Civil War News
14G
The Source By Michael K. Shaffer
The Bachelder Papers Journeying to Gettysburg this month, thousands of folks will walk the battlefield, attend various seminars, visit local shops, and attempt to reconnect with the three days of fighting there in July 1863. Almost as soon as the roar of muskets and artillery died down, another man did likewise. “At the commencement of the war I determined to attach myself to the army and wait for the great battle which would naturally decide the contest; study its topography on the field, and learn its details from the actors themselves, and eventually prepare its written and illustrated history.” The thoughts of John Badger Bachelder, prewar artist and a man on a mission! Arriving within days after the fighting, Bachelder began touring the battlefield and used his artistic talent to sketch the different sectors, which played host to battle. His resultant work produced a highly detailed map, which the National Park Service continues to use today as a guide in the ongoing restoration efforts at the Gettysburg
The Bachelder Papers. Battlefield National Military Park (GBNMP). However, Bachelder’s map, (created in isometric, or birds-eye view style) or reprints sectioned into many large-scale maps, do not serve as the focus of this article. Instead, we will turn our attention to Bachelder’s other work; after all, spending 84 days in Gettysburg
Bachelder and his wife on the battlefield at Gettysburg.
should have produced fascinating accounts. So thought Bachelder as he made his way first to hospitals housing wounded and captured Confederate soldiers. He interviewed them with a focus on the exact location of their respective regiments during the battle. Later, catching up with the Army of the Potomac at Brandy Station—site of their 1863-64 winter encampment— he questioned various Federal officers about the spots where their commands had engaged. After amassing a tremendous amount of information, Bachelder obtained funding from Congress in 1880, to produce the definitive account of the war’s great battle. During a time of reconciliation, Bachelder chose to withhold his accounts as obtained from those he interviewed. Instead, he opted to extract information from the Official Records—volumes in production at the time—and include this evidence in his written history of Gettysburg. Congress had no desire for a mere rehashing of material published in the O.R.s. Bachelder’s work went unpublished. Fast-forward to the late 1950s and historian Edwin B. Coddington. Working on his narrative of the battle - and with an eye for primary source material, especially documents unknown or little used—Coddington began the search for additional information on Bachelder after spotting a reference to the New Hampshire Historical Society on an illustration mentioning Bachelder. Coddington the sleuth went to work. Upon contacting the society, he learned they indeed had boxes of Bachelder’s papers, and the folks in New Hampshire told Coddington no other historians had ever used the source. Bingo! Coddington became the first to mine the thousands of documents written to the ‘Colonel,’ a prewar title Bachelder held while serving in a militia unit in Pennsylvania. Coddington’s 1968 narrative, The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command, marked the first book to reference the Bachelder collection as a source. Thanks to the efforts of David and Audrey Ladd, who served as editors, and Morningside, who published the three-volume collection, this set now exists for those interested in learning more about the fighting at the crossroads town. Issued in 1994 and 1995, with a subtitle The Bachelder Papers: Gettysburg in their Own Words, the volumes contain various letters of correspondence between the Colonel and former Federal and Confederate officers. The communication continued until Bachelder’s death in 1894. Many of the letters detail the location and action of each writer’s respective commands
July 2017
Sample page; a letter from Joshua Chamberlain.
during the battle, while others wrote to critique the placement of various monuments on the battlefield; Bachelder served as a director of the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association. Some wrote to comment on Bachelder’s map, offering words of praise or suggesting corrections. Regardless of the topic, researchers can locate these various documents within the pages of The Bachelder Papers. The editors arranged the papers in chronological order. Volume one covers January 5, 1863 (a couple of letters before Gettysburg, the rest after the battle) through July 27, 1880. In the second volume, readers will find Bachelder’s letters from September 6, 1880, through April 12, 1886; the last volume contains letters from April 12, 1886, until December 22, 1894, along with five appendices presenting additional Bachelder material held in different repositories across the country. Each volume has an index, and the final volume provides a master index for all 2,081, continuously-numbered pages. Researchers seeking printed copies can obtain them from various online bookstores, and remember to check WorldCat http://www. worldcat.org for help in finding the collection in a local library. Scott Hartwig, a former
historian at GBNMP, recently commented on the significance of The Bachelder Papers. “Next to the Official Records, this is the most important collection of papers about the Battle of Gettysburg and the early years of what became the Gettysburg Battlefield National Military Park, that is in existence.” Remember Bachelder while visiting Gettysburg for this year’s commemoration of the battle. Visit the local bookstores, and you might even locate a copy of his work! Please keep suggestions for future ‘The Source’ columns coming; send them to the e-mail 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.