May 4
On this day in 1863, George Washington Palmer (1833-1915), a First Sergeant in the 54th North Carolina Infantry, saw his military service come to an abrupt end when an enemy projectile shattered his left hand during a battle near Fredericksburg, Virginia. A married man with an infant son, the 27-year old Palmer owned two slaves and managed a financially successful farm near Lexington in Davidson County when the war broke out. He refrained from enlisting during the first year of the war, but after the passage of the Conscription Act on April 16, 1862, he volunteered three weeks later, joining the “Holtsburg Guards,” a new company formed from Davison and Yadkin County men. The unit became Company A, 54th North Carolina Infantry, and was eventually assigned to General Robert B. Hoke’s brigade. After battling illness throughout June while training at Camp Mangum, Palmer and his regiment joined the Army of Northern Virginia in time to participate to a limited extent in the battle of Fredericksburg. On May 1, 1863, Hoke’s brigade defended the town as part of General Jubal Early’s division, while the bulk of Lee’s army engaged Joseph Hooker farther west at the battle of Chancellorsville. Early was briefly driven from Fredericksburg on May 3 but regained the town the following day as Union General John Sedgwick’s corps moved west toward Salem Church. Lee launched a broad assault against Sedgwick’s forces on May 4, and the 54th North Carolina, positioned at the far eastern end of the line, crossed Hazel Run and climbed a slope under fierce fire. The regiment’s chaplain recorded that the men “moved to the attack with great gallantry under a most destructive fire of infantry and artillery.” In the thick of this advance, Palmer’s left hand was shattered by a minié ball or shell fragment. Despite the chaplain’s praise that the regiment “knew how to bleed and still fight,” Palmer’s injury took him out of the contest. His left hand was amputated that evening, and he was eventually discharged for disability. Returning home, he raised seven more children and lived another 52 years, remembered upon his death as “one of the oldest and most esteemed citizens of Davidson County.”
Palmer was wounded while attacking as part of Early’s force on the eastern end of the line.
Sources:
Weymouth T. Jordan, Jr., comp., North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster, 13:186, 255; 1860 U.S. Census: Davidson County; Lexington Herald, December 21, 1915
