About 36 hours before he led the 6th Maine Infantry Regiment to safety off a Rappahannock River bluff, 1st Lt. Charles Amory Clark was among the first Yankees to cross the Stone Wall and take the bayonet to defending Mississippians at Fredericksburg on May 3, 1863. (Brian F. Swartz Photo)
As Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick extricated his trapped VI Corps overnight on May 4, 1863, orders went to the 6th Maine Infantry Regiment to defend the corps’ far right flank along the Rappahannock River, even if doing so meant capture or death.
As the night passed, time ran out.
Concealed in dark woods near Banks’ Ford on the Rappahannock River late on Monday, May 4, 1863, the 6th Maine Infantry waited as two 31st New York companies and the 43rd New York anchored the regiment’s left flank. Advancing Confederates “moved between us and the picket line” about 11 p.m. “and our pickets were captured without firing a shot,” reported 1st Lt. Charles Amory Clark, the 6th Maine’s adjutant.
Alerted by “a confused noise,” Clark and Lt. Col. Benjamin F. Harris — the regiment’s commander —rode to a treeline and “discovered in the moonlight the enemy forming his lines and coming on to attack us.”
Rejoining the 6th Maine, Harris aligned his ranks to meet the assault on his left flank. Confederates came out of the moon-lit dark; “there was a sharp fight” lasting 10-15 minutes, “and the night was filled with wild outcries and uproar,” Clark recalled.
The Maine lads repulsed the attack, but their gunfire revealed their thin numbers. Harris rode to find an open route to Union lines near the pontoon bridge spanning the Rappahannock. Clark scouted “to the front” and found the enemy lines reforming for another assault.
With Harris gone, command fell “to the senior captain,” who “naturally hesitated” when Clark urged him to take charge “and withdraw the regiment.” The captain figured Harris might return “at any moment and take such action as was imperative.”
Harris later learned that Clark “rode back and forth along the lines[,] fearlessly exposing his person and encouraging the men,” who by the not-so-distant commotion knew “the enemy” had “rallied his forces and prepared to … attack with overwhelming numbers.
“Annihilation and capture the regiment in the face” unless the Mainers withdrew, Harris admitted.
Realizing “there was no time to be lost,” Clark “rode along the line,” ordered “perfect silence,” and left-faced the men. Tramping to the bluff through thick undergrowth, they started down the “sheer descent of fifty to sixty feet” to the riverbank.
Clark and his horse, “Jim,” descended the steep slope. Jim suddenly stumbled and fell, ejecting Clark from the saddle to catch tree branches somewhere downhill. “I … slid down the tree, and on foot” reached “the base of the bluff,” he said.
There he found “old ‘Jim’ … waiting for me, apparently a good deal dazed and confused, but still ready for faithful service.” Above the reunited horse and rider “the men came over the bluff helter skelter, but silent as possible.”
Charles Amory Clark of the 6th Maine Infantry moved to Iowa after the Civil War. (Hisotry of Iowa, Vol. IV)
Gathering “along the water’s edge,” the 6th Maine lads moved downstream as Confederates “advanced upon our now abandoned position.” Clark heard Southern voices and clatter overhead.
“Some of my men became noisy,” drawing a sharp “dry up” from Clark, but the Mainers finally neared “our pontoon bridge,” he said. Once safely identified to the trigger-happy Yankees guarding the bridge and its approaches, “we joined the rear of the Sixth Corps after it was supposed that every man of us was captured or disabled in battle.”
Clark located Col. Hiram Burnham, the Light Division commander who had formerly led the 6th Maine. “When I … told him that the old regiment had come in all right, he cried like a child,” Clark said.
The Maine lads crossed the river “with the rear guard” just before Southern artillery “opened fire with a battery from the bluffs above us,” he reported.
Clark’s initiative got attention. “I cannot praise the behavior of Adjutant Clark on this occasion too highly,” Harris wrote on May 6. “His gallantry and presence of mind extricated the regiment from a most perilous position.”
Writing his Light Division’s report on May 12, Burnham also praised Clark. “His coolness, gallantry, and presence of mind in the engagement at Brooks’ Ford contributed in a great measure to saving his regiment from annihilation and capture.”
This Congressional Medal of Honor presented to William F. Moore of the 117th Illinois Infantry is similar in design to the Medal of Honor presented to Charles Amory Clark in 1893. (Library of Congress)
Burnham expounded further on May 23 by citing Clark “for distinguished and conspicuous bravery at the Heights of St. Marye” and for his “most conspicuous bravery and daring at Brooks’ Ford” late on May 4. “He rode his horse over a precipitous bluff unmindful of personal peril.
“He is deserving of brevet, medal, or mention in general orders,” Burnham wrote.
Clark was living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa when he received a special honor. In a War Department letter dated May 13, 1896, Col. F.C. Ainsworth informed Clark that he was receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor for his “most distinguished gallantry at Brooks’ Ford, Virginia, May 4, 1863.”
The letter accompanied the medal.
“My brother officers and the enlisted of men who served through the perils of those days, all deserve the same recognition of their services,” Clark wrote a year later.
Sources: Charles A. Clark, Campaigning with the Sixth Maine, The Kenyon Press, Des Moines, Iowa, 1897
If you enjoy reading the adventures of Mainers caught up in the Civil War, be sure to like Maine at War on Facebook and get a copy of the new Maine at War Volume 1: Bladensburg to Sharpsburg, available online at Amazon and all major book retailers, including Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble. —————————————————————————————————————–
Brian Swartz can be reached at visionsofmaine@tds.net. He enjoys hearing from Civil War buffs interested in Maine’s involvement in the war.
