James C. Duke

DUKE, WICAL, OPPENHEIMER, MARVIN

Posted By: Susan Glasgo (email)
Date: 3/10/2005 at 20:39:58

Copied from the Shenandoah-Post newspaper, Shenandoah, Page County, IA,
dated 2 March 1917, written by the newspaper's editor, C. N. Marvin:

TRIBUTE TO J. C. DUKE

Readers of the Sentinel-Post will pardon a brief personal tribute from me to the memory of J. C. Duke, for he was the only link in Shenandoah connecting me in any way with my early childhood.

When Abraham Lincoln called for volunteers to put down the rebellion in early days of the Civil War, J. C. Duke, then a mere lad, resided in Johnson county, Iowa, where also my father had made his home. Both enlisted in the 22nd Iowa Infantry and marched proudly away to the Southland where they fought with Grant and endured the manifold hardships of a climate to which they were unused.

In the siege of Vicksburg, the 22nd Iowa won imperishable renown, for when on May 22nd, 1863, an attempt was made to storm the Confederate works, the 22nd led the assault. Those boys, for they were only boys then, crept along the ravines until as close to the fortifications as possible and then with wild huzzas they leaped out into the open and charged up the hill against as murderous a fire as greeted the Light Brigades at Balaklava or the Prussian veterans at Verdun. The particular attack of the 22nd Iowa was at Railroad Redoubt near the Jackson railway west of the city. Of that little band of Iowa soldiers who charged that fort, 85 per cent were killed or wounded. There my father and an uncle died with their faces to the foe, but Duke suffered only a slight wound. The survivors never wavered but went up and up to the mouth of the cannon, climbed over the parapets, drove the rebels out of the fort and held it, awaiting reinforcements, which, alas, never came; and there an hour or so later the Iowa boys were taken prisoner.

It is a historical fact that during that siege of several months the 22nd Iowa was the only northern regiment that ever crossed the rebel line of defenses until the surrender because of starvation July 4. On that battlefield park of Vicksburg, now to show the scenes and events of that memorable siege, the tablet of the 22nd Iowa, upon the summit of Railroad Redoubt, is the only one that stands beyond the tablets of the confederate regiments showing that to those Johnson county boys alone does history award the honor of Northern valor overcoming that of Southern valor in the siege of Vicksburg.

To the sorrowing wife and children of J. C. Duke, the knowledge that he participated in one of the most glorious events of the civil war must cause their hearts to swell with just pride and thus help to soften the poignancy of their grief during these sad hours.

For many years J. C. Duke has lived among us, quietly, unostentatiously, living his life as a civilian as truly and bravely as he did that of a soldier. He lived and died an honored citizen of the Republic. Peace to his ashes.

C. N. Marvin
*****

James C. Duke was born 27 September 1842 to Henry Duke and Catherine Wical in Licking County, OH. Married Barbara Belle Oppenheimer in Johnson County, IA 26 January 1869, and then moved to SW Iowa by 1880. Died 28 February 1917 in Shenandoah, Page County, IA.