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

Determined to Get Back into the War

92 Capt. Edward Richmond Washburn, Company I, Fifty-third Massachusetts Infantry Carte de visite by unidentified photographer, about 1862 93 Determined to Get Back into the War Bodies of dead and wounded Union soldiers littered the ground near the top of a little knoll that lay in the path of the June 14, 1863, assault on Port Hudson, Louisiana. Brig. Gen. Halbert Paine,134 a division commander, lay on the hillside, his leg hopelessly mangled by a rebel musket blast. Nearby lay Capt. Edward Washburn of the Fifty-third Massachusetts Infantry, who was dangerously wounded in his right thigh. Both became trapped after the federal attack was repulsed; they were pinned down by intense enemy fire for hours. Attempts to rescue them failed. The two men lay close enough together to talk as they waited for cover of darkness , and the young captain shared his canteen of water with the thirsty general. According to the regimental historian, Washburn “was able cautiously to smoke a single cigar he had brought with him, and thought if he had taken along a half-dozen he would have got through the day very well.”135 The two men were returned safely inside the Union line that night. Gen. Paine’s leg was amputated , and he returned to active duty. The Fifty-third’s term of enlistment expired while Washburn was recuperating, but he planned to rejoin the army after his convalescence was complete. The musket ball that slammed into Washburn’s thigh fractured the upper third of his femur. At the regimental hospital, an assistant surgeon removed a bone fragment and piece of lead from the wound and concluded that the captain’s injury would result in a shortened leg. To prevent extreme shortening, he ordered Washburn to undergo extension treatment, by which weight was added to his leg using a pulley system, starting with a half-pound and ending with eighteen pounds. His body acted as the counterweight . The result was favorable, “with shortening of only half an inch.”136 94 Washburn returned to his home in Lancaster, Massachusetts; in the fall of 1863, the twenty-seven-year-old bachelor went back to his job as a secretary with the Bay State Insurance Company. He was determined to get back into the war as soon as his health was fully regained, but his leg continued to trouble him. In August 1864, the wound broke open, blood poisoning set in, and he died after ten days of intense suffering. His death “was a great grief to a large circle of relatives and acquaintances,”137 and Washburn was mourned as an officer “dignified in bearing, courteous to all, and secured in the love and respect of his men, while he held them in strict discipline.”138 ...