T c w m vol4 2 2014 s downmagaz com by Hamdi Belal

* Winchester-Frederick County VIRGINIA * Commemorates Three Civil War Battles in 2014 Second Battle of Kernstown

July 19-20

Battle of Cedar Creek

October 18-19

Participate in a day-long motorcoach tour with author/

Witness one of the most exciting battle reenactments in the

historian Scott Patchan, revisiting the places and events

country! This Ullique opportunity also includes a children's

leading up to the battle. Kernstown Battlefield will also host

activities tent, Sutler Row shopping area, a luminary

the Civil War 150 HistoryMobile, guided tours, live period

commemoration service, and night firing of cannons. Guided

music, period fashion shows, and living history

group tours are available and include grandstand seating for

demonstrations with sharpshooters and cavalry units.

the reenactments. Free admission for children 6 and under.

Third Battle of Winchester

September 19-20

The site of an ambitious restoration project, l1lird

Winchester Battlefield will host special battlefield tours, a kids camp, living history programs, a battle re-creation on the pivotal "Middle Field:' and a Commemorative Program on l1lird Winchester and tlle 1864 Shenandoah Campaign.

Frederick County

YPtfinia

Contents

VOLUME 4,

DEPARTMENTS

NUMBER 2

I SUMMER 2Dlq

FEATURES

Broken Soldiers 30

TRAVELS

For the nearly half million Union and Confederate soldiers wounded during the Civil War, the path to recovery was as uncertain as it was lengthy. And for those fortunate enough to survive their ordeals, a new challenge awaited: adjusting to life with a broken body,

................ 10

A Visit to Atlanta

... 14

VOiCES ........... . Sounds of War

DOSSiER. .. .... ...... . ....... .... 16 Ulysses S. Grant PRESERVATION ........

Campaign 150 Marches On

..... 18

"There were dreadful sights at the SUfj�eon 's bench. I saw them cutting off limbs. It looks stran�e to see a leg with its stockmg lying on tile grass.

PRIMER ......... ..... .. . .. .. .. 20 Corps Badges

DISUNION Albert Cashier's Secret

Ten Miles from Richmond

IN F OCUS............ . Lincoln's Final Journey

At the tiny crossroads town of Cold Harbor, Ulysses S. Grant hoped to crush Robert E. Lee's army and hasten the war's end. What happened instead would become one of his greatest regrets. BY ALLEN C. GUELZO

CASUALTIES OFWAR. Larkin Milton Skaggs

BATTLEF IELD ECHOES.. Losing Focus at Cedar Creek

L E TTERS HOME: CORRESPONDENCE FROM MEN ATWAR....... . .. 67 BY PETER

CARMICHAEL

VOICES FROM THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC, PART 3 . . 71 BY GARY W. GALLAGHER

. ... 2

EDITORIAL.... The Cost of War

PARTING SHOT....... ...

. .. 80

Smoke 'em if You Got 'em

...

William Tecumseh Sherman's 1864 campaign against Atlanta was one of speed and maneuver-with one exception: the June 27 Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. On a rise later known as Cheatham Hill, the fighting was particularly fierce, earning that patch of land a haunting name: T he Dead Angle. BY PATRICK BRENNAN

OHllIE COVER: Caplalll E.B. Gates. 4th Pennsylvania Reserves. Image courtesy National Museum of Health

(

and Medicine CP

1110),

THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

THE CIVIL WAR

MONITOR VOLUME 4, N U M B E R

2 I SUMMER 2014

Terry A. Johnston Jr. EDITOR·IN·CHIEF TERRYE>CIVILWARMONITOR.COM

Laura June Davis Angela Esco Elder David Thomson Robert Polster CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

The Cost of War HOW DO YOU TELL THE FULL STORY OF A WAR?

There is no end to the articles we could (and will) run on the mili tary history of the Civil War-stories of the battles, the armies who

Stephen Berry Patrick Brennan JohnCoski Judith Giesberg AllenC. Guelzo Amy Murrell Taylor EDITORIAL ADVISORS

Jennifer Sturak COPY EDITOR

fought in them, the commanders who led them, and the strategies

MatthewC. Hulbert

and tactics they employed. In this issue, two of our favorite Civil War

MATT@CIVILWARMONITOR.COM

authors (both Monitor editorial advisors) contribute feature articles

Brian Matthew Jordan

that shed light on two key Civil War battles: Allen C. Guelzo writes

SPECIAL PROJECTS MANAGER

BOOK REVIEW EDITOR BRIAN@CIVILWARMONITOR.COM

about the brutal struggle between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee

Katie Brackett Fialka

at Cold Harbor in June 1864 ("Ten Miles from Richmond," on page

SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR

44), while Patrick Brennan probes the oft-overlooked story of the fight

Patrick Mitchell

for Cheatham Hill in Georgia during William Tecumseh Sherman's campaign to take Atlanta ("A Patch of Hell on Earth," page 54). Yet the history of any conflict encompasses so much more than what occurred on the field of battle-from the politics and economics of the day to the goings-on at the home front. In short, to truly under stand the war and its legacy, our explorations of the conflict must be as wide as they are deep. Our cover story ("Broken Soldiers," page 30) is a case in point. When the Civil War ended, its soldiers became veterans who carried the scars and the stories of their wartime experiences. Yet the strug gles of these men-particularly those grievously wounded-rarely get the coverage they deserve. What happened to them after the guns fell silent? What did their path to recovery look like, and what became of them after the war? The stories of the wounded are difficult to read; their photos hard to face. But as part of war's brutal reality, they have a place in our pages.

CREATIVE DIRECTOR MODUS OPERANDI DESIGN (WWW.MODUSOP.NET)

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Howard White CIRCULATION MANAGER HWHITEASSOC@COMCAST.NET

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

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2 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

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Celebrating

60 Years

CIVIL WAR HISTORY JOURNAL

Conflict & Command Civil War History Readers, Volume I Edited by John T. Hubbell Civil War historian John T. Hubbell reintroduces influential essays that treat military matters in a variety of contexts, including leadership, strat egy; tactics, execution, and outcomes . Those interested in the officers and soldiers, logistics and planning, and outcomes of the battles in America's bloodiest conflict will welcome this essential collection .

CIVIL WAR HISTORY

Race and Recruitment Civil Wat· History Readers, Volume 2 Edited by John David Smith In this second volume of the best of

History,

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John David Smith has selected ground

Lesley J.

Gordon,

Editor

breaking essays that examine slavery, aboli tionism, emancipation, Lincoln and race, and African Americans as soldiers and veterans. His introduction assesses the contribution of each article to our understanding of the Civil War.

On Lincoln Civil War History Readers, Volume 3 Edited by John T. Hubbell This third volume of the best of

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ership, views on slavery, abolitionism, emanci pation, and Lincoln as war president. Hubbell's introduction contributes to our understanding of Lincoln and the Civil War.

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DISPATCHES

AW,Shucks

ate soldier images, the rebelyell, and the battle for Nashville. And in this issue,you might especially e,.yoy Pat Brennan's article on the fight for Kennesaw Moun tain, Georgia, on page 54.

Great website.Great mag.Keep up the good work. Peter Hoffer VIA EMAIL

The Civil War Monitor only gets better with age! You could not do a better job if you h-ied! I am a subscriber for life! Tony Ostrowski CHICOPEE, MASSACHUSETTS

I am a subscriber to The Civil War Monitor because of the demise of North &> South maga zine. You honored the remaining issues on my N&>S subscription by sending the Monitol- instead. Boy, am I glad you did; what an upgrade! When the time came, I couldn't re-subscribe fast enough. Now I get detailed articles that are well written and interesting, illustrated by graphics that are relevant, useful, and pleasing to the eye. Even the paper is an upgrade, with a slick cover and pages that feel good to the touch. I am hooked. My only com plaint is that four issues a year are not enough! Keep up the good work. Curtis Mildner KENNEBUNK, MAINE

Reader Requests

erage, anywhere, of the Con federate Army of Tennessee. Generally, all the southern atten tion goes to Robert E.Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. As you well know, the Monitor has covered a ton of Yankees: Custer, Sherman, Lincoln, etc. (or at least y'all put them on the cover). In all fairness, y'all prob ably get a ton of requests from Yankees wanting more northern content, and I know you can't please everybody. Please give us some love here in Alabama, and keep up the good work. Dallas Dorsey VIA EMAIL

I love your magazine, and I have really enjoyed my subscription. May I suggest more southern content? There is very little cov-

4 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

ED. We hearyou, Dallas, loud and clear. Keep an eye out in future issues for alTicles on Confeder-

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

Your spring 2014 issue was a pleasure to read. I commend you for the unique way you have presented new perspectives on a variety of Civil War topics. I am disappointed, however, that the Battle of Shiloh has not graced your pages. I believe Shiloh is unusual among major Civil War battles in that comparatively little has been written about it. The Civil War Monitor is indicative of this absence of coverage.In your last eight issues, Shiloh has received only a few brief mentions (in Vol.2, No. 2, and Vol. 2, No.4) until your current issue's last page ["Parting Shot: Take Me Out to the ...Battlefield," Vol.4, No.1] whereon we are treated to the wonderful little story of a baseball found on the battle field. I'd like to suggest an area of research that I believe would shed new light on the outcome of the battle: the extraordinary heroism of Ulysses S. Grant's chief of staff, Colonel Joseph D. Webster, who on the afternoon of April 6, 1862, at the order of Grant, assembled some 50 to 60 artillery pieces and placed them on what would later be known as Grant's Last Line (of defense). Webster did this under what must have been absolute chaos on the battlefield.Not only did he have to assemble the guns in a defensive line in the

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midst of battle, he also in many cases had to commandeer terrified soldiers, who were running for their lives, and teach them how to man and fire the weapons. Webster's feat is mentioned only in passing in any written work that I have been able to find about the battle, if it is mentioned at all. Having survived several firefights while serving in Vietnam with the 173d Airborne Brigade, I think I have some sense as to what it must have been like for Webster that bloody afternoon at Shiloh. Thus, my real purpose is to hopefully interest you in researching this unsung act of hero ism and bringing it to light in a future issue. In any event, I wish you well in your quest to present "a new look at Ameri ca's greatest conflict."

lion would have consumed another third of the budget for a period of more than 10 years. Thanks for another engaging issue. I read it cover to cover. Steve Walrath CLEVELAND, OHIO

ED. We forwarded your observation to James Malten, who confirmed that the building in fact cost $900,000, not $900 million. Thankyou, Steve, for catching this. You have a good eye indeed!

Correction

Clewell W. Smith SPRING HILL, FLORIDA

Oops!

While I thoroughly enjoyed James Marten's article about a man who was very prominent in his own time but almost forgotten today ["The Ubiquitous Mr. Tanner," Vol.4, No. 1], I have to wonder whether the Pension Bureau building really cost $900 million, as stated on page 65.If $88,275,113 represented one third of the entire annual federal budget (as also stated on page 65), then $900 mil-

ED. A few readers wrote to ask what sources we consulted in compiling the casualty figures presented in Gany Adelman's alticle "The Overland Cam paign in Pictures," which appeal'ed in our spring 2014 issue. We gleaned the numbers from a variety of sources, chief among them: The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion; William F Fox, Regimental Losses in the American Civil War (1898; reprint, 1993); Edward H. Bonekemper III, A Victor, Not a Butcher (2004); and Alfred C. Young, Lee's Army during the Overland Campaign: A Numerical Study (2013). We should have included these titles in our note on sources; our sincere apologies for the oversight, which was ours alone, not Mr. Adelman's.

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SIll Supported by a grant from the Ab�am Lincoln Bicent8nn1al Foundation

'oulhern Illi l(tis Un i \'�r"i t}' ,.1.RSQr... o �L

MEMORABILIA

41st Annual Civil War Collector's Show SATURDAY, JUNE 2 8

- SUNDAY, JUNE

Allstar Expo Complex GETTYSBURG. PENNSYLVANIA

One of the most popular Civil War relic shows celebrates its 41st year. Over 300 tables of authentic, quality artifacts will be on display by a variety of dealers-for perusal or purchase.

Your Guide to Civil War Events

SUMMER

$7 ADULTS; CHILDREN UNDER 12 fREE: FOR MORE INfORMATION: 717-334-2350

2014

JUNE 2Dlq LECTURE

A Day Long to be Remembered: Lincoln in Gettysburg F RIDAY, JUNE 13,6:30 P.M .

Pages ofthe Past Bookstore

A two-act musical drama tells the story of Abraham Lincoln's boyhood years, including his first love, the deaths of his mother and sister, and his first encounter with a slave auction while visiting New Orleans. $19 ADULTS; $16 STUDENTS; $16 SENIORS AND MILITARY: $6 CHILDREN (+$2 fOR TICKETS

BOUGHT AT THE DOOR ON DAY Of PERfORMANCE) ; fOR MORE INFORMATION: LlNCOLNAMPHITHEATRE.

ORG or 800-264-4223

GET TYSBURG. PENNSYLVANIA

Historian Michael Burlingame and land scape photographer Robert Shaw discuss their new book, A Day Lang to be Remem bered: Lincoln in Gettysburg, a multifac eted look at Lincoln's role in the events at Gettysburg from May to November 1863.

(

Juneteenth: The First Day of Freedom SATURDAY. JUNE 21

SUNDAY, JUNE 2 2

fREE SEATING LIMITED TO 50); FOR MORE INfOR MATION: PAGESOfPAST.COM or 717-334-0572

ATLANTA. GEORGIA

A.lincoln: A Pioneer Tale THURSDAY, JUNE 19

SATURDAY, JULY 1 2

Lincoln Amphitheatre LINCOLN CITY, INDIANA

LECTURE

Treating Orthopedic Injuries from the Battle of Monocacy SATURDAY, JULY 5, I P.M.

Monocacy National Battlefield Visitors Center FREDERICK. MARYLAND

COMMEMORATION

Atlanta History Center

PERFORMANCE

JULY 2Dlq

Genealogical workshops, performances, exhibitions, and kid-friendly activities help visitors explore the themes of freedom and family history during this two-day commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States.

Dr. John M. Rathgeb, M.D., explores real cases from Union and Confederate soldiers wounded during the Battle of Monocacy. The presentation, hosted by the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, will examine their i�uries, courses of treatment, and outcomes, and compare them with modern orthopedic practices. FREE; FOR MORE INFORMATION: 301-695-1864 xl013

REENACTMENT

fREE; fOR MORE INfORMATION: ATLANTAHISTORY CENTER.COM or 404-814-4000

Heritage Village Museum Civil War Weekend SATURDAY, JULY 12

SUNDAY, JULY 13

Sharon Woods Park CINCINNATI, OHIO

A full weekend of living-history demon strations includes portrayals of camp and town life and battle reenactments. In addition, several "education stations" for children will present how people lived during the Civil War. $8 ADULTS; $4 CHILDREN 5-11; CHILDREN UNDER 4 AND MUSEUM MEMBERS ARE fREE; fOR MORE INfORMATION: HERITAGEVILLAGECINCINNATI.ORG OR 513-563-9484.

6 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

COMMEM ORATION

AUGUST 20111

Second Battle of Kernstown Commemoration SAT, JULY 1 9

SUN. JULY

LECTURE

Kernstown Battlefield WINCHESTER. VIRGINIA

Celebrate the lS0th anniver sary of the Second Battle of Kernstown-fought on July 24, 1864-with two days of events, including guided tours, live period music,period fashion shows,and living history dem onstrations with sharpshooters and cavalry units. FREE; FOR MORE INFORMATION: KERNSTOWNBATTLE.ORG OR 677671-1326

FESTIVAL

Atlanta Cyclorama Family Fun Day SUNDAY, JULY

Atlanta Cyclorama Auditorium ATLANTA. GEORGIA

Spend a family day at the Cyclorama learning in fun, hands-on ways about the Battle of Atlanta and the Civil War. Educators will teach young people and their families the games and pastimes of the period. Storytellers,face paint ers,and reenactors will keep you entertained and learning about the conflict through engaging,interactive activities. $10 ADULTS; $6 SENIORS; $6 CHILDREN 4-12: FOR MORE INFORMA TION: ATLANTACYCLORAMA.ORG OR 404-656-7625

The Fall of Atlanta in Gone with the Wind: History or Fiction? FRIDAY, AUGUST 15. NOON

The Museum of the Confederacy RICHMOND. VIRGINIA

The movie Gone with the Wind is one of the most enduring cinematic depictions of the American Civil War. One of its most famous scenes illustrates the fall of Atlanta, Georgia, in 1864-but is Hollywood's depiction historically accurate? Curator Cathy Wright exam ines the true historical events, then analyzes author Margaret Mitchell's 1936 book and the 1939 MGM movie for histori cal accuracy. Bring your own brown-bag lunch. fREE WITH MUSEUM MEMBERSHIP OR ADMISSION; FOR MORE INFORMATION: MOC .ORG or 655-649-1661 x121 COMMEMORATION

Manassas Civil War Weekend FRI, AUG

22 -

SUN, AUG 24

MANASSAS. VIRGINIA

Old Town Manassas, the Manassas Museum,and Libe ria Plantation host a weekend of events-including lectures, exhibits, artillery demonstra tions,live music, and a period baseball game-highlighting life during the Civil War. FREE; INFORMATION: MANASSAS MUSEUM.ORG or 703-366-1673

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

USS Monitor Center at The Mariners' Museum Plan your visit today to see this

award-winning Civil War attraction! Be a part of the action in our high definition Battle Theater, walk the deck of the full-sized Monitor replica, see artifacts like the iconic revolving gun turret.

Save the Date!

Battle of Hampton Roads Weekend March 7 & 8, 2015 Commemorating the 153rd anniversary of the Civil War Battle of the Ironclads with living history

SALVO

8 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

IN THIS SECTION Travels A VISIT TO ATLANTA voices SOUNDS OF WAR

. . . . • • . . . . .

. . . • . . . . . . . . . . .

Dossier ULYSSES S, GRANT . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Preservation CAMPAtGN150 MARCHES ON

. .

PrImer CORPS BADGES . . . • • . . . . . • . . . • . 20

Disunion ALBERT CASHIER'S SECRET

. . .

InFoc:us LINCOLN'S FINAL JOURNEY

. . .

9 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

TRAVELS

In May 1864, Union general Wil liam Tecumseh Sherman launched his campaign to take Atlanta, a vi tal rail and industrial center for the South. From Chattanooga, Ten nessee, Sherman invaded Georgia and, through a series of aggressive flanking maneuvers and battles (in cluding Resaca on May 13-15 and Kennesaw Mountain on June 27), methodically pushed the Confeder ate forces defending Atlanta under General Joseph E. Johnston back toward the city. Sherman followed up these successes with victories against Johnston's replacement in command, General John B. Hood. On September 2, Union forces tri umphantly entered Atlanta, a time ly victory that many believe helped propel embattled President Abra ham Lincoln to reelection in Novem ber. !T Interested in visiting Atlanta? To help make the most of your trip, we've enlisted two experts on the area-Gordon L . Jones and Brian Craig Miller-to offer suggestions for what to see and do in and around the historic city.

10 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

Don'tMiss

Pickett's Mill Battlefield (4432 Mt. Tabor Church Rd., Dallas, GA; 770-443-7850) in Paulding County

is probably the most pristine Civil War battlefield in the United States. The tree lines and clearings are virtually unchanged since the May 27,1864, battle. There is a visitors center and walking trails,but no monuments, so you see the same things the soldiers saw in 1864. It's really worth exploring. -GJ

Atlanta is home to so many promi nent Civil War and civil rights loca tions. However,I love spending an afternoon at the Atlanta History Center (130 West Paces Ferry Rd. NW; 404-814-4000) in Buckhead. It has fantastic exhibits laying out the history of the city, and the Civil War section contains a wealth of arti facts. The staff is friendly and will make your visit an informative and enjoyable one. -BCM

BEST TIME TO VISIT Spring is one of the most enjoyable times in Atlanta. Everything awakens in bloom and the residents are ready for great outdoor activities. Sheep to Shawl, held each spring at the Atlanta History Center's Smith Family Farm, is a local favorite. Visitors experience seasonal activities of a work ing 1860s farm, including sheep shearing, and pal·tici pate in the process of carding, cleaning, dyeing, and spinning the wool into beautiful cloth. -GJ

I love going to Atlanta any time in the late spring or early summer (April to June). The weather is perfect, \oVith warm temperatures but low humid ity. It is a great time to be outside, especially if you are walking the battlefield trails in Kennesaw or catching an eve ning Braves game. -BCM

11 PHOTOGRAPHS BY TIM REDMAN

THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

The Atlanta Cyclorama (800 Cherokee Ave. SE; 404-658-7625) in Grant Park-a giant, 360degree painting created in 1886 to depict the July 22,1864, Battle of Atlanta-is one of only two of such circular Civil War paintings that sur足 vive. While you're in the park, see the earthen ramparts of Fort Walker, the only remnant of the 1864 Confederate defensive line. -GJ I personally love the cyclorama and really enjoy

taking my Civil War students there when we embark upon field studies of the South. Since the seats slowly revolve, you get the full perspective of the painting and you will walk away with a great historical overview of the Civil War campaigns that took place around the city in 1864. -BCM

The Georgian Terrace Hotel (659 Peachtree St. NE; 404-897-1991) in Midtown is a favorite for many reasons. Ifs conveniently located near restaurants and attractions Including the Margaret Mitchell House and the Fabulous Fox Theatre. I personally appreciate its historical character and Its ties to Gone With the Wind (many of the stars attended a gala III the hoters grand ballroom when the movie was released Itl 1939). I also recommend the Hyatt Midtown (125 10th St. NE; 404-443-1234) and the Ellis Hotel (176 Peaciltree St. NW; 404-523-5155) for their decor pricing. and convenient locations. -GJ I love the Westin Peachtree Plaza (210 Peachtree St.: 404-659-1400). Its round tower ensures an excellent view of the city. especially If you ask for a higher floor. and it IS walking distance from many downtown attractions. IIlcludll1g the World of Coca-Cola. the Georgia Aquarium. and CNN Center. -oeM

12 T H E C I V I L WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

PHOTOGRAPHS BY TIM REDMAN

o BEST BOOK

BEST EATS

For breakfast, I'd suggest Sun In My Belly (2161 College Ave. NE; 404-370-1088) in the Kirkwood neighborhood. Try "The Hangover," an open-face biscuit with sausage, a fried egg, avocado, and cheese.Pizza lovers shouldn't miss Antico Pizza (1093 Hemphill Ave. NW; 404-724-2333) in West Midtown.All of the pizza is authentic Italian and simply amazing, though I'm partial to the Fromaggio (four cheeses, fresh garlic, and basil).Mary Mac's Tea Room (224 Ponce De Leon Ave. NE; 404-876-1800) is a southern staple (and rumored to be one of Margaret Mitchell's favor ites).You must try the chicken and dumplings.King + Duke (3060 Peachtree Rd. NW; 404-4773500 )-a swanky restaurant that combines urban design with primitive cooking techniques (like cooking over fu-e)-is a great option for dinner.Be sure to try the bone marrow! -GJ The Sllver Sldllet (200 14th St.; 404-847-1388) offers classic southern cooking with mouth-water ing grits.Order the Southern Breakfast to sample a superb selection of southern culinary clas sics.For brunch, try Joy Cafe (316 Pharr Rd. NE; 404-816-0306) in Buckhead, north of downtown. This cozy joint has insanely good biscuits and gravy and shrimp and grits.The pancakes are fluffy and the service is great.You might be in for a wait, but it's worth it.If you're looking for a bw-ger, you must try The Vortex Bar and Grtll (438 MorelandAve.; 404-688-1828). Located in the Little Five Points district, this eclectic neighborhood gem has the hands-down best turkey burger I have ever devoured Uuicy, with the right amount of back heat). The rest of the burgers are also out of this world and it is a great place to relax either for lunch or in the early evening after a long day of touring.If you are looking for soul food, put the Busy Bee Cafe (810 Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. SW; 404-525-9212) on your list. With a wide range of options, including chitlins, ham hocks, fried chicken, and great meatloaf, you can't go wrong.The side dishes (greens, mac 'n' cheese, and fried green tomatoes) and the key lime cake are my favorites.-BCM

ABOUT OUR EXPERTS

Gordon l. Jones is the senior military historian and curator at the Atlanta History Center in Atlanta, Georgia, where he has worked since 1991.

Brian Craig Miller, an associate professor and associate chair of history at Emporia State University, became an Atlanta aficionado after spending several months in the city researching two of his books, John Bell Hood and the Fight for Civli War Memory (2010) and Empty Sleeves: Amputation in the Civil War South (2015).

Barry L. Brown and Gordon R. Elwell's

Crossroads ofConflict: A Guide to Civil War Sites in Georgia

(2010), published by the Georgia Civil War Commission for the sesquicentennial, is a good place to start for anyone looking to visit the state's Civil War sites. Probably the most accurate, detailed, and balanced account of Atlanta during the war is Steve Davis' What the Yanhees Did to Us: Sherman's Bombard ment and Wrecking ofAtlanta (2012). And

a great classic on the struggle for Atlanta is Albert Castel's Deci sion in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of

1864 (1992). -GJ

Bill Link's Atlanta, Cradle ofthe New South (2013) explores the intersecting roles of race and memory in the city during and after the Civil War. It is an excel lent history that will offer insights to those visiting Atlanta. -SCM

13 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

VOICES

ISO UNOS

or WAR

III HAVE NEVER, SINCE I WAS Ba HEARD SO FEARFUL A NOISE AS A REBEL YELL. IT IS NOTH ING LIKE A HURRAH, BUT RATHER A REGULAR WILDCAT SCREECH.II UNION SURGEON .JOHN IWIDNER PEIIRY(RIGHT), MAY 5,1863

"The GROAN S of the dY41g, the SHRIEK S of the wounded, and the almost UNEARTH LY SCREAMI NG

of shells and cannon balls, mingled with the RATTLE of musketry, made up a scene that men see but a few times in a lifetime, and the fewer the better."

"Profound silence ... prevailed in the ranks, broken only liy the rattle of canteens against the shanks of the bayonets, and the hea� monotonous tramp of the men.'; ILLINOIS INFANTRYMAN LUNDEll snLLWELL, REMEMBERING A NIGHT MARCH SHORTLY AFTER THE FALL OF VICKSBURG, MISSISSIPPI, IN HIS MEMOIRS

"THERE IS NOT MINUTE, DAY OR NIGHT, BUT WHAT WE HEAR THE

CAN N O N' S ROAR OR THE RIFLE' S CRACK. BUT WE DON'T MIND IT MUCH. WE HAVE GOTTEN USED TO IT. IT IS OUR TRADE; 'TIS MUSIC TO US . WE GO TO SLEEP TO IT, WE WAKE TO IT; BUT I CANNOT SAY WE LIKE IT."

e whole ense line hed in most iveable alignment,

inging, scream ing, bellowing, cheering, sweating, the line surging and bending like a snake,butthe roar of their multitudinous vOices never letting up for an instant. ... "

ct\AIWE H. WIIITE, 21ST MASSACHUSETTS INFANTRY,IN AN UNDATED LETIER DURING THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG, VIRGINIA, IN 1864

UNION OFFICER CHARLEa WILLIAM WDOUEY, ON A SCENE DURING THE MAY 1864 FIGHTING AT SPOTSYLVANIA, VIRGINIA, IN HIS MEMOIRS

"CLASH GO MY TEETH TOGETHER, MY BONES ALMOST RATTLE;

THEN FOLLOWS THE HUNGRY, RAVENING SHRIEK OF THE SHELL, WHICH BREAKS FORTH LIKE A HORRIBLE BIRD OF PREY TO DEVOUR THE WHOLE WORLD. IT SWEEPS HOARSELY TOWARD THE ENEMY'S LINE; THEN I HEAR IT GO 'THUD-THUD!' THROUGH SOME OBSTRUCTION. IN A MOMENT, THE AIR BEYOND IS LIT UP WITH ITS BURSTING; AND THE SOUND ROARS BACK TO US...." .JAMEa KDlDALL HDaMEII, 52ND MASSACHUSETIS INFANTRY, ON THE FIRING OF UNION HEAVY ARTILLERY DURING THE BOMBARDMENT OF PORT HUDSON, LOUISIANA,IN HIS DIARY, JUNE 1863

_: LETTERS FROM A SURGEON OF THE CIVIL WAR (1906); SOLDIERS' LETTERS, FROM CAMp, SATILE·FIELD AND PRISON (1865); THE COLOR-GUARD ... (1864); LETTERS OF A FAMILY DURING THE WAR OF THE RESELLlON, 1881-188' VOL. 2 (1899); THE STORY OF A COMMON SOLDIER OF ARMY LIFE IN THE CIVIL WAR, 1881-186' (1920).

SEPTEMBER 12-14

OCTOBER 6-10 I

I ·

•

OCTOBERI7-l9

I·

I•

WWW.BLUEANDGRAYEDUCATION.ORG 434-250-9921 �:.L.::.II

DOS SIER

Ulysses S. Grant IN MAY 1864, Ulysses S.Grant embarked upon what would become one of the most consequential operations of the Civil War: the Overland Campaign. Over nearly eight weeks, the armies of Grant and Robert E. Lee clashed repeatedly in northern Virginia. And while these battles collectively produced more Union than Confeder ate casualties, Grant's relentless pursuit of the Army ofNOlthern Virginia allowed him to maneuver it into a siege at Petersburg and ultimately eliminate it as an effec tive fighting force. � The campaign's lS0th anniversary seemed a fitting time to reflect upon the general often credited with winning the war. To do so, we asked a panel of leading historians and authors to assess Grant's record and legacy.

WAS GRANT THE CIVIL WAR'S BEST GENERAL?

Yes 87%

... AND WHAT WAS HIS BIGGEST FLAW?

WHAT D O YOU MOST ADMIRE ABOUT GRANT ...

"Determination: his willingness to keep moving on, undeterred by setbacks."

"Poor choices of subordinates." ALLEN C. GUELZO

"The same aggressiveness that was Grant's strength was also often ms greatest weakness."

BROOKS D. SIMPSON

"clear thinking. Grant was an extremely calm and clear headed general officer."

LESLEY GORDON

"Stubbornness. This is the dark side of his tenacity."

JOSEPH GLATTHAAR

"Despite his imperfections and shortcomings, in the end he comes out on top." BROOKS D. SIMPSON

DANIEL SUTHERLAND

"His genuine humbleness. Grant did not think he was better than anyone else, or above whatever duty needed doing."

"Grant was a poor judge of character outside of a military setting." GREGORY URWIN

CHANDRA M. MANNING

"Unpretentiousness." STEVEN WOODWORTH

JOSEPH GLATTHAAR

WHEN WAS GRANT AT HIS PEAK?

We asked our panelists to rank Grant's performance in seven major campaigns, giving the highest mark for his best performance and the lowest for his least impressive. This chart represents an average of all the responses.

16 T H E CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

Forts Henry & Donelson [FEBRUARY 1862}

Shiloh

[APRIL 1862J

Vicksburg CaJl1paign

{DECEMBER 1862-JULY 1863}

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE BOOK ABOUT GRANT?

"His memoirs rank with the best reminis cences in American literature."

"A gracefully written biography that cap tures every dimension of Grant's life."

GARY W. GALLAGHER

"It is the most comprehensive bioj(raphy, the best written, anathe most intelligent appraisal of the presidential years."

PETER CARMICHAEL

JAMES M. MCPHERSON

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE QUOTE BY OR ABOUT GRANT?

ough;find out where your enemy i , get at him as soon a you can, and strike �im hard as

g . % o

�o > «

i:;

"He habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall, and was about to do it."

[MAY-JUNE 1864j

21.7%

Naive 1396

Detectiw 4 J5"

Modam4Jc' Encumbered 4 l�',

)

THEODORE LYMAN, DESCRIBING GRANT IN MEADE'S HEADQUARTERS, '883-'8811 (KENNETH W. NOE

Overland Campaign

Underrated

Inconsistent 4.3!1%

)

GRANT, IN A DISPATCH TO SEC RETARY OF WAR EDWIN STANTON, MAY 11, 1864 (MICHAEL BALLARD

Chattanooga Campaign

WHAT WORD BEST CHA RA CTERIZES GRANT'S PRESIDENCY?"

Disappointing 87°0

"I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer."

{SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER 1863j

LARRY J. DANIEL

Well-intentioned 13%

)

GRANT, AS QUOTED BY MAJOR JOHN H. BRINTON, IN PERSONAL MEMOIRS OF JOHN H. BRINTON (DANIEL SUTHERLAND

"It is unbiased, balanced, all in all a penetrating look at a man who let few into his inner circle."

Reerattable 4 :;5'0

ContrcrversiaJ 4 35"0

Petersburg Campaign [JUNE 1864-MARCH 1865j

Problamatic 435"

AppomattoxCampal� Army of Northern VIrginia Surre nder [MARCH-APRIL 18651

PARTICIPANTS: JWichael Ballard: Peter Carmichael; Larry J. Daniel; Gary W. Gallagher: Joseph Glatthaar: Lesley Gordon:

Allen C. Guelzo: Jl,1. Keith Harris.: Brian A.fatthew Jordan; Chandra J\J. lvfannil1g; Joltn iWarszalek: James M. J\JcPlIerson: Kennetlt W. Noe; Gerald Proko/Jowicz: Ethan Rafuse; Stephen W. Sears.: Brooks D. Simpson; Christopher S. Stowe: Daniel Sulilerland: Gregory Urwin: Elizabeth Varon: Joan Waugh: alld Steven Woodworth.

.BeCAuse ofroundlng, pereentagesdo not add up to 100%. THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

BY O. JAMES LIGHTHIZER

PRESERVATION

PRESIDENT. CIVIL WAR TRUST

Campaign 150 Marches On AT THE CIVIL WAR

Trust, we've never been afraid of setting ambitious goals. Raise

a million dollars in a few months to save a critical piece of battlefield property? Sure.

marrying 21st-century technol ogy with 19th-century history

Persuade Walmalt to move a new store location farther away from important historic

like never before. Extending the

resources? Count us in. But back in 2011, even I was hesitant about announcing the

campaign will further enable

daunting sesquicentennial task that our staff and bOal·d of h-ustees had set. !I It was

the public to access these free

$40 million, the most ambitious private fundraising effort in the history of American

innovative educational offer

heritage land preservation. !I Flash-forward 32 months. That goal that I thought we'd

ings, laying the groundwork for

maybe, just maybe, be able to reach by the end of the sesquicentennial? The outpour

a new generation of historians

ing of support for battlefield preservation that the sesquicentennial engendered went

and preservationists. Reaching this new milestone

beyond anything I ever hoped

all-time mark of 40,000 acres

will be a b:emendous challenge,

for. In less than three years, the

saved.

but we owe it to the brave men

Civil War Trust has completed the initially stated fundraising

our education programs in

goal of Campaign 150: Our Time, Our Legacy.

online. With more than 200,000

But after reaching our target

people using our state-of-the-art

the classroom, in print, and

more than a year early, we faced

digital interpretive products

a dilemma: Could we set our

including Battle App® guides,

sights even higher? After all,

360-degree panoramas, and

this program has saved some of

animated maps-the Trust is

our highest-profile properties, including key land at Brandy Station, Chickamauga, Gaines' Mill, Shiloh, and Vicksburg. We have translated increased public awareness of the Civil War during this anniversary period into tangible achievements that will stand the test of time. After discussions with our all-volunteer board of h\lstees, we decided to issue a "stretch goal": an additional $10 million toward the permanent protec tion of the nation's endangered hallowed ground. We are grateful to every individual who has contributed thus far. But we also know that there is much more work left to do and no better time to do it than during this sesquicenten nial. Continuing Campaign 150 will propel the Trust towal·d an

18 T H E CIVIL WAR MONITOR

SUMMER 2014

and women who answered this

We will also reinvigorate

nation's call to service. After all, LOOK FOR REGULAR PRESERVATION NEWS AND UPDATES FROM THE CIVIL WAR TRUST IN FUTURE ISSUES. TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE ORGANI ZATION AND HOW YOU CAN HELP, VISIT CIVILWAR.ORG

a preserved battlefield is a living monument-not just to those who fell at one specific site, but to all our fallen heroes-where future generations will learn the values that have shaped our nation. 0

FREE Trial Issues !

a t i f the NORTH had seceded? Whu� i r l hll l�l'O-lllm'ul'Y 1Jl!I1I(JCl'lIjs hml [IWllt I,n i i ' ptl1" I,y U ilil l" [

lind

Wlln

:i.1IVU

L hC' u lclll. i.cm ul' 1 8(;{ )'! W I1l1L if ,JeITI 'I"l14ln O:lvi� l'o ughL III

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The

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A k i n(111l E<l ilion h(Jok b'y A l u ll

Civil War News Current Events Monthly Newspaper civilwarnews.com

...

Un ion

ewel l

VII

War

A mm�un .mm

What ifyour father were killed in war! Blake's father is killed at Shiloh. He has to do something about it and de cides to go to the war and kill the sol dier who killed his father. But it's not as simple as he thinks. Entering the war during the Kentucky Campaign of1862 with the 2nd Tennessee, he later finds himself with the 31st Indi

_ OhIo --

ana when he falls at Perryville , Young Blake sees the gut-wrenching de struction and aftermath of battle with its loss oflife and of friends, wounded and killed. He no longer wants to kill Yanks. He just wants to go home. Friendship with an enemy soldier has unexpected con

The regiments and their histories in this story are real, the events did happen. sequences.

The

Artilleryman

For People Interested In Artillery 1 750-1 900 theartilleryman.com

BY J. A R T H U R M O O R E & BRY S ON B. B R O D Z I N S K I

AVAILABLE IN HARDCOVER ($29.99). PAPERBACK ($19.99). OR .BOOK ($3.99) FROM: A M AZO N - C O M X L i B R I S ,C O M U P F R O M C O R I NTH .C O M

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PRIMER

Corps Badges INSPIRED BY GENERAL

Philip Kearny's insistence that his men wear small pieces

of red cloth on their hats to distinguish them from other troops, the Union army in March 1863 mandated that distinct badges be worn by the men of its various corps. Cut from colored cloth and worn on the hat or jacket breast, each badge allowed easy identification of a soldier's corps (by its shape) and division ( by its color). The badge system also seemed aimed at installing unit pride and improving the army's sagging esprit de corps. By war's end, more than 25 corps and specialty badges had been issued, most of which are pictured here. (Note: The 13th and 21st Corps did not adopt badges.) 1ST CORPS

2NO CORPS

3RO CORPS

Among the army's first corps badges was its simplest: the sphere worn by the 1st Corps.

Union officer Joshua L. Chamber lain thought the clover-leafbadge "a peaceful token, but a triple menace to foes."

Two months after his men started wearing their ''lozenge'' shaped badges, General Daniel Sickles would lead them into battle at Chancellorsville.

5TH CORPS

GYH CORPS

nH CORPS

The Maltese cross badge was worn in some of the war's bloodiest struggles, from Gettysburg to the Overland Campaign.

The 6th Corps wore a St. Andrews cross as a badge until 1864, then changed to the Greek cross shown here.

This crescent-and-star badge was not adopted until after the war's close, in June 1865.

8TH CORPS

9TH CORPS

10TH CORPS

11TH CORPS

Though the six-pointed star was never officiallyadopted as a badge, men of the 8th Corps were wearing it as one by mid-July 1864.

In April 1864, this elaborate shield with a figure 9, anchor, and cannon was adopted. By year's end, it was changed to a simple shield.

Units of the lOth Corps-including the famed 54th Massachusetts Infantry-donned a four bastioned fort badge after its adoption in July 1864.

The lIth Corps wore tins crescent badge for a little over a year, until it was consolidated with the 12th Corps in April 1864 to form the 20th Corps.

KEY Most corps issued badges in these standard colors to signify division.

Q �i"Y 4TH CORPS

The original 4th Corps, organized by George McClellan, had no badge, but the reorganized corps, under George Thomas, adopted the triangle in April 1864.

_ JOHN D.BIWNOS.NARDTACKANOCOFFEE(I8B8), PHIJP KATCHfRAND RON VOLSTAD. A",ERJCANCIVIL WAR ARMI£S:/,UNlON TROOPS0986),THEODORED.STRICKLER. WHEN AND

20 T H E CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

1VH£��:gx��PXW,:lf ��8Jili/ �J �

14TH C O R P S

1 5TH CORPS

I GTH C O RP S

The star badge stayed with the 12th Corpswhen it consolidated with the 11th Corps to form the 20th Corps in April 1864.

It's thought that the 14th Corps' acorn badge was an ode to its men's reliance on the nut for sustenance while besieged at Chattanooga in 1863.

"If any corps ... has a right to take pride in its badge"-a cartridge box with "40 rounds" sbunped on it it was the 15th Corps, noted its commander in 1865.

This badge, "a circle with four Minie-balls, the points towards the centre, cut out of it," was called the A.J. Smith cross after the corps' commanding general.

I?TH C O R P S

18TH CORPS

1 9TH CORPS

ZOTH CORPS

IZTH CORPS

* * General Francis Blair wrote of his corps' aITOW, I'ln its swiftness . . . and its destructive powers ... i t is . . . as emblematical ofthis corps as any design that couId be adopted."

Officers in this corps were initially ordered to wear their badgea cross with equi-foliate arms on the breast, suspended from a trl-colored ribbon.

In contrast to other corps, the second division ofthe 19th Corps wore its ufan-leaved cross, with octagonal centre" in blue, the third division in white.

The 11th and 12th Corps consolidated and adopted the latter's star badge, though some wore a hybrid star-crescent to show their 11th Corps roots.

ZZND CORPS

Z3RO CORPS

Z4TH C O R P S

Z 5TH CORPS

The 23rd Corps adopted a shield type badge, similar to that worn by the 9th Corps, whose commander, Ambrose Burnside, had ordered the corps' formation in 1863.

The heart badge, noted the 24th Corps' cormnander, U"testifies our affectionate regard for all our brave comrades . . . and our devotion to the sacred cause."

The commander of this corps composed almost entirely of black troops-urged his men to make their square badge "immortal" by their conduct in battle.

o A cinquefoil badge was worn by members ofthis corps, which served in the defense of Washington, D.C.

Badges from the 6th Corps (left) and 12th/20th Corps (opposite page) adorn the unifonns of Union soldiers.

HANCOCK'S 1ST

SHBRIDAN'S

CORPS VBTBRANS

C AVALRY C O R P S

General Winfield Scott Hancock left the 2nd Corps to command this military reserve organization, which adopted a wreath-of-laurel badge.

While General Philip Sheridan's Cavalry Corps had a badge-gold crossed sabers on a blue field-it was not generally worn.

u.S. SIDNAL CORPS

BNDINBBR CORPS

The Signal Corps' key communicative tools-flags and a flaming torch adorned its badge.

A castle badge was worn by the men responsible for building military bridges, forts, and roads.

21 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

B Y JEAN R. FREEDMAN

DI S U N ION

Albert Cashier's Secret IN THE SPRING

of 1914, a Civil War veteran named Albert Cashier arrived a t the

Banks' Red River Campaign in

Illinois state hospital for the insane with symptoms of advanced dementia. As a

the spring of 1864, marching

young private, Cashier had fought at the siege of Vicksburg, where he and his

for miles in the Louisiana heat;

comrades broke the spine of the Confederacy, and his name was inscribed on the

by D ecember of that year, she

Illinois victory monument there. He had lived out the intervening years in modest

was in Nashville, fighting with

circumstances, working as a farmhand, a laborer, and, on occasion, a street lamp

the Army of the Cumberland in

lighter, one of the many former soldiers whose civilian lives never achieve the glory

its hard-won victory over John

of their wartime service. He was destined for the same obscurity in death, had it not

Bell Hood's forces. Her final

been for a secret that the state hospital made public: Albert Cashier was actually a

combat experience came during the siege of Mobile, Alabama, a

woman named Jennie Hodgers. Little is known of H odgers'

soldier who spent much of her

fight that did not end until after

time hiding her sex, finding

Robert E.Lee's surrender at

early life; she was born in Ire

ways to bathe and dress alone

Appomattox Court House.

land and came to the United

in that least private of environ

States while still a young girl.

ments, the military encamp

No one knows exactly when

ment. Indeed, historians have

or why she began to dress

uncovered accounts of hun

as a boy, but long before the

dreds of women who passed as

first shots were fired on Fort

men to fight, some of whom,

Sumter, she had abandoned

like Jennie/Albert, had been

SERIES FOLLOWING

skirts for trousers. On August

passing long before the fight

CIVIL WAR AS IT

6, 1862, she joined the 95th Il

ing started.

linois Infantry after a cursory medical examination that re

Hodgers' fellow soldiers re called her as a modest young

quired recruits only to show

man who kept his shirt but

their hands and feet.

toned to the chin, hiding the

Though the shortest soldier

place where an Adam's apple

in her company, she was also

should be. Her comrades

one of the bravest. At Vicks

teased her because she had no

burg, she was captured while

beard, but this was an army

on a reconnaissance mis-

of boys as well as men, and

sion, but escaped by attack

she was not the only beard

ing a guard, seizing his gun

less recruit in her company.

and outrunning her captors

She resisted sharing a tent

till she reached her com

with anyone, but made

rades. On another occasion,

close friends among her

when her company's flag was

fellow soldiers; with one

taken down by enemy fire, she

of them, she briefly owned

climbed a tree and attached

a business after the war.

the tattered flag to a high

Despite her diminutive

branch while snipers' bullets

size, she could "do as

soared past her. Jennie-or Albert, as she was called most of her life was not the only Civil War

22 T H E CIVIL WAR MONITOR

SUMMER 2014

much work as anyone in the Company." Hodgers served in General Nathaniel P.

•

THIS ARTICLE IS EXCERPTED FROM DISUNION, A NEW

YORK TIMES ONLINE THE COURSE OF THE UNFOLDED. READ MORE AT WWW.NYTIMES.COM/ OISUNION.

may have wondered why the

soldiers on both sides of the

never avoided danger-indeed,

shy young veteran never mar

Civil War was well known and

at times she seemed to court

ried, but no one thought it

well documented. Their exact

it-but despite her frequent

strange for a man to live alone

number is unknown, because

participation in combat, she

and make a living at any job he

their service had to be clandes

was never wounded severely

could find.

tine, but the ones whose stories

By all accounts, Hodgers

enough to require medical

It all came crashing down

we know offer a fascinating

treatment. A combination of

glimpse of women who pushed

good luck, good health, and

against the boundaries of their

skillful soldiering kept Hodgers from the attention of those who might penetrate her disguise.

No one knows exactly when or why she began to dress as a boy, but long before the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter, she had abandoned skirts for trousers.

Victorian confinement at a time when American women could not vote, serve on juries, attend most colleges, or prac

Indeed, Hodgers served an en tire three-year enlistment with

when Hodgers, elderly and

tice most professions, and who,

out anyone guessing her sex.

enfeebled, entered the state

when they married, lost all

hospital for the insane. There,

property rights in most states.

once discovered, she was

Some women were discov

of her regiment on August 17,

required to abandon the mas

ered when they were wounded,

1865, and went back to Illinois.

querade that had been her

others when they gave birth,

Acting as a man was now

lifeline and live in the narrow

still others when they were

an ingrained habit, and it

hallway that early 20th-cen

taken prisoner. Some women

eased the return t o civilian

tury America had designed for

soldiers were discovered only

life. Hodgers could not read

women.

when their bodies were being

"Albert Cashier" mustered out of the service with the rest

Officials at the Illinois state

or write, and the jobs avail able for an illiterate woman would have sunk her into pov erty, or even prostitution. But as a man, she could get by as she had in the army, working steadily and honestly, and she made an adequate-if hardly affluent-living as a handy man, a farm laborer, and a janitor, turning her work-worn hands to whatever came her way, supplement

Jennie Hodgers, as she appeared iJl 1864 while serving in the 95th illinois Infantry as Albert Cashier (left) and in 1913, the year before her secret was discovered.

dressed for burial, and some

hospital forced her to wear

were discovered years after the

skirts for the first time in over

fighting stopped.

50 years; she found the garb

The female Civil War sol

restrictive and humiliating

diers were not the first Ameri

and perhaps more danger-

can women to fight on the

ous than the sniper fire she

battlefield; Deborah Sampson

had outwitted so many years

of Massachusetts served for

before. Unused to walking in

nearly two years during the

the long, cumbersome gar

Revolution before her sex was

ments deemed appropriate for

discovered in a military hospi

her sex, she tripped and fell,

t al. (After being honorably dis

breaking a hip that never prop

charged, Sampson received a

erly healed. Bedridden and

veteran's pension for her Revo

ing her income

depressed, her health contin

lutionary service, which went

with a veteran's

ued to decline, and she died on

to her children upon her death.)

pension.

October 11, 1915, less than two

Nor would they be the last. But

years before women gained the

their service came at a crucial

right to serve openly-if mini

time-when the foundation

mally-in the Armed Forces.

of the Republic had shifted to

People in the town of Saun emin, where Hodgers even

By the time of H odgers'

tually settled,

death, the presence of female

allow an expansion of individ ual rights, when

.. ! CaNT. ON P. 74

23 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

I N FOC U S

Lincoln's Final Journey FOR ALMOST 150 years, this photograph of

the funeral procession for President Abra ham Lincoln inNew York City has remained shrouded behind its bland title, "Scene in front of church." But what we see here is Lin coln's hearse, captured in a blur from photog rapher Mathew Brady's studio, as it p asses the massive Grace Church on Broadway. The New York City procession was one of several tributes across the country as the "funeral train" carrying Lincoln's body traveled from Washington, D.C., to Illinois. Center for Civil War Photography member Paul Taylor of Columbia, Mary land, came across the image in early Janu ary while combing through the thousands of Civil War photographs available online from theNational Archives. After careful study, he tentatively identified the blur as Lincoln's hearse. With further research, he established that the image was taken from Brady'sNew York studio and that the procession p assed this location on April 25, 1865. Other experts have confirmed Taylor's findings. National Archives photo specialists say they cannot

BY BOB ZELLER PRESIDENT. CENTER FOR CIVIL WAR PHOTOGRAPHY

remember anyone else ever asking about the image. This image and one taken before the procession are the first known Brady pho tographs of theNew York funeral and the most detailed ever seen of the solemn-faced mourners, including men removing their hats as the president's body p asses. �

THE CENTER FOR CIVIL WAR PHOTOG· RAPHY IS A NON· PROFIT ORGANI· ZATION DEVOTED TO COLLECTING , PRESERVING, AND DIGITIZING CIVIL WAR IMAGES FOR THE PUBLIC BENEFIT. TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE CCWP AND ITS MISSION, VISIT WWW. CIVILWARPHOTOGRA· PHY.ORG

24 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR

SUMMER 2014

PHOTOGRAPH BY MATHEW BRADY

25 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

* C A S U A LT I E S OF WAR

Larkin Milton Skaggs AN OVEREAGER GUERRILLA INCURS THE WRATH OF A DEVASTATED TOWN. BY MATTHEW C. HULBERT

N AUGUST 21, 1863, hundreds of rumbling hooves

broke the forenoon silence in Lawrence, Kansas. The town had been attacked before-sacked in May 1856 by fanatics who destroyed some printing presses and burned down the Free State Hotel. But nothing could have prepared residents for the feroc ity ofwhat descended upon them that morning.

LARKIN MILTON SKAGGS

vain hope of shielding his body.

WHO

slaughtered roughly 200 men

One of Wilham C. Quantrill's band of guerrillas BORN

The emotional damage was in calculable, while the physical

DIED

likely totaled upward of $2 mil

the town. For these Confederate raiders, destroy

August 21 , 1863. at L'll'lrence. Kansas

lion. In the process of notching this victory-perhaps the most

ity was an alleged sanctuary for runaway slaves

FACTOID

lopsided of the entire irregu-

and considered a vanguard in social equality for

Skaggs. a Baptist preacher before Ihe war, was the only one of Quantrill's men to die during the raid on Lawrence.

lar war-Quantrill lost only

its black residents. It was also the epicenter of abolitionism in the borderlands and the de facto headquarters of Senator James H. Lane-a man particularly despised in Western Missouri for orga nizing numerous irregular attacks as a leader of the "jayhawkers," a militant free-soil group that

one man. And even that man, Larkin Milton Skaggs, seems to have almost tried to achieve his anomalous distinction. Skaggs was atypical among Quantrill's band. He was a for

clashed frequently with the pro-slavery "bush

mer Baptist preacher and had

whackers." (In fact, the bushwhackers would nar

been in Lawrence before, hav

rowly miss an opportunity to kill Lane during the

ing participated in the pro-slav

raid; he fled in his pajamas to a nearby cornfield

ery assault of 1856. Despite his former devotion to the cloth he

and eluded capture.)

was, by virtually all accounts,

Quantrill's men first dispatched a small en campment of Union soldiers-and then turned

an unholy terror. One teenager,

their sights on the local populace. The result was

John Speer, had the misfortune

a hellish montage of roaring flames, suffocating

of stumbling across Skaggs,

smoke, and near-uninterrupted screaming. Homes

then heavily intoxicated, in

and storefronts were put to the torch whether

the street during the raid. The

their occupants had evacuated or not; women

guenilla reportedly demanded

begged desperately, and often unsuccessfully, for

Speer's wallet and, upon receiv

the lives of their men; and the corpses of those

ing it, shot him in the stomach

gunned down by guerrillas were left around town

before wandering off. According to multiple wit

in all manner of peculiar positions and locations.

nesses, it was Skaggs' appcu'

In many cases, men were coaxed from conceal ment by promises of truce and parlay-only to be

ent enjoyment of his "work"

felled immediately upon surrendering. Some died

that proved his undoing. As the

in their homes, others in back alleys and barn lofts, more still beneath wagons, under desks, and in underground wells. One man was even shot in the head while his wife lay prostrate over him in the

T H E CIVIL WAR MONITOR

and boys in Lawrence and burned large swaths of the town.

than 300 hardened Missouri guerrillas engulfed ing Lawrence made perfect sense. The municipal

SUMMER 2014

Quantrill and company

Kentucky. 1831

With William C. Quantrill at their head, more

He died instantly.

To view this article's reference notes, turn to our Notes section on page 78.

raid drew to a close and the rest of the command left the city en masse, he lingered in Law rence, bantering with a woman

about whether he would burn down her house. By then, odds are very good that he was the only guerrilla left in the town. His drunken carelessness soon turned to panic, and he bolted the scene on a stolen horse, heading east on the Eudora road. Unbeknownst to Skaggs,

Rebel guerrillas raid La\vrence, Kansas, on August 21, 1863. By the time it was over, some 200 of the town's male residents had been slaughtered and many of its buildings burned.

narrowly missed Skaggs' head,

him, looked back at the crowd a

but set his shirt aflame-then

few rods away, and in a gutteral

the rest of the group let loose.

[sic] voice uttered 'Ugh, ugh' [in]

One eyewitness called the spec

Indian fashion." Further abuses

tacle of powder and flying lead

to the corpse followed.2

a "regular fusillade." Multiple slugs cut into Skaggs but he con tinued in flight for the brush.1 According to the same wit

According to one observer, African-American residents of Lawrence subsequently took ultimate possession of the body. They tied a rope around Skaggs'

however, Quantrill had led the

ness, a Delaware Indian, White

others southward.

Turkey, stepped forward and

neck and dragged him through

propelled an arrow through the

town behind a horse. As the

Farmers along the road spot ted Skaggs. Still too drunk to

guerrilla's abdomen. A second

body was paraded through the

load his revolvers, he became

Delaware, Little Beaver, then

streets, "a crowd was following

easy prey. The Kansans wounded

delivered Skaggs a fatal blow

pelting the rebel with stones."

his horse and disarmed Skaggs.

from his "big buffalo rifle." (Both

An attempt was made to burn

What must have been the now

men likely hailed from a nearby

what remained of the corpse

defenseless guerrilla's worst fear

Delaware reservation along the

but this failed. (No one seems

came to fruition as the men led

Kansas River, although it's un

to have recorded why the guer

him back through the smolder

known whether they witnessed

rilla's body wouldn't burn.)

ing ruins of Lawrence.

the raid or arrived immediately

The charred remains of Larkin

afterward.) After commandeer

Skaggs were never buried

At the town center, the Kan sans ordered Skaggs down from

ing the slain prisoner's brand

and, as summer gave way to

his mount and commanded him

new boots-apparently plun

fall and then winter, the bones

to run for his life. Still on horse

dered during the raid-Little

sat exposed to the elements.

back, they pursued the rapidly

Beaver took Skaggs' corpse

Occasionally, local boys would

sobering bushwhacker like a

"by the hair of the head, made

saw rings from the decaying

game animal. The first shot fired

a motion pretending to scalp

fingers-

.. ! CaNT. ON P. 74

27 T H E CIVIL W A R MONITOR SUMMER 2014

Losing Focus at Cedar Creek DISTRACTED BY THE SPOILS OF WAR, A REBEL ARMY LETS VICTORY SLIP AWAY. BY CLAY MOUNTCASTLE

T WAS A RESOUNDING victory for General Jubal

Shenandoah "a barren waste."2

Early's Army of the Valley-until it wasn' t. To

It certainly appeared that the

this day, the Confederates' performance in the

Confederate operations in the

Battle of Cedar Creek, fought on October 19, 1864,

valley were finished. Jubal Early was not yet

stands as an enduring lesson on the failure to

done, however. As the Union

solidify battlefield gains. The summer of l864 saw the return of full

Army of the Shenandoah

scale war to the Shenandoah Valley. A short,

lingered in camp near Cedar

ill-fated valley campaign led by Union general

Creek, 12 miles south of Win

Franz Sigel ended in defeat at the Battle ofNew Market on May IS. General D avid Hunter led the Federals' next try, and made it as far south as Lynchburg before being turned back by a force of

THE BATTLE OF CEDAR CREEK DATE

20,000 hardened and hungry

Hunter's army retreating back into the mountains

LOCATION

Confederates quietly moved

of West Virginia, the Shenandoah was wide open

Shenandoah Valley. Virgil1la

into position. The Rebels

a victory at the Battle of Monocacy on July 9,

RESULT

attacked at sunrise, sending the

Union victory

stunned Yankees rushing from

COMMANDERS

But with a scattered, disorganized force and an

Jubal Early (CSA. above): Philip Sheridan (USA)

imposing Federal defensive line in front of him,

QUOTABI.£

and arrived at the outskirts of Washington, D.C.

Early soon withdrew back across the Potomac into Virginia. The next Union commander to enter the Shenandoah would put E arly on his heels. The aggressive Philip H. Sheridan was placed in c ommand of the Army of the Shenandoah and

8uI for Ihelr bad conduct I should have defeated Sheridan's whole force." JUlAL£lIII.Y ON THE MtN HE COMMANOED ATC£DAR CR((K INA lCTlER WRITTEHADAY An£ll THl: 8AITLL

their tents. The Confederate Second Corps under the com mand of General John Gordon exploited a weak flank on the Union left, and drove the Feder als back out of their camps in disarray. The rout was on, and for the moment, Confederate fOliunes of war took a gigantic leap forward. But as eager as E arly's

instructed by General Ulysses S. Grant in August

troops were for victory, they

to "put himself south of the enemy and follow him to the death. Wherever the enemy goes let

were also famished; Sheridan's

our troops go also."l Surprisingly, however, the

destruction of the valley had

intrepid cavalryman took his time, slowly advanc

taken its toll. Food, munitions,

ing up the valley. It was not until mid-September

horses, blankets, and more

that Sheridan and E arly would engage in battle,

were suddenly all for the taking,

first at Winchester ( known as Third Winchester

and the jubilant Rebels took

or Opequon) on September 19 and then, three

their time gathering what they

days later, at Fisher's Hill. Both clashes resulted

c ould, suddenly disinterested in

in significant losses for the Confederates, and Early retreated up the valley, leaving it exposed for Sheridan to burn farms and destroy mills, carrying out Grant's intention of making the

THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR

fell on October 18, his force of

October 1 9. 1864

fully down the valley and into Maryland, scored

SUMMER 2014

mander planned to go back on the offense. After darkness

14,000 Confederates commanded by Early. With

for Early to take the offensive. He moved force

chester, the Confederate com

To view this article's reference notes, turn to our Notes section on page 78.

chasing after their fleeing oppo nents. Order and discipline gave way to looting and cel ebrating the rare spoils of war.

Sheridan, who had spent the previous night in Win chester, awoke to the sound of the distant artillery fire. He immediately mounted his horse and rode to meet the retreat ing remnants of his army. The scrappy Irishman succeeded

In this Kun & Alli· son dramlltizlltion of the fighting lit Cedar Creek on October 19, 1864, Mlljor General Philip Sheridan lellds Union cav· alry forward in the counterllttllck that turned the tide of the battle.

Early was defeated, this time

cavalrymen "disintegrated into

for good. As historian James

a plundering mob," according to

M. McPherson described it,

historian James I. Robertson.6

"Within a few hours Sheri-

Upon learning of the delay,

dan had converted the battle

Jackson was highly agitated.

of Cedar Creek from a humili

Fortunately for him, however,

ating defeat into one of the

Nathaniel Banks was no Philip

more decisive Union victories

Sheridan, and the Confederates

in turning around each fleeing

of the war."s Had Early's army

faced no Federal counterattack

column he came across, report

pressed the fight after its morn

that day.

edly proclaiming, "Boys, turn

ing success, it is highly unlikely

back. . . . I am going to sleep in

that Sheridan would have had

that camp tonight or in hell!"3

this chance.

And turn back they did. As one

Ironically, almost the exact

The need to consolidate forces and exploit tactical suc cess is a timeless rule on the battlefield. Whether the exam

scholar noted, Sheridan's "mag

same situation had occurred

ple is the British army failing

netism was such that many

not far from Cedar Creek two

to follow up its initial success

fleeing men abruptly decided

years before. After Stone-

at the Battle of Princeton in

to become soldiers again and

wall Jackson's Confederates

1777 or a score of prematurely

rejoin an army that was no

defeated Nathaniel Banks'

completed attacks during the

longer whipped."4

Union force at Front Royal on

Civil War, the message is the

May 23, 1862, Rebel cavalry

same: Don't quit until the battle

army launched a counterattack

under the command of Turner

is won. Current U.S. Army doc

in the late afternoon, crashing

Ashby were in hot pursuit of the

trine dictates that tactical suc

into the ill-prepared Confed

enemy retreat. When Ashby's

cess must be followed up with a pursuit or, at least, effective

The re-established Federal

erates. After a short, sharp

forces encountered Banks'

fight the Rebel force disinte

wagon trains near Newtown,

preparation for a counterattack.

grated, falling back to the south.

the chase quickly ended and the

What Cedar

.. ! CaNT. ON P. 74

29 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

New York soldier William E. Maxwell, whose right leg was amputated in 1864. Opposite page: A "Jewett leg," an artificial limb invented by Samuel B. Jewett and meantfor use with above-tho-knee amputations.

SAMUEL C. WRI8HT l'

�

Suffered a gunshot wound during the Second Battle of Petersburg on June 17, 1864. The ball, a rninie, struck the right orbit, fracturing the bone. Wright was discharged from the hospital six months later, after making a "good recovery."

ISRAEL SPOTTS ..

Shot in the upper back on March 25, 1865, at Petersburg. After he developed a ''harass ing cough" and "anxiety of countenance:' doctors operated and removed "six pints of sanious pus" from his chest. Spotts recovered nicely after the surgery and deserted the hospital on May 28.

Soldiers wounded in battle were first transported-by litter, runbulance, or wagon-to regimental hospitals set up not farfrom the action. Though marked by myriad deficiencies early in the war, such facilities improved with time as the armies developed profes sional runbulance corps, moved field hospitals closer to the battlefield, and created a system of triage that drrunatically imp roved outcomes. Above: The amb ulance corps of the 57th New York Infantry practices its craft. Opposite: Doctors tend to Union wounded at a field hospital during the Peninsula Crunpaign of 1862.

32 T H E CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

tha ground. wlthblan -.. �.-- .. about ZOO .alft man. and about bals. with all JralIClllvabla kinds of Mou will ntivi crlas. gr11l8111S . and from s. ILord �.coras marcy on ma.l � ••

;JDHN A. DIXDN l'

Shot U1 the leg at Petersburg, Vu-ginia, on March 31, 1865. The wound became gangrenous on May 10, while Dixon was still in the hospital, but treatment was successful. At last report, he was "doing well."

STEPHEN D. WILBUR l'

fil

Suffered a gunshot wound to the right forearm during the fighting at Petersburg, Virginia, on April 2, 1865. The forearm was amputated on the field by a circular incision. Gangrene set in shortly thereafter, but treatment produced "favorable" results.

11TH ERE WERE DREADFUL SIDHTS AT THE SURDEONIS STRANDE TO SEE A LED WITH ITS STOCKIND LVIND ON MASSACHUSETTS SOLDIER

34 T H E CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

HENRY WARREN HOWE,

NOVEMBER

6, l B63

�, l .. · ·

g �

�

5 �

.. · u e o

� ;: .. ;: o

�� v

. . 0 .

S� 00 c >

!i �� .

��

�;

' 0

�w •�

�g • •

��

ROBERT :lEIIKIIiS 1-

, !' � , < a

Shot in the face at Petersburg, Virginia, on March 25, 1865, the ball entering the side of the nose and exiting the opposite cheek. The injury was treated with a "simple dressing."

By 21st-century stan dards, �i�! War surg�ry was pnnutlve. Imperu. ments included insufficient equipment, poor lighting, unsanitary_conditions, and a lack of staff. As the war progressed, howeve� surgeons gained experience and devel oped more skilled approaches to abdominal, chest, eye, plastic, and orthopedic surgery, as well as surgery for heaa wounds, which resulted in an improvement in survival rates. By war's end, Civil War surgeons had performed roughly 60,000 amputations, with an overall survival rate of 75%. Above: A Union surgeon readies to perform an amputa tion for the camera. Left: A surgeon demonstrates an operation in the field.

BENCH. I SAW THEM CUTTINB OFF LIMBS. IT LOOKS THE BRASS.II

35 THE cIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

liTo the parents of many . have made a solemn vow that their sans shall be properly cared for in times of trauble.11 UNION SURGEON ALFRED LEWIS CASTLEMAN, MARCH 6, 1862

:JUDSDN SPDFFDRD l'

�m · amD

:JDSEPH BRIDDS l'

Accidentally shot in the left hand on March 15, 1865, the ball entering the palm and exiting tlle back of the hand. Use ofhis middle finger was "much impaired" as a result; several pieces ofloose bone were removed, and the wound subsequently healed "entirely."

36 T H E CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

Suffered a gunshot flesh wound to the chest at Fort Fisher, VITginia, on March 25, 1865. The ball entered about two inches from the right nipple and passed "transversly through integrunents," exiting one and a half inches from the left nipple. On April 20, Spofford had recovered sufficiently to be transferred to a hospital in his home state, Vermont.

" o o

! o

�

� u

Soldiers who survived their initial surgeries were sent to recover at general hospitals, which were farther from the war zone but suffered from over足 crowding and limited resources. As the war progressed, both sides increased the number, quality, and size of such facilities. In Wash足 ington, D.C., one of the chief medical centers for the Union, the only military hospital at the start of the conflict was a six-room brick structure used for smallpox patients; by war's end, the city boasted roughly 16 convalescent centers and 28 hospitals, including Lincoln Hospital, which as the North's largest hospital cared for more than 50,000 men during the conflict. Left: Dr. Reed Bontecou, chief of Washington's 3,000-bed Harewood Hospital (pictured opposite page), whose comprehensive photographic records of his patients included the images of wounded soldiers on the previous pages. Above: Physicians stand by their patient, Corporal Calvin Bates, a former prisoner at Anderson足 ville whose feet "decayed" due to "exposure," necessitating their amputation.

37 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

110 the sad sad things I s e e -the noble young " men with l e g s and a r m s taken off-th e deatll s the sick wea kness, s i c ke r than death , that some endure, after a m p utati ons.1I WALT WHITMAN, MAY 26, 1 863

BRAZER WILSEY 1-

�!

Shot in the left shoulder on April 2, 1865, at Petersburg, Virginia. The bullet fractured the head ofthe humerus. The same day, a field surgeon operated, removing "about four inches of shaft." At last report three months later, WIlsey had "progressed favorably."

WILLIAM H. DDUDHERTY 1-

�

Shot over the left parietal bone on May 17, 1865, by a member of a military patrol in Washington, D.C. (the exact circumstances are unclear). He was removed to Harewood Hospital, where he remained in a "comatose condition"-\mable to articulate a single \vord-for a week before beginning to revive. The wound was kept open and treated by simple dressings. By the end of June, Dougherty had "so far recovered as to be on duty in the Hospital."

HIRAM WILLIAMS ..

Wounded by an artillery shell during the fighting at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, 1865. Surgeons amputated , the lower third of Williams leg by circular incision and perfonned a "Reyes' operation" ofhis right foot "at [theJjunction ofthe tar5al and metatarsal bones." By September, Williams was doing "very well," had "considerable" use of his right foot, and was awaiting an artificiallirnb and discharge from the army.

Given that roughly 45,000 amputees survived the war, the demand for artificial limbs was considerable in the years following the conflict. While some made do with rudimentary devices, or managed without them, many disabled veterans benefited from governm ent progrann s estab fished to provide artificial limbs (like those pictured below) to ex-soldiers at little or no cost. Others relied on the generosity of family or benefactors to help pay for prosthetics.

SAMUEL H. DECKER ..

�

Accidentally hit when his gun prematurely fired while he was ramming it during the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky, on October 8, 1862. The blast blew off the lower parts ofboth ofDecker's forearms and badly burned his face and chest. Field surgeons removed more ofboth forearms. Decker was discharged from the service the fol· lowing month. Two years later, with his wounds fully healed, he began experiment· ingwith creating artificial limbs, produc· ing in March 1865 the apparatus shown in this photograph, which allowed him to write legibly, pick up objects as small as a pin, feed and clothe himself, and on several occasions prove hhnself"a fonnidable police officer" in the congressional gallery in his postwar position as doorkeeper at the House of Representatives.

C.H. BDWEN .. AGE UNKNOWN I PRIVATE

27TH INDIANA I N FANTRY

Shot by a musket ball that fractured his left femur at the Battle ofAntietam on September 17, 1862. Bowen was released after a year's hospitalization, during which surgeons operated twice to remove necrosed bone, discharged from the service, and employed by the Interior Department. A recurrence of abscesses led to his re·hospitalization in the fall of 1867; shortly after, surgeons removed his leg. The wound healed well. Two months after the operation, staff at the Army Medical Museum took this photograph of Bowen, whoposed alongside his battle-scarred femur.

40 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

[T]HERE ARE FEW aF U

WHO HAVE NOT A CRIPPLE AMa a aUR FRIENDS. IF NOT IN OUR aWN FAMILIES. A MECHANICAL ART WHICH PRaVIDED FaR All aCCA laNAL AND EXCEPTIONAL WANT HA BECOME A aREAT AND ACTIVE BRANCH OF INDUSTRY� WAR UNMAKES LEas. AND HUMAN SKILL MUST SUPPLY THEIR PLACES AS IT BEST MAY. II OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR., 1863

CDLUMBUS D. RUSH .. .. AGE UNKNOWN I PRIVATE 21ST GEORGIA INFANTRY

Wounded by a shell fragment during the Confederate attack on Fort Steadman at Petersburg, VIrginia, on March 25, 1865. The shell"laid open the right knee-joint" and "shattered the upper third ofthe left tibia." Taken prisoner, Rush was soon operated on by Union surgeons, who removed both ofhis legs at the thigh. He spent the swmner at Lincoln Hospital in Washington, D.C., (where the photo at left was taken) before being sent to St. Luke's Hospital in New York, where on February 22, 1866, he was funrlshed with artificial limbs (pictured right), which enabled him to walk with the aid oftwo canes. Soon thereafter, Rush returned home to Atlanta, Georgia.

SOURCES: LETTERS FROM A PDlNSYLVANIA CHAPlAIN AT THE SIEGE OFPET£RSBURG(l901): PASSAGES FROM THE LIFE OFHENRY WARREN HOWE(l899): THE AllMYOFTHE POTOMAC. BEHIND THE SCENES._ (1803): THE WOUNODRESSER(1898): OUVER WEHDEL1.HOLMES. "THE THE LIFE OF BILLY YANK (1952): JAMES I. ROBERTSON JR.. SOLDIERSBLUEAND GRAY(1989): GUY R. HASEGAWA, MENDING BROKEN SOLDIERS (2012):ALFREDJAY BOLLET, CIVIL WAR MEDIClNE(2002). WITH GREATTHANKS TO ERIC BOYLE. ALAN HAWK. AND MATTHEW BREITBART OF THE NATIO� MUSEUM OF HEALTH AND MEDICINE FOR THEIR ASSISTANCE.

HUMAN WHEEl., ITS SPOKES AND FEllOES" (I803): BELl. WILEY.

42 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

44 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

45 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

By late May 1864, tlie Army of the Potomac resembled a wagon with the whe8ls coming off. Since May 4, when the army had crossed the Rapidan River and begun what would become known as the Overland Campaign, it had faced an incessant strain of day-after-day combat-in the WIl derness, at Spotsylvania Court House, at the North Anna River, and in a dozen smaller brushfires in between. The relentless pace had brought the Army of the Potomac to what its commanding general, Major General George Gordon Meade, believed was the end of its tether. "I don't believe the military history of the world can offer a parallel to the protracted and severe fighting which this army has sustained for the last thirty days," Meade complained, and he feared that "with all this severe fighting . . . the physical powers of the men would be exhausted." But Meade had little choice but to slog onward. Although he was still, by title, in charge of the army, he was taking direction from Lieutenant General Ulysses Simpson Grant, the overall general of all Union armies, and Grant was deter mined "to fight it out on this line," from the Rapidan to the Confed erate capital of Richmond, "if it takes all summer."l So far, it looked like it would take far beyond summer. Over the course of May's campaigning, the Army of the Potomac had lost a stomach-sinking total of 40,000 men out of action. And it would soon lose more without firing a shot, as 34 of the army's three-year regiments were due to see their enlistments expire in June. Histo rian John Codman Ropes estimated that "exclusive of worthless bounty-jumpers and such trash," Grant had "only about 65,000 vet eran infantry in the three corps," an advantage of less than 10,000 over his Confederate foe Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northem Virginia.2 To make up the shortfall, Grant raided the District of Columbia's garrison for another 33,000 men-although half of them were in huge heavy-artillery regiments and had never done anything more in the way of war than guard the intricate string of Washington's fortifications and pose heroically for photographers. On the other hand, the Army of Northern Virginia had also been severely ground down. James Longstreet, commander of the First Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia and Lee's "old war-horse," had been wounded by mistaken Confederate bullets in the Wilderness; Richard Ewell, another corps commander, had suffered a near-complete breakdown at Spotsylvania.3 Lee found replacements-Richard Heron Anderson for Longstreet and Jubal Early for Ewell-but neither Anderson nor Early would ever shine as great subordinates. And, like Grant, Lee would fill the gaps in the ranks only by stripping elsewhere, including the Richmond defenses of Robert F. Hoke's division and the Shenandoah Valley of John C. Breckinridge's division, and recalling the division com manded by the unreliable George Pickett from semi-exile in North Carolina. Above all, Lee could not repair the damage a month's savage fighting had done to the northern Virginia countryside,

46 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

which he would need to feed his army. "There are no crops worth speaking of," reported one Yankee colonel. "The country is one vast graveyard-graves everywhere, marking the track of the army on the march and in battles."4

From a strictly military point of view, Grant's great

est frustration on this campaign had been geogra phy. The rivers of northern Virginia-the Rapidan, North Anna, and Pamunkey-ran west-east, and Lee

attempted to make the most of their obstacles. Bitter fighting had

taken place along all these rivers in May, and even if Grant could get across the Pamunkey without another costly fight, he would face Totopotomy Creek and then the Chickahominy River. But surprisingly, the movements across the Pamunkey and the Totopotomy proved the easiest of the entire campaign. On May 27, the Army of the Potomac crossed the Pamunkey with two divi

sions of Phil Sheridan's cavalry and the VI Corps (under Horatio Wright) at Dabney's Ferry.S Winfield Hancock's II Corps followed the VI, while the army's remaining two infantry corps, Gouverneur K. Warren's V Corps and Ambrose Burnside's IX Corps, crossed

farther downstream at Newcastle Ferry. Grant also detached the XVIII Corps under William Farrar "Baldy" Smith from the stalled Union expedition on Bermuda Hundred, and brought them up to the York River, where they could disembark and extend the Union reach still farther, to the Totopotomy. Lee's response to this threat was curiously sluggish, and Grant took this as a sign that the long month of campaigning was finally wearing down the Army ofVrrginia. Despite the horrendous Union casualties, Grant convinced himselfthat "Lee's army is really whipped.... I may be mistaken, but I feel that our success over Lee's army is already assured."6 On May 30, Grant extended the first ele ments of the Army of the Potomac over the Totopotomy, beginning with Warren's V Corps and a division of Sheridan's cavalry, pushing all the way down to the crossroads of Old Cold Harbor, only a mile and a half above the Chickahominy and less than 10 miles from Richmond. THE ETYMOLOGY OF THE odd name Cold Harbor has long been

a puzzlement, since the village was neither a harbor nor, in the chalky-dry summer of 1864, anything like cold. But the name's genealogy stretches back to Roman Britain, where a col herbergh was an unfortified guard post along the Roman-built roads. John Stow's celebrated survey of the cities of London and Westminster names the Lord Mayor's mansion as "Cold Harbour," and it was not difficult for Shropshire antiquarian Charles Henry Hartshorne to find over 70 Cold Harbors in northern England alone in 1841.7 Whatever the romantic origins of its name, the Cold Harbor in the Army of the Potomac's path consisted of little more than a tavern, a collection of buildings, and a crossroads. Seizing and holding the area would force Lee and the Army of Northern Vir ginia into a fast shuffle, giving Grant the opportunity to knock the Confederates apart with an attack. Grant could, in that case, "crush Lee's army on the north side of the James, with the prospect in case Union soldiers forage through a potato field along the banks of the Pamunkey as elements ofthe VI Corps cross the river on a pontoon bridge during the Anny of the Potomac's southward move in late May 1864.

of success of driving him into Richmond, capturing the city per haps without a siege, and putting the Confederate government to flight." Politics contributed another behind-the-scenes motive. The Republican National Convention was due to assemble in Baltimore on June 7 to renominate Abraham Lincoln for the presidency. If Grant could deliver a significant victory on the eve of the conven-

47 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

tion, it would enhance Lincoln's nomination and silence Radical Republican dissidents, who were already assembling their own rival convention in Cleveland to nominate John C. Fremont.s At first, this was exactly how the scene promised to play. Two Union cavalry divisions arrived at the Cold Harbor crossroads on May 31, clearing out a "slight force of [Confederate] cavalry." Alarmed, Lee at once tried to recover the crossroads by dispatching an entire division of Confederate cavalry under Fitzhugh Lee and diverting Robert Hoke's newly arrived infantry division; Richard Heron Anderson's corps would follow as fast as they could march. But neither Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry nor the first infantry brigades to get on the ground-Lawrence Keitt's South Carolina brigade and Thomas Lanier Clingman's North Carolinians-were able to dis lodge Federal troopers armed with repeating carbines.9 Now began a race to get infantry to Cold Harbor, and Grant looked to be in the lead. Horatio Wright's VI Corps was already in motion after midnight on May 31, and William F. Smith's XVIII Corps had just debarked from its transports and moved down to the Totopotomy, with orders from Grant to push on to Cold Harbor. Sliding down behind them, the II Corps and V Corps would link up with the VI Corps and XVIII Corps and form a protective, west-fac ing shield a half-mile west of the Cold Harbor crossroads. Wright and the advance guard of the VI Corps arrived at Cold Harbor on June 1 to the delirious cheers of the Yankee cavalry and a band "out on the skirmish line playing 'Hail Columbia.'" The prob lem was that this arrival did not occur until 9 a.m. Charles Dana, the assistant secretary of war, was traveling with the army, and coldly noted Wright's lack of energy. "Instead of having his advance there at 9 a. m.," Dana tattled furiously to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, "it was General Grant's and Meade's design that his whole corps should be on the ground at daylight, when a rapid attack in mass would certainly have routed the rebel forces." Worse still, it was not until noon that the bulk of the VI Corps was fully in place, "getting into line of battle and digging rifle pits all along the line" west of Cold Harbor. Baldy Smith and the XVIII Corps had been given wrong directions by a staff officer, and didn't appear until

Delays in the attack of the Union VI and xvm Corps on June 1 allowed Confederate troops at Cold Harbor to erect hasty, but effective, breastworks. BELOW: xvm Corps commander William F. Smith (seated) and his staff in June 1864. ABOVE: Part of the Rebel defenses at Cold Harbor.

"about 3 p.m., after a march of more than twenty five miles." lO Nevertheless, Wright and Smith had pre emptory orders from Meade to move to the attack. "General Wright is ordered to attack as soon as his troops are up," Meade wrote to Smith at noon, "and I desire you should co-operate with him and join in the attack." Just by the numbers, Wright and Smith should have been more than sufficient for the task; together, they could mass six divisions-between 25,000 and 30,000 men-and even though it took another three hours to get "into position a little to the west of the old tavern, at Cold Harbor Cross Roads," by 6 p.m., the two Federal corps "were formed in four lines of battle, by regiments:' and ready to advance to the attack.ll But the delay gave the Confederates time to entrench, a recuning course of events on the campaign, and one that usually had fatal conse quences for Federal attackers. Hoke's division, with its four brigades, had beenjoined by Breck inridge, and then by Joseph B. Kershaw's division (from Anderson's corps) and Harry Heth's divi sion (from A.P. Hill's corps), and together they had dug themselves into defenses along a string of hills and ridges perpendicular to Cold Harbor Road, just west of the crossroads. The entrench ments were something less than a marvel of engi neering. The terrain was cut sharply by ravines, gullies, and streams, and Thomas Clingman (whose North Carolina brigade held the first sec tion of the line stretching northward from Cold Harbor Road) was bothered by a gap "of about seventy-five yards" made by a stream that ran between his left flank and the next Confederate brigade, William T. Wofford's, in Kershaw's divi sion. There was at least enough time to create an abatis of cut pine trees, "interlocking with each other and barring all farther advance." That would have to do. 12 Sometime before 6 p.m., with "the sun . . . less than an hour high," both Wright's and Smith's corps "almost simultaneously" advanced "to the To view this article's reference notes, turn to our Notes section on page 78.

THE BATTLE O F CO LD HARB O R

COLD HARBOR, VIRGINIA

J U N E 1 - 3 1 8 64

Determined to defeat Robert E . Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and take Richmond, Ulysses S. Grant advanced the Army of the Potomac southward in May 1864, looking for a fight. After clashing with Lee in a series of bloody but indecisive battles, including at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House, Grant launched another attack at Cold Harbor, a tiny crossroads town less than 10 miles from the Confederate capital. On June 1, Union forces repeatedly assaulted Lee's outnumbered but well足 entrenched Confederates, but to no avail. The same result awaited the Union troops who renewed the attack two days later. By the time Grant finally called a halt to the operations on June 3, over 13,000 of his men were dead, wounded, or missing. Grant would later admit he regretted the assault at Cold Harbor "more than any one I have ever ordered."

49 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

Men of Brigadier General JlUl1es Ricketts' VI Corps division advance to assault an entrenched Confederate position during the fighting ofJWle 1. The attack, which pierced the Rebel line, was one of the day's few successes for Union forces.

charge, a dash by more than 25,000 men." Smith's XVIII Corps went into the attack "in battalions in column closed in mass," trying to spear their way through the Confederate defenses. A soldier in

prove themselves. 1 4 Emory Upton was only too happy to oblige. He formed up his brigade in four lines: three bat

the 25th Massachusetts Infantry saw that "they had entered the

talions of the 2nd Connecticut (with four com

opening of a valley shaped like a horse-shoe, and that the land rose

panies in each battalion line) and the rest of the

in front and on either flank, covered with wood and brush, so that"

brigade in the fourth line. Their colonel, Elisha

even in their hastily contrived "line of rifle-pits and a low breast

Kellogg, led from in front, wearing a straw hat

work of logs and rails," the Confederate fire was too heavy to stand.

and aiming directly at Thomas Clingman's North

Once they had overrun the outer skirmish line, the men of the

Carolina brigade, 400 yards away. They brushed

XVIII Corps "were at the mercy of a concealed enemy," and began to fall back." 1 3

through the outlying Confederate skirmish line,

In front of the VI Corps, the going was even tougher. One of David Russell's brigades, commanded by the newly promoted

crossed an open field, then spilled down into a ravine and up the far side, where Clingman's main line was waiting for them. "A sheet of flame,

Emory Upton, had been reinforced by the 2nd Connecticut Heavy

sudden as lightning, red as blood, and so near it

Artillery, one of the units Grant had fished from the Washington

seemed to singe the men's faces, burst along the

fortifications. The unbloodied "heavies" counted an unwieldy 1,800

rebel breastworks," wrote the adjutant of the 2nd

men in line (heavy artillery regiments had to maintain both an artil

Connecticut, Thomas Vaili. "The air was filled

lery and an infantry component), and they were more than twice

with sulphurous smoke, and the shrieks and

as big as the entire rest of Upton's brigade (the 5th Maine, 95th

howls of almost two hundred and fifty mangled

and 96th Pennsylvania, and Upton's own 121st New York). In their

men, rose above the yells of the triumphant

unfaded uniforms, brass shoulder scales, and red-piped jackets,

rebels." In the rear rank of the Union attack, a

they endured endless jibes as "fresh duck" and "pets of the War

soldier in the 121st New York could see the Con

Department." Cold Harbor offered them their first opportunity to

necticut "heavies" collapse "in all shapes. Some

50 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

DRAWING BY EDWIN FORBES

Yet the June 1 attack was not entirely unsuccessful. Although Upton's brigade was stalled and pinned down, it did not retreat. And just as Thomas Clingman had feared, when James Ricketts' VI Corps division hit the gap between Clingman's line and Kershaw's division, one of Ricketts' brigades broke through, flinging William Wofford's Georgia brigade backward in panic. The brigade "car ried the works in its front and captured several hundred prisoners, who were taken to the rear," then "notwithstanding the difficulties encountered in a dense thicket and swamp," they forced both Hoke's and Kershaw's divisions to abandon their entrenchments and pull back a quarter-mile to a new line. l7 THE COMING OF DARKNESS gave Lee space to move more of

Anderson's and A.P. Hill's brigades down to the hastily redrawn Cold Harbor defenses. He could be grateful that on June 2, the weather, which had been sand-dry through May, suddenly clouded over and brought on a "deluge of rain." Meade and Grant had seen just enough success so far that (as they had done at Spotsylvania) they decided to try another attack, this time adding Warren's V Corps and Hancock's II Corps to make the blow at Cold Harbor an overwhelming one. Grant's intention, Horace Porter recalled, "was to attack early in the morning . . . push it vigorously, and if necessary pile in troops at the successful point from wherever they can be taken." But getting Hancock's corps to Cold Harbor proved no easier than getting Wright and the VI Corps there the day before. Hancock denounced it as "the most severe march of the campaign, marching ten and one-half hours until June 2." The head of the old Irish Brigade only "reached Cold Harbor at 6.30 a.m.," and even then was "in such an exhausted condition that a little time was required to allow the men to collect and to cook their rations." Reluctantly, Grant delayed any fresh attack until 4 p.m. Then down came the "tempest of wind and rain." Hancock "was so earnest in opposition to" the idea of an assault "that Meade countermanded the order," and set the attack back to 4:30 a.m. on June 3. 1 8 As Hancock and Warren arrived, Grant positioned Hancock's would fall forward as if they had caught their feet

corps on the left of the VI Corps, below Cold Harbor Road; Lee

and tripped and fell. Others would throw up their

promptly matched that by bringing up the balance of A.P. Hill's

arms and fall backward. Others would stagger about a few paces before they dropped." ls

Hancock and set them to digging. All the Rebels needed was time,

Kellogg was still on his feet, and close enough that Clingman noticed him and locked eyes for a

corps, along with Breckinridge's division. He lined them up opposite and Hancock's tardiness and the afternoon downpour granted it. "Both sides anticipated battle on the 3rd," wrote Confederate rutil

moment even as he gave the order to fire. Kellogg

leryman Robert Stiles. But since the Confederates intended to fight

took off his hat to cheer his men on, but Cling

this battle on the defensive, they "set to work to rectify the lines

man's fire "knocked down the front ranks of the

about this point." One of Anderson's brigadiers, Evander McIvor

column, while the oblique fire along the right and

Law, actually "laid off the new line with his own hand and superin

left cut down men rapidly all along the column

tended the construction of it during the night of the 2d."19

towards the rear." Kellogg was shot in the arm, and struggled to give the order to about-face

The rest of the Army of the Potomac knew how to read these signs. As Horace Porter wandered along the lines, observing the

when he was hit in the head and fell dead "upon

"preparations for the next morning's assault, I noticed that many

the interlocking pine boughs" of the abatis. The

of the soldiers had taken off their coats and seemed to be engaged

slaughter was so unnerving that Emory Upton,

in sewing up rents in them." At first, he thought this was a charm

whose horse had been shot from under him, actu

ing but puzzling effort to look one's best in a fight. "But upon closer

ally stopped the second battalion of the "heavies"

examination it was found that the men were calmly writing their

from going in and ordered them to lie down, then

names and address on slips of paper, and pinning them on the

recruited a squad of marksmen to join him in

backs of their coats, so that their dead bodies might be recognized

picking off Confederate heads above the breast

upon the field, and their fate made known to their families at home.

works in order to dampen the Rebels' enthusiasm for more firing. l6

They were veterans who knew well from terrible experience the " danger which awaited them . . . . 20

51 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

While showing initial promise in places, the attack by the Anny of the Potomac's n Corps on June 3 ended in disappointment. ABOVE: II Corps commander Winfield Scott Hancock (seated) is shown with his division commanders (from left to right): Francis Barlow, David Birney, and John Gibbon. OPPOSITE PAGE: Men of the 7th New York Heavy Artillery break through the Confederate lines on June 3 before being pushed back by a counterattack.

At 4:30 the next morning, a single signal shot was

base of the long hill occupied by the Rebels, "and

fired from the 10th Massachusetts battery. The first

swept illto the enemy's lines, capturing prisoners

light was "cloudy and foggy," and the rain was "still

and three pieces of artillery." There were no "arti

pattering in fitful showers." In the "blinding mist,"

ficial obstructions, such as abatis or 'slashings,'

Union officers could barely discern on the south side of the road an

to detain an assaulting column," and the 7th New

"intrenched line of the enemy . . . on a low hill that was quite long,

York Heavy Artillery, in John Brooke's brigade,

ending . . . on the Chickahominy swamps, making it quite impossible

snatched the regimental flag of Breckinridge's

to turn the position without crossing the river." Against this ground,

26th Virginia Battalion. 22

Grant proposed to throw all three divisions of Hancock's II Corps,

But the going was less easy farther north

storming against the Confederate entrenchments south of Cold

ward. In John Gibbon's division, the 155th New

Harbor Road; north of it, Wright and Baldy Smith would renew

York made a rapid advance to "within 50 yards of

the attacks the VI and XVIII Corps had made two days before.

the enemy's works." But the hill was steeper here,

"The tactical movement was very simple," wrote Charles Porter

and the "sunken road" in the ravine deeper, and

of the 39th Massachusetts. "Each corps commander was to form

in the face of "the heavy fire from the enemy's

his corps as he might determine, a grand rush was to be made, and

breastworks, it was impossible for the regiment

great were the hopes that success would crown our arms."21 Hancock formed his corps with the divisions of Francis Barlow

to gain the works." After 30 minutes of pointless punishment, the New Yorkers began inch

and John Gibbon in front, and David Birney's division in reserve,

ing backward, until, "at about 150 yards from the

ready to exploit any opening. Barlow, in turn , formed his four bri

enemy's line the regiment halted and established

gades into two waves, and as the Federal artillery erupted with a

a new line . . . by using fence rails and throwing up

balTage "heavy and incessant" enough to awaken Richmonders

earth with bayonets and till cups." Soon enough,

"from their slumbers," his two lead brigades sprang forward,

even Barlow's headlong attack lost its momen

headed for the trenches held by John Breckinridge's small division.

tum. The 116th Pennsylvania "succeeded in gain

Double-quicking, and "without firing a shot," Barlow's men over

ing the main works of the enemy . . . but they were

ran the Confederate picket line, crossed over a sunken road at the

soon forced out by the heavily reinforced Con-

52 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

scarcely believe the easy targets the Yankee attackers offered. "The excitement ran so high . . . that the surgeon of the regiment quit his litter corps and was in the line firing before I discovered him," marveled one Confederate, while "the officers, with hats in hands, went up and down the line, feeling so much elated that they would strike the men over the heads and faces and shout with all the joy ever expressed at a camp-meeting by a new convert." The Alabama brigadier, McIvor Law, "found the men in fine spirits, laughing and talking as they fired . . . . I had seen nothing to exceed this. It was not war; it was murder." Or even worse, massacre. William Oates, com manding the 15th Alabama in Law's brigade, saw the 25th Massa chusetts barreling toward him "in a column by divisions, thus pre senting a front of two companies only." The Alabamians opened up federates." They "fell back . . . about seventy-five

"the most destructive fire I ever saw.... I could see the dust fog out

yards from the enemy's line and quickly covered

of a man's clothing in two or three places at once where as many

themselves with rifle pits or took advantage of

balls would strike him at the same moment. In two minutes not a

such shelter as the broken ground afforded." 23

man of them was standing. 26

Eventually, Barlow's men, too, began to wilt

At some point, the havoc ceased to make sense even to the

under Confederate counterattacks, clambering

Confederates who were wreaking it. In front of Law's Alabama bri

out of "the captured works" and fleeing "wildly

gade, a Union regiment had been "so roughly handled" that most

for the protection of ... the Union guns." In all,

of its survivors had fallen back without orders-except their color

"twenty minutes had not passed since the infan

sergeant who, oblivious of his abandonment, "steadily advanced,

try had sprung to their feet," and now the "dazed

solitary and alone, proudly bearing his flag." Not even Law's hard

and utterly discouraged" survivors "drifted off

nosed veterans could stand shooting the man, and instead began

. . . and found their regiments, but some of them

waving their arms and yelling, "Go back! Go back! We'll kill you!"

drifted to the rear and to coffee potS."24

When his peril finally dawned on him, the Yankee sergeant stopped,

Still, the failure of Hancock's attack was less dismal than the result that awaited Wright and

lifted his flag from its socket, and looked anxiously and deliberately "first to the right rear, and then his left rear." Then "with the same

Smith on the north side of Cold Harbor Road.

moderation gathered in the flag, right-shoulder-shifted his charge,

"About sunrise here they came," wrote Wil-

came to and about-faced as deliberately, and walked back amid the

liam McClendon of the 15th Alabama, "charging

cheers of Law's men." 27

through the pine thicket, huzzaing as they came, expecting to

run

over and capture all that were in

the breast-works." Smith's XVIII Corps jumped

The mood was less generous among the battered survivors of the VI and XVIII Corps. Orders "to renew the attack without refer ence to the troops on the right or left" were issued, conveyed, and

to their attack in close column, "ten lines deep,

passed down "through the wonted channels; but no man stirred,

with arms at a trail," and so closely packed that

and the immobile lines pronounced a verdict, silent yet emphatic,

"it was hardly possible for a ball to pass through

against further slaughter." In Stedman's brigade, one captain "stood

without hitting some one . . . . I never in all the

up before his superiors in rank" and "declared with an oath that

bloody conflicts that I have been in saw such

he would not take his regiment into another such charge, if Jesus

destruction of human lives. They literally piled

Christ himself should order it." Baldy Smith was more succinct:

on top of one another, often the dead would hold

"I received a verbal order from General Meade to make another

down the wounded and vice versa." Griffin Sted

assault, and that order I refused to obey." 28

man's brigade was stacked in column of regi ments, with the 12th New Hampshire first, then the llth Connecticut, 8th Maine, and 2nd New Hampshire. The 12th took the brunt of the fire, the men (according to Sergeant John L. Piper) bending over "as they pushed forward, as if trying . . . to breast a tempest, and the files of men

The attacks on the morning of June 3 lasted barely an hour. All operations had practically halted by II a.m., and at 12:30 p.m., Grant advised Meade that "The opinion of the corps commanders not being sanguine

of success in case an assault is ordered, you may direct a suspen

went down like rows of blocks or bricks pushed

sion of farther advanced for the present." There was desultory

over by striking against one another." Another

fighting farther northward at Bethesda Church, and in the eve

sergeant, Jacob Tuttle, saw so many of his men

ning, A.P. Hill's Confederates attempted a short-lived counterattack

drop to the ground at once that he thought he had

below Cold Harbor Road to clear what small advances the Yankees

missed an order to lie down. He was wrong. Most

had made there in the morning. But Federal artillery vengefully

of his company had been killed outright, and he

"opened with shell, case, and solid shot," leaving "the rebel line back

"dropped . . . among the dead, and did not dis

broken and shattered" and "leaving their dead and part of their wounded on the field." 29

cover my mistake until my living comrades had advanced some distance beyond me." 25 The Confederates who opposed them could

This was small consolation to Grant, who had hoped to deliver a fatal military blow to the Army of Northern Vir-

",," j CONT. ON P. 74

53 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

William Tecumseh Sherman's 1864 campaign against Atlanta was one of speed and maneuver-with one bloody exception. On June 27, the Union general launched his army against Confederates entrenched on Kennesaw Mountain. On a rise known later as Cheatham Hill, the fighting was particularly fierce, searing the memories of survivors and earning that patch of land a haunting name: The Dead Angle.

BY PATRICK BRENNAN

graying veteran and his wife clambered out of the rented buggy and peered at the hard scrabble Georgia ground. The driver, a former slave from nearby Marietta, asked if he recognized the place. The Ohioan reck oned he did. He had traversed it under fire almost 33 years before, and today, under circumstances far more benign, h e would cover it again . � He ambled over the surviving Federal de fenses and descended through the underbrush into a modest vale bisected by a meandering creek . He climbed east out of the low ground and approached the peaceful contours of what was now called Cheatham Hill. A massive line of Confeder ate trenches and earthworks crowned the ridge and ran in both directions as far as he could see. Lowered and rounded by three decades of Georgia weather, the red and yellow mix ture of upturned dirt and clay-strangely free of grass cover made the escarpment distinct and unavoidable. � The Yan kee worked his way a little south to a 90-degree bend in the former Rebel line, then climbed down the hill. At the base, he found vestiges of Federal trenches built after the assault he and his comrades had made on the hill went to ground. At one p oint, only a few dozen feet se p arate d the op p onents' works. 'Almost untouched," he thought, as though th e two armies had only recently marched away. � His attention shifted to another battlefield remnant . Nearby stood a grubby oak, perhaps 20 feet high, that had taken a mighty pounding dur ing the fighting . Bullets still emerged from the many holes in the bark, and few leaves grew on its gnarled, traumatized

Tbe

branches. "Wounded almost to

of Richmond was taken. In northern

death," he mused, like his comrades

Georgia, General William Tecum-

scarred by war "ever living and yet

seh Sherman led three army groups

ever dying." This place, he recalled, was "a hor rid dream, a bloody drama, a patch of Hell on earth." l

against General Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee, with the capture of Atlanta the ultimate prize. Here, in a series of maneuvers, Sherman repeatedly forced Johnston from

The Deadly Duet *

During the Civil War's fourth spring,

his defensive positions north of the city by turning the Confederate left flank. Battles-when they happened proved far less bloody than those oc

two great military campaigns played

curring in Virginia butjust as strate

out in mirror image. In Virginia, Gen

gically successful. In mid-June 1864,

eral Ulysses Grant and the Army of

while Grant had Lee pinned against

the Potomac struck south and sought

the rail hub of Petersburg, Sherman

out General Robert E. Lee's Army of

confronted Johnston near Marietta,

Northern Virginia. Each encounter

within sight of the spires of Atlanta.

over the blasted

For the most

shadow of the twin peaks of Ken nesaw Mountain, however, the high-strung commander claimed

Old Dominion

part, Sherman

landscape re

had relied on

something of a conversion. Anoth er turning movement would angle

sulted in both

these flanking

him away from his rail supply line, a

stunning blood

maneuvers to

dangerous move indeed, but one he

shed and Grant's

force his oppo

had made before. Instead, Sherman

increased deter

nent out of en

decided that his boys had grown too

mination to turn

trenched posi

used to maneuvering ("a single mode

Lee's right flank

tions. With his

of offense," as he termed it) and now

until the Con

army at another

needed to recall the "moral effect" of

federate capital

impasse in the

delivering a frontal assault. He there-

56 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

As Union forces conunanded by General William Tecuznseh Shennan Jnade their way south toward Atlanta, they repeatedly pushed back Confederates led by General Joseph E. Johnston. Above: A depiction ofthe fighting on May 13-I5 Rt Resaca, one ofseveral clashes during the early phase ofSherJnan's invasion of Georgia. Opposite page: Generals Johnston (left) and Shennan.

fore determined to attack Johnston's

left to General George Thomas. The

At Rocky Face Ridge, Resaca, and

center and break the enemy in two.2

jump-off would occur the morning

Adairsville, Johnston retreated south

On June 24, Sherman revealed

of June 27. Salutes were offered and

when the Federals flanked him, al

his plans to his lieutenants. General

returned, and the army commanders

ways on the left. At Cassville, lieuten

James McPherson and his Army of

departed to carry out their orders.

ant generals Leonidas Polk and John

lines that threatened their troops;

place. General John Schofield would

IN LATER YEARS, Joseph Eggleston

their fears convinced their com

lead his Army of the Ohio south and

Johnston would recall moments

mander to abandon the otherwise

east to pressure the Rebel left. The

throughout May and June 1864 when

strong position. Again, to the increas

hard work of creasing the Confed

he determined to attack Sherman

ing agitation of the war department

erate center-where the enemy was

and defeat this invasion of Geor-

in Richmond and many of his own

supposedly spread thin-would be

gia. But these moments were rare.

men, Joe Johnston ceded more Geor-

the Tennessee would push against the Confederate right and pin it in

Bell Hood fretted over a salient in the

57 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

gia soil to the invaders. South of the Etowah River, the nature of the campaign changed dra

ever, three-quarters of a mile south of the Dallas Road, Presstman found trouble. Here, the wooded ridge ended

matically. Gone were the open valleys

abruptly on a modest hilltop, and with

and long ridgelines of northern Geor

belts of trees and an open pasture

gia, replaced by rough tracks, bound

extending to the west, the only good

less thickets, and endless woods. The

defensible ground lay another 300

enemy broke from their supply lines

yards to the east. The officer solved

along the Western and Atlantic Rail

the problem by curving the line 90

road and again lunged left into a red

degrees left along the hilltop and

clay wilderness. Johnston, however,

running it east to the next ridgeline.

was nothing if not adroit. He stymied

Perhaps it was the darkness, perhaps

the movement with a line centered on

a simple oversight. Whatever the rea

New Hope Church and held it for 10

son, Presstman had abandoned the

days. Sherman quickly grew frustrat

hill's military crest and run the line

ed and sidled back toward the rail

higher up on the hill's natural crest,

road. Johnston countered with new

creating a vulnerable salient. None of

positions along three mountains

the Confederates from General Ben

Brushy, Pine, and Lost-where the

jamin Cheatham's division, which

armies spent two weeks brutally test

arrived June 19 to start constructing

ing each other's defenses and wres

the works, recognized the flaw: A gun

tling for the slightest advantage.

ner in the trench would not be able to

On June 16, Sherman reverted to

see the bottom of the hill or a con

his formerways by sending a force

siderable area around it. Presstman

around Johnston's left flank. Following

had unwittingly created a dead zone

the theme of their deadly duet, John

across most of the salient's front.

ston played his part perfectly, parry ing the thrust in a pounding rainstorm that would last for days. Meanwhile he dispatched his engineers to Kennesaw Mountain to lay out a new defensive

Ominous Appearances *

line, and three days later, the Army

General George H. Thomas had

of Tennessee abandoned the Pine

spent hours peering across this new

Mountain Line and filed into its stron

stretch of rugged Georgia country

gest position of the campaign. On cue,

side. As was usual, opposite lay the

Sherman's boys sallied forth and dug

Rebels, dug in along terrain that ap

in north and west of the forbidding in

peared impervious to attack. How

clines of Kennesaw.

ever, Thomas had orders to target

Major General Oliver O. Howard's IV

suitable areas to breach this latest

Corps, and two from Brigadier Gen

Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Presst

Confederate position, and the impas

eral Jefferson C. Davis' Second Divi

man-had performed something of

sive officer-in close consultation

Johnston's engineers-led by

a minor miracle. In

with his subordi

the darkness of June

nates-did his best to

18 they laid out a

find them. He finally

sion of Major General John Palmer's XIV Corps. The plan inspired little confidence. Palmer flatly thought Sherman's

defensive line that

fingered two spots:

"whole army could not carry the po

would ultimately run

the gorge south of

sition." Howard called the area near

for seven miles. As

Little Kennesaw near

Pigeon Hill the "least objectionable"

it curled around the

Pigeon Hill where

on the field, while Davis considered

northern slope of Big

Burnt Hickory Road

"a projecting point in the ridge" in his

Kennesaw, then ran

bisected the Rebel

front "the most assailable." However,

south across Little

defenses, and the

Sherman was convinced his oppo

Kennesaw Moun

ridge running south

nent's lines were stretched beyond

tain and Pigeon Hill,

from Dallas Road.

effectiveness. A breakthrough at ei

the line hewed to the

A total of five Union

ther point would sweep the Unionists

military crest-the

brigades would as

across the high ground and into the

optimal position for

sault the latter: three

streets of Marietta, where Joe John

observing and firing

from Brigadier Gen

ston's army would be sliced in two.

down the hill-ofthe

eral John Newton's

Just beyond Marietta ran the Chat

various heights. How-

Second Division of

tahoochee River, then Atlanta. The

58 THE C I V I L W A R MONITOR SUMMER 2014

Confederate forces positioned on Kennesaw Mountain were well prepared for the Union assault on June 27, having created aline ofimposing entrenchments in the days leading up to the fight. Above: A section ofthe Confederate defenses on Kennesaw Mountain. Opposite page: Rebel troops haul guns up the mountain's slope in preparation for battIe.

prize hung in the simmering heat,

posite Davis' people, Tennesseans

ing onto the defenders. Across much

there for Sherman's taking.3

from Cheatham's division continued

of their front, industrious Johnnies

Davis' two brigades spent the night of June 25 stumbling from the

to strengthen the defenses on the

spent the nights clearing fields of fire

crown of their modest hill. Brigadier

from the wooded ridge and construct

far left of the Union line to a staging

General Alfred J. Vaughan's brigade

ing defensive slashings from the

area south of John Newton's divi

labored along the northern and west

downed trees.

sion. Upon arrival, Colonel Daniel

ern wall of the salient, while Briga

McCook's Third Brigade extended

dier General George Maney's brigade

the line south from Newton's boys,

sweat along the southern leg of the

men occupied a unique position of

while Colonel John Mitchell's Second

arc. Under a daily barrage from nu

strength. Except for some thick trees

With skirmishers lining the bot tomland to the west, Cheatham's

Brigade took up the southern flank

merous Yankee guns, they had spent

on Vaughan's right and a thin belt at

of the assault formation. The Ohio

nearly a week repairing the damage

the base of his ridge, the open ground the Yanks would have to traverse

ans, Indianans, and Illinoians who

and improving the position. The re

constituted Davis' division spent the

sults were fearsome indeed. At some

to attack the hill yawned well to the

next day resting as best they could

places the clay wall stood 12 feet wide

west and south. Shoulder to shoul

in the summer heat. They watched

and seven feet tall. A rifleman could

der the undermanned Tennesse-

as limbers were filled, field hospitals

stand on a step along the bottom of

ans barely filled their firing line, but

located, orders barked, and ammuni

the trench to fire from a slit under a

these veterans of some of the war's worst bloodshed stood grim and

tion distributed. Wrote one veteran

protective head-log, lower himself to

bluecoat, "Appearances are ominous

load, and rise to fire again. Fence rails

ready, although some of the more

of an advance of our lines."4

crossing the top of the trench pre

tactically astute "high privates" who

vented dislocated head-logs from fall-

were to do the shooting and the kill-

About a half mile to the east, op-

59 THE CIVIL W A R MONITOR SUMMER 2014

Ohio-to storm the lower arc of the salient on Mc Cook's right . The trail

ing regiments-the 121st

The Confederates in the salient had

Ohio, the 98th Ohio, and

heard these sounds before: the low

the 78th Illinois-were

shuffle of an army on the move, the

formed en echelon to the

sharp report of picket fire, the clatter

right; once they cleared

ing of wagons as they bounced along

the Buckeyes, they would

the primitive clay paths. The veteran

wheel to the left and

soldiers could keenly sense when

move against the Con

battle loomed, and this day had all the

federate works in a bri

markings. Still, they spent the early

gade front. Only 20 paces

morning dodging the hot sun by draw

separated the regiments

ing their blankets across the trenches

in each column.

and relaxing in the gouged earth.

The sky slowly bright ened, promising anoth

Major General Benjamin Cheathrun, whose Illen occupied the salient in the Confederate line on the hill that would later bear his nrune.

Peal of Thunder

At 8 a.m. , pandemonium erupted. Across the front, enemy cannon fire

er sultry day. Officers

exploded, and shells began to plough

gathered to talk about

into their earthworks. "Blankets went

dispositions and expecta

down and we kept out of sight," re

tions. One group dis

called a private in the Consolidated

cussed their dreams from

1st/27th Tennessee at the apex of

the night before, some

the salient. The backbreaking work

serene, others disturbing.

of the previous week held up well

Elsewhere, soldiers did

as the massive earthworks soaked

what soldiers do before

up the Yankee metal. Only in a few

a battle. Some talked of

places were the head-logs displaced.

ing were now aware that a dead zone

home, others lamented their circum

Otherwise the two small brigades of

cradled most of their front. Engineer

stances. One grizzled warrior thought

Tennesseans simply hunkered down

Presstman's week-old error would

that this looked worse than an earlier

until the short bombardment ended

demand retribution.

bloodletting at Pea Ridge, Arkan-

and the smoke began to clear.7

sas, warning "We'll ketch hell over'n

Almost immediately the fading

them woods." Many simply lay there

artillery concussions were replaced by rolling cheers. Down the wooded

IN THE WARM, pre-dawn gloom of

quietly, their thoughts to themselves.

June 27, 1864, orderlies awakened the

"The silence," a northerner recalled,

slope less than 600 yards to the west

men of Jefferson Davis' division at 4

"became painful."s

boiled two masses of blue coats head

Toward the rear of his brigade,

ing directly for the salient. "Our car

fast and clear for battle. In two hours

McCook concluded one final meeting

tridge boxes were quickly adjusted,"

a.m. and advised them to eat break they would move forward to their

with Davis. As "Colonel Dan" strode

wrote a Tennessean, and from under

launch positions. Two hours after

away toward the front, the general of

the surviving head-logs "every gun

that, they would attack.

fered some parting advice : "Don't be

was in place." They then waited for

rash, colonel, don't be rash!' McCook

the orders to blow the charging Yan kees to hell. 8

Dan McCook and John Mitchell led their boys to their respective

responded by reciting an epic Thom

staging areas along a ridge about 600

as Macaulay poem:

yards from the enemy lines, ordered them to lie down, and issued final instructions. Both would attack in columns of division-one regiment in front of the next-with a cloud of skir mishers leading the way. McCook's lead regiment, the 125th Illinois, was to hit the salient in the Rebel line

Then up spoke brave Horatius The Captain ofthe gate: "To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds For the ashes of his fathers And the temples of his gods.["l

Two swarms of skirmishers led the Federal attack: the 85th Illinois fronting McCook and four companies of the 34th Illinois preceding Mitchell. Covering 225 yards, they scrambled over some rude breastworks held by troops from General James D. Mor gan's brigade-some of whom joined the advance-and "sprang away like

dead on; the 86th Illinois following

By the time he reached the brigade

a trained racer" into a pasture. Fifty

would move by left flank and engage

front, a signal gun off to the left

yards later, at the bottom of the slope,

the Rebs just north of their fellow Il

boomed. Dozens of Union cannon

they splashed across a branch of John

linoians. The 22nd Indiana and the

then joined the chorus.

Ward Creek, slowing a bit to negotiate

52nd Ohio were to exploit any break throughs. Just to the south, Mitchell wanted his lead regiment-the 113th

60 THE C I V I L W A R MONITOR SUMMER 2014

McCook shouted out a postscript to his "heathen refrain" : "Attention B attalion. Charge Bayonets." 6

a tangle of vines and overgrowth that lined the watercourse. In the wood belt across the front, Rebel pickets

THE F I G HT FOR CH EATHAM H ILL

O U T S I D E M A R I ETTA , G E O R G I A

J U N E 27 1 8 64

Less than two months after invading Georgia, General William Tecumseh Sherman's Union forces were on the outskirts of Marietta, not far from his ultimate goal. Atlanta. After repeatedly falling back against the advancing enemy. General Joseph E. Johnston and his Army of Ten nessee decided to make their latest stand on nearby Kennesaw Mountain. The Confederates constructed an imposing, seven-mile-Iong line of defensive trenches. On the morning of June 27, 1 864, Sherman launched an all-out assault upon Kennesaw. The fighting was particularly fierce at the southern end of the Con federate position, at a salient occupied by Major General Benjamin F. Cheatham's troops. Here, two brigades of Union soldiers. commanded by Daniel McCook and John Mitchell. reached the trenches. beaten back only after hand-to-hand combat. Johnston's men held their lines. Still. fearing for his flank. Johnston abandoned Kennesaw on July 2. Atlanta would be Sherman's two months later.

Cheatham Hill

�erl�

Perry's florida & Phelan's Alabama

� t

THOMA S IV

Nonh

XIV

leon h l

JOH NSTON

, ARDEE

-'J

LORING

Martena

eb", '" H,I

Figlrt for Cheatham Hill June 27

10001.., . -----------.-•

Springer

61 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

chipped at the blue wave from their "rabbit holes," but the Illinoians came on in such a frenzied rush that the stunned Confederates either surren dered or ran for their lives. Slightly over 100 yards up the ridge in front lay the Rebel salient. 9 On the retracted Rebel line east and south of the salient, Phelan's Alabama Battery and Perry's Florida Battery had full view of the Yankees swarming across the pasture. At 2,000 feet, their first deliveries were somewhat ineffective as the eight gun crews sought the range of the enemy. One northerner later explained that "each step changed the range," but that would not last. 1 o On Mitchell's front, the skirmish ers from the 34th Illinois ( "Yelling like so many Comanches," according to one witness) swung slightly to the left and pounded toward the apex of the enemy line. The 113th Ohio, with Lieutenant Colonel Darius Warner screaming encouragement, followed close behind. Uneven musketry be gan to tumble some bluecoats while others tripped over stumps. But about 20 yards from the earthworks, as Mitchell's spear point pressed up against a tangle of downed trees heretofore unseen-the Confeder ate line exploded in a "terrific jar of a peal of thunder close at hand." The 1st/27th Tennessee finally got their orders, joined by the 19th Tennes see just to their left. "A sheet of flame burst," wrote one Johnny, "and the missiles of death crashed." The gust

Tennessee soldier SIU1l Watkins, one ofthe Confederates who

defended the salient on CheathlU1l Hill, noted that their position was so favorable, "All that was necessary was to load and shoot."

hammered the Yankees, killing and wounding dozens while driving some survivors to the ground, other survi

vivors from moving much farther.

vors to flight.ll

Marveled an Illinois soldier as the

noians, "We swept them down with

regiment collapsed, "Oh! How that

great slaughter." 1 3

Just to the north and some 100 feet from the enemy, the head of Mc Cook's column received the same

fire of hell beats in our faces." 12 Minutes later, into the human

directly opposite the mass of Illi

Farther north along the Confeder ate defenses, the remaining gray-clad

treatment. One Confederate re

welter pounded the 86th Illinois.

regiments found themselves in an

marked that the Yanks had grown

Their commander, Lieutenant Colo

unlikely position. Other Yankee at

quiet in their last, brave lunge up

nel Allen L. Fahnestock, found the

tacks were crashing against Major

the ridge. That changed quickly.

125th Illinois decimated and the

General Patrick Cleburne's division

The concerted Rebel rifle blast-"a

front clogged by felled trees and

on their right flank, but the 29th Ten

storm of lead and iron"-pulverized

obstructions "staked and wired to

nessee, the Consolidated 12th/47th

the 125th Illinois as their colors re

gether." Winded, his people had the

Tennessee, and the Consolidated

peatedly fell and rose on the bloody

bare energy to press into the melee

13th/154th Tennessee (from south

incline. "They halted and staggered

and fire at the Rebel head-logs "thir

to north) found their front relatively

with considerable confusion," re

ty paces in front," even as a storm

quiet. So, craning his neck above the

membered one Tennessean, and the

of lead lashed their ranks. Recalled

head-logs, Tennessean J.T. Bowden

tree slashings prevented the sur-

one member of the 11 th Tennessee

could look south to see McCook's

62 THE CIVIL W A R MONITOR SUMMER 2014

"The cannons bellowed like so many mad bulls.... The air was so full of sulphurous smoke we could not see, and the roar of musket� so continuous we could not distinguish the report of our gun from that of the one by our side. " A CONFEDERATE DEFENDER OF CHEATHAM HILL

harried blue coats massing in front ofthe salient. Earlier, an officer had warned him and his comrades to look for just this sort of opportunity, so the Johnnies directed their fire obliquely to the left and lacerated the exposed flank ofthe enemy. 14

Tbe KUllng Grind *

While McCook's men bled, Mitchell's brigade surged into its own maelstrom. Colonel Henry Banning raced toward the salient with his 121st Ohio. His orders were to clear the 113th Ohio's right flank, wheel left, and assault the enemy position, but the initial Rebel volley seemed to literally consume the lead regiment. One of Banning's men thought the 113th "broke and fled" from the field while another assumed "they were all killed." Whatever had happened to them-their loss of 153 men in 20 minutes explains enough-Banning completed his maneuver as best he could and advanced. IS Along the front, Rebel musketry gashed the northerners. Off to the east, the Alabama and Florida batter ies zeroed in on the Yankee right flank. A Tennessee infantryman firing at the 113th recalled, "The CarIllons bellowed like so many mad bulls. . . . The air was so full of sulphurous smoke we could not see, and the roar of musketry so continuous we could not distinguish the report of our gun from that of the one by our side."16 Here and there, singly and in small groups, Buckeyes and Illinoians filtered through the obstructions and mounted the works only to be captured or killed. Banning quickly calculated the futility of these brave

actions. Battered by "grape and can ister from both flanks and a full line of small-arms fire from my front," the colonel ordered his boys to halt. Some did, to fight and die in line, but oth ers fell back to positions behind what trees were still standing and opened fire on the nearly invisible enemy. Rebel artillery shells exploded above them, "cutting down trees and felling limbs as if the air and the treetops were full of invisible sappers and miners." The swirl of metal and shattered wood caught many of the wounded working their way toward the rear, add ing to or putting them out of their misery.17 Banning pulled his survivors back about 20 yards. Here the Georgia geography offered a gift. A small branch that ran west to John Ward Creek had created enough of a slope to give some pro tection from enemy bul lets. Banning ordered his battered regiment to take advantage of the swale. One rank targeted the enemy head-logs with a near-contin uous fire, "creating such a splattering of lead and splinters that the defend ers lay low." The rest of the Ohioans used "bayonets, tin cups, plates and hands . . . to dig themselves under cover." If Banning couldn't take the position, he wasn't going to leave it either.ls * INSIDE THE SALIENT, the

dogged infantrymen of Cheatham's division maintained their killing grind. Bat-

tling at the apex, soldier Sam Watkins recalled, "All that was necessary was to load and shoot," and with McCook's two lead regiments massed just a few dozen yards away, Watkins and his comrades could barely miss. But return fire began to tell, "a solid line of blazing fire right from the muzzles of the Yar!kee guns being poured into our faces." Hair and clothing singed, the Tennesseans dared not give an inch, even with "the hot blood of our dead and wounded spurting on us." Smoke choked their throats and clouded visibility, forc ing many Confederates to aim through the murk by sound alone. And the sound-a swelling of screams and curses on the very edge of life, rifle fire, and artillery blasts of such numbing con cussion that "the blood [gushed) out of our noses and ears"-prompted one southerner to acidly declare, "Hell had broke loose in Georgia, sure enough."19 Down the slope from Watkins, Adjutant Lansing Dawdy of the 86th illinois thought he saw an opening. Most of the Federals on Mc Cook's front had stopped at the abatis and opened a ragged fire on the slits under the enemy head-logs. How ever, just yards south near the Rebel apex, a clearing in the obstructions gave easier access to the earthworks. Dawdy and Sergeant John Brubaker gathered some two dozen survivors of Company A and ordered them to rush the opening. Two ofthe Illi noians who heard the orders took one

63 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

Third Brigade commander Colonel Daniel McCook (above, waving hat overhead, and opposite page) leads his men forward in the assault against the Confederate salient on Cheatham Hill. Soon after scrambling atop the Rebel works, McCook would faIl wounded, shot in the chest.

look at the target, then clasped hands as the attack command rang out. In a mad rush, the clot of blue coats swirled through the clearing and charged. Ten feet from the earthworks, a minie ball slammed into Dawdy. Nearby, another creased Brubaker. It would be the same for their boys. Wrote a Tennessean in the salient who helped repel the thrust, "They had foe men to meet them who never quailed." In a few short seconds, seven Illi noians fell dead and 14 were wounded. Realizing that "All who were with us were now down," a writhing Brubaker rolled onto his side and vomited.20

For The Ashes of His Fathers *

Under a bright sun and a metallic blue sky, Colonel Daniel McCook knew that his attack's success hung in the balance. Not 15 minutes after step-off, his skirmishers and first two regiments had degenerated into a confused mass just a stone's throw

64 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

from the Rebels, and the arrival of the 22nd Indiana only increased the throng. Artillery pounded both of his flanks, rifle fire scythed his front, and his boys battled away on a veritable is land with little support. Soldiers over come by the howling barrage began to leak to the rear, first in driblets, then in clumps. "To stand still was death," recalled one of those boys ofthe cri sis. For the colonel, with panicked swatches of his command tumbling off the battle line, this would not do. McCook worked his way to the right front, where he saw the flag of the 86th Illinois. "Forward with the colors," he bellowed as he jostled through the obstructions, then sprinted across the final few dozen yards to the earthworks. For a mo ment he stood there-just north of the angle-but as he turned to en courage his men to join him, "the right battalion of the brigade . . . made a surge to his rescue." Many charged, but "a fusillading volley . . . swept most of them down." Most, but not all. Private Samuel Canterbury of the 86th Illinois survived the dash and

hugged the earthen wall as he tried to get his breath back. J.T. Seay and remnants of the 85th Illinois clawed up the outer wall and launched into "a hand to hand fight across the works, the men using their guns, bayonets, and stones." Up scrambled McCook onto a head-log. Parrying bayonet thrusts with his sword, "Colonel Dan" cried, "Surrender, you damn traitors" and screamed back at his boys to "Bring up those colors." As more of his comrades pushed forward to the works, Canterbury grabbed the colonel's coat and begged him to get down, earning him a curse and a warning to tend to his own business. Just then, a Tennessean rose up, pointed his rifle a few inches below McCook's right collarbone, and fired.21 * SOUTH OF MCCOOK 'S death struggle,

the rest of Mitchell's brigade went to ground. Phelan's and Perry's Con federate guns had the full range of the position and swept the southern slope of Cheatham Hill with a punish-

ing barrage. The Tennesseans lining the lower face of the salient fired at the roiling enemy lines with a deter mination that was, by one account, "intuitive, mechanical." The result was stunning. When the 98th Ohio charged in the wake of the 121st Ohio, blasted elements of Mitchell's lead regiment, the 1 13th Ohio, retreated through two companies of the 98th and swept them away. As Confederate bullets riddled their colors, the rest of the 98th's men hit the dirt to the right of Banning's diggers and extended the improvised trench line. The last of Mitchell's regi ments, the 78th Illinois, could do little more than join the desperate entrench ers muscling out the ragged ditch. Hundreds of northerners thrashed at the ground with everything from bayo nets to bare hands, and, slowly, the kill ing field surrendered a small swatch of its lethality. But the exercise also betrayed a bald military reality: Mitch ell's attack had shot its bolt.22 The backwash of both brigades

produced scenes both typical and unique to combat zones. Under "a perfect storm of lead," McCook's last regiment in line, the 52nd Ohio, stormed toward the front, only to discover "wounded and bloody men . . . pour[ing) past us." Here and there, cowering bluecoats hid behind trees and dead comrades, dodging and ducking the constant sweep of metal. To Major James T. Holmes it appeared that "the line of every regiment in front of us was broken.... Men came rushing down the slope in crowds, breathing hard through fear and physical exhaustion. The tide of retreat swelled." Despite the chaos, the 52nd Ohio pounded up the slope into the hellfire.23 Riding well behind his brigade, John Mitchell took in the same grim chaos. His people never came near overrunning the Rebel position and now had gone to ground. Many of McCook's men still fought along the battlements north of the salient's

apex, but the grand rush evidently had come to naught. Out of the turmoil came three soldiers carrying a wounded officer. As the group moved closer, Mitchell recognized Dan McCook. A bullet had ripped into his right breast at point-blank range; he was "weak and . . . spoke with difficulty and seeming pain." However, he rose up to casti gate Mitchell for leading from behind and promised him a court-martial if he survived. Nonplussed, Mitchell turned to his staff while the soldiers carried "Colonel Dan" away. Later, McCook managed to tell one of John Palmer's staffers that "we did all we could to break the rebel line ... but it was impossible."24

Dead Angle *

Colonel Hume Field celtainly knew how to lead from the front. The com mander of the Consolidated 1st/27th Tennessee stood near the apex and screamed at his men to "Give them the bayonet if they come over." But this was not enough. He dispatched his adjutant to the left to find reinforce ments, and with more Yanks pressing against the outer wall of the salient, the officer grabbed a rifle, clambered onto a SUppOlt beam for the head-logs, and fired into the crowd. His Tennesseans began to hand him loaded weap ons that he discharged with gusto. Suddenly a bluecoat scuttled over the earthwork to cross muskets with Field-and beat him to the draw. The bullet grazed the southerner's skull and knocked him out.25 Confederates low on ammuni tion flung rocks at the Yanks, and the Yanks returned the favor. Small knots of northerners continued to bull over the wall. Sam Watkins drilled two with one shot and was feverish ly reloading when a third came on, screaming, "You have killed my two brothers, and now I've got you." The Yankee leveled his rifle and fired, but Watkins' messmate William Hughes grabbed the muzzle and redirected the shot into his own hand and arm. The wound proved mortal, later prompting Watkins to write, "In sav ing my life, he lost his -- I CONT. ON P. 75

65 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

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Letters Home: Correspondence from Men at War BY PETER S. CARM I C HAEL WE WOULD LIKE T O BELIEVE that Civil War letters transport us back to the historical reality of the camp and the battlefield. These letters are not, however, transparent windows into the past. They are products of men struggling to depict a situation that was radically different than anything they had endured before.

We would also like to believe that soldiers wrote candidly about what they were experi encing. Questions of truthful ness, however, obscure how the act of writing was and is an act of perceiving. Men acted and thought in contradictory ways, but in writing letters home they restored a degree of stability to their lives, even though they admitted to read ers that they were navigating the unknown. The men profiled below-Charles Bowen, Wil liam Wagner, and Charles Bid dlecom-illustrate how soldiers' words and actions were not always in alignment, even as they professed strong opinions about the nature of the war, the political stakes of the conflict, and why they fought.

Dear Friends at Home: Tbe ClvtI War Letters and Diaries 01 sergeant Charles T. Bowen, Tweutb United States Infantry,

1861-1864

EDITED BY EDWARD K CASSEDY

(ZOOI)

On June 18, 1864, as he looked across a barren landscape toward Petersburg, Virginia, Charles Bowen of the 12th United States Infantry imagined his own death. On the far hori zon arose a massive Confederate fortification loaded with artillery and infantry. Sure that he would be in the last spasms of life in less than an hour, Bowen turned to a sick soldier headed for the rear and handed him some per sonal items-a pocketknife, a diary, and a locket containing a picture of his wife-in hopes of having them returned to his family in Utica, New York. He then took his place in the ranks, just before the order to advance was given. As soon as Bowen

68 THE CIVIL W A R MONITOR SUMMER 2014

and his comrades stepped into the open expanse, they were engulfed in a flame of smoke and fire. One solid shot knocked a file of men 10 feet in the air, but out of the chaos the ranks stag gered forward, until they were within the lethal range of canis ter. Each blast shredded soldiers into unrecognizable forms of humanity. "Men were cut in two & hurled [into 1 a disfigured mass of flesh & rags to the ground," a stunned but whole Bowen later wrote. "Arms, legs, headless trunks, & heads without bodies were strewn in every direction." Quick-thinking officers ordered Bowen and other sur vivors to find shelter in a swale until the benevolence of night gave them sufficient cover to throw up a line of earthworks. The next morning the sun unveiled a maze of trenches zigzagging in every direction, constructed throughout the night by men in awe oftheir own survival. Bowen tried to make light of his ordeal,joking to his wife that he had expected

to be discharged from "earth & army at the same time." No attempt at humor, however, could soften the memories of nearly continuous killing in the six weeks since the inception of the Overland Campaign on May 5, 1864. Throughout his mili tary career-one that included every major engagement of the Army of the Potomac from 1862 through 1864-Bowen wrote with remarkable fearlessness about the savagery of soldiering. Bowen was more introspec tive than most Civil War veter ans in exploring the ways that war twisted him into a strange and unfamiliar person. Con flicted feelings pulled him down after every battie, leaving him torn about the act of killing, despite his unfaltering obedi ence in following his officers into infernos of death. On the eve of the Overland Campaign, Bowen confided to his wife, "I hate to go to the front again, my time is so near out, but 1m in for it I suppose & will have to take my share." "One thing I am determined on," he asserted, "that is to do my duty at what ever cost, & you may rest assured that I shall die like a sol dier or come home after having done my duty as a soldier." Bowen adhered to his grim promise, even when his unit was called upon to attack Con federate works in one sense less charge after another. While duty pushed him forward, it did not reconcile the New Yorker to the monstrous acts of human destruction. At the beginning of June 1864, after his regiment had repulsed an enemy assault outside Richmond, Bowen recorded the scene: "When the smoke cleared up we could see

"One thing I am determined on is to do my duty at whatever cost, & you may rest assured that I shall die like a soldier or come home after having done my duty as a soldier." .•.

CHARLES BOWEN, 12TH U.S. I N FANTRY, I N A LETTER TO HIS WIFE ON T H E EVE OF T H E OVERLAND CAMPAIGN IN

IB64

the ground in front & it was a horrible sight indeed, human beings wounded, struggling & squirming over the dead, cries for wate!', help, mercy & the Lord only knows what else." Three Union generals publicly recog nized the heroics of Bowen's regiment, but their compli ments were unsettling to him: Praise from above generally signified more fighting. "I don't like the infernal mean scrapes it gets [us] into," he admitted. When Bowen put pen to paper he sought the realism that evaded many Civil War soldiers. The New Yorker, who managed to survive the war, was an uncompromising writer who demanded that those at home bear witness to the colos sal brutality of organized kill ing. If the sacrifice of blood was to redeem the Union, Bowen believed, those at home must confront the carnage and see it in all of its grotesque forms. Otherwise, they would never understand or sufficiently appreciate the suffering that had been endured for the cause. At the same time, he wanted his readers-then, and probably now-to realize that his writings spoke no single truth.

Letters 01 WIllIamF. Wagner: COnfederate SOldier EDITED BY JOE M HATLEY AND LINDA B. HUFFMAN

(l9B3)

The letters of Confederate Wil liam Wagner should be read out loud. A farmer of modest means and limited education, he strug gled to make his pen articulate what he usually said in person to his wife. His grammar is jagged, his spelling phonetically cre ative, and his thoughts spill out

• QUICK PICKS ClvU War Photography BY R O N A L D C . C O D D I N GT O N

The Photographic History of the Civil War (1911) By Francis Trevelyan Miller This lO-volume work is the starting place for any serious student of historic photography. Know Miller, and you'll understand why interest in the Civil War endures. The depth, breadth, and quality of these volumes continue to move me more than a century after they were published.

The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War (1980) By Bruce CaHon This is the book that inspired my boyhood interest in the war. I spent countless hours absorbing its photographs, maps, and illustrations. The images, and CaHon's words, make the war come alive.

Introduction to Civil War Photography (1991) By Ross J. Kelbaugh If you're new to collecting Civil War photographs, or are simply curious about photographic fonnats and photographers from the period, this slim paperback is a must-have. Consider it Civil War Photography 101. RONALD C. CODDINGTON, AUTHOR OF THREE BOOKS ON CIVIL WAR PHOTOGRAPHY, IS PUBLISHER AND EDITOR OF MILITARY IMAGES MAGAZINE.

in a stream-of-consciousness manner. Listening to Wagner's letters is jarring, clueing us into how difficult it was for some sol diers to communicate with those at home. Most Civil War soldiers were used to face-to-face com munication, and Wagner wrote to his wife as if he were sitting at the kitchen table, chatting about the day's affairs. Wagner's letters offer rare insights into the contradictory thinking of a reluctant Confed erate, one who ultimately gave up on his nation for the fantasy of returning to the Union. He enlisted under the pressure of conscription, joining the 57th North Carolina in 1862, just in time to see bodies mangled at Fredericksburg and Chancel lorsville. Confederate victories did little to relieve the depres sion of a man who thought the

war a grotesque violation of humanity. When Lee's army began its northern raid during the summer of 1863, he dreaded the imminent prospect of more slaughter. Upon entering Pennsylvania he was struck by the number of civilian men in every town and the lushness of a countryside untouched by war-incontestable proof in Wagner's eyes that a depleted Confederacy could not perse vere against such odds. Defeat at Gettysburg crushed Wagner's spirit, though he was thankful to Providence for sparing him during two vicious attacks, including a desperate charge at Cemetery Hill. When he returned to Vir ginia, Wagner drew hope from comrades who deserted. In late summer and early fall, scores of Lee's veterans headed for the hills. "I wouldent care if they would all Runaway," he wrote on August 15, "and then I am shure I would go too for God onleys knows I want this war to End." Wagner was torn. He wanted to slip away, but his wife, think ing of the perilous life of a deserter, wanted him to stay. He loathed his officers, calling them "big-headed" men for publishing patriotic resolutions in the newspapers that were falsely attributed to the rank and file. He wanted his wife to know that the men had never passed such resolutions, and that they were badly divided over whether to continue the fight. Wagner's rage never materialized into subversive action. He remained in the ranks not out of a sense of duty, but because he felt trapped. His gut-wrenching desire to

69 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

"I have tried my gun on the Rebs to my satisfaction and now 1 should like to come home. But 1 suppose Uncle Abe will keep me at this war as long as 1 can shoot a gun." U N I O N SOLDIER CHARLES BIDDLECOM

escape Lee's army and reunite with his family was poignantly captured in a postscript to an August 15, 1863, letter: "Dear if I onley could be at home to Eat peaches." Wagner never made it back to his Catawba County farm to enjoy the simple pleasures of family life. He was captured during the fighting at Rappa hannock Station on November 7, 1863, and sent to Point Look out prison, where the North Carolinian died two months later of chronic diarrhea. His body was buried in a mass grave in Maryland.

No Freedom Sbrleker: The CMI War Letters 01 UDlon SOldier Charles Blddlecom EDITED BY KATHERINE M. ALDRIDGE

(2012)

Just as New Yorker Charles Bid die com was about step into line and enter the Wilderness with the Army of the Potomac, a few comrades took him aside and begged him to desert. They were headed west to the Blue Ridge Mountains, in the opposite direc tion from the killing grounds of the 1864 Overland Campaign. Biddlecom had wanted to run away as soon as he was con scripted in 1863. In the ranks, he felt as if he were a thing, a dis posable part to be used by uncar ing and unthinking officers. "Cursed be the day that saw my name drawn as a conscript and d-d be the hour that I made up my mind to come as a draft," he wrote. "I think sometimes that if it was not for you and my chil dren I would blow out my brains. D-n the South. D-n the war and all that had anything to do in getting it up." Not long after he joined the

70 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

Army of the Potomac, Biddle com's body started to break down. During a November 1863 hike, his legs swelled, diarrhea struck, and he collapsed by the roadside. In a 24-hour period he expelled "over thirty passages of the bowels." He had "passed so much blood and mucus and become so weak," he wrote, that he "could hardly stand alone." Biddlecom sought a medical discharge, but the army's sur geons were indifferent to his suffering. At that moment of crisis, when his body and mind were on the verge of collapse, Biddlecom could have feltjusti fied in fleeing, but in the end he watched his comrades vanish toward the Blue Ridge. A few days later Biddlecom was engulfed in a ferocious killing spree that exceeded

his darkest imaginings. On June 29, 1864, after surviving the bloodiest campaign in the history of the Army of the Potomac, Biddlecom neared his breaking point. He could not imagine another day in the ranks, let alone the two years remaining in his enlistment. "I hate this life worse than a cat does hot soup," he exclaimed to his wife. "lf I ever get out I will stuff my oid uniform with straw and stand it up in one corner to look at when I feel out of humor just to remind me that home with its little cares and troubles is not the worst place in the world for a man to enjoy life." Eleven days later, Biddle com experienced an incredible reversal of thought when he was issued a new blouse. Sud denly, he hated to bid farewell to his old coat, wanting to send it home and to display not as a reminder of the worst, but as a relic of his heroic service and the bloody sacrifices of his com rades. The remarkable letters of Charles Biddlecom illustrate how members of the rank and file never stopped valuing their battle experiences as a testa ment to their manliness, even during those moments when their thoughts and actions were convulsed in contradictions over how they should act in the ranks. Civil War soldiers never stopped reminding those at home that although they were weary of bloodshed, they were inmates in the army, having no choice but to do their duty amid the madness of war. "I have tried my gun on the Rebs to my satisfaction and now I should like to come home," Biddlecom confided after his first encoun-

ter with the Confederates. "But I suppose Uncle Abe will keep me at this war as long as I can shoot a gun." Injust a few sentences Biddlecom outlined what thoughts and actions were available to him in the ranks. He acknowledged the institutional forces of the army were beyond his powers to challenge. Biddlecom would survive his enlistment and return to his native New York, but during his time in the ranks he never stopped loathing the war, loving his comrades, despis ing the Lincoln administration, or believing that killing for the nation was a sacred duty. Like Bowen and Wagner, Biddlecom was remarkable in his ability to reach deep into the dark side of war. But it would be a mistake to put forth these three books as pathways to the "real war." Our obsession with finding authentic voices from the ranks is ridiculously sub jective and largely a fruitless debate over what constitutes realism in the Civil War. It dis tracts us from fully appreciating how soldier correspondence when examined as an entire body of work and not through isolated quotes from individual letters-exposes the ebb and flow of soldier thought, includ ing tensions and contradictions that naturally arose when men had to confront the imponder able moral and political ques tions of organized warfare. � PETER S. CARMICHAEL IS FLUHRER PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND DIRECTOR OF THE CIVIL WAR INSTITUTE AT GET TYSBURG COLLEGE. HE IS COMPLETING

THE WAR FOR THE COMMON SOLDIER, TO BE PUBLISHED AS PART OF THE LITTLEFIELD HISTORY OF T H E CIVIL WAR ERA SERIES FROM THE UNIV ERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS.

Voices from tbe Army of tbe Potomac, Part 3 BY GARY W. GALLAG H ER

VALUABLE TESTIMONY about the Army of the Potomac resides in regimental histories published between 1863 and 1866. Writ ten while memories were fresh and usually compiled without expectation of monetary gain, these regimentals commemo rated the service of citizen-sol diers with an eye toward distri bution among members of the authors' units and their families. Timing also counted in terms of these books' value. They provide extensive firsthand evidence from a period when veterans thought about what their service had meant but, because they had returned to civilian life, no longer wrote letters home. Three regimentals in par ticular convey why accounts from this time period merit attention from students of the Army of the Potomac. David W. Judd's The StDry of the Thirty Third N. Y. S. Vols: Dr TwD Years Campaigning in Virginia and Maryland (1864) chronicles a two-year regiment raised in the spring of 1861 and eventually assigned to the VI Corps. The title page quotes the familiar northern motto "The Union. Now and Forever:' and Judd, while acknowledging that the war might remove slavery's "foul stain from our national escutcheon," identifies the soldiers' primary purpose as saving the republic. As when

Abraham Lincoln spoke of the United States as the "last best, hope of eruth," Judd affirms: "[W]e owe to ourselves, and the world, whose hopes and progress are identified with this last and noblest experiment of a free government, to man fully and successfully resist the breaking away of a single thread from the woof of our nationaL . . Judd makes a number of interesting observations about officers and campaigns. He blames Fitz John Porter rather than John Pope for the Union defeat at Second Bull Run, describes George B. McClel lan's emotional leave-taking from the army on November 10, 1862, as an "affecting and imposing . . . spectacle," and dis misses Joseph Hooker, under whom the regiment suffered its heaviest casualties at Second Fredericksburg, as "the prince of braggruts." Judd deploys common negative stereotypes when describing the 33rd New York's encounters with black people, but also deplores how cruelly white southerners treated slaves. Near the end, he quotes the regiment's chaplain, who addressed the men before they returned to civilian life. "This is not a Democratic war, nor a Republican war," explained the chaplain, "neither is it a 'Negro "

71 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

"The war is over. We have the satisfaction ofknowing that all we fought for has been gained. The rebellion is suppressed The supremacy ofNational over State authority has been demonstrated by the sword."

.••.

CHAPLAIN THOMAS G. MURPH EY, 1ST D ELAWARE I N FANTRY

war,' nor an 'Abolition war.' Let us regard all such appellations as the result of mere party spirit rather than of genuine loyalty. This is the Nation's war." Captain Amos M. Judson largely avoids sweeping state ments about the war's purpose in History ofthe Eighty-Third Regiment Pennsylvania Volun teers (1865). Part ofthe army's V Corps, the 83rd stood second among all Union regiments in the number of men killed or mortally wounded in combat, and McClellan pronounced it "one of the very best regiments in the army." The regimental follows the 83rd through many operations, including Gaines' Mill (the site of its heaviest losses), Malvern Hill, Freder icksburg, Gettysburg (where it fought in Strong Vincent's brigade on Little Round Top), the Overland Campaign, and Petersburg. Judson's matter-of-fact tone seldom glosses over Union set backs. "The campaign before Richmond had proved a fail ure," he concludes of the Pen insula and Seven Days cam paigns. "For nearly six weeks the army had lain within five miles ofthe rebel capital and accomplished nothing. They were now over twenty-five miles from there; and after the losses in the Seven Days were in no condition to make another advance." Like Judd, he evokes the soldiers' emotion at McClel lan's departure from the army "the air was rent by long, loud and enthusiastic cheering" and finds little to praise about Hooker, remarking that George G. Meade's elevation to army command "was received with quiet but apparent satisfaction"

72 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

among men in the V Corps. Gettysburg figures promi nently in the book. In one of his more hyperbolic passages, Judson exaggerates both the enemy's strength and the impact of fighting on Little Round Top. "The field, and the day, and the enemy, too, were ours," he gushes. "A small bri gade of four regiments, scarcely numbering eleven hundred and fifty men, had resisted and hurled back the best part of a division of the enemy's chosen troops, and had saved the army from rout and perhaps the nation from disgrace." A few days later, members of the 83rd spoke to wounded Rebel prison ers, who expressed continuing devotion to the Confederacy by declaring "that rather than live under the government of the United States they would live under a King." Chaplain Thomas G. Mur phey wrote most of Four Years in the War. The HistOlY of the First Regiment ofDelaware Vet eran Volunteers . . . (1866) "on the field, during active opera tions of the army." One ofWil liam F. Fox's "three hundred fighting regiments" (as was the

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Abraham Lincoln 83rd Pennsylvania), the 1st Delaware served in the II Corps from the Mary land Campaign of 1862 to the end of the war. Murphey aligns almost perfectly with Judd concerning the war's major goal. "Our interests and our honor at home and abroad were involved," he explains, " . . . republican constitutional government would have been undermined and its fall inevitable, if we had not struggled to establish our nationality." Murphey relates discussions with Rebel officers and soldiers about slaveholding Delaware's atti tude toward emancipation and the employment of black troops by the United States. He describes one Con federate asserting that the Yankee soldiers' "professed object was to defend the Union and not to abolish slavery. So it is, said I. The proclama tion is not directed against slavery but the rebellion, except so far as the former is sustained by the latter." And Rebels, adds Murphey, also used slaves: "If they had not formally enlisted negroes, they had done and were doing the same thing in effect, for they employed them to drive their teams, haul their rations, and work on their fortifications, thus relieving their soldiers, and in that way rein forcing their armywith fighting men." Robert E. Lee's escape after Get tysburg deeply disappointed men in the regiment, who hoped "the great battle" would yield a more decisive result. "On the morning of the 4th the pursuit of the retreating foe was commenced," writes Murphey, "and strong hopes were entertained that they could not recross the Potomac. A heavy rain which fell, swelling the river, strengthened these hopes. They had re-crossed it after the battle of Antietam, but that, it was said, was the fault of the commanding Gen eral." Yet the Rebels did get back to Virginia, and the "disappointment of the loyal people was intense ...

many yet wonder why it was permit ted, especially with former examples before us. There may be those who know, we do not. Some who censure General McClellan, exculpate Gen eral Meade." As a cleric, Murphey worried about ubiquitous profanity in the reg iment but could also find humor in it. On one occasion the men, worn out by marching and generally disgrun tled, "cursed all who were supposed to be the cause of their hardships. Brigadiers, Major-Generals, General in-Chief, the President, Jeff. Davis, the Abolitionists, the Secessionsists" and others received a "share of male dictions." From the ranks, "a wag" grown weary with the level of blas pheming called out: "Why don't you curse Christopher Columbus for dis covering America and be done with it." The comment "had more effect than would a long lecture on the third commandment in restoring good humor and arresting the profanity." Murphey closes with a tribute to citizen-soldiers and what they accomplished: "The war is over. We have the satisfaction of knowing that all we fought for has been gained. The rebellion is suppressed.... The supremacy of National over State authority has been demonstrated by the sword." Beyond those fun damental achievements, "More has been effected by the war than was originally intended:-Slavery is abol ished." Judd and Judson-as well as most Union soldiers-surely would have nodded their agreement. Indeed, Murphey's final observations can be taken as a starting point for under standing the men who filled the ranks of the Army ofthe Potomac. �

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the very nature of freedom was being questioned and the bonds of restricted servitude were being broken, and when the unfulfilled promise that "all men are created equal" was tenta tively held out to an expectant genera tion of American women who, almost 20 years earlier at Seneca Falls, had

inscribed their gender onto Thomas Jefferson's ringing prose. It would be many years before their sisters-in-arms would reap the benefit of their fledgling feminist agitation-in a world where the word "feminist" did not even exist. Like many pioneers, they sowed the seeds that they would not live to see burst into flower. �

JEAN R. FREEDMAN TEACHES HISTORY AND WOMEN'S STUDIES AT MONTGOMERY COLLEGE.

CONTINUED FROM P. 27

CONTINUED FROM P. 29

trophies of a very small victory culled from a much larger, bloodier defeat.3 Since the turn of the 20th century, multiple renditions of this story have been circulated, each with a varying explanation as to who exactly killed Skaggs and, perhaps more interest ingly, who began the process of mutila tion. Regardless of storyteller, though, one element remained constant: The tactics of tenor so gleefully employed by Larkin Skaggs were turned on him wholesale. By the afternoon of August 21, 1863, the morning's most exultant hunter had become the hunted. The town's own carnival of the grotesque had become a macabre kind of therapy. And therein the cogs of ilTegular vio lence turned along the Missouri -Kan sas border. Death spawned grief; grief necessitated vengeance; and so, as Larkin Skaggs discovered too late, the cycle of violence kept rolling on. �

Creek, and several other battles during the Civil War, proved is that when soldiers are more interested in the spoils of war than the fate of the enemy, good tactical judgment and discipline can easily disappear. �

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74 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

Ulysses S. Granf at Cold Harbor, June 1864

CLAY MOUNTCASTLE, A LIEUTENANT COLONEL IN T H E U.S. ARMY, CURRENTLY SERVES AS THE PROFESSOR OF MILITARY SCIENCE AT T H E UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON I N SEATTLE. HE HOLDS A PH.D. I N HISTORY FROM DUKE UNIVERSITY

PUNITIVE WAR: CONFEDERATE GUERRILLAS AND UNION REPRISALS (UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KANSAS, 2009).

AND IS THE AUTHOR OF

TEN M ILES FROM RICHMOND CONTINUED FROM P. 5 3

ginia. With the Republican convention so near at hand, he was unusually terse in the notification he sent to Wash ington before the end of the day on June 3. "We assaulted at 4.30 a.m. this morning, driving the enemy within his intrenchments at all points . . . . Our loss was not severe." Suspiciously, Grant refused to ask for the customary post battle truce to recover the wounded trapped between the armies. Tradition dictated that the loser ask for the truce, but Grant was unwilling to make such an admission until 5:30 p.m. on June 7, by which time the Republican conven tion was already in full swing.30 To his staff, however, Grant freely admitted that he had made a hideous

mistake. "I regret this assault more than any one I have ever ordered ... as it has proved, no advantages have been gained sufficient to justify the heavy losses suffered." He would even tually have to report-as an aggregate of all the casualties from the cavalry fight at the crossroads, the infantry attacks on June 1 and 3, and the skir mishing that followed for the next week-a depressing total of 13,153 killed, wounded, or missing from the Army of the Potomac. Only a third of these actually took place on the fatal morning of June 3. But eventually the futile assaults that morning came to stand for the cluster of battles around Cold Harbor, and the staggering total of over 13,000 fixed itself in the public mind for June 3 alone.31 Cold Harbor would cling to Grant like mud, sealing his image as an unfeeling butcher whose primary stra tegic metaphor was a meat grinder. For the Army of the Potomac, Cold Harbor would remain a monument to chances lost instead of seized. "It is very interesting to revisit the battle fields of the war, but I never heard any one who was engaged there express a wish to see Cold Harbor again," wrote a former VI Corps staffer after the war. "It remains in memory the Golgotha of American history."32 � ALLEN C. GUELZO IS THE HENRY R. LUCE PRO FESSOR OF THE CIVIL WAR ERA AT GETTYSBURG

NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING GETTYSBURG, THE LAST INVASION (2013).

COLLEGE AND THE AUTHOR OF THE

A PATCH OF HELL ON EARTH CONTINUED FROM P. 65

own."26 West of the bloody earthworks, the 52nd Ohio tore up the incline under a storm of lead "pouring down upon our heads [like) the old historic curse from heaven." Four color-bearers had fallen in the assault (one participant described facing a "plunging fire [that) tears away comrades on left and right"), but a fifth carried the flag through "sheets of flame" to the earthworks. Tennessean John Beasley reached over the head-log and tried to grab it, but the Ohio flag bearer pulled his pistol and blew the Rebel's head off.27 As he rallied with the remnants of McCook's brigade and his surviving Ohioans, one Buckeye called their position "the final stand": Deadly volleys mowed us down. The ground was strewn with the dead and the dying. The living crouched behind the dead comrades.

Soon the only Ohioans at the wall were wounded, dead, or dying. The rest clustered at the abatis, shooting at anything they could.28 The front had proven deadly for infantryman and of ficer alike. McCook was gone, and Colonel Oscar Harmon of the 125th Illinois was killed before he realized he was the brigade's new leader. Command now devolved onto Colonel Caleb Dilworth of the 85th Illinois. Incredibly, Confeder ate volleys had intensified when the Consolidated 6th/9th Tennessee arrived from their position on the far left of the salient and added their muskets to the roar. Their rifles be came so hot that shavings from their bullets melted in the barrel grooves. Captain James Hall of the 6th/9th showed his boys how to reverse their guns to permit the melted lead to drain onto the ground. Problem solved, the Tennesseans resumed their flaying of McCook's shattered brigade. Lieutenant Colonel Allen Fahnestock of the 86th Illino is had spent the entire assault cajoling his men, reform ing their ranks, and trying all he could to somehow get his troops over the wall. However, when Rebel fire halted the 52nd Ohio's thrust among the piles ofthe broken and the bleeding, he sought out Dilworth for instructions. "I told him we could not retreat and I did not now feel willing to surren der," recalled Fahnestock, and Dilworth agreed. They made their choice. Word soon circulated to the survivors: Fall back under the crest of the hill and dig in.29 And so McCook's survivors dug, at some points just 30 feet from the apex of the salient, using their powder-stained hands and whatever tools they could scrounge to fashion their own bastion. They found a bare veneer of safety here, for the Rebs in line on the crest of the hill couldn't see the Yanks at the bottom; the Confederate engineering mistake of 10 days before came back to haunt them. The bluecoats occupied a safe zone-as they would call it, the Dead Angle and burrowed into the ground for the remainder of the day. Their right arced back to Mitchell's new __ I CaNT. ON P. 76

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A PATCH O F HELL ON EARTH CONTINUED FROM P. 75

works, and their left snaked back into the woods north of the pasture. Eventually, entrenching tools were carted to the front. The walls became higher, the trenches deeper, and a terrible game of cat and mouse developed at a range so close few could recall its equal. Wounded Federals who couldn't fall back lay in no-man's land pondering their fate, crying out for water. Some surren dered and went over the wall and off to southern hospitals. Others waited through an afternoon of heat and hell to crawl back to safety under night's cover. Many simply bled to death. Meanwhile, inside the salient, Sam Watkins observed: I never saw so many broken down and exhausted men in my life. I was as sick as a horse, and as wet with blood and sweat as I could be, and many of our men were vomiting with exces sive fatigue, over-exhaustion, and sunstroke; our tongues were parched and cracked for water, .. and our dead and wounded were piled indiscriminately in the trenches,

Watkins' right arm was covered with bruises and "sore as a blister." He calculated he shot his rifle more than 100 times during the battle and easily killed more Yankees than on any other day in his war. "It was verily," he said, "a life and death struggle!'30 *

Uving Hell The Dark Side of the Civil War Michael C. C. Adams "In Adams' hands, the Civil War's legacy is unmitigated personal horror, societal suffering, and political factionalism . . . Living Hell engagingly opens up the'dark side' of the Civil War to comparative scrutiny with other modern wars�-Civil War Monitor "Adams sees the Civil War for what it was, and not how we like to imagine it. . . . Living Hell brilliantly recovers the terrified voices of men who were emotionally torn and twisted by combat. This is a compelling and important book that forces us to think deeply about how we 'celebrate' the heroism of Billy Yank and Johnny Reb."

-Peter S, Carmichael, Gettysburg College "Provides a vital g ut-wrenching counterpoint to the Civil War's glamorization in America's collective memory, a perspective as important to understanding the war as any political history or gen eral's biography . . . Those with the fortitude to endure its darkest moments will find it fascinating."-ShelfAwareness

SHERMAN 'S OTHER attacks that day along the Kennesaw line failed equally, although McCook's men bragged that they occupied the line of their farthest advance. Two days later, a truce was called to bury the putrefying Federal corpses between the lines, and then the soldiers returned to the trenches to resume the sniping and the killing. At the base of the Dead Angle, the Yanks began bUn'owing a mine into Cheatham Hill in an attempt to blow the position up; what they couldn't capture by assault they would now destroy by subterfuge. But on July 2, just five days after the battle, it all became meaningless. Fearing again for his left flank, Joe Johnson pulled his army out of its Kennesaw fortress and retreated to the Chattahoochee River. The soldiers would never forget the fight at the Dead Angle. One northerner called it "our Golgotha and Water loo," while Sam Watkins thought his Tennesseans earned there "a wreath of imperishable fame." Ironically, neither Sherman nor Johnston wrote much about the battles of June 27. In his memoirs, Sherman admitted Thomas' as sault remained the hardest fought of the campaign north of the Chattahoochee, but he spent less than a paragraph de scribing it. Johnston's recollection proved more expansive but considerably less than extensive; he mistook Vaughan's brigade as Cheatham's reserve and thought their casualties high because they fought "unprotected by intrenchments." Amid backtalk of incompetence and needless slaughter, Colonel Dan McCook framed the attack most succinctly.

$29.95 clolhlebook 76 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR

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In Nashville recuperating from his wound, he claimed that if he and Har mon hadn't been shot, they would have needed only 15 more minutes to breach the Rebel position. Perhaps.31 On July 16, 1864, at his brother's house in Steubenville, Ohio, Dan Mc Cook received a brigadier's star. By one account, he declined the honor, saying it had come too late. The next day, with Sherman just a few miles from Atlanta and John Bell Hood the new commander of the Army of Ten nessee, McCook died.

EpUogue *

Near the gnarled oak, the old soldier noticed the opening to the mine. It appeared as solid as the day it was gouged out ofthe ground 33 years before, and as he squinted into its emp tiness he thought of the poor nameless Yank who had crabbed into its recesses on knees and elbows, grasping a small candle to light the way. From a local farmer the Ohioan learned that many veterans came here to do what he did: climb near by Kennesaw Mountain, walk the battlefields, putter about the earth works, and stare into the darkness of the mine. He told the farmer the land should be preserved so that future generations could come to this pe culiarly innocent place and perhaps

understand what had happened here. The farmer-who happened to own the land-agreed. Of course, the soldier already knew the history. He was James T. Holmes, a major in the 52nd Ohio on the day McCook's brigade charged Cheatham Hill. On June 27, 1864, he had crossed the valley, climbed the slope, and somehow survived the car nage along the crest. He would march with the regiment to the end ofthe war, then return to Ohio to marry and build a life. Today, he had brought his wife to see the place where armies

gathered and battle erupted. As he stood awash in memo ries, he absently scanned the ground. Something caught his eye: a bullet half hidden in the Georgia dirt. He bent down, picked it up, and put it in his pocket to take back home.32 0 PATRICK BRENNAN, A MEMBER OF THE MONITORS EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD, IS THE AUTHOR OF

SECESSIONVILLE: ASSAULT ON CHARLESTON (1996). A MUSIC PRODUCER BASED IN CHICAGO, HE HAS CO

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Russell Weigley, A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History, 1861-1865 (Dloomington, 2000), 377.

McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 780.

James I. Robertson Jr., Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend (New York, 1997),402.

Notes CITATIONS FROM THIS ISSUE'S ARTICLES

TEN MILES FROM RICHMOND

(Pages 44-53, 74) Meade to M.S. Meade (June 5, 1864), in The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, ed. George Meade Jr. (New York, 1913), 2:201; E.M. Stanton to John A. Dix (May 11, 1864), in The War ofthe Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies l29 vols. (Washington, 1880-1901), Series I, Vol. 37 (pt 1): 427 (hereafter cited as OR) ; Ernest B. Furgurson, Not War But Murder: Cold Harbor 1864 (New York, 2001), 42; Dana to Stanton (May 30, 1864), in OR, Series I, Vol. 36(pt 1): 83.

CASUALTIES OF WAR

(pages 26-27, 74) J. M. Henry, September 24, 1915, "Account of Eye Witness," Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas, 2. 2

Henry, "Account of Eye Witness," 2-3; William E. Connelley, Quantrill andthe Border Wars (Cedar Rapids, lA, 1909), 104, 127-128.

Account of C. M. Chase reprinted in Connelley, Quantrill and the Border Wars, 382.

�

. ' ..

�� .• .1

�:\..;.

-. � - .. "

,l!,.".,

Robert Stiles, Four Years Under Marse Robert (New York, 1910), 274; Noah Andre Trudeau, Bloody Roads South: The Wilderness to Cold Harbor, May-June 1864 (Boston, 1989), 266267; Louis J. Baltz. The Battle ofCold Harbor, May 27-June 13, 1864 (Lynchburg, VA, 1994), 74-79.

Thomas Livermore, "Grant's Campaign Against Lee" (November 14, 1887), in Papers of the Military Historical Society of Massachu setts, 4:451

Robert McAllister to Ellen McAllister (June 4 and 6, 1864), in The Civil War Letters ofGen eral Robert McAllister, ed. J.I. Robertson (New Brunswick, NJ, 1965), 433, 434.

14 Richard W. Smith, The OldNineteenth: The Story of the Second Connecticut Heavy Artil lery in the Civil War (Lincoln, NE, 2007), 107, 110-111.

E.M. Haynes, A History of the Tenth Regiment, Vermont Volunteer (Lewiston, ME, 1870), 78; John C. Ropes, "The Battle of Cold Harbor" (February 12, 1883), in Papers ofthe Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, 4:344.

Captain Charles H. Porter [39th Massachu setts], "The Battle of Cold Harbor" (December 12, 1881), in Papers ofthe Military Historical Society ofMassachusetts, 4:322; Grant to Halleck (May 26, 1864), in OR, Series I, Vol. 36 (pt 1): 9.

15 History of Litchfield County. Connecticllt: with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of its Prominent men and Pioneers (Philadel phia, 1881), 59; Theodore Vaill, History ofthe Second Connecticut Volunteer Heavy Artillery, Originally the Nineteenth Connecticut Vols. (Winsted, CT, 1868), 62-63; Isaac Oliver Best, History of the 121st New York State InfantTY (Chicago, 1921), 155-156.

Ulysses S. Grantto Henry Halleck, August 1, 1864, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant (New York, 1982), 469. As quoted in James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York, 1988), n8.

As quoted in Paul Andrew Hutton, "Paladin of the Republic: Philip H. Sheridan," in Withmy Face to the Enemy: Perspectives on the Civil War, Robert Cowley, ed. (New York, 2001). 355-356.

12 John Hill Wheeler, Reminiscences and Mem oirs of North Carolina and Eminent North Caro linians (Columbus, OH, 1884), 73; Thomas L. Clingman, "Second Cold Harbor," in Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina in the Great War 1861-65, ed. Walter Clark (Goldsboro, NC, 1901), 5:199; "Report of Brig. Gen. Emory Upton, U.S. Army" (September " 1864), in OR, Series I, Vol. 36(pt 1):671. 13 William Kreutzer, Notes and Observations Made DuringFour Years of Service with the Ninety-Eighth N.Y. Volunteers in the War of1861 (Philadelphia, 1878), 199; S. Millett Thompson, Thirteenth Regiment of New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry in the War of the Rebellion (Boston, 1888), 340; "Reports of Maj. Gen. William F. Smith, U.S. Army" (August 9, 1864), in OR, Series I, Vol. 36(pt 1): 1000; Abijah Perkins Marvin, History of Worcester in the War of the Rebellion (Worcester, MA, 1870), 260.

11 Meade to Smith (June " 1864), in OR, Series I, Vol. 36(pt 1): 999; Haynes, History ofthe Tenth Regiment, Vermont Volunteers, 78.

John C. Ropes, "Grant's Campaign in Virginia in 1864" (May 19, 1884), in Papers of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts (1905; reprint, Wilmington, NC, 1989), 4:373; Gordon C. Rhea, ColdHarbor: Grant and Lee, May26-June 3, 1864 (Baton Rouge, 2002), 16.

(pages 28-29, 74)

THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR

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BATTLEFIELD ECHOES

SUMMER 2014

Porter, "The Battle of Cold Harbor," 324; Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (New York, 1897), 172.

10 Haynes, History ofthe Tenth Regiment, Ver mont Volunteers, 79; Thomas W. Hyde, Follow ingthe Greek Cross: Or, Memories ofthe Sixth Army Corps (Boston, 1894), 210; Dana to Stan ton (June 1, 1864), in OR, Series I, Vol. 36 (pt 1): 85-86; Asa W. Bartlett, History of the Twelfth Regiment, New Hampshire Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion (Concord, NH, 1897),200; Porter, "The Battle of Cold Harbor," 328.

SOURCES &

Furgurson, Not War But Murder, 76-n. 8

Charles Henry Hartshorne, Salopia Antiqua or an Enquiry from Personal Survey into the 'Druidical,' Military, and Other Early Remains in Shropshire and the North Welsh Borders (London, 1841), 253-258; "A History ofthe College of Arms," Eclectic Review 2 (April 1806): 304; John Stowe, A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, Borough of South wark, and Parrs Adjacent (London, 1735). 904;

16 Clingman, "Second Cold Harbor," in Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina, 5:201-202; Vaill, History of the Second Connecticut Volunreer HeavyArtillery, 63; Upton to Maria Upton (June 5, 1864), in Peter Michie, The Life and Letters of Emory Upton, Colonel of the Fourth Regiment ofArtil lery, andBrevet Major-General, U.S. Army (New York, 1885), 109. 17 Haynes, History of the Tenth Regiment, Ver mont Volunteers, 80; Porter, "The Battle of

Cold Harbor,' 330. 18 "Reports of Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock, U.S. Army" (September21, 1865) and "Report of Capt. James Fleming, Twenty-Eighth Mas sachusetts Infantry" in OR, Series I, Vol. 36(pt 1): 344, 390; Porter, Campaigning With Grant, 173; Lyman, "Operations of the Army of the Potomac, June 5-15, 1864" (January 9, 1882), in Papers of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts: Petersburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg(1906; reprint, Wilmington, NC, 1989), 5:11; Wiliam P. Derby, BearingArms in the Twenty-Seventh Massachusetts Regiment of Volunteers (Boston, 1883), 301; Dana also mentions the "deluge of rain" in the afternoon to Stanton (June 2, 1864), in OR, Series I, Vol. 36(pt 1): 87. 19 Stiles, Four Years With Marse Robert, 276; Porter, "The Battle of Cold Harbor," 331. 20 Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 174-175. 21 John D. Billings, The History of the Tenth Mas sachusetts Battery of LightArtillery in the Warofthe Rebellion (Boston, 1909), 261-262; Porter, "The Battle of Cold Harbor,» 333-34. 22 "The War News - Heavy Fighting All Along the Lines," Richmond Daily Dispatch (June 4, 1864); Porter, "The Battle of Cold Harbor," 334; Ropes, "The Battle of Cold Harbor," 355; "Report of Maj. James E. Larkin, Fifth New Hampshire Infantry" (August 9, 1864) and "Report of Brig. Gen. John R. Brooke" (Novem ber 1, 1865), in OR, Series I, Vol. 36(pt 1): 376, 414; Rhea, Cold Harbor, 320-323. 23 "Report of Maj. John Byrne, One Hundred and Fifty-fifth New York Infantry" (August 7, 1864), in OR, Series I, Vol. 36(pt 1): 463; St. Clair Mulholland, The Story of the 116th Regi ment Pennsylvania Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion (Philadelphia, 1903), 255.

Commencement to the Close of the War, 18611865 (New York, 1882), 487; Bartlett, History of the Twelfth Regiment, 204; Smith, "The Eighteenth Corps at Cold Harbor," in Battles & Leaders, 4:227.

29 Grant to Meade (June 3, 1864), in OR, Series I, Vol. 36(pt 3): 526; "Report of Capt. Edwin B. Dow, Sixth Maine Battery" (August 7, 1864), in OR, Series I, Vol. 36(pt 1): 515. 30 "Reports of Lieut. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, U.S. Army· (June 3, 1864), in OR, Series I, Vol. 36 (pt. 1): 11; Ropes, "The Battle of Cold Harbor," 361. 31 Porter, Campaigning With Grant, 179; Walter Taylor to Elizabeth Saunders (June 9, 1864), in Lee's Adjutant: The Wartime Letters of Colonel Walter Herron Taylor, 1862-1865, ed. R.L. Turner (Columbia, SC, 1995), 167. Casualties for all the fighting on June 3 have been estimated at 4,500, with the morning assaults costing 3,500. Hancock originally estimated thatthe II Corps lost 3,024, but the actual total was probably closer to 2,500, with the VI Corps losing another 600 and the XVIII Corps around 1,500. By contrast, the Army of Northern Virginia suffered only about 700 casualties; overall Confederate casual ties for the entire two weeks of action around Cold Harbor amounted to less than 5,300. See "Report of Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, U.S. Army' (November 1, 1864) and "Reports of Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock, U.S. Army· (September 21, 1865), in OR, Series I, Vol. 36(pt 1): 195, 345; Rhea, Cold Harbor, 358362; Alfred C. Young, Lee'sArmy During the Overland Campaign: A Numerical Study (Baton Rouge, 2013), 240. 32 Hyde, Following the Greek Cross, 214.

26 Pinckney D. Bowles, "The 25th Mass. Vols. at Cold Harbor," in William Andrew Emerson, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, Past and Present (Fitchburg, MA, 1887), 135; Law, "From the Wilderness to Cold Harbor," in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, eds. R.U. Johnson & C.C. Buel (New York, 1884-88), 4:141; Oates, The War Between the Union and the Confed eracy, 366-367. 27 The Story of the Twenty-first Regiment, Con necticut Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War, 1861-1865 (Middletown, CT, 1900), 243244. 28 William Swinton, Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac: A Critical History of Operations in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania from the

Re-Union of Col. Dan McCook's Third Brigade, Second Division, Fourteenth A.C., Army of the Cumberland (Chicago, 1900), 84; Holmes, 52nd O.V.I., 178; Allen L. Fahnestock Journal, KMNBPL; Robert M. Rogers, The 125th Regi ment Illinois Volunteer Infantry (Champaign, IL, 1882), 91.

7 James L.W. Blair, "The Fight at Dead Angle" Confederate Veteran, Vol. XII, 532. 8

Ibid.

Payne, History of the 34th Regiment, 128.

10 Holmes, 52ndO.V.I., 178. 11 Earl J. Hess, Kennesaw Mountain: Sherman, Johnston, and the Atlanta Campaign (Chapel Hill, 2013), 129; F.W. McAdams, Everyday Soldier Life, or A History of the One Hundred and Thirteenth Ohio Volunteer Infantry (Columbus, OH, 1884), 343; Payne, History of the 34th Regiment, 532. 12 Rogers, The 125thRegimentlllinois Volunteer 'nfantry, 91-92; Richard A. Baumgartner, KennesawMountain, June 1864 (Huntington, WV, 1998), 152. 13 Fahnestock Journal, KMNBPL; Baumgartner, KennesawMountain, 152. 14 Hess, Kennesaw Mountain, 120-121. 15 Baumgartner, KennesawMountain, 144-145. 16 William J. Worsham, The Old Nineteenth Tennessee (\<noxville, 1902), 121. 17 OR, Series 1, Vol. 38, Part 1, 703; Worsham, The OldNineteenth Tennessee, 121. 18 Baumgartner, Kennesaw Mountain, 149. 19 Sam R. Watkins, "Co. Aytch,· Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment, or A Side Show of the Big Show (Chattanooga, 1900; reprint edition, Wilmington, NC, 1987), 157.

24 Frank Wilkeson, Recollections of a Private Soldier in the Army of the Potomac (New York, 1887), 128-133; Charles Francis Atkinson, Grant's Campaigns of 1864 and 1865 (London, 1908),453; Rhea, Cold Harbor, 335-336. 25 "Report of Maj. Hiram B. Crosby, Twenty-first Connecticut Infantry· (June 12, 1864), in OR, Series I, Vol. 36(pt 1): 1013; McClendon, Recol lections of War Times, 211; Bartlett, History of the Twelhh Regiment, New Hampshire Volun teers, 203; William C. Oates, The War Between the Union and the Confederacy, and Its Lost Opportunities (New York, 1905), 366-367.

Infantry (Clinton, lA, 1903), 127. 6

20 Watkins, "Co. Aytch:157; Re-Union of Col. Dan McCook's ThirdBrigade, 121. 21 Re-Union of Col. Dan McCook's Third Brigade, 40. 22 Hess, Kennesaw Mountain, 132. A PATCH OF HELL ON EARTH

(Pages 54-65, 75-77) J.T. Holmes, 52ndO.V.I. Then and Now (Columbus, OH, 1898), 176-201. 2

United States War Department, The Warof the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records 129 vols. (Washington, 1880-1901), Series I, Vol. 38, Part 1, 68 (hereinafter cited as OR). John M. Palmer, Personal Recollections of John M. Palmer (Cincinnati, 1901),205; Oliver O. Howard, Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard (NewYork, 1907), 582.

4 Frank Chester Diary, Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park Library (KMNBPL), Kennesaw, Georgia. 5

Holmes, 52ndO.V.I., 198; Edwin W. Payne, His tory of the 34th Regiment of Illinois Volunteer

23 Holmes, 52ndO.V.I., 182-183. 24 Re-Union of Col. Dan McCook's Third Brigade, 103-104,121-122. 25 Watkins, "Co. Aytch,n158-159. 26 Ibid. 27 Nixon B. Steward, Dan McCook's Regiment, 52ndO.V.I. (1900), 117-118. 28 Ibid., 119. 29 FahnestockJournal, KMNBPL. 30 Watkins, ·Co. Aytch:159. 31 Re-Union of Col. Dan McCook's Third Brigade, 35; Watkins, "Co. Aytch, "158; Joseph E. Johnston, Narrative of Military Operations (New York, 1874; reprint edition, Bloomington, IN, 1959), 343. 32 Holmes, 52ndO.V.I., 176-201.

79 THE CIVIL WAR MOHITOR SUMMER 2014

The Union soldiers pictured here seem to have been among those with a spe足 cial affection for a good smoke, having their likenesses taken while indulging in one. Why they decided to strike this unusual pose is anyone's guess.

SInoke 'eIn if You Got 'eIn CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS PASSED THEIR free time in a variety of ways. from writing letters and reading to playing music and gambling, as Union veteran John Billings noted. He also observed that men not interested i n such pursuits opted for a popular alternative: "the proverbial soldier's pastime of smoking." Tobacco was "their omnipresent com足 panion," Bill ings wrote, "and seemed to make up to them in sociability for whatsoever they lacked of entertainment i n other directions." As today, many became reliant on the nicotine-rich plant. "The average soldier," observed a Wisconsin private, "can bear cold. heat, hunger, thirst, forced marches and lost sleep with comparative cheerful足

ness, but when he is out of tobacco he is 'cross as a bear.''' Or, as another Union soldier wrote to his father, "I am sorry you object to my smoking. I don't think I could give it up now: it is one of the greatest comforts I have:

SOURCES: JOHN

D. BIL1.INGS. HARDTACK AND COFFEE (1888); SOLOIERS BLUE AND GRAY(1988); LETTERS FROM TWO BROTHERS ... (1871).

JAMES I. ROBERTSON JR.,

WARREN FREEMAN,

80 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SUMMER 2014

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