Tag: Salm-Salm (Felix C. A. J. N.)

Wikipedia says: Prince Felix Constantin Alexander Johann Nepomuk of Salm-Salm (25 December 1828 – 18 August 1870) was a Prussian military officer of princely birth and a soldier of fortune.

Salm-Salm served in the Schleswig-Holstein Army (Prussian Army), Austrian Army, the Union Army during the American Civil War, the army of Emperor Maximilian in Mexico and thereafter in the Prussian Army. He was killed in action during the Franco-Prussian War.

…In 1861, he came to the United States and offered his services to the Union Army in the American Civil War. He was given a colonel’s commission and assigned to the staff of Brigadier General Louis Blenker. It was at this time that he began to court an American woman named Agnes Leclerc Joy. He had met her at a reception given by President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D. C., where he was introduced by the Prussian envoy Friedrich von Gerolt. Felix and Agnes would marry morganatically in August 1862. Agnes Salm-Salm would end up joining Felix on the battlefield because she could not bear being without him. That winter he took command of the 8th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment (which decided Gustav Struve to resign in protest), but would only remain there through the winter.

In February, 1864, he was put under arrest for falsely representing himself as colonel of the 68th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment and enriching himself by raising funds from young officers who expected that he could obtain commissions for them in his regiment. He was eventually released and actually appointed colonel of New York’s 68th in June, 1864, serving under Brigadier General James B. Steedman in Tennessee and Georgia, he took part in the Battle of Nashville, and toward the end of the war was assigned to the command of the post at Atlanta. Salm-Salm was mustered out of the volunteers on November 30, 1865. On January 13, 1866, President Andrew Johnson nominated him for appointment to the grade of brevet brigadier general, to rank from April 13, 1865 and the U.S. Senate confirmed the appointment on March 12, 1866.