Tag Archives: Hiram Burnham

A hero emerges at Chancellorsville, part 2

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’ […]

A hero emerges at Chancellorsville, part 1

 Talk about bureaucratic delay: The federal government took 33 years to reward Charles Amory Clark for saving a Maine regiment at Chancellorsville. Born in rural Sangerville in Piscataquis County on January 26, 1841, Clark “was a student at Foxcroft Academy” when the Civil War began. “I was fairly well fitted for college, and would have […]

Battle of the Bards — Part 2: Regiments trade volley fire in a Maine newspaper

  If Col. Hiram Burnham was pleased that his 6th Maine Infantry received a brief mention in the May 15, 1862 issue of the Maine Farmer, he certainly did not care when he blew his Down East gasket nine days later. Several Maine infantry regiments had battled at Williamsburg, Va. on May 5. The 6th […]

Battle of the Bards — Part 1: The 7th Maine fields a two-man PR machine

  Not until after the Battle of Williamsburg, Va. in early May 1862 did Col. Hiram Burnham learn what Col. Edwin Mason instinctively knew: the value of a good press agent. A Cherryfield native, Burnham commanded the 6th Maine Infantry, Mason the 7th Maine. Months before that regiment fought at Williamsburg, readers of the Maine […]

Machias forager gets his goose cooked

  Sherman’s “March to the Sea” epitomizes the concept of “living off the land” in hostile territory, but soldiers like Calif Newton Drew of Machias were cleaning out Confederate larders long before Sherman’s bummers swaggered out of Atlanta. Hailing from Machias and Whitneyville, Drew was 15 when he joined Co. K, 6th Maine Infantry Regiment […]

The 6th Maine’s screaming demons led the way

Frantically loading and firing their rifled muskets, the Mississippi infantrymen defending the stone wall at Fredericksburg about 11:05 a.m. on May 3, 1863, suddenly realized that all the .58-caliber lead bullets in the world would not stop the screaming, wild-eyed berserkers swarming toward them. No matter how many comrades pitched onto the slope below Marye’s […]