Who Captured Union Colonel Percy Wyndham

By W. Cullen Sherwood and Ben Ritter | America's Civil War  | one comment  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

Englishman Percy Wyndham, colonel of the 1st New Jersey Cavalry, was excited by the prospects for impending battle in the Shenandoah Valley against the forces of Major General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson early in June 1862. Jackson had at one point been only about 50 miles west of the Federal capital. Alarmed, President Abraham Lincoln ordered Major General Irwin McDowell to dispatch half of his men, including Brigadier General George Bayard’s cavalry brigade — which included Wyndham’s horsemen — from Fredericksburg to the Valley, under the overall command of Major General James Shields. Another column under Major General John C. Fremont was heading into the valley from the west, and the plan was for the two forces to unite at Strasburg, trapping Jackson in the northern Valley. The troopers’ hard march took them to the Front Royal area by June 1, but Jackson had narrowly escaped.

Wyndham was the son of England’s Lord Leconfield, a captain in the Queen’s 5th Light Cavalry, and had exhibited an appetite for adventure at an early age. When he was only 15 he volunteered for the Student Corps in Paris. He subsequently obtained a commission in the French navy, followed by service with England’s Royal Artillery. In 1852 he left England to become an officer in the Austrian Lancers, where he served for two years before joining the hero of Italian unification, Giuseppe Garibaldi. Under Garibaldi he rose rapidly to the rank of lieutenant colonel and was knighted for bravery, thereafter bearing the title Sir Percy Wyndham.

The chance to help end slavery drew Wyndham to the New World when the American Civil War began in 1861, and he offered his services to the Union. Major General George McClellan, desperately short of experienced officers, assigned Wyndham to the colonelcy of the 1st New Jersey Cavalry, a woebegone outfit that had been nearly destroyed by the ineptitude of its previous commander.

On March 24, 1862, the regiment was ordered south of Alexandria, Va., where it remained during McClellan’s Peninsula campaign. Lack of action resulted in grousing among the drill-weary troopers. After getting their orders to move west, Wyndham and his men were eager to test their mettle. But Jackson slipped through the trap and continued retreating. His Army of the Valley passed through Harrisonburg on June 6 before turning eastward in the direction of Port Republic, a small town at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Brigadier General Turner Ashby’s cavalry was serving as Jackson’s rear guard. As Jackson’s infantry marched on to Port Republic, Ashby positioned his men to intercept an expected attack by the 1st New Jersey. Soon the Federals appeared and rashly attacked. Ashby launched a powerful counterattack that drove them back.

Ashby was killed, but his men captured a battle flag and more than 60 prisoners, including Wyndham. The Englishman had boasted he would “get” Ashby, and the turnabout capture caused quite a stir. Major Roberdeau Wheat of the Louisiana Tigers embraced the embarrassed captive, exclaiming, “Percy, old boy!” They had served together under Garibaldi.

Wyndham’s capture was a matter of pride for Ashby’s troopers, and after the war the incident generated a lot of press, as aging veterans argued over who should get credit for the deed. One fanciful account published in The New Series on May 18, 1880, claimed that Ashby himself had made the capture: “On the retreat Ashby soon got in striking distance of Wyndham, and as he dashed up to him with his sabre drawn one would have expected him to strike his foe to the earth. But he did not and thus they rode, almost side by side for several hundred yards, Ashby holding his sabre high above his head, as if intending every moment to cut down his enemy….He did not strike, however, but sheathed his sabre and putting his hand on the shoulder of Wyndham, turned and led him away a prisoner.”

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