Suicide during Battle?

[kevinw33]

I am currently reading One of Cleburne's Command by Captain Samuel Foster of Granbury's brigade and I came across something I have never seen.
During their first battle, Arkansas Post, Foster's unit is being bombarded heavily from gunboats and he writes:

"The next one (cannonball) goes nearly in the same place in that company, killing one man and cutting off the legs of his brother. The one hat had his legs shot off urned his body about half way to speak to his brother, not knowing that he was dead. As soon as he saw his brother dead, he takes his pistol, puts it to his head and killed himself."

I have read a pretty good bit and have never came across something like this. The author does no explaining or anything and moves right on.

Does this seem odd to anyone else and has anyone else came across things like this???

[FranklinGuardsNYSM]

Re: Suicide during Battle?

There is an account, I want to say it's at some point during the Marylanders' attack on Culp's Hill at Gettysburg on July 3rd, of a wounded Confederate doing himself in with his rifle.

[flattop32355]

Re: Suicide during Battle?

There are various reasons he may have acted as he did. He may have known he was too injured to survive long, and was going to ask his brother to help keep him from suffering. Seeing his brother already dead, he took matters into his own hands.

There are a number of cases during the Wilderness Campaign when badly wounded men had the choice of burning to death or taking their own lives before the flames reached them.

Overwhelming grief, from news of home or on the battlefield, could cause some men to take their own lives.

[kevinw33]

Re: Suicide during Battle?

I guess my point to this thread was to ask if anyone had come across written accounts of this. This seems like something that would not be mentioned in memoirs and was very surprised to read, it really caught me off guard.
Obviously it happened, especially toward the end when veterans would know their chances of survival with particular wounds.

[Hank Trent]

Re: Suicide during Battle?

Did you see this thread?

The General, looking down, saw his wound, turned his pistol on himself, and shot himself four times and fell from his horse,

The consensus was that it wasn't necessarily true, but it was at least something one veteran wrote as if he believed it had happened.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[lambrew]

Re: Suicide during Battle?

I read a simular account of a federal officer doing this at Gettysburg on the last day. Judson Kilpactrick ordered this officer(sorry I forget the name, but will post it when I have access to my books) to make a charge which he considered foolish. Kilpactrick shamed him as a coward, and he did as orded after that. The story goes that he was wounded, and his horse shot out from under him. Rather than surrender he pulled his pistol and shot himself. This account is controversial, and there is a few different versions. Both from people claiming to be there, and those who heard it second hand. Some say he shot himself, while other accounts say he did not. Either way it is an interesting story to get into.

Respectfully....
Sean Collicott

P.S. It was Elon J. Farnsworth I refer to above. Also I did not see Mr. Trent's post refering to the same. Forgive me. But the debate as to what actually happened is interesting, and on going.

Thanks all....
Sean Collicott

[yeoman]

Re: Suicide during Battle?

Sir, at this time another thread has a site with an article on the 3rd days battle at Gettysburg, in said article is mention in reference to your question. Go to the sinks, "Gettysburg Image", from there follow link to get onto site.

[Michael Comer]

Re: Suicide during Battle?

The General, looking down, saw his wound, turned his pistol on himself, and shot himself four times

Talk about bad marksmanship.

[markj]

Re: Suicide during Battle?

Re: General Elon J. Farnsworth

Let's just say there seems to have been a difference of opinion about the circumstances of Farnsworth's demise although, whatever happened, he remained just as dead. (see attachments)

Yours, &c.,

Mark Jaeger

[Emmanuel Dabney]

Re: Suicide during Battle?

You may also want to read the First Maine Heavy Artillery's memoirs. Following the horrendous assault of June 18th, 1864 on the Confederate lines at Petersburg, Daniel Chaplin, Colonel commanding, according to the regimental never recovered. He stood on top of a Union earthwork during the action at Second Deep Bottom and a Confederate sharpshooter killed him. The author argued that Chaplin certainly knew what he was doing on that day.

[Dutchman Dick]

Re: Suicide during Battle?

Also take into account that (from what I have read) even more so than now, deliberately taking your own life was considered a shameful act, and even a "mortal sin" worthy of eternal damnation in some religious circles. IMHO, it is possible that there may have been more incidents that were hushed up.

[jchristiansen]

Re: Suicide during Battle?

There's the well-known Winslow Homer painting of the Confederate soldier exposing himself to Federal sharpshooters at Petersburg. Some of the studies I've read say that Homer was actually depicting the suicidal act of a desperate man fed up with the pressures of the siege. In the background, you can see a puff of smoke from a sharpshooter's rifle, suggesting that the painting shows the defiant soldier's final moments.

Homer was a field artist for the papers early in the war. General Francis Barlow was his brother-in-law, and I believe he visited Barlow's HQ during the siege of Petersburg. There's a strong likelihood that Homer was showing something that he witnessed in his painting.

[WILSONCREEK61]

Re: Suicide during Battle?

Here is one I ran across during the battle of Gettysburg.

Alonzo Cushing’s guns were the focus of much of the Southern iron. Colonel Smith wrote that "the destruction caused by them [the Confederate artillery rounds] was the most severe I had ever seen." Sergeant Burns watched as men and officers of the battery fell under the concentrated Rebel fusillade. "[I]t was a terrible sight," declared this veteran of almost two years of fighting. One batteryman was struck by a piece of shell. A comrade recalled that the men fell to the ground and "began writhing and begging us to shoot him." The projectile "had torn away a part of the flesh of his abdomen and let some of h is entrails out upon the ground." The men watched horrified as the dying man pulled out his revolver and blew his brains out.