In Search Of My Son (February 1963 | Volume: 14, Issue: 2)

In Search Of My Son

AH article image

Authors: S. K. Wightman

Historic Era:

Historic Theme:

Subject:

February 1963 | Volume 14, Issue 2

On January 15,1865, the United States Army and Navy bombarded, stormed, and captured Fort Fisher, the great Confederate strong point which guarded the outlet of Cape Fear River just below Wilmington, North Carolina. This battle closed the Confederacy’s last port for blockade runners; it also cost the Federal Army and Navy some 1,300 casualties.

Among the men killed at Fort Fisher was Edward K. Wightman, of the 3rd New York Volunteer Infantry, who was shot to death in the attack on the northwest bastion of the fort. His father, a New York attorney named Stillman King Wightman (1803–1899), at once concluded that it was his sad duty to go to Fort Fisher, recover his son’s body, and bring it north for proper burial. Despite grave obstacles, the father did this, and two months later, with the experience still raw and fresh, set down in writing his account of it.

In the long course of time—for Mr. Wightman lived to the age of ninety-six—the manuscript passed into the hands of his descendants. Through the courtesy of his grandson, Dr. Orrin Sage Wightman of New York, and of his great-grandson, Dr. Henry Booth Wightman of Ithaca, New York, we are privileged to publish it for the first time, verbatim. We are also in the debt of Robert T. Horn, assistant treasurer of Cornell University for his assistance.

Stillman Wightman was persevering. It was hard to reach Fort Fisher; harder yet to find the body of the dead soldier and to arrange matters so that the body could be brought back for burial in a Connecticut cemetery; still harder for the father to steel himself for the performance of a grim but necessary task. In his recital of this experience, Mr. Wightman somehow managed to speak for all of the men, in all times and lands, who have had to see a precious light go out under the smoke of battle. He opened the grave where his boy had been buried, looked upon what remained, satisfied himself that this was indeed the body of his son, lived through the harrowing job that then became necessary, brought the coffin back home—and then devoutly thanked God for the infinite mercy that had enabled him to do all of this.

There were hundreds of thousands of fathers and mothers in the Civil War who felt as this man felt, and there have been hundreds of thousands since then who have had to live with, and master, the grief he felt. Because his artless narrative expresses something not merely timeless but ennobling and inspiring, AMERICAN HERITAGE presents it here as a haunting echo from the nation’s terrible time of testing. —Bruce Catton

It was on Thursday morning the 19th of January, 1865, we found it announced in the Herald of that date, that “Sergeant Major Whiteman 3d N.Y.V. was killed” in the battle. Our house