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E.A. Kimball

E.A. Kimball

Federal (USV)

Lieutenant Colonel

Edgar Addison Kimball

(1822 - 1863)

Home State: Vermont

Education: Norwich University

Command Billet: Commanding Regiment

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 9th New York Infantry

 

see his Battle Report

Before Antietam

He was a Mexican War veteran, having served in the 9th United States Infantry as a Captain in 1847-48 and was brevetted Major for bravery there. He was then a printer, and proprietor and editor of The Age, a liberal Democratic newspaper published in Woodstock, Vermont. He mustered into the 9th New York Infantry as Major on 4 May 1861 and was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on 14 February 1862.

On the Campaign

Colonel Hawkins was home in New York on a leave of absence, so Kimball led the Regiment in Maryland. They made an excellent charge on Confederate positions below Sharpsburg on the afternoon of 17 September 1862, taking fearsome losses.

The rest of the War

Killed April 12, 1863 at Suffolk, Virginia ...

... an excited Brigadier General M. Corcoran who reports, 'It being reported that the enemy was advancing against this place, I immediately repaired to my front and had all the troops placed under arms and ready for action.' At 3 a.m., Corcoran heads to the front to inspect his lines when he is accosted by 'an officer, whose rank I could not recognize.' The officer in question is Lieutenant-Colonel Edgar Kimball, commander of Hawkins' Zouaves, who insists that Corcoran give the countersign before he will be allowed to pass. The confrontation escalates until [the drunken ?] Kimball begins to wave his sword and Corcoran shoots him in the neck and kills him. Corcoran describes the incident, 'He...put himself in a determined attitude to prevent my progress, and brandishing his sword in one hand, and having his other on a pistol, as I then supposed, made a movement toward me with the evident design of using them, making an impolite statement that I should not pass. It was at this point that I used my weapon.'
(quoted from This Week in the Civil War)
A Court of Inquiry, requested by General Corcoran, later found that Kimball had not been on duty or at a picket post and had no business challenging the General. It also believed he had been drunk, used "abusive language", and threatened violence with his sword - that General Corcoran had acted in self-defense.

References & notes

His service and bio basics from Heitman,1 as Edgar Allan Kimball, and Appleton's,2 as Edgar Allison Kimball. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture is from a photograph at the Library of Congress.

Birth

06/13/1822; Pembroke, NH

Death

04/12/1863; Suffolk, VA; burial in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, NY

Notes

1   Heitman, Francis Bernard, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army 1789-1903, 2 volumes, Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1903, Vol. 1, pg. 597  [AotW citation 29468]

2   Fiske, John, and James Grant Wilson, editors, Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, 6 vols., New York City: D. Appleton and Company, 1887-1889  [AotW citation 29469]