america's civil war - january 2016

american sniperSharpshooters Break Vicksburg Siege

treasured GUNWhere is Joe Johnston’s Colt?

HISTORYNET.COM

fight OR flee?the demon every soldier faces

JANUARY 2016

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Historic Districts that boast an impressive 676 properties. While other cities were ravaged during the Civil War, Colum-bus was a “hospital town,” leaving the antebellum and Vic-torian homes — along with their contents — spared. Tours of these architectural gems abound. Whether taking a guided walking tour or winding through the scenic area by car, visi-tors to “The Friendly City” are able to experience 19th century OLYLQJ�ÀUVW�KDQG�� Attractions include Waverley Plantation Mansion, a National Historic Landmark and one of the most photo-graphed homes of the South; Friendship Cemetery, the VLWH� RI� WKH� ÀUVW� 0HPRULDO� 'D\� FHOHEUDWLRQ� LQ� �� DQG�the Mississippi University for Women, the oldest pub-lic college for women in the United States and home to 23 National Register properties.� )RXQGHG� LQ� �� RQ� WKH� EDQNV� RI� WKH� 7RPELJEHH� 5LYHU��the town thrives on its rich heritage and Southern Charm. &ROXPEXV� R�HUV� DQ� H[WUDRUGLQDU\� PL[� RI� KLVWRU\�� QDWXUDO�beauty and culture. Situated on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway (nick-QDPHG� WKH� 7HQQ�7RP�� &ROXPEXV� R�HUV� QXPHURXV� RSSRU-WXQLWLHV�IRU�RXWGRRU�UHFUHDWLRQ��2QH�RI�WKH�WRS�VSRUWV�ÀVKLQJ�spots in the nation, the Tenn-Tom is a 234-mile stretch that connects middle-America with the Gulf Coast. It is ideal for

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2 AMERICA’S CIVIL WAR

The Missing PistolOne of General Joe Johnston’s matching

Colt revolvers, lost after the war, remains AWOL. By Joe Johnston

30

JANUARY 2016

On the Cover: Confederate General

Albert Sidney Johnston, who knew how to get

rallies his troops at the Battle of Shiloh on

April 6, 1862, shortly before he was mortally

wounded.

Badge of Shame

M. Grace and Allen F. Richardson

22

3JANUARY 2016

6 Letters 8 Field Notes Civil War news and history 14 HER WAR The Regathering 16 Primary Sources Union General Phil Sheridan loses a friend 18 5 questions Interview with Custer’s Trials author T.J. Stiles 20 EDITORIAL 58 Reviews The Gettysburg Cyclorama, For Brotherhood & Duty 64 Epilogue Confederate General Clement Evans’ legacy

Don’t Mess With Stonewall

Even in defeat at First Kernstown, General Jackson showed he was a force

to be reckoned with. By Eric Ethier38

Red, White, Blue & Rebellious

A colorful look at rare and unusual

By Parke Pierson

44

Departments

Death From AboveSharpshooters protected Union

soldiers trenching to victory during the Vicksburg Siege.

By Justin S. Solonick

50


Michael A. ReinsteinDionisio Lucchesi

William Koneval

Roger L. Vance

Vol. 28, No. 6 January 2016

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EMBATTLED BANNER Why do people have such different perceptions of what the Confederate flag means, and how did those different meanings evolve?

HAS GENERAL GARNETT BEEN FOUND? Virginian Richard B. Garnett, who died during Pickett’s Charge, had long been missing from Gettysburg’s photographic record—until a prewar image showed up.

DIGGING TO VICTORY AT VICKSBURGPicks and shovels proved to be as valuable as bullets and bombshells during the Vicksburg Siege.

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6 AMERICA’S CIVIL WARAMERICA’S CIVIL WAR

WRITE TO US Send letters to America’s Civil War,

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Include your name, address and daytime telephone number.

Letters may be edited.

mill springs postcript

LETTERS

John Brown’s BackersThe blood of 750,000 Civil War dead (a recently revised figure) is on the hands of the Radical Abolitionists [see “Money, Morality & Madness,” in the September issue]—particularly wealthy abolitionists like Gerrit Smith, who financed John Brown’s raid on the Harpers Ferry arsenal. It was the single most pivotal act that led to the Civil War.

One way or another, slavery would have passed away in time. Yet if precociously abolished, it would...be re-created under another guise (e.g., welfare). The South should’ve been left to modify her institution in her own way and time.

Stephan WasselCorolla, N.C.

From Our Facebook Page:Awesome that they recognize the strategic

Eric Ethier’s article on the Battle of Mill Springs, Ky., in the November issue was a good one. It would have been nice if there had been information on the Mill Springs Battlefield Park and the very nice museum there, all operated by the Mill Springs Battlefield Association. If my memory serves me right, more than 500 acres of this battlefield have been preserved with trails and direction signs.

Ed ChapdelaineWest Lafayette, Ohio

importance of the New Mexico Campaign and the Battle of Glorieta Pass [“Dead Men Speak,” November 2015]. Jr. was part of the Honor Guard as a CSA drummer when the Feds buried the mass grave remains at the Nat[ional] Cemetery in Santa Fe [in April 1993]. I was friends with Kip Syler, who found the soldiers buried next to his house....Thanks for sharing.

CMR

Editor’s note: The Mill Springs Battlefield Park is in a beautiful section of the country well worth visiting. For more on the battlefield, its visitor center and museum, its national cemetery and other related attractions, go to millsprings.net. While there, you can also consider a side trip to the Big South Fork Scenic Railway in Stearns, Ky., about an hour away (kentuckytourism.com).

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FIELD NOTES

WHEN CADETS at a military academy in Hillsborough, N.C., presented their instructor, Charles Courtney Tew, with an ornate sword in 1858, they could never have envisioned the journey it would take. Within the span of a few years, Tew carried it into battle, and to his death on the Antietam battlefield. A Federal sol-dier seized it as a war trophy and took it back to Ottawa, Canada, of all places,

where it spent several decades on display in a fra-ternal hall. This fall, however, its journey continued when the sword returned to Tew’s alma mater, the Citadel, during a ceremony on September 18.

The sword’s whereabouts had been vexing Tew’s family ever since the colonel’s death from a bullet wound to the head during fighting at Antietam’s Bloody Lane on September 17, 1862. Tew had assumed command of the 2nd North Carolina just moments before he was killed. A Federal soldier with a British accent, identified as Canadian Captain Reid, reportedly took the sword out of Tew’s hands after the Confederate officer fell.

A photo of Bloody Lane (left) by Alexander Gardner shows what some experts believe is Tew lying among several other dead Confederates, but his body was never recovered after the battle. His family followed up on rumors about his whereabouts as far as Dry Tortuga, in the West Indies. Tew’s sword, however, surfaced in recent years during an inventory of items at the headquarters hall of the Canadian Army’s 33 Signal Regiment in Ottawa. It had been hanging on a wall in the regiment’s headquarters

since 1963, donated that year by an unidentified New York woman.A recent appraisal determined that the sword’s value was “priceless,” principally because

of Tew’s distinction as an officer who died while commanding troops at Antietam and the long-standing mystery surrounding the weapon. The sword, which has a floral-patterned steel blade, bears a dedication to Tew and an etched palm tree near the base of its filigreed brass handle. It also carries the brand: Ames Manufacturing, Chicopee, Mass. As it was manufac-tured before the war, there is a visible U.S. stamp on the blade. The words “Captured at Antie-tam”—evidently added after the war—also appear on its handle. –Sarah Richardson

By Tim and Beth Rowland

A Union captain from Canada apparently

removed Confederate Colonel Charles Tew’s ornate sword from the

sometime after the

September 17, 1862.

Colonel Tew’s ‘Priceless’

Sword Returns to the Citadel

9JANUARY 2016

FIELD NOTES

Cache of Letters GOES to Niagara

County, N.Y.

Grant Memorial Under RestorationEven if you aren’t a Ulysses Grant fan, it’s hard not to admire the bronze and marble Grant Memorial in Union Square, overlooking the Capitol Reflecting Pool near the U.S. Capitol. Now this dramatic three-part monument—which depicts the Union commander on horseback, flanked by four lions, observing life-size cavalry and artillerygroups—is undergoing a sorely needed restoration. For instance, many of the swords and other artifacts that have been vandalized or have disappeared through the years are being replaced (though not the eight bronze lampposts that originally lit the memorial). And over-all corrosion is being removed (see below) via a micro-abrasive spray. The bronze elements’ appearance is also being restored to its original light brown. Work on the monument— created by New York native Henry Merwin Shrady and dedicated in 1922, 20 years after he began executing it—was ongoing as ACW went to press.

“When them infernal shells comes over us they make us hug the ground & almost make a man’s heart sink with-in him. If you could have just one come over you 25 thousand dollars would not induce you to enlist. I think I never will serve my time out. That is enough for me but I shall do my duty as long as I am a soldier & I am not one of these kind that swallows tobacco or makes myself sick so as to unfit myself for duty. No Sir.” So wrote 19-year-old Simon Burdick Cummins in October 1864 from Cedar Creek, Va., just after the fighting there. Now that letter, along with more than 180 other letters Cummins wrote, has been donated by his great-great-grandson to New York’s Niagara County. Cummins was a member of Company H of the 151st New York Infantry, which was made up mostly of Lockport-area men. After the war, Cummins moved to Stanton, Mich., where he farmed until his death in 1928 at age 85.

Melvin and Carol Jones of Eagle River, Mich., transcribed the letters (handed down by Melvin’s mother), donating the origi-nals to County Historian Catherine L. Emerson in an August 26 ceremony. They will be on display in the Historian’s Office.

In this 1866 portrait, former 151st New York Infantryman

Simon B. Cummins is wearing his

VI Corps badge on his lapel.


FIELD NOTESExplosive News in AlabamaCivil War–era cannonballs were unearthed in two locations in Alabama this past summer. In June and then again in July, cannonballs (fortunately, neither of them live) were found by landscapers working on the University of Alabama campus in Tuscaloosa. It is not known how they came to be buried in that spot, though the Leach and Avery Foundry that made armaments like these was also located in Tuscaloosa.

The University of Alabama, founded in 1831, was converted into a military school in 1860 and used as a military hospital during the war. Much of the campus was burned by Union forces on April 4, 1865.

Meanwhile, in Florence, Ala., about 125 miles from Tuscaloo-sa, a duffle bag containing three cannonballs and four other projectiles was recovered from a roadside. Unlike the ordnance found in Tuscaloosa, those explosives were live. They were safely disposed of by police.

Descendants Found, Others Still SoughtAfter 100 years on a Ringwood, Okla., farm—50 years of that face-down, serving as steps for a home—two tombstones are in perfect condition. The grave markers, issued by the U.S. government, bore the names William Thornberry, who served in Company D of the Union Ar-my’s 3rd Kentucky Cavalry, and Thomas J. Hutchins, of Com-pany H of the Union Army’s 1st Arkansas Cavalry. Farm owner Jay Leierer and Rod Bymaster, whose family had previously held the farm, decided to try to reunite the markers with the soldiers’ families.

When the Enid News & Eagle ran a story on the markers, Lue Ann Root of Enid thought she recognized the name Thomas Hutchins, and her sister Carolyn Young confirmed he was in their family tree. Now a monument company has agreed to move Hutchins’ stone to his grave in Carmen, 25 miles away, and a Civil War organization has offered to hold the ceremony installing the tombstone.

It took them three grueling years, but father-and-son team Mike and Jake Bloomer finally finished restoring the Civil War Lot of the Aspen Grove

Cemetery in Burlington, Iowa, this past summer. The Bloomers cleaned all 97 headstones in the section (shown above, in before and after photos), restored all its monuments and plaques as well as an 1850 replica cannon, installed a new fence and added a bench and flagpole. “All my work that went into this was truly voluntary,” Mike Bloomer told Quad Cities TV station WQAD8. “I’m estimating [I worked] anywhere from 800 to 1,000 hours over three years.” The Bloomers managed to raise $32,000 for the project, and were helped along the way by other donations. “The hard work Mr. Boomer put in it [was] amazing,” according to Celia Crawford, who has an ancestor buried in the cemetery.

Historian David Blight’s observation “All memory is prelude” rings true according to a recent McClatchy-Marist poll of 1,249 Americans

on the Civil War. When asked whether slavery was the main reason for the conflict, here’s what respondents said:

was slavery the main reason for the civil war?

labor of love

Registered voters

Democrats

Independents

Republicans

Tea Party

Northeast

Midwest

South

West

0 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

54%

62%

53%

49%

43%

50%

56%

45%

67%

41%

33%

43%

45%

52%

41%

39%

49%

27%

YESNO

Before

After

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ILLINOIS“Undying Words: Lincoln 1858-1865” explores Lincoln’s changing views on slavery through five speeches, including artifacts and interactive stations. Produced in collaboration with the Chicago History Museum. When: January 1 through February 29, 2016 Where: Springfield, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum Visit: www.illinois.gov/alplm/tenthanniversary/Pages/default.aspx

PENNSYLVANIA“Candlelight Christmas Tours” Discover how Christmas was celebrated in the 1860s. When: November 28 through December 19, 2015 Where: Shiver House Museum, Gettysburg Visit: www.shriverhouse.org/candlelight-christmas-tour.html

“1865: Triumph and Tragedy” explores Philadelphia and the Civil War with fascinating relics, including a fragment of Lincoln’s shirt. When: February 1-29, 2016 Where: Union League of Philadelphia’s Heritage CenterVisit: www.ulheritagecenter.org/research-and-exhibit/ exhibits/current-exhibits

TENNESSEE“The 151st Anniversary of the Battle of Franklin and Annual Illumination” 10,000 luminaries, representing the casualties of the battle, will be lit at dusk. When: November 30, 2015 Where: Franklin, along Columbia Pike, at the Carter House, Lotz House, and at several points on the battlefield in that area. Visit: www.boft.org/events.htm

EVENTS CALENDAR

FIELD NOTES

AS MEDICINES GO, beer would have been an attractive option for Civil War soldiers. Now visitors to the National Museum of Civil War Medicine (civilwarmed.org) in Frederick, Md., can grab a special-label six-pack of their own, since the local liquor board has approved a request from the museum to sell beer in its gift shop. The nearby brew pub Brewer’s Alley has meanwhile brewed up a tasty lineup of Civil War-themed beverages, including Antietam Ale, Gettysburg Wheat, First Draught and Proclamation Porter.

David Price, the museum’s chief of operations, told the Frederick News-Post he’s had requests for the brews from as far away as Georgia and Kentucky. Price also reported the museum is looking into selling specialty ciders and wines from local producers.

beer: the best medicine?

“[T]he trenches and streets and ways are more tortuous and bewildering than the streets of Boston.”–Jefferson Brumback, 95th Ohio, commenting on the trench system used by Union troops during the Vicksburg Siege. The sap roller (below) proved critical in helping to break the Confederate defenses.

Brig. Gen. Patrick

Cleburne, a Battle of Franklin casualty.

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14 AMERICA’S CIVIL WAR14 AMERICA’S CIVIL WAR

In April 1865, the 4 million or so people of African de-scent enslaved in the United States emerged, liberated, from the wreckage of war. They were all refugees. Some were refu gees of war in the usual sense, people dis-placed, as many Southern whites had been, by the movement of armies, occupation of territory and chaos of wartime. But all were also, in a deeper sense, refu-gees from slavery and the forced separations of families in the African and inter-state slave trade. Before the war more than a million had been forcibly moved from the Eastern Seaboard to the new cotton plantations of the Deep South, either through the slave trade or by the relocation of their owners. Every single case involved the destruction of a family, half a nuclear family, sepa-rating mothers from children, wives from husbands, sisters from brothers, grandmothers from grandchil-dren. Sometimes all that was left was a memory. “I don’t know who my grand folks were,” Sallie Crane said, only

that they “were all Virginia folks.” Slavery left a trail of heartbreak in its wake and family members and loved ones scattered from Maryland to Texas. In 1865 the ur-gent existential need of newly freed people was clear: to search for and reunify their families.

When the war ended and emancipation was irrevo cably accomplished, African-American women in the U.S. set about the task of making free lives. That endeavor had many challenging parts. People liberated without materi-al means or any compensation, with no property to speak of, possessing only the ability to labor, they had

labor with hostile whites, provide for their families, care for the sick and aged, educate their children, build churches and communities, protect themselves from vio lence, and organize to secure civil and political rights. Above all, they wanted to build free homes and free families out of reach of their former owners.

By Stephanie McCurry

the regathering

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Information wanted of my children, Lew-is, Lizzie, and Kate Mason, whom I last saw in Owensboro, Ky. They were then ‘owned’ by David and John Hart, that is the girls were—but the boy was rather the ‘property’ of Thom-as Pointer. Any information will be gladly received by their sorrow-ing mother, Catherine Mason, at 1818 Hancock St....Philadelphia.

-Christian Recorder

HER WAR

African-American

families were torn apart by

the slave trade in the United

States.

A postwar journal shows a junk dealer

bargaining with women over the

goods they’re selling.

15JANUARY 2016

Did It Fit? Lasting Tribute A Dread Scene

Union General Phil Sheridan had seen men die in battle before, but Joshua W. Sill was different. The two attended West Point together and had remained close after graduating. In late 1862, Sill welcomed the chance to serve with his old friend in Sheridan’s 3rd Division in the Army of the Cumberland. An exemplary soldier, he quickly gained the respect of those with whom he served. With the Federals in danger of collapse at Stones River on December 31, 1862, Sill led a critical counter-attack but was shot in the head and killed after becoming separated from his men.

PRIMARY SOURCES

As they left an early-morning meeting December 31, Sheridan and Sill accidentally put on each other’s coats, though the two officers weren’t the same size. Sill was wearing the 5-foot-5 Sheridan’s coat when he was killed. Sheridan later returned Sill’s coat (left) to his dear friend’s family in Ohio.

In January 1869, Sheridan honored his late friend by naming a new fort after him in Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma). Since 1911, Fort Sill has been the home of the U.S. Army Field Artillery School, and today serves as the world’s largest artillery base and training center.

“He lay unconscious and alone, bubbling out his last breath through the blood that thickly flowed over his fair face and silky beard....Thus died a model of mar-tial virtues, the gentle and chival-ric Sill. This scene and its dread surroundings horrified me with war. —Lieutenant John Mitchell, 24th Wisconsin

General Joshua Sill: A Life Cut Short

‘MODEL OF MARTIAL VIRTUES’

Geronimo! Fort Sill, named after Civil War

General Joshua Sill, has been called the “Indian Arlington”

for the number of famed Native Americans buried there, includ-ing Apache warrior Geronimo.


Apple and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Inc.,registered in the U.S. and other countries.App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc.

WILD WEASELS Hunter Killers Zero In on Missile Sites

Justice in tombstone

Ghosts of sand creek

DEadly DOUBTFUL CANYON

On the run but ready to fightGeronimo

OCTOBER 2015

THE AMERICAN FRONTIERWAR ENDSVICTORY OVER JAPAN

Hellcats’ Last-Minute Fight to the DeathTruman Takes Charge | A Pilot’s-Eye View of Enola Gay

PLUS:The Man with Steel Teeth | Vesuvius Attacks

DAYV-Jspecial issue

HISTORYNET.COMSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

AUGUST 2015

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Charles I at Edgehill

Texian Massacre

Death of a Journalist

Educating Warriors

SIR MAX HASTINGS ON WORLD WAR II’S

LAST FIGHT

V E R S U S

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Battles That Decided the War

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5 QUESTIONS

Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America,

By T.J. Stiles, Knopf, 2015, $17.85

T.J. STILES has a remarkable track re-cord for a historian who has written only three books. Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War (2002) won the Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship and was also a New York Times notable book. His 2009 biography The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (2009) earned both the National Book Award for Nonfiction and the Pulitzer Prize for Bi-ography. As with his other works, Stiles mines new gold from a familiar subject in Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New Ameri ca, which places George Arm-strong Custer in the context of his time and era more firmly than any previous biography has done to date. Stiles recent-ly talked with Ameri ca’s Civil War from his home in Berkeley, Calif.

CusTER Gets A

NeW Look

AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR

T.J. STILES’ LATEST BOOK SHEDS LIGHT ON THE MERCURIAL GENERAL

Interview by Allen Barra

Your bibliography is nine pages long, so no one has to tell you that there’s been enough written on Custer to fill a library. What inspired you to attempt yet another book on him?

Rather than debunk everyone else’s work, I wanted to change the cam-era angle. I started by thinking of how Custer crisscrossed America during the Civil War era. Then I thought about why he was traveling so much, and realized that he played a wide-ranging role in making modern Ameri ca. Just as he illuminates the times, the times illuminate Custer. I think much of his volatility—his wild ups and downs, his self-destructive behavior—had roots in his inability to adapt to the very modernity he helped to create. I see him as a figure on a frontier in time.

What aspect of his story did you feel had been neglected or needed to be reinterpreted?

We tend to see Custer’s life in two separate acts, with very little connection between them: the Civil War and the frontier. I wanted to address the full range of his life—within the army command structure, in politics, in literature and the arts, on Wall Street, in race relations and in his intimate affairs—but not by merely piling new details onto the fa-miliar story. I try to show how the same man could fight at the front of his men with true courage, then connive for promotion, to help readers grasp that the man who loved to scout for campsites on the Yellowstone also delighted in life in New York. Good biographers have addressed almost every aspect of his life, but I wanted to give a fresh sense of why they all mattered. The public thinks of Custer as a bad general because of his death at the Little Bighorn; in fact, his skill at fighting often saved him from messes he had created in every sphere of life.

Before I read Custer’s Trials, I didn’t realize how much he admired George McClellan. But Custer seems to have been aggressive, while McClellan’s painful lack of aggression

eventually got him fired. What do you think Custer most admired in “Little Mac”?

Custer himself said he worshipped McClellan. During Custer’s serv ice in McClellan’s headquarters, though, he developed a craving for victory and a willingness to kill. Those were alien to McClellan. I think Custer desperately wanted to escape the poverty of his childhood, to have others see him as exceptional. McClellan embodied respectability, refinement, wealth and at-tainment. In most ways, McClellan embodied everything Custer longed to become. Fortunately for Custer, he possessed just the qualities he needed to survive McClellan’s downfall. He found his celebrity in combat.

Historians have debated how important Custer’s actions were at Gettysburg. How big a difference do you think his clash with J.E.B. Stuart made?

Custer led the tip of the Union spear in the cavalry battle on the third day, but he did not fight alone, and General David Gregg

commanded the Union cavalry on the field. If the Rebels had broken through, Stuart would have had depleted ammunition, along with re-duced numbers of horses and men, and faced a stronger force of Union infantry and artillery. That said, I think Custer did play an important role. There’s no question his leadership con-tributed to victory on the cavalry field.

How do you rank Custer among Union cavalry commanders?

It’s difficult to find a better combat commander in the Union cavalry. Though Cus ter was aggressive and flamboyant, he wasn’t reckless or a showoff. He excelled in his situational awareness on the battlefield, the uses of firepower and shock action, the proper deployment of artillery and dismount-ed skirmishers. He had as good a sense as anyone of when to take risks and when to take precautions. But though he did well with tactics, he played no role as a strategist. He commanded nothing larger than a division. So Custer proved to be an outstanding leader, but he was never tested at a high enough level to rank him among cavalrymen overall.

19JANUARY 2016

5 QUESTIONS

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George Custer with wife

Libbie and Eliza Brown, the Custers’ household manager.


The turmoil soldiers experience when they face combat for the first time is told fre-quently in literature and film. My introduction to this was the 1981 Mel Gibson film Gallipoli, about two young men who join Australia’s volunteer army during World War I and take part in the August 1915 Battle of the Nek, a shameful example—repeated throughout history, unfortunately—of soldiers slaugh-tered mercilessly as they follow orders that have no chance of success. The movie closes with a haunting image of one protagonist frozen in the moment of death, gunned down as he charges an enemy entrenchment.

“What would I have done?” I asked myself at the time. “Would I have followed orders and made that charge, knowing it meant certain death?” It’s something I reflect upon whenever I visit a Civil War battlefield, whether I’m looking across that open field the Confederates covered during Pickett’s Charge, or at Antietam’s Burnside Bridge, or the killing fields at Cold Harbor. All evoke a similar emotion for me: What kept those who fought here from breaking down? Where did they find the fortitude?

A friend of mine, a Marine who had fought in Vietnam, once told me (a little too nonchalantly, I’m afraid) that when the bul-lets start to fly, “You don’t think; you just

do.” Had I been in his shoes, he insisted, I would’ve coped just as he had. But I’m not so sure. Not everyone was meant to be a soldier, after all—and because I’m probably in that class, it only boosts the respect I have for those who do serve now and for those who came before. It’s why I marvel at stories of individuals who put their lives on the line in battle, and why I take pride as a military historian to make sure others have a chance to read about these individuals.

We shine the spotlight on several re-markable heroes in this issue, such as Confederate Private Drury Lacey Armi-stead, who risked his life in enemy territory to retrieve prized weapons that General Joe Johnston had lost when wounded at Seven Pines (page 30); Union Brig. Gen. Joshua Sill, killed while leading a counter-attack at the Battle of Stones River (page 16); and the countless former female slaves who did all they could to reunite their families after the war (page 14).

But we also examine the other side of the ledger with a thought-provoking story of two Union officers who began the war with considerable bravado, only to break down quickly and run once the bullets flew (page 22). It’s a tale as timeless as war itself.

–Chris Howland

EDITORIAL

Won’t Back Down

The Copse of Trees at Gettysburg was

Robert E. Lee’s target during

Pickett’s Charge. Somehow Lee’s men found the

fortitude to keep coming, even as comrades were

being decimated by the Federals

defending Cemetery Ridge.

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“How do you know you won’t run when the time comes?” Henry Fleming asks a fellow soldier on the eve of battle in Stephen Crane’s 1895 classic The Red Badge of Courage. “Run?—of course not!” the soldier, a youngster named Wilson, says with a laugh. “Well, lots of good-a-’nough men have thought they were going to do great things

skedaddled,” replies Henry, drawing another protest from his comrade: “…I’m not going to skedaddle. The man that bets on my running will lose his money, that’s all.” In that simple exchange, Crane captured a quandary that has tormented warriors across time: Once combat begins, what

of common soldiers during the Civil War, but the anguish they feel while facing possible death in battle applies to any war—from Troy in Ancient Greece, to Agincourt, to Vietnam, to modern-day Ramadi.

a six-month period in 1862—at Shiloh and

from the enemy, risking the lives of the men they had been entrusted to lead. Both faced courts-martial for their actions and were destined to live with the label of “coward” for the rest of their lives. They were not alone.

NOT EVERYONE WAS MEANT TO BE A SOLDIER

The “Bloody Sixth”The 6th Mississippi

surprised Colonel

at Shiloh and paid a

23JANUARY 2016


essie J. Appler and Jonah

years apart in the early 1800s, and both were raised in towns along the Ohio

Appler was born in Washington, D.C., in

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Easy SellMany volunteers found Jessie Appler’s offer of $100 and 160 acres of land hard to resist.

25JANUARY 2016

SmearedUnion Brig. Gen.

William Sherman, not yet a household name in April 1862, mocked Appler’s un-ease repeatedly in the buildup to the Shiloh

taunts of “Take your damned regiment back to Ohio” and

“...you must be badly scared over there” at the colonel. He called out Appler by name

in his post-battle report.

Into the Breach

day occurred in the appropriately nicknamed Hornets’ Nest. In this Dale Gallon painting, members of the 8th Iowa Infantry hold back an attack by Louisiana Confederates.

Appler ordered some scouts to reconnoiter. Then at dawn he roused his young adjunct, 1st Lt. Ephraim C. Dawes, saying he had

Appler’s worst fears were realized when a wounded soldier came running across Rhea Field, screaming: “Get into line! The Rebels are coming.”

Appler dispatched another courier to Sher-man. The response was reportedly: “Gener-al Sherman says you must be badly scared over there.” By that time enemy troops were

back.” Appler hurriedly changed the 53rd Ohio’s position

“This is no place for us,” ordering the regiment back to a scrubby oak wood.

staff emerged from the trees. Lieutenant Eustace H. Ball shouted, “Look to your right,” and Sherman instinctively raised his arms as shots rang out. The general was struck in the hand, but his orderly, riding next to him, was killed.

he yelled: “Appler, hold your position. I will support you.”Appler found himself up against Brig. Gen. Patrick Cle-

twice the size of his own. He did at least have the support of an Illinois battery on a ridge to his right, however, and when the Rebels had closed to within 50 yards of the 53rd,

Confederates to withdraw and reorganize. Two subsequent attacks were repelled as well, with staggering casualties.

53rd. And yet Appler broke down. “Retreat, and save your-selves,” he shouted, setting off a stampede of the regiment.

Shiloh Church. There, Lieutenant Dawes settled down the remnants of the unit and aligned it on the brigade’s left,

Appler for help. The colonel, however, was by then lying under a tree, Dawes remembered, “…his face as white as ashes; the awful fear of death was upon it; [then he] jumped to his feet, and literally ran away.”

of the 53rd had reunited by the end of the day, with the Federals congregated in a defensive line around Pittsburg Landing. The unit joined an assault launched by Grant the

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The 53rd Ohio would serve with distinction for the rest

court-martial, he resigned his commission on April 18. There was nothing left to do except go home, though by

then everyone in Ports-mouth knew about the “cowardice” of the 53rd Ohio. Newspapers, in-cluding the local Times, had carried front-page news of the great battle, pointedly referencing the “disgraceful” showing of several Ohio regiments.

Henry Hall, a Ports-mouth citizen who wit-nessed Appler’s sad home- coming, recalled that the

former colonel took back alleys to his home, looking “as though he wished the ground would open and swallow him

-rades and friends were indignant at his conduct,” federal pension examiner R. Powell wrote years later. “But as time wore on…a revulsion of feeling took place in the Colonel’s favor, and [it now] seems to be the universal opinion of his

Appler eventually tried to resume supporting his fami-ly, but a servant had to be let go, and his household worth dropped more than 50 percent. The builder worked when he

shops owned by friends. Thomas Johnston, a former col-league, remembered that when not using the privy, Appler would “sit for hours” in his carpentry shop. “The soldier [Appler] did not talk about army affairs and his military experience,” noted Powell.

But the former colonel still had friends, among them Hall,

jobs apparently proved to be too taxing for Appler. Hall de-scribed his friend as “a-wreck physically and in mind too” and said he had sadly become “an object of charity.”

In 1886 the Portsmouth Timesdetailing his prewar successes and noting: “He raised the 53rd. It was splendidly equipped, and drilled, and made a

kind-hearted, genial gentleman, and has many friends.”

he had lived “above the turmoil of party or personal strife.”

husband’s death had resulted from the chronic illness he contracted in the war. Eustace Ball, who had warned Sher-man at Shiloh, supported her contention, but the claim was denied. Appler’s friends urged an appeal. The case was re-

found in her favor.The colonel’s last battle was over, although his wid-

Keeping It SimpleAppler had died by the time his

unit’s unassuming monu ment was dedicated in Shiloh’s Rhea Field.


CUT RUNiDesertions by the Numbers

JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC

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NC 23,694TN 12,155VA 12,071MS 11,604AR 10,029

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Total Union Enlistments: 2,128,948 Total Rebel Enlistments: 1,082,119

UNION STATEDesertions

REBEL STATEDesertionsTOP 5 TOP 5

Desertion from the union army by month

103,400-185,000

Union desertions REBEl desertions

Not all soldiers deserted be-cause of cowardice. Many deserters were “bounty

jumpers” who reenlisted repeatedly to collect money. Other soldiers deserted due to a lack of food, clothing and shelter. In the last year of the war, throngs of solders felt compelled to return home to feed and protect their families.

30K-50K 20K-30K 10K-20K 5K-10K 500-5K 90-500

27JANUARY 2016

crowded roads leading to Confederate-occupied Perryville,

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Magic TouchThe charming Jonah Taylor had no trouble wooing volunteers to

He apparently used those same skills in unsavory escapades

No HesitationA determined stand

secure the

Perryville in

29JANUARY 2016

SHOOTSPARE?

o

Union and Confederate Articles of War specified that all officers and soldiers convicted of desertion by court-martial could be “shot to death with musketry,” but also permit-ted “other such punishment” the court-martial might direct, including hard labor, branding with the letter “D” or wearing a placard reading “Deserter.”

In fact, the death penalty was rarely used by either side. Of hundreds of thousands of Union and Con-federate deserters, only a little more than 300 were executed. Those unfortunates were typically ex-ecuted publicly in front of massed troop formations, as bloody examples to “maintain discipline” by dis-suading others from deserting. That was the reason Stonewall Jackson gave when on August 19, 1862, he ordered five soldiers executed—the Army of North-ern Virginia’s first. Jackson’s aide stated, “discipline could not be had if desertions were longer allowed to go unpunished.” By war’s end, massive Confederate desertions forced Robert E. Lee to forego lesser pun-ishments, since leniency “encourages others to hope for like impunity.”

A major reason why only 147 Union deserters were executed during the war was explained by President Abraham Lincoln: “You can’t order men shot by doz-ens or twenties. People won’t stand it.”

—Jerry Morelock

ability to command the regiment.” Taylor returned to Cincinnati, but later moved on to

Michigan and then Chicago, where in 1883 he became a defendant in a trial alleging a series of swindles, cons and thefts. He was visited by a Chicago Daily Tribune reporter covering the trial, but was unfazed by the reporter’s inqui-ries. As he calmly smoked a cigar, Taylor denied most of the allegations and threatened to sue anyone who brought false witness against him. “When the time comes,” he said of one accuser, “I’ll show my character. I’ll make him howl.”

The outcome of that lawsuit is not clear, but Taylor again

book, Portrait and Biographical Album of Sedgwick County, Kansas, Taylor described his stake in businesses worth “mil-lions of dollars,” and several transatlantic forays “to dispose of mining stock.” He also described his war service, starting

late 1863, to protest “the emancipation of the slaves.”By August 1891, Taylor’s fortunes were apparently in

Kansas City, then in the spring of 1892 from Chicago. Claiming to suffer from lumbago, he said it dated from the

(actually drought gripped Kentucky all that summer). Tay-lor also claimed he had been in an ambulance at Perryville, but somehow later “managed to get on my horse and lead my command in battle.”

attending physicians, were dead. He did come up with state-

was deemed forged. When his application was rejected on May 14, 1895, Taylor appealed to several former cronies in Washington, asking them to lobby Congress for a special bill putting his name on the pension rolls. After Taylor died on

November 7, 1898, his daughter Alice wrote to President William McKinley, saying the fam-ily lacked the funds to bury him. McKinley’s reply is unknown. But Taylor’s remains found their way to Chicago’s Mount Olivet Cemetery, where he was buried in an unmarked grave.

Historian Earl J. Hess has researched the combat records of many Union soldiers who were branded as cowards in combat, men not unlike Jonah Taylor and Jessie Appler. Hess notes that “Many found the hardest part was

clearly lacked what Hess calls “physical cour-age.” As for its companion, “moral courage,” Hess believes it is “the more reliable form of

and higher purpose.”

Thomas M. Grace, who teaches history at Erie Community College in Buffalo, N.Y., is a regular contributor to America’s Civil War. First-time contributor Allen F. Richardson, an award-winning news journalist who writes from Old Greenwich, Conn., began studying the Civil War at age 7.

Whatever happened to General

Proud VirginianJoseph E. Johnston, who resigned as U.S.

quartermaster general to serve his native state, rode into battle for the Confederacy bearing

weapons that held great sentimental value.

31JANUARY 2016

heets of rain stung Private Drury Lacey Armistead as he galloped through the night,

lightning offering only brief glimpses of the terrain ahead. Until it

was too late, the lone Confederate courier didn’t see a long pole that had been stretched across the road, its edges resting atop two fence rails that were just a few feet apart.

Joe Johnston’s Colt revolver?By Joe Johnston

THEMISSINGPISTOL

S


rmistead’s horse fortunately passed below the pole at full stride, but its unsuspecting rider was not so lucky—knocked abruptly from his saddle and into the muck by a powerful blow to the chest. Though shaken, the horseman was not prepared to fail in his mission. He collected his wits, rose from the mud, remounted and rode on.

Armistead was serving as a courier for General Joseph E. Johnston, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, then locked in a tight duel with Maj. Gen. George McClellan’s Army of the Potomac during the 1862 Peninsula Campaign. It was May 30, and Johnston wanted his 60,000-man force on the

Longstreet already knew his orders, but Johnston needed to get word to two of his other commanders, Gustavus W. Smith and William H.C. Whiting. During a conference at a farmhouse he was using

where he believed Smith’s and Whiting’s units were camped. But the orderlies he asked to deliver his dispatches protested that they were unfamiliar with

such a stormy night. That’s when Armistead stepped forward. The 25-year-old private from Farmville, Va., had enlisted in June 1861, joining a unit known as the Prince Edward Dragoons that mustered in as the 3rd Virginia Cavalry. Armistead had been with Johnston for less than a month when he volunteered for his dangerous ride. The general’s trust in his youthful courier would soon be rewarded. Despite the storm

and Whiting’s camps and delivered Johnston’s orders. The stage was set for what became one of the war’s signature moments—the two-day Battle of Seven Pines. The battle would change Johnston’s fortunes forever, and soon after would introduce the Confederacy to a new savior: General Robert E. Lee.

Johnston had been one of the U.S. Army’s top generals when the war began, having served with

the frontier. Now siding with the South, he would

be at his best at the First Battle of Manassas, rallying his troops in the victory with fervent shouts of encouragement and waves of his sword. But he frustrated Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who regarded him as a cautious strategist and later balked at Johnston’s protestations that he didn’t have enough men to defend the Virginia Peninsula against McClellan’s army in the spring of 1862. Doing little to change Davis’ opinion of him, Johnston had fallen back toward Richmond in April and May as superior Federal numbers pushed up the Peninsula from Yorktown, Va. Johnston conceded

point, to avoid risking a siege of the Virginia capital.

isolated two of McClellan’s corps while cutting off access to reinforcements. To his credit, Johnston moved promptly to attack the isolated Yankees.

of May 31 at a point along the Chickahominy known as Seven Pines or Fair Oaks. But for Johnston, the en gagement proved to be a strategic nightmare. The Confederates were advancing against the Federals along three roads, though not at the same rate. Flooded streams rerouted some units, and wagons became

through the dense brush, some wading through water up to their chests. Longstreet’s decision to change his route without informing Johnston didn’t help either. And perhaps worst of all, because the terrain was

on the sound of muskets and artillery to know where

near the Seven Pines crossroads. When combat ended for the day, Johnston had instructed his men, they were to bed down where they stood, prepared to wake

In the twilight, Johnston rode once more to the

continued to move through that area. The general rode up a slight rise to get a better view. Armistead dismounted and prudently stood behind his horse, because, in his words, “the air seeming to be alive with whizzing bullets and bursting shells.” Suddenly

A

33JANUARY 2016

Courageous CourierA postwar portrait of

Drury Lacey Armistead, who carried Johnston to safety after the general was wounded at Seven

Pines—then braved

Johnston’s missing sword and pistols.


his saddle, barely missing Armistead’s head. A colonel standing nearby ducked each time he heard the sizzle of a passing round, causing Johnston to comment dryly, “Colonel, there is no use of dodging; when you hear them they have passed.” At that instant, a musket ball grazed Johnston’s shoulder, slightly wounding him. Then moments later a shell exploded overhead and sent shrapnel into his thigh. Johnston later wrote, “I was unhorsed by a heavy fragment of shell which struck my breast.” The general fell unconscious, breaking his right shoulder blade and two ribs. Armistead picked up his commander and carried

Johnston’s injuries, he helped carry him a few hundred yards to safety. Word was sent to Davis, who came immediately to check on his general’s condition.

It’s impossible to overstatethat characterized the war’s early days. Nowhere can the pain of going to war against family, friends and nation be more plainly seen than in the life of Joe Johnston, who had resigned his post as U.S. Army quartermaster general to serve his native state, Vir-

miscommunication, arguments and disasters, John- s ton and others like him maintained a kind of nobility that would not surrender to the horrors of war. So it was that Johnston rode into battle wearing the spurs and carrying the sword that his father, Peter Johnston, had used while serving under “Light Horse” Harry Lee during the Revolutionary War. He also carried a pair of 1860 Army revolvers presented to him by Samuel Colt when he had become quartermaster general (see sidebar, opposite). When Johnston regained consciousness at Seven Pines, he immediately looked for his precious arms and found that the sword and both pistols were missing. He said to Armistead, “The sword was the one worn by my father in the old Revolutionary war and I would not lose it for ten thousand dollars; will not someone please go back and get it and the pistols for me?” Armistead and several others volunteered. But when they rode toward the lines, they found that the Confederates had been pushed back, and the spot where Johnston had fallen was now between the two armies. The sword and pistols were somewhere

Saving the GunsUnion Maj. Gen. Silas Casey’s division tries to

rescue the artillery during the Battle of Seven

Pines (Fair Oaks).

35JANUARY 2016

GENERAL JOHNSTON’S REVOLVERThe surviving Colt of the pair presented to Joseph E. Johnston by Samuel Colt when the general became U.S. Army quartermaster general in 1860 is today in the collection of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond.

Manufactured: 1860 (early production model)Caliber: .44Stock: one-piece walnut handgripCylinder: flutedOverall length: 14 inches Barrel length: 7.5 inches Serial No.: 2252Inscription (on backstrap): “To Gen. J.E. Johnston, U.S.A. from Col. Colt”

Sole SurvivorOne of a pair of

Colt Army revolvers that Johnston was carrying when he

was wounded.

Passed DownThe general’s spurs and sword had been used by his father, Peter, during the

Revolutionary War.

Unsafe EnvironsGeneral Johnston

was wounded within sight of the Quarles

House at Seven Pines, shown here.

“blazing in all its fury, with men falling all around like leaves.” While the others hesitated, the young private once more mustered his courage and rode into the

he jumped down and grabbed them. But no sooner had he remounted than he dropped one of the pistols and stopped to pick it up. Just then a shell loaded with grapeshot churned up the earth all around him, but he managed to gallop to safety. Armistead returned Johnson’s sword and pistols, and an ambulance took the

began pulling the troops back toward the capital. Though the battle was a tactical draw, with an equal number of casualties, both sides were quick to claim victory. Johnston dispatched Armistead to

Days’ Battles, but otherwise ordered him to stay close until November as he


Reunion SceneJohnston and Armistead

met again at the 1890 dedication of the Robert

E. Lee Monument in Richmond, Va.

37JANUARY 2016

Sam Colt, Master MarketerMuch of the success of Samuel Colt (left) resulted from his energetic promotion

and persuasive salesmanship. In a 19th-century version of what we know today as lobbying, Colt courted influential political and military VIPs in

America and countries abroad to gain their support in obtaining lucrative government arms contracts for his Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company. It is no surprise, therefore, that when then-Brig. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston became U.S. Army quartermaster general in June 1860, Colt presented the officer who would oversee the Army’s weapons acquisitions with a pair of new Colt Model 1860 Army revolvers.

As war loomed during the Secession Winter of 1860-61, Colt gave guns to Northern and Southern governors alike and sold his weapons to both sides—though he halted sales to the Confederacy once the war began. He more than made up for the loss of potential business south of the Mason-Dixon Line by the huge arms contracts he secured with the U.S.

government, which purchased nearly 130,000 Model 1860 Colts during the war, making it the Army’s most commonly used pistol. (Thousands of

Federal officers and soldiers would also purchase them to carry as personal sidearms.) Colt, however, did not survive to see the outcome of the war, dying

of gout in his hometown of Hartford, Conn., in January 1862. The story of Johnston’s wounding and the loss of the pistols Colt had given him

in 1860 come from reliable sources: Drury Armistead, according to a March 29, 1891, Richmond Times article, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis in his memoirs (Davis was with Johnston shortly after the battle and overheard his conversation with Armistead).

Johnston’s surviving revolver in the American Civil War Museum’s collection in Richmond, Va,, is serial no. 2252. Although Colt company archives for that period are incomplete and contain no information on serial numbers in this range, Sam Colt would certainly have presented Johnston with revolvers that had sequential serial numbers. Therefore, the general’s “lost pistol” must have been either serial nos. 2251 or 2253. –Joe Johnston

recovered. To show his appreciation, he presented Armistead with one of his Colts—engraved “From General Joseph E. John ston to D.L. Armistead,” and “Seven Pines” on the reverse. He also offered Armistead a furlough and $200. The private refused the extra pay, but took the time off. Johnston was soon given command of the Department of the West, but Armistead passed on the opportunity to join his mentor there, insisting that his friends preferred he stay in Virginia. “Armistead is one of the bravest and truest soldiers I ever saw,” Johnston would write after the war in The Southern Historical Society Papers. When the young private returned to the cavalry, he continued to prove the general right. He was hospitalized after being wounded in the arm at the Battle of Raccoon Ford on October 11, 1863. In August 1864, at Front Royal, he had his horse shot from under him. On November 12, when his unit fought George Armstrong Custer on the Back Road near Middleton, Va., another of the private’s horses was killed.

Paroled at the end of hostilities, Armistead went back to Farmville to rebuild his father’s home, which had been torched by Union forces. He later married, and

fathered seven children. He and Johnston would be reunited at the 1890 dedication of Lee’s statue in

years after the day of the battle. Around 1900, Armistead discovered that he no longer had his Colt. His family ran ads in the Richmond newspapers asking for information or the pistol’s return, but received no response. Years after the veteran’s death, his house was torn down and a Civil War–era sword was found inside one wall—but still no pistol. The matching Colt revolver that the general carried is in the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, along with the Revolutionary War–era sword and spurs that Armistead recovered from the

remains lost to history.

Even though three of Nashville-based writer Joe

Joseph Johnston in the war, his great-grandmother respected the commander so much that she named her youngest son—Joe’s grandfather—after him. Our author was, in turn, named after his grandfather.


DON’TMESS WITHSTONEWALL

Turning the TideUnion Colonel Erastus

B. Tyler leads his brigade against Samuel

Fulkerson’s Rebels in

Kernstown, in a sketch from the April 26, 1862, edition of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.

39JANUARY 2016

The Federals Thought Jackson Was Finished at First Kernstown.

How Wrong They Were.By Eric Ethier

“The havoc made in the ranks of the rebels has struck this whole region of country with terror,” Union Brig. Gen. James Shields wrote shortly after his division held off Maj. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s Confederates in the March 23, 1862, First Battle of Kernstown. Cranking up the hyperbole, he added, “Jackson and his stone-wall brigade, and all the other brigades accompanying him, will never meet this division again in battle.” Long on boasts but short on truth, the former U.S. senator’s commentary suggested blinding ignorance of the bigger picture.


Union and Confederate troops used up shoe leather on miles of marches and countermarches before tangling at Kernstown on March 23, 1862.

41JANUARY 2016

General Jackson had been appointed Confederate guardian of the vital Shenandoah Valley in November 1861. Over the winter, his unenviable responsibilities re-doubled. With Union Maj. Gen. George McClellan assem-bling a massive army outside Washington, D.C., the former Virginia Military Institute instructor was tasked with pre-venting Union forces in the Valley from joining the troops in the East. By mid-March 1862, that meant tying down the 30,000 Federals of Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks’ V Corps—without, of course, risking his own meager force of 5,000. On March 11, the sheer weight of Banks’ numbers forced Jackson out of Winchester, the gateway to the Lower Val-ley, leaving Colonel Turner Ashby’s elusive cavalry to play cat and mouse with Shields’ pursuing division.

On March 20, Jackson’s timetable accelerated when Shields suddenly about-faced and marched back to Win-chester. The next day one of Ashby’s couriers found Jackson at his headquarters outside Mount Jackson with a report that Banks was vacating the Valley entirely. That would not do. Over the next 30 hours, Jackson drove his 3,100 dog-tired troops 35 miles up the Valley Pike, where they caught up to Ashby at tiny Kernstown, four miles below Winchester. Ashby had by now ini-tiated a scrap with what he thought were just four Yankee regiments—an estimate he had dispatched to Jackson. The prob-lem was, only one of Banks’ two remaining divisions had departed. Shields’ 9,000-plus men remained, a fact that had somehow eluded Ashby. Bedridden with

a shrapnel-shattered arm, Shields had by that time ceded

As the devout Jackson arrived on Sunday, March 23, Kimball was anchoring a defensive line with 16 guns on bare-topped Pritchard’s Hill, just northwest of the pike. It was the Sabbath, but—believing that the odds were likely to be with him only momentarily—Jackson ordered his spent troops into battle. Posting the bulk of his artillery just west of the pike, he sent Colonel Samuel Fulkerson’s brigade and most of his old Stonewall Brigade under Brig. Gen. Rich-ard B. Garnett sweeping west through heavy woods to seize an unoccupied height called Sandy Ridge. Along with them went the guns of the Rockbridge Artillery. The idea was to

Thanks to poor communication between Jackson and

artillerists shepherding cannons over broken ground soon found themselves in a shooting gallery between the Yankee- held hill and the ridge. A hair-raising stab at Kimball’s

left by Ashby’s horsemen helped. Mean-while amid the confusion, a concerned Lieutenant Alexander “Sandie” Pendle-ton managed to discover what Ashby, to that point, had not: The countryside was crawling with bluecoats. He quickly re-ported as much to Jackson. “Say nothing,” the general replied. “We are in for it.”

Mindful of his true objective and too closely engaged to safely break off con-tact, Jackson dispatched one of Garnett’s regiments, the 27th Virginia, to cover an

“I hope and pray to our Heavenly Father that I may never again be circumstanced as on that day. I believed that so far as our troops were concerned, necessity and mercy both called for the battle. Arms is a profession that, if its principles are adhered to for success, requires an officer to do what he fears may be wrong.”–Stonewall Jackson, in a letter to his wife, Anna, explaining why he chose to fight on a Sunday

Colonel Nathan Kimball

exposed battery up ridge. Just minutes later, around 4 p.m., the Virginians encountered Yan-kee skirmishers picking their way south. Behind them was an entire Union brigade under Colonel Erastus B. Tyler, sent belatedly by Kimball to

up. The 27th took cover behind a formidable stone wall that stretched east to west along the ridge’s brow and opened up on Tyler’s tightly

to the north, Fulkerson and Garnett sent regi-ments hustling in that direction. Their musket

the ridge-top. Between charges and counter-charges, Rebels mounted fences for clearer shots

rocks and dips in the slope. From a gully just big enough for himself, Corporal Selden A. Day of the 7th Ohio Infantry emptied his cartridge

down the line, turning on my back to reload each -

ing young fellow whom I did not know, from some other company, had crawled up to me as near as he could get, within arm’s length but not so well sheltered as I. He was

loading his gun and preparing for another shot, when he said to me, ‘Isn’t it fun?’ I did not reply, and when I looked at him next he was dead.”

Into the early evening Jackson and Kimball fed troops

men, the Confederate commander determined to hold off

until he could slip away in the darkness. Fortunately for him, Kimball, who was new to command, fought tentative-ly. Still, by 6:30 p.m., nearly enough pressure was on Jack-son’s left wing to produce a rupture. Growing numbers of Yankees had draped the stone wall with gray and butternut corpses. The Rebels who remained now began to run out of ammunition, adding to their distress after two hellish days.

rush at last decided the contest as twilight fell.Jackson’s lack of solid intelligence had nearly cost him

much more than the 139 killed, 312 wounded and 253 miss-ing or captured troops noted on casualty lists. (Union loss-es included 118 killed, 450 wounded and 22 missing.) His rough treatment of his soldiers had, for the moment, earned him their enmity. And his close-to-the-vest command style had hamstrung and infuriated his subordinates, as did his post-battle scapegoating of the unlucky Richard Garnett. To both weary Rebel soldiers and puffed-up Yankee politi-

to a weak-kneed Confederacy.It proved to be quite the opposite. Compelled to move by

strategic necessity, Jackson had indeed gotten the Feder-als’ attention. In late March the Valley Army’s withdrawal south up the Valley drew the blustering Banks and both of his divisions after him, foreshadowing Jackson’s Yankee- diverting Valley Campaign of the coming summer. Ten days later President Abraham Lincoln, alarmed by Jackson’s aggressiveness and wild reports of his strength, shifted a whole corps earmarked for the sluggish, irksome McClellan

Campaign on April 4. But he would do so with less than the overwhelming host that a man of his nature required for success. Part of the reason for that, at least, was Jackson’s “defeat” at Kernstown.

Eric Ethier, who writes from Attlesboro, Mass., is a regular contributor to America’s Civil War.

43JANUARY 2016

Campaign: Stonewall Jackson’s Shenandoah Valley Campaign (1862)

Commanders: Confederate: Maj. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson Union: Maj. Gen. James Shields; Colonel Nathan Kimball

First Battle of Kernstown(Mar. 23, 1862)

Total Forces Engaged: Confederate 3,800 Union 8,500

Estimated Casualties: Confederate 704 Union 590

OUTCOME: Union victory

TarnishedAfter General Richard

Garnett–whose men were surrounded and low on ammunition– ordered a retreat late in the battle, Jackson had him arrested him for “neglect of duty.”

Never able to restore his name, Garnett would be killed during Pickett’s

Charge on July 3, 1863. (For more on Garnett,

see Online Extras.)


PORTFOLIO

Red, White, Blue & Rebellious

45JANUARY 2016

The upstart Confederacy used myriad flags

Here Come the Razorbacks!The ladies of Jacksonport, Ark., proudly sent

Company G of the 1st Arkansas Infantry “Jackson Guards” off to war with this silk


PORTFOLIO

Full Moon RisingGeneral Simon Boli-var Buckner created

He admitted “it had no artistic taste about it,” but its main pur-

pose was to avoid con-

style would become

soldier captured this

Before the Bloodshed

standard is much more suited to a carefree prewar militia unit than the

Maltese Cross

of the Potomac, which

It was actually used

division headquarters

was unusual in that Western

47JANUARY 2016

ecent controversy has brought focus to the Army of Northern Virginia’s battle flag, but Confederate troops used a wide variety of banners in the war’s various

theaters. Southern drapery firms or women supporting war efforts often made the flags out of silk or fine wool bunting. Standards ran the gamut from elaborate to dutiful, depending on the whim of the commander who ordered their production. This brief slice of Southern vexillology illustrates the diversity of Rebel banners.

Get Back in the Fight

indicates it hung in a Confederate hospital ward in Greenville, S.C., and that it was “made from a silk dress in 1862 by

members of the Greenville Ladies Aid Association.” It was meant to inspire men to heal and return to battle.

By Parke Pierson

R


PORTFOLIO Cotton Is King

of Florida’s St.

dates of the state’s

Plenty of Dash

-

Theater forces. The

soldier captured this

49JANUARY 2016

Report to HQIf you were one of the Florida, Georgia or

North Carolina soldiers in Brig. Gen. Marcellus A. Stovall’s Brigade, you knew this

headquarters. Stovall was a Western Theater commander who surrendered at the Bennett

Farm in Durham Station, N.C., in April 1865.


EXCERPTSniper’s Nest

“Coonskin’s Tower” looms over Federals

digging a zigzag trench northeast of Vicksburg. Below,

sharpshooters often relied on the Model

to pick off the enemy.

51JANUARY 2016

The Union triumph at the May 16, 1863, Battle of Champion Hill, 10 miles east of Vicksburg, sealed the ultimate fate of the Mississippi River bastion’s garrison. But when Confederate commander Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton withdrew his 33,000-man

soldiers in Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s 77,000-man Army of the Tennessee faced the daunting task

in which the spade proved more important than the

Vicksburg, Grant’s infantrymen literally dug their

book Engineering Victory reveals how Union “spade-wielders”—and the daring, innovative sharpshooter who protected them—accomplished this grueling task at the Third Louisiana Redan, a key position anchoring Confederate defenses in the northeast sector.

By Justin S. Solonick

Trench WarfareThe Army of the

Tennessee dug its way to victory at Vicksburg in the

spring and summer of 1863, excavating covered approaches

to Confederate


EXCERPT Mobile DefenseA Harper’s Weekly illustration shows workers at Battery Hickenlooper fashioning sap rollers, used to protect men

inside the trenches from Confederate sharpshooters.

erhaps the most extreme example of Western improvisation bent on

along the line of Logan’s Approach.

case of Private Lorain Ruggles of the 20th

P

Frontier HeadgearSniper Henry Foster was dubbed “Coon-

skin” due to his nonregulation cap.

53JANUARY 2016

construction of his “observatory.” He chose for the site of his tower a spot “on the north side of the approach on the Jackson road ” near Shirley’s “White House” and some 550 feet from the Third Louisiana Redan (commonly called Fort Hill by Union soldiers). The structure was erected next to the advanced breach-ing battery dubbed Battery Hickenlooper, in honor of

conjecture among contemporaries and veterans was

raising his head above the top of his tower, which, if

contrived—a tower, ten or twelve feet high, with steps inside running to the top, where was hung a looking-

man inside the tower, the interior of the enemy’s fort

counted.” The purpose of this looking glass, as one soldier wrote, was “to watch their operations and not be exposed at the loophole.” Despite disagreement over the structure’s height, it was high enough “to see the city spread out, and the river shining beyond.” The fate of the “looking glass” atop the tower is undisputed.

the looking glass was “worked with a string” and proved effective until “the Johneys…put a ball through

The majority of the sources state that the tower was

as constructed out “of timber, plank.” Some maintain

dirt” and contained “loopholes in the side to shoot from.” Written descriptions of the tower’s breadth remain

Ring of FireFollowing the

disastrous Union assault on Vicksburg

on May 22, 1863, Ulys- ses Grant’s besieging forces encroached on

the Confederate bastion from the north and east.


six feet square with a ladder for climbing to the top on the inside.” The ties were stacked in a “log cabin style.” A letter from a Union soldier to his parents on June 30, 1863, provides a vivid description of Coonskin’s Tower: “We also have a lookout sharpshooter post, on the highest point of the ridge. This lookout is 20 or 25 feet high and is built of heavy timber and protects a man on three sides and had 3 loopholes in it. [One shooting

it….The outside is more than spattered full of holes.”The tower’s exact purpose remains somewhat a

mystery. One source related that Foster used it to “[ascertain] where [it would] be safe to make an attack.” Others suggest that the tower was to provide a platform from which to snipe at the enemy.

Soldiers from all over the line came to see Coonskin’s Tower. On June 27, Seth J. Wells of the 17th Illinois recorded in his diary, “We climbed the observatory and took a good look at Vicksburg, the river, and its surrounding works.” Climbing the tower, however, could be dangerous. Its location some 600 feet from Confederate lines placed visitors well within range of Rebel sharpshooters. The tower became so popular that

thorized personnel from climbing it and exposing themselves to “the enemy’s sharpshooters.”

The fate of Coonskin’s Tower is also a point of debate in soldiers’ accounts. According to S.C. Beck of the 124th Illinois, “Away on our right the Rebels had a twenty

this observatory [Coonskin’s Tower] they turned this gun on it and had a picnic knocking Foster’s lookout to ‘smithereens.’ Don’t think anyone was hurt….Foster did not rebuild his tower so it was a failure.” This account, however, is most likely false, since other accounts testify to its longevity. In fact, soldiers continued to write home about Coonskin’s Tower as late as June 30, four days before the siege ended. Other sources state the contrary. For example, Ira Blanchard of the 20th Illinois wrote, “Well, Bill set to work on an eminence before the fort to build his tower, and as it rose higher and higher, the ‘Rebs’ tried to batter it down with their guns, but Bill and his tower kept going up, and they never succeeded in hitting it, though at close range.” Fortunately this historical mystery can be settled with concrete evidence.

A photographer took a picture of Coonskin’s Tower still intact after the siege.

regiment for the remainder of the war.

shooter during the Atlanta Campaign, he was later exchanged and mustered out as a

The impact of the tower on the overall prog ress of Logan’s Approach is conjectural. As one soldier correctly noted, Foster “could look down into their fort and see their movements; but whether any real good came of the thing I never knew.” To say that the tower was the key to the success of Logan’s Approach would be an overstatement. Certainly other factors, such as the tenacity of the workers, the persistence of

by sharpshooters in the surrounding parallels and the advanced batteries, played a larger role. But to say that Coonskin’s Tower itself was inconsequential would be unfair. From atop the tower marksmen could gather intelligence about enemy movements and lay

coincidence that this approach, the only one during the entire siege that made use of such a device, would later successfully detonate two mines during the siege.

erate marksmen and guns throughout the siege, making it possible for workers to dig toward the Vicksburg

earliest days of the siege and remained constant all along the line. Sylvester Rynearson of the 15th Iowa in Brig. Gen. John McArthur’s division on the XVII Corps front wrote on June 6, “We have sharpshooters so near

their large guns for several days.” Just to McArthur’s south in Brig. Gen. Isaac F. Quinby’s division, John Quincy Adams Campbell of the 5th Iowa had written the day before, “Early in the morning, the rebels showed

but we put the minies in so thick about them that they

times during the day, but never more than two or three shots from one place.” Farther south, William Reid of the 15th Illinois wrote his father on June 24, “By day our

Albert O. Marshall of the 33rd Illinois wrote in June: “The record for the entire month runs about like this….

their breastworks high enough to aim at us.”Part of the reason for this effectiveness was distance.

EXCERPT Eyewitness From Above A sketch by 1st Lt. Henry O. Dwight

of the 20th Ohio Infantry shows Coonskin standing on his tower

55JANUARY 2016

less than traditional distances allowed Federals to

Unwelcome Visitor

Even General Ulysses S. Grant came out to see “Coonskin” Foster’s peculiar contraption. On one of the quieter days of the siege, the com-mander decided to visit the tower and take a look around for himself. On this particular day, the sentinel customarily ordered to keep passersby from climbing the tower had temporarily neglected his post, and Grant managed to slip up it unnoticed. The guard, upon returning, looked up toward the top of the tower and, to his anger, spied a man. Ignoring his own role in the mishap, he yelled at the figure atop the tower, “What are you doing up there?”

When the man on top did not answer, the guard commanded, “You come down out of that, you fool; you’ll get shot.” Still no answer. Not fazed, the unassuming man, still the object of the sentinel’s curses, began slowly descending the tower and, upon reaching the ground, quietly walked away. One of the guard’s comrades who had observed the whole affair approached his friend and said, “You’ve played with thunder I must say.” Con-fused, the guard replied, “What have I done?” His comrade fired backed, “You’ve been cuss-ing General Grant black and blue.”

The befuddled guard muttered, “You don’t say....I didn’t know it was him.” Despite the fact that Grant was now walking away and had refused to acknowledge the incident, the guard, fearing punishment, ran after the general to explain himself. Catching up with Grant, he proceeded to nervously apologize, “I hope you will pardon what I said, General. I didn’t know [it was] you.” Grant casually re-plied, “All right, my boy…but you must watch closely or someone will get shot there.”

And with that brief exchange, the two parted ways.

–Justin S. Solonick

continued on page 62

H I S T O R I C

Roswell, Georgia

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Southern hospitality at its finest, the Classic South, Georgia, offers visitors a combination of history and charm mixed with excursion options for everyone from outdoorsmen to museum-goers.

Prestonsburg, KY - Civil War & history attractions, and reenactment dates at PrestonsburgKY.org. Home to Jenny Wiley State Park, country music enter-tainment & Dewey Lake.

Search over 10,000 images and primary documents relating to the Civil War Battle of Hampton Roads, now available in The Mariners’ Museum Library Online Catalog!

www.marinersmuseum.org/.catalogs

Come to Cleveland, Mississippi—the birthplace of the blues. Here, you’ll find such legendary destinations as Dockery Farms and Po’ Monkey’s Juke Joint.

www.visitclevelandms.com

Fitzgerald, Georgia...100 years of bring-ing people together. Learn more about our story and the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War’s conclusion at www.fitzgeraldga.org.

Hundreds of authentic artifacts. Voted fourth finest in U.S. by North & South Magazine. Located in historic Bardstown, Kentucky.

www.civil-war-museum.org

Confederate Memorial Park in Marbury, Alabama, commemorates the Civil War with an array of historic sites and arti-facts. Experience the lives of Civil War soldiers as never before.

Seven museums, an 1890 railroad, a British fort and an ancient trade path can be found on the Furs to Factories Trail in the Ten-nessee Overhill, located in the corner of Southeast Tennessee.

Treat yourself to Southern Kentucky hospitality in London and Laurel County! Attractions include the Levi Jackson Wilderness Road State Park and Camp Wildcat Civil War Battlefield.

Hip and historic Frederick County boasts unique shopping and dining experiences, battlefields, museums, covered bridges, and abundant outdoor recreation. Request a free travel packet!

Sandy Springs, Georgia, is the perfect hub for exploring Metro Atlanta’s Civil War sites. Conveniently located near major highways, you’ll see everything from Sandy Springs!

Come to Helena, Arkansas and see the Civil War like you’ve never seen it before. Plan your trip today!

www.CivilWarHelena.comwww.VisitHelenaAR.com

Williamson County, Tennessee, is rich in Civil War history. Here, you can visit the Lotz House, Carnton Plantation, Carter House, Fort Granger and Winstead Hill Park, among other historic locations.

Tennessee’s Farragut Folklife Museum is a treasure chest of artifacts telling the history of the Farragut and Concord communities, including the Admiral David Glasgow Farragut collection.

Explore the Natchez Trace. Discover America. Journey along this 444-mile National Scenic Byway stretching from the Mississippi River in Natchez through Alabama and then Tennessee.

Near Chattanooga, f ind glorious mountain scenery and heart-pounding white-water rafting. Walk in the footsteps of the Cherokee and discover a charming historic downtown.

Historic sites throughout the county throw their doors open the first Saturday of every month through October. Free admission!

www.visitqueenannes.com

Vicksburg, Mississippi is a great place to bring your family to learn American history, enjoy educational museums and check out the mighty Mississippi River.

Join us as we commemorate the 150th anniversary of Knoxville’s Civil War forts. Plan your trip today!

www.knoxcivilwar.org

Just 15 miles south of downtown Atlanta lies the heart of the true South: Clayton County, Georgia, where heritage comes alive! vv

History, bourbon, shopping, sightseeing and relaxing—whatever you enjoy, you’re sure to find it in beautiful Bardstown, KY. Plan your visit today.

www.visitbardstown.com

Through personal stories, interactive exhibits and a 360° movie, the Civil War Museum focuses on the war from the perspective of the Upper Middle West.

www.thecivilwarmuseum.org

There’s a place where a leisurely stroll might lead to an extraordinary historic home, a beautiful monastery or a lush peach orchard. That place is Georgia. ExploreGeorgia.org/HistoricHeartland

Known for its important role in the 1864 Civil War Battle of Mobile Bay, Fort Morgan stands today as a testament to perseverance and resolve. See history come alive.

Alabama Gulf ShoresAlabama Gulf Shores

CIVIL WAR MUSEUMof the Western Theater

Confederate Memorial Park is the site of Alabama’s only Home for Confederate vet-erans (1902-1939). The museum interprets Alabama’s Confederate period and the Ala-bama Confederate Soldiers’ Home.

ALABAMA HISTORICAL COMMISSION

Cleveland, TN

Historic Bardstown, Kentucky

STEP BACK IN TIME at Camp Nelson Civil War Heritage Park, a Union Army supply depot and African American ref-ugee camp. Museum, Civil War Library, Interpretive Trails and more.

DestinationJessamine, KY


The Gettysburg Cyclorama: The Turning Point of the Civil War on Canvas

By Chris Brenneman and Sue Boardman, with Bill Dowling

Savas Beatie, 2015, $34.95

In 2008 the Gettysburg Military Park Visitors Center unveiled the fully restored Cyclorama painting of The Battle of Gettys-burg. When a version of the massive canvas (377 feet long, 42 feet high and weighing 12½ tons) was first displayed in Chi-cago in 1883, the cyclorama effect (think panoramic movies in IMAX 3-D) astonished visitors. The canvas creates the illusion of being witness to the drama of Pickett’s Charge and myriad scenes of the assault on Day 3. One Union veteran who had served as a II Corps division commander in the battle went back to view the Cyclorama three times and wrote to another veteran, “I tell you it was difficult to disabuse my mind of the impression that I was actually on the ground.”

In The Gettysburg Cyclorama, which is filled with remarkable illustrations and original photographs by Bill Dowling, authors Chris Brenneman and Sue Boardman have written the defini tive history of the painting. Paul Philippoteaux and a team of artists created four versions of the Cyclorama between 1883 and 1886 for four cities: Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and New York. It is the Boston version that survives and has been restored.

Philippoteaux cared deeply about historical accuracy. He interviewed veterans and had photographer William Tipton take pictures of the landscape. He made changes in the Boston

version based on feedback he received about the Chicago ver-sion. For example, he added the building that represented Maj. Gen. Gordon Meade’s headquarters—though curiously, for all the artist’s concerns about fidelity, he has it facing in the wrong direction. Other changes were made over time, whether it was adding a state flag, changing a battery wagon into a cannon, or dismounting General Armistead. Brenneman and Boardman guide the reader on a 360-degree tour of the Cyclorama. In examining closely every view and revealing fresh details, they provide a comprehensive key to the panorama. For example, they show that Philippoteaux painted himself into the battle scene, discuss the presence of black laborers and analyze the creative insertion of a field hospital, which would not actually have been located on the front lines. They also point out the possible presence of a wounded Abraham Lincoln in the Cyclorama, as much an allegory about the divided nation as it was history.

The Gettysburg Cyclorama is both historical document and living work of art. I look forward to returning to the Visitors Center with this book in hand and spending time contemplat-ing the vision that unfolds before me.

–Louis P. Masur

REVIEWS

Scene from July 3

Scott Hancock, on his

Copse of Trees.

59JANUARY 2016

The Battle of Ezra Church and the

Struggle for Atlanta By Earl J. Hess

University of North Carolina Press,

2015, $35

“The fury of Ezra Church continues to live in the remaining personal accounts and reports that document the event,” writes Earl J. Hess, who deftly weaves together primary source material in this first major examination of a pivotal event of the Atlanta Campaign.The Battle of Ezra Church is a companion piece to Hess’ Kennesaw Mountain: Sherman, Johnston, and the Atlanta Campaign. As with his earlier book, he lays out an engag-ing narrative and cross-examines misconceptions. For example, the disparity in casualties on July 28, 1864, has led historians to conclude that the battle was an easy Union victory, but Hess argues the truth is more complicated. He also outlines administra-tive changes on both sides of the conflict and follows Confederate Lt. Gen. Stephen D. Lee and Union Maj. Gen. Oliver Howard as they maneuver their recently inherited armies. While the Union losses are better documented, the number of Confederate casualties varies between 3,000 and 7,000. Hess uses ordnance reports and tactical exami nations to illus trate how Union soldiers managed to outma-neuver their adversaries. Despite the apparent Union advantage, at several points the Union defenses were almost overrun.

The Battle of Ezra Church is a welcome addition to Atlanta Cam-paign scholarship.

—Drew A. Gruber


REVIEWS

Strike Them a Blow: Battle Along the North Anna River, May 21–25 1864

By Chris MackowskiSavas Beatie, 2015, $12.95

The Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, Cold Harbor: iconic names in Civil War historiography. The Chesterfield Bridge, Ox Ford, Jericho Mills: not so much. Yet for four days in May 1864, the fate of Ulysses Grant’s campaign against Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia hung in the balance along the steep banks of the North Anna River, just 20 miles from Richmond. But for a series of intelligence failures, missed opportunities and illness and fatigue among top com-manders, either side might have struck a decisive blow—possibly altering the course of the war in the East.

Even considering Gordon Rhea’s as yet unsurpassed monograph on the Overland Campaign, Chris Mackowski’s concise analysis, one of a series of battle narratives published by Savas Beatie, adds important information to this often overlooked chapter of the war, including the condition of the battlefields today. Atmospheric photos taken by Mackowski give his book the feel of a contemporary travel guide as

well as a work of military history.The North Anna engagements involved only parts

of the two armies’ forces. The Union II Corps faced entrenched but vastly outnumbered South Carolinians at the Chesterfield Bridge; elements of the Confederate First and Third Corps denied strategically situated Ox Ford to Ambrose Burnside’s IX Corps; and in the campaign’s largest and toughest fight, most of Union Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren’s V Corps gained but could not hold the river’s south bank against elements of Maj. Gen. Cadmus Wilcox’s division. The piece-meal nature of the actions prevented either side from gaining a strategic advantage during the campaign.

Both sides suffered from inadequate and inac-curate intelligence. J.E.B. Stuart was dead, and Phil Sheridan was off on a jaunt. Lee was exhausted and unsure of Grant’s intentions, while Grant, still smarting from his losses in the Wilderness, was temporarily unaggressive. Both commanders knew that the Telegraph Road, which crossed the North

Anna, was the key highway into Richmond. But the river, according to Mackowski, “made a formidable topographical roadblock….Lee had to beat Grant to the river.” Lee did so. But it was a series of Federal missteps that allowed Lee to maintain his advantage. Burnside made the biggest mistake. Uncertain of his advantage when his troops reached the river, Burnside chose not to attack. Mackowski maintains that if Burnside had pushed forward, “the river crossing, Mud Tavern, and the Telegraph Road would have been his for the asking.”

The Confederates missed their golden opportunity at Jericho Mills. Part of the Union’s V Corps had forded the river there and began deploying on an open plain on the south bank. Late in the afternoon the Confederates struck. “They not only hit the Federals head on,” according to Mackowski, “but also slammed into the exposed right flank.” But Wilcox did not realize the magnitude of his opportunity and, after almost driving the Federals into the river, failed to call on Lt. Gen. A.P. Hill for rein-forcements. Saved from annihilation by the power of Union artillery, the bluecoats regained the ground they had lost and solidified their position on the south bank. Instead of becoming a disaster, the fight at Jericho Mills “offered the Army of the Potomac the perfect platform for offense.”

The two wings of the Union army were widely separated, however, and Lee held a strong defensive position, an inverted “V” at Ox Ford, squarely between them. Grant pulled back, and Lee did not pursue, neither side taking advantage of the opportu-nities. So Grant continued his flanking maneuvers, and Lee doggedly blunted them. And the bloodletting continued unabated.

–Gordon Berg

For Brotherhood & Duty: The Civil War History of the West Point Class of 1862

By Brian R. McEnanyUniversity Press of Kentucky, 2015, $45

To honor his 1962 West Point graduating class, retired Lt. Col. Bri-an McEnany has written a moving, albeit uneven, tribute to the first class of cadets that graduated into the cauldron of the Civil War. For the first time the academic and war-time experiences of young Regu lar Army officers who entered the Union Army in 1862, most joining the Army of the Potomac, have been chronicled by an empathetic and resourceful historian.

The U.S. Military Academy on the eve of the Civil War was a bastion in turmoil. Sectional rivalries and dif-fering opinions about states’ rights, secession and abolition had created deep divisions in the cadet corps, making a mockery of the 1862 class motto, “Joined in common cause.” In fact, of the 75 new cadets who mustered in on September 1, 1858, only 28 graduated on June 17, 1862. From the time Abraham Lincoln was elected president until Confed-erate forces under General P.G.T. Beauregard fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, 18 cadets in that class had resigned and returned to their Southern homes. Clearly, their common cause had been fractured.

The impetus for McEnany’s investigation came when he stumbled upon a cache of letters in West Point’s library written by Cadet Tully McCrea to his cousin in Ohio. Much of McEnany’s detailed description of academics and cadet daily life during these turbulent years is seen through McCrea’s

61JANUARY 2016

eyes. “It is impossible to form an interest in the abstract principles of science when there are such great events occurring of such practical importance to us all,” McCrea wrote on May 19, 1861.”

On July 15, 1862, McCrea reported to Battery I, 1st U.S. Artillery, II Corps, Army of the Potomac. With classmate John Egan, McCrea fought at Antietam, Fredericksburg and Gettysburg. He missed Chan-cellorsville because he was on a recruiting assignment. McCrea lived to see the war’s end and served 41 years in the Army before his death in 1918. He is buried at West Point.

McEnany also follows the ex-ploits of some cadets who fought for the Confederacy. Virginian James Dearing manned guns in George Pickett’s Division, which fired on McCrea and Egan at Gettysburg. Dearing died in a Lynchburg, Va., hospital with Union classmate Ran-ald Mackenzie at his side just after Lee surrendered.

Mackenzie, who graduated first in the Class of 1862, was wounded six times, commanded a brigade and later led a cavalry division in the Army of the James. Promoted to brevet major general, he rode with Phil Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign. Mackenzie, the highest-ranking member of his class, later found fame chasing Apaches into Mexico.

The opening of each chapter features fictionalized opening nar-ratives from McCrea’s viewpoint, an attempt to provide context for the factual information that follows. In reality, these add little to the partici-pants’ actual observations. Mixing reality and fantasy is best left to imaginative artists, who aren’t limited by the facts in their quest for the truth.

Possibly the most valuable sec-tion provides biographical sketches of all the Union graduates from the Class of 1862. Only one, James A. Sanderson, was killed in action. He died at Pleasant Hill, La., on April 9, 1864, and was buried in an unmarked grave on the battlefield. But of the 18 cadets who resigned to fight for the South, five were killed in action or died of battle wounds.

By recognizing the contributions made by all these young line offi-cers, McEnany honors the service of all the Army “regulars,” men whose contributions to the Union armies are often overlooked.

–Gordon Berg


EXCERPTCover: Don Troiani/Corbis; P. 2-3: Clockwise From Top Left: Hornets’ Nest, by Dale Gallon, www.gallon.com; VMI Archives and Museum, Lexington, VA; Allan Burch; Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, VA; P. 4: David Stephenson/ZUMAPRESS.com/Corbis; P. 6: Rob Shenk/Civil War Trust; P. 8: From Top: Sarah J. Mock; Library of Congress; P. 9: From Top Left: Courtesy Niagara County Historians Office; Architect of the Capitol (2); P. 10: Courtesy Russ Fry (2); P. 12: Clockwise From Top Left: National Civil War Medical Mu seum; The National Tribune, March 24, 1892; Library of Congress; P. 14-15: From Left: Library of Congress (4)/Photo-Illustration: Brian Walker; Harper’s Weekly, January 31, 1874; P. 16: From Top: Larry Smith/PaPa Productions; Ohio History Connection; Courtesy Ross County Historical Society, Chillicothe, OH; P. 18: Courtesy T.J. Stiles; P. 19: National Park Service, Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, #LIBI-00019-00562/Photographed by William Frank Browne, circa 1865; P. 20: Kevin Shields/Alamy; P. 22: Rick Reeves; P. 24-25: Clockwise From Top Center: Ohio History Connection; Library of Congress; Hornets’ Nest, by Dale Gallon, www.gallon.com; P. 26: Sharon A. Murray; P. 28: From Top: Portrait and Biographical Album of Sedgwick County, Kan., 1888; Library of Congress; P. 29: Nathan MacDicken; P. 30: The Art Archive/Art Resource, NY; P. 31: Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, VA; P. 33: Courtesy Joseph Johnston; P. 34: From Top: Hulton Archive/Getty Images; Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, VA; P. 35: From Top: Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, VA (4); Library of Congress; Parchment: Andreykuzmin/Dreamstime.com; P. 36: Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, VA; P. 37: Parchment: Andreykuzmin/Dreamstime.com; Painting: The Elizabeth Hard Jarvis Colt Collection/Allen Phillips/Wadsworth Atheneum Museum; P. 38-39: Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, April 26, 1862; P. 41: From Top: VMI Archives and Museum, Lexington, VA; Library of Congress; P. 43: Parchment: Andreykuzmin/Dreamstime.com; Library of Congress; P. 44-45: Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, VA; P. 46-47: Clockwise From Top Left: Heritage Auction, Dallas, TX (2); Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, VA; South Carolina Confederate Relic Room, Charleston, SC; P. 48-49: Clockwise From Top Left: Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, VA (2); Courtesy Old State House Museum, Little Rock, AK; P. 50-51: From Left: Allan Burch; Heritage Auctions, Dallas; Courtesy Old Garden Tools; P. 52: Top: Harper’s Weekly, July 4, 1863; Bottom: Chiya Li/Thinkstock; P. 54: Ohio History Connection; P. 55: Parchment: Andreykuzmin/Dreamstime.com; Library of Congress; P. 58: Courtesy Gettysburg Foundation; P. 64: From Top: Library of Congress; Heritage Auctions, Dallas, TX.

CREDITS

22nd Iowa wrote: “Both sides had the range so perfectly during the latter part of June that it was al-most a miracle to escape from the zipping bullets.” Farther south in Hovey’s division, Thomas D. Wil-liams recalled after the war that “we watched their port-holes so closely

gun. But they did take the risk and

into the head of our trench....Some of the boys thought we were killed but none of us was seriously injured.”

-periority allowed those excavating the approaches to push vigorously forward. As S.C. Beck of the 124th Illinois summarized after the war, “The sharpshooters of Grant’s army had made it so dangerous for the Rebels to use their artillery that it was practically silenced during the greater part of the siege.”

Despite accounts of impeccable marksmanship, it was the volume of

-ply line, not only did nearly unlimited

a nearly inexhaustible supply of ammu-nition found its way down the Missis- sippi. Lucius W. Barber of the 15th Illinois recalled an incident early in the siege when “General Grant rode along the line and told the boys that he had plenty of ammunition and not to be afraid to use it.” It was not uncommon for Union sharpshooters

of small arms ammunition daily to

and artillery.Although Union troops “poured

embrazures and over the parapets of the forts,” most “daily casualties were not very numerous.” The blue-

their target. This was true for the Confederate side as well. Taylor Peirce, writing on June 13, noted that “their sharpshooters still lay in their

chance but they seldom hit anyone.”Despite the fact that Union sharp-

shooters were well within range of

range for most of the siege, the ma-

jority of small arms lead never found its mark. As Jefferson Brumback of the 95th Ohio summarized in a letter written on June 11: “It is wonderful how few shots even of sharpshooters ever take effect. I have no doubt it takes a man’s weight in bullets to kill a man in battles and sieges.” It did. Soldiers in Civil War armies did not receive standardized marksmanship training, and as a result, the majori-ty were inferior marksmen.

celebrities such as Coonskin Foster have become legend, the fact remains

far between during the War of the Rebellion. The crack shots of the war came into service already practiced marksmen, and their comrades cel-ebrated them for their skills with a

Confederate sharpshooters and artil-lery but rather the sheer volume of lead that allowed the federal infantry-

The sharpshooter war that the Army of the Tennessee waged against the Confederates during the Vicksburg siege was integral to Union success. Although revet-ment and sap rollers provided a de-gree of protection, Rebel marksmen and artillerists still posed a threat to the Union troops working in the approach trenches. Without the abil-ity to silence the Rebel guns and thwart the marksmen, the Union saps would not have been able to tra-verse no-man’s-land.

Conversely, it was not simply heavy

workers to push zigzags forward but the ability to do so from covered posi-tions that made the difference. In other words, the Federals’ ability to achieve

Union success, would not have been possible without the structures that

-works that shielded Union sharpshoot-ers and allowed them to lay down a

occupied them.

This article is excerpted from Engi-neering Victory: The Union Siege of Vicksburg, by Justin S. Solonick, ©2015, reproduced by permission of Southern Illinois University Press.

continued from P. 55

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STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION (required by Act of August 12, 1970: Section 3685, Title 39, United States Code). 1. America’s Civil War 2. (ISSN: 1046-2899) 3. Filing date: 10/1/2015. 4. Issue frequency: Bi-monthly. 5. Number of issues published annually: 6. 6. The annual subscription price is $39.95. 7. Complete mailing address of known office of publication: World History Group, 19300 Promenade Drive, Leesburg, VA 20176-6500. Contact person: Kolin Rankin. 8. Complete mailing address of headquarters or general business office of publisher: World History Group, 19300 Promenade Drive, Leesburg, VA 20176-6500. 9. Full names and complete mailing addresses of publisher, editor, and managing editor. Publisher, Michael A. Reinstein, World History Group, 19300 Promenade Drive, Leesburg, VA 20176-6500, Editor, Chris K. 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I certify that all information furnished on this form is true and complete. I understand that anyone who furnishes false or misleading information on this form or who omits material or information requested on the form may be subject to criminal sanction and civil actions.

It was Fitting that Brig. Gen. Clement A. Evans was one of the last soldiers in the Army of Northern Virginia to

at Appomattox Court House. As colonel of the 31st Georgia, he had entered York, Pa., on July 1, 1863, the north-ernmost point reached by any Rebel unit during the Gettysburg Cam-paign. He also led the

Robert E. Lee’s vaunted army on April 9, 1865.

Being out in front was nothing new for Evans. Born in Lump kin, Ga., in 1833, he was admitted to the bar at 18, became a judge at 21, and was then elected a state sena tor. Rising from private to general in the

nearly every major battle

the carnage at Freder-icksburg, he vowed to enter the ministry if he sur vived the war—a vow

He also spread the Lost Cause gospel postwar. “If we cannot justify the South in the act of Secession,” he wrote, “we will go down in History solely as a brave, impulsive but rash people who at-tempted in an illegal manner to overthrow the Union of our Country.”

Evans wrote the Military History of Georgia, and co-wrote the Confederate Military History. He helped form the United Confederate Veterans and served as the UCV’s commander in chief (1909-10) prior to his death on July 2, 1911. –Gordon Berg

EPILOGUE

Above: A wartime portrait of Clement Evans, who helped found the United Confederate Veterans. Left: A 1909

Memphis UCV Reunion Badge.

A REBEL TO HIS DYING DAYS

Clement Evans, who led one of the Confederacy’s last charges, went on to spread the Lost Cause gospel


All through the state, Mississippi’s Civil War heritage is a key component of America’s story. See collections of two presidents—Confederate President Jefferson Davis at Beauvoir and President Ulysses S. Grant at Mississippi State University. Journey through two of the most studied military

Crossroads. Watch the story of

Corinth’s Civil War Interpretive Center and the Contraband Camp. Browse VisitMississippi.org to start writing your own chapter.

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