Faces of the Civil War: An Album of Union Soldiers and Their Stories

Wounded at Bristoe Station

45 Wounded at Bristoe Station In summer 1899, Col. James W. Powell Jr. was ordered to the Philippines with the Seventeenth U.S. Infantry to quash the insurrection against U.S. rule, which had been implemented after the United States annexed the country at the end of the SpanishAmerican War in 1898. Powell went on the sick list soon after his arrival, plagued by malaria and dysentery contracted earlier that year in Cuba.78 Resting in his quarters, waiting for a leave of absence to be approved, he might have cast his mind back to the Civil War and Bristoe Station, Virginia, where he had been wounded thirty-seven years earlier. Back in 1862, twenty-one-year-old Powell had served as a lieutenant and adjutant with the Seventy-first New York Infantry. He and his father, Dr. James Powell Sr., had joined the regiment a year earlier. His father enlisted as the regimental quartermaster and later became a staff surgeon. At the Battle of Bristoe Station on August 27, a musket ball slammed into young Powell’s right thigh. In surgery, a fragment of a knife blade and a piece of clothing were removed from the wound. He returned to duty in December as assistant adjutant of his brigade. However, his injury continued to trouble him, and he underwent another surgery, to relieve abscesses on his thigh. He began to heal properly, but recovery was slow and Powell resigned. After a couple of months off, he enrolled in the Tenth Veteran Reserve Corps and served in an administrative capacity until 1866, when he joined the regular army. Over the next thirty years, he played a leadership role in several infantry regiments and rose to the rank of colonel. After war broke out with Spain in 1898, Powell and the Seventeenth Infantry were dispatched to Cuba and on to the Philippines. 46 When Col. Powell’s leave of absence from the Seventeenth Infantry was denied, he resigned, retired, and went home to Denver, Colorado. He died of cancer in 1907, survived by his wife, Angeline, and four children. Col. James W. Powell Jr., Seventeenth U.S. Infantry Carte de visite by unidentified photographer, about 1863–1864 ...