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

Compelled to Leave the Service

131 Compelled to Leave the Service In the winter of 1863, forty-three-year-old Capt. Joseph Copeland of the Twenty-eighth Pennsylvania Infantry became frightened and deeply concerned after he began to experience trouble seeing at dusk and during evening hours. He went to see the divisional surgeon-in-chief, who examined Copeland and found him “suffering from Nyctalopia, which prevents him from seeing at night, causing him much annoyance in his official duties, and much personal alarm for his sight.”199 Nyctalopia, or night blindness , is a condition in which vision is normal in daytime but extremely weak or entirely absent in dim light or at night. It can be hereditary or a result of disease or a vitamin A deficiency. The surgeon declared him “unfit for the service . . . unless relieved from his present duties.”200 In his resignation letter, Copeland remarked, “I regret the necessity compelling me to leave the service, being identified with the Regiment since its organization.”201 For the record, he stated his medical condition was “the only cause that induces me to resign.”202 He returned to his home near Pittsburgh. About a year later, in August 1864, Copeland rejoined the army in a role better suited to an individual with his physical limitations. He enlisted as recruiting officer, with the rank of second lieutenant, for the 212th Pennsylvania Volunteers, later designated the Sixth Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery. Within a month after mustering in, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. In January 1865, the regiment garrisoned Fort Ethan Allen, a part of the defensive perimeter protecting Washington , D.C., and stayed on duty there until the end of the war. After mustering out, Copeland rejoined his family, which eventually included seven children, and later settled in Wellsville, Missouri, where they worked a farm with eighty acres of improved 132 land and more than 150 acres of timber and brush. He died in March 1889 after a long and painful battle with lung disease. He was “surrounded for over a week by all his children and grandchildren , who labored untiringly to alleviate his sufferings.”203 Lt. Col. Joseph B. Copeland, Sixth Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery Carte de visite by unidentified photographer, about 1864 ...