Civil War News July 2022

Ulysses S. Grant’s Revolvers Bring $5.17M at Auction

The second-highest price ever paid for a collector firearm at auction

by Seth Isaacson

ROCK ISLAND, ILL.—A

significant pair of revolvers presented to Civil War general and 18th president Ulysses S. Grant sold May 13, 2022, at Rock Island Auction Company for a record $5.17 million during the company’s three-day May Premier Auction. Grant’s revolvers led the way in the $28.2 million auction, the second largest in the company’s history.

The magnificent, cased set of Remington New model army revolvers was estimated to sell for $1to $3 million. Bidding started at $800,000. Grant’s Remingtons soared past RIAC’s previous top seller, a garniture of six arms presented to Napoleon Bonaparte that realized $2.875 million in the company’s December 2021 Premier Auction.

“We are seeing remarkable prices in the collectible firearms market, and this is a tremendous example,” RIAC President Kevin Hogan said. “It’s an honor to be the company that people come to with their elite and historic firearms; last year we sold Napoleon’s garniture, Alexander Hamilton’s Revolutionary War flintlock pistols, and John Wayne’s Colt single action army.”

Grant’s Remingtons, numbered 1 and 2, are arguably the most significant firearms from the Civil War. The set is covered with the artistry of L.D. Nimschke, one of the most renowned 19th century master engravers. The pistols feature grips carved with Grant’s portrait and come nested in their original rosewood case with their full complement of accessories.

Grant’s Remingtons are being called an American treasure and drawing comparisons to President Abraham Lincoln’s gilt and engraved Henry rifle and President George Washington’s flintlock pistols. They were likely presented to Grant after he captured Vicksburg July 4, 1863, and thus secured the length of the Mississippi River for the Union.

Grant is one of the most

famous Americans of all time and certainly of the 19th century thanks to “Unconditional Surrender Grant’s” important victories during the Civil War that started with the capture of Fort Donelson and ended with General Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox. Grant’s historic role as President Abraham Lincoln’s hand-picked overall commander of the Union armies during the War established him as a national hero. Lincoln liked Grant as a commander because he was aggressive and got results whereas other generals were seen as too cautious or too reluctant to fully commit their forces when necessary to secure victory.

After many called for Grant’s removal as commander of the Union Army of the Tennessee, Lincoln is famously reported to

have remarked, “I can’t spare this man—he fights.” After the war, Grant was rewarded by becoming the first living “General of the Army;” his immense popularity propelled him to the White House as the 18th president. As president, Grant worked to bring the country back together while also struggling to protect the rights of freedmen and women in the South, including using federal military force to protect the rule of law. His autobiography, a true American classic, was completed in 1885 just before his death and published by his friend Mark Twain for the benefit of the Grant family. It helped solidify Grant’s enduring legacy as the hero who led the Union to victory. In it, he offers frank commentary on the Mexican-American War and American Civil War and

defended his actions during the latter as necessary for victory and to ultimately reunite the country. He concluded that the Confederate cause was “one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.” On the other hand, he also recognized his former adversaries truly believed in their cause; Grant’s terms of surrender for Robert E. Lee ultimately saved Lee from execution for treason.

Ulysses S. Grant’s historic presentation engraved Remington New Model army revolvers are two of the most historically significant and valuable Remington firearms of all time and certainly must be considered a “Holy Grail” for Civil War collectors. They were hidden from public view for over

a century and a half until they surfaced when put on display at the 2018 Las Vegas Antique Arms Show.

The set and their history were discussed in detail in the article “General Grant’s Magnificent Set of Lost Remingtons” by the late firearms author S.P. Fjestad published in the National Rifle Association’s American Rifleman that September. The author writes, “Without a doubt, these cased Remingtons constitute the most elaborate and historically significant set of currently known revolvers manufactured during the Civil War.” The revolvers themselves are true works of art on “steel canvases.” While no signature has been found on this

General U. S. Grant, City Point, Va., August, 1864. (Library of Congress)

Pair of presentation Remington revolvers presented to General Grant during the Civil War. (All firearm photos courtesy of Rock Island Auction Company)

Civil War News

Published by Historical Publications LLC

520 Folly Road, Suite 25-379, Charleston, SC 29412 800-777-1862 • Facebook.com/CivilWarNews mail@civilwarnews.com • civilwarnews.com

Advertising: 800-777-1862 • ads@civilwarnews.com

Jack W. Melton Jr. C. Peter & Kathryn Jorgensen

Publisher Founding Publishers

Editor: Lawrence E. Babits, Ph.D.

Advertising, Marketing & Assistant Editor: Peggy Melton

Columnists: Craig Barry, Salvatore Cilella, Stephanie Hagiwara, Gould Hagler, Tim Prince, John Sexton, and Michael K. Shaffer

Editorial & Photography Staff: Greg Biggs, Michael Kent, Bob Ruegsegger, Gregory L. Wade, Shannon Pritchard, Carl Sell Jr., Joan Wenner, J.D.

Technical Consultant: Heath Jones

Civil War News (ISSN: 1053-1181) Copyright © 2022 by Historical Publications LLC is published 12 times per year by Historical Publications LLC, 520 Folly Road, Suite 25 PMB 379, Charleston, SC 29412. Monthly. Business and Editorial Offices: 520 Folly Road, Suite 25 PMB 379, Charleston, SC 29412, Accounting and Circulation

Offices: Historical Publications LLC, 520 Folly Road, Suite 25 PMB 379, Charleston, SC 29412. Call 800-777-1862 to subscribe.

Periodicals postage paid at U.S.P.S. 131 W. High St., Jefferson City, MO 65101.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: Historical Publications LLC 520 Folly Road Suite 25 PMB 379 Charleston, SC 29412

Display advertising rates and media kit on request. The Civil War News is for your reading enjoyment. The views and opinions expressed herein are those of its authors, readers and advertisers and they do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Historical Publications, LLC, its owners and/or employees.

P UBLISHERS :

Please send your book(s) for review to: Civil War News

520 Folly Road, Suite 25 PMB 379 Charleston, SC 29412

Email cover image to bookreviews@civilwarnews.com. Civil War News cannot assure that unsolicited books will be assigned for review. Email bookreviews@civilwarnews.com for eligibility before mailing.

ADVERTISING INFO:

Email us at ads@civilwarnews.com Call 800-777-1862

MOVING?

Contact us to change your address so you don’t miss a single issue. mail@civilwarnews.com • 800-777-1862

SUBSCRIPTION RATES

U.S. Subscription

Publisher’s Note:

This year’s annual Gettysburg Edition and July Civil War News was mailed in the same polybag. We decided to upgrade the Gettysburg Edition by producing it as a booklet. The July Civil War News is 24 pages since much of the usual content is presented in the Gettysburg Edition. The book reviews and other regular columns will continue in the August issue which will have the regular 48 pages.

Our newest publication, Military Antique Collector magazine, has received hundreds of compliments. Vol. 1, No. 2 was mailed and Vol. 1, No. 3 is at the printer. Visit our website to see a free online version of the issue.

For a shorter URL type in historicalpubs.com.

To Renew your Subscription

Go to Sign Up (top left) and it takes you to the Account Registration page and type in your username (First and Last Name), type in your email address, and create a password. Create a screen name by using your First and Last name only, enter your password, click remember me, then click Create Account. The new website is still a work in progress, and we are participating in weekly Zoom training classes to bring our readers everything the new site has to offer. Over the next year there will be over 500 articles on this new site! We ask for your patience if you encounter any glitches during the transition. If you are a subscriber and would

like to have full access but don’t have an email on file with us, please call us at 800-777-1862,

and we will help you initiate the process.

Sept.

H

from page 1

pair of revolvers, we do know the identity of the engraver, iconic 19th century Master Engraver Louis D. Nimschke of New York.

The barrel engraving on Grant’s revolvers also matches the designs from Nimschke’s pullbook as shown on page 25 of L.D. Nimschke Firearms Engraver by R.L. Wilson. The barrels include borders at the muzzle and breech ends, scroll patterns with punched backgrounds on the sides, entwining bands and floral motifs at the center on the sides and repeated three times on the top, and entwining line motifs on the upper side flats at the breech. The bulk of the engraving on the revolvers consists of Nimschke’s exceptionally well-executed scroll engraving patterns with punched backgrounds. Among the scroll patterns are floral

accents such as blooms on the left side of the frames at the breech and among the scrollwork as well as checkerboard and dot patterns on the right side of the frames and butts. The recoil shields have floral and fan patterns. The top straps have twisted or entwining rope patterns along the sides sighting grooves.

Columbia’s shield is located behind the hammers followed by “FROM YOUR FRIENDS/O.N.

CUTLER. W.C. WAGLEY.” down the back straps.

The left grip of both revolvers features an excellent raised relief carved eagle, flags, and Columbia shield patriotic motif that was also used on the grips of the Alexander II revolvers.

The right panel of the first and left panel of the second feature the significant and beautifully executed raised relief carved bust of General Ulysses S. Grant.

The choice of Remington’s New Model army revolvers is also

notable. They began production in 1863 and became the second most issued Union Army sidearm during the War. As the latest in martial sidearms, they were an excellent choice for presentation to the Union’s greatest military hero. Serial numbers “1” and “2” respectively are marked on the bottom of the barrels, inside the grips, and on the grip frames. The trigger guards were not removed out of caution and immense respect for this historic pair but are clearly original and likely also have “1” and “2” on the rear spurs. The left side of both grip frames have “1” in addition to the respective “1” and “2” on the right side. Whether these are the first two Remington New Model army revolvers off the production line or have special custom order numbers is not known.

Regular production began around serial number 15000, a continuation from the 1861 Army range. The revolvers have

the “pinched” blade front sights. There is a full blue finish, aside from the silver trigger guards and casehardened hammers.

Grant’s uniform on the grips displays the insignia of a major general. Grant attained this rank in the volunteers after he captured Fort Donelson in 1862; he then became a major general in the regular army in the fall of 1863. Grant was promoted on March 2, 1864 and became the country’s second lieutenant general, after General George Washington. After the war, he became the first living four-star general, the designation for the General of the Army of the United States/ Commanding General of the U.S. Army, on July 25, 1866, a position he held until he resigned upon being elected president in 1869. The ranks and dates, plus this model’s 1863 introduction suggest the revolvers were presented in the latter half of 1863 or early 1864.

The exact date, location, and circumstances of the set’s presentation remains unknown, but the inscription on the back strap matches inscriptions on a pair of Colt Model 1861 navy revolvers (#s 11756 and 11757) manufactured in 1863 and presented to General James B. McPherson who was killed July 22, 1864. Given the evidence available, it is likely the revolvers were presented to Grant sometime in the second half of 1863 or early 1864.

The pair was presented by Otis Nelson Cutler and William C. Wagley, both veterans of the Mexican-American War. Wagley was a 2nd lieutenant in the 3rd Dragoons; Cutler was a captain in the Massachusetts Regiment of Volunteers. Cutler enlisted as an orderly sergeant in the 1st Mass. Volunteers in 1846 and was later promoted to captain. He formed a company of men to explore for gold in California where he met with success. He later built a home on the family farm in Lewiston, Maine. Contracted for building the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad in Missouri, he moved to Hannibal and became the superintendent of the railroad. At the end of the Civil War, Cutler was assigned duty as a special treasury agent stationed at New Orleans. Wagley remained active in the Louisiana river trade after the War and is recorded as commanding steamboats running to Mobile and Montgomery in 1865 and 1866.

Fjestad concluded this cased pair was “a ‘thank you’ for a wartime cotton-smuggling scheme” and that Cutler and Wagley most likely ordered these revolvers through Schuyler,

Hartley & Graham of New York City, the largest dealers in the country at the time. The retailer then contracted L.D. Nimschke to execute the embellishment on the guns. “The overall cost of the extravagant gift was no more than $400, with the revolvers’ original value at about $12 each. The set could have either been picked up or delivered to a specific location as per Cutler and Wagley’s request.” While period sources including newspapers, Senate records, and Grant’s own papers link Grant and McPherson to Cutler and Wagley via 1863 cotton trading, Grant’s participation is not as nefarious as Fjestad’s comments imply. Regardless of whether or not Grant’s involvement in the trade was legal, truly disinterested, or evenhanded, these beautiful presentation revolvers certainly smack of a bribe much in the way other gifts during his presidency were later called out as evidence of Grant’s supposed corruption. Like the claims of corruption that dogged him as president, the truth is more complicated and unlikely as dark as his detractors suggest.

By 1863, Grant was already a Union hero following his February 1862 Fort Donelson victory and the victory at Shiloh in April 1862. After New Orleans was captured in May 1862, the Union controlled the northern stretch of the Mississippi River and its mouth, but the Confederacy still retained control of Vicksburg. The fortified Mississippi River city became the main target for Grant and had the potential to end the war.

The Mississippi River was the region’s key mode of transportation, including the lucrative cotton trade. While cotton was a key cash crop in the South, it was also a crucial raw material for northeastern industry. Grant established programs putting runaway slaves to work in camps picking cotton that could be shipped up river and sold to fund the Union war effort and produce needed supplies. Moving the cotton out of the South under Union contract also helped prevent the South’s most valuable cash crop from being used to fund the Confederate war effort. The escaped slaves were compensated for their work under this plan, and some proceeds were used to provide their food, clothing, and shelter. This plan was approved by President Lincoln.

The cotton trade in Union controlled territory was regulated by Union officers and agents of the U.S. Treasury. Grant and his officers were in charge of granting trade licenses for his district.

“FROM YOUR FRIENDS/O.N. CUTLER. W.C. WAGLEY.” engraved the back straps.

PATENTED SEPT. 14. 1858/E. REMINGTON & SONS. ILION. NEW YORK U.S.A./NEWMODEL” is marked on top of the barrels.

The legal trade provided cover for illegal trade, and there were widespread reports of bribes, corruption, and illegal trade. The Secretary of War was told, “Every colonel, captain or quartermaster is in a secret partnership with some operator in cotton; every soldier dreams of adding a bale of cotton to his monthly pay.” Though many Union officers were corrupt and profited through involvement in both the legal and illegal cotton trade during the War, evidence shows that Grant found the whole business to be an annoying distraction from his primary military objective,

capturing Vicksburg.

Grant’s father was involved in these affairs and came down river with two businessmen intent on getting a contract for cotton and splitting profits. Had Grant been inclined to corruption and self-dealing, he certainly could have played along. Instead, he was furious and sent the men back north as soon as he learned their plans. In response to the corruption surrounding cotton in his district, Grant also gave his most controversial order in late 1862: General Order No. 11. Under this order, Jewish residents were expelled from Grant’s

district because blamed them in part for the illicit cotton trade. Lincoln eventually reversed the order after an outcry, but not before many Jewish residents had been expelled. Frustrated with the cotton trade, Grant moved significantly to curtail it all together. News reports from the period provide important evidence both for Grant’s efforts to limit the cotton trade and his connection to the men who presented the revolvers.

The Daily Missouri Republican on February 18, 1863, noted: “It is unfortunately too true that many of our officers have been

unable to resist the wonderful temptation of the cotton trade. The demoralization has been well nigh checked below by the orders of Gen. Grant, which will not allow any cotton to be shipped North, nor even bought, until Vicksburg is taken.”

Coincidentally, this article appears next to an advertisement for “Remington’s Army & Navy Revolvers” noting they had been approved by the U.S. Board of Ordnance. The Nashville Daily Union on April 25, 1863, directly referenced both Grant and one of the men who presented these revolvers. The article noted that Grant announced he would not allow cotton to go upriver until Vicksburg was taken but that some cotton was being shipped nonetheless. “A Breckenridge Democrat, whose loyalty is like that of the Enquirer, has had a contract for picking and bailing cotton in the vicinity of Lake Providence, - This gentleman, Wagley by name, who hails from Warsaw, Ill. Has most emphatically ‘struck ile.’ How much cotton he has sent North, I do not know, but I do know that five hundred bales are now awaiting shipment at Lake Providence and Berry’s Landing. It is a matter of comment that his cotton has been gathered already baled, from the plantations in the vicinity, and that not one-tenth of it is really picked and ginned under his superintendence. Another individual of the same stripe had nearly succeeded in getting a similar contract for the region in the vicinity of Gen. McClernand, but his plan was overthrown by that officer himself. He is now endeavoring to obtain an order from Gen. Grant over Gen. McClernand’s head, and it is feared that he will succeed.”

Page 328, “The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant” is included with the set and provides more details of direct cooperation between Grant, McPherson, and Wagley: “On April 1, USG wrote to Capt. Ashley R. Eddy. ‘The cotton detained by you one half of which was for Government and the other for Mr. Wagley is a part of some cotton abandoned in the field and picked by Mr. Wagly [sic] under an arrangement made with him by Genl McPherson. The one half can be released to Mr. Wagley.’…When William C. Wagley wrote that Col. William S. Hillyer, provost marshal at Memphis, threatened to seize his cotton, Rawlins endorsed the letter. ‘This contract was made by with Mr. Wagely [sic] in the utmost good faith and must be respected. You will therefore not interfere with shipment of cotton

by seizures or otherwise, unless you pass satisfactory evidence of a violation of the contract on Mr Wagely’s [sic] part, mere suspicions will not suffice.’” This clearly provides a link between Grant, McPherson, and Wagley’s roles in the cotton trade, but what about Cutler?

“Senate Documents, Volume 254” includes an important report for the context of this cased set that ties all four men together. It notes “The Committee on Claims, to whom was referred the claim of O.N. Cutler, have examined the same and submit the following as their report:” It states that William C. Wagley, later identified as a citizen of Illinois had a March 5, 1863, contract signed by Assistant Quartermaster John G. Klinck “for picking, ginning, and bailing of cotton then growing on the lands about Lake Providence, in the State of Louisiana, which had been abandoned by the rebel owners and occupants, and then lately brought within permanent Union lines by the advance and occupancy of the federal forces. This contract was approved by Major General McPherson, commanding that district.” The report notes that half the cotton was government property and the other half Wagley’s and that Wagley would be allowed to have his cotton shipped by the government to Memphis. On April 3, Wagley assigned his interest over to O.N. Cutler of Hannibal, Missouri. Cutler then delivered “a large amount of cotton” at Lake Providence and took his assigned half. General Grant had his quartermaster seize Cutler’s cotton and used it to protect the machinery on the steamer Tigress for a run past the Confederate fortress at Vicksburg. Captain B.F. Reno recorded this amounted as 268 bales. Cutler claimed they weighed 113,900 pounds and had a total value of $62,645. The report concludes with a recommendation that $50,000 be appropriated by Congress to pay for this seized cotton. This evidence clearly demonstrates that Grant and McPherson were involved in at least one valuable contract for southern cotton that also netted Wagley and Cutler considerable profits. It also shows that Grant actually seized at least one shipment of cotton as part of his efforts to capture Vicksburg. Grant’s revolvers may have been specifically presented in response to his capture of Vicksburg which gave the Union command of the Mississippi River and opened the river up to more trade, reducing risks for men like Wagley and Cutler who

The deluxe rosewood presentation case has a blank lid escutcheon, pheasant and dog pattern powder flask with sloped charger, oiler, blued ball/bullet mold, L-shaped combination tool, cleaning rod, key, and Eley Bros. cap tin.

were shipping cotton and other goods on the river. Unfortunately no documentation has been found detailing when and where Grant and McPherson were presented their respective sets, but the information certainly suggests that Wagley and Cutler presented the Union generals their revolvers as a thank you for assisting in the cotton trade.

After Pemberton surrendered Vicksburg to Grant’s forces, Grant was promoted by President Lincoln to major general in the regular army and given command of the new Division of the Mississippi on October 16, 1863. His decisive November victory in the Chattanooga Campaign opened the South up for attack and earned Grant more national fame. He received his famous horse Cincinnati in response to this victory.

On March 2, 1864, Grant was promoted to lieutenant general and given command of all the Union armies. Grant was formally commissioned by Lincoln on March 8 in a cabinet meeting and worked closely with the president for the remainder

of the war. With Grant in charge, Lincoln expected Union forces to relentlessly pursue and defeat the Confederates and finally bring the War to a close. Grant directed the Union armies against Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, working to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond.

After Petersburg and Richmond fell into Union hands on April 3, 1865, Lee retreated to fight another day, but the ultimate Union victory was close at hand.

Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House less than a week later on April 9.

Grant gave Lee and his men rather lenient terms, including parole and a guarantee that the men were “not to be disturbed by U.S. authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside.” Grant saw this as the end of the war. As such, the former Confederates were now their countrymen and not the enemy. He even allowed Confederates to keep their sidearms and horses and provided Lee’s bedraggled men with much needed provisions. The final surrenders were completed by May.

Historical Reproduction

Tents

We

The best selection of historical reenactment items from Medieval era to Civil War era. Print catalog is only $2 and includes over 60 pages of our famous tents with a full-color section. Digital catalog is free to download by visiting PantherPrimitives.com.

SEND for your copy TODAY. 304-462-7718

By securing victory for the Union, Ulysses S. Grant provided the basis for national reunification and established himself as a national hero. He remained commander of the armies as the country began reconstruction. He was honored on July 25, 1866, when Congress promoted Grant to the newly created rank of General of the Army of the United States. Grant broke with President Johnson over the latter’s lenient policy towards the South. Congress had guaranteed Grant’s control of the U.S. Army by passing the Command of the Army Act. After Secretary of War Stanton was illegally fired by Johnson, Grant was appointed as interim Secretary of War, but when Congress reinstated Stanton, Grant stepped aside infuriating the president who was soon impeached in relation to the whole affair but narrowly not convicted. In 1868, Grant was unanimously nominated by the Republican National Convention as the party’s candidate for president and won the election. As president, he oversaw both reconstruction and reunification and the Indian Wars. Grant also signed legislation that established Yellowstone National Park.

Though he succeeded in winning a second term in office, claims of corruption and other scandals diminished Grant’s power; renewed conflict undermined his peace efforts in the West. In regards to the latter, the discovery of gold in the Black Hills led to the Great Sioux War and Custer’s famous defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Grant initially declined to run for a

third term and instead returned to civilian life in 1877 for the first time since the outbreak of the Civil War, but he made a run for the Republican nomination again in 1880. Many of his postpresidential business ventures ended in failure, destroying his finances, and he sold many of his valuable Civil War artifacts to pay his debts, but as laid out in Fjestad’s article, the Remington revolvers remained with the Grant family.

Grant may have already given the pair to one of his sons. They are believed to have been brought to California in the late 19th century by either Ulysses Grant Jr. or Jesse Grant II. The two brothers ran the U.S. Grant Hotel in San Diego in the early 20th century. Jesse Grant II was the last surviving child of General Grant’s and died in 1934. Many U.S. Grant artifacts were eventually passed on to Ulysses S. Grant V, but not these pistols. They were reported to have been given as payment to a handyman who worked on the Jesse Grant home around the time of the Great Depression. That man kept the revolvers for many years. But the family was eventually convinced to sell the guns after many years of pursuit by a collector.

A notarized statement from Richard Hatch dated January 6, 2022, accompanies the set

and notes that his father had been pursuing these revolvers in the early 1960s when they were in the possession of Mel Reynolds of San Diego. His father stayed in regular contact with Reynolds after learning of the revolvers around the 1950s and reminded him of his interest in the revolvers. He purchased them in 1976. Reynolds was the son of the handyman who had received them from the Grant family. Per the statement, they were payment for work on “the ‘Grant House’ near the Park. The Park was Balboa Park in San Diego. Years later I found out by the ‘Grant House’ he meant the Julia Dent Grant House at 6th and Quince.” Hatch indicates he drove his father on December 26, 1976, to purchase the guns at Bill Reynold’s house in San Diego. As documented in an included sales receipt dated “Dec. 26, ‘76,” Bill and Mel Reynolds “Received from Frank L. Hatch $1,500 for a pair of engraved Remington pistols.” It appears Reynolds did not know the revolvers had been presented to General Grant during the Civil War. Hatch, a resident of San Diego, kept his new treasures guarded, but he began researching the men whose names are inscribed on the back straps, but with few results as demonstrated by his included correspondence with

The Tug Rumsey accoutred for running the Rebel batteries at Vicksburg. Note the cotton bales used to protect the ships from enemy fire similar to the steamer Tigress (Harper’s Weekly, Saturday, May 30, 1862)

Post-war photograph of U. S. Grant. (Library of Congress)

Panther Primitives • P.O. Box 32 • Normantown, WV 25267

make the best tents in history!

the Smithsonian, West Point, the U.S. Army History Institute, NRA’s American Rifleman, and R.L. Wilson. Through these sources and his own research, he was able to find some details about the men who presented the revolvers, including their service in the Mexican-American War. Perhaps the most important information he uncovered came from pages in “The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant” in the early 1980s that provided clues about the connection between Grant, Wagley, and McPherson relating to cotton.

When he died in 1987, the revolvers remained with his wife until she moved into a care facility in 2002. They transferred into the possession of their son Richard who inherited the guns when his mother passed in 2013. RIAC received subsequent confirmation of this pair of historic revolvers’ provenance from the Grant family in the form of an April 20, 2022, letter from Millard W. Grant of Republic, Missouri. It states: “RE: The cased pair of engraved Remington New Model Army revolvers presented to U.S. Grant – #1 and #2 My father, Ulysses S. Grant V, mentioned many times over his life that he had viewed ‘a pair of highly engraved revolvers with

highly ornate grips and wooden presentation box’ which were given to his great-grandfather and namesake President U.S. Grant. Having myself known about these revolvers’ existence for many years, I have been waiting for them to reappear. My father had viewed these revolvers at his grandmother Elizabeth Chapman Grant’s house on 6th & Quince in San Diego, known as the Julia Dent Grant House. Elizabeth Chapman Grant was the first wife of Pres. Grant’s son Jesse R. Grant II, and remained in the house until her death in 1945, even though she had divorced from Jess Grant II, who died in 1934. My father eventually received many items of Pres. Grant’s that had passed down, but these revolvers were already out of the Grant family. I was also aware of a handyman that worked at the Grant House during Elizabeth Chapman Grant’s time there. I myself visited the house on 6th & Quince many times in my youth, after Elizabeth Chapman Grant had already passed.”

Visit https://www. rockislandauction.com/ detail/85/106/gen-ulysses-sgrants-cased-remington-newmodel-army-revolvers for more information.

Cedar Mountain Battlefield, Culpeper County, Va. BUDDY SECOR

Memoirs and First Hand Accounts

As a group most Civil War collectors and history buffs enjoy doing research to improve their understanding of 1860s material culture. One challenge with historical research, particularly when relying on veterans memoirs that were written many years postbellum, is that an account’s accuracy is often related to the immediacy of the events. An excellent example shared by a World War II veteran is as follows from Old Man in a Baseball Cap: A Memoir of World War II by Fred Rochlin:

“I remember flying from Dakar in the Senegal across the Sahara Desert through the Zagora Pass into Marrakech, Morocco. We were low on fuel. We landed at this dusty town, Timbuktu, mud huts, everyone speaking French. American Air Force fuel depot. Thousands of barrels of fifty-gallon, one-hundred octane aviation fuel. We had cold beers. Refueled, took off, flew through the Zagora Pass, through the Atlas Mountains and into Marrakech. I remember all this with pristine clarity. It never happened. I checked my old navigator logs. We didn’t land to refuel. We flew right through the Zagora Pass. And we wouldn’t have refueled at

Timbuktu anyway. Too far away from the course of our flight. So, where did that French-African town come from? My memory, it’s accurate and false at the same time. It’s complex and simple. It changes constantly, — often just to fit the circumstance. And yet, all this time I know I’m telling the truth because I’m relying on my memory…You reveal yourself in the stories you choose to tell. We become redundant. We tell the same story over and over again. The memory of our memories; the story of our stories. Complex and simple. Sometimes interesting, sometimes boring, sometimes true, sometimes not true. Always revealing.”

Sam Watkins’ excellent memoir, Company Aytch: Or a Sideshow to the Big Show, contains a number of small historical inaccuracies, such as remembering people by name who were injured in certain battles when the historical record suggests they were not present. For example, in his recollection of Shiloh, an event he recalls with clarity since it was his first big battle, Watkins mentions Col. Matt Martin being injured. According to the records, Martin was voted out as colonel of the 23rd Tennessee before April 1862 and was not at Shiloh. Major Hume R. Field of the First Tennessee was present but is not mentioned by Watkins. These kinds of minor factual mistakes are found throughout the book, which is highly regarded as an accurate depiction of Confederate army life in the Western Theater. In a recent discussion between historic weapons demonstrators at Shiloh National Military Park, one noted that Sam Watkins may have been on “French Leave” during the Battle of Franklin in November 1864, which may or may not have been the case. He wrote in his memoirs of the battle: “Would to God I could tear the page from these memoirs and from my own memory. It is the blackest page in the history of the war of the Lost Cause. It was the bloodiest battle of modern times in any war. It was the finishing stroke to the independence of

the Southern Confederacy. I was there. I saw it. My flesh trembles, and creeps, and crawls when I think of it to-day. My heart almost ceases to beat at the horrid recollection. Would to God that I had never witnessed such a scene!” Who knows? About all that can be said with certainty is that his account of Franklin lacks the kind of specific details he provided elsewhere about his experiences. Watkins for his part admits that Company Aytch is not intended as a pure historical account of the war.

“Eyewitness accounts” are notoriously unreliable. In other period accounts, soldiers rely on hyperbole to make their point. For example, one Union soldier proud of his newly issued “United States Springfield” wrote in a mid-1862 letter home that “…my Springfield rifle will shoot through six feet of granite.” Obviously this fellow is exaggerating to make a point about how pleased he is to have been issued the highly regarded U.S. Model 1861 rifle-musket. One cannot rely on the memories of the combatants for 100 percent accuracy concerning what weapons were being used when and by whom. For example, a secondary source such as The

Rifled Musket by Claud E. Fuller is much more accurate about the capabilities of the Model 1861 than most firsthand accounts recorded in diaries or letters back home. The best conclusions may be from “research” conducted with a M1861 in my own hands, one that I can take apart and see how it is made and from that basis make my own observations and conclusions. Am I the primary source there, or is the weapon? Would the lack of citation make the findings any less factual or otherwise accurate? How about if I did the same thing with a hundred original M1861s or three hundred? At what point does it make no difference? In summation, my sense has been, and continues to be, that we can largely miss the point or the purpose of historical research and get bogged down in the minutiae too easily. For example, the wellknown antebellum cookbook The Kentucky Housewife from 1839 by Letice Bryan (Applewood Books, 2001) has a recipe for buttering bread. It stipulates that the bread should be cut from the loaf before it is buttered. At the risk of being pedantic, one would think that antebellum cooks who were old enough to read a cookbook would know

Major Hume R. Field of Co. K, 1st Tennessee Infantry Regiment in uniform. (Library of Congress)

Sam R. Watkins. In 1881, with a “house full of young ‘rebels’ clustering about my elbows,” Watkins began to chronicle his experiences in the First Tennessee Regiment. “Co. Aytch” is considered to be one of the greatest memoirs ever written by a Confederate field soldier.

how to spread butter on a piece of bread. It has been said that one is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. This is an opinion, of course. The “memory curve” is perilously short and within about five days very few details can be accurately recalled. In 1885, Hermann Ebbinghaus discovered the exponential nature of forgetting. The following formula from his Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology describes the relationship between the event (e) and how long the memory of it is retained: R = e-s/t, where R is memory retention, s is the relative strength of memory and t is time. Most memoirs were written and published many

years after the actual events they attempt to recall. For his part, Sam Watkins went back and published “corrections” to his original memoirs which were recently republished when greatgranddaughter Ruth McAllister discovered them in a desk. Some original observations were “remembered” better later in life, such as his thoughts on the pretty girls in the “Pass the Butter” episode. He initially wrote that for a kiss from one of those girls he would gladly forfeit 10 years of his life. The girls were not nearly as attractive as the gal he later married in the revised version. Connecting the dots as a historian, a suggestion for Sam might have been to

– MAKER –LEATHER WORKS

(845)

record that initial observation about those young ladies in the footnotes. Since nobody reads the footnotes, he would not have had to be worried about making corrections later in life.

Craig L. Barry was born in Charlottesville, Va. He holds his BA and Masters degrees from

•

•

UNC (Charlotte). Craig served The Watchdog Civil War Quarterly as Associate Editor and Editor from 2003–2017. The Watchdog published books and columns on 19th-century material and donated all funds from publications to battlefield preservation. He is the author of several books including The Civil War Musket: A Handbook

for Historical Accuracy (2006, 2011), The Unfinished Fight: Essays on Confederate Material Culture Vol. I and II (2012, 2013). He has also published four books in the Suppliers to the Confederacy series on English Arms & Accoutrements, Quartermaster stores and other European imports.

•

•

•

•

•

No One Can Tell What Would Happen In War

“Who can write the history of a battle whose eyes are immovably fastened upon a central figure of transcendingly absorbing interest—the dead body of an oldest born son, crushed by a shell in a position where a battery should never have been sent, and abandoned to death in a building where surgeons dared not to stay?” –

Sam Wilkeson, New York Times Correspondent

In the early hours of July 1, 1863, U.S. Gen. George Meade, commanding, Army of the Potomac, sent an order to Gen. Oliver Howard, XI Corps, to advance to Gettysburg, Penn., eleven miles distant. On June 29, the XI Corps reached the Emmitsburg, Md. area after a hard march over bad roads and intermittent rainy weather. By 8 a.m., the XI Corps was on the road.

Howard, “Old Prayer Book,” had recently taken command of the XI Corps; about fifty percent of the men were either first generation German or German immigrants; many did not speak, read, or write in English. The former West Point mathematics professor was 32 years old, had lost his right arm in the Battle of Fair Oaks, Va., believed alcohol was a poison “injurious to the mental and moral life of a soldier,” and was considerate of others. For example, he thanked an orderly who held his horse; it was a small gesture, but the orderly remarked to others “that no one else had thanked him since he had entered the army.”

Riding ahead, Howard and Col. Theodore Meysenburg had a two-hour lead. In Gettysburg, on Cemetery Hill to “get an extended view,” both men agreed, it would be a “good position” for the Army of Potomac. Next Howard went “dashing” into Gettysburg, entered the Fahnestock building, and joined townspeople viewing the battle from the roof top.

There, about 10:30 a.m., Howard learned, “General [John] Reynolds is dead, and you are the senior officer on the field.” As he left the building, Mrs. Fahnestock asked, “Oh, sir, you are not going to let the rebels come into the town, are you?” Howard paused and replied, “Madam, no one can tell what may happen in war.”

About 11:30 a.m., Howard met with Gen. Carl Schurz at his headquarters on Cemetery Hill. He ordered Schurz to take the 1st and 3rd Divisions through Gettysburg and position them to the right of the 1st Corps. Gen. Adolph Von Steinwehr’s 2nd Division and two batteries remained on Cemetery Hill in

reserve. Howard stated, “We must hold this hill.”

The 45th N.Y. had been doublequicking for several miles and the hastening men were “panting and out of breath.” At Gettysburg, “they flowed through and out into the battlefield beyond, a human tide, at millrace speed.” Offers for water were turned down as “there was not time to drink.”

On to the farm fields outside of town poured the Federals. Harvard lawyer Gen. Francis Barlow positioned his 1st Division, 2,477 men, on the far right. Barlow was 28 years old, a strict disciplinarian, cool and brave in action but had “always been down on the ‘Dutch’ & I do not abate my contempt now.” The Confederates were already on Oak Hill, the Federals intended destination. Barlow advanced to the high ground now known as Barlow’s Knoll, extending the line about a mile. Schurz had to order his men to extend to Barlow’s, to make “still thinner a line already too thin.”

On top of the knoll, Lt. Col. Baynard Wilkeson, Battery G, 4th U.S. Artillery, positioned four Napoleon guns. Wilkeson was the 19-year-old son of New York Times war correspondent Samuel Wilkeson, embedded with the Army of the Potomac.

To reach Gettysburg, C.S. Gen. Jubal Early’s Second Corps traveled on the Harrisburg Road, which led onto the XI Corp’ right flank. Less than 1,200 yards from

Lt. Col. Baynard Wilkeson, Battery G, 4th U.S. Artillery. Colorization © 2022 civilwarincolor.com, courtesy civilwarincolor.com/cwn (Public Domain)

Gen. Oliver Howard. Colorization © 2022 civilwarincolor. com, courtesy civilwarincolor.com/cwn (Public Domain)

Gen. Francis Barlow. Colorization © 2022 civilwarincolor. com, courtesy civilwarincolor.com/cwn (Library of Congress)

Barlow’s Knoll, Lt. Col. Hilary Jones positioned 12 of his 16 guns. Initially, Jones aimed at the Federal infantry. Then a Federal shot struck the muzzle face of one Confederate Napoleon, putting it out of commission. Later three other guns were disabled after the wrong size ammunition got stuck inside the barrel. Jones ordered his gunners to target an officer on horseback.

Lt. Col. Wilkeson was on horseback. A shot mangled his right leg and killed his horse. Under fire, he tied a tourniquet on his leg, used his pen knife to amputate the stump and had his men carry him to a nearby house, where he would die. His replacement deemed the position too deadly and used ropes to drag the guns off the knoll. Jones’s firing signaled Gen. John Gordon’s Southern infantry to move forward toward the 900 men on the knoll. Gordon, on top of his black stallion, “drew his sword, the Georgians grasped their arms, and in a few minutes the line was moving through a field of yellow wheat like a dark gray wave in a sea of gold.”

U.S. Col. Douglass Fowler, 17th Conn., and the 75th Ohio and were ordered to counterattack. Fowler had previously advised, “Dodge the big ones, boys.” On his white horse he turned in his saddle, gestured with his sword and shouted, “Now, Seventeenth, do your duty! Forward, double quick! Charge bayonets!” A gunshot struck his head, his brains splattered his men.

After some 20 minutes of hard fighting, the Yankees fell back. “They then began to retreat in fine order, shooting at us as they retreated,” wrote G.W. Nichols of the 61st Georgia. “They were harder to drive than we had ever known them before.” Barlow spurred his horse into action, attempting to form a second line. He was shot, collapsed, and left for dead on the field. Gordon, spotting the downed Federal officer, had him sent to the rear for medical attention.

Both the positions of the I Corps and the XI Corps were collapsing. Twenty thousand Federals retreated through Gettysburg towards Cemetery Hill; thirty thousand Confederates followed while 2,000 townspeople hid in their cellars. The day was one of the best for Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia as they captured over 5,000 men; one of the worst for the Union Army of the Potomac. The key to the battle’s final outcome would be Cemetery Hill.

U.S. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock arrived at Cemetery Hill about 4:30 p.m. He had

orders from Meade to take over command. Although Howard had seniority, Meade wanted someone he knew in command. Together Hancock and Howard toured the Cemetery Hill. Hancock, in a prophetic comment observed, “I think this the strongest position by nature upon which to fight a battle that I ever saw and if it meets your approbation I will select this as the battlefield.”

Sources:

• Sears, Stephen W. Gettysburg: Mariner Books, 2004

• Pfanz, Harry W. Gettysburg--The First Day: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011

• Trudeau, Noah Andre. Gettysburg: A Testing of

Courage: HarperCollins, 2010

• American Battlefield Trust. “Artillery at Gettysburg and Continuing Day 1: Gettysburg 158 Live!” https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=qGbsZcW_0Pk&list=PLZrhqv_T1O1tcdge8vkHRKOOgD2jjy1jz&index=8

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.

Lt. Col. Douglas Fowler, 17th Conn. Colorization © 2022 civilwarincolor.com, courtesy civilwarincolor.com/cwn (Public Domain)

General John B. Gordon, C.S.A. Colorization © 2015 civilwarincolor.com, courtesy civilwarincolor.com/cwn (National Archives)

In late April 1906 a Jesuit priest from Chicago wrapped up a lecture tour with an engagement in Springfield, Ill. From there, on April 28, he boarded a train for Chattanooga, planning to spend a week on a different kind of tour, traveling on horseback through northwest Georgia to Atlanta, sleeping in a tent and visiting sites where armies fought 42 years earlier.

The news of the priest’s plans arrived before he did; a special report appeared in the Chattanooga Daily Times the day he left Illinois. The good father met his traveling companions at Fort Oglethorpe, just across the state line in Georgia, and they embarked on their adventure, not knowing of the brief item in the Times. For the better part of the week the party trooped along, unaware of the firestorm engendered by the Times report. Numerous papers in the South and elsewhere covered the story; editors and readers opined; politicians had their say; a few Catholic clergymen commented; Georgia Senator Augustus Bacon demanded answers from the War Department; the War Department

scrambled to get the answers; President Theodore Roosevelt issued an order; and the Army Chief of Staff acted.

The priest was Father Thomas Sherman, son of the general wellknown to Georgia and the nation.

Thomas Ewing Sherman, the fourth child and second son of William T. Sherman and Eleanor Ewing Sherman, was born in 1856. Thomas was educated at Georgetown College, Yale, and Washington University’s school of law. He continued his studies under Jesuit fathers in England and Europe. His decision to enter the priesthood in 1878 must have pleased his Catholic mother, but to General Sherman, who had different hopes for Thomas, this choice was a keen and longlasting disappointment.

Father Sherman always maintained a strong interest in the Civil War and his father’s role in the conflict. He was present at the dedication of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park in 1895, four years after his father’s death. He spoke at the ceremony and paid tribute to men who fought with his father and the Union and to their Confederate adversaries as well. Before his ill-fated trip to northwest Georgia in 1906, Father Sherman had traveled

from Savannah to Atlanta to visit—in reverse—the sites along the March to the Sea. He had also toured the battlefields around Atlanta. These earlier trips to Georgia, and to battlefields in other Southern states, had caused no controversy whatsoever.

It is uncertain how Father Sherman came to be invited on the 1906 excursion. The invitation may have originated with President Roosevelt in 1903, when the equestrian statue of Gen. Sherman in Washington was dedicated. One of Father Sherman’s sisters claimed that, during a White House dinner for the general’s family held after the ceremony, Roosevelt said he would arrange for the invitation.

It is also possible that the invitation came from someone of lesser rank than the commanderin-chief. Father Sherman was well acquainted with a number of army officers, and, during an earlier tour in Georgia, he had expressed an interest in traveling over the course of the campaign from Chattanooga to Atlanta. Whatever the source of the invitation, Father Sherman’s 1906 tour turned out to be quite different than the previous ones. The reason: the press and the politicians.

While Father Sherman’s train rattled along from Illinois to Tennessee, this headline appeared in the April 28 Times:

SHERMAN COMING

Jesuit Father to Retrace Steps of Soldier Parent

Under this headline was a small error that was magnified and distorted in subsequent stories in the press. Sent from Springfield on April 27, the item stated that the priest would “be accompanied by an escort of the United States cavalry.”

On April 30 the Chattanooga paper ran a piece with more details about Father Sherman’s plans to “cover every mile of territory devastated by Gen. Sherman’s army in 1865 [sic].” The article went on to state that “By reason of a special order by the secretary of war, Col. Chase [the commander of the 12th Cavalry] has detailed a small escort of cavalry to accompany Father Sherman.”

Outrage was sparked by two misunderstandings caused by inaccurate reporting. One misinterpretation was that public resources were being commandeered for a private

purpose, when in fact the cavalry exercise was already planned and would have been conducted regardless of Father Sherman’s presence. The second and more important problem was the phrase “escort of cavalry,” read by many to imply that Father Sherman believed he needed protection on a visit to an area through which his father had campaigned.

The Times published a letter the following day from a reader who objected to the expenditure of public funds for this duplication of Sherman’s march “on a miniature scale” and to the ostentation that accompanied the march. Furthermore, the reader believed, the excursion would re-ignite “the embers that all people…have tried to quench.”

The reader’s concerns were misplaced, said the editor in a note below the letter. It seems the editor forgot that his own paper’s reporting was the basis for the reader’s misunderstanding.

On May 3 the Times ran a piece headlined “Sherman’s ‘Second March to the Sea.’”

It was understandable for the general’s son, in his “filial zeal,” to undertake such a trip and “he might possibly have accomplished his desire without arousing the slightest objection, had not the military authorities suggested the ‘escort’ which… occasioned the rather sensational publicity.”

Again, the editor seemed unaware of the origin of the sensational publicity.

The same article stated that the president had “recognized the impropriety of this official detail.” The politicians had chimed in. While Father Sherman and his “escort” were marching south from Fort Oglethorpe, ignorant of the furor that had erupted, the story became big news, principally, but not exclusively, in the South.

Members of Georgia’s Congressional delegation

“I should have kept the matter a secret.”

The Resaca battlefield was one of the sites of interest to Father Sherman. The Confederate cemetery was established in 1866. This memorial arch was built in 1911.

While passing through Dalton, the cavalry and Father Sherman visited the Confederate cemetery and would have seen this statue, erected in 1892.

This monument was not built when Father Sherman passed through Calhoun. It honors the men of the community who served the Confederacy in the Civil War and the U.S. in World War I.

spoke up, as did senators and representatives from other states. Atlanta’s mayor said that Sherman’s son would be welcome in his city but advised against appearing with his military escort. The acting mayor of Savannah made the press with an intemperate remark about hanging Father Sherman.

Regular people joined the chorus, sometimes with facetious comments and lame jokes about torches and fire insurance; numerous newspapers continued to fan the flames.

Although the comments varied in tone and volume, all had the same basic points: the military escort was improper and unnecessary. This private citizen had no right to use the army

his own purposes and had no need of protection from his fellow citizens.

Following a sit down with the president, the army chief of staff sent an order to the commander of the Department of the Gulf in Atlanta. Word was sent to Col. George Chase at Fort Oglethorpe: recall the cavalry.

However, the cavalry was hard to find. The small force (two officers, eight enlisted men, and one Jesuit) was riding through and camping in the countryside, or “lost in the woods,” according to the Atlanta Constitution on May 3. After leaving Fort Oglethorpe on April 30 the party spent the night in Dalton. They moved on to Resaca, where they spent some time on the battlefield,

then passed through Calhoun. In Cassville they halted to make some notes on the action that had occurred there.

In several places along the way the cavalrymen and their guest encountered local people, including Confederate veterans, and spent time in conversation with them. All the meetings were cordial and apparently no one they met had seen the news that was so upsetting to so many people.

On May 2, after Cassville, Father Sherman and the cavalrymen reached Cartersville, just 7 miles to the south. There they caught up with the news and the order for the cavalry to turn back.

In the words of historian E. Merton Coulter, “Father Sherman was astounded, aggrieved, and deeply hurt – and angered as far as became a priest.” On May 3 Father Sherman and the soldiers mounted up and headed north. In contrast to the pleasant outbound trek, the march back to Fort Oglethorpe would be an ordeal for the clergyman, nearly 50 years old and unused to riding such a distance.

Father Sherman and his “escort” camped that night near Calhoun. On the 4th they made camp just short of their destination, which they reached the morning of Saturday May 5. The exhausted Jesuit was taken in by Col. and Mrs. Chase, who allowed no one to see him. A reporter from the Times was present when the party arrived, and wrote that “in five minutes the priest had disappeared.” He was told that Father Sherman “did not wish to be disturbed by reporters or anybody else.” The persistent journalist tried by telephone and spoke to Mrs. Chase. She was adamant, and “would not allow the colonel’s guest to be disturbed.”

Mrs. Chase answered the reporter’s questions and informed him of some facts, important facts, that had been missing from all the press coverage during the week. Quoted in the May 5 Times, Mrs. Chase said: “The socalled trip over the ‘March to the Sea’ was arranged well before the invitation was given Father Sherman. You know, we have a practice march at Fort Oglethorpe every week.” According to Mrs. Chase, the invitation had been issued the previous December by Gen. Thomas Barry the Assistant Chief of Staff of the Army.

If Father Sherman knew the source of the report from Springfield he did not say, nor did he comment otherwise on the press coverage. He spoke positively of the welcome he

received from the Georgians he had met on his abbreviated trip. According to Coulter, Father Sherman felt “bitter against the authorities in Washington.” While he did not mention Roosevelt, this bitterness may indicate that the president did first suggest and arrange for the invitation, or at least was aware that such an invitation could have been issued. Perhaps Father Sherman resented the fact that Roosevelt responded to the controversy not by immediately setting the record straight but by recalling the cavalry.

The exhausted priest rested on Sunday at the Chases’ home. On Monday he left Chattanooga by train, bound for California, to officiate at the wedding of his cousin William Ewing.

The reporter from the Times had spoken to Col. Chase, as well as Mrs. Chase, on the day the party returned to Fort Oglethorpe. The colonel said that “it was intended that nothing would ever be given to the public about Father Sherman’s march over Georgia battlefields.” Nothing about the march would have appeared in the press, said the colonel, “If first news had not been received here from Springfield.”

“I should have kept the matter a secret,” Col. Chase said, but of course that was beyond his power after the dispatch had been sent to the Chattanooga Daily Times on April 27. Father Sherman did not speak to the press, but surely his sentiment was precisely the same as the colonel’s.

I am indebted to Cheryl MasonMercer of Colorado Springs, Colo., whom I heard speak on this little-known episode in 2020. Ms. Mason-Mercer directed me to the article upon which this column is based, “Father Sherman’s ‘March to the Sea,’” by E. Merton Coulter, published

in The Georgia Review, Winter 1956. The article is available in booklet form in the Fulton County Public Library’s Special Collections.

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.

Nobody even comes close to building a Civil War tent with as much attention to reinforcing the stress areas as Panther. Our extra heavy duty reinforcing is just one of the added features that makes

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.

Father Sherman’s excursion ended in Cartersville. This Confederate monument was built two years after his visit. (All photos by Gould Hagler)

This obelisk was built in 1878 in Cassville, where Father Sherman stopped to converse with local residents. for

Battles and Leaders of the Civil War

Douglas Southall Freeman deemed it one of “the basic reference works” on the war.1 Ralph Newman and E. B. Long included it the same way in their “Basic Civil War Library.”2 The very first issue of Civil War History (March 1955) ran Newman’s “For Collectors Only”; of course it was listed there, too.3 In an article, “Battle of the Books”

for CWTI in February 1970, James I. Robertson remarked that so many Civil War books were coming out that the next one would be titled “Lincoln’s Wife’s Doctor’s Dog”—but amid the bibliographic bustle he was careful to mention it.4 More recently (1995), Gary Gallagher listed it among 100 essential titles.5 Bibliographer David J. Eicher included it in “Finding the Civil War in Books” for North & South (April 1998).6 He based a list of 125 titles on his The Civil War in Books: An Analytical Bibliography (1997), in which it is #743 of 1,099 works cited.7

We’re speaking, of course, about Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, the four-volume work that ranks as probably the most important compilation of writings by major Civil War figures, both Union and Confederate. First published in 1888, the series was reissued in a single-volume Century War Book: People’s Pictorial Edition in 1894.8 Three subsequent editions have appeared, including that published in 1956 by Thomas Yoseloff.9

The “Battles and Leaders” series was conceived by Clarence Clough Buel, assistant editor for Century magazine. In early 1883 Buel thought of pairing an article on John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry written by a Virginian, with a “Comment by a Radical Abolitionist.” The pieces, published that June, aroused considerable interest. Soon Buel outlined a more ambitious project using the same format: a series of eight or ten articles on decisive battles of the Civil War, written by generals who had commanded the opposing armies. Buel proposed his idea to the associate editor, Robert Underwood Johnson. Both Johnson and the Century editor-in-chief, Richard Watson Gilder, liked the plan. Gilder put Johnson in charge of it, with Buel assisting.

The most important task, the lining up of contributors, was begun in the spring of 1884. In the early days of “general catching” (Gilder’s phrase), the editors met with setbacks. Ulysses S. Grant, the first officer to be contacted, declined to write because his biographer, Adam Badeau, had said it all. William T. Sherman said the proposed series would fail. G. T. Beauregard said he was too busy. Some officers refused because they would have to criticize their dead comrades; others held back because of the living (Johnson termed this dilemma “Scylla and Charybdis”).

But the editors worked their prospects energetically. They persuaded Beauregard by using as intermediary his friend George Washington Cable, whose fiction Gilder had published. Grant, attracted by the editors’ promise of $500 per article, consented after his banking house had failed, and he in turn helped convince Sherman to write an essay. Eventually Joseph E. Johnston, David D. Porter, James Longstreet and many other important military leaders agreed to help.10

Despite their array of contributors, the editors regretted the refusal of some notables to cooperate. Johnson could not persuade generals Winfield S. Hancock, Nathaniel P. Banks, Simon B. Buckner, or Benjamin F. Butler to participate in the series. Philip H. Sheridan wanted to save his commentary for a book; Jubal A. Early claimed that he opposed writing history for money. Neither Robert E. Lee’s son, George Washington Custis Lee, nor Lee’s chief of staff, Col. Charles Marshall, could be induced to contribute a piece on the great Virginian.

With these exceptions, though, most of the war’s major figures

participated, and the series progressed. From the start, the editors emphasized an interesting, colorful format. Johnson admonished his contributors to avoid the style of official reports and tell of their battles as they would an after-dinner chat, preferably with personal incidents and even secrets. But many contributors submitted articles that were too long and sometimes so colorless that they were returned or discreetly set aside. General Grant, considered the biggest “catch,” was one such case. Having received his article on Shiloh in early July, Johnson was dismayed to find the general’s writing too much like an official report. On his next visit, Johnson induced Grant to talk offhand about the battle, then informed him that this was the style which the editors were seeking. “He seemed astonished at this,” Johnson recalled, but the general eagerly applied himself to revision. Before long he had completed a more lively piece, as well as three others on different battles.11

Plentiful illustrations by such staff artists as Walton Taber and Allen C. Redwood (himself a Confederate veteran) would accompany the articles. To balance the generals’ factual narratives, lighter pieces were also commissioned. In December 1885, for instance, there appeared a witty piece by Mark Twain, “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed,” relating in a highly imaginative way the celebrated author’s

Scribner’s-Century, as another counterweight to the war series. “I’ve just been blubbering over [Harris’] “Free Joe,” wrote Gilder. “How well it goes with the war articles!”

With plans set, the editors chose a title for the series. After considering “Men and Events,” Buel proposed “Leaders and Battles.” Gilder liked the dramatic emphasis on fighting, as opposed to political events in the war, and approved Buel’s suggestion in August 1884. By the time the war series was announced in October 1884, the title had become Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. The next month’s issue carried Beauregard’s piece on First Manassas. Thereafter each issue of the magazine carried a least one or two articles by famous officers.

Public response was immediately favorable. A year later, in November 1885, circulation figures for Century peaked at 225,000, up from 127,000 the year before. Letters from readers poured in such quantity that the editors created a special column, “Memoranda of the Civil War,” to print some of them. Unsolicited manuscripts and illustrations also came in, and generals heretofore reluctant to contribute now readily agreed. On the strength of this good showing Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, which had originally been forecast to run for a year, was extended. The unexpected abundance of manuscripts resulted in a hefty pile of unpublished work even after the

Title page from Vol. 1, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. (Google Books)

four-volume set of books. The ninety-nine feature articles in the magazine provided its basis. In all, 226 writers contributed four hundred articles in the four volumes. As much an anthology of participants’ narratives, B & L also gave officers on both sides a forum for airing complaints and criticisms. Grant and Buell argued about Shiloh; Longstreet was attacked for his role at Gettysburg. Nearly two hundred pages, in fact, were devoted to the Pennsylvania battle. Meade was defended against charges of slow pursuit; Mosby spoke up for Stuart. Johnson and Buel gave space to Sickles’ argument that his corps’ placement had saved the army and the battle.

Buel and Johnson sought new material for the books. Significantly, and a point overlooked by many students, is that only a fourth of the books’ articles had appeared in some form as part of the original “Battles and Leaders” series of the Century. There were some deletions, too. Many of the lighter pieces, such as Twain’s “Private Campaign,” didn’t make their way into the final volumes.

The editors welcomed controversy, but they also worked hard to vouch for the historical reliability of their contributors’ writings. Their efforts paid off; the Century’s circulation doubled, allowing it to surpass Harper’s, the topselling magazine in the United States. The books sold well, too; some 75,000 sets were purchased before the pictorial edition of 1894. Johnson estimated that the entire project netted the Century Company a million dollars.12

As the largest and most scrupulously edited compilation of war-related articles by major military figures of the Civil War, Battles and Leaders remains an indispensable source for historians and general readers alike.

Endnotes:

1 “A Confederate Book Shelf” in Douglas Southall Freeman, The South to Posterity: An Introduction to the Writing of Confederate History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1939), 217.

2 Ralph G. Newman and E. B. Long, “A Basic Civil War Library,” Illinois State Historical Society Journal, vol. 56 (1963), 392. Reprinted with additional listings as “The War in Books: A Basic Civil War Library” in Newman and Long, The Civil War Digest (New York: Grosset & Dunlop, 1960), 392.

3 Ralph G. Newman, ed., “For Collectors Only,” Civil War History, vol.1, no. 1 (March 1955),

72.

4 James I. Robertson, Jr., “The Battle of the Books,” Civil War Times Illustrated, vol. 8., no. 10 (February 1970), 47.

5 Gary W. Gallagher, “The Civil War 100: Civil War Magazine’s Essential Titles on Military Campaigns and Personalities,” Civil War, Issue 49 (February 1995), 43.

6 David J. Eicher, “Finding the Civil War in Books,” North & South, Issue #44 (April 1998), 69.

7 David J. Eicher, The Civil War in Books: An Analytical Bibliography (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 260-61.

8 Michael K. Shaffer, “Battles and Leaders of the Civil War,” Civil War News, vol. 42, no. 9 (October 2016), 6.

9 Roy F. Nichols, “Introduction to New Edition” in Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 4 vols. (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1956 [1888]), vol. 1, iii.

10 Stephen Davis, “’A Matter of Sensational Interest’: The Century ‘Battles and Leaders’ Series,” Civil War History, vol. 27, no. 4 (December 1981), 340-41.

11 Davis, “’A Matter of Sensational Interest,’” 341.

12 Stephen Davis and J. Tracy Power, “Battles and Leaders of the Civil War” in Clyde N. Wilson, ed., American Historians, 1866–1912 (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1986), 373-76.

Publisher’s Note: Battles and Leaders of the Civil War is online at https://ehistory.osu.edu/books/ battles.

Decades ago Steve Davis spent an afternoon in the New York Public Library perusing the Robert Underwood Johnson Papers. He then wrote an article on Battles and Leaders that appeared in Civil War History, December 1981. He has drawn on it for this piece in our newspaper.

www.emergingcivilwar.com

From the Editor

May offers a wealth of riches for any student of the Civil War. The weather finally got good enough for campaigning, which unfortunately meant new seasons of slaughter. In 1863 and 1864, in particular, there was so much action going on east and west that it can be hard to keep track of.

In my own front yard, Chancellorsville erupted on May 1, 1863. Along the Mississippi River, meanwhile, Ulysses S. Grant crossed to the east bank and began his overland campaign for Vicksburg. Confederate President Jefferson Davis, while worried about events in his home state, was too distracted by the urgent nearby events in Virginia to give the situation in Mississippi the attention it needed. Modern students of the war often find their own attention split and how to pay attention to both. Then add the events of early May 1864.

Grant launched another overland campaign, this one

through Virginia that became intense enough to earn its own capital letters: The Overland Campaign. He marched into the same Wilderness, the “dark, close wood,” where Chancellorsville had taken place the year before; this time the fighting and maneuvering lasted for six straight weeks. Meanwhile, out west, William T. Sherman began maneuvering against Joseph E. Johnston to open the Atlanta Campaign. Farther west, there is the Trans-Mississippi’s tail end of the Red River Campaign.

That is a tremendous amount of activity to study, east and west, and that’s not even considering the many smaller actions all across the map. Nor does it include the many compelling stories found on the homefront.

If we rewind back to May 1862, we get the battle of Williamsburg on the James Peninsula. On May 8, Stonewall Jackson begins zipping around the Shenandoah Valley with the battle of McDowell. In Charleston Harbor, Robert Smalls and a crew of escaping slaves stole The Planter on May 13. We get Seven Pines/ Fair Oaks at the end of the month.

Most Civil War buffs know all this, but I call it out as a way to invite you to really think about how much material we really have to study and learn and understand, even in just this short span of the calendar, because, at the end of May, we’re called to commemorate the losses from this and other wars. When you pay your respects at Memorial Day, I hope you call to mind these “seasons of slaughter” and

appreciate what they meant.

— Chris Mackowski, Ph.D. Editor-in-Chief

One Simple Way You Can Help ECW

Each Monday morning, we feature a Question of the Week. We’d love to have your participation in that weekly conversation. Make a point to check in on Mondays and add your thoughts, either as a reply to the question or as a reply to the answers others provide. (And, of course, as always, help us keep the conversation civil!)

The Seventh Annual Emerging Civil War Symposium at Stevenson Ridge

We have only a handful of tickets left for the Seventh Annual Emerging Civil War Symposium at Stevenson Ridge, which will be held August 5-7, 2022, in Spotsylvania, Virginia. Our theme this year matches up with our newest book release, Great What Ifs of the American Civil War.

Join keynote speaker Garry Adelman for “The What Ifs of Gettysburg.” We’ll also hear from Gordon Rhea and Brian Matthew Jordan, plus ECW’s Sarah Kay Bierle, Neil Chatelain, Sean Michael Chick, Phill Greenwalt, Kevin Pawlak, Jon Tracey, and Kris White. We’ll have panel discussions on “The What Ifs of the Antietam Campaign” and “Favorite What Ifs of the War.” We’ll also have a Sunday morning tour of the Slaughter Pen Farm at Fredericksburg.

Tickets for all three days are just $225. For more information or to order, visit https://emergingcivilwar. com/2022-symposium.

ECW Bookshelf

The forty-third book in the Emerging Civil War Series is now available: Dreams of Victory: General P.G.T. Beauregard in the Civil War by Sean Michael Chick. Beauregard was one of the most controversial Confederate generals and he remains so to this day. Sean’s biography looks at the pros and cons of the Creole general and offers new insights for readers to consider. Signed copies are available from publisher Savas Beatie: https://www.savasbeatie.com/ dreams-of-victory-general-p-g-tbeauregard-in-the-civil-war.

ECW News & Notes

The Midwest Book Review included a nice review of The Great What Ifs of the American Civil War. “Far from presenting alternative or counterfactual history, the volume examines some of the key pivotal moments of the Civil War and analyzes their importance,” explained reviewer Robin Friedman. Although cast in terms of “what if's" most of the book is squarely within the responsible practice of history. . . . Each of these essays encourages the reader to look closely at the complexity of determining what happened before speculating on what might have happened.” You can read the full review here: http://www. midwestbookreview.com/rbw/ may_22.htm#robinfriedman

The American Battlefield Trust featured a slew of ECW talent at its early May conference in Chantilly, Va. Sarah Kay Bierle, Dan Davis, Phill Greenwalt, Chris Mackowski, Mark Maloy, Rob Orrison, and Kris White all assisted with various programs and tours.

Steve Davis has not one, not two, but three pieces in the June 2022 issue of Civil War News.

For his regular “Critics Corner” column, Steve traces the work of Confederate poet Henry Nimrod, whose poem “Carolina” became the lyrics to the South Carolina state song. Steve also contributed a piece, “The Atlanta Intelligencer Covers the War,” that looked at the work of one of the paper’s mysterious contributors, “Clio.” Steve has a book about the Intelligencer’s wartime coverage coming out later this year. Finally, Steve covered the historiography of John Bell Hood in a lengthy article titled “New Perspectives on the Atlanta Campaign and General John Bell Hood.”

Bert Dunkerly recently visited Kentucky where he saw several Civil War and Revolutionary War sites, and went to his first horse race!

Chris Kolakowski will be the keynote speaker for the rededication of the Hans Heg monument in Madison on May 29. (The original was destroyed by vandals in June 2020.) On June 8, just after the 80th anniversary, Chris is lecturing about the Battle of Midway online for the Commemorative Air Force. Details are at: https:// www.commemorativeairforce. org/events.

Jon Tracey recently delivered a program on the 130th Pennsylvania Infantry as a part of a lecture series by the Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation that supports restoration of an historic structure. He will also be attending the Society of Civil War Historians conference from June 2-4. He'll be presenting some of his research on wounded Civil War veterans as a part of a panel titled “Civil War Bodies, Past and Future.”

Dan Welch is heading back to Gettysburg as a seasonal Park Ranger beginning Memorial Day weekend. If you're in Gettysburg over the summer stop in and say hi!

ECW was pleased in May to welcome new regular contributor Max Longley. “The Civil War is like a real-life Iliad,” he says, “a source of life-or-death drama that authors can recur to again and again while still uncovering new information and new perspectives.” Based in North Carolina, Max loves to focus on lesser-known personalities of the Civil War, and he likes to write about the intersection between the war and religion. Max is available for roundtable talks on the following topics:

• The Reaper Man – Cyrus McCormick and the Civil War

• Conscientious objectors in the Civil War

• Was Lincoln right about the

Chris Mackowski

Chris Mackowski (left) and Kris White (right) enjoyed the company of legendary football coach Vince Dooley and his wife, Barbara, on a bus tour at the ABT conference.

Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston saw plenty of action, but few victories, in May 1862, 1863, and 1864.

existence of a slave-power conspiracy?

• Civil War Stoic philosophy?

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Ambrose Bierce, and Ambrose’s uncle Lucius

• Amasa Converse: The minister who solemnized

Edgar Allen Poe’s wedding and, during the Civil War, endured the confiscation of his newspaper

• The M(a)cMaster brothers: On opposite sides in the Civil War and in the American religious divide

• Did Thaddeus Stevens die a Catholic?

• North Carolina’s proNorthern “governors” on Cape Hatteras and the coast

• The death throes of the Fugitive Slave Act in the Civil War North

• J. Williams Thorne: An antislavery Quaker in wartime Pennsylvania and Reconstruction North Carolina

Five Questions . . . with Steve Davis

For our “Five Questions” feature, we’re focusing on the work being done by some of our stalwart ECW “staff.” We have an outstanding cadre of contributors at ECW, but many of them go above and beyond their writing duties to help run the organization. We’re an all-volunteer crew, so we’re spotlighting some of those great folks. ECW wouldn’t be possible without them.

This month, we’re talking with Steve Davis, ECW’s book review editor. You can read Steve’s full ECW bio here: https://emergingcivilwar.com/ author-biographies/editors/ steve-davis.

for us? Dave Roth got Blue & Gray going in 1984, I think. His first BRE was Rowena Reed (Combined Operations, 1978). When she quit in 1985, Dave called me and asked if I'd take on the “job.” Of course I agreed. I served in that capacity for twenty years, retiring in 2005. Then early last year, when the ECW Board wanted to ramp up ECW’s book reviews, I accepted the invitation to step in.

How did you become interested in serving as a book review editor as opposed to just a book reviewer? I get to keep up with the major publishers and their releases. It's a way of staying informed on what's of current interest in the Civil War community.

What’s involved with being the book review editor for ECW? I try to send out a book, on average, a week. We don't impose deadlines on our readers so I pretty much have to rely on them to finish up and either post their reviews or to send 'em to me. Then I ask Chris or Sarah to post them.

What’s your favorite part of the job? Working with enthusiastic, talented reviewers like, just to name one, Meg Groeling.

Podcasts and Spotify. https://tinyurl.com/4uj4swme and https://tinyurl.com/47bzru45. You can also subscribe to our podcast through Patreon, where we are now also offering exclusive bonus content for subscribers. Along with episodes of our podcast, in May we also offered:

• An interview with Ben Kemp of Grant Cottage for the U.S. Grant Bicentennial

• An interview with ECW’s Phill Greenwalt about his trip earlier this year to visit sites in the far TransMississippi Theater

• An original Edward Alexander map, “Capture of The Planter, May 13, 1862”

All that’s just $3.99/month; proceeds go toward defraying the production costs of the podcast. Check us out: https://www. patreon.com/emergingcivilwar.

Meanwhile, on our YouTube channel, we offered”

• A Red Badge of Courage battlefield tour of Chancellorsville from Chris Mackowski

• An overview of earthworks around Dalton, Georgia, with historian Bob Jenkins

implications of James McPherson’s caution at Snake Creek Gap

• A roundtable talk by Neil Chatelain, “Defending the Arteries of Rebellion: The Mississippi River Squadron”

Please don’t forget to like and subscribe! You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

You Can Help Support ECW

Emerging Civil War is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization. If you’re interested in supporting “emerging voices” by making a tax-deductible donation, you can do so by you can do so by visiting our website: www. emergingcivilwar.com.

From Armed Forces Day until Labor Day weekend, we’re saluting our patriots by offering free admission to active military and up to five family members. Explore SC’s military treasures. Learn more about our exhibits at RelicRoomSC.com

• Recaps of the action at Rocky Face Ridge and Resaca with ECW Chief Historian Kris White

• An overview of Dug Gap with ECW’s David Powell

• An exploration of the

ECW Book Review Editor

Steve Davis loves to stay up with the literature.

You’ve been a book review editor in various capacities for a few decades now. Can you please outline that history

Why do you think book reviews are such an important part of the Civil War culture? I used to work for medical organizations, and saw that the physicians were very proud of their commitment to continuing medical education; a.k.a. “keeping up in the field” and a lifetime of learning. We Civil Warriors can take even more pride in keeping up with the literature. It's our passion, not our profession. So staying informed on what's out there is a proud trademark of Civil War enthusiasts’ identity.

ECW Multimedia

On the Emerging Civil War Podcast in May:

Chris Mackowski and Dan Welch, co-editors of Grant vs. Lee, part of the ECW 10th Anniversary Series, talked about the book in conjunction with the launch of the 1864 Overland Campaign

We also spoke with Darren Rawlings of American Civil War & UK History and Gina Denham’ of the Monuments for UK Veterans of the American Civil War Association an initiative underway to honor Civil War veterans who died in Great Britain by providing them with new headstones.

Check out the Emerging Civil War podcast on places like Apple

Middle Tenn Civil War Show

December 3 & 4, 2022

MK Shows presents the 35th 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 750 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 Sat., 9-3 on Sun. Free Parking. Admission is only $10/ adults and children under 12 are free. For information visit www.MKShows.com (Scan Me) or Mike@MKShows.com.

Earlier this year, the National Archives assembled a collection of their most requested items into a gathering entitled Milestone Documents. Civil War researchers will want to begin their quest at https://www.archives.gov/ milestone-documents/list#civilwar-and-reconstruction. On the ‘Civil War and Reconstruction’ page, users can view the following original papers: Compromise of 1850, Kansas-Nebraska Act, Dred Scott v. Sanford, Telegram Announcing the Surrender of Fort Sumter, Homestead Act, the Pacific Railway Act, Morrill Act, Emancipation Proclamation, War Department General Order 143: Creation of the U.S. Colored Troops, the Wade-Davis Bill, Articles of Agreement Relating to the Surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, and the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery. In addition, other documents from the period include the check for the purchase of Alaska, the

Day by Day through the Civil War in Georgia

Fort Laramie Treaty, the 14th and 15th Amendments, and an Act Establishing Yellowstone National Park.

Selecting any of these original documents will present a new window containing a synopsis of the event, a copy of the original document, and a transcription. For this exercise, a review of the ‘Articles of Agreement Relating to the Surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia (1865)’ will serve as a demonstration. The following image depicts the synopsis and a small view of the original document. Clicking on the image of the document will allow one to download it for closer examination.

A transcription, offering quick perusal of the contents, appears at the bottom of the document page. Spend some time exploring the entire Milestone Documents collection, and continued good luck in researching the American Civil War!

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

February 2022 • $37.00, hardback

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

www.mupress.org

• 866-895-1472 toll-free

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

Synopsis of surrender terms.

Transcription of surrender terms.

Milestone Documents homepage.

Surrender document.

Milestone Documents

Vicksburg

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

We have written about Alfred Mathews, Union soldier and artist. He enlisted as a musician in Company E of the 31st Ohio Volunteer Infantry, which saw action throughout the war. The 31st was attached to Army of Ohio from November 1861 to November 1862 when it joined the Army of the Cumberland until it mustered out in July 1865. Mathews participated in practically all the unit’s actions but mustered out in September 1864, just prior to Sherman’s march to the sea. He saw action at Perryville, Stone’s River, Nashville, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, and the Atlanta Campaign.1

In July 1863, while the nation became fixated on Lee’s advance toward Pennsylvania, Grant and his army were hunkered down in the siege of Vicksburg. It was the Army of theTennessee from midMay to July 4, 1863, that laid siege to the last major Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi. This scenario presented a problem for our lithographer/artist Alfred Mathews. How and why did he get such close access to a battle that he was not engaged in, was not attached to any units that were engaged, and yet was able to capture the desolation of the siege?

Not much is known of Mathews’ movements during the war as compared to his post war years documenting western towns and country. As print historians, Neely and Holzer point out, Mathews is well known to collectors of Western subjects, but “his name is not as familiar among students of the Civil War.”2 In fact, those familiar with the essential, four volume Battles

and Leaders will not recognize Mathews’ renderings of either the Battle of Stone’s River or Vicksburg because “Century’s editors (the magazine publisher and later publisher of B&L) copied Matthew’s [sic] work, crediting the source only as ‘From a Lithograph’.”3

Century used four from Stones’ River and four from Vicksburg. The Library of Congress holds two of Mathews’ Vicksburg views. They were used to illustrate Grant’s narrative on

the battle and the Vicksburg Campaign.4 According to Neely and Holzer, Mathews did not provide glimpses of daily camp life such as Edwin Forbes did, but instead offered “sweeping images of combat,” much “different from the patriotic lithographers” like Currier and Ives because “they were more accurate.”5

Both lithographs featured here bear identical title margin attributions: “The Siege of Vicksburg – Major General U.S. Grant, commanding / JG;

sketched by A.E. Mathews, 31st O.V.I.; Middleton, Strobridge, & Co. Lith. Cin. O.” Mathews depicts officers in the foreground near trees and bushes observing an explosion on the upper right, possibly at Confederate Fort Hill, during a bombardment of the Union encampment and earthworks outside the city; other Confederate earthworks are sited along a ridge in the background. On the left center is “C. Battery Archer, consisting of two heavy siege guns.” The center panel identifies Company E, of the 12th Wisconsin Battery”, and on the right center “F Company, 6th Wisconsin Battery.” Major features are identified by letter with a corresponding “Description of the Position” printed across the title margin. The second print is more elaborate depicting the same bleak terrain. Major features are again identified by letter with a corresponding legend or key printed across the lower edge of the title margin. According to the description provided by the Library of Congress, the print depicts the positions of the First Brigade, Brig. Gen. M.D.

Leggett, commanding, consisting of the 20th Illinois, 31st Illinois, 45th Illinois, 124 Illinois, [and] 23rd Indiana; the Second Brigade, Col. M.F. Force, Commanding, consisting of the 20th Ohio, 68th Ohio, 78th Ohio, [and] 30th Illinois. The Third Brigade, Brig. Gen. John D. Stevenson, commanding consisting of the 8th Illinois, 17th Illinois, 7th Missouri, 32d Ohio, [and] 81st Illinois. And the Artillery, Maj. C.J. Stolbrand, Commanding. Capt. W.S. Williams’ Battery, (3d Ohio), Capt. Sparrestrom’s Bat’y, (D 1st Reg. Ill. Art.), 8th Michigan, Lieut. T.W. Lockwood, Capt. W.H. Bolton’s Bat’y (L 2d Reg. Ill. Art.), [and] Capt. Yost’s Battery, (Captured Battery).”

Mathews sketched several other engagements, in which he was either engaged or conjured imagery from another artist’s work. They include but are not limited to On the March from Hamburg to camp before Corinth Strobridge; The Battle of Jackson, fought May 14, 1863, Gallant charge of the 17th Iowa, 80th Ohio, and 10th Missouri; the Female Seminary, Nashville, barracks of the 31st OV, March

The siege of Vicksburg - Major General U.S. Grant, commanding / sketched by A.E. Mathews, 31st O.V.I. ; Middleton Strobridge, & Co. Lith. Cin. O. Print shows officers in the foreground standing near trees and bushes observing an explosion on the upper right, possibly at Confederate Fort Hill, during a bombardment of the Union encampment and earthworks outside Vicksburg, Mississippi; other Confederate earthworks are sited along a ridge in the background. On the left center is “C. Battery Archer, consisting of two heavy siege guns,” at center is “E. 12th Wisconsin Battery,” and on the right center is “F. 6th Wisconsin Battery,” Major features are identified by letter with a corresponding “Description of the Position” printed across the bottom. (Library of Congress)

1862; the Battle of Stones River, (already written about); The Battle of Shiloh, the Gunboats Tyler and Lexington supporting the national troops; The Battle of Shiloh. Charge and taking of a New Orleans battery by the 14th Regt. Wisconsin Volunteers Monday. April 7, 1862. He also drew several other lesser skirmishes and battles in 1861 and 1862. Mathews created a canvas panorama of the capture of Vicksburg and the battles of Stone River, Lookout Mountain, and Missionary Ridge, which he exhibited in 1864 and 1865.6

It was out west, after the war, where Mathews built his reputation as a lithographer and artist. He eventually settled north of Boulder, Colorado, where he succumbed to appendicitis in 1874 at age 43. His artistic endeavors may not appeal to the connoisseur of fine art, but they authentically capture the bleakness of the battlefield. Additionally, the notes in the title margin provide students and historians of the war yet another source of information crucial to a better understanding of the war.

Endnotes:

1. See Cilella, Civil War News, “The Battle of Stones River or Murfreesboro,” December 2019.

2. Mark Neely, Harold Holzer, The

Union Image: Popular Prints of the Civil War North. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2000, pp. 70 & 72.

3. Ibid., p. 72. Neely and Holzer misspell Mathew’s name using two “t’s.”

4. U. S. Grant, “The Vicksburg Campaign,” Battles and Leaders, III, 493-539.

5. Mark Neely, Harold Holzer, 77.

6. Mathews Papers, Denver Public Library https:// archives.denverlibrary.org/ repositories/3/resources/8586.

After 43 years in the museum field, Cilella devotes his time collecting American prints and maps and writing. His last professional position was President and CEO of the Atlanta History Center. His most recent books are Upton’s Regulars: A History of the 121st New York Volunteers in the Civil War (U. Press Kansas, 2009). His twovolume Correspondence of Major General Emory Upton, (U. of Tennessee Press, 2017), received the 2017–2018 American Civil War Museum’s Founders Award for outstanding editing of primary source materials. His latest book “Till Death Do Us Part,” an edit of Upton’s letters to his wife 186870, was published in 2020 by the Oklahoma University Press.

The siege of Vicksburg - Major General

Grant, commanding

sketched by

Middleton, Strobridge, & Co. Lith. Cin.

(Library of Congress)

Visit our new website at CivilWarNews.com and it will take you to HistoricalPublicationsLLC.com. The calendar is online and an updated before the print issue. To submit an event send it to: ads@civilwarnews.com

June 25, Virginia. Walking Tour

Shenandoah University’s McCormick Civil War Institute in partnership with the Fort Collier Civil War Center will offer a tour with Prof. Jonathan A. Noyalas, “They Have Completely Surrounded Stine’s House”: The Construction and Early Use of Fort Collier during the Civil War. The onehour tour, beginning at 9:30 a.m., will be held at Fort Collier, 922 Martinsburg Pike, Winchester, Va. Event is free and open to the public. No pre-registration

required. For information; jnoyalas01@su.edu or 540-665-4501.

June 25-26, Pennsylvania. The Original Gettysburg Civil War Artifact Show

The nation’s premier Civil War relic and collectors show at the Eisenhower All Star Complex at 2634 Emmitsburg Rd., Gettysburg. Brendan Synnamon, GBPA Vice President of Administration and the event’s coordinator, is working closely with the Eisenhower Complex to ensure the event follows PA Guidelines for COVID 19 control. Our 300+ tables are a great way to view and even purchase authentic Civil War artifacts. Browse the tables and speak with the vendors who are all well versed in history and artifact identification. Every item has someone willing to give you its history lesson and answer all your questions. $100 VIP Charitable donation includes Friday and early admission for the serious collector. Hours: Sat. 10-5, Sun. 9-2. Admission $10, children under 12 free. For more information visit https://www.gbpa.org/event/annual-civil-war-relic-show.

July 16, Virginia. Walking Tour

Shenandoah University’s McCormick Civil War Institute will commemorate the 158th anniversary of the Battle of Cool Spring with a walking tour at the University’s River Campus at Cool Spring Battlefield (1400 Parker Lane, Bluemont, VA). Tour with Prof. Jonathan A. Noyalas will highlight the stories of individual soldiers and the battle’s impact on soldiers and families. Tour begins at 9:30 a.m. at the Lodge and will last approximately 90 minutes. Event is free and open to the public. No pre-registration required. For information; jnoyalas01@su.edu or 540-665-4501.

Aug. 5-7, Virginia. Reenactment

160th anniversary reenactment of the Battle of Cedar Mountain in Culpeper, “Slaughter on the Mountain,” reenactors welcome! Join a reenactment of the first battle of the Second Manassas campaign on the battlefield. Recreations of battle actions on Saturday and Sunday Aug. 6-7. Event limited to 1,500 troops (artillery, cavalry, and civilians by invitation only). Public talks & demonstrations both days. Sutlers and food vendors will participate. For information; friendsofcedarmountain.org.

Aug. 13-14, Georgia. Civil War Show and Sale

44th Annual Southeastern Civil War & Antique Gun Show in Marietta at the Cobb County Civic Center hosted by the North Georgia Relic Hunters Association. Cobb County Civic Center, 548 South Marietta Pkwy SE, Marietta, GA 30060. Hours Sat. 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sun. 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Admission $6, veterans and children under 10 are free. Show chairman: Ray McMahan at terryraymac@hotmail.com. For more info visit www.ngrha.com.

Sept. 24, Illinois. Civil War & Military Extravaganza

Zurko Promotions presents The National Civil War Collectors Fall Show and Sale which will be held at the DuPage County Fairgrounds, 2015 W. Manchester, Wheaton, Ill. Hours: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is $10, Early Admission $25. Free parking. For more info: visit www.chicagocivilwarshow.com or call Zurko Promotions at 715-526-9769.

September 24, Virginia. Walking Tour

Shenandoah University’s McCormick Civil War Institute in partnership with the Fort Collier Civil War Center will offer a tour with Prof. Jonathan A. Noyalas, “A Theme for the Poet, a Scene for the Painter”: Fort Collier and the Third Battle of Winchester. The one-hour tour, beginning at 9:30 a.m., will be held at Fort Collier, 922 Martinsburg Pike, Winchester, Virginia. Event is free and open to the public. No pre-registration required. For information; jnoyalas01@ su.edu or 540-665-4501

Sept. 30-Oct. 2, Virginia, Annual Conference

Central Virginia Battlefields Trust hosts its 2022 annual conference, “1862-The War Comes to Fredericksburg.” This year’s conference kicks off with a Friday evening President’s Reception at the CVBT office. Saturday features a special screening of “Fire on the Rappahannock” in the morning, and river crossings and Prospect Hill battlefield tours during the day. Saturday evening includes a banquet and annual meeting with a keynote address by historian John Hennessey at historic Belmont in Falmouth. Sunday brunch at Stevenson’s Ridge includes a panel discussion moderated by Chris Mackowski with historians Sarah Kay Bierle, John Hennessey, Greg Mertz, and Scott Walker. Full weekend registration is $195.00, or Saturday evening banquet only is $95.00. More information and registration are available at: https://www.cvbt.org/cvbt-annual-conference.

June 25-26, 2022

All-Star Sport Complex

Eisenhower Inn & Conference Center 2634 Emmitsburg Rd, Gettysburg, PA

717-334-8121 (3 miles south of Gettysburg on Rte 15)

The show will open to the public on:

Sat., June 25 10AM – 5PM | Sun., June 26 9AM – 3PM

Early admission (VIP Passes) will be available for $100 from 12PM to 7PM on Friday, June 24, as well as dealer entry time on both Sat. and Sun.

General Admission is $10

Children under 12 are FREE with parent or guardian

Over 300 tables and over 175 dealers from across the country!

For information, contact Brendan Synnamon 717-334-2350 or civilwar@uniondb.com

Website: https://www.gbpa.org/ event/annual-civil-war-relic-show

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

49th

Publishers/Authors

Send your book(s) for review to:

Civil War News

520 Folly Road, Suite 25 PMB 379 Charleston, SC 29412 bookreviews@civilwarnews.com

Civil War Artillery Book

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

$89.95 + $8 media mail for the standard edition.

Subscription/Renewal

c c c c c

$41 - 1 year USA Print

$51 - 1 year USA Print & Digital

$71 - 2 year USA Print

$91 - 2 year USA Print & Digital

Charge my: Discover MasterCard Visa

c

$29.95 - 1 year Digital only

Make checks payable to Historical Publications LLC.

Payment Enclosed Check # Card #

Terms and Conditions

The following terms and conditions shall be incorporated by reference into all placement and order for placement of any advertisements in Civil War News by Advertiser and any Agency acting on Advertiser’s behalf. By submitting an order for placement of an advertisement and/or by placing an advertisement, Advertiser and Agency, and each of them, agree to be bound by all of the following terms and conditions:

1. All advertisements and articles are subject to acceptance by Publisher who has the right to refuse any ad submitted for any reason. Mailed articles and photos will not be returned.

2. The advertiser and/or their agency warrant that they have permission and rights to anything contained within the advertisement as to copyrights, trademarks or registrations. Any infringement will be the responsibility of the advertiser or their agency and the advertiser will hold harmless the Publisher for any claims or damages from publishing their advertisement. This includes all attorney fees and judgments.

3. The Publisher will not be held responsible for incorrect placement of the advertisement and will not be responsible for any loss of income or potential profit lost.

4. All orders to place advertisements in the publication are subject to the rate card charges, space units and specifications then in effect, all of which are subject to change and shall be made a part of these terms and conditions.

5. Photographs or images sent for publication must be high resolution, unedited and full size. Phone photographs are discouraged. Do not send paper print photos for articles.

6. At the discretion of Civil War News any and all articles will be edited for accuracy, clarity, grammar and punctuation per our style guide.

7. Articles can be emailed as a Word Doc attachment or emailed in the body of the message. Microsoft Word format is preferred. Email articles and photographs: mail@civilwarnews.com

8. Please Note: Articles and photographs mailed to Civil War News will not be returned unless a return envelope with postage is included.