“A Good Soldier and a Good Man”: Lansing Hibbard and the 20th Massachusetts

ECW welcomes back guest author Shannon Doherty.

The 20th Massachusetts Infantry looms large in popular Civil War memory, as does its most well-known sobriquet, the Harvard Regiment. This nickname is drawn from the large number of Harvard-connected men in the unit’s officer corps. By their very nature, the Harvard men were usually members of elite, wealthy, and well-connected Boston families, including Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Henry Livermore Abbott, William Bartlett, and Norwood Hallowell. Thirty-one Harvard men ultimately served in the 20th.^[1]

While an overwhelming number of Harvard men were officers in the 20th, there were many who didn’t neatly fit under the moniker’s umbrella. The regiment’s composition was incredibly diverse. Nearly half of the men were immigrants, nearly twice the Federal army average. Their occupations were just as diverse, with over 130 different jobs represented.^[2]

This diversity was less pronounced among officers. Of the regiment’s initial officers, all but seven were born in the United States, with most born in Massachusetts. Officers overwhelmingly came from white-collar professions, whereas about 5 percent of enlistees were white-collar workers. Typical professions of officers included students, merchants, and clerks. These statistics prove that a simple moniker – the Harvard Regiment – rarely tells the whole story.^[3]

Over a hundred and fifty miles west of Harvard Yard lies the town of Pittsfield, where 8,000 people lived in 1860.^[4] It is nestled among the Berkshire Mountains in the far western reaches of Massachusetts, along the Housatonic River. Lansing Edwin Hibbard was born on June 25, 1840, in Pittsfield, the fourth of five sons of Horace and Chloe Hibbard. His family eked out a modest existence; Horace worked as a carpenter and joiner, while maintaining a small subsistence farm. Things changed in 1859, when Horace abandoned his wife and five sons, providing no means of support.^[5]

Despite the abandonment, Lansing followed in his father’s footsteps and became a carpenter. The 1860 census placed him in a boarding house with other single young adults, including a teacher, domestics, and other carpenters. With the war’s outbreak, he put down his saw and chisel and enlisted in Company A of the 20th Massachusetts alongside a handful of other young Pittsfield men.

Lansing and the 20th received their baptism of fire at Ball’s Bluff in October 1861. The aftermath of the disaster along the Potomac River led to a tumultuous reorganization of the regiment. Twenty-two of the original thirty-seven officers had been casualties or resigned, including the unit’s colonel, William Lee. Perhaps it was due to this dearth of officers that Lansing was promoted to corporal sometime before spring 1862.^[6]

During the Peninsula Campaign, Lansing received a minor wound and spent a month in the hospital, returning just in time for the Seven Days battles. He received a promotion to sergeant in August. From this moment, the 20th was involved in nearly every major action in the Virginia Theater, earning its reputation as one of the most hard-fought units in the Army of the Potomac – and gaining its other nickname, the Bloody 20th. Lansing and his unit were caught in the West Woods during the battle of Antietam. The 20th gained renown for its desperate fight in Fredericksburg’s streets to clear Confederate defenders, which was followed two days later by a futile charge on Marye’s Heights.^[7]

With hard fighting came heavy losses; the 20th ultimately suffered the fifth-highest number of casualties of any Union regiment. But even before this number could be tabulated, the consequences of these losses were felt, both by unit members and their friends and families. The losses were also felt when the departure of experienced officers left gaping holes in the unit’s command structure.^[8]

The end of 1862 brought new leadership. Many new line officers were raised from the regiment’s sergeants – so-called “common men.” Early in the regiment’s history, many officers believed that only well educated, wealthy, and upper-class gentlemen could be effective officers. Lieutenant Henry Ropes, a Harvard student and son of a wealthy Boston merchant, wrote that, “Line officers are not gentlemen.” Yet the severe attrition suffered by the regiment by the end of 1862 made it necessary to pull from the ranks for experienced, capable officers.^[9]

“I beg that the four Sergeants recommended are very worthy officers and deserving of promotion,” Maj. George Macy wrote to Governor John Andrew, regarding the promotion of Lansing and three other sergeants. In support of Lansing’s promotion, two Pittsfield men for whom Lansing had done carpentry testified that he was a “young man of good moral character and habits … esteemed by those among whom he associated,” and his promotion “would be the just reward of a good soldier and a good man.” Ultimately, Lansing was elevated to second lieutenant of Company B. A few months later, after Chancellorsville, Lansing was promoted a final time to first lieutenant, which “reflected both necessity and hard-earned distinction.” Lansing’s hometown newspaper, the Berkshire County Eagle, reported on his promotion, as it had on his earlier achievements. It noted that “the 20th has been distinguished for its impartiality and discrimination for which merit has been rewarded.”^[10]

The 20th’s bloody reputation continued growing. At Gettysburg, the unit suffered nearly 50 percent casualties, with officers hit especially hard. Of the regiment’s thirteen officers, ten became casualties. Lansing was one of them, shot through the left forearm during the height of Pickett’s Charge.^[11]

As the unit picked up the pieces, Lansing returned to the regiment by September. In February 1864, he transferred to Company H. Around the same time, he went on a brief furlough home, returning to the regiment’s winter encampment in March.^[12]

It was two more months before the Army of the Potomac shook off its winter camps and lumbered towards the Rapidan River into the Wilderness. Amidst the brush and brambles, the 20th was heavily engaged along the Orange Plank Road-Brock Road intersection, once again suffering heavy casualties – including its young commander, Maj. Henry Livermore Abbott. Even after the 20th emerged from the Wilderness, heading south to the crossroads at Spotsylvania Court House, they were not yet out of the woods.

On the third day of the Spotsylvania engagement, Union commanders attempted to break through the Confederate line at Laurel Hill, a mile or so west of the infamous Mule Shoe. This position had been repeatedly and unsuccessfully attacked for the last two days. Just prior to Col. Emory Upton’s column assault on the Mule Shoe, the United States Fifth Corps, augmented with a Second Corps division that included the 20th, was sent to attack the Confederates’ entrenched position. The no-man’s-land between the lines was “filled with dead cedar trees, whose hard dry branches projected like so many bayonets from the stem.” Men of the 20th couldn’t even see the enemy’s line.^[13]

Around 5:00 p.m. on May 10, 1864, the men were ordered to rush the Confederate works with empty muskets. Stopping to load and fire at such a short distance would prove deadly, and speed was of the utmost importance. Led by Cap. Arthur Curtis, the men rose as one and advanced. But they did not go far before Confederates fired a deadly volley. A large number were “killed and wounded, mostly killed, as when they arose they were struck in the head,” remembered Cpl. John Donnelly. Almost instantly, the line faltered, laying down or returning to the safety of their own breastworks. Donelly admitted that considering the circumstances, they did well. Brigadier General Alexander Webb wrote that the attack “could hardly be termed a charge.” Even notorious disciplinarian John Gibbon seemed to accept the attack was futile and the men did all they could.^[14]

Among those struck down was Lansing Hibbard, felled moments after the attack began. Just weeks shy of his 24th birthday, the working-class carpenter’s improbable rise from enlisted man to lieutenant was instantly ended by a Confederate bullet. He was buried where he fell on the battlefield. After the war, he was reinterred and now rests in Grave #1978 in the Fredericksburg National Cemetery.^[15]

Lansing’s mother, Chloe, deeply felt her son’s loss. Furthermore, Lansing’s death meant the loss of her income. She had been relying on the pay he sent home after her husband’s abandonment and subsequent divorce. Since Lansing had not married or had children, Chloe applied for a pension. Her application, forty pages long, paints a picture of a destitute grieving mother, relying on friends for charity. According to her testimony, the only property she owned was the clothing on her back. Finally, her application was approved. She received $17 a month (equivalent to $340 in 2024) until her death in 1879.^[16]

Lansing’s loss seems small when reduced to a monthly sum. But it was much more than that. Pittsfield lost a carpenter and a citizen who was clearly esteemed by his comrades. His friends’ endorsement of his promotion speaks to this, as well as a newspaper article that appeared in the Berkshire County Eagle in February 1862. Lansing and about a dozen of his comrades thanked the ladies of Pittsfield for a “large box containing blankets, stockings, etc … distributed for our comfort.” The article’s authors then went on to say they hoped to repay the ladies “with their safe return…and to greet them with the assurance that we have tried to do our duties as soldiers, in assisting to put down the rebellion and preserve our glorious Union.  May God … make your hearts glad at some future period by the return of the friends you hold dear.”^[17]

Lansing’s rise from humble carpenter to first lieutenant of Company H, 20th Massachusetts, shows the diversity of experiences within the regiment that is so often simplified to just the Harvard Regiment. Lansing was quite the opposite of the stereotype of an officer in the unit. A carpenter, hailing from western Massachusetts, with little to no formal education, still made his mark as a soldier, and did his duty as one.

 

Shannon Doherty is a native of Orange County, New York. She graduated from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 2021 with a degree in history. Since then, she has been immersed in the public history world, including the Journey Through Hallowed Ground, American Battlefield Trust, Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, and Fort Pulaski National Monument. She currently works as the Education Manager of Historic Germanna, a public history site in Locust Grove, Virginia, and resides in Fredericksburg with her cat Spotsy.

 

Endnotes:

^[1] Richard Miller, “Brahmins Under Fire: Peer Courage and the Harvard Regiment,” Historical Journal of Massachusetts Volume 30, No. 1 (Winter 2002), 3.

^[2] Richard Miller, Harvard’s Civil War: A History of the 20th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (Lebanon: University Press of New England, 2005), 34.

^[3] Miller, Harvard’s Civil War, 34.

^[4] 1860 Federal Census.

^[5] 1850 Federal Census; 1855 Massachusetts Census; 1860 Federal Census; Non-population Schedules; Lansing Hibbard Widow’s Pension (WC113280).

^[6]Miller, Harvard’s Civil War, 88.

^[7] Lansing Hibbard, Company H, 20th Massachusetts, Compiled Service Record.

^[8] William F. Fox, Regimental Losses in the American Civil War, 1861-1865.

^[9] Miller, Harvard’s Civil War, 227; Miller, “Brahmins Under Fire,” 24-27.

^[10] Macy quoted in Miller, Harvard’s Civil War, 227; Briggs and Emerson quoted in Miller, Harvard’s Civil War, 354; Hibbard Compiled Service Record; Miller, Harvard’s Civil War, 282-283; Berkshire County Eagle, 3 September 1863.

^[11] George Bruce, The Twentieth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 1861-1865 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906), 297-298; Hibbard Compiled Service Record.

^[12] Hibbard Compiled Service Record.

^[13] Donnelly quoted in Miller, Harvard’s Civil War, 353.

^[14] Donnelly, Webb quoted in Miller, Harvard’s Civil War, 354.

^[15] U.S. War Department, National Cemetery Interment Form. The interment form lists Lansing’s burial site as Laurel Hill Farm, which most likely refers to the Laurel Hill Farm owned by the Couse Family. This is not to be confused with Sarah Spindle’s farm. The Spindle farm site is today maintained by Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park as part of their Laurel Hill Trail.

^[16] Lansing Hibbard Widow’s Pension (WC113280). Chloe had already lost one son to the war. Gardner Hibbard enlisted in the 10th Massachusetts Infantry and died of illness in Washington, DC, on October 11, 1861. Her three other sons were either financially struggling or sick, unable to support their mother.

^[17] Berkshire County Eagle, February 20, 1862.