Wise Artillery

Wise Artillery
	Flag of Virginia
Active	19 April 1861 – 4 October 1862
Country	Confederate States of America
Branch	Confederate States Army
Type	Artillery
Size	Battery of four field guns
Nickname(s)	Henry A. Wise Artillery, Alburtis' Battery, Brown's Battery
Engagements	American Civil War First Battle of Manassas ; Peninsula Campaign Seven Days Battles Battle of Gaines's Mill ; ; ; Second Battle of Manassas ; Battle of Harpers Ferry ; Battle of Antietam ;
Commanders
Notable; commanders	Ephraim G. Alburtis; James S. Brown

Last updated May 14, 2019

The Wise Artillery was an artillery unit with the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.

The Confederate States Army (C.S.A.) was the military land force of the Confederate States of America (Confederacy) during the American Civil War (1861–1865), fighting against the United States forces. On February 28, 1861, the Provisional Confederate Congress established a provisional volunteer army and gave control over military operations and authority for mustering state forces and volunteers to the newly chosen Confederate president, Jefferson Davis. Davis was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, and colonel of a volunteer regiment during the Mexican–American War. He had also been a United States Senator from Mississippi and U.S. Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce. On March 1, 1861, on behalf of the Confederate government, Davis assumed control of the military situation at Charleston, South Carolina, where South Carolina state militia besieged Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, held by a small U.S. Army garrison. By March 1861, the Provisional Confederate Congress expanded the provisional forces and established a more permanent Confederate States Army.

American Civil War Civil war in the United States from 1861 to 1865

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865, between the North and the South. The most studied and written about episode in U.S. history, the Civil War began primarily as a result of the long-standing controversy over the enslavement of black people. War broke out in April 1861 when secessionist forces attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina shortly after Abraham Lincoln had been inaugurated as the President of the United States. The loyalists of the Union in the North proclaimed support for the Constitution. They faced secessionists of the Confederate States in the South, who advocated for states' rights to uphold slavery.

This unit was distinct from the Wise Legion Artillery which was a battalion formed in the Kanawha Valley in 1861 as part of Brig. Gen. Henry A. Wise's brigade.

Henry Alexander Wise was an American lawyer and politician from Virginia. He was a U.S. Representative and Governor of Virginia, and US Minister to Brazil. During the American Civil War, he was a general in the Confederate States Army. He was the father of Richard Alsop Wise and John Sergeant Wise, who both served as U.S. Representatives.

Cpt. Ephraim G. Alburtis organized the company in Berkeley County, Virginia, in 1859 in response to John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. It was named after then-governor of Virginia, Henry A. Wise. A group of men from this company are seen in a drawing of John Brown's execution as drawn by David Hunter Strother.

David Hunter Strother was an American journalist, artist, soldier, innkeeper, politician and diplomat. Both before and after the American Civil War, Strother was a successful 19th century American magazine illustrator and writer, popularly known by his pseudonym, "Porte Crayon". He helped his father operate a 400-guest hotel at Berkeley Springs which was the only spa accessible by rail in the mid-Atlantic states. A Union topographer and nominal cavalry commander during the war, Strother rose to the rank of brevet Brigadier General of Volunteers, and afterward restructured the Virginia Military Institute, as well as served as U.S. consul to Mexico (1879–1885).

The battery was mustered into Confederate service on April 19, 1861 when it was entered as "Co. B" of the 1st Virginia Light Artillery Regiment. It became an independent battery in April of 1862. Many of the men enlisted from Berkeley County, but the battery also included many men from Jefferson, Orange and Frederick counties. It was armed with two 12-pound smoothbore cannon and two 6-pound smoothbore cannon.

Berkeley County is located in the Shenandoah Valley in the Eastern Panhandle region of West Virginia in the United States. The county is part of the Hagerstown-Martinsburg, MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Jefferson County is located in the Shenandoah Valley and is the easternmost county of the U.S. state of West Virginia. As of the 2010 census the population was 53,498. Its county seat is Charles Town. The county was founded in 1801.

Orange County is a county located in the Central Piedmont region of the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2010 census, the population was 33,481. Its county seat is Orange.

Lt. John Pelham was the drillmaster and artillery instructor for the unit, which he joined in June 1861. Their first engagement came at the First Battle of Manassas, where they supported Stonewall Jackson's brigade.

Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson served as a Confederate general (1861–1863) during the American Civil War, and became one of the best-known Confederate commanders after General Robert E. Lee. Jackson played a prominent role in nearly all military engagements in the Eastern Theater of the war until his death, and played a key role in winning many significant battles.

Col. Alburtis resigned in January 1862 due to ill health. 1st Lt. James Brown was elected captain and the battery became known under his name from January to October 1862. As such, they fought in the Seven Days Battles, the Peninsula campaign, Second Battle of Manassas and Antietam, where they repulsed a Union attack at Burnside Bridge.

Seven Days Battles series of six major battles

The Seven Days Battles were a series of seven battles over seven days from June 25 to July 1, 1862, near Richmond, Virginia, during the American Civil War. Confederate General Robert E. Lee drove the invading Union Army of the Potomac, commanded by Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, away from Richmond and into a retreat down the Virginia Peninsula. The series of battles is sometimes known erroneously as the Seven Days Campaign, but it was actually the culmination of the Peninsula Campaign, not a separate campaign in its own right.

The Battle of Antietam, also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, particularly in the Southern United States, was a battle of the American Civil War, fought on September 17, 1862, between Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and Union General George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac, near Sharpsburg, Maryland and Antietam Creek. Part of the Maryland Campaign, it was the first field army–level engagement in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War to take place on Union soil. It was the bloodiest day in United States history, with a combined tally of 22,717 dead, wounded, or missing.

Wise Special Order #209 effectively ended the unit on Oct. 4, 1862. Capt. Brown had been severely injured at Antietam, and its effective strength was reduced to 48 men, half the strength they had been just four months previous to the Battle of Gaines Mill. Most of the men were reassigned to Eubank's/Taylor's Virginia Battalion or other units of Col. Stephen D. Lee's Battalion of Artillery.^[1]^[2]

Notes

↑ Mountaineers of the Blue and Gray, The Civil War and West Virginia, George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War, Shepherd Univ., 2008, CD-Rom
↑ Sifakis, Stewart, Compendium of the Confederate Armies, Virginia, FactsOnFile, New York, 1992, pgs. 98-99 ISBN 0-8160-2284-4

External links

Roster of Wise Artillery, from Aler's History of Martinsurg and Berkeley County, West Virginia

Related Research Articles

The Army of Northern Virginia was the primary military force of the Confederate States of America in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. It was also the primary command structure of the Department of Northern Virginia. It was most often arrayed against the Union Army of the Potomac.

The First Battle of Bull Run, also known as the First Battle of Manassas, was the first major battle of the American Civil War and was a Confederate victory. The battle was fought on July 21, 1861 in Prince William County, Virginia, just north of the city of Manassas and about 25 miles west-southwest of Washington, D.C. The Union's forces were slow in positioning themselves, allowing Confederate reinforcements time to arrive by rail. Each side had about 18,000 poorly trained and poorly led troops in their first battle. It was a Confederate victory, followed by a disorganized retreat of the Union forces.

The Irish Brigade was an infantry brigade, consisting predominantly of Irish Americans, that served in the Union Army in the American Civil War. The designation of the first regiment in the brigade, the 69th New York Infantry, or the "Fighting 69th", continued in later wars. The Irish Brigade was known in part for its famous war cry, the "Faugh a Ballaugh", which is an anglicization of the Irish phrase, fág an bealach, meaning "clear the way". According to Fox's Regimental Losses, of all Union army brigades, only the 1st Vermont Brigade and Iron Brigade suffered more combat dead than the Irish Brigade during America's Civil War.

Field artillery in the American Civil War refers to the artillery weapons, equipment, and practices used by the Artillery branch to support the infantry and cavalry forces in the field. It does not include siege artillery, use of artillery in fixed fortifications, or coastal or naval artillery. Nor does it include smaller, specialized artillery classified as small arms.

The Fluvanna Artillery was an artillery battery formed from citizens of Fluvanna County, Virginia, during the American Civil War. It participated in the Antietam and Gettysburg Campaigns, as well as the Shenandoah Valley Campaigns of 1864 under Confederate Major General Jubal Early. The Fluvanna Artillery began as two separate batteries raised in 1861.

The following Confederate States Army units and commanders fought in the Second Battle of Bull Run of the American Civil War. The Union order of battle is listed separately. Order of battle compiled from the army organization during the battle, the casualty returns and the reports.

The following Confederate States Army units and commanders fought in the Battle of Antietam of the American Civil War. The Union order of battle is listed separately. Order of battle compiled from the army organization during the campaign, the casualty returns and the reports.

Hampton's Legion was an American Civil War military unit of the Confederate States of America, organized and partially financed by wealthy South Carolina planter Wade Hampton III. Initially composed of infantry, cavalry, and artillery battalions, elements of Hampton's Legion participated in virtually every major campaign in the Eastern Theater, from the first to the last battle.

James Burdge Walton (1813–85) served for two decades in the famed New Orleans militia unit the Washington Artillery. He was most prominent in the Confederate service in the American Civil War as commander of the Washington Artillery out of New Orleans and as Inspector-General of Field Artillery of the Confederate States, the highest position an artillery officer could achieve. Also noted he is descendant from of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, George Walton.

William T. Poague Confederate Army officer

William Thomas Poague was a Confederate States Army officer serving in the Artillery during the American Civil War. He later served as Treasurer of Virginia Military Institute.

The Pointe Coupee Artillery was a Confederate Louisiana artillery unit in the American Civil War made up primarily of men from the parishes of Pointe Coupee, East Baton Rouge, Livingston and other surrounding parishes as well as a large number of men from New Orleans.

Robert Archelaus Hardaway was an artillery officer in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia during the American Civil War.

John Thompson Brown was a Confederate States Army colonel and artillerist in the American Civil War. He participated in the first exchange of cannon fire, in fact the first shots fired, between a Confederate force and a Union force in Virginia during the Civil War. Brown's company of the Virginia Richmond Howitzers artillery regiment, with Brown in command according to some sources, and a Union force, the gunboat USS Yankee, had a minor engagement at the Battle of Gloucester Point, Virginia on May 7, 1861. Neither side suffered casualties. Brown is credited by some sources with firing the first shot of the Civil War in Virginia at that first, minor engagement in the state. During the war, he advanced from the rank of first lieutenant to the rank of colonel in charge of a division of artillery in the Army of Northern Virginia. He was killed by a sharpshooter at the Battle of the Wilderness, May 6, 1864.

Allen Sherrod Cutts was an American soldier who served as a colonel of artillery in the American Civil War, fighting for the Confederacy.

The 1st Virginia Volunteer Infantry Regiment was an infantry regiment raised in the Commonwealth of Virginia for service in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. It fought mostly with the Army of Northern Virginia.

The 2nd Virginia Volunteer Infantry Regiment was an infantry regiment raised in today’s western Virginia and what became West Virginia during the American Civil War for service in the Confederate States Army. It would combine with the 4th, 5th, 27th, and 33rd Virginia infantry regiments and the Rockbridge Artillery Battery and fight as part of what became known as the Stonewall Brigade, mostly with the Army of Northern Virginia.

Battery A, 1st New Jersey Light Artillery was an artillery battery that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

The 1st Rockbridge Artillery was a light artillery battery in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.

The Holcombe Legion of South Carolina fought in the American Civil War as part of the Confederate States Army. It was a true legion, being made up of different types of units, in this case cavalry and infantry.

Lowry's Artillery, also known as the Centerville Rifles, was a unit of the Confederate States Army, and was organized by Dr. William M. Lowry in Monroe County, Virginia, with approximately 100 men. They were officially mustered into Confederate service on June 8, 1861. Dr. Lowry was elected captain, with George Beirne Chapman as 1st Lt., William V. Young as 2nd Lt., Charles Dunlap as 3rd Lt., John H. Pence as orderly sergeant, A.J. Keadle, 1st. Sgt., J.P. Shanklin, 2nd Sgt., and J.C. Woodson, 3rd Sgt. By the end of the war the unit had enrolled 219 men.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] Mountaineers of the Blue and Gray, The Civil War and West Virginia, George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War, Shepherd Univ., 2008, CD-Rom

[2] Sifakis, Stewart, Compendium of the Confederate Armies, Virginia, FactsOnFile, New York, 1992, pgs. 98-99 ISBN 0-8160-2284-4