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

Shot at the Crater

173 Shot at the Crater On July 30, 1864, at Petersburg, Virginia, the Fourth New Hampshire Infantry advanced with its brigade into a mob of panic-stricken Union soldiers fleeing a devastating rebel counterattack at the Battle of the Crater. Pvt. Daniel Sullivan, an Irish immigrant and farmer in Wilton, New Hampshire, marched with the regiment as it moved around the right of the crater. Their mission was originally in support of the main Union attack, but it had become an exercise in damage control. The Fourth came under severe enemy fire that enfiladed its ranks. Col. Louis Bell,282 commanding the regiment and its brigade , reported Union troops “dashing through my men with arms at a trail and bayonets fixed. The officers and men of my command tried to resist the dash of those retreating but to no avail. Quite a number of my men were wounded by the bayonets of the retreating troops, and the brigade was disorganized by the large number of fugitives passing through it.”283 Over in Company D, Sullivan was loading his musket. He placed a paper cartridge between his teeth and, as he tore it open, a bullet ripped through his right hand, the ball entering just below the webbing between his thumb and index finger, shattering several bones. When the regiment fell back, he received medical treatment at nearby City Point, Virginia, and was evacuated to a Philadelphia hospital. He rejoined the Fourth in October, but his hand was permanently damaged. He could flex it only partially and he could not fully extend it. Sullivan mustered out as a corporal after the war ended and returned to New Hampshire. In 1870, he moved to Burlington, Kansas, and found work on the Holt Ranch, renamed the Holt and Sullivan Ranch after he invested in the business. There he met Sarah Stout, a West Virginian seventeen years his junior. The 174 Cpl. Daniel Sullivan, Company D, Fourth New Hampshire Infantry Carte de visite by J. Morgan (life dates unknown) of Concord, New Hampshire, about 1864 175 couple married in 1875 and raised three children. In 1905, the Sullivans moved to the West Coast and lived five years in Washington State before moving to Modesto, California, where their farm supplied community businesses with fruit, vegetables, and chickens . He lived until 1917, dying of heart disease at age seventyseven . ...