Civil War anniversary: Lt. Colonel Joseph Hamilton Phillips Legion

By Kurt Graham and Robert Jenkins Dalton 150th Civil War Commission

Joseph Hamilton was born April 15, 1839, in Rutherford County, North Carolina to Dr. Benjamin and Nancy Whiteside Hamilton. The Hamiltons moved to Dahlonega in 1858 to supervise the father’s interests in several gold mines. Joseph Hamilton attended Wofford College, a Methodist school founded in 1851.

Benjamin Hamilton, who was a Methodist minister, was a man of prominence who represented his area at the Milledgeville convention when Georgia seceded from the union. Although he voted against secession and remained a Union man, his prominence may have helped to secure the captaincy of a newly formed infantry company called the Blue Ridge Rifles for his son Joseph. This new company marched to Camp McDonald in Cobb County in early July of 1861 where it joined the rifle battalion of the newly organized 4th Ga. State Brigade. Capt. Hamilton was 22 years old.

In early August 1861, Gov. Joseph Brown was forced to disband the state brigade and its components went into Confederate service as the 18th, 19th Georgia Infantries and Phillips Legion in which Hamilton’s company was designated Company E in the rifle battalion under command of Lt. Col. Seaborn Jones. Phillips Legion also included the Dalton Guards as Company B.

While at Camp McDonald, Benjamin Hamilton requested that his younger son, Coatesworth Hamilton, a 15-year-old cadet at the Georgia Military Institute, a small military school for boys which had opened in 1851 in Marietta, be reassigned to Camp McDonald to serve as a volunteer aide de camp under his brother Joe, as he was called.

Benjamin Hamilton hoped that the youngster would quickly tire of the rigors of the field and return to his studies at GMI, and get the “war fever” out of his system. Unfortunately, Phillips Legion was soon ordered to Virginia, and during the firestorm of disease (typhoid, measles and mumps) that swept through the Legion in the fall of 1861, it claimed the life of the youngster in November. Joe took leave from the Army to carry the body of his little brother, Coates, home to Georgia to be buried.

The first half of 1862 was spent guarding the Charleston & Savannah Railroad, adding replacements to existing companies, and training five new companies that had been added to the Legion that spring. In July, the Legion received orders to proceed to Richmond, Va., as part of a newly formed brigade under the command of Gen. Thomas F. Drayton.

After spending a short time near Richmond, Drayton’s brigade was assigned to David R. Jones Division of Longstreet’s Wing of the Army of Northern Virginia commanded by Gen. Robert E. Lee and ordered north to assist Stonewall Jackson’s wing in an attempt to defeat John Pope’s Federal army before reinforcements from Gen. George McClellan’s army could join him.

In August 1862, Phillips Legion participated in the Battle of Second Manassas, a Confederate victory which opened the way for Lee to invade Maryland and carry the war to the North for the first time.

During the Maryland Campaign, which culminated in the Battle of Antietam, a tactical draw but a strategic victory for the Federal Army, Phillips Legion fought desperately at the Battle of Fox’s Gap on Sept. 14, 1862. Holding the key position in the battle at the intersection of a crossroads and giving Lee time to consolidate his forces at the little town of Sharpsburg near Antietam Creek, Phillips Legion held off Federal assaults for six hours before yielding to superior numbers.

During the fighting, Hamilton was wounded in the right forearm. The Legion took quite a drubbing in this fight, taking 115 casualties or 40 percent of those engaged. Captain Joe did not rejoin the infantry battalion until just after the battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862. He was hospitalized during the interval in Lynchburg, Va., and was furloughed home for a month, his second trip home during the war, but his first to Dalton, where his family had relocated earlier that year.

The battalion’s commanding officer, Lt. Col. Robert T. Cook of Dalton, was killed Dec. 13 at the battle of Fredericksburg and this resulted in the promotion of Major E.S. “Sandy” Barcley to lieutenant colonel. As the senior company captain, 23-year-old Joseph Hamilton was promoted to major on Dec. 18, 1862.

Hamilton next saw action at Chancellorsville in May, 1863. After Barclay’s health broke down due to wounds received at Fox’s Gap, Hamilton led the command at Gettysburg in July. Hamilton suffered a broken right arm in the ill-fated attack on Fort Sanders at Knoxville on Nov. 29, 1863. While at home in Dalton recovering from his wound, Joe married his sweetheart, Julia A. Stokes, on Jan. 13, 1864. This was Joe’s third return home during the war.

Being wounded seems to have been a harbinger of promotion for Hamilton. When he returned to the battalion in early 1864, Joe found thatBarclay had been forced to resign due to the effects of wounds and Joe was appointed to lieutentant colonel and placed in command of the battalion. He was 24.

Hamilton must have been a “lead from the front” sort of officer as he was to be wounded yet again. Coming safely through the vicious fights at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania in May 1864, he suffered a wound to the neck on June 3, 1864, at Cold Harbor, Va.. Furloughed for 30 days from a Richmond hospital to Oxford, Ga., on June 7, 1864, Hamilton must have suffered complications from the wound as he was still absent at year’s end with the approval of a medical examining board. Because North Georgia had been lost to Federal occupation, Hamilton was unable to visit home in Dalton in the summer of 1864.

By January 1865, Hamilton returned to lead his battalion for the rest of the war. During the final retreat to Appomattox, Hamilton was captured April 6, 1865, at Sailors Creek along with most of the infantry battalion. First taken to Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C., he was then sent north to Johnson’s Island Prison near Lake Erie in late April.

He took the Oath of Allegiance on July 25, 1865, and was released. According to his oath of allegiance card, he was 25 years old, 5 foot 8 and one-half inches tall, of fair complexion with light hair and blue eyes.

Returning to Dalton, Hamilton rejoined his wife Julia and settled down to farming and teaching school at Dalton Academy.

During these years in Dalton, he and Julia were blessed with four children, sons Tallie and Marvin, and daughters Minnie and Annette. In 1875, Joseph, Julia and their four children packed up and moved to southern California. They first settled in Orange, and 18 months later moved to Wilmington, Calif. Here they were blessed with two more daughters, May Julia born in Orange, and Ella born in Wilmington. In 1880 they moved the family to Los Angeles. During this period Hamilton earned a living by teaching and farming. His health gradually failed him. This caused him to retire from business in 1889. He spent his remaining years in extensive church activities.

On Wednesday, June 12, 1907, Joseph Hamilton passed away at his daughter Minnie’s home in Los Angeles and was laid to rest there at Rosedale Cemetery. His wife Julia joined him there in January, 1915.

This article is part of a series of stories about Dalton and life in Dalton during the Civil War. The stories run on Sunday and are provided by the Dalton-Whitfield Civil War 150th Anniversary Commission. To find out more about the committee, go to www.dalton150th.com. If you have material that you would like to contribute for a future article contact Robert Jenkins at (706) 259-4626 or robert.jenkins@robertdjenkins.com.

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