Issue 22 by The Civil War Monitor

BEST BOOKS 2016

LINCOLN MEETS HIS GENERAL

P. 26

63 DAYS IN CHARLESTON

P. 42

VOL. 6, NO. 4

{ a n e w l o o k a t a m e r i c a’s g r e at e s t c o n f l i c t }

GEORGE McCLELLAN had a chance to end the war in 1862. Or did he? It depends on who’s telling the story.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF

THE LOST ORDER PLUS

THE MILLERS OF SHARPSBURG P. 24

WINTER 2016 H $5.99

CIVILWARMONITOR.COM

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2017 CIVIL WAR INSTITUTE

SUMMER CONFERENCE

Battle of Fredericksburg, Kurz & Allison, c. 1888. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress

or over 30 years, the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College has hosted an annual summer conference bringing leading historians and public audiences together for small group discussions, battlefield tours, panel debates, and lectures. In 2017, the conference will move away from its traditional thematic organization and reorient itself around exploring new developments and questions in the field. The 2017 conference program will bring the war to life and offer fresh perspectives on the Civil War. Sessions include in-depth conversations about William T. Sherman, Abraham Lincoln, and Braxton Bragg,

and talks that will explore soldiers’ dreams, Sherman’s “bummers” and Southern women, Nat Turner’s rebellion, and Union prisoners-of-war who escaped Andersonville. A broad-based lineup of battlefield programs will include tours of Gettysburg, Cedar Mountain, Mine Run, Antietam, Mosby country, as well as a Chancellorsville staff ride. A faculty of scholars, public historians, and battlefield guides include experts like Peter Carmichael, Lorien Foote, Earl Hess, Harold Holzer, John Marszalek, Kenneth Noe, Carol Reardon, Brooks Simpson, and TJ Stiles. Registration now open.

civilwar@gettysburg.edu • www.gettysburg.edu/cwi/conference • 717-337-6590 facebook.com/CivilWarInstitute

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twitter.com/CWI_GC

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CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: JIMELL GREENE; ISTOCK, COLORIZED BY MADS MADSEN OF COLORIZED HISTORY; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

JUNE 9–14, 2017

com

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VOLUME 6, NUMBER 4 / WINTER 2016

DEPARTMENTS

FEATURES

Salvo

{Facts, Figures & Items of Interest}

CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: JIMELL GREENE; ISTOCK, COLORIZED BY MADS MADSEN OF COLORIZED HISTORY; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

gress

Contents

TRAVELS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 A Visit to Alexandria VOICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Curses FACES OF WAR. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 “Not while I have my sword arm left” PRESERVATION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Hallowed Ground: Black troops in the American Civil War FIGURES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Horse soldiers COST OF WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 A Bartholomae patent filter canteen IN FOCUS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 The Millers of Sharpsburg

Columns AMERICAN ILIAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Lincoln Meets His General

The Curious Case of the Lost Order 30 George McClellan had a chance to end the war in 1862. Or did he? It depends on who’s telling the story. By Stephen W. Sears

63 Days in Charleston 42

The Unfortunate Colonel 54

STEREOSCOPE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Historian on the Set

Books & Authors THE BEST CIVIL WAR BOOKS OF 2016. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 with A. Wilson Greene, Andrew Wagenhoffer, Kevin M. Levin, Joan Waugh, & Gerald J. Prokopowicz

In Every Issue EDITORIAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Little Mac and the Lost Order PARTING SHOT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 A Hirsute Token ON THE COVER: General George McClellan. Image courtesy of the National Archives. Colorized by Mads Madsen of Colorized History.

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Excerpts from the journal of Lieutenant William Gordon McCabe

The trial of Seraphim Meyer, the 107th Ohio Infantry commander court-martialed for conduct during the Battle of Gettysburg, still raises questions about the nature of cowardice and courage.

By Richard W. Hatcher III

By Brian Matthew Jordan

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editorial VOLUME 6, NUMBER 4 / WINTER 2016

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

Little Mac and the Lost Order in 1879, toward the end of an epic two-year world tour, former gen-

eral Ulysses S. Grant chatted with New York Herald reporter John Russell Young, who had accompanied Grant and his family during their travels. Young asked Grant about George B. McClellan, the general whose star had shone brightly during the Civil War’s early phase—only to be diminished with his removal from army command in 1862 and extinguished with his defeat in the 1864 presidential election against Abraham Lincoln. “McClellan is to me one of the mysteries of the war,” Grant responded. “He had the way of inspiring you with the idea of immense capacity, if he would only have a chance.” To many—then and now—who have studied the Civil War, McClellan’s biggest “chance” to prove himself a great commander was during Robert E. Lee’s 1862 invasion of Maryland, which culminated in the bloodiest single day of combat in American history, the Battle of Antietam. When a copy of Lee’s plans for the Confederate campaign, orders known as S.O. 191, accidentally fell into Union hands, the usually cautious McClellan brimmed with confidence, hopeful that he could crush the divided Rebel army and bring the war to a close. Less than two months later, however, Lee and his men were back safely in Virginia, having lived to fight for many days to come, and McClellan’s army career was over by order of President Lincoln. In this issue’s cover story, “The Curious Case of the Lost Order” (page 30), Stephen W. Sears tells the story of how, when, and why S.O. 191 was lost and found—as well as the many ways in which the tale has been debated, disputed, and even manipulated over the years. Want to share your thoughts about McClellan and the Lost Order? Send your emails to letters@civilwarmonitor.com.

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

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

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Brian Matthew Jordan BOOK REVIEW EDITOR BRIAN@CIVILWARMONITOR.COM

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Every Sat. 8 am â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Mon. 8 am ET Watch American History TV every weekend for 48 hours of people and events that help document the American story.

Weekly Programming on the Civil War & Reconstruction Saturdays at 6 pm Debates and interviews about the events and people who shaped the Civil War and Reconstruction eras.

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d i s pat c h e s

a panel of historians to assess the legacy of Confederate general Thomas J. Jackson. It is difficult to imagine a more distinguished group of Civil War scholars could have been gathered for such a task. My own interest in the subject began in 1992 when I picked up Stonewall: A Biography of General Thomas J. Jackson by Byron Farwell. My library grew from that one volume to nearly 3,000 books on the war, but Farwell’s volume on Stonewall Jackson held a kind of special place for me. However, I came to notice that it was rarely noted in any discussion about the general, including your article and especially the panel’s selection of their favorite book about Jackson. I cannot help wonder why Farwell’s biography gets so little attention. I have enjoyed reading every issue of the Monitor. It is by far the most interesting and informative publication dealing with our nation’s greatest conflict.

Faces of the Navy

I just finished reading Ronald S. Coddington’s article about Civil War sailors in the fall issue of the Monitor [“Faces of the Navy,” Vol. 6, No. 3] and found it very interesting. I do have one question, however: Why did you refer to Nathan Hopkins as “Sailor Nathan Hopkins” [on page 36] and George Clark as “Seaman George Clark” [on page 44]? If you look at the sleeves of their uniforms, both are wearing petty officer “crows.” Wouldn’t it have been more appropriate to refer to Hopkins and Clark as petty officers, or by their rating? Dan Sullivan Sr. PETTY OFFICER 1ST CLASS, USN (RET.) AURORA, INDIANA

ed. Thanks for your letter, Dan,

which we forwarded to Ron Coddington for comment. He responds: “Mr. Sullivan is correct that both Hopkins and Clark wear the insignia of petty officer, which suggests that they attained this rank during their enlistments. However, in searching Hopkins’ and Clark’s surviving records at the National Archives, as well as a collection of Hopkins’ papers and a copy of Clark’s 1867 memoir, Seven Years of a Sailor’s Life, I found no evidence that either man ever served

as a petty officer. It is important to note that Civil War navy records are sparse and incomplete, especially for enlisted men, compared to their counterparts in the army. There are plenty of possible explanations. Hopkins might have posed for this image in a uniform given to him after his release from Andersonville prison. Clark may have adopted the rank to promote his book. Or both men may indeed have achieved the rank and the fact was not properly recorded.” About Stonewall

I am writing about the article in your fall 2016 issue [“Dossier: Thomas J. ‘Stonewall’ Jackson,” Vol. 6, No. 3] in which you asked

Clewell W. Smith SPRING HILL, FLORIDA

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

The Civil War in Color

I wanted to write to tell you how much I enjoyed your recent special issue, The Civil War in Color. It’s another example of your creativity and inventiveness.

Roger Kolb

SOMERVILLE, MASSACHUSETTS

ed. Thanks, Roger. Folks who

don’t yet have a copy can order one online: https://sfsdata.com/CivilWarMonitor/CWMStore.html

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Civil War Tours 2017 NOW IN OUR 16TH YEAR!

April 19-23, The Battle of Gettysburg.

Follow historians Ed Bearss & Jeff Wert for 4 days as we examine the Battle of Gettysburg. We will walk the ground where troops clashed on July 1, 2, & 3, including the action at East Cavalry Field. We will visit sites pertaining to Lincoln’s visit to Gettysburg in 1863 for the dedication of the National Cemetery. One evening, we will make special arrangements for a private, behind-the-scenes tour of the Cyclorama. $695

April 27-30, The Maryland Campaign: South Mountain &Antietam.

Spend 3 days with historians Ed Bearss & Tom Clemens as we cover the events that led to America’s bloodiest day in history. We will tour Harpers Ferry, the gaps of South Mountain, and the key sites of Antietam Battlefield including the North Woods, West Woods, Bloody Lane, and Burnside’s Bridge. $550

May 18-21, Chickamauga & Chattanooga.

Join expert historians Ed Bearss & Jim Ogden as we devote 3 full days to the Battles of Chickamauga & Chattanooga. This in-depth tour will include stops at Reed’s Bridge, Snodgrass Hill, Orchard Knob, Lookout Mountain, Missionary Ridge, and the National Cemetery. $550

Autumn 2017, The Atlanta Campaign.

The capture of Chattanooga in November 1863 opened “The Gateway of the South.” Following that victory, General U.S. Grant assigned General William T. Sherman the mission of capturing Atlanta. Following 4 months of maneuvering, sieges, and battles, Atlanta fell, setting the stage for “Sherman’s March to the Sea.” Battlefield historians Ed Bearss & Jim Ogden will lead us on an in-depth, 3-day tour that traces the armies’ movements from Ringgold to Resaca; Kennesaw Mountain; and into Atlanta. $550

Check our website for our complete 2017 tour schedule and detailed itineraries! www.civilwartours.org ALL OF OUR 2016 TOURS SOLD OUT SO DON’T DELAY *Our tours include evening lectures, lunches, tactical maps & the finest battlefield guides!

Civil War Tours - P.O. Box 416, Keedysville, MD 21756 email: info@civilwartours.org

Be sure to check out our sister company:

Tel: (301) 676-4642

South Mountain Expeditions

2017 History Tours include: The First World War, The Chesapeake, & New York State email: tours@smountainexpeditions.com website: www.smountainexpeditions.com

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RIVERS BRIDGE STATE HISTORIC SITE

ag e n da

EHRHARDT, SOUTH CAROLINA

Your Winter 2016–17 Guide to Civil War Events

Join a ranger at Rivers Bridge State Historic Site—where General William T. Sherman engaged Confederate forces during his northward advance through South Carolina in February 1865—and walk in the footsteps of Civil War soldiers. Take an easy 2-mile hike from the memorial grounds to the battlefield, see the natural beauty of the Salkehatchie Swamp, and hear how the soldiers endured bad weather during battle. The event will happen rain or shine. FREE; FOR MORE INFORMATION: SOUTHCAROLINA PARKS.COM/RIVERSBRIDGE/ or 803-267-3675. SHOW

Civil War Christmas in Camp at Fort Ward

The 2017 Low Country Civil War Show & Sale SATURDAY, JANUARY 7 – SUNDAY, JANUARY 8 OMAR SHRINE TEMPLE MOUNT PLEASANT, SOUTH CAROLINA

Come see history as you’ve never seen it before at this two-day show sponsored by American Digger Magazine. Over 200 sales and display tables will feature relics and artifacts of America’s past, including muskets and swords, old coins and currency, historic art and prints, old newspapers, and antique jewelry. $10 ADULTS; CHILDREN UNDER 12 ARE FREE; FOR MORE INFORMATION: AMERICANDIGGEREVENTS. COM or 770-362-8671. TELEVISION

13th Annual Memorial Luminary Driving Tour SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 4:30 – 9:30 P.M. WILSON’S CREEK NATIONAL BATTLEFIELD REPUBLIC, MISSOURI

Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield presents the 13th annual Memorial Illumination Ceremony, featuring over 2,539 luminaries representing those killed, wounded, or missing at the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, August 10, 1861. Living-history volunteers, carolers, and reenactors at the Ray House will bring the past to life. Music, refreshments, and information will be provided at the visitors center. Vehicles will use parking lights only for the five-mile driving tour through the national battlefield, with stops at the visitors center and the Ray House. Note: There are no restrooms along the tour route. FREE; FOR MORE INFORMATION: NPS.GOV/WICR or 417-732-2662 EXT. 224.

Civil War Christmas in Camp SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 12 – 4 P.M. FORT WARD MUSEUM & HISTORIC SITE ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA

Visit the Fort Ward Museum & Historic Site for a holiday event that interprets how Christmas was observed during the Civil War. The program features a patriotic Union Santa Claus, soldiers in winter camp settings, an officers hut decorated for the season, and fort tours. Kids can make an ornament or holiday card. SUGGESTED DONATION: $2/PERSON, $5/FAMILIES; FOR MORE INFORMATION: FORTWARD.ORG or 703746-4848.

A scene from Mercy Street

Mercy Street, Season Two SUNDAY, JANUARY 22, 8 P.M. PBS

JANUARY 2017 EXCURSION

First Day Hike SUNDAY, JANUARY 1, 10 A.M.

(CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS)

Mercy Street, the much-acclaimed Civil War drama set in the occupied city of Alexandria, Virginia, returns to PBS stations for a second season. The series follows the doctors, nurses, and soldiers, as well as free, enslaved, and contraband African Americans and other residents

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FORT ZACHARY TAYLOR HISTORIC STATE PARK; ANDREA THOMAS

TOUR

CELEBRATION COURTESY OF FORT WARD MUSEUM, CITY OF ALEXANDRIA, VA.; COURTESY OF PBS/ERIK HEINILA

DECEMBER 2016

of the war-torn city as they navigate the new world emerging from the most cataclysmic event in our country’s history. This season, allegiances blur, loyalties shift, and the drama intensifies as the scope of the war pushes beyond Mansion House, the former hotel commandeered by northern troops to serve as a Union hospital. FOR MORE INFORMATION: PBS.ORG/ MERCY-STREET LINCOLN SYMPOSIUM

Reconstruction and the Civil War SUNDAY, JANUARY 22, 2 – 4 P.M.

townspeople, craftspeople, performers, and sutlers participate in a three-day event that focuses on the history of Fort Taylor, which was occupied by Union forces during the Civil War, as well as life during the conflict. Highlights include daily weapons demonstrations and re-creations of camp life, as well as a sea battle (weather permitting), a blockade runner’s trial, and a lecture series.

Grand Army Men

FREE WITH PARK ADMISSION; FOR MORE INFORMATION: FLORIDASTATEPARKS.ORG/PARK/FORT-TAYLOR or 305-292-6850. COMMEMORATION

HISTORYMIAMI MUSEUM MIAMI, FLORIDA

Reconstruction—“America’s Unfinished Revolution”—began 150 years ago, and remains one of the most controversial and passionately debated periods in our history. We know who won the Civil War, but who won Reconstruction? What precisely did Reconstruction aim to achieve? Where did it succeed—or fail? Why does the memory of Reconstruction continue to engage—and divide— Americans? And what lessons can America’s Reconstruction experiment still teach us? These and other hotly contested issues will be explored and debated by a panel of historians. Participants include Dr. Alexandria Cornelius, Hon. Frank J. Williams, Eric Foner, and Harold Holzer. FREE FOR MUSEUM MEMBERS; $10 NON-MEMBERS; FOR MORE INFORMATION: HISTORYMIAMI.ORG or 305375-1492.

LIVING HISTORY

Civil War Heritage Days at Fort Zachary Taylor FORT ZACHARY TAYLOR HISTORIC STATE PARK; ANDREA THOMAS

Battle of Olustee Reenactment FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17 – SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 19 OLUSTEE BATTLEFIELD HISTORIC STATE PARK SANDERSON, FLORIDA

FEBRUARY 2017 COURTESY OF FORT WARD MUSEUM, CITY OF ALEXANDRIA, VA.; COURTESY OF PBS/ERIK HEINILA

Battle of Olustee Reenactment

Commemorate the 153rd anniversary of the largest battle fought in Florida during the Civil War at the 41st annual reenactment of the Battle of Olustee. Throughout the weekend, more than 2,000 demonstrators will present living-history impressions of military and civilian life at the time of the engagement. Battle reenactments occur on Saturday and Sunday. $10 ADULTS; $5 CHILDREN; FOR MORE INFORMATION: BATTLEOFOLUSTEE. ORG or 386-397-7009.

Civil War Heritage Days FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3 – SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 5 FORT ZACHARY TAYLOR HISTORIC STATE PARK KEY WEST, FLORIDA

Share Your Event Have an upcoming event you’d like featured in this space? Let us know: events@ civilwarmonitor.com

Union and Confederate soldiers,

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s a lv o s a lv o

{ FAC T S, F I G U R E S & I T E M S O F I N T E R E S T }

In this 1863 print by Charles Magnus, the city of Alexandria, Virginia—which had been occupied by Union forces shortly after the outbreak of hostilities—bustles with wartime activity. For more on Alexandria, turn the page. ☛

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IN THIS SECTION TRAVELS 10

A visit to Alexandria VOICES 14

Curses FACES OF WAR 16

“Not while I have my sword arm left” PRESERVATION 18

Hallowed ground: Black troops in the American Civil War FIGURES 20

Horse soldiers COST OF WAR 22

A Bartholomae patent filter canteen IN FOCUS 24

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The Millers of Sharpsburg

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s a lv o

t r av e l s

Alexandria VIRGINIA

a little over a month after the siege

and bombardment of Fort Sumter, South Carolina, sparked the outbreak of the Civil War, the city of Alexandria, Virginia, became the conflict’s temporary focal point. On May 24, 1861, the day after Virginia voted to secede, Union forces occupied Alexandria, which was separated from Washington, D.C., by only a few miles and the Potomac River. One of the soldiers who entered the city, Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, spotted a Confederate flag flying atop a hotel called the Marshall House, and went with a few of his men to cut it down. After doing so, the group was confronted by the hotel’s proprietor and ardent secessionist, James W. Jackson, who shot and killed Ellsworth—nationally known for his Zouave militia drill team— before himself being cut down by one of Ellsworth’s men. The incident sent shockwaves through the country, especially in the North, where “Remember Ellsworth” became a rallying cry. Alexandria would remain under occupation until the end of hostilities, its population transformed by an influx of military personnel and escaped slaves and its landscape altered by new hospitals and supply depots. Interested in visiting Alexandria? To help make the most of your trip, we’ve enlisted two experts on the area—Ron Baumgarten and Thomas Schultz—to offer suggestions for what to see and do in and around the historic city.

“Appomattox “ statue

1 CAN’T MISS

Visitors to Old Town Alexandria should take time to walk through the Wilkes Street Tunnel (corner of Wilkes and S. Royal streets), which combines two of my favorites—the Civil War and railroad history. Built in the 1850s, the tunnel connected the Orange and Alexandria Railroad with the busy port’s wharves and warehouses and saw a steady flow of U.S. Military Railroad trains pass through during the conflict. The tunnel now plays host to joggers and cyclists. rb The bronze statue of a lone, unarmed Confederate soldier (corner of S. Washington and Prince streets) is worth a visit. Known as “Appomattox,” it was placed there by local Confederate veterans in 1889 at the spot where they mustered into service before heading off to war. It’s thought to be the only martial statue in the world where the protagonist is not carrying any weapon. The names of 99 Alexandrians who died while serving in the Confederate army are inscribed on its base. ts

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Gravelly Point

3 BEST FAMILY ACTIVITY

Torpedo Factory Art Center

Pops Old Fashioned Ice Cream

2 BEST KEPT SECRET

The Old Town historic district will transport you back in time. The remarkable architecture, fine restaurants, cozy pubs, and unique shops create an atmosphere that is perfect for strolling and exploring. Wander off King Street to check out the numerous 18th- and 19thcentury homes, churches, and commercial buildings that populate the neighborhood. rb Located in an old munitions plant where Alexandrians built torpedoes during World War II, the Torpedo Factory Art Center (105 N. Union St.; 703-838-4565) is home to scores of artists’ open studios. You can view a variety of art galleries as well as a very nice display about life at the factory during the war. ts

Alexandria Archaeology Museum

Start with ice cream at Pops Old Fashioned Ice Cream (109 King St.; 703-518-5374) in Old Town, and follow it with a short walk down King Street to the Potomac River. Large yachts docked at the waterfront are always a draw for the children, and street performers such as balloon artists and musicians provide family-friendly entertainment. You can also take a river cruise or stroll through the waterfront parks. Another option is Gravelly Point, located along the National Park Service-maintained George Washington Memorial Parkway just outside of Old Town (note that access is available on the northbound side of the parkway only). The park offers stunning views across the Potomac River of the Washington skyline and planes leaving and approaching Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. They fly so low over the park that your children will think they can reach up and touch them! rb The Alexandria Archeology Museum, located in the Torpedo Factory Art Center, is an excellent venue for small children, and one that encourages kids to touch the artifacts. It also has a near mintcondition copy of the May 26, 1861, edition of the New York Herald that announced the Civil War’s first casualty with the headline “Assassination of Major Ellsworth in Alexandria.” Admission is free. ts

11 PHOTOGRAPHS BY JIMELL GREENE

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Chart House

4 BEST EATS

Alexandria has an impressive dining scene—eating is one of the best parts of visiting Old Town. When I think of Alexandria for breakfast, Jackson 20 (480 King St.; 703-842-2790) comes immediately to mind. Located in Hotel Monaco, it offers classic southern dishes such as cheddar grits and biscuits and gravy. Brunch is available on the weekends. Speaking of brunch, if you are in Old Town on a Sunday, nothing beats brunch at the Chart House (1 Cameron St.; 703-684-5080). Get a table looking out over the Potomac and enjoy the view along with seafood dishes like crab cake Benedict. Eamonn’s A Dublin Chipper (728 King St.; 703-299-8384), a small space dedicated to the authentic art of fish and chips, is the perfect place to grab a quick lunch and a pint of Guinness. My wife and I discovered Vermilion (1120 King St.; 703-6849669) several years ago and have spent many an evening there. This fine dining establishment is consistently ranked among the best in the D.C. area. Reserve a table and soak up the elegant, warm atmosphere. The chef, a believer in farm-to-fork cuisine, sources his ingredients locally. You can’t go wrong with any dish on the menu. rb Gadsby’s Tavern (134 N. Royal St.; 703-746-4242) is located in an historic colonial tavern—each of the first six U.S. presidents dined there—and offers affordable contemporary and period dishes for lunch, dinner, and Sunday brunch. After your meal, visit the restaurant’s museum and discover how taverns operated as community centers in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Sonoma Cellar (207 King St.; 703566-9867), a wine tasting room and bistro, offers delicious and affordable lunches and dinners in the heart of Old Town. ts

Fort Ward Museum & Historic Site

Historic Christ Church

5 BEST CIVIL WAR SPOT

Fort Ward Museum & Historic Site (4301 W. Braddock Rd.; 703746-4848) is the premier place for exploring the Civil War defenses of Washington. The reconstructed northwest bastion is an impressive example of what the forts looked like at the time. The small museum has some significant holdings, particularly those related to Ellsworth’s death. Another spot worth visiting is The Lyceum: Alexandria’s History Museum (201 S. Washington St.; 703-838-4994). Housed in an antebellum building that served as a Union hospital, the museum features a permanent exhibit on the fascinating history of occupied Alexandria. rb Historic Christ Church (118 N. Washington St.; 703-549-1450)— which dates to the 1770s and where you can still sit in George Washington’s pew—was taken over as a Union army chapel during the Civil War. Docents provide a very nice account of the church under occupation. It’s one of only three churches in Alexandria that were not employed as general hospitals during the conflict, and for that reason it retains its 18th-century woodwork and charm. ts

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“Outstanding ... Thoroughly researched and beautifully written …

We can now add their names to the human toll of America’s greatest conﬂict.”

—James M. McPherson author, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

Kimpton Hotel Monaco

6 BEST SLEEP

The Hilton Alexandria Old Town (1767 King St.; 703-837-0440) scores points for reliable service and a location convenient for strolling down scenic King Street into the heart of charming and historic Old Town. The Metro station across the street allows for easy access to other locations in Virginia and Washington. For a more historic and centrally located venue, visitors may want to try the Kimpton Hotel Monaco (480 King St.; 703-549-6080). This boutique hotel sits on the site of the Marshall House, where proprietor James Jackson shot Ellsworth for removing the Stars and Bars from his roof. A controversial historical marker on the hotel commemorates Jackson’s action in defending his property from the invading Union troops. The cushy guest rooms at Hotel Monaco are modern chic inspired by Alexandria’s Civil War past. rb The Holiday Inn (625 First St.; 703-548-6300) is affordable and contemporary. There are several restaurants within two or three blocks, and it’s an easy seven-block walk to the heart of Old Town on King Street. ts

James Barber’s Alexandria in the Civil War (1988) provides a detailed history of Alexandria from the secession crisis through the end of the Civil War. Visitors should also consider picking up a copy of Alexandria, 1861-1865 (2008) by Charles A. Mills and Andrew L. Mills. This photographic history takes readers through various aspects of Alexandria’s Civil War history, including Union occupation, railroads, the river, hospitals, prisons, and forts. The period photographs and prints bring Civil War Alexandria to life. rb

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JIMELL GREENE

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Arsenal workers were women and girls as young as 10. When disaster struck, they made the ultimate sacriice. “Social history at its nest” — Booklist $16.95 hardcover • Available in ebook and audio

Tillie Pierce

“Insightful perspective” – Kirkus Nonnction $14.95 gatefold softcover

Firebrand Fi Aaron Barnhart

Jewish freedom ghter August Bondi was best known for his role in John Brown’s army.

Jeremy J. Harvey’s Occupied City: Portrait of Civil War Alexandria, Virginia (2003) is an excellent, digestible book on all of the city’s Civil War sites of note. ts

ABOUT OUR EXPERTS

Tanya Anderson

Teen Eyewitness to the Battle of Gettysburg Tanya Anderson

7 BEST BOOK

Ron Baumgarten has explored Alexandria as both a visitor and resident, and writes about the town’s Civil War history on his blog, All Not So Quiet Along the Potomac.

Gunpowder Girls

Historical ction $14.95 hardcover

Thomas Schultz, a retired U.S. Navy officer and 14-year resident of Alexandria, is the proprietor of DC Military Tours (dcmilitarytour.com).

Clarina Nichols Frontier Crusader for Women’s Rights Diane Eickhoﬀ

“Clarina Nichols deserves to be placed next to Susan B. Anthony” — Booklist Women’s history $17.95 hardcover

Wherever distinctive books are sold Samples, audio, and e-books at QuindaroPress.com

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voices

Curses “ She could smoke a pipe, and swear like a veteran.” “[T]hose who brought war on our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.”

Colonel George H. Gordon, 2nd Massachusetts Infantry, on the “young woman of about eighteen” he encountered in September 1861 who had served as a soldier in the 48th Pennsylvania Infantry for about a month without any “suspicion of her sex,” in his memoirs

“A great crowd of men, without the restraints of society, and no influence from woman, become very vulgar in language, coarse in their jokes, impious, and almost blasphemous in their profanity… . It is dreadful and disgusting.”

“ If at any time you would like to swear, call your enemy a Dutch farmer—nothing can be worse, or, if he is a man of decency, make him feel more indignant.” Georgeanna Bacon (below), on a bit of wisdom she picked up while volunteering as a nurse in Gettysburg after the battle, in a letter to her husband, August 6, 1863

Dr. H.H. Penniman, 17th Illinois Infantry, in a letter to his wife, June 6, 1863

“I had to pay one dollar for swearing. You know there is a fine for swearing in the army. How soon one vice followed another! Last night I went to the Theatre, and to day I did swear. What will come next?” Chaplain Hallock Armstrong, 50th Pennsylvania Infantry, in a letter to his wife, August 1, 1865

“ Yes, you are right. I remember it perfectly. I did not swear. I noticed it myself, and, to tell you the truth, the reason was that I was too d—d scared to swear.” A Union officer known for his “variegated and iridescent vocabulary,” upon being asked by Captain Augustus Cleveland Brown (above), 4th New York Heavy Artillery, why he hadn’t cursed at his faltering men when imploring them to advance SOURCES: REPLY OF MAJ. GEN. SHERMAN TO THE MAYOR OF ATLANTA … (1864); SOLDIERS’ LETTERS, FROM CAMP, BATTLEFIELD AND PRISON (1865); LETTERS OF A FAMILY DURING THE WAR FOR THE UNION (1899); THE DIARY OF A LINE OFFICER (1906); BROOK FARM TO CEDAR MOUNTAIN (1885); LETTERS FROM A PENNSYLVANIA CHAPLAIN AT THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG, 1865 (1961).

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, COLORIZED BY MADS MADSEN OF COLORIZED HISTORY (SHERMAN); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; UNITED STATES ARMY HERITAGE AND EDUCATION CENTER, CARLISLE , PA (BACON); THE DIARY OF A LINE OFFICER (BROWN).

General William Tecumseh Sherman (above), in a letter to the mayor and councilmen of Atlanta, September 12, 1864

THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR WINTER 2016

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11/1/16 2:30 PM

GET MONITOR BACK ISSUES

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fac e s o f wa r

by r o n a l d s . c o d d i n g to n p u b l i s h e r , m i l i ta r y i m ag e s

“Not While I Have My Sword Arm Left” Cemetery Ridge during the Battle of Gettysburg’s second day took a terrible toll on the 59th New York Infantry. Afterward, only one of the regiment’s staff officers, First Lieutenant and Adjutant William Henry Pohlman, was left standing. A relative newcomer to the 59th, Pohlman had left Rutgers College and served stints in the 1st New Jersey Infantry and U.S. Signal Corps before joining the New Yorkers the previous December. His leadership abilities quickly gained him the respect of his peers and the trust of the enlisted men—and served him well at Gettysburg. According to one account, “Young Pohlman was everywhere cheering and inciting his men by his own example to deeds of noble daring.” On the battle’s third and final day, Pohlman and his surviving comrades joined other Union forces

in the defense against Pickett’s Charge. At some point during the assault, an artillery shell struck Pohlman and fractured his left shoulder. According to a newspaper report, his men “entreated him to withdraw to the camp, but he answered, ‘Not while I have my sword arm left.’” An hour later, Pohlman’s sword arm was disabled by a shot through the wrist, which severed one of the arteries. Faint and bleeding, “he was reluctantly compelled to retire from the field.” The following day, July 4, 1863, Pohlman mustered the strength to scrawl a note to his sister. “I bear honorable wounds in my country’s cause,” he wrote. “I shall soon write again concerning my whereabouts. Until then, farewell!” Pohlman’s wounds proved fatal, and he succumbed to his injuries on July 21. He was 21 years old.

COURTESY OF MILITARY IMAGES, A MAGAZINE DEDICATED TO SHOWCASING, INTERPRETING, AND PRESERVING PHOTOS OF CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS AND SAILORS. TO LEARN MORE, VISIT MILITARYIMAGESMAGAZINE.COM.

RICK CAR LILE COL

LECT ION

the fighting near

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MUST READ CIVIL WAR MASTERPIECES

The Virginia Memorial with General Robert E. Lee astride his horse, Traveller.

MY GRANDFATHER’S DOG WAS NAMED . MY DAD’S NAME IS . THEY CALL ME

Traveller

Robert Lee

There are 162,000 stories here. I found mine. Battlefield tours, museums, historic sites and more bring history to life at Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center.

Sailing with Farragut The Civil War Recollections of Bartholomew Diggins edited by GeorGe S. burkhardt

Cloth ISBN 978-1-62190-208-9 / $53.95

Ambrose Bierce and the Period of Honorable Strife The Civil War and the Emergence of an American Writer

Come experience the stories of Gettysburg and you might just find your own.

ChriStoPher k. CoLeMan

Cloth ISBN 978-1-62190-179-2 / $49.95

The Legacy of St. George Tucker College Professors in Virginia Confront Slavery and Rights of States, 1771-1897

To plan your next trip, call 877-874-2478 today!

Chad Vanderford

Cloth ISBN 978-1-62190-216-4 / $49.95

Service with the Signal Corps The Civil War Memoir of Captain Louis R. Fortescue edited by J. GreGory aCken

Cloth ISBN 978-1-62190-125-9 / $48.50

the uniVerSity of tenneSSee PreSS

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GettysburgFoundation.org

Order online at UTPRESS.ORG or call 800-621-2736.

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by o. james lighthizer p r e s i d e n t , c i v i l wa r t r u st

p r e s e r va t i o n

Hallowed Ground: Black Troops in the American Civil War frederick douglass, one of the most prominent abolitionists and intellectuals of the Civil War era, once said, “[He] who would be free must himself strike the blow.” The United States Colored Troops (usct) of the Union army embodied that philosophy, yet many Americans are unaware of their efforts and achievements. ¶ Although military service was opened to African Americans in 1862 (with the passing of the Second Confiscation Act and the Militia Act), wide-scale recruitment of black troops did not begin in earnest until President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863. The process of black enlistment was further streamlined by the creation of the Bureau of Colored Troops in May 1863, and by the end of the war, African Americans accounted Just 50 miles away, 84 acres have been saved at the site of the Battle of Honey Springs, the first largescale engagement involving African-American, Native-American, Hispanic, and white troops—a distinction that has led renowned historian Ed Bearss to dub these soldiers the “Rainbow Coalition.” In addition to these battle-

LOOK FOR REGULAR PRESERVATION NEWS AND UPDATES FROM THE CIVIL WAR TRUST IN FUTURE ISSUES. TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION AND HOW YOU CAN HELP, VISIT CIVILWAR.ORG

A USCT soldier stands guard at City Point, Virginia, in this image from 1865. In all, the Trust has preserved some 1,000 acres of ground at USCTrelated sites.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

for 10 percent of the Union army. While many white civilians and military men maintained that black troops would not be reliable in combat, usct regiments ultimately earned the respect of the northern public and their comrades in arms, as well as a reputation for courage under fire. They performed valiantly during the Battle of the Crater at Petersburg, penetrated the Confederate cliff fortress at Port Hudson, and charged Confederate positions at New Market Heights and Fort Wagner. In total, nearly 40,000 uscts gave their lives for the cause. Today, the Civil War Trust works to preserve the memory of the service and sacrifice of these American soldiers on battlefields from the plains of Oklahoma to the shores of South Carolina. Cabin Creek, in Mayes County, Oklahoma, was the site of two such battles, the first on July 1 and 2, 1863, and the second on September 19, 1864. In both encounters, African-American troops resisted Confederate raids and defended vital Union supplies as they moved from Fort Scott to Fort Gibson. Through the efforts of the Civil War Trust, 88 acres of this land have been preserved.

fields, the Trust has preserved numerous usct-related sites in Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Mississippi, amounting to more than 1,000 acres of hallowed ground now saved for future generations. The stories of courage and bravery surrounding the American Civil War are not limited by color or creed, and the Trust remains committed to preserving an array of sites that reflect the full diversity of this era. Through the Trust’s efforts, Civil War battlefields are protected from development, studied, and interpreted so that we may continue to understand and value the sacrifices made there. To learn how you can help, visit civilwar.org.

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Excerpt from Book III

The Battle of Gettysburg The Epilogue

Heated exchange! two fired-up Union Brigadiers Texan marksmen bewildered scarce believe ther ears Gen’ral Jud Kilpatrick spind’ly squirt called “Kill Cavalry” utter foolishness! insistin “rash action” synonymous with “bravery” Elon Farnsworth proven mettle made to the Generals’ mold ‘s common, Captains advancin replacements plent’ful ‘s bold ‘neath cover southern sharpshooters set ‘s if needin target practice West Virginians sent time and again! ‘bama brothers joinin barely distract us Insanity! send the Vermonters same regiment already tore ‘n shred anyway… what the hell ‘s a General care if a hunerd more fall dead! Young Farnsworth Experienced! Wiser! survivin at least forty battles Rebs incredulous equal delighted obligin ‘n steady a’emptyin saddles Orders is orders! Like Hood, Longstreet and Hill Elon, courageous! arguin “these men too good to kill!” †

†

Kilpatrick determined fer glory ‘an fame (‘sides, ‘ats how the game ‘s played) Lockin horns a moment Insubordinate! “I’ll go in Elon, if you’re so afraid!” Eyes flashin more bright than his long silver saber Standin tall in his stirrups… “them ‘s fightin words, neighbor!” His superior, shamed sincere offerin apology and encouragement and of course… full ‘sponsibility Alabamians ready all lev’lin ther gun Vermont boys pray!... a wishin … a flood of Plum Run! each man raises his sword draws a deep breath well aware of the mission a ride to the Death! dry shod ‘cross the creek stirrin dust up the bank Rush headlong at the rebels! a’firin point blank Farnsworth loses his horse… ‘nother mount serves as well “Forward… Charge! Damned Texans!” Saber flashin… Farewell!

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

After the needless loss of General Farnsworth and 65 men, Kilpatrick would say, “For… the glory of his corps, he gave his life… Good Soldier, faithful friend, great heart, hail and farewell!” The 26 year-old Captain had been promoted to Brigadier General that same week, in recognition of his bravery under fire.

©2004 Postlethwaite Publishing. RHawk61@gmail.com Illustration and design by DM Designs, LLC. Video Production by G.Muse Studios. “Red Hawk” The Battle of Gettysburg Narrative online at www.youtu.be/rOTiew8ziVA

Books & Illustration Note Cards at Turn The Page Bookstore Boonsboro, Md. www.RHJournal.com and www.TTPbooks.com CWM22-FOB-Preservation.indd 19

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figures

Horse Soldiers In his exhaustive study of the Union and Confederate armies, historian Bell Wiley observed the mixed feelings that those who served in the infantry held for their comrades in the cavalry. “Infantrymen commonly regarded the cavalry as playboys who roamed the country at will leaving to foot soldiers the mud, misery, and peril,” Wiley noted, “and they took out their spite on the boot-and-saddle fraternity by whatever means they could.” Yet the mounted troopers on both sides provided valuable service, from reconnaissance and screening missions to offensive actions and raids. The high expense to equip and maintain a regiment of cavalry, and the changing nature of warfare (the accuracy and range of the rifle musket made massive cavalry charges virtually obsolete), however, ensured that the size and role of each army’s mounted branch would be smaller than the infantry. Here we highlight a number of statistics about the men who fought the war on horseback.

25.8

Average age of Union cavalrymen at time of enlistment

Approximate cost to equip and mount a Union cavalry regiment in 1861 (roughly twice the cost of an infantry regiment)

KIR

Approximate percentage of Union soldiers who served in the cavalry

“ SC ta fle is tio

Approximate percentage of Confederate soldiers who served in the cavalry

272

“M ab ex m by so bl w ne to bu w le W su so in

Number of Union cavalry regiments formed during the Civil War

137

Number of Confederate cavalry regiments formed during the Civil War

0.21

Percentage of wounds caused by sabers during the Civil War (of these, 54% were scalp wounds)

“ .. k p w b S p

5 $110

$500,000–$600,000

“Th pa ra pa w ca pa kn bo le dr

Typical price of a Union cavalry horse during the war’s first year

Percentage of saber wounds that resulted in death

$102,864,915

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

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A W

Funds allocated by the U.S. Quartermaster’s Department for the purchase of horses during the Civil War SOURCES: BENJAMIN APTHORP GOULD, INVESTIGATIONS IN THE MILITARY AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL STATISTICS OF AMERICAN SOLDIERS (1869); JOSEPH K. BARNES, ET AL, THE MEDICAL AND SURGICAL HISTORY OF THE WAR OF THE REBELLION PART III, VOLUME II (1883); JAMES I. ROBERTSON JR., SOLDIERS BLUE AND GRAY (1988); UNITED STATES WAR DEPARTMENT, THE WAR OF THE REBELLION: A COMPILATION OF THE OFFICIAL RECORDS 129 VOLS. (WASHINGTON, 1880-1901), SERIES III, VOL. 5; FREDERICK PHISTERER, STATISTICAL RECORD OF THE ARMIES OF THE UNITED STATES (1886); STEPHEN Z. STARR, THE UNION CAVALRY IN THE CIVIL WAR: FROM FORT SUMTER TO GETTYSBURG, 1861–1863 (1979).

SU AU

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A GRIPPING NEW CIVIL WAR DRAMA “This lean Civil War sequel packs in more history and raw emotion than a 600page epic….Smith writes wonderfully and realistically, and one can hear the pacing and menace:… Smith knows the Civil War in his bones, and his novel will leave readers emotionally drained but grateful.” KIRKUS REVIEWS

“ SCARRED is an eloquent tale told through vividly fleshed-out characters…and is enjoyable historical fiction with a romantic twist.” FOREWORD CLARION REVIEWS

“ Michael Kenneth Smith’s absorbing historical novel explores the violence and moral dilemmas endured by civilians, prisoners, and soldiers alike during the bloody Civil War…. Meanwhile, Scarred’s pace is nearly cinematic…. Historical fiction and Civil War buffs will wish Scarred were closer to the epic length of Gone with the Wind, simply because the subject never grows tiresome….an engrossing, moving read.” BLUEINK REVIEW

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

“ ...a haunting love story... keeps the reader turning pages, rooting for this man who finds himself trapped between the North and South and only wanting peace.” SUSANNAH CARLSON, AUTHOR OF PICNIC POINT

H P aperback, Kindle and audio editions available at Amazon.com FROM THE AUTHOR OF HOME AGAIN

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H I SBN-13: 978-1530379743 Distribution through Amazon.com Pages: 192 Price: $13.99

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c o s t o f wa r

� 3,737.00 A RARE CANTEEN BRINGS A TIDY SUM

THE ARTIFACT

A Bartholomae Patent Filter Canteen CONDITION The canteen is in good condition. Its filter unit is missing, and only one of its caps remains. The original brown wool cover, while worn on the edges, is also in good condition. Most of the leather strap is missing, and what remains is brittle. DETAILS On July 9, 1861, nearly three months after the out-

break of the Civil War, and less than two weeks before the conflict’s first major land battle at Manassas, Virginia, New York City-based inventor Charles Bartholomae patented his design for “a new and Improved Canteen for Soldiers.” Unlike the style of tin canteen carried by the vast majority of Union troops—vessels shaped like a flattened sphere with a single spout for both filling and drinking—Bartholomae’s canteen, which, as the inventor described, “has vertical sides but is of curved form in its horizontal section,” contained two main openings: one, equipped with a funnel, for filling the vessel with water, and another, fitted with a mouth tube, for more convenient drinking. The key component of Bartholomae’s canteen, however, was its filter tube, which could be attached to the mouthpiece “whenever necessity requires” to remove “impure water … as it is drawn from the canteen.” It is unclear how widely Bartholomae’s

canteen was used by Union troops or how well its filtration system worked, though other filtration devices produced during the war were dismissed by the soldiers who tried them as impractical or ineffective. QUOTABLE As he noted in his patent application, Bartholomae thought his canteen offered benefits beyond its filtration capabilities: “There is another important feature attending the form of the canteen, and that is, its curved shape admits of its fitting snugly to the wearer, and the swinging of the canteen is avoided. The ordinary canteens which are in the form of an oblate spheroid are continually swinging on the backs of the soldiers, especially while going through quick evolutions, so much so as not only to be very conspicuous to lookers on, but also disagreeable and embarrassing to the soldiers.” VALUE $3,737 (price realized at James D. Julia Inc. in Fairfield, Maine, in 2007). “These canteens, mostly private purchase, saw actual use in the field, which accounts for their rarity today,” noted John Sexton, longtime consultant and cataloger for James D. Julia Inc., at the time of the sale. “A fine example of a very rare filter canteen.”

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAMES D. JULIA AUCTIONEERS, FAIRFIELD, MAINE, USA, WWW.JAMESDJULIA.COM. SOURCES: JAMES D. JULIA INC. PRESENTS OUTSTANDING FIREARMS AUCTION, MARCH 13, 2007 (2007); UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE , “SPECIFICATION OF LETTERS PATENT NO. 32,744, DATED JULY 9, 1861.”

Jame a yea Con

10-2

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Consignments Wanted

For Our Important Firearms Auction | March 2017 in Fairfield, Maine

James D. Julia is currently the leading antique auction house in the world for high end, rare and valuable guns. We do not sell the greatest number of guns in a year, however we do on average sell the greater number of high end, rare and valuable guns in a year. We are especially interested in quality Civil War and Confederate items and for high end, rare and valuable Civil War and Confederate items, we have been the leader in the world today.

Here is a sample of just a few of the successes we have generated for our past clients:

“Sisterdale Texas” Dragoon Army Revolver (Bryan Collection) (est. $150,000-250,000)

LeMat SN 8, General P.G.T. Beauregard’s Personal Revolver (Bryan Collection) (est: $200,000-$300,000)

Sold for $253,000

Sold for $224,250

Highest Price attained for Confederate firearms sold at auction

Krider LeMat Patent Revolver Serial Number 2, The Personal Revolver of Col. Alexander LeMat (est. $60,000-80,000)

Sold for $120,750

Extremely Rare Confederate New Orleans Made 12-Pound Bronze Napoleon on Carriage with Limber (est. $200,000-250,000)

Sold for $350,750

A New World Auction Record for Most Expensive Piece of American Artillery sold at auction and a New World Auction Record for the Most Expensive Confederate Arm of Any Variety Sold at Auction.

Rare and Ornate Solid Silver Tiffany Presentation Sword to Major Gen. Lewis Merrill (est: $85,000125,000)

Sold for $241,500

Rare Scagel Made VL&A Bowie Knife (Dr. Jim Lucie Coll.) (est: $18-$28,000)

Sold for $45,425

James D. Julia, Inc. Offers Trust, Expertise, Value and Results! Seller’s Commission Rates on High Value Items as low as...

10/19/16 8:50 AM

Have you visited?

The Lincoln Memorial Shrine

45th Annual Open House Saturday, February 4th

Since 1932, the only museum and research center dedicated to Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War west of the Mississippi

Featuring New Exhibits, Reenactors, Music, & Activities Don’t miss it!

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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! For more information, please visit www.lincolnshrine.org/civilwar or call (909) 798-7632 11/1/16 1:20 PM

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in focus

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by bob zeller president, center for civil wa r p h oto g r a p h y

The Millers of Sharpsburg

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

David R. Miller and his family, who lived on a farm outside Sharpsburg, Maryland, were among the untold numbers of Americans who endured the terrifying experience of having two snarling armies turn their land into a bloody battlefield. ¶ This photo by Alexander Gardner, taken as soon as two days after the Battle of Antietam, shows the family on the front porch of their relatively undamaged house. Its condition was remarkable, considering that Miller’s cornfield was “the” Cornfield, where hundreds of soldiers on both sides were killed or wounded in some of the battle’s most savage combat on the bloodiest day of the war. The fighting was so fierce, remembered General Joseph Hooker, that “every stalk of corn in the northern and greater part of the field was cut as closely as could have been done with a knife, and the slain lay in rows precisely as they stood in their ranks a few moments before.” ¶ The Millers had moved to a house closer to town before the armies arrived, but returned to the farmhouse immediately after the fighting. The family members pictured may be (from left to right): Miller’s 36-year-old wife, Margaret, and their children (all seated) Harriet, age 14, Clarence, 2, Eleanor, 11 or 12, and Mary, 13. Miller, 40, or possibly his son William, 15, may appear at left as a blurred figure seated on a stump. In 1872 Miller received $995 from the federal government as compensation for his losses. The house, where the family lived until 1883, is now owned by the National Park Service. THE CENTER FOR CIVIL WAR PHOTOGRAPHY IS A NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION DEVOTED TO COLLECTING, PRESERVING, AND DIGITIZING CIVIL WAR IMAGES FOR THE PUBLIC BENEFIT. TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE CCWP AND ITS MISSION, VISIT CIVILWARPHOTOGRAPHY.ORG

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american iliad

Lincoln Meets His General THE ENCOUNTER THAT HERALDED THE WAR’S FINAL PHASE BY MARK GRIMSLEY

U.S. general ever to hold this rank, and only George Washington has held it outright. (Winfield Scott, still alive but now retired at West Point, holds it by brevet, or honorifically.) But the victor of Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga has more than earned it, and as the nation’s top-ranking commander, he will now assume the role of general-in-chief. Naturally the clerk assigns Grant and his son the best room in the hotel: Parlor No. 6 on the second floor, the same two-room suite that Lincoln and his family occupied during the week before his inauguration. A bellboy carries the general’s luggage to the suite. Grant and his son head for the crowded dining room and a much-desired meal. A correspondent is in the dining room. Late that evening he will wire a breathless telegram to the New York Tribune. Because it’s the foundational version of the story, it’s worth quoting at length: At 5 o’clock this afternoon, an officer, leading a child by the hand, quietly and modestly entered the dining room at Willard’s, and took a place at the table. A gentleman from New Orleans and his daughters recognized him, rose from their seats and shook hands with him cordially. In a flash, as by electric communication, the news that General Grant was in the room spread through the immense hotel, and the hundreds of guests, Senators, Representatives, Supreme Court Judges, women, officers, lawyers, and all the customary household of Willard’s, sprang from their seats and cheered in the most tremendous manner, and crowded around the blushing and confused object of this sudden ovation, and overwhelmed him with their admiring interest. When his meal was concluded and he left the room, it was but a fall into another scene of enthusiastic love that awaited him from a great crowd in the lower hall. His retreat from this superior force up the stair case and to his room was characterized by most unsoldierly blushing.3

The reporter can guess Grant’s destination for the evening and makes his way to a ☛ } CONT. ON P. 72 3 To view this article’s reference notes, turn to page 78.

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PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

al is one of the most famous tropes in the American Iliad. It is the major theme of Lincoln and His Generals, T. Harry Williams’ magisterial study of Lincoln’s relationships with his top field commanders. It’s the actual title of a five-volume study of the same subject, Kenneth P. Williams’ Lincoln Finds a General. Many other Civil War books utilize the same conceptual framework. Small wonder that newspaper pundits invoked it frequently when discussing President George W. Bush’s hunt for a general who could achieve victory in Iraq and Afghanistan.1 Any tale involving a search, of course, must conclude with the fulfillment of the quest. In the American Iliad, that moment occurs at a White House reception on the evening of Tuesday, March 8, 1864, when Lincoln meets Ulysses Grant for the first time. Although this culmination of the “Lincoln finds a general” theme would logically focus on Lincoln, as generally told the story of this meeting begins with Grant. We encounter him as an anonymous, travelstained officer who shows up at the registration desk of the Willard Hotel, a prominent Washington hostelry near the White House, with his 14-year old son, Fred. The clerk takes little notice. A duster obscures most of Grant’s uniform and even if the clerk could see his rank—that of major general—it would make scant impression. Prominent men from all over the country stay at the Willard and cabinet officers and congressmen frequent its sumptuous dining room. But a glance at the officer’s signature—“U.S. Grant & Son, Galena, Ill.”—on the hotel registry transforms the clerk’s bored countenance into one of unbridled excitement.2 The Washington newspapers have alerted the capital to Grant’s impending arrival. Less than a week ago, an Act of Congress revived the rank of lieutenant general, and the president has summoned Grant so he can bestow the promotion directly. It is a remarkable honor. Grant will be only the third

HARPER’S WEEKLY

abraham lincoln’s search for a winning gener-

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HARPER’S WEEKLY

Abraham Lincoln promotes Ulysses S. Grant to the rank of lieutenant general at a White House ceremony held on March 9, 1864, in this sketch published in Harper’s Weekly. The two men had met for the first time the previous evening, shortly after Grant’s arrival in Washington, D.C.

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stereoscope

Historian on the Set

Historian Anya Jabour (right) poses with actress Hannah James on the set of the PBS series Mercy Street.

upsurge in dramas set during the Revolutionary War and the Civil War era, from the films 12 Years a Slave and Free State of Jones to the television shows Underground and Turn. Their credits often include the names of prominent historians as consultants for the producers, actors, and writers. What is this work like? How does a consultant navigate the sometimes competing demands of historical accuracy and cinematic storytelling? And this is crucial: Do the craft services tables—a buffet of meals, snacks, and drinks for hungry production crews—live up to their amazing reputation? A few months ago, I emailed historian Anya Jabour to find out. Jabour is a professor of history and a past co-director of Women & Gender Studies at the University of Montana. Her books—the two most recent are Topsy-Turvy: How the Civil War Turned the World Upside Down for Southern Children (2010) and Scarlett’s Sisters: Young Women in the Old South (2007)—examine families, women, and children in southern history. In January 2014, Jabour was contacted by Lisa Wolfinger, the co-creator and executive producer of Mercy Street, a Civil War-era television show that was still in development. The show depicts a group of Union doctors and nurses at Mansion House Hospital in Union-occupied Alexandria, Virginia, and the Union and Confederate soldiers, enslaved and freed people, and southern civilians in their midst. Wolfinger, a former history major and documentary filmmaker, had read Jabour’s Scarlett’s Sisters while researching the show’s setting.

“Because the Confederate family featured in the show has two teenaged daughters,” said Jabour, “[Wolfinger] thought I’d be a good person to come on board to consult on issues related to gender roles and family dynamics in the Green family.” Jabour agreed to read the pilot, and once PBS gave the greenlight decision and ordered a season of Mercy Street, she began work as a script reviewer. Her job, as she put it, was to offer suggestions on “anything that struck me as either historically inauthentic, on the one hand, or as especially historically important, on the other.” She also participated in conference calls, discussing characters and plot points with writers and producers. And when Mercy Street went into production, Wolfinger asked Jabour to come to the Virginia set, where she talked with the actors about issues ranging from female friendship to “racial etiquette” in 1860s Virginia to antebellum plantation life. Jabour came to think of the Greens—southern loyalists James and Jane Green, who own a hotel that has been taken over as a Union hospital, and their three children, Emma, Alice, and James Jr.— as “her family.” She and the actors discussed what the Greens’ daily lives would have been like before the Civil War, and how wartime introduced both new opportunities and new challenges for each family member. “In particular,” said Jabour, “I met with Hannah James, who plays Emma Green, and AnnaSophia Robb, who plays Alice Green, to discuss the changing world of the ‘southern belle,’ especially how the Civil War gave elite young ☛ } CONT. ON P. 72

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history fans are no doubt enjoying the recent

PHOTO BY ANYA JABOUR; COURTESY OF PBS/ERIK HEINILA (OPPOSITE)

ANYA JABOUR AND THE QUEST FOR HISTORICAL ACCURACY ON PBS’ MERCY STREET BY MEGAN KATE NELSON

PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

PHOTO BY ANYA JABOUR; COURTESY OF PBS/ERIK HEINILA (OPPOSITE)

Hannah James portrays Emma Green in a scene from the second season of Mercy Street.

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THE CURIOUS CASE OF

THE LOST 30

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George McClellan had a chance to end the war in 1862. Or did he? It depends on whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s telling the story. BY STEPHEN W. SEARS

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“Few generals in history have had a greater piece of fortune than that which had befallen George McClellan.” k e n n e t h p. w i l l i a m s

“On September 13 their non-gambling commander hit the all-time military jackpot.” ja m e s m . m c p h e r s o n

“McClellan knew as much about Lee’s plans as if he had personally attended Lee’s last staff conference. The game was being handed to him on a silver platter.”

these historians are of course pronouncing

on the Lost Order—Special Orders No. 191, Robert E. Lee’s key operational order issued during his first thrust north across the Potomac. The story of the Lost Order is both curious in itself and by now a historical curiosity. It is so bizarre in its improbability that it has invited a century and a half of comment and speculation ... and imaginings. For a matter of such import, its beginnings are pedestrian. The date was September 9, 1862. The

Army of Northern Virginia, fresh from its latest and greatest triumph, at Second Bull Run (August 29–30), had advanced across the Potomac to Frederick, Maryland, and that day General Lee determined on his next move. He believed George McClellan’s Army of the Potomac to be demoralized, in command and in the ranks, and ripe for plucking. He would draw McClellan away from his Washington base to a battlefield of Lee’s choosing in the Cumberland Valley of western Maryland and southern Pennsylvania. “I intended then to attack McClellan, hoping the best results from state of my troops & those of enemy,” Lee would say. First, however, he needed to secure his communications, and Special Orders No. 191 was designed for that purpose. The Yankees had not evacuated their now isolated garrison at Harpers Ferry, where the Shenandoah River enters the Potomac, making it a danger to Lee’s link with Virginia. He designated two columns to recross the Potomac and approach their quarry from east and west, and a third column to close on Harpers Ferry from the north. Stonewall Jackson had the command. Lee with the rest of the army would wait at Boonsboro, Maryland, behind the shield of South Mountain. McClellan’s army was not threatening, and Lee allotted three days for the operation. Staff officer Robert H. Chilton supervised the writing and distribution of Special Orders No. 191. Copies went by courier to the various commanders involved, among them D.H. Hill. When Jackson received S.O. 191, he wrote out a copy and 3 To view this article’s reference notes, turn to page 78.

PREVIOUS SPREAD: ISTOCK, COLORIZED BY MADS MADSEN/COLORIZED HISTORY; UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS LIBRARIES, FAYETTEVILLE (HILL); BATTLES AND LEADERS OF THE CIVIL WAR (OPPOSITE)

b ru c e c at t o n 1

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UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS LIBRARIES, FAYETTEVILLE (HILL); BATTLES AND LEADERS OF THE CIVIL WAR (OPPOSITE)

Above: A portion of the Army of Northern Virginia crosses the Potomac River in September 1862. A few days later, a copy of Robert E. Lee’s campaign plans (S.O. 191) intended for Confederate general D.H. Hill (opposite page) would fall into enemy hands.

sent it to Hill, who was then under his command but was now reassigned. It all appeared routine, with everyone receiving his orders. But Chilton, less than diligent about staff work, apparently did not tally the delivery envelopes or receipts the couriers were required to bring back to headquarters. One copy of S.O. 191, that sent by Chilton to D.H. Hill, was not delivered on September 9. On Wednesday, September 10, at “earliest dawn,” the Army of Northern Virginia set out in four well separated segments to carry out its new assignment.2 These movements mystified General McClellan. The intelligence reaching him had Rebel columns marching to every point on the compass.

“From all I can gather secesh is skedadelling & I don’t think I can catch him,” he wrote his wife on September 12. “I begin to think that he is making off to get out of the scrape by recrossing the river at Williamsport.... He evidently don’t want to fight me—for some reason or other.” McClellan had assured Washington (with his usual overcounting) “that almost the entire Rebel army in Virginia, amounting to not less than 120,000 men, is in the vicinity of Frederick City,” outnumbering him, he said, by 25 percent. He advanced the Potomac army with great deliberation north by west toward Frederick, leaving the initiative to Lee.3 At midmorning on Saturday, September 13, 33 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR WINTER 2016

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by validation of its authenticity. Before the war Pittman had been a teller at a Detroit bank where army paymaster Chilton kept an account, and he was familiar with Chilton’s signature on bank drafts. Thus Williams could assure McClellan that S.O. 191 “is no doubt genuine.”6 For all the documentation on how, where, and when the Lost Order was found, there is slight documentation from the Rebel side on how it was lost. The Confederates’ first knowledge of the Lost Order came either some three and a half months after the close of the Maryland Campaign—from a smuggled copy of the New York Journal of Commerce for January 1, 1863, carrying a copy of S.O. 191 that McClellan supplied to the editor—or three months after that, in March 1863, when McClellan’s congressional testimony on the subject was widely published in the northern

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)

General Alpheus S. Williams, commanding the army’s XII Corps, wrote a hurried note to McClellan: “I enclose a General Order of Genl Lee Commanding Rebel forces which was found on the field where my Corps is Encamped. It is a document of interest & is no doubt genuine.” Williams added, “The Document was found by a corporal of 27 Ind. Rgt, Col. Colgrove, Gordon’s Brigade. AW.” The enclosure was a single sheet of paper, closely written on both sides, headed, “Hd Qrs Army of Northern Va Sept 9th 1862 ... Special Orders No 191,” addressed to General D.H. Hill and signed by R.H. Chilton, “By command of Gen R.E. Lee.” It was the operational order for the movement against Harpers Ferry—naming the generals, their targets, their locations, their routes, their timetables. A lost order abruptly became the Lost Order, and it was in General McClellan’s hands before noon that September 13. As astonishing as everything else about this find was the mere three hours or less it took to reach McClellan. The 27th Indiana had made a short five-mile assigned march early that morning and by 9 a.m. made camp in a roadside wheat field outside Frederick. The corporal General Williams mentioned as the finder of the order was named Barton W. Mitchell. Mitchell’s discovery was remarked in a home letter a few days later by his sergeant, John M. Bloss. “Corporal Mitchell was very fortunate at Frederick,” Bloss wrote. “He found General Lee’s plan of attack on Md.... I was with him when he found it and read it first.” They took the find to their company captain, Peter Kop, then to the 27th’s colonel, Silas Colgrove. “He immediately took it to General [George H.] Gordon,” Bloss continued; “he said it was worth a Mint of money & sent it to General McClellan.... We found the dispatch out in a wheat field under a Locus tree with two cigars with it.”4 Cigars have their own place in this story. The envelope containing S.O. 191 that Corporal Mitchell discovered under the locust tree also held three cigars. Who at Lee’s headquarters included them for D.H. Hill’s pleasure is unknown. But who lifted one of them for his own pleasure is known— Corporal Mitchell. No one of higher rank than the 27th Indiana’s Colonel Colgrove mentioned cigars, leaving the fate of the other two unknown. It may be hoped that Barton Mitchell enjoyed his smoke, for it was his only reward. He never received any public acknowledgment of his find before his death in 1868.5 The Lost Order quickly made its way from brigade to XII Corps headquarters, where Alpheus Williams and his adjutant Samuel E. Pittman examined it. Amazing chance had marked the finding of S.O. 191, amazingly multiplied by recognition of its importance, now multiplied yet again 34 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR WINTER 2016

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)

General George McClellan (left, on horseback) is cheered by residents of Frederick, Maryland, as he and his troops enter the town on the morning of September 13 in this sketch by Edwin Forbes. Soon thereafter, XII Corps commander Alpheus S. Williams (opposite page) would forward the recently discovered copy of S.O. 191 to McClellan.

press and filtered south. Southerners’ condemnation of D.H. Hill was widespread. That “vain and petulant officer,” said Richmond editor E.A. Pollard, “in a moment of passion, had thrown the paper on the ground.” Another report had Hill carelessly leaving S.O. 191 in his former headquarters for the Yankees to find; another, that it fell from his pocket at a review.7 D.H. Hill stoutly defended himself postwar in his magazine The Land We Love. He displayed the copy of S.O. 191 that Jackson had sent him, proving that he had his orders on September 9 like everyone else. His adjutant swore an affidavit that no order had reached Hill from Chilton that day. Corresponding with McClellan after the war, Hill learned that the Lost Order and the envelope in which it was found were in McClellan’s papers. That was proof enough, said Hill: “If

the envelope was with it, the paper was never received.” (He raised the possibility of a turncoat courier deliberately dropping the Lost Order for the Yankees to find, but its clearly accidental discovery in a wheat field implies an exceedingly inept turncoat.) The simplest explanation is the likeliest one: a careless courier—losing the envelope at a “rest stop” under the locust tree, say—thankfully finds that Hill already had his orders, and back at headquarters he sidesteps Chilton’s lax system for delivery receipts. Neither Lee nor Chilton would investigate the matter. “I could not of course say positively that I had sent any particular courier to him [Hill] after such a lapse of time,” Chilton explained a dozen years later.8 That the Confederates might have learned of S.O. 191’s loss as soon as two days after its finding adds another layer to this remarkable story. In its morning edition on September 15 the New York Herald ran on its front page a report from Frederick that “a general order of General Lee was found there” that detailed a plan “to engage the Union forces at Harper’s Ferry.” The same day, the Washington Star reported that “A member of Colonel Colgrove’s regiment found a paper purporting to be Rebel Order No. 119,” and detailed its contents, inaccurate only in transposing the order’s number. The Star’s story was picked up in the next day’s Baltimore Sun. These press leaks—the Herald’s probably from McClellan’s headquarters, the Star’s probably from the XII Corps—somehow escaped the notice of General Lee, who routinely sought out northern papers, looking for just such leaks.9 On the morning of September 13 General McClellan was greeted by a cheering crowd as he entered newly liberated Frederick, and in the headquarters tent he met with a delegation of citizens to discuss the army’s occupation of the town. At about 11:30 a.m. an aide interrupted to hand him the documents sent by Alpheus Williams from the XII Corps. By report, upon reading them McClellan threw up his hands and exclaimed, “Now I know what to do!” This vivid scene is recorded (in retrospect) by none other than Robert E. Lee. In an 1868 conversation reviewing the Maryland Campaign, Lee identified a witness in McClellan’s tent that morning as “a gentleman of Maryland,” his euphemism for one of J.E.B. Stuart’s informants. McClellan’s excited reaction to whatever it was he read was newsworthy enough for the spy to quickly make his way to Stuart, who passed on the report to Lee. Stuart’s dispatch is not on record, but Lee’s description of an exuberant McClellan can hardly be doubted. Indeed, in a second such recollection, Lee said of the incident that McClellan “openly expressed his delight.”10 35 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR WINTER 2016

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The Maryland Campaign | Troop Positions, September 14, 1862 The day after Robert E. Lee’s operational orders for his invasion of Maryland (known as S.O. 191) were delivered into the hands of Army of the Potomac commander George B. McClellan, the Army of Northern Virginia was divided and spread out between Hagerstown and Harpers Ferry. McClellan ordered his army toward the gaps in South Mountain in hopes of scattering the Rebel forces. Instead, the day devolved into a bloody struggle for the gaps. By the time it was over, Lee’s army had started to reunite around Sharpsburg, portending the epic battle of September 17.

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McClellan was indeed inspirited. He also had before him two dispatches from cavalryman Alfred Pleasonton. The first, sent at 1:30 a.m., set the day’s target as the Catoctin range; the second, at 11 a.m., stated he was engaging the enemy cavalry in the Catoctins. There was as well a telegram from President Lincoln, reading, “How does it look now?” McClellan datelined his reply to the president, “Hd Qrs. Frederick Sept. 13 12 M,” the “12 M” being telegraphic protocol for 12 Meridian, or noon. In his excitement he became almost giddy: To the President I have the whole Rebel force in front of me but am confident and no time shall be lost. I have a difficult task to perform but with Gods blessing will accomplish it. I think Lee has made a gross mistake and that he will be severely punished for it. The Army is in motion as rapidly as possible. I hope for a great success if the plans of the Rebels remain unchanged. We have possession of Catocktane. I have all the plans of the Rebels and will catch them in their own trap if my men are equal to the emergency. I now feel that I can count on them as of old. All forces of Pennsylvania should be placed to cooperate at Chambersburg. My respects to Mrs Lincoln. Received most enthusiastically by the ladies. Will send you trophies. All well and with Gods Blessing will accomplish it. Geo B. McClellan11

The scales had fallen from McClellan’s eyes. The Lost Order told him that Lee’s target was Harpers Ferry, told him of Jackson’s three wellseparated commands surrounding the post, told him of Lee with the rest of his army at Boonsboro just across South Mountain, the next range beyond the Catoctins. Now he could calculate that by breaking through South Mountain the game would be in his hands. “Here is a paper with which if I cannot whip Bobbie Lee, I will be willing to go home,” he told General John Gibbon, showing him Chilton’s signature. “I will put Lee in a position he will find hard to get out of. Castiglione will be nothing to it.” Castiglione was Napoleon’s divide-and-conquer victory over a scattered Austrian army in 1796. At noon that September 13 there were 13 Federal divisions at Frederick, a dozen miles from Turner’s Gap in South Mountain. To the south

were four more divisions, a dozen miles from Crampton’s Gap in South Mountain. To cash in on this extraordinary intelligence coup, McClellan need only advance his forces to the base of South Mountain that afternoon and evening, poised to storm the gaps at dawn on the 14th. Such an advance was a necessary preliminary to whatever battle plan he formulated. It involved no risk. It awarded him the critical advantage of surprise come morning. But George McClellan remained firmly in character. He threw boldness to the winds. The only advances that day were short marches previously assigned. Eighteen hours would pass before the first Yankees advanced in direct response to the finding of the Lost Order.12 Second thoughts came as second nature to General McClellan. Some march routes in S.O. 191 did not appear to match the intelligence he was receiving, and he worried that particular second thought for three hours. At 3 p.m. he sent a copy of S.O. 191 to cavalryman Pleasonton with instructions “to ascertain whether this order of march has thus far been followed by the enemy.” At 6:20 p.m. he sent instructions to General William Franklin to advance on Crampton’s Gap—at daybreak. At 11 p.m. he reported to General-in-Chief Henry Halleck: An order of Lee’s “addressed to Genl. D.H. Hill which has accidently come into my hands this evening ... discloses some of the plans of the enemy.” What was in hand at noon was now in hand at evening. What at noon was all the plans of the Rebels was now some of the plans. McClellan was down from his noontime high and covering his hindquarters with prospective excuses. With 11 hours to reflect, he was again his evasive, cautious, doom-and-gloom outnumbered self, warning of the great Rebel army he faced, “which I have good reason for believing amounts to 120,000 men or more.” He anticipated “a severe general engagement tomorrow ... & they outnumber me when united.” This time no trophies were promised. One persistent intelligence report that gave McClellan pause put James Longstreet’s command at Hagerstown, near the Pennsylvania line, rather than at Boonsboro as the Lost Order had it. This intelligence was in fact correct, for Lee

“Here is a paper with which if I cannot whip Bobbie Lee, I will be willing to go home.” g e n e r a l g e o rg e b . m c c l e l l a n, a f t e r r e c e i v i n g t h e l o s t o r d e r

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had altered his plan, leaving only D.H. Hill’s division and Stuart’s cavalry to guard South Mountain. But cavalryman Pleasonton, in answering McClellan’s 3 p.m. query, replied glibly (actually knowing nothing of the matter) that “the order of march of the enemy that you sent me has been followed as closely as circumstances would permit.” With that assurance, McClellan accepted everything in the Lost Order as gospel, and redoubled his caution.13 September 14 was McClellan’s day for an American Castiglione, his reward for exploiting the Lost Order and bursting through the South Mountain gaps at first light to surprise the scattered Rebel forces. The day fell instead into a long, bloody struggle for the mountain gaps. Half the day was spent getting to the battlefront, half fighting on the mountaintop as Longstreet marched back from Hagerstown in time to make a battle of it. In the end, South Mountain was a Union victory, but not before Lee gained the time to reunite his scattered army.

On the next day, September 15, it was McClellan’s uncritical faith in the Lost Order that blunted his final chance for a decisive victory over Lee. The Federal pursuit pulled up before Antietam Creek, beyond which, in front of Sharpsburg, the enemy took up line of battle. This force (according to the Lost Order) was Longstreet’s half of the Rebel army, which command was entered into the headquarters diary that day as 50,000 men (by McClellan’s counting). The actual number was 18,000. Lee ran that bluff for two days until Jackson could join him from Harpers Ferry. The scene at McClellan’s headquarters on September 15 was noted by Captain William Palmer, a scout for Pennsylvania’s Governor Andrew Curtin. As McClellan understood it, Palmer reported, Harpers Ferry surrendered that morning, and that evening “Jackson re-enforced Lee at Sharpsburg.... Rebels appear encouraged at arrival of their reinforcements.” McClellan’s interpretation rested on S.O. 191: Jackson’s orders for approaching Harpers Ferry put him at Martinsburg, only a

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)

By the afternoon of September 13, McClellan’s cautious nature began to reassert itself. Worried that some of the Confederate march routes in S.O. 191 did not appear to match the intelligence he was receiving, at 3 p.m. he sent a copy of the Lost Order to Union cavalryman Alfred Pleasonton (left) “to ascertain whether this order of march has thus far been followed by the enemy.” Opposite page: General J.E.B. Stuart

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“I went into Maryland to give battle, and could I have kept Gen. McClellan in ignorance of my position and plans a day or two longer, I would have fought and crushed him.” g e n e r a l ro b e rt e . l e e t o a p o s t wa r i n t e rv i e w e r

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)

dozen miles from Sharpsburg, an easy march after the Ferry’s surrender, and Jackson was cheered on arrival. As McClellan reckoned it, by day’s end on September 15 Lee’s army was reunited. He could pause to ponder the problem of fighting a battle as the underdog. For him the Lost Order was history. The reality was of course very different. The cheering McClellan heard was for the capture of Harpers Ferry, and the first of Jackson’s troops did not begin to reach Sharpsburg until the afternoon of September 16—and the last of them only arrived (famously) late in the great battle fought there on September 17.14 For all McClellan’s failures to exploit its rich potential, the Lost Order did bring the Confederates to battle at Antietam on September 17—neither the place nor the date General Lee had intended. Lee left no doubt on that point. He told a postwar interviewer, “I went into Maryland to give battle, and could I have kept Gen. McClellan in ignorance of my position and plans a day or two longer, I would have fought and crushed him.” As the interviewer recalled it, “The distinct and emphatic impression made on me by the conversation was that Gen. Lee attributed without hesitation the loss of the campaign to the ‘Lost Dispatch.’”15 This candid appraisal of General Lee’s was occasioned by his postwar dispute with D.H. Hill. Hill’s article “The Lost Dispatch” (1868) argued that S.O. 191’s contents, out of date by the time it was found, so confused McClellan that “to this false information is doubtless due the salvation of the Southern army” in Maryland. Lee took strong exception to Hill’s reading of the case—an exchange out of which sprang a prime example of the trail of “unhistory” that has clouded the story of the Lost Order ever since. Lee learned of the Lost Order from McClellan’s 1863 revelations, and this hindsight knowl-

edge can render some of his postwar comments on the case ambiguous. For example, in 1867 he wrote Hill, “I ... heard at the time that the order was address[ed] to you, and it was so stated by Gen. J.E.B. Stuart in his report of the change of advance of Gen. McClellan which he commented upon.” Lee’s reference to Stuart’s dispatch forwarding his spy’s report is clearly a confused recollection. Stuart’s spy would have needed to be looking over McClellan’s shoulder when he opened the Lost Order to know those facts.16 Historian Joseph L. Harsh overlooked Lee’s ambiguities to put a different take on events. He has Stuart making “the assumption” that what McClellan was handed that September 13 must have been a copy of S.O. 191, and so reported to Lee. Thus Harsh concludes that before September 13 was done, General Lee knew that McClellan had the Lost Order. This is flatly contradicted by Charles Marshall of Lee’s staff, who in 1867 wrote Hill, “I remember perfectly well that until we saw [McClellan’s] report, Gen. Lee frequently expressed his inability to understand the sudden change in McClellan’s tactics which took place after we left Frederick. He regarded the finding of that order by McClellan as a complete and satisfactory explanation of the change.” Indeed, none of Lee’s actions on September 13–15 suggests he knew his plan had been compromised. None of his generals—notably Stuart—ever mentioned such a counterintelligence coup. Harsh explains their silence as “a form of cover-up” of an embarrassing incident—an unconvincing (and unhistorical) theory, to say the least.17 Barton Mitchell, finder of the Lost Order, is another victim of unhistory. Mitchell was an authentic patriot of ’61, a 45-year-old with a family who signed up with the 27th Indiana for three years. Antietam took a toll of those linked to the Lost Order: Mitchell fell with a bad leg wound, 39 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR WINTER 2016

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A reflective George McClellan sits on horseback during the Battle of Antietam in this engraving published in 1863. Whether the general should have been able to crush his opponent given his possession of the Lost Order remains a point of debate today.

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PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

Department telegrapher are—the file copy, in the National Archives; the manifold or carbon copy, in the F.W. Seward Papers, University of Rochester; and the president’s copy, in the Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress. All three are in the same handwriting, all dated September 13, and all bear the same time mark, “12 M,” for noon. Lincoln’s copy has been altered, clearly in another hand, to read “12 Midnight,” that is, 12 M + idnight. This can only have been done by the president—the handwriting is consistent with his—and for what he took as a good reason. The telegram bears the notation “2.35 AM,” the time it was received on September 14. (Dispatches from the field were delayed by Confederate wire-cutters in Maryland.) Handed the telegram early on the 14th, not aware of the 14.35-hour delay in its receipt and unfamiliar with telegraphic protocol, Lincoln assumed it must have been sent at midnight for it to arrive at 2:35 a.m., and he so labeled it. A simple anomaly; another Lost Order curiosity. To read this otherwise, however—to claim that McClellan actually sent his telegram to Lincoln at midnight on September 13—is to defy all the evidence. McClellan certainly had the Lost Order by 3 p.m. that day, when he sent a copy to Pleasonton. Evidence clearly documents that the order reached the XII Corps by midmorning and McClellan before noon, not after an inexplicable delay of five or six hours. Pleasonton’s 11 a.m. dispatch that he had the Catoctins was enough for McClellan to claim them at noon. Most obvious of all, McClellan’s exuberant telegram to Lincoln could only have been written moments after being handed the Lost Order (over which he “openly expressed his delight”), not 12 hours later—and certainly not written one hour after his dark and pessimistic 11 p.m. telegram to Halleck, which predicted an impending “severe general engagement” in which he would be heavily outnumbered. McClellan would hardly at midnight be boasting of the Frederick ladies’ enthusiastic greeting and promising to send trophies. Whatever judgments may be delivered about George McClellan’s response to the finding of the Lost Order, the proof is positive that the clock began ticking for him at noon on September 13.20 These episodes of unhistory have insinuated themselves into print in comparatively small doses over the years. But in 2012 the first volume of a major study of the Maryland Campaign incorporated the most serious of these distortions of the Lost Order story (even that Barton Mitchell was illiterate), thereby blessing them with supposed legitimacy.21 It is perhaps the story’s sheer incredulity, the astonishing twists and turns on ☛ } CONT. ON P. 73

ANNE S.K. BROWN MILITARY COLLECTION

Sergeant Bloss was wounded, and Captain Kop mortally wounded. Mitchell was in hospital for nearly eight months, returned to limited duty, and mustered out in 1864. Neither General McClellan nor the Potomac army staff made any effort to find or reward him. In 1867 Mitchell began a letter-writing campaign to gain recognition and perhaps reward for his discovery of the Lost Order. Sergeant Bloss replied, confirming his priority. Colonel Colgrove sent him a certificate recognizing his claim. But Mitchell, his health weakened by his wartime service, died in January 1868, age 51, publicly unrecognized as the finder of S.O. 191. His son, William, took up the cause, seeking recognition and at least a war widow’s pension for Mrs. Mitchell. He wrote to General McClellan, then New Jersey’s governor, who replied that “it is doubtful whether I ever knew the name” of the finder, but he “showed intelligence and deserved marked reward,” and his widow deserved a pension “without a day’s delay.” (Mrs. Mitchell did in time receive a survivor’s pension.)18 Finally, after 24 years, the Lost Order truly went public. An 1886 article, “The Finding of Lee’s Lost Order” by the 27th Indiana’s Silas Colgrove, ran in The Century as part of the magazine’s immensely popular Battles and Leaders of the Civil War series, which was expanded under that title to four volumes published in 1887 and 1888. Eighteen years after his death, Barton Mitchell was identified by Colgrove as the finder of the Lost Order. Yet even here unhistory has marred that recognition. When Colgrove’s article brought attention to the 27th Indiana, some of its veterans trivialized or denied Mitchell’s role entirely. In his 1899 regimental history of the 27th, Edmund R. Brown tartly remarked, of two such tall tales, that he found no one “who remembers to have heard of either of them, until within a recent period.” Sergeant Bloss, who at the time of the finding fully credited Mitchell, now changed his tune. In an 1892 article, he spotted the envelope in the wheat, he asked Mitchell to hand it to him, and the rest was (his) history. A latter-day history of the 27th Indiana credits these unworthy tales, and adds the canard that Barton Mitchell was illiterate, a mere cipher in the case.19 In another recent bit of unhistory, this one derived from a misread document, it is claimed that General McClellan did not in fact delay on September 13 in his response to the Lost Order. “‘Little Mac’ did not dawdle” that day, its author declares. The document in question is McClellan’s September 13 telegram to the president, announcing the finding of S.O. 191. McClellan’s original is not on record, but three received copies by the War

ANNE S.K. BROWN MILITARY COLLECTION

PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

41 PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN DOE

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63 “It’s a poor soldier, who cares much for shelling.”

E XCERPTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF LIEUTENANT WILLIAM GORDON McCABE BY R I C H A R D W. H ATC H E R I I I

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

Days in Charleston

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PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN DOE

11/2/16 12:23 AM

43 PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN DOE

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On August 17, 1863, Lieutenant William Gordon McCabe strolled from his room

at the Charleston Hotel to the Battery at the tip of the Charleston peninsula. For two years, the 22-year-old Virginian had helped defend the Confederacy, first as a private in the Richmond Howitzers, then as a staff officer in the Army of Northern Virginia. Now, he was in Charleston—a city under siege by Union forces—temporarily assigned to the staff of General Roswell Ripley, commander of the city’s defenses, and charged with test firing two Foote guns, newly designed breech-loading rifled weapons he had been “experimenting” with in Virginia, against U.S. targets. He had a day to kill before he reported for duty, and at the end of his morning walk was an extraordinary sight: For the first time in the war, Union artillery from General Quincy A. Gillmore’s batteries on Morris Island and Admiral John A. Dahlgren’s warships were pummeling Fort Sumter in a storm of shot and shell. As he would for the next two months, McCabe described his day in a well-worn journal, which now serves as an extraordinary record of the siege of Charleston.1

{ august 17, 18 63 }

Over the next few days, McCabe visited Fort Sumter twice. On the 19th he met the fort’s garrison, the 1st South Carolina Artillery Regiment (Regulars), commanded by Colonel Alfred M. Rhett. On the 22nd he made his second trip there before traveling to Morris Island, where he visited Battery Gregg and delivered dispatches to Colonel Lawrence M. Keitt, commander of Battery Wagner. { august 19, 18 63 }

ran the gauntlet to Sumpter today under heavy fire. Our boat was one of three that went over and the other two were struck and sunk. The fort is badly breached, and I consider it exceedingly weak. The Parrott guns will soon render Sumpter a harmless wreck. Many, indeed, nearly every gun on

General P.G.T. Beauregard

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

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NATIONAL ARCHIVES (OPPOSITE); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

i arrived here last night , having been ordered by the War Dept to report to General [P.G.T.] Beauregard, to command a battery of long range Foote guns with which I have been experimenting in Virginia. I am stopping at [the] Charleston Hotel, a hostelry not unworthy [of] the patronage of major Dalgetty himself. I was awaken this morning by the steady firing from our batteries and those of the enemy. However I was too old a soldier to feel any excitement so I turned over and took my morning nap. After breakfast lit my cigar and strolled down to “the Battery,” a very beautiful place. Looking seaward is a line of magnificent residences, where the sangres azul of Carolina reside, rather resided, for they are all deserted now. Oh! how beautiful the harbour looked to my eager eyes, & how delightful & bracing the cool morning-sea-breeze felt…. Old Sumpter, “grand and gray,” loomed up in the centre through the haze that was vanishing before the ocean breeze. How proud and defiant the old fortress looked, the deep mouthed columbiads frowning down from her parapets, while the dear old battle-cross sallies to the fresh Atlantic breezes. The enemy have opened their heavy 200 pounder Parrott guns & their practice is admirable. Every few minutes comes the dull booming of their guns, and then the bricks fly from her south face, showing that she has been struck.

The Charleston Hotel on Meeting Street, where Lieutenant William Gordon McCabe stayed upon his arrival in Charleston

[the] south face has been dismounted, and the north face badly breached by these 200 pounder iron bolts, which graze the interior crest of [the] south face and strike over on the north. The discipline of the garrison is superb. The men are regulars and the officers the first blood of South Carolina. Though the firing was exceedingly heavy every thing went on as usual. Amid the crashing of timbers and the falling of huge masses of masonry the officers could be seen coolly walking the parapet and the men could be heard laughing and singing. The colors were shot away, & several soldiers ran out immediately, though right in the line of fire, to fix the halyards. While talking to the Ordnance Officer just under the South wall, we heard rather a louder noise than usual, and looking up, after the fall of mass of masonry over came a 32 pounder, carriage and all knocked entirely off the parapet into the parade by one of those huge 200 pounder bolts.…

NATIONAL ARCHIVES (OPPOSITE); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

{ august 22 , 18 63 }

ran over to sumpter under very heavy fire.… I found the fort terribly used up; nearly all the guns dismounted. I stood on the parapet a long time with several officers watching the fire of the enemy from their land batteries and the monitors. The shells (200 pounders) went screaming over us, but did not strike any of us. In walking on the brick pavement in front of the kitchens, I came very near being struck by several bricks & fragments of [a] gun carriage, which were thrown up by a bursting shell. They fell all around me.… After we left Sumpter, pulled away under uncomfortable fire to Battery Gregg. Walked thence to Battery Wagner which I consider by far the strongest work I have seen. Col. [Lawrence M.] Keitt in command. Carried him dispatches, and had a pleasant chat with him on the parapet. The enemy [are] about 500 yds. in front running their sap slowly & surely. The bomb-proofs are very hot and there is [a] great scarcity of water, but the men are cheerful enough. [The] Beach from Gregg to Wagner is strongly picketted, a sentinel every 15 yards, to prevent [the] enemy [from] landing in small boats. Picturesque sight at Gregg; the grim bastions looming up, the lurid glare of the camp-fires lighting up the swarthy faces of our Southern soldiers, and an endless string of stalwart negroes busily carrying bags of sand.… Got home late and turned in as hungry as an elephant. Elegant comparison that! While the bombardment of Fort Sumter continued, Union siege lines drew ever closer to Battery Wagner. By August 21 the Federals had completed a one-gun battery in the marsh to the far left (west end) of their lines. The soldiers who

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The “Marsh Battery” and “Swamp Angel,” shown sometime after the gun’s barrel burst

built the platform in the pluff mud named it the “Marsh Battery” and christened the massive 8-inch, 200-pounder Parrott rifle the “Swamp Angel.” Before the first shot was fired, General Gillmore sent word that he’d fire on Charleston if Confederate forces failed to evacuate Fort Sumter and Morris Island. His demand, which allowed only four hours for a response, arrived at Battery Wagner at 11:15 a.m. but did not reach Beauregard’s headquarters until 10:45 p.m. As Beauregard was not present and the document was unsigned, it was returned for verification. Just over 10 hours after Gillmore’s deadline passed, the Swamp Angel opened fire on the city.

firing heavy today. People more despondent here than we are in Virginia. Reason is because the horrors of war are new to them.… Every gun in Harleston’s Battery, Fort Sumpter, was disabled on yesterday by the enemy’s fire, leaving only 4 serviceable guns on [the] parapet. It is definitely ascertained that the [Marsh] Battery, which shelled the city on the night of the 21st, is in the marsh near Black Island. Of course, these fiery messengers occasioned considerable consternation among the citizens, & people are leaving the city as if we had the plague here instead a few 200 pounder shell[s]. The enemy’s battery is at least 5 miles from us & demonstrates that Parrott’s guns are inferior to none, not excepting Armstrong’s or Whitworth’s. General Beauregard looks much worn & his hair is almost as white as snow. Bythe-way I forgot to put down, in my hurry, the circumstances connected with [the] shelling. Two Yankee officers on Friday evening (day before yesterday) rode up under flag of truce to Wagner, & demanded the surrender of Wagner & Sumpter within 4 hours, & threatened, on non-compliance, to shell the city at [the] expiration of that time. To this modest demand General Beauregard replied that when they could take and occupy these outposts, they might have them and not before. The Yankees must have known that it was impossible for their demand to reach the city and an answer be returned in 4 hours. However, at about 2 ½ or 3 A.M. the swift winged messengers came singing or rather screaming over us, as they had not received, up to that time, any answer to their demand. I hope it will not sound unpatriotic for me to say that I went to sleep during the performance (because I know there wasn’t much danger). General Beauregard sent out a flag of truce, after [the] shelling, with an indignant remonstrance against the inhumanity of shelling a city “full of sleeping women & children.”…

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)

{ August 23 , 18 63 }

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[W]e are all expecting a savage shelling to-night. Well, let them go ahead. It’s a poor soldier, who cares much for shelling. I, for me, don’t care a copper. { august 24 , 18 63 }

just as we expected the marsh battery commenced shelling the city last night. Frank Markoe [a Confederate soldier with whom McCabe had served in Virginia] and I had a good laugh at the absurdity of the Yankees in supposing that a few 200 pounder shells could begin to bully us into even thinking of surrendering [the] city. There is now a continual roar of artillery, all night and all day, with scarcely a moment’s cessation. It is supposed we disabled the enemy’s marsh battery as they soon ceased firing after our guns got their range well. It was a beautiful sight to watch our batteries on James Island playing upon them last night. The enemy are pushing up slowly & steadily on Wagner. We expect to lose Morris Island in ten days, if the cannonading continues as hotly as it does now. The enemy’s sharpshooters render it almost impossible for us to man our guns. Our sharpshooters are also busily at work, but I doubt whether they are as accurate as the Yankees, strange as it may sound. The enemy with their 200 pounder rifle shoot as accurately as their sharpshooters, & before we can fire more than one or two rounds with any of our guns in Wagner they are dismounted by their huge missiles. Upon firing its 36th round, the Swamp Angel’s barrel burst. The bombardment of Charleston would continue from other batteries. The shelling of Fort Sumter, though, would cease on September 2, and would not resume until Union forces gained full control of Morris Island. Between August 24 and September 2, 6,828 artillery rounds, from guns ranging from 30-pounder Parrotts to 15-inch Dahlgrens, were fired at the 2.5-acre fort. McCabe witnessed that last day of action.

{ sep tember 2 , 18 63 }

at 11.40 last night 6 monitors steamed in and took positions varying from 800 to 1500 yards from Fort Sumpter opening a furious fire on the E[ast] face. Our batteries on Sullivan’s Island and Battery Gregg opened a severe fire on them in return, striking them repeatedly. Several of them soon backed out, but about 1 ½ A.M. the [USS New] Ironsides steamed in & opened her broadsides. The whole harbour resounded with the roar of artillery. At 4 o’cl’k this morning the fleet retired nearly the whole of the E[ast] scarp at Ft. Sumpter was demolished. Enemy pushed up parallels to within 120 yards of Ft. Wagner. Sharpshooters on both sides at work. Fleet of the enemy repairing damages & taking in ammunition. While much of Sumter was now a pile of brick rubble, Battery Wagner still held out against the approaching Federal siege lines on Morris Island. McCabe took part in the last battle for that storied position.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)

{ s e p t e mbe r 5, 1 8 63 }

the enemy kept up a continuous fire on Wagner during the whole of last night & have pushed their sap to within 50 yards of that post. The Land batteries and [USS New] Ironsides concentrated their fire this morning on Wagner & injured it badly. The land guns were directed against [the] S[outh]E[ast] Salient & those of the Ironsides enfilading the land face and curtain of the work. Our traverses were much injured & so our communications. Several guns disabled. Over 40 killed & wounded to-day at Wagner & Gregg. Following dispatch intercepted: Admiral D[ahlgren]. I shall try Cummings Pt. to-night and want the sailors early. Will you please send in 2 or 3 monitors just by dusk to open fire on Fort Moultrie as a diversion. The last time they were in, they stopped reinforcements & may do so to-night. Don’t want any fire in the rear. (signed) G[illmore]. General Quincy A. Gillmore

The General [Ripley] is going down to-night and I have asked him to let me go. We have made every preparation to meet the assault on Gregg & are bent upon giving them fits. 47 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR WINTER 2016

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{ sep tem b er 6, 18 63 }

the gen’l & i went down last night and saw the fun. We first went to Battery Bee & Fort Moultrie, which the enemy were to attack with monitors. We buckled on our revolvers, so as to keep the crew up to their work, and pulled down the harbour about 8 o’clock. It was a beautiful night overhead but the roar of artillery was terrific. Two monitors were sweeping the water approaches to Gregg & the land batteries & mortars were playing on Wagner. The mortar practice is “beautiful exceedingly” — at a distance. The General kept me pretty busy carrying orders to the different posts. We waited for a long time for the attack & finally came to the conclusion that it had been postponed. I met on the parapet my old college friend Dick [Richard R.] Singleton, Lt. in the 1st S.C. Regular Infantry, who gave me half of his blanket, so we laid down & talked over pleasant old college days. While on [the] parapet the following dispatch was handed to the General (Intercepted) – “Col. [John W.] T[urner, Gillmore’s chief of artillery]. I have enough sailors to man the boats. Fifty (50) can be relied upon going. (signed) – Major [Oliver S.] S[anford, 7th Connecticut Infantry].”

The hour for the monitor attack passed and still there was no sign of an advance. At last between 12 & 1 A.M. our barge was called away & we steered for the city. We had scarcely gone half a mile when we saw the brilliant flash & heard the deafening thunder of a 15 in. Dahlgren from a monitor, who had steamed in close to Sumpter, but was opening on our Sullivan’s Island Batteries. In a moment more, we were flying over the waves back to Sullivan’s Island, our oarsmen straining every nerve. The whole of the lower end of Morris Island in the direction of Wagner was lighted up by a brilliant calcium light, & the mortar hulks & land mortar batteries were busy at work, the 15 in. [shells] literally raining upon Wagner. A moment more and two rockets go shooting into the zenith from the fleet, then for a moment a light twinkles at Gregg, & we hear the sharp rattle of musketry & the deep booming of [Captain Henry R.] Lesesne’s guns & Battery Bee & Moultrie are now thundering away & we are standing on the parapet, the smoking enwrapping us, giving directions, rather the General keeps running me to and fro carrying his orders. In three minutes the fight is over at Gregg, but we keep pouring it to them, taking no notice of the monitors, who occasionally belch forth & send a 15 in. screaming over us. The enemy have come through Vincent’s Creek in their barges, oars muffled, & boat howitzers mounted forward. Lesesne has seen them, but he just steps down from the parapet & awakens his cannoneers, who are sleeping at the guns. [Major James] Gardner of the 27th Ga. is behind the sand-hills with his veterans. Oh! dearly beloved Mr. Admiral Dahlgren, if you only knew what is awaiting you. There! the naval officer is on the beach one, two, three — 12 sailors, armed to the teeth are on the beach beside him, the barges are closing together. Now is the time. May God have mercy on them! “Fire,” cries Lesesne, & 10 in. grape go tearing through them at 50 yards. The sand-hills to the left are wreathed with flame, for Gardner’s Georgians are at work, while [Lieutenant E. Wister] Macbeth, with his two field howitzers, is treating them to double-canister, by way of showing them that our arsenals turn out every kind of ammunition. Finally, towards daylight everything quieted down except the firing at Wagner, & we steered for the city.

I landed at Battery Gregg, where I left my crew; with strict orders to the cox[s]wain not to let a soul get in the boat, & started at once for Battery Wagner. The distance is 1¼ miles, and on a calm survey, I must acknowledge that it wasn’t the [most] pleasant promenade I ever took. The mortar & Parrott batteries were sweeping the beach with one continuous fire, & once I thought I would never reach Col. Keitt with my dispatches. A 10 in. mortar shell burst right by me, covering me all over with sand. As I drew near Battery Wagner the fire was terrific. I passed the commissary building, where lay a ghastly pile of poor fellows, who have been killed. Even after they were dead, the shell[s] would tear through them, 48 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR WINTER 2016

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Early on the morning of September 6 Colonel Keitt sent a message to General Ripley’s headquarters stating that Wagner’s parapet had been “badly breached” and if the shelling continued it would be “almost a ruin.” With the Federals having reached the battery’s moat, General P.G.T. Beauregard ordered Morris Island evacuated. McCabe delivered the order to Colonel Keitt.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Union soldiers on Morris Island look on as USS New Ironsides and other warships from Admiral John A. Dahlgren’s fleet fire on Confederate positions. While undated, the image is thought to have been taken on September 8, 1863.

mangling them more horribly than before. The sally-ports were blocked up with sand, the [sand]bags being displaced by the enemy’s fire. I crawled through the sally port, & to what a grim sight within. The veterans of [Brigadier General Alfred H.] Colquitt were drawn up in the long dark passage-ways, bayonets fixed, silent as death, momentarily awaiting the assault. A taper burning in a lantern threw a feeble gleam upon their bayonets — not a word did I hear spoken. It did my heart good for, I saw it all meant work — I passed out into the parade. It was now quite dark & the stars were shining down tranquilly from the beautiful summer sky, but Death was holding high carnival here amid the baleful glare of bursting shell, & the incessant roar of artillery. I paused on the parade just a moment, wondering where loved ones were just then. But I was sensible enough not to stop long there, and so went on through the galleries to the bomb-proof, where I heard I should find Col. Keitt. I delivered my dispatches & verbal orders, directing him to blow up the fort and evacuate it as soon as practicable. Also gave him necessary directions about transportation, & ordered him to shoot the first man who made a rush for the boats. I sat some time, & brought off for him his sword, opera-glasses, &c. He asked [me] to bring off Mr. Glover, a private in his regt but a very nice young gentleman, which I did. Mr. G. carried away all the official papers of the post.… The bomb-proofs are insufferably hot. The breathing of the men caused an exuding from the timbers-supports of the bomb-proof, & so scarce is water that the men greedily catch this nauseating dripping in their tin cups & drink it. Col. Keitt, his Adjt General [Major H. Bryan] & his Engineer officer [Captain Thomas B. Lee] were all gathered around 49 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR WINTER 2016

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)

PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

Above: A wartime image of a battered Fort Sumter, purportedly taken on August 23, 1863. Opposite page: This 1865 image of the exterior of Fort Sumter bears the label “Site of the night attack on … September 8, 1863.”

a table in consultation, reading reports of [the] condition of the work, having a tallow dip stuck in the mouth of a can. Revolvers, muskets & swords were lying about in such a way that it would require a very little stretch to image oneself in the den of a bandit — Jose Maria himself. Keitt was cool enough, but some other officers I saw were not. In coming back from Wagner, the fire was even heavier then before, the [USS New] Ironsides having now steamed in, & commenced shelling the beach, which was how swept by direct fire from Gadberry Hill, & by the fire of 8 or 10 sea-coast mortars in the advance works of the enemy. In someway the wind got into the papers of the garrison, which Mr. Glover was carrying, & scattered them all along the beach. Knowing that it w[oul]d never do, to leave any of the papers we remained a long time under this sever fire until we recovered every single scrap of paper. So close were the enemy’s works to ours that it was impossible to distinguish the sharp crack of the rifles of our sharpshooters from that of the enemy, whilst the hated stars and stripes was flaunting right under our noses. Indeed our counterscarp was the scarp to their advance works…. { sep tember 8, 18 63 }

the yankees seem greatly elated & are rushing all over Wagner & Gregg, peering into every hole and corner. I have been watching them a long time through the large telescope we have at Head Quarters. Well, they ought to be glad, the stout little earthwork has held out fifty seven days against the most terrible artillery fire to which any fort in the annals of war has ever been subjected. An English officer, who was in the fort, & who had been all throu’ the Crimean campaign told me that Sevastapol was child’s play to it. It has demonstrated that sand forts are the most invulnerable to such enormous ordnance as is now in use. The same day the Federals occupied the abandoned Confederate positions on Morris Island, a telegram arrived at Confederate headquarters from Fort Sumter’s new commander, Major Stephen Elliott; Dahlgren had demanded the fort’s surrender. General Thomas Jordon, Beauregard’s chief of staff, responded, “Inform Admiral Dahlgren that he may have Fort Sumter when he can take and hold it; that such demands are puerile and unbecoming.” The naval commander accepted the challenge and prepared for a nighttime amphibious assault with 500 sailors and Marines. The defenders of Sumter were ready for the attack, as Confederates had deciphered messages between Dahlgren and Gillmore about the operation. After a brief fight during the early hours of September 9, the Union forces were repelled, having suffered 102 casualties. No one in the fort had been killed or wounded.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)

PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

{ sep tember 9, 18 63 }

well, major elliott is either “a prophet or the son of a prophet.” At 1 o’clock last night the enemy attacked Sumpter with a fleet of from 30 to 40 barges. Elliott reserved his fire until the enemy were within a few yards of the southern & eastern faces, where they attempted to land. It was a regular brick-bat-fight with a few guns let off to give it a military appearance. Our men used, besides their muskets & the fragments of the epaulment, a plentiful supply of hand-grenades. The Yankee sailors & officers who had landed, sought refuge in the recesses & breaches of the scarp. 51 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR WINTER 2016

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Those, who had not landed, pulled rapidly away, but my friend Dan Lee, Midshipman on the “Chicora,” sent them his compliments in sundry stands of grape from his 7 in. rifle Brooke gun, while Ft. Johnson, & the batteries on Sullivan’s Island also sent their remembrances. Many of the retreating barges were, undoubtedly, destroyed by this destructive fire. Major Elliott succeeded in securing 5 boats, 5 stand of colours, 12 officers, and 100 [or 109] men (including 2 officers & 17 men wounded). Among the flags was one, tattered & worn, the identical garrison flag which once floated over Sumpter, & which Major Anderson was permitted to carry off with him when he surrendered in April 1861. How they would have boasted, could they have planted it on those haughty ramparts. To-night about 8 o’clock, the prisoners were brought up in the steamer “Etiwan.” Col. Rhett’s Regt. of Regulars was detailed as [the] guard & received them at the wharf, forming three sides of a square until the prisoners were marched in when the rear closed up and they were marched off to prison. They were fine looking men. The attacking force was probably between 700 & 800. Sometime before September 17, McCabe’s Foote guns arrived. McCabe took them to James Island, where he fired on U.S. vessels in Lighthouse Inlet (between Morris and Folly islands). The second time the guns fired, he was on Sullivan’s Island at Battery Marion west of Fort Moultrie.

{ o ctober 3 , 18 6 5 }

[the] enemy have continued to fire on Sumpter, with little or no damage. I took position this morning with my two guns to the left of Batt’y Marion, close to, Moultrie, & opened vigorously on the enemy both at Gregg [renamed Fort Putnam by the Federals] & Wagner [renamed Fort Strong]. I had a good deal of fun. A group of officers, & men were gathered on top of Wagner watching my rapid firing on Gregg; suddenly I wheeled my largest gun, & sent a shell whizzing over to Wagner. Ye gods! how quickly the superior slope was deserted! In the evening left the guns in charge of a Lieut. of Art’y, & directed him to open early to-morrow morning, & forward to me a table of his fire. Of the all ships in the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, USS New Ironsides was considered the most formidable. Around 10 p.m. on October 5 CSS David, a semi-submersible torpedo boat, tried to sink the behemoth enemy vessel in a nighttime attack. { o ctober 6, 18 63 }

a daring attempt to blow up the [USS New] Ironsides was made last night. Lieut. [William T.] Glassel[l], C.S.N. commanded. They ran alongside, G[l]assell shooting the man who hailed the boat, & exploded a torpedo containing 75 pounds of powder. Unfortunately the torpedo was not submerged deep enough, & did the ship no injury. The Yankees opened a vigorous fire of musketry on them. They tried to back off the torpedo-boat, but the column of water thrown up by the explosion had put out the fire, so they could not. There were only 4 of them altogether, & they jumped overboard. Glassel[l] & another were picked up by the enemy’s barges, but the other two becoming weak, swam back to the torpedo-boat, which had now floated off & drifted past several monitors. The[y] found a spark of fire left in the furnace kindled a fire, got the engines to working & ran the gauntlet through the fleet of monitors & the [USS New] Ironsides under heavy fire. The brave fellows arrived here safely this morning, their little craft riddled with bullets. In fact, only three sailors manned David. The Federals captured two of them, while the third escaped with the vessel. A few days later, McCabe witnessed an incident all too common in wartime. { o ctober 12 , 18 63 }

The next day, McCabe visited Battery Simpkins at the end of a narrow peninsula extending from near Fort Johnson on James Island. Colonel Charles H. Olmstead, 1st Georgia Infantry Regiment, was the battery’s commanding officer. There he inspected an improvised explosive device devised by the enemy.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)

an awful accident just occurred. A Yankee shell brought from Fort Sumpter, exploded very close to our H[ea]d Q[uarte]rs killed 2 little boys, 1 negro, & mortally wounded 2 others. Shivered the glass & knocked down ceiling in this & other room, but none of us were hurt. Providence be thanked. Intercepted several unimportant dispatches. The poor creatures, killed & wounded by the shell, were horribly mangled.

Admiral John A. Dahlgren

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Photographer George S. Cook took this image of the interior of Fort Sumter the day before the failed Union assault on September 9, 1863.

{ o ctober 13 , 18 63 }

an “infernal machine” floated up to Battery Simpkins on yesterday.... Description: Nine 15 in. shell boxes strapped together in a square. On the centre box an 11 in. shell box about one third full of tow saturated with turpentine; resting on the tow an 11 in. shell with 10 sec. fuze, quick match, attached, partially burnt out. Over the whole another 11 in. shell box, as a cap.... Col. [Charles H.] Olmstead suggests that this “machine” was only intended to serve the purpose of a fire ball, to throw light on the water suddenly in case of alarm, the shell being placed to prevent any one from approaching to extinguish the tow. McCabe’s time in Charleston ended on October 15, and he arrived back in Virginia on the 23rd. After service as an ordnance officer in Richmond’s defenses, on May 6, 1864, he was ordered to the Army of Northern Virginia, where he was assigned to Lieutenant Colonel B.G. Baldwin, the army’s chief of ordnance. On July 20 McCabe joined Colonel Willie Pegram’s artillery battalion as its ordnance officer. He served with his University of Virginia classmate and friend until Pegram’s death at the Battle of Five Forks in April 1865. Upon Robert E. Lee’s surrender, McCabe attempted to join General Joseph E. Johnston’s Confederate army in North Carolina. However, Johnston surrendered before the young lieutenant was able to reach his command. McCabe then tried to join General Tom Rosser in western Virginia. But Rosser surrendered on May 4 before McCabe was able to reach him. The last entry in McCabe’s remarkable wartime journal reads simply:

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)

Ret’d to Va. & took my parole, May 22nd, 1865. McCabe returned to Richmond. He would open a school for boys and serve as its principal until his retirement in 1901. An educator, scholar, poet, and writer, McCabe earned national attention, receiving honorary degrees from the College of William & Mary, Williams College, and Yale University. He was also very active in Confederate veterans groups and a popular speaker at reunions. William Gordon McCabe died in Richmond in 1920 at the age of 78. RICHARD W. HATCHER III RETIRED IN 2015 AFTER 44 YEARS WITH THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE. THIS INCLUDED SERVICE AT RICHMOND NATIONAL BATTLEFIELD PARK, KINGS MOUNTAIN NATIONAL MILITARY PARK, WILSON’S CREEK NATIONAL BATTLEFIELD, AND FORT SUMTER NATIONAL MONUMENT. HE IS THE AUTHOR OF SEVERAL ARTICLES AND CO-AUTHOR OF TWO BOOKS.

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THE

UNFORTUNATE COLONEL

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The trial of Seraphim Meyer, the 107th Ohio Infantry commander court-martialed for conduct during the Battle of Gettysburg, still raises questions about the nature of cowardice and courage. By Brian Matthew Jordan

In this sketch by Alfred R. Waud, members of the Louisiana Tigers attack soldiers of the Army of the Potomac’s XI Corps—to which Seraphim Meyer and the 107th Ohio Infantry belonged—on East Cemetery Hill during the Battle of Gettysburg’s second day.

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France, not far from where the German and Swiss borders converge, is the steepled hamlet of Bourbach-le-Bas. It was here, a month after Napoleon slinked into exile on Saint Helena, that Jacob and Maria Anna Meyer’s eighth and final child—a son they christened Seraphim—was born in 1815. The Meyers left France for Kendal, Ohio, in 1828, the

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

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PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN DOE

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PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

tucked in the rugged folds of northeastern

PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

scores of tourists gather in a giant white tent pitched in the shadow of the Gettysburg National Military Park Visitors’ Center—the shade a welcome respite from the blistering sun of summer in south-central Pennsylvania. Moments later, three National Park Service rangers who have exchanged their traditional green and gray for 19thcentury garb appear before the crowd. The buzzing audience is soon transformed into a Civil War court-martial jury. After scrutinizing the actual testimony furnished in the case of the lone Union colonel charged with cowardice during the war’s costliest engagement, these inquisitive sightseers and eager history buffs will once again put “courage on trial.”1 It’s not altogether surprising that the latest generation of Gettysburg pilgrims is pondering, at the invitation of the NPS, the once unspeakable subject of cowardice. Recent scholars, after all, have paid considerable attention to “broken” regiments, “reluctant rebels,” and soldier “misbehavior”—recounting the “shadow history” of those Billy Yanks and Johnny Rebs who failed to display “dogged determination” on the battlefield. Collectively, this work has revealed that while disillusionment did not romp wildly through the ranks, neither did ideology reliably brace men to endure the mental and physical demands of Civil War soldiering.2 As those mock jurors would soon discover, battle is an intricate mosaic of human emotions, and few Civil War soldiers make that point more compellingly than an unfortunate Ohio colonel named Seraphim Meyer.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (PREVIOUS SPREAD); CHRIS NELSON COLLECTION

Just before 1 p.m. on a Saturday in late June,

very year that wooden vessels began to creak along the Stark County segment of the Ohio & Erie Canal. They ultimately settled in Canton, then a rather uninspiring map dot a dozen miles east of the canal bed and 60 miles south of Cleveland. (Not until Cornelius Aultman relocated his reaper manufactory to Canton in the decade before the Civil War would the city offer a hint of its future prominence.)3 An industrious student who was fluent in three languages, Seraphim Meyer was admitted to the bar and began practicing law at age 23. His skill in the courtroom was rivaled only by his political prowess. The Ohio Repository not so affectionately dubbed Meyer “the demagogue stumper,” scolding his “deceptive” efforts to rally immigrant support for Democrat Lewis Cass in the presidential election of 1848. He was “indefatigable,” the paper huffed, in alleging that Whig candidate Zachary Taylor was a nativist and “opposed to foreigners voting.” (Though Cass lost the election, he edged the Mexican War general in Ohio.)4 Meyer’s allegiance to the Democratic Party ensured that his political star would continue to rise. After being designated one of Ohio’s electors for Stephen A. Douglas in 1860, he commenced a 17-month stint as Canton’s mayor in May 1861. It would not be long before Democrats began to include him on lists of “aspirants for the Senate.”5 But the sectional conﬂict’s mounting demands intervened. In the frenzied wake of Fort Sumter, Meyer “broke loose from all party ties” and, as he explained it, “took a stand for the Union.” As a member of the Military Committee of Stark County, he crisscrossed Ohio’s 17th Congressional District, recruiting men (including three of his teenaged sons, Turenne, Marcus, and Edward) for the blue-coated armies. Then, in the summer of 1862, after Lincoln issued his summons for “three hundred thousand more,” Governor David Tod, a Youngstown Democrat, ordered Meyer to raise an infantry regiment of his own. His utter poverty of military experience provoked no immediate concern. “I deemed it my duty to accept the trust,” Meyer later commented, adding immodestly that his colonel’s commission resulted from “the influence I possessed in the State.”6 Beginning in early August, farmers and carpenters, shoemakers and stonecutters assembled in places like Navarre and Tiffin, New Philadelphia and Cleveland to enlist in the 107th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Of the 994 soldiers whose names are recorded in the unit’s now brittle descriptive books, some 682 were foreign born; while a few hailed from Switzerland, Ireland, and Canada, the vast majority were German immigrants. Compa-

PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE

The infantry regiment Seraphim Meyer raised in the summer of 1862—the 107th Ohio—consisted largely of foreignborn volunteers, in particular Germans. Shown here is an anonymous member of the regiment.

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Seraphim Meyer himself became “seriously sick,” prostrated “for days” as he endured dizzy spells and “labor[ed] under a very painful cough.”8 In late January, seeking redemption after the humiliation of Fredericksburg (an engagement that the 107th was fortunate to miss), General Ambrose Burnside ordered his Army of the Potomac to fold its tents and begin marching. The damp winter, however, had plastered the roads with a porridge-like muck. “The Army,” one of Colonel Meyer’s men wryly remarked, “is literally stuck fast in the mud.” Mauled in the press and equipped with a new metaphor for the war’s progress in the eastern theater, the troops were arrested in their dismal camps until the spring.9 The Ohioans had barely thawed when, in late April 1863, General Burnside’s blustery successor, Joseph Hooker, unveiled ambitious plans for a spring campaign. The Union cavalry would slice its way behind enemy lines as a tiny federal force conducted a feint opposite Fredericksburg; meanwhile, the balance of Hooker’s army would splash across the Rapidan, steal through the tangled timber of “the Wilderness,” then slam into the left of the unsuspecting Army of Northern Virginia. Nothing, however, went according to plan those ﬁrst three days of May. Though greatly outnumbered, Robert E. Lee twice divided his army—once again confounding the Army of the Potomac as it coiled around a crossroads called Chancellorsville. For its part, the 107th Ohio rustled into position at the Talley Farm along the Orange Turnpike. With the balance of General Oliver Otis Howard’s XI Corps, they anchored the extreme right of a federal line that dangled dangerously in the air. Throughout the afternoon on May 2, “a few scattering shots out on the picket line” interrupted an anguished quiet. Still, the anticipated frontal assault did not come, and as dusk approached, the “general apprehension” that for hours rippled through the regiment finally “began to subside.”10 Then came disaster. The sole omen of Stonewall Jackson’s flank attack was a lone artillery shell that came hurtling into the Union ranks around 5 p.m. Twenty minutes later, “with the crushing power of an avalanche,” Confederate brigades neatly arrayed on both sides of the turnpike—Robert Rodes’ oversized division in the lead—tore through the unsuspecting blue lines. Hearing the “wild shrieks and demonic yells” of the whiskey-baited Rebels, it seemed to one first lieutenant in Company D as though “the population of the lower regions were turned loose to devour our men on the spot.” The initial shock of the bewildering attack quickly yielded to chaos as the Union troops scrambled pell-mell for the rear. The Ohioans

Above: Alfred R. Waud captures the panicked retreat of the Union XI Corps during the fighting at Chancellorsville. The battle, during which the 107th’s Colonel Meyer was taken prisoner, “assumed the appearance and character of a massacre,” in the words of a member of the regiment.

The men who joined Meyer’s 107th Ohio were prompted by a variety of motivations. George Billow (pictured left), a 28-year-old wagon maker, noted a “stern sense of loyalty to country” was behind his decision.

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CHRIS NELSON COLLECTION (OPPOSITE); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

ny C, commanded by Colonel Meyer’s 19-year-old son, Edward, was 79 percent German; Company F was almost exclusively German. As with any Civil War regiment, enlistment motivations varied. While some were no doubt lured by the promise of a modest bounty and an advance on their first month’s pay (“If we do not receive what was promised us,” Private Christian Rieker advised in a September 1862 letter to his sister, “we shall not go forth”), 28-year-old Akron wagon maker George Billow was inspired by a “stern sense of loyalty to country.” Billow was hardly alone among Republicans in the regiment but, like Meyer, most of the volunteers were Democrats, making it likely that few among them saw stamping out slavery as a priority.7 Two months after mustering in at Camp Cleveland, Seraphim Meyer and the 107th Ohio set out for northern Virginia. Frigid temperatures and squalls of sleet, hail, rain, and ice awaited them, first at Camp Stafford and then at Belle Plain Landing and Brook’s Station. It was a winter few would forget. “The weather was cold and bad enough to have killed us,” Private Daniel Biddle remembered. Sergeant George Billow related that the “balls of my feet broke and became sore after the frostbite in the winter of 1862 & 1863.” Regimental morning reports tallied scores of men “sent sick” in each company, and of course, neither illnesses nor chronic diseases revered any distinction between officers and enlisted men.

CHRIS NELSON COLLECTION (OPPOSITE); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

scampered into their second line of entrenchments. According to the 107th’s Jacob Smith, the battle now “assumed the appearance and character of a massacre.” “If we had remained five minutes longer,” insisted a soldier from Connecticut who fought in the 107th’s brigade, “we should … have [all] been killed or taken prisoners.” “I never believed that men would fight as well for a miserable cause as the rebels did there for theirs,” a still incredulous Adjutant Peter F. Young observed years later.11 Gripped with terror during his baptism of fire, Colonel Meyer was helpless to maintain the good order of the unit. “The bullets,” Christian Rieker insisted, “just whistled by … like a real hailstorm.” One of those bullets whistled into the neck of Colonel Meyer’s horse; when the steed bucked, the Rebels snared his rider as yet another prisoner. As they escorted their prized captive to the rear at bayonet point and readied him for the long journey to Richmond, the gray-clad troops

encircled the last, dazed remnants of the 107th. Suddenly, one of the southerners’ leaden slugs smacked into the lower jaw of Seraphim’s son, Edward, fracturing the bone in three places and ejecting an equal number of teeth. Prostrated on the field, he was left for dead. Back in Ohio, the Defiance Democrat lamented his demise on May 16. The report was erroneous; although he needed urgent medical care after being discovered, the captain survived his injury.12 Decades later, Edward claimed that as he “lay most seriously wounded,” he witnessed his father’s “captors leading him away from the field.” Whether or not Seraphim caught a glimpse of his injured son, feelings of terror, helplessness, and indignation must have consumed him along the wearisome journey to Richmond’s Libby Prison, an imposing old tobacco warehouse perched along the James. Nor does it strain credulity to imagine a heartbroken colonel pacing his “loathsome room” in that notorious den, afflicted with 59 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR WINTER 2016

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chancellorsville was immediately and indel-

ibly inscribed on the hearts and in the minds of Seraphim Meyer’s men. In their ﬁrst major combat action, the 107th Ohio reported at least 220 men killed, wounded, missing, or captured; the battle’s toll was especially devastating among the regiment’s non-commissioned officers. Christian Rieker deemed it a “very great miracle” that he was yet alive. “Many fell on my right and on my left,” he marveled, “yet [the battle] did not harm me in the least.” Even more vexing than the physical injuries were the psychological consequences of Chancellorsville. Almost immediately after the battle, Godfrey Kappel of Company I began to manifest symptoms of “nervous fever,” an ailment that soon became an epidemic in the regiment. “He is unaware of what is happening,” Rieker reported in late May. “Often he wants to leave, and when one asks him to where, he says to [his home in] Zoar.” Only weeks after the battle, Sergeant Charles Wimar was “reduced to the ranks,” being “incapacitated by insanity.” Citing his “feeble state of health,” the “perilous condition of his company,” and the “recent trials and hardships to which the regiment was subjected in the late battles of Chancellorsville,” First Lieutenant Hamilton Starkweather resigned his commission. More than a few men were unable to sustain their enlistment idealism. “If we are asked what was gained by our brave loss of men,” regimental musician John Roedel insisted plainly, “the answer is no gain at all.”14 Meanwhile, Colonel Meyer impatiently awaited his release from Libby. Paroled at the end of May, he made a surreal reunion with Edward, who was still recovering from his wound, and an unhappy reunion with his regiment, which was still smarting from the slurs the northern press had heaped upon the XI Corps. The men of the 107th Ohio likewise remonstrated against the “harsh and severe treatment” doled out by their new superior officers: brigade commander Adelbert Ames, a Mainer who sported an impressive walrus mustache and tuft of chin fringe, and division commander Francis Channing Barlow, who, his innocent appearance notwithstanding, had packed plenty of hard fighting into his 28 years. But there would be little time to settle scores. Only a few nights after Colonel Meyer’s return, at a bivouac no more than a mile north of Emmitsburg, Maryland, the men learned that the enemy was near, and that “there was not much doubt but that [an] engagement would begin sometime

within the next day or two.” It was Tuesday, June 30, 1863.15 Reveille sounded early the next morning. By 6 a.m., Seraphim Meyer and his men were tramping north on the road to Gettysburg. “We had not gone half the distance,” remembered Jacob Smith, “when we began to hear the noise of firing and cannonading.” Soon, an orderly from Oliver Howard’s staff arrived, short of breath and directing the men “to hurry forward.” Major General John Fulton Reynolds, commanding the I Corps, had been killed that morning by a Confederate sharpshooter west of the town. Because the newly installed army commander, George Gordon Meade, had not yet arrived, command of the field momentarily devolved upon Howard, the onearmed general who led the XI Corps.16 “We immediately advanced to the front,” recalled the 107th’s Fritz Nussbaum. Howard opted to moor one of his divisions—Adolph von Steinwehr’s—in a reserve position atop Cemetery Hill, a commanding knob south of the town. Then, he ordered his remaining two divisions forward through the town, directing them to brace the I Corps soldiers posted along the spine of Oak Ridge. Yet before Howard’s soldiers emerged from the tangle of the borough, Robert Rodes unlimbered his artillery and anchored his fivebrigade division of Alabamians, Georgians, and North Carolinians on a wide plateau called Oak Hill. So the XI Corps troops instead bent the Union line back and stretched it out to the right,

The men of the 107th Ohio did not have long to recover from the physical and psychological toll they incurred during the Battle of Chancellorsville. Left: Edward Meyer, who was shot in the jaw and left for dead during the fighting.

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OPPOSITE: UNITED STATES ARMY HERITAGE AND EDUCATION CENTER, CARLISLE , PA

“prison fever,” rehearsing over and again the scenes of Chancellorsville. For all he knew, his youngest son, the boy with the gray eyes and the shock of dark brown hair, was dead.13

ROC KC

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Blocher’s Knoll | Gettysburg, Pennsylvania | July 1, 1863

OPPOSITE: UNITED STATES ARMY HERITAGE AND EDUCATION CENTER, CARLISLE , PA

As the lead elements of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia approached the outskirts of Gettysburg on the morning of July 1, 1863, the Army of the Potomac’s I and XI Corps raced to meet them. General Francis Channing Barlow’s division of the XI Corps, consisting of the brigades of Leopold von Gilsa and Adelbert Ames (which included Seraphim Meyer’s 107th Ohio), took up positions on an elevation north of town known as Blocher’s Knoll. Soon thereafter, Confederate troops belonging to the brigades of George Pierce Doles and John Brown Gordon slammed into the Union position, which soon became untenable. Before long, the entire Union line was in retreat, heading to regroup on the heights south of town.

facing north so as to keep a watchful eye on the Carlisle and Harrisburg roads—both of which threatened to deliver additional reinforcements to the Rebels.17 Owing to Howard’s absence, Carl Schurz, the senior division commander, assumed the leadership of the corps. Dreading “a possible flanking movement by the enemy,” the bespectacled Schurz directed Barlow, holding the extreme right of the blue line now tightly coiled around Gettysburg, “to refuse his right wing.” The young general dutifully parked his breathless brigades— Ames’ and Colonel Leopold von Gilsa’s—astride the Harrisburg Road, near the campus of the county almshouse, a collection of multistory brick buildings dating to the mid-1820s. But he would not remain on this ground long. With his present perch “topographically devoid of natural or artificial defenses,” Barlow was drawn to a knoll in his front that peered over the south bank

of Rock Creek. While hardly “a dominating position,” the wide elevation, known to the locals as Blocher’s Knoll, would afford “a fine platform for artillery”—its partially timbered northern face notwithstanding.18 Colonel von Gilsa’s men advanced first, “dash[ing] forward on the double quick” to secure the eminence. “It proved to be a hot place for us,” a captain in one of von Gilsa’s outfits reported matter of factly. From a perch farther north that overlooked the Harrisburg Road, Lieutenant Colonel Hilary Pollard Jones’ southern artillerists lobbed shells at the federal soldiers—their deadly symphony announcing the arrival of Major General Jubal Early’s division of gray-clad troops.19 About 2 p.m., Rebel skirmishers emerged from the woods and peppered the defenders of Blocher’s Knoll with a few volleys. Slowly at first, but then with the earnest strength of a “savage charge,” Brigadier General John Brown Gordon’s howling 61 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR WINTER 2016

“Will the Rebels again be successful, and must all this sacrifice of blood, lives and treasure be made in vain?” JACOB SMITH, 107TH OHIO INFANTRY

consternation was depicted in his countenance.” Ames scolded Colonel Meyer, both for “cowardly conduct” and for “unnecessary[il]y dodging” at the drone of the shells, but the public upbraiding apparently had no effect. “Even while reproving him for such conduct,” the general sniffed, “he repeated the same.” Finally, Colonel Meyer directed his men to move, but he bellowed Ames’ orders in such an “excited” manner that the “greatest confusion” ensued in the ranks. Some men remained fixed in place, even as others “faced to the left & moved off.” Flush with indignation and his patience all but expended, Ames dispatched his assistant adjutant general, Captain J.B. Brown, to position the Ohioans at the tip of the forlorn federal salient.22

Above, left to right: Generals John Brown Gordon, George Pierce Doles, and Francis Channing Barlow, men whose commands clashed during the Battle of Gettysburg’s first day. Opposite page: Brigadier General Adelbert Ames

subjected to “an enﬁlading ﬁre of the most

terrible kind,” Ames’ ﬁght for the knoll was, even if doomed to failure, nonetheless hard and closely fought. “Fiercely and obstinately,” a soldier from the 25th Ohio reported, the contest with the Georgians raged. “How frantically we gnawed paper from cartridges,” exclaimed William Southerton of the 75th Ohio. “What a horrible roar of battle! Smoke and fumes thick and acrid.” The “crash of small-arms,” as yet another participant explained, was “deafening,” as “resounding and unintermittent as the thunder of some mighty cataract.” Caught in “a most tremendous crossfire,” the boys of the 107th anxiously squeezed the triggers of their weapons.23 Accounts of what happened next are sparse— the narrative momentum of otherwise detailed

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM (DOLES); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (3)

Georgians “charged through the creek,” climbed its steep banks, and careened into von Gilsa’s troops. Though the line of New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians did not snap immediately (indeed, a private in the 61st Georgia affirmed that “they were harder to drive than we had ever known them before”), their position was ultimately untenable.20 Now it would be Ames’ turn. The three Ohio regiments (including Seraphim Meyer and the 107th) and all but four companies of the 17th Connecticut had been brought up to brace von Gilsa. But with Gordon blazing away to their front and Brigadier General George Pierce Doles’ brigade (from Rodes’ division) bearing down on them from the west, their position summoned only the chilling memories of Chancellorsville. Once more, they found themselves on the extreme right of the federal line, their flanks exposed and their position about to be overwhelmed. “Here, as at Chancellorsville,” Carl Schurz related, full of remorse, “neither [Barlow] nor his men could do themselves justice.” “The experience of Chancellorsville was here repeated,” echoed a veteran of the 17th Connecticut. Still another veteran of the fight wrote that the “affairs” north of Gettysburg assumed “a Chancellorsville hue.”21 Amid the “pandemonium of howling, hissing, and exploding missiles,” Ames galloped up to Seraphim Meyer and ordered him to post the 107th Ohio atop the knoll. Yet almost immediately, the brigade commander sensed something awry. “I noticed that at the whistling of shells and bullets he would crouch down upon his horse,” Ames remarked, “his breast nearly touching the neck of the horse, and at the same time great fear [and] 62 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR WINTER 2016

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THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM (DOLES); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (3)

diarists, letter writers, and even the 107th’s regimental historian stalled under the strain of the battle, devolving into a dreary catalog of casualties. Captain John M. Lutz inked the unit’s official report, imparting only that the 107th “suffered heavily in killed and wounded,” which, considering the regiment lost 53 percent of its men, was itself something of an understatement. Yet eyewitness testimony by two soldiers from neighboring regiments (soldiers who were, of course, under no obligation to safeguard the 107th’s reputation) permit us to recover something of the story.24 “While I dislike to call attention to that matter at this late day,” advised the 25th Ohio’s Ed-

ward C. Culp in the pages of the National Tribune, the leading Union veterans’ periodical, in 1885, “truth compels me to say that Col. Meyer left the field disgracefully, early in the engagement, and did not turn up until late the next day, when we were behind the stone fence on Cemetery Ridge.” Despite his resolve to set the record straight, Culp was perhaps discreet; indeed, Meyer was so annexed by emotion that at least one observer thought him intoxicated. “One of the officers of the 107th Ohio reg’t was drunk,” Private William Warren of the 17th Connecticut concluded in his voluminous diary, and “while they were falling back, I passed between the officer and the reg’t [and] he swung ☛ } CONT. ON P. 74 63 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR WINTER 2016

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BOOKS & AUTHORS

The Best Civil War Books of 2016 PATRICK MITCHELL

it’s time again for our annual roundup of the year’s best Civil War

titles. As usual, we’ve enlisted the help of a handful of Civil War historians and enthusiasts, avid readers all, and asked them to pick their two favorite books published in 2016. We also gave them a chance to name an additional title or two that they’re looking forward to, books that either were released this year or are coming out in print soon.

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B&A A. Wilson Greene I don’t know how he does it, but Earl Hess manages to publish one fine book after another. His latest offering, Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man of the Confederacy (University of North Carolina Press)—a thorough examination of Braxton Bragg as a man and as a general—may be one of his best. Hess confronts Bragg’s image and reputation, both among contemporaries and in the minds of modern students, with a judicious command of the sources to present a much more balanced view than those crafted in previous Bragg biographies and campaign studies. Hess leads us through Bragg’s Civil War military career (only short chapters deal with his prewar and postwar years), analyzing his generalship as well as his personality. The commander who emerges is, to be sure, a flawed one, but hardly the abject failure described by so many writers. Perhaps more importantly, Hess introduces us to Braxton Bragg the man—a loving husband, loyal friend, and tireless worker. Make no mistake, both Braxton Bragg and General Bragg had their weaknesses, and Hess never hesitates to illuminate them. This is not a revisionist polemic. Yet no one interested in the Confederate military or the war in the western theater should fail to read this book. With the publication of Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man of the Confederacy, one more facile Civil War history stereotype bites the dust. My Top Pick

The last weeks of the Civil War in Virginia are of special interest to me, hence I eagerly awaited Noah Andre Trudeau’s new study of the president’s spring 1865 visit to Petersburg and City Point, Lincoln’s Greatest Journey: Sixteen Days that Changed a Presidency, March 24–April 8, 1865 (Savas Beatie). I was not disappointed. Trudeau adds an engaging writing style to his usual array of previously untapped sources. The details of Lincoln’s time at the front are fresh, and so is Trudeau’s analysis of Lin3honorable mention

coln’s mindset as he contemplated the end of the war and the emergence of a new but undefined United States. And you thought you already knew everything there is to know about our 16th president! forward to Every great Civil War battle or campaign deserves a detailed operational history. The Chickamauga Campaign—Barren Victory: The Retreat into Chattanooga, the Confederate Pursuit, and the Aftermath of the Battle, September 21 to October 20, 1863 (Savas Beatie), scheduled for publication this fall, is the third volume of David A. Powell’s epic study of Chickamauga. If it resembles the first two volumes, it will generate a grateful readership. Looking further ahead, Gordon Rhea has been hard at work on the fifth and final volume of his study of the Overland Campaign, taking the Army of the Potomac over the James River and engaging General P.G.T. Beauregard’s forces at Petersburg on June 15. Gordon has shared drafts of some of his chapters with me and, not surprisingly, his work— 3 looking

which Louisiana State University Press has scheduled for a 2017 release—is outstanding. A. WILSON GREENE IS THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF PAMPLIN HISTORICAL PARK AND THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE CIVIL WAR SOLDIER. HE RECENTLY SUBMITTED THE FIRST OF A THREE-VOLUME STUDY OF THE PETERSBURG CAMPAIGN TO THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS.

Andrew Wagenhoffer Issues surrounding Civil War-era social and political border identity have been strong thematic elements of Christopher Phillips’ scholarly career, and his latest book, The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War and the Remaking of the American Middle Border (Oxford University Press), effectively reminds us of the signiﬁcantly blurred nature of antebellum America’s internal boundaries. The author persuasively argues that over vast stretches of the Midwest states bordering the Ohio and Missouri rivers there existed a cultural consensus, an extension of which was the My Top Pick

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“ I don’t know how he does it, but Earl Hess manages to publish one fine book after another.” A. WILSON GREENE ON BRAXTON BRAGG: THE MOST HATED MAN OF THE CONFEDERACY

adoption of moderate political views. In Phillips’ view, the shared ideal of a new western section that would take a united nation into the future was permanently shattered in the middle border region by the realities of Civil War, when harsh Union occupation measures, intractable guerrilla warfare, and deep social divisions over emancipation and black enlistment forced the population into rival camps that would endure far into the future. The book also ably shows how postwar commemoration, with its creation of artiﬁcially exclusive Civil War memories and narratives, only reinforced the NorthSouth divisions wrought by the conflict. Phillips’ vast original research and clear mastery of the secondary literature inform every page, and his thoughtfully selected case studies strategically placed throughout the volume bring a deeply personal touch to the many macro-scale divisions examined in the book. Some of the author’s previous work, including a detailed assessment of the Union occupation army’s “dominion policy” aimed at rooting out all vestiges of middle ground

loyalty in the region, is seamlessly integrated into the study, making The Rivers Ran Backward something of a career capstone for Phillips. mention Gary Ecelbarger is one of the best Civil War battle historians, and his recent decision to transfer his attention from the Shenandoah Valley to the heretofore much neglected 1864 Georgia Campaign pleased many students of the western theater. Ecelbarger’s battle narrative in Slaughter at the Chapel: The Battle of Ezra Church, 1864 (University of Oklahoma Press) is highly detailed yet engaging (the pages fly by), and his judicious analysis of the command abilities and relationships (at all levels and for both sides), as well as the tactics, terrain, and weapons involved in the fighting, is admirable in its thoroughness and clarity. The book also has the best maps created to date for the engagement. A clearheaded reassessment of the controversies surrounding the battle, especially those related to the Confederate high command, is another 3 honorable

The Top-Selling Civil War Titles of 2016 These books are the 10 bestselling Civil War titles published in 2016, ranked in order of copies sold through mid-October. BASED ON SALES DATA PROVIDED BY NIELSEN BOOKSCAN

The Free State of Jones, Movie Edition: Mississippi’s Longest Civil War

Pickett’s Charge: A New Look at Gettysburg’s Final Attack

By Victoria E. Bynum

By Phillip Thomas Tucker

(UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS)

(SKYHORSE PUBLISHING)

$18

$27.99

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B&A appealing feature of the volume. This is the second full-length Ezra Church study of high quality to appear in as many years, and the pair possess considerable strengths that contrast more than enough to make both books must-reads for any Atlanta Campaign student. forward to I am anxious to finally read Terry Lowry’s The Battle of Charleston and the 1862 Kanawha Valley Campaign (35th Star Publishing), his epic study of the near forgotten western Virginia campaign timed to coincide with the Confederacy’s other great 1862 summer offensives. It will be the campaign’s first book-length treatment, and the scale of the project looks to be quite prodigious. The Civil War in Indian Territory has received increased attention of late, but perspectives of those who actually fought with the units raised from among the territory’s many tribal groups remain largely absent from the published literature. Hopefully, M. Jane Johannson’s Albert C. Ellithorpe, the First Indian Home Guards,

Civil War experiences of unique Union military formations like the Indian Home Guard regiments. ANDREW WAGENHOFFER IS THE CREATOR AND EDITOR OF THE NONFICTION BOOK REVIEW JOURNAL CIVIL WAR BOOKS AND AUTHORS (CWBA. BLOGSPOT.COM).

3 looking

Kevin M. Levin Since the release of the Academy Award-winning movie Glory 25 years ago, our memory of the black soldier experience during the Civil War continues to be dominated by the men of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Douglas R. Egerton’s highly readable new book, Thunder at the Gates: The Black Civil War Regiments that Redeemed America (Basic Books), explores this famous regiment, along with the 55th Massachusetts Infantry and 5th Massachusetts Cavalry. For those familiar only with the movie, this book dispels some of the myths it introduced. For example, My Top Pick

and the Civil War on the Trans-Mississippi Frontier (Louisiana State University Press), an edited collection of Ellithorpe’s writings due out in November, will expose a wider reading audience to the

City of Sedition: The History of New York City during the Civil War

The Maps of the Wilderness

Conversations with Lincoln

By Bradley M. Gottfried

A Savage War: A Military History of the Civil War

By John Strausbaugh

(SAVAS BEATIE)

(TWELVE)

$39.95

$30

By Williamson Murray and Wayne Wei-Siang Hsieh (PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS)

By Gordon Leidner (CUMBERLAND HOUSE)

$29.95

$35

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“ For those familiar only with the movie [Glory], this book dispels some of the myths it introduced.” KEVIN M. LEVIN ON THUNDER AT THE GATES: THE BLACK CIVIL WAR REGIMENTS THAT REDEEMED AMERICA BY DOUGLAS R. EGERTON.

these units were made up primarily of free blacks, not fugitive slaves, and they did not suffer for a lack of weapons and uniforms during their training. Egerton thoroughly examines the black soldiers’ protests over unequal pay within the broader context of a national debate over what service in the military might mean for African Americans who helped to save the Union. The author also explores the battles and other military operations carried out by these three units, including their brief time in South Carolina during the first few months of Reconstruction. The final chapter follows many of the veterans through their challenges and the steps taken to commemorate their war service, which led to the dedication of the famous monument to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and his men on the Boston Common. mention Confederate leaders dreamed of establishing a slaveholding empire. That dream, according to Matthew Karp in This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of Amer3 honorable

7 Out Flew the Sabres: The Battle of Brandy Station By Eric J. Wittenberg and Daniel T. Davis

taine Maury, and Abel Parker Upshur believed that a large navy was necessary to protect America’s slaveholding interests in the face of slave unrest in the Caribbean and other parts of the Western Hemisphere. Ultimately, it was a strong national government that guaranteed the protection of slavery in places like Texas, Brazil, and Cuba right up to the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. The formation of the new Confederate States of America represented the best opportunity for southern leaders to protect their slaveholding interests and shape the future of the Atlantic World. We know very little about the establishment and operation of camps for contraband slaves during the Civil War. In her recently released study Troubled Refuge: Struggling for Freedom in the Civil War (Knopf ), Chandra Manning provides the first comprehensive examination of these camps, one that is sure to enrich our understanding of how freedom came for so many slaves by emphasizing the many challenges and 3looking forward to

ican Foreign Policy (Harvard University Press), extended back as far as the 1830s in response to Britain’s decision to end slavery within its empire. Southern leaders such as John Calhoun, Matthew Fon-

8 Eyewitness Gettysburg: The Civil War’s Greatest Battle

9 A Field Guide to Antietam By Carol Reardon and Tom Vossler

10 The Second Battle of Winchester

By Rod Gragg

(UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS)

By Eric J. Wittenberg and Scott L. Mingus

(SAVAS BEATIE)

(REGNERY HISTORY)

$23

(SAVAS BEATIE)

$14.95

$18.99

$32.95

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B&A dangers that they faced along the way. Next year, one of my favorite Civil War authors, Stephen W. Sears, is coming out with a new book: Lincoln’s Lieutenants: The High Command of the Army of the Potomac (Houghton Mifflin). I can’t wait for this one. Enough said. KEVIN M. LEVIN, A HISTORIAN AND EDUCATOR BASED IN BOSTON, IS THE AUTHOR OF REMEMBERING THE BATTLE OF THE CRATER: WAR AS MURDER (UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY, 2012), WHICH WILL BE RELEASED IN PAPERBACK IN 2017. HE IS CURRENTLY AT WORK ON SEARCHING FOR BLACK CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS: THE CIVIL WAR’S MOST PERSISTENT MYTH. YOU CAN FIND HIM ONLINE AT CIVIL WAR MEMORY (CWMEMORY.COM).

Joan Waugh Yet another sweeping biography on the life and times of Ulysses S. Grant has made an appearance. What makes Ronald C. White’s American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant (Random House) worthy of reading? In my view, it offers insights and perspectives that previous authors either mentioned briefly or passed over entirely. Ron White’s U.S. Grant read widely, was an avid theatergoer, exhibited intellectual and spiritual curiosity, and was an acute cultural and political observer. The military hero emerged with a powerful commitment to the Union, and the twoterm president presided over a truly transformative era. This is an epic story that will continue to vindicate Grant’s reputation as a soldier-statesman in the 21st century. My Top Pick

mention With Lincoln & the Politics of Slavery: The Other Thirteenth Amendment and the Struggle to Save the Union (University of North Carolina Press), Daniel W. Crofts has produced a lively, engaging, and provocative book that challenges and corrects the ascendant “feel good” narrative that Abraham Lincoln, Republican politicians, and a majority of the northern people wanted 3 honorable

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“ Ronald C. White … offers insights and perspectives that previous authors either mentioned briefly or passed over entirely.” JOAN WAUGH ON AMERICAN ULYSSES: A LIFE OF ULYSSES S. GRANT

to abolish slavery even before the war began. The record, he argues, shows this was not true. Throughout, Crofts highlights the story of another, now forgotten 13th amendment that sought to enshrine slavery’s protection in the U.S. Constitution, and in the telling, reminds readers of the willingness of northern leaders and southern unionists to compromise to keep the country together.

closely linked to the antislavery movement, but nevertheless pointed the direction that mainstream politics would eventually follow. To prove her points, the author supplies multiple examples on every page, but the writing is so clear and well organized that the argument never gets lost in the details, and the book remains a pleasure to read. This is the rare kind of book that will make the reading list of every graduate seminar in 19thcentury American history for the next 10 years, while also finding a wide readership outside of academia.

forward to Christopher Phillips’ recently released The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War and the Remaking of the American Middle Border promises a compelling narrative examining the fates of the middle border free and slave states in which there were sizable numbers of citizens who held mixed loyalties and identities during and after the war. In October, the latest from William C. Davis, Inventing Loreta Velasquez: Confederate Soldier Impersonator, Media Celebrity, and Con Artist (Southern Illinois University Press), will be released. Inventing Loreta Velasquez promises to unpack and demolish the myths surrounding her controversial life. In Davis’ story she is hardly the patriotic Rebel soldier and spy she claimed to be on her resume, but nonetheless emerges in some ways an even more fascinating figure. Look for the movie soon! 3 looking

mention Engineering Victory: How Technology Won the Civil War (John Hopkins University Press) by Thomas F. Army Jr. is the best book of its kind since Edward Hagerman’s The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare in 1988. The misleading subtitle implies an unsophisticated reductionist approach that favors things over people in explaining the outcome of the war, but in fact the author argues that the North’s advantage in logistics and military engineering (broadly defined) reflected cultural, social, and economic differences between the North and the South, as seen in their prewar educational systems and attitudes toward innovation. You don’t have to agree that technology really won the war by itself to enjoy this fresh look at an old topic. 3 honorable

JOAN WAUGH IS A PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES. HER MOST RECENT BOOK (CO-AUTHORED WITH GARY W. GALLAGHER) IS THE AMERICAN WAR: A HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR ERA.

Gerald J. Prokopowicz The Slave’s Cause: A History of AbMy Top olition (Yale University Press) by Pick Manisha Sinha is the year’s most significant Civil War-era book. It challenges a long-held belief that abolitionism was a fringe movement, limited primarily to elite, white, northern busybodies, by presenting substantial evi-

forward to This one is easy: The Chickamauga Campaign—Barren Victory: The Retreat into Chattanooga, the Confederate Pursuit, and the Aftermath of the Battle, September 21 to October 20, 1863 by David Powell. I was thinking of choosing this as one of the two best of the year, even though my copy hasn’t arrived yet, just on the strength of the first two volumes of Powell’s Chickamauga trilogy. 3 looking

dence that abolitionism flourished across lines of class, race, gender, and nationality in the decades before the Civil War. Sinha argues persuasively that abolitionism was championed by far more than a few followers of William Lloyd Garrison; it was a complex mix of ideologies that led to internal clashes over black emigration, women’s rights, and other issues

GERALD J. PROKOPOWICZ IS A PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AT EAST CAROLINA UNIVERSITY. HE IS CURRENTLY WORKING ON A BOOK ABOUT ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN PUBLIC MEMORY.

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AMERICAN ILIAD

CONTINUED FROM P. 26

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White House reception, which is open to the public and unusually well attended because everyone has heard that Grant will likely make an appearance. At 9:30 p.m.—perhaps after a brief catnap—the national hero arrives, again with his son, at the presidential mansion’s main entrance. With them is wizened Simon Cameron, Lincoln’s former secretary of war. The trio makes its way toward the murmuring crowd. Nearly a half-century later Grant’s son—by then Major General Frederick D. Grant—will describe what ensues to an assemblage of former Union officers. “As my father entered the drawing-room door ... the other visitors fell back in silence, and President Lincoln received my father most cordially, taking both his hands, and saying, ‘I am most delighted to see you, General.’ I see them now before me, Lincoln, tall, thin and impressive, with deeply-lined face, and his strong, sad eyes; Grant, compact, of good size, but looking small beside the President, with his broad, square head and compressed lips—decisive and resolute. This was a thrilling moment, for in the hands of these two men was the destiny of our country.”4 We have numerous eyewitness accounts of what happens next, but once again, the Tribune reporter ably captures the scene: “The reception of Gen. Grant at the President’s levee in the evening was more furious than any scene that ever transpired in the East Room. He was literally lifted up for a while, and in obedience to a demand and to a necessity, so great was the desire to have a fair look at him, he was obliged to mount a sofa, under the auspices of Secretary [of State William] Seward, who preceded him to that elevation.” (The novelist-historian Shelby Foote will describe this moment—Grant, awkward and embarrassed, surrounded by the breathless crowd, with a beaming Seward delighted to share the spotlight—as “an authentic historical tableau.”) “There has never been such a coat-tearing, button bursting jam in the White-House as this soldier has occasioned,” the reporter as-

sures the Tribune’s readers. “The cheering and waving of handkerchiefs was in the customary fury of Americans over the popular favorites.”5 Grant is soon escorted to an adjacent room where he, Lincoln, and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton confer privately. Lincoln outlines the promotion ceremony scheduled for the next day. He will make a few remarks, and then Grant will make a few of his own. He suggests that Grant include something to obviate the jealousy of other generals and something to flatter the politics-ridden Army of the Potomac. Grant, perhaps pointedly, will include neither suggestion. The nation’s foremost news magazine, Harper’s Weekly, will depict the ceremony in a full-page engraving, and newspapers across the country will print verbatim the remarks of the president and his new general-in-chief. But it’s this joyous reception that best captures the moment when Lincoln finally meets his general. In historical imagination, this meeting allows Lincoln at last to yield the heavy, unwelcome burden of de facto military command that for three years he has shouldered, thanks to the inadequacy of previous generals, and hand it over to a commander in whom he has full confidence. Some will say that Lincoln vocally forswears any interest in even knowing Grant’s plans, much less interfering with them. That is demonstrably false, but it fits our image of the gentle Father Abraham. And as the poet historian Carl Sandburg will maintain, it’s the moment when two men from the American heartland, both from modest backgrounds, at last unite to save the nation, “the last, best hope of earth.”6 MARK GRIMSLEY, A HISTORY PROFESSOR AT THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, IS THE AUTHOR OF SEVERAL 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

women new opportunities to be useful.” Jabour also advised them on posture and movement, coaching them on how Civil War Americans negotiated their rela-

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MARY ANTINOZZI SOULE

Abraham Lincoln Book Shop

MARY ANTINOZZI SOULE

AnnaSophia Robb (left) and Anya Jabour on the set of Mercy Street

tionships with one another and communicated their status using their bodies. “I even put together a short list of essential etiquette tips” for the entire cast, Jabour noted, “using period etiquette manuals for guidance.” Jabour used her own research as a basis for her suggestions, and also tapped into recent historical scholarship on power and affection in 19th-century family life. She has been impressed by the dedication to historical authenticity in the storylines, sets, and costume design. One day, Jabour arrived on the set and found Hannah James, “in costume as Emma Green, reading Scarlett’s Sisters between takes.” Mercy Street’s lead protagonist is Mary Phinney (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a nurse and New England abolitionist. Phinney was a real person, and her wartime diary has provided much of the historical evidence for the TV character’s experiences. The cast and crew also used other historical documents, archival photographs, period magazines, and scholarly publications to create the world of Mercy Street. Jabour and other historian consultants, including Audrey P. Davis, Jane Schultz, and Shauna Devine, contribute to a blog on the PBS website that contextualizes the show’s attention to

historical detail, exploring the larger meanings of little moments so that viewers can gain a deeper understanding of the issues. Jabour’s most read post during the first season, for example, was about a scene where Dr. Jedediah Foster (played by Josh Radnor) refers to Emma Green as the “hoopskirt assassin” after her voluminous dress catches on a hospital bed. Jabour’s post examines the politics of women’s fashions, arguing that “in Civil War America, feminine frills and furbelows were not frivolous; they were expressions of deeply held—and sometimes profoundly radical—political beliefs.” Mercy Street’s ﬁrst season garnered almost unanimously positive reviews from historians for its attention to historical detail and its engagement with recent Civil War scholarship on medicine, women’s work, civilian life in occupied cities, and the volatile wartime experiences of enslaved and freed people. The second season—which will premiere in January 2017—continues to explore the chaos of Civil War Alexandria. Jabour is especially excited that viewers will get to learn more about the world of contrabands—as well as the life in slavery they left behind—and meet a new character, Charlotte Jenkins (played by Patina Miller), who is based

in part on the fugitive slave and abolitionist author Harriet Jacobs. This new season will “showcase both black and white women challenging conventional gender roles and racial hierarchies,” Jabour revealed, “in even more overt— even downright subversive—ways than they did in season one.” Lisa Wolfinger’s commitment to consulting with historians like Jabour has clearly made an impact on the show, grounding its dramatic narrative in historical accuracy. But has this experience changed the way that Jabour herself approaches her work as a researcher and teacher? “Working on Mercy Street has reinvigorated my class in southern history,” Jabour said. She has become more aware of historical research and documents available on multiple platforms, and has integrated websites, blogs, and digital history sites into her syllabi. Last year, she also offered a class for adult learners structured around the issues depicted in Mercy Street. While her current research project is not focused on the Civil War, Jabour has been inspired to think about ways to share her scholarship with the broadest possible audience. And finally, what about craft services? “It is every bit as wonderful as you can possibly imagine.” 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).

THE LOST ORDER

CONTINUED FROM P. 40

the trail of S.O. 191, that inspire naysayers to pick at its threads. Here were Lee’s own orders, presenting to his foe the war’s best opportunity (before Appomattox) to utterly defeat him. That opportunity was wasted. Yet in history’s final accounting, by bringing on the terrible Battle of Antietam, the Lost Order marked a major turning point in the contest. STEPHEN W. SEARS’ LATEST BOOK (APRIL 2017) IS LINCOLN’S LIEUTENANTS: THE HIGH COMMAND OF THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC.

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THE UNFORTUNATE COLONEL

CONTINUED FROM P. 63

his sword around me rather careless, swore at me and told me to get out of that or he would split my head open.” Warren later included the tale in his regimental history. Though a few defenders from the 107th insisted that they spotted their colonel at the almshouse, where the regiment abortively attempted to reform after the Georgians sent them scampering toward the town in “sullen obstinacy,” and while one lieutenant afﬁrmed that his colonel never “abandoned his men for a moment,” Warren’s timeline (not unlike Culp’s) intimates that Meyer broke and ran before the Rebels shoved the Ohioans off the knoll.25 To be sure, Captain Brown insisted that once he posted the 107th Ohio, he “lost sight” of Meyer—next spying the colonel with a knot of men along Carlisle Street, “near the railroad station,” after the XI Corps line folded. “The regimental colors,” he added, “were not with him.” Standing at the base of Cemetery Hill,

whipsawing between panic and relief, General Howard and an aide, Lieutenant Rogers, watched as their soldiers escaped the confusion of the town. “When the broken regiments were emerging from Gettysburg … a colonel passed by murmuring something in German,” Howard later recorded. “His English was not at his command just then; fragments of his regiment were following him.” Though they were unable to identify him, the

“make an effort to stop the routed men” and plant them “in the sound position” on Cemetery Hill. “The Col was riding with his sword in his scabbard,” the major recalled months later, still in disbelief. “He made apparently [no effort] in sight to stop the rout.” Most damningly for those who insisted that the colonel had never abandoned his unit, Howard determined that the horde of men surrounding Meyer hailed from “different

“When I entered the service, I had hoped to remain at the head of my regiment until the end of the war.” COLONEL SERAPHIM MEYER, JULY 4, 1863

pair had almost certainly encountered Seraphim Meyer. Indeed, another of Howard’s staffers, his aide-de-camp and younger brother, Charles, did recognize the colonel. Around four o’clock that afternoon, Major Howard happened upon a “rabble of men coming back in disorder.” Howard “met Col Meyer near the head of the men,” imploring him to

reg[imen]ts.”26 For their part, the colonel-less remnants of the 107th Ohio scrambled into position behind a shin-high stone fence on East Cemetery Hill—the mooring place from which they would confront the dreaded Louisiana Tigers the following day. “It required considerable effort on the part of our officers,” explained

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regimental historian Jacob Smith, “to get them into line and position again.” With “a strong guard” of cavalry and infantry posted in the federal rear to thwart potential deserters, the Union army’s fishhook-shaped defensive line began to take shape. But it would be a restive night, according to Smith, punctuated in turn by the wailing of the wounded and the same, remorseless questions that had taunted them in the wake of Chancellorsville: “Will the Rebels again be successful, and must all this sacrifice of blood, lives and treasure be made in vain?” “Will not the prayers and supplications of God’s people be regarded by a righteous God, and are we doomed to still further defeat?” That night, Seraphim Meyer likely asked these questions—and a few more of his own.27

Independence or Annihilation Campaigns of the 60th Virginia Regiment of Infantry

on july 2, colonel Meyer “reported personally” to Adelbert

Ames. Their exchange was anything but affable. “Mr. Meyer,” the general thundered, “so long as I have a Sergeant left to command the Second Brigade, your services will not be required. Your place is in the rear.”28 Meyer had reached the same conclusion. Two days later, as Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia limped from Gettysburg in retreat—the tactical victory they had notched on July 1 just a hazy memory in the aftermath of Pickett’s Charge—the colonel wrote a letter of resignation to Theodore Meysenburg of General Howard’s staff. “When I entered the service,” Meyer insisted, “I had hoped to remain at the head of my regiment until the end of the war.” But the demands of “this hateful rebellion,” Meyer hinted, were simply too great. He offered his son’s Chancellorsville wound as a telling example.29 Rather than accept his resignation, Adelbert Ames directed an aide to place the colonel under arrest. A few days later, Meyer dashed off an even lengthier missive to Meysenburg in what proved an abortive attempt to head off a court-martial. Protesting that he was “dragged along in the rear of my regiment like a culprit,” he sought immediate redress. He reminded the assistant adjutant general just how much he had sacrificed on behalf of the Union war effort. “At great expenses and labor,” he began, “I succeeded in raising and organizing as good a Regt as ever left [Ohio]…. To accept this trust I abandoned a wife and children, a lucrative professional practice of many years standing, an honorable and lucrative office and all the comforts of home.” Indeed, “although seriously ill nearly all of last winter [I] ever remained on duty.” “As to my conduct on the field of battle,” he appended, “I appeal to every soldier and officer of my regiment.”30 at 10 a.m. on July 27, 1863, Captain Edward Giddings called the

court-martial proceedings to order near Warrenton Junction, Virginia. Meyer recruited one of the two lawyers enlisted in the ranks of the 107th to handle his defense. Over the next week, a parade of witnesses rehearsed their versions of July 1. If not in perfect unison, the witnesses for the defense nonetheless dismissed the accusations leveled against Meyer by testifying that Meyer’s crouching was not a display of fear but typical of his battlefield performance. “He had something peculiar in his way of giving commands,” Captain John Lutz reckoned. A captain and a second lieutenant both insisted that there was nothing remarkable about the way Meyer delivered his commands at Gettysburg. And of course, Lieutenant Philip Wang explained, “If the regt was at rest,” the colonel “would stoop down ☛ } CONT. ON P. 76

This is a masterpiece of ten years of research in order to better understand why these men seceded from the Union. With a Cause of attaining Virginia’s independence, the 60th Virginia Regiment was a consolidation of southern patriots which utilized the title of this book as their motto. The regiment served under General Robert E. Lee in the early days of the war; bled in the Seven Day’s Battle around Richmond and Cedar Mountain. Ordered to the Shenandoah Valley, the regiment defended Lee’s left and rear. This assignment was vital for the protection of the capital, the western rail lines, and the salt and niter mines. The campaigns of 1864 caused much hardship for the men and thinned their ranks with incessant skirmishing and battles against General Grant’s strategic assaults. Eventually the Sixtieth, along with General Early’s Valley Army, could not resist the overwhelming manpower and weaponry and succumbed at the dramatic Battle of Waynesboro; decimating the last Confederate army in the valley. This defeat allowed General Sheridan’s 10,000 troopers to unite with General Grant at Petersburg, ultimately fracturing General Lee’s entrenched lines, ending the war. Strength and determination against perpetual superior numbers on the field of battle exemplifies their courage and commitment to achieve self-government. Like their grandfathers of the Revolutionary War before them, the men of the Sixtieth will always be remembered for their sacrifice and struggle for independence. This book is offered in Softback and Hardcover w/dust jacket; with 2,011 biographies; and 735 pages of storyline, statistics, and countless photos and illustrations. H O R D E R D I R ECT H www.60thvirginiainfantryregiment.com/home.html

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THE UNFORTUNATE COLONEL

CONTINUED FROM P. 75

on his horse. Suppose it was a habit.” But after a “lengthy review” of the testimony, the judge advocate was persuaded only of Meyer’s guilt. “I submit to the Court that they consider carefully the circumstances under which the witnesses for the defence testify,” he wrote. “They no doubt respect [and] esteem Col. Meyer as a man … this together with that regimental pride [that] exist[s] in every such military organization, would insensibly perhaps influence their judgment.” Moreover, the very sequence of events that afternoon argued convincingly against the colonel: General Ames, after all, had assumed command of the division when a Rebel bullet lodged in Francis Barlow’s side. Under ordinary circumstances, this would have temporarily promoted Meyer to brigade command (the 25th Ohio and 17th Connecticut were led by lieutenant colonels, and Andrew Lintner Harris of the 75th Ohio did not have eagles on his shoulder boards until May 1863). Yet Meyer “does not show that he ever at any time during the day exercised [brigade] command,” the judge advocate protested. It was Harris who positioned the brigade atop East Cemetery Hill. “If [Colonel Meyer] was not directing the movements of the brigade,” he continued, “he should have been with his regiment. I submit that the preponderance of evidence shows us that he was not with it.”31 The jury was unconvinced. Although they left no record of their deliberations, they acquitted the colonel of all charges. Five days later, Meyer received a monthlong furlough; the men of the 107th, however, scarcely had a chance to catch a collective breath. On the afternoon of August 10, they were packed aboard the steamer City of Richmond, bound for Folly Island in South Carolina. While the war in the Department of the South posed its own challenges and introduced new enemies—namely humidity, mosquitoes, and disease—and while the unit would meet up with the Rebels in several sprite skirmishes, they would never again have the opportunity to prove their mettle in a major battle.

For that matter, nor would Seraphim Meyer. That winter, after he returned to the regiment, an examination board determined that the colonel did not “possess sufficient knowledge of tactics and of military administrative duties.” In February, rather than endure the ordeal of yet another trial, Meyer once more tendered his resignation, citing his “greatly impaired” and “rapidly declining” health. This time, it was accepted. “The good of the service and the welfare of his Regt,” noted the assistant adjutant general, demanded it.32 the mock jurors huddled in the white

tent hear the evidence and then vote. It’s a convincing mandate: not guilty. “Ninety-five percent of the time,” reports Supervisory Park Ranger Christopher Gwinn from his office in Gettysburg’s Visitors’ Center, “the audience exonerates Meyer.” The reenactment of Seraphim Meyer’s court-martial has become one of the park’s most popular programs, with about 60 people participating on a typical Saturday. Perhaps these visitors understand,

content to parrot the suspect verdict of his trial. Even the mock jurors have, in a real sense, demanded perfect obedience from Seraphim Meyer—unwilling to brand the colonel a “coward,” they accept the narrative that nothing out of the ordinary happened on July 1. Yet given the weight of the evidence, might real empathy prompt us to no longer demand unblemished Civil War soldiers chiseled in granite? Should we instead ask why the colonel quailed in the first place, instead of swiftly dismissing the charges? If Gettysburg so convincingly resembled Chancellorsville, as very many testified, did it retrieve agonizing memories of Edward’s wound? Of his own capture? In this eerie moment, did he hear the song of the dead? Did he fear that this time, he might not be “fortunate” enough to land in Libby? Civil War soldiers, after all, toted much more than their knapsacks and muskets to new battlefields; they also lugged their memories. Personal experiences and regimental histories, in short, shaped Civil War combat. The documentary record remains deafeningly silent on these points—and

“If [Colonel Meyer] was not directing the movements of the brigade, he should have been with his regiment. I submit that the preponderance of evidence shows us that he was not with it.” THE JUDGE ADVOCATE ASSIGNED TO SERAPHIM MEYER’S COURT-MARTIAL

as the historian Chris Walsh has written, “[that] cowardice casts a shadow that throws courage into relief. Knowing what happened to those who failed to stand by their colors enhances our appreciation of those who did and our appreciation of the cost of war to all who served.” Or perhaps after more than a decade of dwelling in a nation at war, these visitors no longer demand the burnished bayonets and devout enlisted men peddled in many sterilized histories.33 Until very recently, we have draped a cloak of silence over cowardice. The men of the 107th Ohio, for instance, uttered not a word about their colonel’s Gettysburg ordeal; indeed, Seraphim Meyer returned home to Canton, resumed his law practice, and eventually took a seat on the Stark County Court of Common Pleas. All the same, historians have been

to it we must remain loyal. Yet as the historian Simon Schama reassures us, our craft is an art, and “even in the most austere scholarly report from the archives, the inventive faculty—selecting, pruning, editing, commenting, interpreting, delivering judgments—is in full play.” Though “our flickering glimpses of dead worlds winter far short of ghostly immersion,” he writes, “that perhaps is still enough to be going on with.” To the extent that his actions offer us an alternate, mottled, and ultimately human history of the Battle of Gettysburg, Seraphim Meyer would surely agree.34 BRIAN MATTHEW JORDAN IS ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AT SAM HOUSTON STATE UNIVERSITY. HIS MOST RECENT BOOK, MARCHING HOME: UNION VETERANS AND THEIR UNENDING CIVIL WAR, WAS ONE OF THREE FINALISTS FOR THE 2016 PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY.

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Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation (required by Section 3685, Title 39, United States Code). 1. The Civil War Monitor. 2. (ISSN: 2163-0682). 3. Filing date: 10/25/16. 4. Issue frequency: Quarterly. 5. Number of issues published annually: 4. 6. Annual subscription price: $21.95. 7. Complete mailing address of known office of publication: 8008 Bayshore Drive, Margate, NJ 08402. 8. Complete mailing address of headquarters or general business office of publisher: 8008 Bayshore Drive, Margate, NJ 08402. 9. Full names and complete mailing addresses of publisher, editor, and managing editor. Publisher: Terry A. Johnston Jr., 8008 Bayshore Drive, Margate, NJ 08402, Editor: Terry A. Johnston Jr., 8008 Bayshore Drive, Margate, NJ 08402, Managing editor: n/a. 10. Owner: Bayshore History LLC, 8008 Bayshore Drive, Margate, NJ 08402. 11. 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INTRODUCING

BEHIND THE LINES O U R V I D E O I N T E R V I E W S E R I E S F E AT U R I N G C O N V E R SAT I O N S W I T H P R O M I N E N T M E M B E R S O F T H E A M E R I CA N C I V I L WA R C O M M U N I T Y

PRESENTED BY

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Catton, Mr. Lincoln’s Army (New York, 1954), 219. William Allan memorandum, February 15, 1868, Gary W. Gallagher, ed., Lee the Soldier (Lincoln, 1996), 8. 2 The copy of Special Orders No. 191 that Jackson made for Hill is in the D.H. Hill Papers, North Carolina State Archives. A Union garrison at Martinsburg fell back to Harpers Ferry.

Clellan Papers. 14 Arthur McClellan diary, September 15, 1862, McClellan Papers; Palmer to Curtin, September 16, OR, 19:2:311. 15 E.C. Gordon to William Allan, November 18, 1886, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina.

Notes

3 McClellan to his wife, September 12, 1862, McClellan to Henry Halleck, September 10, Stephen W. Sears, ed., The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan (New York, 1989), 449, 445.

16 D.H. Hill, “The Lost Dispatch,” The Land We Love, 4 (1868), 277; R.E. Lee to D.H. Hill, June 12, 1867, Lee Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society.

SOURCES & CITATIONS FROM THIS ISSUE’S ARTICLES

4 The Lost Order, its envelope, and General Williams’ covering note are in the McClellan Papers, Library of Congress; John M. Bloss to family, September 25, 1862, Monocacy National Battlefield, courtesy Thomas G. Clemens.

17 Joseph L. Harsh, Sounding the Shallows: A Confederate Companion for the Maryland Campaign of 1862 (Kent, OH, 2000), 170-175; Charles Marshall to D.H. Hill, November 11, 1867, Hill Papers, Library of Virginia.

5 Bloss to Mitchell, 1867, collection of Robert W. Menuet; Silas Colgrove, “The Finding of Lee’s Lost Order,” The Century (33: November 1886), 131, and Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, eds. Robert U. Johnson and Clarence C. Buel, 2:603. Menuet, Mitchell’s great-great grandson, described his unique Lost Order collection of documents in America’s Civil War, 20:4 (September 2007): 19-21.

18 Robert W. Menuet in America’s Civil War, 20:4 (September 2007): 20; Bloss’s letter (1867), Colgrove’s certificate (March 19, 1867), and McClellan’s letter (November 18, 1879) are in the Menuet Collection.

American Iliad (Pages 26–27, 72)

1 T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals (New York, 1952); Kenneth P. Williams, Lincoln Finds a General: A Military Study of the Civil War 5 vols. (New York, 1950-1959). Among numerous references to Lincoln’s search for a winning general, see “Firefight at the Pentagon,” The New York Times, April 6, 2003; “Press Panics over Iraq,” New York Daily News, November 10, 2003; “Bush’s Exit Strategy In Iraq Is Victory,” Investor’s Business Daily, May 21, 2007. 2 Horace Porter, Campaigning With Grant, (1897; Bloomington, 1961), 22. 3 New York Tribune, March 9, 1864. 4 Frederick D. Grant, “Reminiscences of Gen. U.S. Grant, Read Before the Illinois Commandery Loyal Legion of the United States, January 27, 1910,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, vol. 7, no. 1 (April 1914): 74. 5 New York Tribune, March 9, 1864; Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative 3 vols. (New York, 19581974), vol. 3, 6. 6 “Annual Message to Congress,” December 1, 1862, Roy P. Basler (ed.), The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols. and index (New Brunswick, NJ, 1953-1955), vol. 5, 537.

6 Ezra A. Carman to Pittman, May 3, 9, 21, 26, 1897, Pittman to Carman, May 7, 24, 28, Pittman Papers, Chapin Library, Williams College, in Charles B. Dew, “How Samuel E. Pittman Validated Lee’s ‘Lost Order’ Prior to Antietam: A Historical Note,” Journal of Southern History (70:4, November 2004): 965-970. Carman also confirmed with Pittman the midmorning time on September 13 that the Lost Order was sent to McClellan. 7 Journal of Commerce, January 1, 1863; McClellan testimony, Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War (1: 1863), 439; E.A. Pollard, The Lost Cause (1867), 314; Count of Paris, History of the Civil War in America (1876), 2:318; Bradley T. Johnson in Southern Historical Society Papers 12 (1884): 520. 8 D.H. Hill, “The Lost Dispatch,” The Land We Love, 4 (1868): 273-275; J.W. Ratchford affidavit, D.H. Hill Papers, North Carolina State Archives; D.H. Hill to McClellan, April 17, 1869, McClellan Papers; Chilton to Jefferson Davis, December 8, 1874, Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist, ed. Dunbar Rowland, 7:412-413.

10 E.C. Gordon, William Allan memoranda, February 15, 1868, in Gallagher, ed., Lee the Soldier, 26, 8. During the Maryland campaign E.P. Alexander disbursed greenbacks for secret service doings “to trusty scouts whom Gen. Stuart selected & handled”: Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander, Gallagher, ed. (Chapel Hill, 1989), 140.

12 John Gibbon, Personal Recollections of the Civil War (New York, 1928), 73.

(Pages 30–41, 73)

1 Kenneth P. Williams, Lincoln Finds a General: A Military Study of the Civil War (New York, 1949), 1:371; James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York, 1988), 537; Bruce

20 Maurice G. D’Aoust, “‘Little Mac’ did not dawdle” Civil War Times (51:5, October 2012): 36-37; McClellan to Halleck (11 p.m.), Sept. 13, 1862, Sears, Papers of McClellan, 456-457; William Allan memorandum, February 15, 1868, Gallagher, ed., Lee the Soldier, 8. The argument that someone other than Lincoln “corrected” the Lincoln telegram to read 12 Midnight carries a fatal flaw. This “someone” could not say that McClellan had marked it midnight, for the sole evidence of McClellan’s intent was the three received telegraphoffice copies, all marked 12 M, or Meridian. 21 D. Scott Hartwig, To Antietam Creek: The Maryland Campaign of September 1862 (Baltimore, 2012), ch. 8.

9 I am indebted to the late Edwin C. Fishel for the Herald leak, and to Scott M. Sherlock for the leaks in the Washington and Baltimore papers.

11 Pleasonton to Randolph Marcy (1:30 a.m., 11 a.m.), September 13, 1862, Lincoln to McClellan, September 12, McClellan Papers; McClellan to Lincoln, September 13, RG 107 (M-473-50), National Archives.

The Lost Order

19 Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 2:603; Edmund R. Brown, The Twenty-seventh Indiana Volunteer Infantry (Monticello, IN, 1899), 227-228; John M. Bloss, “Antietam and the Lost Dispatch” (1892), in War Talks in Kansas (1906), 1:84; Wilbur D. Jones Jr., Giants in the Cornfield: The 27th Indiana Infantry (Shippensburg, PA, 1997), 228-242.

13 Randolph Marcy to Pleasonton, September 13, 1862 (3 p.m.), in U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records 129 vols. (Washington, 1880–1901), 51:1:829 (hereafter cited as OR); McClellan to Franklin, September 13 (6:20 p.m.), McClellan to Halleck (11 p.m.), Sears, Papers of McClellan, 454-455, 456457; Pleasonton to McClellan, September 13, Mc-

63 Days in Charleston (Pages 42–53)

1 McCabe’s journal is in the collections of the Virginia Historical Society, and was published in 1925 in two volumes under the title Memories and Memorials of William Gordon McCabe by Armistead Churchill Gordon. The journal is well written, providing a rare insight into the events at the beginning of Siege of Charleston. McCabe’s education at Hampton Military Academy and a year at the University of Virginia are evident in his writing. Therefore, very little editing was necessary to aid in reading his entries. Occasionally, the reader will see a word has been inserted (example: [the]) to assist in the flow of a sentence. Also, there are no corrections in the rare cases where spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc. errors occurred.

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The Unfortunate Colonel (Pages 54–63, 74–76)

1 Christopher Gwinn to author, e-mail correspondence, August 25, 2016 [copy in author’s possession]. 2 Lesley Gordon, A Broken Regiment: The 16th Connecticut’s Civil War (Baton Rouge, 2014); Kenneth W. Noe, Reluctant Rebels (Chapel Hill, 2010); Matthew Stith, Extreme Civil War (Baton Rouge, 2016); see also Jonathan W. White, Emancipation, The Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln (Baton Rouge, 2014) and Lorien Foote, The Gentlemen & The Roughs (New York, 2010). The term “shadow history” is from Chris Walsh, “‘Cowardice Weakness or Infirmity, Whichever It May Be Termed’: A Shadow History of the Civil War,” Civil War History 59, no. 4 (December 2013): 492526. For “dogged determination,” see James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York, 1997), 101-102. 3 Terry K. Woods, Ohio’s Grand Canal: A Brief History of the Ohio & Erie Canal (Kent, OH, 2008), 17; William Henry Perrin, ed., History of Stark County, With an Outline Sketch of Ohio (Chicago, 1881), 264, 320-321. 4 [Canton] Ohio Repository, October 11, November 1, and December 6, 1848.

11 Smith, Camps and Campaigns, 73-74; Hamilton Starkweather, “From the 107th Ohio,” Daily Cleveland Herald, May 25, 1863; James Middlebrook to his wife, May 10, 1863, Middlebrook Family Papers, MSS 73139, Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford; Peter F. Young as quoted in Daily Cleveland Herald, May 14, 1863; E.R. Monfort, “Chancellorsville,” National Tribune, October 22, 1891; see also Daniel E. Sutherland, Fredericksburg & Chancellorsville: The Dare Mark Campaign (Lincoln, 1998).

10; “Gettysburg, July 1-3, 1863,” typescript manuscript from Wilton [Connecticut] Public Library in 17th Connecticut Regimental File, Gettysburg National Military Park Library; “Under Guard, or Sunny South in Slices,” Danbury [Connecticut] Times, September 24, 1863.

12 Christian Rieker to his sister, May 11, 1863, and May 30, 1863, both in Society of Separatists of Zoar Records, Box 96, Folder 1, Ohio Historical Society; George Billow affidavit, March 5, 1890, and Edward S. Meyer affidavit, December 4, 1889, both in Seraphim Meyer Pension File, RG 15, NA; Defiance [Ohio] Democrat, May 16, 1863; Edward S. Meyer to Captain McBailey, June 22, 1864, in Edward S. Meyer Compiled Service Record, RG 94, NA.

23 Andrew L. Harris to a friend, July 11, 1863, in Andrew L. Harris Papers, MSS 322, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; E.C. Culp, The 25th Ohio Vet. Vol. Infantry in the War for the Union (Topeka, 1885), 78; William Southerton Memoir, in William B. Southerton Papers, MS 3177, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Lee, “Reminiscences of the Gettysburg Battle,” 59; Seraphim Meyer to Theodore Meysenburg, July 14, 1863, in Seraphim Meyer Compiled Service Records, RG, 94, NA; Smith, Camps and Campaigns, 14.

13 Seraphim Meyer Pension File, RG 15, NA; “List of Union Officers Taken By the Rebels,” New York Tribune, May 12, 1863; for an account of another XI Corps Chancellorsville prisoner’s journey to Richmond, see Thomas Evans Diary, May 5, 1863, in Thomas Evans Diary, VFM 2506, Ohio Historical Society. 14 Whitelaw Reid, Ohio in the War: Her Statesmen, Generals, and Soldiers (New York and Cincinnati, 1868), 2:577; Christian Rieker to his sister, May 11, 1863, and May 30, 1863, both in Society of Separatists of Zoar Records, Box 96, Folder 1, Ohio Historical Society; Special Order No. 22, June 11, 1863, in 107th Ohio Regimental Order Books, vol. 4, RG 94, NA; “From the 107th Ohio,” Daily Cleveland Herald, May 25, 1863; Defiance Democrat, May 23, 1863. 15 Seraphim Meyer Compiled Service Record, RG 94, NA; “The 11th Corps,” Sandusky [Ohio] Register, May 30, 1863; Smith, Camps and Campaigns, 85-86.

5 Daily [Columbus] Ohio Statesman, August 19, 1860; Allen County Democrat [Lima, Ohio], February 19, 1862; Defiance Democrat, August 9, 1862; Revised Ordinances of the City of Canton (Canton, OH, 1916), 535.

16 Smith, Camps and Campaigns, 86; United States War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records 129 vols. (Washington, 1880-1901), vol. 27, pt. 1, 702, 727 (hereafter cited as OR); John Flory diary, copy in 107th Ohio Vertical File, Gettysburg National Military Park Library, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

6 Seraphim Meyer to Theodore A. Meysenburg, July 18, 1863, in Seraphim Meyer Court Martial Records, RG 153, National Archives [hereafter NA]; Meyer to Meysenburg, July 14, 1863, in Seraphim Meyer Compiled Service Record, RG 94, NA.

17 Nussbaum quoted in Smith, Camps and Campaigns, 225; Allen C. Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (New York, 2013), 181; OR, vol. 27, pt. 1, 703.

7 107th Ohio Regimental Descriptive Books, RG 94, NA; Joshua Budd Court Martial Records, RG 153, NA; Christian Rieker, letter “to sister and bother in law,” in Society of Separatists of Zoar Records, Box 96, Folder 1, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; George Billow Pension File, RG 15, NA; George Billow, “From the 107th,” Akron [Ohio] Beacon Journal, September 24, 1863; Jacob Smith, Camps and Campaigns of the 107th Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry, 1862-1865, reprint ed. (Navarre, OH, 2000), 10. 8 Daniel Biddle Pension File, RG 15, NA; Otto Weber Compiled Service Record, RG 94, NA; Seraphim Meyer Compiled Service Record, RG 94, NA. 9 Smith, Camps and Campaigns, 48. 10 E.R. Monfort, “The First Division, Eleventh Corps, at Chancellorsville,” in E.R. Monfort, H.B. Furness, and Fred H. Alms, eds., G.A.R. War Papers: Papers Read Before Fred C. Jones Post, No. 401, Department of Ohio, G.A.R., vol. 1 (Cincinnati, 1891), 62-63; Smith, Camps and Campaigns, 73.

18 Carl Schurz, The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, vol. 3 (Garden City and New York, 1917), 5, 9; D. Scott Hartwig, “The Unlucky 11th: The 11th Army Corps on July 1, 1863,” Gettysburg Magazine 2 (January 1990): 40; “Historical Significance of Adams County Poor Farm Lands, Tracts 02-138 and 02-139,” pp. 1-2, typescript manuscript in Adams County Almshouse Vertical File, Gettysburg National Military Park Library, Gettysburg; asylumprojects.org/index.php?title=Adams_ County_Almshouse [accessed September 5, 2016]. 19 Alfred Emory Lee, The Battle of Gettysburg (Columbus, 1888), 116; Hartwig, “The Unlucky 11th,” 43; OR, vol. 27, pt. 2, 468; Friedrich Otto von Fritsch, A Gallant Captain of the Civil War, ed. Joseph Tyler Butts (New York, 1902), 75; William Southerton memoir, William B. Southerton Papers, MS 3177, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus. 20 von Fritsch, A Gallant Captain, 75-76; Fritz Nussbaum as quoted in Smith, Camps and Campaigns, 225; G.W. Nichols as quoted in Hartwig, “The Unlucky 11th,” 44. 21 Schurz, The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz,

22 Alfred Lee, “Reminiscences of the Gettysburg Battle,” Lippincott’s Magazine 6 (July 1883): 59; Seraphim Meyer Court Martial Records, RG 153, NA; OR, vol. 27, pt. 1, 713.

24 See, for example, Smith, Camps and Campaigns; John Flory diary and Silas Shuler to Asa Shuler, July 16, 1863, copies in 107th Ohio Regimental File, Gettysburg National Military Park Library. Casualty statistics for the 107th vary, of course, but these are the figures etched on the reverse face of the regiment’s Gettysburg monument. Summit County Beacon [Akron, Ohio], September 21, 1887; Report of the Gettysburg Memorial Commission, reprint ed. (Baltimore, 1998), 41, and Canton Repository and Republican, September 22, 1871. 25 Edward C. Culp, “From the 25th Ohio: A Correction as to Gettysburg, and a Sketch of the Closing Days of the War,” National Tribune, June 4, 1885; William H. Warren Compiled Service Record, RG 94, NA; William H. Warren, diary, July 1, 1863, in Civil War Manuscripts Collection, Warren Papers, Group 619, Series I, Box 24, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut; Private William Henry Warren, “History of the Seventeenth Connecticut Volunteers or Fairfield Regiment,” typescript manuscript in 17th Connecticut Regimental File, Gettysburg National Military Park Library; “Saving the Nation,” National Tribune, April 23, 1885. 26 Seraphim Meyer Court Martial Records, RG 153, NA; Oliver Howard, Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard (New York, 1907), 1:419. 27 Smith, Camps and Campaigns, 88, 90. 28 Culp, “From the 25th Ohio,” National Tribune, June 4, 1885. 29 Seraphim Meyer to Theodore A. Meysenburg, July 4, 1863, in Seraphim Meyer Court Martial Records, RG 153, NA. 30 Seraphim Meyer to Theodore A. Meysenburg, July 14, 1863, in Seraphim Meyer Compiled Service Records, RG 94, NA. 31 Seraphim Meyer Court Martial Records, RG 153, NA; Jack D. Welsh, Medical Histories of Union Generals (Kent, 1996), 15. 32 Smith, Camps and Campaigns, 151; Seraphim Meyer to Edward W. Smith, February 13, 1864, in Seraphim Meyer Compiled Service Records, RG 94, NA; see also Seraphim Meyer Pension File, RG 15, NA. 33 Christopher Gwinn to author, e-mail correspondence, August 25, 2016 [copy in author’s possession]; Walsh, “‘Cowardice Weakness or Infirmity, Whichever It May Be Termed,’” 526. 34 Simon Schama, Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations (New York, 1991), 322, 326.

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A Hirsute Token During the Civil War era, Americans regularly used human hair to craft accessories or ornaments of remembrance or devotion. In the spring of 1861, Florida resident Isaac M. Bunting, recently engaged to Miss Fanny Smith, cut his hair and had a set of jewelry, including the necklace shown here, made for his fiancĂŠe. Not long after, secessionist forces fired on Fort Sumter, and Bunting volunteered in the 2nd Florida Infantry, leaving Fanny behind with her impressive keepsake. Bunting would survive the war, and the couple would eventually marry. The Buntingsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; daughter donated the set to the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond in 1935.

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