The Spradley boys: Life and death

The story of the American Civil War can be summed up in the tale of two men, men from Alabama who had similar names but who do not appear to have been brothers. They served in the same Confederate Army unit after enlisting at about the same time. They endured many of the same privations and yet met very different fates.

They were Bryant E. Spradley and Warren A. Spradley of Company A of the 4^th Battalion of Hilliard’s Legion. Bryant Spradley was born in 1833 and married his first wife in 1860. He enlisted in the Confederate arms on May 11, 1862. Warren Spradley was born in 1838. He enlisted April 8, 1862.

The flag of Hilliard's Legion, currently held by the Alabama 

Department of Archives and History

The Legion was made up of mostly Alabamians, with a few men from Georgia. When formed, the Legion was commanded by a well-known politician of the time, Henry Washington Hilliard, and consisted of three infantry battalions, one artillery battalion and a cavalry battalion. The Cavalry group split away from the Legion shortly after the Legion was formed and the artillery battalion mostly fought as infantry. Hilliard eventually resigned from the army and the Legion, which continued to carry his name, was later added to the brigade of the very capable Brigadier General Archibald Gracie. By the time the men of the Legion saw their first combat action during the bloody battle of Chickamauga, the Legion’s original strength of about 3,000 men had lessened to less than 2,000. Disease and other issues thinned the Legion’s ranks.

Warren Spradley was among the lamented dead. He died on March 3, 1863 of an illness while on special duty as a battalion teamster. The leading killer in both the United States and the Confederate armies was disease. For every soldier who was killed in combat, at least two others died of some kind of sickness during the war.

The flag of the 59th Alabama Infantry Regiment, held by

the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

Bryant Spradley, however, survived both the various sicknesses which thinned Civil War ranks and the awful carnage at Chickamauga. When the Legion was broken into three new organizations at the end of 1963, Bryant became a member of Company I of the 59^th Alabama Infantry and as a member of the 59^th, he would later become a member of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and find himself in the mud, rain, heat and horror of the trenches outside of Petersburg, Virginia. He was elected 2^nd Lieutenant on February 19, 1864.

Bryant Spradley was wounded sometime around August 8 of ’64 and then he was captured by Union forces at Amelia Court House, Virginia on April 3, 1865, just a few days before Lee surrendered his Army. Spradley was imprisoned at Point Lookout, then at Old Capitol Prison in Washington, DC. Finally, he was among those Confederate prisoners of war who were held at Johnson’s Island, Ohio. It was at Johnson’s Island that Bryant Spradley took the Oath of Allegiance to the United States and was released from prison. He was 32 years of age at that time and listed his hometown as Benton, Alabama.

Bryant Spradley did not stay in Alabama long after he returned from the war. He and members of his family moved to Texas in 1872. He out-lived two wives and fathered nine children. He eventually died in the home of one of his sons in 1908.

The two Spradley boys served together in the same company for 10 months and suffered very different fates. One died of disease less than a year after enlisting. The other lived through 19 months of combat, although he was wounded, and survived terms in three POW camps before then living a long life.

The Civil War is the story of millions of men like the Spradleys. They caught diseases and they caught bullets. Plenty of them caught both. Some lived, some died. In the end, their story is our nation’s collective story.

Thanks for reading.