Stoney subsequently received from the President the commission
of second lieutenant in the Twenty-seventh regiment, and
did his duty as faithfully and gallantly as heretofore 'till the
close of the war. Captain Daly, though reported dead by the
Yankee newspaper army correspondent, was understood to have
survived and to have published in the New York
Herald many
months afterward a card, among other things vindicatory of General
Hagood from the charge of murder which the Yankee papers
freely lavished upon him.
[33]
General Hagood, valuing highly the approval of his superior
officers in the field, sought to make no use of the foregoing handsome
endorsements beyond leaving them in the war office, where
they were quietly pigeon-holed. Three months later, he and
many better men were overslaughed by the assignment to a
division command in the army of Northern Virginia of an officer
who had never previously been in battle. This it will be remembered
was at the close of the fourth year of the war!
After the repulse of his brigade, on the 21st of August, General
Hagood kept for some time a line of skirmishers on the field as
near as possible to the enemy's works, while the litter bearers
removed the wounded. Many poor fellows crawled within this
line and were thus rescued from captivity; one of them, Lieutenant
Harper, Twenty-fifth regiment, dragged himself from
near the enemy's works with a broken leg. He was never, however,
able again to resume duty with his company. Of the 59
officers and 681 men who went into the action in the brigade, only
18 officers and 274 men came out of it unhurt; being a total of
448 casualties—or about two-thirds of the force engaged. The
enemy claimed to have buried 211 dead, of which most were
Hagood's men. The character of the casualties was probably 120
killed, 125 wounded in our hand, and 203 captured, of which a
large part were also wounded.
In the Twenty-first regiment, Major Wilds, commanding, was
wounded and captured; Lieutenant Ford wounded and captured,
and Lieutenants Bowles, Easterling and Atkinson were captured.
In the Seventh battalion Lieutenants McKaskell, Kennedy,
Isbell and Douglass were killed; Captain Segars and Lieutenants
Tiller, Raley, King, Clyburn, Taylor, and Weston wounded, and
Captain Jones with Lieutenants Young, Gardner and Schley were
captured. Captain Jones commanded the battalion in the action.
In the Eleventh regiment, Lieutenant Minas was wounded, and
Lieutenants Morrison, Bowman and Tuten were captured. Lieutenant
Morrison commanded the regiment, which had scarcely the
strength of a company.
In the Twenty-fifth regiment, Captains Sellars and Gordon,
with Lieutenants Kennerly, Ross, Bethea and Evans were killed.
Captain McKerrall and Lieutenant Duke were captured. Sellars
commanded the regiment—mistake, Gordon ranked Sellars.
In the Twenty-seventh regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Blake and
Lieutenants Muckenfuss, Hendrix, McBeth and Hogan were captured.
Cadet Porcher was wounded. Colonel Gaillard commanded
his regiment and escaped unhurt.
Lieutenant Martin's wound in the leg proved more painful than
serious. In a couple of months he was again at his post as active
and efficient as ever in the discharge of his duty as aide-de-camp-Lieutenant
Cassidy, of the Eleventh regiment, was noted for his
gallantry; and in the ranks Sergeant Brothers, colorbearer of
the same regiment, deserves especial mention. He was sick in
hospital when the brigade left the trenches and hearing of the
probability of its engaging the enemy, applied for his discharge,
which the surgeon refused, on the ground that he was yet unfit
for duty. He deserted from the hospital, joined his regiment on
the march through Petersburg, and was shot down next day
while heroically doing his duty. He lost his leg and was placed
on the retired list. Many other noble men in the ranks perished
or survived that day whose deeds deserve mention; but it is
impossible to do justice to them all.
It was a heartrending sight to look along the line of the
brigade, as it mustered in the Vaughn road after the action, and
miss the familiar faces, without which it did not seem the same
command. It was now shrunk to the proportions of a small
battalion, yet so game and generous was the spirit of this body
of men that the writer believes this poor remnant could have
again been led into action that day with all the dash and gallantry
that marked their morning's work. And as the news of
the fiery ordeal, through which the brigade had passed, spread
through the hospitals and field infirmary, the sick and wounded,
who had not been present, sought their discharges, and pale and
weak voluntarily hastened to rejoin their comrades and share
their fate. In less than a week three hundred and thirty-nine
men (339) from the sick list returned to duty, one-half of whom
could not have stood a five-mile march. No wonder General
Hagood was sensitive to even a suspicion of recklessly wielding
a blade so highly tempered and uselessly hacking it against
impossibilities.
There were two men who fell upon this bloody field who had
done as much, each in his sphere, to give the character to the
brigade which it had exhibited as perhaps any other two men in
it—Moloney and Sellars. Captain Sellars had enlisted in the
First South Carolina Volunteers (Hagood's) in December, 1860,
and was made orderly sergeant of Captain Collier's company.
At the reorganization of the regiment, in April, 1862, he re-enlisted
in the same company, was elected its captain, and with it
joined the Twenty-fifth regiment, then being organized. He was
young, probably twenty-two, at the period of his untimely death
—of modest bearing, strict, yet just, as a disciplinarian, and
beloved by his men. In action he was cool, determined and
unflinching, and exhibited a capacity for higher command, which
he would assuredly have reached had a kinder fate spared his
valuable life. He always did his duty well; had more than once
distinguished himself; and had been recommended for promotion
to the vacant majority in his regiment. The place of such a man
could not well be filled.
Moloney—graduating with honor at a Northern college—
engaged for a year or two in mercantile pursuits at his home in
South Carolina. Then, having studied law and been admitted to
its practice, was in the West perfecting his arrangements for
establishing himself in Louisiana, when South Carolina seceded.
Returning, he joined the First South Carolina and was made its
adjutant. The foregoing Memoirs are the record of his services.
In every action narrated, he was engaged, and if his name is not
always mentioned, it is because the comment that must needs go
with it must become monotonous—he always did his duty well
and completely. His business habits, just mind, and accomplished
manner, made him invaluable in the office; and on the
field he had the quick intelligence and fertility of resource of the
born soldier. An incident on the 24th June illustrates his coolness.
He had been sent to carry an order, under very heavy fire,
and on his return, when some fifteen or twenty feet from the
officer who sent him, a shell from a Napoleon striking the earth
between them exploded at his feet, the fragments flying on. As
he emerged from the smoke which enveloped him, he quietly
announced, with a military salute, "Your order has been delivered."
Moloney was rather above the medium height, of slight
but active frame, and of an intellectual and refined countenance.
General Hagood was strongly attached to him, and in announcing
his death to his family wrote, ". . . Words are idle to express
the sympathy I feel for you in this great affliction. He was
almost a brother to me; and to the brigade his loss is irreparable.
With abilities far beyond his rank, he was assiduous and
thorough in the discharge of his duty; and that with a natural
urbanity which made him an universal favorite. One of the men,
when he learned his fate, seized my hand and leaning on my
horse's shoulder, wept uncontrollably. Wounded men, as they
were borne to the rear, with their bodies torn and their limbs
mangled, stopped their litter bearers to ask me after him, and
express their sorrow. Generous, courteous, brave and high-toned,
pure in thought and speech, ever mindful of the rights and
feelings of others, jealous of his own when he thought them
designedly infringed, he came up more fully to my idea of a
gentleman than any man I ever knew.
"Poor fellow! As we marched that morning from our wet and
comfortless bivouac, he told me that he had been dreaming all
night of his mother,—may God comfort her in her sorrow."
