Most fighting at Fredericksburg ended as the sun went down on December 13, 1862, leaving behind horrific piles of dead men and horses scattered across the fields while woods filled with abandoned equipment and debris. In one sector of the battlefield, the 4th Vermont Infantry had endured a day of intense enemy artillery and musket fire. The regiment suffered more than 50 casualties, including 18 killed and wounded, when a single Confederate artillery round tore through one company. As dusk fell, the Vermont soldiers took up a skirmish line.
Standing prominently among them was George Washington Kimble, the regiment’s 27-year-old acting major. A peacetime schoolmaster, he warned his men to stay low to avoid danger as stray bullets flew through the air. They obeyed and sat or lay down. On the Confederate side, a soldier aimed his rifle and squeezed the trigger.
Kimble never saw it coming. Exactly three years earlier, Kimble had been stuck deep in the South, fresh out of Dartmouth and eager to change the world. He planned to devote his life to education. On December 13, 1859, he wrote to a friend from Mobile, Alabama: “I came here expecting to teach in Georgia, but shortly after that, the Harper’s Ferry affair, some of the school trustees did not want to deal with a Northerner; so I was disappointed, and it is impossible to get a school here now.
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He added: “It is not safe for a Northerner to go to the small places, and they probably have vigilance committees in most of those places, and they would probably drive the man out of the place without a word. ”
The violent backlash to John Brown’s failed raid on Harper’s Ferry influenced Kimble’s decision to return to his family in Lyndon, Vermont. He took a job as principal of the high school in nearby Barton. With his sights set on becoming a lawyer, he began studying law in his free time.
Then the war came. Kimble watched friends and townsmen volunteer during the enthusiastic weeks following the shelling of Fort Sumter. The decision of whether to go weighed on him as he carefully considered the subject of duty and country. His older sister Emeline shared her opinion, urging him to wait until he was drafted.
His response: “I will never go as a conscript. I must offer my life voluntarily or not at all. ”
Kimble joined the 4th Vermont in July 1861 as a first lieutenant in Company D. Its commander resigned in March 1862 and Kimble took his place.
That spring and summer, he led the company through several engagements during the Peninsula Campaign in Virginia. His mother wrote proudly: “He has here shown the courage of a true soldier, and because of his calmness and bravery in the hour of impending danger, he was recommended for promotion to major. ”
Kimble, like many soldiers, wondered whether he would survive the war. In a letter to his mother written shortly before the Battle of Fredericksburg, he stated: “If I do not return to greet you on earth again, trust everything to divine providence and remember that I died at my post.
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Yet on the day of battle, those thoughts seemed far from his mind. He reportedly marched into battle in a cheerful state and distinguished himself again in combat. “He fought with iron courage where the hail of bullets was terrible all day,” recalled the regiment’s chaplain, John L. Roberts.
A Confederate bullet pierced Kimble’s neck while he was giving orders to his men on the skirmish line. The bullet severed the jugular vein, causing immediate and massive blood loss that saturated his uniform coat. His second lieutenant, Charles C. Kinsman, reported: “I was sitting by his side, as was the first sergeant, and we caught him before he fell to the ground.
He never spoke a word, and I believe that from the moment he was hit, he was unconscious of anything. ”
According to a newspaper report, he fell into the arms of his comrade and died instantly. Kinsman added: “As soon as I could get some men, I ordered his body taken to the hospital. ”
Chaplain Roberts took charge of the remains and arranged to send them home.
The next day, he obtained a permit to transport the body to Washington. Roberts recalled: “Just as I succeeded in getting a permit, word reached the place where our sick and wounded were that the hospital must be evacuated immediately because we were under enemy fire. ”
A group of soldiers hastily buried the body to keep it out of rebel hands. Roberts was evacuated across the Rappahannock River.
Once he learned the hospital was safe, “I immediately sent across the river for an ambulance, exhumed the body, and by three o’clock it was on its way to Washington. ”
In the federal capital, an embalmer removed Kimble’s dirt-and-blood-stained uniform, cleaned the body, and injected it with chemicals. The remains were placed in a coffin and shipped by train on their journey to Vermont. Meanwhile, news of Kimble’s death reached the North by telegraph and messenger.
Grieving family and friends gathered in Lyndon days before Christmas, waiting for the body to arrive. “We were assured that his body was on the train. How sad it seemed to us. We arrived at the father’s house at about seven o’clock in the evening, and what a solemn meeting it was.
How we wept over our dear friend who fell by the fire of treason. How grateful we were to recover the body and have the honor of taking one last look at that cheerful, manly face now cold in death,” Moses Kimble, the elder brother, recorded in his diary. Moses Kimble described the funeral held on Christmas Day at the Free Will Baptist Church, where a large crowd gathered to share the family’s sorrow and pay their respects. National flags draped the pulpit and opposite walls, “mourning with their stars that wept over the remains of the brave one struck down by rebellion.
” Banners carried fitting mottos such as “Lyndon weeps for her son and Barton mourns a friend and an officer,” while two beautiful flags decorated the ends of the coffin, reflecting the high regard in which the fallen soldier was held. Back in Virginia, Kimble’s comrades grieved the loss of their beloved officer. Kinsman wrote to Emeline, Kimble’s sister: “I share your grief completely in your loss, for I looked upon him as a brother more than anything else. And I have sincerely wept for him as a friend I have lost forever.
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In 1886, a group of veterans established a Grand Army of the Republic post in Barton named in his honor. Some of Kimble’s personal belongings remain on display in the legion hall. Kinsman left the army a few months later due to illness. The 4th Vermont Infantry fought through the rest of the war and suffered heavy losses in 1864 at the Wilderness and during the siege of Petersburg.
William F. Fox, in his work “Regimental Losses in the American Civil War,” praised the 4th Vermont as one of the 300 best fighting regiments in the Union army, a recognition based on its high casualty rate.