Missing in Action

 

Civil War battle casualty reports usually included those men who were killed, wounded, or missing. Of those categories, those soldiers who were missing were the most difficult to count. After a battle, company roll calls helped determine who had survived and who had not. However, those men who were missing could be absent for several different reasons:  they may have been taken prisoner, they might have used the confusion of battle to desert, they may have been killed and their death not witnessed by a surviving comrade, or their bodies may have been damaged beyond recognition.

In the collections of Pamplin Historical Park and the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier is a carte de visite of Private Aaron Joseph. In the image he sits with his legs crossed, wearing his enlisted man’s frock coat and holding his cap, which sports crossed cannons and the number “2” for his regiment. The photographer’s backdrop shows a peaceful camp scene with rows of tents and the “Stars and Stripes” floating above.

Unfortunately, we do not know much about Aaron Joseph. However, it appears that he was not a soldier for very long. Joseph mustered into Company M of the 2^nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery on December 10, 1864. He hailed from Greenwich, Connecticut. At that time the 2^nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery was fighting as infantry and was part of the VI Corps, encamped southwest of Petersburg. Their role at Petersburg was light in January and February 1865. However, they did come under fire on March 25, at the Battle of Jones Farm, and then, a few days later, they were on the far right (Hamblin’s Brigade, Wheaton’s Division) during the VI Corps’ attack on the morning of the April 2 Breakthrough.

The night before the assault on the Confederate earthworks, the commander of the 2^nd, Colonel James Hubbard, made a speech to his company officers. “Gentlemen, we are going to have a hell of a fight at early daylight as General Grant has made up his mind to take Petersburg and Richmond tomorrow morning and I want you fellows to simply tell your first sergeants to have the men ready to march as I have suggested, at one o’clock a.m. Now you can go to your quarters and if any of you have anything to say to your folks, wives or sweethearts make your story short and get what sleep you can for hell will be tapped in the morning. . . . Good night, gentlemen, hoping our forces may be successful.”

It is unknown whether Col. Hubbard’s sentiments made it all the way down to the enlisted men, and if so, if Pvt. Aaron Joseph took the advice to heart and penned a last minute letter home. Some time, somewhere, on April 2, Joseph ended up missing in action. He most likely received a fatal wound during the assault on the Confederate line early that morning, as his regiment was not engaged later in the day.

One wonders what his family—if he had one—believed became of him. Like far too many other Civil War soldiers in similar circumstances, we’ll likely never know.