
O bless who in the battle DiesGod will enshrine them in the skiesFor the men of the North shall bleed this dayAnd the sun shall blush with war.



In September 1861, the company was incorporated into the 21st Mississippi Infantry as Company K. The regiment participated in many of the war’s highest profile battles, including Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, The Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cedar Creek.
The man with the long red beard is the ranking member of the group. He is Capt. Nicholas M. Blackwell, a physician educated in Philadelphia, Miss., and who practiced in New Albany with his brother. He returned to his medical practice after the war. He died in 1910 at age 72. Seated middle right is farmer James Bowman Blackwell, who suffered a wound at Fredericksburg. He recovered, and became a first lieutenant. After the war, Blackwell married, and eventually settled in North Carolina, where he lived until age 83, dying in 1927. The soldier on the far right is believed to be John Calvin Pruitt of Capt. Robert W. Flournoy’s Company of Mississippi Volunteers. On Sept. 17, 1862, he died in action near the West Woods during the Battle of Sharpsburg. The man on the far left is unidentified.
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