Civil War Times June 2021

KEN BURNS CRITIQUE H THE OVERLOOKED BUT ESSENTIAL CAP BOX H

DEAD LETTER OFFICE

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SOLDIERS THE REMARKABLE AND POIGNANT STORY OF THE WAR’S UNDELIVERED MAIL TABLETOP TACTICS: BOARD GAME RESURGENCE SOUTHERNERS IN BLUE: SHERMAN’S ALABAMA CAVALRY

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CIVIL WAR TIMES JUNE 2021

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TABLETOPS TOUCHED BY FIRE More and more enthusiasts are experiencing the fortunes of war through traditional board games.

ON THE COVER: Dead Letter Office photographs were displayed in the hopes someone would recognize the subjects.

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Features

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Interrupted Sentiments

By Melissa A. Winn

The Dead Letter Office collected undeliverable mail during the conflict, including hundreds of photographs of now-unknown soldiers.

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Union Troopers with a Southern Twang

By Clayton Jonah Butler

General William T. Sherman’s 1st Alabama Cavalry made hard war on their fellow Southerners during the March to the Sea and other campaigns.

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‘A Terri§c Explosion Was Heard’

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By Rich Condon

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Across the Boards

A Pittsburgh reverend’s graphic eulogy describes the horrible blast that devastated the Allegheny Arsenal, killing dozens of female armament workers.

By Kim O’Connell

Shut your laptops and use your brain! Board games with dice and wee warriors are charging back into popularity.

Departments

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6 8 14 16 18 24 27 60 64 72

Return Fire “Howdy” Martin Miscellany Battlefields Ablaze Details Ready for Some Coffee?

Insight Ken Burns’ Civil War at 30

Rambling Imagination Mansion

Interview Starting a New NPS Site Editorial I Forgot my Brick

Armament The Important Cap Box

Reviews Thundering Thaddeus Stevens Sold ! Zouave Fez

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN; COURTESY OF THE GEORGE EASTMAN MUSEUM; DANA B. SHOAF COLLECTION/PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN; LAWRENCEVILLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY; COVER: MELISSA A. WINN COLLECTION (8); RICK CARLILE COLLECTION (1)/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

Union prisoners at Salisbury, N.C., play baseball.

JUNE 2 021

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VOL. 60, NO. 3

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

THE OLD BALL GAME

Civil War reenactors re-create the national pastime the way soldiers used to play it. http://bit.ly/OldBallGame

IMAGES OF WAR

From portraits of common soldiers to battlefield images of the dead, Civil War photographers brought the war home. http://bit.ly/ImagesOfCivilWar

‘NOBLE UNION GIRLS’

The horrible explosion at the Allegheny Arsenal rocked the city of Pittsburgh and its families. http://bit.ly/NobleUnionGirls

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I’d beg for kosher food.

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CIVIL WAR TIMES JUNE 2021

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RETURN FIRE

MAJOR “HOWDY”

MURDER ON THE B&O After reading Dana Shoaf ’s War in Their Words article, “Shoot and Be Damned” in the February issue, I have to say thank you for remembering Samuel Calvin Lamar, the young man who needlessly died. It is a shame that these kind of incidences, are so often overlooked and forgotten because of bigger, more important events.

So glad this young man’s headstone still remains and was discovered. It is truly a poignant monument and the incident leading up to his death was aptly described by Walt Whitman, “The real war will never get in the books.”

Peg Schweizer Kingsport, Tenn.

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DANA B. SHOAF COLLECTION (2); COWAN’S AUCTIONS

Susannah J. Ural’s February 2021 article, “Texas Tough,” was an excellent look at how difficult it is to gain the trust and respect of the citizen soldier. The independent nature of the American soldier has been its hallmark of success, while also frustrating those in authority to mold these citizen volunteers into a cohesive fighting unit.

Officers like William “Howdy” Martin and John Bell Hood exemplify the qualities needed to successfully gain the trust and respect of the rank and file. Certainly, greeting soldiers with an informal “howdy” was a splendid way to let the men know that, “I am no better than you.”

Mark Grimm North Royalton, Ohio

I heartily disagree with most of Gordon Berg’s assertions in his book review of Monumental Harm: Reckoning With Jim Crow Era Confederate Monuments by Roger C. Hartley, in the April 2021 issue. In his opening paragraph, Berg states that the question of what to do with Confederate monuments is “a debate that is currently roiling the very foundations of our social and cultural belief systems.” Aside from the pigeons and a few ax-grinding academics, I don’t think anyone cares quite that much. I do wish that any historical discussion were so front-and-center on the national stage.

The rest of the review is divided between Berg’s fulsome praise of Hartley, and both Hartley and Berg’s idea that Confederate monuments need to be removed. Berg quotes Hartley as saying the task should be “a revived Civil Rights movement for the first third of the twenty-first century.” I humbly advance that there are more urgent needs on the national agenda.

It’s hard to conceive of how the removal of public art commemorating dead soldiers has come to mean so much to a passionate few. Much of it has to do with the fact that statues are easy targets—they can’t fight back. In addition, removing or vandalizing them gives those responsible a facile sense of achievement, and is so simple compared to the task of actually doing something substantive about poverty or racism.

Cheerleading by academics like Hartley laid the groundwork for the vandalism that occurred during the summer protests. In my hometown, Richmond, Va., all the Confederate monuments were vandalized. Most were removed, leaving that much less work for those who, in Hartley’s words, “value racial peace and racial justice.”

The Confederacy was deeply flawed.

I don’t think you could find a person in their right mind today that would defend slavery, which was unarguably the cause of the war. Yet there’s more to the South than slavery. And a counter argument exists to those like Hartley

PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

REVIEW OF A REVIEW

and Berg who say that Confederate memorials only reinforce “the distortion of history embodied in the myth of the Lost Cause.”

I believe the monuments honor the wartime sacrifices and bravery of those who fought for the South. For many, the chiseled name on a courthouse monument is their only memorial. It’s very sad to think that, if Hartley and Berg have their way, those memories will be destroyed.

Ben Cleary Mechanicsville, Va.

ONLINE POLL

REQUA VOLLEY GUN I read with great interest the Armament department on the Requa Gun in the February issue. It was pointed out that Captain Albert G. Mack’s 18th Independent Battery, New York Light Artillery and Captain J. Warren Barnes’

47 0 0

53 0 0 The Results Are In!

Our recent Facebook poll asked which group of officers you would rather serve under, the Army of the Potomac or the Army of the West?

A majority of voters made the case that they would rather march across Tennessee and Georgia and take orders from “Uncle Billy” Sherman and his subordinates.

Our next poll goes online April 29.

and Louisiana, so it is very likely the units served in close contact with each other.

DANA B. SHOAF COLLECTION (2); COWAN’S AUCTIONS

PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

WRONG NEW JERSEY

26th Independent New York Battery, were both sent to the Department of the Gulf. If you could tell me whether either or both of those contingents fought alongside Battery A, 1st U.S. Artillery in that theater, I would be most appreciative. That battery was my great-great grandfather’s unit. Keep up the great work.

Edward Keller Central Islip, N.Y. Editor’s note: Battery A, 1st U.S. Artillery spent the majority of its service in Florida

Civil War Times is an awesome publication and I look forward to each one!

I received today the April 2021 issue and opened to the article, “Escape Was Hopeless,” about Culp’s Hill. The map on page 61 shows the 12th New Jersey in Spangler’s Meadow, but I believe it is supposed to be the 15th New Jersey as the 12th was fighting on the Brien Farm at that time.

Fred Mossbrucker Turnersville, N.J. Editor’s note: You are correct, that is the wrong New Jersey regiment in that brigade, but it should be the 13th New Jersey, as the 15th New Jersey was in the 6th Corps.

WELL MELDED Matt Spruill’s “Week of War” article in the April issue on the Seven Days Campaign was an exceptional piece in crystallizing the decisions of that 1862 fighting. Excellent melding of words, photos, and illustrations to tell the story.

John Grady Fairfax, Va.

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

JUNE 2021 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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MISCELLANY

BATTLEFIELDS

BURN UP

Antietam National Battlefield 8

On March 23, Antietam National Battlefield also conducted a controlled burn of 60 acres of fields on the historic Otto and Sherrick Farms.

In addition, in preparation for special events and tours planned by Manassas National Battlefield Park to commemorate the 160th anniversary of the July 21, 1861, First Battle of Manassas, NPS is performing a major masonry preservation project on the Manassas Battlefield’s Stone House. The 1848 house is one of three surviving structures that witnessed both battles of Manassas. The Historic Preservation Training Center will replace all mortar in between the stones and perform conservation work on damaged stones. The house will be closed until work is complete in June. The park is also restoring two original boat howitzers for display on Matthews Hill and will restore some historic sightlines on Henry Hill by removing tree and scrub growth.

Civil War Times will be broadcasting our #FirstMondays Facebook LIVE videos on July 12 from Manassas with special guests to talk about the First Battle of Manassas for the 160th anniversary of the fight.

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: HAKE’S AUCTIONS; OSFM; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

S

ome exciting new preservation efforts are underway at Manassas National Battlefield Park, including a prescribed burn conducted on March 9. It was the fourth prescribed burn for the park in as many years, and covered 75 acres near the Deep Cut, the scene of fierce fighting during the Second Battle of Manassas. The expanded landscape view around the unfinished railroad bed offers a dramatic new perspective of the soldier’s experience of battle in August 1862.

A prescribed burn reduces the build-up of hazardous debris and vegetation, while maintaining or restoring the battlefield’s wartime appearance.

“Building off the great success we had with prescribed fires in 2018 and 2019, this is another opportunity to continue our efforts to return a significant segment of the battlefield back to its Civil War appearance,” said Manassas National Battlefield Park Superintendent Brandon Bies.

NPS PHOTO (2)

Manassas National Battlefield Park

LINCOLN BANNER A RARE LINCOLN BANNER dating from 1860 sold at Hake’s Auctions in York, Pa., for $143,104, the highest price ever recorded for a Lincoln textile. Hand-painted and hand-stitched, the banner bears the single-eye icon of the “Wide Awakes,” a group of young men devoted to the Republican goals of promoting opportunity and westward expansion of free labor. Wide Awakes became known for their nighttime rallies where members carrying whale-oil torches shielded themselves from drips with distinctive oilcloth capes. Lincoln, with his message of self-improvement and upward mobility, was their champion.

LIVE ORDNANCE FOUND IN MARCH, Bomb technicians from Maryland’s Office of the State Fire Marshal (OSFM) safely disposed of an unexploded 12-pounder cannonball found near the 1864 Monocacy battlefield in Frederick County. The projectile was in the possession of a homeowner, who had been given the round by another family member who found it. When yet another member of the family suggested it might be live, the bomb techs were called in, and determined it was, in fact, still armed. Be careful out there in Civil War country!

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: HAKE’S AUCTIONS; OSFM; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

NPS PHOTO (2)

WAR F RA M E SAMUEL COLE WRIGHT of the 29th Massachusetts Infantry poses in his regiment’s early war uniform, which evoked the Revolutionary era and reflects a naive notion that the war would be a short adventure for young men. The long war, however, did its best to destroy the Bay Stater, but somehow he survived. Wright was wounded at White Oak Swamp, Va., during the 1862 Peninsula Campaign and shot in the left knee while helping to remove a fence at Antietam, as his regiment, part of the Irish Brigade, charged the Sunken Road. He recovered, but became ill with typhus in 1863 and spent time in the hospital. After his discharge, a mule team ran him down, and he had to recover from that battering. He suffered another wound at Bethesda Church, Va., in 1864, and at the Battle of the Crater during the Siege of Petersburg, a bullet ripped out his right eye and sent him home for the remainder of the war. In between injuries, he was promoted to corporal, then sergeant, and eventually received the Medal of Honor for his actions at Antietam.

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MISCELLANY

New Name, Old Stamps

A CONFEDERATE-STAMP COLLECTING CLUB, formed in 1938 as the Confederate Stamp Alliance, voted in November 2020 to change its name to the Civil War Philatelic Society. The name change was favored by 85 percent of the members, and the society’s mission statement explains, “The CivilWar Philatelic Society is a non-sectional, non-political organization for fraternity, research and cooperation among hundreds of collectors of Civil War stamps, covers, and postal history.” The 650-member society publishes a quarterly journal, Civil War Philatelist. The Confederate postal agency was established on June 1, 1861, though official Confederate stamps were not issued until October 1861. Counterfeit Confederate stamps, first identified in 1870, add to the complexity of collecting. To learn about the society, go to https://www.civilwarphilatelicsociety.org.

JUNE 7 & JULY 12

FIRST MONDAYS! 10

Don’t forget to watch Editor Dana B. Shoaf and Director of Photography Melissa A. Winn explore off-the-beaten path and human-interest stories about the war, and interview fellow scholars of the conflict.

Broadcasts start at noon on Facebook at facebook.com/civilwartimes. ( July broadcast will be on the second Monday due to the July 4th holiday.)

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COURTESY OF JULIE SCHABLITSKY; NEW BERN HISTORICAL SOCIETY

WALTERS ART MUSEUM in Baltimore, Md., an extensive art collection gathered by magnate William Walters, is confronting its founding family’s history. The museum web site now includes details acknowledging the links between the Walters family and the Confederacy. Walters funded secessionist resistance, including the April 19 Pratt Street Riot attack on Union soldiers, before fleeing to Europe in August 1861. He returned to Baltimore in 1874, and began charging admission to see his art collection, donating the proceeds to help the poor. He also continued to promote the veneration of the Confederacy, including funding the 1887 installation in Baltimore of a statue of Roger Taney.

Walters the elder died in 1894. His son, Henry, shared his father’s beliefs, and in 1931 he donated his father’s art collection and the buildings housing them in the Mt. Vernon neighborhood to the city of Baltimore. In 2000, what was long known as the Walters Art Gallery was renamed the Walters Art Museum.

Admission is free to the public.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2); VESPASIAN/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

ART MUSEUM’S CONFEDERATE LINKS

REGISTER

COURTESY OF JULIE SCHABLITSKY; NEW BERN HISTORICAL SOCIETY

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2); VESPASIAN/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Unearthing History In the series “Maryland Underground,” four archaeological sites related to the lives of enslaved and free Blacks in Maryland are showcased in brief streaming videos produced by Maryland Public Television.

Maryland Department of Transportation chief archaeologist Julie Schablitsky leads the excavations. The oldest study site is in Newtowne Neck in St. Mary’s County, a former Jesuit property where blacks were enslaved in the early 1700s, but little is known of their lives. Another excavation site, Bayly’s Cabin, is in Cambridge, Md., located behind a prominent home and locally known as a slave cabin. In Hagerstown, the team is analyzing the ground beneath a dilapidated cabin that was first a residence of Whites and German immigrants and later home to free Blacks in the post-Civil War community of Jonathan Street. One site is still being hunted for: Ben’s 10—the 10 acres in Dorchester County owned by Ben Ross, Harriet Tubman’s father. The team hopes to discover Ross’ home and other homes in his community. Watch the videos here: https://www.mpt.org/digitalstudios/ mdunderground Exposing a Coverup Whitewash may be a coverup, but in New Bern, N.C., it helped reveal the location of a previously unknown Civil War hospital.

Local historian Wade Sokolsky and other Civil War aficionados became intrigued after Sokolsky found an article in the January 1862 New Bern Daily Progress reporting the structure—a building dating from 1816 and currently known as the Old City Hall— being converted to a hospital. According to a report by Claudia Houston, historian with the New Bern Historical Society, the build-

DEEP INTO IT Archaeologist Julie Schablitsky explains her team’s search for information about Maryland’s African American families.

ing’s owner let the group tour the building, including an undisturbed portion that contained whitewashed walls—an important clue, as whitewashing improved both lighting and hygiene. The hospital appears in Confederate records as Branch General Hospital; and Union troops took over the 150-bed site following their victory at the Battle of New Bern on March 14, 1862.

Sokolsky is working on a book about Civil War hospitals in North Carolina, due out in November 2022.

IN PLAIN SIGHT A postwar view of the Old City Hall in New Bern, N.C., recently rediscovered as a Confederate hospital site.

On March 14, 1862, Federal troops captured New Bern and held it for the rest of the war.

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MISCELLANY

WORTH

A

MOVE

REAL ESTATE WITH CIVIL WAR CONNECTIONS

CLOSE UP! QUIZ

ON WHAT PIECE of soldier equipment would you find this stamp? The first person who sends in the correct answer wins a Civil War Times water bottle. Send your answer to dshoaf@historynet.com, subject heading “Inspector.”

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ANSWER TO LAST ISSUE’S

CLOSE UP !

CONGRATULATIONS to David White, of Round Rock, Texas, who correctly identified a common Western Theater Confederate battle banner nicknamed the “Full Moon” flag. This example was carried by the 34th Mississippi and captured by the 149th New York on November 24, 1863, at the Battle of Lookout Mountain, Tenn.

CLOCKWISE FRO TOP: FOXFIRE REALTY (2); AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM; PHIL SPAUGY COLLECTION

Tyree Tavern, Ansted, W.V.

Weary travelers on West Virginia’s James River and Kanawha Turnpike welcomed the Tyree Tavern’s hospitality for decades. And now it’s for sale, and you have a chance to hoist a glass in this Fayette County structure that comes with its own Civil War Trails wayside!

A portion of the handsome building, located between Charleston to the northwest and Lewisburg to the southeast, was built in the 18th century.

Confederate Brig. Gen. John B. Floyd headquartered here, August 17–18, 1861, during the South’s unsuccessful Kanawha Valley Campaign. In 1862, Federal troops carved “Headquarters of the Chicago Gray Dragoons” over the front door.

Tavern owner William Tyree served as a captain in the 22nd Virginia Infantry (C.S.), also known as the 1st Kanawha Regiment. Two of his sons, Andrew and Joseph, served with him. The regiment saw action at the 1861 battles of Carnifex Ferry and Droop Mountain, and later fought in the Shenandoah Valley before disbanding in the spring of 1865.

Before he was “Stonewall,” Thomas J. Jackson stayed here in August 1855, hoping to visit his mother’s grave in nearby Westlake Cemetery. William Tyree took him there, but they could not find her then-unmarked grave.

For more information, go to: foxfirenation.com/ listings/historic-tyree-tavern

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visit the stars and stripes museum b lo o m f I e l d, m i s s o u r i

w w w. s e e t h e o z a r k s . c o m

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COFFEE’S ON! WITHOUT A STEADY SUPPLY of invigorating coffee at hand, soldiering was “misery indeed” according

to a 17th Maine infantryman. Troops from both sides coveted bracing cups of hot coffee and its restorative powers. The Union Army made coffee a staple issue ration, and while the amount of picket trading can be exaggerated, Confederates did call truces to trade for the magic beans they found in such short supply. On campaign, troops were content to pull a small sack of ground coffee beans, sometimes premixed with sugar, out of their smelly haversacks and bring it to a quick boil in a tin cup. In more permanent camps, however, iron stoves could be used to simmer the grounds to a richer state of perfection.

At least in theory. Union artilleryman John Billings found the coffee prepared by camp cooks to be “inferior in quality and unpleasant to taste” compared with what he and his pards brewed up after a hard march. Can’t please everybody. This previously unpublished image is labeled the “Cook Tent” of Independent Battery H, Pennsylvania Light Artillery, at Camp Nevin, Va., near Alexandria, and it appears a kettle of coffee is simmering away. We can hope the bombardiers had a good barista. (This image was taken at the same time the photograph profiled in the February 2021 Details was taken.) —D.B.S. 14

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1. The camp stove is the center of attention. The head of a pickax helps stabilize the tall chimney. A large supply of stovewood has been accumulated.

2. A frying pan and a smoke-blackened kettle sit atop the

stove. The handle of a dipper sticks out of the kettle. Coffee beans were often issued raw and had to be roasted in frying pans—perhaps the purpose of that implement in this setting. Brand new kettles await their baptism by fire.

piece of soft bread to a gunner dressed in his issued forage cap and mounted services jacket, complete with bulky shoulder scales. A Model 1840 artillery saber hangs from his belt. Tobacco was as popular as coffee, and nearly “every man…had a sweet briar pipe,” remembered Sergeant Daniel Eldridge of the 3rd New Hampshire Infantry.

3. A very youthful member of the battery has ridden his

horse to the tent. He wears a kerchief around his neck for sun protection or to keep the dust off his face.

5. Winner, winner, chicken dinner! This also-youthful soldier cradles a chicken, the rear end of which is facing the viewer, in the crook of his arm. The smallest portion of the bird’s head is visible to the right of the artilleryman’s sleeve. The animal’s future likely includes one of those well-used camp kettles behind the soldier.

4. A study in sartorial contrasts. A casually dressed soldier with slouch hat, no jacket, collar open, and trousers held up by one suspender prepares to hand off a pipe and a

6. Four soldiers beat the heat under the fly of the cook tent. One holds his tin cup at the ready for some coffee.

The fellow at right looks as if he’s done with it all.

DANA B. SHOAF COLLECTION

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by Gary W. Gallagher

AT 30

HOW DOES THE ICONIC PBS SERIES MEASURE UP THREE DECADES ON? KEN BURNS’ DOCUMENTARY on the Civil War has reached a

larger audience and generated more interest in the subject than any book, theatrical film, or other influence in the past 50 years. First broadcast on PBS stations in 1990 and frequently re-aired ever since, it also appeared in a digitally restored 25th anniversary version with additional material of various kinds. Most viewers have responded positively to the series, though they often disagree about such things as Burns’ relative treatment of the Union and the Confederacy, the degree to which he highlighted slavery as a cause of secession, and whether he glorified war by emphasizing the bravery and devotion of common soldiers on both sides.

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NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES

THE CIVIL WAR

Academic historians have focused much of their criticism on whether Burns spent inordinate time on military campaigns and thereby obscured more important social, political, and cultural issues—especially those related to African Americans, slavery, and emancipation. In the chronological procession of battles and generals, many academics have argued, viewers probably missed the broader context within which the armies contended for supremacy. Agreeing with others who voiced unhappiness with Burns’ “conception of the Civil War as a history of war,” one scholar quoted with thinly disguised sarcasm the filmmaker’s statement that “‘only’ 40 percent of the eleven hours depicted battles.” More recently, another academic claimed, with obvious disapprobation, that Burns adopted a “general focus” for the series that relied on a perception of the conflict centered “almost solely on military history.”

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

TIME FLIES Has it really been three decades since The Civil War riveted audiences?

Dramatic narration and compelling images, like this one of the 88th Pennsylvania Infantry, keep the mini-series fresh in mind.

NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

I think Burns strikes a reasonable balance between military and nonmilitary coverage. In teaching my own lecture course on the Civil War at Penn State University and then the University of Virginia for more than 30 years, I allocated about 40 percent of my time to military affairs. It is important to remember that Burns’ subject was a mammoth war that unfolded over four years. Avoiding chronological narrative and muting the role of armies would render the experience of 1861-65 less intelligible to nonspecialists. In fact, any documentary about the Civil War that failed to place military events at least close to center stage would itself be open to charges of distortion.

How sound, however, is Burns’ treatment of military matters? Many parts of The Civil War betray a curious ignorance of modern scholarship. For example, the first episode stresses the North’s industrial capacity and vast pool of manpower and concludes that “the odds against a Southern victory were long.”

True as far as it goes, this approach overlooks important Confederate advantages that evened the initial balance sheet. Burns’ appraisal of resources drapes a mantle of hopelessness over the Confederate resistance, echoing Lost Cause writers who attributed Confederate defeat to the enemy’s material strength and larger population.

Other passages reinforce the initial image of badly outnumbered Confederates, as when Burns describes Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia on June 26, 1862, as a “tiny force” facing a juggernaut in George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac. The ensuing Seven Days Battles assume the character of an underdog Rebel force vanquishing a much larger opponent—a conception at odds with the facts. By the end of June, Lee commanded approximately 90,000 soldiers in the largest army ever fielded by the Confederacy. Far from a mismatch, the Seven Days featured roughly equal antagonists fighting on Confederate home ground.

The most obvious shortcoming of Burns’ military coverage concerns geographical imbalance. His war is preemi-

nently a struggle between the famous armies that operated in the Eastern Theater. As I have written in earlier Insight columns, I believe that events in the East, for a number of reasons, did overshadow those beyond the Appalachians. But other scholars dispute the primacy of the Eastern Theater—something largely absent from Burns’ series.

The Civil War reinforces the common misconception that Gettysburg towered over all other campaigns. Burns lavishes nearly 45 minutes on Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania versus fewer than 11 on

OUT OF FOCUS? Ken Burns checks out a camera angle for The Civil War. He certainly told a good story, but missed a number of opportunities to challenge tired assumptions about the conflict. the maneuvering and combat between December 1862 and July 1863 that settled Vicksburg’s fate. Treatment of other operations reflects the same bias. Lee’s march into Maryland and the Battle of Antietam receive 25 minutes, equivalent movements into Kentucky by Confederate forces under Braxton Bragg and Edmund Kirby Smith only fleeting attention. Similarly, Burns allocates a 12-minute section to Lee’s battle at Fredericksburg in December 1862, while the clash at Murfreesboro, a much bloodier Western counterpart fought two and a half weeks later, winks past viewers in less than a minute.

The Trans-Mississippi Theater fares worst of all. Burns disregards Pea Ridge and Wilson’s Creek (except for men-

tioning casualties at the latter), battles that helped decide the fate of Missouri.

Viewers also learn nothing about Nathaniel P. Banks’ Federal advance up the Red River in the spring of 1864, Confederate General Sterling Price’s raid into Missouri later that year, and other noteworthy, though not decisive, military events farther west of the Mississippi.

Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, and William Tecumseh Sherman rightly dominate Burns’ cast of generals, yet nowhere does the series take up questions about Lee’s generalship that have inspired vigorous debate over many decades. And the Union’s military effort in the West belongs almost exclusively to Grant and Sherman. John Frémont, Don Carlos Buell, and William Rosecrans all held important Western commands but play only the smallest of bit parts. The most obvious omission concerns Henry Halleck, whom Burns casts briefly as a jealous administrator hoping to push Grant aside after Shiloh. On the Confederate side, viewers might infer that Nathan Bedford Forrest—a favorite of talking head Shelby Foote— ranked as the most important officer in the West. His appearances in the series, quite remarkably, outnumber those of Braxton Bragg, Albert Sidney Johnston, Joseph E. Johnston, P. G. T. Beauregard, and others who led Southern armies during major campaigns.

Also absent from the documentary is a well-developed sense of how profoundly military affairs affected, and were affected by, politics, the process of emancipation, and other aspects of the conflict. Too often, campaigns and battles seem to occur in isolation—something impossible in a contest between two democratic republics at war.

I applaud Burns for applying his narrative gifts to a monumental and potentially controversial subject. My disappointment stems from a sense of missed opportunity. The filmmaker chose to maneuver comfortably along well-trodden paths, serving up military campaigns and leaders in familiar interpretive garb and never really challenging his viewers. ✯ JUNE 2021 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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RAMBLING with John Banks

MEMORIES, AND TWO ANCIENT TREES, LINGER AT CONFEDERATE GENERAL LEONIDAS POLK’S MANSION, CONSUMED IN A POSTWAR BLAZE FRANTICALLY TRYING TO DETERMINE the origin of

a roaring sound, the caretaker grabbed an ax, climbed atop Ashwood Hall, and slashed through the tin, resin, and gravel roof of the mansion in rural Ashwood, Tenn. Then “a terrible flame leapt out like a wild beast released from prison.”

Whoosh!

Ashwood Hall—once one of the “handsomest country residences in Tennessee”—was ablaze on the fall day in 1874, and no one could save it. Fortunately, Rebecca Polk—owner of the estate and widow of a former Confederate officer— was in Europe with her daughters; and except for a young man’s “fine shotgun,” 18

“Bring your boots,” farmer Campbell Ridley encourages me the rainy night before our visit to the Ashwood Hall site. The 78-year-old widower knows the rural area 40 miles south of Nashville better than most—“about seven generations” of his family have lived on his farm; and for two decades, the quipster/storyteller/U.S. Army vet has farmed land where Ashwood Hall once

PHOTO BY JOHN BANKS

IT FIRES THE IMAGINATION

most valuables in the uninsured mansion somehow were rescued from the flames. The ruins reportedly smoldered for two weeks.

Ashwood Hall was never rebuilt, but stories linger there (and treasure remains), for this was where an Episcopal bishop who became a Confederate general laid the foundation for a great estate in 1834; where hundreds of slaves toiled and worshipped; and where a teen became a Confederate heroine “in one of the loveliest spots in America.”

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TENNESSEE VIRTUAL ARCHIVE; ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF ARCHIVES

WITNESS TREE One of the two giant Ginkgo Trees that remain to mark the location of Ashwood Hall.

TENNESSEE VIRTUAL ARCHIVE; ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF ARCHIVES

PHOTO BY JOHN BANKS

stood. Ridley’s farm shop is a musket shot from the Clifton Place mansion of Confederate Brig. Gen. Gideon Pillow, his ancestor. Campbell’s grandfather, who relished eating hog brains, once owned the Pillow place, too.

Joined by Maury County Archives Director Tom Price and my friend Jack Richards, we trudge through a field of corncobs and broken stalks to the Ashwood Hall site—about five miles from downtown Columbia, the county seat.

Behind us, spring peepers make a god-awful racket in a marsh along Old Zion Road. From the rise about 200 yards from Mount Pleasant Pike—a wartime route used by both armies—we see in the distance the slave-constructed St. John’s Episcopal Church, the plantation chapel completed in 1842 under the direction of Leonidas Polk and his three brothers, George, Lucius, and Rufus.

Leonidas, who commanded the First Corps of the Army of Tennessee, became famous as the “Fighting Bishop”—the North Carolina-born soldier held various roles in the Episcopal Church during his lifetime, including Bishop of Louisiana. On June 14, 1864, the general was nearly sliced in two by a well-aimed Federal artillery round at Pine Mountain, Ga. (My favorite Polk anecdote is about when at a christening for a slave’s child in Ashwood, he asked the young mother: “Name this child.” “Lucy, sir,” she replied. “That’s no fit name for a child!” bellowed the bishop, who thought the slave said “Lucifer.” Polk baptized the girl “John.”)

In what before the Civil War was the wealthiest county in Tennessee, the Polk brothers owned enormous, adjacent plantations—George, Rattle and Snap; Lucius, Hamilton Place; Rufus, West Brook; and Leonidas, Ashwood Hall.

(Only the Rattle and Snap and Hamilton Place mansions stand today.)

“God’s country,” Confederate soldiers called the beautiful area.

Of the four plantations, Ashwood Hall may have been the most impressive, “surrounded by one of the most fertile and magnificent farms of which the

OF THE FOUR PLANTATIONS,

ASHWOOD HALL MAY HAVE BEEN THE

MOST IMPRESSIVE

CONSUMED BY FIRE Ashwood Hall, top, was a stunning property before it was destroyed by a postwar blaze. In 1864, Union artillery fire killed Lt. Gen. Leonidas Polk, Ashwood Hall’s pre-war owner, atop Pine Mountain.

new world can boast,” a local newspaper wrote of it. Leonidas and his wife, Frances Ann, furnished the mansion with pricey pieces shipped from such farflung places as Philadelphia and New York City.

After Leonidas sold Ashwood Hall to his younger brother, Andrew, in 1845, the two-story mansion was greatly expanded. It included one-story wings, full-length windows, Corinthian columns, iron railings, a picture gallery, library, and billiard room. Plop the place in Beverly Hills today and no one would blink.

Unfortunately, I did not bring boots for our muddy sojourn to the site of Polk’s palace. But I did bring my imagination. I can picture Ashwood Hall’s once-exquisite grounds—the wellmanicured lawns, the greenhouses, the orchards filled with fruit trees, the iron gates swinging from massive stone pillars surmounted by inverted carved, stone acorns, the Polk family symbol.

Look over there: Is that the Polks’ English gardener? Are those the rare animals the family stocked on the grounds? Is that Andrew Polk, a captain in the First Tennessee Cavalry, instructing soldiers in his Maury County Braves on the plantation? Do you see Confederate cavalry commander Earl Van Dorn, that married rascal, hitting on another lady in Ashwood Hall’s entryway?

Listen up: Can you hear Union Gen. Don Carlos Buell’s Yankees blowing on the organ pipes they swiped from St. John’s Church as they march down Mount Pleasant Pike on the way to Shiloh? Or the chatter from a ball at the Hall with Confederate officers? Or John Bell Hood, “Old Wooden Head” himself, who briefly used Ashwood Hall as headquarters before the Confederates’ disaster at Franklin?

The only tangible evidence we find of Ashwood Hall are scattered pieces of brick and stone, a decrepit building that may have been the mansion’s kitchen, a railroad spike-like rod perhaps used for construction, and two massive, Ginkgo trees imported eons ago by the Polks from Japan. Ridley chuckles when he sees me examine those gnarled monsters. These Ashwood Hall relics have JUNE 2021 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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RAMBLING with John Banks

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RELICS FROM SCORCHED EARTH The soil at Ashwood Hall still holds colorful pottery shards from the plantation’s heyday.

How many people, White and Black, handled that tableware? The bronze tag, right, might be from Polk’s West Point days. curb, but the effect on him was the same as tho they had killed it.”

During the war, Ashwood Hall was stripped of livestock, horses, fences, and crops. But Andrew Polk, who was seriously wounded early in the war, got a teeny measure of revenge against the Federals…thanks to his precocious daughter.

My drive on Mount Pleasant Pike from Columbia to Ashwood Hall, past the convenience stores and other

schlock, will never be the same after learning what happened on this stretch on July 13, 1863. Chased by three Yankees on horseback, 15-year-old Antoinette Polk—who had been visiting cousins in Columbia—dashed on the toll road astride her thoroughbred, Shiloh. (Apparently, she didn’t pay the fare.) The skilled rider’s aim: Race to Ashwood Hall, where Confederates were in danger of capture if she didn’t raise the alarm.

The Yankees were in Columbia!

PHOTO BY JOHN BANKS (2)

survived for roughly 170 years, but the Gingkoes his wife Patty planted at their house were short-timers.

Although we find little, much remains from the plantation era. With Ridley’s permission to hunt the private property, local detectorists Terry Hann and Dan VunCannon have uncovered scores of artifacts—a water pump with an 1854 patent date, broken pieces of dishes, a bronze piano foot, a gorgeous, decorative female figurine, an ornate wind-up key for a clock, the top of a champagne or wine bottle inlaid with gold, and a metal tag inscribed with Andrew Polk’s name. They even have a bucket full of burnt relics.

My favorite find is VunCannon’s bronze tag with “Leonidas Polk” and “Raleigh, N.C.” inscribed on it in cursive writing. Hann speculates it was Polk’s property at West Point, where he roomed with fellow cadet Albert Sidney Johnston, who later became Army of Tennessee commander and was killed at Shiloh. Hann and VunCannon believe more treasure await discovery—perhaps even the communion set Leonidas used at St. John’s Church. Could it be deep underground, in what was once the mansion basement?

Of course, the Yankees figure prominently in Ashwood Hall’s story, too.

Hann discovered a mangled Federal box plate on the grounds. But he hasn’t found Andrew Polk’s silver—if any of it is still out here.

Eager to keep the treasure out of Federal hands, Polk and a family slave hid the silver somewhere on the Ashwood Hall grounds. When marauding U.S. Army soldiers found out, they demanded the slave tell them where.

When he refused, the child—“about four years old,” according to an account—was held over a well. The slave’s repeated refusal apparently almost led to tragedy. “[H]orrible to relate,” according to a diary of one of Polk’s relations, “they dropped it & in the agony of the moment the unfortunate father gratified their cupidity! One of the number caught the child, it is true, after it had fallen out of the father’s sight in the well CIVIL WAR TIMES JUNE 2021

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RAMBLING with John Banks

The cavalrymen dug their spurs into their horses’ sides, straining to catch up with Antoinette. But she reached the mansion ahead of the Federals, roused the Confederates, and was taken almost fainting from Shiloh, whose mouth was covered with blood and foam from the bit.

The soldiers at Ashwood Hall avoided capture; Antoinette’s mission was accomplished. For her bravery, Nathan Bedford Forrest gave the teen a flag captured from Colonel Abel Streight’s brigade in 1863. You can see it today in the Maury County Archives in Columbia.

After the war, Antoinette traveled to Europe, where the “beauty and belle” became a “great favorite of the Italians.”

Her riding exploits remained renowned—“she is a beautiful rider, fearless,” according to an 1872 letter. In 1877, Antoinette married a French 22

nobleman, becoming Baroness De Charette. When she met a group of soldiers from Tennessee on leave in France during World War I, the baroness said, “I am going to kiss every one of you.”

“She felt, no doubt,” a Columbia newspaper wrote after the baroness’ death in 1919, “that in ministering to these men she was but performing another chapter in that romantic career that began more than half a century ago when she outrode a squad of Federal

troops from Columbia to Ashwood and prevented the capture of Confederate soldiers billeted in the palatial home of her father, Ashwood Hall...”

Ah, Ashwood Hall. What a sight.

What stories.

Just imagine the rest. ✯ 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.

PHOTOS BY JOHN BANKS (3)

THEY KNOW THE WAY Campbell Ridley, by one of the two Gingko trees, and Tom Price, Maury County Archives director, know well the unmarked path to the Ashwood Hall site. Price roams in the only building still precariously standing there, right. It may have served as a mansion outkitchen.

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with Steve Phan

RIPE FOR A HARVEST OF HISTORY Hundreds of buildings once occupied the now-open fields of Camp Nelson. But a team of rangers at the National Park Service’s newest installation is dedicated to telling its fascinating war stories.

LOCATED ABOUT 19 MILES south of Lexington, Ky., Camp Nelson served as a critical supply depot, training center, and forward base for the Federal Army during the Civil War. Built in April 1863 on an easily defensible peninsular plateau, the camp once comprised about 300 buildings, and in 1864 was used as a recruitment center for African American troops and as a refugee camp for their families. In October 2018, President Donald Trump designated the site as the Camp Nelson National Monument. Designation as a national park unit has allowed for further development of the site, along with renewed focus on its national significance. To help with that effort, National Park Service veteran Steve Phan was named the site’s acting Chief of Interpretation, Education and Visitor Services in January.

CWT: Tell us more about the changes being made at Camp Nelson.

SP: The park’s staff comprises four NPS personnel, and Superintendent Ernie Price has been on duty since August 2020. The opportunity to build a new national park unit is a challenge and thrill for all of us. We are building capacity and establishing a new NPS unit from the ground up.

It is important to recognize, however, that there was a park here prior to its designation as a national monument: Camp Nelson Heritage Park. We recognize 24

CWT: What role did Camp Nelson play?

SP: It’s as complicated as it gets. It was first established as a supply depot and camp of instruction. East Tennessee was very pro-Union but had been occupied by the Confederacy since 1861, and commanders in the area were tasked with relieving the civilian population there. Ambrose Burnside arrived in late March 1863. He set up his initial headquarters in Louisville and had engineers look for a place to set up the base and depot. They settled on a site about six miles south of Nicholasville, Ky., and called it Camp Nel-

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COURTESY OF STEVE PHAN

REVIVED

PHOTO BY DAN SNIEGOWSKI

CAMP NELSON

Jessamine County, Ky., and the Camp Nelson Foundation for acquiring the land, developing the trails and interpretive waysides, and constructing the visitor center and barracks, and organizing public programming. The national park unit would not be here without their commitment to preserving and sharing Camp Nelson’s rich and vibrant history. Their work has certainly made this transition possible.

son in honor of William “Bull” Nelson, who had been killed in a September 1862 duel with fellow Union General Jefferson C. Davis. The camp was established as a supply depot, hospital, recruitment and training camp, and rehabilitation center for horses/mules.

COURTESY OF STEVE PHAN

PHOTO BY DAN SNIEGOWSKI

CWT: What was the general attitude toward Blacks and slavery?

SP: Kentucky was a border state where slavery was legal. As a result, the Army impressed hundreds of enslaved African Americans to erect fortifications, expand the Lexington-Danville Turnpike, and construct the heart of the camp....The Army compensated the slaveholders for this labor—a policy that kept Kentucky in the fold while directly supporting the war effort. The protection of slavery was paramount to White Kentuckians, who used their military and political clout to ensure that African Americans were not recruited as soldiers. But the fortunes of war and military necessity completely upended the institution of slavery in Kentucky.

CWT: What happened when recruitment of Blacks for soldiers began?

SP: There was heavy resistance to any plan to recruit Black soldiers. After President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which excluded the border states like Kentucky, some Kentucky Union officers resigned in protest. As the federal government moved toward enlisting Black regiments in Kentucky, the resistance turned to negotiation. For example, to enlist Black soldiers, the owners had to be compensated, or it was mandatory that the recruits be trained in another state. But by June 1864, military necessity usurped negotiation. It’s an election year. War-weariness grows as enlistments for White regiments decrease. The reaction is swift and violent when Union commanders begin recruiting Black soldiers. Blacks coming into camp were often forcibly removed by their owners. Men wanting to enlist were attacked and killed making their way to camp. It’s a microcosm

of how conflicted loyalties were then, but the surge of enlistments continues well into 1865.

CWT: How many Black recruits total?

SP: Eight regiments, about 10,000 men, organized into infantry, cavalry, heavy artillery regiments. Camp Nelson grows to become the third largest

Steve Phan

recruitment center for Black soldiers in the entire country. Many are accompanied by their families, which is why it evolved into a refugee camp, as well.

CWT: They experienced enormous hardship at Camp Nelson, didn’t they?

SP: The tenuous idea of freedom is what we want to share with visitors and the public: It was complex, challenging, and never guaranteed. We therefore term the struggle as emancipation rather than freedom. The enslaved people that came into Camp Nelson are called refugees because their arrival does not portend to freedom. Their status was contingent on what the Army was going to do, how they responded, and how the refugees fit within the realm of military necessity. One incident we’ll be highlighting here is the expulsion of November 1864, which was one of at least seven expulsions we know of where the camp commander ordered the removal of the refugees, including family members of USCT soldiers, beyond army lines.

This occurs during the middle of a winter storm. More than 400 people were removed before the order was rescinded, but 102 died of exposure in the process. The Union Army reversed its policy toward refugees and began construction on the governmentsponsored “Home for Colored Refugees” at Camp Nelson, which initially included a communal mess hall, a school, barracks for single women and the sick, and duplex family cottages.

CWT: What happened after the war?

SP: The locals didn’t want an African American community to form here.

The landscape was altered dramatically after the camp was closed in March 1866, when 300 buildings were dismantled. Most of the residents were forced to relocate. Some joined the Regular Army, becoming the famous Buffalo Soldiers. Some made their way to Ohio. Some headed to Louisville, which was becoming a center for former enslaved African Americans. Some started homesteads out west. A small number stayed to form the freed community of Arial on the grounds of the Refugee Home, where the modern hamlet of Hall is now.

CWT: What should park visitors expect?

SP: We are renovating buildings and enhancing our capacity, especially frontline staff to provide proper visitor services and public programming.

There are earthwork remnants constructed during the war by enslaved labor that are in good condition. That’s one of the lasting legacies of African Americans at the camp....There is also a five-mile trail system featuring 35 interpretive markers. Just south of the park is Camp Nelson National Cemetery. Soldiers, including African Americans, were moved from a cemetery established at the camp during the war and reinterred at the National Cemetery. We are also developing our digital [nps.gov/cane] and social media [facebook.com/campnelsonnps] pages. ✯ Interview conducted by Senior Editor Sarah Richardson.

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IN ALL SIZES Cannonballs, now displayed at Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum, from the 2018 cache unearthed at the Allegheny Arsenal.

BRICKS AND BOMBS

COURTESY OF THE SOLDIERS & SAILORS MEMORIAL HALL & MUSEUM

THE ALLEGHENY ARSENAL SOIL PERIODICALLY REVEALS ITS EXPLOSIVE HERITAGE I LOOKED QUICKLY AROUND, no one was watching—well, except for my two friends, Mike Kraus and Mark Grimm. I stooped down and pried the brick out of the cold, muddy ground. I held it low so no one could see my larceny, very pleased that I finally had a piece of Allegheny Arsenal (story, P.46). The brick went into Mike’s trunk…and I forgot it. He would periodically remind me, “Come get your brick.” Less benign artifacts are also unearthed at the arsenal site. In the 1970s, as a postwar warehouse on the grounds was being torn down, a cache of cannonballs was discovered.

Most of them were sent to Fort Indiantown Gap in Pennsylvania to be destroyed, but policemen watching over their excavation “souvenired” some of them. Some of those shells made their way to Pittsburgh’s Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum, where Mike works as a curator, and they are also now on display. In 2018, more excavation turned up brick foundations, and that’s when I got my prize. A few days after I was there, an arsenal subbasement was found full of hundreds of neatly stacked shells. As before, most of the shells, still live, were destroyed, but the Pittsburgh bomb squad saved a few that went to Soldiers & Sailors, the Heinz History Center, and the Espy G.A.R. post in Carnegie, Pa. I’m sad I missed that explosive discovery, but glad at the same time. I wouldn’t want a bomb rolling around in Mike’s trunk. And that brick? It's now on my kitchen window shelf.✯

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INTERRUPTED

SENTIMENTS THE INCREDIBLE STORY OF THOUSANDS OF SOLDIER PHOTOGRAPHS AND LETTERS THAT NEVER MADE IT HOME



PHOTO CREDIT

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BY MELI SSA A. W I N N



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young Civil War soldier gazes back at me from a carte-de-visite, a playing card-sized photograph I recently purchased. He has a steely look, and his right hand grasps the lapel of his military dress coat. His left hand, in his lap, wears a ring.

A small fur cap, a winter luxury, sits atop his head. I don’t know who he is. He’s unidentified.

And when I look at him, I wonder if he posed for the photograph to let someone special back home know the fur cap had arrived in camp. If so, they never got the message. Because this photograph, like thousands of others, bears the characteristic marks—an identifying number written in red ink and the traces of brass mounting clips—of having ended up in the Dead Letter Office.

THESE PHOTOS REMAINED

OF

UNDELIVERED 30

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CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES

THOUSANDS

getting it to its intended recipient. DLO LOST AND FOUND clerks were exclusively granted by Congress This carte-de-visite has a the ability to open mail to examine its conmark on the back indicating tents for further clues as to the proposed it was taken in Davenport, destination. Still, regulations allowed clerks Iowa.

A possible clue to the to read only the bare minimum to try to soldier’s identity? parse out names, locations, or other identifying information. These clerks needed a keen knowledge of geography and colloquial use of language to aid them in their pursuit.

During the mid-19th century, most of the dozen or so DLO clerks were women and retired clergymen. They were believed to possess a superior moral character and could therefore be trusted with the cherished and sometimes priceless contents of these dead letters.

Great care was taken to protect and return as many letters as possible, especially those with any monetary value.

“A ‘money letter’ has five different records before it leaves the Dead Letter Office and is so checked and counter-checked as to make collusion or abstraction almost impossible, in case any soul who surveyed it were fatally tempted,” according to Mary Clemmer Ames in her 1874 book Ten Years

MELISSA A. WINN COLLECTION

D

uring the Civil War years, hundreds of thousands of young men left home for the front lines, traveling out of their state or hometown for the first time in their lives.

Unaccustomed to the separation and the sometimes-stifling loneliness of war, they wrote home.

But many were poorly educated or had never even addressed a letter, and the recipient’s name and address on the envelopes were undecipherable. Sweeping changes to recent postage requirements and the interruption of mail in the seceded states also heavily impacted the delivery of letters. Those letters that could not be delivered, for whatever reason, were processed by the Dead Letter Office.

Established in 1825, the Dead Letter Office, located in Washington, D.C., was designated to investigate undeliverable mail, with the intent of

introduction to a new comrade who kept the soldier company during the homesick days of war?

By the end of the conflict, thousands of these photos remained undelivered, with most estimates around 5,000. They lingered in a portfolio of sorts in a Post Office storeroom, with little hope of finding their destination, until Third Postmaster General Alexander Zevely, who served from 1859-1869, conjured up an innovative idea—he ordered them to be displayed in the Dead Letter Office Museum.

T

he Dead Letter Office Museum housed an eclectic combination of items that represented both the Post Office Department’s history and showcased some of the more curious objects that passed through the DLO each year, including unusual trinkets, loaded pistols, various bottles and boxes, and even a skull.

CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES

MELISSA A. WINN COLLECTION

in Washington: Life and Scenes in the National Capital, As a Woman Sees Them, which documented the inner workings of the Dead Letter Office.

For items such as advertisements or circulars, or those that were never claimed or could not be delivered, the clerks oversaw their disposal—except Civil War soldiers’ photographs. Although these items technically should have been disposed of, according to Lynn Heidelbaugh, a curator at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, they never were. And, driven by a sense of patriotism or devotion, one supposes, to the men who served the Union cause, the DLO continued to try to reunite them with their intended recipients, long after the war ended.

Enclosed with letters home, the photographs came in the form of cartes-de-visite or tintypes.

PAPER CHASE Most were of a single soldier, maybe posed in Dead letters were front of a military-themed painted backdrop and counted, numbered, and decked out in full kit, ceremoniously documenttied up into packages of ing his participation in the monumental war rag100, then sifted through ing on the nation’s own soil. Some photographs on the “opening table,” included more than one soldier. Brothers, maybe? depicted here, by the Friends from back home? Did they all know the date of reception. recipient, or was the photograph meant as an

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OPPOSITE PAGE: GEORGE EASTMAN MUSEUM; THIS PAGE: KURT LUTHER COLLECTION (2); MELISSA A. WINN COLLECTION

PHOTO CREDIT

OPPOSITE PAGE: GEORGE EASTMAN MUSEUM; THIS PAGE: KURT LUTHER COLLECTION (2); MELISSA A. WINN COLLECTION

PHOTO CREDIT

Each photograph was posted to a board with a brass clip on top and one on bottom, the traces of which are still visible on the images today.

The photos were identified with red-ink numerals, which family and friends used to claim a familiar face off the board.

The museum was an oddity and a popular tourist attraction, which Zevely hoped would help put more eyes on the soldier images. At his request, the portraits were attached to panels with brass clips in groups of 36 images, or four rows of nine images each, and numbered with those telltale red-ink numerals.

Museum visitors would scan the image panels and the thousands of stranded faces they displayed, seeking a brother, a husband, a father, a neighbor, a sweetheart, often one lost to the war. The display itself was a moving tribute to the military men who had sacrificed years and sometimes their last full measure of devotion to the Union. They included soldiers, sailors, officers, young and sometimes old. They posed with rifles and sabers, pistols crammed into their standard issue leather belts, cartridge boxes strung across their chest. They donned kepis and Hardee hats and represented states East to West. Some men looked fresh and keen. Others appeared war-weary, with worn brogans and tattered sack coats. It was a stunning display of the Union front line.

When a familiar face presented itself, a loved one would claim it by number. A clerk would remove the image and write in its place on the board the date NEVER-ENDING VOYAGE of its removal and the name and location of While most DLO images the person receiving the image—at long are of soldiers who last going home. On June 17, 1874, Mr. F. served on land, there Poplain claimed the photo of Lieutenant are some, like this S. Roderick of the 19th Iowa Infantry, one, of Navy men. This according to an extant panel. On October officer’s family never 16, 1902, Edward Marsh of the 10th New got to see his well-posed York Battery claimed a photo of himself, portrait, complete with some 40 years after he had placed it in the binoculars. mail. It is impossible now to say how many JUNE 2021 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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PHOTO BOOTH Soldiers posed for portraits in camp studios set up by photographers following the armies, top. Some painted backdrops have been linked to specific army sites, like the one above from Benton Barracks.

34

USAHEC; MELISSA A. WINN COLLECTION

B

ound in an album, these photographs could also now travel, and the Dead Letter Office took the opportunity to exhibit the album at world’s fairs across the country, where new sets of eyes could peruse the thousands of soldier photographs that remained unclaimed. At the 1898 Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition in Omaha, Neb., the daughter of Civil War veteran J.J. Gorman claimed her father’s photograph, which had been sent during the war, from Indianapolis to South Bend, while he was serving with the 86th Indiana Infantry. It had been in the DLO exhibit for 35 years, according to a report about the fair.

“There is a melancholy collection from the dead letter office, including two cases of photographs of soldiers which were sent and miscarried during the Civil War,” noted a reporter for the local Omaha newspaper. “Looking at them, I thought how young were most of the faces….”

The fairs offered some new success stories, but with several decades now since the war had passed, they were few and far between.

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SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL POSTAL MUSEUM; MELISSA A. WINN COLLECTION

of these often-emotional reunions occurred, but some estimates put the number as high as 2,000.

The Dead Letter Office also advertised descriptive lists of the photographs in newspapers and journals of the Grand Army of the Republic. In the early 1890s, the photographs and panels were cleaned and bound into an album, one panel per page. At this time, the DLO also began working with veterans’ groups to track down the descendants of any of the photographs that might have identifying information on it. The G.A.R.’s Meade Post in Philadelphia, for example, inspected the photographs and removed all those with inscriptions, then turned them over to G.A.R. headquarters in Washington, D.C., for further help identifying them and delivering them to their rightful owners.

These extraordinary efforts to reunite the soldier photographs with their recipients, went “above and beyond the standard operating procedure” of the DLO, says Heidelbaugh. “I think it shows how deep the scars of the war were for the United States and that people were dealing with the aftermath very personally and in a very tangible way.”

‘HELD FOR

POSTAGE’

SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL POSTAL MUSEUM; MELISSA A. WINN COLLECTION

USAHEC; MELISSA A. WINN COLLECTION

STAMP ACT New postage requirements created an influx of letters to the Dead Letter Office after the outbreak of the Civil War. Post Office officials created a “Soldier’s Letter” stamp, above, to move soldier mail through.

In the summer of 1861, two consequences of the war significantly increased the volume of mail ending up at the Dead Letter Office in Washington, D.C.: Soldiers sending letters without proper postage and the shuttering of federal post offices in the seceded states.

Before 1856, letters could be sent “postage due” and the cost of mail delivery would be collected from the recipient.

In 1856, however, a law was passed that required prepayment of all mail with postage stamps. Those letters without proper postage would be “held for postage.” The sender, if identifiable, would be notified of the postage due. If left unpaid after a brief period of time, however, the letter would now be sent to the Dead Letter Office. On May 1, 1861, a new post office regulation further eliminated the notification to addressees to prepay the postage and the letters were immediately delivered to the Dead Letter Office. With so many soldiers in camp lacking the money to buy postage stamps or any place to buy them, the influx of these unpaid letters to the Dead Letter Office was stifling. In his annual report of 1861, Postmaster General Montgomery Blair wrote, “By immediately sending this class of letters to the dead letter office, it was expected that a proper compliance with the law would be enforced, but so far from this being the case, the number after one year’s trial exceeds ten thousand each month, and the attention they require imposes considerable additional labor and expense on this department.”

In 1862, Third Assistant Postmaster General Alexander N. Zevely sought to curtail the situation by creating a “Soldier’s Letter” stamp which would move dead letters identified as

originating from a soldier through the delivery process despite a lack of proper postage.

Second, at the behest of Blair, mail service in the seceded states was suspended May 31, 1861, just before the Confederate Post Office Department assumed control of its own postal system on June 1. Much of the mail intended to move between the North and the South ended up in the Dead Letter Office as undeliverable or unpaid mail. In his 1861 report, Blair said, “From the 1st of June to the 1st of November there were received at the dead letter office, in consequence of the suspension of postal communication, 76,769 letters, originating in loyal States, and addressed to residents in disloyal States. Of this number, there were returned to the writers, 26,711. During the same period 34,792 foreign letters, destined for that section, were returned as ‘dead,’ and 2,246 of them were delivered in the loyal States to authorized agents of the parties addressed, making the whole number sent out 103,886, which is considerably more than three times the quantity sent out during the previous year, when the number was unusually large. In addition to the above, about 40,000 letters from disloyal States, addressed to parties in the loyal States, were sent to the dead letter office after the suspension of the postal service, a large proportion of which were forwarded to their destination.”

The Confederate Post Office also designated a Dead Letter Office, which was located in Richmond, Va., although records indicate most of the mail that ended up there was destroyed. –M.A.W.

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GENERAL POST OFFICE BUILDING

STILL TRAVELING FAR FROM THEIR

INTENDED

DESTINATION 36

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HEIDI CAMPBELL-SHOAF COLLECTION; MELISSA A. WINN COLLECTION

DEAD LETTER OFFICE PHOTOGRAPHS CONTINUE TO CIRCULATE,

In 1917, during World War I, the accumulation of mail ending up in the Dead Letter Office again became suffocating, and the now more complicated delivery of it throughout the expanded United States prompted the Dead Letter Office to set up satellite offices across the country. It was the first time all dead letters were not directed just to Washington, D.C. Eventually, most of the satellite offices became obsolete and were shuttered, including the Washington, D.C. office. Today, the Dead Letter Office exists as the USPS Mail Recovery Center in Atlanta, Ga.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; RICHARD CARLILE COLLECTION (2)

During the Civil War, the Dead Letter Office was located in the General Post Office building in Washington, D.C. Designed by architect Robert Mills, it was opened in 1842, and was the first all-marble clad exterior in the capital. In 1855, Thomas Ustick Walter, the architect who designed the Capitol dome, began to oversee the General Post Office’s expansion, which was halted during the Civil War, while the Union used the building’s basement as munitions storage. Walter’s addition was completed in 1866 and Union Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs engineered the addition’s inbuilt mechanical heating and cooling system.

HEIDI CAMPBELL-SHOAF COLLECTION; MELISSA A. WINN COLLECTION

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; RICHARD CARLILE COLLECTION (2)

In 1911, the Dead Letter Office Museum closed. The album of soldier photographs lingered in the Dead Letter Office for a time, still available for the now infrequent observer, but by the 1930s it was placed in storage. In the 1940s, embroiled in World War II, the government decided to free up storage space at the Post Office building and the album was divided and sold. In 1948, collector Philip Medicus sold 10 panels, with about 360 photos, to the George Eastman Museum, in Rochester, N.Y., where they remain today.

Argus Ogborn, an Indiana collector, sold off his collection of about 1,400 DLO photographs in 1982. He recorded his name and a catalog number on everything he collected, including his hundreds of DLO cartes-de-visite. His name and “No. 409” can be found on the back of almost every DLO image that passed through his hands. They still turn up on the collector’s market today, where undelivered DLO photographs continue to circulate, still traveling far from their intended destination.

“They were lost in the mails of the 1860s and never found their rightful owners,” says Dave Taylor, who purchased most of Ogborn’s collection from him. “With any luck, today’s owners will appreciate them as individual pieces of Civil War history that have finally come to rest in their proper place.”

“They are very touching,” says Ronn Palm, who owns and displays one of the panels with many of the DLO images still attached to it at his Museum of Civil War Images in Gettysburg.

“The letter that never made it. The story that never got told.”

In my own personal collection, in addition to the soldier with the fur cap, I have a dozen or more of these poignant images. They seem to hold on to a peculiar sense of loneliness—a sentiment, interrupted. Their faces proud, or stoic, jovial, or determined. Some of them reveal the lost eagerness of a youthful boy who has “seen the elephant.” They were fathers, sons, husbands, brothers, lovers. I wonder what parting words of affection they meant to deliver that never were said. I wonder if the soldiers ever made it home, even though, despite the valiant efforts of a healing nation to deliver them, their photographs never did.

Melissa A. Winn is the Director of Photography for Civil War Times magazine, a writer, and a collector of Civil War photographs. She thanks Kurt Luther, Ph.D., Virginia Tech, for introducing her to Dead Letter Office images and informing some of the research used here on the topic.

PHOTOGRAPHY BECOMES

AFFORDABLE

SOCIAL MEDIA Small, inexpensive photographs could now be shared and traded with friends and family.

Two mid-19th century inventions, the tintype and the carte-devisite, made photographs affordable and accessible to a general population. Invented in 1856, the tintype is not actually tin at all, but iron. The term was a nickname for the more technicalsounding ferrotype and the hard-to-pronounce melainotype.

An improvement upon the earlier ambrotype technology, in which a negative image was exposed on a glass plate and the back painted black for the picture to be viewable, tintypes used the same process but substituted a less expensive iron plate blackened by Japan varnish. The medium reached its peak use from 1860 to 1865.

The carte-de-visite, named for its resemblance in size to the popular visiting card of the era, is a photograph printed on paper, then mounted on cardstock. Unlike earlier photos which were one of a kind, these images were made using a negative and thus could be produced in quantity. The technique was known as an albumen print since the picture was created using a glass negative on paper that was coated with egg white. Invented in 1854, cartes-de-visite were sold by the dozen. By the early 1860s, the U.S. had experienced a craze in collecting and exchanging these “card portraits.” Easy to tuck into an envelope with a letter home, they were particularly popular with Civil War soldiers. The height of their use was between 1859-1870. –Heidi Campbell-Shoaf JUNE 2021 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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UNION TROOPERS WITH A

SOUTHERN TWANG

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ALABAMA CAVALRYMEN SPEARHEADED GENERAL SHERMAN’S MARCH TO THE SEA



BY CLAY T O N JO NAH BU T LER



HARD WARRIORS Union soldiers ravage a plantation during the March to the Sea. The 1st Alabama seemed to delight at hard war and even earned official reprimands for being too brutal.

LEBRECHT MUSIC & ARTS/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

YELLOWHAMMERS IN BLUE SUITS All these men rode with the 1st Alabama Cavalry. From top left, clockwise: Captains Phillip Sternberg and Erasmus Chandler; 1st Lt. James Swift was killed in action on October 26, 1863, near Joel’s Plantation, Ga.; and Major Micaiah Fairfield. Left: 1st Lt William Gray was a quartermaster.

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; HERITAGE AUCTIONS (4)

W

hen Major General William Tecumseh Sherman prepared to set out from Atlanta in the fall of 1864, he tapped the 1st Alabama Cavalry—a regiment of White volunteers recruited from within the heart of the Confederacy—for a key role in the campaign to come. From the commencement of hostilities, United States military and political leadership had sought loyal white Southerners willing to carry the torch of Union to the seat of secession. Now, the 1st Alabama would help to do so.

Who were these men? How did they come to reject the Confederacy and embrace the Union in the most uncompromising terms? And how does their turn at the head of Sherman’s army, helping Uncle Billy bring his brand of hard war to the Deep South, add to our understanding of one of the war’s most infamous chapters?

In deploying the 1st Alabama, Sherman made it clear that he did not make war on the South; he made war on disloyalty and treason. Many of the White Southerners who joined the 1st Alabama exhibited a marked hostility toward the secessionist planter class that had arrogated to themselves the lion’s share of political and economic power in the region and brought on the crisis. A number had already suffered serious depredations at the hands of Confederate partisans before the appearance of Union forces in 1862 and sought revenge whenever they had the opportunity. Sherman determined to give them one when he unleashed them in Georgia.

The core of the 1st Alabama Cavalry hailed from the northern section of the state for which it was named. Unlike the black belt of Alabama, which contained the majority of its slaveowners and enslaved people, the upcountry counties at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains displayed a marked ambivalence—if not pronounced opposition—to secession in the winter of 1860-61. Upcountry residents, explains historian Margaret Storey, were often only marginally part of “Alabama’s staple crop and slave economy,” and had far less frequent contact with African Americans or people who were not smallholding farmers like themselves.

Many hill country neighborhoods remained quite insular. As a result, the election of a Republican president and the prospect of the abolition of slavery—as utterly unpalatable as the concept undoubtedly seemed to them—did not amount to a justification for the dissolution of the Union as it did in other parts of the Deep South. Northern Alabama’s geographic isolation and unusual economic and social circumstances fostered a hidden wellspring of Unionism in the heart of the

NORTHERN ALABAMA’S GEOGRAPHIC ISOLATION

FOSTERED A HIDDEN

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; HERITAGE AUCTIONS (4)

WELLSPRING OF UNIONISM Confederacy. After the ordinance of secession passed, many White Alabamians continued to resist the imposition of Confederate authority— even in the state where the country officially came into existence—and welcomed the Union Army as liberators when elements first began to arrive in 1862.

In February of that year, after an early foray up the Tennessee River, Admiral Andrew H. Foote reported to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles that “Union sentiment in…North Alabama [is] very strong,” and added that he would call for an infantry regiment to accompany the next gunboat up the river, “which will aid the loyal people…to raise Union forces within their borders.

DIFFERENT WORLDS IN ONE STATE Men in the 1st Alabama came from the 10 upcountry counties outlined in this September 1861 slave density map, based on the 1860 census.

The low population of slaves in these counties graphically contrasts with that of the darker counties in the “Black Belt,” so named for the region’s dark, rich soil and large slave population.

J.R. Phillips, a 26-year-old farmer from Fayette County, was one of those holding out for such an opportunity. He had suffered terrific abuse from Confederate neighbors over the course of 1861, but wrote that he “cherished the hope that Uncle Sam would surely put them all to death at an early day, and I stood it the best I could.” He explained that, “it was firmly fixed in my mind that I would never go back on ‘Old Glory.’ I had heard too much from my old grandparents and Aunt Jennie about the sufferings and privations they had to endure during the Revolutionary War to ever engage against the ‘Stars and Stripes.’”

B

y the summer of 1862, following a series of hard-fought victories, the Union Army had established a foothold deep within the Confederacy and could boast more than 100,000 soldiers in Mississippi alone. This allowed beleaguered Unionists to begin to come out of the woodwork. Like Foote, Colonel Abel D. Streight was moved to JUNE 2021 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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comment on the dogged Unionist sentiment he encountered. “[I]f there could be a sufficient force in that portion of the country to protect these people,” he said, “there could be at least two full regiments raised of as good and true men as ever defended the American flag….They have been shut out from all communication with any thing but their enemies for a year and a half, and yet they stand firm and true.”

As soon as Federal troops had firmly established themselves at Corinth, Miss., White and Black refugee supporters of the Union started to filter into the lines, often taking great risks to do so. By the fall, there were enough to incorporate a regiment of volunteers. Part of a larger reorganization resulting in the creation of the 16th Corps, the 1st Alabama Cavalry was officially organized in October and mustered into service on December 18. Ever-resourceful Brig. Gen. Grenville M. Dodge spearheaded the effort, and

would eventually assign one of his understudies, George E. Spencer, to the regiment’s command. J.R. Phillips, one of those who made it through the lines, enlisted in Company L. “Once in uniform, mounted, well armed and equipped with everything we needed,” he remembered, “one cannot imagine how happy and brave we all felt…we felt like we could whip the whole Rebel Army.”

Initially, the 1st Alabama Cavalry engaged in typical mounted assignments such as reconnaissance and short-range raids. In April 1863, several companies of the 1st participated in Streight’s Raid, an ill-fated cavalry operation aimed at destroying portions of the Western & Atlantic Railroad running between Atlanta and Chattanooga. Poorly planned and executed (the men rode mules), it ended in embarrassment. Four regiments of Confederate cavalry led by Brig. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest quickly caught up with Streight and pursued him and his men across Alabama. Through a clever piece of deception typical of Forrest, the Confederates tricked Streight into thinking he was outnumbered and induced him to surrender his command near the Georgia border.

The Confederate press, made aware that among those captured were White Alabamians fighting for the Union, excoriated them as rank traitors and Tories. “No punishment is too great for such wretches,” declared the incredulous Montgomery Daily Advertiser, “and if justice has her own they will speedily grace the gallows.” Despicable as they undoubtedly were, the editorial argued, Northerners “are angels of light as compared with the craven scoundrels who DECEIVED have turned against their own mother, and engaged in the The 1st Alabama’s work of robbery and outrage on their neighbors.” initial raid came

A SERGEANT’S SMITH Sergeant Madison Barton carried this Smith carbine while serving in the 1st Alabama.

Barton’s four brothers and three brothers-in-law also enlisted in the 1st, illustrating the close family connections that could be found in the regiment, and how united some families in Alabama’s upcountry were in their dislike of the Confederacy.

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TENNESSEE STATE LIBRARY AND ARCHIVE; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

C

onfederates expressed bewilderment and rage at the existence of these internal enemies. On a different occasion, after clashing with the 1st Alabama near the Mississippi border in October 1863, Brig. Gen. Samuel W. Ferguson wondered at the fact that, “in the very center of the Confederacy,” he had found “men wearing the enemy’s uniform, killed—as some were—within [a] half mile of their own houses.” Ferguson hopefully but wrongly reported to his superior Maj. Gen. Stephen D. Lee that he had “succeeded in effectually destroying the First Alabama Tory Regiment.” He would encounter them again, when he offered ineffectual resistance to Sherman’s march through Georgia.

The 1st Alabama increasingly engaged in hard war tactics as the war dragged on. At one point, Colonel Spencer informed a “rough” pro-Confederate Alabama woman that his regiment, “were the children of Israel bringing the plague on them.” In 1864, the regiment was placed under the command of General Sherman, and continued to hone their notorious reputation during the campaign against Atlanta.

They saw action at Resaca, Dallas, Kennesaw Mountain, and Jonesboro, establishing their pedigree as a reliable and effec-

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; PHOTO COURTESY OF MORPHY AUCTIONS, WWW.MORPHYAUCTIONS.COM

to grief when its commander, Colonel Abel Streight, pictured here, was tricked into surrender.

FAMILIAR ENEMIES Confederate Brigadier General Samuel Ferguson, far left, despised the 1st as “Tories.” Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest, left, captured members of the 1st during Colonel Streight’s ill-fated 1863 raid. entered the Confederate Army before deserting and joining Union forces that summer. Enlisting as a private, he rose to the rank of lieutenant.

On the March to the Sea, in Baldwin County near Milledgeville, he took his opportunity for revenge, and went out of his way to lead a raid against his uncle’s plantation. Sherman later recalled the episode in his memoirs:

CONFEDERATES EXPRESSED

BEWILDERMENT AND RAGE AT THE EXISTENCE OF THESE

TENNESSEE STATE LIBRARY AND ARCHIVE; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; PHOTO COURTESY OF MORPHY AUCTIONS, WWW.MORPHYAUCTIONS.COM

INTERNAL ENEMIES tive cavalry unit. When Sherman called upon the 1st Alabama to play a prominent role in his March to the Sea, and selected a portion of Company I as his personal escort, he had both symbolic and pragmatic reasons for the choice.

The 1st Alabama often spearheaded Maj. Gen. Francis P. Blair Jr.’s column of the march. A common refrain of Blair’s orders placed “the First Alabama Cavalry…moving in advance,” and the regiment consistently led the 17th Corps en route to Savannah. Making up the vanguard, the 1st most often received orders to secure towns, ferries, bridges, and railroads in advance of the main host. The men often seemed to take special glee in the destruction and seizure of Confederate property. Given license to vent their frustration toward their late countrymen, they sometimes overindulged their desire for retribution.

The conduct of Spencer’s men even earned the colonel an official sanction. “The major-General commanding directs me to say to you,” read the reprimand, “that the outrages committed by your command during the march are becoming so common, and are of such an aggravated nature, that they call for some severe and instant mode of correction. Unless the pillaging of houses and wanton destruction of property by your regiment ceases at once, he will place every officer in it under arrest, and recommend them to the department commander for dishonorable dismissal from the service.”

The 1st became notorious on the March to the Sea, writes historian Joseph T. Glatthaar, because they “felt they had a right to retaliate for the way pro-Confederate southerners had pillaged their family homes, imprisoned family members, and drove them from their communities.”

For Lieutenant David R. Snelling, commander of Company I, the campaign represented something of a homecoming. Employed as a colporteur in central Georgia before the war, Snelling “knew every stream and crossroads, and kept by the side of ‘Uncle Billy’ all the way, to post the old man.”

In his youth, Snelling’s uncle had forced him to work in the fields side-byside with his slaves, engendering a deep hatred for both planters and slavery in the young man that resulted in a dedicated Unionism. Faced with conscription in 1862, Snelling, like a number of his comrades, had initially

Lieutenant Snelling, who commanded my escort, was a Georgian, and recognized [an] old negro, a favorite slave of his uncle, who resided about six miles off; but the old slave did not at first recognize his young master in our uniform…his attention was then drawn to Snelling’s face, when he fell on his knees and thanked God that he had found his young master alive and along with the Yankees. Snelling inquired all about his uncle and the family, [and] asked my permission to go and pay his uncle a visit, which I granted, of course.

Leading a detail to the site of his prewar suffering, Snelling had his men make off with as many provisions as they could carry and pointedly destroyed the cotton gin. “The uncle,” wrote Sherman, “was not cordial, by any means, to find his nephew in the ranks of the host that was desolating the land.”

I

n the end, Sherman did not punish the 1st for its seemingly vindictive destruction. In general, it fit his policy. “The fact is,” writes historian Terry L. Seip, “Spencer and his men were pretty much doing what Sherman wanted done, he knew Spencer and the Alabamians were capable of doing it, and the regiment remained in the vanguard.”

Leading the line could carry risks, however.

On December 8, as the regiment approached Savannah, a “torpedo”—or mine—exploded in its path, leaving Lieutenant Francis W. Tupper’s horse dead and his leg “blown to pieces.” Tupper survived the wound, but lost his leg. Sherman arrived on the scene quickly, where he ascertained that “a torpedo trodden on by [Tupper’s] horse had exploded, killing the horse and literally blowing off all the flesh from one of his legs.” Still troubled by the incident when he wrote his memoirs, Sherman declared: “[T]his was not war, but murder, and it made me very JUNE 2021 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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GONE FOR A SOLDIER: THE CIVIL WAR MEMOIRS OF ALFRED BELLARD

UNDERLYING DANGER Torpedoes, like this one sketched by a New Jersey private in 1862, lay in the 1st’s path during the March to the Sea, and severely wounded one trooper near Savannah, Ga., on December 8, 1864.

angry.” Sherman then ordered forward a THE DOTTED LINE group of Confederate prisoners whom he Through rain and snow, forced to act as minesweepers, “so as to the 1st Alabama Cavalry explode their own torpedoes, or to discover led the 17th Corps from and dig them up. They begged hard, but I Atlanta to Savannah, Ga. On reiterated the order, and could hardly help one occasion, the troopers laughing at their stepping so gingerly along raided the Milledgeville the road.” plantation of a lieutenant's This one incident notwithstanding, the 1st relative with no remorse.

Alabama faced only sporadic opposition and relatively little danger on the March to the Sea. Confederate Brig. Gen. Samuel W. Ferguson, who believed he had destroyed the “Tory regiment” in October 1863, led some of the cavalrymen who feebly harassed the Union forces, but by the winter of 1864 the tables had turned. Confederate resistance proved ineffectual and made little dent in the men’s morale. After securing the surrender of Savannah around Christmastime, Colonel Spencer wrote to General Dodge, now commanding the Department of Missouri in St. Louis, informing him that, “we have had a delightful trip & all enjoyed it.” Without a hint of modesty, he added that he had “done all the fighting that was done by our Column (the 17th Corps) & have made a reputation for both myself & Regiment.” On December 27, when Sherman formally reviewed the troops, Blair placed the 1st Alabama Cavalry at the head of the line—in a hardearned place of distinction and source of pride for the loyal men of the Deep South.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS (2)

GONE FOR A SOLDIER: THE CIVIL WAR MEMOIRS OF ALFRED BELLARD

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t the end of the year, a short profile of the regiment circulated in the national press. “Let me say a few words in behalf of the gallant First Alabama,” began a correspondent of the New York Daily Herald, “for it has seldom, if ever, received credit for its valuable services.”

The article recounted the unusual regiment’s contributions in the Atlanta Campaign and the March to the Sea when it had “rendered signal service” and praised Colonel Spencer as a “distinguished [and] efficient” commander. “In the ranks of this regiment are to be found some of the original true blue Southern Unionists,” the piece concluded, and “it is needless for me to speak of the intelligence and patriotism of this patriotic body of Alabamians, for their severe denunciation of the rebellion and McClellanism is the best proof of that, but their stainless military record I deemed worthy of more than passing notice. All honor to the 1st Alabama Cavalry, and may their lives be spared to reap the rich reward of their unadulterated loyalty.”

Ultimately, however, the postwar period was fraught with almost as much difficulty for these Yellowhammer State Unionists as their beginning had been. Though they enjoyed a brief ascendancy during the Radical phase of Reconstruction, during which time Colonel (now General) Spencer became Alabama’s first Republican Senator, by the middle of the 1870s Democrats had regained control of state politics and former Unionists once again found themselves relegated to the margins of society. Their failure to form a lasting SOUTHERN UNIONIST LEADER social and political alliance with African Americans helped New York–born Colonel George Spencer requested a transfer from pave the way for the “redemption” of the former Confederacy a staff position to lead the 1st Alabama. He parlayed his Union and left them once again on the outside looking in, feeling as Army success into a postwar political career. though, and treated as though, they had fought on the losing side of the war.

In the latter stages of the 19th century, White Alabama Unionists orgaAlabama’s Union veterans felt no obligation to nized posts of the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.), but their adherdefend the civil rights of their African-American ence to strict segregationist policies increasingly isolated them from the former comrades against their mutual former national community of Union veterans. In 1891, the senior vice-comfoe. This did not sit well with many G.A.R. mander of Alabama argued that, “such close comradeship as our order members outside the former Confederacy, who insisted that (at least de jure) equal legal status inspires, will not permit of the introduction of this element into our ranks… at least here in the South where the question of race enters so largely into before the law had constituted one of the principles enshrined by Union victory. the subjects affecting man’s happiness and success.” White Union veterans in the Deep South showed themselves willing to wear the same uniform in Unwilling to embrace their black fellow-Union war but not in peace. As they organized to commemorate their service, veterans, shunned by both their unrepentant and rehabilitated former Confederate neighbors, White Unionists throughout the Deep South TIP OF THE SPEAR began to fade out of Civil War memory. Today, The 1st served under the little visible evidence remains of the obstinate command of the 17th Corps, White Unionism that existed in the heart of the Confederacy, and they are little remembered. Yet which used an arrow as a White Southerners also had a part to play. Some badge, when it spearheaded even marched with Sherman through Georgia, the March to the Sea. Before and they ought not to be forgotten. that, it served under the

circular cross of the 16th Corps.

Clayton J. Butler is a postdoctoral scholar at the Nau Center for Civil War History and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 2020. He is currently at work on his first book, which is under contract with Louisiana State University Press.

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RISKY BUSINESS Arsenals favored women for making cartridges because their smaller hands were considered more nimble and suitable for the hazardous task. These workers toil at the Watertown, Mass., arsenal.

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The war in their words

‘A Terrific

Explosion Was Heard’

An eyewitness describes

horrible 1862 Allegheny Arsenal  explosion  the

d BY RICH CONDON D n Memorial Day 1889, Civil War veterans gathered with civilians at the Allegheny Cemetery in Lawrenceville, Pa., just east of Pittsburgh, to reminisce and remember those lost not only on the battlefield but on the home front as well.

Notably, Lawrenceville was the site of the war’s largest industrial and home-front disaster—the Allegheny Arsenal explosion of September 17, 1862. A simple obelisk had been placed near the southern end of the cemetery to memorialize that day’s horrific events. Below it lay the unidentified remains of about 40 of the 78 workers who had perished in the blast and subsequent fire. Family members, friends, and survivors solemnly laid flowers about the site and listened to a powerful eulogy delivered by the Rev. Richard Lea, a local pastor who had experienced the tragedy firsthand.

Although overshadowed in national periodicals by the Battle of Antietam, occurring the same day, the arsenal accident continued to resonate heavily with the local community for more than a century. On September 18, 1862, John Symington, the arsenal’s colonel of ordnance,

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PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY AUSTIN STAHL

noted that “the whole proceeds of the day…exploded, amounting to about 125,000 of .71 and .54 [caliber] small arm cartridges, and 175 rounds of field ammunition assorted for 12-pounder and 10-pounder Parrott guns.” Though Lawrenceville was far from the battlefields, the thought of that day conjured up warlike memories for survivors and witnesses alike. As military veterans honored their fallen on battlefields postwar, Lawrence­ville’s civilians likewise paid their respects at the hallowed ground of the arsenal.

A native of Coventry, England, Lea had served as a pastor in the Pittsburgh area for at least 55 years—a majority of that period at the Lawrenceville Presbyterian Church, which stood less than a block away from the arsenal grounds. He was a revered member of the community who oversaw a large congregation and was regarded for his compassion. Lea, in fact, had borne witness to warlike imagery at the arsenal. One of the first to arrive in the wake of the explosion, after the first of three blasts shattered most of his church’s windows about 2 p.m., the reverend scaled the arsenal wall and began rendering aid to the wounded and providing comfort to the dying. Lea soon discovered that three of his parishioners were among the departed.

On September 28, 1862, Lea delivered a stirring sermon to his congregation chronicling the horrors he had witnessed. The following account illustrates his experiences in graphic detail.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)

THE MAIN GATE Workers who toiled at the arsenal would have passed through the main gate, pictured above. From 1891 to 1911, Pittsburgh officially dropped the “h” from its name, hence the spelling. At right, an original copy of Reverend Richard Lea’s September 17, 1889, memorial address.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY AUSTIN STAHL

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)

“THE UNCERTAINTY OF HUMAN LIFE was never more strikingly shown in this community than upon the memorable 17th day of September, 1862. The morning was calm and beautiful, and until noon nothing unusual occurred at the Allegheny Arsenal. It was pay day, and the noble Union girls, who had toiled all the month, were rejoicing over the reception of the fruit of their labor. The shop had been swept, and among the leavings, some loose powder was scattered over the stony road winding around the beautiful grounds. A wagon was passing, when either the iron of the wheel or horse’s shoe struck fire. In an instant a terrific explosion was heard, shaking the earth, and inflicting injury upon the surrounding buildings. Amidst a dense column of smoke, and a bright sheet of flame, were seen fragments of the building, mixed with portions of the human frame, rising high into the atmosphere, and then falling in a horrid shower all around.

Some panic-stricken persons shouted: ‘The magazine is on fire!’ Repeated explosions, and the wild confusion, seemed to confirm the awful report. In this dreadful stage some were thoughtful and calm—others prayed and wept, while many rushed, horror-stricken, they knew not whither. A few stopped not until they were miles from the scene of danger. Several were picked up insensible, and when consciousness returned, were unable to tell whither they were going or wherefore they had fled.

But amidst all this dismay and fearful consternation and apprehension of still worse to come, when the magazine should explode, there were many who entered the gates and climbed the walls, determined to aid, or die in the attempt. The doors of the large building near the entrance to the park were closed, and the frantic girls, supposing themselves confined for certain burning, without hope of escape, pushed and trod upon each other, screaming and leaping from the windows, seeking avenues of escape, or sitting down in dumb despair.

Strange that more were not mangled here; as it was, serious injuries were inflicted, and terror was added to the scene.

But the central terror was the burning laboratory. Here one hundred and fifty-six girls were ready to resume their labors, and were, almost without a moment’s warning, wrapped in flames, or violently thrown from the building; a few ran, or were blown out into the yard, and escaped; some were rescued by the daring of friends, but the majority met death instantaneously—perhaps hardly knowing the cause of their death. The fire was so fierce, the sulphur so suffocating, that an instant was sufficient to extinguish all sensibility. Some were dragged

“the central terror

WAS THE

burning laboratory”

Superintendent Alexander McBride made a diagram of the laboratory that exploded on September 17, 1862, which was published in the Pittsburgh Dispatch, and is adapted below. The initial blast of gunpowder barrels occurred at letter “A,” and carried to letter “B,” the largest explosion. A third explosion occurred at letter “C.” All the workers in that detached cluster of buildings escaped. McBride tallied 69 deaths, but nine more bodies were later found.

10

1. Cartridge room, 22 killed

8

9

2. Cartridge room, 18 killed

C

3. Cartridge room, 24 killed 4. Percussion cap room, 5 killed

6

5

5. McBride’s office

7

6. Unoccupied 7. Cartridge room, no deaths 8. Cartridge room, no deaths

B

9. Cartridge room, no deaths

4

10. Engine room, no deaths

A 3

2

1

A. Initial explosion B. Second, largest blast C. Final explosion

from a mass of ruins who had died in each other’s arms; some were rescued who would recover. A few escaped without assistance, who will die of their injuries. Some could merely mention their names, or call for a priest, or for water, or for prayer, but all upon the ground were naked, blackened with powder, roasted, somewhat bloody, and with many the resemblance to the human form was completely lost.

Nothing but masses of flesh and charred bones remaining of what, such a short time before, was life and beauty. In most instances the skulls of those taken out dead were fearfully cracked. The victims lay about upon boards and shutters, amidst a horror-stricken crowd, the trees above holding fragments of female attire, mournfully waving to and fro over their former owners. It may be possible that a few were entirely consumed— not a distinguishable relic being left to testify respecting their untimely end. The building was utterly consumed, and the ashes were carefully raked for every vestige of its former occupants. The calamity was so sudden, so crushing, so wide-spread in its results, and the horrors so varied, that the large crowd which assembled seemed overwhelmed—the usual signs of sharp woe giving way to solemn remarks or the stillness of stupefaction.

When the fire was utterly subdued, the noise, the turmoil of the scene was over, then came the terrible, orderly process of identification and burial. A hand was identified outside the grounds by a ring upon the finger, a leg by a shoe upon the foot ; but in neither case was the former JUNE 2021 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY DIGITAL COLLECTIONS

Situated just outside the Pittsburgh city limits in the borough of Lawrenceville, the Allegheny Arsenal was established in 1814 on 30 acres of land sold to the U.S. Ordnance Department by the borough’s founder, William B. Foster. The arsenal grounds were bordered by 39th and 40th Streets, Penn Avenue, and the Allegheny River—the latter which connected to the broader Ohio River and served as a major highway in transporting munitions, weapons, and supplies westward.

By 1860 the arsenal encompassed 38 acres and employed a little more than 300 laborers; however, with war on the horizon, a larger workforce was required. At the height of the Civil War, approximately 1,200 men and women reported for duty at the arsenal. As reported by the site’s colonel of ordnance, John Symington, to the Ordnance Department on October 2, 1861, nearly 200 male employees had been fired after “matches were discovered among the bundles of cartridges prepared to be packed, in one of the rooms… I have discharged all the boys at work in that portion of the laboratory, and will supply their places with females…”

From that point on, a majority of those employed at the laboratory were women drawn from the surrounding community. With an efficient workforce in place, the laboratory’s WAR FORGE daily output of small arms ammunition The arsenal sign, above, now reached approximately 30,000 rounds, in addition to field artillery ordnance and variat the Heinz History Center, ous equipment for the Union Army. Even hung above the main gate, as after the devastating explosion on September seen on the previous page. The 17, 1862, manufacturing continued through huge facility also produced the end of the war and toward the end of the or contracted with local 19th century. tradesmen to make leather But with the decreased demand for miligoods like the cavalry tary supplies after the war, the arsenal saddlebags at right. decreased production and, as stated by the Pittsburgh Daily Post in 1897, was “counted as one of the best storage places in the country for munitions of war.” The arsenal grounds decayed with the onset of the 20th century, and by 1926 had been sold off to make way for urban development as well as a city space for public use—the appropriately named Arsenal Park. Few buildings from the Allegheny Arsenal still remain, although reminders of the site’s past are visible in sections of the park’s bordering wall, as well as Powder Magazine No. 2, which, although now a public restroom, is the only building present from the arsenal’s 1814 construction. —R.C.

COURTESY OF THE JOHN HEINZ HISTORY CENTER, OBJECT 92.55.2; PITTSBURGH HISTORIC MAPS ARCHIVE; COWAN’S AUCTIONS, DALLAS

Iron City Arsenal

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY DIGITAL COLLECTIONS

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owner of the fragments found. A parent would bend over some blackened corpse, examining minutely form, hair, any relic of dress, and then drop down silently if nothing was discovered, or shriek wildly if something certainly proved that these changed bodies were really the remains of their loved ones.

Parts of two days these affecting scenes were constantly witnessed, but after all the efforts of deeply interested friends and spectators, about forty were unrecognized. There they lay, subject to the minutest scrutiny, yet neither sister nor mother could tell which of these they had watched over from infancy, and had so lately parted from, with the farewell kiss, for the day, they supposed; but alas! it was a final adieu. The immense throng of people was a distinctive feature of the scene. Cars and all kinds of vehicles, loaded to their utmost capacity, and the sidewalks, crowded with passers to and fro, led by every imaginable impulse, irresistibly drawn to the gates within which such a fearful tragedy had been acted. The crowd was immense on Wednesday and Thursday, and for days continued lessening gradually, as though unwilling or unable altogether to escape at once from the terrible fascination of the place.

The Government provided plain black coffins for the un-distinguished remains. The Allegheny Cemetery donated a lot suitable for the internment. The bodies were gradually re-moved to their place of repose, and about three o’clock on the 18th, the mighty mass of human beings moved, accompanying the last body from the Arsenal to the grave. The mayors of both cities were there; the council and clergy

WALLED FORTRESS From its main gate along Penn Avenue, the arsenal followed the downward slope of the land until it reached the Allegheny River. The heights in the distance are on the river’s north bank.

Though most of the arsenal is long gone, artillery shells are still occasionally found.

of Lawrenceville; a number of carriages, and a countless multitude of all ages and classes walked in mournful order to the place.

It was a large, deep pit—unlike, in its vastness, any other grave; planks were laid across and from these, coffin after coffin was lowered to men below, who placed thirtynine coffins side by side, filled by those whom no one could recognize, but whom the whole community adopted and honored as sisters and brethren who fell at the post of duty. After the last coffin had been lowered, the friends of the deceased were invited to the front rank, upon the margin of the grave, opposite the officiating clergy. Brother Millar, of the Methodist Church, offered a prayer; Dr. Gracey read a portion of the book of Job; Reverend Andrews, pastor of the United Presbyterian Church, prayed; Reverend Lea, pastor of the Lawrenceville Presbyterian Church, made an address; and Reverend Edmonds, of the Episcopal Church, pronounced the benediction.

Blather Gibbs, of the Catholic Church, signified his intention of being present, but was officiating at the same time over the remains of other victims in St. Mary’s Cemetery, immediately adjoining. The dust was committed to dust until the morning of the resurrection, and a committee has been appointed to procure funds to erect a suitable monument to their memory.

Among these unrecognized remains were some dear to their own churches for their piety and virtues. They will be missed from the house of God. Three were members of this church—two by baptism and one by

The Government provided

plain black coffins FOR THE

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All classes were there, to sympathize, to do anything, mastering their own feelings as they attempted to console the sufferers. O! it was grand to see the heart of this community stirred to its inmost depths. The cloud had a silver lining; the sable pall was fringed with gold.

Upon the deep back ground of this woe was painted a picture of heroism and love upon which angels might gaze with admiration….

How could those dear girls know that by the grinding of a wheel or the dropping of a shell, such dire calamity would be instantly brought upon themselves. The opening of a bale of strange merchandise let out the ‘great plague’ of London: the careless management of a little fire in a small yard started the ‘great fire’ of Pittsburgh. We are so linked together; our lives or deaths depend so much upon others, over whom we have no control, that we should be always ready. A carelessly prepared prescription, a drunken captain or conductor, may work harm. Who could foretell what the firing of the first gun at Fort Sumter would bring about? It brought about remotely, the catastrophe of Wednesday. And who can tell what more it may bring?

In conversing with so many dying persons in so short a space of time, their final words would naturally leave a deep impression. One as soon as rescued, exclaimed, ‘Tell me truly, will I die?’

You will. ‘Then cover me and take me out of the crowd.’ Several cried frantically, ‘Send for a priest.’ One declared that her only hope was in the Mother of God. Another said, ‘I die, but Jesus died for me; I am safe.’ One from a dis-

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ALLEGHENY CEMETERY

GIRL, INTERRUPTED This is the only known image of a woman killed in the blast, Melinda Neckerman. She would have been familiar with these Allegheny Arsenal artifacts used to make cartridges, a multi-holed block for holding paper tubes in an upright position, and a wooden “table” that was used to help form and roll the rounds.

command or the presence of an insulting foe. One poor girl, who barely escaped with life, could hardly be prevented from rushing back to find her companion, and when hindered, wended her way slowly home, wailing, even upon a bed of pain, that her friend was lost.

2. The firemen of the cities were out with their engines, with a promptness truly praiseworthy. Fearing not the proximity of the magazine, regardless of the repeated explosions of the shells and cartridges, they poured their streams upon the burning mass as steadily as on a parade, or a common conflagration.

3. Physicians were there, unfed, uncalled, with the appliances of skill, to save or alleviate suffering. Clergymen were there, amidst smoke and fire, to point the dying to the Lamb of God. 4. Women were there, with lint and bandage, with oil and wine, with ready hands to soothe and words to encourage.

LAWRENCEVILLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY; COURTESY OF THE JOHN HEINZ HISTORY CENTER, OBJECT 72.44

profession. Mr. David Gilleland lately came among us—a man of warm, modest piety, who loved the house of God—who was almost always at the prayer meeting, and who loved to be a spectator, even when not teaching in the Sunday School. He will never lead our singing again, but we trust that ere now his voice has been heard among those who sing around the Throne. Agnes Davidson told me, the last time I saw her, that she was for the Union—and that she would no longer be a secessionist from the government of God, and would testify her love to Jesus and the Church at our next communion. Mary Davidson, a younger sister, left her home that morning, singing a beautiful hymn. Both were dutiful at home; both were loved at the Sabbath School, and both would probably have soon been fellow communicants. We hope all three are now with the blessed.

There are other things which are not so painful to look upon. This dark cloud has a silver lining.

1. Heroic courage was displayed. Men dashed into the midst of the burning to save, as dauntless as ever soldiers stormed a battery. The walls were scaled, burning fragments scattered, shrieking victims carried out, with bravery never surpassed, showing that peace and mercy have their heroes, without drum and fife, without the word of

tant town cried almost unceasingly, ‘God have mercy on my poor wicked soul.’ One murmured indistinctly, what sounded like ‘Glory! glory!’ ‘My poor mother!’ ‘My poor children!’ were exclamations upon the lips of many. One ‘had done no harm, and hoped that her suffering would atone for her sins.’ A mother said, ‘I have worked for a living for my children, but, sir, if I live I will set them a better example. I will take them to your church. I have them baptized, but I should have done my duty better. God spare me to my children.’

These remarks show the feelings of persons of different creeds. When near to eternity, we must in deep agony lean upon something, either upon the Almighty God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, or upon a poor reed. One poor girl who escaped with fearful injury, seemed to forget herself entirely, and exclaimed continually to herself, or others, ‘My poor companion! she perished in the flames: I tried to save her, but could not,’ In the very midst of the awful scene, an intelligent physician said, ‘I heard glorious news SACRED DUST just as I left the city, but can hardly tell it The current memorial in Allegheny Cemetery to the explosion was erected in 1928, and here; McClellan has defeated the rebels in replaced the one dedicated in 1863. It lists the names of all the victims of the tragedy.

Maryland, and will, without doubt, kill or capture them all.’ Patriotism for a and determine the innocence or culpability of moment lit the countenances of the bystanders with joy; but the smile those in charge….” was like a sudden gleam of sunshine across ruins. There was the terror from which such tidings as this could not divert the mind. Another physician exclaimed, ‘I was all along the Chickahominy during the battles, mong those who gathered in Allegheny but was not affected as I am here—so unexpected—so terrible—and the Cemetery on Memorial Day 1889 was sufferers, poor girls—the impossibility of even relieving them,’ pointing to former Arsenal employee Laura Guinn, some dozen blackened, quivering remains. Those who saw the sight can who lost her sister in the explosion and barely never forget it…. escaped with her own life. In an 1890 interview Ever since the fatal day, persons have visited the Arsenal, either to with the Pittsburgh Press, championing pension inquire about the whole occurrence, or in the faint hope of learning somerights for survivors and family members, Guinn thing of their lost ones. Sometimes deeply affecting scenes are emphasized, “I can show as many scars from witnessed…. injuries received as any soldier who lived through As soon as the community recovered somewhat from the stunning the war.” Much like the Rev. Lea, Guinn kept the blow, arose the questions, How did it happen? Is any one to blame? memory of the departed alive through efforts of Might it have been prevented? The efforts to answer these questions memorialization and recollection—an endeavor were unparalleled in the history of this region. Public meetings and prithat was carried on into the the 20th century. vate investigations—discussions by the press—a coroner’s jury, with Following his death in 1900, the Rev. Richard amazing perseverance and research—all combined, calling for light. From Lea’s remains were laid to rest within a short disthe fact that no one shrank from investigation, we most certainly believe tance of the arsenal memorial. At the age of 90, that no one willfully committed the deed. But the road before the buildhe was the oldest and longest-serving Presbyteing was stony. Powder was hauled in great quantities in wagons. Even rian minister in the state of Pennsylvania. powder barrels may be leaky. The shop was swept out—sometimes loose powder among the dust. Familiarity breeds contempt of danger. All these are facts. So it is also true, that visitors have been long excluded from the shops—that the laboratory was guarded by stringent rules. Respecting Western Pennsylvania native Rich Condon the living—agents and employees—we say not one word, except that founded and maintains the Civil War Pittsburgh from the highest to the lowest, we believe every one of them utterly and Pennsylvania in the Civil War blogs, and he incapable of doing the deed purposely. The rigid examination will disworks as an NPS ranger at Reconstruction Era cover what amount of carelessness, or want of forethought, there existed, National Historical Park.

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ACROSS THE

BOARDS Even

in the

digital age,

Civil War board gaming

remains a popular pastime  BY K I M O ’CO N N ELL  h, damn it.” Somewhere near Charlottesville, Va., Greg Gordon is scanning the expanse before him—the landscape mostly flat, a few rocky hills and groves of trees posing formidable barriers. Behind those trees, he knows, the enemy is waiting. Gordon doesn’t like the hand fate has dealt him, so he has to move wisely. He positions soldiers on horseback in front of him. On his flanks, artillerymen are poised and ready.

The weather is cold, gray, and drizzling, but it hardly matters. Within moments, the armies will advance.

“

O

On the other side from Gordon, Shane McBee is surveying his own options. “Don’t like that,” he says, examining available tactics.

“Really don’t like that.” He pauses, considering.

When he finally makes his move—a surprising one, a retreat—Gordon groans. It’s thrown off his plan for an assault. Now he’ll have to rethink everything. In the distance, other men murmur and grumble and occasionally cheer.

The backdrop for these contests is not a sprawling battlefield, but a DoubleTree Hotel about five miles from the University of Vir-

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ginia campus, host to the annual Prezcon board gaming convention. Gordon and McBee are among dozens of players who have been playing in a tournament of the Civil War game Battle Cry, a popular tabletop game that hinges on both lucky die rolls and strategic maneuvers. The 2020 convention, held in late February before the pandemic closed down such things, drew hundreds of gamers for a week of tournaments. Hundreds of board games were in play, with several focused on the Civil War.

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REBS RUN THE TABLE Southern troopers charge across the gameboard of Battle Cry!, powered by rolls of the dice and shrewd game-player skill.

PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN

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THE HANDS OF FATE A gamer studies his next move, eager to get his Federal troops in motion and capture some hexagonal landscape.

Even in this digital age, board gaming appears to be on the rise, with well-known titles such as Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, and Clue flying off store shelves and filling online shopping carts. Board-based wargaming in particular, which became widely popular in the 1970s and ’80s, has also enjoyed a resurgence in recent years, according to game sellers and enthusiasts, with games such as Axis & Allies, Churchill, and 1775: Rebellion routinely topping rankings. Civil War games, including such titles as Lincoln, Fire and Fury, A House Divided, and Terrible Swift Sword among many others, have maintained a loyal fan base along with them.

As with many things related to the Civil War, the devotion is deep. At his table at Prezcon, Gordon makes a decision. “I’m just going to go for the gusto,” he says. “Assault on the right flank! Come on, boys!”

Casualties mount. The landscape shifts. The battle is on. oard games of various forms have existed for thousands of years. An early version of chess dates to the 6th century in India, and other ancient games such as pachisi (popularized in the U.S. as Parcheesi and Sorry!) and backgammon are still played today as well.

By the Civil War, soldiers were well versed in checkers, chess, dominoes, and card games, and travel versions of these games were often tucked into haversacks alongside sewing kits, journals, and photos from home. As an 1861 account of the Washington Artillery of New Orleans noted, “The men, when not on fatigue duty, lounge about, smoking, playing euchre, cribbage, or chess.”

The outbreak of war proved especially important for an

Civil War

games HAVE MAINTAINED

a loyal fan base

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HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLS; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

PHOTOS BY MELISSA A. WINN (2)

entrepreneur named Milton Bradley. In 1860, Bradley had printed thousands of commemorative portraits of then-presidential-nominee Abraham Lincoln. The portrait depicted an unbearded Lincoln as he had appeared during the campaign, but when the newly bewhiskered president was inaugurated, Bradley’s portraits were immediately obsolete. The misfire could have doomed Bradley if he hadn’t channeled his energy into a new board game he called The Checkered Game of Life, in which players endured ups and downs based on the spins of a teetotum, a top-like spinner that is the precursor to the plastic version that the game of Life uses to this day. Rather than earning prestigious jobs and fancy houses as in the current game, the original game had players achieving either “happy old age” or a host of terrible outcomes including jail, “intemperance to poverty,” and “gambling to ruin.” Bradley quickly realized that making the game portable for Civil War soldiers was a lucrative strategy; Bradley earned a patent for the game in 1866.

The war inspired other games as well. The New York State Library has a copy of a Chutes and Ladders-type game dating to 1862 called The Game of Secession, or Sketches of the Rebellion. Based on a die roll or the spin of a teetotum, players moved along a fork-tongued serpent divided into 135 spaces, with Union victories allowing advancement and Confederate victories signaling a retreat. The playing board depicts generals, soldiers, and both Lincoln and his counterpoint Jefferson Davis, along with key army and navy scenes. Land on spot number 79, illustrating the virtuous “Mrs. Columbia” holding “little Jeff Davis,” and you’ll have to go back a demoralizing 44 spaces. But land on space 59 bearing the slogan “The Union: may it be preserved at any cost!” and you’ll get three extra throws. (The game’s publisher, Charlton & Althrop of Philadelphia, also became known for printing pictorial envelopes depicting Union soldiers on them.)

A checkered gameboard also dating to 1862, owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, features the portraits of 31 prominent Union generals in the light squares, including Ambrose Burnside, George McClellan, Benjamin Butler, and David Hunter (in a jaunty feathered hat), along with Lincoln. The Met notes that the board, measuring about 9 × 9 inches, could have been used by a soldier in camp, but “its construction and pristine condition suggest it was created, sold, and reserved for patriotic use at home.” A larger, 15 × 15 version of this gameboard sold at auction in 2019 for $3,500.

BRADLEY'S ROLL OF THE DICE Milton Bradley's Lincoln portrait, left, failed to win over the public because he depicted the president without a beard. Bradley, however, took a chance on a board game he developed, The Checkered Game of Life, above. That roll of the dice paid off in spades, making a fortune for the entrepreneur and creating a long-lasting name brand. ather than just “patriotic use at home,” by the 20th century and into the 21st, Civil War games were and are meant to be played.

Board wargames arguably entered the modern era with the 1953 release of the game Tactics, the first title published by well-known gamemakers Avalon Hill. In 1958, on the eve of the Civil War centennial, Avalon Hill (which still exists today in name but under different corporate ownership) published the game Gettysburg, no doubt spawning a generation of Civil War enthusiasts and gamers. Among them was David A. Powell, a Civil War author and former game designer who lives outside Chicago.

“My dad tried to play Gettysburg once and he put it away,” Powell says. “I found it in his closet and asked if I could have it. I now have about 400 wargames in my collection.”

Designed by pioneering game designer Charles S. Roberts, Gettysburg set important precedents in that different units in the game mimicked the actual size of the units on the battlefield in July 1863, and they had to enter the gameboard from the same routes their historical counterparts used, dealing with whatever advantage or disadvantage that created. The second edition of the game incorporated a hexagonal grid, which removed diagonal distortion in game play, since moving along the diagonal in a square grid covered more distance than moving across the sides. Hexagons make movement equidistant in all directions. Today, most wargames are based on either this method, called hex-and-counter, blocks (which represent units of various types), or cards.

“One of the things that interested me about wargames is they act as living maps,” Powell says. “When you read or write military history, every-

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HEROES AND VILLAINS An American eagle devouring the snake of secession is among the colorful graphics on an 1862 game that is equal parts fun and Union propaganda. Players move ahead if they land on a square celebrating a Federal victory and fall behind if the square references a Confederate triumph. on the board facing the owning player; a number on the top edge represents the brigade’s or battalion’s strength. As they take hits, blocks are rotated so that diminishing numbers are shown, until they’re completely eliminated.

Like reenacting, Civil War board gaming allows enthusiasts to examine history in a way that feels sustained and immersive. “I’m attracted to what the hobby calls ‘monster’ games—multiple maps, days, weeks, months to game, 50- to 100-page rule books,” David Powell says. “[Those games are] an effort to make you feel how you feel when you’re reading a book about Gettysburg.” ack at Prezcon, it’s the end of a long day of gaming. Greg Gordon looks a little weary, but pleased. In addition to playing, he has served as the gamemaster for the Battle Cry tournament, which means he has spent hours monitoring wins and losses, answering questions, and keeping several concurrent games on track. Something like what a general officer would do on the battlefield, but on a smaller scale and with much lower stakes.

With remaining players dwindling, the contest has grown more intense. Gordon notes the people crowding around: players who have long since lost their own games; dutiful, patient spouses; gamers who’ve wandered over from other areas of the convention—all waiting for the outcome. “This game is very visual,” he says.

“It adds to the whole experience.”

Something else holds them there, too—that inimitable feeling when you’ve found the people who enjoy your hobby as much as you do, the people who will sift through rulebooks and play for hours, just to claim a bit of this defining era of history for themselves. Far too soon, they know they will have to pack up their armies and move on.

Kim O’Connell is a writer based in Arlington, Va., with bylines in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Atlas Obscura, National Parks Traveler, and other national and regional publications.

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PHOTO CREDIT

B

BRIAN D. CAPLAN COLLECTION, METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART; OPPOSITE PAGE: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

body says, ‘I wish you had more maps.’ A wargame can provide you with a living map.”

Other successful companies followed Avalon Hill, including Game Designers Workshop (GDW), Simulation Publications Inc. (SPI), and Tactical Studies Rules (TSR), which exploded in the ’70s and ’80s on the strength of its roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons. In A House Divided, a GDW title first issued in 1981, the game is played on a mapboard of the 1860s United States, with boxes indicating a city, town, fort, or other military location. Rather than the simple “my roll, your roll” action of most board games, this game hinges on four actions per player turn: movement, combat, promotion, and recruitment. Restrictions exist, too: Only Union forces can move via the Potomac River, and the Confederacy doesn’t automatically win if D.C. is captured, but must meet other conditions, too. (And this is one of the simpler Civil War board games.) As S. Craig Taylor wrote in the book Hobby Games: The 100 Best, “It seems that some wargames are intended to be admired, and some wargames are intended to be played. A House Divided falls squarely into the latter category.”

Grant Dalgliesh, vice president of the veteran game company Columbia Games (founded by his father Tom Dalgliesh), says there are three types of wargamers: the competitors, the socializers, and the dreamers. “The dreamer pictures himself riding the horse,” Grant says. “My publishing style leans toward the first and second categories, but I don’t sacrifice those things that make the dreaming possible.”

Columbia’s Civil War titles include Bobby Lee, Sam Grant, Gettysburg: Badges of Courage, CHECKERED LEADERS Shenandoah: Jackson’s Valley Campaign, and ShiThis game board dates to loh: April 1862.

Founded in 1972, the company 1862 and features pioneered the hardwood block method that is the portraits of 31 Union now commonplace in wargaming. Blocks allow leaders. Not all of them, for the “fog of war” element many gamers admittedly, were skilled desire, where players must commit their forces strategists who would without knowing exactly what their opponents’ serve to inspire victory. assets and strengths are. Blocks stand upright

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PHOTO CREDIT

BRIAN D. CAPLAN COLLECTION, METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART; OPPOSITE PAGE: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

ARMAMENT

CAP BOXES WERE DECEPTIVELY INTRICATE, ESSENTIAL PIECES OF GEAR 60

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ORDER ARMS Light reflects off the cap box attached to the belt of this New York soldier from the 2nd Division of the Army of the Potomac’s 2nd Corps, as indicated by the badge on his cap.

DANA B. SHOAF COLLECTION/PHOTOS BY MELISSA A. WINN (4)

DANA B. SHOAF COLLECTION

CAP BOXES don’t get much respect. The little black pouches hung off soldiers’ belts, often overshadowed by their martial neighbors, eye-catching brass belt buckles and scabbards that held wicked-looking bayonets. Veterans wrote poems in praise of their canteens, a cartridge box became the centerpiece of the badge for the Union’s 15th Corps. But no odes, and little acclaim, recorded for the cap box.

Yet they were among the most important pieces of gear in a soldier’s kit. Cap boxes carried their namesake, percussion caps, the revolutionary little copper top hats that served as the priming system for muskets, many cavalry carbines, and even some breechloading rifles. To discharge his weapon, a soldier placed a percussion cap on the cone, or nipple, of his firearm. When the trigger was pulled, the hammer flew forward and forcefully struck the percussion cap. The impact ignited an explosive fulminate of mercury compound inside the cap, creating a spark that dropped through the cone and ignited the powder charge in the barrel, sending a lethal lead missile downrange.

The percussion system was invented in the 1820s, and two decades later it became the standard for the U.S. Army with the issue of the Model 1842 musket.

Troops then needed a way to carry the small percussion caps. Initially, small pockets were cut into issue jackets to hold the caps, but they did not prove satisfactory. By about 1845, U.S. troops were issued the first cap boxes. During the Civil War thousands upon thousands were stitched up for Union and Confederate troops. —D.B.S.

HANG ON Cap boxes had loops on the back to attach the accoutrement to a belt. If you look closely at the soldier image, left, you can see the top of the loops just above the body of the box. Rivets were sometimes applied, as here, to reinforce the hand stitching.

Some Confederate-made cap boxes had one wide belt loop on the back to speed production.

TWO LEVELS OF PROTECTION An inner flap, complete with little “ears” sewn on the side, helped hold in the caps and provided additional protection from moisture.

INTRICATE ENGINEERING Above, a strip of sheep’s wool was sewn into the box to prevent percussion caps from falling out. Next to the wool, but out of sight here, was a narrow leather channel that held a metal “cone pick.” Left, many Union Army cap boxes incorporated a leather tab integral to the front flap that buttoned over a brass finial.

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ARMAMENT A “CAP”TION Small, critical copper percussion caps could easily be lost, and the cap box kept the vital primers close at hand.

FIELD-READY PELICAN A Confederate soldier wearing a Louisiana state belt buckle brandishes his smoothbore musket, a flintlock converted to percussion. His cap box is a prewar design called a “shield front” because of the shape, and the closing tab is a separate piece of leather sewn on the flap. Union troops also used this style of cap box.

SOUTHERN MADE AND FROM ACROSS THE POND The Confederate-made cap box, below left, might not win a fashion show, but it did its job. The cap “pouch” at right was imported from England and used

by Confederates and a few Union regiments. The pouch was made to be worn on the cartridge box sling, which slid through the angled attachment loop.

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: DANA B. SHOAF COLLECTION/PHOTO BY MELISSA A. WINN; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; PHOTO DON TROIANI/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

TWELVE TOP HATS Every bundle of 10 cartridges included a paper tube, like the original, above, with 12 percussion caps a soldier would dump into his cap box. In the Allegheny Arsenal diagram on P. 49, the “percussion cap room” is where the youngest female arsenal workers placed percussion caps in tubes.

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Coming in April from Gregory Lalire, the editor of

MAGAZINE

MAN FROM MONTANA

by Gregory J. Lalire

JACKET DESIGN BY KATHY HEMING

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

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

LALIRE_MONTANA AD-2.indd 22

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

1/28/21 11:48 AM

HAIR-RAISING ORATOR Thaddeus Stevens delivers the last speech to Congress about the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson.



EGALITARIAN

REVIEWED BY LOUIS P. MASUR

T

haddeus Stevens became something of a household name in 2012 thanks to Tommy Lee Jones’ memorable portrayal of the Pennsylvania congressman in the Steven Spielberg film Lincoln. As Bruce Levine makes clear in this wonderfully clear and concise biography, the club foot and the wigs were historically accurate, but there is no evidence that he had a romantic relationship with his mixed-race housekeeper.

Born in Vermont in 1792, Stevens imbibed the state’s democratic ethos and his Baptist upbringing reinforced his egalitarian impulses.

Stevens graduated from Dartmouth and moved to Pennsylvania, became a lawyer, and opened an office in Gettysburg. His entry into the world of politics came with election as an Anti-Masonic candidate to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 1833. He would soon join the Whig Party.

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Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice

By Bruce Levine Simon & Schuster, 2021, $28



As a lawyer, Stevens took what cases he could.

Although personally antislavery, he defended both those accused of being fugitive slaves as well as slaveholders seeking to reclaim their property. He also supported colonization of ex-slaves. In these ways he was not unlike a fellow Whig, Abraham Lincoln. Stevens did not start out a revolutionary; he became one.

First elected to Congress in 1848, he earned a reputation, reported one newspaper, for his “witty repartee, his scorching sarcasm, his lofty eloquence, his great profundity, and his ponderous mind.” He predicted that the compromise of 1850 would become “the fruitful mother of future rebellion, disunion, and civil war.”

Stevens shared the nativist beliefs of the Know-Nothing Party and soon migrated to the newly created (1854) Republican Party.

Reelected in 1858, after being out of office for five years, Stevens was 69 years old when war

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broke out. He assumed chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee and played a central role in pushing Congress and the Union toward sterner measures such as confiscation of Southern property and emancipation of Southern slaves.

By 1862, Stevens endorsed revolutionary actions “not only to end this terrible war now, but to prevent its reoccurrence.” While his advocacy on behalf of the enslaved is well known, Levine also discusses Stevens’ support for American Indians and Chinese immigrants. The one-time nativist had become a true egalitarian.

Stevens opposed Lincoln’s wartime Reconstruction measures. He also viewed congressional proposals as too timid. He disagreed that the seceded states had remained in the Union and argued that they had to be treated as conquered provinces. He believed that only by destroying the Southern planter’s economic power through land seizure would the Second American Revolution be completed.

Levine reminds us that the Radical Republicans did not dominate Congress in 1865, and that the actions of Lincoln’s successor as president, Andrew Johnson, forced moderates to tack left. Stevens himself vacillated until 1867 on support for universal black male suffrage. But he came to embrace all measures necessary to secure black civil and political rights and economic independence.

He pushed for the removal of Johnson and was disappointed that the House did not frame the articles of Johnson’s impeachment more broadly.

Stevens died less than three months after Johnson’s acquittal in the Senate. He was buried in the only racially integrated cemetery in Lancaster. The inscription on his tomb reads, “I have chosen to illustrate in my death the principles which I advocated through a long life: ‘Equality of Man Before His Creator.’”

IN 1846, Thaddeus Stevens acquired a small stone house in Gettysburg, Pa., which he owned until he died in 1868. The tenants of the home were Mary Thompson and her children. She was widowed when her drunkard husband, Joshua, died. In July 1863, the home would gain everlasting fame when General Robert E. Lee used it as his battlefield headquarters.

SMOKE

ON THE

WATER REVIEWED BY STEVE DAVIS

G

iven the groaning bookshelves for other Civil War genres, Confederate naval historiography may be comparatively slim in its number of volumes, but many of them are quite sturdy indeed. J. Thomas Scharf ’s History of the Confederate States Navy (1887) is the granddaddy, followed by Raimondo Luraghi’s History of the Confederate Navy (1996). More specialized works include William N. Still Jr., Iron Afloat: The Story of the Confederate Armorclads (1971). Discovery of the Hunley in 1995 has sparked a boomlet about the Confederate semi-submersible.

That there is still room for creative scholarship is demonstrated

by Neil P. Chatelain’s Defending the Arteries of Rebellion.

Confederates’ difficulties with building a navy from scratch are legendary, but Chatelain focuses on them in a refreshing way.

Navy Secretary Stephen Mallory early on saw the value of ironclad gunboats and launched a spirited building campaign. But with pinched resources, Southern construction lagged. For instance, iron plating for Louisiana, being built in New Orleans, had to come from Atlanta; the monster gunboat was unfinished when David Farragut took the Crescent City in April 1862. Southerners instead converted river steamboats into improvised warships. Sometimes, Defending the Arteries Confederates won small tactical victoof Rebellion: Confederate ries, such as at Head of Passes, La., Naval Operations September 1861, and Plum Point in the Mississippi River Bend, Tenn., in May 1862. But, usuValley, 1861-1865 ally, Confederate vessels could not

By Neil P. Chatelain stand up to Union riverine ironclads, Savas Beatie, as shown in the battle of Memphis, 2020, $32.95 June 1862: seven of eight Southern ships were destroyed or captured.

The author carries his story through the end of the war, including the construction of the ironclad Arkansas, built on the Virginia model, and lost in the fight at Baton Rouge, in August 1862.

Chatelain teaches at a Texas college and is author of The Confederate Gunboat McRae (2014). Here he has composed a skillful narrative based on impressive research. Moreover, concentrating on the Confederate Navy on the Mississippi, he has at once carved out an interesting area of study, and promptly filled it.

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ESCAPING RAT HELL REVIEWED BY GEORGE SKOCH

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n a postwar tour of Richmond in late September 1865, Northern journalist John T. Trowbridge examined “infamous” Libby Prison, made notorious for its treatment of Union officers held there during the war. Upon entering the “large, gloomy brick building,” Trowbridge noted the ground floor was partitioned into dingy offices and store-rooms, and a “large cellar-room below, paved with cobblestones.” On three floors above, he found “large, whitewashed, barren” rooms. He easily envisioned the inmates they once held, “…diseased and haggard men crowded together…a den of misery, starvation and death.”

In late September 1863, Union Colonel Thomas E. Rose of the 77th Pennsylvania Infantry, captured at the Battle of Chickamauga, was sent to Libby Prison, and immediately resolved to “set about devising means of escape.” That was more easily said than done, as Douglas Miller reveals in The Greatest Escape: A True American Civil War Adventure.

This standout account of Rose’s quest to free himself and fellow Union officers from Libby Prison and the adventures that followed is a remarkable story of determination and human endurance. “To enter Libby Prison in 1863,” writes Miller, “was to enter bedlam.”

The author blends his talents as a writer and an award-winning documentary filmmaker to weave a chilling account of life inside Libby Prison, and the superhuman exertion of Rose and his compatriots to tunnel out and evade recapture. “…personal stories are front and center,” writes Miller.

He sourced more than four dozen eyewitness accounts to tell his story of “the largest prison breakout in U. S. history…truer than it’s ever been told.”

Originally fashioned from a ship chandlery and grocers warehouse to house up to 500 Union officer POWs in 1861, within two years the captives in Libby had nearly tripled in number. In addition to the “formidable” Col. Rose, who became the driving force behind the greatest escape from Libby Prison, Miller populates his book with a memorable supporting cast, both Union and Confederate.

Chief among the antagonists, for example, is 23 year old Dick Turner, the notorious jailer responsible for day-to-day operations at Libby.

Union “memoirists,” reports Miller, “were unanimous in their hatred of the man.” Equally despised was Turner’s younger cousin, prison commandant Captain Thomas Turner. Union POW Lieutenant Willard Glazier, for instance, reviled the enemy captain for heaping “barbarities upon us with Herculean and fiendish strength.”

Also serving in the prison, albeit reluctantly, was “Old Smoke,” an aged slave who shuffled The Greatest Escape: from room to room toting a kettle full of burning A True American tar to fumigate the squalid quarters. He Civil War Adventure exchanged pleasantries with the men, insisting

By Douglas Miller his was “good Union smoke.”

Lyons Press, 2021, Among the prisoners, Union Captain Andrew $26.95 Hamilton of the 12th Kentucky Cavalry, shared Rose’s unbridled enthusiasm to escape. A brick 66

mason by trade, Hamilton would prove integral to Rose’s schemes. “These two,” writes Miller, “would support each other to the bitter end.”

Miller also singles out Cuban American Lt. Col. Federico Cavada, as “one of the more fascinating of Libby’s denizens.” Captured at Gettysburg, Cavada left one of the best written accounts of prison life, including several skillful drawings Miller has included.

Miller deftly weaves these and many colorful characters into background for the heart of his story, the tunneling and its aftermath. Digging started from a festering recess in the cobblestone-floored basement. “Two feet of rotten straw covered the floor,” writes Miller, “hundreds of rats lived there, more likely thousands.” The space was christened “Rat Hell.”

Failure was not an option for Rose. When two tunnels miscarried, he forged ahead with an ultimately successful third one. Rose and 108 other captives, including Union cavalry raider Colonel Abel Streight, finally struggled free on the frigid night of February 9, 1864.

Traveling singly, in pairs, or small groups, the underfed, scantily clad escapees battled forces of man and nature in the dead of winter. While Rebel soldiers, civilians, and bloodhounds pursued them; rivers, swamps, and trackless forests confronted them. Richmond, in addition, was ringed by a barrier of military fortifications.

Remarkably, 61 fugitives gained their freedom.

In nearly every case, Miller points out, the “Libby inmate who successfully escaped did so with the help of local slaves.” The author makes a good argument that these slaves had a “formidable Underground of their own…connected to Elizabeth Van Lew and her Unionist spy network.”

Miller includes a helpful bibliography, with adequate endnotes and index. Numerous illustrations give face to key components of his story.

His account of the daring and circuitous escape and pursuit would have benefited by including a map, however.

The author’s quest for primary sources and illustrations to tell his story spanned “more than two decades.” Now, “For the first time, a century and a half after the events, all the Libby memoirs are together in one place.” Miller spins an inspiring yarn. His book should not escape readers.

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ANOTHER

UNION STAR RYAN B. WEDDLE MEMBER, MILITARY ORDER OF THE LOYAL LEGION / LEFFERTS CAMP #7 SUVCW NEW YORK CITY

What Are You

Reading?

I just reread William J. Roehrenbeck’s 1961 classic The Regiment That Saved the Capital, which details the 7th Regiment of New York State Militia and its famous departure from Manhattan after Fort Sumter. Roehrenbeck pulls together wellknown regimental histories of the 7th, military archives, and public newspaper accounts to provide a detailed narrative of the regiment. Many members of the 7th that made a name for themselves later in the war took part in the grand adventure, including Robert Gould Shaw, Alexander Shaler, Theodore Winthrop, Rufus King, and Isaac Newton Jr., who went on to serve aboard USS Monitor. The 7th provided more than 600 members who left to accept commissions in volunteer regiments, producing more Union officers than West Point. Roehrenbeck’s work is a fascinating chronicle of a famous prewar unit during the Civil War’s opening months.

The Regiment That Saved the Capital

By William J. Roehrenbeck Thomas Yoseloff, 1961, available used at various prices.

REVIEWED BY ETHAN S. RAFUSE

H

istorians of the Civil War and Reconstruction Era have devoted a great deal of attention to “drums and trumpets” military history: the decisions of generals, the movements of armies, and combat in the field. This is eminently understandable. After all, it was on the progress of Union and Confederate arms that the course and outcome of the war hinged and there are few subjects that make for more compelling reading than military operations. Yet the fact that it raised questions of no little legal and constitutional import also ensured the Civil War and its aftermath would provide plenty of opportunity to engage the energies of the American republic’s redoubtable armies of lawyers. This is among the points that are made abundantly clear in Seceding From Secession.

To be sure, economic factors (above all the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad), geography, and military operations were all critical to the process that led the Unionist population of the mountains of western Virginia to first successfully resist secession, then establish the new state of West Virginia. Yet, it was not until 1871, when the Supreme Court weighed in to validate the constitutionality of the work of those in West Virginia and Washington, D.C.,who enabled the creation of the state, that the fruits of this effort could Seceding from be considered truly secure.

Secession: The Civil It is an interesting and important story to War, Politics, and be sure and one that is told clearly in this the Creation of study. Although its readability is sometimes West Virginia diminished by the inclusion of long block

By Eric J. Wittenberg, Edmund A. Sargus Jr., quotes (a number of which are from legal and Penny L. Barrick documents that do not always make for scinSavas Beatie, 2020, tillating reading), it makes a useful contribu$32.95 tion to scholarship. Anyone looking for an informative account of the events and forces that gave rise to the curious case of the state that was born out of secession from secession will find much of value and interest here. The authors draw from a solid range of secondary and primary sources and, in addition to chronicling events effectively, provide useful information on the evolution of larger political and legal dynamics before, during and after the war, and the individuals who shaped them, from Francis Pierpont to John Carlile to Benjamin Curtis to Samuel Miller.

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PHOTOGRAPHS

OF

FREEDOM FIGHTERS REVIEWED BY GORDON BERG



s James Baldwin once noted, “People are trapped in into the war’s impact on the lives they led. We meet William history, and history is trapped in them.” This is cerHenry Johnson, born free and attached to the Second Containly true of the more than 180,000 Black men who served in necticut Infantry, writing as a reporter for the Palm and Pine, the Union Army and whom Deborah describing the fighting at First Bull Run; Willis has done much to free through Rufus Wright, writing to his wife from Proud Union soldiers, her groundbreaking work linking the the camp of the 1st USCT near Hampan image from the book. fields of African American history and ton, Va., about his concerns for his fellow photography. The Black Civil War Soldier soldiers; the Reverend James H. Payne, quartermaster of the 27th USCT, writbears eloquent testimony to her efforts ing to the Christian Recorder in August to redeem the memory and sacrifices made by Black men and women as they 1864 about the disastrous July 1864 Batexperienced emancipation and freedom tle of the Crater; and Hannah Johnson, a during the Civil War era by making mother from Buffalo, N.Y., writing to their lives a visible memorial to their Abraham Lincoln asking that he insist that captured black troops be treated as dignity and humanity. prisoners of war and not sold into slavWillis has chosen 99 photographs of Black soldiers, white officers and some ery. Thankfully, Willis has found photoof the women in their lives, and couples graphs of most of the correspondents them with excerpts from their letters, she includes. diaries, and memoirs. “Rediscovered Perhaps the most remarkable find voices and photographs,” she underWillis has uncovered is a carte-de-visite stands, “help us grapple with a history album containing photographs of the men of the 108th USCT produced in that has often excluded stories about the bravery of Black soldiers and the uncel1865 at Rock Island, Ill., and assembled ebrated work of Black women, teachers,

by Lieutenant T.F. Wright, one of the regiment’s white officers. It not only and nurses.” As a curator and collections includes striking soldier portraits, but also coordinator for Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and written comments on their personal lives and Culture, Willis visited local historical societsoldierly attributes. Henry Price, cook, “does his duty faithfully to the satisfaction of the ies, libraries, individual collectors, and famimen;” Corporal Rendwick Allen, “now Serlies that helped her understand the profound impact the war had on African Americans, geant...commands obedience;” Emmit Adams, both enslaved and free. “makes the morning reports of the company and by his diligence and good conduct has Willis presciently keeps her written contiwon the esteem of his officers.” Seeing these nuity to a minimum and gives most of the men look confidently into the camera gives book’s narrative over to the eloquence of the participants themselves. Some, like Charlotte them a humanity that is timeless.

Forten, Robert Gould Shaw, and Thomas Willis admits, “There is something about Wentworth Higginson are familiar historical looking at images that forces me to question personages. There are also letters like those the narratives of the past.” Both seeing and from Sgt. Maj. Lewis Douglass, oldest son of reading about the personages she has assemThe Black Civil War Soldier: Frederick Douglass, to his fiancée Amelia, bled makes vivid their voices and serves “as a A Visual History of assuring her that he survived the charge of testimony that reflects people’s bravery, pride, Conflict and Citizenship the 54th Massachusetts at the 1863 Second and determination and reminds us of the toll

By Deborah Willis Battle of Fort Wagner. of war.” Looking back at these men and New York University Press, But most of the people Willis highlights women, speaking to us from the past, reminds 2021, $35 are not well known and it is their writings us all of our shared humanity at a time when that provide remarkably eloquent insights such a reminder is much needed.

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

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USMC Ret. Master Gunnery Sergeant Bob Verell takes a moment to honor those commemorated on the replica Vietnam Memorial Wall. Photo by Thomas Wells

GETTYSBURG’S SPANGLER FARM, WHERE ARMISTEAD DIED H

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INVISIBLE INK UNION PRISONER’S SECRET MESSAGES

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

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

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

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Timely Lincoln Study REVIEWED BY HAROLD HOLZER ith his latest work, James Oakes, two-time Lincoln Prize winner (The Radical and the Republican and Freedom National) has produced another thought-provoking and timely work. His highly original Crooked Path to Abolition portrays Abraham Lincoln as a sincere, albeit cautious, anti-slavery politician who operates within the limits—and possibilities—of the U. S. Constitution.

Lincoln has endured some tough revisionism on slavery and race in recent months, both in print and in the public square, including the erasure of his name from a San Francisco school building, and the removal of an Emancipation Group statue that long stood in Boston. In the recent CNN documentary Lincoln: Divided We Stand, several talking heads all but labeled him a white supremacist. (Full disclosure: I was a historical consultant and on-air commentator for the project.)

According to this negative interpretation, Lincoln committed belatedly to emancipation, and then only as a military weapon needed to turn the tide in the Civil War. This oversimplified mischaracterization threatens to supplant the equally simplistic “Great Emancipator” narrative that long defined Lincoln’s image in our culture.

Oakes, who teaches at the City University of New York, puts the lie to both of these facile generalizations, offering a nuanced analytical approach in a concise volume that will not only serve the general reader but doubtless emerge as a valuable text for college courses.

In Oakes’ views, Lincoln was always antislavery, and justified his position by viewing the U. S. Constitution as an antislavery document. This will surprise those who read sympathy for slavery in its notorious three-fifths clause, which counted enslaved people as less than full human beings yet awarded extra representation—and power—to states where slavery existed.

As evidence that Lincoln nonetheless viewed the Constitution in antislavery terms, Oakes offers his “remarkable” 1857 speech on the Dred Scott decision. In it, the future president not only humanely bemoaned the condition of the slave but assailed the Supreme Court’s majority view that the Constitution was proslavery in intent. Oakes’ Lincoln justifies his opposition to slavery expansion in part because it violates Constitutional intent to limit the institution. His interpretation seemed threatening enough to slaveholders when he was elected president. Though Lincoln consistently vowed he intended no threat to slavery where it existed, seven Southern states seceded even before Lincoln was inaugurated.

Significantly, the author also judges Lincoln “relatively untouched by racial prejudice” even as he was “surrounded by it.” As for Lincoln’s infamous 1858 debate performance at Charleston, Ill., in which he declared blacks should not vote or serve on juries, Oakes reminds us that the Republican Senate candidate was “merely running for cover, trying to avoid the virtually radioactive political fallout…from his implicit support” for the proposition “that Blacks were entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizenship.”

Oakes is right that Lincoln sensed the political danger in being viewed a racial egalitarian, but sidesteps the understandable current anguish over his uncharacteristically harsh words.

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The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution

By James Oakes Norton, 2021, $26.95

Oakes’ view of Lincoln’s evolution takes some fascinating turns in the book’s final chapters. The author regards the Emancipation Proclamation as but one step in the effort to destroy slavery, and emphasizes Lincoln’s concurrent commitment to constitutionally safe, compensated emancipation to states untouched by the order.

Ultimately came passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, putting black freedom beyond legal or political challenge. As Lincoln memorably put it, the amendment was “a King’s cure for all the evils.”

Tackling a dense legal question and making it comprehensible and compelling, Oakes makes a strong case for Lincoln’s belief in an anti-slavery constitutionalism that trumped the pro-slavery interpretation applied by Southerners. His book, really a collection of essays, will not end the debate over whether Lincoln based his antislavery primarily on the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. But it reminds us why he embraced both founding documents in tandem, describing them as “an apple of gold in a frame of silver.”

If Oakes portrays a sometimes inconsistent Lincoln—though ever-true to a principled hatred for slavery buoyed by his interpretation of the Constitution—he more than proves the point implicit in his title: that the “emancipator’s” path to abolition was indeed, at least in a directional sense, crooked.

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M-LondonLaurel 1-2H March2017.qxp_Layout 1 1/11/17 3:17 PM Page 1

Visit Camp Wildcat Civil War Battlefield!

Located on the old “Wilderness Road” Laurel County, KY A beautiful and well-preserved Civil War Battlefield.

It has many original trenches that are still intact!

London-Laurel County Tourist Commission 1-800-348-0095 www.laurelkytourism.com

Don’t Miss the Reenactment!

October 15-17, 2021

Clash of Egos

Bragg vs Forrest Untangling the mystery of their volatile relationship

Plus!

Firsthand Account: Jailbreak in Texas Sherman’s Trailblazing Mapmaker

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FORM OVER

FUNCTION $960 a friend of Abraham Lincoln, killed in 1861 while tearing down a Confederate flag in Alexandria, Va., sparked a “Zouave craze” just before the war.

His traveling drill company called the “Zouave Cadets” amazed Americans with intricate formations and colorful uniforms inspired by French North African soldier garb that consisted of short jackets, baggy trousers, and tasseled fezzes, similar to this one sold by Cowan’s Auctions. Northern and Southern regiments wore Zouave uniforms throughout the conflict. This fez is unattributed, but the 165th New York, among other units, wore red fezzes with blue tassels. The hats were fetching, but offered no protection from the sun and the rain. -D.B.S

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COWAN’S AUCTIONS

ELMER ELLSWORTH,

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Jackpot! Hoard of 1884-O Morgan Silver Dollars Found & Secured Mintage accounts for only 1.48% of all Morgan Silver Dollars Struck!

In 1859, Nevada’s Comstock Lode was discovered, and soon its rich silver ore made its way across the nation, including to the fabled New Orleans Mint, the only U.S. Mint branch to have served under the U.S. government, the State of Louisiana and the Confederacy. In 1884, some of that silver was struck into Morgan Silver Dollars, each featuring the mint’s iconic “O” mint mark. Now you have the chance to add these historic, 90% pure U.S. silver coins to your collection!

1884-O Date

The Morgan Silver Dollar was struck from 1878 to 1904, and again in 1921. In the 100 years since, most of these beautiful U.S. Silver Dollars have been worn out or melted down for their silver. It’s estimated that as little as 15% of all Morgans struck exist today in any condition. Even fewer come from this particular mintage.

Here’s the breakdown: in 1884, just 4.28% of the total Morgan series was struck. Just over one third of those coins came from New Orleans. In the end, the 1884-O Morgan Silver Dollar accounts for just 1.48% of the entire series—and that’s before the mass meltings that have left so few coins for collectors to secure.

And we can expect that even fewer of the survivors are of collector grade...

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 Historic Morgan Silver Dollars  Minted in New Orleans  1884 date  137 years old  26.73 grams of 90% fine silver  Hefty 38.1 mm diameter  Certified collector Mint State-63

The Morgan Silver Dollar is the most popular and iconic vintage U.S. coin. They were the Silver Dollars of the Wild West, going on countless untold adventures in dusty saddlebags across the nation. Finding a hoard of Morgans doesn’t happen often—and when it does, it’s a big deal. So when we came across a recent hoard of 549 Morgan Silver Dollars— all struck at the historic New Orleans Mint in 1884—it was like hitting the jackpot!

Morgans from the New Orleans Mint

13

(Ju

(MS63) condition by NGC/PCGS

 Sealed in protective holder  1884-O accounts for just 1.48% of all Morgans Struck

Actual size is 38.1 mm

or Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS)! Grading service varies. The condition of these coins are as though they were struck yesterday, despite cbeing minted more than 135 years ago to circulate in commerce! And yet they have survived with a quality level of eye appeal that won’t cost you an arm and a leg.

Don’t Miss This Opportunity—Order Now!

Look elsewhere and you’ll find 1884-O Morgans in the same MS63 graded condition selling for as much as $159. But you won’t pay that here. For this special offer, we’re offering these collector-grade, 1884-O Morgan Silver Dollars for just $99 per coin. That’s 137 years of American history for just 72 cents per year!

The 1884-O Morgan Silver 1.48% of the entire series Dollar accounts for just 1.48% All Morgan of all Morgans Silver Dollars struck. Don’t miss out. Call 1-888-324-9125 and use the special offer code below to secure yours today while our limited supply lasts!

1884-O Morgan

1884-O Morgan Silver Dollar NGC/PCGS MS63 — $99 ea.

Certified Collector Quality

Coins are graded on a 70-point scale, with a 70 representing perfection. Through hard work and diligence, the collector who first assembled this hoard managed to find 1884-O Morgans graded as quality Mint State-63 (MS63) condition by the world’s two leading third-party grading services, Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC)

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GovMint.com • 14101 Southcross Dr. W., Suite 175, Dept. MHK201-01, Burnsville, MN 55337 GovMint.com® is a retail distributor of coin and currency issues and is not affiliated with the U.S. government. The collectible coin market is unregulated, highly speculative and involves risk. GovMint.com reserves the right to decline to consummate any sale, within its discretion, including due to pricing errors. Prices, facts, figures and populations deemed accurate as of the date of publication but may change significantly over time. All purchases are expressly conditioned upon your acceptance of GovMint.com’s Terms and Conditions (www.govmint.com/terms-conditions or call 1-800-721-0320); to decline, return your purchase pursuant to GovMint.com’s Return Policy. © 2021 GovMint.com. All rights reserved.

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