requiescat in pace

This young man is Private Edwin F. Jemison, of the 2nd Louisiana Volunteers. He was born on December 1, 1844, in Macon, Georgia. When he enlisted at Baton Rouge in May of 1861, he was only sixteen years old. Shortly thereafter, he had this image taken, left it with his family as a keepsake, and set off for the war.

Much of Jemison's time in the Army was spent in camp around Richmond, Virginia, either drilling or helping to construct defenses. The war came to the regiment with McClellan's Peninsula Campaign of 1862, and Jemison saw his first combat at a skirmish in April at Dam No. 1 near Yorktown. A month later, his enlistment having run out, Jemison should have been sent home to his mother - but measures passed by the Confederate States Congress effectively blocked the seventeen year old private and hundreds of thousands of his comrades from returning home.

In June, Robert E. Lee launched an offensive to get the Federals away from the Confederate capital. The Seven Days fighting began with the Louisiana troops in defensive positions, but their own offensive was soon to come. June 29th was marked with a sharp conflict at Savage's Station, where the 2nd Louisiana was moved into line of battle, but not engaged. The following day saw battle at Frayser's Farm, where Jemison and his comrades arrived too late to participate in the fight. Historian William J. Miller writes "If Private Jemison slept at all that night at Frayser's Farm, his last in this world, he did so among the dead and the moans of the helpless wounded."

The following day, Confederates under Major General John B. Magruder attacked Northerners in a strong position at Malvern Hill. They quickly found themselves in far over their heads. The terrain in front of the hill was a flat open field, a perfect shooting gallery for Union artillery, which was massed at the summit of the hill with cannons nearly wheel to wheel. Anyone entering that field was liable to get pinned down, as was the fate of a brigade under Lewis Armistead. Among the troops Magruder sent to reinforce the trapped brigade were the relatively inexperienced men of the 2nd Louisiana.

Magruder recalled that Union artillery was "stripping the limbs from trees and plowing up the ground at our feet." Massed Union infantry added to the carnage, taking full advantage of their high ground. Minié balls and cannon shrapnel tore holes in the Confederate lines. The 2nd Louisiana lost its commanding officers and had its colors shot down three times before it even reached the clover-covered slope.





Still the Southerners charged, with the bravery that had made them legendary.

A soldier in the 2nd Louisiana never forgot Malvern Hill. More that four decades later, he recalled an artillery burst very near him, and felt a splatter of blood across his face.

"I turned suddenly at the terrible concussion, and saw that man standing headless, with bayonet drawn as at the charge, his blood spurting high in the air from the jugular vein, and it seemed to me an hour before he reared and fell, still holding on to his gun. To me it was one of the most horrible sights of the period. I went back and looked at him after the fight to assure myself that it was not a dream of frenzy in those exciting moments. He was there as I had seen him fall, and more than 40 years have passed with that picture forever impressed on my memory."

Edwin F. Jemison, aged 17, lay dead on the Virginia field. 29 others of his regiment would also die that day, and 152 would be wounded. At the surrender at Appomattox, only three officers and 41 men were left in the unit, one that had a strength of 782 at Dam No. 1, three years and uncountable lifetimes ago.



Jemison's family learned that he had been killed in the fighting, and kept his portrait as a treasured heirloom. It wasn't until 1906 that the particulars of Jemison's death became known. As the soldier who had been sprayed with Jemison's blood and saw him fall told his story to a small crowd on a streetcorner in Atlanta, one older man began questioning him sharply. Upon getting the information he wanted, onlookers said the man, one Robert W. Jemison, Jr. grew pale and stammered "That was my brother."



A monument to Jemison has been erected in Memory Hill Cemetery in Milledgeville, Georgia. It is claimed that he and an older brother share a tomb under the monument, but investigation suggests that the space is only big enough for one body - and as the brother died in 1859, and would have been buried first, it is impossible to say where Edwin Jemison is buried. In all likelihood, he lies underneath a marker reading "Unknown" on the battlefield.

Jemison's photograph is one of the most famous surviving from the war years, as his haunting gaze perfectly shows the innocence of youth heading for the unspeakable horrors of the battlefield. His fate was a mystery until fairly recently - an image in the minds of thousands of modern Americans identified by an image in the mind of a Confederate soldier. Images different beyond belief, yet all that remains of this young man. His is the first photograph of a Civil War soldier I remember seeing... and from that, what followed, followed.



War is over,
(if you want it).
~John Lennon


(most of the information herein comes from William J. Miller's article "The Two Pictures of Private Jemison," an extraordinarily well written piece in the May 2004 issue of America's Civil War)