Civil War Times August 2021

DID Mc CLELLAN HAVE A MESSIANIC COMPLEX H DIGGING CULP’S HILL H

62nd Pennsylvania Private William Cain survived the brutal Wheatfield fight on July 2, 1863.

GETTYSBURG

WHEATFIELD

MAYHEM THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE 62 ND PENNSYLVANIA’S DESPERATE BATTLE TO SAVE ITS FLAG

August 2021 HISTORYNET.com

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CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2021

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“B”-FORE THE MAYHEM A determined soldier of the 62nd Pennsylvania, with his company letter indicated on the underside of his forage cap’s brim.

ON THE COVER: William Cain’s regiment was one of several stalwart units recruited from western Pennsylvania.

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CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2021

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Features

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Fight for the Colors

By Scott Fink

Shattered, shot up, and surrounded in Gettysburg’s Wheatfield, the 62nd Pennsylvania Infantry put up a desperate fight to save its flags.

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Man in the Shadows

By Allen J. Ottens

General John Rawlins remains obscure, even though the man he helped save, Ulysses S. Grant, is a household name.

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‘Expect No Help’

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By Catherine M. Wright

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In God We Trust

After years of keeping its secret, a sealed Confederate message in a bottle was opened to reveal an encrypted document.

By Steven R. Stotelmyer

Why does George McClellan get criticized for his religious beliefs when other generals—“Stonewall” we’re looking at you—are praised for the same?

Departments 6 8 14 16 18 22 25 60 64 72

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Return Fire Dead Letters

Miscellany Sinking Fort Wool Details The Place Was Wrecked Insight A Look at John Pope

Rambling Culp’s Hill’s Hidden Treasures Interview Losing Robert E. Lee

Editorial Brigade Nicknames

Armament Iron “Death Missiles” Reviews Fitz John Porter’s Fall Sold ! Whiskey to Go

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: RONN PALM COLLECTION; MELISSA A. WINN COLLECTION; THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM; “GENERAL AND HIS CHAPLAIN” BY DALE GALLON, WWW.GALLON.COM; COVER: USAHEC; ISTOCK/PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: BRIAN WALKER

AUGUST 2021 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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

C E L E B R A T I N G 60 Y E A R S

AUGUST 2 021

An Iron Brigade soldier fights for his flag at Gettysburg.

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VOL. 60, NO. 4

EDITORIAL DANA B. SHOAF EDITOR CHRIS K. HOWLAND SENIOR EDITOR SARAH RICHARDSON SENIOR EDITOR

12 FORGOTTEN HEROES OF GETTYSBURG For every Joshua Chamberlain there was a common soldier whose bravery was overlooked. https://bit.ly/GettysburgHeroes

GALENA GENERALS

A populous Illinois river town provided nine of the war’s most notable figures. http://bit.ly/GalenaGenerals

UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER

Did the fall of Vicksburg really matter? http://bit.ly/FallofVicksburg

Abolitionist/ orator Frederick Douglass

STEPHEN KAMIFUJI CREATIVE DIRECTOR BRIAN WALKER GROUP ART DIRECTOR MELISSA A. WINN DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY AUSTIN STAHL ART DIRECTOR SHENANDOAH SANCHEZ PHOTOGRAPHER AT LARGE

Who was the most influential civilian, not an elected official, during the war?

ADVISORY BOARD

New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley

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, Phil Spaugy, Susannah J. Ural Political North Carolina cartoonist Standard editor CORPORATE Thomas Nast W.W. Holden ROB WILKINS DIRECTOR OF PARTNERSHIP MARKETING TOM GRIFFITHS CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT GRAYDON SHEINBERG CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT SHAWN BYERS VP AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT JAMIE ELLIOTT PRODUCTION DIRECTOR

ADVERTISING MORTON GREENBERG SVP Advertising Sales mgreenberg@mco.com RICK GOWER Regional Sales Manager rick@rickgower.com TERRY JENKINS Regional Sales Manager tjenkins@historynet.com

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LET’S CONNECT Like Civil War Times Magazine on Facebook FOLLOW US @CivilWarTimes GO DIGITAL Civil War Times is available on Zinio, Kindle, and Nook A Complete Civil War Times index from 1958 to present is available at historymagazinearticles.com

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CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2021

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Groundbreaking New Biographies 978-0-253-05730-3

"One of the finest and most important Civil War biographies to appear in recent decades."

–PETER COZZENS, author of

Tecumseh and the Prophet: The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation

978-0-253-05394-7

“Here is the fascinating story, not told in more than a century, of a son of perhaps the nation’s most fascinating founder.”

–JAMES M. CORNELIUS, former curator of the Lincoln Presidential Library

AVAILABLE WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD iupress.org

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RETURN FIRE

Kudos on the article by Melissa A. Winn about the Dead Letter Office.

It completely resonated with me the poignant images of the Civil War soldiers frozen in time. How completely heartbreaking, some stories with no endings, faces with no purpose, no future, no past. We are only left with wondering. A beautiful representation.

Lisa Samia Author, The Nameless and the Faceless of the Civil War Artist in Residence, Gettysburg National Military Park

ON KEN BURNS I find Gary Gallagher’s “Insight” article on Ken Burns’ PBS Civil War series ( June 2021) disingenuous, egotistical, and haughty. He was 40 years old, I was 39, when it first aired. How many people at that point except history buffs, historians, and educators really knew anything about the war?

I had only a superficial knowledge of the Civil War. While he points to academic historians and scholars who find myriad shortcomings in Burns’ series, every one of these “shortcomings” could be argued to no end.

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The Ken Burns series was tremendous! It had to be very broad in nature.

It was the boilerplate for how documentaries were forever written. The greatest thing about the series is the incredible interest it instigated for many people to read and investigate the Civil War. It did for me.

I spent 25 years in the Army and to this day my hundreds of Civil War and Indian War books continue to fascinate me.

Judith B, Saffron MSG, USA (Ret) Bass Harbor, Maine

I, as usual, enjoyed reading the June 2021 issue from cover to cover. This time, however, I feel obligated to comment on the “Insight” story by Gary Gallagher. I can’t remember the last time I have read so many historians and academics casting dispersions on Ken Burns’ PBS series The Civil War. Ken Burns brought America’s tragic war into the homes of millions of us and many, for the first time, saw the extent of the event and the price we paid to rid the country of the horrors of slavery.

Thank you Ken Burns. Critics, get over it. America loved it.

Bob Ettl Hampton Bays, N.Y. Gary Gallagher responds: With the luxury of more space, I would have discussed the many things I like about Ken Burns’ series at much greater length. His documentary marked a high point for Civil War studies in the past 30 years precisely because it introduced so many people to the subject—many of whom, as the letters make clear, have continued to read about the war.

My column focused on Burns’ military coverage—which many academic historians criticize as being too detailed. I disagree strongly with that view and believe Burns achieved excellent balance between military and nonmilitary aspects of the war.

For viewers who came to the series with little knowledge of the subject, the fact that Burns employed historians as talking heads conveyed a sense of authority. My disappointment stemmed from knowing that Burns’ gripping treatment offered a very conventional, and in some ways distorted, portrait of the war’s military leaders and action.

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TOP: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2); THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM

Interesting article about dead letters and photos. I had 14 relatives including four great-greatgrandfathers who served the Union. I have a photo for two of them, but in old age. I have service records for 13. One was an 18-year-old nephew of my greatgreat-grandfather, George Blakesley. In his file was a blunt letter from his mother telling him to come home as his father was dying and there was no one to take care of the estate. It was sent from Potter, Yates Co., N.Y., on December 16, 1864. Her son wrote a letter from his hospital in Alexandria, Va, to the adjutant general in Washington, D.C., December 24, 1864, asking for a leave based on his mother’s letter. The letter dates indicate it took seven days or less to get from New York to Virginia. Faster than today’s mail! Keep up the good work.

Richard Blakesley Bloomfield, N.Y.

MELISSA A. WINN COLLECTION

DEAD LETTERS

A very insightful Gary Gallagher article on the Ken Burns documentary! It would be nice to hear Burns’ comments on Gallagher’s article.

Ernie Shepherd Dublin, Ohio

CONFEDERATE FLAGS

In the April 2021 issue, two Confederate flags receive mention. The first was the flag of the 4th Virginia Infantry (seen below), depicted in Keith Bohannon’s fine “War in Their Words” article on the capture of the 4th Virginia at Culp’s Hill (Page 62). The flag’s caption seems to indicate that this was the flag taken at Culp’s Hill, but that is incorrect. The flag shown was actually the replacement battle flag for the regiment issued to replace the flag lost at Culp’s Hill, as listed on September 30, 1863, on a Special Requisition by Major William B. Terry commanding the regiment.

The second flag was an interesting secession era banner shown in “Sold!”

(Page 72). These flags were dubbed “exclusionary flags” by the late flag historian Howard Madaus and were created in late 1860 and early 1861 as symbols of defiance that show a love for the Stars and Stripes but only having stars for the Southern states, “excluding” those of the Northern states. A number of these, with varying numbers of stars, survive today. Some were indeed, as the caption suggests, considered for the First National flag but were mostly rejected due to the strong similarity to the U.S. flag.

Greg Biggs Clarksville, Tenn.

TOP: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2); THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM

MELISSA A. WINN COLLECTION

Editor’s note: Greg Biggs is a wellknown expert on the many variations of Confederate flags, and I appreciate his insight on these banners.

ONLINE POLL

23.6 0 0

76.4 0 0

The Results Are In! Our recent Facebook poll asked which battlefield had the worst terrain, steep Lookout Mountain, Tenn., or the tangled second growth of Virginia’s Wilderness?

An overwhelming majority of respondents agreed that the Wilderness jungle would be a worse place to do battle than craggy Lookout Mountain.

Our next poll goes online July 1.

VETS MOVE WEST

Thanks for the great article on the veterans’ colonies in the April issue. I live close to Colony, Kan. Also, the October 1864 Mine Creek Battlefield is here in Linn County. It is burned frequently as it is composed of tallgrass prairie in large part. Thanks for the great work.

Lloyd L. Wilson III Centerville, Kan.

MONUMENTAL BOOK Ben Cleary’s “Review of a Review,” ( June “Return Fire”) in which he takes issue with my April 2021 review of Monumental Harm: Reckoning With Jim Crow Era Confederate Monuments by Roger C. Hartley, affirms P.T. Barnum’s assertion that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Any discussion about what to do with Jim Crow-era Confederate monuments will further public debate about their ultimate disposition.

For the record, the ongoing work of removing monuments across the South shows that more than pigeons and professors are at work and there is no

more important issue on the national agenda than our long-delayed confrontation of racism. Also, neither this reviewer nor Professor Hartley advocate vandalism, only removal from public spaces based on communitybased decisions. Mr. Cleary’s belief that honor and heritage supports keeping Confederate statuary is a bedrock principle of discredited Lost Cause mythology. These memorials were always about power and who holds it over whom. I recommend to Mr. Cleary an article in the October 2017 Civil War Times discussing this very subject.

Gordon Berg Gaithersburg, Md.

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AUGUST 2021 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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MISCELLANY RIP RAP HABITAT The federal government dumped tons of stone to create the island on which Fort Wool was built. Stability issues have plagued the artificial island from the beginning. This image shows the fort before its conversion to a bird sanctuary.

FORT WOOL :

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lished in 1818 as “Rip Rap Shoals Fort Calhoun,” an artificial island not far from Fort Monroe, it was built to help defend the Chesapeake Bay following the War of 1812. Enslaved workers constructed the fort, which became a major stop for refugees fleeing to Fort Monroe. During the Civil War, the island was renamed Fort Wool for Union Maj. Gen. John Wool and defended access to the James River. The site also served as a military installation in World Wars I and II. In the 1830s, Robert E. Lee, then an Army engineer, was tasked with stabilizing the fort. Efforts continued over the years until halted by the outbreak of the Civil War. It’s been gradually sinking ever since.

CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2021

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DALE NIESEN COLLECTION; COURTESY OF MARNIE WEEKS (2)

fter a critical Virginia seabird habitat was paved over during the recent expansion of the Hampton Roads-Norfolk bridge, its inhabitants migrated to the historic island of Fort Wool for temporary shelter. Working with environmental conservationists, the State of Virginia, which now controls the site, has completed a $1.7 million project to turn the grounds into a nesting habitat for the seabirds. Many historic structures have been sealed and markers removed. Preservationists, however, stoutly oppose the conversion and are keen to stabilize a steel tower dating from WWII, one of only two in the United States still standing. Estab-

WESTEND51 GMBH/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; WILL DANIEL/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

FOR THE BIRDS

WAR F RA ME HAIR NEATLY COMBED, a youthful Confederate poses wearing a tightly fitted frock coat. The photographer has lightly tinted his cheeks to help bring life to the image, which was found in Memphis, Tenn., many years ago. The image is reversed due to the technology of the time, and he holds a large, thermoplastic image case in his left hand, which is on your left. Perhaps he had a second image taken that day, or the case contained a photo of a loved one, and he wanted to show he was taking it to war with him.

ALOHA STATE SERVICE RECOGNIZED

DALE NIESEN COLLECTION; COURTESY OF MARNIE WEEKS (2)

WESTEND51 GMBH/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; WILL DANIEL/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

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ver the past decade cemetery preservationist Nanette Napoleon in Kailua, Oahu, has hunted down details about Hawaiians who served in the Civil War and are buried or commemorated in Hawaii. In an April 2021 conversation recorded for Hawaii public radio, Napoleon described the challenges. Hawaii was then a sovereign nation, and men who enlisted were often given new names that were simpler than their given names. However, their military records would show their home was the Sandwich Islands, as Hawaii was then called. Most of the men she has found enlisted in the USCT, with traits noted as dark hair, dark eyes, and dark complexion. The strong influence of American missionaries in Hawaii would have influenced recruits to enlist in the Union Army. One of the few Confederate sympathizers she has found hailed from England. Arthur Brown (above) arrived in Hawaii as a child, loved the sea, and became a contract blockade runner for the Confederacy. He died of yellow fever in Bermuda in 1864. Another was Thomas Clark who fought for the Confederacy and served in a naval regiment, but no further details remain about his service.

AT REST IN PARADISE Blockade runner Arthur Brown is buried in O’ahu Cemetery in Honolulu. Hawaii, known as the Sandwich Islands in the 1860s, has a surprising Civil War history.

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MISCELLANY

of the opulent 1890s State House building. The Reconstruction Trail, however, highlights sites related to the brief period, 1865-1876, when Blacks experienced what approached political equality with Whites until the withdrawal of Federal troops posted across the South allowed the reemergence of white supremacist ideology.

The State House is noted on the trail for hosting a majority-black legislature voted into office four terms in a row from 1868-1874. Other sites include, among others, four churches, where, after the war, Blacks in South Carolina were for the first time permitted to establish their own places of worship and the Woodrow Wilson House, where the 28th U.S. president lived as a boy and which is now the Museum of Reconstruction.

AUGUST 9 & OCTOBER 4

FIRST MONDAYS! 10

Don’t forget to watch Editor Dana B. Shoaf and Director of Photography Melissa Winn explore off-the-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.

(There will be no broadcast in September due to the Labor Day holiday.)

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PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE’S COLUMBIA SITES Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Woodrow Wilson’s Trail announced 16 additions in April, bringing boyhood home (left) the total of sites to 682 listings in 39 states, now is also home Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. to the Museum of One new addition features a site in Lowell, Reconstruction.

Mass., where Nathaniel Booth, who had escaped Fresh interpretation from slavery, operated a barber shop that douin South Carolina’s bled as a stop on the Underground Railroad. capitol discusses Black Meanwhile, in the heart of secession, South legislative history.

Carolina’s capital city, Columbia, has created its first history-focused tourism trail, including eight stops profiling the Reconstruction Era in the city, and celebrating 10 Black trailblazers. The designations are poignant. Columbia is where 169 delegates from the state’s planter class passed the Ordinance of Secession on December 20, 1860, and a plaque inscribed with its text overlooks the lobby

DANITA DELMONT/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; IAN G. DAGNALL/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Take A Walk Through History

REGISTER

PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

DANITA DELMONT/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; IAN G. DAGNALL/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

History Translated Visitors to the Ox Hill Battlefield in Chantilly, Va., will find the nation’s first bilingual Civil War Trails sign, bearing text in Spanish and Korean. The added translations will help bring the project and Civil War history to a new, broader audience, according to Drew Gruber, executive director of Civil War Trails. “The stories and cast of the Civil War were as varied and diverse as our communities are today. By presenting this fuller, more complete history of the Civil War we hope to inspire everyone to find their own stories in this complex national narrative.” Immigrants make up about 30 percent of Fairfax County residents, and in the neighborhood around Ox Hill Battlefield, about 29 percent speak a language other than English in the home. Linguistic diversity was a feature of the Union Army, as well, which created translations of military manuals for soldiers who could not read or speak English. All Civil War Trails signs have a sponsor who maintains the sign and promotes tourism to the site. The sponsor for the Ox Hill Battlefield sign is the Old Baldy Civil War Round Table in New Jersey.

Rippavilla Opens for Tours Rippavilla, a pre-Civil War home in Spring Hill 13 miles south of Franklin, Tenn., has a new manager—The Battle of Franklin Trust—and new tour offerings. Completed in 1855, the home survived the Battle of Spring Hill on November 29, 1864, where Confederate troops led by Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood and Federal forces led by Maj. Gen. John Scofield engaged before advancing to battle in Franklin. Aficionados can opt for a four-hour battlefield tour focusing on the Tennessee Campaign and the battlefields of Spring Hill and Franklin. Tickets are by reservation only: $100 for a two-

The bilingual Ox Hill wayside. person minimum. As for touring Rippavilla, the grounds include the mansion, slave quarters, cemeteries for the enslaved and free, and a postwar school run by the Freedmen’s Bureau. Options include a battlefield tour, a house tour, a tour focusing on the enslaved workers, and a behind-the-scenes tour. Tickets must be purchased online 72 hours in advance at https://boft.org/rippavilla.

Tubman Family Home Unearthed An announcement in April from the Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration highlighted the discovery of the home site belonging to Ben Ross, father of Harriet Tubman, on land in Peter’s Neck in Dorchester County, Md. Archaeologists had been combing the area for clues to the 10-acre site, which Ross received title to after his owner, who died in 1836, willed him the land and his freedom. Working as a timberman, Ross was skilled in navigating the forests and waterways. His daughter Harriet Tubman, born Araminta Ross in 1822, would have spent time with him, absorbing the skills that later allowed her the confidence to travel the swampy land, returning again and again to help some 70 kin escape to freedom. The site has no trace of a home, but period artifacts unearthed point to its occupation. Peter’s Neck is a 2,500-acre parcel bought for $6 million by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2020 to expand the acreage of Blackwater Wildlife Refuge. The Ben Ross site will be added to the collection of more than 30 historic sites that make up the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway.

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MISCELLANY

WORTH

A

MOVE

REAL ESTATE WITH CIVIL WAR CONNECTIONS

CLOSE UP!

ANSWER TO LAST ISSUE’S

CLOSE UP !

QUIZ

WHERE WOULD

you find this metal guard? The first person who sends in the correct answer wins a Civil War Times water bottle.

Send your answer to dshoaf@historynet.com, subject heading “Seen on Battlefields.”

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CONGRATULATIONS to Janel Green of Marysville,

Ohio, who correctly identified an inspector’s stamp on a musket stock. Specifically, that stamp is the initials of Erskine S. Allin, who worked at the Springfield, Mass., armory before, during, and after the Civil War.

REAL ESTATE TEAMS LLC; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN; PHOTO BY PHIL SPAUGY/PHIL SPAUGY COLLECTION

Donnelly House, Williamsport, Md.

On July 14, 1863, the Battle of Falling Waters, Md., swirled around this home as Maj. Gen. Henry Heth’s Army of Northern Virginia rear guard, exhausted from a grueling 10-day retreat from Gettysburg, fought Maj. Gen. Judson Kilpatrick’s division. Heth’s men were trying to let the final elements of the army escape across the nearby Potomac River, about two miles to the south.

Captain James H. Kidd of the 6th Michigan Cavalry remembered their initial charge “surprised and astonished the enemy.” Heth rallied however, and his men hung on long enough during the last battle of the Gettysburg Campaign to allow the artillery and wagons to get across. Furious Federal cavalry attacks, however, captured 700 Confederates and mortally wounded Confederate Brig. Gen. James Pettigrew in the yard of this home.

Daniel Donnelly, an attorney and investor in the nearby C&O Canal, built the 1832 Washington County, Md., home, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. Artist Edwin Forbes featured the Donnelly House in one of his sketches of the Battle of Falling Waters (left), displayed at the Gettysburg National Battlefield Visitor Center.

For more information, go to: circaoldhouses.com/ property/the-donnelly-house

CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2021

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THE SCENE ON AUGUST 27, 1862, at Manassas Junction was surreal. “Imagine about 6,000 men

hungry and almost naked, let loose on some million dollars worth of biscuit, cheese, ham, bacon, messpork, coffee, sugar, tea, fruit, brandy, wine, whiskey, oysters, coats, pants, shirts, caps, boots, shoes, socks, blankets, tents etc.,” recalled 14th Louisiana Chaplain James B. Sheeran. The Bacchanalian affair occurred when “Stonewall” Jackson’s troops captured the U.S. supply base and railroad junction during the Second Manassas Campaign. This image shows some of the chaos Confederates left behind. Just a few days later, Jackson’s temporarily satiated men were hunkered down in an unfinished railroad cut, desperately fighting off Federal assaults during the Confederate victory at the Second Battle of Manassas. For many of those Rebel soldiers the Manassas Junction party was their last soiree. —D.B.S.

1 2

3 14

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1. Cars sit on a section of Orange & Alexandria Railroad track. A witness to the Confederate free-for-all on August 27 remembered seeing men “enter a car with their old Confed. greys and in a few minutes come out dressed in Yankee uniforms, some as cavalry, some as infantry, some as artillerists; others dressed in the splendid uniform of Federal officers.”

2. Surrounded by death and destruction, a young boy sits on a piece of trash. Months earlier, it would have been unfathomable for his life to be interrupted by such an apocalyptic incident. It is easy to wonder how he managed to end up in the midst of the devastation.

3. A dead mule lies in the foreground, and adding to the

incongruity of the image, deer antlers can be seen on a smashed bench in front of the dead beast. It would appear some Confederates enjoyed a taste of venison.

4. It’s hard to tell the use of these curious structures, but their lower halves look to be made of stone or brick. Small forges?

Cooking stoves set up by Federal soldiers?

5. No, Billy Yank, the war is not going too well for you right now. His desolate view can’t possibly boost his morale.

6. Federal supply wagons and Sibley tents are on the horizon.

Somebody is going to have to clean up this mess.

6

4 5

AFTERPARTY

MESS

CORBIS/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES

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5/26/21 9:14 AM

by Gary W. Gallagher

SHOULD POPE

BE A

PUNCHLINE?

me that some military leaders elicit almost universal scorn. Mentioning them prompts members of audiences to smile, chuckle, and nod knowingly, as if they are in on a joke that does not even require a good punchline—the mention itself is the punchline. Brief pauses when saying the generals’ names heightens the effect: for example, Ambrose (pause) Everett (pause) Burnside, or Theophilus (pause) Hunter (pause) Holmes. Adding something about Burnside’s whiskers or Holmes’ nickname “Granny” removes almost any chance that listeners will take either man seriously.

The fact that neither Burnside nor Holmes possessed much martial talent renders them easy targets, but soldiers of considerably more substance, including Braxton FIRST TO FALL Bragg and John Pope, also suffer from the Brig. Gen. John Pope coordinated punchline syndrome. infantry and U.S. Navy gunboats to A closer look at John Pope will illustrate cause the surrender of Island No. 10 this point. Pope’s popular reputation rests in April 1862, the first Confederate almost entirely on his conduct as comMississippi River stronghold to fall. mander of the Army of Virginia in July and 16

August 1862, a period that ended with the general’s defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run and his reassignment to Minnesota. Public perceptions combine images of Pope as a man widely mocked, just as widely disliked, and removed in September 1862 as a figure of importance during the war.

Pope appears most ridiculous for allegedly issuing orders that located his headquarters “in the saddle.” None of his orders contained that language, but the slur has stalked him from the summer of 1862 to the present. In late July 1862, a newspaper in Kansas remarked that “Gen. Pope says he means to make his head-quarters in the saddle. Officers

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

MANY YEARS OF SPEAKING about Civil War topics has taught

NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND

FOR STARTERS, THERE IS SCANT EVIDENCE HE SAID THAT “HEADQUARTERS IN THE SADDLE” LINE

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND

usually have their hind-quarters there.”

Other Northern papers echoed this sentiment, as did some of their counterparts in the Rebel states. Confederate artillerist Edward Porter Alexander recalled, incorrectly, that Pope’s first general order to the Army of Virginia was headed “Headquarters in the Saddle, 1862.” The fabricated heading “was reprinted in all the Southern papers, &, with it, a sort of defiant reply of the South, that a general who did not know his headquarters from his hindquarters had better be kept out of General Lee’s way.” Alexander employed a dismissive flourish to compare Pope’s overall conduct at Second Bull Run to “a plot from a comic opera.”

Extending his assault on Pope’s character and military standing to the antebellum years, Alexander asserted that the Union general’s “reputation in army circles...was that of a blatherskite.”

Returning to his humorous tone, Alexander mentioned an army ditty about when Pope “was stationed for some years on the ‘Llano Estacado’ or Staked Plains of Texas trying vainly to get water by boring artesian wells. The song had it: ‘Pope told a flattering tale / Which proved to be bravado, / About the streams which spout like ale / On the Llano Estacado.’”

Union Brig. Gen. Samuel D. Sturgis figured in another anecdote that has clung doggedly to Pope. During a dispute with Herman Haupt, who oversaw the use of railroads during the Second Bull Run Campaign, Sturgis bridled at the suggestion that his conduct might cause “serious delays...in the forwarding of troops to General Pope.” Haupt described how Sturgis, in an “excited tone,” exclaimed: “I don’t care for John Pope a pinch of owl dung!”

Pope’s statements and actions in the summer of 1862 also provoked vituperative responses from both Federals and Confederates. When he arrived in Virginia from the Western Theater, he promised a new approach to subduing the Confederacy. In line with congressional Republicans who favored applying harsher policies, Pope announced that he would seize civilian property,

MIXED REVIEW Fellow general and future president James Garfield considered Pope, above, “a man of some...ability and vigor, but given to fanfaronade and on the whole I don’t like him.”

AN OVERVIEW OF

JOHN POPE’S

MILITARY CAREER REVEALS FAR MORE THAT IS

POSITIVE THAN NEGATIVE hang guerrillas, punish civilians who aided them, and otherwise chastise all Rebels. His address to the Army of Virginia dated July 14, 1862, also included a statement implicitly critical of George B. McClellan that offended many of the soldiers who read it: “I have come to you from the West, where we have always seen the backs of our enemies; from an army whose business it has been to seek the adversary and to beat him when he was found; whose policy has been attack and not defense.”

Pope did not follow through with all of his threats, but Confederates, as well as conservatives and McClellan’s admirers within the Union Army, reacted passionately. Robert E. Lee typified many

Confederate reactions to Pope’s vision of a harder war. In late July 1862, he wrote Secretary of War George Wythe Randolph that he hoped to “destroy the miscreant Pope.” (The 19th-century meanings of “miscreant,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, included “depraved, villainous, base” [adjectives] and “a vile wretch, a villain, rascal” [nouns].) Elsewhere Lee stated that Pope must be “suppressed.” Brig. Gen. Marsena R. Patrick, who led a brigade in the Union 3rd Corps, pronounced Pope’s address of July 14 “very windy & somewhat insolent.” Three days later, Patrick claimed, “This Order of Pope’s has demoralized the Army & Satan has been set loose.”

Although soundly defeated at Second Bull Run and quickly removed from the principal arenas of action, Pope maintained a good reputation among key Union figures. In November 1864, General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant requested that the Departments of the Northwest, Missouri, and Kansas “be erected into a Military Division and that Genl Pope be assigned to the command. I think it highly essential that the territory embraced in these three Depts should all be under one head.”

Grant predicted “intelligence of administration” under Pope, and the appointment went forward.

An overview of John Pope’s military career reveals far more that is positive than negative. Second Bull Run stands as his greatest failure, and partisan treatment of Fitz John Porter did him no credit (though Porter, together with his friend McClellan, could have helped Pope more during the campaign). Apart from Bull Run, Pope’s record boasts two brevets for gallantry in Mexico, success at Island No. 10 and elsewhere in the Western Theater in 1861-62, and credible service in Minnesota and as commander of the military division Grant proposed in 1864.

After the war, he played a leading role in Reconstruction and during the Indian Wars (like O.O. Howard, he argued for improved treatment of Native Americans). He deserves better than relegation to a punchline. ✯ AUGUST 2021 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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RAMBLING

DIGGING

CULP’S HILL ARCHAEOLOGISTS CAN’T SWING A METAL DETECTOR WITHOUT GETTING A HIT STEPS FROM REMAINS of Union earthworks and within sight of the

“God Tree,” Gettysburg National Military Park archaeologist Erik Kreusch and two volunteers sweep metal detectors over deep-brown earth. “Beep, beep, beeepppp ….”

A pricey machine squeals, announcing the presence of metal under hallowed ground, near the crest of Culp’s Hill.

18

Before we dig deeper into this archaeology story, a brief history lesson: Culp’s Hill—the barbed portion of the “fishhook” of the U.S. Army line—was the only hill on the field that was attacked on all three days during the battle.

Although it outnumbered the U.S.

PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

HANDS-ON HISTORY Civil War Times Editor Dana Shoaf holds a fired Confederate bullet fresh from the ground and still covered in Culp’s Hill dirt.

In three weeks, Kreusch and his team have uncovered hundreds of battle artifacts. That’s hardly a surprise, because on July 3, 1863 alone, more than 1.5 million bullets were fired on the hill ¾-mile from the town square, according to one expert. That’s probably more than 100,000 pounds of lead.

To return Culp’s Hill to close to its 1863 appearance, trees and undergrowth were removed beginning in February, opening stunning viewsheds not seen for more than a century. The National Park Service-Gettysburg Foundation partnership was largely funded by California businessman Cliff Bream, a Gettysburg native with deep pockets and deep local roots—his ancestors owned the Black Horse Tavern, a Confederate hospital and staging area near the battlefield.

The NPS will add a trail for visitors to massive Forbes Rock, among the most famous boulders on a battlefield studded with them. To comply with Federal law, that project requires the clearance of archaeological materials and a report from Kreusch, a longtime NPS employee with an “I have a sweet gig” grin.

While I visit with the archaeologist, yards away Civil War Times Editor Dana Shoaf and Director of Photography Melissa Winn hover over artifact holes like famished Billy Yanks eyeing a box filled with hardtack. Volunteer Joe Balicki, a retired archaeologist, registers another hit with his $1,200 Equinox 800. Shoaf plunges a shovel into the dirt, then uses a small, orange pinpointer to narrow the location of the find. Moments later, a mangled Confederate bullet reveals itself after nearly 158 years in seclusion.

For Shoaf, it’s ecstasy. For Kreusch, it’s a tiny piece of a giant mosaic…and so much more.

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CHESHIRE HISTORICAL SOCIETY/RANDY BIELER COLLECTION; PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

with John Banks

CHESHIRE HISTORICAL SOCIETY/RANDY BIELER COLLECTION; PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

Army roughly 3½ to 1 at Culp’s Hill on July 2, the Army of Northern Virginia failed to dislodge the Federals, who fought furiously from behind breastworks. For Confederates, it was a missed opportunity to sever the Army of the Potomac’s vital Baltimore Pike supply line.

Culp’s Hill was the scene of one of the more remarkable postwar events: On July 3, 1885, 22 years to the day after he lost his arms to friendly fire nearby, 20th Connecticut veteran George Warner unveiled the regiment’s monument. Using a pulley connected to a special device tied around his waist, the married father of five children stepped back several steps to remove a giant American flag from the white granite marker. “Holy and sacred ground,” one of Warner’s comrades called Culp’s Hill in his monument dedication speech that day.

In the first decades after the war, Culp’s Hill was a destination point for visitors, who were drawn by its proximity to Baltimore Pike, bullet-riddled trees, remnants of Federal earthworks …and shade. The wooded hill, actually two rounded peaks separated by a narrow saddle, offered plenty of protection from the sun. In 1906, Culp’s Hill was still open enough for the Pennsylvania State Guards to hold a three-hour reenactment with thousands of soldiers.

Eventually trees and other vegetation obscured the viewshed on Culp’s Hill; and for the past 100-plus years, many battlefield visitors skipped the former grazing ground for farm animals. That’s too bad, because on the crest they missed a monument to underappreciated Union Brigadier Gen. George Sears Greene—a brilliant engineer and one of my favorite Union officers. By ordering his soldiers to build breastworks at Culp’s Hill, 62-year-old “Pappy” Greene helped save the U.S. Army.

A Navy jet mechanic a lifetime ago, Kreusch has worked as a professional archaeologist for 27 years. His resume includes assignments at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, where Francis Scott Key

WHERE HIS LIFE CHANGED Armless 20th Connecticut veteran George Warner at the 1885 dedication of his regiment’s monument. Friendly artillery fire mangled both his limbs on July 3, 1863. was inspired to write The Star-Spangled Banner during the British bombardment in 1814, and the Chalmette battlefield near New Orleans, where Andrew Jackson’s hastily assembled army whipped the Brits the next year.

He loves archaeology and says his Gettysburg job represents the pinnacle of his career—the battlefield he finds inspirational, “a touchstone for talking about our divisions.”

The “holy grail” for Kreusch is tying an artifact directly to an event or person—a Rebel private to the lock plate on a Model 1861 Richmond rifled musket or a fallen Yankee lieutenant to the bullet that killed him. Linking a find to another living human exhilarates.

He tells me the story of an assignment in the Great Smoky Mountains at a Cherokee Indian site that dated to 1350. One of his volunteers, a Cherokee high school student, discovered in a pit a small, green rock, about the thickness of five dimes. It was a fortune-telling stone, the Cherokee version of a Magic 8-Ball you may have played with as a kid. It was a thrilling find for the girl because her grandmother used similar stones.

Few artifacts Kreusch uncovers elicit such a strong, emotional reaction. But

every battlefield artifact he and his crew uncover at Gettysburg helps tell a story.

Think of Culp’s Hill like a giant puzzle—the bullets, artillery fragments, buttons, and other recoveries are the pieces. Each “piece” enhances an archaeologist’s ability to tell a more complete story. That’s why professionals like Kreusch wince—or worse—when amateurs remove artifacts from Gettysburg or any other battlefield or historic site.

A longtime battlefield preservationist calls relic hunters “vermin.” Their angry reply might be: “What’s the big deal? We seek permission to hunt on private land, document our finds, and have a deep interest in history.” The NPS occasionally has even used amateur archaeologists to help recover artifacts from national parks. But some diggers are in the hobby for less than altruistic reasons— we sometimes read stories of the unscrupulous caught removing artifacts from national battlefields. “Vermin?”

Yup. Theft from all of us? Yup. A Federal crime? You bet.

From Spangler’s Spring, Slocum Avenue cuts a serpentine path to the crest of Culp’s Hill. In a roughly 500-square foot area near Forbes Rock, a short distance from the park road, Kreusch’s

BUCKLE UP! An archaeologist shows off a brass buckle from a forage cap chin strap he had recently unearthed. A portion of the leather chin strap remains in the buckle.

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19

5/26/21 9:35 AM

RAMBLING with John Banks

20

unfired bullets on a battlefield can tell an archaeologist about the ferocity of fighting, troop strength, weapons used, and much more. A bullet’s orientation in the ground may denote its firing point. Were some of the Kreusch team’s recoveries discharged from nearby Forbes Rock, used by Confederates for cover on the night of July 2?

A tree in Brady’s image of the massive boulder clearly shows evidence of Union return fire.

Two Culp’s Hill bullet finds—a Sharps fired into U.S. Army breastworks and a full Spencer cartridge—pique Kreusch’s interest. In 1863, Confederates were not generally known to have Sharps rifles. Was a Union cavalryman picketing on Culp’s Hill with a Spencer carbine? The weapon wasn’t demonstrated to President Lincoln on the lawn of the White House by its inventor until after Gettysburg. Hmmm.…

Perhaps bullets also remain in the now-decrepit “God Tree,” which in a misguided preservation effort more than 100 years ago was filled with concrete and rebar. (“Horrible,” Jason Martz of the NPS, our Culp’s Hill guide, tells me.) Areas near Union earthworks where relatively few battle artifacts are found also may tell a story. Were they safe havens in the storm of Confederate lead on the evening of July 2, 1863?

BOULDER AND BEEPER Landmark Forbes Rock, left, was cloaked in thick vegetation until the landscape restoration. NPS archaeologist Erik Kreusch is all smiles at the great finds located by the beeps of his metal detector.

At the national cemetery’s former caretaker’s lodge, nerve center of Kreusch’s operation, two large, plastic tubs hold hundreds of bags of Culp’s Hill artifacts. Each find will be cleaned and analyzed. Bullets may be subjected to ballistics tests. Using computer technology, a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) map of the finds will be created.

Kreusch will write a report about his team’s discoveries. The entire process may take as long as six months.

For Kreusch, new archaeological adventures at Gettysburg await—at Devil’s Kitchen on Big Round Top’s lower slope; at Devil’s Den and Spangler’s Spring; and at the Josiah Benner farm, a U.S. Army hospital site, and elsewhere.

Oh man, I can dig it. ✯ John Banks, who lives in Nashville, is author of a popular Civil War blog (john-banks.blogspot.com). On his only relic-hunting adventure, he found a fired bullet on private land at Antietam.

PHOTOS BY MELISSA A. WINN

crew works the ground; to our left, about 15 yards away, Mathew Brady shot an image in mid-July 1863 of his assistants gazing at the battle-scarred landscape. Dozens of white flags mark recent archaeological finds, each stashed in a small plastic bag.

The work of Kreusch and his volunteers is—no pun intended—ground-­ breaking. It’s the first systematic archaeological work at Culp’s Hill in the national military park’s 126-year existence. For now, their search is confined to ground the NPS plans for a pathway through the woods. Ongoing archaeological efforts on the rest of Culp’s Hill will take years to complete.

Among finds by Kreusch’s crew are percussion caps, a button and small buckle from a forage cap, a Company I insignia, and a New York state button with a green patina. Behind Union earthworks, six Confederate Gardner bullets and a piece of leather revealed themselves. Kreusch speculates those rounds were in a pouch dropped by a prisoner as he was hauled over U.S. Army earthworks. Uncovered nearby were a cartridge box and more than a dozen unfired Miniés—the most impressive recovery thus far.

Oh, my, why did I choose journalism for a career?

The concentration of fired and CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2021

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with Ty Seidule

CASTING A CAUSE Author Ty Seidule particularly dislikes this tableau on the Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, in which an officer hands off his child to a compliant, tearful Black “mammy.”

RETIRED ARMY BRIG. GEN. TY SEIDULE spent two decades teaching history at West Point. His new book, Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning With the Myth of the Lost Cause, which combines history and memoir, reflects on Confederate memorials and Seidule’s education in segregated academies and at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., where R.E. Lee was venerated. His book got its start when he wondered why there were so many Lee memorials at West Point, where until around 1898, Confederates were reviled.

CWT: You revered Confederates.

TS: I grew up in Alexandria in Northern Virginia, the last outpost of segregation.

I was bused from the white elementary school to an all-Black school named RE Lee, named in 1961 to protest integration. Alexandria named Confederates as romantic heroes and hid slavery and inequality to ensure racial hierarchy.

CWT: Why did you decide to research the history of Confederate memorials related to the U.S. Army?

TS: I was at West Point and I was chair of the Memorial Committee. I had been in 22

CWT: Are you the first to research this topic?

TS: No one had written about the Army and West Point and the aspect of memory before. At West Point, there are more than a dozen things named after Confederates, most of

CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2021

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5/27/21 10:01 AM

COURTESY OF TY SEIDULE

LOST CAUSE

ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

LOSING THE

the Army for 25 years and we were creating a new memorial room. It was going to commemorate all the West Point graduates killed from the War of 1812 to the Wars on Terror. I briefed senior leaders to say we can’t put Confederates in because they fought against their country, they killed U.S. Army soldiers, they renounced their oath—for the worst possible reasons, to create a slave republic, and by the way, the building bylaws say it can contain no unworthy subjects. That’s because the person who gave the money for the building was the anti-Confederate postwar superintendent George Washington Cullum. I got nowhere. They said they wanted to bring people together.

them after Robert E. Lee. I wondered why. I understood Washington & Lee University, where I went to school. But why here? I asked and nobody knew.

So I went to the archives. In the 19th century, West Point banished Confederates, it was an anti-Confederate museum in a way. No Confederates in the cemetery, our big monument has no Confederates. Our great motto: “Duty, Honor, Country” was anti-Confederate. So when did Lee Barracks, Lee Road, and the Lee Housing area

by Lee Gate all come? They came in the 1930s as a reaction to the first Black cadets coming to West Point in over 50 years, and then came in the 1950s when the Army was fighting forced integration. It came again in the early 1970s when minority admissions began. So Confederate memorialization both in the Army and at West Point is a 20th century phenomenon, and it’s a reaction to integration.

COURTESY OF TY SEIDULE

ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

CWT: Explain why so many U.S. Army bases, such as Fort Bragg and Fort Hood, are named after Confederates.

TS: They were named in WWI and WWII to bring America—White America—together against a common enemy, Germany, but at the expense of Black Americans. It’s a segregated Army, and it wants to stay segregated.

Congressmen from the South control the committees, and you have to listen to them, as well.

CWT: You single out two memorials as especially awful. One is at Arlington National Cemetery.

TS: Arlington National Cemetery was created in 1864 by Montgomery Meigs in response to the Overland Campaign.

It is the old estate owned by Lee’s father-in-law. So they started burying U.S. soldiers there. But in the early 20th century, as White people in the South came into power and disenfranchised Black people, it changes and there are Confederates reburied in the southern part of the cemetery around Stonewall Jackson Circle. And then they put up a monument: an overweight black “mammy” who has a tear

in her eye as she takes a baby from a Confederate officer. It’s meant to show that slavery was the best form of labor and the South was right and the United States was wrong. And the White South will always be right and the United States will always be wrong.

CWT: The other is little known.

TS: The second is Fort Belvoir, Va. It was named in WWI after Andrew Humphreys, a Federal Civil War general. It was renamed in 1935 to appease Southern segregationist Howard Smith who had first voted against the Social

Ty Seidule

Security Act. He later voted for it because Franklin Delano Roosevelt renamed Fort Humphreys as Fort Belvoir after the name of the slave plantation, or, as I like to call it, the enslaved labor farm, created in the 18th century and burned to the ground in 1783. It was owned by a loyalist, Lord Fairfax, who wrote in his account book that he paid 10 shillings to bed a Black woman—rape an enslaved woman—at the age of 83. Finding the terrible awful racist nature of how we named these forts and who we named them after—I just could not believe it, and it was not the U.S. Army that I wanted to be a part of.

CWT: Did you have trepidation about publishing this book?

TS: Yes. But I did a video that the war

was about slavery and it went viral, got about 30 million views. I got such hate mail for that. I got death threats at my West Point e-mail address. The Army investigated me for political speech, for saying the war was about slavery. I knew what I was getting into. The form of this book was really my wife’s idea. She said the only way you’re going to do this is to tell your own story. One reason I chose to retire was because I could not write about it in uniform openly. It was too hot a topic for the Army to deal with. And now it’s not. I was a pariah about this subject, but now the Army can’t wait to change. It’s amazing the amount of change that has happened since then.

CWT: Talk about Lee Chapel at Washington & Lee University.

TS: The Lee Chapel has no Christian iconography. The only sculpture in the apse is Lee lying on the altar. When the Lost Cause is a civic religion, you need saints for that religion. Lee was revered in his lifetime, but he was a cruel enslaver. Why did he choose the Confederacy? Because of his undying belief in human enslavement. There were eight U.S. colonels from Virginia in 1861, and Lee is the one and only one who did not remain with the United States. I use the Lee Chapel as a way of getting at the Lee reverence.

In the 1870s, Jubal Early and his people created the Lost Cause. By the early 20th century, President Taft and Theodore Roosevelt join in. The Lost Cause myth becomes a White American phenomenon. I grew up with the belief that the greatest gentleman of all was Robert E. Lee. That is just not the value that we should be teaching to U.S. Army soldiers. The only way to prevent a racist future is to first understand and acknowledge our racist past.

We have got to be honest about who we are and who we’ve been if we want to make sure we aren’t this way going forward. Who we commemorate should represent today’s values. ✯ Interview conducted by Senior Editor Sarah Richardson.

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by Dana B. Shoaf

The Irish Brigade at the Battle of Fredericksburg.

WHAT’S

IN A

NAME?

TROIANI, DON (B.1949)/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

MANY BRIGADES DESERVED NICKNAMES COLORFUL AND POPULAR INFANTRY BRIGADE NICKNAMES are primarily an Eastern Theater phenomenon. It might even be argued it’s one of the reasons that theater gets more attention than the West. Undoubtedly you have heard and read of the Stonewall Brigade, the Irish Brigade, or the Iron Brigade, storied collections of regiments helped to fame by their catchy nicknames. And naturally, students of the war pick up on these names and seek out books on those brigade’s exploits and battlefield monuments to their bravery. Think, however, of all the nicknameless-brigades that fought. Take Colonel Jacob Sweitzer’s Brigade, for example. In addition to all the fighting those regiments did in 1862 and at Gettysburg, Sweitzer’s command went on to fight at the Wilderness, where cover soldier William Cain fell wounded, through the rest of the Overland Campaign until the regiments mustered out at Petersburg, Va. I must admit, however, I didn’t know that much about the brigade until this issue’s article (P. 26) piqued my interest. On a recent visit to Gettysburg’s Wheatfield, I noticed that dog biscuits covered the Irish Brigade’s monument, left as tribute to the Irish wolfhound that graces the bronze memorial. Yards away, the only token left for any of the monuments of Sweitzer’s Brigade was a broken mason’s tool, left behind at the 62nd Pennsylvania’s monument during some reconstruction work. As you read and explore battlefields, think of those brigades never blessed with catchy nicknames. They deserve a bone, too. ✯ AUGUST 2021 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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BLOOD ON THE WHEAT The heroic defense of the 4th Michigan’s colors by Colonel Harrison Jeffords, captured in this Don Troiani painting, has dominated histories of the Wheatfield fighting over the years. The 62nd Pennsylvania’s own valiant struggle for its flags, which occurred nearby, tends to get shortchanged.

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he first day of fighting at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, had favored the Army of Northern Virginia and General Robert E. Lee spent the early hours of July 2 looking to land a knockout blow on Maj. Gen. George Meade’s Army of the Potomac, now aligned in the shape of a fishhook, stretching from Culp’s Hill to Big Round Top. Lee decided a coordinated attack on the Federal left flank by the divisions of Maj. Gens. John Bell Hood and Lafayette McLaws, in Lt. Gen. James Longstreet’s First Corps, would quickly break and roll up Meade’s lines and deliver that Confederate victory.

Had Longstreet followed Lee’s directive, that may well have happened. Lee’s plan had Hood and McLaws attacking in tandem—Hood toward Devil’s Den and the Round Tops; McLaws across the Emmitsburg Road and up Cemetery Ridge. Longstreet, however, chose not to send McLaws forward until a half-hour after Hood had launched his attack. The delay would significantly impact the fighting that afternoon.

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OPENING SPREAD: TROIANI, DON (B.1949)/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; THIS PAGE: PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

O

n September 11, 1889, in GettysHEAVY LOSSES burg’s notorious Wheatfield, a The 62nd Pennsylvania crowd gathered for the dedicaInfantry’s monument at tion of the 62nd Pennsylvania Gettysburg, as it stands Infantry’s monument, placed today off DeTrobriand where a bloody contest for the regiment’s flags had taken place Avenue, inscribed with 26 years earlier. An inscription on the monument the unit’s devastating read: “Position occupied by the Regiment on the casualty count: 175 lost evening of July 2. 1863. After the troops on the out of 426 engaged. right had retired, and where the Brigade had a Bayonet contest.”

The Wheatfield had been the gory epicenter of fighting on the Battle of Gettysburg’s second day. The 62nd, part of Colonel Jacob Sweitzer’s 2nd Brigade in the 5th Corps’ 1st Division, suffered heavily in this field alongside the 4th Michigan and the 32nd Massachusetts. Second Lieutenant William Patterson of the 62nd remembered that just before the fighting commenced, the Wheatfield was “covered with the plumage of waving grain, ready for the harvest, and when twilight gathered over its surface the ripening stalks were trampled into the earth and dyed with the blood of the blue and the gray, and when the light of the moon cast its gentle rays over this gory plain it revealed scores of the pale, upturned faces.”

Several of those “pale, upturned faces” had died fighting for the regimental flags that had been symbols of pride for the 62nd since early in the war.

Before leaving Pittsburgh, where the regiment was raised, in August 1861,

a church group presented the men with a “beautiful silk flag.” Captain James C. Hull, who led the 62nd at Gettysburg as a lieutenant colonel, accepted the flag. Colonel Samuel W. Black then made a few remarks, proclaiming that the “colors should never be dishonored, and if stained at all, it would be with the best blood of the regiment in their defense.” He was prophetic.

A few months later, with the 62nd posted at Camp Bettie Black near Fairfax, Va. (named for Black’s daughter), Pennsylvania Senator Edgar Cowan presented the 62nd a state flag that the regiment would use as its national colors, what would become known as the “Bettie Black Flag.”

As Colonel Black proclaimed: “Behold and admire the beauty of the glowing thought that shines upon the standard! The arms of the State are inlaid amongst the stars of the Union! Her shield, her buckler, and her strength are there.”

By March 1863, that resplendent banner had become tattered and worn. “The old flag that was presented to us more than a year ago at Camp Bettie Black is here yet with no less than forty seven (47) bullet holes through it,” wrote Sergeant William Hagerson of Company D. “The boys have nobly defended it. When I look at it a thrill of Patriotism runs through me.”

That spring, Pennsylvania began issuing replacements for the battle-worn and damaged flags carried in the Army. Because the 62nd’s regimental flag certainly qualified, it received a new one in April. The flag that had been presented at Camp Bettie Black remained in service, however. After all, the more battle-scarred the flag, the more it was beloved, and to bear the flag into battle was considered a true honor.

GREEN TROOPS IN SKY BLUE This camp photo of 62nd Pennsylvania soldiers was taken early in the war when their unit was known as the 33rd Independent Regiment. The men are attired in sky blue uniforms, later replaced by standard-issue dark blues.

RONN PALM COLLECTION; KEN TURNER COLLECTION

OPENING SPREAD: TROIANI, DON (B.1949)/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; THIS PAGE: PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

REGIMENTAL PRIDE Men of the 62nd’s Company L presented this ornate badge to Lieutenant Joseph Aldred. This shield is skillfully engraved with the regiment’s battle honors.

At the start of Hood’s attack about 4:30 p.m., Colonel Regis de Trobriand’s 3rd Brigade, part of Maj. Gen. Daniel Sickles’ 3rd Corps, marked the lone Federal presence in the Wheatfield– Stony Hill sector, located on the John Rose Farm just east of the Emmitsburg Road. With the help of the 8th New Jersey and 115th Pennsylvania of Maj. Gen. Andrew Humphreys’ 2nd Division, de Trobriand’s men managed to hold off a fierce initial attack by Colonel George “Tige” Anderson’s Brigade. But the bloodshed had just begun.

With Trobriand’s position threatened, 5th Corps commander Maj. Gen. George Sykes rushed reinforcements to the Wheatfield—Jacob Sweitzer’s and Colonel William Tilton’s brigades from Brig. Gen. James Barnes’ 1st Division.

Sweitzer and Tilton had taken up their positions just as Anderson unleashed a second attack on the Wheatfield and as Brig. Gen. Joseph Kershaw’s Brigade advanced on the left.

Again, the Federals tenuously held on. Barnes, however, decided to withdraw Tilton’s brigade, acquiescing to Tilton’s plea to do so because the inexperienced colonel was convinced he couldn’t hold the position. Tilton’s withdrawal exposed Sweitzer’s left flank, and Barnes responded by ordering Sweitzer to withdraw as well.

The withdrawals infuriated Sickles, who quickly solicited help from Brig. Gen. Samuel

Zook’s 2nd Brigade, part of Brig. Gen. John Caldwell’s 1st Division in Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock’s 2nd Corps. Sickles directed Zook’s brigade to Stony Hill.

When Zook’s brigade encountered Sweitzer’s men, an officer from the 140th Pennsylvania recalled, “A line of the Fifth Corps was lying down and, as we passed over them, the boys picked their way gingerly. They called out, ‘Don’t mind us; step anywhere; step on us.’ They enjoyed seeing us get between them and the enemy.”

As the 2nd Corps brigades reached the front, Caldwell began funneling them into the Wheatfield, and it wasn’t long before his division had managed to clear the Wheatfield and drive the Confederates back through the Rose Woods while Zook’s brigade and Colonel Patrick Kelly’s Irish Brigade expelled Kershaw’s Rebels from Stony Hill. The Confederates quickly rallied, however, and resumed their attacks.

In desperate need of support, Caldwell spurred his horse and raced down the Wheatfield Road seeking reinforcements. Coming upon Sweitzer and his men, Caldwell informed the colonel of his need for support. Sweitzer responded that it would be Barnes’ decision, telling Caldwell “he would obey [Barnes’] directions with pleasure.”

After consulting with Caldwell, Barnes sent Sweitzer back toward the Wheatfield. The three officers were unaware, however, that the Confederates had overrun Colonel John R. Brooke’s 4th Brigade, forcing the collapse of Caldwell’s entire line. Meanwhile, Brig. Gen. William Barksdale’s Mississippians had smashed through the Peach Orchard salient and Brig.

Gen. William T. Wofford’s Confederates were marching east on the Wheatfield Road.

Sweitzer pressed through the Wheatfield with his three undersized regiments—the fourth regiment in his command, the 9th Massachusetts, was simultaneously engaged on Big Round Top—and took up a position behind AUGUST 2021 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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offord’s oncoming brigade consisted of five regiments. Cobb’s and Phillips’ Legions advanced north of the Wheatfield Road, the 16th Georgia proceeded along the clay roadway itself, and the 24th and 18th Georgia held the right, marching south of the road. In addition, the 3rd Battalion Georgia Sharpshooters screened Wofford’s front.

The sharpshooters alerted their commander to Sweitzer’s presence in the Wheatfield, and Wofford decided to set a trap, halting his line and

W 30

sending his three leftmost regiments—the 16th Georgia, Cobb’s Legion, and Phillips’ Legion—on the double-quick through the western woods to the right of the line in order to outflank Sweitzer. A major in the 140th Pennsylvania, part of Zook’s Brigade, remembered seeing three battle flags flash by him just before he was taken prisoner. Given his location at the time, the flags undoubtedly belonged to those three regiments.

As soon as Sweitzer’s men got in position behind the stone wall to engage with “Tige” Anderson’s Georgians, Wofford’s sharpshooters jumped on the opportunity and began pouring fire into the backs of the unsuspecting Federals. Located on swampy, brush- and timber-laden ground just beyond the stone fence, the 4th Michigan was the brigade’s rightmost regiment and therefore most vulnerable to the sharpshooters’ fire. Members of Company A reported seeing the sharpshooters in the woods to their colonel, Harrison Jeffords, and Jeffords, as well as Lt. Col. Hull of the 62nd rushed word to Sweitzer of their precarious situation, albeit too late.

Sweitzer expressed surprise at the onslaught in his after-action report:

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a stone wall at the southern end: the 32nd Massachusetts on the left, the 62nd Pennsylvania in the center, and 4th Michigan in the woods on the right, extending beyond the stone barricade.

IRON CITY GRIT A carpenter from Allegheny County, Pa., Lt. Col. James C. Hull (far left) did not survive the war. He was mortally wounded at Laurel Hill, Va., in May 1864. Prewar attorney Jacob Sweitzer, made a brevet brigadier general in early 1865, resumed his law practice in Pittsburgh after the war. in our position until the order came ‘about face,’ when we walked out in good order, contending with the enemy both in front and rear….” bandoning the protection of the stone wall created an added threat for Sweitzer’s men, who continued receiving fire from Anderson’s Georgians posted in the ravine south of the Wheatfield. The situation would only get worse for the retreating brigade when they ran headlong into the trap Wofford had set for them.

Cobb’s Legion was supposed to line up next to the 16th Georgia once the 16th had wheeled into position but, coming upon the 4th Michigan, instead moved forward to engage them.

That left a gap, which Phillips’ Legion promptly filled. After routing the 4th Michigan, Cobb’s Legion set its sights on the last company in the 62nd Pennsylvania, Company A. The 62nd itself was already engaged with Phillips’ Legion.

Recalled one member of the 32nd Massachu-

A

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: KEN TURNER COLLECTION; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; RONN PALM COLLECTION (2)

We had scarcely got to this position before I noticed regiments retiring from the woods on our right, which I supposed were relieved by others who had taken their places, and would protect us in that direction. I observed also that there was considerable firing diagonally toward our rear from these woods, which I then thought were shots from our troops aimed over us at the enemy in the woods beyond and falling short. They were, however, much too frequent to be pleasant, and my color-bearer, Ed. Martin, remarked, “Colonel, I’ll be—if I don’t think we are faced the wrong way; the Rebs are up there in the woods behind us, on the right.”

Corporal Zerah Coston Monks, Company C, 62nd Pennsylvania, echoed Sweitzer’s sentiments in a letter home to Hannah Tabitha Rohrer, whom he married after the war. “You of course have seen the papers and know how severely our brigade suffered in the action of Thursday, July 2,” he FOREIGN FASHION wrote. “We were flanked by the Lt. Scott McDowell, killed breaking of a brigade of the 3rd in action during the Corps, who were charged by Gettysburg fighting, [Barksdale’s] Brigade and gave way. poses in his French Thus the Rebs got right in our rear, “chasseur” uniform, and the first indication we had of briefly worn by the them was a volley in our backs.”

“The order was given for the 62nd. Below: A button right of our regiment to fall back to from McDowell’s coat. receive them,” Monks continued.

“That threw Company C and Company I in the rear of the retreating column.”

For the Federals, it would be a complex and dangerous maneuver. When the right wing conducted an about-face and marched forward in order to meet the threat to the rear, it placed Monks’ company—the regiment’s color company—and Company I—the color guard—at the rear of the retreating column. Normally when brigades moved out by the left flank, companies within a regiment doubled-up to minimize the column’s length. In this case, it meant the colors and color guard were now to Monks’ immediate front.

Recalled John R. Garden of Company M: “We were hardly posted behind the wall, before the word was passed that we were flanked on the right of our brigade, which we soon found to be too true, for the bullets commenced flying in among us from the right. We remained

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Lemon was referring to the remarkable brav32

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With a piercing “Rebel” yell, we continued our advance into the field and, reaching a point near the center, a large force of Yankees moved out of the woods off to our right and moved to the left across our front. We fired several well-aimed volleys at them into their flank and then we pitched into them with a piercing yell.

We caught them after a short distance and the most terrific hand-to-hand fighting occurred. Guns were fired into the very faces of the enemy only a few feet away.

Then the clubbed musket, bayonet, knives and fists were employed. All formation was lost in a huge swirling death-struggle of men, grappling, stabbing, clubbing and shooting each other. After the bloodiest struggle, we captured a stand of their colors belonging to a regiment of Michigan troops, whose commander was run through the body with at least 5 or 6 bayonets while attempting to save them.

ery displayed by the 4th’s Colonel Jeffords, who was bayoneted to death as he fought to save his regiment’s colors from capture (see P.35). It was about this point that soldiers in the 62nd Pennsylvania found themselves in a deadly struggle with the enemy for their own regimental flags.

“For a time it was a hand to hand engagement,” recalled Garden. “[M]uskets were clubbed, and pistols and sabers were used in the scuffle. Our regiment lost one of its colors, both color bearers being wounded and bayoneted.”

Lieutenant Charles Martin, commanding Company F of Cobb’s Legion, later wrote home to his sister about the vicious fight with Company A of the 62nd Pennsylvania at the edge of the Wheatfield. “We had it hand to hand for some time…sword crossed sword, and bayonet crossed bayonet,” Martin wrote. “We were all mixed up together and thrusts were passed with terrible rapidity.”

The knockdown, drag-out clash with Company A, the 62nd’s last company in the retreating column, would endure for several minutes before Lieutenant Martin demanded a surrender. The response by one Yankee, Private William McCarter, was a clubbed musket. His hands grasping his rifle’s barrel, McCarter turned and brought the stock down on Martin’s head, rendering the lieutenant unconscious. As the hand-to-hand fighting continued, Martin’s comrades dragged him away to safety.

Garden’s recollections about the struggle were not entirely accurate. One of the 62nd’s color-bearers—Corporal Thomas H. Budlong of Company I, who carried the “Bettie Black Flag”—had been shot and killed outright during the clash. The other—Corporal Jacob B. Funk of Company A, who bore the regimental colors—had been wounded by gunfire and not a bayonet.

Funk received the honor of carrying the “Pittsburgh flag”—the one given the 62nd before it left the city in August 1861—for rescuing that banner at the June 1862 Battle of Malvern Hill. During that fight, Funk was wounded in the hand moments after rescuing the flag. Not able to handle a rifle while

IN THE CROSSHAIRS In a modern painting aptly titled “Whirlpool of Death,” Sweitzer and his pennant-bearer can be found at the front of the action on horseback as the 62nd faces fire from three directions.

PAINTING BY LARRY SMAIL, COPYRIGHT LARRY SMAIL

setts: “The enemy moving quietly up the ravine charged directly upon the flank of the 4th Michigan, curling it and the 62nd Pennsylvania up like a worm at the touch of fire, and throwing them into the greatest confusion.”

Captain James Lile Lemon of the 18th Georgia Infantry later wrote of Wofford’s Wheatfield clash with Sweitzer’s brigade:

corporal, fearing that his company and the rest of the regiment’s right wing needed a guide, had fallen out of formation alongside Corporal Budlong and the “Bettie Black Flag” and slowed his pace to allow the retreating column to pass and the right wing to catch up. Funk would write:

SWEITZER’S STORM FLAG Samuel Bates, a Pennsylvania historian, wrote of Colonel Jacob Sweitzer at Gettysburg, “When he was ordered to move on the enemy he moved up to the very front, some distance in advance of his troops, with his brigade flag flying at his side.”

To dispel any confusion, what Bates was referring to was Sweitzer’s headquarters flag—a white pennant bearing a red Maltese Cross and a blue band along its pole edge, carried by Private Edward Martin, who was also mounted. The pennant (above) was used to mark Sweitzer’s location while the brigade colors (with the absence of the 9th Massachusetts on detached duty) was positioned between the 32nd Massachusetts and the 62nd Pennsylvania. The men would guide off these colors while in brigade formation. —S.F.

SOLDIERS & SAILORS MUSEUM TRUST INC., PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA;USAHEC

PAINTING BY LARRY SMAIL, COPYRIGHT LARRY SMAIL

he recovered, he was recognized as the regiment’s color-bearer. Now, wounded again at Gettysburg, he was headed to the rear for medical attention when a vicious fight for the precious flag ensued in his absence. nother factor that severely hampered the 62nd during its retreat from the stone wall prior to the clash with Wofford’s men: Confederate prisoners captured from Anderson’s Brigade, likely from the 8th and 11th Georgia. “When we were engaged at the stone fence,” recalled Lieutenant William Patterson, “a large squad of prisoners had been taken and sent to the rear, and when the regiment became entangled with the enemy[,] the opposing forces could not at times fire into each other for the unarmed captives between the lines.”

Funk later commented about this unexpected complication as well. The

A

Corporal Jacob Funk

Just then I came up to where some Prisoners were that had been taken a short time before. The bullets were falling like hail & the Guard that had the Prisoners ran and left the Prisoners go when they immediately picked up Guns and began to shoot our men. I saw [one] pick up a Gun and looking round he spied me with the Colors of the Old Keystone state immediately he leveled his Gun and ordered me to surrender my Colors or he would shoot me but I thought that was rather a saucy demand & I could not see the point. I looked at him a moment then turning round I called out, “Some of you shoot that man.”

Funk had made a dangerous gamble, as nobody was behind him and there was only one soldier at his side. But the bluff provided him sufficient distraction to temporarily get away. “I took leg bail for security and increased the distance between him and me very fast,” he wrote.

“I had to jump a stone fence and came very near losing my balance but I managed to get over. I then went straight ahead when directly I heard the report of a Gun just behind me. I just concluded that was for me, and sure enough the Ball struck my arm four or five inches from the shoulder passing under the Bone and coming out in the chest near the arm pit. I called out for someone to take the Colors one of the men ran out & took them & I then made tracks to get out of farther danger...after leaving the Battle field I went about 2 miles and then got my wound dressed.”

Although the fight was over for Funk, his distress call had attracted not only Union soldiers from the right wing but also Confederates from Companies D and E of Phillips’ Legion, who rushed toward the 62nd’s vulnerable flag and began grappling for it with both Yankees and fellow soldiers.

“We went into them with our bayonets and clubbed them with our guns,” recalled Confederate Private James S. Wood of Company D. “It was here that I went after the flag; and after shooting one man, and clubbing five others, I was in the act of reaching for the flag when a fellow named [Edward J.] Smith [of Company E] jumped in ahead of me and grabbed it. I came very near clubbing him, but he put up such a pitiful mouth about having a family of small AUGUST 2021 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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BETTIE BLACK’S TATTERED REMAINS The 62nd Pennsylvania carried two stands of colors into battle, the national flag and the regimental flag. The national flag (above), known to the regiment as the Bettie Black Flag, is at the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg. It was a variant of the United States flag, containing 34 stars of the Union in the canton, which would become 35 stars later in the war. Normally, an infantry regiment’s regimental flag consisted of the American Eagle on a field of blue with the unit identification within a scroll at the bottom. These were the standard issue flags from the U.S. government, but certain states also issued their regiments flags called state colors, in lieu of the national or regimental flag. For the state of Pennsylvania, it was the United States flag with the state’s coat of arms surrounded by the stars of the Union in the canton, and the unit identifier on the middle red stripe.

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KEN TURNER COLLECTION; COURTESY OF JOHN HENDERSON; PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

he Georgians in Phillips’ Legion had also cut off Corporal Budlong and the rest of the color guard, as well as the two companies behind them. “The brigade was going out by the left flank,” Corporal Monks later wrote, “and as we were falling back, a member of Company H was shot in the leg by my side and clung to my shoulder for support. That checked my progress and though I loaded and fired as fast as before, the Rebs coming up after gained on us and soon a line was run in between us and the regiment.”

According to Monks, when “a line of Rebels rushed toward the 62nd’s colors,” he and a “handful” of men from Company C joined the fight and “stood for their colors.” Hit by rifle fire during the clash, Budlong fell lifeless to the ground along with his flag, which lay by the color corporal’s side as his blood stained the trampled grain red.

Private Thomas B. Jolly of Phillips’ Legion scampered toward the unattended flag, only to have his way blocked by Private Thomas Bowser, Corporal Monks’ cousin. Jolly responded by shooting Bowser in the chest, sending him reeling, and then thrust his bayonet into the wounded private’s side for good measure. (Somehow, Bowser escaped death.) As Jolly took hold of the target banner’s staff, however, a bullet slammed into his arm, shattering the bone and

PENNSYLVANIA CAPITOL PRESERVATION COMMITTEE

children that he wanted to see so bad, I let him have it so he could get the furlough. Gus Tomlinson [Lt. Augustus Jackson Tomlinson, Company D] saw the whole transaction.”

Edward Smith was apparently unwilling to share the credit with Wood for capturing the “Pittsburgh flag” but had no problem sharing it with a comrade from his own company, likely to get his friend, Alfred Norris, a furlough also. The two privates concocted a story in which both could claim that honor. The ploy worked, too, as each was placed on their battalion’s “role of honor” and received a furlough.

KEN TURNER COLLECTION; COURTESY OF JOHN HENDERSON; PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

PENNSYLVANIA CAPITOL PRESERVATION COMMITTEE

STEEL DEATH

forcing him to drop the flag. Then Monks, DEFENDERS seeking to avenge his cousin, lunged his Captain Edwin Little bayonet into Jolly’s side “and he went (left) was one of four headlong on his face”—supposedly dead.

62nd Pennsylvania The hand-to-hand struggle raged on. officers killed during Locked in a frightful struggle with Color the Wheatfield clash.

Sergeant Isaac S. Osborn, Private Marcus Above: Corporal Thomas D. Austin of Phillips’ Legion yanked a pisBudlong was shot and tol from Osborn’s belt and killed him with killed carrying the it instantly. Austin used the captured pistol Bettie Black Flag. to kill two more Pennsylvanians and wound others.

Corporal Johnson C. Gardner of the 62nd joined the fight for the regiment’s colors, later writing that he raced to rescue the flag with “fire coming from two directions.” Bodies littered the ground amid a mass of struggling soldiers, and the Bettie Black Flag continued to lie unattended, protruding from underneath Jolly’s seemingly lifeless body. Gardner lunged for the coveted banner, only to be stopped by “a big Johnny”—likely Sergeant Charles H. Quinn of Company B. But as Gardner and Quinn faced “each other very fiercely,” Quinn suddenly crumbled to the ground, shot in the head. Gardner looked over to see Sergeant William M. Fairman of the 62nd standing a few yards away with a smoking gun barrel.

Getting the jump on “six other rebs,” Gardner succeeded in ripping the flagstaff from underneath Jolly and then “made for the regiment.” The boys cheered him as he ran past and continued their retreat. Reaching safety, Gardner counted seven bullet holes in his uniform. Miraculously, he was unscathed.

General Wofford was among those to comment on Gardner’s bravery, although he and the Phillips’ Legion’s commanding officer, Major Joseph Hamilton, believed Gardner belonged to another Union regiment. Wrote Wofford: “In this hand to hand fight the colors in the hands of the gallant ‘Jolly’ was lost by the man who strove so bravely to obtain them, though supposed to be in the hands of some other Reg’t.”

With the Bettie Black colors now safely to the rear, and having done all they could “against so great odds,” Corporal Monks and the rest of Company C surrendered. Released from captivity in September, Monks wrote Hannah:

As Wofford’s Brigade overran the Federal ranks in the Wheatfield about 6:30 p.m., Colonel Harrison H. Jeffords of the 4th Michigan—a few dozen yards west of the 62nd Pennsylvania—realized his regiment’s flag had fallen and was now in the hands of Confederate Corporal James D. Putnam of Cobb’s Legion. Accompanied by Lieutenant Richard W. Seage of Company I and Color Sergeant Edwin G. Tripp, Jeffords raced after Putnam to recapture the prized possession, doing so as Tripp dropped Putnam with a bayonet. But moments later, Jeffords fell wounded, shot in the thigh. Then, while wrestling Confederate Sergeant James L. Born for the colors, the Union colonel tore the flag from its staff and tried to get away, only to find himself surrounded by a sizable gray presence. Refusing to concede, Jeffords “cut down one or two Rebels” with his sword and then advanced on Sergeant Alonzo C. Adair, also of Cobb’s Legion. Adair countered by thrusting his bayonet into Jeffords, mortally wounding the intrepid colonel and securing the torn flag. Jeffords would be the highest-ranking officer to die by bayonet during the entire war. The flag itself was finally returned to Michigan in 1905. —S.F.

WOLVERINES IN THE WHEATFIELD A color bearer and cannon adorn the face of the 4th Michigan’s Wheatfield monument, marking the site where Jeffords was mortally wounded.

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a handful of the 62nd stood for their colors.

You can imagine the scene when I tell you that within a circle of twenty feet as many Rebs lay weltering in blood, bayoneted two and three times, and some with their heads split open by the stocks of the muskets. hile rounding up prisoners, Confederates came upon Private Jolly’s body.

Believing he was dead, they left him where he had fallen. Incredibly, Jolly was still alive. Found by Union soldiers, he was taken prisoner and eventually recovered in a Union prison hospital before being released in May 1864. Though discharged for his disabilities, Jolly did not stay out of the war—he and his family were captured as spies in 1865. Similarly, Private Bowser survived the ordeal and recovered in a Confederate prison and was paroled with his cousin, Monks, in September 1863.

Although Lt. Col. Elihu S. Barclay was nominally the Phillips’ Legion’s commander at Gettysburg, he had been sidelined by wounds during the march toward Pennsylvania and was out of action, which left Major Hamilton in command during the battle. In a report to Wofford, Hamilton claimed his regiment had captured two

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flags in the Wheatfield—information the general included in his afteraction report of August 14, 1863: I enclose a note from Major Hamilton Com’ding Phillips Legion in which he states that the colors captured by his command have been sent to Gov Brown of Geo. The incidents relating to their capture is as follows. Two stands of colors were captured, one of them by private Alfred Norris Co E which he carried to the rear and delivered to a Lieut. who claimed to be of Barksdale’s Brigade & who was wounded and sent to the hospital carrying the Flag with him which is supposed to be still in his possession. The other stand was captured by Private E J Smith of Co E & was also carried to the rear and handed to a Lieut. of Frazier’s [Fraser’s] Battery but was returned when the Battle was over and has now been sent to the Gov. of Geo. The wounded officer to whom Norris claimed to have given Corporal Funk’s captured Pittsburgh flag was not from Barksdale’s Brigade, however. It actually was Barksdale’s fellow brigade commander in McLaws’ Division, Brig.

Gen. Paul Jones Semmes—who, like Barksdale, was mortally wounded during the fighting that day. Semmes was shot in the thigh as he led a charge but remained determined not to leave the field until the fighting was finished.

One of Semmes’ officers, Major Peter A.S. McGlashen of the 50th Georgia, discussed Semmes’ wounding in postwar speeches to Confederate veterans in 1898 and 1899. McGlashen initially claimed, “Gen. Semmes [was] shot through the thigh, fell beside a large boulder whence we dragged him out and sent him to the rear, with a captured flag,” but elaborated in an 1899 speech, “General Semmes fell shot through the thigh and was sent to the rear on a captured Pennsylvania flag.” McGlashen’s comment in his second speech was certainly an embellishment, as Major Samuel P. Hamilton of Cabell’s Artillery Battalion reported seeing Semmes carried from the field, but not on the flag itself.

Just before 7 p.m., Hamilton was standing next to one of the guns of the Pulaski (Georgia) Artillery—commanded by Captain John C. Fraser, who had been mortally wounded—when he spotted the severely wounded General Semmes.

Hamilton would write:

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PRISON CRAFTSMAN Private Thomas Bowser (left) survived two serious wounds while defending the 62nd’s flags and spent two months in captivity. He occupied his time in prison crafting keepsakes, such as this remarkable bone ring, complete with detailed etched depictions of the U.S. flag and the 5th Corps’ Maltese Cross.

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I was standing at the gun where the gallant [Fraser] had just been struck down, when I

observed a wounded man being borne from the field in a blanket. By the number of attendants, I soon perceived that it was an officer of rank and in a moment after recognized that officer as Gen. Semmes. Almost at the same instant he saw me, and called me to him, whither I had already started. I found him weak and exhausted shot through the thigh….

He caused himself to be lowered into a reeling position, and his eyes brightening with a fire of particular brightness, he said: “Major Hamilton, I am glad to see you…”

Apparently, one of Semmes’ attendants had given the captured flag to one of Fraser’s lieutenants while Semmes spoke to Hamilton. That officer had returned it to Phillips’ Legion after the battle, and in turn Major Joseph Hamilton (commanding Phillips’ Legion) sent it to the governor GEORGIA COMMANDER of Georgia. After the war, it was turned over to Shot in the thigh as his Georgia the U.S. government. brigade attacked toward the Where that flag is today is unknown. In his Wheatfield, Maj. Gen. Paul J. Semmes book Advance the Colors, Richard A. Sauers remained in action as long as possible wrote that as of 1987 the 62nd’s “Pittsburgh before being carried from the field. He flag” was on display at the Erie County Library would die six days later. The coat he System. There has been no specific reference wore in battle (right) is on display at regarding its whereabouts since then, however. the American Civil War Museum.

Interestingly, Company A was not the only unit in the regiment presented a flag by local groups in 1861. Companies M and H also enjoyed that distinction, but it dislocated all of the Confederacy there was in because the regiment was authorized to carry only two flags, those banners it and it was gradually oozing out onto the ground for the flies to diagnose. It was said he were kept back home for safe keeping. Company H’s was never used in battle, but in 1909, Company M’s flag was presented to the town of Holiwas the man that stabbed Colonel Jeffords.” daysburg, Pa. Since it had battle scars, it was likely the one that replaced the In his speech at the 62nd Pennsylvania’s monPittsburgh flag captured at Gettysburg. Until 1963, it had hung in the halls ument dedication in September 1889, Lieutenant Patterson summed up what Sweitzer’s of a local school in Holidaysburg before being taken down and stored in a Brigade had achieved more than a quarterjanitor’s closet. The janitor apparently had been told to dispose of it but never followed through. Found in 2015, it was restored and then rededicentury earlier. cated at the regiment’s monument on July 2, 2017.

Fortunately, the Bettie Black Flag was never lost and now resides at the The brigade was now nearly surrounded and state capitol in Harrisburg. in a very perilous situation. Attacked in front, right and rear, its chances of extricating itself n July 4, burial crews began preparing battlefield graves for the fallen were anything but good. Gen. Barnes of both North and South. Private James Houghton of Company K of exclaimed: “There goes the Second Brigade: the 4th Michigan went to find the body of his friend and tent mate, we may as well bid it goodbye.” But it was not the first time the Second Brigade had James Johnston, who had been killed 40 yards south of where the fight with Colonel Jeffords took place. His friend’s knapsack and haversack still lay on been in critical positions, and by good judgthe ground next to the spot stained with blood where he had died, but the ment and indomitable pluck came out burial party had already laid him in a grave next to a large rock. alright. The command was terribly exposed Johnston’s grave site was near where the horrific fight for the 62nd’s colin the open field, while our enemies had the ors had taken place. The bodies lay thick here. On the banks of the trench, cover of the woods. The men’s blood was up, and they fought with desperate resolution.…

Houghton noticed the body of a Confederate sergeant. He incorrectly believed that it was the soldier who had bayoneted Colonel Jeffords of the 4th Michigan, Sergeant Alonzo C. Adair of Company D, Cobb’s Legion.

But Adair had survived the ordeal untouched. The body was actually Charles Quinn of Company B, Phillips’ Legion—the sergeant who had This is Scott Fink’s second Gettysburg article for Civil War Times. He is the author of “Behind the clashed with Corporal Gardner for possession of the Bettie Black Flag.

Barricade” about the Devil’s Den Sharpshooter “On the bank near the trench lay a large Rebel sergeant,” Houghton mystery, which ran in our June 2018 issue. wrote, “one of our Minnie balls had passed through his head so quick that

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INNER CIRCLE In June 1864, photographer Mathew Brady captured several images of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant (left) and staff at Cold Harbor, Va., including this one of two of his most trusted officers, Brig. Gen. John A. Rawlins (seated) and Col. Theodore “Joe” Bowers.

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MAN IN THE

SHADOWS JOHN RAWLINS MAY BE

THE

MOST IMPORTANT UNION OFFICER

YOU HAVE NEVER HEARD OF

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BY ALLEN J. OT T ENS

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uring the last half of December 1861, allegations were buzzing about Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s uncontrolled drinking. No one was sure who started the malicious rumors. Perhaps it was some of the crooked contractors and suppliers who wanted to retaliate because Grant was thwarting their schemes to defraud the government. Perhaps the stories were planted by detractors who second-guessed Grant’s decision in November to pick a fight with Confederates at Belmont on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River across from Columbus, Ky. Whoever was responsible knew resurrecting suspicions about his drinking would strike him where he was most vulnerable. The commotion precipitated a mini-flurry of correspondence—three letters from three people—urging an uncovering of the facts and ascertaining if the general might prove too incapacitated to carry out duties at his district headquarters at Cairo, Ill. In succession the correspondents were: an alarmed businessman who alerted a congressman who aroused a staff officer who, in turn, assured the congressman. All three of the correspondents, as well as the subject of their correspondence, had ties to Galena, Ill., a town in the lead mining region of northwest Illinois.

The businessman was Benjamin H. Campbell, originally from Virginia and residing since 1835 in Galena. A prosperous merchant and owner of a packet line doing trade on the upper Mississippi River, Campbell had just returned from a trip to St. Louis where worrisome stories circulated about Grant. On December 17, he sent a letter to his congressman with dire news: “I am sorry to hear from good authority, that Gnl Grant is drinking very hard, had you better write to Rawlins to know the fact.”

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it would not sit well with him. However, Washburne’s letter “astounded” Rawlins, and he took several days before penning his reply, which was a lengthy and impassioned defense of his commanding officer.

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IF GRANT WERE CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM

The congressman, Republican Elihu ON MAIN STREET Washburne, had come west and in 1840 setAt the outbreak of the war, tled in Galena where he became a prominent Grant and Rawlins both lived lawyer and was elected in 1852 to his first and worked in Galena, Ill. term in Congress. He was a flinty, ascetic Grant at his father’s leather New Englander by birth, who neither drank, store, above, and Rawlins smoked, nor chewed, who spurned attena block away as an attorney. dance at theatrical performances, and who was a foe of any swindler out to hoodwink the U.S. government. Washburne was also an intimate of President Lincoln—so close that when plots against President-Elect Lincoln’s life forced a change in his train schedule through Baltimore, Washburne was the only one to greet him at the Washington railroad platform. The congressman was understandably interested in these drinking rumors because earlier in the year he was influential in having fellow Galena resident, Grant, included in the first batch of newly minted brigadiers appointed from Illinois.

Immediately upon receipt of Campbell’s letter, Washburne dashed off his own on December 21 to Captain John A. Rawlins, Grant’s assistant adjutant general in Cairo, requesting an explanation.

Rawlins was also a Galena lawyer—he had lived in or nearby Galena all his life—and the town’s most prominent Democrat. It is telling that, despite their differing political perspectives, Rawlins was the person Washburne should first consult. He knew well of Rawlins’ patriotic fervor, that he was steadfastly abstemious, and a man of unquestioned probity and uncompromising values. If Grant were tippling, Rawlins would know, and

awlins made several points in his letter, among them: a categorical denial of Benjamin Campbell’s statement about General Grant’s hard drinking (“ut[t]erly untrue and could have originated only in malice”). A tally of virtually each of the few instances in which alcohol in strictly modest amounts touched Grant’s lips since Rawlins had joined him at Cairo (e.g., “on one or two occasions he drank a glass of [champagne] with his friends”).

Testimony to Grant’s resolute attention to the duties of his command (e.g., “Ever since I have been with Genl. Grant he has sent his reports in his own hand writing to Saint Louis daily when there was a matter to report”). And an allusion to scurrilous cheats who wanted to strike back at Grant and cause him injury (“That General Grant has enemys [sic] no one could doubt, who knows how much effort he has made to guard against & ferret out frauds in his District”).

Rawlins ended the letter with a heartfelt self-disclosure and then a pledge to Washburne: “No one can feel a greater interest in General Grant than I do; I regard his interest as my interest, all that concerns his reputation concerns me; I love him as I love a father, I respect him because I have studied him well, and the more I know him the more I respect and love him.” What Rawlins is disclosing here is his devotion to Grant and how he has come to regard Grant as a man worthy of his personal investment. This is meant to reassure Washburne that he, Rawlins, is a man who has Grant’s best interests—which are his interests as well—at heart. It is not heroworshipping; nor is it Rawlins viewing Grant as a father figure. It is definitely not Rawlins engaging in a repudiation of his own father for his presumed shortcomings.

In closing, Rawlins pledged “that should General Grant at any time become an intemperate man or an habitual drunkard, I will notify you

NATIONAL ARCHIVES; MELISSA A. WINN COLLECTION

CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM

PETERSBURG SIEGE NERVE CENTER Grant’s staff at City Point, Va., included several loyal members who served with him throughout the war, including Rawlins, left of Grant, and Colonel Ely Parker, fourth from right, an American Indian, also from Galena, Ill.

immediately, will ask to be removed from duty on his staff (kind as he has been to me) or resign my commission.” There would be no coverup

by Rawlins if Grant wavered. When he vowed to be Washburne’s eyes and ears in the field, he was not making an empty promise: Rawlins was almost like a divining rod in detecting the presence of ardent spirits in camp and, as he showed in this letter, he could recite chapter and verse of each instance when Grant hoisted a glass.

To his credit, Rawlins shared his reply with Grant before sending it to Washburne. There would be no colluding with a congressman behind Grant’s back. Moreover, this written show of support helped assuage some of the mortification Grant was feeling as a result of the spurious allegations. A grateful Grant pored over the letter, then nodded his assent, “Yes, that’s right; exactly right. Send it by all means.”

Rawlins’ powerful letter succeeded in defusing this threat to Grant’s character and fitness to command. It wasn’t the first threat, and there would be more.

RISING STAR This handsome 1862 portrait of Rawlins shows the promising young officer before tuberculosis began to ravage his body.

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he story of John Aaron Rawlins is intertwined with the history of Galena and the man, Ulysses S. Grant, whom he loyally served as assistant adjutant general, chief of staff, and finally secretary of war. Grant had lived in Galena for a year before the Civil War commenced. There he came into contact with a number of men, and after receiving a general’s commission, he invited several of them to complement his staff. These were men with whom Grant felt comfortable and whom he could trust, Rawlins above all. Regarding his AUGUST 2021 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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feelings for Rawlins, Grant in later life revealed in his Memoirs, “I became very much attached to him.” Years earlier in a letter to Congressman Washburne, he shared his opinion regarding Rawlins’ capabilities as an officer:

During the Siege of Vicksburg, General Grant and his staff took up headquarters on the first floor of the Lum House, a mansion owned by a wealthy businessman. The Confederate-sympathizing Lum family resided on the upper floors and their Connecticut-born governess, Mary “Emma” Hurlburt, acted as a liaison between the family and Union officers. It was there that Rawlins and Hurlburt would spark a romance that resulted in their December 23, 1863, marriage. It was the second marriage for Rawlins. On August 30, 1861, John Rawlins’ wife, Emily, died of tuberculosis, leaving him a widower with three small children.

When tuberculosis also took the life of John Rawlins at the age of 38 in 1869, his children were now orphaned. Although Emma assumed the responsibility of their care, Rawlins named Grant his executor and guardian of his children, a responsibility he tended to carefully for the rest of his life. On May 11, 1870, President Grant signed legislation appropriating the remainder of Rawlins’ salary for his term as secretary of war to the executors of his estate. He was also one of several donors to raise $50,000 for his estate. When Emma returned to Connecticut with the three children in 1870, Grant paid for a new home out of Rawlins’ fund and assumed a hands-on role in the financial details of the family, including renting out the Rawlins’ Washington, D.C., home and disbursing the rent to pay for the children’s educational expenses.

When Emma remarried in 1872, she forfeited her income from the fund, and Grant worked with Rawlins’ brother, William, to relocate the children to live with relatives. In November 1874, Emma passed away, and another uncle of the children was appointed a guardian. In July 1875, Grant appointed James, Rawlins’ oldest child and only son, to West Point. He was dismissed from West Point in 1876 for deficiencies, likely due to James’ poor health from epilepsy, but Grant wrote a personal letter to financier Edwin D. Morgan recommending him for a job.

Disabled by seizures and failing health, James spent most of the last 20 years of his life at a colony for epileptics in New York.

The youngest Rawlins child, Emily, was also plagued by chronic health problems and died at the age of 30. When Rawlins’ daughter Jane married in 1882, Grant sent a congratulatory telegram. In 1898, James applied for a small government pension, which Julia Grant, more than a decade after Grant’s death and carrying on his devotion to the Rawlins family, supported. —Melissa A. Winn 42

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FAMILY TIES

Rawlins performed a host of invaluable tasks for Grant besides writing reports and handling and organizing his files and documents. These included issuing orders for Grant, serving as his emissary on certain delicate missions, offering input on strategy decisions as well as staff business, and possessing the vehement assertive qualities in making personnel and policy choices that his confrontation-averse commander avoided.

Rawlins’ value to Grant as confidant, administrator, adviser, and loyal staffer cannot be denied.

Colonel Ely Parker, Grant’s military secretary who knew both men dating back to prewar Galena, once told Washburne that Rawlins was “absolutely indispensible [sic] to General Grant....I am also very confident that General Grant’s continued success, will, to a great extent, depend upon his retaining General Rawlins as his privy counsellor or right hand man.”

Although Rawlins is not well-known today, he was a near constant presence at Grant’s command headquarters. Theirs was a trusted friendship as well as close working relationship. As historian E.B. Long noted, “They were quite inseparable during much of the war, and this was undoubtedly not entirely because of their relationship in the army command.” Regarding how connected they were, Long went on, “When one studies and records the rise of Grant through the winter of 1861–1862, through the capture of Fort Donelson, the controversial Battle of Shiloh, the area command in the summer of 1862, and the early abortive but important moves against Vicksburg, one is studying simultaneously the career of John Aaron Rawlins.”

However, to many Rawlins is known as Grant’s protector—the staffer who insulated him from untrustworthy aides, grafters, and fellow general officers who wished to promote themselves at Grant’s expense—or as the adviser who functioned as an alter ego, that is, providing a counterbalance to some of Grant’s natural ten-

MELISSA A. WINN COLLECTION

Rawlins especially is no ordinary man. The fact is had he started in the Line there is every probability he would be today one of our shining lights. As it is he is better than probably any other officer in the Army who has filled only staff appointments. Some men, to[o] many of them, are only made by their Staff appointments whilst others give respectability to the position. Rawlins is of the latter class.

HOMETOWN HEROES Galena’s esteemed 45th Illinois “Washburne Lead Mine Regiment,” was granted the honor of raising its national flag over the Vicksburg courthouse after the city’s fall. dencies: where Grant eschewed conflict, Rawlins had no trouble expressing his displeasure or laying down the law, and where Grant could be trusting at times to a fault, Rawlins’ initial inclination was often to be suspicious of motives. Rawlins’ reputation as the scold who kept Grant sober is unwarranted.

Grant, the general, did drink on occasion during the war—and he did not hold his drink well—but rarely to excess and not in a way to blemish his record. Much more often, the problem of Grant’s drinking revolved around the stories that circulated about his overfondness for alcohol and gossip about the trouble it brought him during his pre-Civil War military career; those rumors and doubts hung over him like a cloud and made for ammunition that could be used by men who disliked him or who could profit if he failed. Given that reputation, Grant operated as if under a microscope: Were his military decisions made while under the influence? Were troublemakers abetting his taste for alcohol? At every social event at which drinks were served, attendees kept close watch to see (and often report) if he abstained or imbibed.

John Rawlins did not control Grant’s drinking—it could be argued that he did not need a nag or scold to maintain his sobriety while fighting Confederates.

But Rawlins provided two things that benefited Grant: the shield of a “temperance zone” that enveloped Grant and a loyalist’s zeal. The presence of a temperance zone reassured Grant’s supporters (“If Rawlins is policing the camp, it must be as dry as the Sahara”) and kept critics at bay. Rawlins as the loyal staffer ran stout downfield interference to keep Grant moving to the goal line. Whether Rawlins proved more helpful to Grant as protector/alter ego than as a hard-working adjutant/chief of staff is open to debate. Grant would have agreed more with the latter.

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espite Grant’s expressed appreciation, fondness, and respect for John Rawlins, it remains a mystery why Grant only made mention of Rawlins three times in his famed Memoirs. Perhaps it was a simple omission on Grant’s part; or intentionally done to keep from stirring up old stories about Rawlins as his protector. At the time of the publication of the Memoirs, mutual friends struggled to explain the oversight and found it hurtful to Rawlins’ memory. Ely Parker was one such mutual friend who felt for Rawlins and wondered if the omission could be attributed to Grant harboring a grudge against Rawlins for having supposedly opposed William Sherman’s campaign through Georgia

RAWLINS PERFORMED A HOST OF

TASKS

INVALUABLE FOR

GRANT

MERITORIOUS SERVICE On April 9, 1865, Rawlins was appointed a major general in the U.S. Army for his role during the war. He resigned from the Army in 1869 to serve as Grant’s secretary of war.

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COMIC RELIEF Why is the tail clearly drawn on Rawlins’ beloved horse in this image taken at City Point, Va.? It’s a funny story. Rawlins and Grant enjoyed a close friendship that at times could provide an amusing reprieve from the stresses of war. Such was the case when Rawlins’ prized horse met with a comical mishap. The bay horse had been a gift from Galena friends to commemorate Rawlins’ appointment to Grant’s staff in August 1861. Rawlins was known to be particularly fond of its lavishly long tail. One morning, Rawlins found the tail had been reduced to a two-inch stub. At the sight of it, the excitable Rawlins raged and declared that should he ever find the enemy who did it, he would shoot him. An amused Grant, through fits of laughter, explained that the “enemy” was likely not human, but an army mule that had munched the tail off. “Well, general,” Rawlins replied with exasperation, “I hope that some night a mule will eat off the tail of your old yellow horse—and then see how you’ll like it.”

For months, Grant laughed at the sight of it when he found himself riding behind Rawlins.

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MELISSA A. WINN COLLECTION; PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

Speculation runs wild about the motivations behind Ulysses S. Grant’s failure to mention John Rawlins but a mere three times in his two-volume Personal Memoirs, Grant’s devotion to his friend and comrade are evident in his efforts to memorialize Rawlins in Washington, D.C. Shortly after Rawlins’ death in 1869, efforts began to erect a monument to the general and late secretary of war. Still stalled in 1872, then-President Grant wrote a letter to Congress to address the delay and on June 10, 1872, he signed into law a congressional bill appropriating $10,000 to erect the statue.

Joseph A. Bailly, a popular French-born American sculptor, was chosen to design and create the monument. The eight-foot bronze statue depicts Rawlins in uniform, holding a pair of field glasses in his right hand and a sword in his left.

It stands tall atop a 12-foot pedestal. The bronze used for the statue was cast from Confederate cannons captured during the Civil War. In November 1874, the monument was installed in Rawlins Park on E street between 18th and 19th streets NW. It is one of only a few Civil War monuments in Washington, D.C., that are not equestrian sculptures. It was moved several times as the city’s development expanded around the turn of the century, but in 1931 was returned to its original location, where it stands today at the head of a reflecting pool, paying tribute not only to the man it depicts but also to the friendship that ensured its creation. —Melissa A. Winn

TOP: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; BOTTOM: PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

HIGH ESTEEM

and even going to Washington behind Grant’s back to sabotage it. Parker expressed his feelings to John C. Smith, then lieutenant governor of Illinois and a fellow Galenian: [Rawlins] certainly did conspicuous and meritorious services to his Chief and his country as A.A.G. [Assistant Adjutant General] and Chief of Staff. He builded [sic] and saved much for which no credit is awarded him. No one could have been more true and loyal to his Chief and country than he, and yet he gets only faint praise from Grant in his Memoirs...he almost charges him with disloyalty to himself, an imputation, which, even if true should have been omitted or not referred to....It was, in my judgment, a grave and serious error, which the true friends of both will never cease to regret. If Rawlins was opposed to Sherman’s campaign to the sea, it was from conscientious motives with no desire or intent to thwart Grant in his plans or wishes.

In truth, Rawlins did have some initial misgivings about Sherman’s plan, misgivings that had ample face validity. He did not play the role of an obstructionist, however, and it was not his style to do an “end run” around his superior. Rawlins’ gesture to share with Grant the letter he sent to Washburne illustrates that point.

MELISSA A. WINN COLLECTION; PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

TOP: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; BOTTOM: PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

R

awlins and Grant established a geographical connection at Galena, a river town in a mining region that produced a bevy of politicians, jurists, wealthy entrepreneurs, high-ranking military officers, and memorable personalities far out of proportion to its size. John Rawlins was one of Galena’s most revered sons.

He spent his first 30 years or about three-quarters of his brief life in Galena and surrounding Jo Daviess County, rarely venturing beyond its borders. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Rawlins was a rising political and professional figure. He was a successful lawyer and civic leader who towered over the reticent and generally reclusive Grant. But before achieving prominence, Rawlins was a product of the Jo Daviess hills, its hardwood forests, meandering streams, and rich mineral deposits. He burned the wood to produce the charcoal that smelted the ore that yielded fortunes in pig lead. To a generation of townspeople, John Rawlins was known as the “Galena Coal Boy.” He ended his life as Grant’s indispensable man.

Al Ottens is Emeritus Professor of Counselor Education and Supervision at Northern Illinois University, and past president of The Manuscript Society.

He has written several articles for the society’s quarterly journal, Manuscripts, on Civil War topics, including “Forging Loyalty: The Curious Case of Williamson R.W. Cobb,” the story of perhaps the earliest known forgery of Abraham Lincoln’s signature.

HIS SERVICE REMEMBERED Those who served with Rawlins knew his importance.

The Grand Army of the Republic’s first Washington, D.C., post adopted his name in tribute when it organized on October 12, 1866. Post members wore ribbons like this one at special events, and they were undoubtedly donned on February 8, 1899, when, at the behest of the post, Rawlins’ remains were transferred from Congressional Cemetery to a more befitting plot at Arlington National Cemetery. “The fame of Rawlins has not gone trumpet-tongued all over the earth,” said his eulogist that day. “…But with his contemporaries and comrades there dwelt a full appreciation of what he did and what he was.

Among their survivors his memory is cherished with a gratitude that is imperishable.”

This article is adapted from General John A. Rawlins: No Ordinary Man, by Allen J. Ottens, published by Indiana University Press, 2021.

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The war in their words

‘Expect No Help’ After years of speculation, modern code-breakers

translated a Vicksburg

message in a bottle d

BY CATHERINE M. WRIGHT

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THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM

DECODER RING From 1862 on, Confederate agents used a Vigenère cipher, deciphered by a disc like this one. That cipher replaced the simpler Caesar cipher used when the war began.

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM

n early July 1863, seven miles of Confederate earthworks, more than 70,000 United States troops, a fleet of Federal gunboats, and the muddy Mississippi River stand between a Confederate courier and his intended recipient, Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton. The dispatch he bears is unusual. It is tightly rolled, tied with a piece of cotton thread, and inserted into a small cork-stoppered glass bottle along with a .36-caliber pistol bullet. ¶ As the courier draws nears Vicksburg, however, he learns—perhaps from the sight of white flags planted atop Confederate earthworks, a glimpse of a United States flag flying over the city courthouse, or just a breathless explanation from another Confederate soldier—that Pemberton has surrendered the city to Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, bringing an end to the 47-day siege. ¶ Concluding either that he is unable to deliver the dispatch or that the situation had changed so materially as to render its delivery moot, the courier turns and begins to make his way back to his commanding officer, the unopened bottle still tucked in his pocket. ¶ It will take another 30 years for the dispatch finally to be delivered, although into different hands than those originally intended and far from Vicksburg, and more than a century beyond that before it is finally read.

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM

CORKED CASTAWAY For decades, the mysterious note stayed corked up. A lead bullet had been placed in the bottle to help it sink if it had to be thrown in a watercourse to keep it out of Federal hands.

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This statement is frustrating for several reasons. One wishes that Smith had given some indication as to the content of the message, although it may have been that he did not remember or had never known it. The final sentence, however, suggests he knew more about the dispatch than he let on.

But, as far as modern museum staff are aware, he never sent a key.

Museum personnel placed the still-sealed bottle in a display case. For more than 100 years, it remained on exhibit, consigned to relative obscurity by its diminutive size. By the late 20th century, the museum, then known as the Museum of the Confederacy, provided an exhibition label paraphrasing Smith’s statement and concluding with the sentence, “The message has never been opened.”

Was there any reason, however, that the bottle should remain sealed and the message unread?

Museum staff had long speculated about the contents of the message and what it might reveal about the Siege of Vicksburg, but collections staff were concerned that any such effort could damage or even destroy the artifact.

They could all too easily envision the cork crumbling, the bottle shattering, the fragile slip of paper disintegrating. It seemed safest not to tamper with it.

By 2008, however, collections staff wondered if modern conservation techniques would enable such an attempt. Since the first question was whether the bottle could safely be opened, they identified a conservator with prior experience opening hundreds of old corked bottles. He agreed to assess the object and determine if efforts should proceed any further.

SIMPLY GIBBERISH? An expert freed the message from its bottle, allowing conservators to carefully unroll the brittle paper. Another challenge remained, as the coded text kept the message secret.

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LIBRARY COMPANY OF PHILADELPHIA; HARPER’S WEEKLY

Dispatch in a medicine phial with lead sinker sent by Genl. Jos. E. Johnston to Genl. Pemberton at Vicksburg in 1863. When the scout arrived at the Mississippi River, Vicksburg had fallen & the dispatch was brought back to Capt. W.A. Smith, AA, Genl. Walker’s Division, Texas Troops.

(The misplaced key to this dispatch will be sent in as soon as recovered.)

Following the delivery of the artifact to his studio, the conservator used a microscope to inspect the bottle for any cracks. He paid particular attention to the region of the neck where the cork was lodged, as this area would be subjected to the greatest amount of stress during the cork removal process. The glass appeared structurally sound, so he concluded that it was possible to open the bottle.

He eased a scalpel blade between the cork and the neck to test how tightly the cork was fitted.

Finding the cork bonded to the glass, possibly with an application of wax, he gently heated the bottle for a few seconds to expand the glass slightly and soften the wax. Then he used a scalpel to loosen the cork until it could be carefully extracted with tweezers. Finally he used the tweezers to extricate the dispatch from the bottle.

The brittle slip of paper clearly required professional expertise to unfurl it, having been so tightly rolled for so long. A paper conservator who examined the dispatch assumed that the message was written with iron gall ink, the standard ink used throughout the 19th century, and therefore decided to avoid any treatment involving humidification that could encourage corrosion. Instead, she proposed an incremental approach using gentle weights to slowly unroll and eventually flatten the message. This process would take time, so she offered to send a photograph of the message as soon as the text was visible.

Museum collections staff received an email from the conservator about one week later. They opened the attachment in great anticipation of

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM

A

mong the hundreds of items contributed to the newly opened Confederate Museum in Richmond, Va., in 1896 was a small glass bottle containing a paper cylinder and a bullet. Confederate veteran William A. Smith provided museum staff with a brief description of the item, which they logged in a donation ledger as follows:

reading a message unseen for nearly 150 years.

The text that appeared on their computer screens read: July 4th SEAN WIEUIIZH DTG CNP LBNXGK OZ BJQB FEQT FEQT XZBW JJOA TK FHR TPZWK PBW RYSQ VOWPZXGG OEPF EK UASFKIPW PLVO JKZ HMN NVAEUD XYE DWRJ BOYPA SX MLV FYYRDE LVPL MEYSIN XY FQEO NPK M OBPC FYXJFHOHT AS ETOV B OCAJDSVQU M ZTZV TPJY DAW FQTI WTTJ J DQGOAIA FLWHTXTI QMTR SEA LVLFLXFO.

LIBRARY COMPANY OF PHILADELPHIA; HARPER’S WEEKLY

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM

I

t was hugely disappointing. Most of the text was unintelligible, but at least the date was legible—and indicated that the dispatch had been written on the very day Pemberton surrendered Vicksburg. In some ways this made the message’s incomprehensibility even more maddening. What could Gen. Joseph E. Johnston have said to Pemberton in such dire circumstances? Could the contents of the message have potentially altered the siege’s outcome if the dispatch had been delivered?

The donation entry’s last line regarding a misplaced key finally made sense. Museum staff now knew what Smith had apparently known more than a century before: The message was written in cipher to protect its contents in the event of its capture by United States troops. Without the key, museum staff needed to crack the code before they could read the message.

The first step in decrypting the message was

to determine the method used to encode it.

GRANT TOOK HIS SEAT The obvious choice was a Caesar cipher, A native of Pennsylvania, since Confederates employed it from the Lt. Gen. John Pemberton, beginning of the war. A Caesar cipher is a left, was excoriated single-alphabet substitution method in throughout the South for which every letter in the text is replaced by losing Vicksburg to Maj. Gen. another letter shifted the same number of Ulysses S. Grant.

The positions to the left or right. For example, in drawing at right shows the a right shift of five, every “A” becomes “F”, generals meeting in the every “B” becomes “G”, and so on. It is a relatively easy method to decipher, since captured city. code-breakers can deduce a few of the most commonly occurring letters, then methodically work their way through the rest of the alphabet.

It soon became apparent, however, that whoever encrypted the Vicksburg message had used a more sophisticated method than the Caesar cipher. The most likely candidate was the Vigenère cipher, which Confederates used from 1862 on. Rather than the Caesar cipher’s single alphabet with a standard shift, a Vigenère cipher uses multiple interwoven alphabets with varying shifts. One needs to use a keyword or keyphrase in conjunction with a table of alphabets (sometimes called a Vigenère square) or cipher disk to encrypt or decrypt a Vigenère cipher.

It is tremendously difficult to crack a Vigenère cipher without knowing the keyword or using modern computers. The museum asked two cryptologists, one a retired U.S. Army cryptologist and the other a U.S. Navy information officer, to attempt to decrypt the dispatch in hopes that each would succeed and achieve the same result, thus providing independent confirmation of the message’s contents.

Fortunately for the cryptologists and the museum (to say nothing of the 1860s U.S. military), Confederates are known to have reused a handful of

the dispatch had been written

on the very day

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GRINDING AWAY From May 18 to July 4, 1863, even as Pemberton’s besieged Confederate troops fought off Federal assaults, the U.S. siege lines crept ever closer.

key phrases including “Complete Victory,” “Manchester Bluff,” and “Come Retribution.” The retired Army cryptologist, who also happened to be an expert on the Confederate Secret Service, knew this and tried plugging in keyphrases until one of them (“Manchester Bluff ”) worked. It took him less than one day to decipher the message. The Naval officer was not privy to this information but managed to crack the code after a couple weeks’ effort.

The decrypted text (with the addition of punctuation for clarity and correcting occasionally erroneous characters) reads:

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PEMBERTON’S BANE An uncommon image of Grant, taken around the time of his Vicksburg triumph.

Museum staff were elated to read the dispatch at long last. The sender was telling Pemberton that he could not directly assist him, although he might be able to create a diversion to enable Johnston to make such an attempt. The “caps” referred to were percussion caps for firearms. No additional “despatch” (an antiquated spelling variant of “dispatch”) was donated

by Smith, so historians can only speculate about what it may have said.

Something did not make sense, however, when the dispatch’s contents were considered alongside the statement Smith provided at the time of donation. He claimed Johnston was the sender, but the text twice references Johnston in the third person: first to exhort Pemberton to communicate

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; DANA B. SHOAF COLLECTION

July 4th Gen’l Pemberton you can expect no help from this side of the river. Let Gen’l Johnston know, if possible, when you can attack the same point on the enemy’s line. Inform me also and I will endeavor to make a diversion.

I have sent some caps. I subjoin despatch from Gen. Johnston.

directly with Johnston, then to identify Johnston as the author of a separate dispatch. This strongly implied that Smith was mistaken and some unknown Confederate officer was the real author.

Who else could have written it?

S

everal clues contained in Smith’s donation statement pointed to a likely candidate.

First, Smith said that “the dispatch was brought back to Capt. W.A. Smith, AA, Genl. Walker’s Division, Texas Troops.”

That the dispatch was returned to Smith suggests that it originated with him or his unit, which he helpfully identified as Walker’s Texas Division. Nicknamed “Walker’s Greyhounds” for their speed on foot, this division of 12 Texas regiments was commanded by Maj. Gen. John G. Walker of the Trans-Mississippi Department NO HELP, FROM EITHER DIRECTION from November 1862 until the end of the war.

The Vicksburg garrison got no assistance from Maj. Gen. John J. Walker, A further clue is offered in the dispatch’s left, west of the Mississippi and General Joe Johnston, right, east of it. opening line, which mentions “this side of the river.” It would seem unnecessary for the author to mention his location in relation to the Mississippi River since nearly all Walker learned of Vicksburg’s fate. It therefore Confederate units involved in the Siege of Vicksburg were stationed on seems that the courier returned sometime on or the east bank. The phrase would make much more sense, however, coming after July 7, otherwise he would have been the from someone on the west bank…someone like Walker. This would also one to break the news. explain why the dispatch was sealed in a bottle with a bullet, since a courier crossing the Mississippi might rely on the bottle to protect the mesothing Walker’s Texas Division could have done would have rescued Pembersage from water damage and the bullet to serve as a sinker in the event ton. Their best chance to stymie Grant that the bottle needed to be thrown into the river to prevent interception came before the siege began, but as by the enemy.

Walker wrote after the war, “The golden Spring and summer 1863 found Walker’s Texas Division caught between opportunity had been allowed to pass.” It the competing commands of Lt. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith and his subbecomes clear that the encrypted dispatch only ordinate Maj. Gen. Richard Taylor, crisscrossing northern Louisiana and served to underscore the hopeless situation in engaging in various fruitless attempts to thwart Grant. In mid-April, Smith ordered them to proceed to Monroe, La., some 70 miles west of Vicksburg, which Western Theater Confederates found where they could strike Grant’s army as it straggled down the west riverthemselves in early July 1863. bank. But Smith soon changed his mind and redirected them to assist TayToday the dispatch is preserved in the same manner it was presented to the museum: rolled lor against Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks, thus missing a chance to foil up, secured with thread, and sealed within the Grant’s designs on Vicksburg.

In late May, Smith sent the Texans to attack Grant’s supply lines and stoppered glass bottle. It is back on display at the attempt to relieve Pemberton’s army, now besieged within Vicksburg. Taylor museum’s latest iteration, the American Civil then ordered Walker to deploy a brigade to attack Federals at Milliken’s War Museum, accompanied by a photograph of Bend, 10 miles northwest of Vicksburg. Walker sent Brig. Gen. Henry E. the encrypted dispatch and an exhibit label that McCulloch’s Brigade, which engaged Union troops on June 7. The battle— credits Walker as its author. Hopefully, he would notable as being among the first major engagements involving Federal be pleased that the museum’s efforts to read a message he wrote 146 years earlier resulted in African American troops—came too late to have any effect, for Grant had bringing some attention to the role he and his already moved his lines east of the river.

Walker’s Greyhounds spent most of the next few weeks roaming between division played in the Vicksburg Campaign.

Milliken’s Bend and Lake Providence, hindering Federal communications and raiding cotton plantations leased by Northern businessmen. Smith, still harboring hope that there was some way to assist Pemberton, charged Walker with reaching the city from the west. On July 3, Walker replied to Catherine M. Wright was curator at the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Va., from Smith from Delhi, La., declaring that “no part of my command would 2008-2019, and the principal researcher and escape capture or destruction if such an attempt should be made.” writer for the museum’s permanent exhibition, It is probable that Walker was still in Delhi the following morning when A People’s Contest: Struggles for Nation and he wrote his discouraging dispatch to Pemberton. On July 5, still oblivious Freedom in Civil War America. She currently to the preceding day’s momentous events, Smith ordered Walker to proceed resides in Edinburgh, Scotland. to the river to attack Federal vessels. Another two days passed before

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IN GOD

WE TRUST George B. McClellan

is accused of character defects and

mental illness

for his

Religious beliefs.

But those views were not unique

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DEAR LORD Officers of the 69th New York and civilian visitors gather to hear Father Thomas H. Mooney deliver a camp service in 1863.

Soldiers of all ranks attributed victory and defeat to God’s will.

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n September 2, 1862, shortly HEAVENLY GAZE after the disastrous defeat of Backed by a rapturous Union Maj. Gen. John Pope at cloudscape, Maj. Gen. Second Bull Run, President Abraham LinGeorge McClellan stands coln found himself musing about God’s purdeep in thought. Such pose regarding the present crisis facing the period illustrations were United States. In a short essay titled “Mediintentionally crafted to tation on the Divine Will” he wrote for his suggest commanders were personal use, Lincoln sought to explain Geninstruments of Heaven. eral Pope’s failure as an act of God. “The will of God prevails,” began Lincoln.

“In great contest each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God.” Here, Lincoln grappled with the age-old paradox of both combatants claiming to have God on their side. As the president observed, however, “Both may be, and one must be wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time.” One side must be right, one side must be wrong, but which? The answer was unfathomable: “In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party.” Unfathomable or not, there had to be some plan on God’s part because “the human instrumentalities, working as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect his purpose.” This statement bespeaks of

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

istorians frequently state that Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan suffered from a messianic complex and that he alone believed he had been called by God to save the Union. McClellan’s religious beliefs are often presented as a character flaw, personality disorder, or psychological malady. A quick look at the historiography of the general reveals that belief began with his contemporaries. In an 1894 article for Century Magazine, James B. Fry, formerly on McClellan’s staff, wrote, “The belief that he had been called to ‘save the country’ had seized upon him....[T]he strong religious element of his character served to fasten the conviction and blind him to the obligations and influences which governed him at other times.

Under the power of this hallucination he was insensible of his own weaknesses and errors.”

Modern historians have agreed with Fry’s assessment. In his 1952 book, Lincoln and His Generals, T. Harry Williams bluntly stated that McClellan “developed a Messianic complex.”

James B. McPherson echoed that in his 1988 Pulitzer Prize–winning Battle Cry of Freedom, claiming that “McClellan’s letters to his wife revealed the beginnings of a messiah complex.”

That same year, in his biography, George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon, Stephen W. Sears offered: “Taking the role of God’s chosen instrument might be dismissed as nothing more than a harmless conceit but for the effects it produced on his generalship. It was at once the prop for his insecurity and the shield for his convictions. With Calvinistic fatalism he believed his path to be the chosen path, anyone who raised criticisms or objections...was at best ignorant and misguided and at worst a traitor.”

Did the commander use God to escape responsibility, rationalize, or offer excuses for failure? Was he unique in that regard? To the secular mind of the 21st century, professing to be God’s chosen instrument appears to be conceited behavior or a self-righteous delusion.

These judgments may seem plausible when viewed through the vacuum of modern skepticism; however, as we shall see, for citizens of the mid-19th century the notion of consigning oneself over to God’s will was a common principle in all Christian denominations. The following examples will prove Little Mac was not alone in his thoughts.

LINCOLN GRAPPLED WITH BOTH COMBATANTS CLAIMING TO HAVE GOD ON THEIR SIDE predestination: human beings, and their actions, are reduced to instruments of God’s will.

“I am almost ready to say this is probably true, that God wills this contest,” continued Lincoln, “and wills that it shall not end yet.” The war would continue because God had willed there be a contest, and as far as Lincoln could tell the outcome was still in the hand of God. The Union could win or lose; it was up to God. He ended his musings with the simple observation that God “could give the final victory to either side any day.” In this secret meditation, Lincoln sought to find some divine meaning to the recent unfortunate turn of events. The best the President could deduce was that he was one instrument of many fulfilling God’s purpose, and whatever the outcome, it was in the hands of God. Although he never formally joined any church, Lincoln grew up in a highly religious Baptist family. The president attended Protestant church services with his wife and children. Lincoln’s religious beliefs, such as they were, must be viewed within the context of his religious experience and time. “Mainstream Protestant morality was dominated by various forms and nuances of predestination doctrine,” observed historian Thomas J. Rowland, “particularly as it related to man’s need to submit to the will of God.”

PRAY FOR VICTORY President Abraham Lincoln reads from a large Bible to his son, Tad. Below is the Bible he used to take the presidential oath at his March 4, 1861, inauguration.

Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump also used the Bible at their inauguration ceremonies.

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incoln’s experience was not unique.

Religious belief permeated the rank and file of both armies from the lowly private to the commanding general.

Many unit commanders led their men in prayer before taking them into battle and soldiers often referred to their first combat experience as their baptism of fire. It was not unusual to march into battle with Bibles, rosaries, or some other religious artifact tucked in their pockets. Major Frederick L. Hitchcock with the 132nd Pennsylvania, during his first taste of combat at Antietam’s Bloody Lane, no doubt expressed the common feeling of many soldiers when he wrote, “How does one feel under such conditions….I said to myself, ‘this is the duty I undertook to perform for my country, and now I’ll do it, and leave the results with God.’” Confederate General Robert E. Lee was formally confirmed in the Episcopal Church. Lee AUGUST 2021 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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believed that battles were determined by God.” When his plans failed in western Virginia in 1861, Lee declared, “I had taken every precaution to insure success…but the Ruler of the Universe willed otherwise.” To explain the awful Confederate casualties inflicted at Malvern Hill during the Seven Days, Lee is on the record as offering the rationalization, “God knows what is best for us.”

Lee often interpreted defeat as punishment by God. If one were inclined to use religious belief as the basis for a psychological malady, one could arguably use the forgoing to make the claim that Robert E. Lee suffered a persecution complex at the hands of God. But just the opposite is true. Lee was often portrayed in the 19th century as the personification of the Christian Gentleman.

And then there is the war’s most famous religious general, Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. Henry Kyd Douglas, one of his greatest advocates, described him as a “quiet Christian gentleman,” but added, “he was a Pres-

IN GOD’S HANDS This painting portrays “Stonewall” Jackson praying with his chaplain, the Reverend Beverly Tucker Lacy, in December 1862.

Jackson’s religious fervor is celebrated, while McClellan’s has been disdained.

“GENERAL AND HIS CHAPLAIN” BY DALE GALLON, WWW.GALLON.COM

was renowned for his piety, including his total commitment to Divine Providence: the governance by which God controls, among other things, the activities of nations and human destiny. The Army of Northern Virginia commander believed that God intervened in the affairs of men and that God’s will was a more determining factor in success or failure than men’s abilities. In a prewar letter to his disappointed wife, during a time of slow promotion, Lee wrote, “We are all in the hands of a kind God, who will do for us what is best.”

Lee carried those beliefs into the war, often when his tactics failed to defeat an opponent, it was because “God ordered otherwise.” Indeed, as Thomas L. Connelly has noted, “Lee’s belief in God’s intervention was an important part of his wartime personality….He saw the Southern army as controlled by a divine hand, and

byterian but might just as easily have been a Methodist or an Episcopalian or, perchance, a Catholic.” According to Douglas Southall Freeman, Jackson “lives by the New Testament and fights by the Old.” Whatever his denomination or testament he followed; Jackson continually unnerved his command with his militant spirituality. He has been described as “fanatical” in his faith. As Stephen W. Sears noted, “His dispatches invariably credited an ever-kind providence.” It was not uncommon for Jackson to inform Lee that success had been achieved “Through God’s blessing.”

During the 1862 Maryland Campaign, Jackson wrote his commander of the Confederate victory at Harpers Ferry and began the dispatch, “Yesterday God crowned our army with another brilliant success.” By assigning his fate to God’s hands, Jackson acted fearlessly on the battlefield with an unnerving sense of fate which undoubtedly contributed to his premature death less than halfway through the war. Indeed, a contemporary newspaper correspondent described “Stonewall” as “a Presbyterian who carries the doctrine of predestination to the borders of positive fatalism.”

Jackson was convinced that pious soldiers would always prevail and that God favored his every move. Tom Rowland has observed, “For Jackson, war was a purifying process which cleansed the soul of iniquity and transformed the baseness of human nature.” If one were looking for a candidate for a messianic complex one could easily stop with “Stonewall” Jackson. Yet, as Rowland has further observed, “Jackson, for all his eccentricities, has more frequently been hailed a genius than a self-styled messiah.”

COWAN’S AUCTIONS, HERITAGE AUCTIONS INC. (2)

“GENERAL AND HIS CHAPLAIN” BY DALE GALLON, WWW.GALLON.COM

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his brings us to the Civil War’s most misunderstood religious general, George B. McClellan. On the same day that Lincoln mused about God’s will, September 2, he and General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck visited McClellan at his home. After the visit, McClellan wrote to his wife, Mary Ellen. “I was surprised this morning…by a visit from the Presdt and Halleck,” he wrote, “in which the former expressed the opinion that the troubles now impending could be overcome better by me than anyone else.”

He next simply informed his wife, “Pope is ordered to fall back upon Washn & as he reenters everything is to come under my command again.” McClellan admitted to Mary Ellen that he considered it, “A terrible and thankless task…I will do my best with God’s blessing to perform it. God knows that I need his help.” He then asked his wife for her prayers, “Pray that God will help me in the great task now imposed

PORTABLE RELIGION It was not uncommon for soldiers, like the young Confederate above, to carry small Bibles on campaign or pose with them in images. The U.S. Christian Commission, and other similar agencies, handed prayer books out to the fighting men. In the late 20th century, a forgotten Federal battlefield burial was discovered at Antietam. Portions of a rosary, like the one at left, were found with the remains of one of the men.

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It was a very different age We gaze at the images of Civil War participants, read their written records, and walk in their battlefield footsteps, all factors that can make us feel as if they are familiar and we “know” them.

But their lives, and scientific knowledge, were vastly different from ours. They were people of another age. Gottlieb Daimler and Carl Benz were still 23 years away from producing the first successful gasoline engines. The idea of generating artificial light by passing an electric current through a wire filament inside a glass sphere was still years away. People, even the LIGHT THE WAY wealthiest, lit their homes A camphene oil lamp, a common with candles, fires, and oil lighting device found in middle lamps. In the mid-1800s, there were reputable scienclass Civil War–era homes. tists who still believed in the theory of Spontaneous Generation—the idea that certain forms of life, such as flies, worms, and mice, developed directly from non-living matter.

Charles Darwin’s controversial ideas on evolution as set forth in his Origin of the Species had been in print for only three years when Abraham Lincoln penned his September 2, 1862, meditations. The first complete dinosaur skeleton had only been unearthed four years previous and another six years would pass before it was put on public display. The concept that creatures other than human beings had once dominated the earth was still some years on the horizon.

Neptune, the eighth planet in the solar system, had been discovered only 16 years earlier. Concepts of time, space, and the geological history of the Earth were still very much defined by the book of Genesis. In the mid-1860s, the natural world was still mysterious enough to suggest a supernatural power that governed the course of events; religious belief and prayer still occupied a very dominant and influential part of day-to-day life. In this context, there was nothing odd or peculiar about generals and presidents regarding the will of God. —S.S. 58

McCLELLAN’S CONFIDANTE The general relaxes with his wife, Mary Ellen.

He often wrote messages meant for her eyes only that contained religious references and overtones.

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COWAN’S AUCTIONS, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

YET DISTANT

BOSTON MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS; THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM

FAMILIAR,

upon me.” McClellan then stated he assumed the task “reluctantly,” and “with a full knowledge of all its difficulties & of the immensity of the responsibility.” He confessed, “I only consent to take it for my country’s sake & with the humble hope that God has called me to it, how I pray that he may support me!” He ended this short missive to Mary Ellen with the assuring words, “Don’t be worried, my conscience is clear & I can trust in God.” Some modern historians see in this letter a character defect of false humility, others use it to represent a far more serious psychological malady. But the letter must be considered within the context of his marriage and the religious beliefs prevalent in his time. If the correspondence were with someone other than his wife, perhaps the charge of false humility might stick. McClellan’s wife, however, was the one person he could honestly bare his soul to, and he did repeatedly. He had absolutely nothing to gain by putting on a false front for his wife’s sake. McClellan and his wife participated in a marriage of mutual support. In this context, there is certainly nothing unusual in a young man complaining to his wife

COWAN’S AUCTIONS, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

BOSTON MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS; THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM

GOD IS WITH US Both North and South claimed God supported their efforts.

Stuart Dewitt, a seventh-grade student in Philadelphia, Pa., drew this eagle in 1862. At right, a flag bearer gazes toward Heaven, and his flag asks for God’s blessing on the Confederacy. of an immense task placed before him.

What is unusual, to the contemporary reader, is the invocation of God. It has been used by some of McClellan’s modern critics to demonstrate proof of a messianic complex on the part of the Young Napoleon. It is not uncommon to find the modern authors, such as Joseph T. Glatthaar in his 1994 Partners in Command, The Relationships Between Leaders in the Civil War, using such correspondence as confirmation that McClellan set himself up as a “Christ-like figure…a chosen instrument, fulfilling God’s will.”

Charges of psychological disorders without clinical evidence lead one down a slippery slope to begin with, but the charge of the messianic complex is perhaps the most slippery of all the anti-McClellan slopes. As we have seen, the list of other 19th-century personalities that considered themselves instruments of God’s will certainly argues against singling out Little Mac for this alleged malady.

In addition to the religious influences of his time, McClellan was greatly influenced by his wife’s Presbyterian religious beliefs. By his own admission, George McClellan never professed any adherence to a specific Christian denomination until he met Mary Ellen Marcy. By the time they were married on May 22, 1860, McClellan had undergone an evangelical rebirth that fundamentally changed his outlook on life. He openly embraced the tenets of Calvinism and mainstream Presbyterianism.

McClellan—along with many other Presbyte-

rians of his day, Stonewall included—openly embraced the dogma of predestination, a doctrine which states that God determines the eternal destiny of humanity. In this context, McClellan’s letter is perfectly understandable; “I will do my best with God’s blessing….God knows that I need his help….I only consent to take it [command]…with the humble hope that God has called me to it….I can trust in God.” It is only natural for the modern secular mind to perceive such expressions as false humility. For the modern historian, the label of “messianic complex” is an easy way to explain the motivation behind a historical figure that believed he was God’s chosen instrument to save the Union. Such simple heart-felt religious belief, it seems, has become too naive a concept for the 21st century mind.

McClellan’s religious convictions were no more abnormal than those of his contemporaries who embraced God’s Will. Consider these two statements. “It is probable that we shall have a severe engagement today...I feel as reasonably confidant of success as anyone well can who trusts in a higher power & does not know what the decision will be,” McClellan wrote to his wife on September 14, 1862. On July 2, 1863, Robert E. Lee told a foreign observer, “I do everything in my power to make my plans as perfect as possible...the rest must be done by my generals and their troops, trusting to Providence for the victory.” Stonewall Jackson believed all victories came through God’s blessing. Lincoln believed that humans were simply instruments playing out their parts in some grand scheme of God’s. Yet, because McClellan also believed he was God’s instrument, he is singled out for being the victim of some debilitating religious psychological malady. What is seen as virtue in others becomes vice for Little Mac. Such is the nature of the historical double standard by which George B. McClellan is judged.

Steven R. Stotelmyer, who writes from Sharpsburg, Md., is the author of Too Useful To Sacrifice, Reconsidering George B. McClellan’s Generalship in the Maryland Campaign. He is a certified tour guide for the Antietam and South Mountain battlefields.

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ARMAMENT DEATH IN TWO SIZES The large shot on the left is from a 24-pounder grapeshot charge. At right, an iron 12-pounder canister ball seems small in comparison, but needless to say it was still deadly. At far right, a ping pong ball helps put the size of the ferrous killers in perspective.

CANISTER AND

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: THE MINNESOTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY; DANA B. SHOAF COLLECTION/PHOTOS BY MELISSA A. WINN (2); HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS (2)

IN A FAMOUS INCIDENT at the Battle of Antietam, Brig. Gen. John Gibbon jumped off his horse and raced over to Battery B, 4th U.S. Artillery, whose men were firing canister as fast as they could at Confederates across the Hagerstown Pike.

Gibbon noticed the battery’s 12-pounder Napoleons were firing high, and he directed the gunners to lower their muzzles so the canister would skip off the ground and up into the gray ranks. The adjustment was made, and the next blasts caused a grotesque plume of fence rails and Confederate soldiers to rise into the air.

Canister and its forerunner grapeshot were the most fearsome artillery projectiles of the conflict.

Each fired iron balls into the air like giant shotgun blasts that shredded oncoming infantry formations and swept the decks of ships. Though the terms are often used interchangeably, as they were even during the war by soldiers, they were made quite differently. And by the Civil War, grapeshot was seldom used by field artillery batteries in either army, but some large garrison and shipmounted cannons still made use of that round.

It’s hard to imagine how charging troops could bear down on an opposing battery, knowing that iron hail could strike at any moment.

DANA B. SHOAF COLLECTION/PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

YOU WOULDN’T WANT TO GET HIT WITH EITHER

GRAPESHOT BALL actual size

PING PONG BALL actual size

CANISTER BALL actual size

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: THE MINNESOTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY; DANA B. SHOAF COLLECTION/PHOTOS BY MELISSA A. WINN (2); HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS (2)

DANA B. SHOAF COLLECTION/PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

CAN WITH A KICK The standard canister shot for the 12-pounder Napoleon consisted of 27 1.5-inch canister balls packed in sawdust, though this example contained more. The tin can disintegrated upon firing, dousing attacking infantry with the shot. At times, cannoneers even fired double canister.

GRAPES OF WRATH The stand of grapeshot on the far left was “quilted,” meaning iron balls were stacked around an iron pin, and then covered with cloth that was laced to hold the balls in place. By the Civil War, most grapeshot was made of iron plates and rings bolted together to keep the round intact.

Canister was much easier to produce in comparison.

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CANNON FODDER Private Michael Dunn of the 46th Pennsylvania lost both his legs to canister at the May 23, 1864, Battle of New Hope Church, Ga. Canister was most effective up to 200 yards, but could also be deadly at 400 yards, maximum range for this projectile.

THEIR BUSINESS WAS BOOMING The 12-pounder Napoleon, top, had a bore of about 4.6 inches across, and such smoothbore cannons excelled at firing canister. Rifled cannons, like the 3-inch Ordnance Rifle pictured above, could also fire canister, but not as effectively. The smaller 3-inch bores prevented the shot from dispersing as widely. The canister rounds could sometimes track along the rifling and pick up a spin, another reason the canister balls would not spread out over a wider area. But that fact would have been cold comfort to troops charging rifled artillery.

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EXPLOSIVE CANISTER Smith Groom of Troy, N.Y., invented this shell to help rifled cannons fire canister.

The rocket was supposed to fly downrange as a fuze, located in the brass tube inserted in the base, burned. After detonating, it was to scatter its “war missiles,” as Groom called canister. The prototype shell never went into production.

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: PHOTOS BY MELISSA A. WINN (2); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

ARMAMENT

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JURY OF PEERS? Secretary of War Edwin Stanton appointed the members of court for Porter’s trial. They found him guilty, and he was dismissed from the Army.

RUINED BY COMRADES he order was written at 6:30 p.m. on August 27, 1862, from Bristoe Station, Va., and arrived at 5th Corps headquarters three hours later. It ordered the corps to be on the road by 1 a.m. and arrive at Bristoe by daylight. The general read the order and told his division commanders to have their men, all of whom were hard marched the day before, ready to go by 3 a.m., believing rested men would march more quickly in mostly daylight hours. He then wrote an explanatory note to his superior.

It took lead elements of the 5th Corps six hours over roads clogged with wagon trains to arrive at Bristoe Station. Author William Marvel rightly concludes “no danger attended the delay.” Nevertheless, Fitz John Porter would find his tardy arrival on the eve of the Second Battle of Bull Run heading a list of accusations 64

Radical Sacrifice: The Rise and Ruin of Fitz John Porter

By William Marvel UNC Press, 2021, $35



leading to what Marvel contends was a “choreographed downfall” orchestrated by an “astoundingly corrupt” court-martial trial board. Found guilty, Porter was dismissed from the Army in January 1863. For the next quarter century, he doggedly fought to clear his name.

It took an act of Congress in 1886 before Porter finally won “nominal restoration to the army.” But the court-martial had stained his name forever.

Porter ranks near the top of Civil War scapegoats. As such, he has been unjustly overlooked for a comprehensive, scholarly biography. Bill Marvel has righted this wrong and Porter couldn’t have asked for a more empathetic chronicler. Marvel never met a conspiracy of silence he didn’t relish exposing or a thinly fabricated truism he didn’t gleefully demolish. By combining meticulous research, reasoned anal-

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

REVIEWED BY GORDON BERG

HARPER’S WEEKLY

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HARPER’S WEEKLY

ysis, and, at times, colorful writing, Marvel reveals an accomplished West Point-trained officer who found himself caught up by an intrusive Washington bureaucracy, tainted by his steadfast loyalty to Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, and ostracized for conservative political beliefs, opposition to abolitionism, and the “hard war” campaigning then becoming prevalent.

From its inception, the upper echelon of the Army of the Potomac’s officer corps was a Gomorrah of perfidy, political intrigue, personal jealously, and rampant careerism.

All of these command fissures split wide open at Second Bull Run where a series of conflicting and misunderstood orders, mismanaged logistics, poor timing and even poorer judgment by the commander of the newly created Army of Virginia, Maj. Gen. John Pope, and his clueless sidekick, Brig.

Gen. Irvin McDowell, significantly contributed to the decisive Union defeat. In a marvelous Marvel declaration, he comments on events at Porter’s command at a critical tipping point: “Fitz John Porter, John Pope, and the Union cause would all have benefited had a Rebel sharpshooter been able to knock McDowell out of the saddle when he arrived at Dawkins Branch, leaving Porter in unquestionable control.”

After the battle, events quickly spiraled out of Porter’s control and his arch enemy, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, hastily arranged for a court of inquiry. Stanton, says Marvel, “was sufficiently underhanded to choose members inclined toward an adverse finding.” McClellan demanded Porter’s immediate reinstatement. This allowed his protege to command troops through the Maryland Campaign. But the clouds of conspiracy finally broke on November 25, 1862, when Porter was arrested. He was found guilty of misconduct and disobedience, also by a prejudiced trial board, and dismissed from the Army on January 25, 1863. After a close analysis of the trial’s testimony, Marvel characterizes much of it as “reminiscent of the Salem witch trials.”

Marvel also gives careful attention to Porter’s post-army life and his eventual exoneration. Nevertheless, he concludes “even someone as determined as Fitz John Porter could not extricate himself from so dense a web of fabrications.” Fortunately for us, Marvel has done what Porter could not.

The war left large portions of the Confederate capital in ruins.

CAPTURE RICHMOND REVIEWED BY THOMAS ZACHARIS n Embattled Capital, two distinguished Civil War authors unite their talents to describe life in Richmond, Va., throughout the conflict. After Virginia seceded from the Union on April 19, 1861, the Confederate government decided it strategically prudent to move its capital from Montgomery, Ala., to Richmond and on the morning of May 29, Jefferson Davis arrived by rail from Petersburg to establish his government. Richmond, with a population of 38,000, of which one-third were enslaved, was an important industrial center with the Tredegar Iron Works and the Rocketts Landing Naval Yard, as well as a key railroad junction.

A tragic disaster is among the details of life in wartime Richmond brought to life by the authors. On Friday, March 13, 1863, on Brown’s island 19-year-old Mary Ryan accidentally set a fire in a room where other girls were unloading black powder resulting in an explosion. The authors include Mary Ryan’s gravestone, which was identified and marked for the first time in 2017. The authors contradict long-standing beliefs that when Richmond fell, a U.S.C.T. unit was the first to enter the city and that Union soldiers started the fire that consumed portions of the city. In reality the Union troops saved many official buildings from the fire that members of the retreatEmbattled Capital: ing Confederate garrison had started.

A Guide to Richmond These and numerous other details are During the Civil War sure to satisfy all Civil War enthusiasts.

By Robert M. Dunkerly Moreover, Embattled Capital will be a useand Doug Crenshaw ful supplemental reference for travelers Savas Beatie, 2021, wishing to visit Richmond’s battlefields, $14.45 monuments, and museums.

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CONFEDERATES

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AS

POSTWAR PATRIOTS

REVIEWED BY GEORGE SKOCH

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s inspiration for his latest book, Patriots Twice: Former Patriots Twice does include tantalizing nuggets that beg the Confederates and the Building of America After the Civil kind of further research Hood encourages readers to do.

War, author Stephen Hood cites “the current cultural, Among “the more interesting former Confederates,” he cites political and scholarship movement of reassessing histor- for instance is Danish-born Julius Gabriel Tucker, who served ical characters and causes, removing symbols, monuments and as U.S. commissioner for the Rio Grande Valley during Presmemorials, and renaming buildings and landmarks of those ident Grover Cleveland’s administration. However, it’s not deemed unworthy by current social values.” Hood perused sev- Tucker’s postwar service that is so intriguing. Rather, it’s eral thousand biographical profiles of former Confederate sol- Tucker’s service in the Confederate Army that fosters curiosdiers and dignitaries. Their postwar lives had typically been ity. In October 1864, Tucker “recruited foreign-born federal consigned “to footnotes or a short postscript…the dearth of prisoners…to serve in the Confederate Army. He organized coverage…shortchanges these men,” he noted. To help fill in the volunteers into the 1st Confederate Foreign Legion (later these gaps, Patriots Twice highlights the postwar accomplish- named Tucker’s Texas Confederate Regiment).” Hood leaves ments of more than 200 former Confederates—officers and the rest of Tucker’s war-story untold. rank-and-file alike. Hood laments the limits of his book preHood introduces Bavarian-born Isidor Straus, who served vented him from including “many former Confederates who the South as a commissioner in Europe. Following the war attained unqualified postwar success.”

Straus rose in business and financial circles in New York City, Hood chose the men featured in Patriots Twice “based solely co-owned Macy’s Department Store, and served a term in on their tangible professional accomplishments and…that (in Congress. While returning from a trip to Europe in April most cases) they were welcomed into their positions by men 1912, Straus and his wife had booked passage aboard RMS who had worn blue uniforms and fought for the Union.” Eight Titantic, and became victims of the sinking. former Confederate officers, for example, served as generals in “Anyone with an interest in a particular man covered the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War. Edward here,” writes Hood, “can easily type in their name on the Douglass White, a lieutenant in the 9th Louisiana Cavalry Internet and find more than enough to satisfy his or her during the Civil War, went on to become associate justice of curiosity and confirm the basic facts about his postwar the U.S. Supreme Court in 1894, and was appointed chief jus- accomplishment.”

The author chose not to “analyze, accuse, condemn, glorify, tice in 1910. Hood’s book is replete with such stories, though the majority are on less prestigious levels; John B. Castleman, or criticize” any of the men he spotlights in the book. for example, a major in the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry, became “Whether a man deserved his position at the time, and…his president of the American Saddlebred subsequent historical notoriety,” writes Hood, “are better left to other researchers.” Hood’s Association.

Hood’s research ranged from traditional biogsketches are succinct and well cataloged with an raphies to information he gleaned from online informative appendix and index. Though not a major flaw, typos sprinkled throughout Hood’s sources. “I also relied heavily upon U.S. Governtext may have been avoided with closer editing. ment web sites,” writes Hood. The author recogSome readers may lament that contributions of nizes that the reputation of online sites “is not pristine,” though they serve as a good “starting Confederate women are absent from this book. point.” Hood speculates that many researchers Writing more than 50 years ago, author/histouse online sources “more than they care to admit.” rian Robert D. Hoffsommer observed, “There Hood also confides, “Searching for biographical will always be among us those who are fascinated information can be a tedious exercise.” by the minutiae of the Civil War....” Hoffsommer’s observation could easily describe the ideal Readers may wonder if Hood’s tedium hasn’t infected his writing as well. The book is built Patriots Twice: Former audience for Stephen Hood’s latest book.

Confederates and the around a sound framework of chapters divided Researchers will delight in the trove of inforBuilding of America mation Hood has gleaned from myriad sources. into logical categories featuring former ConfedAfter the Civil War By the tasks he undertook for himself, and the erates, such as City Founders and Mayors; OffiBy Stephen M. Hood years of grunt work it took to produce Patriots cers of Professional Societies; Higher Education, Savas Beatie, 2020, Twice, Hood has provided a useful reference and so forth. The text, however, is lackluster and $32.95 encyclopedic, and too often padded with periphwork. Current and future generations of researcheral information. ers owe him a debt of gratitude.

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

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

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

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What Are You

Reading?

Iron Behemoths REVIEWED BY THOMAS ZACHARIS n his recent book, ex-naval officer Dwight Hughes examines the naval clash between the armored ram CSS Virginia and the turreted USS Monitor, each in its own way representing a new type of warship known collectively as ironclads. The book’s title comes from a phrase with which a news reporter from Vermont described Monitor: Unlike Anything That Ever Floated.

The author focuses not only on the twoday confrontation at Hampton Roads, a succession of engagements that changed the course of naval warfare, but also on the influence it shed upon American naval military history. We can justly say that after the battle a kind of manic struggle ensued between Confederate and Union naval designers, who went on to construct many more ironclads, an arms race that the North, with its superior Unlike Anything industrial capacity, was predestined to win.

That Ever Floated, As far as the contest at Hampton Roads The Monitor and itself went, if evaluated on the basis of casuVirginia and the Battle alties alone CSS Virginia emerged the winof Hampton Roads, March 8-9 1862 ner, having sunk two wooden Union warships, seriously damaged another,

By Dwight Sturtevant Hughes destroyed three transport ships, and damaged a tugboat. It also killed or wounded Savas Beatie, 2021, $14.95 300 Union seamen, with its own loss of only 20 men. In two days Virginia collectively inflicted the most casualties suffered by the U.S. Navy until the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor almost 80 years later.

With its sudden expansion during the Civil War the U.S. Navy added new ranks, such as commodore and admiral, as well as an Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the person of Gustavus Vasa Fox. By the war’s end, the Union fleet was the most formidable in the world.

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It is a truism among students of the Civil War that Confederates believed they would establish an independent slaveholding republic. But what, precisely, would that mean? Adrian Brettle’s Colossal Ambitions offers a remarkable look at the world rebels planned to build—and at how the shifting fortunes of war forced them to adapt their plans. From foreign conquest to free trade, Confederate leaders conjured wide-ranging visions of their future—all of which centered the CSA in the global postbellum order through a revived cotton economy, a swelling empire, and a reinforced slave system. It seems obvious that correctly assessing rebels’ hopes and aspirations shapes how we interpret their actions, but it is all too easy to lose sight of overarching aims amid the fractious realities of day-to-day wartime life. Colossal Ambitions thus offers a fresh lens through which to review key ideas and intentions that shaped the American Civil War. Colossal Ambitions: Confederate Planning for a Post-Civil War World

By Adrian Brettle University of Virginia Press, 2020, $45

SCIENCE HISTORY IMAGE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

AS MONITOR SANK during a December 1862 gale off the Atlantic coast, a well-meaning, but misguided sailor supposedly sealed the ship’s cat in one of the Dahlgren cannons for safekeeping, instead dooming it to a watery grave. The cannons were brought up from the ocean floor in 2002, but no kitty bones were found when they were reopened in 2020.

ROBERT COLBY CHRISTOPHER NEWPORT UNIVERSITY, NEWPORT NEWS, VA.

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NORTH STAR AT

THEIR BACK



REVIEWED BY GORDON BERG

SCIENCE HISTORY IMAGE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

G

eorge and James Frisby, two enslaved sailors, jumped ship in the Mexican port of Vera Cruz in the summer of 1857.

George was quickly apprehended but when James was caught by the police, he claimed his freedom, ironically, by proving he was a slave. When the ship’s captain demanded James’ return, Mexican authorities refused to arrest or return him because Mexico had declared all enslaved people who set foot on Mexican soil to be forever free. “The freedom that Mexico promised,” declares Alice Baumgartner, “would threaten slavery not just in the nearby states of Texas and Louisiana, but at the very heart of the Union.”

The familiar creation story about slaves who self-emancipated in the years prior to the Civil War has them “following the drinking gourd” north to a promised land across the Ohio River and the problematic safety in northern “free” states or to assured freedom in Canada. Baumgartner now offers a deeply researched, persuasively argued, and graceful written addendum to the conventional freedom’s highway chronicle. She has dug deeply into American and Mexican archival records to document how thousands of enslaved people set their sights south to a promised land across the Rio Grande River. There, as early as 1819, they started new lives as free people in Mexico.

If Baumgartner’s monograph does nothing more than shift the focus of antebellum emancipation studies toward the south and west, this achievement alone will have cemented the contribution South to Freedom makes to the growing literature of how enslaved people seized freedom for themselves. But Baumgartner has additional stories to tell. First, she documents how the early settlement of Tejas, then Mexico’s sparsely settled northernmost territory, was intimately connected to the desire by Norteamericanos to extend slavery into the vast territory beyond the Louisiana Purchase. She goes on to make a strong case that the preservation and extension of slavery was also at the heart of Texas’ declaration of independence in 1836, the driving force behind its annexation by the United States as a slave state in 1845, and the vast land grab of Mexican territory following the U.S. victory in the 1846-48 Mexican War. But the political power of the slaveholding states was in jeopardy. With thousands of Norteamericanos flocking to California after gold was discovered there, “a major sectional controversy over the status of slavery in the former Mexican territories seemed imminent.” But delegates from the territories of California and New Mexico, as a prelude to being admitted to the Union as states, drafted constitutions that prohibited slavery. That, and the fact that Mexico had prohibited slavery there before annexation,

South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War

By Alice Baumgartner Basic Books, 2020, $32

“prevented the expansion of slavery to the Southwest.”

Baumgartner’s deep archival dive has also unearthed numerous stories detailing how enslaved people planned and achieved their escape from bondage and sought to create new lives for themselves as free people under the protection of Mexico’s anti-slavery laws. We learn their names and read detailed accounts of their lives; in this way, Baumgartner personalizes their historical presence. She also recognizes that life in Mexico was often as harsh as their prior experiences under slavery. “But in contrast to the southern United States, where enslaved people knew no other law ‘besides the caprice of the masters’” Baumgartner points out, “laborers in Mexico enjoyed a number of legal protections.”

In conclusion, Baumgartner laments that “For all of the scholarship on African Americans on the frontier, the fugitive slaves who fled to Mexico have largely escaped notice.” Fortunately, that is no longer true. Her pathbreaking study opens up new territories of investigation that will enhance our understanding of the origins of the Civil War. AUGUST 2021 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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A UNIQUE

NATION? REVIEWED BY RICK BEARD

A

Contest of Civilizations is rich with challenging ideas and hangs on a central paradox: 19th-century Americans’ unshakable belief in their nation’s exceptionalism, despite its status as the world’s largest slave-owning empire. Exceptionalism is currently out of favor, but Andrew F. Lang reminds readers that many 19th-century Americans embraced the notion with a fervor that colored their unsuccessful effort to avert war, the war’s progression, and its aftermath. That it continues to inform our current day politics, while left unsaid, is nevertheless evident.

A Contest of Civilizations poses three compelling questions: 1) How could a republic committed to equality become “the largest slaveholding nation in the modern world?” 2) How could a people seeking a “stable course… welcome a violent civil war?” And 3) How could “the world’s largest enslaved population… emerge as fully emancipated citizens” in less than a decade?

“Conceived in Liberty,” the book’s first section, addresses how the concept of liberty informed 19th-century American identity. “Because the Union was as much an enduring ideal as it was a nation,” Lang argues, “the republic invited unlimited claims for inclusion.” The existence and growth of slavery refuted these claims, and by the mid-19th-century the debate over the fate of newly acquired western lands brought into clear relief the national tension between freedom and slavery.

For antislavery advocates, slavery represented a temporary detour on the path to a more perfect union. Slaveholders, conversely, sought to permanently embed the institution in American life through territorial expansion, resumption of the transatlantic slave trade, and the use of federal power to protect their interests.

“Now We Are Engaged in a Great Civil War”—the book’s longest section—explores how contested visions of Union led to secession and war. “For Confederates,” Lang suggests, slavery “[was] the unquestioned essence and secure foundation of the southern republic.” Secession would ensure that foundation. For the North, the eventual embrace of emancipation was a modernizing stance that simultaneously marginalized the Confederacy.

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A Contest of Civilizations: Exposing the Crisis of American Exceptionalism in the Civil War Era

By Andrew F. Lang University of North Carolina Press, 2021, $34.95

Despite “enormous but restricted bloodletting,” posits Lang, voluntary restraint characterized the fighting on both sides.

The “inconceivable” end was the “sudden and absolute collapse of a civilization built on slavery.” What remained was “a stark paradox of exceptionalist conviction”: how to preserve and stabilize the republic by striking a delicate balance between moderation and force, and Union and emancipation.

“Shall Not Perish from the Earth”—the book’s third section—addresses Reconstruction. Moderation, restraint, and leniency were necessities for a mild, sustainable peace, but by the 1870s, insists Lang, the only path to national stability was a “negotiated compromise” ensuring that “whites, somehow, would govern the republic.” Authentic racial equality, he concludes, was “seen by many white Americans as an ideal at best and a curse at worst.” To suggest that it remains so today seems only appropriate.

The single shortcoming of Lang’s book is a reliance on an overabundance of quotations, which are frequently redundant and break up the flow of a well-crafted narrative. Otherwise A Contest of Civilizations marks a brilliant conclusion to the Littlefield History of the Civil War Era, a 16-volume collaboration between the University of North Carolina Press and the University of Texas’s Littlefield Fund for Southern History.

CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2021

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H NASHVILLE’S BATTLEFIELD, OVERDEVELOPED & OVERLOOKED H

PLUS

FROM VMI CADET TO CONFEDERATE SCULPTOR

CHARGE! THIRD WINCHESTER THE WAR’S LARGEST CAVALRY ATTACK

LOST MOVIE OF THE

BATTLE OF FRANKLIN LETTERS FROM CONNECTICUT’S

‘IRISH REGIMENT’ February 2019 HistoryNet.com

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10/29/18 4:40 PM

The N-SSA is America’s oldest and largest Civil War shooting sports 5/14/21 organization. Competitors shoot original or approved reproduction muskets, carbines and revolvers at breakable targets in a timed match. Some units even compete with cannons and mortars. Each team represents a Civil War regiment or unit and wears the uniform they wore over 150 years ago. Dedicated to preserving our history, period firearms competition and the camaraderie of team sports with friends and family, the N-SSA may be just right for you.

12:32 PM

For more information visit us online at www.n-ssa.org.

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A WEE NIP FOR

THOMAS

$2,750

COWAN’S AUCTIONS; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

IN 1860, George Henry Thomas stepped off a train car in the dark and fell 20 feet down an embankment.

The resulting injury to his back forever after caused him pain and limited his mobility, a partial reason for his weight increasing from 175 pounds to 245 by war’s end. Perhaps “Pap Thomas” needed an occasional drop or two from this silver-plated flask to provide some relief.

Sold by Cowan’s Auctions, the flask is engraved, “Major Genl. G.H. Thomas,” indicating that he acquired it sometime after his April 1862 promotion to that rank.

“The Rock of Chickamauga” doubtless earned many toasts in his honor after the native Virginian who stayed Union loyal served so capably on the battlefield despite his constant physical discomfort. -D.B.S.

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5/26/21 11:09 AM

FOUND! American Coin Classics Collection Hurry to secure yours before they disappear again!

A

mericans of a certain age may remember seeing these five coins as youngsters—or even getting a few as part of a weekly allowance! But many others have NEVER EVEN SEEN these vintage U.S. coins, let alone owned EVEN ONE. Now, for a limited time and while our supplies last, you can secure ALL FIVE vintage coins in this American Coin Classics 5-Piece Collection!

Five Classic American Coins

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GovMint.com • 14101 Southcross Dr. W., Suite 175, Dept. ACC210-01, Burnsville, MN 55337 GovMint.com® is a retail distributor of coin and currency issues and is not affiliated with the U.S. government. The collectible coin market is unregulated, highly speculative and involves risk. GovMint.com reserves the right to decline to consummate any sale, within its discretion, including due to pricing errors. Prices, facts, figures and populations deemed accurate as of the date of publication but may change significantly over time. All purchases are expressly conditioned upon your acceptance of GovMint.com’s Terms and Conditions (www.govmint.com/terms-conditions or call 1-800-721-0320); to decline, return your purchase pursuant to GovMint.com’s Return Policy. © 2021 GovMint.com. All rights reserved.

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5/14/21 12:34 PM

PROUDLY SERVING OUR BRAVE MILITARY Get your discount today. geico.com/military | 1-800-MILITARY

Some discounts, coverages, payment plans, and features are not available in all states, in all GEICO companies, or in all situations. GEICO contracts with various membership entities and other organizations, but these entities do not underwrite the offered insurance products. Discount amount varies in some states. One group discount applicable per policy. Coverage is individual. In New York a premium reduction may be available. GEICO may not be involved in a formal relationship with each organization; however, you still may qualify for a special discount based on your membership, employment or affiliation with those organizations. GEICO is a registered service mark of Government Employees Insurance Company, Washington, DC 20076; a Berkshire Hathaway Inc. subsidiary. © 2021 GEICO

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