Wampler, John Morris

John Morris Wampler (May 3, 1830 - August 17, 1863) was an American surveyor and military engineer in the Antebellum period and the U.S. Civil War. Born in Maryland, Wampler came from humble origins, with his mother being widowed at a young age. Wampler's education and training were minimal, mostly coming by way of a girls' school in rural Virginia run by one Margaret Mercer, a family friend. However, Mercer was a native of Philadelphia and had connections with another Philadelphia native, Alexandar Dallas Brache, the head of the fledgling U.S. Coast Survey. Bache may have also been well-disposed towards Wampler due to his own difficult childhood, supporting eight siblings after his father abandoned the family. In any event, Bache provided an opportunity for Wampler, hiring him as a draftsman at the Coast Survey in 1847 when he was just 17 years old. Once at the Coast Survey, Wampler flourished and received training as a topographical engineer. Once in the field, like most of his fellow surveyors, Wampler travelled great distances, conducting surveys in northern states in the summer and southern states in the winter. By 1850, Wampler was given charge of his own team, to conduct a survey of Galveston Bay, in the newly-admitted state of Texas. Wampler continued to work for the Survey until the mid-1850s, undertaking work throughout the growing United States, but after being married and having a child desired to travel less and therefore left the Survey. Wampler tried his hand as an engineer in the private sector, with mixed success, working on railways and Baltimore's municipal water supply system, as well as trying to patent his own invention for a surveying instrument. As the U.S. drifted towards Civil War, Wampler became an ardent supporter of the Confederacy despite having lived much of his life in the border states or the North and having seemingly never owned slaves. He quickly distinguished himself as a capable engineer in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States and came to work for General P.G.T. Beauregard, under whom Wampler surveyed landscapes and designed field fortifications across Mississippi, Tennessee, and South Carolina. He subsequently served under General Braxton Bragg, executing critical wartime duties that included route reconnaissance, bridge building, and fort construction. In the summer of 1863, Wampler was appointed chief engineer at Battery Wagner on Morris Island to fortify the defenses of Charleston Harbor. On August 17, 1863, while taking shelter inside a bombproof structure at the battery, Wampler was killed instantly by fragments from an exploding Union artillery shell, bringing a sudden end to the life of one of the era's prominent field engineers. Wampler is the subject of a 2000 academic biography by George G. Kundahl, titled Confederate Engineer: Training and Campaigning with John Morris Wampler (University of Tennessee Press).