My sister and I are headed to Petersburg, Virginia, this weekend. It’s been a kind of Civil War year for us already, having gone to Antietam, Harpers Ferry, and Fredericksburg/Spotsyvlania County memorials.
But Petersburg is different. It’s where the blood of some of our ancestors was spilled.
In “Dixieland,” Steve Earle sings of the 20th Maine “goin’ down to Dixieland” after its successful stand at Little Round Top during the battle at Gettysburg in July 1863. The 20th Maine was at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House the following May, then went on to Petersburg in June 1864.
One of the other units that arrived in Petersburg that June was the 37th Wisconsin Infantry, which included my great-great-grandfather, Josiah Bennet Smith. He’d turned 22 between the time that the 37th left Madison on April 9 and June 18, the day he was wounded in battle. It was a crazy situation, with crazy commands that included exposing the flank to the Rebels. But the 37th Wisconsin followed orders–sometimes to their death. Forty-four died on the field; another fourteen were mortally wounded. Another 80, including Josiah and his younger-by-one-year brother Robert, suffered lesser injuries.
Josiah was injured again at Petersburg on July 6 of that year; he mustered out the following July. The 37th was among the units that took part in the grand review in Washington on May 23, 1865, so he was likely among the participants. Josiah went back to Wisconsin, and on October 26, 1868, married Anna Mitchell, a Swiss immigrant who lived a couple counties away. He died in 1911, less than a month shy of his sixty-ninth birthday, the father of six children, two of whom preceded him in death. For the most part, he led a quiet life on a farm in the Wellington, Wisconsin area.
I can’t help but wonder as I pack today what Josiah thought f this chapter of his life. Did he see this as the grand adventure of his young life? What was his reaction to the horrors of war? Did he go home changed, but unable to talk about it much? What did he think as he marched down to Dixieland–and back home?
