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Woodstock Soldier Meets Famous Cartoonist On The Battlefield A “Maine at War” exclusive
Woodstock Soldier Meets Famous Cartoonist On The Battlefield
A “Maine at War” exclusive by Brian Swartz
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Noticing a suspicious-looking with Dr. Almon Twitchell, a Bethel Governor Israel Washburn Jr. ofindividual hanging around his physician, and pursued further medifered him an assistant surgeon’s slot, military post one day in winter cal studies in Maine, New Hampshire, but Lapham wanted to fight. He recruit1865, William Berry Lapham decided and New York until earning his meded by newspaper, poster, and personal to find out who the man was. ical degree in 1856. Returning to Oxcontact and soon “had two-thirds of a
Lapham was in for quite the surford County, Lapham started practicing company in camp,” but sent his men prise. medicine at Bryant Pond in Woodstock. home after the War Department decid
Born in Greenwood in late August Beneath this doctor’s calm exterior ed enough soldiers had reached Wash1828, Lapham grew up in Bethel and beat a patriot’s heart. After the Maine ington, D.C. that spring. looked back fondly on “the dear old Legislature authorized 10 infantry regIn late autumn, Washburn sumtown” later in his life. A Gould Acadiments to defend the United States in moned Lapham to provide medical care emy graduate, he later attended Watermid-April 1861, “I went to Augusta for the various new units gathering in ville College (the antecedent to Colby and took out enlistment papers, the first Augusta. A year later, Lapham joined College), but left without a degree. given to a citizen of Oxford county,” the 23rd Maine Infantry Regiment as
He subsequently studied medicine Lapham recalled. a second lieutenant in Company F. The
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regiment served in the Eastern Theater for nine months before mustering out in Portland in July 1863.
Lapham then joined the new 7th Maine Battery, which mustered into the Army on December 29, 1863. As the senior first lieutenant, he was second-in-command as the battery fought in Virginia in spring 1864 and ended up outside Petersburg that summer. Shifted hither and yon among the Union forts sprouting up like weeds, the 7th Maine Battery arrived at Fort Sedgwick around December 1.
There Lapham would spend the winter commanding the artillery and gunners assigned to Sedgwick. He sent his men, “most of whom were familiar with the use of the axe,” to cut trees in the “heavy growth of pine timber” behind the fort. The men built “bombproof” living quarters that incoming Confederate shells would hopefully not destroy.
Lapham lived at Fort Sedgwick until early April 1865. With Confederate artillery and sharpshooters often targeting the post, he was ever watchful. Sedgwick was nicknamed “Fort Hell” for some reason, and civilians visiting the Union positions outside Petersburg liked to stop by Sedgwick and stand at a high point where they could see the Petersburg church spires.
“The consequence was that we had many visitors,” Lapham recalled.
Then, “one morning as we were busy about our routine duty, I noticed a stranger looking over the works, and as this was of itself a suspicious circumstance, I decided to keep my eye on him,” Lapham said. “He was short in stature, had a dark complexion, black mustache, and seemed like a foreigner.”
Lapham watched the man as “he went round and appeared to be inspecting everything.” Could he be a spy?
“I was on the point of asking him
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YWCA Girls’ Swim Class, Portland, 1928 Item #20468 his business when the Johnnies (Confederates) rendered it unnecessary” by firing “a sixty-four pound mortar shell which exploded in the fort,” Lapham described the beginning of another interminable enemy shelling.
Another mortar shell dropped inside the Sedgwick walls and blew up. “Our visitor was glad to cease his inspection and seek shelter in our bomb-proof,” said Lapham, quickly diving into the safe haven himself. Modern soldiers would call this bomb-proof a “bunker,” and then as now, it sheltered soldiers from enemy artillery fire.
The civilian “spent the greater part of the day with us as the bombardment was kept up, rendering it unsafe to leave the works, a large number of shells exploding in the rear” positions behind Fort Sedgwick, Lapham said.
He and other Maine soldiers chatted with their visitor; “we found him social and full of anecdote, and enjoyed his (cont. on page 6)
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(cont. from page 5) stay very much,” Lapham recalled. Introductions were made, and “we found that he was no stranger, though we had never before met him face to face.”
Like soldiers everywhere throughout the Civil War, the Maine boys read every available newspaper. Among the popular publications was Harper’s Weekly, its eight pages filled each issue with news and sketches of battles and military and political leaders.
Artists hired by Harper’s Weekly accompanied Union troops on different campaigns and sketched scenes from the camps and the battlefields. Shipped to New York City, these sketches were turned into woodcuts that left printed images on newspaper pages.
As for the oddball civilian checking out Fort Sedgwick, “he was Thomas Nast, the inimitable caricaturist of Harper’s Weekly, and was then out on a professional tour and filling his port-
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Although active during much of the war, Nast would be best remembered for creating the caricature of the modern Santa Claus and for drawing the elephant that came to symbolize the Republican Party. Post-war he often drew hard-hitting cartoons targeting the ineptly managed Reconstruction and its tragic aftermath.
After the war ended, Lapham accepted a promotion to captain and reassignment as an assistant quartermaster, the Army no longer needing the 7th Maine Battery. He mustered out as a brevet major in late October 1865.
Returning home to Woodstock, he married Cynthia Perham in 1866 and transitioned to writing the genealogies and Maine-based histories that would make him well known in western Maine.
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