U.S., Confederate Soldiers Compiled Service Records, 1861-1865
General "Sideburns" Burnside and Jacksonville Lt. Fight It Out at Antietam Bridge
Farquhar McCrimmon Led Staunch Four-Hour Defense in Bloodiest Day Of Civil War
This article is compiled by Julian Williams.
From all accounts, the McCrimmon brothers of Jacksonville, Georgia, meaning to or not, made the front pages of the Civil War. There was plenty of war and they seemed to somehow wind up in the middle of it. John McCrimmon had already killed General Phil Kearny and was now killing himself tearing up an iron bridge at Harper's Ferry (suffered a rupture which many years later contributed to his death). But there were three other McCrimmon boys in the War. Today we take a look at Farquhar. Farquhar walked out of Jacksonville toward the battlefields just a little ahead of older brother John. Farquhar, only 24 now, had stood at the Jacksonville courthouse and watched fellow soldier Luke Campbell deliver impressive and courageous words in accepting the flag of the 20th Georgia Regiment from the patriotic and supportive ladies of Jacksonville and Telfair County. Although Luke had been quickly promoted to sergeant major in September of 1861 he died the next month of typhoid fever. That was a sad day because everybody seemed to like Luke. Luke, an adventuresome sort, and smart, had run away from home and gone to William and Mary College at Williamsburg, Virginia, to finish his education. Whatever his motivation, it was a long way from Jacksonville to the doorsteps of that institution of higher learning. One source said Luke graduated and another said he would have graduated with "professor honors" had not the announcement of Civil War necessitated suspension of studies at the school. He died not far from his old college.
So, as fate would have it, John McCrimmon would help his unit secure the stores of goods and parole the many Federal prisoners captured at Harper's Ferry. His commander, General A.P. Hill and the other units were driving hard and fast to a little village called Sharpsburg, Maryland, where the war's bloodiest day's battle would take place. Through the place, a little stream ran - Antietam Creek. This would be to the Northerners The Battle of Antietam. To the South the battle would be called Sharpsburg.
General Ambrose E. Burnside was given the task of mounting a major offensive against the Rebels dug in across the creek. It would definitely not put any feathers in his cap and it almost singed the whiskers off his face. He had such a growth of whiskers on the sides of his face that they later came to be known as "sideburns" (from Burnside). But he had a big problem. He had to get an army of over 14,000 over a narrow bridge that spanned a creek (quite shallow but he didn't know this at the time). But, at the other end of the bridge was a worthy adversary, Lt. Farquhar McCrimmon and his few but well-hidden, well-positioned and expert sharpshooting Georgians. They didn't want the general to cross that bridge.
For the next four and a half hours, from about 1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., the numerical odds overwhelmingly against them, Lt. McCrimmon and his men killed hundreds of the enemy trying to cross the twelve-foot wide stone bridge.
At long last, someone decided that crossing the creek rather than the bridge might be a nifty idea. It worked. After a fiercely resisted siege that went down as a classic in military history, Farquhar and his remaining sixteen men, exhausted and out of ammunition, raised dirty white rags and bits of newspaper they had used for wadding and surrendered.
When the enemy surrounded them, they wanted to execute them on the spot, but a gentler soul appeared on the scene in the form of a Union colonel who invoked military courtesy and procedures for the Rebel prisoners. Sadly, he met his own end within minutes. Going down to the stream to water his horse, he was killed by a shell fragment. But, Farquhar would not remain captured. He lived to fight at Gettysburg the next year. There he was killed.
20th Ga., Co. H (Telfair) casualties:
Sgt. Thomas J. Williams, Wounded, Sharpsburg, MD, (Antietam) Sept. 17, 1862.
Pvt. J.C. Anderson, Wounded, Sharpsburg, MD, (Antietam), Sept. 17, 1862.
Pvt. John M. Bryant, Captured, Sharpsburg, MD, (Antietam), Sept. 17, 1862.
When I saw the name of J.C. Anderson, I thought of a dear uncle, a few years departed, with that same name. Could have been kinfolk. I remember fondly that my Grandmother Mary (Cravey) Anderson would not be cornered about her son's name. When the Craveys inquired if J.C. stood for "John Cravey", Grandmother would just say, "Well, it's J.C." And when the Andersons asked if it might stand for "James Clifton" she would say "Well, it's J.C." And as far as I know that's what it was - J.C.
But, besides Farquhar McCrimmon and Thomas J. Williams and J.C. Anderson, thousands were captured, wounded, killed or just plain missing. Many fell from pure weariness, hunger and exhaustion.
One Rebel soldier (absent from Antietam) told his officer: "I had no shoes. I tried it barefoot, but somehow my feet wouldn't callous. They just kept bleeding. I found it so hard to keep up that though I had the heart of a patriot, I began to feel I didn't have patriotic feet. Of course, I would have crawled on my hands and knees, but then my hands would have got so sore I couldn't have fired my rifle."
Men fell sick and dead. Animals, pulling wagons and cannon, fell in their traces. The War was taking its toll but the soldiers pressed on.
Antietam Creek - its flow started at Gettysburg, where Farquhar McCrimmon would meet his end. The stream ended near Harper's Ferry where it flowed into the Potomac River - a fateful place - the beginning of the end for John McCrimmon.
And Antietam Creek was the beginning of the end for General Ambrose Burnside - as far as his military career was concerned. He never recovered from the devastating scuffle he had at a little bridge in Maryland with a young second lieutenant from Jacksonville, Georgia, named Farquhar McCrimmon.
Note: One source reported the following total casualties at Antietam:
North, 12,469;
South, 13,724
for a total of 26, 193.
