The newly formed 56th Massachusetts Infantry, under their 22 year-old Colonel Stephen Minot Weld, were passing through Philadelphia on the way to Virginia. When one soldier was found drunk, Weld ordered the nearby tavern ransacked, its liquor destroyed, and its owner, Henry Brown, arrested. Weld took Brown with him to Baltimore in handcuffs where the Provost Marshal ordered his release, but not before Weld had had "half his head and beard shaved." (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Stephen Minot Weld, War Diary and Letters of Stephen Minot Weld, 1861-1865 (Cambridge, MA; Riverside Press, 1912), 260-263.
Thomas Scharf and Thompson Wescott, History of Philadelphia 1609-1884, in three volumes (Philadelphia, PA: L.H. Everts & Co., 1884), I:814.
J. Matthew Gallman, Mastering Wartime: A Social History of Philadelphia During the Civil War (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 211.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Battles/Soldiers
