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| Francis W. Butler of the 5th New Hampshire Volunteers, winter 1861-62 |
It has
been 13 years since the publication of My
Brave Boys, the book Mark Travis and I wrote about the 5th New Hampshire
Volunteers under Col. Edward E. Cross. It was our first book, and the memory of
seeing it for the first time still makes me smile.
When we
started our research eight years earlier, more than one person knowledgeable
about the regiment warned us that we wouldn’t find enough about the 5th to
write a book. On the contrary, we discovered a wealth of letters, diaries,
memoirs and newspaper accounts to bring the men and their experience to life.
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| Captain Richard R. David, 39, of Wolfeborough |
But little
did we know how much more was out there. The internet age has created a bonanza
of new primary source material. Not least are dozens of CDVs – wartime studio
(or “salon,” the word used at the time) photos of the men. The soldiers
distributed these to friends and family. The portraits were cherished,
especially when their subjects happened to die, which, of course, was a common
outcome.
Nowadays
there are collectors galore of CDVs, and identified soldiers are especially
coveted. My friend Dave Morin and I check regularly online, especially on eBay,
for new faces of New Hampshire soldiers. The other day Dave found a run of four
photos of 5th officers on eBay and shared them with me. I had never seen any of
them, although three of the four men had star turns in My Brave Boys and one an even larger role in Our War, my 2012 book
about New Hampshire’s Civil War experienced.
I’ve
reproduced the four pictures in this post. They are Frank Butler, Richard R.
Davis, Jacob Keller and James B. David. The eBay seller told Dave they came
from the photo album of a daughter of Capt. Richard Welch, another 5th officer.
All four
of the CDVs are signed, and all were taken at the Mathew Brady studio in
Washington, D.C. They were taken during the winter of 1861-62, before the
regiment had fought its first battle. Maybe the four officers went together to
the studio while the 5th was stationed at Bladensburg, Md., where Col. Cross
was preparing his men for war.
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| Lt., later Capt., Jacob Keller of the 5th was an immigrant from Germany |
Butler is
the soldier I know best. His descendant, Tom Jameson, a Texan, lent me a large
notebook of Butler’s wartime letters for Our
War. In the book I tell Butler’s story through the letters, which are
descriptive and candid.
Butler was
a bright, articulate man who left the 5th to go to signal school. He later
returned to the regiment as a captain. He rode with Cross to Gettysburg. Still
later, while serving as a staff officer for Gen. “Baldy” Smith before Petersburg,
Butler was wounded in the leg. He made it home to New Hampshire, where he underwent
an amputation and died.
Richard R.
Davis of Wolfborough, N.H., joined the 5th as captain of Company H at the age
of 39. He served under Cross at the Battle of Fair Oaks but resigned and went
home in late July 1862, after the Seven Days.
Jacob
Keller was German by birth and a stalwart officer. He immigrated to the United
States in 1855 at the age of 28. When the war broke out, he joined the 6th
Massachusetts, the three-month regiment attacked by a mob in Baltimore on April
19, 1861. Keller returned home to Claremont, N.H., where he enlisted in the 5th
New Hampshire and was commissioned as Davis’s first lieutenant in Co. H.
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| Lt. James B. David ran afoul of Col. Cross and was sent packing. |
Later, he
became a captain and transferred to command of the ill-fated Claremont company,
Co. G. Of the battle of Fair Oaks on June 1, 1862: Keller wrote: “We fought so
close that if a little nearer the powder of the one would have burned the faces
of the other.” At Fredericksburg, where his company was nearly destroyed, a
ball shattered his right arm.
Lt. James B.
David of Company K was from Amherst, N.H. When I showed his picture to Mark
Travis, he responded: “Can’t you just see Cross hating this guy? On looks
alone, all politics aside.”
David and his
captain, Richard Welch, whose daughter apparently collected these CDVs in her
album, shared the ignominy of being booted out of the 5th by Col. Cross on Feb.
15, 1862. Their records read: “Disch. incompetency.” Company K’s first sergeant,
Thomas L. Livermore, had borne the brunt of Welch’s and David’s callous and
babbling leadership. Of their ouster, he wrote in his memoir: “The
consternation of our two officers was exceeding, and their calamity must have
weighed very heavily.”
[More faces of the Fighting Fifth here, here, here and here.]
[More faces of the Fighting Fifth here, here, here and here.]
