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“WAR OF 1861” EAGLE IDENTIFICATION DISK: 15th NEW HAMPSHIRE, SIEGE OF PORT HUDSON AND THE TWO ASSAULTS

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A very good example of a Civil War “Eagle/War of 1861” pattern identification disk worn by a soldier who saw action in the siege of Port Hudson from May 27 to July 9, 1863, Gen. Nathaniel Banks’s effort to open up the southern end of a Confederate-held stretch of the Mississippi while Grant hit the northern end at Vicksburg. This included trench and siege warfare as well as two heavy assaults in May and June 1863. The owner of this disk, David T. Brooks, enlisted at age 36, giving his residence at Alton, NH, on 9/15/1862, and mustered into Co. A of the 15^th NH on 10/6/62, a unit recruited for nine-months service in Banks’s expedition and served in the 19^th Army Corps. He was promoted Corporal 5/14/63, mustered out 8/13/63 at Concord, and returned to Alton after the siege and the expiration of his term of service.

Civil War soldiers had to provide their own methods of identification, with commercial suppliers offering a variety of stamped or engraved badges often in the form of medals or awards. This is pattern uses a brass disk, likely given a thin silver wash originally and pierced for suspension from pin in the form of an eagle or portrait bust of a favorite general shows the Arms of the U.S. on one side- an eagle with raised and spread wings, holding arrows and olive branch, with “WAR OF 1861” in raised letters in an arc at top and “UNITED STATES” at the bottom. The reverse was then personalized by the sutler or merchant selling it by stamping the reverse, in this case with the soldier’s name, unit, and hometown: “D.T. BROOKS / Co. A / 15^th REG. / NHV./ ALTON.” The first digit of the regimental number has been partially obscured by wear to the edge of the suspension hole. For an example of an identical badge with the same large suspension hole in the same spot, see p.92 Top, of “Identification Discs of Union Soldiers in the Civil War” by Maier and Stahl, showing one worn by a soldier in the 5^th NJ.

Company A of the 15^th New Hampshire sailed from New York with Company D and part of Company H on Dec. 3, 1862, reaching Ship Island, a staging area off the Mississippi coast, on Dec. 16, and disembarking at Carrollton, on the Mississippi, above New Orleans on Dec. 19. The rest of the regiment followed in two more detachments, and the whole reunited at Carrollton, LA, on Dec. 26. Armed with Enfield rifles on Jan. 7, and then placed in a brigade under Gen. Dow in T.W. Sherman’s division. Banks was in no hurry, however, and they spent the next several months drilling, doing guard and provost duty, though also conducting some practice marches and at least one sham battle, while Confederates added to the defenses of Port Hudson, a small town, but a strategic spot on high ground covering a bend in the Mississippi. They at last again boarded ship in late May, rendezvoused at Baton Rouge with other forces and landed at Springfield Landing, just below Port Hudson on May 22. Issued a hundred rounds of ammunition, they marched cross country to get in the rear of Port Hudson, and was by then encircled with entrenchments, breastworks and lunettes, adding to natural obstacles such as ravines and steep bluffs in places.

After a division review by Sherman at Beulah Plains, they camped about 4 miles from Port Hudson and on May 24 took part in the advance upon the enemy’s outer works, which they found abandoned in their sector, but soon had their first experience under fire when some ill-advised playing by regimental band drew the interest of Confederate artillery.

They were then engaged in picket firing, burning a house near the enemy works that might shelter sharpshooters, until Banks’s main attack on May 27 in which Sherman’s division faced the central, eastern portion of the Confederate line.  Four of the companies, including Company A, were assigned to act as sharpshooters to Confederate heads down while Union artillery went to work, but Banks peremptorily ordered Sherman to send his infantry forward, with the 15^th NH third in the brigade’s column of assault. The attack was unsuccessful all along the line, resulting in heavy casualties as well as the wounding of both the regiment’s brigade and division commanders, among roughly 2,000 Federal casualties and just 250 Confederate.

Thereafter the regiment served continually under fire in the trenches, engaged as sharpshooters, constructing batteries, etc., punctuated only by a second failed assault on June 14. Banks opened it with an intense artillery bombardment on June 13, during which 50 men from the regiment were among a party who reached and held a position “twelve rods” from the Confederate works until recalled at midnight, having lost 2 killed and 6 wounded. The regiment then moved several miles to the left and took part in the assault near the river on the morning of June 14 that was poorly coordinated and in their sector stymied by steep bluffs on the far side a ravine. The fighting thereafter returned to trench warfare, the the regiment’s historian noted, “the siege work grew closer and hotter up to the time of the surrender on July 9.”

The regiment remained in the captured works from July 16 to July 26, when it sailed to Cairo, IL, reaching Concord, NH, by rail on August 8 and mustering out August 13, having lost some 27 men killed or mortally wounded the siege, not counting numerous wounded who survived, and another 134 who died of sickness and disease.

Brooks survived to return to his family at Alton, listed in 1860 as consisting of his wife and four children, whom he supported as a shoemaker. By 1870 his occupation was listed as “works at shoe factory,” as did three of his children also, but in 1880 is listed as simply a “laborer” and unemployed for five months in the last year. He passed away in 1903 and is buried in the same town.  [sr][ph:L]

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