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Confederate (CSA)

Captain

William Duncan McKim

(1832 - 1863)

Home State: Maryland

Education: Harvard University, Class of 1852

Branch of Service: Staff

Unit: Trimble's Brigade

Before Sharpsburg

He was a banker in Baltimore. He enlisted as Private in Company H, First Maryland Infantry (CSA) in Richmond, VA in June 1861. He was appointed Lieutenant and Aide de Camp to General Isaac Trimble 16 April 1862 to date from 31 March. He was promoted to Captain, date not given.

On the Campaign

General Trimble was wounded 29 August at Second Bull Run, VA, but McKim remained with the Brigade, under Colonel J.A. Walker on the Maryland Campaign. He was severely wounded while bearing an order from [Colonel Walker] to the Fifteenth Alabama Regiment on 17 September 1862 at Sharpsburg. He had been shot through both thighs.

The rest of the War

He was treated in Staunton, VA, and returned to duty about 1 February 1863, though not entirely recovered. He was again promoted, to Major and Assistant Adjutant General to General Trimble on 23 April 1863 (to date from 2 February). He served as AAG of Trimble's Division, then under General Raleigh Colston. He was wounded in the leg at Chancellorsville, VA on 3 May 1863, and could not walk. He ignored advice to remain in the rear, rode into action the next day, and was killed in action while bringing up Paxton's Brigade.

After the War

He was originally buried on the field, reinterred in Staunton, VA about two weeks later, and finally buried at Green Mount, Baltimore after the War.

References & notes

His service from Krick1 and Goldsborough.2 Details from Trimpi's Crimson Confederates (2010), The Harvard Graduates' Magazine (March 1912), and Palmer's Necrology of Alumni of Harvard College, 1851-52 to 1862-63 (1864). The quote above from Colonel Walker's Report. His gravesite is on Findagrave. The Harvard University Archives have a daguerrotype of him as a student in 1852.

Birth

06/27/1832; Baltimore, MD

Death

05/04/1863; Chancellorsville, VA; burial in Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, MD

Notes

1   Krick, Robert E.L., Staff Officers in Gray; A Biographical Register of the Staff Officers in the Army of Northern Virginia, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003, pg. 209  [AotW citation 17505]

2   Goldsborough, William Worthington, The Maryland Line in the Confederate Army, 1861-1865, Baltimore: Press of Guggenheim, Weil & Co., 1900, pg. 80  [AotW citation 17506]