"...heroically cheered on his comrades as he fell." -The last moments of 1st Sergeant Ezra P. Cowles.

On a recent warm morning, a visitor walked up to the front desk at Sailor’s Creek Battlefield Historical State Park and pulled out his cell phone.  This interaction was different than most because of the content on the cell phone screen that was being shown to me.  The visitor began by telling me that he had been in an accident back in the 1980s and was forced to sell some of his American Civil War collection of artifacts to buy another vehicle.  On the screen, he showed me a beautiful carte de visite matted tintype of a soldier and began to tell me his story.  The image was of First Sergeant Ezra P. Cowles, a Union soldier in Company D of the 37th Massachusetts Infantry.

Image above:  Photograph of CDV of 1st Sgt. Ezra P. Cowles.  Courtesy of the University of Kentucky.

What made this image remarkable and inspired this blog post was the inscription on the reverse side that read; “Wounded at the Battle of Sailor’s Creek April 6th and died April 7th 1865.  1st Sergt E. P. Cowles Co D 37 Regt Mass Vols.”  I was hooked at this point and needed to find out more.  I began to pull his service records and military information from FOLD3.

Image above:  Reverse side of CDV including inscription.  Courtesy of the University of Kentucky.

Colonel Oliver Edwards promoted Ezra to Corporal on March 1, 1863, and then to 1st Sergeant on September 19, 1864.  By April of 1865, through attrition, he was commanding Company D in the engagement at Sailor’s Creek.  As the fighting began, Ezra became one of the first to fall.  Wounded in the groin, he cheered his comrades on as they charged up the hill and overran the entrenched Confederate position on the south side of Little Sailor’s Creek.  In James L. Bowen’s History of the Thirty-Seventh Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers in the Civil War 1861-1865 published in 1884, Bowen writes, “As the foot of the ascent was reached the lines were again adjusted, moved by the right flank for a short distance, and once more advanced up the slope.  A scattering fire was immediately encountered from the enemy's skirmishers, and one of the first of the Thirty-seventh to fall was First Sergeant Ezra P. Cowles of Company D which he commanded, Captain Edwards acting as major.  Sergeant Cowles was mortally wounded through the body, but heroically cheered on his comrades as he fell. Shortly afterward as the regiment scrambled through the undergrowth a terrific crash of musketry burst from the Confederate lines but a few yards in front.  Fortunately, owing to the position of the foe on somewhat higher ground and the impossibility of their taking proper aim through the thicket, what was intended for an annihilating volley at close range mostly went over the heads of the Thirty-seventh.  The men pressed forward, holding their fire with wonderful self-control till they were in plain sight of the enemy, almost face to face.”  Cowles wounds were indeed mortal.  Transferred to the hospital at Burkeville Junction, he died there on April 9, 1865.

Question 1:  The first glaring question is why does the CDV have his death dated April 7th?  Is it because he was so severely wounded that he was chalked up as dead?  Did he die being transported and they recorded it when he reached Burkeville?  Did he indeed die on the 7th and they mis-recorded it on his service record files as the 9th or vice versa?  Sevens and nines can look very similar depending on who is the scribe especially since several people would have had their hands in recording this information.  Any one of these could be true.

Image above:  Service Record Courtesy of Fold3.com showing that Ezra died on April 9.

Image above:  Casualty sheet from Fold3.com showing Ezra’s death on April 9.

Question 2:  Who opposed the 37th Massachusetts that day until they were “almost face to face.”  Using the Official Records and based on their location on the battlefield, the 2nd Rhode Island Infantry would have been on their right flank.  Colonel Elijah Hunt Rhodes of the 2nd Rhode Island Infantry wrote, “We charged to within a few feet of their lines when we met a severe flank fire which forced us to retire.  The action was so close that men were bayoneted and knocked down with the butts of guns.”   

Major Robert Stiles commanded the Confederates firing into the 37th Massachusetts and 2nd Rhode Island.  Years later, Stiles wrote,

“"Ready!"  To my great relief, the men rose, all together, like a piece of mechanism, kneeling on their right knees and their faces set with an expression that meant--everything. "Aim!"  The musket barrels fell to an almost perfect horizontal line leveled about the knees of the advancing front line. "Fire!"  I have never seen such an effect, physical and moral, produced by the utterance of one word.  The enemy seemed to have been totally unprepared for it, and, as the sequel showed, my own men scarcely less so.  The earth appeared to have swallowed up the first line of the Federal force in our front.  There was a rattling supplement to the volley and the second line wavered and broke.

The revulsion was too sudden.  On the instant every man in my battalion sprang to his feet, and, without orders, they rushed, bareheaded and with unloaded muskets, down the slope after the retreating Federals.  I tried to stop them, but in vain, although I actually got {sic} ahead of a good many of them.  They simply bore me on with the flood...  we were attacked simultaneously, front and rear, by overwhelming numbers, and quicker than I can tell it the battle degenerated into a butchery and a confused mêlée of brutal personal conflicts.  I saw numbers of men kill each other with bayonets and the butts of muskets, and even bite each others' {sic} throats and ears and noses, rolling the ground like wild beasts.”

I believe that it was right before this Confederate charge that Major Stiles wrote about and the melee that ensued that 1st Sergeant Cowles was mortally wounded.  The graphic description of that moment in time is both terrifying and haunting.  Ezra would have been experiencing literal hell on earth and lay helplessly as the combatants literally ripped each other apart all around him.  The 37th Massachusetts Infantry had 9 men killed in action at Sailor’s Creek and 31 were wounded.  Like Cowles, several more were mortally wounded and died in the days following the bloody engagement.

Question 3:  When did Ezra die on the 9th?  This is something we may never know.  Word travelled very quickly as both Lee and Grant left the McLean parlor that Palm Sunday afternoon, but did it reach Ezra before he passed?  Was he aware of the magnitude of what his sacrifice had been for?  These are all questions that remain unanswered, and we will likely never find those answers.

I’d like to think news of the surrender of General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia did indeed reach him in his last moments.  Such a powerful and emotional feeling that must have been in that moment.  Elijah Hunt Rhodes wrote, “So near the end and yet men must die.”   Perhaps it is James L Bowen’s epitaph to his fellow soldiers in his book that sums it up best:

To

THE MEMORY

OF

THOSE BRAVE MEN

WHOSE NAMES FORM OUR

ROLL OF HONOR

THIS RECORD OF THEIR SACRIFICE

AT DUTY’S CALL

IS REVERENTLY DEDICATED

BY

THEIR COMRADE

THE AUTHOR

1 Colonel Elijah Hunt Rhodes’ After Action Report, Rhode Island State Archives.  Courtesy of Ben Frail.

2 Four Years Under Marse Robert.  NEW YORK AND WASHINGTON- THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 1904.

3 All for the Union- The Civil War diary and letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes by Rhodes, Elisha Hunt. Published 1985.