November 2017
Civil War News
The Source By Michael K. Shaffer
Papers of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts – Part Two
Massachusetts Papers Cover. Last month’s installment reviewed the first eight volumes in the original 14-volume collection of the Papers of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts. We resume this month with volume 9, where researchers will find various accounts on Operations on the Atlantic Coast 18611865; Virginia 1862, 1866; and Vicksburg. Contributors include William Lamb, Adelbert Ames, and many others. Among the accounts, ‘Recollections of Fort Sumter,’ ‘Action in the Department of North Carolina,’ ‘The Siege of Suffolk,’ ‘The Battle of Olustee,’ ‘The Fall of Fort Fisher,’ ‘Burning of Columbia,’ ‘Second Manassas,’ ‘Fredericksburg,’ and ‘Vicksburg.’ Moving to volume 10, John Ropes, Theodore Dodge, Henry Stone, and other speakers for the society provided details beneath the title: Critical Sketches of Some of the Federal and Confederate Commanders. Source materials accompany
these accounts, a return to the practice adopted in an earlier volume. Again, modern researchers will benefit from gleaning the documents each of these men referenced in compiling their lectures. Officers included P.G.T. Beauregard, U.S. Grant, W.S. Hancock, Andrew Humphreys, George McClellan, William T. Sherman, Jeb Stuart, and George Thomas. The book closes with an interesting chapter – ‘The War as We See it Now.’ Naval Operations and Operations Against Cuba and Puerto Rico: 1593-1815, the title of volume 11, offers accounts of various military engagements before the American Civil War. The members of the society harbored a keen interest in military history and occasionally had guest lecturers discuss battles outside the 1861-1865 time frame. Alfred T. Mahan and J. Giles Eaton, along with others, gave talks on the ‘American Revolution,’ ‘Tripoli,’ ‘Trafalgar,’ ‘Perry on Lake Erie,’ and ‘Old Ironsides.’ Refocusing on the American Civil War, with a couple of exceptions, volume 12, entitled Naval Actions and History, 1799-1898, provides accounts from waterborne fighting. The topics covered include ‘Home Squadron in the Winter of 186061,’ ‘Story of the Cumberland,’ ‘Story of the Monitor,’ ‘Siege of Charleston,’ ‘Battle of Mobile Bay,’ and ‘The Naval Brigade.’ William G. Saltonstall lectured on ‘Personal Reminiscences of the War, 1861-1865; the volume closes with stories of ‘Samoa and the Hurricane of March 1899;’ and ‘The Battle of Manilla Bay.’ Included among the contributors,
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George Belknap and Thomas O. Selfridge Jr. The thirteenth installment— Civil and Mexican Wars 1861, 1846—along with volume 14— contains the most varied assortment of accounts found throughout the collection. James H. Wilson, William B. Franklin, Henry Hunt, and others, provided their insights on ‘Cavalry in Virginia,’ ‘Cavalry of the Army of the Potomac,’ ‘Artillery,’ and ‘Hasty Intrenchments.’ Brigadier General George B. Davis, Judge Advocate General when he addressed the society in 1912, discussed a ‘Comparison Between Certain Aspects of the War of the Rebellion and the Russo-Japanese War in Manchuria.’ The medical field received attention with accounts entitled ‘Medical Services in the Ranks of the U.S. During the War of the Rebellion,’ and ‘The Surgeon and the Hospital in the Civil War.’ Other entries include an accounting of ‘President Davis,’ ‘The Negro as a Soldier in the War of the Rebellion,’ ‘Strategy of the Civil War,’ and ‘The Gettysburg Campaign.’ Thomas Livermore offered insight on ‘The Numbers in the Confederate Army 18611865.’ Three non-Civil War entries close this volume: ‘Battle of Buena Vista,’ ‘Battles of Contreras and Churubusco,’ and the ‘Battles of Molino De Ray and Chapultepec.’ Photographs make an entry in volume 14, joining the maps typical throughout most of the collection. Samuel Sumner, Charles Morse, Leonard Wood, and others contributed reports for the work’s title, Civil War and Miscellaneous Papers. The subjects range from events during the American Civil War to World War I. Among the entries: ‘Report on the Alleged Delay in Concentration of the Army of the Potomac at Antietam,’ from Major John C. Gray, Jr. Others considered ‘The Antietam Campaign,’ ‘The Twelfth Corps at Gettysburg,’ ‘Mine Run Campaign,’ ‘Mine Run Affair,’ and ‘The Relief of Chattanooga.’ Also included, reports of ‘Petersburg-Fort Harrison: A Comparison,’ ‘Cedar Creek,’ ‘Capture and Occupation of Richmond,’ ‘The Effect of President Lincoln’s Reelection Upon the Waning Fortunes of the Confederate States,’ and ‘Military Prisons: North and South.’ Nine articles, which cover later conflicts, close this edition. Historian William Marvel wrote
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the introduction to the index for the collection, and also provided a useful biographical sketch of each contributor throughout all 14 volumes; Marvel included a photograph of many of the men who had addressed the society. The index greatly enhances one’s ability to locate various references throughout the series quickly. Marvel closed his comments on the Papers of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts with an insightful summation of the work. He likened opening one of the volumes to passing “…between the massive yellow lions that guard the marble stairway to Boston’s grand athenaeum: one can almost catch the apple-sweetened scent of pipe smoke, drifting down from the room where the old men are reminiscing.” Thankfully, for modern researchers, these Prince Alberts remained diligent in collecting notes from each speaker and did not keep the transcripts in a can, but published them for posterity! Those seeking printed copies of the set can obtain them from Broadfoot Publishing, at http://www.broadfootpublishing. com, or check WorldCat http:// www.worldcat.org for help in finding the collection in a local
library. A few websites contain digitized versions of some individual Papers, including the Internet Archive at http://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Military%20Historical%20Society%20of%20 Massachusetts%22 and Hathi Trust at https://catalog.hathitrust. org/Record/009793905. At both sites, users can view pages online, conduct searches, or download different file formats. Please keep suggestions for future ‘The Source’ columns coming; send them to the email address shown below. Continued good luck in researching the Civil War! Michael K. Shaffer is a Civil War historian, author, lecturer, and instructor, who remains a member of the Society of Civil War Historians, Historians of the Civil War Western Theater, and the Georgia Association of Historians. Readers may contact him at mkscdr11@gmail.com, or to request speaking engagements via his website www.civilwarhistorian.net. Follow Michael on Facebook www.facebook.com/ michael.k.shaffer and Twitter @ michaelkshaffer.
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Photo of a page from Volume 14 Papers of MHS Massachusetts.