The Adventures of Private Sam Eddy
Bell Irvin Wiley, in his classic volume, “The Life of Billy Yank,” wrote that “of the countless feats of individual valor cited in official records, none was more remarkable than that of Private Samuel E. Eddy of the Thirty-seventh Massachusetts Regiment….” What exactly did Sam Eddy do that would cause Wiley to single him out among all the other Union soldiers he studied?
Eddy was born on June 2, 1822, in Vermont, but sometime later moved to Massachusetts. He was a blacksmith and woodturner by trade until finally the clouds of war beckoned his service to the Union on July 20, 1862, in Company D. He passed through most of his regiment’s fighting relatively unscathed until April 6, 1865, during Lee’s retreat from Richmond and Petersburg.
While the Confederate army was marching toward the town of Farmville, it passed over a series of water courses that emptied into the Appomattox River. One was known locally as Little Sailor’s Creek. While the line of march of the Southerners was crossing this small stream, Union troops from the 6th Corps (of which the 37th Massachusetts was part) intercepted them at this point. In command of the immediate Confederate forces was Gen. Richard S. Ewell who had with him units under Gen. George Washing-ton Custis Lee, Gen. Joseph Kershaw’s division and a small group of marines and sailors.
As two divisions of Union Gen. Horatio Wright’s 6th Corps arrived on the scene, preparations were made to do battle with the Southerners, who were dug in on the opposite high ground overlooking the creek. After nearly half an hour of artillery bombardment on the exposed Con-federate troops, the Union soldiers moved down to and across the creek, then formed to begin their assault on Ewell’s position. As this was transpiring, one of Eddy’s colleagues re-membered that “Private Eddy was obliged to fall from the ranks, being about 44 years of age, and having been wounded in the knee March 25 previous – less than two weeks previous. To the surprise of his officers and comrades, he found the regiment and join it….”
In their initial approach upon the enemy line, the Union troops were received by an impromptu counter-attack by Custis Lee’s men. Deadly hand-to-hand fighting took place as the two sides came together. Some of the Northern regiments were forced back to the creek, while others, like the 37th Massachusetts, held their ground. Under the fire of artillery, the Confederates fell back to their slight breastworks. Finally, the Union soldiers reformed and began their ascent once more, this time overlapping the flanks of the South-ern position. Though brief in time, both armies struggled desperately before Ewell’s men began to surrender. Gen. Custis Lee is said to have given his sword to a member of the 37th. It was during this time that Sam Eddy had his ordeal.
The colonel of the 37th, Oliver Edwards, remembered that:
“The Colonel next in command (of Lee’s forces) was in the act of handing his sword to adjutant (John S.) Bradley, when, seeing how small was the command (300 men) op-posed to him, he drew back his sword, and attacked the adjutant with his pistol. Bradley grappled with his foe though wounded by his pistol shot (passing near his should-der blade)—and they rolled into a hollow, where surrounded by rebels, Bradley was shot through the thigh, when Samuel E. Eddy private Co. D, shot the rebel Colonel as he was about to shoot Bradley through the head with his pistol. A rebel who saw the man who killed his Colonel – put his bayonet through private Eddy’s body, the bayonet passing through the lung and coming out near his spine. Eddy dropped his gun, and tore the bayonet out from his body, then in a hand to hand struggle with his foe temporarily disabled him and crawled to his gun, and with it killed his antagonist.”
Another, slightly different version said that as the “stalwart Southron” ran his bayonet through Eddy:
“The weapon protruded from the back near the spine, and the unfortunate soldier being thrown down was literally pinned to the ground. The assailant then endeavored to wrest away Eddy’s (seven-shot) Spencer rifle, but the wounded man grasped his trusty weapon with a grip which few men in either army could equal, and not withstanding his awful situation succeeded in throwing another cartridge into his rifle, the bullet from which was next moment sent through the heart of his antagonist. The Confederate fell across the prostrate Unionist, but the latter threw aside the body with one hand as though it was the carcass of a dog, withdrew the bayonet from his horrible wound, rose to his feet and walked to the rear….”
William Shaw, also of the 37th, remembered: “I saw him (Eddy) after the battle sitting on the ground. I says to him are you wounded? He said they have run a bayonet through me. I looked and saw where it entered his body and came out on his back. He said it did not hurt so very much when it went through, but the man twisted it when withdrawing it but the man never bayoneted another soldier, for Mr. Eddy was so indignant, that he shot him then and there.”
Sam Eddy’s war service was over. Initially taken to a nearby field hospital on the battlefield, he eventually was transferred to a larger hospital at Burkeville Junction. A few days later he was sent by train and placed in the Depot Field Hospital in City Point where he recuperated from his wound. His treatment was for a bayonet wound in the breast with the weapon entering between the third and fourth ribs and passing through near the spine. He was mustered out June 9, 1865.
Because of his heroism in saving the life of Adjutant Bradley, Private Eddy in 1897 would be issued a Medal of Honor for gallantry at the Battle of Little Sailor’s Creek. On March 7, 1909, the old Civil War veteran passed on and was buried in Chesterfield, Mass.
