As the 143rd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry maneuvered onto the open ground west of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on July 1, 1863, Color Sergeant Benjamin Crippen helped lead the way, the bright red, white, and blue national banner and regimental flag he and his colleagues carried guiding the way for his 464 comrades in the regiment amid battle smoke and screeching shot and shell.

The Battle of Gettysburg began early that morning and quickly escalated, with US and Confederate forces pouring more soldiers into the fray. By mid-afternoon, the Crippen and the 143rd Pennsylvania were in deep trouble. Confederate forces continue to arrive on the battlefield from the west, plunging into Union lines and threatening to envelope the men of the Keystone State’s anthracite coal fields.

As the US lines collapsed on Seminary Ridge that afternoon, the 143rd was swept up in the collapse, but Benjamin Crippen, the 21-year-old resident of the Wyoming Valley refused to turn his back on the enemy.

Instead, the young man continuously turned to face the Confederates, the 143rd’s battle flags still fluttering the muggy summer air. A Confederate bullet, or bullets, plunged into Crippen’s body.

A witness, Private Harris of the regiment described what happened:

“[Crippen] first shook his fist at the enemy, and defied them to take his colors, but brave boy as he was he goes down wrapped in the fold of his colors, and all but two of the Color guard were down, and one of the Survivors wounded, when Owen Phillips the guard from our company picks up both Flags, but nothing but the trumpets last call will raise brave young Crippen.”

Benjamin Crippen breathed his last along the Chambersburg Pike on a ridgeline west of Gettysburg in the afternoon of July 1, 1863. His remains were never identified and he likely was interred as an “unknown” in Gettysburg National Cemetery. Twenty comrades of the 143rd Pennsylvania shared his fate – killed-in-action on July 1, 1863. They died fighting to put down rebellion and save the Union.

When choosing designs for their monument at Gettysburg, survivors of the 143rd decided to immortalize their gallant young friend upon the stone. In 1889, the monument bearing a sculpture of Benjamin Crippen shaking his fist at the enemy was dedicated and remains upon the grounds of the regiment’s hallowed ground at Gettysburg today.

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Read our History Hikes story about following in the footsteps of the 143rd Pennsylvania at Gettysburg

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