Issue 24

Secession in San Antonio

A Fortunate Horse

P. 24

P. 80

VOL. 7, NO. 2

Behind the partnership that won the Civil War

Meade, Grant, and the Path to Victory PLUS

SUMMER 2017 H $5.99

THE VILE REPUTATION OF “SPOONS” BUTLER

X

P. 26 CIVILWARMONITOR.COM

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June 7 - August 13

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Contents DEPARTMENTS

V O L U M E 7, N U M B E R 2 / S U M M E R 2 017

FEATURES

Salvo

Meade, Grant, and the Path to Victory 30

{Facts, Figures & Items of Interest}

Behind the partnership that won the Civil War

By Stephen W. Sears

TRAVELS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 A Visit to Philadelphia VOICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Subpar Officers PRIMER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Rebel Buttons PRESERVATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 A New Guarantee for Tennessee FIGURES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 The March to the Sea COST OF WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Colonel Gustavus Sniper’s Pistols

GENE SMIRNOV; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (3), COLORIZATION BY MADS MADSEN OF COLORIZED HISTORY

IN FOCUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Secession in San Antonio

Columns AMERICAN ILIAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 “Spoons” Butler STEREOSCOPE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 The Civil War through British Eyes

Books & Authors THE B&A Q&A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

WITH SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL

THE BOOKS THAT BUILT ME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

BY A. WILSON GREENE

Reverberations of Battle 54 In Every Issue EDITORIAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 An Underappreciated Duo PARTING SHOT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 A Fortunate Horse

The Soldier Artist 42 The artwork of Charles W. Reed, one of the foremost chroniclers of the life of the common Civil War soldier

ON THE COVER: Generals George G. Meade and Ulysses S. Grant.

Illustration by Chris Koehler.

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A brief, fierce clash during the first day of fighting at Gettysburg affected the men of the 24th Michigan and 26th North Carolina long after the guns fell silent.

By Judkin Browning

1 SUMMER 2017 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR

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editorial

VOLUME 7, NUMBER 2 / SUMMER 2017

Terry A. Johnston Jr. PUBLISHER & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF TERRY@CIVILWARMONITOR.COM

Laura June Davis David Thomson Robert Poister Katie Brackett Fialka CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

much has been written about the wartime partnership forged by Union generals Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman. Serving together in the West during the conflict’s early years, both men were dogged by rumors, accurate and imagined—Sherman of depression and Grant of alcohol abuse. The result was a close bond characterized by mutual respect and loyalty. “Grant stood by me when I was crazy,” Sherman reportedly remarked of their alliance, “and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other.” By March 1864, when Grant was promoted to general-in-chief of all Union forces and moved east to oversee the fight against Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia, he and Sherman had teamed up on a number of significant military victories, including ones at Shiloh, Chattanooga, and Vicksburg.

Indeed, one modern historian of the conflict thought the Grant–Sherman bond so significant that he called it “the friendship that won the Civil War.” Little, by contrast, has been written about Grant’s relationship with George Gordon Meade, the leader of the Army of the Potomac at the time Grant arrived in Virginia. While he had overseen the Union victory at Gettysburg the previous year, the notoriously short-tempered Meade was unsure what his status would be under Grant—whether he would keep his job and, if so, how the two men would get along. He needn’t have worried. While their relationship was not free from friction, as Stephen W. Sears notes in this issue’s cover story, “Meade, Grant, and the Path to Victory” (page 30), Meade made a positive enough impression that Grant not only kept him in command of the Army of the Potomac but worked with him closely during the war’s final phase. In truth, by accomplishing what no other Union generals could during the war’s first three years—battling Lee’s army to its breaking point and forcing its surrender—it might be more accurate to say that it was the partnership between Grant and Meade that “won” the war.

Want to share your thoughts about this or other articles in the issue? Send your emails to letters@civilwarmonitor.com.

EDITORIAL ADVISORS

Jennifer Sturak Michele Huie COPY EDITORS

Brian Matthew Jordan BOOK REVIEW EDITOR BRIAN@CIVILWARMONITOR.COM

Katharine Dahlstrand SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR

Patrick Mitchell CREATIVE DIRECTOR

MODUS OPERANDI DESIGN

(WWW.MODUSOP.NET)

Alicia Jylkka DESIGNER

Zethyn McKinley ADVERTISING & MARKETING DIRECTOR ADVERTISING@CIVILWARMONITOR.COM (559) 492 9236

Howard White CIRCULATION MANAGER HWHITEASSOC@COMCAST.NET website

www.CivilWarMonitor.com

M. Keith Harris Kevin M. Levin Robert H. Moore II Harry Smeltzer DIGITAL HISTORY ADVISORS

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EMAIL: CUSTOMERSERVICE@CIVILWARMONITOR.COM

The Civil War Monitor (issn 2163-0682/print, issn 21630690/online) is published quarterly by Bayshore History, llc, 8008 Bayshore Drive, Margate, NJ 08402.

Periodicals postage paid at Atlantic City, NJ, and additional mailing offices. postmaster: Send address changes to The Civil War Monitor, P.O. Box 292336, Kettering, OH 45429.

Subscriptions: $23.95 for one year (4 issues) in the U.S., $33.95 per year in Canada, and $43.95 per year for overseas subscriptions (all U.S. funds). Views expressed by individual authors, unless expressly stated, do not necessarily represent those of The Civil War Monitor or Bayshore History, llc. Letters to the editor become the property of The Civil War Monitor, and may be edited.

The Civil War Monitor cannot assume responsibility for unsolicited materials. The contents of the magazine may not be reproduced in whole or part without the written consent of the publisher.

2

FRANK LESLIE’S ILLUSTRATED NEWSPAPER

An Underappreciated Duo

Stephen Berry Patrick Brennan John Coski Judith Giesberg Allen C. Guelzo Amy Murrell Taylor Matthew C. Hulbert

Copyright ©2017 by Bayshore History, llc all rights reserved.

printed in the u.s.a.

THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2017

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FRANK LESLIE’S ILLUSTRATED NEWSPAPER

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d i s pat c h e s

For many years I have been a citizen steward of Richmond’s Shockoe Hill Cemetery, the final resting place of a number of prominent Unionists—among them Elizabeth Van Lew, f.w.e. Lohmann, Franklin Stearns, and Botts.

It has been my special pleasure to help maintain Botts’ family plot and to include his gravesite as a highlight of many tours. Botts’ marker—which includes a quote from Botts, “I know no North, no South, no East, no West; I only know my country, my whole country, and nothing but my country”—leaves no doubt as to his passion and loyalty.

BEST MUSEUMS

I just received the current issue and am enjoying the many well written, well researched articles. I do, however, have a quibble with the article on Civil War museums [“Travels: The Best Civil War Museums,” Vol. 7, No. 1]. While many very good museums are mentioned, not one is related to naval warfare! How can The Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia; the Warren Lasch Conservation Center (home to the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley) in Charleston, South Carolina; or the National Civil War Naval Museum in Columbus, Georgia, not be included in such a list?

As Abraham Lincoln opined, we cannot forget our web-footed combatants.

ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA

THE SCOURGE

Many thanks for John J. Hennessy’s excellent article on that

* * *

cranky, imperious lion of the Union, John Minor Botts [“The Scourge of the Confederacy,” Vol. 7, No. 1]. He is indeed sadly underappreciated despite being one of the war’s more compelling figures. I hope Hennessy’s article starts to correct that.

Letters to the editor: email us at letters@ civilwarmonitor. com or write to The Civil War Monitor, P.O. Box 428, Longport, NJ 08403.

Can you identify the rounded wooden structure seen in the extreme right-center of the photo of the Union winter camp in Culpeper County that appears on page 41 of John Hennessy’s article about John Minor Botts? I do not ever recall seeing such an unusual item in a Civil War photo. This is really piquing my curiosity.

I love the Monitor—it’s the best Civil War publication on the market today! Keep up the good work.

Dennis D. Urban

OAK RIDGE, TENNESSEE

ed. Thanks for your letter, Dennis.

We forwarded your question about that image, shown at left, to John Hennessy, who responds: “Good catch by the reader. That structure is a turntable for a short spur of railroad built off the nearby Orange and Alexandria. After lots of specu-

FROM THE COLLECTION OF BRIAN POHANKA, VIA CLARK B. HALL

Douglas K. Ault Captain, usnr Retired

Jeffry Burden

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

4 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2017

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From master Civil War historian

STEPHEN SEARS

lation by several people over the years, historian (and Culpeper guru) Bud Hall recently nailed down the location of that image. It’s about a mile westsouthwest of present-day Brandy Station, Virginia.”

KUDOS

I have long been a Civil War buff.

Your magazine really sheds a different light on the conflict. Keep up the really good work. I will be subscribing today.

Raymond Green VIA EMAIL

FROM THE COLLECTION OF BRIAN POHANKA, VIA CLARK B. HALL

* * *

I am a subscriber to your fine publication, and read each issue cover to cover. I have never done that with any other publication in my life. Keep up the good, quality work you’ve done thus far.

Last year you published a special issue titled The Civil War in Color. I have purchased it and it’s outstanding. A while back you produced another special edition, the name of which escapes me, but I never purchased that one and would really like to do so. Do you still have quantities of that special publication available for purchase? That would make my set complete, as I have every other issue you have published.

David Joswick GETTYSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA

ed. Thanks for your note, David.

You’re referring to our first-ever special issue, The Civil War From A to Z, which we released in 2015. I’m happy to say that, due to popular demand, we recently reprinted it. You can order a copy online at civilwarmonitor.com/ atoz.

www.hmhco.com

From the best-selling author of Gettysburg, a multilayered group biography of the commanders who led the Army of the Potomac The high command of the Army of the Potomac was a changeable, often dysfunctional band of brothers, going through the fires of war under seven commanding generals in three years, until Grant came east in 1864.

President Lincoln oversaw, argued with, and finally tamed his unruly team of generals as the eastern army was stabilized by an unsung supporting cast of corps, division, and brigade generals.

With characteristic style and insight, Stephen Sears brings these courageous, determined officers, who rose through the ranks and led from the front, to life.

“Massive, elegant study . . . A staggering work of research by a masterly historian.” —kirkus reviews, starred review “The finest and most provocative Civil War historian writing today.” —chicago tribune

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AVAILABLE WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD

THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2017

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tionists John Brown and Gerrit Smith.

Military skirmishes will be held both days at 2 p.m.

Agenda

$10 ADULTS; $5 AGES 6 – 12; CHILDREN UNDER 6 ARE FREE; FOR MORE INFORMATION: PETERBORONY.ORG or 315-280-8828.

JULY Reenactors at work at Gettysburg’s Shriver House Museum

Your Summer 2017 Guide to Civil War Events

LIVING HISTORY

Confederates Take the Shriver House!

SATURDAY, JULY 1, 5 – 9 P.M. SHRIVER HOUSE MUSEUM GETTYSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA

Visit the Shriver House Museum for a re-creation of the Battle of Gettysburg from the point of view of local civilians.

Confederate sharpshooters took over the Shriver family house, which was used to treat countless wounded soldiers during and after the fighting.

A recent reenactment of the Seven Days Battles

LECTURE

Love, Sex and Consequences

EXHIBIT

“The Vision Place of Souls”

LIVING HISTORY

SATURDAY, JUNE 10, 4 P.M.

“On to Richmond”: The 155th Anniversary Reenactment of the Seven Days Campaign

MONDAY, JULY 3 – SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2017

SURRATT HOUSE MUSEUM

LYNN MUSEUM

CLINTON, MARYLAND

LYNN, MASSACHUSETTS

SATURDAY, JUNE 3 – SUNDAY, JUNE 4

The topic of young couples finding love in the midst of war has often been romanticized. Christy Coleman, co-CEO of The American Civil War Museum, explores the subject in depth, from the most heartfelt stories to the more salacious tales.

The Lynn Museum marks the opening of a new exhibit, “The Vision Place of Souls,” which showcases the Civil War works of Jeff Fioravanti, a nationally accomplished pastel artist and oil painter with a longtime interest in the history of the conflict. Fioravanti draws inspiration from the artists of that era, including

NEWPORT NEWS, VIRGINIA

The Seven Days Battles, fought outside Richmond from June 25 to July 1, 1862, produced some of the deadliest combat seen to that point in the war and gave many soldiers their first taste of battle.

The sights and sounds of these battles will come alive again as 1,300 reenactors portray the soldiers of the opposing armies at Endview Plantation and Lee Hall Mansion. This event will feature battle reenactments, living history programs, and historical talks. Activities on June 3 will be held at Endview Plantation. On June 4, the action shifts to Lee Hall Mansion. $10 SATURDAY; $8 SUNDAY; FOR MORE INFORMATION, OR TO PURCHASE TICKETS IN ADVANCE AT A DISCOUNT: ENDVIEW.ORG or 757-887-1862.

FREE; FOR MORE INFORMATION: SURRATTMUSEUM.ORG or 301-868-1121.

LIVING HISTORY

Peterboro Civil War Weekend

One of Jeff Fioravanti’s works on display in the Lynn Museum’s new exhibit, “The Vision Place of Souls.”

SATURDAY, JUNE 10 – SUNDAY, JUNE 11 GERRIT SMITH ESTATE PETERBORO, NEW YORK

Learn about military and civilian life in the mid-1800s at the 25th Peterboro encampment. Scheduled events include a game of rounders (town ball), musical performances, and programs on aboli-

PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

ENDVIEW PLANTATION AND LEE HALL MANSION

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CITY OF NEWPORT NEWS PARKS, RECREATION AND TOURISM (SEVEN DAYS); SHRIVER HOUSE MUSEUM; JEFF FIORAVANTI; PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY HISTORIC PRESERVATION (LOMOND).

JUNE

$12 ADULTS; $10 CHILDREN 12 AND UNDER; FOR MORE INFORMATION: SHRIVERHOUSE.ORG or 717-337-2800.

Winslow Homer, Conrad Wise Chapman, Richard Norris Brooke, and Alfred Waud, among others.

FREE FOR MUSEUM MEMBERS; $5 NONMEMBERS; FOR MORE INFORMATION: LYNNMUSEUM.ORG or 781-581-6200.

“Xanthus Smith and Civil War Maritime Art” TUE., AUGUST 22 – SAT., AUGUST 26

Battle of Fort Stevens Commemoration

SOUTH CAROLINA CONFEDERATE RELIC ROOM AND MILITARY MUSEUM

FORT STEVENS WASHINGTON, D.C.

Join guest speakers, musicians, military and civilian reenactors, and noted historians as they mark the 153rd anniversary of the Battle of Fort Stevens. An array of interpretive and educational activities will occur throughout the day at the fort as well as on the grounds of the nearby Battleground National Cemetery.

FREE; FOR MORE INFORMATION: NPS.GOV/CWDW/INDEX.HTM or 202-829-4650.

LIVING HISTORY

The Aftermath of First Manassas Weekend SAT., JULY 22 – SUN., JULY 23 BEN LOMOND HISTORIC SITE MANASSAS, VIRGINIA

CITY OF NEWPORT NEWS PARKS, RECREATION AND TOURISM (SEVEN DAYS); SHRIVER HOUSE MUSEUM; JEFF FIORAVANTI; PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY HISTORIC PRESERVATION (LOMOND).

EXHIBIT

LIVING HISTORY

SATURDAY, JULY 8, 10 A.M. – 4 P.M.

PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

AUGUST

After the Battle of First Manassas, the Ben Lomond plantation house served as a Confederate field hospital.

Visit the historic structure to commemorate the 156th anniversary of the battle and learn from historians and reenactors about Civil War medical treatment and hospital conditions.

Not recommended for children under 12. $5 DURING THE DAY; $10 FOR EVENING TOURS (SATURDAY ONLY); FOR MORE INFORMATION: PWCGOV.ORG/HISTORY or 703-367-7872.

COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA

Visit the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum for the final week of its exhibit, “Xanthus Smith and Civil War Maritime Art.” Smith, a Philadelphiabased landscape artist, served in the Union navy. While stationed in Port Royal he produced dozens of drawings and paintings of both the ships that were a part of the Atlantic fleet and of camp life in coastal South Carolina. The exhibit features 47 of his paintings and sketches, along with his paint palette and artists box. $6 ADULTS; $5 SENIORS; $3 CHILDREN 10 – 17; CHILDREN UNDER 9 ARE FREE; FOR MORE INFORMATION: CRR.SC.GOV or 803-737-8095.

LECTURE

Picking Up the Pieces: Long-Term Effects on the People Who Lived Here SAT., AUGUST 26, 10 – 11:30 A.M. CHICKAMAUGA & CHATTANOOGA NATIONAL MILITARY PARK FORT OGLETHORPE, GEORGIA

A battlefield park ranger shares stories about the families who lived on the ground over which the Battle of Chickamauga was fought in September 1863 and explains how the battle affected their lives in the years afterward.

FREE; FOR MORE INFORMATION: NPS. GOV/CHCH/INDEX.HTM or 423-752-5213.

Ben Lomond Historic Site

Share Your Event

Have an upcoming event you’d like featured in this space?

Let us know: events@civilwarmonitor.com

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Salvo Facts, Figures & Items of Interest

In this wartime lithograph by James Fuller Queen, civilians cheer the arrival of soldiers outside the Union Volunteer Refreshment Saloon at the corner of Washington Avenue and Swanson Street in Philadelphia. The facility was one of two in the city that provided free food and medical care to soldiers during the war.

For more on Philadelphia, turn the page. 3

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IN THIS SECTION travels 10 A VISIT TO PHILADELPHIA voices 14 SUBPAR OFFICERS primer 16 REBEL BUTTONS preservation 18 A NEW GUARANTEE FOR TENNESSEE figures 20 THE MARCH TO THE SEA cost of war 22 COLONEL GUSTAVUS SNIPER’S PISTOLS

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

in focus 24 SECESSION IN SAN ANTONIO

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t r av e l s

Philadelphia P E N N S Y LVA N I A

as he traveled by train from Spring-

field, Illinois, to Washington, D.C., in February 1861, President-elect Abraham Lincoln made numerous stops to address citizens, including a memorable speech at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. “I am filled with deep emotion at finding myself standing here, in this place, where were collected together the wisdom, the patriotism, the devotion to principle, from which sprang the institutions under which we live,” he began. It was “that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty,” Lincoln continued, “not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world, for all future time” that especially motivated him to preserve the Union. Two months later, with war upon the country, the citizens of Philadelphia would respond enthusiastically. Over the course of the conflict, the city sent some 100,000 volunteers to the Union army; produced large quantities of uniforms and weapons; used its extensive rail network to carry supplies and soldiers toward the front; and established two dozen military hospitals. Visiting Philadelphia again in 1864, President Lincoln praised the city’s efforts, pointing to them as evidence that “the national spirit of patriotism is even ... stronger than at the commencement of the rebellion.”

Interested in visiting Philadelphia?

We’ve enlisted two experts on the area— Judith Giesberg and Anthony Waskie— to offer suggestions for what to see and do in and around the historic city.

Laurel Hill Cemetery

1 CAN’T MISS

Without a doubt, visitors should know about Philadelphia’s part in the recruitment and training of some 11,000 African-American troops during the Civil War. There is not much left of Camp William Penn (7322 Sycamore Ave., La Mott) except for a marker and a seasonal museum, but I take people there because it makes me think about Frederick Douglass’ fiery speeches demanding the right of black men to serve their country. The Mütter Museum (19 S. 22nd St.; 215-560-8564) is another Philadelphia original. With its displays of medical specimens and instruments, it rates high for quirky. JG Laurel Hill Cemetery (3822 Ridge Ave.; 215-228-8200) boasts a multitude of military interments—including George Gordon Meade and 41 other Civil War-era generals, many Medal of Honor recipients, and 10 admirals— and is the final resting place of many prominent Philadelphians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Fort Mifflin (82 Fort Mifflin Rd.; 215-685-4167) has a rich history that spans the American Revolution to World War II. During the Civil War, the fort served as a military prison. AW

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Philadelphia Museum of Art

3 BEST FAMILY ACTIVITY

The Philadelphia-themed minigolf in Franklin Square (200 6th St.; 215-629-4026) is a sure bet.

The park has a terrific playground and carousel, and it is right across from the National Constitution Center (525 Arch St.; 215-4096600), so when the kids are done playing, you can duck in to take a photo with Benjamin Franklin in Signers’ Hall. In the summer, head to Sister Cities Park (210 N. 18th St.; 215-440-5500). Its Children’s Discovery Garden features a delightful miniature Wissahickon Valley, complete with a winding stream that opens to a splash pool. (Bring the kids’ bathing suits for the total experience.) The park also has a fine little café where grown-ups can sip coffee while the kids splash. JG

Schuylkill River Trail

2 BEST KEPT SECRET

On a cool spring day or summer evening, the Schuylkill River Trail (schuylkillrivertrail.com) is perfect for a stroll or bicycle ride. The section that leads to the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2600 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy.; 215-763-8100) is my favorite. JG The Philadelphia Museum of Art is a world-class institution that boasts over 240,000 objects—from paintings to sculptures to photographs— from around the world. You could easily spend an entire day there.

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (118-128 N. Broad St.; 215-972-7600), designed by architect Frank Furness (who served during the Civil War in the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry and was awarded the Medal of Honor), is another great spot with a strong collection of 19th-century paintings. AW

The Philadelphiathemed mini-golf in Franklin Square

Philadelphia offers a variety of kidfriendly locales, among them the Please Touch Museum in West Fairmount Park (4231 Avenue of the Republic; 215-581-3181), located near the George Gordon Meade equestrian monument; the Philadelphia Zoo (3400 W. Girard Ave.; 215-243-1100), which is the oldest such institution in the country, dating from 1874; and the Franklin Institute (222 N. 20th St.; 215-4481200), a wonderful science, exploration, and technology museum located on Logan Circle in Center City. AW

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George McClellan statue at City Hall

4 BEST CIVIL WAR SPOT

One of my favorites is the equestrian statue of George McClellan at City Hall (John F. Kennedy Boulevard and N. Broad Street).

I’ve been there when people are actually talking about the Civil War. Once, in true Philly style, someone told me exactly what he thought of McClellan. The Abraham Lincoln Monument (Kelly and Sedgely drives) in Fairmount Park is another. Lincoln is holding a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, and the serene spot is perfect for communing with Abe. JG The Union League of Philadelphia (140 S. Broad St.; 215-563-6500) was founded in 1862 in support of the Union and the policies of Abraham Lincoln. Today it’s a private club, but the public can tour the magnificent building and its collections on Saturdays or visit its Heritage Center—which boasts impressive exhibit rooms and a research library—on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and the second Saturday of the month. Located in the historic John Ruan House in the Frankford neighborhood, the Grand Army of the Republic Civil War Museum and Library (4278 Griscom St.; 215289-6484) contains a large collection of Civil War artifacts (including the head of General Meade’s famed warhorse, Old Baldy) and archival records. It’s open on Tuesdays and the first Sunday of the month, or by appointment. AW

Ritz-Carlton Hotel

5 BEST SLEEP

Kimpton Hotel Monaco (433 Chestnut St.; 215-925-2111), next to Independence Hall, is pet friendly and has many enticing amenities, including hotel bicycles and a yoga mat in every room. It is new, totally hip, and you just can’t get a better location. JG

The Union League of Philadelphia

The Franklin Hotel at Independence Park (401 Chestnut St.; 215925-0000) is located in Old City, an area steeped in history. Those looking for a bit of luxury, as well as great food and drinks, might try the Ritz-Carlton Hotel (10 Avenue of the Arts; 215-523-8000) in Center City. AW

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The Victoria Freehouse

Square Burger

City Tavern

6 BEST EATS

For breakfast, try Café Ole (147 N. 3rd St.; 215-627-2140), a slightly loud Israeli place that features several versions of shakshuka, a dish of poached eggs in spicy tomato sauce. Reading Terminal Market (51 N. 12th St.; 215-922-2317) offers good lunch options; I’m particularly fond of DiNic’s pulled-pork sandwiches. For those who’d prefer a burger, try SquareBurger (200 6th St.; 215-629-4026) in Franklin Square. The milkshakes are delicious too! Dim Sum Garden (1020 Race St.; 215-873-0258) makes the best soup dumplings in town. It’s cash only. JG Sulimay’s Restaurant (632 E. Girard Ave.; 215-423-1773) in the trendy Fishtown neighborhood offers a laid-back atmosphere for a satisfying breakfast. The city is replete with good old pubs, including City Tavern (138 S. 2nd St.; 215413-1443), a reconstructed Colonial tavern where servers in period dress deliver superb cuisine; McGillin’s Old Ale House (1310 Drury St.; 215735-5562), which opened its doors in 1860 and is right around the corner from the Union League; and The Victoria Freehouse (10 S. Front St.; 215-543-6089), a classic British pub in a mid-19th-century building in Old City. Another good option, especially for dinner, is Moshulu (401 S. Christopher Columbus Blvd.; 215-923-2500), which offers fine dining aboard a renovated four-masted, steel-hulled sailing ship on the Delaware River. AW

7 BEST BOOK

J. Matthew Gallman’s Mastering Wartime (1986) is a terrific onevolume social history of Philadelphia during the Civil War. Dan Biddle and Murray Dubin’s Tasting Freedom (2010) brings to life the story of famous Philadelphia civil rights activist Octavius Catto, who was assassinated on Election Day 1871. And my edited volume, Emilie Davis’s Civil War (2014), provides readers a window into the daily life of a young African-American Philadelphian during the war years. JG My Philadelphia and the Civil War: Arsenal of the Union (2011) offers an authoritative overview of the city during the conflict. AW

McGillin’s Old Ale House

ABOUT OUR EXPERTS

Judith Giesberg is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of History at Villanova University. She is the author of five books, including Keystone State in Crisis: Pennsylvania in the Civil War (2013).

Anthony Waskie, a professor in the Languages Department at Temple University, is the founder and president of the General Meade Society of Philadelphia.

13 PHOTOGRAPHS BY GENE SMIRNOV

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voices

Subpar Officers “Since I came here, I think I can tell a man’s calibre by his shoulder-straps. The amount of brain is generally in inverse proportion to the size of his straps.” “ [I]f you could see ... [our captain] strutting along as proud as a peacock you would think he was Jeff Davis ... or some other big bug. Today whist out drilling, he was walking so big and his head so high that when he came across a ledge of rocks, he could not see them and fell head over heels….

I reckon he wont walk so big hereafter.” “ He loved to crush the spirit of his men. The more of a hang-dog look they had about them the better was … [he] pleased. Not a single soldier in the whole army ever loved or respected him.”

Confederate soldier Sam Watkins reflecting on his old army commander, General Braxton Bragg (above), in his memoirs SOURCES: THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC, BEHIND THE SCENES (1863); CO. AYTCH (1900); SERVICE WITH THE SIXTH WISCONSIN VOLUNTEERS (1890); THE LIBERTY HALL VOLUNTEERS: STONEWALL’S COLLEGE BOYS (1964); JAMES I. ROBERTSON JR., SOLDIERS BLUE AND GRAY (1988); LYMAN JACKMAN, HISTORY OF THE SIXTH NEW HAMPSHIRE REGIMENT (1891).

Confederate soldier Ted Barclay (below), in a letter to his sister, June 25, 1861

“ Curious cases were brought before the Board. I remember a case of a Captain who had drank a decoction of powdered slate pencils in vinegar to render himself unfit for service.”

Lieutenant Colonel Rufus Dawes, 6th Wisconsin Infantry (above), on his time as a president of the Examining Board of the V Corps, Army of the Potomac, a group charged with “summarily weed[ing] out incompetent and cowardly officers”

“ We like our Captain…. [H]e Is full of fun and makes a good deal of noise but if we was a going into battle I should rather he stay behind for he is no milatary man at all.”

Ira Jeffers, 137th New York Infantry, in an early war letter

“He was a tyrant in every sense of the word, and all the troops on the island hated him. They would shoot at him as he rode through the bushes; and when he was in his tent, they put the balls into his bedpost.”

Union sergeant Lyman Jackman, reflecting after the war on General Thomas R. Williams, who commanded Jackman and his comrades in the 6th New Hampshire Infantry during their stint on Roanoke Island, North Carolina, in early 1862. Williams would be shot in the chest and killed during fighting at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, that August; Jackman claimed the wound was inflicted “by his own troops.”

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (BRAGG); THE LIBERTY HALL VOLUNTEERS (BARCLAY); SERVICE WITH THE SIXTH WISCONSIN VOLUNTEERS (DAWES).

Surgeon Alfred Castleman, 5th Wisconsin Infantry, in his diary, August 1861

14 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2017

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American Abolitionism and Antislavery Series John David Smith, Series Editor

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (BRAGG); THE LIBERTY HALL VOLUNTEERS (BARCLAY); SERVICE WITH THE SIXTH WISCONSIN VOLUNTEERS (DAWES).

THE IMPERFECT REVOLUTION Anthony Burns and the Landscape of Race in Antebellum America Gordon S. Barker

TO PLEAD OUR OWN CAUSE African Americans in Massachusetts and the Making of the Antislavery Movement Christopher Cameron

A SELF-EVIDENT LIE Southern Slavery and the Threat to American Freedom Jeremy J. Tewell

ONE NATION DIVIDED BY SLAVERY Remembering the American Revolution While Marching toward the Civil War Michael F. Conlin

Forthcoming HER VOICE WILL BE ON THE SIDE OF RIGHT Gender and Power in Women’s Antebellum Antislavery Fiction Holly M. Kent DENMARK VESEY’S REVOLT The Slave Plot That Lit a Fuse to Fort Sumter John Lofton With a new Introduction

by Peter Charles Hoffer

AFRICAN CANADIANS IN UNION BLUE Volunteering for the Cause in the Civil War Richard M. Reid

Available from your local bookstores or from www.KentStateUniversityPress.com 800-247-6553

The American Abolitionism and Antislavery Series published by The Kent State University Press presents the best scholarship on abolitionist and antislavery activism in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century United States. Volumes published in the series include biographies, monographs, anthologies, and new editions of classic works on the antislavery and abolitionist crusades.

The Kent State University Press • 1118 Library • Kent, Ohio 44242-0001 CWM24-FOB-Voices.indd 15

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primer

Rebel Buttons “Their uniforms are as various as the states and cities from which they came,” observed Colonel William T. Sherman of the new Union recruits who crowded the nation’s capital during the summer of 1861. The same could be said of the men who enlisted in the Confederate army. On both sides, military volunteers donned a wide variety of uniforms that included both national and state elements—a diversity that extended to the buttons that adorned their coats.

Here are some of the many—and often elaborate—buttons worn by Confederate soldiers and sailors.

1 This button, which bears the motto of the state of South Carolina (“Animis Opibusque Parati,” or “Prepared in Mind and Resources”) under the image of a palmetto tree, came from a uniform jacket belonging to William Bush Stokes, who was a native of North Carolina but served as a lieutenant in the 4th South Carolina Cavalry.

5 Crossed cannons and a fouled anchor decorate this button worn by Confederate navy surgeon Bennett W. Green, whose duties included service at the Naval Hospital in Richmond in 1863 and on board the ironclad ram CSS Stonewall during the conflict’s final months.

1 An eagle with a “C.S.A.” shield and a ring of stars— likely one for each of the 11 states that made up the Confederate States of America—adorn this version of a Confederate staff button, of which there were several variations. This particular button came from the coat of General Robert E. Lee.

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SOURCE: ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM (ACWM.ORG). THANKS TO ROBERT HANCOCK, ACWM’S SENIOR CURATOR AND DIRECTOR OF COLLECTIONS, FOR HIS ASSISTANCE .

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3 Depending on their branch of service, Confederate soldiers might wear buttons bearing a simple “I” (infantry), “A” (artillery), or “C” (cavalry). Right: A Union soldier from the 118th Pennsylvania Infantry took this “I” button from the coat of a wounded Confederate sergeant after the Second Battle of the Weldon Railroad outside Petersburg, Virginia, in August 1864.

Far right: During the war, a boy named Isaac Davenport collected this and other buttons from Confederate soldiers as compensation for holding their horses.

According to Davenport, the men would say, “I haven’t got any money, but will give you a button.”

7 Though his reason for doing so is unclear, Colonel Willis Cox Holt, commander of the 10th Georgia Infantry, wore this “Rifleman” button, used by soldiers in the prewar U.S. Army, on his Confederate uniform. Holt was mortally wounded at the Battle of Cedar Creek on October 19, 1864.

1 Kentucky-born general John Bell Hood, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia’s famed Texas Brigade, wore this button, which makes clear his bond with his adopted home state.

7 Mrs. Martha Robb cut this Virginia state seal button from General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s coat while she nursed him after he was mortally wounded at the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863.

1 This general service button— emblazoned with a simple but straightforward “CSA”—was worn on the coats of Confederate enlisted men.

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p r e s e r va t i o n

A New Guarantee for Tennessee p r e s i d e n t , c i v i l wa r t r u st

Fort Donelson National Battlefield, one of several Tennessee sites where the Civil War Trust and the state’s Civil War or War Between the States Site Preservation Fund aim to protect additional acres of land.

TENNESSEE’S ROLE IN THE CIVIL WAR WAS

a contentious one. When the conflict began, Tennessee was deeply divided, just like the country itself. Although it seceded from the United States on June 8, 1861, Tennessee provided many troops to the Union army—more than any other state in the Confederacy. And the region itself, sandwiched between the warring sides, proved to be of immense strategic importance.

It is because of Tennessee’s significance during the conflict that the Civil War Trust and others have sought to protect its hallowed grounds. In April 2012, the Trust purchased 267 acres six miles southwest of the main battlefield at Fallen Timbers, where Federal and Confederate troops fought the final hours of the Battle of Shiloh. In October

2013, the Trust saved 109 acres at historic Reed’s Bridge, site of the opening salvo of the Battle of Chickamauga. To date, the Trust has saved nearly 3,500 acres at �� of Tennessee’s battlefields. Such efforts are an investment in our nation’s future, enhancing historic educational resources and benefiting the economy and the environment alike.

To this end, the Trust was honored to visit Nashville earlier this year to thank Governor Bill Haslam and Tennessee lawmakers for creating the Civil War or War Between the States Site Preservation Fund—the first program of its kind to guarantee that money will be automatically set aside each year to preserve Civil War sites. It has already been used to preserve 100 acres at Chattanooga and Shiloh—land that could easily have been

lost to residential or commercial development.

The Trust is also pursuing opportunities at other battlefields in Tennessee, including Franklin and Stones River. In February, we announced fundraising for 45 acres at Fort Donelson, money that will be matched by Tennessee’s new preservation fund. The Fort Donelson battlefield is essential to understanding the war in the West and Ulysses S. Grant’s ascent to commanding general of the Union army.

After capturing Fort Henry on February 6, 1862, Grant set his sights on Fort Donelson. Three freezing days of fighting finally broke the Confederates’ spirits, and Federal soldiers were greeted with white flags flying above the Confederate earthworks. On February 16, Grant famously demanded (and received) the “unconditional surrender” of a Confederate army of more than 12,000 men. The loss ensured that Kentucky would stay in the Union and left Tennessee open for a northern advance along the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. It was the first of three occasions on which Grant captured an entire enemy army, something no other general in American history has accomplished.

A dedicated fund for this and other critical preservation opportunities not only demonstrates devotion to Tennessee’s hallowed grounds, but sets the standard for state lawmakers nationwide who are passionate about protecting their historic lands. With the support of our elected officials and other national and state partners, we can preserve America’s battlefields for generations to come.

3 THE CIVIL WAR TRUST (CIVILWAR.ORG) IS A NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION DEVOTED TO THE PRESERVATION OF ENDANGERED CIVIL WAR BATTLEFIELDS.

CIVIL WAR TRUST

by o. james lighthizer

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How much is hallowed ground worth to you?

CIVIL WAR TRUST

448 pages Soft Cover 6” x 9”

THE REMARKABLE STORY of the modern battlefield preservation movement and how a grassroots citizens group became the largest heritage land preservation organization in the nation. Over the course of 30 years, some 45,000 acres at 132 American Civil War, Revolutionary War and War of 1812 battlefields have been saved from encroaching development.

Available in June on Amazon.com and select retail outlets.

Book cover photo: Devil’s Den, Gettysburg National Military Park, Pa., by Dan Thompson

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figures

The March to the Sea “I propose to demonstrate the vulnerability of the South, and make its inhabitants feel that war and individual ruin are synonymous terms.” So wrote William Tecumseh Sherman in October 1864 on the reasoning behind his proposal to destroy military and civilian targets as he moved his army from Atlanta across the state of Georgia to capture the port city of Savannah. After receiving the blessing of General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant, who was ensnared in a stalemate with Robert E. Lee in Virginia, Sherman began marching his veteran army southeast in two massive, parallel columns in midNovember. Cut free from their supply lines, Sherman’s men lived off the land, sending foragers to seize food from local farms and leaving a trail of devastation in their wake. With minimal Confederate military resistance, the 300-mile journey took them only five weeks. On December 20, Savannah surrendered to Sherman, who two days later telegraphed President Lincoln, “I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty guns and plenty of ammunition, also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton.” From the Union perspective, the maneuver had been a resounding success, one that indeed had, in Sherman’s words, made southerners “feel the hard hand of war.” Here we highlight a number of statistics about Sherman’s march through Georgia.

60,000

Approximate strength of Sherman’s army

78

Percentage of Sherman’s men with at least two years of military experience

88.7

Percentage of Sherman’s men who were infantrymen

8.3

Percentage of Sherman’s men who were cavalrymen

3.0

Percentage of Sherman’s men who were artillerists

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317

Miles of railroad track destroyed by Sherman’s army

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2

Number of times it rained during the Savannah campaign

6,871

Number of mules and horses confiscated by Sherman’s army

13,294

Head of cattle confiscated

10.4 million Pounds of grain confiscated

10.7 million

50

Number of foragers authorized per army brigade

30

Pounds of fodder confiscated

Number of soldiers each forager was expected to feed

6 million

64

Rations of beef, bread, coffee, and sugar confiscated

Recorded number of foragers found murdered in Georgia

86

Percentage of votes Abraham Lincoln received among absentee ballots cast

by Sherman’s men in the November 8, 1864, presidential election*

$100 million

Estimate of the “damage done to the State of Georgia and its military resources” during the march, according to Sherman in his afteraction report

10,000

Estimated number of escaped slaves who followed Sherman’s army on its march to Savannah

* Based on the results in Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, and Pennsylvania, where the soldiers’ absentee votes were clear and complete.

Sources: Joseph T. Glatthaar, The March to the Sea and Beyond (1985); United States War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records 129 vols.

(Washington, 1880-1901), Series I, Vol. 44. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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c o s t o f wa r

$24,999.85

THE ARTIFACT

Two Colt Model 1851 Navy Revolvers belonging to Colonel Gustavus Sniper, 185th New York Infantry

CONDITION The guns are in very good to fine condition, with crisp markings and edges. The grips on both are sound, retaining over 90 percent of their original varnish.

Mechanically, both guns function well and have crisp bores.

The accompanying case is solid with a worn lining and includes a powder flask, a bullet mold, a box of cartridges, and matching percussion cap tins.

DETAILS In December 1861, 25-year-old Gustavus Sniper enlisted as a captain in the 101st New York Infantry. The native of Germany had emigrated to America with his family as a boy, settling in Syracuse, where, according to a postwar biography, Sniper “developed an ardent love for military study and practice” and became active in the city’s militia. This military experience served him well; in less than a year, Sniper rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the 101st, which had seen action at the Seven Days Battles, Second Bull Run, and Fredericksburg. In December 1862, after the regiment was consolidated with the 37th New York Infantry, the officers of the 101st, including Sniper, were mustered out. As a parting gift, Sniper’s original command,

Company E of the 101st, presented him with the revolvers, which he kept with him when returning to the army in late 1864 as lieutenant colonel of the newly forming 185th New York Infantry. The following March, Sniper was promoted to colonel of the regiment, which he commanded for the remainder of the war. During the conflict’s final weeks, the 185th was engaged in heavy fighting, including on March 29, 1865, at Quaker Road outside of Petersburg, where the 185th formed part of the Union force attempting to pierce the Rebel defenses. Sniper would later be breveted brigadier general for his gallantry during the battle. After the war, he returned to Syracuse, where he and his wife, whom he had married in 1863, raised two children. He died in 1894 on the 29th anniversary of the fight at Quaker Road.

QUOTABLE In his report of the fight at Quaker Road, Brigadier General Joshua Chamberlain, in whose brigade the 185th New York served, singled out Sniper for praise: “Nor can I fail to speak of … the unflinching tenacity of Colonel Sniper at his perilous post, and the desperate bravery with which he rallied his men, seizing his color after it had fallen from the hands of three color-bearers and a captain, and bearing it into the very ranks of the enemy.”

VALUE $24,999.85 (price realized at James D. Julia Inc. in Fairfield, Maine, in 2016). “These pistols show honest wear and use, and there is little doubt Sniper used them during the war,” noted John Sexton, longtime consultant and cataloger for James D. Julia, at the time of the sale. “This is truly a fine matching pair.”

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES D. JULIA AUCTIONEERS, FAIRFIELD, MAINE , JAMESDJULIA.COM. SOURCES: JAMES D. JULIA INC. PRESENTS EXTRAORDINARY FIREARMS AUCTION, OCTOBER 4, 5, 6 & 7, 2016 (2016); DWIGHT H. BRUCE , ONONDAGA’S CENTENNIAL VOL . II (1896).

A PAIR OF PISTOLS EARNS A PRETTY PENNY

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Have you visited?

The Lincoln Memorial Shrine Since 1932, the only museum and research center dedicated to Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War west of the Mississippi Located in Redlands, California Halfway between Los Angeles and Palm Springs Open Tuesday-Sunday, 1-5pm Closed most holidays, but always open Lincoln’s birthday Free admission!

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES D. JULIA AUCTIONEERS, FAIRFIELD, MAINE , JAMESDJULIA.COM. SOURCES: JAMES D. JULIA INC. PRESENTS EXTRAORDINARY FIREARMS AUCTION, OCTOBER 4, 5, 6 & 7, 2016 (2016); DWIGHT H. BRUCE , ONONDAGA’S CENTENNIAL VOL . II (1896).

For more information, please visit www.lincolnshrine.org/civilwar or call (909) 798-7632 CVM ad 1.indd 1

3/12/2016 3:41:49 PM

SOUTHERN MUSEUM

OF CIVIL WAR AND LOCOMOTIVE HISTORY

More than 150 years ago, a group of Union spies illustrated the importance of railroads when they stole a locomotive behind enemy lines. Learn their story at the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History: • See the General, the actual Civil War era locomotive stolen by Union spies • View rare Civil War memorabilia, including one of the first Medals of Honor ever awarded • Learn about the South’s last locomotive builder and its role in developing the post-bellum South

SouthernMuseum.org

Exit 273 on Interstate 75 in downtown Kennesaw The Southern Museum is a Smithsonian Institute affiliate

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in focus

Secession in San Antonio p r e s i d e n t , c e n t e r f o r c i v i l wa r p h oto g r a p h y

On February 16, 1861, 16 days after Texas became the seventh state to secede from the Union, veteran Texas Ranger and Mexican War veteran Benjamin McCullough led at least 500 local militiamen into San Antonio, demanding the surrender of the federal arsenal established there in 1859 to supply arms and munitions to frontier forts.

Having received no direction from Washington, Major General David E. Twiggs, commander of the arsenal and the 2,700 United States troops stationed in Texas, surrendered the 21-acre reservation after hours of negotiations. He also agreed to evacuate all federal troops out of the state.

Although no supporting documentation exists, Texas photo history expert Larry Jones and others are certain the dramatic scene captured in this glass-plate ambrotype at the Texas State Library and Archives shows McCullough’s militiamen in San Antonio on February 16, during the takeover, as they occupied rooftops and surrounded the arsenal.

The image looks north on Soledad Street just off the Military Plaza in San Antonio. Nineteen men can be seen on the rooftop of the Veramendi house—the building at center. At right, armed horsemen are in the street, one carrying a flag.

Just ahead, another group of men stands in the middle of the street, while a larger group stands beyond them.

“The archives didn’t even realize they had it until I and another guy spotted it one day years ago while browsing through boxes,” Jones recalled. “To date, this is one of less than a half-dozen outdoor scenes showing military events in Texas during the American Civil War.” 3 THE NONPROFIT CENTER FOR CIVIL WAR PHOTOGRAPHY (CIVILWARPHOTOGRAPHY.ORG ) IS DEVOTED TO COLLECTING, PRESERVING, AND DIGITIZING CIVIL WAR IMAGES.

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1/134-11, COURTESY OF TEXAS STATE LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES COMMISSION

by bob zeller

1/134-11, COURTESY OF TEXAS STATE LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES COMMISSION

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american iliad

“Spoons” Butler

among the exhibits at the american civil War Museum in Richmond is a white chamber pot, a common bedroom item before the advent of the modern “water closet,” now known as a toilet. The chamber pot performed a distasteful but much appreciated service. At night the sleepy occupant could relieve his swollen bladder or yield the treasures of his bowels into the pot, thereby avoiding an uncomfortable midnight trip to the outhouse. This particular pot of gleaming porcelain would have no business in a Civil War museum, save for one detail: At its bottom is the face of Union major general Benjamin F. Butler. Thus the user could simultaneously offer the chamber pot both his bodily waste and his opinion of Ben Butler, a man whom Confederates habitually called “Beast” Butler. The chamber pot is not unique, but rather the product of a company that manufactured them by the hundreds shortly after the war.

The Confederates had a second epithet for the general: “Spoons” Butler. “Beast” could potentially apply to other Union commanders, foremost among them the much reviled Major General William T. Sherman, author of the famous March to the Sea, inaccurately but fervently condemned in the South as a war atrocity. But one does not find Sherman’s stern visage at the bottom of any chamber pots.

That distinction belongs to Butler alone, and so the name “Spoons” Butler best captures Butler’s place in the American Iliad.

But first a word about “Beast.” The term refers to Butler’s conduct during his seven-month tenure as commander of the occupation of New Orleans.

Shortly after his arrival in early May 1862 he executed one William Mumford, a professional gambler who

hauled down the Stars and Stripes at the outset of the Union occupation. Taking down a flag generally did not carry the death penalty—and the newly arrived Union occupiers had not announced that it did. But Butler, as military governor of the city, ordered that Mumford be arrested and hanged. The sentence was carried out on the exact spot where Mumford had made his final gamble.

Butler was just getting started. When New Orleans ladies ostentatiously insulted Union officers on the city sidewalks, he announced that henceforth any lady who did so “shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as woman of the town plying her avocation.”1 In New Orleans prostitutes tended to be ignored (save by their clients), and in practice Butler did so too, but the affront to the honor of southern women was in itself intolerable. This infamous “Woman Order” was condemned not just in the South but in Great Britain, where Prime Minister Lord Palmerston told Parliament that “an Englishman must blush to think that such an act had been committed by a man belonging to the Anglo-Saxon race.”2 Butler didn’t care. Subsequently he arrested and imprisoned the wife of a former Alabama congressman who had laughed when the funeral procession of Federal officer passed her home.

These outrages were largely symbolic gestures, as Butler conducted an occupation that was (as even some southerners conceded) mild and enlightened.

But that fact was ignored or soon forgotten by most southerners; hence, the success of the postwar chamber pot venture. ☛ } CONT. ON P. 72 3 To view this article’s reference notes, turn to page 78.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)

THE ORIGINS—AND ENDURANCE—OF A UNION GENERAL’S VILE REPUTATION BY MARK GRIMSLEY

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)

During his tenure as commander of the Union occupation of New Orleans, Benjamin Butler (pictured here) earned the ire of southerners, who referred to the general as “Beast” and “Spoons,” the latter because it was rumored that he had absconded with valuables from the house he had commandeered during his stay. opposite page: This wartime cartoon from Harper’s Weekly shows Abraham Lincoln greeting Butler upon his return from New Orleans. “Got through with that New Orleans job,” Butler says to Lincoln. “Cleaned them out and scrubbed them up!”

27 PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN DOE

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stereoscope

The Civil War through British Eyes

IN FEBRUARY 2017, A GROUP OF FILM STUDENTS CON-

tacted me through Twitter and asked me to help spread the word about their senior project, a nineminute movie called Enemies set during the American Civil War. I was intrigued for two reasons. First, how could they convey something important about this massive and complicated national conflict in nine minutes? Second, why in the world did these students—undergraduates at the University of Derby, in central England—decide to make a film set in 19thcentury America? I contacted the writer/director, Oliver Griffiths, to find out.

Griffiths, 21, is in his fifth and last year as a film studies major at Derby. When it came time to put together his final film with a team of classmates, Griffiths decided that he did not want to play it safe in terms of topic and approach.

“I wanted to tell a story about a conflict between two characters,” he explained. So he asked himself, “How am I going to do that in a way that will really stand out?”

Griffiths thought he might make a Western, and that his two central characters would enact a classic cinematic narrative of revenge. But while he began writing and revising his script last summer, he also began rewatching a television series his Canadian-born mother had introduced to him when he was young: North and South. The 1980s miniseries was quaintly entertaining on the second viewing, and it also gave Griffiths an idea. The Civil War, he thought, would be the perfect context for another iconic conflict narrative: a moral struggle between brothers.

The Enemies script evolved into a story about Joseph and Robert, who grew up on a plantation and enlisted in the same company to fight for the South.

The short film opens in 1864, as the Confederacy’s hopes are fading, and the brothers begin to diverge in their level of devotion to the war effort. When Joseph deserts, aided by a nurse in the camp hospital, Robert follows him in order to bring him back. Their subsequent confrontation is the climax of the film.

As Griffiths and his team began to prepare for production, several challenges related to filming an American Civil War story in the U.K. arose.

First, the setting required six days of out-oftown shooting. Before the on-location filming began Griffiths and his production team made site visits and planned each shot meticulously. The rural fields of Shardlow (about 10 minutes from where Griffiths grew up) and the hills around the Howden Reservoir in the Peak District northwest of Derby resemble rural Virginia, but Griffiths and his team had to be “very careful in the way that we shot” the landscape in order to heighten the sense of authenticity.

Costumes and props were also difficult and expensive to obtain. “Most shops around here that provide clothes for army or war productions do World War I or World War II outfits,” Griffiths noted. Instead, he ordered most of his costumes and props—including lanterns and canteens, and reproduction pistols— online from the British company Civil War Sutler and Frontier Clothing.

The thorniest problems, however, had to do with casting. The first challenge was finding actors who could speak in a credible American southern accent.

“It seems like a basic thing,” Griffiths noted, “but some [British actors] can do an American accent and some cannot.” He was able to find actors who could do a convincing but not over-the- ☛ } CONT. ON P. 73

THE ENEMIES CREW, VIA OLIVER GRIFFITHS

BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE SHORT FILM ENEMIES BY MEGAN KATE NELSON

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THE ENEMIES CREW, VIA OLIVER GRIFFITHS

A behind-the-scenes shot of the making of Enemies, a short film set during the Civil War. Oliver Griffiths (opposite page, left) wrote and directed the film.

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Grant,

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PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

In this photo taken at Massaponax Baptist Church

by Timothy O’Sullivan on May 21, 1864, General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant (circled in front of tree) contemplates his next move during the Overland Campaign as Army of the Potomac commander George G. Meade (circled at left) examines a map.

PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

Meade,

•

Behind the partnership that won the Civil War

•

BY STEPHEN W. SEARS

and the Path

PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

to Victory

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When he learned, on February 29, 1864, that Ulysse s S. Grant had been app ointed lieutenant general, Ge orge G ord on Meade anticipated Grant replacing Henry Halle ck as general-in- chief, and he wondered ab out his own future in command of the Army of the Potomac.

Grant suffered no shortage of advice on these command matters. Assistant Secretary of War Charles A. Dana wrote him that at the White House and in the War Department it was well known that from the Army of the Potomac “nothing is to be hoped under its present commander.” As Grant prepared to journey to the capital to take the top command, Cyrus Comstock of his staff had word that Grant would replace Meade with William F. “Baldy” Smith.

That word soon made its way to General Meade.

“Grant has reached Washn. so I presume in a short time my fate will be settled,” he told Mrs. Meade. “It is said he is greatly smitten with Baldy Smith, and if so, in connection with this clamor against me he may make a change.”2

1 Baldy Smith had experienced a strange career with the Army of the Potomac. He had risen to corps command with no serious battle-leading— his troops had not reached the field or were in reserve or on the fringes of the action. The duplicitous Smith spent his time undermining his superiors even as they accepted him as combat-ready. Joe Hooker, not fooled, had gotten rid of him, but Smith found a berth with Grant’s western army and gained favor there as an engineering officer. Grant bringing Smith with him when he came east seemed to bode ill for George Meade.

Meade explained to his wife that he knew Grant only from their service in the Mexican War, “at which time he was considered a clever young officer,” but that afterward he was compelled to resign “owing to his irregular habits & I have no doubt he is weak on this point.” (The matter of Grant and alcohol was no secret in the old army.) He had certain-

LIBRARY PHOTOGRAPH OF CONGRESS CREDIT HERE (2); PREVIOUS SPREAD: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, COLORIZED BY MADS MADSEN OF COLORIZED HISTORY

With Grant “responsible for the doings” of that army, he wrote his wife, “he may desire to have his own man in command particularly as I understand he is indoctrinated with the notion of the superiority of the western armies, and that the failure of the Army of the Potomac to accomplish any thing is due to its commanders.”

Such concern about his posting was scarcely new. In the nearly eight months since his great victory at Gettysburg, General Meade had to worry repeatedly about his future as army commander. His critics’ initial complaint was that he had witlessly allowed Robert E. Lee to “escape” from Gettysburg with his beaten army, a misconception generated largely by Washington civilians (notably Abraham Lincoln) making war by map. Meade’s autumn 1863 campaigning against Lee in the region of the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers in central Virginia had witnessed some victories, some withdrawals, and finally stalemate and winter quarters. Armchair generals and a ravening press blamed the Potomac army’s alleged sluggish ways on its commanding general. Watching his Gettysburg laurels wither under this second-guessing, Meade told his wife in December 1863 that “after awhile it will be discovered I was not at Gettysburgh at all.”1 February and March 1864 saw the pressure on Meade ratchet upward as the congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War hosted a cabal of dissident Union generals, led by Daniel Sickles and Daniel Butterfield, who damned Meade’s competence, his courage, even his loyalty. With this rabid testimony in hand, committeemen Benjamin Wade and Zachariah Chandler hurried to the White House to demand Lincoln fire Meade and replace him with his predecessor, Joe Hooker. The president turned them away. He had Lieutenant General Grant coming to Washington to take over such command matters.

3 To view this article’s reference notes, turn to page 78.

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George G. Meade (fourth from right) stands among his corps commanders and staff officers in the Army of the Potomac’s winter camp at Brandy Station in March 1864, the same month Ulysses S. Grant arrived from the West to assume overall command of Union forces. Opposite page: William F. “Baldy” Smith, whom Meade feared might re33 place him as Potomac army head after Grant’s promotion.

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1 Meade already had radically reorganized his army for the 1864 spring campaign. He had found the seven corps at Gettysburg too many to effectively manage. In the fall he lost two corps, transferred to the western theater, but he was still not

happy with the five corps commanders remaining.

So he reduced the Potomac army to three corps: II (Winfield Scott Hancock), V (Gouverneur Warren), and VI (John Sedgwick). Grant’s sole contribution to this scheme was bringing with him Philip Sheridan to head the cavalry corps.

To Meade’s disgust, the press heaped praise upon Grant for the Potomac army’s reformation.

This became a pattern. George Meade was a proud man, sensitive about his reputation, and he was as well a newspaper reader—an unfortunate conjunction. The press, he wrote his wife, “was uniformly & consistent in endeavoring to make him [Grant] out the actual comdr. of this Army.” The papers puffed up Grant as the man

MEADE’S HEADQUARTERS, 1863–1865 (LYMAN); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, COLORIZED BY MADS MADSEN OF COLORIZED HISTORY

ly been very successful, Meade went on, at Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, “and that is nowadays the measure of reputation.... Grant has undoubtedly shown very superior abilities, and is I think justly entitled to all the honors they propose to bestow upon him.”

Grant, for his part, left no record of his intentions regarding the Potomac army; he kept his options open and private. But the betting was on Smith as the new commander (Smith was himself a believer). On March 10, just installed as general-in-chief in Washington, Grant called on Meade at his headquarters at Brandy Station.

Neither general stood on ceremony that day (or any day). It was raining, and Meade, in the jacket of a common soldier, opened his tent door, put out his arm, and said, “Good morning, General Grant, pray come in.”3 That greeting set the tone, and the two were quickly at ease. Meade spoke “very plainly about my position.” He understood Grant might want one of his western generals—he mentioned William T. Sherman—for the Potomac army. If so, as Grant wrote in his memoir, Meade “begged me not to hesitate about making the change ... that the work before us was of such vast importance to the whole nation that the feeling or wishes of no one person should stand in the way of selecting the right men for all positions.” This declaration, Grant wrote, “gave me even a more favorable opinion of Meade than did his great victory at Gettysburg....” He assured Meade “that I had no thought substituting any one for him.” Staff man Comstock entered in his diary, “Grant who at Chattanooga thought Baldy Smith should have it—now says no change....”

That evening Meade reported Grant’s arrival to his wife, adding, with obvious relief, “He has been very civil and said nothing about superseding me.” A few days later he expanded on his impression of the new general-in-chief. “I was very much pleased with Genl. Grant in the views he expressed to me he showed much more capacity & character than I expected.... You may rest assured he is no ordinary man.” He also learned that rather than command from Washington, Grant would campaign with the Potomac army in Virginia. Not a desk general, Grant chose the field over the political hothouse that was the capital.

(Meade took wry note, “So that you may look now for the Army of the Potomac putting laurels on the brow of another rather than your husband.”)4

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MEADE’S HEADQUARTERS, 1863–1865 (LYMAN); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, COLORIZED BY MADS MADSEN OF COLORIZED HISTORY

Above: Men from the Army of the Potomac cross the Rapidan River at Germanna Ford on May 4, 1864, at the beginning of the Overland Campaign, an offensive that marked the first test of the Grant– Meade command relationship.

Opposite page: Meade’s staff officer Theodore Lyman.

of the hour, a no-nonsense westerner, a soldier of the simplest needs and tastes. One day Grant invited Meade and his staff to dine, and afterward staff man Theodore Lyman wrote his wife, “As you have heard that the Lieut. Gen. never, under any circumstances, eats anything but soldiers’ rations, I will state that we had soup, fish, two kinds of meat, three vegetables, pudding, and coffee....”

Meade recognized his awkward relationship with the general-in-chief; that by traveling with the army Grant “will in a measure control its movements and should success attend its operations that my share of the credit will be less....

Moreover whilst I have no doubt he will give me all the credit I am entitled to, the press & perhaps

the public will lose sight of me in him....” Still, “My duty is plain—to continue quietly to discharge my duties, heartily co-operating with him & under him, and leave to truth & justice in time to place me right on the record.” It was a hard bargain George Meade set for himself, but he lived up to it. He and Grant would share a partnership that withstood many slings and arrows from enemies North as well as South.5 They worked together in setting an initial line of attack for the 1864 spring offensive, to be called the Overland Campaign. Lee’s Rapidan line, too strong to strike head-on, was to be flanked on the east, drawing on Meade’s fall campaign experience there. The advance, starting May 4 into the 35 SUMMER 2017 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR

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no line can march & keep in order. In most of it a man cannot see 50 paces.... We are in very strong force but cannot use our artillery & a small force is almost as good as a large one.” Meade and Grant set up adjoining headquarters along the Orange Turnpike, with Meade managing the fighting while Grant tended to Ambrose Burnside’s peculiar status. Burnside was senior to Meade and a former Potomac army commander, and to not step on toes, Grant issued the IX Corps’ orders. This was cumbersome and slow. (Meade knew Burnside’s laxness, and had protocol been set aside he would have started him early to get him to the battle on time.)

The heaviest fighting on May 5 was along the turnpike. Charles Griffin’s division of the V Corps led the way, and one of Griffin’s brigades broke through the enemy line. But support was lacking and the spearhead was driven out. Griffin came storming back to headquarters. “He is stern & angry,” Colonel Lyman of the staff reported. “Says in a loud voice that he drove the enemy, Ewell, 3/4 of a mile, but got no support on the flanks and had to retreat.” Griffin had harsh words for the absent flank support and for corps commander Warren before rushing back to the front. General Grant, sitting nearby on a stump, quietly smok-

Grant’s decision to continue the army’s southward move after the fighting at the Wilderness (depicted below) was not lost on the veterans of the Army of the Potomac, who cheered the decision to press on. Opposite page: Edwin Forbes’ May 7, 1864, sketch shows Grant (center, on horseback) riding among appreciative Union soldiers during the march toward Spotsylvania Court House.

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tangled Wilderness south of the Rapidan, marked the first test of the Grant–Meade command relationship.

The May 4 march carried the army only halfway through the Wilderness, and the next day Lee reacted aggressively, initiating battle on this unlikely battlefield. Meade did not hesitate accepting the challenge. As he had done in the fall campaigning, he welcomed Lee taking the initiative—he need not go find him, or dig him out of his defenses. He ordered Gouverneur Warren and his V Corps out the Orange Turnpike to meet the Rebels head-on. He then sent a dispatch to Grant, who was at the rear shepherding Ambrose Burnside’s newly added IX Corps, telling of the enemy on the turnpike and describing the actions for battle he had taken. This would be the test case. He had acted independently, on a moment’s notice. Would Grant approve, or would he gather the decision-making into his own hands?

Meade was reassured by Grant’s reply: “If any opportunity presents itself for pitching into a part of Lee’s army, do so without giving time for disposition.”6 General John Gibbon described for his wife what it was like to fight in the Wilderness: “The whole country is a dense tangled jungle thro which

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ing and whittling, heard enough of this tirade that he turned to Meade and said, “Who is this Gen. Gregg? You ought to arrest him!” Grant’s uniform coat was unbuttoned, Lyman noted, and Meade began to button it up, “as if he were a little boy, saying in a good-natured voice, ‘It’s Griffin, not Gregg; and it’s only his way of talking.’”7

1

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May 5 ended in a bloody standoff. It was agreed they would resume the offensive on the 6th, and Grant set the start for 4:30 a.m. Meade found his lines needed reordering and wanted to delay until 6 a.m. Grant granted him just a half-hour. This became Grant’s pattern, to order advances aggressively, leaving Meade to resolve the not-always-resolvable tactical details.

On May 6 the heaviest fighting switched to the Orange Plank Road, south of the turnpike, where II Corps commander Hancock led a powerful thrust that for a time swept all before it. But Lee’s counterattack swallowed up the gains, and the day ended with Hancock rallying his forces behind a stout defensive line. In this virtual jungle, defense ruled. Hancock told Meade it was inadvisable “to attack this evening,” and Meade ordered a stand-down. Grant’s day with the IX Corps went badly. He sent to Burnside, “Hancock has been expecting you for the last three hours,” making his attack and his dispositions “with a view to your assistance.”

At dusk the Rebels made a thrust at the other flank, capturing two unwary Union generals before being beaten off. A panicked officer rushed up to Grant, crying that their flank was turned and Lee would cut them off from the Rapidan crossings. Grant turned on the man: “Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going

to do. Some of you seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both our flanks at the same time.... [T]ry to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do.”8 Reviewing the day’s fighting with Meade, Grant remarked, “Joe Johnston would have retreated after two such days’ punishment,” his acknowledgment of a certain difference between the western and eastern theaters. They saw no percentage in renewing the assault on the now-entrenched enemy in the Wilderness, but neither would they give up their campaign and withdraw, as had Hooker and Burnside and McClellan before them. Grant’s orders were prompt: “Make all preparations during the day for a night march, to take position at Spotsylvania Court House”—a decision Meade took as a given.

The decision was not lost on the veterans in the Army of the Potomac. That evening the V Corps was set to marching, and soon enough, passing by the column, came General Grant and staff—not leading the army north back across the river, but south, toward Richmond. “Our men knew what that meant,” wrote a man in the 16th Maine. “Somewhere, Grant was seen, and a great burst of cheering greeted him as he rode swiftly and silently by.” Grant sought to quiet the demonstration—it might alert the enemy, he said—but the cheering continued until he was out of sight.9 The Federals had the direct route to Spotsylvania Court House, but march discipline was poor and then Philip Sheridan’s idle cavalry blocked the infantry’s path for crucial hours. Meade and Sheridan got into a shouting match over that, for Sheridan could not be bothered with gathering intelligence and working with the infantry—he just wanted his cavalry to go fight Jeb Stuart’s cavalry. Thoughtlessly, Grant indulged him, and for 37

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May 10 the new tactic was tried against a salient in the Rebel line and proved a brilliant success, breaking through and taking 900 prisoners. But command of the support forces was bungled and Colonel Upton had to withdraw. Grant was heard to say, “A brigade today—we’ll try a corps tomorrow.”10 It was the day after tomorrow, May 12. Planning was better, but on too short notice. The best in the army—Hancock’s II Corps, spearheaded by Francis Barlow’s division—struck the salient before dawn and crashed through, collecting 3,000 prisoners and 20 guns. Reinforcements poured into the breach, yet expanding and exploiting the gains had not been thought out in advance, despite Upton’s teachings. No one general at the front took charge. The salient finally fell to the Yankees, but not before Confederate engineers cobbled together a backup line. The carnage was ghastly: “the place this morning looks like a slaughter pen & is a sight to make any one sick of war,” John Gibbon wrote.

Above: Union troops breach the Confederate line at Spotsylvania in this painting

by Thure de Thulstrup.

After several days of attacks failed to result in decisive victory, Grant relented, ordering the army to disengage and continue its southward march, much to the relief of Meade and others. Opposite page: Grant (top) and Meade.

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more than two weeks the Potomac army would fight and march blind. Sheridan’s raid reached as far as the James River and managed to kill Stuart along the way, but for the Army of the Potomac it was a net loss. Lee reached Spotsylvania first, dug in, and the fighting reached a new intensity.

Spotsylvania demonstrated Robert E. Lee’s new mode of field warfare—moves and marches ending in a powerful defensive stance. Colonel Lyman described the Rebels’ skill at going to ground: rifle pits the first day, infantry parapet with artillery the second, abatis and entrenched artillery the third. “Sometimes they put this three days’ work into the first 24 hours.”

When his first assaults were beaten off, Meade thought back to a tactic used the previous fall to break into a defensive citadel. Under innovative Emory Upton (West Point class of 1861), a narrow, focused strike force, disciplined and briefed, would lead; no one was “to fire a shot, cheer or yell, until we struck their works”; support forces would exploit the breakthrough. On 38 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2017

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Grant was unrelenting, scheduling another attack for May 14, only to see it rained out. He rescheduled for the 18th. But by now everyone (everyone except Grant) recognized that surprise was impossible and failure certain. The enemy, said Gibbon, “I think are now anxious for us to attack ... & consequently I hope we will not gratify them.” General Meade grew acerbic: “even Grant thought it useless to knock our heads against a brick wall and directed a suspension of the attack.

We shall try to manoeuver again, so as to draw the enemy out....” In the 15 days since crossing the Rapidan, the Wilderness and Spotsylvania had cost the Army of the Potomac 36,000 casualties.11 March by the left flank resumed, and the two armies broke contact, hurrying south toward the North Anna River. It was finally seen as senseless to direct the IX Corps independently of the rest of the army, and Burnside was put under Meade’s command. The VI Corps leadership was much diminished by the loss of John Sedgwick, killed by a sharpshooter at Spotsylvania and replaced by the unassertive Horatio Wright. Gouverneur Warren showed unsteady leadership—at one point Grant wanted him relieved but Meade saved him; at another, Meade wanted him gone but Grant kept him on.

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1 With the campaign now shaped, Meade sought to define his role vis-à-vis Grant. “I see the papers have counted me out entirely,” he told his wife, but added that Grant had showed him his dispatch to the War Department recommending Meade be promoted major general in the regular army. A pair of visiting senators assured Meade it was understood in Washington that “these were my battles.”

He corrected them. At first, he said, he had indeed maneuvered the army, “but gradually & from the very nature of things, Grant had taken the control, and that it would be injurious to the Army to have two heads.” He cast no blame on Grant for this. “I know he thinks a great deal of me & is most friendly.” He defined his role as Grant doing the grand strategy and he the grand tactics. But he doubted that the press—and therefore the public—would see the distinction and “the false position I am placed in. I think the army realise & appreciate it, but outside the army it appears to be unknown.”12

In a misstep all his own, Meade ensured he would remain unknown to the newspaper-reading public. In the Philadelphia Inquirer, reporter Edward Cropsey claimed that “General Meade was on the point of committing a blunder” in the recent campaigning but “Grant assumed the responsibility, and we are still on to Richmond.” The near-blunder reference was to the Wilderness and retreating back across the Rapidan. This was the last straw for George Meade. Not only false on its face, Cropsey’s story refreshed the old canards that Meade had ordered retreat at Gettysburg, that he had let Lee escape across the Potomac, “that I was always on the defensive & proposed to run away on the plea of saving the army.” He ordered Cropsey expelled from the army.

That order ought to have ended the matter, but Meade let Provost Marshal Marsena Patrick, a confirmed hater of reporters, stage the expulsion. Cropsey was mounted backward on a mule, wore placards front and back labeled “Libeler of the Press,” and was paraded through the camps to the accompaniment of “The Rogue’s March.” “It will be a warning to his tribe,” said Patrick. In retaliation, the press corps banded together to exclude Meade’s name from their reporting (unless the subject was defeat or retreat), and substituted Grant’s name for Meade’s in printing official documents. In a nice irony, Meade ensured that his complaint of press anonymity became permanent.13 In reviewing the fighting, members of his staff urged General Grant to take over control of the battlefield and issue orders directly to the corps commanders, eliminating delays and chances of misinterpretation by Meade or his staff—in short, to take command of the Army of the Potomac. Grant rejected the idea. As general-inchief he was already burdened with the administration of all the nation’s armies. Meade was a widely experienced manager of this complicated, ofttimes erratic Potomac army and he knew its generals; Grant, the outsider, would be resented as usurper.

A related, alleged problem was Meade’s explosive temper when there was fighting to be done, as remarked on by Grant’s staff (and recalled by Grant in his memoir). Colonel Lyman acknowledged this trait of his chief (“I can tell you aqua fortis [nitric acid] is mild to the Major General commanding when he gets put out”), but staff man James Biddle applied necessary perspective 39 SUMMER 2017 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR

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willing to admit now Virginia & Lee’s army is not Tennessee & Bragg’s army.” Too, Cold Harbor demonstrated with finality that if Robert E. Lee was given a day (or even less) to defend a well chosen position, it was plainly senseless to attack it.

Grant was slower to grasp this grim reality than Meade, but he switched to a wholly new strategic plan almost in the blink of an eye. Two days after Cold Harbor, he outlined a plan to quit the present battle lines and thrust the army south, across the James River, to campaign south of Richmond rather than north of it. Meade was pleased. “Today we commence a flank march.... If it is successful, as I think it will be, it will bring us to the last act of the Richmond drama.” The James was the line he had advocated as early as November 1862: “the proper mode to reduce [Richmond] is to take possession of the great lines of railroad leading to it from the South and Southwest.” Grant took as the target Petersburg, the railroad hub 25 miles south

Grant (seated, center) and his staff gather outside the general-in-chief’s headquarters tent at Cold Harbor in June 1864. Meade thought the Union failure to secure victory at Cold Harbor after multiple failed attacks had caused Grant to have “his eyes opened,” now “willing to admit …

Virginia & Lee’s army is not Tennessee & Bragg’s army.”

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to the matter: “Genl. Meade’s only fault is his irritability, which does not affect him as a general, but only exasperates the unfortunates who are so unlucky as to be the cause of his ire.”

However much in his home letters Meade chafed at his public anonymity, he dealt selflessly and in mutual respect with Grant. In joint planning, Biddle reported, the two “work together very congenially,” but that did not mean Meade turned the other cheek where his Army of the Potomac was concerned. At a planning session of the generals and staffs, Charles A. Dana of the War Department read out a telegram from General Sherman in Georgia: “The army of the West having fought, could now afford to manoeuvre, and that, if his (Grant’s) inspiration could make the Army of the Potomac do its share, success would crown our efforts.” At that, Colonel Lyman reported, Meade’s “grey eyes grew like a rattlesnake’s” and he said “in a voice like cutting an iron bar with a handsaw: ‘Sir! I consider that despatch an insult to the army I command and to me personally. The Army of the Potomac does not require General Grant’s inspiration or anybody’s else inspiration to make it fight!!’”

He did not get over it all day, said Lyman, “and at dinner spoke of the western army as ‘an armed rabble.’”14 In falling back from Spotsylvania, Lee was vulnerable to being caught on the march, but Sheridan’s continued absence left Meade without cavalry and blind to the opportunity. Lee took up a blocking position behind the North Anna.

Meade proposed they continue their advance by the left, cross below the point where the North Anna and South Anna join to form the Pamunkey (one river crossing rather than two), then seek an advantageous battlefield. But Grant stayed with his plan to bring Lee to battle short of the Richmond lines. He forced two crossings of the North Anna, but Lee wedged his army between the halves of the Potomac army and achieved checkmate. Grant pulled back, made a point of consulting his generals, and adopted Meade’s plan to continue the advance by their left. “We are engaged in maneuvering now more than in fighting,” John Gibbon told his wife, “which suits me much better.”

The two armies next fetched up at a desolate crossroads called Cold Harbor. For the Yankees, Cold Harbor went wrong at the start and never came close to going right. In the final attack, on June 3, even aggressive Winfield Hancock recommended a halt. As early as 7 a.m. Meade signaled Grant, “I should be glad to have your views as to the continuance of these attacks.” Grant did not suspend until midday, by which time Union casualties had climbed to 3,500.15 Cold Harbor generated a pause and a rethinking of the Overland Campaign. “I think Grant has had his eyes opened,” Meade told his wife, “& is 40 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2017

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of Richmond. General-in-chief and general commanding were on the same page.16 The movement of the Army of the Potomac— II, V, VI, and IX Corps, plus Baldy Smith’s attached XVIII Corps, all under Meade’s direction—was masterfully executed. Slipping out of the Cold Harbor lines, swinging south by east to cross the Chickahominy River and then the broad James, created a major logistical challenge. The James crossing required a 101-pontoon bridge, plus a fleet of ferries and transports. Lee had to be kept in the dark as the Yankees raced toward Petersburg.

As he did repeatedly during the campaign, Grant grew impatient, pushing ahead with his scheme to cross the James before the myriad of logistical details could come together. A day or two’s delay in evacuating Cold Harbor would have meant time enough to complete the pontoon bridge one vital day sooner; time enough to gather more transports to speed the crossing; time

enough to compensate for human error. The consequence was a race to a hair’s-breadth finish.

June 15 found Baldy Smith’s XVIII Corps confronting Petersburg’s fortifications, by the latest intelligence manned only by militia; Lee’s army had not yet caught up. This was Smith’s first independent command, really his first battle, and it took him a full eight hours to gird himself to act. When he finally did, at 7 p.m., he quickly captured a mile and a half of defenses and 16 guns.

Hancock’s II Corps arrived in support. But Smith elected to wait until morning to try and capture Petersburg. In the Federal ranks it was agreed that the Johnnies would now have at least four or five hours to dig in. “The most blood-curdling blasphemy I ever listened to I heard that night,” wrote a II Corps man, “uttered by the men who knew they were to be sacrificed on the morrow.” A disappointed Meade summed up: “It looks very much as if we will have to go through a siege of Petersburg before entering on the siege of Richmond.”

What in moonlight on June 15 was an unobstructed path to Petersburg was in daylight, by afternoon on the 16th, blocked by a fresh line of earthworks. A rushed attack that evening cost the II Corps 2,500 men. Sensing his last opportunity, Meade launched repeated attacks on the 17th and 18th, finally pushing the troops beyond their limits; whole brigades simply refused to advance. At 6:50 p.m. on June 18 Grant announced, “we will try to gain advantages without assaulting fortifications.”17 Besieging Petersburg operated on the principle of caging Lee’s army without attacking it headon, trying to snip off its rail connections without suffering (politically) damaging reverses. Lincoln, running for a second term, would face General McClellan in November, and it appeared the military outlook would decide the election. Further, the generals the president had appointed for their political constituencies—Franz Sigel, David Hunter, Ben Butler among them—were only darkening the military outlook with their serial incompetence. General Meade had to manage a balancing act with the Army of the Potomac.

1 A week after the siege of Petersburg commenced, a onetime mining engineer named Henry Pleasants began tunneling under the Rebel works in Ambrose Burnside’s IX Corps sector, with intent to explode a gunpowder mine. By July 30 the fourton charge was set and ready. Meade was specific in orders to Burnside. “Very careful & particular directions were given by Gen. Meade for the formation of the assaulting columns and ... for the easy passage of the troops,” noted Colonel Lyman. The explosion of the mine opened a great crater 30 feet deep in the Confederate line. At- ☛ } CONT. ON P. 74 41 SUMMER 2017 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR

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THE SOLDIER ARTIST

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THE ARTWORK OF CHARLES W. REED, ONE OF THE FOREMOST CHRONICLERS OF THE LIFE OF THE COMMON CIVIL WAR SOLDIER

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1861–1865 LETTERS FROM THE FRONT Unlike other artists who plied their trade during the Civil War, Charles W. Reed covered the conflict not as a professional “special correspondent” for one of the many illustrated newspapers of the day, but as a soldier. Unable to find employment in his chosen fields of art or music, Reed, 21, enlisted in the 9th Massachusetts Battery as a bugler on August 2, 1862. For the remainder of the war Reed wrote home frequently to his mother and two sisters, often illustrating his letters with drawings of camp life and the battlefield (samples of which are shown here alongside a photo of Reed in his uniform). He also kept sketchbooks that he filled with more detailed drawings of his surroundings. As he noted in a letter to his mother in 1863, the soldier’s life afforded Reed ample opportunity to indulge his artistic interests. “I think I improve some,” he wrote, “and shall not consider it time lost being out here for I draw half the time.” In November 1864, Reed was detailed as an assistant topographical engineer (“a position befiting my talents,” he noted) at the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac’s V Corps, a role he maintained until war’s end.

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1863 BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG

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While Reed saw combat several times during the war—including during the Overland Campaign and at Petersburg—it was his first taste of battle, at Gettysburg, that left an indelible impression on the young artist. During the engagement’s second day, Reed’s battery was heavily engaged near the Abraham Trostle farmstead while covering the retreat of Union forces from the Peach Orchard. “[S]uch a shrieking, hissing, seathing I never dreamed was imagineable,” Reed wrote of the sounds of Confederate bullets whizzing by his position. “[I]t seemed as though it must be the work of the very devil himself.” When his captain was wounded between the opposing lines, Reed rushed to his aid and removed him to safety, exposing himself to fire from both sides, an action for which he would eventually be awarded the Medal of Honor. “[T]he idea of being hit or killed never occurred to me,” he would later note in a letter to his sister. “[B]ut when I saw the dead, wounded, and mutilated pouring out their lifes blood groaning and crying piteously for assistance then the terrible sense of the reality came upon me in full force. [T]he novelty had vanished.” Reed’s sketches of the 9th Massachusetts Battery’s experiences at Gettysburg formed the basis for the wartime lithograph shown here.

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1865–1880s EARLY POSTWAR

After war’s end, Reed returned to Boston with thoughts of making a career as an artist. He put his aspirations on hold in 1870, a year after marrying, when he opened a wholesale liquor store with his father-in-law, a partnership that lasted nearly a decade. In 1880, Reed returned to art, advertising his services as a freelance illustrator. He sketched extensively during this time, returning frequently to a subject he knew well: the Civil War. His illustrations of wartime scenes enhanced a number of regimental histories published during the late 19th century, including the history of his old unit, the 9th Massachusetts Battery, as well as The Century Magazine’s multivolume wartime series, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. The images shown here are samples of Reed’s postwar work that are preserved in his sketchbook; the photograph (inset, below left) is of Reed as a member of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, in which he served for 15 years after returning home from the war.

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1880s BITS OF CAMP LIFE In 1888, Reed published a book called Bits of Camp Life, which he co-authored with Louis K. Harlow and dedicated to the Grand Army of the Republic, the largest Union veterans organization. While brief, the book contained a series of color illustrations by Reed—some of them shown here—that portray various scenes in the life of the common soldier.

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1880s–1926 HARD TACK AND COFFEE Reed is best known for his association with John D. Billings’ comprehensive, and often humorous, memoir of soldiering, Hard Tack and Coffee (1887). Reed produced over 200 illustrations—his sketches for some of them are shown here—for the book, which became an instant bestseller and earned him increased exposure and acclaim. Reed would continue his artistic endeavors for the rest of his days, including helping design the monument to his old battery erected on the Gettysburg battlefield. Upon his death in 1926 at age 85, The Boston Globe, which had run many of Reed’s illustrations over the years, wrote, “Charles W. Reed was one of the most famous ‘characters’ in Boston … an all around good fellow.” He is buried in Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. In 1988, the Veterans Administration placed a bronze marker on his grave that notes his status as recipient of the country’s highest military honor.

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SOURCE: “A GRAND TERRIBLE DRAMMA” FROM GETTYSBURG TO PETERSBURG: THE CIVIL WAR LETTERS OF CHARLES WELLINGTON REED, ED. BY ERIC A. CAMPBELL (2000). ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF THE CHARLES WELLINGTON REED PAPERS AT THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, EXCEPT “EXPERIENCES OF THE 9TH MASS. BATTERY AT GETTYSBURG,” WHICH IS COURTESY OF THE ANNE S.K. BROWN MILITARY COLLECTION, BROWN UNIVERSITY.

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r e v e r b e r at i o n s o f b at t l e • A brief, fierce clash during the first day of fighting at Gettysburg affected the men of the 24th Michigan and 26th North Carolina long after the guns fell silent.

•

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PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

by j u d k i n b row n i n g

PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

Confederate troops advance upon Gettysburg onJuly 1, 1863, driving the Union forces before them back toward the town, in this painting by James Walker.

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Michigan repositioned to a third line on the summit of the wooded slope. In one final charge, the North Carolinians pushed the Union regiment off McPherson’s Ridge. The 26th North Carolina’s part of the battle ended around 3:45 p.m., and soon after, units from General William Dorsey Pender’s division pressed the Iron Brigade back over 400 yards to Seminary Ridge. The northerners made a final stand at a rail fence barricade near the Lutheran Theological Seminary before retreating through the town about 4:30 p.m. Both regiments suffered enormous casualties during the fighting: Seventy-three percent of the 496 men in the 24th Michigan fell, while the 26th North Carolina lost nearly two-thirds of its approximately 900 men.3

3 To view this article’s reference notes, turn to page 78.

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PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

It was in the aftermath of the fight for McPherson’s Ridge that the most significant battle of Peter Bird’s life began. After the Confederate troops passed by his bleeding body, Bird lay in the same spot in the woods west of Gettysburg for four days as maggots gorged on his mangled leg. Family lore maintains that Robert found his brother late on July 5—two days after the Battle of Gettysburg had ended—and moved him to a temporary hospital. With so many wounded to be treated, it was the next day before the regimental surgeon, Dr. J.H. Beech, examined him and moved him to a nearby feed store to die. When a visitor from Detroit arrived at the battlefield on July 12, he “was shocked at the sight” of the gruesomely wounded young man. Bird appeared “happy in the hope of restoration to friends,” even though the doctors assured the visitor that Bird could not live.

Bird, however, defied medical expectations.

On July 15, Dr. Beech finally began treating the wound—cutting into the flesh to remove the lead bullet and pieces of bone that had splintered off.

Because the leg was so inflamed, he decided not to amputate, but instead set the bone and immobilized the leg. Four months later, “the fracture of the bone had united, but the wound continued open and discharged large quantities of pus, and a few pieces of bone.” Despite the complications associated with his injury, Bird moved to a new detail as a hospital clerk in Detroit. He married his 21-year-old sweetheart, Mary Jane Morris, in November 1864. In April 1865, as the nation celebrated the surrender of Lee’s army, Bird went under the knife again at St. Mary’s Hospital in De-

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2); COLORIZATION BY MADS MADSEN OF COLORIZED HISTORY : PREVIOUS SPREAD: ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

1 twenty-two-year-old private peter c.

Bird of the 24th Michigan Infantry, part of the Army of the Potomac’s famed Iron Brigade, lay in the battle line in McPherson’s Woods west of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on the muggy afternoon of Wednesday, July 1, 1863. He stared across 300 yards of oat fields at a large force of Confederates gathering for an attack. These men were from the 26th North Carolina Infantry and, as part of General J. Johnston Pettigrew’s brigade, they were among the first elements of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia to descend on the outnumbered Union forces formed around the town. Near Peter was his younger brother, Robert. The Birds hailed from Romulus, Michigan, southwest of Detroit, and had joined the regiment at its inception in July 1862. Positioned on a slope known as McPherson’s Ridge, Peter detailed that morning’s activities in his pocket diary to pass the anxious moments. Around 3 p.m., when he saw the Confederates rise from the ground, dress their lines, and step off, he put down his diary and snatched up his rifle.1 Peter and Robert held their ground until the 24th’s colonel, Henry C. Morrow, ordered the regiment to retreat to a second defensive line farther up the ridge. Robert dutifully fell back, but Peter lingered to fire a shot. As he turned to retreat, a minie ball tore into his left leg and broke his femur in half. He crumpled to the ground as the Confederates overtook his position, leaving him with the other human debris in their wake.

Mercifully, Peter knew neither how dreadfully long he would lay there, nor exactly how this event would affect the rest of his life.2 As Peter lay untended, Robert and the 24th

PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2); COLORIZATION BY MADS MADSEN OF COLORIZED HISTORY : PREVIOUS SPREAD: ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Photographer Mathew Brady, who visited Gettysburg shortly after the battle’s end, gazes upon McPherson’s Woods, the site of heavy fighting between the 24th Michigan and 26th North Carolina during the engagement’s first day. Opposite page: the 24th Michigan’s colonel, Henry C. Morrow.

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troit to remove pieces of bone still detaching from the compromised femur. He mustered out of the service in October 1865, and another surgery followed six years later.4 After serving as a lighthouse keeper in northern Michigan, Bird and his growing family moved back to Romulus in 1874. (The Birds would eventually have nine children.) Once in his hometown, Bird became an active Republican Party leader and justice of the peace. He sold life insurance and served for many years as deputy register of deeds of Wayne County and deputy collector of U.S. Customs for Detroit. Peter and his brother traveled at least once to Gettysburg, where they were interviewed by an assistant to Paul Philippoteaux, who was working on his epic cyclorama of the battle. The artist became so taken with the Birds that he painted them into his famous depiction of Pickett’s Charge (even though Peter was still lying in McPherson’s Woods during that event). Though Peter remained active in the 24th Michigan’s regimental association, his increasing debilitation prevented him from attending any of the decennial anniversaries of the battle in which he suffered his traumatic wound.5 Bird’s injury forced him to remember that fateful afternoon for the rest of his life. In 1904, he described his daily regimen to federal pension commissioners: “There is a hole at the seat of the wound, and there is a continual discharge of pus from this hole. It is necessary to insert a drain to keep this hole open, and sometimes it has been necessary to cut it open.” Bird noted that the wound “requires so much dressing and attention that I cannot be away from home for any length of time; I am home every night.” The daily treatment exerted a profound influence on his children; one son became a doctor, and another entered the pharmacy business. Forty years after the battle, his youngest son, Richard, still attended to the wound. Bird admitted, “At first Richard did not like to do the work,” but when Peter nearly died from an infection at the wound site, Richard relented and dealt with the unpleasant task of inserting a drain into his father’s leg and cleaning it with hydrogen peroxide. The operation had to be performed every morning and every night for 49 years, until Peter’s death on October 10, 1912.6

Peter Bird was not the only member of the 24th Michigan whose life was altered as a result of the fighting on July 1, 1863. Not far from Bird that day stood Private Solomon Benster, a six-foot-tall, 18-year-old machinist from southwest Detroit who had enlisted the previous summer. As the Rebels advanced on their position on McPherson’s Ridge, Benster bent over, perhaps to tend to a wounded comrade. At that moment two bul-

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

1

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Before retreating through Gettysburg, the men of the 24th Michigan made a last stand near Lutheran Theological Seminary (shown here not long after the battle) west of town.

lets struck him simultaneously. The first broke the bones in his left shoulder, ripped his left lung, and lodged against his right hip bone. The second struck his right shoulder, passed through his lung cavity, scraped his sternum, and lodged in the muscles of his stomach.7 Benster would carry both bullets—and their effects—to the grave. His left arm was “nearly useless,” and the bullet that lodged against his hip also impinged on the sciatic nerve, causing his right leg and hip to trouble him throughout his life. Thirty-one years after the battle, Benster wrote, “I have never been able to perform manual labor since my discharge.” He also revealed that for three years, “I had to be tied to a chair back to be kept upright.” He admitted, “This is one of my main troubles at present and always will be.”

Unable to work as he had before the war, Benster took up photography and, with monthly financial assistance from the U.S. Pension Bureau, opened his own business. Benster attended the Michigan Day ceremonies at Gettysburg in June 1889 (when the regiment’s monument was unveiled on McPherson’s Ridge), the only time in his life he revisited the scene of his disabling.8 Benster’s physical condition also took a toll on his personal life. He married India King in 1866 and had two sons with her, but they divorced a few years later. His experience was not unusual.

Indeed, a sample of 118 men from the 24th Michigan who were wounded at Gettysburg shows they suffered from a divorce rate that was more than double the postwar average, suggesting that the physical and psychological scars of the battle— which led some veterans to violence against their families—damaged postwar relationships.9 Edward Chope, a member of the regiment who was discharged after a severe leg wound, divorced twice; his second wife testified to his “cruel and inhuman treatment of her.” A shot to the knee disabled Jeston Warner, whom a court found “guilty of several acts of extreme cruelty” against his wife, who divorced him. Patrick Clarey was shot four times and lost a leg at Gettysburg. After the war, domestic violence became the norm at his house; witnesses described Clarey as a drunkard with a “dangerous disposition and temper.”

He abused his wife, who threatened to poison him in retaliation, and tried to use an iron bar to beat his stepson, who later attempted to shoot Clarey with a revolver. Clarey claimed that all this unrest stemmed from his wife’s attempts “to ridicule me because of my infirmities.”10 For other veterans of the 24th, the battle had devastating economic consequences to accompany emotional wounds. Located on the far left of the regiment’s line on McPherson’s Ridge was 27-year-old German immigrant Friedrich Koch.

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Left: Charles McConnell, a corporal in the 24th Michigan during the Battle of Gettysburg, donned his old uniform for this postwar photo.

Opposite page: Andrew Hull “Dan” Courtney, one of many members of the 26th North Carolina to be wounded during the fighting on July 1, 1863.

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PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

ancholy and nervous prostration.” The Battle of Gettysburg cast a permanent shadow over him.

A close friend asserted, “I know that his wounds affected his mind from his strange manners....

They were the cause of his mental derangement.”

Veo battled his demons until July 1889. Four days after the 26th anniversary of his wounding, Veo took his own life. Eulalie never remarried and continued to receive a widow’s pension until her death in 1930. His daughters, Elizabeth and Florence, lived long and full lives, indelibly molded by the broken and depressed man who emerged from Gettysburg.13 Corporal Charles McConnell was one of the few members of Company B who emerged from the battle unscathed. Born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1841, he had emigrated in 1847 when his family fled the potato famine. They made their way to Detroit, where McConnell grew up and joined the 24th Michigan on July 24, 1862. During the McPherson’s Ridge fight, McConnell had several near misses. One bullet tore his shirtsleeve, while another ripped his pants. As he retreated to a new position, a third bullet struck him square in the back. His blanket saved his life, the ball “cutting through ten thicknesses” of the tightly rolled covering. It was indicative of fighting so blisteringly intense that one soldier wrote his parents: “I don’t see how in the world that our men got off without [the enemy] killing them all.”14 McConnell continued to the fence barricade at the Lutheran Theological Seminary. As the Union line showed signs of giving way, McConnell took aim at a Confederate soldier carrying a battle flag about 30 yards away. He steadied his rifle on the branch of a tree, fired, and through the smoke saw the flag and its carrier collapse. He turned and joined his comrades retreating through the streets of Gettysburg, certain that he had fired the 24th Michigan’s last bullet on the first day’s battle.15 In 1867, McConnell married a comrade’s sister, and they had a daughter. He became president of a Chicago-based drug company in 1892, making a handsome salary until his death in 1916. Throughout his life, McConnell maintained an abiding interest in the 24th Michigan’s role at Gettysburg.

In 1896 he wrote a detailed account of the regiment’s action on the first day, which he delivered as a speech to the Army of the Potomac Society in March 1897. McConnell felt “the first day’s battle of Gettysburg has never been given proper appreciation” by the northern public. McConnell had witnessed Pickett’s Charge on July 3—“a spectac-

GEORGE C. UNDERWOOD, HISTORY OF THE TWENTY-SIX REGIMENT OF THE NORTH CAROLINA TROOPS (1901); THE SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORICAL PRESERVATION OF THE 26TH REGIMENT N.C. TROOPS, INC. (OPPOSITE PAGE)

ing about three inches below his left ear and exiting near his spinal cord. Koch fell into enemy hands, but escaped from a Confederate field hospital two days later and hid with a local farmer who later carried him to Union lines. Treated in a Harrisburg hospital, Koch received a two-week furlough in August 1863. Believing he had been discharged from the army, Koch returned to Chicago, where doctors treated his wound for years.

The army classified Koch as a deserter, though he would not discover this until after the war when he was repeatedly denied a pension. The intense and unremitting head pain from his wound prevented Koch from holding a job. For 40 years he fought the Pension Bureau to have his record cleared—a process that included having a friend write directly to President William McKinley in 1901 asking for mercy for “the gentleman [who] is past sixty years of age and in poor circumstances”—but never succeeded. Koch died alone, destitute, and unrewarded for the sacrifice he made for his adopted country.11 He was not the only one. Of 391 pension claims filed by soldiers of the 24th Michigan or their dependent family members, 51 were rejected.

Even for those who did receive a pension, postwar life was not free from financial hardship. Standing in line with his comrades in the 24th’s Company B at Gettysburg was a 25-yearold French Canadian laborer from Trenton, Michigan, named Raphael Lafayette Veo. As Veo turned to his right for a moment, three bullets from a Confederate volley struck him. One bullet benignly passed through the flesh of his left elbow, but a second bullet fractured his right heel. The third ball entered his back four inches above his hip and passed across his spine before exiting on his right side. With a crippled back and a useless foot, Veo spent time in several hospitals before he was discharged for disability in November 1863. One year later he married Eulalie Depuis, and they had two daughters. Veo tried to make a living as a farmer and a sawyer, but his wounds prevented it. His heel never mended properly and by 1882 had become a continual open sore, which kept him housebound for nearly half of that year. His federal pension was the family’s primary means of support, but at $8 a month, it was barely sufficient.12 The inability to provide a comfortable living for his family and the constant physical pain weakened Veo’s psyche. His physician noted that he became increasingly prone to “spells of mel-

ular, unmilitary, worse than useless slaughter of brave men predestined to defeat”—and asserted that the famously doomed attack did not compare to the fighting of July 1 on McPherson’s Ridge.

“There was nothing spectacular about that fight,” McConnell declared. “It was cold-blooded, grim determination, give and take, until both commands were nearly annihilated.” If not for the sacrifice of the Iron Brigade on July 1, he said, there would have been no Union victory to salvage. McConnell’s efforts to recount and memorialize the first day’s fight would even lead to unlikely connections and close bonds with his former adversaries in the 26th North Carolina.16

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PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

GEORGE C. UNDERWOOD, HISTORY OF THE TWENTY-SIX REGIMENT OF THE NORTH CAROLINA TROOPS (1901); THE SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORICAL PRESERVATION OF THE 26TH REGIMENT N.C. TROOPS, INC. (OPPOSITE PAGE)

The fight for McPherson’s Ridge was every bit as devastating and personal for men of the 26th North Carolina. After lying in line for two hours that July afternoon, the southerners were relieved when the order to advance finally came.

One Chatham County soldier wrote, “I was as anxious to go as I ever was to do any thing in my

life and as we went in I could heardly [sic] keep from crying I was so proud to see our boys go in so well.” They had not gone far when the Yankees fired a destructive volley. One soldier saw “my comrades lying almost in piles,” dead or with all imaginable variety of wounds. Another confirmed that “hundreds [were] lying wounded, some dying, other[s] bleeding to death, other[s] crying and saying oh cant you do something for me or I shall die.”17 Those who could returned fire and continued to advance, reloading as they marched.

Three members of the extended Setser family from mountainous Caldwell County served in the 26th’s Company F. W.E. “Eli” Setser, 19, marched beside his 20-year-old cousin, Joseph, that afternoon. Their 23-year-old cousin, Thomas, was fortuitously detailed for other duty that morning and missed the fight. A bullet from one of the first volleys smashed Joseph’s knee, but Eli was able to continue with the regiment into the woods. As he stood within yards of the enemy line, multiple bullets slammed into Eli—at least two hit one arm, and another tore a hole through his coat. Another minie ball struck near the top of his leg, shattering his femur. The wound was so high that amputation was impossible, and the bone had disintegrated so badly that it could not be set. Eli recognized immediately that he would not recover.18 Thomas Setser frantically scoured the battlefield that evening for his cousin. He found him suffering in the woods and remained by his side until shortly after dawn, when he flagged down some medical orderlies. As Thomas helped put his cousin in an ambulance wagon, Eli asked Thomas to “tell my folks how it was.” An emotional Thomas earnestly promised to do so. The wagon carted the ashen Eli off to the same field hospital where his cousin Joseph had had his leg amputated above the knee the night before.19 On the morning of July 4, Lieutenant William A. Tuttle of the 22nd North Carolina, a family friend, visited the Setsers. Tuttle was dismayed to see Eli so hopelessly wounded. “I Dont think he will ever Recover,” Tuttle painfully wrote to Eli’s father, “his thigh was shivered close up to his hip.”

Eli’s resigned acceptance of his fate impressed the lieutenant: “He told me that he was willing to Die and that he hoped to meet me in heaven.” Tuttle waited as long as he could before leaving to stay ahead of the approaching Union army. “With a heavy heart I took their hands, and a tear fell from our eyes and we parted.” Eli died that evening.

Joseph died of infection two weeks later. After the war, one of Eli’s younger brothers named his firstborn son after him. Two of Joseph Setser’s younger brothers named their own sons Joseph.20 Marching in the attack near the Setsers was their good friend, Andrew Hull “Dan” Courtney, 26, who had enlisted in July 1862 to avoid 61 SUMMER 2017 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR

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1 The memory of the battle shaped the lives of many other participants and their families as well. On that fateful afternoon, the 26th North Carolina’s 21-year-old colonel, Henry (“Harry”) King Burgwyn, ordered his men forward at the quick step while he followed a few paces behind the lines to view their progress. The men marched crisply through an oat field, then bunched up a bit as they crossed the brambles of a small creek known as Willoughby’s Run. Once the regiment traversed the creek, Burgwyn reformed his lines and urged his men up the slope.

During the advance, one color bearer after another fell, but others kept picking the banner up and carrying it forward. At one point Burgwyn picked up the fallen flag. As he was handing it to another soldier, a bullet entered his left side,

perforated both lungs, and dropped him flat on his back.23 When Lieutenant Colonel John R. Lane saw Burgwyn fall, he rushed to his colonel’s side, grabbed his hand, and asked if he was badly hurt.

Burgwyn could not find the breath to speak and only squeezed Lane’s hand and motioned to his left side. As others came to Burgwyn’s side, Lane left to take over leadership of the regiment. Using a blanket as a stretcher, two soldiers carried Burgwyn toward the rear, stepping over the mangled and dead. Burgwyn died that afternoon, soon after averring to those around him that he felt no regrets and gloried in the day’s victory. His friends buried him in an ammunition case and marked his grave so that his family could someday retrieve his body, which they did two years later.24 The lanky, heavily bearded Lane was only three days shy of his 28th birthday on July 1, 1863.

After checking on Burgwyn, the lieutenant colo-

Above: Henry (“Harry”) King Burgwyn, the 26th North Carolina’s 21-yearold colonel who was mortally wounded during the fighting on July 1. Opposite page: The regiment’s lieutenant colonel, John R. Lane, who would fall wounded not long after Burgwyn.

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BOTH FROM GEORGE C. UNDERWOOD, HISTORY OF THE TWENTYSIX REGIMENT OF THE NORTH CAROLINA TROOPS (1901)

the Confederate military draft. Dan’s thoughts were of his sickly wife, Mary, who had given birth to a stillborn son eight months earlier and then discovered in February 1863 that someone had stolen their only plow on the eve of spring planting. On June 3 Courtney wrote his wife, “I want to get home worse on your account than anything else. I know you are lonesome and see a heep of trouble….” On June 24, as the regiment prepared to cross the Potomac River into Maryland, the devout Methodist wrote, “I hope Gode [sic] will spare my life to get home on your account.” In the attack that Wednesday afternoon, a minie ball tore apart Dan’s lower left leg. Carried to the same hospital as the Setsers, he lay near his friends, all three of them in agony.21 Dan became a prisoner when the Union took over the field hospital on July 4, and Union surgeons amputated his infected leg on July 6. He recuperated in a prison hospital in Baltimore and was exchanged in August 1863. He remained in Confederate hospitals until he was furloughed in October. Dan returned home to his wife, who gave birth to a son, John, 10 months later. Ultimately, Dan and Mary would raise eight children on their farm and tannery near Lenoir, North Carolina. Dan died in 1909, but Gettysburg played a prominent role in his family’s memories of him. Nearly 100 years after his death, a granddaughter wrote a brief family church history that was revealing in its inaccuracies. The story begins with a realistic version of Courtney’s wounding at Gettysburg, but veers from the facts into family lore that has him fashioning a wooden leg and stumping all the way home from Pennsylvania just “to see his wife and little son, John.”

Dan did not walk home from Gettysburg, and his wife gave birth to John a year later. But the story demonstrates the mythical power the battle held for later generations.22

BOTH FROM GEORGE C. UNDERWOOD, HISTORY OF THE TWENTYSIX REGIMENT OF THE NORTH CAROLINA TROOPS (1901)

nel ran to the right to prepare his men for a final charge at the Union line on the summit of the hill. He returned to the center to see that Lieutenant Milton Blair of Company B had picked up the fallen colors. Lane asked for them, and as he handed them over Blair sardonically replied, “You will get tyred [sic] of them.” With the flag held high, Lane led the regiment toward what remained of the Union defenders, who were still blazing away. When the smoke cleared for a moment, General J. Johnston Pettigrew, well to the rear, witnessed Lane leading the charge and remarked, “It is the bravest act I ever saw.”25 As they came within 30 yards of the enemy line, Lane turned to encourage his men. A .58 caliber ball crashed through his neck at the base of the skull and exited through his mouth, carrying parts of his chin, jaw, tongue, and several teeth with it. The men of the 26th charged past the fallen Lane and drove the Yankees off the crest

of McPherson’s Ridge. With that desperate rush, the 26th North Carolina’s part of the fighting ended. While some of the North Carolinians followed the continued Confederate advance, most stayed behind to tend to wounded friends, and some carried Lane’s inert body to the rear.26 A day after battle’s end, Lane was loaded into a wagon full of wounded and started back to Virginia. A Union cavalry detachment attacked the caravan, and Lane, though weak from hunger and his wound, grabbed a riderless horse and made his escape. By August 4 he was back home in Chatham County on extended furlough. Remarkably, Lane recovered and rejoined the regiment. After the war, he returned to his home on Little Brush Creek, where he ran a general store and grist mill before establishing a lucrative business selling horses, mules, and land. Lane would give several speeches about his regiment’s experience at Gettysburg and participated proudly in tributes to Confederate forces until his death on December 31, 1908. During the last decades of his life, Lane corresponded frequently with those who wished to preserve the regiment’s history, especially the younger brother of Colonel Harry Burgwyn.27 At the moment his older brother fell mortally wounded, 17-year old Lieutenant William Hyslop Sumner Burgwyn was resting on the Williamsburg Road a few miles east of Richmond. As part of the 35th North Carolina Infantry, he was monitoring Union forces scouting the eastern approaches to the Confederate capital. The first reports of the battle at Gettysburg arrived on July 7, a rainy Tuesday, and relayed “the glorious news that Lee had captured 40,000 men of Mead’s [sic] Army,” and William optimistically “believe[d] it to be true.” Five days later, he received news his brother had been killed. “I could not bear to believe it & do not,” William wrote in his diary. The next day corroborating sources confirmed Harry’s death. William mourned “my dear beloved brother who I had just began to appreciate for his good and noble qualities.” The brothers had had their difficulties. Like many siblings, the two could not be together long without irritating each other, but William greatly admired his big brother. He confessed that Harry’s death “presses with a heavy load on my heart and I find difficulty in believing or realizing it.” That Christmas, William lamented, “the only thing that saddened the day was that my poor brother Harry had been killed and could not be with us.”28 Harry’s death also devastated the rest of the family. His presumed fiancée never married. His father, who was very close to Harry, declined rapidly in health. Harry was constantly in the thoughts of his mother, Anna. On July 9, 1867, Anna attended the reinterment of Harry’s Gettysburg coffin in Raleigh’s historic Oakwood Cemetery. In the last six ☛ } CONT. ON P. 76 63 SUMMER 2017 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR

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BOOKS & AUTHORS

The B&A Q&A: Sidney Blumenthal

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

in may, simon  schuster released Wrestling With His

Angel, the second book in veteran journalist and presidential advisor Sidney Blumenthal’s multivolume political biography of President Abraham Lincoln. (A Self-Made Man, the series’ critically acclaimed first volume, was released in 2016.) We recently sat down with Blumenthal to learn more about his work, including how he came to study Lincoln and what he’s learned about the 16th president along the way.

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B&A

When I was growing up and attending public schools in Chicago during the 1950s and early 1960s, Lincoln was a constant presence; his portrait hung in the classroom and his birthday was a state holiday. When I was about 12 years old, an older cousin took me on a trip to Springfield. With the eyes of a boy awakening to the larger world, I saw New Salem, the Old State Capitol, and Lincoln’s tomb. These sights were not in a Disney-like theme park. There was no animatronic figure with a tinny voice spouting Lincoln’s phrases to inspire a momentary false awe. Understanding demanded one’s own imagination and the pursuit of history. I began by reading Carl Sandburg’s Lincoln biography and continued from there. Serving in the White House as assistant to President Clinton I spent years working where Lincoln had lived. Afterward, I started research for a book on how presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt have dealt with civil rights and transformed the modern political parties. I kept returning to Lincoln until I reached his beginning. Having fallen down that rabbit hole, I found it a congenial place and haven’t left yet. The more I

spend time with Lincoln the deeper and broader my inquiry has gone.

Can you describe your research process? What sources have you found most reliable or insightful in your study of Lincoln?

I read through as much I can, from the newspapers of the day to the latest scholarship. When I come to a crucial aspect of Lincoln’s life I follow the footnotes until the trail runs dry. I bring to bear my own unique experience in government and politics in penetrating behind the iconic images of the personalities of the time and their motives. The past may be another country, as an English novelist said, but American politics in fundamental ways remains American politics.

As a journalist, my historical research is also a journalistic enterprise. Sometimes the path leads me to letters and documents in the Library of Congress and the National Archives, which, living in Washington, are conveniently nearby.

Google’s copying of whole university libraries has made it possible to wander through musty stacks without ever leaving the laptop on my desk. Gradually, old newspapers have been added to online archives and I have become familiar with the correspondents of The New York Times and the New York Tribune. Even obscure pamphlets have now been copied. My greatest frustration is the inability to interview those involved in the events.

That’s why the interviews that William Henry Herndon, Lincoln’s law partner, conducted with those who knew him before the presidency are so invaluable.

I am always excited to discover a memoir or a life-and-letters biography from the period that I hadn’t anticipated.

Wresting With His Angel covers 1849 to 1856, a key period in the development of Lincoln’s political skills. Which events during this time were most significant in shaping Lincoln the politician?

Wrestling With His Angel opens with one-term congressman Lincoln leaving

Washington behind after botching his attempt to secure a federal patronage job with the incoming Whig administration.

Almost at once he goes from Springfield to Lexington, Kentucky, to serve as cocounsel in a case to determine who will get the Todd family fortune on behalf of his wife and finds himself in the vortex of Kentucky politics. He contests for the estate against the leader of the powerful and virulent proslavery forces, who is married to a Todd cousin and directing the rewriting of the state constitution to end Kentucky’s restrictions on the slave trade. Lincoln loses the case as he observes the legacy of his idol, Henry Clay, and his late father-in-law, Clay’s business partner and political ally, destroyed at the hands of the Slave Power.

The true heir to the Todd money is none other than a slave, who is his wife’s unacknowledged cousin and has been sent to Liberia. Decades later that boy becomes president of Liberia. Lincoln’s Kentucky experience simmers within him for years. When his longtime rival Senator Stephen A. Douglas sponsors the Kansas-Nebraska Act that repeals the Missouri Compromise, opening the way for slavery to expand into the territories, Lincoln emerges in opposition as the figure recognizable in history. Behind the

RALPH ALSWING

How did you get interested in Abraham Lincoln in general and his political life in particular?

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RALPH ALSWING

Sidney Blumenthal

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B&A antislavery preacher married his father and mother, who were functionally illiterate poor whites in Kentucky and always belonged to tiny emancipationist Primitive Baptist churches, even after migrating to the free state of Indiana in order to escape living within an economy in which Thomas Lincoln had to compete for wages with slaves. The Lincolns, as Lincoln understood it, were white fugitives from slavery. In 1856, upon assuming his new political identity as a Republican, Lincoln declared, “I used to be a slave.” He was referring to being hired out as an indentured servant until he was 21 years old by his father. Lincoln was an oppressed, poverty-stricken, and stunted boy who emancipated himself. His sense of emancipation and a free society was rooted in his own life.

scenes, he also takes on the anti-immigrant Know Nothings in order to create the Illinois Republican Party. Lincoln’s dramatic inner struggle leads him to rise in defense of the American democratic experiment, which, borrowing from Scripture, he declares cannot exist “half slave and half free.”

Have you learned anything about Lincoln during the pre-Civil War years that surprised you?

In 1864, Lincoln wrote in explaining the

Emancipation Proclamation that he was “naturally anti-slavery.” Some historians state that he had little early experiences with slavery or slaves. That is the starting point for their discussion of the evolution of what they call his “maturation” on slavery. But while Lincoln’s political strategies and tactics against slavery, and his sense of urgency, did evolve with circumstances and his own responsibilities, his antislavery belief was his birthright.

By “naturally” Lincoln meant just that.

It was part of the fiber of his being. An

Wrestling With His Angel is the second volume of my four-book political biography of Lincoln. Future volumes will describe, among other aspects of Lincoln’s genius, how he engaged in the difficult and complex task of creating a new party out of political chaos; how he distilled and refined his brilliant arguments against a host of dangerous and influential demagogues, particularly Stephen A. Douglas, who manipulated and exploited every advantage of racism against Lincoln in their debates; how Lincoln outflanked the media-savvy General George B. McClellan, who became the instrument of Lincoln’s political adversaries, for control of the military; how Lincoln survived the assaults of, on the one hand, pro-Confederate “Peace Democrats,” or “Copperheads,” who branded him a tyrant, and on the other hand radical abolitionists, who disparaged him as a vacillating and compromising sellout.

In the final volume, I promise to have extraordinary new material that will shed new light on the assassination, the most consequential act of political violence in American history.

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PAMPLIN HISTORICAL PARK

What are you looking forward to examining about Lincoln’s presidency in future volumes of the series?

The Books That Built Me: A. Wilson Greene

PAMPLIN HISTORICAL PARK

you’ll know i am of a certain age

when I say that the Centennial first sparked my interest in the Civil War. I fondly recall looking forward to each Sunday’s edition of the Chicago Tribune because the comic section included a strip depicting the conflict’s most important events of the week 100 years earlier. A fifth-grade family vacation to Washington that budgeted four hours for a tour of Gettysburg turned into two overnight stays, and that sealed the deal. I was hooked on the Civil War, and my literary-minded parents began to feed my new childhood passion at the local bookstore, just as they had generously done the year before with dinosaurs, reptiles, and the Old West.

I can’t be sure if Picture History of the Civil War, published by American Heritage magazine in 1960, was the first book they bought, but it certainly is the one that most captured my fascination with the people and places of the 1860s. Employing a combination of art, historic images, and modern photographs—and those unforgettable cartoonish, bird’s-eye maps of battlefields that kept me fascinated for hours—the editors of American Heritage produced a coffee-table book for the ages. In fact, I still have the very copy I devoured as a boy more than a half-century ago. Bruce Catton’s matchless prose summarized the major campaigns and described the war’s leading personalities in such a way that compelled a young reader to learn more.

And who better to turn to than Catton himself?

A. Wilson Greene

Most of my published work has focused on campaign histories, so the sweeping narratives produced by Catton set the tone for my own particular approach to the war. His multivolume Centennial History of the Civil War— The Coming Fury (1961), Terrible Swift Sword (1963), and Never Call Retreat (1965)—challenged my developing reading skills but exposed me at an early age to how superlative writing can help one not only understand but also feel history.

My career has taken me almost exclusively to Virginia’s battlefields, but through high school and college I read just as much about the western theater as I did about the fighting between Washington and Richmond. Fletcher Pratt’s Civil War on Western Waters (1956), The Web of Victory: Grant at Vicksburg by Earl Schenck Miers (1955), and Wiley Sword’s groundbreaking Shiloh: Bloody April (1974) competed for my spare time with the likes of Jim Murfin’s The Gleam of Bayonets

(1965), First Blood: The Story of Fort Sumter

by W.A. Swanberg (1957), and Clifford Dowdey’s wonderful books on the Army of Northern Virginia and its commander.

The arc of becoming professional at any endeavor follows a predictable path: Interest leads to a quest for knowledge, and increased knowledge yields to a questioning of the original orthodoxy. When I began to turn my evolving knowledge base into a desire to contribute my own wisdom through the printed word, I looked to the authors I admired for clues on how to write. (I also have to credit my graduate school mentors at Louisiana State University, T. Harry Williams and William J. Cooper, for bludgeoning me into a passable scribe.)

No historian can overstate the importance of primary research. So much of what seems to be celebrated these days are mere re-hashes of previous work or books based almost exclusively on secondary sources. Three historians among 69 SUMMER 2017 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR

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B&A

many who have influenced the way I conduct research deserve mention. Robert K. Krick served as an invaluable teacher in many ways, not the least of which was his emphasis on using previously untapped sources. A quick glance at the endnotes and bibliography of Bob’s Conquering the Valley: Stonewall Jackson at Port Republic (1996) or his Stonewall Jackson at Cedar

Mountain (1990) demonstrates that he dug deeply into new material to inform those definitive studies. Richard J. Sommers’ Richmond Redeemed: The Siege at Petersburg (1981 and 2014) remains one of the best single campaign studies of our generation for its organization, clarity of argument, and use of sources. Dick’s dissertation, on which his book is based, runs

to nearly twice the length of his published version, and the amount of primary research he conducted sets the standard for any writer of campaign chronicles. Finally, William Marvel has produced a veritable library of outstanding books on the Civil War, ranging from biographies of Ambrose Burnside and Edwin M. Stanton to studies of Andersonville, the Appo-

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“ When I began to turn my evolving knowledge base into a desire to contribute my own wisdom through the printed word, I looked to the authors I admired for clues on how to write.”

A. WILSON GREENE

mattox Campaign, and the clash between CSS Alabama and USS Kearsarge, not to mention a four-volume study of Abraham Lincoln’s management of the Union war effort. Bill studiously avoids many of the sources that historians commonly apply, such as regimental histories and published memoirs, utilizing instead—and almost exclusively—contemporary evidence that often revises what previous pens have written. Krick, Sommers, and Marvel—all in their own ways—epitomize for me how careful and diligent researchers go about gathering the grist for their literary mills.

So if Catton et al. attracted my interest, writers of the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s helped build my knowledge base, and several of my contemporaries showed me the way to use source material, which writers influenced the way I see the war and present it in talks, tours, and books?

My major professor in graduate school, T. Harry Williams, wrote a classic study of Union military leadership, Lincoln and His Generals (1952). Although much of what Williams concluded has been challenged in the six decades since that book appeared, I confess that any time I consider Federal leadership on the battlefields, Harry’s opinions provide my point of departure.

On the question of what motivated soldiers to fight, James M. McPherson’s For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (1997), in which he emphasizes idealism and a sense of duty and honor among the volunteers, I find profoundly persuasive. In a more narrow sense, Gary W. Gallagher’s The Union War (2011) convinces me, despite modern academic preferences, that the boys in blue in the 1860s went to war to preserve the nation. David Blight’s Race and Reunion (2001), although recently and capably challenged, forced me to think about the legacy of the Civil War in new ways.

I must return to Jim McPherson’s work in regard to the question of turning points in the Civil War. His Battle Cry of Freedom (1988) is not only the best single volume on the war we are ever likely to see, but it

lays out a very convincing case that the Confederacy could have achieved its war aims without winning on the battlefield and that the South’s true military highwater mark came in the autumn of 1862, not in the fields around Gettysburg or Vicksburg. Jim’s collection of essays, This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War (2007), touches on a number of topics and provides viewpoints that I have almost universally embraced.

The wonderful thing about studying the history of our Civil War is that the learning curve is never complete.

Thought-provoking new approaches, such as The Blue, the Gray, and the Green: Toward an Environmental History of the Civil War, edited by Brian Drake (2015), continually challenge me to expand my thinking and consider the war in novel paradigms. Innovative research constructs employed by authors such as Joseph T. Glatthaar in General Lee’s Army: From Victory to Collapse (2008) and Soldiering in the Army of Northern Virginia (2011) have led me to re-evaluate the old way of doing history. Earl J. Hess, in his Civil War Infantry Tactics (2015) and The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat (2008), has compelled me to revise or completely abandon longcherished assumptions about how soldiers conducted their war. My role model for my current multivolume study of the Petersburg Campaign is Gordon Rhea.

His four (soon to be five) volumes on the Overland Campaign strike just the right balance between operational detail and general appeal, while utilizing an admirable array of primary source material woven into a narrative replete with literary grace.

So, the learning—the historical evolution—never really stops. With that in mind perhaps a better title for this essay would be “The Books That Are Building Me.” A. WILSON GREENE RECENTLY RETIRED FROM A 43-YEAR CAREER AS A PUBLIC HISTORIAN AND BATTLEFIELD PRESERVATIONIST. HIS BOOK ON THE FIRST SIX WEEKS OF THE PETERSBURG CAMPAIGN IS SCHEDULED FOR PUBLICATION

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AMERICAN ILIAD

CONTINUED FROM P. 26

Southerners considered the general as loathsome as he was fearsome, and the moniker “Spoons” captured this sense of contempt. Its origin lay in a rumor that spread after his departure from New Orleans in December 1862. During his stint in the city Butler had commandeered the residence of General David E. Twiggs, a turncoat commander of the U.S. Army’s Department of Texas who had surrendered his department to Confederates well before the firing on Fort Sumter.

When Butler left New Orleans it was said that he absconded with Twiggs’ ceremonial swords and some valuable silver spoons.

In fact Butler had turned over the swords to the government and had purchased the spoons for his mother (and had the receipt to prove it). But nobody cared about the details. Butler was not only a lout; he was also a petty thief.

The image stuck. Bruce Catton, one of the American Iliad’s most influential bards, provides a vivid example of its du-

rability, for Catton would one day write about Butler in terms that William Mumford might have applauded. Butler had a “lumpy, oversized body, arms and legs that looked as if they had been attached as an afterthought, [and] eyes that refused to mesh.”3 Behind those eyes was a brain that harbored “monstrous ambitions ... with [a] whole-souled lack of scruple.”4 Butler was, Catton pronounced, “exactly the sort of man the founding fathers had in mind when they stiffened the Constitution to prevent an abuse of military authority.”5 But apparently they did not stiffen the Constitution enough, for elsewhere Catton wrote that Butler “gave New Orleans a dictatorial military government” that “offered nothing but oppression tempered by venality” as well as “the whiff of something spoiled and corrupt.”6 Judging by his lusty contempt for Butler, one might suppose that Catton hailed from the deepest of the Deep South. In fact he came from a village in northern Michigan and his lifelong sympathies were plainly pro-Union. So why did Catton write as if Butler had shot his dog? Catton was simply working within a tradition that had its origins decades before, when another pro-Union north-

erner, the respected historian James Ford Rhodes, had dwelled at length upon corruption allegations against Butler, broadly implying that at least some were true.

But Butler’s reputation does not reflect the whole picture, as a New York Times article written during the Civil War sesquicentennial argues. It was Butler who in May 1861 held that slaves used to support the Confederate military effort could be held as “contraband of war,” a valuable formula that allowed Union soldiers to protect at least some enslaved Americans at a time when the Lincoln administration had not yet dared to introduce an emancipation policy. It was Butler who was among the first to advocate the use of African-American men as soldiers. It was Butler who in New Orleans had, yes, issued the infamous “Woman Order,” but had also “handed out free food ... put civilians to work cleaning up the city’s streets and drainages, and ... quarantined ships to fight yellow fever, which had killed 11,000 people in the city just a decade earlier.”7 As a U.S. congressman in 1869 he even rescued the widow of William Mumford from poverty, inviting her to Washington, helping her to get settled, paying off the lien on her house, and twice securing for her a government job.

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Yet most lay students of the Civil War still regard Butler as a corrupt villain, and the stability of this image makes Butler an important figure in the American Iliad. The bipartisan consensus that Butler was loathsome is part of a central tenet of the Iliad: that Americans North and South fought for different but morally equivalent visions of the American republic. This required a northern concession to the southern view that southern civilians had been victims—that, as a Richmond newspaper editor insisted in an influential 1866 history of the recent conflict, Butler’s “war upon the helplessness of men and virtue of women was another step in atrocity.... And yet it was but the opening chapter of cruelty and horrours, exaggerated at each step of the war, until Humanity was to stand aghast at the black volume of misery and ruin.”8 This clearly pointed toward the “hard war” policies of Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman, and Philip Sheridan. Northerners would scarcely agree to portray these paladins as villains, but “Spoons” Butler was perfectly cast for this indispensable role.

MARK GRIMSLEY, A HISTORY PROFESSOR AT THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, IS THE AUTHOR OF SEV-

ERAL BOOKS, INCLUDING AND KEEP MOVING ON: THE VIRGINIA CAMPAIGN, MAY-JUNE 1864 (2002) AND THE HARD HAND OF WAR: UNION MILITARY POLICY TOWARD SOUTHERN CIVILIANS, 1861-1865 (1995). HE HAS ALSO WRITTEN MORE THAN 50 ARTICLES AND ESSAYS.

STEREOSCOPE

CONTINUED FROM P. 28

top southern drawl, but it took a bit longer than he would have liked.

The trickier bit of casting was for a scene that Griffiths felt was vital to the story: the “breaking point” moment that provokes Joseph to desert, when he sees Robert beat a camp slave named Turner to death. The African-English actors who read the script declined to audition for the role of Turner, saying it “wasn’t for them.”

Griffiths understood. Any cinematic depiction of slavery is a delicate matter; in a short film, Griffiths had to convey both the reality of the violence of slavery and Turner’s humanity in a mere 30 seconds of film. In the end, he was able to cast a friend and fellow student, and to film the scene as straightforwardly as possible.

For Griffiths, these challenges were

part of the enjoyment of writing and producing a historical film. It was important to him to get the history right, although he is quick to note that Enemies is not a documentary. For him, the story is the most important and powerful part of a feature film. Ultimately, Enemies will not rely on the dates of Civil War battles and other events for its sense of authenticity but on the ways that the progress and nature of the war inform the characters’ relationships and determine their actions.

Enemies will be screened at a student showcase in May 2017, and Griffiths and his collaborators hope to have careers in the film industry after graduation. Does Griffiths see himself returning to the American Civil War in a future work?

“Absolutely,” Griffiths said. “This has been one of the most enjoyable filming experiences I have ever had…. [T]he enthusiasm from the whole cast and crew to tell this story [is] what has made it so enjoyable.”

MEGAN KATE NELSON IS A WRITER AND HISTORIAN WHO LIVES IN LINCOLN, MASSACHUSETTS. SHE IS THE AUTHOR OF RUIN NATION: DESTRUCTION AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR (2012) AND TREMBLING EARTH: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE OKEFENOKEE SWAMP (2005).

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MEADE-GRANT

CONTINUED FROM P. 41

tacking troops filed into the crater and stopped to gawk; their commander was drunk in a dugout far to the rear.

Meade pressed Burnside to push into the enemy’s rear, to secure and widen the breach. A befuddled Burnside complained that Meade’s dispatches were “unofficerlike and ungentlemanly.” Meade finally ordered recall. The cost reached 3,800 men, more than Cold Harbor. “I am afraid our failure will have a most unfavorable influence on the public mind,” Meade wrote.18 The Battle of the Crater energized a rash of reports that Meade’s command was in jeopardy. Winfield Hancock confided to him that he heard Meade would be relieved and that he, Hancock, would take his place. Hancock “said he believed it was a political intrigue,” Meade told his wife, “& intimated a victim was wanted to appease the public & I was to be the man.” The press took up its cudgels, and staff man James Biddle confirmed Meade’s impression: “The trouble is they want to make Meade the scapegoat & are trying to fasten everything that goes wrong in the Army upon him.”

Meade took the matter to Grant, who assured him his command was secure. In fact, he said, Meade might be called on to put out a fire in the Shenandoah Valley. The Rebels had seized the Valley and were holding it like a gun to Washington’s head. It was proposed to revamp the overlapping Valley commands into one military division, and Grant discussed its command with Meade. Cautiously saying he would serve where ordered, Meade on reflection took to the idea. “So far as having an independent command which the A.P. is not, I would like this change very well.”

The matter took on a political caste. The Blair clan—elder statesman Francis Preston Blair and his son Montgomery—approached General McClellan with a proffer: withdraw from consideration for the Democratic nomination in return for an important command befitting his rank.

That command was the new Middle

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Military Division, the task, clearing the Valley of Confederates. Lincoln did not initiate the proffer, but knew about it from Blair and could envision it as a major coup—exchanging a second presidential term for a sure-to-be-popular McClellan posting.

Lincoln met with Grant to settle the matter. Grant had indicated to Meade the post would be his, McClellan had promised to think on it for himself, and Grant rethought this prospective Valley campaign. He changed course and picked Philip Sheridan for the post. (The door was left ajar for McClellan, who did not come knocking.) Grant decided that the Shenandoah Valley must not only be cleared of Confederate soldiers but that it

“Boys, your work is done. Lee has surrendered. You can go home.”

GEORGE G. MEADE

must no longer provision the Confederate war effort. Noholds-barred aggression was required, and Grant recognized that George Meade was not a soldier with the heart (or stomach) for that kind of total, beyond-the-pale warfare, for burning down barns and smokehouses and leaving civilians to starve. Philip Sheridan had the stomach for anything.

Me a d e c o n t i n u e d to manage the Petersburg siege prudently, making probes and nibblings and flankings and reconnaissances in force, while victories elsewhere—at Atlanta and Mobile and in the Shenandoah—ensured Mr. Lincoln’s reelection. Winter quarters witnessed Lee’s army gripped as tightly as ever by the Army of the Potomac, and at least professionally, Meade had his reward. With Grant’s prod-

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ding, the War Department finally got around to promoting Meade to major general in the regular army, and the Senate approved by 32 to 5. “I really have more friends than I had any idea of,” a surprised Meade wrote his wife.19 Came April 1865 and one last offensive broke through Lee’s lines. Meade and staff rode into liberated Petersburg.

“As we struck the rear of the column marching onward,” Colonel Lyman wrote, “the men broke into loud cheers, which were continued all along. It was grand!” The press and the people might fail to appreciate George Meade, but not so his troops.

Meade led the pursuit west that ended on Palm Sunday at Appomattox Court House.

His Army of the Potomac was the largest but not the only element in the conquering force, and he was not a witness to Lee’s surrender. When he learned the news, long-suffering, long-patient George Meade mounted up and galloped through the camps of the II and VI Corps, waving his hat and shouting, “Boys, your work is done. Lee has surrendered. You can go home.”

From first to last in the Overland Campaign and in the Petersburg siege, Grant registered full confidence in Meade’s management of the Army of the Potomac, and he stood against those in the administration, the Congress, and the press who would have Meade’s head. In return, despite his loss of command independence and his sometimes bruised pride, Meade served Grant well and faithfully, living up to the bargain he had struck with himself—“and leave to truth & justice in time to place me right on the record.”20 STEPHEN W. SEARS’ LATEST BOOK (APRIL 2017) IS LINCOLN’S LIEUTENANTS: THE HIGH COMMAND OF THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC (HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT), FROM WHICH THIS ARTICLE IS DRAWN.

Maj. Gen. George E. Pickett was born in Richmond, graduated from West Point, and at Gettysburg played a major role in the charge named for him. One of his horses was named Lucy.

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REVERBERATIONS OF BATTLE

CONTINUED FROM P. 63

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MARY BURGWYN NEWSOMEHERE

intimate correspondence. The two met several times near the turn of the century. In one meeting in Richmond in 1900, McConnell mentioned to Burgwyn that he had shot a color bearer with his last cartridge, and assumed that he must have been from the 26th North Carolina. Burwgyn immediately responded, “Then you are the man who shot Colonel Lane.” Burgwyn arranged an introduction in May 1903, and the two former antagonists became fast friends.31 Two months later, on July 4, 1903, at Gettysburg, Lane delivered a speech to assembled veterans about the 26th North Carolina’s fight. After his oration, an emotional Lane pulled McConnell on stage with him and announced: “And this is the man that shot me.” McConnell, equally moved, replied, “I thank God that I did not kill you.” Afterward the men had photos taken together at the 24th Michigan monument.32 Nearly every historian who has written about the two regiments since 1903 tells their story, and it even found a new audience during the war’s recent sesquicentennial as news organizations and bloggers touted the 1903 reunion as

PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE MARY BURGW YN NEWSOME

months of her life, Anna referred to Harry five times in her journal. One of her last entries, on February 25, 1887, poignantly noted that day was “the anniversary of my last parting with dear Harry.”29 William dedicated his life to preserving his brother’s memory, especially in relation to the 26th North Carolina’s sacrifice at Gettysburg.

William became a lawyer and a banker in Henderson, North Carolina, but in his free time, he compiled all he could about Harry’s unit. He corresponded with several members of the regiment, including Lane.

When Judge Walter Clark began to publish his five-volume Histories of Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina (1901), William told the story of the 26th. His obsession with learning every detail about the Gettysburg fight meant that he knew about the 24th Michigan as well, and he became particular friends with one veteran of that regiment, Charles McConnell.30 In November 1896, while attempting to write his own history of the fighting on July 1, 1863, McConnell contacted Burgwyn, beginning a lengthy,

MARY BURGWYN NEWSOMEHERE

PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE MARY BURGW YN NEWSOME

John Lane (left), William Burgwyn, and Charles McConnell gather at the Gettysburg battlefield in 1903.

the epitome of reconciliation. It would be the perfect story to conclude this essay— except that it is not true. McConnell may have shot some poor color bearer, but it was not Lane.33 More than 150 years later we are still detangling the web of myths that have spun themselves into the history of the Battle of Gettysburg. In this particular case, it was an unintentional falsehood. Lane had been shot at the edge of McPherson’s Woods, while McConnell fired his last shot at the barricade near the Lutheran Theological Seminary some 400 yards away. William Burgwyn had never been to Gettysburg and did not understand that there was a quarter-mile gap between McPherson’s Ridge, where Lane fell, and Seminary Ridge, where McConnell fired his last shot. And Lane had no idea who shot him; he simply believed what Burgwyn told him. All three men wanted the story to be true, as it not only imbued the battle and their connections to it with a deeper significance, but also offered a sense of closure. Thus a mythic moment made its way into histories of the encounter.

Any battle—but especially one as celebrated as Gettysburg—leaves personal legacies that are just as powerful as the military outcomes, with the effects resonating through families and communities for decades. The stories of the crippled but resilient Peter Bird and Dan Courtney and the depressed, suicidal Lafayette Veo are perfectly relevant today. The battle altered the lives of the families of Harry Burgwyn and Eli and Joseph Setser, who were all buried on the field. The desire to remember, understand, and glorify the fight dominated the lives of Charles McConnell and William Burgwyn—and influenced thousands of others who read their works. The physical, psychological, economic, and emotional effects of a conflict (and how we remember that conflict) are experiences with which people in the 21st century can identify. By studying these reverberations of battle, we can understand more fully and intimately the costs, sacrifices, and legacies of the Civil War. JUDKIN BROWNING IS PROFESSOR OF MILITARY HISTORY AT APPALACHIAN STATE UNIVERSITY IN BOONE, NORTH CAROLINA. HE IS THE AUTHOR OF SHIFTING LOYALTIES: THE UNION OCCUPATION OF EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA (UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS, 2011) AND IS WORKING ON A BROADER STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG ON THE MEN OF THE 24TH MICHIGAN AND 26TH NORTH CAROLINA AND THEIR FAMILIES AND COMMUNITIES.

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2 Dana to Grant, December 21, 1863, Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, ed. John Y. Simon (Carbondale, 1982), 9:502; March 10, 1864, Comstock, The Diary of Cyrus B. Comstock, ed. Merlin E. Sumner (Dayton, 1987), 260; Meade to wife, March 9, 1864, Meade Papers, HSP.

Notes SOURCES & CITATIONS FROM THIS ISSUE’S ARTICLES

3 Meade to wife, December 20, 1863, Meade Papers, HSP; Smith to William B. Franklin, April 28, 1864, Franklin Papers, Library of Congress; Theodore Lyman to wife, April 5, 1864, Lyman Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society (hereafter MHS).

4 Meade to wife, March 10, 14, 16, 1864, Meade Papers, HSP; Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant (1885–86; reprint, New York, 1990), 470; March 10, 1864, Comstock, Diary, 260.

5 Meade to wife, April 13, 1864, Meade Papers, HSP; Lyman to wife, April 24, 1864, Lyman Papers, MHS.

Papers, MHS; Burnside to Meade, July 30, 1864, OR, 40:1, 143; Meade to wife, July 31, 1864, Meade Papers, HSP. 19 Meade to wife, July 12, 29, 1864, February 2, 1865, Meade Papers, HSP; Biddle to wife, July 18, 1864, Biddle Papers, HSP; F.P. Blair in National Intelligencer, October 8, 1864; Grant to Halleck, August 1, 1864, OR, 37:2, 558.

20 April 2, 9, 1865, Lyman, Meade’s Army, 358, 369; William Marvel, A Place Called Appomattox (Chapel Hill, 2000), 242; Meade to wife, April 13, 1864, Meade Papers, HSP.

Reverberations of Battle (Pages 54–63, 76–77)

6 Meade to Grant, Grant to Meade, May 5, 1864, U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records, 129 vols.

(Washington, 1880–1901), 36:2, 403 (hereafter OR).

American Iliad (Pages 26–27, 72–73)

1 War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, 1880-1901), Series I, vol. 15, 426.

2 Quoted in Hans Louis Trefousse, Ben Butler: The South Called Him BEAST! (New York, 1957), 112.

3 Bruce Catton, A Stillness at Appomattox (Garden City, NY, 1953), 207.

4 Bruce Catton, This Hallowed Ground: The Story of the Union Side of the Civil War (Garden City, NY, 1956), 10–11.

5 Bruce Catton, The Coming Fury (Garden City, NY, 1961), 355.

6 Bruce Catton, Terrible Swift Sword (Garden City, NY, 1963), 358; Bruce Catton, Never Call Retreat (Garden City, NY, 1965), 70, 71–72. Catton’s numerous anti-Butler quotations are conveniently gathered in Paul C. Palmer and Nancy Carol Carter, “Bruce Catton’s Uncivil War on Benjamin Butler,” Louisiana History 36:3 (Summer 1995): 261–275.

7 Terry L. Jones, “The Beast in the Big Easy,” The New York Times, May 18, 2012: opinionator.blogs. nytimes.com/2012/05/18/the-beast-in-the-bigeasy/?_r=0 (retrieved April 10, 2017).

8 E.A. Pollard, The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates (New York, 1866), 260.

Meade–Grant

(Pages 30–41, 74–75)

7 Gibbon to wife, May 7, 1864, Gibbon Papers, Maryland Historical Society; May 5, 1864, Theodore Lyman, Meade’s Army: The Private Notebooks of Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman, ed. David W. Lowe (Kent, OH, 2007), 134.

8 W.R. Rowley to Meade, May 5, Hancock to Meade, May 6, A.A. Humphreys to Hancock, May 6, J.A. Rawlins to Burnside, May 6, 1864, OR, 36:2, 405, 446, 447, 461; Horace Porter, Campaigning With Grant (New York, 1897), 70.

9 May 6, 1864, Lyman, Meade’s Army, 141; Grant to Meade, May 7, 1864, OR, 36:2, 481; Abner R. Small, The Road to Richmond: The Civil War Memoirs of Major Abner R. Small of the Sixteenth Maine Volunteers (Berkeley, 1939), 134.

10 Lyman to wife, May 18, 1864, Lyman Papers, MHS; Upton report, OR, 36:1, 667-668; Gordon C. Rhea, The Battles for Spotsylvania Court House and the Road to Yellow Tavern (Baton Rouge, 1997), 165; Luman H. Tenney, War Diary of Luman Harris Tenney, 1861–1865 (Cleveland, 1915), 115.

11 Gibbon to wife, May 13, 14, 1864, Gibbon Papers, HSP; Meade to wife, May 19, 1864, Meade Papers, HSP. 12 Meade to wife, May 15, 19, June 5, 9, 1864, Meade Papers, HSP; Grant to Stanton, May 13, 1864, OR, 36:2, 695.

13 Philadelphia Inquirer, June 2, 1864; Meade to wife, June 9, 17, 1864, Meade Papers, HSP; June 8, 1864, Patrick, Inside Lincoln’s Army: The Diary of Marsena Rudolph Patrick, Provost Marshal General, Army of the Potomac, ed. David S. Sparks (New York, 1964), 381.

14 Porter, Campaigning With Grant, 114–115; Grant, Personal Memoirs, 770–771; Lyman to wife, May 27, June 5, 1864, Lyman Papers, MHS; Biddle to wife, June 4, 1864, HSP; May 24, 1864, Lyman, Meade’s Army, 172–173.

15 Gibbon to wife, May 31, 1864, Gibbon Papers, HSP; Meade to Grant, June 3, 1864, OR, 36:3, 525; Meade to wife, June 5, 1864, Meade Papers, HSP. 16 Meade to wife, June 5, 12, 1864, November 22, 1862, Meade Papers, HSP; Grant to Halleck, June 5, 1864, OR, 36:2, 598.

1 Meade to wife, February 29, March 8, 1864, December 7, 1863, Meade Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania (hereafter HSP).

17 Frank Wilkeson, Recollections of a Private Soldier in the Army of the Potomac (New York, 1887), 162; Meade to wife, June 17, 1864, Meade Papers, HSP; Grant to Meade, June 18, 1864, OR, 40:2, 156–57.

18 Lyman to wife, August 3, 1864, Lyman

1 George Turner, comp., Record of Service of Michigan Volunteers in the Civil War, 1861-1865 (Kalamazoo, MI, 1865) 24: 14; Entry for July 1, 1863, Peter C. Bird Diary, Wayne Historical Museum, Wayne, Michigan, found at oocities. org/24th_michigan/pbirddiary.html, accessed April 3, 2013.

2 Peter C. Bird pension file, Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs, 1773-2001, Record Group 15 (hereafter RG 15), National Archives (hereafter Peter C. Bird pension file).

3 O.B. Curtis, History of the Twenty-fourth Michigan of the Iron Brigade (O.B. Curtis, 1891; reprint, Gaithersburg, MD, 1988), 159–163; Donald L. Smith, The Twenty-fourth Michigan of the Iron Brigade (Harrisburg, 1962), 130–139; Judkin Browning, “Deconstructing the History of the Battle of McPherson’s Ridge: Myths and Legends of the Twenty-Sixth North Carolina on the First Day’s Fight at Gettysburg,” Gettysburg Magazine 53 (July 2015): 14–30.

4 Curtis, History of the 24th Michigan, 186; Deposition of Peter C. Bird, May 21, 1894, Peter C. Bird pension file.

5 Silas Farmer, History of Detroit and Wayne County and Early Michigan: A Chronological Cyclopedia of the Past and Present (3rd ed.; Detroit, 1890), 1363; Travis W. Busey and John W. Busey, Union Casualties at Gettysburg: A Comprehensive Record (Jefferson, NC, 2011), 274; Ronald E. Bird to Robert E. Davidson, Acting Superintendent, [Dec. 17?] 1984, 24th Michigan File, Gettysburg National Military Park Library, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

6 Deposition of Peter C. Bird, June 25, 1904, Peter C. Bird pension file.

7 Turner, comp., Record of Service of Michigan Volunteers, 24: 13; Surgeon’s Examination for Increase in Pension, December 22, 1866, Solomon Benster pension file, RG 15, National Archives (hereafter Benster pension file).

8 Application for Invalid Pension, October 27, 1863, Deposition of Solomon Benster, March 17, 1894, Benster pension file; Curtis, History of the 24th Michigan, 416.

9 Alexander A. Plateris, 100 Years of Marriage and Divorce Statistics, United States, 1867-1967

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(Rockville, MD, 1974), 6–10; The average national divorce rate was 3% in 1867 and 5% in 1890. Of my sample of 118 Michigan soldiers, 13 divorced—an 11% rate.

10 Nellie Chope vs. Edward Chope, Bill for Separate Maintenance, Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, October 1900 term, Edward Chope pension file, RG 15, National Archives; Martha Warner vs. Jeston Warner, Circuit Court of Wayne County, Michigan, November 14, 1890, Jeston Warner pension file, RG 15, National Archives; Deposition of Charles Parkes, n.d., Deposition of Patrick Clarey, June 10, 1907, Patrick Clarey to Vespasian Warner, June 24, 1907, Patrick Clarey pension file, RG 15, National Archives.

11 Declaration for Original Invalid Pension, April 30, 1879; [illegible] to President William McKinley, January 16, 1901, Friedrich Koch pension file, RG 15, National Archives.

12 Lafayette Veo pension file, RG 15, National Archives (hereafter Veo pension file).

13 Deposition of J.W. Squire, M.D., May 12, 1891, Deposition of Peter Veo, December 7, 1893, Veo pension file. Elizabeth Veo (b. 1865) died in 1931, while Florence (b. 1868) lived until 1954. Genealogy found at Ancestry.com.

14 Smith, The Twenty-fourth Michigan, 145; Eli A. Blanchard to “Dear Parents,” July 5, 1863, in Katherine Ann Vallaire, ed., “Digitizing and Transcribing the Blanchard Brothers’ Civil War Letters,” (M.A. Thesis, California State University, Sacramento, Spring 2011), 109.

15 Detroit Advertiser and Tribune, July 8, 1863; “Fortieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg,” Raleigh News and Observer, July 6, 1903.

16 Charles McConnell to W.H.S. Burgwyn, March 18, 1897, W.H.S. Burgwyn Papers, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, NC (hereafter referred to as SANC); Charles H. McConnell, “First and Greatest Day’s Battle of Gettysburg,” Gettysburg National Military Park Library.

17 W.W. Edwards to Dear Sir [R.B. Paschal], July 24, 1863, M[errit] Rosson to R.B. Paschal, August 14, 1863, Civil War Collection, Box 91, Society for the Historical Preservation of the 26th North Carolina Regiment Collection, SANC. 18 Weymouth T. Jordan Jr., comp., North Carolina Troops: A Roster, Volume VII (3rd edition; Raleigh, 2004), 545; William A. Tuttle to W.A. Setser, July 18, 1863, and Thomas W. Setser to W.A. Setser, July 29, 1863, in Greg Mast, ed., “The Setser Letters,” Company Front (June/July 1989): 14–15.

19 Thomas W. Setser to W.A. Setser, July 29, 1863, in Mast, ed., “The Setser Letters,” 14–15.

20 William A. Tuttle to W.A. Setser, July 18, 1863, in ibid., 14.

21 Jordan, comp., North Carolina Troops, 7: 538; Polly to Andrew

Courtney, October 17, 1862, Andrew to Polly, March 1, 1863, Andrew to Polly, June 3, 1863, Andrew to Polly, June 24, 1863, courtesy of the Society for the Historical Preservation of the 26th Regiment N.C. Troops, copies in possession of the author.

22 Ruby Courtney, “The History of Courtney Chapel,” Littlejohn United Methodist Church webpage, found at: littlejohnumc.org/courtney_chapel.htm, accessed on April 10, 2013.

23 Rod Gragg, Covered With Glory: The 26th North Carolina Infantry at the Battle of Gettysburg (New York, 2000), 117–130.

24 Ibid., 130–131, 137–138.

25 T.J. Cureton to John R. Lane, June 15, 1890, John R. Lane Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (hereinafter SHC); George C. Underwood, History of the Twenty-sixth Regiment of the North Carolina Troops in the Great War 1861-’65 (Goldsboro, NC, 1901), 107.

26 Gragg, Covered with Glory, 130–136.

27 Ibid., 213–214, 242–245; Underwood, History of the Twenty-sixth, 106–109.

28 Entries for July 1, 7, 12, 14, and December 25, 1863, Captain W.H.S. Burgwyn & Henry Brantingham Diary, SANC. 29 Gragg, Covered with Glory, 238– 240; Archie K. Davis, Boy Colonel of the Confederacy: The Life and Times of Henry King Burgwyn, Jr. (Chapel Hill, 1985), 340–347.

30 Walter Clark, ed., Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina in the Great War (Goldsboro, NC, 1901), 2: 303–424.

31 “Rather a Romantic Scene: Col. Lane Sees Man Who Shot Him,” Charlotte Observer, May 24, 1903.

32 “At Gettysburg on Old Battleground,” Raleigh News and Observer, July 6, 1903; Gragg, Covered with Glory, 244; Lance Herdegen, Those Damned Black Hats! The Iron Brigade in the Gettysburg Campaign (El Dorado Hills, CA, 2008), 248–250.

33 Rod Gragg retold a version of the story from his book for a July 2, 2013, editorial on the Fox News website, and the University of North Carolina Library blog series, “North Carolina Miscellany,” also posted portion of a speech relating the story on its webpage on July 1, 2013. See Rod Gragg, “Gettysburg’s Most Important Lesson,” found at foxnews.com/opinion/2013/07/02/gettysburg-most-important-lesson/, accessed on August 27, 2013; John Blythe, “Greetings on the Gettysburg Battlefield in 1903,” found at blogs.lib.unc.edu/ncm/ index.php/2013/07/01/greetings-onthe-gettysburg-battlefield-in-1903/, accessed on August 27, 2013.

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PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

During his service in Charleston, South Carolina, during the secession crisis, Lieutenant Norman J. Hall of the 4th U.S. Artillery purchased a large gray horse he named Colonel. For the next few years, Colonel would carry Hall— who was promoted to command the 7th Michigan Infantry in July 1862—through some of the conflict’s bloodiest engagements, including the Seven Days Battles, Second Bull Run, Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg.

Colonel was wounded twice in battle, in the left shoulder and left hip, but survived all his assignments, a remarkable feat considering the estimated 1 million horses and mules killed during the conflict.

When Hall received a position that required him to part ways with the 7th Michigan shortly after Gettysburg, he left Colonel with W.W. Wade, the regiment’s quartermaster, who took the horse with him to Hillsdale County, Michigan, at war’s end. Hall died from illness before he could retrieve his trusted mount, which inspired a local veterans organization to care for him (and, as this 1880 image shows, celebrate him). Local legend has it that, upon his death, members of the group secretly buried Colonel in the military section of the local cemetery, which forbade the interment of animals.

LILJENQUIST FAMILY COLLECTION (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

A Fortunate Horse

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PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

LILJENQUIST FAMILY COLLECTION (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

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