9 Crucial Decisions
Chaos at Shiloh What Grant, Johnston did right...and wrong The Union’s critical Plus! Russian connection Tony HorwitZ’s final thoughts on ‘Confederates in the Attic’ NOVEMBER 2020 HISTORYNET.COM
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November 2020
Confederates in the Attic author Tony Horwitz (right) and Southern reenactor Robert Lee Hodge, shown following a reenactment march to Cashtown, Pa., in July 1996.
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Attic Echoes
Twenty years on, some of the lessons Tony Horwitz learned about the South have changed. By H.R. Gordon
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: COURTESY OF ROB HODGE; TROIANI, DON (B.1949)/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; COVER: PAINTING BY RICK REEVES
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Departments 6 LETTERS In defense of George Pickett 8 THE BLOG ROLL These monuments should go up, not down 12 FROM THE CROSSROADS Fragile freedom for Gettysburg’s Black farmers 14 HIDDEN HEROES The Union’s man in Liverpool 56 TRAILSIDE Historic Virginia rail trail 60 5 QUESTIONS Confederate citadel 62 REVIEWS Prussian all-star 64 CONVERSATION PIECE A curator’s cherished cross
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Strange Bedfellows Abraham Lincoln’s “extreme” coalition with Russia had a big hand in Union victory. Rick Beard
18 By the Book
Pure chaos reigned at the Battle of Shiloh. Or did it? Timothy B. Smith
Surviving Andersonville Army of the Potomac gunner looks back at his haunting stay at the notorious Confederate prison.
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Edited by Moira Jacobs
ON THE COVER: THE 6TH MISSISSIPPI INFANTRY, PART OF BRIG. GEN. PATRICK CLEBURNE’S BRIGADE, SUFFERED HEAVILY IN A CLASH WITH THE 53RD OHIO EARLY IN THE FIGHTING AT SHILOH. OF 425 MEN ENGAGED, THE MAGNOLIA STATE BOYS HAD MORE THAN 300 CASUALTIES.
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Michael A. Reinstein Chairman & Publisher David Steinhafel Publisher Alex Neill Editor in Chief
AMERICA’S CIVIL WAR ONLINE HISTORYNET.com/ AMERICAS-CIVIL-WAR
SHILOH’S FALSE HERO? Is Union General Benjamin Prentiss’ Hornet’s Nest fame truly deserved? bit.ly/ShilohHero
OUT OF THE ATTIC
Confederate reenactor, Yankee journalist foster a true friendship. bit.ly/OutOfAttic
INSIDE ANDERSONVILLE
Union soldier recalls the horrors of the South’s most infamous prison. bit.ly/InsideAndersonville
HALLOWED GROUND How Manassas, Va., became more than just a battlefield. bit.ly/MoreManassas
Vol. 33, No. 5 November 2020
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in defense of pickett I always enjoy reading Ron Soodalter’s articles, partly because they are always well-written and well-researched, and also because his historical interests run very close to my own—in this case my favorite long-haired Confederate general (“Cloaked Vengeance,” September 2020). I have researched and written about George Pickett for nearly 40 years. I have gone from being at the forefront of Pickett critics to having a more nuanced view of poor George. He was not the best of men; he was not the worst of men. In this instance I have to take issue with Mr. Soodalter on several points. Obviously, the Kinston hangings are one of the more infamous acts of an infamous general officer, and Pickett deserves plenty of criticism for every infamous act he committed. Those hangings were cruel, unnecessary, and violated all principles of military justice. However, Mr. Soodalter goes beyond that to paint poor George in the harshest light, recycling all the usual attacks on his character, his reasons, and his
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leadership. He says Pickett was “seething from” and “shamed by” his failure to capture New Bern in February 1864. There is no historical support for this statement. In fact, we don’t know what George felt about anything except what Sallie, his wife, tells us in her writings many years later, and not surprisingly she says absolutely nothing about the hangings. As authors we need to be careful about diving into a historical character’s mind to describe their deepest feelings—when that character said nothing about them himself. He extrapolates from a quote about Pickett’s “aristocratic airs” into sneering reference to “scented hair, frilly shirts, and lace-trimmed uniforms.” A lot of gentlemen, including J.E.B. Stuart, wore their hair scented. It was good grooming at a time when people didn’t wash their hair regularly. And I’ve never seen a photo or read a contemporary account putting George in a frilly shirt or lacetrimmed uniform. Soodalter extrapolates from the high desertion rate in Pickett’s Division late in the war that George’s men “generally disliked him, considering him an arrogant, vainglorious martinet.” Where does this come from? All reports of Pickett’s Division veterans after the war suggest just the opposite, that they loved him. And the evidence for that
doesn’t come from Sallie Pickett alone. Striking out as a general and being something of a fop describes half the general officers in the Confederate Army! Why single Pickett out? Soodalter cites the infamous Five Forks shad bake but piles on when he adds that our boy “perhaps drank whiskey” with his shad. “Perhaps”? What he’s really doing is suggesting that George was inebriated, and that’s why Sheridan rolled him up at Five Forks. Did he get this from Lesley Gordon’s biography? It sure didn’t come from contemporary reports. Pickett should not have been away from his lines having a lunch of fresh fish, but Soodalter tries to turn it into a drunken bacchanalia—without evidence to support that accusation. He cites the famous Robert E. Lee quote upon seeing Pickett at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, but he adds that Lee said it “with disgust.” Neither Venable nor Mosby used that damning modifier in the original. It’s just more piling on. Soodalter says Pickett was “terrified” when he fled to Canada after Appomattox. Nonsense. There is not a single source that tells us how George felt. Sallie was the only one who was close enough to know, and she sure didn’t say that. Soodalter further says that George cut “his trademark perfumed locks” as part of his effort to hide his identity while in Montreal. There is also no primary source to back up that statement either. We don’t know why he cut his hair after the war. Maybe it’s because he was pushing 50 and no longer considered it stylish. We don’t even know exactly when he cut his longish locks. This is jumping to a conclusion based on nothing more than photos. Soodalter suggests that Ben Butler burned Pickett’s home on Turkey Island in retaliation for the Kinston hangings. Absolutely no evidence of that can be found in anything Butler or the Picketts ever said. Finally, Soodalter says that George died “a bitter, broken man.” Says who?
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COURTESY OF RONALD L. JONES
LETTERS
LETTERS
COURTESY OF RONALD L. JONES
Not Sallie Pickett, not his friends or former comrades. His modern biographers? I think the author of “Cloaked Vengeance” is guilty of taking too much dramatic storytelling license and dealing in tired tropes and stereotypes. All we really know about George Pickett the man comes from three sources: Sallie Pickett; Edward Longacre’s biography; and Lesley Gordon’s biography. At least two of those sources should be handled with care, because one of them has nothing bad to say about George and the other has nothing good to say about her subject. Criticize George Pickett for the many things he did that deserve criticism but don’t perpetuate the myth of “Terrible George.” Don’t create a cardboard figure and then take potshots at it. Richard Selcer Fort Worth, Texas Ron Soodalter responds: While I’m flattered Dr. Selcer has enjoyed my work in the past, I am equally saddened that he found my piece on his “favorite general” and the Kinston hangings lacking. Without getting into a blow-by-blow, let me begin by agreeing with him that Pickett was neither the best nor the worst of men. He was, however, a decidedly substandard general, both strategically and interpersonally, and a repeated source of concern and disappointment to General Robert E. Lee. After the war, Lee’s assistant adjutant general, Colonel Charles Marshall, commented, “Lee ought to have had Pickett shot,” and I don’t envision Lee—who ultimately relieved Pickett of duty—saying, “Is that man still with this army?” with anything but disgust. (Historian Gerard A. Patterson uses the word “disdainfully” to describe Lee’s comment.) For the record, I did not infer that Pickett was drunk at the shad bake, nor did I try to turn a fish fry into a “drunken bacchanalia”; I did, however, state unequivocally—and here reiterate—that by being there in the first place, he was in flagrant disobedience of his orders, and his dereliction and resultant absence from the field were the actual reason “Sheridan rolled him up.” He needed no
help from strong drink. As for Pickett’s appearance, the use of the word “lace” is appropriate; it is a common military term describing the braiding on a uniform sleeve. And even in an army where a number of senior officers affected an elaborate personal style, Pickett’s vanity and foppish attention to his appearance were of common knowledge among his comrades. There are simply too many issues for me to address here. Suffice to say, no detail in the article was of my own inventing. As for “tired tropes and stereotypes,” for Dr. Selcer’s edification, there are recent viable sources on Pickett and the Kinston Affair besides Gordon and Longacre. (I certainly would not take any of Sallie Pickett’s reminiscences as historical fact!) For one, I refer Dr. Selcer to Gerard Patterson’s well-researched and highly readable Justice or Atrocity: General George E. Pickett and the Kinston, N.C. Hangings, from which I gleaned many of the details that he infers I created. These include my comments on Pickett’s hair (“shorn to alter his appearance dramatically”), and Butler’s burning of his home (“[I]t could…well have been in revenge for the Kinston hangings”). Thank you for Ron Soodalter’s “Cloaked Vengeance.” It would be great if people understood that not everyone in the South wanted disunion. Edward Keller Central Islip, N.Y.
One-Sided?
In reading the adaptation of The Civil War Diary of Rev. James Sheeran (July 2020) I couldn’t help but feel Sheeran’s take on his confrontations with Sheridan are quite one-sided and self-serving. I find it hard to believe he—or anyone, for that matter—could walk into Phil Sheridan’s headquarters and domineer him in such an easy fashion. I would like to read Sheridan’s side. I wonder if it even registered to him the way the Rev. thinks it did. His talks might have been just another matter of business in a busy day. Connan Smith South Jordan, Utah
Heart-Felt
I read with interest a couple of articles in your July 2020 edition, particularly “A Mother’s Sacrifice” by John David Hoptak [p. 10]. I lost 2 of 3 Bradford County, Pa., relatives who served in the 63rd New York Infantry, Co. E. John Wesley Preston was killed at the Wilderness on May 5, 1864, and his brother, Samuel Henry Preston, was killed the next month at Cold Harbor. Samuel was one of the first soldiers buried at Arlington National Cemetery. The lone surviv-
ing brother, George Washington Preston, survived the war and died in 1917. In addition, another relative, Job Robards Crandle, also from Bradford County, Pa., served in the 106th Pennsylvania Infantry, Co. C, under Brig. Gen. Alexander Webb and helped repulse Pickett’s Charge at the stone wall. Your article “Bullseye” by D. Scott Hartwig [p. 14] provided me a view of what Job Crandle saw that fateful July 3. Thank you for both stories! Ronald L. Jones Mechanicsburg, Pa. WRITE TO US Send letters to America’s Civil War, Letters Editor, Historynet, 1919 Gallows Rd., Suite 400, Vienna, VA 22182-4038, or e-mail acwletters@historynet.com. Letters may be edited. NOVEMBER 2020
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HIDDEN THE BLOG HEROES ROLL Moment of Valor Lt. Nathan Edgerton, one of the 6th USCT’s White officers, joins Sgt. Maj. Thomas Hawkins and Sgt. Alexander Kelly to rescue the regiment’s flag at New Market Heights. The three received Medals of Honor for their heroics.
Not Forgotten MONUMENT CONTROVERSY HIGHLIGHTS THE NEED TO MEMORIALIZE AFRICAN AMERICANS’ ROLE IN THE WAR
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African American men, women, and children were once sold at slave auctions. “No country ever had truer sons,” reads an inscription carved into the marble monument, “no cause nobler champions.” Gaines, the only Black member of the 12-person Brentwood, Tenn., historical commission, prefers that the Franklin monument be placed in a museum. But if it and similar memorials remain on public land, she believes it is vital they are placed in the proper context. Until 2019, when Franklin added five markers here portraying African American history, the full story of this turbulent place was untold. A full-scale statue of a U.S. Colored Troops soldier, another major effort to balance the scales, will be dedicated in the square in 2021 to honor the roughly 300 Black men from Williamson County who served in the Union Army. “That day,” Gaines says, “will be etched in my mind forever.” And maybe that is what’s missing from our often-
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PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN BANKS
ON AN UNSEASONABLY COOL summer morning in Franklin, Tenn., Inetta Gaines and I sit on a park bench near the eye of a hurricane of history. Twenty yards away, in the town’s public square, stands a controversial Confederate monument. “Towering over everything else,” she says ruefully. At the old Williamson County courthouse, looming over our shoulders, slaves were auctioned through the outbreak of the Civil War. In November 1864, Union officers met in the two-story, brick building during the exceptionally bloody Battle of Franklin, fought less than a mile away. And from the second-floor porch in 1888, an African American named Amos Miller was lynched by a white mob. In the very square in front of us, Whites and Blacks battled after the Fourth of July during the 1867 Franklin Race Riot. The nearly 38-foot-high Confederate monument, topped with “Chip,” a statue of a Rebel soldier grasping a musket, was dedicated by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1899 on the same ground where
TROIANI, DON (B.1949)/PRIVATE COLLECTION/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES
By John Banks
THE BLOG ROLL ugly, current national debate over Confederate monuments: recognition of the immense contributions of Blacks during the Civil War. Thousands of memorials—in town squares, cemeteries, parks, battlefields, and elsewhere—honor the sacrifice of White Americans, those who fought on both sides. Although monuments to the USCT were dedicated in recent years in New Haven, Conn., Vicksburg, Miss., and elsewhere, the public landscape remains embarrassingly deficient in its representation of African Americans’ Civil War experience. Sadly, it’s an old issue. “Nowhere in all this free land is there a monument to brave Negro soldiers, 36,847 of whom gave up their lives in the struggles for national existence,” George Washington Williams, a Black Civil War veteran, wrote in 1883. “Even the appearance of the Negro soldier in the hundreds of histories of the war has always been incidental. These brave men have had no champion, no one to chronicle their record, teeming with interest and instinct with patriotism.” So, let’s embrace the “fuller” story of the war. Learn the names of courageous Black soldiers. Celebrate them. Perhaps, like the city of Franklin, we can build, rather than tear down. Here’s where we can start:
cially the absence of all straggling, their uncowering advance in the face of terrific firing…have won for them the sincere admiration, without exciting any envy, of all the volunteers of the Army of the James,” wrote a Philadelphia Press correspondent. Many of the Confederate earthworks remain, but a postwar, water-filled quarry occupies ground where one of the major attacks by Black troops occurred. And the battlefield, largely owned by Henrico County, is infrequently visited and poorly interpreted. Two state historical signs and a Civil War Trails interpretive marker denote one of the most significant battles of the war involving the USCT. That’s “a crying shame,” says Tim Talbott, who serves on the board of directors of the Battle of New Market Heights Memorial & Education Association. The nonprofit group is in the initial planning stages for creation of a long-overdue monument on the battlefield to honor USCT at New Market Heights. Talbott, who is also director of education, interpreta-
PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN BANKS
TROIANI, DON (B.1949)/PRIVATE COLLECTION/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES
New Market Heights Twenty-five African Americans were awarded the Medal of Honor for action during the Civil War, 14 at New Market Heights in Virginia—one of the war’s largely forgotten battles. Remember their names: William Barnes, Powhatan Beaty, James Bronson, Christian Fleetwood, James Gardiner, James Harris, Thomas Hawkins, Alfred Hilton, Milton Holland, Miles James, Alexander Kelly, Robert Pinn, Edward Ratcliff, and Charles Veal. Early on the morning of September 29, 1864, while one wing of Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler’s Army of the James assaulted Confederates at nearby Fort Harrison, another attacked near New Market Road. To slow the advance of five USCT regiments, Confederates placed abatis between their earthworks and a swampy creek. A conclusive Union victory at New Market Heights could open the road to Richmond, eight miles away. “Remember Fort Pillow!” 4th and 6th USCT soldiers shouted as their assault began about 5:30 a.m.—a reference to the Confederate massacre of Black troops near Memphis, Tenn., five months earlier. Despite initial breakthroughs, the attack was stymied, and Confederates regrouped to protect their capital. But the valor of Black troops, who suffered 800 casualties, earned the respect of Butler and others. “The good conduct of the colored troops, and espe-
Bucking the Trend Inetta Gaines of the Brentwood, Tenn., historical commission prefers Confederate memorials remain in place as long as they’re given proper historical context. tion, visitor services & collections at Pamplin Historical Park in Petersburg, pours his passion for New Market Heights into the association’s website (battle ofnewmarketheights.org/). His research revealed one of the more compelling soldier stories of the war. In the charge on enemy breastworks, Miles James of the 36th USCT suffered a grievous wound in his left arm. While urging on his comrades, he remarkably continued to fire his weapon. At a field hospital, his arm was amputated. The 34-year-old corporal, whose prewar occupation was listed as “farmer,” was sent to Fort Monroe to recover. James easily could have sat out the rest of the war. Instead, he chose to continue to serve. On February 4, 1865, his brigade commander, Colonel Alonzo Draper, wrote to the chief surgeon at NOVEMBER 2020
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“Sir—Sgt. Miles James, Co. B, 36th U.S.C.I. writes me from your Hospital to urge that he may be permitted to remain in the service. He lost his left arm in the charge upon New Market Heights, Sept. 29, 1864. If it be possible, I would most respectfully urge that his request be granted….He is one of the bravest men I ever saw; and is in every respect a model soldier. He is worth more with his single arm than half a dozen ordinary men.” On April 6, 1865, James received his Medal of Honor. Weeks later, he was promoted to sergeant. He served in the Union Army through the end of the war. Remember his name.
New Orleans Although Robert E. Lee had no direct tie to New Orleans, a monument to the famed Confederate general stood in Lee Circle in the city from 1884 until 2017, when Mayor Mitch Landrieu ordered its removal. Yet no Civil War monument in the city has ever commemorated the vast contributions of Blacks to the Union war effort. That “borders on being shameful,” says Alan Skerrett, who maintains an impressive website largely devoted to the African American Civil War experience. “If you are an African American going through that town,” he says, “you have no recognition of your history.” Louisiana supplied more African American soldiers, and perhaps more Black officers, to the Union war effort than any other state. Remember this name: Andre Cailloux, who surely merits recognition on the landscape in the city he called home. Born into slavery, Cailloux was a mulatto who served in the 1st Louisiana Native Guard. The 38-year-old captain was killed during an attack at Port Hudson on May 27, 1863—one of the first Black officers to die during the war. That assault, like one nearly two months later by the 54th Massachusetts Infantry at Fort Wagner, underscored the worthiness of Blacks as soldiers. “A revolution in sentiment toward colored troops took place upon that field of carnage,” wrote an Ohio newspaper, “which in itself was a glorious victory.” Organized by occupying Union authorities, Cailloux’s funeral in New Orleans was described as “one of the most extraordinary exhibitions brought forth by this rebellion.” Immense crowds lined the streets, and roughly 100 sick and wounded Black soldiers marched in the funeral procession. “In Captain Cailloux the cause of the Union and
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freedom has lost a valuable friend,” a New Orleans newspaper wrote. “Captain Cailloux, defending the integrity of the sacred cause of liberty, vindicated his race from the opprobrium with which it was charged.” Skerrett, who has a collateral ancestor who served in the USCT, highlights stories such as Cailloux’s on his website, “Jubilo! The Emancipation Century.” He believes the stories of Blacks during the Civil War— contrabands, civilians who aided the Union Army, and others—have gone unrecognized. “There is a big need,” says Skerrett, a 65-year-old retired auditor who volunteers at the African American Civil War Museum in Washington, D.C., “to have these stories told in whatever way is possible.” Skerrett sees a need, too, to tap the brakes on the removal of Confederate monuments from public spaces: “I think monuments are works of art, what people were thinking and feeling at the time. I don’t think they should be destroyed or defaced or vandalized.” But the community landscape should be “fair, balanced, and accurate,” he says. “If not, that’s a prima facie case that it should be changed.”
Charleston, S.C. As twilight arrived on July 18, 1863, the predominantly black 54th Massachusetts charged with bayonets fixed toward Fort Wagner on Morris Island, at the southern entrance to Charleston Harbor. Hit by flanking fire, the soldiers slogged through a ditch filled with water before charging up the slope to the fort, where they slugged it out with the defenders. In the inky blackness, reinforcements mistakenly fired into the 54th, perhaps causing as many casualties as the enemy did. But the bravery of the Black soldier—famously depicted in the 1989 Academy Award– winning film Glory—was undeniable. “It is another evidence that cannot now be denied, that colored soldiers will dare go where any brave men will lead them,” recalled Sergeant George Stephens. Shortly after their failed assault, 54th Massachusetts soldiers proposed erecting a monument near where Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, their commander, fell. They would even help pay for it themselves. Shaw’s father had another idea. “The monument, though originated for my son, ought to bear, with his, the names of his brave officers and men, who fell and were buried with him,” he wrote. The memorial was never erected, the funds instead directed to the first free school for African American children in Charleston, named after Shaw. Bernard Powers, an emeritus professor of history at the College of Charleston, and lawyer Robert Rosen recently advocated for a monument in Charleston to the war’s African American heroes. “Monuments tell a
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Fort Monroe’s hospital:
THE BLOG ROLL story,” they wrote in the Post and Courier of Charleston. “...We can begin to heal the wounds of generations by telling the forgotten stories of those who fought and died for the equality of all men and women.” And no time is better for a monument to the famed 54th Massachusetts in the very city where the Civil War began in 1861. As Shaw’s father suggested long ago, it should include the names of those Union men who made the ultimate sacrifice on Morris Island. Of 700 men in the assault, at least 100 died. Among them were privates Josephus Curry, a “bold, fearless and worthy soldier always ready for duty”; Joseph Johnson, a former slave who was the only means of support for his wife, Fairaby; George Henry Albert, a “good and faithful man”; Charles Hardy, who, before the war, gave the $3 a day he earned in a restaurant to his widowed mother in Philadelphia; and William Lee, a married father of four children under 8 years old.
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Nashville
perfect order and remained there as long as those of the white veterans on their right. And as many of them in proportion remained until borne away and buried after the action. It was as pretty an example of courage and discipline as one could wish to see.” Confederate commander Brig. Gen. James Holtzclaw, whose men faced off against the 13th USCT in its first, and only, major fight of the war, made note of the Black troops’ bravery. The 13th, nearly 600 strong, suffered 220 casualties. Thomas was among the 55 killed. “Placing a negro brigade in front,” Holtzclaw wrote in his official report, “they gallantly dashed up to the abatis, forty feet in front, and were killed by hundreds. Pressed on by their white brethren in the rear they continued to come up in masses to the abatis, but they only came to die.” In an affluent suburb five miles south of downtown Nashville, only slivers of ground remain undeveloped on Peach Orchard Hill, where the 12th, 13th, and 100th regiments fought courageously in their first battle. Two historical markers highlight the fighting there, but neither mentions the Black troops’ role in the battle.
James Thomas is another name we need to remember. On the morning of December 16, 1864— Day 2 of the Battle of Nashville— the 13th USCT private said TWENTY MILES TO the south, in goodbye to his wife and sister. “I Franklin, a discussion with Inetta never saw my brother again,” Gaines drifts from the 19th cenrecalled Sarah Walker, who, like tury to the 20th—RFK, MLK, James, was born into slavery. Black Panthers, 1960s Mississippi Later that unseasonably warm “Chip” is Getting Company and Alabama—before landing day, Thomas and his comrades In 2021, a full-scale statue of a back in the 21st. Perhaps, she and two other USCT regiments USCT soldier is slated to be erected in downtown Franklin, near this says, this city’s handling of its advanced up the steep, 300-foot towering monument of a Confederate Confederate monument issue can Peach Orchard Hill into the teeth soldier known as “Chip.” serve as a model for the South. of strong enemy defenses near the Before we part, Gaines mentions crest. Canister and well-directed musket fire poured into them. And yet these ill- a date she has mentally circled: June 19, 2021. That’s Juneteenth, a holiday long embraced in the Black comequipped and ill-trained soldiers continued to charge. “I never saw more heroic conduct shown on the field munity as the day in 1865 many enslaved learned of of battle,” recalled an Ohio officer, “than was exhibited their emancipation. It’s also the date that “Chip” finally may get by this body of so recently released slaves.” Disabled by a wound, U.S. Army officer Ambrose company. Bierce (the famed postwar essayist, humorist, and writer) watched from afar the advance of the USCT A Nashville resident, John Banks serves on the board through intricate abatis of felled trees. “They did not of the Battle of Nashville Trust. This column, edited hesitate for a moment,” he recalled decades later. for print, originally appeared on his blog (john-banks. “Their long lines swept into that fatal obstruction in blogspot.com).
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FROM THE CROSSROADS
Freedom’s Fragile Foothold The small stone home owned by free African American blacksmith James Warfield, seen at right in this painting, is being restored by the National Park Service to match its wartime appearance.
An American Story EXPLORING GETTYSBURG THROUGH THE EYES OF ITS BLACK CITIZENS By D. Scott Hartwig ran through Gettysburg, and Biggs worked as an agent helping escaped slaves pass through. To do so, he was taking a great risk because of the Fugitive Slave Act, passed in 1850, which required that all escaped slaves be returned to their masters and made it mandatory for officials and citizens of free states to assist in their capture. Federally authorized slave-catching patrols were not uncommon around Gettysburg before the war. The legislation also gave cover to an illegal business that predated the 1850 act: the kidnapping of African Americans and stealing them away to the Deep South to be sold into slavery, a story highlighted in the 2013 Oscar-winning film Twelve Years a Slave. As Richard Bell points out in his book Stolen, children were often targets of these individuals because they had many working years before them. Biggs, Warfield, and Brian all had children. Their concern was underscored by the experience of Mag Palm, who rented a tenant house from Brian. She was nearly a victim of one of these
National Park Service preservationists are restoring the Warfield farm house, built in the mid-1850s, to its 1863 appearance. Additions and modifications to the stone house were made at the turn of the century and in the 1950s and ’60s. The NPS has removed the non-historic part of the home and restored the original roofline and roof height; stabilized and reconstructed masonry walls; and are restoring original doors and windows. More details about the project can be found at https://www.nps.gov/gett/learn/historyculture/warfield-house.htm.
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NPS PHOTO (2)
BASIL BIGGS, JAMES WARFIELD, and Abraham Brian (also spelled Bryan and Brien) were farmers on what would become the Gettysburg battlefield. Warfield also ran a highly regarded blacksmith shop, and Biggs was well known for his veterinary skills. What set them apart from neighbors such as Joseph Sherfy and William Bliss was that they were Black. It is notable that 5.1 percent of the residents of Cumberland Township, in which these three families lived, were African American. Their stories provide some understanding of the unique experience of Gettysburg’s Black residents and the Gettysburg Campaign that uprooted their lives. The color of their skin made all the difference. There were worries that Biggs and the others dealt with daily that Joseph Sherfy did not have to consider. They were free, but the border with Maryland, a slave state, was only about five miles from Gettysburg. Biggs had moved his family from Maryland specifically because it was illegal for his children to receive an education in that state. Pathways of the Underground Railroad
NPS PHOTO (2)
FROM THE CROSSROADS Since most of the damage each of these families susraids in 1857, but managed to fight off her kidnappers. tained was caused by an act of war, there was little In the 1857 Dred Scott case, the Supreme Court relief for them from the federal or state government. declared in a 7-2 decision that African Americans were Warfield did not recover. He put his farm up for sale not, and could not be, citizens of the United States. in 1864 but failed to sell it and was forced to remain In his majority opinion, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney there until 1871, when he moved to nearby Cashtown. declared that Blacks were “so far inferior, that they had Brian was able to repair his property and farmed it no rights which the white man was bound to respect; until 1869, when at age 62 he found less physically and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced demanding work in Gettysburg. Biggs not only recovto slavery for his benefit.” By Taney’s opinion, Biggs, ered, he prospered. In the fall, he found work as a subWarfield, and Brian had no protection under the law contractor for Samuel Weaver, the superintendent in because of their skin color. But they could own property charge of efforts to exhume the bodies of Union solin Pennsylvania, and Brian and Warfield both owned diers and rebury them in the newly created Soldiers their small farms. Biggs was a tenant farmer, as were National Cemetery. Biggs hired a crew of 8–10 other many of the other Black and White farmers in the area. African American men and did the hard, physical work When the Army of Northern Virginia entered Pennof removing the dead from their sylvania in June 1863, White battlefield graves. farmers generally took their famNo work associated with the ilies and their horses to safety to battle was more solemn…or more avoid the danger of possible fightnauseating. Weaver examined ing. But occasionally the men each body to ensure that it was a departed with the horses and Union soldier, then Biggs and his left the women of the household crew reinterred the body in the behind because it was less likely cemetery. Biggs received $1.25 for soldiers would enter a residence if each body and used the money he it were occupied. This was the case earned to purchase the Peter Fry on the Emmanuel Harmon farm Farm on the Taneytown Road. on the July 1 battlefield, where The property included the Copse the tenant, David Finnefrock, left of Trees, where Pickett’s Charge his wife and her niece at the farm. reached its terrible climax on July He did not fear that they might be 3. One day in 1869, historian John harmed or seized by the ConfedBachelder came upon Biggs cuterates. The Black residents could ting trees down, no doubt for some take no such chance, for their very Hard-Earned Farmstead practical need. Bachelder appealed freedom was at stake. They had Basil Biggs and his wife, pictured to Biggs to stop, arguing that the certainly heard that Confederon the farm he purchased using the trees had historical value, but this ate units were actively rounding money he earned burying Union soldiers killed during the battle. failed to stir the pragmatic farmer. up African Americans in adjacent So Bachelder suggested that Biggs Franklin County on the premise might earn more in the future by preserving the trees they were escaped slaves and taking them south. So than he could by cutting them down. In the hard, practhey gathered their families and generally headed east tical world in which Basil Biggs lived, there was logic to get out of the Confederates’ path. in Bachelder’s suggestion and he saved the trees and The Battle of Gettysburg took a toll on each of these later sold the property that included them to Gettysindividuals’ lives. The farm Biggs rented was used burg Battlefield Memorial Association. as a field hospital for Confederate Maj. Gen. LafayBiggs, Warfield, Brian, and their families and those ette McLaws’ Division. The dining room of the house of other African Americans who lived in and around became an amputation room. All his corn, oats, wheat, Gettysburg, inhabited a world where their country and fencing were destroyed. Warfield was ruined. His stacked the deck against them because of their skin farm was on the front line and the site of heavy fighting. color. For them the Gettysburg Campaign, and the war, All his blacksmithing tools were taken, his crops and was about more than a threat to their homes and propfencing wrecked, and he found 14 Confederates buried erty. Everything was at stake in the outcome, including in his garden. Brian, whose farm was on the front line their right to be citizens. of Union Brig. Gen. Alexander Hays’ 2nd Corps division, lost nearly everything but his house and barn, which were riddled with bullets and shell fragments. Scott Hartwig writes from the crossroads of Gettysburg. NOVEMBER 2020
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THOMAS HAINES DUDLEY AND THE UNION’S MOST SUCCESSFUL SPY RING By Gordon Berg
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THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM
Lincoln’s Man in Liverpool
THE TALL, SAD-FACED, New Jersey Quaker carried himself more like a career diplomat than a notorious spymaster. In reality, Thomas Haines Dudley was both. A passionate abolitionist, successful lawyer, and Republican Party activist, Dudley helped orchestrate Abraham Lincoln’s nomination as the party’s candidate in the 1860s presidential election. As a reward, he had his choice of serving as the American minister in Japan or in a lesser position as consul in Liverpool, England. Dudley chose Liverpool because he wanted to contribute to the Union cause during the war and believed he could get dependable medical treatment there for his chronic irritable bowel. While Dudley fulfilled his diplomatic duties and received the medical treatment he needed, his most important role was organizing and running what became the Union’s most successful spy network on the Civil War’s most hotly contested foreign battlefield. Dudley would fight his battles mostly in the shipyards lining the banks of the River Mersey and in Liverpool, its port city. That prosperous metropolis was a hotbed of Confederate sympathizers and ground zero for the Confederacy’s all-out effort to build a blue-water navy. More than 90 percent of the cotton entering the United Kingdom landed on Liverpool’s docks, and more than 80 percent of that cotton came from the American South. In an early dispatch to Secretary of State William Seward, Dudley wrote, “the great mass of the residents of [Liverpool] is and has been against the North and in favor of the South. This feeling is now deep and bitter.” To keep the profitable cotton trade going and its war-making capability alive, the Confederacy needed fast blockade runners, commerce raiders to sink Union merchant shipping, and state-of-the-art warships to break the naval blockade strangling the South. The Confederacy’s shipbuilding facilities were insufficient to meet its needs, but England’s shipyards could make up that deficit. President Lincoln needed someone to report on the Confederacy’s
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THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM
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HIDDEN HEROES A dispatch from Dudley to Seward about a ship being progress and hamper its efforts. Dudley was soon at built on the Mersey portrayed how one of the Confederthe heart of the war’s European intrigues. acy’s schemes worked: “The builders say she is intended When he arrived in Liverpool in November 1861, for the Italian Government….I am afraid she is intended Dudley found Confederate agents hard at work—the for the South. She has one funnel, three masts, bark keel of one commerce raider already laid, thanks to the rigged, eight portholes on each side and is to carry sixwork of James Dunwoody Bulloch, head of the South’s teen guns....Her armament is not yet on board and the secret service throughout Britain. He had arrived in appearances indicate that she is to leave Liverpool and Liverpool five months earlier, armed with a $2 million receive [cannon and shot] at some other place.” loan guarantee backed by a prestigious Liverpool firm Dudley was describing Oreto, the first Confederate and a mandate to build ships and buy naval stores. commerce raider being built in England, which would Dudley came armed, too, and technically had the law become known as CSS Florida and would ravage on his side. England’s Foreign Enlistment Act of 1819 Union merchant shipping over the next three years, forbade the equipping and arming of ships in British taking more than 60 prizes worth in excess of $4 milports for the use of belligerents with whom that counlion (10 times what it cost to build it). try was at peace. But getting Britain to enforce the law Bulloch also had a second commerce raider under was a different matter, and Bulloch was particularly construction in Birkenhead, across the Mersey from adept at circumventing any legal constraints. Often he Liverpool. After failing to prevent Florida from sailsimply contracted for a ship and had an English caping, Dudley ramped up his tain and skeleton crew sail it efforts to stop this ship, deson a “trial run.” Once outside ignated No. 290. His operathe reach of British law, the tives frequented taverns and ship would be armed, fitted other places where dockyard out, and crewed with Confedworkers congregated, gathererate sailors at a foreign port. ing timely information. A May Or Bulloch would have the 1862 report to Seward warned, builders claim the ship was a “She will be when finished, a mere merchant vessel or was very superior boat. The order destined for another nation’s when given was to build her navy and therefore legally of the very best material and built in England. in the best and strongest manProving Bulloch’s many subner. There is no doubt...she is terfuges false was complicated intended for the Rebels.” and time-consuming. Dudley’s This raider, 210 feet long efforts to gather evidence and Sealed and Safe and weighing more than 1,000 submit affidavits were made This satchel was used to carry the Great Seal more difficult by the Southern of the Confederacy by boat from Britain. Filled tons, was even larger than with lead, the bag could be tossed into the Florida. Powered by twin sympathies of the British govwater and sink if it were in danger of capture. 300-horsepower engines, it ernment under Prime Miniscould steam at 12 knots, easily ter Lord Palmerston and his fast enough to overtake any Union merchantman. foreign secretary, Lord John Russell. Legal foot-dragThis time the builders claimed the ship was desging by bureaucrats, judges, and customs officials at tined for the Spanish government even though Dudevery level of government further frustrated Dudley’s ley’s massive documentation clearly demonstrated efforts to prevent many ships from escaping. To gather otherwise. But British officials disagreed and found information in support of his legal cases, Dudley at no credible evidence that No. 290 was destined for the first used a small network of agents and informers Confederacy. Dudley was so sure, he traveled to Lonbegun by his predecessor. But he soon found that to don on June 21 to personally present his evidence to keep track of the Confederacy’s expanding ship-buildAmerican Ambassador Charles Francis Adams. Even ing program, he would need more spies and a lot more a personal note from Adams to Foreign Secretary Rusmoney to pay them. With the help of a private detecsell failed to prod the British government into action. tive, Michael McGuire, Dudley set out to build a coorOn May 14, 1862, No. 290 slipped down the ways and dinated intelligence network of sympathetic British a month later made a trial run. Dudley continued to shipyard workers, Southern turncoats, tavern keepsupply British authorities with damaging evidence, ers, and a motley assortment of dockyard denizens hoping to prevent the ship’s eventual departure, but who prowled Liverpool’s waterfront. NOVEMBER 2020
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Union Navy’s dominance of the seas. On October 10, to no avail. On July 31, No. 290, now called Enrica, Dudley reported to Seward “that the issuing of orders weighed anchor for its final trial run. It never returned to Captain Inglefield satisfied me that they [the Britto England. On August 21, 1862, Enrica arrived in the ish authorities] were now in earnest….I think I can Azores, where Captain Raphael Semmes took comnow say to you with every assurance of its truth that mand and christened the ship CSS Alabama. Until the two rams are stopped.” In May 1864, the British sunk off the coast of France in June 1864, Alabama government bought the two ships, thus forever keepcaptured 64 Union vessels worth more than $5 million. ing them out of Confederate hands. Despite the setbacks, Dudley continued to gather Dudley had no time to rest on his laurels. Bulloch evidence of English complicity. His agents infiltrated had already begun shifting most of his shipbuilding social clubs, learning the names of blockade runners projects to Scotland and France. Dudley and his agents and their dates of sailing. He regularly supplied Seward followed close behind. In a February with manifests of blockade runners 17, 1864, letter to Confederate Navy departing for Southern ports and also Secretary Stephen Mallory, Bullinitiated a successful propaganda och complained that “the spies of the campaign supporting the Union’s war United States are numerous, active, aims, wrote newspaper articles, pamand unscrupulous.” He concluded, “It phlets, and letters to editors and symis now settled beyond a doubt that no pathetic British parliamentarians. vessel constructed with a view to offenDudley’s expanded espionage netsive warfare can be built and got out of work, now numbering more than 100 England for the service of the Confedinformants, paid dividends when erate States.” While some ships, such he learned about two ironclad waras Florida and Alabama, did inflict ships being built. Known only by the significant damage to the Union’s code numbers 295 and 296, they were merchant fleet, no armored ironclads designed to be superior to any Federal ever sailed for American waters. warship afloat. Despite attempts to The end of the war did not bring an keep the ships a secret, Dudley’s spies end to Dudley’s work. He continued to learned their dimensions. Both would A ‘Most Dangerous Man’ gather evidence on Britain’s assistance have 200-foot keels and “a strong ram Georgia-born James Bulloch, to the Confederacy, confident there of wrought iron projecting about 8 feet a 15-year U.S. Navy veteran, just under the water line.” In a March was Dudley’s primary Confed- would eventually be a day of reckonerate opponent in Liverpool. ing. That would come beginning in 1863 report, Dudley observed that “no 1867. In demanding compensation for expense is being spared,” concluding the damage done by the British-built commerce raiddirely: “You must not deceive yourselves...they will ers, the United States argued that Britain had inadhave more power and speed probably than any ironequately followed its neutrality laws—what became clad...that has yet been built.” known as the “Alabama Claims.” Seward made Dudley’s confidential report public. Dudley’s reports provided much of the evidence supIts dramatic revelations energized Congress, and the porting the U.S. claims, but years of diplomatic wranAmerican press began a public relations campaign gling ended in a stalemate. Then in 1871, Secretary of demanding that England seize the ships. On SeptemState Hamilton Fish negotiated the Treaty of Washber 5, 1863, Adams sent a strongly worded note to Forington, calling for an arbitration panel to settle the eign Secretary Russell indicating that the first ironclad dispute. In May 1871, the arbitrators met in Geneva was ready to sail and the British government’s failure and issued a report in September 1872 awarding the to act was “practically opening to the insurgents full United States $15.5 million—closing the books on the liberty in this kingdom.” It was Adams’ concluding war’s most successful intelligence network. sentence, however, that probably got Russell’s attenDudley returned to his law practice in Camden, N.J. tion: “It would be superfluous of me to point out to your In April 1893, he died of a heart attack. For years, the Lordship that this means war.” local Grand Army of the Republic lodge placed a flag More irritated than intimidated, Russell nevertheon his grave in recognition of his service to the Union. less responded to Adams’ bluster on September 8, Of 324 ships built either as commerce raiders or to run writing that “instructions have been sent which will the Union blockade, 126 were sunk. prevent the departure of the two ironclad vessels at Liverpool.” Dudley’s dogged determination had finally borne fruit; the Laird rams would never threaten the Gordon Berg writes from Gaithersburg, Md.
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Applying modern military analysis to Shiloh helps make sense of the chaotic Battle By Timothy B. Smith
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he mere mention of Shiloh conjures up all sorts of chaotic connotations. If anything, it signifies a disorganized, muddled, confused, and frenzied two days of fighting on the banks of the Tennessee River on April 6-7, 1862. Certainly, that early in the war the relative armies’ troop composition had not yet become standardized; in fact, some in the Union Army of the Tennessee were dressed in gray, some in the Confederate Army of the Mississippi in blue. The armies likewise were nowhere near their more streamlined status of later years. Staff work, departmental organization, weaponry, and other forms of standardization simply did not exist that early in the war. This chaotic status led by mostly amateur generals overlaid on a heavily wooded battlefield made for an extremely disorganized clash. The battle quickly broke down to a soldiers’ fight. Yet there was enough framework amid the mayhem to make possible a detailed, coherent analysis of the battle. Indeed, there exists
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a useful way to systematically analyze the Battle of Shiloh by applying modern military theory, policies, and procedures, determining how well both sides fought by judging it against today’s standards. Modern U.S. military services have a guiding examination and analysis tool represented by the “nine principles of war.” Embedded in Joint Publication 3-0 Joint Operations, a reference applying to all U.S. Military Services, these principles offer what today’s military considers guiding concepts that, if followed, can help win wars, campaigns, and battles. Moreover, the principles transcend all three levels of war (also officially delineated in the Joint Operations manual), whether it be strategic (national in scope), operational (campaigns), or tactical (battles). Although modern in concept and use—the U.S. military first developed these nine principles after World War I and has continued to refine and use them in professional military education since—they can be readily used for historic study. They are timeless, not dependent on technology, weaponry, tactics, or anything beyond common sense. With the help of expert-conducted “staff rides,” military officers today have a chance to analyze such decisions both historic and modern. Likewise, many professors teaching American military history require a “battle study,” in which students pick a battle and analyze it according to these principles. Shiloh is always a popular choice. Thus, these nine classic principles of war are extremely useful, when overlaid onto Shiloh’s historic narrative, in evaluating how well each side fought during this historic early Civil War battle.
The battle of Shiloh’s basic nar-
rative is already well known. In early 1862, Union Western commander Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck sent forces to outflank the Confederate Mississippi River bastion at Columbus, Ky., resulting in the operations along the Tennessee River to the east. After February victories at Forts Henry and Donelson in northern Tennessee, Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and his naval counterparts moved up the river to the area of Pittsburg Landing, where he halted to await arrival of the Army of the Ohio, under Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell, for a joint advance on the vital Confederate railroad center at Corinth, Miss. The Confederates were not inactive, meanwhile, hurriedly concentrating most of their Western forces at Corinth. On April 6, General Albert Sidney Johnston and his second in command, General P.G.T. Beauregard, launched an attack at Pittsburg Landing, hoping to destroy Grant’s army before Buell could arrive. In heavy fighting, the Confederates drove back Grant’s forces, despite stubborn
True Carnage Union troops overrun a Confederate position during the bloody fighting at Shiloh in April 1862. The two sides suffered nearly 24,000 casualties during the two-day battle—at that time the largest single-battle casualty total in the United States’ military history.
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Principles of War
IN 2017, THE US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE CREATED A SINGLE REFERENCE PUBLICATION DEFINING THE PRINCIPLES OF WAR. THIS NOW APPLIES TO ALL MILITARY SERVICES, SUPERSEDING INDIVIDUAL SERVICES’ PREVIOUS PUBLICATIONS REFERRING TO PRINCIPLES OF WAR. THIS ALL-SERVICE REFERENCE IS: JOINT PUBLICATION 3-0 JOINT OPERATIONS (JAN 2017 & OCT 2018), P. I-2 & APPENDIX A
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1. Objective
When referring to the objective of an operation, the U.S. military directs commanders toward a “clearly defined, decisive, and attainable objective.” Obviously, the detailed planning done by today’s large, highly specialized military staffs at all echelons of command
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PHOTO CREDIT
1. Objective 2. Offensive 3. Mass 4. Economy of Force 5. Maneuver 6. Unity of Command 7. Security 8. Surprise 9. Simplicity
stands and even counterattacks, to a series of defensive lines. In the afternoon, Rebel attention focused on the Union center (what became known as the Hornet’s Nest) while Grant built a formidable defensive line on the Tennessee River’s west bank, near Pittsburg Landing, for the final stand of the day. After Johnston was mortally wounded during the afternoon fighting, Beauregard took command of the Confederate army. During the night of April 6-7, however, he mistakenly concluded he had the battle won. In reality, Buell’s army had arrived and Grant unleashed his own attack the morning of April 7. The Federals launched bloody frontal assaults everywhere but on the extreme right, where more reinforcements from Maj. Gen. Lew Wallace’s recently arrived division continually outflanked the Confederate line and drove it back. By midafternoon Beauregard realized he was beaten and ordered a retreat to Corinth, ending the battle. What follows is an examination of the impact on both sides during the battle of each of the aforementioned nine principals of war.
was out of the question for the small, primitive staff system of both Civil War armies. In early 1862, both sides had to make decisions in a fast-paced environment: The Federals hoped to take advantage of their recent victories at Forts Henry and Donelson, while Johnston and Beauregard cobbled together their advance from Corinth in a matter of a few days. Despite the need to act with such haste, both sides managed to lay out fairly stable objectives. The executor of the Federal movement at Shiloh was the scholarly General Halleck, a onetime lawyer known as “Old Brains.” Halleck planned an advance up the Tennessee River to strike and capture the pivotal railroad crossroads at Corinth, pausing only at Pittsburg Landing, where Grant was to wait for the arrival of Buell’s army. This planned massing of the armies, another solid principle of war, was just a little late, however, and the Confederates struck before it was fully accomplished. Nevertheless, despite Shiloh, the Union objective remained the same, even though the capture of Corinth wouldn’t come until late May. Even tactically, on the battlefield, Grant’s sound objective plan of trading space for time worked well. This design allowed time for reinforcements to arrive and proved adequate if not overwhelming in terms of objective. Even though they were forced to work within a much shorter time frame, the plan cobbled together by the Confederates was sound objectively from the start. Johnston realized he had to fight one enemy army at a time because once Grant’s and Buell’s armies combined he would be woefully outnumbered. Thus, the idea of marching northward to Shiloh in early April was predicated on the idea of taking care of Grant first and then dealing with Buell later. The timing was just off. Even on the battlefield, the Confederate objective of turning the enemy left flank and driving the Federals into the swamps to the northwest was a solid plan on paper. However, aspects such as terrain, environmental dynamics such as rain, and breaking many of the other principles of war hurt the Confederate effort. But the clear objective was certainly there.
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The U.S. military’s nine principles of war provide general guidance for conducting war and other military operations at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels. The principles are the enduring bedrock of military doctrine and have stood the tests of analysis, experimentation, and practice. These principles are not a mere checklist. They do not apply in the same way to every situation. Instead, they summarize the characteristics of successful military operations. Their greatest value lies in educating the military professional. Applied to the study of past campaigns, major operations, battles, and engagements, these nine principles of war are powerful analysis tools:
Good with X’s and O’s An 1839 West Point graduate, Henry Halleck was regarded as one of the nation’s top military experts at the war’s outset. He enjoyed mixed success serving as Abraham Lincoln’s general in chief from July 1862 to March 1864.
2. Offensive
‘Let This Be My Share of the Spoils’ The question whether Shiloh would’ve ended differently had Albert Johnston survived will always be one of the war’s great “what-ifs.” Shortly after Johnston famously held a tin cup aloft as he roused his troops, the general was mortally wounded, dying about 2:30 p.m.
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The military defines the term “offensive” as “seize, retain, and exploit the initiative.” Such initiative is vastly important whether in war or boxing or almost any other dominant relational endeavor. Surrendering the initiative means handing the decision-making process over to the enemy. And that means going on the defensive. Strategically, the Federals at first showed great initiative in their progression up the Tennessee River. That process bogged down, however, as Halleck waited for a concentration, or massing, of the armies. As is often the case, mass and initiative worked in opposition to one another, as it took time to mass, during which time the Federals lost the initiative. In fact, the Union high command lost so much of the initiative that Johnston and the Confederates were able to seize the advantage and go on the offensive. Although tactically there were times that the Federals displayed offensive prowess—most notably an afternoon counterattack on the Union right by Brig. Gen. William T. Sherman and Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand that regained some lost ground and bought valuable time—Grant’s army had to fight essentially on the defensive most of the first day. That changed on April 7, however, when Grant retook the offensive and initiative to overwhelm the Confederates.
Confederate planners can be praised for their use of bold offensives, both on the operational and tactical level. The march northward in early April, the surprise attack, and the continual push on the first day were all vast achievements of the principle of offensive and taking the initiative. Yet the Confederates’ seeming comfort the night of April 6-7 that the battle had been won changed the dynamics, and on the second day it was Grant who took the initiative and launched a tactical offensive. Forced to play defense all day April 7, the Confederates would be driven away in defeat.
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Whether on the battlefield combatting an enemy army or in the third grade fighting a bully, the more support you have behind you the better. The principle of mass means “concentrating the effects of combat power at the decisive place and time.” Basically, the more men you have the better it is for you. But these troops have to be used at the right place and at the right time. The Federals were in the process of massing their armies when Shiloh occurred. In that sense, they were simply late in massing,
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but achieved this principle in the middle Daunting Deterrent of the fighting. When Buell and Lew WalCapable of firing 2,200 lace arrived late on the first day, massing yards, these siege guns of the Union troops began a process that formed the heart of the would continue throughout the spring, until Federals’ last line of the successful achievement of the Union defense near Pittsburg objective, the taking of Corinth. Massing Landing the night occurred, albeit late, but not completely too of April 6-7, finally late. Essentially, the Federals withstood the convincing the surging Rebels to call an end to Confederate attack and then massed for the their first-day attacks. decisive counterattack on the second day. Similarly, a wonderful example of tactical massing was Grant’s establishment of a short and strong last line of defense late on the first day when Buell’s and Wallace’s troops arrived. The Confederates massed their armies as well, particularly in February as a result of Fort Henry’s fall. Troops from Columbus, Ky., Bowling Green, Ky., Pensacola, Fla., and New Orleans, La., all concentrated at Corinth in preparation for the offensive. Yet that was not enough. The Federals withstood the force of this mass Confederate attack and then massed themselves. Tactically, the Confederates massed on the battlefield as well, but almost always in the wrong time and place. A mass 11 a.m. assault on the battlefield’s western side shifted the center of gravity from the east, where Johnston intended to turn the enemy left flank, to the west and the Hornet’s Nest Valor enemy’s right flank. Likewise, the massing of Union troops under the vast majority of the army late on the first W.H.L. Wallace and day to surround and capture the defenders of Benjamin Prentiss the Hornet’s Nest was, in many historians’ held out valiantly for several hours against a eyes, a needless concentration. Many argue Confederate onslaught the Confederates would have been much betin the Hornet’s Nest ter off holding the Hornet’s Nest with a small before succumbing at force and moving on to fight Grant’s last line about 5 p.m. Wallace of defense at Pittsburg Landing with more was mortally wounded. time left in the day to be successful.
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3. Mass
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‘General, Are You Wounded?’
4. Economy of Force
More complicated is the concept of economy of force, which is defined as “allocating minimum essential combat power to secondary efforts.” In more common parlance, as Abraham Lincoln put it, those who were not skinning could hold a leg. Essentially, most combat force should be used at the most important point, and only a minimum number of troops should
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be left at less critical, though still important, positions and tasks. While the main Union thrust was up the Tennessee River, Halleck held other forces along the Mississippi River under Maj. Gen. John Pope, and two divisions of Buell’s army in east Tennessee and north Alabama. These certainly aided in diverting Confederate attention, especially as seen in the message Beauregard received on the battle’s first night that Buell was in Alabama, making him think he
Back and Forth On April 7, a series of well-coordinated attacks helped the Federals recapture much of the ground they had lost on Day 1 (see P. 23). Having Lew Wallace’s wayward division (inset) on hand was crucial.
PHOTO BY SMITH COLLECTION/GADO/GETTY IMAGES
regiment to the left, charge, and take that battery.” I galloped to Colonel Statham, only about two hundred yards distant, gave the order, galloped back to the general where a moment before I had left him, rode up to his right side, and said, “General, your order is delivered, and Colonel Statham is in motion”; but, as I was uttering this sentence, the general reeled from me....I put my left arm around his neck, grasping the collar of his coat, and righted him up in the saddle, bending forward as I did so, and...said, “General, are you wounded?” In a very deliberate and emphatic tone he answered, “Yes, and I fear seriously.”… The general’s hold upon his rein relaxed, and it dropped from his hand....I gathered his rein with my right hand, in which I held my own, and guided both horses to a valley about 150 yards in rear of our line, where I…eased him to the ground as gently as I could.…I untied his cravat, unbuttoned his collar and vest, and tore his shirts open with the other, for the purpose of finding Tennessee Governor Isham Harris joined the staff of Army of Deadly Strike the wound, feeling confident from his the Mississippi commander Albert Sidney Johnston in early Isham Harris reaches out condition that he had a more serious 1862 and was with Johnston when the general was mortally to support wounded Albert wound than the one which I knew wounded on Shiloh’s first day. Harris later wrote about the Sidney Johnston as the was bleeding profusely in the right experience, as related in Colonel William Preston Johnston’s general reels on his horse, leg; but I found no other....Raising his account The Life of General Albert Sidney Johnston. the victim of a Minié ball head, I poured a little brandy into his that severed the popliteal mouth, which he swallowed, and in a “...The general immediately established his line upon a artery of his right leg. few moments I repeated the brandy, parallel ridge in easy musket range of the line of the enemy, but he made no effort to swallow; it and a galling fire was opened upon both sides. Just as the gurgled in his throat in his effort to breathe, and line of our extreme right (with which I had moved forward) was established, I turned his head so as to relieve him. In a few casting my eye up the line to the left I saw General Johnston sitting upon moments he ceased to breathe... his horse a few feet in rear, and about the centre of his line. He was alone. I He died calmly, and, to all appearances, free immediately galloped to him, to ascertain if, in his new position, he wished from pain—indeed, so calmly, that the only to send orders. I had never, in my life, seen him looking more bright, joyous, evidence I had that he had passed from life was and happy, than he looked at [that] moment....The charge he had led was the fact that he ceased to breathe, and the heart heroic. It had been successful, and his face expressed a soldier’s joy and a ceased to throb. There was not the slightest patriot’s hope. struggle, nor the contortion of a muscle; his As I approached him, he said “Governor, they came very near putting features were as calm and as natural as at any me hors de combat in that charge,” holding out and pointing to his foot. time in life and health… Looking at it, I discovered that a musket-ball had struck the edge of the sole [The wound] was not necessarily fatal. General of his boot, cutting the sole clear across, and ripping it off to the toe. I asked Johnston’s own knowledge of military surgery eagerly: “Are you wounded? Did the ball touch your foot?” He said, “No”; was adequate for its control by an extemporized and was proceeding to make other remarks, when a Federal battery opened tourniquet, had he been aware or regardful of its fire from a position which enfiladed our line just established. He paused nature.”–T.B.S. in the middle of a sentence to say, “Order Colonel Statham to wheel his
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PHOTO BY SMITH COLLECTION/GADO/GETTY IMAGES
had the battle won. Tactically, Grant’s decision to have Lew Wallace’s division camp well away from the army was not the wisest decision, and there was little room for Grant to employ economy of force in his defensive lines throughout the two days of battle. But he certainly did not break this principle either. The Confederacy failed across the board when it came to economy of force. Strategically, they moved almost everything to Corinth’s vast concentration, leaving paltry numbers at places like New Orleans, which was then overrun easily later in April. Similarly, not enough troops were left at various places such as Island No. 10, which also easily fell. If the Confederates were going to gamble everything in an all-out attack, they needed everything they had. Consequently, if they intended to hold these secondary places, they needed the minimum number to do the job. In essence, they did neither. Tactically, the same held true. For Johnston’s plan to work, he needed the minimum number possible to hold the enemy’s right so he could mass and turn the enemy’s left. Just the opposite occurred. Similarly, the Hornet’s Nest is a prime example of not leaving a minimum force to do a minimal job while taking the majority of the army and massing it at the critical point, which at that time was Grant’s last line. Relentless Shelling throughout the night of April 6-7 by the gunboats USS Tyler and USS Lexington terrorized Rebel soldiers camped along the Tennessee River. It proved to be a vital yet often-overlooked factor in the Union victory.
bloody frontal assaults. The Confederates quickly found themselves behind in the maneuver column. They were outmaneuvered by the Tennessee Valley campaign, and even had a hard time with this concept on the tactical level at Shiloh. For instance, the movements that led to the surrounding and surrender of the Hornet’s Nest were pure expressions of the maneuver, turning each flank of that famous position. Yet the Confederates were consumed with surrounding and capturing the defenders of the Hornet’s Nest although it did not place the enemy “in a disadvantageous position.” If anything, it allowed Grant unfettered time to build up his last line of defense nearer the landing, a position far stronger than the one at the Hornet’s Nest and its flanks.
6. Unity of Command
One of the key military maxims is having one person in charge. The principle of unity of command demands that “for every objective, ensure unity of effort under one responsible commander.” As the old saying goes, anything with two heads is a monster, and anything with no head is dead. Given that both armies utilized departments as well as armies within those departments, this principle could get complicated quickly.
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Late Arrival Ulysses Grant arrives at Pittsburg Landing on April 6. An unsuspecting Grant had been enjoying breakfast at nearby Savannah during the initial Confederate attack that morning.
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Today’s military places a premium on being able to move where it needs to quickly, defining “maneuver” as “placing the enemy in a disadvantageous position through the flexible application of combat power.” Certainly, to be able to sting like a bee, you need to first float like a butterfly. In military terms, that takes the connotation of outflanking, or turning, an enemy position. But not all maneuver is profitable, and it has to be done at the right time and place. The classic Federal maneuvering on the strategic level that led to Shiloh was the turning of Columbus, Ky. Blocking the Mississippi River, Columbus was all but impregnable, resulting in Grant going to the east up the Tennessee Valley instead of down the Mississippi River. Only once the campaign had shattered the Confederacy’s railroad system at Corinth did the Union movement step back to the Mississippi River “water highway” for continued operations against Vicksburg. Tactically, a wonderful example of maneuver by Union forces on the battlefield of Shiloh was Wallace’s turning of the Confederate left not once, not twice, but three separate times on the second day. Wallace maneuvered around the Confederate flank each time, driving it back and taking the position with casualty-saving movement rather than
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5. Maneuver
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Counterattack On Shiloh’s second day, Union troops recapture an artillery position that had been lost during the fighting on April 6.
The Federals had the problem of the departmental commander (Halleck) not commanding the army (Grant). In the end, this situation worked out overall, especially on the operational and tactical levels. More problematic for the Federals was the presence of two army commanders on the same tactical field. Halleck, the departmental commander who was not himself present, took care of that possible problem by ordering that the two commanders retain sovereignty over their armies at all times except in battle, at which time Grant would be in command of all. Although Grant did not always choose to exercise that command, such as in the pursuit after the battle, it was nevertheless there. While Grant et al. utilized unity of command, the Confederate effort at this principle was a disaster and a large part of why the battle was not fought well. Johnston and Beauregard both had adequate claim to command of the army, but unlike the Federals, the department commander Johnston also chose to retain tactical command of the army in battle. Although Johnston had offered Beauregard tactical command of the army, Beauregard declined but seemed to think the offer gave him superior status. From that point forward, operationally in planning the advance and attack as well as tactically, Johnston and Beauregard seemed to work at cross purposes, canceling each other out. Two completely different plans of attack emerged, and then on the field two completely different efforts pushed forward, each under its respective commander. There was definitely no unity of command in the Confederate army, and as a result, no one seemed to know which general to follow, that is until Johnston bled to death. Then Beauregard became the supreme commander.
7. Surprise
It is a central precept of military planners that they “strike the enemy at a time or place or in a manner for which he is unprepared.” History has numerous examples of surprise, from Pearl Harbor to Tet to 9/11. Shiloh is one of those examples, although getting into the weeds of Shiloh’s history reveals there are various levels of surprise. Still, it is safe to say few if any soldiers in the Union army expected to fight the largest and bloodiest battle to date in America’s history when they woke up that April 6 morning. The issue for the Federals in dealing with surprise was not necessarily being surprised. That had more to do with the failure of the next principle, security; the Federals cannot be judged on this principle simply because they were themselves surprised. Ironically, the Federals did actually manage to achieve surprise in other less famous instances at Shiloh. The issue of the morning patrol that uncovered the Confederate army at daylight was by all accounts a surprise to the Confederates; no one expected Federals to be that far out from their NOVEMBER 2020
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BATTLE OF SHILOH April 6-7, 1862
COMMANDERS
Confederate: General Albert Sidney Johnston; General P.G.T. Beauregard Union: Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant; Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell
ESTIMATED CASUALTIES Confederate: 10,669 Union: 13,047
FORCES ENGAGED
Confederate: Army of the Mississippi (~45,000) First Army Corps (Polk) Second Army Corps (Bragg) Third Army Corps (Hardee) Reserve Corps (Breckinridge) Union: Army of the Tennessee (~48,000) 1st Division (McClernand) 2nd Division (W.H.L. Wallace) 3rd Division (L. Wallace) 4th Division (Hurlbut) 5th Division (Sherman) 6th Division (Prentiss) Army of the Ohio (~18,000) 2nd Division (McCook) 4th Division (Nelson) 5th Division (Crittenden) 6th Division (Wood)
OUTCOME
Union victory
Night Tremors USS Tyler pounded the Confederate lines with huge 32-pounder shells like this one. The overnight blasts demoralized the Rebels. camps. Likewise, the Sherman– McClernand counterattack that occurred about noon on the first day on the western side of the battlefield completely took the Confederates by surprise and drove them back. The April 7 advances at daylight likewise took a tired, disorganized, and unready Confederate army by surprise. Of course, the Confederates managed to surprise the Federals at Shiloh. But the impact of this surprise was mitigated somewhat by the famous patrol sent out from the Union camps before daylight. This patrol uncovered the Confederate army poised to attack much earlier and farther out than the Confederates planned, and the result was that Federal units had some warning before the bulk of the Confederate army was upon them. Certainly, Shiloh was a surprise strategically, operationally,
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8. Security
Safety is a paramount concern for all, whether it be locking car doors or placing surveillance cameras to monitor personal possessions. In military matters, the principle of security means “never permit the enemy to acquire an unexpected advantage.” Basically, it means do not let the enemy surprise you. History is replete with instances where an army did not secure itself and paid the price. Shiloh is one of those examples. The Federals utterly failed in securing their campsite from an attack by an enemy army. There were security precautions in place, such as the two front divisions covering all four major roads into the army’s bivouacking area and pickets being put out all along the line. Yet a feeling of almost invincibility and disregard for reports of Confederate movements led to a lackluster security effort that allowed the Confederates to slip to within a mile of the Union camps and launch a massive attack that no Federal expected that morning. Just because the Confederates managed to take advantage of the enemy’s lack of security and surprise the Federals did not mean they were immune from surprise themselves. In fact, there are numerous examples of the lack of security on the Confederates’ part, including the surprise counterattack by Sherman and McClernand on the first day that found them woefully unprepared to resist as well as, primarily, the lack of security and organization at daylight on the second day. Thinking they had the battle won, the Confederates were not ready for the fight when the Federals pushed out from their lines at daylight. The result was that they gave up the best ground they could use for defense because they were unprepared, and only mounted a coherent—but ultimately unsuccessful—defense later in the morning and on much less suitable ground.
9. Simplicity
There is a famous phrase: “Keep it simple, stupid.” Military simplicity is the principle of “preparing clear, uncomplicated plans and clear, concise orders to ensure thorough understanding.” Given the greenness of the troops on both sides, the heavily wooded terrain, the inexperience of the generals, and the lack of uniformity of weapons, uniforms, and other equipment, it was a good idea not to overload the armies with burdensome plans and requirements that the soldiers were incapable of performing. Grant kept it simple. He never issued problematic or detailed orders, the missing Lew Wallace order perhaps being an exception. Rather, he let his division commanders fight their own fights within general guidelines. Essentially, Grant’s plan was to fight a delaying action across the entire front before falling back to successive lines of defense. In doing so, he was trading space for time, eating up daylight to reach nightfall when he knew major reinforcements would be arriving. This same simplicity occurred on the second day when Grant’s orders were only to attack and take back the original Union camps. The Confederates never could match Federal commitment to simplicity. Starting with a huge concentration that mashed regional corps together into an army, that army then went off to battle far before it
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Fight facts
and even tactically in some ways, but the tactical surprise was muted much more than, for example, Pearl Harbor, where the first indications of an attack were bombs dropping out of the clear blue sky.
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sustaining the offensive and maintaining security. Yet in the other five principles hung the balance of victory and defeat. The Federals did a much better job of mass, unity of command, maneuver, economy of force, and simplicity than did the Confederates, the Southerners not achieving any of them to any degree. The result, as shown by this modern analysis, is one explanation for a sound Union victory and a Confederate defeat at Shiloh.
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Timothy B. Smith, Ph.D., is a veteran of the National Park Service and currently teaches history at the University of Tennessee at Martin. In addition to was ready. Beauregard also dreamed up an unwieldy Tale of Two Generals numerous articles and essays, he plan of advance in which the four corps marched on two Shiloh was undeniably is the author, editor, or co-editor different roads and were supposed to interweave themthe highlight of the war of 20 books, including award selves together into one whole in front of the enemy. for Union Maj. Gen. Don winners Champion Hill: DeciObviously, this effort did not go as planned. Then, Carlos Buell (far left). sive Battle for Vicksburg (2004), Beauregard’s plan of attack in columns of corps rather Meanwhile, the decision Corinth 1862: Siege, Battle, than a simpler linear formation, as Johnston conceived by P.G.T. Beauregard to halt Confederate attacks Occupation (2012), Shiloh: Conit, brought chaos and a quick loss of command and conon Day 1 may well have quer or Perish (2014), Grant trol. Johnston should have exercised unity of command cost him a critical victory. Invades Tennessee: The 1862 but let Beauregard plan in a manner that was anyBattles for Forts Henry and thing but simple. Finally, the original plan to turn the Donelson (2016), and The Real Horse Soldiers: enemy left flank became anything but simple when the unknown geogBenjamin Grierson’s Epic 1863 Civil War Raid raphy and terrain became a major factor. Through Mississippi (2018). His book on the Shiloh was complicated, uneven, and chaotic, but enough of the action Vicksburg assaults of May 19 and 22 came out can be documented and narrated to gain a good understanding of what in January 2020, and he is currently writing a happened. And when analyzed against the modern U.S. military’s govbook on the Vicksburg siege. He lives with his erning principles of war, clear lessons can be learned. Both sides did wife and two daughters in Adamsville, Tenn. well with objective and surprise. On the other hand, both had trouble
Tragic Loss Confederate soldiers retreat defeated to the Army of the Mississippi’s headquarters in Corinth, Miss., on the evening of April 7, as depicted in this 19th-century wood engraving.
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strange bedfellows Abraham Lincoln and Russia’s czar Alexander II formed an unusual, but crucial, wartime alliance By Rick Beard Coming to America Russian sailors congregate for a photo session on the deck of their ship Oslyabya after its arrival in the port of Alexandria, Va., in December 1863.
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On April 4, 1866,
kov, Stoeckl revealed no misconceptions about American motivations. “The Americans will go after anything that has enough money in it,” he wrote. “They have the ships, they have the men, and they have the daring spirit. “The blockading fleet will think twice before firing on the Stars and Stripes.” Stoeckl’s surmise that Britain and France would adopt a hands-off approach to American shipping proved correct, and U.S. aid flowed freely to the czar’s army. The Russians’ defeat in 1856 did nothing to diminish their gratitude for the support they had received from the United States.
nearly a year after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Russian Czar Alexander II narrowly escaped a similar fate. Within a few weeks, the U.S. Congress adopted a joint resolution expressing its “deep regret of the attempt made upon the life of the Emperor of Russia by an enemy of emancipation.” At Congress’ request, President Andrew Johnson dispatched a special envoy—Assistant Navy Secretary Gustavus Fox—to hand-deliver the resolution to Alexander. In early August, a squadron of American naval vessels, led by the ironclad USS Miantonomoh, dropped anchor off the Baltic port of Kronstadt, where a 21-gun salute and harbor festooned with U.S. flags awaited them. he election results of 1860 initially The ensuing month of ceremonies, dinners, tours, fireworks, and appeared to jeopardize the Russian– other festivities celebrated the unlikely friendship, never formalized, American entente cordiale. The new between “the great Empire of the East, and the Great Republic of the administration’s views of Russia, while West.” In his remarks to the czar, Fox praised “the unwavering fidelity still unformed, were generally critical: Presiof the imperial government…throughout the recent period of convuldent Abraham Lincoln described it as a nation sion.” In return, Alexander promised to “contribute all his efforts to… “where they make no pretense of loving libstrengthen the bonds.” erty.” William H. Seward had lambasted RusToday such mutual regard is in stark contrast to the enmity that sia’s “despotism” in a number of speeches on has characterized Russian–American relations the Senate floor before he took office as secresince the end of World War II. The connectary of state. Stoeckl, who had been promoted tion between a young and growing democto minister, called the new president weak, racy and an entrenched autocracy also provincial, indecisive, and limited by his struck some 19th-century observers as “gross inexperience in the management unusual: An English traveler during of the more important affairs of state the 1850s attributed it to “some mysas well as of military affairs.” Seward terious magnetism” drawing “these was, in Stoeckl’s words, “completely two mighty nations into closer conignorant of international affairs,” yet tact.” But for many Americans, Ruspossessed of a vanity “so great that sia seemed the most trustworthy of he will not listen to anyone’s advice.” the European nations—an especially Although the Russian minister’s reliable buffer against the imperial analysis of the strengths of Lincoln schemes of Great Britain and France. and Seward was flawed, Stoeckl was The two nations had enjoyed a dipa perceptive and experienced observer. lomatic relationship since 1809, when In Washington since 1850 and married to James Madison appointed John Quincy an American, Elisa Howard, he had closely Adams as the first minister to Russia. And followed the growing rupture between North in 1832, Russia became the first nation and South. Both sides, he believed, bore to enjoy “most favored nation” trading responsibility—“the North for having ‘Czar Liberator’ status with the United States. Staunch provoked it, and the South for wantAlexander II freed all of Russia’s American support during Russia’s serfs in 1861. In 1866, he escaped ing to precipitate events with a speed 1853-56 Crimean War against Britain, which makes rapprochement impossia brash assassination attempt but was finally slain by a group France, and the Ottoman Empire would ble.” While “the North can exist without of nihilists in March 1881. only strengthen the so-called “mysterithe South,” he argued, “it will lose the ous magnetism.” principal source of its wealth and prosAlthough the Franklin Pierce administration (1853-57) successfully perity.” For the South, the only protection for blunted efforts by Baron Eduard de Stoeckl, the Russian chargé d’afslavery were the “the guarantees granted it by faires in Washington, D.C., to craft a formal alliance, the United States the Constitution.” supplied Russia with coal, cotton, munitions, and other war supplies. The outbreak of hostilities in April 1861 draU.S. doctors and American volunteers served with the Russian army matically altered the foreign policy dynamic throughout the conflict. between Russia and the United States. While In a dispatch to Russian Foreign Minister Prince Alexander GorchaRussia certainly had no love for American
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democracy, and the United States was conPrince Alex temptuous of Russian absolutism, antipaAlexander Gorchakov, thy toward the leading European powers born in 1798, part of soon bound them together. The collective one of Russia’s most memory of America’s assistance during the noble families, served Crimean War, the czar’s emancipation of 22 as Russia’s foreign million Russian serfs on March 3, 1861, and minister from 1856 the negligible impact of the American war to 1882—a year after Czar Alexander II’s on Russia’s agrarian economy all helped to assassination. strengthen the ties between these admittedly strange bedfellows. Stoeckl and his superiors in Russia’s capital, St. Petersburg, embraced the belief that “the preservation of the Union is for our own best interests.” To further their aims, the Russians would refuse to “take sides with the secessionists prematurely…and not antagonize any State regarding matters which do not involve our interests.” Russian and American interests quickly coalesced around the prevention of French and British interference in the Civil War. The British decision to recognize the belligerency of the Confederacy by declaring neutrality in May 1861 opened the possibility of recognition of the Confederate States of America as an independent nation. “England will take advantage of the first opportunity to recognize seceded states,” Stoeckl warned, “and France will follow her.” Maintaining good relations with Russia was critical if the United States was to counter the growing hostility of both France and Britain. To represent American interests in St. Petersburg, Lincoln and Seward
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Perceptive Observer Eduard de Stoeckl, Russia’s minister to the U.S., was no fan of Abraham Lincoln, but he did a reputable job maintaining the two nations’ diplomatic relations during the Civil War.
turned to Cassius Marcellus Clay, a pugnacious Kentucky abolitionist. Clay, who had worked hard for Lincoln’s election, coveted a Cabinet appointment as secretary of war. Failing that, he hoped for a post as minister to England or France. Too radical for inclusion in the Cabinet, Clay was forced to settle for the Russia post when Lincoln tapped others for the London and Paris assignments. Seward’s instructions to Clay were straightforward. He was “to confirm and strengthen these traditional relations of amity and friendship” between Russia and the United States. Further, he was to convey to Czar Alexander Lincoln’s wishes that Russia and America refrain from any intervention in one another’s political affairs. The United States, in the president’s words, has “too much self-respect to ask more and too high a sense of its rights to expect less.” Clay’s service got off to a rocky start. Before setting sail for Russia, he voiced a persistent lament that his annual salary of $12,500 ($328,000 today) was insufficient for his needs. “The Court of St. Petersburg is an expensive one,” he complained to Lincoln, and it ought to be “put upon an equality with the English and French [of] $17,500.” While crossing the Atlantic, Clay expressed further misgivings about his new post, asking to be made a general instead: “I think my talent is military…. Make me a general in the regular service… and I’ll return home at once.” In the fall of 1861, less than six months after arriving in St. Petersburg, Clay sent his family home. The following January, Lincoln NOVEMBER 2020
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In the Limelight Simon Cameron (left) and William H. Seward were principals in the two nations’ partnership. Seward, Lincoln’s secretary of state, famously engineered Russia’s 1867 sale of Alaska to the U.S. decided to solve two problems at once. By appointing Clay a major general, he would presumably please his restive envoy while freeing up the post of minister to Russia for Simon Cameron. The Pennsylvania politico’s scandal-filled stewardship of the War Department had made him a political liability. After a rancorous debate, the Senate confirmed Cameron’s appointment, leading Frank Leslie’s Weekly Newspaper to quip that the nomination made Lincoln look “as if he were addicted to practical joking.” Like his predecessor, Cameron proved reluctant to go to Russia, delaying his departure until May 1862 after an abortive attempt to return to the Senate. Cameron, too, stopped off in England, where Henry Adams weighed in with the hope that the “whited sepulcher General Cam-
eron” would “vanish into the steppes of Russia and wander there for eternity.” And like Clay, Cameron almost immediately began plotting his return to the United States. When Seward denied his request for a furlough to participate in the 1862 fall elections, Cameron decided to accompany his wife back to the U.S. and then resign as minister to Russia. In the meantime, Clay had decided that the military life was not for him and implored Lincoln “to return me to this court on Mr. Cameron’s leaving” since “you now have already too many generals in the field.” Recognizing that Clay was not fit for command, a “much annoyed” president decided to honor his request to return to Russia as minister. Clay’s appointment was widely criticized, and Seward had to step in at the last minute to save the nomination in the Senate. Bayard Taylor, who had served Cameron as secretary of the legation and hoped for the ministerial appointment himself, claimed Clay “had made the legation a laughingstock.” His “incredible vanity and astonishing blunders “are “still the talk of St. Petersburg.” Despite his critics, Clay proved to be popular and socially adept during his second tour of duty in St. Petersburg. His parties rivaled any held in the Russian capital. “If they liked flowers, I accommodated them,” he boasted, “if paintings, I had invested in some of the rarest; if wines, I had every sample of the world’s choice; if menu was the object, nothing there was wanting.”
Abraham Lincoln’s issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, met with praise from most of Europe. Ironically, the Russian response as embodied in Baron de Stoeckl’s reaction was among the most negative. A frequent critic of Lincoln, the Russian minister argued that the proclamation should have been “universal in its immediate application.” Instead, the document was a “military weapon” that was “not at all a proclamation of human liberty” and might well provoke a bloody servile insurrection throughout the South. Furthermore, it was “but a futile menace [because] it set up a further barrier to the reconciliation of the North and South—always the hope of Russia.” The response from St. Petersburg was muted. Czar Alexander II’s conversation with an American banker years after the war suggests that the Russian ruler shared his minister’s misgivings. “I did more for the Russian serf in giving him land as well as personal liberty, than America did for the Negro slave set free by the Proclamation of President Lincoln….I believe the time must come when many will question the manner of American emancipation of the Negro slaves in 1863.” –R.B.
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hroughout much of 1862, while Simon Cameron and Cassius Clay were engaged in an almost comic diplomatic pas de deux, France and Great Britain were exploring ways they might intervene to broker a peace that would lead to Confederate independence. Both nations saw in the potential dissolution of the United States the beneficial removal of an emerging power from the world stage. In the early spring, Henri Mercier, the French minister to the United States, began sounding out his British and Russian counterparts about playing a role as mediators. The effort quietly collapsed after Stoeckl reported on a conversation with Seward, who declared the war “a domestic quarrel which must be settled among ourselves” and warned potential interlopers that “mediation from whatever source will not be popular with our nation.” Undaunted, the French tried again in July, asking the Russians to lead a mediation attempt. Prince Gorchakov flatly refused. “Russia and America,” he noted, “have a special regard for each other which is never
adversely affected because they have no points of contact.” In the fall, the British tried their hand, proposing an armistice requiring the Union to lift its blockade and negotiate a peace based on Confederate separation. If the North refused, British leaders hinted that they might then recognize the South. At the same time, the French renewed their effort to broker a peace. Once again Russian participation was critical to the washout of both initiatives. For their part, the Russians viewed the United States as a valuable counterweight to the global ambitions of the British and so favored a reunion of North and South. In St. Petersburg, Prince Gorchakov warned Bayard Taylor that England “longs and prays for your overthrow…[and] France is not your friend.” Russia alone, he continued, “has stood by you from the first, and will continue to stand by you. We believe that intervention could do no good at present…[and] will refuse any invitation of the kind.” But Gorchakov also expressed his nation’s anxiety-laden wish that the Lincoln administration find some means to “prevent the division which now seems inevitable.” From Washington, Stoeckl offered support for his government’s hands-off policy. Recognition of the Confederacy by France or England “will not end the war and…will not procure cotton.” The latter could be accomplished “only by forcing open the Southern ports,” a move that Celebrities Americans were fascinated by the visiting Russian sailors, who posed for a number of photographs. These sailors were from the ship Variag, shown on two of their cap bands.
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Cassius Clay and the Code Duello
Although dueling was outlawed in much of the United States by the 1840s, it was not unusual for men to face off against one another to settle “affairs of honor.” The individual challenged had the right to choose the weapon—usually pistols or swords—to be used to settle the dispute. Cassius Clay (right), never one to shirk from a fight, had survived a number of duels in the United States. Clay’s weapon of choice was the Bowie knife. He owned several, including an 18-inch blade with a pearl handle and an eagle on the haft. For street wear, he preferred a bone-handled knife. Considering his pugnacious character, it is not surprising that Clay found it necessary to answer several challenges while in Russia; he invariably chose the Bowie knife for the confrontations. An oft-repeated story, perhaps apocryphal, speaks to Clay’s fearsome nature. One evening two Russians accosted Clay while he was dining in a hotel. They hoped to gain the advantage by selecting swords as the weapon of choice. Not to be outsmarted, Clay arose from his seat and punched one of the Russians in the face, breaking his nose, and then sat down and resumed his meal. No duel ensued. –R.B.
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would lead “to a clear rupture with the North.” By late November 1862, the last concerted effort by European nations to intervene in the Civil War fell apart when both Britain and Russia rejected the French proposal. The entire effort, Lincoln noted, had been the result of a “mistaken desire to counsel in a case where all foreign counsel excites distrust.” One Washington newspaper spoke for many knowledgeable Americans when it editorialized, “Russia has obtained the deep gratitude of this country.”
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England’s Take In 1863, Britain’s Punch magazine ran this cartoon mocking the “extreme” Lincoln–Alexander II partnership. The artist included a background of dead Confederates and massacred Polish rebels.
ithin a year, Northern supporters had yet another reason to be grateful to Russia. In early September, the arrival of Oslyabya in New York Harbor brought news that five other Russian warships under the command of Rear Admiral Lisovskii were en route. The frigate’s unannounced appearance generated considerable excitement, and on September 16 a delegation that included First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, Maj. Gen. John A. Dix, Russian Consul-General Baron d’Ostensacken, and Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks’ wife, Mary, paid a visit, during which they drank a toast to Czar Alexander II. On September 24, 1863, four days after the Federal army’s crushing defeat at Chickamauga, two Russian frigates—Alexander Nevskii, and Peresviet—arrived, followed by three more vessels by mid-October. To many, their presence seemed to reaffirm Russian support for the Union cause. For Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, the squadron’s presence was “a politic movement for both Russians and Americans, and somewhat annoying to France and England.” He quickly made the facilities of the Brooklyn Navy Yard available for any necessary repairs. The entrance of six ships from Russia’s Far East fleet into San Francisco Harbor on October 12 seemed a further token of Russian friendship. In fact, the foreign vessels remained in American waters for the next seven months, providing a welcome distraction.
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New York welcomed the Russian fleet Welcome Aboard with a series of celebratory events—a parade Oslyabya, a 33-gun down Broadway, a reception with Mayor screw frigate named George Opdyke, and two banquets. The after a 14th-century grandest of these fetes—the Soirée Russe warrior monk, was honoring the Russian naval officers—took an integral part of the place at the Academy of Music the evening Russian fleet anchored of November 5. Luminaries such as John in New York Harbor. Mary Todd Lincoln Jacob Astor, Hamilton Fish, and wealthy was among dignitaries banker Moses Taylor hosted the event, to visit the ship. which drew more than 2,000 of the city’s social elite to eat, drink, and dance beneath portraits of Peter the Great, George Washington, Czar Alexander II, Abraham Lincoln, and Union military notables such as Ulysses S. Grant and David Farragut. Guests began arriving at 9 p.m. and two hours later sat down to a supper catered by Delmonico’s, New York’s premier restaurant. Harper’s Weekly catalogued the evening’s lavish bill of fare, including 12,000 oysters, 12 “monster” salmon of 30 pounds each, 1,200 game birds, 250 turkeys, 400 chickens, a half ton of tenderloin, 100 pastry “pyramids,” 1,000 loaves of bread, and 3,500 bottles of wine.” Following the meal, dancing and socializing extended into the wee hours of the next morning. The following month, when the fleet sailed south to the Chesapeake Bay, then up the Potomac to Alexandria, Va., Lincoln hosted the Russian officers at a White House reception. In attendance were Cabinet members, the diplomatic corps, Supreme Court justices, and members of the Lincoln administration such as presidential secretary John Hay, who described the Russian guests as “fiendishly ugly” but mar-
veled at their “vast absorbent powers.” The political significance of the balls, ceremonies, parades, and receptions that greeted the Russians was not lost on most observers. There were, however, critics. “Such extravagant festivities were out of place when the Boys in Blue were dying in the trenches and when the government was having hard work to raise money for munitions,” protested one New York newspaper. “The million spent on the ‘Ovation, Collation and Ball’ should instead have been given to the Sanitary Commission.” The reasons for the fleet’s visit remain open to interpretation. While there is little doubt that the Russian government saw it as an opportunity to display its support for the Lincoln administration, considerable selfinterest was also at work. The Russians were anxious to avoid their misfortune of 10 years earlier when the British and French navies had been able to trap the Russian fleet in the Baltic during the Crimean War. Should war now break out over the Russians’ brutal suppression of a revolt in Poland, the czar wanted his fleet to be available and in position to raid enemy shipping. The voyage to North America also provided opportunities to demonNOVEMBER 2020
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‘Deep-Seated Irritation’ Confederate relations with Russia were virtually nonexistent throughout the Civil War. Jefferson Davis failed to appoint a minister to Russia until late 1862. His choice, the Mississippi politician L.Q.C. Lamar (left), never actually reached Russia. In December 1863, the Confederate Senate refused to confirm him, prompting Secretary of State Judah Benjamin to assure the would-be diplomat that the decision was not personal. Rather, Benjamin wrote, the decision was the result of “a deep-seated feeling of irritation at what is considered to be unjust and unfair conduct of neutral powers toward this Confederacy [which] prevails among our people.” –R.B
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Union,” he wrote in 1862. “We cannot take any part more than we have done. We have no hostility to the southern people.” During the winter of 1863-64, the threat of war in Europe evaporated, and on April 26, 1864, orders arrived directing the Atlantic and Pacific squadrons to return to Russia. In retrospect, one historian has written that a stance appearing to favor the Union was smart policy for the Russians: if the North won, it would be grateful, while if the South won, it would be so elated that it would soon forget its grievances. The staunchly Democratic New York Herald wondered what had been gained by the fleet’s presence, noting that “Russia sends her navy here to keep it safe [but]…we doubt if she would
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strate the Russian navy’s capabilities and to Pomp and observe the Union ironclads that promised to Circumstance revolutionize maritime warfare. New York City Once the Russian squadron reached Amerspared little expense ican waters, its orders were to “drop anchor in entertaining the in New York…[and] await the outcome of the visiting Russian negotiations on the Polish question.” Should officers. On October 1, the U.S. government object to their pres1863, the officers took part in a grand parade ence in a single harbor, the Russian admidown Broadway. ral was “to divide the squadron into two or three parts and to scatter it among ports of the North American coast.” From there, the Russian fleet could attack enemy shipping should war break out over the Polish question. Foreign Minister Gorchakov had been consistent in impressing upon Stoeckl and the fleet commanders that they were not to interfere in the fighting. “We desire above all things the maintenance of the American
send it…to aid us in fighting England.” Her navy, in fact, was “not worth the sending.” The author rather accurately, if somewhat insultingly, observed that “one of our Ironsides could blow it out of the water…in a couple of hours.” Although Lincoln and Seward both recognized that the Russian fleet’s presence in American waters signified neither a promise of military support nor opposition to slavery, they skillfully deployed it to discourage foreign intervention on behalf of the Confederacy. They were “astute enough to see that this visit of the Russian squadron might seem to be what it was not,” observed one contemporary. “Appearances, we all know, are sometime deceptive.” The visit of the squadron was “a splendid ‘bluff’ at a very critical period in our history.”
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y early 1865, a Union victory and the resulting national reunification— always the Russians’ goal—seemed increasingly likely. Baron de Stoeckl and his colleagues in St. Petersburg began to ruminate on the war and the challenges of the postwar era. Always a harsh critic of Lincoln, whom he felt lacked leadership qualities and moral courage, Stoeckl took pains to explain the Union victory. “Providence has taken [Americans] under his special protection,” he suggested. “The insurrection was put down not by the skill of the men in authority, but by an irresistible strength of the nation at large.” Stoeckl praised Ulysses Grant’s “commendable” moderation at Appomattox and hoped it would set an example for the politicians. His analyses of the aftereffects of the bitter enmity between North and South over slavery were prescient: He saw trouble ahead. “How can it be expected that States which have waged a long and fierce war can rejoin the Union and live in peace and harmony with the loyal States?” he asked. It is rather improbable that the people of the South could be persuaded “to form a new attachment to the Union.” Stoeckl predicted an equally bleak future for relations between Whites and the new freedmen and women. “The Negro will be tolerated only so long as he is useful to the Americans who, like all Anglo-Saxons, are always ready to speak piously about the rights of humanity, but are slow to put them into practice.” The unlikely friendship between Russia and the United States during the Civil War paid dividends for both countries. While it may not have been the decisive factor in discouraging European intervention—the Union
victory at Antietam and the Emancipation Proclamation cannot be discounted as determinative factors—the Russian refusal to join the mediation efforts of Great Britain and France effectively squelched attempts at foreign intervention. Russian support also strengthened Union resolve at key moments. In return, the Lincoln administration’s refusal to condemn the czar’s suppression of the Polish revolt likely discouraged European intervention in what Lincoln and Seward considered a problem internal to Russia. Finally, the United States’ enmity for Britain in particular provided a strategic counterbalance that aided Russia’s emergence on the world stage. It proved to be an alliance of strange bedfellows that, however informal, served both nations well. Red Carpet Treatment The New York Times claimed the Soirée Russe on November 5, 1863, promised the Russian officers the “opportunity of seeing society in New-York in all its full regalia, style and splendor.”
Rick Beard, a frequent America’s Civil War contributor, is an independent historian and exhibition consultant who writes frequently on Civil War topics. NOVEMBER 2020
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Morass of Men This A.J. Riddle photograph, taken in August 1864, aptly captures Andersonville’s congested landscape. Note the sinks, or latrines, at the bottom of the photo. Runoff from those sinks would mix with a nearby stream and pollute the prisoners’ drinking water.
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SURVIVING ANDERSONVILLE A CIVIL WAR SOLDIER’S STORY Edited by Moira Jacobs
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Empire State Gunner Elisha Davis Conklin in an undated photo. A 2nd Corps badge is just visible on his right lapel. Conklin turned 25 while in captivity.
handling bees,” he would write. “He took a blanket, set the hive down very carefully on it, and when he got to the Battery he scraped the clover all away so the ground was clear. Then he lit a fuse, set the hive over it very carefully—so as not to disturb the bees—and in ten minutes he took nearly twelve pounds of honey out of the hive, and you could not see a live bee around.” Conklin watched in amusement as another detachment followed suit. “[W]hen they set their hive down on the coarse clover that lay on the ground, the bees crawled out from under their hive,” he wrote. “They began to crawl up the fellows’ legs that were standing around, and they began to curse and holler for the bees were stinging them. They were hollering like bloody murder. Jack had told our detachment to keep away from the crowd that were waiting to get their honey and we would see some fun. Sure enough, for they had shook the bees all down so they would crawl out, and were pulling off their clothes, turning them inside out and shaking them…” After seven weeks of constant fighting, and facing the likelihood he would see action the following day, the evening’s merriment was a welcome respite for Conklin. But like the bees in that hive, his world was about to be wrenched apart. During the afternoon fighting on June 22, Confederate infantry charged and overran the 12th New York’s guns, taking several Empire State gunners prisoner, including Conklin. By the end of July, Conklin found himself a captive at the Confederates’ Camp Sumter prison camp in Andersonville, Ga. An unfortunate 13,000 or so Union prisoners would die at the notorious Andersonville while it was open, but Conklin survived not only a five-month stay there but also the war. He would, in fact, live another 65 years. In 1926, four years before his death at the age of 91, Conklin compiled his memories of Andersonville, the Civil War, and that fateful June at Petersburg—derived from letters and journals he had kept—in a typed manuscript, portions of which are published below for the first time. [Conklin’s original text has not been edited, but paragraph breaks have been added for readability.] His story provides touching insights into the brotherhood among soldiers, the tragedies of death and disease in prison camps both North and South, and the human resilience and resolve to survive against all odds.
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une 21, 1864, marked the first day of the Battle of Jerusalem Plank Road, the opening engagement in what would become the Army of the Potomac’s nine-month siege of Petersburg, Va. For Elisha Davis Conklin, though, it was a relatively peaceful day. That afternoon, Conklin and his fellow gunners in the 12th Independent Battery, New York Volunteer Light Artillery took advantage of an opportunity to explore the land near their position along the army’s 2nd Corps’ lines. Conklin, who had enlisted in October 1861, was a first sergeant in the 12th New York, a few weeks shy of his 25th birthday. Coming upon a large farmhouse with “a large garden of all kinds of vegetables,” he began bartering with the farmer for some of his produce, later writing, “We got all we wanted and [the farmer] also was well pleased. The boys…traded coffee, socks, drawers, and many trinkets; we had a fine dinner.” The frivolity didn’t end there. After dinner, Conklin bought a hive of bees from the farmer. “I took one of my detachment that was used to
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“ This is the report of the last engagement that I was in during our Civil War of 1864: We were ordered out at 2 A.M. June 22nd, 1864. The Pioneers were sent up ahead of the Battery to cut a road through the woods and underbrush, and to throw up some embrasure for the Battery. They threw some for the five right Pices, but none for my Pice, which was on the extreme left of the line of Battle, so we were placed 50 yards from the five right Pices and had to put up our own protection ourselves. By 8 A.M. we were ready for action and we commenced firing at about once in from 15 to 20 minutes, and I kept my Pice well sponged so it would keep cool, for I did not know how quick I might want to use it faster. The infantry on both sides had kept a pretty sharp firing-up until after 2 P.M. Then the
artillery on both sides opened, and then I slackened up until the artillery firing began to die down, then the Rebel infantry began to work towards us, and I commenced to fire into their lines and they were coming pretty close then. I used a case shot without fuse, then canester, and we were firing as fast as we could, and in a short time a batch of Rebels came on to us from Front and Rear, and as they were planting their colors on our works, we were firing into their ranks, when they took us prisoners. Then they rushed us into their lines at a double quick for 1/4 of a mile, then put us in a barnyard and about 9 P.M. put us in an open field and put a strong guard over us. In the morning of the 23rd they took us down to Petersburg and put us on an Island and let us buy some bread, which we paid nine dollars for the nine Like Cattle loaves. Then we were put on the cars and Captured soldiers were sent to Richmond and put in Libby Prison. usually transported to Then we washed up—they began to send Union and Confederate squads in to search us. We had to take off all prisons across the country in congested our clothes and they would search them. Two rail cars, packed of our detachment had been searched and much like farm they were dressing on the other side of the animals, as shown table where I was undressing; they gave me in this postwar a tip to pass my valuables over to them, and illustration. I passed my gold watch, ring and $80 in NOVEMBER 2020
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July 1st – a rainy day – marched 20 miles. Got no rations. July 2nd – marched all day, got four corn dodgers. Not a drink of water today. Marched 20 miles. July 3rd – marched 20 miles, several gave out, left them behind, no rations. July 4th – marched 15 miles, an awful hot and dusty day; got to Danville 4 P.M. Water once today, but no rations. They put us in a warehouse and laid here 36 hours until the 6th; then put on cars and sent to (I think the name of the place was) Shilotta and lay there all day, in the cars most of the time. Put in cars again and rode all night. We had one meal in 24 hours.
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orning of the 8th we arrived in Augusta, took us off the cars and to a goose pond to wash. Could not drink the water. Put on the train again and run out into the country. Don’t know where the guard said they were going to take us, to some place where there was a stockade, but they had orders to send us back to Augusta again. We were in Augusta the morning of the 9th. They ran us where they had long flower beds and walks in their garden that came clear to our car, and there were four colored women watering the flowers. We were dry standing still as we had been without water; we saw some white ladies looking at our car and we asked them
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greenbacks and the Rebels never saw them No Letup pick them up; they were two pretty handy The 12th New York’s fellows, their names were Kelly and Richards guidon displays and Richards was a sleight-of-hand fellow. the battery’s many So they saved all of my valuables and the engagements during rest of my detachment lost everything. The the war, including Rebs had told they would get them when we battles at North Anna, went out, but they never got any of them. We Tolopotomy, and Cold were sent to Belle Island and laid there until Harbor that preceded Conklin’s capture at the 28th of June, then sent to Manchester. Jerusalem Plank Road. The 29th put in cars and sent to Lynchburg. The 30th of June we left for Lynchburg and marched five miles to the River Stanton, laid there all night.
if they would let the colored women fetch us some water as we had not had a drink all day. She let them bring us some; we were drinking as fast as we could—some of the boys filled their hats—she said, “It ain’t because I like you, but I have three sons in the Southern Army and if they want a drink sometime I hope they get it”; but a couple Rebel officers came along and stopped the colored women bringing water. The next stop we made the guard drew rations, but we got nothing. When night came we laid on a tressle in a marsh overnight. I told my men that were taken prisoners with me that if the guard went to sleep, I would cut the sack from him. My boys were so hungry, they kept watching for that grub; I got it and we ate all the corn dodgers the guard had. When morning came the guard says to me— “Did you see anyone take my haversack?” I said, “I wasn’t here to watch your haversack.” In a short time he said to me, “Come with me and we will see if we can see any crumbs on any of them.” He did not find any and he said: “We have been running around several days trying to get you in some stockade, now we have orders to go to Andersonville Stockade, and I will get even with you before we get there….” The officer asked me if I had the names taken. I said I had, and in a few minutes along came our guard—the one I had cut the haversack off from—and he had two officers with him. He said, “You are the ones I am looking for, I thought you had gone into the stockade.” One of the officers asked the guard what they wanted of us. He said, “I drew rations the other day and they came and stole my haversack and took all my corn dodgers. I told them I would get even with them before they went into stockade.” The officer said, “what do you want?” The guard walked along looking us over, stops in front of one of the prisoners that had on a pair of officer’s boots and he said, “I give you two minutes to pull them off; if you don’t I’ll blow your head off.” The officer said, “Take them off or he will shoot.” So he got the boots. Then he went into stockade.… This is about the way we would get our rations; we were counted in the morning, but it was no telling when we would get our grub, maybe 8 A.M. and maybe none to-day and by noon to-morrow we would have gone two days without grub; then the first meal would be corn bread, sometimes for your first meal would draw molasses and the next meal would
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be mush, so you did not get any molasses to put on your mush. Next day you might get fresh beef—nothing with it. Many days we only got one meal a day, which might be cornbread—that is the way we got our meals. That is the way they made models of us, the kind you would see laid in the dead line every day; one day there were 117 laid in the dead line for 24 hours. One time some ladies took a peek over the top of the stockade and when they saw those poor fellows lying there, with eyes open, chin dropped, grimey and skinny, those women let a scream out and dropped out of sight. Then to see the way they were taken to the cemetery. They were thrown into wagons—one on top of the other—until the wagons were heaping full, some arms hanging over the side, others with legs hanging out—it was a hard looking sight. And just at that time so many were dying in prisons, and we were informed by prisoners that had just come into the stockade that the men who had charge of the exchange of prisoners on both sides had stopped the exchange because the Southerners did not want to let a colored man be swapped for a white man. The North wanted to exchange all sick and wounded, either white or black that had been in Prison longest. They could not agree on the paroling so it was stopped. I was talking with a colored prisoner in Andersonville who only had one leg; he said that every colored man in the Pen would willingly stay to the last man to have the exchange go on. There were eleven hundred of us that started away from Belle Island, Va., the 28th of June. We were in cars most of the time up until mid-day July the 11th, P.M. They were running us around trying to get us in some stockade.
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Stung The Battle of Jerusalem Plank Road was the result of a Union attempt to extend its siege lines and cut the key Weldon Railroad. Conklin was captured when William Mahone’s troops overran the 12th New York’s position.
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ere is how things would look to you as soon as you got into the Stockade. I had only got inside when my friend, Dawson and I, stopped to see six men hung. They were murderers and raiders. While watching the crowd you would wonder if you would ever get out alive. Some so black and dirty, many with clothes nearly all gone, clothes all rotted away. Many had traded their boots for something to eat, or sold the legs for water buckets. Many had no soap or a rag to dry themselves with. There was about 30,000 of us on the day we went in. Now the hanging is over (one of them broke his rope and ran into the crowd, but they brought him back and hung him). There was no more murdering or raiding done, so my friend and I started out to buy some dishes and something to cover ourselves with. He had been in the stockade about forty days and was pretty well posted. He took me to a man that they called a dealer. I got a frying pan and some of the old canteens and we melted them apart and made dishes of them. I paid sixteen dollars for a blanket and three dollars for a grain sack. We tore up handkerchiefs to fasten them together and Ike (my mate) told me if I kept a lookout and could get hold of a dead prisoner, carry him over and lay him in the dead line and get a card for him, in the morning they would let four take him NOVEMBER 2020
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out to the dead house and they would all get some wood to carry in. Wood was a scarce article. Our bugler found one the first night and three of our mess went out with him in the morning. So we had wood enough for two weeks. The bugler and the boys had another one in two days and this time they brought sticks enough to fix up our covering. So we had pretty good covering to keep the sun off us. By lying with heads together four in a row, we would lay under there day times and night time stroll around through the grounds, and the bugler and the boys were on the lookout every night.… If it was a rainy day, it might be bath day, for you wouldn’t get a chance to take a bath only when it rained, for the stream that ran across the stockade was so shallow that you couldn’t take much of a wash in it. So when it rained we could get a good bath. That was the time we could wash out clothes also, but other times it was so shallow we could not get much of a bath or wash clothes. Our clothes got so rotten they would not stand much rubbing. About every day we would take and louse ourselves. If the sun was hinting we would pass the time a lousing; take our clothes off, turn them inside out and shake them; then look them over and pick what we could get off of them; then run along the seams, put our thumb nails together, run along the seams and keep cracking the nitz. Sometime the seams would be pretty white with nitz. We did not get man head lice but always had plenty of body lice, but a man that was in poor health would have brown ones. We would sit and talk and wonder if we would live to get home and tell our folks how lousy we were in here if they would believe us. Then on Sundays we would talk about what a dinner they would be having and us foolish fellows to have enlisted. So that is the way we would pass the time. Then we would go strolling around the camp to see what news we could get; every day looking for some word of exchange of prisoners.… Every one of us who were in prison any length of time are doctoring for some disability he got while in prison. My eyes got effected there, got the scurvy. Many doctors do not know how many ways we were affected from it, have been bothered with inward piles and bowel trouble which I got while in prison and have had to doctor for them ever since. Lost Tried and Punished An illustration of the makeshift gallows used in July 1864 to hang six Union prisoners found guilty by trial of robbing or killing fellow captives, socalled “Raiders” or, as some knew them, “Mosby’s Marauders.”
most of my teeth with the scurvy, and now because I can walk they think I am all right. I am thankful that I have lived so long. Here are some things that I tried to get through. I asked one of my officers in command at the stockade to let me write to my father. I told him my father had a brother living in Houston, Texas, that had a drug store and I wanted my father to write to him that I am in the stockade and am sick; have the disentary and piles and I have eight men with me that belonged to my detachment and most of them are ailing, and I would like to have him send me some medicine. I got a sheet of paper and envelope from the officer. He told me not to seal it up because he had to read it and if it was all right it would be sent with others, with a flag of Truce through the lines. I took my letter to him to read. He took and sent it, said it was alright and hoped I would get the medicine. I did not get the medicine. My uncle answered my father’s letter; told him he could not say he was sorry I was there, but all he could say was that he was sorry that there were not more of us in there. So when the officer read father’s letter, he says, “How many men did you say were with you?” I said, “There are eight of us.” He said, “If you will all go out and agree to stay until after the war is over, I will place you all in a good place where you will get good grub and with nice people.” I told him we could not make such a bargain. There originally were nine of us, but one took the oath and went outside and our army took him a prisoner and they had him in jail somewhere, I forget where. His folks wrote to me, wanted I should sign some papers for him so he could get out. I tore the papers up, never heard from him since. We had another man that was true blue; his name was La Barren. The Rebs often came looking for shoemakers, offered to pay them good. We tried to get La Barren to go out, but he would say “Let them go to Hell and make their own shoes.” He was driving the ambulance when captured. He stayed in the stockade until he died. Fine old man. Before we left Andersonville I had lent some of my money, sold my watch and ring and spent all my money except 85 cents. I felt good that Kelly and Richards had saved those articles for I think it saved my life and my gun detachment of eight men; all lived to get home and all lived 20 years after getting out of prison. Kelly and myself are the only ones living now; I think Kelly is in his 86th year and I have a good start in my 88th.
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ow I will tell you how Ike and myself got out of Andersonville. There were one thousand names enrolled to go out in the morning to be paroled. During the night one of the lot that were to go out died, and Ike came over and told me to come over and answer to his name in the morning. I went and when I went through the gate that was all right—when I went into the stockade I did not remember of there being more than one gate—but when I stopped at the second gate Ike was there and he hollared to the gate man to let me through... We were put in cars and they told us we were going to be paroled. We were in this car about 30 hours without water or anything to eat, and when they took us off the cars they marched us to where they were building another stockade and put us in there. We had no covering and no dishes, so we strolled around in the Stockade. We drew pea soup and we had nothing to put it in, so we got our mess man to hold it until we could borrow something to put it in. After strolling around all night—we could not sleep for as soon as we saw the stockade we knew there was no parole for us. We were broke up. I said: “Ike, make the best of it, I have 85 cents and we will see what we can do.” One of the prisoners told us that there was a crippled Reb that bought
stuff of fellows that were going out. They Hell Hole were fellows that were nearly dead and the Camp Sumter opened Rebs were sending them to be exchanged. So in February 1864, we went to the crippled Reb and got a few old designed to hold up to tin dishes. Then we got a little sleep, couldn’t 10,000 prisoners on sleep much. Then we run across a Bucktail 16½ acres. Even after who was in the same fix as we were, and we the addition of 10 acres all got in the same mess. I could hardly get in July, space remained an issue. At its peak, in around for I had the scurvey, but the little August, the camp held Bucktail helped me and Ike got a job outside. He had to come inside every night, so Ike nearly 33,000 prisoners. and the little Bucktail got some roots and made a stand for me. We got a little iron kettle that held about four quarts. Ike traded some York state buttons, we had polished them and they looked like gold, the darkies we’re glad to get them…. After we three had gotten along nice for a spell—I could get around pretty good again—Bucktail and I thought we would go to the other side of the camp. We went where there was a log laid across the stream and we did not notice that it was the dead line. Bucktail had gotten about halfway across the log and I was just going to get on it when the guard shot him, because that log was a part of the dead line. We got Bucktail out and sent him out in the morning with the dead. Ike came in and asked, “Where is Bucktail?” I replied, “He got on that log to cross the stream and the guard shot him, he fell in the water dead.” Ike felt awful bad for Bucktail was such a nice boy. Ike and I got along nicely for some time, then he began to feel bad. He stayed inside for one day and then went out again. After three days I asked the guard to find out why Ike did not come in. He told me that Ike had been buried for three days. That left me alone and I was going down hill pretty fast myself. The 28th of November they took the names of about four hundred of NOVEMBER 2020
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there long. They sent me home quick for after they gave me my furlough papers, they gave me orders to get in line, they were all going home. When we got to the cars in Baltimore, I was all in. The first thing I knew I was in a fire engine house in Baltimore, laying on a cot. I asked the firemen how I came there. They said, “The day before yesterday, just after dusk, one of the boys saw you sitting there all hunched up over by that building. They brought you here and you were trembling like a leaf. Your teeth would chatter like lightening and you couldn’t talk, so we called a doctor and he said you never should have been sent away in such a condition...” He told them to let me lay there as my nerves had been overtaxed, so the boys had washed me and changed my clothes. They had given me several meals. They saw by my papers that I was going to Amsterdam, N.Y. on a furlough, and when I got up they said they would take me across to my train. I wanted to stop in New
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THAT WAS THE 0DOR OF COFFEE COOKING, THE FIRST FOR SOME FOR A WHOLE YEAR. LET ME TELL YOU, IT DID SMELL NICE.
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us, all sick and wounded, to be exchanged. They took us outside in an open field and kept us waiting all night for cars. It was a very cold night and we were poorly clad, some in a pair of drawers, not one in ten with a shirt. Some no pants, all rotted away; some one coat sleeve gone; all without any covering. Some all crippled up, lots without shoes, lots bareheaded and we all lay nestled together until morning. Then we were all put back in the stockade again and got a dish of pea soup. At 4 p.m. we were called out again and put in cars, taken to Charleston and put in a lumber yard. Laid there all day and the Sisters of Charity fed us twice that day. Then in the morning we were put on cars again, sent back to Florence and put in the Stockade again. Laid there all night, then taken out, given a dish of pea soup and put on cars again for Charleston. Arrived at 8 a.m. and were taken to a rebel boat, “The Star of the South.” We were all day getting thru the blockade. Got aboard a U.S. Boat about 4 P.M. We passed Fort Sumpter just before we got aboard the U.S. boat. When we got on the U.S. boat, they had barrels sawed in two for wash tubs to wash us in. They had men there to scrub us. They took all the rags off of us and threw them overboard. When they got us scrubbed they took us thru the gangway on to another boat, then the helpers would take a blanket and drag it along. There were dry goods boxes strung along. The men had their blankets and as they passed the boxes each box contained one kind of outfit, one overcoats, another caps, etc. until you got your whole outfit. Then we went through another gangway on to another boat. There we dressed ourselves…. Here is where we got something to cheer us up. That was the odor of coffee cooking, the first for some for a whole year, but the most of us six or seven months. Let me tell you it did smell nice. They gave us light grub, but it seemed like the best meal we ever had. Three of the boys got into the store room and ate so much that two of them died by the time we were getting into pretty rough sea…. When they took us off the boat they sent the sixteen of us, that had lain on the deck, to the bath house, where they washed and put dry clothes on us and sent us out to the Parole camp. They didn’t keep me
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York two days and they found out what train would get me there in the morning. They took me to the train and told the conductor I was going to stop in New York two days. The conductor was very nice when the firemen told him what they had done for me and that I was from Parole Camp. He knew I had been a prisoner, so he had me tell him all about the prisons. He made me go have breakfast with him. All I could do for the firemen was to thank them for their kindness. They would not take a cent. I stopped two days at the hospital in New York, then went to Albany for one day, then on to Amsterdam, my home. While on the cars from Albany, I had to go to the closet pretty often and one of the men that sat close to me said: “I see by your badge you belong to the 12th New York...We have several boys from our town that belong to that Battery.” I said, “You are talking to one of them now.” He wanted to know who I was. I told him Elisha Conklin, but he said, “He was such a stout and healthy boy.” Then he threw his arms around my neck and this man was Mr. Bronson. Then Mr. Kline, the banker, came over, then a State Representative, Mr. Little. They hoped I would get well and I was asked by all to come and see them. When I got off the cars my father did not know me. This was the time when I got a furlough at Annapolis to go home and recruit up. I was invited to go here and there to spend a few days and a great many came to see me
Show of Force The 12th New York, shown in captured Confederate Battery 8, part of the Dimmock Line defending Petersburg, Va. A vigorous attack by the 22nd U.S. Colored Troops overran the battery on June 15, 1864.
Relief and Celebration Conklin was honored to join his comrades in the Grand Review of the Armies on May 23, 1865, when Maj. Gen. George Meade and the Army of the Potomac was honored.
inquiring about friends, fathers and brothers. Some I knew had died in Rebel prisons; some had died in Andersonville and some in the Florence [Ga.] stockade…. I was [eventually] sent to my battery at City Point, Va. Got there in the evening, 9 P.M. and went to the Commander. He told me I would have to go into the yard. There were several others along with me and I found two others of my company. This was in March and the yard was slushy—a nice place to put one just after coming out of the hospital. We walked around until 12 o’clock. Then two of my company had a poncho and a blanket. We scraped a place to lay on and put some shavings on the ground. We laid there until three a.m. There were barracks on two sides of the camp and there were 300 rebs in these barracks. In the morning we asked the Commander to put us in the barracks. He put the rebs out and put us in; the boards ran up and down and there was an inch or more between the boards. One of the boys spied our Quarter Master pass by and called to him. He went to the Battery and one of the officers came and got us; in thirty minutes we were in our Battery, then we were asked all about the prisoners and our experiences. Now I have given an account of myself and others who were captured with me. When I got back to the battery I had a commission as Second Lieutenant in the Battery awaiting for me to get mustered in.
In December 1866, Conklin married Clarinda Butler of
Cherry Valley, N.Y., a small hamlet not far from Amsterdam. Their first child, Dora, was born in 1867. Six more children survived to adulthood: Elisha Jr (1871), McKee (1874), Proctor (1875), Charles (1877), Fred (1879), and Lotta (1881). In July 1890, Clarinda died of heart failure, just 48.
Moira Ann Jacobs, of Santa Rosa, Calif., is Elisha Conklin’s great-greatgranddaughter. She thanks her cousins Arline Hanson, Bill Hanson, and Thomas Collette for sharing Elisha’s original manuscript, and her father, who shared his memories of Elisha when she was a child. NOVEMBER 2020
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ATTIC ECHOES
revisiting confederates in the attic: an interview with tony horwitz By H.R. Gordon
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Editor’s note: On May 27, 2019— between H.R. Gordon’s work on this essay and its publication—Tony Horwitz, 60, collapsed during a walk and died of a heart attack. His book Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide, which examined some of the same issues he explored in his landmark Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches From the Unfinished Civil War, had just been released. This essay appears in the recently published Emerging Civil War book Entertaining History: The Civil War in Literature, Film, and Song (Southern Illinois University Press, 2020).
Embedded Reporter Tony Horwitz (left) shares a moment with Confederate reenactor Robert Lee Hodge, whom Horwitz befriended while doing research for his 1999 best-seller Confederates in the Attic.
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merica’s fascination with the Civil War may not have changed much since Tony Horwitz explored the South in Confederates in the Attic, but Horwitz said the way people are invested in the history has shifted. Published in 1999, Confederates in the Attic was Horwitz’s answer to his boyhood passion for the Civil War. The book features Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, as the protagonist, navigating the South and along the way meeting a plethora of characters who share a vibrant passion for the Civil War, history, and Confederate culture. Juggling the opinions of Confederate descendants and their opponents, as well as his own perspective, Horwitz produced a journalistic story with humor and thought-provoking commentary. Though the book is a seamless recollection of his travels weaved with the history of the sites, his research process for the book was to not have much of a process at all, he said. “I set off with the general idea of exploring the contemporary landscape of the Civil War and then pretty much went where my encounters led me. I tried to hit certain historic landmarks, like Fort Sumter and Richmond and Vicksburg, but wasn’t rigid about this and spent a considerable amount of time in small communities I’d never heard of.” After his approximately 18-month excursion, he spent what he called a “difficult year” deciphering his notes, reading, and conducting archival research. Most of the book was firsthand reporting, and Horwitz said he didn’t have a well-defined process while writing his material—though it was more defined than his travels because his notes guided his writing.
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“I just dove in and let the material lead me through the narrative,” Horwitz said. “As much as possible, I recounted my travels in the order they occurred, so that the reader experienced the South as I had. I tried to find the right balance of history, humor, and hard-nosed reporting so that one element didn’t overwhelm the others. Also, of course, I threw away 75 percent of my reporting and focused on the best material.” Horwitz said he was pleasantly surprised when the book debuted. He didn’t expect the wide acceptance and positive reviews so quickly. “I knew there were plenty of people riveted by the Civil War but had no idea if my rather quirky approach would find a readership,” he said. “I was also gratified that so many Southerners responded, mostly positively, though a vocal minority took issue with me, mostly conservative neo-Confederates who claimed I’d misrepresented and defamed the Cause.” The book’s initial success hasn’t diminished. Even up to his death, Horwitz continued to receive e-mails every week from readers, some from high school and college students assigned the book in class. And he said when topical debates surfaced periodically—noting the Rebel flag or related issues—he typically saw a spike in e-mails and media interview requests. What Horwitz would have said in an interview changed over the years, as he noted the people of the South have changed much since he wrote the book, so the South he presented in Confederates in the Attic wasn’t the same anymore. “Watching cable TV or reading the news, it’s easy to imagine that America is hopelessly divided and on the brink of another civil war,” Horwitz said. “The biggest change is demographic, due to the influx of Hispanics, Asians, African Americans from the North, and others. A diminishing percentage of people living in the South have a blood tie to
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—Tony Horwitz, explaining the genesis of Confederates in the Attic
the Confederacy or a passion for honoring it. This is particularly so among the young and in fast-growing urban centers.” Those changes in demographics represent a change in attitudes. For instance, in Confederates in the Attic, Horwitz described an instance when AT&T supported removing
those were how we were introduced to the nation’s seminal conflict between the North and South. Stories and songs capture our imagination in ways that excite, inspire, and entertain. Entertaining History: The Civil War in Literature, Film, and Song (Southern Illinois University Press, 2020) is a collection of essays compiled by Emerging Civil War historians and writers that explores some of the best-known examples of the Civil War in mass media. The book includes standards such as Gone With the Wind, The Killer Angels, and Shelby Foote’s Civil War: A Narrative, as well as ballads like “Dixie” and “Ashokan Farewell.” Twenty contributors take a look at more than 30 favorite stories, shows, and songs—including H.R. Gordon in her interview with Tony Horwitz.. Ken Burns’ nine-part documentary The Civil War is especially instructive. After it aired on PBS in the fall of 1990, millions of new, inspired visitors flocked to Civil War battlefields. Ronald F. Maxwell’s film Gettysburg had a similar effect after it came out in 1993. One of our essays explores this phenomenon in detail, what we have dubbed “The Ken Burns Effect.” Other topics getting deserved attention are the Gettysburg Cyclorama, the illustrious Time-Life “Silver” series, and even the 2012 film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. A few other surprises are included, too. As editor, it is my hope that readers, upon reading this collection, will feel as though they are sitting down with a friend or friends and discussing their favorite book or movie. The book includes a great extent of serious scholarship about various mass media, but we also have given it a sort of “fanboy/fangirl” feel. After all, I—and my fellow contributors—love these offerings just as much as you do! –Chris Mackowski
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WE ALL HAVE A FAVORITE Civil War movie, novel, or TV show. For many of us,
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The War, Captured Through Mass Media
I tried to find the right balance of history, humor, and hard-nosed reporting so that one element didn’t overwhelm the others. Also, of course, I threw away 75 percent of my reporting and focused on the best material.
PHOTO BY AL FENN/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES
PREVIOUS SPREAD: PHOTOGRAPH BY PHILIP BRANDT GEORGE
the Rebel flag. Horwitz quoted a man as saying, “We won’t spend any of our money on a phone company that likes queers!” and then wrote, “What exactly this had to do with the rebel flag isn’t clear.” Later in the book, he recounted a conversation with Frances Chapman, who said, “Blacks just need to get over slavery. You can’t live in the past….Don’t put us where they used to be.” But Horwitz contended that those incidents didn’t define current Confederate culture. “Those incidents were true to the world I explored in the 1990s and spoke to the way in which, for some white Southerners, the Confederacy, and its symbols had floated free from historical context, becoming fodder for a contemporary culture war,” Horwitz explained. “A sector of white Southern society that feels discomfort with the rapid change in America—regarding race, immigration, gender— chooses to use the flag and other emblems as a rallying point and bludgeon. But I don’t think this amounts to a ‘defining rhetoric’ for any but an aging minority.” With a turn from the commitment to the Confederate cause came a shift in the way the Civil War—and the South’s history in general—is presented in the states that comprised the Confederacy, Horwitz said. With fewer people dedicated to preserving the memory of their ancestors’ hard-fought battles, a more open approach to historical events and challenges has taken hold. The difference in interpretation of plantations, museums, and other sites in the present day compared with the 1990s is striking, he says. “Slavery is presented much more fully and honestly than before, as a central part of the history of that era,” he said. “You see many more African Americans at these sites, as employees and as visitors. We still have a long way to go in confronting all the ghosts of our past, but a lot of progress has been made in just the last twenty years.” Of course, as Horwitz noted, there are still some who want to defend the Rebel flag and emblems of the Confederacy. But to him, “they’re fighting a rearguard action.” And as for the Confederate heritage groups Horwitz describes in Confederates in the Attic? “[They] used to operate a bit like the National Rifle Association, threatening to dislodge any legislator who didn’t fully embrace their agenda,” Horwitz said. “That power is gone, as we saw most vividly with the lowering of
Faux Fighting Civil War reenacting began to become much more popular at the time of the war’s centennial. The reenactment shown here took place in May 1960 at a race track in New Jersey.
the flag at the South Carolina statehouse.” But the Rebel flag has crept out of the Confederate museums and into the hands—and wardrobes—of many. Plastered on belt buckles and car decals, and flown off the back of pickup trucks in even the northernmost parts of the United States, the flag has a legacy of its own. “During the Civil War, it was a battle standard, not a political emblem, and for many Southern veterans in the decades that followed, it was a symbol of their combat service and sacrifice,” explained Horwitz, who wrote: But over time, the flag took on other connotations, including its appropriation by the Ku Klux Klan as a symbol of white supremacy and resistance to civil rights. In the 20th century, the flag was also commercialized, plastered on beach towels and bikinis and license NOVEMBER 2020
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I would like to apologize for all the times I refused to get out of the car at Antietam or whined about the heat at Gettysburg; for all the complaints about too many shelves colonized by his Civil War tomes and all the moaning over weekend expeditions devoted to events such as the interment of Stonewall Jackson’s horse. I’m not sure quite when or where it happened, but on a sunken road somewhere, I finally saw the light.
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That raised middle finger may represent the original intent of the flag best, though. The anti-establishment ideas push against the politicians who, as Horwitz observed, tend to “draw on history in ways that suit their aims and ambitions.” “As a result, knotty issues with complex historical roots—for instance, the Founders’ intent when they crafted the Second Amendment—get reduced to a sound bite,” Horwitz lamented. “But the responsibility for this rests as much on the public as it does on politicians. We need to be better educated about our history and ask hard questions when we hear politicians claim the mantle of Thomas Jefferson or Abe Lincoln or some other icon.” That responsibility to be historically vigilant is something Horwitz explored in Confederates in the Attic along with his own fascination with the Civil War, which he passed on to his reluctant wife, novelist Geraldine Brooks. Initially, Brooks called him a “Civil War bore,” but she was drawn in just
the same. “It wasn’t the battlefields that truly stirred her interest; it was the human and family drama of what happens to both men and women during war,” Horwitz said. “I think this speaks to the breadth of the subject. While many Civil War buffs are drawn in their youth to the great leaders and battles, there’s so much more to the story, including the home front. So for all the tens of thousands of books that have been written, there’s always new territory to explore.” Brooks’ experience of the Civil War alongside Horwitz led her to write March, which won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. March retells Louisa May Alcott’s story Little Women from the perspective of the father’s experience as a Union chaplain in the Civil War. “I retract unreservedly my former characterization of my husband… as a Civil War bore,” Brooks wrote in March’s afterword. Opening More Eyes In recent years, living history has taken on a broader approach. Here, African American reenactors offer their perspective to visitors at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Mich., the country’s “largest outdoor museum.”
MARMADUKE ST. JOHN/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
plates, not only as an emblem of Southernness but as a more generalized expression of rebel-dom, a raised middle finger.
PHOTOGRAPH BY ELIZABETH CECIL
MARMADUKE ST. JOHN/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
But Horwitz and Brooks certainly weren’t the first nor the last to discover a fascination with the war. The cover of Confederates in the Attic boasts a large black-and-white photo of a burly man in a plaid shirt holding a large “D-handled” Bowie knife. His stone face holds a glare—his furrowed brow highlighted by dirt. To someone who doesn’t know better, it seems to be a Civil War–era photograph. But a couple of chapters into the book, the reader finds out it is Robert Lee Hodge—a “hardcore” reenactor. Horwitz noted in Confederates that Hodge is known for his ability to lie stiffly on the ground and make his limbs appear bloated, as the dead in the war would look in a photograph. In an article for America’s Civil War in March 2008, Hodge wrote that he felt naïve. When Horwitz asked to join their reenactment to do a story for the Wall Street Journal, Hodge invited him. “Initially, I thought the article would be positive, but when I read the piece I was disappointed,” Hodge said. “I never wanted any popularity for mimicking a bloated corpse or urinating on buttons.” Hodge went on to say he didn’t want to be the poster child for reenactment because he felt many others had a lot to offer as well. After Confederates in the Attic gained popularity, though, Hodge became a center of media attention because, as he said, “there I was, on the cover of the book.” Despite this, he said his experience with Horwitz was positive and that the fifteen minutes of fame that came with it was both humbling and amusing—sentiments that some reenactors feel simply by donning the garb of the era. Horwitz revisited a Civil War–related topic in his 2011 book, Midnight Rising: Gone Too Soon John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the A Washington, D.C., Civil War. He said his interest in telling the native, Tony Horwitz story sparked from a desire to understand earned plaudits as a the beginnings of the war, as well as to well-rounded journalist always willing to go to explore the Northern side of the conflict great lengths to get his more. He also wanted to experiment with stories right. He won writing traditional historical narrative in a 1995 Pulitzer Prize contrast to his work in Confederates in the reporting for The Wall Attic and other books, which weave together Street Journal. the past and present narratives.
It wasn’t the battlefields that truly stirred her interest; it was the human and family drama of what happens to both men and women during war. —Tony Horwitz, on what drew his wife, author Geraldine Brooks, to the Civil War “Like most Civil War buffs, I’d always focused on the 1861–65 period, and I wanted to get a better understanding of how Americans came to this bloody crisis in the first place,” Horwitz explained. “John Brown seemed a good way to get into all that, and I was also struck by how dramatic and misunderstood the story of Brown and the raid were.” After moving to New England from Virginia about 14 years ago, Horwitz no longer purposely visited battlefields and other sites, though he often returned to the South for research, and because of the pervasive history of the Civil War, some sites were inescapable, he said. “While looking for something else, I often stumbled on intriguing, little-known sites. But I’m more focused these days on the antebellum South or contemporary issues— not the Civil War years, per se.” Even without constant immersion in Civil War-specific history and sites, Horwitz’s appreciation of the stories of the era remains strong. “Simply put, the Civil War is the most engaging, dramatic, and consequential episode in U.S. history, and its echoes can be heard in the present day,” Horwitz said. “In so many ways, studying that era provides a window into our history and character as a nation.” Gertrude Stein put it best: ‘There never will be anything more interesting in America than that Civil War[,] never.’” Hannah R. Gordon is a Buffalo, N.Y.–based author, photographer, and podcaster. A St. Bonaventure University graduate, she was given the “Civil War history bug” by her former professor, Emerging Civil War founder Chris Mackowski. She can be found on all social media platforms @HR_Gordon and at www.HannahRGordon.com. NOVEMBER 2020
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TRAILSIDE
Path of War Civil War Trails’ walking and driving tours offer the perfect opportunity to safely stretch your legs and escape into history. America’s Civil War will highlight places to visit accessible under social distancing regulations while they remain in place.
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.
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During an early morning bike ride on the Washington & Old Dominion Trail, the rising sun seeps through the trees lining its paved path. The sing-song of birds overhead and the buzzing of insects fill the air so sweetly, it’s easy to forget the trail weaves through one of the most populous urban areas—the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. The quiet respite is also a haven for history lovers, beginning with the trail itself, which runs 45 miles through the Northern Virginia landscape along the former roadbed of the Washington & Old Dominion Railroad. Construction on the railroad began in February 1855, starting from Alexandria, passing through Falls Church, Vienna, and on to Leesburg. The W&OD
Railroad ceased operations in 1968, and the trail was opened in segments beginning in 1974. Maintained today by NOVA Parks, the asphalt-paved trail is conveniently lined with mile markers for reference to entry points and scenic stops along the way. Interpretive signs up and down the trail share the history of the railroad and historic spots accessible by the path. Civil Warrelated sites are in no short supply here, as the area was a hotbed of activity during the conflict, including as the host of several skirmishes and battles. Union troops seized the railroad in May 1861 and the line saw plenty of action, including, on more than one occasion, a visit from the notorious John S. Mosby and his Partisan Rangers. Trail travelers can run, bike, or skate the path and jump off at any or all of these Civil War-related stops for a brief history fix or a full day’s journey. Several breweries and eateries have taken advantage of the trail location as well, and are accessible from it for refueling. —Melissa A. Winn
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MELISSA A. WINN
THE W&OD RAIL TRAIL WEAVES THROUGH A HOTBED OF VIRGINIA CIVIL WAR ACTIVITY
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Hunter Mill MILE MARKER 14.5 For four days in
March 1862, the Pennsylvania Reserve Corps camped here, near a gristmill and sawmill named for George Hunter Sr., who acquired it in 1831. On the rainy evening of March 14, the corps, commanded by Maj. Gen. George A. McCall, broke camp and headed to Alexandria as part of the Peninsula Campaign. Civil War correspondent George A. Townsend described the scene: “Although 15,000 men comprised the whole corps, each of its three brigades would have seemed as numerous to a novice....The country people gathered in fright at the cottage doors, and the farm dogs bayed dismally at the unwonted scene.”
Star Shaped Fort 330 North Center St., Vienna
MILE MARKER 11.4 This six-point, star-shaped earthen fort with a 130-yard perimeter was constructed on the highest point of land in the area. It provided a commanding view of the western and northwestern approaches to Vienna.
The Falls Church
115 E. Fairfax St., Falls Church
MILE MARKER 3.6 Union troops used The Falls Church as a hospital and stable and the resulting damage is still visible on the door and some windows. Northern troops also vandalized the 1769 church’s interior, stripping the furnishings and leaving graffiti. The federal government eventually compensated the congregation for the damage and they returned to using the church for worship in 1873.
Herndon Station
717 Lynn St., Herndon
MILE MARKER 20 On March 17, 1863, John Singleton Mosby and 40 of his men
The Freeman House 131 Church St., NE, Vienna
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MELISSA A. WINN
MILE MARKER 11.9 The Freeman
House Store, formerly the Lydecker Store, was built in 1859. Both Confederate and Union Army troops occupied the house during the Civil War. The house has been restored in accordance with historical records. Civil War paraphernalia are sold in a general store on the first floor of the house. A museum on the second floor of the house presently displays Civil War artifacts.
of the 43rd Battalion, Virginia Cavalry raided a Union outpost located here by the Herndon Station. Lieutenant Alexander G. Watson was commanding a picket of 25 Union men who had been on duty for 48 hours guarding the station and an adjacent sawmill. Mosby and his men approached the pickets, who mistook the Confederates to be a relief party. Before the Union soldiers realized what was happening, Mosby’s crew charged the buildings and quickly captured many of the Federals. The rest surrendered when Mosby threatened to burn down the sawmill. The station is now a museum owned by the Herndon Historical Society.
Frying Pan Meetinghouse
2615 Centreville Rd., Floris
MILE MARKER 21 In 1861 and 1862, encampments of Confederate troops
occupied the surrounding woods and fields here. Confederate cavalrymen J.E.B. Stuart and John S. Mosby often stopped here. Mosby often received crucial information from Confederate sympathizers nearby. The meeting house was also used as a field hospital for wounded Confederate troops. At least three Confederate veterans are buried in the cemetery. NOVEMBER 2020
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1. Hunter Mill 2. Star Shaped Fort 3. The Falls Church 4. Herndon Station 5. The Freeman House 6. Frying Pan Meetinghouse 7. Loudoun Museum 8. Ball’s Bluff Battlefield 9. Green Lizard Cycling
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Loudoun Museum
16 Loudoun St., SW, Leesburg
MILE MARKER 34 The town of Leesburg endured the passage
of troops from both armies, bombardment, frequent raids, and combat in its streets, leaving the hamlet battle-scarred and weary. “Caught in the Maelstrom of Civil War: Loudoun Divided,” a permanent exhibition at the Loudoun Museum, displays artifacts and interpretive information about the conflict that so heavily impacted the area. The museum also displays other photographs and memorabilia related to the county’s history.
Ball’s Bluff Battlefield
Ball’s Bluff Rd., NE, Leesburg
MILE MARKER 34.6 On October 21, 1861, Union Brig. Gen. Charles P. Stone ordered a minor reconnaissance mission across
the Potomac River at Ball’s Bluff, Va., which set off a chain of events that resulted in the battle of the same name. The engagement ended with a Confederate victory and resulted in the only death of a U.S. senator in battle, Colonel Edward Dickinson Baker. The Ball’s Bluff Battlefield Regional Park is open from dawn to dusk for walking, hiking, and self-guided tours.
Green Lizard Cycling 718 Lynn St., Herndon
trail on the site of the Herndon sawmill raided by Mosby and his men on St. Patrick’s Day 1863, this cycle shop offers trailblazers a place to service or repair their bike, rent or purchase a new one, restock supplies, or even stop for a rest and recharge at the coffee shop and bakery.
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PHOTOGRAPHS BY MELISSA A. WINN
MILE MARKER 20 Situated adjacent to the
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TODAY IN HISTORY JULY 17, 1918 TSAR NICHOLAS II OF RUSSIA AND HIS FAMILY WERE EXECUTED. YEARS LATER, CONSPIRACY THEORIES EMERGED, AND IMPOSTORS BEGAN TO SURFACE. AN EASTERN EUROPEAN WOMAN NAMED ANNA ANDERSON CLAIMED TO BE GRAND DUCHESS ANASTASIA ROMANOV, SPARED DEATH IN 1918 BY A SYMPATHETIC GUARD. TEN YEARS AFTER HER DEATH IN 1994, DNA TESTING CONCLUDED SHE WAS NOT ANASTASIA BUT A MISSING POLISH FACTORY WORKER. For more, visit WWW.HISTORYNET.COM/ TODAY-IN-HISTORY
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Interview by Nancy Tappan
5 QUESTIONS
attracted refugees. It’s not possible to say how much the population of Richmond grew during the war because no wartime census was taken. However, historians estimate that Richmond had a population of 37,000 in 1860 and by the end of the war it was close to 130,000. The city’s infrastructure, especially the police, could not accommodate such an influx. There were acute housing shortages, currency speculation, prostitution, and an increase in crime.
Outrage over the soaring prices of staples such as flour kindled Richmond’s 1863 Bread Riots, led by the city’s housewives and mothers, struggling to feed their families.
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Upper- and middle-class women took jobs outside the home, correct? Why? A lot of women had to go to work because their husbands were in the Army. What they did depended on their social class. The plum jobs, which often required political connections, were working for Confederate government agencies, such as the Treasury Department. For illiterate women or even children who had to work to support their families, the only option was taking a low-paying, dangerous job in the war industries. On March 13, 1863, there was a massive explosion on Brown’s Island, where a Confederate munitions laboratory employed girls even as young as 7 or 8. More than 60 girls died and many more were disfigured. Still, the day after the explosion, women and girls lined up to take the jobs of the dead and injured.
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Richmond changed during the war from a quiet bastion of the aristocracy to a “sin city” full of moneygrubbers on the make. How did that happen? There was a sense that if Richmond was the capital, it would not be given up and would be a safe haven. That
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Discuss the situation in Richmond during the nine-month siege of Petersburg between June 1864 and April 1865. The women of Richmond decided during November 1864 that the brave defenders of Richmond deserved a
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
U.S. Naval Academy history professor Mary A. DeCredico specializes in the Civil War era and the Confederacy. Her first book, Patriotism for Profit: Georgia’s Urban Entrepreneurs and the Confederate War Effort (University of North Carolina Press) received the Museum of the Confederacy’s Jefferson Davis Award for outstanding scholarship on the Confederacy. She has also written Mary Boykin Chesnut: A Confederate Woman’s Life (Rowman-Littlefield). In Confederate Citadel: Richmond and Its People at War (University Press of Kentucky, 2020, $50) she explores the surprising disaffection of Richmonders for Jefferson Davis and the national government even though the city was the capital of the Confederacy.
What caused the Bread Riot of April 2, 1863? First of all, there were 22 measurable snowfalls in Richmond in the winter of 1862-63, which discouraged farmers from bringing their produce into the city markets. Although wages were going up, they did not keep pace with inflation. Then there was the Brown’s Island explosion. On April 2, women from the Oregon Hill neighborhood, which was home to most of the workers at the Tredegar Iron Works, marched on the governor’s mansion and then the business district. War Department clerk J.B. Jones asked one emaciated woman what was going on, and she replied, “We celebrate our right to live! We are starving!” What began as an orderly procession degenerated into a mob. Mayor Joseph Mayo, Governor John Letcher, and Jefferson Davis called on the women to disperse, arguing they were just helping the Yankees. A charity called Overseers of the Poor organized relief efforts. Those found “worthy”—in other words those who didn’t participate in the riot—were given tickets to a government store where they could buy food at belowmarket government rates. The “unworthy” poor, who were thought to have been in the mob, were out of luck. This was a dramatic departure from Richmond’s tradition of poor relief for all.
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Christmas feast. But December rolled around and the organizers realized that they did not have enough food to feed the troops at Christmas. So they resolved to feed them New Year’s Day. The grand feast became two very small pieces of bread with a thin slice of ham. By this time, Lee’s army was hemorrhaging, with 100 men a day deserting the ranks. What I found fascinating was that the city, and the governor, tried to address this very thorny issue, but the Confederate government did nothing.
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What occurred in Richmond when Robert E. Lee was forced to evacuate the lines around Petersburg after the Confederate loss at Five Forks on April 1, 1865? The Confederate government ordered that Richmond be set on fire. My Southern midshipmen are always shocked when they learn that it was Jefferson Davis’ government that destroyed Richmond, not the Yankees. General Lee gave Lt. Gen. Richard Ewell, commander of the Department of Richmond, a very controversial order: If the Army of Northern Virginia was forced to evacuate Petersburg, you will torch the tobacco stored in Richmond’s warehouses. City officials begged Ewell not to do it. On April 2, after Grant broke Lee’s lines, the last elements of the Confederate Army marched out of Richmond and the tobacco warehouses were set alight. A wind suddenly picked up and the city descended into chaos and looting. The mob broke into government storehouses and found them packed to the roof with food. The City Council broke open the whiskey barrels and poured the liquor into the gutters. This is the scene playing out as the initial Union Army elements marched into the city. The first thing they had to do was put out the fires, which were engulfing huge swathes of the city and would burn for weeks. The Yankees were dumbstruck that the Confederates had set fire to their own capital.
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To read the full interview, go to bit.ly/ConfederateCitadel.
Plus!
Pickett’s Notorious Hangings Soldier Voten Gives Lincol the Edge in 1864
Bloody Maryland Morning
Antietam Gen. George Greene’s Gritty Stand at the Dunker Church
HISTORYNET.COM SEPTEMBER 2020
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REVIEWS His father, a member of the famed Hussar Cavalry, died when he was 4 and his mother, a Polish stage actress, sent her two sons to live with different relatives. Young August, reared in the home of one of Europe’s greatest thinkers, theologian and philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher, received a liberal education and seeds planted in his mind to guide him the rest of his life. Willich embraced the inherited legacy of military service at a time when the Prussian Army was evolving as the envy of the world. As an officer in the elite artillery arm, Willich made the life-altering choice to repudiate his family’s nobility when he abandoned the Prussian Army to live a life dedicated to social justice, universal rights of self-determination, and the unification of his native Germany through revolution. The author closely examines events leading up to the failed German Revolution of 1848 and beyond, profiling revolutionary leaders who became Civil War commanders such as Fritz Anneke, Ludwig Blenker, Carl Schurz, and Franz Sigel, among thousands of other Forty-Eighters who served the Union in every theater of the Civil War. Radical Warrior weaves Willich’s story through escape to England by way of Switzerland and France, ideological conflict with Karl Marx, and departure for America, where he received a hero’s welcome from In the exhaustive annals of Civil War personalifellow expatriates. In this country, Radical Warrior: ties, there are few who remain more deserving of a as Dixon states, “The Prussian August Willich’s volume dedicated to their life than August Willich. nobleman turned communist Journey From Arguably one of the war’s least-written-about Union revolutionary became an unlikely German officers, and perhaps the most interesting, Johann American hero” by creating two Revolutionary August Ernst von Willich is at last given his due by of the finest regiments during to Union General David T. Dixon in his new book, Radical Warrior. the war, the 9th Ohio and 32nd By David T. Dixon Dixon guides his readers through the impact the Indiana, while becoming one of University of Tennessee American Revolution had on the world, particularly the premier Western Theater field Press, 2020, $45 the Patriots’ slow but steadily maturing ability commanders from the beginning to to throw off the constraints of Great Britain, the after war’s end. strongest military force on earth. French radicals, Dixon should be highly commended for the great inspired by America’s success, became the first nation effort involved in uncovering and translating the to challenge the many generations of monarchy by numerous archaic references he discovered in Germany initiating a social revolution for liberty in 1789 that that will advance the study of German immigrants in descended into a bloody nightmare. This social, the American Civil War. This volume is enhanced by economic, and political upheaval spread globally. In this the maps of Hal Jespersen and the drawings of soldierevolving world, Willich was born into the noble Junker artist Captain Adolph G. Metzner of the 32nd Indiana. class in Braunsberg, Prussia, on November 19, 1810. –Michael Peake
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Unlikely American Hero
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REVIEWS Lincoln Takes Command: The Campaign to Seize Norfolk and the Destruction of the CSS Virginia
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By Steve Norder Savas Beatie 2019, $32.95 This meticulously researched book examines a signature event not only in Civil War but also U.S. history when President Abraham Lincoln took command of all Union naval and army forces in a weeklong campaign in May 1862 to capture Norfolk, Va., and destroy the Confederates’ daunting ironclad, Virginia. From May 5 to May 12, Lincoln became the first sitting president to take personal control of United States’ land and sea forces engaged in active combat. Author Steve Norder provides readers with a day-by-day account of Lincoln’s tenure as a field commander during actions that took place two months after Virginia had fought USS Monitor to a draw in Hampton Roads in history’s first battle of ironclad warships. Lincoln took personal action because he realized that strong action had to be taken immediately or the course of the year-old war could be significantly altered in the Confederacy’s favor. Lincoln’s sojourn to Norfolk coincided with a massive Union offensive—Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s landing of the Army of the Potomac on the Virginia Peninsula, threatening the Confederate capital, Richmond. Norder’s story recounts all of Lincoln’s actions, including the naval bombardment of a Confederate fort; the sailing of Union ships up the James River toward the enemy capital; an amphibious landing of Union soldiers followed by an overland march that expedited the seizure of Norfolk, Portsmouth, and the Gosport Navy Yard; and the Confederates’ scuttling of Virginia to prevent its capture. The book is well-illustrated with two excellent maps, a useful bibliography, and two important appendices. It is a must-read for anyone interested in Abraham Lincoln, naval warfare, and the Civil War’s Eastern Theater. –David Marshall
Whether called revolts, revolutions, rebellions, or civil wars, the middle decades of the 19th century were violent ones throughout the world. Aaron Sheehan-Dean, in a pathfinding monograph, seeks to understand the American Civil War in the context of global conflict and, in doing so, expands our understanding of how the war was fought, how its participants understood similar foreign insurrections, and why ours turned out the way it did. Sheehan-Dean sets himself a formidable task. Using primarily the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny in India, the 1863 uprising in Poland, and the 1850-64 Taiping Rebellion in China for comparison, he boldly posits that “participants in these wars of national liberation knew about the other conflicts.” More than that, SheehanDean seeks to show they “understood that commonalities and differences reverberated among them” and “the ways those events were represented and understood, shaped what happened in the others.” He contends that the comparisons he proposes are valuable because “such a comparison reveals a surprising degree Reckoning of convergence in the experiences of diverse With Rebellion: peoples in the nineteenth century.” War and Divided into three cogently argued chapters, Sovereignty in Sheehan-Dean bases his arguments on how the Nineteenth these conflicts were fought and why fighting Century as an insurgent ultimately failed each of the By Aaron rebellious groups. He then focuses on the Sheehan-Dean question of legitimacy and how the dominant University Press of powers, Britain, Russia, the Qing Dynasty Florida, 2020, $40 in China, and the United States kept foreign nations from intervening in these uprisings and, finally, he asks readers to rethink the relationship between sovereignty and power, a relationship that continues to confront historians in the 21st century. This foray into intellectual and cultural history is not an easy read and Sheehan-Dean often bolsters his arguments with examples of insurgency beyond his primary examples. Fortunately, he provides some background information on the foreign examples; why the native Hindu soldiers (Sepoys) serving the British in India were violently opposed to tearing their musket cartridges supposedly greased with cow fat; the longstanding land-owning grievances of the Polish peasants against czarist Russia, and the religious motives behind the Taiping’s dissatisfaction with the long reigning Manchu dynasty. Clearly, Sheehan-Dean doesn’t argue that the Confederacy lost the war because of events that occurred thousands of miles away. But he does see “a deep degree of entanglement” and that “the legacies of the midcentury rebellions lived on long after their failures.” Nowhere was this legacy more clearly visible than in the American South. Only the Confederacy lived on culturally and politically through the promulgation of Lost Cause ideology “that emphasized Confederate valor and moral virtue to conceal the terroristic violence used by veterans in Reconstruction and beyond.” –Gordon Berg NOVEMBER 2020
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This handsome medal was awarded not for gallantry, but for being a museum curator. On January 24, 1863, Union 1st Lt. Charles Albert Loretz, a 22-year-old New Yorker, was detailed as the acting ordnance officer for historical memorabilia at the Baton Rouge (La.) Arsenal, a facility secured by Federal forces in December 1862. Major General Nathaniel P. Banks had the interior of the arsenal—now part of a bastion called Fort Williams—reconfigured as a museum to display captured cannons and other “war trophies.” Loretz was named its curator, although he was discharged and sent home due to disability before the project’s culmination. His men presented him this medal in the shape of a 19th Corps badge, inscribed: “To 1st Leut. C A Loretz from the Non Comm. Officers and Privates of Baton Rouge Arsenal, May 23, 1863.” –Richard H. Holloway
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COURTESY OF RICHARD H. HOLLOWAY
Museum Medal
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Sacred Stone of the Southwest is on the Brink of Extinction
B.
C
enturies ago, Persians, Tibetans and Mayans considered turquoise a gemstone of the heavens, believing the striking blue stones were sacred pieces of sky. Today, the rarest and most valuable turquoise is found in the American Southwest–– but the future of the blue beauty is unclear. On a recent trip to Tucson, we spoke with fourth generation turquoise traders who explained that less than five percent of turquoise mined worldwide can be set into jewelry and only about twenty mines in the Southwest supply gem-quality turquoise. Once a thriving industry, many Southwest mines have run dry and are now closed. We found a limited supply of C. turquoise from Arizona and snatched it up for our Sedona Turquoise Collection. Inspired by the work of those ancient craftsmen and designed to showcase the exceptional blue stone, each stabilized vibrant cabochon features a unique, one-of-a-kind matrix surrounded in Bali metalwork. You could drop over $1,200 on a turquoise pendant, or you could secure 26 carats of genuine Arizona turquoise for just $99. Your satisfaction is 100% guaranteed. If you aren’t completely happy with your purchase, send it back within 30 days for a complete refund of the item price. The supply of Arizona turquoise is limited, don’t miss your chance to own the Southwest’s brilliant blue treasure. Call today!
26 carats of genuine Arizona turquoise
ONLY $99
“With depleting mines, turquoise, the most sacred stone to the Navajo, has become increasingly rare.” –– Smithsonian.com
A. Necklace enlarged to show luxurious color
Jewelry Specifications: • Arizona turquoise • Silver-finished settings
Sedona Turquoise Collection A. Pendant (26 cts) $299 B. 18" Bali Naga woven sterling silver chain C. 1 1/2" Earrings (10 ctw) $299 Complete Set** $747
$99* Save $200 $149 $99* Save $200 $249 Save $498
** Complete set includes pendant, chain and earrings. Call now and mention the offer code to receive your collecion.
1-800-333-2045 Offer Code STC265-01
You must use the offer code to get our special price.
Rating of A+
* Special price only for customers using the offer code versus the price on Stauer.com without your offer code.
Stauer
® 14101 Southcross Drive W., Ste 155, Dept. STC265-01, Burnsville, Minnesota 55337 www.stauer.com
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Stau e r … A f f or d the E x tr aor d i n a r y .®
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! N IO T C U D O R P Y C N E G R E EM
Actual size is 40.6 mm
Rush Production of U.S. Silver Dollars Creates 2nd Lowest Mintage in History
4,000,000
2,000,000
The Mystery of Silver Bullion A coin’s value is often tied to its rarity. One way to determine a coin’s rarity is by its mint mark—a small letter indicating where a coin was struck. Since Silver Eagles are almost always produced solely in West Point, the coins don’t feature one of these mint marks. But this year’s Silver
2015-P
2020-P
2017-P
2016-P
2017-S
1996
0
1994
1,000,000
Philadelphia Steps Up For just 13 days, the U.S. Mint struck an “Emergency Production” run of U.S. Silver Dollars at the Philadelphia Mint. This was great for silver buyers, and really great for collectors. Here’s why:
2nd Lowest Mintage (240,000)
3,000,000
1997
West Point, the U.S. Mint branch that normally strikes Brilliant Uncirculated (BU) Silver Eagles, went into lockdown. Prices quickly shot up, and freshly struck Silver Eagles became much harder to find at an affordable price. To meet the rising demand, the U.S. Mint knew it had to act—and act fast.
5,000,000
1995
U.S. Mint Halts Production
Eagles were also produced in Philly—so few (a scant 240,000) that they are now the second smallest mintage of Silver Eagles ever struck! So how do we tell a 2020(W) Silver Eagle from a 2020(P)?
2016-S
O
ne of the most popular ways to buy silver is the Silver Eagle— legal-tender U.S. Silver Dollars struck in one ounce of 99.9% pure silver. When the COVID-19 pandemic began sweeping the world, demand skyrocketed. But there was a problem...
Certified “Struck at” Coins Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC) is one of the world’s leading third-party coin grading services. Thanks to some skilled detective work, they have certified these coins as being struck at the Philadelphia Mint during this special Emergency Production run. What’s more, a number of these coins have been graded as near-flawless Mint State-69 (MS69) condition—just one point away from absolute perfection!
Buy More and Save! We’re currently selling these coins for $79 each. But you can secure them for as low as $59 each when you buy 20 or more and mention the special call-in-only offer code below. Call 1-888-201-7639 now! Date: Mint: Weight: Purity: Diameter: Mintage: Condition: Certified:
2020 Philadelphia (P) 1oz (31.101 grams) 99.9% Silver 40.6 mm 240,000 Mint State-69 (MS69) Emergency Production
2020(P) Emergency Production American Eagle Silver Dollar NGC MS69 Early Releases —$79 1-4 coins — $69 each + s/h 5-9 coins — $67 each 10-14 coins — $65 each 15-19 coins — $63 each 20+ coins — $59 each FREE SHIPPING on 3 or More! Limited time only. Product total over $149 before taxes (if any). Standard domestic shipping only. Not valid on previous purchases.
Call today toll-free for fastest service
1-888-201-7639 Offer Code EPE216-01
Please mention this code when you call.
GovMint.com • 14101 Southcross Dr. W., Suite 175, Dept. EPE216-01 • Burnsville, MN 55337 GovMint.com® is a retail distributor of coin and currency issues and is not affiliated with the U.S. government. The collectible coin market is unregulated, highly speculative and involves risk. GovMint.com reserves the right to decline to consummate any sale, within its discretion, including due to pricing errors. Prices, facts, figures and populations deemed accurate as of the date of publication but may change significantly over time. All purchases are expressly conditioned upon your acceptance of GovMint.com’s Terms and Conditions (www.govmint.com/terms-conditions or call 1-800-721-0320); to decline, return your purchase pursuant to GovMint.com’s Return Policy. © 2020 GovMint.com. All rights reserved.
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