Typos in history

Note: Now edited to fix a typo!

Nobody understands how easy it is to commit a typographical error – also known as a typo – better than your loyal blogger. Even with today’s wonderful spell-checking computer programs, typos get into print. The world will probably never be rid of them because we are human and we make mistakes. Even our machines make mistakes because we imperfect humans are the ones who build the machines.

            That intimate knowledge of how typos can happen and then get through the editing process makes it easy to understand how the subject of today’s blog might have happened. Even the best of us, the hardest-working and most talented, can make mistakes.

            That a mistake was made nearly a century and a half ago is clear. How it was ignored all this time is a different question. It is time to stop ignoring an historic gaffe and fix a typo.

            On March 25, 1865, during an engagement that has come to be known as the fight at Hatcher’s Run in Virginia, a private in the Union army named George W. Tompkins shot Confederate Colonel Daniel Shipman Troy in the chest. Troy was in the act of waving the regimental flag of the 59^th Alabama Infantry Regiment in an effort to rally his men, who were attacking a Union position and were in danger of being flanked by the enemy.

            Thompkins grabbed the flag of the 59^th from the wounded Troy and Thompkins was properly credited with capturing an enemy flag. Thompkins was eventually awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and that’s where the typo, or whatever led to the mistake mentioned here, came into play. The citation for Thompkins’ Medal of Honor reads that he captured the flag of the 49^th Alabama, not the 59^th.

            An excellent article about the action itself appeared in the magazine Alabama Heritage, Number 63, Winter 2002. There is also a shorter piece about Troy’s survival of his wound and what eventually happened to the sash he wore the day he was wounded at Hatcher’s Run.

            Your loyal blogger is researching the history of a different Alabama unit, Hilliard’s Legion, and the fighting at the battle of Chickamauga. Hopefully, a best-selling book is in the works.

The Legion was so splintered by the carnage at Chickamauga that it was split into three different units, the 23^rd Battalion Alabama Sharpshooters, the 60^th Alabama Infantry and the 59^th Alabama Infantry.

            Troy commanded the 60^th Alabama at the time of the fight at Hatcher’s Run but he was asked to command the 59^th on March 25 because by that stage of the war, the 59^th was running out of officers. The men of the 59^th and 60^th had served together over the course of the war and Troy would have been a familiar figure to the men of the 59^th.

            The story in Alabama Heritage is accurate in regards to the matter of the identification of the regiment Troy led into battle on March 25, 1863. Indeed, the only place this writer has found where it is reported that Thompkins captured the flag of the 49^th is in the citation for Thompkins’ Medal of Honor.

            This researcher has requested, and received, a copy of the wording of Thompkins’ citation from the National Archives, in case Internet quotations of the citation are incorrect. The citation declares Thompkins captured the flag of the 49th Alabama.

            Further, your writer has read through the regimental history of the 49^th Alabama and found no reference to that unit serving anywhere near the 59^th Alabama in March of 1865. A check with experts on the subject of the Confederate army confirms that the 49^th did not serve in Virginia at that point in the war.

            Finally, a check of the history of the 124^th New York, which was Thompkins’ regiment, shows that unit was in action at Hatcher’s Run near Petersburg, Virginia on March 25, 1865.

            Thompkins captured the flag of the 59^th, not the 49^th.

            Obviously, others have discovered the same error on Thompkins’ CMH citation but so far it has not been corrected. As the medal is named Congressional Medal of Honor, you would suspect an act of Congress might be needed to change the wording on a CMH citation. Maybe that’s why no correction has been made: Congress hasn’t acted in years.

            One thing is certain: There is no question about the valor of private Thompkins. During a heated engagement he shot an enemy officer and risked his life to snag the regimental flag the enemy officer had been waiving. The issue raised here is specific to the accuracy of the citation regarding the regiment Thompkins fought so bravely against on March 25, 1863.

            Thompkins reached age 91, passing away in 1934. Troy also survived the war and died in 1895. According to the previously-mentioned Sam Duval article in Alabama Heritage, Troy’s son wrote a letter to Thompkins to let the old Union soldier know that Troy’s father survived the war and lived 30 years beyond it. Duval reported that Thompkins wrote back to the younger Troy and said that he, Thompkins, was glad to hear he had not killed the Confederate colonel that day in Virginia.

            It might be a better world if we could all follow the example of the old Union soldier and the son of his Confederate foe: Reach out to each other, put the past behind us and move forward.

            In the meantime, yours truly will begin researching the process for correcting a typo. At least this time it will be someone else’s goof.

 

            Thanks for reading.