America's Civil War September 2021

Stonewall Stumbles How trusted subordinates saved him at Chantilly

Plus!

Exclusive Account: Confederate march to Sharpsburg Fighting men and their steeds

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AVAILABLE WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD iupress.org

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September 2021

Exclusive

!

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Crossing the ‘Rubicon’ A Confederate private recalls his army’s September 1862 March to Sharpsburg Edited by Robert Lee Hodge

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AMERICA’S CIVIL WAR

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CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: FREDERICK COUNTY (MD.) HISTORICAL SOCIETY; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; LOOK AND LEARN/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; HARPER’S WEEKLY ; COVER: ©DAVID H. WRIGHT/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

6/23/21 9:36 AM

Departments 6 LETTERS Filling gaps from Joseph Revere’s Chancellorsville debacle 8 GRAPESHOT! Stone Mountain discord; custom-built snub-nosed revolver 12 LIFE & LIMB Jonathan Letterman’s medical revolution New! 16 HIDDEN HEROES Winchester “Devil Diarist” Cornelia Peake McDonald 20 FROM THE CROSSROADS J.E.B. rides around McClellan one more time 54 TRAILSIDE War comes to Baltimore 58 5 QUESTIONS Gettysburg’s unsung cavalry hero 60 REVIEWS Co-opted Civil War culture 64 FINAL BIVOUAC Fierce fighter with a painter’s heart

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The Vicksburg Question What was behind Robert E. Lee’s decision not to send reinforcements to embattled Mississippi in 1863?

By Chris Mackowski

Rebel Thunder Stonewall Jackson wasn’t counting on a battle at Chantilly. He needed help to stave off a clumsy defeat

By David A. Welker

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Majestic Mounts A closer look at that special bond Civil War soldiers shared with their horses

By John Banks

ON THE COVER: STONEWALL JACKSON RARELY TASTED DEFEAT DURING THE WAR. THE BATTLE OF CHANTILLY (OX HILL) IN SEPTEMBER 1862 WAS NEARLY A BLOT ON THAT RECORD.

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SEPTEMBER 2021

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6/23/21 9:36 AM

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

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

ANTIETAM’S HAUNTING HORSE

The captivating story behind a popular image of a dead stallion on the battlefield. http://bit.ly/HauntingHorse

STOPPING JUBAL EARLY

With the fate of Washington, D.C., at stake, Lew Wallace’s assignment was clear. http://bit.ly/StoppingEarly

IN DEFENSE OF J.E.B.

Stuart’s widow, Flora, was devoted to honoring her cavalryman husband’s memory, especially his actions at Gettysburg. http://bit.ly/DefendingJEB

Vol. 34, No. 4 September 2021

Chris K. Howland Editor Jerry Morelock Senior Editor Sarah Richardson Senior Editor Nancy Tappan Senior Editor Dana B. Shoaf Consulting Editor Stephen Kamifuji Creative Director Brian Walker Group Art Director Melissa A. Winn Director of Photography Austin Stahl Art Director A DV ISORY BOA RD Gordon Berg, Jim Burgess, Steve Davis, Richard H. Holloway, D. Scott Hartwig, Larry Hewitt, John Hoptak, Robert K. Krick, Ethan S. Rafuse, Ron Soodalter, Tim Rowland CORPOR ATE Rob Wilkins Director of Partnership Marketing Tom Griffiths Corporate Development Graydon Sheinberg Corporate Development Shawn Byers VP Audience Development Jamie Elliott Production Director A DV ERTISING Morton Greenberg SVP Advertising Sales mgreenberg@mco.com Rick Gower Regional Sales Manager rick@rickgower.com Terry Jenkins Regional Sales Manager tjenkins@historynet.com

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LETTERS

Great May Issue!

Touching Account

I am a long-time subscriber to America’s Civil War and enjoy the articles. I am always impressed by the quality of the research in your articles. In the May 2021 issue, my interest was particularly struck by the article by Rick Barram on the Chancellorsville action and the court-martial of Joseph Revere. This article on Revere’s conduct at Chancellorsville fills a gap in my information on the 72nd New York and the Excelsior Brigade. This is the first article I have found on this incident. I greatly appreciate the map on page 32 showing the location of the brigade’s regiments.

The related sidebar on William Stevens’ death on page 37 was of very special interest to me. My great-uncle, George Tate, was a corporal in the 72nd New York and was also wounded at Chancellorsville.

George joined Company D, 72nd New York in Dunkirk, N.Y., along with three classmates from the Fredonia Academy in May 1861. Their first company commander was William Stevens. My great-uncle was wounded on May 3, 1863, along with Colonel Stevens.

George suffered a wound in the face at the same time he suffered a head wound. The head wound was the more serious since a bullet chipped a quartersized piece of his skull along the crown of his head. He fell unconscious and awoke in a Confederate hospital with Colonel Stevens. George ministered to

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his colonel to make him as comfortable as possible. When Stevens died, great-uncle George organized a burial party and carefully marked the grave.

Two days later, the regimental surgeon and chaplain visited the hospital under a flag of truce looking for missing members of the regiment. George showed them Stevens’ grave and helped with exhuming the body for transport back to New York.

George was paroled to convalesce in an exchange camp. He was given leave to return home where a local doctor covered the bone chip with a sheet of silver flattened from a coin. Because his wound had healed, he was exchanged and returned to his regiment later in 1863. For his actions taking care of his colonel, burying him and marking the grave, George Tate was promoted to sergeant, effective May 3, 1863.

Sergeant George reenlisted for another three years in December 1863.

When the 72nd New York was mustered out in July 1864, he was transferred to the 120th New York of the Excelsior Brigade. He remained with the 120th, being promoted again to regimental sergeant-major in early 1865.

He was then promoted to 2nd Lieutenant in the 41st USCT. After the Civil War, George Tate returned to Fredonia, married, and fathered two daughters. He lived as a local merchant until his death in 1912 in Washington, D.C. This information comes to me from George Tate’s pension records and several affidavits from his comrades.

James P. Tate III Roanoke, Va.

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.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

An Excelsior Brigade review, in an undated photo.

As usual, I found your May 2021 issue to be another interesting mix of insightful, well-written articles on a wide range of subjects. Two stand out particularly in my opinion. The first is Timothy B. Smith’s outstanding story about the “Lasting Void” in Confederate senior leadership in the Western Theater created by Albert Sidney Johnston’s death at Shiloh. Smith clearly and logically shows the significant lack of competent senior commanders in the West that confronted Jefferson Davis after Johnston’s loss. Confederate fortunes in the West—its armies subsequently led by a succession of lesser men, such as Braxton Bragg—never recovered. But the circumstances of Johnston’s death itself raise serious questions about the much-lamented general’s actual abilities and effectiveness as an army-level commander. I see this superb article as essentially a continuation of several articles on Confederate leadership in the West, such as those covered in previous issues like Bragg and Joe Johnston.

I also thought the material on Abraham Lincoln was very interesting, especially “Marketing Lincoln” on Lincoln’s faithful secretaries John Nicolay and John Hay, who arguably created the image of Lincoln that has dominated America’s historical record to this day. I found that article especially insightful when reading the excellent book reviews of two recent Lincoln biographies. And “Assassin’s Escape”

by Melissa Winn is a superb tour of John Wilkes Booth’s tortuous journey leading up to his ignominious end in a remote Virginia tobacco barn. I intend to use this as a guide when I visit each of the sites.

David Wallace Rockville, Md.

AMERICA’S CIVIL WAR

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ROMAN GLADIATORS FROZEN IN TIME FOR OVER 1,600 YEARS

Found: 1,600-Year-Old Roman Gladiator Coins Hold the Glory of Rome In the Palm of Your Hand

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hen your famous father appoints you Caesar at age 7, you’re stepping into some very big sandals. But when that father is Emperor Constantine the Great, those sandals can be epic!

Constantius II, became Caesar at 7, and a Roman Emperor at age 20. Today, he is remembered for helping continue his father’s work of bringing Christianity to the Roman Empire, as well as for his valiant leadership in battle.

But for many collectors, his strongest legacy is having created one of the most fascinating and unique bronze coins in the history of the Roman Empire: the “Gladiator’s Paycheck”.

the Gladiators Paycheck

Roman bronze coins were the “silver dollars” of their day. They were the coins used for daily purchases, as well as for the payment of wages. Elite Roman Gladiators—paid to do battle before cheering crowds in the Colosseum—often received their monthly ‘paycheck’ in the form of Roman bronze coins.

But this particular Roman bronze has a gladiator pedigree like no other! Minted between 348 to 361 AD, the Emperor’s portrait appears on one side of this coin.

The other side depicts a literal clash of the gladiators. One warrior raises his spear menacingly at a second warrior on horseback. Frozen in bronze for over 1,600 years, the drama of this moment can still be felt when you hold the coin.

Surrounding this dramatic scene is a Latin inscription—a phrase you would never expect in a million years!

Happy Days are Here Again The Latin inscription surrounding the gladiators reads: “Happy Days are Here Again” (Fel Temp Reparatio). You see, at the time these coins were designed,

the Emperor had just won several important military battles against the foes of Rome. At the same time, Romans were preparing to celebrate the 1100th anniversary of the founding of Rome. To mark these momentous occasions, this new motto was added and the joyful inscription makes complete sense.

A Miracle of Survival for 1,600 Years

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GRAPESHOT!

A Blast of Civil War Stories

Stone Mountain Standoff

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AMERICA’S CIVIL WAR

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PHOTO COURTESY OF LAWRENCE LEE HEWITT; NORTH WIND PICTURE ARCHIVES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

stepping back from a 2018 election promise to “protect The world’s largest and most famous Confederate memoStone Mountain and historical monuments in Georgia...” rial just got a little less Confederate.

“The SCV presented a proposal to the Governor’s office On May 24, the board of the Stone Mountain Memorial and SMMA to incorporate a Heritage Tourism business Association voted to move Confederate flags away from model,” declared Timothy F. Pilgrim, Georgia Division the base of the huge granite outcropping, located east of commander. Its purpose was to implement living history Atlanta. The board also approved construction of a new attractions and events to increase attendance and park museum exhibit to place the memorial in wider historical revenue, both of which had been down in recent years. context—including its ties to the Ku Klux Klan. The SMMA In 1914, the Atlanta Chapter of the United Daughters of logo will be changed to remove the bas-relief carving of the Confederacy raised the possibility of establishing a Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson. memorial here. Two years later the Venable family, the Some Black activists, such as DeKalb County NAACP mountain’s owners, deeded its north face for the proposed Chairman John Evans, have called for the entire removal of sculpture. Gutzon Borglum, famed for Mount Rushmore, the three Confederate figures. The famous sculpture, howgot involved early, but scarce funding, artistic arguments, ever, will remain. As with all compromises, this one has world war, and then the Depression slowed the work for sparked criticism. “Some people are going to say they’re decades. In 1958 the state of Georgia took on the project, not going far enough,” remarked Bill Stephens, chief execwhich was completed and dedicated in 1970. utive of SMMA, which oversees the park. “Others are goThe move to finish the project aligned ing to say they’re going too far.” with rising opposition to desegregation Among the latter is the Georgia DiviTrio Stays for Now in the South, prompting Atlanta History sion, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Removal of the images of three Center President Sheffield Hale to rewhich argues that “contextualization” Confederate luminaries from mark recently: “They have the wrong of the park aims for the piecemeal deStone Mountain’s north slope is people on the mountain. [It’s] about struction of the Confederate heritage not among changes approved massive resistance to desegregation. It’s that the organization champions and for the park outside Atlanta. not about the Civil War.”—Stephen Davis also criticizes Governor Brian Kemp for

PHOTO BY RAYMOND BOYD/GETTY IMAGES

CONTROVERSY OVER PARK’S PAST, FUTURE REMAINS CONTENTIOUS

QUIZ

Cavalry Sideshows?

1. Which cavalry clash ended in the only Union victory in southwestern Missouri for 1861?

A. Fredericktown B. Wilson’s Creek C. Lexington D. Springfield

Split Decision PHOTO COURTESY OF LAWRENCE LEE HEWITT; NORTH WIND PICTURE ARCHIVES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

PHOTO BY RAYMOND BOYD/GETTY IMAGES

Englishman John C. Barnes Jr. enlisted in the 42nd Illinois in 1861. On June 13, 1862, he was hospitalized for illness in Farmington, Miss., later transported by steamboat to a hospital in St. Louis.

After being discharged as fit for duty on December 29, 1862, Barnes changed units. With Charles Ellet Jr.’s Ram Fleet in need of soldiers skilled in marksmanship, President Lincoln authorized the recruitment of candidates already in service to fill those spots.

Barnes volunteered for that duty on January 1 and was mustered out of the 42nd on January 3. The 42nd, however, never received notification and declared him a deserter, listing him as such for the duration of the war. Barnes would serve with distinction in the Mississippi Marine Brigade until contracting syphilis and given a medical discharge. Recovered sufficiently to serve his adopted country a third time, Barnes joined the 136th Indiana and helped guard Sherman’s supply line during the 1864 Atlanta Campaign.

Barnes had his triple duty inscribed on the badge above, which he wore at reunions. When he needed a disability pension, however, he struggled for three years to get the War Department to remove the erroneous charge of desertion from the 42nd. It took him five more years to secure the pension, although the government made it retroactive for only one year. —Lawrence Lee Hewitt

3. Who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions at the Battle of Piedmont?

A. David Hunter B. Wesley Merritt C. Julius Stahel D. William E. Jones 4. In which battle did George A. Custer salute and then defeat his former West Point friend Thomas Rosser?

A. Tom’s Brook B. Fisher’s Hill C. Cedar Creek D. Waynesboro 5. Who earned two Medals of Honor in three days in April 1865?

A. Nelson A. Miles B. George A. Custer C. Hugh P. Boon D. Thomas W. Custer Answers: 1.D, 2.B, 3.C, 4.A, 5.D

CONVERSATION PIECE

2. Who of the following was not promoted directly from captain to brigadier general in 1863?

A. Wesley Merritt B. Ranald S. McKenzie C. George A. Custer D. Elon J. Farnsworth

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GRAPESHOT! him the admiration of Richmond politicians, newspapers, and debutantes.

Von Borcke was given the rank of major and named chief of staff by Stuart prior to Antietam. He got along so well with his boss that he gifted him a similar Trantor revolver in June 1863 and had the case inscribed to Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, so sure was Von Borcke that Stuart would be named to command “Stonewall” Jackson’s Corps after Compact Killer the general was mortally Heros Von Borcke carried wounded at Chancellorsthis .44-caliber double-action percussion revolver, with a ville. That firearm is now in custom-built 1.75-inch barrel, the collection of the Smithwhile in the field. sonian Institution.

Von Borcke was horribly wounded at Middleburg, Va., during the cavalry battle on June 19, 1863. While recuperating, he received a resolution of thanks from the Confederate Congress. He When Prussian aristocrat Heros Von Borcke landed in Charleston returned to the Cavalry Corps in time to witness Stuart’s mortal wounding at YelHarbor in May 1862 seeking adventure, he wasn’t sure what was in his immediate future. Armed with a .44-caliber licensed copy of the low Tavern in May 1864. A Confederate to English Trantor double-action percussion revolver, with a custom the end, Von Borcke served the South in various roles until he was stranded in shortened barrel, he quickly found himself in the thick of the action, Europe when the Civil War ended. He fighting with J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry in August 1862 during the fought in the Prussian-Austrian War of leadup to Second Manassas. His martial knowledge and bravery in the field quickly gained him the respect of his commander and 1866, wrote his memoirs in 1877, and died in Berlin in 1895. —Jay Wertz Stuart’s troopers. His dashing manner and good looks also earned

Drawn to the Cause

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; GRANGER, NYC

For Northern artists, early-war bravado was common. In this April 1861 cartoon, General-in-Chief Winfield Scott— drawn as a defiant bulldog perched over a large slab of beef representing Washington—snarls at Jefferson Davis, a “slinking” greyhound.

Behind Scott are sacks of money, barrels of food, and a cannon.

COURTESY OF THE NAU CIVIL WAR COLLECTION/PHOTO BY JAY WERTZ; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

CIVIL WAR ILLUSTRATED

GRAPESHOT! BATTLE RATTLE “I, Philip Kearny, an old soldier, enter my solemn protest against this order for retreat.

We ought instead of retreating to follow up the enemy and take Richmond. And in full view of the responsibility of such a declaration, I say to you all, such an order can only be prompted by cowardice or treason.”

—Phil Kearny, after McClellan ended his campaign against Richmond in July 1862

Western Saves Ninety-nine acres of hallowed ground, critical to Western Theater fighting in 1862 and 1863, have been preserved by the American Battlefield Trust. In June, the organization said more than 22 acres at Shiloh, Tenn., nearly 44 acres at Raymond, Miss., and just short of 33 acres at Vicksburg, Miss., have been saved. All three acquisitions will help reshape interpretation at their respective national parks.

EXTRA ROUND

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; GRANGER, NYC

COURTESY OF THE NAU CIVIL WAR COLLECTION/PHOTO BY JAY WERTZ; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Under Lock and Key Fort McHenry was never attacked during the Civil War, and any further uprisings after the Baltimore Riot of April 1861 were deterred. The fort, of course, is most famous for its role in the War of 1812 when it successfully defended Baltimore Harbor from the British navy. A large garrison flag flying over the fort on the night of September 13, 1814, signaled American victory over the British in the Battle of Baltimore and the sight of it inspired Francis Scott Key to write the poem “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” which later was set to music and became “The Star Spangled Banner.”

During the war, Fort McHenry was used as a prison to confine both Confederate soldiers and a large number of Maryland political figures who were suspected of being Confederate sympathizers (see Trailside, P. 54). Francis Scott Key’s grandson, Francis Key Howard, was one of these political detainees. Howard was the editor of the Daily Exchange, a Baltimore newspaper sympathetic to the Confederacy. He was arrested without a warrant just after midnight on September 13, 1861, exactly 47 years after his grandfather witnessed the flag flying over the fort.

Howard wrote the book, Fourteen Months in American Bastiles, about his experiences as a political prisoner. It was published in 1863 and two of the publishers selling the book were then arrested. Howard commented on his imprisonment, “When I looked out in the morning, I could not help being struck by an odd and not pleasant coincidence. On that day forty-seven years before my grandfather, Mr. Francis Scott Key, then prisoner on a British ship, had witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry. When on the following

morning the hostile fleet drew off, defeated, he wrote the song so long popular throughout the country, the Star Spangled Banner. As I stood upon the very scene of that conflict, I could not but contrast my position with his, forty-seven years before. The flag which he had then so proudly hailed, I saw waving at the same place over the victims of as vulgar and brutal a despotism as modern times have witnessed.”

—Melissa A. Winn ‘O Say Can You See’ In 1814, Francis Scott Key spies the American flag over Fort McHenry, where his grandson would later be imprisoned.

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LIFE & LIMB

Medical Revolution FREDERICK, MD., BECAME THE SCENE OF EPIC CHANGES IN MILITARY MEDICINE DURING THE CIVIL WAR

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on the streets of Frederick were just a few of the thousands still beginning their recovery from serious wounds and illnesses following the bloody fighting of September 1862. In the chaotic battles atop South Mountain and along Antietam Creek, more than 20,000 American soldiers fell wounded.

Many were destined for makeshift hospital wards inside Frederick’s public buildings, churches, schools, and hotels.

An incredible transformation took place in Frederick in the autumn of 1862. In the normally prosperous market community of local farmers and industrialists, almost all business had ground to a halt. Life in Frederick had been disrupted since early September, when the Army of Northern Virginia marched into town. Their occupation, lasting nearly a week, had summoned the Army of the Potomac from Washington, D.C. The Union army would occupy Frederick on September 12.

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The nonprofit NMCWM, based in Frederick, Md., explores the world of medical, surgical, and nursing innovation during the Civil War. To learn more about the stories explored in this and future columns, the museum hosts walking tours to the city’s Civil War hospital sites on Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. from April to October. For more, visit civilwarmed.org.

“WHEN WE FIRST CAME HERE the streets, on a pleasant afternoon, were filled with convalescent wounded soldiers,” Union soldier Stephen Bogardus Jr. wrote in a letter to his hometown newspaper in late January 1863.

His unit, the Maryland-based Purnell Legion, was assigned to guard the important railhead and road junction at Frederick, Md.—assigned to the noncombat assignment in early December 1862.

Remembering his arrival in Frederick, Bogardus wrote of the numerous wounded men he witnessed everywhere in the town of 8,000 residents. “The bandaged head, the empty sleeve, and the stump of a leg, told a tale louder than words could speak,” he continued in his letter to the Poughkeepsie Daily Eagle. “Those who spoke flippantly of patriotism as a mere word should have seen some of those that I have met.”

The convalescing men that Bogardus met

EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH

By John Lustrea and Jake Wynn

LIFE & LIMB Arriving among the officer the length of the ambulance trains winding their way to corps of the Union force was Frederick. In his after-action report, Letterman Major Jonathan Letterman, acknowledged the many challenges that needed to be the Army of the Potomac’s managed: 37-year-old medical director.

Letterman had a monumenAll the available buildings in this city (six in numtal task ahead of him as the ber) were taken at once for hospitals for our own army moved into Maryland. troops and those of the enemy who should fall into He and his department were responsible for the health our hands. These were fitted up with great rapidof more than 80,000 soldiers. ity…the buildings selected and prepared, beds, bedAs Letterman entered Frederick on September 13, he ding, dressings, stores, food, cooking arrangements ordered “the establishment of hospitals...for the recepmade, surgeons, stewards, cooks, and nurses tion of wounded in the anticipated battles.” The direcdetailed and sent for. This was a great deal of labor, tive to prestage medical supplies and personnel prior to but it was done, and done promptly and well. the outbreak of fighting was indeed revolutionary and heralded a series of other innovative steps Letterman Among the first patients to arrive from the fighting in would take while in command of the Army of the Poto- Maryland was Sergeant Henry Tisdale of the 35th Masmac’s medical wing. The major, in fact, had begun a sachusetts Infantry. Tisdale had been shot through the complete overhaul of the army’s Medical left leg by a Minié ball at the Battle of Department.

South Mountain. After the ordeal on the In what has become known as “The mountainside, Tisdale found his way to a Letterman Plan,” he oversaw the reorgaUnion field hospital and was among the nization of battlefield medical evacuation hundreds sent by ambulance to from the moment that soldiers were Frederick. wounded on the front lines, to the care Decades later, a woman remembered they received at field hospitals, and then these childhood moments, writing: “I can at more established medical facilities recall standing on Market Street…and away from the battlefield in communities how we used to watch the wagons bringsuch as Frederick. ing the wounded into Frederick for us to As part of his new system, Letterman look after. There was so much blood seized control of the army’s ambulances dripped out of the back of the wagons and and conveyed them to the Medical falling on the dirt road, that eventually Department and organized training for the mud became red as the wagon wheels Natural Fit stretcher-bearers and ambulance drivploughed through the streets.”

Though not a West Point ers. He also enforced a new division-level graduate, Letterman, from Medical authorities placed Tisdale and field hospital system that ensured ade- 1849 on, spent most of his others suffering as he was into the makequate medical supplies and personnel career with the U.S. Army. shift hospital ward at the Evangelical were available to treat the wounded.

Lutheran Church on East Church Street.

Frederick, roughly 25 miles east of Sharpsburg, was Tisdale later described what he witnessed inside: to play a pivotal role in Letterman’s first field test of his new medical systems. Soon after Letterman issued his A rough board floor was laid over the tops of the pews. Folding iron bedsteads with mattresses, orders to convert it to a hospital city, significant quanticlean white sheets, pillows, blankets, and clean ties of beds, bandages, anesthetic, and other medical underclothing, hospital dressing gowns, slippers, necessities began arriving. “All the churches (or nearly so) in Frederick have been taken for hospitals for the etc. were furnished us freely. The citizens came in wounded which are to be brought to town,” wrote tailor twice a day with a host of luxuries, cordials, etc. for Jacob Engelbrecht the morning of September 16. our comfort. The church finely finished off within, According to Engelbrecht and other residents, the well ventilated and our situation as pleasant and first wounded from the September 14 Battle of South comfortable as could be made.

Mountain arrived in Frederick aboard Army ambulances on the 17th. Engelbrecht counted the arrival of

By September 30, Frederick’s makeshift hospital 25 ambulances filled with wounded and recorded that wards already had more than 2,321 patients, and there the churches-turned-hospitals were being rapidly filled. were 3,032 patients in two tent hospitals set up on the The September 17 fighting at Antietam only added to outskirts of the city—with 62 surgeons, 15 medical

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EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH

Divine Care Frederick’s Evangelical Lutheran Church was among several facilities Jonathan Letterman converted for Antietam’s wounded in 1862.

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cadets, 22 hospital stewards, 539 nurses, and 127 cooks on duty, according to Letterman.

For the town’s residents, Letterman’s medical revolution prompted major changes to everyday life. “Town in commotion,” Engelbrecht recorded in his diary on September 23. “Our little city is all day long & part of the night one continued bustle of moving of wagons, ambulances, etc. bring wounded, medical & hospital stores.”

While residents observed the commotion suddenly enveloping their community, others jumped into action.

“As a vast number of sick and wounded are now in our midst requiring immediate relief,” wrote Mrs. J.A. Bantz, president of the city’s Ladies’ Union Relief Association, “we would urgently entreat one and all of the friends of the cause, to renew their diligence and forward whatever they can…as our brave soldiers’ wants should be punctually attended to.”

Southern sympathizers also jumped into action for the wounded Confederates cared for in the city’s various hospitals. Catherine Markell attended them on numerous occasions, recording the visits in her diary and remarking sadly when soldiers died from wounds, infection, or disease. On November 24, she visited the Lutheran Church Hospital on Church Street before heading on to Mount Olivet Cemetery. “[P]laced flowers on the graves of our friends of CSA who are buried there,” she wrote somberly.

Despite the bleak situation as the weather turned cold in October and November, Frederick residents received high praise for their heroic actions in assisting the wounded in the city now labeled as “one vast hospital” by the Philadelphia Inquirer. One of those lavishing praise on Fredericktonians was a Baltimore preacher who wrote that, “the inhabitants of that city have covered themselves with a glory high above that of military conquerors, by their noble charities.”

All the while, Frederick residents dealt with the noise

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of wounded soldiers, the illicit activities of those convalescing soldiers who were mobile enough to visit the city’s beer halls, and the ever-present Union military occupation. “Everything from the omni-presence of the soldier is tinged with blue,” one Pennsylvania soldier wrote in his diary. “Officers and privates crowd the sidewalk.” The intrusions of military and hospital into civilian life meant that for months everyday life in the community came to a halt.

Over the course of four months between September 1862 and January 1863, U.S. Army surgeons recorded the treatment of more than 8,000 patients in Frederick’s hospitals—in effect doubling the size of the city’s population. The life-saving care given in the city’s schools, churches, hotels, and private homes could not have been administered without the assistance of the local residents who nursed the wounded and amassed supplies despite the horrors of war.

Wounded were removed from the city’s public spaces in early 1863 and moved to general hospitals in neighboring communities for further recovery—the next step in Letterman’s system of care. Many of the treated, including Confederates, would forever remember the assistance of locals who volunteered at their bedsides.

The efforts of Letterman, the surgeons, and the heroic civilians of Frederick all played a role in revolutionizing medical care and inventing the system of emergency evacuation as we know it. The National Museum of Civil War Medicine welcomes visitors to experience the town’s key part in the development of these vital systems we rely upon today.

Jake Wynn is Director of Interpretation at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine and Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office. John Lustrea is the National Museum of Civil War Medicine’s Education Coordinator.

HARPER’S WEEKLY; COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF CIVIL WAR MEDICINE

Eternally Grateful Above: Confederates sent this card of thanks for their care. Left: A Harper’s Weekly sketch of downtown Frederick.

The twin spires of the Evangelical Lutheran Church can be seen.

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A SOUTHERN WRITER’S DIARY PRESENTS A VIVID PICTURE OF LIFE ON THE HOME FRONT

By Ron Soodalter “March 11, 1862…[P]art of the army had already gone, and there were hurried preparations and hasty farewells, and sorrowful faces turning away from those they loved the best, and were leaving, perhaps forever….

Soon the heavy tramp of the marching columns died away in the distance. The rest of the night was spent in violent fits of weeping at the thought of being left….”

—first entry in Cornelia Peake McDonald’s diary THE THREAT OF DISPLACEMENT, and worse, on the home front during war is an ancient one. Without a standing and accessible force for their protection, those who remain behind in the wake of a departed army find

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IRON HORSES, MEN OF STEEL BY MORT KUNSTLER ©2000 MORT KUNSTLER INC., WWW.MORTKUNSTLER.COM

War at Her Door

themselves at the mercy of the occupying troops, and of the inevitable crippling side effects of war in general.

Cornelia Peake McDonald was just one of the countless thousands who watched their loved ones and sole sources of support march off to war, and who then had to fend for themselves during the dark and often tragic times that followed. As did countless wives and mothers on both sides of the civil conflict that rent the nation, Cornelia fastidiously kept a diary detailing both everyday events ‘Devil Diarist’ and the news of the war.

Cornelia McDonald, As a resident of Winchester, in a photo taken late Va., she was in a prime posiin life. Daughter of a slave-owning family tion to experience and record who married into much of it. Located in the ferwealth, she had lived tile Shenandoah Valley, the at ease until the war. so-called “Breadbasket of the Confederacy,” Winchester changed hands numerous times during the conflict.

Over the four years of the war, several battles, raids and skirmishes took place in the immediate area. As historian Chris Fordney once noted: “No town heard more of the war’s rumblings than Winchester.”

Cornelia Peake was a lifelong Southerner, born into a slave-owning family in Alexandria, Va. In 1847, the 24-year-old Cornelia married Angus William McDonald, a widower 23 years her senior. A prominent Virginian, and West Point graduate, Angus had a resume that included stints as a fur trapper and trader, attorney, state government official, and land owner. He had married once before, fathering nine children before the death of his first wife. In the 14 years before the start of the war, Angus sired nine more with Cornelia. After living in various places, the family settled into “Hawthorne,” an impressive house in Winchester, while Angus practiced law.

Early in the war, Angus served as a colonel in the famed Stonewall Brigade. The following year, he reported to Richmond as an adviser in the Confederate War Department, leaving Cornelia and their children, along with three servants and two slaves, in Winchester. Before departing, Angus instructed her to keep a diary, in order to record local developments.

Prior to the war, Cornelia had given no thought to keeping a personal journal. When she took on the task, however, she did so with a vengeance. From the first entry in March 1862, to her last in late 1863, she reports accurately and in detail on events transpiring around her and her family. Her writing style is often eloquent: “I had a heart for sorrow, and it ached with a ceaseless pang for the country as well as for my own griefs.”

Writes editor/biographer Minrose C. Gwin: “She tells exactly what it was like to be a middle-class white southern woman during the Civil War, what it meant to

A DIARY WITH REMINISCENCES OF THE WAR AND REFUGEE LIFE IN THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY

HIDDEN HEROES

HIDDEN HEROES possessed neither the objectivity nor the ability to write.

On August 23, 1862, her youngest child, 10-month-old Bess—died in her arms of an undetermined illness.

Unable to write for weeks, in late September she finally entered, “Two months since I wrote a line, and oh! The sorrow they have left me. They have taken away my flower. My sweet blue-eyed baby has left me.” She described the child’s death in detail, adding, “I felt as if my heart was lead, I still held her but could see or feel nothing….” Cornelia mentioned Bess often in her writing—“Morning, noon and night I think of her”—affirming her faith in a God that will raise up and “restore my precious handful of dust as beautiful…as before….”

Cornelia was very much a product of her time and culture, and her journal was not without its contradictions. While she could express sympathy for the young Union privates (“Some of them are to be pitied, they are forced into the army…and hate the service”), she never lost her sense of loathing for the Federals in general: “To day…a grand review of dirty Yankees took place….”

Welcome Back Winchester repeatedly found itself either in Confederate or Union control during the war. Here, Rebel troops traverse the town’s main street before fervent locals.

IRON HORSES, MEN OF STEEL BY MORT KUNSTLER ©2000 MORT KUNSTLER INC., WWW.MORTKUNSTLER.COM

A DIARY WITH REMINISCENCES OF THE WAR AND REFUGEE LIFE IN THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY

defend a household against numerous attempts (eventually successful) to take it over…[and] how it felt to be left behind to cope and wait.”

In matter-of-fact tones, Cornelia recorded a seemingly endless litany of horrific experiences. Shortly after a nearby battle, while tending her garden, she stumbled across a human foot. And on Christmas 1862, she wrote of how hundreds of Yankee soldiers broke into her home, smashing the windows and stealing her family’s food out of the oven and off the table.

From the beginning of hostilities in and around Winchester, Cornelia volunteered to tend the wounded. On one occasion, she described the shock of being asked to bathe the wound of a man whose eyes and nose had been blown away. In fleeing the room in distress, “my dress brushed against a pile of amputated limbs heaped up near the door.”

In time, however, even the constant presence of men mutilated or killed in battle failed to elicit an emotional response: “I heard someone describing the pitiful sight of a school boy brought in mortally wounded….[B]ut I had seen the fair dead faces of our boys, in the early days of the war, when all were eager for the fray…so it was no new thing to me.”

There were circumstances, however, when Cornelia

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tasks all day, and when night comes such weariness that I can only go to bed without touching pen or paper.” Also, as she later stated, writing paper was scarce under the current circumstances, and she took advantage of every available space—including “some on blank leaves of old account books, and some between the lines of printed books.”

Sadly, when she and her family were forced to flee Winchester, several months of her entries were lost. She later rewrote them to the best of her impressive memory—and at this point, the work became a hybrid, as much Another example of her ambivamemoir as journal.

A Family Portrait lence was in the occasional mention of The years of conflict exacted a terrible Cornelia Peake McDonald slavery. She purported to loathe the toll on Cornelia. By war’s end, she had (seated center) and seven of institution: “I never in my heart her children, in an 1870 photo lost her husband, a stepson, her sister, thought slavery was right…and daily taken in Lexington, Va., where and her youngest child. In addition, she witnessing what I considered great and her family had endured humiliashe lived for 10 years after leaving Winchester. injustice to them, I could not think tion, hunger, penury, and ultimately how the men I most honored and homelessness. In 1875, after adding admired, my husband among the rest, could constantly reminiscences about the war, she handwrote a copy of justify it…[and] say it was a blessing to the slave, his her nearly 500-page manuscript for each of her survivmaster, and the country….” And yet, in the same para- ing eight children to ensure they had a personal record graph, she wrote, “[E]ven now I say it with shame, that of the war years. A fine artist, she had illustrated her the renewal of the slave trade would be a blessing and diary/memoir with vivid illustrations. Sixty years later, benefit to all, if only the consent of the world could be one of her sons edited and published her book under the obtained to its being made lawful.” title, A Diary With Reminiscences of the War and RefuBy late July 1863, with the Federals poised to retake gee Life in the Shenandoah Valley, 1860-1865. control of Rebel-occupied Winchester, many residents For nearly a decade after the surrender, Cornelia fled in haste. Cornelia loaded a wagon with her posses- made Lexington her home, supporting her family by givsions, and with her remaining children, left Hawthorne ing drawing lessons and selling her art. She later forever, to take refuge in Lexington, Va. Angus man- moved, along with most of her children, to Louisville, aged to visit them from time to time, but even he was Ky., where she died at her daughter’s home, at the age not spared suffering. Along with their teenage son, of 86.

Harry, he was captured the following summer. Harry Cornelia was just one of a handful of women whose managed to escape, but the debilitated Angus was kept writings and defiance in the face of Union occupation earned them the sobriquet “Devil Diarists of Winmanacled in a dank cell, in solitary confinement.

After his release months later, Angus sought to return chester.” So vexed was Union Maj. Gen. Robert Milroy to his family in Lexington; he never made it beyond by both their writing and their constant resistance that Richmond. His already precarious health had suffered a he fumed: “Hell is not full enough. There must be more devastating blow in captivity, and he died on December of these Secession women of Winchester to fill it up.”

But Cornelia’s journal is remarkable in itself, in that 1, 1864. Cornelia knew only that her husband was in Richmond, and she raced to be with him. Unaware he it addressed both the world at war outside her door and had died the day before, she walked into the house the effect it had on her and her family. As a personal where he had been staying: “[T]he first object I saw was record of the war on the Southern home front, it remains my husband’s corpse, stretched on a white bed with a timeless. Writes Gwin, “In the midst of a culture of war, large green wreath around his head and shoulders…!”

McDonald’s writings show the effects of that culture on Even after Angus’ death, Cornelia maintained her white women and children, slaves and former slaves, diary, although the logistics were often challenging, and southern landscape, and southern life.” at times impossible. “Days pass,” she wrote, “and the promise of a daily record not kept. Cares and heavy Ron Soodalter writes from Cold Spring, N.Y.

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COURTESY OF THE HANDLEY REGIONAL LIBRARY, STEWART BELL JR. ARCHIVES

HIDDEN HEROES

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FROM THE CROSSROADS

‘Riding a Raid’ Confederate troopers make their way to the Potomac River during J.E.B. Stuart’s second “Ride Around McClellan” in October 1862.

Another Round J.E.B. STUART’S SECOND “RIDE AROUND MCCLELLAN” PROVED JUST AS CRITICAL AS HIS MORE FAMOUS FIRST

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Lee knew he faced a cautious commander in Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan. Because an aggressive posture might keep McClellan thinking defensively, Lee had his cavalry commander, Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, push his pickets up to the Potomac to suggest strength and prevent enemy patrols and scouts from getting close to the main body of the army to ascertain its true condition.

Lee’s strategy worked. McClellan overestimated the Confederates’ strength and condition and focused on guarding the line of the Potomac rather than pressing and probing the enemy. But to keep McClellan further off-balance, Lee felt a cavalry raid into the Federal rear would help him learn what McClellan was up to. Was he preparing a new campaign into the Shenandoah or had he detached part of his army to threaten the Confederates on a different front? Union cavalry, however, were watching all fordable points on the Potomac, so on October 4, Lee arranged for a force under Colonel John D.

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THE 1862 MARYLAND CAMPAIGN had left the Army of Northern Virginia badly damaged. Now with thousands of stragglers, wounded, and sick scattered across the lower end of the Shenandoah Valley, General Robert E. Lee needed time to restructure his army. He had to absorb newly arriving conscripts and recovered sick and wounded from the Peninsula Campaign; collect his stragglers; evacuate his sick and wounded; and gather supplies. It was a tall order, and to achieve it Lee needed the Union Army of the Potomac to leave him alone. A conventional commander would have withdrawn closer to his army’s rail communications at Staunton, Va., some 90 miles to the south, but that would have entailed abandoning many of his stragglers, sick, and wounded to the enemy, which Lee refused to do. Instead, he chose to reorganize the army near Winchester, which placed him close to the Union forces in Maryland. It was a bold and risky decision because of the condition of his army, but

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By D. Scott Hartwig

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CORBIS HISTORICAL/GETTY IMAGES

FROM THE CROSSROADS Imboden to mount a raid in the direction of Cumber- erstown before changing direction again, marching back land, Md. As Lee had hoped, the raid drew away some through South Mountain and emerging at Emmitsburg, of the Union’s mounted arm. In sending one of his pre- Md., 12 miles south of Gettysburg. He pressed on cious cavalry brigades in pursuit of Imboden, McClellan toward Frederick, eluding Union detachments franticleared the way for Lee to strike. On October 8, he cally trying to track him down, but again deviated from ordered Stuart to assemble a detachment of 1,200–1,500 the course the enemy presumed he would take and cut troopers, cross the Potomac above Williamsport, ride to southeast through Liberty and New Market. By dayChambersburg, destroy the bridge over the Conoco- light, he reached Hyattstown, having covered 70 miles. cheague Creek, and inflict any other damage on military Learning 4,000–5,000 Union soldiers had collected equipment and installations in the area. He was also around Poolesville, near where he wanted to cross the asked to “gain all the information of the position, force, Potomac, and that all nearby fords were guarded, Stuart and probable intention of the enemy which you can.” again relied on deception to keep the enemy guessing.

Apart from that, Lee gave Stuart great discretion in On the morning of the 12th, he proceeded directly on how to conduct the operation, writing, “reliance is Poolesville to give the impression that was his target before cutting west to where the placed upon your skill and judgment Monocacy River emptied into the in the successful execution of this plan, and it is not intended or desired Potomac. Employing skillful combined you should jeopardize the safety of arms tactics with mounted and disyour command, or go farther than mounted troopers, and his artillery, your good judgment and prudence he dispersed the defenders in his path may dictate.” In other words: no and crossed at White’s Ford, the same unnecessary risks. point much of Lee’s army had used to enter Maryland back in September.

With a force of 1,800 troopers and four pieces of field artillery, Stuart on Stuart had escaped to Virginia havthe 9th marched from Darkesville, ing lost in two days only a handful Va., to Hedgesville, two miles below with minor wounds. As he had the Potomac, and camped for the famously done near Richmond in the night out of sight of enemy scouts. At spring, he had ridden around the daylight on the 10th the Southern entire Army of the Potomac, covering horsemen crossed the river at nearly 130 miles and confirming for McCoy’s Ferry and moved rapidly, Lee that the entire Federal army narrowly missing an encounter with remained in place. “The results of this the Union division of Maj. Gen. Jacob expedition, in a moral and political point of view, can hardly be estiD. Cox, who had been ordered to the Change of Plans mated,” Stuart claimed. That wasn’t Kanawha Valley. By noon, they had Stuart’s ability to adapt his covered nearly 26 miles, reaching bombast either. In those areas, it had strategy served him well during his 130-mile excursion.

Mercersburg, Pa. Intending to march succeeded beyond Lee’s and Stuart’s next on Hagerstown—a large Union most ambitious hopes. The seemingly supply hub—Stuart learned that enemy forces there fumbling, hapless Union effort to trap Stuart, caused were on the alert and adjusted, heading instead to McClellan great embarrassment and inflicted damage Chambersburg. He arrived, unexpected, at dark, to com- on his already fragile relationship with the Lincoln administration from which it never recovered. It also plete a ride of more than 50 miles.

All vestiges of Union authority had departed and the eroded the Union army’s confidence in its cavalry. graycoats took control of the city without incident. The “I fear our cavalry is an awful botch,” Colonel Charles troopers proceeded to cut telegraph wires, paroled sick Wainwright of the 1st Corps complained unfairly, when and wounded Union soldiers in hospitals in the city, it was McClellan’s defensive posture that had kept his seized nearly 300 horses from residents, destroyed rail- cavalry erratically dispersed. What had actually made road facilities, as well as a large quantity of equipment, the Federals look foolish was Stuart’s superb manageclothing, weapons, and ammunition. ment of the raid. He had seized the initiative, moved “After mature consideration,” Stuart decided to head faster than anticipated, never took the route they next for Leesburg, Va. Knowing it was necessary to expected, was informed by excellent intelligence about deceive the enemy as to his true destination, however, enemy movements, and acted boldly but prudently. he marched toward Gettysburg. But after crossing South Mountain, he turned south, feinting toward Hag- Scott Hartwig writes from the crossroads of Gettysburg.

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By David A. Welker

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outhern fortunes turned on a dime in mid-1862. The first full year of the war had begun badly with several setbacks out West, and by June the Confederates faced a double threat in the Eastern Theater, with Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac threatening Richmond and Maj. Gen. John Pope’s newly formed Army of Virginia taking the field. The situation would change in August, however, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee seized the offensive with his daring Virginia Campaign. Sending Maj. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s command— nearly half his army—north, Lee determined to interpose between Pope’s army and Washington, forcing a decisive battle to advance Southern independence by pressuring Abraham Lincoln to negotiate a separation or inducing Britain and France to intervene.

The Confederates’ August 9 victory at Cedar Mountain, near Culpeper, enabled Jackson to push east and strike the rich Federal supply depot at Manassas Junction. Resupplied, Jackson then moved north to await the arrival of Maj. Gen. James Longstreet’s half of the army, only to be drawn into battle before that could occur. The ensuing Second Battle of Manassas on August 28-30 would yield another victory that Lee wasted no time trying to exploit.

On August 31, a dawn cavalry probe by Confederate Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart revealed that Pope’s retreating army had stopped behind works at Centreville, Va., and was beginning to receive reinforcements from McClellan’s fresh 2nd and 4th Corps. Although Lee knew a direct attack was ill advised, he was determined to provoke another major fight by again trying to place Jackson’s command between Pope and Washington, to be joined in the effort

by Longstreet. By midday that Sunday, Lee had Jackson moving north from Manassas along a thoroughfare known as Gum Springs Road before turning east and heading down the Little River Turnpike toward the intersection of Jermantown.

Though shaken, Pope remained committed to attacking Lee’s army from his position in Centreville until Union cavalry revealed witnessing a large Rebel infantry column already

Close Call August 1862 had been a triumphant month for Stonewall Jackson and his men, beginning with victory at Cedar Mountain on the 9th.

The winning streak nearly ended September 1. in the army’s rear—Jackson’s command. Now resigned to a general retreat, Pope knew he needed to find and block that force, assigning the small 9th Corps to the task. The 9th Corps was commanded by Maj. Gen. Jesse Reno, but Reno’s illness had left Brig. Gen. Isaac I. Stevens in charge.

In the afternoon September 1, Jackson halted his column at Ox Hill, just southeast of the prestigious Chantilly Plantation, before sending the Stonewall Brigade and 5th Virginia Cavalry down Little River Turnpike to probe the Union position at Jermantown. That probe determined that Jermantown was strongly held by two Union brigades and cavalry commanded by Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker.

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dding to Jackson’s woes was a late summer sky that had turned ominous, but even that storm paled in comparison to the threat presented by the unexpected appearance of Isaac Stevens, leading the 9th Corps across a series of rolling fields south of Ox Hill, squarely on Jackson’s right flank.

With just more than 2,000 men in his command, Stevens was determined to strike while he possessed the advantage, realizing that to wait would undoubtedly allow Jackson to respond with his full force, some 15,000 men strong. There was a brief delay, as Reno, still quite ill, appeared and deferred command to Stevens. Reno, however, agreed to lead the corps’ 2nd Division in support of the main attack, which began about 5 p.m.

Union skirmishers advanced ahead of the main column. Pressing through the marshy swale surrounding the Reid house, the Irishmen of the 28th Massachusetts and the 79th New York “Highlanders”—comprising the 1st Division’s 3rd Brigade—could see the wood line ahead.

“Not a sight nor sound betrayed the presence of the enemy,” recalled

Major Hazard Stevens, the general’s son, an assistant adjutant of the 79th. “[T]here was nothing to be seen but the open field, extending two hundred yards in front and closed by the wall of woods, with the old zigzag rail fence at its edge.”

As they advanced, Highlander William Lusk exclaimed to the younger Stevens, “There is no enemy there! [T]hey have fallen back; we shall find nothing there.” But within yards of the woods, Lusk’s hopeful words were mocked by a deadly volley that staggered Stevens’ line.

Four Confederate brigades steadily concentrated their fire on the Union attackers. Particularly effective was Harry Hays’ Brigade of Louisianians, commanded by Colonel Henry B. Strong, holding Lawton’s right flank. To their right, Brig. Gen. Maxcy Gregg’s Brigade, also part of A.P. Hill’s Division, had joined Field’s and Branch’s brigades. Although the Southerners were no longer concealed, the trees and fence solidified and reinforced their position.

Isaac Stevens was not done yet, however. As his men returned fire, the general shifted his line left 40 yards by pushing the 50th Pennsylvania beyond the 28th Massachusetts. Stevens then grabbed the 79th’s national flag and personally renewed the attack, only to be killed moments later. Spurred by his heroics, however, the attack rolled on.

The troops in Jackson’s center were in no position to repel this strike. Hays’ Louisianans had borne the brunt of the assault, taking fire from both the 79th New York and the 28th Massachusetts. Colonel Strong knew his thinning brigade was nearing collapse and asked Lawton to be replaced. Told Georgians under Colonel Edward L. Thomas would do so, Strong ordered his men back without waiting for those replacements to appear. In no need of persuasion, Hays’ men began streaming rearward.

Restored Reputation In August 1862, morale problems compelled the 79th New York to mutiny. Isaac Stevens was brought in, and under his leadership the Highlanders had become a reputable fighting force by Ox Hill.

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trong’s hasty action invited disaster, for at that moment the Federals entered the woods. Advancing with a fury, the Highlanders and Irishmen opened a melee worthy of their Celtic forebears. Thrusting bayonets and swinging muskets like clubs, they shattered what remained of Hays’ Brigade. As Dennis Ford of the 28th Massachusetts recalled, “When we got into the woods, we ran through what we did not shoot. We bayonetted them. One man begged for mercy, a yankee ran him through.” The ferocious attack Stevens had ordered before his death now threatened to tear asunder Jackson’s line.

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ticularly so now that Federals operating on the nearby Warrenton Pike, paralleling Jackson’s route, had uncovered the Confederate advance. To secure that flank, Maj. Gen. A.P. Hill pushed Field’s Brigade—Colonel James M. Brockenbrough commanding—and Brig. Gen. Lawrence O’Bryan Branch’s North Carolina brigade south 100 yards from the Little River Turnpike.

Jackson followed by shifting his command into a defensive arc, building on Hill’s two brigades north of the nearby Reid farmhouse. On Hill’s left, Maj. Gen. Robert Ewell’s Division—now commanded by Brig. Gen. Alexander Lawton, after Ewell’s grievous wounding at Second Manassas—comprised Jackson’s center, straddling the Ox Road. Jackson’s former division, under Brig. Gen. William E. Starke, formed the left, extending through the thick woods to the Little River Turnpike. From this alignment, they would await Longstreet’s expected arrival.

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Jackson’s center precisely for such an emergency—was suddenly unavailable, however.

Shortly before, General Starke had appeared in person and frantically appealed to Early for help against Reno’s 51st New York, advancing on Jackson’s far left. With little choice, Early began moving his brigade away. In the confusion of storm and battle, however, the 13th, 25th, and 31st Virginia regiments were inadvertently left behind.

Amid the downpour, those lonely regiments were suddenly swept up in a torrent of men as Hays’ shattered brigade raced for the rear, followed by the Union 3rd Brigade, now commanded by Lt. Col. David Morrison. What they did not see was General Early. But at this moment of chaos and uncertainty, three Virginian leaders would emerge to avert pending defeat.

Best known of the three was 13th Virginia Colonel James Alexander Walker. Born August 27, 1832, near Mount Meridian, Va., Walker was an exceptionally bright and headstrong boy. Frequently truant from school, he once vowed to someday return a teacher’s beating.

He was provided that opportunity in 1852 as a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute, although to a different strict instructor—Major Thomas J. Jackson. Once, after Walker successfully completed a blackboard math problem, he watched as Jackson erased the blackboard and directed Walker to repeat his work. When Walker demanded to know why he should do so, Jackson had him arrested.

Walker promptly challenged the major to a duel, to which Jackson replied by expelling Walker—preventing the cadet from graduating third in his class.

Walker then studied law at the University of Virginia and passed the bar in 1856, opening a practice in Newbern, Va. In 1858, he married

Rising to the Occasion Left to right: Colonel James Alexander Walker, 13th Virginia, Captain Robert Doak Lilley, 25th Virginia, and Colonel John Stringer Hoffman, 31st Virginia, led the Confederates’ timely response at Chantilly. All three would survive the war, but Hoffman lost a foot in February 1865.

Sarah A. Poage, who would bear him six children; in 1860, he was serving as a Virginia state attorney.

With the outbreak in war, Walker raised the Pulaski Guards, which became Company C, 4th Virginia Infantry. After leading the unit during its baptism of fire at the Battle of Falling Waters (Hoke’s Run) on July 2, 1861, Walker garnered a commendation from now-Maj. Gen. Thomas Jackson and promotion for gallantry. Accepting his promotion from Jackson in person uncharacteristically unsettled Walker—they had not met since his VMI challenge—but Jackson received the new lieutenant colonel warmly, as if no tension between them had ever existed.

Serving briefly as Colonel A.P. Hill’s deputy with the 13th Virginia, Walker on February 26, 1862, was promoted to colonel and given command of the regiment upon Hill’s rise to brigade chief. He led the 13th throughout Jackson’s 1862 Shenandoah Valley Campaign, including fighting at Cross Keys and Port Republic. Joining Jackson’s force for the Seven Days Battles, Walker led the 13th through fighting at Gaines’ Mill—assuming brigade command when Brig. Gen. Arnold Elzey was wounded—and then at White Oak Swamp and Malvern Hill. Although Early assumed formal command of the brigade on July 1—which restored Walker to regimental command—both Lee and Jackson had noticed the fiery colonel’s skill. The 13th Virginia certainly benefited from Walker’s leadership at Cedar Mountain and then Second Manassas, where the 13th and Early’s Brigade turned back repeated Union assaults on Jackson’s left in the Unfinished Railroad Cut.

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hat Captain Robert Doak Lilley of the 25th Virginia acted as decisively as he did that stormy September day might have surprised many who knew him as a survey instrument salesman before entering Confederate service. Born January 28, 1836, near Greeneville, Va., Lilley graduated from Washington College and was in Charleston, S.C.—presumably on business—when the firing on Fort Sumter occurred. Back in Virginia, he recruited the Augusta Lee Rifles, which in May became the 25th Virginia’s Company C, Lilley its captain.

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Star in the Making Jubal Early wasted no time making a name for himself, earning a brigadier’s star for his showing at Blackburn’s Ford in July 1861.

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that approved secession. Lacking personal interest in preserving slavery, Hoffman supported secession only after being promised that future tax income on slaves would reach his county.

On May 13, 1861, he enlisted in the Harrison State Guards, which in July became Company C, 31st Virginia Infantry. Although appointed sergeant major—the regiment’s top enlisted man—Hoffman missed its first battle at Rich Mountain. Politics’ pull remained strong because Hoffman spent Chaos at Chantilly much of 1861 in Richmond, advising the The 13th, 25th, and Judge Advocate General and Inspector 31st Virginia succeeded General’s offices on property law and other in blunting the 5 p.m. legal matters. Although being in Richmond attack by Stevens, in kept him from the 31st’s first victory—the charge of Reno’s 9th Corps. Kearny was killed December 13 Battle of Alleghany Mounduring his subsequent tain—it likely explains how the very next attack on A.P. Hill’s day Hoffman vaulted over more experiposition in the Cornfield. enced officers to become the regiment’s major. Despite others’ consternation at his elevation, John Hoffman quickly proved a skilled field grade officer and on May 1, 1862, was given command of the 31st.

Illness, however, kept Hoffman from active service for much of 1862.

Though present at the May 8 Battle of McDowell, Hoffman missed the fighting “violently ill” and then spent months convalescing in a Richmond home that kept him from leading the 31st in Jackson’s Valley Campaign and the Seven Days fighting at Gaines’ Mill and Malvern Hill. Only by August 25 had he recovered enough to rejoin the regiment, having missed its critical Cedar Mountain victory.

Hoffman led his regiment into battle for the first time on August 29 at Second Manassas, joining Walker’s 13th Virginia guarding Jackson’s extreme right flank. Serving later that day as the brigade’s skirmishers earned Early’s notice that “the Thirty-first Regiment by skirmishing kept the body of the enemy’s infantry…in check until the head of General Longstreet’s corps made its appearance…” Although some standing amid the thunderous storm and advancing enemy at Chantilly might have questioned Hoffman’s abilities, he quickly dispelled any doubts.

Acting intuitively, with coordination born of natural leadership, Walker, Lilley, and Hoffman instantly pushed their regiments forward. A fresh line of veteran troops pressed south like a tidal wave, sweeping away in an instant Stevens’ attackers and with them Union hopes for breaking Jackson’s line and victory in this fight. As Morrison’s brigade fled in disorder, the 13th, 25th, and 31st Virginia restored Jackson’s position along the wood line. Walker, Lilley, and Hoffman’s initiative had literally saved Stonewall Jackson and the Confederacy from disaster.

Early’s thorough official report on the Virginia Campaign, which details the Ox Hill fight, barely mentions this action, however: “On reaching the position General Starke wished me to occupy, I found that three of my regiments (the Thirteenth, Twenty-fifth, and Thirty-first Virginia Regiments) had not followed the rest of the brigade, and I immediately sent my aide, Lieutenant [S.H.] Early, to see what was the cause of it. He found these regiments engaged with the enemy in their front, Hays’ brigade, under Colonel Strong, of the 6th Louisiana Regiment, having fallen back in confusion and passed through these regiments, followed by the enemy, just as my orders were being carried out.”

Neither in this report nor in his 1912 memoir did Early note the importance of his three regiments’ action or list Walker, Lilley, or Hoffman by name.

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tle of Rich Mountain on June 15, ended in disaster when most of the regiment surrendered, Lilley and Jedediah Hotchkiss (later Jackson’s noted mapmaker) led a small band in escaping. Joining Jackson’s 1862 Valley Campaign, Lilley and the 25th Virginia were attached to Elzey’s Brigade, fighting at Cross Keys and Port Republic and joining Jackson in the Seven Days. Lilley served here under Colonel Walker, commanding the brigade through actions at Gaines’ Mill, White Oak Swamp, and Malvern Hill.

When the 25th Virginia wavered and broke at Cedar Mountain on August 9, Lilley grabbed the regiment’s colors and restored order, earning Early’s commendation for gallantry. Early again noted his leadership after Second Manassas, when in command of the brigade’s skirmishers, Lilley repulsed an advancing Federal column—probably Stevens’ 79th New York, ironically. Little did Lilley know just how soon he would again see the Highlanders.

The third Virginian seizing the moment at Chantilly was Colonel John Stringer Hoffman of the 31st Virginia, the oldest and least experienced of the three. Born June 25, 1821, in Weston, Va., Hoffman hailed from a “Unionist-leaning” western Virginia county that seceded from the Confederacy and joined the state of West Virginia in 1863. By 1841, he was studying law with his uncle, a judge in nearby Clarksburg. Hoffman was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates’ 1859-60 session, serving also in the April 1861 Special Session

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September 17, but returned to again lead Early’s Brigade at Fredericksburg, this time officially. In mid-May 1863, Walker was given command of the Stonewall Brigade and promoted to brigadier general. At Gettysburg, he led the brigade on Culp’s Hill, earning the nickname “Stonewall Jim.” In the fighting at Spotsylvania’s Bloody Angle in May 1865, his left arm and elbow were shattered. After recovering and returning in February 1865, Walker was given command of Ramseur’s/ Pegram’s Division, which he retained until the Appomattox surrender.

Resuming his law practice, Walker was elected as a Democrat to the Virginia House of Delegates’ 1871-72 Session. That year, Walker was also awarded the VMI degree Jackson’s expulsion had cost him so long ago. Elected Virginia’s 13th lieutenant governor in 1878, Walker by 1890 had become a charter member of the Virginia Bar Association. He returned in 1895 to the Virginia House for two sessions, though this time as a Republican. His efforts at the decade’s end to reenter the House were highly acrimonious and during a March 1899 deposition related to one election loss, Walker was shot twice by his opponents. He would die October 21, 1901, in Wytheville, Va. Lilley commanded the 25th Virginia through Antietam but returned to his company in early October, remaining in that post through Fredericksburg. Made the 25th’s major on January 28, 1863, Lilley would fight at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, cited for gallantry in the fighting on Culp’s Hill. On August 20, he was given command of the 25th and

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‘A Gallant Charge’ One-armed Union Maj. Gen. Phil Kearny did not realize he had ridden into a group of Georgia troops after ordering a charge. He was shot in the hip and killed as he tried to ride away.

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Regardless, the Virginians’ decisive response and the loss of Union leadership caused by Stevens’ death brought a lull in the fighting that enabled Jackson to straighten and strengthen his line. When Maj. Gen. Philip Kearny’s division attempted to restart the fight, Jackson was more than ready. Kearny’s death amid the gloaming—he would be killed by Georgians under A.P. Hill while leading a charge through Reid’s ripe cornfield—as well as encroaching darkness finally ended the fighting. Rainsoaked Federals and Confederates settled down for an unpleasant night.

Dawn revealed that Union troops had slipped away in the dark to Washington and safety, signaling that Lee’s effort to follow up the Second Manassas victory had faltered.

Regardless, after a day or two of rest Southern troops began the long march north into Maryland. Many miles and battles lay ahead of the two armies before Appomattox Court House in April 1865, and Walker, Lilley, and Hoffman had considerable roles yet to play.

Walker found himself once more commanding a brigade, replacing wounded Isaac Trimble, throughout the coming Maryland Campaign. He was wounded at Antietam on

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made a lieutenant colonel, leading the regiment in the Mine Run Campaign and at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania—fighting so costly that the 25th and 48th Virginia were merged on May 21, 1864. Ten days later, Lilley was temporarily elevated to brigadier general and given command of Pegram’s Brigade before being joining Early’s Valley Army. At Stephenson’s Depot, on July 20, 1864, Lilley rallied his troops but was thrice wounded and left on the field to be captured. Then left behind by retreating Federals, he eventually recovered to command reserve forces in the Valley until the war’s end. Postwar, Lilley became financial officer at Washington College, where Robert E. Lee was president.

Never married, he died on November 12, 1886, and buried in Staunton, Va. Hoffman would lead the 31st Virginia through Antietam and Fredericksburg. Ever the politician, he requested leave on March 15, 1863, to attend the Virginia House session in Richmond, a request Early quickly denied.

Regardless, Hoffman led the 31st through Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, and assumed brigade command on July 10 until replaced by Brig. Gen. John Pegram in October. When Pegram was wounded at the Wilderness on May 5, 1864, Hoffman resumed brigade command. The next evening, he stumbled upon unidentified troops in the darkness. Upon learning he faced New Yorkers, he was able to get away. Hoffman led the brigade at Spotsylvania—slightly wounded in helping to recapture the Mule Shoe—as well as North Anna and Cold Harbor until replaced by Lilley on June 4, which returned Hoffman to the 31st.

Joining Early’s Army of the Valley, Hoffman led the 31st at Monocacy, Md., Early’s assault on Washington, D.C., and in the Shenandoah Valley fighting. On September 21, Hoffman resumed brigade command—Pegram assuming command of Maj. Gen. Robert Rodes’ Division following Rodes’ death at Third Winchester—leading it through battle at Fisher’s Hill and Cedar Creek.

During the Siege of Petersburg, Hoffman was gravely wounded leading the brigade’s probe of Union lines at Hatcher’s Run on February 6, 1865. Struck in the left leg and carried from the field, Hoffman wavered near death in a Petersburg hospital until summoning his friend, Surgeon Archibald Atkinson, who reported finding “two inches of the tibia bone protruding beyond the flesh.” Saving Hoffman’s life required removing his left foot.

Given a medical furlough to recover in Rich-

History Was Made Here Chantilly was a relatively small-scale battle, but the enormity of its Civil War legacy cannot be overlooked. A grassroots effort in the mid-1980s to establish what is now 4.9-acre Ox Hill Battlefield Park, featuring stone monuments to slain Union generals Phil Kearny and Isaac Stevens (above), marked the genesis of the modern Civil War battlefield preservation movement, now carried on by organizations such as the American Battlefield Trust. It also is home to the nation’s first bilingual Civil War Trails sign, with text in Spanish and Korean.

mond, Hoffman was paroled there on May 9.

Returning home was harder for Hoffman than his fellow Chantilly counterparts. Time spent in Baltimore being fitted for a prosthetic leg offered hope “that with time I can walk again,” but his Clarksburg hometown had for two years been in pro-Union West Virginia, which barred former Confederates from practicing law. Hoffman, in response, traveled frequently between Clarksburg, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and elsewhere, selling parcels from his considerable land holdings. In 1872, with most anti-Confederate laws by then repealed, Hoffman was elected to the state’s Supreme Court of Appeals, serving until the effects of his never-healed wound forced his resignation. Never married, Hoffman died on November 18, 1877. He is buried in the Clarksburg Odd Fellows Cemetery.

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he three officers, who crossed paths frequently during the war, had much in common. Respected at home, though none was a soldier by profession, each eagerly served Virginia’s secession cause from early on. All rose quickly to brigade or division command and two became brigadier generals. Each played a vital role in the war’s most significant battles, two at Gettysburg and another at Spotsylvania. Although all three were wounded, they would survive to see the war end and the nation reunited. Even so, what the three achieved amid a thunderous downpour at Chantilly would be perhaps their finest moment. By demonstrating remarkable leadership at such a critical moment of the battle, Walker, Lilley, and Hoffman helped save Stonewall and prevent a disastrous Confederate defeat.

David A. Welker, a professional historian and military analyst for the federal government, is the author of Tempest at Ox Hill (Da Capo, 2002) and The Cornfield: Antietam’s Bloody Turning Point (Casemate Press, 2020). He lives in Centreville, Va. SEPTEMBER 2021

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North of the Potomac Confederate troops march through the Maryland countryside during one of Robert E. Lee’s unsuccessful invasions of the North.

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Crossing the ‘Rubicon’

A “High Private” relays his experiences on the march from Manassas, Va., to Sharpsburg, Md. Edited by Robert Lee Hodge

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After the war, Hunter discovered that the Abingdon Plantation where he had grown up and which he had inherited had been confiscated by the U.S. Tax Commissioner’s Office in 1864 for unpaid taxes. The taxes were to be paid in-person, and because Hunter was a Confederate soldier that could not be done. He won his lands back after Bennett v. Hunter was decided by the Supreme Court in 1870.

(Ironically, former Union Maj. Gen. James A. Garfield was a member of Hunter’s legal team.) Today the ruins of Abingdon are located between parking garages at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

Hunter passed away in 1914 and was buried in the Confederate section of Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors, a Confederate battle flag draped over his coffin.

In Memory of Sacrifice and Comrades On May 24, 1889, the 17th Virginia Monument was dedicated at Washington and Prince streets in Alexandria, Va.—28 years to the date Alexandria troops first left the city for Confederate service. It is uncertain whether Hunter (pictured right during and after the war) attended the dedication. The monument was taken down preventatively by the United Daughters of the Confederacy during the controversial summer of 2020.

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The following account, taken from Alexander Hunter’s “Four Years in the Ranks,” begins on August 31, 1862—the day after the Army of Northern Virginia’s resounding victory over Maj. Gen. John Pope’s Federal army at the Second Battle of Manassas. Most of Hunter’s original spelling and punctuation are retained, but paragraph breaks have been added to help with readability.

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN DONNELLY; JOHNNY REB AND BILLY YANK: A SOLDIER’S MEMOIR; LIBRARY OF VIRGINIA

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n July 1994, during a visit to Manassas National Battlefield Park, the late historian Brian Pohanka shared with me an unpublished account of the epic fighting that had occurred upon those fields August 28-30, 1862—at the battle known across the South as Second Manassas and in the North as Second Bull Run. The account had been written by Private Alexander Hunter of the 17th Virginia Infantry, who served in Company A (the “Alexandria Riflemen”). Hunter later became known as the author of a 1905 “novel” Johnny Reb and Billy Yank, and would also write about his experiences during the 1862 Maryland Campaign for the Southern Historical Society Papers and the Baltimore Sun. The fascinating material Pohanka shared led me to the Virginia Historical Society (VHS), where I found a fragmented, never-published 1866 manuscript titled “Four Years in the Ranks” that Hunter had penned under the nom de plume “Chasseur” (French for “hunter”).

There were considerable differences between the material in “Four Years in the Ranks” and Johnny Reb and Billy Yank. Notably, some of the strong views Hunter expressed in 1866 seem to have abated by 1905 when his book came out. The last sentence in his manuscript provides one striking example of that: “To every Yankee I tender most cordially my undying HATE—now and ever after.”

Hunter served throughout the war, first with the 17th Virginia and then with the 4th Virginia Cavalry. Captured June 30, 1862, at Frayser’s Farm (Glendale) during the Seven Days, he was exchanged in time to fight at Second Manassas. After being captured at Sharpsburg, the self-proclaimed “High Private” would be exchanged again. His stint with the 4th Virginia Cavalry began in July 1863. Captured once more, he attempted to escape twice, succeeding on the second opportunity and returning to his regiment for the remainder of the war.

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CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN DONNELLY; JOHNNY REB AND BILLY YANK: A SOLDIER’S MEMOIR; LIBRARY OF VIRGINIA

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n Evant! En Evant! It was near forenoon…before the order to march was given, and slowly we wended our way through the battlefield – Ah! What a contrast, war stood now in all its misery divested of all the glittering panoply – and proud display, the dead lay in heaps as they fell, in every conceivable attitude of death. The corpses were all divested of their outer clothing, not one had his shoes or hat left him – it was a sad sight to see them thus, and made one heartily curse the pillagers and the miserable camp followers that followed like birds of prey, the wake of our army, the true soldiers rarely condescend to strip his fallen enemies he leaves that to the regular plunderer – but if he finds that he has a purse in his pocket, or a good pair of shoes, & he is only carrying out his camp education, which teaches him to help himself with what he desires most.

It was a most disagreeable day – the rain fell with a steady ceaseless stream, that seemed as if it had made up its mind to keep pouring down until every thing was saturated, the mud was getting deep too – and we trudged along, too gloomy to talk with each other, but after a while we began to brighten up some, as the hasty retreat after the enemy became visible – knapsacks, guns, and all kinds miscellaneous articles belonging to the equipment of the soldier, were lying in the greatest profusion all along the road, and the men would pick up letters, daguerreotypes – and newspapers – and read them out aloud their natural buoyant spirits of the soldier soon showed itself in bursts of hearty laughter as some very funny extract would be read and some tender love passages criticized.

After these subjects exhausted themselves, the conversation naturally turned on the events of the late battle – and the various unfortunates who had been killed – grieved over….The seventeenth suffered severely, but there was an unusually large number of wounded. The bearing, and the bravery of the different men were freely discussed, and woe [illegible] the man who had acted timidly during the battle, ridicule and scorn were freely heaped upon him & he had to bear it as well as he could. Our regiment if I mistake not recaptured (or found them on the field) three or four of our colors, and took one Stars & Stripes from the enemy. Sam Coleman of Co. E was the man who took the flag – it was an act of

distinguished courage, that in any army but ours he would have been promoted on the field with a commission, but his gallantry was only rewarded by the high promotion of fourth corporal.

All along the road evidences of the hasty retreat met our view. We passed a slaughtered beef – skinned and cleaned, but they were in such a hurry that they had not time to divide it – many of our regiment had fresh beef that

Fine Imports Above: Imported English equipment, like this knapsack and mess tin, were carried by thousands of Southern soldiers.

Top: An unidentified 17th Virginia soldier, possibly a member of the Dominion Guard.

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Secondhand Jacket?

As the story goes, Hunter was given this jacket to wear by the sister of a fellow private who was killed at Second Manassas. More than likely, it dates from Hunter’s late-war service with the 4th Virginia Cavalry.

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offered up as a sacrifice on the atlas of his country to take her away too.

And I [illegible] the latter part of her last letter which ended thus, “And now my dearest Henry I must say farewell, God in his divine mercy grant that you may escape – Do your duty – and pray earnestly that he may shield you, and take you in his own good time. Farewell Henry – my mind is appressed with sad forebodings, an undefinable feeling of boding ill hangs over me. I try to shake it off but I cannot, Heaven protect my

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It was the last letter that affected me — Never in my life have I ever read an epistle, which for beauty of style, affecting words, and inimitable pathos, could approach that letter.

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night & consequence. No rations had been issued out to us, but most of the men had filled their haversacks with captured provisions.

After a long march with frequent halts, we bivouacked for the night in the woods – and being so tired we went to sleep without taking the trouble to build any fires.

The next day it cleared up temporarily and we did not resume our march until late. I took this opportunity to look at the pocket book, daguerreotype and letters, which had remained in my pocket unforgotten, I opened the pocket book with a trembling hand, expecting to see a small fortune, in the way of a roll of bank notes[.] [J]udge of my disappointment when I found that the book was stuffed out with black thread & needles, very useful articles in their way no doubt, but not very valuable to a man whose clothes were in rags, and tatters.

Next I looked at the likeness and could not

but be struck with the look of mingled sweetness, and beauty of the face – I gazed long at it, and then turned to the letters to find out who she was. It was so sad – so sweet – so touching, that it brought even tears to my eyes, a rough reckless soldier that I was. The first letter was written to him just after his arrival in the army.

It alluded in touching terms to their long engagement, [illegible] her vows of love, and giving him pure & holy advice, there was a deep [illegible] in her letters, which showed that she was truly a Christian.

It was the last letter that affected me – Never in my life have I ever read an epistle, which for beauty of style, affecting words, and inimitable pathos, could approach that letter. I commenced by saying that she knew that he would soon be called upon to go through a bloody battle, and it had been the tenor of her prayers, prayers for her safety, that night after night would she dream of seeing him brought back to her all bloody and dying, that her health was suffering so, that she knew if anything happened to him – that her heart strings would snap asunder, then followed passionate appeals to God, to protect him her cherished Idol, and if he must be

soldier boy – if he takes you Henry I will soon follow, let your prayers assend humbly to the throne of the Most High – and pray yourself for safety. One last lingering farewell – remember not to expose yourself for on your lip hangs mine. Farewell my darling. If we do not meet on this earth, we will meet in Heaven.

Fondly but sadly your ___ Lucy” The letter was dated G.F. New Jersey – I thought, and how will you take the news, even now you are watching, and praying for him – and he lies dark and stiff – with that face that you loved so well shattered by the ball, and I thought how will she receive the news, and I thought then there is wailing and weeping up in the Northern households as well as the Southern, and many a woman in both sections of the country, were weeping over their loved ones who fell in the Second Battle of Manassas & that night the image of that girl was much up in my dreams.

he next morning we continued are march down the turnpike, the rain recommenced, and everything look[ed] blue & melancholy, a good many men now began to straggle out – and go to [illegible] houses. On we went through the mud – and the mud so thick that it was late in the evening when we arrived at Chantilly, too late to participate in the battle, the rain still poured down, and all our ammunition was wet through, our musket barrels full of water, and now uncomfortable set of men, could not be found, the only consolation we had was that the Yankees were in a worse plight than we were. It was sad to witness the destructions of waste of the once lovely Chantilly [Plantation] – a more beautiful place could not be found – but what a change was wrought on it in a few short days by the hand of the foe, the fences were all leveled – the outbuilding nearly turned down, one of the finest shade PENNSYLVANIA trees cut down – choice fruit trees hack[ed] down in mere wantoness, and the house itself was not spared. The furniture that was left Destination Sharpsburg was smashed, the plastering from the walls Hagerstown Stonewall Jackson’s troops knocked off. Everything defiled, and defaced left Manassas on August – it was the same old picture, and Chantilly, 31, reaching Chantilly the once the seat of elegant hospitality, and the next day. The trek continued Boonsboro home of wealth and refinement, was in a few September 4th, with stops Sharpsburg hours changed into a place that was hardly at Dranesville and Leesburg decent for a hog pen. before a cross of the Potomac Frederick WEST at White’s Ford. The 17th That night we had to sleep out in the rain VIRGINIA Virginia reached Boonsboro with no covering from the inclement weather, (statehood 1863) on the 14th, a day after and nothing for our beds, but the muddy advancing to Hagerstown. earth. But such was our fatigue, after tramping all day in the mire & mud that exhausted White’s Ford nature accommodating herself to any circumstances gave completely out – and we rested Leesburg at will as if we lay on beds of down.

Potoma c Ri In the morning [September 2] we could ver hardly move our stiffened limbs, and our bodWASHINGTON, D.C. ies were chilled through [but] fortunately the Dranesville sun came out – and its hot beams soon dried our clothes[;] still we were in a wretched situChantilly ation, no rations had been issued out and those that had their haversacks [stocked] MILES Manassas were not disposed to divide except to their 0 5 intimate friends. Through the charity of one of my messmates I got a meagre breakfast, and

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thought as I was eating it – where’s the next coming from – that thought passed through the heads of many hungry men that morning, I have no doubt.

The next morning [September 3] we started on our march leaving behind some of our best soldiers, who wore out, and being taken sick were unable to proceed any further. Among them was my old comrade and messmate Walter A. [Addison] – by whose side I had marched and fought for two long years, he was attacked by one of those lingering camp fevers which bought so many of our soldiers the grave, he had heroically kept up – but could now march no further. It was with a heavy heart that I shook hands and bade him farewell and left him lying on the side of the road – where he found his way to some farm house and ultimately recovered.

As we marched down the pike, the citizens by every means in their power, testified their delight in being relieved from the presence of the foe, who used them so badly – the little they had saved they cheerfully divided with our hungry and foot sore soldiers, they were too kind – and their generosity bore its bitter fruits, Much better for our cause had it been, if

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Getting By On Scraps A Rebel soldier gnaws on a corn cob during the 1862 Maryland Campaign. As Hunter would note, limited or nonexistent rations was a dire problem for Lee’s army during its march to Sharpsburg.

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wo or three days by steady and continuous marches we reached Leesburg, we passed through little [illegible] town in the evening – the whole town stood out in the streets – to see us go by. Some waving their handkerchiefs some taken on animated [illegible] to friends – and many crying…as they bade farewell to some relation whom they thought they may never see again. We did not stop but pressed right on mile after mile we marched – and it was late at night before we halted, and then with about half the men we started with, every hundred yards, some soldier would drop out [of the] ranks, and unchecked by the officers would wander where their inclination led them, indeed during the who[le] march into Maryland, to such an extent was the vice of strag[g]ling carried to that it resembled the retreat of a demoralized army, more than it did of a body of troops flushed with success, and advancing to conquest.

We were on the road in the morning, with our faces turned towards the Potomac – still no rations had been delivered to us – not once had we received our food, since the battle of Manassas, and our breakfast consisted of roasting ears, and apples, which we cooked in any imaginable way, to make them as palatable as possible. About the middle of the day we arrived at the river. And as its blue waters first gladdened our sight – a simultaneous cheer burst from our lips, and we had arrived at the Rubicon at last. Preparations were made for crossing at once – the river was about a hundred yards wide and owing to the fine weather of the last few days not very deep, but the current was very swift, as many of us found to our cost.

We were not long in getting ready. Every soldier consulted his own individual conscience.

Some crossed as nature made them – with their bundle stuck on their bayonets, others took off their pants & shoes, and many plunged in just so – and it proved the wisest plan – it was a joyous and ludicrous sight, the river was spotted with the forms of the soldiers crossing, laughing and shouting like truant schoolboys, greeting each mishap of their comrades with roars of Merriment.

The bottom of the river was composed of rocks, rendered smooth as glass by the constant action of the tide, here you would see some tall fellow with his whole bundle elevated in the air on his top of his bayonet, picking his way carefully, when suddenly he would slip and disappear, coming up again with the water pouring out of his gun barrel, and his bundle of all his earthly possessions, gliding quietly down the river on a voyage of discovery – with the water in his eyes, and ears, he would gaze dimly at the retreating wardrobe, and a short Mental Conflict would ensue, as to which he had better give up. He couldn’t get his bundle if he kept his musket, and in the meantime what would he do for clothes. This last thought decided him – down to the bottom would his rifle go, where it is lying there now I suppose, and with a bold sprint he struck out, and would reach the opposite shore a mile or two down, minus his shoes, hats, & gun. Here a short stumpy fellow could be seen wading along with difficulty, the water up to his neck, his eyes looking volumes once on the other side – an inventory was made of the things that were lost.

Confound it – I heard one fellow say, “I don’t mind losing my gun, and shoes much, but I hates to lose my haversack – chock full of good bread and meat that I begged this morning.”

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we had marched through a section of a country bitterly hostile to us – The soldiers stopping at these houses, and being treated so kindly, felt a disinclination to rejoin their regiment with its hard marching, and untold future hardships in store for them, they could easily quiet their conscience by imagining that they felt sick, and the consequence was that every farm house for miles around had one or more soldiers as its inmates, who by doing little services for the families amply compensated them for their [illegible]. It was a terrible blunder somewhere – and moving into the enemies land – with the intention of attacking him – our army instead of being reinforced and under strict discipline, was dwindling in point of numbers and morale.

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PICTORIAL PRESS/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Hunter’s Rubicon White’s Ford, shown in two images on this page, was where the bulk of Lee’s army crossed the Potomac from Virginia over three days, September 5–7. This sketch by A.R. Waud, labeled as occurring “previous to Antietam,” shows Union scouts in the foreground watching a crossing from the Maryland shore.

And now brisk musket fire – sounding like a miniature battle took place – every soldier fearing that the cartridge inside of his gun had become wet, had to fire it off – and they amused themselves with seeing how far their rifles would throw, and watching the balls skip along the placid waters.

During our onward march we passed through Frederick City, and we [were] very much disappointed at the way we were received. Our boys indulged in glowing anticipations, of how we were to be treated in Maryland, and we led away many a weary hour of marching, in dilating how the ladies would lionize them, how they would feed them, for a soldiers’ first principle of happiness is having a full stomach, without that all other pleasures are vain. And many a wearied footsore reb stumbled, and limped along solacing himself with the thought of how he would charge through the streets of Baltimore, shooting Yankees, and niggers ad lib. And now in their disappointment they seemed to forget that they were not in real Maryland, but in the pan-

Stripped Down For Invasion This hand-colored woodcut painting depicts the crossing from the Virginia side of the Potomac. The water here was shallow enough that officers on horses could remain mounted while crossing and common soldiers needed only to remove their shoes and pants.

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Street Fighting Men Southern troops assemble in Frederick, reportedly in September 1862. The date of this photo recently has come into question, with some claiming it was taken on July 9, 1864, during Jubal Early’s Raid on Washington

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FREDERICK HISTORICAL SOCIETY; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

All or Nothin’ Local storekeepers weren’t really given a choice of payment for their goods while Lee’s army was in Frederick. They either had to accept Confederate money or nothing.

handle, and there was just as much difference between Frederick City and Baltimore as there is between Richmond and Martinsburg.

Most of the windows were closed, and nothing could be seen but the eyes of some scornful female which cast the most defiant glances at them, our Devil may care fellows always met such looks with a merry jest, and joke, that soon caused them to beat a hasty retreat, when at intervals they would pass by some lady whose heightened color, and triumphant excited manner showed plainly enough with-

onfederate notes were now at premium, orders having been issued by our Generals that the store Keepers in town, should keep open their shops, and sell for our currency, or gets for nothing. And in an hour or two a store would be completely cleaned out, not anything left, the soldiers buying everything they could carry away – leaving the proprietor – his empty shelves, with a bushel or two of Confederate shucks, which were as about as much use to him, as the paper which covered his walls. Many put them carefully away thinking well, they may worth something after all.

The next day we passed through, and camped on the outskirts of Hagerstown. I spent two

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out noticing the white hand that waved the hankerchief that she wished our cause success with the grace and politeness that spoke well for them. They would revertly bow, and still showed that as dirty and dusty as they are – that gray jacket, so tattered and torn, enclosed the form of many a Chevalier Bayard sans peur et reprache….

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FREDERICK HISTORICAL SOCIETY; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

Maryland! My Maryland!

Top: Confederate troops parade through the streets of Middletown prior to the fighting at South Mountain on September 14. Middle: An elevated view of Main Street in Sharpsburg following the Battle of Antietam. Bottom: Sharpsburg’s Lutheran Church, used to care for wounded soldiers during the battle.

nights there, and the memory of the devoted kindness to a sick and friendless soldier will always remain green in my memory. And for the sake of such women, it was worthwhile to land any amount of hardships, and shed your blood like water, it was with bitter regrets that I left Dr. McG[’s] hospitable roof, and took my place again in the ambulance, for I had been sick with the camp fever, ever since I had been in Maryland, and after all my trouble in getting here, I determined to see the thing through if there was breath left in my body.

Back we retraced our steps and arrived at Boonsboro on the evening of the fourteenth of September, about four o’clock the regiment took position in a cornfield and fought until night, sustaining little damage, losing only one officer, and he only wounded. Lieutenant A.C. Kell of Co. H. a ball had passed through the upper part of his skull, and instead of numbing him with the shock, only served to madden him and forgetting his rank he seized a musket and fought like a tiger. Lieut. Kell was one of our bravest, and most gallant Officers – and the regiment could ill afford to lose him, even temporarily.

That night I gave my place in the ambulance up to a wounded soldier and tried to march along with the troops but I soon broke down, and coming to an old saw mill on the side of the road I sat down and went to sleep, and was awakened by some one calling my name, opening my eyes I found to my great joy the regiment passing by, they were the rear guard. I thought they were miles in advance. I in company with a comrade took a short cut to Sharpsburg, not before I furnished both Col. C. [Corse] &H. [Lt. Col. Arthur Herbert] with their breakfast of bread and apple butter, which they seemed to enjoy very much, as it was the first meal they had eaten since the day before.

Reprinted with permission of the Virginia Historical Society [“Four Years in the Ranks” VHS Manuscript Call No. Mss5:1 H9162:1].

Robert Lee Hodge writes from Nashville, Tenn. [e-mail: robertleehodge@yahoo.com].

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Gauntlet of Fire Vicksburg’s bluff-top batteries deliver a relentless barrage on Union gunboats trying to pass the city on the Mississippi River.

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The Vicksburg Question

Why exactly was Robert E. Lee so opposed to sending help to Mississippi in 1863?

By Chris Mackowski

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Seddon could move across the Confederate board to Vicksburg. Complicating matters further, Union Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s 9th Corps shifted to the Western Theater and advanced on Knoxville, Tenn., increasing the need for Confederate counterforces out West.

Could reinforcements “safely be sent from the forces in this department,” Seddon inquired of Lee on April 6, going so far as to muse aloud whether “two or three brigades, say of Pickett’s division” could be spared. “[T]hey would be an encouraging re-enforcement to the Army of the West,” he stressed.

No one seemed eager to get on Lee’s bad side, though; his fiery temper, usually kept hidden under a courtly exterior, was an open secret.

Besides, Lee had strung together impressive victories since assuming command in June 1862, so he had earned a certain amount of deference. “I know…that your army is largely outnumbered by the enemy in your front, and that it is not unlikely that a movement against you may be made at any day,” Seddon admitted. “I am, therefore, unwilling to send beyond your command any portion even of the forces here without your counsel and approval.”

Lee responded on April 9 with a letter that demonstrated he, too, had his eye on the chessboard. “I do not know that I can add anything

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icksburg stood hundreds of miles from Lee’s own position along the banks of Virginia’s Rappahannock River, and Lee had reason to be concerned about the question. Confederate President Jefferson Davis was a Mississippi native who saw Vicksburg as “the nail head that holds the South’s two halves together.” On a more personal note, Davis and his brother both owned plantations right outside Vicksburg. The urge to protect the riverside bastion and deny Federals free, full access to river navigation was strong.

Lee had another reason to be concerned. From a logistical point of view, he already had two divisions on detached duty from his army as winter thawed toward spring in 1863: Maj. Gen. John Bell Hood’s and Maj. Gen. George Pickett’s men, both under the overall command of Lt. Gen. James Longstreet. In mid-February, Lee had sent them to southeastern Virginia on a foraging mission to shuffle much-needed supplies back to the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia. Their absence from the Confederate line along the Rappahannock presented a double benefit, too, by lessening the need for those very same supplies on the front.

“At this time but few supplies can be procured from the country we now occupy,” Lee told Seddon on March 27 as part of a series of urgent correspondence about the dire state of the army.

Longstreet acknowledged Lee was “averse to having a part of his army so far beyond his reach.” Detached as they were from Lee’s immediate control, the two divisions looked like tempting chess pieces that

Government Service Unlike his predecessor, George Randolph, and his successor, John Breckinridge, James Seddon never served in the military. His stint as Confederate secretary of war lasted two years.

THE HISTORY COLLECTION/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

hat if Robert E. Lee had sent troops to Vicksburg, Mississippi, in the spring of 1863?

That question was certainly on the mind of Confederate Secretary of War James Seddon that season. By default, then, it was also on Lee’s.

Anchored on bluffs lining the Mississippi River, Vicksburg was the key to success in the West for either side as the war entered its third year. The “fortress” city’s topographical dominance gave Confederates the ability to control traffic up and down the river and also served as a vital connection to Southern interests in the Trans-Mississippi Theater.

The Union high command in Washington and the region’s army commander, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, were well aware of Vicksburg’s strategic importance. Grant had made stabs at the city for months, to no avail, but his tenaciousness worried the once-confident Mississippians, who demanded a strong response and reliable leadership.

Department commander General Joseph E. Johnston was the highest-ranking Confederate commander in the Western Theater. He was, however, ensconced at the headquarters of General Braxton Bragg in Tullahoma, Tenn., where Bragg’s Army of Tennessee seemed to dominate Johnston’s attention. Meanwhile, the commander of the Vicksburg garrison, Lt. Gen. John Pemberton, was a Pennsylvanian who had thrown his loyalty in with the Confederacy only because of his marriage to Virginia native Martha Thompson—and thus, to some Southerners, could not be trusted. Worse, he had never held such an important field command in his career.

As the situation along the Mississippi looked more and more questionable, Seddon sought solutions. One option would be to send reinforcements directly to Pemberton, another to send them to Johnston, who left Bragg’s headquarters and arrived in the Mississippi capital of Jackson on May 13, with orders from Seddon to take command of troops in the Magnolia State and coordinate the struggle for Vicksburg.

But from where would those reinforcements come?

to what I have already said on the subject of reinforcing the Army of the West,” he opened before offering a string of suggestions. Just as Seddon had suggested a Pickett-for-Burnside shift west, Lee countered with a corresponding shift of troops from southwest Tennessee. “If a division has been taken from Memphis to re-enforce [Union Maj. Gen. William] Rosecrans, it diminishes the force opposed to our troops in that quarter,” Lee pointed out, urging offensive action that might tie down Rosecrans’ reinforcements and indicating that rumors of a Federal troop shift along the Tallahatchee River would free up Confederate troops there. He also suggested “judicious operations” in the West that could occupy Burnside, which would do more to relieve pressure on Johnston than sending more troops to Tullahoma would.

Seddon, as secretary of war, certainly had his pulse on these developments more so than Lee, who got them second- and third-hand in his camp in Fredericksburg.

But Lee’s attention to them demonstrates the larger strategic view he had beyond his own army, which served as a protection for his army. His big-picture view served his operational interests.

And Lee’s army did have immediate concerns to think about. Rumors circulated everywhere that Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, on the far side of the Rappahannock, was preparing to shake the Army of the Potomac from its winter slumber. Lee set a May 1 deadline, determining to take the offensive himself if Hooker didn’t do something by then. That, too, could help address Seddon’s concerns out west. “Should Genl Hooker’s army assume the defensive,” Lee suggested, “the readiest method of relieving the pressure upon Genl. Johnston…would be for this army to cross into Maryland. This cannot be done, however, in the present condition of the roads….But this is what I would recommend if practicable.”

Already Lee was looking north of the Mason-Dixon Line, foreshadowing events that would lead to the Battle of Gettysburg.

Lee admitted that Pickett’s men seemed to offer an easy fix for Seddon, but he warned the secretary not to be deceived. “The most natural way to reinforce Genl Johnston would seem to be to transfer a portion of the troops from this department to oppose those sent west,” he admitted, “but it is not as easy for us to change troops from one department to another as it is for the enemy, and if we rely on that method we may be always too late.”

As events would tell, this proved a self-fulfilling prophecy. By not shifting troops, Lee’s “Better never than late” logic assured there would be no reinforcements at all. For a man once described as “audacity itself,” this abundance of overcautiousness seems curious.

Lee’s pessimism is easily explained by the fact he had a vested interest in keeping Pickett’s troops attached to his army. Longstreet already felt he didn’t have enough troops to robustly carry out his foraging mission, Lee informed Seddon. “If any of his troops are taken from him,” he explained, Blind to the Facts?

“I fear it will arrest his operations and Did General Robert deprive us of the benefit anticipated from E. Lee’s myopic view increasing the supplies of this army.” of the fighting in the Eastern Theater cloud The flurry of correspondence between the his judgment about two over the previous weeks had clearly the importance of laid out the case for Lee’s supply concerns, sparing troops to defend so this comment was no lame excuse sudVicksburg in 1863? denly pulled out of thin air. Furthermore,

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Lee was averse to having a part of his army so far beyond his reach

Seddon had attributed the supply urgency to “impediments to their ready transportation and distribution,” admitting in particular, “[O]ur railroads are daily growing less efficient and serviceable.” To depend on those railroads to quickly shift troops to the West might be asking for trouble.

Lee knew this well enough, too, but instead of closing his letter by saying “check mate,” he deployed his usual rhetorical deference. If Seddon thought it “advantageous” to send troops to the West, “General Longstreet will designate such as ought to go.” Couched in such terms, Lee knew Seddon would not find it advantageous and, better, would think it his own idea.

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ike his parries with the Army of the Potomac, though, Lee’s victory on the Vicksburg question would be temporary.

As rumor foretold, Hooker’s army did rumble to life, and the two forces clashed at Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, and Salem Church from April 30 to May 4. Hooker slipped away on the night of May 5, giving Lee little time to assess his army’s condition before he received another message from Richmond about events in Mississippi.

Even as Lee had beaten back Hooker at Chancellorsville, Grant had begun his spring campaign against Vicksburg in earnest. On April 29, Grant landed two of this three corps on the east bank of the Mississippi at Bruinsburg, south of Vicksburg, then fought his first action of the campaign two days later just a

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ended up stretching “defense of Virginia” enough to include an invasion of the North in the fall of ’62, and even now he contemplated stretching it again for another. Most important, Lee’s vow reflected his Virginia-centric view of the conflict and his role in it. As a professional soldier, he no doubt would have obeyed any direct order to go west, but as a wily negotiator who knew better than anyone how to manage his own president, he surely would have found a way to make Davis see things his way.

But if Lee wasn’t going anywhere, Seddon at least wanted to shift Pickett’s Division westward—and said so in a May 9 dispatch. Lee was simultaneously deferential and oppositional in his reply the next day: “The distance and the uncertainty of the employment of the troops are unfavorable. But, if necessary, order Pickett at once.”

Opponents From the North Within that reply, Lee included a stark The people of Vicksburg had little faith in their city’s Northernassessment: “[I]t becomes a question between born Confederate commander, Lt. Gen. John Pemberton (left), and Virginia and the Mississippi.” Seeing the note, grudging respect for his Union opponent, Ulysses S. Grant.

Davis informed Seddon, “The answer of General Lee was such as I should have anticipated, few miles inland at Port Gibson. and in which I concur.” That fairly blunt comment is often taken to sugOn May 6, with Grant moving about the gest Davis agreed with Lee’s priorities, but what the president was in Mississippi interior, Pemberton pleaded with fact acknowledging was that the shortage of resources in the face of twin Richmond for reinforcements. “The stake is a crises created an unfortunate binary choice. great one,” he told Seddon. “I can see nothing Lee followed his short dispatch to Seddon with a longer one later in so important.” Davis responded the next day: the day. He blamed the delay on the garbled transmission of Seddon’s “You may expect whatever is in my power to telegram, which couldn’t be “rendered intelligibly” until nearly noon. It do.” By that time, he and Seddon had directed could be, though, Lee needed a little time to think through his response.

General P.G.T. Beauregard, in command of the He did, after all, have much vying for his attention, including the aftermilitary district that included Charleston and math of battle and the deteriorating condition of trusted subordinate Lt. Savannah, to send reinforcements. Those Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, who would die that very day.

5,000 men boarded trains on May 6, and lead Lee’s reply laid out careful arguments against any move to Missiselements began arriving in Jackson by May 13, sippi. Sincerely meant at the time, the note now teems with unfortunate where they would rendezvous under Joe Johnirony when read with hindsight. ston’s leadership for Vicksburg’s relief.

“If you determine to send Pickett’s division to Genl Pemberton,” Lee Davis had explicitly ordered Johnston to wrote, “I presume it would not reach him until the last of this month. If anything is done in that quarter, it will be over by that time, as the cliMississippi as an answer to a call from several prominent citizens, including editors of the mate in June will force the enemy to retire. The uncertainty of its arrival Jackson Mississippian newspaper. The people and the uncertainty of its application cause me to doubt the policy of sending it. Its removal from this army will be sensibly felt….I think did not have “confidence in the capacity and loyalty of Genl. Pemberton, which is so importtroops ordered from Virginia to the Mississippi at this season would be greatly endangered by the climate.” ant at this junction, whether justly or not…” the editors wrote in a private letter to Davis on Lee predicted that any action in Mississippi would be over by month’s May 8. “Send us a man we can trust,” they end, which, of course, would not be the case. Instead, by month’s end pleaded, “Beauregard, [Maj. Gen. D.H.] Hill or Grant was just settling into a siege. Even factoring in the questionable Longstreet & confidence will be restored & all condition of the railroads and the distance to travel, it’s reasonable to will fight to the death for Miss.” think Pickett’s men could have arrived in the Magnolia State in time to Lee himself was not an option. On the angstbe of use. The timely movement of Beauregard’s men from South Carolina and Georgia demonstrated as much. Certainly, the vulnerabilities filled evening of April 20, 1861, when he decided of the railroad, called into stark relief by the supply issue, offered cause to decline Lincoln’s offer to command U.S. for realistic caution, but a little more audacity would not have hurt. forces in the war, Lee resolved, “Save in the Pickett’s arrival would have added 7,500 troops to Johnston’s assemdefense of my native State, I never desire again bled force of 15,000 men in Jackson—a significant threat to Grant’s isoto draw my sword.” Sincere as that vow was, he AMERICA’S CIVIL WAR

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lated army. In fact, one reason Grant rushed into assaults on May 19 and 22 was that he had one eye on Johnston operating in his rear and feared an attack from behind. Johnston never made a move, but perhaps an additional 7,500 men would have inspired action.

Lee’s May 10 letter also became ironic because he predicted “the climate in June will force the enemy to retire.”

Of course, Grant ended up doing no such thing, opting to “outcamp” the besieged force in Vicksburg for 47 days. One of Lee’s underlying assumptions proved wildly off the mark, which Seddon had suspected from the beginning: “Grant was such an obstinate fellow that he could only be induced to quit Vicksburg by terribly hard knocks.”

Of course, Lee had a vested interest in keeping his army intact. “Unless we can obtain some reinforcements,” he told Seddon, “we may be obliged to withdraw into the defenses around Richmond. We are greatly outnumbered now….The strength of this army has been reduced by the casualties of the late battles.”

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Moments of Truth Below: Confederates repeatedly turned back Federal attacks on their Vicksburg trenches in May 1863, prompting Grant to lay siege to the city. Right: Captain Raleigh Spinks Camp of the 7th Texas Infantry, captured at Vicksburg in July.

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ith Stonewall Jackson struggling to recover from his wounding and with James Longstreet not yet back from Suffolk, Lee felt the loneliness of command even as he tried to puzzle out what to do next. How should he follow up Chancellorsville?

What should he do about the army in light of Jackson’s absence? What could he do to replace the tremendous battle losses his army had sustained? Yes, even perhaps, how might Vicksburg tie into his own plans?

“There are many things about which I would like to consult Your Excellency,” Lee wrote Davis on May 7, “and I should be delighted, if your health and convenience suited, you could visit the army.” Promising Davis a comfortable room near his headquarters, Lee wrote, “I know you would be content with our camp fare.”

Davis was too sick to travel, however, and with the wounded Army of the Potomac lurking on the far side of the Rappahannock, and with his

own army and officer corps still reeling from its recent bloodletting, Lee did not yet feel comfortable slipping away to Richmond. He’d have to brood over his plans in solitude.

As it happened, Longstreet would have been happy to discuss things. Chancellorsville had triggered a hurried recall of the First Corps commander and his two divisions, but the fighting ended before they could make it back.

Lee subsequently ordered his Old Warhorse not to stress his men with a forced march.

On the trip north, Longstreet had plenty of time to chew over the Confederacy’s overall strategic situation. Since at least late January, he had contemplated moves where one corps of the Army of Northern Virginia would hold the line at the Rappahannock while the other corps would operate elsewhere—and his operations around Suffolk had confirmed the idea’s viability. He longed to “break up [the enemy] in the East and then re-enforce in the West in time to crush him there.” By May, Longstreet had a particular eye on Vicksburg. “I thought that honor, interest, duty, and humanity called us to that service,” he would later say.

Traveling ahead of his divisions, Longstreet arrived in Richmond by train the evening of May 5 and spent the 6th conferring with Seddon. What if, the secretary of war floated, we sent Pickett’s and Hood’s divisions toward Mississippi and not north to the Rappahannock?

Longstreet did Seddon one better. Rather than send troops to Vicksburg where they would move against Grant directly, he sug-

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Indeed, even in victory, Chancellorsville Drained had cost Lee 13,460 men. Compounding those Prisoners from the losses, intelligence suggested Hooker’s army Army of Northern was already replenishing its own casualties.

Virginia, captured “Virginia is to be the theater of action, and at Chancellorsville, this army, if possible, ought to be strengthhead to the rear under ened…” Lee wrote to Davis on May 11, underguard. Despite victory, scoring the point he had made to Seddon the heavy losses at the day before. “I think you will agree with me battle left Lee’s army further shorthanded. that every effort should be made to re-enforce this army in order to oppose the large force which the enemy seems to be concentrating against it.”

In that same letter, noting that troops from the Departments of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida had been sent to Vicksburg—the 5,000 men Beauregard had shipped out—Lee let slip an idea that had weighed increasingly on his mind since Chancellorsville. “A vigorous movement here would certainly draw the enemy from there,” he said.

Lee didn’t just want reinforcements for defense. He was thinking about taking the fight to the Federals.

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gested reinforcements concentrate instead in Middle Tennessee under Johnston—reinforcements that would include Hood and Pickett, with Longstreet himself along for good measure. Johnston could then combine with Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee in a move against Rosecrans’ Army of the Cumberland encamped in Murfreesboro. “The combination once made should strike immediately in overwhelming force upon Rosecrans, and march for the Ohio River and Cincinnati,” Longstreet argued. That sudden dire threat would force a Federal response. “Grant’s was the only army that could be drawn to meet this move, and that the move must, therefore, relieve Vicksburg,” he concluded.

Longstreet’s plan reflected the same principle Lee had articulated in April while contemplating a move on Maryland, ultimately shelved because of the muddy spring roads. A serious movement north would panic state governments and the Lincoln administration into a response that would sap Union operations of any initiative and momentum while they dealt with a Confederate invasion.

Lee’s Old Warhorse was not being disingenuous toward his commander in proposing this plan. As soon as he reported to Lee on May 9, he presented his idea for Vicksburg’s tangential relief to Lee and asked for “reinforcements from his army for the West, to that end.”

As Longstreet recalled, Lee “reflected over the matter for one or two days.” This was either a generous or a forgetful retelling. The same day Longstreet pitched the idea, Seddon’s garbled telegram arrived asking to transfer Pickett’s Division west—a telegram no doubt inspired by Seddon’s conversation with Longstreet. Lee didn’t respond until May 10, and during that time, he sent for Longstreet for further discussion.

“I thought we could spare the troops unless there was a chance of a forward movement,” Longstreet explained to a confidant. “If we could move of course we should want everything that we had and all that we could get.”

Indeed, Lee had begun thinking of moving, not defending, and his reply to Seddon suggests a mind firmly made up. “To that end he bent his energies,” Longstreet recalled. “His plan or wishes announced, it became useless and improper to offer suggestions leading to a different course.”

But even as Lee settled on his plans—and set his mind about reclaiming Longstreet’s two divisions—John Pemberton was penning frantic letters to Richmond about Grant’s move-

ments through the Mississippi interior. Davis, still ailing, was largely silent in reply, but he confided “intense anxiety over Pemberton’s situation” despite public confidence.

In fact, the timing of Grant’s river crossing could not have worked out better for him in relation to events in the East, which presented more urgency to Richmond because of their proximity. Chancellorsville, on Richmond’s doorstep compared to the Magnolia State, sucked up all the oxygen. Davis’ illness kept him uncharacteristically passive, and even before he recovered, Stonewall Jackson’s May 10 death provided additional, mournful distraction. Davis and Seddon did agree to send reinforcements west from Beauregard, but at a time when additional troops might have also come from the Army of Northern Virginia, Robert E. Lee was feeling his oats after his Chancellorsville victory.

Lee finally had his conference with Davis in Richmond on May 15, arriving on a day of “calamity,” according to Confederate clerk John B. Jones. A fire had torn through the Tredegar Iron Works and Crenshou’s woolen mill, mostly destroying them, and news had just arrived of Grant’s capture of Jackson. “[Vicksburg] may be doomed to fall at last,” Jones wrote. If so, it would be “the worst blow we have yet received.”

Lee, Jones wrote, looked thin and a little pale, while Davis, just back to work, was “not fully himself yet.” Lee was so alarmed at the president’s frailty, in fact, he wrote upon his return to Fredericksburg, “I cannot express the concern I felt at leaving you in such feeble health, with so many anxious thoughts for the welfare of the whole Confederacy weighing upon your mind.”

Although no record exists of the discussion that day, the result of the Lee-Davis confab was the Gettysburg Campaign—or at least the general outlines of it.

“It appears, after the consultation of the generals and the President yesterday, it was resolved not to send Pickett’s division to Mississippi,” Jones observed on May 16.

In the weeks that followed, Davis perhaps felt buyer’s remorse for his troop allocations. After two failed assaults on Vicksburg, Grant besieged the city instead.

“The position, naturally strong, may soon be intrenched,” said Davis, conceding that Grant had the additional advantage of connecting his army with gunboats and transportation on the Yazoo River to the north of Vicksburg, allowing Federals to bring in more troops, supplies, and big guns—none of which were now available to the cut-off city.

—John B. Jones “It is useless to look back,” Davis told Lee, “and it would be unkind to annoy you in the midst of your many cares with the reflections which I have not been able to avoid.” Davis had put the needs of the Confederacy ahead of his home state but now could not stop wondering whether he had prioritized the crisis properly.

What if Lee had sent troops to Vicksburg? Would it have made a difference? Was the gambit worth it?

Lee’s foray north of the Mason-Dixon Line was about to begin. The answers to Davis’ questions awaited.

“[Vicksburg] may be doomed to fall at last”

Adapted from The Summer of ’63: Vicksburg and Tullahoma, edited by Chris Mackowski and Dan Welch (Savas Beatie, 2021).

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Through fire and fury, fighting men formed special bonds with their war horses

By John Banks

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A Sturdy Steed “Old Baldy,” ridden by Union Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade for most of the war, survived several serious wounds before wisely “retired” in December 1864. Few, if any, soldiers could match Old Baldy’s roll call of famous battles where wounded: Gettysburg, Antietam, First and Second Bull Run, and the Siege of Petersburg.

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t about 2 on a foggy morning in 1862, a steamer transporting the 67th Ohio Infantry on the Chesapeake Bay struck another vessel, sending several soldiers, a horse named Big Frank, and two other mounts splashing into the inky-black water. The accident apparently wasn’t serious, and the men were rescued, but no one aboard the steamer noticed that the steeds were missing. Roughly six hours later, about 15 miles from where the collision occurred, a lookout spotted an animated form in the wake of the ship. It was Big Frank, paddling to catch the vessel with his master, 67th Ohio Lt. Col. Henry Commager, aboard.

Like Commager, “a man of immense stature,” Big Frank was large, with flanks as big as a plow horse’s, and had a fearsome personality.

Months after his rescue in the bay, the gray charger dashed under fire into a sandy ditch near Fort Wagner (S.C.) during a night assault—the only horse to make it that far. “I do not know that he feared God,” recalled Commager’s son, also a Union officer, “but he was like his rider in one thing, he didn’t fear the devil nor gunpowder….”

No wonder Henry Commager wept when Big Frank, a veteran of several major battles, died from exhaustion in 1864.

Ah, but this was far from the only story of deep appreciation—dare we say love?—that a Civil War soldier had for a horse. At least one veteran gave his wartime mount a military funeral…in his back yard. Another old warhorse—named after the wife of a Confederate guerrilla—earned a national reputation and his master’s undying devotion. A famous general’s revered mount was a leading attraction in postwar parades, and later poisoned and buried, then exhumed and decapitated.

Sometimes love can be complicated. Weird, too.

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y one estimation, 5.9 million horses—4.2 million for the U.S. and 1.7 million for the Confederacy—were used by the armies. They moved artillery and other equipment, carried soldiers into battle, and helped deliver messages, among many other duties. They suffered, too. Hundreds of thousands died. Horses of generals became famous, inspiring poetry and at least one novel in which the tale was told through the animal’s eyes.

At the Battle of Thompson’s Station (Tenn.) on March 5, 1863, Confederate Brig. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s favorite horse, Roderick, was wounded three times before he was guided to safety by the general’s son. Apparently eager to return to the “Wizard of the Saddle,” however, Roderick leaped over several fences, suffering another wound in the process. As Roderick’s life ebbed away, bad-ass Forrest—who had many other mounts shot out from under him—supposedly wept beside the animal. Roderick was buried on the battlefield.

Roderick’s remains may rest somewhere in an upscale development named after the horse, which could lead to some weird conversations: “Honey, the workers were digging in our flower garden, and they found this huge skull.” A statue honors the chestnut gelding there, too.

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Mourning Glory Of the 30 or so mounts shot with Nathan Bedford Forrest in the saddle, the fiery general remembered none more fondly than Roderick.

This memorial is on the Thompson’s Station, Tenn., battlefield where Roderick was buried.

In 1956, the Nashville Banner devoted an entire page to The General’s Mount, a poem that recounted Roderick’s demise. Many of the newspaper’s readers probably winced at stanzas such as this: From mouths and nostrils Sponged his wounds Applied a stinging ointment They washed his knees And hocks And pasterns It’s Roderick! The General’s mount!

Bring the water bucket to him.

Robert E. Lee may not have shed a tear over Traveller, perhaps the most famous Civil War horse of all, but he was enamored with the gray American Saddlebred. In a postwar letter dictated to his daughter to an artist who wanted to depict the horse, he said:

retirement. The tale was not universally acclaimed. “If there was good information here,” a critic wrote on Amazon.com, “it was lost behind the concept of a horse talking and in dialect, too.”

Less famous than Traveller or Roderick was Almond Eye, the favorite horse of Union Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler. The colorful, often controversial commander was nicknamed “Beast” for his alleged harsh treatment of civilians as military governor of New Orleans during the Federals’ occupation of the city. Decades after the war, newspapers reported a story that, if true, may explain why Butler appeared so grumpy in Civil War-era images. (The “Beast” didn’t mention Almond Eye by name in his 1,000-plus page autobiography.)

While he commanded the Army of the James in front of Petersburg in 1864, Butler heard his prized mount had died from a fall into a ravine.

Saddened, he decided to have Almond Eye stuffed. He ordered an Irishman to skin him. According to postwar accounts, the conversation went something like this: “What! Is Almond Eye dead?” asked the Irishman.

“What is that to you? Do as I bid you and ask no questions.”

The man returned about an hour or two later.

“Well, Pat, where have you been all this time?”

“Skinning the horse, yer honor.”

“Does it take near two hours to perform such an operation?”

“No, yer honor; but thin ye see it took ‘bout half an hour to catch him.”

“Catch him! Fire and furies, was he alive?”

“Yes, yer honor; and ye know I couldn’t skin him alive.”

“Skin him alive! Did you kill him?”

“To be sure I did! You know I always must obey orders without asking any questions.”

In Traveller, Richard Adams’ 1988 novel, the horse is the lead character, telling stories of wartime exploits while he and Lee enjoyed

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year after his favorite horse was wounded at Gettysburg, Army of the Potomac commander Maj. Gen. George G. Meade was cheered by the mount’s recovery. “I am glad to hear the good news about Baldy,” the general wrote, “as I am very much attached to the old brute.”

The animal took a beating during the war, perhaps suffering as many as a dozen wounds. In 1864, fearing the enfeebled, battle-scarred horse would be an “embarrassment” on future campaigns, Meade sent Old Baldy home to Pennsylvania.

After the war, the horse—beloved by veterans, too—marched in parades and in the November 1872 funeral procession for his owner through Philadelphia. Before his death, Meade gave the charger to a blacksmith named John Davis. The general’s conditions: Never sell Old

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“If I was an artist like you, I would draw a true picture of Traveller—representing his fine proportions, muscular figure, deep chest, short back, strong haunches, flat legs, small head, broad forehead, delicate ears, quick eye, small feet, and black mane and tail. Such a picture would inspire a poet, whose genius could then depict his worth…”

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Evidently, neither beast was pleased.

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Baldy into servitude, and when his quality of life deteriorated significantly, put him out of his misery humanely. Old Baldy, believed to be about 30, was dispatched on December 16, 1882, with two ounces of cyanide of potash and a pint of vinegar poured down his throat.

“Not a word was spoken,” wrote a local reporter who witnessed Old Baldy’s demise. “True, it was only a dumb animal that was about to stagger, fall and die beneath the deadly action of the potent drug. Yet the mind would conjure up a widely different scene in which Baldy, gay in the trappings of war, with proudly arched neck, heaving flanks and panting nostrils bore amid the clashing of sabers and the hot fire of musketry, the Hero of Gettysburg—Pennsylvania’s noblest son!”

A Confederate Gray Traveller, acquired by Robert E. Lee in February 1862—reportedly for $200—remained in Lee’s keep until the general’s death in 1870.

Traveller was put down only a few months after his master died.

War Marvel It made headlines when the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia was given the bones of “Old Ned”—43 years old when he died in 1898, purportedly the war’s last “equine survivor.”

Then things with this famed horse got, ah, a little squirrely.

With Davis’ blessing, two veterans in the Meade Grand Army of the Republic Post No. 1 exhumed the horse’s remains around Christmas Day 1882 on the blacksmith’s farm, cutting off his head. The nag’s noggin was “very tastefully” mounted on a large plaque, with each war wound site noted, and displayed at the post. Old Baldy’s front hooves were made into inkstands.

Perhaps the Pennsylvania owner of another Civil War horse took notes. After a battle against Confederate Lt. Gen. Jubal Early in 1864, Benjamin Franklin Crawford of the 16th Pennsylvania Cavalry acquired a captured coal black charger. He named the horse Ned. After the war, Crawford took the mount to his home near Erie, Pa., using him for farming.

Old Ned, whose coat eventually turned a solid gray, became a fixture in parades and veterans’ events. The horse “pranced like a colt” when he heard martial music, “which had a wonderful rejuvenating effect on him.” On Decoration Days, children reportedly enjoyed putting flowers on Old Ned more than they did on soldiers’ graves.

In Old Ned’s old age, Crawford fed the horse—“always the boss in pasture,” according to his owner—a diet of bran and apples. “He was cared for as carefully as a child would be,” the veteran’s cousin recalled. After Old Ned SEPTEMBER 2021

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Bill in a skirmish at Old River Lake, Ark., on June 6, 1864.

Six months later, at the Battle of Nashville on December 15, 1864, Hill was killed astride Dixie Bill during an assault on Redoubt No. 3. Afterward, the bay was purchased by a 33rd Missouri Infantry (Union) adjutant, but when he learned of Dixie Bill’s bad battlefield karma, the horse was offered for sale. “With this record, three riders killed in action, he became hoodoo,” an Iowa newspaper reported years later, “and no staff officer could be found who would ride him.”

And so William Bagley, who rose from private to 35th Iowa chaplain, acquired the outcast. When he returned to Iowa near the end of the war, Bagley offered Dixie Bill to Hill’s widow. Thanks, but no thanks, she told him. Perhaps it was too painful to keep a reminder of a war that had cost her family so much.

The Rev. Bagley eagerly took in Dixie Bill at his farm in Tipton, Iowa—a decision he never regretted. In parades throughout the state, the horse often was a star attraction. At veterans’ events, Bagley enjoyed talking about Dixie Bill’s wartime exploits. The bay’s saddle—the one on which Colonel Hill sat during his final ride—became an attraction, too. It was donated by his widow to a local Grand Army of the Republic post.

Even as late as 1878, Dixie Bill—purportedly 29 years old at the time—remained feisty. Before a July 4 parade, “[t]he old horse broke away from Mr. Bagley while in [Wilton],” an Iowa newspaper reported, “and pranced through the streets like a colt, and to judge from his appearance would be good for another campaign.”

When Dixie Bill died on October 15, 1881, he received a grand military funeral. Covered with an American flag, the bullet-scarred charger was laid to rest by Bagley in the back yard of his house on 11th Street in Des Moines. A U.S. flag flew near Dixie Bill’s grave. Scores of veterans attended the service, and area residents talked about the funeral for years. “[G]reater sorrow could not have been felt from a human being than was felt by a number of people over the death of the faithful old steed,” a Muscatine newspaper wrote.

Dixie Bill’s funeral story was picked up by newspapers throughout the country: “Venerable war-horses who did valuable service during the Rebellion are as plentiful as George Washington’s body servants,” read an account in the Oakland Tribune, “but there is no occasion for cavil-

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y late 1864, Dixie Bill was considered jinxed. The horse’s dark history in battle explains why.

At the Battle of Wilson’s Creek (Mo.) on August 10, 1861, the Confederate rider on the dark bay—whose Rebel name was unknown to Federals—was killed by an Iowa soldier. The horse was shot in the neck—the first of four battle wounds the hearty animal suffered during the war.

After Wilson’s Creek, the horse was sent with other captured Confederate mounts to Muscatine, Iowa, where Colonel Sylvester G. Hill led the recently formed 35th Iowa Infantry. Hill purchased the battle-scarred steed, dubbing him “Dixie Bill,” and the horse quickly became a favorite of his staff. Hill rode Dixie Bill throughout the Deep South—at the 1863 Siege of Vicksburg and during the 1864 Red River Campaign battles in Louisiana at Pleasant Hill and Yellow Bayou, where his 18-yearold son was killed. While the heartbroken father recovered from a bullet wound during a furlough in Iowa, Major Abraham John of the 35th Iowa was mortally wounded riding Dixie

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Love and Care in All Its Dimensions Almost as vital as food and water, hoof scrapers like this, used to clean debris out of hooves, were made in various forms. Some even came fitted with corkscrews.

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died in 1898, at about age 43, his skeleton was donated to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. But Crawford kept the hide, which he planned to have tanned.

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Place of Honor Old Baldy’s head was preserved after the horse died in 1882 and is now on display in a climate-control case at the G.A.R. Museum in Philadelphia. George Meade would approve.

Out West A veteran of Trans-Mississippi Theater fighting, Old Bally was ridden by John Yokley of Jo Shelby’s Cavalry Brigade and found with several bullets in his body when he died. Below: A broadside soliciting horses for the Army.

ling over the remains of ‘Dixie Bill,’ which were consigned to their final resting place in Des Moines with military honors in the presence of many mourners.” At an 1898 reunion of the 35th Iowa, Bagley said a larger crowd attended Dixie Bill’s graveside service than would attend the funeral of any veteran in the room.

Like his horse, the reverend remained vigorous in his old age. “He is still fighting Satan,” a Muscatine newspaper wrote in 1906 about the 86-year-old veteran, “as hard as he fought the rebels.” Bagley died nearly three years later after a brief illness. An obituary highlighted his Civil War service and listed survivors. Dixie Bill was mentioned prominently, too.

“One of [Bagley’s] dearest possessions,” the obituary noted, “was a horse.”

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ixie Bill wasn’t the only horse whose master mustered a military funeral for his beloved animal.

In 1886, 7th Minnesota Infantry veteran William R. Marshall, a former Minnesota governor, mourned the death of Don, his devoted companion of nearly a quarter-century. In Roseville (Minn.) Cemetery, you can see the 29-year-old horse’s gravestone: “Don, My Faithful War Horse,” reads the inscription on it. The horse was also buried cloaked in an American flag.

And, in 1895, Belle Mosby, among several nags billed as the last surviving Civil War horse, was laid to rest in Library, Pa., near Pittsburgh, also with military honors. What a life she led.

Shortly after going into camp in Virginia one evening, 18th Pennsylvania Cavalry soldiers were stirred by a commotion. On the other side of a creek, they spotted an escaped slave, “evidently frightened to death,” astride a beautiful black thoroughbred. Swiped from a Confederate camp by the man, as it turned out.

The banks of the creek were steep, so the soldiers debated how to get horse and rider across to their side. A plank was placed across abutments of a ruined bridge, allowing the “snorting and trembling” horse to walk to the other side. When the pair finally made it, soldiers cheered.

A Union cavalryman named the horse “Belle Mosby” because the “beautiful creature reminded him to some extent” of the “beautiful gypsylike wife of Guer[r]illa [John S.] Mosby…” There is no known record of what Pauline Mosby thought about the comparison.

In exchange for an overcoat, a lieutenant in the 18th Pennsylvania Cavalry acquired the bullet-scarred horse from the escaped slave. In a fight against Rebels the next day, the officer rode the animal after two other mounts were shot out from under him.

“She seemed to bear a charmed life, darting and flashing around through the scrap like a charmed creature,” recalled Joseph R. Phillips, a farrier in the Pennsylvania regiment. The horse was hit several times by stray bullets—“only flesh wounds,” the farrier said. A day or two

later, the lieutenant gave the “hard as nails” horse to Phillips, his friend. An examination of Belle Mosby’s teeth in 1865 determined she was five years old.

After the war, Phillips worked Belle Mosby regularly at his farm in western Pennsylvania until she was wracked with rheumatism in the early 1890s. By then, Belle Mosby had earned national fame—nearly every member of the Grand Army of the Republic had heard of her, according to a newspaper account. At the national G.A.R. encampment in Pittsburgh in 1894, thousands of pictures of Belle Mosby were sold. But the next year, a bitter cold snap evidently led to the horse’s demise. In an orchard at Phillips’ homestead, Belle Mosby— age about 35—was buried with military honors, wrapped in flags.

“Comrade Joe Phillips,” a Pittsburgh newspaper reported, “…wept like a child.”

John Banks, a frequent contributor to America’s Civil War, lives in Nashville. He also is author of a popular Civil War blog (johnbanks.blogspot.com).

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Baltimore, Md.

City of Unrest

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attacked the train cars and blocked the route, forcing the troops to make the trek on foot, while they were further assaulted with bricks, stones, and pistols. In response, several soldiers fired their weapons into the crowd, igniting a giant brawl. Five soldiers and 12 civilians were killed during the riot, the first such casualties of the war.

The 6th Massachusetts Militia successfully reached Camden Station but left behind dozens of wounded and dead.

According to Baltimore Mayor George W. Brown, the riot escalated the conflict to fullscale war, because “a step was taken which made compromise or retreat almost impossible…passions on both sides were aroused which could not be controlled.”

Visitors to Baltimore can follow Civil War Trails signs from President Street to Camden Station, which interpret the fateful events of that April 1861 day. The city itself is steeped in the history of this country’s upbringing, and related sites to explore include the birthplace of the “Star-Spangled Banner.” —Melissa A. Winn

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FROM TOP: MELISSA A. WINN; PHILIP SCALIA/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; GOSS IMAGES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

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.

The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, which began operating in 1830, was the nation’s oldest rail line and had cemented Baltimore’s status as a major transportation hub.

Its proximity to the nation’s capital meant it would be essential to Union war efforts. But Maryland was a slave state and many Baltimoreans were opposed to the war. Yet the city also was home to the country’s largest population of free Blacks, many white abolitionists, and Union supporters. The divided loyalties created a palpable tension that boiled over on April 19, 1861, when the 6th Regiment Massachusetts Militia, answering Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers, reached Baltimore on its way to Washington.

Because no direct rail connection linked President Street Station and Camden Station, rail cars that transferred between the two had to be pulled by horses along Pratt Street. The regiment’s colonel, Edward F. Jones, had received information that their passage through Baltimore “would be resisted.” And it was. A mob of antiwar supporters and Southern sympathizers

CHRISTIAN HINKLE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

SOUTHERN SYMPATHIZERS ATTACKED UNION TROOPS HERE IN APRIL 1861, THE WAR’S FIRST BLOOD DRAWN IN ACTION

Washington Monument

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Mount Vernon Square On April 18, 1861, 700 of Baltimore’s Southern sympathizers gathered at historic Washington Monument, pictured here. Hearing that four companies of Pennsylvania state militia, accompanied by two Regular Army artillery units, were marching in formation along Pratt Street to Camden Station, the crowd headed that way. A police cordon had been thrown up along the route and the troops were unarmed, but some stones and bricks were hurled, and Nicholas Biddle, a free Black traveling with the Pennsylvania soldiers was injured.

The Pennsylvanians’ safe passage through town frustrated the antiwar crowd and many returned the next day to confront members of the 6th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Militia. Interactive displays inside Washington Monument explore its history and significance, and visitors can climb to the top of the column for a small fee.

President Street Station 601 S. President St.

FROM TOP: MELISSA A. WINN; PHILIP SCALIA/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; GOSS IMAGES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

CHRISTIAN HINKLE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Completed in 1851, President Street Station served passengers traveling along the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad. In February 1861, Abraham Lincoln, wary of a possible assassination attempt, secretly passed through the station on the way to his inauguration in Washington, D.C. On April 19, 1861, the 6th Massachusetts Militia arrived here at 10 a.m. Because of the anti-Union demonstrations the day before, they were ordered to load their weapons, which proved to be a necessary measure as the day’s events unfurled. Today the station houses the Baltimore Civil War Museum, with exhibits exploring the city’s difficult tenure during the conflict.

B&O Railroad Museum 901 W. Pratt St. During the Civil War, Baltimore was the rail center of Maryland and the North’s gateway to the South. The 40-acre site upon which the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum sits is considered the birthplace of American railroading, where Baltimore businessmen, surveyors, and engineers set about building the B&O Railroad in 1828, laying the first commercial long-distance track, building the first passenger station, and designing the country’s railroad system. The museum’s collection includes locomotives and rolling stock, historic buildings, and artifacts that document the impact of the B&O on the growth and development of early railroading and that cover the railroad industry in its entirety.

Camden Street Station 333 W. Camden St. As the 6th Massachusetts troops reached Camden Station, the mob renewed its assault, incited by a man waving a secessionist banner. Soldiers aboard the waiting train opened fire to protect their comrades. Colonel Edward F. Jones ordered the cars’ window blinds drawn to discourage further attacks. A final shot came from the train as it departed at 1:30 p.m., killing wealthy merchant Robert W. Davis on the Spring Garden side of Camden Station.

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1. Washington Monument 2. Battle Monument 3. President Street Station 4. USS Constellation 5. Camden Street Station 6. B&O Railroad Museum 7. Fort McHenry 8. 1840s Carrollton Inn

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Fort McHenry 2400 E. Fort Ave.

Calvert Street between Fayette and Lexington Streets

After the Baltimore Riot, Fort McHenry became an important part of Union efforts to keep Maryland from seceding. In July 1861, General John A. Dix invited several prominent Baltimore women with known Southern sympathies to be entertained at the fort. During the event, he directed their attention to the large Columbiad cannon pointed in the direction of Monument Square in the city. Dix informed his guests, “[I]f there should be another uprising in Baltimore, I shall be compelled to try to put it down; and that gun is the first that I shall fire.” Future uprisings in the city were successfully deterred. The fort was used to hold dissidents after President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and as a prisoner of war camp after the Battle of Antietam.

On the evening of April 19, Maryland Governor Thomas Holliday Hicks and Baltimore Mayor George W. Brown spoke here to the people of the city to try to calm them. The monument commemorates the Battle of Baltimore with the British fleet of the Royal Navy’s bombardment of Fort McHenry, the Battle of North Point, and the standoff on the Eastern siege fortifications, in what is now Patterson Park. It honors those who died in September 1814 during the War of 1812.

1840s Carrollton Inn 50 Albemarle St. History lovers who visit Baltimore can stay at the 1840s Carrollton Inn, a boutique hotel comprised of a series of interconnected row homes, dating back to the early 19th century.

Nearby, Little Italy is a dining destination just steps away from President Street Station.

USS Constellation 301 E. Pratt St. Built in 1854 at the Gosport Shipyard in Portsmouth, Va., USS Constellation was the flagship of the anti-slave trade African Squadron when the Civil War began in April 1861. The following month, Constellation made one of the first captures for the Union when it took the slaver Triton of Charleston, S.C. After briefly being recalled to American waters, Constellation was ordered to the Mediterranean, where it fulfilled a variety of missions, including protecting American commerce from Confederate raiders.

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RICHARD CUMMINS/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; STILLMAN ROGERS/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; NPS PHOTO; 1840S CARROLLTON INN

Battle Monument

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David McMurtrie Gregg

Out of the Shadows Edward G. Longacre is an award-winning historian with more than 30 books covering a variety of Civil War subjects. He is best known for his work on Union cavalry operations and biographies of Union and Confederate cavalry commanders, including Fitzhugh Lee, Wade Hampton, John Buford, and James H. Wilson. He is currently at work on the final volume of a trilogy on the life and legacy of George Armstrong Custer. In Unsung Hero of Gettysburg (Potomac Books, 2021) he gives David McMurtrie Gregg—an outstanding but underappreciated cavalry officer—a biography worthy of a soldier who served his country with unfailing dignity and unpretentiousness.

1

Why did you choose to write about David McMurtrie Gregg?

I’ve been interested in Gregg ever since I was a college freshman and began researching operations of the Union cavalry. My interest in Gregg specifically was heightened years later when, pursuing my doctorate in American history, I had the good fortune to study under the late Professor Russell F. Weigley, generally regarded as one of America’s finest military historians. Russ grew up in Gregg’s adopted hometown of Reading, Pa. As a teenager, he cut the grass at the local cemetery, where he paid special attention to the general’s grave and began studying his life. More than once I heard him say that Gregg deserved a full-length biography; the suggestion resonated with me.

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You call David Gregg the beau ideal of a Civil War cavalryman. What made him an effective commander?

First off, Gregg had all the prerequisites for success as a mounted officer: a first-class education at West Point,

post-graduate training at the Cavalry School at Jefferson Barracks, Mo., and distinguished service against Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest. A consummate professional, he never allowed ego or ambition to influence his actions, and he bore no ill will toward colleagues of lesser ability who gained higher rank and authority through military or political connections. His determination to advance his career through performance rather than personality—in contrast to such flamboyant self-promoters as George Custer, J.E.B. Stuart, and Judson Kilpatrick—stands as perhaps his most notable trait. Although not a tactical innovator, he grew and evolved professionally as the war progressed, giving greater emphasis to dismounted fighting over saber charges. By late 1864, he was relying heavily on mixed formations, fighting his men mounted and dismounted in rapid sequence. He was also adept at utilizing the horse artillery units attached to his brigades and divisions. Throughout the war he held the confidence and respect of every superior, and the trust and affection of his troopers. One veteran spoke for many of his comrades when he wrote that while their old commander was noted “as being the most tenacious cavalry fighter of the war, they felt that he was watching over them and that not a life would be sacrificed needlessly.”

3

Describe Gregg’s relationship with Custer. Was he angry or jealous Custer got so much acclaim for Union success in East Cavalry Field on July 3, 1863?

As far as I know, Gregg never expressed any jealousy toward Custer. On the contrary, he was highly appreciative of Custer’s contribution in halting Stuart’s advance toward the Union right and rear on Gettysburg’s third day. For his part, Custer always spoke highly of Gregg’s leadership, as did many of his men. The Federals foiled Stuart’s grand effort to turn the Union flank and strike from the rear, and Gregg, more than any other man on the field, including Custer, had seen to it. Gregg had additional grounds for being in debt to Custer, whose critical support during the seven-hour Haw’s Shop struggle on May 28, 1864, prevented Gregg’s outnumbered and hardpressed command from being driven from the battlefield. By the way, Haw’s Shop has its own niche in the history books. It was the largest and most fiercely contested dismounted cavalry engagement of the war.

4

What happened to Gregg immediately after Gettysburg?

The best answer is that no one knows for sure. For almost a week following the battle, he disappeared almost entirely from the official record. Even Gregg’s own after-action report of the campaign fails to address his status

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

5 QUESTIONS

Interview by Gordon Berg

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during this period. His division was broken into three parts that were detached from him and assigned to other commanders, including infantry generals, in order to pursue the retreating Confederates. These events do not appear to be a form of punishment. In fact, he received praise rather than censure from his superiors, including Meade’s chief of staff, Daniel Butterfield, for his activities on July 2-3. Perhaps Gregg’s absence had to do with his sometimes fragile health, including undiagnosed fainting spells and debilitating fevers, that plagued him throughout the war and forced him to go on sick leave.

There is no report, however, of him taking medical leave during this period.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

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Did Gregg strive to reestablish his reputation after the war or was he content to let the record speak for itself?

While Gregg made no overt attempt to solidify or bolster his reputation—he published no memoir of his service and the few public talks he gave focused not on himself but on the troops he led—he did try to regain a position in the ranks.

When the postwar Army was enlarged, he avidly sought the colonelcy of one of the new cavalry regiments but, perhaps due to his early exit from the war, the appointment went instead to his cousin and wartime subordinate, J. Irvin Gregg.

His postwar life was, in some ways, a study in rootlessness. He never owned a home of his own—he, his wife, and their two sons lived in a series of rented houses, hotel rooms, and resort cottages.

Rarely, and only for brief periods, did he have a paying job. In 1874, President Grant appointed him U.S. consul in Prague, but he gave up the post in less than five months when his wife became desperately homesick. In 1891, he was elected to a four-year term as auditor general of his native Pennsylvania, his only stint in political office. His postwar finances must have been a continuing concern, especially when a bill to provide him with a pension twice failed in Congress. A fellow cavalry historian who read my book in manuscript came away feeling that Gregg’s postwar years must have been lonely ones. That had not occurred to me, but I think he’s right.

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REVIEWS

Co-opted Culture Buying & Selling Civil War Memory in Gilded Age America Edited by James Marten and Caroline E. Janney University of Georgia Press, 2021, $36.95

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the quality of its newest line of pistols that included the artistic representations of a Union and Confederate soldier admiring the famed M-1911 semi-automatic.

From the time the Civil War ended, enterprising Gilded Age entrepreneurs manipulated the public’s memory of the war to market a variety of goods and services, including canned asparagus tips (Veteran Brand), replica Confederate uniforms suitable for reunions, trading cards to promote the Duke Tobacco Company, cookware, parlor games, and patent medicines.

James Martin and Caroline Janney have compiled an ingenious, multifaceted, collection of essays examining various ways Civil War memory became commercialized during the economically booming decades that came to be known as the Gilded Age. They and their contributors collectively agree that “the war would infuse almost every element of U.S. culture.” Aided by the emergence of advertising agencies, these retailers, publishers, and manufacturers “tapped into the anxieties, animosities, and physical needs unleashed by the war to sell their wares and services.”

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HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

Card Catalog This colorful album, first available in 1889, was used to hold Civil War-themed cards included in cigarette packages.

Each of the carefully crafted essays endeavors to show how the war “fit into larger patterns of 19th-century consumer culture.” Jonathan Jones investigates “the buying and selling of patent medicine remedies for opiate addiction by Civil War veterans.” More than 6,000 unregulated nostrums were a $74 million-per-year industry before the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 put an end to the patent medicine craze.

Compton Burton’s essay examines how “the National Tribune represented many things to many people” by linking it to the tsunami of pension applications submitted

by Union veterans and the growth of the Grand Army of the Republic. Amanda Bellows shows how “businesses used images of reconciliation to sell products primarily to white audiences” and Natalie Sweet investigates how Duke Cigarettes used trading cards with short histories of Civil War generals lives on them to feed tobacco addictions begun during the war.

Images of the ironclads Monitor and Merrimack were co-opted by cookware, sewing machines, printmakers, and lithographers.

Brewster, Gordon and Company—purveyors of all manner of canned goods, spices, and cigars—“attracted customers by connecting their merchandise to the steady, trustworthy, and even patriotic connotations projected by the image of the veteran that appeared on every can, tin, and pouch they produced.” Shae Smith Cox examines how some companies helped re-create Southern identity through the production and marketing of Confederate veterans uniforms. “At reunions, monument dedications, and other functions,” Cox concludes, “the old soldiers would don Confederate veterans’ uniforms, providing a homogeneous appearance and suggesting a coherent wartime identity.”

Marten and Janney conclude that, for advertisers, “Civil War images served as a kind of common currency” for “at least eighty years after the conflict ended.” These essays are an important addition to the growing field of Civil War memory studies.

—Gordon Berg

AS ALLEN J. OTTENS PROCLAIMS in the subtitle of his new biography, John A. Rawlins was no ordinary man. His rise from grinding childhood hardship to the Illinois bar and a place of prominence in Galena, Ill., was remarkable enough. It was hitching himself to Ulysses S. Grant’s star in 1861, however, that set the “Galena Coal Boy” on a course that would give him an important place in the Union war effort. Impressed by the enthusiasm with which the Douglas Democrat rallied the people of Galena behind the Union standard, Grant invited Rawlins to join his staff and in the years that followed few, if any, enjoyed as prominent a place among Grant’s aides—to the point that some wartime participants later claimed it was actually Rawlins who was the brains behind Grant’s victories.

Ottens rightfully dismisses these allegations, noting they usually came from individuals whose relationships with Grant soured after the war—but nevertheless probably contributed to the unfortunate lack of attention Grant devoted to Rawlins in his celebrated memoirs. At the same time, Ottens does a good job of making clear how important Rawlins was to Grant, although that importance diminished some General John over the course of the war as A. Rawlins: Rawlins battled tuberculosis, No Ordinary Man which would tragically claim his

By Allen J. Ottens life at 38, less than six months Indiana University Press, after he assumed office as Grant’s 2021, $35 secretary of war in 1869. In the process of providing an impressively researched account of Rawlins’ life, Ottens clearly chronicles not only Grant’s endeavors during the war (which, due to the zeal with which Rawlins took on the task of guarding the general’s sobriety, naturally means considerable attention is devoted to Grant’s relationship with alcohol), but also the efforts of Grant and Rawlins to negotiate the struggle between Andrew Johnson and Republicans in Congress over Reconstruction and the initial months of Grant’s presidency.

Though it would have been good to see the author discuss the Grant-Rawlins relationship in the context of the evolution of military staff systems during the 19th century, this minor quibble is outweighed by the book’s many positive qualities. It is readable, informative, balanced in its assessments of men and events, and will be of value to anyone with an interest in the Civil War and its most successful general. —Ethan S. Rafuse

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REVIEWS

UNIT HISTORIES James I. “Bud” Robertson Jr. had only completed his doctorate

Decisions at Antietam: The Fourteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Battle

By Michael S. Lang University of Tennessee Press, 2021, $29.95

FRESH SCRUTINY OF the bloodiest day of the entire Civil War is always welcome. Based on a series conceived by Matt Spruill, this new look into the fight at Sharpsburg, Md., uncovers some interesting aspects of the conflict. This is the 10th offering in the series and one deftly navigated by author Michael S. Lang.

Examples of how the book is set up are the use of Situations, such as Lee committing his reserves. You will then see several options of which Lee could have availed himself. These are all cleverly revealed and presented.

Finally, you will see that Lee makes the decision to bolster the dwindling forces on his left flank with all of his inactive men and material joining the fray north of the Boonsboro Pike. The Results/Impact of this decision are explored as well as an Alternate Decision/Scenario.

One of my favorite aspects of this volume is the first appendix containing a Battlefield Guide to the Critical Decisions at Antietam.

The modern photographs augmenting the text are a welcome addition, a product of Lang’s background in professional photography. The Order of Battle for both sides follow in the appendix in addition to a section on Strengths and Casualties from the opposing armies.

This book is well thought out, examined, and documented. While it is not a comprehensive look at the entire battle, it amply covers the critical decisions made and the options the generals had at their disposal at the time.

—Richard H. Holloway 62

at Emory University two years before when President John F. Kennedy appointed him executive director of a very troubled U.S. Civil War Centennial Commission in 1961. It proved a wise choice. This, however, was but one of many contributions Robertson made to the field of Civil War studies in the course of his career. He also edited the academic journal Civil War History, actively engaged with public audiences in person and through various media outlets, and spent four decades teaching the Civil War to more than 20,000 students at Virginia Tech. These endeavors, and his distinguished body of scholarship, earned Robertson well-deserved and universal acclaim as one of the truly great—and personally popular—scholars the field has ever known.

Robertson’s first book, The Stonewall Brigade, a revision of the dissertation he wrote under Bell I. Wiley, chronicled the history of the five regiments that made the stand on Henry Hill that turned the tide of the first major battle of the war, then played critical roles in one of the truly great campaigns in American military history, the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862. The brigade earned further laurels in the Seven Days Battles and at Cedar Mountain, fought a bitter stand-up fight at Brawner Farm, and helped repulse Union attacks at Second Manassas before participating in the Maryland Campaign. In the course of these operThe Stonewall ations, the brigade paid a brutal price.

Brigade While it would see hard fighting at By James I. Robertson Jr. Gettysburg, Monocacy, and elseLouisiana State where, never again would the unit University Press, 1963 play as conspicuous a role in the Confederate war effort as it did in 1861-62. Of the thousands who served in its ranks over the course of the war, only 210 were with the colors when it surrendered at Appomattox.

Since its appearance in 1963 Robertson’s study has been widely acclaimed as a classic, not least because it offered a compelling demonstration of how a modern, scholarly unit history could not only be a good read, but also offer fresh and important insights into the military history of the war and the men who fought it. In addition to the Official Records, Robertson drew from newspapers, as well as the writings of civilians, private soldiers, and junior officers to craft a study that skillfully and efficiently told the unit’s story from the proverbial “bottom up” while also providing plenty to satisfy enthusiasts of traditional “drums and trumpets” military history. For these reasons, it remains a landmark study in the field and one that belongs on the shelf of any serious student of the Civil War. —Ethan S. Rafuse

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REVIEWS Mark F. Bielski contributes the latest entry in Savas Beatie’s engaging “Emerging Civil War” series. The New Orleans native makes the city the star of his account, observing that previously published accounts tend to focus more on Union military commanders such as David G. Farragut and Benjamin Butler rather than the Crescent City itself. He also argues that the fall of New Orleans, which along with New York City was the world’s A Mortal Blow to largest trading port at the time, marked the Confederacy: The Fall of New the death knell of the Confederacy. That, Orleans, 1862 he believes, has been overlooked by the long-dominant but now largely discredited

By Mark F. Bielski “Lost Cause” mindset that the Civil War Savas Beatie, 2021, $14.95 was Virginia centric and that mostly ignored the Western Theater, where so much of the war’s eventual outcome was actually decided.

While lauding local New Orleans officials for their skill in organizing defenses, Bielski is critical of Confederate political and military leadership for the lack of strategic vision in concentrating military forces upriver in Tennessee or downriver at Forts Jackson and St. Phillip as well as their overall lack of coordination. Impro-

vised ships of war, including gunboats, the ram CSS Manassas, and two incomplete ironclads as well as Confederate gunners in the two forts and elsewhere put up a spirited defense against Butler’s troops, David Porter’s mortar boats, and Farragut’s gunboats. However, Farragut’s daring passage through an obstructive river boom and past the forts with 14 of his 17 gunboats sealed the fate of the otherwise defenseless city, which Farragut partially occupied on April 29, 1862, and Butler finished on May 1.

Bielski’s book includes substantial appendices on a variety of topics: Louisiana history, Belvoir, Confederate Memorial Hall, the 1889 death of Jefferson Davis in New Orleans, and the organization of Union and Confederate forces in 1862. Lavishly illustrated with nearly 200 contemporary engravings, a mix of historical and modern photographs, and several detailed maps, A Mortal Blow is a great addition to Civil War scholarship, filling a noticeable gap. —William John Shepherd

“When Sidney Johnston fell, it was the turning-point of our fate; for we had no other hand to take up his work in the West.”

—Confederate President Jefferson Davis

Albert Sidney Johnston

Shiloh Disaster The general’s battlefield death wrecked Confederate Western Theater strategy Plus!

Chancellorsville dishonor for Paul Revere’s grandson Massive floating artillery battery bombards Fort Sumter

MAY 2021

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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

BREVET MAJOR GENERAL

Truman Seymour an assistant professor of drawing under Weir and even married his Italy, in September 1891, retired U.S. Army officer Truman Seymour mentor’s daughter, Louisa. struggled to find the words. “I am so At the war’s outset in April 1861, Seymour was one of nine officers in feeble, so broken down, so heavyhearted,” he told Parmenas Taylor the Fort Sumter garrison during the Turnley in response to the news that Confederate bombardment. CommisTurnley’s youngest son, just 16, had sioned a brigadier general in April 1862, he would command a brigade died from typhoid fever. “[S]ince your in the Army of the Potomac during letter came this morning, I have been the Peninsula Campaign, at Second wandering about the house, trying Bull Run, and at Antietam. From vainly to realize the incomprehensible fact, and crying until I can hardly November 1862 to March 1864, Seysee to write.” mour served in the Department of At the time, Seymour was living in the South, severely wounded in the Italy as an artist, suffering from historic Union assault on Fort WagBright’s disease, which would factor ner on July 18, 1863. As commander in his death only one month later. of the District of Florida, he led Having lost his only son 32 years Union forces during the defeat at before, Seymour looked upon TurnOlustee, Fla., in February 1864. ley’s boy as one of his own. Turnley, Back in the Army of the Potomac who graduated with Seymour in

by May, he was captured at the BatWest Point’s famed Class of 1846, tle of the Wilderness. Exchanged in had honored his friend by giving his August, he served as a division comson the middle name Seymour. mander for the remainder of the war.

“Feeble and reeling on the brink of Seymour moved to Europe after retiring from the Army in 1876 to his own sepulcher, he answered my pursue his passion for art. The Seyletter the same day,” recalled Turnley, who, in an effort to reveal the mours toured England, France, “true character, life and being” of this Spain, and Italy, befriending various European artists along the way. Seyenigmatic Union general, made sure the information was prominently mour filled his sketchbooks with shared in Seymour’s obituary. scenes of the exotic places he visited Born September 24, 1824, in Burland painted numerous watercolors.

Student and Mentor His health failing, Seymour made ington, Vt., Seymour was a descenTop: Seymour, as painted by Robert dant of an early colonial settler, Florence his home in 1885. Upon his Walter Weir, his West Point mentor Richard Seymour. Appointed to West and father-in-law. Above: Seymour’s death, he was buried in Florence’s Cimitero Evangelico degli Allori—a Point in June 1842, Seymour estabgrave site in Florence, Italy. cemetery where a fellow Civil War lished himself as one of the most talented artists in the academy’s history under the tutelage veteran, Colonel Adolphus Buschbeck, is also interred.

Louisa would spend the final 28 years of her life in the of Robert Walter Weir. Seymour proved an accomplished warrior as well, serving with distinction during the MexUnited States. She is buried in West Point’s Cemetery ican War. In 1850, he returned to West Point to serve as alongside her only child. –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).

64

WEST POINT; COURTESY OF FRANK JASTRZEMBSKI

Writing from his home in Florence,

AMERICA’S CIVIL WAR

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