Medal of Honor Awardee Civil War Soldier William L.S. Tabor

An excerpt from “Ready, Stay, Stay Cool!” Derry’s Civil War Soldiers and Sailors by T.J Cullinane, published with the permission of the author. The family is loaning the medal to the Derry MUseum of History at a graveside cermony during the Civil War Encampment, June 3, 2023.

Methuen-born William L. S. Tabor would earn his medal as a Union infantryman during the Siege of Port Hudson, a campaign so punishing that one participant referred to it as “forty days and nights in the wilderness of death.” Tabor’s act of bravery is noteworthy not only for what he did, but for whom he did it. He would wait thirty-three years before receiving the nation’s highest award for battlefield bravery, during which time he would serve Derry as a custodian, volunteer fireman, and counterman at the Subway Diner.

William L. S. Tabor

Our next Medal of Honor recipient, William L.S. Tabor, would demonstrate his incredible bravery deep in the malaria-infested bayous of Louisiana. Tabor was born in Methuen, Massachusetts, on June 2, 1843. By 1862 he had moved north of the state border to nearby Hampstead, New Hampshire. That September, on the border between what was now the Confederate States of America and the United States, a large rebel force led by General Robert E. Lee was moving into Maryland, an incursion that would culminate in the Battle of Antietam. This cataclysmic battle brought about the call for more volunteers for the Union Army. Tabor answered the call and enlisted in Company K of the 15th New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry Regiment (Nine Months). After completing basic training in Concord, the regiment boarded trains and began moving south to the theater of war. Stopping first in Boston, they would detrain again in New York City and board ships for New Orleans, arriving in the storied city the day after Christmas.

The role Tabor’s regiment would play in the unfolding story had its origin in the overall Union war aims as formulated by “Old Fuss and Feathers,” General Winfield Scott. Derided in the press as “Scott’s Great Snake,” the Anaconda Plan as it was called was in fact a sound strategy. Scott proposed depriving the South of all of its seaports on the Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico as well as taking control of the Mississippi River. With vital support cut off from Europe and elsewhere, the Confederacy would be wrapped in the constricting coils of a giant snake, slowly squeezing the life out of it from the banks of the Mississippi River to the East Coast.

Tabor’s regiment would help realize this strategy by investing the Confederate fortresses guarding the Mississippi. Moving north from New Orleans, the 15th New Hampshire was assigned to the 1st Brigade, 2nd Division, XIX Corps, Army of the Gulf. This army was tasked to capture Port Hudson, Louisiana. Simultaneously, the Union Army of Tennessee, under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant, was moving south to capture the fortifications surrounding the port city of Vicksburg in the neighboring state of Mississippi.

Early attempts to take Port Hudson in a single assault in May 1863 ended in failure, and both sides settled in for a long siege. The conditions were miserable. It was the start of the summer in the Deep South, and the Union soldiers sweated and chafed in their scratchy wool uniforms. Soaking rains covered the shell-pocked terrain that ultimately produced clouds of mosquitoes. These swarms covered the Union fighting positions at sundown and plagued the men all night. Adding to the misery were poisonous snakes, alligators, and any number of tropical diseases, many of them mosquito borne. These diseases would take a grievous toll on the 15th New Hampshire, ultimately claiming 130 lives. After another assault on the Confederate works failed on June 14, greater efforts were made in the arena of siege warfare. A key component of this style of warfare was called “sapping.” Sapping consisted of digging approach trenches in the direction of the enemy lines. The end of the “sap” would then serve as a jumping-off point for a new series of assaults. But now, instead of having to cross fire-swept killing zones in front of the enemy lines, the Union soldiers would have a relatively safe approach offering a quick sprint to the heart of the enemy defenses.

Digging the saps was brutal and backbreaking work, but here the Union Army would be aided by fugitive slaves. Escaping from their owners and flocking to the Union camps, they were quickly pressed into service as laborers and paid a small wage for their efforts. Protecting these men in their vital work would become the responsibility of William Tabor. In Tabor’s sector of the front, the sapping was quite successful. The laborers had in fact dug to within feet of the Confederate works. The rebels however, had devised a diabolical means of countering the sap. As their parapets towered over the Union trench, they had the advantage of height. They used this height advantage to great effect when they extended a wooden trough from their elevated position over the Union trench. They then placed a short-fused artillery shell into the trough and rolled it into the Union lines.

Tabor, himself, picks up the narrative:

The first time they [the Confederates] attempted this they succeeded in killing and wounding 125 men. Just as they were putting a second shell in the trough, I jumped up the sandbags which formed our breastworks, slipped a noosed rope around the trough, and jerked it into our lines. This resulted in throwing the shell the other way, falling [sic] it among the rebels and exploding there. While slipping the rope around the trough, I was necessarily exposed to the full view [and gunfire] of the rebel sharpshooters … [1]

Tabor’s quick thinking and bravery saved hundreds of lives. His selfless act would go unrewarded, however, for more than three decades. Not one to seek attention for himself, Tabor went about doing his duty and continued his service in the siege lines until the rebel garrison surrendered on July 9, 1863. The 15th New Hampshire’s nine month term enlistment expired soon after the Confederate capitulation. The regiment would move back to New Orleans for transport back home. The unit was mustered out in Concord on August 9, 1863.

***Tabor moving the Confederate chute. (From Deeds of Valor: From Records in the Archives of the United States Government.)***

Apparently unfazed by the arduous tour of duty he had just endured, Tabor reenlisted, signing up with Company K of the 1st New Hampshire Heavy Artillery Regiment on September 14, 1864. Tabor and his regiment were assigned to the defenses before Washington, D.C. Tabor served honorably on this tour as well and was discharged for a second time on June 15, 1865. Returning home to Hampstead, Tabor would eventually move next door to Derry. Here he found employment with the town and served for many years as the custodian of the Benjamin Adams Memorial Building. In those days the town library was housed there, and Tabor was frequently called upon to assist the librarians. Rick Holmes told me that one of Tabor’s assigned duties was “the retriever of lost books.” One can only imagine the discomfiture felt by the hapless miscreant when the imposing figure with a walrus mustache manifested himself in the doorway looking for the town’s property. Tabor was also employed as a volunteer fireman. When his son opened the popular Subway Diner, the elder Tabor was quick to take a spot as a counter man. Tabor was also active in the Grand of Army of the Republic, a Civil War veteran’s organization better known as the G.A.R. He was a popular and well-known member of the Wesley D. Knight Post No. 41 in Londonderry.

The 1890s found Tabor in his early fifties. He was beginning to feel the telling effects of his arduous service in the Louisiana bayous. He wrote to a government official seeking a pension and justified his request by recounting his valorous actions in the trenches before Port Hudson. This official was so taken with Tabor’s account that, not only was Tabor awarded his pension, he was nominated for and conferred with the Congressional Medal of Honor. The presentation was made on May 10, 1896. William L. S. Tabor died on December 15, 1921 and was buried in Forest Hill Cemetery. Tabor remains the only Methuen or Hampstead man to ever be awarded his country’s highest award for bravery. His citation reads as follows:

Citation:

Voluntarily exposed himself to the enemy only a few feet away to render valuable services for the protection of his comrades.

[1] Walter F. Beyer and Oscar Frederick Keydel, eds., Deeds of Valor: From Records in the Archives of the United States Government[Detroit: Perrien-Keydel Company, 1907], p. 207