During the 30-minute firestorm during which the 2nd Massachusetts lost nearly a third of its strength, Capt. Samuel Quincy could not see what was happening on the right of the regiment's line. The 27th Indiana had fallen back, exposing the Bay Staters to a deadly flank fire. What Quincy could see was the red Confederate flags getting dangerously close and suspected that the right companies of the 2nd were pulling out. Moving across to his right to validate his fears, he was struck twice, in the right leg and through the left foot. Almost immediately, "the enemy were upon us, or rather me, for what was left of my company had gone with the rest. Though staggering, I had not yet fallen, when one rushed up, aimed at my head with 'Surrender, G-d d--m your soul!' which I did."
For Quincy, it was the beginning of a prolonged nightmare.
Quincy was a member of one of the Commonwealth's most prestigious families. His great- grandfather, Josiah Quincy, had defended the British soldiers accused of murder in the Boston Massacre. His grandfather, also Josiah, was a former Mayor of Boston. But his family connections would not avail him now. Giving up his sword and pistol, he sat down to examine his wounds. There was a hole through his foot. The wound to his leg was the minor of the two injuries, but the bullet was still lodged in his flesh. "Seeing this, the Confederate gentleman to whom I belonged was seized with a desire to perform a surgical operation...but yielded to my remonstrance and request that he would be satisfied with having put it in, and allow some gentleman of the staff to undertake the bullet's extraction. Two of them then offered to take me across the wheat-field to where their own wounded were, asking me at the same time what money I had for them. They did not offer any violence or undertake to search me. Had they done so, they would have made prize of my money-belt, containing over $90 in greenbacks and a gold watch."
Quincy gave them a few gold dollars, which seemed to satisfy them. As he was transported across the field towards enemy lines, he saw the body of Capt. Edward Abbott, who "half an hour before had joked about being two hours in action without losing a man,--with white, waxen face against dead leaves."
Deposited among the "groaning mass of wounded of both sides," Quincy was grateful to a wounded Rebel who gave him some water and a knapsack for his head. During the night, when it got cooler, he "got a piece of a wounded rebel's blanket" and managed to get some sleep. "Once I was waked by some one attempting to pull off my seal ring; but he desisted when I pulled my hand away, remarked, 'A handsome ring,' and went on. Very likely he thought me dead, as my companion under the blanket was by that time."
By the next day, the shock of his wounds had faded and the pain began. He hated the sight of the brightening sky, "knowing how soon the sun would blaze furiously down upon us." As the dreaded sun rose, Quincy managed to drag himself under the shade of a nearby tree. As a Rebel carrying canteens passed by, he offered him a dollar for one of them. "He laughed and was passing on. 'A gold dollar,' said I. He stopped: 'What, Yank! have you a gold dollar?' 'Yes,' said I, 'you go to the branch, fill then canteen with fresh water, and here's the dollar.' If he had been a wretch, he might have taken it away and left me to die, for there was no one else near except wounded; but, after considering a few minutes, he went off to the stream, filled the canteen, brought it to me, took the dollar, and left." Quincy was convinced that the canteen saved his life.
In time a Confederate surgeon came to examine his wounds and extracted the bullet from his leg. He then bound up the foot, "relieving me with the assurance that it would probably stay on, though I should always be lame." There was nothing for him to do but wait. Throughout the day, as it rained on and off, Quincy watched details burying arms and legs. He could not help thinking that the scene "would not have made a bad slide for a stereoscope, on the whole."
The next day, Quincy made the acquaintance of General A.P. Hill, who asked him to what Yankee regiment he belonged.
"Second Massachusetts."
"Let's see, Gordon's old regiment?"
"Yes."
"Best regiment in Banks' army. Cut all to pieces, though."
With the withdrawal of Jackson from the battlefield, Quincy's journey into imprisonment at the Confederate hospital at Staunton began. It was a trip of "broken oblivion...with occasional wakings to a semi-consciousness of rumbling wheels, brakes, and once familiar railroad sounds, mingled strangely with groans, cries, stench, squalor, and misery."
Upon arrival at the town, the Yankees were looked upon like animals in a menagerie by the curious inhabitants, one of whom, Quincy recalled, was "turned out of the car by a rebel sergeant for insulting the prisoners." The Confederate wounded were removed first, so it was not until evening that Quincy was carried off the train. Along the route to the hospital, he saw women standing at their windows with "various expressions of countenance, pity being the scarcest."
For Quincy, the pain was endurable, but it vexed him to be a"crippled and helpless butt for the exulting Philistine and his women ten thousand times worse than himself." Even worse, was the "impenetrable curtain" that had been drawn between him and the outside world. Then, there were the threats of retribution promised by Jefferson Davis against Pope's men for the latter's "cruel" policies. Would those threats be carried out? "Of my own chances for life and liberty, I cannot even guess," Quincy wrote in his diary. "The blackness of darkness surrounds me on every hand, with no perceptible ray or glimmer from any quarter." If only Harry Russell or Stephen Perkins or Jim Savage were with him so they might "cheer each other with regimental chat." In their company he might "suffer and be strong unto the end." But Perkins was dead and Quincy grieved his loss. That the light of such a man of culture and intellect have been "forever extinguished by the bullets of men so few degrees above brute level, saddens the soul." And he feared that Savage's pierced mortal body had not the strength in it "to retain the soul of one of the bravest Christian gentlemen that ever drew sword for the right since the world began." Quincy would suffer alone.
It was more than a month before Quincy was able to get word to his anxious family that he was alive and as well as could be expected under the circumstances. "I entreat you to feel easy about me. I assure you that I do not suffer either in body or mine, but manage to take things as they come with something of Father's philosphy. Remember me as usual to Grandfather & tell him that his memory & example have helped me to keep up the heart of a soldier through many vicissitudes & chances of war."
In Quincy's absence, the 2nd MA took but a small part in Pope's last hurrah--at Second Manassas, and suffered more losses on the field of battle at Antietam. With the death of Lt. Col. Wilder Dwight, mortally wounded during the battle, and the subsequent death on October of Jim Savage, Quincy was elevated to the command of the 2nd Massachusetts in absentia.
Quincy's sprits rose a hundredfold as he read a list of parolees from Libby prison in Richmond. On it were names he recognized from Pope's army. Determined not to rot another day "as food for Confederate vermin," he claimed his rights as a prisoner of war and demanded that he and any other officer well enough to make the journey, be transferred to Libby. The response he got was that he was better off to stay put, but he persisted and to Libby he went.
He arrived at Richmond in the middle of the night. After limping up 3 flights of stairs to the hospital ward, he found himself in an immense room lit by a single candle which "only made darkness visible." The newcomers were given cots of sacking to sleep on with no bedding or blankets. Quincy threw himself down and shivered himself into oblivion.
The next day, he was about to poke his head out of the window to get some fresh air "but was forcibly informed that I'd better not, unless I wanted it shot off."
Quincy's diary entry for his first day at his new accomodations read: "In hell, alias the Libby prison." But his occupancy in the former tobacco warehouse was mercifully short-lived. The very next day, a "little spitfire clerk" arrived to take his parole. "I could have embraced the little devil, but I didn't, only waited until my name was called, when I toed the mark instanter, and quite won his heart with the promptitude with which I recited my descriptive list, insomuch that he asked me to take a letter to his sweetheart." Before he knew it, Quincy was on his way home. He rejoiced at the sight of the Star-spangled banner ("Oh, long may it wa-a-ve") flying over the boat waiting to transport him to Washington.
The first thing Quincy did after checking into Willard's hotel was to purchase new underclothing and indulge himself in a much needed bath. The hot water and soap "speedily restored that self-respect which is so difficult to retain after one is conscious of not being the only inhabitant of one's garments." After drawing his back pay, he replaced his ragged blouse, bullet-pierced trousers and torn Confederate cap--"given me on the field to replace my broad-brimmed felt, which a Georgian gentleman fancied"--with the "jauntiest" uniform he could find. Shortly thereafter, he returned home to Massachusetts where he remained until just before Hooker's Chancellorsville campaign. He returned to the 2nd Massachusetts as its colonel.
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