Single flower

Terrible...

‎"I believe we live in a great country. A country that's great enough to help a man financially when he's in trouble..." - Jim Braddock, Cinderella Man

What is this country coming to...

http://news.yahoo.com/slammed-using-food-stamps-ga-woman-seeks-apology-121005811--abc-news-savings-and-investment.html

New Jersey's role at Antietam, past and present

By Steve Janoski

As the suns descends over one of the many cornfields that divide the rolling hills of western Maryland, a scene not witnessed in over a century-and-a-half is taking place as thousands of men – some wearing blue, some wearing gray – file into a field, their steel rifle barrels glinting in the light as they march.

Minutes later, a thunderous roll of drum beats calls the infantry to battle, and a battery of cannons roars to life, its bellows shattering the quiet country evening as its crew swarms around it. One officer yells to his men, "Alright boys…get ready for hell!"

In one cornfield, a swirling firefight has broken out, and all that can be heard over the din of artillery muzzles and rifle cracks is men yelling in a mad chorus, shouting orders, and firing at each other while horses careen about and the sulfur smoke settles just over the tops of the 7-foot stalks… and for a brief moment, it becomes all too easy to lose one's place in time.

The confusion is endless. Northern sharpshooters thread between the plants in guerilla-fashion more suited for the jungles of Vietnam, but a line of rebels soon overwhelms them, charging forward with their high-pitched "rebel yell." Minutes after, however, a thick line of blue follows and drives those same southerners before it.

An hour later, a bugle blows in the distance to signify that the scenario is being brought to a close, and the firing slows. It appears that the North has won the exercise, called a "tactical" in the reenactment world. 

Unscripted and unmapped, it is a real competition where the Northern and Southern commanders use tactics from the mid-19th century to match soldiers and wits.

Or, as 56-year-old West Milford resident and 17-year Civil War reenacting veteran Mike Belgie said, it's "two generals looking for each other, and they know they're out there, and they're going for it."

Sometimes, at formally-scored events, referees are even present, but many (such as this one) are done on the honor system.

The tactical stands in stark contrast to the reenactment that the public will see the following day in a massive but scripted performance meant to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Battle of Antietam, he said, precisely because it is not intended to follow history — the generals have "taken the script and thrown it away."

"When we do a tactical, we're writing our own history," he said.

In this case, the rewritten history mirrors the actual battle as the Union troops continually outmaneuver and outwit the rebels, but the chaotic atmosphere gives Belgie a thorough appreciation for what the soldiers of the mid-1860s went through when the bullets began flying.

"Once the guys got into the corn, the only way we knew where they were was the smoke…that's a great way to run a battle: Which way is the smoke?" he said with a laugh.

Belgie isn't the only one who looks forward to the private battles, said Tony Daniels, a retired history teacher from Jackson Township whose thick brown beard and propensity for smoking cigar after cigar gives him an uncanny resemblance to Ulysses S. Grant. In his 30 years, he said, he has been in nearly 100 of the running fights, and can recite story after story about one match after another.

But for Daniels, who as a general often commands a wing of the army (or sometimes the entire army), going head-to-head with an opposing leader brings out his competitive streak, and he can recall only twice where he lost convincingly.

"Although you're not using real bullets, it's like, 'I don't want this guy to trick me, I want to kick his ass,'" he said. "It's almost like chess, and I love it."

One of the officers on Daniels' staff, Pennsylvanian Carl Popadick, has been reenacting for 17 years and said that when there's no choreography, everything changes, and all the sensations are heightened.

"You get out there in that field, and you're fighting because you don't know what's going to happen. Your awareness changes, it really does," he said.

But even the reenactors are keenly aware that they can get only so close to history, and that even the most hectic tactical is tame compared to the real thing — especially when "the real thing" is Antietam.

During the historical battle, which took place on Sept. 17, 1862, the artillery did a good amount of the work of clearing out the real cornfield, Belgie said, by firing canister — a metal cylinder packed with hundreds of little metal balls and shards of metal — into it.

By the time dusk gathered around the 3,000 or so acres east of the little farming town of Sharpsburg, 23,000 Americans would lie in various states of death or agony, with 3,600 killed outright. That's eight times as many casualties as Omaha Beach, and eight times as many as in 9/11. Even with the horrific wars fought in the 20th century, Antietam today remains the single bloodiest day in American history.

And, nearly 150 years ago to the day, just a few miles away from the reenactors' frenzied fight, the young soldiers of the 13th New Jersey volunteers crouched near another cornfield, waiting for the orders that they knew would send them to their deaths.

Jersey boys' baptism by fire

The 937 men of the regiment had been recruited from Passaic, Essex, and Hudson counties during the summer of 1862, and by mid-September, it was attached to the XII Corps of the General George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac as it traveled north from Virginia in pursuit of an invading southern army.

The stakes could not possibly have been higher. A series of Confederate victories in front of Richmond during May and June, coupled with Robert E. Lee's crushing defeat of another Union army at Second Bull Run in late August, had shattered the Northerners' spirit, and it appeared that one more big win for the rebels might have ended the conflict.

Even if it did not, a victory somewhere in Pennsylvania or Maryland might convince the major European powers — namely, England and France — to intervene on behalf of the South in the same manner that the French had during the Revolutionary War 81 years earlier.

When the two armies finally met, it was along a tiny tributary of the Potomac River called Antietam Creek, and when the 13th New Jersey moved into position on the west side of its banks on the night of Sept. 16, it was impossible for them to know what the next day would hold.

Samuel Toombs, a sergeant who became the de facto regimental historian after the publishing of his 1878 book "Reminisces of the War: Comprising a Detailed Account of the Experiences of the Thirteenth Regiment New Jersey Volunteers in Camp, on the March and in Battle," wrote that the 13th, situated on the extreme right of the federal line, would be a part of the assault force charged with turning the rebel flank and driving it back toward Sharpsburg.

The sounds of skirmishing in the distance made the green regiment skittish; they'd barely heard a shot fired in training, much less in battle.

"It was a trying situation for us," Toombs wrote. "The certainty of death never before seemed so near. The approach of dawn was dreaded as though it was to witness our last day upon earth, and our thoughts wandered back to home and the loved ones there."

For David and Peter Ryerson, two brothers hailing from Pompton Lakes, thoughts of loved ones might not have been of so much comfort — earlier in the year, their 63-year-old father (born in 1798) had fallen at the Battle of Williamsburg, his body pierced by several bullets, while commanding another New Jersey regiment. 

He was buried in the graveyard of the Pompton Reformed Church on Hamburg Turnpike with full military honors.

Months later, the brothers, who were both officers (27-year-old David was a captain in Company C and Peter was a 1st lieutenant), would face their first real battle. Also in that company was Private J.M. 

Shepperd, whom much less is known about other than he was likely from the Pequannock area and fought in the battle.

The order to attack came so early in the morning on the 17th that there wasn't even time to cook their breakfast rations of fresh meat, Toombs wrote, and he described the scene that greeted them as they arrived on the field at around 7 a.m.

"Shot and shell were doing their dreadful work. The roar of musketry grew louder…we lay under a severe artillery fire for some time, and the hissing, screeching sounds which accompanied the deadly missiles in their flight produced anything but a pleasant sensation," he wrote.

An Irish brigade from Boston marched by and into the West Woods, which would have sat to the 13th's front, and the New Jerseyans were ordered to move in behind them.

An unimaginable scene

Belgie, who has been researching the regiment, said that because they were initially held as a reserve, their advance would have been slowed by the mangled bodies of slaughtered comrades who'd fallen earlier in the fighting.

"They would have been stepping over dead bodies, over the wounded, and be trying to keep to their ranks. As soon as they cleared the cornfield, they would have been in range of the (rebel) artillery, and they would have started dropping shells on them," he said.

Once through the cornfield, which prior currents of lead had destroyed, they jumped over the wooden fences that lined the sides of the Hagerstown Pike and began to draw small arms fire from the southerners positioned in the woods.

They continued forward toward the Dunker Church, a small white building that would become infamous because of the severity of the fighting that took place around it, and ran head-on into the troops of legendary Southern General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson.

Confusion reigned supreme — the Union troops were initially ordered to stop firing because it was thought that the soldiers they were shooting at were actually Northerners, but when the "friendlys" began advancing toward them, the firing resumed.

"The advance of the enemy was persistent and in strong force, and they poured a fierce and destructive fire into us," wrote Toombs, somewhat matter-of-factly.

The fighting scattered the regiment, which later reformed and pushed toward the church once more, this time led by Brigade Commander General George S. Greene himself. Jackson's troops, ever the veterans, attempted to ruse the New Jerseyans into believing they were surrendering, but that illusion was shattered when they leveled their rifles and began pouring a murderous fire onto the federals.

After an hour of fighting, Toombs wrote, the 13th was forced back "before the strong fire of the enemy, who were in superior force."

But in reality, Toombs placid field reporting belies the terror that actually occurred; the National Park Service's battlefield guide states that the area where the men of the 13th New Jersey and its sister regiments met the stalwart defenses of Jackson's Confederates was the site of some of the "most horrific fighting" in U.S. history.

A reenactor from the 3rd New Jersey reenactment group noted that, because the exit wounds for the .58-caliber rifles used during the Civil War were so large, men who were gutshot would often have their insides blown out their backs. In the vicinity of the cornfield, he said, this meant that the stalks behind the rows of dead men were colored brown and red with entrails.

Belgie, for his part, admits that he can't imagine what it must have been like to storm the position, and that he would have quickly made a "strategic advance to the rear" in the real battle.

"My ass woulda' been outta' there…I would have been in the rear with the gear," he said.

After seeing horrors like that, it was hard for him to imagine that the veterans didn't have long bouts with post-traumatic stress disorder, even though there was no such diagnosis back in the 1860s.

Some of the units engaged in that part of the field would lose four out of five men — an 80-percent casualty rate unthinkable for any American unit in this day and age. And though it may be hard to truly figure out how the 13th felt during their baptismal firefight, Daniels reached back to what his father, a World War II veteran of the 101st Airborne who was badly wounded during the Normandy Invasion, told him about how men react during battle.

"He said that when you see someone get shot…when they hit the ground, they start digging at their clothes to see where they're shot, and if they're going to live or die. And you don't want to see the looks on their faces," said Daniels. "There had to be a lot of guys who were just scared to death…a lot of prayers, a lot of fear, a lot of rage, and you can get all that out of the same person in 10 minutes during combat where it's (either) your life or the life of the guy across from you."

But of course, no matter who is quoted, or what source presented, it is not possible to replicate the sheer heart-stopping fear that the average soldier felt that day as Americans butchered each other in record numbers.

And few of us will ever know what it felt like to be Private J.M. Shepperd, who probably grew up in some little town along the Pompton or Pequannock River and went off to war never thinking that there was a bullet or shell fragment with his name on it.

Toombs, however, reports that there was, and Shepperd is listed on his roll of those wounded in the fight. He is buried in Pequannock's First Reformed Church, although it's unknown when he died, or how.

Confederate General John B. Gordon wrote that the Union assault had landed "with the crushing weight of a landslide," and that Lee himself had ridden to rally the troops.

"Again and again….by charges and counter-charges, this portion of the field was lost and recovered, until the green corn that grew upon it looked as if had been struck by a storm of bloody hail," he wrote. "From sheer exhaustion, both sides, like battered and bleeding athletes, seemed willing to rest."

By mid-morning, both North and South on the 13th's part of the field would retire, having fought to a bloody standstill, and it would be up to other troops to decide the battle's fate. The 13th had suffered 90 casualties, 9 of whom were killed.

And although by nightfall the Union army would be victorious, Lee's army, kicked in the teeth and badly wounded, was allowed to escape across the Potomac and into Virginia, leading to the war's continuation for three more increasingly desperate and brutal years.

David and Peter Ryerson would both survive the fight to represent Pompton Lakes in more of the war's gruesome battles… but death was not done with the family.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

New York City boxing

Armstrong's death should be watershed for NASA

By Steve Janoski

“You guys just don’t get it,” my father, the old engineer, told me as he stood in his kitchen. “You, your generation... you guys just don’t understand how important it was.”

Being just over two decades older than I, we typically don’t have the generational disconnect that other families might; we have the same politics, listen to the same music, and generally see things the same way. But for once, I could not argue with him — this was a gap neither of us could bridge.

And even though he was just eight years old when Neil Armstrong landed on that chunk of rock that’s haunted humanity since it first looked up at the sky, that event had such an impact on him that to this day he thinks it marvelous, and there is no way that I, being born in 1984 and brought up in the age of the routine space shuttle mission, could appreciate the momentousness, or feel the disbelief, that the world felt on July 20, 1969.

I like to imagine that for those few minutes, nothing else mattered. Not the hatred that humans level against one another or the misdeeds of men past, or even the irony that the same nation that left a plaque on the moon reading “We came in peace for all mankind” was simultaneously napalming children in the rice paddies of Vietnam.

No — the moon landing was one of those grand historical pivot points, like the signing of the Magna Carta or the surrender of the Nazis, that bends everything afterwards towards it and can bring tears to men’s eyes when they think on it.

That night, it stripped Walter Cronkite of his powers of speech and left him -wringing his hands in disbelief — for once, even he was just another member of the human race — and it is still impossible to look at the picture taken by Apollo 11 of that little shimmering blue ball, teeming with life and rising from the unimaginably desolate ocean of darkness, and not realize how fragile all of it is.

“For thousands of years now it’s been man’s dream to walk on the moon. Right now, after seeing it happen, knowing that it happened, it still seems like a dream,” he said.

But it wasn’t. It was real. And it was made possible by the United States government.

It began with the Democrat Kennedy’s legendary pledge to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade, and it ended when Armstrong stepped off the landing craft and onto the dusty surface of the Sea of Tranquility. When the first phone call was received by the astronauts, it was made by the Republican Nixon.

That kind of achievement required the devotion of both parties, and the understanding that this was something that was worth it, and that we had no other choice than to take everything we’d ever learned, even through our wars, and put it into the hands of a bunch of kids at NASA and say, “We have faith in you. Do this great thing, and we will support you.”

Over the years we’ve gotten away from that, and both parties bear the blame; even President Obama made me do a face-palm when he announced the most recent cuts to NASA’s budget, which led to the scrapping of the plan to put a man back on the moon. Although some have this misguided belief that private enterprise will take up the mantle, that will not happen unless there’s enough profit in it.

Simply put, that isn’t acceptable.

Those cuts even stirred Armstrong, who generally preferred to live the quiet life on his Ohio farm, to make a rare public appearance to protest in front of Congress.

“America is respected for its contributions it has made in learning to sail on this new ocean. If the leadership we have acquired through our investment is simply allowed to fade away, other nations will surely step in where we have faltered,” he said. “I do not believe that would be in our best interests.”

Armstrong could not be more right — government exists for two reasons: to take care of children and the elderly, and to fund exploration.  If it can’t do that, why bother having it at all?

And for someone like me, who spent his childhood trips to Disney World marveling at “Spaceship Earth” and wondering what the future would hold for us…well, I think it’s time to work on creating a new pantheon of American heroes before all of the old lions pass on.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

Zippos from Vietnam

This is truly remarkable, and utterly haunting.

http://huckberry.com/blog/posts/134-zippos-from-the-vietnam-war

One of the comments is especially badass: "When wounded in 1969, my team gave me a Zippo that said, "For those who have had to fight for it, life has a certain flavor that the protected will never know."

Rod & reel

North Jerseyans' role in battles of 1862

By Steve Janoski

Editor's note: This is another installment of the paper's ongoing series concerning the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. We expect at least two more articles concerning what Civil War soldiers from this region did during the battles of 1862 including Antietam and Fredericksburg.

One must wonder if there was ever an evening in the twilight of his long life that James R. Evans sat down on one of the wooden benches outside of the Pompton Plains Train Station and gazed out across the flat, open plains of Pequannock, wondering how, exactly, he had made it there.

He had moved to the township in 1875 after securing a job with the railroad, and was the station agent of the Jackson Avenue stop for 26 years during its heyday. He had a wife and two sons, and besides minding a telegraph line that connected to his house, he served as a local constable and a trustee on the Board of Education.

But there was a time in Evans' life that was not so simple, and not so quaint. And, if this were a movie, now might be when the camera closed in on the eyes of the old man, and the cacophony might slowly rise in the background until it became a deafening roar of cannons and crackling rifle fire, mixed with the screams of the wounded and the stomach-churning sound of soft lead splitting open human skulls.

And the idea that he would be sitting where he sat, listening to the steady insect rattle of another New Jersey night, would seem even more remarkable.

A scourge upon the land

When the first lanyard on the first cannon to fire on Fort Sumter was pulled at 4:30 a.m. on Friday, April 14, 1861, the sound could have easily been mistaken by the educated as the groan of a nation being wrenched apart by two opposing forces so great that the echoes would reverberate in the history of the world.

And, when an utterly defeated Union army streamed back into the streets of Washington just three months later after the Battle of Manassas, one could have mistaken that as the death rattle of the 72-year-old American Republic, which, founded in the spirit of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," stood in stark contrast to a Europe still dominated by monarchies.

But in reality, that sound was much more that of a rattlesnake gathering its wits than a nation nearing death, and it's likely that few in the South predicted the storm that was about to strike as a result - or that it would burgeon from the muzzles of the rifles held by men just like Evans.

Too young to fight, too eager to stay

Evans was born in New York City on Sept. 12, 1845 to a Canadian father and a New York mother. Just 16 years old when the conflict began, he did what all young men do when they're itching to fight in a war that doesn't want them yet: he lied about his age.

And so Evans, now newly born in 1843, was able to sign up as a musician in the 62nd New York Volunteer Infantry on June 30, 1861.

According to the New York State Military Museum and Veterans' Research Center, the regiment was raised under "special authority" of the War Department and recruited from throughout New York before being placed under the command of Colonel John Lafayette Riker.

David Sanders of the online Anderson Zouaves Research group wrote that although the 33-year-old Riker had been born into the New York elite, the fireman/lawyer would suffer a series of personal tragedies (including the death of his wife, son, and father) in the early 1850s that left him in shambles.

However, like so many other NYC firemen, he joined the war relatively quickly after its outbreak in a fierce show of patriotism and an obligation to do his "civic duty."

The 62nd adopted the somewhat ostentatious (or, one might say, gaudy) uniform of the French Zouave infantry units. Featuring short jackets, bright sashes, red fezzes, white leggings, and tremendous balloon-like trousers, they were easily distinguished from the rest of the troops, who wore the more staid dark blue jacket that the North became known for.

The 950 volunteers called themselves "Anderson's Zouaves," so named for Major Robert Anderson, the commander and hero of Fort Sumter, and they entered camp near Bayonne, which was, at the time, "a closely wooded locality, its shore commanding a view of the broad bay and the City of Newark."

"These are almost exclusively young, sturdy, healthy fellows who have passed a strict examination by the surgeon and received his unqualified encomium," one paper wrote. "They drill at least six hours a day, devoting their leisure to gymnastics, quoit-playing, wrestling, and the occasional sparring match. The propinquity of the bay, too, affords opportunities for bathing and oyster and clam bakes, which are by no means neglected."

The praise, however, was not ubiquitous, and the regiment gained a reputation for being a little rough around the edges.

"In October 1861, this regiment was the most sloppy, unclean and generally disgraceful regiment in Union service," wrote Phillip Haythomthwiate in his "Uniforms of the Civil War" in 1975. "The gaudy Zouave costume always attracted a rowdy element, but this corps contained nothing but vagabonds who stole from friend, foe and civilian alike."

They trained through the summer at Camp Astor on Rikers Island, and were sent to Washington and brigaded with four other regiments under General John J. Peck, who was similarly not impressed with the New York/New Jersey unit.

"It was mortifying to find so much neglect of duty, so much inefficiency, and so low a concept of the soldiers' position as in the Anderson Zouaves," Peck wrote. "Its organization was defective and unfortunate."

Regardless, they continued to train, and gradually formed yet another fragment of the magnificent collection of soldiers - soon to be known as the Army of the Potomac - that were slowly accumulating around the capital.

Commanded by General George B. McClellan, a talented organizer but an utter failure on the battlefield, the 120,000-man army was in fantastic shape by the spring of 1862. The ever-cautious general, however, might have sat near Washington indefinitely if not for the constant cajoling of Abraham Lincoln, who realized far faster than his general that in order to win a war, one must fight it.

To satisfy Lincoln, McClellan created a plan that would put his lumbering army on boats and transport its by sea to the Virginia Peninsula, a long stretch of land jutting out into the Chesapeake and flanked by the York River to the north and the James River to the south.

Once offloaded, the army would march on Richmond from the southeast, simultaneously catching the rebels by surprise, seizing their capital, and ending the war.

Lincoln, eager for any movement, consented, and on March 26, the 62nd broke camp and sailed for Virginia.

The Peninsula Campaign 

Drive down the Virginia Peninsula toward the sea on Interstate 64 during the daylight hours, and it isn't much different than any other highway. It's nicely paved, the lanes are well-marked, and greenery bookends either side of the asphalt - in other words, it's boring.

At night, something curious happens. The sky falls inwards and drapes a sinister blanket across the landscape, and it's only then one realizes how few lights there are. The road narrows in the mind of the driver from that of a 20th century highway to an eerie trail winding through dense, overgrown swamps thick with vines, and even in the safety of a car it can be unnerving.

All over, signs with famous names - Mechanicsville, Malvern Hill, Seven Pines - stand-a thorough reminder that men died all around, and did so in great numbers. All the while, a brief glance at Google Earth will show that if one was to step off of Route 64 in the wrong spot at the wrong time of year, especially near the murky Chickahominy River, very little has changed over the last century-and-a-half in the swampy lowlands.

It was in that atmosphere that Evans and the rest of the 62nd got its introduction to war. Not the war that had been talked about back in the streets of New York City, or in the halls of Congress, but real, ugly war that haunts the mind and stains the soul.

The Union army landed on the Peninsula on March 17 and began its crawl toward Richmond. Two weeks later, it was barely 15 miles from its starting point, and the historian James McPherson in "Battle Cry of Freedom" wrote that by April 5, the Union troops approached the old Yorktown battlefield - the same ground where, in 1781, the combined American and French armies forced the surrender of a major British army and effectively won the country's independence.

The irony was lost on no one that four score and one year later, two great armies of that same country faced each other, one hoping for independence yet again and the other seeking to save the very nation the first battle had created.

At that moment, McClellan could have ended the war swiftly had he chosen to sweep aside the 13,000 Confederates in his path and march on Richmond. But rebel commander John Magruder, an inherent showman, used a plethora of tactics to convince the Union general that his force was 10 times stronger than it was, and Evans' regiment, which would figure prominently into the spring's fighting, settled in for a month-long siege that ended only when the overall Confederate commander, General Joseph E. Johnston, called for a withdrawal.

The 62nd was one of those pursuing the retreating rebels, and met its first real combat at the Battle of Williamsburg, where it fought through the woods until a Confederate counterattack stopped its advance.

In spite of its less-than-stellar reviews earlier in the war, the regiment performed well, and the unit chaplain, John Harvey, later wrote to the Utica Morning Herald and Daily Gazette that the troops had started firing at 3:40 p.m. and "continued hard at work till dark."

The soldiers were so well trained that they were laughing and joking while they fought, and their fire, a captured North Carolinian told Harvey, had a devastating effect on their foes.

"The advantage of the winter's drilling was now plainly seen and felt," wrote Harvey. "The men were as steady and obeyed the word to 'fire' by files, platoons, divisions, or battalions, as coolly as if on parade."

McClellan himself praised Peck for the excellent service of the brigade, and Peck said that he was "bound to mention the Anderson Zouaves in particular as worthy of praise." Peck would later tell the chaplain that he was proud of the New Yorkers.

"They have done well, and now I know I can rely on them," Peck told Harvey.

Three weeks later, Evans' regiment would see intense action again during the Battle of Seven Pines as Johnston, knowing that the much smaller rebel army could not hold Richmond through a siege, turned and attacked the Union army just seven miles from the capital.

The 62nd was in the thick of it again, and at one point, the IV corps commander Erasmus Keyes personally led the regiment in a counterattack to save a crumbling flank. The fight would be the last for the New Yorkers' hard-luck colonel; he was cut down while "coolly smoking a cigar" as he led the regiment on horseback.

"The losses in the 62nd were not so great as in some of the other regiments," Keyes wrote in his after-battle report. "Its conduct was good, and its colonel, J. Lafayette Riker, whose signal bravery was remarked, met a glorious death while attacking the enemy at the head of his regiment."

That "glorious death" came with a price, for now Riker's 14-year-old daughter was an orphan. Keyes left that part out.

 

The Zouaves were driven back, however, and the corps was forced to retreat. A second day of fighting followed, but repeated Confederate attacks failed against a line reinforced, in part, by the troops of another proud son of New Jersey- Phil Kearny, whose gallant service and reputation would earn him the naming rights to a certain Hudson County town years later.

Kearny, something of a professional warrior, had fought in Algiers with the French and in Mexico with the Americans. While in Mexico, he was hit in the arm with grape shot, leading to his arm's amputation, and so he often fought with his sword in one hand and his horse's reins between his teeth.

A division commander during Seven Pines, he led his troops to shore up the faltering Union line, shouting, "I'm a one-armed Jersey son-of-a-gun, follow me!" Few were as highly respected by men on both sides as he.

Johnston was also wounded, and history would change directly as a result of the bullet that struck him; once he was out of commission, Robert E. Lee was appointed his replacement.

The ever-aggressive Lee immediately attacked the Union army, determined to drive it away from Richmond and pin it against the Chickahominy. He was, for the most part, successful, and the series of fights that took place along the flood-prone river came to be known as the Seven Days' Battles.

Evans' regiment would be the thick of it once again, and its troops would witness one of the more brutal spectacles of the war during the July 1, 1862 fight for a place called Malvern Hill.

'It was not war - it was murder'

In all wars, there are some assaults that should not be made for the simple fact that they are one step short of suicidal. Due to its wicked combination of technological advances and ancient tactics, the Civil War would see an inordinate amount of these, but perhaps none was so terribly obvious as the one at Malvern Hill.

McPherson wrote that the hill, which rises 150 feet above the surrounding land and is flanked by deep ravines on each side, was held by four Union divisions (about 55,000 men) and supported by 150 heavy artillery pieces (not counting the 50 pound shells from the gunboats on the nearby James River).

In the war's first example of Lee's fighter's heart getting the best of him, he decided to hurl his men up the slopes head on, believing that the now-perennially-retreating Union army was a step from breaking.

That army would prove to be a bit more resilient than he thought, however.

The rebels attacked, but were pounded mercilessly by artillery fire until one unit after another broke and fled. Those that did manage to get within rifle range were mowed down by massed small arms fire; a good portion of those bullets were courtesy of Evans and his regiment.

General Albion P. Howe, who took over the 62nd's brigade after Peck was promoted during the Seven Days, wrote that "the enemy again came down upon the left and center of our division in strong force, and was again repulsed...the 62nd New York, on the left of my brigade, gallantly joining with the left of the division in the repulse."

At the end of the battle, 5,500 Confederates lie on the field, their farthest push barely reaching within 200 yards of the main Union line. Confederate General D.H. Hill, whose division had been decimated, uttered the now-famous phrase, "It was not war - it was murder."

But, even as the victorious Union army stood in perfect position to counterattack the exhausted rebel army lying wounded in front of it, McClellan ordered a retreat. Kearny, ever a New Jerseyan, was so enraged that he told fellow officers that, "Such an order can only be prompted by cowardice or treason" - daring words to say against one's commanding officer in any war, at any time.

Regardless, the campaign was over. The armies had fought for two months in the dank Virginia swampland, and together had amassed a remarkable 30,000 casualties. The 62nd had taken on roughly 49 casualties during the heavy fighting at Seven Pines, and another 45 during the Seven Days' Battles. Just four months after seeing its first real action, a ninth of the regiment was gone.

Evans, miraculously, was not among them.

And as the Army of the Potomac sailed back toward Washington, its second major campaign a bloody failure only because of its commander's spinelessness, one must wonder how the young Evans felt about the slaughter he'd witnessed.

He would have time to mull it over, of course - as Union leadership was shuffled about and the strategy changed, the 62nd would not see action again until December of that year.

But even as they rested, other New Jerseyans would begin rising to the call, signing their names on the enlistment papers, and gathering into camps as the strength of the state that twice voted against Lincoln was raised for "the cause."

It would be those like Pequannock's Colonel Moses Nelson Wisewell, the 35-year-old commander of the 28th New Jersey, or the Pompton-born David Austen Ryerson of the 13th NJ, who would see their share of bloodshed as their newly created units were rushed into the maelstrom of war, and many others, now buried in the cemeteries we live next to and drive by every day, followed with them.

Those stories, however, remain to be told.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com


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