John Wesley Kimbrough & Elizabeth Steele Kimbrough

John W. Kimbrough was a soldier who fought bravely during the tumultuous years of the Civil War. He joined Company K, 11^th Regiment Mississippi Volunteers in April 1861.  He was single and quickly rose through the ranks from Private to Corporal and finally Sergeant by the end of the War.  He fought many battles and skirmishes witnessing the atrocities of war and how it changed peoples lives.  He displayed courage and bravery through some of the toughest times in U.S. history.

        Great Grandfather John Wesley Kimbrough fought at Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland. It pitted Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of  Northern Virginia against Union General George McClellan’s Army of the Potomac and was the culmination of Lee’s attempt to invade the north. The battle’s outcome would be vital to shaping America’s future, and it remains the deadliest one-day battle in all American military history. The Battle of Antietam began at dawn on September 17 as the fog lifted. All of Lee’s troops were worn-out and hungry, and many were sick. They watched and waited as McClellan’s army assembled along the creek’s east side. Union forces outnumbered Confederates by two to one, although McClellan thought Lee’s forces were much larger. The Union won the battle,  As night fell, thousands of bodies littered the sprawling Antietam battlefield and both sides regrouped and claimed their dead and wounded. Just twelve hours of intense and often close-range fighting with muskets and cannons had resulted in around 23,000 casualties, including an estimated 3,650 dead. Our Great grandfather was wounded from a gunshot wound to his nose during this intense battle.

The next day, as Lee began the painstaking job of moving his ravaged troops back to Virginia, McClellan, surprisingly, did nothing. Despite having the advantage, he allowed Lee to retreat without resistance. From his point of view, he’d accomplished his mission of forcing Lee’s troops from Maryland and preventing a Confederate win on Union soil.

President Lincoln, however, wasn’t pleased. He thought McClellan missed a great opportunity to defeat the Army of Northern Virginia while they were down and potentially end the war. After the war-weary general repeatedly refused Lincoln’s orders to pursue Lee’s retreating troops, Lincoln removed McClellan from command.

John Wesley Kimbrough reported to the hospital at Chimbrozo, Virginia for a month due to his facial wounds from fighting at the battle of Antietam.

Another battle that John Wesley Kimbrough courageously fought in was the battle of Gettysburg. John Wesley Kimbrough rose to rank of 5^th Sergeant by June 1863 and in July 2^nd and 3^rd he participated in the Battle of Gettysburg. Soldiers described the battle as follows:

“The charging Confederates were brave men, –in fact, no braver ever faced death in any cause, and none ever faced more certain death!

   Almost at the same moment, as if every lanyard was pulled by the same hand, this line of artillery opened, and Seminary Ridge blazed with a solid sheet of flame, and the missiles of death that swept it’s western slopes no human being could endure. After a few moments of the belching of the artillery, the blinding smoke shut out the sun and obstructed the view. We of the infantry fell into line between the artillery sections and assisted with our musketry, keeping up the fire until our pieces grew hot in our hands, and the darkness, as of night, had settled upon us. Not a Confederated reached our line. After we had ceased firing and the smoke of battle had lifted, we looked again, but the charging Confederates were not there. Only the dead and dying remained on the bloody slopes of Seminary Ridge. “ As described by one of the boys from the Fourth United States Artillery

“All around them the air became hot as from a furnace; above the sky was obscured with the clouds of sulphurous smoke; the sun was veiled and fled in haste toward the shelter of the western mountains. The earth trembled; the rocks were overturned; the hills shook beneath their violent contortions. The valleys and fields ran red with the blood of their carnage.”

Pickett’s charge was fought on July 3^rd, 1863 and was the culmination of the Battle of Gettysburg.  John Wesley Kimbrough, Mississppi regiment Company K rifle division, fought at the battle of Pickett’s Charge. They held the high ground up on the hill and the shots didn’t seem to affect them much.  After two days of bloody stalemate, the commander of the Confederate forces at Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee, ordered a massive last-ditch assault on the Yankee center to force an end to the contest. Lee would send his men against the center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge. Fifteen thousand men spread out three lines deep and nearly a mile wide would dash across the hell between Seminary and Cemetery ridges and up, up to the federal lines: the greatest spectacle of the war, Pickett’s Charge.

On July 3, 1863 at 1:00pm the war began, there was about a 2 hour barrage of mortar and cannon fire from the confederates but the Union troops just waited it out. The charge would be carried out by three full divisions of infantry – between 12,500 and 15,000 men, all of which would converge on an area surrounding small cluster of trees just behind the Union line. At the appointed hour, the attackers would break from cover from a forest on the edge of Seminary Ridge and advance steadily and in perfect formation across nearly a mile of open country to drive the Northern army from the high ground. Once the Federal line was split, Lee would be free to take Washington D.C. from the rear, thus ending the war in a matter of days. Pickett’s charge left 6,000 confederate troops dead, bleeding or captured on the field at Gettysburg, including most of the regimental commanders. Union losses as a result of Pickett’s Charge totaled about 1,500.

John Wesley Kimbrough was 53 out of 393 men in his troops that walked away from Gettysburg that day. 

Gettysburg Memorial over looking Pickets Charge Reads—

“The 11th Mississippi Infantry Regiment, under the command of Col. Francis M. Green and Maj. Reuben O. Reynolds, formed west of the tree line on Seminary Ridge behind Maj. William Pegram’s Battalion of Artillery and immediately south of McMillan’s Woods on July 3, 1863. Shortly after 3:00 p.m., Color Sgt. William O’Brien of Company C, memorialized on this monument, raised the colors and the regiment stepped forward. Although clusters of men reached the stone wall near Brian’s Barn, the attack was driven back with heavy loss, and the remnants of the regiment reformed in this vicinity.

Combatants – 393
Killed in action/died of wounds – 110
Wounded/wounded captured – 193
Captured unwounded – 37
Non-casualty – 53

From the monument near the Brian Barn, Gettysburg:

July 3, 1863. The 11th Mississippi Infantry regiment, with its ranks growing thinner at every step, advanced with the colors to the stone wall near the Brian Barn.

The regiment was here ‘subjected to a most galling fire of musketry and artillery that so reduced the already thinned ranks that any further effort to carry the position was hopeless, and there was nothing left but to retire.

– Report of Brig. Gen. Joseph R. Davis