Who is sullivan ballou

To the left of the thoroughfare the land rose to form high ground, locally called Matthews Hill, as the Matthews house stood on its slopes. While the skirmishers cautiously moved toward the summit, they received their first hostile shots in the form of a volley delivered by elements of Brig.

Burnside quickly shifted his men to the left of the road to meet the threat, forming the balance of the 2nd in a battle line and ordering them up the hill behind the skirmishers. The Carolinians, however, had not given up the field; they had only fallen back down the southern slope of the hill, and they greeted the Rhode Islanders with a blast of hot lead.

The gunners moved to the summit of Matthews Hill and began blasting away while Burnside went in search of more help. Colonel Slocum had been very active during the attack, and what he lacked in experience he made up for with courage and conspicuous leadership. He climbed atop the rail fence that ran across Matthews Hill and began waving his sword to encourage his men, but he was quickly felled with a grievous wound to the head. Privates Elisha Hunt Rhodes and Thomas Parker carried him off the field to the Matthews house, and then the colonel was evacuated by ambulance to the field hospital at Sudley Church, which was located near Sudley Ford.

Command of the regiment devolved upon Lt. Frank Wheaton, and he helped Ballou to shift their line while Burnside worked to get the balance of his brigade — the 1st Rhode Island, 71st New York and 2nd New Hampshire — to come up. At that point, a 6-pounder solid shot, probably fired by a gun of the Lynchburg Artillery, tore off his right leg, killing his horse. The stricken major was then also carried to Sudley Church, where he joined the unconscious Slocum.

Eventually, the rest of the brigade came up, and Burnside led it in a push that cleared the Rebels from the area north of the Warrenton Turnpike by about noon. That afternoon, however, the battle resumed with a markedly different complexion. A Confederate counterattack put the Union troops to flight back to Washington, and the fight ended as a Southern victory.

The regiment had suffered heavily: 93 of its men were killed, wounded and missing. Sprague survived the fight unharmed, though his horse was killed. Both men died, Slocum on July 23 and Ballou on the 28th. They were buried side by side just yards from Sudley Church.

Union troops soon occupied the area, permitting Sprague and a band of 70 others to embark upon their body-recovery mission. Privates Josiah W. Richardson, John Clark and Tristam Burgess of the 2nd assisted in the effort; they had also stayed behind at Sudley Church after the battle and had witnessed the burial of Major Ballou and Colonel Slocum.

Troopers from the 1st Rhode Island Cavalry escorted the mission, and a surgeon, chaplain and two wagons filled with forage, rations and empty coffins rounded out the column. The entourage made slow progress due to muddy roads and ever-present driving rains, and arrived at Cub Run on the eastern edge of the Bull Run battlefield on the afternoon of March Riding along the Warrenton Turnpike during stormy weather on the morning of March 21, the column arrived at Bull Run to discover that the stone bridge had been blown up by the withdrawing Confederates.

Near its ruins the group examined a skeleton leaning against a tree, before they rode north and forded Bull Run and Catharpin Run. They continued on to Sudley Church. Now abandoned and polluted with the remnants of war, the church stood with its door ajar, and several of the troopers stopped to investigate the structure. A few even rode their horses inside and up to the pulpit. Sprague instructed Private Richardson to lead the band of grave hunters to the spot near the churchyard where the Rhode Islanders were buried.

Richardson did so, pointing out two mounds that he claimed were where Colonel Slocum and Major Ballou had been buried. Soldiers began to dig amid the thickets of huckleberry bushes, the still graveyard echoing with the sound of shovels as the men went about their morose task. Just then a young black girl, full of curiosity, made her way from a nearby cabin to investigate.

If so, she said, they were too late and would not find him. She went on to recite a chilling tale, claiming that a number of men from the 21st Georgia Regiment had robbed the grave several weeks prior. If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the gladdest days and in the darkest nights … always, always, and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath, as the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.

Sarah do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again …. He was admitted to the Rhode Island Bar in Ballou devoted his brief life to public service. He was elected in as clerk of the Rhode Island House of Representatives, later serving as its speaker. He married Sarah Hart Shumway on October 15, , and the following year saw the birth of their first child, Edgar.

A second son, William, was born in Ballou immediately entered the military after the war broke out in He became judge advocate of the Rhode Island militia and was 32 at the time of his death at the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, Ballou wrote with pride on July 10, "I have become well acquainted with Gov. Sprague as he has taken up quarters in our camp, occupying a tent not very far from mine.

I shall improve the acquaintance and make it serviceable to me if I can. He is a very unassuming man and a very agreeable man. I think if he stays here long I can advance myself in his good opinion.

One curious though rarely mentioned fact is the existence in this collection of an entirely different letter from Sullivan to Sarah, also dated July 14, Neither letter refers to another letter written earlier in the day. As the published letter refers to "this calm summer Sabbath night, when thousands now are sleeping around me", the other letter must have been written earlier in the day.

While the unpublished letter is affectionate and well-written, it is also optimistic and upbeat as are all of the other letters. He wrote ".. Fifteen items - the bulk of this collection - were purchased from Patrick Conley in One copy of the July 14 letter was donated by Mrs. Stanton F. Slocum in The provenance of the other copy is unknown. Undated letter, Sullivan to Sarah, circa He is apparently writing from Woonsocket, while Sarah is somewhere near Albany, N.

The letter mentions Edgar but not William, and can thus be estimated at circa Letter, Sullivan to "My very dear friend" L. Probably Latimer Whipple Ballou, a distant cousin of Sullivan's, who was a prominent Woonsocket banker active in politics. Latimer may have been the benefactor who sent Sullivan to school.

Letter, Sullivan to [Charles F.? Sullivan writes that "It seems to me that this war is 'played out'. This is the unheralded letter written earlier in the day.

By mid-July, the swirling events in the summer of had brought Ballou and his unit to a camp of instruction in the nation's capital. With the movement of the federal forces into Virginia imminent, Sullivan Ballou penned this letter to his wife. His concern that he "should fall on the battle-field" proved all too true. One week after composing his missive, as the war's first major battle began in earnest on the plains of Manassas, Ballou was struck and killed as the Rhode Islanders advanced from Matthews Hill.

Regrettably, the story of Sullivan Ballou does not end with a hero's death on the field of battle and a piercing letter to a young widow.

During the weeks and months that followed the battle, Confederate forces occupying the area of the battlefield desecrated the graves of many fallen Federals. As a means of extracting a revenge of sorts against the Union regiment at whose hand they had suffered, a Georgia regiment sought retribution against the 2nd Rhode Island.

Supposing they had disinterred the body of Colonel John Slocum, commanding the Rhode Islanders during the battle, the Confederates desecrated the body and dumped it in a ravine in the vicinity of the Sudley Methodist Church. Immediately following the Confederate evacuation from the Manassas area in March , a contingent of Rhode Island officials, including Governor William Sprague, visited the Bull Run battlefield to exhume their fallen sons and return them to their native soil.

Led to the defiled body, the party examined the remains and a tattered remnant of uniform insignia and discovered that the Confederates had mistakenly uncovered the body of Major Sullivan Ballou, not his commanding officer.

The remains of his body were transported back to Rhode Island, where they were laid to rest in Providence's Swan Point Cemetery. Of the tens of thousands of letters written in the days leading up to the First Battle of Manassas, certainly none is more famous than the last letter of Major Sullivan Ballou. As poignant as it is prescient, Ballou's epistle captures not only the spirit of patriotic righteousness that led many men to the enlistment office, but it also drives home the stark reality that casualties of war were not confined to the battlefield.