May 16, 1864, had been a disaster for the troops of New Jersey, and Ocean County in particular. Only a few miles away from capturing Richmond, Va., the Confederate capital, the Army of the James, commanded by Gen. Benjamin Butler, had been counterattacked by the Confederates. Butler decided to pull back and regroup his forces, but word didn’t reach Gen. Charles Heckmann’s Star Brigade. Fought in a dense fog, the engagement was sheer confusion as the brigade was being surrounded.
Heckmann, formerly a conductor on the Jersey Central Railroad, said to an aide, “I am outdone this time, when with only…
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