Major, a 110-pound black dog makes himself comfortable on the leg of Corporal William H. Wentworth in this December 1863 tintype. Sergeant Hezekiah Elwell, also of the 29th Maine, is on the left. (Nicholas Picerno Collection)
On the afternoon of April 8, 1864, fierce fighting raged around a farmer’s peach orchard near Chapman’s Bayou in Sabine Parish. Union Gen. Nathaniel Banks had marched 35,000 men up the Red River with the intention of capturing Shreveport, but Confederate Gen. Richard Taylor blocked his way near Mansfield with a much smaller force.
Suddenly, Taylor launched a surprise attack and pushed Banks back several miles to Chapman’s Bayou, where the fight continued as evening fell.
Among the embattled Union soldiers were the men of the 29th Maine. And among the men ran their beloved mascot Major, a one-hundred-pound labrador mix.
Major came to the 29th Maine by way of a circuitous path. He began the war with the 2nd New Hampshire and accompanied it at the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861. Major was slightly wounded in that engagement but was able to return to New Hampshire with his comrades.
Three months later, Major deserted his unit when he happened to follow an officer of the 10th Maine aboard a train. The Maine men immediately adopted him as their mascot and gave him the name Major.
In December, Major suffered a serious injury when he was struck by a locomotive. According to one officer, Major came to dislike a particular engineer after he sprayed some water on the dog. Afterwards, whenever the train approached, Major tried to jump on the locomotive, but one day he miscalculated his approach. The officer wrote his wife, “Today [Major] got a little too near and the cow-catcher gave him a pretty hard thump—knocking off a piece of his nose and his rump. . . . I guess tomorrow he will get up in good shape and be a wiser dog.”
Major did recover, but his luck ran out again a few months later when he lagged behind from exhaustion as the Union army retreated up the Shenandoah Valley. The Confederates captured him, but Major made his escape two days later and somehow found and rejoined the 10th Maine.
At the Battle of Antietam, Major again rushed into the fight. Lt. John Goud wrote, “Old dog ‘Major’ behaved well under fire, barking fiercely, and keeping up a steady growl from the time we went in till we came out. . . . He had shown so much genuine pluck, moreover, that the men . . . were bragging of his barking, and of his biting at the sounds of the bullets, asserting besides that he was ‘tail up’ all day.”
Goud also noted that Major would jump into the air and snap his jaws at the sound of bullets whizzing past his head and chomp at dirt clods that were kicked up when the bullets hit the ground near him. It was a behavior he exhibited on other battlefields, as well.
In 1863, the regiment’s term of service expired, but before disbanding, the men of the 10th Maine presented Major with a silver collar inscribed with an oak leaf, which designated the military rank of major, and a list of his battles. Lt. Granville Blake then assumed the dog’s ownership and later brought him along when he became a captain in the 29th Maine, a regiment that included many former members of the 10th Maine.
Major’s new regiment was sent to Louisiana, and on April 8, 1864, he found himself once again on the firing line at Chapman’s Bayou. In the regimental history, Lt. Goud wrote of Major, "We never shall forget his actions at the top of the hill where we fought. We came at that point upon almost a solid mass of fugitives, and here, too, we first heard the bullets whistle. The dog seemed to comprehend the situation, and bracing himself against the torrent, he gave one long, loud howl that rose above all other sounds, and then went on again. He ran wildly around the field, always keeping in our fronts and biting at the little clouds of dust raised by the enemy's balls. At our first volley he jumped into the air, howled and bit at the flying bullets, and was going through strange capers when the fatal bullet struck him. He died like a hero, far in the front of the line, and had he been human we should not have felt his loss more keenly."
Another officer wrote home, “Our old dog Major, which was such a great favorite with us, was killed at the battle of Mansfield in the first days fight—he fell just in front of my company, he was running in front of the company jumping for the bullets as they knocked up the dust in front of us. We miss him very much, for we were all greatly attached to that poor fellow—but he fell on the field of battle nobly facing the foes.”
Dr. Terry L. Jones is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. An autographed copy of “Louisiana Pastimes,” a collection of the author’s stories, costs $25. Contact him at tljones505@gmail.com
