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Canoerebel -> RE: Outing Canoerebel (4/14/2012 12:27:33 PM)
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That's Antietam. Dunker Church would be below the lower left corner.
The guy who is my Avatar - Lt. Colonel Emory F. Best, was second in command of the 23rd Georgia Regiment at this battle. The 23rd Regiment was in heavy combat in the cornfield (depicted on that map) when its commanding officer, Colonel Barclay, was killed in action. Lt. Col. Best took command. He was wounded and taken prisoner. While a prisoner of war in Baltimore, where his father had once been the preacher at the Seaman's Bethel, this photo was taken.
After Best was exchanged and promoted to colonel in command of the 23rd Georgia, he led the unit into action at Chancellorsville. The 23rd, in Colquitt's Georgia Brigade, led Stonewall Jackson's famous flanking march that day. At a point where the road passed close to the Union lines, Jackson ordered a regiment to be posted to protect the exposed Confederate column. Best's 23rd Georgia was given the assignment, and JEB Stuart personally placed the regiment in line at Catherine Furnace.
David Birney's division, led by Berdan's U.S. Sharpshooters, assaulted the Confederate position at about noon. Greatly outnumbered, the Georgians fell back to a railroad cut and called for aid. A battery of Tennessee artillery responded, but the Confederate line was overwhelmed - it was a regiment of 235 men against a division. Best, who was at the left of the regiment in the railroad cut, ordered the regiment to retire to the left and rear. Instead of standing at his post as each company filed by, Best led the withdrawal. He and about 20 men escaped while the remainder of the regiment was captured.
When the captured portion of the regiment was paroled a month later, charges were preferred against Best for cowardice at this battle and at South Mountain the previous autumn. He was tried and found guilty in Charleston in November 1863. He was then dismissed from the service.
After the war, he served for a time as a judge in Macon, Georgia (he was appointed by Governor Alfred Colquitt, his former commanding officer who had forwarded the charges against Best for court martial and trial). Then Best worked as a clerk in the Interior Department in Washington, D.C. until his death in 1912. He is buriend at Rose Hill Cemetery in Macon. There is no marker at his grave indicating his service in the Confederate army. He was, as one Confederate congressman noted in a letter to Jefferson Davis, "Shamed and ruined by the decision of the court."
Fifteen years ago, I spoke by telephone to Best's great-nephew, Emory Fred Best, a 76-year-old retired used-car dealer in El Cajon, California. He said that the family was dismayed to learn in the 1960s of what had happened to Best. Apparently his trial had never been mentioned by the family, so the descendants stumbled upon the information and were horrified. When I asked him if he thought the charges were true, he replied: 'I would like to think not."
At the end of that conversation, Fred Best asked me, "Are you related to Daniel C. Roper, Secretary of Commerce under FDR?"
I replied, "Yes, he was a distant great-great-great uncle" (or something like that).
"He gave me my first job in Washington in 1930," Best told me.
A shiver ran up my spine.
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