USS Constellation on the Dismal Coast: Willie Leonard's Journal, 1859-1861

Epilogue

Epilogue William Leonard, paid off from the Constellation on October 10, 1861, went home to Charlestown. On September 5, 1862, he enlisted in the local Hamilton Guard. Two weeks later, on September 18, 1862, he married twenty-twoyear -old Mary Moloney. They had six children, of whom three survived to adulthood. The Hamilton Guard became a company of the Fifth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, for nine months’ service. Shipped to North Carolina, the regiment conducted various operations against the Confederates . Though the regiment served until July 1863, Leonard was mustered out early for medical reasons; while on picket duty near Washington, N.C., he was hospitalized for a severe bout of malaria. Discharged from the hospital and the army on March 4, 1863, he returned home and began employment in the rigging loft at the Charlestown Navy Yard on March 26. In March 1864, despite all the warnings he had written into his journal aboard the Constellation, Leonard again enlisted in the navy, this time for service aboard the USS Cornubia. Built as a coastal steamer for a Welsh shipping line, the Cornubia was purchased by the Confederate government for service as a blockade runner. Captured by the U.S. Navy, it was commissioned as the USS Cornubia. With Leonard in the crew, it served on the Gulf Coast until being decommissioned in August 1865. Leonard presumably lived and worked in the Boston area from then on, though the first available record from that period has him working as a messenger for the Osgood and Co. express company on October 26, 1869. In this job he shuttled the 63 miles between Boston and Worcester on the Fitchburg and Worcester and Nashua Railroads, traveling by his reckoning a total of 151,872 miles during the next three years. When that company suspended operations on October 1, 1872, Leonard went to work as a driver for the U.S. and Canada Express Company. On December 19, 1889, at the American Epilogue 387 Express Co. stable in south Boston, he was killed by falling through a scuttle to the floor twelve feet below. Flag Officer William Inman was placed on the retired list effective December 1, 1861. Promoted to commodore on the retired list in 1867, he died in Philadelphia in 1874. Capt. John Smith Nicholas returned to his home in Bound Brook, New Jersey, where he died on July 18, 1865. Fannie Page Hume broke off her engagement to Lieutenant Rhind. Unable to return his letters because of the war, she finally burned them on Christmas Day 1862. On February 18, 1865, she married a cousin, Confederate artillery officer Lt. Col. Carter Braxton. She died in Richmond on June 16, 1865. Lt. Alexander Colden Rhind failed in his efforts to reconnect with Fannie Hume, but the war made his career. Given command of the USS Crusader two months after leaving the Constellation, he distinguished himself in taking and destroying Confederate works on rivers in the vicinity of Edisto Sound. On April 7, 1863, he commanded the ironclad USS Keokuk participating in an unsuccessful attack on Fort Sumter. Riddled with ninety hits from Confederate guns, the ship sank the next day. In December 1864 Rhind took the USS Louisiana, loaded with powder, to explode under the walls of Fort Fisher, near Wilmington, North Carolina. After the war he held various commands afloat and ashore, retiring in 1883 as a rear admiral. He died in New York City on November 8, 1897. He never married. This page intentionally left blank ...