Civil War
At the start of the Civil War, Parke was appointed brigadier general of volunteers and commanded a brigade in the operations on the North Carolina coast in early 1862. He received a brevet promotion for the Battle of Fort Macon and was promoted to major general of volunteers on July 18, 1862.
In the Army of the Potomac, Parke served briefly as commander of 3rd Division, IX Corps. Then he served as chief of staff to Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside during the battles of Antietam and Fredericksburg. He assumed command of the IX Corps and was sent to the Western Theater for the Vicksburg Campaign. Parke then was Burnside's chief of staff in the Army of the Ohio in the defense of Knoxville.
Parke served as chief of staff to Burnside during the Overland Campaign, in which the latter commanded IX Corps, as well as in the beginning stages of the Siege of Petersburg. After the Battle of the Crater, Burnside was relieved of command and Parke assumed command of the IX Corps. He led it at the Battle of Globe Tavern, the Battle of Peebles' Farm, and the Battle of Boydton Plank Road.
In 1865, while Army of the Potomac commander Maj. Gen. George G. Meade was in a conference, Parke, being senior officer, was acting commander of the army during the Battle of Fort Stedman until Meade returned to the field. He led the IX Corps through the fall of Petersburg and the Appomattox Campaign. In 1865 he was appointed brevet major general in the regular army in recognition of his service at Fort Stedman.
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Famous quotes by civil war:
“The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“We have heard all of our lives how, after the Civil War was over, the South went back to straighten itself out and make a living again. It was for many years a voiceless part of the government. The balance of power moved away from it—to the north and the east. The problems of the north and the east became the big problem of the country and nobody paid much attention to the economic unbalance the South had left as its only choice.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“At Hayes’ General Store, west of the cemetery, hangs an old army rifle, used by a discouraged Civil War veteran to end his earthly troubles. The grocer took the rifle as payment ‘on account.’”
—Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“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)