Civil War History of Russell Legg (Virginia)
Russell Woodward Legg was born in southwest Virginia in 1827 and was the husband of Louisa Roach and the father of Robert Patton Legg, Emily Legg, Sarah Legg, John Legg, and Martha Legg.There may be other children of whom I am unaware.
Russell Legg enlisted in the Confederate 50th Virginia Infantry regiment shortly after the Civil War broke out in 1861.He was initially elected to the rank of Sergeant by the members of his company.The regiment experienced its first combat in the Kanawha Campaign West Virginia) of 1861, with its most serious fight coming at Carnifex Ferry on September 10.The regiment also engaged in several other minor skirmishes during the campaign.
After a brief deployment to Bolling Green, KY in January 1862, the regiment was sent to reinforce rebel forces in western Tennessee, arriving at Fort Donelson on February 13.On the 15th the regiment engaged in a significant battle there, suffering at least 19 deaths with 30 additional soldiers wounded.
Because Union forces at Fort Donelson were larger and had the fort effectively surrounded, the Confederate commander elected to surrender the fort and his troops.However, the rebel cavalry component under Nathan Bedford Forrest managed to escape before the surrender, and so did a small number of infantry units.Among those that escaped were the 50th Virginia, although a few of its wounded men had to be left behind.
The evacuation was hasty and not well organized, and after successfully escaping from the fort the regiment broke apart.A few of its companies remained with the regimental commander, but at least three others, including the company to which Russell Legg was assigned, became separated from the main body.The detached men then dispersed into smaller groups and made their way back to Virginia as best they could.
Most of the regiment's soldiers arrived back in Virginia by the spring of 1862, but their one-year enlistments were soon finished.Accordingly, the regiment was re-organized with new recruits and re-enlisting 1861 personnel.Russell Legg was one of those who re-enlisted and presumably gave to Louisa the $50 bounty that re-enlisting soldiers were paid.
During the regiment's re-organization, Russell Legg was elected or appointed as a 2nd Lieutenant, a rank he then held until his death in 1865.For the remainder of 1862, the regiment served at various times in the Shenandoah Valley, in the area around modern-day Charleston WV, and around Petersburg, VA.The combat experienced by the 50th Virginia during this period was relatively minor and not historically notable, although a few combat deaths did occur in WV.
In early spring 1863 the 50th Virginia was transferred from the Confederacy's Department of Western Virginia to the Army of Northern Virginia, the famous military command headed by Robert E. Lee.Upon arrival it was assigned to the 2nd Corps, Johnson's Division, Jones' Brigade.The corps commander at the time was Stonewall Jackson.
On May 1, 1863 the 50th Virginia marched with the rest of the 2nd Corps in a successful flanking maneuver that caught Union forces by surprise at Chancellorsville, VA.The regiment was heavily engaged at Chancellorsville during the late afternoon of May 2, fighting in woods and open fields just to the right of the Orange Turnpike near Hawkins Farm.The next day the regiment was again heavily engaged, this time in the Fairview area of the battlefield.
The regiment's casualties at Chancellorsville included at least 31 killed, 64 wounded, and 3 captured.The actual figures may be somewhat higher.Also fatally wounded at Chancellorsville was the regiment's corps commander, Stonewall Jackson, brought down by friendly fire on the night of May 2.
In June 1863 the regiment marched north with Lee, crossing into Maryland near the 1862 battlefield of Antietam and then traveling north through Hagerstown MD, Greencastle PA, and Chambersburg PA, with the intent to attack Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's state capital.
On June 29, however, before arriving at Harrisburg, the 50th Virginia and its sister regiments of the 2nd Corps were ordered to turn back toward the south, as Lee became aware that Union forces were pursuing him and a large battle was likely to be fought in southern PA.That battle commenced at Gettysburg on July 1 and the 50th Virginia arrived on the northeast edge of the battlefield in the late afternoon of that first day.It did not engage in combat on July 1.
However, the 50th Virginia was heavily engaged on Culp's Hill during the evening of July 2.Lee ordered the attack there as a diversion to prevent Union forces from reinforcing the Union left flank at Little Round Top, which was the principal Confederate objective for the day.
The 50th Virginia fought at the extreme right side of the rebel advance upon Culp's Hill from sometime after 6 pm until well after dark, exchanging fire with the 60th and 102nd New York infantry regiments.Culp's Hill is extremely steep, wooded, and rocky at that location, and the rebels never had any realistic chance of throwing the Yankees off the hill.
During the morning of July 2 the attack upon Culp's Hill was resumed, but the 50th Virginia was not one of the lead attacking regiments, as it had been the previous day.It likely engaged in some skirmishing around the edges of the action, but it did not have a particularly bad time of it on this third and final day of the battle.For those who don't know Civil War history well, the Union army won at the Battle of Gettysburg, which is often cited by historians as being the turning point of the war.
During the night of July 4-5 the regiment left Gettysburg and traveled back to Hagertstown before proceeding to Williamsport MD, where its men waded across the chest-high waters of the Potomac River around dawn on July 14.Casualty figures for the 50th Virginia at Gettysburg were at least 22 men killed, 48 wounded, and 17 missing (and presumed captured).Of the 48 wounded, 33 had to be left behind to be medically attended by the victorious Union army, and they too became prisoners when they recovered.The 50th Virginia did not engage in further significant combat actions for the remainder of 1863.
The Army of Northern Virginia's first significant battle in 1864 occurred at a heavily wooded area known as The Wilderness (Virginia) on May 5 and May 6.Again, the 50th Virginia Infantry regiment was heavily engaged.On May 5 it tangled in fierce hand-to-hand fighting with the 7th Indiana Infantry, one of the five regiments comprising the Union's famous Iron Brigade.During this combat the 7th Indiana captured the 50th Virginia's regimental colors (flag), and one of the Indiana soldiers earned a Congressional Medal of Honor.
The number of men from the 50th Virginia who were killed or wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness is difficult to determine, as no casualty lists were prepared by the regiment following that fight.Regimental authorities combined The Wilderness casualties with casualty figures for the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House when they made their official report several weeks later.However, research into individual soldier records identifies at least 9 dead, 24 wounded, and 34 captured at The Wilderness.The actual figures are probably much higher.
Heavy fighting resumed on May 10 at nearby Spotsylvania Court House, where Confederate forces were deployed along a curving ridge line that featured a dangerously protruding area near its center.This protrusion, known variously in Civil War history as The Salient, The Mule Shoe, and The Bloody Angle, was vulnerable to attack from three sides and probably should not have been included inside the rebels' defensive perimeter.The better military tactic would have been for the rebels to leave The Salient outside their fortications and instead fortify slightly lower ground to The Salient's rear.
Confederate commanders didn't do that, though, and instead deployed several 2nd Corps brigades into The Salient, including the brigade to which the 50th Virginia was assigned (Jones' Brigade, now commanded by Colonel William Witcher following General Jones' death at The Wilderness).The Confederates paid a very heavy price for this mistake.
Shortly before 5 o'clock a.m. on May 12, in a drizzle of rain amidst heavy fog, roughly 20,000 Union troops attacked the Salient on all sides in heavy force, rapidly pouring over the Confederates' breastworks and sweeping away any and all opposition at the wall.Fighting was intense and many men fell with bayonet wounds, but it didn't last long for the 50th Virginia.Witin 15 to 20 minutes at least 211 men from the regiment were captured, with about a dozen killed and 30 to 40 wounded.Only about 40 of the regiment's soldiers escaped to re-group with other Confederate regiments.
Fighting would rage on in The Salient for nearly another 24 hours, during which time Johnson's entire rebel division would be effectively destroyed.Russell Legg didn't see much of it, though, as he was captured during the initial 15-minute onslaught.
For any descendant who might someday visit the Spotsylvania Court House battlefield, the 50th Virginia's position within The Salient was immedately at the right apex, where the tip of The Salient turns sharply back to the right.Russell Legg was probably along the right turnback within 30 to 40 yards of the right apex when he was captured.
As a prisoner of war, Russell Legg was first sent to the POW camp at Point Lookout MD, and shortly thereafter to the POW camp for rebel officers at Fort Delaware DE.
At around this same time a controversy was brewing in South Carolina regarding the imprisonment of captured Union officers.Union forces were beseiging Charleston SC and were routinely firing artillery into the city, and they objected to Confederates holding Union officers as POWs in the city's jails.They were afraid, of course, that the artillery being fired into the city might injure or kill some of those POWs.Thus, they demanded that the Confederates remove the POW officers to a safer location.
The Confederates declined, prompting Union authorities to retailiate.Six hundred captured Confederate officers were removed from Fort Delaware, placed aboard a ship, and sent to the Charleston vicinity.There they were placed in a makeshift POW camp positioned on the beach directly in front of Union artillery positions on Morris Island, a sandbar at the entrance to Charleston Harbor.
The purpose, of course, was to expose the rebel officers to the line of fire, since rebel cannoneers inside Charleston often returned fire against the Union cannons that were shelling the city.The 600 rebel officers from Fort Delaware, in effect, became human shields.Russell Legg was one of those 600 officers.
(Morris Island, by the way, was featured in the 1990s movie GLORY, starring Denzel Washington and Matthew Broderick.It was the sandbar upon which Battery Wagner, the fort attacked in the movie by the Black 54th Massachusetts regiment, was situated.At the close of the movie the credits report correctly that the fort was never captured, but what the credits don't say is that the rebels abandoned the fort a month later, whereupon the Union occurpied it and emplaced artillery pieces.The beach where Russell Legg lived for a month in autumn 1864 isn't shown in the movie, as it would have been on the back side of the fort, away from Denzel Washington's attacking Yankees.)
The Union tactic for discouraging Confederate artillery fire didn't work.Rebel gunners in Charleston were good at what they did and they had no difficulty finding the right range.They lobbed shells over the 600 rebel officers and into Union artillery positions without ever once injuring a rebel POW.Union officials soon recognized the futility of their tactic and moved the 600 rebel officers to other, more secure POW camps.Morris Island, incidentally, no longer exists, having long ago been gobbled up by the Atlantic Ocean.
Russell Legg was shipped from Morris Island to Fort Pulaski GA, a brick coastal fort captured early in the war by Union forces.He and a few hundred of his fellow prisoners from Morris Island were then kept there until the war ended, except that 13 of the men did not survive until war's end.Russell Legg was one of the 13, dying of dysentery around February 5, 1865.The exact date of his death cannot be conclusively established, as different sources disagree by a day or two.
Following his death Russell Legg was buried in the Fort Pulaski cemetery just outside the fort's walls.As of a few years ago, the precise location of his grave within the cemetery area was unknown, but I've heard that this may no longer be true.The fort's cemetery was untended for many years and the graves became obscured, but the US Park Service has been conducting research into the cemetery's records and geology, and they may have made progress since I last checked.
After the war the 600 rebel officers used as human shields at Morris Island became famous throughout the South as "The Immortal Six-hundred" and today they are sometimes referred to in Civil War history texts by that name.
Finally, descendants may want to know that Civil War military records rarely confirm whether a soldier was actually engaged in a particular battle.Instead, they show merely whether he was present with the regiment for pay purposes.And some soldiers who were present with their regiments might miss a particular battle if they were sick and confined to camp, assigned to cook for the fighters or to guard supplies, or otherwise deployed to non-combat tasks.
For those reasons, it should never be presumed that a given soldier fought in every battle attended by his regiment.However, officers very rarely stayed back in camp when a major fight was to occur.They were too valuable, in that they calmed and directed the rank and file during the heat of battle.
I have personally inspected Russell Legg's military file and it appears that he was not on leave or hospitalized during any of his regiment's major battles.Therefore, given his status as a 2nd Lieutenant, I regard it as highly probable that he actively fought in each of the battles I previously described.
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Re: Civil War History of Russell Legg (Virginia)
David Deatherage 12/16/10