EARLIER IN THE year, many of us heard about the tragic death of a young Wisconsin woman in Iraq. Her two sisters who also served in Iraq came home for the funeral and then were given the option of returning to Iraq or be assigned to duty elsewhere. It was an emotional story of what one family went through during times of war.
During the Civil War, the Chapman family of Campbell County also went through emotional turmoil and suffering. Three Chapman brothers were born two years apart starting with John C. Chapman in 1836 followed by James O. Chapman and Patrick Henry Chapman. Their grandfather served in the Continental Army during the Revolution. He was captured in the famous battle of Cowpens in South Carolina. After his release by the British, he was awarded a tract of land in Virginia in Campbell County, where the three Chapman boys were born.
Their lives went along normally until May of 1861 when they enlisted in Company D, 42nd Virginia Infantry. They spent part of the the first winter of the war detached with the 1st Tennessee Infantry in western Virginia. They were recognized for "behaving in a good and soldierly manner." Patrick suffered from exposure that cold winter and remained in a hospital for a year. The other brothers spent 1862 fighting with "Stonewall" Jackson in his famous Shenandoah Valley Campaign, the Seven Days Campaign, Cedar Mountain, Harpers Ferry, Antietam and Fredericksburg.
During the lull after Fredericksburg, James went AWOL to visit Patrick in a Lynchburg hospital. They returned to the army together and James was immediately arrested. He was sentenced to hard labor at Staunton on public roads with a 12-pound ball attached to his right leg with a 3-foot chain.
The three brothers met with mixed success and agony on May 2, 1863, during Jackson's famous flank attack at Chancellorsville. After a long 10-mile march, their regiment formed in the second line north of the Orange Turnpike, now State Route 3. Jackson's men poured through the dense underbrush of the Wilderness routing the Union XI Corps. The 42nd Virginia ran into heavy initial resistance on the Hawkins farm, losing 15 killed and 120 wounded. Patrick and John were among the wounded. John was shot in the back and thigh. On the other hand, James performed well. He was cited for gallantry, causing the dropping of the desertion charges.
Only James was present at Gettysburg and, in the fall of 1863, campaigns in Orange and Culpeper counties. The brothers were reunited in time to fight at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania. On the infamous morning of May 12, 1864, the 42nd Virginia held the advanced picket line near the Landram House in front of the Mule Shoe salient in the Confederate lines. About 5 a.m., 20,000 soldiers of the Union II Corps suddenly appeared through the fog and mist. The 42nd Virginia quickly broke. The Union soldiers managed to surround and capture most of the unit. James managed to escape and fight with another unit, but again John and Patrick met with bad luck in Spotsylvania County. They were captured and sent to prison.
James never saw his brothers again. Patrick died of pneumonia on Feb. 27, 1865, at Elmira prison in New York. John was eventually exchanged and sent to a hospital in Richmond. He was given a 30-day leave to recover from chronic dysentery and fever. The family never knew beyond that what happened to him.
James Chapman participated in the major fighting as the armies moved toward Richmond. In the middle of June 1864, his unit moved into the Shenandoah Valley where it is estimated that his unit walked 1,260 miles and fought in five battles. Late in the year, they returned to Robert E. Lee's army in Petersburg. On the morning of April 9, 1865, at Appomattox, James was one of only 12 members of the regiment still standing.
After the war, James lived in Buchanan, where he worked as a farmer. He married in 1869. One of his sons became a Federal Prohibition agent and later police chief of Buchanan. One of his great-grandsons, Richard Chapman, currently works as a historian on the battlefields around Fredericksburg where James and his brothers fought. James died in 1919 at the age of 81.
The story of the Chapman brothers and many other American families played out to sometimes glorious and sometimes tragic ends not in a far-away place, but right here where we live, work, shop and play.
MAC WYCKOFF of Spotsylvania County is a historian. He is also newsletter editor for the Rappahannock Valley Civil War Round Table.