1863

____________________ 

“Every name…is a lightning stroke to some heart, and breaks like thunder over some home, and falls a long black shadow upon some hearthstone.” 

Gettysburg Compiler, reporting on July 7, on the long lists of killed in battle

____________________ 

This photo was found in the bloody hands of Sgt. Amos Humiston,
a Union soldier who died on the battlefield at Gettysburg.

An nationwide effort was made to identify the fallen man
and the photo was eventually returned to his widow, Philinda.

The children, left to right: Franklin, Frederick and Alice.

NOTE TO TEACHERS: The purpose of my yearly posts is to present material I think might interest others who wish to interest students in American history. I grew up in the 1960s, reading Bruce Catton’s works on the Civil War. His eye for human detail enthralled me and first hooked me on history. 

William H. Sadlier, writing a history of the U.S. for young people, in 1910, was, I think, deadly accurate. He warned: 

The ‘dryness’ of United States History, is, at present, proverbial with teacher and pupil. This ought not to be; for, certainly, there is richness enough of material to make it otherwise. Nevertheless, such an accumulation of statistics and data of various kinds is presented in the majority of school-books on the subject, as to make the youthful learner shriek in dismay from the mass he is expected to memorize.

 

What he said then still resonates. I used to explain on Parents’ Night every year that we used a textbook in class that supplied readymade tests. The chapter test for the Civil War asked students, in a matching section, to identify the losing general at the Battle of Fredericksburg, and the losing general at the Battle of Chancellorsville. 

I asked rooms full of parents every year, for at least two decades (once I realized this was an example that would work) if anyone could tell me who those losing generals were. I always thought some Civil War enthusiast would show up and know the two names. 

No one ever could. 

I believe we must always strive to teach students what will be of use to them in life. That quote I use to lead off the year – that, I believe is where the heart of our discipline lies. The human element. The great pain every family that lost a loved one at felt. History isn’t about names or dates. It’s about the human condition.

 

P.S. I hate standardized testing. Luckily, I retired just as the mania for testing hit. You can read my opinion on testing, if you like: “NFL Adopts Common Core Playbook – Copying Education Reforms.”

*

January 1: The Emancipation Proclamation goes into effect. This opens the door to the recruitment of African Americans to fight for the Union. 

An article in Smithsonian (September 2020) relates the story of Milton Howard, born free in Iowa. As a baby, he and his family were kidnapped and taken south into slavery. He later escaped and joined the Union Army (see A. J. Pickett, in entry for Year 1858). 

The article includes a collage of small pictures, including a brass piece, with a hole in it, which served as a “dog tag” of sorts. It was owned by George W. Washington, who had escaped slavery and joined the army as a musician, at age 16. Many soldiers had  merchants make tags, often out of coins. 

There’s a recruiting poster for, “Men of Color,” with a warning line: “Fail Now and Our Race is Doomed.” 

James Lawson, a free man of color from Philadelphia, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his role in the Battle of Mobile Bay. 

Although wounded, he had refused to retreat. 

*

On the Emancipation Proclamation, the historian James McMaster is emphatic: 

1.     Lincoln did not abolish slavery anywhere. He emancipated certain slaves. 

2.     His proclamation did not apply to the loyal slave states – Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri. 

3.     It did not apply to such Confederate territory as the Union armies had conquered; namely, Tennessee, seven counties in Virginia, and thirteen parishes in Louisiana. 

4.     Lincoln freed the slaves by virtue of his authority as commander in chief of the Union armies, “and as a fit and necessary war measure.” (97-365)

 

* 

January 1-2: Andrews (see Year 1862) continues his description of the Battle of Stone River or Murfreesboro. 

The next day, January 1, 1863, was peaceful save for cavalry skirmishing. January 2d the awful combat was renewed. Rosecrans having planted artillery upon commanding ground, Bragg must either carry this or fall back. He attempted the first alternative, and was repulsed with terrible slaughter, losing 2,000 men in forty minutes. He escaped south under cover of a storm. In proportion to the numbers engaged, the battle of Stone River was one of the bloodiest in the war. About 45,000 fought on each side. The Union loss was 12,000, the Confederate nearly 15,000. (4/48-50)

* 

May 1: Lee and General Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker meet in the Battle of Chancellorsville. Andrews notes that Stonewall Jackson “cherished the theory that one man in an enemy’s rear is worth ten in his front.”

 

* 

May 2: Jackson’s daring flank attack on Hooker’s lines, famously collapses the XI Corps of Union general, Oliver H. Howard. (The XI Corps will suffer a similar attack at Gettysburg in July, and be routed for a second time.) How Howard’s men, or more correctly, how their commanders could be taken by surprise, neither Andrews nor any other historian has ever figured out. “The surprise,” Andrews writing in 1925, says, “was as complete as it was inexcusable.”

General Joseph Hooker, baffled by Lee's attacks,
and stunned by the explosion of a shell.

 

Annie Etheridge goes to war. 

May 2 (Part 2): Bruce Catton tells a story about the battle: On the second day of fighting at Chancellorsville (May 1863) a young woman, “gentle, respected Annie Etheridge, who wore a black riding habit with a sergeant’s chevrons and who had been part of the army since the early days of the war,” appeared on the firing line. 

She had gone off with the Third Michigan as a laundress but when the regiment headed for battle and all the other women stayed behind, she remained with the troops. She was described by soldiers as “a young and remarkably attractive girl,” “modest, quiet, and industrious.”

 

General Phil Kearny saw her caring for the wounded one day and made sure she had a horse and a sergeant’s pay afterwards.

 

In the following scene we find her riding along the firing line, carrying a sack of hardtack and a dozen canteens of hot coffee for the fighting men. A shell explodes nearby, as she offers refreshments to a group of officers. Three horses are killed.

 

A soldier from Pennsylvania remembers, “She never flinched or betrayed the slightest emotion of fear.”

 

She was seen later, inspiring the gunners of a battery locked in a long-range duel with enemy guns. They had been hit hard and were thinking of abandoning position. “That’s right, boys,” Etheridge shouted encouragement, “now you’ve got good range, keep it up and you’ll soon silence those guns.”

 

The gunners gave a cheer, sent her to the rear, and kept firing. We were more inspired by “that brave little sergeant in petticoats” one man recalled, than if all the officers of the army had urged them on.

 

After the battle Gen. David B. Birney’s division was paraded. Birney had devised a decoration called the Kearny Medal. (By this time, Kearny had been killed.) It was a bronze Maltese cross awarded to enlisted men for valor. Birney pinned the medal on the blouse of Miss Etheridge. (63-198; 215)

 

* 

May: General Grant and General Sherman move against Vicksburg, but first must face two separate Confederate armies, one under Gen. John Pemberton (born in Pennsylvania), the other under Gen. Joe Johnston. As Andrews writes, “Grant’s position was now full of peril.” Grant and Pemberton had roughly equal forces – and if Johnston moved quickly, the Union army might have been in trouble. 

A bold policy was the only safe one. Taking five days’ rations, he cut loose from his base at Grand Gulf and marched north to attack Pemberton before Johnston could join him. Jackson, forty-four miles to the east of Vicksburg, was easily captured, May 14th. Grant had thus thrust himself in between Johnston and Pemberton. Turning to the left he smote Pemberton a heavy blow at Champion’s Hill on the 16th and drove him into Vicksburg. Johnston fell back baffled. In eighteen days Grant had marched 200 miles, defeated the enemy in four engagements, inflicting a loss of 8,000 and taking 88 guns, and shut up a large army in Vicksburg all this upon 5 days rations. (4-43)

 

* 

“The heart-break of the Southern Confederacy.” 

May 10: Henry Kyd Douglas had this to say, regarding the Battle of Chancellorsville, and his commander, Stonewall Jackson. 

Previous to Chancellorsville, Douglas notes,

 

I had been among the ranks and close to them and saw their daily improvement in condition and morale. I had also seen a deal of Lee, Jackson, Hill, Stuart, and others and saw the interest with which they looked upon the steady improvement throughout the army. And now it seemed to me there never had been a better understanding between officers and their troops.  (20-213)

 

One cold night a junior officer, Lt. J. P. Smith, offered Jackson his cape to sleep. Jackson first refused; then, “not to appear inconsiderate” he accepted.  But he did not use it long. Waking up after a short doze, he observed Smith asleep near a tree and went up to him and placed the cape on its owner so quietly that he was not aroused and slept on in comfort.”  (20-214)

 

“That evening, the news went abroad [May 10; Jackson’s death], and a great sob swept over the Army of Northern Virginia; it was the heart-break of the Southern Confederacy.” (20-221)

 

Douglas said no general ever “left behind him among the ranks more reverence or a more tender memory” than Jackson.

 

* 

“Terribly and suddenly afflicted with some bronchial affection.” 

June 15: Catton pointed out that the “wolf whistle,” popular with soldiers in World War II, was unknown to the men of the Army of the Potomac. On the march north to Gettysburg, the soldiers met friendly greeting at every town and at most homes along the road. Often, the young ladies came out to watch them march past. Catton explains: “The army had its own method of greeting these girls…an abrupt, significant clearing of the throat, or cough, which burst out spontaneously whenever a line of march went by a nice-looking young woman, so that at such a time, as one veteran said, ‘the men seemed terribly and suddenly afflicted with some bronchial affection.’” 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: Again, it never hurts to point out to students that people never change, and soldiers have always succumbed to feelings of sexual attraction, (Well, okay, don’t say it that way; but you get my drift. People don’t change.) It might be fun to have some of the boys in class demonstrate. For humor, you might pick one of the other boys in class to play the role of the “nice-looking young woman.”

 

* 

June 28-30: I have the following notes from the museum at Gettysburg: 

The people were out in force, and in their Sunday attire to welcome the troopers in blue…At intervals of a few feet, were bevies of women and girls who handed up bouquets and wreathes of flowers. (Captain James Kidd, 6^th Michigan Cavalry, speaking of his regiment’s reception in Gettysburg when they passed through on a scouting mission on June 28) 

Both armies had marched hard, all the way up from Virginia, a few of their comments, copied at the Battle of Gettysburg Museum: 

“The men were tired, but they were marched and countermarched, and halted and started, and placed and unplaced, until it was fair to conclude that someone was drunk.” (Sgt. Charles A. Fuller, 61^st New York) 

“i still live in hopes of getting word from yo i am disappointed evry day in geting a letter. if you lack of paper buy it if you lack of time to write take time…if you cant get stamps send it any how if you wil write often i will be glad.” (Joseph Jones, 79^th Illinois, writing a letter to wife)

 

Sgt. Oliver Roe, a Yank, had this handwritten prayer in his possession: 

    Our father which art in Washington, Uncle Abraham is thy name,

    Thy victory won thy will be done at the South as at the North

    Give us this day our daily rations of crackers and pork

    and forgive us our short coming as we forgive our quartermasters

    for these are the prayers of the soldiers and negroes

    for the space of three years unless discharged. Amen.

 

*

July 1-3: Battle of Gettysburg. Benjamin Andrews notes that Round Top rose 400 feet above the surrounding farmlands. Little Round Top was “about three-fourths as high.” (4-100) 

In fighting on July 2, he notes that Union losses “were 10,000, three-fifths in Sickles’s corps, which lost half its numbers.” (4-101) 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: I tried to focus on the horrible losses Civil War units suffered. I did not want students to imagine there was glamor in warfare.

Tourist have touched O'Rorke's nose so often it's shiny. 

A Rebel sharpshooter in Devil's Den, had a firing position here, looking at Little Round Top.

 

* 

“Large enough to crawl into.” 

Henry Kyd Douglas was helping organize the July 2 Rebel assault on Culp’s Hill:

 

…when suddenly, from behind trees perhaps a couple of hundred yards up the heights, there sprang a dozen or more sharpshooters, and their muzzles seemed trained on me. I fancied I could look down the barrels and I fancied also they were large enough to crawl into. There came little puffs of smoke, a rattle of small arms, the sensation of a tremendous blow and I sank forward on my horse.

 

I had a severe and ragged wound in the left shoulder, the ball having taken in with it a clipping from my coat, shirt, and undershirt, which it cut out in its haste and lodged with its accessories under the clavicle, cutting also some muscles and paralyzing for a time my left arm. My duty in that battle was over.

 

Douglas had once led Company B of the 2^nd Virginia, a member of that unit Wesley Culp.

 

He was twenty-four years old and very little, if any, over five feet, and when captain of the company I procured a special gun for him. When the war broke out he enlisted at Shepherdstown in Company B and was killed in the assault on Culp’s Hill, in sight of the house in which he was born. He is buried there and sleeps there now.  (20-241-242)

 

He recovered from his own wounds in the barn of a Mr. Pickering, who showed the Rebel wounded great kindness. In repayment, a number of the convalescent “took his wagon and horses, hauled in his wheat from the field and stacked it where he wished it.”  In a few days his mother and sister arrived, having driven through both armies.

 

It was a reckless thing to do, and yet, from the time they left home, during the several days they were on the journey, the met with no disagreeable incident, nor a discourteous word. They came and went in absolute safety and when blocked by artillery or cavalry or wagon trains they were helped on their way. (20-244)

 

* 

Will Henry Thompson’s poem, “High Tide at Gettysburg,” is interesting. The author was born in 1846, or 1848, in Missouri, maybe, or Indiana, or possibly Georgia. His older brother, Maurice, 17, joined the Confederate army early in the war. Their father Matthew Thompson also served as a chaplain. Will, only 13 (or 15?) at the start of the war, finally enlisted in 1864 and fought at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania. According to a speech he gave after the war, his brother was hit in the chest with a bullet. At Spotsylvania, the blood of a comrade “splashed” Will himself. 

Some reports put him at Gettysburg, serving with the Fourth Georgia, and taking part in Pickett’s Charge. A look at records indicates that regiment took no part in the charge. Some say the three Thompsons served with the Fortieth Georgia, instead, which did not participate in the fight at Gettysburg, but they do not appear on the regimental rolls that I checked. 

So, who knows? 

In any case, the worry the poet’s mother Dianthe experienced during the long years of conflict must have been great. 

We do know both brothers survived the war. Afterwards, they moved to Indiana and practiced law together. Maurice turned to writing, first poems, and then novels. Will kept up the legal practice but wrote poems on the side and penned a book about archery. In 1904 he won two bronze medals at the Olympics. Three years later he defended his son against a charge of murder, moving judge and jury to tears, and proved his son was not guilty by reason of insanity. 

He lived out the last decades of life in Seattle, Washington, dying August 12, 1918, just three months before the end of World War I.

 

High Tide at Gettysburg 

A cloud possessed the hollow field,

The gathering battle’s smoky shield:

Athwart the gloom the lightning flashed,

And through the cloud some horsemen dashed,

And from the heights the thunder pealed.

Then, at the brief command of Lee,

Moved out that matchless infantry,

With Pickett leading grandly down,

To rush against the roaring crown

Of those dread heights of destiny.

Far heard above the angry guns

A cry across the tumult runs,—

The voice that rang from Shilo’s woods

And Chickamauga’s solitudes,[1]

The fierce South cheering on her sons!

Ah, how the withering tempest blew

Against the front of Pettigrew![2]

A Khamsin wind that scorched and singed[3]

Like that infernal flame that fringed

The British squares at Waterloo!

A thousand fell where Kemper led;

A thousand died where Garnett bled:

In blinding flame and strangling smoke

Their remnant through the batteries broke

And crossed the works with Armistead.

“Once more in Glory’s van with me!”

Virginia cried to Tennessee;

“We two together, come what may,

Shall stand upon these works to-day!”

(The reddest day in history.)

Brave Tennessee! In reckless way

Virginia heard her comrade say:

“Close round this rent and riddled rag!”

What time she set her battle-flag

Amid the guns of Doubleday.[4]

But who shall break the guards that wait

Before the awful face of Fate?

The tattered standards of the South

Were shriveled at the cannon’s mouth,

And all her hopes were desolate.

In vain the Tennessean set

His breast against the bayonet;

In vain Virginia charged and raged,

A tigress in her wrath uncaged,

Till all the hill was red and wet!

Above the bayonets, mixed and crossed,

Men saw a gray, gigantic ghost

Receding through the battle-cloud,

And heard across the tempest loud

The death-cry of a nation lost!

The brave went down! Without disgrace

They leaped to Ruin’s red embrace;

They heard Fame’s thunders wake,

And saw the dazzling sun-burst break

In smiles on Glory’s bloody face!

They fell, who lifted up a hand

And bade the sun in heaven to stand;

They smote and fell, who set the bars

Against the progress of the stars,

And stayed the march of Motherland!

They stood, who saw the future come

On through the fight’s delirium;

They smote and stood, who held the hope

Of nations on that slippery slope

Amid the cheers of Christendom.

God lives! He forged the iron will

That clutched and held that trembling hill![5]

God lives and reigns! He built and lent

The heights for freedom’s battlement

Where floats her flag in triumph still!

Fold up the banners! Smelt the guns!

Love rules. Her gentler purpose runs.

A mighty mother turns in tears

The pages of her battle years,

Lamenting all her fallen sons!

 

General Pickett reduced to bronze.
(All pictures from the author's collection.)

* 

July 4: Having pinned Confederate forces inside Vicksburg, Grant has time on his side, as supplies run low. 

Famine began to threaten the city… flour sold for $1,000 a barrel in Confederate money. Mule flesh became the chief meat. Rats were hung up for sale in the market. The inhabitants sought protection from the shells in cellars and caves. Cave-digging became a regular business. The Vicksburg daily news sheet was now printed on wallpaper. July 3d, white flags appeared upon the city’s works. An armistice followed, and the next day Pemberton surrendered. The prisoners, some 30,000 in number, were mostly released on parole. (4-45)

A resident of Vicksburg attends church during the siege,
having had his hat perforated by Yankee fire.

 

* 

“I look up and see Christ spanning this battlefield.” 

July 4: Samuel Wilkeson’s report on the Battle of Gettysburg, for The New York Times, begins with the focus on his dead son, Lt. Bayard Wilkeson, 19: 

Who can write the history of a battle whose eyes are immovably fastened upon a central figure of transcendingly absorbing interest – the dead body of an oldest born, crushed by a shell in a position where a battery should never have been sent, and abandoned to death in a building where surgeons dared not to stay?

 

The 2018 story in the Times, from which this material comes, explains the situation on July 1, as Rebel forces overwhelm gathering Union troops: 

The commander overseeing Lt. Wilkeson’s unit in the XI Corps, Brig. Gen. Francis C. Barlow, had surveyed the landscape and decided to abandon the position he had been assigned by his superiors. Instead, on the first day of the battle, he ordered troops, including Lt. Wilkeson and his unit, to move to higher ground, which would normally be a sound tactical maneuver.

 

In this case — given the Union forces available, this particular piece of higher ground and the Confederate units arrayed against them — it was a fatal choice. The position was exposed, and Union fire was returned by an overmatching number of Confederate artillery pieces. The Union unit was wiped out at a spot now known as Barlow’s Knoll, and Confederate troops took the rise.

 

According to the Times, Wilkeson, his leg shattered, was “taken nearby to a community poor house” serving as a field hospital; but surgeons pulled back as the enemy advanced. The 19-year-old officer died soon after.

 

(Some reports insist that the young officer, his leg hanging by a few shreds, cut it off with a penknife.) 

According to one historian, even simple details of the battle can become garbled. Consider the demise of  “Maj. Gen. John F. Reynolds, the first senior Union officer to be killed in action at Gettysburg.” 

The Times explains: 

Some newspaper accounts said he was shot behind the right ear on horseback and fell to the ground without a word. Others ascribe to him a near-Shakespearean speech, delivered with his final breath, proclaiming the glory of the Union. Still others said he rode a quarter-mile to a field hospital, where he opened his coat to display his wound (odd if he had been shot in the head) and asked a surgeon, “Does this look bad?” before dying.

 

As for the bereaved father, Wilkeson concluded his story: 

My pen is heavy. Oh, you dead, who at Gettysburg have baptized with your blood the second birth of Freedom in America, how you are to be envied! I rise from a grave whose wet clay I have passionately kissed, and I look up and see Christ spanning this battlefield with his feet and reaching fraternally and lovingly up to heaven. His right hand opens the gates of Paradise—with his left he beckons to these mutilated, bloody, swollen forms to ascend.

 

* 

July 11-16: Van Loon described the anti-draft riots in New York this way: “there was a very serious riot during which the regulars fired upon the mob and killed enough people to make the others eager to obey the law.” Lowlights of that riot, led to a large extent by Irish and Irish American thugs, include the burning of the Colored Orphan Asylum, attacks on businesses that catered to African Americans, lynching of African Americans, and a death toll as high as 1,200. The following year, New York City sent its first all-black regiment off to war. (124-385)

 

*

Painting by Chaz Guest.

 

July 17: The Battle of Honey Springs is fought in the Indian Territory, roughly 50 miles west of Fort Smith, Arkansas. 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: I originally wrote this next section for a book on teaching. I had this story in a chapter about the curse of standardized tests. I’ve been retired since 2008, but still believe standardized testing was a mistake. 

Not one adult in ten thousand could tell you about the Battle of Honey Springs (July 17, 1863). But if I was teaching today, especially in an inner-city school, I’d bring it up to make a valuable point.    

A dedicated teacher is never satisfied to follow a narrow curricular path. Yet a standardized curriculum forces you in that direction, stifling innovation. A standard curriculum cannot adapt or change or improve and a teacher is unwise to go above or beyond any “standards” because all that really matters is what “standards” will be on the test. 

The fight at Honey Springs is a perfect example. The battle is of no importance. The lesson it provides is. Both North and South deployed regiments of Indian troops, the First and Second Indian Infantry regiments in blue on one side, Creeks and Cherokees in gray on the other. Many members of these tribes owned slaves, an irony that might be worth our time to discuss.  

But, ah, the State of Ohio does not care about irony – or the essential nature of prejudice, cutting across all types of lines. 

At the center of the Yankee defense at Holly Springs the First Kansas Colored Infantry takes a stand.  It is a hot day and soldiers strip off any unnecessary equipment before the fight. The Kansas men go a step farther and remove their shirts and “their black skins glistened in the sun.”

 

If I was teaching, I’d want students to tell me why these forgotten soldiers in this forgotten fight took off their blue shirts and proved willing to shed red blood for the country. I know from thirty-plus years in the classroom that students would see the truth. I’d like black kids like Tommy S---- to sense the pride these brave men must have felt. I’d like to tell every class the story, not because dates and details matter, but because of what the story proves. I’d like every kid to know that Southern forces advanced within twenty-five yards of the Kansas line. Then black Yanks in blue poured in fire and drove the Rebels back.  

I’d like to stand in front of a class again and ask, “What do you think this battle proves?” I’d like to challenge students to examine their ideas about courage and race and patriotism and humanity. And if you can’t put that all on a standardized test, then Lord help us all.

 

Noah Andre Trudeau tells the story of the battle, including the story of the black soldiers shedding their shirts, in Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War 1862-1865 (pp. 107-108) 

If a teacher wanted to go over this fight, these details would help, all from Trudeau’s work. General James G. Blunt is in command of all Federal forces, two regiments of Indians, one of African Americans, and two regiments of white cavalry, from Wisconsin and Colorado. 

Rebel forces are led by Gen. Stand Watie, a member of the Cherokee nation. He had two regiments of Creek Indians, two of Cherokee Indians, and three Texas regiments. 

Colonel James M. Williams, commander of the First Kansas (Colored), 

told his men, “I want you all to keep cool, and not fire until you receive the command; in all cases aim deliberately and below the waist.” A teamster who tried to follow the troops with his wagon was told that a battle was coming, and warned, “Hell’ll be turned loose here directly!”

 

When Colonel Williams was seriously wounded, early in the fight, Lieutenant Colonel John Bowles took over the regiment. 

Sources do not agree on what happened next. 

An unidentified Union force (it may have been either a lost squad of cavalry or a portion of the Second Indian) briefly masked the front of the First Kansas (Colored) and then fell back. The rebels opposite, believing it was the black regiment that was retreating, pressed forward, coming within twenty-five yards of the Federal troops before the First Kansas (Colored) unleashed a killing volley. This was the turning point of the fight. The rebel regiment was shattered, and this in turn collapsed the center of the Confederate line, causing all of it to retreat. When the Union forces aggressively followed the rebels across Elk Creek, the retirement became a rout, and the Federals soon had possession of Honey Springs, with many of its supplies intact. Some of the fleeing Rebel units spread their panic to the troops marching over from Arkansas, who consequently did an about-face. Confederate casualties were 134 killed or wounded and 47 taken prisoner; The Union loss was 17 killed and 60 wounded. The share paid by the First Kansas (Colored) was 2 killed and 30 wounded.

 

When the fighting was over, General Blunt located Colonel Williams in the field hospital. The wounded officer’s first question was, “General, how did my regiment fight?” “Like veterans, most gallantly,” Blunt replied. To which Williams rejoined, “I am ready to die, then.” Williams’s wound was not mortal, however, and he would soon be back with his men. Writing in his official report, General Blunt noted that the “First Kansas (Colored) particularly distinguished itself…. Their coolness and bravery I have never seen surpassed.” In a private letter finished at about the same time, Blunt declared, the question that negroes will fight is settled.” A white Federal involved in the fighting made the point more colloquially, when he wrote, “I never believed in niggers before, but by Jesas, they are hell for fighting.”

 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: Apology for including the “n-word,” but I believe in quoting racists and haters of all kinds. I had retired before I read Trudeau’s book; but if I had a chance, I’d ask my classes what those white soldiers from Texas must have thought about facing African Americans. Did any of the Native American troops feel ambivalent? I certainly liked to ask my students if you could be patriotic for the wrong reasons? 

Anyway there’s the story.

 

* 

Chauncey Depew, a young man at the time, notes that Governor Horatio Seymour fell into a trap, in a sense, during the Draft Riot. Seeking to quell the bloodshed, he addressed a mob as “my friends.”

 

“No two words were ever used against a public man with such fatal effect. Every newspaper opposed to the governor and every orator would describe the horrors, murders and destruction of property by the mob and then say, ‘These are the people whom Governor Seymour in his speech from the steps of City Hall addressed as “my friends.”’” (123-29)

 

He jokes of one long-winded speaker for his side. He joined an audience and was told the man had already been talking for four hours, “but had only reached the administration of Jackson. I never knew how long he kept at it, but there was a tradition in our party that he was still speaking when the train left the next morning.” (123-32)

 

Seymour eventually announced that he would under no circumstances be a candidate for reelection. A supporter convinced the party caucus to nominate him anyway, as a sign of honor. A delegation went to Seymour to pay respects—and returned an hour later. The governor, said one, had explained “that in his long and intense application to the public duties he had impaired his health and greatly embarrassed his private affairs, but, but, he continued with emphasis…He never got any further. Senator Shafer, of Albany, who was unfriendly to the governor, jumped up and shouted: ‘Damn him, he has accepted!’” It was true. (123-36)

 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: I found that my students had almost no idea how the draft worked. During the Civil War names were placed in a large drum and pulled out by a blindfolded individual. During the Vietnam War, a lottery set the draft by picking days of the year at random. If the first date selected was January 11, then every male, age 18, born on that date eighteen years before, would be first drafted. 

This blogger’s number was 269, so he would have been safe, had he not already joined the Marines. His younger brother’s number was 356 the next year. Sometimes young man, for example, in fraternities, gathered for a draft “party,” involving lots of beer and alcohol. The blogger’s friend Ray remembers making fun of Don, a mutual friend, when his number came up #8. Ray did not have long to celebrate, because his birthdate was #13. 

Another friend of the blogger evaded service by convincing his draft board he was gay, then a disqualification for serving.

* 

Young women, aged 18, might soon be required to register for the draft, just like their boyfriends, brothers, and classmates of the same age. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a challenge in June 2021 to the “males-only” requirement that individuals sign up for the draft. Legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate in July 2021 would have removed the word “male” from existing draft law, and the proposal was approved by the Senate Armed Forces Committee. 

Sen. Josh Hawley, (R-Mo.) objected, as did others. Hawley tweeted: 

American women have heroically served in and alongside our fighting forces since our nation’s founding - It’s one thing to allow American women to choose this service, but it’s quite another to force it upon our daughters, sisters, and wives. Missourians feel strongly that compelling women to fight our wars is wrong and so do I.

 

Since 2013, all positions in the U.S. military have been open to women, including service in combat units. 

Some say it’s time to make them eligible for the draft. The committee voted 23-2 in favor of the change.

 

* 

Copperheads: Andrews writes unsparingly of these Northerners, “wishing peace at any price.” 

They denounced the war as cruel, needless, and a failure. They opposed the draft for troops, and were partially responsible for the draft riots in 1863. Many of them were in league with southern leaders, and held membership in treasonable associations. Some were privy to, if not participant in, devilish plots to spread fire and pestilence in northern camps and cities. Partially through influence of the more moderate, several efforts to negotiate peace were made, fortunately everyone in vain. (4-181)

 

* 

August 21: William C. Quantrill and his raiders sack Lawrence, Kansas, and murder 182, mostly men and boys. 

Quantrill will be remembered later as a psychopath and “the bloodiest man known to the annals of America.” (American Heritage article, “The Wild, Wild West” by Peter Lyon, 1960.)

* 

September 18-20: The Battle of Chickamauga is fought. In mentioning President Garfield later, the historian Benjamin Andrews, noted his heroism during the fight: 

At Chickamauga, when the right wing of Rosecrans’s army was in full retreat, leaving to its fate the left, under General Thomas, Garfield, through a fiery storm of shot, fatal to most of his escort, had ridden back to acquaint Thomas with the state of affairs, encourage him, and arrange for the safe re-formation of the Union forces on a new line. Entering Congress in December, 1863, he at once became a leader, serving with distinction on the most important committees, a power in debate and on the stump, eloquent, sensible, patriotic – not, indeed, an adroit politician, but no little of a statesman. While in Congress he probably had a more thorough acquaintance with important public questions than any other man in official life. His firm and decisive stand for honest money when a formidable faction in this party was for fiat greenbacks has already been alluded to in this History. That his State made him its Senator, and his country made him its President, were in nowise mere accidents. (11/318)

 

A second hero for the Union was Johnny Clem, a drummer boy, already known for having fought at Shiloh. This capsule description, lightly edited, comes from “Fascinating,” on “X.” 

A year later, at the Battle of Chickamauga, he rode an artillery caisson to the front and wielded a musket trimmed to his size. In one of the Union retreats a Confederate officer ran after the cannon Clem rode with, and yelled, “Surrender you damned little Yankee!” Johnny shot him dead. This pluck won for Clem national attention and the name “Drummer Boy of Chickamauga.”

 

Clem stayed with the Army through the war, served as a courier, and was wounded twice. Between Shiloh and Chickamauga he was regularly enrolled in the service, began receiving his own pay, and was soon-after promoted to the rank of Sergeant. He was only 12 years old.  

Johnny Clem.

 

* 

September 29: Henry Kyd Douglas “celebrated” his birthday, arriving at a prison camp on Lake Erie. He had plenty of company. “Still the 42° of Latitude, North, is hardly the place Southerners would select as a winter resort. Johnson’s Island, however, was just the place to convert visitors to the theological belief of the Norwegian that Hell has torments of cold instead of heat.”  (20-251)

 

*

 

“The cheeks of every American must tingle with shame.”

 

November 19: Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address. Edward Everett writes to the president the next day: “I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in ten minutes.” (Trollope; North America; editor’s notes, p. 220.) 

These notes come from the Gettysburg Museum. As always, where politics are involved, reactions to Lincoln’s speech varied: 

“The cheeks of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dishwatery remarks of the man who has to be pointed out as the President of the United States.” (Chicago Times, 11-20-63) 

“The dedicatory remarks by President Lincoln will live among the annals of man.” (Chicago Tribune, 11-20-63) 

“The ceremony was rendered ludicrous by some of the sallies of that poor President Lincoln. Anything more dull and commonplace it would not be easy to produce.” (London Times)

 

“We pass over the silly remarks of the President; for the credit of the nation we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they shall no more be repeated or thought of.” (Harrisburg Patriot and Union) 

“His little speech is a perfect gem; deep in feeling, compact in thought and expression, and tasteful and elegant in every word and comma.” (Springfield Republican) 

“I doubt that our national literature contains a finer gem than that little speech at the Gettysburg celebration.” (Horace Greeley, editor, New York Tribune)

H.L. Mencken, writing years later, will say, 

The Gettysburg speech is at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history. Put beside it, all the whoopings of the Websters, Sumners and Everetts seem gaudy and silly. It is eloquence brought to a pellucid and almost gem-like perfection – the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Nothing else precisely like it is to be found in the whole range of oratory. (49/79)

 

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[1] The Battle of Shiloh, in April 1862, and the Battle of Chickamauga, in September 1863 were also incredibly bloody affairs.

[2] Brigadier General Johnston J. Pettigrew was one of the leaders of units taking part in Pickett’s Charge. James Kemper, Richard P. Garnett and Lewis Armistead were also brigade commanders involved. Pettigrew, Garnett and Armistead all died during the attack or shortly after as a result of their wounds.

[3] A Khamsin wind is a hot, dry wind that blows in Egypt.

[4] Alexander Doubleday was a general for the Union Army; he is sometimes credited with creating the rules of modern baseball.

[5] Union lines were formed along the crest of a low line of hills called Cemetery Ridge. Pickett’s men had to charge uphill, always a more difficult challenge.