Michele and I decided to visit Civil War-related graves and monuments at Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn to commemorate Memorial Day back in 2018. We stopped to see Henry Ward Beecher, Henry Halleck, and a number of other Civil War Era “permanent residents” of the famous cemetery. While we were driving towards the exist, Michele asked me to stop when she saw two graves with the same last name on them, one with a Union and one with a Confederate grave stone. She is a lot sharper at catching these than I am. The Union stones are rounded at the top and the Confederate stones are pointed.
We immediately wondered if these two men were brothers or cousins. Both from Maryland, both died during the Civil War.
I looked up the two men in Greenwood’s amazing Civil War database and learned that they were brothers. Here is Clifton’s story:
Here is the younger of the Prentiss brothers, the one who went South to join the Confederates. He too died of wounds received at Petersburg.
Here is the story of the younger Prentiss. Both brothers were mortally wounded at Petersburg, both died in the same Union army hospital. The bios claim they were nursed by Walt Whitman.
I found a blog that says that Prentiss was mentioned in Walt Whitman’s Specimen Days:
Clifton’s Maryland regiment was instrumental in breaking the months-long siege at Petersburg, but, as one of the first officers in the charge, his luck ran out when he was shot in the lung. While he was taken to the side, he was told that some subordinates had just received word that his brother had also been wounded, in the knee, and that he desired to see him.
At first, Clifton refused any contact with his brother with a curt, “I want to see no man who fired on my country’s flag.” Another colonel pleaded with him, but, even after William’s cot was laid beside his, Clifton initially just glared at him.
Williams’ smile finally battered down Clifton’s defenses. Before long, the brothers had reached out their hands to each other and were crying. For about a month, they were kept in the same field medical unit, a tent associated with the Fiftieth New York Engineer’s camp, and it appeared that they would both be on the road to recovery. But their condition began to deteriorate after a transfer a month later to Armory Square Hospital in Washington, D.C.
Besides the camp where the brothers struggled for life, there was another New York connection involving the brothers: their male nurse, Walt Whitman. Specimen Days, the poet’s fragmentary, quasi-autobiography, includes a late May 1865 diary entry describing William, “very intelligent and well bred—very affectionate—held on to my hand, and put it by his face, not willing to let me leave.” Even copious amounts of morphine could not really ease the pain of the “young Baltimorean” (Whitman underestimated his age by five years). An amputation of William’s right leg had left him debilitated so that he “can’t sleep hardly at all.”
William died a little less than a month after Whitman’s diary entry and was buried at Green-Wood Cemetery. By summer’s end, Clifton joined him in death.
I. Specimen Days
93. Two Brothers, One South, One North
May 28–9.—I STAID to-night a long time by the bedside of a new patient, a young Baltimorean, aged about 19 years, W. S. P., (2d Maryland, southern,) very feeble, right leg amputated, can’t sleep hardly at all—has taken a great deal of morphine, which, as usual, is costing more than it comes to. Evidently very intelligent and well bred—very affectionate—held on to my hand, and put it by his face, not willing to let me leave. As I was lingering, soothing him in his pain, he says to me suddenly, “I hardly think you know who I am—I don’t wish to impose upon you—I am a rebel soldier.” I said I did not know that, but it made no difference. Visiting him daily for about two weeks after that, while he lived, (death had mark’d him, and he was quite alone,) I loved him much, always kiss’d him, and he did me. In an adjoining ward I found his brother, an officer of rank, a Union soldier, a brave and religious man, (Col. Clifton K. Prentiss, sixth Maryland infantry, Sixth corps, wounded in one of the engagements at Petersburgh, April 2—linger’d, suffer’d much, died in Brooklyn, Aug. 20, ’65.) It was in the same battle both were hit. One was a strong Unionist, the other Secesh; both fought on their respective sides, both badly wounded, and both brought together here after a separation of four years. Each died for his cause.
Greenwood has an amazing collection of mini-biographies of men, women, and children connected to the Civil War. You can access it for free here.
Great find!! Thanks to your wife’s visual acuity!! One day I will have to take a tour that’s given by Jeff Richman of the Civil War soldier’s buried there. Its a fascinating place!
Where is this cemetery? Brooklyn in what state?
Brooklyn in New York City.
So they died in a hospital in Washington, D.C., how did they come to be buried in Brooklyn N.Y.? Did I miss that in the article?
William died in Washington, but Clifton was moved to Brooklyn before his death and died there. I do not know why they were both buried in Brooklyn.