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bright again when they tell you of the deeds of daring and gallantry of the men who wore the gray.
Comments on the preceding, by ‘Sentinel,’ of Baltimore.
The Federal officer so badly wounded, as related by
Lieutenant Berkeley, was not a field officer.
He was
Lieutenant Charles H. Richardson, of
Baltimore, adjutant of the 9th Maryland Federal Regiment.
His hip-bone was shattered, but he recovered, though left very lame, and died some years after the war. It was said that he was one of the worst wounded men in the war to recover.
The affair at
Charlestown was probably the only fight in which he participated.
The regiment was organized in response to
Lincoln's proclamation of June 15, 1863, calling for additional troops to repel the
Confederate invasion of
Maryland and
Pennsylvania, and the expectation was that it would be employed only in home defense and not sent outside of
Maryland.
Richardson's kinspeople, in
Baltimore, were divided on the questions involved in the war. His father had gone from the Whig party into the
Know Nothing, the
Native American, and, finally, the
Black Republican party—as it was then styled.
But a brother of his father, a staunch, influential Democrat, had edited a daily newspaper in
Baltimore, and—counting the courage of convictions rather than experience—had printed, right along, news from the
South very distasteful to the
Federal authorities.
The newspaper (
Republican and Argus), had an enormous sale, and was the delight of the
Southern element, which all the more offended and exasperated the other side, and the authorities.
Finally, one afternoon, as the paper was about to go to press, a detachment of soldiers, under an officer, with orders, arrested the editor and his two partners, destroyed or appropriated the newspaper property, and on that same day hurried the three prisoners, via the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, to
Charlestown, Va., whence they were sent into the
Confederate lines and warned not to return, under pain of being treated as spies.
This outrage occurred in September, 1863, one month before
Lieutenant Richardson was so terribly wounded.
Editor Richardson returned to
Baltimore at the close of the war and lived to a ripe old age, greatly respected, and honored with public office; indeed, was a distinguished citizen, always.
Many there are who see in all this something like retributive fate.
