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E.A. 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.'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.
(quoted from This Week in the Civil War)
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
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]