America's Civil War March 2022

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Grierson was promoted from colonel to brigadier general one month after his legendary raid.

Behind Enemy Lines MARCH 2022 HISTORYNET.COM

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Benjamin Grierson led a devastating raid through hostile Mississippi 12/13/21 8:52 AM

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING HOLLYWOOD ACTORS NEVER PORTRAYED WILLIAM F. “BUFFALO BILL” CODY ONSCREEN? Charlton Heston, Paul Newman, Keith Carradine, or Lee J. Cobb?

For more, visit WWW.HISTORYNET.COM/ MAGAZINES/QUIZ

HISTORYNET.com ANSWER: LEE J. COBB. 1953’S PONY EXPRESS FEATURED CHARLTON HESTON AS CODY. IN 1976 PAUL NEWMAN STARRED AS CODY IN ROBERT ALTMAN’S BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS, OR SITTING BULL’S HISTORY LESSON. IN 1995 KEITH CARRADINE PORTRAYED CODY IN WILD BILL, A CAREER LOW POINT FOR LEGENDARY DIRECTOR WALTER HILL.

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Eyewitness to Carnage

Green Union officer braves the Confederates’ first-day onslaught at Shiloh Edited by Steven Magnusen

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CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; HARPER’S WEEKLY; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS; NICHOLAS PICERNO COLLECTION; COVER: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)/PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: BRIAN WALKER

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Departments 6 LETTERS Family ties: a 12th Georgia memory 8 GRAPESHOT! Saving Sherman’s life; the coffee grinder carbine 12 LIFE & LIMB For surgeons and wounded soldiers alike, anesthesia was a godsend 16 DIFFERENCE MAKERS Pitiful breach spurs a bushwhacker to the Confederate cause 20 FROM THE CROSSROADS J.E.B. Stuart and an enduring Gettysburg myth 54 TRAILSIDE Union stronghold on the contested shores of Southern Maryland 58 5 QUESTIONS Susan Trail, Antietam National Battlefield superintendent 60 REVIEWS The Army of Northern Virginia’s long journey home 64 FINAL BIVOUAC Restless three-war standout

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‘Deep Cut Into Dixie’ Exclusive account of the 7th Illinois Cavalry’s destructive detour during Grierson’s Raid

By Richard H. Holloway

30 A Fierce Bark and a Steady Growl Major, one Maine regiment’s loyal mascot, never shied away from the fighting

By Nicholas Picerno ON THE COVER: KICKED IN THE HEAD BY ONE AS A CHILD, COLONEL BENJAMIN GRIERSON WASN’T EXACTLY FOND OF HORSES. YET THE ANTEBELLUM PIANO TEACHER AND BAND LEADER MADE HIS MARK IN THE UNION ARMY AS A CAVALRY COMMANDER AND CONTINUED IN THAT ROLE ON THE FRONTIER WELL AFTER THE WAR.

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Macabre Trophies

The corpses of several eminent generals were shamelessly looted

By John Banks

MARCH 2022

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Michael A. Reinstein Chairman & Publisher David Steinhafel Publisher Alex Neill Editor in Chief C E L E B R A T I N G 35 Y E A R S

Vol. 35, No. 1 March 2022

HISTORYNET.com/ AMERICAS-CIVIL-WAR

CHURCH IN THE MAELSTROM

A historian’s reflection on the violence of the war’s first major battle. https://bit.ly/ChurchInMaelstrom

TRAGIC FATES

The bizarre and unusual deaths of 10 Civil War generals. https://bit.ly/TenDeaths

MAJESTIC MOUNTS

Through fire and fury, fighting men formed special bonds with their war horses. https://bit.ly/MajesticMounts

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LETTERS

From the Heart I recently bought your magazine and read an article titled “Crossing the Rubicon” by Robert Lee Hodge. In it, Confederate Private Alexander Hunter picks up a love letter found on the body of a killed Union soldier after the Second Battle of Manassas. It reminded me of what I wrote in my book, Captains at Rest (Indigo Custom Publishing, 2008). In it is a conversation Captain Brown of Company F, 12th Georgia, carries on just prior to the Battle of Chantilly, in which Captain Brown instructs his son not to carry him home should he [be] killed in the battle that day. The captain’s instruction to his son were: “Bury me on the battlefield and [do] not carry me home.”

Surely, the captain is killed in the battle and the son buries him on the battlefield. The captain’s remains have not been found to this day. I felt goosebumps when I read the article in your magazine.

L. Harris Churchwell Perry, Ga.

Rich History

Your November 2021 issue had several items of interest to history-minded folk like us on the southside of the lower James River.

The dramatic image of 54th Massachusetts Sergeant William Harvey Carney on the front cover reminds us that his statue tops the 1906 West Point Monument—aka the “Carney” monu-

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My husband, Luther H. Churchwell, resides in a nursing home in Perry, Georgia. I am able to visit him twice a week. When I saw him last Wednesday, he was very pleased to share your article with me.

He asked me to mail a letter he has written to you. His great-grandfather served with the 12th Georgia Infantry and he dedicated his first book, Captains at Rest, to him. [Churchwell is author of another book about the 12th Georgia, Seeking Glory.]

Luther is now 82 and of good mind, but he must remain in the nursing home due to health issues. He has enjoyed reading your magazine whenever I can find a copy on a newsstand.

Judith K. Churchwell

ment—in Norfolk’s Elmwood Cemetery.

There are 58 Black Union soldiers and sailors interred here, and it is our understanding that it is the only such memorial to African American Civil War veterans in the entire South. Sergeant Carney lived in Norfolk before the war, apparently as a slave, until he made his way north via the Underground Railway and eventually joined

the 54th Massachusetts Infantry.

The monument is also important to me at a personal level, as I donated the four cannonballs that now adorn the base of the monument—replacements for the originals that had disappeared many years ago.

Also evocative was this issue’s “Final Bivouac” article about Edward Augustus Wild, who is somewhat well-known

Proud Banner Flag of the 12th Georgia, which served in Maj. Gen. Richard Ewell’s Division in 1862 battles at Second Manassas, Chantilly, and Antietam.

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OPPOSITE PAGE: 12TH GEORGIA REGIMENT INFANTRY FLAG, 1861, THE COLUMBUS MUSEUM, GEORGIA: GIFT OF THE MUSCOGEE COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT G.2005.22.1; THIS PAGE: COURTESY OF ALLAN P. VAUGHAN; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)

Below is a touching pair of letters we received from a Georgia-based husband and wife regarding the feature article “Crossing the Rubicon,” which ran in our September 2021 issue (P. 30).

LETTERS

OPPOSITE PAGE: 12TH GEORGIA REGIMENT INFANTRY FLAG, 1861, THE COLUMBUS MUSEUM, GEORGIA: GIFT OF THE MUSCOGEE COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT G.2005.22.1; THIS PAGE: COURTESY OF ALLAN P. VAUGHAN; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)

Part of the Family Gravesite marker dedicated to Union Maj. Gen. Charles Loring’s war horses and his granddaughter’s family pet.

around here. On September 1, 1864, Wild reported a failed Federal rescue mission of his into the port town of Smithfield by “contrabands” from Fort Monroe. He apparently assigned Union Captain Whitehead and 15 “dismounted cavalry” to escort a number of freed Blacks up the Pagan River to try to bring back their families. On their way out, local inhabitants and “irregulars” intercepted the boats, fired on them, and prevented the mission from being accomplished.

Albert P. Burckard Jr. Carrollton, Va.

War Steeds Regarding the “Majestic Mounts” article by John Banks in your September 2021 issue, looking at Civil War soldiers and their beloved war horses, I thought you might be interested in the above memorial in Prides Crossing, Mass.

Major General Charles Greely Loring was one of my ancestors. He served

Leather Fixture The photo of Robert H. Milroy in your January 2022 issue (“Branded,” P.31) shows some sort of pouch at the beltline with attached loops. I am curious as to what these were used for.

Ron Jacobs Pleasantville, Pa. with Ambrose Burnside and the Union 9th Corps for most of the war. When he was a lieutenant colonel, he received praise for his conduct at Petersburg during the Battle of the Crater on July 30, 1864. He was observed “exploring the ground upon which the troops were to enter [the Union-built mine], and walking about in the rain of bullets as if totally unconscious of them.” A Confederate commander purportedly declared an eventual cease fire, saying “it was a shame to kill so brave a man.”

Loring was breveted a Major General of Volunteers in July 1865. It was the third brevet he received during the war.

Allan P. Vaughan Prides Crossing, Mass.

Editor’s Reply: That actually is not a pouch but what is known as a “uniform protector.” It’s a semi-circle of leather that protects the uniform when the sword is hung from the hook on the belt.

Officers usually hooked their swords for ease while walking, and swords only hung at the full extent of the straps when the officer was mounted. Because Milroy’s uniform protector is shown bent in this photo, it looks like a pouch.

They were designed to lie flat.

WRITE TO US Send letters to America’s Civil War, Letters Editor, Historynet, 901 North Glebe Road, 5th Floor, Arlington, VA 22203, or e-mail acwletters@ historynet.com. Letters may be edited.

MARCH 2022

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GRAPESHOT!

A Blast of Civil War Stories

EXTRA ROUND

Saving Sherman

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RICHARD H. HOLLOWAY COLLECTION; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

he will be lying to you,” Satanta said. “I led it myself.” U.S. After the Civil War, Benjamin Grierson [see our cover Army control of the Kiowas, he added, was “played out.... story, P.22] was commissioned a colonel in the U.S. Army There is never to be any more Kiowa Indians arrested.” and assigned command of the 10th U.S. Cavalry, one of two After Sherman ordered Satanta, Big Tree, and Satank mounted regiments composed of Black enlisted men and arrested, Satanta threw off his blanket and grabbed for a White officers—the famed Buffalo Soldiers. In May 1871, pistol. The other chiefs also drew weapons, but Grierson’s Grierson was in command of Fort Sill in Indian Territory, troopers immediately reacted, aiming their guns at the when he had a remarkable encounter with William T. SherIndians. Satanta cried, “Don’t shoot!” Another Kiowa, man, one that would save the renowned general’s life.

Stumbling Bear, shot an arrow at Sherman, but had his As commanding general of the U.S. Army, Sherman had aim thrown off when another Indian struck his arm at the come west to investigate raids on White settlements by Kilast second. As Sherman moved to avoid the arrow, Lone owa and Comanche Indians. On May 27, Chiefs Satanta, Wolf aimed his rifle directly at Sherman. Grierson jumped Big Tree, Satank, and Lone Wolf rode into Fort Sill to conupon Lone Wolf, knocking him to the fer with the irate Sherman while also ground and saving Sherman from cerdrawing rations of sugar, coffee, and Men of War tain death. Sherman had once called beef. Satanta complained about Army Grierson (left) and Sherman, Grierson “one of the most willing, armistreatment of his tribe and admitted postwar. This photo of Grierson dent and dashing cavalry officers I ever that he had personally led the most rewas taken after his April 1890 had.” Surely, he appreciated Grierson’s cent raid on Lone Star teamsters near promotion to brigadier general gallant efforts at Fort Sill that fateful Jacksboro, Texas. “If any other Indian in the Regular Army. day in May 1871. —M.A.W. claims the honor of leading that party,

USAHEC; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

QUICK-THINKING GRIERSON HELPS “CUMP” DODGE CERTAIN DEATH

Thomas Crittenden

QUIZ

Brother vs.

Brother— Literally Match the brother to his unit—and the side for which he fought.

Given Rein to Fire

RICHARD H. HOLLOWAY COLLECTION; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

USAHEC; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Weapons of war usually get the majority of attention. And why not? They are the main tools that help win conflicts. But what about the accessories—items vital for the proper use of those weapons? The cavalry carbine sling swivel was an example of one such little-known accessory.

Comprising a buckle, swivel, and clip attached to a long strap of leather, the sling swivel was essential for cavalrymen in battle. The strap would be strung over the trooper’s head and rest on his left shoulder, buckled behind his back; the swivel and clip would lie on the right side of the soldier’s body. The carbine was then attached to the clip by a ring opposite the lock mechanism and hung down along the rider’s right leg while he was in action. Troopers could thus grasp both reins and not worry about the weapon falling out of reach. It also let them easily turn and fire in any direction.

The example above, minus the carbine clip and strap, is an original excavated from the 7th Illinois Cavalry’s camp in LaGrange, Tenn., and would have been attached to the new Cosmopolitan carbines the troopers were issued before Grierson’s Raid.

Created in 1839, the device was used by the U.S. Army until 1885. Southern troopers at first carried sling swivels captured from Federal arsenals, but they were later reproduced at Confederate facilities. —Richard H. Holloway

A. Major William Goldsborough B. Surgeon Charles Goldsborough C. Brig. Gen. George B. Crittenden D. Maj. Gen. Thomas L. Crittenden E. Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Drayton F. Lieutenant Percival Drayton G. Private John V. Barnhart H. Private Thomas H. Barnhart I. Captain George W. Terrill J. 1st Lt. Robert Q. Terrill 1. 24th Missouri Infantry (USA) 2. 1st Maryland Infantry (CSA) 3. 11th Regt., Kentucky Volunteer

Infantry (USA)

4. Port Royal Military District (CSA) 5. 1st Maryland Infantry (USA) 6. 3rd Brigade, Missouri State Guard

(CSA)

7. 1st Division, 9th Corps, Army of the

Potomac (USA)

8. 5th Kentucky Cavalry (CSA) 9. Gunboat Pocahontas (U.S. Navy) 10. District of East Tennessee (CSA) Answers: A.2, B.5, C.10, D.7, E.4, F.9, G.1, H.6, I.8, J.3.

CONVERSATION PIECE

MARCH 2022

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GRAPESHOT! Home Turf The preserved Fraction family home on Virginia Tech’s Blacksburg, Va., campus.

Restored Honor On November 6, 2021, Virginia Tech’s Black Cadet Organization presented descendants of Thomas Fraction with a certificate of honorable discharge—155 years after he had been demoted and discharged without cause from the Union Army.

Fraction fought with his brother, Othello Fraction, in the 40th USCT. He joined the USCT after escaping from the Smithfield and Solitude plantations, ground that is now part of the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va. In July 2021, Thomas Fraction’s military record was corrected by the U.S. Army after his great-great-great-granddaughter, author Kerri Moseley-Hobbs (More Than a Fraction), petitioned for a review of his case. In addition to receiving the honorable discharge, Thomas Fraction was reinstated to the rank of sergeant, retroactive to April 25, 1866.

The ceremony took place at the Smithfield Plantation site. It commem-

orated not only the correction of Fraction’s military record, but also honored the service of formerly enslaved soldiers like him who fought for their freedom during the Civil War. “The recognition of the Fractions and the other families enslaved is an important step in Virginia Tech maintaining a more complete and truthful history,” said Michele Deramo, associate vice provost for diversity education and engagement.

Deserving Recognition for Eads James Buchanan Eads was named to the National Inventors Hall of Fame’s 29-member Class of 2022 for his “American Infrastructure and Defense” contributions in the Civil War era. The NIHF, in partnership with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, will honor these inductees May 5, 2022, in Washington.

The NIHF dedication to Eads reads: “[He] created a series of inventions...that improved transportation and the military defense of the Mississippi River region. His widespread innovations were crucial to river salvage, the success of the Union Navy during the Civil War, and infrastructure and engineering that enabled major advances in commerce.”

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A BOY AT SHILOH; JOHN L. NAU III CIVIL WAR COLLECTION, HOUSTON, TEXAS

As shown in this 1861 Harper’s Weekly cartoon, Northern newspapers and periodicals were quick to claim early in the war that the South didn’t have the resources to go toe-to-toe with the mighty Union militarily, that defending Virgina impaired its ability to defend, say, Charleston and Savannah—and vice versa. It didn’t take them long to realize instead the North was in for a slugfest.

VIRGINIA TECH; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

CIVIL WAR ILLUSTRATED

GRAPESHOT! BATTLE RATTLE

“I passed…the corpse of a beautiful boy in gray who lay with his blond curls scattered about his face and his hands folded peacefully across his breast. He was clad in a bright and neat uniform, well garnished with gold….His neat little hat lying beside him bore the number of a Georgia regiment….He was about my age….At the sight of the poor boy’s corpse, I burst into a regular boo-hoo, and started on.”

—Colonel John A. Cockerill (U.S.), A Boy at Shiloh, 1896

Double Duty

A BOY AT SHILOH; JOHN L. NAU III CIVIL WAR COLLECTION, HOUSTON, TEXAS

VIRGINIA TECH; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Necessity is the mother of invention, as the saying goes, and many Civil War soldiers undoubtedly ranked coffee as a necessity—right there with shoes, tobacco, and bullets. That prompted one enterprising colonel to invent a device using two of the four together: coffee and bullets. At his own expense, Colonel Walter King of the 4th Missouri State Cavalry (Federal) adapted a Sharps breech-loading carbine to include a simple coffee grinder. In theory, the concept was good. Coffee beans—or perhaps corn or wheat kernels—would be inserted in a compartment inside the the buttstock and then crushed by cranking the attached grind handle, with the contents then poured from a brass opening in the stock. As it turned out, the contraption just wasn’t that efficient when it came to grinding whole coffee beans.

The .52-caliber carbine above—part of the John L. Nau III Civil War Collection in Houston, Texas—is identified as a “New Model 1863.” Other than the handle, it appears to be otherwise unaltered.

King would have only a small number of the weapons modified.

The resourceful colonel believed they would be particularly advantageous for troopers serving in frontier areas, where access to quartermaster stores was limited. He included his carbine as part of a “Cavalry Riding Equipment” package that he took for approval on January 6, 1865, before an inspection board convened by the U.S. Ordnance Department. The board thanked him for his efforts but deemed the package unsuitable for further development.

The 4th Missouri served in the Department of Missouri from May 1862 until the end of the war, operating against Confederate cavalry

Morning Joe Coffee beans could be fed through an opening into a compartment inside the carbine’s buttstock, then ground down using the attached handle. raiders and bushwhackers. In late summer 1863, King and his troopers crossed into Kansas as part of the Federal pursuit of William Quantrill’s Raiders after the Lawrence Massacre in August. In his report to Brig. Gen. Thomas Ewing Jr., commander of the District of the Border, King described his strategy: “Thinking he designed returning to the Blue Hills to scatter out, I marched as rapidly as possible to the position that would enable me to cut him off… and keep him in the open country.”

Quantrill and his men escaped the trap and disappeared inside Missouri. The 4th was later part of the Union effort to thwart Sterling Price’s ill-fated 1864 Missouri Raid. It was a solid, though not extraordinary, record for a unit that probably would have gained little attention in Civil War annals if not for the unique invention of its one-time commander. —Jay Wertz MARCH 2022

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12/16/21 4:41 PM

LIFE & LIMB

‘An Infinite Blessing!’

ANESTHESIA HELPED EASE THE ORDEAL OF SICK AND WOUNDED SOLDIERS ON BOTH SIDES FACING AMPUTATION OR SURGERY

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tial tool in the Civil War medical arsenal.

By providing vital comfort to the wounded and serving as a boon to overwrought surgeons, they were arguably the era’s most important medical development.

Our focus in this column is “general anesthesia”—the state of the patient during a surgical procedure in which anesthetics are applied to the entire body to induce unconsciousness. (Local anesthesia is pain relief in a particular area—e.g., when powdered opium was applied to a soldier’s open wound.) General anesthesia offers three vital results for patients and surgeons: 1) analgesia (painlessness); 2) amnesia (memory loss); and 3) muscle relaxation.

A distinctly American invention, anesthetics first saw widespread use about 15 years before the Civil War. Crawford W. Long of Georgia reportedly conducted the earliest successful experiments, using anesthesia in surgery in 1842. Long, however,

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The nonprofit NMCWM, based in Frederick, Md., explores the world of medical, surgical, and nursing innovation during the Civil War. To learn more about the stories explored in this and future columns, visit civilwarmed. org. The museum also hosts walking tours to the city’s Civil War hospital sites on Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. from April to October.

“SEE HERE, DOC, if you’re goin’ to take that leg off, you’d better be about it—I’m comin’ to.”

Those were the frustrated and possibly fearful words of a wounded soldier in the aftermath of the July 1863 Battle of Honey Springs. The unidentified soldier was so grievously wounded that army surgeons had opted for amputation. Understandably, he was worried, particularly at the prospect of suffering such a painful operation without the aid of anesthesia. Much to his surprise, the patient was informed that “his leg was already off and the stump ‘done up in a rag,’” Raising himself a little on his elbows to verify the news, the soldier remarked, “Is that so? I didn’t know a thing about it.” Such was the miracle of anesthesia.

We have long been led to believe that surgeons used anesthetics only occasionally during the war, but that is untrue. [For a dramatic anesthesia experience, see P.43.] In fact, anesthetics were an absolutely essen-

“ARMY MEDICAL WAGON; SURGEON AND ASSISTANT DEMONSTRATE ANESTHESIA FOR AMPUTATIONS DURING THE CIVIL WAR,” (CP 1563).

OHA 75 CONTRIBUTED PHOTOGRAPHS COLLECTION. OTIS HISTORICAL ARCHIVES, THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF HEALTH AND MEDICINE.

By Kyle Dalton

LIFE & LIMB Reflecting on the event, an older and wiser Keen conmade no sincere effort to publicize his discovery until fessed: “I must admit gross thoughtlessness. My only years after others had consolation is that the patient suffered no harm.” shared their findings.

Not only was chloroform safer, but it was also more Long was followed by effective. Yet that did not stop the use of ether. AccordHorace Wells, a dentist in ing to The Medical and Surgical History, about 14 perMassachusetts who expericent of procedures relied on ether and 9 percent used an mented with nitrous oxide. ether-and-chloroform mix. Those numbers represented Wells tried to draw attention to his discovery, but his a division between field and general hospitals. The public demonstration in 1845 failed. Apparently, Wells’ authors of the report wrote that chloroform was almost patient did not reach complete muscle relaxation and uniformly used in field hospitals, while ether was frewas heard moaning, leading attendees to jeer at Wells quently used in general hospitals far behind the lines. with cries of “Humbug” and “Swindler.” Although the The authors also tabulated the reported incidents of patient did indeed experience analgesia and amnesia, anesthetic use among Union forces during the war, and the inadequate levels of muscle relaxation was enough the findings are telling: At least 80,000 surgeries were to end Wells’ career as an anesthetist. performed with some form of anesthesia in the North, It was an associate of Wells’—dentist William only 254 without (a rate of 99.7 percent).

It is interesting that a tiny number of surgerThomas Green Morton—who demonstrated the use of ether as an effective anesthetic. During ies were performed without anesthesia by Union doctors who did have access to a procedure at Massachusetts General ample supplies of both ether and chloroHospital in October 1846, surgeon John Warren successfully removed a tumor form, perhaps because those surgeons before an audience of prominent medical feared anesthetics might induce a hemorprofessionals. Morton’s demonstration rhage or pyaemia (blood poisoning) and sparked the first general campaign in therefore slow recovery time. favor of anesthesia as a safe and efficient In rare instances, chloroform wasn’t available. Such was the case for Private means of preventing shock and pain James Winchell of the 1st United States during surgery.

Sharpshooters. Wounded in the arm and Morton, it should be noted, later served captured during the Battle of Gaines Mill as one of the Civil War’s only dedicated in June 1862, Winchell, along with anesthetists. Union wounded surely appreciated his help when he served in hundreds of fellow wounded prisoners, Proper Dosage field hospitals during fighting at Fredwere not treated by Confederate docThis preserved flask contained ericksburg, Chancellorsville, and tors. Instead, a single captured Union liquid ether, prepared by E.R. Spotsylvania. surgeon was instructed to perform Squibb & Sons of Brooklyn, Ether, however, would be surpassed every operation, with the help of a sole N.Y. The liquid was applied to a cloth sheet that was then by chloroform as the most popular attendant. Winchell waited for days for placed over the patient’s nose. form of anesthesia during the war. Not his procedure, during which time his wound festered. Finally, as Winchell even a year after Morton’s successful ether demonstration, experiments with chloroform were recalled: “About noon July 1st, Surgeon White came to already taking place. According to Robert Reilly, a Civil me and said: ‘Young man, are you going to have your War-era doctor, “Chloroform was preferred because it arm taken off, or are you going to lie here and let the had a quicker onset of action, could be used in small volmaggots eat you up.’ I asked if he had any chloroform or umes, and was nonflammable.” quinine or whisky, to which he replied, ‘No, and I have As another expert at the time was quick to point out, no time to dilly-dally with you.’” “mixtures of ether vapour with atmospheric air are Perhaps 125,000 surgeries involving general anesthehighly explosive and have frequently given rise to sia were performed on both sides during the war, giving frightful accidents.” U.S. Army surgeon W.W. Keen had surgeons unprecedented experience with the procedure. just such an experience in his hospital after the Battle The Confederacy used anesthesia much like the North of Gettysburg, recalling: “The only available light was did and held as much regard for the practice as their five candles…suddenly the ether flashed afire, the Northern counterparts. However, because Confederate etherizer flung the glass bottle of ether…in one direcmedical records were burned in Richmond at the end of tion and the blazing cone fortunately in another direc- the war, we should avoid projecting too much on the tion. We narrowly escaped a serious conflagration.”

South using only Northern sources.

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“ARMY MEDICAL WAGON; SURGEON AND ASSISTANT DEMONSTRATE ANESTHESIA FOR AMPUTATIONS DURING THE CIVIL WAR,” (CP 1563).

OHA 75 CONTRIBUTED PHOTOGRAPHS COLLECTION. OTIS HISTORICAL ARCHIVES, THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF HEALTH AND MEDICINE.

Traditional Method Cloth-mask application of anesthesia in a camp demonstration. Doctors usually preferred this option over the newly invented nasal inhalers.

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admitted to him: “I had enough consciousness to know what [McGuire] was doing; and at one time thought I heard the most delightful music that ever greeted my ears. I believe it was the sawing of the bone.”

We can only speculate whether Jackson, or any other wounded Confederate, was intentionally underdosed. During the war, it was up to individual surgeons to determine how much anesthesia to give their patients, rather than relying on codified guidelines. Not until World War I did the anesthesia community enact the first true systematic approach to monitoring—a multi-stage system created by Arthur Guedel to evaluate a patient’s precise state under anesthesia. Accordingly, in the first stage, patients would experience “disorientation”; in the second, “excitement”; Some historians have argued that and the safest phase to perform surgery Stonewall’s Last Ordeal was deemed the third stage.

Confederate soldiers were more Doctors care for Stonewall likely to go under the knife without During the “excitement” phase, the Jackson at Guinea Station anesthesia because of supply shortpatient reportedly “may exhibit…musshortly after his left arm was cular movement, phonotation, staring ages in the South. That, however, amputated in May 1863. It is eyes, irregular respiration, etc.” To ignores key factors. possible that Jackson was Again, anesthesia was a priority untrained eyes, it might appear that an underdosed with anesthesia before the amputation. for Confederate surgeons, as the milinsensible and unconscious patient had itary medical consensus on the necesbeen given no anesthesia at all.

A further variable was the method by which anesthesity of anesthetics was cultivated in the antebellum period, and there was effectively no resistance to acquir- sia was administered. Surgeons on both sides preferred ing, producing, and using them during the war. Hunter to use a cloth rather than manufactured inhalers. As Holmes McGuire, Stonewall Jackson’s famed doctor, Chisolm noted: “The best apparatus is a folded cloth in asserted, “in the corps to which I was attached, chloro- the form of a cone, in the apex of which a small piece of form was given over 28,000 times,” and Julian John sponge is placed.” Union surgeon Dr. Valentine Mott Chisolm, one of the most noted Confederate medical agreed that “it is best to employ no special apparatus,” experts, claimed to have performed or observed 10,000 but also noted that a cloth “in the folded condition… surgeries that used anesthesia during the war. might interfere too much with respiration.”

Several Confederate laboratories were constructed for The application of anesthetics was inconsistent chloroform and ether production, from Virginia to during the war, and there was no empirical and uniTexas. According to historian Michael Flannery, Chi- form guide on how and when to apply them. Neverthesolm’s laboratory in Columbia, S.C., was considered so less, more than 100,000 wounded soldiers ultimately important that he “asked for and received the single- benefited from the innovation. The final word perhaps largest Confederate warrant for medical supplies, should come from Stonewall Jackson himself. Despite more than $850,000, issued on April 13, 1864.” For the Pendleton’s underdosage claim, McGuire recalled that cash-strapped Confederacy, that says a great deal. as he applied the chloroform, the mortally wounded Another factor in anesthesia use in the Confederacy is general drifted into unconsciousness: “As he began to that very little chloroform was needed to induce general feel its effects, and its relief to the pain he was sufferanesthesia, on average only about a shot glass worth. ing, he exclaimed, ‘What an infinite blessing!’ and conAn underdosage, however, might have occurred after tinued to repeat the word ‘blessing,’ until he became Stonewall Jackson was wounded by friendly fire at insensible.”

Chancellorsville and had his left arm amputated by McGuire. According to Jackson’s adjutant general, Lt. Kyle Dalton is the National Museum of Civil War Col. Alexander Swift “Sandie” Pendleton, the general Medicine’s membership and development coordinator.

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Made an Outlaw “DOUBLY WRONGED” EARLY IN THE WAR, BUSHWHACKER SAM HILDEBRAND SPENT HIS REMAINING DAYS BENT ON REVENGE

By Ron Soodalter Dashing and Dangerous The date of this ornately framed tintype— widely believed to be of Samuel Hildebrand—is undocumented. Hildebrand never served formally in either the Confederate or Union armies, so it’s possible he acquired this attire from one of his victims.

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FROM 1861 TO 1865, war-torn Missouri produced its share of guerrillas and brigands. The deeds of many Missourians who rode “under the black flag”—“Bushwhacker Bill” Wilson, Cole Younger, and “Little Arch” Clement, to name just a few— fell far outside the bounds of what were considered the “acceptable” rules of conduct during wartime. One man who stood out among this company for his unbridled dedication to mayhem was Sam Hildebrand, known as the “Big River Bushwhacker.”

Not surprisingly, Hildebrand claimed to have been “driven to it” by outrages committed against him and his family. It was the same assertion that was echoed by the Jameses and the Youngers, among others: Frank and Jesse James pointed to the near-fatal hanging of their stepfather by Union soldiers, while Cole Younger and his siblings used the murder of their father as justification for their guerrilla and outlaw careers.

Samuel S. Hildebrand was born on January 6, 1836, to a large farming family near Big River in St. Francois County in southeastern Missouri. He married at 18, and in short order, fathered six children. The most commonly referenced photograph of Hildebrand, likely taken during the war, features the bearded 6-footer standing at attention, incongruously clad in what appears to be a Union coat and forage cap, with a brace of Colt revolvers in his belt.

Unlike other guerrilla fighters who survived the war, the completely illiterate Hildebrand dictated his autobiography, which was published in 1870, just two years before his death. It sports an impressive if immodest title, the first part of which reads: Autobiography of Samuel S. Hildebrand, the Renowned Missouri “Bushwhacker” and Unconquerable Rob Roy of America Being His Complete Confession. Despite its burdensome title, it is a well-illustrated, remarkably lucid, and highly entertaining 300-page tome, detailing the impetus behind Hildebrand’s career as a bushwhacker, as well as his actions during the war.

According to Hildebrand, his brother Frank— whom he felt had been erroneously accused of horse stealing—attempted to enlist in a Union Home Guard outfit in October 1861 but was instead turned over to the local vigilance committee, an entity created in assorted parts of the country to administer justice when citizens felt government authorities were inadequate. The committee’s leader, Firmin McIlvaine, unhappy with a local justice’s refusal to act without suffi-

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COURTESY OF BONNE TERRE

Legal Matter This warrant to have Samuel Hildebrand arrested for murder was issued on June 3, 1865, in St. Francois County, Mo. If caught, Hildebrand was ordered to be held until a scheduled November trial.

MISSOURI STATE ARCHIVES

cient evidence, took matters into his own hands.

Bolin, and the wounded Hildebrand was soon spirited “The sad termination of the affair,” Hildebrand away to the Confederate camp across the state line in recalled, “is soon told. The mob took my kind, inoffen- Arkansas. According to Hildebrand’s account, Captain sive brother about five miles and hung him without any Bolin explained, “We are what is denominated ‘Bushtrial whatever, after which they threw his body in a whackers’; we carry on a war against our enemies by sink-hole thirty feet in depth, and there his body laid for shooting them.” more than a month before it was found.”

Hildebrand was soon introduced to Brig. Gen. M. Jeff Hildebrand, who would assert he had also been Thompson of the Missouri Home Guard. After hearing falsely implicated in the horse-stealHildebrand’s story, the general, who ing charges, had been hiding in the “He was the first man was known throughout the state as local woods. He returned home to find the “Swamp Fox,” commissioned him I ever killed; a little his house ransacked by the committee, a major on the spot, and ordered him notch cut in the stock to “go where you please, take what and his possessions either taken or of my gun was made men you can pick up, fight on your destroyed. “I was completely broken up,” he recalled. own hook, and report to me every six to commemorate Nevertheless, Hildebrand claimed months.” Hildebrand had found his the deed.” to have eschewed violence, choosing place. “I was fully satisfied that the instead to devote himself to supporting his family, “pro- ‘Bushwhacking department’ was the place for me.”

Hildebrand returned to Missouri with revenge as his vided I could do so without being molested.” The vigilance committee, however, was soon elevated to the primary order of business. His first target was George status of a Union militia company, going after locals it Cornicius, the man who had betrayed his presence to considered disloyal. They raided Hildebrand’s farm McIlvaine’s militia company. “After searching two days again, pursuing him into the woods and wounding him and two nights I succeeded in shooting him; he was the in the leg. first man I ever killed; a little notch cut in the stock of Hiding under a pile of leaves, Hildebrand swore my gun was made to commemorate the deed.” revenge, seeing himself as doubly wronged. “As I lay in It was the first of dozens to follow. Hildebrand reputthat gully, suffering with my wounds inflicted by United edly notched “Kill-devil” whenever he dispatched a States soldiers, I declared war. I determined to fight it man. By the time of Hildebrand’s death, his weapon—a out with them, and by the assistance of my faithful gun, replacement, since Kill-devil had been lost in a Union ‘Kill-devil,’ to destroy as many of my blood-thirsty eneencounter—reputedly bore between 80 and 100 notches. mies as I possibly could….[F]or the sake of revenge, I Next on Hildebrand’s death list was “the darling pronounced myself a Rebel.” object I had in view,” McIlvaine himself. After stalking Word of Hildebrand’s situation soon spread to a local the militia leader for days, he shot McIlvaine dead as he company of Rebel guerrillas under Captain Nathan was harvesting his grain, and carved a second notch in Kill-devil’s stock.

The local Federals took their revenge; unable to find Hildebrand, they raided his homestead, killing his 13-year-old brother, his sister’s fiancé, and an uncle, driving his family out and burning the house to the ground. For Hildebrand, it was now a case of what a proslavery newspaper was calling “war to the knife, and knife to the hilt.”

The rest of the book details Hildebrand’s activities both during and after the war.

Not surprisingly, he paints himself in a

heroic light, often outnumbered and alone, fighting against Yankee occupation and injustice. Despite the title, it is not a “confession” at all, but rather an indignant self-justification of his conduct.

He ends his autobiography on a grandiose note:

COURTESY OF BONNE TERRE

MISSOURI STATE ARCHIVES

As several proclamations have been issued against me, without ever eliciting one in return, I shall now swing my hat and proclaim: ‘Peace and good will to all men; a general amnesty toward the United States, and to Uncle Sam—so long as the said Uncle Sam shall behave himself.’

On March 21, 1872, John Ragland, an Illinois constable, and two deputies surprised and arrested what Ragland had been told were three outlaws. One of the outlaws attempted to escape, stabbing Ragland in the leg, whereupon the constable shot the man through the head. Only later did the constable learn that he had killed the notorious Sam Hildebrand.

Hildebrand did, in fact, achieve a measure of hero status, with various Southern-leaning newspapers trumpeting his exploits. Four years after the war ended, and while Hildebrand was still terrorizing Missouri and Illinois, a popular but historically worthless dime novel titled Hildebrand, The Outlaw was printed by Robert M. DeWitt as one of his Dewitt’s Ten Cent Romances (a series that included such “classics” as Sam Sutton, The Scalp Taker, and Old Eph, The Man Grizzly). That effort was followed by an equally absurd release, The Outlaw’s Bride. In neither work does the title character, conjured whole-cloth from the writer’s imagination, bear any resemblance to the man himself.

It is impossible to fact-check many of Hildebrand’s claims. There are few actual biographies, and the various editors of his autobiography are diametrically

A Peaceful Vibe?

Future Rebel insurgent Sam Hildebrand was born and raised in this historic farmhouse, now beautifully restored on a 275-acre working cattle ranch in Bonne Terre, Mo., and available to rent through Airbnb.

Although the Airbnb listing calls it “a quiet retreat for anyone wanting to get away from the hustle and bustle of city life,” life was anything but quiet here during the war. Vigilantes nearly apprehended both Sam and his brother Frank at their home in the fall of 1861; both barely escaped. Frank was later arrested and hanged. opposed in their views of him. One edition, published in 2019, introduces Hildebrand’s valiant part in what the editor—who claims a familial connection to Hildebrand—refers to as the “War of Northern Aggression,” leaving little doubt as to where his own sympathies lie.

“Simply put,” the editor writes, “the Union invaded the Confederacy. The Confederacy was simply defending itself.”

In an earlier edition of Hildebrand’s book, the publisher’s contrasting opinion of his subject is made equally clear: “Hildebrand’s thirst for extrajudicial killing and lack of remorse make him the kind of monster for whom wartime rules of engagement are created….[T]his uneducated, vicious, and vengeful man had no notion of the idea of civilization he professed to believe in.”

Sam Hildebrand entered the war committed to the task of killing Yankees. While most Confederates—regulars and guerrillas alike—returned home in 1865 to rebuild their lives, Hildebrand elected to remain outside the law. He took pride in his reputation as a mankiller, and ultimately he met the same fate as his dozens of victims.

Ron Soodalter writes from Cold Spring, N.Y. MARCH 2022

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As the Story Goes Once Pickett’s Charge succeeded in breaking the Union center on July 3, J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry was supposed to surge in from the rear and close the vise. Or so we have been led to believe.

FROM THE CROSSROADS

An Enduring Myth J.E.B. STUART’S INTENTIONS DURING PICKETT’S CHARGE AT GETTYSBURG HAVE LONG BEEN MISINTERPRETED

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phlet covering the July 3 Union cavalry operations beyond the Army of the Potomac’s right flank and the engagement with Stuart’s cavalry on what is known today as East Cavalry Battlefield. Brooke-Rawle, a 3rd Pennsylvania Cavalry lieutenant who fought there, maintained that had Brig. Gen. David McM. Gregg’s cavalry not checked Stuart, July 3 “would have resulted differently, and instead of a glorious victory, the name of ‘Gettysburg’ would suggest a state of affairs which it is not agreeable to contemplate.” In other words, the Army of the Potomac would have lost the battle if Stuart had been allowed to run amok in the Union rear.

In 1956, Edward Stackpole published the widely read They Met at Gettysburg and picked up Brooke-Rawle’s theme that the cavalry battle had been “neglected by historians,” and its importance not appreciated. Stuart’s role in Lee’s July 3 battle plan, Stackpole would write, was to exploit the anticipated breakthrough of Pickett’s

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ALL CIVIL WAR BATTLES have their share of myths, but Gettysburg seems to be in a league of its own. One of the more enduring ones—one I heard frequently when I worked at Gettysburg National Military Park—was that during Pickett’s Charge on July 3, J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry was supposed to charge in and strike from the rear at the same time George Pickett and his fellow generals broke the Union center along Cemetery Ridge.

As with many myths, there is a granule of truth here.

But tracing the origin of these myths is difficult because they often result not from a single source but from an accumulation of accounts that morph over time into a single narrative, one repeated so often the myth that evolves generally becomes accepted as fact.

Stuart’s attack upon the Union rear on the battle’s third day is a prime example. This narrative appears to have evolved from a Union account of 1878: William Brooke-Rawle’s The Right Flank at Gettysburg, a pam-

©KEITH ROCCO/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

By D. Scott Hartwig

FROM THE CROSSROADS

ARTOKOLORO/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

©KEITH ROCCO/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

Charge by circling the Confederate left and coming in on Maj. Gen. George Meade’s rear “at the psychological moment and giving the Army of the Potomac the coup de grace.” In describing Lee’s intentions in High Tide at Gettysburg, published two years later, Glenn Tucker at first accurately summarized Stuart’s role by writing, “Stuart would be sent to Meade’s rear to aggravate and pursue the Federals in case Pickett and Pettigrew achieved a break-through,” but then later tied Stuart’s operations directly to Pickett’s Charge in declaring that Stuart’s “part in the effort to break the Federal center on July 3 was entirely negative.”

The myth received a fresh infusion in 2005 when Tom Carhart argued in Lost Triumph: Lee’s Real Plan at Gettysburg and Why It Failed that if Lee’s plan worked as intended, then “Stuart’s troops would meet Pickett’s men at or near the Clump of Trees.”

Adding even more weight was the viewpoint of the millions who saw the old Gettysburg NMP Visitor Center’s Electric Map program (now reconfigured and in a new home in nearby Hanover, Pa.). It graphically illustrated with electric lights how Stuart was to swoop in from the rear while Pickett assailed the Union center.

With such an onslaught of books, pamphlets, articles, and orientation programs all repeating the same general theme, it is no wonder the myth of Stuart’s attack on the Union rear became firmly entrenched in the popular memory of the battle.

rear.” If the enemy’s main position had been dislodged, “as was confidently hoped and expected,” Stuart believed he was “in precisely the right position to discover it and improve the opportunity.”

What is quite clear here is that Stuart’s primary mission was not to go thundering into the Yankees’ rear but to protect the left flank and rear of the army from a possible thrust by Union cavalry. Rather, he was to threaten the enemy rear and communications—to discover and “improve the opportunity” should the main offensive dislodge Meade’s army and force a retreat. In other words, there was no plan for Stuart to assault the Union center when he began his movements. Lee’s original plan called for simultaneous attacks by Longstreet’s and Ewell’s corps on both flanks. When Lee was forced to modify his plan—what resulted in Pickett’s Charge— he may well have communicated the change to Stuart.

Stuart, however, makes no mention of it, probably because it was immaterial to the role his cavalry would play.

Primary evidence refutes the prospect Stuart was to attack the Union rear while Pickett et al. assailed the front, and it is also inconceivable that Lee would even have risked his valuable cavalry with such a shock assault.

The Civil War was not another Napoleonic War; it was its own conflict with elements of the Napoleonic War. Closeorder infantry tactics, in particular, were still in use because of weapons and communications, but cavalry tactics were one area that had changed considerably. Rifled weapons had made If the idea that Stuart was to smash using cavalry as shock troops—a cominto the Union rear is myth, then what mon feature of Napoleonic battles— rare and exceptionally dangerous for exactly was his role? Lee’s and Stuart’s after-action reports are illuminating in the troopers themselves.

Confederate Icon different ways. When Lee described his Stuart’s mission on July 3, as he A J.E.B. Stuart trading card, described it in his report, is entirely plan for July 3, he didn’t even mention part of the Allen & Ginter’s Stuart’s role—not because he wished consistent with the effective use of cavCigarettes “Great Generals” to keep it secret or shield Stuart from alry during the war—to screen an series started in the 1880s. embarrassment, but because Stuart’s army’s flank, threaten enemy commurole on July 3 was intended to be only nications, and be in position to act as a secondary to the infantry operations. Lee would provide pursuit force in the event of an enemy retreat. This is a detailed account of the campaign’s cavalry’s opera- the granule of truth contained in the myth: Stuart tions in his report, but of July 3 he merely wrote that would strike into the enemy rear if the opportunity preStuart’s troopers “engaged the enemy’s cavalry with sented itself and he could get by the Union cavalry.

No doubt the myth of Stuart meeting up with Pickett unabated spirit, and effectually protected our left.”

Stuart, however, wrote: “I had such a position as not at the Copse of Trees will endure and my feeble effort at only to render [Maj. Gen. Richard] Ewell’s left entirely relegating it to history’s dustbin will fail. Some myths secure, where the firing of my command, mistaken for are uncommonly stubborn things to dislodge. that of the enemy, caused some apprehension, but commanded a view of the routes leading to the enemy’s Scott Hartwig writes from the crossroads of Gettysburg.

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‘DeEp Cut Into dixIe’

As Benjamin Grierson rampaged through Mississippi in the spring of 1863, a detail of Union troopers embarked on a raid of their own to keep the Confederates in further disarray

By Richard H. Holloway

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At Last, a Little Rest Their horses lined up on the outskirts of Baton Rouge, Grierson’s weary troopers encamped in a grove of magnolia trees on the grounds of the Magnolia Mound Plantation. This photograph was taken by famed photographer Andrew Lytle.

ANDREW D. LYTLE COLLECTION, MSS. 893, 1254, LOUISIANA AND LOWER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY COLLECTIONS, LSU LIBRARIES, BATON ROUGE, LA.

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supply lines in Mississippi and Tennessee, greatly frustrating Grant’s advance on the important Mississippi River port city of Vicksburg. A Union response of some scale was needed, leading to Grierson’s daring raid behind enemy lines.

In the wake of the raid, Captain Henry Clinton Forbes, who commanded Company B of the 7th Illinois Cavalry, took time to write his wife a detailed account of the role he and his men had played in the venture, planting himself on a hill in front of the Louisiana State House to do so.

Although Forbes—labeled “a dashing sagacious captain of 30” by one relative—later compiled an official report, these initial thoughts, still fresh in his mind, provided valuable insight. Portions of the letter to his wife, now in a private collection, are published here for the first time.

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made a good sweep tareing up railroads burning bridges cuting telegraph wires and raising the divil in general. It is the greatest thing that has ever transpired since this war broke out.”

For the Northern public, this was not mere hyperbole. Cavalry raids in late 1862 and early 1863 by Confederate Generals Earl Van Dorn and Nathan Bedford Forrest had disrupted Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s

Hero’s Welcome in Baton Rouge Cheers greeted Grierson’s arrival in the Louisiana capital. “To use the expression of my informant,” Ulysses Grant wrote, “Grierson has knocked the heart out of [Mississippi].”

HARPER’S WEEKLY; UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA COLLECTION

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he arrival of Colonel Benjamin Grierson and his saddle-sore troopers in Union-occupied Baton Rouge, La., on May 2, 1863, simultaneously caused both relief and excitement throughout the region. Grierson’s cavalry had barely slipped through the grasp of the pursuing Confederates on several occasions, managing to reach safe haven after a long and treacherous expedition originating in LaGrange, Tenn. Brigadier General Halbert E. Paine of Wisconsin, 3rd Division commander in the Army of the Gulf, later described the incoming horse soldiers as “rough and ready Illinois cavalrymen embrowned by their raid through the Confederacy unkempt and frowsy.” The weary men set up what they called “Camp Magnolia Grove” and finally had a chance to rest uninterrupted.

Stationed outside New Orleans when he heard the news, Corporal George W. Southwick of the 1st Vermont Light Artillery on May 6 elatedly wrote—albeit with a few misspellings—“900 cavalry made a good sweep down through Forbes from Tennessee to Baton Rouge. They

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; © CORBIS/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES

HARPER’S WEEKLY; UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA COLLECTION

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he brainchild of this “expedition southward into Mississippi” on horseback was Union Maj. Gen. Stephen A. Hurlbut, commander of the 16th Corps, headquartered in Memphis, Tenn. Obtaining quick approval from Grant, Hurlbut called Grierson to his headquarters for a detailed description of his idea. Grant had planned a series of diversions to throw the Southern forces off balance. Northern Mississippi was to be rife with Federal advances, certainly drawing enough attention away from Grant’s river operations and Grierson’s maneuvers.

Forbes’ own description of the raid’s start was rather matter of fact: “Well, I was in my blankets, on my particular five feet nine of mother earth at ten o’clock P.M. 16th-April at LaGrange where we had been so long and so quietly doing duty at Headquarters of the 1st Div., 16th Army Corps, when an orderly brought me a dispatch from the general commanding, ordering me to report to the Commanding Officer of my regiment, for ‘duty on this expedition.’ Reporting immediately, I learned that three regiments comprising our brigade [6th Illinois, 7th Illinois, and 2nd Iowa] were ordered to march at daylight the next morning with five days rations.”

“By special favor,” Forbes recalled, “I learnt that we were to make a deep cut into ‘Dixie’ and at the dawn we were in our saddles.” Of their departure, Forbes noted, “42 men and both my lieutenants McCausland and O’Kane, provided each man with a [Cosmopolitan] carbine and fifty rounds of ammunition, a saber and a gay heart. We were within the enemy’s lines; ahead, a wilderness of secession and enmity…”

The troopers had an inkling it was to be a long raid, but, as Grierson elaborated, “No person other than myself and Lieutenant S.L. Woodward, a.a.a. [acting assistant adjutant] general of the brigade knew the probable extent of the expedition on which we had started.”

Wanting his wife to know the exact route they took, Forbes recommended: “Now take the best map of the State of Miss. you can get and you shall march with us. You observe Tippah County next to the N.W. of Ripley its county seat, having marched 35 miles. There we found plenty of Com. [Commissary] Fodder and meat, which we appropriated with a liberal understanding of our own wants. The soonest of objections only enlisted the sweetest of smiles, but the inexorable ‘can’t help it’ of the pleasant ‘Feds’ only left the grief of the impoverished secesh the deadlier and the deeper.”

Forbes would also boast: “Through the

northern edge of Pontotoc Co. you will observe the Tallahatchie river running in a southwestern course. This stream the Rebs had vaunted no Yank should ever pass alive again. Accordingly, we passed it, the central Column a couple of miles above New Albany.

One battalion at Kingsford [King’s] Bridge, below, and the 2nd Iowa above. About twenty secesh men found by the advance guard endeavoring to fire [King’s] Bridge, but were readily dispersed and the crossing Hurlbut effected.” These, Forbes noted, were part of a cavalry force dispatched by Major A.H. Chalmers, but when word that a larger force of Yankees was headed their way, “they had suddenly left in the night, going west.” The clash, though, had served to warn Grierson of a possible attack from the rear.

The next morning, Forbes’ Company B took the lead and had “several lively chases after little squads of the enemy”—a singular “rebel scout... shot on the edge of town” being the only notable interaction. Commissary stores were destroyed, including “a number of barrels of salt [which were] poured in the street, not that it had lost its savor, but that it might be trodden under foot by our horses.”

The malicious act sent the civilians scrambling for the valuable commodity. As Forbes wrote, “You should have seen the unsalted poor jubi-

Left a Shell Captain Henry Forbes sat down on the hill in front of the Louisiana State House to write his wife of his exploits. In late December 1862, Union troops had started a fire that gutted the building’s interior.

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lant with their pails to scratch the precious condiment out of the dirt! One poor woman I remember with peculiar zest, who, as she came in sight of the long white line of salt spilled across the street turned to our column then in full motion and with her bonnet hastily snatched from her head in one hand and her pail in another powerless to express her joy in Language jumped up and down in her place and actually screamed in delight.”

Forbes’ baleful tendencies were further exposed when he recalled: “Another amusing incident occurred near the rear of the column where my company was stationed....I heard a dire knocking behind some fine premises against whose fence our horses were turned, and passed through to see what was doing when I found our boys in the act of very generously distributing some five or six hundred weight tobacco which they had discovered. The man of the house having run away, his lady very affectingly besought me to set a guard for his property, which I very magnanimously pro-

COURTESY OF GLEN CANGELOSI

Unadorned in Triumph Lytle took this previously unpublished photo of Grierson, a piano teacher prewar, after the colonel reached Baton Rouge. Grierson wears no insignia and a plain uniform jacket.

ceeded to do. Some delays, accountable to the uninitiated, having been experienced, when I finally went to set my guard, behold the tobacco, the boys and the duty, which, as a gallant Knight owed to a fair one in distress, I was not at all sorry to find had all vanished together!”

On April 20, Grierson’s command was “roused by the shrill reveille bugles at 2 o’clock in the morning.” By then, Grierson had already “sent back all the sick and disabled men”—an ensemble to be dubbed the “Quinine Brigade”—through Pontotoc in an effort to further confuse the Confederates of his true intentions. Forbes and his men “drew a deeper breath and set out again for Dixie, which like ‘away down east’ you may discover is difficult to reach.”

“We marched south east by byroads and encamped at Clear Spring,” Forbes wrote. “No event occurred worthy of note, save that being below the advance of our troops upon any former occasion, we began to perceive the most ludicrous panic in possession of the minds of the people.

No language can give an adequate idea of the prepossession of the popular mind in Central Mississippi, against the Yankee soldiery, all chimerical, all whimsical, the work of false witnesses in the only journals which come to their hand, a part of the great system of atrocious fabrication upon which the rebellion was based at the first, and by which it is diligently sought to be perpetrated.”

Grierson continued his efforts at subterfuge on April 21, when he detached Colonel Hatch and the 2nd Iowa Cavalry. They were, Forbes noted, “striking eastward with his command for the Mobile and Ohio R.R. to work it whatever mischief lay in his power and diverting the attention of the enemy from our progress midway between the two roads to return at his convenience to our lines.” Grierson’s main command crossed a local creek and, according to Forbes, “[Upon entering] Starkville, a neat and pleasant village, we found almost entirely deserted of its inhabitants, they newly fled in terror of the Yankee invasion. The place was tenderly treated, not a house being broken, not a person molested, though afterwards the secesh papers published that we burned the town and hung one of the physicians.”

“We camped 8 miles beyond [Starkville],” Forbes continued, “having marched 45 miles thru interminable swamps, and captured a number of prisoners, among which was a quartermaster from Port Hudson.” About two miles out after dawn, Colonel Prince asked Forbes if he was willing to take his command of 39 men to Macon and if possible destroy the [rail] road at that place. They were instructed to then rejoin the main column by forced marches.

Forbes readily accepted the assignment and started out toward Macon “as rapidly as the slippery roads would permit.” One soldier, however, quickly suggested: “The detachment to be thrown against this [railroad] was used as a forlorn hope and was expected to be thrown away.”

Forbes’ men noticed the roads were tracked with hooves of liveOrchestrated Mayhem stock “driven in to the swamps to be Highlighted here is the hidden by negroes” to avoid capture.

Confederate-controlled territory Several women, Forbes noted, through which Grierson’s “burst into tears as we passed withtroopers rode on their 16-day out biting their noses off.” The raid in conjunction with Ulysses Grant’s operations against group also encountered wagons Vicksburg. Also highlighted is loaded with food and valuable goods the path Forbes’ detail pursued hub-deep in mud. Forbes directed a from Grierson’s main route in couple of his men to dress in caporder to distract the enemy and tured “secesh” clothes and scout destroy railroad infrastructure. ahead of their unit. The detail would

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Hard to Handle When Hot Grierson’s men were issued new .52-caliber Cosmopolitan carbines that used breech-loaded paper cartridges. Despite a 1,000-yard range, they proved unpopular with the troopers. arrest a few locals, while one man attempted to make a break for it before getting “a saber stroke for his temerity.” Company B finally halted and bivouacked in the yard of a local plantation. “Just as I was finishing my piece of pone and cup of buttermilk,” Forbes wrote, “...picket posts came in with a prisoner captured.” Forbes learned that a Southern infantry regiment had arrived in Macon by rail, bolstered by two artillery pieces and local militia.

Forbes was not pleased to learn that the bridge he was suppose to cross “had been prepared for instantaneous destruction.” They all slept restlessly that night with “23 men out of 39 sustaining various parts of guard duty for that night.” Realizing that at least 30 miles separated Company B from Grierson’s main body, Forbes impressed a guide to lead them to Baugh’s Ford, which they “found impassable owing to a[n] exceedingly heavy current.” They ended up crossing a bayou, finally making their way to the Marshallville road. They turned and went through a menagerie of “swamps, plantations, wildernesses, dens, logs, pens, lakes, pits and caves of death.” They swam two more streams and eventually struck the road running southwest from Macon to Philadelphia about four miles from the former, “pushing with all speed.”

As Forbes would later document: “We passed thru Summerville, called Gholson on Colton’s maps, just before sundown. It is a beautiful little hamlet, the seat of two popular schools finely situated in large buildings, one for either sex. We were mistaken for secesh cavalry by the boys of the first school, and amid the most exaggerated demonstrations of pleasure we made in enjoying the glory of being their brave defenders.

The girls rushed to their balcony to wave us all hail, the matrons to their

larders to procure us a lunch and invitations to the officers to sup here.” The men of Company B passed up those opportunities but finally stopped at Mr. Nunn’s plantation. Recalled Forbes: “We entered into negotiations for feed and supper all in the pure Secesh vernacular.

Out came the fodder, out came the corn; the smokehouse disgorged, the ovens glowed, the churn gave up her all (of buttermilk), even the knives and spoons found their way on to the table cloth.”

Forbes had a confidential confab with his host, where the latter expressed his dire contempt of the Yanks. Nunn began to entertain “misgivings in his mind and neuralgia in his stomach” when he heard the bugles sound and came outside to discover “one of the boys whose horse had become way worn had traded him incontinently for an available nag that he found neighing patriotically for U.S. Service in the poor patriarch’s stables. The last I heard of our host was an inquiry for the Captain, and upon being told that he was in advance, he lifted up his voice, and called me just as I was engaged in shouting forward! March! Which of course, shut off forever the noise of his com-

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Wayne and Holden also graced the cover of this 1959 Dell comic book.

Legendary actor John Wayne was best known for playing parts in movies with Western themes. One of his most memorable roles, however, was in The Horse Soldiers, taking place during the Civil War. Wayne’s character, Colonel John Marlowe, was a thinly veiled portrayal of real Yankee Benjamin Grierson and his 1863 cavalry raid through Mississippi. The movie was derived from a 1956 novel by Harold Sinclair, who based his account on the original Grierson’s Raid. The renowned John Ford was tabbed to direct the production, co-starring William Holden.

Most notable among altered script details was inclusion of a major female character—not a factor when Grierson and his men rode through Mississippi—and Marlowe was a railroad engineer while Grierson was a piano teacher. An interesting parallel between the original and fictional stories is that in both a Union doctor was captured after being left behind to treat the wounded. The movie was filmed in Natchitoches, La., and the nearby Oakland Plantation, with the part involving the military school filmed at Jefferson Military College in Natchez, Miss. Holden spent his off-time in his hotel in Shreveport, La., and often argued with Ford between takes. Wayne was particularly engaging with the local community and welcomed visitors to the set, gladly signing autographs and taking photos with fans. —R.H.H.

COWAN’S AUCTIONS; RICHARD H. HOLLOWAY COLLECTION

Hollywood Takes on the Raid

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY; RICHARD H. HOLLOWAY COLLECTION

COWAN’S AUCTIONS; RICHARD H. HOLLOWAY COLLECTION

Ruthless Ruin Forbes’ men were tasked with destroying enemy railroad tracks and depots, disrupting Confederate train service to Vicksburg.

plaints and divided the Yankees and fair Summerville for a season. Poor Nunn! May he repent and believe. Though he is old in transgression, and hardened in false doctrines.”

Forbes’ men were making great time, resting for four hours at Pleasant Spring after traversing 60 miles. On the 24th, the company passed through “a poor and barren company.” The side trip became dangerous when the two scouts Forbes had dispatched ahead encountered bushwhackers, with one scout killed and the other wounded. The Confederates “had done their bloody work and disappeared before we could canter on to the ground.” They gathered up the dead man and “laid him on a neighboring porch and spread a blanket decently over him and left him for the enemy to bury. Our haste would brook no delay. Poor Bill Buffington! God gave him good sleep under the green trees of this far land!” Forbes had his revenge, however, revealing, “I enjoyed the pleasure of burning to the ground the home of one of the bushwhackers.”

Upon reaching Newton Station, the troopers found the train depot smoldering. Expecting to cross the bridge Grierson had used, they discovered it had been destroyed by their own forces and headed instead toward Enterprise. There, Forbes came upon a “suspicious looking enclosure of high plank fence around a school house...[that] I speedily discovered was full of soldiers and a sentry to be standing at the gate.”

In the middle of his next sentence, however, the narrative ends.

Forbes had spilled coffee on this 14th page and neither finished his thoughts nor the missive itself. He had also spilled ink on the first page.

Forbes later boasted to his sister about going “48 hours without food,” despite revealing quite the opposite to his wife. He also claimed to have lost 22 pounds, despite his earlier descriptions of eating sumptuous meals from the hands of Southern civilians or their storehouses.

Stained Missive Forbes had already spilled ink on the first page of his letter; when his cup of coffee overturned and leaked on the page above, he stopped mid-sentence and never finished his account.

Forbes became a farmer after the war and published a large volume of his own poetry. He would pass away on January 5, 1903, in Champaign, Ill. Richard H. Holloway, who writes from Alexandria, La., is president of the Civil War Round Table of Central Louisiana.

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A fiercE BArk and a Steady Growl Maine soldiers’ beloved canine companion joined them in many a battle

By Nicholas Picerno

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Maine’s Best Friend Major, a 110-pound black, “Newfoundland cross-breed,” makes himself comfortable on the leg of Corporal William H. Wentworth in this December 1863 tintype. Sergeant Hezekiah Elwell, also of the 29th Maine, is on the left.

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ne of the more touching and littleknown mascot stories of the Civil War is that of “Major,” described as a “large black Newfoundland cross-breed dog,” weighing about 110 pounds.

Major had his first experience in the war while with the 1st New Hampshire Infantry, a three-month regiment, and was with them at the First Battle of Bull Run. During the battle on July 21, 1861, Major received a slight wound and afterward would return with the regiment to Portsmouth, N.H. But on October 6, 1861, he volunteered again, jumping aboard a southbound train containing a newly recruited two-year regiment, the 10th Maine Infantry. He followed Captain Charles Emerson of Company H into the train

“Major behaved well under fire, barking fiercely, and keeping up a steady growl from the time we went in till we came out” On December 6, 1861, Captain George H. Nye of Company K, 10th Maine, penned the following to his wife, Charlotte: “We have some domestic animals in the house –first-we have a dog-weighs about a hundred pounds–he is on the sick-list today–he has a great dislike for the engine as the engineer squirted some water on him the other day, since then whenever he sees the cars coming he puts for the engine on the clean jump. Today he got a little too near and the cow-catcher gave him a pretty hard thump—knocking off a piece of his nose and his rump....I guess tomorrow he will get up in good shape and be a wiser dog.”

On May 25, 1862, during Union Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks’ retreat following the First Battle of Winchester, Major was so crippled by the long march that he could hardly walk and was eventually captured and

OPPOSITE PAGE: FRANK LESLIE’S ILLUSTRATED NEWSPAPER; NICHOLAS PICERNO COLLECTION (3)

Always Loyal This sketch, which appeared in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, portrays “A faithful dog watching and defending the body of his dead rebel master,” slain during Sheridan’s 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign.

car and was immediately adopted by the men of the company and given the name “Major.”

A comrade recalled that while the 10th Maine was stationed at the Relay House railroad transportation hub near Baltimore in November 1861, Major “was always among the most advanced of the pickets, and no dog was ever allowed to cross the lines with impunity.”

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Maine Mainstays Officers Charles Emerson (left) and John Mead Gould (right) figured prominently in the 1st, 10th, and 29th Maine’s history from the war’s outset, with both surviving the conflict. It was Emerson whom Major followed onto a train, quickly becoming the 10th’s feisty mascot.

spent two days behind Confederate lines before “escaping” to rejoin his comrades in Company H. Recounting the September 1862 Battle of Antietam, regimental historian Lieutenant John Mead Gould wrote, “Old dog ‘Major’ behaved well under fire, barking fiercely, and keeping up a steady growl from the time we went in till we came out. He had thus contributed his part towards the uproar which some consider so essential in battle. He had shown so much genuine pluck, moreover, that the men of H were bragging of his barking, and of his biting at the sounds of the bullets, asserting besides that he was ‘tail up’ all day.”

A comical—though potentially fatal—trait began to be observed of Major during battle: He would leap into the air to snap at bullets as they whizzed by or as they created small dirt clouds when they hit the ground.

Major returned home to Maine with the two-year enlistees of the 10th Maine, and the regiment was mustered out on May 8, 1863. News of the dog’s deeds in the war had spread to his native New Hampshire, and the veterans of the 10th Major’s Lieutenant Maine faced an attempt by his former master Granville Blake, a to claim Major as his property. The men of lieutenant in the Company H offered to purchase the dog at the 10th Maine, became owner’s price, but he insisted on having the Major’s handler in dog returned. Emerson refused to return late 1863. He escorted the dog to Louisiana Major, and the owner next appealed to Colonel for the Red River George L. Beal, the regimental commander.

Campaign, serving Beal refused to get involved, saying the matin what was now the ter did not concern him and insisted the owner 29th Maine. settle Major’s ownership with the men of Company H. While the dog’s owner was meeting with Beal, two of the Company H men took Major away from camp and kept him out of sight. The owner was forced to return home without his dog or the money the men had offered.

The soldiers paid to have a silver collar made for Major. On the collar was engraved an oak leaf, signifying the rank of major. Also inscribed on the collar were the battles in which Major participated.

The collar was given to 1st Lt. Granville Blake, who assumed responsibility for Major after Emerson became lieutenant colonel, keeping Major at his home in Auburn, Maine.

On December 16, 1863, Blake was commissioned a captain in Company H of the 29th Maine Infantry, made up of many 10th Maine veterans, including the faithful Major.

Major accompanied Blake and the 29th Maine to New Orleans, arriving on February 16, 1864. They would take part in Banks’ illfated Red River Campaign. It would be Major’s second campaign with Banks—and his last.

In late March 1864, Major went missing for a short period. Gould wrote in his journal: “The dog Major is lost: was last seen in Washington [Louisiana] where he went in swimming with the Reg’t. In the 10th he used to march at the head of the Reg’t. as Company H was on the right but in the 29th H is near the left and old Mage is wild when it comes marching time….” Shortly afterward, Major returned to the regiment.

On April 8, 1864, the 29th Maine entered the fight at the Battle of Mansfield. While positioned at Chapman’s Bayou, also known as the

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A Canine Menagerie Below: Sallie’s Gettysburg monument.

Above: The “capt Stearns” in this photo was Daniel Stearns of the 104th Ohio, Harvey’s owner. Stearns was gravely wounded at Nashville, as was Harvey.

USAHEC; PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

MAJOR, OF COURSE, was not the only dog to find a deserving home as a regimental or company mascot in either the Union or Confederate armies. There were several famous ones—including “Jack,” a stray bull terrier adopted by the Pittsburgh-based 102nd Pennsylvania Infantry.

According to the regiment’s soldiers, many of them former members of Pittsburgh’s Niagara Volunteer Fire Company, Jack would join them on the march and would stand near the “firing line” during combat. Jack, they stressed, comprehended bugle calls and would obey orders. He was also known to roam the battlefield in the wake of fighting, seeking out wounded and dead “comrades.” Captured twice, Jack at one point survived six months in a Confederate prison camp.

Another canine mascot of note was “Sallie,” a brindle Staffordshire bull terrier adopted by the 11th Pennsylvania (remembered with the memorial below). Sallie was with the regiment at Gettysburg, famously standing guard over wounded or dead Federals on Oak Ridge during the battle, and thereafter survived several intense engagements before being killed in action at Hatcher’s Run, Va., in February 1865. She was, appropriately, buried on the battlefield.

A white bulldog named “Harvey” (shown right) was a mascot of the 104th Ohio—the so-called “Barking Dog Regiment”—and was wounded in action at Kennesaw Mountain during the Atlanta Campaign and later at Nashville. And let’s not overlook “York,” who faithfully accompanied Union Brig. Gen. Alexander S. Asboth, joining him at Pea Ridge and during the Siege of Corinth, Miss. Or “Calamity,” known as a foraging specialist with Company B of the 28th Wisconsin. Just a few!

For those of us with cherished dogs who, yes, shrink and hide at the sound of thunder or fireworks, we salute these canine anomalies. –C.K.H.

Day of Destiny At the April 8, 1864, Battle of Mansfield, La., an outnumbered Confederate force routed Nathaniel Banks’ Army of the Gulf, including the 29th Maine. Despite a Union tactical victory at Pleasant Hill the next day, Banks called off his ambitious Red River Campaign.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; NICHOLAS PICERNO COLLECTION

USAHEC; PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

“plum orchard fight,” Major was barking fiercely at passing stragglers.

In a tribute to Major in his 1871 regimental history, Gould wrote: “He was always a dog of singular behavior, but never acted so strangely as in his last fight. While in camp at the saw mill he was much disturbed at hearing the sound of the battle, and appeared to know that we should have to, or ought to go to the front.

He barked wildly at every cavalry-man we met on the march[,] he seemed to know a straggler and skulk, and knew, too, that it was safe to

“He died like a hero, far in the front of the line, and had he been human we should not have felt his loss more keenly” bark at them. We never shall forget his actions at the top of the hill where we fought. As before stated, we came at that point upon almost a solid mass of fugitives, and here, too, we first heard the bullets whistle.

The dog seemed to comprehend the situation, and bracing himself against the torrent, he gave one long, loud howl that rose above all other sounds, and then went on again. He ran wildly around the field, always keeping in our front, and biting at the little clouds of dust raised by the enemy’s balls. At our first volley he jumped into the air, howled and bit at the flying bullets, and was going through strange capers when the fatal bullet struck him. He died like a hero, far in the front of the line, and had he been human we should not have felt his loss more keenly.”

In a letter home written shortly after the battle, Nye, then commanding the 29th Maine’s Company K, poignantly summed up Major’s death: Our old dog Major which was such a great favorite with us was killed at the battle of Mansfield in the first days fight—he fell just in front of my company, he was running in front of the company jumping for the bullets as they knocked up the dust in front of us.

We miss him very much for we were all greatly attached to that poor fellow—but he fell on the field of battle nobly facing the foes.

‘A Great Favorite’ George H. Nye of the 29th Maine, who ended the war as a brevet major general, paid Major a fitting tribute following the dog’s death: “He fell on the field of battle nobly facing the foes.”

Major would share the fate of many a soldier, whether they wore blue or gray: an unmarked grave on the battlefield.

Nicholas Picerno is chairman emeritus of the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation and has been collecting and researching the 1st, 10th, and 29th Maine Infantry for more than 40 years.

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EyewitneSs to CarNAge

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A young Union lieutenant and his fellow Ohioans learn the horrors of war on Shiloh’s opening day Edited by Steven Magnusen

Rude Awakening Union soldiers in the 5th Division camp near Shiloh Church scramble to respond to the surprise Confederate onslaught that opened the battle.

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n Friday, April 4th, there was a considerable skirmish about one mile in front of our camp. Some prisoners were captured. They were confined in Shiloh Church over night. I did not see them. Those who did reported that they claimed to be the advance of a great army, that would drive us into the river the next day.

Saturday, April 5th, was a day of rumors.

Colonel [Jesse J.] Appler was very uneasy.

About four o’clock in the afternoon, some mounted men were seen at the end of the field, south of our camp. The colonel sent an officer with a platoon of men through the woods to find out who they were, and to bring them in, if enemies. The men were gone some time, a few shots were heard, and the officer returned, reporting that the mounted men had escaped him and his men had been fired upon, by what appeared to be a picket line of men in butternut clothes.

Colonel Appler ordered the regiment in line and sent the quartermaster, Lieutenant J.W. Fulton, to General Sherman with this report.

The quartermaster came back and said in the hearing of many of the men: “Colonel Appler, General Sherman says: ‘Take your d----d regiment to Ohio. There is no enemy nearer than Corinth.’” There was a laugh at the colonel’s expense, and the regiment broke ranks without waiting for an order.

At seven o’clock P.M., Colonel Hildebrand sent word to Colonel Appler that General Sherman had been to his tent, and told him that the force in front of our army had been definitely ascertained to be two regiments of cavalry, two regiments of infantry, and one battery of artillery. He had directed Colonel Hildebrand to send the Seventy-seventh Ohio Regiment at 6:30 A.M., Sunday, April 6th, out the Corinth road to a point known as the See House…to support a movement of our cavalry, intended to attack and drive away or capture the part of

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In His Brother’s Shadow As a prominent member of the Iron Brigade, Rufus Dawes (left) garnered greater fame than brother Ephraim (right). Still, the younger Dawes’ war accomplishments should not be discounted.

May 1864, Ephraim’s field service ended when he was severely wounded at the Battle of Dallas, Ga., during Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign. Rufus would be mustered out of the Army of the Potomac that August.

The following is a condensed version of Ephraim’s postwar account of his experiences that first day at Shiloh, which he penned for the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States (MOLLUS). Grammar and punctuation of the original are retained.

OHIO HISTORY COLLECTION; COURTESY OF THE DAWES ARBORETUM

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ith his army paused at Pittsburg Landing, Tenn., in early April 1862, waiting the arrival of Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio from the east, Ulysses S. Grant was confident he was on the verge of dealing a decisive blow to General Albert Sidney Johnston’s Confederate Army of the Mississippi, stationed about 20 miles away at Corinth, Miss. Union victories at Forts Henry and Donelson in February had given Grant control of the upper stretch of the Tennessee River, allowing the general to launch a forceful thrust into the Confederate heartland.

Johnston, however, stung Grant early in the morning April 6 with a strike on the Army of the Tennessee’s right flank, manned by Brig. Gen. William T. Sherman’s 5th Division and Brig. Gen. Benjamin M. Prentiss’ 6th Division. Several hours of desperate, chaotic fighting followed that initial attack, and although Johnston would be lost, mortally wounded, the Confederate onslaught continued unabated. By nightfall on the Battle of Shiloh’s first day, the Federals found themselves all but surrounded in front of Pittsburg Landing itself.

Grant famously turned the tables the following day, helped by the overnight arrival of Buell’s reinforcements, to secure an unlikely victory and another notch in a budding war record of success. For many Union soldiers, Shiloh was their first taste of true combat. Among those was Lieutenant Ephraim Cutler Dawes, 21-year-old adjutant of the 53rd Ohio Infantry, in Sherman’s division—camped near the Shiloh Church on the battle’s opening day. The 53rd, part of Colonel Jesse Hildebrand’s 3rd Brigade, had been in service for only two months.

Dawes, an 1861 graduate of Ohio’s Marietta College, would be part of the one of the war’s more remarkable fighting families. His older brother, Rufus, became lieutenant colonel of the 6th Wisconsin Infantry, serving first in Northern Virginia with an all-Western brigade that would become known as the legendary Iron Brigade for its exemplary record of heroism in battle. Both brothers survived the war, but in late

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OHIO HISTORY COLLECTION; COURTESY OF THE DAWES ARBORETUM

Woods, Fields, and Slaughter This historic map shows the battlefield’s varied terrain. The 53rd Ohio manned a position near the Shiloh Church during the Confederates’ initial attack and the response of Sherman’s and Prentiss’ men. By day’s end, the Yankees were backed up to the river.

this force in our immediate front.…

About four o’clock Sunday morning, Colonel Appler came to my tent and called: “Adjutant, get up, quick.” I hurried out and walked with him to the left of the camp. We could hear occasional shots beyond our pickets. He said he had been up all night, and that there had been constant firing. While we were standing there, our picket of sixteen men came in. They reported that they had heard a good deal of firing, and were sure that there was a large force in our front….

The colonel sent me to form the regiment; then, called me back, directed me to go to Colonel Hildebrand; again called me back, and finally sent a soldier to the brigade picket line, which was not three hundred yards away, to ascertain and report the facts. Before the soldier was out of camp, a man of the Twenty-fifth Missouri Regiment, shot in the arm, came hurrying toward us, and cried out: “Get into line; the rebels are coming!”

Colonel Appler hesitated no longer, but ordered the long roll, and formed the regiment on its color line. The only mounted officers in the regiment then were the lieutenant-colonel and the quartermaster. He sent one of these to Colonel Hildebrand and one to General Sherman with the report of the wounded man. General Sherman’s quarters were nearer to us than Colonel Hildebrand’s, and the quartermaster returned first, and said, this time in a lower tone: “General Sherman says, ‘You must be badly scared over there.’”

An officer of our regiment, just out of bed, came running to the line half-dressed, and cried out: “Colonel, the rebels are crossing the field!” pointing to the long open field south of our camp. Colonel Appler ordered the regiment to move to the left of the camp, facing south, and directed me to go at the head of the regiment and halt it at the proper point. As we filed left, one of the companies that had been sent to support the MARCH 2022

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to Colonel Appler, who was in rear of the center of the regiment, said in a low tone: “Colonel, look to the right.” Colonel Appler looked up, and, with an exclamation of astonishment, said: “This is no place for us;” and commanded: “Battalion, about face; right wheel!”

At this time, about 6:45 A.M., the tents were standing, the sick were still in the camps, the sentinels were pacing their beats, the officers’ servants and company cooks were preparing

Poise Under Fire Left: Recruiting poster for J.J. Appler’s 53rd Ohio, which fought with the 57th Ohio and 77th Ohio under Sherman in Colonel Jesse Hildebrand’s 3rd Brigade.

Sherman later lauded the 61-year-old Hildebrand (above) for his poise under fire. Unfortunately, the colonel died of pneumonia just 11 days after Shiloh.

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

“The rebels out there are thicker than fleas on a dog’s back.”

breakfast, the details for brigade guard and fatigue duty were marching to their posts, and in our regiment the sutler shop was open. This order brought the regiment back through its camp. Colonel Appler, marching in front, cried out a number of times, in the loudest tones of his shrill, clear voice: “Sick men to the rear!” It is needless to add that they obeyed.

The regiment halted at the brow of the elevation in rear of the officers’ tents, marched ten paces forward, faced about, and the men lay down in the brush where the ground began to slope the other way.

Two pieces of artillery of [Captain A.C.] Waterhouse’s battery [Battery E, 1st Illinois Light Artillery] took position on the right of the regiment, as it halted, and General Sherman and staff rode along its front, stopping a few paces in front of the sixth company….

General Sherman with his glass was looking along the prolongation of the line of…troops marching across the end of the Rea field, and did not notice the line on his right. Lieutenant Eustice Ball, of Company E of our regiment, had risen from a sick bed, when he heard Colonel Appler’s command, and was walking along in front of his company. I saw the Confederate skirmishers emerge from the brush which fringed the little stream in front of [our] camp, halt and raise their guns. I called to him, “Ball, Sherman will be shot.” He ran toward the general, crying out, “General, look to your right.” General Sherman dropped his glass, and looking to the right saw the advancing line of [Confederate Lt. Gen. William J.] Hardee’s corps, threw up his hand, and exclaimed, “My God,

OHIO HISTORY CONNECTION; COWAN’S AUCTIONS

pickets came back through the brush, the captain exclaiming, as he took his place in line: “The rebels out there are thicker than fleas on a dog’s back.” …The bright gun barrels of the advancing line shone through the green leaves. I gave the command, “Front! left dress!” and, hastening

we are attacked!” The skirmishers fired; an orderly fell dead by the general’s side.

Wheeling his horse, [Sherman] galloped back, calling to Colonel Appler as he passed him, “Appler, hold your position; I will support you.”

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

OHIO HISTORY CONNECTION; COWAN’S AUCTIONS

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No Respite The showdown in this sketch—an attack by the 14th Wisconsin on the Washington (La.) Artillery—occurred on April 7, when Grant’s army reversed the course of the battle en route to victory. But it matched much of the closequarters fighting that dominated the Shiloh action the previous day.

he view from the high ground where I stood at this time was one never to be forgotten. In front were the steadily advancing lines of Hardee’s corps, marching in perfect order, and extending until lost to sight in the timber on either flank. In an open space in the Corinth road a battery was unlimbering. Directly in front of the spot where General Sherman’s orderly lay dead, there was a group of mounted officers and a peculiar flag—dark blue, with a white center.

The camps of [Colonel Ralph] Buckland’s and Hildebrand’s brigades were in sight; all the regiments were in line, those of Buckland were marching forward; there were great intervals between them, for sickness had made heavy inroads in the ranks….There was a sharp rattle of musketry far to the left, on General Prentiss’ front. The long roll was beating in [Maj. Gen. John] McClernand’s camps. The Confederate battery fired, its first shot cutting off a tree top above our Company A. The two pieces of Waterhouse’s battery each fired a shot, limbered up, and

returned to the battery camp; a Confederate regiment came through the line of our officer’s tents; Colonel Appler gave the command to fire; there was a tremendous crash of musketry on the whole front….The battle was fairly on.

The hour marked by the first cannon shot was seven. The first fire of our men was very effective. The Confederate line fell back, rallied, came forward, received another volley, and again fell back, when our colonel, who was behind the left wing, cried out, “Retreat, and save yourselves.”

Two or three companies on the right, whose commanders did not hear this order, stayed until they saw the remainder of the regiment going back in confusion, and then marched back, in order, to a ravine in rear of a regiment of McClernand’s division which had just come forward. Here the regiment was rallied without difficulty. General McClernand was there, and in person ordered it into position in front of General Sherman’s headquarters, designating the point where the right should rest. The regiment marched to the position indicated. The colonel [Appler] walked quietly along near the front. There were many bullets singing through MARCH 2022

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ur miserable position flashed upon me. We were in the front of a great battle. Our regiment never had a battalion drill. Some men in it had never fired a gun. Our lieutenant-colonel had become lost in the confusion of the first retreat, the major was in the hospital, and our colonel was a coward! I said to him, with an adjective not necessary to repeat, “Colonel, I will not do it!” He jumped to his feet, and literally ran away.

The sergeant-major, W.B. Stephenson, who was an old college friend, had followed me up to the line. I said to him, “Go, quick, and order each company to close up to the right.” I went to Captain Wells S. Jones, of

Rising to the Occasion L–R: The 57th Ohio’s Lt. Col. Americus Vespucius Rice—undeniably one of the war’s greatest names—and 77th Ohio Major Benjamin Fearing figured significantly in the Federals’ resilient Day 1 defense.

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Company A, and said, “Captain, you are in command; Appler has run away. I have ordered the regiment to close up to the right; let us help the Fifty-seventh.” He replied, “All right, get the men together; tell every company commander my order is to stay at the front, and come back as quick as you can.”

I ran down the line, stopping a moment to speak to brave old Captain [J.R.] Percy, of Company F. He swung his sword over his head and said, “Tell Captain Jones I am with him.

Let us charge!”

“Wait till we get together,” I replied, and he assented. Just then the regiment in our front which had been fighting most gallantly broke to the rear. I passed across the ravine and met the sergeant-major, who said, “The men have all gone.” Where or why they went, we could not then imagine.

It transpired that our brigade commander had ridden over and ordered them back to “the road.” He did not designate what road; they expected him to conduct them, and went back until they found a road and remained there until Major [Benjamin D.] Fearing with the remnant of the Seventy-seventh [Ohio] came along, when they placed themselves under his command. I went back to Captain Jones, who had moved a little way to the right….

Bullets now began to come from our left. The battery swung around and began to fire almost

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OHIO HISTORY CONNECTION (2); DAWES’ COAT COURTESY OF THE DAWES ARBORETUM

Commanders Good and Bad Grant held subordinates William T. Sherman (left) and John McClernand in different regard. Shiloh bolstered the Grant-Sherman bond; by 1863, McClernand was gone.

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY (2); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; MEDFORD HISTORICAL SOCIETY

the air, but he paid no attention to them. In its new place the two right companies, A and F, were separated some thirty yards from the remainder of the regiment by a deep but short ravine. Colonel Appler remained with them while I went to the left.

One of McClernand’s regiments went to our front and at once became hotly engaged. Waterhouse’s battery was firing down the ravine between our camp and the Fiftyseventh Ohio camp. A good many men in our left were shot here by a fire which they could not return because of McClernand’s regiment in our front.

As I turned to go back from the left to the right, I saw the Fifty-seventh Ohio, which had been fighting on its color line, falling back through its camp, its ranks broken by the standing tents, despite the efforts of its gallant lieutenant colonel, A.V. Rice, the only field officer with it.

It seemed to me we could help them by moving the length of a regiment to our right and perhaps save the line. I ran to where the colonel was lying on the ground behind a tree, and stooping over said, “Colonel, let us go and help the Fifty-seventh; they are falling back.” He looked up; his face was like ashes; the awful fear of death was on it; he pointed over his shoulder with his thumb in an indefinite direction, and squeaked out in a trembling voice, “No; form the men back here.”

to its rear. Men from Prentiss’ division were passing very rapidly behind us. The Seventeenth Illinois Regiment came up in beautiful order, and, forming on the right into line, on our left, began to fire at the Confederates who were coming now from the south-east. We continued firing almost west….

The Confederates had now captured three of Waterhouse’s guns. They swarmed around them like bees. They jumped upon the guns, and on the hay bales in the battery camp, and yelled like crazy men. Captain Jones moved our little squad, now reduced to about forty men, to join Lieutenant-Colonel Rice…who was still making a fight on the left of Shiloh

OHIO HISTORY CONNECTION (2); DAWES’ COAT COURTESY OF THE DAWES ARBORETUM

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY (2); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; MEDFORD HISTORICAL SOCIETY

“We had not yet learned that in victory was the only battle-field humanity” Church. Of seventy men in Companies A and F, nineteen had been killed or wounded, eight or ten had gone to the rear with badly wounded men, one had fallen in a hole, and when pulled out had permission to go to the rear by the most expeditious route.

No orders had been issued in our brigade in regard to care of the wounded. No stretchers were provided. No stretcher bearers had been detailed. We had not yet learned that in victory was the only battle-field humanity. When a man was wounded, his comrades took him to the rear, and thus many good soldiers were lost to the firing line.

We joined Colonel Rice, and...with his men, drove back a disorderly line that was pursuing us, and then, with the Seventy-seventh Ohio, made a line parallel with the Corinth road, the right of this line resting near Shiloh Chapel, and the left extending toward the river.…

There was a good deal of disorder here.

Every body wanted cartridges. There were three kinds of guns in our brigade and six in the division, all requiring ammunition of different caliber. Of our brigade not over four hundred men were present. The brigade commander had disappeared. During the first fight he had displayed the most reckless gallantry.

At the time he rode his horse directly between the opposing lines of battle, but when the Seventy-seventh and Fifty-seventh Regiments were driven from their camps, he assumed that their usefulness was at an end, and rode away and tendered his services to General McClernand for staff duty. This line was soon

‘The Most Horrible Looking Wound I Saw’ While the success of Iron Brigade Lt. Col. Rufus Dawes is wellknown, the catastrophic heroics of his younger brother, Ephraim, at the Battle of Dallas, Ga., somehow tend to get overlooked by many Civil War enthusiasts. On May 28, 1864, the younger Dawes was rallying his wavering 53rd Ohio Infantry as Confederate troops closed in. Dawes was struck by a bullet to his left jaw, which, according to Private John Duke of the 53rd Ohio, “took off his lower lip, tore the chin so that it hung down, took out all the lower teeth but two and cut his tongue.” As Duke recalled: “It was the most horrible looking wound I saw during my entire army service.”

Dawes survived the ghastly injury, but it ended his active military career and he underwent several surgeries over the next few months to reconstruct his lower jaw. In September 1864, Dawes underwent the most difficult of those, enduring most of a 1½-hour procedure without anesthesia after an initial dose of chloroform wore off. The wound eventually healed and he regained his speech. After the war, the 53rd Ohio members voted unanimously to present Dawes with the regiment’s national colors. —M.A.W.

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n the Purdy road, two regiments of Buckland’s brigade [48th and 72nd Ohio] were in line. Our men and the Fifty-seventh fell in with the Forty-eighth Ohio. Here was more confusion than I saw at any time during the day. The troops who retained their organization were in good enough shape, but there were many disorganized men; the road was almost blockaded with teams hurrying from the battle line; a battery was trying to get into position; the Confederates charged; there was a brisk fire for a few moments. Our line gave way at all points….

There was a brass gun stuck between two small trees, apparently abandoned by all but one man who sat on the wheel horse crying. I took seven of our men and called to Colonel Rice, who took a dozen or more of his men. In a moment we broke down the saplings and released the gun….

We hurried to join the nearest troops and fell in with the Seventieth Ohio Regiment, which we now saw for the first time. I have no idea where we were, and think no one else had. All around was a roar of musketry; immediately about us was the silence literally of death, for the ground was strewn with the slain of both armies. Colonel [Joseph] Cockerill rode at the head of his regiment in a perfectly cool matter of fact way, as if it was his custom to pass through such scenes every Sunday morning. He marched the regiment along the road…several hundred yards, where I saw the sergeant-major of the Seventy-seventh Ohio Regiment in the brush near by….

In an open field on lower ground to our right was a regiment with full ranks, uniformed in blue, marching by flank to the drum beat. Their course was obliquely across the path of the Seventieth Regiment; a few moments would bring them together. It did not seem possible that a Union regiment in such condition could be coming from the battle line.

I said, “They are rebels. I am going to fire on them.” He said, “They are

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Young Rebel in Blue The unit with the Louisiana state flag Dawes spotted was likely the Orleans Guard Battalion. Private Octane Fellon fought with the Guard at Shiloh, later presumed killed.

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Pelican State Pride Shiloh flag of the Lake Providence Cadets, Co. C, 4th Louisiana Infantry, similar to the one used by the Orleans Guard Battalion. This and other company banners were later banned from use within the Army of Tennessee and sent home.

PRIVATE COLLECTION; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

broken; bullets came from too many points of the compass. The situation was aptly described by a man who was hit on the shin with a glancing ball. It hurt him awfully and he screamed out. His captain said, “Go to the rear.” As the line broke and began to drift through the brush, [he] came limping back and said, “Cap, give me a gun. This blamed fight ain’t got any rear.”

not.” The wind lifted the silken folds of their banner. It was the Louisiana State flag!

We all had guns, and dropped to our knees and fired. The men on the road saw us, ran forward, and a rattling volley ran along the line.

The Louisianians broke in disorder to their rear, and we marched unharmed past the point of danger….

A Confederate battery was now in position… the line of its fire was pretty certainly toward our troops. If we could follow it and not get shot we could surely find somebody. There was an old farm road along which we ran, falling on our faces at each report of the cannon….I think we went half a mile when I saw Colonel Hildebrand sitting on his horse by an old log barn intently watching the swaying lines and wavering banners of troops, fighting across a long open field south. “Now, we are all right,” I said to our men, and directing them to lie down in a little gully I went to the colonel, and said, “Colonel where is the brigade?” “I don’t know; go along down that road and I guess you will find some of them.” …“Why don’t you come with us, get the men together and do something?” I said. “Go along down that road,” he answered sharply, “I want to watch this fight.”

Cannon shot were whizzing through the air, bullets were spatting against the old barn. It was not an ideal place to tarry, so calling my

NIDAY PICTURE LIBRARY/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

PRIVATE COLLECTION; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

Muzzle Blasts A Union battery fires away during the battle. Both armies employed roughly equal complements of artillery—the Yankees 119 total guns and the Rebels 117, ranging from 6-pounder field guns to 20-pounder Parrotts. men we followed the road, crossed the head of a deep ravine and found Lieutenant [Jack] Henricle, a typical battle picture. His arm and shoulder were covered with blood, where a wounded man had fallen against him, his coat was torn by a bullet, his face was stained with powder, his lips were blackened by biting cartridges, he carried a gun. His eyes shone like fire. He was the man we long had sought. I said to him, “Jack, where is the brigade?” He replied, “Part of your regiment and part of ours are right down this way a little way.” I felt like falling on his neck and weeping for joy, but did not, and only said, “What time is it?” I was amazed when after consulting his watch he replied, “A quarter to three o’clock.”

We walked rapidly down the road, and soon found that portion of our regiment which had fallen back early in the morning; about two hundred and fifty strong, now under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Fulton. Near them was the Seventy-seventh Regiment, having about the same number of men….With them was a battery that had arrived at the landing that forenoon, had not yet been under fire, and had received no orders whatever. They were in front or south of the main road leading from Pittsburg Landing to Corinth, and several hundred yards west of some heavy guns, which I suppose were of the famous siege gun battery which figures so largely in all accounts of the battle. A few minutes after I reached the regiment, Captain [J.H.] Hammond, who was General Sherman’s A.A.G., rode up and gave to the commander of the battery an order which I did not hear, and then coming to us, cried out in an excited tone: “Sidney Johnston is killed!

Beauregard is captured! Buell is coming! I want volunteers to go out and support this battery!”

At the command “Attention!” our men fell in, and we marched out the main Corinth road to its junction with the road running from Hamburg to Crump’s Landing; marched along it a little way to the right, then a short distance forward, where the battery went into position with our regiment on its left….The battery had hardly opened fire when it was answered by a Confederate battery with shot and shell. At first, the shells burst far behind us, and the

round shot cut off the limbs of the trees above our heads. But soon another Confederate battery began to fire at a different angle, so as to partially enfilade the line….In a very short time it had disabled two guns of our battery and killed ten or twelve horses. Our battery men, however, stood up to their work until they had fired away their last round. I suppose this artillery fire lasted an hour. I do not think a single man, either in our regiment or the battery, was killed or wounded….

In about one-half hour, the firing ceased almost as suddenly as it had begun. We were not quite certain what the result had been, so, on my own responsibility, I sent a reliable man to go down the line as far as possible and find out the situation….I distributed pieces of paper…to the company commanders, to take the names of the men present….

This was the end of my first day under fire. In the light of subsequent experience, I can see many things I might have done much better, but as I recall the circumstances then existing, I have no apologies to make.

Steven Magnusen, who writes from Indianapolis, is the author of To My Best Girl: Courage, Honor, and Love in the Civil War—The Inspiring Life Stories of Rufus Dawes and Mary Gates (GoToPublish, 2020).

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Surprised and Killed This depiction of the battlefield death of Brig.

Gen. Felix Zollicoffer, the first Confederate general killed in the Western Theater, at the Battle of Mill Springs, Ky., was published during the war. Union Colonel Speed S. Fry is shown firing the fatal bullet. Whether Speed did so has never been verified, however.

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MAcabre TrophiEs

Soldiers snatched souvenirs from a number of dead or dying generals. Confederate commander Felix Zollicoffer was perhaps treated the harshest

By John Banks

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pieces of his underwear. “Old Zolly,” though, was not the only fallen commander treated disrespectfully during the Civil War.

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Perhaps Watkins would have tried harder if the man were a general.

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n a driving rainstorm at the Battle of Chantilly (Ox Hill) late in the afternoon of September 1, 1862, Union Maj. Gen. Philip Kearny, who lost his left arm during the Mexican War, reconnoitered ground before his division. “The General rode up to a whole company of the enemy, paid no attention to their demand that he surrender, wheeled his horse and started back,” an aide recalled.

A Confederate company fired a volley, and a bullet pierced the 47-yearold general’s back, near the spine, killing him instantly. Confederates took Kearny’s body to a field hospital. The next day, the general’s remains were returned to the Union Army—minus his “sword, pistol,

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“He had on the finest clothes I ever saw, a red sash [cloth belt] and fine sword. I particularly noticed his boots. I needed them, and had made up my mind to wear them out for him. But I could not bear the thought of wearing dead men’s shoes. I took hold of the foot and raised it up and made one trial at the boot to get it off. I happened to look up, and the colonel had his eyes wide open and seemed to be staring at me. He was stone dead, but I dropped that foot quick. It was my first and last attempt to rob a dead Yankee.”

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n a misty Kentucky morning, Confederate Brig. Gen. Felix Kirk Zollicoffer’s body lay on the muddy ground surrounded by gawking Union Army soldiers. “What in hell are you doing here?” a Federal officer shouted at the men as the Battle of Mill Springs swirled on January 19, 1862. “Why are you not at the stretchers bringing in the wounded?”

“This is Zollicoffer,” one of them replied, gesturing toward the corpse.

“I know that,” the officer said. “He is dead and could not be sent to hell by a better man, for Col. [Speed] Fry shot him; leave him and go to your work!”

Earlier that wintry day, Zollicoffer—a former Tennessee congressman and newspaper editor from Nashville—had accidentally ridden his horse into Union lines. After a volley or two, he fell from his mount, fatally shot in the chest. Fry may have fired the bullet that killed the 49-year-old commander, derisively called “Snollegoster” and an “old he-devil” by the Yankees, but no one really knows for sure.

Even after his death, Union soldiers and others targeted Zollicoffer, whose body was looted of outer wear, buttons, hair and even (gasp!)

iends, ghouls, and souvenir hunters have looted fallen soldiers since the dawn of warfare thousands of years ago. Following the famed final showdown between Napoleon and Wellington at the June 1815 Battle of Waterloo, locals and soldiers reportedly yanked teeth with pliers from the fallen. But the gruesome act was not some weird form of vengeance. Early dental technicians boiled the teeth, chopped off the ends, and placed them onto ivory dentures.

According to the British Dental Association, “Waterloo Teeth” appeared in dental supply catalogs well into the 1860s.

At Gettysburg in July 1863, soldiers from both sides grabbed trophies from the dead. When a 14th Connecticut soldier stooped to examine a fallen Confederate, a Pickett’s Charge victim, he noticed the curlyhaired, young man held something in his hand, near his left breast. The soldier broke the Rebel’s death grip and examined the object, a daguerreotype of a young woman in her late teens or early 20s. “I prize it as the most valuable ‘Old Zolly’ relic of my war experience,” he recalled Felix Zollicoffer, who years later. was 49 when he was Civilians recovered souvenirs from Getkilled at Mill Springs, tysburg’s fallen, too. Abby Howland Woolserved briefly in the sey wrote of her mother, who collected U.S. Army in his younger days, but it was battle mementos from Confederates while as a newspaper editor she served as a nurse: “One, of a rebel lieuand politician that the tenant who died in her care; and a score of native of Maury County, palmetto buttons from [South Carolina] Tenn., had established rebel coats—dirty but grateful, poor his lofty reputation wretches; etc.” before the war.

In his classic Civil War memoir, Co. Aytch, Confederate soldier Sam Watkins— who seemed to be everywhere in the Western Theater—wrote of his attempt to snatch boots from a fallen Federal colonel:

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Mistaken Identity Like Felix Zollicoffer, Union Maj. Gen. Philip Kearny was killed after mistakenly riding into the midst of enemy soldiers. As shown here, during the fighting at Chantilly (Ox Hill) on September 1, 1862, the popular, one-armed Kearny turned around and tried to ride away, only to be immediately shot near the spine by Confederate soldiers in A.P. Hill’s command. watch, diamond brooch, finger rings, and the pocket book, in which the millionaire general always kept a large amount of money.” Confederates snatched souvenirs from the man they called “The One-Armed Devil.” The Rebels had Bayard, Kearny’s prized horse, too. Meanwhile, Army of Northern Virginia commander Robert E. Lee burned the papers found with the general, assuming they were of a “private nature.”

Four days after his death, Agnes Kearny wrote a letter to Lee seeking the return of her husband’s mount and sword. “Feeling great sympathy” for the widow, Lee—who admired Kearny—replied on September 28, 1862: “I inquired particularly if his person had been disturbed and was informed that his uniform did not appear to have been disturbed; but that he was lying under care of a guard in the condition in which he was brought from the field without his side arms and hat.”

After Lee consulted with his government, Confederates returned Kearny’s sword—“a light one with a leather scabbard suitable for a disabled person.” It was private property of a former fellow officer, Lee decided. Rebels sent Bayard and Kearny’s saddle through the lines for Army of the Potomac commander George B. McClellan to forward to Agnes. “I beg you to accept my thanks for your courteous and humane attention to the request of the widow of this lamented officer,” McClellan wrote Lee. But the rest of the booty snatched from Kearny remained with the Army of Northern Virginia.

Treasured Footwear Good boots, no matter the previous owner, were a valuable commodity for any Civil War soldier. Confederate Private Sam Watkins (above) later wrote of his failed attempt to snatch a pair from a “dead Yankee” colonel.

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n July 3, 1863, Confederate Brig. Gen. Richard B. Garnett was killed during Pickett’s Charge. Although he wore a nearly new uniform coat with a general’s star and wreath on the collar, high-top boots, and spurs, the remains were never publicly identified, and his final resting place remains unknown. “Inexplicable,” Confederate veteran James Clay, Garnett’s orderly, said decades later.

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the ornately inscribed saber remained with the general’s body. Years afterward, George H. Steuart, who commanded a Confederate brigade at Gettysburg, purchased the then-rusty relic in a Baltimore junk shop. After Steuart’s death, the general’s nephew acquired the saber. He eventually gave the “precious heirloom” to Garnett’s niece.

Whether a Johnny Reb or Billy Yank picked up the relic from Garnett is unknown. How it ended up in a Maryland junk shop remains a further mystery. What’s indisputable is the location of the relic today: The American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Va.

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hat and cheering the men on to renewed Is This Garnett? efforts against the enemy,” recalled Clay, Richard Garnett was an 18th Virginia private. “I remember that carrying this saber he wore a black felt hat with a silver cord. when killed, but the His sword hung at his side.” photo itself may or may After Clay fell among rocks, he lost sight not be of the general. of the 45-year-old commander during the Conjecture continues on “life and death struggle” with Union solthe accuracy of several diers. Then Garnett’s wounded black charwar photos supposedly of Garnett. The Library ger, its right shoulder apparently shot off of Congress identifies

by Union artillery, galloped out of the batthis photo as Brig. Gen. tle smoke.

Franklin Gardner, “At this time a number of the Federals but it is likely Garnett, threw down their arms and started across according to a recent the field to our rear,” Clay recalled. “Two of research effort. these deserters came to the clump of rocks where [a Confederate captain] and I were and asked to be allowed to assist us to our rear, obviously for mutual safety, and the kind proffer was accepted. These men told us that our brigade general had been killed, having been shot through the body at the waist by a grape shot.”

Rather than attempting to recover Garnett’s body and accoutrements in the extreme chaos, Clay sought medical attention at a field hospital for his shot-off right index finger and head wound. “The place was like a slaughter pen—legs, arms, hands, etc., all piled up,” he recalled.

A Confederate staff officer reportedly recovered Garnett’s watch, but

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t the Wilderness on May 6, 1864, Union Brig. Gen. James Wadsworth suffered a similar fate as Kearny. [For more, see “The Ultimate Price” in the March 2021 America’s Civil War.] As Confederates pressed an attack near the Plank Road, a bullet crashed into the back of the silver-haired millionaire’s head, splashing brains upon an aide’s coat. The aide frantically tried to remove a gold watch from the 56-year-old officer’s outside coat pocket. But as Confederates swarmed the area, he did not have time. So, he scrambled upon the general’s horse and rode like hell back to Union lines.

Like frenzied locusts ravaging a cornfield, Confederates looted the helpless Wadsworth, who died two days later in enemy hands. His sword, boots, buttons from his coat, the gold watch, a Virginia map, silver spurs, a billfold containing $90, and elaborately engraved field glasses all disappeared during the maelstrom.

Confederates left the white cotton stockings with Wadsworth’s initials stitched in red thread on the general’s feet.

Shortly after the war, a Confederate veteran returned the watch to the Wadsworth family and was rewarded handsomely. Veterans later returned other items pilfered from the general at the Wilderness. But the engraved field glasses—perhaps the most prized Wadsworth booty of all—remained MIA after the war. In 1921, Confederate Veteran magazine ran an obituary of William T. Lowry, an 8th South Carolina private, who claimed to have shot Wadsworth. Lowry reportedly once had the field glasses in his possession, but the elaborate artifact supposedly had been destroyed in a fire at his house several years earlier.

In the 1970s, however, the field glasses resurfaced when a descendant of a South Carolina soldier showed the relic to a National Park Service historian during a visit to the

Fredericksburg (Va.) area battlefields. He claimed his grandfather had shot Wadsworth, but the man was uninterested in donating the field glasses or leaving his name.

In 1985, James Wadsworth Symington—the general’s great-greatgrandson and a former Missouri congressman—placed ads in South Carolina newspapers seeking the gloves the general wore and field glasses he carried at the Wilderness. But the long-shot effort turned up nothing, and the whereabouts of the relics remain a mystery.

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fter a sharpshooter’s bullet struck 6th Corps commander Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick in the cheek, killing him instantly, blood spewed “like a fountain” and saturated bushes in the undergrowth. Word of the 50-year-old general’s death spread “like an electric shock” throughout the Union Army. Army of the Potomac commander Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade and other officers wept over the death of a general soldiers fondly called “Uncle John.” Sedgwick’s shooting rocked overall Union commander Ulysses S. Grant as much as news of President Lincoln’s assassination the following year.

Lieutenant John G. Fisher of the 14th New Jersey saved a souvenir of the killing, cutting down a bush upon which Sedgwick bled, letting it dry in the sun, slicing off a five-inch section that formed a “Y,” and carving into it the date “May 9.” After the war, he kept it on his mantle, “a reminder of the cold-blooded manner in which our gallant commander was killed.” Four hours after Sedgwick’s death, Frederick T. Dent, Grant’s brother-in-law and military aide, plucked a violet from the general’s death site and saved it in a book.

At Meade’s headquarters, Sedgwick’s remains lay on a bier below a bower of evergreens. Before the transportation of the corpse to Wash-

Silver-Haired Star Union Maj. Gen. James Wadsworth (above) was mortally wounded during the Wilderness fighting on May 6, 1864 (top), dying on May 8. Among items taken from the general were a lock of his hair and a gold watch, both later returned to Wadsworth’s widow.

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erhaps no fallen Civil War general suffered as ignominious a fate as “Old Zolly,” however. Days after the Battle of Mill Springs, a newspaper correspondent spotted Zollicoffer’s body in front of the tent of a sutler, wrapped in a blanket. His skin was “beautifully white and clear,” the reporter noted, and his face had a “pleasant expression,” which “grim in death was not altogether destroyed.” Zollicoffer had shaved off his beard, “probably in order to be less easily recognized,” the correspondent speculated.

But Federals had stripped “Old Zolly” of his clothes, from the white, rubber coat over his uniform to his shirt, undershirt, and socks. An Ohio private snipped three buttons from his coat. Colonel Speed Fry claimed to have Zollicoffer’s spyglass and elaborately engraved sword, apparently bent when the fatally wounded general fell from his horse. (The

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hieves looted the body of one of the Confederacy’s most beloved generals, too. At about dawn on December 1, 1864, the day after the Battle of Franklin, a search party discovered Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne’s body near Fountain Carter’s cotton gin, vortex of the bloody fight in which five other Confederate generals fell. The Irishborn Cleburne lay on his back “as if asleep,” his kepi partially covering his eyes. The 36-year-old division commander wore a new, gray uniform and a white, linen shirt stained with blood.

“He was in his sock feet, his boots having been stolen,” recalled a witness years later. “His watch, sword belt and other valuables were all gone, his body having been robbed during the night.” Cleburne had fallen within Confederate lines.

Early in the 20th century, the .36-caliber Colt revolver Cleburne carried at Franklin turned up with a man in Cleburne, Texas.

Then it went missing for years. In 1944, it was found by two boys on the banks of the Nolan River in Texas. Today the weapon is in the collection of the Layland Museum in Cleburne.

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ington for embalming, soldiers paid their respects. (There were no reports of a private surreptitiously snipping hairs from Sedgwick’s beard.)

Then, as now, crassness plagued the nation’s capital.

After the embalming at Thomas Holmes’ establishment on Pennsylvania Avenue, the general’s body was visited by a “large number of persons,” the Washington Evening Sedgwick Star reported. At least one of them was a souvenir hunter. Apparently ignoring a guard of four soldiers near the corpse, a woman “exhibited a singular pertinacity to procure a memento of the fallen hero by clipping two buttons from his coat.”

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sword was returned to the Zollicoffer family, according to an 1893 account in The National Tribune, a veterans’ newspaper. In 2020, the weapon and general’s sash from the battle sold at auction for $31,980.)

Another soldier sent a piece of the general’s bloody undershirt to a friend in Alexandria, Va. “The possession of it made me nervous for awhile,” abolitionist Julia Wilbur wrote in her diary. “It is a singular & interesting memento of the Rebellion.” Even Zollicoffer’s hair was cut off close to the skull, apparently by fiendish souvenirs hunters.

“I am sorry to say that his remains were outrageously treated by the thousands of soldiers and citizens that flocked to see them,” wrote the newspaper correspondent, probably exaggerating the number of ghouls.

To His Death “On Tuesday evening the body was Opposite page: Maj. Gen. almost naked,” he added. “This kind of curiPatrick Cleburne, one of osity-hunting borders on vandalism.” six Confederate generals Some vehemently denied the ill-treatslain at Franklin, was ment of Zollicoffer’s remains, but the evilast seen advancing on foot during this charge dence is irrefutable. “I have a small piece of after his horse was Zollicoffer’s undershirt,” a Federal soldier killed. It is unknown bragged, “and a daguerreotype of a seceswhether Union or Rebel sion lady, taken with a lot of other plunsoldiers were the thieves der.” An Ohio newspaper reported a Union of his possessions. officer showing off a piece of the general’s buckskin shirt: “It was very soft, and must have been exceedingly comfortable if kept dry.”

A week after the battle, 31st Ohio Captain John W. Free wrote of the division of Zollicoffer’s clothes as trophies—“until orders were imperatively given not to do so any more.”

“But his pants and the fine buckskin shirt is no doubt scatered [sic] all over the different States of the North,” the officer added, “as some 4 or 5 different states were here represented.”

Another Ohioan echoed Free’s account. “When the soldiers saw Zollicoffer’s corpse,” wrote Private John Boss of the 9th Ohio, “they tore his clothing from his body, and split up his shirt, in order to have a souvenir. A Tennessean wanted his whole scalp but was prevented from that because a guard was placed there.”

In a letter to a friend, 9th Ohio quartermaster sergeant Joseph Graeff wrote of Zollicoffer: “Inclosed you will find a lock of his hair and a piece cut from his pantaloons. Shortly after the battle I hunted for his corpse, and found it lying in the mud.”

Union Army authorities eventually stopped this macabre nonsense, washed Zollicoffer’s mud-spattered body, and placed it in a tent under guard. “Having no clothing suitable in which to dress him,” a witness recalled, “he was wrapped in a nice-new blanket until they could be procured, after which he was dressed and provided for in a handsome manner….Particular regard and unusual respect were shown his body by officers and men.”

Chaplain Lemuel F. Drake of the 31st Ohio viewed the general’s remains on a board in the tent. “I saw the place where he was shot, and laid my hand upon his broad forehead,” he wrote. “He was about six feet tall, and compactly and well built, one of the finest heads I ever saw.”

The Federals, who kept the body until January 31, considered the general a bizarre (and by then smelly) war trophy. At division headquarters in Louisville, Federal soldiers waited in line for an opportunity to view the remains of the general and his aide, also killed at Mills Springs.

The Union Army embalmed “Old Zolly.” Then “…the bodies of Zollicoffer and his aide were placed in elegant and expensive burial cases by

Memento Mori This red officer’s sash was one of the items stolen from Felix Zollicoffer’s body and later returned to his family. Along with the general’s sword, the sash recently sold for several thousand dollars at auction. the munificence of the government he had fallen trying to overthrow,” wrote one disgusted Federal soldier.

Under a flag of truce, the two Confederates’ remains were sent through the lines. “It was courteous, soldierly and christian to send to their friends these bodies of men prominent in the bad cause,” wrote the Federal soldier. “But neither courtesy, nor military etiquette, nor Christianity demanded anything more.”

Finally back in his native Tennessee, the remains of one of Nashville’s leading citizens were treated reverently. In early February, Zollicoffer’s body arrived in the state capital, where, despite rainy, “exceedingly disagreeable weather,” thousands filed past the remains at the State Capitol. The next day, the procession to Zollicoffer’s gravesite at Nashville City Cemetery, a little more than a mile away, was “one of the largest ever seen” in the city.

At last, “Old Zolly” could rest.

John Banks, a frequent America’s Civil War contributor, writes from Nashville, Tenn.

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St. Mary’s County, Md.

Defending the Potomac

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receive supplies and wounded soldiers. In 1863, Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs established a prison camp at Point Lookout, intended to hold 10,000 prisoners.

It held twice that at its peak, however. In 1864, construction on three forts at Point Lookout began, with two of them eventually being armed.

On April 22, 1865, following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, the Quartermaster Corps sent the barge Black Diamond here to keep John Wilkes Booth from crossing the river. Tragically, the steamer Massachusetts, headed for nearby Fort Monroe, struck the Black Diamond, which sank in less than three minutes.

Eighty-seven men were killed.

The history of St. Mary’s dates to its colonial roots, and enthusiasts cannot only follow a half-dozen Civil War Trails signs here but will also enjoy a host of significant sites spanning several centuries of the area’s story. And the views from the shore, of course, are striking. —Melissa A. Winn

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Trailside is produced in partnership with Civil War Trails Inc., which connects visitors to lesserknown sites and allows them to follow in the footsteps of the great campaigns. Civil War Trails has more than 1,400 sites across six states and produces more than a dozen maps. Visit civilwartrails.org and check in at your favorite sign #civilwartrails.

Union troops occupied much of St. Mary’s County for the duration of the Civil War, owing in large part to its citizens’ Southern sympathies and its strategic location on the Potomac River. The waterway was a vital transportation route for troops and supplies, not to mention a means of direct access to Washington, D.C. The river was to be protected at all costs.

“From all I can see and learn of the people of Maryland I am convinced that along the shores of the Potomac there is not one in twenty who is true to the Union,” Thomas T. Craven, commander of the Potomac Flotilla, recorded in his journal in August 1861.

Throughout the war, the flotilla patrolled the waters here for Confederate vessels and guarded the lighthouses.

In 1862, the U.S. government leased Point Lookout, which had been a popular resort at the tip of the peninsula. It was quickly turned into a government installation. A 1,400-bed hospital complex was built with 20 buildings and a large wharf to

PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

CONFEDERATE SYMPATHIZERS FORCED THE FEDERALS TO PROTECT THE RIVER FROM ITS OWN SHORES

Point Lookout

Piney Point

10350 Point Lookout Rd.

44720 Lighthouse Rd.

In 1862, the federal government erected Hammond Hospital at the tip of Point Lookout. The ward buildings radiated in spoke fashion from a central bay.

After the Battle of Gettysburg, Union authorities started sending Confederate prisoners here for incarceration. In 1864, Confederate Brig. Gen. Bradley T. Johnson planned to liberate the prisoners here, arm them, and march on Washington, D.C., as part of General Jubal Early’s offensive. When the U.S. government learned of his plan from Southern newspapers, they began to fortify Point Lookout. The reconstructed barracks and prison pen are a must-see.

Point Lookout State Park is open daily from 8 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.

On December 11, 1861, Captain Shore of the steamer Chamberlain disembarked here when he saw a distress flag flying. Inside the lighthouse, the wife of keeper Robert J. Marshall reported that “five or six loads of rebels crossed the river every night into Virginia with provisions, etc. [and] that there was $10,000 worth of goods, ammunition, clothing, etc., in the woods just above the lighthouse to be carried over. Men came to her every day and asked her if any of the U.S. cutters were about and told her she had better keep away as they intended to destroy the lighthouse.” They never did. It’s open from noon to 4 p.m. daily.

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USCT Monument 21550 Willows Rd. Dedicated in 2012, the United States Colored Troops Memorial Statue commemorates the more than 700 African American soldiers and sailors from St. Mary’s County who served in the Union forces. Two Black soldiers from St. Mary’s County—William H. Barnes and James H. Harris—were awarded the Medal of Honor for gallant actions at the Battle of New Market Heights. They both served in the 38th U.S. Colored Infantry.

MARK SUMMERFIELD/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; PHOTOS BY MELISSA A. WINN; POTOMAC SUN PHOTOGRAPHY

PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

Leonardtown 41605 Court House Dr. William Charles Love cast his ballot at the courthouse here in 1860, the single vote for Abraham Lincoln in St. Mary’s County. He was ambushed on his way home, fighting his way across the bridge out of town. When Abraham Lincoln won the election, the people of Leonardtown called for secession. On April 23, 1861, in a public meeting, the residents declared allegiance to the South and resolved to raise $10,000 for weapons and ammunition. Union troops later occupied the courthouse. The Old Jail Museum located on the grounds of the courthouse is open for guided tours.

Chaptico 22937 Maddox Rd. Despite the presence of Federal forces at Chaptico wharf, blockade runners carried supplies at night down Chaptico Run and across the Potomac River to Virginia. Clement Spalding, a local merchant who supplied them, was arrested and confined in the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C. William Charles Love, the only man in St. Mary’s County to vote for Abraham Lincoln during the 1860 presidential election, was a Chaptico resident.

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1. Chaptico 2. Blackistone Lighthouse 3. Leonardtown 4. Sotterley Plantation 5. USCT Monument 6. St. Mary’s City 7. Piney Point 8. Point Lookout

Blackistone Lighthouse St. Clement’s Island | 38370 Point Breeze Rd.

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Called Maryland’s Plymouth Rock by some, St. Clement’s Island was the site of the first landing of colonists in Maryland on March 25, 1634. During the Civil War, Confederate forces planned to destroy the lighthouse here to keep it from aiding Union forces. When keeper Jerome McWilliams learned of the plan in May 1864, he pleaded with the Confederates to spare it, saying his wife was close to childbirth and moving her was unsafe. Confederates instead confiscated the supply of oil and destroyed the lantern and lens. This replica lighthouse was unveiled in 2008 and is open for tours.

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Sotterley Plantation

44300 Sotterley Ln.

Sotterley’s wartime owner, Walter H.S. Briscoe, served as the surgeon for a local Confederate infantry company. Three of his sons also joined the Confederate Army, enlisting in Company H of the 1st Maryland Infantry. Enslaved men and women worked on the plantation until 1864, when the state of Maryland abolished slavery. One of the plantation’s slaves, George Washington Barnes, enlisted in Company I of the 7th U.S. Colored Troops and would fight opposite the plantation owner’s son, Henry, in the trenches of Petersburg on August 25, 1864. Guided tours of the plantation are available, including the outbuildings and an original slave cabin. www.sotterley.org

Historic St. Mary’s City 18751 Hogaboom Ln. This living history area and museum reconstructs the original colonial town that was Maryland’s first European settlement and capital. The entire complex is staffed by living historians in period costume, as well as archaeologists and archaeology students who provide scientific and historical interpretation. Hours vary by season.

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FIRST MONDAYS AN ORIGINAL VIDEO SERIES

Editor Dana B. Shoaf and Director of Photography Melissa A. Winn explore off-the-beaten path and human interest stories about the war, and interview fellow scholars of the conflict.

JOIN T O D AY !

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T H E

LINCOLN FORUM

What began as a modest proposal to bring Lincoln enthusiasts together for a small East Coast-based yearly history conference at Gettysburg has blossomed into one of the leading history organizations in the country.

Live broadcasts begin at noon on the first Monday of each month.

FACEBOOK.COM/CIVILWARTIMES

Our yearly November symposium is attended by scholars and enthusiasts from all over the nation and abroad.

It attracts speakers and panelists who are some of the most revered historians in the Lincoln and Civil War fields.

Visit our website:

thelincolnforum.org for more information

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5 QUESTIONS

Interview by Sarah Richardson

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been 4–5 years since we completed the rehabilitation of Burnside Bridge; and we just finished rehabilitating the inside of the Observation Tower on Bloody Lane, where we have the cast iron staircase, which is original to the 1890s. It needed a lot of work, and up on the top we did some safety upgrades as well.

We put in a railing and a better stairway entrance onto the platform.

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You manage a beautiful landscape that was the site of horrific carnage.

Is that a paradox?

I feel that every time I go out on the battlefield. One of fundamental values we’ve identified on the battlefield is a sense of place, solemnity. Something we value and want to keep. That is something we hear a lot from visitors: how beautiful and well maintained it

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Are you a Civil War aficionado?

I’m not a military historian and I’ll be the first to admit that.

That’s why I depend on the amazing staff we have, who have great depth and knowledge in that area and are amazing public historians and interpreters. My interests have always been looking at cultural history and as manager to leave the battlefield better than I found it. We are in the midst of a renovation of the visitor center; it’s

Artifact In Its Own Right The Antietam Visitor Center opened in 1962. A $6.8 million rehabilitation project of the facility is underway and may be completed by the battle’s 160th anniversary.

IAN DAGNALL/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; NPS PHOTO

For Susan Trail, superintendent of Antietam National Battlefield, a summer stint doing archaeology blossomed into a career juggling oversight of the 3,000-acre park near Sharpsburg, Md., where her responsibilities range from managing the physical landscape and infrastructure to developing cultural resources and changes in interpretation. Prior to her appointment at Antietam in 2011, she spent more than a decade working in various aspects of the National Park Service, bringing training in anthropology, archaeology, and history specific to Antietam commemoration with her. Today the Antietam Visitor Center is in the midst of a physical renovation and comprehensive update to its exhibits. Trail notes that the facility “is now a historic structure in its own right,” and updates are taking that into account. Interpretation of the epic September 17, 1862, battle—deemed the single bloodiest day in American history—is also being revisited.

5 QUESTIONS is, the juxtaposition between that and what happened that resulted in it being preserved.

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You are rehabilitating the visitor center.

What is the goal?

We needed all new HVAC, plumbing, electrical systems. We’re going to be bumping the front of the building out to make a larger lobby area and we’re adding a small wing in the back for offices and our staff. We’re also adding accessibility improvements, including redesigning our front sidewalk and adding an elevator that will go to all three levels. We’re redoing all of our exhibits and interpretive exhibits. We’re really excited about the exhibits because they look at a broadening of the story of Antietam and its larger context: the beginning of the Civil War, what led up to the Civil War, and going through and looking at the Emancipation Proclamation and the freeing of the enslaved as a result of the war.

We’re also looking at memory or the legacy of the battle, which of course we would. Commemoration is my area; we’re looking at how the battlefield has been memorialized and commemorated over time as well. We’re also working on a new park film, but it will not be ready when the visitor center opens back up. Overall, the visitor center experience will be very much updated. We don’t have an exact date for the opening at this point. It would be nice if we could complete it in time for the 160th anniversary of the battle in September 2022.

PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

IAN DAGNALL/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; NPS PHOTO

4

Reflect on the changes between when you started as Antietam’s superintendent and today.

Over that time, we’ve seen an increase in visitors.

A lot of parks are seeing that. I think our interpretive emphasis has changed over that time. One of the things we’ve seen in the larger world, over the past several years, is just how relevant the Civil War and its history remains for the public, or should be. When we look at the controversies over the Confederate battle flag, the controversies over Confederate statuary, Civil War sites and history are front and center as people seem to understand that things happening today have roots and are looking for the genesis of them.

That provides opportunities for us, as well, to talk about the context of these events in history. We definitely have seen more of a shift toward seeing the Civil War in a broader context. When I first started in 1997, I attended a “Holding the High Ground” conference work group in Nashville, Tenn., which was a turning point for the Park Service in interpretation of the war. What we have seen over the years are more and more efforts to do that across the system. History is relevant. You have to understand where you come from to know where you are now. That is another thing I have seen during my tenure as a Civil War battlefield manager.

Keeping the Beat Drum Major Sebastian Mayer of the 1st New Jersey carried this drum during the battle. The instrument is just one artifact of the park’s vast collection.

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Describe the scope of the landscape management and the range of elements on the battlefield.

We have historic houses, historic barns, and a historic landscape, which is really our main resource—the battlefield. We work to maintain that, and we work with local farmers who actually farm a large part of the battlefield for us through agreements. We’ve been focusing on building a really good relationship with our local farmers and bringing in really good farmers. Another focus is looking at ecological resilience on the battlefield.

We have a historic landscape, but we also have opportunities to integrate our natural resource management and our cultural resource management. Down on the south end of the park, about 15 years ago, the park started setting aside derelict farmland for native grasslands and developed those down on the Otto Farm. We’re looking to expand our native grasslands in the park and doing some reforestation along Antietam Creek. We have a planning effort underway now to develop a landscape management plan. This is just now for public review and comment. We’re planning on having that done early next year and will focus considerably on resource management on the battlefield.

To read the rest of our exclusive interview, go to bit.ly/SusanTrail5Q. MARCH 2022

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REVIEWS Time to Rebuild A former Confederate ponders his war-damaged property, an all-toocommon experience in defeat for members of Robert E. Lee’s army across the South.

The Dream Denied 9, 1865, did not mark the end of the Civil War, only the end’s beginning.

Caroline Janney’s Ends of War offers a detailed and compelling analysis of the confused, often contentious months that followed Appomattox, as Union leadership sought to dissolve the surrendered army while forestalling extended guerrilla warfare.

Aware that President Lincoln sought an “easy peace,” Grant did not demand Lee’s unconditional surrender. Any Confederate soldier below the rank of colonel would be placed on parole and allowed to return to his home undisturbed. By Lee’s estimate, no more than 8,000 of his troops actually surrendered on April 9, and a week later as many as 12,000 had yet to surrender. These latter troops could elect to return home and seek a parole from a Union provost marshal along the way; proceed without a parole and await a call to reassemble; or move south hoping to link up with General Joseph E. Johnston’s army.

Janney uses primary sources to illuminate the experiences of individuals who pursued each of these options. She points to the assassination of Lincoln as a flash point for Union leaders suddenly alert to the need to closely monitor the movements of homeward-bound Confederate sol-

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Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army After Appomattox

By Caroline E. Janney UNC Press, 2021, $30

BIRMINGHAM MUSEUM OF ART

Robert E. Lee’s surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia on April

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BIRMINGHAM MUSEUM OF ART

REVIEWS diers. Many prohibited the wearing of Confederate uniforms or insignia and required printed parole passes to include physical descriptions of the parolees.

In offering terms, Grant had not anticipated several issues that would bedevil Union leadership. What obligation did the federal government have to provide the defeated Confederates with rations and transportation? How could Lee’s troops travel south over a Southern railway system that was destroyed? What was to become of veterans no longer welcome in the border or Northern states that they had left to serve the Confederacy? Did the military paroles shield Confederate soldiers and their leaders from facing domestic charges of treason?

Grant’s role at Appomattox constrained him from making political decisions (a constraint Sherman later overlooked when negotiating Joe Johnston’s April 26 surrender). Janney skillfully parses the political differences between grants of amnesty and pardons, and explores the intersection of the idea of belligerent status as defined by the laws of war with the domestic law of treason. Could Lee be accused of treason in light of Grant’s parole? Were other CSA military and civilian leaders liable for prosecution as traitors?

Throughout the post-Appomattox period, Grant staunchly defended the terms he had negotiated in the McLean family’s parlor. When Andrew Johnson twice sought to press the issue of trying Lee for treason, Grant pushed back, forcing the president to back down by threatening to resign his commission. After several feeble attempts to hold Lee, Jefferson Davis, James Longstreet, and others accountable failed to gain traction, Johnson rendered the issue moot with a Christmas Day 1868 amnesty proclamation.

Janney’s study is a welcome reminder that ending a war is a messy business, no more so than in the instance of the American Civil War. On her book’s penultimate page, she concludes: “The quest for an independent Confederate nation may have ended in the spring of 1865, but an attachment to and defense of the Confederate cause would continue to flourish.”

–Rick Beard

AS PART OF THE LSU series Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War, the editors have assembled chapter contributions from 13 notable Civil War scholars to re-examine the events and legacy of the war in the loyal border slave state of Maryland. The collective thesis is that two abiding myths have obscured Maryland’s experience and memory of the great divisive conflagration. The first is that of ‘The Lost Cause’ of freedom-loving Southerners defending states’ rights against an overmighty federal government while the second celebrates a moral equivalency between two causes with brave soldiers on each side. Both of these evolved to protect White supremacy, something the editors argue is as integral to Maryland identity as crab cakes and fried chicken! They also hope this book will be an historical corrective and spur more research and interpretations as these myths are finally collapsing in the 21st century.

Notable contributions include Richard Bell on antebellum Maryland as a border conflict zone where opportunistic traders kidnapped free Blacks from Pennsylvania to sell them in Baltimore ‘down the River’ into the Deep South’s brutal but lucrative cotton and sugar plantations. Martha Jones shows how the Supreme The Civil War Court’s Dred Scott ruling denying in Maryland citizenship to freedom-seeking Reconsidered African Americans, though symBy Charles W. Mitchell bolic, had little material effect in and Jean H. Baker Maryland, where nearly half of the LSU Press, 2021, $45 state’s Black population had long been engaged in state and local lawsuits. Maryland’s position as a loyal Union state, downplayed by mythmakers, is on display as Charles Mitchell reveals a majority (55 percent) of voters in the 1860 presidential election were for pro-Union candidates; Frank Towers shows how the 1861 pro-Confederate riot in Baltimore was instigated by an activist minority; and Timothy Orr documents that Baltimore contributed 36 percent of the state’s Union Army quota despite making up only 30 percent of the population.

Other key sections examine the contributions of women— White and Black, Union and Confederate—on the home front as well as the short life of state reconstruction. The chapter endnotes are valuable, but unfortunately there is no comprehensive bibliography, glossary, maps, or illustrations. Nevertheless, this volume is a key, though pricey, contribution to emerging 21stcentury Civil War scholarship, despite being heavy at times with esoteric academic jargon such as “critical fabulation” and “sensory historian.” While amusing, the last chapter, titled “F**k the Confederacy,” is perhaps a counterargument for scholars to stick to their jargon! —William John Shepherd MARCH 2022

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REVIEWS Civil War Witnesses and Their Books: New Perspectives on Iconic Works Edited by Gary W. Gallagher and Stephen Cushman LSU Press, 2021, $45

IN 2019, Gary Gallagher and Stephen Cushman put forth Civil War Writing: New Perspectives on Iconic Texts. At that time, they promised a companion volume on the writing of Civil War witnesses. Here it is.

“Witnesses” is a rather odd term, for here we have essays on such participants as James Longstreet and George McClellan.

Elizabeth Varon views the former as a “prophet of reconciliation between the North and South,” especially through his memoir, Manassas to Appomattox (1896). In articles for the Philadelphia Times and Century in the 1880s, Longstreet also strongly defended himself against Lost Cause spokesmen who blamed him for Gettysburg.

Co-editor Cushman writes of McClellan’s complex personality: his well-known popularity among the troops, of course, but also a dark side, bearing so many psychological defects (19, as Cushman enumerates them) as to run 6½ lines of text in their mere listing.

Gallagher explains how the two books (1877, 1906) by Walter H. Taylor, Robert E. Lee’s adjutant general, placed Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia smack-dab in the middle of the Lost Cause myth. That may be a well-known story, but Gallagher adds some tasty bits (e.g., staff officers called General Lee “The Tycoon”).

Northern writers and their works, such as John D. Billings’ Hard Tack and Coffee (1887), get attention, too. So do women, including Phoebe Pember’s recollection of her work at Chimborazo Hospital and the memoir of Elizabeth Custer, the cavalryman’s widow.

Altogether the eight essays serve as a thoughtful and informed volume of commentary on “iconic” Civil War books. A third volume in this series is being planned. Let’s watch for it. —Stephen Davis

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UNIT HISTORIES The great-grandson of a participant in the “midnight ride of Paul Revere” as well as the father of a vice president of the United States, Rufus R. Dawes made his own notable contribution to the history of the republic as a member of one of the Army of the Potomac’s most celebrated units. Finding himself in Wisconsin on business in April 1861, the Ohio native raised a company that was assigned to the 6th Wisconsin, which was subsequently combined with the 2nd and 7th Wisconsin, along with the 19th Indiana, to form a brigade that, under John Gibbon’s leadership, developed the sense of distinctiveness, physical and moral toughness, and esprit de corps that made it an elite fighting force. It was also under Gibbon that the brigade adopted the distinctive headwear that inspired its first nickname, the Black Hat Brigade.

Not until August 1862, however, did the Black Hats receive their baptism of fire at the Brawner Farm. After their remarkable performance there, they won further laurels at South Mountain and Antietam, and became known as the Iron Brigade. Following Gibbon’s promotion to division command, leadership of the unit, which now also included the 24th Michigan, passed to Solomon “Long Sol” Meredith. The brigade then suffered brutal losses in the course of yet another extraordinary battlefield performance on July 1 at Gettysburg from which, although it saw important service afterward, it never truly recovered. Nevertheless, in that brief window of time from August 1862 to July 1863, it earned a distinguished place in the history of the Union Service with the Sixth war effort.

Wisconsin Volunteers Few sources on the Iron BriBy Rufus R. Dawes gade and its campaigns have E.R. Alderman, 1890 been more valued by historians than Dawes’ 1890 account of his experiences with the 6th Wisconsin—and for good reason.

Drawing mainly from his letters and papers from the war, Dawes not only provided invaluable insights into the war in the Eastern Theater from the perspective of a front-line commander, especially the fights at Brawner Farm, South Mountain, Antietam, and Gettysburg, but an enjoyable read as well.

Fortunately for readers wishing to add it to their libraries, Dawes’ wonderful book was republished in 1962 by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, with a superb introduction by Iron Brigade historian Alan T. Nolan, and is now available from the University of Nebraska Press as A Full Blown Yankee of the Iron Brigade. –Ethan S. Rafuse

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REVIEWS In this absorbing book, author William A. Blair plants his readers in the midst of the fierce struggle against racial injustice in the post–Civil War South. It was, Blair claims, “one of the most important conflicts of the Reconstruction era, a conflict that was, at its heart, a war over trustworthy information.”

Immediately after the war, bands of white supremacists and ex-Rebels unleashed a deadly campaign of intimidation and terror against former slaves and their White compatriots, including Union soldiers. “[T]he people of the South,” a Virginia politician insisted in June 1865, “will not permit the negroes to remain in the South in peace as free men.” In mid-1865, horrific massacres of Blacks occurred in both Memphis and New Orleans, and conditions in Texas were especially troubling. As Blair notes, “former Rebels killed more White and Black people than [American] Indians did.”

In response, Radical Republicans led by Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson, chair of the Military Affairs Committee, argued for military intervention to enforce the law and protect citizens of any color. Reports and data from “a network of military officers and African Americans who bore witness to the atrocities” were compiled by the Freedmen’s Bureau, under commissioner Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard. Wilson eventually reported a grim tally of atrocities to his colleagues in the Senate on a chilly February 19, 1867. “Black people laid their lives on the line to supply the documentation,” Blair writes.

It was “hard-won evidence that accurately portrayed the larger patterns of violence within Southern communities.”

Reactions to the report from some of Wilson’s colleagues and other officials were also chilling. Wisconsin Senator James R. Doolittle—“an antislavery man who had supported Lincoln”—questioned its veracity, as did Union Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, a future Democratic candidate for president, who dismissed the reports as “fabricated for political effect.”

Blair notes that Democrats and conservatives often refused to take victims’ accounts seriously. “Long-standing traditions of criminal justice based on racism and gender discrimination fortified the critics who refused to consider testimony of African Americans as credible.”

Other critics claimed it “overlooked that violence was simply a part of American culture.” Meanwhile, President Andrew Johnson believed “that former rebels accepted their fate, recognized Federal authority, and conducted peaceful relations with freed people.”

The Military Reconstruction Act was passed in March 1867, putting “the protection of loyalists in the South front and center.” On the heels of this success, Wilson was at the forefront of “Northern white and Black politicians and community leaders who traversed the South to encourage Black men to vote the Republican ticket.” But, Blair admits, “Wilson’s travels backfired by giving detractors ammunition to deny the validity of the outrages he had articulated on the Senate floor,” seeing “safe passage as proof that anarchy did not grip the region.” Montgomery Blair, a moderate Republican, chalked-up the Radicals’ political stumping to their “lust for power.”

Decades of relentless racial violence and injustice followed, and the tally of murders and outrages steadily mounted through the era of Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, and the spawning of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups. The records of incidents themselves fell victim to all manner of interpretations according to partisan needs.

The Record of Murders and Outrages: Racial Violence and the Fight Over Truth at the Dawn of Reconstruction

By William A. Blair UNC Press, 2021, $19.95 While public awareness of these bloody accounts “did not stem the violence,” Blair writes, the “accurate depiction of murders and outrages justified federal actions during Reconstruction.” The author touts, “Black suffrage, and adoption of key amendments to protect the rights of individuals from harm and from restriction at the ballot box” as legacies of the “paper trail” of witness testimonies amassed by the Freedmen’s Bureau.

Ironically, this mass of evidence failed to take root among academics until the modern Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

Prior to this, Blair reveals, “when it came to assessing the murders and outrages during Reconstruction, early scholarship ignored the testimony of African Americans.” In closing, Blair reminds readers that “Racial violence outlasted the Freedmen’s Bureau; so did the need to prove it happened.” His story of racism and political partisanship echoes to current events.

Blair includes pertinent statistical tables and an ample bibliography to help inform readers. This is an in-depth look at a divisive and deadly period in our history when political calculus too often trumped humanity. These are hard truths. Though we may not always like what we see, it is important not to look away from this book.

–George Skoch MARCH 2022

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FINAL BIVOUAC

COLONEL

Burr Baldwin Porter diers were disciplined by first-class officers, he reasoned, they could least that’s what Burr Baldwin Porter might have told his wife, Mary, emulate the discipline and recklesswhen he left Boston for France in ness of the French Zouaves. Neither recommendation was adopted.

1870. A veteran of both the Crimean Porter became a major on June 2, War and the Civil War, Porter headed to France to arrange a sale 1862, serving on Maj. Gen. John C. of arms. But following the French Frémont’s staff until Frémont’s disaster at Sedan during the Francoremoval from the Mountain DepartPrussian War, he felt compelled to ment. Massachusetts Governor John join his old Gallic companions and Andrew later appointed Porter colodefend what Porter considered his nel of the 40th Massachusetts Infansecond country. Fluent in French, he try, noting: “He is a splendid soldier. was named chief of staff to General I appointed him, as I have several Pierre Deflandre of the 3rd Division others—though not from Massachusetts—because [he is] so able.” in the Armée de la Loire. During fighting on December 8, 1870, PorAlthough Porter rose to brigade command in the Department of ter was mortally wounded, struck by Washington, he would never be a Prussian bullet as he called out to nearby French soldiers, “Come, let promoted to general—likely because me show you how Americans fight!” on two occasions he faced charges of He died two days later. leaving his command without perThe son of a reverend, Porter was mission. He was mustered out of the born on October 26, 1829, in MonArmy in July 1865. trose, Pa. Instead of following a reliIn 1871, Mary Porter had her husgious vocation, he sailed overseas to band’s remains disinterred from a fight in the Crimean War. One of grave in France and returned to the only a few Americans to join the United States. He was buried at ForOttoman Army, Porter was eventuest Hills Cemetery in Boston on ally promoted to major. “I have great September 25. Some of Porter’s Civil regard for him and respect for his War comrades, including Major Wilexcellent character and correct prinliam L. Burt, served as pallbearers ciples, which have endeared him to at the funeral. all of his brother officers and superiInterestingly, according to an April 1871 report in the Newark ors,” John Porter Brown of the U.S. A Restless Man Sleeps Legation at Constantinople, wrote in Though a Pennsylvania native, Porter (N.J.) Advertiser, Porter had left April 1855. After the war, Porter primarily represented Massachusetts behind in death “literary remains of during the Civil War and made the returned to the U.S. to practice law. value, consisting of a novel distinBoston area his postwar home. guished by some capital characterFour days after the Confederates painting, which is soon to be pubfired on Fort Sumter, he urged Secretary of War Simon Cameron to “raise as soon as praclished, and another romance treating of the lives, loves, ticable two regiments of infantry from the free colored and fates of the hypothetical inhabitants of the muchpeople of the border States.” He also advised against sought-for Northwest Passage.” Neither book seems ever having volunteers elect their own officers. If citizen-solto have been published. –Frank Jastrzembski Final Bivouac is published in partnership with “Shrouded Veterans,” a nonprofit mission run by Frank Jastrzembski to identify or repair the graves of Mexican War and Civil War veterans (facebook.com/shroudedvetgraves).

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; COURTESY OF FRANK JASTRZEMBSKI

Some men are born restless. At

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