Cpl. A.B. Ellis and Kershaw’s Brigade

Archibald B. Ellis

Archibald B. Ellis … my Great-Great Grandfather who lived to the age of 84, was born in Hodges, SC in 1842.  Early in his life, he was faced with the decision to defend a popular cause that would ultimately prove indefensible both militarily and morally.

When Abraham Lincoln was elected and South Carolina voted to secede in late 1860, Arch Ellis was 18 years old and living in Cokesbury in the Old Abbeville District.  When war broke out between the North and the South a few months later, he was among the first wave of his generation to volunteer for Confederate service.

Let me say this right up front.  There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that my ancestor was a racist.  95% of white America at the time was racist.  But, like so many young men of modest means and upbringing in the antebellum South, he owned no slaves and he viewed the situation as simply a question of honor and served through a sense of duty.

Records show that he enlisted as a Private on April 17, 1861, only five days after the bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor by forces under the command of General P.G.T. Beauregard.

He was a member of Company F, 2nd South Carolina Infantry, a part of the brigade made famous by General Joseph E. Kershaw.

General Joseph Kershaw

Kershaw’s Brigade was to become one of the elite units in Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

Not only did the soldiers of the brigade establish a first-rate combat record, but the history of the units that compose the brigade is the longest of the war, having come into existence before Ft. Sumter and still being active weeks after Lee’s surrender at Appomatox.

After taking part in the Battle of 1st Manassas in July, his unit was inactive until the following May.  At some point during this lull in the action, Arch was appointed to serve as a musician perhaps as a drummer, or a bugler.  They went back into combat during the fierce fighting outside Richmond known as The Seven Days Battles.  He sustained a minor wound of some kind during the fighting in which there were a large number of casualties at both Savage Station and finally on the last day at Malvern Hill.

While not involved in Lee’s triumph at the Battle of 2nd Manassas, Kershaw’s Brigade re-joined him as he marched north and crossed the  Potomac, helping to capture Harper’s Ferry prior to the terrible conflict on September 12, 1862 near the tiny Maryland town of Sharpsburg on Antietam Creek.

Dunker church at Antietam (now & then)

At some point that morning as the fighting raged in and around the West Woods and the famous Dunker Church, Arch received another, more serious wound.

His recovery took place after Lee had retreated back into Virginia following the bloody stalemate of what those in the north call the Battle of Antietam, where more Americans died than on any other single day in history.

The Battle of Fredericksburg took place in December 1862 and was a particularly decisive Confederate victory that saw the Union forces of Ambrose Burnside decimated as they tried tragically to advance up the long slope toward a ridgeline known as Marye’s Heights, where Kershaw’s Brigade and the rest of The Army of Northern Virginia lay behind the protection of the stone wall and the sunken road.

Afterwards, Lee’s army remained  inactive through the winter of 1862 and did not move again until late May of 1863, when a strong advance of Union forces under General Joe Hooker forced Lee into a bold maneuver near the crossroads known as Chancellorsville.

Kershaw’s Brigade did not march with “Stonewall” Jackson on his famous flanking move that routed the Federal forces that afternoon and fateful evening, but was involved with the action that took place in and around Salem Church the next day.

After the stunning victory at Chancellorsville, the army remained in camp for nearly a month before Lee resumed the offensive by pushing north into Pennsylvania where the armies clashed in a little college town called Gettysburg.  Here Kershaw’s Brigade was involved in some of the hottest fighting of the entire three-day battle in the sector now known as “The Wheat Field”.

About 4:00 p.m. of July 2, 1863 the soldiers of Kershaw’s Brigade leaped a stone wall and headed toward their destiny. They made an unsuccessful attempt to silence the cannon along the Wheatfield Road before continuing straight across the Rose Farm to the Stony Hill and ultimately attempting to advance up the slope of Little Round Top.

Carnage at Rose Farm after 2nd day of Gettysburg

While suffering a staggering 650 casualties that day, General James Longstreet described the actions of his corps, which included Kershaw’s Brigade as the best four hours of fighting during the war.

The records don’t show specifically what part Pvt. Archibald B. Ellis personally played during the Battle of Gettysburg, but they do indicate that just a few weeks later, on August 31, 1863, he was promoted to the rank of 1st Corporal and once again the following March to the rank of 2nd Corporal.

That September, the brigade followed Longstreet as they were detached from Lee’s army to join General Braxton Bragg in Tennessee where they played an important  part in the smashing victory at Chickamauga in September, before slowly making their way back to Virginia in time for the spring 1864 Wilderness Campaign which followed on the heels of the appointment of  U.S. Grant to supreme command on all Union Forces.  A series of extremely bloody engagements took place at Spotsylvania Courthouse and the North Anna River, culminating in the futile slaughter at Cold Harbor.

By mid-June of 1864, as both sides settled into the protracted siege in the trenches of Petersburg, Lee had detached General Jubal Early to the Shenandoah Valley in an attempt to re-create the “Stonewall” tactical masterpiece in the Valley two years before and draw Union troops away.  He sent Kershaw’s Brigade as a part of this effort.

Confederate POWs at Point Lookout prison in Maryland

In October of 1864, Early’s forces met those of General Phillip Sheridan at The Battle of Cedar Creek where, following a see-saw affair, over 1,200 Confederate soldiers were captured, including my Great-Great Grandfather Archibald B. Ellis, who was destined to spend the final months of the war as a prisoner in the camp at Point Lookout on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.  He was paroled on March 28, 1865, only a few days before Lee surrendered at Appomatox and less than a month before Joseph Johnston with his tattered army including the 2nd South Carolina and the remnants of Kershaw’s Brigade stopped fighting on April 26, 1865 at Durham Station in North Carolina.

A.B. and Sally Riley Ellis circa 1920

Archibald B. Ellis came back home from the war and later married Sally Riley.  They had a family and he survived and appears to have thrived during and after Reconstruction, living well into the 20th century.  He  died in Greenwood, SC in 1926 while living with his son, my Great Grandfather, James Ellis.

A brief entry in the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) Book of Recollections Vol. 7, pg 41 offers this quote by A.B.Ellis …

“I was born February 1842 near Hodges and was living in the Old Abbeville district when the war started.  I offered my services, enlisting in Company F, Second S.C.V., under Captain Perryman on April 17, 1861.  It wasn’t very long before I was chosen as one of the musicians of my company.  I hate to recall the awful struggle, but when honor was at stake we could not let the yankees go by unnoticed. I am eighty-four years old, living with my son in Greenwood.  At some other time I will give you an account of some of the battles … “

Sadly, THAT’S IT!

When asked to add his memories for posterity, that’s all he had to say.  This modest man with so much to tell would die very shortly and if he ever provided a more detailed account of his long and distinguished service during the Civil War, I have not been able to find it …

… at least not yet.

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NOTE:  Thanks to historian and author Mac Wyckoff for his wonderfully detailed accounts of the history of the 2nd SC Infantry and Kershaw’s Brigade from which my chronology and some of the details of this account are drawn.