★ FORTS AND SOUTHERN CHARM IN SAVANNAH, GA. ★
FROM DIXIE TO JAPAN The Fearsome Ironclad “Stonewall”
NIGHT’ HAVOC ! 300 Rebels Smash a Union Outpost
BOTTOMS UP Civil War Inspiration for Craft Beer
“The Horrors I Have Witnessed” This nurse, known as “Mary,” served at one of Washington’s wartime hospitals.
★ NURSES’ POIGNANT LETTERS ★
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CIVIL WAR TIMES DECEMBER 2016
60 SIGNATURE SCENE The large fountain at the center of Savannah, Ga.’s Forsyth Park epitomizes the city’s charm.
ON THE COVER: Nurse “Mary” wrote that she was “determined to do the best” for the men in her wards.
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48
42 18
Features
24
‘I Talked to Your Son About Dying’
34
Powerful, Intense, Emotional
42
From Dixie to the Land of the Rising Sun
48 52
Hops and History
By Chris Foard Nurses’ letters reveal the suffering and sorrow of soldiers far from home.
By Noah Andre Trudeau Abraham Lincoln comforted thousands of wounded, North and South.
By Tom Huntington The Japanese navy’s first ironclad had actually been built for the Confederacy.
By Eric J. Mink Craft brewers are eager to quench the thirst of Civil War travelers.
Victory in the Pitch Black
By Bruce M. Venter
Wade Hampton pulled off a perfect surprise attack on Judson Kilpatrick’s Richmond raiders.
Departments
6 8 12 14 18 20 23 60 66 72
Letters Kudos from a longtime reader News! Virginia records come back home Details Family life on suds row Insight Inventing the Lost Cause Materiel 5 helpful “housewives” Interview Emancipation’s aftermath Editorial Comforting the wounded Explore Savannah, Ga. Reviews Free State of Jones Sold ! A father’s forage cap
DECEMBER 2016 CIVIL WAR TIMES
3
MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER DAVID STEINHAFEL ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER
EDITORIAL DANA B. SHOAF EDITOR NAN SIEGEL MANAGING EDITOR CHRIS K. HOWLAND SENIOR EDITOR SARAH RICHARDSON SENIOR EDITOR STEPHEN KAMIFUJI CREATIVE DIRECTOR BRIAN WALKER GROUP ART DIRECTOR JENNIFER M. VANN ART DIRECTOR MELISSA WINN SENIOR PHOTO EDITOR/SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR SHENANDOAH SANCHEZ PHOTOGRAPHER AT LARGE ADVISORY BOARD Edwin C. Bearss, Gabor Boritt, Catherine Clinton, William C. Davis, Gary W. Gallagher, Lesley Gordon, D. Scott Hartwig, John Hennessy, Harold Holzer, Robert K. Krick, Michael McAfee, James M. McPherson, Mark E. Neely Jr., Megan Kate Nelson, Ethan S. Rafuse, Susannah Ural
CORPORATE
CSS ALBEMARLE
A mammoth ironclad ram named after North Carolina’s Albemarle Sound terrorized Union ships for months during 1864.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT GOES TO WAR
The author volunteered for the Union’s fledgling corps of female nurses, documenting her experiences in a serialized memoir, Hospital Sketches.
SOLDIERS LOVED A REFRESHING CUP OF COFFEE
No question about it: Coffee was one of the most treasured items in common soldiers’ rations.
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ENHANCED FOCUS Common soldiers are always under the lens in CWT stories.
Our October article on the rebirth of the Gettysburg Electric Map in Hanover, Pa., resonated with a number of readers:
THE TWINKLE
OF BATTLE
GETTYSBURG’S FAMED ELECTRIC MAP
REOPENS IN HANOVER,
NEW GENERATION OF CIVILPA., READY FOR A WAR ENTHUSIASTS BY KIM O’CONNELL AND NATASHA MAGALLON Scott Roland and Marc Charisse are bent over a network of wires, making connections, testing things out and adjusting their computer records. Sprawled before them is a green expanse about the size of half a tennis court. Instead of being flat, however, it is uneven, with discernible ridges and sharp bumps, and punctuated by a patchwork of colors. This is the beloved Gettysburg Electric Map, a ghost of the battlefield being brought back to life in Hanover, Pa. ¶ As the men tinkered with the wiring, the map’s June reopening to the public was only a few days away. “Hold on,” Roland said, then turned off the bright overhead lighting. At that point, with a flip of a switch, dozens of small lights came on across the map, creating their own firmament in the darkened room. Although the Electric Map has been upgraded and the whole display is now tied to a sophisticated new system, the exhibit still retains its wholesome, low-tech charm. Turned on and off in succession, these points of light help tell the story of the Battle of Gettysburg, pinpointing important landmarks and showing the movement of troops during three crucial days in July 1863. ¶ But the map’s reopening, like the outcome of the battle itself, was by no means assured at the project’s outset.
GETTYSBURG FROM 6 FEET The Electric Map landscape once again blinks out the story of the July 1863 battle. Blue lights indicate Federals, while Confederates are yellow. Red lights show campfires, while white signifies structures and green marks places of interest. This view looks to the northeast, with Big and Little Round Tops on the far right.
Joannie West: I am thrilled that the electric map has been resurrected and updated for display. It was my favorite part of the old visitor center. Buck Jones: Great hearing the map has been brought back to service! Very educational for schoolchildren and all students young and old!
MAGNIFYING CIVIL WAR HISTORY I have enjoyed CWT since 1962, when it was called Civil War Times Illustrated. Remarkably, I still have a copy of the special Gettysburg centennial issue that I picked up in 1963 at Gettysburg National Military Park. Over the last several years there has been a noticeable change in the magazine’s format. This evolution of the content has fueled my continuing interest in CWT, the war itself and preservation. There is more to the Civil War than battles, even though there is always something new to learn about a certain engagement or campaign. My area of study is the common soldier, the civilians and how the war affected them. Material culture is also an area of study and enjoyment; needless to say, CWT hits the mark on these areas. I go first to see what item has been “Sold” or what interesting place has been “Explored.” My magnifying glass is always at the ready when I move on to the “Details” section. Excellent work, continue evolving—and a HUZZAH to CWT. Dutch Grimm North Royalton, Ohio
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU ! e-mail us at
[email protected] or send letters to Civil War Times, 1919 Gallows Rd., Suite 400, Vienna, VA 22182-4083 6
CIVIL WAR TIMES DECEMBER 2016
John Stillwagon: Great article on some good news! I’m glad they were able to save and revitalize the map. It’s a great learning tool. I always particularly liked the twinkling campfires each night. Craig Ward: I remember the map. I would have seen it sometime between 1965 and 1967. I think it was the clincher for my interest in history!
KING COTTON? I really enjoyed the interview with R. Douglass Hurt in the October issue about agriculture and the South. Most assume that region was “king” of agriculture, but Hurt points out the fatal flaws in supply and demand that impacted the Confederacy. I just ordered his book, Agriculture and the Confederacy, and look forward to reading about a little-known facet of the war. Thanks for bringing this topic more attention. Rob Orrison Dumfries, Va.
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Union troopers wait for orders outside of the colonial-era Charles City Court House.
RANSACKED COURT RECORDS
RETURNED On August 15, 1862, following the unsuccessful campaign to take the Peninsula, Union soldiers stationed at Charles City, Va., rampaged through the courthouse, leaving legal papers strewn on the ground. Now some 300 of those missing pages—dated between 1694 and 1700—have
8
CIVIL WAR TIMES DECEMBER 2016
found their way back to Charles City thanks to a family in New Jersey, according to Richmond. com. ¶ Decades ago, the late Karl Urbania had bought a box of old documents—penned on rag paper—from an antiques dealer, and his descendants recently decided to return the material to Charles City. The family’s donation encompasses deeds and wills from an important book of records, so locals are already looking forward to probing the pages for missing bits of family history. But the pages must be cleaned and repaired before being digitized. ¶ On August 25, 2016, Charles City celebrated the documents’ return. The courthouse at Charles City, settled in 1613, houses some of the country’s oldest legal documents. A copy of the digitized documents will be sent to the family that donated them.
QUOTABLE
if washington was a patriot,
lee cannot
have been a
rebel
— Confederate Lt. Gen. Wade Hampton
CIVIL WAR COLLECTION FINDS A HOME
SOME 3,000 CIVIL WAR ITEMS, ranging from cartes-de-visite to Confederate dice, were donated to the De Paul Library at the University of St. Mary in Kansas City, Kan. Former Marine Bobby Lawrence devoted 30 years to building and cataloging the collection, and after his death in 2013, his family looked for a home to showcase it. Two focuses of the Bobby D. Lawrence collection are women in the war and the regions of Kansas and Missouri. Lawrence particularly treasured a memoir by Emma Edmonds, a Civil War nurse who was also a Union spy. According to Danielle Dion, director of the De Paul Library, the Bobby D. Lawrence Collection will dovetail nicely with the school’s 10,000-item Abraham Lincoln collection, and a plan to digitize the recent donations and make them available online to the public is underway. The archivist working on the project has created a blog describing progress on cataloging the collection: https://usmbobbydlawrencecivil warcollection.wordpress.com/
CAPTAIN SALLY’S COAT
RESTORED
A
RESTORED GRAY WOOL COAT belonging to CSA captain and hospital administrator Sally Louisa Tompkins was honored in Mathews, Va., on July 23, 2016, two days prior to the 100th anniversary of Tompkins’ death. Named Virginia’s 11th most endangered artifact in a 2015 online survey, the coat was worn by the only woman the Confederate Army commissioned as an officer. In 1861 the recently widowed Tompkins used her inheritance to open a hospital in the Richmond home of judge John Robertson following the First Battle of Manassas. Her hospital was so impressive that President Jefferson Davis named her a captain of cavalry in September 1861, thus allowing her hospital to remain open even after he required all Confederate hospitals to be operated by military personnel. Throughout the war her hospital treated some 1,300 Confederate soldiers. To restore the coat, Costume and Textile Specialists of Richmond replaced the silk lining, buttons and buttonholes, and fixed seams, stitching and insect damage. About 70 people attended the ceremony at the Tompkins Cottage in Mathews, Va.
Captain Tompkins’ coat was cut to fit over the voluminous dresses of the era.
PERRYVILLE AND BENTONVILLE PRESERVATION PROJECTS In August the Civil War Trust announced that it has preserved 70 more acres at Perryville, the site of the largest Civil War battle in Kentucky. The organization has also started a push to acquire privately held land at the Bentonville battlefield in N.C., the site of that state’s largest clash, which lasted three days in March 1865. The fight at Bentonville was the last in which the Confederate Army of Tennessee initiated a battle. DECEMBER 2016 CIVIL WAR TIMES
9
THE WAR ON THE NET
w w w . C i v i l Wa r R i c h m o n d . c o m
THIS REPOSITORY ON WARTIME RICHMOND WILL SATISFY THE MOST AVID RESEARCHER
We’re a demanding lot. Straightforward analysis is no longer enough; we want to study individuals and events from every possible angle. The good news is that between traditional research approaches and the new tools of the digital age, historians are producing increasingly sophisticated work. The bad news? It has only made us greedier. I encourage all those with high research expectations to visit Michael D. Gorman’s “Civil War Richmond” website. Gorman has spent the last two decades gathering, transcribing and organizing sources on nearly
every aspect of the Confederate capital during the war era. I first came across the site when I was trying to understand exactly where sick and wounded soldiers from John Bell Hood’s Texas Brigade went for their medical care. Letters and diaries often mention that men were taken to a Richmond hospital, but which one? Gorman’s site gives visitors the tools to find the answers, ask new questions and draw their own conclusions. Gorman designed the site to provide documents, without commentary, that relate to hospitals, prisons and other sites and facilities around the city. They also include fully searchable transcriptions from Richmond newspapers (the Dispatch, Enquirer, Examiner, Sentinel and Whig) from the 1850s into the 20th century, as well as articles from other major U.S. newspapers on topics related to wartime Richmond. Under the “People” tab, researchers can read about different groups of individuals— slaves, deserters, children, Unionists—in Richmond newspaper accounts. Under the “Written Accounts” tab, they can click on “Archival Sources” to find transcriptions of sources from the U.S. National Archives, Library of Congress and other repositories relating to the city. Cross-referenced, well organized and beautifully presented, Gorman’s website is one of the best starting points for anyone researching the Confederate capital at war, as well as the war in the East.—Susannah J. Ural
VETERAN’S ASHES ESCORTED TO MAINE 20TH MAINE Infantry member Jewett Williams will get a belated burial in his home state due to the discovery of his cremated remains, which were neglected for decades at Oregon State Hospital in Salem, according to the Portland Press Herald. In 2004 Williams’ remains were discovered among some 3,600 copper canisters containing ashes from cremated patients. Most are still unclaimed, but the Patriot Guard Riders motorcade—which provides escorts for burials of veterans, firefighters and police—took Jewett’s remains to Maine for a September 17, 2016, 10
ceremony. The group left August 1 and made stops at Gettysburg and Appomattox. Williams, who joined the regiment in October 1864, was present at Appomattox and mustered out in July 1865. He married twice and fathered five children, but was alone at age 78 when he was hospitalized for senility and died in 1922. No descendants have been found. Williams will be buried beneath a period-appropriate white marble headstone at Togus National Cemetery, near Augusta. Six others from the 20th Maine are also buried there.
CIVIL WAR TIMES DECEMBER 2016
Patriot Guard Riders salute the remains of 20th Maine veteran Jewett Williams before the motorcade.
You are Invited to Attend the
SARASOTA, FLORIDA HISTORY FESTIVAL
QU I Z
including the
1st Annual Native American History Conference, January 17-18 with Adam Fortunate Eagle, Melissa Cody, Lola Cody, Ronnie Francisco, Robert S. McPherson, Jamie K. Oxendine, Theda Perdue and Jay Wertz
25th Annual Civil War Symposium, January 19-21
with Ed Bearss, William C. “Jack” Davis, Joseph T. Glatthaar, Harold Holzer, Robert K. Krick, Candice S. Hooper, John F. Marszalek, Richard M. McMurry, James I. “Bud” Robertson, Frank J. Williams and Jeffry D. Wert
6th Annual World War I Conference, January 24-25
with Edwin C. Bearss, Keith Kehlbeck, Lee F. Kichen, George A. Kranz, Graydon Tunstall and Mitchell Yockelson
12th Annual World War II Conference, January 26-28 with Edwin C. Bearss, Edwin B. Cottrell, Carlo D’Este, Bruce Gamble, John Hensel, Darren Moran, Jerry D. Morelock, Craig L. Symonds, Jay Wertz and Mitchell Yockelson
WHAT OCCURRED AT THIS DEEP-WATER PORT IN 1864? Send your answer via e-mail to dshoaf@ historynet.com or via regular mail (1919 Gallows Road, Suite 400, Vienna, VA, 22182-4038) marked “Three Forts.” The first correct answer will win a book. Congrats to last issue’s winner, Jim Milne, of East Lansing, Mich. (email), who correctly identified Pickett’s Mill Battlefield Historic Site, in Georgia. There was no regular mail winner.
Ohioans Vote to swap Statue On September 21, 2016, a bronze statue of inventor Thomas Edison, light bulb in hand, will replace the statue of Governor William Allen, in office from 1874-1876, in the Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol. The exchange ends a process that began in 2006, when the Ohio Assembly voted to replace the statue of Governor Allen, a slaveowner who opposed emancipation, with someone deemed more inspiring and representative of Ohioans today. In 2010, when nearly 50,000 Ohioans voted on candidate replacements, the top three vote-garners were Edison, the Wright brothers and Jesse Owens. Each state is given space in the Capitol to display two figures. The other figure on display for Ohio is James Garfield, the 20th U.S. president.
Engaging Presentations, Panel Discussions, Author Book-Signings, Social Gatherings and Fun! Join us at the Sandcastle Resort on the warm white sands of Lido Beach.
For Program Information and Registration, visit
www.cwea.net or call 800-298-1861
4
3 1 5
2
6
SUDS ROW
FAMILY
UNION BRIG. GEN. AUGUSTUS V. KAUTZ wrote in his Customs of Service, a handbook for volunteer officers unaccustomed to army life, that “Four laundresses are allowed to each company, and soldiers’ wives may be, and generally are, mustered in that capacity. They are then entitled to the same quarters, fuel, and rations as a soldier, and the established pay for the washing they may do for soldiers and officers.” As Kautz indicated, many laundresses were married to soldiers. This image taken in 1862 of a soldier, woman and small children in the 31st Pennsylvania Infantry probably shows just such a family on “Suds Row,” the camp area designated for laundry. It’s a bittersweet portrait of a young couple trying to maintain family bonds after war uprooted their lives.
1.
Two ceramic pitchers, meant for home use rather than the battering common to camp life, sit atop a trunk punctured with numerous ventilation holes. Perhaps this served as a poultry carrier.
2. A frying pan, plate, spoon and tin bowl sit on the ground. Note as well another ceramic pitcher, this one with its handle broken off. The abundance of household utensils suggests this family hoped to stay together for some time.
3.
7
This young woman in a tattered sweater had to be tough to deal with camp life and the hard labor of laundry, not to mention the demands of being a wife and mother. We can only assume she preferred to live in a tent, enduring the privations of camp life, rather than be separated from her soldier husband.
4. The couple stands in front of an “A” tent, so named for its shape. Made to hold up to six men, it would still have been close quarters for a family. Tents like this were generally phased out after 1862 and replaced with much smaller “dog” tents.
5.
The soldier holds a large saw, often used by butchers to dress a carcass, and wears a short “shell jacket” that his regiment, also known as the 2nd Reserves, adopted early in the war.
6. To heat up this Cummings-Taliaferro iron, patented in 1852, coals were loaded through a sliding aperture cast with the visage of Vulcan, Roman god of fire and the forge. Smoke belched from the curved chimney as this fist-powered furnace did its hot work.
7.
Two children, including a boy in a castoff forage cap, entertain an infant. Would they remember the war as an adventure, or as the last days they spent with a father later felled by battle or disease?
DECEMBER 2016 CIVIL WAR TIMES
13
By Gary W. Gallagher
“SOUTHERN CROSS” Don Troiani’s painting depicts the 11th Alabama’s victory over a Union battery at Glendale.
WARTIME CHRONICLE EDWARD A. POLLARD WROTE A REVEALING HISTORY OF THE CONFEDERACY AS THE WAR UNFOLDED
EDWARD A. POLLARD’S Southern History of the War should be on any list of essential books about the Confederacy. The four-volume set, published between 1862 and 1866 under a combination of Richmond and New York imprints, totals more than 1,500 pages and offers a kaleidoscopic view of the conflict as it unfolded. A native Virginian born in 1832, Pollard joined the editorial staff of John Moncure Daniel’s Richmond Examiner in the summer of 1861. Colorful, controversial and sometimes violent, Pollard tried to go to Great Britain in 1864, but was captured by a U.S. warship and imprisoned. After being released in January 1865, he returned to Richmond and rejoined the Examiner staff. 14
CIVIL WAR TIMES DECEMBER 2016
He began work on Southern History of the War in 1861 and continued with the project sporadically for several years. His preface to the first volume disclaimed any intention of writing “a brilliant or elaborate book,” promising instead “a compact…popular narrative.” Although often critical of Jefferson Davis and other political and military figures, Pollard claimed to be “honest, fair, independent, and outspoken.” He unquestionably deserved the last of those four adjectives, and his initial volume triggered outrage from many of his targets. Pollard characterized their responses as “unjust, ignorant, and contemptible criticism, emanating mainly from favorites of the government and literary slatterns in the Departments.” He had made no attempt “to conciliate either these creatures or their masters” because he was “not in the habit of toadying to great men.”
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Though opinionated, Southern History affords a window into Confederate military, political and social history. It includes assessments charting leaders’ fluctuating reputations. For example, the first volume shows how Robert E. Lee’s reputation plummeted in late 1861. Lee’s campaign in western Virginia that summer and fall, wrote Pollard, was “conducted by a general who had never fought a battle, who had a pious horror of guerrillas, and whose extreme tenderness of blood induced him…to essay the achievement of victories without the cost of life.” Pollard directed some of his most unsparing language toward Jefferson Davis, accusing him of ignoring “the sentiment and wisdom of the people” and of making “himself the supreme master of the civil administration of the government, so far as to take the smallest details within his control, and to reduce his cabinet officers to the condition of clerks.” In the realm of martial affairs, Davis “was unfortunately possessed with the vanity that he was a great military genius, and that it was
POLLARD CLAIMED THE UNION SHOWED NONE ‘OF THAT NOBLE
SPIRITUALITY COMMON TO THE
GREAT CONFLICTS OF
CIVILIZED NATIONS’
necessary for him to dictate, from his cushioned seat in Richmond, the details of every campaign.” Some of Pollard’s best analysis deals with the effects of major military operations. He reminds readers that Confederates considered the action in the Eastern Theater between June and September 1862 to be one grand drama in three acts. The Seven Days blunted McClellan’s offensive against Richmond, Second Manassas reori16
CIVIL WAR TIMES DECEMBER 2016
ented the war to the Potomac frontier, and the Antietam campaign carried the conflict across the national frontier into the U.S. Lee’s withdrawal from Maryland did not signify failure in a campaign that had shifted the spotlight from Richmond to the Potomac. “The army which rested again in Virginia had made a history that will flash down the tide of time a lustre of glory,” concluded Pollard. Lee’s troops “had done an amount of marching and fighting that appears almost incredible, even to those minds familiar with the records of great military exertions.” Pollard recognized that the summer of 1863 did not mark a decisive turning point. “Great as were the disasters of Vicksburg and Gettysburg,” he explained, “they were the occasions of no permanent depression of the public mind.” In fact, the two campaigns’ aftermath demonstrated that the “most remarkable quality displayed by the Southern mind in this war has been its elasticity under reverse, its quick recovery from every impression of misfortune.” The summer of 1863 “taught the lesson that the spirit of the Confederacy could not be conquered unless by some extremity close to annihilation.” A Southern rights advocate before the war, Pollard favored arming some slaves late in the conflict. He aligned himself with Lee, who saw establishing the nation as more important than holding a firm line on slavery. “The question divided the country,” Pollard remarked: “The slaveholding interest, in its usual narrow spirit—in its old character of a greedy, vulgar, insolent aristocracy—took the alarm” and argued that enrolling slaves in the army “would stultify the whole cause of the Confederacy.” In the end, Congress “had not nerve enough to make a practical and persistent effort at safety.” Federal armies did eventually crush Confederate military resistance—but only by means Pollard decried as beyond the pale. In this respect, he echoed most other Rebels during and after the war. The Union’s embrace of emancipation, he angrily asserted in language that reflected common racial views, “forced
LOST CAUSE ADVOCATE Prolific author Edward A. Pollard defended slavery as the foundation of Southern society. into military service one hundred thousand blacks…and…has whetted their ignorant and savage natures with an appetite for the blood of the white man of the Confederacy.” As the war grew increasingly ferocious, Pollard’s bitterness deepened. The Union foe, he claimed, showed none “of that noble spirituality common to the great conflicts of civilized nations....The track of his armies has been marked by the devouring flame, or by the insatiate plunder and horrid orgies of a savage and cowardly foe.” When U.S. forces demonstrated they could subdue Lee’s army, despair gripped the South and brought a swift end to the conflict. The “suddenness and completeness of the catastrophe” revealed “a widely spread rottenness in the affairs of the Confederacy, and…its cause went down in a general demoralization of the army and people.” After the war, Pollard reconfigured the material in Southern History of the War to publish large single volumes titled The Lost Cause (1866), his mostread book, and Lee and His Lieutenants (1867). But the fullest rewards lie in a careful perusal of the original four volumes, which pull readers into a violent, partisan, prejudiced world of military and political conflict. ✯
5
HANDY HOUSEWIVES
“JOHN WILSON and myself has been patching the seat of our britches this morning,” Confederate soldier S.G. Pryor wrote home in 1861, adding, “John puckered his patch bad but I got mine on finely as good as a heap of women would do that has a house full of children.” Volunteers quickly learned that they not only had to learn how to march and shoot, but they also needed to attend to their tattered clothing. Nearly every soldier carried a “housewife,” a sewing kit often given to him by a thoughtful relative, that carried the necessary accoutrements for battle with war-torn uniforms.
A note found inside this housewife reads: “This needle cushion was A.C. Vaughan’s and carried through the War. Presented by Emma Fisher, 1861.” Vaughan fought in the 60th New York Infantry.
Mary Ann Booth Forman probably used a remnant left over from a silk dress to make this housewife for her son, Lieutenant William Booth Forman of the 6th Florida Infantry. Lieutenant Forman lost his right foot at the Battle of Chickamauga.
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Someone added military flair to this small housewife by painting a Confederate 2nd National flag on the interior pincushion. The sewing kit was found on the Chancellorsville battlefield.
A small bullet tore through Corporal J.P. Menary’s housewife at the Battle of Lookout Mountain, leaving a visible hole. The 11th Ohio soldier survived the hit with no serious injury and mustered out in 1864.
Joseph Rideout of the 17th Maine carried a roll-up housewife armed to the teeth with sewing implements and other items such as a pewter whistle. Wounded and captured at the Battle of the Wilderness, Rideout died in prison at Andersonville, Ga.
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with Chandra Manning
COOKS, SPIES AND SCOUTS Author Chandra Manning argues that contrabands, like these pictured at Cumberland Landing, Va., in 1862, were critical to the Union’s success.
‘A STEP INTO THE
UNKNOWN’ AMONG THE 21ST CENTURY’S
most vital new historians of the Civil War is Chandra Manning, author of What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (2007). Manning’s grandmother shared her fascination with the war and later taught her to read at age 2. As a result, the youngster was reading anything she could find about the conflict by first grade. Today Manning serves as a special adviser to the Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. She was recently interviewed for Civil War Times about her research on contrabands and emancipation, and her most recent publication, Troubled Refuge: Struggling for Freedom in the Civil War. 20
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CWT: You write that “looking to the experiences of fleeing slaves in Union Army encampments to understand emancipation is a bit like visiting a cyclorama.” Could you elaborate? CM: To me, visiting the Gettysburg Cyclorama is a total immersion experience, at first overwhelming and disorienting. At first it is impossible to make much sense of the painting. You can try to reduce it in your mind to just a bunch of painted soldiers, or you can focus on the meticulous detail, like individual leaves painted on trees or expressions on soldiers’ faces. But the cyclorama achieves its meaning not by simplifying or subsuming the various parts, but by honoring each of them, and holding their particularity in creative tension with the vastness of the full 360 degrees that it takes to paint the scene. That experience mirrors the process by which I wrote this book. I started out to write a book about race relations in the decade after the Civil War, and realized that first I needed to know more about emancipation itself, or to be more precise, more about the on-the-ground process by which individuals actually exited slavery.
Making that decision was like stepping into the Cyclorama room. I was surrounded and overwhelmed by minute details, and I felt very disoriented for a long time, because none of it seemed to fit together in any kind of coherent way. How could a single story—emancipation—have room for such widely varying experiences? How could a woman who put a basket of eggs plus her children into a canoe and walked it 12 miles along the North Carolina shoreline fit in the same story with a man named Sancho, who organized squadrons for work and defense on the Louisiana side of the Mississippi River? How could a story of ordinary white Northern men, suddenly plucked from their usual lives of farming or shopkeeping and faced with decisions about whether to protect former slaves, be put into productive conversation with debates in Congress? For a long time, I saw no way out of the confusion and into a book. CWT: How did you overcome that? CM: I came to believe that living with the confusion was necessary to gain any understanding of life in the encampments—called contraband camps— where nearly half a million former slaves exited slavery and encountered the Union Army. None of them had any way of knowing what was coming. The escape routes varied mightily in their details, and certainly in their outcomes, some of which were tragic. I wanted the first part of Troubled Refuge to convey a sense of emancipation as a step into the unknown, defined by detail and uncertainty. But if the book stopped there, it would be like looking closely at one section of the Cyclorama wall—without investing the patience to allow a larger whole to emerge from the tension and unease. The book’s second and third parts let that larger whole take on a meaning that does not erase or subsume the details of each part, but rather makes room for them. CWT: What were some of the ways that black men and women helped to win the war and gain their freedom?
THE ESCAPE ROUTES
VARIED MIGHTILY IN THEIR DETAILS,
AND CERTAINLY
IN THEIR OUTCOMES, SOME OF WHICH WERE
TRAGIC CM: Former slaves who ran to the Union Army made terrific spies. Slaves helped keep track of the Confederate ironclad ship Merrimack. After the clash with Monitor, one Union official reported, “The most valuable information we received in regard to the Merrimack and the operations of the rebels came from the colored people.” Freedpeople often knew which Southern whites really were Unionists, and which claimed loyalty to the Union but actually sided with the Confederacy, and they could reveal that information to Union authorities. Also, unlike white Union soldiers, they knew the territory and the terrain. Some of them arrived in Union lines with strategic information about the location of Confederate troops or resources. Others undertook daring missions, running back and forth between lines. One young boy named Charley scouted more than 40 miles into North Carolina to assess Confederate strength and troop positions at Kinston. Besides spying, there is the less glamorous but equally vital area of logistics. The Union war effort was a colossal logistical undertaking. Sheltering, clothing and feeding roughly 2 million soldiers was no small task. Then take into account keeping them healthy and guarding against attack. A successful military effort required a staggering amount of labor, and a lot of it was provided by former slaves in contraband camps. Black men, women and even children cooked, laundered, nursed, dug, ditched, weeded, hoed,
harvested, hauled, built, sailed, steered, navigated, repaired and more. More than one advance, for example, was delayed or even derailed by a burlap sack shortage. On one occasion, a quartermaster in Virginia discovered that 5,000 grain sacks were actually defective. No grain sacks meant no feed, which meant livestock could not haul wagons…until a group of formerly enslaved women repaired the grain sacks. Now, multiply that one example to get a sense of the magnitude of former slaves’ logistical contributions to Union victory. CWT: You note several of Harriet Tubman’s efforts. How did she earn the nickname “The General”? CM: Both of Tubman’s nicknames— “Moses” and “The General”—actually predated the war. Tubman herself escaped slavery in Maryland, but then returned several times to shepherd others out of slavery and into Canada. It is commonly believed that John Brown first called her The General when he visited her in Ontario, in hopes of securing her endorsement for his raid on Harpers Ferry. She certainly lived up to both nicknames, leading a raid up the Combahee River in South Carolina that freed more than 700 slaves, but she did a lot of war work before and after that raid, as well. In Beaufort, S.C., she spied, nursed and did relief work among refugees from slavery who came into Union lines. She also built a wash-house in Beaufort and helped women who had fled slavery to set up a laundry business in it. Later she went to Fort Monroe, Va., where she was appointed matron of a hospital by the U.S. Surgeon General. At one point she was so disgusted with abuses in the hospital that she marched off to Washington, D.C., to report them. But she ended up in a home for the indigent,so we should be careful not to romanticize her story too much. Because from her point of view, the later years werereally something of a betrayal by the Union she helped to save. Interview conducted by Allen Barra. DECEMBER 2016 CIVIL WAR TIMES
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A
B LL Bu ig -NE tt ge W on r s
s o N act r nt Co
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ROUGH NEWS A selection of nurses’ letters, transcribed starting on P. 24. The center missive, written by nurse “D. Brake,” describes Taylor Meredith’s death.
MOTHERLESS CHILD RESEARCH REVEALS AN UNHAPPY BACKSTORY
PRIVATE TAYLOR MEREDITH LIED ABOUT HIS AGE
to join the 97th Indiana. Information in the 1850 and 1860 censuses makes it clear that he was actually only 15 when he left the farm and mustered in on September 25, 1862. But we can see from his Compiled Service Record and 97th Indiana papers at the National Archives that he claimed he was 18 and used his middle name instead of his forename, Henry, when he enlisted. He went into the hospital on October 8, 1863, and died of “chronic diarrhea” with few possessions and $1.07 in his pocket. Why would he have lied to join the Army, unwittingly sealing his own fate? The census indicates that his mother, Nancy, and his father lived apart. He stayed with her until she died in 1859 and then moved in with his father, Jacob. Perhaps Taylor saw the war as a chance to escape an unhappy home. We’ll never really know. But knowing the private’s real age and that his mother was dead gives even more poignancy to the fact that when nurse Brake told him, “poor boy you ought to be at home with your mother,” he broke down and “wept like a little child.” –D.B.S.
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The war in their words
‘ I TALKED TO YOUR S ON
ABOUT DYING ’
EXTRAORDINARY LETTERS
FROM NURSES REVEAL THE
PATHOS OF WOUNDED TROOPS
CROWDING HOSPITAL WARDS
by chris foard The war generated unprecedented numbers of sick and injured soldiers who needed nursing care. Up to that time, nursing had historically been seen as a male profession in the United States. But with hospitals overwhelmed and understaffed, hundreds of women offered to fill the void. ¶ For many, the yearning for adventure that had inspired them to volunteer was quickly tempered by reality. In her wartime memoir Hospital Sketches, Louisa May Alcott recalled her shock when wounded men from Fredericksburg started to appear at the Washington hospital where she worked: “The sight of several stretchers, each with its legless, armless, or desperately wounded occupant, entering my ward, admonished me that I was there to work, not to wonder or weep; so I corked up my feelings, and returned to the path of duty.” ¶ Poorly paid female nurses had to deal with hard work and financial hardships, as well as the threat of disease. As nurse Rebecca Wiswell put it in a December 1862 letter home: “I went home and my pay was stopped….I think as long as a nurse is in government service, nurses should have their pay all the time. It is little enough anyhow 40 cents a day and I see no reason why nurses should not have their wages raised as well as the soldier, they have something allowed for their clothes and the Nurses have nothing. Some [nurses] have layed down their lives for their country and many have gone home disabled for life, lost their health in taking care of the Noble soldier.” Delaware resident Chris Foard is a collector of Civil War nursing materiel. His artifacts have been exhibited in a number of museums, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington. All the quotes in this article come from letters in The Foard Collection of Civil War Nursing, with the exception of the statements by Louisa May Alcott and Thomas Hannah Jr. 24
CIVIL WAR TIMES DECEMBER 2016
MERCY IN ACTION A nurse helps an injured soldier write a letter home. This pleasant scene belies the misery that most nurses witnessed daily.
DECEMBER 2016 CIVIL WAR TIMES
25
Nurses often suffered, as well, from having to work with arrogant surgeons and physicians. But their patients’ gratitude apparently helped make up for that. The “good women who are taking care of our sick and wounded soldiers are the only virtuous women in Memphis,” wrote Thomas Hannah Jr. of the 95th Illinois Infantry. The letters quoted below, some never before published, attest to the trials and tribulations of the women who sought to bring relief to wounded warriors. Note that paragraph breaks have been added for readability in some cases, but spelling and punctuation have been left in the original form.
Gayoso Hospital, Memphis, November 3, 1863
Mrs. D. Brake
ng The Foard Collection of Civil War Nursi
There were 400 hospital beds located in the Gayoso Hotel in downtown Memphis, Tenn., one of 15 hospitals in that town by war’s end. Mary Ann Bickerdyke, who organized many of the Union nurses in the Western Theater, ran the ward and would have supervised “D. Brake,” who wrote this letter to the father of a 97th Indiana soldier who died under her care, describing his burial.
Mr. Meredith, Sir, It is my painful duty to write to you of the death of your son Taylor. He died Sunday at ten minutes past one. He was very sick when he was brought to the hospital. After a few days he seemed to get better and we had hoped that he would get well enough to go home but that was not to be so. He suffered a good deal but died very easy. You may rest satisfied that we did all for him that could be done. He wanted to go home very much and talked about you all, I talked to him about dying, he did not seem afraid to die. I truly simpethise with you in this, your day of trouble, may the lord be with you. I send you a lock of his hair that I cut off. He was perfectly sensible until the last and he held onto my hand. He asked me about five minutes before he died what was the matter, I told him he was going home. He then asked me to move him nearer to the side of the bed where I was. I did so and he died in a few minutes. His sufferings are over and he is happy, may we all live so much as to meet him in heaven. I wish it was so that your son would have been sent home, but there is a great many that are brought here that never get home alive and your son was one of them. When he was brought here they carried him from the ambulance into my ward and laid him on a cot. I saw he was very sick and went up to him and laid my hand on his head and said poor boy you ought to be home with your mother. He raised up and put his arms around me and I drew his head down on my breast and he wept like a little child. From that time he wanted me to be near him all the time until he died. We have everything to provide for the sick, good doctors and nurses to take care for the men….How he was buried, we try to fix him as nice as you do at home only we put no shroud on them. Some we bury in their clothes if they are nice enough, if not we put on a shirt, drawers and socks. They have very good pine coffins and bury every other day at the burying grounds about two miles from the city and a very pretty place. They mark all the graves with a board at the head and name on it. There is a minister that makes a prayer at the grave. I talked to your son about dying and he said he was not afraid to die and he could just put his trust in God. May we all put our trust in our heavenly father, is my prayer. Mrs. D. Brake
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CIVIL WAR TIMES DECEMBER 2016
Rebecca Wiswell Nurse Rebecca Wiswell worked at the Union officers hospital located at “Miss English’s Seminary for Young Ladies,” in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. Since Confederate sympathizer Lydia English, the seminary’s proprietor, could not bear to see the American flag flying over her school after the U.S. government commandeered it in 1861, she moved her own apartment to another location. Writing to the mother of a patient, Nurse Wiswell was glad to report some good news after watching so many patients die.
The Foard Collection of Civil War Nursing
Seminary Hospital, Georgetown August 19, 1862 I often look at him and think O how much he has to be thankful to God for in sparing his life while he was in such danger for 3 days and nights, he lay with the blood and feces flowing out through his back, his case was a hard one, the Dr’s said he must be starved in order to save his life, give him just enough to keep life in him….I told him we wanted to save his life if we could, I dressed his wounds every half hour for two days. I have passed through some very trying times. I have sat by the dying bed of 18 brave soldiers since I have been here. Some have died rejoicing some have died begging for mercy, such scenes are heart rendering to me.…Your son can come home when his wounds get healed up, he has to be very careful how he moves around for an inward wound is a dangerous wound to contend with. The greatest danger with him is over exertion, the cellular tissue must have been very much disturbed. Could you have seen what passed through his back for days you would wonder how he lived.
LIFELONG BONDS Civil War nurses formed postwar organizations to commemorate their service. These artifacts are from various nursing reunions. The leftmost medal, from a 1911 event in Rochester, N.Y., cleverly incorporates the badges of the Army of the Potomac’s I, V and VI Corps.
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ANGEL IN A TENT A photograph of the Smoketown Hospital near Hagerstown, Md., shows a nurse, believed to be Maria M.C. Hall, attending to the wounded.
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CIVIL WAR TIMES DECEMBER 2016
Hagarstown [sic], MD Dec 10th, 1862
“Mrs. Kennedy” Smoketown, Md., was a hamlet of six log houses until the carnage of the September 1862 Battle of Antietam turned it into a field hospital of 80 tents, the largest of its type in the area. It remained open until May 1863. “Mrs Kennedy,” a Hagerstown, Md., resident, writes to a friend describing the conditions at Smoketown and the suffering of the soldiers convalescing there.
Our poor men have suffered terribly from this cold weather, in tents without stoves, it was terrible to see them during this last snowstorm. On Friday I was at Smoketown all day. Poor boys, so cold and so feeble, and only their blankets to cover them, and too many of them with no woolen shirts. I am telling you of the destitution for I have hope that I shall receive a large supply soon. I wish you could see the cheerfulness with which all this hardship is borne. I often tell the men I learn patience from them. When I first arrived directly after the battle I would ask them what was the matter, a smile would come over their pale faces and the only answer would be pulling aside the blanket and showing an amputated leg or arm. Oh, I could not tell you of. It would make your heart ache to see the sights I have looked upon. The finest looking men you can imagine—helpless and maimed, but so patient, so cheerful. It has been so pleasant helping all this time to get them well, to see them at last attempting to go on their crutches and with such joy to say goodbye to start for home….In one tent there would be six or eight men and each one having lost an arm or leg. Many times I have been in tents and every man in it with only one leg. Oh, that hospital has seen many a sickening sight, there have been so many deaths too….The grave yard tells many sad stories. A simple wooden headboard with name and regiment…. I had to refuse many in the hospital last Sunday, my supply was exhausted.
DECEMBER 2016 CIVIL WAR TIMES
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Edward Curtis Male nurse Edward Curtis was stationed at the busy hospital at Bridgeport, Ala., a town on the Tennessee River and the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad that was occupied by the Union in the summer of 1863. Curtis graphically describes the injuries of some of his patients in a letter to his aunt— also thanking her for sending a book of nursing “hints.”
General Field Hospital, Bridgeport, Ala Dec. 10th 1863 There are three patients now in my tent, two of them having been left here some time. One was wounded by the rebs in their night attack of Gen. Hooker at Lookout Mt. and he was brought here on the 1st and been here ever since. He had a flesh wound from a ball through his left thigh which is now almost healed, and one through his left leg which broke the larger bone—several small pieces coming out. The hole on the side where the ball came out was made larger by cutting, to take out the pieces of the bone. At first our doctor would put his finger into it and work it around to find any small pieces of loose bone there might be. He had a splint from his hip the whole length of the leg, I raised it up a few inches from the bed by a rope from above. His heel has seemed to pain him more than anything else and we have done everything to relieve it, now loosening the bandages and rubbing it and putting wadding under the ankle to raise it from the splint. Another patient was shot through the left leg by the accidental discharge of a pistol, it breaking badly shattering the large bone in about 10 pieces. It is now in a fracture box. He has lost considerable blood, the doctors being unable to get at the artery to tie it. He has suffered considerable and his case is quite critical. Some of that black berry wine you sent me came just in time, it being given to him as a mild stimulant….I was tending to my patients and 6 more patients were brought to me. I did not get much sleep last night—some 200 came in by boat from Chattanooga….Most of my patients are wounded and their appetites are good. Some I have to feed. Poor Showers is no more! He passed away at 7 pm last night, his leg was amputated above the knee under the influence of chloroform but he lost too much blood. His bone was split into 4 pieces. Thank you for that book on nursing, there are many practical and valuable hints in it.
FRESH AIR Officers congregate on the steps of Seminary Hospital, (discussed on P. 27), perhaps after visiting recuperating comrades. Note the women, likely nurses, in the window at left.
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CIVIL WAR TIMES DECEMBER 2016
Sarah Low New Hampshire native Sarah Low tended the human wreckage of war at the 1,000-bed Armory Square Hospital in Washington, located at the site of what is today the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum on the National Mall, from October 1862 until August 1865. The hospital was situated near a steamboat landing, and many of the most grievously wounded were rushed there. Consequently, Armory Square had a fairly high death rate. Low wrote this letter to the wife of one of her patients.
Ward I , Armory Square Hospital Washington April 26th / 64 Before this letter reaches you, you will probably have heard sad news of your husband. He was brought into this hospital on Wednesday evening the 20th very ill with typhoid fever. He was not able to retain anything on his stomach after he was brought in except on Sunday, when he seemed better, was able to retain his medicines & stimulants and we thought he would recover….He said “yes” better than I expected but when I came into the ward I found he had been throwing up all night. I carried him his medicine at about ¼ past 6. He took it very well. I said to him that I thought he had better turn on his back he would be less likely to bring up his medicine. He at once turned from his side to his back and seemed quite strong. In a quarter of an hour I went to give him a spoonful of wine which he took, but I felt that there was but little hopes of recovery. I then went to see other patients and an attendant met me saying that the patient in bed 4 is dying. I hurried to him and found him nearly gone, not suffering but passing away. I stayed by him until he died. He died at half passed seven. I was so much occupied with several very sick patients that I had not much time though his death was very sudden. We have a very good surgeon and very good nurses here. Your husband was well cared for.
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Clara Barton At the end of June 1864, Clara Barton arrived at the Point of Rocks hospital on the Bermuda Hundred peninsula in Virginia. The hospital was located on the Appomattox River, not far from where it empties into the James, and the site today is a state park. Barton spent most of her time in the hospital’s kitchen, vastly improving the diet of her Army of the James patients, many of whom were suffering from heat exhaustion after serving in the trench lines outside Richmond and Petersburg. 10th Army Corps Hospital, Point of Rocks, VA July 31st ‘64 I send you a line by request of your husband who is with us in this hospital. I beg you will not allow a strange hand writing to alarm you as I truly assure you there is no necessity for it. He came to us yesterday or day before complain some of nervousness and is somewhat feverish. His appetite is not good. I have attempted to get some salt fish for him today but could not succeed…. We have been very unsuccessful in front of Petersburg. The 2nd Division of the 10th Corps has been falling back today and have suffered fearfully from excessive heat and sun stroke. Hundreds of them have come in at our hospital today—some of them only require a few days rest and feeding while others will find it a more serious matter…. Please excuse me for running on so familiarly. I forgot that I was a stranger of whom you never heard. Yours Very Sincerely, Clara Barton
Dorothea Dix Dorothea Dix was a well-known advocate for health care reform before she became the Union’s Superintendent of Army Nurses in 1861. A taskmaster who was often feared by her nurses, Dix insisted on equal care for Yankee and Rebel alike and brought order out of chaos in many hospitals. Her frank, no-nonsense style is evident in this letter, written to a potential nurse.
Miss Chamberlain—if you have no inflammation in yr eyes, and are strong to bear service and exposure—still freely electing a hard life, you may come immediately reporting in Washington without delay— in Boston show this letter—to Dr. George Heyward 13 Temple Place who will order yr transportation from that city to Washington. D.L. Dix , Superintendent U.S. Hospital Nurses
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The Foard Collection of Civil War Nursing
Office of Women Nurses U.S. Hospital Service, Washington, D.C. Oct 22nd 1864
“Mary” Concerned that patients and doctors might try to take advantage of young women, nursing supervisor Dorothea Dix ordered that the female nurses chosen should be mature and plain, 35 to 50 years old, and should not wear jewelry. Burgeoning demand for nursing care soon rendered her mandate moot—as the image of nurse “Mary,” who wrote this letter to her mother, proves. Her brooch appears to show the Union VI Corps badge. The vast complex of barracks and tents that made up Washington’s Harewood Hospital held more than 2,000 patients.
Harewood Hospital 10 Nov. 1864 Three wards were assigned to me, one with 14 men, one with 19 and the other with 8….I was quite unprepared for the gangrene ward. All cases are brought here from the other wards so that it has the worst cases in the hospital. There were 8 patients and almost all helpless—not one able to sit up. I thought I had seen suffering before but nothing would compare with what these men suffer. Two were dying, one his hands were cold, one with much perspiration and he could not speak. The others lay quietly. I was determined to do the best I could, I did not stop much. I was strengthened for the work and ready to engage in it with all my heart. I washed them, combed their hair, talked with them and did what I could for them. They were very grateful for all I did. One man said he had not had a lady do anything for him for more than a year….It is very terrible when their wounds are dressed. Spirits of Turpentine is syringed into the wounds and you might imagine how painful that must be—though you cannot imagine anything half dreadful enough.
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FATHER ABRAHAM SPENT HOURS
COMFORTING THE WOUNDED OF BOTH SIDES NEAR THE WAR’S END
BY NOAH ANDRE TRUDEAU
and emotionally intense moments of Abraham Lincoln’s presidency occurred at midday on April 8, 1865, near City Point, Va. In a move unequaled in American history, Abraham Lincoln undertook to honor the war’s wounded. ONE OF THE MOST PROFOUNDLY SYMBOLIC
incoln knew that his stay at the Army of the Potomac’s supply base, which had begun on March 24, would have to end soon. He had hoped to hear from General Ulysses S. Grant that the Army of Northern Virginia had been defeated during his visit, but much as he wanted to linger at City Point until that happened, he could no longer justify remaining absent from the Oval Office. Before he left, however, there was one important duty he wanted to perform. The president had spoken during his second inaugural address of the importance of caring “for him who shall have borne the battle.” In December 1863, he had written of the honor due the citizen who “cares for his brother in the field, and serves, as he best can, the same cause.” On April 8, Lincoln was determined to turn his own words into deeds—on a grand scale. Wounded troops were not unfamiliar with the president, whose lanky form had often been seen in hospital wards around the Northern capital. Now he was determined to visit one of the largest hospitals in the United States and personally greet every wounded soldier—at least 5,000 men, perhaps as many as 6,000. A chapter of history was nearing its end, and before he turned to the challenges of a postwar American nation he needed 34
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to meet with the men whose sacrifices had bought that victory. He had been waiting to do so for some time, and now the time had come. Lincoln made his intentions known during his morning visit to the telegraph office, and word was passed to the medical director of the 200-acre Depot Field Hospital. Carriages were waiting when a little after midday, the president and his wife, plus Mary’s entourage, clambered aboard. Their route eased along the riverbank, crossing a special spur added to the military railroad to facilitate transporting wounded troops. Lincoln and his party could see a wooden boundary fence and, behind it, row after row of temporary buildings and tents. Dr. George B. Parker, the surgeon in charge, met the procession and started steering the president toward one of the kitchens when Lincoln objected, saying he had come to visit the troops. Then several of Parker’s assistants started explaining how the place functioned, annoying Lincoln even more. “Gentlemen, you know better than I how to conduct these hospitals,” he exclaimed, “but I came here to take by the hand the men who have achieved our glorious victories.” When someone mentioned the large number of patients involved, Lincoln said that he “guessed he was equal to the task; at any rate he would try, and go as far as he could.” Parker promptly
HONOR FOR HIS SACRIFICE This sketch of Lincoln shaking hands with an injured soldier appeared in the Syracuse Herald in 1912, alongside an account by former IX Corps Captain Charles Houghton, who was hit three times during fighting at Fort Stedman.
SPECIAL TRANSPORT Lincoln’s rail car sits in the foreground of this wartime view of City Point, Va. A special spur had been added to the military railroad near the waterfront to provide speedy passage to the hospital for the wounded who arrived aboard ship.
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conducted the Lincolns and their group into the nearest ward, operated by the II Corps. It would appear the party traveling with the president remained with him to varying degrees. Mrs. Lincoln appears to have dropped out early, prompting a disdainful observation from a regular nurse: “One lady in rich garb sauntered through our worn walks, leaning on the arm of a Congressman, noting what we lacked in our appointments. My bed-tick dress made a sorry contrast to her costly-attired figure, but I looked at my hands, which were not afraid to touch the dirty blouse of a wounded soldier, and wondered if her jeweled fingers would shrink from the contact.” The Marquis de Chambrun stayed the course, but not always alongside Lincoln. Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner seems to have remained nearby the whole time. (There’s no mention of Tad Lincoln, who may have remained aboard the vessel River Queen, which had brought the Lincolns to City Point.) By the time the president entered the II Corps compound, all the ambulatory patients had been lined up outside their tents to receive him. Sometimes it was a straight line, sometimes circular. Lincoln alternated between greeting those in line and ducking inside the tents to meet those who couldn’t stand. He was often preceded by a corps surgeon who announced, “Attention: the President of the United States!” The II Corps had taken part in the actions
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against the White Oak Road and participated in the April 2 breakthrough of Confederate lines, suffering some 917 casualties, of which 628 were wounded. “Weather clear and pleasant,” wrote a II Corps Pennsylvanian. “Old Abe passed through on a shake hands with all the patients.” One New Yorker added that “Uncle Abe gave us each a word of cheer.” For many of those standing outside the tents, the president’s words were a simple “How do you do.” Some of those unable to stand heard him say, “I hope you will soon be able to go to your friends.” A Vermont man serving as a sharpshooter recalled that they were told we could uncover our wounds, but must not speak to him. I threw the blankets off so he could see that my right leg was gone, above the knee, and when he reached my bed he said: ‘What, a leg gone?’ I said: ‘Yes.’ He stopped at the head of my bed and looked at the card, saying, ‘and a Vermonter.’ I said: ‘Yes, sir, I pride myself on being a Green Mountain boy. I was born within seven miles of Mount Mansfield, the highest peak of the Green Mountain range.’ He then took my hand in both of his. I asked him: ‘Well, Father Abraham, have we done our work well.’ He said: ‘Very well, indeed, and I thank you.’ I never shall forget the pressure he gave my hand, nor can I forget that sad, careworn face.
Recollecting that day 50 years later, the soldier wrote: “I often see that sad and worn face in memory, and I can hardly keep back the tears.” Also witness to Lincoln’s visit were members of the Depot Field Hospital support staff, both army and civilian. An aide known to the readers of a hospital newspaper only as “Frank” said the president “passed around and cordially shook hands with nearly all the boys. It pleased them greatly. He had, as ever, kind words for all, and now and then found utterance in some jokes, for which he is so well known, and thereby would arise the sounds of mirthful laughter.” “He had the manner of a gentleman—I may say of a gentle gentleman;” added an agent for the U.S. Christian Commission, “his voice as we heard it was subdued and kindly; his eyes were mild but all-observing; and his face that he once himself described as ‘poor, lean and lank,’ was a strong face marked with lines of a mingled gentleness and sadness that redeemed it from being homely. The close grasp of his hand attested the sympathetic great heartedness of the great man.” Many of those in the V Corps wards had fought at Quaker Road, White Oak Road and Five Forks, where the totals for killed and wounded exceeded 2,800. A soldier with a shoulder wound remembered the Lincoln mantra, “Be of good cheer, boys; we are at the beginning of the end at last.” To another he said that “the war will soon be over and then we’ll all go home.” In one tent the president encountered 12 officers of the Maryland Brigade, 2nd Division. With them was a Confederate major who had fallen at the same time as the Union men. According to one of the Marylanders, Lincoln “gave this officer a hearty grasp of the hand and inquired what State he was from and where he resided before entering the Army….He then…wished him a speedy and hasty recovery from his wounds and [told him] that in a few days the war would be over and he would be able to see his dear ones at home.” After Lincoln left, the dazed Rebel asked who the man was who had spoken to him and was stunned by the answer. “My God, is that so?” he exclaimed. “Is that the kind of a man that we have been fighting for four long years?” There was an even more distinguished Confederate officer in the V Corps wards, Colonel
Harry L. Benbow, who had been captured at Five Forks. Benbow later recalled that the president walked down the long aisle between the rows of cots on each hand, bowing and smiling…. Arriving at length opposite where I lay, he halted beside my bed and held out his hand. Looking him in the face, as he stood with extended hand: Mr. President, I said, do you know to whom you offer your hand? ‘I do not,’ he replied. Well, I said, you offer it to a Confederate colonel, who has fought you as hard as he could for four years. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘I hope a Confederate colonel will not refuse me his hand.’ No, sir, I replied, I will not, and I clasped his hand in both mine. I tell you, sir, he had the most magnificent face and eye that I have ever gazed into. He had me whipped from the time he first opened his mouth.
Dr. George Mendenhall was not present when Lincoln visited the Depot Field Hospital, arriving just minutes after he departed. “It was like the visit of a father to his children and was appreciated in the same kindly spirit by the soldiers,” he wrote. “They loved to talk of his kindness and unaffected manner & to dwell upon the various incidents of this visit as a green spot in the soldier’s hard life.” From Surgeon Parker, in charge of the facility, he learned that at “one point in his visit he observed an axe which he picked up & examined & made some pleasant remark that he was once considered to be a good chopper. He was invited to try his hand upon a log of wood lying near from which he made the chips fly in primitive style.” According to another doctor, Lincoln was “swinging the ax around in a powerful manner, which I would hardly have expected in a man of his sedentary habits.”
The ax Abe used at the Depot Hospital is now at the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.
Those hospitalized from the IX Corps had seen hard fighting at Fort Stedman and in the April 2 attacks along the Jerusalem Plank Road, which had resulted in over 2,500 killed and wounded. One Pennsylvanian who had been hit on March 25 remembered when “Abraham Lincoln came along, took off his hat, grasped him by the hand, DECEMBER 2016 CIVIL WAR TIMES
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TENT CITY ON THE JAMES A Krebs & Brothers lithograph provides an overview of the 200-acre Depot Field Hospital, one of the largest such facilities in the United States when the president visited on April 8, 1865. It could hold 10,000 patients.
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asking if there was anything he could do or any word he could send for him to the folks back home.” Massachusetts officer Cyrus T. Goodwin would write home that the president “looks very thin and as though he has not much rest. [H]e must have had a good deal on his mind the last four years and it would broke many a tougher looking man than what he is. He had a kind word for us all[.] The Dr told me he said the war would be over in six weeks [but] we can tell better
IN ORDER TO MEET OLD ABE SEIZE
THE
DAY
A II CORPS SOLDIER “DISGUISED” HIMSELF
John B. Holloway would have worn a club-shaped II Corps badge similar to the one above. The V Corps of the Army of the Potomac used a Maltese cross as its insignia (top).
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As John B. Holloway of the 148th Pennsylvania explained it, “It was my misfortune to stand in one of these circles close to where the President started to go around it. He went toward his right which was away from me, and it so happened that before he got around to where I stood some one engaged him in conversation and so he stopped before completing that circle. Then Mr. Lincoln said, ‘Well, where will we go now.’ So they started across the railroad track to the V Corps Hospital. While on this little walk many were the pulls the President got on his coat tail by persons who wished to meet him, so he would turn about and take them by the hand. As for myself, I pulled the Second Corps badge off my cap, so as not to be known as an interloper, and crossed over and stood in line with the Fifth Corps boys, and then I had the pleasure of shaking hands with President Lincoln.”
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about that when the times comes around.” Lincoln was a bit more definite speaking with a New York colonel, telling him to “cheer up, and get well…for this dreadful war is coming to a close.” Another man whose hand he shook was Sergeant John H. Strickler, struck down on April 2, who afterward said that he felt he was “in part…recompensed for the wound.” A young medical aide trailing the president through the wards was deeply impressed by his “genuine interest in the welfare of the soldiers.” Two of the IX Corps boys seen by the president were struggling to survive—a fight that would claim the life of one. Pennsylvania Lieutenant Levi R. Robb had been terribly wounded on April 2. A less severely injured soldier lying next to him recalled the moment when the president stopped by: “Suddenly his eyes opened wide and his face lit up with a happy expression of recognition as he spoke in a clear but feeble voice, ‘The President.’…When he reached Lieutenant Robb’s cot he grasped his feebly extended hand as he cheerily said, ‘God bless you.’ Slowly and deliberately came the reply, ‘He has, Mr. President, and may it be your happy portion, too.’ The President paused just a moment; as he looked with compassion into the wan face of the wounded officer, and said, ‘It is, but cheer up, my boy, we’ll meet again,’ and then passed on to cheer others.” Robb died on April 9. One of the others was Captain Charles H. Houghton, who had been wounded three times during the Fort Stedman fighting, after which he lost part of his left leg. Another wounded officer lying next to Houghton recorded how Lincoln paused at the captain’s cot, bent over and gently kissed him on the cheek. Then In voice so tender and so low that only my near proximity enabled me to hear, he began to talk to him, telling him how he had heard from Dr. McDonald all the story of his bravery in battle, his heroic fight for life and quiet cheerfulness in hospital. …Poor Houghton could only reply with faint smiles and whispers that were too low to reach my ears, but Mr. Lincoln heard, and a smile came to his grave face. Turning to the surgeon the President asked to be shown the major’s wounds, especially the amputated limb. Dr. McDonald tried to dissuade him by saying the sight…would be too shocking. But the President insisted, turned down the light coverings, and took a hasty look. Straightening up, with a deep groan of pain, and throwing up both his long arms, he cried out, ‘Oh, this awful, awful war!’ Then bending again to Houghton with the tears cutting wide furrows down his dust-stained cheeks, and with great sobs shaking him, he exclaimed, ‘Poor boy! Poor boy! You must live! You
SURVIVOR A postwar portrait of Charles Houghton, who lost part of his left leg due to his wounds. On meeting the president, according to an officer lying in a bed nearby, Houghton whispered that he was determined to recover. Captain Houghton later received the Medal of Honor.
must!’ This time…[his] whispered answer, ‘I intend to, sir,’ was just audible.”
Captain Houghton survived his wounds. The final ward contained soldiers from the VI Corps, whose breakthrough on April 2 had cost them 958 wounded or missing. When the president stopped at the bed of amputee patient C. Hull Grant of the 43rd New York, Grant reminded him that he had previously greeted the then president-elect in 1861, during a stop in Albany en route to Washington. As Grant’s friends like to tell it, “On the first occasion he shook hands with his own good right hand, but on the second occasion he was obliged to use his left, for the other was on the field.” A Vermont soldier recalled years afterward that Lincoln’s “tall form and loving face bent over every one of us. Not one did he pass by. And to every one he had some word of good
cheer tenderly spoken, while his homely face became absolutely beautiful as it beamed with love and sympathy. He would say to each, ‘God bless you, my boy! Keep up a good heart. You’ll come through all right. We’ll never forget you!’ Ah, I tell you, boys, we felt like reaching up our weak arms to clasp his neck yes, even to press our lips to his rough cheek. We all felt impatient to get well as fast as possible that we might fight as never before for our President, the great heart who came to cheer and love us while we lay disabled from our wounds.” One soldier who had a more comprehensive view of the proceedings was Private Wilbur Fisk, a hospital guard. “Everything passed off in a very quiet manner,” he wrote the next day, “there was no crowding or disorder of any kind….Mr. Lincoln presides over millions of people, and each individual share of his attention must necessarily be very small, and yet he wouldn’t slight the humblest of them all.” It was late afternoon by the time the president finished greeting the wounded warriors, each of whom, as he said, “bravely bears his country’s cause.” Senator Sumner remarked, “Mr. President, you have taken the hand of some thousands of men to-day: you must be very tired.” When he afterward recalled that day while speaking to Secretary of State William Seward, the president described it as having ‘worked as hard at it as sawing wood.’ Only when he returned to the privacy of his stateroom on River Queen did Elizabeth Keckly hear him admit to Mary Lincoln: “Mother, I have shaken so many hands to-day that my arms ache tonight. I almost wish that I could go to bed now.” In an age when people were as apt to bow as clasp hands when they met, Lincoln’s hand-shakings were an integral part of the man. His actions at the hospital were not perfunctory, but rather an expression of sympathy and honor from the heart to men who had sacrificed so much. In taking their hands, Lincoln was affirming for each Union soldier the righteousness of their cause. And for the Southerners he encountered, the president’s firm grip said clearly, “Welcome back to the Union.”
Noah Andre Trudeau is the author of numerous award-winning books on the war, including Bloody Roads South and Like Men of War. This article is adapted from his latest, Lincoln’s Greatest Journey: Sixteen Days That Changed a Presidency, March 24 – April 8, 1865, published by Savas Beatie LLC. DECEMBER 2016 CIVIL WAR TIMES
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FROM DIXIE TO THE LAND OF THE rising sun How CSS Stonewall became the Japanese navy’s first ironclad BY TOM H U N T I N G T O N 42
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IRON INTIMIDATOR CSS Stonewall looks lethal even sitting in dry dock. Despite its killing power, the ram was destined to see little combat over a lengthy and peripatetic life.
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The French built Stonewall with a shallow draft so it could operate in Southern rivers.
MIDSHIPMAN ALFRED THAYER MAHAN immediately recognized the ironclad ram he spotted entering Yokohama Bay in April 1868. He had seen it before, back when he was stationed at the Washington Navy Yard. It was the former CSS Stonewall, a French-built Confederate ironclad. Stonewall never fired a shot in anger during the Civil War, but had received a new lease on life as the first ironclad to serve in the Japanese navy. ¶ “I have never known her subsequent fortunes in Japanese hands,” Mahan wrote in 1907, which is somewhat surprising. As a naval historian, Mahan later preached the vital effects of sea power. He would no doubt have been interested to learn that Stonewall, after being denied the chance to fight during America’s Civil War, played an important role in Japan’s.
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hen James Dunwoody Bulloch was overseeing Stonewall ’s creation, Japan was likely the farthest thing from his mind. As the Confederacy’s top naval agent in Europe, Bullock was determined to provide the South with ships. Born in Georgia in 1823, he joined the U.S. Navy in 1839 but resigned in 1853. In command of the U.S. mail steamer Bienville in New Orleans when war broke out in April 1861, Bulloch resisted pressure to surrender his vessel to the Confederacy and fulfilled his responsibility to its owners by sailing back to New York. Then he offered his services to the Confederacy and made his way to Montgomery, Ala., to meet with the secretary of the Confederate Navy, Stephen Mallory. The South lacked the resources to make warships, and Mallory asked Bulloch to oversee their construction in Europe. Agreeing to do so, Bulloch traveled to Canada and sailed to Liverpool, arriving on June 4, 1861. But Britain had declared its neutrality in May and wasn’t about to allow the Confederacy to use it as an arsenal, especially with American minister Charles Adams quick to protest any perceived tilt toward the South. Bulloch’s main hurdle was Britain’s Foreign Enlistment Act, passed in 1819 to make it illegal for British subjects to build, arm or crew warships for belligerents in foreign wars. Guided by a Liverpool solicitor who, Bulloch said, “piloted me safely through the mazes of the Foreign Enlistment Act,” the Rebel agent stuck close to the letter of the law when he commissioned the vessels that would become Florida and Alabama, plus two armored rams from the Laird & Son shipyards of Birkenhead, across the Mersey 44
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River from Liverpool. The English shipbuilders ostensibly had no idea of their creations’ final destinations, and Bulloch arranged for the ships to receive arms and Confederate crews outside of Britain. Adams knew perfectly well what was going on, however, and Bulloch’s activities brought additional scrutiny from private detectives. As pressures increased in England, Bulloch turned his eyes to France. That country had issued its own neutrality proclamation in June 1861, but Bulloch believed the French would follow the whims of Emperor Napoleon III, who appeared to favor the Confederacy. France craved Southern cotton, and a weakened United States would be less likely to interfere with Napoleon’s ambitions in Mexico. In 1862 French officials, including the emperor himself, let Confederate diplomat John Slidell know that France would not interfere if the South built warships at its shipyards. Slidell communicated that welcome news to Bulloch. By March 1863, the Confederate government
was on the verge of receiving a $14.6 million loan backed by the sale of cotton bonds in Europe, so Bulloch traveled to Paris that month to meet with Slidell and French shipbuilder Lucien Arman. Arman assured Bulloch that when the U.S. government made its inevitable protests to France, he would say the ships were designed for trade in the Pacific for either the Chinese or Japanese governments, and had been armed as protection against pirates. Bulloch placed an order for four 1,000-ton, steam-powered corvettes. On July 16, 1863, he commissioned construction of two ironclad steam-powered rams, each just under 172 feet in length, with a 300-pound turreted gun on the bow and two 6-inch rifled guns astern. Twin screws allowed for rapid turning. Projecting from each ship was an iron ram, which Bulloch hoped would wreak havoc on the Union ships blockading Southern ports. Since he wanted the rams to operate on the South’s coasts and rivers, the vessels would have a light draft, though that would limit their seaworthiness. But the tides were already turning against the Confederacy, shaking French confidence in the Southern cause. Bulloch soon sensed a shift in the diplomatic winds. Construction of the ironclads—known as Cheops and Sphinx to underscore the fiction that Arman was making them for Egypt—had started at a good pace, but work appeared to be slowing.
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aking matters worse for the Confederates, in the fall of 1863 William Dayton, U.S. minister to France, received stolen papers from the Nantes shipyard that was building two of the corvettes, providing incontrovertible evidence that the rams were intended for the Rebels. Dayton protested to the French, who notified the shipbuilders they must find new customers for the corvettes and the ironclads would not be allowed to leave France. Bulloch remained hopeful that at least one ram would eventually serve the South. Arman advised the American that the sale of one ram to Sweden should ease U.S. suspicions, after which he could contrive to deliver the second ram to the Confederacy. Arman also said he would meet personally with the emperor within two weeks and discuss arrangements. Bulloch felt “a reasonable assurance of seeing one of our rams at work upon the enemy.” That sense of assurance was soon dashed. Arman’s meeting with the emperor did not go well. Napoleon reportedly ordered the ships sold at once. Bulloch seethed over what he saw as French perfidy. Peru bought two corvettes. Prussia bought the two Bordeaux corvettes and one of the rams.
REBS ACROSS THE POND James D. Bulloch, above, oversaw Confederate ship construction in Europe. Thomas Page, right, was Stonewall ’s only Southern captain.
Denmark bought the other—the future CSS Stonewall—but that sale was delayed until Denmark’s ongoing war with Prussia ended. By then, however, the Danes were suffering from buyer’s remorse. Once the ram reached Copenhagen in November 1864, Arman had an agent ready to begin negotiations to sell the vessel to the Confederacy. Bulloch, hoping to see his ironclad break the blockade of Wilmington, N.C., or perhaps attack General William T. Sherman’s supply depot at Port Royal, S.C., began recruiting a crew for the vessel, now called Olinde. For commander he picked Captain Thomas J. Page, who had come to Europe to command one of the Birkenhead rams and remained at loose ends after Britain seized those two ships in October 1863. In London Bulloch hired a tender, renamed City of Richmond, and assigned Lieutenant Hunter Davidson to command it. In Paris Commodore Samuel Barron rounded up more officers, 17 of whom had previously served aboard Florida, and arranged to have them sail to England and join Davidson on City of Richmond for its rendezvous with their new ship. Bulloch worried the men would be detained in England, but British authorities made no moves to hold them. On January 4, 1864, Bulloch wired to his Copenhagen agent, “Sail as soon as you can.” His plan called for the ram to steam to Niewe Diep, in the Netherlands, for coaling and then head for Quiberon Bay in Brittany to rendezvous with City of Richmond. Juggling all those complex arrangements was difficult enough, but now Bulloch also had to suffer the whims of nature. Almost as soon as the ironclad left port, a fierce storm forced the vessel’s crew to shelter at Elsinore, Denmark. City of Richmond left London on January 11 without incident, but a storm forced the little paddle-wheeler to seek refuge in Cherbourg, where it remained until January 18. City of Richmond finally made it to the rendezvous point on January 20. Four days later the ironclad—now officially named CSS Stonewall— finally hove into view, “to the rapturous delight of all who were in on the secret,” wrote Davidson. But the ship had suffered terribly from the ocean’s pounding. It was filthy and had developed a leak around its rudder casing. On January 28, the two vessels left for San Miguel despite more severe weather. Davidson reported that “Stonewall would often ship immense DECEMBER 2016 CIVIL WAR TIMES
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seas...but yet she never seemed to be injuriously affected by them....” The leak, low stores of coal and an unhappy crew persuaded Page to head for Ferrol, in northern Spain. Meanwhile Davidson, aware that delays had already cost him one moonless window for running the blockade, opted to head out across the Atlantic. The two ships parted ways on January 30. The Spanish authorities at Ferrol were willing to help—until Horatio J. Perry, the U.S. chargé d’affaires in Madrid, heard about Stonewall’s arrival. Perry reportedly felt “forced to use firm language” with the Spanish government to have all repairs halted. But the ship’s officers were also unhappy, complaining to Page about the vessel’s condition and the unlikelihood it would be able to make it across the Atlantic. The captain departed for Paris to meet with Bulloch and Commodore Samuel Barron to get advice. Bulloch promised to send an engineer to deal with the ship’s shortcomings. More bad news arrived when the frigate USS Niagara, commanded by Commodore Thomas Craven, reached the area on February 10, soon joined by USS Sacramento. “The Stonewall is a much more formidable vessel than any of our monitors,” Craven reported on February 28. “In smooth water and open sea she would be more than a match for three such vessels as the Niagara. In rough weather, however, we might be able to annoy if not destroy her.” Repairs completed, Stonewall finally steamed away from Ferrol on March 24. To make sure no fighting broke out until the belligerents were in neutral waters, a Spanish vessel escorted the ship to some distance, then returned to port. Steaming up and down across a perfectly smooth sea, Stonewall waited for battle, but the two American ships nearby at Coruna never weighed anchor. “This will doubtless seem as inexplicable to you as it is to me, and to all of us,” Page wrote to Bulloch. “To suppose that those 46
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two heavily armed men-of-war were afraid of the Stonewall is to me incredible, yet the fact of their conduct was such as I have stated to you.” Craven viewed the situation differently. “With feelings that no one can appreciate, I was obliged to undergo the deep humiliation of knowing that she (the Stonewall) was there, steaming back and forth, flaunting her flags, and waiting for me to go out to the attack,” he wrote to Perry in Madrid. “I dared not do it! The condition of the sea was such that it would have been perfect madness for me to go out. We could not possibly have inflicted the slightest injury upon her, and should have exposed ourselves to almost instant destruction—a one-sided combat which I do not consider myself called upon to engage in.” Unable to entice his adversaries into a fight, Page set course for Lisbon. There the Portuguese authorities made him feel “that he was the representative of a losing cause.” He refueled and continued to the Azores. From there, he first set course toward Bermuda, then Nassau and finally to Havana, where he learned of Robert E. Lee’s surrender. Page then agreed to surrender his ship to Cuba if the authorities would pay $16,000 so he could pay off his crew. The Cubans wanted
FLEE BEFORE FIGHT A British spy reported Chinese sailors were so intimidated by Stonewall, by then called Azuma by the Japanese, that they deserted their ships when they thought they might have to fight the ironclad (seen at left in a stereoview card). Japanese Admiral Takeaki Enomoto, below, failed to capture Stonewall for his Shogunate rebellion.
him to ask for more, knowing they would eventually be reimbursed by the Americans. On May 19, Page turned Stonewall over to Cuba, and it was subsequently handed over to the United States for $18,064.01, Page’s original figure plus expenses. After waiting out a yellow fever epidemic, an American crew sailed the ex-Confederate ship to Washington. On the way Stonewall collided with and sank a coal schooner in Chesapeake Bay. Craven was also in Washington at the time, facing a court-martial for failing to destroy Stonewall. He was found “guilty of the charge in a less degree than charged” and sentenced to two years of paid leave. That displeased Secre-
tary of the Navy Gideon Welles, who felt the decision was “an unsuccessful attempt at compromise” between those who believed Craven was guilty and those who didn’t. Welles set the proceedings aside and had Craven relieved from arrest.
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tonewall would have to steam to the other side of the world to fight. When Commodore Matthew C. Perry had visited Japan in 1853 and forced an American “open door” policy on the isolationist island nation, he set off a chain reaction that pushed Japan into the modern world. The Japanese were impressed by Perry’s modern tools of war and became determined to upgrade their own navy. When a Japanese purchasing mission toured Washington’s navy yard in 1867, the guide, Commander George Brown, pointed out Stonewall. The Japanese bought the vessel for $400,000 and hired Brown to pilot it back to Japan. Stonewall made the journey via the Strait of Magellan and then up to Hawaii and across the Pacific to Yokohama. The ship reached Yokohama when Japan was near the end of its own Civil War, which had pitted the feudal lords of the Tokugawa Shogunate, who had ruled Japan since 1603, against the forces aligned with the emperor, Meiji Tenno. The emperor’s forces captured the capital of Edo (Tokyo) in 1868, but Admiral Takeaki Enomoto and his followers continued the struggle for the Shogunate from a naval base on the northern island of Hokkaido. The flagship of their rebel fleet was Fujiyama, a U.S.–built steam corvette that the Japanese had received in January 1866. The 207-foot, 1,000-ton vessel was powerful by Japanese standards, but it had a wooden hull. The purchasing mission that had arranged to buy Stonewall had been dispatched by the Shogunate, but the U.S. government—professing official neutrality—initially refused to release the vessel to the Shogunate once it reached Japan. The American minister in Japan waited until January 1869 to release the ironclad to the Imperial forces, which renamed it Kotetsu. Two months later Admiral Enomoto, determined to capture the powerful ship for his Shogunate navy, dispatched a paddle-wheeler called Kaiten in an attempt to capture the enemy ironclad, but Kotetsu’s defenders managed to drive them back with a Gatling gun and killed Kaiten’s captain. The emperor’s forces struck back on May 11 at the Battle of Hakodate. Led by Kotetsu, a squadron of Imperial ships swept away a rebel fleet and leveled the shore defenses with their guns. “The last rebels surrendered and the Meiji regime triumphed, with the former Confederate vessel a significant factor in the victory,” according to historian William L. Neumann. The former Stonewall remained a formidable weapon for the forward-looking regime of the Meiji Restoration. As early as 1869, the American minister issued a warning that the Japanese, emboldened by their new naval strength, “perhaps entertained a conceit that they were strong enough to defy our government.” The former Confederate vessel would remain a part of the Japanese fleet until 1888. Japan meanwhile continued to modernize its navy. Early in the next century Japanese forces succeeded in demolishing the Russian navy during the Russo-Japanese War. In one of history’s strange ironies, the peace treaty between Russia and Japan was brokered by President Theodore Roosevelt—the nephew of James Dunwoody Bulloch, whose work had inadvertently helped send Japan down the path to a modern navy.
Tom Huntington, former editor of American History and Historic Traveler magazines, is the author of Searching for George Gordon Meade: The Forgotten Victor of Gettysburg (2013). DECEMBER 2016 CIVIL WAR TIMES
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HAVE A COLD ONE Purcellville, Va.’s, Corcoran Brewing Company produces J.E.B. Stuart Stout in honor of the Rebel cavalry leader, who was, ironically, a teetotaler. The youthful Federal soldiers pictured above enjoying some beer probably wouldn’t meet the legal drinking age in many states today.
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From Minnesota to Maine to Virginia, a curious intersection of Civil War history and beer brewing is taking place. Heritage tourism is a driving force marrying beer and the Civil War. Since small independent craft brewers often struggle to compete with the large national brands for retail shelf space, and packaging and distribution can be very expensive, many small breweries have embraced a business model whereby the brewery becomes a destination, complete with tasting rooms and on-site sales. It’s an approach that has given rise to beer tourism in many parts of the country. After touring the battlefields around Fredericksburg, Va., for example, you can drop into Spencer Devon Brewing for a Sunken Road Belgian Blonde or a Fighting 69th Irish Stout. Follow up a hot day on the fields of Gettysburg by stopping by Battlefield Brew Works—the perfect place to refresh your spirits with a Lincoln Lager, an Irish Brigade Brown Ale or a Bobby E. Lee Double IPA. Drive north to Hagerstown, Md., after a visit to Burnside Bridge and Bloody Lane and try Antietam Brewery’s General’s Golden Ale or Little Mac IPA. ore Civil War battles were fought in Virginia than in any other state, and in the past five years the number of breweries in the Old Dominion alone has tripled. There’s not a battlefield in Virginia that does not have a brewery nearby, many of which have adopted names or labels that pay tribute to historical events, as well as notables who passed through their communities 150 years ago. Tin Cannon Brewing Company, for example, located just a few miles from Manassas, explains its name as an “ode to…an area of tremendous Civil War history.” In Spotsylvania County, Adventure Brewing Company, which has two locations in Fredericksburg,
HERO ON A SIX-PACK Shipyard Brewing of Portland, Maine, offers a pale ale named after Union icon and Portland resident Joshua Chamberlain. At right, Federal troops congregate and have a few outside a sutler’s hut. 50
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operates a restaurant named “Lee’s Retreat” after the momentous events that happened nearby. Adventure also produces a very popular Stonewall Stout, the slogan for which is “One Taste and You’ll Say…‘I’d Give My Right Arm for a Stonewall Stout.’” Jackson, however, lost his left arm, proving that not all brewers are historians. Center of the Universe Brewing Company, outside Richmond, released Crazy Bet Imperial Amber Ale with a label bearing the likeness
There is no mistaking the Civil War theme of Saw Bones, a ginger table beer offered by Flying Dog Brewery.
of notorious Union spy Elizabeth Van Lew. “Like ‘Crazy Bet,’ this Imperial Amber is sweet upfront and bitter at the end. We think she’d like it!” reads the label. Confederate Colonel John S. Mosby’s visage graces The Ghost of the 43rd American Pale Ale by Three Notch’d Brewing Company in Charlottesville, Va. The Corcoran Brewing Company in Purcellville, Va., produces J.E.B. Stuart Stout—only fitting, as Corcoran is situated close to where Stuart screened the Army of Northern Virginia’s march to Pennsylvania during 1863 cavalry fighting at Aldie, Middleburg and Upperville. Breweries in other states have also incorporated Civil War references into their labels. In Wilmington, N.C, a major Atlantic point of entry for Confederate blockade runners as well as home to Fort Fisher State Historic Site, Ironclad Brewery offers its own Cape Fear Defender India Pale Ale. The logo of Union Pizza and Brewing Company of Fergus Falls, Minn., features Ulysses S. Grant in uniform—but you also can opt for a glass of their Jeff Davis Porter to enjoy with your slice of pie. America’s 16th president gets a nod from two locations: The Lincoln Brewing Company of Fuquay-Varina, N.C., and Lincoln’s Beard Brewing Company in Miami, Fla. Burnt Hickory Brewery in Kennesaw, Ga., offers its patrons Fighting Bishop Belgian Trippel and Old Wooden Head Imperial India Pale Ale, in honor of Confederate Generals Leonidas Polk and John Bell Hood.
The National Museum of Civil War Medicine was so pleased with the success of its Sesquicentennial Series beer that it partnered with Flying Dog Brewery in Frederick, Md., to produce beers more specific to the museum’s mission and interpretive themes. From a tourism perspective, the partnership makes perfect sense, as the museum is the most visited gated attraction in the City of Frederick and Flying Dog Brewery is the most visited tourist destination in Frederick County. The museum once again provided a recipe to inspire the brewery, resulting in Saw Bones, a seasonal ginger table beer. Its label, created by celebrated artist Ralph Steadman, includes the museum’s logo. Flying Dog’s significant distribution is helping to make a wider audience aware of the museum, according to museum Executive Director David Price, who notes, “We are able to get outside the four walls of our museum and reach an audience who probably never heard of us or Civil War medicine.” So far the collaboration is proving successful. The museum and brewery plan to continue working together, releasing new Civil-War inspired beers over the next few years.—E.J.M.
Brewers have also collaborated with historic sites and museums. A partnership between the National Museum of Civil War Medicine and breweries in Frederick, Md., exemplifies this tasty intersection of tourism and history. When the Civil War Sesquicentennial commenced in 2011, the museum worked with Brewer’s Alley Restaurant and the Monocacy Brewing Company to create a limited edition series of beers commemorating the war’s anniversary. The museum’s staff researched historic recipes and provided them to the brewers, who massaged them into beers that they bottled and sold locally. “Together with the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, we set out to tell an interpretive story through beer,” said a Brewer’s Alley representative. The first release occurred in 2012, with Antietam Ale, followed in 2013 with three additional brews: Proclamation Porter, First Draught and Gettysburg Wheat. Bad Old Man Ransom Ale, released in 2014, sported a label featuring Confederate General Jubal Early, who threatened to burn down the city of Frederick unless he received $200,000 ransom during his 1864 invasion of Maryland. Sesquicentennial Ale capped off the series in 2015. That partnership benefited both the brewery and the museum, with proceeds from beer sales going to support the museum’s interpretive programs. As breweries increasingly become tourist destinations, we’re likely to see even more cooperation between historic sites and brewers. Perhaps there’ll also be a “Beers for Battlefields” collaboration, to benefit battlefield preservation as well as thirsty visitors. In the meantime, whenever you visit your favorite battlefield or site, take time out to look for, and maybe sample, what’s being served locally.
When he’s not working as a historian and cultural resources manager at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, you can often find Eric J. Mink quenching his thirst at a nearby craft brewery. DECEMBER 2016 CIVIL WAR TIMES
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VICTORY IN THE
PITCH BLACK Wade Hampton’s troopers pummeled a Union outpost on a sleet-swept night
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Y 4 P.M. ON MARCH 1, 1864, Brig. Gen. Judson Kilpatrick’s scheme to capture Richmond and free some 13,000 Federal prisoners held at Belle Isle and Libby Prison had faltered. The raid had begun on February 28, when Kilpatrick’s men and a column led by Colonel Ulric Dahlgren left Stevensburg, Va., intent on raising havoc in the Confederate capital and rescuing Union soldiers. The plan might have seemed impossible, but it had Abraham Lincoln’s blessing, notwithstanding the objections of Army of the Potomac commander Maj. Gen. George G. Meade and cavalry chief Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton. “The rationale of the raid was a hurried ride, timely arrival, great daring, a surprise, a sudden charge without a moment’s hesitation—success,” a Michigan officer wrote after the war.
But factors beyond Kilpatrick’s control had thwarted his plans: bad weather, faulty communications, command and control issues and failed attacks on Richmond by Dahlgren and Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler—in addition to unexpected resistance by local defenders. The 26-year-old West Pointer remained undeterred. As Kilpatrick retreated from Richmond, he pondered ideas for a second run at the city, if nothing else but to save his career. As it happened, Maj. Gen. Wade Hampton, one of the South’s most gifted cavalrymen, would order a night attack at Atlee’s Station, a mere dozen miles northeast of Richmond, that crushed the Union commander’s plans. At Kilpatrick’s order, the retreat from Richmond began on March 1 as the late-winter light faded. Brig. Gen. Henry E. Davies Jr., Kilpatrick’s most trusted subordinate, covered the withdrawal as his commander led the demoralized column
SURPRISE, SURPRISE After a failed raid led by Brig. Gen. Judson Kilpatrick (left), Confederate cavalryman Wade Hampton (right, after his promotion to lieutenant general) engineered a brilliant ambush at Atlee’s Station.
over the swampy Chickahominy River at the Meadow Bridge. The withdrawing Yankees swept up slaves, horses, mules, carriages, bacon, corn, a gold watch, the mite of a widow named Watson and pretty much whatever else they pleased as they exited the city. To thwart pursuers, they destroyed both the Virginia Central Railroad and the causeway bridges over the Chickahominy. In the rush to cross the river before the structures went up in flames, some riders splashed into the water. Several horses became mired in the belly-deep mud, to be left behind or shot where they wallowed as their riders waded across as best they could. But despite the burned bridges between the Union force and its foes, the raiders found no respite. “After dark a severe storm of sleet and rain came in which lasted through the night,” Davies remembered. “It was raining and freezing so our clothing was ice,” wrote an officer in the 5th New York Cavalry, adding, “Take off our overcoats and they would stand alone.” The New Yorker went on to describe how the “roads were a puddle of mud. The night was dark as pitch.” “We were all very sleepy and tired having had no sleep nor rest since we left Stevensburg,” a Vermonter recorded in his diary. Some weary riders stretched out on the sodden ground, reins around their wrists, and slept. A few fortunate troopers started fires and brewed coffee, while others balanced on fence rails to keep themselves out of the mud, “wet as drowned rats,” as they tried to catch what sleep they could. A few had rubber blankets, a minimal layer of protection against storm and slop. Some officers had the foresight to order only the saddle girths loosened, not the saddles removed from the horses. Kilpatrick was not thinking about weather, muddy roads, hot coffee or even a defensive perimeter for his camp, not even posting “a regular picket line.” He was focusing on how to regain the initiative he had lost. Between 9 and 10 p.m., the general decided to make another run at Richmond. Extrapolating from what scouts and spies had told him, he concluded that most of the Confederate troops were concentrated north and west of the city, leaving the Mechanicsville Road to Richmond barely covered. He drew up a plan calling for Lt. Col. Addison Preston and Major Constantine Taylor to take separate “dismounted” detachments of 500 men each and renew the assault. Each officer had his own objectives: “one was to liberate prisoners confined to Libby, and
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Kilpatrick was not thinking about a defensive perimeter for his camp...He wanted to regain the initiative FUTILE EFFORT Artist Edwin Forbes sketched Kilpatrick’s horsemen en route to Richmond, where the Union commander hoped to rescue POWs. After the raiders were ambushed at Atlee’s Station, Colonel Edward Sawyer (inset), the 7th Michigan’s acting brigade commander, failed to come to their aid in a timely fashion. the other was to secure Jeff Davis.” Kilpatrick, with the remainder of his force, would hold the area around the Meadow Bridges, waiting for the return of Preston’s and Taylor’s men and the escaped prisoners. He never explained how weak POWs were supposed to get across the swollen, wintry river without access to bridges. However flawed his proposition may have been, Kilpatrick had chosen two solid officers to make it work. The 27-year-old Taylor was a veteran of the Old Army, having served in the 5th U.S. Cavalry before joining the 1st Maine Cavalry, and Preston had earned plaudits from his regiment, the 1st Vermont Cavalry. One Vermonter remembered Preston as “an officer who makes everything stir, and in the right way.” Before those units could move out at 2 a.m., however, actions elsewhere further eroded Kilpatrick’s operation. Near Atlee’s Station on the Virginia Central Railroad, Lt. Col. Allyn Litchfield had orders to make fires and coffee for the men of his 7th Michigan, and establish a 10-man picket post south of the depot. He did as instructed, and not a few of his men seized the opportunity to get their first dismounted sleep in 60 hours. By 9 p.m. they were fast asleep, while Litchfield paced back and forth, dressed in a fine overcoat collared and cuffed in astrakhan fur. About 9 p.m. all hell broke loose when Hampton’s men smashed into the Wolverine pickets from the direction of Hughes’ Crossroads. 54
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The South Carolinian had set up headquarters in the Atlee’s Station ticket office, and from there ordered 300 Rebels to undertake, by his own admission, “the most difficult duty of soldiers—a night attack.” Hampton sent one squadron under Captain J.C. Blair, Companies C and F, 1st North Carolina Cavalry, into the fight dismounted as skirmishers. The Carolinians came within 50 yards of the Union campfires. “It was dark as an Egyptian night” when the Confederates attacked. A piece from Hampton’s two-gun section barked as the remainder of Colonel William Cheek’s 1st North Carolina attacked with about 120 men, swarming the Federals on foot, while the remainder of Hampton’s cavalry stayed mounted in the rear. Raining down carbine fire on the sleepy raiders, screaming Carolinians ran
headlong for the Union campfires. Campfires silhouetted Litchfield’s hastily organized skirmish line, and the troopers made fatally easy targets. Although the sloppy ground kept Lieutenant Edwin Halsey, who was commanding Hampton’s artillery, from using both of his guns, he fired one piece so rapidly that the Federals thought they were in the sights of several batteries. Halsey’s shelling badly punished the raiders’ horses. Hitched to trees, they could not run, and several were wounded while others were captured. The special terror of being the target of a night attack was the subject of a Michigan man’s letter home a few days later: “It was dark as a stack of black cats, and we could only see the blaze of their cannon, while the grape and canister and shell came in from all sides. We were almost scared to death, we were so sleepy, but we had to get out of it horse or no horse, just as soon as we could.” Hampton had achieved a textbook surprise. Litchfield had to improvise. He sent Captain
Robert Sproul’s company out across both sides of the road leading from Atlee’s Station. To protect Sproul’s flank, he placed 20 men in a field, then sent Sgt. Maj. Lucius Carver to find the 7th Michigan’s acting brigade commander, Colonel Edward Sawyer, and deliver a note advising that he could not hold much longer. Carver found Sawyer in a blacksmith shop south of Litchfield’s position. Sawyer had garnered his command of the 1st Vermont Cavalry by Republican Party connections, not valor. In 1863 he dodged a courtmartial for embezzlement and “entertaining lewd women in his camp.” Nor was he known for his bravery. In one October 1863 fight, a Vermont cavalryman wrote, “I saw the Colonel with his face towards Vermont when we went into that last charge.” Sawyer would not redeem his reputation in the fight with Hampton. With no help immediately available from Sawyer, Litchfield decided to string out a dismounted skirmish line around his entire regiment. Snow started to fall at that point, and in the darkness Hampton, whose cannons were only 150 yards away from the Wolverines, threw shells as Cheek’s attacking troopers uncorked the fearsome Rebel yell, a blood-curdling sound one Union officer described as “a mixture of Panther, Wolf, dog, Peacock and Screech owl.” One North Carolina captain later recalled, “what we lacked in numbers [had to] be compensated for in noise and rattle.” The Wolverines blindly aimed their Spencer carbines at the flashes of artillery rounds being sent their way. But Confederate bravado, effecDECEMBER 2016 CIVIL WAR TIMES
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It was dark as a stack of black cats, and we could only see the blaze of their cannon TOO FAR The Kilpatrick-Dahlgren raid left Stevensburg on February 28, 1864, intent on causing havoc. But it ended during the first days of March with the Yankee troopers racing for the safety of Union lines, and little accomplished.
tive small-arms fire, and 14 rounds from Halsey’s gun forced Lieutenant Hiram Ingersoll’s men to give way, exposing Sproul’s flank. During the melee, 1st Lt. John Q. Sessions sent Corporal Andrew Pray and four other men across the Atlee Road to hold the regiment’s left. Hearing firing toward their rear, the corporal ordered his men to head back to the main camp around the Eliza Crenshaw house. After discovering that the Rebels had captured their horses, Pray’s comrades surrendered, but the corporal made a break for it. As he ran down a hill with Carolinians firing over his head, Pray fell into a pond, then ran smack into a tangle of grapevines. But he made it to the Federals’ rear, mounted a spare horse and finally returned to his regiment with only his shell jacket, boots and trousers. With Ingersoll’s line gone, Sproul exhorted his men to “lick the h—l out the blank, blank Rebels.” But they had to withdraw as enemy carbine fire increased on the 7th Michigan’s flank. As one man recalled, “The fight was severe, and no other coming to our help, we were obliged to fall back.” Horseless, his revolver cylinder empty, Litchfield tried to escape the melee on foot but unexpectedly ran into half a dozen Rebels. He quickly retreated back to his makeshift headquarters at Crenshaw’s, where, in his “best Southern tone,” Litchfield tried to bluff his way out of his predicament. The 6-foot colonel, dressed far too well in his fur-trimmed overcoat to be a Rebel, drew the attention of three Tar Heels, who took him prisoner. Lieutenant Samuel B. Carll was far less lucky. Shot through the lungs and left lying in his rain-soaked uniform all night after his unit fled, Carll 56
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was found the next day by Confederates. The Southerners took him to a house but could not get him medical treatment for 10 days. The 46-year-old officer would recover, though exposure cost him an eye. Litchfield landed in Libby Prison with Carll, Ingersoll and Captain John A. Clarke. Forty-five other 7th Michigan men were also captured in the fight. Sawyer finally decided to support the 7th Michigan’s fight with Hampton. As a Confederate shell smashed through the shake roof of his headquarters at the blacksmith shop “with an awful crash,” the colonel ordered 21-yearold 2nd Lt. Billy North of Company K, 5th Michigan, to support the imperiled 7th Michigan’s line. North’s reinforcements had scarcely advanced before Litchfield’s men appeared, “coming helter-skelter down the road in a panic and…[running] completely over and through [them], scattering the company so that it did not get together again until the morning.” After that Sawyer sent the remainder of Lt. Col. Ebenezer Gould’s 5th Michigan to try to help North, but
WO U L D ulric dahlgren
HAVE SHOT
jeff daviS ? Brash Colonel Ulric Dahlgren, who led part of the February-March 1864 raid on Richmond, had promised his father, Rear Adm. John Dahlgren, the raid would be the “grandest thing on record.” But home guards shot Dahlgren dead during a March 2 ambush and found orders on his body calling for the assassination of Jefferson Davis and his cabinet. Brig. Gen. Judson Kilpatrick and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton denied all knowledge of the plot. But Maj. Gen. George G. Meade suspected that Kilpatrick had been involved, and many historians think Stanton could also have been aware of the situation. After angry Confederates buried Dahlgren in an unmarked plot, Unionists had him dug up, according to the Richmond Examiner, on a night so dark “no object ten feet distant could be distinguished, and no sounds broke upon the loneliness of the place save the howling of the winds and the resurrectionist’s spade.” His remains eventually ended up in Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery, where he rests today. Apparently buried along with him was the truth about the Northern plot to assassinate the Southern president.
CONTROVERSIAL COVERUP Following the death of Colonel Dahlgren (above), Confederates consigned him to an unmarked grave—and the North denied all knowledge of his aims. Right: One of Dahlgren’s gauntlets, with his blood-stained, bullet-holed silk sash. DECEMBER 2016 CIVIL WAR TIMES
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WOLVERINE BANNER In the aftermath of the Richmond raid, the 7th Michigan set up a picket post south of Atlee’s Station, where Hampton’s horsemen captured the 7th’s commander, Lt. Col. Allyn Litchfield. it was too late. The 30-minute fight with Hampton had devolved into a rout. The regiment was “retreating on the run the rebs yelling halt you Yankee sons of bitches,” a private in the 7th Michigan wrote home, “but I had no particular desire to make their acquaintance.” Weary troopers were awakened as Sawyer’s units fled to the rear, but could scarcely figure out where they were. “Men began running to all points of the compass and became completely lost,” one veteran recalled. Preston managed to form up his Vermonters, who fired eight to 10 rounds from their carbines before Preston ordered them to mount up and fall back. Major Kidd also mounted his 6th Michigan troopers without loss. His fortuitous orders to only loosen girths and not unsaddle saved his unit. But another Wolverine, serving on Sawyer’s staff, described the withdrawal as a “great confusion in our ranks and very little order.” Kidd said later that Sawyer had left them to fight on their “own hook.” Troopers who tried to put up a dismounted fight lost their horses to the Confederates. On this part of Kilpatrick’s line, demoralization was reportedly “wonderfully and fearfully” rampant. Hampton’s surprise attack “was perfect and the result damaging to the raiders.” A few Yankees somehow escaped the confusion. “We were mounted and formed in line with as little excitement as though we were falling in for drill,” a 9th New York diarist observed. General Davies claimed that Sawyer’s brigade actually repulsed Hampton’s cavalry without his brigade’s 58
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help, an opinion supported by a trooper in the 5th Michigan who described in a letter home how his comrades jumped for their arms “in a twinkling” and “were in position and charged the Greybacks who ran away.” With Hampton’s attack on the 7th Michigan subdued by other troopers from Kilpatrick’s command, the order to move out came quickly. An artilleryman close to 3rd Cavalry Division headquarters remembered that “every order was given and executed as coolly and as quickly as though nothing uncommon happened, but we got out of that place in the shortest time possible.” The “men followed the splash of mud in front of them” as staff officers hurried to and fro, carrying Kilpatrick’s orders and directions for the regimental commanders. A Vermonter who was probably with Sawyer recorded in his diary, “we traveled on the double quick until five this morn then halted about three hours.” Kilpatrick’s signal officer reported that “dark and raining as it was, not much confusion ensued” as the two brigades retreated. Kidd, a frequent Kilpatrick critic, remembered that the column “was moving at a walk on the road leading to Old Church.” Even Hampton credited the Federals with making “a stout resistance for a short time.” But that interval quickly came to an end. “Soon the road and fields were filled with crowding, cursing men each one trying to protect himself,” a Vermonter wrote. “Everyone was now making an effort to escape….Away we go on the trot, now gallop, now on the dead run and then come up with a sudden stop against the men ahead. More cursing and crowding and then plunge ahead again; and so on during the night…a disgusted mob of men, without any formation of any kind.” As the column left Mechanicsville, “the men were sleepy, the horses tired and everyone [was] in bad humor”—but not panicky. “Oh no! It was more disgust than fear,” a cavalryman remembered. Whatever their emotions, few raiders would forget that night. About 1 a.m. on March 2, Kilpatrick’s column halted at the intersection of roads leading from Mechanicsville to Old Church and from Hanover Court House to Bottom’s Bridge so that the ranks could close up. The Federals then proceeded for several hours, skirmishing briefly with Rebels near dawn. A Pennsylvania trooper scribbled in his diary about how the column was harassed “for a mile or two with the rascals in our rear” until the Yankees halted, then three companies of the 6th Michigan and part of the 1st Vermont charged
with a determination that ended the pursuit. The raiders now moved off in the direction of Old Church, where they regrouped about 4 a.m. The weary riders then bivouacked until 1 p.m. near Old Church Tavern. The snowy fight with Hampton had lasted less than 30 minutes. A bitter Litchfield later criticized Kilpatrick for not properly picketing his line. But Davies squarely blamed Sawyer, saying that the colonel’s “pickets were carelessly posted.” Likewise, Kidd also blamed Sawyer for not rushing his entire brigade to Litchfield’s defense. Moreover, Kilpatrick’s orders to build fires meant that those served “as lighthouses to direct the course of the enemy whom he knew to be pushing a vigorous pursuit.” It appears Kilpatrick, Sawyer and Litchfield should all share blame in allowing 300 freezing Southerners the opportunity to disrupt two veteran brigades of Federal cavalry, even though the Union horsemen were in rough shape after three straight days in the saddle. Lauding Hampton’s singular victory, a Richmond editor took a swipe at Kilpatrick when he wrote that the raid “thus far consisted in robbing hen roosts and stealing negroes.” Colonel Cheek, who led the North Carolinians in their wild attack on the 7th Michigan, later felt that the fight at Atlee’s Station was more important than the cavalry’s other battles at Brandy Station and Trevillian’s Station because it saved the Confederate capital from capture. Captain John McAnerney, who defeated Dahlgren on the west side of Richmond on March 1, considered the turning back of the Yankees attributable to “obstinacy and good luck.” He also paints a picture of the alternative scenario: “Imagine what would have been the result if their plans had succeeded. Thirty thousand federal prisoners, many of the toughs from the great cities [loose]. It would have been a sad night for the homes, women and children of Richmond.” But one of Hampton’s company commanders, Captain J.C. Blair, reasoned that had it not been for Hampton’s decisive action, Kilpatrick would have taken Richmond. The captain reserved his most incisive comments for a backhanded slap at army brass, however, opining that the South Carolinian’s attack “was the best managed of any fight I was ever in, and yet they think no one can manage troops but a West Pointer.”
Bruce M. Venter is the author of Kill Jeff Davis: The Union Raid on Richmond, 1864 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2016).
Years after the war, Wade Hampton, by that time a U.S. senator, apparently had a conversation about his attack at Atlee’s Station with Allyn Litchfield, who reportedly considered the ex-Confederate cavalryman “one of the bravest Southern Generals” to have fought in the war. Litchfield’s Libby Prison experience had apparently affected his physical health as well as his mental state. From a soldier who had been “cool, collected, determined, [and] energetic,” he had become “apathetic, listless, woody, unresponsive”—and in one doctor’s opinion, perhaps even insane. Litchfield bumped around from job to job after the conflict due to “fits of the blues.” His issues provide a well-documented case of post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition that was often overlooked in Civil War soldiers. ¶ When Litchfield buttonholed the former Confederate general about his actions on March 1, 1864, Hampton reportedly told him, “I had no idea of fighting that night, but the thing looked so pretty and inviting I thought I would give the boys some fun.” The former Union officer then suggested that if only George Custer had been present, things would have been different for the South Carolina cavalryman. Hampton agreed, saying, “He would have made it more than lively.” B.M.V.
If Only
Custer
Had Been
There
UNREALISTIC OBJECTIVE If Kilpatrick had reached Libby Prison, above, could debilitated Union POWs have escaped?
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STEAMY SOUTHERN NIGHT Savannahh’s Confeederate memorial is in Forrsyth Parkk, on the southern end of the historic district. The statue features a Confedderatee solldier standing atop a sandstonne baase. Two nearby busts honor native soons Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws and Brig.. Genn. Fraancis Bartow.
SOUTHERN GRACE ON DECEMBER 17, 1864, UNION MAJ. GEN. WILLIAM
Tecumseh Sherman wrote a letter to Confederate Lt. Gen. William J. Hardee, who then had a tenuous hold on the coastal city of Savannah, Ga. “I am…justified,” Sherman wrote, “in demanding the surrender of the city of Savannah, and its dependent forts, and shall wait a reasonable time for your answer, before opening with heavy ordnance.” Hardee responded by fleeing. After presenting the capitulated city to President Lincoln as his “Christmas gift,” Sherman made his headquarters in a luxurious private home now known as the GreenMeldrim House. Today Savannah is a city of genteel grace, with many notable homes, churches, squares and monuments comprising its picturesque historic district. Although it may be better known now for its associations with the films Forrest Gump and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (both based on books), Savannah has much to offer Civil War travelers, from the battered Fort Pulaski National Monument to African-American houses of worship that played a role in the Underground Railroad. The city is easily accessible from I-95 and the Savannah-Hilton Head International S AVA N N A H Airport. Although a car is required to reach outlying forts and cemeteries, the historic district is pedestrian-friendly, and trolleys are available for hopping on and off. In local establishments you’ll find no shortage of fresh-made biscuits, fried green tomatoes and ghost stories.—Kim A. O’Connell
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CIVIL WAR TIMES DECEMBER 2016
FORT
JACKSON
Built between 1808-1812, Fort Jackson, two miles east of Savannah, is another brick
SHERMAN’S HEADQUARTERS Sherman and his army (some 60,000 strong) entered Savannah bearing not torches but a treaty. With the flames of Atlanta fresh in their minds, city officials brokered a deal with the Union general: surrender in exchange for leniency. Agreeing to the terms, Sherman became a guest of Charles Green, a wealthy merchant whose Gothic Revival house on Madison Square was one of the city’s grandest. Indeed, a Civil War tour of Savannah might have no better starting place than the Green-Meldrim House, built in the 1850s for the Green family. Sherman slept upstairs, in the corner bedroom. SQUARES AND PARLORS Savannah has 22 public squares, most of them named for an important historical figure. Lined with mature trees, including grand oaks dripping with Spanish moss, the squares offer welcome respite during a day of exploring on foot. Good thing too, because Savannah boasts a variety of beautifully restored and maintained homes with Civil War connections. Just around the corner of Madison Square from the Green-Meldrim House, for instance, is the Sorrel-Weed House, boyhood home of Rebel General Moxley Sorrel. Robert E. Lee visited here early in the war and again shortly before his death in 1870. The house was one of the city’s first to be preserved and opened to the public, and was later used in the opening shot of Forrest Gump.
Only a couple of blocks away sits the Andrew Low House, a neoclassical structure with an Italianate roofline, built in 1847. On Lee’s last visit to Savannah following the war, his stay at the Low house was frequently interrupted by citizens stopping by to shake his hand. Artifacts there include a brooch that Lee gave to a family matriarch. Another draw is the MercerWilliams House, located a few blocks to the south on Monterey Square. Famous for its connection to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (site of a scandalous murder), the house was built for Confederate Colonel Hugh W. Mercer, the grandson of Revolutionary patriot Brig. Gen. Hugh Mercer and grandfather of singer/songwriter Johnny Mercer (“Jeepers Creepers”).
fortification that changed hands during the conflict. One of the last Federal units stationed at Fort Jackson was the 55th Massachusetts, an African-American unit that had fought at Honey Hill, S.C., in November 1864,
along with its more famous counterpart, the 54th Massachusetts.
Storm Over the City
Jacqueline Jones’ Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War (Knopf ) is a richly detailed account of the city’s storied history before, during and after the war. The New York Times called the book “a meticulous recreation of the Civil War in Georgia’s rice kingdom.”
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Fort Pulaski sits on Cockspur Island, which is between Savannah and Tybee Island on Georgia’s Atlantic Coast.
BRICKS AND BOMBS Devastating artillery damage can still be seen at Fort Pulaski National Monument. In April 1862, Union batteries began a sustained bombardment of the brick fort, effectively demonstrating the power of rifled cannons and nearly detonating the fort’s magazine. The Southerners surrendered rather than risking a conflagration. Visitors can explore the fort’s brick walls, original bunkrooms and moat, among other features.
SOLDIER ART Although the Savannah Visitor Center and History Museum is a good place to get oriented, the new Webb Military Museum packs a lot of punch into a much smaller space. This carefully curated facility preserves exhibits from the Civil War through Desert Storm. The Civil War portion includes the uniforms, 62
weapons and flags you might expect, but they are enlivened by unusual additions, such as a tiny human skull carved from a human bone and a walking cane inscribed with military insignia. Collector and museum founder Gary Webb brings a personal touch to the displays, with artifacts from his own family woven in.
VISIT THE DEAD Savannah’s most visited burial ground is probably Bonaventure Cemetery, whose “Bird Girl” statue was featured on the book cover for Midnight. (Because of concerns about too many visitors and vandalism, the statue now stands at the Jepson Center, one of the city’s Telfair museum properties.) This hauntingly beautiful burial ground is the final resting place for several notables, including Hugh Mercer and Confederate Brig. Gen. Claudius Charles Wilson.
CIVIL WAR TIMES DECEMBER 2016
The Laurel Grove Cemetery
“It could be observed that the rifled projectiles were doing excellent service…the portion of the wall where the breach had been ordered was becoming rapidly ‘honey combed.’” Maj. Gen. Quincy A. Gilmore, Union commander at Fort Pulaski
Second African American Church
The Laurel Grove Cemetery also is home to many Civil War dead, with one section for Confederate officers and soldiers and another section for freed and enslaved African Americans. Also buried at Laurel Grove is Phoebe Pember, who served as a nurse and administrator at Richmond’s Chimborazo Hospital.
MEETINGHOUSES For African Americans, the city’s churches offered more than spiritual uplift. When the Second African Baptist Church on Greene Square hosted Sherman during his Savannah sojourn, he read the Emancipation Proclamation from its steps (the Civil War– era wooden church was replaced by the current structure early in the 20th century). Decades later, these and other churches hosted meetings to organize protests against segregation.
LOCAL COLOR Planters Inn and the Olde Pink House The Planters Inn is a charming boutique hotel with period décor, four-poster beds and a complimentary breakfast and happy hour. Some balconies overlook adjacent Reynolds Square. Right next door is the Olde Pink House, an 18th-century dwelling that has become a popular restaurant. During the war, the house had been converted to a bank (ask for the bank vault table for a cozy dining experience). Today the BLT salad— served with buttermilk dressing, sweet bacon, fried green tomatoes and a sharp knife—is not to be missed. Entrees range from comfortfoods like pot pie to elegantly presented seared scallops. DECEMBER 2016 CIVIL WAR TIMES
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HERITAGE TRAVEL & LIFESTYLE SHOWCASE
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Join us for our Civil War Anniversary Commemoration including attractions and tours, exhibitions, memorials and a selection of artifacts from Fort Fisher.
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History lives in Tupelo, Mississippi. Visit Brice’s Crossroads National Battlefield, Natchez Trace Parkway, Tupelo National Battlefield, Mississippi Hills Exhibit Center and more.
“Part of the One and Only Bluegrass!” Visit National Historic Landmark, National Civil War Trust tour, historic ferry, and the third largest planetarium of its kind in the world!
North Little Rock, Arkansas, is one of only two places to have two vessels that bookend World War II: tugboat USS Hoga and submarine USS Razorback. www.AIMMuseum.org
A vacation in Georgia means great family experiences that can only be described as pretty sweet. Explore Georgia’s Magnolia Midlands.
Experience the Civil War in Jacksonville at the Museum of Military History. Relive one of Arkansas’ first stands at the Reed’s Bridge Battlefield. jacksonvillesoars.com/museum.php
Explore the past in Baltimore during two commemorative events: the War of 1812 Bicentennial and Civil War 150. Plan your trip at Baltimore.org.
Are you a history and culture buff? There are many museums and attractions, Civil War, and Civil Rights sites just for you in Jackson, Mississippi.
Experience living history for The Battles of Marietta Georgia, featuring reenactments, tours and a recreation of 1864 Marietta. www.mariettacivilwar.com
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The Mississippi Hills National Heritage Area highlights the historic, cultural, natural, scenic and recreational treasures of this distinctive region. www.mississippihills.org
Once Georgia’s last frontier outpost, now its third largest city, Columbus is a true destination of choice. History, theater, arts and sports—Columbus has it all.
Over 650 grand historic homes in three National Register Historic Districts. Birthplace of America’s greatest playwright, Tennessee Williams. The ultimate Southern destination—Columbus, MS.
Six major battles took place in Winchester and Frederick County, and the town changed hands approximately 72 times— more than any other town in the country! www.visitwinchesterva.com
Home to more than 400 sites, the Civil War’s impact on Georgia was greater than any other event in the state’s history. Visit www.gacivilwar.org to learn more.
Greeneville, TN Founded in 1783, Greeneville has a rich historical background as the home for such important figures as Davy Crockett and President Andrew Johnson. Plan your visit now!
Richmond, Kentucky
H I S T O R I C
Roswell, Georgia
Tishomingo County, MS Fayetteville/Cumberland County, North Carolina is steeped in history and patriotic traditions. Take a tour highlighting our military ties, status as a transportation hub, and our Civil War story.
Whether you love history, culture, the peacefulness of the great outdoors, or the excitement of entertainment, Roswell offers a wide selection of attractions and tours. www.visitroswellga.com
With a variety of historic attractions and outdoor adventures, Tishomingo County is a perfect destination for lovers of history and nature alike.
History surrounds Cartersville, GA, including Allatoona Pass, where a fierce battle took place, and Cooper’s Furnace, the only remnant of the bustling industrial town of Etowah.
Relive history in Hopkinsville, Kentucky and explore Jefferson Davis’ birthplace, the Trail of Tears Commemorative Park and the vigilante rebellion of the Black Patch Tobacco War.
Seven museums, an 1890 railroad, a British fort and an ancient trade path can be found on the Furs to Factories Trail in the Tennessee Overhill, located in the corner of Southeast Tennessee.
Through personal stories, interactive exhibits and a 360° movie, the Civil War Museum focuses on the war from the perspective of the Upper Middle West. www.thecivilwarmuseum.org
There’s a place where a leisurely stroll might lead to an extraordinary historic home, a beautiful monastery or a lush peach orchard. That place is Georgia. ExploreGeorgia.org/HistoricHeartland
Harrodsburg, KY—The Coolest Place in History! Explore 3000 acres of discovery at Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill and 1774 at Old Fort Harrod State Park. www.HarrodsburgKy.com
Williamson County, Tennessee, is rich in Civil War history. Here, you can visit the Lotz House, Carnton Plantation, Carter House, Fort Granger and Winstead Hill Park, among other historic locations.
Explore the Natchez Trace. Discover America. Journey along this 444-mile National Scenic Byway stretching from the Mississippi River in Natchez through Alabama and then Tennessee.
Come to Helena, Arkansas and see the Civil War like you’ve never seen it before. Plan your trip today! www.CivilWarHelena.com www.VisitHelenaAR.com
Join us as we commemorate the 150th anniversary of Knoxville’s Civil War forts. Plan your trip today! www.knoxcivilwar.org
Charismatic Union General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick had legions of admirers during the war. He just wasn’t much of a general, as his men often learned with their lives.
Sandy Springs, Georgia, is the perfect hub for exploring Metro Atlanta’s Civil War sites. Conveniently located near major highways, you’ll see everything from Sandy Springs!
Treat yourself to Southern Kentucky hospitality in London and Laurel County! Attractions include the Levi Jackson Wilderness Road State Park and Camp Wildcat Civil War Battlefield.
Hip and historic Frederick County boasts unique shopping and dining experiences, battlefields, museums, covered bridges, and abundant outdoor recreation. Request a free travel packet!
Just 15 miles south of downtown Atlanta lies the heart of the true South: Clayton County, Georgia, where heritage comes alive!
St. Mary’s County, Maryland. Visit Point Lookout, site of the war’s largest prison camp, plus Confederate and USCT monuments. A short drive from the nation’s capital.
Cleveland, TN
Near Chattanooga, find glorious mountain scenery and heart-pounding white-water rafting. Walk in the footsteps of the Cherokee and discover a charming historic downtown.
Alabama’s Gulf Coast
If you’re looking for an easy stroll through a century of fine architecture or a trek down dusty roads along the Blues Trail, you’ve come to the right place. www. visitgreenwood.com
Southern hospitality at its finest, the Classic South, Georgia, offers visitors a combination of history and charm mixed with excursion options for everyone from outdoorsmen to museum-goers.
Relive the rich history of the Alabama Gulf Coast at Fort Morgan, Fort Gaines, the USS Alabama Battleship, and the area’s many museums. Fort-Morgan.org • 888-666-9252
CIVIL WAR MUSEUM of the Western Theater
Vicksburg, Mississippi is a great place to bring your family to learn American history, enjoy educational museums and check out the mighty Mississippi River.
Follow the Civil War Trail in Meridian, Mississippi, where you’ll experience history first-hand, including Merrehope Mansion, Marion Confederate Cemetery and more. www.visitmeridian.com.
Fitzgerald, Georgia...100 years of bringing people together. Learn more about our story and the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War’s conclusion at www.fitzgeraldga.org.
Hundreds of authentic artifacts. Voted fourth finest in U.S. by North & South Magazine. Located in historic Bardstown, Kentucky. www.civil-war-museum.org
Come to Cleveland, Mississippi—the birthplace of the blues. Here, you’ll find such legendary destinations as Dockery Farms and Po’ Monkey’s Juke Joint. www.visitclevelandms.com
Historic Bardstown, Kentucky
Destination
Jessamine, KY Prestonsburg, KY - Civil War & history attractions, and reenactment dates at PrestonsburgKY.org. Home to Jenny Wiley State Park, country music entertainment & Dewey Lake.
Search over 10,000 images and primary documents relating to the Civil War Battle of Hampton Roads, now available in The Mariners’ Museum Library Online Catalog! www.marinersmuseum.org/catalogs
History, bourbon, shopping, sightseeing and relaxing—whatever you enjoy, you’re sure to find it in beautiful Bardstown, KY. Plan your visit today. www.visitbardstown.com
London, KY–The reenactment of the Battle of Camp Wildcat, Camp Wildcat Historic Site, Wilderness Road Trail & Boones Trace Trail, & antique and flea market shopping. www.LaurelKyTourism.com
STEP BACK IN TIME at Camp Nelson Civil War Heritage Park, a Union Army supply depot and African American refugee camp. Museum, Civil War Library, Interpretive Trails and more.
STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE Matthew McConaughey as Newton Knight, who volunteered to fight for the Confederacy but then deserted to lead his own rebellion.
A REBEL AT
LIBERTY
Free State of Jones Directed by Gary Ross
REVIEWED BY CAROLE EMBERTON
F
REE STATE OF JONES is not your granddad’s Civil War movie. If you expect a conventional story of heroic sacrifice, you will be disappointed. And if you want a film that extolls the virtues of the Confederacy, then you might even be outraged. Director Gary Ross (Seabiscuit, The Hunger Games) uses the story 66
CIVIL WAR TIMES DECEMBER 2016
of Confederate deserter Newton Knight, played by Matthew McConaughey, to probe the issues of Southern dissent, Unionism and interracial alliances. By creating a compelling counternarrative to the worn-out worldview of the Lost Cause, Ross succeeds in bringing the Civil War film into the 21st century. Based on historian Victoria Bynum’s book by the same name, FSOJ follows Knight and his mixed-race band of dissenters, who successfully declared their independence from the Confederacy in 1863-64. To bring to life the true story of Knight and his compatriots, Ross assembled an army of historians, including not only Bynum but also Margaret Storey (whose book on Alabama Unionists is a must-read for anyone interested in the topic of Southern dissent). Ross’ knowledge of recent historical scholarship on the war and Reconstruction places FSOJ among recent Hollywood films, such as Twelve Years a Slave, that painstakingly reconstruct life in the 19th-century South. Ross wastes no time making his argument about the Confederate war effort. The movie begins with the Battle of Corinth in October 1862, with Knight working as a stretcher-bearer. As Knight drags a wounded private to the
surgical tent, he removes the man’s jacket, telling him he will get treated faster if they think he’s an officer. This is the first sign of the movie’s perspective on “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight,” a slogan soon expressed by one of Knight’s fellow soldiers. When Knight’s teenage nephew, recently impressed into the Confederate army, arrives in camp, it’s up to Knight to shield the boy from harm. Ordered to advance from the trenches in a futile assault against Union guns, the nephew is shot and dies. When a fellow soldier, who eventually joins Knight’s band, assures him that the boy “died with honor,” Knight replies coldly as he prepares to take the body home to Jones County, “Naw, he just died.” The film’s opening battle scenes provide a sobering glimpse of war’s horrors: mutilated bodies, troops marching over their dead and dying comrades. But FSOJ stops short of being an antiwar film. When Knight becomes an outlaw for deserting, he takes refuge in the swamps with a group of runaway slaves who help him realize that the only thing worth fighting for is human liberty. Thus Knight’s struggle was as much an effort to give meaning to the untold suffering caused not only by the war but also by decades of human bondage. That struggle continued long after the war officially ended. FSOJ is the first major Hollywood film in recent memory to delve into the bloody politics of Reconstruction. In the final third of the story, we see the promise of democracy as well as its retreat in the face of white supremacist violence. Although the brutal death of Moses, Knight’s friend and former slave turned political organizer, at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan is one of the film’s most haunting images, the scene where Knight is forced to buy Moses’ young son out of apprenticeship to a white planter epitomizes the tragedy of Reconstruction. Despite Moses’ earlier declaration that “you cannot buy a child of God,” that is exactly what Knight must do if the child is to be free of his former master. Interspersed with the 19th-century story of Newton Knight is the 20th-century story of his great-grandson, Davis, who was a descendant of Knight and Rachel, a former slave who lived with him as his wife until her death in 1889. In 1948 Davis Knight was prosecuted under Mississippi’s anti-miscegenation law for marrying a white woman. The Knight family tree is complicated, and readers would do well to consult Bynum’s book for a full elaboration. Suffice it to say that the reverberations of Knight’s efforts to live on his own terms were felt many years after his death. FSOJ is a valuable addition to Civil War film that any student or scholar of the period should see.
HEROIC EXPLORER
Lincoln’s Bold Lion: The Life and Times of Brigadier General Martin Davis Hardin By James T. Huffstodt Casemate Publishers, $32.95
REVIEWED BY FRANK J. WILLIAMS ith more than 65,000 books already published on the Civil War, is another one about an obscure brigadier general needed? Lesser-known participants can offer fresh perspectives. This highly readable and wellresearched volume rescues General Hardin from oblivion while relating the sad exploits of a talented but sometimes dysfunctional family. Abraham Lincoln was a friend and rival of Hardin’s father, John, who died a hero in the Mexican War. The ever-loyal Lincoln took an interest in the family, especially Martin. A graduate of West Point, Martin Hardin explored the Far West, lost an arm from a gunshot wound, knew Robert E. Lee and George Armstrong Custer, and was wounded four times in battle, once allegedly by Lewis Paine, who would grievously wound U.S. Secretary of State William Seward on the night Lincoln was assassinated. Hardin participated in tracking down the assassins. The story also includes Lincoln’s relation to the Armed Forces, and relates how Hardin’s mother used her Washington influence to curry favor and enhance her son’s military career. Hardin fought with valor at Malvern Hill, Second Bull Run, Gettysburg and during General Ulysses Grant’s spring 1864 Overland Campaign, as well as during Jubal Early’s July 1864 raid on Washington. He earned his rank, yet this 19th-century hero died forgotten at age 86 in St. Augustine, Fla.
W
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CUMBERLAND CAVALRY CHRONICLE REVIEWED BY STUART MCCLUNG ennis Belcher has taken on the major task of telling the story of the Army of the Cumberland’s cavalry and its accomplishments. With multiple chapters devoted to the individual chiefs of cavalry—David S. Stanley, Robert B. Mitchell and Washington L. Elliott—Belcher chronologically details the organization and its many personalities, efforts and actions over the course of its two years of existence. Evolving from a small collection of inexperienced, illled, ill-equipped regiments parceled out to the infantry, it had by the fall of 1864 developed into a formation of four divisions of veteran horsemen, including mounted infantry and lacking only official designation as a corps. Combining his narrative with many maps, photographs and the always necessary order of battle, Belcher makes excellent use of memoirs, diaries, letters, newspapers and official documents, as well as many secondary sources. This is not just an account of the operations and battles but also the personalities, thoughts and attitudes of—and conflicts between—officers, as well as the men they commanded. The two appendices are also highlights. One provides short biographical synopses on the division, brigade and chiefs of cavalry, respectively. The other is a detailed table of organization, from Dyer’s Compendium, for each cavalry chief, division and brigade commander, listing periods of command, ranks and original units. The individual regiments are listed with date of inclusion in their respective brigade and the source of their original command, military district or formation prior to the unit’s transfer to the cavalry of the Army of the Cumberland. In spite of a cover illustration of Phil Sheridan’s cavalry charge at the Third Battle of Winchester (the Army of the Cumberland was not actually present at that engagement), some missing, misplaced or superfluous words in the text and occasional repetitions, this is still a well-written and interesting monograph on a little-known subject.
D
HISTORYNET.COM
Give Them Respect!
ten Southern Generals You Need to Know spying on grant Charles Dana, Fly on the Wall
glory ’s legacy Still the One to See
NOVEMBER 2016
A Confederate officer puts his life on the line to lead Army of Tennessee troops late in the war.
ACWP-161100-COVER_DIGITAL.indd 1
The Cavalry of the Army of the Cumberland By Dennis W. Belcher McFarland & Co., $45
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REINVENTING THE SOUTH’S ECONOMY REVIEWED BY GORDON BERG he exigencies of war sometimes result in strange bedfellows. How else to explain the Confederacy, an amalgam of sovereign states grounded on a slave-based agricultural economy, creating a centralized, expedient political economy built on a modern capitalist industrial paradigm. According to Michael Brem Bonner, that is exactly what happened. While Abraham Lincoln has been accused of exercising excessive executive powers under the guise of wartime necessity, his actions pale in light of the steps taken by the South’s government to wage war. “Confederate leaders understood that drastic measures were necessary in their bold bid for independence,” writes Bonner. “With a centralizing political culture, they implemented an expedient corporatist state to mobilize the southern populace and develop an industrial base sufficient to wage a modern war.” How did the Southern leaders achieve that transformation? First, Bonner maintains, they created a strong executive branch, promoted anti-party sentiment in the legislature and weakened the judiciary by denying it judicial review. Second, they centralized critical wartime policies like conscription and exemptions to it, thus controlling the size of the military and private access to the labor market. Requiring domestic passports gave the Richmond government control over internal security. Third, by forming cooperative corporate alliances, the government and the private sector developed an industrial policy. Bonner uses the munitions industry and the railroads as successful examples of this partnership. Examining the interaction of these and other policies with the citizenry, Bonner describes what he calls “the Confederate system,” providing “insight into the debate between consent and coercion, the corporatist state in action, and the nature of Confederate nationalism.” Bonner maintains that each of these policies “was an expedient response to wartime necessities” that became systematized only in the war’s later years. Without them, he claims, the Confederate nation “could not have survived until 1865.” In what is perhaps his most startling conclusion, he declares that “Confederate leaders unintentionally created an early example of a modern political economy that has thrived in other nations throughout the twentieth century and still exists today.” This leads him to conclude, ironically, that “in order to fight modernization, the Confederacy was forced to modernize.” But moonlight and magnolias continued to dominate the South’s cultural identity even as its economic development began to mirror the North’s. Bonner’s narrative is lucid, if not lyrical, and his arguments are rigorous if occasionally repetitive. But by treating the Southern government as a functioning political entity, Bonner contributes an innovative theoretical framework to the study of the Confederacy, slavery and the evolution of American economic policy.
T
Confederate Political Economy: Creating and Managing a Southern Corporatist Nation By Michael Brem Bonner LSU Press, $35.78
CREDITS Cover: The Foard Collection of Civil War Nursing/Photo Illustration: Brian Walker; P. 2: Shenandoah Sanchez; P. 3: From Top: Courtesy New York State Library, Syracuse Herald, May 5, 1912/Photo Illustration: Brian Walker; Library of Congress; Melissa Winn; Private Collection/©Don Troiani/Bridgeman Images; P. 4: Library of Congress; P. 6: Melissa Winn; P. 8: Photographic History of the Civil War; P. 9: The University of Saint Mary De Paul Library Special Collections; Mathews County Historical Society; P. 10: Library of Congress; AP Photo/Andrew Selsky; P. 11: Google Earth; P. 12-13: Library of Congress; P. 14: Southern Cross, 1994 (oil on canvas), Troiani, Don (b.1949)/Private Collection/Bridgeman Images; P. 16: Hulton Archive/Getty Images; P. 18: From Top: Heritage Auctions, Dallas; The American Civil War Museum; Heritage Auctions, Dallas; P. 19: Left: Private Collection/©Don Troiani/Bridgeman Images; The American Civil War Museum; P. 20: Library of Congress; Kevin Grady; P. 23: The Foard Collection of Civil War Nursing (3); P. 25: American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA/Bridgeman Images; P. 26: The Foard Collection of Civil War Nursing; P. 27: From Top: The Foard Collection of Civil War Nursing; Heritage Auctions, Dallas (4); P. 28-29: ©World History Archive/Alamy Stock Photo; P. 30: Heritage Auctions, Dallas; Library of Congress; P. 31: Courtesy the New Hampshire Historical Society; P. 32: ©Everett Collection Historical/Alamy Stock Photo; ©B Christopher/Alamy Stock Photo; P. 33: The Foard Collection of Civil War Nursing/Photo Illustration: Brian Walker; P. 35: Courtesy New York State Library, Syracuse Herald, May 5, 1912/ Photo Illustration: Brian Walker; P. 36: Library of Congress; P. 37: Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM); P. 38-39: Courtesy of National Park Service, Petersburg National Battlefield, “Depot Field Hospital, Army of the Potomac, Near City Point, VA Krebs & Bro. Lith. Pittsburgh, PA, Sketched by F. J. Chasseur,” PETE 2121; P. 40: Heritage Auctions, Dallas (2); P. 41: Deeds of Valor; P. 42-43: Photographic History of the Civil War; P. 44: DEA Picture Library/De Agostini/ Getty Images; P. 45: From Left: Image courtesy the House Divided Project at Dickinson College; Naval History and Heritage Command; P. 46: Library of Congress; P. 47: Chronicle of World History/Alamy Stock Photo; P. 48: Melissa Winn; P. 49: Library of Congress; P. 50: Library of Congress; Shipyard Brewing; P. 51: Flying Dog Brewery; P. 52: Left: Library of Congress; Right: The American Civil War Museum; P. 54: Library of Congress; Inset: Vermont Civil War Collection of Francis Guber; P. 57: From Top: National Archives; Private Collection/©Don Troiani/Bridgeman Images; P. 58: Peter Glendinning and Save The Flags; P. 59: Library of Congress; P. 60-62: Shenandoah Sanchez (5); P. 63: Shenandoah Sanchez; Photo by davelandweb.com; P. 66: STX Entertainment; P. 72: Images courtesy Skinner, Inc. www.skinnerinc.com (2).
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CIVIL WAR TIMES DECEMBER 2016
EDITOR’S PICK
Being a random book favored by the editor
Medical Histories of Confederate Generals Medical Histories of Union Generals By Jack D. Welsh Kent State University Press, $29.95 each
Robert E. Lee’s hands were in splints during the opening weeks of the Sharpsburg Campaign. James Longstreet, shot in May 1864 in the Wilderness by his own men, returned to duty in October with a paralyzed right arm. These two volumes are full of such fascinating details about 425 Confederate generals and 583 Union commanders. Jack Welsh, a doctor by trade, obtained the details by perusing all sorts of source material, some quite obscure. He also includes a glossary to help readers decipher archaic 19th-century medical terms. Pre- and postwar ailments are illuminated. Because Georgian Lafayette McLaws’ right hand had been injured in an 1845 shooting incident, for instance, he hid that hand in his wartime photographs. Ulysses S. Grant first discovered the cancer that would kill him in 1884, when he found that eating a peach irritated his throat. But it’s the war-era information that is most riveting, sometimes even shocking when you realize how many of these men tried to stay in the field and exercise command while suffering from illnesses or debilitating wounds. These two volumes could also inspire you to reconsider why a certain battle turned out the way it did. Federal Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock, for example, suffered for months from the thigh wound he received at Gettysburg. He doused the still-seeping injury—which occasionally extruded bone chips—with water from his canteen as his II Corps approached Petersburg in June 1864. Just how effective could he have been as a commander in those circumstances?
DAD’S HAT $4,920
The 12th Pennsylvania Reserves report for the Battle of Antietam states that a “terrible fire” devastated the regiment on September 17, 1862. First Sergeant James L. McClure was among the struck, and he died on October 9. The mournful news undoubtedly devastated his only child, George. The 8-year-old’s mother, Maria, had died in 1858, and he was now an orphan. George received a pension for Sergeant McClure’s service to help him navigate life’s difficult waters. He must have treasured his father’s picture and McDowell-style forage cap, recently sold by Skinner Auctions. 72
CIVIL WAR TIMES DECEMBER 2016
A 6-PART SERIES
WED DEC 14 10/9c
A H C T V. C O M
“An impressive and thorough guide “Hess takes into account both sides’ “A well-crafted, well-written account “In this expansive history of an understudied facet of the Civil War, to one of the most important battles of a seeming paradox: why was views of this controversial man and Engle offers the first extended offers his own takes in ways that are of the Civil War . . . a clear, concise a conciliatory, doughface Whig examination in more than half a informative, insightful, and persua- way for visitors to understand invited to speak with Lincoln at century of Abraham Lincoln’s relaAntietam from the ground up.” sive. Sometimes surprising, always Gettysburg in 1863? An essential tionship with the Union’s loyal state —Tom Clemens, National Park effective, this is the definitive study contribution to the new and the governors. A substantial contribuService Certified Antietam of the life and career of an unquesclassic literature on the origins of tion to Civil War scholarship by a tionably important but oft-maligned Battlefield Guide the American Civil War.” major scholar.” Civil War figure. —John Brooke, —Gary W. Gallagher, author of —Ethan S. Rafuse, author of Robert The Ohio State University Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy, 1863-1865
“A clear and provocative treatment of “An ambitious piece of work spana very difficult and complex subject, ning three centuries that presents offering a well-balanced assessment a lively and intricate portrait of of the effort to conduct ‘hard war’ in some fascinating and idiosyncratic a humane way. Nuanced, complex, characters. . . . provides as full a and captivating.” picture of Jones County and its —George C. Rable, author of God’s people as we are ever likely Almost Chosen Peoples to have.” —American Historical Review
“Crofts shows us how Abraham Lincoln and a host of other key players attempted to keep the Upper South in the Union. The result is a contrarian and rich book that makes a significant addition to the scholarship of this vital period.” —Jonathan H. Earle, Louisiana State University
“Whether shelved as Civil War history, Virginia history, Southern history or local history, Marvel’s work is sure to stand for generations to come as the most authoritative account of one tiny village’s collision with history.” —America’s Civil War
Omnibus The official journal of the Society of Civil War Historians
Journal of the Civil War Era visit JOURNALOFTHECIVILWARERA.ORG
Best-selling books in one convenient Ebook. Visit www.uncpress.org and search for Omnibus.
Most UNC Press books are also available as E-Books. UNC Press books are now available through Books @ JSTOR and Project Muse – and North Carolina Scholarship Online (NCSO) on Oxford Scholarship Online.
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