Tag Archives: The Boy Battery

Boy Battery’s experience shows Longstreet’s incompetence

Captain/Doctor William Watts Parker’s famous “boy battery” plays a prominent role in the novel, because its position on Cherokee Heights gives a literal overview of the battlefield. But also because the battery’s almost-incredible experience of being shuffled back and forth … Continue reading

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The “contentious and fractious” Longstreet

Civil War historian Robert Krick—author of the really fine book on the Boy Battery (which fought at Knoxville)—weighed in on Gen. Longstreet back in 2000 at Gettysburg. The talk is available here at C-Span. It’s long, almost 54 minutes altogether, … Continue reading

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Dr. William Watts Parker

Captain Dr. William Watts Parker, 1824-1899. The Richmond medical doctor who organized, recruited & commanded Parker’s “Boy Battery.” It supported from Cherokee Heights (as best it could with faulty Rebel ammunition) the Confederate assault on Fort Sanders.

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The Boy Battery at Sharpsburg/Antietam

From an obituary of Confederate Gen. Stephen D. Lee, in the July, 1908 edition of Confederate Veteran Magazine: “He always said that it was his ‘gallant boys of the batteries that placed the wreath around his stars.’ At Sharpsburg he … Continue reading

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Arthur Lyons Freemantle

Freemantle, a lieutenant colonel of the British Coldstream Guards who was traveling with Gen. Lee’s staff, visited the Boy Battery in the chaos of battle on the field at Gettysburg, July 3, 1863. The novel’s Sgt. Pease remembered Freemantle speaking … Continue reading

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The unfortunate friendship

Unfortunate, that is, for the boys age 14 to 17 who comprised the majority of Captain/Doctor William Watts Parker’s Sixth Virginia Light Artillery. Meaning his friendship with Colonel Edward Porter Alexander, Longstreet’s chief of artillery. For as Alexander put it … Continue reading

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