Civil War Service and Death
When the American Civil War began in 1861, Chapin chose to follow his home state and the Union cause. He was mustered into the Union Army on September 6 as a captain in the 44th New York Infantry Regiment. The 44th left New York on October 21, numbering 1,061 strong, and joined the Army of the Potomac. On January 2, 1862, Chapin was promoted to major, and he fought during the Peninsula Campaign in Virginia. On May 27 he was seriously wounded in the Battle of Hanover Court House, among the 86 casualties the 44th suffered in the fight. Chapin's performance there was praised by his commanding officer, Brig. Gen. John H. Martindale.
On July 4, 1862, Chapin was promoted to lieutenant colonel in the 44th New York, however he resigned that day and returned home. During the convalescence from his wound, Chapin was approached by Buffalo officials requesting he raise and lead a new regiment, the 116th New York Infantry. On September 5 Chapin was appointed commander of the 116th, with the rank of colonel. He led the regiment south to Baltimore, Maryland, where it remained until ordered to Mississippi that November.
Chapin and the 116th arrived at Ship Island, Mississippi, by sail on December 14, 1862, and by the end of the year they reached New Orleans, Louisiana. On February 9, 1863, Chapin was given brigade command in the army of Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks, operating against Confederate forces defending the Mississippi River. Chapin and his command saw action at the Battle of Plains Store on May 21, where he was again praised for his conduct by his superiors. Six days later Chapin led his brigade (part of Brig Gen. Christopher C. Augur's division) against the Confederate fortifications around Port Hudson, Louisiana, the first assaults in the Siege of Port Hudson. What happened has been described as:
After several hours of heavy Federal cannonading upon the Confederate works, at 3 pm on May 27, 1863, General Augur’s men advanced from the woods across an open area of about a mile in length obstructed by fascines, abattis, and underbrush. Colonel Chapin’s Brigade rushed forward under heavy grape, shell, and canister fire from the Confederate artillery during which Colonel Chapin, wounded in the knee early in the contest, received a mortal wound from a Minié ball in the head within a few yards of the Rebel breastworks.After being wounded in the American Civil War with the second injury causing his death, Chapin's body was sent back to Waterloo, New York, and was buried there in the city's Maple Grove Cemetery. Four months after his death, President Abraham Lincoln sent Chapin's father a commission, appointing Chapin a brigadier general "for gallant and meritorious service at the assault on Port Hudson." The commission was dated from the day of Chapin's death, but was never confirmed by the U.S. Congress. Chapin Parkway in Buffalo, New York, was named in his honor.
Read more about this topic: Edward Payson Chapin
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, civil, war, service and/or death:
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)
“There is reason in the distinction of civil and uncivil. The manners are sometimes so rough a rind that we doubt whether they cover any core or sap-wood at all.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Soldier, there is a war between the mind
And sky, between thought and day and night. It is
For that the poet is always in the sun,
Patches the moon together in his room
To his Virgilian cadences, up down,
Up down. It is a war that never ends.”
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“Service ... is love in action, love “made flesh”; service is the body, the incarnation of love. Love is the impetus, service the act, and creativity the result with many by-products.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 3, ch. 3 (1962)
“Such as the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman’s Woe!”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)