Stephen H. Weed

Stephen H. Weed

Stephen Hinsdale Weed (born November 17, 1831 in Potsdam , New York , † July 2, 1863 in Gettysburg , Adams County , Pennsylvania ) was a brigadier general in the Union Army during the American Civil War .

Before the civil war

Weed was born in Potsdam, New York in 1831, the second of four children to John Kilbourne and Charity Winslow Weed. He decided to pursue a military career and therefore went to the Military Academy in West Point . There he graduated in 1854 as the 27th of his class, with 46 students in the class. Among the classmates were ten of the later Civil War generals , including Oliver O. Howard and JEB Stuart . He received the rank of Second Lieutenant and was assigned to the 2nd US Artillery on July 1, 1854 . Weed was used in the Texas border area . In December he then received the regular rank of second lieutenant in the 4th US Artillery.

Two years later he was promoted to First Lieutenant and fought in Florida in the Seminole Wars between 1856 and 1857 . The following year, 1858, he helped put down the Kansas riot . He was also a war veteran in command of Battery B in the 4th US Artillery and took part in the Utah War , where he helped restore order in the territory . Then he fought on August 11, 1860 at the Battle of Egan Station and on September 6, 1860 at the Battle of Deep Creek against Indians in the Nevada Territory .

In the civil war

At the outbreak of the American Civil War, Weed had been promoted to captain of the newly formed Battery I in the 5th US Artillery in May 1861 . He stayed at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, trained his crews until the spring of 1862, and then took part in the Peninsula Campaign in the Second Battle of Bull Run . Then he commanded his battery during the bitter artillery duel at Antietam . He was then promoted to commander of all artillery in the V Corps . Its guns were used at Fredericksburg . Then he was stationed at Falmouth ( Virginia ) from December 1862 to January 1863 . After a short leave of absence, he took part in the Battle of Chancellorsville , where he commanded the 2nd Division of the V Corps. On June 6, 1863, Weed left the regular army artillery to accept an officer's license as brigadier general in the volunteer army. He was assigned to the 3rd Brigade in the 2nd Division of the V Corps.

At Gettysburg , his brigade acted as a replacement for Colonel Strong Vincent's brigade at the Little Round Top . His vanguard fought off a Confederate attack that had overcome Vincent's right. Colonel Patrick O'Rorke of the 140th New York Infantry was killed in the counterattack he led. Meanwhile, parts of Weed's Brigade were helping Lt. Transferring Charles E. Hazlett's Battery D of the 5th US Artillery to the hill. When Weed set up the guns, he was fatally wounded in the chest, possibly by a sniper hiding in Devil's Den . His last words were, "I'd rather die here than let the rebels gain an inch of this ground." Lt. Hazlett was killed trying to hear what Weed was saying. Command of the brigade fell to Colonel Kenner Garrard of the 146th New York Infantry.

Weed's body was returned home and buried in Moravian Cemetery in New Dorp, a village on Staten Island in Richmond County, New York.

Honor

• Hill A of the military defense around Washington, DC was renamed to "Fort Weed" in memory of him in September 1863.
• After the war, position 91 of the Grand Army of the Republic in New York City was named Stephen H. Weed Post.
• Army General Orders No. 16 renamed part of Fort Wadsworth along The Narrows in New York Harbor to Battery Weed in 1902 .

literature

• Heitman, Francis, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army 1789-1903 , Washington: United States Government Printing Office , 1903.
• Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography , edited by James Grant Wilson and John Fiske. Six volumes, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1887-1889.

Web links

• Stephen H. Weed in the database of Find a Grave (English)