The Fate of John Sedgwick
Posted: March 2, 2025 Filed under: photography, WOR Leave a comment
Of General John Sedgwick, Grant wrote:
I had known him in Mexico when both of us were lieutenants, and when our service gave no indication that either of us would ever be equal to the command of a brigade. He stood very high in the army, however, as an officer and a man. He was brave and conscientious. His ambition was not great, and he seemed to dread responsibility. He was willing to do any amount of battling, but always wanted some one else to direct. He declined the command of the Army of the Potomac once, if not oftener.
and
he was never at fault when serious work was to be done
I was reading up on Timothy O’Sullivan, a somewhat mysterious character, and his haunting photographs:
On May 5, [Timothy] O’Sullivan and his camera were at the Wilderness where men fought in a virgin forest of oak and pine, choked with underbrush.
It was so thick the troops moved in single line, the powder smoke so heavy, that men stumbled blindly into enemy lines. Two days later OSullivan was with Grant, moving toward Spotsylvania, where on May 8, Grant and Lee faced each other again. One of the last pictures OSullivan made before the battle began was of his old friend General Sedgwick, who liked to describe himself as “practical as distinguished from the theoretical soldier,” standing on the steps of a house surrounded by his staff. A short time later Sedgwick would be killed, as he told a soldier dodging Rebel bullets not to worry, “they could not shoot an elephant at that distance.” The words had just fallen from his lips when he fell, killed by a sharpshooter.
That from James D. Horan, Timothy O’Sullivan: America’s Forgotten Photographer.
A firsthand account of the end of Sedgwick, from Martin McMahon, who was Sedgwick’s chief of staff:
After this brigade, by Sedgwick’s direction, had been withdrawn through a little opening to the left of the pieces of artillery, the general, who had watched the operation, resumed his seat on the hard-tack box and commenced talking about members of his staff in very complimentary terms.
He was an inveterate tease, and I at once suspected that he had some joke on the staff which he was leading up to. He was interrupted in his comments by observing that the troops, who during this time had been filing from the left into the rifle-pits, had come to a halt and were lying down, while the left of the line partly overlapped the position of the section of artillery. He stopped abruptly and said, ” That is wrong. Those troops must be moved farther to the right ; I don’t wish them to overlap that battery.” I started out to execute the order, and he rose at the same moment, and we sauntered out slowly to the gun on the right. About an hour before, I had remarked to the general, pointing to the two pieces in a half-jesting manner, which he well understood, ” General, do you see that section of artillery? Well, you are not to go near it today.” He answered good-naturedly, “McMahon, I would like to know who commands this corps, you or I? ” I said, playfully, “Sometimes I am in doubt myself”; but added, ” Seriously, General, I beg of you not to go to that angle; every officer who has shown himself there has been hit, both yesterday and to-day.” He answered quietly, ” Well, I don’t know that there is any reason for my going there.” ‘ When afterward we walked out to the position indicated, this conversation had entirely escaped the memory of both.
(you can see the inveterate half-jester in this portrait of him, taken probably in 1864, by Matthew Brady or one of his employees)
back to McMahon:
I gave the necessary order to move the troops to the right, and as they rose to execute the movement the enemy opened a sprinkling fire, partly from sharp-shooters. As the bullets whistled by, some of the men dodged. The general said laughingly, ” What! what! men, dodging this way for single bullets! What will you do when they open fire along the whole line? I am ashamed of you. They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.” A few seconds after, a man who had been separated from his regiment passed directly in front of the general, and at the same moment a sharp-shooter’s bullet passed with a long shrill whistle very close, and the soldier, who was then just in front of the general, dodged to the ground. The general touched him gently with his foot, and said, ” Why, my man, I am ashamed of you, dodging that way,” and repeated the remark, ” They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.” The man rose and saluted and said good-naturedly, ” General, I dodged a shell once, and if I hadn’t, it would have taken my head off. I believe in dodging.” The general laughed and replied, “All right, my man; go to your place.”
For a third time the same shrill whistle, closing with a dull, heavy stroke, interrupted our talk; when, as I was about to resume, the general’s face turned slowly to me, the blood spurting from his left cheek under the eye im a steady stream. He fell in my direction ; I was so close to him that my effort to support him failed, and I fell with him.
Colonel Charles H. Tompkins, chief of the artillery, standing a few feet away, heard my exclamation as the general fell, and, turning, shouted to his brigade-surgeon, Dr. Ohlenschlager. Major Charles A. Whittier, Major T. W. Hyde; and Lieutenant Colonel Kent, who had been grouped near by, surrounded the general as he lay. A smile remained upon his lips but he did not speak. The doctor poured water from a canteen over the general’s face. The blood still poured upward in a little fountain. The men in the long line of rifle-pits, retaining their places from force of discipline, were all kneeling with heads raised and faces turned toward the scene ; for the news had already passed along the line.
After the war, Timothy O’Sullivan accompanied several expeditions out west, and photographed stuff like this:
John Sedgwick was from Cornwall, Connecticut, which seems like a pleasant place. Mark Van Doren wrote a poem about it, here’s an excerpt:
The mind, eager for caresses,
Lies down at its own risk in Cornwall;
Whose hills,
Whose cunning streams,
Whose mazes where a thought,
Doubling upon itself,
Considers the way, lazily, well lost,
Indulge it to the nick of death–
Not quite, for where it curls it still can feel,
Like feathers,
Like affectionate mouse whiskers,
The flattery, the trap.
In Cornwall there’s House VI, an experiment in deconstructivist architecture (a failed experiment?)
The Sedgwicks are a big name in the Berkshires, although I don’t see that our John is connected to the Main Line with Kyra and Edie. There’s a monument to John Sedgwick in Cornwall, but it seems ununique, like a thousand other Civil War monuments:
On the other hand, there’s a monument of him at West Point that has a tradition attached:
Legend holds that if a cadet is deficient in academics, the cadet should go to the monument at midnight the night before the term–end examination, in full dress, under arms, and spin the rowels on the monument’s spurs. With the resulting good luck, the cadet will pass the test.
It seems like he might’ve enjoyed that.
sources, for the photo, for Waud’s drawing and more.
Helytimes 