Nicholas Wall: Montana’s First Rebel Prisoner of War and Territorial Empire Builder

Remembering Our Civil War Heritage and Heroes:

1861-1865

Nicholas Wall: Montana’s First Rebel Prisoner of War and

Territorial Empire Builder

By Ken Robison

For The River Press

June 26, 2013

This continues a monthly series commemorating the 150^th Anniversary of the Civil War and the veterans that settled in Montana. This month features Major Nick Wall who was captured and held as a Confederate prisoner of war, banished to the western territories, and established a trading empire in Territorial Montana. Descendants of Montana Civil War veterans are encouraged to send their stories to mtcivilwar@yahoo.com.

Nicholas Wall was a man of many talents and important firsts in Montana history.  He was the first Confederate Prisoner of War to come to (later) Montana Territory. He was a key member of the Montana Vigilantes and among the most important founders of Montana Territory, yet few Montanans have ever heard of Captain Nicholas Wall.

Nick Wall was born in 1820 in Alexandria, Virginia. He was a young master of steamboats on the Mississippi River in the 1840s and operated a steamboat agency in St. Louis during the 1850s. Wall lived with his family in St. Louis where they had one domestic female slave in the household in 1860. Major Nick Wall was the Officer of Commissary with the Missouri Volunteer Militia when they deployed to the southwestern Missouri border with Kansas in late November 1860 to suppress raids by Kansas Jayhawkers on the eve of the Civil War. As Commissary of the Brigade on this Southwest Expedition, Major Wall made all purchases and issued all rations and stores. The brigade returned to St. Louis in mid December to be welcomed home by immense crowds.

By early May 1861, Missouri teetered on the edge of secession. Missouri’s pro-secession Governor Claiborne Jackson supported by Brig. Gen. Daniel M. Frost, commanding the Missouri Militia, and other southern leaning officers on his staff including Major Wall were determined to lead the state out of the Union. The Civil War began in Missouri on May 6, 1861 when the Missouri Militia was ordered into encampment at Camp Jackson at Lindell’s Grove on the outskirts of St. Louis. Camp Jackson posed a symbolic and potentially real threat to the Union in Missouri. In response, Captain Nathaniel Lyon led loyal Union troops composed mostly of German immigrants into deployment to surround Camp Jackson. In the face of overwhelming firepower, the Missouri Militia surrendered without firing a shot and their secession flags were hauled down.

Major Wall and the other officers and men of the Missouri Militia were held as Confederate prisoners of war and marched through the streets to the St. Louis Arsenal. During the march riots and gunfire broke out and continued for two days. The prisoners including Major Nick Wall were released on parole that required them to remain in St. Louis or go to the western territories.

After signing his parole, Nick Wall’s Civil War was over. During July 1861, Captain Wall commanded the steamboat Emilie in place of Captain Joe LaBarge who ironically was removed from his command because of his pro-southern leanings. In the spring of 1862 the Emilie with Capt. LaBarge in command and Capt. Wall as Clerk departed St. Louis loaded with 143 miners and adventurers bound for the gold fields of Idaho. Steamboat clerks were responsible for the cargo and passengers.

The Emilie arrived at Fort Benton June 17, and Captain Nick Wall stepped ashore in what would become Montana territory to establish the most sophisticated trading empire of the 1860s. With the miners, Wall headed west, following the Mullan Road to western Montana where gold had been discovered in quantities at Gold Creek near today’s Drummond. Arriving near today’s Deer Lodge, Wall leased cabins from Johnny Grant and set up a small store, doing a brisk business with newly arriving miners.

Just weeks after his arrival, Wall had a visitor at his store. Young Tom Cover arrived with a group of men who were out of money and provisions. Looking Cover over, Wall advanced him life saving provisions, and before long Cover, with another party, discovered gold on Grasshopper Creek, the beginning of the Bannack boom. In payment Cover filed a claim in Nick Wall’s name. Wall moved his store to Bannack and early on became a partner with A. F. Graeter and others in the Bannack Ditch that furnished water to the placer miners.

After a successful trading year, Nick Wall returned overland to St. Louis for the winter, establishing a commuter pattern he would follow throughout his Montana years. During the winter of 1862-63 Wall formed a partnership with wealthy St. Louis steamboat line owner and merchant John J. Roe who was acquiring wealth from pork packing during the Civil War.

On his return to the mountains in early June 1863, Capt. Wall rode into Bannack and then on to Fort Benton to receive a large shipment for John J. Roe & Company shipped up the Missouri River by Capt. Joe LaBarge’s steamboat Shreveport commanded by his brother John LaBarge. Through a combination of low water and extremely bad judgment, Shreveport’s freight was offloaded at Snake Point, an almost inaccessible point near Cow Island. Disgusted at this setback to his new company, Capt. Wall immediately sent a letter of protest and then returned to St. Louis to join John J. Roe in seeking damages in district court from LaBarge, Harkness & Company. In mid-September accompanied by young Edgar G. Maclay, Capt. Wall returned to Bannack, and on November 1 Wall and Maclay arrived in the new boomtown of Virginia City in the heart of Alter Gulch’s massive placer mining strikes. A new John J. Roe & Company store opened, and Captain Wall erected a rather pretentious looking house at the rear of the store. True to his nautical habit, his home resembled the “Texas” on the upper level of steamboats.

With the mining boom at the big gold strikes at Grasshopper Creek and Alder Gulch thousands of miners, merchants, and adventurers flocked into this eastern region of the new Idaho Territory. In the presence of huge amounts of gold and in the absence of civil authority or organized government, travelers were subjected to robberies and murders. “Miners courts” tried to fill the void and by mid December one of the murderers, George Ives, was apprehended and brought to trial in Virginia City.

A young Civil War Union veteran, Colonel Wilbur Fisk Sanders of Bannack, accepted the dangerous challenge of prosecuting Ives, who was known as a close associate of Sheriff Henry Plummer the leader of the gang of troublemakers. Despite threats to his life, Sanders began to prosecute. Throughout the Ives trial, Col. Sanders was a guest of Capt. Wall, and Wall’s men served as guards at the trial and at his home. Early in the Ives trial, probably the night of December 20, 1863, Capt. Wall met covertly in the back of Kinna & Nye’s store with four fellow Masons, Paris S. Pfouts, Alvin W. Brookie, John Nye, and Wilbur F. Sanders. Mason bonds trumped North-South sentiment, and out of this meeting came agreement to form a vigilante movement to bring order out of the lawless chaos. After Ives’ conviction and hanging, Capt. Wall departed Virginia City by horseback for St. Louis. His arrival at Salt Lake City on January 12, 1864 brought the first news to the outside world of the vigilante actions to clean up the gold fields.

During this winter sojourn in St. Louis, Capt. Wall and John J. Roe refined the next step in their plan, and by the spring of 1864 their new steamboat line, the Montana and Idaho Transportation Company, began operations directed by Roe’s son-in-law Capt. John G. Copelin. By late April, Capt. Wall was back in Montana Territory just as it was being formed, taking charge of Roe company operations. During this summer, E. G. Maclay suggested to his boss that they begin an overland freighting operation, thus perfected their network: shipping cargo up the Missouri River by company boats; overland freighting the cargo by company wagon trains; and selling the merchandise in John J. Roe & Company stores. Over the coming two years, Capt. Wall built the overland freighting operation, forming the famed Diamond R freighting line—the “R” representing their St. Louis moneyman, John J. Roe.

As his work force of men grew, Capt. Wall attained the capability to raise a volunteer armed force at Fort Benton to react to increasing incidents in May 1865 with Blackfoot renegades such as the Ophir massacre on the Teton/Marias River by Calf Shirt’s band. Capt. Wall’s volunteer force was later replace by the Montana Militia formed by Acting Gov. Thomas Francis Meagher.

For the next two years, Capt. Wall managed and built the powerful John J. Roe & Company operations in Montana. As Last Chance Gulch boomed and the town of Helena grew, Wall moved his company’s headquarters to Helena. Throughout his time in Montana Territory, he was known and respected and the company prospered, but Capt. Wall remained quietly out of politics. As the Montana placer mines faded, in June 1868 Capt. Wall arranged the sale of the great John J. Roe & Company including the mammoth Diamond R to E. G. Maclay & Company, a group that included men working for the company.

Despite his withdrawal from management of the company, Capt. Wall continued to spend summers in Montana Territory, looking after his interests in the Bannack Ditch and mining properties. Mainly, the popular Nicholas Wall, the first Confederate Civil War prisoner of war to come to the Upper Missouri, visited the towns and friends he had made in his wartime exile years. On October 2, 1880, Capt. Nicholas Wall passed away in St. Louis to be interred in an exceptional mausoleum at Bellefontaine Cemetery.

Sources: [John J. Healy. Life and Death on the Upper Missouri: The Frontier Sketches of Johnny Healy. Edited Ken Robison; M. Hopewell. Camp Jackson History of the Missouri Volunteer Militia of St. Louis. St. Louis: George Knapp & Co. Printer, 1861; Montana Post; Missouri Republican; Missouri Democrat; St. Louis Globe-Democrat 3 Oct 1880; Edwin Ruthven Purple. Perilous Passage A Narrative of the Montana Gold Rush, 1862-63; Hiram Martin Chittenden. History of Early Steamboat Navigation on the Missouri River Life and Adventures of Joseph La Barge Pioneer Navigator and Indian Trader for Fifty Years identified With the Commerce of the Missouri Valley. New York: Francis P. Harper, 1903; Hoffman Birney, Vigilantes; Mable Ovitt, Golden Treasure; Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography, 3;

Photos:

            1. Nicholas Wall Family Mausoleum in Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis.

Missoulian Review of Life & Death on the Upper Missouri

Historian compiles 'Frontier Sketches' of 1860s, '70s Montana

MAY 27, 2013 7:00 PM  •  BY KIM BRIGGEMAN

No word yet on beard-growing contests or sesquicentennial wagon trains for Montana Territory’s 150th birthday bash next year.

But Ken Robison is doing his part to help us get in an 1860s state of mind. A leading historian on Montana’s frontier era, Robison recently edited and released “Life and Death on the Upper Missouri: The Frontier Sketches of Johnny Healy.“

It’s based on some 50 reminiscences of life in the 1860s and ’70s that Healy wrote for the Benton Record of Fort Benton from 1878 to 1880. Robison is amazed they weren’t compiled in book form long ago.

Healy probably should be better known than he is. He was in the party that discovered the Florence mines in what’s now Idaho, served in the territorial legislature when Montana was formed, and spent eight eventful years as sheriff of Chouteau County after settling in Fort Benton.

His decade and a half within the boundaries of modern-day Montana were sandwiched around several years in Canada, where he took on the powerful Hudson’s Bay Co. by building Fort Hamilton, better-known as the notorious Fort Whoop-up, near Lethbridge, Alberta.

***

An immigrant from Ireland, Healy came to the West with the Army during the Mormon Campaign of 1858. His thirst for adventure led him to a wide assortment of callings, but for our 21st century purposes, he was a master storyteller.

Robison calls Healy’s “Frontier Sketches” “pure literary gold, worth far more today than any flakes or nuggets he found during his gold mining days.“

For sure, Healey took an unblinking look at a time that’s difficult to regard as romantic.

“I think it’s pretty darn distinctive,” Robison said last week. “He honestly felt that history would take care of the big guys, but nobody would remember the little guys. So he set out on a mission in his writing to record their names, if nothing else, but stories that included them so they would not be forgotten.“

Good news for researchers – Robison made sure to include all the names in an index at the back. Robison, who lives in Great Falls, is historian at the Overholser Historical Research Center in Fort Benton and a trustee of the River and Plains Society and Museum Complex.

If nothing else, he said, Healy’s writings portrayed to his contemporaries – and now us – a sophisticated understanding of the complex relationships between a wide assortment of tribes and their diverse reactions as whites, including Healy, flooded into their homelands.

“He treated each of the Indian tribes differently, I think as a direct result of experiences he had,” Robison said. “He had nothing but trouble with the Snakes, or Shoshones, but he was much softer, gentler and more objective in his discussion of the Nez Perce during that gold rush period.“

When Healy went into the robe trading business at Sun River Crossing, Fort Benton and Fort Whoop-Up, his hole card was his friendship with some of the more hostile bands of Blackfeet. Indeed, he had a Blackfoot wife for a time.

“Frankly I think one of his big contributions was this firsthand recording of what he was doing in that whole period from 1865-70, during the so-called Blackfoot War,” Robison said.

Healy properly pointed out that most of the Blackfoot Nation above and below the Canadian border wasn’t at war.

“It was renegades in a couple of bands causing trouble, and they caused serious trouble,” said Robison.

Healy described the atrocities and events that led up to the tragic Marias Massacre in early 1870.

“Nobody wrote more detailed and I think was more balanced, even though he uses terminology that whites used then,” said Robison.

***

It wasn’t Robison’s intention to write Healy’s biography. That’s been done – Mountain Press of Missoula published Alaska historian William Hunt’s “Whiskey Peddler: Johnny Healy, North Frontier Trader,” in the 1990s. That account included Healy’s entrepreneurial adventures and misadventures in Alaska after he left Montana – he was at one time known as “King of the Klondike” – and his death in Los Angeles in 1908.

Healy didn’t include in his “Frontier Sketches” tales of Fort Whoop-Up. Whiskey fueled his trade success there until the Canadian government outlawed it and, at the urging of a rival Hudson’s Bay Co. that was doing its own rum-running, formed the North-West Mounted Police (the “Mounties”) to address problems like Healy.

“Later in life, he was absolutely determined to give his side of the story,” Robison said.

That’s why the book includes a couple of addenda beyond Healy’s “Frontier Sketches.” One’s a Los Angeles newspaper’s account of an interview with the “history maker of the Northwest” in 1891, when Healy was in California visiting his daughter. The other is from 1903, one of several stories written by Forrest Crissey as “Told by Capt. John J. Healy” that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post.

“Healy was such an adventurer. He never bogged down into one business or one pattern, and so his slice of history ... I’m not sure there was anybody like him,” Robison said.

“As you go through what he did, he was living the doggone history of the formation of not just Montana Territory but that slice of the Northwest that included Idaho and Montana. And then he wrote about it. And he didn’t write 50 years after the fact.”

Helena reading

Ken Robison will read from “Life and Death on the Upper Missouri: The Frontier Sketches of Johnny,” at the Montana Historical Society in Helena at 6:30 p.m. Thursday. The book is available now at Amazon.com and will soon be in Montana bookstores.

Major Martin Maginnis: Gettysburg Hero and Territorial Montana Delegate

Remembering Our Civil War Heritage and Heroes:

1861-1865

Major Martin Maginnis: Gettysburg Hero and Territorial Montana Delegate

By Ken Robison

For The River Press

May 29, 2013

This continues a monthly series commemorating the 150^th Anniversary of the Civil War and the veterans that settled in Montana. This month’s feature highlights Civil War veteran, Major Martin Maginnis who survived devastating fighting at Gettysburg to serve as Montana Territorial Delegate. Descendants of Montana Civil War veterans are encouraged to send their stories to mtcivilwar@yahoo.com. To see previous installments from this series, visit greatfallstribune.com/civilwar.

Martin Maginnis served with distinction in war and peace. Born October 27, 1841 in western New York of Irish parents, he moved to Minnesota in 1852, attended Hamline University, and became a newspaper editor at a young age. Early in the Civil War on April 18, 1861 in response to President Lincoln’s first call for troops, Maginnis enlisted at Red Wing, Minnesota, mustered in at Fort Snelling eleven days later, and was appointed sergeant of Company F, First Minnesota Infantry Regiment. On July 21, 1861 the First Minnesota fought well despite the defeat of Union forces at the 1^st Battle of Bull Run, and Maginnis was promoted 2^nd Lieutenant for his gallantry. Despite a severe wound to his left shoulder at Savage Station in June 1862 during the Seven Days Battle of the Peninsula Campaign, he was assigned to command Company H and promoted to 1^st Lieutenant.

Lieut. Maginnis and his First Minnesota Regiment participated in many of the Civil War’s major battles including 1^st and 2^nd Bull Run, Antietam, and Gettysburg. In one of the most famous events of the Civil War, the First Minnesota rose to legendary stature conducting a charge in which 262 men went into action and just 47 came out unscathed. This famous charge resulted in the highest percentage of Union loss in any action of the war.

Maj. Gen. Daniel Sickles’ Third Corps had been routed by Confederate Mississippi and Alabama brigades under Brig. Gens. William Barksdale and Cadmus M. Wilcox. The southerners, flush with victory, were pursuing the retreating men at a point where Maginnis and his little band were positioned on the approach to Cemetery Ridge.

Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, making a frantic effort to rally the Union forces, dashed up and asked, “What regiment in this?” “The First Minnesota,” was their colonel’s reply.

“Charge those lines!” ordered Hancock, pointing to the Confederates. Although outnumbered more than five to one, the First Minnesota, without hesitation, fixed bayonets and charged. The ferocity of the onslaught of this band made up for their disparity in numbers, and amazed and checked the Confederates, as their first line went down under the bayonets of the Minnesotans while the second line crumpled up from rifle fire that scorched their faces.  The gallant charge was followed immediately by reserves, the Confederates broke and fled to cover, the day was saved, and Hancock and the First Minnesota had held Cemetery Ridge to be hailed as heroes. Just Lieut. Maginnis and two other officers out of twenty-four remained on their feet at the end of the battle.

In a lecture delivered later in his life, Maginnis described the actions of the First Minnesota on Cemetery Ridge on July 2^nd, 1863 as they bravely conducted one of the most remarkable charges of the war:

“The morning was foggy, sultry, and murky, and spent chiefly in skirmishing and desultory cannonading. The sharp-shooters on our front contested the right to hold the farm-houses, which were alternately occupied by either side, and finally burned. About 2 P.M., Gen. Sickles made a reconnaissance which developed the presence of the enemy in light force on his front, whereupon he moved his corps to the front and occupied an intermediate ridge, the right forming along the Emmittsburg road to the peach orchard from which his left bent back to the foot of Round Top. The enemy opened batteries far to Sickles’ left. The rattling fire of the skirmishers deepened into the continuous roll of musketry as the enemy threw forward forces to dispute his advance. The artillery opened on both sides with vigor, and the engagement became general all along the front of his line. The enemy at this time were quiet on our extreme right, while in the centre the batteries alone were engaged. Two companies of the First [Minnesota] (the Red Wing Company and the Second Sharpshooters) were out on the skirmish line. Another was on provost guard, and the other eight were detached from our proper brigade position and sent down to the left to form a reserve support for a section of United States Artillery, which was posted on that part of the ridge from which Sickles had just advanced.

“Once there . . . cannon balls, shells, and bullets . . . went whistling and bursting above and around us, we beheld a grand sight. Below and before us on the plain the battle was fiercely raging. Every movement of the opposing troops were discernible, and we watched them with the anxiety of spectators so deeply interested in the result; though but little of this could be seen in the faces of our men, who, long accustomed to conceal their emotions beneath the mask of reckless indifference, were with apparent unconcern criticizing impartially the fighting of friend and foe.

“Soon the view became more obscured, for, though the sun shone brightly, the air was damp and the smoke hung heavily over the fight, sometimes in rolling, cloudy masses, and again, like a well-defined wall conforming to the lines of battle, rising high in the air. Through this could be seen the charging battalions, the darkened forms of the combatants, and the banners wildly tossing to and fro above the struggling masses, looming gigantically in the maze between us and the declining sun. Again the sulphurous pall would hide everything from view save when the flashes gleaming redly through the darkness revealed the position of the batteries, and we would intently listen, endeavoring to tell from the yelling and cheering which came up from the chaotic turmoil to which side the advantage leaned, while the rattle of small arms and the deep bass of the artillery made the music of the battle, and Round Top re-echoed the grand diapason. Then the breeze would roll up the smoky curtain, and none could repress a shout of joy to see that our men were still crowding the fight, and every heart felt the meaning of those expressive words of our national anthem, ‘Our flag is still there.’

Sickles’ corps had formed an angle with the apex pushed over the Emmittsburg road, and the enemy attacked this from both sides with extreme fury. To fill up the break in the original line of battle caused by Sickles’ advance, Caldwell’s division of the Second Army Corps was put into the gap on his left, and joined the Fifth Corps, which stretching still to the left, rested on Round Top. The Second Division of the Second Corps, resting near Cemetery Hill, was also advanced and realigned with a view to supporting the right of the Third Corps. But the active enemy threw himself on the apex of Sickles’ advanced position with such tremendous force of men that it soon became evident that here on the left, and not on the other wing, the enemy had been gathering his heaviest forces to break through. Meanwhile Lee’s entire line advanced to engage ours everywhere and prevent the changing of troops. Pushing the divisions of the Third Corps on their exposed flanks, the enemy began to crumble it up and force it back over the ground which it had won. Sickles being wounded about the time his centre broke, and the line gave way and went to our rear.

“Our troops in front gallantly endeavored to sustain themselves and check the momentum of the enemy, and with the assistance of some reserve regiments made him halt and waver. The contest was sharp and heavy, and success trembled in the balance, till still fresh battalions of the foe came down and our gallant boys gave way, carrying back their colors and slightly wounded, and rallying by squads, now and then to empty their guns once more at their pursuers; but all organized, concerted, effective action on the part of that corps was at an end. The rebel batteries poured grape and canister into the retreating groups, and, their infantry advancing with triumphant yells, showered rapid volleys of leaden hail into the broken ranks, which were reeling and staggering back, but still turned to make fight, like some feeble but spirited man beneath the blows of a young and vigorous giant. Thomas’ battery, which had necessarily been silent till these troops had cleared its front, now opened upon the rebel infantry at short range. This turned their attention to an objective point, and soon a group of crimson battle-flags were advancing through the smoke toward it, supported only as it was by eight companies of the First Minnesota—252 officers and men all told.

“Just then Hancock rode up, and, unable to conceal his agitation, asked in almost anguished tones, ‘Great God! Is this all the men we have here?’ And turned toward the right, from which was hastening Gen. Alpheus Williams’ division, but still five minutes distant, and before they reached us the foe would have the battery and gain the very heart of the position. Not a hundred yards behind us was the road, crowded with our wagons, and beyond them the hospitals and trains. If Hancock could only stop that charging mass for five minuets. A hope lit up his face, and, pointing to the smoke-covered masses of the advancing foe, he cried: ‘Col. Colvill, advance and take those colors!’

“It is an easy thing to charge when the enemy is retreating and the battle is going well, but it requires steady troops to even hold a position when the line is breaking away on every side, and it was a strange order to give a handful to charge that advancing mass that had just carried two of our best divisions off their feet. We looked at them as Nolan might have looked at the Russian cannon at Balaklava, and with the same disposition to unquestionably obey.

“‘Forward!’ shouted our gallant Colonel, and as one man the regiment arose, and, as if on review, stepped down the slope toward the enemy. Their cannon opened on us, and shell and solid shot tore through the ranks, and the more deadly Enfield rifles of their infantry were centered on us alone. At every step fell our men, yet no one waves; every gap is closed up, and bringing down their bayonets, the boys press shoulder to shoulder, and disdaining the factitious courage proceeding from noise or excitement, without word or cheer, but with silent desperate determination, step firmly forward. Five color-bearers are shot down, and five times our flag, proudly, goes forward as before.

‘Steady they step down the slope, steadily down the hill.

Steadily load, and steadily fire, and march right onward still.’

“No! unlike the famous veterans of Fonteney, they are unsustained by the excitement of firing. Within a hundred ten of our men already fallen, and yet no shot has been fired at the enemy, whose foremost rank, consisting of Forney’s, Herbert’s, and other regiments of the Alabama brigade, commanded by Wilcox, and portions of Barksdale’s brigade of Mississippians, all of whom had lost their order and alignment, had become mingled in one advancing mass during their fight with and pursuit of the Third Corps. Behind them in alignment came a body of troops, since understood to be a Florida brigade, which had not been actively engaged, but was supporting the victorious advance of their comrades. As soon as our movement was noticed the advancing mass stopped and opened a murderous fire upon us at not more than fifty yards’ distance.

“’Charge, men!’ ran the order along the line, and with a wild cheer we ran at them. Their extended front swept around our flanks like the waters round a rock. But before us they gave way, for we empty our guns with the muzzles at their very hearts, and but little ammunition was wasted at that volley. A perfect swath of men sink upon the ground, and their living recoil back upon their second and third lines, and the body of many a chivalric Southerner lies beneath the feet of our men. Their supporting lines, confused and excited, wildly commence firing through the mass in front, slaughtering their own men by hundreds, and throwing the whole column into confusion, while their artillery from the rear fired on friends and foe alike. Their officers endeavored to stop the firing and restore order, and there, like some small obstacle thrown in the way of a locomotive to stop the power that will grind it to dust, we had momentarily checked the momentum of the mass, which in another moment would recover itself and sweep us from the earth; but the time had been gained, and at that instant a battery on our left opened, and poured a few rapid volleys into the confused mass, swept it from the field; and before we had recovered from the shock we found ourselves among groups of disarmed prisoners, and our bewildered senses take in the fact that the enemy have somehow disappeared from the plain, all but his dead and wounded, and over their prostrate bodies ring the hearty cheers of our reinforcing troops.

“That is the manner and order in which these things happened, as I have been told by those whose position made them lookers-on. For who that was an actor there can give the order or detail the changes of the eventful and exciting moments following that word ‘Charge?’ When we heard neither ball not shell now saw our comrades fall; when the blood rushed like fire through the distended veins and every faculty was absorbed in the one desire to conquer or to die—no, not to die, for though thoughts of the icy King of Terrors may for a minute chill the heart of the bravest when the battle is commencing, and the blood is cold, every fear of that grim dwelling on the threshold of eternity is long since lost in the glorious enthusiasm of action.

“The almost fatal attack was repulsed; but where was the First Minnesota? Had they deserted the field for the first time? That was the first idea that came to my senses, half oblivious of what had passed. But forty-seven men now gathered round the colors. Great heavens, is it possible that the other two hundred five lie bleeding under them? Yes, they are all there within a hundred square yards of crimson sward—two hundred and five killed, wounded, and none missing. Beloved comrades, noble and heroic martyrs, let your countrymen for all time to come place this simple list of figures beside the recorded losses of the vaunted light brigade, or Cambronne’s immortal guard at Waterloo, and the comparison will forever tell the tale of your glory and teach them that not outside the history of the late great war need they go for instances of devoted courage or the highest record of heroic daring.

“It was indeed the Thermopylae of the Regiment. Our colonel, lieutenant colonel, major, and adjutant were all wounded, each mortally, as was the feared, for all were pierced with more than one ball, which was the case with most of the wounded, and some of the corpses were perfectly riddled and few escaped without a scratch. Out of twenty-one line officers but five were fit for duty. The command devolved upon Capt. N. S. Messick, and, as the senior lieutenant, I acted as his adjutant, turned over five men left of my company of thirty-five that morning, thirteen being killed and seventeen wounded, to another lieutenant.”

In the aftermath of Gettysburg, on July 29, 1863 Maginnis was promoted to Captain. The First Minnesota was discharged in May 1864. Four months later, Captain Maginnis joined the new Eleventh Minnesota Infantry to serve as quartermaster as that regiment operated under Maj. General George H. Thomas’s Division in the Army of the Cumberland. One month later he was promoted to Major and served until June 26, 1865, when he was mustered out with the regiment at St. Paul.

In 1866 Maginnis emigrated overland with the Henry B. Steele party from Minnesota to Montana Territory to try his hand at mining. Two years later he became an intensely partisan democratic editor of the Rocky Mountain Gazette newspaper in Helena. A lifelong Democrat in August 1871, Maginnis narrowly defeated incumbent William H. Clagett to become Montana’s non-voting territorial delegate to U. S. Congress where he served for the twelve years. During his congressional years, Delegate Maginnis made an impressive mark convincing Congress to build forts Custer, Keogh, Logan, and Maginnis, opening navigation on the Missouri River, opening reservation land to white settlement, and encouraging railroad building to promote settlement of Montana—all measures designed to increase the territory’s population.

Maginnis was elected to the state constitutional convention in 1889 and defeated for the U.S. Senate that same year in a disputed partisan election. Major Martin Maginnis, who served Minnesota and the nation with distinction in the Civil War and Montana well as Territorial Delegate in Congress, spent the last four years of his life in California and died March 27, 1919 in Los Angeles. He rests today in Resurrection Cemetery in Helena.

Sources: [MNA The Gentana Reporter 12 Nov 1917; MNA The Big Timber Pioneer 26 Jan 1920; Martin Maginnis “At Gettysburg The First Minnesota,” Gettysburg Star & Sentinel 14 Jun 1882; Minnesota in the Civil and Indian Wars, vol. 1, p. 1-78, 488-506; Michael Leeson, History of Montana, 327, 1234; Helen McCann White editor, Ho! For The Gold Fields Northern Overland Wagon Trains of the 1860s, 172, 175-76; Ellis Waldron, An Atlas of Montana Politics Since 1864; “Partial sketch of the civil and military service of Major Martin Maginnis,” Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana, vol. 8, p. 7-24; Wikipedia Martin Maginnis and 1^st Minnesota Volunteer Infantry.]

Photos:

1.     Captain Martin Maginnis shortly after his First Minnesota Infantry charged Confederate lines at Gettysburg.

2.     Map of Second Day at Gettysburg when First Minnesota achieved greatness. [Courtesy of Wikipedia]