Civil War News August 2019

America’s Monthly Newspaper For Civil War

GBPA’s 46th Annual Gettysburg Civil War Collector’s Show

GETTYSBURG, Penn.—

The Gettysburg Battlefield Preservation Association held its 46th Annual Gettysburg Civil War Collector’s Show on June 29-30 at the Allstar Expo Complex in Gettysburg. This year’s show was the largest yet with 355 tables of vendors and exhibitors. They displayed artifacts from the Revolutionary War through the Civil War including buttons, belt buckles, uniforms, accoutrements and gear, documents, photographs, rifles and muskets, swords, personal items, and much more. Attendance also broke records with over 875 in attendance on Saturday and Sunday. Early VIP tickets allowing the holders to visit the show on Friday and an hour before general admission on Saturday and Sunday also sold a record number. “Some of the best deals are made when the vendor and buyer have time to talk without a lot of distractions” said show organizer Brendan Synnamon.

Brendan’s father, Bill Synnamon, has been running the Collector’s Show for the past 14 years. This year he passed the torch to his son, owner of Union Drummer Boy and the current President of the GBPA. “He has done a great job. Things ran

extremely smoothly this year”

Bill said of Brendan. Brendan returned the compliment, “The show grew and flourished under my dad. He made it possible.”

Brendan credits the seemingly effortless flow of the show to his support staff. His brother William, wife Jamie, and mother Janine worked behind the scenes all year. Various volunteers involved with the GBPA worked the front lines together to make the show a success for both vendor and visitor. Kirk Davis, GBPA Vice President of Operations, commented, “Even if you aren’t a collector, this is one of the best museums you can possibly visit in Gettysburg. You have a very knowledgeable teacher behind every table, and they love to pass that knowledge on to whoever is interested.”

Charles Petrillo was kind enough to sponsor the awards program again this year. After careful review of the various displays, Mr. Petrillo announced the winners:

• Jay Reid of Quakertown, Penn., received the GBPA’s Best of Show award for his display centered on the sword presented to Captain Digman.

• The People’s Choice Award was given to Chris Foard of Magnolia, Del., again this year for his display on Civil War Nursing.

• Elizabeth Topping was awarded the Best Photographic Exhibit titled “The Mystique of Death.”

• Best Union Exhibit award went to James Crane for his display featuring the 15th New York Cavalry. Appreciation awards were awarded to:

• Buck Zaidel, “Connecticut Civil War Images.”

• Michael Fisher for his display of Civil War corps badges.

• Jeff Mattix for his display titled “Thru the Valley of Death.”

• Paul Loane, “The Civil War Haversack.”

• Alan Genetti for displaying General Ambrose Burnside’s sword.

• The Renfrew Museum. The 47th Annual Civil War

Collector’s Show is set for June 27-28, 2020. More information about this show, the Historic Daniel Lady Farm, and other GBPA events can be found at www.gbpa.org.

The Gettysburg Battlefield Preservation Association is a 501c3 nonprofit organization under the Internal Revenue Code and is registered as a charitable organization with the Pennsylvania Department of State, Bureau of Corporations and Charitable Organizations. Contributions are tax deductible.

Left: Union Brigadier General Lansing B. Swan’s uniform coat, and accoutrements, along with daguerreotypes of him in civilian clothing, and items related to his wife, etc., from Rochester, New York. From the collection of James and Jean Mountain.

The Pennsylvania monument, the largest at Gettysburg, is one of the most visited places on the battlefield. In the foreground is Hexamer’s New Jersey Battery’s monument with a U.S. 3-inch Parrott rifle (left) and a U.S. 10-pounder Parrott rifle (right). (Peggy Melton)

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Peggy and I attended the Gettysburg Battlefield Preservation Association’s 46th annual Civil War Show the last weekend of June. Thank you to everyone who came by and visited us at our table. We always appreciate meeting our subscribers and visiting with our advertisers to receive their input. While in Gettysburg, we visited the battlefield and stayed at the Farnsworth House Inn Bed & Breakfast.

There, we received excellent service, whether we were dining at Sweeneys Tavern, being treated to a delicious complimentary freshly cooked breakfast each morning, or enjoying a snack or beverage in the Beer Garden. A must see is the wall of birdhouses near the coy pond. It is mesmerizing. And don’t miss a chance to visit Camp Tiger next to the rear parking lot for an opportunity to go back in time and envision what it would have been like to camp with Civil War soldiers. We wish to extend a special “Thank you” to Jean and Loring Schultz for taking the time to share a meal with us and for their exceptional hospitality.

Due to our deadline for this issue, the September issue will cover the Gettysburg Anniversary Committee’s 156th reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg.

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Featuring a large assortment of Civil War and Indian War autographs, accoutrements, memorabilia, medals, insignia, buttons, GAR, documents, photos, & books.

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Ben Greenbaum and Bill Irvin, proprietors of Perry Adams Antiques, brought a selection of uniforms and other collectibles to the show.

The Horse Soldier, located in Gettysburg, brought Gettysburg artifacts from old-time collections. Left to right: Don Bennett, Cara Stewart, Jim Young, and Wes Small.

Deanna and Robert French of Poulin’s Firearms & Militaria Auctioneers, displayed weapons for their upcoming auction.

Dan Toomey and Everitt Bowles pose for a photo in front of Everitt’s assorted UCV, SCV, UDC, and other reunion badges for sale from CivilWarBadges.com.

Virginians Lewis Leigh Jr. and Shannon Pritchard stand next to a Confederate 1st lieutenants frock coat that Shannon offered for sale by OldSouthAntiques.com.

Gary McQuarrie and Charles Williams presented a naval display; complete with a Confederate torpedo replica. Charles publishes the Civil War Navy magazine.

Les Wells, Nick Periut, and John Gibson smile for the camera behind Nick’s Army of Tennessee Relics tables of bullets, buttons, belt buckles, artillery, swords and rifles.

Bookseller and author Marc Ramsey was one of the many book dealers at the show. Marc is a regular contributor to Civil War News and has an article on page 17 in this issue.

Wallace and Debbie Markert, proprietors of CS Acquisitions Museum, showcased Confederate weapons.

By Bruce S. Allardice and Wayne L. Wolf

Blockade duty during the Civil war usually proved to be deadly dull… weeks of boredom, punctuated by moments of pure excitement. The following, recently discovered, letter by Engineer George P. Hunt details some exciting times during the naval blockade of Mobile, Ala. He is critical of Captain Thornton Jenkins,1 temporary commander of the blockading squadron, for being too passive, and wishes that Admiral Farragut, the regular commander, had been present. Hunt suspects that his ship, the Metacomet, is stationed in the ship channel where blockade runners never run, because the

commander has the ship’s captain on his “Black List.” He notes that the boredom of patrol duty could be enlivened by a boat race.

During the Civil War, George P. Hunt (1837–1887) wrote numerous letters to his fiancé, Cordelia Eames (1833–1900).2

The English-born Hunt entered the U.S. Navy in July 1861 as 3rd Assistant Engineer. By 1880, he had risen to the rank of Chief Engineer, and was rated an officer of “marked ability.”

Much of his wartime service was on the USS Metacomet, a sidewheel steamer built in 1863. The 1,173 ton warship carried 9 cannon. Posted to the West Gulf Squadron, it distinguished itself in the Battle of Mobile Bay.

U.S.S.

"Metacomet"

Off Mobile April 12/1864

Dear Miss Eames, Your two letters with a postscript from your father came to hand on the 25th Mar. Very pleased indeed I was to receive them. They came together with letters from home while we lay in the Miss. Sound, blockading Grant's Pass. I had quite a large mail and ‘twas very acceptable.

I can assure you [I] had been suffering from fit of the blues for several days. Turned into my bunk after dinner to try & sleep it off. When I awoke found my

letters alongside of me. Thanks for the acct. of your Fair.3 Should have been very glad to have been there with you. You have done remarkably well in B[rooklyn] and I expect you will be quite proud. We are all in a regular growl since yesterday morning. What do you think? Two large steamers run in right under our nose & both escaped. One Clyde built steamer, the other American. The first a side wheel steamer, double smokestack, a little larger than the Cumberland.4 Running along shore got aground about 3/4 of a mile from the fort. Saw her at sunrise. We ran down to the flagship "Oneida," asked permission to go up & shell her or try & get her off. The senior officer Capt. LeRoy5 would not allow us but ordered us back to our station & there we had to lay & see the Rebs bring along their steamers and barges about 11 A.M. & lighten her up after which she of course got in safe by noon. There were 11 vessels laying blockading here, "Itasca," "Pinola," "Oneida," "Ossipee" and another laying away out to sea. The "Penguin" & "Albatross" & "Genesee" lay

nearer the shore in the Pelican Pass. "Conemaugh" in the Swash Channel. The most important port off here. We lay in the main Ship channel where nothing has ever been known to try to run out (because we are on the Black List) I believe. The "Pembina" & "Seminole" lay between us, if any of the vessels in the Pelican Pass or Swash Channel had had picket boats out or perhaps kept a better lookout they could have signaled & ten chances to one but they would have frightened him & drove him out to sea again & then we should have had a jolly good chase. However he escaped. We thought at least that the fleet, &c., would be better stationed to prevent such a thing occurring again, but at daylight this morning what should we see but a splendid American steamer, double smokestack, sidewheel, about 1800 to 2000 tons (The "Austin” of Havana)6 further had aground in the same channel, Swash Channel) about 1-1/2 miles from the fort. The flag officer would not allow us to do anything to prevent them coming with their steamers to tow her off. They tugged away until late in the afternoon when she got away safe. 'Tis provoking to say the least of it. If Farragut had only been here we might have done something. There are over 40 steamers laying in Nassau intending to run the blockade. They may come for evidently but little is to be done to prevent them from "running in” there while we are so afraid of our vessels. To be sure some of us might get hurt, & as the Rebs may be wanting a few thousand more English rifles & a few more Whitworth or Brookes guns can and may yet be mounted on Fort Morgan to greet our ironclads whenever they make their advent here. Why I suppose

the safest thing for us perhaps is to let them alone.

Admiral Farragut is at New Orleans now. Capt. Jenkins of the Hartford is Comndg. this Division. He is at Pensacola, but expected down shortly. We were there for coal last week. Left Sunday morn at 10 o'clock, & had a chase with the fastest vessel of this squadron, the “Eugenie.”7 The mail boat she had 6 miles the start on us. I was on watch from 8 to 12M. & was just in my element. We gained upon her handsomely the first hour. By that time I had everything in good trim for a race, as I did not know she was bound our way until after that start. 11 A.M. Capt. & all hands on deck getting excited. He sent me a bottle of sherry down into the engine room & told me if I passed her he would give me another. I told him I should give this to the firemen. No says he, I will send them a lunch which he did in the shape of 12 bottles of all with crackers & cheese. We gained nearly 3 miles upon her the next hour to quarters. Capt. would have me keep by the engine until we got to

“If Farragut had only been here…”

USS Metacomet. (Wikimedia Commons)

George P. Hunt. (HistoricalShop.com)

Admiral David G. Farragut. (Library of Congress)

Captain William E. Le Roy. (Wikimedia Commons)

Mobile as we were both going to the flag ship & he wished to get there first. We went along bravely. Arrived at the flagship 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 ahead of their crack steamer. We came in making 14 knots. The flag officer thought we came in at a fearful rate. Our capt. told him we were only making 14 knots. We made the capt. of the Eugenie so angry that today, instead of bringing our mails alongside as he usually does he left them aboard the 0[neida] So if we want them we may fetch them. Well, I suppose you think the above is dry & uninteresting. If so excuse me for troubling you

with it. But when they stick a vessel like this that can beat their crack steamer nearly 8 miles in a 4 hour chase, into the worst station there is off here it vexes a fellow & besides that when there is a chance of a fight & doing some good either directly or indirectly to be obliged to sit still with our hands tied fast is worse.

Most likely more steamers will be along here as the moon goes down at 1 A.M. & after that they have plenty of time to run in. The "Admiral" is expected soon bound north. Shall finish this & forward by her.

I spent a pleasant time in Key

West two last evenings, & also in New Orleans. Met several of my friends on the other vessels. Have no intimate acquaintances ashore there. Went to the theatres there in the evening generally with some of my chums. There was quite a lively time there, a grand review at Carrollton, after which Gen. Banks & Staff attended the Academy of Music.

I generally took my meals ashore (but we are all obliged to sleep on board) as I was then in a mess with the four Vol. Assts. & we had nothing to eat scarce. Have lost 13 lbs. since leaving N.Y. They are too fond of the almighty dollar. Expect to live upon about 10 Dollars each per month. I could not & would not endure it when better stores could be obtained. I wrote a letter to the Fleet Engineer, New Orleans, stating how I was situated & asking for a change. Should have got it. Have

no doubt. Only the Capt. & Chief became aware of what I was trying for (The Fleet Engineer is one of the oldest Engineers in the Navy & was President of the Board of Examiners when I entered the service). In the Board Room there is a mess composed of the Chief Eng., Lieut. Commdg., Paymaster, Surgeon, Sailing Master & Three Engineers. So somehow or other through the influence of the Capt. & Chief I was invited to join their mess. Being on good terms with them all & especially the Capt. & now that I have got everything in good order I concluded to retain my letter & join their mess. Since then I have been very comfortable & shall be I believe.

I have received the illustrated paper you sent me & also the Tribune from your father. Thanks. Am looking for a letter from you when we get our mails tomorrow. We have had some very cold weather off Mobile. Yesterday was very warm. The first warm day we have had. Temp 89 to 94 degrees. You think I tire of reading long letters. If I were to tell you how many times I read my last budget you would not think so. You ought to be sent on the blockade for saying so. Adios.

George P. Hunt

Endnotes:

1. Thornton A. Jenkins (1811-93).

2. Other letters of Hunt were published in Civil War News, May 2019.

3. A reference to the “Brooklyn and Long Island Fair, in aid of the Sanitary Commission,” held Feb. 22nd.

4. Probably the Scottish (Clyde) built blockade runner Denbigh,

which so regularly ran the Mobile blockade to Havana, Cuba, that it was nicknamed “the packet.” The Americanbuilt ship was probably the Alice, another famously successful blockade runner. See Wise, Lifeline of the Confederacy, which notes that these two ships arrived in Mobile in April.

5. William E. Le Roy (1814–88).

6. The “Austin” was the former name of the blockade runner Donegal. She was Americanbuilt, as Hunt observes. Two months later, Hunt’s Metacomet captured the Donegal. See ORN vol. 21, p. 334.

7. The Eugenie was a former blockade runner that served the Union navy as a supply ship. It was a compliment to Hunt that the Metacomet’s engines could overtake a ship known for its speed.

Bruce S. Allardice is Professor of History at South Suburban College in Illinois. He is a past president of the Civil War Round Table of Chicago.

Wayne L. Wolf is past president of the Lincoln-Davis Civil War Roundtable.

Want To

Map of entrances to Mobile Bay, showing Swash and Main Ship Channels.

Exploding Walkers, .31 caliber mold and Rebel Henrys

The Legendary Walker Colt

I know a guy who uses a reproduction Colt. 44 caliber Walker six gun for plinking and wild hog hunting. The gun has performed reliably for him over a number of years. Sometimes we hear people say that “they don’t make ‘em (insert whatever) like they used to.” In the case of Walker Colts, they certainly don’t. They make “em better – a heck of a lot better.”

The original Walker Colt, named after Texas Ranger Samuel Hamilton Walker, who collaborated with Sam Colt to design the gun in 1846, was not manufactured by Colt, who, since closing his Paterson, N.J.,

factory, had no manufacturing facility. Colt contracted with Eli Whitney Jr., to produce the guns at his Whitneyville, Conn., factory in 1847. Walker, who had become familiar with the earlier Colt Paterson during his tenure as a Texas Ranger, had been commissioned as a captain in the United States Mounted Rifle Regiment for the Mexican War, and persuaded the government to buy 1,000 of the new handguns for his regiment. Problems developed with the Walker revolver in combat, but Captain Walker did not live to address them. He was killed in action on October 9, 1947, at Huamantia, Mexico. Some accounts have him speared with a lance; others maintain he was shot. At the end of the war, the remaining Walker models were returned to the army’s ordnance

Vin Caponi Historic Antiques

charges, in any one cylinder, exploded rarely ever four frequently but two.

Colonel Hays states that for the first few days after his men received these arms they were continually bursting – but that, eventually, those which were left were fired with less certainty of such a result.

by Joe Bilby

department save for a hundred made for civilian sale. I was not aware of all the specific complaints about the Walker until I received a copy of letter, from Mark Hubbs of Eras Gone Bullet Molds, which I am reprinting below in its entirety. It is an account by Captain Jonathan Williamson, the ordnance officer who received the revolvers at the end of the war.

“Ordnance Depot Vera Cruz, Mexico, May 8, 1848.

Col. G. Talcott Ordnance Corps.

Sir: Five Companies of discharged Texan rangers [Actually Mounted Rifles.] have turned in their arms and accoutrements. Agreeably to the statement of Colonel Hays, these men received less than a year ago 280 Colt’s patent pistols of which number 191 now revert to the U.States. The remainder chiefly bursted in their hands, tho a few were lost in skirmishing with the enemy.

Of the 191 turned in only 82 can be considered serviceable. All of the others have been more or less damaged by firing, and the wear and tear of some eight months use in the field. In some cases the cylinders are entirely destroyed – in others the barrels are irreparably injured where they join the cylinder – and again, having bursted at the muzzle, the barrels have been cut off to one half their original length.

As the pistols were turned in loaded, in attempting to discharge them the Snaps were found fully unequal to the explosions – and in no instance were all the six

This being probably the first experiment of these pistols in actual service, I consider it worthwhile to commit the foregoing to paper.

I am respectfully, Yr. Obt. St. JNO. Williamson Capt. Ordnance”

The ultimate verdict was that the revolvers were made of inferior material and Colt, of course, got another chance, and this time manufactured his improved Dragoon model in his own factory, establishing his bona fides as a great handgun maker. There were no exploding Model 1860 Army revolvers at Brandy Station.

New From Eras Gone

Mark Hubbs, by the way, is a busy guy in the black powder bullet business, with new bullet molds and cartridge designs all the time. He has recently ordered a limited run of .31 caliber Baby Dragoon conical bullet molds. Mark says that these two cavity molds cast “a perfect replication of the bullet cast from the original colt .31 caliber molds. The resulting slug is .330 inch in diameter and weighs in at about 77 grains. This is the bullet that Sam Colt intended for his .31 pocket pistols. The heavier bullet gives the little gun all the ballistic advantage that is possible.” All of Mark’s molds are double cavity and are $65 postpaid to anywhere in the USA. Check his website at: www erasgonebulletswebstartscomup date-36s-a/1842014076021856/.

Rebel Henrys

While some are aware that there was Confederate use of captured Henry repeating rifles, particularly in the Shenandoah

Valley Campaign of 1864 and allegedly in the hands of Jefferson Davis’ personal bodyguard, few know that the first Henrys used in combat were likely used by Confederates, and as early as the summer of 1862 in Kentucky. In the summer of 1862, Louisville Journal editor George Denison Prentice received a gift of a Henry rifle from Secretary of War Henry Stanton. The editor waxed eloquent on the rifle in June 1862, calling it “the most beautiful and efficient rifle we have ever seen.”

Local firearms dealers were soon carrying the Henry in their inventories and local citizens and militiamen were purchasing them over the counter. Prentice himself became a wholesale dealer.

During the Confederate invasion of Kentucky later that summer, a number of Henrys went unaccounted for, and one Union commander who surrendered to a Rebel force, recalled that one Confederate company was “armed with volcanic rifles [predecessor of the Henry] (16 shooters).” These were undoubtedly Henrys. Several early numbered Henrys have appeared over the years since the war with Confederate association as well. Ordnance history can be complicated.

Joseph G. Bilby received his BA and MA degrees in history from Seton Hall University and served as a lieutenant in the 1st Infantry Division in 1966–1967. He is Assistant Curator of the New Jersey National Guard and Militia Museum, a freelance writer and historical consultant and author or editor of 21 books and over 400 articles on N.J. and military history and firearms. He is also publications editor for the N.J. Civil War 150 Committee and edited the award winning New Jersey Goes to War. His latest book, New Jersey: A Military History, was published by Westholme Publishing in 2017. He has received an award for contributions to Monmouth County (N.J.) history and an Award of Merit from the N.J. Historical Commission for contributions to the state’s military history. He can be contacted by email at jgbilby44@aol.com.

We carry a very large inventory of Colt and Civil War firearms including muskets, carbines, rifles and accoutrements. Our inventory of historic antiques and firearms begin at the early collectors level and range all the way up to the advanced collector and investors level.

Colt Walker revolver serial number 1017. (Metropolitan Museum of Art Arms and Armor collection, accession number 58.171.1.)

By Charles H. Bogart

Recently Kent Masterson Brown, President of the Lexington, Ky., Civil War Roundtable challenged the membership to write an article about their Civil War relative for posting on the roundtable’s website. I decided to write about my great grandfather Henry Heidebrink, I had heard from my grandmother Nobbe, when a child, about her father who served in the 108th Ohio and died at the Soldier Home in Dayton, Ohio. With the help of my computer I set out to write the story of Private Henry Heidebrink. To my surprise the story Grandma Nobbe told of her father turned out to be somewhat different from what I found on the internet.

A search on the internet confirmed that Henry Heidebrink had been born in Prussia circa 1841 and came to the United States with his parents circa 1850. He and his parents settled in the Over-the-Rhine area of Cincinnati, Ohio, where Henry was employed as a cigarmaker. To my surprise, I found that on June 26, 1861, Henry Heidebrink joined Company K, 13th Ohio Infantry Regiment, as a musician. The 13th Ohio Infantry was first raised as a three-month regiment; at the end of this service, it was reorganized as a three-year regiment. It mustered into the Federal Army at Camp Dennison, Ohio, on June 22, 1861, under Lt.

Henry G. Heidebrink

A Soldier in the 13th and 108th Ohio Infantry Regiments

Colonel William Sooy Smith.

During the period June 1861 to April 1862, the 13th Ohio saw duty in a number of different locations. In June 1861, the regiment left Camp Dennison and traveled by steamboat to Parkersburg, (West) Virginia.

The regiment participated in the Western Virginia Campaign of July 6-17, 1861. The 13th Ohio then garrisoned Sutton, Va., during August 1861. The regiment next fought in the Battle of Carnifex Ferry, Sept. 10, 1861, where Henry Heidebrink was wounded in the shoulder. The 13th Ohio suffered in this engagement 1 KIA, 3 DOW, 16 WIA, and 2 MIA. Grandma told me her father had been wounded in North Carolina at the surrender of the Confederate Army to General Sherman.

After the Battle of Carnifex Ferry, the 13th Ohio took part in operations in the Kanawha Valley and New River Region until early November 1861. From November 12-16, 1861, the 13th Ohio participated in the failed campaign to capture Confederate troops serving with General John B. Floyd. After this failed operation, the 13th Ohio travelled by steamboat down the Ohio River to Jeffersonville, Ind. On December 11, the Thirteenth crossed the Ohio River and moved south to guard the Louisville & Nashville Railroad between Elizabethtown and Bowling Green, Ky. In

February 1862, the 13th Ohio marched to Nashville, Tenn., where it took up garrison duties. While on garrison duty at Nashville Henry Heidebrink was medically discharged.

On January 1, 1864, Henry Heidebrink, having recovered from his wound, signed on to become an infantryman in the 108th Ohio Infantry Regiment. The 108th was a Cincinnati regiment organized in August 1862 at Camp Dennison for threeyear service. It was commanded by Lt. Col. George T. Limberg. In November 1863, to bring the 108th back up to strength, a recruiting party was sent to Cincinnati. Henry Heidebrink was one of the men recruited, joining the regiment on Jan. 1, 1864. The new recruits were sent to Camp Dennison where they were organized into Companies I and K. These two companies were mustered into the Army on March 1, 1864. Henry Heidebrink was now a private in Company K, 108th Ohio. I would suspect that the bounty being paid to men joining the Army at this time had something to do with Henry re-enlisting.

In January 1864, the 108th Ohio was assigned to the 2nd Brigade, 2nd Division, XIV Corps. It would serve with XIV Corps until the end of the war. Companies I and K joined the 108th in late April at Chattanooga, Tenn. The 108th took part in Sherman’s advance on Atlanta, Ga., and saw action at Tunnel Hill, Rocky Face Ridge, Buzzard’s Roost Gap, Resaca, the capture of Rome, occupation of Dallas, New Hope Church, and the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. Thereafter, from July until November 1864, the 108th guarded the Western & Atlantic Railroad between Kennesaw and Atlanta.

On November 1, 1864, the 108th Ohio was relieved of guard duty. On November 14th, the regiment moved out from Atlanta as part of Sherman’s March to the Sea. Savannah, Ga., was taken by Sherman’s troops on Dec. 21, 1864. The 108th, after refitting at Savannah, took part in Sherman’s advance through the Carolinas, from January to April 1865. In North Carolina, the 108th participated in the battles of Averasboro, and Bentonville, (1 KIA and 4 WIA). They then occupied Goldsboro, March 24, 1865, and Raleigh, April 14, 1865. The regiment was present at the surrender of General Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of Tennessee at Bennett’s House on April 26, 1865.

The 108th then marched to Washington, D.C., and on May 24, 1865, participated in the Grand Review of the Armies. The 108th Ohio, less Companies I and K, mustered out at Washington, D.C., on June 9, 1865. Companies I and K were ordered to travel by train to Louisville, Ky., for occupation duty. They mustered out on July 22, 1865.

Henry Heidebrink, upon being discharged from Company K at Louisville, returned to the Cincinnati, where he married Catherine Moemkel. Their daughter Rose Heidebrink (grandma Nobbe) was born in 1881; she married Henry Nobbe. The Nobbe’s, in turn, had a daughter, Ruth E. Nobbe, who married Howard C. Bogart, who, in turn, had a son, me Charles H. Bogart.

During the 1870s and early 1880s, Henry Heidebrink was in constant trouble with the Cincinnati Police Department due to alcohol related incidents. He was arrested on numerous occasions for disturbing the peace, public drunkenness, and assaulting his wife. In 1893, he filed for divorce claiming Catherine had been unfaithful. She, in denying this allegation, stated that Henry had been placed in the workhouse seven times to recover from drunkenness after assaulting her. The divorce proceedings were dropped either because, as a Catholic, Catherine was opposed to divorce, or she wanted to insure she would collect Henry’s pension. Catherine supported her family by working in a Cincinnati

clothing factory.

On August 30, 1884, Henry Heidebrink entered the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers at Dayton. Henry left the Home in 1891, returned in 1906, left in 1907, and returned again later that year. During the period 1884 to 1911, Henry Heidebrink was living in Dayton, and Catherine Heidebrink in Cincinnati. In 1911, Henry Heidebrink moved from the Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers at Dayton to the Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Hampton, Va. This move was apparently to put some distance between him and his wife. He died at Hampton on Aug. 25, 1923, and was buried in the Hampton Veterans Cemetery. His wife Catherine preceded him, dying in Cincinnati on July 23, 1920.

The tale of Henry Heidebrink as told by the internet is very different from what I remember Grandma Nobbe telling me about her childhood. Glad I did the research but wish Grandma Nobbe was still here so I could ask her about her childhood with her parents.

Henry Heidebrink’s gravestone.

The Artillery Fuze

“The Ordnance Department of the Confederate States has accomplished immense results of which the people are almost wholly ignorant…From the Richmond Arsenal and the various other depots throughout the States, come all the various grades of cannon, from the mountain howitzer to the columbiad; all small arms; all cavalry equipment for man and horse; all artillery equipments, and all ammunition for infantry, artillery and cavalry.” (Richmond Enquirer Nov. 14, 1864).

“Many of the fuzes exploded prematurely, and about half of the friction primers failed.” (Lt. Col. Kemper, C.S. Artillery, Dec. 26, 1863).

The reliability of Confederate artillery seems to depend on whether you get your information from the Richmond Enquirer or from trying to fire the artillery piece yourself. Artillery misfires seemed particularly vexing for the Confederate Ordnance Department early in the war, and the failure of the artillery shells to detonate as intended “could usually be traced to defective fuzes and primers.” Union artillery also had its share of misfires, but seemed to have fewer failures from their primers and fuzes.

The first step in successfully shooting any kind of gun is (of

course) igniting the gun powder used as a propellant. This is the role of the primer, which we will concentrate on here. If a cannon failed to fire, the primer was a good place to begin the investigation. General John B. Magruder wrote Ordnance Chief Josiah Gorgas in September 1861 that not one of his first shipments of friction primers from the Richmond Arsenal had worked. A second batch arrived, and Magruder noted that ironically that the new primers, “…were supplied in the place of others which were worthless, and these were worthless themselves.” Gorgas for his part blamed it on unskilled artillerymen. Who knows? However, the problems with C.S. Arsenal primers and fuzes were well documented. Artillery is after all both a science and an art. And to be fair, the South had to create an armaments industry virtually from scratch while the Civil War was in progress.

A quick explanation is in order on the distinctive period spelling of “fuze” with a ‘z.’ In the Civil War-era, a “fuze” was a time delayed, slow burning igniter used either as the priming charge or with the projectile itself. For example, the “slow match” and linstock primer ignition was called a “fuze.” The fuze was also used in projectiles. The so-called “timed” fuze was the most commonly employed form of projectile detonation. The artillerist would cut through the train at the appropriate time mark before loading the projectile into the cannon. The flame from the main charge was intended to light the timed fuze in the projectile. Another type was the percussion fuze which exploded the projectile when the fuze made contact with an object. Most percussion fuzes employed a plunger-and-anvil method of detonation. There were chemical concussion fuzes and

This “4 second fuses to one inch” fuse box was manufactured at the C.S. Laboratory in Richmond, Va., in May 1864. The box is 4.51 inches wide x 2.62 inches high x .80 inch thick. These paper time fuses have numerous wicks that are 1 inch long. The length of the paper time fuse is 2.08 inches. Top diameter of the fuse is .55 inch and tapers to .41 inch at the base. The outer covering is wax paper for waterproofing. The box holds five paper time fuses. (Courtesy Atlanta History Center)

Paper wrapping is marked 12 / FRICTION PRIMERS. / C- S. Laboratory. / RICHMOND ARSENAL. / 11 Mo., 1864. Box is 4.13 inches wide x 2.34 inches high x .74-inch thick. Friction primer is .189-inch in diameter and is 1.83-inches long. There are six holes in the wooden box each containing two friction primers. (Courtesy Atlanta History Center)

combination types, but the two main types were timed fuze and percussion.

The timed fuze was the most problematic. (See Jack Melton, “How Artillery Fuses Worked” www.civilwarartillery.com). In the modern military, the meaning of fuze is distinct from the alternate spelling of fuse. A slow burning igniter would be called a “fuse” and a “fuze” (with a z) would indicate a more complicated mechanical or electronic detonator. The spelling of “fuze” with a ‘z’ and fuse with an ‘s’ were used during the mid-19th century spellings and are not consistent in period publications, etc.

Cannon are deceptively simple, nothing really but a metal tube closed on one end. In that closed end is a small hole leading down to the main powder charge. In the earliest cannon, this hole was filled with finely ground powder which was then ignited with a hot ember or torch. With the advent of black powder hand-held guns,

a new method of ignition was necessary. It goes without saying that holding a red hot rod while trying to pour a charge of black powder down a barrel is a good way to get killed. Also, trying to shoulder the musket with one hand, aim at the target, and look for the touchhole so you could fire the charge with the other hand was clumsy.

One method of firing the charge was the “slow match,” hence the term matchlock musket. The “slow match” was usually a length of hemp twine or cord that had been chemically treated with an oxidizer to make it smolder slowly without a visible flame and last for an extended period of time. This same technology was also employed by artillerymen. The slow burning cord was held off the ground with a stick called a linstock. The cannon vent was charged with either a priming tube of powder or loose powder; then the tip of the “slow match” held by the linstock

Brass friction primer, non-excavated, complete.

was touched to the vent to ignite the charge. Based on advances in small arms technology, the matchlock musket was replaced by the flintlock around 1630 or so, but “slow match” and linstock were still in use for field artillery when the Civil War began. As late as 1864, Union forces in the Trans-Mississippi Theater noted that Confederates were firing their artillery with “matches and fuze” presumably meaning the linstock and slow match. Obviously, friction primers were widely available by then but it appears that slow match was still used late in the war. It bears noting that in the Western and TransMississippi theaters, some flintlock rifles were still in the ranks in mid-1864.

When did artillery begin to follow small arms and implement the newer forms of ignition like the flintlock? In 1782, the British navy first employed flintlock fired cannon aboard their warships. These can be seen being used in the film, Master and

Commander: Far Side of the World set during the Napoleonicera. By the mid-1840s, naval artillery was produced with the newer percussion cap lock system, following the trend in military small arms. The percussion artillery cap-locks were fired with a lanyard. Adapting the percussion cap-lock to artillery was tricky due to the gas pressure coming up the vent after igniting the round.

The surging pressurized gas from the vent blew back the hammer, damaged it and rendered the cannon at least temporarily out of commission. The solution was found with the so-called “Hidden” (designed by Enoch Hidden and patented Jan. 14, 1831) flint-lock ignition system. The Hidden caplock was attached to an oblong mass of metal near the vent called the lock piece. On shell guns, the hammer was fitted into a slit cut into a lug cast near the vent. The Hidden percussion caplock was also used with the Parrott and other rifled ordnance.

To fire the piece, a percussion primer in the shape of a 2 ½-inch-long quill tube topped with a wafer was first inserted in the vent. Then the lanyard was steadily and quickly pulled, rotating the hammer on its bolt until it was brought down on the vent setting off the percussion primer. Continued pull on the lanyard drew the hammer clear of the vent avoiding the erosion caused by gasses rushing from the vent. To obtain this action, an inch-long slot was cut at the rear of the hammer. In contrast to the hand held weapons, no springs were included in the Hidden mechanism. The percussion caplock artillery was somewhat superseded in the late 1850s by lower cost friction primers. The friction primers fit into the vent, much like the older powder tubes and were fired with a lanyard, like the lock type artillery. The friction primer consists of a brass tube, open at one end. At the closed end, a small hole of about the same diameter of the tube is drilled to one side, and short length of similar tubing is inserted and soldered into place. Opposite this short length of

tubing is a hole to receive the priming wire, a length of brass wire with a flattened and serrated end. The short tube is lined with a friction powder similar in composition to the head of a friction match. The priming wire is inserted through the head of the long tube and into the short tube, which is then crimped to hold the end of the serrated wire in place. The long end of the priming wire is twisted into a loop. The head of the primer is then sealed and, when dry, the main body of the primer (the longer tube) is filled with fine musket powder and the open end sealed with wax. The resulting product is effectively waterproof, which is one of the big advantages the friction primer had over the linstock. In use, the primer is simply placed in the vent hole of the cannon, with the lanyard hooked to the loop of wire. When the lanyard is pulled, the serrated end of the priming wire ignites the friction composition. This fire ignites the musket powder in the body of the primer, which flashes through the vent and sets off the main charge. The chain reaction ignition is nearly immediate. The wire

being quickly jerked through the fulminate-of-mercury compound is the reason this type of cannonprimer is called a “friction primer.”

To make the wire capable of creating the necessary friction, the final ½ inch of the wire was “roughened” with a knife-blade or a file. If the wire were smooth it would not create the necessary amount of friction to ignite the compound. Wire on a few original friction primers from one arsenal was closely inspected and found to have two tightly wound circular twists, and the total length when straightened-out measured about one and one half inches. However, friction primers from other arsenals appear to have a longer wire or more twists in the wire. Was this intentional? Other friction primers identified as Civil War-era were made from copper wire instead of brass. Despite occasional defects, friction primers were the most reliable and most common method of artillery ignition during the U.S. Civil War-era.

This is a rare 1812 French manufactured flintlock ignition system for cannon marked BRINGOL / A PARIS / 1812.

Prior to cannon ignition ‘locks’ being used, typical firing of cannon would be with a quill primer or open powder train which was touched off with either a handheld linstock or portfire. Use of either of these methods required the gunner to be in close proximity to the cannon’s vent and left the artillerist subject to possibly be in line of the cannons’ recoil, or in the event of the failure of the tube; undoubtedly in harms way.

The brass body consists of two pieces with the release spring and cocking mechanism inside, as typical with a flintlock gun. At the rear of the lock, is an iron piece which has a hole in it for the lanyard line to attach. Black powder was filled into the pan and the frizzen closed to protect the powder from the wind and elements. The hammer which held a flint was pulled back or cocked readying the piece. A quick pull on the outstretched lanyard released the hammer and the flint would strike the steel frizzen hopefully creating a spark which would instantaneously light the powder in the pan and set off the propellant charge.

Cannon locks would either mount onto a raised cast section on the barrel next to the vent, or onto an applied mount next to the vent. On some older cannon barrels you can see the cast on mounts, or the threaded holes for screws used for attaching the mount next to the vent. The lock pictured, has in the front a pin that slid into a receiving hole, and a hole through the brass housing for a bolt to secure it. The lock measures overall, approximately 6 5/8 inches in length.

Cannon locks are very rare to find today. Eventually flintlock style cannon locks were replaced with a percussion style system of ignition which was a further improvement.

(David

Kornelly

collection)

Tragedies were not unknown at the time and not all the friction primers made by Confederate arsenals were duds; in fact, far from it. According the Richmond Whig newspaper, in mid-March 1863, a young woman employed at the Brown’s Island laboratory building in Richmond was making friction primers on a perforated board and decided that it would be faster to remove all the primers at once by knocking the boards together. The ensuing explosion blew the roof off and knocked down the walls of the laboratory building resulting in a temporary shutdown of the Richmond Arsenal. From this we know some C.S. friction primers were not completely defective.

Craig L. Barry was born in Charlottesville, Va. He holds his BA and Masters degrees from the University of North Carolina (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) and three books (soon to be four) in the Suppliers to the Confederacy series on English Arms & Accoutrements, Quartermaster stores and other European imports.

Cannon lock invented by Enoch Hidden. This is the improved percussion version patented by Hidden and Samuel Sawyer on April 29, 1842, no. 2,594. The patent drawing is shown below.

The Lincoln Funeral Train Commemorated

By Joseph Bordonaro

A single shot from a derringer, at 10:15 pm on April 14, 1865, was all it took to transform the end-of-the-war celebration in Washington, D.C., into shocked anger, outrage, and depression. A nation had lost its leader and, as Secretary of War Stanton said, “He now belongs to the ages.” The grief the Union felt was visible as the President’s funeral train made its roundabout way to Springfield, Ill., Abraham Lincoln’s home town, and the place where he was to be buried. Leaving Washington on April 21, the train traveled through 180 cities in seven states. One of those cities was Elizabethtown, Penn.; 154 years later, to the day, a commemoration of the train’s passage through the town was reenacted on the Stone Gable Estate.

The Stone Gable Estate recently added the Star Barn to its property. The magnificent 1872 barn was disassembled at its home in Lower Swatara Township, moved to the new site, reassembled, and completely restored. Now, in place of its 25 horse stalls, the Star Barn serves as a museum,

conference center, and a place for weddings and other events.

The original railroad bed of the Northern Central Railway is also on the Stone Gable property. With new track placed, the Lincoln Funeral Train was transported to the site from its home on the Harrisburg, Lincoln & Lancaster RR and placed on the tracks.

Excitement was palpable on the Stone Gables Estate on April 22, 2019, as brilliant spring sunshine greeted crowds of people who began arriving to see the full scale replica 4-4-0 steam locomotive moving down the tracks. At precisely 12:05 the train came chugging up the track and stopped at a covered bridge. The covered bridge is another historic structure that has been moved to the estate and rebuilt. A company of Civil War reenactors dressed in Union Army uniforms, marched through the covered bridge and onto the passenger car behind the Leviathan engine. Both passenger car and engine are faithful reproductions of mid 1860’s railroad stock and were decorated the same way as the original funeral train. Behind the passenger

car was a hearse car, again decorated as the original. Inside the hearse car, reenactors portraying members of the Veterans’ Reserve Corps, soldiers who had been injured or otherwise made unable to perform a soldier’s full duties but who were still capable of light duty, maintained a guard over the President’s coffin, just as was done in 1865.

After the train was loaded, it continued down the track and stopped at the site of the reenactor camp. Speeches were made and visitors were able to view the train and its cars. The most touching part of the day’s reenactment, though, came during the train’s short trip. The railroad bed here is at the bottom of a deep cut, and along a good part of the distance from the bridge to the camp, many visitors lined the way and made those on the train think of the crowds who lined the track of the actual funeral train so long ago. Shannon Brown, Programming Director for the Lincoln Funeral Train, Harrisburg, Lincoln & Lancaster RR, estimates that over 2,200 people attended this event. It is a tribute to the love that many in America still feel for President Abraham Lincoln that they took the time to make the pilgrimage to Elizabethtown to help commemorate the passage of our “Captain’s” last voyage.

The Lincoln Funeral Train will remain at the Stone Gable Estate. Rides will be available during various special events throughout the year. More information on these train rides can be found at https://thestarbarn.com/ event-calendar/.

Joe Bordonaro is a USAF veteran (1973–1977), Glassboro State College graduate (1980), Catholic school teacher (St. Joseph’s ProCathedral, 1983–1988), and retired public school teacher (Mullica Township School, 1988–2009). He has been involved with Civil War reenacting/living history since

1999. Joe began submitting articles to the Civil War News in 2005 and has been covering events for the News on a regular basis since 2016. Joe lives in Mount Laurel, NJ, and has been married to his wife Karen for 29 years. If you wish to contact Joe, you may send an email to joe1861@gmail.com.

Lincoln Funeral Train Engine, the Nashville (Library of Congress)

Lincoln’s Funeral Car. (Library of Congress)

Lincoln Funeral Train moving down the tracks, with colors flying. (Tony De Seta)

Faith and Mark Hintzen, and Sherri Groff, members of the Atlantic Guard Soldiers’ Aid Society, portrayed members of the Elizabethtown, Penn., community who came to pay their respects to their fallen President.

Col. Dave Childs, USV, and Major Marcus Riddell, USV, directed security during the arrival of the Lincoln Funeral Train. (Joe Bordonaro)

Dillan Enck, of Mannheim, Penn.; Roy Wulf, of Manassas, Va.; and Joel and Jacob Yoder, of Cochranville, Penn., helped provide an infantry escort. (Joe Bordonaro)

Don Whitley, of Lititz, Penn., portrayed a member of the Veteran Reserve Corps in the Lincoln Funeral Car. The VRC provided the guards for the train in 1865. (Joe Bordonaro)

Donald Husler portrayed a reporter for the Juniata Sentinel. The paper reported on the war, including the identity of casualties from the area. (Joe Bordonaro)

Hearse car being transported on a low-boy trailer. (Dave Kloke)

Francis Strouse, of Elizabethtown, Penn., portrayed the conductor of the Lincoln Funeral Train. (Joe Bordonaro)

Steven Diatz portrayed Winfield Scott Halliday, a writer for the New York Herald. (Joe Bordonaro)

Reproduction of Lincoln’s casket. (Joe Bordonaro)

James Steinmetz, of Birdsboro, Penn., takes a rest after the train arrived in Elizabethtown. (Joe Bordonaro)

Eye in the Sky

“A hawk hovering above a chicken yard could not have caused more commotion than did my balloons when they appeared before Yorktown, [Va.].”

– Professor Thaddeus Lowe

In March 1862, U.S. Gen. George McClellan launched the Peninsula Campaign with the goal of capturing the Confederate capital of Richmond, Va. Accompanying McClellan was Thaddeus Lowe and the Balloon Corps. Lowe had convinced President Abraham Lincoln of the value of having a transportable surveillance post that could observe “an area nearly fifty miles in diameter.”

A converted coal barge, The General Washington Parke Custis, became the United States’ first aircraft carrier. Its deck was cleared of any item that could entangle the balloons. It was named for George Washington’s

step-grandson and father-in-law of future Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It transported two gas generators to fill the balloons, along with the balloons, the Constitution, the Washington and the larger Intrepid, able to ascend higher while carrying an additional operator and a telegraphic apparatus. It took four army wagons to bring the corps to the Yorktown, Va., area.

During the campaign, Lowe’s balloons made many ascensions. The Confederates would salute the balloon with “an iron hail” and attempt to hide their movements from the overhead observers. Despite their efforts, estimates were made of unit size by counting campfires or by noting the size of the dust cloud raised by maneuvering troops. Still, McClellan preferred to believe other intelligence that his Army of the Potomac was outnumbered.

At Yorktown, Lowe noticed that

the incoming wagons were lighter than the outgoing wagons. He concluded that the Confederates were not resupplying. On May 4, it was Lieut. George Armstrong Custer’s assignment to climb into the willow basket, or “car,” to observe the enemy with his field glasses, compass, pencil, and notebook. About 2 a.m., Custer became aware the Confederates had left Yorktown instead of facing McClellan’s siege machines. By dawn the Confederate withdrawal was confirmed when he couldn’t spot any breakfast fires. Headquarters was alerted. The Federals dashed after their fleeing foe.

By mid-May, C.S. Gen. Joseph Johnston’s Army had withdrawn to within seven miles of Richmond. Federal soldiers could hear the city’s bells chime the hours from their camps.

McClellan, convinced his forces were outnumbered, waited for U.S. Gen. Irvin McDowell’s forces to join him before attacking the city. Instead, McDowell was sent to the Shenandoah Valley, Va., in response to Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s troops posing threat in that area.

The night before the Battle of Seven Pines, May 31, a thunderstorm “in which the very sluice gates of heaven seem to be opened,” rapidly swelled the Chickahominy River and turned the landscape east of Richmond into a swamp. A lightning bolt killed the quartermaster of the 44th N.Y. and stunned twenty men. Four men of the 4th Ala. were killed in a single strike at “Camp Lighting.” Johnston was “elated;” the flooding would aid in protecting Richmond.

Johnston’s plan was to attack on the Chickahominy’s south bank where Federal forces were fewer Confusion quickly arose as green commanders led green troops from different locations toward their objectives. Instead of using three parallel roads to attack the enemy, multiple divisions crowded a single road. Fed up with waiting, C.S. Gen. D. H. Hill began the attack five hours after the scheduled start time.

During the morning, Lowe had not been able to launch his

largest balloon, the Intrepid, due to the wind. From the Washington, Lowe realized a large battle was brewing. He sent a message to have Intrepid, inflated as he made a “mad gallop for the balloon camp.” On arrival he realized that it would take an hour to fill Intrepid, but the Constitution was already filled. Spotting a ten-inch camp kettle, Lowe had a makeshift valve created, “transfusing” gas from one balloon to the other. Back up in the air, Lowe “made an observation that showed that the Confederates were marching … [to] attack our troops on the right bank of the Chickahominy before the completion of the bridge would permit those on the left bank to join them. This would mean the destruction of our army.” Lowe sent dispatches alerting McClellan.

U.S. Gen. Edwin “Bull” Sumner was ordered to cross the Chickahominy. An engineer protested that floodwaters were breaking the bridges making the crossing not only unsafe but impossible. After 43 years in the army, Sumner had a “narrow focus” and could not be deterred. “Impossible!” Sumner roared, “Sir, I tell you I can cross. I am ordered!”

On the bridge “men went in up to their waists; horses floundered and fell down.” After the Lower

Prof. Lowe replenishing Intrepid from balloon Constitution; May 1862; Colorization © 2012 civilwarincolor.com courtesy civilwarincolor.com/cwn. (Library of Congress)

August 2019

Bridge was swept away, the men crossed over a “Grapevine crossing.” Five of Edmund Kirby’s Battery I, 1st U.S. Artillery, guns made the crossing; one gun stuck in the mud. The infantry and battery slogged on, arriving near Fair Oaks, Va., about 5:30 p.m.; just in time to save the Federal position.

Despite Lowe’s assertions that his dispatches saved the army from a major defeat, the use of the Balloon Corps steadily diminished after the Peninsula Campaign. After the May 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville, Va., the Balloon Corps was dismantled. Its legacy is as the forerunner of the modern artillery observer, responsible for directing fire on to a target. While the Federal Balloon Corps did have its supporters, one of the more surprising is C.S. Gen. Edwin Porter Alexander.

Before he was a general, artillerist Alexander was tasked as the military observer in the Confederate’s balloon. Alexander saw the Battle of Gaines Mill from a balloon. He was “sure that on certain occasions skilled observers in balloons could give information of priceless value.” After the war Alexander remarked, “I have never understood why the enemy abandoned the use of military balloons early in 1863 after having used them extensively up to that time. Even if the observers never saw anything, they would have been worth all the cost for the annoyance and delays they caused us in trying to keep our movements out of their sight.”

Sources:

• Govan, Dr. Gilbert E., A Different Valor: The Story of General Joseph E. Johnston, C.S.A.

• Sears, Stephen, W., To the Gates of Richmond; The Peninsula Campaign

• Alexander, E.P., Pickett’s Charge, The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Volume 33, page 465

• Holmes, Richard., Falling Upwards

• Scott, Joseph C., The Infernal Balloon: Union Aeronautics

During the American Civil War, Army History No. 93 (Fall 2014), pp. 6-27

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.

Civil War News

Bridge built by 15th NY Vol.; Chickahominy River, Va., May-August 1862; Colorization © 2012 civilwarincolor.com courtesy civilwarincolor.com/cwn. (Library of Congress)

The Soldiers’ Journal

Shifting her focus from the hospitals, where she worked as a nurse tending to wounded and ill Federal soldiers, Amy Morris Bradley began publishing The Soldiers’ Journal on February 17, 1864, in Alexandria, Va. Bradley, a Maine native and prewar teacher, printed an eight-page edition each week, from inception until June 1865. Eventually surpassing 20,000 subscribers in the North, each issue contained reports from the battlefront, soldier letters, information on hospitals and relief

agencies, and many more topics. Researchers can access the surviving copies of the Journal for free, thanks to the Library of Congress and the ‘Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers’ website, at https:// chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ lccn/sn89038091/. Other online repositories also offer the Journal, including the Library of Virginia, https://virginiachronicle.com, and a subscription site, http://www.newspapers.com.

Regardless of the access method,

On August 5, “Seventeen of the enemy’s vessels, (fourteen ships and three iron-clads) passed Fort Morgan this morning.”

each website provides the ability to conduct keyword searches, save and print results, and the opportunity to view the actual digitized pages. Except for a few missing editions, most weekly issues remain from 1864; six exist from 1865.

Given the August date of this column, let us turn to a critical event, that took place during the month in 1864 – the Battle of Mobile Bay. On August 5, Admiral David Farragut ran his 18 ships past Forts Morgan and Gaines, entered Mobile Bay, rendered the CSS Tennessee dead in the water, and sank the CSS Gaines. A search of ‘Mobile Bay’ at the Library of Congress site yielded the account shown in the clipping.

Go online, check out the other issues available, conduct your own searches, and next month, we will explore another primary source. Until then, good luck in researching the Civil War!

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

August 17, 1864 cover of The Soldiers’ Journal.

Deadlines

for Advertising or Editorial Submissions is the 20th of each month. Email to: ads@civilwarnews.com

Amy Morris Bradley. (Duke University Library, Amy Morris Bradley Papers.)

William and Stiles Hinson at Fussell’s Mill

By Marc Ramsey

During the spring of 1864, in the continuing effort to bolster the Richmond, Va., defenses, five veteran companies of cavalry were brought up from South Carolina to join the Holcombe Legion in Virginia, and with them, form a new cavalry regiment to be known as the 7th South Carolina Cavalry. This unit, along with the recently mounted Hampton Legion, and the new 24th Virginia Cavalry, would constitute a brigade under South Carolina Brigadier General Martin Gary, and would become part of the force tasked with defending Richmond. As a specific counter to Union General August Kautz’s Union Cavalry Division, Army of the James, Gary’s Brigade would see continuous action north of the James River, most often on the far left of the Confederate defensive positions. Among the troops called up from the Palmetto State were two young brothers from James Island, just outside Charleston, 2nd Lt. William G. Hinson and his younger brother Stiles, of the Rutledge Mounted Rifles and Horse Artillery. From the time they received their marching orders on April 6, 1864, through the end at Appomattox Court House, William kept an almost diary of the 7th SC Cavalry and its activities; it is from this journal that the following account of the fighting at Fussell’s Mill is drawn, as well as the story of the subsequent return home of the younger brother Stiles’s body.

In August 1864, with Grant bogged down in his siege works at Petersburg, Union forces under Major General Winfield S. Hancock were sent to outflank the Confederate lines north of the James; an earlier attempt failed the month before. After crossing the river at their Deep Bottom bridgehead, and failing to make progress in direct attacks against Confederate Major General Charles W. Field’s Confederate defenders, Hancock dispatched Maj. Gen. David B. Birney’s X Corps to try and turn the Confederate left flank at Fussell’s Mill. Field called for help, and Gary’s Brigade was sent to block the Yankee advance and hold the line long enough for infantry reinforcements to come up. In the intense August heat and humidity, the Union advance was slowed, and when they finally did get to the earthworks near the mill, they found Gary’s dismounted cavalrymen dug in and ready for them, resolutely holding on until Field could bring up

infantry support. Here we join Lt. Hinson’s contemporary account:

August 15 – Joined the regiment in breastworks at 11 o’clock near Fussell’s Mill… my poor brother had received a mortal wound about 12 o’clock the day before, was carried to the hospital in Richmond by R. Bee and died at 2:30 that night. An affectionate son and brother and a gallant soldier, may he rest in peace and his fall inspire others to strike the harder for our country’s cause. Poor Mother! It will be a sudden blow to her to bear in her old age, but his having died as a soldier would wish, doing his country’s duty, I trust may be some consolation to her. Skirmishers engaged, slept in the trenches.

August 16 – Advanced to meet the enemy on Charles City Road. Made a charge, dismounted, drove them back near Deep Run, White Oak Swamp. My Company (G) led the charge. Captured a number of horses. Stribling prisoner, Garrison wounded. Very Hot. Suffering for water; many men fainted. A shower of rain came up just as we halted from the charge; men dropped on their knees to get a mouthful of water, much dust on the roads. Gens. Chambliss and Girardy killed. Gen. Lee complimented the cavalry, especially mentioning Gary’s Brigade. Returned to the trenches and slept in a rain. No blankets.

August 17 – In trenches. A little skirmishing going on. Yanks sent in a flag of truce to bury dead who had been killed the day before in attempt to take works when we were engaged at Deep Run. They took them for a short time only and were then routed and slaughtered, principally Negroes. Capt. Jeffers was taken sick and sent to the hospital. Left me in command.

August 18 – Was sent out to occupy rifle pits at 5 o’clock; was ordered to advance with whole line of skirmishers. We charged their rifle pits. My company took eight prisoners and killed two that we knew of and then laid down to await our line of battle, which did not advance after finding so heavy a body massed in our front. Robert Bee wounded in the foot. I returned and took up my position in the rifle pits. Was up all night. Men so worn out could scarcely keep them awake, although so near the enemy. I found Spann Jeffers asleep on duty standing up; he does not know I knew it.

August 25 – Visited spot where poor brother was mortally

wounded.

The fighting, skirmishing, and picketing would continue on an almost daily basis until the regiment was ordered into winter camp in early November. This gave time for many men to tend to more personal matters. One in particular deserves recounting as a touching example of similar stories unfolding throughout the South at that time. On Nov. 17, our chronicler Lt. Hinson records in his journal:

“Had poor Stiles’ body taken up and put aboard the cars to take home.” This was no small undertaking. Hinson first had to secure sick leave (he was quite ill at this time), then he had to go through Confederate bureaucratic channels for permission to re-inter his brother’s body. He then had to secure help in digging up and removing Stiles’s remains from the grave at Oakwood Cemetery in Richmond, arrange for a new casket, and hire a wagon to transport it to the Danville Railroad station. There he bought passage for himself and his precious burden on the train to Charleston. This was just the beginning of a journey that would not be easy.

November 24th – Started at seven and went 25 miles, when we found another engine had run off [the rails] ahead of us 15 miles from Greensboro. Started again at 9 o’clock. Just made connection at Greensboro at 11:30 o’clock. I could not get assistance to move the body to the other train, although hundreds of soldiers were standing around, until I met a few of the Hampton Legion and hired three Negroes just as the cars were leaving it; it only shows how hard and selfish we become when removed from softening influences and subjected to the hardships and roughness of camp life: one soon learns to think only of self. All were suffering from cold and hunger and all sensibilities appeared to be deadened; there was not a stove on the train and the wounds had not been dressed for days until they had become very offensive. Arrived at Charlotte at seven in the morning and paid $2 for a cup of unsweetened coffee.

November 25th – Left Charlotte at 7:30 and arrived at Chester, SC at 12, where we found the good and kind ladies had prepared a lunch for all the soldiers, the first kindness we had received since we left Richmond. The difference between North Carolina and the other states is very marked. You can tell on either side as you touch either Virginia or South

Carolina. It is the universal experience. Arrived at Columbia at 6:30 o’clock; stayed at the Home, having a bed but no covering.

November 26th – Left Columbia

4 A.M. met Mr. Wm Lebby at Branchville. At Orangeburg the ladies had a fine spread for the soldiers, at the home of the noble Mrs. Rowe. Arrived in Charleston at dark.

The next morning Lt. Hinson went to the Charleston waterfront and secured a boat. He also hired a wagon and several men to haul the coffin from the railway station to the docks and load it aboard the boat. He and the men then manned the oars for the long pull over to James Island, where they borrowed another wagon to convey his brother’s remains to the churchyard, where they then dug the grave.

November 28th – Carried the body over and landed at Godbers or Stiles Point. Got a wagon and buggy from Col. Joe Yates and buried the body at the Presbyterian Church, where God grant that it may rest in peace. Returned and spent the night at Mr. Lebby’s. Was quite sick during the night.

November 29th – Started at 6 o’clock for Graham Turnout and arrived at home at midday. Alas, it was a sad meeting with my poor mother.

Lt Hinson would slowly recover, and would return to the 7th SC Cavalry in Virginia on February 1, 1865. Wounded three times in the war, William Hinson survived to surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. He would live a long and productive life, much loved by his family and friends until 1919, when he would pass away and be buried in the churchyard of James Island

Presbyterian Church, next to his younger brother Stiles M. Hinson. We honor them by remembering them

From The 7th South Carolina Cavalry – to the Defense of Richmond by Marc Ramsey. NC, 2011, Broadfoot Publishing, Marc Ramsey is co-owner of Owens and Ramsey Historical Booksellers with his lovely wife Jill, who, for the past 24 plus years, have specialized in the buying, selling and trading of rare and collectible Civil War books, artifacts and paper items. They provide appraisals for estate planning, charitable deductions, or insurance purposes. They also love making recommendations to readers looking to expand their Civil War knowledge as well as providing customers with very rare and collectible volumes for their libraries. The Ramsey’s have an open shop at 2728 Tinsley Drive in Richmond, VA 23235, send out a monthly catalog, and can be seen at many Civil War Shows and conferences throughout the year. Call Marc at 804-272-8888 or visit their website at www.owensandramsey.com.

Gen. Martin Gary

Lieutenant William G. Hinson (left) and his younger brother Stiles M. Hinson (right), 7th SC Cavalry, of James Island, S.C.

Hollywood History

By Stephen Davis Special to Civil War News

Disney’s movie The Great Locomotive Chase (1956) was based on the Andrews railroad raid in Georgia in 1862. John Ford’s The Horse Soldiers (1959) was based on Benjamin Grierson’s cavalry raid in 1863, just as Alvarez Kelly (1966) related to Wade Hampton’s Beefsteak Raid in 1864.

We could go on about how filmmakers either recreate Civil War history, or reimagine it. Another instance of this is The Raid (1954) directed by Hugo Fregonese, based on the actual raid on St. Albans, Vt., led by Lt. Bennett H. Young on Oct. 19, 1864. In this one, Van Heflin stars as a Confederate officer, Maj. Neal Benton. He leads some twenty Southern cavalrymen out of Canada in a raid on St. Albans, a town fifteen miles south of the Canadian border. The movie gets the raid’s date correctly, but spins chronology by having Sherman marching across Georgia at the time; Sherman did not leave Atlanta for the sea until Nov. 16, 1864.

for Northern raids.

Traveling to Richmond, Young secured a meeting with Seddon and won approval. The lieutenant was instructed to scout out towns along the U.S.-Canada border suitable for raiding with some twenty men who had escaped Northern prisons and were in Canada. Secretary Seddon authorized Young’s men to loot and burn banks, stores, factories, and railroad stations. Seddon added particulars in a letter of August 20, 1864. “It is but right,” he wrote, “that the people of New

(Author’s collection)

England and Vermont especially, some of whose officers and troops have been foremost in these excesses and whose people have approved of their course, should have brought to them some of the horrors of such warfare.” The secretary added a hint as to his preferred targets; “you will visit Burlington and St. Albans.”

Confederate authorities envisioned a series of such raids; similarly, in the movie Major Benton tells his men that after St. Albans there would be more such forays.

Lieutenant Young and twenty

men slipped into St. Albans in small groups and found rooms in hotels on the night of October 18. Midafternoon of Oct. 19, they gathered in the street, took off their coats to show their Confederate uniforms and announced they were taking possession of the town in the name of the Confederate States. They ordered the citizens in the streets into the central square. While some men robbed banks and rounded up horses, others set fires with glass jars of Greek fire.

All of this is depicted in the movie. The Confederates, in brand-new spiffy uniforms, surprise the townspeople, rob their banks, and burn a lot of buildings before riding off. Federal cavalry arrive to chase them, but Benton’s troopers burn a bridge and foil the pursuit.

It’s actually a pretty nifty movie. Among Major Benton’s troops are Lee Marvin, who later won a Best Actor Oscar as the drunken Kid Shelleen in Cat Ballou [1965], and Peter Graves, Jim Phelps in TV’s “Mission Impossible.” It’s Graves/Captain Dwyer who tells Van Heflin that the men have scooped up $90,000; actually, it was closer to $20,000. The film’s love interest, Katy Bishop, is a Union officer’s widow played by Anne Bancroft; think Mrs. Robinson in

The Graduate.

In the actual event, some residents opened fire from windows; three Confederates were wounded. After about an hour Young and his band mounted up and rode off. In The Raid, a lone Federal portrayed by Richard Boone, Paladin in the “Have Gun, Will Travel” TV drama of 1957–63, fires on the Rebels, wounding a few.

Back to history. The few Federal soldiers in town gave chase to Young and his band. Eight miles off the Confederates burned a bridge to halt the pursuers.

Yup, this too is in the movie, when Major Neal looks back on the Yankees stalled on the other side of the river. In the actual event, the Southerners reached Canada about 9 p.m., changed back into civilian clothing and dispersed. Eventually Young and five of his men were caught and arrested in Quebec. U.S. authorities requested their extradition, but the Canadian government refused. They were ultimately released.

At the end of the movie, Katy consoles her son Larry, played by Tommy Rettig, of TV’s “Lassie,” as she remembers what Neal, who lost his family and home to Sherman’s troops, once told her: if Southerners came and burned St. Albans, would you

The point in the film, though, is correct: just as Major Benton’s troopers seethe to exact revenge on the Vermont town for the depredations of Sherman’s Yankees against Southerners and their property, so too did Lieutenant Young seek retaliation for the excesses being committed by Federals in 1864. He explained his ideas to Clement Clay and Jacob Thompson. Clay had been tapped by the Confederate government to slip into Canada and from there try to foment peace sentiment among disaffected Northerners. President Davis himself requisitioned $1 million for the operation out of a “secret service” fund administered by Secretary of State Judah Benjamin to accomplish this task. After hearing Young, Clay wrote Secretary of War James A. Seddon endorsing Young’s plan

Van Heflin

General Bennett H. Young Confederate Raider and a Man of Many Adventures by Oscar A. Kinchen, Ph.D.

The Story of the Confederate Northern Campaign Confederate Operations in Canada and the North by Oscar A. Kinchen. (Author’s collection)

Hugo Fregonese’s 1954 film The Raid opens by showing four illustrations from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper in November 1864. #3. Top center, shows the Southerners firing the bridge to block pursuing Union cavalry. #6. Shows a Confederate shooting a civilian in cold blood on the town sidewalk (which didn’t happen—but this is a New York newspaper). Lower center. Confederates rob a bank (true). Lower right. They wake up a civilian at gunpoint (also not documented).

understand?

A slight smile on her face suggests that she does.

Sources

• John M. Cassidy, Civil War Cinema: A Pictorial History of Hollywood and the War Between the States (Missoula, MT, 1986). Ch. 7, “Hollywood and History: Factual Events on Film” (pp. 113-32, with focus on The Raid, The Great Locomotive Chase, The Horse Soldiers and Alvarez Kelly).

• Robert H. Fowler, “Raid on St. Albans, Vt.” In Patricia L. Faust, ed., The Historical Times Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War (New York, 1986), p. 651.

• John W. Headley, “The Confederates Raid Vermont” in Philip Van Doren Stern, Secret Missions of the Civil War (New York, 1959). Pp. 242-46.

• Oscar A. Kinchen, Confederate Operations in Canada and the North: A Little-Known Phase of the American Civil War. North Quincy, MA, 1970.

• Oscar A. Kinchen, General Bennett H. Young: Confederate Raider and a Man of Many Adventures. West Hanover, MA, 1981.

• Roy Kinnard, The Blue & Gray on the Silver Screen: More Than Eighty Years of Civil War Movies. Secaucus, NJ, 1996. Pp. 132-35 (including cast of major characters in The Raid).

Steve Davis of Cumming, Ga., has long been interested in Hollywood’s depiction of American wars.

Some years ago he taught a course at Atlanta’s Oglethorpe University on “Studying America’s 20th Century Wars Through Film.”

Text was Frank J. Wetta and Stephen J. Culley, Celluloid Wars: A Guide to Film and the American Experience of War (1992). Featured films, which we viewed in their entirety on Saturday mornings, were All Quiet on the Western Front (1930); Sahara (1943); Paths of Glory (1957); Pork Chop Hill (1953); Patton (1970); and Go Tell the Spartans (1978—when offered a drink, Burt Lancaster answers, “Always”).

Globe Tavern or Weldon Railroad, August 1864

This column highlights prints from the Civil War, discusses their meaning, and most importantly, details what the print maker or artist was trying to achieve.

Like a few Civil War battles, the Battle of Weldon Railroad, Globe Tavern, or the Battle of Six Mile House, carried more than one name. The locus of the fight, over three steaming days in August 1864, occurred three miles south of Petersburg as Grant settled into the city’s siege. The rail line at that point connected Petersburg with Wilmington, N.C., and was vital to supplies for the besieged city.

The Federal force, the V Corps led by Major General Gouvernor Warren, began destroying the tracks near Globe Station around 9 a.m., the morning of the Aug. 18. An attempt by Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard’s three infantry brigades to dislodge Warren was not successful. The next day, Aug. 19, three Confederate brigades under Major General William Mahone, made impressive gains pushing the Federals away from their destruction of the rail line until the Federal IX Corps stopped them. Although the Union forces suffered nearly 3,000 casualties, they held their ground. The following day, Aug. 20, a Confederate war council planned a new offensive, which they tried to implement the next day, but the Federal troops had created a stronger counter defense snuffing out the rebels final attempt.

Bufford’s of Boston produced the lithograph print of the battle. It was drawn by Richard Holland, who previously has never been identified. Holland was a resident of North Bridgewater, Mass., who enlisted in the 9th Mass. Light Artillery, which is prominently featured center right in the print’s main scene of the last day’s fighting. He stated his occupation as painter. Holland served the entire war and later became a member of the GAR post #13, (Fletcher

Webster) in Brockton, Mass. He died January 12, 1906.1

Holland’s lithograph featured the three days of battle, August 18, 19, and 21. The 18th and 19th are depicted in the upper left and right corners as inserts. The main act in the drama, August 21, shows several Federal batteries and the 16th Maine, repelling Brigadier General Johnson Hagood’s South Carolina brigade, which lost 50%

of its men that day. Other units identified in the title margin are the 5th NY, the 1st NY artillery, and one regular army battery. The main character in the drama, the rail line, cuts across the main im age, showing the battle from the Federal prospective. The Federal line held, forcing Lee to off-load his supplies below Petersburg and ship them north to Richmond and Petersburg on wagons.

Etching on blade reads: PRESENTED TO MAJOR GENERAL WILLIAM MAHONE BY THE CITIZENS OF PETERSBURG VA IN APPRICIATION [sic] OF HIS SKILL ENERGY AND GALLANTRY IN DEFENCE [sic] OF THEIR CITY DURING THE CAMPAIGN OF 1864.

Battle of the Weldon Railroad August 21st, 1864. Drawn by R. Holland. J.H. Bufford’s Lith. Boston. (Library of Congress)

Major General William Mahone’s presentation sword. (Donald Tharpe collection, Jack Melton, photographer)

Holland and Bufford’s lithograph is undated, but it was probably executed shortly after the battle and probably from sketches and notes Holland prepared on the spot. As one Civil War dealer remarks: “The image is finely rendered and lithographed, presenting an almost photographic feel to the print.”

Endnote: Richard Holland, http://www. civilwardata.com/active/ hdsquery.dll?SoldierHistory?U&36767. See also John Horn, The Destruction of the Weldon Railroad: Deep Bottom, Globe Tavern, and Reams Station, August 14–15, 1864. Lynchburg, Va.: H. E. Howard, Inc., 1991; Robert E. L. Krick, “Weldon Railroad August 18–21, 1864.” Civil War Magazine 67 (April 1998): 22–27; Captain Charles H. Porter, “Operations Against the Weldon Railroad, August 18, 19, 21, 1864.” Papers of the Military Historical Society

of Massachusetts, 4: 243–66. Boston, The Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, 1906 and A. W. Greene, “Battle of the Weldon Railroad.” Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 18 Sep. 2012. Web. 25 Apr. 2019. First published: March 18, 2009 | Last modified: September 18, 2012.

Salvatore Cilella is retired after 43 years in the museum field. His last position was President and CEO of the Atlanta History Center. He is the author of several articles and books. His most recent books are Upton’s Regulars: A History of the 121st New York Volunteers in the Civil War (U. Press Kansas, 2009) and The Correspondence of General Emory Upton, 1856–1881 (U. Tennessee Press, 2017) edited. He is currently editing “Till Death do us Part, The Letters of Emory and Emily Upton, 1868–1870” to be published next year by the University of Oklahoma Press.

Spanish “Enfield” Rifles in the American Civil War

During the latter part of the 1850s, the Spanish military adopted a family of .577 caliber, percussion ignition, muzzleloading long arms based on the British Pattern 1853 “Enfield” series of arms. Like the British, the Spanish adopted both long barreled infantry rifle muskets, shorter barreled rifles, as well as a variety of other branches arms that included carbines for use by cavalry and artillery, as well as some specialty rifles for engineers and marines. The two patterns produced in the largest numbers and thus most likely to appear for sale at collector shows and on web sites are the Carabina Rayada Modelo 1857 (short rifle M1857) and the Fusil Rayado Modelo 1859 (long rifle M1859). These two models closely resembled the British P1856

Enfield short rifle and the P1853 Type III long Enfield rifle musket, respectively. Both had blued barrels, color case hardened locks, and walnut stocks.

The Modelo 1859 was a “three band,” full-length rifle musket with a 39.25-inch barrel and an overall length of 54.5 inches. Unlike the British long Enfield, the Spanish model was iron mounted rather than brass mounted, had its lower swivel screwed into the toe of the stock, rather than attached to the triggerguard bow, and the ramrod had a brass band around its head to protect the rifling. The rear sight of the M1859 was attached via a clamping band around the barrel, rather than soldered to the barrel like its British counterpart. The M1857 rifle was also iron mounted and even more closely resembled the British P1856 from which its design was derived. The two most obvious differences were the use of the clamping rear sight and the lack of a saber bayonet

lug, as the M1857 used an angular socket bayonet, like the musket, rather than a saber bayonet. As originally produced, the short rifle’s rear sight had rather tall side walls, but in 1859 the graduations for the rear sight were changed and after 1860 the rifles were produced with a rear sight with lower walls. It is likely that the change was the result of upgraded powder that allowed for a flatter projectile trajectory. A similar change was made in the later 1850s to Harpers Ferry rifled and long-range sighted M1841 Mississippi rifles, whose sights were re-graduated for essentially the same reason. Some additional minor changes in the design in addition to the sight change have led collectors to refer to these rifles as M1857/59.

The association of Spanish pattern percussion long arms and the American Civil War was first widely noted in William B. Edwards’ seminal work Civil War Guns. Edwards identified the M1857 Rifle as having been used during the war but hypothesized that the guns were carried by U.S. troops. In their books Firearms from Europe authors Hartzler, Whisker, Yantz, & Noe and Europeans Arms in the Civil War by Marc Schwalm and Klaus Hofmann, the authors provide some interesting documentation suggesting the Spanish arms may well have been purchased by the Confederate government.

Both sources initially refer to a letter sent to Theodore Lewis, a Confederate arms purchasing agent, dated July 19, 1861, from Confederate agents W.G. Betterton & J.E. Chalard. In the letter, 6,500 “Spanish Enfields” were reported to be in Havana, Cuba, and ready for shipment to the Confederacy at a price of $13 per gun. Schwalm & Hofmann quote additional portions of the letter that also offered 500 “Minié rifles with bayonets” at $26 each, 500 “artillery muskets with bayonets” at $12 each, 500 “cavalry revolvers, American patterns, latest improved” at $35 each and 2,500 “Enfield rifles new and complete” at $32.50 each.

Schwalm & Hofmann also quote additional period Confederate letters that talk about a small number of “Spanish Enfield rifles” being brought into the Confederacy

through Mexico during 1863. However, the paper trail does not end there. While the initial letter does not confirm the importation of the guns, only their availability; the following is concrete evidence that at least a handful of these guns entered America and were eventually sold as surplus by the Federal government. Whether these surplus guns were U.S. purchases or captured C.S. purchases is not immediately clear, but this new research proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that at least a few of the Spanish-made rifles made landfall in America. The following documentation comes from the National Archives and was kindly provided to me by Civil War import arms researcher and author David Noe.

All the following comes from the U.S. Government publication R6 156-124, better known as Abstract of Reports of Sales of Ordnance Stores: 1864–1907. Within these reports, the following listings were found for the sale of “.577 Spanish Rifles:” September 27, 1880: 56 pieces were sold @ $.35 each to Francis Bannerman, all listed as “Unserviceable” (Volume 5, page 373); October 25, 1881: 1 piece was sold to S.R. Starr for $1.00, listed as “Unserviceable” (Volume 6, page 27); December 3, 1881: 334 pieces were sold @ $.78 each to Simon Belcher, all listed as “New & Serviceable” (Volume 6, page 38). One other gun is listed as being sold to Charles Townsend for $1, also unserviceable (Volume 6, page 217)

This information indicates that for whatever reason, the United States government was in possession of at least 392 “Spanish Enfields” after conclusion of the American Civil War, which they subsequently sold off. However, there is some more new evidence that helps establish even further the connection between Spanish rifles and the Confederacy.

A number of long-time collectors and researchers have long postulated that the Confederacy received at least two batches of Spanish rifles. The first batch, in late 1861 or early 1862, has always been associated with the famous Kentucky Orphan Brigade. The Orphan Brigade was formed from Kentucky regiments mustered into Confederate service. Because the state of Kentucky never officially joined the Confederacy, these regiments were considered “orphaned” as these soldiers fought for the Confederacy without the support of their home state, which never seceded. The brigade included the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 9th Kentucky volunteer infantry regiments. The guns with a Kentucky association are the Spanish M1857/59 Rifle and are

inevitably dated “1861” on the lock and typically have a serial number below 500 on the lock, stock, and breech.

A second group of Spanish rifles appears to have entered the Confederacy in late 1863 or 1864 and are usually 1863 dated. These guns have higher serial numbers, typically in the, mid 3,000 to mid 4,000 range. A July 1, 1864, article in the Spanish newspaper La Iberia reads in part: “Units of the Spanish Army in Cuba are currently equipped with expensive and inefficient Liège rifles, while La Euscalduna (a Spanish arms contractor) has to sell their precision weapons to the Confederate South Commissioners, eager to buy them.” Additional period documentation of at least some of these later imports appears in the Official Records of the War of Rebellion. In a letter dated December 22, 1863, C.S. Major General Bankhead Magruder reported from his headquarters in Texas that “300 Spanish Rifles” had been recently received. These would have likely been the 1863 dated guns that collectors occasionally encounter today. However, the Official Records sheds a little light on the earlier importation of the guns, and this is what I have spent some more time researching.

The association of the 1861 dated Spanish Enfields with the Orphan Brigade originated with an identified Spanish M1857/59 rifle in a private collection that is concretely identified to a member of Colonel Hiram Hawkins 5th Kentucky Infantry. Hawkins helped establish the 5th Kentucky and eventually became the Regiment’s colonel. Hawkins also helped outfit the unit out of his own pocket, including the purchase of a number of imported rifles. While no history of the unit officially identifies these guns, there is much circumstantial evidence that there were a number of Spanish Enfields included in that purchase. In addition to the identified extant example, there have been a handful of Spanish Enfields that have surfaced in Kentucky, typically with a strong provenance and family story of Confederate Civil War use. These guns tend to appear in two states of condition: quite good or fairly rough. This is easily explained by the fact that the original 5th Ky. was mustered out of service on October 20, 1862, and then reformed. The original members were offered the option to go home with an honorable discharge, rejoin the newly reformed 5th Ky., or join another of the many Southern units being formed in Kentucky at that time. This explains the very good condition guns, as they likely went

home with soldiers who opted out. In fact, the identified gun noted above has this story associated with it. The guns of the men who stayed to fight further would necessarily show significantly more wear than those that went home in the fall of 1862. The final piece of the puzzle as to why Hawkins purchased Spanish guns was recently revealed while doing some research on the Orphan Brigade; that puzzle piece is William Preston. Preston, who would eventually serve as the division commander for the Fifth, was a Kentuckian who had a long pre-Civil War political and military service record. Preston served with distinction in the Mexican War as Lt. Col. of the 4th Ky. volunteers. After that war he entered politics and became a very powerful and well-known Whig politician. When the Whig party dissolved, Preston joined the Democratic Party and threw his political support to Democratic presidential candidate James Buchanan. After the election President Buchanan repaid Preston by making him the Minister to Spain, and for the next few years Preston was based in Madrid. In fact, Preston was on his way back to America when the war broke out. A quick search of the Official Records shows that with the coming of the war, the Confederate government relied on Preston to help them establish contacts in Spain for acquiring arms. While Preston was skeptical about the availability and quality of Spanish arms, he appears to have been more than willing to help the Confederacy obtain whatever arms were available. Additional records reveal that Preston returned to the South via Cuba. This dovetails with the letter from Cuba and the time line works out well. All this circumstantial evidence provides strong support for stories about Confederate Enfield pattern rifles manufactured in Spain. It is worth noting that the letter regarding the 6,500 guns available for shipment were likely contractor made M1859 rifle muskets sent to Cuba as part of a program to upgrade the weapons in the hands of Spanish colonial troops, a problem alluded to in the Spanish newspaper story quoted earlier. The huge difference

in price between the various arms offered in the letter suggests that the guns in the $12-$26 price range were Spanish manufacture and those priced above $30 were arms procured from other countries, likely English made Enfields, and as the letter notes, American pattern revolvers. The M1857/59 rifles that appear to have actually been imported were Spanish manufactured guns marked Madrid on their locks with Spanish military proofs on their barrels. It seems likely the guns passed through Cuba as a place of transshipment, as did some other Confederate imports, and ran the blockade for delivery to Hawkins’ men.

The accompanying photos illustrate a classic example of a potentially Confederate purchased Spanish Modelo M1857/59 rifle. The gun is dated 1861 and has the relatively low serial number 499. Like many non-interchangeable parts European military arms of the period, the Spanish rifles are serial numbered on most of the major components to enable reassembly if the guns were dismantled in a group. These numbers are usually found on lock, stock, and barrel and sometimes appear on other smaller parts.

The lock is marked in three lines, forward of the hammer with a Spanish Crown / Madrid / 1861. The left angled breech flat shows a Spanish Crown over the letters AR, indicating government arms, with the source of the gun indicated by the letter “T” underneath. It is worth noting that the Spanish relied on a variety of sources to supply their long arms, much like the British military did. These sources included Spanish government arsenals, Spanish contractors (usually based in Eibar in the Basque region of Spain), and foreign contractors. English made Spanish pattern guns appear on the collector market from time to time, particularly the M1859 rifle musket, but do not appear to have any Civil War association at this time.

While the research is ongoing, it appears that William B. Edwards was initially correct in his belief that the Spanish M1857/59 rifle was imported for use during the Civil War. However, his assertion

that these were Northern purchases appears to be incorrect, as it now seems certain that at least a handful of these Spanish rifles were purchased by the Confederacy.

Tim Prince is a full-time dealer in fine & collectible military arms from the Colonial Period through WWII. He operates College Hill Arsenal, a web-based antique arms retail site. A long time collector & researcher, Tim has been a contributing author to two major book projects about Civil War era arms including The English Connection and a new book on southern retailer marked and Confederate used shotguns. Tim is also a featured Arms & Militaria appraiser on the PBS Series Antiques Roadshow.

Overall obverse view of Spanish M1857/59 rifle #499. (All photos by Tim Prince)

Reverse overall view of Spanish M1857/59 rifle #499.

Close up view of the lock of Spanish M1857/59 rifle lock showing the Madrid/1861 lock markings and serial number 499.

Close up of the counterpane of Spanish M1857/59 rifle showing the proof marks and serial number 499.

Close up of the unique clamping base 1859 pattern rear sight used on the M1857/59 Spanish Enfield rifle and rifle musket.

Muzzle area of a Spanish M1857/59 rifle showing the 3-groove rifling and the correct pattern brass banded ramrod.

The Battle of Champion Hill American Battlefield Trust News

HINDS COUNTY, Miss.—

American Battlefield Trust Honors Battlefield Preservation Champions at Annual Conference

National nonprofit recognizes outstanding leaders dedicated to preserving hallowed ground in Kentucky and Tennessee

LEXINGTON, Ky.—During

the annual gathering of its members in Lexington this week, American Battlefield Trust president James Lighthizer recognized four outstanding battlefield preservation advocates with the organization’s preservation awards.

“The fight to protect our nation’s hallowed grounds requires dedication, passion, and hard work from individuals throughout the United States,” Lighthizer said. “The individuals and organizations that we honor in Lexington are an unwavering force in the struggle to save these vulnerable links to our past. Their work today leaves a preservation legacy that will benefit generations to come.” Since the inception of its battlefield preservation awards in 2001, the Trust has honored a wide variety of individuals and groups for their achievements in protecting endangered battlefields. Previous winners include historians, scholars, National Park Service personnel, lawmakers, and local preservation partners. Despite such disparate backgrounds, all have made unique and lasting contributions to historic battlefield preservation. The 2019 preservation awards presented in Kentucky are:

Edwin C. Bearss Lifetime Achievement Award: The Trust is honoring Robert Hicks of Franklin, Tenn., with the Edwin C. Bearss Lifetime Achievement Award. As a New York Times bestselling author, Hicks’ novels have brought national attention to the Franklin community and the cause of battlefield preservation. With the future of the Franklin battlefield in the balance, Hicks re-enlivened the community’s spirit of preservation in 2005

through co-founding Franklin’s Charge, a broad-based coalition dedicated to recapturing Franklin’s Civil War legacy, and has helped the Trust reclaim and restore nearly 200 acres of hallowed ground to date. The Trust is privileged to work side-by-side with Hicks and others in Franklin inspired by his passion on what the National Park Service has called “the largest battlefield reclamation in North American history.” The award is named after renowned historian and preservationist Edwin C. Bearss, who was its first recipient in 2001 and again received the award in 2018 for his dedication to battlefield preservation and Civil War history.

Shelby Foote Preservation Legacy Award: The Trust presented the Shelby Foote Preservation Legacy Award to Joni House, manager of Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site. House has been instrumental in preservation efforts at Perryville that have enabled the Trust to save 1,027 acres of that battlefield. She recently worked with the American Battlefield Protection Program to complete an economic impact study of Kentucky’s battlefields. House also serves as president of the Kentucky Military Heritage Sites Alliance. The award is named after late historian and author Shelby Foote, who dedicated his life to educating Americans on the Civil War.

State Leadership Awards: The Trust awarded its State Leadership Award to two state entities that have made lasting contributions to the cause of battlefield preservation in Kentucky, the Kentucky Heritage Land Conservation Fund (KHLCF), and Kentucky State Parks.

KHLCF is the primary source of state funding for the purchase and management of natural areas and has funded Kentucky’s acquisition of more than 130 acres at the Perryville battlefield. Kentucky State Parks is responsible for operating and stewarding more than 40 resorts, recreation parks, and historic sites across the state and has played a significant role in the preservation of the Perryville battlefield since 1936. Kentucky State Parks has also done important work to protect and steward other battlefield sites across the state, including Blue Licks, Fort Boonesborough, and Old Fort Harrod.

On May 16, 1863, following the Union capture of Jackson, Miss., Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s 32,000 advancing Union soldiers met 22,000 Confederates under Maj. Gen. John C. Pemberton in a fierce struggle for a vital crossroads roughly halfway between Vicksburg and Jackson.

Pemberton posted his divisions on high ground in a three mile line covering the roads from Jackson. Grant’s men moved west along the Jackson Road and met Pemberton’s men at Champion’s Hill. Outflanked, Pemberton stretched his line to hold back the Yankees, advancing all across his front.

As the Union soldiers tried to reform and consolidate their gains, they were nearly swept away by a counterattack led by Brig. Gen. John Bowen’s Division of Missourians and Arkansans.

After Grant ordered more men forward Bowen’s Confederates were themselves driven off, initiating a general retreat. Confederate Brig. Gen. Lloyd Tilghman was killed while directing a desperate rearguard action that enabled most of the Confederate army to escape towards Vicksburg.

The decisive Union victories at Champion Hill and a following engagement at the Big Black River the next day were instrumental in forcing the Confederates into a doomed position inside the Vicksburg fortifications.

The Battle of Champion Hill was the largest and bloodiest action of Grant’s Vicksburg Campaign. Find more history and resources at www.battlefields. org/championhill.

Edwin C. Bearss

“In May 2019, the Trust proudly unveiled a monument in honor of Ed’s truly monumental contributions to teaching American history and preserving American battlefields. The monument will stand on Ed’s beloved Champion

Hill, and is a small token of the Trust’s unwavering thanks and appreciation.

Badly wounded by Japanese machine-gun fire in New Guinea during World War II, Ed Bearss spent 26 months in military hospitals where he devoted countless hours to reading history. A Montana native educated in a one-room schoolhouse, Ed began his long and storied National Park Service career in 1955 at Vicksburg National Military Park, where he helped locate the sunken Union gunboat USS Cairo. From 1981 to 1994, Ed served as the chief historian for the National Park Service.

Since his retirement in 1995, Ed has continued to give lectures and battlefield tours, writing and appearing on numerous TV programs, including Ken Burns’ The Civil War. Ed has received many honors, including the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Distinguished Service Award. His dedication to battlefield preservation and Civil War history prompted the American Battlefield Trust to name its Lifetime Achievement Award after him, and he was its first recipient in 2001. In 2018, the organization rededicated the award and again presented it to the longtime trustee, who turned 95 that June.

Learn more at www.battlefields.org/Edwin_Bearss.

The American Battlefield Trust is dedicated to preserving America’s hallowed battlegrounds and educating the public about what happened there and why it matters today. The nonprofit, nonpartisan organization has protected more than 50,000 acres associated with the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and Civil War, including 2,856 acres in Kentucky and 3,516 acres in Tennessee. Learn more at www.battlefields.org.

On Friday, May 3, 2019,

James Lighthizer, President of the American Battlefield Trust, unveils a monument to Edwin C. Bearss, standing right, at Champion Hill in Hinds County, Mississippi. (American Battlefield Trust)

Edwin C. Bearss seen at his home in Virginia. (Buddy Secor)

Betcha haven’t seen this one!

By Stephen Davis Special to Civil War News

Quick! What’s this view—a photograph taken by one of the Civil War’s most prominent cameramen?

Chances are that you’ve seen a slightly different view of this same scene in

• Francis Trevelyan Miller’s Photographic Views of the Civil War (1911), vol. 3, p. 135;

• Lamont Buchanan, A Pictorial History of the Confederacy (1951), p. 243;

• William C. Davis, ed., The Image of War: 1861–1865 (1983), vol. 5, p. 292; or

• Jeff L. Rosenheim, Photography and the American Civil War (2013), p. 210.

Hint: it’s also in countless histories of the Atlanta Campaign. In the Brig. Gen. Clement Anselm Evans Memorial Research Collection—

AKA my personal library at home—I found fifteen books in which the companion photograph has been published. But this one? Nada. We’re fortunate to have found it in the Orlando M. Poe Collection at the U.S. Military Academy—its collection of George N. Barnard photographs. To our knowledge, it’s never been published…

…until now, on page 112 of our new book, 100 Significant Photographs of the Civil War—Atlanta Campaign. The page is reproduced below.

100 Significant Civil War Photographs: Atlanta Campaign

“The best little book on Barnard”

A Less Familiar View

This Barnard photograph is also at West Point, but it has not been published (so far as we know). The photographer set his camera and tripod so as to emphasize the chimneys of the Atlanta Rolling Mill.

Established in 1857, the facility specialized in rolling iron rails for the South’s growing railroad lines. Located beside the Georgia railroad east of downtown, the plant had six big furnaces—five of whose chimneys Barnard captured in this picture. After the war began, the mill turned out armor plate for the South’s ironclad warships.

When Sherman’s armies were nearing Atlanta, the mill’s valuable machinery was hauled by train to Columbia, S.C. By July 10, a correspondent for the Montgomery Advertiser reported that “Atlanta has been stripped of public stores and works.”

In the night of September 1-2, as Hood’s army abandoned Atlanta, the Georgia militia and Confederate cavalry destroyed the ammunition train and set fire to the nearby mill buildings.

After Federal troops entered the city, William Wallace of the 3rd Wisconsin saw “steam boilers, fly wheels, great piles of iron in various stages of manufacture,” but of the mill itself only the chimneys stood. Illinois private Laforest Dunham also saw the wreckage, noticing “lots of plateing for gun boats that they could not get off”—Confederate railroads proved unable to transport the rolling mill’s iron plate to the coastal facilities where the ironclad gunboats were being built.

The American Civil War was the rst war in which both sides widely used entrenchments, repeating ri es, ironclad warships, and telegraphed communications. It was also the rst American War to be extensively photographed. Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner and Timothy O’Sullivan are famous for having made iconic photographs in the Civil War’s eastern theater. George N. Barnard deserves to be ranked in this top tier for his photographic work in the war’s western theater. A civilian photographer hired by Gen. William T. Sherman’s chief engineer to take pictures of forti cations around Atlanta, Barnard took several hundred of them in and around the city in the fall of 1864. His most famous is the site of Union Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson’s death in the battle of Atlanta, July 22, 1864. Thus far, no comprehensive, de nitive listing has been made of the photographer’s work. For this book we have chosen a hundred images we deem “signi cant.”

Ordering info:

$19.95 plus $4.50 s&h South Carolina residents add 9% sales tax

Going Paperless

An errant tee shot from the Atlanta Country Club’s 13th hole will transport the ball a century and a half back in time. The ball will fly out of bounds, out of the prosperous suburban neighborhood, and onto a wooded hill overlooking ruined stone buildings on Sope Creek.

These ruins were once the Marietta Paper Mill, one of the few facilities in the South manufacturing paper, a product in short supply from the outset of the Civil War. The mill’s destruction by Union forces on July 5, 1864, contributed to the already severe problems that plagued Confederate newspapers. Lack of paper wasn’t the journalists’ only headache, but it was a major one, and one that hampered their operations from the start of the conflict to its finish.

Most of the paper used by Southern newspapers and, of course, by other users of the product, including musket cartridges. was imported from the North or Europe. The interruption of these supplies quickly caused shortages, price increases, and often a diminution in quality.

A review of newspaper articles published during the war shows how owners struggled to continue their operations in the face of these difficulties.

On June 12, 1861, the Bellville Countryman, a Texas weekly, published “but half a sheet,” because of the scarcity of paper and warned readers to expect more of the same and worse. “Unless the blockade is raised before long many newspapers will have to suspend for want of the article….” Four months later the Athens (Ga.) Southern Watchman cut its size to a half sheet and told readers “We were obliged to yield.” The same edition reported that, “One third of the papers in the Confederate States have been entirely discontinued; while of the remainder, more than one half are published either on a half sheet or have been reduced in size.”

In November the Austin State Gazette reported that only two newspapers in its “exchange” were still printed on broad sheet. That same month the Charleston Mercury reduced its size. In March 1862 the Washington

(Ark.) Telegraph announced that it too was shrinking as it reminded readers “the Paper Mill at Nashville is in the hands of the enemy [and] the blockade still exists.”

Even as they conserved paper by printing on half sheets, and by using smaller type, shrinking margins, and devoting less space to ads, newspapermen still scrambled to get the paper they needed—and they suffered sticker shock when they did find some for sale. On April 22, 1862, the Southern Watchman skipped an issue; there was no paper to print it on. The following week the Watchman announced that an ample supply had arrived, “but oh! what a price – $7.50 per ream,” double the price paid a year earlier. Worse still, the Watchman had a collections problem. How can a publisher pay for his supplies when some customers “refuse or fail to pay”?

As one would expect, the newspapers had to raise their own prices. The Augusta (Ga.) Daily Chronicle and Sentinel went up to $8 per year in July 1861. The paper’s proprietor and the owner

of the Augusta Constitutionalist made a joint announcement about their agreed-upon terms, which included cash on the barrel head. (It seems Messrs. Jones and Gardner were not hampered by anti-trust laws.) The publishers of two Savannah newspapers made a similar joint announcement the following February.

In April 1862, the Charleston Mercury carried news about the price of four Richmond papers, which ranged from $8 to $12 per year. The Dallas Herald doubled its rates in early 1863 to $5 per year. Articles in the Athens (Ga.) Southern Banner and the Columbus (Ga.) Enquirer provide lessons in newspaper economics, describing the cost of various supplies and services. Even with higher subscription rates they were losing money with every copy they sold.

Of course, the subscribers were in a pinch too. In July 1861, even before the first major battle of the war, the Bellville Countryman told its Texas readers that it was willing to barter. Running a newspaper “requires money,” the editor wrote, “or something that will sustain life. Country publishers can use much of the produce of the farm and workshop in lieu of money.” The following October the Athens Southern Watchman also invited cash-strapped readers to pay in “any kind of country produce – corn, wheat, flour, oats, rye, butter, hay, shucks, fodder, chickens, eggs – any thing that can be eaten or worn, or that will answer for fuel.” Mind you, this was in 1861, not 1865.

The papers’ prices went up; their size went down; and their overall quality suffered. Brown paper was common. Other shortcuts produced bizarre results.

In December 1862 the Natchez Daily Courier received an issue from one of its exchanges “printed on the white side of wallpaper.” The following March the

Richard McMurry holding replica of July 2, 1863, newspaper from Vicksburg, printed on wallpaper. This edition was set but not printed when the city fell. Finding the paper typeset and ready to go, some clever Yankee printers added an item announcing the Confederates’ surrender.

(Gould Hagler)

Mobile Register and Advertiser joked about receiving a paper from Louisiana that was beautifully illustrated “by masters – of the school of paperhangers.”

Of course, the shortage was not limited to print paper, but to paper used for all the facets of the business. The Washington Telegraph didn’t report having to print on wallpaper, but in May 1862 advised that “We have used up all the supply of our editorial office, and invaded our stocks of law stationery. At length we have destroyed all our legal blanks by writing editorials on their backs, and now we use the yellow ruled leaves, we have from an old ledger.”

And regular folks, too, not just journalists, had trouble getting the paper they needed. The Columbus Enquirer received a letter to the editor inked on “a leaf from an account book of a mercantile house…just one hundred

Gould B. Hagler, Jr.

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.

Ruins of Marietta Paper Mill.

(Gould Hagler)

years ago – 1762.” That reader was desperate to have his say.

With supplies restricted and prices rising, entrepreneurs saw opportunities in the paper mill business. Some mills were already in operation, of course, like our facility adjacent to the 13th hole. Others were built during the war at Mobile, Atlanta, and Manchester, Ga. There were plans to build paper mills in Texas and Louisiana; it is unclear if these plans came to fruition. Sometimes new mills were just hoped for in newspaper editorials. In April 1863 the Natchez Daily Courier listed 20 paper mills operating in six Confederate states.

No one will be surprised to learn that these businesses confronted challenges just as severe as those faced by their newspaper customers. They too had to battle for raw materials and deal with labor shortages, inflation, routine perils like fires, and un-routine perils like invading armies. One mill refugeed south when an enterprising Georgian bought mill machinery in Tennessee in 1863, “just before a raid of the enemy swept through the region in which it was located.”

Newspapers became advocates of recycling. “Rags! Rags! Rags!” blared numerous headlines above articles urging people to save their rags, assuring them that the paper mills were paying good prices for the material. By January 1863 the price of rags had risen 800%, according to the Charleston Mercury, and not just cloth rags were sought. The papers begged readers to save ashes, scraps of rope and thread, refuse cotton, flax, hemp, corn husks— anything that could be pulped and processed into paper.

Some mills limited sales to customers who helped supply the desperately-needed raw materials; consequently, newspapers did more than advocate. Bring your rags to us, they pleaded, and we will pay top dollar. “10,000 Pounds Of Rags Wanted at This Office, For Which the Highest Market Price Will be Paid!!” shouted the Columbus Enquirer on Oct. 13, 1863.

With the ashes, corn husks, and whatnot, the quality suffered. The Atlanta Southern Confederacy complained in early 1863 that much of the paper bought from the Marietta mill was unsatisfactory and would not run through the press.

For good paper or bad, prices continued to rise. A ream of paper cost the Athens Southern Watchman $15 in May 1863, up from the pre-war price of $3.50. In Texas things were much worse. In August the San Antonio Herald and the Galveston Weekly News

paid $100 per ream, according to the latter publication on August 26. Eight months later the Austin State Gazette said “the same amount of paper that formerly cost us $3.50 in specie, now costs us $360 in Confederate money.” This alarming fact demonstrates the collapse of the currency’s value as much as it does the increase in the price of paper. By this point in the war some papers were demanding payment in specie, as were the paper mills.

There were some accusatory editorials with headlines like “Profits of Extortion,” but these were rare. It seems that the newsmen understood that their suppliers were as stressed, strained, stretched, and starved as they were. There were also complaints that the blockade runners did not allot sufficient space to this vital cargo. The government too was shortsighted, say the editors, when it did not exempt newspaper hands and paper mill workers from the draft. The agent for the Marietta Paper Mill explained in a letter to the Atlanta Intelligencer (Sept. 10, 1863) that he would be able to supply no more paper until the government detailed workers to man his machines. “I do not exactly comprehend how it is that Government agents insist upon the absolute necessity for the Government to have paper,” he wrote, “and yet refuse us our hands.”

More and more papers suspended operations as the economy worsened with the war, and surely many a newspaperman went a-soldiering. The paperless editor of the Dallas Herald signed up early in 1862. Wartime newspapers contain scores of items on the shuttering of other papers. As the Columbus Enquirer put it, “We can but [express] our deep grief at the early loss of our boon companions, and pray that our fate be not too soon like theirs.”

The story of Southern newspapermen’s struggles during the Civil War is a tale of woe and hardship, but it is also a tale of persistence and resourcefulness. The publishers improvised and by one means or another made do for as long as they could.

The journalists also maintained their sense of humor: The Mobile paper in the spring of 1863 relayed a jape from the wags at the Winchester Bulletin, who advised “people in that region to write letters on the backs of one dollar bills, for the sake of economy.” Who said the money was worthless?

When forced to suspend, they bounced back as they could. The Dallas Herald ran an item in September 1863 welcoming the Marshall Republican back into

the brotherhood after a forced hiatus of several months. The Republican was again knocked down and again rose from the mat a year later, as the Galveston paper happily reported. As unlikely as it seems, two new papers were established in Texas late in the war: the Army and Navy Messenger in the fall of 1864, and another publication in 1865, less than two months before Appomattox. That required faith, but the founders had plenty of that. The other startup was the Texas Christian Herald, published by the Baptist State Convention.

Sources: The newspaper accounts used for this article were compiled by Vicki Betts, a librarian at the University of Texas at Tyler. Betts, Vicki, “Paper Manufacturing and Paper Shortages in the South, 1861–1865” (2016). Special Topics. Paper 18. http://hdl.handle. net/10950/790.

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.

All Hands on Deck!

General’s Presentation Sword

I received a phone call from the owner of a presentation sword given to General Alpheus Williams just prior to 2018 hurricane that threatened the South Carolina coast with mandatory evacuation. The sword had been in the family for five generations. I was asked if this sword should be taken inland and saved from potential storm damage. Since that call last year, I’ve been called back and asked the best way to market the sword after the family was informed that indeed the sword was valuable. The most transparent and reliable way to maximize money is usually an auction, the recommendation I usually suggest. This sword will be offered in the Poulin Auction, Fairfield, Maine, October 20. The

sword has not been seen by the public for a very long time and is totally unknown to the collector community. It is indeed a beautiful sword retained in its original casing with two sword belts and two regulation buff general’s sashes.

The sword was made by Bailey of Philadelphia though an agent mark of Canfield Brothers, Baltimore, with a Collins, Hartford, Conn., blade etched in a Tiffany style with four battle honors: “RAPPAHANOCK / ANTIETAM” and “WINCHESTER / CEDAR MOUNTAIN.” General Williams’ war record is extensive. He served as a brigade commander, division commander, and corps commander in the Army of the Potomac. He and his troops

Overall view of this unique and exceptional sword and scabbard.

Original “royal purple” lined sword case displaying General William’s sword and accessories including regulation general’s buff sash and bullion embroidered hat cord. (All photographs by Jack Melton)

Alpheus Starkey Williams (September 29, 1810 – December 21, 1878) was a lawyer, judge, journalist, U.S. Congressman, and a Union general in the American Civil War. (Library of Congress)

saw battle at Cedar Mountain, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Winchester, and Gettysburg. Williams was transferred to the Army of the Cumberland in October 1863 as commander of the 1st Division of the XXth Corps.

During the Atlanta Campaign, Williams and his men saw battle at Resaca, New Hope Church, Kolb’s Farm, Peach Tree Creek, and in the siege and capture of Atlanta. In November 1864, Williams was made commander of the XXth Corps, the first troops to enter Savannah. On January 12, 1865, Williams was breveted Major General. In the Carolinas Campaign, Williams fought in the battles of Averasboro and Bentonville.”

Williams was not a West Point graduate, and was often passed over for promotion, but consistently earned the praise of his superiors, and is widely considered among the best non-professional Civil War generals. He was a quiet and unassuming man, who refused to put himself forward or lobby for personal advancement.

To his soldiers, he was “Pap” Williams, a nickname he earned because he treated his men like they were his sons.

Gen. Williams wrote his daughter January 27, 1863, from winter quarters in Stafford, Va., concerning presentation of the sword:

….some sixty officers, Colonel Knipe, now commanding the brigade, received me with a very flattering speech, opened the box, and took out a most magnificent sword and a belt and sash, which he presented on the part of the officers. I was so taken by surprise, so affected by the manner in the mode the testimonial was made, so filled with recollections of the past several months that this gallant brigade has been under my command, of the many changes that death has made, that I fairly broke down and for the 2nd time since I have been in service, tears flowed freely. You can hardly realize how attached I have, too many of these officers who have been with me through so many trials, privatizations, and dangers. Of course it makes me very happy to know how they love me, as I know they do, sincerely. The sword is the most gorgeous thing I have seen, costing nearly $400. Nobody but the officers of my old brigade was permitted to subscribe…..

Preview for new 2019 biography by Jack Dempsey: Michigan’s Civil War CitizenGeneral: Alpheus S. Williams:

“Detroit’s Alpheus Starkey Williams never tired in service to his city or his country. A veteran of the Mexican-American War, he was a preeminent military figure in Michigan before the Civil War. He was a key link in forwarding the “Lost Order” before Sharpsburg, and served well at Gettysburg, the March to the Sea, and the Carolinas Campaign. His generalship at Antietam made possible the Emancipation Proclamation, and Meade and Sherman relied on his unshakable leadership. A steady hand in wartime and in peacetime, Williams was a Yale graduate, lawyer, judge, editor, municipal official, militia officer, diplomat, and congressman who stood on principle over party. With vivid battlefield accounts based on extensive primary research, award-winning author Jack Dempsey’s masterful biography tells the amazing story of this unsung hero.”

John is an certified appraiser with International Society of Appraisers specializing in Civil War memorabilia. He authenticates and evaluates other rare and valuable historic items as well. His website is www.civilwardealer.com. He is coauthor of the book Confederate Bowie Knives (2012) by Jack Melton, Josh Phillips and John Sexton, that was published by Mowbray Publishing, Inc.

The battle honors commemorate General Williams’ actions at the Rappahannock River and Antietam. (Jack Melton)

Regulation Civil War general’s sword belt with three bands of gold bullion on red Moroccan leather.

Exquisite etched blade, very typical of Tiffany high grade presentations.

Engraved presentation on scabbard between mounts reads: PRESENTED / TO / GENl. A.S. Williams. / by the Officers / OF THE OLD THIRD BRIGADE.

By Bruce W. Miller

The North-South Skirmish Association prides itself on its motto of “History, Competition and Camaraderie.” One of the many ways the Association does this is through youth competition.

Dependents and guests of N-SSA members who are under the age of 15 and not members of the Association (minimum age for regular membership is 14) are eligible to participate in individual and team matches with pellet rifles or BB guns. The objectives of these matches are to promote education in the history of the Civil War; to learn the fundamentals of firearms safety and marksmanship, and to develop a sense of fair play and personal achievement while providing family entertainment during skirmish weekends. The N-SSA has held matches for young people at the nationals since 1975 and even earlier on a regional level.

Youth Competition has two classifications: Juniors, aged four through ten years, and Seniors, aged 11 through 14. All matches are fired at 25 feet with individual competition at paper targets; team competitions are shot at breakable targets such as clay pigeons and clay pot silhouettes. As with all N-SSA matches, safety rules are strictly enforced. These “skirmishers in training” have at least one adult coach immediately behind the firing line for a team

Young Skirmishers Join the Fun at N-SSA 139th Nationals

event. Any competitor who needs individual assistance is allowed one adult coach. During individual competition, each competitor must have an adult accompany them. Safety glasses must be worn by both the competitors and the coaches.

Awards are given to each member of the top three teams in each age classification. For individual awards, Juniors have six places for BB guns while Seniors have three places for pellet rifles and six places for BB guns. Awards are presented at Saturday evening’s ceremony in the Memorial Park.

Nine-year old Alexander

Noyalas was the top Junior individual with a score of 82-1x. The top Senior was 14 year old Lucas Jenkins with a wonderful score of 91-1x; the first place Senior Pellet gun was Joseph Laskas, Jr.

The kids didn’t have all the fun at the N-SSA 139th National Competition held May 15-19, 2019, at Fort Shenandoah, the Association’s home range, just north of Winchester, Va. Member units competed in live-fire

matches with original or authentic reproduction Civil War period muskets, carbines, breech-loading rifles, revolvers, mortars, and cannon. It is the largest Civil War event of its kind.

Members who had pre-registered for individual match targets competed on Wednesday and Thursday. Competitors can order one paper bulls-eye target for each firearm at regulation distances as well as an aggregate score. The stat house staff was kept very busy as they scored over 2,250 individual match targets. Nine team matches were held over the three-day weekend. The weather bordered on perfection and the 16 units whose turn it was to host the affair did a masterful job. McNeill’s Rangers contributed both the Skirmish Director Ken Spence and the Adjutant John Zebelean for the nationals.

As with the very first match in 1950, the Rifle-Musket Team match remains the N-SSA’s signature event. All targets are breakable and the pieces certainly flew as clay pigeons, ceramic tiles, and pot silhouettes were

Participants in the N-SSA Tenderfoot matches are “skirmishers in training” as they compete in BB and pellet gun matches under close adult supervision. (Lis

The distance may be short, but the targets are really small for these BB and pellet gun tenderfeet. (Lis Cole)

Forty breech-loader teams competed in the 139th National Skirmish. Competitors start the match with a full magazine, but must single load after the magazine is emptied. (Niki Bethke)

Competitors ranging from age 4 to 13 shoot their BB and pellet guns in two classes, Junior and Senior, in both individual and team matches. (Lis Cole)

Cole)

These “skirmishers in training” have at least one adult coach immediately behind the firing line for a team event. Any competitor who needs individual assistance is allowed one adult coach. (Bruce Miller)

Members and talented seamstresses of the costume committee meet at a National Skirmish for various events and workshops. They compete for technical and presentation awards for clothing in the styles worn during the Civil War era. (Niki Bethke)

August 2019

blasted by Minié balls at ranges of 50 and 100 yards. The consistently excellent 110th Ohio Volunteer Infantry (OVI) took gold medals again. They won the musket match with a time of 485.7 seconds for the five-event program. However, it wasn’t easy as the 9th Virginia Cavalry were hot on their heels and finished only 1.3 seconds behind the winners. A total of 168 eight-member teams participated in this classic competition.

The 8th Virginia Infantry won the Carbine Team match with a time of 387.7 seconds, edging out the 9th Virginia Cavalry by just 3.4 seconds. You have to feel for the 9th Virginia Cavalry; two second place finishes in the two largest team matches by less than five total seconds! One hundred forty-one teams competed in this match of speed and accuracy.

The 110th OVI took another championship as they also triumphed in the Smoothbore Musket Team match, beating 127 other units to finish first with a terrific time of 168.8 seconds and a 17.3 second lead over the second place unit. This exciting match has become increasingly popular and, as you can imagine, is a really great test of skill. Three events are shot at 25 yards and a fourth event at 50 yards. Competitors participate with many different firearms, including the U.S. M1842, Confederate Macon Arsenal conversions of the M1842, the Hewes & Philips conversion of the U.S. M1816 (which features a rear sight), and the occasional European Potsdam in .72 caliber.

Eighty four-member teams participated in the Revolver Team match of four 25 yard events: 12 clay pigeons on a cardboard backer; eight hanging 6 x 6 inch ceramic tiles; eight hanging clay pigeons, and eight hanging 4 x 4 inch ceramic tiles. The 21st Virginia Infantry finished first and claimed the gold with a time of 151.4 seconds.

Three additional shoulder arm team matches were held. In the Single-Shot Rifle Team match, the 149th Pennsylvania Infantry won gold medals with a time of 194.4 seconds, a whopping 75.3 seconds better than the runner up. Most rifles in this match are Sharps’ or Ballard’s.

In the Breech-Loading Rifle Team match, the 2nd Maryland Artillery won, besting 39 other teams with a time of 159.4 seconds. This match is shot primarily with Henry rifles. Competitors start the match with a full magazine, but must single load after the magazine is emptied.

Some members want to compete with much slower Spencer

Civil War News

At the end of the mortar match members of Dulany Troop help score the shots fired by the Hazelwood Volunteers. The distance is measured from each ball to the target stake, and the five best shots are added together to determine the team’s score. (Ericka Hoffmann)

Rob Bethke of the 3rd Maryland Cavalry watches their mortar ball fly toward the target stake while the crewman on the next firing position readies to pull a lanyard and fire their mortar. (Niki Bethke)

Members of the 118th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry and the 3rd U.S. Infantry fire a memorial salute for the late Howard (Ken) Kortman with Roger Hipple’s 12-pounder Napoleon that Kortman had crewed for many years with the 3rd U.S. (Hipple). (Tambi Dudley and Schuetzen Powder Energetics Inc.)

A crew member of the 2nd Maryland Baltimore Light Artillery (CSA) sponges their 3-inch ordnance rifle. For safety reasons, in N-SSA competitions, teams must wait one full minute after firing before reloading their artillery pieces again. (Ericka Hoffmann)

Forty-six cannons and howitzers competed in the 139th N-SSA National Skirmish Artillery matches. As during the Civil War, 3-inch ordnance rifles are reliable and accurate artillery pieces, and a favorite of many N-SSA units. (Ericka Hoffmann)

One of the 3rd U.S. Infantry gun crews prepares to fire their 3-inch ordnance rifle. (Ericka Hoffmann)

The position #4 crewman of the 3rd Maryland Artillery pulls the lanyard to fire their M1841 6-pounder gun as teammates watch the projectile fly down range toward its mark. (Ericka Hoffmann)

The 3rd U.S. Infantry mortar team members pass implements to each other while the loading of their 24-pounder Coehorn mortar. (Niki Bethke)

magazine-fed arms so they have their own match. The 11th Pennsylvania Infantry won it with a time of 1,072.2 seconds… just a bit slower than the Henry’s!

Forty-five pieces competed in the Mortar Team match. It is always great fun to watch this match because you can follow the projectile’s flight due to its low muzzle velocity. The mortar teams fire seven shots at a stake 100 yards down range. Officials then carefully measure the distance from the stake and tally the best five shots for score. The overall winner was the 7th Tennessee Infantry with a five shot aggregate score of 24 feet, .25 inches.

The cannon matches are a spectator favorite and 46 guns participated in the beautiful spring weather. The range is reconfigured so the cannon fire perpendicular to the regular firing line. Target frames and their paper targets are set at a range of 200 yards for rifled guns and 100 yards for smoothbores and howitzers. Each cannon fires solid shot (smoothbore) or bolts (rifled) at two targets, a bull’s eye and a silhouette of a cannon facing them that represents counter battery fire. A maximum of seven shots are fired on either target with a maximum point count of 25 per target. A perfect score is 50 points. The guns are classified by type: Smoothbore, Rifled, Howitzer, and Rifled Howitzer.

In the Smoothbore class, the 1st Virginia Cavalry (gun #1) won the gold medal with a 43-2V (“V represents dead center.)” In the Rifled class, the 3rd U.S. Infantry won with an almost perfect score of 50-4V. In the Howitzer class, the 3rd U.S. Infantry won again, shooting a spectacular 50-7V. The Rifled Howitzer class winner was the Rowan Artillery with a 49-1V. The accuracy of these Civil War cannon is truly amazing and N-SSA gun crews know how to get the most out of them.

The N-SSA is the country’s oldest and largest Civil War shooting sports organization with more than 3,000 individuals who make up its 200 member units. Each represents a particular unit or regiment and proudly wears reproductions of the uniform the original unit wore over 150 years ago.

At the 139th National, five members were recognized for 50 years of membership in the Association; quite an accomplishment.

The 140th National Competition is scheduled for October 4-6, 2019, at Fort Shenandoah, just north of Winchester, Va. For more information about the N-SSA vis-

the web site at www.n-ssa.org.

it

At the 139th National, Grant Ostner (on the right, loading his musket) of the 9th Virginia Cavalry was the recipient of the first place Young Skirmisher Award, presented to the shooter aged 18 or younger with the highest musket aggregate individual score. (Ericka Hoffmann)

The 110th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, Company A claimed the gold medals in the musket team match, beating 168 other competing teams. (Ericka Hoffmann)

Men, women, young and old, love to compete in the musket team matches, the N-SSA’s signature event. (Lis Cole)

A left-handed young lady takes careful aim at 4 x 4 inch ceramic tiles with her U.S. M1861 rifle musket. (Lis Cole)

Black powder smoke hangs in the morning air as revolver teams fire at targets placed 25 yards from the firing line. (Lis Cole)

Two shooters with the 1st Florida Cavalry compete in the Singleshot Rifle Team match with their Sharps and Ballard rifles. (Ericka Hoffmann)

Members of the 13th Confederate infantry carefully load, aim, and fire at hanging 4-inch tile targets during the Smoothbore Musket Team match. The smoothbore matches include events with a variety of breakable targets set at 25 and 50 yards from the firing line. (Ericka Hoffmann)

Music of the fifes and drums cuts through the warm Sunday afternoon air as the musicians march to the range during the break between the two phases of the Musket Team matches. (Ericka Hoffmann)

Sometimes Readers Send Us Research Questions….

By Stephen Davis Special to Civil War News

Publisher’s note:

From time to time one of our regular columnists receives an e-mail from a reader who writes, “Hey, I liked your recent article, and it prompts me to ask if you know anything about…?”

Sometimes the query is of interest to our writers, as happened last month when Dave Langford of Hollywood, Md., wrote, “I have an ancestor who was in the 24th Wisconsin. He was killed in the fight at Adairsville, Ga. I have a copy of his officer’s report of how he was killed. But when I visited there several years ago, the marker did not lend itself to understanding the skirmish action. Do you know someone in Georgia who is knowledgeable about that battle?”

Well, we referred Mr. Langford’s question to our Book Review Editor, who cobbled together the following response from books at his home (“The Brigadier General Clement Anselm Evans Memorial Research Library,” as he calls it.)

Here’s Steve’s answer to Dave:

Dear Mr. Langford:

You are so right about the Georgia Historical Commission’s marker, placed in the 1950s in Bartow County, northwest of Atlanta. The county was renamed from Cass County during the war, to honor Col. Francis Bartow, slain at Manassas; the county seat, Cassville, was even renamed Manassas for a while.

Actually, there are three markers in the area: “Johnston’s Army at Adairsville,” “Federal Armies at Adairsville,” and “McPherson’s Troops to Barnsley’s.” Their texts, probably written by the renowned Wilbur G. Kurtz, refer only to Federal troop movements on May 18, 1864, the day after the skirmish at Adairsville, fought on May 17.

Sherman’s armies were pressing south from Calhoun toward

Cassville that day. As Albert Castel relates in Decision in the West (1992), Col. Frank Sherman’s First Brigade of Newton’s Second Division, was in the advance of Oliver O. Howard’s IV Corps. The 24th Wisconsin, your ancestor’s regiment, was part of Sherman’s brigade. It encountered Wheeler’s cavalry and the infantry of Frank Cheatham’s Division, which was dug in and ready for them. Howard ordered them to move forward anyway, and in a sharp skirmish the Federals got nowhere. That night Johnston’s army retreated toward Cassville. In their forward movement, as Castel writes, Sherman’s troops “suffer a large number of unnecessary casualties” (page 193).

Colonel Sherman recorded in his diary for May 17: “Resumed the march at 6 A.M.; 1st Brigade in advance. Skirmished and drove rear guard of rebs back to Adairsville where they made stand. My brig. heavily engaged until night. Loss 167 men.” (C. Knight Aldrich, ed., Quest for a Star: The Civil War Letters and Diaries of Colonel Francis T. Sherman of the 88th Illinois [1993], page 114). By the way, I do not see a campaign report in the Official Records from Colonel Sherman; he was captured on July 7, and exchanged on Oct. 7, 1864.

From Christopher Losson, Tennessee’s Forgotten Warriors: Frank Cheatham and His Confederate Division (1989): On the afternoon of May 17, Wheeler’s cavalry were falling back slowly before the enemy advance. Cheatham’s troops formed a line to help cover the retreating horsemen. “Some of Cheatham’s men were cooking supper, while others were just stretching out their blankets for the night,” Losson writes, “when the Yankees made their appearance. Confederate cavalry screened the Union advance, and Cheatham’s men at first were ‘thrown into a kind of hollow square or ambuscade’ to help defend the

cavalry as they fell back.” Men of Col. Hume R. Feild’s First and Twenty-seventh Tennessee occupied all three levels of a tall octagon-shaped house and fired from its windows (page 147). By the way, Dave, you might have seen my article in the May 2019 Civil War News, in which I wrote about the Sons of Confederate Veterans having recently bestowed its Confederate Medal of Honor on Colonel Feild.

Lt. Thomas Mackall kept a diary during the campaign; his cousin, Brig. Gen. William Mackall, was Johnston’s chief of staff and the lieutenant served on the general’s staff. The diary entry for May 17: “by 5 p.m. Cheatham, who was one mile in advance, was skirmishing. Pack up and saddle. Troops who had not been in line, but massed in bivouac, quickly formed, while firing going on” (Mackall diary typescript at William and Mary, copy courtesy of Richard McMurry).

Interestingly, as I have said, in the 1950s Wilbur Kurtz did not devote a roadside marker to the fight at Adairsville, which further entitles it to rank as a skirmish, not a “battle.” Still, Kurtz

was evidently captivated by the Octagon House, as he made a color painting of Confederates fighting around it on May 17 (Atlanta and the Old South: Paintings & Drawings by Wilbur G. Kurtz [1969], page 34). You might be interested in knowing that Atlantan E. Joseph Seguin has just published an appreciative history, Wilbur G. Kurtz: A Most Remarkable Life. I wrote the Foreword, in which I term W.G.K. (as he signed himself)

“the guardian angel of our city’s Civil War history.”

Sam Watkins, of course, was in the 1st Tennessee, and in one of the editions of Co. “Aytch” that I have here (ed. by Ruth McAllister, Franklin TN., 2007), he writes of the fight at the Octagon House. His regiment lost some thirty men that afternoon, but he describes more of the damage to the house: “Fine chairs, sofas, settees, pianos, and Brussels carpeting,” he recalled, “being made the death-bed of brave and noble boys, all saturated with blood. Fine lace and damask curtains, all blackened by the smoke of battle. Fine bureaus and looking-glasses and furniture riddled by the

rude missiles of war. Beautiful pictures in gilt frames, and a library of valuable books, all shot and torn by musket and cannon balls. Such is war. When we first got into the house, the papering on the walls was white. When we came out, it had the look of an old wall begrimed with soot. The fine lace had all been torn down and trodden under foot” (pages 166-67).

Well, Dave, I hope this adds context to your research into your forefather’s service with the 24th Wisconsin, and his tragic death at Adairsville. Best wishes in your continued journey.

Sincerely,

Steve Davis

Publisher’s note: we can’t promise this kind of response to all research inquiries, but when we receive an interesting one, such as Mr. Langford’s, we’ll occasionally turn to our expert staff writers to see if they can add any informational answer.

Send your research inquires to mail@civilwarnews.com.

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.

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

www.emergingcivilwar.com

to cover the story was fierce, so reading this anecdote didn’t surprise me. But how are we to interpret this incident? Was this an enterprising journalist who went to great lengths to get an important story, or was this an intrusive trespasser sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong?

Grant’s response tells us much: He could have had the reporter put off the train at any number of stations but did not.

discerning media consumers can develop the skills and wisdom to look past the folly and understand the value. I think Grant’s forbearance on the train serves as a good example.

After all, he not only didn’t eject the reporter, he spent part of his trip reading a newspaper.

From the Editor

On June 16, 1885, as the dying Ulysses S. Grant made his way northward toward his rendezvous with destiny atop Mt. McGregor in upstate NY, he rode in a private train provided by his friend, William Vanderbilt. “[T]he party was so large no persons were permitted on the train excepting members of the family, the help,” Mr. Arkell, a representative of the Albany Journal and of the associated press, wrote the reporter from Albany in his dispatch for the newspaper. However, shortly after the train left Manhattan, he reported, an additional journalist appeared. “After the train had started, a reporter for the New York Times, who had thoughtfully stowed himself away in the baggage car, came out from his hiding place and was left undisturbed,” he wrote.

Grant’s health was major national news, and competition

As a general, Grant never harbored a deep animosity toward reporters the way his colleagues William T. Sherman or George Gordon Meade did. However, once elected president, Grant became an intense political partisan. Furthermore, his administration endured plenty of scandal and controversy. Both developments made him frequent targets of the press. The failure of his financial firm, Grant & Ward in 1884, also subjected him to unflattering news coverage. In short, he had plenty of reason to be unhappy about the press.

But Grant also recognized that a free press played a vital part in the proper functioning of a democracy. People cannot govern themselves from ignorance, so the press played a role in helping them make informed choices. The press also played role in the government’s system of checks-and-balances as an important external check.

The press still fulfills these crucial functions. Although it has become fashionable to indiscriminately bash the media, which, as an institution, is not without fault,

— Chris Mackowski Editor-in-Chief, Emerging

Civil War

10 Questions . . . with Robert Lee Hodge

Emerging Civil War is pleased to welcome Robert Lee Hodge to our ranks. You can read his full bio here: https://emergingcivilwar.com/2019/06/18/ecw-welcomes-robert-lee-hodge/ (In the photo: Robert Lee Hodge, Bud Hall, and Chris Mackowski)

Many people know who you are from your exploits in Confederates in the Attic, but who is “Robert Lee Hodge” beyond the version of you portrayed in the book?

Ha. Well, the way I see myself and the way others see me is I assume a lot different. I am full of flaws that some of my friends can attest to. That being said, I think I often disappoint folks who have read “the book” and meet me to find I have read “The Myth of Sisyphus,” drool over Rembrandt and Frederick Church, and love old architecture. I tend to think they expected a neo-Confederate caveman, clad in a homespun loincloth carrying a club, or a Glock, perhaps on a Harley. Horwitz was a sensationalist, but I am thankful to have been written about.

Who am I? I have great concern for historic greenspace and culture; it makes me hurt and gets me angry. The person you read about in the book does not exist, but parts certainly do, or did.

How have you seen the Civil War landscape, as a whole, change since Confederates was published?

Just recently, June 17, 2019, the Confederate monument to the dead in Nashville was vandalized with red spray paint that said, “They were racists.” By today’s standards, everyone was, and probably everyone still is, to some degree, racist, whatever that term really means. I thought the red paint splashed on the face of the faded bronze Rebel was somewhat oddly artistic and meaningful; it reminded me of the Confederate blood spilled. I wanted to take a picture of the bloody bronze Reb, not only because I wanted to document it, but because it strangely added to it. Of course I was hurt and upset by the cowardly action, but this is nothing new anymore; these childish efforts have been going on in the anti-history/anti-art war camp since June 17, 2015. It has been rough to see the massive authoritarian anti-Confederate memory aggression. The self-righteous judgment of the dead is hurtful to witness. However, there is also something healthy about these juvenile moves that add to the kids’ social resume, it also creates definition as to who they are, and makes one wonder where and how the indoctrination took place. It also reminds us of how topical the Civil War is. The bullying is rough, but I have to try to be like Gandhi or King and take the lumps for the time being. I have been going to Rebel monuments since I was 4. In my mind I never saw an evil person at them in almost 50 years of visiting, and I have been to hundreds of Confederate monuments. The lack of nuance is interesting, and the press fuels this in a partisan way. Simplistically put, I feel the vandalism is an example of technology damaging civility.

How did you get hooked on the Civil War?

My name, of course did it, juxtaposed to being born on Stonewall Jackson’s 143rd birthday, juxtaposed to the Marx/Sears “Blue and the Grey” figurines,

juxtaposed to The Golden Book of the Civil War. The Rebel aesthetic is what I was all about. The popular Romanticism of the Confederate with the visual-history aspect made me an addict. Tony Horwitz once said, “Never grow up.” I think he was jealous of my “Confederate Peter-Pan” approach to history, and to life in general. This journey would not have happened without the library, my favorite place in town. When I would not show up for dinner, my mother would call the librarian to get me out of the Civil War books to come home and eat.

You’re a deeply passionate advocate for battlefield preservation. Why is preservation so important and why is it so important to you?

Preservation boils down to math perhaps: add limited space to a population explosion nobody will address because it would be political suicide to do so, to how much time we have until huge amounts of land are overrun with aesthetically abysmal abominations called “developments,” to local government simply often doing bad things to help developers, etc. Thus, you see a real crisis of epic proportions. Water quality is compromised, air quality, ingress and egress, quality of life, habitat, etc. all affected by a few folks, the cronies of local governments that chase avarice. Perhaps this is just human nature and I should give up on idealism. For me, I “woke up” in June 1991 when I saw The Wilderness Battlefield being compromised for homes just a few feet from the earthworks. It was B.S., and it really numbed me. I did not get angry for about a week because I was still in shock. Then I started calling the National Park Service, and I became an intern for the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission. I learned how powerful local governments are destroying the nation’s battlefields. My love for Civil War memory, but more specifically Confederate memory, turned me into a “tree-hugger.” I wish Teddy Roosevelt was eternal, and a dictator, a fusion of nationalism and environmentalism.

What do you see as the next Civil War frontier?

Civil War memory is a huge “evergreen” frontier that will continue to expand because the “the information age” really started in the 1850’s. It is fascinating that this 150+ year old subject has so much data sitting in archives all over the country (and in grandma’s attic), just waiting to be discovered. For instance, Record Group 94 at the National

Chris Mackowski

In the last photo taken of U.S. Grant, on July 20, 1885, the former president is reading a newspaper on the porch of the building where he would die three days later. Robert Lee Hodge, Bud Hall, and Chris Mackowski.

August 2019

Archives is over 13,000 feet long. Another example is the fighting at Spotsylvania Court House, in the area of Po River, only Bill Matter and Gordon Rhea have really dug into it. Bringing deeper associations to what happened there is something I hope to do. The resources are available, but bringing the connectivity to all the massive data is of course the challenge.

Lightning Round (short answers):

Most overrated person of the Civil War? Joshua Chamberlain? Abraham Lincoln? I like both figures, but the masse focus makes me yawn. The unknown I want to get to know, the privates in the ranks, blue and gray. The civilian aspect helps paint the picture also, but to go beyond that, for example, two authors I am fond of, Fremantle and Mary Chestnut.

Favorite Trans-Mississippi site? Wilson’s Creek, by far. They have a decent chunk of land saved, a great library, a great museum, and a great Friends group.

Favorite regiment? Often the 17th Virginia Infantry, but it depends what day it is. Tomorrow it may be the 16th Alabama Infantry, or maybe the 9th Alabama Infantry. It always shifts.

What is the one Civil War book you think is essential?

The kids book from American Heritage Publishing, The Golden Book of the Civil War. It had a huge impact on tens of thousands. On a more cerebral level: anything from Bill Styple at Belle Grove Publishing, Writing and Fighting in the Army of Northern Virginia, and Writing and Fighting the Civil War come to mind.

What’s one question about the Civil War no one has ever asked you that you wish they would? What is the wildest court-martial you have ever read?

ECW News and Notes

Edward Alexander is finishing up a couple of map projects around the globe, from Bristoe to Burma.

Sarah Kay Bierle spoke at the Inland Empire Civil War Round Table, sharing information about Virginia Military Institute history and the lives of eight cadets who fought at New Market and later moved to California after the war.

book on the Peninsula Campaign. Doug will also be working the NPS anniversary event at Gaines’ Mill.

Dwight Hughes has been requested to author an article for the Essential Civil War Curriculum, a sesquicentennial project of the Center for Civil War Studies at Virginia Tech, on the subject of Riverine Warfare in the Civil War.

Dwight presented a paper at the North American Society of Oceanic History annual conference in New Bedford, Mass., on May 17. The conference theme was “Connecting the Global and Local: The Sea and Maritime Cities.” Dwight’s talk, “Global War, Local Impact: In the Wake of CSS Shenandoah,” discussed the commerce raider’s visits to Melbourne, Australia, and the Pacific island of Pohnpei, and her destruction of New Bedford whalers in the Arctic in June 1865.

Chris Kolakowski spoke and gave tours at the American Battlefield Trust Conference in Kentucky. He also read at the D-Day 75th Anniversary at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Va.

Chris Mackowski joined Sarah Kay Beirle at the Gazette 665 Civil War Symposium in Temecula, Calif., in early June (and then Chris and his wife enjoyed some fantastic wine tasting for a couple days, too!). The following weekend, Chris spoke at the Oklahoma Civil War Conference hosted by the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma in Chickasha. Amidst his travels, he also visited Joshua Tree National Park (now pretty much cleaned up following the vandalism that plagued the park during last winter’s government shut down); Dealey Plaza and the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas; the site of the last Confederate surrender of the war near Fort Towson, Ok.; the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial; and Hershey, Pa., “the sweetest place on earth.”

Julie Mujic has accepted a new position teaching in the Global Commerce Department at Denison University starting in Fall 2019.

Civil War News

In 1951, Douglas MacArthur referred to himself as the “reunion of blue and gray personified.” The American Civil War was an immediate and formative experience for both of his parents and their families, and their experiences helped inspire and shape Douglas MacArthur and his older brother Arthur. General MacArthur’s wife, the Tennesseeborn Jean Faircloth MacArthur, also had a significant Civil War pedigree. Between them, General and Mrs. MacArthur had ties to virtually every major land campaign east of the Mississippi River.

The MacArthur Memorial and Emerging Civil War are co-sponsoring a symposium with four scholars exploring the Civil War activities of Douglas and Jean MacArthur’s ancestors. Speakers include Chris Mackowski, Charlie McKnight, Dan Welch, and Brian Steel Wills.

Join us on September 28, 2019, from 9:15 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. at the MacArthur Memorial, 198 Bank Street, Norfolk, Va., 23510. The event is FREE, but registration is required. Call 757.441.2965 to reserve a seat or register online: https://goo.gl/ndrPLL.

ECW Bookshelf

If you love audiobooks, Emerging Civil War has a treat for you: the Emerging Civil War Audio Series. Our publisher, Savas Beatie, has released nine titles so far, with more on the way. Our goal is to get all of them out in audio by the year’s end, including our forthcoming fall titles.

Joshua Saxon

• Battle Above the Clouds: Lifting the Siege of Chattanooga and the Battle of Lookout Mountain by David

A. Powell, narrated by Joseph

A. Williams

• Fight Like the Devil: The First Day at Gettysburg by Chris Mackowski, Kristopher D. White, and Daniel T. Davis, narrated by Joseph A. Williams

• The Great Battle Never Fought: The Mine Run Campaign by Chris Mackowski, narrated by the author

• Hell Itself: The Battle of the Wilderness by Chris Mackowski, narrated by Bob Neufeld

• Let Us Die Like Men: The Battle of Franklin by William Lee White, narrated by Bob Neufeld

• The Most Desperate Acts of Gallantry: George Custer in the Civil War by Daniel T. Davis, narrated by Bob Neufeld

• Simply Murder: The Battle of Fredericksburg by Chris Mackowski and Kristopher D. White, narrated by Joshua Saxon

• That Furious Struggle: Chancellorsville and the High Tide of the Confederacy by Chris Mackowski and Kristopher D. White, narrated by Bob Neufeld

All audiobooks are available from Audible.com, Amazon.com, and SavasBeatie.com.

of those books at www.emergingrevolutionarywar.org.

Also, tickets are now on for the “Before They Were Americans” Symposium featuring Emerging Revolutionary War historians in Alexandria, Virginia’s Gadsby’s Tavern / The Lyceum, Alexandria’s History Museum. Information about the daylong event can be found on the Emerging Revolutionary War’s website as well.

Speakers Bureau Spotlight

Spotlighting different speakers and their topics from our Emerging Civil War Speakers Bureau. See the full brochure online at https://emergingcivilwar.com/wp-content/ uploads/2018/08/SpeakersBureau-18-19.pdf.

Dan Welch currently serves as a public school teacher in northeast Ohio and continues to serve as seasonal Park Ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park where he has worked for the past ten years.

Doug Crenshaw and Drew Gruber are trying to finish up their

Kevin and Kristen Pawlak recently attended the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College.

Douglas MacArthur and the Civil War: “The Reunion of Blue & Gray Personified”

• The Aftermath of Battle: The Burial of the Civil War Dead by Meg Groeling, narrated by

Emerging Revolutionary War News

As summer season hits the U.S., it’s a great time to visit some of the battlefields of the American Revolution. In fact, in June 1778, the Continental Army marched out of Valley Forge and fought one of the hottest (temperature wise) engagements ever fought on American soil: the Battle of Monmouth Court House on June 28. Temps soared into the mid-90s, with a heat index well in excess of 100 degrees.

Coincidentally, books on both Valley Forge and Monmouth Court House will be slated for publication this summer and fall as part of the Emerging Revolutionary War Series by Savas Beatie LLC. But, while you wait, check out the initial two volumes, published last year and available wherever books are sold. You can find the titles

Talks:

• “A Fitting Tribute:” Memorial Tributes to Abraham Lincoln

• “Rally ‘Round the Flag:” Colorbearers at Gettysburg

• How Did They Get Here: The Gettysburg Campaign

• “Boys, give them rocks:” Jackson’s Defensive Stand at Second Manassas

• William Child, the Smoketown Hospital, and the Aftermath at Antietam

• “Acting as an Agent for Governor Curtin:” David Wills and His Mark on Gettysburg

• Martyrs of the Race Course: The Forgotten Decoration Day

Descriptions for each talk are available in the speakers bureau brochure.

Dan Welch with Rufus Dawes’ men at Gettysburg.

Confederate Statue Rededicated at a New Location

By Walt Albro WHITE’S FERRY, MD—The

three-year-old controversy over a Confederate soldier statue in Rockville, Md., has been resolved, with each side gaining at least part of what they wanted.

The county government succeeded in transferring the Confederate symbol from public to private land. Confederate heritage groups applauded the monument’s preservation at a place that is more visible.

The monument was relocated at county expense to White’s Ferry, a rural area that overlooks the Potomac River and is steeped in Civil War history. The spot is 28 miles west of Rockville.

At a May 11 rededication of the White’s Ferry memorial, Terry M. Klima, Maryland Division Commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said that when the statue was still in Rockville, the Montgomery County government had hidden

it behind dense bushes and trees.

Asked what he thought of the White’s Ferry site, Klima said, “We are very pleased.”

The monument now sits a short distance from a ferry boat landing that transports cars and pedestrians across the river to Virginia.

The statue can be clearly seen from the hundreds of motor vehicles that use the ferry weekly.

White’s Ferry is not far from White’s Ford, the river crossing used by the Army of Northern Virginia in the South’s 1862 invasion of Maryland, an incursion that ended in the Battle of Antietam.

During the hour-long rededication service, five wreaths were placed in front of the memorial, a life-sized bronze of a young cavalry private, wearing boots and with a sheathed saber at his side. He stands on an eight-foot granite pedestal that is inscribed, “To our heroes of Montgomery County, Maryland, that we may

through life not forget the Thin Grey Line. 1861–1865.”

About 75 people attended the event.

Confederate heritage groups that were represented included the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Military Order of Stars and Bars, and the Order of the Confederate Rose. Klima expressed concern about persons with “political agendas” who, he said, had placed all historical monuments in the crosshairs. He said, “The Sons of Confederate Veterans prefers to emphasize unity, national reconciliation, and the importance of honoring all military veterans.”

In addition to the Confederate heritage groups, there were also representatives from the Sons of Union Veterans, the Sons of the American Revolution, and contemporary veterans’ organizations.

The Confederate statue was originally erected in 1913 in front of the Rockville court house to honor local men who fought in the Confederate Army. Rockville is the county seat of Montgomery County, which abuts the city of Washington, D.C.

In the early 1860s, Montgomery County was inhabited mainly by rural white Southern sympathizers. Today, the county is heavily suburban and racially diverse. Since the 1970s, the memorial had been relocated several times, each time to a progressively less conspicuous plot of public land, although still in downtown Rockville.

In 2016, former County Executive Isiah Leggett called for the statue’s removal, saying that it was an improper symbol to display prominently on public property. He directed that the

monument be moved again to another less visible public place or to private property.

Eventually, the county negotiated an agreement with a private landowner (who asked not to be identified) and hauled the statue to White’s Ferry in July 2017. The process of preparing the site had been going on from that time until the May 11 rededication.

“In 1913, when this beautiful monument was dedicated, the ceremony emphasized the reconciliation and unification of our country, which had suffered through what remains our country’s deadliest war,” Klima said during the ceremony. “Hopefully, today’s rededication will instill in each of us a deeper appreciation of history, foster in us a sense of unity as Americans, and remind us of the perils of division,” he added.

lThe May 11 rededication of the Confederate soldier statue in White’s Ferry, Md., after it’s relocation from downtown Rockville.

A view of some attendees at the statue rededication.

The rededicated statue on its new site at White’s Ferry, Maryland. The color guard (not shown) was provided by the Maryland Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Walking in Footsteps of the 69th New York State Militia

By Steve Reilly

Like many of you, I have always been interested in where my family walked during the Civil War. This past May, the well-known private tour guide and Bull Run historian Harry Smeltzer, put together a free tour, walking in the footsteps of the 69th N.Y. State Militia. My twelve-year-old great grandfather Philip Reilly was a member of “B” Company and his twenty-one-year-old brother Bernard, was in “C” Company.

Along with Harry Smeltzer, there was John J. Hennessy, another widely respected historian and author of First Battle of Manassas. Added to them, was Damian Shiels, who probably has a, is the world’s leading expert on the Irish in the Civil War. He was over from the old country, doing research for his university. Then there is Joe Maghe, who I feel, has a collection that would match my family’s regiment’s, the 69th New York National Guard. Joe set up a small part of his collection in the Henry House for our tour.

Many men serving in the 69th New York State Militia were Fenians. Their hopes were of someday returning to Ireland and kicking the British out. In May 2010, Damian Shiels dedicated his life’s work to telling the people of Ireland about a generation of Irish emigrants who fought in our Civil War. I think we all know by now that many Irish emigrants came to America because of the famine and the British occupation.

Damian told our group there were three types of poor in Ireland; the ones with the most money in their pockets went to England for work, the second came to America, and the third, the poorest of the poor, died of the famine. One of our group, Professor Pat Young of Hoffstra Law School, reminded us all, that many Irish families agreed that those who went to America would send money back to their families in Ireland. He gave an example on how the Irish worked that out; in 1850 they started their own bank in New York City, the Emigrant Saving Bank that is still an active bank in New York.

The current 69th N.Y.N.G. has many members whose families fought together during the Civil War. One such officer is Colonel Sean Michael Flynn, the former Commanding Officer of the 1/69. Colonel Flynn’s uncle, Edward Butler was Captain Thomas Francis Meagher’s Executive Officer in the 69th’s Zouaves Company. My son Richard

commanded a 1/69 company and both our families come from Kilkenny, Ireland. They are now both staff officers in the 42nd Division.

Colonel Flynn sent me the following, with permission to include it in this report. To bolster their skills, many Fenians enrolled in organized units of the State Militia. By 1861 the largest concentration of Fenians were found in the 69th Regiment N.Y.S.M. The 69th was one of three N.Y. Irish regiments during the 1850s. These units merged in 1858 under the 69th’s flag, unifying the bulk of Irish soldiers serving in New York’s military forces. When President Lincoln called for state militias to suppress the southern rebellion in April 1861, Irish American leaders in New York saw the conflict as an opportunity to further enhance the military skills of the Fenians. The 69th Militia was among the first New York units to volunteer its service. The 69th N.Y.S.M. was part of a brigade commanded by Colonel Willian T. Sherman. The units were the 13th, 69th, 79th New York, and the 2nd Wisconsin, plus Company E, 3rd U.S. Artillery.

Our first stop was Farmer’s Crossing. Both Harry Smeltzer and John Hennessy talked about how General Sherman’s Brigade crossed here. Farmer’s Crossing is about one-half mile north of the Stone Bridge, if you were marching from Centreville. Harry and John told our group that General Sherman moved his brigade onto what is now, the Bull Run Winery where we had an after tour debriefing. As Colonel Sherman watched the battle unfold and looking for a way to cross, he saw two riders cross from the Confederate side. Harry told us how they rode within yelling distance and started to call the men of the 69th damn abolitionists. Harry felt that the men of the 69th were far from abolitionist; they were there to preserve the Union. Colonel Sherman followed the Confederate riders and watched where they crossed back to the Confederate side and he had his crossing.

The men of the 69th broke out of the wood near the Van Pelt house, behind the Confederate lines of Colonel Nathan Evans. Here is where Damian, John, and Harry told the story of acting Lt. Col. James Haggerty. John Hennessy reported that Colonel Haggerty was reported killed a few days before, at Blackburn Ford. Haggerty joked to a reporter that he “felt very war like for

a dead man.” Using the words of Colonel Sherman, Damian told us what happened to Lieutenant Colonel Haggerty of the 69th. When, without orders, he rode out and yelled for the retreating Confederates to surrender. Damian, John, and Harry agreed that a Confederate from the 7th or 8th Georgia shot Haggerty dead at close range. Several men of the 69th were wounded at this location.

What happened next was that the 69th opened fire on the retreating Confederates. At this point, Sherman ordered the firing to stop as he wanted his brigade to disengage from the rear of the retreating Confederates and join the main attack, pressing against their front of the retreating Confederates. Sherman had four regiments and Evans had five, but Evans, also had Colonel Burnside with five regiments to his front forcing him back.

Off our group went, to join the main attack against the Confederate line on Mathews Hill. There was not much to report, as we marched back into the wood. Colonel Burnside was pushing Evans back toward the Warrenton Turnpike.

John Hennessy noted that about 2:30 p.m., General McDowell ordered Sherman forward toward the Confederate position on Henry Hill and onto Sudley Road. First Sherman sent the 13thNew York toward the Henry House, but they slowed their fire when someone called out that they were firing on Union troops; they were not. Then Colonel Sherman sent the 2nd Wisconsin up the hill in their gray uniforms. Harry told us how the 2nd Wisconsin reported Union troops fired into their rear.

Unable to force the Confederates back, the 2nd Wisconsin withdrew toward the Sudley Road. Here, the New Yorkers of the 69th thinking they were attacking Confederates because of their gray uniforms gave them a volley. Then the 79th New York went forward and became lost in the confusion and smoke of the battle. Not knowing who was Union and who was Confederate, the confusion allowed the Confederates to get in two volleys and the 79th came tumbling back down.

Up went the 69th and the 38th New York; they forced the Confederates to fall back. Then they found themselves alone, without fresh troops to come to their aid. Some men of the 69th felt they were fired on by Union troops in their rear. I wonder if it was some 2nd Wisconsin men

returning the earlier kindness of the 69th. While more and more Confederate troops arrived on the battlefield from the Shenandoah Valley, the 69th and 38th remained alone. The fresh Confederate troops forced both the 69th and 38th off the hill where they began the long walk back to Fort Corcoran, in Arlington, Va.

As John, Harry, and Damian described the action on Henry Hill, all I could think about was that it turned into a real donnybrook. As more Union troops arrived, they were sent up the hill and then came tumbling down. At times, the Union had the day, then the Confederates. Union General Robert Patterson failed in his duty, to keep General Johnston in the Shenandoah. He even gave false reports that Johnston was in the valley, even as he was moving his troops to Bull Run. Patterson left the army right after the battle, never to serve again.

On our tour, Harry, John, and Damian told us of the 69th’s retreat along the Warrenton Turnpike. I walked back to my car parked at the Stone Bridge; even now, it’s a narrow and mostly without shoulders. At times, it is sunken, other times flanked by Young’s Branch and wetlands.

Damian found a letter by James Rorty, of “G” Company, who best described the 69th retreat.

Now the letter by Pvt. James Rorty of “G” Company.

“Again, when our attack failed, and the retreat began, Col. Corcoran endeavored to cover it by forming his men in square, in which order it moved to the point at which we crossed Bull Run, where on account of the woods and the narrowness of the path down the bluffs that formed the west bank, it had to be reduced to a column. Sherman, who was in the square, told the men to get away as fast as they could as the enemy’s cavalry were coming. This prevented Col. Corcoran from reforming the men on the other side of the Run, a movement which would have not only effectually repelled the enemy but would also have covered the retreat of every battery lost subsequently. It was in his efforts to remedy the disorder and straggling caused by this license to run, that Col. Corcoran (who, from the unfortunate and irreparable loss of Haggerty, and the absence of all his staff, was obliged to be somewhat in the rear) was cut off from the main body of the regiment, by the enemy’s horse, and being able to rally only nine men, moved into a small house, to make a better defense, but was

induced by some of his officers to surrender as resistance was hopeless. Meantime about half a dozen men had joined him at the house, of whose arrival he was ignorant. Trifling as the reinforcement was, he surrendered so reluctantly that I verily believe had he known of it he would not have surrendered without a desperate fight. As I shared all his subsequent misfortunes, and witnessed the manly fortitude with which he bore them, the consistent dignity with which he repelled all overtures for any parole that would tie up his hands from the Union cause, and repulsed some Southern friends who endeavored to seduce him from it, it may not be improper to sketch his prison life.”

At this point in the tour, one of our members, the Superintendent of Manassas National Battlefield Park, spoke to our group. Superintend Brandon Bies pointed out, that all the Civil War National Battlefield Parks need our active support. He requested that we give that support by joining friend’s associations. To that, I would like to add, that we need to support our Civil War media also, which is the life blood of our hobby.

What happened to my great grandfather Philip, my uncle Bernard, and Colonel Flynn’s uncle, Edward Butler? All returned safely to New York City, all three waited for the return of Colonel Corcoran, who was also the New York’s State acting Fenian leader. All three joined the Corcoran Irish Legion, Lt. Butler joined the 69th Artillery and was killed at Cold Harbor, my grandfather and his brother joined the 170th New York. Bernard was wounded at Spotsylvania and shot in the forehead at the North Anna River; he is in section 27, grave 411 Arlington. My 12-year-old grandfather Philip was chased down by his dad, Bernard senior, and taken home. He is listed as a deserter on the rolls of the 170th New York but ran away near the end of the war and joined up again, in time to see General Robert E. Lee hang out the white flag. He entered the marble business and died in his bed at age 75, living where La Guardia Airport now sits. Both he and Lt. Butler are in Calvary Catholic Cemetery, Queens, N.Y.

Steve Reilly has been a longtime member, of the Sons of Union Veterans, Tilden Camp NYC, and is a member of the 69th N.Y.S. Historian (reenactors) Association, which supports 1/69.

Civil War News book reviews provide our readers with timely analysis of the latest and most significant Civil War research and scholarship. Contact Stephen Davis, Civil War News Book Review Editor. Email: BookReviews@CivilWarNews.com.

Something New to Learn about 1864 North Carolina

The Fight for the Old North State: The Civil War in North Carolina, January-May 1864. By Hampton Newsome. Illustrations, maps, notes, appendices, bibliography, index, 467 pp., 2019. University Press of Kansas, www.kansaspress.ku.edu. $34.95 hardcover.

Reviewed by Joan Wenner, J.D.

Rehabilitating Meade’s Reputation as Commander

Meade: The Price of Command, 1863–1865. By John G. Selby. Notes, index, maps, 370 pages, 2018. Kent State University Press, www.kentstateuniversitypress.com. $49.95 cloth.

Reviewed by Thomas J. Ryan

inspirational and heroic, and a man who, at times, was sarcastic, impatient, quick-tempered, reserved, suspicious of the press, and wary of politicians. Most importantly, he lacked “a deep reservoir of support among the foot soldiers of the army.”

providing no evidence for these erroneous assertions. At Williamsport following the Battle of Gettysburg, Meade’s forces outnumbered Lee’s by a ratio of about 2 to 1.

The Fight for the Old North State takes us on a detailed, factfilled journey through joint land and water operations by Federals and Confederates in their struggle for North Carolina during the early part of 1864.

The social and political climate in the state is expertly relayed by Hampton Newsome through his thorough research. Early on Newsome writes, “As 1863 came to a close, there was much to fuss about. The growing distrust between North Carolina and Virginia, a situation that predated the Civil War, remained a source of tension.”

I add a comment from my research that also helps set the stage for what was on the horizon for the Tar Heel state. Greenville judge George Howard in a letter to his wife in July 1863 (whom he had sent away for safety), wrote, “I am as busy as a bee preparing for the coming of the

Yankees, probably here this summer.” Governor Zebulon Vance’s cries for help went unfulfilled as Federal forays created more and more panic. “North Carolina was not left with enough troops ‘to protect a potato patch,’” he complained; “our state is not receiving justice.”

Along with the narrative of operations, battles, and listing of participants, the author’s selection of maps and illustrations provides a clear “lay of the land” for those not familiar with the state’s vital supply network of rail lines, coastal region, and ports.

New Bern was the significant prize for the Federals, though additionally of importance were Wilmington, Washington, Roanoke Island, Morehead City, Beaufort and crucial Plymouth, known for the success of the ironclad CSS Albemarle in its clash with the USS Southfield gunboat.

Newsome explains the plans devised by both sides at the highest levels, including Burnside, Butler, Peck, Foster, Cooke, Pickett, Ransom, Wood, Hoke, Terry and those of naval note.

Perhaps some will recall Sherman’s notice to his commanders while he marched north toward Richmond: “Do not let your command rest on its oars, but keep them going all the time, even if for no other purpose than to exhaust the enemy’s country, or compel him to defend it.”

Hampton Newsome’s recommended book tells the chain of events—the highs and the lows, the bumbling and the courageous, from January to May, 1864 in the Old North State. It’s all here.

Joan Wenner, J.D. is a longtime contributor to Civil War News. A native New Yorker based in eastern North Carolina, she has visited many of the sites mentioned. She has a special interest in naval operations and courts-martials.

Email: joan_writer@yahoo.com.

John Selby’s goal in this study is to “reassess [George G.] Meade’s leadership” as the commanding general of the Union Army of the Potomac during two harrowing years of the Civil War. He desires to amend the view of Meade as a “thin skinned leader of limited imagination, nerve, and drive” who was dependent on Gens. Ulysses S. Grant and Philip Sheridan in his quest to defeat Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia on the field of battle.

The author challenges the evaluations of other historians regarding Meade, including Allen Guelzo’s contention that Meade did not want to “risk battle at Gettysburg” and preferred “withdrawal” from the area. He differs with Gordon Rhea’s views regarding who made the decisions when Meade served directly under General in Chief Ulysses S. Grant, and relies on a variety of primary and secondary sources to counter assessments he considers unnecessarily critical of Meade on the personal level as well as of his military leadership.

While the focus remains primarily on Meade, Selby provides a comprehensive discussion of Army of the Potomac operations from Gettysburg to Appomattox. He gives Meade the benefit of the doubt regarding his command ability and personal conduct given the stressful and physically demanding conditions in which he operated. He describes Meade as competent and reliable, if not

Yet, in Selby’s view, Meade had more nerve than Gen. George McClellan, tolerated a high casualty rate on offense or defense, avoided open fights with politicians, never boasted like Gen. John Pope, managed an army of 100,000 men, worked closely with his corps commanders, and exhibited better tactical instincts and more resolve than Gen. Joseph Hooker.

John Selby has invested considerable time and effort in making the case for a more favorable and realistic view of Meade’s generalship, and his presentation is clear, concise, and offers a scholarly contribution to the historical record. However, it should be pointed out that Meade had opportunities to gain the advantage over Lee that he ignored. For example, message exchanges in the Union Bureau of Military Information (BMI) files at the National Archives and Records Administration demonstrate that multiple options existed for Meade other than a frontal attack on Lee’s fortified position near Williamsport, Maryland. Meade learned that Lee’s army was clustered around Hagerstown on July 9 and 10, which provided the opportunity to march part of his army to Williamsport and block Lee’s forces from gaining access to the river. However, he missed or ignored this opportunity.

Meade took no action when the BMI informed him that Rebel wagon trains of pontoons and ammunition were moving from Winchester, Virginia, to Williamsport, and the fact that Lee deployed a detachment of cavalry to hold open an escape route upriver. Meade also chose not to send a force across the river to destroy Lee’s pontoon bridge under construction at Falling Waters. This would have prevented Lee’s ability to move his artillery and wagons loaded with wounded soldiers, munitions, supplies, and a sizable amount of booty across the swollen river.

Meade also ignored the BMI’s estimates of Lee’s troop strength that were accurate within a small percentage of the actual figures, insisting the enemy force was equal in size to his own—while

Selby would have benefited by consulting published sources such as The Secret War for the Union by Edwin C. Fishel and a series of articles in Gettysburg Magazine that address the BMI’s operations during the Gettysburg Campaign. Similarly, Grant’s Secret Service by William B. Feis, Scouting for Grant and Meade, edited by Peter G. Tsouras, and Southern Lady, Yankee Spy by Elizabeth R. Varon provide insight into the intelligence advantage that Meade and Grant had over Lee during the Overland Campaign and the siege of Petersburg.

Information available from these resources enhances the ability to evaluate Meade’s performance during two years as an army commander. Read Meade: The Price of Command, 1863–1865 for a perceptive analysis of George G. Meade’s personality traits and command preferences, while consulting the other recommended sources for consideration of Meade’s operational alternatives based on information the BMI provided regarding the enemy’s strength, disposition, and intentions—vital factors in hastening an end to the war in the East.

The collection, analysis, and effective use of intelligence is a fundamental requirement for successful military operations, a concept that Meade struggled to accept during his tenure in command of the Army of the Potomac. Advantageously for the Union cause, U.S. Grant came to embrace and employed these functions to defeat the Confederate forces.

Thomas J. Ryan is the author of Spies, Scouts, and Secrets in the Gettysburg Campaign: How the Critical Role of Intelligence Impacted the Outcome of Lee’s Invasion of the North, June-July 1863. His latest book, written with co-author Richard R. Schaus, titled “Lee is Trapped, and Must be Taken”: Eleven Fateful Days after Gettysburg, July 4-14, 1863, is scheduled for publication by Savas Beatie later this year.

A New Look at Lew Wallace

Politician in Uniform: General Lew Wallace and the Civil War. By Christopher Mortenson. Annotations, bibliography, illustrations, maps. 298 pp., 2019. University of Oklahoma Press, www.oupress. com. $34.95 hardcover.

Reviewed by John

Foskett

military departments. Mortenson finishes with Wallace’s clandestine mission to negotiate a peace in Texas and to support Mexican liberationists, as well as his prominent role on the tribunals convened for the Lincoln assassination conspirators and for the trial of Henry Wirtz, commandant of the notorious POW facility at Andersonville.

Despite similarity in scope, Mortenson’s approach differs from that used by Stephens. Mortenson examines Wallace’s Civil War experience through dual lenses—(1) the clash between the values of the professionally-trained soldier and those of the amateur civilian/“politician” and (2) the aggressive “martial”/“rough” notion of manhood which was prevalent in the era. In Mortenson’s eyes these factors combined to make Wallace his own worst enemy and accounted for the frustration of his own military ambitions. Mortenson’s framework is useful but the author may take the analysis too far in some instances.

on Wallace’s shortcomings certainly is reasonable, especially when compared with Stephens’ tendency to favor Wallace in his persistent friction with superiors. Occasionally, however, this approach seems to minimize Wallace’s military accomplishments. For example, Wallace clearly played his part in his division’s leisurely, “by the book” march to the field of Shiloh on April 6. But on April 7 Wallace twice executed careful, effective turning movements on the Union right which forced the Confederate line to retreat. Mortenson gives Wallace sparse credit for this achievement.

A Complex Relationship Clarified

Lincoln and the Abolitionists.

Civil War students’ knowledge of Major General Lew Wallace’s military career is generally limited to the unending debate over his division’s failure to timely arrive on the field at Shiloh on April 6, 1862, during the first day’s crisis for Ulysses Grant’s Army of the Tennessee. Most also have some familiarity with the crucial stand at the Monocacy River outside Washington in July 1864 when Wallace, in command of an outnumbered force, including his own VIII Corps, held off Jubal Early’s raiding Confederates long enough to nullify the Rebel assault on the capital. Christopher Mortenson has ably covered these events and much more in his new assessment of Wallace’s Civil War experience.

Like Gail Stephens in her 2011 book Shadow of Shiloh, Mortenson confines himself to brief background on Wallace’s youth, his military service in the Mexican War which (to Wallace’s chagrin) did not involve combat, and his pre-Civil War activities as a lawyer and Indiana state legislator. Mortenson also gives minimal coverage to Wallace’s postwar accomplishments, including his authorship of the novel Ben Hur. Beyond that, as Stephens did, the author tightly limits his focus on the Civil War, beginning with Wallace’s command of the 11th Indiana infantry (which he helped raise), his elevation to brigade and then division command, his promotion to major general, and his role in commanding various

Mortenson’s repeated apportionment of the lion’s share of blame to Wallace for his several disputes with his superiors causes some skepticism. Wallace was far from alone on any list of officers, both professional and civilian, who ran afoul of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, Chief of Staff Henry Halleck, or Indiana Governor Oliver Morton. Even his clash with Grant seems to have resulted mostly from a misunderstanding regarding the “wrong road” question at Shiloh, for which both were in part responsible.

As for the “professional–citizen/politician” dichotomy, plenty of West Point-trained officers shared traits of untrammeled ambition, glory-hunting, and contentiousness. Names such as Joseph Hooker, Judson Kilpatrick and George Custer come to mind. In contrast, a variety of citizen-soldiers fit into the disciplined military culture, including John Logan, Jacob Cox, James Wadsworth and Frank Blair. There was no shortage of disdain by West Pointers for politicians-turned-officers—with some justification--but the role which that played in Wallace’s experience may be overly emphasized. Mortenson also seems unduly inclined to attribute every decision by Wallace to a consuming drive for military fame. Indulging in the “mind reading” of historical figures can be risky business.

Mortenson’s decision to focus

Mortenson’s most persuasive analysis covers Wallace’s performance in non-combat roles. This includes his orchestration of an effective defense at Cincinnati during the Confederate invasion of Kentucky in fall 1862 and his adept handling of the Middle Department during much of 1864. Mortenson compellingly demonstrates that Wallace’s skills as a politician and lawyer helped him gain objectives which might have eluded a military professional.

There are thoughtful insights as well. For example, in his autobiography Wallace claimed that on April 3 or 4, 1862, he forwarded to Grant intelligence from his scouts that Albert Sidney Johnston’s 40,000 Confederates were on the march to assault the bulk of Grant’s army at Pittsburg Landing. Mortenson flatly states that the story is “hard to credit.” This reviewer has extensively researched the claim and concludes that it was almost certainly a fabrication concocted by Wallace after Grant’s death.

Mortenson has used a number of primary sources as well as several reliable secondary works. If I have a criticism about the latter, it is the author’s apparent failure to access some of the recent scholarship, such as Timothy B. Smith’s excellent and somewhat revisionist Shiloh: Conquer or Perish (2014).

Notwithstanding these criticisms, Mortenson’s book is an important addition to the literature on so-called “political generals.” The book also is well worth purchase by those with an interest in Wallace’s campaigns, especially as a complement to the equally well-done Stephens book.

John Foskett is a practicing attorney in Boston. In addition to numerous reviews in Civil War News, he has given Civil War Roundtable presentations on the subject of Civil War field artillery tactics.

By Stanley Harrold.

Images, notes, bibliography, index, 168 pp. 2018. Southern Illinois University Press, www.siupress. com. $24.95 cloth.

Reviewed

by Tim Talbott

any success he was to have in politics—particularly in local and state politics—depended on meeting in agreement, at least on a certain level, with those who cast the votes. Lincoln often saw abolitionists as disrupting the Union and thus chose to maintain a rather conservative stance on the institution of slavery and race relations in Illinois, and reject the more radically perceived abolitionist view of immediate and uncompensated emancipation. He knew doing so was instrumental to his success in climbing the political ladder.

A welcome addition to the ever-growing Concise Lincoln Library, published by Southern Illinois University Press, is noted abolitionist historian Stanley Harrold’s contribution, Lincoln and the Abolitionists.

In order to understand the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and the abolitionists, Harrold contends that it is important to understand their vastly different backgrounds. Lincoln, born in slaveholding Kentucky, raised in southern Indiana and frontier Illinois, was a product of the environment and the people he grew up with. Although often commenting on the basic immorality of slavery, largely as a violation of the revered Declaration of Independence, as a young man, and even deep into his political career, Lincoln felt slavery was a political conundrum that would be difficult to solve. And, as Harrold puts it so well, “being ‘antislavery’ was not the same thing as being an abolitionist.”

Harrold explains that once Lincoln embarked on his political career, it was those politics that kept him from moving into the abolitionist camp. Taking on a political life as a Whig and revering “The Great Compromiser”

Henry Clay as his ideal politician left Lincoln with a pragmatic approach to what would be the future of slavery in the United States. The man who would be one day become known as “The Great Emancipator” knew that

The majority of Lincoln and the Abolitionists focuses on the Railsplitter’s rise to the presidency, and rightly so. As mentioned above, understating Lincoln’s background is prerequisite to understanding how he viewed abolitionists and approached their methods. However, the short treatment—always a challenge with a “concise history”—on the often fraught relationship between President Lincoln and abolitionist leaders like William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Horace Greeley, and Frederick Douglass leaves considerable room for further examination. Despite this fact, Harrold makes clear that abolitionist pressure influenced many of Lincoln’s decisions regarding slavery during his presidential terms.

Lincoln and the Abolitionists clearly achieves its goal in providing a short, thoroughly researched, yet highly-readable explanation of the sometimes rocky relationship between the two parties. Despite their differences in backgrounds, political ideology, and ultimate goals, both Lincoln and the abolitionists, and thus their interactions, left a tremendous impact on the history of the United States that still resonates today. Harrold’s book makes that particular relationship dynamic ever so more understandable for both casual learners and wellversed historians.

Tim Talbott is the Director of Education, Interpretation, Visitor Services, and Collections at Pamplin Historical Park and the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier in Petersburg, Va. He is currently researching the various combination of elements that ultimately led to emancipation.

The Scholarship of Confederate Nationalism

George C. Rable, DamnYankees! Demonization & Defiance in the Confederate South. Louisiana State University Press, 2015.

Jason Phillips, Diehard Rebels: The Confederate Culture of Invincibility. University of Georgia Press, 2007.

James Marten, The Children’s Civil War. University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Michael T. Bernath, Confederate Minds: The Struggle for Intellectual Independence in the Civil War South. University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

Coleman Hutchison, Apples & Ashes: Literature, Nationalism, and the Confederate States of America. University of Georgia Press, 2012.

Aaron Sheehan-Dean, Why Confederates Fought: Family & Nation in Civil War Virginia. University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

In January 1862 a Georgian serving in Virginia wrote home about the sunny prospects for the Southern Confederacy. “I have no more idea that the Yankees will whip us,” he declared, “than that a chicken can teach Latin.”

I quote from a recent book, George C. Rable’s Damn Yankees! Demonization & Defiance in the Confederate South (2015) as a way of introducing a point that has recently struck me: the surge of academic interest in cultural expressions of Confederate nationalism. By the way, when George told his chicken-teaching-Latin yarn to the Atlanta Civil War Round Table,

from the lectern when I told the story of the old slave woman on the plantation of Howell Cobb (also from Athens) who explained to the Cobb children that there’d be no Christmas toys that year because the Yankees shot Santa (the audience howled).

we all laughed.

Historiography routinely records historians revising the findings of earlier generations of scholars—which is sort of reflected in what Henry Ford, the carmaker, once said: “history is more or less bunk.”

Ahem.

Thirty years ago I reviewed Why South Lost the Civil War (1986), by Richard E. Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William H. Still, Jr. I noted the authors’ argument that shaky nationalism, guilt over slavery, and confusion as to why they were fighting all undermined Southerners’ spirit. The Confederacy, as they put it, “died of guilt and failure to will.”

Well, that take seems to be on its way out, to infer from a handful of books I’ve read or am reading.

One of my favorites is Damn Yankees! by Dr. Rable, now retired from the University of Alabama. He examined Southern newspapers, speeches, letters, and diaries, searching for Confederates’ denunciations of the enemy. He found that the longer the war dragged on, the more poisonous and pervasive the anti-Yankee invective became.

Jason Phillips, who teaches history at Mississippi State, is author of Diehard Rebels: The Confederate Culture of Invincibility. He worked this book from his doctoral dissertation at Chapel Hill, which alone attests to academic interest in Confederate culture.

Dr. Phillips is at his best in describing Confederates’ characterization of Yankees. Southerners found them at once weak, brutal, “fanatical Puritans,” “brutish mercenaries,” “immigrant trash,” and “cowardly shopkeepers.”

No wonder that, as the wartime children’s math book taught, one Confederate could whip ten Yankees!

…er, make that seven, at least in An Elementary Arithmetic, Designed for Beginners (Raleigh, 1864): “If one Confederate soldier can whip 7 yankees, how many soldiers can whip 49 yankees?”

This brings up another of my favorites, James Marten’s The Children’s Civil War, which deals a lot with Confederate primers. It’s not so recent, but I turned to it while preparing a slide talk for the Georgia Obstetrical & Gynecological Society on women and children in the Civil War. President at the time was Dr. Cindy Mercer of Athens. I addressed her

The title of Michael T. Bernath’s work tells it all: Confederate Minds: The Struggle for Intellectual Independence in the Civil War South. A reviewer for the Journal of American History judged, “this valuable work finally puts to rests the notion that the Confederacy was an intellectual wasteland and that Confederates had nothing to say aside from their rebel yell.”

…which is the point that Coleman Hutchison makes in Apples & Ashes: Literature, Nationalism, and the Confederate States of America (Georgia, 2012). The author, an assistant professor of English at the University of Texas, examines poetry, fiction, drama, music, and criticism produced in the wartime South and finds that “Confederate literature was an essential vehicle for Confederate nationalism, a sinewy and multifarious phenomenon that historians have begun to take seriously.”

Way to go, Professor!

I find striking a statement that Dr. Hutchison makes in his opening pages:

This book is by no means an apology for the Confederacy or Confederate nationalism. I find almost nothing that is admirable in the politics and culture of the Civil War South. Much of Confederate literature was deeply conservative. Emerging from a fiercely nationalistic milieu, it resounds with both racist and racialistic rhetoric and makes the case again and again for an antidemocratic republic.

But here’s the clincher: “No matter how unsavory that story proves, I think it is important that it be told.”

Reading this, I couldn’t help but think that it’s peculiar: while everyday Americans are pulling down or hiding away Confederate monuments, a growing number of academic scholars are studying aspects of Confederate nationalism that led to those statues being raised in the first place. They are detailing Confederate culture without dignifying it.

The conundrum is ably expressed by Professor Aaron Sheehan-Dean in his Why Confederates Fought: Family & Nation in Civil War Virginia: “While it is certainly true that simple answers to the question of why men fought, such as ‘for their way of life,’ or ‘for freedom,’ or even ‘for independence,’ conceal the reality of slavery, hierarchy, and inequality in the southern

social order, it is equally true that people at the time incorporated the oppressive elements of the antebellum South within abstract frameworks such as democracy, self-determination, and cultural autonomy. The fact that we value those abstractions but not the uses to which Confederates put them complicates matters still more.”

Think about it.

Stephen Davis is Book Review

Editor for Civil War News. His new book, just out, focuses on a hundred Civil War photographs taken by George Barnard; most are from Atlanta. His next book, Texas Brigadier to the Fall of Atlanta: John Bell Hood, will be published later this year by Mercer University Press. Its companion volume, carrying Hood’s story through the Tennessee Campaign, will appear next year.

Titles By Stephen Davis

100 Significant Civil War Photographs: Atlanta Campaign

George N. Barnard’s photographs of the Atlanta Campaign

While Mathew Brady, Timothy O’Sullivan and a few others won fame as photographers of the American Civil War’s eastern theater, George N. Barnard earned a reputation as the key cameraman of the war’s western area. Evidence of this is Barnard’s hundreds of photographs taken of Atlanta Campaign scenes. Some were published in 1866, but many more have appeared in the countless pictorial histories of the Civil War.

Paperback, 128 pages. $19.95 + $4.95 shipping

A Long and Bloody Task

The Atlanta Campaign from Dalton through Kennesaw Mountain to the Chattahoochee River May 5–July 18, 1864

Davis’ narrative history of the Atlanta Campaign is divided into two paperbacks from Savas Beatie’s Emerging Civil War Series. Volume One, A Long and Bloody Task, carries Sherman’s forces from Dalton in northwest Georgia to the Chattahoochee River. There the Confederate government was forced to relieve its army commander, Joseph E. Johnston, and replace him with Gen. John B. Hood.

Paperback, 192 pages. $14.95 + $4.95 shipping

All the Fighting They Want

The Atlanta Campaign from Peachtree Creek to the City’s Surrender July 18–September 2, 1864

With the Yankee army five miles outside of Atlanta, Hood promised not to give up with city without a fight— which is all President Jefferson Davis asked. Davis’ companion volume, All the Fighting They Want, describes Hood’s efforts to defend Atlanta. Its fall in early September 1864 was a mortal blow to Confederate hopes for independence and a big boost to Lincoln’s hopes for presidential reelection.

Paperback, 192 pages.

$14.95 + $4.95 shipping

To order a signed copy from author Stephen Davis call 404.735.8447 or email SteveATL1861@yahoo.com

The Complex Creatures That Were Southern Ironclads

Gettysburg Trivia

1. Who sent this note to Pickett, “The 18 guns have been driven off. For God’s sake come on quick or we cannot support you. Ammunition nearly out”?

2. Who was the only Gettysburgher who fought in the battle near his home?

3. Which two regiments fought each other at Little Round Top on the afternoon of July 2?

4. Who commanded the 20th Maine during the battle?

5. Which Confederate division commander was seriously wounded in the arm at the start of Longstreet’s attack on the afternoon of July 2?

6. Federal III Corps commander took a wound to his leg on the afternoon of July 2 that led to amputation. Which general?

7. Who commanded the newly

formed Third Corps of Lee’s army?

8. During the battle, who was commander of the Union II Corps, which took the brunt of the attack of Pickett, Pettigrew, and Trimble on the third day?

9. Who commanded Lee’s cavalry in the summer of 1863, who proved himself famously absent in the several days before the battle?

10. Which one of Pickett’s three brigade commanders rode his horse ahead of his troops in the charge of July 3, was killed, and whose body was never identified for burial?

Answers found on page 46.

Steve Davis is the Civil War News Book Review Editor.

He can be contacted by email at: SteveATL1861@yahoo.com.

Military Images

Engines of Rebellion: Confederate Ironclads and Steam Engineering in the American Civil War. By Saxon T. Bisbee. Photos, drawings, appendices, notes, bibliography, index, 280 pp., 2018. University of Alabama Press, www.uapress. ua.edu. $59.95 hardcover.

Reviewed by Theodore P. Savas

ships themselves and their (usually) short lives, but until now almost nothing about the engines and other important equipment found below decks.

Bisbee begins with something of an encapsulated overview of the book as a whole, a very detailed and technical introduction (though it is much more than that) describing the steam power plants of the day, the Confederate ironclad program, hull-types, auxiliary machinery, etc. While interesting, it is also very detailed and littered with engineering jargon that had me flipping to the back of the book to study the glossary (thereby proving its worth). Whether this level of detail is needed is arguable, but it sets up a much better understanding of the balance of the book for readers determined to understand the minutiae included within these pages.

on the fly via conversion. As the war progressed, the Confederacy needed smaller and simpler designs with a focused need on ships capable of defending harbors like Mobile, Wilmington and Charleston. Still, the iron added significant weight that increased draft in often notoriously shifting and treacherous waters. Finding good reliable steam plants plagued the South until the end of the war. Dwindling skilled labor helped induce cleaner designs, including diamond-shaped hulls, though few records seem to exist to make definitive conclusions as to their efficacy (the Albemarle being, perhaps, the lone exception). Late-war designs came too late to see any combat but promised much, since they were constructed or undergoing construction on the shoulders of several years of trial and error.

As everyone who reads much of anything about the Confederate Navy soon realizes, Secretary Stephen Mallory managed to accomplish quite a lot with very little—especially when compared to the deployable assets available in the North. He and the South were not always (or often) well served by those tied into the naval industrial complex. Because of Engines of Rebellion, a new book by Saxon T. Bisbee, it is much easier to understand the rich complexity of what went on within the ironclad program and especially the complex machinery needed to operate the vessels.

Early on Mallory realized that the Confederacy could not compete with the Union in building traditional warships and decided instead to pump resources into ironclad construction. By the time the war ended, the South had begun construction on fifty such vessels and had completed or nearly outfitted twenty-eight of them. The iron ships proved they were powerful in battle in Hampton Roads (CSS Virginia), on the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers (CSS Arkansas), in Charleston against the Federal blocking squadron (CSS Chicora and Palmetto State), and in Mobile Bay (CSS Tennessee) and elsewhere. What they lacked was the machinery capable of handling their massive weight. We know a substantial amount about the

The first iron ships were conversions from existing ships: the CSS Manassas from the steamer Enoch Train; the CSS Virginia from the steam frigate USS Merrimack; and CSS Baltic from a prewar iron and cottonclad sidewheeler. Unable to match their needs with the right engines and machinery, the South had no choice but to use what was available. That they proved ineffective is no surprise, but the technology was still in its infancy, and that it worked as well as it did under the circumstances is something of which the author takes note.

Most of the balance of Engines of Rebellion is segmented by the type of ship under discussion, for example, the Richmond Class — CSS Richmond, Chicora, Palmetto State, etc.— the Tennessee Class—CSS Tennessee, Columbia—and so forth, and how the various designs selected worked with the machinery available to power them. Different hull designs, for example, worked better with different engine plants, boilers, and so on. One thing made clear is that the Confederacy got better at designing and building ironclads as the war went on.

To a degree, part of the failure of the ironclads had to do with their conflicting purpose. Harbor defense or oceangoing to break the blockade? Slow lumbering behemoths in still waters, or faster offensive ships, nimble but powerful? The conflicts led to compromises that created serious flaws in each of the ships built from scratch, rather than created

Readers seeking a complete history of ironclad warfare will be disappointed, but that is not the purpose of Engines of Rebellion. An appendix featuring a list of each of the ironclads, its specifications, machinery and final location (if known) is interesting and helpful. What is not helpful is the manner in which the nearly 50 illustrations were reproduced. The drawings, plans and photographs are especially valuable because of the technical nature of this study. Unfortunately, most of them are reproduced too small to be of any use—a curious design oversight for a book of this nature.

Those caveats aside, Bisbee is to be applauded for his level of research and the organization of his groundbreaking study. This information is available nowhere else, and without it students only had an incomplete picture of the complex creatures that were Southern ironclads. Why they worked as well as they did—and why they didn’t—has now been answered much more satisfactorily. Stephen Mallory was right: Southern naval efforts accomplished much more than most people ever realized.

Theodore P. Savas is the owner and managing director of Savas Beatie Publishing in El Dorado Hills, Cal. He has written about and lectures frequently on Civil War naval topics.

Hidden in the Archives So Long

Exposing Slavery: Photography, Human Bondage, and the Birth of Modern Visual Politics in America. By Matthew Fox-Amato. 105 color photographs, notes, bibliography, index, 360 pp., 2019. Oxford University Press, www.oup.com/ us. $39.95 hardcover.

Reviewed by Stephen Davis

existed in America more than two centuries when daguerreotypy was invented in France in 1839. Reported in newspapers, the process was brought to this country, where experimenters improved it as wet-plate collodion photography. By 1850 almost a thousand cameramen were in business in the U.S., offering everybody a chance to have their pictures taken.

Enter Prof. Fox-Amato, who teaches at the University of Idaho, and who developed this book from his doctoral dissertation at Southern California. Exposing Slavery looks at how photography was used in distinctly different ways by slaveowners, abolitionists, Union soldiers and enslaved African Americans themselves.

Understanding Confederates’

Hearts and Minds

decade of the medium,” the author explains, “enslaved people had begun entering southern daguerreotype saloons of their own volition, posing for cameras, and leaving with visual treasures they could keep in their pockets.”

The same thing happened in the antebellum North. Frederick Douglass had his picture taken more than 160 times—more than Lincoln—and in doing so he was casting his image as not only a man, but a defiant one at that (see Samuel Miller’s daguerreotype 1847/1852).

Private Confederacies: The Emotional Worlds of Southern Men as Citizens and Soldiers. By James J. Broomhall. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, 240 pp., 2019. University of North Carolina Press, www. uncpress.org. $29.95 softcover.

Reviewed by Meg Groeling

In his remarkable book, Believing is Seeing (2011), Errol Morris explores the mysteries of photography, especially images of historical events and personages.

Continuing in that spirit of imaginative scholarship is Matthew Fox-Amato’s Exposing Slavery: Photography, Human Bondage, and the Birth of Modern Visual Politics in America.

The institution of slavery had

Take the photograph on the cover of the book, that of little Charlotte Middleton and her enslaved nurse, Lydia, taken by Charlestonian George S. Cook in the late 1850s. The author puts it best: “through the circulation and display of images of well-dressed bondspeople and portraits of enslaved caretakers with white children, enslavers projected a comfortable, harmonious, and familial form of bondage,” allowing Southern whites to “persuade themselves and others of the just and beneficial nature of slavery.”

But danger lurked here. The Lydia posing as “property” is simultaneously having her personhood affirmed and preserved by Cook’s camera. “In the first

In his chapter “Realizing Abolition,” Fox-Amato discusses how abolitionists recognized and employed photography as a powerful antislavery weapon. The Branded Hand of Captain Jonathan Walker, a daguerreotype made in 1845, shows closeup Walker’s outstretched left hand branded with “SS”—slave stealer. (Walker, a northern white shipwright, had helped seven slaves escape from Florida to the Bahamas, but was caught, tried and sentenced to brief imprisonment but a lifetime scar.) Abolitionists reproduced the picture widely in newspapers and pamphlets as an irrefutable portrayal of slavery’s horrific violence.

“Years later, as the Civil War raged,” the author states, “Union soldiers would orchestrate pictures with fugitive slaves that envisioned racial hierarchy as slavery fell.” When Timothy O’Sullivan photographed a group of Union officers in Virginia in the spring of 1864, he included in the scene a young black man holding a pitcher—an image, Fox-Amato writes, that “fused racial hierarchy with a sense of place, white privilege, and black subservience.” To Northern whites worried about the status of millions of soon-to-be freedpeople, such pictures offered assurances that after emancipation, blacks were ready to accept a subordinate role in white society.

These instances only hint at the intellectual richness of Exposing Slavery. I echo the observation of one admirer of Fox-Amato’s book: “the links between photography and American thinking about slavery are so clear here, one wonders how they could have remained hidden in the archives for so long.”

Stephen Davis is Book Review Editor for Civil War News. His new book, 100 Significant Photographs of the Civil War--Atlanta Campaign, is due out August 2019.

children. White supremacy and control denoted his role in society. In the Confederate armies, however, men were forced to associate with a variety of other men, many not from the elite or even middling class. The decisions of other men now controlled his daily actions, his food, and his clothing. Men, now separated from their families, created other support groups from within the military. Without this support, the chaos and trauma of battle, wounding, illness, and death could have seemed impossible to bear. How each man dealt with these issues is the premise of Private Confederacies.

Author James J. Broomhall is an assistant professor of history at Shepherd University and director of the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War. This book is part of Civil War America, edited by Peter S. Carmichael, Caroline E. Janney, and Aaron Sheehan-Dean. Civil War America is a series of books interpreting the history and culture of the Civil War-era and beyond in a broad and diverse manner.

Broomhall has followed the private writings (letters, diaries) of several Southern men from the antebellum years through the Civil War, emancipation and Reconstruction. He has chosen a diverse group of men, although each is from a slaveholding family. For example, Georgia native George Anderson Mercer kept a diary from the age of fifteen. His words represent a complex but familiar portrait of southern masculinity based on “Christian gentility, ideological expression, and emotional communication.” Future Confederate general Edmund Kirby-Smith wrote of similar feelings. When these men became soldiers, they continued to write. For southern men, the crises of war forced a transfiguration of ideas upon the private, emotional worlds of those who fought for the South.

Before the war, a “southron” defined himself by his relationship to slaves, women, and

When southern soldiers returned to civilian life, the changes they experienced once again left many emotionally vulnerable. There were several outcomes of these experiences. Most men found ways to define themselves once again, even in times of emancipation and Reconstruction. Some others, however, found that bitter, aggressive masculinity defined their reaction to such significant changes. Sadly, the latter choice led to the creation of vigilante organizations with their legacy of lynchings and the Ku Klux Klan.

Private Confederacies is an essential contribution to a growing number of resources concerning the mentality and actions of southern men and women before, during, and after the Civil War. Good, new work is appearing in this area, and each one takes a step toward helping readers understand just how the myth of the Lost Cause not only came into existence but persisted for so long. Books such as Joanne Freeman’s The Field of Blood, Ben Wynne’s The Man Who Punched Jefferson Davis, Diane Miller Sommerville’s Aberration of Mind, and Jarret Ruminski’s The Limits of Loyalty join Tony Horowitz’s seminal Confederates in the Attic as the waning of the Lost Cause pushes us to more clearly understand the hearts and minds of southerners who fought in the Civil War. James J. Broomall’s book makes a significant contribution to this worthy effort.

Meg Groeling, of Hollister, Cal., received her Master’s degree in military history, with a Civil War emphasis, from American Public University in 2016. Her next book, First Fallen: The Life of Col. Elmer Ellsworth, will be published by Southern Illinois University Press.

The Liberation of the Single Southern Woman

Single, White, Slaveholding Women in the NineteenthCentury American South. By Marie S. Molloy. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, 240 pp., 2018. University of South Carolina Press, www.uscpress. com. $39.99 hardcover.

Reviewed

by

Claire Affinito

Scabs and Scabbards

children. Molloy argues that the Civil War provided single women with the opportunity to accelerate personal, social, economic and legal change that fostered the acceptance of their existence in society.

Molloy’s work covers a wide expanse of time by considering gender norms and behavior from the antebellum through the postwar era. Molloy defines singleness to include nonmarriage, widowhood, separation and divorce. Through the stories of individual women, she highlights how all varieties of single women navigated their precarious position. To place these single women in context, Molloy begins with a description of the gender roles of Southern society. She investigates the hierarchical structure of Southern society and how the position of women in this structure dictated acceptable behavior for women. In Southern society, women were expected to conform to the social paradigm known as “The Cult of True Womanhood.”

In Single, White, Slaveholding

Women in the NineteenthCentury American South, historian Marie S. Molloy examines a relatively overlooked group in nineteenth-century Southern society: single white slaveholding women. Traditionally, studies of slaveholding women have focused exclusively on married plantation mistresses and socialites. Molloy brings slaveholding single women into the spotlight by highlighting how these women maneuvered in a society that expected them to marry and bear

To be an ideal Southern lady, women were expected to uphold “the four cardinal virtues”—piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Along with exemplifying these traits, women were valued for their roles as mothers and wives. This left single women with few options. Single women were viewed as redundant, odd, or even socially deviant by choosing not to marry and have children. Molloy describes how single women found ways to define themselves as valuable and respected members of society.

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Single Southern women coped with societal constraints in various ways. Molloy argues that the Civil War allowed these women to forge a legitimate rival to the Cult of True Womanhood with the Cult of Single Blessedness, which emphasized the contributions of single women inside and outside of the home. Women expanded the traditional and acceptable roles of domestic caregivers, nurses and teachers. The Civil War and subsequent postwar challenges provided single women with ample opportunities to augment these home roles and find a place for themselves in society. And, in turn, these new roles gave women greater autonomy and economic independence. This book is broken down into five chapters. Each chapter ends with a brief summary that provides an excellent wrapup for each of Molloy’s main points. The chapters focus on topics including the construction of Southern femininity, the role of single women in the family, work, female friendship, and law, property and the single woman. Molloy uses diaries, letters, journals, court cases, petitions and laws to paint a picture of challenges and triumphs of unmarried, divorced and widowed women and how their situations changed throughout the nineteenth century. However, the women investigated in this work are of the highest class. A look at middle- and lower-class single women would round out this already excellent study. This book is an essential read for those interested in gender and sexuality. It provides a more positive look at the role of single Southern slaveholding women in society. Single, White, Slaveholding Women in the Nineteenth-Century American South delves beyond the traditional plantation lady to provide a nuanced look at the Southern female experience.

This past spring Claire Affinito graduated from Shepherd University with a bachelor’s degree in history. She has recently begun a nine-month internship at the Antietam National Battlefield. In this internship she will focus on providing education and interpretive programs to visitors that focus on the battle, the aftermath, and its impact on local citizens.

War Matters: Material Culture in the Civil War Era. Edited by Joan E. Cashin. Photos, notes, index, bibliography, 263 pp., 2018. University of North Carolina Press, www.uncpress. org. $29.95 paperback.

Reviewed by Salvatore Cilella

artifacts—are all central to our study of history and anthropology. Editor Joan E. Cashin’s War Matters narrows the microscope on the material culture to that produced during the American Civil War and comes up with some pretty surprising results, along with some more traditional “things.” Her introduction, aptly entitled “The Idea of Things,” explores the current academic controversies surrounding the concept of “material culture,” and the ten essays that follow illuminate the “battle.”

When I was in museum school (during the medieval ages), we learned that material culture was all those “things” that man has produced that have earned him money, made him comfortable, made him uncomfortable, increased his lot in life, decreased his lot in life and generally could be described as all those things you see in museums. The term came into the mainstream museum world in the 1970’s when James Deetz, a young anthropologist/archeologist, began using the term to help identify different cultures and societies through his diggings and explorations. A classmate of mine, Thomas Schlereth, also helped popularize the term in the museum field when he recognized that all those everyday things in our attic and basement were worthy of our study to understand our and other cultures. Indeed, Deetz’s book, In Small Things Forgotten, argued that the written word alone failed to provide an adequate picture of the past. Schlereth’s Artifacts and the American Past explored in detail the motivations driving the production of material cultures. All human creations— maps, photographs, art, music,

Traditional pieces with self-explanatory titles include Jason Phillips’ “John Brown’s Pikes,” Ronald and May Zboray’s “Saved by a Testament, Books as Shields Among Union and Confederate Soldiers,” and Earl Hess’ “The Material Culture of Weapons in the Civil War.” Two of the most compelling essays are Peter Carmichael’s “The Trophies of Victory and the Relics of Defeat: Returning Home in the Spring of 1865,” and Yael Sternhell’s “The Stuff of Defeat: Material Culture and the Downfall of Jefferson Davis.” Carmichael examines a witness tree under which Robert E. Lee stood prior to his meeting with Grant at Appomattox. Once the surrender was announced, soldiers from both sides recognized the importance of the tree and literally tore it to shreds for a souvenir of the day—for one group, a sad remembrance of defeat, for the other, a reminder of victory as both sides seemed to understand it was symbolic of peace at last.

Sternhell’s essay recounts the brief history of Jefferson Davis’ personal effects after his capture, their confiscation and his twenty-year struggle to regain possession of them. To Davis, Sternhell argues, his loss of his possessions was the final indignity.

Perhaps the most arresting article in this slim volume is Robert D. Hicks’ “Scabrous Matters: Spurious Vaccinations in the Confederacy.” After presenting the traditional definitions of material culture, Hicks argues the

H Scabs

. . . . . . . .

“lymph and crusts (scabs from vaccinations) are artifacts” as well. After all, they are produced and used by man. If a doctor’s bag included all manner of instruments to cut and probe, why not dead smallpox virus that can be used to inoculate? Hicks argues successfully that the samples of virus, crusts, lymph, and vaccine were no more unusual than the other items in a physician’s bag. In the end I had to admit that, as strange as smallpox vaccinations are as an indicator of material culture, they do indeed fit the definition and are worthy of our attention.

aspect of the historical narrative. To whom would a book like this appeal? Do you read for information or affirmation? Probably the general reader and student of the war will find new information and thus greater knowledge concerning our great national tragedy. Museum leaders who have not gotten wind of this work should read it. The voracious reader of battles and leaders will probably take a pass on this, much to his or her regret. It is an eye-opener and a fascinating take on the war that has occupied the American imagination for the last 150 years.

The Seventh West Virginia: “Their Deeds Are Their Monuments”

The Seventh West Virginia Infantry: An Embattled Union Regiment from the Civil War’s Most Divided State. By David Mellott and Mark Snell. Appendices, notes, bibliography, index, 368 pp., 2019. University Press of Kansas, www.kansaspress.ku.edu. $34.95 cloth.

Reviewed by David Marshall

members of the Seventh West Virginia Veteran Volunteers and were present when Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House.

not secession. As a result, many fought against the Confederacy and the slave oligarchy of eastern Virginia in support of the Union.

This classic study would have been enhanced by an order of battle, a listing of soldiers who fought with the 7th and more maps. In the end, 577 soldiers of the Seventh West Virginia Veteran Volunteers received honorable or medical discharges at war’s end and made it back home.

This is a well-written book on the Seventh West Virginia Infantry. Each battle this regiment participated in is covered in detail. Students and enthusiasts will gain a great deal of insight into common soldiers and their officers. Like most modern regimental histories, the authors do not seek to glorify the men of the 7th, but simply to understand and report the reality of the soldiers’ experience. The text is complemented by 38 photographs and twelve outstanding maps produced by cartographer Hal Jespersen.

After fighting a few minor skirmishes, one of its own soldiers named this regiment from West Virginia the Bloody Seventh. By the end of the Civil War, 315 members died of injuries, illness, or from other causes. Out of a total four-year enrollment of 1,528 enlisted officers and men, the Seventh’s mortality rate was 20.6 percent. After a year of skirmishing, marching, serving on occupation duty and participating in a few battles in the Shenandoah Valley, the Seventh was transferred to the Army of the Potomac in early 1862. There it remained an integral part of the Second Corps until the end of the conflict. These fighting men fought in more major battles in the eastern theater than any other from the newly admitted thirty-fifth state, including Winchester, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Overland Campaign, and Petersburg. In December 1862 the regiment’s name was changed officially to the “Seventh Union Virginia Volunteers.” Following official statehood on June 20, 1863, the regiment was renamed the “Seventh West Virginia Infantry” and became part of the Gibraltar Brigade. One third of these fighting men came from outside the Mountain State, including nearby Appalachian counties in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The survivors who reenlisted in 1864 became

This monograph is the result of more than two decades of research by David Mellott and Mark Snell. The statistical appendices included are the result of research by Professor Snell that was originally entered into a data base of West Virginia soldiers created during his tenure as the founding director of Shepherd College’s Center for the Study of the Civil War in 1993. It is not written in the standard format of well-respected military works such as John Pullen’s Twentieth Maine Infantry, The First Minnesota by Richard Moe, The Twentieth Massachusetts by Richard Miller, or The 11th Pennsylvania Reserves by Joseph Gibbs. However, it utilizes social details that provide a greater understanding of the men’s lives and their political history. The authors provide an in-depth look at the regiment’s members from a socioeconomic, military, medical, and personal point of view. Statistics include casualties for all of the Seventh’s engagements.

An Embattled Union Regiment from the Civil War’s Most Divided State successfully tells the story of individuals and their place in West Virginia’s Civil War history. In 1860 more than half of the families living in the Southern Appalachian region were poor and only 18 percent were slaveowners, with the fewest living in West Virginia counties. Most people living in western Virginia favored the Union and

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This narrative is a first-rate work that should appeal to anyone with an interest in regimentals in general and West Virginia in particular. I highly recommend this publication as a memorable regimental history.

David Marshall has been a high school American history teacher in the Miami-Dade School district for the past thirty-two years. He is president of the Miami Civil War Roundtable Book Club. He has given presentations to Civil War Round Tables on Joshua Chamberlain, Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln and the battle of Gettysburg.

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July 23-28, Maryland. Conference, Antietam: The Bloodiest Day

Featuring Ted Alexander, Scott Hartwig, Tom Clemens, Carol Reardon, Dennis Frye, John Michael Priest, Steve Recker, John Schildt and others based in Hagerstown, Md. Join us for the largest Antietam conference ever held led by expert historians! Detailed battlefield walks and specialized tours of the campaign such as Crampton’s Gap, Harpers Ferry, the C&O Canal during wartime, the Battle of Shepherdstown and more. Talks also given by the historians listed above. The full itinerary & pricing available on www. CivilWarSeminars.org.

July 27-28, Tennessee. Civil War Show and Sale

American Digger® Magazine’s Chattanooga Civil War & Artifact Show, Camp Jordan Arena, 323 Camp Jordan Pkwy., East Ridge, Tenn. For information contact 770-362-8671 or 716-574-0465; email anita@americandigger.com or kesmas@localnet.com.

Aug. 3, Alabama. 155th Battle of Mobile Bay Commemorative Day

The well-preserved ramparts of Fort Gaines have guarded the entrance to Mobile Bay for more than 160 years. Now a fascinating historic site, the Fort stands at the eastern tip of Dauphin Island where it commands panoramic views of the bay and the Gulf of Mexico. The event highlights Fort Gaines integral role in the Battle of Mobile Bay. The cannon will be fired every

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forty-five minutes in honor of the soldiers that fought in this pivotal battle. A living history day for the whole family. Demonstrations will be held all day in the Fort’s Blacksmith Shop.

Aug. 3, North Carolina.

Please join Mr. Harry Taylor as he continues with the ‘Timothy O’Sullivan and the Photographing of Fort Fisher’ series in the Spencer Theater at 2 p.m. Demonstrations will include how photos were created and developed during the Civil War. Seating is limited so please call 910-251-7340 for reservations.

Aug. 9, North Carolina. Fort Fisher Junior Reserves – “Civil Communications”

The last of the 2019 Junior Reserves summer programs: How did Civil War unites send messages over large distances without texting or cell phones? During the Civil War, both sides used the same signaling system called Wig-Wag, named for its movement of the flag. Learn to send the 1860’s version of text messages by flag. Program is from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Aug. 10-11, Georgia. Civil War Show and Sale

41st Annual show in Marietta at the Cobb County Civic Center, 548 S. Marietta Parkway, S.E., Marietta, Ga. 30060, hosted by the North Ga. Relic Hunters. $5 for adults; kids free. For more information see our ad on this page or visit www.NGRHA.com.

Aug. 10, North Carolina. Beat the Heat Summer Lecture Series at Fort Fisher

Jim Steele, site manager of Fort Fisher, will present a program on “The Battle of River’s Bridge.” Seating is limited, so please call 910-251-7340 for reservations. The program will begin promptly at 2 p.m.

Aug. 31 & Sept. 1, New York. Reenactment

Civil War Reenactment at Museum Village, 1010 State Route 17M, Monroe, NY 10950. Looking for reenactors. Application is available at www.museumvillage.org. For information; Contact Christine Egan, 845-782-8248, ext. 5.

Sept. 10, New Jersey. Lecture

The history of “The Pennsylvania Reserves” is recounted in a free PowerPoint presentation titled, “Following the Ghost of Corporal George Garman.” Garman’s great-great-grandson, Joseph F. Wilson, will offer the program at 7 p.m. on the Blackwood campus of Camden County College in the Civic Hall. Garman was a member of the 7th Pa. Reserves. Free parking. For information; joef21@aol.com.

Sept. 14-15, Virginia. Reenactment

Waynesboro At War: A Civil War Weekend will be held at Coyer Springs Park: 2091 Lyndhurst Rd, Waynesboro, Va. Experience living history along with battle scenarios at 2 p.m. each day. A Civil War dance social will be held Sat. 7-9 p.m. For information; 540-949- 5259, email: waynesboroatwar@gmail.com or www.waynesboroatwar.com.

Sept. 21-22, Pennsylvania. Fall Farm Skirmish

Historic Daniel Lady Farm, 1008 Hanover St. Gettysburg, Pa. Saturday, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., Sunday, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. In honor of its 60th Anniversary, the Gettysburg Battlefield Preservation Association will host a live action and living history program that will include Confederate and Union encampments and skirmishing on the hallowed ground of the Historic Daniel Lady Farm in Gettysburg. Over 500 reenactors will present the Battle of Antietam’s “Bloody Lane” along with a cavalry reenactment and other clashes during the two-day program. Adults: $15 for a one-day pass and $25 for a two-day pass. Children 15 and under free. Includes tours of the historic Daniel Lady farmhouse and barn. For information, www.gbpa.org. Email: events@gbpa.org.

Sept. 28, Pennsylvania. Ride for Monument Preservation

Soldier’s Grove, Pennsylvania Capitol Building East Wing. The 19th Annual Ride for the Monuments from Harrisburg to Gettysburg is sponsored by the Alliance of Bikers Aimed Toward Education (A.B.A.T.E.). It supports the Pennsylvania Gettysburg Monuments Trust for maintenance and upkeep of more than 140 monuments and markers on the battlefield that memorialize the actions of Pennsylvania troops. A portion also benefits upkeep of the Gettysburg Battlefield Preservation Association’s Historic Daniel Lady Farm. Registration begins at 11 a.m. outside the State Capitol Building’s East Wing. Welcoming ceremony: 12:15 p.m. Ride departure: 1 p.m. Open to all interested riders. Rain or shine. Registration $10. For information, www.gbpa.org and www.abatepa.org.

Sept. 29, Illinois. Civil War Show and Sale

Zurko Promotions presents The National Civil War Collectors Fall Show and Sale which will be held at the DuPage County Fairgrounds in Wheaton. Hours: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is $9 – includes admission to the CADA Collector Arms Dealers Assoc. Show. For information; www.chicagocivilwarshow.com.

Oct. 4-6, Virginia. Period Firearms Competition

The North-South Skirmish Association 140th 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 information; www.n-ssa.org.

Oct. 17, Massachusetts. CWRT Annual Jubilee Dinner

Olde Colony Civil War Round Table’s annual Jubilee Dinner at “Four Points by Sheraton Norwood, 1125 Boston Providence Turnpike, Norwood, MA.” Featuring the Hon. Frank J. Williams speaking on “U.S. Grant as a Hero.” Info/tickets: call Bob Hearsey at 781-828-3183.

Oct. 23-27, Pennsylvania. Guerillas, Partisans and Raiders

Featuring Martin West, Kevin Pawlak, Michael Hardy, Ted Alexander, Steve French and others based in Chambersburg, Pa. Special guest, award-winning author and historian Brian Steele Wills will also join us. We will examine irregular warfare through the ages from the Romans to present. Tours will include McCausland’s Raid, the Johnston/Gilmore Baltimore Raid, Mosby’s Confederacy and McNeil’s raids against the B&O Railroad. Talks also given by the historians listed above. The full itinerary & pricing available on www.CivilWarSeminars.org.

Artilleryman is a quarterly magazine founded in 1979 for enthusiasts who collect and shoot cannons and mortars primarily from the Revolutionary War, Civil War to World War II. Now expanded and fully illustrated in rich color throughout the entire magazine.

Oct. 26-17, Alabama. Skirmish

Alabama’s oldest active working farm, Old Baker Farm is located approximately 25 minutes south on Hwy. 280 from Birmingham in Harpersville. All branches invited. Firewood, hay, water and powder for Artillery provided. Sutlers welcome. For information; Jimmy White, alabamabattery@yahoo.com, 1174 Curt Jarrett Rd., Ashville, AL 35953.

Nov. 16, Pennsylvania. Remembrance Day in Gettysburg

General Meade & his Generals and the veterans of the Battle of Gettysburg Honor/Dedication Ceremonies during the Remembrance Day Observance. Honoring all commanders and veterans of the Battle. Meet at the General Meade Equestrian Monument at 10:30 a.m. For information; Jerry McCormick, 215-848-7753 or gedwinmc@msn.com for info.

Nov. 16-17, Virginia. Civil War Show and Sale

MK Shows presents the “Original Richmond” Capital of the Confederacy Civil War Show for collectors and history enthusiasts. There are hundreds of dealers with tables filled with books, authentic artifacts, guns, swords, uniform gear, images, artillery, belt buckles, buttons, and other accoutrements. Located at the Richmond International Raceway, 600 E. Laburnum Ave. Free parking. Over 350 tables. Adults $10, Children under 12 are free. Sat. 9-5 and Sun. 9-3. For information; www.MKShows.com or mike@mkshows.com.

Dec. 7-8, Tennessee. Civil War Show and Sale

MK Shows presents the 32nd Annual Middle Tennessee Civil War Show and Sale at the Williamson County Ag Expo Park, 4215 Long Lane in Franklin. The nation’s largest Civil War show, featuring 1,000 tables of antique weapons, artifacts and memorabilia from top dealers and collectors around the country and encompassing all eras of military history from the Revolutionary War through World War II. Appraisers are always on hand to help you identify and value your military collectibles at no cost. Hours are 9-5 on Saturday, 9-3 on Sunday, parking is free and admission is only $10/adults and children 12 and under are free. For more information; www.MKShows.com or Mike@ MKShows.com.

Dec. 31, Pennsylvania. Annual General Meade Birthday Celebration

Mark the annual anniversary of the birth of General George G. Meade, heroic commander of the victorious Union army at the Battle of Gettysburg. The General Meade Society of Philadelphia will celebrate at Historic Laurel Hill Cemetery, 3822 Ridge Ave. at 12 p.m. Champagne toast and reception will follow. For information; 215-228-8200 Laurel Hill Cemetery.

Deadline for submissions and advertising is the 20th of each month for the following Civil War News issue.

Small Talk Trivia Answers

1. Col. Edward Porter Alexander (1835–1910), commander of an artillery battalion in Longstreet’s corps. Maury Klein, Edward Porter Alexander (University of Georgia Press, 1971), 89.

2. “John Burns, the only citizen of Gettysburg who fought in the battle.” Earl Schenck Miers and Richard A. Brown, eds., Gettysburg (Rutgers University Press, 1948), 84.

3. The 15th Alabama and 20th Maine. Glenn W. La Fantasie, Gettysburg Requiem: The Life and Lost Causes of Confederate Colonel William C. Oates (Oxford University Press, 2006), 95-100.

4. Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (1828–1914). Edward G. Longacre, Joshua Chamberlain: The Soldier and the Man (Combined Publishing, 1999), 129-45.

5. Maj. Gen. John B. Hood (1831–1879). Richard M. McMurry, John Bell Hood and the War for Southern Independence (University Press of Kentucky, 1982), 75. Dr. McMurry wrote that an overhead shellburst lodged fragments in Hood’s left hand, forearm, elbow, and biceps. His source was the earlier biography by John P. Dyer (1950), in which the author noted that this information had come from “a member of the Hood family who prefers to remain anonymous” (p. 348 n. 60). In the last few years, though, the medical log of Hood’s physician, Dr. John Darby, has been published, and from it we learn that a lead ball from a shrapnel/spherical case shell had struck the radius in Hood’s left arm 2 ½ inches below the elbow, but had not broken the bone. Surgeons extracted the metal and did not have to amputate the arm.

6. Maj. Gen. Daniel E. Sickles (1825–1914). “A twelve-pound cannonball that had failed to explode came visibly lolopping, far too fast to be avoided by Dan and his mounted staff, across the farmyard from the direction of the Confederate artillery on Seminary Ridge and shattered and tore to pulp Dan’s right leg in its blue fabric.” Thomas Kenneally, American Scoundrel: The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles (Anchor Books, 2002), 287.

7. Lt. Gen. Ambrose Powell Hill (1825–1865). “A. P. Hill was called to Lee’s tent on the morning of May 24 [1863]. There the Commanding General told him that he was being promoted to the rank of lieutenant general and given command of the new Third Corps.” Martin Schenck, Up Came Hill: The Story of the Light Division and Its Leaders (Stackpole Company, 1958), 258. A half-century ago, I learned from my Civil War professor at Emory, the great Bell Irvin Wiley, a useful mnemonic device to remember the names of A. P. Hill’s three division commanders: Anderson, Pender, Heth. It’s funny how things stick with you….

8. Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock (1824–86). During the Confederate assault of July 3, Hancock took a bullet wound. “He was hit in the front of the right thigh by a Minie ball that had passed through the pommel of his saddle. As the bullet entered his groin it carried with it some bits of wood and a bent iron nail, apparently from the saddle. He was able to pull the nail out unaided but mistook the source of it. ‘They must be hard up for ammunition when they throw such shot as that,’ he remarked to the group that gathered around him.” Glenn Tucker, Hancock the Superb (Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1960), 155-56.

9. Maj. Gen. James E. B. (Jeb) Stuart (1833–1864). John W. Thomason, Jr., Jeb Stuart (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930), 426-38.

10. Brig. Gen. Richard B. Garnett (1817–1863). During the night of July 3-4, Federals behind the stone wall pilfered the bodies of Rebels buried before them; General Garnett’s sword, scabbard, and other signs of rank were thus stolen. When Federal soldiers buried the Rebel dead, Garnett’s body was likely thrown into the mass grave dug for common soldiers. In the early 1870s the Southerners’ remains were disinterred and transported for reburial to Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery. Garnett’s remains were probably among them. In 1991 I started a fundraising campaign to erect a cenotaph to the general. We succeeded in having a stone created and we dedicated it on July 3, 1991. Today you may see it at Hollywood’s Gettysburg Hill, inscribed thus:

AMONG THE CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS’ GRAVES IN THIS AREA IS THE PROBABLE RESTING PLACE OF BRIGADIER GENERAL RICHARD BROOKE GARNETTT, C.S.A. WHO WAS KILLED IN ACTION JULY 3, 1863, AS HE LED HIS BRIGADE IN THE CHARGE OF PICKETT’S DIVISION ON THE FINAL DAY OF THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. FIRST BURIED ON THE BATTLEFIELD, GENERAL GARNETT’S REMAINS WERE LIKELY REMOVED TO THIS AREA IN 1872 ALONG WITH OTHER CONFEDERATE DEAD BROUGHT FROM GETTYSBURG BY THE HOLLYWOOD MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION. REQUIESCAT IN PACE RICHARD BROOKE GARNETT 1817–1863.

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