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Originally published in the Historic Nantucket, Fall 1993 (Vol. 41, No. 3; incorrectly labeled Vol. 42, No. 3), p. 51-53

The Journal of a Union Soldier: Nantucket Warrior
By Richard F. Miller

"When the war broke out I was employed as a clerk in the Union Store [and] I caught the fever in August, 1862. Being a minor, I had to get the consent of my mother and [I] signed the rolls [in] one of the ante rooms of the old Pantheon Hall, then used as a recruiting office ..."

So begin the reminiscences of Nantucketer Josiah Fitch Murphey, a veteran of the Civil War. Written thirty years after the war, they include a diary he kept while on the march during the Union debacle at the battle of Chancel-lorsville and later, during the bloody Wilderness Campaign. Murphey's narrative gives us a striking picture of an ordinary Nantucketer transformed by an extraordinary war.

The early pages reflect the excitement and enthusiasm of a young patriot who sings as he travels to boot camp: "I'm a raw recruit With a bran[d] new suit One hundred dollars bounty I'm going down to Washington, To fight for Nantucket County."

Just two years later, we see the disillusionment of a war-weary veteran who rejects the offer of an officer's commission if he re-enlists. "I did not choose to remain," he wrote thirty years afterward, "as it was too hard a life for me."

Nearly 280 Nantucket men served in the army during the Civil War, eighty of whom, including Murphcy, served in Company I of the 20th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Raised by islander George Nelson Macy (later a major general) the "Bloody 20th," as it was informally but appropriately known, was a veteran of the Union disaster at Balls Bluff and of General George B. McClellan's failed Peninsula Campaign at the time Murphey enlisted. And a bare three weeks after he joined his comrades in the field, the 20th Massachusetts incurred terrible losses near Antietam Creek in what became the bloodiest afternoon in American military history.

But Murphey's war was just beginning. Within six weeks after Antietam, the 20th Massachusetts was on the march again, heading toward its rendezvous with tragedy in the streets and on the hills of Fredericksburg, Virginia. This battle was destined to be the deadliest fight of the war for both Private Murphey and his regiment. His description of the killing fields of Fredericksburg is vivid and concise:

"The Country back of Fredericksburg rises to quite a height and the hills are called Marye's Heights. On these heights the rebs built their lines of works, three or four of them, one overlooking the other
like seats in a theatre, only farther apart. Each line could get in its work by firing over the heads of those in front, a little risky, perhaps, but then they take risks in battle. The rebs also built a line of breastworks in front of the city next to the river where they were to make their first resistance."

Fredericksburg lies just across the Rappahannock River from the site of the winter quarters of Union commander Ambrose E. Burnside's 100,000 troops. Burnside's plan was to construct a pontoon bridge and cross his army to attack the Confederate forces, under the command of Robert E. Lee, in and around the town, but he delayed for almost a month while waiting for his pontoon bridge to arrive. On the other side, Lee used this critical time to create some of the most formidable defensive works of the war.

In the early hours of December 11, 1862, Private Murphey was recalled from picket duty and ordered to pack up for the attack on Fredericksburg. Burnside may have been oblivious to the perils of a frontal assault, but the men in the Union ranks were not. Murphey remembers:
"Well we knew what was in store for us, we knew that we were to make an attempt across the river and gain the city and the heights beyond, and knowing how strongly fortified the rebs were, we knew what a reception we should get, and that many of us would never see the light of another day."

At dawn, the drummer beat the long roll and the Nantucketers of Company I fell in with their comrades to begin the battle. Murphey relates that the commanding officer then asked one of the men to stand as a color guard, a great honor but an extremely dangerous one. The regimental colors were a prime target for enemy fire. Murphey says of the volunteer:

"He immediately [accepted], but at the same time made this remark, 'Good-bye boys, you will never see me again,' expecting to be killed, as it was the most exposed place in the regiment. Well, he was not killed, but so badly wounded that [we] never did see him again."

As the Union ranks waited anxiously, Burnside was faced with a situation that should have been obvious from the start. An early-morning fog had obscured the river, allowing the engineers to begin construction of the pontoon bridge with very little harassment from Confederate sharpshooters on the opposite shore. By mid-morning, with the bridge only a third of the way across the Rappahannock, the fog burned off and the engineers were exposed to the full force of enemy fire. Taking heavy casualties, the engineers retreated and the bridge was left unfinished.

Burnside then called for volunteers to cross the river in boats and take Fredericksburg by storm. Colonel Norman J. Hall, commanding the brigade which included the 20th Massachusetts, volunteered his troops for what was to become one of the most heroic actions of the war. And Private Josiah F. Murphey, along with his fellow Nantucketers, was square in the middle of it.

Murphey's account of the bravery of Nantucket's sons on that dark day conveys the sense of danger and excitement that pulsed through the young soldier's veins. The air was alive with the greasy slide of Confederate minie balls as the assault began:

"Permission was granted and it was planned that the boats would be ready on the shore and the troops at a given signal should rush down to the bank of the river, jump into the boats and pull quickly across and charge up the bank on the other side. It was a desperate game ..."

"After getting into the boat two men sat down at the oars. One was Thomas Russell of this town, the other man I do not remember, but he pulled Russell right around and headed the boat upstream. Lieut. Leander F. Alley [also a Nantucketer] said to me, 'Murphey, take that oar,' which I did and we soon had the boat across on the other side where she grounded a few feet from the shore. We jumped out and waded to the land."
What happened next would literally mark the nineteen-year-old Murphey for the rest of his life. It was his own red badge of courage, although he neither sought it nor coveted another's. Murphey's tour through the streets of Fredericksburg was destined to be brief:

"We lay under the bank of the city and as soon as the troops began to cross we were ordered forward. [Company I] formed in two platoons of about thirty men each at the lowest end of a street called Farquier street and began our advance up the street.

"As soon as we came in sight of the rebels who were concealed in every house and behind every fence, they opened a terrible fire on us at short range and our men began dropping at every point, those struck in the vital parts dropping without a sound, but those wounded otherwise would cry out with pain as they fell or limped to the rear.

"But despite the terrible fire we pressed on up the street. Where men fell and left a vacant place other men stepped into their places and although death stared us in the face there was not a man who faltered. Our chief company officer Capt. H.L. Abbott said,'... hold your fire, boys, until you see something to fire at.

"We had now arrived at the corner of a cross street [and I], being on the left flank of the company, turned to look down the street to see if anything could be seen to fire at, and bringing my gun to the ready at the same time. At that moment I felt a sharp stinging pain on the right side of my face and presto, I knew no more."

Sometime later, bleeding profusely, Murphey regained consciousness. While "the balls were still flying thick around [him]," the fighting had moved some distance away. If evidence were needed to illustrate his generally good temper, the next few minutes would provide it, beginning with his realization that he had been shot in the face:

"I got up rather faint, and a feeling of madness came over me. I swore. I cursed the whole southern confederacy from Virginia to the Gulf of Mexico. But on second thought I realized it was war and banished such thoughts from my mind, and made my way across the river to a hospital called the Lacy house...."
Burnside hurled regiment after regiment against Lee's entrenchments, but failed to take Marye's Heights. The battle of Fredericksburg is still regarded by many as the most senseless bloodletting of the Civil War. Murphey's 20th Massachusetts lost 163 men killed or wounded in the futile assault. It is reliably reported that of this total, 97, including Murphey, became casualties in the twenty minutes it took to move from the banks of the Rappahannock to the corner of Farquier and Caroline streets.

Nantucket's share in this harvest of death came to 9 dead and 12 wounded.

Private Murphey recovered from his wound and returned to his regiment in March 1863, in time to see further action in the Battle of Chancellorsville, from which he emerged unscathed. But in June 1863, while on the march to Gettysburg, he contracted typhoid fever and was hospitalized in Washington, D.C., for another long stay.

In October, Murphey was pronounced cured and rejoined the 20th Massachusetts. That winter was relatively quiet, but with springtime came a new Union commander and a new aggressive philosophy for the Army of the Potomac. On May 3, 1864, General Ulysses S. Grant ordered his Army of the Potomac to cross the Rapidan River and undertake a grueling and bloody six-week journey toward Richmond. That twenty-four-hour-a-day trek of marching and fighting became known as the Wilderness Campaign, and Murphey was right in the thick of it.

He saw action at the Wilderness, Todds Tavern, Laurel Hill, Spottsylvania, North Anna River, Po River, Totopotomy, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and the Jerusalem Plank Road. And through all this he somehow found time to keep a daily record of events.

Among the incidents noted in his journal is the sight of General Grant passing the 20th Massachusetts. Murphey's regiment cheered Grant so loudly that the rebel troops across the way, thinking that all the hubbub was the beginning of a Union attack, opened fire.

Murphey describes the gruesome details of being forced to witness executions for desertion, rape, and murder. He banters with a general while the pair are made a special target by Confederate sharpshooters. He captures a Confederate soldier and debates the respective merits of Generals Grant and Lee with his Georgian prisoner. He watches helplessly as a fellow Nantucketer, William P. Kelley, is taken prisoner by the rebels, and ultimately, perhaps to his own surprise, records the relief he feels at being able to converse and trade newspapers with Confderate soldiers during a truce following the carnage at Cold Harbor.

Murphey's period of enlistment finally ended on July 16, 1864. His terse entry for that day serves to sum up the severity of his experiences during the preceding twenty-four harrowing months:

"We leave for home today, yes, Home, the dearest spot on the earth to me, how it thrills my every nerve to think of going home."

Josiah Murphey spent the rest of his long life on Nantucket. He served as postmaster, and later successfully ran for the office of town assessor, and, finally, town clerk. He also served several terms as Commander of Nantucket's Thomas M. Gardner Post 207 of the Grand Army of the Republic.

Murphey's real importance in the Nantucket community cannot be measured by the number of times he was elected to public office or honored by his comrades in the G.A.R. That his influence and character far transcended these tangible symbols of respect and affection is amply attested to by this excerpt from an article describing a visit to Nantucket that was published in the Salem (Mass.) Dispatch on August 24, 1910. In it the correspondent tells of an unusual sixty-seven year-old gentleman he met while there:

"We were introduced to a certain "Uncle Cy," an uncle of our host. He was a native Nantucketer and although an old Civil War veteran, rode a bicycle and bathed in the surf. Uncle Cy is a marvel. We asked him questions galore about Nantucket people and he answered every one of them. He holds some town position like town clerk, but we doubt if he ever refers to the books. As we talked with him, people constantly asked him questions and he never once failed to give a correct answer. He knew people, names, dates, occurrences, marriages, deaths and births. He did not trouble to take people to his office, he just scratched his head and it came to him. Uncle Cy would make an ideal hotel clerk. We venture to predict that even in the Waldorf-Astoria with its six hundred arrivals a day, he would be the same satisfactory official as he is in little old Nantucket."

On May 2, 1931, at the age of 88, Josiah Fitch Murphey joined the permanent ranks of his beloved Army of the Potomac. The Inquirer and Mirror obituary used phrases such as "sterling citizen," "won the admiration of the entire community," and "won and held the respect of his fellow townsmen." But one suspects that Murphey, veteran of so many battles in so bloody a war, might have seen himself in a light not visible to any save other veterans of that conflict. Two years before his death, in a hand shaking with age, he wrote:

"Boston Herald said [after the battle of Fredericksburg] that Murphey who was reported yesterday mortally wounded might possibly recover.

"He did and lived to be over 85 years old. He is writing this."