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P. Keenan
(1834 - 1863)
Home State: Pennsylvania
Branch of Service: Cavalry
Unit: 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry
Before Antietam
He lived in Philadelphia at the start of the War, and in the summer of 1861 helped recruit the 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry. He was appointed Captain of Company C on 19 August 1861.
On the Campaign
He commanded his Company in Maryland.
The rest of the War
He was promoted to Major of the regiment 15 October 1862 and was killed in action at Chancellorsville, VA on 2 May 1863. According to General Pleasonton
he was ordered by General Alfred Pleasonton, after the rout of the 11th corps on the right wing, to charge the advancing enemy in a wood, and hold them in check until the artillery could be got into position. He charged with his regiment, which numbered fewer than 500 men, so impetuously that the Confederates were startled, and hesitated to advance from the wood, until the guns were ready to rake the column as it emerged. Keenan met an inevitable death at the head of his men, many of whom fell with him, but the sacrifice enabled General Pleasonton to hold Stonewall Jackson's corps in cheek and save the army from rout.More recent scholarship suggests that Major Keenan and his troopers ran into Jackson's infantry by accident, and were cut down in surprise (see Krick).
(from Appleton's)
References & notes
Service basics from Bates.1 Personal details from Appleton's.2 "Krick" is
Robert K. Krick's Chancellorsville: Dusk, lies, and cavalry, one of a series of articles about Chancellorsville he published in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star in 2010. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from an etching after a photograph in Battles & Leaders.3
Charles C. Kelsey published To the Knife: The Biography of Major Peter Keenan, 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry in 1964.
Birth
11/09/1834; York, NY
Death
05/02/1863; Chancellorsville, VA; burial in Saint Joseph's Cemetery, Scio, NY
1 Bates, Samuel Penniman, History of the Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-65, Harrisburg: State of Pennsylvania, 1868-1871 [AotW citation 29529]
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 29530]
3 Johnson, Robert U., and Clarence C. Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 4 vols., New York City: The Century Company, 1884-1887, Vol. III, pg. 184 [AotW citation 29528]