On this day, 150 years ago, Daniel Boyd wrote his father a letter from his camp near Winchester, Virginia reporting on the death of his brother Pressley. He also gives details from the battle up on Maryland Heights as well as the more famous Battle of Sharpsburg (Antietam for those preferring the northern name), three days later on Sept. 16.

In a letter recently discovered in private hands and not in the Duke University collection, Daniel reports that Pressley was shot in the head and that Daniel helped bury him up on the Blue Ridge mountain peak of Maryland Heights. He reports that they lost 280 men from his regiment, the 7th South Carolina. James Alewine was wounded in the leg and he reports his belief that Col. Wyatt Aiken’s wound is mortal. That would prove incorrect as Col. Aiken would recover and later return to his command.

Boys of Diamond Hill

The Military Writers Society of America Gold Medal for History 2012.

To read the entries thus far in the Sesquicentennial series for The Boys of Diamond Hill click here.

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