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

Caught in a Deadly Crossfire

101 Caught in a Deadly Crossfire On July 1, 1863, the 134th New York Infantry was sent to help stop the rapid rebel advance at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The regiment positioned itself along a fence just beyond a brickyard on the outskirts of town. Soon afterward, three North Carolina regiments attacked and battled their way around the 134th’s unprotected right flank, catching the regiment off guard with a deadly crossfire. The next twenty minutes were hell for the New Yorkers—on average, a man fell every five seconds—leaving more than 250 killed and wounded. Cpl. James Brownlee was on the hard-hit right flank. One musket ball smashed into his breastbone, shattering ribs and perforating his right lung before blowing a hole out his back. Another bullet slammed into and fractured his right thigh. A spent bullet entered near the base of his spine and stopped just below the skin’s surface at the right hip. He removed this bullet himself. Three buckshot were embedded in his left side, one piercing his bladder. His right shoulder was deeply bruised. His doctors, writing him off, made him comfortable for his expected final days. Brownlee, a twenty-four-year-old farmhand born in Ireland, beat the odds. “Strange to say he recovered from his wounds,”149 one surgeon reported. His bladder injury leaked urine for ten days, probably saving his life—the urine may have prevented fatal infections from occurring.150 His weight dropped to eighty-seven pounds. After two years convalescing in three hospitals, he returned home, weakened, but generally healthy. His doctor recommended living in the country and handling cattle and meat as a health-improving occupation. He married Mary Jane Stryker in the winter of 1865 and settled in Cobleskill, New York, where they began a family that grew to 102 Cpl. James Brownlee, Company G, 134th New York Infantry Carte de visite by Haines (life dates unknown) & Wickes (life dates unknown) of Albany, New York, 1865 103 include four sons. In the 1870s, he worked as a street vendor, selling meats. But exposure to the elements slowed him down: On damp, cold days, he would “cling to the side of his meat wagon for several minutes”151 to catch his breath. In the 1880s, he and his wife opened a men’s clothing store, which they operated for nineteen years. He wore padded clothing to compensate for the great concavity of his chest caused by the wound to his lung, but nothing could hide the marked incline to his affected side. After Brownlee died of a stroke in 1904, his wife moved in with her son Eugene. He lived in Tryon, North Carolina, the home state of the Confederate soldiers who had wounded her late husband . She lived until 1923.152 ...