Civil War Times December 2020

PENNSYLVANIA RESERVES AT THE FRONT H MAYNARD’S DEADLY CAP GUN H

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IGHT STAY OVERN BY WHERE MOS RAIDED — page 3 3

JULY 4, 1864

PARTY CRASHER JOHN MOSBY AND HIS RANGERS RUIN INDEPENDENCE DAY AT POINT OF ROCKS, MD GETTYSBURG SURGEON’S LETTERS HOME LOUISIANA TROOPS IN THE VICKSBURG CAMPAIGN CWTP-201200-COVER-DIGITAL.indd 1

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CIVIL WAR TIMES DECEMBER 2020

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READY FOR THE FIGHT Company A of the 30th Pennsylvania Reserves poses next to the decorative bower they erected to denote their camp.

ON THE COVER: John Mosby’s Point of Rocks, Md., raid was timed to aid Lt. Gen. Jubal Early’s last gasp 1864 campaign.

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CIVIL WAR TIMES DECEMBER 2020

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Features

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Calico and Cake

By Kevin Pawlak

John Mosby ruined a Maryland town’s 1864 Independence Day.

‘They Have Our Range’

By Jon-Erik Gilot

A former Union officer picked a bad day for a canal cruise.

Curtin Called

By Jennifer M. Murray

The Pennsylvania Reserves Division earned every bloody bit of its hard-fighting reputation.

Swan Song

By Richard H. Holloway

Louisiana troops brought music with them on the Vicksburg Campaign.

‘I’m Exhausted’

By Jonathan W. White

Union surgeon Daniel G. Brinton spent days on duty at his Gettysburg hospital.

Statuary Rivals

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By Harold Holzer

Sculptor Leonard Volk benefited from Stephen Douglas’ patronage, but gained fame for sculpting Abraham Lincoln.

Departments 6 8 14 16 18 22 25 62 66 72

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; HN ARCHIVES; ARTOKOLORO/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; COVER: VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND CULTURE; INSET: HARPER’S WEEKLY/PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: BRIAN WALKER

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Return Fire Little Mac’s Location Miscellany Re-homed Confederate Details War Drums in Rhode Island Insight Mrs. Pickett Rambling Civil War Cycling Interview Pennsylvania Glory Editorial Far Too Soon Armament Deadly Cap Gun Reviews Essays on Everything Sold ! USCT Canteen DECEMBER 2020 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER DAVID STEINHAFEL PUBLISHER ALEX NEILL EDITOR IN CHIEF

John Mosby with some of his Rangers.

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VOL. 59, NO. 6

EDITORIAL

LEGENDS ON HORSEBACK

Mosby’s Partisan Rangers played a big role in bringing the ‘Gray Ghost’ plenty of glory. http://bit.ly/MosbyMen

TEMPLE OF TOLERANCE

The cruel irony of a segregated Lincoln Memorial dedication ceremony has given way to reverence and rallies. http://bit.ly/LincolnTemple

WAR ON THE DOORSTEP

How Gettysburg’s Spangler Farm was transformed into an 11th Corps hospital for the wounded and dying. http://bit.ly/SpanglerHospital

“Winslow Homer.

I once wanted to be an artist.

Watching him sketch, and hearing about his experiences at the front, would be invaluable.”

DANA B. SHOAF EDITOR CHRIS K. HOWLAND SENIOR EDITOR SARAH RICHARDSON SENIOR EDITOR STEPHEN KAMIFUJI CREATIVE DIRECTOR BRIAN WALKER GROUP ART DIRECTOR JENNIFER M. VANN ART DIRECTOR MELISSA A. WINN DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY SHENANDOAH SANCHEZ PHOTOGRAPHER AT LARGE

What Civil War personality would you like to live with for a month?

ADVISORY BOARD

For more visit: http://bit.ly/ BoardAnswers

Edwin C. Bearss, Gabor Boritt, Catherine Clinton, William C. Davis, Gary W. Gallagher, Lesley Gordon, D. Scott Hartwig, John Hennessy, Harold Holzer, Robert K. Krick, James M. McPherson, Mark E. Neely Jr., Megan Kate Nelson, Ethan S. Rafuse, Susannah J. Ural “‘Howdy’ Martin.

“Abraham I’d like to watch Lincoln, CORPORATE the evolution of obviously. I’d ROB WILKINS DIRECTOR OF PARTNERSHIP MARKETING this skilled junior video everything commander amid TOM GRIFFITHS CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT he said with a the challenges smartphone GRAYDON SHEINBERG CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT of late 1862.” until the battery SHAWN BYERS VP AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT wore out.”

JAMIE ELLIOTT PRODUCTION DIRECTOR

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CIVIL WAR TIMES DECEMBER 2020

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“WORLD WAR II MOVIES HAVE COVERED ALMOST EVERY POSSIBLE ANGLE, AND YET ‘THE LAST VERMEER’ FINDS A FRESH AND FASCINATING STORY TO TELL. GUY PEARCE’S CAREER-CAPPING PERFORMANCE MAKES ART DEALER HAN VAN MEEGEREN ENDLESSLY FASCINATING.” - Stephen Farber, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

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DEC 2020

(American History, Civil War Times, Wild West, and World War 2 Magazines)

10/13/20 9:08 PM

RETURN FIRE

Steven Stotelmyer’s account of Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan “on the move” at Antietam in the October 2020 issue calls for a bit of updating.

On September 17, McClellan posted at the Pry House only briefly.

As the fighting advanced, McClellan shifted to 5th Corps headquarters near the John Ecker House, just south of the Middle Bridge and almost due east of Sharpsburg.

McClellan left there twice. First, crossing Antietam Creek in the afternoon to counsel the demoralized Maj. Gen. Edwin Vose Sumner.

Second, a late-day start toward Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside to counsel him, but he was intercepted by Burnside’s courier. McClellan sent the courier back with the edict, “If the bridge is lost, all is lost.” He returned to 5th Corps headquarters and, finally, to army headquarters at Keedysville.

CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS AT GETTYSBURG Gary W. Gallagher writes in “Leave Them Standing” (October 2020) that Confederate monuments in Gettysburg National Military Park should 6

Some of these soldier accounts can be fitted to these known movements, but McClellan schmoozing with Burnside at battle’s end is, at best, mistaken identity.

Reference my Lincoln’s Lieutenants: The High Command of the Army of the Potomac, 2017.

Stephen W. Sears Norwalk, Conn.

Author Stephen Stotelmyer responds: In addition to the movements Stephen Sears mentions, four newspaper correspondents and a soldier in the vicinity of the Cornfield attest to a morning visit to the East Woods.

Lieutenant Colonel David H. Strother of McClellan’s staff, and members of his headquarters guard confirm a forward observation area on the commanding knoll on the east side of the Boonsboro-Sharpsburg Turnpike. remain for educational and interpretive purposes. He is 100 percent correct.

In fact, we can conceptualize the park as one large museum, which is exactly where many of the advocates for dismantling Confederate monuments and statues propose to have them stored.

In response to Mr. Sears’ assertion that Steven Stotelmyer’s account of McClellan’s movements needs updating, I think, respectfully, that it is the other way around. Steve’s recent book, Too Useful to Sacrifice, and his articles are the latest scholarship on the matter representing the culmination of decades of research into primary sources. Steve’s work and Tom Clemens’ threevolume edition of the Carman manuscripts contain materials not found in earlier accounts of the Maryland Campaign. I don’t think there is any reason to discount the primary sources used by Steve.

Finally, referring to any meeting between Burnside and McClellan as “schmoozing” may bring a smile to the anti-Mac crowd but surely does not reflect the state of mind of these two commanders following the bloodiest day in American history.

Jim Rosebrock Jefferson, Md. However, and not to nitpick, but the question of why the Gettysburg park exists at all goes much further back than what professor Gallagher describes as a “breathtaking failure of the nation’s electoral system in 1860.” The Constitution of 1787

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HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

MAC AT THE FRONT

Regarding the afternoon visit to the East Woods, the eyewitness accounts of McClellan rallying his troops under enemy fire, and directing counter battery fire certainly provide an update to the standard image of counseling the demoralized Sumner.

Lastly, Private Wight’s letter to his brother speaks for itself. I am confident he served long enough in the Maryland Campaign to recognize both Burnside and McClellan. Furthermore, I doubt Wight would have considered helping the wounded off the field of battle or comforting injured soldiers in a field hospital as “schmoozing.”

formulated a union based upon the two notions of liberty and the ownership of man as constitutional republicanism and constitutional slavery were blended inside one federal government. In 1860, the Republican Party won with a principal platform plank that had already been judged unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court three years earlier. And following that duly constituted Republican election victory seven Southern states, in a true testament to the centrality of slavery, walked away from the Constitutional Union, gone before Lincoln ever took his oath.

Michael Smiddy Plattsburgh, N.Y.

HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

I have been a subscriber for many years, and really enjoy the contents.

The Gettysburg monument article

by Gary Gallagher is one of the best he has ever written, and I enjoy his work. I am also a member of the American Civil War Society in the U.K. and a member of the American Battlefield Trust.

Stewart Douglas, United Kingdom Thank you for publishing Gary Gallagher’s stellar contribution to the debate over Gettysburg’s Confederate Monuments. To those who worry about the fate of these statues, it is unnecessary to tote an AR-15 to the battlefield to “protect” them. Armed only with Professor Gallagher’s essay, one can make a compelling case for their continued presence on that Hallowed Ground. His suggestion to include them into a “memory tour,” complete with additional and indispensable signage to place in context when and why they were erected, would make for a teachable moment to reach all Americans and give such monuments new meaning, as artifacts along our country’s long and tortured road to live up to its highest aspirations.

Charles Joyce Media, Pa.

ONLINE POLL

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0

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Henry Repeating Rifle

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Spencer Repeating Rifle

The Results Are In! Our recent Facebook poll asked what repeating rifle would you rather carry into battle, the handsome Henry Rifle or the 7-shot workhorse invented by Christopher Spencer?

The brass-framed Henry Rifle was the weapon of choice for 63 percent of all respondents. Benjamin Henry invented the 16-shot repeater.

Our next poll goes online November 19.

SPEAKING OF MONUMENTS

As a long-time subscriber to Civil War Times, a grandmother and without a close Confederate ancestor, I am shocked by editor Dana Shoaf ’s August editorial in which he comments that “like it or not, a lot of monuments are going to come down.”

It appears he has no fortitude or sense of history.

He goes on to say, “history isn’t in bronze figures” but rather in “archives... books, and magazines.” Do you think the terrorists/Marxists will be satisfied with destroying monuments?

Their goal is erase ALL history of this country.

Sharon McClelland Richardson, Texas Editor’s note: You missed the point of my editorial. I was stating that CWT would continue putting out unbiased history, no matter what happened to monuments. I also hope you appreciated Gary Gallagher’s article about Gettysburg monuments in the October issue.

PROSTITUTE PACKET

Some more on the packet boat Idahoe mentioned in the October “Regulating Venus” article. Built in 1863 at Cincinnati, Idahoe was a 450-ton steam-powered sternwheel with a wooden hull. Its original owners were J.N. Newcomb, John Swasey, and David Gibson. Idahoe was chartered by the War Department for $175 per day from May 18, 1863, to August 15, 1863. Idahoe’s first military duty was actually to transport men and equipment on the Ohio and Cumberland Rivers.

Charles H. Bogart Frankfort, Ky.

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU ! e-mail us at cwtletters@historynet.com or send letters to Civil War Times, 1919 Gallows Rd., Suite 400, Vienna, VA 22182-4038

DECEMBER 2020 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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MISCELLANY

FOR A NEW AUDIENCE Few of the Confederate monuments that have been removed have found new homes, but “Spirit of the Confederacy” is an exception.

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inal site in June based on a task-force recommendation from two years ago, the statue will be installed in a museum courtyard not visible from the street.

Viewing will be via online or through a window at the museum by appointment. During a press visit to the site, John Guess Jr., the museum’s CEO emeritus, told the Associated Press that visitors can view the statue on their own terms. “There is a need for our folks to heal. The way you get rid of the pain is not burying it as if it had never existed, but to confront it and engage with it. This allows our community to do this.”

AP PHOTO/DAVID J. PHILLIP

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Confederate memorial joins the displays at the Houston Museum of African American Culture, despite objections by the Houston chapter of the NAACP. The 12-foot bronze statue, named “The Spirit of the Confederacy,” portrays a winged man holding a sword and a palm frond. First erected in a Houston park in 1908 by the Robert E. Lee Chapter No. 186 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, it was dedicated: “To all heroes of the South who fought for the principles of states rights.” Removed from its orig-

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PHOTO BY BUDDY SECOR; ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AND ARCHIVES

UNUSUAL HOME

ONE OF A KIND VENERATED CIVIL WAR HISTORIAN and World War II combat veteran Ed Bearss, a member of CWT’s advisory board, died at age 97 on September 15, 2020. Tributes to Bearss, a longtime battlefield guide, poured in, recognizing not only his dedication to the detailed histories of Civil War combat and campaigns, but his commitment to battlefield preservation. Born in Billings, Mont., Bearss early was acquainted with stories of the Civil War told by a local veteran. He served in the South Pacific in World War II, where combat wounds in a battle at the island of New Britain in Papua, New Guinea, nearly killed him and left him without function in his left arm. Indomitable over the years and steeped in the details of Civil War combat, Bearss tirelessly promoted awareness of Civil War history and served from 1981 to 1994 as Chief Historian of the National Park Service. Bearss often noted the force of personality of Civil War officers, and in that respect the larger-than-life Bearss stepped into the shoes of the men he had spent his life studying.

PHOTO BY BUDDY SECOR; ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AND ARCHIVES

AP PHOTO/DAVID J. PHILLIP

WA R FRA ME George P. Provost served in Company F of the 19th Louisiana, one of the regiment’s featured in the Vicksburg Campaign article on P. 44. The 19th saw service in noteworthy Western Theater battles such as Chickamauga and Chattanooga, and took part in Atlanta Campaign fighting.

Provost enlisted at Camp Moore, La., on December 11, 1861. He missed a good portion of the 1863 campaign season in a hospital in Selma, Ala., and after his health improved he saw duty in 1864 as a teamster, helping to drive army supply trains.

He survived the war and surrendered in 1865.

This image was a treasured family heirloom, “Made about close of war/ George Poindexter Provost/ youngest brother of William Franklin Provost/ my father...” is scratched on the back.

The ambrotype is now a part of the Alabama Department of Archives & History collections.

DECEMBER 7 & JANUARY 4

FIRST MONDAYS!

Let Editor Dana B. Shoaf and Director of Photography Melissa Winn do the tramping during these cold months as you watch from your warm home while they bring you offthe-beaten path and human-interest stories about the war and interview fellow scholars of the conflict. Broadcasts start at noon on Facebook at facebook.com/civilwartimes DECEMBER 2020 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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METEOR OF THE WAR John Brown, portrayed by Ethan Hawke, speaks to Abolitionists during a scene from The Good Lord Bird.

SLAVERY ON FILM

THE AMERICAN BATTLEFIELD TRUST named David Duncan, the organization’s longtime chief development officer, to be its new director. On September 30, Duncan took over for Jim Lighthizer, who stepped down as ABT director after serving for nearly 21 years. He will continue as a trustee with the title president emeritus. Lighthizer praised Duncan for having overseen the donation of nearly $240 million that has preserved more than 53,000 acres of battlefields. Duncan first joined ABT in the mid-1990s, volunteering his time and expertise to fundraising. He formally joined the ABT staff in 2000.

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COURTESY OF MICHAEL PEAKE; NPS PHOTO

NEW DIRECTOR AT ABT

SHOWTIME; PHOTO BY BUDDY SECOR/COURTESY OF AMERICAN BATTLEFIELD TRUST

The Good Lord Bird, a Showtime series fictionalizing the life of abolitionist John Brown, released its first episode on October 4, 2020. The film, based on a 2013 novel by James McBride of the same name, takes liberties in many ways, including creating a boy narrator identified as an enslaved teen who joins John Brown after his father is killed. Joining a cascade of movies portraying slavery in historical times, The Good Lord Bird follows the 2019 movie Harriet, which depicted the daring exploits of Araminta Ross, aka Harriet Tubman. In a rough tally of films listed on Wikipedia as addressing slavery in the New World—whether through fiction or documentary—over a third were filmed since 2000, and of that percentage, two-thirds were made since 2009. John Brown has been featured in two previous feature films: Santa Fe Trail in 1940 and Seven Angry Men in 1955. Harriet Tubman was the subject of a 1978 miniseries, A Woman Called Moses, and a 1992 feature film, The Quest for Freedom. Perhaps due to the complexity of his long career, Frederick Douglass is recorded as the focus of only one film, the 2008 documentary Frederick Douglass and the White Negro, which covers his anti-slavery lecture tour in Ireland while avoiding capture as a fugitive slave in the U.S.

COURTESY OF MICHAEL PEAKE; NPS PHOTO

SHOWTIME; PHOTO BY BUDDY SECOR/COURTESY OF AMERICAN BATTLEFIELD TRUST

REGISTER Saving the Oldest Civil War Monument. On December 17, 1861, Confederates attacked elements of the 32nd Indiana Infantry that were protecting construction parties repairing the vital rail bridge crossing Green River at Munfordville, Ky. After the fight, most Union dead were interred on a small knoll just north of the Green River near the bridge. Within weeks of the burials, Private August Bloedner, a native of Altenburg, Saxony, Germany, created a beautiful monument dedicated to his lost comrades owner of The John Stevens Shop in Newport, R.I., meticthat was placed in the small BOTH SAVED ulously re-created the description of the battle and names cemetery just before the troops The original monument of the dead in German fraktur, similar to August Bloedner’s moved on to more costly battles. to the 32nd Indiana work. Unlike the original, the reverse contains an English During the summer of 1867, was weathered and translation of the text. as part of the effort to reindeteriorating, and moved For more information, visit the Frazier Museum site at ter all Union dead in national inside for protection. The https://fraziermuseum.org/bloedner-monument and the cemeteries, those 14 men of the preservation of Brown’s Veterans Administration’s National Cemetery Administra32nd Indiana were removed to Tavern saves another tion (NCA) at: https://www.cem.va.gov/CEM/bloedner_ Cave Hill National Cemetery monument.asp —Michael A. Peake along with Bloedner’s heartfelt important piece of memorial. Formerly prone, the Chattanooga’s war history.

Chattanooga Landmark Saved. The log Brown’s Ferry memorial was mounted upright, Tavern, dating from 1803, has been saved with a 9-acre purchase, using which led to the monument’s deterioration. funds from the federal American Battlefield Protection Program and the A serious effort began in early 2000 to save Tennessee Historical Commission’s Civil War Sites Preservation Fund. the weathered 32nd Indiana Monument, conFollowing the Battle of Chickamauga, Union troops were besieged in firmed as the nation’s oldest surviving Civil Chattanooga. The siege broke when Union troops boldly sneaked under War memorial. On the 147th anniversary of the noses of Confederates to establish a supply line across the Tennessee the 1861 engagement, the Veterans AdminisRiver at Brown’s Ferry, near the historic Brown’s Tavern. After supplies tration’s National Cemetery Administration began to flow into Chattanooga on the “Cracker Line,” replenished Union (NCA) allowed the removal of the monument troops were able to break the siege. Maryland Campaign Last Gasp. In for conservation at the University of LouisSeptember, The American Battlefield Trust announced the completion of ville, and it is now displayed in a small second a joint deal to preserve 278 acres in Shepherdstown, W.Va., including the floor exhibit titled, “Border State: Kentucky Borden Farm where General A.P. Hill turned back Union forces during the and the Civil War,” at the Frazier Kentucky Battle of Shepherdstown on September 19-20, 1862. Partners in the deal History Museum in Louisville. are ABT, the Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Land Easement Heritage Preservation Inc., of Washington, Program, and the Jefferson County Farmland Protection Board, which D.C., designed a replacement monument for will oversee the site. With this land, the acreage preserved relating to the Cave Hill made of dense Bedford limestone, Battle of Shepherdstown totals 621 acres. and Nicolas W. Benson, stone carver and

DECEMBER 2020 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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THE WAR ON THE NET   Exploring Civil War Era Elections HarpWeek.com & ChroniclingAmerica.loc.gov

A

CLOSE UP!

QUIZ

BE THE FIRST to identify where this church was located, and win a Civil War Times water bottle.

Send your answer to dshoaf@historynet.com or 1919 Gallows Road, Suite 400, Vienna, VA 22181-4038, marked “Worship.” Note the smoke plumes issuing from chimneys.

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ANSWER TO LAST ISSUE’S

CLOSE UP!

CONGRATULATIONS to Gary Daniel of Flagstaff, Ariz., who correctly identified a gilded, North Carolina state seal button.

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT; HARPER’S WEEKLY; HNA; DANA B. SHOAF COLLECTION

s Americans approach another presidential election this fall, it may help to consider how the nation did this in the Civil War era. The results of election of 1860 led to the secession of seven states, soon to be followed by four others. In 1864, the nation faced an unprecedented challenge—holding a

presidential election in the midst of a civil war and when onethird of the nation considered itself a separate country. In 1868, new African American voters had the opportunity to voice their opinions on the national scene as they had been locally. And in 1876, the presidential election was so contested there were fears that the nation would divide again.

Newspapers are a fantastic way to study the topsy-turvy nature of presidential election years, and one of the best places to start is HarpWeek.com’s historical summary of that election at elections.harpweek.com (this works better in Firefox and Safari than Chrome). Their “Overview” provides historical background on the candidates, parties, and issues. The biographies and summaries of key events provide good context, too, but the political cartoons with contextualizing analysis comprise the richest part of each election collection. They capture the known and forgotten fears of the race, and if you’re using them in classrooms, they’re great for encouraging student engagement (especially for students who struggle with or resist assigned readings).

Then, compare Harper’s Weekly editors’ sentiments with those in your area that year by visiting ChroniclingAmerica.loc.gov.

You can narrow your search by state, newspaper, day/month/ year, and then enter keywords like the candidates’ names or “election” and “presidency.” Presidential elections are a fantastic way to take the pulse of a nation, and few eras were as intense as that of the Civil War. —Susannah J. Ural

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Sacred Stone of the Southwest is on the Brink of Extinction

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C

enturies ago, Persians, Tibetans and Mayans considered turquoise a gemstone of the heavens, believing the striking blue stones were sacred pieces of sky. Today, the rarest and most valuable turquoise is found in the American Southwest–– but the future of the blue beauty is unclear.

On a recent trip to Tucson, we spoke with fourth generation turquoise traders who explained that less than five percent of turquoise mined worldwide can be set into jewelry and only about twenty mines in the Southwest supply gem-quality turquoise.

Once a thriving industry, many Southwest mines have run dry and are now closed.

We found a limited supply of C. turquoise from Arizona and snatched it up for our Sedona Turquoise Collection. Inspired by the work of those ancient craftsmen and designed to showcase the exceptional blue stone, each stabilized vibrant cabochon features a unique, one-of-a-kind matrix surrounded in Bali metalwork. You could drop over $1,200 on a turquoise pendant, or you could secure 26 carats of genuine Arizona turquoise for just $99.

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OFF TOWAR WAR DRUMS WERE BEATING, and Rhode Island was eager to do its part to defend Washington, D.C. In April 1861, the 1st Rhode Island Detached Militia departed Providence to defend the capital in two contingents.

The first, consisting of 45 men from each company, left with Colonel Ambrose Burnside on April 20. Lieutenant Colonel Joseph S. Pitman led the second detachment out of the state on April 24. At 2 p.m. that day, the second detachment formed up opposite the railroad station in Exchange Place prior to embarkation aboard the steamer Empire State at Fox Point. After being wheeled into platoons, the Rhode Islanders remained in position for a few minutes while this daguerreotype was taken from the roof of the Gorham Silver Manufacturing building on Canal Street, probably by William W. Coleman, who was employed as a photographer by the firm. After being wished “God’s speed” by the Rev. Dr. Francis Wayland, the troops marched off to war. When the 1st Rhode Island returned on July 28 at the end of three-month’s service, it left 12 killed plus 28 captured on the Bull Run battlefield, and brought home 33 men wounded. Men from this regiment went on to serve as officers in every Rhode Island unit throughout the remainder of the war. – Ron Field

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1. Numerous spectators have shown up to give their soldiery a patriotic sendoff. The mixture of carriages, cars, and wagons drawn up in the foreground illustrate the cross section of Providence society gathered to witness the departure of the regiment.

2. Irish-born Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore’s Boston-based Cornet Band stands at the head of the column. Gilmore had

managed the Boston Brigade Band since 1859, and was co-owner of two instrument manufacturing firms. In October 1861, he volunteered his band to serve with the 24th Massachusetts Infantry.

3. From front to rear, the column consisted of the remaining men of the National Cadets, Woonsocket Guards,

Pawtucket Light Guard, First Light Infantry, Providence Artillery, Westerly Rifles, Newport Artillery, First Light Infantry No. 2, and Mechanic Rifles No. 2. The Mechanic Rifles No. 1 were absent as they were not fully equipped and left a few days later.

4. A barouche carriage containing 79-year-old militia veteran Major John B. Chace waits by the railroad station.

Chace held aloft “the old Continental flag with thirteen stars” carried by Rhode Island troops in the Revolutionary War. The banner would be presented to the detachment once it reached Fox Point.

5. Flanked by two graceful towers on one end, and an octagonal pavilion on the other, Union Station also accommodated Railroad Hall, in which the yet to be nominated presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln gave a public address to an audience of about 1,500 on February 28, 1860.

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COURTESY OF THE RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY

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by Gary W. Gallagher

SHADES OF GRAY

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literary fame of their soldier-author as immortal as his military glory.” The book sold well enough to justify a slightly revised second edition, edited

by Arthur Crew Inman and published

by Houghton Mifflin in 1928 as Soldier of the South: General Pickett’s War Letters to His Wife.

The Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania in 1863 and the Battle of Gettysburg form the centerpiece of The Heart of a Soldier. Pickett’s innermost thoughts and feelings emerge from these pages, often in breathlessly dramatic phrasing. Enthusiasm and confidence before the grand assault that became known as Pickett’s Charge give way to anger and bewilderment following its bloody repulse. “Even now I can hear them cheering,” reads one passage describing the beginning of the attack,

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VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND CULTURE

LASALLE CORBELL PICKETT (1843-1931) most often comes to mind as a widow who labored tirelessly to burnish her husband’s reputation. She married Maj. Gen. George E. Pickett in 1863 and outlived him by 56 years. Although 20 at the time of her marriage, “Sallie” Pickett cast herself after the war as the “childbride of the Confederacy,” and frequently attended commemorative events at Gettysburg and elsewhere, lectured, and wrote for periodicals. In 1899, she published Pickett and His Men, an unabashed tribute to “my husband, the noble leader of that band of heroes whose deeds are sparkling jewels set in the great history of the Army of Northern Virginia.” She also wrote, among other things, a quartet of books in black dialect known collectively as the In de Miz series (1900-01) and a novel titled The Bugles of Gettysburg (1913).

In the spring of 1913, New York publisher Seth Moyle offered readers The Heart of a Soldier: As Revealed in the Intimate Letters of Genl. George E. Pickett, C.S.A. Destined to NAMESAKE ATTACK become LaSalle Pickett’s most influential Civil Edwin Forbes painted Pickett’s War-related book, The Heart of a Soldier conCharge on July 3, 1863, at Gettystains 44 letters supposedly written to her by the burg. Three divisions participated general between September 1861 and the midin the attack, but Maj. Gen. George 1870s. One review pronounced the letters the Pickett is still most commonly “finest literary product of the Civil War,” and an advertisement predicted they would “make the associated with the assault.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

GENERAL GEORGE PICKETT’S WIDOW WROTE A FALSIFIED TRIBUTE TO HIS WARTIME SERVICE

VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND CULTURE

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

“as I gave the order, ‘Forward!’ I can feel the thrill of their joyous voices as they called out all along the line, ‘We’ll follow you, Marse George. We’ll follow you—we’ll follow you.’ Oh, how faithfully they kept their word—following me on—on—to their death, and I, believing in the promised support, led them on—on—on— Oh, God!” A number of historians, the novelist Michael Shaara, and documentary film-maker Ken Burns, impressed with the vividness and immediacy of the letters, have quoted them in reaching broad audiences.

Almost from the time of its publication, however, LaSalle Pickett’s edition of her husband’s letters proved controversial—accepted by some writers, rejected by others, and questioned at least in part by most. In fact, The Heart of a Soldier is worthless as a source on the general’s Confederate career. It should be considered an epistolary novel concocted by LaSalle Pickett, who used her vivid imagination and plagiarized shamelessly in fabricating the letters.

Proof of her authorship, rather than her husband’s, lies in the pages of Walter H. Harrison’s Pickett’s Men: A Fragment of War History (1870). Pickett’s inspector general for much of the war, Harrison participated in most of the division’s operations and supplemented what he had seen by consulting surviving records and conducting interviews with former officers. LaSalle Pickett’s plagiarism of Harrison permeates all 18 letters in The Heart of a Soldier that deal significantly with battles from Seven Pines through Appomattox—more than 40 instances ranging in length from one sentence to entire paragraphs, together with dozens of paraphrases.

Two comparative passages illustrate the extent of LaSalle Pickett’s literary theft. Harrison offers this about Pickett’s Charge: “The three brigades moved across this field of death and glory as steadily as a battalion forward in line of battle upon drill. The three brigade commanders were conspicuously in front of their commands, leading and cheering them on.” Mrs. Pickett attributes to her husband this language:

MARKETING CAMPAIGN LaSalle Corbell Pickett spent the postwar years polishing her husband’s reputation as a “noble leader of that band of heroes... of the Army of Northern Virginia.”

‘FORWARD!’ I CAN FEEL THE

THRILL OF THEIR

JOYOUS VOICES

THEY CALLED OUT ALL ALONG THE LINE , AS

‘WE’LL FOLLOW YOU

MARSE GEORGE WE’LL FOLLOW YOU!’ “My three brigades...moved across that field of death as a battalion marches forward in line of battle upon drill, each commander in front of his command leading and cheering on his men.”

Harrison’s account of Pickett’s last battle describes the crossroads where

the fighting occurred: “Situated in a flat, thickly wooded country, Five Forks, as its name indicates, is simply a crossing, at nearly right angles, of two country roads, and the deflection of a third road, bisecting one of those angles.” LaSalle Pickett has her husband state that “Five Forks is situated in a flat, thickly wooded country and is simply a crossing at right angles of two country roads and a deflection of a third bisecting one of these angles.”

Although Harrison stood first among her sources, LaSalle Pickett also exploited other ex-Confederates’ writings. The letters dated July 3 and July 4, 1863, which feature conversations between Lee and Longstreet and Longstreet and Pickett, strongly suggest that she used Longstreet’s articles on Gettysburg in the Southern Historical Society Papers and The Annals of the War, as well as Edward Porter Alexander’s letter on the cannonade preceding Pickett’s Charge in the Southern Historical Society Papers. One example concerns a conference between Lee and Longstreet early on July 3. Lee rode to First Corps headquarters that morning, where, according to Longstreet, the commanding general pointed toward Cemetery Hill and said, “The enemy is there, and I am going to strike him.” LaSalle Pickett places her husband at this conference and has him report, “’The enemy is there, General Longstreet, and I am going to strike him,’ said Marse Robert in his firm, quiet, determined voice.”

The Heart of a Soldier and most of LaSalle Pickett’s other writings fit into the Lost Cause literature of the late19th and early-20th centuries. They dwell on what the white South considered tragic aspects of the Confederate experience, such as the defeat at Gettysburg, and celebrate a chivalric people battling impossible odds to preserve their superior civilization. But The Heart of a Soldier belongs in a special category apart from typical Lost Cause special pleading—as a fraud that added no luster to her husband’s reputation and deceived future generations of readers. ✯ DECEMBER 2020 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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RAMBLING with John Banks

READY TO ROLL Bike touring is a great way to get exercise and explore Civil War sites you might overlook from a vehicle. Here, author John Banks’ bike is parked next to signs related to the Battle of Franklin.

WAR TOUR A HEADLESS CORPSE, A SLAVE CEMETERY, AND A KAMIKAZE INSECT MAKE FOR A LIVELY CIVIL WAR-THEMED BIKE RIDE PLAGUED WITH A “CASE OF THE SLOWS,” brother-in-

law Nels Jensen and I start late on our epic Civil War cycling adventure south of Nashville. Worse, the forecast is ominous, so we really need to roll on our Brentwood-to-Franklin round trip.

My personality skews toward Jubal Early (short-tempered, profane) and J.E.B. Stuart (flamboyant, carefree). I’m apt to ride aimlessly through the countryside, then swear repeatedly because of a missed turn. Thankfully, Nels is wired like Ulysses Grant: even-tempered, strategic, tactically sound. He’ll keep this ride on track.

“Car back,” Nels warns shortly after our journey begins in Brentwood on Granny

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White Pike—a wartime artery used by both armies during the Battle of Nashville.

“Civil War history ahead,” I’m thinking. “So much history ahead.”

Chugging up a steep grade, I remember what a longtime Nashvillian told me: “Every hill you see around here the armies occupied during the war.” Many of these hills, crisscrossed by modern roads, are occupied today by mansions with well-manicured lawns so expansive they should be declared national parks.

We turn on Holly Tree Gap Road— especially ambitious cyclists would ride up and down this hilly, serpentine monster to where it intersects Franklin Pike.

On December 17, 1864, that’s where Federals harassed beleaguered soldiers of John Bell Hood’s Army of Tennessee in the aftermath of the Confederates’ soul-crushing defeat the day before at Nashville. Now that site is a mishmash

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ALL PHOTOS BY JOHN BANKS

PEDAL POWERED -

ALL PHOTOS BY JOHN BANKS

of modern development and unrecognizable as a battlefield.

Already drenched in sweat several miles into our ride, we cruise past Jefferson Davis Drive and briefly stop for a water break. On our left, we find a residential development; to our right, a large, untilled farm field; in the near distance, a rickety, red barn. The dividing line between them is an antebellum stone wall about 2½ feet high—a common site on our weekend rides.

“Built by slaves,” a caretaker tells me during his break from mowing grass.

The rock walls are often knocked akilter, he says, by unruly cows.

Suburbia eventually gives way to countryside. Out here, amid horse farms, fields of yellow meadow buttercups, and roadkill, it isn’t hard to imagine Nathan Bedford Forrest and his cavalry galloping about. In fact, this is where the “Wizard of the Saddle” and his boys found safe havens after their raids on 700-man Union garrisons in Brentwood in March 1863.

And out here history can be downright bizarre.

Astride Del Rio Pike, on a rise across from a soybean field, stands an impressive, circa-1810 brick home. “When you have a house like this,” owner Abbie Griffith says, “it owns you, you don’t own it.”

But it’s not the Federal-style residence we’re here to see—or Griffith’s 150-pound Great Dane, “River,” who seems to enjoy my company. We’re here to examine the final resting place of a 20th Tennessee colonel in a small family cemetery 75 yards behind the house.

William “Bill” Shy, a handsome, 26-year-old Confederate officer, was killed by a point-blank head shot at Compton’s Hill (now Shy’s Hill) on December 16, 1864—the second day of the Battle of Nashville. Afterward, some believe Bill was bayoneted to a tree by a Yankee (untrue).

What is indisputable is that his body was returned to the Shys and buried behind “Two Rivers,” the family farmhouse on Del Rio Pike. The officer’s

SCENE OF VIOLENCE On Franklin’s Columbia Pike, Banks (right) and Nels Jensen visited Fountain Carter’s house and bullet-marked outbuildings—vortex of one of the war’s most vicious battles. After the fight, Carter’s son scraped together a half bushel of gory remains near Fountain’s front door. remains lay undisturbed in a nearly 300-pound, cast-iron casket until the winter of 1977. Around Christmas, law enforcement was called to the property to investigate the disturbance of a grave.

The house was undergoing renovation at the time.

Atop churned earth, Griffith’s mother discovered a headless body in a sitting position, clad in what appeared to be a tuxedo, a white silk shirt, trousers partially laced up the sides, and black, square-toed boots. Mom “was absolutely scared to death,” says Abbie, whose family isn’t related to the Shys. Stories that the body was a pile of goo when it was first found are, well, rubbish, says Griffith.

Judging from its condition, University of Tennessee forensic anthropologist William Bass determined that the

well-embalmed remains were of a male who had been dead six months to a year. He believed the victim was white, 26 to 29 years old, had brown hair, and weighed about 175 pounds.

Was this simply a grave robbery or something even more sinister?

Baffled law enforcement could not match a headless corpse to any missing persons’ report. “It looks like we have a homicide on our hands,” said the local police chief.

Not so fast, chief.

Initially overlooked, the head was discovered by Bass in the jumbled grave.

And days later, after a much more thorough examination of the remains, he and investigators agreed the body was indeed Shy’s.

“I got the age, sex, race, height and weight right,” Bass told a Nashville DECEMBER 2020 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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RAMBLING with John Banks

permanent tombstone. To this day, visitors honor James with stones and coins placed atop his grave.

newspaper, “but I was off on the time of death by 113 years.”

In early 1978, the colonel received a dignified reburial at “Two Rivers.” The Shy grave robber has never been identified publicly.

Mindful of her home’s history, Griffith frequently hosts Shy descendants, Civil War buffs, and others eager to see the scene of the crime. “I feel like it’s my duty,” she says, “to share this place.”

Zooming past a turkey vulture enjoying road food, we head south in Williamson County, to Civil War-rich Franklin. A village with a robust slave market in the 19th century, it’s now a booming city in one of America’s wealthiest counties.

Blocks from Main Street, we briefly stop at Rest Haven Cemetery, where Confederate Tod Carter was buried. At the Battle of Franklin on November 30, 1864, the 20th Tennessee captain was mortally wounded about 75 yards from his boyhood home. Two days later, he died in that very house in the room next to one he was born in in 1840.

We deftly navigate busy downtown streets and stop at the 1850 Bennett-Gathmann house on West Main.

During the battle, 15-year-old Hardin Figuers ignored his mother’s warnings and climbed up a tree to get a view of the battle.

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HERE LIES? Unlike their master’s ornate gravestone on the grounds of the “Midway” plantation, the slaves’ markers have no inscriptions. Most are stubs of stone, and only a few might be identified from slave records.

We glide down Cleburne Street, near where the body of Irish-born Confederate Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne was found by comrades the night of the battle. Think there aren’t any more Civil War artifacts in the ground in this residential neighborhood? Two years ago, a local couple gave me a bullet and clumps of lead found on their property.

On Lewisburg Pike, we pedal past a shop busy with customers—hey, don’t they know a Union artillery battery was set up right here near the railroad tracks during the battle? Nearby, a historical marker on a sliver of preserved battlefield explains a site where withering Federal fire swept Rebel ranks “like hail.”

Perhaps one of the victims was James Wilson Winn, a 25th Georgia private, whose grave site in McGavock Confederate Cemetery nearby is our final Franklin stop. Winn’s parents planned to take their 16-year-old son’s remains back to Georgia. But when the couple discovered his grave was so well tended, they went home and returned with a

Thirty miles into our ride, Nels somehow survives a brutal encounter with a bug he swallowed. We’re nearly gassed.

But dark clouds and several hills don’t keep us from our most rewarding stop.

Sometimes Nels and I discover the unexpected on our weekly, mind-soothing rides—a seat on the porch of an outof-the way general store, a fellow cyclist with a $6,000 bike.

But one overcast winter day, we found the truly unexpected: a small slave cemetery on Murray Lane’s median in Brentwood. A short distance away, a sizable mural at a subdivision entrance commemorates Confederate Colonel Edmund Rucker’s saber duel with a Union colonel during Hood’s post-Nashville retreat.

Nearby, in the mid-19th century, 38 slaves toiled on the 600-acre plantation of Lysander McGavock, who farmed tobacco and corn. After McGavock’s first home was destroyed in a fire, slaves built the wealthy landowner a mansion called “Midway” in 1847.

Roughly 10 miles south of Nashville, wartime skirmishes flared here, and Midway served as a headquarters and hospital for both armies. Now it serves as the Brentwood Country Club headquarters.

Inside the modest cemetery, steps from busy roads, a modern memorial’s inscription notes “unsung heroes” who “endured the shackles of slavery.”

Visitors place tokens of remembrance —pennies and pebbles—on its ledge.

On our first visit, Nels discovered a powerful note from a grateful visitor: “I so very hope someone thanked you during your life here. You could not have imagined so many wonderful things we have today because of your labors, and how much farther we have to grow.”

Minutes after our latest visit, a 35-mile ride complete, the heavens open up, too. ✯ John Banks is the author of the popular John Banks’ Civil War blog.

CIVIL WAR TIMES DECEMBER 2020

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with John David Hoptak

FOR COUNTRY AND FOR CAUSE Stones that commemorate 54th Massachusetts Infantry soldiers in Zion Hill Cemetery in Columbia, Pa.

AS IT HAS DONE FOR many Civil War buffs

since its release in 1989, the movie Glory sparked John David Hoptak’s fascination with the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, one of the Union Army’s first African American regiments. He was 11 years old when Glory premiered, and despite his age and its “R” rating, his parents took him to see the film several times. Now a park ranger/educator with the National Park Service, based at Gettysburg National Military Park, Hoptak continues to explore the 54th Massachusetts’ rich history. Surprised when he came upon tombstones of Civil War veterans inscribed “54th MASS” while in a cemetery in Reading, Pa., he began investigating further the regiment’s roots. It has been a rewarding experience.

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CWT: What is the biggest unknown about the 54th?

JDH: It’s probably the fact that the regiment was composed of men from just about every state, North and South, and not just Massachusetts. In fact, when the 54th first left Boston in May 1863 and headed off to war, there were more men from Pennsylvania in the ranks than from any other state.

Because the number of African American men of fighting age in Massachusetts was low—about 2,000 according to 1860 Census records—it was necessary for the regiment to be recruited from other states: According to historian Edwin Redkey, of the 1,044 men who composed the ranks of the 54th when it marched off to war, 133 enlisted from Massachusetts; more than 150 came from Ohio; and close to 200 from New York. From Pennsylvania came more than 300 soldiers, mostly from Philadelphia and its environs. But a good number came from the largely rural towns and townships of central Pennsylvania, as well. Just over 300, men who served in the regiment, about 25 percent, were born in Southern slave states.

CWT: Were you surprised to learn how large the 54th’s southcentral Pennsylvania representation was?

JDH: I was. And I was especially surprised when I learned that

COURTESY OF JOHN HOPTAK (2)

GLORY FROM THE KEYSTONE STATE

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COURTESY OF JOHN HOPTAK (2)

there were two men in the regiment— William Haines and James Phoenix— who also hailed from my own native Schuylkill County in the coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania. But it wasn’t really until I moved to Gettysburg in 2004 and began exploring some of the cemeteries in nearby Columbia, Carlisle, Shippensburg, Chambersburg, and Mercersburg that I began to realize just how many men came from south-central Pennsylvania. Later, digging into the regimental records, I discovered that there were at least 124 men who were either born in, resided in, or enlisted from this part of the Commonwealth, from anywhere within a 45-mile radius west, north, and east of Gettysburg. Four men were from Adams County; Gettysburg was identified as the place of birth for two men in the regiment: James T. Russell and B. Harvey Williams.

CWT: Describe your research.

JDH: Through fold3.com, I was able to read through the regimental record books as well as peruse the company rosters, which contain detailed biographical information about the men. The service records for these men are also all available there. I went through each of the company rosters and compiled a listing of all those from south-central Pennsylvania. From there, I drafted a portrait, so to speak, of who these men were: What was the average age? Their occupations? Marital status? And so on. Fold3.com also has a number of pension files available for some of these men, which provided more biographical information and some information about their families.

I also utilized the roster of soldiers in Luis Emilio’s excellent regimental history A Brave Black Regiment.

Other great online resources include a collaborative Wikitree genealogical page dedicated exclusively to the men of the 54th, the goal or mission of which is to “humanize and honor all 1,200+ of the soldiers of color of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry that fought in the Civil War,” as well as findagrave.com, which helped me

locate the final resting places for a number of these men. I have traveled several times to area cemeteries, including the Zion Union Cemetery in Mercersburg, the Locust Grove Cemetery in Shippensburg, and the Zion Hill Cemetery and Mount Bethel Cemeteries in Columbia, to name a few, to visit the graves of 54th Massachusetts soldiers buried therein.

CWT: Pennsylvania was home to two sets of siblings who fought in the 54th.

JDH: From in and around the very small community of Mercersburg, in Franklin County, came at least 32 of the 124 south-central Pennsylvania men who served in the 54th including

GETTYSBURG WAS IDENTIFIED AS THE PLACE OF BIRTH FOR

TWO MEN IN THE REGIMENT the four Christy Brothers and the four Krunkelton brothers (sometimes spelled Crunkelton). Jacob, Joseph, Samuel, and William Christy served in Company I. Another brother—John Christy—would later enlist and serve in a USCT regiment. At age 16, Joseph Christy was one of the youngest men in the entire regiment. He was wounded at the Battle of Olustee in Florida but survived the war. Samuel also returned home, as did Jacob, though he had suffered a terrible wound during the charge upon [Fort] Wagner.

William Christy never made it back from the war; he was listed as “Missing” after the Battle of Olustee. It was later learned that he died “while in enemy hands.”

The four Krunkelton brothers served in Company K—Cyrus, James, William, and Wesley. Young Cyrus

was among the regiment’s very first battle casualties. He was killed in action during the 54th’s baptism by fire at James Island on July 16, 1863.

His brothers William and Wesley were among the wounded in that battle as well. Two days later, the fourth brother, James, was wounded during the assault on Fort Wagner. Within 48 hours, then, all four Krunkelton brothers fell upon the field of battle.

The wounded Krunkeltons were cared for at Beaufort by Dr. Esther Hill Hawks. She kept a diary, and in it she recorded a conversation with one of the injured Krunkeltons. “We offered to go when the war broke out but none would have us,” said one of the brothers. “[A]s soon as Gov. [ John] Andrew [of Massachusetts] gave us chance, all the boys in our place were ready, hardly one who could carry a musket stayed home.”

William Krunkelton survived his wound but died of pneumonia on April 14, 1865, at age 23. Wesley and James returned home after the war, but Wesley’s injury continued to plague him. He died in 1902 at age 63. There was another Krunkelton who served.

Henry Krunkelton served in the 55th Massachusetts Infantry and survived the war.

CWT: How do you feel when you discover a new 54th soldier’s Pennsylvania grave?

JDH: When I happen upon the final resting place of a man who served in the 54th Massachusetts, or any Civil War soldier, really, I try to imagine all the history he witnessed, the campaigns in which he participated and the battles in which he fought. I try to think about the life he led. Visiting graveyards, reading the names on the old granite and marble stones, and getting to know their story all helps to keep their memory alive. ✯ Interview conducted by Senior Editor Chris Howland. Read more about Pennsylvanians in the 54th Massachusetts

by John Hoptak on the NPS blog at http://bit.ly/54thMass DECEMBER 2020 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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by Dana B. Shoaf

NAMES ON THE

MASTHEAD

“A FREE BIRD LEAPS ON THE BACK OF THE WIND”

PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

—Maya Angelou

AFTER THIS ISSUE , two names will have to be removed from our masthead.

We pay tribute to Ed Bearss, the legendary Civil War historian and member of our advisory board, in our Miscellany section (P. 8). The second name cuts a deep personal gash for me and the Civil War Times team. Art Director Jennifer Vann passed away due to cancer on Oc- The CWT team at tober 1; she was only 52. After an out-of-nowhere diagnosis in June, Jennifer’s rare, angry Antietam, January cancer attacked her without remorse. She endured surgeries, chemotherapy, and other 2020. From l to r: Senior Editors Chris treatments, but the dark force engulfing her body scoffed at her brave efforts. She and I Howland and Sarah worked together for nearly 20 years. Two decades of designing and discussing magazine Richardson; Art issues, traveling to locations, and working hard to make each issue the best it could be. An Director Jennifer Vann; art director takes images and story text and designs them in attractive, compelling layouts. Editor Dana Shoaf; She could often read my mind when it came to that. We didn’t always see eye to eye, mind Director of Photography you, but that is expected when two creative, and at times headstrong, people work together. Melissa Winn.

The few disagreements quickly became water under the bridge, and she was soon giggling as I told a ridiculous story about my past or poorly imitated a Civil War general. I know I probably shouldn’t use this space for such a personal lament, and I hope you’ll forgive me. I just want to give my friend her due. She worked hard for you, and hard for me, and fought hard against her disease.

Now she is free from pain. Thank you, Jennifer, for everything. We’ll never forget your name. ✯ DECEMBER 2020 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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CALICO CAKE AND

MOSBY’S RANGERS HAD A RAUCOUS 1864 INDEPENDENCE DAY AT POINT OF ROCKS, MD.

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BY KEVIN PAWLAK

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hings weren’t shaping up for a joyful Fourth of July in 1864, at least for the Union war effort. The presidential election loomed four months in the future and Lincoln’s reelection appeared to be very much in doubt, and Lt. Gen. Jubal Early’s Confederate force was nearing the Potomac River, poised for a third Confederate incursion into Maryland. Dark times seemed to be on the North’s horizon.

Lieutenant Colonel John Singleton Mosby’s Rangers had already provided many dark times for the Union soldiers guarding Northern Virginia and the approaches to Washington, D.C., since they dashed onto the scene in early 1863. Throughout his 27 months of operating in the area, Mosby clung to the belief that his success should not be measured “by the number of prisoners and material of war from the enemy, but by the heavy detail it has already compelled him to make.” In other words, by diverting thousands of troops to guard against his escapades.

In order to continue increasing the “heavy detail” of the enemy’s forces, and force the Union

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM

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SPOILS OF A RAID John Mosby’s men wrecked a lot of Union gatherings. In this painting, he watches at right on horseback as his happy Rangers show off beef and prisoners captured near Berryville, Va., in August 1864.

His riders also got a lot of loot during the Point of Rocks, Md., attack.

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fusion among the local Union commanders.

By noon on July 3, 250 Rangers had left the comfort of their safehouses to assemble at Upperville, Va., for the raid. The command brought a 12-pounder Napoleon cannon with them. Rumors had coursed through the ranks that the Rangers might cross the Potomac, and despite being on the warpath, Mosby’s Rangers marched in a jolly mood. They prepared to “picnic” on the Fourth of July from captured enemy food and supplies. Each of the men joining the raid fixed a “large sack” to their saddles to fill with captured enemy goods. Once formed, the command departed Upperville and marched toward the river.

Deception and secrecy were keys to the Rangers’ operations. They traveled along the backroads of Loudoun County to avoid detection. If they encountered civilians, Mosby ordered the men to say that they were scouts in advance of Lt. Gen. James Longstreet’s Corps, which would soon be in the Loudoun Valley following in their footsteps. Mosby sought to sow as much uncertainty among the Federal high command as possible.

By the late morning of July 4, Mosby’s men reined up their horses on the south bank of the Potomac River opposite Berlin, Md. (modern-day Brunswick). Then a turn to the right sent them downriver toward their objective: Point of Rocks. When within a few miles of the town, Mosby halted his command and went forward to reconnoiter the Federal positions.

From his perch on the Potomac’s south shore, Mosby could easily see infrastructure features that made Point of Rocks important to regional Federal operations. Both the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal passed through the town and continued 12 miles west to Harpers Ferry. Through his binoculars, Mosby spied the enemy defenses— an earthen fort overlooking the depot. The town’s garrison included 250 men from the 1st Maryland Potomac Home Brigade and the Loudoun

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VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND CULTURE

Sergeant Fount Beattie

CHEEK BY JOWL AT POINT OF ROCKS A sketch of Federal soldiers working on the B&O Railroad at Point of Rocks, Md. A canal boat, such as Flying Cloud, heads upriver toward Harpers Ferry, Lock 28 and Paton Island are just out of sight, around the bend.

The ruined bridge over the Potomac River can be seen at left.

COURTESY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE HISTORICAL SOCIETY; HN ARCHIVES

to move around troops, Mosby often picked soft targets—lightly defended camps and outposts— to aid the Confederate cause.

In this regard, Mosby hoped to aid Early’s northern thrust. On July 2, 1864, as Early neared Harpers Ferry, Mosby and Sergeant Fount Beattie, one of Mosby’s oldest comrades, learned from a member of Early’s staff about the general’s progress and his intentions to threaten Washington, D.C. Immediately, Mosby settled on Point of Rocks along the Potomac River as his target.

By striking north of the river, the partisan commander believed he could disrupt Union supply routes, divert Federal reinforcements moving against Early’s column, and cause fear and con-

TROUBLEMAKERS Mosby sits at the center of a group of his Rangers, mostly young men recruited from the shaded area in the map below.

S VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND CULTURE

COURTESY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE HISTORICAL SOCIETY; HN ARCHIVES

Rangers. Whether or not Mosby knew of the Loudoun Rangers’ presence in the town at this point is uncertain. If he did, he no doubt let his own men know of it, for they held a deep disdain for the “renegade Loudouners.” atisfied with the information he had, Mosby rode back to his command to prepare them for action. The Rangers jumped into their saddles and continued down the Potomac River’s Virginia shore. They stopped at a ford off the western end of Paton’s Island, a strip of land that bisected the river channel about one mile upstream, or west, from Point of Rocks. Mosby ordered his gun unlimbered and dispatched Company D to remain behind with it. While the gun crew wheeled their weapon into position, about two dozen Rangers dismounted and headed to the ford. Armed with carbines, they soon engaged the Federal pickets on the island itself. Simultaneously, the Napoleon opened fire. The combined pressure scattered the Union skirmishers off Paton’s Island and onto the towpath of the C&O Canal, scrambling downstream for the DECEMBER 2020 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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safety of the fort at Point of Rocks. (The Rangers subsequently dubbed their gun “Potomac.”)

With the crossing open, Mosby’s other three companies plunged into the river and onto Maryland soil. They charged unopposed down the towpath on the heels of their prey. Along the canal, the Confederate partisans encountered the canal boat Flying Cloud carrying a host of Treasury Department clerks on a pleasure cruise to Harpers Ferry. They were on their return trip when Mosby’s men caught them. The boat provided a target for the cannon across the river but three successive shots missed. The Flying Cloud floated into Lock 28, where panic seized the clerks as their boat stopped in the lock. Many fled for safety. Quickly, the Confederates scavenged the boat and took bottles of liquor, cigars, and other treats the clerks packed for their trip before they torched the Flying Cloud.

Tasting success, the Rangers continued their charge down the towpath 30

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2); AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM; VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND CULTURE; ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND CULTURE

MOSBY’S MANY FACES The partisan commander was frequently photographed and painted. In photos, particularly, he had the knack for having a different appearance from image to image. Fitting for a man nicknamed the “Gray Ghost.”

to Point of Rocks itself. The Union withdrawal into the Point of Rocks fortifications was just as hasty, though some brave members of the garrison kept their heads on square enough to remove the planking from the bridge that spanned the canal bed. When Mosby’s command reached the empty span, they became bogged down under enemy fire with nowhere to go.

The Rangers saw a nearby wooden building, the provost marshal’s office, as a solution to their problem, and they began tearing it down.

Bullets zipped through the air as a few Rangers struggled to repair the bridge’s flooring. Seeking to inspire his men, Lt. Harry Hatcher, whom Mosby affectionately called “the bravest of the brave,” tightroped his way across the remaining bridge timbers and into the abandoned Union camp. Still under a hot fire from the Federal fortifications, Hatcher grabbed an American flag left behind in the camp. Seeing his example, Captain Dolly Richards ordered his men to dismount and force a crossing in Hatcher-like style.

Only a trickle of Rangers made it across the span before it was ultimately repaired. Then, the remaining horsemen dashed across the bridge and into the Federal encampment and fort. This impetuous charge drove the Union garrison away from Point of Rocks. The bark of the “Potomac” across the river ended the brief action when it targeted a train chugging down the tracks of the B&O Railroad from Harpers Ferry to Point of Rocks. The engineer quickly got the message and steamed back to safety.

Mosby’s men, flushed with victory in which the command suffered no casualties, leapt from their mounts and into the Point of Rocks stores.

They grabbed anything they could find, including clothing—men’s and women’s—and candy.

John Dutton, a Virginia Unionist who operated a store in Point of Rocks, lost approximately $7,000 worth of stock. Mosby’s men cleaned out Sam Gover’s store—the third such time that happened to Gover since the commencement of the war.

John Scott, an early postwar chronicler of Mosby’s Rangers, wrote of the sight of Mosby’s men after they recrossed the Potomac River into Virginia. They were “bedecked in a very grotesque and original manner with their captured goods. As they passed along the road, some arrayed in crinoline, some wearing bonnets, and all disguised with some incongruous and fantastic article of apparel, they looked like a company of masqueraders.” Ranger John Alexander, who sulked with candy, his only booty of the raid, thought the joyous column “looked for all the world like a parade of Fantastics.” He could not help but wonder “how far the captured groceries, of the wet variety, contributed to the grotesque

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2); AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM; VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND CULTURE; ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND CULTURE

appearance” of his comrades. Mosby’s Rangers forever after remembered the July 4, 1864, raid on Point of Rocks as the Great Calico Raid because of the cloth and clothing they took.

O

ne of the Rangers’ greatest discoveries was a masterpiece of culinary creations.

The story could not be told better than from the words of Ranger John Marshall Crawford.

“Passing through the burning camps, the boys, after collecting what relics they wanted, pushed on back to town. Such an exciting and laughable scene few have ever witnessed or enjoyed.

They had secured a huge pound-cake, which had

been prepared by some ladies, who were to give the officers of the garrison an entertainment that evening.

The history of the cake is as follows: The officers of the garrison had signified to some of their lady friends their desire and intention of celebrating the Fourth of July in a becoming manner, so their lady friends went to work and prepared a monster cake for the occasion. This cake was moulded in the form of a spread eagle, the mould being made in Boston, and measured twenty-five feet from the tip of its bill to the tip of its tail. It was a complete eagle in all its parts.

It had glass eyes, talons, &c., &c., and in the baking of it, which occupied three days and nights,

ONE LAST CHANCE The Point of Rocks raid was a small piece of a bigger picture. Mosby was assisting Lt. Gen. Jubal Early’s gamble to cross the Potomac and capture Washington, D.C. The raid nearly succeeded, despite the odds against it.

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25 ft.

5 ft. 8 in.

OPPOSITE PAGE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM; ISTOCK (2); THIS PAGE: PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

it was burnt (intentionally I presume), so that it looked like a real eagle. But the most remarkable thing about it was, that inside of it there was some machinery that every time one of the boys thrust his sabre into the eagle to cut off a piece, the bird would scream. What their idea was in inserting this instrument into this spreadeagle cake, I have never been able to learn or conceive. I inquired diligently of the residents of the place, but they would give us no satisfaction. Colonel Mosby would have brought it across the river, and sent it to Richmond; but the enemy had destroyed all the boats, so the boys concluded to take it to pieces; which, being done, it was with great difficulty got across the river in the evening by means of a raft. A six-horse team belonging to Mr. S. was pressed into service, the cake put into it, and started for Fauquier County. A guard of five men accompanied the wagon.

While in camp on Goose Creek, the second night they were out, the guard got drunk on ‘blockade,’ and all of them lay down and went to sleep.

The driver being a strong Union man, and having conceived the idea he would be made a hero, if he could save what was left of the great American bird, availed himself of the opportunity, and drove his load in the night to a Mr. _____’s farm, in Loudoun County, situated on Goose Creek. Securing four of Mr. _____’s most reliable colored servants, he secreted his precious load in one of those safe places which abound on that stream, and which are known only by those patriotic and loyal colored men, and started back with his team. Sunrise next morning, found him in the bosom of his family, on the banks of the classic Potomac. This Union driver kept the part he had played a profound secret, until General _____, occupied the valley, when he divulged his secret to him. On General _____’s retreat from Washington, a portion of his wagon-train and eight hundred prisoners crossed the Blue Ridge mountains at Ashby’s Gap. This portion of his army was pursued by General Durfea [Duffié], with two thousand five hundred cavalry. After occupying the Gap three days, [Duffié] fell back to Snickersville, where General Wright was encamped with a division of the Union army. On their march to Wright, they passed by Mr. _____’s house, and found these col-

UNEXPECTED VISITORS In another depiction of Mosby’s August 1864 Berryville raid, his riders barrel down on a Union supply train.

MORE TERRIFYING THAN TASTY It’s hard to imagine a 25-foot-tall cake like the one reportedly made for the July 4th celebration at Point of Rocks, especially when the typical soldier was less than six feet tall.

Heck, adult giraffes top out at 20 feet.

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OPPOSITE PAGE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM; ISTOCK (2); THIS PAGE: PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

ored Union citizens, who conducted them to the spot where the treasure was hid, and carried it off with them. But the fates seemed opposed to having the remnants of the bird ever reaching the shores of Maryland again. Notwithstanding its long captivity, it retained signs of life still; and as it approached the soil on which the stars and stripes had never ceased to wave, these symptoms of vitality increased. An escort was sent with it; while crossing the Shenandoah River at Rock Ford, the wagon upset, and the load was precipitated into the river. By an eye-witness of the scene, I was told that it was beyond description.

Suffice it to say, the greatest confusion prevailed.

Every one wanted his own plan adopted to save the bird, and before any one that the men suggested could be adopted, to their utmost dismay and horror the bird gave one shriek, and then sunk; to rise no more. I never learned whether or not it was recovered; the presumption is that it was not.”

Aside from this absurd but impressive cake and the captured supplies that Mosby’s men netted during their July 4 raid, the attack against Point of Rocks did have implications for Early’s campaign into Maryland. As Mosby struck Point of Rocks, Early’s command approached Harpers Ferry. Before Mosby’s men cut the telegraph wires in Point of Rocks, the operator there reported the enemy “in force.” This dire news reached army Chief of Staff Henry W. Halleck in Washington. Wild rumors and inflated accounts of the size of the Confederate force moving north spread quickly. Halleck gathered 2,800 dismounted cavalrymen from Washington’s defenses and ordered them “to force [their] way to Harper’s Ferry.” That very same day, Halleck requested reinforcements for the Washington defenses from Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.

Not all of this was Mosby’s doing. But the cavalryman, who used fear as his ally, heightened the sense of dread percolating in Washington by the news of Early’s northward column. The Great Calico Raid serves as a perfect example of what Mosby’s partisan command did well during the Civil War: disrupt enemy communications, divert troops from threatened sectors, achieve a quick victory, and have a great story to go along with all of it.

Kevin Pawlak is a historic site manager for Prince William County’s Historic Preservation Division and an Antietam Battlefield Guide.

He is the author or co-author of three books, including To Hazard All: A Guide to the Maryland Campaign, 1862.

RELAX WHERE MOSBY RAIDED Lock 28, where the Flying Cloud came to grief, and its accompanying lockhouse, built in 1837, are now protected as part of the National Park Service’s Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park. That park parallels the Potomac River in Maryland, follows the path of the historic canal, and runs 184.5 miles from Cumberland, Md., to Georgetown in the District of Columbia.

The canal is a marvelous modern resource for hikers, bikers, and history lovers. It offers scenic beauty and a plethora of historical sites, including other lockhouses and locks, the vestiges of this 19th-century highway of water. And of course, since the canal was literally located on the border of Maryland and Virginia, it was heavily impacted by the Civil War. Advancing and retreating armies crossed over it, battles were fought along it, and Confederate raiders wreaked havoc on the canal, often breaching its earthen banks to drain its vital water.

One of those raiders was, of course, John Mosby. Lockhouse 28, one of the Gray Ghost’s targets, is among seven lockhouses that you can rent to stay in overnight through a program known as Canal Quarters (canalquarters.org), administered by the C&O Canal Trust.

Lockhouse 28 is just upriver from Point of Rocks, and wonderfully situated in an area rich with Civil War history. Not only can you sleep in the lockhouse, just across from Lock 28, that was surrounded by Mosby’s partisans on July 4, 1864, but short drives or bike rides from there will take you to other wartime sites and battlefields, such as Harpers Ferry, South Mountain, Antietam, and Monocacy, not to mention the city of Frederick and its history, including the National Museum of Civil War Medicine. Microbrews, wineries, and quality restaurants also abound in the region. And if you just want to hang out, you can sit and watch the Potomac flow and imagine Mosby’s men thundering by, out on a raid. —Dana B. Shoaf DECEMBER 2020 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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‘They have our range...’

B

y the middle of May 1862, the regiment was detailed for provost guard duty at White House Landing, Va., when Hobart was detailed to transfer Confederate prisoners to Fort Monroe. On reaching his destination, he was there ordered to transfer the prisoners further to Fort Delaware, located on Pea Patch Island south of Wilmington, Del. After completing the transfer Hobart returned to the regiment

34

NIGHTMARE VACATION It’s hard to imagine pleasure cruises along the Potomac during the war, but it was on one that Elijah Hobart met his fate. Mosby’s men carried revolvers, so it was possibly a gun like this one, owned by Mosby, that laid Hobart low. to find he had been considered absent without leave and was again arrested.

Though eventually released from confinement, Hobart learned from a July 18, 1862, issue of the New York Herald that he had been dismissed from the service.

“The blow came like a flash of lightning from a clear sky,” recalled a friend. Two days later Hobart received official communication regarding his dismissal and departed for Washington, D.C., to clear his name. “When he left the regiment,” recalled one comrade, “it lost one of its best and bravest officers.” After months of unsuccessfully requesting a hearing, Hobart acquiesced and returned to his prewar engraving profession. He took a job

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COURTESY OF THE C&O CANAL TRUST

hen former Union officer Elijah Fearing Hobart booked his cruise on the canal boat Flying Cloud, he was hoping for a few hours of relaxation and respite from the war. His cruise ran directly into the Calico Raid, and he was shot dead.

Hobart was born in 1821 at Hingham on the Massachusetts coast, and traced his lineage back to the Mayflower’s landing at Plymouth Rock.

Both of his grandfathers had fought in the Revolutionary War. He moved to Boston at age 15 to learn the engraving trade. Becoming a proficient engraver, he moved to Albany, N.Y., and worked engraving bank notes. In the late summer of 1861 he determined to recruit a company for Federal service and promised his enlistees that the company was bound for the famed Berdan’s Sharpshooters and that the men would receive Sharps breechloading rifles. He was elected captain of the company. New York Governor Edwin Morgan, however, declined to assign the men to sharpshooter service, instead designating them as Company B of the 93rd New York Infantry.

The enlisted men of the company felt they had been duped. The promises of Sharps rifles went unrealized, and following their arrival on the Virginia Peninsula in March 1862, the company laid down their arms in protest. The men were placed under guard while Captain Hobart and the lieutenant colonel commanding the regiment, Benjamin C. Butler, were placed under arrest. With the Federal army soon on the move toward Williamsburg, Va., the company elected to pick up their arms and both Hobart and Butler were released.

COURTESY OF JON-ERIK GILOT; INSET: STUART-MOSBY CIVIL WAR CAVALRY MUSEUM/PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

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A Pleasure Trip on the C&O Canal Turns Deadly

By Jon-Erik Gilot

at the Treasury Department where he oversaw the engraving of fractional currency.

In the summer of 1864 a party of Treasury Department employees, Hobart included, arranged for a Fourth of July pleasure trip from Georgetown to Harpers Ferry on the C&O Canal.

The boat for the trip, a steam packet dubbed the Flying Cloud, was described as “a handsome specimen…a beautiful boat” when it had launched in 1858 as a light freight and passenger canal boat. The Flying Cloud catered to pleasure excursions, running the canal between Georgetown and Point of Rocks at a clip of eight miles an hour, three times a week since September 1862. The boat had even come under fire from a Confederate battery at Ball’s Bluff on September 4, 1862, escaping without injury.

COURTESY OF THE C&O CANAL TRUST

COURTESY OF JON-ERIK GILOT; INSET: STUART-MOSBY CIVIL WAR CAVALRY MUSEUM/PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

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hile Hobart and his friends were likely following the developments of Confederate Lt. Gen. Jubal Early’s advance down the Shenandoah Valley, they were unaware their pleasure trip would lead them into danger. Early had his sights set on Washington, but he first needed to clear the Harpers Ferry garrison standing in his way. After skirmishing at Bolivar Heights and Camp Hill, the Federal garrison abandoned Harpers Ferry and dug in on Maryland Heights, removing a pontoon bridge and burning the Baltimore & Ohio Bridge behind them. Harpers Ferry was once again a war zone.

Operating in conjunction with Early’s advance, Colonel John Singleton Mosby and his partisan command determined to attack a small Federal garrison at Point of Rocks, Md., located on the Potomac River downstream from Harpers Ferry.

If successful at Point of Rocks, Mosby could sever the telegraph, rail, and canal line between Maryland Heights and Washington.

The Flying Cloud passed a leisurely trip up the canal on July 4, safely passing Point of Rocks before ultimately reversing course prior to reaching Harpers Ferry, the echoes of rifle and artillery fire alerting the passengers and crew to the fighting ahead involving Jubal Early.

Mosby, with 250 men and one howitzer had reached Point of Rocks after the Flying Cloud had passed. From the Virginia shore his men drew fire from an equal-sized garrison of Federal troops belonging to the Loudoun Cavalry and First Potomac Home Brigade. Once the Confederates crossed to the Maryland side of the river, the Federal garrison quickly retreated towards Frederick, leaving Point of Rocks to Mosby’s fate.

Flying Cloud approached Lock 28 on the C&O as Mosby’s assault was underway. Mosby’s artillery, unsure of the crew or contents on the boat, trained their shots on the boat. The lockkeeper had either abandoned the lock or refused to

WHERE FLYING CLOUD BURNED This is a postwar view of Lock 28 and its accompanying lockhouse, but is what the location looked like during the Civil War. Locks were water elevators that raised and lowered boats to meet changes in elevation. operate it, meaning Flying Cloud was a sitting duck, literally dead in the water. Some of the party jumped from the boat and attempted to force open the lock doors while others retreated into the woods.

The boat’s impasse at the lock cost Hobart his life. Accounts of Hobart’s last moments vary. One account claims that he refused to leave the boat or be taken prisoner and was summarily shot by Mosby’s men. Another account claims that Hobart turned to a fellow passenger saying, “They have our range—jump, and I will follow,” but was shot from behind by a squad of Mosby’s men who had circled through the woods. Both accounts indicate he did not linger after the fatal shot. Hobart was not the only noncombatant casualty that day, as a stray shot killed local resident Hester Ellen Fisher, only 18 years old, while she observed the fighting from her front porch.

Mosby’s men liberated a supply of food, whiskey, and cigars from the Flying Cloud before setting the boat aflame. The rangers likewise cut the telegraph lines, fired on an approaching train, damaged the B&O tracks, and burned four other canal boats and the abandoned Federal camp.

Elijah Hobart’s body was first interred nearby, but within days at the request of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton the body was disinterred and removed to his hometown of Hingham.

In the years following the war, Hobart’s comrades from the 93rd New York would petition that his dismissal from the service better reflect an honorable discharge. He was remembered in their regimental history as “…a noble man, of many disappointments and trials, one who, if an uncompromising opponent, was a warm, unhesitating, uncalculating friend; who considered no sacrifice too great for one he loved, and who was generous, even to his enemies.” ✯ Jon-Erik Gilot has worked in the fields of archives and preservation for more than 15 years. He is a contributing author at the Emerging Civil War blog and his first book, a history and tour guide of John Brown’s raid co-authored with Kevin Pawlak, is due out next year.

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THE SOLDIERS OF GOVERNOR ANDREW CURTIN’S UNIQUE PENNSYLVANIA RESERVES DIVISION WERE SOME OF THE BEST FIGHTERS IN THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC

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uring four years of carnage on hundreds of Civil War battlefields, a handful of units earned reputations as elite, battle-hardened forces. Soldiers in these units prided themselves on their regiment, brigade, or division’s reputation and laurels, often earned at considerable sacrifice. The Iron Brigade, the Stonewall Brigade, and Cleburne’s Division, for instance, garnered respect during the war and continue to retain popular appeal and reverence. Yet few units stand as distinguished as the Pennsylvania Reserves in the Army of the Potomac.

Through grinding campaigns, high casualty rates, and army reorganizations, the Pennsylvania Reserves served and fought as a division consisting exclusively of Pennsylvania regiments. Far from a reserve or militia unit, as commonly misperceived, the Pennsylvania Reserves saw combat in nearly every significant campaign in the war’s Eastern Theater between December 1861 and May 1864.

In the wake of Fort Sumter, tens of thousands of men throughout the North enthusiastically responded to Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers, and Pennsylvania offered the War Department 25 regiments of approximately 25,000 volunteers. Meanwhile, concerned with the state’s vulnerability to a possible Confederate invasion, Governor Andrew Curtin, a Republican governor elected in 1860, called the state legislature into spe-

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cial session. On May 15, 1861, the legislature authorized the creation of the Reserve Volunteer Corps of the Commonwealth. Funded by state money, the Pennsylvania Reserves would be used in “suppressing insurrections, or to repel invasions” and could be mustered into federal service, “if necessary.” urtin first offered the command of the Pennsylvania Reserves to George McClellan. Although McClellan, a Philadelphian, had expressed interest in the command, he had just accepted command of the Ohio militia. Curtin then turned to 59-yearold George McCall. A Philadelphian, West Point graduate, and Mexican War veteran, McCall accepted Curtin’s offer at the rank of major general. In early June, volunteers began organizing at four camps throughout the commonwealth and, as new regiments, converged upon Tennallytown, in northwestern Washington, D.C.

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ADAMS COUNTY BOYS Company K of the 1st Reserves was raised in the vicinity of Gettysburg. The recruits fought on their home turf during that battle. This image was taken at Fairfax Station, Va., on June 4, 1863.

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Seven Days Battles. Much of the heaviest fighting during that week fell to Porter’s corps and the Pennsylvania Reserves found themselves on the front lines at Mechanicsville, Gaines’ Mill, Glendale, and Malvern Hill. McCall’s division arrived on the Peninsula with approximately

RESERVE COMMANDERS All of these officers led the Pennsylvania Reserves Division at some point, and some served multiple terms at the helm of the hardfighting regiments.

Samuel W. Crawford

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George A. McCall

William McCandless

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CAP BRASS AND TOP BRASS Above, the soldier’s cap bears numerals and letters that indicate he was in Company G of the 1st Pennsylvania Reserves. At right, staff officers who served under Brig. Gen. Samuel W. Crawford during his command of the Reserves.

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Organized into one division of three brigades, the Pennsylvania Reserves consisted of 13 infantry regiments, one artillery regiment, and one cavalry regiment. Brigadier General John Reynolds commanded the 1st Brigade, Brig. Gen. George Meade arrived at Camp Tennally in mid-September to take command of the 2nd brigade, and two months later Brig. Gen. Edward O.C. Ord arrived to assume command of the 3rd brigade.

Although initially refusing Pennsylvania’s additional regiments, in large part due to a personal disdain for Governor Curtin, Secretary of War Simon Cameron authorized the inclusion of the Reserves into the Army of the Potomac on September 16, 1861. Thus, two months after taking their loyalty oath to the commonwealth, the Reserves were mustered into Federal service for three years. In 1864, this conflicting muster-in date proved contentious for the men of the Pennsylvania Reserves as the expiration of their three-year terms neared.

At Camp Tennally, the new recruits endeavored to transition from citizen to soldier. Military reviews offered a welcome break from relentless military drill and gave the rank and file opportunities to catch glimpses of their commanding generals. McClellan garnered enthusiastic cheers, leading one volunteer to declare, “I think we have the right man in the right place.” Other Pennsylvanians shared this optimism. Writing home to his mother, and articulating a naïve expression only possessed by new volunteers, Thomas Dick, a private in the 12th Pennsylvania predicted, “The opinion appears to be here that the war will be ended in the course of six months and then if spared I will return to my quiet home once more.”

For the Pennsylvania Reserves, the pinnacle of their first year came on December 20, 1861, at the Battle of Dranesville. A small village crossroads where the Georgetown Pike and Leesburg Pike converged, Dranesville figured prominently in the operations of both Union and Confederate forces in the war’s early months. Encountering approximately 1,800 Confederates commanded by Brig. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, Ord’s 3rd Brigade, in its baptism of fire, routed the enemy. Not only had the Pennsylvania Reserves recorded their first battlefield victory, but they had also claimed the Army of the Potomac’s initial triumph. “This is the first victory of any account in this part of Virginia,” boasted Adam Bright of the 9th Pennsylvania in a letter to his uncle, “and it was won by the Pennsylvania boys.”

In the spring of 1862, McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign galvanized the nation as the Army of the Potomac moved “on to Richmond” seeking to capture the Confederate capital. After being relegated to the defenses of Washington, in mid-June McCall’s division joined the army’s 5th corps, commanded by Maj. Gen. Fitz John Porter. Between June 25 and July 1, McCall’s division endured relentless fighting east of Richmond in the

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9,500 soldiers and sustained 3,067 casualties, a devastating 32 percent.

In addition to the losses in the rank and file, the fight along the Peninsula decimated the division’s officer cadre. At Gaines’ Mill, Reynolds inadvertently found himself isolated from

George G. Meade

his brigade, and the following morning was captured by a Confederate patrol. Reynolds remained a prisoner until mid-August 1862 when he was exchanged for Lloyd Tilghman, the Confederate general who surrendered Fort Henry. At Glendale, the division’s third battle in five days, while rallying his infantry, Meade suffered two wounds and spent the remainder of the campaign recovering at his home in Philadelphia. The division’s com-

John F. Reynolds

Truman Seymour

Horatio G. Sickel

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WAR TORN A color bearer of the 8th Reserves holds the tattered national flag of his regiment.

EVERY CORNER OF THE KEYSTONE The regiments that made up the Reserves infantry were made up of

companies that came from 57 different counties across the breadth of the state, plus Philadelphia. Initially, they were organized by a Commonwealth of Pennsylvania number system. But after they entered Federal service, they were given new regimental numbers to fit into the Federal system. Therefore, each regiment had two numeric distinctions, and some Keystone soldiers continued to prefer their “Reserves” number.

The 13th Reserves were also known as the 1st Rifles, and as the “Bucktails,” for the deer tails they wore in their hats.

1st RESERVES 2nd RESERVES 3rd RESERVES 4th RESERVES 5th RESERVES 6th RESERVES 7th RESERVES 8th RESERVES 9th RESERVES 10th RESERVES 11th RESERVES 12th RESERVES 13th RESERVES

30th PA. VOL. INFANTRY 31st PA. VOL. INFANTRY 32nd PA. VOL. INFANTRY 33rd PA. VOL. INFANTRY 34th PA. VOL. INFANTRY 35th PA. VOL. INFANTRY 36th PA. VOL. INFANTRY 37th PA. VOL. INFANTRY 38th PA. VOL. INFANTRY 39th PA. VOL. INFANTRY 40th PA. VOL. INFANTRY 41st PA. VOL. INFANTRY 42nd PA. VOL. INFANTRY

mander, McCall, was captured in the fight and imprisoned at Libby Prison in Richmond until he was exchanged in August 1862 for Simon Buckner, the Confederate general who surrendered Fort Donelson. McCall returned home to recover, and citing failing health, resigned his commission.

With no time to reorganize, the Pennsylvania Reserves prepared for the 1862 fall campaigns. The Reserves, now commanded by John Reynolds, joined Maj. Gen. John Pope’s Army of Virginia, then positioned at Warrenton, Va., on August 23. Reynolds’ division suffered over 600 casualties in the fight at Second Manassas. Pope praised the Reserves for their conduct during the campaign, noting that Reynolds deserved the “highest commendation” and Truman Seymour and Meade, brigade commanders, “performed their duties with ability and gallantry.”

Following his success at Second Manassas, General Robert E. Lee maneuvered the Army of Northern Virginia into Maryland and, by September 7, had concentrated near Frederick. Meanwhile, elements of Pope’s army were folded into McClellan’s Army of the Potomac, then concentrated near Washington. Now part of General Joseph Hooker’s 1st Corps, the Pennsylvania Reserves departed Washington on September 7 and began marching toward Maryland. Worried that the Confederate push into Maryland threatened his state’s security, Governor Curtin recalled 40

MUSTER LOCATION

Baltimore, MD Philadelphia, PA Philadelphia, PA Harrisburg, PA Harrisburg, PA Harrisburg, PA Harrisburg, PA Pittsburgh, PA Pittsburgh, PA Harrisburg, PA Pittsburgh, PA Harrisburg, PA Harrisburg, PA

Reynolds to command the state’s militia. Meade assumed command of the division.

As McClellan’s forces maneuvered toward Frederick, on September 14 the Pennsylvania Reserves reached Turner’s Gap, one of the three passes in the South Mountain range. Here, Meade directed an offensive against Maj. Gen. D.H. Hill’s Confederates, over unforgivingly steep, jagged terrain, facing “severe fire across rocks, stonewalls.” Meade later described this as the “most rugged country I almost ever saw.”

Still, the Pennsylvanians secured Turner’s Gap, losing 399 men.

On the morning of September 16, Meade’s division approached the small town of Sharpsburg, near Antietam Creek, with, according to the general, no more than 3,000 effectives.

Their arrival into the East Woods precipitated a sharp firefight with Confederate skirmishers.

At dawn the following morning, with the bulk

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of their force repositioned in the North Woods, Hooker’s men opened the Battle of Antietam by assailing the Confederate left flank. The fight in the Miller Cornfield quickly evolved into a vortex of death with the Reserves, once again, in the thick of a desperate struggle. When Hooker fell wounded in the fray, Meade assumed command of the corps, and with its units shattered and disorganized, ordered a withdraw. Bloodshed and carnage on the fields at Antietam was unparalleled. Casualties for the Pennsylvania Reserves totaled 573, or 20 percent.

The Pennsylvania Reserves had started the war with a full complement of 15 regiments, or approximately 15,000 men. By the end of the Maryland Campaign, their ranks amounted to little over 2,000. Writing home to his uncle in western Pennsylvania, Adam Bright of the 9th Pennsylvania lamented, “We have lost a good many of our men since I last wrote you.” On September 30, Curtin appealed to Lincoln, requesting that regiments in the Reserves be allowed to return to Pennsylvania, recruit, and then return to the field at full strength. The request was denied; all units were needed on the field.

Accordingly, the Reserves experienced another reorganization. With the threat to Pennsylvania eliminated, Reynolds returned to the army, assuming command of the 1st Corps, and Meade again leading the division. uring the Battle of Fredericksburg, December 11-15, 1862, the assault of the Pennsylvania Reserves proved the single bright spot in the otherwise dismal Union outcome. On the morning of December 13, Meade’s division, with now approximately 4,500 infantry, assaulted the Confederate line at Prospect Hill, a position held by Lt. Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. Crossing over boggy terrain, Meade’s men directed their assault toward a gap in Jackson’s line. Although the Reserves broke the enemy line, without reinforcements the initially promising assault sputtered as Jackson restored his position. Meade’s men withdrew back over the ground they had just crossed. Furious with a lack of support for his assault, Meade grumbled to Reynolds, “My God, did they think my division could whip Lee’s whole army?”

Once again, the Pennsylvania Reserves had proven themselves as a veteran combat unit. But battlefield heroism invariably came at considerable human cost. Their losses in the fight at Fredericksburg totaled 1,853, roughly 41 percent of their strength. Some within the ranks of the Pennsylvania Reserves interpreted their fight along Prospect Hill at Fredericksburg as frustrating, if not futile. One soldier lamented the lack

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NEAR MISS IN MARYLAND First Lieutenant Andrew Eagleson was leading his men at Antietam when a bullet tore through his forage cap. Eagleson kept the artifact of his brush with death, marking the bullet’s path with a stick. of reinforcements allocated to Meade’s division, declaring, “Had we been supported we could have taken the heights but our division is too small now to fight the whole rebel army.”

Two years of combat had visibly taken its toll on the Reserves. “You can see that the Pennsylvania Reserves best days are over,” one soldier surmised.

Following the Battle of Fredericksburg, Meade received command of the army’s 5th Corps and issued his farewell order to the Reserves promising, “the commanding general will never cease to remember that he belonged to the Reserve Corps.”

Before leaving for his new corps command, Meade advocated that the Reserves return to Pennsylvania for recruitment. He recorded their strength at 195 officers and 4,249 enlisted, but noted that “a very large proportion” of the enlisted strength were wounded and unlikely to return to active duty.

In any case, owing to the volume of similar requests from numerous units

WHAT IS A LIFE WORTH? Private George W. Morris of Company K, 10th Reserves turned an 1854 quarter into an ID disc. Fortunately, he didn’t need it, for, though wounded, he survived his three-year enlistment.

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throughout the army, the War Department again denied the request to return the division to Pennsylvania.

Relief from the front lines ultimately came in February 1863 when the Pennsylvania Reserves were ordered to Washington, D.C. Men greeted the order with much enthusiasm. For the next four months, soldiers maintained the defenses around the capital. By some accounts, however, duty around Washington proved more exacting and tiring than expected. “We have been shamefully treated,” opined one soldier. Despite the harsh winter weather that year, soldiers eagerly took leaves of absences to return home and morale within the ranks slowly improved.

While the Army of the Potomac battled Lee’s forces at Chancellorsville in early May 1863, the Pennsylvanians remained assigned to the defenses of Washington. As Lee extracted his army from Fredericksburg and began moving north, on June 3 the Reserves received a new commander, Maj. Gen. Samuel Crawford. With the 2nd brigade remaining near Washington, the 1st and 3rd brigades joined Meade’s 5th Corps on June 28, the same day that Meade received command of the Army of the Potomac.

At Gettysburg, and fighting now on their native soil, the Pennsylvania Reserves earned further distinction through their deeds on the afternoon of July 2. Texans and Alabamians from Lt. Gen. James Longstreet’s First Corps assailed the Federal left flank and a desperate fight for control of

Little Round Top ensued. As soldiers from the 5th Corps rushed to secure the army’s left flank, and with bullets whizzing overhead, Crawford led the headlong charge of Colonel William McCandless’ brigade down the northern slope of Little Round Top, scattering the advancing Georgians and South Carolinians under William Wofford’s and Joseph Kershaw’s command.

Amid loud cheers, the Pennsylvanians “charged at a run down the slope driving the enemy back.”

Crawford’s countercharge swept the enemy from their front, through the marshy Plum Run, and back into the Wheatfield. That evening, McCandless’ regiments held their position along a stone wall at the eastern border of the Wheatfield. The following day, after the Union repulse of Pickett’s Charge, the Pennsylvania Reserves advanced across the Wheatfield, assailing the 15th Georgia, and cleared the enemy from Rose Woods. Totaling no more than 3,000 effectives, Crawford’s two brigades counted 210 casualties during the Gettysburg Campaign. Once again, in two days of action at Gettysburg, the Pennsylvania Reserves had proven steadfast.

After the Gettysburg Campaign came to a close, Meade’s army maneuvered against Lee’s forces in Virginia into the fall of 1863. That winter, as the expiration of their initial three year terms of service loomed, the War Department incentivized reenlistment for an additional three years, or the duration of the war. Of the approx-

COURTESY OF THE STATE MUSEUM OF PENNSYLVANIA, PENNSYLVANIA HISTORICAL AND MUSEUM COMMISSION

INTO THE VALLEY OF DEATH Peter Rothermel’s 19th-century painting shows the Reserves charging down the face of Little Round Top at Gettysburg. A 2nd Corps soldier described the attack: “Our regiment continued to fall back...when all at once it was brought to a stand still by a yell so fierce and terrible that the very blood seemed to curdle in our veins, while a sound as if a hurricane was swept toward us. It was the crushing of leaves and twigs made by the Pennsylvania Reserves coming up in mass....”

“THE MEMORY OF THE DEAD WILL BE MORE SACRED, AND THE NAMES OF THE LIVING MORE HONORABLE...

BECAUSE THEY ARE ENROLLED AS

PENNSYLVANIA RESERVES.” imately 4,300 soldiers now in the ranks of the Pennsylvania Reserves, roughly 1,700 men reenlisted.

As the spring campaign season neared, the men from the Pennsylvania Reserves eagerly anticipated their return home, believing that their three-year term of service would be fulfilled in May. The 9th Pennsylvania’s term of service expired on May 4; the regiment reached Pittsburgh and mustered out of service on May 13.

For the soldiers in the remaining infantry regiments, now organized into two brigades, the war continued.

ack in Pennsylvania, Governor Curtin had appealed to the War Department to uphold the May termination date, but the administration denied the request.

Invariably, unrest mounted among the rank and file. “The impression is now,” one soldier griped, “that we will not be discharged before the middle of July.” The division’s muster-out date loomed and in their final month of service to the Union cause the reserves would witness some of the most desperate fighting they had yet to see. As the Overland Campaign began in early May, the Pennsylvania Reserves saw combat during the fight in the Wilderness.

On the morning of May 12, at Spotsylvania, they made a futile charge against the Confederate earthworks at Laurel Hill, RALLY ONCE AGAIN “driven back each time with heavy loss.”

A Reserves reunion ribbon. It’s not As the Army of the Potomac continued surprising that Gettysburg became to grind against Lee’s forces, so too did a favorite gathering place for the the Pennsylvania Reserves, fighting at aging Keystone veterans.

Guinea’s Station, North Anna River, and Bethesda Church.

Finally, on May 31, 1864, Maj. Gen. Gouvernor K. Warren issued orders Jennifer M. Murray is a military historian at for the Pennsylvania Reserves to return home. Their service to the Union Oklahoma State University. Murray’s most recent was complete. In his farewell order, Warren acknowledged the valor of the publication is On A Great Battlefield: The division, declaring, “great satisfaction at their heroic conduct in this arduMaking, Management, and Memory of Getous campaign.” In expressing gratitude at their three years of distinguished service, Crawford extolled, “Take back your soiled and war-torn banners, tysburg National Military Park, 1933-2013, published by the University of Tennessee Press in your thinned and shattered ranks, and let them tell how you performed 2014. She is currently working on a full-length your trust.” biography of George Gordon Meade, tentatively Soldiers of the “thinned and shattered ranks” wearily boarded transtitled Meade at War. ports at White House Landing, and began arriving in Harrisburg on June

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B COURTESY OF THE STATE MUSEUM OF PENNSYLVANIA, PENNSYLVANIA HISTORICAL AND MUSEUM COMMISSION

6. Josiah Sypher, writing the history of the Pennsylvania Reserves, reported that approximately 1,200 officers and men returned to the Commonwealth and were mustered out of federal service. Regiments that had marched off to war in the summer of 1861 with robust ranks returned home as shadows of their former selves, with men indelibly transformed by the carnage of war. The 11th Pennsylvania, for instance, mustered out a mere 211 men. Yet the war did not come to an end for all soldiers in the Pennsylvania Reserves. Indeed, the soldiers who reenlisted in December 1863 were reorganized into the 190th and 191st Pennsylvania and participated in the war’s final campaigns.

Over four grueling years, the Pennsylvania Reserves played a prominent role in the campaigns of the Army of the Potomac. Soldiers of the Pennsylvania Reserves recorded one of the most distinguished combat records of any division in the Civil War’s armies. This division produced some of the finest generals in the Union Army, John F. Reynolds, Edward O.C. Ord, and George G. Meade. From Dranesville through the Overland Campaign, these men were often in the thickest of the fight, suffering consistently high casualty rates in their service to the Union. “The memory of the dead will be more sacred, and the names of the living more honorable,” extolled the division’s historian, “because they are enrolled as Pennsylvania Reserves.”

Indeed, the Pennsylvania Reserves deserve a prominent place on the mantel of legendary Civil War units.

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he area surrounding Pollard, Ala., located east of Mobile, in the early months of 1863 was overrun with deserters and stragglers from both armies who had flocked to this sparsely populated and isolated locale. Fortunately for the local populace, which included a large number of civilian refugees from Pensacola, Fla., several Confederate units were stationed nearby to protect them if required.

The command consisted mainly of Alabama and Florida units and the 19th Louisiana Infantry. Private George Asbury Bruton of the 19th Louisiana wrote to his sister and described Pollard: “This is the poorest country I ever saw in my life or ever expect to see. Tell Ma I am sorry that I can’t say any thing in favor of her old native state but we are camped in the out-edge close to no where. I never saw a goffer [gopher] before I come to this country & I imagin that is all this country is fit for is to rais goffers.”

Despite Bruton’s low opinion of his surroundings, these forces served another vital purpose in their assignment to keep an eye on the Yankees at Pensacola; thus, the assembled Confederates units were officially deemed an “army of observation.”

The Louisianans were added to this garrison in part to recoup their strength after WELCOME RETURN appalling losses at the Battle of Shiloh, Local citizens cheer where they earned the sobriquet “Bloody Southern soldiers reentering 19th.” In addition to their daily drudge of Jackson, Miss., after drill and outpost duties, music was incorporetreating Federal troops rated into the 19th with both practical and had set a number of spiritual results. The 19th’s commander, Colbuildings ablaze. onel Wesley Parker Winans, was a “lover of music” and formed a regimental band. Douglas John Cater, a transfer from the 3rd Texas Cavalry, was tabbed as drum major who oversaw four other drummers.

Cater also implemented a string band that further raised the spirits of the soldiers. The regiment took up money that was used to purchase musical instruments from Mobile. “We secured,” Cater later recalled, “a good violin [for Cater’s brother, Rufus], a guitar [for John W. Bonham who also sang lead for the melodious quartet], a base violin [for Lieutenant Frank Smith] and a piccolo [for himself ].” Cater’s orchestra was soon serenading young ladies throughout the countryside.

Preparation for resumption of duty at the front lines soon marred the serenity of the concerts. Orders came to pack up and get ready to move by train starting April 8 and ending May 31 at Jackson, Miss. During the same time, the 5th Company of Washington (Louisiana) Artillery was passing through Mobile from Wartrace, Tenn. The last time the 19th Louisiana and the Washington Artillery served side by side was at Shiloh, where both units were part of a makeshift brigade with the Crescent Infantry, 24th Louisiana, during the battle’s second day. The two units, along with the Crescents, bonded from the fighting they endured.

The brigade the 19th and Washington Artillery joined consisted of the 32nd Alabama Infantry, 13th and 20th Louisiana Consolidated Infantry, 14th Louisiana Sharpshooter Battalion, and 16th and 25th Louisiana Consolidated Infantry, all under the command of Brig. Gen. Daniel W. Adams.

The soldiers learned they were ordered there by General Joseph Eggleston Johnston, who was assembling an army for the relief of the Vicksburg garrison, besieged by Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Johnston arrived in Jackson a couple of weeks before the Louisianans and immediately began to formulate a plan to free up the forces inside of beleaguered Vicksburg.

Confederate Secretary of War James Alexander Seddon had dispatched Johnston to Mississippi on May 9 with orders to take “chief command of the forces, giving to those in the field, as far as practicable, the encour-

agement and benefit of your personal direction.”

Grant’s men, however, were already positioned between Johnston and Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton’s forces just east of Vicksburg. Some of Pemberton’s soldiers attempted to join Johnston, but they were soundly defeated at the Battle of Champion Hill on May 16, and retreated back to their breastworks. Thwarted at rescuing Pemberton, Johnston resolved to attack the Federal rearguard and trap them between the two Southern forces, and he waited for reinforcements to arrive at Jackson.

When the 19th arrived, much of Jackson was in shambles. In mid-May, in an attempt to destroy facilities housing Confederate war materials, Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s troops started fires to burn every building in the city capable of producing war material.

Both public and private residences went up in flames despite one of the “most drenching rain storms” the night prior to the city’s brief occupation by Federal units. The residents later dubbed their city “Chimneyville” because chimneys were the only thing left of many of the burned buildings. Private Rufus Eddins of the 19th observed upon his entrance to the city, “The Yanks nearly ruined Jackson…they burned up $15,000,000 worth of property.”

Shortly after pitching their tents in a valley about 200 yards from the Mississippi capitol building, Cater recalled the 19th Louisiana was ordered to go on provost duty three miles from town. Eddins complained he was “standing guard ev[e]ry other day.”

Aside from guard duty, members of the Washington Artillery spent time ensuring the unit was well equipped. Captain Cuthbert H. Slocomb managed to secure new issues of clothing, refurbished wagons, “camp equipage, artificers tools, etc.,” and his battery was better equipped than it had been in over a year’s time.

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umors about Vicksburg began trickling in. As the middle of June approached, Eddins wrote, “[T]here is talk ev[e]ry day of Johonsons [ Johnston’s] mooving on the Yanks. [T]hey have Vicksburg in a clost [closed] place. [T]hey are within rifel shot of our works and as well fortied [fortified] as we are in some places. The Pontoon Bridges from here this morning. I expect there will be a forward move shortly. I expect our Regt will be left here to guard Jackson.” Despite the rest and refitting, Eddins was experiencing the doldrums when he explained, “I don’t feel like writing humor this morning.” Soon, others in the 19th Louisiana would have a cure for his sagging spirits.

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BIG EASY BOMBERS The 5th Company of the Washington Artillery from New Orleans was one of the most famous units from Louisiana, and a stalwart Western Theater force. The battery traced its lineage back to an 1838 militia unit.

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uring most of late June, soldiers in Jackson could hear cannonading originating from the direction of Vicksburg. On the first day of July, Johnston finally headed toward Vicksburg with his army. Cater noted he and his comrades marched all day and reached the outskirts of Clinton more than a dozen miles away. A Kentuckian remembered it was, “The hotest march we have ever made. Many soldiers tumbled down the road from sun-stroke.”

To combat the extreme heat, the officers elected to take up the next day’s march before daylight. An Alabamian remarked, “Orders issued to allow no music from bands, beating of drums nor any noise above ordinary tone of conversation,” a hardship for the musically inclined Louisiana troops. Private Eddins remembered that “A grate many fell, some stretch on the side of the road.” Late in the afternoon, Johnston’s exhausted soldiers halted and stretched out to sleep alongside the road.

The Army of Relief stayed in a holding pattern for most of July 3 and 4. One disgruntled Alabama soldier complained, “Our idea of generalship was that if our expedition was intended for a relief of Vicksburg, it should be a bold and quick movement. It was irritating to be dallying along at the rate we were going, but we had implicit confidence in General Johnston and hoped all would turn out well.”

Meanwhile, after negotiations on July 3, Grant prepared to accept the surrender of Vicksburg’s garrison, thus ending the long siege. Soon thereafter Grant instructed Sherman: “I want Johnston broken up as effectually as possible, and the [rail]roads destroyed.” Sherman responded, “[T]elegraph me the moment you have Vicksburg in possession, and I will secure all the crossings of [Big] Black River, and move on Jackson or Canton, as you may advise.” As an Illinois foot soldier put it on July 5, “We were called out and started on the march toward [Big] Black River at an early hour. We were marched at a very rapid pace as Gen Sherman was trying to steal a march on Gen Johnston before he learned of the fall of Vicksburg.”

On the afternoon of July 5, Johnston’s command assembled and advanced about six miles toward Vicksburg. One Louisiana soldier commented, “The weather is very dry and the roads a foot deep in dust.” An enlisted man serving in the Breckinridge’s Division proclaimed it “the hardest marching ever” and noted when his unit halted for the evening, they “bivouacked in line of battle on the battle field of ‘Champion’s Hill.’”

The next day was ominous for the Confederates as word began to spread throughout Johnston’s forces of Vicksburg’s fall. Cater recalled,

COURTESY OF CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL HALL

ordered the 19th Louisiana’s string band instruments safely stored among the baggage of the regiment on their winding travels from Pollard to Jackson. Cater and the other members of the musical group excitedly hauled them out and put them to use. One night, the group somehow secured the use of an ambulance to transport them, along with Adjutant A. Ben Broughton, Captain Jack Hodges, and Sergeant Thomas J. Prude, a few miles outside of town with the purpose of serenading some young ladies.

It was a beautiful moonlit night; the men brought out their pieces and took note of their surroundings, bedecked with a plethora of decorative flowers and shrubs. “[T]he folding doors were thrown open by an affable old gentleman, who welcomed us and invited us” inside, so impressed was he with the band’s selection of tunes. In the dining room, the bandsmen were delighted to discover a “sumptuous repast” awaiting them. Cater later remembered his brother Rufus saying the dessert cake “was too pretty to cut.” Wines, salads, and much more awaited the talented musicians, all surrounding a notable vase inscribed, “Vicksburg, Vicksburg, Vicksburg.”

Discreetly tucked inside the flower arrangements encircling the vase were dainty notes thanking the soldiers “for the serenade and conveying happy wishes.”

While the men under his command were involved in frivolous activities to pass the time, Johnston realized he was not getting any more additions to his small “Army of Relief.” He even debated with Confederate President Jefferson Davis concerning the actual number of men he had on hand. The general speculated he had in the neighborhood of 23,000 soldiers fit for duty while the president countered with an amount totaling 34,000 troops.

Other governmental officials in Richmond chimed in and confirmed the president’s mathematics, but Johnston insisted those numbers were blown out of proportion. Finally, Johnston was told by Confederate Secretary of War Seddon in no uncertain terms, “You must rely upon what you have and the irregular forces in Mississippi.” Aware of Johnston’s probable approach, Grant instructed his command to build another set of entrenchments that would protect the Federals from an offensive emanating from Jackson.

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“Gloom is on every countenance, with Pemberton’s army prisoners in the hands of Gen. Grant and the war prolonged.” Johnston’s army reversed their course towards Vicksburg and headed back to Jackson. Continuous forced marching caused elements of Johnston’s men to arrive back in Jackson toward the late evening amid a “heavy rain & storm.” Eddins wrote, “We got back the night of the sixth. [T]he last day we marched nearly all day and a good portion of the night.” During the trip, the Washington Artillery stopped on a regular basis to deploy into battery to confront any perceived rearguard attacks. Eddins wrote, “[W]e arrived in Jackson [and then] we were ordered to the ditches.”

The units settled into the trenches in an arc configuration with both flanks resting on the Pearl River per Johnston’s orders. The Louisiana brigade manned the extreme right side of the Confederate line’s left flank, straddling the New Orleans Railroad. In line from the left were the 16th and 25th Consolidated Louisiana; 32nd Alabama; 5th Company, Washington Artillery; 19th Louisiana; and 13th and 20th Consolidated Louisiana. The 14th Louisiana Battalion was stationed nearby with its dependable sharp-

shooters. Incredulously, the members of the Washington decried the use of a barricade for protection as they were used to fighting out in the open. First Lieutenant J. Adolphe Chalaron explained, most “had never handled anything heavier than a pen,” and this experience became “their first initiation handling picks and shovels.”

Slocomb’s gunners were not the only soldiers in the area unfamiliar with digging implements. Men of Breckinridge’s Division scoured the city in search of “negroes to work on the fortifications.” One group managed to corral quite a crowd, “among them a few dandy barbers, who did not fancy wielding the pick and shoving the spade much.” One of the Kentucky natives remembered, “We layed around & took it easy while the negroes used the picks, spades & axes.”

The Army of Relief ’s commander personally inspected the earthworks and found them “miserably located and not half completed.”

Johnston ordered 4,000 bales of cotton to help augment his defenses.

Of Johnston’s directions, a Georgian surmised, “I think he is going to make a stand here. He is going to fight the Yanks as old Jackson did the English at New Orleans, behind the cotton bags.” Slocomb “erected a strong traverse of cotton bales” around the battery and proclaimed, “Thus we formed quite a comfortable redoubt for ourselves.” This area of fortifications was referred to as Fort Breckinridge in honor of their division commander. Second Sergeant James Elijah Carraway of the 19th Louisiana wrote, “[A]ll of the timber and underbrush had been cut down for one

MUSICALLY INCLINED Washington Artillerymen relax in camp early in the war. A fiddle player alludes to the musical prowess of the unit, put on display during the Vicksburg Campaign.

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quarter of a mile in front of our works.”

“A very fine but abandoned brick residence stood out in front of our works” that belonged to William A. Cooper’s family, recalled Carraway.

One of Slocomb’s gun crew confirmed his statement by remarking, “[It was indeed a] splendid mansion…which had been deserted by the family, leaving most of the household effects behind.” On the 10th, Cater volunteered to join a party of five from Adams’s brigade and sharpshoot from near the home. “I volunteered to go and a musket and cartridges were furnished me,” Cater later speculated, “There was a large cistern under a dwelling in the yard. The water was cool and it seemed the Federals knew that the cistern of good water was there and they wanted it.” Of the Yankees, he noted, “Their guns were better than ours and they were doing good execution while our guns could not reach them, only raise the dust twenty or thirty feet in front of them.” Not long after the Southerners settled in, one of them was hit by an enemy bullet. Two men were required to drag him to safety, leaving Cater and another man to scramble behind a tree until they could retreat under the cover of darkness. Cater resolved to not volunteer for sharpshooting again “if I could not get a longer ranging gun.”

This detachment was firing into the distant ranks of Union Maj. Gen. Edward O.C. Ord’s 13th Corps. Their attention toward the Cooper house caused Johnston to direct it to be burned immediately. A small group comprised of Louisianans was tasked with the job. Cater grabbed a “little piece of broken mirror and about a yard of Brussells carpet for use in camp.” Carraway pocketed a piece of one of the “large and costly mirrors” so he could “afterwards behold his own halfstarved features and ragged clothes,” and he also cut himself a blanket-sized section of the carpet. All the men appropriated a suitable volume from the splendid library.

The squad came across a magnificent piano and a “swarthy Creole” from the Washington Artillery “proposed that it be turned over to his battery as most of them were musicians, all of them French.” It was agreed upon, and the men picked up the heavy piano and carried it back to their breastworks in the dead of night. The large musical instrument was safely 48

MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT OF ARCHIVES AND HISTORY; COURTESY OF RICHARD HOLLOWAY

WHERE FIRES RAGED A stereoview of the destruction in Jackson by Maj. Gen. William Sherman’s men that caused residents to nickname their torched town “Chimneyville. ” Below right, George Bruton of the 19th Louisiana Infantry.

placed among the large cotton bales. After they were gone, the remaining men, much to their chagrin, began to “apply the torch” to the magnificent home.

Bolstered by the reinforcements from the timely arrival of Maj. Gen. Francis P. Blair Jr.’s division of the 15th Corps, Ord’s men made a heavy reconnaissance toward the cistern at the Cooper residence the next day but were met with the deadly fire of one of Slocomb’s rifled cannons sent out 500 yards in advance of Fort Breckinridge to hamper the Federal advance. After being bloodied heavily, the Northern troops retired to a safe distance. With the onset of evening, the Union troops were treated to a concert of melodies played by the Southerners on the piano and accompanied by hundreds of Louisiana soldiers singing such patriotic songs as Dixie.

An hour before noon on July 12, elements of the 13th Corps began to attack the well-defended Confederates, despite orders not to bring on a general engagement by their superiors. As the Union advance developed, Lawrence Pugh of the Washington Artillery made his way to the piano and began playing it enthusiastically. Fellow cannoneer Andy Swain soon pushed him aside, grabbed an ammunition box, flipped it over, and took a turn at the ivory keys.

Other men packed around the piano and sang

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along with the songs.

The force moving on Fort Breckinridge consisted of two divisions from Ord’s 13th Corps. He instructed them to “make a reconnaissance, and, if it is necessary to form a line and attack to drive the force in front, do so, so as to keep your connection with the main corps.” The Federals dispatched the 5th Ohio Independent Battery to shell the Confederates in the vicinity of Slocomb’s battery and Winans’ infantry.

The Washington Artillery coolly responded to the attack but with only two of their cannon, thus not revealing their remaining arsenal. One of the Yankee brigade commanders hesitated upon receiving the Louisianans’ return fire. Ordered to continue forward, Union Colonel Isaac Pugh complied and moved to a cornfield in front of the fort.

The other division halted forward progress and dug in while Pugh’s men advanced amid a hail of cannon and small arms fire from Slocomb’s and Winans’ men. Felled trees blocked their progress as a Kentucky artillery unit and the 32nd Alabama managed to get an angle on them to multiply the murderous firing.

As Pugh’s men trudged forward, some of the 19th Louisiana “had told the battery ‘boys’ to send for me,” described Cater, “and that I would give them some good music on that piano.” Cater responded to Slocomb’s call, along with his brother Rufus. As the Southerners enjoyed Cater’s playing while the shells and bullets whizzed by, Slocomb caught sound of a Federal movement and “saw them coming at a charge.” The Cater brothers quickly scurried back to their post. Winans’ regiment held their fire until Slocomb’s cannon belched forth a volley in unison. Cater reported the deadly rounds took a toll of 260 men dead in their front, 150 prisoners, and 160 wounded. One of the Washington Artillery recounted years later, “’Tis over; with a rush the piano is sought again. Not twenty minutes has sped since its last notes have died away.” When Pugh’s regiments streamed to the rear, Winans’ soldiers emerged from behind the breastworks to collect their spoils of war.

MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT OF ARCHIVES AND HISTORY; COURTESY OF RICHARD HOLLOWAY

DEEP SOUTH DISASTER General Joe Johnston’s Army of Relief failed to aid Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton’s entrapped army in Vicksburg, and also failed to hold Jackson, leaving the city on July 17. The spring campaign in Mississippi was a disaster for the Confederacy.

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he July 12 attack was the only major assault on Jackson, and by the 17th Johnston’s forces abandoned the city.

One of Breckinridge’s Kentuckians recalled, “About midnight…we folded our tents like the Arabs and quietly stole away.” The Confederates burned the bridge they retreated across and moved to Morton, a short distance away. Looting and destruction by the Federal soldiers entering Jackson was rampant until Blair’s division arrived to restore order.

Into the next century, Carraway would sit at a local store and relate the story of the piano in the trenches to anyone who would listen. Used as a horse trough by the Yankees after they retook the city, the piano found its way to New Orleans after the war where it remains on display today at the Confederate Memorial Hall Museum. It is a fitting honor for the musical instrument that unintentionally played the swan song of Johnston’s Army of Relief.

Richard H. Holloway works for the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism and is president of the Civil War Round Table of Central Louisiana. His biographies of Hamilton Bee, William Boggs, and Richard Taylor appeared in Confederate Generals of the Trans-Mississippi, Vol. 3 (University of Tennessee Press, 2019). This article is adapted from his essay in Vicksburg Besieged (SIU Press, 2020), edited by Steven E. Woodworth and Charles D. Grear.

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The war in their words

‘I’M EXHAUSTED’ UNION SURGEON DANIEL G. BRINTON

WORE HIMSELF OUT TENDING

GETTYSBURG WOUNDED EDITED BY JONATHAN W. WHITE

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aniel Garrison Brinton was an important medical figure in the 19th century. Born in 1837 in Thornton, Pa.—on a farm that had been in his family since 1684—he graduated from Yale in 1858 and Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia in 1860 before traveling to Europe in 1861 to study at Paris and Heidelberg. Upon returning to the United States, he entered the Union Army in August 1862, becoming surgeon-in-chief of the 1st Division of the 11th Corps in the Army of the Potomac. After the 11th Corps moved west to join the Army of the Cumberland in late 1863, Brinton saw action at Chattanooga, Lookout Mountain, and Missionary Ridge. He served as medical director of the 11th Corps until April 1864, when physical disabilities forced him to leave the front. Brinton spent the remainder of the war as surgeon-in-charge of the U.S. Army General Hospital in Quincy, Ill. Following the war he earned renowned as an anthropologist and linguist, serving on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania from 1886 until his death in 1899.

Throughout his time in the service, Brinton wrote to his parents in Pennsylvania, offering them keen observations of army life. He saw the fighting at Chancellorsville firsthand, which he called “a hard week and a rude introduction to camp life.” Stonewall Jackson’s famous night attack produced “a most tremendous din of musketry and artillery about a quarter of a mile from us” that “roused us to our feet in a twinkling.” According to Brinton, the intensity of the firing over the next hour was such as “the oldest campaigner among us confessed he had never before heard.”

Following the battle, Brinton saw Union Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker riding with his staff. “The General was silent ILL-FATED & moody, his hat pulled down over his eyes, altogether a A corps badge of different looking man from when I saw him start out from Surgeon Brinton’s 11th his head quarters at Falmouth a week before in a brilliant Corps, battered at

Chancellorsville and Gettysburg.

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CARE PROVIDER Dr. Daniel Garrison Brinton is clean and well-rested in this image. But during harrowing days at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, he worked until he was fatigued and filthy treating the human wreckage of battle.

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and hundreds of shelter tents [are] occupied yet the wounded are so numerous that some have yet to lie out in the open air.” According to this soldier, “the barn more resembled a butcher shop than any other institution.” Schurz later recalled seeing the hospital in the rain on July 4, with “long rows of men lying under the eaves of the buildings, water pouring down under their bodies in streams.” Most of the operating tables, according to Schurz, were in the open “where the light was best” but only “partially protected against the rain” by blankets that were stretched out on poles. “There stood the surgeons, their sleeves rolled up to the elbows, their bare arms as well as their linen aprons smeared with blood, their knives not seldom held between their teeth while they were helping a patient on or off the table.” Schurz saw “pools of blood and amputated arms or legs in heaps, sometimes more than man-high.”

Brinton worked in the Spangler barn almost nonstop as soon as the wounded “began to pour in” on July 1 until the afternoon of July 5. He later wrote in his diary, “Four operating tables were going night and day.” By July 4, approximately 1,000 wounded men were in the hospital.

“A heavy rain came over in the afternoon and as we had laid many in spots without shelter some indeed in the barnyard where the foul water oozed up into their undressed wounds, the sight was harassing in the extreme. We worked with little intermission, & with a minimum amount of sleep. On one day I arose at 2 AM & worked incessantly till midnight. I doubt if ever I worked harder at a more disagreeable occupation.”

On July 5, the order came to move. Finally, three days later, the exhausted surgeon found a few moments to sit down and write to his mother and describe his experiences. His letter, now in the collection of the Chester County Historical Society in West Chester, Pa., is published here for the first time.

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uniform, & surrounded by the prancing HANDSOME FARMSTEAD horses of his aid[e]s. An orderly handed A postwar image of the George him a letter just as I passed him—some Spangler Farm. The barn despatch, doubtless. He put it in his pocket served as the main hospital, without a word or a glance.” and the stone summer kitchen Watching the retreating Union army was “the most deplorable [scene] I ever wit- is reportedly where Brig. Gen. nessed.” He wrote, “The roads were fright- Lewis Armistead was treated.

Today, the well-preserved ful, the mud of unexplored depths, the rain cold, & driven before a north east blast…. farm is owned by the Did some fainting man drop exhausted by Gettysburg Foundation. the roadside, none lent him a helping hand, or stopped to aid him. Among so many thousand lives one seemed nothing, and the instinct of self preservation is strong.” He concluded, “I expect this disaster will disgust the north, & well it may.”

After this first experience of combat, Brinton was convinced that Union soldiers lacked the mettle of their Confederate adversaries. “The fact is, humiliating as it is to confess, I don’t believe our men can fight like the rebels,” he wrote. “The latter, of whom we captured a number, are wiry, healthy looking fellows, by no means the half starved ragamuffins I expected to see.

They are all gritty to the backbone, as the saying is, & tell us we can kill but never conquer them. I believe it. They fight like tigers, & proved on this occasion that they could take as well as keep earthworks. We had every advantage & were driven in disgracefully.”

Brinton noted scenes that most members of the army would not have seen. Near Union Maj. Gen. Carl Schurz’s headquarters, he observed, “During the day the rebels came pretty close on reconnoissances, and twice there was quite sharp skirmishing. When each time the rebels retired, the band in front of the General’s struck up a lively national air, but when the final grand rush was made, pipes & pipers were both bagged by the enemy!

It was a dramatic but rather annoying finale.”

Two months after Chancellorsville, Brinton found himself heading north toward his home state of Pennsylvania. During the Battle of Gettysburg, he cared for wounded soldiers at the 11th Corps hospital at the George Spangler Farm, which was located on the south side of the Granite Schoolhouse Road, between Taneytown Road and the Baltimore Pike.

The farm consisted of a stone farmhouse, sheds, and other outbuildings, and a large bank barn—a barn that has an earthen ramp on the outside of the structure leading up to the second story. Brinton spent almost all of his time at Gettysburg in the barn.

According to a Connecticut infantryman who was wounded on July 1, “all the hospital tents have been put up and are filled, the barn is also crowded CIVIL WAR TIMES DECEMBER 2020

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MIDDLETOWN MD. H.Q. 11TH CORPS

July 8 1863

THIS PAGE: ADAMS COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY; OPPOSITE PAGE: EMMITSBURG AREA HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Dear Ma, I have just received your letter of the 3rd, and for the first time since Sunday week having an hour or two of probable leisure—for with the cannon sounding in my ears it is only probable,—I determine to write you rather more at length than I did just after the battle of Gettysburg. I may start by saying that although I am much exhausted by the hard work of the past week, yet I remain in good health, & have no desire to give up yet. I sent you my last letter from South Mountain Pass. We stayed there only half a day, an order coming in the afternoon to march immediately. We took the road back to Middletown & on to Frederic that night, our course lying through a beautiful country, a picture of peaceful agricultural thrift and felicity. By the time we reached Frederic & went to bed it was midnight, & at half past three in the morning we were ordered to march. We were not the most cheerful company you may imagine. The men had had no supper the night before & no breakfast in the morning; it was a “forced march” and no time could be spared. Add to this a drenching rain came on which rendered the clay road wet & slippery. We worked on drearily up the valley with such success that by 4 oclock we reached our destination which was the pretty little town of Emmitsburg, having made 38 miles in 24 hours, the longest march ever made by a division of this army. So well did the men bear up under it that

some regiments had at the close of this march every man they started with.

Emmitsburg is a very pretty place. The Sisters of Charity have here their chief house, an imposing & extensive edifice, surrounded by 600 acres of good land. Another very prominent structure on the hill side likewise belongs to a Catholic sect, & is an educational institution. Nearly half the town had been accidentally burnt a week or two before our arrival, the extensive ruins & blackened walls being all that remained to tell of many handsome mansions.

It was most cheering to us to receive such a welcome as we did here, & to see the ladies congregated on the steps with bouquets & more substantial refreshment. Nothing tended more to implant a more determined spirit of fight in the men than this sympathy & good feeling which they had been strangers to so long. We remained here a day, marching only a moderate distance in the vicinity. The next day was the eventful first of July.

SOUTH MOUNTAIN PASS

July 9

I had written thus far when marching orders came, & after a very tedious march of several hours up the mountain, we made our head quarters at the very spot whence I wrote you last. Such are the curious mutations of war. It presents a quite different scene now from last Sunday week. Long ammunition trains, battery after battery, ambulances filled with wounded are filing by, & have been ever since our arrival last night. A cavalry fight was going on all yesterday within four miles of us, and as I write musketry firing is reported. Doubtless before you receive this we shall have another great battle to chronicle. May it likewise be a great victory. But to return to Gettysburg.

On the first of July we took an early start for Gettysburg, 10 miles distant.

As we approached, aid[e]s & orderlies kept coming to hurry us up. No rest was given the men & about 10 A.M. we reached the Gettysburg cemetery.

This is just outside the town on a high hill, a very commanding & in a military point of view a most important position. The enemy afterwards made desperate efforts to take it but were repulsed with heavy loss. The view at the time I speak of was most interesting. In the plain below us, the troops were moving like chess men. Four or five batteries were playing, squadrons of cavalry were forming & charging, masses of infantry moving to assault.

ACCIDENTAL RAVAGE This image of Emmitsburg, Md., shows the burnt shells of buildings noted by Brinton in a letter. On June 15, 1863, an accidental fire, reportedly started in a horse stable, ravaged the town located south of Gettysburg.

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

PAINTING BY KEITH ROCCO; COWAN’S AUCTIONS

DIFFERENT SYMBOLS OF SKILL General Armistead (top) famously placed his hat on the tip of his sword as he led his Virginia regiments during Pickett’s Charge.

Dr. Brinton also wielded a blade at Gettysburg, but it was not to inspire troops. It was an amputation saw, as seen in this surgeon’s kit.

Presently a narrow dark line became visible on our left moving slowly & regularly forward over fields & through woods. It was [Confederate Lt. Gen. James] Longstreet’s line of skirmishers, two miles in length driving in our left wing. Fortunately they did not push us then as they did the next day or the Army of the Potomac would have had a different & sadder tale to tell. Meanwhile we doctors were preparing for our share of the work. We were driven out of two places in which we had established our hospital by the firing & finally took refuge in a large barn about three quarters of a mile from the principal scene of action.

Here I remained throughout the battle leaving it only for an hour or two on the fourth. Our distance preserved us from danger from the musketry, but on the afternoon of the third we were shelled without intermission for two hours. None of the surgeons were injured but two men and several horses were killed & wounded close to the house. Our principal anxiety was lest our barn which contained at the time over 500 wounded should catch fire. It escaped, however.

That day was the most terrific fighting ever known in this war. Gen. [Lewis] Armistead of the rebel army was brought to our hospital. He has since died. I had considerable conversation with him & was much pleased with his manners & language. Capt. [Fred William] Stowe [son of Harriet Beecher Stowe] of our staff was brought to me during the afternoon, wounded just behind the ear by a piece of shell. I extracted it, but though I left him doing well, I am not without anxiety as to the result. The wounded came in rapidly so that by the next day we had over a thousand to attend to. Many of them were hurt in the most shocking manner by shells. My experience at Chancellorsville was nothing compared to this & I never wish to see such another sight. To add to the scene a heavy rain came up on the fourth & many of the wounded were drenched to the skin & lay writhing with pain in the mud & barn yard water. The surgeons worked night & day but were insufficient in numbers to accomplish everything. For myself I think I never was more exhausted.

On the fifth I was ordered to report to the Division for marching orders. I had an hour or two to spare which tired as I was I passed in looking at Gettysburg and the battle field of the right wing which under general [Henry Warner] Slocum resisted a most determined attack of the rebels. The dead had just been buried but signs of desperate fighting were plainly visible in trees scarred by hundreds of bullets[,] others split into slivers by round shot, the earth torn by shell[,] and the numerous mounds of fresh earth that covered the remains of the fallen. Relics in abundance lay scattered over the ground, & already curiosity seekers were on the spot collecting the fragments of broken guns, cartridge boxes, canteens, &c.

The town itself which had been occupied by the sharp shooters of each army bore likewise numerous marks of bullets, & splintered window shutters &

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PAINTING BY KEITH ROCCO; COWAN’S AUCTIONS

battered bricks told of many a whistling ball.

IDEALIZED PRACTICE For several days no one could venture into Union Zouaves pose loading the street without imminent danger to life, stretchers onto an ambulance. & when our men took possession, many Many wounded men, however, corpses lay here & there in the streets & were brought into hospitals in the door steps. by comrades, or, if able, Early in the battle I met Dr. [Richard staggered to aid stations.

Cresson] Stiles & had a few moments conversation with him. He was then going to seek a location for a hospital.

Hardened as surgeons must get to the sight of suffering, I confess it was with a feeling of intense relief that I got my orders to leave this place where groans & cries had been resounding in my ears for days. Nor did I complain though we were started off in the night, & rain and darkness on a seven miles march southward. We halted at Horner’s Mills & the next day came to Emmitsburg. There we started the next morning & working again through rain & mud stopped at the foot of the Kitoctan Mountains near Frederic. Yesterday morning we were again on the road by daylight, & without waiting for breakfast tried to cross the mountain. The regular road was blocked with artillery & trains so I & one or two more started off to find another. We soon succeeded in completely losing ourselves & having wandered over the mountain some five miles in a pouring rain brought up at a Dutch farm house where we were put in good humor at once by a breakfast of ham & eggs & having learned that we we[re] going in precisely the opposite direction that we ought to, started on the right road & reached Middletown about noon when I commenced you this letter.

All the farmers here are in despair about the weather and predict a total failure of the wheat crop. I hope it is better with you. My horse has suffered much from the hard marches. Since leaving Goose Creek we have been marching or fighting every day, & almost every day it has rained. Yet I never observed the men have fewer diseases. They suffer much in other ways. One quarter of them are barefoot & the roads are stony & rough. They have missed their rations for a day & a half at a time & have had little sleep &

long marches. Yet they complain little & fight with indomitable vigor.

I must ask you to excuse the appearance of this letter but I had to carry it in my pocket & it would get torn of course. We are preparing for another great battle but I hope that this time our corps will be held as reserve. It has suffered fearfully. One regiment that came out a thousand strong now numbers twenty-eight men & three officers, another, the 154 N.Y.[,] counted up after the battle 17 men & one officer!! The whole corps does not probably number over 5000 muskets—not greater than a respectable brigade.

Gen. [Adolph von] Steinwehr [commander of the 2nd Division, 11th Corps] was not wounded as reported, & though the shells dropped fast & thick around his headquarters no one but Captain Stowe was wounded.

But you are probable sufficiently tired of deciphering this scrawl so with love to all I close.

Yr affectionate Son D.G.B.

Jonathan W. White is associate professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University and author or editor of 10 books about the Civil War, including Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln (2014) and Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams During the Civil War (2017).

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LEONARD VOLK SCULPTED POLI T ICA L OPPON E N TS

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS AND

ABRAHAM LINCOLN d

BY HAROLD HOLZER

D

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erched high above the Chicago tomb of Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln’s famed political rival, stands a larger-than-life statue. It was once as famous as any outdoor memorial in the North. Ironically, it was created by an artist who knew the “Little Giant” personally, benefited from his financial support, and even married into the extended Douglas family. The artist was once the Windy City’s most famous sculptor: Leonard Wells Volk. Yet some residents of modern Chicago believe his Douglas statue should no longer reign there.

As an 1876 photograph of Volk’s preliminary model reveals, the artist intended to portray Douglas, who died in June 1861, as a pugnacious orator—which indeed he was. The sculptor knew precisely how to pose his subject realistically, for he IN THE ARTIST’S STUDIO had seen the senator deliver many political speeches. The figure is unapolSculptor Leonard W. Volk ogetically diminutive, but also coiled with aggression, conceding Dougposes with busts of two of las’ physical shortcomings while emphasizing his charismatic impact on his most famous subjects, audiences.

Abraham Lincoln and The result pleased nearly all of Douglas’ contemporary admirers and Stephen Douglas.

The a number of period art critics, too. Yet the final bronze, installed sculpting mallet at left can at the Douglas Monument in 1878, has since been forgotten by be seen on the bench next most, while arousing controversy from the few who still notice it. Whether it has become a casualty of the subject’s reputo Lincoln’s sculpture. tational decline, the statue’s unfortunate above-the-trees placement, the neighborhood’s changing culture, or the artist’s limited talent remains open to debate. Certainly Volk never quite earned a national reputation. In his influential 1867 Book of the Artists, critic Henry T. Tuckerman included a laudatory assessment of the Douglas Monument. But he referred to its creator as “Leo W. Volk.”

Douglas would not even be remembered as Volk’s principal artistic subject. The sculptor reached his professional apogee only when he created an 1860 life mask of Lincoln. Volk would subsequently use it to fashion a bust portrait, a full-size statue (now in the Illinois

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State Capitol), and a series of best-selling plaster reproductions in a variety of styles and sizes. Many of the Lincolns, unlike Volk’s Douglas portraits, entered indelibly into American memory.

Volk’s Lincoln mask would evoke both praise and poetry, and inspire succeeding generations of sculptors including Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Daniel Chester French. If Volk ever lamented the fact that his mere plaster cast would earn him more attention than any of the portraits he molded from it, he never said so publicly. Rather, like other artists who managed to secure life sittings with Lincoln, Volk went on to write about the experience. His seminal 1881 Century Magazine article appeared coincidentally the same year as work on the Douglas monument finally came to an end.

What is perhaps most ironic of all about Volk’s lasting impact on the Lincoln image is the fact that the sculptor was not only a longtime Democrat and Douglas supporter, but also Douglas’ relative by marriage, and the beneficiary of Douglas’ generous financial patronage.

REPRODUCTION In 1888, August Saint-Gaudens had bronze copies made of the plaster casts Volk made of Lincoln’s hands on May 20, 1860.

OPPOSITE PAGE: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM/GETTY IMAGES; THIS PAGE: ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

LITTLE GIANT Douglas and Lincoln sparred in the famous August 1858 debates for an Illinois Senate seat.

Douglas won the election, but Lincoln gained national stature that helped take him to the White House two years later.

a lethal cholera epidemic. Progressing slowly in his profession, he copied a marble bust of Henry Clay in 1851. Setting out for New York to sell it, he found a buyer as soon as he got to a hotel in Louisville, boosting his confidence.

After marrying into the Douglas family, Volk’s ties to his increasingly famous relative proved crucial to his professional rise. In one sense, the connection was not really close: the sculptor’s first wife, Emily Barlow, was the daughter of Douglas’ cousin, Honor Douglas Barlow. It proved enough. Volk never forgot his first sight of Douglas when the senator came barreling up a St. Louis street in 1852 to campaign for presidential candidate Franklin Pierce, “a broad rimmed silk hat” shading “a strikingly marked face of Websterian type.” Douglas advised his new cousin: “This is no place for you, a young man just married and starting out in life. Come to Chicago, and combine in your art the useful with the beautiful, and any influence I may be there I will be happy to exert in your behalf.”

Notwithstanding the senator’s advice, Volk relocated to Galena, Ill., then returned briefly to St. Louis before launching what he called a “marble business” with his brother in Rock Island. He seemed to be gaining little professional traction. Then Douglas came to the rescue, telling Volk in 1855 that “if you desire to go to Italy, and study the art of sculpture, I shall be happy to furnish you with the means to do so,” adding: “I don’t ask you to take it as a gift, but as a loan, to be paid when you are able; but never give yourself any concern about it.”

Volk left no record of when or if he repaid Douglas’ extraordinary largesse, but his long visit to Rome proved transformative. In honor of his

B

orn in 1828 in upstate New York, the son of a marble-cutter, Volk spent much of his youth in Stockbridge, Mass.

Schooled locally, the boy boarded for a time with a local marble-cutter named Bartholomew Tucker, an experience Volk hated because Tucker required him to perform arduous farm work in his rocky fields. His brother Cornelius Volk, trained in the same craft, later settled in Quincy, Ill.—where Lincoln and Douglas would meet for their sixth senatorial debate in 1858.

At the age of 20, the future sculptor moved with his family to Buffalo, where he spent the summer of 1848 “working at my trade lettering and carving marble.” The following year, Volk migrated to St. Louis, where he recalled encountering “many thoroughly educated and talented refugees [from Europe]…from whom I received some instruction in the rudiments of drawing and modeling in clay.” He commenced working in a studio above a tobacco warehouse, whose “good ventilation and large quantities of leaf tobacco” shielded him, he believed, from

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benefactor, Volk named his son, born in 1856, Stephen Arnold Douglas Volk.

Sometime after his Italian sojourn, Volk finally heeded the senator’s advice and established himself in Chicago. It was only natural that Volk eventually repay part of his personal and professional debt to his famous cousin by commemorating him in marble while the senator lived, and memorializing him after he died. But Volk also began celebrating Douglas’ political nemesis.

OPPOSITE PAGE: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM/GETTY IMAGES; THIS PAGE: ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

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olk remembered seeing Abraham Lincoln for the first time at the Tremont House in Chicago on July 10, 1858. There, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate replied to a speech delivered the previous evening by Democrat Douglas, who was seeking reelection to a third term. Volk had joined the senator’s campaign entourage, placing him in an ideal position to make preliminary sketches for his first Douglas statue. The Chicago encounter made a deep impression on Volk.

That night, Lincoln spoke eloquently about “the electric cord” in the Declaration of Independence “that links the hearts of the patriotic and liberty-loving men together.” Volk remembered that he “regretted to hear” some of the “hard words which passed between them” during their subsequent debates. A few days after watching Lincoln in Chicago, Volk encountered him again in yet another Illinois town, and there exacted a promise that the Republican would one day pose for him. Douglas won the 1858 senate race, but Lincoln emerged a national figure.

Later that year, Volk turned his attention to his first Douglas assignment. The wealthy former governor of Illinois, Joel A. Matteson, had commissioned him to create a life-sized marble Douglas statue to grace a niche inside the lavish mansion he planned to build in Springfield. Volk completed the work the following Fate—and a celebrated legal dispute known as the Sand year and initially placed it on exhiTRUE TO LIFE Bar Case—came to Volk’s rescue. Returning to Chicago, the bition at a Springfield jewelry store Volk’s bronze of Douglas sculptor learned that Lincoln was in town for the trial. Volk opposite the State Capitol (not far depicts the pugnacious strolled to the courthouse and asked Lincoln to fulfill his earfrom Lincoln’s law office). orator as he appeared lier pledge to sit for him. Happy to oblige, Lincoln began freThe following winter, Volk jourduring many of his quenting Volk’s studio in March 1860, initially submitting to neyed to Washington, D.C., to speeches, right hand the uncomfortable wet-plaster process required to produce a copyright a bust-sized version of the likeness. While there, he asked Illi- thrust in his vest, while life mask. Using the resulting positive cast as a model, Volk nois’ junior senator, Lyman Trum- his left hand, clutching quickly fashioned a 21-inch-high plaster bust from life.

Initially, Volk intended that the bust serve as the model bull, to predict who might win the a scroll, rests defiantly for a projected, full-length Lincoln statue and traveled to presidency in 1860. Volk hoped to on his left hip.

Springfield the next month to produce plaster casts of the new sculpt the likely victor in advance Republican presidential candidate’s hands—another set of models desand have copies ready for mass-production tined to achieve success as collectibles. Only later did Volk use all his preafter the election—and no doubt hoped his cousparatory work to fashion the life-sized statue unveiled in the martyred in might prevail. But Trumbull insisted “he did president’s hometown 11 years after Lincoln’s death. Yet the reproductions not have the least article of an idea” who would of his earlier casts and models became far more famous—not only securing become president, “…only that it would not be Volk’s fame, but, displayed in thousands of American homes, transforming Judge Douglas.”

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n the meantime, the surrounding grounds began housing the newly named Camp Douglas, a Union Army training ground and holding site for Confederate prisoners of war.

It was from this eponymous camp that Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside in 1863 dispatched Federal 60

troops to suppress the very newspaper that Douglas had once helped finance: the anti-Lincoln Chicago Times. For his part, Volk claimed he was not “elligible” [sic] for military service in the Civil War “because of a crippled right hand, and afterwards paid for a substitute” to avoid conscription—an excuse that seems difficult to explain, much less justify, considering his continued, undiminished ability to sculpt.

As it turned out, Volk submitted the sole design proposal for the Douglas Monument, but his fellow commissioners rejected it. Undaunted, the sculptor returned with a modified plan, and this time won approval. According to the Chicago Tribune, the revised scheme called for a 12-foot-high bronze statue surmounting a 100-foot marble column rising above a cenotaph containing Douglas’ remains entombed in a marble sarcophagus. “Surrounding the sepulchre,” reported the Tribune, “will be four seated symbolical figures, representing Illinois holding a medallion of Douglas, America, History and Fame—the four figures being the size of life.”

Commendation quickly came from a critic who hailed the “truth and purity of the artist’s design,” marveling that the “beautiful and expressive” Douglas portrait had been “wrought…solely from recollection.” (The author clearly did not know that Volk also had his own Douglas life mask to consult.) Predicting that “Volk will win fresh renown to his already enviable name as a sculptor by this work,” the critic effused. That fall, Harper’s Weekly published an engraving of the proposed monument, predicting: “Its beauty will be apparent to everyone....”

Notwithstanding the early publicity, government and private funding remained elusive, and the monument project languished. A delayed cornerstone-laying finally took place in August 1866, but is now best-remembered as a prelude to the imminent drama of President Andrew Johnson’s impeachment. That is because the ceremony featured an address by Johnson as part of his ongoing “Swing Around the Circle”—a series of rallies staged

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CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM

Lincoln into a domestic god.

Gravely ill, Douglas died in Chicago on June 3, 1861, less than two months after the surrender of Fort Sumter. Plans to enshrine him with a fitting public memorial quickly began taking shape. Following a lavish public funeral, Douglas was buried at Cottage Grove, a 53-acre familyowned, lakefront property on the southern edge of town on which the senator had built a modest summer residence in 1849. By July 1861, Volk had signed a letter calling for establishment of “an efficient organization for the erection of a suitable monument” there to the late senator.

That September, certain that the sculptor’s involvement amounted to “a labor of love,” Douglas’ second wife and widow, Adele, named Volk the site’s official custodian. Serving as artist-in-residence gave him a distinct advantage in any future competition for a sculptural commission. Progress came slowly, however, and only in February 1863 was a Douglas Monument Association formally established, with Volk as secretary.

NEWBERRY LIBRARY

FINALLY DONE Pedestrians stroll about the tomb of Stephen Douglas. The cornerstone of the monument was laid in 1866, but Volk’s bronze statue of the senator was not set in place atop the marble shaft until 1878.

CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM

NEWBERRY LIBRARY

to rally public support for his conservative Reconstruction plans. The progressive Chicago Tribune described Johnson’s speeches as “The Ravings of a Besotted and Debauched Demagogue.”

The spirit of comity did not reign universally. Illinois Governor Richard Oglesby, originally scheduled to deliver the keynote, bowed out after the Chicago Times groused that the Republican had often “pursued Douglas with bitterest hatred.” As dignitaries headed toward the gravesite, a widow strung black petticoats along the route, accompanied by a placard that taunted: “No Welcome to Traitors.” The “house” remained divided, even if the mementos sealed within the new monument’s cornerstone included a medallion featuring portraits of both Lincoln and Douglas.

Not for another two years was Douglas’ casket transferred to the tomb. Soon, cracks appeared in the monument masonry. Neglected, the surrounding area grew blighted. Desperate for money, the commission at one point ousted Volk from his post as custodian of the Douglas cottage and offered the property for rent. Volk also resigned as secretary, and in 1872 headed to Europe, where he would live and work for two years.

Ultimately, Volk received reward for his labors.

The association paid him $8,000 for the bronze statue of Douglas, finally hoisted into place atop a somewhat abbreviated marble shaft on July 17, 1878. Volk earned an additional $6,500 to create the four allegorical sculptures to decorate the corners of the tomb. Each would be installed as it was completed: Illinois in July 1879; History on September 28, 1879; Justice on December 30, 1879; and Education on August 18, 1881.

Today, the monument occupies the South Chicago neighborhood officially named for Douglas.

The area later became known as “Bronzeville,” a vibrant center of African-American business and culture after the Great Migration. Some current residents think that their neighborhood is ill-suited to a tribute to a politician—and, through his second wife, a slave-owner—best known for advocating (through his Kansas-Nebraska Act) that white settlers had the right to approve or oppose the extension of slavery.

In 2018, as the movement to de-install Confederate memorials intensified, one historian called for removing the “objectionable monument,” arguing that the Douglas bronze in Bronzeville belonged in “the dustbin of history.” Only Chicago’s chronic political “gridlock,” mocked the writer, guaranteed that the monument would remain in place—“for now.”

CLOUDY FUTURE A 2018 movement to remove the monument to Douglas fizzled, and it remains standing. But for how long? Another Douglas statue was recently taken down in Springfield, Ill.

“Its beauty will be apparent

to

everyone,

and no encomium

for the artist

is necessary from us.”

Harold Holzer, winner of the 2015 Lincoln Prize, is chairman of the Lincoln Forum.

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ARMAMENT Get Loaded

Edward Maynard’s tape-priming system required a soldier to open the magazine door on his lockplate and insert a roll of caps. The paper strip was fed up through the opening over the cone. In theory, each time the soldier cocked his weapon, an indexed spring would feed the strip up and place a cap over the cone.

It was found, however, that the spring often misfed the strip, causing misfires.

TAPE

DISPENSER

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COURTESY OF RICK CARLILE; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

IN THE DECADES leading up to the Civil War, Minié balls and rifling began to replace round balls and smoothbore barrels in U.S. Army arsenals. Percussion caps had come into use on Model 1842 smoothbore muskets, but it was hoped an even more rapid means of ignition could be developed. A temporary solution to that problem came from an unorthodox source, a New York dentist named Edward Maynard, who had dropped out of West Point due to ill health. In 1845, Maynard patented a tape priming system that used a paper roll of caps he described as such: “A strip of paper, either in a moist or dry state is, by means of appropriate instruments and by the application of pressure, forced out into cup forms…the spaces between the cups being sufficient to prevent the communication of fire from one to the other. These cups are filled with the percussion or ful-

HN ARCHIVES

A DENTIST DEVELOPED A CLEVER, BUT FLAWED, SYSTEM FOR DISCHARGING FIREARMS

Sharp dressed Man

A well-turned-out corporal of Company A, 14th U.S. Regular Infantry poses with his tape-primerpowered Model 1855 rifle musket. Such muskets manufactured from 1859 to 1861 also had a patch box inlet into the butt to hold cleaning supplies.

COURTESY OF RICK CARLILE; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

HN ARCHIVES

minating mixture, even with the original surface of the strip, it is then coated with a varnish… dissolved in alcohol, and covered with a thin strip of paper, and the whole is then varnished over.” Maynard also invented the spring-loaded system that would feed the caps into firing position. Confused? Think of the caps you loaded in your cap gun, it’s about the same thing.

Jefferson Davis, who served as secretary of war from 1853 to 1857, took an interest in Maynard’s invention and initially paid him $1 for every musket made that used a tape primer. In 1854, the government gave the dentist a lump sum of $50,000 for unlimited use of the system.

The washed-out cadet was getting rich, and his system was at the core of the U.S. Army’s first percussion rifle musket, the handsome Model 1855, of which 50,000 were made at the Springfield, Mass., and Harpers Ferry, Va., government arsenals. In addition, tape primers were used on government-made pistols and shorter Model 1855 rifles.

Maynard claimed that the varnish on the paper and the protection of the magazine door would prevent dampness from affecting the primers, but that proved false. The paper strips were also prone to “chain fires,” where the spark from one cap would set off others in the roll. Due to those and other problems, the Maynard primer was abandoned by the U.S. Army in favor of the percussion cap. Model 1855s saw Civil War service using common percussion caps. —D.B.S.

Tin of Tapes

Soldiers were issued tin tubes that held nine Maynard priming tapes.

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ARMAMENT

Deadly Dentist

The Humpback of Richmond

Maynard, who lived from 1813 to 1891, continued to tinker with military inventions throughout his life, and held 23 patents related to weaponry, including the Maynard carbine.

When Virginia troops captured Harpers Ferry in April 1861, they sent machinery and dies from the U.S. armory to Richmond for weapons production. The Rebels used the Model 1855 lockplate dies that were made to accommodate tape primers, and so the reliable Richmond rifle musket had a distinctive “hump” but no tape priming system.

For Handguns, too

The Maynard system was also used in civilian firearms and pistols, like this small “vest revolver.” Abolitionist John Brown bought 2,000 .31-caliber Massachusetts Arms revolvers that used the Maynard system to arm his “Free Soil” followers fighting against slavery in the undeclared civil war that ravaged Kansas after the passage of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act.

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS; A&S AUCTION

Bang! Bang! The Maynard tape priming system lives on in children’s cap guns.

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Gina Elise’s

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COLLECTED

WISDOM 

REVIEWED BY DANA B. SHOAF

T

66

The Enduring Civil War: Reflections on the Great American Crisis Gary W. Gallagher Louisiana State University Press, 2020, $34.95

“Things I’ve been thinking about the Civil War, but was afraid to say.” Namely, what exactly did John Reynolds and John Sedgwick do to deserve their reputations, and the essay “The War was Won in the East,” which is something I have believed for a long time.

You’ll soon find your favorite entries in this handsome book. In some ways, the essays represent a stream of consciousness from one of America’s top Civil War scholars.

What does he think about Shelby Foote? How did Gideon Welles influence policy? Did Vicksburg’s fall really matter?

What is the best Civil War movie and why? (Hint, “Give ’em hell, 54th!”)

I love books like this. You can sit down and spend hours reading the various entries, or simply snap it open, pick an essay, read it, and come back for more later. Either way, you’ll be satisfied and, even if you don’t agree with Gallagher’s conclusions, given something meaty to think about.

Christmas isn’t far away. You might want to put The Enduring Civil War into your own stocking.

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NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

his is not an impartial review. The majority of the essays in Gary Gallagher’s The Enduring Civil War: Reflections on the Great American Crisis first appeared as columns that he regularly writes for this magazine, and that he began at my behest in 2009. If I liked them when they ran in the magazine, how could I not like them now? So, I’m violating book review etiquette to praise this volume. I’ll sleep with a clean conscience.

Gallagher has spent his career in academia, first at Penn State University and then at the University of Virginia, from where he recently retired. He is the author or editor of more than 40 books and countless articles, and throughout his career he has been committed to reaching out to a popular audience and making Civil War history accessible. His university classes were legendary for filling up, he leads battlefield tours, and he advocates for battlefield preservation.

He also writes clear, thought-provoking, jargon-free history, such as you will find in this book. That is not as easy as it sounds, and one of the benefits to The Enduring Civil War is that both grizzled Civil War bibliophiles and newcomers to the study of the conflict will find the book digestible and stimulating.

Gallagher’s broad approach to studying the conflict has allowed him to cross paths with myriad topics, and that is reflected in this work. The Enduring Civil War consists of 73 essays, divided into six parts that show the breadth of his scholarship: Framing the War; Generals and Battles; Controversies; Historians and Books; Testimony from Participants; and Places and Public Culture.

Many of the essays are only 1,000 to 1,500 words in length. Don’t be misled by the word count. Gallagher is a succinct writer, and there is a great deal to digest in this volume. I can’t list each and every topic, but I have my favorites, two of which could fall into a category labeled,

DIFFERENT MEANS TO AN END

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

REVIEWED BY LOUIS P. MASUR

H.W. BRANDS is one of the finest and most prolific historians writing today. Among his many books are works on Benjamin Franklin and Aaron Burr, Andrew Jackson and Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Until now, however, he has not written about Abraham Lincoln.

He has chosen to do so with a revealing dual biography, pairing Lincoln with John Brown in a work that illuminates their conflicting approaches to ending slavery.

Brands’ question that animates this work is “how does a good man challenge a great evil?” One abolitionist described Brown as “lean, strong, and sinewy” (adjectives that could apply to Lincoln as well), a person who made a strong impression wherever he went. Residing in the late 1840s in Springfield, Mass. (about 1,000 miles from Springfield, Ill.), Brown worshipped at a prominent black church and attended abolitionist lectures. Frederick Douglass later recalled spending an evening with Brown and coming away “tinged by the color of this man’s strong impressions.”

The Zealot and the To combat the sin of slavery, Brown Emancipator: John turned to violence and insurrection. Brown, Abraham Lincoln and the Struggle for Brands carries readers through the familAmerican Freedom iar terrain of Bleeding Kansas, the PotBy H.W. Brands tawatomie Massacre, and the assault on Doubleday, 2020, $30 Harpers Ferry. That final fatal attempt to initiate a slave insurrection horrified

Southerners who were equally outraged by Northern support for the attack.

Lincoln was careful to disassociate himself from Brown’s actions, insisting that “John Brown was no Republican.” Like Brown, Lincoln, hated slavery, but he confessed he did not know how to abolish the institution. Opposing its expansion was one thing; bringing it to an end where it existed quite another.

Lincoln’s legalistic, gradualist approach could go only so far. When he declared “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” opponents denounced him for predicting bloodshed, but he was not condoning violence.

Much as Lincoln dreaded the war degenerating into a “violent, remorseless revolutionary struggle,” it became one. By the end, he sounded like John Brown. Although the Second Inaugural struck New Testament notes of forgiveness, it was Old Testament sentiments of just retribution that contributed bite: “Every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.”

Brands concludes, “Brown aimed at slavery and destroyed the Union; Lincoln defended the Union and destroyed slavery.” Dual biographies can offer new ways of thinking about familiar topics. In pairing Brown and Lincoln, Brands invites us to rethink the paths that led to slavery’s ultimate extinction.

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What Are You



Reading?

ANTIETAM ON TWO WHEELS fter years of navigating Civil War battlefields by car, bus, and foot, I’m convinced there is no better way to explore them than by bicycle. Not only does it provide a way to cover vast landscapes with more ease than by foot, but the easy on/off access actually prompts you to explore more obscure monuments, buildings, and historic nooks and crannies that might otherwise be deemed too burdensome to access by vehicle.

Author Sue Thibodeau must surely agree. The avid cyclist and Civil War enthusiast has followed up her 2019 guide to cycling around Gettysburg National Military Park with this year’s Bicycling Antietam National Battlefield: The Civil War Cyclist’s Travel Guide. The handbook provides more than 40 maps, 100 photos, GPS coordinates, and touring tips for traversing the battlefield near Sharpsburg, Md., by bike. Excitingly, it includes optional excursions from the nearby C&O Canal Towpath trail, a historic and enchanting route to ride.

Thibodeau has done her research and her route maps are meticulously detailed to provide for full battlefield tours or segmented, including turn-by-turn directions and helpful insights about which routes prove more challenging due to terrain, traffic, or elevation. The book offers a broad battle overview, some battle maps to help interpret park signage, and fun facts, such as a list of presidents who have visited Antietam.

Its wealth of information means you should study the book and routes before hitting the road but stick it in your bike Bicycling Antietam: basket or daypack as a quick reference for The Civil War information about monuments and hisCyclist’s Travel Guide toric sites while you pedal. The addition of

By Sue Thibodeau an index in this guide makes it all the more Civil War Cycling, invaluable out in the field. Digital PDF 2020, $32 companion maps for your mobile device can be purchased separately online, as well.

A

68

TOM LEUPOLD AVID BATTLEFIELD TRAMPER AND LIVING HISTORIAN

People familiar with the Battle of Antietam know that David Miller’s cornfield was a fiercely contested prize for both sides, but many fail to understand the reason why.

David Welker’s The Cornfield: Antietam’s Bloody Turning Point, The Cornfield: rises above the battle’s Antietam’s confusion to explain Bloody Turning why General George Point McClellan was so

By David Welker fixated on conquering Casemate the Cornfield, even Publisher, 2020, if that success was $34.95 at the expense of other sectors of the battlefield. While McClellan’s failures in the battle are widely known, Welker also conveys how his problems were exacerbated by poor performance from lower-ranking generals —including Joe Hooker and Edwin Sumner—who often escape criticism. I also respect this book, for it is one of the few publications that acknowledge the fighting in and around the Cornfield was not simply over by the “morning phase.”

Instead, over the entire day, both sides were busy planning further assaults to lay final claim to the “Bloody Cornfield.”

C&O CANAL TRUST

REVIEWED BY MELISSA A. WINN

CIVIL WAR TIMES DECEMBER 2020

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REVOLUTIONARY GENERAL

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RE V IE WE D BY C O L IN WO O DWA RD ugust Willich’s life was the stuff of Hollywood movies.

In David T. Dixon’s enlightening book, Radical Warrior: August Willich’s Journey From German Revolutionary to Union General, the first major biography of the general, the author examines Willich’s role in the failed 1848 revolution in Germany, his sparring with Karl Marx in London, serving in the Union Army and enduring months in hellish Libby Prison, and surviving most of the major battles in the West.

Johann August Ernst von Willich was born into an aristocratic family in 1810 in Braunsberg, eastern Prussia. Willich’s father died when he was 3, and he grew up in the household of theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher.

Prussia was, as French Revolutionary Count Mirabeau called it, “an army in search of country.” True to Mirabeau’s observation, Willich attended military schools before becoming a Prussian artilleryman. Despite his noble credentials, Willich was enthralled by republican and communist ideas.

Politically, it is rare to be to the left of Karl Marx, but such was the case with Willich.

Dixon’s biography is not one that contains a brief overview of his subject’s early years before diving into the Civil War. Willich spent most of his life in Europe before he fled Germany after leading troops in the ill-fated Baden uprising of 1848-1849 and settled in the United States. Anyone deluded by the idea that 19th-century people lived in a “simpler time” should read the early chapters of Dixon’s book. Even those with a solid background in 19th-century German history will have difficulty navigating the complexities of 1840s Europe. The fault is not Dixon’s: he skillfully takes the reader through the confusing and unstable times.

C&O CANAL TRUST

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Radical Warrior: August Willich’s Journey From German Revolutionary to Union General

By David T. Dixon University of Tennessee Press, 2020, $45

Willich was lucky to survive execution for supporting the rebels against the German Confederation.

And yet he was no safer in London, which was home to radical expatriots who attacked one another as much as they did the status quo.

By the time Willich landed in the United States in the late 1850s, his political beliefs had mellowed but he remained a radical who sided with the abolition. The Union was lucky to have him as he emerged as one of the best commanders in the Western Theater. By the end of 1861, he was colonel of the 32nd Indiana. Willich excelled in combat and he was promoted to brigadier general after Shiloh and took part in the Perryville Campaign in Kentucky. At the Battle of Murfreesboro, Willich was captured and sent to Libby Prison. In May 1863, he was exchanged.

Willich was a well-liked, amiable, and paternalistic leader. His Prussian sense for discipline and ingenuity paid off in combat. In November 1863, his men charged up Missionary Ridge. Unfortunately for him and the Union, in May 1864, a bullet put the general out of action for the rest of the war. After the war, Willich unsuccessfully dabbled again in politics before dying in 1878 of an apparent heart attack.

Roughly half of his biography examines Willich’s life before the Civil War. This might test the patience of buffs eager to read about battles in Tennessee and beyond. And while Dixon provides solid analysis of Willich’s politics and military skill, I would have liked more discussion of—or perhaps speculation about—his personal life. On the whole, however, Dixon has provided a rich, compelling, and insightful look at a most extraordinary figure.

WILLICH developed an “Advance Firing” tactic, whereby his troops were arranged in four lines. After the front rank fired, the next rank moved up to fire while the others loaded, and so on. This allowed for near-constant gunfire as his troops advanced, and the technique was used with particular success at the Battle of Liberty Gap during the Tullahoma Campaign.

DECEMBER 2020 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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AFTER THE FIGHTING REVIEWED BY ETHAN S. RAFUSE

here can be no doubt that veterans of the Civil War played a major role in shaping American life after 1865. Thus, it is not surprising that there is a growing body of literature on their experiences and how they shaped and were shaped by the larger social, political, and cultural contexts of the postwar period. The explosion of interest in Civil War veterans in recent years, and the directions it has taken, can be attributed to a number of factors. One is the ascendance of social and cultural history in the modern historical profession, with its calls for less attention to the William McKinleys and Oliver Wendall Holmes Jrs. of the world and, in line with its call for hisThe War Went On: tory from the “bottom up,” more attenReconsidering the Lives tion to those who led less celebrated, but of Civil War Veterans nevertheless compelling and interesting Edited by Brian Matthew lives. Another is how veterans of this Jordan and Evan C. Rothera country’s military experiences in VietLSU Press, 2020, $55 nam and the Middle East have shaped recent American life and culture. Then, of course, there is the emergence of “memory” as a major subfield, with David Blight’s 2001 Race and Reunion, and its arguments about reconciliation and race after the war serving as the catalyst for reexamination of the postwar years.

Anyone looking to gain a sense of just how rich the state of scholarship on Civil War veterans has become, or how exciting future scholarship on the subject will be, are well-served by The War Went On. Brian Matthew Jordan and Evan C. Rothera have assembled a team of scholars whose 15 essays cover their various topics in superb fashion. It is impossible in this limited space to do full justice to the work of all the contributors, but to give a sense of the range of topics addressed, this reviewer will note finding of particular interest Zachery Fry’s study of Army of the Potomac veterans and postwar politics, Kurt Hackemer’s on communities veterans established on the frontier, Jonathan Neu’s on the establishment of Grand Army memorial halls, Adam Domby’s on the malleability of loyalties in the wartime and postwar South, and Sarah HandleyCousins’ on medical photography and its uses by disabled veterans. Other readers will surely come away with a different list. All readers will finish the book with a better appreciation of the experiences of Civil War veterans and looking forward to what its contributors have to say in the future about the subject.

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STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION (required by Act of August 12, 1970: Section 3685, Title 39, United States Code). 1. Civil War Times 2. (ISSN: 1546-9980) 3. Filing date: 10/1/20.

4. Issue frequency: Bi Monthly. 5. Number of issues published annually: 6. 6. The annual subscription price is $39.95. 7. Complete mailing address of known office of publication: HistoryNet, 1919 Gallows Rd. Suite 400, Vienna, VA 22182. Contact person: Kolin Rankin. 8. Complete mailing address of headquarters or general business office of publisher: HistoryNet, 1919 Gallows Rd. Suite 400, Vienna, VA 22182.

9. Full names and complete mailing addresses of publisher, editor, and managing editor. Publisher, Michael A. Reinstein, HistoryNet, 1919 Gallows Rd. Suite 400, Vienna, VA 22182, Editor, Dana B Shoaf, HistoryNet, 1919 Gallows Rd. Suite 400, Vienna, VA 22182 , Editor in Chief, Alex Neill , HistoryNet, 1919 Gallows Rd. Suite 400, Vienna, VA 22182. 10. Owner: HistoryNet; 1919 Gallows Rd. Suite 400, Vienna, VA 22182. 11. Known bondholders, mortgages, and other security holders owning or holding 1 percent of more of total amount of bonds, mortgages or other securities: None. 12. Tax status: Has Not Changed During Preceding 12 Months. 13. Publisher title: Civil War Times. 14. Issue date for circulation data below: August 2020.

15. The extent and nature of circulation: A. Total number of copies printed (Net press run). Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 40,262. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 22,558. B. Paid circulation. 1. Mailed outside-county paid subscriptions. Average number of copies each issue during the preceding 12 months: 21,337. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 21,715. 2. Mailed in-county paid subscriptions. Average number of copies each issue during the preceding 12 months: 0. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0. 3. Sales through dealers and carriers, street vendors and counter sales. Average number of copies each issue during the preceding 12 months: 4,366. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0. 4. Paid distribution through other classes mailed through the USPS. Average number of copies each issue during the preceding 12 months: 0. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0.

C. Total paid distribution. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 25,703. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date; 21,715. D. Free or nominal rate distribution (by mail and outside mail). 1. Free or nominal Outside-County.

Average number of copies each issue during the preceding 12 months: 0. Number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0.

2. Free or nominal rate in-county copies. Average number of copies each issue during the preceding 12 months: 0. Number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0. 3. Free or nominal rate copies mailed at other Classes through the USPS. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 0. Number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0. 4. Free or nominal rate distribution outside the mail. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 579. Number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 437. E. Total free or nominal rate distribution. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 579. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 437. F. Total free distribution (sum of 15c and 15e). Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 26,282. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 22,152. G. Copies not Distributed. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 13,980. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 406. H. Total (sum of 15f and 15g). Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 40,262. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing: 22,558. I. Percent paid.

Average percent of copies paid for the preceding 12 months: 97.8% Actual percent of copies paid for the preceding 12 months: 98.0% 16. Electronic Copy Circulation: A. Paid Electronic Copies. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 0. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0. B. Total Paid Print Copies (Line 15c) + Paid Electronic Copies (Line 16a).

Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 25,703. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 21,715. C. Total Print Distribution (Line 15f) + Paid Electronic Copies (Line 16a). Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 26,282. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 22,152. D. Percent Paid (Both Print & Electronic Copies) (16b divided by 16c x 100). Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 97.8%. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 98.0%.

I certify that 50% of all distributed copies (electronic and print) are paid above nominal price: Yes. Report circulation on PS Form 3526-X worksheet 17. Publication of statement of ownership will be printed in the December 2020 issue of the publication. 18. Signature and title of editor, publisher, business manager, or owner: Shawn G. Byers, VP, Audience Development & Circulation . I certify that all information furnished on this form is true and complete. I understand that anyone who furnishes false or misleading information on this form or who omits material or information requested on the form may be subject to criminal sanction and civil actions.

CIVIL WAR TIMES DECEMBER 2020

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