Civil War Times April 2021

JULY 3, 1863: FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT OF CONFEDERATE ASSAULT ON CULP’S HILL H

LEE TAKES

COMMAND 16

CRUCIAL DECISIONS OF THE 1862 SEVEN DAYS CAMPAIGN

H THE WAR’S LAST WIDOW TELLS HER STORY H In one week, Robert E. Lee, with James Longstreet and Stonewall Jackson, drove the Army of the Potomac away from Richmond.

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CIVIL WAR TIMES APRIL 2021

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ONE DAY OF THE WEEK Brig. Gen. Thomas Francis Meagher urges on his Irish Brigade at the Battle of Gaines’ Mill, the largest and bloodiest fight of the June 25-July 1, 1862, Seven Days Campaign.

ON THE COVER: It wasn’t always pretty, but new commander Robert E. Lee and his generals saved Richmond in 1862.

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Features

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26

Week of War

42 48

The Widow’s Secret

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The Seven Days Campaign brought Robert E. Lee to the fore and altered the course of the war in the Eastern Theater.

By John Banks

Helen Viola Jackson married a Union veteran when he was 93 and she was 17. Out of practicality, not love.

A Place of Their Own

By Kurt Hackemer

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‘Escape Was Hopeless’

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By Matt Spruill

Thousands of Civil War vets “headed west” to planned communities where they could live among others who had experienced war’s crucible.

By Keith Bohannon

Trapped by gunfire behind a boulder on Culp’s Hill, a 4th Virginia captain recounts his struggle to survive.

Departments 6 8 14 16 18 22 25 64 66 72

Return Fire Mosby Men

Miscellany Culp’s Hill Clearing Details Union Camp Scene

Insight Pointed Nicknames

Rambling In Search of Pat Cleburne Interview To Save the Irreplaceable Editorial Past Is Present

Armament Flawed Confederate Bullet Reviews Bahamas Blockade Runners Sold ! Rare Confederate Flag

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: TROIANI, DON (B.1949)/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; TREGO COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY; DANA B. SHOAF COLLECTION/PHOTOS BY MELISSA A. WINN; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; COVER: FROM LEFT: VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF HISTORY & CULTURE; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)/PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: BRIAN WALKER

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MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER DAVID STEINHAFEL PUBLISHER ALEX NEILL EDITOR IN CHIEF

C E L E B R A T I N G 60 Y E A R S

Wounded in 1865, Union Private John Parkhurst carried a projectile in his head the rest of his life.

APRIL 2 021

/

VOL. 60, NO. 2

EDITORIAL

BULLETS IN THEIR BODIES

Civil War veterans’ shocking souvenirs of the battles they survived. http://bit.ly/VetSouvenirs

SAVING THE SEVEN DAYS BATTLEFIELDS

Private efforts to preserve land around Richmond have saved much of the ground crucial to these battles. http://bit.ly/SevenDaysSaved

BEYOND LITTLE ROUND TOP

The forgotten four hills that decided the fight at Gettysburg. http://bit.ly/FourHills

The Vicksburg Campaign, combined with Gettysburg, proved a serious blow to the South. Not the end, of course, but significant to eventual Union victory.

DANA B. SHOAF EDITOR CHRIS K. HOWLAND SENIOR EDITOR SARAH RICHARDSON SENIOR EDITOR STEPHEN KAMIFUJI CREATIVE DIRECTOR BRIAN WALKER GROUP ART DIRECTOR AUSTIN STAHL ART DIRECTOR MELISSA A. WINN DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY SHENANDOAH SANCHEZ PHOTOGRAPHER AT LARGE

What was the war’s most significant battle or campaign?

ADVISORY BOARD

Gabor Boritt, Catherine Clinton, William C. Davis, Gary W. Gallagher, Lesley Gordon, D. Scott Hartwig, Harold Holzer, John Hennessy, The Seven Days Robert K. Krick, James M. McPherson, Mark E. Neely Jr., caused Union Ethan S. Rafuse, Megan Kate Nelson, Susannah J. Ural policymakers to Fort Donelson in press much harder the West set the for emancipation trajectory of CORPORATE and elevated Grant’s career.

ROB WILKINS DIRECTOR OF PARTNERSHIP MARKETING Robert E. Lee to Kernstown in the TOM GRIFFITHS CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT lead the Army of East shaped the Northern Virginia, course of the GRAYDON SHEINBERG CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT the long-term Shenandoah SHAWN BYERS VP AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT impact of which Valley in 1862, JAMIE ELLIOTT PRODUCTION DIRECTOR cannot be and for the rest overstated. of the war.

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CIVIL WAR TIMES APRIL 2021

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RETURN FIRE

Editor’s Note: We asked Eric Buckland, Mosby expert and author, if there were any men named Triplett or Lackee in the Rangers. He responded: “There were at least eight Tripletts who 6

Director of Photography’s note: The photograph of Mosby and his Men includes, with corresponding number: 1. Lee Howison; 2. W.B. Palmer; 3. John W. Puryear; 4. Tom Booker; 5. Alfred G. Babcock; 6. Norman Randolph; 7. Frank Rahm; 8. Sgt. Robert Parrot; 9. Thomas Throop; 10. John W. Munson; 11. John S. Mosby; 12. Rat Noel; 13. Charles Henry Quarles; 14. Walter Gosden; 15. Henry T. Sinnott; 16. Otho Butler; 17. Isaac Gentry.

RESERVE RESEARCH

I was so glad to see the article “Curtin Called” by Jennifer Murray in the December 2020 issue. Her research into the Pennsylvania Reserves answered a lot of questions that I had concerning my great-great-grandfather, Charles Lynch.

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)

On page 29 of the December 2020 issue, there is a numbered image of 15 members of Mosby’s Rangers. I was hoping that you could tell me the names of the 15 using the name and number together. My mother’s side of the family was from Middleburg and Upperville, Va., and she had Triplett and Lackee ancestors who were part of Mosby’s Rangers. I have been a subscriber for a long time and love your magazine.

William Freeburn Severna Park, Md.

VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF HISTORY & CULTURE

GRAY GHOST RIDERS

rode with Mosby. No one named Lackee that I have a record of.

The Tripletts were: Benjamin Addison; F. D.; George William; James Pendleton “Penny”; L.B.; Reuben; Richard C.; and S.B.”

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)

VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF HISTORY & CULTURE

Several years ago I came into possession of his discharge certificate from the 6th Pennsylvania Reserves, 35th Regiment.

Previously all I knew was that he had been a lockkeeper on the Pennsylvania Canal, and died and was buried in Steelton, Pa., in 1903. The family lore was that Grandpa Lynch served in the Union Army, was shot in the hip and lay on the field at Gettysburg for three days. My research found that Charles Lynch was indeed shot in the hip and lay on the battlefield for three days, but it was the Battle of Fredericksburg, not Gettysburg. Grandpa Lynch spent two years in military hospitals and eventually was discharged on a Surgeon’s Certificate of Disability.

I also learned he traveled to Harrisburg to enlist as part of the Towanda Rifles, a local militia unit from Bradford County, and he was an immigrant from Ireland and settled in Bradford County along with his brother. They were both listed as “laborers” in the Bradford County 1858 Census.

Where did Murray get her photographs, and is there possibly a photo of the 6th Pennsylvania Reserves somewhere that I could get a copy of ?

Thanks again for her great article and where the Pennsylvania Reserves fit into the Union Army.

Michael Proper Harrisburg, Pa.

ONLINE POLL

Henry Halleck

49.1 0 0

50.9 0 0

The Results Are In! Our recent Facebook poll asked which Union general had the more unflattering nickname, “Old Brains” Henry Halleck or “Old Slow Trot” George Thomas.

By a mere two votes, George Thomas “won” the poll. He earned the nickname when, as a West Point instructor in the 1850s, he admonished eager cadets to keep their mounts at the “slow trot” during riding classes.

Our next poll goes online February 25.

Director of Photography’s note: Specific photo sources can be found in the photo credits printed on each article page near the gutter. Unfortunately, we haven’t located any group photos of the 6th Reserves at this time.

In fact, on Sunday April 21, the day after he wrote General Winfield Scott relinquishing his commission in the United States Army, he was attending services at Christ Church when approached by men from Richmond. They soon told him he was to be offered command of the Virginia forces. The next day, Lee boarded a train for Richmond to accept that position.

Ted Pulliam Alexandria, Va.

LEE IN ALEXANDRIA

POINT OF ROCKS

Thank you for publishing in your February 2021 Details department the photograph of Independent Battery H, Pennsylvania Light Artillery, in Alexandria, Va. Few people in Alexandria are familiar with that photo.

Not only did George Washington worship at Alexandria’s Christ Church, but so too did Robert E. Lee. It was his home church when he lived at Arlington.

George Thomas

I always appreciate when a busy editor takes time to carefully research and thoughtfully write about an incident of the war—not to mention a dramatic one, at that. Dana Shoaf ’s purchase of the testimonial documents about the confrontation at Point of Rocks in the February 2021 issue attests to his love of history. And his search for and trek to Calvin Lamar’s grave demonstrates the kind of “in the weeds” pursuit of

history that reflects once more on Red Warren’s observation that the Civil War remains our only “felt history.”

Steve Davis Atlanta, Ga. CORRECTION: In our Close Up quiz answer in the February 2021 issue, we incorrectly identified the wartime St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Sharpsburg, Md., as St. Paul’s Lutheran Church. Thanks to Kim Grove of Findlay, Ohio, who grew up in Sharpsburg, for pointing that out.

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU ! e-mail us at cwtletters@historynet.com or send letters to Civil War Times, 901 North Glebe Rd., 5th Floor, Arlington, VA 22203

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MISCELLANY

WITNESS BOULDER In this July 15, 1863, image, an assistant of photographer Mathew Brady sits on a massive stone on the eastern slope of Culp’s Hill. New trails will make the distinctive landmark more accessible.

MEADE’S

8

the epic battle, as they never have been able to before.

Additional interpretive signs will also be added to further explain the significance of the events in the area.

“Visitors will be able to better understand the actions of Union soldiers as they held off multiple Confederate assaults; assaults that took place over very steep and rough terrain that has been all but hidden in plain sight,” said Steven D. Sims, superintendent of Gettysburg National Military Park and Eisenhower National Historic Site.

The nonprofit American Conservation Experience is performing the conservation work, which began in early February and is expected to be done by the end of June. Project updates will be posted on the Gettysburg National Military Park website at https://www.nps.gov/ gett/learn/historyculture/culps-hill.

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NPS PHOTO; NPS PHOTO/PAINTING BY RICHARD LINDAMOOD; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

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ovetailing nicely with our War in their Words article on page 56, astounding news from Gettysburg National Military Park in late January revealed that new efforts to interpret the Culp’s Hill area of the Gettysburg battlefield are underway. Trees and brush will be removed and invasive species treated on all earthworks stretching from Spangler’s Spring to the summit of Culp’s Hill, where key battle action occurred July 2-3, 1863. A new trail will also be constructed from the 150th New York Infantry monument to Forbes Rock, a prominent landmark named for the artist Edwin Forbes, who created several paintings of the Culp’s Hill area that popularized the rock.

The conservation efforts will allow visitors to experience the rugged terrain traversed by soldiers during

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

CRITICAL RIGHT

LOOK INTO

CHRIS CALKINS HONORED

THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE has assembled “Faces of the 54th,” an online database of soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, the Black troops who laid siege to Fort Wagner before storming it on July 18, 1863, in a failed attempt to capture the stronghold protecting Charleston.

Over 1,500 names have been compiled in datasets divided between enlisted men and commissioned officers who served in the 54th Massachusetts between February 1863 and August 1865. The NPS project was prompted by questions from the public concerning the identities of the troops.

See https://www.nps.gov/boaf/learn/historyculture/ faces-of-the-54th.htm

THIS PORTRAIT of battlefield advocate Chris Calkins was installed at the visitors center at Sailor’s Creek Battlefield Historical State Park near Farmville, Va., where Calkins spent more than a decade as a staff member before retiring in January 2020. Following 34 years working for the National Park Service, where he had worked at both Appomattox and Petersburg National Battlefields, Calkins was well suited for the job of developing the Sailor’s Creek Park, which lies midway between Appomattox and Petersburg. On April 6, 1865, more than 7,700 men in General Robert E. Lee’s army were killed, wounded, or captured at Sailor’s Creek—72 hours before Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Named manager for the Sailor’s Creek Park in 2008, Calkins not only championed and expanded resources there, but years earlier, in 1994, had gotten Lee’s Retreat Driving Tour off the ground, an effort that now flourishes as the Civil War Trails program, educating visitors throughout six states. The author of numerous books, including one on Sailor’s Creek, Calkins brought deep knowledge to his long career in education and battlefield preservation, which was recognized on February 6, 2020, with a commendation from Virginia General Assembly.

THEIR EYES

NPS PHOTO; NPS PHOTO/PAINTING BY RICHARD LINDAMOOD; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

WAR F RA M E THIS UNIDENTIFIED CONFEDERATE poses with his hat prominently placed on the muzzle of his smoothbore musket. The hat bears the brass letters “S.L.G.” for Sumter Light Guard, which formed in Americus, Ga., on April 27, 1861, and is named after the fort in Charleston Harbor, S.C. The Sumter Light Guard became a company in the 4th Georgia Infantry, denoted by the brass “4” also on his hat. This Confederate went off to war wearing a plaid “battle shirt,” and is well equipped with a knapsack and blanket. The 4th served in the Eastern Theater, mostly with the Army of Northern Virginia, from the Seven Days Campaign to Appomattox and was heavily engaged in many battles. At Chancellorsville, for example, the regiment lost 29 killed and 115 wounded.

It surrendered in 1865 with only 100 men in the ranks.

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GRAFFITI SLEUTHS

HISTORIC BLENHEIM in Fairfax, Va., won a coveted grant from the NPS’s National Center for Preservation Technology and Training to uncover and preserve graffiti written by Civil War soldiers. Highly specialized imaging of the walls will be used to determine whether inscriptions lie behind wallpaper and to make evident writing indiscernible to the naked eye. The $19,976 grant is one of 11 awarded annually by the NPS Center. Blenheim is a brick farmhouse built around 1859; soldiers lived in the home in 1862-63 and left a vivid record in signatures and drawings. Due to COVID, Blenheim is currently closed, but check this website to view a calendar of online programs: https://www.fairfaxva.gov/ government/historic-resources/programs/historic-tours-programs.

SCRIBBLERS “Army of the United States” dominates graffiti slathered on the interior walls of Blenheim. This is just a portion of the writing soldiers left in the home during the war.

A RARE WOVEN COVERLET dating from 1850 is on display at the Montgomery Museum in Christiansburg, Va., chosen as one of the top 10 endangered artifacts of 2020 by the Virginia Association of Museums. Handed down over 160 years in a local family and recently donated to the museum, the textile—woven of homespun cotton and dyed blue wool yarn—was created on the plantation of Catherine L. Montague Trigg by an enslaved woman, whose name is unknown. Expert inspection supports the family lore that it was woven around 1850. Such artifacts are extremely rare, not only because textiles often aren’t preserved, but also because the provenance of the object is often obscured or forgotten. Before mills made possible the large-scale production of fabric, everyday clothing and textiles were created by local women, from the spinning of the thread, the weaving and dyeing of the fabric, to the cutting and stitching of the garment or textile.

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PHOTO BY MADISON BEST; AP PHOTO

RARE SLAVE ARTIFACT

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FROM TOP: PHOTO BY DON SNIEGOWSKI, COURTESY OF THE AMERICAN BATTLEFIELD TRUST; PHOTO BY JAMIE BETTS, COURTESY OF THE AMERICAN BATTLEFIELD TRUST; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

MISCELLANY

FROM TOP: PHOTO BY DON SNIEGOWSKI, COURTESY OF THE AMERICAN BATTLEFIELD TRUST; PHOTO BY JAMIE BETTS, COURTESY OF THE AMERICAN BATTLEFIELD TRUST; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

PHOTO BY MADISON BEST; AP PHOTO

REGISTER Three significant battlefield tracts are bundled in an unusual American Battlefield Trust campaign to raise $423,000 to add to more than $1 million already available under matching state and federal grants. The campaign encompasses a total of 110 acres associated with the openings of three different campaigns. The largest tract, 94 acres, is in Mill Springs, Ky., site of a Union victory on January 19, 1862, in the effort to take control of that critical state; nine acres are outside Petersburg, Va., where clashes initiated the Richmond– Petersburg Campaign in June 1864 and led to the 292-day Siege of Petersburg.

A little-known aspect of the Petersburg campaign was the participation of American Indian units from Michigan and Wisconsin. Seven acres in Bentonville, N.C., will complete acquisition of the site of the opening battle on March 19-21, 1865, that would ultimately close the chapter on the Confederacy with the surrender of General Joe Johnston’s Army of Tennessee on April 26, 1865, at Durham Station, N.C. In recognition of his 20-year service preserving battlefields, American Battlefield Trust president emeritus Jim Lighthizer was one of three recipients of the National Humanities Medal awarded by President Donald Trump on January 13, 2020.

GAINING SOME GREEN SPACE Battlefields at Mill Springs, Ky., top, and Petersburg, Va., above, and Vicksburg, Miss., have recently grown in size thanks to a recent preservation “bundle” effort.

TUBMAN ON THE

$20?

THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION has reinstated the push to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill. The change was originally proposed in 2016 by the Obama administration, but former Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin announced that the change could not be made until 2028, due to implementation of counterfeiting measures.

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MISCELLANY

THE WAR ON THE NET Time for a Reboot

n 2009, editor Dana Shoaf and I created this column to connect readers with rich online Civil War collections. Over the next decade, working closely with senior editor Chris Howland, I explored everything from digitized letter collections to massive projects featuring the latest in the field of Digital Humanities. My favorites included a Civil War–era exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (February 2019) that let us study the war through the eyes of 19th-century masters, but it was Professor Steve Berry’s CSI: Dixie (August 2016) explorations of 19th-century coroners’ inquests that generated the most mail from readers.

Originally called “Ural on URLs” and later renamed “War on the Net,” the column’s central focus has always been to identify online resources to help teachers, researchers, and the general public understand a conflict

I

that still fascinates and mystifies, saddens, and inspires. From small local projects to collections digitized by the National Archives or the Library of Congress, CWT connected readers with online resources.

Through it all, the column’s mantra— digital collections will never replace archives or archivists, librarians or historians—was frequently repeated. Online records improve access and outreach, but trained experts help us place them in context and ensure that we study history with an eye toward accuracy, not mythology.

New Digital Humanities projects demand my attention, but I want to thank Dana, Chris, the CWT staff, and all of you for allowing me to discuss old sources made newly available and that help us continue our exploration of this endlessly fascinating era. I hope you have enjoyed reading these articles as much as I have enjoyed writing them. —Susannah J. Ural

QUIZ

ANSWER TO LAST ISSUE’S

CLOSE UP! BE THE FIRST to identify this unique type of banner and win a Civil War Times water bottle. Send your answer to dshoaf@historynet.com, subject heading “Night Sky.” 12

CONGRATULATIONS to Al Walgenbach, of Shelby Charter Township, Mich., who correctly answered that the Confederate battle flag can be found on the Gettysburg monument to Cowan’s Battery, 1st New York Independent Battery, located near the Copse of Trees.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: PHOTO BY DANA B. SHOAF; PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN; THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM

CLOSE UP!

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Sacred Stone of the Southwest is on the Brink of Extinction

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CANDID CAMERA THE LOCATION OF THIS IMAGE, the photographer, and the year in which it was taken are unknown. Based on other identified photographs from the war, however, it’s a good guess it’s an Eastern Theater scene, and in a semi-permanent location for the Union Army, such as the massive 1863-64 Army of the Potomac winter encampment at Brandy Station, Va., or the accumulation of buildings that were quickly constructed at the large and important supply base of City Point, Va., during the Siege of Petersburg.

It could also have been taken in or near a fort that protected Washington, D.C., or one of the large assembly camps in that region. What we do know is that the image portrays three animals and 10 humans in an informal setting. The long exposures required to take photographs during the Civil War meant that no “action” shots could be taken, so true candid images do not exist from the period, and photos of posed soldiers in studios are the most common. Pictures like this, an outdoor scene in which the subjects are posed but still appear as if they were captured while going about their day, are rare.—D.B.S.

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1. Effort has been put into the large building to make it stylish. The decorative fascia boards can be found on other buildings associated with the Union Army, and, along with the steep pitched roofs with finials and narrow board-and-batten finishing of the upper gables, they reflect a simple version of the “Gothic Revival” architectural style that was fashionable from 1840-1880.

It’s a bit hard to make out, but the fence that surrounds the building is also a marvel. No ordinary rail fence, it is constructed of tree limbs for both utility and beauty, and was called a “rustic” style fence, which became popular in the 1850s. The 50th New York Engineers built a number of structures with similar decoration and fences, but there is no evidence that this location is associated with that regiment.

4. This group, which appears to be made up of all officers, some with nicely starched white collars, holds particular interest. The man at far left has draped himself in a blanket to ward off the chill. The officer on the far right appears to be wearing a four-button, commercial grade sack coat with lieutenant’s bars.

here, and the other holding the horse in the center of the image. As always, their presence in such photos indicates a social revolution in process. They don’t appear to be wearing uniforms and are likely refugees who made their way to Union lines.

7. We said there are 10 people in the image, but one is hiding a bit. When you take a closer look at this support pole, do you see an enlisted man just peeking out his head? Civil War photo bomb.

2. Two African Americans are present in the image: One

3. Photographer’s assistant? Sutler? Sanitary or Christian

5. The star of the image is this wonderful dog, perhaps some sort of retriever, maybe a Chesapeake Bay Retriever, who listened to his master and sat still for the image.

What a good pup! His presence surely helped pass the time in camp.

6. The hat brass on this enlisted man’s forage cap provides a clue for further research as to the location of the image. Though blurry, under magnification you can make out crossed sabers for cavalry and the regimental numeral 1 on the cap.

Commission member? Visiting relative? A smiling civilian, hands on hips, takes center stage.

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by Gary W. Gallagher

‘OLD

BRAINS’ ‘GRANNY LEE’ AND

THE RELATIONSHIP between soldiers and their commanders can be indicated by nicknames, which also provide insights into how opponents and civilians on both sides thought about various generals. Nathan Bedford Forrest, lauded by Confederates as the “Wizard of the Saddle,” vexed William Tecumseh Sherman as “that devil Forrest.” Rebels cursed Benjamin F. Butler as “Beast” and “Spoons” and mocked Nathanial P. Banks, whose army abandoned supplies during the 1862 Shenandoah Valley Campaign, as “Commissary Banks.” Saddled with the un-martial nickname “Old Brains,” Henry W. Halleck might have envied James Ewell Brown Stuart, whose three initials created “Jeb,” a splendid piece of luck for a dashing cavalryman. Richard S. Ewell (“Old Bald Head”) and William Farrar Smith (“Baldy”) certainly harbored no doubts about how they acquired their informal monikers.

‘SPOONS’ BUTLER No general experienced a greater turnaround in New Orleans citizens accused nicknames than Robert E. Lee. Scorned as “Granny” Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler of or the “King of Spades” early in the war, he remained stealing silver spoons while controversial when assigned to replace the wounded military commander of their Joseph E. Johnston outside Richmond on June 1, city. This spoon, made in 1862. The ensuing year brought victories that solidiLowell, Mass., pays humorous fied Lee’s reputation as a gifted commander whose tribute to the general. soldiers called him “Marse Robert.” An alternative form of “master” typically associated with enslaved African Americans, “marse” carried cultural weight in a patriarchal slaveholding society. For Lee’s soldiers, the nickname combined respect for supreme authority and affection. A North Carolinian explained in early 1864 that comrades “speak of him amongst themselves universally as ‘Marse Robert’ & use it as a term of endearment & affection.” Lee’s troops developed a sense of familial loyalty and obligation that showed when James Longstreet’s Corps returned to Virginia from Tennessee

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HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS (2)

CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS OFTEN GAVE THEIR GENERALS POINTED NICKNAMES

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in April 1864. Artillerist Edward Porter Alexander recalled the moment Lee rode onto a knoll to review the men: “The general reins up his horse, & bares his good gray head, & looks at us & we shout & cry & wave our battleflags & look at him again....Each man seemed to feel the bond which held us all to Lee. There was no speaking, but the effect was that of a military sacrament, in which we pledged anew our lives.”

Only George B. McClellan inspired comparable devotion among men in the ranks. His nickname, “Little Mac,” conveyed no sense of military talent or purpose—indeed, as a diminutive version of “McClellan” it could be construed as somehow negative. But the nickname had nothing to do with stature—at 5’ 8” tall, McClellan was slightly above average height—and everything to do with acknowledging a sense of closeness between the general and his troops. McClellan worked hard to build spirit in the Army of the Potomac, making himself accessible through unannounced visits to camps and using reviews to imbue the men with a sense of being part of the republic’s greatest military force. In important ways, the army remained McClellan’s after he departed in the wake of Antietam. A Rhode Islander captured prevailing attitudes in the ranks to McClellan’s removal in early November 1862. “This has been a sad day for the Army of the Potomac,” he wrote: “Gen. McClellan has been relieved from command and has left us. He rode along the lines and was heartily cheered by the men....This change produces much bitter feeling and some indignation. McClellan’s enemies will now rejoice, but the Army loves and respects him.”

Avuncular imagery usually signaled strong ties between soldiers and their commander. William Tecumseh Sherman and Joseph E. Johnston, known as “Uncle Billy” and “Uncle Joe” by their men, forged reputations as officers who avoided unnecessary bloodshed and looked after their troops. “Uncle John” Sedgwick, chief of the Union 6th Corps, stood, in the words of one soldier who commented about the gener-

al’s death at Spotsylvania, as “our friend, our idol...the great leader, the cherished friend, he that had been more than a father to us all.”

“Old” figured in many nicknames and often connoted a reciprocal bond across ranks. Although celebrated as “Stonewall” (surely the best of all Civil

NATHAN BEDFORD

FORREST WAS LAUDED BY

CONFEDERATES AS THE

WIZARD OF THE SADDLE War nicknames), Thomas J. Jackson most often was “Old Jack” to his men.

Similarly, James Longstreet’s soldiers knew him as “Old Pete” (derived from a boyhood and West Point appellation), though he also earned respect as Lee’s “Old War Horse” and “the Bull of the Woods.” William J. Hardee (“Old Reliable”), William S. Rosecrans (“Old Rosey”), P.G.T. Beauregard (“Old Bory”), and Jubal A. Early (“Old Jube”)

inspired quite different reactions among their men, with Early, curmudgeonly and sharp-tongued, probably the least popular. George H. Thomas, “Old Slow Trot” to those who thought his movements too sluggish, was most often called “Pap” by devoted troops or “The Rock of Chickamauga.”

A positive nickname could be turned against an officer. Joseph Hooker emerged from the Richmond campaign of 1862 as “Fighting Joe,” which many soldiers embraced because it set him apart from overly cautious generals in the Army of the Potomac. Hooker despised it. “Don’t call me Fighting Joe,” Harper’s Weekly quoted him as saying in February 1863. R. E. Lee took a dismissive tone in late February 1863, saying, “I owe Mr. F J Hooker no thanks for keeping me here in this state of expectancy. He ought to have made up his mind long ago what to do.” After Hooker’s ignominious collapse at Chancellorsville, the nickname became a weapon for anyone of a sardonic bent.

Similarly, John Bell Hood, known as “the gallant Hood” in the Confederacy, fell victim to a sarcastic twist during his army’s retreat from Nashville in December 1864. To the tune of The Yellow Rose of Texas, some of his soldiers, in lyrics that compared Hood unfavorably with Joe Johnston, sang: “I’m going back to Georgia / To find my ‘Uncle Joe’ / You may sing about your dearest maid, / And sing of Rosalie, / But the gallant Hood of Texas / Played hell in Tennessee.”

Soldiers bestowed no nickname on some of the war’s leading generals.

Ulysses S. Grant’s initials yielded “Sam” (short for “Uncle Sam”) from fellow cadets at West Point and “Unconditional Surrender” from newspapers after Fort Donelson, and Confederates and some Democrats (especially Copperheads) called him “Butcher” during the Overland Campaign. But no lasting nickname originated with his troops. John Pope, Braxton Bragg, and Irvin McDowell, among army commanders, similarly emerged from the conflict without a nickname. That might have been a good thing in each of their cases. ✯ APRIL 2021 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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GRAVES

YOU DON’T HAVE TO LOOK FAR TO FIND TRACES OF PATRICK CLEBURNE IN TENNESSEE REMINDERS OF PATRICK CLEBURNE are sprinkled throughout Tennessee—on battlefields at Chattanooga, Stones River, Spring Hill, and Franklin; in Ashwood, where his remains once rested among the oaks and magnolias; and in Nashville, where today you can examine for yourself a poignant artifact associated with the Irish-born general’s death.

But I begin my journey on the trail of “The Stonewall of the West” in aptly named Wartrace (population 700), “The Cradle of the Tennessee Walking Horse,” and according to a town source, a center of paranormal activity. My guide is 73-year-old Philip Gentry, a retired AT&T project manager, Vietnam War Purple Heart recipient, former gold panner, and longtime curator of the town’s Tennessee Walking Horse National Museum. (He poo-poos that ghost stuff.)

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PHOTO BY JOHN BANKS; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

RELICS AND

Gentry lives with his wife, Laura, and a black Lab/German Shepherd mix named Alexander the Great in a large house on a hill about a mile outside of town. After the Battle of Stones River, Confederate Lt. Gen. William Hardee established his headquarters and camps at Andrew Erwin’s Beechwood Plantation—Gentry owns a 67-acre slice of what once was the Southern sympathizer’s massive property.

British Army Lt. Col. Sir Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, who visited with Hardee at the plantation, described the area in May 1863 as “beautiful country, green, undulating, full of magnificent trees, principally beeches, and the scenery was by far the finest I had seen in America as yet.”

The Erwins’ brick mansion, where the family often entertained Confederate officers, is long gone. (Gentry’s house rests on its old footprint.) But Cleburne, who commanded a division in Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee, undoubtedly roamed the grounds, my

PHOTO BY JOHN BANKS

IN THE HEARTLAND Philip Gentry lives on the grounds of the former Beechwood Plantation and nearby battlefields such as Stones River and Liberty Gap.

PHOTO BY JOHN BANKS; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

PHOTO BY JOHN BANKS

guide tells me. The Irishman, of course, was always in the thick of the action: “In the advance from Tullahoma to Wartrace, and the subsequent retirement of the army to Chattanooga,” Hardee wrote, “his division habitually formed the vanguard in advance and the rearguard in retreat.”

The view from Gentry’s house is impressive on this gray, overcast morning—the surrounding hills look like a tan, wool blanket haphazardly tossed on the ground. To our left, Gentry can see at night the lights of Murfreesboro, where Cleburne led his division against Phil Sheridan at Stones River. A click to the right, roughly 10 miles away near Bell Buckle, he sent forces to fend off Federals at Liberty Gap during the June 1863 Tullahoma Campaign.

Yards from a two-lane road outside town, Gentry and I stand near the Beechwood Plantation state historical marker—he researched and wrote the words for the sign; paid for it, too. “I’m not really a history buff,” says the East Tennessee native, “but things that are meaningful need to be recognized.”

Gentry points to a tree-lined ridge below his house. The remains of wartime trenches are back there, he says, and that’s where his brother-in-law, a relic hunter, found Confederate buckles.

Bullets and other war artifacts also have turned up on his property.

Gentry’s place may not be the only Wartrace spot with a Cleburne tie. The local Chamber of Commerce website touts the historic Chockley Inn— opposite the railroad tracks—as a meeting place for the general and other Confederate officers. Visitors from as far away as Ireland have come to see the rickety old place, now the residence of a woman named Blossom. But its Cleburne connection, well, that merits more scrutiny—just like those Wartrace ghost stories.

The view of Franklin from Winstead Hill—the jump-off point for Cleburne’s Division and thousands more soldiers in General John Bell Hood’s Army of Tennessee—was spectacular

MAN OF THE EIRE Patrick Cleburne, right, was born in Ireland in 1828, and came to America in 1849 to remake his life. He joined the Confederate Army as a private, but was soon elected a captain in the 1st Arkansas. The monument to him, above, is in Wartrace, Tenn.

on November 30, 1864. Roughly two miles away, the Union Army awaited behind crude earthworks near Fountain Carter’s house and outbuildings.

Now the scene is largely blocked by a stand of trees. It’s just as well, because the bloody plain upon which Cleburne and hundreds of other Confederate soldiers advanced to their deaths is clogged with fast-food restaurants, retail stores, and residential neighborhoods. Progress? Meh. On the east side of Columbia Pike, about 40 yards from Federal works,

Cleburne—on foot after two of his mounts were shot from under him— was killed by a shot to the chest. A modern memorial of cannonballs marks the general area of his death—until a remarkable early-21st century battlefield reclamation effort by preservation groups, the ground was occupied by a pizza restaurant.

At the small Carter House State Historic Site visitors’ center, Cleburne fan Carrie Craddock serves as a tour guide.

Decades ago, her “daddy,” a contractor, worked at a Victorian-era house on the APRIL 2021 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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RAMBLING with John Banks

site near Carter’s long-gone cotton gin—scene of savage fighting.

When Craddock was a preteen, she followed him as he tilled a garden there: “We’d find grapeshot left and right,” she tells me. On one occasion, Craddock heard a clunk as Dad was tilling, “and there was a 12-pounder”—an artillery shell. At home, she has a can filled with canister found on the battlefield.

“If I’d find anything today [on the battlefield],” Craddock says, “I’d be squealing, because I have a deeper appreciation for it now.”

Years ago, Craddock’s husband was part of a Civil War reenactment group that went to Ireland, marched in the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin on Cleburne’s birthday, and even saw the room in which the general was born in 1828 in Ovens, County Cork.

“Beware of the snakes,” a Civil War confidant warns me before a visit to St. John’s Episcopal Church Cemetery in rural Ashwood, site of Cleburne’s second Tennessee burial.

The 36-year-old general’s remains originally were buried at Rose Hill Cemetery in nearby Columbia. But a Confederate chaplain and an officer were aghast upon discovering Union troops were buried in the same section.

So, Cleburne was dug up the next day and reburied in a handsome walnut coffin behind St. John’s Church, completed with slave labor by the summer of 1842.

(It was used by Confederates as a hospital during fierce skirmishing in the area.)

On the march toward Franklin with the Army of Tennessee, Cleburne famously remarked about the beauty of the spot, which may have reminded

PHOTO BY JOHN BANKS (4)

HIS LAST FIGHT A bronze contour map on Winstead Hill shows how open the approach to Franklin was in 1864.

A cannonball pyramid marks the general location of Cleburne’s death at the Battle of Franklin.

Not long ago, a pizza restaurant stood on the property.

him of his native Ireland. A comrade of the general’s later described the cemetery as “beautiful as the Garden of Eden—seemingly a fit place for pure spirits to dwell, and for the haunts of angels.”

Thankfully, the grounds weren’t the haunt of snakes—at least on this day.

But the drone of traffic on busy Mount Pleasant Pike nearby is a Civil War buzz kill. Cleburne’s resting place was behind the gorgeous, brick church, among gravesites for Confederate fallen.

In late April 1870, a delegation from Arkansas arrived at St. John’s Cemetery for the disinterment of the general’s body for reburial in his adopted state.

Confederate Generals Otho Strahl and Hiram Granbury—Battle of Franklin victims, too—also were interred at the cemetery before they also were removed and reburied elsewhere.

On April 28, while en route to Helena, Ark., Cleburne’s hometown, the group stopped at the train depot in Memphis for a procession through the city with his remains. Among the huge White turnout was Jefferson Davis, former president of the Confederacy.

“The whole history of the past ten years,” wrote a newspaper reporter who was there, “ran like a flash of lightning over Mr. Davis’ expressive face. There was an intensity of feeling and thought written upon the strongly marked lineaments of his eloquent features that unfolded the profoundest emotions.”

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THE 36-YEAR-OLD

GENERAL’S

REMAINS ORIGINALLY

WERE BURIED AT ROSE HILL CEMETERY IN NEARBY COLUMBIA

PHOTO BY JOHN BANKS (4)

The procession through Memphis for “Arkansas’ greatest soldier” was called “perhaps the finest ever witnessed in the city.”

Like Philip Gentry, Richard White— curator of 18th- and 19th-century history at Nashville’s Tennessee State Museum—doesn’t buy into the “ghost stuff.” But the man in charge of the museum’s excellent Civil War display does feel the weight of history when he handles a relic such as Cleburne’s kepi.

“Some museum professionals are stoic about their work,” says White, obsessed with Civil War history since he was eight. “But I geek out over this.”

He last handled Cleburne’s military hat four years ago, shortly before it was displayed with other Battle of Franklin artifacts—including Cleburne’s cane with a knob in the shape of a dog head.

My first reaction when I saw it? Whoa, that’s impressive. Reaction No. 2: Sheesh, Cleburne sure had a small head. The blue kepi, trimmed with gold braid, might be size 6 ¾, a 6 7⁄8 max. In 2014, the museum had the kepi—then in a dismal state—conserved. The Sons of Confederate Veterans and The Society of the Order of the Southern Cross raised $3,800 to cover the cost.

NO GHOSTS, BUT SPIRITS Cleburne’s second Tennessee burial was at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Ashwood, above, until his remains were exhumed in 1870 and moved to Arkansas.

The general’s embroidered kepi, left, is on display at Nashville’s Tennessee State Museum.

How the museum acquired the hat is one of those “you gotta be kidding me” stories. At about dawn the day after the battle, Confederate soldiers discovered Cleburne amid their other dead—he was flat on his back “as if asleep,” a veteran recalled after the war, the kepi partially covering his eyes. His remains were taken by wagon to the McGavock family’s Carnton Plantation mansion, accompanied by the hat as well as the general’s watch and sword. Carrie McGavock put away the sword and kepi for safekeeping. Later, she hid both between her mattress and bed to keep

them from Union troops.

In 1887, the McGavock family donated the kepi to the Tennessee Historical Society, whose collection is held in trust by the state museum. As for the sword and watch, well, the whereabouts are unknown. White especially would like to find the weapon. “Are you kidding?” he says.

Keep your eyes peeled. ✯ John Banks is the author of two Civil War books and his popular Civil War blog (john-banks.blogspot.com). He lives in Nashville, Tenn.

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with David Duncan

AUTHENTIC EXPERIENCES

IN OCTOBER 2020, David Duncan took over the position of president of American Battlefield Trust, following Jim Lighthizer’s long tenure. A lifelong Virginian, Duncan became a member of the Civil War Trust in the 1990s. When Jim Lighthizer became the president in 1999, he hired Duncan as chief development officer for his background in direct mail and fundraising. Over Duncan’s two decades in that role, the organization—renamed the American Battlefield Trust in 2018 with an expanded mission—has raised $240 million and preserved nearly 45,000 acres of battlefield.

CWT: Tell me the challenges you are facing.

DD: Jim announced his intention to retire formally in October 2019, and the world had not so radically changed at that point. My first interview with the search committee was in February [2020], and when it was announced in September that 22

CWT: Have battlefield visits increased during the pandemic?

DD: My wife and I were doing some hiking trails on the Manassas Battlefield. We got there at 10 a.m. and the parking lot was already filled and the

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COURTESY OF THE AMERICAN BATTLEFIELD TRUST/PHOTO BY BUDDY SECOR

PRESERVING

I would be following Jim, I had at least one person send me a congratulatory e-mail saying you must be a really special person to want this job at this time. It would have been enough of a challenge to follow a tremendous legacy leader like Jim Lighthizer. Then let’s throw in the added difficulty of a worldwide pandemic and extreme economic uncertainty. I am reminded of wise words on the subject of rising to the occasion spoken by Winston Churchill: “We don’t always get to pick the hour, sometimes the hour picks us.”

There’s not a single thing I can do about it except show up and do my job every single day.

COURTESY OF THE AMERICAN BATTLEFIELD TRUST/PHOTO BY MIKE TALPLACIDO

A LONG ROAD Some of the 276 acres preserved by the American Battlefield Trust at Appomattox Court House. The organization has been working to save land for four decades.

cars were parking on the grass all the way down to the main access road. It was astounding. I heard the same thing back in the fall about Gettysburg.

CWT: Has it helped the Trust raise money?

DD: We had a pretty good year in 2020 all things considered. We don’t have museum buildings to maintain.

We have battlefields to maintain, but that’s cutting grass and taking care of brush. It’s not nearly as expensive as running a museum. We don’t have fundraising events per se. No galas to cancel. We have an annual conference, but we generally keep the prices low so more members can attend, and hopefully break even. Our model is to go out and find important battlefields to save, put together the matching grant opportunities using federal, state, or other private matching money and ask our members for help. We’ve got the best and most generous members in the nonprofit world. We actually had more donors in 2020, by a small percentage, than we did in 2019.

COURTESY OF THE AMERICAN BATTLEFIELD TRUST/PHOTO BY BUDDY SECOR

COURTESY OF THE AMERICAN BATTLEFIELD TRUST/PHOTO BY MIKE TALPLACIDO

CWT: Do you know why?

DD: Our education team puts a new article or video out on our website at a rate of almost one per day. And people are stuck at home and they are looking for great content. Some of it is educational material or virtual battlefield tours. We were well positioned for that before the pandemic, and we pivoted to that and it took off.

CWT: Has the move to dynamic media been a long-term push?

DD: Members still clamor for our magazine, and we still bring in most of our money from the old process of direct mail. The web aspect of our fundraising is growing, as it should. It’s a very conscious expansion toward that online content. A million people watching our YouTube videos every month is a wonderful thing. At the same time, my hope is that eventually folks watching will support us financially. At the end of the day, we need to raise money to continue to save land.

CWT: Is there one fight to acquire a battlefield that stands out as the most challenging?

DD: Just at the end of the calendar year last year we announced making progress to preserve a nearly square mile of property that was the central part of the Battle of Gaines’ Mill in 1862 and Cold Harbor in 1864. And from literally the day I walked into this

David Duncan

organization almost 21 years ago, if you asked what’s the most important unprotected piece of battlefield in the country, this was it. This property is in the heart of both of those battlefields and it is absolutely pristine. We have five years to raise the money to complete the transaction, and the details are different from transactions we’ve done before. It’s been in the family since before the war, and when you get back in the property you feel like you are in 1862 and 1864. It’s not the most expensive deal we’ve done, but it is in the top five.

CWT: What is the value of pristine battlefields?

DD: To be able to see and walk that ground in their footsteps; there is no better educational or interpretive experience. I’ve had that experience at the Slaughter Pen Farm at Fredericksburg, which we saved several years ago.

From the road it looks like a tabletop flat piece of ground, but when you walk

it, you can read about the experiences of the soldiers who went across that field and see the minute changes in topography. There is nothing better. I hear people say, “I read about the battle, and then I walked the ground and, oh my God, it changed everything I thought about that battle. People crave authenticity and want to be on the ground where those events happened— as opposed to standing in a parking lot or housing subdivision.

CWT: How do you sustain interest in battlefield preservation?

DD: There are always going to be people interested in our country’s history. Preservation will forever be the cornerstone of what we do, but what we’re attempting to do with our education efforts and online work is to expand the scope of the stories that can be told about these battlefields. We’re working on a project called Fighting for Freedom, which focuses on African American troop contributions at many of these battlefields. We’re putting together a driving tour and an app, so you can virtually tour these battles.

Younger folks are looking to have more of those experiences.

CWT: Any comment on Confederate flags being carried into the Capitol on January 6?

DD: This isn’t new; it’s been misused over the years. What keeps coming to my mind are the words from Lincoln’s First Inaugural speech, especially at the end, the last paragraph: “We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies.” He’s saying this as the country is coming apart at the seams.

We have to embrace that kind of thinking again. If the Civil War taught us anything, we can never go through that again. By preserving the places where we did it once we can learn from them and know that we never want to do it again. That’s why I’m in this job. I think this is very, very important to the future of our country. ✯ Interview conducted by Senior Editor Sarah Richardson.

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by Dana B. Shoaf

A CONTINUOUS

RUMBLE

HARPER’S WEEKLY/WILSON’S CREEK NATIONAL BATTLEFIELD VIA AP

THE CIVIL WAR IMPACTS OUR EVERY DAY “THE PAST IS NEVER DEAD. IT’S NOT EVEN PAST.” This famous line by the great writer William Faulkner seems more apt than ever when applied to the Civil War. In some ways, the conflict seems distant. Bearded generals ordering younger men to attack in lines across fields and through smoke-filled woodlots toward death-dealing gunfire. Reports and letters penned with Union troops a syntax and rhythm we admire but no longer duplicate. Bloody accomplishments bivouacked in the commemorated by battlefield monuments that stare blindly across hallowed ground. unfinished Capitol All provoke thoughts of an ancient age. But then, the war will intrude without warning into modern life. The Confederate flag and United States troops in the halls of building in 1861, a scene our nation’s Capitol within days of each other this past January. One president com- National Guard soldiers mends Robert E. Lee, while the descendant of a slave reads a poem at another presiechoed in 2021. dent’s inauguration. A widow comes forth with the surprising news that she is the last surviving spouse of a Civil War veteran (P. 42). Towns in the Midwest owe their existence to battle-scarred veterans (P. 48). I find it fascinating, and at times disturbing, how the rumbling of cannons fired long ago can still shake my soul and shape my world. I know many of you feel the same. Let’s all keep at it—studying, learning, and drawing lessons from our engrossing, bedeviling conflict. Those who fought in it are free of its burden, and it is up to us to “strive on to finish the work we are in…and bind up the nation’s wounds,” to quote another pretty good writer. The Civil War is never past. ✯ APRIL 2021 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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THE END IN SIGHT? Confederate soldiers overrun a Union battery during the Battle of Glendale on June 30, 1862, among the last fights of the Seven Days.

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WEEK WAR OF

A HANDFUL OF CRITICAL DECISIONS ALTERED THE

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1862 SEVEN DAYS CAMPAIGN

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T

he Seven Days Campaign, fought June 25–July 1, 1862, prevented the Army of the Potomac from capturing the Confederate capital of Richmond, Va., at a critical junction early in the Civil War; established Robert E. Lee as an army commander, which would be an instrumental factor in extending the war for another three years; and forced the Lincoln administration to grapple with the issue of emancipation. The fighting and maneuvering that raged that summer from north of Richmond to 16 miles southeast along the James River unfolded as it did because of 16 critical decisions made before, during, and after the battles by commanders in both armies and at all levels. Of these decisions, three were strategic, four operational, eight tactical, and one personnel. Four were nationallevel decisions, nine army-level, one wing-level, and two division-level. Seven were made by Union commanders, nine by Confederate commanders. All were implemented by the thousands of soldiers in the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac.

1

McClellan Decides on a Turning Movement

THE YOUNG NAPOLEON Maj. Gen. George McClellan got closer to Richmond than any Army of the Potomac commander did until 1864. “He has a good face, open and manly,” said a subordinate.

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UNDER PRESSURE to begin operations in the spring of 1862, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac, developed a plan using Union naval power to move his army from the vicinity of Washington, D.C., 87 miles south to Urbana, Va. In March, General Joseph E. Johnston’s Confederate army retreated south from Centreville, Va., to the Rappahannock River, about 36 miles, which blocked McClellan’s intended Urbana movement.

The Union general then modified his plan and moved the army to Fort Monroe on the tip of the Virginia Peninsula. Shifting the center of fighting in the Eastern Theater to the Peninsula put the Confederate capital in jeopardy of capture if sufficient forces could not be redeployed in time for its defense. The series of events set in motion by this decision led to the Seven Days.

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Army-Level Strategic Decision

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McClellan Decides to Besiege Yorktown Army-Level Tactical Decision

BY APRIL, McClellan had approximately 50,000 men, with more arriving every day—enough to move against the Confederate positions at Yorktown and the Southern army’s defensive line across the Peninsula. Confederate Maj. Gen. John B. Magruder, who commanded 13,000 troops, skillfully used his soldiers to bluff McClellan into thinking he had a significantly larger force. McClellan decided to lay siege to the Yorktown defenses, putting heavy artillery in place from mid-April to May 2, which allowed Johnston time to shift a significant portion of his army from the Rappahannock to the southern part of the Peninsula. The Confederate position at Yorktown was abandoned the night before McClellan’s siege artillery was set to open fire. Because of his decision, McClellan lost the operational advantage gained by moving to the Peninsula. Sufficient Confederate forces were now deployed between his army and Richmond and closed the once-open road to the capital.

SLOW START Massive Federal mortars in the Yorktown siege lines. They never fired a shot. Though he had the advantage of numbers, McClellan remained convinced he was outnumbered, partially because intelligence operative Allan Pinkerton (circled at left, at McClellan’s headquarters) fed him exaggerated Confederate troop numbers.

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AS McCLELLAN BEGAN moving his army to the Peninsula, President Abraham Lincoln directed Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell’s 33,510man 1st Corps to remain near Washington for the defense of the capital.

When Johnston transferred his army from the Rappahannock River to the Peninsula, McDowell’s corps moved to just across the Rappahannock from Fredericksburg. In mid-May, he was ordered to shift farther south toward Richmond and work in conjunction with McClellan’s army.

Major General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, however, began his Valley Campaign shortly thereafter. In response, McDowell was ordered to concentrate, along with two other commands, near Strasburg in an attempt to cut off Jackson while he was in the northern Shenandoah Valley. That attempt was unsuccessful, and a large portion of McDowell’s force spent wasted time marching to the Valley and then back to Fredericksburg. As a result, McDowell’s corps did not make contact with the Army of the Potomac’s right flank. Such a juncture would have extended the Union lines at Richmond to the northwest and west, which would have precluded the turning movement Lee planned against McClellan’s right rear area, supply line, and base. It would have also blocked Jackson from joining Lee, as he did in late June.

30

SUBORDINATE EVENTS Top, Confederate troops in the Shenandoah Valley cheer Maj. Gen. Stonewall Jackson. Above, McClellan had no love for Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell, once calling him a “scoundrel a liar & a fool.”

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National-Level Operational Decision

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3

McDowell Is Diverted

4

THE NEW BOSS Robert E. Lee bestowed the name Army of Northern Virginia on his new command and moved to the offensive.

THE GILDER LEHRMAN COLLECTION; NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

TROIAI, DON (B.1949)/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

5

Lee’s Plan Gets Approved National-Level Strategic Decision

UPON COMPLETION of the Valley Campaign on June 9, Jackson proposed that his command be reinforced from 16,000 to 40,000 troops so he could move north and cross into Maryland and Pennsylvania. The most available for Jackson, however, were 16,500 men, meaning he would still be 7,500 short.

If Jackson had succeeded in following through with his proposal, it would have had a major impact on the war in the East. McClellan would probably have to withdraw part of his army from in front of Richmond and send them back to northern Virginia, but it also meant Lee wouldn’t have sufficient troops to execute the turning movement he was planning. Faced with the two options, Davis sided with Lee and chose not to reinforce Jackson. Lee continued planning his turning movement against McClellan.

Davis Decides on Lee National-Level Personnel Decision

AFTER ABANDONING the Yorktown defenses, Johnston withdrew gradually up the Peninsula while conducting a delay. On May 31, he attacked a portion of the Union army at Seven Pines (Fair Oaks). During the battle, Johnston was severely wounded and evacuated. Confederate President Jefferson Davis needed to appoint a new army commander. He had the option of leaving the army’s second senior officer, Maj. Gen. Gustavus W. Smith in command, appointing General Robert E. Lee, or turning to another general for the position, such as P.G.T. Beauregard or Samuel Cooper. Davis decided on Lee, appointing him commander of the Army of Northern Virginia on June 1.

In two weeks, Lee launched the Seven Days Campaign and determined how the war would be fought in the Eastern Theater for the remainder of the conflict.

AERIAL WARFARE Union aeronaut Thaddeus Lowe’s observation balloon flies high above the James River. Both sides used balloons on the Peninsula, but the heavy vegetation limited their effectiveness.

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UNDER WAY Supply ships at White House Landing. Below, the strong Union position at Beaver Dam Creek. The sketch mistakenly claims Jackson’s men were there.

Army-Level Operational Decision

WHEN LEE ASSUMED COMMAND of the Army of Northern Virginia, it was located on the eastern edge of Richmond and besieged by a larger Union army. Knowing that his defenses were vulnerable if McClellan conducted a large siege operation, Lee planned a turning movement around the Union right (north) flank. With the advance of Confederate forces deep into the Union right rear area, McClellan’s supply line would be threatened, particularly his army’s principal supply base at White House Landing on the Pamunkey River, a tributary of the York River. This would turn McClellan’s position and force him into a battle of maneuver.

Lee’s offensive concept would save Richmond and prolong the war.

A.P. Hill Attacks Division-Level Tactical Decision

LEE PLANNED to hold a portion of his army in front of Richmond while three divisions were moved farther to the north for the turning movement. These divisions would join with Jackson’s command after it moved from the Shenandoah Valley to Ashland, then south toward the Union right rear area. Major General A.P. Hill’s Division was the leftmost of these three divisions.

When contact was made with Jackson, Hill was to cross the Chickahominy River and attack south to Mechanicsville. That would support Jackson and also clear the way for Maj. Gens. D.H. Hill’s and James Longstreet’s Divisions to cross the Chickahominy. When Jackson failed to reach his planned position by June 26, A.P. Hill made the decision to still launch his attack across the river. That initiated the Battle of Beaver Dam Creek, the first Confederate offensive of the Seven Days. Without Jackson in place, Lee’s plan did not develop as the Confederate commander intended. By taking the initiative, however, Lee disrupted future Federal plans, thereby establishing the tenor of the entire campaign.

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OPENING DAYS The first fight of the Seven Days was a Union attack at Oak Grove designed to gain ground so McClellan could again deploy siege guns. It was stymied, however, and the next day Confederate troops were attacking at Beaver Dam Creek.

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Lee Decides on a Turning Movement

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THE BIGGEST FIGHT A wartime sketch of the Union lines at Gaines’ Mill, the most costly fight of the Seven Days. At the time it was the second bloodiest fight in American history, only behind Shiloh for casualties.

8

McClellan Provides Minimal Reinforcements Army-Level Tactical Decision

DESPITE THE SUCCESSFUL UNION DEFENSE at Beaver Dam Creek, also known as the Battle of Mechanicsville, McClellan ordered Porter’s 5th Corps to withdraw to the east and establish a defensive position at Gaines’ Mill overlooking Boatswain’s Swamp. Lee soon came up against Porter’s new position.

Throughout the afternoon of June 27, Lee committed all six divisions of his maneuver force in attacks against the Union defenders in the Battle of Gaines’ Mill.

This provided McClellan the opportunity to send significant reinforcements north across the Chickahominy to fight a potentially decisive defensive battle and even counterattack the left (east) flank of Lee’s army. McClellan did not do that, however, and late in the afternoon provided only minimal reinforcements that covered the retreat of the 5th Corps after it was forced from its position. McClellan had lost the tactical edge to Lee and would never regain the initiative.

THE SEVEN DAYS BATTLES JUNE 25 – JULY 1, 1862 CASUALTIES

Wednesday, June 25 OAK GROVE

UNION

CONFEDERATE

626

441

361

1484

6837

7993

Thursday, June 26

BEAVER DAM CREEK

Friday, June 27

GAINES’ MILL

Friday, June 27 Saturday, June 28

GARNETT’S FARM/ GOLDING’S FARM

189

438

Sunday, June 29

SAVAGE’S STATION/ ALLEN’S FARM

1038

473

Monday, June 30

WHITE OAK SWAMP/ GLENDALE (Frayser’s Farm)

3897

3688

Tuesday, July 1

MALVERN HILL

3000

5650

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TOKEN OF WAR An identification badge belonging to George Bumbaugh of the 26th Pennsylvania Infantry features battle honors, including the “7 Days Before Richmond,” and McClellan’s profile.

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9

McClellan Decides to Retreat to the James River Army-Level Operational Decision

AFTER GAINES’ MILL, the Union army was concentrated on the south side of the Chickahominy River. McClellan had two options. He could hold Lee along the line of the river and attack with the remainder of his army, the force covering Richmond—an operation that probably would have been successful. Alternatively, he could retreat. McClellan decided to retreat across the Peninsula to the James, which he tried to disguise by calling it a “change of base.”

There he could reestablish a supply base, use the river as a line of supply and communication, and be supported by the Union Navy’s gunboats. The route of retreat began at Savage’s Station, then went southeast, then south across White Oak Swamp, through the crossroads at Glendale, over Malvern Hill, then along the James to Harrison’s Landing.

It was 14 road miles to the James, then seven more miles to Harrison’s Landing for a total of 21 miles. Most roads on the Peninsula ran east and west. There were fewer north-south roads that crossed to the James. Those that existed passed through choke points such as at Glendale. McClellan would be moving a large infantry force with artillery, the artillery reserve, an artillery siege train of 26 heavy guns, more than 3,800 wagons and ambulances, and a herd of 2,518 cattle.

For an army of this size, with the limited road network going across the Peninsula, the retreat would be slow progress. Not all of McClellan’s commanders believed retreat was the right decision. Brigadier Generals Philip Kearny and Joseph Hooker, division commanders in the 3rd Corps, informed McClellan that the Confederate lines in front of Richmond were thinly held and he should launch an immediate attack against them. McClellan refused, and in the ensuing argument Kearny became so aggressive in language toward McClellan that many of those present thought he would be arrested. McClellan had given up any thoughts or pretension of capturing Richmond. For the Army of the Potomac, the Seven Days would turn into a series of successful defensive battles followed by retreats.

MARCHING AWAY The Army of the Potomac begins its retreat from the Chickahominy River across the Peninsula.

The troops at the rear of the column might be the 16th New York, which had been issued distinctive straw hats.

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10

Lee Decides on a Pursuit Army-Level Operational Decision

ON THE NIGHT OF JUNE 27, Porter’s battered 5th Corps retreated to the south side of the Chickahominy and destroyed the bridges after doing so. Lee’s army remained divided into two segments: 1) Magruder’s three-division force and Maj. Gen. Benjamin Huger’s Division holding the defenses of Richmond and 2) six divisions north of the Chickahominy involved in the turning movement. All had lost contact with the Army of the Potomac, and Lee needed 24 hours to determine whether McClellan was retreating south across, and not down, the Peninsula.

Lee had not given up attempting to seriously damage or destroy McClellan’s army. To accomplish that, he decided upon a pursuit.

Jackson’s and Magruder’s commands were to apply direct pressure to the Union rearguard to slow its retreat, and did so at the Battle of Savage’s Station. Longstreet, A.P. Hill, and Huger marched to obtain a position at Glendale.

If successful, this would block all or a major portion of McClellan’s army from reaching the James River. Lee’s decision continued combat operations for three more days.

VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND CULTURE; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

PHOTO CREDIT

EVACUATION ROUTE McClellan’s men had to cross the slow-moving Chickahominy River and pass by choke points to successfully retreat to the James. Confederate attacks at Golding’s Farm and Savage’s Station failed to break through the Union columns.

NO ROLLING RIVER The swampy, sluggish Chickahominy River impeded both sides during the campaign. This sketch by Union veteran Robert Sneden shows the Federal Grapevine Bridge over the river.

11

Jackson Decides Not to Cross White Oak Swamp Wing/Corps-Level Tactical Decision

JACKSON’S COMMAND was a direct pressure force that was to maintain close contact with the retreating Union army and to attack and attempt to slow down the retreat whenever the opportunity presented itself. Jackson’s planned route after crossing the Chickahominy was south across White Oak Swamp, then on to Glendale, and eventually to Malvern Hill. When Jackson reached White Oak Swamp, however, he found his way barred by a Union force on the other (south) side. Rather than choose to aggressively maneuver and attack, he allowed his command to sit mostly idle on the northern edge of the swamp.

Jackson’s decision kept three divisions (D.H. Hill’s, Whiting’s, and Winder’s) out of the Glendale battle, where they might have been enough for a Confederate victory. It also allowed some Union troops at White Oak Swamp to be sent as reinforcement to the Glendale fight. Jackson’s decision nullified a major portion of Lee’s plan and contributed to the Union army’s survival at Glendale, followed by a repositioning to Malvern Hill.

PERMANENT RECORD A Union cavalry officer’s saber. The unknown owner engraved the scabbard with most of the battles of the Seven Days Campaign.

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Huger Decides Not to Attack Division-Level Tactical Decision MAJOR GENERAL BENJAMIN HUGER’S Division was to march down the Charles City Road and, in conjunction with Longstreet’s and A.P. Hill’s Divisions, attack the Union forces at the Glendale crossroads on June 30. That morning, Huger’s Division was three miles from the crossroads. A mile after it commenced marching, it entered a wooded area with felled trees blocking the road, an obstacle to artillery and wagons but infantry, with difficulty, could continue toward Glendale. Huger, seen at left, however, decided to cut a parallel road through the woods. Union troops continued chopping down trees on the established road as fast as the parallel road was cut.

Huger’s Division did not arrive at Glendale in time to have any effect on the battle. Jackson’s and Huger’s decisions kept four badly needed divisions out at Glendale, contributing to a successful Union defense and a continued retreat to Malvern Hill.

13

CLOSING REMARKS Disjointed attacks at Glendale cost Lee the chance to cut off McClellan’s retreat.

By the next day, the Army of the Potomac held the high ground at Malvern Hill, and Lee would engage in more costly attacks.

Magruder Ordered to Support Holmes

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HOLD THE LINE Another Sneden watercolor portrays Maj. Gen. Samuel Heintzelman’s headquarters at Glendale.

Veteran Sneden recalled that the “Rebel yells could be heard above the crashing musketry.”

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DURING THE PURSUIT, Lee ordered Magruder to follow and be prepared to support Longstreet and A.P. Hill. On June 30, Lee received a report that Union wagons were crossing Malvern Hill and he ordered Maj. Gen Theophilus H. Holmes’ Division to move down the River Road and attack Union forces on Malvern Hill.

Holmes was unsuccessful in breaching the strong Union position, and Lee ordered Magruder’s Division, essentially the army’s only reserve, to stop following Longstreet and A.P. Hill and move south to support Holmes. Shortly thereafter, Longstreet and A.P. Hill commenced The Battle of Glendale. Several hours later, Magruder was ordered to reverse course and march to Glendale to support the attack.

By the time his troops got there, it was too late. Longstreet’s and A.P. Hill’s attacks almost penetrated the Union defense at several locations, but neither commander had sufficient force to take advantage of the situation. The commitment of Confederate reserves might have cut off a significant portion of the Army of the Potomac. Lee’s decision removed a division from his attack, and together with Jackson’s and Huger’s forces, prevented five divisions with 17 infantry brigades and 23 batteries from getting into action. Union troops continued their march to Malvern Hill.

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Army-Level Tactical Decision

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IRON STORM A Harper’s Weekly engraving of the Battle of Malvern Hill shows Confederate infantry charging toward a wall of Union cannons positioned nearly hub to hub. A Georgian in Huger’s Division remembered that shells “burst over our heads, under our feet, and in our faces.”

40

ON JULY 1, the Army of the Potomac had formed a formidable artillery and infantry defensive position on Malvern Hill. In the morning and early afternoon, Confederate divisions began to move within striking distance of the Union defenses. When Union artillery suppressed the crossfire of Confederate artillery, it appeared that no infantry attack would take place.

Lee, however, received incorrect information that Union artillery and infantry were withdrawing and ordered his infantry to attack, resulting in multiple unsuccessful brigade attacks with a high number of casualties, and a Union victory. Malvern Hill was Lee’s last chance to damage the Union army.

This battle, with 5,650 Confederate casualties, was the second bloodiest of the Seven Days. With the other battles during the campaign, Lee’s army had suffered 20,204 casualties, 22 percent of its strength. After Malvern Hill, Lee ceased combat operations and begin to consolidate, reorganize, and resupply his army.

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BATTLE SCARRED The tattered flag of the 8th Pennsylvania Reserves. For both the Army of Northern Virgina and the Army of the Potomac, the Seven Days was an exhausting week. The Confederates, though, could boast a “great victory,” as a 5th Texan put it.

Army-Level Tactical Decision

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14

Lee Orders an Attack

15

McClellan Retreats, Again Army-Level Tactical Decision

NO SHORTAGE OF FIREPOWER Union gunboats Galena (left) and Mahaska add their huge shells to the cannonade at Malvern Hill while Federal reserve batteries in the open field await the call to action.

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McCLELLAN WON a resounding defensive victory on July 1 and had the opportunity to hold his strong position or to counterattack. He chose to do neither. On the night of July 1, Union troops abandoned the Malvern Hill position and continued their retreat.

On July 2-3, McClellan’s army marched seven miles on the River Road to Berkley Plantation and Harrison’s Landing.

With this critical decision, McClellan gave up any tactical advantages he had gained on July 1 and essentially brought the Seven Days Campaign to a close.

Halleck Decides to Evacuate the Peninsula National-Level Strategic Decision

THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC occupied positions at Berkley Plantation and Harrison’s Landing from July 3 into August, staying secure behind defenses and resupplying. No offensive operations were conducted. Lincoln and then the new general-in-chief, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, both visited McClellan to discuss several proposed offensive options, among them renewed operation on the north side of the James against Richmond or on the southside against Petersburg. McClellan, however, demanded more troops and remained in place. Halleck then ordered the Army of the Potomac to march to Fort Monroe and then be sent back to Alexandria and Washington by ship. This decision ended combat operations on the Peninsula. Union troops would not be this close to Richmond again until the late summer of 1864.

DOUBLE ENTENDRE The Confederate defense of Richmond inspired this sarcastic English broadside. General Lee, however, was not satisfied. “The Federal Army should have been destroyed,” he lamented.

Matt Spruill is a retired U.S. Army colonel and author of 10 Civil War books, who now resides and writes from Colorado. The critical decisions he summarizes in this article can be fully explored in his new book, Decisions of the Seven Days: The Sixteen Critical Decisions That Define the Battles, published as part of the University of Tennessee Press’ newest series “Command Decisions in America’s Civil War.” APRIL 2021 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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OPPOSITES ATTRACT Helen Jackson, seen here in 1955 dressed in “old time” clothes for the Webster County, Mo., centennial, was 17 when she married Civil War veteran James Bolin, below. He was 93.

THE

WIDOW’S

SECRET A MISSOURI WOMAN SACRIFICED MUCH OF HER OWN LIFE TO HELP

AN AGED UNION VETERAN



BY JOHN BANKS



PHOTO CREDIT COURTESY OF THE ELKLAND INDEPENDENT METHODIST CHURCH

PHOTO CREDIT

B

arely five feet tall and weighing no more than 100 pounds, Helen Viola Jackson sat on the edge of a bed in a private room of a nursing home, her tiny feet grazing the floor. Hanging on a wall, near a collection of birthday cards, was a photo of Jackson’s parents and one of her nine siblings— Helen, nearly 100, had outlived them all.

“My God, it’s hot as hell in here,” Pastor Nicholas Inman said as he entered the sparsely furnished room at Christmastime 2017. Jackson liked the heat on full blast and the curtains closed. The light hurt her eyes.

Still full of life despite physical challenges, the lifelong Missourian intended to plan her funeral with the pastor, whom she befriended after they first met in church three decades earlier in rural Marshfield. But on this afternoon, Jackson—almost a member of the Inman family now—also planned to reveal an 81-year-old secret.

“I was married,” she told the 35-year-old pastor. “What do you mean you were married?” replied the incredulous Inman, who thought Helen had been single her entire life. Jackson was no jokester, so this must be serious.

Jackson paused, then revealed even more stunning information. “Well, he was in the Union Army,” she said. The veteran was 93; she was 17.

Helen Jackson was “The Last Civil War Widow,” and, oh, what a story this old woman had to tell.

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could obtain any reliable information of,” 14th Missouri Cavalry Lt. Col. Joseph Gravely wrote of the recalcitrant Rebels in an after-action report of those events. “At Warsaw and other points, I learned that the above-named band committed horrid outrages, murdering some ten or twelve discharged soldiers and citizens in Hickory and Benton Counties.”

Unable to find the guerrillas, the soldiers returned to camp—“men and horses in good condition,” according to Gravely.

Following a divorce from his first wife during the Civil War, Bolin married Elizabeth Ferrell in 1868, and the couple had seven children together. After Elizabeth’s death in 1922, James had no one to help with chores. So, in 1936, James Jackson recommended his daughter, Helen, then a 17-year-old high school student.

The kindly old man and the teen grew close— no, not in that way. Bolin enjoyed Helen’s company, and Jackson, an eager caregiver, became the veteran’s lifeline.

One day, Bolin made an unusual proposal to Jackson: I do not believe in accepting charity and don’t have money to pay you, so why don’t you marry me so I can give you my Civil War pension when I’m gone? For a girl of modest means, the veteran’s pension check—perhaps $30 a month or more in Depression-era America—was too enticing to decline.

Jackson accepted the old man’s offer, but with strict ground rules: She would keep her maiden name, go home to her family farm every day, and tell only a select few people. The couple’s 76-year-old age difference, after all, surely would have created a scandal.

Let’s do it, Bolin said.

On September 4, 1936, Jackson and Bolin were married in the living room of the veteran’s house. Shortly after the ceremony, Tommy Macdonnell, a teenager who was preparing for a squirrel hunt, and his father, Bolin’s physician, congratulated the couple. Keep this quiet, Dr. C.R. Macdonnell urged his son. To cement the union, Bolin gave his bride a pink topaz ring that belonged to his second wife, and the common-law marriage was recorded in his cherished personal Bible, given to him decades earlier by a traveling evangelist.

The union followed Jackson’s ground rules— cooking, housekeeping, chores, return to the farm. Although her husband talked about Civil War “blood and guts stuff ” all the time, Jackson showed no interest.

Less than three years after the marriage, on June 18, 1939, Bolin died in the home of his daughter, Martha, after a lengthy illness. In the local newspaper, the 96-year-old veteran’s obituary listed next of kin: two other daughters

TROIANI, DON (B.1949)/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

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orn August 3, 1919, less than a year after the end of World War I, Helen Jackson grew up in Niangua (population about 275), a railroad and farming town about 25 miles northeast of Springfield.

Hardworking and humble, she was the seventh of 10 children of Thursa and James Jackson, a farmer and longtime member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

In the late 1920s, Route 66—the legendary “Mother Road”—pumped a little energy into sleepy Niangua, known mainly for its dairy and cattle farms. And, in March 1936, a tornado ravaged the area, killing four. But the pace of life was typically slow in this blink-and-you’ll-miss-it place.

Twice-married Civil War veteran James Bolin, a widower, also lived in Niangua, alone, in a small house near a lumber yard and train tracks. In a photo from the 1930s, a seated Bolin—wearing a bowler hat, suit jacket, and dark vest—sported a large, white mustache. It’s a pity the photo isn’t in color, because the veteran had vivid blue eyes.

When he enlisted in 1864, Bolin—a 21-year-old farmer from Webster County—had dark hair and a fair complexion. The 5-foot-8 private served honorably with the 46th Missouri Infantry from fall 1864 to March 1865 and, later, with the 14th Missouri Cavalry. Although they were busy, neither unit saw much serious fighting.

In the spring of 1865, the cavalrymen— including Bolin—guarded the Wire Road in LITTLE GLORY Missouri, a frequent target of guerrillas because Bolin served in the of the telegraph line along the vital route. In 46th Missouri Infantry late May 1865, more than a month after Robert until March 1865. He E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, the then joined the 14th unit was sent to confront unrepentant ConfedMissouri Cavalry until erates in the border state, which sent troops to November 1865. His both sides during the war. service rarely took him “The band that crossed the railroad near out of the state.

Knobnoster on the 22d instant were all that I

besides Martha, two sons, 17 grandchildren, 36 great-grandchildren, and nine great-greatgrandchildren. There was no mention of his young widow.

At the funeral service at the Free Will Baptist Church in Niangua, a quartet sang “Will the Waters Be Chilly,” followed by a soloist’s version of “Good Morning Up There.” Jackson didn’t hear a single verse—fearful her secret would be revealed, she did not attend the church and graveside services.

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n the spartan nursing home room, Nicholas Inman gently pressed the nervous, old woman for more details about her stunning news. Shifting uncomfortably on the small bed, Helen Jackson eyed her pastor while trying to gauge his reaction.

Nearly blind, hard of hearing, and wracked by arthritis in her legs, Jackson spent most of her days in bed, staring at the ceiling. Perhaps that’s when she planned this big revelation, Inman thought.

Like bubbles in a glass of soda, details of Jackson’s long-ago life broke through the surface— slowly at first, then in a rush. Soon after her husband’s death, one of Bolin’s daughters threatened to ruin Jackson if she filed for the veteran’s pension. Petrified of having her reputation destroyed, she never did.

Around World War II, Jackson moved to Marshfield, roughly seven miles from Niangua, to escape potential “wagging tongues.” Worried that if she got serious with a man he would discover her secret, Jackson never dated, or married, again. Meanwhile, her sisters and brothers married and raised families. Later, Jackson cared for her aging parents—her mom died in 1953; her dad in 1972. (Her last sibling died in 2019.)

Throughout her adult life, Jackson carried heavy emotional baggage from her short marriage to James Bolin: What would anyone think of me if they found out I married a 90-somethingyear-old man when I was a teen?

In Marshfield, where she worked in a wood-working factory and, later, as a substitute cook in local schools, Jackson lived alone in a farmhouse along Route 66. She became an active member of the Elkland (Mo.) Independent Methodist Church, where Inman became pastor in 2004, and volunteered for the local Missouri Cherry Blossom Festival. She may have even teased her Civil War connection with a friend or two, but she largely lived alone with her secret for 81 years.

The potential historical implications of Jackson’s revelation fascinated Inman, a Civil War buff. Could his friend—this sometimes gruff, 98-year-old woman with the beautiful white

hair—really be the last living Civil War widow?

He sought more information about Private Bolin from Wilson’s Creek (Mo.) National Battlefield, which confirmed the basics of the soldier’s service.

Stories of “last” Civil War widows percolate every so often in the news. The Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War confirmed Jackson as the “last” publicly documented widow. But who knows if there are other Civil War widows out there harboring their own secrets?

In 2004, Alberta Martin, a sharecropper’s daughter who lived in poverty most of her life, died in Alabama at 97. Married to a Confederate veteran, William Jasper Martin, in the 1920s, “Miz Alberta” loved the attention she got from

HER FAMILY Helen in 2017, and below, second from right in the front row, with the active charter members of the Elkland Independent Methodist Church. Her initial confidant, Pastor Nicholas W. Inman, is in the rear row, far left.

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ON THE RECORD GAR posts implored their aging veteran members to leave behind an easily accessible record of their service dates, pension number, and other biographical details so that after passing, their wives could easily file for a widow’s pension. Many of these documents, and soldiers’ service records such as Bolin’s pictured above right, are held today at the National Archives.

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FROM SECRET TO SOCIAL MEDIA Helen kept her marriage hidden for 81 years, but she allowed herself to embrace a small measure of fame and appreciation once the word was out. Her story really spread after she died. the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who would take her to conventions and rallies.

In 2008, Maudie White Hopkins, who enjoyed making fried peach pies and applesauce cakes, died at 93. When she was 19 in 1934, she married Confederate veteran William Cantrell, who was 67 years her senior. Hopkins said Cantrell supported her with his Arkansas state pension of “$25 every two or three months” and left her his home when he died in 1937.

Helen Jackson’s husband left her his Bible and eyeglasses, a bullet he kept during the war…and memories.

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eluctantly the old woman who treated her pastor like a grandson agreed to go public with her story.

Jackson came to embrace her celebrity—especially in Marshfield.

At the town’s annual Fourth of July parade in 2018, she was grand marshal. Inman drove the Chevrolet she rode in.

“Slow down,” she told him, “these people want to see me.”

A stone slab with a star and her name inscribed was placed on the Missouri Walk of Fame, near Marshfield’s town square. The school superintendent in Niangua gave Jackson—who never completed her education—an honorary high school degree for the Class of 1937.

Through an address posted on a Facebook page that Inman set up (“Helen Jackson, Last Civil War Widow”), Jackson received fan mail from around the world. A member of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War sent her a card each Christmas.

In 2019, Jackson sat down with a local historian for a lengthy oral history: “I didn’t want them all to think that I was a young woman who had married an old man to take advantage of him….Mr. Bolin really cared for me. He wanted me to have a future and he was so kind.”

And at the 2019 Cherry Blossom Festival, Inman’s play about Jackson’s life—“The Secret Veil”—was performed. Margaret Kerry, Disney’s model for Tinker Bell in 1953, played Jackson, who worried the portrayal would make her look like a “floozy.”

Jackson typically was blunt, like the president she adored, Missouri’s own Harry S. Truman. “She would not take guff off anyone,” said her friend, Ruthie Letterman.

“Not even words for the sass that woman had,” said Jill Phillips, the Cherry Blossom Festival’s official photographer.

“Could have whooped a bear,” said Inman.

But one day, her crusty exterior was pierced by another woman’s kindness. Phillips, who made jewelry in her spare time, gave Jackson a necklace.

Encased in resin in the pendant was a tiny picture of her husband. Nearly blind, Jackson gently rubbed the keepsake image of Bolin—the only man who ever loved her, she once said—and wept.

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hortly before Christmas, about 20 people gathered at Marshfield Cemetery for Helen Jackson’s graveside service. On December 16, 2020, the 101-year-old’s big heart finally gave out. Jackson’s life

story made international news.

Perhaps Helen would have been pleased that Jimmy L. Bolin was there on that cold, blustery afternoon. At 6-foot-11 and 300 pounds, Civil War veteran James Bolin’s great-great-nephew looked nothing like his ancestor. The hulking man was honored to serve as a pallbearer for “The Last Civil War Widow,” who outlived a host of other potential pallbearers.

“At funerals, people don’t like to take pictures,” said Bolin, a lifelong Missourian. “How we wish we did at this one. This was part of history.…”

John Banks is the author of two Civil War books and his popular Civil War blog (john-banks. blogspot.com). He lives in Nashville, Tenn. Kristen Pawlak of the Missouri Civil War Museum in St. Louis and Penny Bolin of Springfield, Mo., aided with Banks’ research for this story.

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A PLACE OF THEIR OWN As Civil War veterans struggled to

reenter society, some formed their own unique communities  BY KURT HACKEMER 

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n September 16, 1861, Albert Freeman Waugh left the comfortable civilian world of Sheboygan Falls, Wis., and enlisted in Company H of the 1st Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry. Private Waugh was shot through the knee at the Battle of Perryville in October 1862, spent six months recovering in a hospital, and returned to Sheboygan Falls in 1863 crippled for life. Even though he had been gone barely two years, he no longer felt at ease in his hometown. After several years of trying to reclaim his old life, he gave up. In 1872, he “took by force” his family and moved to Kansas, claiming that the “stumps and stones” in Wisconsin made farming impossible, an excuse his son described decades later as “perfectly invalid at the time it was given.”

Over his wife’s objections, Waugh relocated the family near the brandnew town of King City in McPherson County, Kan., where a colony of Union Army veterans and their families had been established in 1871.

The colony had first been organized in meetings at Ashtabula, Ohio, and was also known as the Ashtabula Soldier’s Colony. It was one of the first of several colonies that would spring up on the western frontier, offering those who had served in the war an opportunity to start anew.

The idea of “colonies” was not a new or novel concept. Dozens sprang up across Kansas in the 1870s organized around religion, geography, or

country of origin, with the idea of providing mutual support in an uncertain environment.

Similar colonies appeared in western Minnesota, the Dakotas, Colorado, and Nebraska, but soldier colonies catering to Union veterans were exceedingly rare, with less than 10 dotted across the northern Great Plains. Soldier colonies were an efficient and cost-effective mechanism for organizing and relocating veterans to the frontier after the Civil War. But they were far more than that. A significant percentage who migrated west had been exposed to hightrauma combat during the war, and many used the anonymity and newness of the frontier to reintegrate into society on their own terms.

Albert Waugh needed the solitude and lack of established social structure on the frontier to put his life back together. Although he served as a judge, county commissioner, and selftaught doctor, he did so quietly, always refusing “to make speeches or enter any public forum.”

GO WEST, AGING VETS The main street of Collyer, Kan., taken after the windmill in the background was erected in 1884. Collyer was one of several Midwestern towns founded as colonies for Civil War veterans and their families.

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Waugh’s son, Frank, later ascribed the move to a “joy of adventure” and “the desire to think one’s own thoughts and determine one’s own acts.” But the most important factor was the way the war annexed his life. As Frank recalled: I know now that those days of grand excitement with the army, those wild forays into roadside groceries and farmyard smokehouses, those sleepless nights on the ground with eyes and heart open to the stars, those exhilarating marches through strange towns and over unfamiliar hills, and especially those hours of battle when all the desirable things of this world are relinquished and life itself staked against the ultimate gain of personal integrity—I know now that in these experiences all former things had passed away, and that there had arisen in their place an imperious demand for a new life—a life of new objectives and new sanctions. Such a life could not be projected upon the old background. It tore itself free from the old environment and began again upon the virgin sheet of the untouched Kansas prairie.

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LAND, GIVE ME LAND Newspaper advertisements like these encouraged veterans to turn their backs on gory battlefields and move on with their lives. The idea of the West as a “garden” was promoted even before the Civil War, and veterans saw relocation to the land of “sparkling water” as a chance to remake their lives.

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he war was disruptive, taking soldiers away from family and social networks for extended periods of time. When they returned home, they often found that two parallel changes had occurred, both of which made reintegration into civilian life difficult. First, they learned that life at home had progressed without them. The economic, social, and political events that defined people and their relationships with each other had continued unabated, and no amount of letter writing nor the occasional furlough could prevent the persistent feeling of disconnection. The new veterans lamented lost economic opportunities, unfulfilled relationships, missed community celebrations, lack of engagement with local politics, and aging children and parents. Somehow, they would have to find their way in this familiar but changed world.

Second, veterans learned that the war altered the social norms that had defined them as civilians. As soldiers, they ranged over vast distances, interacting with individuals and cultures quite different than what they had known. They engaged in sanctioned theft and destruction of property as foragers, grew used to a more rough-and-tumble existence in their all-male world, and might engage in the organized killing of fellow human beings. Returning home to a civilian population that welcomed them back but expected minimal disruption could be an overwhelming challenge.

Veterans struggled to reconcile the adrenaline associated with battle with the carnage and destruction they witnessed, and many found themselves dealing with postwar trauma. The concept had not yet been described medically, making it all but impossible for historians to assign the “trauma” label to specific veterans using contemporary records. Still, the scale and ferocity of Civil War combat makes it impossible to deny that soldiers experienced it. While symptoms of trauma cannot be assigned to specific veterans, those who had served in units that experienced intense combat have been identified as having a higher likelihood that their wartime experiences might induce trauma. Many of those soldiers who migrated west to settle in colonies were found to have served in such units, and, therefore, had a higher likelihood of having suffered from trauma.

IN HIS YOUTH Albert Freeman Waugh of the 1st Wisconsin before a Confederate bullet tore through his knee at the October 1862 Battle of Perryville, Ky. The wound left him crippled, an everlasting reminder of war.

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oving west seemed relatively straightforward. The Homestead Act of 1862 theoretically opened a billion acres of government land to settlement.

Interested parties found a quarter section of available land, paid a nominal filing fee to establish a temporary claim, and had to establish residency. After six months, the homesteader could either buy the claim or live on the claim for five years and improve it with a dwelling and cultivation. At that point, the homesteader would own the land. However, it was rarely that simple. It took a fair amount of capital to set up a viable farm, and new settlers hoped for favorable conditions so they could make it to the second year.

Veterans had some advantages over the general population when moving west. In 1871, Congress modified the Homestead Act to allow Union veterans to count each year of Civil War service toward the law’s five-year residency requirement. Military service could be beneficial in other ways, too, especially for those who had been wounded or disabled during the war and received federal pensions. In the case of the Dakota Territory, 24 percent of all veterans were on the pension rolls in 1885, significantly higher than the 6.5 percent of all veterans who received a pension. Those monthly payments provided guaranteed income during a transition that might otherwise be fraught with economic uncertainty.

During the 1870s and 1880s, colonies sprang up across the Northern plains. The Dakota Territory, Kansas, and Nebraska vigorously advertised for settlers using immigration boards that often cooperated with the railroads. Boosters such as George Batchelder assured potential settlers that “the man of small means can purchase excellent lands cheap, and by a judicious investment of a small capital, he will become rich in a few years.” Others more explicitly suggested the plains as the perfect location for colonies, noting, “It will be found on examination that a very large proportion of new towns and new settlements, perhaps the vast majority of those in the new States, have been started” by cooperative associations. These efforts worked. Ellis County, Kan., for example, became home to 24 colonies of various types during the 1870s; a 1906 examination of settlement patterns in the state observed, “Foreigners have peopled Kansas by groups and colonies rather than as individuals acting inde-

RETURNING HOME TO A CIVILIAN POPULATION

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pendently.” Migrants arrived in ever-increasing numbers, facilitated in part by the railroads, which offered package deals of land and transportation to colonies. This was no small thing at a time when railway tickets for a family of five could cost the equivalent of six months’ wages.

The advertising, promotion, and boosterism that appealed to so many religious organizations and ethnic groups found a similarly receptive audience among veterans. A recent study suggests they had higher geographic mobility than nonveterans and were already more likely than the rest of the population to move west, attributing their wanderlust to the fact that the war had already taught them to leave home. Whether a result of wanderlust or the fact that so many veterans had difficulty readjusting to their APRIL 2021 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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n Ashtabula, Ohio, organizers there did not exclude nonveterans from joining the venture, a strategy also adopted by other successful veteran colonies. “Any person...whether citizen, or Soldier” could pay two dollars to join the

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home communities after the war, the frontier called. In early 1870, a group of disabled veterans from Dayton, Ohio, proposed “to form an agricultural colony in the west” consisting of 25 otherwise able-bodied men who had each lost either an arm or a leg. An important component of their plan was that each veteran would be drawing a $15 monthly pension, which would provide the capital necessary for their venture. This colony, a newspaper writer suggested, would be better than “living an aimless life in an asylum.”

The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) advised its various posts that “preparations to take advantage of the [Homestead] act should be commenced immediately.” It wanted colonies to be coordinated through the GAR “in order to secure unity of action and mutual aid and support,” with an optimistic goal “to organize in the Territories a soldiers’ state.” Whether or not they were affiliated with the GAR, veterans across the North began meeting, which led to an initial wave of colonies in Minnesota, Nebraska, and Kansas.

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GOOD DECISION The Waughs prospered after the move to Kansas.

Above, an image of their farm in McPherson. At right, the Waugh family. Front row, daughters Mary Lana and Fanny Elizabeth flank their mother, Madeline. Son Frank and father Albert in the rear.

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association, entitling them to collective benefits like negotiated rail rates or land selection. The first meeting of the Ashtabula County Soldiers’ Free Homestead Colony drew over 300 interested people. One of its selling points was an organizational structure and approval process designed to prevent land speculation, ensuring fair land prices for all involved. This approach resonated well with potential colonists, and the colony soon had membership requests from Ohio and neighboring states, which led to the colony directors changing the name to the Soldiers’ and Citizens Mutual Benefit Free Homestead Colony. They reasoned that “by thus uniting [we] will have good society and soon secure to ourselves all the advantages of older countries of schools, churches, &c, [and] also avoid the trials and privations of frontier life alone.”

The connection between potential colonies and railroads was evident from the beginning. The Ashtabula colonists, for example, planned that “each member, and family shall be entitled to first class passage over all Railroads from which the Directors may secure special rates.” Similarly, the New England Military and Naval Bureau of Migration worked closely with the Northern Pacific Railroad to facilitate migration. Colonies that proposed to either seek homesteads on public land or purchase land directly from the railroads received special rates. The railroads did their part and vigorously advertised in eastern newspapers about opportunities available to veterans. The Northern Pacific Railroad, for example, let readers know that its commissioner of immigration was working closely with the New England Bureau of Migration to create veteran colonies.

The Union Pacific Railroad touted “Cheap Farms! Free Homes!” in the “best farming and mineral land in America” through its land commissioner, with a specific appeal to veterans. Those purchasing land directly from the railroad received free passes from the East.

Furnished with free or reduced transportation, and with access to affordable land, veterans began heading west. In 1871 and 1872, four veteran colonies successfully took root in Gibbon, Neb.; King City, Kan.; Detroit Lakes, Minn.; and Colony, Kan. Members of the Soldiers’ Free Homestead Colony who arrived in Gibbon in April 1871 probably had the most abrupt introduction to the Northern plains. Colonists collected in Chicago and made their way to Omaha, where they boarded the train that took them to the colony site. The train left Omaha on April 6 at

Detroit Lakes

MN

Loyalton Gettysburg

SD NE

Gibbon

KS

Collyer King City

Colony

LEARN YOUR GEOGRAPHY As the veterans’ communities, such as those marked on the map, grew and prospered, additional public services were added for the benefit of residents. Top, the flag-topped stone Collyer schoolhouse, an example of that, was built in 1885.

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GETTYSBURG

The Civil War still impacts this small Dakota town Founded in 1883 by Civil War veterans and named for the titanic Eastern Theater engagement, Gettysburg, S.D., remains a thriving small-town community. Incorporated into a City in 1907, and dubbed the Gettysburg “where the battle wasn’t,” it now boasts a population of about 1,150. In the wake of the controversial death of George Floyd in 2020, the town changed its police logo, which featured a U.S. flag alongside a Confederate flag. Floyd’s uncle, Selwyn Jones, was one of the town’s residents advocating for the change to the logo, which adorned a patch worn by the two-person police force.

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second wave of veteran colonies began with a January 1878 gathering in Chicago to organize a soldiers and sailors colony in Trego County, Kan. Like the earlier colonies, promoters welcomed both civilians and veterans, collected a modest membership fee, and sent a locating committee west to find suitable land. They identified their spot in western Kansas along the line of the Union Pacific Railroad and founded the town of Collyer.

Members of the advance party erected “Colony House” next to the railroad to serve as temporary shelter for arriving settlers and provided a team and wagon to get them to their claims. An unclear title to the land forced the Chicago Colony, as it became known, to relocate a half mile away from the railroad, but a steady stream of colonists arrived in 1878, 1879, and 1880. Potential colonists received encouragement from local boosters who nonetheless admitted, “Inconveniences, of course, are experienced, but with a hearty appetite and plenty of hope, we live in anticipation of happy days in a land of plenty.” Those “inconveniences” caused the population to fluctuate when crops failed in the 1880s, with the population of original settlers falling to 37 men, women, and children by 1888, but Collyer survived.

As new counties in the Dakota Territory formed in the 1880s, two more veteran colonies took root in the newly created towns of Gettysburg and Loyalton. The Gettysburg colony first organized in Chicago in the spring of 1883. By the fall of 1884, 700 settlers occupied the surrounding countryside. Organizers invited “all classes of business men” to join the veterans and successfully lobbied the Chicago and North Western Railroad to extend its line through the new community, and by 1887 the town alone boasted 400 residents. As Gettysburg established itself, a group of veterans near Royalton, Vt., organized a colony of their own. The Vermont colony met with various railroad representatives in early 1885 to identify a location “offering the best railroad facilities, best soil and other natural advantages” and negotiate bulk passenger and freight rates. They settled on a site in Edmunds County, which they christened Loyalton, and the first settlers arrived that same spring.

As was the case with Albert Waugh, there are clues suggesting that some of these veterans had wartime trauma that needed to be processed. In Gibbon, Neb., most colonists “were veterans of the Civil War who found in this new life an answer to their restlessness.” Those restless veterans included men like Adam Zimmerman, who had

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6 p.m., which caused a rumor to circulate “that we were being taken on a night train because, if we saw the country in the day time we would desert before reaching the destination.”

When they arrived in Gibbon the following afternoon, they found nothing but a railroad section house and a siding on which the Union Pacific left some passenger cars and boxcars to serve as temporary shelter. Just a week before, “a prairie fire had swept over the entire country leaving it black, bleak, desolate and uninviting.”

One colonist turned around and left, but the rest, about 65 families, stayed. By April 18, 61 homestead claims had been filed with the nearest land office. This was done communally, with lots drawn to see who would have first choice of the surrounding land. By July 1872, nearly 150 families had found their way to the colony.

The migrations to King City, Detroit Lakes, and Colony occurred in similar fashion. The Ashtabula colonists arrived in King City in June 1871. Within one year of founding, King City contained 25 houses and several businesses, including two general stores, a brickyard, a lumberyard, two hotels, a blacksmith shop, and a farm machinery dealer. A post office and doctor’s office quickly followed.

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been wounded in the head at Petersburg. When he was found “on the battlefield, he had maggots in his head and they could see the pulsation in his brain. They had to put a steel plate in his head.” Newspapers in Colony, Kan., reported gatherings of veterans where “the boys were called upon to tell Army yarns,” or where a “baker’s dozen of old veterans” met on the anniversary of the Battle of Shiloh to reminisce with each other. Within just a few months of its founding, Gettysburg saw the establishment of a GAR post. At its first meeting “old battle scenes, hard marches, and old jokes were rehearsed and talked over, and general good feeling prevailed” as veterans interacted with each other.

Veterans in more established parts of the United States regularly used their status to engage collectively in political activity, often under the auspices of the GAR. Not so in the colonies. Local newspapers reveal a decided lack of political involvement, and instead the veterans living in the colonies participated in the GAR with a focus on social events, Memorial Day, and Fourth of July celebrations. The Gettysburg Herald noted that the 1888 Fourth of July celebration “was marred by no serious accident, no brawls, no drunkenness. It was sensibly and gloriously celebrated.” In these com-

munities, that was the full extent to which veteran status was celebrated. Otherwise, veterans went quietly about their lives.

And that, perhaps, is exactly what those veterans wanted and needed. They were more likely than veterans in general to have experienced trauma during the war, which in turn made it that much more difficult to reintegrate into civilian life after the war. When they moved to the frontier, they deliberately chose to do so in the company of fellow veterans with whom they shared a common bond.

On the frontier, veterans could define new relationships and even new existences on their own terms. As Frank Waugh remembered of his father, in creating a new community “he was building solidly a new life and a new character in place of those so passionately renounced.”

Kurt Hackemer is provost and vice president for Academic Affairs at the University of South Dakota. This article is an excerpt of Hackemer’s “Civil War Veteran Colonies on the Western Frontier” published in The War Went On: Reconsidering the Lives of Civil War Veterans, edited by Brian Matthew Jordan and Evan C. Rothera, and published by LSU Press.

FLOWERING COMMUNITIES There were enough Union veterans in Kansas to establish a state GAR chapter, celebrated by the medal above adorned with a sunflower, the state flower. Top left, the McPherson Hotel, named along with a Kansas county, for Union Maj. Gen. James Birdseye McPherson. Bottom left, Union veterans lead a Decoration Day, now Memorial Day, procession to Collyer’s Union Cemetery.

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UPHILL BATTLE Edwin Forbes’ painting shows the daunting task faced by the Confederates attacking Culp’s Hill at Gettysburg. Southern troops can be seen pinned down behind the rocks, while at right another regiment begins its attack. The distinctive large boulder at left front is today a favorite stop of battlefield explorers.

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The war in their words

‘ESCAPE WAS HOPELESS’ A STONEWALL BRIGADE CAPTAIN RECOUNTS THE SAVAGE JULY 3, 1863, FIGHT FOR

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LUCKY IN THE LONG RUN Captain Strickler, seen here in a civilian image, survived the bullet-swept slopes of Culp’s Hill and imprisonment to return to his Virginia home. graduating in 1867. He had a long and distinguished tenure as a Presbyterian minister, ending his career as a faculty member at the Union Theological Seminary in Richmond. Following his death in 1913, Strickler was buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.

It is not exactly clear when Strickler wrote his Gettysburg account; it definitely is not a postwar recollection due to its sense of immediacy. It is very possible he wrote it while imprisoned at Johnson’s Island when the events would still have been fresh in Strickler’s mind. The account excerpts appearing here are courtesy of the Washington and Lee University Special Collections. Paragraph breaks have been added to enhance readability.

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line of fire,” Geary continued, “they begged our men to spare them, and they were permitted to come into our lines.” That account has become a standard reference regarding the situation on Culp’s Hill.

It is fascinating to compare General Geary’s representation in his official report of the Stonewall Brigade soldiers surrendering—“begged our men to spare them…throwing down their arms,” etc., to the account below by Captain Strickler, who doesn’t suggest any begging for mercy, or extensive display of white flags. Does Strickler purposely ignore the behavior of some of the men in his regiment? Perhaps Strickler’s vantage point was limited? Could Geary’s comments have originated from second-hand accounts provided to him by other Federals? In any event, it would seem that the battle for Culp’s Hill could use some closer study and more research.

The “Liberty Hall Volunteers” lost 16 men captured on July 3, including Captain Strickler, along with one dead and five wounded. The 4th Virginia lost 18 dead or mortally wounded, 63 wounded, and 69 taken prisoner, the highest regimental loss in the Stonewall Brigade.

After a brief stay at Fort Delaware, Captain Strickler went to the Confederate officer’s prison at Johnson’s Island, Ohio, where he remained until being forwarded to Point Lookout, Md., for exchange in midMarch 1865. Strickler returned to Washington College after the war,

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hen reflecting after the Civil War on the men in the “Liberty Hall Volunteers,” the nickname of Company I, 4th Virginia Infantry, William A. Anderson remembered Captain Givens Brown Strickler as being “remarkable, even among the brave men who were his comrades, for the coolness and dauntless intrepidity with which he bore himself on the field.” Strickler, like the majority of the original members of his company, had been a student at Washington College in Lexington, Va., at the outbreak of the Civil War. Enlisting as a corporal at age 21, Strickler received several promotions, and became captain of his company after the Second Battle of Manassas. He survived two wounds, one at First Manassas, where his older brother Cyrus was mortally wounded, and the second a little more than a year later at Second Manassas.

The 4th Virginia was part of the famed “Stonewall Brigade,” which, along with the 2nd, 5th, 27th, and 33rd infantry from the Old Dominion, had been raised in 1861 by General Thomas J. Jackson. The regiments had participated in all the battlefield victories achieved by “Stonewall” and Robert E. Lee in 1862 and 1863. At Gettysburg, the Stonewall Brigade was part of Maj. Gen. Edward Johnson’s Division of the Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Johnson’s Division was ordered to attack Culp’s Hill, a critical anchor of the Army of the Potomac’s right flank, in the early evening of July 2. The Stonewall Brigade was held out of that assault because it was left on Brinkerhoff ’s Ridge to the east to contend with Federal cavalry.

After desperate fighting, Johnson’s attacks were stalled, but fighting for the stone-studded hill would resume on the morning of July 3, when the Confederates renewed their attacks.

The 4th and the rest of the Stonewall Brigade would see heavy fighting that morning when it and three other regiments of Brig. Gen. James Walker’s Brigade advanced against Federals entrenched on Culp’s Hill.

The Virginians attacked directly east up the hill and clashed with Brig. Gen. George Greene’s New York regiments—the 60th, 78th, 102nd, 149th, and 137th Infantry.

Major William Terry of the 4th, reported how his men and officers received orders to relieve another regiment in the Stonewall Brigade and “advanced so far up the side of the hill under the enemy’s defenses that they afterward, when the regiments in support gave way, found it impracticable to effect a retreat.” The men were pinned down behind boulders, unable to advance or retreat on the bullet-swept slopes. Eventually, many men in the 4th were captured.

Union Maj. Gen. John W. Geary, commanding a 12th Corps division of several infantry brigades defending Culp’s Hill, offers an account of the Virginians’ subsequent surrender in his official report. Geary claimed that men of the “celebrated Stonewall Brigade” tossed down their arms and rushed into Union lines with “white flags, handkerchiefs, and even pieces of paper, in preference to meeting again the fire which was certain destruction.”

As the Virginians “threw themselves forward and crouched under our

July 3rd 1863

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HIGH DRAMA A postwar view of Culp’s Hill from East Cemetery Hill. Often overshadowed by the fight for Little Round Top, the Union defense of Culp’s Hill was just as critical to the Army of the Potomac’s victory.

Having this day, in a manner which will be referred to hereafter, become a prisoner of war, in the hands of the United States forces, I have resolved to keep a record of such things as I shall deem of sufficient importance to be written down for future perusal…

The circumstances of my capture, as far as I may prudently relate them here were the following: The regiment to which I belong (4th Va. Inf.) occupied a position in [Edward] Johnston’s Division, [Richard] Ewell’s Corps, and at four o’clock this morning, were ordered

by Brig. Genl [ James] Walker to storm a line of breastworks….Under a terrific fire of musketry, the regiment moved forward with much spirit until within about one hundred yards of the fortification, when, a portion of several companies, amounting in the aggregate, to two-thirds of the entire regiment, halted, I suppose, in obedience to orders; but the remainder, composed, principally of Co’s “B” “H” & “I” not having heard the order to fall back (if there was such an order given) continued to push forward until they arrived within twenty feet of the enemy’s position, when discovering that the

greater portion of the regiment had halted, and that they were too feeble to accomplish anything themselves, took position behind a ledge of rocks almost under the parapet of the enemy’s works, and proceeded to annoy them as much as occasion offered.

This we continued to do very successfully until 8 o’clock (three hours) when the supply of ammunition being almost exhausted, it was considered prudent to slacken our fire, so as to be in a condition to repulse a sortie, if one should be made. As soon as we ceased firing, the enemy were enabled to ascertain very accurately, our numbers and position, and poured down upon us a tremendous fire of musketry, and about (10) o’clock enfiladed us with artillery. Although many were wounded and killed, our position was maintained, because it was regarded [as] essentially important, from circumstances well known to us.

Besides any attempt to retreat must have resulted in the slaughter of the entire party. Our safety and our duty, as we conceived, required us to remain where we were. Accordingly, our purpose now was, to await orders; and in the event of not receiving orders, to hold the position until night, and fall back under cover of darkness. At about 10½ o’clock a.m. we discovered Capt. Lee [Benjamin Watkins Leigh], of Johnston’s staff, approaching us, probably, with orders. Evidently he knew not the danger to which he was exposed, for he was mounted;- and we trembled for his fate. Soon his horse was shot, and now he seemed conscious of the terrible gauntlet which he was running, and made some effort to shelter himself from the storm of leaden hail in which he was enveloped. But, alas! It was too late!

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AT THE SUMMIT Another Forbes watercolor illustrates the stout defensive works that protected the Union troops on Culp’s Hill. When captured, Captain Strickler was hauled over a similar breastwork.

WE WERE IN THE HANDS OF THE

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o resume the narrative, as soon as I had been ushered into the Yankee lines by a New York captain, who seemed very glad of so good an opportunity to get to the rear, and expressed his intention to be in no haste to get back, I made every effort I could, under the circumstances, to provide for my wounded, three in number and it is but justice to the enemy to record here that they very readily complied with all my requests and manifested a very laudable disposition to provide for their wants.

As soon as the wounded had been borne away, our New York captain gave the command forward marsh (pronouncing march as if it were spelt with an s instead of a c) and, after passing through several lines of battle, we ascended a very steep and rugged eminence, on the crest of which we found Major-General [Henry] Slocum, commanding the 12th Army Corps composed principally of New York troops. He received us politely, and remarking that he could not distinguish the rank of our officers by the badges they wore asked me what was my rank? I told him I was a captain. He then enquired from what state we came. Having answered that we were Virginians, a dingy looking Brigadier standing near, remarked, with an air that indicated that he wished to be agreeable that he believed Virginians did more fighting than the troops from any other state.

He was answered in effect, that Virginians endeavored to do their share.

By this time about a score of men from a battery that occupied the summit of the hill, had crowded around us to gratify a curiosity that was perfectly natural to see a portion of the foe with whom they had been contending. A spruce staff officer, having discovered them, ordered them to

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upon the same ground and took his dusty bed among those who were already wrapped in the slumbers that know no waking. About this time, some members of the party, seeing that an escape was hopeless and that almost certain death awaited them if they were longer subjected to the terrific fire which was directed upon them, proposed to raise a white flag, and surrender. This proposition was not countenanced, and the threat of an officer to shoot any man who raised one, delayed a resort to this expedient for safety, which was evidently becoming popular, as our condition grew more desperate. At 11 o’clock a.m. however, after we had been in this position for six hours contending against a force that outnumbered us in the proportion of at least fifty to one, a white flag was raised by a party in our rear, over whom we could exercise no control.

This was not discovered by the enemy for several minutes, and in the meantime every effort was made to induce the party to take it down, without success. They were concealed behind rocks, else they would have been shot. An officer endeavored to reach them with rocks, but failed. As soon as it was discovered, the enemy ceased firing, and the majority of our party, not having seen the flag, and supposing it was the enemy who had surrendered, hastened up to the breastworks with guns in their hands, only to discover their mistake when it was too late to remedy it. Those who knew the condition of affairs, and were still remaining in their position were now ordered over the works, and had no alternative but to obey the summons and soon we were in the hands of the hated foes.

Our capture was the result, as I think of a gross military blunder. In the first place, it was folly to suppose that a single regiment of two hundred men could capture so formidable a line of works, but if it was not the intention to capture the works, but only to make a feint at that point to cover movements at other points orders should have been given to that effect. In either event, some effort should have been made, during the six long hours we were lying under the enemy’s works (whither we had gone in the face of deadly storm of leaden hail and in obedience to the orders of our superiors,) to extricate us from the perilous situation.

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return immediately to their battery, in a manner and in the employment of words which no Southern gentleman would have either used or tolerated, military discipline to the contrary notwithstanding and I may remark here that my observations have convinced me that the Yankee officers are very far inferior to our own in all the particulars that among us at least constitute a gentleman. There is nothing that reflects so much disgrace upon the manhood of the Northern soldiery as this abject- slavish submission to the tyrannical impositions of these military upstarts, many of whom “Never set a squadron

in the field, Nor the division of a battle know more than a spinster.”

But to return to my narrative, Genl Slocum did not pursue his interrogatories, as I apprehended, but concluded his conversation with us by assuring us that his Provost Marshall would furnish us with “refreshments” as soon as we arrived at his headquarters. As we had been without rations for about twenty-four hours, this assurance was most welcome.

I confess to have formed a better opinion of this General than of any with whom I have yet met. His manners indicated the perfect gentleman, and I doubt not he is a man, also, of more than ordinary capacity.

After detailing one of my company by permission of Genl Slocum, to remain with the wounded, our New York Captain again pronounced the inevitable “forward marsh” and soon we arrived at the Headquarters of the Provost Guard, which, from its exterior, was a building in which, in more peaceful times, the “young idea had been taught how to shoot.”

Our New York Captain delivered Genl Slocum’s order with regard to “refreshments,” and they were immediately furnished, consisting of half a loaf of bread for about forty men! Before delivering us to the Provost guard, our New York captain “marshed” us to a very aggreeable shade, furnished by some fine oaks near the schoolhouse, and having given the order with the genuine Yankee nasal twang, “on the ground, rest” “or rather, at ease, rest,” (this last form of the command was added, doubtless, because he apprehended from his crude ideas of a rebel’s disposition, that he might prefer standing to sitting in a shade) left us in the hands of the new guard. Our New York Captain, true to his promise, that he would not make undue haste in returning to the field, gathered his company together, and stacked his arms and himself and men doubtless considered that they would be manifesting a dangerous haste, or at least, a haste that might lead to dangerous consequences, if they returned to the front that day.

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A VICTOR AND A VANQUISHED BANNER Maj. Gen. Henry W. Slocum (top) interviewed Strickler after his surrender. The honors on the 4th Virginia’s battle flag, above, end at Gettysburg as it was captured there along with 69 men of the regiment.

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ut we were not permitted to enjoy the luxurious shade of these friendly oaks for long. We had scarcely consumed our “refreshments,” before we were ordered to “fall in.” The cause of this we imagined, was the sullen thunder of a hundred of our guns which had opened upon the Yankee lines, creating a possibility that they might have to “change their base,” and prepared to have us out of the way. We were marched about four miles in the direction of Westminster, in Maryland, and halted at Genl [Marsena] Patrick’s Headquarters, who is the Provost Marshall Gen’l of the Army of the Potomac. Gen’l Patrick turned us into a field, like he would have done the same number of cattle, and it may be for the same purpose, for he furnished us with no rations. We sought such shelter as we could find from the “red hot” vertical rays of the sun, and entertained ourselves with a discussion of the scenes through which we had just passed, until the day was far spent. Now, we began to receive news from the battle-field, and to witness the arrival of prisoners, from whom we received the sad intelligence of the terrible repulse of our troops, the death of the gallant [General Lewis] Armistead, the wounding of [General Richard] Garnett & [General James] Kemper and the almost complete annihilation of Picquett’s [General George Pickett’s] splendid division….[While resting, the prisoners] were suddenly aroused by the stentorian voice of Gen’l Patrick. He had taken a prominent position in the field, and evidently proposed to make a speech. We were all [at] attention, to hear what this functionary had to say.

Waving his cane frantic[al]ly, as if contending with “unseen spirits in the air,” he pronounced with terrible emphasis, that military command which is the forerunner of the catalogue: “Attention!” He then proceeded as follows: “Hear me, all you men! You are assembled here quite a body of prisoners. I know the wages of civilized warfare, and will treat you with all the kindness possible under present circumstances. I have placed but a small guard around you, but I have my cavalry near me, and if you attempt to desert me,

SENT TO FORT McHENRY PRISONS BY THE WATER Barracks were built at Fort McHenry, left, to accommodate prisoners and the expanded Union garrison. Below, a sutler’s chit from Johnson’s Island.

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Though most often associated with the War of 1812, Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Md., played roles during the Civil War as well. After Gettysburg, thousands of Confederate prisoners, including Captain Strickler, were sent there to be organized before they were shipped to other Northern prisons. Strickler and his fellow captives arrived via train in Baltimore on Sunday, July 5, 1863. He did not stay there long, as the next day he was on a steamer headed for Fort Delaware near Wilmington, Del., where he arrived late in the evening of July 8. From there he was transported to the Confederate officer’s prison on Johnson’s Island in Lake Erie, arriving on July 18, where he remained.

Below, the captain describes his arrival in Baltimore, a city heavily occupied by Union troops and known for its Confederate sympathy.

“We arrived in that city just at the hour when the people were repairing to the Temples of God....We attracted much attention and the streets were so densely crowded by spectators as to render our passage through the city very difficult. The citizens, generally are content to observe us; now and then however, one, something bolder than the others, would adventure an encouraging remark, or gesture, or knowing wink of the eye. And here, I

I will turn them loose upon you and they will cut right and left, and slaughter you indiscriminately! Remember if you attempt to desert me woe be unto you, and your blood be upon your own hands!” This threat was pronounced with tremendous emphasis accompanied by terrific demonstrations from his huge club, by which he doubtless meant to give us some faint idea of the manner in which he would use his sabre in case we should attempt to desert him. This bloody pronunciamento was received with a volume of derisive shouts and laughter after this episode,

venture the assertion, that there is no slave in the South, or serf in Europe, who trembles at the presence of his master, as this people do at the presence of the minions of Abraham L. After winding through, as it appeared to me, almost all the streets of Baltimore, probably to impress the people with the power of the Union arms by the exhibition of their trophy, we finally arrived at Fort McHenry, and were halted in the open ground around the Fort, until a guard was established and the names of the commissioned officers were ascertained. The privates and non-commissioned officers then reclined upon the ground, while the commissioned officers were conducted to their “quarters.” We were anticipating, at least, that our “quarters” would be decent, but imagine our chagrin when we were ushered into a building which a decent Southern dog would not occupy, unless compelled to do so.

Having lost much sleep...we threw ourselves down upon the filthy boards, endeavoring to separate ourselves from the dirt as much as possible by the insertion of such articles between our bodies and the floor as we possessed, and we slept as soundly, and, perhaps, dreamed so sweetly, as ever Eastern prince did in his gorgeous palace.” —K.B.

all was again soon hushed….We slumbered soundly until midnight, when we were aroused, formed in four ranks, and marched in the direction of Westminster in Maryland, twenty-five miles distant.

Keith Bohannon is a professor of history at the University of West Georgia.

His most recent essay, titled “The Fatal Halts: Gettysburg, the Wilderness, and Cedar Creek in John B. Gordon’s Reminiscences,” appears in Civil War Writing, 1866-1989: New Perspectives on Primary Texts, edited by Steve Cushman and Gary W. Gallagher (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2019).

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HASTE MAKES

WASTE THE GARDNER CARTRIDGE WAS EXPEDIENT TO MANUFACTURE, BUT PROVED FRAGILE 64

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: HN ARCHIVES; MORPHY’S AUCTIONS; DANA B. SHOAF COLLECTION/ PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN (4); PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY AUSTIN STAHL; MORPHY’S AUCTIONS

THEY BLEW THEIR TOP The deep base of Gardner bullets, combined with flaws introduced during the casting process, meant the slugs were susceptible to “blow throughs.” Gunpowder combustion gas literally blew through the weakened bullet, rendering it inaccurate.

THE THREE-RING Minié ball is a Civil War icon, but in reality, the lead slugs came in many different forms. One of the most common Confederate-made varieties was the Gardner patent bullet, invented by Frederick J. Gardner of New Bern, N.C., who was issued Confederate Patent No. 12 on August 17, 1862, for the projectile with a thick bottom ring paired with another thin raised ring and two grooves. The bullet was unique in that it was not contained within a paper cartridge, but rather a gunpowder-filled paper tube was crimped to the base. As Gardner explained, that was to “expedite the manufacture…by superseding the necessity of tying the paper to the ball….”

That concept did speed up the production of the cartridges, and initially Confederate Chief of Ordnance Brig. Gen. Josiah Gorgas and one of his subordinates, Lt. Col. John W. Mallet, were favorable of Gardner’s invention. Mallet considered it “ingenious in design and easily and rapidly made.” The Richmond Laboratory made most of the Gardner bullets, but they were also manufactured at the Confederate arsenals in Augusta, Ga., and Charleston, S.C. The Gardner cartridge became the most common round issued to Southern troops.

But unfortunately for the Confederacy, this Minié ball variant soon revealed major flaws. The paper cartridge often tore where it was crimped into the base during transport, wasting powder and rendering the round useless. Also, air bubbles could be introduced during casting that weakened the bullet. Gardners were also cast with very deep bases, compounding the problem and causing bullets to rupture upon firing.

Mallet complained to Gorgas in late 1863 that the “Gardner cartridge for small arms…is certainly the most inferior cartridge for the service….” “The only advantage of the machine is the rapidity with which it can be worked, but the labor of boys and girls for making cartridges by hand can be had in abundance,” he continued. Gorgas agreed with Mallet and in January 1864 production of the Gardner round ceased. The abundance, however, of archaeologically recovered Gardner bullets in the Eastern and Western Theaters, including many “blow throughs,” indicates their widespread use. —D.B.S.

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WEAK CONNECTION A pack of 10 Gardner cartridges. The point where the heavy bullet attached to the thin cartridge paper created a stress point that often tore open. Lt. Col. Mallet complained the cartridges “will not bear transportation….sometimes rendered unserviceable by carriage even in the original packing boxes.”

Paper cartridge tube Gunpowder

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: HN ARCHIVES; MORPHY’S AUCTIONS; DANA B. SHOAF COLLECTION/ PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN (4); PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY AUSTIN STAHL; MORPHY’S AUCTIONS

DANA B. SHOAF COLLECTION/PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN (2)

Crimped base

Bullet

PATENT NO. 12 This plate from Gardner’s patent application shows the machine that attached the paper to the cartridge. A cast bullet was placed nose down in a swage cavity, then the paper was lowered onto it by the pointed rod. A foot pedal was pressed to force the bullet through the swage, making it a uniform size and crimping the outer “flange” band of lead over the paper. The cartridge was then removed from the machine, filled with gunpowder, sealed, and bundled in a pack.

CAST BY THE NOSE Gardner bullets were made in (L to R) .69, .58, and .54 calibers. Molten lead was poured into the nose of the Gardner bullet molds, and a blob of lead from casting is evident on the .54-caliber bullet. The view at left shows the deep base of a Gardner round and the two layers that were crimped to hold the cartridge paper.

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 ALL ABOUT THE MONEY 

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eaders holding the moonlight-and-magnolia vision of blockade running during the Civil War as the patriotic actions of intrepid sea dogs selflessly smuggling critical war materials into Southern ports had best read Charles D. Ross’ deeply researched and energetically written monograph to get the story straight. During its heyday, blockade running was a systematic and, for many, a lucrative operation run by a cartel of industrious merchant princes primarily operating out of the port of Nassau on the island of New Providence in the Bahama Islands chain. While many hoped for a Confederate victory, the lure of copious amounts of money made what came to be called the “Great Carnival” the lifeblood of island life during wartime.

Nassau became the optimal reshipment point for goods coming out of England to be transferred to swift, shallow draft vessels for the final run into Southern ports. It was closer to the Confederate mainland than other island ports and had a large and experienced mercantile class supervised by savvy business entrepreneur George Trenholm and led by commission merchant Henry Adderley. Early in the war, they saw the potential for enormous profits by selling cotton, tobacco, turpentine, and in exchange for British-made war materials, household goods, and luxuries for those who could afford them.

Watching this burgeoning operation evolve was Samuel Whiting, U.S. consul in Nassau. In a September 1861 letter to Secretary of State WilBreaking the liam Seward, Whiting predicts what was to Blockade: The Bahamas During come. “I am convinced that the rebels and their the Civil War sympathizers have determined to make Nassau a

By Charles D. Ross depot from which supplies may be reshipped to the insurgent states.” Powerless to intercede University Press of Mississippi, 2021, $30 because the Bahamas were British territory, Whiting and other Union officials sought, usu66

ally in vain, to get British officials to stop the trafficking in war material under the maritime doctrine of continuous voyage. The Nassau merchants, experienced with working with Nassau’s large population of “wreckers,” (bands of salvage hunters who pounced on the many ships wrecked in Bahamian waters and selling the goods retrieved) proved adept at evading legal constraints by using false bills of lading and changing nation-of-origin registrations on ships involved blockade running activities.

Ross introduces a large cast of characters that occasionally threatens to overwhelm the narrative, especially in early chapters. A helpful list of dramatic personae provides some clarity as to who’s who, what they did, and where they resided.

Also, a picturesque chapter devoted to how a traveler arriving in Nassau in 1861 might find the city would make any travel agent proud. The increased port activity during the war gave rise to the city’s most prominent landmark, the posh Royal Victoria Hotel. It became the center of Nassau’s social scene but, as Ross points out, “Even with the addition of this grand structure, there will not be nearly enough housing for all the people swarming the city.”

But once the war was over, Nassau quickly reverted to a sleepy, destitute outpost of the British Empire. Mother Nature provided the coup de grace on September 30, 1866, when a hurricane almost destroyed the city. “When it was over,” Ross observes, “many thought it was God’s retribution for the sins of the ‘Great Carnival.’”

PHOTO CREDIT CHRONICLE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

REVIEWED BY GORDON BERG

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LONE STAR

STRUGGLE REVIEWED BY GORDON BERG

PHOTO CREDIT CHRONICLE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

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ointe Coupee Parish, Vermilionville, Sabine Pass, Bayou Bourbeau, Catahoula Basin, Niblett’s Bluff. The place names roll off the tongue like sweet tea and étouffée. Fighting in these locales was another matter altogether. Malarial swamps, sawgrass coastal flats, pine tree thickets, and sugarcane stubble fields dominated the geography. Such was the Civil War in western Louisiana and eastern Texas known as the Trans-Mississippi. And nobody knows the territory like Donald Frazier.

Indeed, Frazier has been writing about this still underserved theater of operations for more than a decade and this fourth installment of his Louisiana Quadrille will probably require a fifth volume to complete his picturesque sojourn through these exotic tropical locales. Frazier’s writing is reader-friendly, almost folksy, but it is firmly grounded in scrupulous research augmented by a keen eye for descriptive anecdotes illustrating larger historical events. Frazier dramatically tells the story of a doughty 46-man artillery company commanded by a successful Irish saloon keeper essentially saving Texas for the Confederacy by repulsing a clumsily coordinated Union amphibious invasion at Sabine Pass in September 1863 and how a hurricane played a crucial role in stymieing a Union thrust in Louisiana at the Battle of Sterling’s Plantation later that same month.

The Trans-Mississippi also abounds with outsized personalities whose character traits influenced the course of military operations. There’s “Prince” John Bankhead Magruder, ostracized from The Army of Northern Virginia only to be rehabilitated as the Confederate savior of Texas.

Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh Dana, a warhorse brigadier in the Army of the Potomac, nearly killed at Antietam, is suddenly thrust into a corps command in an alien landscape far removed from the green hills of Maryland. Where else would a Confederate colonel named Major and a Union colonel named Mudd collide in a cavalry action on a prairie named Buzzard? And, finally, there are the two area commanders—Confederate Lt. Gen. Richard Taylor, the patrician son of a former president, and Union Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks, a humble millworker and former speaker of the House of Representatives and governor of Massachusetts.

Fighting in the Trans-Mississippi had unique qualities. Skirmishing, sharpshooting at river traffic, and small unit encounters outnumbered pitched battles. Military operations were at the mercy of almost impossible

Tempest Over Texas: The Fall and Winter Campaigns of 1863-1864

By Donald S. Frazier State House Press, 2020, $39.95

logistical nightmares and the availability of pontoon bridges were as vital as food, ammunition, and forage to armies that, more often than not, were wet, mud-caked, and foot-sore. Politics often intruded on military plans, especially those of Banks’ Army of the Gulf. Frazier assumes a sympathetic stance toward the often maligned Union commander. He was tasked with subduing Louisiana and bringing it back into the Union and planting the flag in Texas to thwart French machinations in Mexico and doing it with too few men and too little naval support.

“He did what he could,” Frazier decides, “often with his bosses actively undermining him.”

Frazier concludes this volume with outcomes undecided. The spring campaigns of 1864 would focus on the Red River. There, many of the same opponents would square off and, as is so often said in Cajun country, they would again “laissez les bons temps rouler.”

The May 3, 1864, ambush of the Union troop transport City Belle on Louisiana’s Red River typifies unorthodox Trans-Mississippi warfare. Confederates pounded the unarmed transport with gunfire from hidden positions along the bank, forcing it aground. The 120th Ohio suffered 250 casualties, mostly captured, and Colonel Marcus Spiegel was mortally wounded.

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LEFT FOR DEAD When the Confederates abandoned Atlanta, Hood ordered the destruction of an ordnance train to keep supplies from falling into Federal hands.

HOOD’S FUTILE END 

REVIEWED BY ETHAN S. RAFUSE



he 1864 fall of Atlanta placed the Confederate cles in painstaking detail, to take advantage of an opporwar effort in a decidedly difficult spot. After tunity to inflict severe damage on a Union force at General Joseph E. Johnston’s defensive cam- Spring Hill. Then came a futile assault at Franklin that paign in north Georgia failed to keep the Federals from took a brutal toll on Hood’s army, but Davis argues was reaching the outskirts of Atlanta, Jefferson Davis made not without rationale and probably no worse a move the controversial decision to replace him with Lt. Gen. than the assault on Cemetery Ridge in July 1863. Then, John Bell Hood. The Texan’s far more aggressive at Nashville, Hood suffered as bad a defeat as any commander of a major army suffered during approach was in line with Davis’ taste, but, the entire war, becoming a compelling in the end, he too failed and Maj. Gen. symbol of the Confederacy—bold and full William T. Sherman was able to claim of ambition in 1861-62, damaged beyond possession of Atlanta in September. repair in 1863, unrelentingly futile in It is at this point, with Hood facing an 1864-65. unpromising set of options for what to do Davis tells this sad story as fully as any next, that Into Tennessee and Failure, the scholar has yet done. While he clearly second volume of Stephen Davis’ study of believes Hood deserves better than he has Hood’s career, picks up the story. After received from students of the war, Davis is efforts to operate against Sherman’s railby no means blind to his subject’s faults road supply line failed to have the desired and errors and does not hesitate to critieffect, Hood decided the hard-luck Army cize. He does so in the course of offering a of Tennessee had done all it had the ability Into Tennessee and highly detailed account and balanced to do in Georgia. Consequently, he led his Failure: John Bell Hood assessment of Hood’s career that offers army west to Alabama and then turned

By Stephen Davis important insights into the conflicts within north to cross the Tennessee River and Mercer University the Confederate high command that enter Tennessee.

Press, 2020, $35 shaped the South’s troubled and unsucWhat followed was catastrophe. Hood’s cessful bid for independence. command failed, for reasons Davis chroni-

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

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OF Statues AND Meaning REVIEWED BY GORDON BERG onumental Harm is an important book. It deserves a readership beyond those who normally follow the emerging currents of Civil War historiography. It deals with, as its title implies, a debate that is currently roiling the very foundation of our social and cultural belief systems. Namely, what we should do with the hundreds of Confederate monuments currently located on public property on courthouse squares, in parks, along major streets, and at intersections? The vast majority of these silent sentinels are situated in the states of the former Confederacy. Hartley maintains that while these monuments are mostly old and all inanimate, they are anything but silent.

Hartley is a professor of constitutional and labor law, not a historian. In this case, that’s a plus. He comes to the subject with no academic preconceptions or invested ideology. Hartley’s footnotes and bibliography show a prodigious amount of research, his narrative is deftly organized, and he writes clearly and precisely as would be required in a finely crafted legal brief argued before the Supreme Court. Readers are also advised to take time and read his detailed footnotes; they convey a rich context for the primary story line.

Readers steeped in the prevailing arguments as well as those who, hard as it may be to believe, have no prior inkling of what he is writing about will come away greatly informed and with no doubt about where Hartley stands. “The burden of the argument of this book,” he declares, “is to demonstrate that Confederate monuments do foist material harm on contemporary American life of such a severe magnitude that ending the harm by removing these monuments from public spaces represents a pressing public necessity.” He grounds his unambiguous conclusion on the thesis that “Confederate monuments harm contemporary American society by perpetuating anti-Black racial stereotyping and systemic racism.”

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

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Monument to Confederate dead, Shelby, N.C.

Monumental Harm: Reckoning With Jim Crow Era Confederate Monuments

By Roger C. Hartley University of South Carolina Press, 2021, $29.95

Hartley carefully builds his case as would a successful prosecutor—a stepby-step process, each new issue building upon the rationale of the previous determinations. He begins with a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between monuments and the distortion of history embodied in the myth of the Lost Cause. He then moves on to assess the impact of these monuments on civil society, “in particular the harm that Confederate monuments unleash on African Americans, and on all of us today.” Once the deleterious effect of these monuments is established, Hartley moves on to the question of what to do with them. The options he considers are to destroy them, contextualize them by adding clarifying explanatory language, or relocate them to other venues. After analyzing the pros and cons of each option, he finally arrives at who should ultimately decide the fate of the monument itself and the legal framework currently protecting many of the Confederate monuments.

In conclusion, Hartley believes he has provided “facts sufficient to formulate wellsupported positions regarding the controversy over the removal and relocation of Confederate monuments.” Facts, not personal preference, regional tradition, or collective morality, are what Hartley uses to make his case. And, Hartley insists, it is an issue that affects us all. “Readers who value the twin goals of racial peace and racial justice,” he hopes, “may well conclude that the preceding pages provoke compelling reasons to step up and add their voice to the conversation.”

If readers are so persuaded, then Hartley urges them to join “a revived civil rights movement for the first third of the twenty-first century.” Racial justice and racial peace are the still unfinished business bequeathed to us by the Civil War. Reckoning with Jim Crow–era Confederate monuments is a social imperative too long delayed and way too long denied.

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Squaring Off IN

MISSISSIPPI

REVIEWED BY WILLIAM JOHN SHEPHERD

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ess, a university professor and award-winning author of several Civil War studies, presents a detailed study of a key portion of the Vicksburg Campaign as part of the acclaimed Civil War America series from the University of North Carolina. The thesis is that this five-day period, which witnessed two Union assaults on the Confederate earthworks defending the crucial Mississippi River stronghold of Vicksburg, was the fifth of six phases of the campaign, and not merely a prelude to the lengthy siege as generally depicted.

Hess cites detailed archival sources, especially 10,000 pages of letters and diaries of veterans stored at Vicksburg National Military Park. He argues that while Ulysses S. Grant eventually triumphed, the Confederate commander of Vicksburg, John Pemberton, outgeneraled him during these crucial May 19-22 battles. Grant approached Vicksburg by May 17, 1863, with about 30,000 men in his Army of the Tennessee. Pemberton had less than 20,000 men and no Confederate relieving army nearby. Grant won two engagements, at Champion Hill and Big Black Run, and gambled on two separate assaults on the Vicksburg defenses, on May 19 and 22, hoping to avoid a prolonged siege.

Both attacks were unsuccessful due to a combination of strong defenses, high Confederate morale, and poor Union leadership, especially the 13th Corps commander, John McClernand, who was later relieved by Grant. The Union sufStorming Vicksburg: fered 3,199 casualties, some 7.9 percent Grant, Pemberton, of their 40,000-man army, while the Conand the Battles of federates lost only about 500—about 3.5 May 19-22, 1863 percent of their 14,000 troops. The inevBy Earl J. Hess itable siege that followed starved the garUniversity of North rison into surrender on July 4, 1863. This Carolina Press, 2020, delayed victory cemented Grant’s image $40 as a heroic Union leader and propelled him to greater achievements, including final victory in the war less than two years later.

Storming Vicksburg has short, well-written chapters, supported by extensive endnotes, bibliography, and a glossary of the order of battle of the respective armies. It also has 16 impressive maps and two dozen illustrations—the latter a mix of archival photographs from the Library of Congress and the U.S. Army’s Military History Institute as well as modern site shots taken by the author. This impressive academic study takes its rightful place alongside Ed Bearss’ The Campaign for Vicksburg (1991) and Michael Ballard’s Vicksburg (2004), and is in ways more analytical than Timothy B. Smith’s recently released The Union Assaults at Vicksburg.

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What Are You

Reading?

KATHRYN SHIVELY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY

If you imagine Civil War women’s history to involve a narrow cast of elite, White women living the same rehashed stories of nursing or spying, consider Thavolia Glymph’s book The Women’s Fight. Repopulating the Civil War with Black and White women from all social classes, Glymph liberates from the archives agonizing and hopeful stories of everyday life amid war. She proves that home meant everything to 19th-century Americans, and women fought with desperation to salvage and reimagine home wherever they roamed. The book is subtle and powerful; I wept with an enslaved woman who waited for her starving baby to die, marveled at women’s creation and transmission of knowledge, and turned the last page transformed by new understanding. I frankly found this to be The Women’s Fight: one of the best Civil The Civil War Battles for Home, Freedom, War books I’ve and Nation read, and I’m a

By Thavolia Glymph military historian The University of who rarely reads North Carolina Press, women’s history.

2020, $34.95

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NEW IN THE DECISIONS SERIES

DECISIONS OF THE SEVEN DAYS THE SIXTEEN CRITICAL DECISIONS THAT DEFINED THE OPERATION

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BURNSIDE GETS THE NEWS

PHOTO SLEUTH UNCOVERS IMAGE’S SECRET DETAIL

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December 2019 HISTORYNET.com

8/23/19 2:53 PM

THE LAST JAPANESE HOW MANY TIMES SOLDIER HAS THEFROM DESIGN WORLD OF THE WAR U.S.IIFLAG SURRENDERED CHANGED? IN THIS YEAR 27, 31, 36 or 40?

- 1945 - 1947 - 1950 - 1974 For more,search visitDAILY QUIZ For more,

1/20/21 4:56 PM

WWW.HISTORYNET.COM/ at HistoryNet.com.

MAGAZINES/QUIZ HistoryNet.com

ANSWER: 1974. PRIVATE TERUO NAKAMURA, A TAIWANESE NATIONAL,27.

ENLISTED IN THE JAPANESE ARMY IN 1943.

ANSWER: THE CURRENT DESIGN HAS BEEN IN HE HELD OUT ON 1960 MORTAI IN INDONESIA HE WAS CAPTURED PLACE SINCE WHEN THE FLAGUNTIL WAS MODIFIED IN DECEMBER 1974. EARLIER THAT YEAR, HIRO ONODA, WHO TO INCLUDE THE 50thFINALLY STATE. SURRENDERED. HELD OUT INHAWAII, THE PHILLIPINES,

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X-IT THE UNION $50,787.50 the United States banner and the Southern battle flag. The colorful flag, 33” by 52” in size, is made of red, white, and blue cotton fabric, with 13 white stars, for the seceded states and two border states, applied in an “X” pattern to each side of the canton. Its exact origin is unclear. A similar version was carried by the combined 22nd/20th Arkansas Infantry, and is part of Little Rock’s Old State House Museum.

It is also possible that the flag, sold by Heritage Auctions, is an early prototype for the Confederate national flag, and was one of several designs considered by Confederate President Jefferson Davis. -D.B.S.

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HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

THIS CONFEDERATE FLAG forms a curious hybrid of

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TODAY IN HISTORY MAY 1, 1931 THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING OFFICIALLY OPENS. IN ITS FIRST YEAR ONLY 23% OF THE AVAILABLE SPACE WAS SOLD. THE LACK OF TENANTS LED NEW YORKERS TO DISMISS THE BUILDING AS THE “EMPTY STATE BUILDING.” IN YEAR ONE THE OBSERVATION DECK HAULED IN APPROXIMATELY $2 MILLION IN REVENUE, EQUAL TO WHAT ITS OWNERS COLLECTED IN RENT. THE BUILDING FIRST TURNED A PROFIT IN THE 1950s.

For more, visit

WWW.HISTORYNET.COM/ TODAY-IN-HISTORY

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