Captain Nelson Armes’ Gauntlets
Heritage Auctions (ha.com)
An Artillerist’s Gloves Earn a Tidy Sum
The Artifact
Gauntlets belonging to Captain Nelson Ames, 1st New York Artillery
Condition
The gauntlets are in excellent condition. Written in ink on the inside cuff of each glove is Ames’ name, rank, and the date “DEC 1 1861.” The left glove also includes Ames’ unit in ink.
Details
Nelson Ames enlisted on October 1, 1861, at Elmira, New York, as a first lieutenant in Battery G of the 1st New York Light Artillery. Though he had played a primary role in raising the unit, Ames declined the captaincy, a comrade later noted, “in order that an experienced and trained soldier might be put in command.” (Ames would assume the captaincy after the battery’s original commanding offer resigned in April 1863.) Not long after his enlistment, Ames obtained the gauntlets shown here, which he would wear throughout his service; on the outside cuffs, he wrote in ink the artillery firing tables to use as a quick reference in battle. Wounded in 1862 and again in 1864, he mustered out on October 15, 1864, having accompanied Battery G at some of the war’s biggest engagements, including during the Peninsula Campaign, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Overland Campaign, and Petersburg. “Battery G was never driven by the enemy’s fire from a position it was ordered to hold,” Ames would later note with pride, “never fell back until ordered, and never lost a gun or carriage of any kind during its term of service.”
Quotable
Captain Nelson Ames and Battery G were heavily involved in the fighting at Gettysburg, in particular in repelling Pickett’s Charge on the battle’s final day. As Ames would write in the battery’s history he published in 1900: “Men were never placed in a more trying position than were the men on our line that day when they were obliged to remain idle, subject to an incessant artillery fire, but not allowed to fire a shot in return…. It did seem an age … before the troops of the enemy began to move, but slowly and surely on they came. As they reached their artillery line, it ceased firing. We did not wait for orders to open fire…. There was one mighty roar; it seemed as if not only our battery had fired, but as if also every gun on our line had fired at once. The air was filled with shot and bursting shell as the enemy’s lines came down against ours. How any man lived in that charging column and returned alive to his lines is nothing less than a mystery and a miracle…. The consequences … of that fight can never be adequately described. Gettysburg stands before the thought and imagination of the world as an indisputable conflict, during which … two great armies had struggled with an intensity of passion and indomitable purpose that never had controlled men before.”
Value
$5,937.50 (price realized at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas, in 2014). “These gauntlets are amazing not only for their excellent condition, but for their incredible association to a battery that saw considerable action during the war, including Gettysburg,” a Heritage representative noted at the time.
