Courtroom wars part 2 – Corinna selectmen shaft a soldier

Four 12-pounder Napoleons are displayed inside Fort Stedman’s weathered earthworks at Petersburg National Battlefield Park in Virginia. For a few months in late autumn 1864, part of the 4th Maine Battery was stationed at this particular fort. The rest of the battery was assigned to nearby Fort Haskell. A transfer westward in December saved the 4th Maine contingent from being present when Confederate troops overran Fort Stedman in late March 1865. (Brian F. Swartz Photo)

Note: We thank attorney Joseph G. Donahue, a re-enactor with Co. A, 3rd Maine Infantry, for providing the Maine Supreme Judicial Court opinion that sparked this three-part post.

While stationed at forts Haskell and Stedman along the Petersburg siege lines, the 4th Maine Battery lads cast their votes — 59 for Abraham Lincoln and 34 for George McClellan — in the November 8 presidential election, celebrated Thanksgiving on November 24 with “turkey … furnished us by the Christian Commission,” and built “log huts for winter quarters” in mid-December, recalled Sgt. Judson Ames.

Then the VI Corps, with which the 4th Maine Battery had served in the Shenandoah Valley, returned to Petersburg, and the Army ordered the battery to rejoin its old command. “A cold rain” fell December 19 as the Mainers relocated “several miles” westward, reaching “our new quarters” around nightfall as the rain transitioned “to soft snow,” said Ames, now promoted to first sergeant.He later became the battery’s historian.

Restored to three two-gun sections, the battery deployed into batteries 24, 25, and 26, and the Mainers promptly built new log huts with material, especially bricks, “brought from our old quarters,” Ames said. Pvt. John Winchester of Corinna helped build the hut, its sides approximately five feet tall, in which he and three other soldiers spent the winter.

By the time that Pvt. John Winchester of Corinna joined the 4th Maine Battery at Petersburg in autumn 1864, the battery was garrisoning forts Haskell and Stedman, upper right on this map. (The Atlas to Accompany the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies)

The Mainers listened as a cacophonous cannonade boomed along the Union lines during the April 1-2 darkness. Standing to their cannons, “we could see but little of the terrific contest that was going on” as Union infantry attacked the western Confederate lines early Sunday, Ames said.

Robert E. Lee had pulled troops from those defenses to block Maj. Gen. Phil Sheridan’s end-run around the Confederates’ right flank. Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant ordered the subsequent assault that punctured the weakened Southern lines as Sunday wore on.

We felt that the end of the long struggle was at hand,” Ames commented.

Soon recalled with other batteries to “the reserve artillery camp at City Point,” the Mainers celebrated with cheers and a bonfire upon learning around 7 p.m., April 9 that Lee had surrendered. “Comrade grasped comrade by the hand[,] and tears of joy stood in many an eye,” Ames said.

Crossing the James River by boat on May 3, the 4th Maine Battery headed home, the lads catching an outbound train at Washington, D.C. on June 3. Along with the 6th Maine Battery “and a New Hampshire battery,” the 4th Maine reached New London, Connecticut early on June 5 and Boston later that morning.

At 5 p.m. the two Maine batteries started marching through Beantown to board a steamer bound for the Kennebec River. Ames remembered the ship docking briefly at Richmond, Gardiner, and Hallowell; few people turned out to cheer the Maine gunners, “and the boys growled considerably at the cool reception we were receiving …”

But Augustans turned out en masse, treating the hungry soldiers to “a most substantial and generous repast” at Capitol Park. The 4th Maine lads mustered out at Augusta on June 17 “and separated, many never to meet again,” Ames observed.

John Winchester likely caught a Maine Central Railroad train north to Newport, Corinna’s southern neighbor, and arrived home sound in mind, perhaps less so in body.

He greeted Elizabeth, his daughters, and his son, John Howard Winchester, born on April 13.

While in the army, Winchester had sent “his agent duly authorized” to collect the $300 bounty from the Corinna selectmen on November 26, 1864. Declining the $200 offered by selectmen Robert Knowles, Charles H. Morse, and Emery Southard, the agent insisted on the $300.

They refused to pay.

Part 1: Corinna promises its recruits big bucks for enlisting

Part 3: John Winchester sues his hometown for the money due him

Sources: George Thomas Little, editor, Genealogical and Family History of the State of Maine, Vol. 1, Lewis Historical Publishing Company, New York, NY, 1909; John Winchester versus Inhabitants of Corinna, Cases In The Supreme Judicial Court of the State of Maine, Eastern District, Penobscot County,1867; Lilla E. Wood, A Brief History of Corinna, Maine: 1814-1916, J.P. Bass Publishing Company, Bangor, ME, 1946; Judson Ames, History of the Fourth  Maine Battery Light Artillery in the Civil War: 1861-1865, Burleigh & Flynt, Augusta, ME, 1905


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.

 

Brian Swartz

About Brian Swartz

Welcome to "Maine at War," the blog about the roles played by Maine and her sons and daughters in the Civil War. I am a Civil War buff and a newspaper editor recently retired from the Bangor Daily News. Maine sent hero upon hero — soldiers, nurses, sailors, chaplains, physicians — south to preserve their country in the 1860s. “Maine at War” introduces these heroes and heroines, who, for the most part, upheld the state's honor during that terrible conflict. We tour the battlefields where they fought, and we learn about the Civil War by focusing on Maine’s involvement with it. Be prepared: As I discover to this very day, the facts taught in American classrooms don’t always jibe with Civil War reality. I can be reached at visionsofmaine@tds.net.