Getting Punched by a Minie Ball

ECW welcomes back guest author Samuel Flowers.

One important thing I learned from the work of historian Peter Carmichael is that we can learn a great deal about the Civil War from the letters of illiterate and semi-literate soldiers. Unlike soldiers who write with a formal education, these men spoke with a bluntness devoid of poetic filler. They depict the reality of violence while simultaneously assuring their friends and family that everything was fine and that they were going to make it home. Keeping this in mind, I reexamined a primary source from my graduate thesis, Pvt. Alfred Proffitt of the 18th North Carolina Infantry.

Alfred’s letter was written on May 6, 1864 and was addressed to his sister Rachel, who lived in Wilkes County, North Carolina. His regiment had been engaged against Union forces in the battle of the Wilderness. Although Alfred was a veteran and had been involved in the 1862 Maryland Campaign and Chancellorsville, the Wilderness was different. The Overland Campaign was a marathon of constant marching, digging, and fighting, with casualty tolls higher than any other campaign of the Civil War. The Wilderness nearly cost Alfred Proffitt his life.

Proffitt’s letter apologized for the delay in writing. He and his brother, A.J. (Andrew Jackson Proffitt), had received Rachel’s letter while marching and could not respond quickly. After summarizing his regiment’s combat in the Wilderness, he talked about the wound that landed him in the field hospital: “…the infernal rascals fired the put it to me I was struck just a bove the right Eye. It split me to the Skull a bout three inches, and you can guess if I dident git away from thare…”^[1]

Alfred’s anger toward the Union army and the situation is noticeable, given his calling the Federals “infernal rascals” or “Yankees” throughout the letter. Southern hatred for anything Northern was not just reserved for wealthy planters, but also by poor farmers like the Proffitt family. Alfred’s loyalty to the Confederate cause was passed down through future generations by naming two of his sons Robert Lee and Wade Hampton. Civil War memory for some common soldiers had been formed on the battlefield. This is how they justified their fighting. Proffitt’s hatred for the North is very well documented in both the letter and his children’s names. Bullet wounds were typically a prolonged death sentence, so for Alfred Proffitt to essentially be punched in the face by a bullet and live is rare.

The letter also reflects how Alfred thought and felt, adding: “I left A.j. thare I have not heard from him cince I am now at the hospittal at orange. my wound dos not pain me any alltho my eye is swolen and black I have not heard from any of the relationn…Dont write untill I write again.”^[2]

The stress and anxiety, in his words, not for his own safety but for his worried family back home, are apparent. He went from describing a bullet that had been lodged in his face, nearly ripping his skull wide open, to saying that it did not hurt him and that it looked more like a bruise from a brawl.

His sister no doubt recalled the letter to the rest of the family, telling them that he would survive his wound. The Proffitt family had already experienced loss in the war, with two more brothers in the 1st North Carolina Infantry dying of disease the previous spring, and A.J. had just returned to the regiment after being captured and presumed dead at Chancellorsville.^[3] With Proffitt now away from the front lines, A.J. was alone.

Needless to say, Alfred did not want Rachel and their parents to suffer the loss of another son. Worried and flustered by his situation, his last line instructed his sister not to write back until he recovered. The common soldier went through things that the brain sometimes cannot fully comprehend, so understanding their emotions through letters is key to re-interpreting motivations and feelings.

Private Alfred Proffitt spent a couple of months in Confederate hospitals before being ordered to Petersburg. A.J. was captured at the Mule Shoe Salient on May 12, 1864, exchanged a second time, and then died of tuberculosis in March 1865.^[4] Of the four brothers, Alfred was the only one to return home. Family lore said that when Alfred was an older man, he sneezed so hard once that a piece of the bullet came out of his nostrils.^[5] Whether true or not, Proffitt carried the war with him for the rest of his life: bullet fragments, anxieties, and all that came with it.

Sam Flowers is an assistant professor and teaches American History at Louisburg College. He received his B.A. from UNC-Charlotte and graduated with his M.A. from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington under the guidance of Angela Zombek, PhD. His thesis looked at the significance of the Overland Campaign from the lenses of military significance, common soldier experience, and memory and memorialization. He is researching the Third North Carolina Infantry as its war service transitioned, perpetuating Confederate myth and memory.

Endnotes:

[1] Alfred N. Proffitt to Rachel Proffitt. Orange Court House, Virginia, May 6, 1864, Proffitt Papers, Southern Historical Society, UNC-Chapel Hill, available online thanks to Private Voices.

[2] Ibid.

[3] M. A. Hancock, Four Brothers in Gray (Sparta, North Carolina: Imaging Specialists, Inc.: Star Route Books, 2013), 30, 40-42, 52.

[4] Ibid, 81.

[5] Ibid, 81-82.