A Soldier's Story of His Regiment (61st Georgia): And Incidentally of the Lawton-Gordon-Evans Brigade Army of Northern Virginia

Introduction

Introduction by Keith S. Bohannon In his classic bibliography, In Tall Cotton: The 200 Most Important Confederate Books for the Reader, Researcher, and Collector, Richard B. Harwell wrote that A Soldier’s Story of His Regiment (61st Georgia) and Incidentally of the Lawton-Gordon-Evans Brigade Army, Northern Virginia was primitive in its style, “but lively and refreshing.” Since the 1978 publication of Harwell’s assessment, the usage of A Soldier’s Story of His Regiment in numerous campaign and battle studies suggests its value as one of the finer memoirs penned by an Army of Northern Virginia veteran.1 George Washington Nichols, the author of A Soldier’s Story of His Regiment,was born January 22,1843,in Bulloch County, Georgia. He was the son of Theophilus Nichols (1808–1881) and Rebecca Crumpton Nichols (1818–1869). Theophilus Nichols was “a large farmer, honored and esteemed by the community.” Despite being listed as illiterate in the census, Theophilus “was successful in the management of his many acres” and “a master with tools.” For labor, he relied on his large family and possibly hired hands, for neither Theophilus nor his children owned slaves.2 The Nichols family farm was near Bengal, a post office established in the early 1850s close to Lower Lotts Creek in Bulloch County. In 1860 the Nichols farm included 1,600 acres, one hundred of them improved for cultivation. Like many inhabitants of the wiregrass region of southeastern Georgia, the Nichols family raised livestock, including cattle, sheep, and hogs. They also cultivated Indian corn, oats, sweet potatoes, peas, and beans.3 2 On the eve of the Civil War, George Nichols, his older brother Absalom Jackson Nichols, and five younger siblings all attended a country school. They might have been under the tutelage of James C. Hodges, a well-respected man identified by George Nichols as “his old professor.” Hodges was a twenty-one-year-old teacher in the Bengal community in 1860.4 The Nichols brothers did not rush to join the Confederate Army immediately upon the outbreak of the Civil War. Absalom Nichols waited until early September 1861 to enlist as a private in a company commanded by Captain Henry Tillman. According to a 1911 memoir, Colonel Charles A. L. Lamar swore Tillman’s company into service in Bulloch County on September 1, 1861. The compiled service records state that Absalom Nichols enlisted for the duration of the war along with his company on September 9, 1861, at Eden Station,No.2,on the Central Georgia Railroad.Tillman’s men and several other South Georgia companies remained along the Central Railroad at the Eden and Guyton stations until late September, when they moved into Savannah. There the companies became part of the 7th Georgia Infantry Battalion.5 George W. Nichols joined his brother’s company on May 10, 1862, at Camp Bethesda, ten miles south of Savannah. During the succeeding weeks, the 7th Battalion received three additional companies and became the 61st Georgia Infantry Regiment. Shortly thereafter, the 61st went to Virginia, where it joined “Stonewall” Jackson’s command in the Shenandoah Valley in the second week of June 1862. When the 61st Georgia marched into battle for the first time at Gaines Mill on June 27, 1862, George Nichols had a high fever. After collapsing during the engagement, the exhausted and ill youth awoke the next morning to discover 3 the corpse of his brother Absalom. The sickly George, unable to rejoin his regiment, began an extended period in the Confederate hospital system. After a stint in Richmond and Lynchburg hospitals and a failed attempt to rejoin his unit, Nichols entered the general hospital in Danville, Virginia, suffering from “debilitas” on August 23, 1862. After being discharged from the Danville hospital on October 31, 1862, Nichols entered General Hospital No. 19 in Richmond on November 5, where he stayed through February 1863. By the end of February, Nichols had rejoined the 61st, who were then encamped below Fredericksburg. The extended hospital stay apparently invigorated the youth, for one of his comrades wrote home from Hamilton’s Crossing in late March 1863 that G.W. Nichols had been out washing in the cold weather and was “quite hearty.”6 Nichols served with his regiment in the Chancellorsville Campaign, having bullets pass through his blanket and shoe during the fighting around Fredericksburg. In the subsequent march into Pennsylvania, the “sick and weakly boy” once...