THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM
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TO DO RIGHT AND SERVE MY COUNTRY OFFICERS OF THE 14TH UNITED STATES COLORED INFANTRY RECONSIDERING A MARY BOYKIN CHESNUT LETTER | ‘MY REBEL CANTEEN’ VISCERAL TOTEMS OF A BRUTAL WAR
LETTER FROM THE CEO
CEO JOHN M. COSKI Editor PENELOPE M. CARRINGTON Magazine Design
BOARD OF DIRECTORS Edward L. Ayers Ph.D. J. Gordon Beittenmiller Claude P. Foster George C. Freeman III Bruce C. Gottwald Sr. David C. Gompert Monroe E. Harris Jr. D.D.S. Elizabeth Cabell Jennings Richard S. Johnson Donald E. King John L. Nau III Lewis F. Powell III Walter S. Robertson III O. Randolph Rollins Kenneth P. Ruscio Ph.D. Thomas A. Saunders III Leigh Luter Schell Daniel G. Stoddard Ruth Streeter W. Hildebrandt Surgner Mario M. White Elisabeth S. Wollan Ph.D. ACWM FOUNDATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS Donald E. King* President J. Gordon Beittenmiller* David C. Gompert* Walter S. Robertson III* Kenneth P. Ruscio Ph.D. * Jeffrey Wilt Elisabeth Muhlenfeld Wollan Ph.D. * *Also on Museum Board
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reetings from Richmond, Virginia.
I’m delighted to write this quarter’s message (my second) from an American Civil War Museum that is seeing very steady attendance, here at Tredegar, Appomattox and the White House. This is very encouraging and speaks both to people’s pent-up demand to be out and about and, we believe, a genuine and revived interest in the Civil War. While we continue to monitor the situation with Covid we remain cautiously optimistic for the rest of the summer and the autumn. As you will read in the rest of the magazine, we continue working on bringing our magnificent and unique collection to wider audiences. Chris Graham’s fascinating article fills in what we do not have space to convey about a canteen in our flagship exhibit that was used by both a Confederate and Union soldier and shows how it sheds light on the wider war. Similarly, John Coski explores the ironic histories of visually striking pikes that would seem more at home in the English than the American Civil War. Robert Hancock showcases a set of photographs of U.S. Colored Troop officers from the Museum’s John H. Motley Collection. Betsy Wollan’s article on Mary Chesnut revisits a letter in our collection as well as her own 46-year relationship with the Civil War’s most famous diarist.
and use them to educate students of all ages, we are also looking ahead. We are in the early stages of a strategic planning process that will map out our immediate future and enhance our national visibility and our ability to tell the story of the American Civil War to the broadest possible audience. In that vein we were delighted to be visited by the Governor of Virginia, the Honorable Ralph Northam (below) who toured our facility for the first time and heard how we have employed support from the Commonwealth of Virginia to educate new generations of Americans about the Civil War.
PHOTO BY PENELOPE M. CARRINGTON
ROB HAVERS, PH.D.
I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible here in Richmond or at our other sites in the coming months.
As we continue to care for our collections
Rob Havers CEO 2
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FOUNDATION UPDATE
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ear Friends,
In a few months, the American Civil War Museum will combine its priceless artifacts with stateof-the-art technology to bring to life dramatic Civil War stories in all their complexity. The 12-minute fast-paced presentation will use multiple screens and life-like floor-to-ceiling renditions of Civil War participants and events. The action, sound and visuals will surround viewers with an explosive introduction to the war and its legacies from multiple perspectives: Confederate, Union, African-American, military, civilian, women, and children. Live action filming began this summer. Two 30-feet wide and 14-feet-tall layered screens will create a near three-dimensional effect that will immerse the audience in the experience. The theater space will be suitable both for the immersive film and as a lecture/ presentation space for education and public programming. It will have 63 seats plus room for adaptive seating. Closed captioning across the top of the layered screens has been added for Americans with Disabilities Act compliance. Focus groups have been used to help refine the scriptand story boards. Hold your breath. It will be worth it. The Robins Experience Theater is set to open in early spring 2022. Special pre-opening screenings will be scheduled for
ACWM members and donors. Meanwhile, we have come through COVID with flying colors. Our award-winning new museum building at Tredegar is a stunning success. Its brilliant exhibition, A People’s Contest: Struggles for Nation and Freedom in Civil War America, has received national acclaim.Visitation is returning to pre-pandemic levels. Thanks to grants from the Commonwealth of Virginia, generous donations from foundations, board members and other donors, and prudent cost savings, the Museum was able to operate in the black. We are very grateful to Solid Light for designing, fabricating, and installing A People’s Contest, and for collaborating so well with us on the immersive film. We are also grateful to 3North for its beautiful architectural design, and to Whiting-Turner, the general contractor, for building the new museum on time and under budget. We look forward to seeing you at the Museum in the coming months.
Donald E. King Chair of the Foundation
PHOTO BY PENELOPE M. CARRINGTON
Tess Evans Joins Foundation Team as Manager of Institutional Giving The American Civil War Museum Foundation is pleased to welcome Ms. Tess Evans as our new Manager of Institutional Giving. She brings a wealth of experience in several facets of public history. Tess hails from Wichita, Kansas, moved as a teenager to Alabama and received a degree in history from the University of North Alabama. She began her career in public history with an internship at Alexandria Archeology and working summers at Colonial Williamsburg and the Jamestown/Yorktown Foundation. She remained in Virginia to earn her master’s in public history at James Madison University, then worked four years for the Town of Wytheville Department of Museums as the Public Programs/Digital History Specialist.
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CONTENTS
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SECOND LOOK RECONSIDERING A MARY BOYKIN CHESNUT LETTER
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‘MY REBEL CANTEEN’ THE STORY OF AN OBJECT & THE MEN WHO USED IT
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VISCERAL TOTEMS OF A BRUTAL WAR JOHN (AND JOE) BROWN PIKES
DEPARTMENTS 02 LETTER FROM THE CEO 03 FOUNDATION UPDATE
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Letter from the President
06 CALENDAR OF EVENTS 07 EDUCATION
In-Person Book Talks: Caroline Janney and Jonathan White
Virginia Declaration of Learning ‘Summit’
FEATURES 16 THE MOTLEY COLLECTION 17 TO DO RIGHT & SERVE MY COUNTRY
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Edward Munk collected images of white officers in the 14th United States Colored Infantry. He was captain of Company C. His image and the ones he collected are part of the John Motley collection.
30 2021 FALL READING 32 PRESERVES ON THE COVER: This medal of the Grand Army of the Republic (a Union veterans’ organization founded immediately after the war) is part of the extensive John H. Motley Collection (see. p. 16).
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CALENDAR OF EVENTS PROGRAMS ARE ONLINE AND IN-PERSON. Visit ACWM.ORG/EVENTS and then click on the specific event to sign up.
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HISTORY HAPPY HOUR (Virtual) September 13 @ 6:30 Emancipation Towns In the aftermath of the Civil War and Emancipation, newly freed men and women established homes and communities of their own. Some migrated west, but most stayed closer to lands and people they knew. Names like Westwood, Zion Town, Washington Park and Jackson Ward will ring familiar as Richmond neighborhoods begun by people starting with nothing but the determination to begin autonomous lives in a new, uncertain America. With Ana Edwards, ACWM BOOK TALK (Virtual) ACWM Appomattox September 28 @ 6:30 The Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army After Appomattox See page 7 for details. With Caroline Janney, Ph.D., University of Virginia
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HISTORY HAPPY HOUR (Virtual) October 11 @ 6:30 Ulysses S. Grant and Slavery During the time Grant lived at White Haven, his father-in-law’s St. Louis plantation, the Dent family owned upwards of thirty enslaved African Americans, and Grant, himself, owned one man. Grant’s later outspoken criticism of slavery has prompted debates among historians about his actual views. How did Grant’s life in St. Louis impact his relationship with slavery? 6
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With Nick Sacco, Park Ranger at Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site in St. Louis, Missouri. BOOK TALK (In-Person) ACWM Richmond October 19 @ 6:30 To Address you as my Friend: African Americans’ Letters to Abraham Lincoln See page 7 for details. With Jonathan White, Ph.D., Christopher Newport University BOOK TALK (Virtual) October 21 @ 6:30 Escape! The Story of the Confederacy’s Infamous Libby Prison and the Civil War’s Largest Jail Break Located in the heart of the Confederacy’s capital, the infamous Libby prison took on symbolic significance far beyond that of just a prison. It was also the site of a bold and daring prison break by a group of high-ranking Union officers. Delve into the event that captivated the nation, outraged the South, and sparked one of the largest manhunts in American history. With Robert Watson, Ph.D., Lynn University
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SPECIAL PROGRAM (In-Person) ACWM in partnership with the Black History Museum of Virginia November 4 @ 6:30 At the Crossroads: AfricanAmerican History and the Civil War The story of the Civil War cannot be told without exploring the agency, struggles, and accomplishments of African Americans. Join us for this conversation, highlighting the intersection of Black History and the Civil War and exploring how understanding the past can help inform and transform the present. With author, historian Lois Leveen, Ana Edwards, ACWM, and Mary Lauderdale, BHMVA
HISTORY HAPPY HOUR (Virtual) November 8 @ 6:30 The James W.D. Bland Story Neither the threat of being ousted from the lands of their former owners nor the intimidation of the Appomattox Ku Klux Klan would deter these pioneering former slaves from casting their votes. What were the obstacles they overcame and what was at stake? With Al Jones, local historian. BOOK TALK (In-Person) ACWM Richmond November 18 @ 6:30 Civil War Richmond: The Last Citadel Few American cities have experienced the trauma of war on the level that Richmond did as capital of the Confederacy. The city was transformed with the creation of a massive hospital system, military training camps, new industries, and shifting social roles for everyone, including women and African Americans. Discover the excitement, and eventually bitter disappointment, of Richmond at war. With Jack Trammel, Ph.D., Mount Saint Mary’s University
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HISTORY HAPPY HOUR (Virtual) December 13 @ 6:30 Petty Differences: Brother Against Brother in the Civil War Summerfield Petty mortified his family by remaining loyal to the United States and serving in the Union Army. Thomas Petty remained loyal to Virginia, fought for the Confederacy, and is buried in Arlington Cemetery. What can we learn by studying the saga of the Petty brothers? With John Coski, ACWM
IN-PERSON BOOK TALKS TO FEATURE UNC PRESS AUTHORS CAROLINE JANNEY AND JONATHAN WHITE B Y K E L LY H A N C O C K
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fter almost a year and a half of virtual programs, we are excited to begin holding a few in-person book talks. Our first, on September 28, at 6:30 p.m. will be held in Appomattox and will feature Caroline E. Janney,* John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War at the University of Virginia and director of the Nau Center for Civil War History. Janney’s latest book, Ends of War,The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox (University of North Carolina Press), debuts in late September, so
members and attendees will be among the first to hear Janney discuss her work and acquire a signed copy. Receiving praise from Ed Ayers, Joan Waugh, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author T.J. Stiles, Ends of War is a dramatic new history examining the weeks and months after Appomattox. According to Stiles, Janney tells “a rich, detailed, and heartrending story of how the Civil War did not end in Wilmer McLean’s parlor at Appomattox Court House. Through the lives of soldiers, politicians, and African Americans, she vividly recounts the months of chaos, violence, and defiance that followed Robert E. Lee’s surrender.” “It shows a period that imperiled Reconstruction before it began.”
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feature Jonathan White, associate professor of American studies at Christopher Newport University, and will be held in Richmond on October 19 at 6:30. White’s newest book, To Address you as My Friend: African Americans’ Letters to Abraham Lincoln (University of North Carolina Press, October 2021), is a compilation of more than 120 letters written to Lincoln. The letters of free and newly freed African Americans provide insight into the wartime experiences of Black soldiers and civilians, demonstrating their agency, struggles, and hopes. *After monitoring cases and much consideration that the ACWM decided to turn the Book Talk with Dr. Caroline Janney into a web program instead of an in-person event to ensure the health and safety of our community.
Kelly Hancock is the Museum’s Public Programs Manager.
ur second in-person program will
ACWM PARTICIPATES IN THE VIRGINIA DECLARATION OF LEARNING ‘SUMMIT’ B Y J O S E P H RO G E R S
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his summer the Museum helped launch the Summit for the Virginia Declaration of Learning (VDOL) teacher cohort. In partnership with other educational institutions around the state, the VDOL partners combined civic engagement with object-based learning.
understand the duties and responsibilities that accompany citizenship and the meaning of being good community members. This year-long initiative will culminate in a civic engagement project undertaken by the students for the benefit of their communities.
Partnering organizations selected 30 teachers from different regions in the Commonwealth. Each teacher selected five objects from the collections of the partner institutions to use throughout the school year. The objects will help their students
As the week-long summit kicked off, teachers were asked to share their thoughts. Of the summit in general, and the American Civil War Museum in particular, the teachers commented that they were engrossed in the material and eager to put what they
were learning into action: “Participating in the [teaching hard history] session, I felt connected with the content and other teachers and am going to use some takeaways with my students.” “I have been kind of bored with the same curriculum I have taught for 20 years. I change it up as much as I can by bringing in different voices and texts, but this has begun to light my fire again! Thank you.” Joseph Rogers is the Museum’s Education Programs Manager.
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Second look Reconsidering a Mary Boykin Chesnut Letter BY ELISABETH MUHLENFELD WO L L A N
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f the approximately 120,000 artifacts, documents, and photographs in the ACWM Collection, the one that has been most valuable to me personally is a letter written by Mary Boykin Chesnut to Varina Davis in 1883. It is among the many letters and papers donated to the Museum by the Davis Family.
trenchant observations of the events unfolding before her eyes.
As any student of the Civil War knows, Mary Boykin Chesnut (1823-1886) kept a diary during the Civil War, which she revised and expanded to become the finest first-hand account of life in the Confederacy. Daughter of U. S. congressman, governor, and senator from South Carolina Stephen Decatur Miller, Mary at age 17 married James Chesnut, Jr., the only surviving son of a large slaveholding family in South Carolina. Chesnut was the first U. S. senator to resign his position following Lincoln’s election, and Mary jotted down in a diary the first of her
Following Appomattox, the Chesnuts returned to South Carolina. There, Mary spent years revising her diaries of the war years but died before she had completed polishing them for publication. Nearly 20 years after her death, a severely truncated version was published as A Diary From Dixie, a title assigned by the Saturday Evening Post, which printed it in five installments in 1905. A second, longer edition, also heavily cut and “improved,” was published by Ben Ames Williams in 1949. Chesnut’s entire work was edited in 1981 by C.Vann Woodward under the title
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Throughout the next four years, MBC (as she abbreviated herself and I came to know her) was in an excellent position to observe the war. She was in Montgomery, Alabama, for the formation of the Provisional Confederate Congress. In Charleston she stood on a rooftop to watch the firing on Fort Sumter (the orders to fire having been given by her husband), and, in Richmond, she heard the strains of the Dead March following the first Battle of Manassas. Everywhere she went, her home served as a sort of salon for the elite of the Confederacy. The Chesnuts were close friends of the Davises, and when in Richmond, saw one another almost daily.
MARY BOYKIN CHESNUT AND JAMES CHESNUT, JR. (c. 1840)
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(Top photo) “Mulberry,” the country seat of the Chesnut family near Camden, South Carolina. (Above photo) Elisabeth Muhlenfeld Wollan with C. Vann Woodward (middle) and John Bonner at “Kamchatka,” Chesnut’s home in Camden, South Carolina, on “Mary Chesnut Day,” 1981. Both photos courtesy of Elisabeth Muhlenfeld Wollan.
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Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, winning Woodward (and, to my mind, Mary) the Pulitzer Prize. I first encountered Mary Boykin Chesnut in 1975, when I began doctoral study in the Southern Studies Program at the University of South Carolina, where Chesnut’s papers were housed. I was not there to study history but the literature of the American South, with an emphasis on editing and literary criticism. In my first semester, I encountered historian C.Vann Woodward, who had come to begin a full edition of the Chesnut diaries. I was privileged to lead the group transcribing the manuscripts and spent many hours talking with Dr. Woodward about the literary aspects of her book of the 1880s and how it compared with the original diaries of 1861-65. Since virtually no serious study had been done on Chesnut, I edited two of her manuscript novels for my dissertation and introduced them with a long biographical sketch, which soon became a book. Woodward drew on my work for the introductory matter in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War and wrote a generous forward to my Mary Boykin Chesnut: A Biography, published at the same time. Later we co-edited the original diaries under the title The Private Mary Chesnut. Early on, I discovered that the Museum of the Confederacy had a single Chesnut letter which turned out to be of enormous importance. Written in 1883, it contained four sentences that were scholarly gold. They verified my understanding of the process and timing of MBC’s revision of her diary and of what literary critics call the “author’s intention”: “How I wish you could read over my Journal — I have been two years over looking it – copying — leaving my self out. You must see it – before it goes to print but that may not be just now. I mean the printing for I must overhaul it again – and again.” This was proof positive that
MBC was in fact preparing her work for publication, had been “overhauling” it for two years (actually, her third attempt at a full-scale revision), and had more work to do. Chesnut’s original 1860s diaries had been kept under lock and key and shared with no one, not even her husband. By comparing them with the longer work, we know that “leaving myself out” meant leaving out what she regarded as too personal (including her own petty complaints), mundane or trivial, and focusing instead on the world around her. In fact, the 1883 letter contains a disquisition on Jane Welsh Carlyle, wife of Thomas Carlyle, which speaks to that very point: “She had two motions — the one around her Sun – or brilliant husband - is delightful – the harder she hits him – the better fun – but when she turns on her own axis – and thrusts her homely details under our noses by the quire – she is a bore.” My trip in 1976 to see that letter was my first visit to the Museum of the Confederacy and the White House of the Confederacy. In 1984, I delivered a lecture on “Mary Chesnut’s Portrait of Richmond” as part of the Museum’s annual Evening Series Lectures. Years later, I joined the board of the American Civil War Center and, following the merger with the MOC, the American Civil War Museum Board. One day last year, while I was serving a 14-month stint as interim President and CEO, historian John Coski brought me a copy of the Chesnut letter, and I read it again, some 45 years later. This time, the letter had more to teach me. Certainly, America has changed in the last half-century; our cultural values, our perspectives on history, and our memorial landscape have all evolved. We know more now about the Civil War and its aftermath than we did then. Since the mid-1970s, dozens of women’s Civil War diaries, memoirs, and collections of letters have been published in print or online. Scholars have studied women’s lives during
(Above photo) Portrait of Mary Boykin Chesnut by Samuel Stillman Osgood. Private Collection. T H E A M E R I C A N C I V I L WA R M U S E U M
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the war, the role of white and black women, slavery, and racism. Our understanding of the Lost Cause ideology – no secret to historians but only vaguely perceived by the general public – has been fleshed out and is reshaping what we know about Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era. Given the passage of time, I now saw Mary’s letter with fresh eyes and found new things on which to focus. It provides an intimate glimpse of Mary and her circle grappling with how to live with and remember the defeat and desolation they have experienced – and how to shape it. We can see in the world she inhabits the first undertones of the developing Lost Cause narrative. And we can also watch Mary Chesnut, as always, render her world vividly alive with exuberant flashes of wit and sober reflection. The letter is, for MBC, a quick one, dashed off before breakfast in the middle of a very busy time. She is expecting a houseful of guests to come for a week (“an avalanche of company is about to overwhelm us”). Old friends are arriving for the unveiling in two days’ time of a monument to the Confederate dead – one of the earliest of hundreds to be erected over the next century. Generals Wade Hampton and Milledge Luke Bonham, as well as Mary Preston Darby and Isabela Martin (two of the young women Mary had taken under her wing in Richmond and Columbia during the war years and both friends of Varina Davis) will be among the guests. Despite her “to do” list, a letter from Varina Davis that morning prompts an immediate answer. The two women had been friends since the late 1850s in Washington, D. C., and through the war years, the friendship had deepened. They had sat together at the Spotswood Hotel awaiting news of the Battle of Manassas and at the Davises’ mansion throughout the night of Stoneman’s Raid. The Chesnuts delayed their return to Columbia in 1864 because of the death of the Davises’ son in a fall from the piazza of the executive mansion. Mary describes sitting for hours in the Davises’ drawing room, listening to the president’s steps above her as he walked up and down through the night. Varina’s sister Maggie Howell visited Mary in Columbia for weeks in 1864, and in October she hosted Jefferson Davis, prompting a note from Varina: “Thank you a thousand times my dear friend for your more than maternal kindness to my dear child — as to Mr. Davis he thinks the best ham — the best Carte-de-visite of Wade Hampton published by Y. Day, Memphis, Tennessee. Cabinet card of Milledge Bonham (top). Both from the Museum collection. 1 2 FALL 2021
Madeira, the best coffee, the best hostess in the world, rendered Columbia delightful to him.” Varina ends her letter, “Do write as often
as you can…. tell me of yourself, of your enjoyments your cares — every thing. I cannot bear to think we shall grow further apart until you forget me.” At war’s end, Varina and her children fled South, stopping with the Chesnuts briefly in Chester. Now as Mary writes her letter, Varina has apparently promised a recent picture of her youngest child, 19-year-old Winnie, who will soon become known as the “Daughter of the Confederacy”: “My Pie Cake’s photo has not come yet – but I look for it anxiously. I remember her placid – sweet sad angel face – at Chester - when our hearts were wrung.” From the first, Mary Chesnut had been a stalwart Davis supporter, often outraged by the constant criticism of him. Now twenty years later, she begins with “Three cheers for Jeff Davis!! I am Davis straight out. I was. I am. And I always will be — heart and soul a good old confederate.” She refers to recent comments by Joseph Johnston as “blind spite” (“He suits the Yankees – so he prospers”). She notes that her nephew David Williams believes that if Lee were still alive, Jefferson Davis (left) and Varina Davis (above) as they appeared in the 1880s. Museum collection. T H E A M E R I C A N C I V I L WA R M U S E U M
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he would curb such calumny. Having learned of the death a month earlier of William “Constitution” Browne, another aide to Davis, Mary writes, “our military family in Richmond came up to us so vividly. And all that we were then — and are now.” Mary’s letter is scattered with glimpses of her dayto-day life: her library where she is “overhauling” her journals; her husband’s library with its “bay window filled with Confed trophys” and books, where he hopes to write his own memoirs; and the “Yankee named Dodge” who has bought the Hampton-Preston mansion in Columbia, site of many scenes in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War. She promises that “As soon as [my guests] go, I will give you a long letter -- and record the sayings and doings of your two best friends in the world: Mary Darby [and] Isabella.” She promises to record the chatter — the very technique she uses so effectively in her book. She closes her letter by creating a charming picture of a slumber party: Dearest – would you not like to drop in on Mary Darby, Isabella and me – about twelve or one at night – when we are in full blast? – we are to sleep in this same room – my house is so crowded I take them in my room on the first floor – away from the “madding crowd.”
Mary Chesnut as she appeared in the early 1880s. Museum collection.
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You do not know how glad I am to hear from you – and how I will parade it at the head of my table – with the So Ca FF’s [South Carolina First Families] to
the fore – “My friend – Mrs. Davis – who is by far the cleverest woman I know – says . . . Devotedly your friend and obedient servant MBC Although few letters survive, until she died in 1886, Mary Boykin Chesnut continued to correspond with Varina Davis. Following her husband James’s death in February 1885, Mary indicated in a letter to Varina that she hoped to organize and publish General Chesnut’s papers. On March 25, 1885, Varina replied, “I think your diaries would sell better than any Confederate history of a grave character. Between us no one is so tired of Confederate History as the Confederates — they do not want to tell the truth or to hear it.”
Mary was too ill to complete either project. But Chesnut’s book has long since taken its rightful place as the most famous first-hand account of Southern society during the Civil War. Thanks in part to this 1883 letter, its author is now coming to be understood not simply as one of dozens of women diarists and letter writers of the Civil War era but as one of the best of our 19th-century writers, period. Elisabeth Muhlenfeld Wollan is the author of Mary Boykin Chesnut: A Biography (1981) and co-editor with C. Vann Woodward of The Private Mary Chesnut: The Unpublished Civil War Diaries (1984). She is a founding member of the ACWM Board of Trustees and served as interim CEO in 2020.
Gallery Dedication Dr. Elisabeth Muhlenfeld Wollan
P H OT O B Y P E N E L O P E M . C A R I N G T O N
On June 17th, the American Civil War Museum dedicated a gallery of its flagship exhibit, A People’s Contest, in recognition of Dr. Elisabeth Muhlenfeld Wollan’s service as Interim CEO. Dr. Wollan and Board of Directors Chairman Dan Stoddard unveiled the recognition plaque.
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THE OTLEY COLLECTION
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onated to the Museum beginning in 2005-2006, the John Motley Collection is a rich source of documents, photographs, and objects relating to the African-American military experience from the American Revolution through Desert Storm – such as the photographs shown here of Black soldiers in World War I. Occasional articles in this magazine offer in-depth looks at facets of the collection that is still growing.
Examples of postcards from the Motley Collection showing (unidentified) U.S. soldiers in France during World War I. 1 6 FALL 2021
Edward Munk
Edward Safford
Daniel K. Hassler
To Do Right And Serve My Country
Jonathan Vallette
Eli McMillan
Officers of the 14th United States Colored Infantry BY ROBERT HANCOCK
Andrew Snyder
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ithin the John Motley Collection at The American Civil War Museum resides a selection of 22 Carte-de-Visite photographs assembled by Edward Munk of fellow officers who served in the 14th United States Colored Infantry.
George W. Boutwell
In May 1863, the U.S. War Department established the Bureau of Colored Troops to recruit African American soldiers, many of them formerly enslaved, to serve in the Union Army. The soldiers would be black, but they were to be led by white officers. Many bristled at the idea of armed black men serving in the army and held the stereotypical discriminatory view that they would either run amok or prove too lazy to be of any real use. The army and the public had to feel that they were at least led by competent (and white) officers. It
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would take trial by combat for such racial prejudices to even begin to break down. In the meantime, the newly formed USCT units needed officers. Maj. Gen. David Hunter, a career soldier, wanted to find company officers for the newly raised black regiments in “the most intelligent and energetic of our non-commissioned officers: men who will go into it with all their hearts.” Suddenly, an officer’s commission was available to those who stood little chance of finding promotion in the other volunteer forces of the U.S. Army. Men who sought an officer’s commission wrote for permission to appear before a board of examiners who tested the candidate’s military knowledge and moral character. Some men, strong abolitionists from the start, thought of being an officer in a black regiment as a way to put their beliefs into action in a most tangible way and so help uplift the black race. Others thought that if the raising of black regiments for service would shorten the war and put down the rebellion, it was their patriotic duty to serve. An officer from Ohio wrote: “It is not a popular branch of the service now, but what the difference, when I am conscious of doing right, and serving my country.” Moral and patriotic feelings aside, one cannot overlook the fact that, in most soldier’s eyes, being an officer was better than being an enlisted man; not the least of the attractions were higher pay and the privileges associated with rank. However, Col. Reuben D. Mussey, who organized black units in Tennessee (including the 14th), stated: “No person is wanted as an officer in a Colored Regiment who ‘feels that he is making a sacrifice in accepting a position in a Colored Regiment,’ or who desires the place simply for higher rank and pay.” All would-be officers were called before an examining board of four
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No person is wanted as an officer in a Colored Regiment who ‘feels that he is making a sacrifice in accepting a position in a Colored Regiment,’ or who desires the place simply for higher rank and pay.
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COL. REUBEN D. MUSSEY Organizer of black units in Tennessee, including the 14th USCT.
unsympathetic officers who grilled them on their knowledge of tactics, army regulations, mathematics, and geography. Col. Mussey, who established an ad hoc board in Nashville for candidates serving in that area, told his examiners: “Do not ask leading questions; do not seek to refresh the candidate’s memory; do not inform him whether his answer is correct; you are to examine, not to teach him.” He wanted to ensure that the applicant was applying for the position for the right reasons and had the foreknowledge to lead men in combat. “A few questions on important subjects,” stated Mussey, “will determine a man’s character as a military student, and show his fitness or unfitness for the position he seeks.” Col. Thomas Morgan organized the 14th United States Colored Infantry Regiment at Gallatin, Tennessee, in late 1863. In order to free up existing white regiments for service at the front, many black regiments, their combat effectiveness questioned by many in authority, were relegated to manual labor jobs behind the lines. However, Morgan did not wish to be nothing more than “an overseer for black laborers.” He knew the men under his command could fight, and he wanted to prove it. The 14th proved itself at Decatur, Alabama, in October 1864, where U.S. forces stopped the Confederates from crossing the Tennessee River there, and they received three cheers from white troops after the fight. The 14th would have a much tougher time of it later that year when they ran into the same Confederates at Nashville. On December 15, Morgan commanded the First Colored Brigade, composed of five USCT regiments, including the 14th. They, along with the Second Colored Brigade and a third brigade of white troops, were to attack the extreme right of the Confederate line. Faulty reconnaissance the previous night led to the U.S. forces marching against a much stronger position than had been thought. The Confederates saw them coming and
waited behind their fortifications. As one Confederate put it, the advancing battle line was composed of “white negroes and black negroes.” It was the first time that the Army of Tennessee “had ever met our former slaves in battle.” When within range, the Confederates opened fire with muskets and cannon. Facing such formidable defenses, the First Colored Brigade was engaged in a fight it could not hope to win, but the men of the 14th stood their ground, loading and
firing their rifle-muskets, until they were ordered to withdraw. The next day they supported another push that eventually drove the Confederates from the field.
the men — whatever their motivation might have been — who volunteered to become officers in the USCT, collected by one who had served with them.
At Nashville, Col. Morgan lost over 300 men. He later wrote: “Colored soldiers had fought side by side with white troops. They had mingled together in the charge. They had supported each other. They had assisted each other from the field when they were wounded, and they lay side by side in death.”
Robert Hancock is the Museum’s Senior Curator and Director of Collections. For further information on this topic he recommends Joseph T. Glatthaar’s Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers (1990), and James Lee McDonough’s Nashville: The Western Confderacy’s Final Gamble (2004).
Here are selected images of a few of
THE OFFICERS
BEHIND THE PHOTOS The officers whose CDVs appear here (beginning on page 17 and continuing on pages 20-21) are: Edward Munk, who collected these images of officers in the 14th United States Colored Infantry, was captain of Company C. He was formerly a 1st sergeant in the 105th Illinois Infantry before receiving his commission in the 14th. Munk survived the war, but in May 1864, he requested a furlough (Letter, right) to take the body of his brother, killed at Resaca, Georgia, home to his parents. Munk had already lost another brother earlier in the war. Edward Safford was the captain of Company F and had served first in Edward Munk’s unit, the 105th Illinois, as a corporal. He received a serious leg wound from a Minie ball at the fight around Decatur, Alabama, October 1864. After five months of hospitalization and convalescence, Safford was discharged from the service. Hailing from Wheaton, Illinois, Jonathan Vallette was 39 years old when he was appointed captain of Company D. Previously, he served as sergeant-major in the 105th Illinois Infantry. In January 1865,Vallette found himself supervising the making of wooden railroad ties. Exactly the sort of thing Col. Morgan did not want his men doing.
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Wallace Tear
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 19 In ‘65, he tendered his resignation to return home to his ailing wife, but the resignation was refused. He was involved in a minor court martial affair revolving around his refusal to sign the muster roll for his company as he considered it incorrect. Vallette’s objections were, apparently, the misspelling of two names and the enlistment dates of himself and Lt. Wheeler. Colonel Morgan considered Vallette’s conduct “un-officer-like.” And his refusal to sign disrespectful to both the colonel and the mustering officer. In the end, Col. Morgan decided that “[i]n view of all the circumstances, the good of my regiment would be promoted by this officer going out.” Vallette’s resignation from the army was accepted. Born in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, Daniel K. Hassler was a clerk before the war. It wasn’t until May 1865 that his pre-war occupation was acknowledged, and he was
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appointed adjutant of the regiment. He remained with the regiment until October 1865, having served in the army since August 1861, and then resigned to take care of his two sisters living in Ohio. Eli McMillan was promoted to 1st lieutenant of Company C after serving as a sergeant in the 79th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He tendered his resignation from the army a month after the fight at Nashville. Andrew Snyder started off as a lieutenant in Company B, then was quickly promoted to captain in charge of Company I. He was a sergeant in the 18th Michigan Infantry before joining the 14th USCT. George W. Boutwell, formerly a sergeant in the 105th Illinois Infantry, served as a lieutenant in the 14th USCT for only a short time before resigning his commission and returning home after the death of his father. Wallace Tear served as a lieutenant and regimental
quartermaster in the 14th. He was on detached service away from the regiment November and December 1864, so, luckily for him, he missed the battle at Nashville. Charles W. Oleson called Portland, Maine, home and served as an assistant surgeon in the 14th. He spent much of the spring in 1864 working in the field hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee, before rejoining the regiment. No doubt he was kept busy after the fight at Nashville. In May 1865, he resigned to pursue his medical studies “in order to appear before the examining board for the regular army.”
Alexander Recker
Orville A. Loomis was a 27-year-old first sergeant in the 12th Michigan Infantry before becoming a lieutenant in Company F of the 14th US Colored Infantry. Alexander Recker was a commissary sergeant in the regular army when he decided to apply for an officer’s commission. He served as a lieutenant in Company C of the 14th.
William Elgin
Charles W. Oleson
Orville A. Loomis
Henry Austin, a lieutenant in Company B, was only with the 14th for a short time before he received a medical discharge for a back injury sustained in a railroad accident.
Henry Austin
Samuel Curtis
James H. Meteer
Frederick Cressey
A former sergeant in the 70th Indiana Infantry, James H. Meteer commanded Company K and eventually became an inspector of the 1st Colored Brigade under Colonel Morgan. William Elgin interrupted his studies preparing for the gospel ministry to enter the army in 1862. According to Elgin, he was teaching six hours a day in addition to his other duties. He must have had some ministering to do after the sharp fight at Nashville. At the end of the war, he resigned from the army to continue his studies.
Colored Infantry. He was a teacher before enlisting in the army. Frederick Cressey was a student from Ohio when war broke out. He first served as a sergeant in the 113th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, then won his commission as captain, and was assigned to command Company G of the 14th U.S. Colored Infantry. Unlike most of his fellow officers, Cressey stayed with the regiment after the war and even applied to fill the vacancy left by Lt. Colonel Corbin. However, the board of examiners determined that Cressey “was not possessed of the necessary qualifications…either in knowledge of tactics education or general intelligence.”
Samuel Curtis was a lowly private in the15th Indiana Volunteers before receiving his commission as the captain of Company H in the 14th U.S.
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V ISCERAL TOT EMS OF
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f you were to take a tour of the Museum’s collections storage vault, you may find yourself staring into a long drawer packed with what look for all the world like Medieval pikes. “What are those doing here?” you might ask. If you are a knowledgeable student of the American Civil War, you could answer your own question.
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“Those must be some of those pikes that John Brown ordered for his raid on Harper’s Ferry!” Indeed, the Museum has in its collections three “John Brown pikes.” If your tour of the Museum also included the flagship exhibit, A People’s Contest, you would have seen three John Brown pikes on display in the pre-gallery case. If all the Museum’s John Brown pikes
PHOTO BY ROBERT HAN C OCK
BY J O H N M . C O S K I
At first blush, the “Joe Brown pike,” created to defend a slaveholding republic against invaders, seems like the literal and figurative antithesis of the “John Brown pike,” created to arm enslaved people in a rebellion against their enslavers. Nevertheless, the two pikes shared many similarities, not only in their general appearance, but also in their histories. Their atavistic appearance and symbolic connotations made them what historian Jason Phillips dubbed “visceral totems” that “foretold a brutal war of close combat and personal killings.” John Brown Pikes In 1857-1858, as he was touring New England to solicit funds and support, John Brown (revered or reviled as “Old
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are on display, what are those pikes in storage? They sure look like John Brown pikes – long wooden poles topped with iron double-edged blades, roughly a foot long. Deep in the recesses of your Civil War knowledge you might recall an odd factoid that Georgia Governor Joseph E. Brown commissioned pikes to arm his state troops early in the war. It certainly makes sense that a handful of those weapons would wind up in the collections of what was originally the Confederate Museum founded 25 years after the war.
John Brown pike bearing the stamped serial number 621. Lt. Robert Grattan, an officer in the 10th Virginia Infantry, took this pike from Harper’s Ferry a day after John Brown’s raid on that town.
blacksmith Charles Blair to forge 950 pikes for his continued battle against slavery in Kansas. The pike featured a fearsome looking double-edged blade modeled on a bowie knife captured from a pro-slavery soldier in the Kansas wars mounted on a six-foot shaft. Blair delayed work on the job until early 1859 when Brown showed up again with a final payment of $450. Unable to complete what had become a rush job, Blair sub-contracted the work to blacksmith Chauncey Hart of Unionville, Connecticut. The pikes were no longer needed in Kansas, but Brown had other plans for them. Along with a supply of firearms, the pikes arrived at Brown’s staging area across the Potomac River from Harper’s Ferry,Virginia. Brown’s October 1859 attack on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry failed. Few slaves rallied to Brown’s cadre of abolitionist crusaders, and most of the weapons Brown had stockpiled went unused – including all of the 950 pikes.
JOHN BROWN Carte-de-visite from the Museum collection
Osawatomie” for his revenge killings of pro-slavery men in of pro-slavery men in Kansas) asked Collinsville, Connecticut,
Useless (or, at least, unused) as a weapon for a slave uprising, the pikes became extremely effective weapons for propaganda against northern abolitionists – most famously in the hands of Virginia agronomist and southern nationalist “fire-eater” Edmund Ruffin. On the day of John Brown’s execution, December 2, 1859, Ruffin exhibited one of the pikes with the label “Sample of the favors designed for us by our Northern Brethren.” With obvious satisfaction, Ruffin wrote in his diary that the display “attracted much attention. I hope it will produce some effect.” He later arranged to send a pike to thirteen slaveholding state governors to remind them of the dangers they faced from radical abolitionists. Ruffin portrayed the pikes as “spears,” an image calculated to exploit slaveholders’ fear of “barbaric” Africans rising against them. Befitting a double-edged weapon, the “primitive” quality
(Facing page photos) A side-by-side comparison of a John Brown pike (far left) characterized by its cross guard, and a Joe Brown pike (right) with a cylindrical ferrule and a longer, spear-point blade. T H E A M E R I C A N C I V I L WA R M U S E U M
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EDMUND RUFFIN in 1861, Carte-de-visite from the Museum collection
armed with pikes rushing “with terrible impetuosity into the lines of the enemy.” “I already have a considerable number of these pikes and knives,” he wrote, and appealed to the mechanics to produce another 10,000 within the next month. The Georgia chief of ordnance reported in December 1862 that he had received 7,099 pikes, 5,870 of which were at the state arsenal, and 1,229 had been issued to the Confederate quartermasters in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Augusta, Georgia. Having successfully acquired that large stock of pikes (and of knives), Brown was compelled to inform the Georgia General Assembly that the investment in pikes may have been pointless. “By the mercy of a kind Providence, and the valor of our troops, we have since procured a much better supply of firearms, “he wrote in December 1862, “and but little use has been made of the pike.” The governor covered his bureaucratic flank by dropping the name of his favorite adversary, President Jefferson Davis. “The of the pikes cut two ways. Historian Jason Phillips explained that the historically minded John Brown regarded pikes as weapons that the masses of Europeans wielded to overthrow the aristocracy. Their symbolic value, as well as their ease of use, made them appropriate for the Harper’s Ferry raid. By the beginning of the civil war that John Brown predicted and helped precipitate, more than half of his pikes were souvenirs in private hands. Joe Brown Pikes Less than a year after America’s cataclysmic civil war began, another man named Brown had contracted for a large order of pikes to help fight that war. “The late reverses which have attended our arms, show the absolute necessity of renewed energy and determination on our part,” wrote Governor Joseph Emerson Brown to the “Mechanics of Georgia” on February 20, 1862. Citing matter-of-factly the North’s “superior numbers” and the “quantity and quality of their arms,” Brown asked rhetorically, “What is to be done in this emergency?” His answer: “Use the ‘Georgia Pike’ with a six feet staff, and the side knife eighteen inches blade, weighing about three pounds.” Brown then imagined a scenario in which brave Georgia men Governor Joseph E. Brown after the Civil War. Photographic print from the Museum collection. 2 4 FALL 2021
Charles Gray Vield of Salisbury, North Carolina, donated two “spears” to the Museum in 1897 after seeing an article about them in Confederate Veteran magazine (shown below right). “I have it now from good authority that they were used to arm a regiment from Georgia and are known as the ‘Joe Brown Pikes’,” he wrote. With its cross guard and slightly swelling blade,Vield’s “spear” differs from other Joe Brown pikes in the collection. Two of the pikes shown in the illustration – and one in the Museum’s collection – featured a second point (sometimes called a “bridle cutter”).
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fact that President Davis, at a time when other arms were scarce, accepted pikes and knives from Georgia, showed his appreciation of them as a military weapon.” And just because Georgia troops hadn’t used them yet didn’t mean that they were useless. Brown reminded the Assembly that the Spanish routed Napoleon’s troops with pikes in 1808-1809. If others could, “why may not the gallant sons of Georgia take them in hand and strike for their homes and their liberties, when no better weapon is at their command?” Joseph Brown, unconsciously echoing John Brown, portrayed
the pike as the weapon of the brave but poorly armed underdog fighting for his liberties against an oppressor. Confronting the numerical and material superiority of the North, white southerners were in the position of European peasants fighting against the aristocracy – and in a position analogous to enslaved African-Americans rising against their white southern owners. The parallel between his pikes and those of “Old Osawatomie” must have come to Joseph Brown’s mind when he made one final argument for the utility of the state’s 7,099 pikes: “In case of servile insurrection,” he wrote, “as the insurgents would not probably have firearms, our militia might make the pike and knife a most destructive weapon.” There is no credible evidence that Joe Brown pikes were ever
“Joe Brown’s Pikes” from Confederate Veteran magazine, August 1896
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used – whether against enslaved people or against “Yankees” – any more than John Brown pikes were used by enslaved people against slaveowners. Occasional columns published in newspapers hinted that the Georgia Militia may have used pikes during the November 1864 skirmish at Griswoldville, Georgia. This claim probably traced back to a widely syndicated 1890 Three nearly identical Joe Brown pikes in the Museum’s collection.
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newspaper report about a “popular druggist” named Dr. Hall who owned a “rusty old relic of the late war” that he had found near the Griswoldville battlefield. The reporter noted matter-of-factly that the pikes “were used by the [C]onfederates at the beginning and some of the troops through the late war.” Another article, widely syndicated from the New York Evening World in 1890, described a pike in the collection of the Georgia Historical Society. “A lot of these pikes were sent to Savannah to be used in the defense of Fort Pulaski,” the article concluded. “They were never used, however, but they might have been – and had the boys in blue seen them glistening in the starlight, they would have prayed heaven to defend them from primitive implements of warfare.”
more confidence in the boys than they had in the pikes, for the Georgia soldiers refused to use them except ‘to go for gophers’,” wrote one soldier in Confederate Veteran magazine in 1913. “Some of the soldiers shed tears and others laughed heartily when these unique implements of feudal warfare were presented to them, but they soon laid them aside.” A Yorkville, South Carolina, newspaper declared “laughable” stories heard around the United Confederate Veterans 1915 reunion about “the famous old ‘Joe Brown pikes,’ so dreaded by the Union soldiers, with which the southerners fought hand to hand when the ammunition gave out.” The state of Georgia reportedly sold many or most of the pikes in 1869. Like the John Brown pikes, they had a long after-life as souvenirs, many of which have been donated to
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An Athens, Georgia, newspaper ran a story in 1884 noting that ‘It has been charged, gravely by some, flippantly by many, that there was no man killed or wounded during the war by the Joe Brown pike. A man can be produced, living in Atlanta, who carries an empty sleeve on account of one of the said pikes.” That man, Richard Yancey, lost his arm while making a pike. The writer wondered aloud – and, yes, rather flippantly – whether Yancey would qualify for a pension under the recent state law. Unlike John Brown pikes, which carried a terrifying association with slave insurrection and retained a deadly serious connotation, the Joe Brown pikes became a source of levity. They were ambidextrous curios whose double-edged blade was as useful for poking fun at Confederates as fighting against well-armed “Yankees.” “Georgia’s enterprising Governor no doubt had
(Above photo) To the pikes that Charles Vield donated (see previous pages), the Museum attached a label that reads: “The JOE BROWN PIKE’ / WAS ORDERED MADE IN AN OFFICIAL CALL / FEBRUARY 20th, 1862 / BY / JOSEPH E. BROWN / GOVERNOR OF GEORGIA / 1857-1865”
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collections such as those of the American Civil War Museum. John M. Coski is the Museum’s Research Historian.This article draws from multiple sources, including Jason Phillips’ article on John Brown Pikes in Joan E. Cashin, ed., War Matters: Material Culture in the Civil War (2018) and Tony Horwitz, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War (2011), which are available from the Museum Store (see pages 30-31); The Confederate Records of the State of Georgia,Volume II (1909); digitized newspaper articles found on the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America data base, and the Museum’s object accession files. John Brown and Joe Brown pikes reside in many public collections and have been the subjects of several excellent on-line articles by Dr. R. Blakeslee Gilpin.
notice A appeared in a 1909
“A People’s Contest: Struggles for Nation and Freedom in Civil War America,” the Museum’s flagship exhibit at its Tredegar Iron Works site, features more than 500 artifacts, most from its own rich collections. Exhibit labels and even supplemental digital media don’t allow sufficient space to relate all the stories the artifacts tell or to explore the historically significant themes that the artifacts and their histories illuminate. This is the first in a series of articles offering deeper histories of selected artifacts on display in “A People’s Contest.”
issue of the Union veteran’s newspaper, The National Tribune: “Comrade C.K. Leach, Cambridge, Vt., has a Confederate canteen on which is the name of C. Palfrey, C.S.A. on one side; on the other side a Confederate flag. He will be pleased to hear from Palfrey or his relatives.” Amazingly, Charles Palfrey of New Orleans knew the answer. It was his.
This connection, made 44 years after the close of the war, capped a remarkable career for this canteen that not only witnessed so much, but also whose owners themselves witnessed so many momentous events in the Civil War era. We don’t know exactly how Palfrey acquired the canteen (finding or capturing and using enemy equipage was a common occurrence during the American Civil
"my rebel canteen" THE STORY OF AN OBJECT AND THE MEN WHO USED IT B Y C H R I S TO P H E R G R A H A M
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War), but we have learned much about the canteen, its onetime owner, and its one-time captor. Charles Palfrey served in a Louisiana Confederate command and the object – although it was used by a Confederate – is a United States Army 1858 model oblate spheroid canteen. Confederate arsenals did not make this type of canteens, but because they were of the highest quality – much more so than leaky Confederate versions – they were among the most sought-after items captured on Civil War battlefields.
“Our Co was deployed as skirmishers in front & pushed on up to their earth works where we came in sight of the rebs artillery but they soon hauled off on a double quick.” CHESTER LEACH Letter to his wife
Palfrey, a young cashier at the New Orleans branch of the Bank of Louisiana, first enlisted in Company B of the 1st Louisiana Battalion (Rightor’s) on April 15, 1861. He accompanied this command to Pensacola, Florida, and then to the Virginia Peninsula, where they remained until May 1862. Palfrey served as the Battalion’s quartermaster sergeant. The 1st Battalion – a 12- month command – disbanded on May 1, 1861, coincidently the same day that New Orleans surrendered to the United States Navy. Palfrey returned to his home city at some point and was sick in the hospital when captured on June 17, but he was soon paroled. His whereabouts between that summer and the following spring are unknown, but he responded to a recruiting party from the Washington Artillery of New Orleans – a prestigious command in the Army of Northern Virginia in which Palfrey’s
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brother served as an officer – and arrived in camp near Fredericksburg in late April 1863. Within a week, Palfrey and the Washington Artillery unlimbered for action at the “Second Battle of Fredericksburg” (a segment of the larger Chancellorsville Campaign). He later wrote that “[I] took off my blanket, haversack, cartridge bag and my canteen and laid them on the ground by the side of the gun.” In just moments, Palfrey and his crew fled before the onslaught of the United States’ 6th Army Corps.
Driving the Washington Artillery from their positions was a brigade that included the 2nd Vermont Infantry, with a company commanded by Chester Leach. After the fight, the young officer – who at home in the Green Mountain State had been a married farmer – penned a lengthy letter to his wife describing the combat between his regiment and Palfrey’s battery. “Our Co was deployed as skirmishers in front & pushed on up to their earth works where we came in sight of the rebs artillery but they soon hauled off on a double quick.” He named the two men – Monroe Bingham and H. Maxfield – who had been wounded “by shells before we came to the heights.” In a subsequent letter, dated May 10, 1863, he wrote that “I lost nothing in the late move but have got a number of little notions which belonged to the rebels. One is a canteen & a nice one, the mans [sic] name worked on one side & a rebel flag on the other. I shall carry it home if ever I go home. I also got a good pair of socks out of one of their knapsacks. I foraged a little on purpose to see what I could find.”
Leach, Palfrey, and the canteen remained in relatively close proximity to one another for the next three months. Both men marched north toward Gettysburg, where the Washington Artillery again lobbed artillery shells at the enemy. One of them – Leach’s cousin Julius Spafford later claimed – shattered his rifle stock. If Palfrey lamented the loss of his customized canteen, or if he imagined that it might be present across the lines in a baggage wagon or on the body of the man who captured it, is unknown. After Gettysburg, Leach’s regiment was in the vanguard of the pursuit of the Army of Northern Virginia back across the Potomac. At that point, Palfrey moved further and further from his canteen. Upon arriving back in Orange Courthouse, the artilleryman broke his femur and was sent to a hospital in Richmond. As Palfrey crossed the Potomac, Leach witnessed the destruction that Confederate soldiers had left in their wake. At a barn near Williamsport, Maryland, he observed a young Black man whom Confederate soldiers had tortured and grievously mutilated – still alive though evidently near death. “I understood the reason of the act,” Leach reported, “because he would not go over the river with them.” Near the same time, in a letter dated July 9, 1863, from Boonsboro, Maryland, Leach noted “I sent my rebel canteen by [cousin] Julius Safford [of the 13th Vermont], I did not give it to him myself for I did not think of it when I saw him but sent it to him by another & if he got it I guess he will get it home safe & you can get it there.” He could rest assured. Safford successfully carried it home to Vermont.
Vermont State Militia. He continued to farm, eventually becoming a prosperous dairy and maple syrup farmer, and served in a variety of local government positions, including that of Vermont state senator in 1878. We do not know how the war ended for Palfrey, but we do know that he continued the fight through Reconstruction. Palfrey, according to a history published in 1914, was an enrolled member of the White League (“Pleasants Co. E”), a paramilitary organization explicitly devoted to removing Republicans from state government and intimidating Black people. It was not a secret organization and did not hesitate to precipitate murders and massacres to achieve its goals. Palfrey was present when the White League attempted a coup against the Republican administration of Louisiana at the “Battle of Liberty Place” in New Orleans on September 14, 1874. Thereafter, he resumed work as a banker, serving as the cashier for the Hibernia National Bank in his hometown. When the notice that Chester Leach had placed in The National Tribune came to his attention, he asked that “if Mr. Leach is willing to return to me my canteen, I shall feel much obliged.” Julius Safford replied to Palfrey, noting that Leach was rather ill and infirm, but that he would return the canteen. Leach died shortly after the canteen arrived in New Orleans. Palfrey held onto it for a short time before turning it over to the Ladies Confederate Memorial Association of New Orleans, who in turn donated it to Richmond’s Confederate Museum in 1912. Palfrey died in 1923.
The canteen can now be seen on exhibit in the American Civil Wartime image of Chester Leach from War Museum’s exhibit, A People’s Vermontcivilwar.org Contest, where it still bears Palfrey’s broken leg had healed much shorter than his good witness to the momentous history that its owner and leg, thus making continued service in the field impossible. captor both witnessed. The War Department detailed him to work as a clerk in Christopher Graham is the Museum’s Curator of Exhibitions. For the Engineer Bureau Hospital in Richmond, the hospital this article he used Chester Leach’s wartime letters published as that treated the enslaved people whom the Confederate “Dear Wife”: the Civil War Letters of Chester K. Leach, government had forced to work digging the entrenchments compiled by Edward J. Fiedner (2002).The military records of both that circled Richmond. men are drawn from the Compiled Service Records available on At the expiration of his term, Leach was discharged on June 20, Fold3.com, and other biographical information has been gleaned 1864. He returned to Vermont and served as an officer in the from Newspapers.com and Ancestry.com
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by John Reeves tells the riveting story of a perilous time when the future of the United States depended on the Union Army’s success in a desolate forest roughly sixty-five miles from the nation’s capital. HARDCOVER, ITEM #154260 $28.95; MEMBERS $26.05
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THE BETTER ANGELS: FIVE WOMEN WHO CHANGED CIVIL WAR AMERICA by Robert C. Plumb is a
collective biography of Harriet Tubman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Clara Barton, Julia Ward Howe, and Sarah Josepha Hale, whose backgrounds ranged from abject enslavement to New York City’s elite. HARDCOVER, Item #154281 $32.95; MEMBERS $29.65
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SHOP
COPPER POT AND
WOODEN SPOON Copper Pot and Wooden Spoon’s preserves and pickles are produced with care by a brother and sister team, in Waynesville, NC. Their love of good food and appreciation of the local farm community inspires them. Shop these jams, jellies and Dill Pickel Chips Garlic (above) in-store and online at ACWM.ORG. $12.75; Members $11.47
Peach ‘Shine MOONSHINE & VANILLA BEAN Jam Item #154013
3 2 FALL 2021
PHOTOS BY COPPER POT AND WOODEN SPOON
Red Grape Muscadine Jelly Item #154254
HONEY CITRUS MARMALADE Item #154058
Strawberry Jalapeno Jam Item #154057