Civil War News April 2023

Back to Normal—Annual Civil War Show a Success!

DALTON, Ga.—The 28th Annual Chickamauga (Dalton) Civil War Show held February 4th and 5th at the Dalton Convention Center in Dalton, Ga., exceeded expectations according to promoter Mike Kent of MK Shows. Kent noted that shows overall seem to have been stuck in the doldrums for the past two years due to concerns over Covid-19 but finally broke free this year leading to the best attendance for the Dalton show in the past six years. Dealers were upbeat and commerce was brisk as relics and cash traded hands throughout the 45,000 square foot state of the art Dalton Convention Center.

As always, General Manager Doug Phipps was on hand for move in on Friday and reminisced with Kent about their initial meeting in 2002 where Kent agreed to take over management of the show and how it has grown to its full capacity of 500 tables, attracting dealers and attendees from over 30 states and the United Kingdom. Dalton is one of the few cities that actually encourages and supports Civil War shows and related activities as evidenced by front page coverage on Thursday before the show.

The Convention Center actively promotes the show through the hard work of our long time Event Services Manager Tuesday Jones who ensures our Dalton Lecture Series is well publicized several weeks in advance. Tuesday did such an excellent job this was the first year that all seats were taken at many sessions with standing room only for late comers. The lecture series was put together by well-known author and lecturer

Greg Biggs who continues to bring the best and most entertaining speakers to Dalton year after year. The speakers and their topics for this year’s show were as follows:

H Richard McMurry: Jeff and Joe: The Quarrel that Doomed the Confederacy

H Steve Davis: The Atlanta Daily Intelligencer Covers the Atlanta Campaign

H Gene Andrews: General Forrest at Fort Pillow - The Truth

H Robert Jenkins: The Cassville Affairs, May 19, 1864, and the Failed Confederate Strategy in the Atlanta Campaign

H Donna Faulkner Barron: The Man Who Carved Stone Mountain

H Scott Sallee: The Deification, Sanctification and Sainthood of Abraham Lincoln – How Did That Happen?

As always there are vendors who participate in Civil War shows primarily to display their collections and vie for awards.

David LaSlavic won the People’s Choice Award for his educational display of fake swords. Gerald Roxbury was winner of the Chairman’s Award for his display entitled “The Cutlasses of Columbus, GA”. They generally don’t buy, sell, or trade artifacts and memorabilia unless it is to enhance or improve their collection. Hats off those who pursue this type of activity as it is often expensive and time consuming with few rewards other than a small plaque and the respect and admiration of their fellow collectors. It is truly a labor of love. This year’s award winners were:

♦ David LaSlavic - People’s Choice Award – Fake Civil War Era Swords

♦ Gerald Roxbury –Chairman’s Award – The Cutlasses of Columbus, Ga.

Make plans now for next year’s Chickamauga Civil War Show on February 3 & 4, 2024. For information on all shows, visit www.MKShows.com or contact Mike Kent by email at Mike@MKShows.com.

Kenny Copelin, Scott Riddle, and Dr. Bill Blackman shared honors with Best of Show awards for their combined six tables of rare Confederate buckles.

Josh Phillips always comes to the show with rare and unusual flags like this one.

Speaker, columnist, and author Steve Davis.

♦ Kenny Copelin, Scott Riddle, and Dr. Bill Blackman – Best of Show Award – Confederate Buckles and Belt Plates

Speaker and author Robert Jenkins.

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Dave Nelson and Greg Ton consummating a deal at the show.

David LaSlavic’s award winning educational display of fake swords.

Tom and Debbie Hays of Stones River Trading Company.

Civil War badges experts Everitt Bowles, Shane Bowles, and Vann Martin.

To

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

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Kenny Coplin’s award-winning display of Confederate buckles.

Hemphill and Jeff Luncan

Glenn Dutton and Roy Woods taking a break during the show.

1861 Redoubt Preserved on George Mason University Campus in Fairfax, Va.

by Carl L. Sell Jr.

Preservation has been completed and the Farr’s Crossroads Civil War Redoubt now can be visited at George Mason University’s main campus in Fairfax, Va. The University and the Bull Run Civil War Round Table are continuing research to uncover even more nearby history. What has been learned so far is impressive. Included are interpretative markers developed by the Roundtable and the University.

The Farr’s Crossroads Redoubt was built by Confederate troops in June 1861, a month before the War’s first major land battle along Bull Run near Manassas Junction. Union troops passed the site on the way to and from Manassas, with Confederates again occupying the redoubt after the battle and remaining there until March 1862. It was in Union hands for the rest of the war.

A dedication program to celebrate preservation of the redoubt, along with a tour of the site, was held in October 2022. The project began in 2015 when the Bull Run Round Table contacted George Mason’s History Department and began conducting on-site classes about the redoubt’s history as part of the University’s Civil War history course. The Round Table then joined forces to preserve the site.

Fairfax County’s inventory of Civil War sites, published in

2002, documented the existence of the redoubt, other earthworks, and camps on the GMU campus. The redoubt is the last Civil War earthwork remaining on campus and is in remarkably good condition.

Although in plain sight on farmland in the 1860s, the redoubt now is hidden from the junction of two major roads just steps away. Ox Road and Braddock Road, both four-lane commuter routes, now intersect at what once was known as Farr’s Crossroads.

The dedication program included remarks by Blake Myers, Jim Lewis, and Brian McEnany of the Bull Run Civil War Round Table and Dr. Brian Platt of George Mason’s History Department. Music for the occasion was provided by the 8th Green Machine Regimental Band, a brass band with snare drummer, whose focus is Civil War-era arrangements. The band uses original or reproduction period instruments.

Although unreachable directly from nearby roads, the redoubt is accessible through the University’s Parking Lot K in the southeast corner of the campus via Braddock Road. An historical marker with interpretative panels is located at the western edge of the parking lot. This marker’s front panel describes the history of Farr’s Crossroads, the two historic roadways, and the site’s

significance during the War. On the back is information about Civil War fortifications near the site.

At the redoubt, a second marker provides information about the redoubt and a nearby “corduroy road” discovered along Ox Road in 2014 and 2015. The redoubt is described as being 80 feet in diameter with a parapet height today that ranges from two to three feet, the original height being reduced due to erosion. A redoubt is an enclosed fortification without bastions, designed for visibility in all directions. The parapet walls are typically five feet or higher, and usually measured from the bottom of the fort’s ditch.

The redoubt was built and occupied by the Fifth Alabama Infantry under the command of then Colonel Robert Rodes. After the Confederates fell back to defensive emplacements along Bull Run, the Sixteenth New York Infantry briefly occupied the redoubt. Following their defeat on July 21, 1861, retreating Federals streamed back to the defenses of Washington and Confederates returned to the area in the following weeks.

The Twenty-Seventh Virginia Infantry, part of Jackson’s Stonewall Brigade, occupied the redoubt during September 1861. Jackson’s Brigade was headquartered at Fairfax Court House and he was promoted to Major General during that time. He and his brigade had earned the sobriquet “Stonewall” at Manassas.

After the Confederate army withdrew from Northern Virginia, the First New Jersey Infantry took over the redoubt on March 9. It remained in Union hands as part of the Washington defenses for the remainder of the War. Confederate cavalry under Major General James Ewell Brown Stuart passed nearby in June 1863 on the way to Gettysburg.

An archaeological assessment by George Mason graduate Brian Corle in 2008 laid the groundwork for the preservation effort. His assessment was confirmed by archeological data maintained by Fairfax County and the Fairfax County Park Authority.

The historic site was part of a 283-acre farm owned by Samuel Ratcliffe Farr. On his death in 1819, one of his three sons, Richard Ratcliffe Farr, inherited roughly 183 acres, including the crossroads, which began to appear on Fairfax County maps as Farr’s Crossroads in 1879. The house burned during the war, but

Blake Myers at Farr’s Crossroads dedication. (Farr’s Crossroads photos by Charles Mauro.)

Farr’s Crossroads history signage

Farrs Crossroads highlighted in a red circle.

Location of the redoubt site on the George Mason University Campus.

was replaced by Richard Ratcliffe Farr Jr.

Included as part of the new construction was a cottage called “Grandma’s Cottage,” which later was moved to the Historic Blenheim and Civil War Interpretative Center on Old Lee Highway in the City of Fairfax. The cottage had been built by Richard Ratcliffe Farr Jr. for his widowed mother. In

1958, Wilson Farr and Viola Orr, the widow of Wilson’s bother, Richard (she had married William Orr) sold the remaining 146-acre tract to the then Town of Fairfax for $300,000. The town in turn offered it to the University of Virginia Board of Regents as a site for George Mason College, predecessor of George Mason University.

The roads that make up Farr’s

Crossroads, Ox Road and Braddock Road, have interesting histories of their own. Today’s Ox Road (Route #123) was a spur off the original Ox Road built in the late 1720s by Robert “King” Carter to connect the town of Floris (now Herndon) with Occoquan on the Occoquan River near where it meets the Potomac River. It first was called the road to the court house, which was located near today’s Tyson’s Corner before moving to its present location after Fairfax County was incorporated in 1742. Braddock Road had its beginnings as the 1720s Mountain Road, a route from the port at Alexandria west through the Blue Ridge Mountains toward the fertile Shenandoah Valley. General Braddock arrived in America in 1755 and led an expedition westward to secure the frontier against the French and Indians. His route paralleled current Route #7 to Leesburg but never did travel the road that bears his name outside Alexandria.

Carl Sell is a frequent contributor to the Civil War News. Although he worked at George Mason University as Sports Information Director (retiring in 1995), Sell was unaware of the University’s Civil War history until recently. His office in the Recreation Sports Complex was cattycorner across Ox Road from the redoubt hidden by trees. Help from Genealogist Karen Conair and historians Ben Trittipoe and Blake Myers added greatly to this story. Contact Carl at sellcarl@ aol.com or 703-971-4716.

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Eighth Green Machine Regiment Band tunes up!

Farr’s Crossroads Redoubt drawing.

Remains of the redoubt lie behind this marker on the George Mason campus. (BRCWRT)

COLLECTION

This outstanding portrait taken January 16, 1863 by Fitchburg, Mass., photographer Joseph C. Moulton shows a determined and hardworking Sanitary Commission nurse Helen Louise Gilson (1836–1868). After the Union defeat at Bull Run, Gilson left Boston and went to Virginia, to aid in treating the wounded and recovering the dead. She would continue to travel to all the major battlefields including Yorktown, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg and Gettysburg. At Petersburg in late 1864 over thirty black regiments were engaged, with heavy casualties. The wounded were taken to a temporary facility at City Point. A doctor would later state “It was in no sense a hospital, than a depot for wounded men.” Helen was appalled by the conditions and decided to do something about them. She campaigned for the establishment of a hospital for the black soldiers and the Colored

Hospital Service was organized. There were a square mile of tents and hundreds of wounded blacks being cared for at the facility. The Army detailed soldiers to assist Helen at her hospital working as cooks and nurses, as well as many civilian volunteers from the north. Gilson had contacted malaria, but she remained at her post until the fall of Richmond on April 2, 1865. On April 20, 1868 she died in childbirth at Newton Corner Hospital, too weak for childbirth due to never having fully recovered from the malaria she contacted at Petersburg. Her child did not survive either. “Angel of Light”: Helen L. Gilson, Army Nurse is the title of Kent State Civil War History article by Edward A. Miller Jr. in 1997 and among her best biographies. Text on second manuscript affixed inside case (below) behind photograph: “Jan’y 16, 1863, Nurse Sanitary Com., nurse in this Hospital.”

Helen Louise Gilson. Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs (Library of Congress).

Text on manuscript fragment (torn envelope): “Miss Helen L. Gilson, care Sanitary Commission, Washington, D.C., Potomac Creek Hospital, 2d Division, 3d Army Corps.”

Letters Editor to the

Letter to the Editor:

Your coverage of the A.P. Hill reburial prompts me to send this note regarding a significant A.P. Hill artifact that is lost and I hope can be found.

One of the industrial miracles of WWII was the Liberty Ship program which, using mass production techniques, built more than 2,700 cargo vessels. As part of its effort to enlist all factions of the nation behind the war effort, the U.S. named many Liberty Ships after historical Americans. Among them were 85 bearing the names of Confederate soldiers, statesmen, and public officials. On October 15, 1942, the SS A.P. Hill was launched in Houston, Texas. These vessels were not built to last, and after serving honorably during the war and continuing to provide service for years afterward, the Hill was scrapped in 1965. A group called the Liberty Ship Memorial Program, saved the ship's bronze name plate.

You can view a typical name plate (for a different

Liberty Ship) by following this link: https://www.mainememory. net/artifact/17271.

On October 15, 1966, the A.P. Hill nameplate was presented in a public ceremony to Mr. Robert Y. Button on behalf of the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Inc. He, in turn, passed it to the President of the Memorial, Mr. Jay W. Johns. According to coverage in the New York Times, the name plate was given "for preservation as a monument to the ship and to Gen. A.P. Hill."

In time the Jackson Memorial operation completed its mission and disbanded. There was no further mention of the A.P. Hill’s name plate. I have identified three archive/libraries holding materials from the Jackson Memorial group. Each reported that they held papers and not any objects.

The whereabouts of the Hill’s name plate remains a mystery. It's both a part of WW II history as only a small number of name plates survive, and part of the larger A.P. Hill story.

I write this in the hope that some of your readers may have seen the name plate or know something about where it might be. It really needs to be preserved and displayed. It is the only name plate for a Confederatenamed Liberty Ship that was so preserved.

The editor has my e-mail address and can pass along any sightings to me.

INSIDE EVERY ISSUE

Noah Andre Trudeau

William Gregg and Essays on Domestic Industry

The urban centers of the antebellum South were long content to rely on importing virtually every civilian necessity and ignored soothsayers like William Gregg who advocated economic self-sufficiency for the region. Gregg published his ideas in an 1845 pamphlet “Essays on Domestic Industry” wherein he argued, somewhat prophetically as it turned out, that economic domination by the North was best headed off by Southern industrialization. He managed enough support for his own efforts but failed in the broader scope of facilitating any major change in the cotton-based agrarian economy of the region.

The prophetess Cassandra was the daughter of King Priam who argued unsuccessfully against bringing the Trojan horse into the city of Troy. “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentis,” said she, “Beware

of Greeks bearing gifts.” William Gregg lived until 1867 and was forced to see his most dire predictions become reality. The purpose of this column is not to surmise what might have happened if the South had diversified its economy, if not completely industrialized; rather, how the difficulties of the time revealed some truly remarkable ways of coping with shortages in the civilian sector, and what it reveals about the character of the Southern people on the home front during the 1860s.

The first point to consider is the difference between “making do” with substitutes and “doing without” a critical necessity. A common example given is the ability of Southern women to concoct substitutes for almost everything. The 1863 Confederate Receipt Book offers receipts (recipes) for making coffee from parched corn, okra, or peanuts, apple pie “without apples,” and “artificial” oysters. However, there was no ingenious substitute for salt. This did not

mean that they had to endure bland food without salt as a seasoning, but rather there was no way to adequately preserve meat for the winter months. This is quite a different level of sacrifice when hunger looms large in your immediate future. The Receipt Book offers some suggestions of course:

“We need salt as a relish to our food, but it is not essential in the preservation of our meats. The Indians used little or no salt, yet they preserved meat and even fish in abundance by drying. This can be accomplished by fire, by smoke or by sunshine, but the most rapid and reliable mode is by all these agents combined. To do this select a spot having the fullest command of sunshine. Erect there a wigwan five or six feet high, with an open top, in size proportioned to the quantity of meat to be cured, and protected from the winds, so that all the smoke must pass through the open top. The meat cut into pieces suitable for drying (the thinner the better) to be suspended on rods in the open comb, and a vigorous smoke made of decayed wood is to be kept up without cessation Exposed thus to the combined influence of sunshine, heat and smoke, meat cut into slices not over an inch thick can be thoroughly cured in twenty-four hours. For thicker pieces there

must be, of course, a longer time, and the curing of oily meat, such as pork, is more difficult than that of beef, venison, or mutton. To cure meat in the sun hang it on the South side of your house, as near to the wall as possible without touching. Savages cure fish by pounding it fine, and exposing it to the bright sun.”

They were kidding themselves about curing meat with no salt. There are two “safe” methods for preserving or curing meat, and both require some salt. First is soaking in brine, and the second is dry curing. The reason for salting of meat during curing was to draw out the bacteria that cause spoilage. The natural bacteria that are always present in the blood and tissues of live animals begin to multiply as soon as it is butchered. If meat is left exposed to the air, slow oxidation of the fat takes place which causes rancidness. What is described in the Confederate Receipt Book is cold curing (smoking) the meat in the Native American tradition at very low temperatures of less than 100 degrees Fahrenheit for long periods of time.

This is possible but Native Americans primarily preserved fish this way, not the Southern staple, pork. Low temperature smoking dries the meat and flavors it but does not kill the bacteria in pork or “cook the meat.” The method would perhaps work better in winter in terms of extending safe usage, but most meat would spoil in a few days during the summer months. As the War wore on and most salt was diverted to the military, desperate civilians began digging up the dirt floors of their smokehouses to recover whatever salt had accumulated from falling off the meat hanging there in previous years.

A distinction might be made between the Southern urban

and rural populations, however, both were faced with shortages which, though they manifested themselves differently, led to many of the same difficulties. The crunch was being felt by Southern cities as early as autumn 1861, when several unpleasant realities became clear. First, the war was not going to be over in 90 days and the military was going to take much of the labor force at the same time industrialization became a priority. The Crenshaw Woolen Company in Richmond was about a year old in late 1861. It was one of the few mills producing broadcloth of “light blue and grey cloth required for the uniforms of the Confederacy.” An account of that firm’s enterprise from late 1861 suggests the dilemma that was developing for new industries in the Confederate Capitol, the Richmond Enquirer noted in an article dated October 17, 1861:

“The sudden blockading of the ports of the South bade fair for awhile to terminate, or very much cripple, at least, the operations of the Crenshaw mills, as far as the manufacture of broadcloths was concerned, by cutting off the supply of logwood; but fortunately the much talked about ship Tropic Wind, which ran the blockade in April, brought within available distance of Richmond a full cargo of the necessary material, found on board a wreck which was encountered on the coast of Cuba. The Crenshaw Company are now enabled to furnish their less fortunate manufacturing friends throughout the South with as much logwood as can be needed for months to come. The Crenshaw Works are now exclusively engaged under a Government contract, in the manufacture of regulation cloth for army uniforms, blankets, and stocking yarn, all for the use of the army. About 5,000 yards in all

Shipment of cotton at Savannah, for New York, on account of the U.S. Government (Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, Feb. 25, 1865, p. 357.

of cloth is manufactured weekly, and about 450 blankets. The latter, of which large numbers have already been furnished to the army, are quite equal to the English army blanket, many of which are made of shoddy, and superior to those of the Yankees.”

The article goes to say that about 130 workers were employed at the Crenshaw Woolen Company, 25 of whom were female, who earned wages of about $7.50 a week. “Several children” as young as 10 to 12 years were also employed “in the light and simple labor of filling shuttles.”

. The male employees were principally foreigners relocated to Richmond “from the English, Irish, and German factories.” Their labors are superintended by experienced “overseers from England.” At a glance it is clear

the blockade of Southern ports was already causing shortages, in this instance, logwood dye, necessary to produce cloth for army blankets and uniforms; more alarming, the factory’s workforce was not comprised of local men, an early indicator of labor shortages to come. The workforce available in Richmond during late 1861 was already limited to women, children, and foreigners. Hence, for the home front, the war’s most dramatic and immediate effect could be summarized as the shortage of men. It was estimated that women had to use substitutes for 75% of their household goods and scarcity quickly became a fact of life. The inevitable result to the economy of severe shortages and continued printing of paper money was runaway inflation in the cities.

The war also tested the strength of the rural Southern Appalachian economy, producing scarcity and contributing to serious setbacks in agricultural production by 1862. While many rural Southerners had been subsistence farmers, these were also businesses involved in the local exchange of goods and services, in other words, a barter economy not fully dependent on currency. Local citizens traded with merchants and drew on the specialized skills of millers, tanners, and blacksmiths. Many rural communities were moreor-less self-sufficient on a subsistence level. As the war progressed, however, rural civilians also dealt with scarcity and hyperinflation. Local citizens became increasingly bitter as farmers and merchants drained the local food supply to seek high prices elsewhere and

were paid in currency, a thing largely unknown previously in the rural Appalachian mountain region. Yet even as the war brought economic chaos, it also, paradoxically, revealed how thoroughly Southern Appalachia could rely on trade networks between different regions to survive. As the war dragged on, the two armies themselves foraged local food supplies down to levels that were not selfsustaining for some local areas. Continued habitation in some of these localities could not be maintained after mid-1863. Still, after mid-1863 the war and the Southern Confederacy continued for nearly another two years. History has somewhat slighted the role of Southern nationalism, or at least the extent to which Confederate civilians desired a life free from the political machinations of their Northern neighbors. Historians generally work backwards from Appomattox for their explanations. Others resign themselves to the national obsession with Confederate military success in the Eastern Theater and the genius of Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. Jackson, and others, while being less impressed with the Western Theater’s military leaders. It is important to note the style and substance of Confederate military strategy sprang from the expectations and

will of the Confederate Home Front.

Gary M. Gallagher, noted in The Confederate War (Harvard Press, 1999) that Confederate civilians accepted the shortcomings of their political leaders and made sacrifices for a shared vision of their own homeland. This story is a seldom told part of American history that has not been adequately recognized or appreciated. The facts of U.S. Civil War history and the effects on the Confederate home front are not always politically correct, but it is a part of American history none-the-less.

Craig L. Barry was born in Charlottesville, Va. He holds his BA and Masters degrees from UNC (Charlotte). Craig served The Watchdog Civil War Quarterly as Associate Editor and Editor from 2003–2017. The Watchdog published books and columns on 19th-century material and donated all funds from publications to battlefield preservation. He is the author of several books including The Civil War Musket: A Handbook for Historical Accuracy (2006, 2011), The Unfinished Fight: Essays on Confederate Material Culture Vol. I and II (2012, 2013). He has also published four books in the Suppliers to the Confederacy series on English Arms & Accoutrements, Quartermaster stores and other European imports.

View on the Appomattox River, near Campbell’s bridge, Petersburg, Va. (Library of Congress)

The Tredegar Iron Works, Richmond, Va. (Library of Congress)

The Vermont Brigade at the Wilderness

Few brigades, Union or Confederate, sustained the numbers of casualties and encountered the trying situations that the Vermont Brigade suffered while fighting on the battlefields that the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust works to preserve.

Green Mountain State men fought at Fredericksburg in December 1862, and at Second Fredericksburg during the Chancellorsville Campaign. In the late fall of 1863, they participated in the Mine Run Campaign. At Spotsylvania Court House, the First Vermont Brigade, as they were sometimes known, had three regiments that participated in Col. Emory Upton’s May 10, 1864, attack on the Mule Shoe, and then battled again on May 12 and 18. Above all those engagements, it was the Vermont Brigade’s participation in the Battle of the Wilderness that stands out as probably their most difficult test.

The Vermont Brigade formed in fall of 1861, under the charge of native son, William F. “Baldy” Smith. For the majority of the war the respected unit consisted of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th Vermont Infantry regiments. For a time in 1862 and 1863, the orphaned 26th New Jersey fought with the Vermonters, but by the summer of 1863, it was back to an all Vermont brigade. The 1st Vermont Heavy Artillery joined the unit as infantrymen during the fighting at Spotsylvania Court House and stayed with it through the end of the war.

By the time of the Battle of the Wilderness, the Vermont Brigade had already earned a reputation for combat prowess and toughness on the march. Their grit came partly through solid leadership and desperate trials by fire at Williamsburg, and then during the Peninsula Campaign, especially at Savage’s Station in the Seven Days’ Battles. Largely unengaged at Antietam and held in reserve at Gettysburg, they fortunately missed the worse of those two monumental clashes. In August 1863, they were

among the troops ordered to New York City to guard against, and suppress, the draft riots.

After several months spent in their Culpeper County winter quarters, all was hustle and bustle

on May 4, 1864, as the Vermont Brigade broke camp and headed off on another campaign, this time under a new overall commander, Lt. General Ulysses S. Grant.

Detached from the Sixth Corps,

the Vermont Brigade and the other two brigades from Maj. Gen. George Washington Getty’s Division, stopped briefly at Wilderness Tavern, but received orders to quickly move forward to

the intersection of Orange Plank Road and Brock Road. There the Vermonters saw Confederate infantry brigades moving in their direction and pushing the Federal cavalry. Fighting in the

The original regiments of the Vermont Brigade were organized in 1861. Shown here are two camp views of the 2nd Vermont early in the war. (Library of Congress)

dense woods limited artillery to the roadway. Some Federal infantrymen started building improvised breastworks, but the Vermonters soon received an order to attack.

Moving forward in battleline, the landscape made communication difficult. Col. Lewis Grant, commanding the brigade, noted in his official report that, “The ground was covered with brush and small timber so dense that it was impossible for an officer at any point of the line to see any other point several yards distant.” The Vermonters fired a volley and then “hugged the ground as closely as possible, and kept up a rapid fire; the enemy did the same,” Grant reported. It was as if lead was flying from smoke shrouded trees fired by ghosts

instead of from Confederate rifles. The Vermonters started falling by scores.

Col. Grant tried to dislodge the Confederates, “but the moment our men rose to advance the rapid and constant fire of musketry cut them down with such slaughter that it was found impracticable to do more than maintain our then present position,” he explained. They held firm. After receiving support from three II Corps regiments, Col. Grant, noting a potential weakness in the Confederate line, asked the 5th Vermont to try to break it. Their major responded, “I think we can.” The line went forward and was partly successful, but support troops “were thrown into some confusion” and went to the ground. The 5th Vermont

outpaced its help and soon had to hit the dirt, too. With their ammunition nearly exhausted, II Corps units relived the Vermonters, who retired to their previous Brock Road position when darkness mercifully halted the fighting. The Vermonters had fought for about five hours. Getty’s brigades, and particularly the Vermont men, had helped plug the gap A. P. Hill’s Confederates were making, and then held it until the II Corps was able to get into position. Their effort was at a fearful cost. Col. Grant explained that, “One thousand brave officers and men of the Vermont Brigade fell on that bloody field. Was the result commensurate to the sacrifice? Whether it was or not the battle once commenced had to be fought.” Regardless of whether the II Corps had been able to hold its own, “the enemy would have secured the important position and completely cut off that corps from the rest of the army,” if the Vermonters had not acted Grant noted.

May 6 brought additional combat for the Vermont Brigade as it attacked along with the II Corps and successfully pushed A.

P. Hill’s Confederates out of their improvised earthworks. However, James Longstreet’s Corps arrived on scene in the nick of time and counterattacked, forcing the Federals back toward Hill’s old position now occupied by Grant’s Vermont men. The brigade commander noted, “Perhaps the valor of Vermont troops and the steadiness and unbroken front of those noble regiments were never more signally displayed.”

Taking tremendous casualties again, the Vermont men were fortunately relived by II Corps reinforcements that arrived to relieve the pressure.

According to one historian’s count, the Wilderness cost the Vermont Brigade 1,234 casualties, almost half of its men. The Vermont Brigade went on to earn more laurels at Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and the Shenandoah Valley. The Vermonters returned to Petersburg, where on April 2, 1865, they led the assault that broke the Confederate defensive line, and precipitated the surrender at Appomattox a week later.

CVBT has helped save over 220 acres of Wilderness battlefield land.

The mission of CVBT is to preserve land associated with the four major campaigns of: Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Mine Run, and the Overland Campaign, including the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Court House. To learn more about this grassroots preservation non-profit, which has saved over 1,700 acres of hallowed ground, please visit: www.cvbt.org.

The Vermont Brigade’s heroism at the Battle of the Wilderness is honored by a monument where they encountered some of their hardest fighting. (Tim Talbott)

Lewis Addison Grant served as the major, lieutenant colonel, and colonel of the 5th Vermont before becoming the commander of the First Vermont Brigade. (National Archives and Records Administration)

Tim Talbott is the Chief Administrative Officer with the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust.

Five Battlefields, Four States, 343 Acres

When seeking to tell as a full story of the Civil War as possible, the actions of the Western Theater cannot go untold. Now, the Trust has launched a campaign that would guarantee preservation of 343 acres at Chickamauga (Ga.), Brice’s Cross Roads (Miss.), Wyse Fork (N.C.), Bentonville (N.C.), and Shiloh (Tenn.).

Altogether, these hallowed grounds have a staggering transaction value of $2.5 million. But through a projected $2.3 million via government grants, donations, and other partners in multiple states who will, we only need to raise the final $140,732 to seal the deal and acquire these multiple key tracts. This means all gifts will be multiplied by an impressive ratio of $18-to-$1.

While the properties we are trying to preserve span different years and four states, they are connected by the ebb and flow of the War. By connecting the dots between these battles, we think you’ll agree that each plays a crucial part in the Civil War.

In early 1862, most of Tennessee was open for active campaigning. Union troops moved southward, winning the Battle of Shiloh, a bloodbath that produced far more casualties than any American battle up to that time, and resulted in more than two years of thrusts and counterthrusts, until the

Confederates were forced to evacuate the state during the summer of 1863. At Shiloh, we have the opportunity to secure a strategic two-acre tract that will expand our holdings to the east, near the heart of some of the fiercest fighting.

Feeling emboldened, the Federal army moved into Georgia but were battered at the Battle of Chickamauga and driven back to Chattanooga, still controlled by the Union. The nearly two-acre, targeted tract at Chickamauga is part of the battle ground that saw Confederates capture Reed’s Bridge, which opened the larger battle. It’s also located close to a growing residential development.

Meanwhile, stretched Union supply lines presented an opportunity for Confederate forces to score a victory at the Battle of Brice’s Cross Roads in Mississippi. The Union captured Atlanta and then marched to the sea while Confederate forces moved northward toward Nashville, where they were soundly defeated. At Brice’s Cross Roads, we’re seeking to preserve a 95-acre tract that borders previously protected land.

1865 saw the Union army move through the Carolinas while ragged remnants of the Confederate Army of Tennessee moved east from Nashville to contest the advancing Federal. In fighting at Wyse Fork and Bentonville, the futility of further Confederate efforts was evident,

and soon led to the largest mass surrender of the war at Bennett’s Place, in April 1865. Right now, we are conducting a crucial effort to acquire two separate and adjacent plots totaling 86 acres at Wyse Fork. Additionally, we’re pursuing more than 159 acres across two tracts at Bentonville.

To learn more about this preservation opportunity, visit www.battlefields.org/preserve.

Mississippi Grant Program Supports Trust Efforts in the Magnolia State

Mississippi has joined the roster of jurisdictions proactively working to foster public-private partnerships to protect battlefield landscapes though the availability of state matching grants. In February, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) announced the first round of recipients for the Mississippi Historic Site Preservation Grants (MHSPG), a mechanism established in 2021 by Mississippi Legislature. Mississippi’s state grant program differs from predecessors in Virginia and Tennessee, in that it can also apply to 20th-century sites, notably those related to the Civil Rights Movement. Like other grants the Trust receives, selected projects must provide a one-to-one match in funds from other non-state sources, encouraging collaborative investment in these historic sites. This round of awards totaled more than $1.2 million and benefited four battlefields in

the state: Brice’s Cross Roads, Corinth, Champion Hill, and Chickasaw Bayou. Although the Trust has long done work at three of these battlefields, the grants are part of our first-ever projects at Chickasaw Bayou, an important engagement in the Vicksburg Campaign that saw initial Union gains collapse in the face of heavy casualties.

Calling all Partners in Battlefield Preservation!

This January, the Trust launched the first edition of the Allies for Battlefield Preservation newsletter. This new communication mechanism is intended to highlight the power of advocacy, to encourage peerto-peer education and to empower local preservationists in their work alongside decisionmakers. With the Trust’s “Speak Out” Campaigns, the newsletter will prove a robust companion to any preservation-minded individual or group, or even those newly curious about ways to get involved. Looking ahead, we plan to convene virtual gatherings to offer training and foster dialogue among friend groups, round tables and other history affinity organizations.

To sign-up for the newsletter, visit www.battlefields.org/emailsignup. You can also check out www.battlefields.org/preserve/ speak-out to learn of other opportunities to contact your representatives about pressing preservation issues.

Protecting 104 Pivotal Acres at Brandy Station and Cedar Mountain

Given an opportunity to save more than 104 acres in the Virginia Piedmont, the Trust launched a campaign that aims to secure 97 acres of hallowed ground at Brandy Station and seven acres at Cedar Mountain. Taken together, this acreage

has a total transaction value of $5,697,826.

By tapping state funds requested by Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin and appropriated by the legislature to help save the land at Brandy Station, while applying for additional federal and state matching grants, we hope to fully cover $5,244,382 million (92%) of what we need through these sources.

The historic value is unarguable. The Confederate victory at the 1862 Battle of Cedar Mountain resulted in the 1862 Northern Virginia Campaign, as well as the 1862 Maryland Campaign. Meanwhile, the 1863 Battle of Brandy Station represents the largest cavalry battle ever fought in North America and the beginning of the Gettysburg Campaign.

The 97 acres we have a chance to save today are essential to any future preservation work to be done at Brandy Station. They would connect previously saved land, from the western edge of Fleetwood Hill extending northward for nearly four miles. Plus, as the land is zoned light industrial, preservation would shield it from development’s grasp.

To help with this preservation opportunity, visitwww.battlefields. org/104AcresVirginiaPiedmont.

Landmark Moments for the Trust

After taking possession of 117 acres at Buffington Island, site of the largest Civil War battle in Ohio, the Trust can now claim to have permanently protected hallowed ground in half the states in the Union.

At our founding in 1987, the organization’s work was expected to focus on Civil War sites in the Old Dominion. Thanks to the generosity of members, the partnership of elected officials, and the collaboration of countless park administrators, the Trust has grown to become the nation’s premier heritage land protection organization, having saved a total of 56,000 acres across 155 sites in 25 states and representing three wars.

Educators Invited to Baltimore for 2023 National Teacher Institute

The Trust’s annual National Teacher Institute will descend on Charm City July 13-16, building on a two-decade tradition of excellence in continuing

Shiloh National Military Park in Shiloh, Tenn. (Photo by Mike Talplacido)

The sun rises over the Brice’s Cross Roads National Battlefield in Baldwyn, Miss. (Photo by Mike Talplacido)

April 2023

Brandy Station Fleetwood Hill, Culpeper County, Va. | June 9, 1863

Fought in the second week of June 1863, Brandy Station was the largest cavalry battle ever fought in North America. With momentum firmly in hand after his stunning victory at Chancellorsville, Gen. Robert E. Lee decided to launch a second northern invasion. On June 3, the Army of Northern Virginia began the movement away from Fredericksburg.

The first leg of the march took the Confederates to Culpeper Court House. From there, Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry division was to screen the infantry as the march continued to the Shenandoah Valley. Stuart’s concentration, however, was detected by Union cavalry led by Alfred Pleasonton. Under the assumption that Stuart planned a raid around his right flank toward Washington, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, the commander of the Army of the Potomac, directed Pleasonton to cross the Rappahannock River and destroy the Confederate cavalry.

Early on the morning of June 9, Pleasonton sent columns over the Rappahannock at Beverly Ford and Kelly’s Ford. Following the crossing at Beverly Ford, the Union troopers struck Stuart’s camp in the vicinity of a rail station on the Orange & Alexandria Railroad, Brandy Station. The Confederates quickly rallied, and the Federals ran into stiff resistance at St. James Church and the Richard Cunningham farm.

After moving over Kelly’s Ford, the Union cavalry split up. One division headed for Brandy Station while the other made their way to Stevensburg. The arrival of blue troopers at Brandy Station threatened the rear of Stuart’s position. Stuart countered by deftly shifting his brigades, and the two sides clashed in mounted combat on a long, low ridge that rose from the station called Fleetwood Hill. Correspondingly, Pleasonton’s force at Stevensburg was stymied by Confederate horsemen. Unable to break through Stuart’s position, Pleasonton abandoned the field after 14 hours of fighting To learn more about Brandy Station visit https:// www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/brandy-station.

education. For three-and-a-halfdays, educators will have the opportunity to pick up skills and innovative methods while networking with other likeminded professionals.

As part of the 2023 theme “What’s Past is Prologue: Making History Relatable in Today’s Classrooms,” eventgoers will take part in lectures and workshops to learn about historical topics from experts in both the education and

April 2023

history fields.

The event is free for educators but requires a $100 refundable deposit to reserve a spot. At the conclusion of the event, educators can apply for continuing education certificates.

Following the in-person event, the Trust will also host a Virtual Teacher Institute from July 2426. Registration for both events is now open. Learn more at www. battlefields.org/TI2023.

Buffington Island Battlefield Memorial Park in Portland, Ohio. (Photo by Jennifer Goellnitz)

A lone tree stands against a vivid dawn sky on Fleetwood Hill at Brandy Station Battlefield in Culpeper County, Va. (Photo by Buddy Secor)

Garry Adelman leads a tour at a past National Teacher Institute. (Photo by David Davis)

Tattered, Battered, Bareheaded, And Blood-Smeared

“Once more! Try the steel! Hell for ten minutes and we are out of it!” – U.S. Gen. Joshua Chamberlain

By late March 1865, the Siege of Petersburg, Va., was winding to a close. The Confederate supply lines to Petersburg had dwindled to two; the South Side Railroad and the Boydton Plank Road. U.S. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Potomac was driving C.S. Gen. Robert E. Lee to abandon Petersburg and the nearby capitol of Richmond. Lee had delayed joining Gen. Joseph Johnston’s army in North Carolina due his lack of sufficient horsepower to move his artillery and wagons over the rain-soaked roads.

On March 29, Grant launched his Spring Campaign with

generals Gouverneur Warren’s V Corps, Andrew Humphreys’ II Corps, and Philip Sheridan’s cavalry. The infantry was to march five miles west, flanking the Confederate lines, then turning north to drive the Rebels from their trenches. The cavalry would swing below, around the infantry, proceed north from the Dinwiddie Court House, and get behind Confederate lines. Grant made it clear that the infantry was to support the cavalry.

At 3:00 a.m., the V Corps left camp as quietly as they could. Reveille was not sounded or fires lit. The Federals “… went slipping and plunging through the black slimy mud in which pointed rocks were bedded.”

At 10:20 a.m., Gen. George G. Meade revised Warren’s orders due to Humphreys’ II Corps being delayed. Warren was to cross Gravelly Run using Quaker Road instead of Boydton Plank Road. Warren replied that “my skirmishers are

out on the Quaker Road as far as Gravelly Run. They had been ordered there, and I’ll see that it is done.” Meade responded, “that you did not understand his last order.” Warren’s entire V Corps., not just the skirmishers, were to take the revised route. As Col. Charles S. Wainwright, Battery B, 4th U.S. Artillery, wrote, Warren would be “moving farther off from Sheridan, whose operations we were supposed to be supporting....”

C.S. Gen. Bushrod Rust Johnson’s Division had to protect more than three miles of trenches at the extreme right of Lee’s forces. West Point graduate Johnson was born in Ohio and raised as a Quaker. He had fought in the Seminole War in Florida and the Mexican-American War. Afterwards, as a college professor, he taught in Kentucky and Tennessee and was active in their state militias.

Johnson’s 4800 dispirited men were hungry and ragged, their

lines stretched too thin. The division had little more than one man per yard of defensive line, leaving the area vulnerable

to attack. The Federals were enticing deserters by paying “at the rate of $8 per arm.”

The Army of Potomac’s Chief Ordnance Officer had $10,000 sent to facilitate these purchases. Deserters were slipping away in groups.

Realizing Grant’s army was on the move, Lee sent Johnson to the breastworks guarding Boydton Plank Road. Johnson positioned the brigades of generals Samuel McGowan on the right, Col. M.L. Stansel’s regiment from Young Moody’s in the center, Eppa Hunton on the left and Henry Wise as the reserve. Resolved to hold the outpost protecting the vital junction of White Oak and Boydton Plank Road, Lee rode over to join them.

The March 29, Battle of Lewis Farm began with Gen. Joshua Chamberlain, 1st Division, V Corps, leading the attack. A prewar college professor of modern languages, Chamberlain is best known for holding Little Round Top on July 2, 1863, during the Battle of Gettysburg, Penn. Six months earlier, Chamberlain had returned to the field after being critically shot during the June 18, 1864, Second Battle of Petersburg. He used his sword to hold himself upright as he encouraged his men to hold the line before collapsing from blood loss. Chamberlain received

Gen. Bushrod Rust Johnson, C.S.A. Colorization © 2019 civilwarincolor.com courtesy civilwarincolor.com/cwn. (Library of Congress)

Gen. Gouverneur Warren. Colorization © 2023 civilwarincolor.com courtesy civilwarincolor.com/cwn. (Library of Congress)

Gen. Joshua Chamberlain. Colorization © 2023 civilwarincolor.com courtesy civilwarincolor.com/cwn. (Public Domain)

a Brigadier-General battlefield promotion on what was thought to be his death bed.

While Gen. Charles Griffin’s pioneers rebuilt the Gravelly Run bridge, Chamberlain positioned generals Edgar M. Gregory on the left, Joseph Bartlett to be ready as required, and Horatio Sickel on the right below the bridge “to pour hot fire upon the enemy opposite.” Chamberlain with the rest of his 1,750 men, crossed the waist-deep stream above the bridge. “Major [E. A.] Glenn with his six companies in skirmishing order dashed through the stream and struck the enemy’s breastworks front and flank. … The whole command swept onward like a wave, carrying all before it a mile or more up the road, to the buildings of the Lewis Farm.”

Under hot fire, between 3 and 4 p.m. Chamberlain’s men had reached the old sawmill when Chamberlain’s horse reared up, catching a bullet that passed through its neck, into “a leather case of field orders and a brass-mounted hand-mirror in my [left] breast-pocket … demolished the pistol in the belt of my aide Lieutenant Vogel, and knocked him out of the saddle. … The bullet continued down Chamberlain’s sleeve, “bruised and battered my bridle arm so that it was useless, … it had followed around two ribs so as to come out at the back seam of my coat. The horse was bleeding profusely.”

Knocked unconscious, “the first thing I knew an arm was around my waist and words murmured in my ear, ‘My dear General, you are gone,’” said Griffin. Chamberlain simultaneously heard, “a wild rebel yell” and saw the Federal line breaking. Chamberlain “… rose in the saddle tattered and battered, bareheaded and bloodsmeared. I swung the rein against my horse’s wounded neck and lightly touching his flank with my heel, we made a dash for the rally of our right.”

The Confederates again advanced, pushing the Federals “entirely out of the woods to a direction parallel with the road by which we advanced.” Word was sent if they could hold on, Griffin would bring up the artillery. The Federals endured. Battery B, 4th U.S. Artillery, came thundering up with their Napoleons. “The two guns opened with canister at once, doing splendid service. … the rebel yell ceased, and the next moment our men hurrahed.” Four

additional regiments arrived, pushing the Confederates back.

According to Johnson, “Our troops persistently continued to fight, but were unable to advance,

and orders were first sent to hold the position they had gained. It, however, became evident that our troops were being exhausted, and needed re-enforcements, of

which there was none available.”

About 5 p.m. the Confederates withdrew to their morning position at the main breastworks.

Lee’s Boydton Plank Road supply line had been permanently cut. The V Corps would continue to move forward on White Oak Road towards that meeting place of roads, Five Forks. Sensing the end was near, Grant ordered the cavalry to forget attacking the railroads; stay close to the infantry.

After the battle, Warren came up to Chamberlain, still wearing his bloody, bullet riddled clothes. “General,” he says, “you have done splendid work. I am telegraphing the President. You will hear from it.” Chamberlain soon received a brevet commission of Major-General.

Sources:

• Chamberlain, Major-General

Joshua L. The Passing Of The Armies: An Account Of The Final Campaign Of The Army Of The Potomac, Based Upon Personal Reminiscences Of The Fifth Army Corps. Golden

Portion of base map: Manuscript on file at Petersburg National Battlefield, National Park Service: Ed Bearss Troop Movement Maps, Boydton Plank Road Base Map. Additional Union and Confederate earthworks and troop movements added by Brett Schulte. Unit placement is solely based on an original map found in The Petersburg Campaign, Volume II: The Western Front Battles by Ed Bearss and Bryce Suderow, p. 343.

Springs Publishing, 2015

• Cummings, Charles M..

“Yankee Quaker Confederate General: The Curious Career of Bushrod Rust Johnson.” Blue & Gray Magazine/The General’s Books, 1993

• Wainwright, Colonel Charles S.. A Diary Of Battle; The Personal Journals Of Colonel Charles S. Wainwright, 1861–1865. Golden Springs Publishing, 1962

• Korn, Jerry, and the Editors of Time-Life Books. Pursuit To Appomattox: The Last Battles, Time-Life Books, Alexandria, VA, 1987

• Jordan, David M. “Happiness Is Not My Companion”: The Life of General G. K. Warren, Indiana University Press, 2001

Stephanie Hagiwara is the editor for Civil War in Color.com and Civil War in 3D.com. She also writes a column for History in Full Color.com that covers stories of photographs of historical interest from the 1850’s to the present. Her articles can be found on Facebook, Tumblr and Pinterest.

Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, 1861–1865 Journal homepage.

Researchers wishing to mine the records of the Confederate Congress may do so by visiting the Library of Congress archives at https://memory.loc.gov/ ammem/amlaw/lwcc.html. Here, one can search through the following papers. (Descriptions from LOC website.)

• Volume I.–Journal of the Provisional Congress, February 4, 1861, to February 17, 1862, together with, the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention, held at Montgomery, Ala., February 28, 1861, to March 11, 1861, and an appendix containing the Provisional and Permanent Constitutions of the Confederate States.

• Volume II.–Journal of the Senate of the First Confederate Congress, first and second sessions, February 18, 1862, to April 21, 1862, and August 18, 1862, to October 13, 1862, respectively.

• Volume III.–Journal of the Senate of the First Confederate Congress, third and fourth sessions, January 12, 1863, to May 1, 1863, and December 7, 1863, to February 17, 1864, respectively.

• Volume IV.–Journal of the Senate of the Second Confederate Congress, first and second sessions, May 2, 1864, to June 14, 1864, and November 7, 1864, to March 18, 1865, respectively.

• Volume V.–Journal of the House of Representatives of the First Confederate Congress, first and second sessions, February 18, 1862, to April 21, 1862, and August 18, 1862, to October 13, 1862, respectively.

• Volume VI.–Journal of the House of Representatives of the First Confederate Congress, third and fourth sessions, January 12, 1863, to May 1, 1863, and December 7, 1863, to February 17, 1864, respectively.

• Volume VII.–Journal of the House of Representatives of the Second Confederate Congress, first and second sessions, May 2, 1864, to June 14, 1864, and November 7, 1864, to March 18, 1865, respectively, and a general index to the entire work.

While several search methods exist, one might begin at https:// memory.loc.gov/ammem/ hlawquery.html and select ‘Journal of the Confederate Congress’ (full text) from the drop-down box in the note section. See image.

A search of ‘Shiloh’ yielded nine hits; see the image. Select line 14 and read as the “… House took up for consideration joint resolutions of thanks for the victory at Shiloh, Tenn.” Use the ‘find’ function in the browser to locate the search term on the resultant page (s).

Search through these records

and continued success in researching the American Civil War!

Michael K. Shaffer is a Civil War historian, author, lecturer, and instructor who remains a member of the Society of Civil War Historians, Historians of the Civil War Western Theater, and the Georgia Association of Historians. Readers may contact him at mkscdr11@gmail.com or request speaking engagements at www.civilwarhistorian. net. Follow Michael on Facebook, www.facebook.com/ michael.k.shaffer, and Twitter @ michaelkshaffer.

Until now, a daily account (1,630 days) of Georgia’s social, political, economic, and military events during the Civil War did not exist. In Day by Day through the Civil War in Georgia, Michael K. Shaffer strikes a balance between the combatants while remembering the struggles of enslaved persons, folks on the home front, and merchants and clergy attempting to maintain some sense of normalcy. Maps, footnotes, a detailed index, and bibliographical references will aid those wanting more. February 2022 • $37.00, hardback

Michael K. Shaffer is a Civil War historian, instructor, lecturer, newspaper columnist, and author. He is a member of the Society of Civil War Historians, Historians of the Civil War Western Theater, and the Georgia Association of Historians. Contact the author: mkscdr11@gmail.com

Begin search.

Shiloh results

Saint-Gaudens Medal Awarded to Historian and Author Harold Holzer

The Saint-Gaudens Memorial, a partner of and advocate for the Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park (SGNHP) in Cornish, N.H., awarded the Saint Gaudens Medal to Lincoln Forum Chairman Harold Holzer in a New York ceremony held Jan. 9. The award honors his outstanding contributions as an authority on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War era.

than 600 articles and reviews for popular magazines and scholarly journals. His book Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion (2014) won both the Gilder-Lehrman Lincoln Prize and the Mark Lynton History Prize from the Columbia University School of Journalism. His most recent book, published in 2020, is The Presidents vs. the Press: The Endless Battle Between the White House and the Media from the Founding Fathers to Fake News.

Holzer served for six years (2010-16) as chairman of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation, and for the previous 10 years as co-chair of the U.S. Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, appointed by President Bill Clinton. In 2008, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President George W. Bush.

extraordinary artists.”

Over the course of his career Holzer has spoken and written extensively on the visual arts, focusing on Civil War print culture, sculptural representations of Lincoln, and American public monuments. In 2016, Holzer delivered keynote remarks at the unveiling of a recast of Standing Lincoln at the Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park, on the occasion of the centennial of the National Park Service.

gardens, and collections in Cornish. The organization donated the property and contents to the federal government in 1964 to create the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, operated by the National Park Service and renamed in 2019 the SaintGaudens National Historical Park. The Saint-Gaudens

Memorial sponsors exhibitions, concerts, artist fellowships, and educational programming at the park, open to the public seasonally from May to October. To plan visits, please refer to the SGNHP website for the most current information on hours, fees, and conditions: nps.gov/ saga.

Throughout his career, Holzer has recognized Augustus SaintGaudens as the sculptor who set the standard for civic monuments commemorating Lincoln with Abraham Lincoln: The Man (Standing Lincoln) (1884-87) and Seated Lincoln (1897–1906), both for Chicago.

“We proudly present this medal to Harold Holzer,” said SaintGaudens Memorial president Thayer Tolles. “He has engaged a broad audience, bringing a wealth of insights into our ever evolving understanding of Lincoln as man, president, and icon. His engagement with portrayals of Lincoln in the visual culture of the United States complements the Memorial’s longstanding commitment to fostering the enduring legacy of SaintGaudens.” Tolles, a curator of American sculpture at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, was a longtime colleague of Holzer’s during his decades as a Met senior executive. Holzer is the author, co-author, or editor of 55 books on Lincoln and the Civil War era, as well as more

He is a co-founder and current chairman of The Lincoln Forum, a national organization dedicated to enhancing the understanding and preserving the memory of Abraham Lincoln. Holzer has served on the advisory boards of many Lincoln and Civil War magazines and museums, and recently wrote the authorized biography of the sculptor of the Lincoln Memorial: Monument Man: The Life and Art of Daniel Chester French.

Holzer has had a long career in the interconnected worlds of press, publicity, history, and politics. For 23 years, he was Senior Vice President of External Affairs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since 2015 Holzer has served as The Jonathan F. Fanton Director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College in New York.

“I want to express my sincere thanks for this wonderful, and wholly unexpected, honor,” said Harold Holzer. “For a ‘Dan French’ man to be recognized with the prestigious Saint Gaudens Medal suggests that the creative synergy that once existed between those two giants continues to animate the study of, and appreciation for, American sculpture. I am so grateful to the Saint-Gaudens experts who first introduced me to Cornish, invited me to speak there, helped me with my research on Monument Man, and continue to educate and inspire me. And of course, to the Daniel Chester French community, and my Metropolitan Museum family, let me say how glad I am that we remain interconnected in pursuit of, and appreciation for, these

“In his art-related scholarship Harold Holzer has consistently highlighted Saint-Gaudens and his important relationships with fellow artists of his time, most recently in his award-winning biography Monument Man: The Life and Art of Daniel Chester French (2019) in which SaintGaudens receives prominent consideration,” commented Donna Hassler, Director Emerita, Chesterwood, National Trust for Historic Preservation, and also a trustee of the Saint-Gaudens Memorial.

The Saint-Gaudens Medal, established in 1988, is awarded from time to time to those who, by their talents and vision, have made a distinguished contribution to the arts in the United States in the high tradition of sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848–1907). The Saint-Gaudens Medal has been given thirteen times. The award was last presented in 2021 to art historian Wanda M. Corn in recognition of her longstanding commitment to the preservation and stewardship of historic artists’ properties throughout the United States. Prior to that the medal was awarded in 2019 to Dartmouth College Library for its exemplary care and preservation of the papers of Saint-Gaudens, as well as those of other Cornish Colony artists and the Saint-Gaudens Memorial. Other recipients include historian and author David McCullough (2016); historian and author James B. Atkinson (2014); and museum director Earl A. Powell III (2005).

The medal was designed in 1992 by sculptor Robert W. White (1921–2002), a trustee of the Saint-Gaudens Memorial from 1972 to 2002 and grandson of architect Stanford White, a frequent collaborator with Saint-Gaudens.

The Saint-Gaudens Memorial is a nonprofit organization incorporated by the state of New Hampshire in 1919 as a permanent memorial to honor Saint- Gaudens’s legacy and to safeguard his home, studios,

Harold Holzer.

Congratulations from former NYC Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (L) and Hunter College President Jennifer J. Raab.

The Holzer family joins the celebration: from left, grandson Charles, son-in-law Adam, Harold, daughter Remy, and wife Edith.

Harold Holzer (R) receives Saint-Gaudens Medal from Saint-Gaudens Society president and noted sculpture curator Thayer Tolles. (Photos courtesy Hunter College).

Robert W. White, The Augustus Saint-Gaudens Medal, 1992, silver.

Georgia Civil War Heritage Trails: The Atlanta Campaign, Part 1

“They came with their heads bowed down and their hats pulled over their eyes as if to hide from view their inevitable death.”

Last year I devoted four columns to Georgia Civil War Heritage Trails’ interpretive markers that trace Sherman’s March to the Sea. Now we step back in time several months to learn about the earlier Atlanta Campaign. We will drive through northwest Georgia toward Atlanta, pausing at GCWHT’s various stops along the way. What decisions did the commanders make during this campaign? What did the privates do? How did the region’s geography affect the fighting? And what happened to civilians in this area in the spring and summer of the war’s fourth year? GCWHT will tell us.

Our first stop is at Tunnel Hill, a few miles north of Dalton. The GCWHT marker here states that “On May 7, 1864, as Union Major General John M. Palmer’s 14th Corps advanced

on Tunnel Hill, the first shots of the Atlanta Campaign were fired from a Federal battery on a hill near the Clisby Austin House.” After artillery and infantry drove away Confederate cavalry, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s force moved against Dalton and the Confederate Army of Tennessee

commanded by Gen. Joseph E. Johnston.

The next three stops are at Crow Valley, Mill Creek Gap, and Dug Gap, Confederate positions protecting Dalton. The defenses across the mile-wide Crow Valley were well-built and capably manned. At Mill Creek

the Southern defenders held a naturally strong position, one made stronger when they created a lake by damming up the creek. Further south along Rocky Face Ridge is Dug Gap, where one finds a narrow passage at the top of a very steep climb. The GCWHT markers explain that the Federals probed and tested the Confederate positions at these strong points. A Northern officer reported that the works at Crow Valley were “too strong to be carried without great slaughter.”

The commander of the Federal force at Dug Gap described “the palisades of rock impossible to scale.” Regarding Mill Creek, a Yankee sergeant wrote that “The enemy was concealed from our view and we did not have the poor satisfaction of shooting at them.”

The Federals occupied the Confederates’ attention, as one

with some 100,000 Federals and 60,000 Confederates engaged. The marker here, just south of the Oostanaula River some distance from the battlefield, describes the battle. The fighting was heavy, with about 6,000 total casualties, roughly equal on both sides. The battle was a tactical draw, but Johnston was forced to retreat late on the 15th when he received word that the Federals had begun crossing the river in his rear. There were three bridges here, one for the railroad, one for wagons, and a pontoon bridge. “The Confederate army secretly withdrew overnight, spreading straw over the bridges before marching across undetected and setting them afire.”

The movements between May 7 and May 16 presaged much of the action during the Atlanta Campaign. Johnston would take a defensive position and prepare to face Sherman’s advancing force. Part of Sherman’s army would occupy the attention of the dugin Confederates, while another part marched around Johnston’s left flank to threaten the Western and Atlantic lifeline. Johnston’s outnumbered army would be forced to pull back, undefeated and intact, but ever closer to Atlanta.

Federal commander put it, but they made no concerted attack. They did not have to. Further south was another way through Rocky Face Ridge. Maj. Gen. James McPherson was headed there with his 24,000 men.

At Snake Creek Gap

McPherson found an undefended route to the valley below and the railroad at Resaca. As the Federals debouched from the gap, they saw Confederate infantry in the valley. The commander overestimated the Confederates’ strength and hesitated while Johnston pulled his entire force back. The GCWHT marker quotes Sherman, who said to McPherson “Well, Mac, you have missed the opportunity of a lifetime.”

The ensuing Battle of Resaca on May 14 and 15 was the first major battle of the campaign,

About 40 miles south of Resaca, the W&A cuts through Allatoona Pass, another strong defensive position. Sherman declined to attack in force. On May 20, according to the GCWHT marker, Johnston “hoped that… Sherman would attack his army in this stronghold.” In his memoirs Sherman explained why he forewent the opportunity. Sherman had served in this area 20 years earlier and knew the terrain. “I therefore knew that Allatoona Pass was very strong,” he wrote, “would be hard to force, and resolved not even to attempt it.” He chose instead “to turn the position by moving from Kingston to Marietta via Dallas.” So we also head southwest to Dallas, 20 miles or so from the W&A. Markers in and near Dallas tell us what happened in late May.

Several roads converge at New Hope where, on May 25, the first of three battles in the vicinity of Dallas was fought. The GCWHT marker in a small “pocket park” describes the action. Johnston had moved so rapidly from Allatoona that Sherman was unaware a Confederate force was already at the crossroads. Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker’s XX Corps, a force of 16,000 men, moved forward and was met by Maj. Gen. Alexander Stewart’s Division. “The Federals advanced…one brigade at a time,” according to the marker.

Clisby Austin House at Tunnel Hill, Sherman’s HQ during the first few days of the campaign. (All photos by Gould Hagler)

Tunnel Hill: Original tunnel (1850) on right and modern tunnel (1928) on left.

Each brigade, therefore, “bore the brunt of the massed enemy fire along a narrow front.” With 4,000 infantry and 16 cannon the Confederates repelled the attack and inflicted heavy casualties. One Federal division lost 800 men “in only a few minutes.”

The brochure for the Atlanta Campaign Trail includes a

number of “points of interest,” sites shown on the brochure’s large map but not interpreted by GCWHT markers. One point of interest is Pickett’s Mill Battlefield State Historic Site. The state of Georgia has created an excellent facility to educate visitors about the battle fought here on May 27, two days after

New Hope. Here, as at New Hope, a poorly-executed Federal assault resulted in a bloody repulse.

The day after Pickett’s Mill, the armies clashed again in the Battle of Dallas. Two markers tell the story of a failed Confederate assault on the Union right. Believing the Federals were withdrawing from this part of the line, and hoping to catch the enemy on the move, the Confederates probed with dismounted cavalry to determine the Federals’ strength. Finding that the works were still fully manned, the cavalry commander sent word to call off the attack.

A Florida brigade and the famed Orphan Brigade of Kentuckians did not get the message. They attacked. Moving against the well-prepared Federals, these brigades suffered severe losses. The GCWHT marker quotes an Ohio soldier who wrote that “they

came with their heads bowed down and their hats pulled over their eyes as if to hide from view their inevitable death.”

A marker in a downtown park provides only a brief description of the May 28 engagement, stressing instead the effects the fighting had on the town and its vicinity. For two weeks “nearly 170,000 soldiers in the Federal and Confederate armies faced each other in Dallas and throughout Paulding County.” Many wounded Confederates were taken to Dallas, where they received inadequate care in the town’s “impromptu hospitals.” A Confederate captain later wrote of wounded soldiers “lying in hospitals and uncared for, some of them with limbs amputated, and undressed for two days, until from neglect – the weather being warm – insects had found a lodgment in every wound.”

Even before the action at Dallas on his right, Sherman had decided to move his force east, back to the railroad. Johnston hastened toward Kennesaw Mountain and the prepared works on terrain highly favorable to the defending Confederates. The story of the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain is well-known. Kennesaw is mapped by GCWHT as another point of interest. As at Pickett’s Mill, GCWHT has installed no marker here, leaving the interpretation of this battle to the Kennesaw National Battlefield Park. Most readers will be familiar with the story: Sherman attacked on June 27 and was checked with serious losses. The Federals still held the advantage, however, and again moved around Johnston’s left flank, forcing another retreat. We will pause here, and resume our tour next month at the Battle of Peachtree Creek, where the Army of Tennessee, under a new commander, attacked the Federals at the very gates of Atlanta.

Gould Hagler is a retired lobbyist living in Dunwoody, Ga. He is a past president of the Atlanta Civil War Round Table and the author of Georgia’s Confederate Monuments: In Honor of a Fallen Nation, published by Mercer University Press in 2014. Hagler speaks frequently on this topic and others related to different aspects of the Civil War and has been a regular contributor to CWN since 2016. He can be reached at gould.hagler@gmail. com.

If you ever get to Gordon County, stop by and visit Sheriff Mitch Ralston, collector of artifacts and restorer of old wagons.

Georgia Civil War Heritage Trails has clearly marked the route with directional signs that lead to interpretive markers. The organization’s website (https://www. civilwarheritagetrails. org/) also contains each marker’s GPS coordinates. Brochures for the Atlanta Campaign Trail and other driving routes, available from GCWHT, contain much useful information, including excellent maps. I suggest that travelers make use of all three resources. If you use only the GPS coordinates to get from one stop to the next you will be led upon modern roads and miss much of the fun. If you are like me you will miss a sign now and then or take a wrong turn. When this happens the GPS coordinates will get you back on track. GCWHT’s address is P.O. Box 1864, Evans, Georgia, 30809.

Dug Gap Battle Park near Dalton.

GCWHT marker located in New Hope’s pocket park.

GCWHT marker at Oostanaula Bridges.

The GCWHT marker at the Oostanaula River is at the Gordon County Sheriff’s Office.

The story of the Orphan Brigade is told on this marker in a Dallas city park.

The terrain at Dug Gap, on the west side of Rocky Face Ridge.

Execution of Sioux Indians

The Graphic War highlights prints and printmakers from the Civil War discussing their meaning and the print maker or artist’s goals

Every American President has dealt with simultaneous multiple crises. No one’s plate was as full as Abraham Lincoln’s. In the fall of 1862, in the midst of the

“Great Rebellion,” the Union army was recovering from a second defeat at Bull Run, a questionable victory at Antietam, as Lincoln was contemplating the Emancipation Proclamation. He had fired his commander in the field George McClellan. In the first weeks of the month of December, the new commander of the Army of the Potomac, Ambrose Burnside was engaged in planning the disastrous Fredericksburg campaign and battle.

Adding to the Lincoln administration’s burden, the turmoil in the west was caused by a wave of white settlers seeking their “manifest destiny” clashing with the indigenous populations. The so called “Indian Wars” unleashed hatred and violence on both sides. In the summer of 1862, temperatures reached a boiling point. The Santee Sioux had been “badly mistreated by corrupt federal Indian agents and contractors.” During July, agents withheld food stores “because

they had not yet received their customary kickback payments. The contractors callously ignored the Santee’s pleas for help.”1

The Administration’s Secretary of the Interior Caleb B. Smith in his annual report stated that in August of that year, “Sioux Indians, in Minnesota, attacked the settlements in their vicinity with extreme ferocity, killing, indiscriminately, men, women, and children. This attack was wholly unexpected, and, therefore, no means of defense had been provided. It is estimated that not less than eight hundred persons were killed by the Indians, and a large amount of property was destroyed.”2 Naively, Smith went on to wonder about the cause of the outbreak of violence and refused to speculate. He also recommended “remodeling” the Indian Policy but refrained from offering substantial specifics. He concluded with offering condolences to the people of Minnesota: “The State of Minnesota has suffered great injury from this Indian war. A large portion of her territory has been depopulated, and a severe loss has been sustained by the

destruction of property. The people of that State manifest much anxiety for the removal of the tribes beyond the limits of the State as a guarantee against future hostilities.”3

Anglo retaliation followed. In late September, General Henry Sibley led an expedition that defeated the Sioux at the Battle of Birch Coulee capturing most of the Indians. The perpetrators were tried before a commission consisting of five Federal officers: Colonel William Crooks of the Sixth Minnesota Volunteers, Lieutenant Colonel William R. Marshall of the Seventh Minnesota Volunteers, Captain Hiram P. Grant and Captain Hiram S. Bailey of the Sixth Minnesota, and Captain Rollin C. Olin, assistant adjutant general on Sibley’s staff.

In December, the Senate asked President Lincoln for “all information in his possession touching the late Indian barbarities in the State of Minnesota, and also the evidence in his possession upon which some of the principal actors and head men were tried and condemned to death.”4 Lincoln responded with an even-handed approach. On the 8th of November he had received the names of those to be hanged and immediately asked for more information which he received and carefully sifted through. Lincoln made a distinction between those who had been involved in “massacres” and those involved in “battles.” He had been inclined to order the execution of those convicted of “violating females,” but discovered only two such individuals. A total of 40 Indians and half-breeds were convicted, 38 had participated in “massacres” and the two individuals were found guilty of rape. One of the number was recommended by the commission for “commutation to ten years’ imprisonment.” Lincoln ordered the execution to take place on December 19 listing in the order by name every condemned man totaling 39.5

Execution of the thirty-eight Sioux Indians at Mankato, Minnesota, December 25, 1862. Print shows the residents of Mankato, Mn., gathered to watch the execution of thirty-eight Sioux Indians, who stand on a scaffold with nooses around their necks, separated from the community by rows of soldiers. Local newspaper publisher John C. Wise commissioned this print to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the event. After the American victory against the Dakota at the Battle of Wood Lake during the Dakota War of 1862, over three hundred Indians were sentenced for execution, but President Lincoln, after reviewing their cases, commuted the majority of the sentences. (Library of Congress)

Sibley wrote back that the 19th was too soon and proposed moving the execution forward to December 26. “The excitement prevails [in] all sections of the state & secret combinations Exist Embracing thousands of citizens pledged to execute all the Indians matters must be managed with great discretion & as much secrecy as possible to prevent a fearful collision between the U.S. forces & the citizens.” At the same time, Sibley acknowledged Lincoln’s order to exonerate Chakaydon, Chaska-don, Chaskay-etay, (alias Robert Hopkins) one of the original 40. On the approved

day, 38 Sioux Indians and halfbreeds were hanged in Mankato at 10 AM, “Everything went off quietly, and the other prisoners are well secured” Sibley told the President.6

During the Civil War, no lithographer or printer documented the mass execution in Mankato, Mn. In 1882-83, John C. Wise published the only known depiction of the event. He was the “fiery editor” of the Mankato Record who “launched an ‘extermination or removal’ campaign directed not at the Sioux alone, but also at the peaceful Winnebago.” Wise, a Democrat, maintained that the Lincoln administration and Republicans in general “listened to Eastern humanitarians rather than Western pioneers.” Wise commissioned the lithograph depicting the large squares within squares; the inner comprised of robotic looking soldiers, first infantry then cavalry and then an outer square of civilians. In the center is the large scaffold with the 38 doomed Sioux prisoners. Wise’s intention was to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the mass execution. As he told the readers of his newspaper when the deed was done: “All believe they richly deserved hanging, but as the President would not consent

to this, the next best thing was to take them away. This has been done, and the people of our state and of this community especially are pleased with the riddance.”7

The Indian wars continued well into the last quarter of the 19th century.

Endnotes:

1. This Day in History, November 5, 1862. https://www.history. com/this-day-in-history/300santee-sioux-sentenced-tohang-in-minnesota

2. Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1953, V, 525. Hereafter Basler, Lincoln.

3. Basler, Lincoln, V, 526

4. Ibid., V, 550.

5. Ibid., V, 542-543.

6. Ibid., VI, 6-7

7. William E. Lass, “The Removal from Minnesota of the Sioux and Winnebago Indians,” The Minnesota Historical Society, Minnesota History Magazine, December 1963, 353, 354, 356-7.

8. https://collections.mnhs. org/MNHistoryMagazine/ articles/38/v38i08p353-364.pdf.

After 43 years in the museum field, Cilella devotes his time collecting American prints and maps and writing. His most recent books are Upton’s

Regulars: A History of the 121st New York Volunteers in the Civil War (U. Press Kansas, 2009). His two-volume Correspondence of Major General Emory Upton, (U. of Tennessee Press, 2017), received the 2017–2018

American Civil War Museum’s Founders Award for outstanding editing of primary source materials. Upton’s love letters to his wife 1868-70, (Till Death Do Us Part) was published in 2020 by the Oklahoma University

Press. His current book, From Antietam to Appomattox with Upton’s Regulars: A Civil War Memoir from the 121st New York Regiment published by McFarland Press will be released in April.

This

Red Cloud and other Sioux Indians (taken post Civil War). Standing: Red Bear (Sons Are?), Young Man Afraid of his Horse, Good Voice, Ring Thunder, Iron Crow, White Tail, Young Spotted Tail; seated: Yellow Bear, Jack Red Cloud, Big Road, Little Wound, Black Crow. (Library of Congress)

is Hallowed Ground.

When you visit battlefields of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and the Civil War, you are standing where history happened.

the help of our supporters and partners, the American Battlefield Trust has saved more than 55,000 acres at 150+ sites in 25 states — creating outdoor classrooms where the past can come alive. Join

and protect America’s past by saving these endangered battlefields. www.battlefields.org

Chancellorsville Battlefield, Virginia. THERESA RASMUSSEN

The Atlanta Appeal Justifies Fort Pillow

At the time of the war, Memphis’s four leading newspapers were the Appeal, Argus, Avalanche and Bulletin.1

After Federal forces captured Memphis in June 1862, the Avalanche continued operation, absorbing the Bulletin three months later. The Avalanche sometimes ran afoul of the occupiers, but managed to last through the war. The owners of the Argus also made it, as one historian has written, “by being very circumspect in their editorial policy.”2

The Appeal, however, pulled up stakes. Owners and editors were John R. McClanahan and Benjamin F. Dill, who refused to accept the prospect of being censored and controlled by Yankees. On June 6, 1862, even as a big naval battle raged offshore, McClanahan and Dill packed up and took off. They had already

announced their intentions:

Lincoln’s hireling minions would deprive us of the privilege of expressing at all times our earnest God-speed to the progress of Southern independence…. Sooner would we sink our type, press and establishment in the bottom of the Mississippi river, and be wanderers and exiles from our homes.3

Wanderers and exiles, indeed. As the Confederacy shrank under Union conquest, the Appeal was forced to migrate further: first, to Grenada, Mississippi (JuneNovember 1862); to Jackson (December 1862-May 1863); then to Meridian (one week); and on to Atlanta, where the Appeal resumed publication on June 6, 1863. All of this relocating by the paper led wags to start calling it the “Moving Appeal.”4

By midpoint in the war, Atlanta had become home to five newspapers. The Intelligencer had been founded in 1842 in Madison, Georgia; it moved to Atlanta five years later, locating downtown on Whitehall Street. It became a daily in 1854. The Southern Confederacy had been founded in 1857 as the National American; it got its new name on March 4, 1861 (the day of Lincoln’s inauguration). A third paper, the Commonwealth, limped behind the other two and folded in August 1863. Then came two more papers, refugees

from Yankee conquerors: first the Appeal, then the Knoxville Register, which arrived in late August 1863.5

The Appeal was the quintessential Confederate newspaper. As such it celebrated Confederate victories, like that at Chickamauga, usually hyperbolically.6 It shrugged off Southern reverses, such as the fall of Vicksburg: “Come what may, we shall not despond, or despair of the Republic,” McClanahan vowed. “We have an abiding faith in the success of the South,” it proclaimed, as it pledged “a continued resistance to the tyranny which a haughty foe are endeavoring to establish over us.”7 Prominent in wartime propaganda was vilification of the enemy, and the Appeal did this, too, at one point calling Yankee bluebellies “azure-stomached miscegnators.”8

Events of April 12, 1864

Especially when the Northern press condemned Confederate actions, the Appeal always took up for the South. Such was the case with Fort Pillow.

Maj. Gen. Bedford Forrest and his cavalry had already conducted two raids into west Tennessee, when on March 15, 1864 he set forth once more from north Mississippi.9 Detachments were sent out to gobble up Union garrisons along the way while Forrest pressed ahead, reaching Paducah, Kentucky on March 25.10 He kept part of his forces, under Brig. Gen. James R. Chalmers, in west Tennessee to watch possible enemy advances from Memphis or Fort Pillow. By April 13-14, Confederates were still threatening Columbus and gathering horses at Paducah. Detachments kept Federals at Memphis while Forrest and Chalmers planned to move against Fort Pillow.11

The place had been constructed by Confederates in 1861 on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi forty miles north of Memphis. Federals occupying it in the spring of ’62 modified the earthwork; two years later it was garrisoned by 557 officers and men –half white, half colored—under Maj. Lionel F. Booth. Most of the whites were Tennessee Tories, tales of whose depredations on the local citizenry reached Forrest. Not surprisingly, the Saddle Wizard pledged to “attend to” the Fort Pillow garrison.12

Chalmers and some 1,500 troopers arrived before Fort Pillow at dawn on April 12. The Confederates drove in the outside skirmish line and

surrounded the fort. Then from high ground and tree stumps they started picking off the garrison, zeroing in on officers. “We suffered pretty severely in the loss of commissioned officers by the unerring aim of the rebel sharpshooters,” one Federal stated. Major Booth was killed around 9 a.m.; his adjutant fell shortly after. “From that time on” Forrest biographer Robert Selph Henry writes, “the defense of the place was hopeless.”13

And so it was. As the Confederates kept up a steady fire on targets inside the fort, Forrest arrived at 10 o’clock to direct the final deployment of his men. A few hours later he sent in a demand for surrender, with his usual threat: “Should my demand be refused, I cannot be responsible for the fate of your command.”

Maj. William F. Bradford, who had succeeded Booth, consulted with his officers, then sent back a note: “I will not surrender.”14

Upon receiving it around 3:15, Forrest ordered his bugler, Jacob Gaus, to sound the charge. Some 1,200 Southerners quickly covered the distance to the fort, jumped into the ditch, climbed up the parapet, and poured into the fort.15

With most of their officers gone, the overwhelmed Federals, white and black, fought as best they could, but most started fleeing out of the fort and down the riverbank.

Forrest’s men continued firing as the Yankees plunged into the water. “The victory was complete,” Forrest wrote afterward; “the river was dyed with the blood of the slaughtered for 200 yards.”16 When it was all over, toward sundown, 41% of the Federals—231 of 557— were dead. Many drowned; others surrendered—or tried to. “There can be no doubt,” admits Forrest biographer Robert Selph Henry, “nor has it been denied, that some men—perhaps a considerable number—were shot after they, as individuals, were seeking to surrender.” Forrest’s casualties totaled 14 killed and 86 wounded.17

Talk of a massacre

The next day, with Confederates still holding the fort, two Northern vessels appeared offshore. A truce was arranged for the Federals to bury their dead and gather their wounded in and around the fort. These were put onboard one of the transports, the Platte Valley, which steamed upriver to the army hospital at Mound City, Illinois.18

The survivors spoke of a deliberate and wholesale massacre by Forrest’s men. The

Federal commander at Cairo, Brig. Gen. Mason Brayman, sent to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton lengthy written and sworn testimony he had received alleging wholesale bloodshed. One black private claimed he saw a Federal soldier stabbed after he had surrendered. A store clerk in the fort stated he heard Rebel officers say that “they would never recognize negroes as prisoners of war, but would kill them whenever taken.” One Federal cavalryman responded in a question-and-answer setting that he heard Rebels shouting, “Give them no quarter; kill them; kill them; it is General Forrest’s orders.”19

A Memphis newspaper and the Associated Press quickly picked up on the story, which then spread throughout the Northern press. The Cincinnati Gazette called the bloody battle “one of the most horrible that has disgraced the history of modern warfare.”

The New York Tribune asserted, “the Rebel leaders meant to impress upon this struggle every possible feature of cruelty.” On April 30, 1864, Harper’s Weekly rushed into its pages a woodcut illustration that showed Rebels shooting fallen black soldiers and bayoneting others; one unfortunate Negro is seen lying on the ground helpless as he is about to be stabbed in the back.20

So the Yankees claimed that there was “no quarter” shown by Forrest’s men at Fort Pillow. The allegation infuriated Southerners, even as they owned up to the bloodshed. The Mobile Advertiser and Register was one of the first Confederate newspapers to report the “indiscriminate slaughter,” and that “the fort ran with blood; many jumped into the river and drowned or [were] shot.” The Memphis/Atlanta Appeal spoke of the “unprecedented slaughter of five-sevenths of the garrison.”21

The Appeal’s take

Even acknowledging the bloodshed, the Confederate press sought to absolve Forrest of the Yankee libel that he had ordered a massacre, and took up all lines of counterargument. Many of them can be seen in the following editorial of the Memphis/Atlanta Appeal.

THE MURDER OF NEGRO TROOPS.

OKOLONA, MISSISSIPPI, June 14, 1864.

There is but one fact significant above all others in connection with the recent victory of General Forrest—it is the first

Frank Leslie’s the war in Tennessee: Confederates massacre Union soldiers after they surrender at Fort Pillow, April 12th, 1864.”

which has been won by the smaller over the larger force, where the inequality in numbers was so great that every participant in the struggle must have been conscious of the relative strength of the combatants. Strategy, Forrest’s name, and confidence in their leader, won the day. The Yankees and negroes opposed Forrest in Middle Tennessee, and came forth simply to slaughter the helpless, to plunder and desolate the country.

Forrest’s strength in the contest was about three thousand five hundred men. The number of negroes and whites is not accurately ascertained. Prisoners say that their force was twelve or fifteen thousand. Telegraphic despatches have given the general result of the battle, but many days must elapse before the details are known. Prisoners are constantly brought in by the country people. Very few negroes it seems have been captured. Perhaps not more than forty and fifty have appeared at headquarters. Most of them fled as soon as it was known that Forrest was on the battlefield. Those that were taken escaped. (?) The soldiers say that they “lost them.”

You must know that most of Forrest’s men are from Western Tennessee. Before the battle fugitives from the counties through which Sturgis and his troops were advancing, came into camp detailing incidents which made men shudder who are accustomed to scenes of violence and bloodshed. I cannot relate the stories of these poor frightened people. Robbery, rapine, and the assassination of men and women, were the least of crimes committed, while the “Avengers of Fort Pillow” overran and desolated the country. Rude unlettered men who had fought at Shiloh, and in many subsequent battles, wept like children when they heard of the enormities to which their mothers, sisters, and wives had been subjected by the negro mercenaries of Sturgis. The mildest, most peaceable of our soldiers became madmen when they heard how the persons of their kinswomen were

violated. The negroes were [killed] regardless of the age, condition, sex, or entreaties of their victims. In one instance, the grandmother, daughter, and granddaughter, were each, in the same room, held by the drunken brutes, and subjected to outrages by the bare recital of which humanity is appalled. A young wife, enciente, taken to a negro encampment, and, tied to stakes driven in the ground, was made to minister to the hellborn passions of a dozen fiends. Death, in his mercy came to her relief. A little boy, who sought to defend his mother, was brutally bayoneted. When their savage lusts were gratified, the victims here and there were burned in their dwellings. Insanity, in some cases, came to the relief of sufferings such as never before were inflicted upon human creatures by remorseless fiends in human shape. Terror, and the agony of hopeless shame, and famine, and fire, and blood, and the assassination of the helpless and unoffending, marked the progress of the “Avengers of Fort Pillow.” It is not strange that negro prisoners were “lost.” The whites who led them on and incited them to these damnable deeds deserve a more terrible punishment. Yet we have sent three thousand of those white men to prison to be exchanged. Simple justice demands their instant execution by the hangman’s rope.

You have heard that our soldiers buried negroes alive at Fort Pillow. This is true. At the first fire after Forrest’s men scaled the walls, many of the negroes threw down their arms and fell as if they were dead. They perished in the pretence, and could only be restored at the point of the bayonet. To resuscitate some of them, more terrified than the rest, they were rolled into the trenches made as receptacles for the fallen. Vitality was not restored till breathing was obstructed, and then the resurrection began. On these facts is based the pretext for the crimes committed by Sturgis, Grierson, and their followers. You must

remember, too, that in the extremity of their terror, or for other reasons, the Yankees and negroes at Fort Pillow neglected to haul down their flag. In truth relying upon their gunboats, the offices expected to annihilate our forces after we had entered the fortifications. They did not intend to surrender.

A terrible retribution, in any event, has befallen the ignorant, deluded Africans.22

So therein lay the Southern argument. Fort Pillow’s garrison of white Tennessee traitors and black recruits/former slaves had wreaked vengeance on the defenseless citizenry in the nearby area through murder, rape and robbery. They apparently called themselves the “Avengers of Fort Pillow,” part of the Union force based at Memphis under the command of Brig. Gen. Samuel D. Sturgis. Rape was a term not commonly used in Victorian America, but the Appeal’s reference to “the hellborn passions of a dozen fiends” would have been unmistaken by its readers; today a newspaper would simply refer to the gang rape of a young pregnant woman. It was this set of men who needed “attending to.”

Forrest was credited with a great victory because the Appeal got the numbers all wrong; The Yankees numbered a little over 500, not 12,000-15,000; Forrest and Chalmers had 1,500 men, not 3,500.

Losin’ ‘em

Then there was the fate of the prisoners, whom Confederates claimed “escaped.” Even the Appeal had to insert a question mark after that claim.

Truer was the statement that Forrest’s men had “lost them.” “Lost them” was a euphemistic phrase used by Confederate when they executed Union prisoners.

In The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl (1908), Eliza Frances Andrews describes her conversation in late 1864 with a Southern soldier, Sam Weller, who told her how, after capturing some of Sherman’s men, they “just took ‘em out in the woods and lost ‘em.”

”Ever heerd o’ losin’ men, lady?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered.

“What was the process of losing?” another inquired. “Did they manage the business with firearms?”

“Sometimes, when they was in a hurry,” Weller answered; “the guns would go off an’ shoot ‘em,

in spite of all that our folks could do.”23

“It is not strange that negro prisoners were “lost,” the Appeal judged, and suggested that the black troops had been egged on by white officers, who deserved the same fate.

Regardless of cause or context, the Appeal’s conclusion was unassailable: a terrible retribution had befallen the Federal garrison of Fort Pillow.

Northerners’ outrage led Washington to order a Congressional inquiry. Two Republicans, Senator Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio and Representative Daniel W. Gooch, from Massachusetts, traveled to Cairo in late April to interview survivors.

The interrogations and testimony were carefully transcribed during Wade and Gooch’s time west, April 22May 2, during which they held interviews at Cairo and Mound City, Illinois, Columbus, Kentucky, as well as at Fort Pillow and Memphis. When they returned to Washington, they submitted their findings. Congress viewed the whole thing so explosive that it authorized sixty thousand copies to be printed and distributed.24

The Congressional report

To judge from the tone of their questions, Wade and Gooch were out to skewer the Rebels—and they succeeded. They concluded that there was definitely a massacre at Fort Pillow, and that it was a product of malignant Rebel policy not to recognize blacks as soldiers. The report accused Forrest’s men of stealthily advancing during the truce; that when the Rebels charged they yelled out

“no quarter.” When the garrison troops started running for the river, “the rebels commenced an indiscriminate slaughter,” even of women and children in the fort. Cries of “Kill the damned niggers; shoot them down” were heard. “All who asked for mercy were answered by the most cruel taunts and sneers.” Tents containing wounded were set on fire. One man, they claimed, was nailed to an outbuilding which was then torched. The next morning, April 13, the report continued, Rebels roamed about looking for wounded men, whom they then shot. When they began burying the dead, Rebels threw into the ditch some wounded men, still living. Major Bradford had survived the fight, but Wade and Gooch claimed that he was shot the next day as a “homemade Yankee,” detested by Forrest’s Tennesseans.25

Forrest’s riposte

The arguing stretched for decades after the war. A central Southern allegation was that the black troops had been given whisky to strengthen their nerves against the impending assault. “The negroes were drunk,” claimed one former Confederate, “and, when Forrest’s men got into the fort, the negroes continued to fight until they were overpowered.” “Many of the prisoners were drunk,” wrote James Dinkins as late as 1925; “a number of barrels of whisky were found at convenient points in the fort with tin dippers for use of the Federal soldiers.”26

Defenders of Forrest put forth various other arguments. The Southern Historical Society Papers in 1879 took satisfaction in printing a letter from Dr. Charles Fitch, fort surgeon, to General Chalmers, refuting the

Edited

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outrageous story that he had killed a baby in the fort battle.27 William Witherspoon served in the 7th Tennessee Cavalry, and in 1906 published Tishomingo Creek or Bryce’s Cross Roads, which included a passage on Pillow. “The Fort Pillow affair is not, by long odds, what it is reported to be by the Yankee side of the house, and our own (Southern) make too many apologies,” he began. “It needs none.”

The negroes had blue buckets (the common water bucket at that time) filled with whiskey and tin dippers (to drink with) passed around on their line on the breastworks, and were drinking and making sport and contumely remarks of our boys lying in line and in front and near them, while the first flag of truce was pending. The fact (about the whiskey) was reported to General Forrest; he said, “I will give them time to get drunk,” and sent the second flag. The object was accomplished—the negroes got drunk. Major Booth, the commander, the only soldier and gentleman in the fort, was killed at the first of the fight, left the negroes without a head.

The white element were all Tennessee home-made Yanks—who had joined the Federals not through any sense of patriotism, but for booty and plunder, and as bad as the worst Yank could do in their line, and they were pretty adept, the home-made Yank could beat him two to one.28

Another able advocate was Maj. Charles W. Anderson, Forrest’s adjutant and inspectorgeneral, who prepared a detailed account of the events at Fort Pillow published in Confederate Veteran in 1895, a generation after the war (showing that the controversy was still redhot). Anderson essentially put the blame on the Federals, Major Bradford particularly, for refusing Forrest’s surrender demand and failing to have the garrison flag lowered after the fort was overrun. According to Anderson’s argument, this entitled Forrest’s men to keep firing even as individual garrison members sought to surrender. As soon as the Stars and Stripes was lowered, “firing was promptly stopped.” His conclusion was pointed:

The charges against Gen. Forrest and his men of massacre and butchery at

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fort Pillow are outrageously unjust and unfounded. He did everything in his power to induce a surrender and avoid an assault. Thrice was a surrender demanded, and as often refused. There never was any surrender, therefore no massacre after surrender, as has been so erroneously and widely charged.29

What Forrest’s biographers say

Surprise, surprise: Forrest’s life-chroniclers take his side, and without subtlety. First, from Jordan and Pryor (1868):

We submit to the candid and those who are capable of accepting the truth that, in what occurred after the Confederates stormed the trenches, there was neither cruel purpose not cruel negligence of duty, neither intention nor inadvertence, on the part of General Forrest, whose course, therefore, stands utterly devoid of the essence of outrage or wrong.30

Dr. Wyeth (1899) sifted through all the testimony, and concluded “no cruelties were practiced by Forrest’s men upon any prisoner,

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wounded or unwounded.”31

Former Confederate infantry captain J. Harvey Mathes wrote a Forrest biography for Appleton’s “Great Commanders” Series (1902). Remember the My Lai massacre? Reading Mathes’ efforts to contextualize Fort Pillow reminds me of the American press’ efforts to explain the conduct of Captain Calley’s men. Forrest’s men had ridden all night, and were on the move all morning as they approached the fort. During the truce, the blacks inside “were very defiant and insulting in language and grimaces.” Finally, the enemy’s determination to make an “insane defense of a fort which they knew they could take,” was a further irritant, especially as the assault of any fort, regardless of the number of assailants, meant that some of them would fall. Thus the ensuing battle was “a terrific slaughter”—but no premeditated massacre, certainly not one ordered by the Confederate commander.32

H. J. Eckenrode wrote a biography for young readers that appeared in 1918. In it he points to the Federals garrison’s failure to surrender after the fort had been overrun, and to the continued shooting by black soldiers; “most of these foolhardy men were killed by enraged cavalrymen.” But there was no ordered massacre.33

The Englishman Eric Sheppard (1930) concluded, “a dispassionate consideration of the whole controversy leads one to conclude that while no organized massacre or measures of barbarity or severity were ordered by Forrest or any of his subordinate officers,” he blamed the general and his subordinates for having taken no steps to shield the garrison from “the manifestations of the very natural feelings of personal hatred and desire for vengeance which animated many of their men.”34

Andrew Nelson Lytle is without doubt the most literary of Forrest’s biographers. A Tennessean, he was a novelist, editor and critic, as judged by a 1984 essay in The Southern Review, “‘Three Ways of Making a Saint’: A Reading of Gustave Flaubert’s Three Tales.” Lytle was one of the Nashville Agrarians, the Fugitives who collaborated on I’ll Take My Stand (1930). As the group began planning their critique of American society, Donald Davidson wrote to John Crowe Ransom, “Andrew Lytle is terrifically interested, but he has to get his Forrest biography out of the way before all else.” 35 In his biography of Forrest, (1931), Lytle builds up the

circumstances for a bloodletting.

Approaching Fort Pillow, Chalmers’ troopers had ridden all Sunday night (April 10), Monday and Monday night, before arriving s the fort around dawn on Tuesday, the twelfth. So the attackers were exhausted, and had reason to be vengeful. Writing of the Yankee garrison, Lytle declares, “many of the troops were known to be deserters from the Confederate armies, and they all had been a menace to West Tennessee”—an oblique reference to the depredations upon the people that the Atlanta Appeal referred to.36

Robert Selph Henry’s “First With the Most” Forrest (1944) is the first modern, thorough biography of the general, and to some it remains the best. His judgment on the matter is therefore important. “There can be no doubt, nor has it ever been denied,” he concludes, “that some men—perhaps a considerable number—were shot after they, as individuals, were seeking to surrender.” But Forrest did not order any sort of massacre; in fact, when he saw the Federal flag fall, he “promptly ordered all firing to cease.”37

Then there are three recent works. Brian Steel Wills, in A Battle from the Start: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest (1992), concludes that at Fort Pillow “people died who were attempting to surrender and should have been spared.” But he exonerates Forrest on the charge of ordering wholesale or premeditated massacre: “had Bedford Forrest wanted to annihilate the garrison, he could have easily done so and would certainly have supervised the operation personally.”38

In Nathan Bedford Forrest: A Biography (1993), Jack Hurst cites pro and con as to Forrest’s culpability. He quotes a letter from Sgt. Achilles Clark of the 20th Tennessee Cavalry to his sisters, dated April 14, in which Clark claimed the general “ordered them shot down like dogs.” In truth, the sergeant had written, “I with several others tried to stop the butchery and at one time had partially succeeded. But Gen. Forrest ordered them shot down like dogs—and the carnage continued. Finally our men became sick of blood and the firing ceased.” Yet Hurst also quotes Confederate Samuel H. Caldwell, who wrote his wife that the enemy “refused to surrender—which incensed our men & if General Forrest had not run between our men and the Yanks with his pistol and sabre drawn not a man would have been spared.”39 Davison and Foxx are

unequivocal. “There is no evidence that anything vaguely resembling a massacre of surrendering troops had ever been perpetrated upon Forrest’s orders,” they declare; “there is no record that he gave such orders or made any plans to exterminate these troops.”40

Fort Pillow just won’t go away; I count six books on the battle in the last generation: Gregory J. Macaluso, The Fort Pillow Massacre: The Reason Why (1989); Richard L. Fuchs, An Unerring Fire: The Massacre at Fort Pillow (1994); John Gauss, Black Flag! Black Flag! (2003); John Cimprich, Fort Pillow (2005); Andrew Ward, River Run Red (2005); and Brian Steel Wills, The River Was Dyed with Blood (2014). There are even novels: Perry Lentz, The Falling Hills (1967), James Sherburne, The Way to Fort Pillow (1972) and Fort Pillow (2006) by the redoubtable Harry Turtledove.

Among the tons of articles on the subject, my favorite is still Albert Castel’s in Civil War History (March 1958). In it he quotes Dudley Cornish’s The Sable Arm (1956), in which the historian declares, “It has been asserted again and again that Forrest did not order a massacre.”

Given the enemy garrison he faced—half Tennesseans-turnedtraitor, the other half ex-slaves fighting their former masters— Cornish dismisses the whole thing by concluding, “he did not need to.”41

Notes

1. J. Cutler Andrews, The South Reports the Civil War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 40.

2. Thomas Harrison Baker, The Memphis Commercial Appeal: The History of a Southern Newspaper (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971), 95.

3. Thomas H. Baker, “Refugee Newspaper: The Memphis Daily Appeal, 1862-1865,” Journal of Southern History, vol. 29, no. 3

(August 1963), 326.

4. Rod Sowalter, “News on the Run: J. R. McClanahan and “The Moving Appeal,” America’s Civil War, vol. 32, no. 1 (March 2019), 16-17; B. Kimball Baker, “The Memphis Appeal,” Civil War Times Illustrated, vol. 18, no. 4 (July 1979), 32-35.

5. Stephen Davis, “Atlanta’s Wartime Newspapers,” Civil War News, vol. 48, no. 4 (April 2022), 6.

6. B. G. Ellis, The Moving Appeal: Mr. McClanahan, Mrs. Dill, and the Civil War’s Great Newspaper Run (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2003), 249.

7. R. A. Halley, “A Rebel Newspaper’s War Story: Being a Narrative of the War History of the Memphis Appeal,” Tennessee Old and New, 2 vols. (Nashville: Tennessee Historical Society, 1947), vol. 1, 248, 263.

8. Stephen Davis, What the Yankees Did to Us: Sherman’s Bombardment and Wrecking of Atlanta (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2012), 72n.

9. John Allan Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest (Dayton OH: Press of Morningside Bookshop, 1975 [1899]), 326.

10. Eddy W. Davison and Daniel Foxx, Nathan Bedford Forrest: In Search of an Enigma (Gretna LA: Pelican Publishing Company, 2007), 219.

11. Andrew Nelson Lytle, Bedford Forrest and His Critter Company (Seminole FL: Green Key Press, 1984 [1931]). 273-76.

12. Robert Selph Henry, “First With the Most” Forrest (Jackson TN: McCowat Mercer Press 1969 [1944]), 249; Eric William Sheppard, Bedford Forrest: The Confederacy’s Greatest Cavalryman (Dayton OH: Morningside, 1988 [1930]), 165.

13. Henry, Forrest, 250-51.

14. Brian Steel Wills, A Battle from the Start: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 181-83.

15. Davison and Foxx, Forrest, 232.

16. Wills, Forrest, 183-85.

17. Henry, Forrest, 256; Albert Castel, “The Fort Pillow Massacre: A Fresh Examination of the Evidence” in Castel, Winning and Losing in the Civil War: Essays and Stories (Columbia: University of South

Carolina Press, 1996), 44.

18. John Cimprich, Fort Pillow: A Civil War Massacre and Public Memory (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005), 86-87.

19. Brayman to Stanton, April 28, 1864, OR, vol. 32, pt.1, 518-21, 525.

20. Brian Steel Wills, The River Was Dyed with Blood: Nathan Bedford Forrest & Fort Pillow (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014), 165.

21. Cimprich, Fort Pillow, 96.

22. “The Murder of Negro Troops,” Memphis/Atlanta Appeal, July 1864, in Frank Moore, ed., Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events, 11 vols. (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1861-63; D. Van Nostrand, 1864-68), vol. 11, 525-26.

23. Eliza Frances Andrews, The WarTime Journal of a Georgia Girl 1864-1865 (Macon: Ardivan Press, 1960 [1908]), 30-31.

24. Cimprich, Fort Pillow, 97-99.

25. Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War at the Second session, Thirty-eighth Congress (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1865), 1-6.

26. Charles W. Anderson, “The True Story of Fort Pillow,” Confederate Veteran, vol. 3, no. 11 (November 1895), 322-26; James Dinkins, “The Capture of Fort Pillow,” Confederate Veteran vol. 33, no. 12 (December 1925), 462.

27. “Capture of Fort Pillow— Vindication of General Chalmers by a Federal Officer,” Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. 7 (1879), 439-41.

28. William Witherspoon, Tishomingo Creek or Bryce’s Cross Roads (Jackson TN: published by author, 1906), excerpt in Robert Selph

Henry, As They Saw Forrest: Some Recollections and Comments of Contemporaries (Jackson TN: McCowat-Mercer Press, 1956), 125-26.

29. Anderson, “Fort Pillow,” 326.

30. Thomas Jordan and J. P. Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. N. B. Forrest, and of Forrest’s Cavalry (Dayton OH: Press of Morningside Bookshop 1977 [1868]), 453.

31. Wyeth, Forrest, 383.

32. J. Harvey Mathes, General Forrest (New York: D. Appleton, 1902), 224.

33. H. J. Eckenrode, Life of Nathan B. Forrest (Richmond: B. F. Johnson, 1918), 98.

34. Eric William Sheppard, Bedford Forrest: The Confederacy’s Greatest Cavalryman (Dayton OH: Morningside, 1988 [1930]), 172.

35. Louis D. Rubin, Jr., The Wary Fugitives: Four Poets and the South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State

University Press, 1978), 136.

36. Andrew Lytle, Bedford Forrest and His Critter Company (Seminole FL: Green Key Press, 1984 [1931]), 276-277.

37. Henry, Forrest, 256.

38. Wills, Forrest, 196.

39. Jack Hurst, Nathan Bedford Forrest (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 176; Dan E. Pomeroy, ed., “A Letter of Account: Sergeant Clark Tells of the Fort Pillow Massacre,” Civil War Times Illustrated, vol. 24, no. 4 (June 1985), 24-25.

40. Davison and Foxx, Forrest, 243.

41. Dudley Taylor Cornish, The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1861-1865 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1966 [1956]), 175.

Stephen Davis’ next book, on how the National Intelligencer covered the Atlanta Campaign, will be published by Savas Beatie later this year.

News and Notes

Sarah Kay Bierle recently spent a day exploring Warrenton, Va. Check her Instagram @

sarahkaybierle for some of the shared photos and local history notes!

In the Savas Beattie January Newsletter, Sheritta Bitikofer was named associate editor alongside Gordy Morgan on M. Chris Bryan’s upcoming project with Savas Beattie

for The Chancellorsville Papers, Volume 3(ish), a compilation of transcribed letters and recollections about the campaign. Think The Bachelder Papers, but for Chancellorsville. Also check out her latest article on the battle at Natural Bridge, Florida, the battle that “saved Tallahassee,”

From the Editor

Retreat!

Emerging Civil War historians gathered in Winchester, Va., over Presidents’ Day Weekend for our annual retreat. While not everyone could make it in person, those who did were able to explore battlefields, bookstores, and excellent restaurants. On Saturday, we had members from far and wide Zoom in to join those who attended in person for a daylong strategic planning session (our thanks to Shenandoah University’s McCormick Civil War Institute for hosting us at their Cool Springs Battlefield campus).

We’ll have more news to share from the retreat in the coming months. In the meantime, here’s a quick look at some of our fun:

Jonathan Noyalas, director of Shenandoah University’s McCormick Civil War Institute (and a good Buffalo Bills fan!), graciously offered a tour of the Cool Springs battlefield. In the background stands “The Retreat,” a home once owned by Judge Richard Parker—the judge who presided over John

in the most recent publication of American Civil War Magazine

On a more personal note, Sheritta has been working hard to get as much of her degree program out of the way before this summer because she’ll have her hands full with a new member of the Bitikofer household. With an estimated due date of July 3, she and her husband are excited to welcome this little one into the world. With some luck, the baby won’t be late to the party like J.E.B Stuart, and they can brag that their first child was born during the 160th anniversary of Gettysburg/Vicksburg.

Neil Chatelain has had quite the busy February, including presentations for the Inland Empire Civil War Round Table, the Civil War Round Table of Central Louisiana, and the Louisiana Historical Association. Besides that, he published the article “Ship Island, Mississippi: Versatile Key to the Gulf” in the Winter 2023 issue of Civil War Navy Magazine. Finally, he was presented the 2023 Lone Star College Faculty Writing Award for his paper “Postwar Identity Crisis of the Confederate Navy’s Officer Corps” published in the October 2022 issue of US Military History Review.

Bert Dunkerly will be speaking to the Loudon County, VA, Civil War Round Table in mid-March. He is also excited to be going to explore French & Indian War sites next month, his first true love. He’s working on a book project on that.

Meg Groeling is getting into the last turn on her ECWS books on Walt Whitman. She has also been enjoying some cemetery walking. She and her husband, Robert, found a tombstone for a USCT soldier. “His family came to Hollister, CA,” she says, “and stuff has been done on the Griswald colony, but nothing has been done about the soldier himself. So thinking that might be the next project.”

Steward Henderson, Chris Mackowski, and Kris White offered presentations on Saturday, February 18 for the Chambersburg Civil War Seminar. They each spoke about different aspects of the Overland Campaign.

Brian Matthew Jordan published a review of David Prior’s recent collection on Reconstruction and empire in the latest number of the Journal of Southern History. He heads to Emory Upton’s hometown of Batavia, N.Y., to deliver a lecture on March 1 as part of Derek Maxfield’s Historical

Chris Mackowski

Horizon’s Lecture Series. Brian will talk about his book Marching Home:

Jon Tracey (right) with the lean-in to capture colleagues Dwight Hughes, Patrick Kelly-Fischer, and Sarah Kay Bierle at the stone wall in Kernstown.

Jon Tracey (right) with his patented lean-in catches the crew on a Cedar Creek tour. Our usual suspects are joined here by Phill Greenwalt (center), author of the ECW Series book Bloody Autumn: The 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign

Two of the COVID-delayed ECW Series titles now at the printer as part of the Savas Beatie catch-up.

Brown’s trial.

Tim Talbott, Patrick Kelly-Fischer, and Dwight Hughes tower over a diorama of the Cedar Creek landscape like Godzilla-sized historians.

Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War

Derek Maxfield presented to the Hershey, PA, CWRT on Feb. 16 via Zoom about his first book Hellmira: The Union’s Most Infamous Civil War Prison Camp—Elmira, NY (Savas Beatie, 2020). He is not-sopatiently awaiting the release of his new book, Man of Fire: William Tecumseh Sherman in the Civil War, which has gone to the printer and is expected to be available by mid-March 2023.

Chris Kolakowski has been named Chair of the Wisconsin America250 Commission. For details, see this link: https:// wisvetsmuseum.com/ america250/.

Chris Mackowski’s book The Battle of Jackson, Mississippi, received an excellent review from The Strategy Page, which is published in conjunction with the New York Military Affairs Symposium. Reviewer Julius Haukser summed up the book thus: “Most authors lift the ‘fog of war,’ the better to make their conclusions; Makowski keeps it in place, which actually results in a greater understanding of what the soldiers and civilians of the time knew and what they did not. I highly recommend this book and his website for any ACW reader.” You can read the review here: https://tinyurl.com/ mrx3a6ma.

Mackowski also appeared with co-editor Frank Scaturro for a book talk sponsored by the American Civil War Museum (ACWM). They spoke about their edited essay collection Grant at 2000. You can watch their talk at the ACWM’s YouTube page: https://youtu.be/ZT2iMG9zSTI.

Tim Talbott attended the Longwood University/ Appomattox Court House National Historical Park Seminar in Farmville, Va., and the American Civil War Symposium in Richmond. He has also been researching for a two-part post for the ECW blog on African American camp servants who became USCT soldiers.

Jon Tracey spoke about Camp Letterman and medical care after the battle of Gettysburg for the Wilmington, Del. CWRT in February. In March, he speaks at the Hampton Roads CWRT on the realities of Civil War medicine.

Kris White and Chris Mackowski will head off to Vicksburg, Miss., in early March to film the last episode in a series of virtual fields for K-12 students being produced by the American Battlefield Trust. Previous stops have taken them to Boston, Charleston, and New Orleans. Look for the team to record some

segments for a Trust video swing, too!

ECW Multimedia

On the Emerging Civil War Podcast in February:

ECW historians Chris Mackowski and Kris White talked about the Civil War history around Mobile, Ala.

We caught up with Joe Ewers of the 2nd South Carolina String Band. The boys have been enjoying retirement and yet enjoy more success than ever!

We highlighted a new exhibit by historian Nick Sacco at Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site that explores the history of slavery in St. Louis and situates Grant and his family in that larger story.

We visited with Steve Phan, chief of interpretation at Camp Nelson National Monument in Kentucky, about the road to freedom for former slaves who found their own “new birth of freedom” by enlisting in the U.S.C.T.

The Emerging Civil War Podcast is available through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever fine podcasts are available. You can also subscribe to our podcast through Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/ emergingcivilwar), where we are now also offering exclusive bonus content for subscribers. For as low as $1.99/month, you can help support ECW. Proceeds go toward defraying the production costs of the podcast.

In February for Patreon-only content, we featured a video tour of Charleston’s Liberty Square.

On the ECW YouTube page, we hit a number of sites around Mobile, Ala. Chris Mackowski introduced the trip. Kris White talked about the battle of Mobile Bay and Fort Morgan. Mike Bunn, site director at Historic Blakeley State Park, showed us around the battlefield and the new USCT Heritage Trail. Kris White visited Magnolia Cemetery.

We also commemorated the campaign for Forts Henry and Donelson with a visit to Fort Henry, a walk along Fort Donelson’s river batteries, and a

stop at the Dover Hotel. Plus, Chris Mackowski mailed out a slew of copies of his newest book, Grant at 200, and shared his adventures prepping and mailing the signed editions. Finally, we featured video versions of our podcast interviews with Chris/Kris, Joe Ewers, Nick Sacco, Kevin Levin, and Steve Phan.

The 2022-2023 Emerging Civil War Speakers Bureau

If you’re looking for a speaker for your Civil War Roundtable, look no further than the Emerging Civil War Speakers Bureau. Our brochure features all the ECW historians who are available for speaking engagements. You can read their bios and see their lists of talks, complete with descriptions.

And as a bonus in this updated edition, ECW co-founder Kris White is back on the circuit. His availability is limited, but if you’re interested, nab him while it’s hot!

You can find a copy of our speakers bureau online (and also available for download) at: https://emergingcivilwar.com/ wp-content/uploads/2023/02/ Speakers-Bureau-2022-2023.pdf.

The 2022-2023 ECW Speakers Bureau brochure features the Illinois Monument at Kennesaw Mountain’s “Dead

Historian Nick Sacco of Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site.

Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation

Piedmont Battlefield

2022 saw great progress in permanently protecting key portions of the twenty battlefields the Foundation is charged with protecting, caring for, and interpreting. One battlefield where nothing had yet been protected, the Piedmont Battlefield, where Union forces under General David Hunter scored one of the first Union victories in the Valley on June 5, 1864, is now headed toward being largely protected by the Foundation. Thankfully, the battlefield occupies pristine and beautiful farmland which had been kept in near 1864 condition by its owners for the last 150 years but, with residential

sprawl, industrial solar fields, warehouses, and data centers advancing, that condition could not be expected to long continue.

One 3-acre tract near the battle’s center was purchased last year and is now under easement held by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. A much larger adjacent tract, consisting of 146 acres of farmland occupying almost the entirety of the area where the forces collided, is in progress for a conservation easement. Several grants have been obtained to purchase the easement and efforts continue to raise all the funding needed. In the coming years the Foundation expects to provide interpretive access, meaning that for the first time visitors will be able to experience and appreciate the battle where it happened.

McDowell

The Foundation has completely updated and upgraded the visitor experience at the May 8, 1862, McDowell Battlefield in Highland County, Va., developing and installing new exhibits, interpretive markers, and signage. The project included a new exhibit room at the Highland County Museum, interpretive markers at sites throughout the battlefield, and trail and orientation signage at the Sitlington’s Hill trailhead.

The new exhibits were made possible by a generous donation from Col. Hugh Sproul, the Foundation’s outgoing Board Chairman, who made the donation in honor of his great grandfather, Archibald Alexander Sproul, who served in the 10th

Virginia Cavalry during the Civil War.

The Foundation created and installed 18 new interpretive markers on the McDowell Battlefield, including 15 on the Sitlington’s Hill battlefield trail and three at other sites, including “Hometown Foes” at a new location on US 250. The Foundation also installed new site and orientation kiosk at the Sitlington’s Hill trailhead, located off US 250 about a mile and a half east of the Village of McDowell. The site sign also functions as an entrance sign for the battlefield. An orientation sign provides visitors with an overview of the battle and Jackson’s Valley Campaign, information about the Sitlington’s Hill trail, and information about and directions to the Highland County Museum.

New Maine Monument at Third Winchester Battlefield

A monument to Maine soldiers was dedicated at the Third Winchester Battlefield Park on September 25, 2021. The dedication began with remarks from Foundation Chairman Emeritus Nick Picerno and included messages from Maine lawmakers. A keynote address was given by former Maine State Archivist David Cheever. The dedication included a presentation by historian Peter Dalton on Captain Ira Gardner, 14th Maine Infantry, and his experience during the Third Battle of Winchester.

The Maine Monument is the

fourth monument erected on the Third Winchester Battlefield since 2017. The monument’s location was chosen because of its close proximity to where the 1st Maine Light Artillery went into action and near where all Maine regiments in the XIX Corps passed through as the battle raged through the Middle Field on September 19, 1864.

A quote by John Mead Gould, who fought with the 29th Maine Infantry at Third Winchester, is inscribed on the back of the monument: “We are glad that we could suffer for our country’s good; we glory in our strength and in all that is creditable to a soldier, but war we hate; it shall never exist again if we can prevent it.”

The Foundation is also looking forward to the erection of another monument on the Third Winchester Battlefield in 2023, this one to soldiers from Ohio.

Jessie Rupert and the Woodworth Cottage Institute

By 1869, Jessie Hainning

Rupert had lived on two continents and four states. She had been orphaned and taken in, and then, when her benefactor died, turned out again. She had lived in both the North and the South, and been a citizen of Virginia under the flags of two different countries. She taught Sunday school to slave children with the man who

became famous as Stonewall Jackson, built a reputation as an up-and-coming educator, teaching at a female seminary in Lexington, Va., and then in New Market. She married into one of the most prominent families in the Middle Shenandoah Valley, only to find herself ostracized by her husband’s family because of her social and political beliefs. She was made a prisoner of war during the Civil War, only to be released by her old friend, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, then the Valley’s Confederate commander. She was the mother of three children and lost her husband to suicide after just five years of marriage. In 1869, with the help of the Freedman’s Bureau, funds raised by veterans of the Battle of New Market, and a town lot that she inherited from her husband’s estate, Jessie constructed her “Woodworth Cottage Institute,” a school on New Market’s main street for the education of poor white children and the children of recently freed slaves. The whites attended during the daytime hours, and the blacks through the evening, with classes being held on the structure’s first floor and Jessie and her children residing on the upper two floors. The historic building remains standing today and now, thanks to a significant investment by the Commonwealth of Virginia, the Foundation has purchased the site and structure. Plans are being developed to preserve the

lNew Maine Monument at Third Winchester Battlefield.

Roadside marker for trenches on Hupp’s Hill. Marker reads: Hupp's Hill was a strategically significant site occupied at different times by Union and Confederate forces during the Civil War. Union troops under Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan constructed extensive trenches here after defeating Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early's Army of the Valley in the Battle of Cedar Creek on 19 Oct. 1864. Led by Maj. Hazard Stevens, the 1st and 3rd Brigades of the 2nd Division, Union VI Corps, built infantry breastworks and several artillery positions. The troops remained here until mid-November, when they moved to the vicinity of Kernstown. They were sent to the lines south of Petersburg in December as the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864 came to an end.

site, restore the exterior, and rehabilitate the first floor as a visitor center and museum.

Hupp’s Hill Appeal

The Foundation is currently seeking donations toward preserving 35 acres at the heart of the Hupp’s Hill battlefield, just southwest of the Cedar Creek battlefield. The Battle of Hupp’s Hill occurred on October 13, 1864, just six days before the much larger Battle of Cedar Creek.

The action at Hupp’s Hill erupted when Confederate General Jubal Early and his staff rode to these heights to observe the Union Army encampments on hills and ridges above Cedar Creek. Early ordered his artillery to fire upon the Union forces, thus triggering two Union infantry brigades to attack the Southern position. One brigade retreated

but the other, under Col. George Wells, became engaged in fierce combat (resulting in Wells’ death) before being pushed back.

The action at Hupp’s Hill had a pivotal effect on the campaign in the Valley. Knowing that Early and the Confederates were at his front in strength, Sheridan recalled the VI Corps under Gen. Horatio Wright to his force. At Cedar Creek on October 19, 1864, the VI Corps’ stand proved critical to preventing a complete rout of the Federals, and helped turn an apparent war-changing Confederate victory into a crushing defeat that ensured permanent Union control of the Valley.

The Foundation is seeking $180,000 in donations toward preserving this tract and other important battlefields in the Valley. Contributions can be sent to the Foundation at P.O. Box 897, New Market, VA 22844.

Civil War News book reviews provide our readers with timely analysis of the latest and most significant Civil War research and scholarship. Contact email: BookReviews@CivilWarNews.com.

Detailed Work on Cedar Mountain

The Carnage Was Fearful: The Battle of Cedar Mountain. August 9, 1862. By Michael E. Block. Maps, photos, illustrations, appendices, order of battle,168 pp., 2022. Savas Beatie, www.savasbeatie.com. $14.95.

Reviewed by Mike Priest

The Interracial Fight for Emancipation

The Color of Abolition: How a Printer, A Prophet and a Contessa Moved a Nation

By Linda Hirshman. Notes, illustrated, Mariner Books,

https://www.harpercollins.com/ pages/marinerbooks, 2022, 314 pp.,

softcover, $28.00.

Reviewed by Wayne L. Wolf

William Lloyd Garrison strove to end slavery using nonresistance and moral suasion. It was not until the 1850s that he recognized political activism as a tool used by the newly founded Liberty Party, the Liberty League, the FreeSoil Party, and the Republican Party. By this time, it became evident that changing people’s minds about slavery needed to be translated into electoral success to accomplish full equality of men.

for future generations. Michael has thrown his heart into this worthy endeavor, and it shows. His thorough knowledge of the battle and the intricate maneuvering which preceded it shine through in this book.

He devotes the first four chapters describing the social, political, and military situation in Northern Virginia that contributed to the three-hour conflict on August 9, 1862. Hal Jasperson’s excellent maps succinctly illustrate the movements of Maj. Gen. John Pope’s Federal Army of Virginia through Culpeper to ferret out and engage Maj. Gen. Thomas J. Jackson’s Army of the Valley. Two Federal cavalry brigades under Brig. Gens. John Buford and George D. Bayard intercepted Jackson’s slow-moving column and initiated several skirmishes.

As a boy, my grandmother often told me, “Good things come in small packages.” This most aptly describes this thoroughly researched book about, until recently, a long-forgotten battle.

The Battle of Cedar Mountain, being overshadowed by Second Manassas and the Maryland Campaign, has remained a footnote in the pages of Civil War history. For the veterans who fought and left friends and family dead upon the field, it lingered in their memories. All wars involve seemingly insignificant actions like Ball’s Bluff, Chantilly, and Cedar Mountain, that have not received the attention they deserved. The men who fought them did not consider them insignificant. Neither should we.

Michael Block has spent some two decades studying the rich history of Culpeper County, Va. As the vice president of the Friends of the Cedar Mountain Battlefield, he has actively worked to preserve this ground

On August 9, the Federals advanced southwest on both sides of the Culpeper Road. They engaged Confederate infantry and artillery head on and initially achieved some success, including attacking a battery from behind. Then Confederate reinforcements arrived, broke the Union center, and “crossed the T” on the far right of the Federal line. As darkness overtook the field, the Confederates chased the Federals toward Culpeper. The nasty fight cost the Union 2,382 casualties and the Confederates 1,276.

As part of Emerging Civil War Series, this book also includes a self-guided tour of the battlefield and surrounding areas and pays meticulous attention to sites on private property. This small but extremely detailed work should be read slowly and repeatedly with pen in hand to note the fine details the reader will glean with each sitting. I keep finding new details every time I go through it. It is a gift that keeps on giving.

Linda Hirshman focuses her treatise on the history of the abolition movement around three of its most prominent exponents: the printer (William Lloyd Garrison), the prophet (Frederick Douglass, originally Frederick Bailey) and the Contessa (Maria Weston Chapman). From the 1830s, William Garrison, the quarrelsome, moralistic, selfrighteous, vivid, and imaginative newspaper editor of The Liberator pursued his vision for total abolition. Garrison was undeterred by financial pressures, a short jail sentence and fine, a divided anti-slavery movement, and his own weak constitution.

Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave from a Maryland plantation, eloquent, focused, and uncompromising, toured the country and Europe spreading his messages on the evils of slavery, the brutal repression of the Negro as property, and the humanity of every man. To promote their quest for abolition Maria Weston Chapman, married to an ardent abolitionist, was behind the scenes organizing their travel itineraries, raising funds through fairs, and promoting the Boston Anti-slavery philosophy. These three stalwarts formed an alliance that lasted a decade before it dissolved in doctrinal disagreements and procedural avenues of achieving freedom and equality for all.

From the first issue of the Liberator on January 1, 1831, to its last on December 29, 1865,

Frederick Douglas, after initially aligning himself with Garrison, eventually rebelled against Garrison’s vision and methodology. He also broke with the Boston Anti-slavery cabal, published his own newspaper, The North Star, and with the help of Maria Weston Chapman, and later Julia Griffiths, set his own agenda, freeing himself by being managed by white supporters. He gained such a national prominence that he was invited to the White House by President Lincoln, related his demands for full equality to the Chief Executive, and instilled in Lincoln his vision for true humanity for the Negro and all men and women.

Hirshman does a commendable job of weaving the personal attributes and ambitions of all three prominent abolitionists

into an explanation of how the abolitionist movement evolved in the three decades before the Thirteenth Amendment. Likewise, she sheds new light on the role Maria Chapman played in controlling both William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, and how their split had its seeds in her correspondence and vision for the movement. At times the author’s judgmental analysis appears excessive, e.g., calling Gen. McClellan “cowardly,” and throwing around the label racist to characterize organizations and people. Yet, for an historical review of the different ideologies and rivalries inherent in the abolition movement, this book could be a valuable resource. The primary source material, voluminous as it is, is welcome to any historian. The illustrations are of inferior quality and, while relevant are hard to see, read, and analyze. This book would be a valuable asset for any student of the abolition movement.

Dr. Wayne L. Wolf is Professor Emeritus at South Suburban College and Past President of the Lincoln-Davis Civil War Roundtable. He is the author or editor of numerous Civil War books and articles and a frequent contributor to Civil War News.

Mike Priest is author of Antietam: The Soldiers’ Battle (1989) and Before Antietam: The Battle of South Mountain (1992).

The Extraordinary Escapades of a Union Pow in Texas

William Francis Oscar Federhen. Thirteen Months in Dixie, or, the Adventures of a Federal Prisoner in Texas. Edited by Jeaninne Surette Honstein and Steven A. Knowlton. Bibliography, index, maps, photographs, 170 pp., 2022, Savas Beatie, https://www. savasbeatie.com, hardcover, $29.95.

Reviewed by Jonathan W. White

Freedom’s Trailblazers

W. F. Oscar Federhen enlisted in the 13th Independent Battery, Massachusetts Light Artillery, on March 25, 1864; he never saw combat. Soon after arriving in Louisiana, on May 3, Federhen was captured. The Confederates stripped him of his money, possessions, gun, and most of his clothes. With little left to his name, he was sent to Camp Ford, a stockade prison in Tyler, Texas. There, he suffered indignities, starvation, and disease, including a fiery sunburn he called Satan’s itch. Federhen’s descriptions of prison life are detailed and compelling. Prisoners punished thieves among them by burying the culprits in mud up to their necks. To pass the time, inmates made playing cards from tree bark, and skinned cats to make banjos by using the skin for the banjo’s head and “some part of the cat’s innards” for strings. Federhen suffered permanent physical damage in prison as burns and scurvy left scars on his feet.

After several unsuccessful attempts, Federhen escaped. He walked through Texas for many, miles, hiding in woods, thickets, and swamps, and seeking help from local civilians. These chapters offer readers an intimate

picture of life in Confederate Texas, the squalor, poverty, and fear that Confederate civilians lived in, their decrepit cabins, beds of straw, shrinking quantities of food, and fear of Home Guards who might execute them for harboring a Yankee or for expressing Union sympathies. Throughout the course of his narrative, Federhen was recaptured and escaped several times. In one instance he escaped from captivity with one of William Clarke Quantrill’s men. Federhen and the Confederate guerrilla broke free by walloping their guard over the head with a piece of wood. They then made their way to Quantrill’s camp, where Federhen had a long conversation with “Bloody Bill” Anderson. This detailed account which has not been utilized by Anderson biographers, conflicts with some known facts about Anderson. The next few chapters describe guerrilla raids in brutal, graphic detail. Federhen saw and participated in robbery, murder, fistfights, and plunder. In one particularly horrifying scene, he witnessed the literal butchering of a black man. In another, he witnessed guerrillas ripping out an elderly man’s fingernails when the old man would not reveal the hiding place of his gold and silver. Federhen wrote, “I stood over the bed looking at this barbarous action but could say nothing to prevent it lest they should turn on me.”

After more captures and escapes, Federhen finally made it home to Boston in July 1865. His mother was elated to see him, for

she had thought him long dead. Federhen’s memoirs will be of great interest to scholars of the Texas home front, guerrilla warfare in Arkansas, and prison life in the Confederacy. He was a talented writer, much more so than many of his postwar contemporaries. As with all memoirs written long after the war, Federhen’s recollections are not entirely reliable even though he claimed to be writing “undisputable facts.” Nevertheless, this is an extraordinary primary source that offers valuable insights into some of darker aspects of the Civil War. The editors of this volume conclude, “Readers will have to judge for themselves the reliability of Federhen’s account; we have faith few will deny that it is a gripping tale and one you won’t soon forget.” They are correct in this assessment; Federhen offers an unforgettable Civil War narrative.

Jonathan W. White is professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University and the author or editor of 13 books, including A House Built By Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House (2022). In 2023 he will publish Final Resting Places: Reflections on the Meaning of Civil War Graves with Brian Matthew Jordan, as well as a biography of convicted slave trader Appleton Oaksmith. Check out his website at www. jonathanwhite.org.

GEORGIA’S CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS

This unique work contains a complete photographic record of Georgia’s memorials to the Confederacy, a full transcription of the words engraved upon them, and carefully-researched information about the monuments and the organizations which built them. These works of art and their eloquent inscriptions express a nation’s profound grief, praise the soldiers’ bravery and patriotism, and pay homage to the cause for which they fought.

When Emancipation Came: The End of Enslavement on a Southern Plantation and a Russian Estate. By Sally Stocksdale. Illustrated, Notes, Index, Bibliography, McFarland and Company, https:// mcfarlandbooks.com, 2022, 244 pp., softcover. $55.00.

Reviewed by Wayne L. Wolf

the attitude of the elite towards the previously enslaved. Both groups struggled for land of their own, autonomy for their choices, and self-determination.

During this struggle, what predominated was confusion by competing narratives of what freedom meant, rumors as to what newly freed people were entitled to, and the elites trying to instill the notion the labor was the heart of and key to freedom. Free people were being told that they should grow into their freedom and their labor was the vehicle for that transition. Yet, free people in both Russia and Mississippi ultimately desired to act in their own self-interest while moving to work within the constraints imposed by the institutional and traditional constraints they found themselves in.

Sally Stocksdale crafts a unique picture of two plantations (demesnes) Palmyra Plantation in Mississippi and Yazykovo Selo in Russia to compare the meaning and effects of freedom on slaves and serfs. She explores the origins, structure, requirements, and reception on those who endured the lengthy process towards true freedom endured.

For Russian serfs “freedom” came in February 1861 with the stroke of a pen by Tsar Alexander II. For slaves held on Palmyra Plantation their freedom came on January 1, 1863 when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. From this point on freedmen in both locales played a role in determining and defining themselves and their new roles.

Authorities in both countries prioritized their chief aim as social control while maintaining the economic integrity of the land and its productivity. The main difference between the two settings was evidenced in how Russian serfs would gain total freedom in stages after buying land from the nobility and agreeing to contract terms of service to their former masters. In Mississippi, no provisions were made for gradual freedom. It was immediate and unstructured, yet formalized by Union officials and the Freedman’s Bureau so labor was assured and land productivity encouraged. Emancipation in both locales did not solve problems of the demand for cheap labor nor did it modify

This book paints a fascinating picture of two groups of formerly enslaved people fighting for true total freedom where they could own land, travel, decide where they would labor and under what conditions, and elect those who would govern them. Both landowners, Gen. John Quitman and Vasili Yazynov, represent the archetypical owner of slaves; both are faced with the dilemma of accepting freedom, yet maintaining their economic status in society. It is a wellresearched, historically accurate, interdisciplinary study which addresses the social, cultural, economic, geographic, and political aspects that impacted the newly acquired freedom in two societies not as different as previously supposed.

This book is recommended as a new conceptualization of what happens throughout the emancipation process, a process that does not happen with the stroke of a pen but may take decades to be fully realized.

Dr. Wayne L. Wolf is Professor Emeritus at South Suburban College, past president of the Lincoln-Davis Civil War Roundtable, and the author of numerous books and articles on the Civil War including Heroes and Rogues of the Civil War (4 Volumes) and The Last Confederate Scout. He is a frequent Roundtable speaker, book reviewer, and manuscript editor.

An Exhaustive History, An Instant Classic

Civil War Field Artillery: Promise and Performance on the Battlefield. By Earl J. Hess. Photos, notes, index, 440 pp., 2022. Louisiana State University Press, www.lsupress. org. Hardbound. $50.

Reviewed by Jonathan A. Noyalas

shells fired, types of fuzes, and discusses every piece of hardware employed in an artillery battery. The author includes seventeen tables with information vital for any historian who writes about battles, leads battlefield tours, or has the awesome responsibility of developing interpretation at battlefields. Tables include such useful information about each type of cannon, ranges, specifications of artillery shells, and statistics about field artillery in combat.

Arguably no Civil War historian has been more prolific during the past few decades than Earl J. Hess. Known for the depth of his research, detailed analytical skills, and impeccable writing, Hess has produced some of the most important scholarship in the field and transformed the way historians think about personalities, campaigns, and technology. Hess’s latest volume, the first in-depth and scholarly examination of field artillery during the conflict, is no exception.

The objectives of Hess’s volume are, as the author freely admits in the introduction, “to fill in much of the historiographical omission” about field artillery and to analyze “its effectiveness in the field.” To meet the study’s goals, Hess mined an exhaustive number of unit histories, battle reports, memoirs, reminiscences, and archival collections.

After providing a concise overview of the history and evolution of field artillery in the four centuries prior to the Civil War’s outbreak in the book’s first two chapters, Hess spends a considerable portion of this handsomely crafted history addressing various technical aspects of field artillery. Hess covers every conceivable topic including examinations of every type of cannon, the array of

Additionally, Hess offers a thorough exploration of how field artillery units were structured, organized, managed, and trained. Hess masterfully explores all the skills artillerists had to proficiently learn, including cross training on every role, and procedures batteries employed to be prepared for battle and maintain combat readiness. Hess’s analysis of the various techniques units employed is fascinating. While target practice with live rounds proved one of the most valuable means of training, as it was the best way artillerists could improve their adeptness in estimating distance to target, the author illustrates that the desire for a battery to be prepared for battle was always weighed against the cost of an artillery round and ammunition supply. Hess also explores the use of sham battles as a beneficial training tool. Although “comparatively rare,” Hess demonstrates how artillerists believed them beneficial and “stimulating.”

The author’s exploration of training also includes the 261,672 horses who proved critical to any field artillery unit’s success. While Hess recounts the various qualities batteries sought in horses (including being between five to seven years old and weighing between 1,100 and 1,200 pounds), drilling methods, and diet, the author explores the bonds that artillerists formed with their horses. Drawing on the perspectives of artillerists such as Lewis Sykes and Frederick Wild, Hess demonstrates how in “the process of training and serving together, man and beast often developed bonds of affection.”

While the depth of Hess’s exploration into the myriad technical aspects of field artillery makes this volume indispensable, the author’s deep analysis of the

effectiveness of types of artillery magnifies this book’s worth. In an effort to challenge a long-standing convention that rifled cannon outperformed smoothbore guns, Hess analyzed hundreds of reports which revealed that the average maximum distance cannon fired in battle was 1,122 yards, well within the range of both types of guns. While technically accurate at a greater distance, the fact that batteries which employed rifled cannon in battle customarily did not fire at targets greater than 1,122 yards “fails to support,” in Hess’s estimation, previous assumptions “that rifles were hugely successful or were used in dramatically different fashion than smoothbores under battlefield conditions.”

Another convention Hess convincingly challenges is that artillery dominated the battlefield during the conflict. Critical analysis of primary materials reveals that while the “long arm was important as support for infantry and cavalry,” artillery “did not dominate the battlefield consistently or clearly.” While there are certainly exceptions to this and Hess is careful to point out that the psychological impact the presence and sound of artillery had on troops, the author argues compellingly that various factors including ability of gun crews, quality of ammunition, and the natural environment oftentimes limited field artillery’s overall usefulness in battle. Accounts from figures such as Confederate generals Daniel Harvey Hill and William Hardee bolster Hess’s assertion.

Once again Earl Hess has produced a masterpiece of scholarship that is engagingly written, exhaustively researched, and accessible. Hess’s study immediately becomes the single most important volume for anyone to consult when desiring an understanding of any conceivable facet of Civil War field artillery.

Jonathan A. Noyalas is director of Shenandoah University’s McCormick Civil War Institute in Winchester, Virginia, a professor in Civil War Era Studies at Shenandoah University, and founding editor of Journal of the Shenandoah Valley During the Civil War Era. He is the author or editor of fifteen books including most recently Slavery and Freedom in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War Era, published by the University Press of Florida.

Whatif’s and what could have been?

Decisions of the Maryland Campaign: The Fourteen Critical Decisions That Define the Operation. By Michael S. Lang. Appendices, Photos, Illustrations, Maps, Notes, Bibliography, Index. University of Tennessee Press, www.utpress. org, 2022, 322 pp., softcover.

$29.95

Reviewed by Joseph Truglio

spent on actual battle information, but rather on its reasoning and results. If the reader is interested in combat results I suggest you peruse the authors companion volume in this series, The Battle of Antietam

Mr. Lang does a very creditable job in presenting the mindset of the principals as to why they made decisions. He even includes an alternative scenario/decision following the results of the actual decision. This is done with a minimum amount of speculation. I found this to be a fair and balanced presentation. Although I am not an admirer of McClellan’s ability as a field commander, I think the author does justice to his decisions during the campaign. Perhaps the best and most valuable section of the book is the driving tour of the decisions. This gives the reader the ability to follow in the footsteps of the participants and gain a clearer understanding of the decisions made. I plan to do this on my next visit.

As with many books of this type, the scenario deals with the premise of “what if.” However, this volume seems to present the scenario of ‘what was’ and, perhaps, ‘what could have been.’ The author indicates, early on, that this presentation is for students who are familiar with the events and not the novice.

The text on the campaign is relatively short. It consists of three chapters and a conclusion, comprising 140 pages of the book’s 322 pages. Little time is

Overall, I recommend this book to all students of the Maryland Campaign. I also suggest you read his companion volume on the Battle of Antietam in order to obtain a fuller perspective of events. I plan on doing just that!

Joseph Truglio, of Manchester, N.J., is a retired Motion Picture Technician who has a lifelong interest in the Civil War. He is past President of the Phil Kearny CWRT in N.J.

Civil War Artillery Book

392 page, full-color book, Civil War Artillery Projectiles – The Half Shell Book. For more information and how to order visit the website www. ArtillerymanMagazine.com or call 800-777-1862.

$89.95 + $10 media mail for the standard edition.

Engineering in the Confederate Heartland. Larry J. Daniel. Photos, illustrations, index, bibliography, appendices, 204 pp., 2022. Louisiana State University Press. https://lsupress. org, ISBN 978-0-8071-7785-3. Hardbound. $45.00.

Reviewed by John D. Fowler

Rebel Engineering

One of the most important aspects often overlooked is engineering, the subject of Larry J. Daniel’s Engineering in the Confederate Heartland. Daniel, a noted and prolific Civil War historian, is well known for his studies Western Theater studies. This volume seeks to place the experiences and contributions of Confederate engineers into proper perspective.

Daniel places his examination primarily within what historian Thomas L. Connelly called the Confederate Heartland, which included Tennessee, north-central Alabama, north-central Georgia, and northeast Mississippi. Daniel expands this area a bit to include parts of Louisiana and Vicksburg where engineering proved critical to the republic’s war effort. He argues rightly that engineers played a key role in the campaigns stretching across this vast expanse and details their exploits in both chronological and thematic chapters.

Military history has always been an all-inclusive subject covering far more than just the bugles and bullets of a military engagement. Leadership, morale, medicine, logistics, and a host of other aspects of war are equally important in determining the outcome of battles, campaigns, and wars.

For example, he points out the important contribution of Confederate engineers to defending the Cumberland, Tennessee, and Mississippi Rivers early in the war. He goes on to discuss the critical efforts of engineers out in the field on campaign, especially in relation to building bridges and pontoons.

Daniel’s work will offer students of the war a chance to learn about

key figures in engineering who are often overlooked. Names such as Andrew “Asa” Gray, Minor Meriwether, Bushrod Johnson, Jeremy Gilmer, David B. Harris, Lemuel P. Grant, Martin L. Smith, and Samuel L. Lockett are primarily known only to those who read widely in the history of the period. The author delves deeper to examine the reorganization of the Confederate engineering corps in 1863 and offers readers an interesting analysis of Southern efforts to produce accurate maps. Indeed, Andrew Jackson Riddle’s photographic reproduction of maps is a captivating story of ingenuity and necessity. Daniel also includes a glossary of engineering terms, extensive notes, and a bibliography, as well as two appendices listing all the Rebel engineers he could locate and the civilian occupations of some of those who served in the Confederate engineering regiment assigned to the Western Theater. Scholars who wish to continue exploring the subject will find Daniel’s work here valuable in their endeavors.

Considering the herculean efforts of Southern engineers to devise the near impregnable defenses of Vicksburg and Atlanta, the skill of the pontoniers that allowed Hood’s misguided campaign even to function, and the countless unassailable field

Civil War & Military Show

works constructed throughout the struggle for the Heartland, one can’t help but be awed by their accomplishments. Daniel goes beyond demonstrating their achievements, however, to challenge the notion that these engineers were not skilled professionals and were often incompetent. Contrary to these claims, he finds them to be critical to the Confederate war effort.

Engineering in the Confederate Heartland is not a dynamic page turner the casual Civil War afficionado will want to read. There are no dramatic charges or gut-wrenching tales of sacrifice and valor. Instead, the volume offers students of the war a deeper understanding of a small but important group of engineers and sappers who played a vital role in allowing the Confederate army to wage a war against a numerically and logistically superior foe. More information is available on Union engineering efforts. For example, see Thomas F. Army, Engineering

Victory: How Technology Won the Civil War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016). Daniel’s work joins James L. Nichols’s Confederate Engineers (Tuscaloosa, Alabama: Confederate Publishing Company, 1957) as the major studies of the Rebel side. Nichols’s work is small at 122 pages, but when studied in conjunction with Daniel’s monograph, one would come away with a solid grasp of the subject. Daniel has written an important work for those interested in a deeper understanding of Southern efforts to defend the Heartland, and it adds to his reputation as one of the foremost scholars of the field.

John D. Fowler, Ph.D., is the author of several books and articles on the Civil War Era. He is the author of Breaking the Heartland: The Civil War in Georgia. He is currently a Professor of History at Dalton State College.

Current Event Listings

To

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March 24-25. Mississippi. Militaria Show and Sale

Sponsored by Col. W. P. Rogers Camp SCV #321, The 14th Annual Corinth Militaria Show will be held at 2800 South Harper Rd. in Corinth. Vendors will have all kinds of military items including those from the Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWI and WWII. Show hours are 2-7 p.m. on Friday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday. Admission is $5 and children under 12 are free. For information; Contact Buddy Ellis – 662-665-1419 – bellis1960@ comcast.net or Dwight Johnson – 662-284-6125 – dgene@gmail.com.

March 30-April 2, Louisiana. Reenactment and Festival

Plan to attend the 159th Anniversary of the Battle of Pleasant Hill Reenactment and Festival located 3 miles north of Pleasant Hill at 23271 Hwy. 175 in Pelican. The original Battle was fought on Apr. 9, 1864, during the Red River campaign of the Civil War. Friday is school day from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. On Sat. there will be a parade at 10 a.m. and a program at 11 a.m. at Mansfield State Historic Site. There will be guest speakers, opening ceremonies and then a battle reenactment at 2 p.m. The ball is at 7 p.m. (period dress suggested). 7 p.m. luminary memorial ceremony. Sunday begins with 10 a.m. church services followed by guest speaker. At 1 p.m. is the Crowning Ceremony of Miss Battle of Pleasant Hill followed by the opening ceremony and finally the 2 p.m. battle. For information; www.battleofpleasanthill.com.

April 13-16, Georgia. The Georgia Battlefields Association Annual 2023 Tour

Thursday Morning Walking tour of Savannah’s Revolutionary War Sites.

Thursday Afternoon-Walking Tour of Bonaventure Cemetery. Thursday evening reception with heavy hors d’oeuvres with a presentation by Dr. Mary-Elizabeth Ellard on Civil War Veterinary Practices.

Friday & Saturday–Tours of Fort Pulaski, Old Fort Jackson, Wormsloe State Historic Site, King’s Bridge, Fort McAllister, Ebenezer Creek, and remnants of the 1864 landward defenses.

Sunday Morning–Walking tour of The City of Savannah’s Squares.

Price: $580 per person which includes all tours (Thursday-Sunday morning), breakfast is included in the hotel price, Thursday night reception, three lunches, two dinners (Friday & Saturday) and bus rental. $460 per person for Thursday night reception and tours & meals Friday to Sunday morning.

Host hotel: Hampton Inn & Suites-Historic District at 603 W. Oglethorpe Ave. Savannah, GA 31401 912-721-1600. Ask for The GBA Rate of $179 per night for Wed. & Thur. nights & $259 per night for Fri. & Sat. nights. If you reserve all four nights, it’s $219 per night plus a 16% tax which adds $34.47 per night for a daily total of $253.47 per night. Breakfast is included in the hotel price. Hotel parking is $30 per night.

Our guide is Jim Ogden, Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park Historian.

We welcome Non-GBA Members to join us on our Tour however you can join GBA for just $25. Registration: Mail a check payable to Georgia Battlefields Assn. (GBA) to PO Box 669953, Marietta, GA 30066. You can also use Paypal or Credit Card to register online at our GBA Website Tours Page http:/ georgiabattlefields.org/tours.aspx. If you have trouble registering, please contact our Treasurer: William W. Gurry at email:billgurry@bellsouth.net.

April 15, Virginia. Seminar

Shenandoah University’s McCormick Civil War Institute’s annual spring conference on the campus of Shenandoah University, Winchester, Virginia, “So Tired & Exhausted”: In Battle’s Aftermath. Presentations with Jonathan S. Jones (Virginia Military Institute), Brian Matthew Jordan (Sam Houston State University), Jonathan A. Noyalas (Shenandoah University), and Melissa A. Winn (HistoryNet). $30 registration fee covers all presentations and lunch at SU. Space is limited, visit ww w.su.edu/mcwi to register. For information; jnoyalas01@su.edu or phone 540-665-4501

April 23, Illinois. Civil War & Military Extravaganza

Zurko Promotions presents The National Civil War Collectors Fall Show and Sale which will be held at the DuPage County Fairgrounds, 2015 W. Manchester, Wheaton, Ill. Hours: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is $10, Early

Admission $25. Free parking. For more information visit www.chicagocivilwarshow.com or call Zurko Promotions at 715-526-9769.

April 28-29, Symposium

The Historical Society of Quincy and Adams County and the Tri-States Civil War Round Table are again co-sponsoring their Civil War Symposium on Friday-Saturday. The event is free and open to the public, but RESERVATIONS are required. Speakers include: Dr. Edna Greene Medford; Dr. Curt Fields; Dr. Samuel Wheeler; Dr., and Mrs. Tim Roberts; and Cody Engdahl. To obtain more information, please call 217-222-1835 or email susid@hsqac.org.

May 6-7, Ohio Civil War /WWI & II Show Historical Event

The Ohio Civil War & WWI/II Show will be held in Mansfield, OH, May 6th – 7th at the Richland County Fairgrounds. All federal, state, and local firearm ordinances and laws must be obeyed. Civil War and WWI & II Memorabilia from 1775 through 1945 for buy, sell, and trade. Featuring a unique artillery show with full scale cannons on display and daily cannon firing demonstrations. Added Special Features: Civil War & WWII Encampments, Sutlers Row, Civil War Period Music, Gettysburg Address by President Lincoln, WWII US 801st Med Air Evac Educational Presentation, Marlboro Volunteers Traveling Museum and WWII Military Vehicles. Hours are Saturday 9 a.m.5 p.m. and Sunday 9 a.m. - 3 p.m. Admission $7. Children under 12 Free. Parking is free. Camping on grounds is available – $35.00. For more Information; contact: 419-884-2194 or info@ohiocivilwarshow.com and visit our website: www.ohiocivilwarshow.com. Follow us on Facebook: Ohio Civil War Show.

May 18-21, Tennessee. American Battlefield Trust Annual 2023 Conference

The 2023 Annual Conference will be hosted at the Cool Springs Franklin Marriott located at 700 Cool Springs Blvd. Group rate is $169+/night. Call 800-228-9290 and ask for the ABT group rate. Conference begins with registration and exhibitor tables open on Thursday at 11 a.m. The day will be filled with tours for Color Bearers, history talks, a welcome reception from 6:30 – 8:15 p.m. and a photo extravaganza with Garry Adelman. Friday begins at 6:30 a.m. with a breakfast buffet, 8 a.m. tours depart, 6:45 p.m. cocktail reception for Color Bearers and a Color Bearer Author Dinner at 7:30 p.m. Saturday begins with a breakfast buffet at 6:30 a.m. and tours departing at 8 a.m. There will be a cocktail reception at 6:30 p.m. and the Banquet and Awards Ceremony with be held at 7:30 p.m. The Conference will conclude on Sunday morning with a closing breakfast with Q&A with President David Duncan between 8 and 9 a.m. For more information; events@battlefields.org or 800-298-7878 x7229.

May 19-21, Georgia. Reenactment and Living History

The Battle of Resaca Reenactment will be held on over 600 acres of the original battlefield in Resaca, Georgia. This reenactor-friendly event will have main camps located near the original US and CS lines. Campaigners are welcome to camp in or near the breastworks. Amenities include straw, hay, and firewood. Modern food and ice vendors on site. Weekend activities will include battles both days at 2 p.m. – rain or shine, combined US & CS morning colors, period demonstrations, cavalry competition, a civilian refugee camp, reenactor yard sale, sutlers, period music and dance, period church services, and a memorial service at the Confederate Cemetery. Many Civil War historical sites are located on the reenactment site and two major Civil War parks are within minutes of the site. Handicapped parking available with free transport from parking areas to battlefield, vendor and sutler areas. Reenactor pre-registration is $10 if received by April 15th. Artillery bounties of $150 for the first 18 cannons with crew pre-registered by April 15. A portion of the proceeds to be donated to preservation efforts of the Friends of Resaca Battlefield. For more information; www.georgiadivision.org.

May 19-21, Virginia. Period Firearms Competition

The North-South Skirmish Association 147th National Competition near Winchester. Over 3,000 uniformed competitors in 200 member units compete in live-fire matches with muskets, carbines, revolvers, mortars and cannon plus costume competitions and historical lectures. The largest Civil War live-fire event in the country. Free admission, large sutler area, and food service. For more information visit the N-SSA web site: www.n-ssa.org.

May 20-21, New York. Annual Artillery School

Old Fort Niagara in Youngstown, NY, will again take place. Open to all branches of service, both Federal and Confederate. Sponsored by the National Civil War Artillery Association and Reynolds’ Battery L. For questions contact: Rick Lake at: rlake413@aol.com or call: 585-208-1839. Registration Forms and additional information can be found at: www.reynoldsbattery.org.

May 20-21, Pennsylvania. 160th Anniversary of Battle of Monterey Pass

Living History Weekend at Monterey Pass Battlefield. Hosted by the 2nd Maryland Artillery CS. Monterey Pass was fought on July 4-5th when Union cavalry attacked Confederate wagon trains retreating from Gettysburg. The battle was fought in a driving rain storm. Approximately 1,500 prisoners were taken. Most of the Confederates prisoners were wounded. Artillery, Infantry and Medical demonstrations daily. Guided walking tours of the battlefield daily. Opportunity for picket line scenario in the evening. For more information visit https://montereypassbattlefield.org or contact John at Johnwelker117@gmail.com.

May 20, Virginia. Civil War Books, Relics and Memorabilia Show

Saturday, May 20, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. at the Arlington-Fairfax Elks Lodge, Rt. 50, Fairfax, Virginia. Admission $5 per person. Vendors welcome. For information contact dhakenson@verizon.net, 703-785-5294, or mayo5404@cox.net, 703-389-1505. Sponsored by Frank Stringfellow Camp, SCV, Fairfax, Virginia.

May 28, Pennsylvania. Original G.A.R. Decoration Day of Service

Memorial Day Observed at Laurel Hill Cemetery located at 1868 3822 Ridge Ave., Philadelphia at 12 p.m. All are welcome. Laurel Hill is the site of the first Memorial Day in Philadelphia in 1868. Special veterans’ markers will be dedicated at the graves of previously unmarked veterans. Speakers, ceremonies, and pageant will highlight the ceremony. Wreath-laying, speeches, music, and honor guards. Historical groups, veterans, and citizens are urged to participate. Wreaths, military contingents, color guards, music and period civilians are encouraged to participate. Refreshments served after the ceremony. For information; 215-228-8200.

https://www.historicalpublicationsllc.com/site/eventlistings.html for all 2023 events.

Before making plans to attend any event contact the event host.