A Young Abolitionist Who Fell at the Battle of the Wilderness
by
John J. Dunphy
Wilberforce Lovejoy Hurlbut was born in 1841 in the Hurlbut-Messenger house in Upper Alton, Illinois. He was the youngest child and only son of Thaddeus Hurlbut, who was the martyred abolitionist newspaper editor Elijah Lovejoy’s most ardent ally. This young man was named after two abolitionists: Lovejoy and William Wilberforce, the English abolitionist who helped to end slavery in the British Empire. The Hurlbut-Messenger house served as an Underground Railroad station. Young Hurlbut grew up in an environment permeated with abolitionism.
He was a brilliant student at Shurtleff College, which was located just a short distance from his home. Against his parents wishes, however, Hurlbut left college in the middle of his senior year in 1862 to enlist in the Union army. For this idealistic young man, the Civil War wasn’t being waged merely to preserve the Union. It was a crusade to end slavery.
Hurlbut fought at Antietam, led the Fifth Michigan regiment at Chancellorsville and was wounded at Gettysburg. He went missing in action on May 6, 1864 during the Battle of the Wilderness, one of the bloodiest engagements of the Civil War, and was reported last seen leading a charge against the Confederates.
Union General Isaac Richardson contacted Confederate General James Longstreet to inquire about Hurlbut’s fate. Longstreet replied that Hurlbut was not incarcerated in any of the South’s prisoner-of-war camps. Finally, an eyewitness was located who stated that he saw young Hurlbut shot in the head. Union General Thomas F. Meager praised the fallen warrior by saying, “With Hurlbut fell the fittest historian of the Army of the Potomac.
Although his body was never recovered, Hurlbut is honored by a cenotaph in Alton’s City Cemetery.
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Read more about the Hurlbut family and its role in the Underground Railroad and the abolitionist movement in Abolitionism and the Civil War in Southwestern Illinois (978–1–60949–328–8) by John J. Dunphy.