Wilder Dwight

After graduating from Harvard, he attended the Law School there (LL.B '55), and began to practice in 1857 in Boston. At the outset of the War he helped obtain authority for and organized a regiment of troops (April 1862) and was appointed Major of the 2nd Massachusetts on 24 May 1861.

In May 1862 he was captured in action near Winchester, Virginia. He was paroled and returned "within the Union lines" in June, and was officially exchanged, returning to duty just after the battle at Cedar Creek, in August 1862. He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on 13 June 1862.

He was mortally wounded in the thigh and arm in combat at Antietam on 17 September. As he lay on the field he wrote

Dearest mother,
I am wounded so as to be helpless. Good bye if so it must be.

I think I die in victory. God defend our country. I trust in God & love you all to the last.

Dearest love to father & all my dear brothers.

Our troops have left the part of the field where I lay --

He died of his wounds two days later at Boonsboro, MD.

Biographical data and sketch from "Gordon's Regulars" - the excellent 19 Massachusetts Infantry website of Lynne M. Kennedy. The letter home Dwight wrote from the battlefield of Antietam is now in the Massachusetts Historical Society collection. The photograph above is from a CDV offered by MQ Americana.

His brother William (USMA 1859) rose to be Brigadier General, and served in the West during the War. Two other brothers, Charles and Howard (killed 1863), also fought in the Federal Army during the War.

Private Rupert J Sadler of Company D helped bring Dwight off the field at Antietam on 17 September and wrote home about it soon afterward.

A painted portrait of LCol Dwight is in Memorial Hall at Harvard. Heritage Auction Galleries sold a lovely drawing of him at auction in 2007.

4/23/1833; Springfield, MA

9/19/1862; Boonsboro, MD; burial in Forest Hills Cemetery and Crematory, Jamaica Plain, MA