We are sadly human, and in our contemplation of the
Civil War we see a dramatization of our humanity. —Robert Penn Warren
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| INTO THE WOODS: This faint path, marked by small blocks of blue paint on bark, led me through the 1863 Battle of Payne's Farm, where my ancestor, Lyndon M. Welborn, died. The fierce clash between battle-hardened foes ignited the seven-day Mine Run Campaign, in which nearly 2,000 soldiers died. |
MEMORIAL DAY 2016
Lyndon McGee Welborn, a 23-year-old corporal of the First Regiment, Company B, North Carolina Troops, almost made it to the end of the Civil War. But his luck ran out in the afternoon of Nov. 27, 1863, during the Battle of Payne's Farm on a remote field north of Richmond. Since volunteering to fight for the Confederacy in May 1861, right after his home state seceded, my ancestor had survived in a continuous cauldron of hardship and violence. Even a leg wound that hospitalized him hadn't kept the Randolph County farm boy down.
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| Union troops cross the Rapidan River At Germana Ford during the Mine Run Campaign, Virginia, 1863. Lithograph courtesy U.S. Library of Congress online. |
The killing field where Lyndon's life ended wasn't easy to find. He didn't die on a famous nearby battlefield: Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania, the Wilderness, all well-marked and celebrated, although the daylong Battle of Payne's Farm — an unexpected encounter that ignited the oft-overlooked Mine Run Campaign — took place in the same roiled real estate between the enemy capitals of Washington and Richmond.
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| A display at the Chancellorville Battlefield Visitor Center explains the importance of the central Virginia area where the Battle of Payne's Farm took place, as well as many other skirmishes and battles. These include Spotsylvania Courthouse and the Wilderness. |
Despite an hour looking for it, I had no luck finding the steep, primitive Raccoon Ford.
"In a word, it's obscure," said Britt Brewer, on duty at nearby Chancellorville Visitor Center when I asked him about the river crossing. "You've got lots more famous crossings all along the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers: Germana Ford, Kelly's Ford, Elly's Ford." Union soldiers' traversing of these fords and others along the rivers preceded the famous Virginia battles we read about in history books. Brewer added that Raccoon Ford today is inaccessible.
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The Civil War Trust placed this
marker along Virginia Hwy. 611, marking the 1.5-mile walking trail through the Payne's Farm Battlefield. The trail is part of a 635-acre historic preserve. |
At the site, I followed a woodland path, marked by blue paint on trees, as dying leaves mourned overhead. The path took me past 11 markers that told of the frenzied fight of late fall 1863, when an isolated column of Army of the Potomac troops forded the Rapidan. At daybreak, they marched up the narrow Racoon Ford Road, amid rolling pastures and fields ringed by thick woods.
The Union troops collided with a
contingent of seasoned Confederate fighters, less than half the number of their adversaries that day. Corporal Welborn was among them. As usual, Federal troops were advancing
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| This plaque marks the site of the hospital where Lyndon Welborn recuperated after a left thigh wound sustained at the Battle of Chancellorsville. Government buildings today dominate the area along a busy street in Raleigh, N.C. |
Though the odds of victory weren't good for Lyndon and his fellow fighters that day, they had become accustomed to uncertainty during three years of conflict. From the final letter the recently promoted corporal wrote home to father Joseph:
Where the Confederate military put him was squarely back in Virginia. (To see Lyndon's other letters home, go to the LETTERS page.)
May 24th
1863
Raleigh NC
Dear father,
My health is very good
yet and my wound is doing fine… If they would just let me know what I have to do
I could content myself here I have got a pair of crutches and can go all about over the grove… if
I knew I had to stay here (Pettigrew Hospital) untill my wound gets well….I am going to quit
thinking anything like a furlough and make myself satisfied with where they put
me…
Your affectionate son
L.M. Welborn
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| The Zoar Baptist Church was started in 1805 and moved to its current site near Payne's Farm in 1884. |
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| View of entrance to the walking trail through the battlefield from the Zoar Church parking lot. |
Of the Mine Run campaign's 1,952 estimated casualties, 1,272 were Federals; 680 were Confederates.
The inconclusive fighting that followed at
Mine Run, a north-south creek, marked the end of winter fighting in the Civil
War's Eastern Theater. The Army of the Potomac, under the command of Gen.
George G. Meade, seeing his hope of expanding the victory at Gettysburg
dashed, set up winter quarters at Brandy Station, Va. Meade had concluded
that the Confederate defense line was too strong to continue an advance, a
decision that undermined his military career.
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| This stone marks Lyndon McGee Welborn's grave in rural Randolph County, N.C. |
Robert
E. Lee's army also retired in the area. The general's hope of repeating the
Confederate triumph at Chancellorsville was dashed. Lee was quoted as
saying, " I am too old to command this army. We never should have
permitted those people to get away." From the Shenandoah Valley in western
Virginia to the outskirts of Washington, one enormous military encampment faced
an unusually harsh winter marked by grim deprivation.
American history doesn't regard the Confederate cause as noble. That is as it should be. Yet, I have read of many noble characteristics in the southern ranks, and I know that rebel actions often exuded noble intentions. When Lyndon volunteered to fight in the spring 1861, riding a wave of youthful bravado with a legion of friends and kin, he set out on his own personal path to glory. I think he believed in a high-minded nature of the North Carolina cause.
As he almost innocently stumbled along that chosen path, which became more and more tortured as weary years of fighting passed, he never veered from his pledge to stick to his decision to fight for the Confederacy. Lyndon remained loyal to his tribe of North Carolinians who had eaten together, slept together, fought together, survived together and mourned their dead together for the better part of the war. Lyndon became a man of his word, a noble thing indeed.
From Lyndon' first letter home after volunteering:
acquia creek Virginia
aug 19 1861
Dear Father
i received a letter from you this morning and was very much
pleased to here from you
i had not herd in some time...
...
i dont think that we
wil have any fighting to do….. that is our reg(iment) we (volunteers) are for the war we wil be reserved the twelve months Volunteers wil hav to fight until their time is
out i think
peace will be made before that time Pa
I looked over them
chapters (in the Bible) you told me to read but if we are doing wrong we cant
help it now…… but if my capt. or col. was to tel us to go home all that did not
want to fight for their country i would not go after i undertok it i wil go throu with it if i live but as
you are dis satisfied i wish i had never undertook it
you was pittying me
but if i was dissatisfied and had a hard time you would not be to blame
...
I must quit writing and go at some thing else give my best respects to all
my folks and friends I will write when i can you kno that i am a bad hand to write a
letter but this is a good way to learn
Farewell for thy time Write soon as you can
From your son Lyndon
As I left the battlefield and recrossed Highway 611 for a final glance at the killing field where Lyndon died, a weariness settled over me, the same emotional weight I've felt walking so many other Civil War battlefields. I heard the faint whiz of pick-ups and cars busy at the day's tasks, but mostly I heard the oaks lonely whisper of long-ago loss, long-ago waste of precious life.
After Lyndon's death at Payne's Farm, Joseph brought his son's body home to the farm in Randolph County. Joseph buried Lyndon in the family cemetery, where already rested Lyndon's mother, Parthena, who died when Lyndon was a child. In time, the other Welborn brothers who fought in the Civil War, as well as their families, were buried in the Bell-Welborn cemetery at a shady edge of a peaceful cornfield.
After Lyndon's death at Payne's Farm, Joseph brought his son's body home to the farm in Randolph County. Joseph buried Lyndon in the family cemetery, where already rested Lyndon's mother, Parthena, who died when Lyndon was a child. In time, the other Welborn brothers who fought in the Civil War, as well as their families, were buried in the Bell-Welborn cemetery at a shady edge of a peaceful cornfield.
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SOURCES: http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1864/january/mine-run.htm:
http://en.wikipedia.org ; A Roster of the North Carolina Troops, 1861-1866; /wiki/Battle_of_Mine_Run;http://www.bit.ly/minerun
http://www.bit.ly/minerunmap; http://www.bit.ly/cwtrailsv; cschemmer@freelancestar.comhttp://newhopebapt.org/; National Park Service @ http://www.nps.gov/frsp/mine.htm; From http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Mine_Run_Campaign, Kati Sengal.
National Park Service @ http://www.nps.gov/frsp/mine.htm.
Payne's Farm Trial at http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=43170
The Southern Historical Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill; N.C. Archives, Raleigh, N.C. All photos, unless otherwise noted, were taken and copyrighted by B.J. Welborn.
