The Angel of Marye’s Heights

I’ve been working on my story repertoire the last few days. In that process, I came upon a tale from the time of the Civil War. Times of conflict can bring out the very best in some people.

The dawn came; a wintry gray morning with pink fingers of light spreading across the horizon. Reluctantly, Richard Kirkland sat up from the cold, hard ground that had been his bed. His breath was a frosty plume before his face, for the temperature was below zero.

He could smell his own sour sweat (even though it was bitterly cold) and recognized it as the smell of “fear.” He caught a whiff of the gunsmoke that lingered in the air, a reminder of the battle the day before.

Then, Richard paused to listen, and winced. The groans and anguished cries for help from wounded men met his ears. It gouged his heart like the twist of a knife.

Warily glancing over the stone wall on the ridge at Marye’s Heights, for to do so risked the possibility of a Federal rifle ball between the eyes, Richard glimpsed a sight that chilled his soul. The bodies of some sixty-three hundred dead and wounded Union soldiers lay sprawled or crumpled down the slope. Blood ran on the slopes like a river.

These men were his enemies. Richard knew that. On the day before, he had not hesitated to fire his rifle upon them. They were also men. They
were
someone’s fathers,
brothers, sons, and
husbands.
Their agonized cries
of pain moved him
to pity. They were someone’s fathers, brothers, sons, and husbands. Their agonized cries of pain moved him to pity.

Richard Kirkland was a seasoned soldier. Already he had partaken of many battles in this “War of Northern Aggression.” At Fort Sumter, he cut his teeth on battle. Then, there was First Bull Run, the Peninsular Campaign, the Seven Days Campaign, and the battles of Seven Pines. He had proven himself brave; though he had been wounded in battle before, he returned to the war to fight.

It led to this day in December of 1862, on a ridge called Marye’s Heights, near Fredericksburg, Virginia. The Confederate troops, under the command of General Robert E. Lee, defended the ridge against a larger Union force, under General Ambrose E. Burnside. During the three day battle, Union troops were reduced by nine thousand men, while the Confederate losses were only slightly over fifteen hundred men.

He had fought bravely in this battle. On this day, Richard Kirkland proved beyond a doubt that he was more than brave; he was more than brave; he was compassionate.

So moved was he by the sound of misery, that Richard approached his regimental commander, Colonel John D. Kennedy, and asked for permission to do something to comfort the wounded. He was denied. But, that didn’t stop him.

Prevailing on a personal friendship with Brigadier General Joseph B. Kershaw (who had enrolled Richard Kirkland in the Camden Volunteers two years before), Richard pleaded with him to be allowed to help the wounded soldiers.

“You’ll get a bullet in your head if you cross the wall, Richard,” said General Kershaw. But, Richard Kirkland was adamant and persuasive. At last, he was given permission to cross the wall, but he was not allowed to wave a white handkerchief, as that would look like a sign of general truce.

Gathering as many canteens as he could carry, he filled them at the Widow Steven’s well and leaped over the wall. His anxious friends hunkered behind the wall and watched as Richard Kirkland ran to a wounded soldier.

He crouched beside the man, tenderly lifted his head to give the wounded man a drink from a canteen, straightened a broken limb, put his knapsack under his head, covered him with an overcoat, and went to the next man. Union troops, perhaps thinking he meant to rob the dead, fired on him once. Then, realizing his intentions, did not fire upon him again.

When the canteens were empty, Richard crossed the wall and filled them again…and again. For more than an hour and a half, risking gunfire from the enemy, Richard Kirkland comforted any wounded man he could locate on that part of the battlefield. Possibly he reached a hundred men, just a fraction of the wounded upon the field, but he did what he could, and those men never forgot him.

Then, Richard Kirkland crossed back over the wall and picked up his rifle, once again ready to lay down his life for “his country.” He fought at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. Then, on September 20th, 1863 at The Battle of Chickamauga he did indeed give his life. He was struck by a single bullet in the chest. It’s said that his dying words were, “Tell Pa I died right.”“Tell Pa I died right.”

He lived right, too.

Richard Kirkland was nineteen years old.

In the first public account of the battle, General Kershaw himself said of Kirkland, “he has bequeathed to American youth, yea, to the world, an example which dignified our common humanity.”

His name went down in history as “The Angel of Marye’s Heights.” It is said that when General Sherman’s troops made their fiery march across the South, the Kirkland home, in Camden South Carolina, was spared.

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5. Contrasts

Tagged as: Civil War, courage, History, life lesson, Storytelling