Clarendon Blues, 1861, The

The soldier pictured here could be one of two people.

He may be Robert Wesley Green, Co. C. (The Clarendon Blues), 9th South Carolina Volunteer Infantry, or, more likely, Private Warren Lavender, also of the Clarendon Blues.

The 9th was organized for a year's service between April 8 and July 12, 1861, under Lieutenant Colonel James Douglass Blanding. Blanding saw service in the Mexican War as an officer in South Carolina's volunteer Palmetto Regiment. Returning to an active professional and political life (he was a lawyer), he eventually served as mayor of Sumter. On July 12, 1861, he was promoted to full colonel.

The 9th was sent to the Army of the Potomac in Virginia and assigned to Brigadier General D.R. Jones' Brigade, later commanded by Brigadier General R.H. Anderson. It saw action as part of Major General James Longstreet's Division during the siege of Yorktown.

When the Confederate Army was reorganized in the Spring of 1862, the 9th was disbanded. In April 1862 it counted only 450 effectives, so was a smaller than regulation regiment. Starting in April most of the officers and men went into other South Carolina regiments. Blanding himself returned to South Carolina where later he tried to raise a battalion of partisan rangers.

Of the two potential sitters of this image, Green survived the war. Warren Lavender died, a victim of typhoid at Germantown, Virginia, on either September 1 or 7, 1862. As families hold more dearly to images of the casualties of war, I believe this image shows Lavender, who did not survive the war, rather than Green, who did.

Copyright Military Images May/Jun 2003
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