Civil War Times Spring 2023

TODAY IN HISTORY

JANUARY 16, 2001

THEODORE ROOSEVELT BECAME THE ONLY U.S. PRESIDENT EVER TO RECEIVE THE MEDAL OF HONOR. PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON AWARDED THE MEDAL TO ROOSEVELT POSTHUMOUSLY FOR HIS SAN JUAN HILL BATTLE HEROICS. THEODORE ROOSEVELT JR. ALSO RECEIVED THE MEDAL OF HONOR AS THE OLDEST MAN AND ONLY GENERAL TO BE AMONG THE FIRST WAVE OF TROOPS THAT STORMED NORMANDY’S UTAH BEACH.

For more, visit HISTORYNET.COM/ TODAY-IN-HISTORY

Relive Civil War history! Walk This Hallowed Ground at Manassas/Bull Run, Gettysburg and Appomattox to experience the beginning and end of the Civil War. Visit Memphis, Shiloh, Vicksburg and New Orleans on our Mississippi River Campaign Tour, to study “the key to the Confederacy.” Explore the rivers, ridges and the battles that raged from Atlanta to Chattanooga to Nashville on our Civil War on the Rivers, Rails and Mountains Tour Our Civil War, American History and WWII tours are unrivaled in their historical accuracy!

CIVIL WAR TIMES SPRING 2023

ON THE COVER: What motivated Civil War soldiers to fight: money or patriotism?

28

Rich Man’s War, Poor Man’s Fight?

Did the poor fight, while the wealthy stayed home? The answer is complicated.

36 Battle’s Hard Aftermath

The Army of the Potomac spread disease and devastation across the Sharpsburg, Md., region.

46

The Trouble With Tanglefoot

Liquor played an integral role in the daily life of both armies, as a medicine and as an escape.

54 ‘Nothing of the Kind Ever Took Place’

A young Union officer likely fabricated an attack by Confederate guerrillas along the Potomac River.

Whiskey-Fueled Warrior

Weapons

The

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GENIUS.

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The Greatest Leader of America’s Civil War

When South Carolina seceded from the Union, the first person offered the job of commanding the Union forces to return the rebel state to the fold was Robert E. Lee. But when his home state voted to join the Confederacy, he resigned his commission in the Union Army and took command of the Army of Northern Virginia. What he did then is legend and he remains the most admired general on either side of the conflict for his superb strategy and ability to find success in the face of far superior numbers. Now, his military achievements inspire The Robert E. Lee Proof Coin from the Bradford Exchange Mint. Magnificently plated in 99.9% silver, this exclusive coin’s reverse showcases the historic Great Civil War General surrounded by a wreath inspired by the 1863 Indian Head Penny, carried by soldiers on both sides of the conflict and backed by crossed Springfield rifles. His name appears above and a golden privy mark reads C.S.A. declaring his side of the conflict. The obverse features a Civil War era cannon backed by crossed United States and Confederate battle flags. American Civil War appears above and the years of battle below. Proof quality coining dies create your nonmonetary coin’s polished, mirror-like fields and raised, frosted imagery. It arrives secured in a crystal-clear capsule.

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DIGITAL WATCH

Civil War Times is now on TikTok. Check us out at tiktok.com/@civilwartimesmagazine for video features like Civil War Stuff on My Desk, Hidden Gettysburg, and a new series: the Civil War in Miniature. We’ll be bringing you sneak peeks from the battlefields and upcoming issues, and more! Don’t miss a thing. Follow us now!

HARPERS FERRY GRATITUDE

#HumpDayHistory runs every Wednesday on our Facebook page (facebook.com/CivilWarTimes) with vignettes about the war and its era. In our last #HumpDayHistory post of 2022 we shared the story of Harpers Ferry’s Camp Hill. Regiments on both sides encamped there during the war before its rebirth as a launching pad for Civil Rights. You had a lot to say!

Working as a ranger there was one of the best years of my career.

Never forgotten. —Dan Dry Lived not far from Harpers Ferry.... Visited few times...before National Park Service took over....Also remains of Stoner College....GG Grandfather was one of military captured John Brown... Buried in family plot in Petersville, MD.

Very nice research which made for a good story. —Lester

I’ve never seen those older illustrations or the photo. —Mark

FROM THE ARCHIVES

When we posted our February 2020 cover story “Selling Stonewall” about how the sites of Stonewall Jackson’s wounding and death became tourist attractions, we received lots of comments from readers who have visited the spots and many who want to go.

Great article, I’ve visited the sites before myself.

Great Story! —Scott Saunders

I stood beside that a few years ago. Actually he died in a house a few miles away several days after he was shot. —Gary

I remember stopping off at Jackson’s Shrine after seeing the sign on Interstate 95 whilst traveling through Virginia back in September 2017. It was a gorgeous, sunny day and we had the best one on one tour there. Our teenage daughters enjoyed it, too, and appreciated the stretch of the legs after the drive from Washington, D.C.

Made It Out Alive

It was a perfect late autumn day in the northern Rockies. Not a cloud in the sky, and just enough cool in the air to stir up nostalgic memories of my trip into the backwoods. is year, though, was di erent. I was going it solo. My two buddies, pleading work responsibilities, backed out at the last minute. So, armed with my trusty knife, I set out for adventure.

Well, what I found was a whole lot of trouble. As in 8 feet and 800-pounds of trouble in the form of a grizzly bear. Seems this grumpy fella was out looking for some adventure too. Mr. Grizzly saw me, stood up to his entire 8 feet of ferocity and let out a roar that made my blood turn to ice and my hair stand up. Unsnapping my leather sheath, I felt for my hefty, trusty knife and felt emboldened. I then showed the massive grizzly over 6 inches of 420 surgical grade stainless steel, raised my hands and yelled, “Whoa bear! Whoa bear!” I must have made my point, as he gave me an almost admiring grunt before turning tail and heading back into the woods.

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BEYOND THE BATTLE

For years, the Adams County Historical Society has been housed in a cramped Victorian house on Seminary Ridge, unable to display its rich horde of artifacts or offer access to researchers. But this April, the ACHS will open a new 29,000-square-foot complex just north of the Gettysburg battlefield. The expansive building will feature 12 galleries of immersive exhibits that showcase the county’s deep history.

No matter how much has been written, displayed, or filmed about the Civil War’s largest engagement, the appetite for more information about the Battle of Gettysburg remains insatiable. The ACHS will help satisfy that hunger with its revolutionary Beyond the Battle Museum, featuring some of Gettysburg’s rarest artifacts and using media and special effects technology to take visitors on a journey through time.

“Beyond the Battle will push the boundaries of a traditional museum experience to deliver a new perspective of the fight,” says Andrew Dalton, ACHS’ energetic executive director. “What was it like to live through the battle? To hear Abraham Lincoln’s immortal words? These questions and more

will be answered and help visitors expand their knowledge of this remarkable town and its people.”

Caught in the Crossfire, a 360-degree re-creation of a home trapped between Union and Confederate lines, will be a unique feature of the museum. This immersive experience uses light projections, surround-sound speakers, and special effects to transport visitors back to the battle. Guests will enter a family’s home shortly after their rush to safety in the cellar below, hear their hushed conversations, split-second decisions, and life-or-death encounters with Union and Confederate troops. Visitors will hear the whizzing of bullets through the home, the hiss of shells overhead, the shaking of floorboards and furniture, and the family’s frightened reaction from below.

UNDER ONE ROOF

The ACHS’ new complex will house its entire library and archives. The museum’s 12 galleries will showcase many of its collection highlights.

The new museum will also include a spacious library and archives where visitors can access rare archival holdings, including civilian accounts from the Battle of Gettysburg and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

To learn more, visit achs-pa.org or follow the ACHS on Facebook and YouTube. Advanced tickets will go on sale starting March 1, 2023.

FOR OLD ABE

IN NOVEMBER, The Lincoln Forum hosted its 27th annual symposium at Gettysburg. This year’s event featured two cable news stars: John Avlon, who spoke on “How Lincoln Helped Win the Peace After World War II,” and Jon Meacham, who delivered an address on Lincoln as a moral leader.

Three biographers discussed their recent books: Walter Stahr on Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, Elizabeth D. Leonard on Union general Benjamin F. Butler, and John Rhodehamel on John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln assassination.

Jonathan W. White delivered a lecture on his two recent books about Lincoln and African Americans; Roger Lowenstein and Frank J. Williams had a conversation about how the North financed the Civil War, and Christopher Oakley received a standing ovation for showing how historic photographs and computer technology could be used to pinpoint the location of the platform from where Lincoln delivered his epochal “Gettysburg Address.”

Attendees at the symposium enjoyed the all-author book signing, a battlefield tour by Carol Reardon, a concert of Civil War music featuring Jari Villanueva and the Federal City Brass

IN LINCOLN’S HONOR

From left: Lincoln Group President David J. Kent accepts the Wendy Allen Award from Wendy Allen, Jonathan White, and Harold Holzer.

Band, and breakout sessions and panels featuring Forum favorites such as Harold Holzer, John Marszalek, Craig Symonds, Edna Green Medford, Christian McWhirter, Edward Steers, J. Matthew Gallman, Michael Green, and Andrew F. Lang.

The Forum’s 2022 Richard N. Current Award of Achievement went to Jon Meacham; the Harold Holzer Book Award went to Roger Lowenstein; and the Wendy Allen Award went to the Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia.

For more information or to join, visit www.thelincolnforum.org.

WA R F R AME

SOME SOLDIERS had a bit more flair when it came to having their images taken than others. This unidentified Union bon vivant is showing off his “camp hat.” Patterns for such hats were available in ladies’ magazines of the era, and it’s possible a loved one made this and sent it to the soldier to help keep him warm during winter camp. He’s added some drama to the sixth-plate tintype by opening the top buttons on his overcoat and brandishing an Allen & Wheelock revolver and a rifle with a gnarly looking sword bayonet. Those weapons might be photographer props. He spent a little extra to have the photo tinted with color, which makes the decoration on the hat pop and even more interesting.

REGIMENTAL NEWSPAPER

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS recently acquired a rare surviving copy of the complete run of the Civil War regimental newspaper, the Soldier’s Letter of the 2nd Colorado Cavalry. More than 100 regiments on both sides of the conflict printed at least one edition of a camp newspaper, but few survive and a complete run of one paper is even harder to find. The 2nd Colorado Cavalry’s four-page Soldier’s Letter was staunchly against slavery and the Confederacy. It ran for 50 editions between 1864 until after the war ended in 1865.

“The rebels have taken to smuggling in bacon past the blockage,” a short item noted in one edition near the end of the war. “The evidences multiply that they are on their last legs.”

Three pages in each edition were devoted to a narrative history of the regiment, war news, local gossip, rumors, and jokes.

The fourth was left blank for soldiers to write letters or notes to family and then mail home. Each copy cost 10 cents. The paper’s editor, Oliver Wallace, was a private in the 2nd Colorado Cavalry.

More than 200 regimental papers in at least 32 states printed at least one edition, according to

historian Earle Lutz, but they had mostly vanished by the time he surveyed the nation’s libraries, museums, and major private collections in the early 1950s.

“I was struck by its uniqueness: a complete run of an American Civil War regimental newspaper and a specially collected set presented to the regimental commander,” says Georgia Higley, head of the Physical Collections Services in the Serial and Government Publications Division, who recommended the acquisition of the paper.

“Researchers and Civil War enthusiasts value regimental newspapers for the honesty expressed by the men and their descriptions of life on the front lines—both at times at odds with mainstream newspapers.”

EXTRA! EXTRA!

Each copy of the 2nd Colorado Cavalry’s regimental newspaper the Soldier’s Letter cost 10 cents. The full run, recently acquired by the Library of Congress, ran 50 editions between 1864 and after the war ended in 1865.

CALL FOR

VOLUNTEERS

ENLIST NOW! Join the volunteer army transcribing the papers and correspondence of notable figures in the collections of the Library of Congress. Launched in 2018, the Library’s “By the People” crowdsourcing campaign has several active projects in progress. Volunteers are helping transcribe, review, and tag digitized pages in the collections of Walt Whitman, Clara Barton, James Garfield, Theodore Roosevelt, and more.

As of December 2022, the Library has released more than 831,000 pages for transcription, and about 591,000 have been transcribed. For more information visit: https://crowd.loc.gov.

A New Charge

The American Battlefield Trust is raising funds to acquire and raze General Pickett’s Buffet in Gettysburg and “restore the area to its wartime appearance.” The eatery, on Steinwehr Avenue, is visible from much of the area where the climactic Pickett’s Charge occurred on July 3, 1863.

Following a $1.5 million campaign to cover acquisition and subsequent restoration costs, the Trust plans “to take down the current structure, remove the asphalt parking lot, and restore the landscape, preparing the property for an interpretation and visitor experience that will attract heritage tourists for years to come.” Buffet owner Gary Ozenbaugh is moving the buffet to a larger site about four miles southwest of Gettysburg. He approached the ABT about preservation options for the half-acre site when making the decision to move it. Ozenbaugh “made a proactive and profound choice,” says ABT President David Duncan. In addition to funds already committed, including a contribution from the Gettysburg Foundation, the trust must raise an additional $550,000 to complete the transaction.

See You in Court

Residents in Virginia’s Prince William County have filed a lawsuit against the county’s supervisors over the recent decision to allow more than 25 million square feet of data centers to be developed near Manassas National Battlefield Park. In November, officials voted in favor of changing the area’s comprehensive plan, which paves the way for the data center development under a project known as the PW Digital Gateway. The lawsuit, filed in December, argues that the board “failed to consider” the proposal’s impact on the environment and

nearby Manassas National Battlefield Park or the effects of noise, traffic, and “visual blight” on the surrounding community. It aims to reverse the comprehensive plan amendment and prevent future changes to the plan. No hearings have been scheduled and the county had not submitted a response at press time. A coalition of groups, including the Manassas Battlefield Trust, the National Parks Conservation Association, the Prince William Conservation Alliance, Piedmont Environmental Council, and the American Battlefield Trust have been advocating for alternative plans. “We see industrial development of this location, historically part of the battlefield and teaming with wildlife, as the worst possible fate for this largely pristine landscape,” the ABT said in a statement released last year. More information about this new fight at Manassas can be found at growsmartpw.org.

Campus Crossroads

On October 7, 2022, George Mason University dedicated a Civil War redoubt on its Fairfax campus as a Virginia historic site. The redoubt, an earthen fortification, was one of three constructed by Confederate troops along Braddock Road in 1861. The nearby intersection of Braddock and Route 123 dates back to the 1700s. The redoubt was built in the strategic location known as Farr’s Cross Roads, because it provided views of both Braddock Road, which was used to travel from the port in Alexandria into the Shenandoah Valley, and Route 123, a major thoroughfare. The redoubt changed hands many times between Union and Confederate forces during the Civil War. The preservation and interpretation of the site is the result of a partnership between Mason and the Bull Run Civil War Roundtable, which began in 2016.

MISCELLANY WORTH A MOVE

REAL ESTATE WITH CIVIL WAR CONNECTIONS

as soon as he was the least startled…”), or bemoaning command decisions (“Jeff Davis did hate to put Joe Johnston at the head” of what was left of the Army of Tennessee, “For a day of Albert Sidney Johnston, out West! And Stonewall, could he come back to use here!!!”), her opinions provide a page-turning chronicle of the rebellion’s rise and fall.

You can own the Columbia, S.C., home the Chesnuts lived in for periods during the war, and where she wrote a part of her diary. The six-bedroom house was built in the 1850s, and survived the February 1865 fires that swept the South Carolina capital after William T. Sherman’s men occupied the town.

There are hundreds of published primary sources of soldiers, civilians, and politicians, but the massive diary kept by South Carolinian Mary Chesnut (1823-1886), published as Mary Chesnut’s Civil War in 1981, remains a classic must-read of its genre. Mary, the wife of South Carolina politician and officer James Chesnut, knew and interacted with the Confederacy’s elite.

Whether expressing disgust at the contradictions of slavery (“our men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines, and the mulattoes one sees in every family exactly resemble the white children….”), describing a general’s appearance (Maj. Gen. Edward Johnson “had an odd habit of falling into a state of incessant winking

Offered at $950,000 and located on Hampton Street in the historic district, the house has operated as a bed & breakfast and is still zoned for such use. Or it can serve as a private residence. Buy it and walk to the Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, or swing by the old capitol building and see where the scars remain from Union shellfire. Upon returning, you might want to sit down and record your own thoughts of the war that so intrigues us.

ANSWER TO LAST ISSUE’S QUIZ CLOSE UP!

WHAT PARTICULAR TYPE of object is pictured here? Send your answer to dshoaf@historynet.com, subject heading “Boom!”

CLOSE UP

CONGRATULATIONS to Ashley Healy of Olympia, Wash., who identified the stone tenant house on the Thomas Farm on the Monocacy Battlefield near Frederick, Md.

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KEEN EYES, STEADY HANDS

EVEN SIMPLE IMAGES can tell interesting stories. At a quick glance, this sixth-plate tintype simply appears to be of three unidentified Union soldiers. But a closer look uncovers interesting hat badges on two of the men and unique, non-military issue rifles. Those clues reveal that these men are members of Vermont’s Company E of the 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters, one of two regiments of sure shots raised by Hiram Berdan, an enterprising inventor and marksman from New York. The regiments were nicknamed “Berdan’s Sharpshooters” and earned acclaim on many battlefields. By 1864, both regiments were combined into one: the 1st U.S. Sharpshooters. Unlike most volunteer units, the men in the Sharpshooters came from many different states: Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Wisconsin. It was not easy to get into the Sharpshooters. To do so, a man had to place 10 consecutive shots in a 10-inch circle from 200 yards away while resting his weapon, then repeat the feat while hitting a target 100 yards away and firing offhand, or without resting his weapon on a stabilizing device. Recruits tried out with their own weapons brought from home, similar to those carried by the three men here—one of the clues to whom they served with. —D.B.S.

1. The forage caps of the left and right soldiers provide other important clues. They bear the hat brass figures “E” and “2” arranged horizontally or vertically within a wreath. “E” stands for Company E, and “2” indicates the 2nd regiment. The wreath is key, in that placing company letters and regimental numerals within a wreath was unique to Berdan’s men.

2. Sharpshooters wore dark green frock coats, which appeared no different than the more typical blue in Civil War photography. This trio wears an early version of the green uniform produced by Martin Bros. of New York City. The photographer tinted the brass buttons. Later in the war, the Sharpshooters were issued coats that used non-reflective, black hard-rubber buttons. The man in the middle also has a painted rain cover on his forage cap.

3. Each man shoulders his personal small-caliber civilian rifle. These were no doubt used in the shooting trial that qualified them to join Berdan’s Sharpshooters. All test shooting was done with open sights, no scopes.

Civil War Times would like to thank Brian White for the use of this image and for his expertise on Sharpshooter clothing and equipment.

LA GUERRE CIVILE

FROM FRANCE AND FROM A FRIEND

ONE OF THE GREAT BENEFITS of working in the field of Civil War history derives from the generosity of other scholars. Their sense of shared exploration promotes the circulation of materials that otherwise would remain unknown. More than 25 years ago, I met Donald E. Witt, a scholar of French literature with a deep interest in the American conflict. He had spent years translating the French newspaper Le Temps (The Times) for the period 1860-65. Because historians had frequently quoted the British press but paid relatively little attention to French newspapers, the materials he showed me seemed especially fresh. Happy to know someone else shared his enthusiasm for the project, he gave me seven thick binders containing more than 3,500 pages of translations.

A perusal of Le Temps revealed a rich body of descriptive and analytical evidence. The newspaper’s correspondents pursued an expansive approach to the American war that addressed politics, military affairs, swings of national morale, diplomatic

maneuverings, and other topics. Political and military leaders figured prominently in the articles, which suggests Parisians exhibited a desire for such news.

Fourteen newspapers served Paris in 1861. Napoleon III’s government sponsored Moniteur and received largely favorable treatment from several other papers deemed “semi-official press.” Le Temps, which would become one of the important French dailies, supported the house of Orleans. With a pro-Union, antislavery editorial slant, it stood at odds with a pro-Confederate imperial press. In October 1861, Le Temps made a distinction regarding slavery’s role in the American crisis. “Yes, slavery is at the root of the war,” read the piece, “since it is the institution of slavery that, in the North and in the South, has made two nations, has created hostile interests between them...that has determined for her (the South) the rupture of the pact...” But it was not a war to kill slavery because “the abolitionist opinion has ever been, in the North, only that of an intimate minority.”

Le Temps allocated considerable attention to the Emancipation Proclamation. Noting that President Lincoln’s preliminary proclamation of September 22, 1862, finally “placed the debate between the North and the South on its true terrain,” the editors labeled it a military expedient forced on Lincoln by Rebel victories in the Eastern Theater. The paper found it “regrettable that the President hesitated for so long a time” and quoted from his letter to Horace Greeley dated August 22, 1862, concluding that “[t]his policy has only one aim, the re-establishment of the Union.” The newspaper responded to the final proclamation, which it termed “very important news from America,” on January 15, 1863. “This proclamation,” read the perceptive article, “...can hardly have any immediate effect; but it is not any less one of these utterances destined to have repercussions in history, to be converted into acts, and to become definitive.”

The prospective dual between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee in 1864 generated sustained coverage in Le Temps that praised both commanders. “General Grant has acquired in his western campaigns habits of vigor” that would allow him “to lead the Army of the Potomac to victory,” while Lee, a general of “remarkable talent,” had won victories that showcased “the courage and energy of the Confederate troops.” Le Temps initially predicted Union triumph, largely because of faith in “the militar y capacity, but especially in the tenacity and the character of Grant.”

After the Battle of the Crater, the editors adopted a more ambivalent stance. “Whatever will be the denouement of this campaign in Virginia,” observed a piece treating Lee and Grant as equals, “it will remain a testimony of the indomitable tenacity of the two armies and the two generals who resist each other for so long...without any perceptible advantage on either side.”

Grinding operations in Virginia between early May and August 1864 set up a long piece in early September.

Analyzing the two societies at war, a correspondent explored the combatants’

NEWS FROM AMERICA

The January 15, 1863, edition of Le Temps discusses the Battle of Murfreesboro, fought from December 31, 1862, to January 2, 1863, as well as the Emancipation Proclamation.

national morale and chances for victory. Confederates had faced “bankruptcy, despotism, famine” and “no longer have anything to hope for except independence; they no longer have anything to lose except their life.” The author admired “the courage that they deploy in this long resistance” and resoluteness in “this obstinacy of a common people who, for two years, block[ad]ed, invaded, decimated, found resources, [and] faced immense forces from the Union.” The Confederate economy lay in ruins “from top to bottom; all able men from fifteen to fifty-five are under arms....One no longer sees but women in the families and Negroes in the fields.” Yet Confederates manifested discipline born of “a unity of will” and still “held on, and no one can say when they will succumb.”

The United States presented a vastly different picture. It “has not renounced its richness,” asserted the author, “the war has interrupted neither its industry, nor its commerce.” Daily life progressed essentially as in peacetime, and Northerners shrank from “extreme measures, acting little and spending a lot, placing

mercenaries opposite seasoned men, wasting immense resources without breaking down a poor enemy.”

The Union effort lacked the sense of collective direction evident in the Confederacy. Writing before the full impact of Sherman’s capture of Atlanta had become evident (travel across the Atlantic took 10 days or more), this writer perceived a possibly disastrous lack of will above the Potomac: “The North can yield to fatigue; then the war would have served only to substitute a national hate for a political rivalry; and to ruin more profoundly the Union.”

Four months later, on January 2, 1865, the paper had changed its tone. It celebrated the “re-election of Mr. Lincoln, and the manner in which it was accomplished” as “the gage of an indestructible liberty, and will remain in history as an imperishable testimony of political and moral grandeur.” The editors accurately predicted the difficult road that remained ahead: “[If] it is no longer hardly possible to doubt the re-establishment of the Union, the final success, and especially the final pacification do not appear still less a rather lengthy operation.”

Whenever I see the seven binders on the bookcase in my library, I think of Donald Witt’s great generosity and the trove of French evidence he made available to me. ✯

ACHOO!

COLORFUL REPRODUCTION HANDKERCHIEFS

IN HIS SPRAWLING HOUSE on the outskirts of Murfreesboro, Tenn., Chris Utley shows me his second-floor office—the nerve center of his business for 19th-century reproduction clothing. Atop a bookcase rest 150-plus year-old boots and shoes. To our left stands a display of original U.S. Christian Commission ephemera. To our right, in a closet, hang some of the repro clothing Utley sells.

But I’m not here for the old-style vests and overshirts or the denim and linen jackets. I’m here to learn about handkerchiefs. Utley, a 47-year-old healthcare investigator, is the only person I know who collects original hankies from the Civil War. Of the 14 in his collection, seven belonged to identified soldiers. For nearly a decade, Utley has reproduced and sold copies of original Civil War hankies—a business that spawned his reproduction clothing business called South Union Mills.

The war has enthralled Utley since he first read Bruce Catton’s books as a kid. As he grew older, the Kentucky native caught the reenacting bug. In 1998, Utley and hundreds of his reenacting pards—including Robert Lee Hodge of Confederates in the Attic fame—re-created Stonewall Jackson’s famous Flank March on the very ground where the general’s soldiers advanced at Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863.

Utley owns roughly 20 books on “Old Jack,” whom he admires for his devout Christian beliefs. In the back yard of his 10-acre spread, Utley raises chickens, just as Jackson did at his farm outside Lexington, Va., when he served as a

PERSONAL EFFECT

Chris Utley and one of his prized original cotton handkerchiefs. Norman Hastings of the 45th Massachusetts stenciled his name, company, and regiment on the colorful hanky.

professor at Virginia Military Institute.

“A lot of the ways he led his life, I lead mine,” says Utley, a devout Christian himself.

In 2013, the idea to reproduce and sell Civil War handkerchiefs came to Utley while he was taking a lunch break at his cubicle at work.

“What is something I can do that nobody else can do?” the former patrol officer thought. “I want to find a niche that’s mine.”

At the time, Utley didn’t know anything about textiles and little about Civil War-era handkerchiefs. Reenactors used handkerchiefs as an added touch of authenticity for their uniforms. But no one, as far as Utley could tell, made versions that were true to the period.

“The big thing for me is I wanted to be as authentic as possible,” he says.

In 2014, Utley bought his first original Civil War handkerchief from a Virginia antiques/relics dealer. The 18- by 16-inch cotton hanky belonged to Lieutenant S. Millet Thompson of the 13th New Hampshire. On the handkerchief —which features black, red, and tan patterns—the officer had stenciled his name and regiment. Thompson survived the war, including a wound at the siege of Petersburg. He died in 1911.

Over the years, Utley purchased other handkerchiefs on eBay and from Civil War dealers from $500 to $1,000. In an online auction, Utley spotted a handkerchief carried by U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Daniel Butterfield at Gettysburg, but he dropped out of the bidding when it soared to several thousand dollars.

All Utley’s originals belonged to U.S. Army soldiers except for one. When new, most featured vibrant colors, now dulled by time. Some have intricate patterns. All are made of either cotton or silk. A soldier paid about $1.50 for a silk hanky, less for cotton. Utley’s reproductions sell for $15 to $30 apiece.

One of Utley’s originals was carried by Lincoln Ripley Stone, a surgeon in the 54th Massachusetts, the most famous Black regiment of the war. The Harvard Medical School graduate served with Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, who was killed in the 54th Mas-

A GLORY-IOUS HANKY

Surgeon Lincoln Ripley Stone began the war with the 2nd Massachusetts, and was briefly held prisoner in 1862 at Winchester, Va. He later became the 54th Massachusetts’ surgeon.

sachusetts’ epic night attack at Fort Wagner on July 18, 1863.

Corporal Cyrus Dennis of the 1st Maryland “Potomac Home Brigade” Cavalry (U.S.) carried another. Utley owns his wartime Bible, too. Another belonged to Private Reuben Sweet of the 5th Wisconsin, who served under Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman during his March to the Sea.

The only non-soldier handkerchief in Utley’s collection was carried by a Philadelphia man named George Johnson, a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Escaped slaves used the network of clandestine routes and safe houses to escape to free states and freedom.

The first original soldier handkerchief Utley re-created for sale came from the collection of an Idaho doctor. That hanky is named the “Galloway” after the collector’s surname.

For a nominal fee, Utley has purchased the reproduction rights of other soldier handkerchiefs from the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Va.; the Adams County (Pa.) Historical Society in Gettysburg; the Ohio Historical Society; the Oshkosh (Wis.) Public Museum, and elsewhere.

After receiving photos of handkerchiefs from Utley, a designer in Europe re-creates the hankies in digital form in their original, striking colors.

“My aim was to make them look like new,” Utley says.

An overseas mill makes the cotton or silk handkerchiefs for Utley, who sells them on his website and at Civil War shows. They’re also available at the Chickamauga battlefield in Georgia and at two outlets in Gettysburg.

Besides living historians, Utley says the handkerchiefs are popular with attorneys and cowboy action shooters who participate in Old West target competitions.

Hollywood likes Utley’s hankies and reproduction clothing, too. He has spotted his goods in movies such as The Free State of Jones, Nightmare Alley, and Jane Got a Gun.

“It’s gotten to be so common that I no longer make a mental note of it,” he says. In a display case on a bottom shelf in the nerve center, I stare at one of Utley’s original handkerchiefs—probably his favorite, he tells me. “Norman Hastings,” reads the name stenciled on the handkerchief in neat, block letters. “Co. C 45th Reg. Mass. V.”

In mid-September 1862, the 29-yearold married farmer enlisted as a private in the 45th Massachusetts, a ninemonth regiment. On November 5, 1862, his regiment departed from Boston on the steamship Mississippi, bound for North Carolina to reinforce U.S.

RAMBLING

Army occupation forces.

In North Carolina, 45th Massachusetts soldiers suffered from yellow fever, typhoid, and dysentery. As the weather turned brutally hot—a “fiery furnace,” a 45th Massachusetts veteran recalled— the already debilitating conditions turned worse.

“The sickness increased daily, and some poor fellows passed on to their resting-place above, when almost in reach of that earthly home towards which their thoughts and dreams had so long been directed,” a regimental historian wrote.

On June 24, 1863, Hastings and his bedraggled 45th Massachusetts comrades jammed aboard the steamer S.R. Spaulding, bound for Boston and their families.

“Forlorn and weary,” an observer described the soldiers.

On the journey from Fort Monroe, a stop in Virginia en route to Massachusetts, Hastings and another 45th Massachusetts man died from disease, probably dysentery. They were only several days’ travel from home.

“Their bodies will be forwarded to their friends,” a contemporaneous newspaper account noted. On Hastings’ “Casualty Sheet,” a clerk wrote: “Effects sent [to] wife.” Hastings’ cotton hand-

LOST TO DISEASE

While Norman Hastings’ handkerchief survived the war (previous spread), he did not. Disease killed him in 1863 while he was returning home.

kerchief probably was among them.

On the shelf near the Hastings hanky, another display case catches my eye. It contains two handkerchiefs—one plain white with a pattern along the edges and another featuring a maroon design—as well as a small tobacco box and an old metal chain, perhaps for a watch.

The relics belonged to Ira Lindsay, a

38-year-old machinist and shoemaker from Worcester, Mass. In 1857, he married a woman named Mary Estabrook, who bore him three children: Ellen, Kate, and Joseph Jr. On March 17, 1864, their father enlisted in the 25th Massachusetts as a private.

In early June 1864, Lindsay and his comrades found themselves at Cold Harbor, a dusty hamlet 10 miles northeast of Richmond. On June 3, in Ulysses Grant’s infamous, poorly coordinated charge, the 25th Massachusetts was among the Army of the Potomac regiments cut to pieces.

“[Our] lines were broken [and] the flying iron crushed bones like glass, and men and officers seemed to be staggered,” a 25th Massachusetts soldier recalled.

In the assault, Lindsay and 74 other soldiers in his regiment suffered mortal wounds. He may have bled on the chain in the display case. An old tag with it reads: “Blood was never washed off” and “Chain worn by father in the army.”

I wonder about those handkerchiefs.

Did Lindsay use them to wipe away tears after he received a letter from his wife, Mary?

Did he wrap one of them around a tintype of his children? Joseph Jr. was only nine months old when he lost his father.

Did Lindsay or someone else use them to stanch his wounds as he lay dying at Cold Harbor?

Who sent the relics home to Lindsay’s family?

I ask Utley if he visits his handkerchiefs late at night, as I probably would, perhaps to commune with the spirit of their owners.

“I think about what these have seen and whose pockets they were in,” he tells me. Then he pauses.

“Sometimes,” he says, “it just seems surreal that I own them.” ✯

SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE

John Banks, author of two Civil War books, has another one coming in late-spring 2023. Check out A Civil War Road Trip of a Lifetime (Gettysburg Publishing). Banks’ home base is Nashville, Tenn.

PYRRHIC TRIUMPH

Sherman’s 15th Corps took part in the January 1863 fight at Arkansas Post. Despite the victory, it marked another blip in a poor start for “Cump” and his men.

MANAGED MAYHEM

WILLIAM T. SHERMAN’S LEGACY probably is linked more to 15th U.S. Army Corps than any other unit or army he would command during the Civil War. Still today, more than 160 years later, Sherman and the “Diabolical 15th” continue to spur wrath in Southern hearts and minds, particularly for the carnage wreaked during the 1864 “March to the Sea” in Georgia and the subsequent Carolinas Campaign. As Eric Michael Burke reveals, however, in his captivating new tome, Sherman’s reputation as a “hard war” commander evolved as the war progressed and, contrary to popular belief, Sherman’s men likely had a greater impact on him during that evolution than he did on them. In Soldiers From Experience (LSU Press, 2022, $50 hardcover) Burke explores new ground in analyzing the rise of corps-level tactical culture within respective Civil War volunteer armies.

CWT: What inspired your research?

EB: Initially, my hope was (and still is) to develop new ways of effectively bridging the older, now occasionally maligned “drums and guns” literature focused on Civil War military operations with so much of the incredibly fascinating and vitally important ideas circulating in the less military-centric sub-fields of the war’s historiography. My time spent in and out of combat in the Army while serving in different units inspired an interest in me for understanding why different organizations, trained to conduct particular tasks in more or less identical ways, still tend to operate in distinctive fashions. I wanted to try to develop a more holistic understanding of why military units had such a timeless habit of developing unique collective personalities. Given the particularities of how volunteer regiments—and thus the

higher commands to which they were assigned—were raised and maintained in the field during the Civil War, it was a natural place to focus that research.

CWT: Were any preconceived notions you had about Sherman impacted?

EB: As a non-commissioned officer, I frankly found it hard to believe 19thcentury generals enjoyed the degree of influence over those in the ranks they likely believed they did. That said, I think that Sherman has classically been depicted as having been far more in touch with his junior subordinates than many of his peers. I was struck to find that, while this was certainly the case later in the war, Cump truly had to grow into that role. He was never inclined toward believing some kind of special wisdom was maintained within the rank and file, and he seemed to think of himself as a consummate professional among others merely masquerading as such—and there’s some truth to that, of course—but he ultimately recognized that to be successful in pursuing his objectives he had to “speak their language” and accept their “eccentricities.”

CWT: Was Sherman’s “hard war” evolution purely the product of military necessity?

EB: Sherman was a consummate conservative in just about every conceivable way. Politically, socially, tactically, the man was wracked with anxiety about radical change. Early on, few of his echelon in the Western Theater were as committed to ensuring that the conflict wouldn’t be transformed from a “kid-gloved” military prosecution of a mostly contained domestic insurrection into a “radical” social revolution in which America morphed from a slave society into something altogether different—which to conservatives like Sherman was, of course, frightening.

Unfortunately for Cump, he did not control events to that effect. He struggled to control the war’s political drift, struggled to control the libertine and destructive spirit of the volunteers he at least nominally “commanded,” and he

very much struggled to control the trajectory of the combat engagements he prosecuted. It took considerable time and what appears to have been a nervous breakdown of sorts to finally force him to embrace the fact he would—to use his phrase—have to accept that he was “riding a whirlwind unable to guide the storm.”

Like many of his peers, Sherman grew increasingly reticent about the possibility the Southern rebellion could be terminated by relatively conservative means. By the summer of 1862, he knew only harsher policy measures would bring the most ardent secession-

Believe it or not, generals are human beings, too, which means their beliefs are likewise shaped by their experiences leading particular bodies of troops that respond to events and their own orders in particular ways. Thus, there is a perpetual cycle of mutual influence whereby commanders and their men influence each other’s behavior and thoughts, besides exogenous factors like environment or enemy action.

Historians have paid far too little attention to this dynamic and instead emphasize the individual personalities of general officers in order to explain the incredibly intricate behavior of the massively complex human systems they commanded. The truth is, it is literally impossible for a single officer to have the kind of direct unmitigated influence over the behavior of an organization as large as an army corps that they often believed they enjoyed.

ists to their knees, but it was important to him that such a policy be prosecuted exclusively by officers and men kept on a tight leash by professionals who knew how to ensure that “hard war” didn’t spontaneously devolve into mass destruction, rapine, murder, and such. Tightly controlled chaos became one of his favorite strategic tools, even if it leaned too far for his liking toward the chaotic side of the spectrum.

CWT: Why do you feel Sherman’s men influenced his growth as a commander, not the other way around.

EB: As I write, the cultures of military organizations arise organically from cycles of experience, reflection, and collective meaning-making. The experiences soldiers have are of course directly shaped by the decisions and expectations of their leaders, but a wide array of factors go into shaping a soldier’s experiences and thus his or her beliefs, assumptions, ideas, norms, etc.

Granted, the unity of command principle does mean that in an ideal situation it all comes down to one individual calling the shots. But as historians, we have to parse the difference between the legal responsibility of a final military decision and the incredibly complicated network of people, ideas, culture, and other influences that lead to shaping that individual’s decision as well as the even more complex story of how that decision is or is not actually prosecuted. Attributing it all simply to a single individual’s actions or decisions is far too easy an explanation. As a historian, I am infinitely skeptical of excessive parsimony.

CWT: Chickasaw Bayou, the corps’ first true fight, was a disaster. What did Sherman do wrong there?

EB: Sherman’s expeditionary force failed foremost in its coordination between brigades and divisions. While that was mainly a product of the Yazoo bottomlands’ nightmarish terrain, it was exacerbated by the inattention Sherman and his staff paid to integrating each component command. Major delays in communications due to that terrain and Sherman’s habit of frustrating attempts by couriers to find him as

TIGHTLY CONTROLLED CHAOS BECAME ONE OF SHERMAN’S FAVORITE STRATEGIC TOOLS

he wandered the battlefield—mixed with major personality clashes among senior leaders—proved a toxic brew. Given the Union advantage in numbers, a well-coordinated offense would have left the Confederates incapable of responding to all the threats Sherman could pose simultaneously. Sherman and his lieutenants also did not learn the appropriate lessons from the debacle. Instead of taking a hard look at their own coordination failures, they sought scapegoats in the inexperienced junior officer corps, whom they charged with insufficient ardor and discipline.

CWT: Though it was a Union victory, Arkansas Post saw many of the same mistakes as at Chickasaw Bayou. Was Sherman in danger of losing his men?

EB: He was at risk of losing the confidence of his corps by the winter of 1862-63—and had already in a vast number of cases. The despondency he observed in the ranks after Arkansas Post was proof enough to him that the men of the 15th Corps were not especially happy; but, as was his habit, Sherman struggled to understand why or to what extent because he failed to empathetically observe events from their different perspective. The men lamented the loss of beloved comrades in what had been a stiff fight, but Sherman wrote off the engagement as a minor skirmish. That divergence in meaning-making in the wake of a major trauma did result in a serious deterioration of confidence between commanders and their subordinates.

CWT: Does Sherman deserve the blame he gets for the failed Union attacks at Vicksburg in May 1863?

EB: In short, yes. Sherman and Grant failed miserably in the planning and execution of both the May 19 and 22 assaults on the works at Vicksburg. Given the strategic context, it is understandable Grant opted for an “attack by open force.” Even his decision to launch a more army-wide assault on May 22 made some practical sense. But the coordination, and thus prosecution, of both assaults was abysmal.

Everything from insufficient artillery preparation; complete failure to often coordinate attacks above the division level; inadequate attention to preparation for the myriad pioneering tasks involved in breaching a fortification like Stockade Redan; and a complete

compact masses against salient enemy positions without the formations deteriorating into a “cloud of skirmishers.” Broken terrain would fragment attacking commands and inspire the men to go to ground and “sharpshoot” rather than push the charges to fruition.

CWT: Sherman is generally criticized for his November 1863 effort at Chattanooga. You give him credit. Why?

UNCLE BILLY’S BOYS

disregard for the actual psychological, emotional, and physical state of the Army of the Tennessee—these top the long list of disastrous oversights at play.

CWT: You argue battlefield terrain had a greater impact on Sherman’s tactical philosophy than weapons. EB: The 15th Corps fought nearly every engagement in heavily wooded, swampy, or intractably hilly and broken terrain. With the exception of the siege at Vicksburg and perhaps the fight before Atlanta on July 22, 1864, few of its actions featured viewsheds that would have allowed soldiers to visually identify targets at the actual maximum effective range of their rifle-muskets.

More often than not, the region’s broken, cluttered terrain tended to dismantle the tight cohesion of assault columns featured in most contemporary infantry commands. It was exceedingly hard, if not impossible, to send

EB: Sherman’s hesitation to launch an attack on the Rebel right at Tunnel Hill has drawn considerable fire from historians. I argue the fault belongs with Grant in failing to consider the 15th Corps’ new tactical culture in designing his operation to break out of the siege. His reticence in launching yet another failed frontal assault marks one of the first instances Sherman showed a grasp of his command’s tactical weaknesses. While some of his future actions, most notably at Kennesaw Mountain, suggest he occasionally hoped he was wrong about that conclusion, he ultimately accepted the corps was not a viable tool for frontal assaults against any but dramatically outnumbered defenders.

CWT: Will there be a second volume?

EB: I’m interested in following the corps’ story further only if, in doing so, it shines an interesting theoretical or historiographical light on what interests me most: namely, crafting maximally holistic explanations for the tactical behavior of historical military organizations. I do not want to simply write a narrative of the latter half of the war from the limited perspective of the 15th Corps. I fervently believe that operational military historians like myself have an onus to prove “drums and guns” histories need not be abandoned as fruitful scholarship topics. But doing so requires more rigorous, more interdisciplinary, and more innovative approaches to analyzing military operations; not merely re-narrating them ad infinitum. ✯

LOOKING FOR THE REAL WAR

FRESH WAR HISTORY KEEPS ON COMING

I’VE HEARD THIS A LOT, and I am sure you have, too: “What new could there possibly be to say about the Civil War?” Skeptics need look no further. I always try to get “new” stuff in Civil War Times, and I hope you’ll find this issue especially engrossing. On P. 54, we share a newly uncovered version of 2nd Wisconsin Captain William Strong’s legendary 1861 encounter with Confederate pickets along the Potomac. The findings from a clandestine investigation of his account sat buried in archives at the Wisconsin Historical Society for 161 years and are published here for the first time. In our February 2019 cover story, “Battle Scars,” Eric Michael Burke wrote about General William T. Sherman’s 15th Corps and how it developed its own, unique fighting identity—an analysis he further expounds in his new book Soldiers From Experience. In this issue’s “Interview,” P. 22, Burke discusses with CWT his fresh approach to the study of military history. In “Battle’s Hard Aftermath,” P. 36, Steven Cowie examines something that’s been in front of our eyes since 1862, but we have not seen: How the Army of the Potomac turned minuscule Sharpsburg, Md., into one of America’s largest cities for weeks after the Battle of Antietam. When Union troops finally marched away, Sharpsburg was as devastated as any hamlet that lay in the path of the March to the Sea. You all keep reading, and we will keep digging. ✯

RICH MAN’S WAR POOR MAN’S FIGHT?

STATISTICS HELP US UNDERSTAND WHO WENT TO WAR AND WHY

Acommon maxim during the Civil War held that it was “a rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight.” Both Union and Confederate critics leveled this charge—especially in the wake of conscription. But was that the case? Did the poorer classes of Union and the Confederacy bear the burden of fighting while the rich remained at home? The answer is more complicated than a simple yes or no.

In the two principal armies in the Eastern Theater, the Union’s Army of the Potomac and Confederacy’s Army of Northern Virginia, precise numbers are difficult to determine. Approximately 240,000 soldiers served in General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia (although the average at any given time ranged between 35,000 and 90,000).

On the Union side, approximately 350,000–375,000 men served in the Army of the Potomac (although its strength at any given time averaged 125,000). Most of the soldiers on both sides were in their teens or early twenties when the war began. Single men—those with the fewest ties to keep them at home—were the most likely to rush off to war in 1861.

FOR CAUSE OR CASH?

The average Civil War soldier stood about 5 feet 8 inches tall, weighed 143 pounds, and was 26 years old. But what do we know about their economic backgrounds, and what induced them to serve?

Unwedded men, therefore, dominated both armies. The same held true for soldiers with children. Only one in three Confederates had children at home. But Union soldiers were even less likely to be married and have children than Confederates—only one of five Army of the Potomac soldiers left a family behind. Ninety-five percent of Lee’s soldiers came from farming communities. Conversely, only 30 percent of soldiers in the Army of the Potomac were farmers or farmhands. The Army of the Potomac was instead a predominately working-class army. The largest segment were day laborers, finding any work they could. Others constructed homes and buildings, some worked as shoe or boot makers, while a handful held skilled positions such as blacksmiths.

UNWEDDED MEN DOMINATED BOTH ARMIES

The next question concerns personal wealth. It is helpful to consider not an individual soldier’s wealth, but rather that of his family, as a majority of the soldiers on both sides still resided with their parents or older siblings. Approximately half of Lee’s men still lived with their families and therefore reaped the benefits of their parents’ lifestyle and wealth. For example, in 1860, Howlit Irvin was a student and owned nothing. But his father was

the former lieutenant governor of Georgia, whose wealth was valued at $170,000—including an estate with 117 slaves—making him one of the richest men in Georgia, if not the South.

On the Union side, two of five soldiers still resided with their parents or other family members when the war began. Examining the combined personal and family wealth therefore reveals a dramatic disparity between Union and Confederate soldiers: The median wealth of most Federal soldiers was a paltry $200. Conversely, soldiers in the Army of Northern Virginia enjoyed a median personal and family wealth that was 6½ times greater than their Union counterparts.

Moreover, more than half of the Union soldiers fell into the category of “poor.” In fact, historian William Marvel has shown that the men who enlisted ear liest in the Union Army proved to be some of the poorest. While popular belief has held that those who enlisted earliest did so from unbridled patriotism, Marvel finds that the desire for economic relief proved a more likely motivating factor for Union soldiers in 1861-62.

Many men still reeling from the effects of the financial panic that swept New York City in 1857 found the prospect of a steady paycheck and bounties their overriding motive for enlisting. For example, when men from the 15th, 19th, and 20th Massachusetts Infantry were captured by Confederates at Ball’s Bluff in the fall of 1861, they explained their motivations: “A great many of them gave it as their excuse for fighting that they were out of employment and had nothing else to do,” noted their North Carolinian captor.

BATTLE AWAITS

Two out of every five Union enlistees lived at home when the war began. Despite his attempt at an aggressive, warlike pose, this bluecoated volunteer can’t hide his youth.

Returning to the Army of Northern Virginia, perhaps even more telling when we consider the lament of a “poor man’s war” is that Lee’s army had, as a percentage, according to historian Joseph Glatthaar, fewer poor folks (those worth less than $800) and more wealthy men (those from families claiming more than $4,000 in property) than the Southern states at large.

There was considerable affluence among Lee’s army, and that wealth was tied to the ownership of enslaved people. As Glatthaar has explained, “slaveholding had a powerful grip on…Lee’s army.” While only 13 percent of Lee’s soldiers were slaveholders, if we look at their families— we find that 44 percent came from slaveholding households—a statistic revealing that slaveholders were far more prevalent in Lee’s army than in the Southern population at large (where only 25 percent of households owned slaves).

In the Confederacy, therefore, this was not a poor man’s fight. Slaveholders, among the richest in the South, served in disproportionally high numbers in Lee’s army. Believing that slavery

was under attack, they flocked to the cause. Those from the middle- and upper-classes in the Army of the Potomac, however, did not have the same financial interest in fighting. Even those who came from the wealthy class would not have lost a fortune had the South achieved its independence.

But that fact must be balanced with the reality that there were certainly those from more privileged backgrounds that fought for the Union. For example, approximately 1,300 men with Harvard ties fought in the Union ranks—they clearly were from the privileged class. In other words, the poor, elite, and middle classes were represented in the Union Army just as they were in the Confederate armies.

Despite these men’s service, by the spring of 1862, Confederate armies were shrinking because of battlefield casualties, sickness, and disease, but also as a result of expired enlistments and deser tion. The Confederate Congress responded to the emergency by taking one of the most momentous steps of the war: conscription (or the draft). On April 16, 1862, the first of

SO EXCITING

With bold graphics and stirring text, recruiting posters encouraged men to join the military. The Union poster at left also uses the threat of being drafted with the enticement of bounty money to fill the ranks.

three Confederate conscription acts became law and required the following:

• All able-bodied White men already serving would have their enlistments extended for two years—men who had enlisted in good faith for one year’s service

• All other White males between the ages of 18-35 would serve for three years

Two subsequent revisions to the legislation, passed in September 1862 and February 1864, changed the age limits—eventually setting the range from 17-50. In effect, if the Confederacy got a man into uniform, he never got out. The draft was unprecedented in American history. But we need to keep in mind it was as much carrot as it was stick. The potential for conscription convinced men to enlist. Men of 1861 worried that if they didn’t reenlist, they would be forced to add three years, instead of two. Others worried that if they went home and risked draft, then they would be forced to serve in units other than the ones they had joined by choice. Fear of serving with strangers drove Spencer Barnes of North Carolina to admit to his father, “I hate to be thrown into another company.”

There certainly were those that complained. Unionists were distraught at having to fight for a cause they opposed. Others complained on ideological grounds: they argued that the Confederacy had been founded to protect states’ rights—but the conscription law allowed the central government to

LOOKING FOR A LOOPHOLE

Drafted New Yorkers swarm a draft office to plead their case to an official in the hopes of claiming an exemption from military service. In 1863, only one draftee out of 30 actually entered the Union Army.

usurp states’ rights. Then there was the list of exemptions from the draft. The occupations exempted included government officials, teachers, millers, some artisans, and laborers engaged in industries such as mining, railroads, textile mills—all things necessary for the war effort. But there were two exemptions that particularly galled many Rebels. The first was the Overseer Clause—added in October 1862. This clause exempted one white male from each plantation with 20-plus slaves under the assumption that one white man was needed to manage large numbers of slaves. But non-planters and slave-less whites claimed the clause gave preferential treatment to planters and their sons.

The second exemption that triggered protests was substitution, which allowed draftees to avoid military service by finding someone exempt from the draft to replace him—this meant hiring someone who was either under or over the mandatory conscription age, someone whose trade of profession exempted him, or

BAD LUCK OF THE DRAW

An original New York City draft tumbler. The cards pulled out of drums such as this sparked the July 1863 draft riots in that city—the largest, most violent demonstration against forced service in the North.

a foreign national. Prices for substitutes in the South were said to range as high as $3,000 in specie (gold) or even higher in Confederate money—a sum that only the very wealthy could afford. Like the Overseer Clause, this provision also seemed to favor the wealthy and provoked calls of “rich man’s war,” and the Confederate Congress did ultimately abolish the practice.

But did conscripts change the composition of Lee’s army? In large part, no, because nearly all of those men volunteered. Only eight percent were drafted or served as substitutes. In fact, the vast majority of Lee’s soldiers, nearly 80 percent, volunteered before the Confederacy implemented conscription. But draftees did tend to be poorer and owned fewer slaves than their comrades who volunteered. They also tended to be older— between the ages of 26 and 40. The most glaring difference between Confederate volunteers and draftees, however, revolved around marital status and children: 70 percent of conscripts were married. And nearly every drafted married soldier left behind children. In other words, having a family and children to support made men less likely to volunteer than the younger, single enlistees.

THE VAST MAJORITY OF LEE’S SOLDIERS VOLUNTEERED BEFORE THE CONFEDERACY IMPLEMENTED CONSCRIPTION

The Union draft began a year after Confederate conscription and operated somewhat differently. Each loyal state was divided into recruiting districts, and each district had a quota to meet based on population. When the recruiting district failed to meet its quota through volunteers, soldiers would be drafted by lottery among men between the ages of 20 and 45—as well as immigrants seeking U.S. citizenship. If a man’s name was selected by the lottery—he had three options: enlist, find (and pay) a substitute to take his place, or pay a $300 commutation fee that exempted him from that round of the draft. In 1860, $300 would have been the equivalent of the annual wage of an unskilled laborer.

Unlike Confederates, the Union lawmakers allowed no occupational exemptions. But there

were some exemptions—exemptions that critics charged favored the poor. For example, the only son of a widow or of infirm parents did not have to serve if he was their primary support. And a widower with children younger than 12 was not subject to conscription. Those with more means, of course, could afford to hire a substitute (essentially bribing someone else to fight for them) or pay the commutation fee. Thousands of middle and upper-class Northerners, including John D. Rockefeller and future president Grover Cleveland escaped military service by these means.

In the first national draft levy, in 1863, only one drafted man out of every 30 went to war. In some states, this number was far higher—for example, in Connecticut only one in 63 drafted men found himself in a blue uniform. In some communities, men subject to the draft pooled

WAR RALLY

Union recruiters make a splash with a trolley. Veteran John Billings claimed that early in the war “waving banners, martial and vocal music” would drive crowds into a frenzy, and a town’s quota could be “filled up in less than an hour.” As casualty lists grew, however, so did the monetary subsidies for new troops.

DOLLAR SIGNS

The signboards posted at a Northern recruiting office accentuate cash incentives over all else. There is nary a mention of patriotic motivation. Martin Kelley, an immigrant from Ireland, volunteered late in the war, avoiding the draft and earning some money.

their money in draft insurance clubs that would hire substitutes for those selected. As Marvel pointed out, “[U]nless a man was unable to simultaneously support his family and hire a substitute or pay the commutation fee, it was easy to avoid going into the Union Army, and the overwhelming majority of those who were called to serve” avoided it. In 1864, Congress abolished the commutation provision, but not substitution.

As it had in the Confederacy, the Northern draft provoked outrage, with many arguing that it abridged their fundamental personal liberties. Both substitution and commutation produced cries of “a rich man’s war” just as the Overseer Clause had done in the South. Combined with emancipation, the draft of 1863 unleashed a storm of violent protests in the loyal North. Some provost marshals—those in the army charged with enforcing of the law—were shot, their families threatened, their property vandalized. More than 160,000 men—one-fifth of those drafted—refused to report for duty. Thousands more who did eventually deserted and others dodged the draft by going to Canada.

The draft likewise spurred protests. Democrat politicians, especially Copperheads (the name given to anti-war Democrats), inspired the most violent protests. The most notorious and deadliest rioting erupted in New York City on July 13-17, 1863. Anti-conscription sentiment spilled into four of the bloodiest days of mob violence in the city’s history—by the time the smoke cleared, at least 105 people, mostly rioters—lay dead and another 300 were severely injured. Twenty thousand armed troops marched from Gettysburg to quell the rioting.

The draft began without incident on July 11—but that evening and into the next day disgruntled draftees, including urban laborers and immigrants—many of whom were Irish—gathered and planned to disrupt the draft proceedings by attacking the provost marshal’s station and setting it on fire. The cry of a “rich man’s war” may have ignited the riot, but racial tensions and economic dislocation fanned the flames. The working poor, including the mostly unskilled Irish workers, competed with African Americans for jobs—yet African Americans were not subject to the draft. This infuriated Whites—they might be forced to serve and die in a war that was now about liberating slaves. Rioters burned the Colored Orphan Asylum and rampaged through Black neighborhoods lynching at least six African Americans on lampposts and brutally mutilating others. There were other smaller riots—in Boston, in New Hampshire, and even Wisconsin—but theses riots served as the high point of draft resistance.

DON’T DO IT

A broadside urges Northern laborers not to resist the draft and to unite against a common enemy. More than half of the Union Army was composed of “poor” men who made less than $200 per year.

The question remains: did the draft alter the composition of the Union Army? Historians have yet to answer this question regarding the Army of the Potomac as fully as they have for the Army of Northern Virginia.

What we do know is that in the Army of the Potomac, approximately three percent were drafted while another six percent were substitutes. Like the Confederate draft, the Union draft was far more crucial as a spur to local recruitment than as an end unto itself. And, as such, it likely had a similar impact—that is, draftees were probably poorer, older, and more likely to be husbands and fathers than their volunteer counterparts.

So was the Civil War a poor man’s fight?

In answering this question, we need to keep in mind the difference between reality and perception. Many people at the time believed that it was a rich man’s war and poor man’s fight. But a closer examination suggests that all classes were well represented. Indeed, as Glatthaar has explained, “on the whole, soldiers in the Army of Northern Virginia were very comfortable financially, whereas the men in the Army of the Potomac were comparatively poor.”

Even though Lee’s soldiers were more likely to come from wealthy families, we should keep in mind that war placed great strain on the poor and middle classes of both sides. War always takes harder toll on those who have fewer resources. Even those of the middle class had a great deal to lose in the war. Their families had worked quite hard to achieve even moderate success—and they worried about losing all of it. Given the scale of the

mobilization on each side—the war did not belong to one class alone.

Despite what some chose to believe, it was not a poor or rich man’s fight, it was every man’s fight.

Caroline E. Janney is the John L. Nau III Professor in History of American Civil War and Director of the John L. Nau Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia. She has published seven books, including Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox (2021) winner of the 2022 Lincoln Prize.

FURTHER READING

This article is an excerpt from The Great Courses’ 10 Big Questions of the American Civil War, by Caroline E. Janney on Audible.com. Janney’s lecture is based on research from Joseph Glatthaar’s books General Lee’s Army and Soldiering in the Army of Northern Virginia, and his article, “A Tale of Two Armies,” published in the Journal of the Civil War Era, Vol. 6, No. 3, Sept. 2016, pp. 315-346. William Marvel’s book, Lincoln’s Mercenaries, also provided a wealth of important data.

GRIM FIELDS OF PLENTY

Sharpsburg civilians watch in morbid curiosity as fields adjacent to the Sunken Road formerly used for agriculture are tilled for mass graves by troops of the 130th Pennsylvania, in this Frank Schell drawing. Such conditions forced some families to move from the area.

Battle’s Hard Aftermath

By the time sunset closed the Battle of Antietam September 17, 1862, nearly 23,000 men were dead, wounded, captured, or missing, making the fight the bloodiest day in American military history. This grim statistic, nonetheless, tells only part of the story, for the small community of Sharpsburg, Md., was the epicenter of that deadly day. Families lived, worked, and worshipped there. It was their home—and the savage combat turned their lives upside down. Shot and shell terrified the inhabitants, destroyed houses and barns, obliterated crop fields, and transformed portions of farmsteads into vast graveyards. Yet this was only the beginning of Sharpsburg’s struggles. Although the fighting ended on September 17, the civilians’ hardships continued.

The Battle of Antietam differed from other engagements like Gettysburg and Monocacy, where the armies departed the battleground soon after fighting, leaving only their wounded and medical personnel behind. After Antietam, tens of thousands of men in the Army of the Potomac, commanded by Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, remained in the battlefield area for almost six weeks while suffering from supply shortages. The presence of so many soldiers for so long a time devastated the local community on multiple levels. Expressing concern shortly after the battle, Sharpsburg resident Augustin A. Biggs wrote, “We have nearly the whole of McClellan’s army quartered here…we are all in a destitute state, and if the government don’t relieve us, this neighborhood is ruined.”

When General Robert E. Lee withdrew his Army of Northern Virginia from Sharpsburg on the evening of September 18, some residents may have wondered if McClellan’s army might immediately pursue Lee’s Confederates into Virginia. McClellan, however, had already met his Maryland Campaign objective, which was “to preserve

GORY TASK ON A WARM DAY

A Union burial party takes a break from its work to pose for Alexander Gardner’s camera on September 19, 1862. The warm days following the battle caused the dead to quickly decompose and attract swarms of flies.

the National Capital and Baltimore, to protect Pennsylvania from invasion, and to drive the enemy out of Maryland.” If he pondered rushing his army across the Potomac River to attack Lee, the clash at Shepherdstown (now West Virginia) on September 20 showed the Federal commander that the enemy was by no means demoralized. Ruling out an immediate advance, McClellan decided, “[T]he first thing to be done was to insure Maryland from a return of the enemy.” To prevent this possibility, he stretched his army along the Potomac River to defend the major crossing points from Williamsport to Harpers Ferry, basing most of his forces near Sharpsburg.

From a strategic standpoint, McClellan’s defensive web along the Potomac forced Lee to suspend his plans for reentering Maryland. Consequently, Lee withdrew his Confederate army farther south into Virginia. Satisfied with his defense of the river, McClellan planned to prepare his army “for a definite offensive movement, and to determine upon the line of operations for a further advance.” Such preparations would not happen anytime soon, though. Sharpsburg inhabitants hoping to see the Union army leave the area watched with concern as four army corps settled into nearby camps, lit campfires, and awaited further orders.

Federal troops came and went from Sharpsburg after the battle, but the military population near the small town remained colossal. On October 1, 1862, the Official Records listed more than 75,000 men and officers present for duty in the Antietam battlefield vicinity. At this time, one study argued, more people resided “within a fivemile radius of Sharpsburg than in Pittsburgh, Detroit, Milwaukee, Rochester, or Cleveland.” The bigger problem, the study noted, was that these larger cities were “established urban centers.” By contrast, rural Sharpsburg and its neighboring villages “lacked the commercial ties and transportation networks” to feed and supply the thousands of military guests.

Worse, Confederates sabotaged Army of the Potomac supply lines earlier in the Maryland Campaign, destroying the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad bridge over the Monocacy River, tapping sections of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, and wrecking bridges at Harpers Ferry. Until Federal engineers repaired the damages, McClellan’s army would have to draw supplies from depots at Frederick and Hagerstown. Still, rail shipments from Washington were slow and circuitous, and miscommunications caused delays. In the interim, the Army of the Potomac desperately needed provisions—and unofficially turned the Sharpsburg community into an emergency supply depot.

More than 150 civilian claimants, supported by the sworn testimonies of several hundred witnesses, alleged that Federal forces ravaged properties from September 15–October 30 to offset

HOUSES OF MISERY

The Lutheran Church on the east side of town, below, exhibits significant Union shellfire damage that caused it to be torn down. After the battle, occupying Union soldiers gutted the interior of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on the west side of Sharpsburg for campfire fuel, as the view at right indicates.

THE MILITARY POPULATION NEAR THE SMALL TOWN REMAINED COLOSSAL

supply shortages in the medical, commissary, and quartermaster departments. War claims, congressional cases, and other primary sources shed light on the extent of these unpaid appropriations.

The Army of the Potomac’s medical department faced tremendous challenges during and after the battle. First, the severed railroad at Monocacy Junction, southwest of Sharpsburg, jammed incoming train traffic, stranding boxcars of hospital supplies sent from Baltimore. In addition, regional military traffic delayed the forwarding of medical wagons staged at Frederick, 20 miles distant. Dr. Jonathan Letterman, medical director of the Army of the Potomac, admitted: “For the first few days the supplies of some articles became scanty, and in some instances very much so.”

Charles J. Stille, a member of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, complained that the medical stores “did not reach the battle-field for many days.” On September 21—four days after the battle—Stille observed that the urgently needed items still had not arrived, and on-hand supplies at Antietam’s field hospitals “were not one tenth of what was absolutely needed.” The commission and other relief agencies partially remedied Dr. Letterman’s dilemma by delivering food, clothing, bandages, and medicines to the infir-

WOUNDED MEN FOR MILES

Dr. Anson Hurd of the 14th Indiana walks among his Confederate patients on the Otho Smith Farm, two miles northeast of Sharpsburg. At another hospital, a soldier in the 76th New York remembered that the number of “arms, legs, feet, and hands” he saw tossed into an amputation pit would weigh “several hundred pounds.”

maries. Nevertheless, according to Dr. Elisha Harris of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, these provisions did not arrive in sufficient quantity until “eight days from the occupancy of the field of Antietam by our force.”

Because thousands of patients needed immediate care, army surgeons and their staff could not afford to wait and thus appropriated makeshift supplies from the community. Troops confiscated entire wardrobes of clothing from homes, leaving nothing for the families. Farmhand Alex Davis recalled, “The soldiers had taken every stitch of mine and the old man’s clothing, and they’d torn up the old woman’s clothing and used it for bandages.” Hospital forces also seized quilts, blankets, and sheets from numerous households, along with window curtains and carpeting. Additionally, they gutted kitchens of cooking, eating, and drinking wares, and carried off buckets and basins and candles and lanterns.

Farmer Michael Miller listed “clothing, furniture Dishes &c.” among his hospital-related losses. Miller’s neighbor, Samuel Poffenberger, clarified in his claim for damages, “I know that the supplies were used in the hospitals…because Dr. Shadduck told me they used everything in

the house as hospital supplies.”

Medical personnel were not solely responsible for taking private property. Straggling was a terrible problem at Antietam, and depredating soldiers from both armies ransacked countless homes. They stole jewelry, Bibles, clothing, photographs, and other personal possessions. Describing Confederate thefts, one Sharpsburg townsman complained, “They entered several poor people’s houses and robbed them of everything they had in this world….two thirds of the families in the place had nothing but the clothes on their backs.”

Union troops also plundered homes, and the depredations became so widespread that McClellan issued General Order No. 159 on October 1, 1862, to address the “stragglers and pillagers” wreaking havoc on the region. Unfortunately, the order came too late, for many residents had already suffered heavy losses. When a journalist asked a Sharpsburg villager which army did most of the damage, she replied, “[T]hat I can’t say stranger. The Rebels took; but the Yankees took right smart.” Civilians felt a range of emotions upon finding their homes pillaged, but this particular woman was heartbroken. “When we came back,” she recalled, “all I could do was just to set right down and cry.”

The Army of the Potomac also lacked subsistence in the battle’s aftermath. Since the onset of the Maryland Campaign in early September, many soldiers suffered without regular rations, given that commissary wagons remained miles behind the mobile army. Wagons, though, were not a long-term solution to feeding so large a force. Colonel Henry F. Clarke, the Army of the Potomac’s chief commissary of subsistence, thus depended on railroad shipments from Washington to feed

McClellan’s army. To better serve commands in the Sharpsburg region, Clarke’s personnel on September 21 established a commissary depot in Hagerstown, 12 miles from the camps. Notwithstanding, Dr. Letterman recognized that such distance affected the supply network, for his medical department encountered challenges in feeding the wounded. “The difficulty of supplying the hospitals with food,” Letterman reported after the battle, “was a much greater one than that of providing articles belonging to the medical department, and was a matter of very great concern.” Letterman blamed much of the food shortage on “the distance of the depot of supplies.”

The remote depots and wagons, combined with inedible rations in some of the camps, forced many troops into fits of hunger. “How those men suffered!” recalled Abner Small of the 16th Maine. “Hunger, daily felt, was nothing compared with it.” A Massachusetts cavalryman recalled, “Rations for the men and horses were issued only once from September 4 until September 19.” During this time, the horseman explained, “Both men and horses had to be fed by a country nominally loyal to the Union.” Similarly, a member of the 9th New Hampshire confessed, “After the severe engagement at Antietam…the somewhat scanty rations made the surrounding country a tempting field for foraging.”

ANOTHER TYPE OF CASUALTY

Farmer D.R. Miller’s home, which still stands on the battlefield. The notorious Cornfield was on his property. After the battle, he submitted a damage claim to the U.S. government for $1,237, and was awarded $995.

Confederates had already plundered food from many Sharpsburg properties. Now, Union forces seized what remained. According to sworn statements in several dozen civilian claims, Federals in September and October 1862 took subsistence from nearly every family in the area. Soldiers ravaged gardens, orchards, and potato patches and butchered thousands of chickens, hogs, sheep, and cattle. They emptied smokehouses of cured meats and cleared homes of flour, preserves, and other foods. Describing her parents’

MORE ROTTING FLESH

Union troops slaughter and dress cattle that will be used to feed the Army of the Potomac. The offal from weeks of such outdoor butchering contributed to hygiene problems.

PESTILENCE

Horrid conditions polluted the Sharpsburg area for weeks after the Battle of Antietam. Hundreds of dead horses rotted on the battlefield, while the Army of the Potomac’s living animals—nearly 18,000 mules and horses—deposited several thousand tons of manure. These contaminants, along with livestock carcasses, piles of amputated limbs, and the fecal waste of 75,000 encamped soldiers, attracted swarms of houseflies and tainted the groundwater.

Consequently, diseases like typhoid fever and diarrhea spread from McClellan’s camps and hospitals to local families. The medical daybooks of Dr. Augustin A. Biggs, Sharpsburg’s physician during the war, cross-referenced with burial records and obituaries, show a surge in civilian sickness after the battle. Biggs made house calls seven days per week, dispensing drugs like calomel, opium, and turpentine, to no avail. Dozens of residents perished. For example, in six short weeks, typhoid fever took the lives of farmer John C. Middlekauff, his three adult daughters, and one granddaughter. Samuel Michael’s mother and sister suc-

6TH CORPS

1ST CORPS

FIELD HOSPITALS

5TH CO R PS

9THCORPS

cumbed to the same fever, while his younger siblings barely survived. Carrie May Roulette also died during the epidemic, described by her father as “a charming little girl 20 months old … just beginning to talk.”

Sharpsburg townsman Jacob Miller summarized the outbreak in a December 1862 letter. After describing the disease-related death of his brother, Miller wrote, “Many other citizens and hundreds of soldiers have been taken with the same, and many died, it is an army disease—thus adds an addition to the horrors of war.” —S.C.

OVERWHELMING

ANTIETAM FIELD HOSPITALS

The properties depicted on this map served as temporary hospitals, field dressing stations, or lodging for wounded men. In addition, officers commandeered many homes, stores, and churches for hospital purposes in the towns of Sharpsburg, Keedysville, and Bakersville.

SHARPSBURG POST-BATTLE ENCAMPMENTS

Brigadier General John R. Kenly’s Maryland brigade arrived from Hagerstown on September 21 to guard Light’s Ford at Williamsport. That allowed 6TH CORPS and Maj. Gen. Darius Couch’s division (of the 4th Corps) to establish camps between Williamsport and Bakersville.

1ST CORPS, meanwhile, camped south of 6th Corps, from Mercersville to Grove’s Landing.

5TH CORPS sprawled across riverside farmsteads west and south of Sharpsburg, from David Smith’s farm to the Blackford’s Ford vicinity. Nearby, a brigade of Federal cavalry bivouacked near the town’s out lots and eastern heights.

9TH CORPS made its home south of 5th Corps, stretching its camps from the farms of John H. Snavely and Rev. John A. Adams to the mouth of Antietam Creek. To guard waterway crossings, McClellan sent the 12th Corps to Maryland Heights and the 2nd Corps to Harpers Ferry.

losses, Mary Ellen Piper wrote shortly after the battle: “[I]f you would have gone from cellar to garret, not a mouthful could have been found to eat. Our cattle had been killed; the sheep, hogs, chickens, and everything were gone.”

McClellan’s troops also plundered the home of farmer Joseph Poffenberger, carrying off all things edible. “[W]hen I returned to my house,” Poffenberger stated in his claim, “it was completely empty. I had nothing left. I lived on army crackers that I found on the battle field for five days.” The scarcity of subsistence impacted hundreds of other residents. One week after the battle, the Hagerstown Herald of Freedom and Torch Light summarized the direful circumstances:

[T]he region of the country between Sharpsburg and Boonsboro has been eaten out of food of every description…what our people in that section of the county will do to obtain food for man and beasts during the approaching winter, God alone knows.

Lieutenant Colonel Rufus Ingalls, chief quartermaster of the Army of the Potomac, encountered similar supply challenges that plagued the medical and commissary departments. For instance, the fighting at Antietam destroyed several hundred army horses, and hoof and mouth diseases sickened thousands of Federal equines during the battle’s aftermath Ingalls noted that the epidemic “put nearly 4,000 animals out of service. Horses reported perfectly well one day would be dead or lame the next.” To offset the shortage, U.S. troops seized an untold number of horses from Sharpsburg’s citizens, offering no payment in exchange. Combined with Confederate thefts from September 15–18, the collective loss prompted one civilian to vent in a September 1862 letter, “Nearly all the horses are taken away.”

Appropriations aside, the Official Records listed nearly 18,000 equines assigned to Union army corps based near the Antietam battlefield on October 1, and these animals needed copious amounts of forage to survive. Although the war department shipped equine feed to McClellan’s depots, the insufficient quantities failed to meet the army’s demands. Consequently, Federals turned thousands of army horses and mules loose into Sharpsburg’s cornfields, hay mows, and wheat stacks, destroying what remained of the 1862 fall harvest.

Based on losses filed in war claims, Sharpsburg-area petitioners alleged that the Army of the Potomac’s animals devoured more than 4,200 tons of hay, corn, wheat, oats, and rye during the

GATHERING BATTLE’S HUMAN COST

Confederate dead on a unidentified portion of the Antietam battlefield. The tattered fence in the background provided “skids” for some of the dead bodies. Note the two fence pickets under the corpse at right. A New Yorker remembered the overwhelming “stench from the unburied dead.”

six-week encampment from September 15–October 30, 1862. For example, widow Eliza Davis attested that Union forces confiscated “her entire crop of growing corn” because “the troops being without forage for some days after the battle were compelled to subsist their horses off the farmers in the neighborhood.” Another resident, Eli Wade, testified that all the products on his farm “disappeared like frost before a burning sun.”

In September 1862, omnipresent fence lines covered Sharpsburg’s landscape, bordering farm lanes and turnpikes while enclosing farmsteads and nonresidential agricultural tracts. Because landowners subdivided their properties into multiple fenced fields for growing various crops, each farm typically contained thousands of rails. Worm, post and rail, and paling fencing stood on most properties in 1862, although some farmers divided their fields with post and board, cap, or stone barriers. While the types of fences varied, nearly all suffered damage in the fall of 1862.

During the Battle of Antietam, Northern and Southern soldiers knocked

down worm panels for passage, stacked rails as breastworks, and burned the wood in campfires. Shot and shell also splintered some of the partitions. These damages, though, paled in comparison to the McClellan’s subsequent encampment, during which time thousands of soldiers used a mind-boggling amount of wood for warmth and cooking fuel. After burning the community’s seasoned cordwood, troops dismantled worm fences and post

“I LIVED ON ARMY CRACKERS THAT I FOUND ON THE BATTLE FIELD FOR FIVE DAYS”

CONSUMED BY FIRE

The Reel family lived on this farm just north of Sharpsburg. Union artillery fire set their barn ablaze when it was being used as a Confederate hospital and Federal troops camped here post-battle.

and rail panels, pulled hundreds of locust posts from the ground, and carried off scores of gates. The widespread devastation stripped away miles of fencing, leaving farmers little to contain new livestock or protect future crops from foraging animals.

To locals, the barren landscape was unrecognizable. “The battle made quite a change in the look of the country,” remembered Alex Davis. “The fences and other familiar landmarks was gone, and you couldn’t hardly tell one man’s farm from another.” On the 329-acre farm of the Samuel Grove heirs, witnesses estimated that Federals destroyed more than eight miles of fences. Robert Leakins, a farmhand employed by the Groves, testified,

“After the Union troops left, it looked like a prairie—no fencing at all; the soldiers burnt it up.”

Replacing fences put great demands on the inhabitants. Landowners labored to fell trees, haul and split logs, reset posts, and rebuild panels. Those without timber growing on their tracts needed to purchase wood, and others paid out of pocket to hire laborers. Due to the expense, some farmers did not re-fence their lands until after the war. Others found the physical task of rebuilding too much to bear. “It killed my old father,” a Sharpsburg woman lamented. “He overworked getting the fences up again, and it wore on him so he died within a year.”

In a sample of claims and congressional cases reviewed at the National Archives, civilians accused McClellan’s troops of destroying 615,885 rails during and after the battle. This number primarily reflects worm and post fences. Factoring in cap, board, and paling rails, the total fencing destroyed in the Sharpsburg environs possibly measured 100 miles or more. Nonetheless, this staggering amount of wood did not satisfy the needs of McClellan’s army, as encamped soldiers and hospital staff required additional fuel. After confiscating fence rails, McClellan’s forces reportedly demolished several tenant houses and outbuildings to use the lumber as firewood. They also stripped floorboards from churches, weatherboards from barns, and planks

DEMAND AND MORE DEMAND

This winter scene is from an 1864 Union encampment, but illustrates how huts and cooking would consume wood. Union axes devastated Sharpsburg woodlots.

LIST OF A LOST LIFE

Widow Margaret Shackelford, a resident of Sharpsburg, had already lost her husband. Then the Battle of Antietam brought her more suffering. From house to furniture to crops and animals. All her meager possessions, even her kitchen stove, were taken from her, as this list attests.

from canal boats for the same purpose. Afterward, the troops set their sights on local timber, which grew on privately owned lands. Out came the axes, and down went the trees—hundreds of them. As temperatures dropped throughout October, soldiers built dozens of log quarters on farms along the Potomac River. Compared to shelter tents, these crude huts provided better protection from the elements but required a significant amount of timber to build. Private Robert Goldthwaite Carter of the 22nd Massachusetts wrote from Sharpsburg on October 24, “[A]t headquarters they are building log huts and seem as contented and happy as possible … they are cutting down everything here in the shape of trees.” Another Massachusetts soldier described the construction of log cabins at Sharpsburg, recalling, “[T]he men made themselves as comfortable as they could, and ‘built a city.’”

INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR

and, for most claimants, ultimately paid very little.

Follow the link below to hear author Steven Cowie discuss his book When Hell Came to Sharpsburg, and learn more about the Union Army’s post-Antietam occupation. historynet.com/steve-cowieinterview-sharpsburg

Based on the civilians’ allegations, Army of the Potomac forces camped near Sharpsburg felled more than 5,000 trees. Quartermaster agents, civilian appraisers, and professional surveyors later verified this destruction by walking through the ravaged woodlots to count the stumps and estimate the damages. As a case in point, William F. Hebb testified that, on his property alone, men from General George Meade’s and John Reynolds’s divisions chopped down more than 1,000 hardwoods. Another Sharpsburg claimant, William M. Blackford, described his woodland as “a very fine and heavy piece of timber which had been saved up for years by my father and myself, and was very valuable.” Of this prized forest, Blackford noted, “Not less than thirty-three acres were cut in the fall and winter of 1862 for fuel and winter quarters.”

When the Army of the Potomac finally departed the region in late October 1862, large sections of Sharpsburg’s formerly picturesque landscape resembled a fenceless wasteland, blemished with acres of tree stumps, stripped crop fields, and shallow graves. Countless families struggled to make ends meet, prompting a local newspaper to complain, “We have been invaded—our fences burned—our wheat crops obliterated from the face of the earth—our stock driven off—our farms and houses pillaged...cannot the Government make some provision for us?” Congress eventually passed legislation to consider war claims, prompting scores of residents to pursue compensation for their Antietam-related losses. However, the slow and frustrating process dragged into the 1900s

The sacrifice of serving McClellan’s army cast many Sharpsburg-area families into troubled circumstances. Among them was the wife of a tenant farmer, who testified that, after the Antietam battle, “[T]he Union troops came on the farm and took everything we had and ruined us—I know we lost all we had.” Phillip and Elizabeth Pry, thrown into debt by the Army’s appropriations, sold their land and relocated to Tennessee. Samuel I. Piper’s losses “were so numerous … including valuables, timber and hardwood rail fences,” that the financial burden “brought him to bankruptcy and the farm was lost.” He was left “nearly heart-broken.”

The Herald of Freedom and Torch Light summarized the widespread devastation in October 1862, estimating that “a million of dollars will not more than cover the total loss inflicted upon our county.” And because “the necessary and unnecessary destruction of property has been enormous,” the newspaper correctly predicted, “the county will not recover from the effects of this heart-rending disaster for years to come— probably not in our day and generation.”

Steven Cowie is the author of When Hell Came to Sharpsburg: The Battle of Antietam and Its Impact on the Civilians Who Called It Home (Savas Beatie, 2022).

FOR MEDICINAL PURPOSES?

At his Westover Landing, Va., headquarters Colonel James H. Childs of the 4th Pennsylvania Cavalry pours drinks for his officers and those visiting from the 3rd Pennsylvania Cavalry. Officers had the luxury of buying liquor from sutlers, while enlisted men had to “forage” for their booze.

THE TROUBLE

WITH TANGLEFOOT

Liquor numbed pain, took the edge off homesickness, and caused havoc

Rain fell along Virginia’s Rapidan River in December 1863 as the 5th New York Cavalry set about building its winter quarters at Germanna Ford. The thickly wooded hill of Devil’s Leap offered a good location—so good, in fact, that Confederate soldiers encamped along the other side of the river were also racing to clear the hill’s timber for their own winter quarters.

Rain fell. Cold, wet, and miserable, the Federals built their temporary home among the hills. The taskmaster camp adjutant pushed the men to finish while enlisted men pooled their carpentry skills, motivated to put up shelters as quickly as possible to get themselves out of the weather. But on December 30, the building process hit a snag, of sorts. The adjutant took a break from construction to enjoy “a jollification time with an old crony.”

After what must have been a pleasant evening of drinking, the adjutant decided “to make use of one of the deep-dug sinks”— presumably newly constructed by hard-working soldiers. Unfortunately, the adjutant lost his balance and tumbled into the latrine trench head-first—“spoiling his entire suit of clothes.” The adjutant suffered no long-term ill effects of his tumble, although work on the camp construction ground to a halt the next day (presumably because he was hungover and, perhaps, doing laundry). Most of the cavalrymen found his misfortune to be hilarious.

Although the story remains comical more than a century and a half later, it also contains many of the typical elements of soldier drinking during the Civil War: the soldiers in this story were cold and wet from exposure; they were performing what they called fatigue duty by building winter structures; they were in winter camp; the officer was, seemingly, the first to get drunk; and though the mishap caused by the drinking was fairly minor (in this case) it prevented the completion of tasks.

So while it may seem like a random occurrence that a poor drunken adjutant would inadvertently fall into the latrines on Devil’s Leap, military regulations in place during the war created the culture that led to his drinking and subsequent tumble. Liquor was an integral part of military medicine and military life in both the Union and Confederate armies. And officers and soldiers used various forms of liquor for self-care in order to treat themselves for various ailments, both physical and mental. The result of their drinking was a chaotic environment full of mishaps and uncompleted tasks.

In the 21st century, Americans typically associate alcohol with its numbing characteristics— its painkilling, cough relieving, and seeming alleviation of emotional distress. When the Civil War began, the medical community did not

describe alcohol (which they typically called “liquor” or “ardent spirits”) as a depressant at all. In fact, medical manuals regarded liquor as a stimulant.

Confederate surgeon John Julian Chisholm described two ways that liquor stimulated the body: it could reinvigorate a body that had lost a lot of blood and it could “restore nervous energy” when men were suffering from shock. U.S. Surgeon-General William A. Hammond noted that when people became intoxicated, “the nervous and circulatory systems become excited, the mental faculties are more active, the heart beats fuller and more rapidly, the face becomes flushed, and the senses are rendered more acute in

MEDICAL MANUALS REGARDED LIQUOR AS A STIMULANT

their perceptions.” Because of these properties, he believed that too much liquor could be “a violent poison,” but he also urged Union hospitals to keep liquor on hand at all times. So during the war, surgeons were instructed to prescribe liquor when soldiers were sick or wounded to stimulate the body to help it recover. Every use of liquor was designed to give the body a jolt.

CARRY IT WITH YOU

A Civil War-era alcohol flask, shaped like an oval so it could easily slip into a pocket. The bottom section slid off to be used as a cup. But if time was short and shells were flying, you could simply take a wee nip right out of the flask.

Both the Union and Confederate armies published guidelines on when to use liquor, which were based on the guidelines of the antebellum United States Army. The most obvious uses involved prescribing liquor in hospitals to treat acutely ill soldiers. The medical departments also used whiskey rations to try to prevent malaria by mixing it with quinine. In the 1860s, physicians still did not know that malaria was a mosquito-borne illness, but the British empire—and the U.S. Army—had figured out that malaria tended to occur in swampy, low-lying areas. They also perceived that quinine (which comes from the bark of a cinchona tree) prevented and treated malaria. But quinine tasted unbearably bitter, so whiskey made drinking quinine possible. Any time that the armies were encamped near water, medical departments doled out whiskey and quinine rations (if those supplies were available).

Beyond the medical department, military regulations stated that whiskey (or other types of liquor) could be used in cases of exposure, which meant that soldiers could receive a spirit ration whenever they were stuck in extreme elements, such as rain, snow, or mud. Liquor rations at the end of a shift on picket duty were therefore especially common, as the goal was to prevent the soldiers from becoming ill after they had been cold or damp.

Finally, whiskey rations were used in cases of extreme fatigue. Officially this meant that soldiers could have whiskey rations any time they were building bridges, digging trenches, burying the dead, or performing other similar tasks. In practice, this regulation was often expanded to include any task that was arduous, such as marching long distances.

The guidelines, on paper, seemed fairly straightforward. The uses of liquor were clearly defined and the amount of the rations were regulated, usually at a gill or a half gill (so about a shot or two, in the modern sense). In practice, however, these guidelines were not actually very specific at all. In large part the confusion came from the fact that supplying rations was left to the discretion of the commanding officer. In some cases, commanding generals set their own rules for spirit rations. For example, after Fredericksburg, General Robert E. Lee forbade Christmas rations. But just across

the river, in the camps of the Army of the Potomac, Union Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker celebrated the holidays by doling out whiskey rations widely. Often, though, the decision about whiskey rations passed down the chain of command, so the implementation of regulations varied a lot by who was in charge. If a colonel or a major was a teetotaler, the soldiers were probably not getting any rations. Other times, the company officers happily ladled out whiskey.

Throughout the conflict, many low-ranking officers (some of whom had been elected by enlisted men) made decisions about what constituted “exposure” and what constituted “fatigue.” When men had to march, for example, some commanding officers thought that a ration of whiskey could stimulate them for the journey. This did not always work. Whiskey rations promoted straggling.

Perhaps the most infamous instance of whiskey-related trouble occurred during Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s Mud March after the Battle of Fred-

DRINKS FOR DESPERATE TIMES

After the Union’s Fredericksburg disaster, Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s “Mud March” (top) conducted during freezing rains that turned the roads to glop and soaked troops to the bone, added to his army’s woes and sent many men to drink to forget their misery. Modern science has proved alcohol is actually a depressant, but during the war it was considered a stimulant. Above, Federal troops line up for a ration of whiskey or rum—a bit of liquid courage—before they continue the hazardous work of entrenching during the 1864 siege of Petersburg, Va.

BLUSHED CHEEKS

Soldiers often posed with alcohol as the centerpiece of their images. At left, a sergeant poses with a lieutenant. The cavalrymen at right paid extra to have their image tinted with gilt and color, a luxury they extend to the label of the bottle of liquor that takes center stage and the liquid in the glass of the man at center. Red wine?

ericksburg. The soldiers were demoralized. Union officers decided to try to cheer them up with whiskey rations. Instead, the men became drunk and fought. Sometimes, commanding officers would try to give the ration at the end of the march, which seemingly made more sense. Except that orders could change. For example, in 1863, Confederates had similar troubles (albeit on a smaller scale) while on their way to Pennsylvania. After crossing the Potomac River in Maryland on a rainy, muddy day, Confederate soldiers were told they would have time to eat dinner. They received hearty rations of whiskey to combat the nasty weather, and “about one-third got pretty tight.” Orders came to march again, and the tipsy soldiers “dragged” themselves toward Pennsylvania. “Many slipped down and literally rolled over in the mud for it rained all the time.”

In the most extreme instances, officers concluded that battle constituted extreme fatigue. Obviously, this was not what the military considered fatigue duty. But the officers’ perspective seemed to be that if soldiers needed whiskey to dig a ditch, they definitely needed whiskey to charge a hill. The general understanding was that it calmed the men’s nerves and stimulated the body for the attack. But serving these rations could backfire.

At the start of the siege of Petersburg in June 1864, a Union captain gave his men a whiskey ration right before an engagement. The men began “dropping into a little ditch just outside of the line of trees.”

The captain stood, “with tears streaming down his face,” screaming at his men, prodding them, and “begging them to get out and keep in line and not

disgrace themselves or him.” Despite this fear that men might stop fighting if drinking during battle, plenty of officers served their men rations if they had been under heavy fire, especially if they were celebrating a victory. When Union Maj. Gen. Fitz John Porter heard of the U.S. Army’s successes in Tennessee in early 1862, he gave all the colonels permission to issue celebratory whiskey rations to their men. Porter happily predicted that the U.S. Army would take Richmond within six weeks. These celebratory whiskey rations were, in a way, the biggest stretch of the official regulations. Yet officers passed out the drinks because it raised morale. This, indirectly, combated exhaustion.

It is important to remember, though, that unless a soldier got an official government ration supplied at the request of his commanding officer, enlisted men were not supposed to drink. Only officers could drink. They could keep private stores of liquor, they could buy liquor from camp merchants, and they could get passes to go to town and drink.

Enlisted men in the Civil War could not legally procure their own spirits. They could not buy any spirits from the camp merchant (sutler) nor could they drink in town without risking punishment. But enlisted men drank—ALL THE TIME. They based their own uses of

liquor off of the armies’ regulations and employed what other historians have identified as “selfcare” to make up for inadequacies in the medical departments. Soldiers foraged liquor on the sly in order to keep themselves healthy.

Many soldiers had grown up in households where liquor was used medicinally, and this formed the basis of their drinking. Much like medical professionals, many young men believed that liquors treated illness. So, when soldiers became sick in the army (which was often) they typically tried to find liquor to treat themselves. This was most common with Confederate soldiers, because Federal soldiers tended to receive medicinal liquor rations more regularly. But Confederate soldiers wrote often of trying to procure whiskey, in large part because the Confederate military did not have a steady supply of liquor on hand due to shortages caused by the blockade and the scarcity of grain.

Confederate soldiers used liquor to treat a variety of ailments. Texan Elijah P. Petty imbibed “about 4 fingers of brandy” and took a bath in a spring to treat a fever brought on by a “severe cold,” a case of piles, and a “very sore and painful” ripped fingernail that was undoubtedly infected. The brandy and bath readied Petty for “the full discharge of my duty and more.” Mississippian Robert A. Moore blamed a rainy march for landing him on the sick list with the measles. He purchased some brandy and ginger and concocted a brandy-infused ginger tea, which “made the measles go a little easier.” Soldiers expanded their own use of spirits well beyond treating infected thumbs and head colds. Enlisted men seemingly interpreted “exposure,” “exhaustion,” and “fatigue” broadly.

Much more often than the official documents, soldiers wrote about mental fatigue, especially when they were in winter encampments. By and large, the fighting stopped in the winter and the soldiers ended up living—for months—in massive tent cities. When soldiers moved into winter quarters they tried to make their shelters as home-like as possible, and one of the ways they made themselves warm and comfortable was by drinking. Some men wrote about keeping jugs of whiskey by their beds—officers especially. This seemed like a straightforward use—combating exposure, staving off the cold. But men also wrote about keeping warm by playing whiskey poker and other games. This seemed to be a bit more than just combating exposure. Clearly, soldiers were trying to pass the time, to relieve boredom. They were certainly trying to re-create some kind of familial environment that they had left behind.

ENLISTED MEN IN THE CIVIL WAR COULD NOT LEGALLY PROCURE THEIR OWN SPIRITS

And this element of emotional self-care became clearer around holidays such as Christmas, a time when most soldiers were used to drinking with their families. During the war, the men went to fantastic lengths to find liquor around the holidays. A few friends in Walker’s Texas Division pooled their resources to purchase “some whisky at $40 per gallon to have a frolick” on Christmas Day. Soldiers in the 17th Mississippi paid between $30 and $50 per gallon to buy liquor for a “grand camp dance” to celebrate the holiday.

Union Corporal Robert Rossi and his own friends “made punch”—on both Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. On the latter holiday, they “had a lot of fun and didn’t get to bed until around 3, all of us dutifully drunk.” These men’s attempts to make Christmas in camp similar to Christmas at home fell short. Sometimes, they waited for their families to send care packages, and when those packages did not arrive, they became “melancholy.” Charles Francis Adams Jr., complained to his family of his Christmas dinner of “tough beef” and “commissary whiskey” in 1862. Floridian Robert Watson drank a little, but “did not feel marry [sic] as my thoughts were of home.” Liquor became the attempted, if ineffective, curative for homesickness.

Because soldiers could use liquor to treat their emotional and physical needs, both officers and enlisted men ended up drinking pretty much

FOR MEDICINAL PURPOSES

A nurse known as Anne Bell tends to wounded soldiers in a Northern hospital. She holds a cup and spoon. Behind her, bottles, perhaps holding liquor, rest on a bedside table. Confederate nurse Kate Cumming recalled that in her hospital, the “liquor of all kinds is given out on an order from the druggist for each ward separately.”

whenever it suited personal needs, provided they could find the liquor. The Union armies had a fairly steady supply of rations (but those did not always include whiskey). The Confederate armies had a chronic shortage of whiskey. It was used only by the medical department, and the surgeons prescribed it sparingly. But just because official government rations were scarce did not mean that soldiers did not manage to find liquor on their own. Men sneaked into town and bought it from civilians. Camp merchants sold liquor illegally. Men’s families sent them care packages with liquor in them. And, these men spent most of their time encamped in apple and peach growing regions. Young soldiers knew how to find rural stills bursting with brandies.

The presence of liquor—even a small amount—wreaked havoc with camp discipline and led to all sorts of mishaps. Men complained about drunks making a lot of noise. Other men stumbled (not just into latrines) or became lost. More seriously, soldiers who were drunk tended to fight with each other and their commanding officers. This sometimes just ended with the drunken men being put under guard until they sobered up. Other times the violence was more severe.

of

TAKING HIS MEDICINE

Follow the link below to see editor Dana B. Shoaf try a Civil War liquor a Union surgeon ordered for his hospital in Frederick, Md. historynet.com/tenth-ward

the 7th Illinois Cavalry was shot in the arm by a drunken soldier and only saved from death by his “suspender buckle” that knocked the ball off its course. Major Joseph D. Bullen of the 28th Maine was killed after being shot by a drunken fellow. One soldier in the Union Army’s Excelsior Brigade “deliberately shot a member of the same company for no cause whatsoever” while “under the influence of liquor.” While the mishaps were not usually severe enough to change the course of a major battle, military officials scrambled to punish drunken soldiers in an effort to try to maintain discipline.

Army physicians were likewise concerned about soldiers’ overuse of liquor. The 1860s were a transitional time in the way that Americans thought about illness, and specifically, physicians did not regard alcoholism as a disease in the way modern Americans do. When people in the 19th century saw a person who drank too much, they interpreted it as a moral failing. Many people believed that everyone who even tried a drop of liquor was at risk of becoming a chronic drunkard. But Americans during the war did notice the symptoms of too much drinking: the delirium tremens. This shaking and confusion occurred when someone who was regularly intoxicated experienced withdrawal. Yet when they saw a person suffering from delirium tremens, they tended to regard it as the consequence of immorality rather than as illness.

Moreover, because physicians regarded liquor as a stimulant, no war-era medical books discussed liquor’s numbing effects. Yet even though the medical departments were not officially using liquor to relieve pain, soldiers

UNDER THE INFLUENCE

On December 9, 1861, two Louisianans had the misfortune of being the first soldiers executed by the Confederate Army. Privates Dennis Corcoran and Michael O’Brien, of the famously rowdy Louisiana Tiger Rifles, had been convicted of drunkenly attacking Colonel Harry T. Hays while attempting to free some of their comrades being held in a guard house for fighting over a bottle of whiskey. The Tigers’ leader, Major Roberdeau Wheat, sought leniency for his two men, but brigade commander General Richard Taylor refused, believing such discipline was necessary to keep the Tigers in line. They were sentenced to death by firing squad and 12 of their fellow Tiger Rifles were chosen to do the duty. The two published a farewell letter in a local newspaper before their death, saying in part: “We are to suffer death in vindication of laws outraged while we were under the influence of reason-destroying liquor….Oh, brother soldiers, let this, our unexpected and untimely end be a warning to you; and should it be the means of saving you from the souldestroying vice, we will not have died in vain.” —Melissa

BENEATH THE MAGNOLIA

The men were buried in Centreville, Va., at the site of their execution. In 1979, historian Michael Thomas exhumed their remains, including teeth, bone fragments, a crucifix and scraps of their uniforms. On December 9, 1979—118 years after their execution—the men’s remains were reinterred at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Centreville, Va.

seemed to be drinking liquor precisely because of its physical and emotional numbing effects, whether they articulated it in those terms or not. Physicians absolutely realized, too, that soldiers—especially those that were sick or wounded—overused liquor to the point that it was a problem.

As a result, physicians tried to control the flow of liquor in the hospitals as much as possible. In the Confederate hospitals, especially, physicians required prescriptions for whiskey and brandy (this also helped to prevent shortages). Union hospitals also tried to curtail chronic intoxication. Virtually all Union hospital newspapers advertised temperance clubs—which urged men to pledge not to drink liquor. The Soldier’s Journal further instructed men: “Don’t sit down listless and inactive and thus enter a course that will make you a curse to yourself and to everybody else because Uncle Sam foots the bill and furnishes rations.” The Cripple described drinking as a vice, which “betrayed the hidden faults of man, and showed them in odious colors and faults to which he is not naturally subject. Wine throws a man out of himself and infuses qualities into the mind making him a stranger in his sober moments.” Drinking excessively was a common enough problem that hospital newspapers devoted significant column space to combating it. And yet, the newspaper writing suggested that while soldiers were drinking because they were bored, homesick, or in pain, society’s understanding of men’s drinking was that it was a moral failure (rather than a physiological condition). This view persisted as the war came to a close. Members of the American Temperance Union expressed concern that the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who had “learned a wandering life” would be returning to their families shortly. Reformers vowed not to let veterans head down the road to ruin. Their bodies were wounded, and for so long the men had existed only on “hard-tack and salt beef.” When they came in contact with colorful shops filled with goods and carts of “refreshments” on board trains, the returning soldiers would be too weak to resist temptation. These men had “passed through the terrible storm of shot and shell, and hurricanes of flame and smoke.” And while soldiers had “fought and conquered” the rebels, reformers worried that a veteran would “find it difficult to conquer himself.” They were not wrong.

In the late 19th century, veterans of the Civil War struggled to cope with chronic pain from their injuries and the mental trauma from the horrors they experienced. Not surprisingly, they struggled to re-adapt to a civilian world where the prevailing belief was that all men should

‘DEATH TO RUM’

Before the advent of prohibition, the temperance movement gained new advocates among the spouses of Civil War veterans who turned to alcohol to cope with their new realities. Carrie Nation, right, was well-known for her radical opposition to liquor after a tumultuous marriage to David Gloyd, a Union Army doctor and alcoholic. Nation was arrested more than 30 times for raiding bars and using a hatchet to smash fixtures and bottles of booze while singing and praying for the men’s souls inside. Below, a broadside touting a temperance movement event.

work hard (usually through manual labor) to support their families. Many veterans continued to drink to self-medicate. And mainstream society, especially in the North, shut the veterans off from the world by establishing veterans’ homes. Yet looking at drinking during the war years reveals that soldiers were beginning to cope with the war—its exhaustions and traumas—while they experienced it. They drank during the war to take the edge off of whatever misery they were experiencing at the moment. And, over time, this led them to become men who behaved outside of the norms civilian society expected of them.

Megan L. Bever is the author of At War With King Alcohol: Debating Drinking and Masculinity in the Civil War (UNC Press, 2022), and an associate professor of history and chair of the Social Sciences Department at Missouri Southern State University. She received her PhD in History at the University of Alabama in 2014. She has published articles in the Journal of Southern History, Civil War History, and the Journal of Sport History and coedited The Historian Behind the History: Conversations with Southern Historians (University of Alabama Press, 2014) and American Discord: The Republic and Its People in the Civil War Era (LSU Press, 2020).

The war in their words

‘Nothing of the Kind Ever Took Place’

The First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861, was a disaster for the North. The Northern public was hungry for heroes and eager for stories of individual courage and Union success. Wisconsin residents were understandably thrilled when the exploits of 2nd Wisconsin Captain William Strong made national news on the front page of the September 28, 1861, issue of Harper’s Weekly There, featured as the sole illustration on the cover, was the brave Union officer surrounded by six Confederate soldiers. The following article, “Gallant Exploit of Captain Strong, of the Second Wisconsin Volunteers,” described Strong’s reconnoitering of potential picket positions on September 6 along the Potomac River near Washington, D.C., and his sudden capture by the Rebels. The story recalled that when asked to surrender, 21-year-old Captain Strong, commander of Company F, shot two of his captors and ran to safety.

FRONT PAGE NEWS

The September 28, 1861, cover of the popular newspaper Harper’s Weekly featured an illustration of Captain Strong’s “gallant” encounter with Confederate soldiers, including that he shot two of them. But did he?

Strong shot the leader of the pursuing party but not before he was wounded and had several additional close calls with bullets passing through his clothing and canteen. Exhausted from his narrow escape and loss of blood, the captain was met by some of his pickets, who carried him back to camp. The story was picked up by Wisconsin newspapers, with the headline “Captain Strong’s Heroic Adventure” ensuring an even broader viewership of his exploits.

Shortly after the accounts were published, Major Charles H. Larrabee of the 5th Wisconsin Infantry, who commanded the picket line that day, documented Strong’s story for posterity in the archives of the State of Wisconsin. Writing to Mr. Lyman C. Draper, the corresponding

A youthful Wisconsin officer’s tale gained him acclaim and promotion. But it probably never happened

secretary of the Wisconsin Historical Society, in his introduction to Captain Strong’s report, Major Larrabee stated:

I was Officer of the Day at this time, and as such had charge of the line of pickets of this command. We had but two days before come over at a double to repel a supposed Rebel advance on Chain Bridge, and had been occupied day and night in throwing up earthworks to strengthen our position. The lines of the pickets had been stationed in the night of Tuesday, 3d September, and were in some cases in bad positions. I had just returned from a visit along the left exterior line—the centre being the turnpike from the Chain Bridge to Leesburg—and intended visiting the right exterior line. I called to Capt. Strong to accompany me but he not being quite ready—then awaiting his dinner—I having entire confidence in his discretion, directed him to make a careful examination of the picket stations, and especially of the right outpost, and be prepared to report to me when I should return from the examination of our exterior line, what alterations were in his judgment needed. Particularly I wished him to see whether our enemy could pass along the banks of the Potomac to the right of our pickets. On my return

THE DEFENSES OF WASHINGTON

I found the Captain wounded—with all the marks of his encounter on him—but full of self-reliance and manly strength. Dr. Ward had passed me, and at this time was returning with him to camp. To show you how coolly he bore up under his exertions, upon offering him my horse, he absolutely refused, saying he was as sound as ever; so he went on to camp, some two miles, on foot.

Col. Stannard, of the Vermont 3d Regiment, and myself then took a portion of the new guard, and some two hundred volunteers of the Wisconsin 2d, of the old guard, and scoured the woods where the affray took place....The next day I took two hundred men of the Indiana 19th, and thoroughly scoured the woods—found where horses had been picketed for some days past, and signs of the camp of pickets. We found the place of Strong’s encounter, and picked up what we supposed was a Secesh pistol, but we now find it was a small pocket pistol which Strong dropped in his retreat. I am thus minute because I really think this is the bravest and coolest act I recollect in our history.

It is interesting to note that Major Larrabee had to order Captain Strong to record the incidents. Strong submitted this report that Larrabee forwarded to the Wisconsin Historical Society with the above cover letter:

Camp Advance, Sept. 7th, 1861

Major Larrabee: – Sir: In pursuance of your order of yesterday, I proceeded to examine the woods to the right of our exterior line, for the purpose of satisfying yourself whether the line should be extended. The last picket was stationed about four hundred yards from the river— being the outpost on our right exterior line—leaving a dense thicket of pine undergrowth between it and the river. From my means of observation up to that time, I had concluded that our pickets were not sufficiently advanced in that direction, as this space was wholly uncoupled. At least I thought the ground should be examined; and in this you were pleased fully to concur.

You desired me to make a minute examination of the ground, and to be ready to report when you should return, at 3 o’clock p.m. of that day. Accordingly after dinner I passed along the line until I reached the

extreme outpost on the right—which consisted of Lieut. Dodge, Corporal Manderson, and three privates, and then proceeded alone over very rough and densely wooded ground to the river. I soon ascertained that these physical obstacles were so great, that no body of troops could, in this direction, turn our right flank, and there was no necessity of extending our pickets. I then concluded to return—and for the purpose of avoiding the dense under-growth, I turned back on a line about one hundred rods in advance of the direction of our line of pickets. As I was passing through a thicket, I was surrounded by six Rebel soldiers – four infantry and two cavalry. The footmen were poorly dressed, and badly armed, having old rusty altered muskets. The cavalry were well mounted and well armed. Seeing I was caught, I thought it best to surrender at once. So I said “Gentlemen, you have me.” I was asked various questions as to who I was, where I was going, what Regiment I belonged to, &c.—all of which I refused to answer. One of the footmen said, “Let’s hang the d—d Yankee scoundrel,” and pointed to a convenient limb. Another said, “No, let’s take him to camp and hang him there.” One of the cavalry, who seemed to be the leader, said “We will take him to camp.” Then they marched me through an open place— two footmen in front, two in the rear, and the cavalry man on each side of me. I was armed with two revolvers and my sword. After going some twenty rods, the Sergeant, who was on my right, noticing my pistols, commanded me to halt, and give them up, together with my sword. I said “Certainly, gentlemen,” and immediately halted. As I stopped, they all filed past me, and of course were in front. We were at this time in an open part of the woods, but about sixty yards to the rear was a thicket of under-growth. Thus everything was in my favor; I was quick of foot, and a passable shot. Yet the design of escape was not formed until I brought my pistol pouches to the front part of my body, and my hands touched the stocks. The grasping of the pistols suggested my cocking them as I drew them out. This I did, and the moment I got command of them, I shot down the two footmen nearest me—about six feet off—one with each hand. I immediately turned and ran towards the thicket in the rear. The confusion of my captors was apparently so great that I had nearly reached cover before shots were fired at me. One ball passed thought my left cheek— passing out of my mouth. Another one—a musket ball, went through my canteen. Immediately upon this volley, the two cavalry separated, one to my right, and another to my left, to cut off my retreat—the remaining two footmen charging directly towards me. I turned when the horse men got up and fired three or four shots; but the balls flew wild. I still ran on- got over a small knoll, and had nearly regained one of our pickets, when I was headed off by both of the mounted men. The Sergeant called to me to halt and surrender. I gave no reply, but fired at him, and ran in the opposite direction. He pursued and overtook me, and just as his horse’s head was abreast of me, I turned, took good aim, pulled the trigger, but the cap snapped. At this time his carbine was unslung, and he was holding it in both hands on the left side of his horse. He fired at my breast without raising the piece to his shoulder, and the shot passed from the right side of my coat, through it and my shirt to the left, just grazing the skin. The piece was so near as to burn the cloth out the size of one’s hand. I was, however, uninjured at this time save for the shot through my cheek. I then fired at him again, and brought him to the

ground—hanging by his foot in the left stirrup, and his horse galloping towards his camp. I saw no more of the horseman on my left, nor the two footmen—but running on soon came to our own pickets—uninjured save the shot through the cheek, but otherwise much exhausted from my exertions.

Very Respectfully Yours, Wm. E. Strong, Captain Co. F., 2d R. W. V.

Strong was quickly promoted to major in part due to the media attention, and he returned to Wisconsin to help organize the 12th Wisconsin Infantry then being formed in Madison. Not all members of the 2nd Wisconsin, however, were convinced of the facts of the event, or how deserving he was of the subsequent fame.

Brevet Lt. Col. George H. Otis, who in 1861 was a newly promoted second lieutenant in

A BOLD POSTURE

Captain William Emerson Strong was commissioned into the 2nd Wisconsin on April 23, 1861. He raised Company F and fought as its leader at Blackburn’s Ford and the First Battle of Bull Run before his promotion to major with the 12th Wisconsin Infantry.

SHOTS FIRED

Company I, stated after the war: “There were those that could scarcely credit the story, and I presume there are those living now who entertain doubts regarding the truthfulness of the captain’s story.” Lieutenant Colonel Lucius Fairchild commented in a September 22, 1861, letter to his sister: “Captain Strong has left us to be Major – He is a brave fellow, I suppose, & has made himself quite a name. I have been on the ground where it happened several times since – Day before yesterday I saw some rebels a long way off.” Even a year later, on September 8, 1862, Captain Wilson Colwell of Company B would write his wife, “the first one promoted was Capt. Strong and you know he got it through friends at home.”

So, what did actually happen on that day in September 1861, and were the comments by others valid or did it show their jealousy only at Captain Strong’s success? The newspapers had widely told the story of “Captain Strong’s Adventure” and noted that the report would be placed in the Wisconsin Historical Society for posterity. Several officers in the 2nd Wisconsin wrote and collected statements to document their own findings to supplement the historical record. For 161 years, those accounts remained in the archives, and are published here for the first time.

Second Lieutenant Nathaniel Rollins of Company H, one of the companies on picket duty that day, recounted how the geography called the events into question. He prefaced his evaluation of the terrain with:

…Distrusting the truth of the story went and made a careful examination of the ground about the place stated to have been the scene of action by Capt. Strong. This survey was made last week in company with Lieut. [Dana] D. Dodge of Co. D of this Regt. I had previously been over the ground. I found these facts.

Rollins noted a high bluff along the river, making ascent there virtually impossible—that where Captain Strong indicated he was captured, “in either direction one goes down into a deep ravine, rocky and steep, the side of the hills are covered with a growth of scrub pine, oak, beech and hickory which grow very thick and generally covered with limbs from the ground to their tops.” As he and Lieutenant Dodge explored the area and attempted to move from the tree to more open ground they found that “ground of scrub pine was here so dense that several times we were obliged to retrace our steps and seek places offering less obstruction.”

Rollins next spoke to the placement of the picket line that overlooked the area in question. He noted that “All the ground...is in plain sight of the pickets posted on the open high ground east of the fence. It would be impossible for a horse to approach the large tree from the west across any of this ground without being in plain

sight and within musket shot for the pickets.” The only area Rollins felt that horses could be brought through were in the areas of farmer Reid’s house and “the Negro hut” and each of those areas had “one to three fences full four feet high which show no signs of having been thrown down that I have ever seen and I visited the spot and examined the fences shortly after the reported exploit.” Due to the impassable terrain and the open line of sight of the pickets, it seemed impossible for the six Confederates to have gotten to the place Strong indicated that they had been. Lieutenant Dodge was 36 at the time and so was one of the older officers in the regiment. Dodge had been on the picket line that day and also related an account somewhat at odds with what Strong had reported:

I was on picket guard and on Reid’s farm on the day that Capt. Wm E. Strong of the 2nd Wis. Vols. was reported or rather reported himself to have been shot by some rebel scouts. The Picket guard went out the day before the reported exploit....After the picket was posted Capt. Strong said he would meet me near Reid’s house at a certain guard post at 12 o’clock at night and again at 3:30 or 4 o’clock in the morning and would go with me along the line of pickets to see that all was right. I went to the appointed post at 12 and again at 3:30 where I waited until morning for Captain Strong when after day light I went up to the road to the reserve and there found Strong asleep and wakened him up. He said he had been there all night. That day at about one o’clock PM I was at the post near Reid’s house where I met Capt. Strong and he went down with me to the post nearest the river, marked on the sketch drawn by Adjt. Dean, where I stopped. Strong threw off his sword belt, pistols and coat at the fifth post from the last and then went over to the last post with me. He then said he would go back where he had left his things and lie down. About 1/2 or ¾ of an hour afterwards, I heard the report of a pistol. The reports were all about alike. Sounded like pistol shots. Some of the privates with me remarked “there was some one shooting off his pistols.” There were certainly not to exceed ten or eleven shots in all. I shortly after went down the hill, back along the line of pickets, about to the fourth post from the last and there I found Capt. Strong. He said he had been shot by some rebels, that there were six rebels who had attacked him, four on foot and two mounted, that he (Strong) had killed one and

wounded one, that he fired but four shots himself and that the other shots that I had heard were fired by the rebels. He then showed me the wound in his cheek, the holes in his canteen and coat. There was no blood on his face and I saw no signs of it having bled. I have seen quite a number of gun-shot wounds but this bore but very little resemblance to those I had seen. I remarked to Capt. Strong at the time that the wound could not have been made by a musket ball or by a carbine ball, that it could not have been more than a buckshot or a pistol. I noticed the hole in the canteen, the hole was too small for a musket or carbine ball and I then told him that must have been a pistol. The hole was very nearly through the center of the canteen. I thought it was very strange how the ball could go through the canteen in that way and not penetrate his body. I also noticed the shot hole in the coat. I noticed that the hole in the right side where he said the ball entered was lower than on the left side where it came out. The coat was badly scorched on the right side. This shot he said he had received from a man on horseback while he, Strong, was on the ground. He said the rebel put his carbine right against him [Strong] and fired! The cloth on the canteen was also scorched where the ball had entered. I proposed to him to let me take a squad of men, say two from each post near there, and go down in search of them but he positively objected, said it would not answer besides

“X” MARKS THE SPOT

Charles K. Dean, adjutant of the 2nd Wisconsin Infantry, drew this map of the area surrounding Capt. Strong’s reported encounter with Rebel scouts, indicating the tree it happened near and other notable spots with a key we’ve re-created here.

1 – The large tree where Capt. Strong stated the encounter took place

2 – Place where Capt. Strong’s cap was found by Lt. Dodge

3 – Negro Hut and field

4 – Last picket post and place where Lt. Dodge was when he heard the firing

P – Picket posts—3 men at each post

5 – High open ground overlooking all ground in the vicinity

Another Side of Strong

The 2nd Wisconsin soldiers’ inquiry into Captain Strong’s action on September 6, 1861, challenged his honesty and honor, but the officer’s actions for the remainder of the war tell a far different story. As major of the 12th Wisconsin Infantry, he was sometimes in charge of the regiment and did well on those occasions. In October 1862, he was assigned to serve on the staff of General Thomas J. McKean as his asst. adjutant general. He later served with distinction on the staffs of Maj. Gens. James McPherson and Oliver O. Howard.

Following the Confederate surrender, Strong served with Howard as the inspector general for the Freedman’s Bureau in Washington, D.C., until his discharge as a brevet major general in May 1866. He then moved to Chicago and went on to a successful career in business, the Illinois National Guard, and the Republican Party.

Perhaps the most telling example of the esteem in which he was held is that, at his wedding in Chicago on April 25, 1867, in attendance were Generals Howard, William T. Sherman, and Andrew Hickenlooper. No matter what happened that day in September 1861, William E. Strong must have shown great gallantry and courage during the rest of the war to merit such success. —M.S.

when he (Strong) called “rally” the rebels left as fast as they could run (I would here say I heard no one cry “rally” or anything else in that direction, yet the distance was so short and I was on higher ground that if anyone had cried for help I must have heard them). Capt. Strong then described minutely the place to me. I afterwards went (that afternoon) and examined the place but found no signs of the contest whatever. About ten days or two weeks after I was on picket again in the same place and again went over the ground and about thirty rods nearer the river and near the fence found Strong’s cap at the place as shown in the sketch. It is thick woods where the cap was found. I have been over the ground three different times, each time with different gentlemen and it is my candid opinion and the expressed opinion of all who have been there with me that it is impossible for cavalry to get to the fence mentioned by Strong as the scene of action. This statement is made without any feelings against Capt. Strong but merely that the public may know the real facts.

Three enlisted men were then questioned. Albert F. Wade, First Sergeant, and Private Isaac R Higgins of Company D, and Private Frank Wilkins of Company H. Wade stated he was near Lieutenant Dodge on the picket line that day and went over the ground with him after the incident. He could see no indications of horses in the area and given the ground felt that the only way a horse could be at that spot was by the open ground near the brook or by going past “the negro’s hut.” Higgens heard the firing and noted they sounded all like pistol shots. He also looked over the ground and saw no disturbance and spoke of the ruggedness of the terrain and vegetation. Private Wilkens also went over the ground after the encounter and, while he saw some horse tracks, noted that farmer R.S. Reid had horses out at the time. He reiterated Wade’s comment that there were only two places, both open, that horses could be gotten to the spot. Captain George B. Ely of Company D also commented:

That day I was in command of part of my Company on a working party at Fort Marcy. Just towards evening some one came up from our camp and said Capt. Strong had been shot by the Rebel Pickets and that the ambulance had been sent to bring him in. We soon went to camp & there found Lieut. Dodge who had also been on picket duty with part of my company and also Captain Strong. Strong’s face was bound up and he was standing by the cooking fire of his company which was near my company quarters and Major Allen and many others went to Strong to express our sympathy & hear an account of the affair. Strong talked freely and apparently without difficulty showed us his canteen shot through & through and the hole in his coat and gave his narration enthusiastically.

After recounting the experience that Captain Strong also made in his report, Captain Ely then noted that he also saw Strong on the morning of the next day.

A FEW GOOD MEN

Strong, left, continued to receive commendations for his conduct during the war, after his encounter along the Potomac, and kept company with several esteemed figures, including O.O. Howard, right.

The next morning he complained that his face was sore & he could not talk. He went that day to our old camp on Calarama [sic] Hill for the course of five or six days[,] he returned to the Regt. & resumed command of his company.

Next to testify was R.S. Reid, the farmer who owned the property where the incident supposedly occurred. He noted he had resided on the land for over 50 years and was at home the day of the incident and

the action would have taken place between his house and the river. Reid stated he saw no men that day other than the Federal picket and had never seen Confederates near his house. He also noted that the only way to get horses to the point Strong indicated was by going past his house and so “was fully convinced this was some mistake in statement” by Captain Strong.

Peter Arndt, the 2nd Wisconsin’s assistant surgeon, also provided his medical perspective on Strong’s wound.

I hereby certify that Capt. Strong of Company F 2d Regt. Wis. Vol. presented himself to me for treatment of a wound of the cheek about 24 hours after such wound had been made or rec’d on the 7th day of September last. I found upon examination the wound penetrating through about the center of the left cheek, rather triangular in shape, the course was oblique pointing toward the right angle of the mouth and in its exit produced no wound of the lips or tongue....There was considerable tumefaction [swelling, Ed.] of the cheek at the time and I ordered an Elm poultice with muriate of ammonia dissolved, applied which in about 36 hours reduced the swelling when healthy suppuration took place and the wound healed very rapidly – There was no appearance of there having been much if any hemorrhage from the wound. The wound could not have been made by anything larger than a buck shot – There was no perceptible destruction of the parts and the wound was closed perfectly when I first saw it.

Perhaps the most damaging statement of all is an account of a discussion Lieutenant Nathaniel Rollins and Charles K. Dean, the adjutant of the 2nd, had with Captain Charles Mundee, the assistant adjutant general of Brig. Gen. William F. “Baldy” Smith’s command. Rollins and Dean had wished to get a pass to investigate the area one more time, but orders now required approval from Smith to pass the main guard.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Captain Strong’s report about his encounter and the additional accounts from 2nd Wisconsin officers were filed in the annals of the Wisconsin Historical Society, pictured here in the early 1900s.

Dean “Capt.[,] Lieut. Rollins and I have a pass to go along the line of pickets which we wish you to approve.”

Mundee “I cannot do it Adjt. for Genl. McClellan has issued an order prohibiting any person’s passing beyond the main guard.”

Dean “We do not wish to go outside the pickets but only out, out to the place where Capt. Strong is reported to have had an encounter with some rebel scouts.”

Mundee “Why go now! You can’t take away his commission, you are too late.”

Dean “We have no wish to take away his commission, we had some doubts about the matter and wanted to satisfy ourselves.”

Mundee “Then it is unnecessary to go for the very next day after it was reported, we sent out and made a very thorough examination and satisfied ourselves full that nothing of the kind ever took place.”

Capt. Mundee afterward remarked that “there might possibly have been something but that he had seen so many such things, he put no confidence in the story from the first.”

On November 11, 1861, Charles K. Dean packaged up all the correspondence regarding the investigation along with his own recollections to send to Wisconsin. Dean closed his note by clarifying his intentions. He bore no malice nor ill feeling toward Captain Strong, nor was he jealous of his promotion. He noted that this was “the universal feeling of this Regt,” and finished the letter with the statement, “I have to request or enjoin that the papers in this case now furnished be filed with Capt Strong’s and Major Larrabee’s statements (now there) in the State Historical Society, and that in no case shall they be published.” And so it was for 161 years….

Marc Storch is the author of multiple articles and book chapters on the Iron Brigade. He and his wife are currently working on a history of the 2nd Wisconsin Infantry. Kevin Hampton is the curator of history at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum and is researching the 7th Wisconsin Infantry.

MADE IN THE CSA

SOUTHERN ARMS MAKERS PRODUCED PISTOLS WITH BRASS PARTS TO SAVE ON SCARCE STEEL

GEORGIA TECH

About 3,700 Griswold & Gunnison revolvers were made by that firm, which depended heavily on enslaved labor. The company, located in the industrial mill town of Griswoldville, Ga., made cotton gins before the war. The sixshot, .36-caliber gun was a copy of the Colt Navy. The firm operated from 1862 until Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s men sacked the town during the 1864 March to the Sea.

SUBSTITUTE WITH BRASS

Most Confederate revolvers substituted brass parts for steel when possible. Brass was a softer metal, and more prone to expanding and contracting when heated. The Griswold & Gunnison frame was brass. Note the “V” notch cut in the hammer. When the pistol is fully cocked it serves as the rear sight, a common feature on wartime revolvers.

IMITATION IS a sincere form of flattery, so the saying goes, but in the case of the Confederacy it was also due to necessity. Faced with a shortage of weapons when the war began, Southern arms manufacturers, including some 1861 start-ups (no pistol factories existed in the South when the war began) made copies of firearms that had been manufactured in Northern factories, including pistols.

Revolvers produced by the Colt Manufacturing Company in Hartford, Conn.—particularly the .44-caliber Model 1860 “Army” and the .36-caliber Model 1851 “Navy”—were the most frequently copied. At least 11 firms in Georgia, Mississippi, Virginia, and Tennessee made handguns of sound, albeit rough, quality for Confederate troops.

One thing, however, that these firms could not copy compared to Northern gun producers was quantity. It is estimated that fewer than 10,000 Southern revolvers were made during the conflict by all Confederate firms combined. Just a drop in the bucket of what was needed.

In contrast, Samuel Colt’s armory cranked out 121,757 revolvers from 1861 to 1865, including nearly 60,000 Army revolvers in 1863 alone. Three Southern manufacturers—Griswold & Gunnison, Leech & Rigdon, and Spiller & Burr —made 70 percent of all Confederate revolvers. Pistols produced by those firms are featured here.

Various Confederate armories also manufactured revolver ammunition. Troops didn’t use loose powder and balls, but most often were issued boxes of six rounds, conical bullets with a paper cartridge glued on to the base. This rare, still-full box was manufactured in the Confederate capital.

DOUBLE ARMED

FIRING A REPRODUCTION CONFEDERATE PISTOL

Follow the link below to see Editor Dana B. Shoaf fire a reproduction Griswold & Gunnison revolver. He’ll discuss the quirks of revolvers—will he get off six shots?—and also compare the reproduction to an original: historynet.com/brass-frame-shot

MORE THAN A NOVELTY

Thomas Leech and Charles Rigdon first partnered in the Memphis Novelty Works of Tennessee to make swords and other metal items for the Confederacy. By April 1863, the company, renamed Leech & Rigdon, had moved to Greensboro, Ga., and was concentrating solely on making its version of a six-shot .36-caliber Navy revolver. Leech & Rigdon pistols were of high quality, and brass was substituted brass for steel only on the backstrap. The company was contracted to make 1,500 pistols, but only about 900 were finished when the firm dissolved in December 1863. Looking closely at the brass strap under the handle, right, you can see file marks from the manufacturing process.

IT WAS FRAMED

The main difference with the Whitney it copied was the Spiller & Burr’s use of a solid brass frame, grip strap, and back strap. Due to very slow production, the Confederate government bought out the firm in 1864. Regardless, only about 1,450 Spiller & Burr revolvers were produced.

COMPARISON SHOPPING

The Spiller & Burr firm started in Richmond, Va., at the beginning of the war to make revolvers for the Confederacy, but would eventually move to Macon, Ga. Its initial November 20, 1861, contract with the Confederate government called for 15,000 .36-caliber revolvers based on the Colt Navy. Despite that fact, the pistols produced by the firm, above, were actually copies of the Whitney Arms Company’s version of the Navy, top.

THUNDERING HOOVES, CLANGING SABERS

Sandwiched between the most famous cavalry battle of the war at Brandy Station and the titanic battle at Gettysburg, the June 17–21 cavalry clashes at and near the Virginia towns of Aldie, Middleburg, and Upperville are less known. Author Robert F. O’Neill first set out to rectify that in 1993, when Harold E. Howard published his book on the topic as part of the Virginia Civil War Battles and Leaders Series. O’Neill states this book is not an expansion on that previous work, but “new in every respect.” After nearly 30 years of continued study, this work “reconsider[s] the judgments and conclusions [he] reached years ago.”

One of the reconsiderations the author mentions is the role played by Union cavalry commander Brig Gen. Alfred Pleasonton. Plagued by conflicting orders from Army of the Potomac commander Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, it is O’Neill’s argument that “No officer’s role in the Loudoun Valley has been more misunderstood or misrepresented.” The author does a good job of showing how Hooker, in an effort to make officials in Washington, D.C., believe he was following their orders, sent Pleasonton conflicting orders during the five-day span.

Pleasonton proved just as unwilling to follow orders as Joe Hooker. When Hooker finally decided he wanted the cavalry to remain east of Bull Run Mountain, his orders reached Pleasonton too late, and the battle near Aldie had already begun. The fighting that started on June 17

Riots: The Cavalry Battles of Aldie, Middleburg, and Upperville

between one of Confederate Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart’s brigades (commanded by Colonel Thomas Munford) and newly appointed Brig. Gen. Judson Kilpatrick’s command touched off five days of continuous fighting, including three battles.

Stuart had been tasked with keeping the Union cavalry out of the Shenandoah Valley, preventing them from seeing the Confederate infantry marching northward. For five days, his brigades gave ground slowly, preventing the Union cavalry from passing through Ashby’s Gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Pleasonton had “hoped to quickly overpower or drive the Southern cavalry from the Loudoun Valley” but failed.

According to the author, though Stuart was eager to redeem his reputation after Brandy Station, he “set aside his own thirst for victory” and “accomplished exactly what [General Robert E.] Lee had asked him to do. He had kept the Union cavalry from breaching the Shenandoah Valley by “meeting his foe at the gaps in Bull Run Mountain.” Despite being prevented from finding the Confederate infantry, the author demonstrates Pleasonton’s cavalry proved that its performance at Brandy Station was not a fluke. After pushing Stuart’s heralded cavalry back for five successive days, “The Federal troopers gained confidence and swagger in the Loudoun Valley.”

Writing in a lively style, O’Neill has produced an excellent narrative study of the engagements in the Loudoun Valley in June 1863. Based on an impressive array of sources and augmented by 18 excellent maps, this book will appeal not just to students of the Gettysburg Campaign and cavalry operations, but also to anyone interested in lesser-known “small riots.”

HI-TECH LINCOLN

On April 13, 1849, Zenas C. Robbins, an experienced patent agent, excitedly wrote to his client, “It affords me great pleasure to inform you that I have obtained a favorable decision on your application….The patent will be issued in about a month.” The client was Abraham Lincoln, a U.S. congressman. Just when it seems that Lincoln has been parsed from every possible angle, we learn that he was a technology geek and the only president to hold a U.S. patent. Who knew? Clearly, David Kent did.

In Lincoln’s case, the patent was for a device that could lift vessels stranded on sandbars or other obstacles by placing “expandsible buoyant chambers placed at the sides of a vessel…in such a manner that…the buoyant chambers will be forced downwards into the water and at the same time expanded and filled with air for buoying up the vessel by the displacement of water. Lincoln got the idea as a young man after experiencing the grounding of his flatboat on the Sangamon River and later witnessing a similar grounding of a steamship. Lincoln’s curious and inquiring mind and continuous self-study was drawn to things scientific and technological. He loved all things mechanical and was curious as to how they worked and how they could be used to improve people’s lives.

Kent appropriately begins with Lincoln’s early years on the prairie and his interest in agronomic science, forest ecology, hydrology, and a bit of civil engineering. During his legal career and years as a Whig legislator from Illinois, he was known to advocate for government-funded technological improvements such as canal building and railroad expansion, projects he would later support as president. He was also the go-to lawyer for patent and technology cases as he rode Illinois’ legal circuit. A scientist and historian of Lincoln himself, Kent writes about these activities with a confident grace based on his own experience in both fields.

But possibly most remarkable of all was Lincoln’s continued advocacy for and interest in science and all things technological in the midst of the Civil War. Kent describes how “science and technology issues often merged with military strategy issues and economic development.” Would-be inventors would besiege him at the White House, and he showed respectful interest in many of their innovative ideas, actually trying out many of them himself. Kent shows how Lincoln “relied on science to advance the military effort in several fundamental ways: weaponry, transportation, communication, and in the broader sense of strategy.”

In the midst of war, Lincoln somehow found time to further internal improvements, including the continued construction of the

Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America

Transcontinental Railroad, enlarging the capacities of canals in New York and Illinois, signing the Homestead Act facilitating the westward expansion of the country, institutionalizing science through the Smithsonian Institution, creating the Department of Agriculture and the National Academy of Sciences, and signing the Morrill Land Grant Act allocating government land for colleges and universities dedicated to teaching the latest in agriculture and scientific principles. Lincoln also “set aside the first land for federally funded protection; Yosemite was the precursor to the national park system we enjoy today.”

Historian Eric Foner has concluded that Lincoln’s greatest attribute was his lifelong ability to learn and grow. Nowhere is this more evident than in Lincoln’s support for science and technology dedicated to the public good. Kent has drawn back the curtain on Lincoln’s lifelong interest in these areas and the historiography surrounding the 16th president is richer for his efforts.

KEYSTONE TROOPERS

The 21st Pennsylvania Cavalry was one of the few Northern units to be founded as cavalry, transition to infantry, back to cavalry, and gain respect for both roles. They fought at Gettysburg as cavalry, as infantry at Cold Harbor, and then made the last cavalry charge of the war at Appomattox Courthouse. The author, a Pennsylvania native and Licensed Battlefield Guide at Gettysburg, is also a public historian with programs on CSPAN and PCN-TV and author of The Boys Fought Like Demons (2016) and Gettysburg’s Peach Orchard (2019) with James Hessler.

While not ignoring the rank and file, many of whose letters are excerpted, Isenberg often tells the 21st’s history via its impressive commanders, William H. Boyd, Richard F. Moson, Oliver B. Knowles, and Robert Bell. The Canadian born Boyd, along with his nephew of same name and Knowles, served with distinction hunting Confederate raiders in Virginia, 1861-63, as part of Company C of the 1st New York Cavalry, otherwise known as the ‘Lincoln Cavalry,’ which included many Pennsylvanians. Following Gettysburg, Boyd joined many others, including local farmer Robert Bell whose Adams County Scouts were active during the campaign, notably burning the Wrightsville Bridge and saving the state capital of Harrisburg, to combine recruits and consolidate independent companies into the new 21st with six-month enlistments.

The nearly 1,000 men were formed into 12 companies and equipped with Gallagher car-

Cavalry: From Gettysburg to Appomattox

bines and Whitney revolvers. Five companies served under their commander, Boyd, as part of the Army of the Potomac in Virginia, with the rest remaining stateside patrolling against draft resisters and striking coal miners. One company, under Bell, guarded Lincoln during his immortal Gettysburg Address. In early 1864, the 21st re-enlisted for 3 years. After heavy losses at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Courthouse in May, the 21st, much to their chagrin, were converted to infantry and engaged in June at Cold Harbor where Boyd was wounded and replaced by Moson. The 21st fought repeatedly as part of the Siege of Petersburg, with Knowles replacing the wounded Moson, until October when necessity saw them reconverted to cavalry.

In spring 1865 the 21st fought at Amelia Springs, Sailor’s Creek, and launched a final cavalry charge at Appomattox Courthouse where Lee surrendered. The 21st was mustered out on July 8, 1865, having suffered more than 300 total casualties. Knowles, unhurt during the war, died suddenly in 1866, while Boyd recovered and lived until 1887, and Bell organized the first regimental reunion in 1890, which later had two unit monuments placed at Gettysburg. Isenberg’s excellent unit history contains a useful appendix of ‘casualties and attrition’, endnotes, and bibliography, though sadly no index. There are seven excellent maps, including five by the author, along with 60 contemporary photographs interspersed throughout the text.

What Are You Reading?

The Salem Church battlefield in Fredericksburg, Va., has almost been lost entirely to development and the traffic on the ever-bustling Route 3. Thanks to Chris Mackowski and Kristopher White, however, the story of that battle has been given a new breath of life. Chancellorsville’s Forgotten Front is the key to understanding an often-overlooked aspect of the Chancellorsville Campaign. Using a variety of primary sources, a commanding narrative, and excellent maps, this book is helping me understand the Union’s lost opportunity at Chancellorsville.

Chancellorsville’s Forgotten Front: The Battles of Second Fredericksburg and Salem Church, May 3, 1863

SPY VS. SPY

BY DAVE

At the outset of the Civil War, the South had few—if any—of the resources required to wage war, including a navy. To rectify that, the Confederacy sent covert operative Joseph Bulloch to England to build ships needed to break the Union blockade.

The North responded with Thomas Dudley, American consul in Liverpool, to stop these stealthy strategies. For the next four years, a cat-and-mouse spy game played out in Liverpool as the South secretly constructed Florida, Alabama, and other blockade runners and raiders in violation of English law.

Complete with double agents, a devious mole, and daring adventures, this new book by Alexander Rose (Washington’s Spies and Men of War) reads like a John le Carré thriller set in Victorian England—except it’s all true. Built on extensive research and featuring a flowing narrative, The Lion and the Fox details the incredible underhanded dealings of two spies bent on the destruction of the enemy—and each other.

Bulloch (“the Fox”) uses whatever means possible to raise funds and construct ships for the Confederacy by circumventing England’s neutrality laws. His ultimate goal? Build ironclads to destroy the Northern navy and free Southern ports from the restrictive blockade preventing “white gold”—cotton—from making it to the mills of Great Britain.

Two Rival Spies and the Secret Plot to Build a Confederate Navy

Dudley (“the Lion”) pursues Bulloch with relentless zeal, much to the consternation of the English government. He tracks down his adversary across Europe, searching for evidence to expose his illegal activities and surreptitious deals with English boat builders.

The Lion and the Fox is a delight and an exciting read for Civil War fans, especially those who enjoy intrigue and deception.

EPITAPH

What does a good historian do when a cache of unexamined Civil War letters is handed to him? He does what John Simpson did. He writes a book. All for the Union is the saga describing the intertwined lives of two Ellithorpe brothers and two of their brothers-in-law in the Civil War as told through 180 lovingly preserved letters, most of them to their three sisters and a sisterin-law living in western New York and stored in a long forgotten wooden trunk in an attic in Kelso, Wash. Clearly a labor of love, Simon spent years researching, annotating, visiting the locales associated with important events in the brothers’ service, and skillfully weaving their experiences into a compelling narrative of duty and family.

Possibly the most interesting aspect of this collection is that Phillip and Philander Ellithorpe, Asa R. Burleson, and Oliver W. Moore come to life as “Billy Yank” everymen; they would serve in every branch of the Union Army including sharpshooters, engineering, and ambulance corps; fight as part of seven different regiments; and participate in all the classic battles associated with the Army of the Potomac.

Phillip was the author of most of the letters and addressed them to his oldest sibling Ann. He would die at Gettysburg; the others would come home and establish civilian identities forever influenced by their military service. Simpson helpfully fleshes out the lives of many of their comradesin-arms, friends and relations on the home front, and details of the everyday life of common soldiers finding themselves in very uncommon circumstances. While Oliver Moore authored none of the letters, he was instrumental in preserving and transporting them across the continent.

Simpson, however, has set himself a complex agenda and that’s where things get a bit complicated. In addition to the multiple biographies of his leading protagonists, Simpson endeavors to construct genealogical trees for the relevant families, and produce a regimental history of perhaps the most storied of the seven regiments, the 13th Pennsylvania Reserves. “But make no mistake,” he writes, “this book is first and foremost a Bucktail story draped in family history.” By alternating his focus between experiences of the brothers and the larger events befalling the regiments requires the reader to similarly shift his attention and occasionally losing the narrative

Northern Family Fighting the Civil War

thread. Too often, the inclusion of large block quotations is a sign of authorial padding. Simpson too scrupulously avoids this problem. By often paraphrasing the actual content of the letters, Simpson dilutes the immediate feelings and observations of the brothers and prevents the reader from assessing how the home folks might have reacted to what they read.

It’s to Simpson’s credit that he doesn’t end his story with the end of the war. The experiences of veterans struggling to reintegrate themselves into civilian life is an increasingly important aspect of Civil War historiography. In documenting the postwar lives of Philander Ellithorpe, Asa Burleson, Oliver Moore, their families, and descendants, Simpson demonstrates that “veteranhood did not define their total identity; it merely constituted a portion of their being.” Like most veterans throughout our history, Simpson rightly concludes that “each one led meaningful lives beyond—as well as in—the reaches of battlefield remembrance.” It’s a fitting epitaph for a remarkable family.

FOR TIRED BONES

$400

SOMEONE MADE THIS FOOTSTOOL and decorated it with the Army of the Potomac’s 5th Corps Maltese Cross, painted white for the 2nd Division. Perhaps the maker was himself a member of that storied corps. The stool, sold by Fleischer Auctions, was obviously used in a soldiers’ home, one of the many that opened during the late 19th century. These facilities often served as the only living arrangement available to aging veterans, many physically or mentally damaged because of their wartime experiences. Whoever used the stool had earned the right to be comfortable in his waning years. —D.B.S.

Upper Class Just Got Lower Priced

UntilStauer came along, you needed an inheritance to buy a timepiece with class and re nement. Not any more. e Stauer Magnificat II embodies the impeccable quality and engineering once found only in the watch collections of the idle rich. Today, it can be on your wrist.

e Magnificat II has the kind of thoughtful design that harkens back to those rare, 150-year-old moon phases that once could only be found under glass in a collector’s trophy room.

Powered by 27 jewels, the Magnificat II is wound by the movement of your body. An exhibition back reveals the genius of the engineering and lets you witness the automatic rotor that enables you to wind the watch with a simple ick of your wrist. It took three years of development and $26 million in advanced Swiss-built watchmaking machinery to create the Magnificat II.When we took the watch to renowned watchmaker and watch historian George Thomas, he disassembled it and studied the escapement, balance wheel and the rotor. He remarked on the detailed guilloche face, gilt winding crown, and the crocodile-embossed leather band. He was intrigued by the three interior dials for day, date, and 24-hour moon phases. He estimated that this fine timepiece would cost over $2,500. We all smiled and told him that the Stauer price was less than $100. A truly magnificent watch at a truly magnificent price! Try the Magnificat II for 30 days and if you are not receiving compliments, please return the watch for a full refund of the purchase price. The precision-built movement carries a 2 year warranty against defect. If you trust your own good taste, the Magnificat II is built for you.

Stauer Magnificat II Timepiece $399*

Offer Code Price $99 + S&P SAVE $300!

You must use the offer code to get our special price.

1-800-333-2045

Your Offer Code: MAG654-08 Rating of A+

•Luxurious

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•Water-resistant

Finally,

built for value— not for false status

Our 1/30 scale metal figures are painstakingly researched for historical accuracy and detail. The originals are hand sculpted by our talented artists before being cast in metal and hand painted – making each figure a gem of hand-crafted history. Please visit wbritain. com to see all these figures and more from many other historical eras.

matte finish