Tag Archives: Moses B. Lakeman

The 3rd Maine and Cadmus Wilcox’s Alabamians duel in Pitzer’s Woods, part 2

Ordered by Maj. Gen. David B. Birney to probe southern Seminary Ridge on Thursday, July 2, 1863, Col. Hiram Berdan and his green-clad sharpshooters crossed the Emmitsburg Road and advanced into Pitzer’s Woods. With Berdan came Col. Moses B. Lakeman and his 3rd Maine Infantry Regiment. You can read part 1 here. The sharpshooters took […]

The 3rd Maine and Cadmus Wilcox’s Alabamians duel in Pitzer’s Woods, part 1

Early on Thursday, July 2, 1863, Maj. Gen. Dan Sickles sent an aide to find Col. Elijah Walker and his 4th Maine Infantry Regiment, numbering “about 300 men and 18 officers” upon bivouacking near Cemetery Ridge the previous night. Sickles commanded III Corps, deployed by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade to hold the southern end […]

Lakeman loses larking lieutenants

Moses B. Lakeman lost lieutenants on June 20, 1863. He had a pretty good idea what happened to them. Commanded respectively by colonels Lakeman and Elijah Walker, the 3rd and 4th Maine infantry regiments served in the 2nd Brigade led by Brig. Gen. John Henry Hobart Ward, a New York City native and Mexican War […]

Eyewitness to slaughter

  What was Robert E. Lee thinking? Among the battlefields preserved by Richmond National Battlefield Park, Malvern Hill is my favorite site. Standing amidst the cannons aligned east of the Crew House, I can see the open fields across which Lee hurled his infantry on July 1, 1862. These cannons, sited to approximate the Federal […]