Stagecoach was released in 1939. It was the first Western that director John Ford shot in Monument Valley. John Wayne and Claire Trevor star in the movie but the connection of the poster to the Civil War is related to the man who played the stagecoach driver named Buck in the film, actor Andy Devine. Devine was born on October 7, 1905, and died in 1977 of leukemia. He is probably best known for the role he played in 10 movies as Cookie, the sidekick of Roy Rogers, as well as an extensive resume playing supporting roles in over 400 films and television. He hosted a children’s TV show called Andy’s Gang from 1955 to 1960. The connection to the Civil War involves his family tree. His mother was Amy Ward the granddaughter of Naval Commander James H. Ward, making the Commander his great-grandfather.
James Harmon Ward was appointed by Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles as the first commander of the Potomac Flotilla. He would also become the first officer of the United States Navy killed in the Civil War at the Battle of Mathias Point on June 27, 1861. Mathias Point sticks out into the Potomac River on the Virginia side, as shown in the lower right of the map below, and the Federals were concerned that a battery located on the 20-foot-high bluff there could close traffic on the Potomac. The shipping channel there was close to the Virginia shore and about 4,000 yards from the Maryland shore.
Over the objections of General Robert E. Lee Confederate President Jefferson Davis approved the construction of a battery at Mathias Point. Lee felt the location was too remote and a battery there too vulnerable to a land-based assault in its rear. When Federal Commander Ward learned a large battery was under construction at the point, he planned an attack. He took the USS Thomas Freeborn and the USS Reliance to shell the battery. At the same time a force of sailors and marines would land in the battery’s rear and destroy it. A reconnaissance of the point on June 24th found no evidence of a battery but a camp of about 500 men. On June 27th Ward set out to establish his own battery there and burn as much brush and trees as possible to make the area more defensible from the water. At 10:00 AM on the 27th he began a bombardment in preparation for a landing. Lieutenant James Chaplin accompanied by Commander Ward rowed ashore with a party of 34 seamen and moved inland. They were met by a large force of about 400 Confederates and realizing they were outnumbered Ward ordered his men to return to their boats and wait offshore for further orders. Meanwhile Commander Ward went back to the Thomas Freeborn, sited his guns and shelled the area where the Confederates were located. Chaplin then relanded to try and establish the battery under cover of fire from the ships. The men had constructed most of a sandbag breastwork when about 5:00 PM Ward signaled them to return. As they were in the process of leaving the Confederates attacked again. Chaplin and his men evacuated back to the Thomas Freeborn. Chaplin was the last to leave swimming to his boat with a wounded sailor on his back. When they arrived on the Freeborn they learned that Ward had been mortally wounded in the abdomen, shot by a sharpshooter from shore, while sighting one of the 32-pounder guns to aid their evacuation. He died an hour later. Fort Ward in Alexandria, one of the forts built to defend Washington, DC, during the Civil War, was named after him.
In the photograph below taken on the deck of the USS Thomas Freeborn sailors are reenacting the death of Commander Ward. The man sighting the cannon is wearing Ward’s straw hat and blouse to show how their commander met his demise.
The land across the river above the wooden post near the bottom center of the picture is Mathias Point it was in the waters there that Commander Ward was mortally wounded.
The battle is memorialized by the sign below, a few miles from Mathias Point, on the Virginia side of the Potomac River alongside modern-day Route 301.
In the next post we’ll talk about the funeral of Commander Ward in the city of Hartford, Connecticut.