America's Civil War July 2021

FitZ John Porter

Scapegoat

The general was a rising star in the Union Army until blamed for defeat at 2nd Bull Run Rebel artillery commanders Plus! feud on the road to Gettysburg Rare 1861 images of 1st Massachusetts Cavalry

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July 2021

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Pomp and Circumstance Rare early war photos of Massachusetts cavalrymen, not yet scarred by war

By Alan I. West

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AMERICA’S CIVIL WAR

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CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: COURTESY OF ALAN WEST; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; MARK MARITATO/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; COVER: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; HARPER’S WEEKLY/PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: BRIAN WALKER

4/28/21 8:37 AM

Departments 6 LETTERS More on Elliott Map discord 8 GRAPESHOT! 54th Massachusetts memorial returns to Boston 12 THE BLOG ROLL Joshua Chamberlain’s postwar battle in Maine 16 HIDDEN HEROES From slave to Medal of Honor recipient 20 FROM THE CROSSROADS The visionary who put Gettysburg on the map 54 TRAILSIDE Desperate showdown on the road to Appomattox 58 5 QUESTIONS An idealized postwar Confederacy 60 REVIEWS Fitting final resting spot for Grant 64 FINAL BIVOUAC Soldier turned Molokai missionary

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Affair of Honor As battle loomed, two Confederate commanders couldn’t quite quell their mutual dislike

By Richard H. Holloway

22 ‘Such a Splendid Soldier’ Fitz John Porter’s rapid ascent in the Army of the Potomac was remarkable, as was his fall from grace

By William Marvel

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Hell on Water The tragic, overlooked explosion of the troop transport Eclipse

By Stuart W. Sanders

ON THE COVER: THE VICTIM OF A POLITICALLY DRIVEN COURT MARTIAL AFTER THE UNION DEFEAT AT SECOND BULL RUN, FITZ JOHN PORTER SPENT THE FINAL 38 YEARS OF HIS LIFE TRYING TO RESTORE HIS REPUTATION AND HONOR.

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Michael A. Reinstein Chairman & Publisher David Steinhafel Publisher Alex Neill Editor in Chief

AMERICA’S CIVIL WAR ONLINE HISTORYNET.com/ AMERICAS-CIVIL-WAR

MANASSAS MISTAKES How John Pope’s ego and failure to write a clear operational order contributed to the Union army’s Second Bull Run debacle. http://bit.ly/ManassasMisery

BOOTH’S COLLATERAL DAMAGE Two Union vessels collided on the Potomac while assisting in the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth. http://bit.ly/PotomacPeril

GETTYSBURG BIG GUNS PORTFOLIO: Significant artillery sites at Gettysburg National Military Park. http://bit.ly/GettysburgBigGuns

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LETTERS

I agree 100 percent with Tom Clemens’ comments in the May 2021 issue in regards to Simon Elliott’s newfound Antietam map (“Letters to the Editor,” P.6). There are no corroborating facts listed to show without a doubt that Elliott’s map is accurate. Despite loads of after-action reports and even personal battlefield tours given to returning veterans by O.T. Riley himself, there were never any notations or discussions about the map or the possibility of the figures presented by Elliott.

I spent 25 years as a volunteer research librarian at the Antietam Battlefield library and tracked down numerous accounts and records for people looking for specifics to the battle down to the regimental level. Never once during my time in that capacity did any of the records, accounts, or handwritten notes by the soldiers

Righting the Record Despite a recent report to the contrary, Confederate General Leonidas Polk was indeed killed in action at Pine Mountain, Ga., on June 14, 1864.

would have accounted for them in their letters.

The map is worth noting and logging for historical data, but it’s certainly not the Holy Grail of maps leading to a change in the numbers set forth by those who fought and died upon that hallowed ground September 17, 1862.

Scott C. Anderson Martinsburg, W.Va.

Correction

Our thanks to a number of eagle-eyed readers who caught a typo in one of the answers in our May 2021 quiz, “Killed in Action” (P.9)—Nathaniel Lyon was killed at Wilson’s Creek, Leonidas Polk at Pine Mountain. And a special shoutout to a reader in the United Kingdom, Stewart Douglas, who offered a “Killed in Action” quiz of his own.

Match each general to the site of his death or mortal wound (Part 2): 1. J.E.B. Stuart 2. George Duncan Wells 3. Philip Kearny 4. Samuel Zook 5. Edward Dorr Tracy 6. Joseph Mansfield 7. Lloyd Tilghman 8. Robert E. Rodes 9. Daniel Chaplin 1 0. Felix Zollicoffer A. Gettysburg B. Chantilly C. Mill Springs D. Cedar Creek E. Antietam F. Champion Hill G. Opequon H. Deep Bottom I. Yellow Tavern J. Port Gibson Answers: A4, B3, C10, D2, E6, F7, G8, H9, I1, J5

WRITE TO US Send letters to America’s Civil War, Letters Editor, Historynet, 901 North Glebe Road, 5th Floor, Arlington, VA 22203, or e-mail acwletters@ historynet.com. Letters may be edited.

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ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF ARCHIVES AND HISTORY

More on Map Dispute

themselves show the numbers listed by Elliott. Furthermore, during a threeday visit once to the National Archives to look over, scan, and sort the original letters, maps, and drawings sent to the Battlefield Commission, nothing showed up presenting itself as irrefutable evidence in saying there were key burial locations as described by Elliott.

I can understand David Welker’s passion and excitement in the find, but it’s nothing more than a unique look at perhaps a publicity stunt or economic paper to ride the coattails of profit after the war as so many others followed suit. If it were a valuable new tool, it most certainly would have been corroborated by any number of men who witnessed the battle and wrote about it to the board when they explained what took place during their actions during America’s bloodiest single day. The War Department maps used these 10,000 firsthand accounts to set up what took place and mark the spots with War Department tablets. Had there been mass graves, the farmers would have reported them, the locals would have had to deal with them, and the soldiers writing about the deaths

AMERICA’S CIVIL WAR

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GRAPESHOT!

A Blast of Civil War Stories

Restored Glory

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AMERICA’S CIVIL WAR

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HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS; NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND; NPS PHOTO

One of the noblest of U.S. memorials arrived back on the in Woburn, Mass., delicate work given the painstaking deBoston Common on March 3, 2021, crated in steel, foam, tail of the soldiers’ faces by sculptor Augustus Saintand wood ready for final repairs and rededication in the Gaudens. Commissioned by private citizens to create the fall. Erected in 1897, the Robert Gould Shaw and Massa- memorial, Saint-Gaudens originally conceived of a single chusetts 54th Regiment Memorial was removed in August equestrian statue but was convinced to expand the sweep 2020 for restoration of the five-ton bronze bas-relief of it to include the troops, using local Black men as modsculpture and installation of structural support for its els. He spent 14 years on the masterpiece.

Critical aspects of the restoration include installation base. The memorial commemorates the 54th Massachusetts Infantry—one of the first U.S. regiments to feature of a new concrete foundation and the attachment of the African American troops—and its 25-year-old White com- bronze bas-relief to a supporting steel framework to promander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, who died amid a tect from seismic events. Dismantling the memorial for valiant attempt to capture Fort Wagner on Morris Island the project revealed that it was attached to its base with outside Charleston, S.C., on July 18, 1863. Sergeant Major brick and stone. After work is completed on surrounding Lewis Douglass, Frederick Douglass’ son, called the attack marble and seating, along with brick repairs and paving, the memorial will be restored to gran“the most desperate charge of the war.”

Attention to Detail deur on the Boston Common. Partners Douglass was a fortunate survivor, but The Robert Gould Shaw and in the $3 million project are Friends of 280 of Shaw’s 600 troops were killed, 54th Massachusetts Regiment the Public Garden, the City of Boston, wounded, or captured.

Work on the bas-relief—cleaning the Memorial, pictured here before the National Park Service, and the restoration, will be unveiled Museum of African American History surface and applying a protective coatMemorial Day 2021. in Boston. ing—was performed at Skylight Studios

NPS PHOTO

REDEDICATION CLOSE FOR 54TH MASS. MEMORIAL

EXTRA ROUND

Love in the Ruins Colonel Robert Williams, the first commander of the 1st Massachusetts Volunteer Cavalry, usually didn’t get along with his men [see story, P.42]. At the time, it was customary for soldiers to elect their company and field officers, and Williams, a strict disciplinarian—and a Virginian by birth—was not a natural fit for the New Englanders.

Still, Williams was a professional soldier with a decade of Western service. Despite discord in the ranks, he stayed with the regiment through early campaigning in South Carolina and its transfer to the Army of the Potomac in August 1862. At Antietam, however, Williams complained that he had been the victim of an unspecified injustice. He resigned his colonel’s commission and returned to the Adjutant General’s department in Washington, D.C., his previous posting.

He remained in the Army postwar, serving during the Indian Wars. In July 1892, now a brigadier general, he was named adjutant general of the U.S. Army and retired in November 1893.

Despite his prickly disposition, Williams won the heart of Adele Cutts Douglas, widow of Senator Stephen Douglas— Abraham Lincoln’s longtime rival, who died in June 1861 after contracting typhoid fever. A chestnut-haired beauty from an old Washington family, she became Douglas’ second wife in 1856 and raised the senator’s two sons from his first Adele Cutts Douglas marriage. Her family’s Southern sympathies—Rebel spy Rose O’Neal Greenhow was her aunt—made her a popular capital hostess even after Douglas’ death. In 1866, Adele met and married Williams, later accompanying him to the frontier, where she bore six children. She died in 1899 in Washington, predeceasing her husband by two years.

QUIZ

Sunk by Singular Means Match the vessel with the cause of its demise: A. USS Congress B. CSS Rattlesnake C. USS Hatteras D. CSS Virginia E. USS Cairo F. CSS Atlanta G. USS Housatonic H. CSS Albemarle I. USS Monitor J. CSS Florida 1. Rammed and sunk by spar

HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS; NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND; NPS PHOTO

Abe Takes a Seat in Prestonburg Abraham Lincoln has taken his seat in the Middle Creek Battlefield in Prestonburg, Ky.—a 19foot-tall statue of him, that is. Modeled after the seated figure of the martyred president in Washington’s Lincoln Memorial, the statue formerly belonged to disgraced lawyer Eric Conn, who had commissioned it for display outside his office near Stanville, Ky. The statue became state property after Conn was convicted of what is reported to be the largest Social Security fraud in U.S. history. A local businessman bought the statue and offered to donate it to the Middle Creek Battlefield. That is where on January 10, 1862, Union forces under future President James Garfield turned back an incursion into Kentucky by Confederates commanded by Brig. Gen. Humphrey Marshall. The statue was installed on April 2, 2021.

monitor USS Weehawken

3. Sunk by spar torpedo via

Southern submarine H.L. Hunley

4. After capture, sunk in collision

with troop ferry USAT Alliance 5. Foundered in a storm off Cape Hatteras 6. Set afire and sunk by CSS Virginia 7. Sunk by cruiser CSS Alabama 8. Blown up by own crew 9. Sunk by underwater torpedo 10. Driven aground and blown up by monitor USS Montauk

Answers: A.6, B.10, C.7, D.8, E.9, F.2, G.3, H.1, I.5, J.4

NPS PHOTO

torpedo via Picket Boat No.1

2. Run aground and surrendered to

JULY 2021

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GRAPESHOT!

The 1860s witnessed a great deal of new and unique firearm designs.

While not formally adopted by the U.S. Military, the Model 1863 Lindsay rifle-musket is truly oneof-a-kind for the period. Patented on October 9, 1860, by John Parker Lindsay, the weapon featured a single barrel, single trigger, and twin hammers.

Before the Civil War, Lindsay’s brother—armed with only a singleshot musket—was killed during an engagement with American Indian fighters. J.P. Lindsay was convinced that if his brother had been able to get off a quick second shot, he wouldn’t have been killed. Thus, the inspiration for a two-shot rifle-musket was born.

Previously employed at the

Springfield (Mass.) Armory, Lindsay was confident in his skills. The unique .58-caliber design he adopted employed what is known as a superimposed load, meaning one load sat on top of the other and only one barrel was needed. This was made possible by the dual hammer system he designed as well as the separation of the fire channels. With the first pull of the trigger, the right hammer would drop, igniting the powder load in front, and with a second pull of the trigger, the left hammer would ignite the rear powder load.

In 1861, Lindsay relocated from New York City to New Haven, Conn., to begin production of his new rifle. In the summer of 1863, he attempted to obtain a coveted Ordnance Department contract.

BATTLE RATTLE

“Never will I forget those scenes and sounds. The earth seems unsteady beneath this furious cannonading, and the air might be said to be agitated by the wings of death. Over 400 guns nearly every minute being discharged!”

—Captain John E. Dooley, 1st Virginia Infantry [reflecting on the Pickett’s Charge cannonade, July 3, 1863—see P.34]

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Much to Lindsay’s disappointment, Brig. Gen. James Ripley, chief of ordnance, was disinterested in what he was offering.

By September 1863, however, Ripley had been replaced by Brig.

Gen. George D. Ramsay. Lindsay tweaked and improved his design, and was able to land a contract for 1,000 rifle muskets at $25 each.

But, having no way to produce the number ordered, Lindsay turned to Samuel Norris of Springfield, Mass., to fulfill the contract. While the complex trigger assembly was produced at Lindsay’s factory, the other components were fabricated and assembled by Norris. Unforeseen production delays, however, kept the weapons from delivery until August 16, 1864.

Although never formally adopted for use, the M-1863 Lindsay was issued to the 5th, 16th, and 26th Michigan Infantry regiments as well as the 9th New Hampshire.

The 16th Michigan used the new firearm at Peebles’ Farm during the 1864 Petersburg Campaign. Unfortunately, soldiers reported some catastrophic failures, resulting in both injuries and death.

For various reasons, particularly the small production numbers, not many M-1863 Lindsays have survived. Although J.P. Lindsay’s design for a multi-shot firearm was a dangerous disappointment, the single-trigger, dual-hammer design he crafted is still in use in doublebarrel shotguns—a lasting legacy for a firearm that was inspired by a tragedy. —Bruce A. Allen

HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS; JOHN DOOLEY’S CIVIL WAR

Tragic Inspiration

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THE BLOG ROLL

‘Another Round Top’ WITH MAINE TORN APART BY POLITICAL VIOLENCE IN 1880, WAR HERO JOSHUA CHAMBERLAIN AGAIN ANSWERED THE CALL

In July 1863, Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain became a household name for his leadership during the 20th Maine’s sweeping charge down Little Round Top, a critical turning point in the Army of the Potomac’s victory at Gettysburg. A little more than a quarter-century later, when a disputed gubernatorial election threw his home state of Maine into turmoil in early 1880, Chamberlain stared down danger once more. Now 51, the war hero and former governor was called to preside in the state capital of Augusta until the situation could be resolved. Despite Chamberlain’s steady hand and trademark calm, tensions mounted. For the 12 days he wore his old Army uniform, Fusionists (the name given to Democrats and Greenbackers who voted together) and Republicans alike curried his favor—and when such smooching failed, some even plotted to kill him.

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THE CRISIS BEGAN WITH the gubernatorial election of September 8, 1879, featuring four candidates: Democrat (and current governor) Alonzo Garcelon; Republican Daniel F. Davis; Greenbacker Joseph L. Smith; and perennial election loser Bion Bradbury. Although Davis received the most votes, he didn’t have a needed majority to clinch the win, leaving the decision to the incoming legislature, to be seated in January 1880. The election gave the Republicans legislative control and, thus, the right to select a Republican governor, but after Garcelon and members of his hand-picked Executive Council meticulously reviewed the results, the governor declared that 37 apparently victorious Republican candidates (eight senators and 29 representatives) had lost and 25 losing Fusionist candidates (eight senators and 17 representatives) had won—revisionism that gave the

VINTAGE MAINE IMAGES

By Brian Swartz

AMERICA’S CIVIL WAR

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THE BLOG ROLL Fusionists legislative control. officers in the State House and to arrest “all parties…

Garcelon and his minions breaking the peace.” cited specific examples of Discovering “unauthorized persons” in the Executive alleged wrongdoing, including Council chamber, Chamberlain ordered them out, forged signatures and ques- locked the door, and pocketed the key. Thronged by “cittionable spelling of names. izens…asking and urging all manner of things,” he set Maine exploded politically. a police guard outside his office door.

Voters packed public halls Chamberlain summoned to Augusta a few trusted and protested in thundering diatribes and petitions. friends—all veteran officers as well—and made them Among the outraged were voters from the small town of aides. He then sent packing “the bummer guard” Winthrop, who fumed in a detailed resolution sent to allegedly protecting the State House. Wiring militia offiAugusta that Garcelon had overthrown “the plainly cers not to organize their units unless directed by him, declared will of the people.” he worked with Augusta Mayor Charles A. Nash to keep Garcelon’s opponents hoped the Maine Supreme Judi- sufficient city police on hand. cial Court would review the disputed election results.

Because Chamberlain had served four terms as a The court did so in late 1879 and ruled that sloppy Republican governor, Grand Old Party interests in the handwriting and misspelled names, “if understood,” did state were convinced they owned him. The Fusionists, on not disqualify disputed votes. They had to be counted. the other hand, tried to intimidate Chamberlain, figuring As one newspaper growled, “The Prevailing Feeling he was just one man. Both parties underestimated him. [is] One of Resistance.” Armed men proceeded to Wanting the crisis resolved in Republican favor, U.S. Augusta, and when Garcelon garrisoned the State Senator James Blaine of Maine even dangled a juicy House with a “military force” at night, a Republican edi- political bribe. He would resign his seat in Washington, tor labeled the building “Fort Garcelon.”

D.C., and back Chamberlain as his replacement if the The Fusionist-led legislature convened in early Janu- general supported the Republicans. The bribe failed. ary. When asked by five Republican legislators to Violent threats circulated. The Bangor Commercial, remove “the armed force” and its “paraphernalia” from for one, delivered a “bitter attack…calling me a traitor, the State House, Garcelon replied he would consider it. & calling on the people to send me speedily to a traitor’s With his term expiring at midnight, January 9, doom”—execution, in other words, Chamberlain Garcelon knew that his departure informed his wife, Fanny. would leave a rudderless government.

The rebellion peaked January 14.

“There were threats Chamberlain would call it “another On January 5, he announced in Speall morning of cial Orders No. 45, that Chamberlain Round Top, although few knew of it.” was “authorized and directed to pro“There were threats all morning of overpowering the tect the public property and instituoverpowering the police & throwing police & throwing me tions of the State until my successor is me out of the window,” he reported to out the window...” duly qualified.” Garcelon’s adjutant Fanny, “& the ugly looking crowd general, S.D. Leavitt, promptly orgaseemed like men who could be brought nized Maine’s “several counties…into the first militia to do it (or to try it).” division,” with Chamberlain in command.

When, he noted, angry partisans threatened “fire & A Portland newspaper stated the obvious: “Gen. blood” or cajoled him “to call out the militia at once...I Chamberlain is now the only lawful State authority… stood it firmly through, feeling sure of my arrangements until a Governor is chosen and qualified.” The war hero & of my command of the situation.” was “the sole possessor of executive power....He will see That afternoon he learned that subversives planned that the peace is kept and that law and order prevail.” “to arrest me for treason” and toss him “in prison while they inaugurated a reign of terror & blood.” Perhaps IN EARLY JANUARY, Republican legislators posed 27 Chamberlain saw through the smokescreen and called questions to the state’s supreme court—convening now their bluff, because “they foamed & fumed…all that in Bangor, 75 miles away by train from Augusta—and, evening,” but “that plan failed.” Later that night, he along with Chamberlain and countless other Mainers, was informed of another threat in which he “was to be awaited the justices’ official decision. kidnapped—overpowered & carried away & detained” As Chamberlain reached the capital and settled into in parts unknown, “so that the rebels could carry on an obscure State House office, a newspaper reported their work.”

Wartime memories were sparked. “I had the strange that “all his movements are carefully observed.” By January 9, he had arranged with Augusta police to place sense again—of sleeping inside a picket line,” he wrote.

VINTAGE MAINE IMAGES

Agitation Two days before his term was to expire in January 1880, Alonzo Garcelon, Maine’s governor, addresses a raucous legislature.

JULY 2021

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THE BLOG ROLL galleries, and the House floor; “the rotunda…was a perfect jam,” but “the best of order prevailed inside and outside the building,” a newspaper commented.

Spectators wildly cheered the new governor Davis (known as “the Little Corporal” because of his height and the rank he once held in the 1st Maine Cavalry) as well as Blaine, Chamberlain, Nash, and others who had been involved in seeing justice done.

After taking his oath of office and delivering a short message, Davis “repaired to the [Executive] Council Chamber.” He almost did not get in. Chamberlain discovered that a final act of Fusion skulduggery had left the council’s chamber door locked and its keys missing. With Nash’s help, that problem was soon rectified.

Accessed from the chamber, the governor’s office “was still locked and no key to it could be found,” a reporter wrote. Nash summoned a locksmith who picked the lock and found a key inserted into it from inside the office.

Now in possession of keys to both rooms, Chamberlain ordered the doors locked while he eyed the legislative proceedings. Sworn in, Davis finished his speech and, IN A LENGTHY January 16 ruling along with his chosen Executive in Bangor, sent to Augusta the next day, the justices rebuffed Council members, headed for the Garcelon and the Fusionists by council’s chamber.

Postwar Prestige stressing that “the Governor and Chamberlain ordered the doors Chamberlain returned to Maine after the war. In addition to serving four years Council” had no constitutional unlocked, and Maine’s election as state governor, he was president of right to seat a legislative candicrisis peacefully ended. He folBowdoin College from 1871 to 1883. date who “was not voted for” or lowed with a letter to Davis con“was defeated” in an election. veying that with “the legality of Individuals seated this way “would be intruders with- your election…I consider my trust, under Special Orders out right into a legislative body,” the justices wrote. No. 45, as at an end.”

Candidates “rightfully elected as shown by the official In his General Orders No. 4, addressed to Maine’s returns” must be seated. Then, referring to specific militia officers, Chamberlain underscored that Davis municipalities, the court tossed out losing Fusionist was now the state’s “Commander-in-Chief.” He in turn candidates who had been appointed to the legislature thanked his aides, two particular militia officers, and and installed winning Republican candidates who were Mayor Nash for the key roles they played in averting denied their seats. bloodshed at the State House. In closing, Chamberlain The unanimous decision restored the actual election wrote, “The General also thanks the citizens of Maine results and kept the legislature Republican-controlled. for patiently enduring the political crisis to its peaceful conclusion.” With that, he returned home to Brunswick Davis would replace Garcelon as governor.

In their January 17 editions, Maine dailies either and Fanny. applauded or booed the decision. All ink protests to the contrary, “the bogus Fusion Legislature” adjourned Sat- Brian Swartz, who writes from Hampden, Maine, is urday morning and, in “the second act of the drama… author of the blog “Maine at War.” This post, which being played in the State House,” legally elected legis- has been adapted for print, originally appeared on the “Emerging Civil War” blog (emergingcivilwar.com) on lators took their seats at 2 p.m.

“Crowds of people” jammed the building, the House March 2–3, 2021.

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VINTAGE MAINE IMAGES

Later that night (perhaps early Friday), two Maine Civil War heroes brought reinforcements to Augusta.

From Bath came Thomas Hyde (7th Maine Infantry) “with 30 men.” From Waterville came Francis Heath (19th Maine Infantry) “with 50 men: sent for by Republicans[,] I suppose,” Chamberlain observed. “Greatly annoying to me & embarrassing[,] too.”

Chamberlain demurred when Blaine advised “ordering out the Militia.” Citing “the storm…raging around me here in the State House” and “the wicked men inside this building as well as outside,” he assured the senator that “the dispositions I have made” mean “the position shall be held,” and also pledged, “Neither force [nor] treachery nor trick” would overwhelm the State House defenders.

Apparently Chamberlain had quietly established an intelligence system that operated with the help of loyal Mainers and the telegraph. “I have means of knowing all that is going on all over the State, & shall be ahead if force is resorted to,” he informed the senator.

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HIDDEN HEROES

Delayed Honor ANDREW JACKSON SMITH DEFIED THE ODDS

By Ron Soodalter

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ers—often meant brutal whipping, hanging, or being torn to pieces by their vicious dogs. A slave’s prospects after reaching the Union lines were little better. It was common Northern policy—with the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act still in effect—for Federal forces to return runaways to their owners, prompting horrific punishment for the recaptured escapee. And just weeks before Andrew’s flight to freedom, Union Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, commander of the Department of the Missouri, ordered that no fugitive slaves were to be “hereafter permitted to enter the lines of any camp or of any forces on the march….”

Even though Union officers tended to sympathize with escapees, fugitives could never be sure what their fate might be. Smith and his companion were among the fortunate—after a harrowing trek, the two escapees

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NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY & CULTURE

Spit and Polish Andrew Jackson Smith proudly posed in his United States Army uniform for this photo. It would take 137 years before he was recognized with a Medal of Honor for heroism in battle.

STATE LIBRARY OF MASSACHUSETTS

IT SHOULD BE NO SURPRISE that attrition among color-bearers was staggering during the war, so much that commanders often cited these individuals by name when listing killed and wounded in their after-action reports—a singular honor, particularly for enlisted soldiers. Private Andrew Jackson Smith would be one of those color-bearers for his regiment. It was not, however, a position he had sought; rather, it quite literally fell to him.

Smith was born into slavery in September 1843, on the Lyon County, Ky., plantation of Elias Smith, who, in addition to being the boy’s master, apparently was also his father. When Elias Smith died just prior to the outbreak of the war, Andrew was handed down to Elias’ son, William.

Although the population of Kentucky, one of four prominent border states, was strongly proslavery, its government—and most of the citizens—officially supported the Union. Not surprisingly, conflicts between Union and Confederate Kentuckians became commonplace, as each side formed its own regiments and waged bitter campaigns within the state’s borders.

Some Rebel outfits commandeered slaves and put them to work. In early January 1862, when Smith learned that his new master was planning to turn him over to the Confederate Army to help in the construction of Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River, he decided to risk escaping to the lines of the advancing Union army. Along with an older slave, Alf Bissell, he struck out on a perilous 25-mile route to the nearest Federal force—two companies of the 41st Illinois Infantry.

The risks were daunting. It was one thing to be seized by Confederate cavalry; but to be caught by the “patterrollers”—home-grown patrols of slave-catch-

HIDDEN HEROES

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY & CULTURE

STATE LIBRARY OF MASSACHUSETTS

Eager Volunteers Members of the 55th Massachusetts pose for the camera in their camp in Readville, Mass., shortly before the regiment headed off to war in 1863. It is possible Smith is among the 59 soldiers pictured.

reached the picket lines of the sympathetic 41st Illinois, icy of accepting Black volunteers into the ranks. With where they were welcomed, fed, and sheltered. the Warners’ blessing, as well as some money, Smith left Smith would be introduced to Major John Warner, his position as servant and traveled by train to Boston to who hired him as his personal servant, giving the for- join the 55th Massachusetts Infantry. The 55th was one mer slave a home in the regiment’s camp. Bissell fared of two new African American regiments sponsored by even better, as it turned out, when he became a servant Governor John Andrew. The other was the now-celebrated 54th Massachusetts made for the 41st’s commander, Colonel Isaac C. Pugh. famous by the 1989 movie Glory.

Smith clearly stood Smith accompanied Major Warner In July 1863, the 55th was ordered out among his fellow when the 41st marched into Tennesto Charleston, S.C. Earlier that volunteers, with one month, on July 18, the 54th had see, and was present at the decisive officer describing mounted a gallant but disastrous February 1862 battles at Forts Henry him as “a splendid assault on Fort Wagner on Morris and Donelson, in which Brig. Gen. Island in Charleston Harbor. Smith Ulysses S. Grant’s Union army estabman and soldier.” lished a critical foothold in Middle was among 10,000 fresh troops sent to Tennessee. Two months later, while attending Warner’s the South Carolina Sea Islands as reinforcements. What horse at the April 6 Battle of Shiloh, Smith was shot in followed was the seemingly unending task of digging the temple. To his great fortune, it was a spent ball. trenches and fortifications, and moving immense guns Rather than penetrating his skull, the ball ran under into position for what would become the siege of Smith’s skin and lodged at his forehead. After removal, Charleston by Union forces. it left him with a lifelong scar, but the injury itself was Smith clearly stood out among his fellow volunteers, only temporary. with one officer describing him as “a splendid man and soldier.” He was also given the honor of being assigned ON A VISIT TO HIS home in Illinois on leave, Warner to the four-man color guard entrusted with bearing the brought Smith along. While there with the Warner fam- Stars and Stripes and the unit’s regimental flag. ily, he learned of the Union Army’s newly instituted polBy late November 1864, Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh JULY 2021

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HIDDEN HEROES Sherman had begun his legendary March to the Sea When Smith died in March 1932, it did not mark an from Atlanta to Savannah, Ga. Both the 54th and 55th end to the quest to preserve his legacy. He had contributed, the only time during the war that the two bequeathed to his daughter, Caruth Smith Washington, regiments campaigned together. They would be involved a box containing pertinent documents that he had saved in the mission to disrupt the Confederate-held Charles- over the years, and she began to collect every scrap of ton & Savannah Railroad, which, on November 30, information she could find detailing her father’s life. brought Smith and his comrades to an unremarkable Leaving no stone unturned, she at one point discovered bump in the road known as Honey Hill, along the rail- letters that the illiterate Smith had dictated to his comroad tracks at the headwaters of manding officer. Caruth Washthe Broad River. African Ameriington actively sought someone cans filled the ranks of about who could put all her informahalf of the Union force to fight at tion together in a cohesive form, Honey Hill, commanded by Maj. but the overall response was disGen. John Hatch. appointing—until her nephew During the battle, which had stepped in. already been delayed a day Bowman discovered the supbecause of bad weather and posedly nonexistent government erroneous maps, the drastically records and continually presunderstrength 55th was ordered sured the federal government to to charge into a maelstrom of honor the Medal of Honor recenemy grape and canister fire. ommendation made decades At one juncture, shrapnel from before. Finally, his and his an exploding shell struck Colaunt’s efforts bore fruit. or-Sergeant Robert H. King in On January 16, 2001, in the the chest, killing him instantly.

Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes, PresWithin seconds, one of the ident Bill Clinton presented the guard’s three remaining memMedal of Honor to the descenbers also fell and another was dants of Andrew Jackson Smith, badly wounded, leaving Smith including Caruth Washington, the only one left standing. As 93, and Bowman. The medal’s Etched in Stone Sergeant King fell, Smith— citation best sums up Smith’s Recognition of Smith’s long-delayed Medal braving a torrent of enemy actions during the bloody fightof Honor now graces his gravestone at Mt. fire—grabbed both flags. Miracing at Honey Hill that long-ago Pleasant Cemetery in Lyon County, Ky. ulously unhurt at the close of November. It reads, in part:

SMITH SURVIVED THE remaining months of the war unhurt. After being mustered out, he settled in Eddyville, Ky., where he raised a family and prospered as a dealer in land. Meanwhile, one of his former officers, who was chronicling the history of the 55th, began working on getting Smith recognition for his courage at Honey Hill. In 1916, the now-73-year-old Smith was finally recommended for the Medal of Honor. The U.S. government, however, took no further action, purportedly due to a lack of official records.

That never set well with Andrew Bowman, Smith’s grandson. Bowman spent significant time researching his grandfather’s life and wartime experiences. In 2020, he opined that Smith’s records had been deliberately “suppressed by the highest levels of our government at the time.”

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Forced into a narrow gorge crossing a swamp in the face of the enemy position, the 55th’s Color-Sergeant was killed by an exploding shell, and Corporal Smith took the Regimental Colors from his hand and carried them through heavy grape and canister fire. Although half of the officers and a third of the enlisted men engaged in the fight were killed or wounded, Corporal Smith continued to expose himself to enemy fire by carrying the colors throughout the battle. Through his actions, the Regimental Colors of the 55th Infantry Regiment were not lost to the enemy.

In 2001, the 137 years between Smith’s heroic deed and presentation of the medal was the longest such span in the nation’s history. Gettysburg hero Alonzo Cushing’s Medal of Honor came in 2014.

Ron Soodalter writes from Cold Harbor, N.Y.

KENTUCKY HISTORICAL SOCIETY

the fight, he had saved the regiment’s banners from what would have been almost certain capture.

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FROM THE CROSSROADS

Gettysburg Visionary

Bird’s-Eye View John Bachelder’s consummate skills as an artist, his profession during the war, are evident in this aerial map he crafted of the expansive Gettysburg-area landscape as it looked at the time of the battle.

JOHN BACHELDER WORKED TIRELESSLY TO COMMEMORATE THE JULY 1863 BATTLE

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hand to collect material for a history of what he anticipated would be the decisive struggle of the war. When the Peninsula Campaign proved a Union failure, he returned to New Hampshire; however, he asked his army friends to “give me early intelligence of any important movements looking to a decisive engagement.”

Learning of the fighting at Gettysburg, Bachelder hurried south and arrived on the field about July 5. He spent the next 84 days there, sketching the field and interviewing wounded from both armies. That fall he traveled to the Army of the Potomac’s camp in Brandy Station, Va., and spent weeks interviewing officers and men from every regiment that had been in the battle.

He also corresponded with officers from the 11th and 12th Corps, now fighting in Tennessee. Returning to New Hampshire armed with his extensive research, Bachelder completed a remarkable 3-D (aerial perspective) map of the three-day battle that was both a work of art and history. The position of every regiment and battery during the three days of battle were mapped

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THE HUNTINGTON LIBRARY

MAJOR GENERAL HENRY SLOCUM, who commanded the Union 12th Corps at Gettysburg, called “Colonel” John Bachelder “a gentleman who knows more about this battle and battlefield...than any man living or than any man who ever did live. He can tell more of what I did there than I can tell myself.” Slocum was not alone in that sentiment. Although Bachelder did not fight at Gettysburg or even in the war, and the “Colonel” title was purely honorary, countless veterans of the battle freely admitted he was perhaps the single most important person in preserving and shaping the battlefield as we know it today.

Bachelder was 37 years old in June 1863, a New Hampshire resident earning his living principally as an artist. With a keen interest in history, he had hoped to write a definite account of the Battle of Bunker Hill until discovering how poorly documented that battle was. In the spring of 1862, he accompanied the Army of the Potomac on the Virginia Peninsula as a correspondent, hoping to document the army in art and be on

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

By D. Scott Hartwig

THE HUNTINGTON LIBRARY

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

FROM THE CROSSROADS with considerable accuracy. In those days, army officers could endorse commercial products, and Bachelder’s map was published with the endorsement of every major officer of the Army of the Potomac, including its commander, Maj. Gen. George G. Meade.

In August 1869, Bachelder arranged a meeting of 123 former officers (120 Union, three Confederate) to mark positions of units on the battlefield. Brevet Maj. Gen. Alexander Webb, a Union brigade commander at the battle, was initially suspicious of Bachelder’s motives but soon discovered a sincerity and purpose in Bachelder that caused his misgivings to vanish.

Throughout the next two decades, Bachelder regularly organized meetings of veterans and continued to conduct extensive correspondence with many of them.

Some former Confederates remained wary, however, convinced he sought their input only to further glorify the Federal victory. But as he had done in Webb’s case, Bachelder wore them down with his sincerity of purpose. Major General James Kemper, for example, had refused to correspond with Bachelder in 1865 but, 20 years later, would write the New Englander, “I very cheerfully give you my personal recollections.”

In 1879, a group of Union veterans took control of the local Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association, which had been formed in late 1863, and dramatically altered the organization’s management philosophy, allowing Bachelder to assume an even greater role.

More land was acquired and avenues were opened up along the Union line of battle to make the battlefield more accessible. Union veterans’ groups were encouraged to erect monuments marking where they fought and what they had done.

Bachelder was named the GBMA’s superintendent of monuments, tablets, and legends in 1883—tasked with determining a monument’s location and approving its inscription and design, as well as the material with which it was made.

In his fourth year as superintendent, Bachelder approved the placement of the 15th, 19th, and 20th Massachusetts monuments near the now-famous Copse of Trees on Cemetery Ridge, but grew concerned that as other units erected their monuments, inevitable clustering at various locations would “have a tendency to mislead the public in the future rather than illustrate the battle.” He proposed the GBMA adopt a line of battle policy toward monument placement, meaning regimental monuments would go where the unit stood in the army’s general line of battle for its principal part of the engagement. Advance position markers could then be erected at positions to which the unit had moved.

Although plenty of controversies and some placement errors resulted, in general Bachelder’s policy worked as intended for battlefield visitors.

In 1873, Bachelder published the first guidebook encouraging tourism to the battlefield. In subsequent years, he produced detailed maps on each day of the battle and another series on the July 3 cavalry battle east of town. The government paid Bachelder $50,000 to write an official history of the battle, but the 2,550-page volume he produced proved a major disappointment and was not published until the 1990s. Deciding against an interpretive history, Bachelder merely assembled a collection of both armies’ after-action reports. Why he chose not to take advantage of the unpublished material he had collected is unknown. One possibility is he feared that by weighing in on Gettysburg’s controversies he might alienate veterans he needed to complete his quest: a national park that included lines of battle the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia had held.

He lobbied veterans and Congress to build support for such a park, and also succeeded in 1892 in erecting the High Water Mark Monument on Cemetery Ridge, where

A Visit to Hallowed Ground Bachelder (far right) poses with 29th Ohio veterans at the regiment’s Culp’s Hill memorial, dedicated in 1887.

Pickett’s Charge had been repulsed—still considered one of the battlefield’s most iconic monuments.

Bachelder died in 1894, almost a year before his vision of a national park at Gettysburg became a reality.

As the years passed, he became largely forgotten by all except the battle’s most serious students. But his presence lingers throughout, for when you visit Gettysburg National Military Park you are gazing upon Bachelder’s vision. No single individual did more to document the battle or shape how the field evolved and continues to be remembered.

Scott Hartwig writes from the crossroads of Gettysburg.

JULY 2021

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‘Such a splenDid soLdier’ The sky seemed the limit for Union General Fitz John Porter.

Then came 2nd Bull Run.

By William Marvel

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NATIONAL ARCHIVES

F

itz John Porter’s arrival at the U.S. Military Academy in 1841 gave him a perfect opportunity to erase the black mark his alcoholic father had left on his family’s name, and he made the most of it. Only a quarter of the young men who reported to West Point alongside Porter would graduate with their class, with the New Hampshire native ranking eighth out of 41 cadets in the Class of 1845.

Less than a year later, Porter landed on the coast of Texas, and in the spring of 1847 his regiment joined Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott for the U.S. Army’s campaign against Mexico City during the Mexican War. Porter helped guide artillery into position for the assault at Cerro Gordo, took part in the 4th Artillery’s epic bayonet charge at Contreras, and was even knocked unconscious by spent grapeshot at the Garita de Belén in the final assault on Mexico City.

Porter ended the war as a first lieutenant, with brevets as captain and Looking the Part major. Assigned to the West Point faculty in early 1849, he remained at Though mocked by his alma mater more than six years as an instructor of “natural and one subordinate as the experimental philosophy,” artillery, and cavalry tactics. Toward the lat“extreme West Pointer,” ter part of his sojourn there, he stood in as acting adjutant for the acadFitz John Porter backed up his dashing looks emy’s superintendent, Robert E. Lee. with an inventive Frustrated, however, by the glacial pace of promotion, Porter relinmind, a penchant for quished his seniority as a line officer in 1856 to accept an appointment discipline, and in the adjutant general’s office, which would take him to Kansas Terriprowess in battle. tory during the hunt for abolitionist John Brown. Then, in the autumn of 1857, he served as chief of staff to Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston during the Utah Expedition. After a brutal winter in the mountains on short rations, Johnston’s force marched into Salt Lake City in 1858, establishing a military post and spending the next two years amid a covertly hostile Mormon population.

After returning to New York via California and Panama in 1860, Porter played a part in some of the more renowned preludes to the Civil War. As secession loomed that

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NATIONAL ARCHIVES

JULY 2021

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T

Porter Earns Another Star After leading the Union tactical victory at Malvern Hill on July 1, 1862—the final battle of the Seven Days Campaign—Porter earned promotion to major general.

MPI/GETTY IMAGES

hrough the summer of 1861, Porter served as chief of staff to Maj. Gen. Robert Patterson, whose missteps as a commander in the Shenandoah Valley contributed to the Federals’ stunning defeat at First Bull Run on July 21. Promoted to brigadier general in August, Porter assumed command of a division in the Army of the Potomac. By autumn, it was widely recognized as the best-drilled in the entire army.

Before long, Porter became the favored adviser of his commanding officer, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, a former West Point comrade.

During the Peninsula Campaign in the spring of 1862, McClellan elevated Porter to 5th Corps command, and his reliance on Porter was soon evident—to the displeasure of the army’s more senior generals. Porter led the Federals’ first clear victory in the campaign in an engagement at Hanover Court House, Va., and also commanded Union forces in a

tactical victory at Malvern Hill during the Seven Days Campaign in late June-early July.

Despite Porter’s success at Malvern Hill, the Seven Days would be a calamitous defeat for McClellan, who having failed to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond was ordered to pull his army back to Washington. On August 16, Porter’s corps was instructed to join Maj. Gen. John Pope’s newly created Army of Virginia. On August 29, during the Second Battle of Bull Run, Porter halted a risky noontime assault at the behest of Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell, commander of that army’s 3rd Corps. Later that day, Porter called off what he considered a more injudicious attack Pope had ordered, insisting the general was mistaken in doing so—ignorant of enemy dispositions.

Second Bull Run proved another devastating Union defeat, and Pope would be quick to blame it on Porter’s inaction at critical points

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November, he inspected federal facilities in Charleston, S.C., and recommended a more energetic officer to command it—which led to the assignment of Major Robert Anderson. Early in 1861, Porter sailed to the mouth of the Rio Grande to help bring home hundreds of U.S. troops trapped by the secession of Texas.

With the war’s outbreak in April, Scott, serving as Lincoln’s chief military adviser, sent Porter to Harrisburg, Pa., to organize volunteers. On April 22, while in the Pennsylvania capital, Porter intercepted a telegram indicating that the Army’s department commander in St. Louis, a suspect Southerner, had impeded the mustering of volunteers to protect the U.S. arsenal there. Audacity had always been part of Porter’s personality. On his own initiative, he issued orders in Scott’s and Secretary of War Simon Cameron’s names to muster in those volunteers.

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of the battle, accusing his subordinate of deliberate subversion. A political element became entwined in the fallout from the defeat, particularly when information reached the White House about pre-battle correspondence from Porter—like McClellan, a conservative Democrat—revealing his poor opinion of Pope. That would be presented as evidence of Porter’s guilt when he was finally brought before a courtmartial on November 25, 1862.

That court-martial is perhaps unequaled in American military history. Although it Scheming Garfield wasn’t settled until January 22, 1863— Union Maj. Gen. nearly two months after it began—Porter James Garfield had a was likely doomed from the start. He would calculated role in both be convicted of criminal disobedience of the court-martial and orders and misbehavior before the enemy, Porter’s failed efforts and dismissed from the Army in disgrace. seeking restitution.

For the next 35 years, Porter worked as a mining engineer and construction superintendent, as New York City’s director of public works and one of its police and fire commissioners, and as the treasurer of private corporations and the New York Post Office. He devoted the bulk of his leisure time to a determined crusade to clear his name. Pope and his cronies blocked Porter’s every request for a rehearing until 1878, when President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed a board of officers to review the case.

Those officers dismissed every accusation made against Porter in his court-martial, characterizing his Second Bull Run performance as prudent and obedient, and recommending his reinstatement. But Republican congressman James Garfield of Ohio, who as a brigadier general had sat on the 1862 court-martial, worked behind the scenes to deny Porter hope of justice, continuing to denounce the dishonored general, probably to further his own presidential ambitions. In 1881, after Garfield was assassinated four months into his presidency, Senator John A. Logan—another former Union general and presidential aspirant—continued Garfield’s vendetta.

Finally, in 1886, Porter was restored to his old Regular Army rank of colonel and retired immediately. He never received a penny of back pay or retirement, having waived such reward for service in hopes of restoring his good name, as he had always desired. But his success was limited. Thanks to the efforts of Garfield and Logan, doubts about Porter’s honesty and faithfulness persisted a century after his death.

There had already been trouble in three of Porter’s regiments. Hundreds of the men believed they had enlisted for three months’ service only to learn they had been mustered in for two years. Many refused to perform any more duty after the last of the 90-day militia went home. Only days before, Porter’s predecessor had confronted the disaffected camps with Regular cavalry and a battery of charged guns, taking the most stubborn mutineers away in irons.

These sullen soldiers composed one-third of Porter’s new command. The 13th New York evinced the greatest bitterness, and equipment shortages deepened their resentment. Desertions, dismissals, and discharges—not to mention arrests—had reduced the regiment to barely a third of its complement.

Porter, whom one volunteer officer called “the extreme West Pointer,” imposed a series of courts-martial as he strove to improve discipline. He had several dozen officers and men from the 13th, 14th, and 41st New York and the 9th Massachusetts regiments arrested, for offenses ranging from minor insubordination to mutiny and assault with a deadly weapon.

Over the next 10 weeks, different courts cashiered officers and sentenced men to drumming out of camp or hard labor with ball and chain for anywhere from two months to a year.

Two new brigadier generals joined him the first week. John Martindale and George W. Morell, both 46-year-old New Yorkers, had graduated together in the West Point Class of

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orter’s abrupt fall from military prominence was startling considering his pedigree and his momentous start in the war. The Union army’s inaugural disaster at First Bull Run in July 1861 had emphasized the need for better training and discipline—and for organizational genius—which brought Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan to Washington to take command of the army. McClellan recommended numerous acquaintances from the antebellum Army for appointments as brigadier generals, including Porter, Porter’s West Point classmates Charles P. Stone and William F. “Baldy” Smith, and William B. Franklin. Upon Porter’s arrival in Washington in late August, McClellan handed him a two-brigade division—assigned to Fort Corcoran, a logand-earthwork bastion constructed on the heights of Arlington, Va., across the Potomac River from the capital.

Empire State Banner Regimental flag of the 13th New York, one of three raucous units in Porter’s first command. Porter was credited for turning the 13th into a well-disciplined regiment.

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orter took keen interest in a novel means of observing the enemy. Thaddeus S.C. Lowe, known as the “Professor,” offered his services to the government as an aeronaut.

After bringing his hydrogen balloon to the Virginia side of the Potomac, Lowe made his first ascent from Fort Corcoran within hours of Porter’s arrival there. He took General McDowell aloft, and on the sultry afternoon of September

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4, Porter went up over the fort with them. From an elevation of 800 feet, they could see Confederates digging earthworks on Upton’s and Munson’s Hills, a few miles in advance of the constricted Union perimeter.

Over the next week, Porter asked Lowe to make an observation nearly every clear day. He arranged for the balloon to go up where McClellan and other prominent officers could see it in action, advising Lowe to make the most of the demonstration, and when it went well he assured Lowe that he was “of value now.” Porter recommended more balloons, pointing out that such reconnaissance would prevent any significant number of the enemy from approaching unseen within eight or ten miles. “It costs several lives now to obtain a portion of the information which may be derived by means of the balloon,” he noted.

The first aerial surveillance for active operations took place on September 25 when Baldy Smith, whose division lay on Porter’s right, launched a foraging expedition to the village of Lewinsville. Porter sent Lowe up to watch for enemy interference, but the Confederates seemed preoccupied with parading their troops for spectators crowding the slope of Munson’s Hill.

McClellan coveted Munson’s and Upton’s hills, in the middle of the Confederate line, to the left of Porter’s position, and Lowe’s surveillance may have led the enemy to suspect as much. On September 28, Union pickets before Munson’s Hill detected that their Rebel counterparts had slipped away, and McClellan sent orders to ease forward cautiously. A Michigan regiment swept up the hill and seized the abandoned works, which it turned out had served mainly as an observation post, with “artillery” consisting of painted logs and pasteboard tubes—so-called “Quaker Guns.”

As other troops occupied Munson’s and Upton’s hills, Porter moved one brigade three miles forward from Fort Corcoran and seized two taller crests in the western corner of D.C.’s original boundary. He bivouacked most of the brigade on Hall’s Hill, where he and his staff slept under a tree the night they occupied the place. His pickets also occupied Minor’s Hill, a couple of miles away, which offered the highest vantage point within the old district line. From there Porter could look down on

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1835, Morell ranking first and Martindale third. Both had also quickly left the Army: Martindale never served on active duty, and Morell spent two years in the Engineers. Both then practiced law in their native state. Now, both commanded brigades under Porter.

Porter imposed a rigorous training schedule, alternating drill with fatigue duty, and he emphasized bayonet practice. He roused the men at all hours to respond to real or imagined alarms, hardening them to the rigors and uncertainty of soldiering. Much like the commander of his army, he emphasized vigilance against an enemy he assumed to be much stronger than it was. From the start, McClellan had tended to credit exaggerated estimates of Confederate strength, and his closest subordinates shared that credence, including Porter. On September 13, 1861, McClellan reported that the enemy had amassed as many as 170,000 men in front of the Union army’s lines in Arlington, Va., and was about to spring. In fact, barely 35,000 Confederates stood present for duty within striking distance of Washington.

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Heavy Hitters Left: Members of the 4th New York Heavy Artillery, at one point part of the Fort Corcoran garrison, pose next to a 24-pounder siege gun.

Above: Maj. Gen. William F. “Baldy” Smith, another of George McClellan’s commanders of choice.

Falls Church, where Rebels had left rumors behind to discourage pursuit. Inhabitants told Porter that Confederate leaders had recently discussed plans to pull back to a stronger position and thus lure McClellan into pursuit, hoping to pounce on him with 175,000 men.

Porter had called Alexandria home for some years. He probably credited the local Eye in the Sky inhabitants with greater fidelity than the Capable of floating to times warranted, and his credence in them high altitudes while may have helped McClellan to accept such carrying up to five observers, Intrepid also inflated numbers. Porter tried to cultivate sported a painting of spies and informants wherever he served, McClellan on its side but some of his operatives proved useless, (not visible here). or worse. Lest they be caught by surprise,

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Professor Lowe began making observations from Upton’s Hill almost immediately, taunting the Rebels with the portrait of General McClellan painted on his balloon, Intrepid.

On October 10, Porter moved his staff and the rest of his division from Fort Corcoran to Hall’s Hill. His division had just been augmented by a third brigade commanded by Daniel Butterfield, an antebellum officer of gentlemen militia and the son of the founder of the Butterfield Overland Mail Company. Porter had met him in the summer campaign, as colonel of the 12th New York. Judging Butterfield a strict disciplinarian and an effective drillmaster, Porter had suggested him to McClellan.

Over the next several months, Porter devoted most of his attention to drilling the troops and acquainting himself with the officers of the dozen infantry regiments in his division. McClellan had given him two regiments of Pennsylvania volunteer cavalry, with experienced officers from the West Point Class of 1855 commanding both, and Porter’s artillery consisted of two Regular Army batteries.

The volunteer infantry brought the greatest trouble in the way of undesirable officers. In Martindale’s brigade, the 13th New York began floundering again, and Porter court-martialed more officers, forcing others to resign. The latest of several colonels who commanded that regiment was John Pickell, who had graduated from West Point two months before Porter was born but had been out of service for decades. Colonel

Classroom Prodigies George Morell (left) and John Martindale ranked 1st and 3rd in West Point’s Class of 1835, ahead of the likes of George Meade, Marsena Patrick, and Herman Haupt. Porter wasn’t necessarily impressed.

Pickell harbored intense abolitionist sentiments, and when a cavalry officer from Washington brought his own slave to the camp at Hall’s Hill, Pickell lured the lad away and hid him in his quarters. Porter ordered Pickell to turn the youth out, and the old man surreptitiously raised a stink over it.

Porter eventually asked a board to examine Pickell’s fitness for service. Pickell had solicited an appointment as brigadier general, but Porter gently suggested that the old man was already expending “as much energy as his age and bodily strength will permit.” The examining board showed less tact, finding him pathetically deficient, and one officer recorded that Pickell was “the merest child in his profession: he could not answer the simplest questions.” He was particularly deficient as an administrator, and his muster rolls were a shambles, carrying enlisted men as officers while vacant commissions went unreported. The man acting as adjutant of his regiment turned out to be a private.

Pickell was summarily discharged. Porter’s confirmation as brigadier general came under attack by Radical Republican senators soon thereafter, and Porter understood that Pickell had carried to them an exaggerated tale about the runaway slave.

Insubordination was the rule in the 25th New York, which reportedly consisted of “New York roughs, Bowery boys, ‘Dead Rabbits,’ etc.”

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Like Fitz John Porter, Thaddeus Sobieski Constantine Lowe was born in New Hampshire. He assumed the title of “Professor” early in life, after a stint as assistant to a traveling magician who performed tricks with lighter-thanair gases. Lowe first attracted public attention in 1859 by constructing an enormous balloon in which he planned to fly across the Atlantic. He canceled so many launch dates that he became the butt of journalistic ridicule, and he moved his launch site twice, finally lifting off from Cincinnati before dawn on April 20, 1861.

Expecting to make a stop near Richmond, Lowe hoped to find an easterly air current at high altitude. Instead, his balloon drifted southeast, toward Confederate territory, and he started looking for a place to land just after noon. By then he was over South Carolina. He finally dropped down east of Spartanburg, dispelling suspicions that he was a spy by producing Cincinnati papers published early that morning, with reports of his imminent voyage.

Ever the promoter, Lowe brought his balloon to Washington in June, taking a telegrapher 500 feet aloft and dictating a telegram directly to the president. That demonstration secured him a trial assignment, without contract or commission, but institutional resistance delayed him from starting regular service until late August 1861. Fitz John Porter soon took up his cause, endorsing Lowe’s requisition for more balloons and a portable hydrogen generator, and Lowe accompanied the Army of the Potomac when it left for the Virginia Peninsula in March 1862.

Porter frequently ascended with Lowe or an assistant. As he got into the basket alone one morning early in the siege of Yorktown, the tether rope snapped. He had to climb the rigging to reach the valve lanyard, then drop back into the basket as it swung back and forth, and after sketching everything of importance he started releasing hydrogen until he crash-landed on an unoccupied tent.

Two days before the Confederates abandoned Yorktown, Porter and Lowe went up in the basket together, but the Rebels turned a battery of artillery on

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The Showman

them. Shells exploded around them, one round soaring over their heads between the basket and balloon. Another scattered General McClellan and his staff, standing just below.

Aerial observations by trained officers could be valuable, but Lowe’s vague and dramatic reports sometimes did more harm than good. On May 31, when most of the Confederate army concentrated to attack an isolated portion of McClellan’s army at Fair Oaks, Va., McClellan asked Porter and Franklin to take the 5th and 6th Corps across the swollen Chickahominy River to probe for a weak spot. Lowe, however, had reported “large bodies” of the enemy gathering directly across from Porter and Franklin, and they discouraged McClellan from any attack there.

Porter spent most of June 27 holding off assaults by the greater portion of Robert E. Lee’s army north of the Chickahominy, hoping it would give McClellan a numerical advantage south of the river. Lowe’s alarming, misleading reports about the remainder of the Rebel army on that side only worsened McClellan’s disinclination to engage that outnumbered fragment.

After the retreat to Harrison’s Landing, Lowe came down with fever and returned to Washington. Not until Fredericksburg in December did he resume aerial reconnaissance on the battlefield, but his dispatches proved less useful than his report to the War Department indicated. He stayed with the Army of the Potomac through Chancellorsville in May 1863, where he failed to detect the large troop movements that precipitated the Union defeat. Thereafter, army officers managed the balloons, and Lowe returned to civilian life.

Turning to the exhibition circuit, the aeronaut offered carnival-style passenger flights and airborne stunts. Once, a thousand feet in the air, an acrobat tossed ropes from the basket of his balloon and jumped out, catching one rope and swinging between it and the other. Another time Lowe carried an entire wedding party up for a celestial ceremony.

Late in life, Lowe became a tourist promoter.

Having been born in the shadow of Mount Washington, he replicated that destination in California, building a grand hotel on Echo Mountain in the San Gabriel range north of Los Angeles with a railroad to the top. It was a more down-to-earth enterprise, but he remained a showman to the end. —W.M.

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Replenished One of Lowe’s balloons gets a fill from portable hydrogen gas carriages that accompanied the Union Balloon Corps during the 1862 Peninsula and Seven Days campaigns.

years, including the major and quartermaster. Colonel James E. Kerrigan, a Tammany Democrat freshly elected to Congress, finagled commissions for three of his brothers and ruled the regiment like a gang, ignoring both drill and discipline.

Martindale, whose brigade also encompassed this problem regiment, inspected it in mid-October and reported it in abominable condition.

Officers and men were drinking, arguing, and fighting, and when called into formation many of those in the ranks stood half-dressed and barefoot. In defiance of Martindale’s direct order, Colonel Kerrigan refused to stand inspection with them. Martindale had him arrested.

Kerrigan enjoyed the loyalty of his most obstreperous men, who might resist any effort to confine him. On October 18, Porter called the 25th New York into line and brought all his nearby regiments out under arms while a guard detail seized Kerrigan and escorted him to Washington.

Porter supported Martindale’s efforts to weed incompetents out of the 25th and promote promising officers. Two of Kerrigan’s brothers resigned immediately after his arrest, and the third was fatally wounded—by whom was never established.

Over the next few weeks, more than a dozen officers left the regiment, including a surgeon who had been filching from the hospital fund.

Private soldiers who still refused to go on duty were given the choice of compliance or prison, and most submitted. Another man took temporary command, and his strict discipline momentarily accelerated the desertion rate, but the erstwhile mob started to look military.

Just as Porter relied on firmness and competence among his regimental and brigade commanders to mold their men into trustworthy components of his division, McClellan needed generals with similar talents to lead his divisions. Porter was hardly the most senior of McClellan’s generals, but many thought him the best of the lot, and some already suspected that he was the commanding general’s favorite.

His calm and thoughtful nature made him a valuable confidant and counselor. His talent for training raw recruits and reconciling them to

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Porter was hardly the most senior of McClellan’s generals, but many thought him the best of the lot

War Counselors This photo of Porter (sitting, center) and staff at his Westover Plantation, Va., headquarters is dated August 1862, taken shortly before the 5th Corps left to join John Pope’s army. strict discipline gave McClellan an excellent opportunity to showcase the development of his army—and McClellan needed such a display by late October, after a disastrous little battle at Ball’s Bluff, near Leesburg, Va., where Charles P. Stone’s division had taken a pounding (see P.32).

Porter proposed a review for Saturday, October 26, with a division drill and sham battle.

He formed his three brigades, batteries, and cavalry in a 25-acre field, with McClellan and his staff in attendance. Porter led the various brigades through the evolutions of drill, maneuvering them by regiment, battalion, company, and file, and finally formed them in double ranks, three brigades deep. From there they wheeled out by companies and marched before the assembled visitors, then resumed their formation. McClellan and his guests trotted between the ranks, and as they approached each regiment its band would erupt in brass and percussion, falling silent as the next band began another selection.

For the finale, Porter deployed the division in line of battle, bringing each company into line by regiment at the double-quick. Each rank loosed a blank volley before retiring behind another rank to load, while the new front rank fired in turn. The sound of the exercise carried into the streets of Washington, JULY 2021

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ing himself to McClellan soon after the general reached Washington. He drafted the opening part of McClellan’s report, which ended with the suggestion that Cameron show it to the president. When it was finished, McClellan and one of the French princes rode away to Hall’s Hill—“to seek refuge in Fitz Porter’s camp,” as McClellan told his wife. The three of them sat around the campfire late into the night while the two generals digested the news and discussed the possibilities. The next day Scott formally retired, and Lincoln appointed McClellan “to command the whole Army.”

Porter never recorded his thoughts about the retirement of Scott, whom he had seemed to hold in high esteem until Scott turned on Patterson, Porter’s former commander in the spring and summer of 1861. Thereafter he had begun finding fault with Scott’s tactical and administrative wisdom in letters to Manton Marble, the influential Democratic editor of the New York World. McClellan’s personal annoyance with Scott did not improve Porter’s image of the old hero, and Porter may have been prodding Marble to editorial criticism for McClellan’s benefit. Porter gave McClellan the same loyalty he usually accorded his superiors, but his personal affection and his faith in McClellan’s ability enhanced the intensity of that professional obligation. McClellan reciprocated both Porter’s friendship and his confidence, regarding him privately as his chief subordinate and causing them both trouble by betraying that view through word and deed.

On his fourth morning as general-in-chief, McClellan met the division commanders of the Army of the Potomac at his lodgings in Washington. Mathew Brady came to photograph all the generals alongside the Young Napoleon, as

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where the unexpected echo of gunfire roused apprehension.

Three members of the Orléans family, claimants to the throne of France, attended the review. François d’Orléans, the somewhat deaf Prince de Joinville, rode along as a civilian observer and deemed himself an unofficial consultant to McClellan. His young nephews, Philippe d’Orléans (nominally the Comte de Paris) and Robert d’Orléans (the Duc de Chartres), held volFrançois d’Orléans unteer commissions as captains, with appointments as aides-de-camp to McClellan. These nomadic noblemen saw life at McClellan’s headquarters from a unique perspective, and Philippe kept a dense journal of his adventure.

The troops moved with admirable speed, thought Philippe. Of the brigadiers, he deemed Martindale “the true soldier, glaring always and swearing without cease, but briskly leading his brigade.” The prince considered Butterfield “the beau of New York transformed into a general.” He saw nothing noteworthy about Morell, but he thought Porter might be the most distinguished man in the army, “slim and delicate in appearance, with a black beard and a small and lively eye.” Porter evinced a reserved but determined air, according to the rightful king of France, and he maneuvered his troops “perfectly.”

That review of Porter’s division came just as McClellan expected to assume command of the entire U.S. Army, in place of General Scott.

Scott intended to retire once an acceptable replacement appeared, and McClellan considered himself eminently acceptable. He led three Republican senators to believe Scott was impeding his efforts to move against the enemy, and Notables those senators waited on the president, urgGeneral McClellan ing him to shelve the old general. (sixth from left) poses for Mathew Brady with McClellan spent most of October 31 with Edwin M. Stanton, composing a report for his Army of the Potomac commanders earlier in Secretary Cameron designed to persuade the war. Porter stands the president to name him general-in-chief. on the far right next to Stanton, who had briefly served in James Brig. Gen. Silas Casey.

Buchanan’s Cabinet, had begun ingratiat-

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Quite a Spectacle Army of the Potomac units partake in an elaborately choreographed grand review in November 1861. The VIP audience included a contingent of France noblemen living in exile.

friendly newspapers were calling McClellan.

The weather was clear and unseasonably warm, so they sauntered outside, using the rear wall of the house for a backdrop. Baldy Smith, Franklin, Samuel P. Heintzelman, Andrew Porter, and McDowell lined up on McClellan’s right, with George McCall, Don Carlos Buell, Louis Blenker, Silas Casey, and Porter on his left.

Philippe d’Orléans regarded McDowell as “simple, frank, and affable,” but showed less enthusiasm for McCall, who was nearly 60 and slowing down. He described Casey as “an old man with a head like a bald parrot, who mounts a horse like a sick monkey.” The prince heard it said that Buell and Porter were the best generals with the army at Washington, and he left no doubt that Porter had surpassed everyone in training his troops. Porter had the best-looking division in the army, thought the prince, and McClellan took enormous pride in it.

Porter’s division elicited grand compliments after a review McClellan arranged for November 9. It was raining, but Porter ignored the weather. His men followed the same choreography they had performed two Saturdays previously, including the sham battle, while the mud deepened beneath their feet. From lines

The prince left no doubt that Porter had surpassed everyone in training his troops

of battle they swung into hollow squares, and once again the hillsides echoed with the dull, damp reverberations of musketry and cannon.

The men marched back to camp at midafternoon drenched to the skin, but a week later McClellan issued a general order praising their proficiency in drill. He called Porter’s division “a model for the Army,” evidently hoping to initiate competition among other commands, but he also aroused jealousy among some of the older division commanders.

November 20 provided the premier military spectacle thus far in the war. Official Washington took a holiday, and all morning carriages crowded across the Long Bridge and down the Columbia Turnpike to Bailey’s Cross Roads, at the junction of the Leesburg Pike. There, on a broad and relatively level plain below Munson’s Hill, seven divisions— more than 60,000 men—formed ranks as a thick morning fog dissipated.

The president and his family came, with most of the Cabinet and department functionaries galore. Thousands of spectators ringed the field.

McClellan galloped onto the field at the head of a brigade of cavalry as 40 acres of massed troops cheered him. Batteries fired salutes, raising clouds of acrid smoke. After a barrage of anthems and accolades, McClellan, the president, and a long gaggle of officers and hangers-on mounted horses and threaded their way at a gallop through the long, deep ranks.

Many of the civilians clung nervously to their saddles. Lincoln rode with his elbows tucked into his sides, wrote the Comte de Paris, holding his hat out before the faces of the troops like a blind man begging. The tour consumed as much as an hour and a half, after which the riders returned to JULY 2021

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Charles Pomeroy Stone graduated seventh in the West Point Class of 1845, one place ahead of Fitz John Porter. They shared many experiences and traits, and both would become victims of egregious injustice at the hands of the government they served.

With a fresh commission as brigadier general, Stone assumed command of a division on the upper Potomac late in the summer of 1861. He had early trouble with unruly volunteers in a regiment commanded by U.S. Senator Edward D. Baker, and his imposition of strict discipline also rankled rowdies in the 2nd New York State Militia. After Stone’s division was roughly handled at Ball’s Bluff in October, officers from those regiments collaborated in an effort to rid themselves of him. With the help of Radical Republicans in Washington, they succeeded.

Those disgruntled officers, several of whom would later be dismissed for corruption or other moral shortcomings, wove together fiction and distorted fact to insinuate that Stone was disloyal. To further incite the powerful antislavery faction in Congress, they pointed out that he was in the habit of returning runaway slaves to professedly loyal Maryland owners—as the Fugitive Slave Act still required.

In a self-righteous screed on the Senate floor, Charles Sumner of Massachusetts ridiculed Stone for his defeat while sarcastically and inaccurately praising him for his readiness to return a slave “to a rebel.” Alluding to the famous “caning” Sumner had taken in the Senate chamber by Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina in 1856 without defending himself, Stone replied in a private note addressing Sumner as a “well known coward” who aimed his insults “from a safe distance in the rear.” That note, and Sumner’s access to sources of arbitrary power, would exact the retaliation conceived by Stone’s more underhanded subordinates.

The Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War listened intently as those subordinates perverted Stone’s routine duties into suspicious behavior, and his observance of a limited war as evidence of sympathy with the enemy.

When Stone came before them, they asked only general questions, withholding the specific accusations from him and so preventing him from

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explaining himself adequately.

The final nail in the coffin of Stone’s career came when Edwin M. Stanton replaced Simon Cameron as Lincoln’s secretary of war. Anxious to demonstrate his conversion from conservative Democrat to fervent Republican, Stanton immediately sought the favor of the Radicals who dominated the joint committee, and he had already allied himself secretly with Sumner. Only days after taking office, he ordered Stone’s arrest without bothering to cite specific charges, sending him to the government’s new political dungeon at Fort Lafayette.

In a direct violation of the Articles of War, Stanton kept Stone imprisoned for six months without trial—and therefore with no opportunity to clear himself. Only in compliance with a special Act of Congress did Stanton finally release the hapless general, and even then he waited until the last day prescribed in the congressional resolution.

Stone’s imprisonment was his punishment for failing to adopt Radical doctrine, and for returning Sumner’s insult, but Stanton had not exhausted his vengeance. He kept Stone inactive for nine more months, until political pressure mounted to assign him somewhere. When Ulysses Grant sought Stone’s services, Stanton vindictively stripped Stone of his volunteer commission as a brigadier, reducing him to his Regular Army rank of colonel.

Stone wrote to the president, asking for some word of exoneration or confidence. When five months passed without a response, he resigned from the Army altogether. Lincoln did begin a reply, but never completed it. His opening sentences may have reminded him that he could have overruled his war minister at any time during Stone’s persecution, and that he should have done so. —W.M

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ate troops in northern Virginia. Then Congress reconvened, establishing a joint committee to investigate the conduct of the war. Republicans filled all but two of the seats, and the committee was soon dominated by Senators Ben Wade of Ohio and Zachariah Chandler of Michigan—the most visible and vocal of the Radical Republicans, who sought to steer the war toward abolition.

William Doubleday, whose cousin Abner had been at Fort Sumter, caught Chandler’s ear. The Doubledays were thoroughgoing abolitionists, and William offered Abner’s testimony to what he called the “proslavery” attitudes of McClellan, Porter, and dozens of other generals whose appointments would be coming to the Senate for confirmation. Chandler took the hint, especially in regard to McClellan and Porter.

As December progressed, the Comte de Paris claimed he knew McClellan had a campaign planned, and meant to launch it soon, but Porter

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a rise at the front of the massive formation and gathered to watch as the army peeled off, one regiment or battery at a time, and marched past on its way to camp. When the last man had passed, one of the president’s private secretaries realized that it must have been the largest military parade the continent had ever seen.

The great review of November 20 demonstrated an impressive degree of competence in the army. Important people began wondering why it was not put to use, and early in December, Lincoln gently questioned McClellan about moving against General Joseph Johnston, who had assumed command of Confeder-

TROIANI, DON (B.1949)/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY

allowed his men to build winter huts and McClellan asked him to parade his division again on December 21. McClellan’s wife had come to Washington, and attended the review. When it was over, Porter provided a banquet for McClellan, his wife, and their staffs. Two days later, McClellan came down with typhoid fever that he may have contracted at the feast.

Headquarters tried for some time to pass McClellan’s illness off as a severe cold, but he grew worse for a week and could hardly leave his bed for over two weeks. His father-in-law and chief of staff had it, too, so there was no one to tell the president what should be happening to prepare the army for the field, or where it should go.

The joint committee immediately began interrogating McClellan’s troop commanders, and Porter testified late on December 28. Wade, Chandler, and the rest wanted Close Quarters Mayhem to know whether the army could move During Porter’s Second Bull Run attack on Stonewall Jackson’s position against the enemy immediately and, if not, along Stony Ridge the afternoon of August 30, 1862, Confederate soldiers why. Porter said that as a division comin the Unfinished Railroad Cut—their ammunition all but gone—resort to mander he knew little about the army as a throwing rocks at the Federals. After a devastating two hours, Porter’s men whole, but he did suggest that the army finally retreated, with nothing gained but an extensive casualty list. could benefit from more preparation.

His own division illustrated how much the army could benefit. Porter’s distant, dignified manner, stern discimander during the Ball’s Bluff debacle (see pline, and attention to training had won the admiration and affection of opposite). Stone’s efforts to impose discipline in men even in his most rebellious regiments. The adjutant of the oncehis division had made him some enemies, and mutinous 13th New York assured his brother that Porter commanded numerous officers, themselves of dubious “the best 13,000 soldiers in the world,” and he described “Fitz John” as repute, began impugning his loyalty. They fossomething of a father figure. tered Radical hostility for him by pointing out that he returned runaway slaves to loyal own“A handsome man he is, slender but erect. A few gray hairs among his ers, as required by law. Stone was imprisoned raven locks, a full black beard kept neatly trimmed, an eye like a diamond, slow and deliberate in his speech, with a low, clear, distinct utterin New York Harbor early in February—on charges never formally specified—and the ance, prompt and decisive in his actions. Cold, heartless, unimpassioned, and a terrible, terrible, terrible disciplinarian….But such a splendid solprecedent had been set that political prejudice could be brought to bear to ruin a general. dier….Ed, I honor, admire, revere, and could almost devote my life for that man.” Porter evidently had the magic touch.

The arrest cast a sudden pall over Porter’s Still, the president grew increasingly anxious about McClellan’s idle demeanor. A staff lieutenant misunderstood that Porter feared some of the accusations army and consulted with McDowell, Franklin, and some Cabinet officers might be true, but even Stone’s successor as on how it might be used. (Not yet aware that Porter had become Little Mac’s special confidant, Lincoln left him out.) On the morning of Janudivision commander considered Stone perfectly ary 13, a wan and wary McClellan finally made an appearance, saying innocent. Porter was troubled by Stanton, he had his own plans and his own schedule but declining to reveal them whom he and McClellan were already learning before so many people, lest details filter into the newspapers. to mistrust. They recognized that Stone was Secretary of War Cameron had been squeezed out of the Cabinet by being persecuted for his conservatism, and his then, replaced by Edwin Stanton, who had pretended to be McClellan’s failure to adopt Radical doctrine. They also best friend when the general seemed the foremost power in the land. knew that they might be next.

McClellan initially greeted the appointment as a stroke of luck, but Stanton ended his first day as secretary in secret conference with McClellan’s William Marvel, who writes from South Conworst foes among the Radicals, with whom he promptly allied himself. way, N.H., is the author of Radical Sacrifice: The Rise and Ruin of Fitz John Porter, pubA year later, McClellan and Porter would regret ever having heard lished by University of North Carolina Press, Stanton’s name, and the new secretary quickly sealed his commitment Chapel Hill, N.C. (2021) to the Radicals by ordering the arrest of Charles Stone, the Union comJULY 2021

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personality clash between fiery Rebel commanders comes to a head during the trek to Gettysburg

By Richard H. Holloway

Field of Fire A Confederate-made Parrott Rifle at Manassas National Battlefield.

The Army of Northern Virginia’s long arm accomplished great success with sometimes meager resources.

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Strong in Appearance and Demeanor About 6 feet tall, with blue eyes and a “large strong face,” George V. Moody always made an impression, whether in court or battle. A former commander favorably compared his “carriage & general appearance” to Robert E. Lee’s.

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n January 13, 1862, Moody embarked on a 30-day venture to Louisiana and Mississippi to recruit more men for the Light Tips, who had been encamped at Manassas since October 1861.

As it was still early in the conflict, Moody’s mission would prove fairly easy, with offers of a $50 bounty particularly enticing to potential recruits. In mid-February, Moody returned to Virginia with 99 officers and men, signed up for the length of the war.

With winter approaching, the soldiers in northern Virginia began constructing small log cabins, complete with fireplaces. It was especially hard for the Louisianans to adjust to the colder temperatures, and each battery’s contingent of horses likewise suffered braving the elements

ERIC D. RIVENBARK

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eorge Vernon Moody, a 26-year-old native of Maine, graduated from the prestigious Harvard Law School in 1842. Degree in hand, he promptly headed to Port Gibson, Miss., to join his younger brother, a successful druggist in the Mississippi River town. The elder Moody secured office space across from the Claiborne County Courthouse and in the almost two decades that followed accrued a reputation as a forceful presence in the courtroom—fiery behavior that at one point provoked six locals enough to attempt to assassinate him. Chased through town, Moody somehow managed to evade their shotgun blasts by racing through several local businesses and churches that lined Port Gibson’s picturesque roadways.

When Mississippi and neighboring Louisiana seceded from the Union in January 1861, the 45-year-old Moody decided to try his hand as a soldier, organizing an infantry company from Port Gibson and parishes across the river in Louisiana. Many of the men who signed up were Irish immigrants who were provided both a bonus for enlisting and a monthly source of income.

Once assembled, the company embarked on a long, winding train ride to Lynchburg, Va., where it was officially mustered into Confederate service. On August 23, Moody’s unit was transferred to the artillery and, in recognition of the men’s Irish roots, took the name Madison (La.) Light Tipperarys Battery. Transferred to the state fairgrounds in Richmond to complete their organization, the “Light Tips,” as they became better known, began training with two 12-pounder howitzers, two 3-inch rifles, and two 6-pounder smoothbores.

Not far away in Hanover and surrounding Virginia counties, another temperamental personality began raising a company of infantry in May 1861: Captain Pichegru Woolfolk Jr., a 6-foot-tall, dark-haired 30-year-old, already regarded as an expert drillmaster. Woolfolk was generally known as “jolly, careless, hospitable, sociable, and always fond of a laugh,” though other characteristics clearly offset his youthful vigor. While “fearless in the face of danger,” he was also “high-strung.“ The captain was also apparently selective with whom he added to his ranks. As one man would write, “I tride to enlist[,] but they told me I was too small and too young.”

Lacking the required number of men for his unit—named the Ashland Light Artillery in July—Woolfolk continued his recruiting efforts until the end of the year. In addition to providing a bounty, he would take each man to a tailor to be fitted for his uniform. The battery achieved sufficient manpower by September but remained underequipped—lacking small arms and harnesses—and in need of more overall training.

Training with the weapons lasted six weeks. In February 1862, Woolfolk’s unit was sent to Manassas Junction, a 75-mile venture that took 10 days because of mud-caked roadways. “[W]ell at that time in Virginia,” a gunner recalled, “it rains a great deal and we [saw] mud worse than any Nebraska mud you ever saw. It was almost impossible to get feed for the men and horses (Sometimes we had to cut down trees about 6 inch through and put them across the mud places so as to get through with the Cannon). We staid at Manassas 2 or three weeks.”

MARK MARITATO/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

ERIC D. RIVENBARK

outdoors. Local farmers would occasionally come to the camps to sell goods to the soldiers, which gave the men opportunity to pull shenanigans. “One day there was a man came with a wagon load of dressed Turkeys and chicken,” recalled one Ashland cannoneer, “and when he was selling them at the front end of the wagon the soldiers were stealing them out of the hind end and stole about half his load.”

By April, as the weather got warmer, both the Ashland Light Artillery and Moody’s Battery were assigned to the defenses of Yorktown, Va., as part of Major John J. Garnett’s Artillery Battalion in Maj. Gen. John Bankhead Magruder’s command. This was likely the two captains’ first time serving in close proximity of one another. In the summer of 1862, both units saw their first heavy action during the Seven Days Battles.

As one Ashland gunner remembered, “Some times we would get up onto the Breast works and the enemy would fire at us we could see the smoke of there guns before the balls and shells would reach us and Jump down behind the works. [S]ometime the balls would strike the works and cover us all up in dirt. [T]here was the first time I saw a balloon go up in the army it was sent up to see what we were doing we went to work and dug a hole in the ground and let the hind end of the Cannon down got the right elivation and began to fire at them and they soon pulled it down they had a rope to it so that it wouldn’t get away.”

Major Garnett complimented the batteries,

assigned to Yorktown’s defenses, it was the captains’ first time serving in close proximity

Rebel Thunder Posted near the Dunker Church at Antietam, gunners in Colonel Stephen D. Lee’s Battalion, which included both Moody’s and Woolfolk’s batteries, unload on approaching Federals. both attached to Brig. Gen. Robert Toombs’ Brigade during the Seven Days. “Captain Woolfolk,” Garnett reported, “was relieved from duty with General Toombs’ brigade on Monday, July 30, and was engaged only on Friday, [the] 27th, when he behaved very handsomely and his battery did excellent service.”

At Garnett’s Farm on June 27, Moody’s Battery served in support of Captain James J. Brown’s Wise (Va.) Artillery. When they opened fire, the Light Tips found themselves fired on by an enfilading Federal battery on the right in addition to the two in front of them. The engagement endured for two hours, but Moody, in such a precarious position, finally retired, incurring only minor losses.

Colonel Stephen D. Lee, the army’s acting chief of artillery, had high praise for Moody’s service. “On June 27, Moody’s and Brown’s JULY 2021

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Lawton

S. Elliott

Marmaduke

along the Hagerstown Pike, two other alumni—Samuel Breck Parkman and Jesse Reed—were struck down in other sectors of the battlefield.

On September 18, as the two armies positioned themselves and prepared for a possible resumption of heavy fighting the day after the main battle, Elliott found himself engaged in a “severe fight” from morning until evening, earning praise from his commander for “distinguished gallantry.” Later serving in the Western Theater, he turned in a distinctly heroic effort at Champion Hill, Miss., on May 16, 1863, by grabbing the fallen colors of the 34th Georgia Infantry and carrying them forward. At one point during the subsequent Siege of Vicksburg, Elliott lobbed Parrott shells from his artillery limber like grenades, forcing the Federals to retreat from a ditch they had captured. During the Battle of Bentonville, N.C., in March 1865, Elliott was seriously wounded in the left leg, ending his service.

Crimson boys in Confederate gray saw action in all three theaters, enlisting from as old as age 57 (Elias Levy Yulee) to as young as 16 (Julius L. Brown and William Hyslop Sumner Burgwyn). —R.H.H.

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Woolfolk’s demeanor quite possibly was a reason why so many men avoided serving under his direction replaced by heavier guns, so I could consider that battery as one of my reserve batteries.

Shelling from four enemy batteries opposite on the north s[i]de of the Chickahominy River was ineffective and cause no injury.”

On the 28th, the two rifled pieces of Woolfolk’s unit were detached and accompanied other cannon down the New Bridge Road to shell enemy positions at long range. That gave the Ashland gunners welcome credit “as the enemy broke and ran in every direction.”

In early October, the Hanover (Va.) Artillery, under Captain William Nelson, was disbanded

by Special Orders No. 209 and some of its equipment and 40 men transferred to Woolfolk’s command, as were 20 men from the Middlesex (Va.) Artillery—known better as Fleet’s Battery. Many men chose to desert, however, rather than serve in a new command. Others remained absent because of sickness or took unauthorized furloughs. One private even took matters into his own hands and reported to the Amherst Artillery. Woolfolk’s demeanor quite possibly was a reason why so many men avoided serving under his direction.

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lthough both Moody’s and Woolfolk’s batteries were not engaged at the Second Battle of Manassas in late August, they did see action at Sharpsburg on September 17. On September 14, with Woolfolk’s Battery encamped at Funkstown, Md., two gunners encountered Robert E. Lee while they were out looking for fruit. When the general indicated that their unit would be moving

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THE PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR; VALENTINE MUSEUM; COURTESY OF RICHARD HOLLOWAY

The oldest institution of higher learning in the United States is Harvard University, established in 1636. On September 17, 1862, two Harvard alumni, Confederate Captain George Vernon Moody (Harvard Law School) and Lieutenant William Elliott (Harvard College), found themselves side by side in a field near Sharpsburg, Md., on the bloodiest day of the war. Upon graduating from Harvard, neither man expected to parlay their educations into military careers fighting for an upstart nation. Yet here they were, commanding batteries in Colonel S.D. Lee’s Battalion along the Hagerstown Pike during the Battle of Antietam.

The Confederate Army managed to draw 357 former, present, and future Harvard students to fight in its ranks. Granted, a whopping 78 percent of Harvard’s students aligned with the Union, not surprising considering the school’s location in the heart of Massachusetts. Of the number who would don the gray, two achieved the rank of major general: William Henry Fitzhugh “Rooney” Lee (son of Robert E. Lee) and John Sappington Marmaduke. Thirteen former students became brigadier generals: Stephen Elliott Jr.; Martin Witherspoon Gary; Henry Watkins Allen; John Bullock Clark Jr.; John Echols; States Rights Gist; Benjamin Hardin Helm; Albert Gallatin Jenkins; Bradley Tyler Johnson; Alexander Robert Lawton; William Preston; William Booth Taliaferro; and John Rogers Cooke. Allen would become wartime governor of Louisiana and Lawton would be appointed quartermaster general for the Confederacy.

The bravery of the Harvard men in gray was never in question.

Of 71 alumni who died while serving during the war, 55 were killed or mortally wounded in action. While Moody and Elliott were engaged

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS; COURTESY OF THE MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT OF ARCHIVES AND HISTORY

Crimson in Gray

batteries engaged the enemy’s works,” he recalled. “I mention the above batteries specifically, as they were each of them under very heavy artillery fire. None of the captains except Brown had their entire batteries; they went into action with their rifle[d guns] section generally. Officers and men behaved well.”

In an after-action report for July 11, Lieutenant James Woolfolk, Pichegru’s brother, noted that his battery had served somewhat uneventfully on picket duty at “Mrs. Price’s property.” In less kind words, Lee complained, “I should like another battery or Woolfolk’s

THE PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR; VALENTINE MUSEUM; COURTESY OF RICHARD HOLLOWAY

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS; COURTESY OF THE MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT OF ARCHIVES AND HISTORY

soon, the men scampered back to their command with haversacks full of peaches.

The next day, Woolfolk’s command was ordered to cross the Potomac River at Williamsburg, Md., to guard the fords. Men without shoes were given the option of crossing the river or remaining behind in Virginia to guard the wagons. The bulk of the artillery battalion then crossed Antietam Creek about 8 a.m.

Woolfolk’s Battery, equipped with at least one 12-pounder howitzer, and another battery formed part of the Confederate line facing a cornfield from atop a slight rise. On the night of September 16, the entire battalion, except Moody’s unit, was shifted left, bivouacking on the Hagerstown Pike about 400 yards in front of the Dunker Church.

Moody’s men would be integral in the upcoming fray. Equipped with two 3-inch rifles and two 24-pounder howitzers, they had seen action on the 15th. Then early on the morning of September 17, the battery took up a position near the Dunker Church. Colonel Lee ordered Moody to advance 300 yards with two of his guns into a plowed field, where he did “good service” for 15 minutes while “exposed to a most galling infantry fire.”

About 10 a.m., Moody was sent to a nearby ridge, where he quickly refitted his guns and replenished his ammunition before moving adjacent to the famed Washington Artillery of New Orleans in front of the village of Sharpsburg. Moody posted his battery on the right and again “did good service” alongside their fellow Louisiana artillerists, and “repelled some six or eight attempts” by Federal infantry to take “our position.” Colonel Lee later credited Moody “particularly” for “distinguished gallantry.”

Top Gunners West Point-trained artillery commanders E.P. Alexander (left) and S.D. Lee (right) were consummate mentors for Moody. The relentless cannonade Alexander led prior to Pickett’s Charge is perhaps his greatest moment, but his guns also were instrumental in Confederate victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.

Moody drew praise from Brig. Gen. Richard B. Garnett for his aid with his “200 men and two rifled pieces during the Miller Cornfield fighting.”

Garnett noted that his infantry held its precarious position “partly due to the brave and energetic manner in which [Moody’s Battery] was handled.” A South Carolina brigade commander also offer commendations for Moody’s “skill, daring and endurance.”

By midday, Moody unlimbered near Brooks’ (S.C.) Artillery, commanded by William Elliott, a fellow Harvard graduate. Moody and the Light Tips played a decisive role in keeping the blue columns pinned down. After Sharpsburg, Colonel Lee rewarded the Light Tips by regularly placing them at the head of his line of march.

When Lee was promoted to brigadier general in November and sent west to command infantry, Moody was among those lobbying for Lt. Col. Edward Porter Alexander, the Army of Northern Virginia’s chief of ordnance, as his replacement. Alexander recalled Moody as “a magnificent specimen of physical manhood, over six feet in height & weighing about 200 pounds, a large strong face, blue eyes and no colored hair. He always dressed Signature Shell well & I think rather prided himself in a Found near the Gettysburg carriage & general appearance not unlike battlefield, this cannonball Gen. [Robert E.] Lee’s.” was almost certainly Moody, Alexander noted, was “a good fired by one of Moody’s 24-pounder howitzers. His soldier & disciplinarian, & needed to be was the only unit equipped as his company was rather a rough one, with cannons that size having many ex-stevedores & boat hands during the battle. from the Mississippi River,” astutely adding: “He & I were always most excellent friends, but he was not an easy man to get along with generally, & was often in more or less hot water with his brother captains.”

Alexander’s observation was certainly on point. Moody’s and Woolfolk’s batteries performed admirably at both Fredericksburg in DecemJULY 2021

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THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM; ILLINOIS STATE MILITARY AND LOUISIANA NATIONAL GUARD MUSEUMS; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM; ILLINOIS STATE MILITARY AND LOUISIANA NATIONAL GUARD MUSEUMS; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

Rare Survivors Left: Captain Pichegru Woolfolk’s uniform coat, on display at the American Civil War Museum. Below: The Madison Light Tips’ battery flag. Bottom: Parole slip from the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court House, carried by one of Moody’s gunners.

ber 1862 and Chancellorsville in May 1863, but tensions between the two commanders continued to grow. As Alexander recalled, during the march into Pennsylvania in June 1863, “Various little things between Moody and Capt. Woolfolk had kindled feeling.” A few days before the Battle of Gettysburg, Alexander surmised, “some question, of precedence in the march led to a challenge from Moody to Woolfolk” on July 1 at Fairfield outside Gettysburg. Woolfolk accepted the terms for the following day, electing to duel Moody with rifles at 10 paces. That evening, however, orders came to head to Gettysburg. The planned altercation would have to be postponed until after the battle.

Both batteries again exhibited exemplary service during the battle, but fate intervened to permanently postpone the personal dispute.

Woolfolk was badly wounded on July 2 and Moody was captured at a later date to prevent a resumption of their affair of honor.

A Constant Roar On July 2, during the heavy fighting The cannonade that around the Peach Orchard, the Light Tips preceded Pickett’s adopted the tactic previously used against Charge lasted two hours and involved enemy balloons during the Seven Days. By 150 Confederate and lowering their guns’ trails into holes in the 75 Union guns. The ground to elevate the barrels, their shots positions of Moody’s and arched when fired. Raining fragments from Woolfolk’s batteries are their exploding shells added to the devasindicated in red. tation of the Union soldiers below.

During the night of July 3, 1863, thunderstorms hampered the Confederate retreat from Gettysburg. In the confusion, Moody’s Battery accidentally left behind its flag (shown above).

As the 2nd U.S. Cavalry scoured the area, Private Newton McCan recovered the abandoned guidon. On July 4, 1885, the flag was presented to the State of Illinois, where it remained until returned to Louisiana in 2009.

Moody returned to Port Gibson after the war, only to get killed in 1866 when a personal enemy seeking satisfaction fired 16 buckshot into Moody’s back as he sat at his office desk.

Four years later, Woolfolk would also lose his life tragically. While attending a trial on the top floor of the Virginia Capitol, he was among several killed when the floor collapsed.

Richard H. Holloway is president of the Civil War Round Table of Central Louisiana.

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Pomp and Circumstance War was still a bloodless adventure when these rare camp images were taken

By Alan I. West

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he six stereoviews on these pages, taken in November 1861, show the 1st Massachusetts Volunteer Cavalry assembling at Camp Brigham in Readville, Mass., roughly two months after volunteer cavalry companies—nearly all drawn from state militia—began to muster in Massachusetts. Upon forming at the camp, the 1st expected to select its field officers from its own ranks, but Massachusetts Governor John Andrew interceded. Andrew felt that professional leadership was required in preparing qualified units on short notice. For the 1st, he handed the command reins to Virginia native Robert Williams, a former 1st Dragoon, and named Horace Binney Sargent, a member of his own staff, as lieutenant colonel.

At the outset of the war, many volunteers considered the cavalry a more appealing and dashing option than other branches of the military. To be truly proficient, however, most troopers needed to train for long periods of time, usually months. Andrew deserved credit for correctly recognizing the difficulties entailed. By the fall of 1861, the war that many had once predicted would be short had become a bloody, drawn-out affair. With a call from President Abraham Lincoln for more men to fight, time was not a luxury.

Despite his Virginia roots, Williams was a prudent choice. A member of West Point’s Class of 1851, he had received a strong recommendation from Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott, who promoted Williams to colonel on September 11, 1861. Williams faced significant challenges, however. The men who volunteered for the 1st Massachusetts had not been selected for their horsemanship or even their size and weight. Many, in fact, had never even been on a horse before.

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house the vile task of policing the stables and removing manure “before reveille.”

As the weeks progressed, the situation in camp remained unsettled. When 2nd Lt. Nathaniel Bowditch reported for duty in Readville on November 5, 1861, he was struck by the men’s rebellious spirit. That very afternoon, in fact, force had to be used to subdue a melee in which one trooper was wounded by gunfire. Following the incident, Williams decided that he also needed to select the unit’s company officers. Around Thanksgiving, new replacements began to arrive.

Sent to South Carolina in the spring of 1862, the 1st first saw action on May 28 at the First Battle of Pocotaligo, and then at Secessionville on June 16 before returning to the Eastern Theater. The 1st remained engaged throughout the war, mainly as part of the Army of the Potomac’s Cavalry Corps, before mustering out on June 29, 1865.

Williams remained the unit’s commander until October 1862, at which point he resigned and joined the Adjutant General’s office in Washington, D.C. Among Boston-area notables to serve in the unit were Charles Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams; Henry Lee Higginson, founder of the Boston Symphony; and Charles A. Longfellow, son of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

The stereoviews here can be dated to early November 1861, before the unit received new uniforms and while some leaves remained on the trees. They were taken by Black & Batchelder, a Bostonbased partnership formed by James Wallace Black and Perez M. Batchelder. (In 1860, Black gained fame for his photographs taken from a balloon over Boston, the first bird’s-eye views of the city.)

Rich views of militia uniforms and camp life come across in the photos. While many of the faces and details are blurred, several of the men can be identified when compared with known photographs of the 1st Massachusetts’ officers and from its regimental history. Many of the company officers pictured, however, were likely among the discontented members of the unit and would be dismissed by month’s end.

That first fall of the war was a cold and wet one, and several individuals are wearing overcoats. Even though many of these men were unhappy about their new leaders, the excitement of having their photographs taken seems to have overshadowed their ill sentiments—at least temporarily. The men are decked out in their parade finest and appear upbeat regarding the great adventure into which they were about to embark.

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Added Security To prevent from dropping their swords in combat, troopers would secure a sword knot (right) to the hilt and wrap it around their wrists.

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COURTESY OF ALAN WEST; A HISTORY OF THE FIRST REGIMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS CAVALRY VOLUNTEERS; SKINNER AUCTIONS

When Williams and Sargent arrived, they faced a disgruntled assortment of men, unhappy to learn that their officers would not be chosen from among their own, and Williams’ decision to disband the old militia companies caused further discontent. The colonel was a strict disciplinarian and immediately began working to control his green and unruly troops. In early October, Williams issued an order demanding that quiet be maintained in the camp after Taps. A few days later, he issued another order demanding that his men spend an appropriate amount of time caring for their horses. He would also write to Andrew critiquing the company officers’ physical and leadership fitness. Some he claimed were too old, some too heavy to ride horses, and others “lacked energy of mind.”

To squelch mounting insubordination, the general began to dismiss the more rebellious company officers and imprison unruly men. On October 31, he ordered prisoners in the guard-

PREVIOUS SPREAD: PHOTOS COURTESY OF ALAN WEST (6); THIS PAGE: A HISTORY OF THE FIRST REGIMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS CAVALRY VOLUNTEERS; HERITAGE AUCTIONS (2)

Loyalty Reward Left: Having served with the renowned 1st Dragoons prior to the war, Virginia native Robert Williams stayed loyal to the Union.

Below: Veterans wore this gilded brass 1st Massachusetts Cavalry badge after the war.

COURTESY OF ALAN WEST; A HISTORY OF THE FIRST REGIMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS CAVALRY VOLUNTEERS; SKINNER AUCTIONS

PREVIOUS SPREAD: PHOTOS COURTESY OF ALAN WEST (6); THIS PAGE: A HISTORY OF THE FIRST REGIMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS CAVALRY VOLUNTEERS; HERITAGE AUCTIONS (2)

Photo #1 shows a grouping of five staff officers; Colonel Robert Williams is on the far left. All five men wear Model 1851-pattern shakos, adorned with wreaths, brass eagles, and long pom poms, shrunken into round balls in line with 1851 Army regulations. One can see the dark band on Williams’ shako as well as a velvet standing collar on his coat. The insignia just above the visors of each shako are blurred but appear to indicate “U.S.” at the center of an eagle-laden wreath.

The officers all wear epaulettes and belts with officer’s sashes that circle their waists. The officer second from right displays a pocket watch chain, and one can see a sword knot—a safety device designed to prevent a cavalryman from dropping his weapon during battle—dangling from his sword.

The officer on the far right is likely Major William F. White, the most senior militia officer, whom many of the men had hoped would be appointed to lead the regiment.

The horse on the far right of the picture is wearing a regulation blanket with an eagle and one star, indicating it was likely to be ridden by a White brigadier general. This same horse is seen in two other pictures.

The tents are set against woods and overlook fields of rolling hills and scattered trees. The tent directly behind the men is an officer’s Marquee tent with double poles.

Panache With a Pom Pom A Model 1851-pattern Massachusetts Militia shako, similar to those worn by the officers above. It was 11½ inches tall.

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L. Sargent

Keith

Teague

Curtis

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THE HORSE SOLDIER; COURTESY OF ALAN WEST; USAHEC

Holland

Photo #2: Williams (center) and four of his officers are shown seated in front of a number of soldiers and other officers. Several are wearing swallowtailed militia coatees, with ornate sleeve buttons, high collars, and epaulettes. Major Greely S. Curtis is seated far right (1). An infantry horn with the numeral “1” in the center adorns his shako. Curtis served as captain of the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry before joining the 1st, and commanded the unit during the Battle of Gettysburg.

The two officers seated to the left of Williams display Model 1850 field and staff officer swords. Two sets of rifles, stacked in threes, are propped just behind the seated officers—likely two-banded Pattern 1853 Enfield rifle-muskets (see P.48).

Seated on the far left is Surgeon James Holland (2), who joined the regiment on September 14. Seated to Holland’s immediate right is 35-yearold Lucius M. Sargent (3), half-brother of Lt. Col. Horace B. Sargent. Sargent, whose shako also is adorned with an infantry horn, had been a member of

FROM TOP: COURTESY OF ALAN WEST; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS; FROM LEFT: A HISTORY OF THE FIRST REGIMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS CAVALRY VOLUNTEERS; USAHEC

Standard Issue Forage caps, like this example reportedly worn by George W. Floyd of the 1st Massachusetts, replaced the elaborate shakos.

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Training Day Above: M-1860 light cavalry officer’s saber and scabbard. Right: 1st Massachusetts Private Stanton Allen’s sketch, “First Lessons With the Sabre,” was found in a personal scrapbook he carried.

Photo #3 shows Colonel Williams astride his horse, with two officers standing nearby. The man wearing a greatcoat and forage cap may be 40-year-old Lt. Col. Horace B. Sargent (below). The other officer, unidentified, wears a field grade officer’s coat with two rows of six buttons.

THE HORSE SOLDIER; COURTESY OF ALAN WEST; USAHEC

FROM TOP: COURTESY OF ALAN WEST; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS; FROM LEFT: A HISTORY OF THE FIRST REGIMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS CAVALRY VOLUNTEERS; USAHEC

the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry prior to reporting to the Readville camp on October 31.

David B. Keith (4) stands directly behind Holland. The 30-year-old Keith joined the unit on September 25 as a first lieutenant and was promoted to captain on November 25.

He wears a double-breasted frock coat and 1861 forage cap.

Standing at far right is Nathaniel Bowditch, seen partially in profile (5). The officer in the back row, near center, appears to be Charles Griffen Davis (6).

In the third row on the right side of the photo is another individual who would serve prominently in the 1st Massachusetts: George H. Teague (7). On September 23, Teague mustered into the regiment as a corporal and was later promoted to major.

In the back, to the left of Teague, is Major John Henry Edson, wearing an 1858 pattern infantry forage cap (8).

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Firepower From Abroad The cavalrymen of the 1st Massachusetts initially carried two-banded Pattern 1853 Enfields, imported from England.

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COURTESY OF ALAN WEST (2); PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

Confiscated Comfort Many of the plantations that occupied Edisto Island, on South Carolina’s Atlantic Coast, had been abandoned by the time the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry reached the area in the spring of 1862. The regiment used this mansion as its headquarters.

Photo #4 is the same grouping of some of the officers shown in Photo #2—the camera moved to the left showing the same line of trees in the background and more Sibley tents. A U.S. flag can be seen snapping in the wind from the top of one of the tents. From this view, the stacked rifles are clearly two-banded Pattern 1853 Enfield rifle-muskets.

The corporal standing to the right of center with his hands on his hips is wearing an 1858 U.S. Army hat. The officer immediately to the left of the corporal appears to be Nathaniel Bowditch, already identified in photo #2.

In the second row, just to the left of center, is Private Samuel Emory Chamberlain (1).

Mustered in as a private on September 6, Chamberlain would be promoted to captain on November 25. He later became chief of staff for Brig. Gen. W.W. Averell and then a brevet brigadier general before the end of the war.

Also in the background are Captain Lucius Sargent (2) and Major John Edson (3), already identified in Photo #2. In between is 31-year-old Lucius Richmond (4), who led the North Bridgewater Dragoons before it was merged into the 1st.

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: USAHEC (2); COURTESY OF ALAN WEST; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Richmond

Ambushed at Aldie

Photo #5 (top) shows Colonel Williams’ staff, many with their wives, against a backdrop of tents and rolling fields. A handler tends to the colonel’s horse, and Williams and his wife appear in front of the mixed group of individuals who have come to share in the excitement. The women all wear fashionable hoop skirts with bonnets and shawls.

COURTESY OF ALAN WEST (2); PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: USAHEC (2); COURTESY OF ALAN WEST; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The worst day of the war for the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry was June 17, 1863.

Weeks after the Battle of Chancellorsville, the Army of Northern Virginia slipped behind the Blue Ridge Mountains, aiming to invade Pennsylvania. Determined to bypass J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry screen, Union troopers reconnoitered the Ashby’s Gap Turnpike. After a fight at Aldie, the 4th Virginia Cavalry veered north to block the Snickers Gap Turnpike. The 1st Massachusetts pursued, with Companies E and G following the turnpike and Companies C and D (along with the 4th New York), crossing an adjacent field. Hiding at a bend in the road, the Rebels mowed down Companies E and G, then took deadly aim at the approaching Massachusetts and New York men. Unaware of the ambush, 1st Massachusetts Lt. Col. Herbert P. Curtis sent in Companies A and B. They, too, were decimated. Only the appearance of two companies of the 1st Maine Cavalry forced a Confederate retreat. The 1st Massachusetts Cavalry would lose 198 of 294 men that day. —N.T.

For Photo #6, the photographer moved his camera closer to where the horse was standing in Photo #5, as we see the same Sibley and wall tents.

In this view, Colonel Williams is seen in profile at left. A civilian wearing a top hat stands in front of the Sibley tent. The young boy in uniform to the right is most likely the son of David Keith, who stands directly behind the boy. The woman just to the right of the boy is most likely his mother, Keith’s wife. Her hand rests on a Model 1860 Officer’s Light Cavalry Saber, with an open finger guard and swept blade.

Alan West, a Civil War collector and speaker, resides in Pittsburgh, Pa. He is the author of two Civil War books, including Christopher H. Tebault: Surgeon to the Confederacy (2020).

Day of Carnage This monument recognizing the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry’s June 1863 clash at Aldie can be found on the rural Snickersville Turnpike just outside Middleburg, Va. JULY 2021

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The tragic explosion of the steamboat Eclipse predated the infamous loss of Sultana, but was soon Forgotten history

By Stuart W. Sanders 50

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O Mass Transit Federal armies used civilian steamboats impressed or leased from private owners, such as those shown here on the Tennessee River, to transport soldiers, weapons, and supplies throughout the war.

The ill-fated Eclipse was one such steamer.

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n April 27, 1865, more than 2,000 Union soldiers headed up the Mississippi River, crammed onboard the steamboat Sultana. Most were recently released prisoners of war, elated to be going home with peace finally on the horizon. Earlier that month, the Confederate capital of Richmond had fallen to Federal forces, and General Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Va., on April 9. Several miles north of Memphis, Tenn., however, tragedy struck. In a flash, Sultana exploded, scattering baggage, freight, debris, and passengers across the river. Nearly 1,200 Union soldiers were killed in the accident, which still stands as the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history.

The explosion of Sultana was a terrifying coda to the striking number of steamboat accidents that had occurred on Western rivers during the Civil War. Because these vessels served as troop transports and hospital ships, faulty boilers and operator errors caused extensive casualties. In December 1864, for example, the steamer Maria exploded near St. Louis. Among the 80 soldiers onboard, at least 25 were killed, 30 injured, and 25 missing. Dozens of horses and mules belonging to the 10th Wisconsin Cavalry also perished in the blast.

Three months before the Sultana disaster, another river calamity made international headlines and took the lives of homebound Federal soldiers. The explosion of the steamboat Eclipse on the Tennessee River killed and injured dozens of troops who were traveling northward to muster out of the Army. Sadly, many of these men—combat veterans— had survived multiple battles. Yet, like those on Sultana, they were cut down by this catastrophic accident.

Soldiers commonly traveled Western rivers on civilian steamboats.

These vessels, which were either impressed into the Union Army or leased by the federal government, served multiple roles during the war.

The boats, many renowned for their luxurious accommodations, acted as hospital ships, floating military headquarters, scouting vessels, and gunboats. The Cincinnati-based Ohio Belle, for example, carried sick and wounded soldiers and transported Federal troops on missions of retribution against Southern communities that had harbored bushwhackers. Operating along guerrilla-infested waters, however, could be exceedingly dangerous. In April 1864, guerrillas firing on Ohio Belle seriously wounded two Union soldiers, and, though not confirmed, Rebel sabotage also was suspected in Maria’s explosion.

Snags in the river, sandbars, and ice were among real and artificial obstacles that posed accident risks during steamboat travel. Moreover, boiler explosions and fires almost always led to mass casualties. In 1856, the St. Louis Democrat estimated that an average of eight boats had been lost per month on the Mississippi River during the year’s first six months. As the destruction of Maria, Eclipse, Sultana, and other vessels illustrate, the rate of accidents did not decrease during the Civil War. In January 1865, Eclipse and seven other steamboats left Eastport, Miss., traveling north on the Tennessee River. Bound for Paducah, Ky., at least 160 men were on board, including 40 crew members and dozens of Union soldiers. This number included 70 artillerymen from the 9th Independent Battery, Indiana Light Artillery, who were traveling to Paducah to muster out. While these Hoosier gunners had concluded JULY 2021

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exploded, he jumped to safety on Lady Franklin. Craven later wrote, “[W]e went out on the deck, but the steam, smoke, ashes, and soot filled the air, and obscured all sight for a time….The cracking and crashing of timbers about the boat, in connection with the cries and shrieks of despair, was truly calculated to alarm one.”

As neighboring boats pulled survivors out of the water, Lady Franklin’s crew cut Eclipse loose. Engulfed in flames, the vessel floated downstream and ran aground. After about an hour, the fire ignited artillery shells belonging to the 9th Indiana Battery. What was left of Eclipse blazed for at least another hour. “Many poor fellows were buried under the timbers and burned,” a reporter wrote.

Some of the injured were placed on Lady Franklin and Madison, where Union army surgeons from the gunboats Silver Lake and Lexington cared for them. “The cabins presented a distressing scene of dying, scalded and wounded,” a witness explained. The surgeons covered several of the burned men with flour in the hopes that it would alleviate their pain.

The bartender on Madison also gave whiskey to the injured soldiers.

Safe onboard Lady Franklin, Craven entered the vessel’s cabin. What he saw, he recalled,

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their three years’ service, the other Federal soldiers on the boat had either been discharged or were going home on furlough.

The 9th Indiana Battery had seen its share of action. Organized in December 1861, the battery had fought at Shiloh and during the subsequent siege of Corinth, Miss. It served throughout the war in Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Missouri. After the Battle of Nashville in December 1864, the men were finally heading home.

On the evening of January 27, Eclipse reached Johnsonville, Tenn.

Stopping for the night, the crew lashed Eclipse to Lady Franklin, another steamboat under Federal service. A few hours later, a reporter wrote, passengers on the other boats heard what they thought was “the discharge of a twelve pounder [cannon], but it was soon discovered that the Eclipse was all in ruins and on fire.” One of Eclipse’s boilers had exploded, instantly killing more than 30 people and injuring 75 more.

It was a horrific scene. The shattered boiler spewed superheated steam throughout the vessel, scalding scores of soldiers. The blast also sent casualties flying. According to one reporter, the captain of a nearby steamboat, Madison, “was on the upper deck of his boat and was knocked down by one of the killed who had nearly every bone broken in his body.” Another corpse crashed through Madison’s deck and landed in the cabin. A third body knocked down the chimneys of Lady Franklin.

Four other corpses fell on the deck of that vessel, and pieces of the boiler riddled the steamboat Emperor. W.G. Voris, Eclipse’s captain, said that “the whole forward part of the boat was blown into atoms.”

When shrapnel cut through a cabin where Lt. Col. Hervey Craven of the 89th Indiana Infantry had been sleeping, he thought that the boat was under attack. “My first impression was that a rebel battery had opened up on us, and that a shot or shell had passed through my stateroom,” Craven recalled. When the officer learned that a boiler had

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Horror Redux The grim casualty count of the Eclipse accident was surpassed by the Sultana explosion (shown) three months later. In both cases, a faulty boiler was the likely culprit.

YOGI BLACK/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; HISTORIC MAP WORKS

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

was “the most heart-rending scene of my life.

Stout men that I had seen face death on more than one well contested battle-field, without murmur, nobly doing their duty in the midst of a terrible artillery fire, were shrieking and crying from the excruciating pain of their scalded bodies and limbs, the scalded skin coming off their hands and hanging to the points of their fingers, their hide following and clinging to their garments as they were stripped from their bodies; the suffering victims walking to and fro, some moaning as if in the agonies of death, others shrieking at the top of their voices, and quite a number of them begging to be killed, that they might get relief from their terrible anguish.” “[T]hus terminates a three years’ term of service of a battery which, from...Shiloh to the battle of Nashville has nobly sustained the credit of the State and nation by their deeds of heroism,” Craven wrote of the 9th Indiana Battery, acknowledging that two officers and 68 Hoosier artillerymen had been onboard and lamenting, “fifty-eight are killed, wounded, or missing.

Alas, too many of the wounded will yet die.”

At least 105 of the 160 men on the vessel were listed as killed, injured, or missing. “Several of the unfortunates, who were wounded, have since died,” a reporter later noted. Voris had also been scalded, although his quick thinking likely saved his life. When the boiler exploded, a reporter wrote, Eclipse’s captain “had the presence of mind to bury his face in a pillow, which…prevented him from inhaling the volume of steam surrounding him.” Had he

Haunted Hoosier Lt. Col. Hervey Craven, a lucky survivor, called what he saw “heart-rending.”

Fortified River Port Some soldiers heading home on Eclipse were to be mustered out at Fort Anderson in Paducah, Ky., shown in April 1862. breathed in the vapors, the steam would have likely scalded his lungs and killed him.

Steamboats transported many of the victims to both Paducah and Evansville, Ind. Within six days of the accident, 21 more had died in Paducah. Surgeons there expected more to soon perish. In addition to the 9th Indiana Battery, casualties came from the 32nd Iowa, 5th Minnesota, 89th Indiana, and 21st Missouri infantry regiments.

After the disaster, there were conflicting reports about the cause of the blast. Engineers examined pieces of the boiler and determined that it had been poorly manufactured. This, they claimed, likely caused the explosion. Voris said that he had previously complained to a Union quartermaster that the boilers had been leaking, but the quartermaster had refused to make repairs. The engineer on Eclipse also remarked that the boiler “had become cracked while going up the Tennessee River,” yet the boat continued its journey. Steamboat inspectors in Cincinnati, however, blamed that engineer for the tragedy and revoked his license.

The explosion made headlines across the nation. News about the disaster also appeared in European newspapers, including the Liverpool Mercury and the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent in England. One American publication called it, “One of the most terrible steamboat explosions it has ever been our sad task to record.”

Although the stories surrounding the explosion were horrific, news of the more massive casualties on Sultana quickly overshadowed Eclipse’s destruction. With the war winding down in early 1865, stories about Union soldiers killed while traveling home were particularly heartbreaking. These men had survived the war, yet they died because of poor boiler construction or negligence of a crew. Although the Eclipse explosion was smaller in scale, the destruction of that steamer foreshadowed the catastrophic losses on Sultana. The deaths of men on both vessels proved a stark reminder that army life was always dangerous, whether a soldier was on the battlefield or headed for home.

Stuart W. Sanders is the author of four books. His latest, Murder on the Ohio Belle, examines vigilante justice, Southern honor, and the Civil War through the lens of an 1856 slaying on a Western river steamboat.

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The Battle of Sailor’s Creek

The Final Contest

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ates, killing, wounding, or capturing 7,700 men, more than a quarter of Lee’s remaining forces. Eight generals were among the prisoners—most notably Robert E. Lee’s eldest son, George Washington Custis Lee. Watching his retreating troops in dismay, the Army of Northern Virgina commander exclaimed, “My God! Has the army dissolved?” In reporting about the battle, Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan suggested to Grant, “If the thing is pressed, I think that Lee will surrender.” Upon seeing Sheridan’s report, President Abraham Lincoln concurred: “Let the thing be pressed.” Lee surrendered three days later.

Visitors to the Sailor’s Creek Battlefield State Park and its surrounding areas can experience the sites of all three engagements. The visitor center boasts an impressive collection of artifacts and especially engaging exhibits and panels. The nearby town of Farmville is a traveler’s delight with old tobacco warehouses converted to shops and restaurants, and interpretive signs describing the tense last hours of the war that passed through here. —Melissa A. Winn

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PHOTOS BY MELISSA A. WINN (4)

Trailside is produced in partnership with Civil War Trails Inc., which connects visitors to lesser-known sites and allows them to follow in the footsteps of the great campaigns. Civil War Trails has to date 1,552 sites across five states and produces more than a dozen maps. Visit civilwartrails.org and check in at your favorite sign #civilwartrails.

After the fall of both Richmond and Petersburg on April 2, 1865, an increasingly desperate General Robert E. Lee evacuated his crumbling Army of Northern Virginia from the areas and sought to unite it with General Joseph Johnston’s Army of the South in North Carolina. Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s attempt to thwart Lee’s men from reaching the railroad hub in Danville rerouted Lee’s troops and resulted in the last major battle of the war unfolding on April 6, 1865, near Sailor’s Creek.

Although considered one battle, three separate engagements raged over the fields here that day. First, Confederate troops under Maj. Gen. John B. Gordon clashed with the Union 2nd Corps under Maj. Gen. Andrew Humphreys on the James Lockett Farm. The Union 6th Corps under Maj. Gen. Horatio Wright battered Lt. Gen. Richard Ewell’s two divisions near the Hillsman Farm. And, lastly, Confederates under Lt. Gen. Richard Anderson sparred with Maj. Gen. Wesley Merritt’s three divisions of Union cavalry near Marshall’s Crossroads.

The Federals overwhelmed the Confeder-

PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

THE LAST MAJOR ENCOUNTER OF THE WAR ERUPTED IN THE VIRGINIA COUNTRYSIDE

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Sailor’s Creek Battlefield State Park 6541 Sayler’s Creek Rd., Rice, VA 23966 The State Park covers 379 acres of the Sailor’s Creek Battlefield. It houses the sites of all three engagements that made up the totality of the battle on April 6, 1865, and offers extensive walking and driving trails.

The staff at Sailor’s Creek present living history programs and events throughout the year at various times. The park is open dawn to dusk. The visitor center is open 9 a.m.–4 p.m. daily.

Marshall’s Crossroads VA-617 Rice, Inside the Battlefield A hurried line of defense was erected here by the troops of Confederate Lt. Gen. Richard Ewell, but they were no match for the half-hour artillery bombardment and subsequent assault by Union Major Andrew Cowan’s troops. After a failed repulse by the Confederates, more than 3,400 men surrendered here.

Holt’s Corner

Rte. 617, Inside the Battlefield

Shortly before noon, Union Maj. Gen. George Crook’s cavalry attacked Confederate Lt. Gen. Richard Anderson’s infantry corps as it marched through this intersection. While most of the Army of Northern Virginia continued marching straight ahead to Rice’s Depot, part of Anderson’s Corps quickly dug in here to repel Crook’s attack, creating a gap in the Confederate column.

Lt. Gen. Richard Ewell ordered the main wagon train, which was following Anderson, to turn northwest at this crossroads onto Jamestown Road.

Hillsman House

Sayler’s Creek Rd., Inside the Battlefield

During the Battle of Sailor’s Creek, this 1770s house was occupied by the James Moses Hillsman family. Hillsman, a captain in the 44th Virginia Infantry, was captured at Spotsylvania in May 1864 and was a prisoner of war at the time. His wife Lucy, mother Martha, and his two children and eight enslaved workers were forced to huddle in the basement kitchen during the fight. The home was used as a 6th Corps field hospital and temporary burial ground for Federal soldiers after the battle. Tours are available upon request.

Double Bridges

PHOTOS BY MELISSA A. WINN (4)

PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

County Rd. 619, Inside the Battlefield Late in the afternoon, the Confederate wagon train that had passed Holt’s Corner turned south at James Lockett’s farm and crossed the two bridges here, across Little Sailor’s Creek and Big Sailor’s Creek. The wagons, which jammed the narrow road and small bridges, soon bogged down. Behind the roadblock, to the north, Confederate Maj. Gen. John B. Gordon’s Corps took up positions near the Lockett House as Maj. Gen. Andrew Humphreys closed in with his 2nd Corps.

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1. Sailor’s Creek Battlefield State Park 2. Marshall’s Crossroads 3. Hillsman House 4. Holt’s Corner 5. Double Bridges 6. Lockett House 7. The High Bridge 8. Hotel Weyanoke

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Lockett House

Rte 619, Inside the Battlefield

Near sundown on April 6, desperate fighting occurred here, near the home of James Lockett. The Union 2nd Corps commanded by Maj. Gen. Andrew Humphreys overwhelmed Maj. Gen. John B. Gordon’s Corps. The house still bears the scars of the battle. After the fighting ceased, it was used as a field hospital.

Hotel Weyanoke Trailside is produced in partnership with Civil War Trails Inc., which connects visitors to 1466 Camp Paradise Road lesser-known sites and allows them to follow in On April 6, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet dispatched 1,200 cavalrymen under Maj. the footsteps of the great Gen. Thomas L. Rosser to hold the bridge here to allow Lee’s army to retreat campaigns.

Civil War toTrails Farmville supplies and food. A 900-man Union force of has tofor datemuch-needed 1,552 sites across states arrived first and set about destroying the bridge. Rosser’s infantry andfive cavalry andengaged produces more men themthan and captured nearly the entire force, allowing the remainder dozen maps. Visit civilofaLee’s army to cross the span. On April 7, Longstreet’s men attempted to set wartrails.org and check fire the bridge prevent Federal pursuit, but were shut down by elements of in to at your favoriteto sign the Union 2nd Corps. Today, the High Bridge Trail is 31 miles long and used for #civilwartrails.

The High Bridge

hiking, bicycling, and horseback riding. Confederate earthworks are visible and preserved near the bridge, and the wartime bridge piers still stand.

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202 High St., Farmville The vanguard of the Army of Northern Virginia, exhausted and famished, reached Farmville the morning of April 7, where the men were finally treated to rations, including bread, soup, and ham.

But Federal troops were in pursuit and, by mid-day, the Confederates had left, heading for Appomattox Station. By 1:30 p.m. the Union army occupied the town. Hotel Weyanoke offers travelers a unique, historic setting to act as base camp for visitors to the Sailor’s Creek Battlefield, Appomattox Court House, and surrounding Civil War sites.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN; COURTESY OF HOTEL WEYANOKE; VIRGINIA STATE PARKS

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5 QUESTIONS

Interview by Nancy Tappan Crux of the Economy Confederate leaders hoped that agriculture would be the basis of their wealth. Here, a New Orleans wharf is crowded with cotton bales unloaded from steamships by enslaved people.

Brave New World?

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In conventional Civil War historiography, Confederate leaders believed that their armies would ultimately win in the field and that life in the South would return to the way it was. Your research, however, revealed a number of surprising presumptions that counter this assessment.

Confederate leaders believed they were fighting to preserve a slaverybased society and economy. At the same time, though, they portrayed the Republican Party and the Union as something of a throwback, especially in its military aggression, to an old-fashioned Europeanstyle tyranny. They insisted slavery would provide the foundation for a modern, even progressive, nation state pursuing an international agenda of free trade, peaceful collaboration, civilization of lessadvanced areas, and exploitation of newly accessible tropical regions.

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Modern and progressive? Didn’t they believe the South’s future depended on slavery and unceasing expansion, since a labor system based on coercion was essential to growing staple crops and controlling the African American population?

White Southern leaders regarded territorial expansion as necessary for maximum production of staple crops, together with enabling the dispersion and diffusion of the African American population. This is the safety-valve argument— that western or southern expansion would lessen the concentration of the enslaved people in a given area in the East, serving as both a social and economic protection against Blacks competing with Whites for wages. Ample cheap land also offered the best chance to non-slaveholding Whites to own enslaved people down the line.

It’s based in part on fear of slave insurrections, but also on what I call a giddy excitement that they are on the road to a bright future that is a vanguard for the rest of the world. Preserving slavery and an economy based on agriculture would, Confederates insisted, avert the social revolution they predicted would result from creating a White working class in new factories in Britain and the United States.

GRANGER, NYC

In his 2020 book, Colossal Ambitions: Confederate Planning for a Post-Civil War World (University of Virginia Press, $45), Adrian Brettle of Arizona State University takes a detailed look at the world that Confederate politicians and planners imagined would exist in the wake of a Southern victory in the Civil War. Drawing on a rich assortment of speeches, articles, letters, and diaries from the period, Brettle explores the blueprint from which these individuals hoped to create a postwar Confederacy. They envisioned a new country based on slavery that would be independent from the United States as well as its commercial and political equal.

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In an address to the Confederate Congress on May 29, 1861, Jefferson Davis insisted, “All we ask is to be left alone”—a declaration that contradicts the idea that the Confederacy’s future was progressive.

I call this Davis’ “Greta Garbo” moment. Left alone but to do what? It’s a question I try to answer because Davis went on to describe the ambitions he and his colleagues had for the new nation. He saw the Southern example of White-only egalitarian democracy as an example for Europeans. With mobility increasing and global economic expansion beginning, he saw interracial contact as inevitable and suggested that the racial harmony in which Southerners had such faith would be emulated abroad. The world would follow the Confederate example—a stable society based of a hierarchy of races including Native Americans and Hispanics as well as African Americans.

From GREGORY LALIRE, the editor of

MAGAZINE

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Talk about the impulse for expansion and a traditional view of a Southern agricultural empire and contrast that with the planners’ dream of an industrial, commercial empire, complete with a navy.

In 1861-62, the talk was all about a borderless world with the Confederacy becoming a global hub of trade and communications. Leaders, including oceanographer Matthew Maury, proposed that steamship lines be established in Southern ports to open new trade routes to the Caribbean, Brazil, and southern Europe. There were proposals for undersea cables to southern Europe via Brazil, a feat still unrealized by the North. A Southern empire in a pre-imperial age involved new avenues of commerce in a free trade union (that’s why a navy was so important; they needed protection for their merchant fleet). At times, the dream was of being the world’s premier producer of raw materials and consumer of manufactured goods. Plans do change, of course, and at times during the Civil War there is a push for industrialization and economic self-sufficiency, particularly with regard to an arms industry. Some Confederates, especially in the upper and border South, certainly looked forward to an industrialized future as a good thing in itself, but most Confederates recognized that slavery and factories were incompatible. Davis and his secretary of state, Judah Benjamin, preferred to look forward to cornering the world market in commodities, lumber, precious metals, and other mined minerals.

GRANGER, NYC

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Some scholars argue that Lincoln “blundered” in the winter of 1860-61 in not supporting a compromise with the seceding states. Was a compromise of some sort possible?

Lincoln did not blunder. If there is a single takeaway from the book it is the vindication of Lincoln’s opposition to secession and the expansion of slavery. Other than the minority of committed Unionist Southerners, most leaders—whether secessionist or “cooperationist” (calling for a reformed union)—insisted that unlimited southward expansion of slavery would be the price of any reunion. Furthermore, behind all the “compromises” offered by Confederates during the war to Federals, these leaders planned to support the further breakup of the Union into both Pacific and Northwest Confederacies. This fragmentation would secure the Confederacy’s northern border while its planners focused on colossal ambitions elsewhere.

MAN FROM MONTANA

by Gregory J. Lalire This historical novel follows adventurer Woodie Hart to the violent goldfields of what would become Montana Territory.

Woodie discovers the boomtowns of Virginia City, Bannack and Hell Gate and faces the twin terrors of road agents looking to get rich quick and vigilantes intent on dishing out cruel justice.

PRICE: $25.95 / 370 PAGES HARDCOVER (5.5 X 8.5) / ISBN13: 9781432871178 TIFFANY.SCHOFIELD@CENGAGE.COM FACEBOOK & TWITTER: @FIVESTARCENGAGE

To read the complete interview online, go to bit.ly/ColossalAmbitions.

JACKET DESIGN BY KATHY HEMING

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REVIEWS

Defining Grant’s Legacy

manding general of the U.S. Army and, with Abraham Lincoln, the Union’s savior, Ulysses S. Grant went on to serve two terms as the country’s 18th president. His fame was such that after leaving office, he embarked on a three-year world tour during which he met with near-universal acclamation.

In the mid-1880s, facing financial ruin and suffering from throat cancer, Grant labored painfully for the last 11 months of his life to finish The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. An instant Grant’s Tomb: bestseller, it earned his family the modThe Epic Death ern equivalent of $12.7 million and of Ulysses S. Grant remains a greatly admired work of and the Making of an American nonfiction.

American Pantheon Louis L. Picone’s new book adroitly

By Louis L. Picone unravels the tangled web of events folArcade, 2021, $25.99 lowing the general’s death. Grant’s insistence that his wife, Julia, eventually be buried by his side ruled out West Point and Washington’s Old Soldiers Home as sites for his tomb. Despite interest from several other cities, the family selected a site overlooking the Hudson River in New York City.

On an early August Saturday in 1885, more than 1.5 million people lined the route of the general’s funeral procession as it made the 5½-hour journey from City Hall in Lower Manhattan to the tempo-

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Majestic Memorial The April 1897 dedication of Grant’s Tomb in New York City, as seen from the Hudson River. It’s the final resting spot of Ulysses Grant and his wife, Julia. rary tomb in Morningside Heights.

Grant’s burial was but a prelude to a 12-year, at times torturous, effort to create a permanent memorial. Picone engagingly narrates the repeated failures at fundraising; the disruptive calls to abandon the New York location; the reluctance of Democratic state and city officials to support an effort perceived to benefit Republicans; and the problems posed by competing campaigns to honor Grant in other cities and to memorialize recently slain President James Garfield.

It took more than five years to select John Hemenway Duncan to design the permanent memorial. The groundbreaking proceeded on April 27, 1891, Grant’s birthday, despite the fact that only $150,000 of the needed $500,000 was in hand. But for the ascendancy of Horace Porter, a close aide to the general, to the leadership of the Grant Memorial Association in February 1892, the

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Rising from obscurity to become com-

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

REVIEWS memorial might never have been finished.

With the help of a professional fundraiser, Porter raised more than $350,000 of new money in less than four months.

Construction began in earnest in the spring of 1893 and was completed in time for an elaborate dedication ceremony on April 27, 1897. The tomb, at 122nd Street and Riverside Drive, was an immediate magnet for city residents as well as tourists; in the first eight months, 560,000 people visited. Visits peaked in 1906 at nearly 608,000, and never fell below 100,000 until 1933. But as time passed, inadequate maintenance led to the building deteriorating.

The promise of improved care when the National Park Service assumed control in 1958 proved illusory. Stewardship by the NPS proved abysmal, with original display cases deliberately destroyed, original architectural drawings and Grant family correspondence damaged or lost, and memorabilia lost or stolen.

That indifference, combined with demographic changes in the surrounding neighborhood, led to frequent vandalism, and in 1979 attendance hit rock bottom at 35,117.

After a brief resurgence of interest in the early 1990s, driven by Ken Burns’ PBS Civil War series, attendance again dropped. In 1991, Frank Scaturro, a Columbia University student, began volunteering, leading tours and serving as a vocal advocate for the memorial. Hoping to embarrass the NPS to act, he compiled a 325-page report detailing all that was wrong, and in 1994 resurrected the Grant Monument Association.

Simultaneously, Ulysses Grant Dietz, the general’s great-great-grandson, suggested the family might consider relocating his ancestors’ remains and sued the federal government. In response, the NPS begrudgingly appropriated a modest $1.8 million for clean-up efforts.

Other than a few brief mentions, Picone’s account leaves readers stranded in the mid1990s. Events of the past quarter-century go unmentioned, despite a resurgence of interest in Grant that might suggest opportunities to once again make the memorial a vibrant attraction. Grant’s Tomb piques this reader’s interest in revisiting the site, but it offers a disappointing conclusion to an otherwise interesting and well-done book. —Rick Beard

DURING THE VICKSBURG CAMPAIGN, Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Tennessee had a great deal of success after winning battles at Champion Hill and Big Black River Bridge, but it was forced to besiege the city considered the Confederate key to the Mississippi River to finally defeat Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton’s Army of Vicksburg. Federal assaults on May 19-22 failed to take the “City on a Hill,” but the siege ultimately led to the Vicksburg Besieged capture of thousands of soldiers, Union [Civil War control of the Mississippi, and geographiCampaigns cal division of the South. Vicksburg in the West] Besieged, the newest entry in Steven Edited by Woodworth’s and Charles Grear’s groundSteven E. Woodworth breaking Western Theater series, goes and Charles D. Grear beyond the end of the campaign to the Southern Illinois dangers that followed the guns going silent.

University Press, This excellent book explores not only 2020, $29.50 Union efforts to capture Vicksburg but also Confederate efforts to prevent Grant from doing so. Both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis knew how essential the location was to ultimate victory in the war. Along with Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg on July 3, Pemberton’s failure at Vicksburg led to a resurgence of optimism for the North in 1863.

Woodworth and Grear are well-known for their valuable contributions to scholarship on the Western Theater. This seventh volume in their “Civil War in the West” series features eight essays. Each can stand alone, but they are best enjoyed together. Collectively, they render a portrait of the challenges for Grant’s and Pemberton’s armies, as well as the community of Vicksburg. The first chapter by Andrew Bledsoe deals with an examination of how Grant’s staff assessed the general’s hands-on style of leading an army. The next essay by Scott Stabler and Martin Hershock considers the contributions of USCT soldiers to the Siege of Vicksburg and how their bravery affected public opinion. Jonathan Steplyk’s section covers the role of sharpshooters and soldiers’ reactions to their roles during the siege. The fourth chapter by Woodworth himself concerns the night actions between the Federal and Southern lines that proved quite dangerous. Justin Solonick’s essay contains details of Union mines and how they weakened the Confederate defenses and influenced Grant’s plans for the siege. John Gaines’ study provides understanding into the experiences of residents trapped inside Vicksburg. The next section, written by Richard H. Holloway, recounts the music played and sung by Louisiana soldiers during actions at Jackson, Miss., fascinating stories that still resonate in the 21st century. The final chapter by Grear encompasses the reactions of Trans-Mississippi Confederates to the loss of Vicksburg and the effect it had on their morale and desire to continue the war.

All of the essays included in this slim volume are excellent, readable, and meticulously researched. This important work is illuminating, thought-provoking, detailed, engaging, and a real page-turner. —David Marshall JULY 2021

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REVIEWS WHY WOULD A DISTINGUISHED British historian write a book linking Stonewall Jackson with Alexander James Beresford Hope?

Michael J. Turner hints at the answer in the subtitle of his ingeniously integrated investigation of the meaning of the Civil War in Britain. Jackson, of course, was one of the Confederacy’s most successful generals; Beresford Hope was a leader of the very active pro-Confederate lobby in England. Turner persuasively argues that these two disparate historical figures are important to understanding the Confederacy’s relationship with Great Britain.

Turner is interested in better understanding the Confederacy’s attempt to influence English public opinion, gain diplomatic recognition and material aid from Great Britain during the war, and enshrine a positive postwar legacy even after being defeated on the battlefield. Turner’s scholarship is an example of a growing trend toward transnational historiography that, when in the hands of skilled practitioners such as Turner, adds valuable layers of understanding to what is now understood to be a complex relationship between the Confederacy and Great Britain.

Turner splits his book into two distinctive yet interrelated parts. First, he uses Beresford Hope’s thoughts, Stonewall Jackson, words, and deeds “to mount a susBeresford Hope, and tained analysis of British sympathy the Meaning of the for the South during the war.” Hope Civil War in Britain was a wealthy Conservative politician,

By Michael J. Turner author, collector, High Churchman, LSU Press, 2020, $50 and patron of the arts. These interests gave him access to an influential cross-section of British society.

Turner then focuses on how Jackson’s life and legend “gained remarkable purchase over the British imagination” both during and after the war. The two men’s stories come together in a postwar effort in England, led by Hope and others, to raise funds through public subscription for a statue of Jackson that was eventually unveiled in Richmond’s Capitol Square 10 years after the shooting war had ended. Turner’s concluding chapter “assesses the impact of Hope’s agitation on behalf of the South and relates the nature of British opinion to the creation and maintenance of Jackson the hero.”

When Hope began his pro-Confederacy campaign, Turner reminds us, “British attitudes were confused and conflicting.” The people, press, and Parliament “could not agree on the line Britain should take in response to the American crisis.” Hope lobbied on a variety of issues from strong personal conviction even though he had never visited the land he lionized. On economic and political issues, he “advocated free trade, opposed democratization, and endorsed states’

62

rights.” He considered Lincoln “unfit for the presidency” and repeatedly argued that the South had stronger cultural and social affinities with England than did the North.

Turner concludes that Hope believed Southerners were “more virtuous, kind, hospitable, patriotic, self-sacrificing, courageous, and more devout religiously than [N]ortherners.”

The issue of slavery was tricky for Hope.

While English mill owners needed Southern cotton, England was in the throes of various social reform agitations, and many workingclass operatives and their representatives in Parliament held strong antislavery convictions. In an effort to reach a broad range of British opinion, Hope argued that slavery was not only benign but also beneficial for the enslaved. He insisted that a process of education and Christianization was necessary before any thought of freedom for enslaved people could be contemplated and, he believed, “that most Southern slaveholders did not treat their slaves cruelly. They were not as abolitionist propaganda depicted them.”

As for Jackson, Turner argues that he personified the ideal of the Victorian hero and British society’s fascination with the role of the great man in history. Jackson’s fervent Christian beliefs and practices coupled with laudatory newspaper coverage of his personal courage and tactical brilliance on the battlefield added to his idealized mystique.

His death at the height of his powers gave a tragic element to his life that resonated with the romantic impulse of many of the wellto-do in Britain. As early as 1863, Hope took a leading role in raising funds for a statue of Jackson that Turner maintains “brought together pro-southern sentiment in Britain.”

It was unveiled on Capitol Square in Richmond to great fanfare on October 26, 1875, with many ex-Confederate luminaries and veterans attending. Unlike the recently removed equestrian statue of Jackson on Richmond’s Monument Avenue, the statue “presented by English gentlemen” still stands. —Gordon Berg

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REVIEWS Fire-eaters were Southerners who advocated secession, some as early as the 1830s.

The breeding ground of many was South Carolina—“too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum,” as one despondent Unionist declared.

Alabama had fire-eaters, too. William Lowndes Yancey is usually thought of as the quintessential Alabama fire-eater. But Chris McIlwain contends that David HubThe South’s bard (1792–1874) not only radicalized before Yancey, but that Yancey may have bor- Forgotten Fire-Eater: David Hubbard rowed some of Hubbard’s rhetoric. Hence and North the title of this engaging biography.

Alabama’s Long Hubbard was a 40-year-old land speculaRoad to Disunion tor and member of the Alabama legislature

By Chris McIlwain when it voted the federal tariff unconstituNewSouth Books, tional. In 1832, after a South Carolina con2020, $27.95 vention “nullified” the tariff, President Andrew Jackson arranged a compromise. But Hubbard’s die was cast; he became dedicated to the cause of John C. Calhoun, the Great Nullifier. By late 1843, with North and South arguing over Texas annexation, Hubbard began talking about “Northern fanatics.”

Within a year he was calling for the Union to be broken if the South

did not get its way. He favored the war against Mexico. In June 1850, he delivered in the House of Representatives, in the author’s words, “one of the most divisive, hateful attacks on the North” heard lately in Congress. Needless to say, Hubbard opposed the Compromise of 1850. A year later, Alabama newspapers were calling him “Disunion Davy.” He raised money for proslavery forces in Bleeding Kansas; supported John Breckinridge in the 1860 election; and after Lincoln’s election finally saw his dream of disunion realized. When war came Hubbard, nearly 70, could only watch the collapse of his cherished Confederacy.

One measure of a sound biography lies in the detailing of its subject’s life. Here, one might see too much focus on Hubbard’s land and railroad business activity. But as a chronicle of a thoughtful Alabamian’s conversion from Jacksonian nationalism to Southern separatism in the antebellum era, this is a commendable contribution to scholarship of Southern studies. –Stephen Davis

Plus!

10 Generals, 10 Peculiar Deaths Gettysburg Scapegoat Redeemed

Into the

Wilderness Virginia’s notorious forest bedeviled commanders and chilled soldiers’ hearts

HISTORYNET.COM MAY 2020

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The N-SSA is America’s oldest and largest Civil War shooting sports organization. Competitors shoot original or approved reproduction muskets, carbines and revolvers at breakable targets in a timed match. Some units even compete with cannons and mortars. Each team represents a Civil War regiment or unit and wears the uniform they wore over 150 years ago. Dedicated to preserving our history, period firearms competition and the camaraderie of team sports with friends and family, the N-SSA may be just right for you.

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

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FINAL BIVOUAC

FIRST LIEUTENANT

In July 1886, Union Army veteran Ira without loss to government, and as an B. Dutton arrived at the Hawaiian honest man.” island of Molokai unannounced and After the war, Dutton, now a first offered a lifetime of service to Father lieutenant, was entrusted with disinDamien, a Belgian priest later canonterring the bodies of more than 6,000 soldiers for reburial in newly created ized for his devoted work at a leper colony on the windswept Kalaupapa national cemeteries. By 1870, however, Peninsula. Dutton professed that he had his life had turned for the worse. He endured a divorce, spent all of his committed unforgivable sins and, in money, and drank heavily. “I lived for repentance, intended to spend the some years a wild life and felt that I remainder of his life helping the exiled victims of what is now known as Hanshould make some sort of reparation for it,” he would lament. sen’s disease. Grateful for all the help he In 1883, Dutton was baptized a Cathcould get, Father Damien accepted this olic, took the name Joseph, and entered earnest American with open arms.

Ira Barnes Dutton was born in Stowe, the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Vt., on April 27, 1843, but his family Bardstown, Ky., to become a Trappist monk. Less than two years later, howrelocated to Janesville, Wis., a few years after his birth. On the eve of the Civil ever, he decided to leave the monastery.

War, Dutton joined a local militia unit Learning about Father Damien’s work and in September 1861 enlisted in the among the lepers on Molokai, Dutton headed for Hawaii. He would assume 13th Wisconsin Infantry—appointed the administration of the colony after regiment’s quartermaster sergeant.

The 13th spent most of its service Father Damien died in April 1889. engaged with Rebel guerrillas in TennesDutton’s humanitarian work garnered worldwide attention. “[A]ll over see and Alabama. But at the Battle of the world there are people who regard Dover, Tenn., on February 3, 1863, Dutyou and Father Damien as men whose ton helped Colonel Abner Harding’s 600man garrison defeat Maj. Gen. Joseph lives have been well-nigh perfect examWheeler’s Confederates. Although a relples of self-abnegation, sacrifice and seratively minor clash, it was for Dutton vice,” President Warren G. Harding “the most brilliant affair of the war.” wrote to Dutton in 1923. “You have set Dutton, now 21, was promoted to secfor us a model which I wish might be ond lieutenant later that month. raised up for the view and emulation of Reclaimed Image many others, for it is in the selfless serAssigned to Brig. Gen. Robert S. GrangA sharp-looking Ira Dutton er’s staff as the District of Northern Ala- during the war, before his life vice of all our brothers that all of us took a brief detour. Top: His bama’s chief quartermaster, he was must at last find the great satisfactions adorned Molokai grave. and consolations of this life.” tasked with supplying Granger’s troops and supervising major construction projDutton, 87, died on March 26, 1931, ects. “He is a young man of high character and of thorand was buried at St. Philomena’s Catholic Church Cemough business qualifications, and can be trusted in any etery on Molokai. As of 2019, devoted individuals from position,” Brig. Gen. Charles C. Doolittle said in Decemhis native Vermont had petitioned Rome to open his ber 1865. “He...closes his business of twenty millions cause for sainthood. –Frank J. Jastrzembski Final Bivouac is published in partnership with “Shrouded Veterans,” a nonprofit mission run by Frank Jastrzembski to identify or repair the graves of Mexican War and Civil War veterans (facebook.com/shroudedvetgraves).

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COURTESY OF FRANK JASTRZEMBSKI; WISCONSIN VETERANS MUSEUM

Ira B. Dutton

AMERICA’S CIVIL WAR

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