Civil War Times - August 2018 USA

★ BIG GUNS OF GETTYSBURG ★ FREEDOM BY HATCHET ★
PLUS
REVEALING
QUOTES
FROM
GRANT’S
MEMOIRS
GOODBYE TO THE
‘BUTCHER’
GRANT
REDEFINED
BATTLEFIELD TRAMPER
FRED CROSS EXPLORED ANTIETAM’S
HALLOWED GROUND BEFORE IT WAS COOL
August 2018 MISSING STONEWALL
HistoryNet.com
TAR HEEL’S GETTYSBURG LETTERS
CIVIL WAR TIMES
AUGUST 2018
58
DAY TWO THUNDER
On July 2, 1863, the
9th Massachusetts Battery
fought desperately on
Getttysburg’s Trostle Farm.
ON THE COVER: The victor. Ulysses S. Grant poses for an image after his promotion to Union Army commander.

34
24
Features
Writing His Mind
By John F. Marszalek
Passages from U.S. Grant’s memoirs
reveal his personality and will to win.
Plus: “On the Rise” by Joan Waugh
Three new books give Grant his due
34
‘ We Stared Death
in the Face’
By Keith S. Bohannon
Two Tar Heels describe Gettysburg and their
longing for Stonewall’s command presence.
42
The General
By John Banks
Remarkable Fred Cross and his “Battle-field
Expeditionary Army” toured Eastern Theater
sites before World War II.
50
Freedom
by Hatchet
18 By Jonathan W. White
After a week of captivity, William Tillman
took desperate measures to gain freedom.
50
6
8
12
Departments
Letters Gettysburg “sharpshooter”
News! Burning up battlefields
Details Dirty work at Gettysburg
14 Insight Pathbreaking historian Ella Lonn
18 Materiel Confederate goods from England
20 Interview Want to sleep in a slave quarters?
23 Editorial In praise of U.S. Grant
58 Explore Gettysburg artillery locations
64 Reviews Ill-fated North Carolinians
72 Sold ! Abolitionist surgeon’s kit
AUGUST 2018 CIVIL WAR TIMES 3

MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER
DAVID STEINHAFEL PUBLISHER
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EDITORIAL
DANA B. SHOAF EDITOR
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STEPHEN KAMIFUJI CREATIVE DIRECTOR

BRIAN WALKER GROUP ART DIRECTOR
JENNIFER M. VANN ART DIRECTOR
MELISSA A. WINN DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
SHENANDOAH SANCHEZ PHOTOGRAPHER AT LARGE
ADVISORY BOARD
SHARPSHOOTER SHINES Edwin C. Bearss, Gabor Boritt, Catherine Clinton, William C. Davis,
Marksman Eugene Blackford’s finest hour Gary W. Gallagher, Lesley Gordon, D. Scott Hartwig, John Hennessy,
came at dawn July 3, 1863, with the Harold Holzer, Robert K. Krick, Michael McAfee, James M. McPherson,
Mark E. Neely Jr., Megan Kate Nelson, Ethan S. Rafuse, Susannah Ural
5th Alabama at Gettysburg.
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Recent restoration efforts are allowing RICK GOWER Regional Sales Manager rick@rickgower.com
visitors to the battlefield to view the TERRY JENKINS Regional Sales Manager tjenkins@historynet.com
hallowed ground as it was in 1862. RICHARD E. VINCENT Regional Sales Manager rvincent@historynet.com
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4 CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2018
GETTYSBURG SHARPSHOOTER
I read Scott Fink’s June issue article “Behind
the Barricade” about the identity of the dead
Confederate sharpshooter at Gettysburg
who was photographed by Alexander Gardner a couple of
days after the battle. The body of this young man has been
identified as Andrew Hoge of the 4th Virginia, identified
from Gardner’s photo by Hoge’s cousin, Captain John T.
Howe, who was with him when he died.
I am a Hoge descendant and have a copy of a family history
written around 1920 by a Hoge relative, Major Daniel Howe,
titled Listen to the Mockingbird. The author was a World War I
army officer. In that book, there is a copy of Gardner’s famous
photo with Andrew Hoge identified as the victim.
I would love to see a photo of young Andrew if one exists.
I also wondered if Mr. Fink had any information regarding
where the body of Andrew Hoge might be buried. He is not
in the family cemetery in Pulaski County, Va. Needless to say,
I have a real interest in Civil War history through the links to
my ancestry.
Beverly Etling
Westerville, Ohio
Author Scott Fink responds:

Thank you for your letter. I read
Listen to the Mockingbird, and it
is very interesting, although some of
the information conflicted with my
research. There is an ambrotype of the 4th
Virginia’s Andrew Hoge that I believe
was taken between the late 1850s and
1860 in the collections of the American
Civil War Museum in Richmond. His
facial similarity to the Devil’s Den
“Sharpshooter,” John Rutherford Ash, is
remarkable, and I was convinced that
they were one and the same for quite some
time. Also, Andrew’s cousin, Captain John
T. Howe of the 4th, who was indeed with
Hoge when he died, mentioned that he
placed a canteen between Hoge’s elbow
and body before he left him.
John Rutherford Ash, left, and Andrew Hoge do bear a resemblance to each other. Hoge’s In the rough draft of his Sketch
regiment, the 4th Virginia, however, was not deployed near the rocky warren of Devil’s Den. Book, photographer Alexander Gardner

described a canteen lying near the
sharpshooter’s body. That reference
is mysterious, however, since the
mention of the canteen did not make
it into Gardner’s final published
draft, nor is there actually a canteen
in any of the six photos taken of the
soldier in the famous image.
Also, it is clear the 4th Virginia
was not near Devil’s Den during the
battle. Captain (then-Lieutenant)
Howe, was wounded and captured
at Gettysburg—not at Devil’s Den,
however, but rather at the base of
Culp’s Hill. The stone fence that
the 4th sheltered behind was near
Spangler’s Meadow at the base of the
hill, where the regiment was located
throughout the fight on July 3. This The N-SSA is America¶s oldest and largest Civil War
is most likely where Andrew Hoge shooting sports organization. Competitors shoot
lost his life. I’m fairly certain that original or approved reproduction muskets, carbines
the details of his death as related and revolvers at breakable targets in a timed match.
by Captain Howe are true, but the Some units even compete with cannons and mortars.
speculation that he died in Devil’s Each team represents a specific Civil War regiment or unit and wears the
Den is incorrect. uniform they wore over 150 years ago. Dedicated to preserving our
Andrew Hoge is most likely history, period firearms competition and the camaraderie of team sports
buried in Hollywood Cemetery in with friends and family, the N-SSA may be just right for you.
Richmond, Va. His remains were )RUPRUHLQIRUPDWLRQYLVLWXVRQOLQHDWZZZQVVDRUJ
identified by Dr. Rufus Weaver (see
P. 12) in 1871 or 72. Weaver noted
that Hoge had faded papers in his
pocket and a photograph of his cousin, I am amazed at the research in
Helen Hoge, that identified him and Scott Fink’s “Behind the Bar-
with which he was buried. Weaver ricade” article and I am in full
FACEBOOK
did send individual remains back to agreement that it appears the FEEDBACK
their families, but this was expensive soldier has at long last been iden-
and was done mostly for high- tified. This is a monumental dis- Regarding the June issue and the
ranking officers. Since Hollywood covery that most likely identifies a Gettysburg “sharpshooter” article:
was in Virginia, Hoge’s family most soldier who fell on the battlefield
likely did not object to his interment of Gettysburg. To my knowledge,
there. Unfortunately, much of Dr. there are only a handful of other
Great issue this month!
–Chad Carlson
Weaver’s identification work was soldier’s bodies that are identified
undone by the haphazard way in in period images, which makes A great story. My wife’s
which the soldiers were buried in this identification all the more
GG uncle was with the
Hollywood Cemetery in one mass noteworthy. Georgia Infantry and died
grave with no markers. The only As a member of a number of near the Rose Farm in a Union
record of their identities was a hand- Civil War Roundtables in south- artillery barrage –John Binfield
drawn map with numbers and letters eastern Michigan, it is exciting
that corresponded to Dr. Weaver’s to see that Mr. Fink’s article is a
shipping manifests. Unfortunately, topic of keen interest during our
Fascinating
–Craig Heyse
article
the records for the last shipments to open discussions of Civil War
Richmond were lost before markers material. I tip my hat to him for
were placed. I believe that Andrew showing the rest of us history
Hoge was one of the victims of the buffs that, regardless of your level
mishandling of the burials there. If
I can be any more help to you, please
let me know. Thank you again for
sharing your information. Your
of expertise, diligence and staying
the course on your suspicions will
often times be very rewarding.
Peter C. Gaudet

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU !
e-mail us at cwtletters@historynet.com
or send letters to Civil War Times,
1919 Gallows Rd., Suite 400,
family history is fascinating. Clinton Township, Mich. Vienna, VA 22182-4038

BURNING UP BATTLEFIELDS

Both burns at Gettysburg,
seen here, and at Manassas,
below, removed unwanted
vegetation and were carefully
maintained by trained personnel.
At Manassas, the flames were
diverted to avoid woodcock nests.
Most Civil War battlefield visitors can only from 11 national parks in Virginia, Maryland, the
imagine billowing gunsmoke, but actual plumes of District of Columbia, and Pennsylvania helped with
smoke and flames have been seen lately rising into the the fire. Hand tools were used to ignite and control
air. The conflagrations, however, are not the result of the fire, and four fire engines and three utility task
battle, but part of several prescribed burns performed vehicles ensured the flames were controlled. The
by the National Park Service. Manassas National public was allowed to view the fire from the Brawner
Battlefield Park held its first ever prescribed burn Farm Interpretive Center. ¶ The prescribed fire at
April 11, and Gettysburg National Gettysburg National Military
Military Park conducted a Park was initially scheduled for
controlled burn later that week, April 13 and 14, but high winds
April 14. A prescribed burn forced the first day’s burn to
reduces the build-up of debris be canceled. The park service
and non-native vegetation, and was still able to cover the full
restores or maintains wartime planned acreage on the 14th,
landscape conditions. ¶ “This about 215 acres between Devil’s
is a great opportunity to restore Den and South Confederate
a significant segment of the Avenue. Gettysburg visitors
battlefield back to its Civil War were allowed to view the flames
appearance,” said MNBP Superintendent Brandon from the Slyder farmhouse and from Little Round
Bies. “Through the use of prescribed fire, native Top. ¶ Lawn-sprinklers, hoses, mowed lines, and fire
grasses will flourish, and soon visitors will experience engines created a fire break to protect monuments
the battlefield landscape like it has not been seen in and other cultural resources. Following an active
over a century.” ¶ The prescribed fire at Manassas burn, wildland firefighters patrol the area to ensure
was conducted adjacent to the eastern edge of the the fire is completely out. Prescribed burns have also
Brawner Farm area and covered approximately 60 recently been held at Stones River National Battlefield
acres of open fields and scrub. Twenty-nine staff and Shiloh National Military Park.

in the
INDIANA NURSE nick of time
REMEMBERED
Rising east of Culpeper, Va., along a crucial east-west corridor, the
mile-long Hansbrough’s Ridge was the setting for battles, an enormous
Union winter camp, and signal station. It has now been preserved,
thanks to the Civil War Trust, the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, the
Virginia Department of Natural Resources, and others who pulled
together the $900,000 purchase price. On June 9, 1863, during the
Battle of Brandy Station the ridge’s eastern slope was a strategic
defensive site for Confederates blocking Federal troops from fighting
J.E.B. Stuart’s forces on nearby Fleetwood Hill. The following winter,
the 174-acre site was home to 10,000 troops of the Army of the
Potomac that included vast earthworks and a hospital. John Hennessy,
chief historian and chief of interpretation at Fredericksburg and
Spotsylvania National Military Park, explained the ridge’s importance
to the Free Lance Star. “Its hut sites, fire-pits, and earthworks remain as
they were left 153 years ago,...a visible remnant of what was a virtual
city.” He added that “visitors will be able to imagine men strapping on
ARSINOE MARTIN, a native
of Elkhart County, Ind., lives their haversacks, loading their muskets and walking down the eastern
on in the newly formed Arsinoe Martin slope toward the Rapidan River’s Germanna Ford—and the battles
Chapter of the Ladies of the Grand of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House.” Sites visible from
Army of the Republic. Martin contracted the ridge include Fleetwood Hill, Culpeper Courthouse, and Pony
yellow fever in 1863 while nursing Union Mountain. Although Hansbrough’s Ridge was named a Virginia
soldiers in Corinth, Miss., and died after Historic Landmark in 1991, a developer was poised to clear the ridge
returning to Indiana. On March 13, 2018, for home construction. Visitors will now be able to access the site via a
the chapter, which had raised money for public road, and there is discussion of making it part of a state park that
a new grave marker, honored her restored includes the nearby Brandy Station and Cedar Mountain battlefields.
gravesite at the Pine Creek Cemetery
with a ceremonial rifle salute. Martin’s
father, a farmer, helped fugitive slaves
escape, and in 1862 his schoolteacher
daughter Arsinoe joined the Indiana
Sanitary Commission and helped recruit
soldiers. She then nursed troops in
Tennessee and Mississippi. Unlike many
of her unremembered colleagues, Arsinoe
Martin survives in photographs and
words. In a letter written shortly before
her death, she observed, “That we are
never as happy as when usefully employed.
How large the field of usefulness opened
before me,–for all that can leave their
homes and enter upon the field of action.
I certainly never was happier. –Some may
think it strange, so far from home and
loved ones, a stranger to home, loved ones,
and comforts; but I am happy, because I
know I am doing good.”
Troopers of the 18th Pennsylvania Cavalry at their neat and orderly
winter camp site on Hansbrough’s Ridge in February 1864.

THE WAR ON THE NET
www.americanhistory.si.edu/documentsgallery/exhibitions/nursing
n May 13, 1864, Amanda Akin

the libraries that nurses helped main-
O entered Ward E of Wash-

ington, D.C.’s Amory Square
Hospital to discover 28 new patients.
tain. Images of hospital wards like the
one where Akin worked illustrate each
page. The best section of the site, how-
Wounded soldiers had poured in all ever, is the interactive map that shows
night, and Akin admitted that she felt the close proximity of Armory Square
“sick and weak…to see almost every Hospital to the White House, the
bed filled with a new patient and with Smithsonian, and the Capitol Building.
a ghastly wound.” She had been nurs- By clicking on these features on the
ing for a year, but the devastation of map, or others including Ford’s Theatre
the fighting that spring stunned Akin or the city wharves, visitors can learn
much as it did the men in the field. more about what the sites looked like
Akin’s wartime experiences are during the war.
the focus of “The Diary of a Civil War Little is known of Akin after she
Nurse,” a digital exhibit hosted by the returned home in late 1864 other
National Museum of American His- than that she married Dr. Charles W.
tory and the National Library of Med- Stearne in 1879 and was widowed in
icine. While a small online exhibit, 1887. But shortly before she died in
the pages at this site, accompanied 1911, Akin published her wartime diary
by Akin’s digitized memoir, provide and correspondence. This digitized
a useful lens through which to better memoir, along with the information
Amanda Akin, with bow in her hair,
understand the experiences that char- posed with other Armory Square nurses presented on each of the seven pages
acterized daily life in Civil War hospi- for this artistically composed image. of the site and in the explanatory
tals in 1863 and 1864. pages and images accessed through
Akin was 35 years old and unmar- the interactive map, offer an excellent
ried when she left her parents’ pros- nurses played in recording medical introduction to Civil War hospitals and
perous home in Quaker Hill, N.Y., to supplies and the names, regiments, the experiences of soldiers. This easily
take a position as a volunteer nurse in and possessions of the men who filled navigated, attractively presented site
Washington. She had no experience their wards. Another page highlights can help visitors gain a better under-
and was expected to learn alongside Akin’s efforts to secure fruit or drink standing of medical care during the
her fellow “lady nurses.” Over the next prescribed by hospital physicians, war, the changing opportunities it pro-
15 months, she mastered the skills while another section focuses on the vided to women like Akin, and what
that were essential to her new pro- Armory Square Hospital newspaper, daily life was like not just in Civil War
fession. One section of the website which was a common feature at med- hospitals, but in the Federal capital as
emphasizes the administrative role ical facilities during the war, as were well.—Susannah J. Ural
FORT NEGLEY SUCCESS

The controversy over development adjacent to funding for demolishing the stadium and seeding the land
Nashville’s historic Fort Negley is over. Following with grass. He also stated, “We have a unique opportunity
an archaeological survey that found a high probability of to bring the community together to design a park that will
human remains on the 21-acre site, Mayor David Briley has honor the sacrifice of the slaves who died building this fort
decided against developing the land, where an abandoned while providing active park space in a growing neighborhood
stadium now sits. On March 13, 2018, Briley announced that will be enjoyed by residents for generations to come.”

civil war trust
generations
Eager young historians reenact the September 17, 1862, Federal charge across Burnside’s Bridge at Antietam as part
of a Civil War Trust Generations event held April 7. The Trust’s Generations program helps parents and other adults share history
with young people, including through on-site events and online educational content such as videos, articles, and photos. The program
launched in 2015 and the first Generations event was held that July at Gettysburg. A second 2018 Generations event was also held at
Gettysburg on April 21. More information about the program can be found at: www.civilwar.org/learn/collections/generations
QUI Z
VIGILANCE IN PHILLY
AN UNREMARKABLE PHILADELPHIA
townhouse with a remarkable history earned a spot on the National Register
of Historic Places in February. From 1850-1855 the three-story structure was
home to prominent Underground Railroad agent William Still and his wife
Letitia. Together they helped shepherd hundreds of fugitives out of slavery.
No address for the couple’s house had been known until J.M. Duffin, a
member of the preservationist group Keeping Philadelphia Society, spotted
the address for Letitia Still’s dressmaking business in an old newspaper. He NAME THIS STRUCTURE
Send your answer to dshoaf@his-
then figured out that the street it was listed on, Ronaldson, had since been torynet.com or to 1919 Gallows Road, Suite
changed to Delhi. The approval shields the structure from arbitrary alterations 400, Vienna, Va. 22182-4038, marked “wig-
or demolition. Son of freed slaves, Still was named head of the Philadelphia wag.” The first correct answer will win a
Vigilance Committee of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society following the book. Congratulations to June issue win-
ner Tregg Hartley, of Newport News, Va.
passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave law that required Northerners to help return He correctly identified the 18th-century
escaped slaves. In 1872 he published a book—The Underground Railroad— Pohick Church near Mount Vernon, Va.,
about the network’s exploits, compiled from letters and notes he kept. which was damaged by Union troops.

1. The Hanover Public School, built in 1852, can be
seen in the background. It was torn down in 1904.
$1.59 2. Young children, probably students from the school,

watch the macabre proceedings. More than 7,000 men were
killed outright during the battle, and dozens more died of
their wounds in the days and weeks following the fight.
With such a vast scale of death, there was no way to isolate
PER the young from war’s horrific cost.
MAN 1

DEAD UNION SOLDIERS
were hastily buried all over the Gettysburg
region after the three-day July 1863 slug-
fest, and somebody had to dig them up for
reinterment in the new Soldiers’ National
Cemetery, which would be consecrated
on November 19, 1863. Samuel Weaver, a
prewar teamster and the bearded man at
the right of this image taken in the grave-
yard of the Trinity Reformed Church of
Hanover, Pa., on February 6, 1864, got the
contract to exhume soldier graves for $1.59
per corpse. That work kept him busy from
2
October 26, 1863, until March 18, 1864,
and Weaver was fastidious in making sure
no Confederates were accidentally interred
in the cemetery dedicated to Union troops.
He carefully examined the clothing of all
the bodies to make sure they were Union
men. “In no instance was a body allowed
to be removed which had any portion of
the rebel clothing on it,” Weaver wrote, “I
then saw the body, with all the hair and
all the particles of bone, carefully placed
in the coffin.” In the 1870s, Samuel, and
after he died, his son, Dr. Rufus Weaver,
accepted money from former Confederate
states to hunt down Southern corpses for
exhumation and shipment to their home
states. The Soldiers’ National Cemetery is
today known as the Gettysburg National
Cemetery, and it is a solemn and contem-
plative place. But it was hard, grisly work
that made it that way. –D.B.S.

3. Weaver’s hired laborers were mostly African American 5. Weaver used an iron hook to probe the pockets of each
men who accepted the job few wanted to do, and here four corpse, and he noted what he found in the book he poses
of them have just hoisted a soldier from his rude grave. One with here. Weaver collected 287 packets of personal effects
black man named Basil Biggs is known to have worked of identified men for relatives to claim, and the largest
with Weaver, and he is likely in this image. Weaver’s Union burial trench he encountered held 70 remains.
hardworking team could exhume up to 100 bodies a day.
6. The coffin business was also brisk during the
4. The decomposing body is one of 11 Union cavalrymen reinterment period. Sometimes a legible headboard with
from regiments raised in New York, Pennsylvania, and a name or a scribbled regimental distinction remained at
West Virginia who were buried in this graveyard. The men the temporary grave. That headboard would be nailed to
were all killed or mortally wounded during a large skirmish a new coffin so the information could be used when the
on June 30, 1863. body was reinterred.
3 6
5
4

By Gary W. Gallagher
TIRED OF THE FIGHT

A Confederate deserter
surrenders to Union
pickets. Ella Lonn was
among the first scholars
to study desertion and
its varied causes.
Ella Lonn’s career overlapped with
AHEAD OF
the other four historians, and her pub-
lications, in both quantity and topical
reach, made her the most important
woman in the field between the 1920s
HER TIME and the 1950s. Educated at the Uni-

versity of Chicago and the University
of Pennsylvania, Lonn wrote six books,
five of them devoted to the war or
PROLIFIC SCHOLAR ELLA LONN BROKE NEW Reconstruction. Very few men during
HISTORICAL GROUND IN MULTIPLE WAYS the same period, though in many
instances better known, matched, never
mind exceeded, her accomplishment.
Lonn’s first book, Reconstruction in
DURING THE FIRST THIRD of the 20th Century, women pro- Louisiana After 1868 (1918), appeared
duced a body of work that anticipated directions Civil War-era scholarship would during the era when a series of state
take many decades later. Annie Heloise Abel’s trilogy The Slaveholding Indians studies, many produced by students of
(1915-25) offered a detailed examination of Native Americans between the late- John H. Dunning at Columbia Univer-
antebellum years and the early phase of Reconstruction. Bessie Martin’s Desertion sity, brought the postwar years to schol-
of Alabama Troops From the Confederate Army (1932) and Georgia Lee Tatum’s Dis- arly prominence. As with the volumes
loyalty in the Confederacy (1934) agreed that disaffection on the military and civilian of what came to be called the Dunning
fronts, often fueled by class conflict, undercut the Southern war effort. Louise B. School, Lonn’s book reflected the racial
Hill’s State Socialism in the Confederate States of America (1936) presented the Con- prejudice of the era and treated Recon-
federacy as “the most successful demonstration of State Socialism to be found up to struction as a dark time of great travail
the time in modern civilization.” Although they are all in some respects dated, these for the white South. Lonn argued that
titles reveal their authors’ rigorous academic training, retain value, and, except for social conflict during Reconstruction
Hill’s, are available in paperback editions. “was largely a race question, though

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By Gary W. Gallagher
the bitterness of feeling toward…[the defeats after 1862 and “a prime factor in
South’s] conquerors and contempt of precipitating catastrophe in 1865,” but
carpet-bagger and scalawag enter to she pronounced Northern desertion
complicate the matter.” Despite its “the more to be deplored” because it
flaws, the book reflected considerable lengthened a war that Union resources
research and remained the standard otherwise might have ended sooner.
title on the subject for a half century. Lonn next turned her attention to a
Desertion During the Civil War (1928; mineral critical to the Confederate war
reprinted 1998), Lonn’s second book, effort. Salt as a Factor in the Confederacy
addressed a controversial element of the (1933; reprinted 1965) documented
conflict and remains, after almost 90 the centrality of salt to mid-19th-
years, the only general treatment of the century society and warmaking.
subject. “To the casual reader the knowl- Lonn examined Confederate efforts
edge of any desertion in the brave ranks to produce enough salt, U.S. target-
of the armies engaged in the Civil War,” ing of salt-making facilities, and the
wrote Lonn at a time when thousands direct and ancillary military, as well
of Civil War veterans were still alive, as economic and social, consequences
“…will come as a distinct shock; even related to shortages of salt. In the
by the historical scholar the full extent end, insisted Lonn, the “fact that salt
of the evil...and the enormous numbers could become a major problem to the THOUGHTFUL PATHBREAKER
implicated on both sides may not be confederacy reveals strikingly its com- An Ella Lonn image that appeared in a
fully grasped.” In a text divided evenly plete dependence on outside sources for Southern Historical Association program.
between the United States and the Con- primary needs and emphasizes that fact In 1946, she became the first female
federacy, Lonn explored the causes and as the most serious of its disadvantages president of the SHA.
extent of desertion, the behavior of men in the unequal struggle.”
after they left their units, and efforts to Nine years passed before Lonn pro-
control the problem. She estimated that duced Foreigners in the Confederacy nent officers (the Navy gets relatively
8,600 of 12,000 deserters from Virginia (1940; reprinted 2002), a pathbreaking, little attention). Lonn estimated that
and nearly 9,000 of 24,000 from North 500-page work that reviewers praised one-quarter of all Union soldiers—
Carolina rejoined the army, while also for its comprehensive research and orig- more than 500,000—were born outside
inality. Lonn sought to counter the Lost the United States, with Germans and
Cause idea that hordes of foreigners Irish placing first and second in terms

ELLA LONN
EXPLORED
THE CAUSES
AND EXTENT OF
helped fill Union ranks while Confed-
erates lacked access to such manpower.
Comparatively, she demonstrated, for-
eigners were overrepresented in Con-
federate armies, and she underscored
the presence of significant foreign-born
of numbers. As in her book on foreign-
ers in the Confederacy, she linked com-
mon characteristics, both positive and
negative, to ethnicity. Describing her
research as “the most laborious of the
writer’s entire experience,” she apolo-
DESERTION populations in major Southern cities. gized for not mastering Polish, Russian,
Although Lonn exhibited prejudices and Italian sufficiently to engage with
common to the time in generalizing sources in those languages. In the end,

emphasizing that the presence of thou-
sands of deserters greatly demoralized
civilians in parts of North Carolina,
Georgia, Florida, and Mississippi.
Recognizing that many Confeder-
about the Irish, Hispanics, and other
groups, the book, which contains a mass
of useful information, placed her far
ahead of the scholarly curve in remind-
ing readers that the conflict played out
within a context that included Europe,
she stated, “men from all parts of the
world” created “a truly American army,
composed of native sons and adopted
sons...animated by a genuine devotion
to the ideals for which the Union stood.”
Ella Lonn wrote and taught at a time
ate “offenders had little conception of Mexico, and other parts of the world. when Civil War scholarship was thor-
the gravity of their offense in military Foreigners in the Union Army and oughly dominated by men who studied
law,” she nevertheless concluded that Navy (1950) provided a companion to military operations, great captains, and
the Richmond government and military Lonn’s earlier study. Its more than 700 political events and leaders. An outlier
authorities “were unduly lenient” in han- pages dealt with units composed wholly in many respects, she deserves serious
dling their crime. Lonn judged desertion or primarily of foreign-born soldiers attention from modern students of the
a contributing factor to Confederate as well as with a number of promi- conflict. ✯

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LONDON CALLING

ONCE WAR IS DECLARED, numerous English firms who made equipment for the British Army,
such as S. Isaac Campbell & Co. and Alexander Ross & Co., geared up to send blockade runners loaded
with military equipment to the Confederacy’s faraway towns. Southern purchasing agents established in
London streamlined the process, and thousands of Rebel troops went into battle kitted out head to toe in British gear.
Bolts of blue-gray English “Army Cloth” wool also came over in abundance from late 1862 on. For example, between
October 1863 and March 1865, the Richmond Clothing Bureau received 289,018 yards of English wool, and premade
uniform items also found their way through the blockade. The blue hue of some of the English cloth caused confusion
in battle. At Chickamauga, a number of regiments in Lt. Gen. James Longstreet’s Corps wore English Army Cloth
clothing. Private Jacob Allsbaugh of the 31st Ohio recalled seeing a soldier at that fight wearing a “neat suit of dark
blue” being berated by a Union colonel who thought he was a Federal shirker. “But I belong to the other side,” blurted
the infantryman, “and sure enough,” said Allsbaugh, it was “one of Longstreet’s men” who was taken prisoner. The items
depicted here are examples of British-made equipment used by Confederate troops throughout the war. – D.B.S.
The British Pattern 1853 rifle-musket,

commonly called the “Enfield” because the guns
were first made at the Royal Small Arms factory in Enfield. It was one of the finest
muzzleloaders used during the Civil War, and about 900,000 came to America and were
carried by both Southern and Northern troops. Contractors in London or Birmingham,
not at Enfield, however, made most of the weapons that saw service in the Civil War.
On April 1, 1862, Major Caleb Huse, one of the Confederacy’s

purchasing agents in England, wrote Brig. Gen. Josiah
Gorgas, the South’s chief of ordnance, that the blockade
runner SS Minna was headed across the Atlantic with 5,900
Pattern 1856 knapsacks like this one. A return dated April
28, 1864, just before the Battle of the Wilderness, stated
that “50 English box knapsacks” were issued to the First
Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia. Many of the
knapsacks arrived from England with Pattern 1854 mess
tins, as seen here. Each tin had its own painted canvas
cover, and was strapped to the top of a knapsack.

Rebel troops carried hundreds of various British-pattern
cartridge boxes. This is a Pattern 1859 English sergeant’s box
made to carry 20 rounds in its tin insert and with an
attached cap pouch. In the British Army, sergeants carried
fewer rounds because of their extensive administrative
duties. But in Confederate use, sergeant’s boxes were
frequently issued to private soldiers and retrofitted with
tins that held 50 .57-caliber rounds, as was this example once
displayed in a Gettysburg museum.
Confederate
quartermasters struggled
to keep their soldiers in
good footwear, and sturdy
English army shoes were
welcome in the Rebel ranks.
The hobnails on the sole
added traction, and the
heel plates helped prolong
the life of the shoe.
Beginning in the 1850s, the belts issued to British soldiers were made to close with eye-catching and practical snake buckles.
The Pattern 1861 ball bag attached to the belt was a unique British accoutrement. Soldiers were supposed to transfer 10 loose
rounds from their cartridge box to the ball bag, which also held an oil bottle for gun cleaning, so the ammunition was more
accessible during a fight. Rebel troops disliked the bags, and many were sent back to Southern arsenals labeled “scrap leather.”

with Joseph McGill
FIRESIDE CHATS
Slave Dwelling Project attendees listen
as project founder Joseph McGill
discusses slavery. McGill believes that
campfire conversations are the most
“powerful part of the program.”
AN UNEASY
NIGHT’S SLEEP
JOSEPH MCGILL began sleeping in slave cabins in 2010 while working for the National Trust for Historic
Preservation to draw attention to endangered buildings, and his efforts have evolved into a platform for dialogue about the
consequences of slavery. McGill has reenacted as a USCT soldier since 1989 and was featured in Tony Horwitz’s 1998 Confederates
in the Attic. His Slave Dwelling Project, founded in 2010, now holds an annual conference: see slavedwellingproject.org.
CWT: How did you become a Civil War reenactor?

JM: I am from Kingstree, S.C. My relatives were enslaved there in Williamsburg County.
I became a Civil War reenactor because I was once a park ranger at Fort Sumter National
Monument. I would sometimes encounter Confederate reenactors who had the courage to ask
me to be a reenactor, but they wanted me to reenact an enslaved person who would have served
the Confederacy. Then came the movie Glory, and that’s when I started delving into the African
Americans who served in the Union. That encouraged me to start a unit of 54th Massachusetts
reenactors. The movie Glory was that inspiration for me.
CWT: Why did you start spending the night in slave cabins?
JM: The Slave Dwelling Project started as a very simple idea of spending nights in slave
dwellings because of what I did not see. We tend to tell the history of this nation through the
buildings we preserve, and the buildings we preserve tend to tell the stories of the people who
lived in those beautiful, architecturally significant big houses and mansions. But what it leaves

out are the stories of the enslaved, JM: I had to convince the stewards of Northern states I get pushback because
and those buildings still exist. Eight these properties that I came in peace people think the Northern states had
years ago, I intended to sleep in slave and meant no harm. I was not ghost the Underground Railroad and sent
dwellings in South Carolina for one hunting, I was not treasure hunting, the Union army down South to get
year and then be done with it. As soon nor was this a call for reparations. That rid of slavery. I have to take people
as I started, it was evident that this would steer people away from me. I further back to know that those states
was a project a lot bigger than myself. had to convince them this was all about engaged in the practice of slavery also.
News outlets started to cover it—and the preservation of the buildings. I And this year I will be adding Flor-
the genie was out of the bottle. got enough people to agree to take me ida—and I haven’t been to Kansas,
through the first year. The publicity it Kentucky, West Virginia. This year we
CWT: Where was your first sleepover? garnered got others wanting to be a will be adding Minnesota because of
JM: Magnolia Plantation and Gardens part of it. Fort Snelling, where Dred Scott was
in Charleston, where I am currently taken into the free state by the Army
employed on a part-time basis. At that officer who owned him. Scott used his
time I slept alone. It took about four residence in that state to petition the
nights of sleeping alone at sites before Supreme Court for his freedom.
others started joining me. I remember PEOPLE ARE
that first night alone, and getting up
a few times to make sure that what I SURPRISED CWT: Have you considered
sleepovers in the Caribbean?
heard was wind. That stands out.
AT SOME OF THE JM: I certainly have considered that.
I want to complete that triangle of
CWT: Describe an overnight.
JM: The sleeping portion is the simple
PLACES WHERE trade that brought the 12 million
enslaved Africans to this New World.
part, anybody can sleep. The most
powerful part of the program is the SLAVERY Only 500,000 were brought to the
United States. The majority were
EXISTED
conversation that will happen around taken to South America and Carib-
the campfire. We discuss slavery and bean islands. I want to expand to those
the legacy it has left on this nation. places, and I want to go to Africa. I
really want to go to Africa some day.
CWT: Are slave dwellings endangered?
JM: They will always be endangered. CWT: What are other goals?
We don’t have all the answers; and CWT: What do you want venues JM: Our conference next year will also
we don’t have the resources to restore to know about what you do? be commemorating the first docu-
these buildings. But at least people are JM: We want to engage the public, and mented Africans that came into this
contacting us about what to do. We we hope descendants of the enslaved nation at Jamestown, Va. My ultimate
can point them in the right direc- community attend and engage them goal is to make this not only what I
tion—where to restore these buildings, in that uncomfortable conversation love to do but also make it a fulltime
or at least how to arrest the deterio- about slavery and the legacy it has left profession. We are seeking funding to
ration by stabilizing them so they can on this nation. These sites allow that to make that happen.
come up with a plan to save them. happen because these are conversations
that one would not normally engage CWT: What’s the most surprising
CWT: You have also started an in during everyday conversation with a thing about your experience?
annual conference. What is it? circle of friends. We want these folks to JM: In Brenham, Texas, I stood on an
JM: Our fifth annual conference will be be ambassadors not only for the Slave actual auction block, and I thought
in Murfreesboro, Tenn. The conference Dwelling Project, but for solving the about enslaved people baring their
brings together different players—own- problems of this nation. We are a great backs to a potential buyer to look for
ers, historians, genealogists, the general nation, no doubt, but we are a nation marks—a sign of an enslaved person
public, etc.—interested in preservation that committed some atrocities along who is defiant. You don’t want to buy
and interpreting the property. We meet the way and we’ve got to deal with that a defiant enslaved person to insert
for three days of conversation about and this project helps folks do that. among your already docile and broken
slavery’s legacy, but more import- enslaved people and give them ideas
ant, about preserving, interpreting, CWT: What sites are you of freedom. That’s probably the most
and maintaining these buildings. still hoping to get to? profound moment. ✯
JM: People are surprised at some of
CWT: What’s been the reaction the places where slavery existed. When Interview conducted by Senior Editor
to your project overall? I start talking about slavery in the Sarah Richardson

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STILL LEADING
This wartime engrav-
ing of a middle-class
kid who persevered
hangs on my office
wall, urging and
inspiring me to get
the job done.
RELATABLE
GENERAL GRANT IS LIKE A LOT OF US
I ADMIRE GRANT, not just for his notable military success, but also because he is eminently
relatable. He was a middle-class kid and a reluctant college student who went to West Point in large part
because it gave him a chance to travel away from his Ohio home and see something of Philadelphia, New York,
and the country. Once enrolled, he was a middling student. After graduating 21st out of 39 students in the
Class of 1843, Grant served admirably in the Mexican War, but then left the Army and drifted through odd
jobs for more than a decade in search of a satisfying career. His life would have been even more haphazard and
his drinking more frequent if an intelligent, capable wife had not provided him an anchor. When the Civil War
came, Grant found his niche, almost by accident, and persevered to rise through the ranks and win. I can relate
to his struggles and rocky path to success, and maybe you can, too. The Currier & Ives engraving I’m holding in
the photo above is one of my few Civil War treasures. The rendering of Grant’s face is not quite right, something
about the chin is off, and I hypothesize it was rushed into print shortly after he was promoted to lieutenant
general in March 1864 and before his likeness was well-known to the Eastern press and publishers. Thanks to a
series of new books and research (P. 24), however, the relatable man is much more recognizable to us all. –D.B.S.

writing
His Mind
PA S S AG E S F R O M
ULYSSES S. GRANT’S MEMOIRS
REVEAL A MAN OF
CLEAR PURPOSE AND
FRANK OPINION

BY JOHN F. M ARSZALEK

NEAR THE END
Ever curious about world events,
Ulysses S. Grant takes a short
break from writing his memoirs
to read the newspaper on the
porch of his cottage atop New
York’s Mount McGregor.
rant wrote the memoir in part because he had lost
G
all his money in a financial scandal and hoped the
sales of the book would provide income for his wife,
Julia, and their children. But the general and pres-
ident also wanted the world to know his thoughts
about the Civil War and his role in the conflict.
The result of his death-defying determination was
the creation of one of the greatest pieces of nonfic-
tion in all of American literature, a memoir that dozens of historians have
used as a source to produce studies of the war, and that uncounted people
have read for personal enrichment. The publication of such a work would
have been extraordinary even if it had been accomplished by a completely
healthy man, much less one who was deathly ill.
The contemporary readers of Grant’s memoirs had no problem under-
standing what he was saying and recognized the names mentioned in the
book. After all, in the mid-1880s, the United States was still populated
by people who had experienced the war. Most of the war’s veterans were
The sick, aging about 40 years old, and their wives and families were similarly young. But
warrior put down his in 2018, of course, all Civil War veterans are long gone, and the average
reader has limited knowledge about what Grant was describing. Therefore,
pen. It was July 18, 1885, a modern version, edited to explain the details, was absolutely essential if
and Ulysses S. Grant had this classic was to remain understandable to a wide audience. It was to that
end that I, ably assisted by David S. Nolen and Louie P. Gallo, began work
just finished his memoirs. on an annotated version of The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant.
It was very important that the editors allow Grant to speak his mind
The hero of war had no and allow him, unencumbered, to express what he believed. After all, the
way of knowing his final memoirs emphasize Grant’s perspective. He said as much in his preface,
“The comments are my own, and show how I saw the matters treated of
determined act would also whether others saw them in the same light or not.”
As the editorial team worked on the memoirs, certain passages stood
make him a literary hero. out as emblematic of Grant’s personality and his blunt nature when it
In terrible pain from came to expressing his opinion. The determination he conveyed during
the Civil War was evident during an instance when he described having to
throat cancer, hour after swim a swollen creek on horseback to be sure he proposed to his fiancée,
Julia Dent, before he left for the Mexican War. After recalling the incident,
hour and day after day he ruminated, “One of my superstitions had always been when I started to
he had pushed himself go anywhere, or to do anything, not to turn back, or stop until the thing
intended was accomplished.” What an insight into Grant’s role in the Civil
to write his recollections War and in the writing of his memoirs.
Nor did Grant hold back on political opinions, stating exactly what he
from his cottage atop believed. For example, regarding the Mexican War of 1846-48, in which
New York’s Mount he served as a junior officer just a few years past his West Point gradua-
tion, he wrote that “the occupation, separation and annexation, were, from
McGregor. He knew the the inception of the movement to its final consummation, a conspiracy to
acquire territory out of which slave states might be formed for the Amer-
end was near. “Man ican Union.”
proposes and God disposes,” When it came to the Civil War, once again he saw slavery’s dire role:
“The cause of the great War of the Rebellion against the United States will
he wrote. “There are but have to be attributed to slavery.” Despite believing that slavery, which he
disliked, was the cause of the war, he was initially not ready to become part
few important events of the military to end it. When his father decided that he wanted to send
in the affairs of men him to West Point in 1839 so that Grant could receive a free education,
the 17-year-old rebelled. “But I won’t go,” Grant insisted. His father stood
brought about by their firm, Grant recalled. “He thought I would, and I thought so too, if he did.”
Even when he arrived at the military academy, Grant remained unhappy.
own choice.” “A military life had no charms for me,” he insisted.
Grant also harbored anti-military feelings, even when he reentered the
army to fight in the Civil War. He was frightened of battle, especially leading
men into combat. When Captain Grant took command of the 21st Illinois

STIFF AND NEW
Newly minted Brig. Gen.
Ulysses S. Grant poses in
full military regalia in a
ca. August 1861 image. Grant
usually eschewed such
finery, and related in his
memoirs the taunting he
received from a stable boy
when he wore his uniform
home after he left West Point.
Infantry in 1861, he once again came face to face with conflict. When he saw the valley below and saw that the Confeder-
“My sensations as we approached what I supposed might ate “troops were gone. My heart resumed its place. It occurred
be ‘a field of battle’ were anything but agreeable. I had been to me at once that [Confederate Missouri State Guard Brig.
in all the engagements in Mexico that it was possible for one Gen. Thomas A.] Harris had been as much afraid of me as I
person to be in; but not in command. If someone else had had been of him….From that event to the close of the war,
been colonel and I had been lieutenant-colonel I do not think I never experienced trepidation upon confronting an enemy,
I would have felt any trepidation…” though I always felt more or less anxiety. I never forgot that
After a night of sleep, Grant still did not feel better. He he has as much reason to fear my forces as I had his. The les-
marched his men toward the enemy and “my heart kept get- son was valuable.”
ting higher until it felt to me as though it was in my throat. I Grant’s admission that he found combat frightening is an
would have given anything then to have been back in Illinois, important insight into his attitude. Too often, people believe
but I had not the moral courage to halt and consider what to that Civil War officers were fearless supermen, when in real-
do; I kept right on.” ity they were often frightened. And, as Grant indicated in his

LIFE PARTNER
Julia Dent married Grant on August 22, 1848. She had a lazy
eye, often posed for images in profile to hide it, and recalled
that as a child she “used to cry” about her looks. But Ulysses
saw nothing but beauty in the woman he loved. At left, the
two pose after he became lieutenant general, and above, just
before they toured a Nevada mine in 1879.
On the Three recent books go

a long way to redeeming
Rise Ulysses S. Grant’s
reputation By Joan Waugh
I
t used to be easy to define Ulysses S. Grant. He was a heavy drinker who won the Civil War by
slinging vast numbers of hapless Union soldiers at the outnumbered Confederacy. But that defi-
nition has become more complex. The general’s reputation has been trending upward as recent
historians strive to replace the powerful stereotype of the top Union general and two-term presi-
dent as a butcher commander and failed chief executive. Their collective work has provided a measured
and often more appreciative evaluation of the soldier-statesman’s event-filled life and vital legacy.
More success has been notched in reevaluating Grant’s military reputation than with his troubled presi-
dential tenure. That too, may be changing. The arrival of Ron Chernow’s Grant and Charles Calhoun’s
The Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant are brilliant entries to the list of revisionist literature; both deserve a
wide readership. The icing on the cake is the publication of the complete annotated edition of The Per-
sonal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, edited by John F. Marszalek with David S. Nolen and Louie P. Gallo.

memoirs, it is also important to remember that command is not an easy task. Grant
is often pictured as a butcher, an individual who threw his men into battle casually
and needlessly. In fact, he felt, as they did, the fear of combat. War was not a roman-
tic adventure; it was a place of terror, gore, and death.
Yet when he fought Robert E. Lee in Virginia in 1864-65, Grant fought him
with all he had. He believed strongly that the only way to defeat the Army of
Northern Virginia was to destroy it, to attack all Confederate forces on all fronts at

GRANT
IS OFTEN
PICTURED AS A
BUTCHER,
the same time, and to wear away their fighting strength. Other Union generals had
tried to outmaneuver Lee and his Confederate army and capture places rather than AN INDIVIDUAL
destroy their armies; they had failed. WHO THREW
Grant began his final campaign on May 3, 1864, in Virginia’s wilderness. He
expressed his plans and the results he expected bluntly. “The campaign now begun HIS MEN INTO
was destined to result in heavier losses, to both armies, in a given time, than any BATTLE
previously suffered, but the carnage was to be limited to a single year and to accom-
plish all that had been anticipated or desired at the beginning of that time. We had
CASUALLY AND
to have hard fighting to achieve this. The armies had been confronting each other NEEDLESSLY.
so long, without any decisive result, that they hardly knew which could whip.” As IN FACT,
Grant realized, the next year saw desperate fighting, high casualties, but eventual
victory for the Union troops. HE FELT, AS
In April 1865, the war came to an end in Virginia with Grant’s all-out warfare
wearing Lee’s forces down until the Confederates had insufficient manpower to
THEY DID, THE
fight back. After a bloody year, Grant broke through the lines at Petersburg and FEAR
then pressed on to Richmond. He was clearly in command of the situation. What
followed was a series of letters in which Grant called for Lee’s surrender, and Lee
OF COMBAT
tried to delay so he could get the best terms possible. His first letter to Lee on
April 7, 1865, was a classic. Grant wrote: “[T]he results of the last week must con-
vince you of the hopelessness of further resistance….I feel that it is so, and regard it
as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood,
by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the Confederate States army
known as the Army of Northern Virginia.”

four parts with a total of 43 chapters, his alcoholism and his peculiarly naïve
Grant covers the Ohio-born and -bred and trusting nature. Both tarnished his
Ulysses’ origins, education and hard- reputation. Chernow unearths every
scrabble period, his rapid ascent to story (true or false) of Grant’s battles
fame and success as the Union’s top with the bottle. He insists the reader
general, his turbulent and influential understand that Grant’s rare benders
political career, and his post-presi- were often preceded by bouts of lone-
dential years. Chernow threads the liness, boredom, or pain. It seems that
narrative with an astute psychologi- Julia Grant’s presence was the surest
cal analysis of the man whose pri- guarantee of sobriety and few, if any,
vate wellsprings remained a mystery. lapses were committed during and
Grant’s relationships with a judgmental after his presidency. He judges that
father, an undemonstrative mother, “all available evidence suggests Grant
and a blowhard father-in-law are had abstained from alcohol and largely
examined, yielding rich insights into vanquished the problem though sheer
Best-selling biographer Ron Chernow his experiences with public and private willpower and perseverance…It was
begins Grant with Walt Whitman’s humiliations that wounded him but one of the supreme triumphs of a life
famous assessment that includes the also added to his strong character. He loaded with major accomplishments.”
lines, “What a man he is! What a his- thrived in a long and happy marriage Grant’s resolute nature featured
tory!” Chernow proceeds to deliver a and was a loving father to four children. perseverance, intelligence, and the
dense and riveting saga fully validat- Two recurring themes stand out in patience to pursue victory in the face
ing the poet’s declaration. Divided into the book in regard to Grant’s struggles: of innumerable setbacks. This is made

IN THE FIELD
Grant studies a map
at his headquarters
near Cold Harbor,
Va., in 1864. He is
accompanied by
staff members Lt.
Col. Theodore Bowers
and Chief of Staff
John A. Rawlins.
manifest in Grant’s willingness to tion as general-in-chief plunged him

wage war with a remorseless ferocity into the struggles between President
in the cause of saving the Union, and Andrew Johnson and the Republican
at the same time demonstrate mag- Congress. Grant learned to master the
nanimity toward the enemy, most politics of military leadership, but by
famously at Appomattox. While not 1868 he feared that politicians would
ignoring serious mistakes, Chernow fritter away the hard-won fruits of
renders Grant’s military career in Union victory, accepting the Repub-
the Western and Eastern theaters in lican nomination with his campaign
refreshingly accessible prose, explain- slogan, “Let Us Have Peace.” The
ing how this unassuming man deliv- youngest president yet to be elected,
ered the kind of decisive, smashing, the 46-year-old “silent general” won
aggressive victories at Fort Donel- his first term with 53% of the popular
son, Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, vote; in 1872 he swept the Democratic
and in Virginia that made him a hero ticket with a huge mandate from the
in the eyes of his countrymen and electorate. He remained personally
brought him to a position of unrivaled popular during his eight years in the
power. “Grant was the strategic genius White House; his ardent desire to
produced by the Civil War,” Chernow escape Washington City trumped all
proclaims. considerations of a third term.
Hailed in the postwar North, Grant’s Chernow’s narrative encompasses term. Personally incorruptible, Grant’s
vast popularity and serene confidence, serious misjudgments, such as Grant’s trusting nature disinclined him to take
magnified after President Lincoln’s stubborn loyalty to his corrupt aide action against shady dealings until too
death, propelled him into another Orville E. Babcock in the Whiskey late. Notably, Chernow hails the 18th
level of power and fame. His posi- Ring scandal that engulfed his second president as an early champion for

Despite the hard war that he believed in, Grant made clear in his memoirs that he
had a softer side, too. Instead of gloating about the beating he had inflicted on Lee
and his army, Grant indicated that “my own feelings, which had been quite jubilant
on the receipt of his letter, were sad and depressed. I felt like anything rather than
rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suf-
fered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which
a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.”
Grant also realized the appeal of Abraham Lincoln, the tragedy of his death, and
the coming to power of Andrew Johnson. “Mr. Lincoln, I believe, wanted Mr. Davis
to escape, because he did not wish to deal with the matter of his punishment….
He thought blood enough had already been spilled to atone for our wickedness as a
nation….He would have proven the best friend the South could have had, and saved
much of the wrangling and bitterness of feeling brought out by reconstruction.” Best Seller
Grant insisted that the “universally kind feeling expressed for me at a time when
it was supposed that each day would prove my last, seemed to me the beginning of
the answer to ‘Let us have peace.’” And, knowing that he was close to death, Grant

Ulysses S. Grant finished his
remarkable memoirs on July 20,
completed his memoirs with the words, “I hope the good feeling inaugurated may
continue to the end.” 1885, three days before his painful
Grant’s memoirs present a great insight into the general and his thinking. There death. Mark Twain had helped his
friend find a publisher, and in
is no better way of understanding this great American than by reading this out-
1885-86, the initial printing of
standing self-evaluation, now published with the modern world in mind.
200,000 two octavo-sized volumes
were sold only by subscription.
Salesmen went door to door to
increase sales and offered them in
four different bindings with price
John F. Marszalek is W.L. Giles Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus, and ranges from $7 to $18 a set. Today, in
Executive Director and Managing Editor of the Ulysses S. Grant Association’s U.S. excellent condition, the collectible
Grant Presidential Library at Mississippi State University in Starkville. He led the sets generally sell for $600-$1,800.
editing of the most recent edition of Grant’s memoirs, with assistance from editors Daniel Weinberg
David S. Nolen and Louie P. Gallo. Abraham Lincoln Book Shop, Inc.
A cartoon, far left, mocks the Whiskey Ring

scandal that stained Grant’s presidency.
But Grant also signed meaningful social
rights legislation like the Ku Klux Force
Bill, as depicted at left, that allowed federal
resources to help suppress the Klan and
uphold African American voting rights.
honored place in American history,

second only to Lincoln, for what he
did for the freed slaves.”
Grant’s final weeks in office were
spent ensuring national authority in
the disputed election of 1876, no small
achievement. Grant’s financial ruin
late in life coincided with his fatal
contraction of throat cancer. He rallied
to write his memoirs, and in doing so,
produced a classic history of the war,
black civil rights. the violent chaos that attended black ensuring an already indispensable
Among many other courageous voting in the South. place in U.S. history.
actions, he proudly signed off on the Although he lost the battle for a Ron Chernow’s Grant is a master-
15th Amendment, broke the spine of racially enlightened Reconstruction, piece of the art of biography and will
the KKK, and tried repeatedly to stop Chernow writes, “Grant deserves an be the standard for some time to come.

the skeptics, and his meticulously provides shocking reading, and ren-
researched book offers a thorough and ders his judgment important: “Taken
judicious reassessment of President together, Grant’s eight years produced
Grant’s eight years in office. The enor- a record of considerable energy and
mity of Grant’s undertaking in 1868 success, tempered at times by frus-
still astonishes. Buffeted by civil war, tration and blighted expectations.”
assassination, a $2 billion war debt, Charles Calhoun’s mastery of the inner
Johnson’s impeachment, and constant workings of politics is combined with
turmoil over “the Southern question,” the unmatched depth of his research.
voters elected General Grant to clean As a result, this important book is
up the disastrous mess created by the not only full of original insights into
nation’s political class. A majority of Grant’s presidency, but also for that of
Northern Americans couldn’t have the era’s larger political culture.
cared less about Grant’s early fumbling
with Cabinet selection, or his friend-
ship with wealthy supporters, or his
supposed lack of cultural polish that
so outraged professional politicians.
Rather, they approved of his first-term
achievements in securing financial
Charles C. Calhoun’s The Presidency reform, encouraging a surging econ-
of Ulysses S. Grant is the only compre- omy, promoting humane changes in
hensive study of the Grant adminis- Indian policy, stabilizing Reconstruc-
tration to be published since the 1930s. tion policy, and notching foreign pol-
Calhoun, a distinguished political his- icy triumphs.
torian, was determined to rectify this These accomplishments were aided
gap, remarking wryly that, “most his- by the wise guidance of Cabinet mem-
torical writing magnified its blemishes bers such as Hamilton Fish, George
and slighted its achievements.” To a S. Boutwell, and Amos Ackerman.
surprising degree, the hostile charges Reelected by a landslide in 1872,
against Grant levied by his fiercest Grant’s second term was marred in
contemporary critics were embraced 1873 by a severe economic depression,
and embellished by most 20th-century followed by the exposure of corruption
historians. Here, John Russell Young’s in his Cabinet, and Northern white
quote is worth repeating: “Calumny exhaustion with Reconstruction. Finally, the best place to start a study
has fallen upon the memory of Grant The unfolding chapters depict a of Grant can be found in the anno-
with Pompeiian fury,” he claimed, military hero who became a skilled tated edition of The Personal Memoirs
so that “to tell the truth about him, politician. He lobbied for his agenda, of Ulysses S. Grant, edited by John F.
sounds like unreasoning adulation.” twisted arms, wielded patronage, pro- Marszalek with David S. Nolen and
Calhoun’s task is to convince moted policies, and shrewdly enlisted Louie P. Gallo. Although one might
supporters in Congress. He quibble with the editors’ decision not
did so because he believed to include maps, the superb annota-
the Republican Party was the tions make this edition indispensable.
only national institution that Grant’s beautiful narrative of the war is
could preserve the war’s goals a pleasure to read. While imbued with
of union and emancipation. the spirit of reconciliation between the
He did so in an atmosphere of sections, he also expresses his belief
vicious, sustained, and shock- that the North’s cause is the morally
ing attacks by members of his superior one. Ulysses S. Grant was the
own party led by an unhinged general who saved the Union and the
Charles Sumner. Emboldened steadfast president who made sure it
Democrats launched numer- stayed together. He is surely deserving
ous politically motivated of a renewed appreciation from the
investigations with the goal of current generation.
An 1868 campaign flag from Grant’s first run for destroying the administration.
president. He was inaugurated on March 4, 1869, The firestorm of political A history professor at UCLA, Joan
venom and visceral hatred Waugh is the author of U.S. Grant:
winning 26 states while his Democratic Party
directed toward Grant and American Hero, American Myth (Uni-
opponent Horatio Seymour carried only eight. documented by Calhoun versity of North Carolina Press, 2009).

DETERMINATION
A rare image of Grant that
personifies his resolute
personality. This was the intense
face that thousands of Union
soldiers saw during the war.
The war n their words
TWO LETTERS BY NORTH CAROLINA

SOLDIERS DESCRIBE
THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG

BY KEITH S. BOHANNON

BY THE TIME CONFEDERATE BRIG. GEN. THE SOUTH’S DAY
Stephen D. Ramseur’s North Carolina brigade of Maj. Gen. Robert Rodes’ Division arrived Artist James Walker’s
at Gettysburg’s Oak Hill on the afternoon of July 1, 1863, the fields and woodlots in the vicinity were panorama shows
already littered with the dead and dying men of Brig. Gens. Alfred Iverson’s and Edward O’Neal’s
victorious Rebel troops
brigades, also of Rodes’ Division. After a brief rest, Ramseur received orders to divide his brigade
and send the 2nd and 4th North Carolina regiments under Colonel Bryan Grimes east and then
sweeping into Gettys-
south down Oak Ridge to attack the far right flank of the Union 1st Corps line. ¶ Despite a “severe, burg on July 1, 1863.
galling and enfilading fire” poured into Grimes’ regiments as they moved off Oak Hill, the promi- The 2nd North Carolina’s
nence at the end of Oak Ridge, the North Carolinians assisted in outflanking an enemy brigade and position was off the
driving the Federals back into the streets of Gettysburg. The two accounts provided here from the canvas to the left,
2nd North Carolina Infantry include vivid descriptions of that fighting. Compared to the other bri- but the Tar Heels wit-
gades in Rodes’ Division, Ramseur’s regiments sustained few casualties at Gettysburg, the 2nd lost nessed the triumphant
only four dead and 27 wounded. ¶ The editor of the The Raleigh Standard did not name the officer Southern drive down
of the 2nd North Carolina whose letter, which recounts the entire three days of the battle, is the first the Chambersburg Pike.
one presented here, but the Thomas Gorman Papers at the North Carolina State Archives identify
the author as Captain John Calvin Gorman (1835-1893). Gorman had been a printer and journal-
ist in Kansas and North Carolina before enlisting as a lieutenant in Company B of the 2nd in May
1861. Gorman suffered wounds at Antietam and Fredericksburg, while also being promoted to cap-
tain. Following the Gettysburg Campaign, Captain Gorman served with the 2nd until his capture
during the Battle of Harris’ Farm on May 19, 1864, near Spotsylvania Court House. Gorman was

initially one of 600 captive Confederate officers transported geant Alexander Murdock of the 2nd wrote the last letter,
from Fort Delaware to the vicinity of Charleston in Septem- which discusses only the fighting on July 1 and which echoes
ber 1864, but illness resulted in him being separated from Gorman’s disappointment and longing for the leadership of
the “Immortal Six Hundred” and sent to a hospital in Beau- Stonewall Jackson. Murdock enlisted at age 30 in the 2nd’s
fort, S.C. After being exchanged in December 1864, Gor- Company H in May 1861, and was promoted to ordnance
man returned home for several months before rejoining his sergeant a year later. He appears as present on all regimental
regiment in early March 1865. He recounted his experiences muster rolls until the time of his death in a Staunton, Va., hos-
in the Appomattox Campaign in a small book published in pital on July 1, 1864. Excerpts from Murdock’s letter appear
Raleigh in 1866, titled Lee’s Last Campaign. ¶ Ordnance Ser- courtesy of Cal Packard, MuseumQualityAmericana.com
CONFEDERATE
FIREPOWER
Positions on Oak
Hill of batteries
from Maj. Gen.
Robert Rodes’
Division. Their
guns hammered
away at the right
flank of the Union
1st Corps on July 1.
August 4, 1863 dier, Ramseur, seeing the advantage,

in the face of a torrent of bullets,
wheeled his entire brigade to the
Semi-Weekly Standard (Raleigh, N.C.)
right, and before the Yankees could
Battles of Gettysburg
think, we were pouring showers of
We have been permitted to make the following
rifle balls into their right flank and
interesting extracts from a letter written by a gallant
rear. Their whole line broke and fled,
young officer of the 2d N.C. regiment, Ramseur’s
and at one time I was fearful their
brigade, to his mother in this City:–
running troops would crush our little
brigade. We had them fairly in a pen,
Just as we arrived on the ground, our division was recovering with only one gap open—the turn- Captain John
from a repulse, in which Iverson’s N.C. brigade, and Daniel’s pike that led into Gettysburg—and Calvin Gorman,
N.C. brigade were badly cut up. Things looked decidedly hither they fled 20 deep, we all the postwar
blue, but lines were reformed, and again we advanced, our while popping it to them as fast [as]
brigade being assigned a position on the left that overlooked we could load and fire, and into town we rushed pell-mell
the enemy. The right and centre were soon engaged, and after them, our brigade in the advance. I was with my com-
brought to a halt, but amid bursting shells and whistling pany in the skirmish line, in front, and when the Yankees got
bullets we steadily advanced, until we had driven the enemy’s into town they hid by hundreds in houses and barns, and I
weak right beyond their main line, when our gallant Briga- had the felicity of capturing any number. I got three swords

and two pistols from officers who surrendered
to me. We captured 7,600 prisoners during
the fight, while the enemy left the fields cov-
ered with the dead and wounded.
Just at the close of the fight, the other
divisions of our corps came up, but they had
hardly a chance to fire a gun. Our division had
borne the brunt of the fight, by itself. We lost
3,000 men killed, wounded and missing out of
about 10,000. Our brigade loss was compara-
tively slight, and I had only one man wounded.
The enemy had fled south of the town, and
had taken position on the ridge that caused
us all our after loss. Instead of following the
enemy up, and continuing the fight, (as “old
Jack” would have done,) the pursuit was carried
no further than the base of the enemy’s new
position, when our line were halted for the day,
and new lines of battle were formed, and we
rested in that position till the next day, waiting
for Longstreet and Hill to come up. That delay
was fatal to us. Our new line of battle extended
through the streets of Gettysburg, and there we
slept that night. It is the opinion of many that LONG SERVICE
we lost the golden opportunity in not keeping The tattered remnant of Rodes’ divisional headquarters
up the attack that evening, and I concur in that flag. This banner was at Gettysburg and also used after
opinion. The evening’s reinforcement had not Brig. Gen. Stephen Dodson Ramseur was promoted and
come up; they had been badly whipped and took command of the division. A Union soldier captured
demoralized, and it is believed that we could it at the October 1864 Battle of Cedar Creek.
have taken their position that evening with
the loss of less than 500. It afterwards cost us
10,000 and then we could not hold it. Had we taken it that ours. They occupied a crest or ridge, mountain like in appear-
evening it is hardly possible to say, how great our victory ance, running 3 miles north east by south west from Gettys-
would have been. Washington would have been evacuated, burg, while our troops were deployed some half mile from its
Baltimore would have been free, Maryland unfettered, the base, fronting them, Longstreet on the right, Hill in the cen-
enemy discomfitted, and our victorious banners flaunting tre, and Ewell on the left, while our artillery was placed on an
defiantly before the panic-stricken North. There we missed elevated ridge behind the infantry line. Skirmishing rattled
the genius of [T.J. “Stonewall”] Jackson. The simplest soldier along the line from daylight to dark, but until 3 p.m. of the
in the ranks felt it, and results have proven it. But, timidity 2d, no heavy fighting took place, the time being occupied in
in the commander that stepped into the shoes of the fearless making dispositions and preparing for the onslaught. The
Jackson, prompted delay, and all night long the busy axes position of our division was immediately to the right of the
from tens of thousands of busy hands on that crest, rang town, where the enemy’s position was the steepest, and where
out clearly on the night air, and bespoke the preparation the there was less likelihood of making a successful attack, and
enemy were making for the morrow, while our troops were Gen. Lee intended us only to hold our position, while those
feasting on the good things the fleeing inhabitants of Gettys- troops on the right and left of us, charged the enemy. On the
burg had left in their open and deserted houses, and the sun extreme right, Lee made his utmost endeavors to drive the
of the 2d of July rose on a pillaged city, and a feasted army, on enemy, and there the hardest fighting took place. The other
our side, while embrazured eminences and frowning cannon positions were only assailed in order that the enemy might
arose from the forest, as if by magic, in our front. The ene- not know where to mass his greatest force.
my’s whole army had come up during the night, and so had At 3 P.M. the ball opened. For two hours the roar of artil-


lery was incessant, and the howling and screeching of two ors, and none but a patriot can realize the emotion that filled
hundred shells minutely shot over our heads. Frank Ramsay my breast, and the thoughts that flitted through my mind. It
was killed during this artillery duel while loading his gun, a was a time when hours were compressed into minutes, hearts
piece of shell passing diagonally through his lungs. I learn cease throbbing, and the blood lies dormant in your veins.
that his last words were, “Tell my wife I died at my post like They are finally hid from view, and then began the terrible
a man.” I saw a testament he carried in his pocket; it was rattle of musketry, sounding not unlike the pelting of hail
saturated with his heart’s blood. He was the only man killed on the housetop, until it finally culminates in a continuous
in his battery. At 5 o’clock, the roar of artillery died on the roar that language cannot describe, while the detonating
ear, and our eager lines to the right and left of us advanced thunder of artillery again sets in and adds new horrors to
under a dense canopy of sulphurous smoke that densely the bloody drama of death that is going on. Sometimes the
hung in lowering clouds at the base of the enemy’s position. ear can catch the pealing cheer of our men ringing out amid
I watched their long lines as they advanced with flying col- the din as some advantage is gained, and our hearts beat
tumultuously with joy, only to be again oppressed by hearing
the hated “huzzah” of the enemy. Thus the fight continues
until long after the sun has set, until, perhaps 10 o’clock,
when it gradually ceases, and an oppressive silence reigned
until daylight, only disturbed by the distant groaning of the
wounded and dying that cover the ground. Thus ended the
second days fight.
We lay and slept in line of battle in our old position in
dread uncertainty as to the result of the day’s fight. At dawn
we learned that Longstreet’s corps had crossed the enemy’s
position on the right, but on account of overpowering odds
the enemy had hurled against him, he was forced to fall back,
leaving all but four of the 15 pieces of artillery he had cap-
tured. Hill’s forces also drove the enemy from the centre, but
he, too, was forced back while the divisions on our left were
equally unfortunate. In fact, the hard fighting of our troops
was barren of results.
July 3. The day wore on, and an anxious silence reigned.
Only the pickets kept up a desultory firing. The hour of
battle—3 o’clock—again came, and from the stir amongst
the artillery in our rear, I knew that one more effort would
be made. We had one hundred and fifty pieces of artillery
in position, while, perhaps the enemy had 200. We began
the fight, and the oldest soldier in our army says he never
witnessed anything that equaled it. The lumbering of the
thunder overhead, (as a squall passed during the fight,) was
but as the wail of an infant to the roar of a lion, in compari-
son with the deafening roar that shook the ground. It lasted
for three long hours, and the last hour the rattle of musketry
commingled with the fierce roar of the artillery. The same
scene was enacted as of the day before, with the like results,
as we could tell by the loud “huzzah” of the enemy that rang
in my ears with the painfulness of the expressed anguish of
a mother weeping at the death of her first born. Once more
CALM IN THE STORM we were forced to leave works that the most daring courage
Confederate Lt. Gen. Jubal Early stated that General Ramseur and heroism was evinced to take. Just at night, we (I mean
gained “strength in the midst of confusion and disorder.” He was our division,) was ordered to make a night attack on the
mortally wounded on October 19, 1864, at Cedar Creek. position in front of us as a forlorn hope. We were to attack

AFTER THE FIGHT bosoms as if they would leap out, while noble Ramseur and
Oak Ridge can be seen on the horizon of this photograph of scouts creep forward to reconnoitre. For 10 minutes we lay
the town of Gettysburg taken on July 7, 1863, from atop in dire suspense. A few random shots are fired, and a few
Cemetery Hill. The tents of Union soldiers can be seen at right. whistling shells from artillery whistle over our heads, and we
expect the whole air to blaze forth with leaden and iron hail.
But the firing ceases and silence reigns. The rising moon
with the bayonet alone, our brigade in advance, with Daniel creeps under a cloud. Messengers are sent down our lines,
as support. Our battle cry was to be, “North-Carolina to the and instead of the dismal death-knell sound of “forward,”
rescue!” The attack was to be made just as the moon arose. the gladly obeyed command of “fall back without noise” is
In front of us, hid only by a slight hill, stood this frown- given, and soon we are again back in our old places in line of
ing eminence, cleared of timber, and crowned with artillery battle. Our General saw the fool-hardiness and madness of
thickly parked. Between its base and summit, two long lines the attempt, and being unwilling knowingly to sacrifice his
of stone fence ran parallel with the summit, and behind command, he on his own responsibility, ordered us back; and
these rock walls two lines of battle stood, musket and rifle for that act there are many Carolina mothers, wives, sisters
in hand awaiting our approach. The order astounded me, and children who should pray blessings on his head. Thus
and I thought surely our leaders must be mad, or ignorant of ended the battle of the 3d of July. The losses on our part in
the position, or else they think our little brigade of 900 can the three days fight was heavy—15 or 20,000, doubtless. The
accomplish impossibilities. But the hour of trial approaches. enemy’s are probably much heavier.”
In his characteristically clear, ringing voice, our noble com-
mander gives the word, “Forward!” We spring forward and
clutch our arms nervously; I gave in faces I never expect
to see again on earth. Pocket books and last messages are
hurriedly given to Surgeons, and those whose duties cause
August 10, 1863
them to remain in the rear, and we march boldly forward, Camp near Orange Court House
sweeping in good line through the tall wheat that divides our
position. We near the base of the hill that towers and looms My Dear Brother,
up, mountain like, in our immediate front, and halt at a low …The Battle of Gettysburg was badly conducted. In the first
given command within the pale of a graveyard with marble place our Division was almost marched at a double quick
monuments that seem typical of our fate. The enemy seem for 7 miles. Iversons N.C. Brigade being in front then came
aware of our approach. Their commands can be heard, and Daniels N.C. Brigade, then Doles Georgia Brigade then
they are evidently preparing to receive us. We are ordered to Rhodes’ old brigade of Alabamians, and last our small but
lie down, and our great hearts thump and beat within our veteran Brigade Commanded by our beloved Gen. Ram-

seur, composed of the 2nd 4th 14th & 30th N.C. Regts. We A DISMAL DEATH-KNELL
stopped for about three minutes on the roadside, about a Major General Rodes (left)
mile from where we knew the Yankees were. As we advanced ordered his division to assail
to our position in line of battle (each Brigade engaging the the link between the Union 1st
enemy as they came up in the order above enumerated) we
Corps and 11th Corps on July 1.
were astounded to get the news from stragglers and skulk-
ers that our Division was driven back with heavy loss. Our
Rodes’ lead brigades suffered
Brave Boys laughed and said that they were not driven heavy casualties, with a
back and were not likely to be. It was only a few minutes veteran of Iverson’s Brigade
until we could hear the whistling of the bullets was heard mourning the “orphan chil-
over our heads and ever and anon one would strike in our dren” caused by the attacks.
ranks. Here we were ordered to lie down and wait until the Ramseur’s regiments had to
Gen. came back when away rode our Brave Ramseur to add their weight to break the
reconoiter the ground. Here then Brother is the time when Federal line.
we feel the need of a sustaining Saviour and a firm reliance
on the promises in God’s holy word. I have seen the most
abandoned sinner’s cheek blanch, his lips quiver, and his out safe carry such a message home and take this memento.”
eye raised to heaven as if seeking assistance from that God Sooner than it has taken me to write this, the Gen. rides
whom he had scoffed and scorned in such an hour as this. back and gives the command “forward,” the lines were some-
Many a heartfelt and earnest prayer then ascends to Heaven thing like this (diagram at left).
from lips that at other times never utter one. And here I have Iverson’s Brigade marched right up in the direction I have
felt impressions on my heart that I pray to God may never made the arrow, and of course got a flank fire from both
never be erased. There we lay looking around upon our com- stone walls and one right in front. Iverson was nowhere to be
rades and wondering who would be the ones who would be found on the battlefield. It is said that he took his position
taken from us and in full health with the life blood coursing behind a tree about ½ mile from it, of this I cannot say such
joyously through our veins we stared death in the face. The is the report. When we came up Gen Ramseur sent two
loved ones at home were not forgotten at this moment, but Regts. by the left flank in the direction of the dotted line and
every well beloved face and every name remembered. Whilst by this means flanked the Yankees and in ten minutes we had
ever and anon you could hear “If I am killed and you come them running in full retreat on Gettysburg. Johnstons divi-
sion came up on our left, where I have made the cross. By the
time we got into Gettysburg, it was about 6 oclock, and here
was when the failure was made (and if Jackson had been with
us it would not have been done.) We ought to have marched
right [onto?] the heights that night and we would have taken
them; but we laid quietly down in the streets of Gettysburg
and feasted on many a good thing: preserves of all kinds, and
the finest sort of bread taken from those houses which were
deserted. That night the Yankees wrought hard all night for-
tifying the heights and the next day the whole of the Yankee
army came up as well as ours….Yours fraternally, Sandie
Keith Bohannon is a professor of history at the University of West

Georgia in Carrollton, Ga. He has an essay on the destruction of
Confederate Army records during the Appomattox Campaign in
Petersburg to Appomattox: The End of the War in Virginia
(Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2018),
edited by Caroline Janney.

SEEING THE PAST
Fred Cross gazes down the Old
Sharpsburg Road at Fox’s Gap on the
South Mountain Battlefield in 1924.
I
I


was so knowledgeable about the Civil War
history of his home state of Massachusetts that a
friend swore he could call the roll of many of its
regiments from memory. He greatly admired the
heroics of John Mosby—Cross owned at least
six books on the Confederate guerrilla—and
relished walking Civil War battlefields, often
ferred historic homes on battlefields, where he
enjoyed talking with descendants of those who
lived at the sites during the war.
“He would not sponge on any of the battle-
field folks he stayed with,” insisted Cross’ friend,
Jim Clifford, a major in the expeditionary force,
years later. And although he was a Yankee and
“one hundred percent Massachusetts,” South-
with a half-dozen or so friends from Virginia ern hosts liked Cross. “I’ll say this for General
and Maryland, whom he called “The Battle- Cross,” Clifford remembered, “he appreciated a
field Expeditionary Force.” Cross, who stood good soldier and a brave man on either side and
only about 5’2” or 5’3”, was always the “General” said so!”
of the force, while his friends in the merry band And when you walked hallowed ground with
he called “colonel,” or “major,” or a lesser rank. General Cross, oh, what an experience that was.
In the decades before World War II, Cross traveled from “He never stopped talking of what happened at that spot,
his Cape Cod–style house near railroad tracks in South Roy- at that instant, and who did what to who,” Clifford recalled
alston, Mass., to his second home in Florida. He went by bus of excursions with Cross in the 1930s and ’40s. “And he was
because trains didn’t stop at battlefields. A first-class Civil waving his arms around and walking fast as he could travel! I
War geek, Cross sometimes stayed in private hotels, but pre- mean, he was going a streak and you better listen to him and

AROUND SHARPSBURG
Bertha May and Dorothy,
Cross’ daughters, pose in 1919
for their father in the Sunken
Road at the 132nd Pennsylva-
nia Monument. The regiment
suffered 152 casualties at the
September 17, 1862, Battle of
Antietam, and its monument
was put up in 1904. The Joseph
Poffenberger house, seen in a
1920 Cross photograph, stands
north of Antietam’s notorious
Cornfield. Maj. Gen. Joseph
Hooker, who led the Federal 1st
Corps, sheltered in the farm-
stead’s barn on the evening
of September 16. Another 1920
Cross image shows the marker
to the mortal wounding of
Union 12th Corps commander
Maj. Gen. Joseph K.F. Mansfield,
located near the East Woods.
HANDWRITTEN RECORD
Cross made his own
battlefield guidebooks.
The account at right
records his 1903 visit to
Virginia’s Seven Days’
battlefields and notes
he arrived at Harrison’s
Landing on the steamship
Berkeley. At far right is
Cross’ neatly executed
map of the Battle of
Mechanicsville, or Beaver
Dam Creek, complete with
souvenir holly leaves
tipped in the page.

PEOPLE HE MET Cross encountered many
individuals impacted by the conflict. From
upper left: 76th New York veteran Uberto
Burnham surveys the Fox’s Gap battlefield
and the Reno Monument; Carlton Gross shows
off an artillery shell that pierced his family
home during the Battle of South Mountain; and
Alexander Davis helped bury Antietam dead.
not interrupt the flow of facts.” “There are few places that I have visited or of which I have
Cross’ resumé was impressive—he was a Phi Beta Kappa ever dreamed that have such a hold upon my heart as the pic-
graduate of Williams College in 1900, a principal of Massa- turesque hills and broad valleys of Western Maryland,” Cross
chusetts high schools, and served as a member of the Mas- wrote in 1926. “A most beautiful and romantic country, much
sachusetts General Court in 1914-18 and as a state senator of it rich in agricultural resources, its low mountains not too
representing South Royalston in 1917-18. From 1918 to lofty to be ascended with ease, their summits presenting to
1938, he was the military archivist for Massachusetts, com- the traveler most wonderful landscapes, every hill and road
piling in his tenure a 6,500-page history of the state’s men and stream abounding in historic associations; there is a lure
who served during the Civil War. to this section, which calls me back to it again and again.”
But Cross’ real calling was as a “battlefield tramper.” Of Eager to follow in the footsteps of Massachusetts soldiers,
all the battlefields Cross visited, Maryland’s Antietam and Cross walked Fox’s Gap, Crampton’s Gap, Turner’s Gap,
South Mountain were easily his favorites. His love affair with Antietam, and other battlefields. He was keen to visit with
the Civil War history of western Maryland may have begun the locals there, interviewing them about what happened in
with his first visit there in July 1903, when he was 34. On the area during the war. Sometimes, an interview subject had
summer vacation in 1919, he was accompanied to the state by first-hand knowledge of wartime events.
his wife, Ida May, and daughters Bertha May and Dorothy. In Sharpsburg, a resident told of aiding the clean-up at
On other trips in the 1920s, he traveled to the region alone, Henry Rohrbach’s farm, used as a makeshift hospital by the
documenting his experiences with a camera he had purchased Army of the Potomac’s 9th Corps. The smell of the wounds
in Fredericksburg, Va., in 1912. of a dying Federal Maj. Gen. Isaac Rodman became so offen-

ICON IN RUINS Cross photographed the dilapidated Dunker Church in 1922, a year after a violent storm flattened the deteri-
orating structure. The Antietam battlefield landmark was not restored to its wartime appearance until 1962.
and terrible character of war.”

sive in the house, the man told Cross, that he had to eat out-
side on Rohrbach’s porch. “Such incidents as these are not
pleasant to relate,” Cross wrote, “but they represent the actual
During a visit to Antietam in 1919, Cross spoke with Alex-

ander Davis, who said he worked for the Nicodemus family at
the time of the battle. The Nicodemus farm lent its name to
battlefield landmark Nicodemus Heights, and “Uncle Aleck”
Davis, the “bovine majesty” refused to leave the barnyard
of farmer David R. Miller, whose cornfield became site of
horrific fighting on September 17. “In the morning, doubly
excited and maddened by the artillery fire which began before
dawn,” Cross wrote, “the bull smashed through the barnyard
gate, and with flaming eyes and waving tail charged along
through the entire length of the cornfield which that day won
its bloody name, and never stopped in his mad course until
told of burying soldiers days after the fighting. While digging he had reached the banks of Antietam Creek.” “Some of the
graves alone, Davis told Cross he was approached by a soldier soldiers,” claimed Cross, “who were lying on their arms in the
who asked if he had seen the body of Jimmie Hayes, a pri- edge of the cornfield, and in the early gray of the morning
vate in the 19th Massachusetts. Davis turned over a body in a saw the terrible apparition sweep past, laughed over it until
blanket to reveal Hayes, who was identified by letters that had their dying day.”
fallen from the 18-year-old private’s blouse. The soldier wept In the 1920s, Cross gathered his experiences at South
at the sight of his brother. Mountain, Antietam and other battlefields into self-pub-
“Incidents, ludicrous as well as pathetic, the old gentle- lished reports that included the many photographs he had
man often told me,” Cross wrote about Davis, whose tales taken of the sites. He later shared the reports with friends. In
included the story of a stubborn battlefield bull. The night his South Mountain report, Cross included a photo of Carl-
before major fighting erupted at Antietam, according to ton Gross, whose family’s house was struck by Rebel artillery

END OF AN ERA
At Antietam, Cross met Jerry Summers, the last
survivor of the six slaves who lived on the Henry
Piper Farm in 1862. The farm and its slave quarters are
preserved by the National Park Service. Cross later
typed up his description of the encounter:
“Jerry Summers was the last of the slaves of Sharpsburg.
He was the property of Henry Piper who owned the
famous Piper farm which was fringed on its northerly and
easterly edges by the “Sunken Road” or “Bloody Lane”.
In war time Jerry was carried off by the Union Army
but later recovered by his indulgent master who
regarded him almost like one of his children.
At Henry Piper’s death Jerry was given the use for life
of a small cottage and garden plot facing the northerly
stretch of the “Bloody Lane”, and here I found him in 1922
and in 1924....He died in 1925 aged about 76 or 77 years.”

during the battle. “This little house was under fire during the
artillery duel that proceeded the infantry attack, and a Con-
federate cannonball is preserved in the house, which was fired
into it on the morning of September 14, 1862,” Cross wrote.
“It came in at the right end of the house...pierced the westerly
wall and the open front door, and wedged itself in the wall
beside the door casing. I have a section of the shattered door
casing in my collection at home.”
Labors of love, the reports included images of Union Maj.
Gen. Jesse Reno’s monument at Fox’s Gap; the Middletown
house where 23rd Ohio Lt. Col. Rutherford B. Hayes, a future
president, recovered from his South Mountain wounds; and
a New York veteran’s visit to a farmer’s field where he had
fought decades earlier. Cross’ Antietam report included a
remarkable, undated image of the ruins of Dunker Church,
flattened in 1921 by a violent storm. The church was rebuilt

in time for the 100th anniversary of the battle, in 1962.
In one of his reports, Cross wrote: “I have prepared and
annotated this collection of pictures because of the pleasure

HERE AND THERE This 1923 image (above) shows the overgrown unfinished railroad cut on the Second Manassas Battlefield,
used as a trench by Stonewall Jackson’s troops. Cross typed in his battlefield notebook: “scene of very desperate fighting and
is known to the dwellers round as ‘Jackson’s Cut.’” Facing page: The color photo of Cross was taken in 1944 during a visit to the
Chancellorsville, Va., battlefield. In an era before chain hotels, Cross stayed at places like the Mountain Glen Hotel in Boonsboro,
Md. The building, which stands at the intersection of Maryland Routes 34 and 40–Alternate, is known today as Inn BoonsBoro.

that I enjoy in revisiting in fancy the scenes, which hold for
me such surpassing interest, and because of the feeling that,
perhaps, long years to come my children may like to view
again in these pages the scenes, which they once visited with
me—scenes that are so intimately and pathetically connected
with our Country’s history, and that have always filled and
thrilled me with such absorbing interest.”
After Cross’ death in 1950, Jim Clifford and John Win-
Later, Clifford visited Cross’ grave, only 50 yards from the
house where he was born. It says so right on his gravestone.
“His tombstone [was] erected and carved to his specifica-
tions,” Clifford recalled in 1987. “It was tall, maybe four feet
and five or six inches thick, and made of pure black slate.
Beautiful and solid looking. His wife’s, too.” Next to his
friend’s grave, Clifford found a marker for a homeless Union
veteran, whom Cross had befriended and aided. “Wonderful
ters, a “colonel” in the expeditionary force, traveled separately of Mr. Cross,” Clifford wrote. “This alone should get him into
from Virginia to their friend’s house near the railroad tracks the kingdom of heaven.”
in South Royalston. Cross had put his friends in his will, des-
ignating each to receive some of the many Civil War relics
and books he had collected during his lifetime.
In wood boxes, Winters and Clifford packed up hundreds
of books from Cross’ collection as well as cannonballs and John Banks is author of two books on the Civil War, Connecti-
projectiles by the dozens. Clifford was bequeathed a large, cut Yankees at Antietam and Hidden History of Connecti-
oak bookcase that held belt plates, bottles, buttons, pieces of cut Union Soldiers, both by The History Press. He also is the
exploded shells and scores of war relics Cross had collected author of a popular Civil War blog (john-banks.blogspot.com/).
from Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania battlefields. Banks lives in Avon, Conn.

TO DAVY JONES’ LOCKER
William Tillman strikes a
Confederate privateer while
fellow crewman Billy Stedding
heaves a Rebel overboard
during their frantic attempt
to gain control of the
captured ship.

FREEDOM
BY HATCHET
I
I
AN AFRICAN–AMERICAN
SAILOR USED A
SHARP BLADE TO TURN
THE TABLES ON HIS
REBEL CAPTORS
BY JONATHAN W. WHITE

THE CAPTAIN’S STATEROOM
LOOKED LIKE A
SLAUGHTERHOUSE

Steward William Tillman had been waiting for more than a week to take back
his freedom after Confederate privateers from the ship Jeff Davis had captured and
boarded his vessel, the schooner S.J. Waring, on July 7, 1861. The Rebels were pilot-
ing Waring back to a Confederate port with the intent of claiming prize money
and selling Tillman, a free black, into slavery for additional profit. But Tillman
would have none of it. On July 16, he slipped into the cabin of the Southern prize
master who was leading Waring’s prize crew, raised high a hatchet he had secreted
away, and brought it crashing down on the Southern seaman’s head. Before 10 min-
utes had elapsed, two other Confederate crewmen had been killed with the same
bloody hatchet. Tillman had effectively taken over the ship. Now what would he do?

T
he Southern sailors who had captured Tillman’s ship mately become the most consequential man aboard the ship.
were sailing under a letter of marque issued by Con- A 27-year-old native of Delaware who had lived in Provi-
federate President Jefferson Davis that permitted Jeff dence, R.I., since he was 14, he had been working as a sailor
Davis (sometimes called the Jefferson Davis) to act as for the past decade. Standing 5-feet-11 with an athletic build,
a privateer on behalf of the Confederacy. Tradition- one observer described Tillman as having a “high, open fore-
ally, nations without a strong navy—like the Con- head, and pockmarked features.” Others would recount that
federacy—relied on private seamen to attack enemy they could “see by the glimmer of his beaming eye, that he
merchant ships. Armed with letters of marque, these possessed within him a large amount of the high mettle and
sailors claimed legitimacy under the nation for calculating mind peculiar to a courageous man.”
which they sailed. But Abraham Lincoln refused to On July 7, Jeff Davis captured Waring. The captain, two
recognize these sailors as lawful belligerents, and on April 19 mates, and two of Waring’s seamen were taken aboard Jeff
he issued a proclamation stating captains and crews of Rebel Davis, while a prize crew consisting of a prize master, two
privateers would be treated as pirates. mates, and two seamen took control of the captured vessel.
Lincoln’s proclamation gave little pause to ardent South- The officers of Jeff Davis chose to leave Tillman on Waring,
ern seamen, however, and soon many ships like Jeff Davis figuring they could sell him in Charleston, S.C., for a hefty
were leaving from Confederate ports to prey on Union ship- sum.
ping. Jeff Davis struck quickly, capturing Enchantress on July Initially the Rebels treated Tillman kindly as part of their
6 (see sidebar), and then snagging S.J. Waring the next day. deceit. The prize master told him that he would be “well
S.J. Waring had departed New York for Buenos Aires on rewarded in Charleston” for helping bring the ship into port.
July 4, and on board were the captain and mate, black steward Another member of the prize crew told him, “When you go
William Tillman, a 23-year-old German seaman named Wil- down to Savannah, I want you to go to my house, and I will
liam Stedding, a British sailor named Daniel McLeod, and take care of you.” Tillman replied politely, saying, “Yes, sir;
a passenger named Bryce McKinnon. Tillman would ulti- thank you,” as he doffed his hat. But Tillman afterward told

CREATIVE LICENSE
Tillman’s exploits became grist for a novel titled The Rebel Pirate’s Fatal Prize,
printed by Philadelphia publisher Barclay & Co. The book also included a
fanciful tale of Tillman freeing and marrying a slave. Records indicate, however
that Tillman actually wed Julia A. Prophet, a free black woman, in 1863.

ery, or have our heads chopped off,” Tillman later stated.
He spoke to McLeod about the plans, but the British sailor
was not willing to join the mutiny. That night Tillman and
Stedding worked alone, preparing their weapons and final-
izing their plans. Finally, Stedding came to Tillman and said,
“Now’s our time.”
Shortly before midnight on July 16, Stedding signaled to

Tillman that the prize crew was asleep. Stedding drew a pistol
and clutched a knife while keeping watch on the deck. Till-
man grabbed a hatchet and crept into the captain’s quarters,
where he “raised his axe and gave him a vigorous blow on his
skull, from which he seemed to be launched into eternity, for
he moved not an inch.” By the time Tillman was finished, the
captain’s stateroom looked like a slaughterhouse, with the bed
linens and floors “covered with blood.” Tillman next found
the first mate sleeping nearby “and dealt with him in the same
summary and terrible manner.”
McKinnon, the passenger, witnessed this second slaying
and let out a scream in terror. According to Tillman, “He
jumped up very much affright. I said ‘you need not be scared; I
suppose you know what I have been up to.’ He said ‘yes.’ I told
him to take a chair and sit down. He did so.” Before leaving,
Tillman assured him, “Do you be still; I shall not hurt a hair
of your head.”
Tillman went to the poop deck, where he saw Stedding
holding a knife and pointing a pistol at the second mate, who
had just been awakened by the sound of McKinnon’s scream.
Fearing that the report of a gunshot would awaken the other
two members of the prize crew, Tillman signaled to Stedding
not to fire. Still groggy from sleep, the second mate said to
Stedding, “What the h—ll is all this noise in the cabin.” But
before he could get to his feet, Tillman struck him with his
hatchet near the temple. The second mate had been lying near
the desecrated Union flag, and now it bore “several marks of
Billy Stedding, “I am not going to RINGLEADER the crimson fluid.” Tillman and Stedding grabbed the second
Charleston a live man; they may take Handsome and mate and threw him overboard. Then they went below-deck
me there dead.” capable, William and grabbed the captain and first mate and flung them over-
Tillman’s intuition proved pre- board, too. The entire enterprise took less than eight minutes.
scient. At one point he overheard the
Tillman risked it all There were still two men from the prize crew asleep, one
prize master say to another member to gain his freedom. named Miller and the other named Dorset. Tillman said to
of the crew, “You talk to that stewart Stedding, “We’ve done all the butchering we shall on this voy-
[sic], and keep him in good heart. By God, he will never see age; the other two fellows I’ll take back; there are two of them
the North again.” The captain became more direct with Till- and two of us; we can manage them I guess.” Stedding took a
man, telling him “that he would yet see me down in Savan- knife away from Miller, and Stedding, Tillman and McKin-
nah, and there he would deal with me as he pleased.” At that, non then put the two prize crewmen in irons. Dorset begged
Tillman thought to himself, “Old man, you will never catch
me down there.” Indeed, the prize crew would come to regret
having kept him on board the ship.
Almost immediately after taking over Waring, the prize
crew cut up the American flag in order to make a Rebel ban-
ner. This action “incensed me to use violence,” Tillman later
recalled, for it “made my blood boil, and I vowed to have
revenge.” For about a week, Waring cruised on the high seas
while, unbeknownst to its Confederate captors, Tillman and
Billy Stedding, the German, were plotting a way to secure
their freedom. “In the afternoon we talked it over again, and
I said it’s our only chance, and if we don’t go in tonight and
clear ourselves we have to go to a southern port; go into slav-

Stedding to spare his life. “Yes, we don’t intend
DRAMA
to spill any more blood than we have done,”
Stedding assured him.
MORE
Next Tillman called McLeod, the British JEFF
sailor, out of his berth and said, “Do you know
we have taken this vessel to-night?” McLeod
DAVIS
replied, “No.” Tillman said, “You would not help
to take this vessel, and I want to see if you will
help to take her to a northern port. We saved
ourselves so far.” After McLeod agreed to work
for the mutineers, Tillman hove the vessel on a
northwest course.

The mutineers, however, did not know how
to navigate the ship. The next morning Tillman
spoke to one of the prize crew, saying, “I want
you to join us, and help take this vessel back.
But mind, the least crook, or the least turn, and
overboard you go with the rest.” “Well,” replied
the man, “I will do the best I can.” Tillman
recalled, “And he worked well all the way back.
He couldn’t do otherwise. It was pump or sink.”
For more than four days the men worked with

“unremitting vigilance and exertion” and brought
the vessel to port at Sandy Hook, N.J., just south
of New York City.
Once in New York, Tillman was placed Jacob Garrick was another black sailor who escaped Jeff Davis.
in police custody as a witness, while the flag, Garrick was a 25-year-old native of the Danish West Indies, a free
hatchet, and Rebel captain’s coat were held at the man who was serving as a cook on Enchantress, a merchant ship out
headquarters of the harbor police. People gazed of Boston, when it was captured by Jeff Davis on July 6, 1861.
in wonder at the hatchet. “One would be sur- William Smith, the prize master placed in command of
prised to look upon the small instrument which Enchantress, planned to take the vessel back to Charleston, where he
did such serviceable and at the same time bloody would sell Garrick into slavery for $1,500. But on July 22, Garrick’s
work on board the schooner,” marveled the New fortunes improved when the steamer USS Albatross came up next
York Herald. “It is a simple wood hatchet, the to Enchantress to check its cargo, as shown in the above illustration.
handle about eighteen inches in length and the Garrick threw himself overboard, shouting that Enchantress was a
head not weighing much over sixteen or eighteen “captured vessel of the privateer Jeff Davis and they are taking her
ounces…being covered with the blood of those into Charleston.” Albatross picked up Garrick and then arrested
whom it slew, and several splinters knocked off Enchantress’ crew. Albatross towed Enchantress to Fort Monroe in
the handle in the efforts of the brave Tillman to Hampton Roads, Va., and then to Philadelphia, where William Smith
destroy the enemies of his flag.” found himself indicted for piracy.
New Yorkers, eager for positive Union news Garrick testified against Smith during the trial, depicting him as
to help offset the newly arriving news of the a pirate and a slave trader. One member of the prosecution called
Federal defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run, Smith’s actions “an offence without feeling, because to tear a man
hailed Tillman as a hero. The Herald stated that from his home and enslave him forever, against the usages of warfare,
his “name will now become historic as the enac-
stamps this transaction…[as] a piratical, outrageous aggression,
without any of the color or the forms of law.” The trial ended on
October 25, and Smith was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged.
Four days later, on October 29, all but one of the other crewmen were
SEA MONSTERS also found guilty. Jefferson Davis, however, threatened to retaliate if
Northern envelopes poke Abraham Lincoln should carry out the execution.
scorn and ridicule at Davis set aside 14 Union prisoners of war, including Colonel
Michael Corcoran of the 69th New York Volunteers, as hostages in
the Confederacy’s use of
the place of Smith and the other privateers. Confederate authorities
privateers to compensate
demanded of the Lincoln administration “an absolute, unconditional
for its lack of a navy.
abandonment of the pretext that they are pirates” before an exchange
would take place. After protracted negotiations, the prisoner exchange
finally took place in June 1862. –J.W.

tor of as great a piece of daring and heroism as
A SAD
perhaps the world ever saw” and that he “pos-
sesses the physique and general appearance of a
BACKSTORY
brave man.” The editors marveled “that he could
bear almost anything than seeing the dear old
flag which had fluttered so long over the freest
country in the world transferred into the colors
of the rebel government. His powers of speech,
although tinctured with that accent peculiar to
his race, yet possesses a simple eloquence and
force of its own, which has been the remark of
all who conversed with him yesterday.”
On July 22, Tillman was taken from the
House of Detention to the office of U.S. Mar-
shal Robert Murray, where he was visited by
“a large number of citizens” of all classes. They
greeted him “with the warmest expressions of
esteem and laudation for the manner in which
he had taken from the robber bands of the rebels
the property so ruthlessly stolen.” At the mar-
shal’s office Tillman held court as a line of visi-
tors came to meet him. Sitting comfortably in an
armchair, Tillman rose and bowed “with an air
of humility” and shook the hand of each guest.
The visitors praised him for his gallantry and
bravery, telling him he deserved the “thanks of
the whole country.”
“You deserve to have your liberty,” one caller
told him. “Yes,” said another, “If all the colored
people were like you, we would not have all of
Before Jeff Davis was named after the Confederate president, it this trouble.” “I did the best I could,” Tillman
had participated in several different types of trade in the Atlantic replied. “I couldn’t see any other way to get my
World. Built about 1845 in Baltimore, the ship had been named liberty.” Tillman told another visitor that kill-
Putnam and served for a time as a merchant vessel, before being ing the men was “a good action” and a “service
repurposed as a slaver in the 1850s and renamed Echo. In the to that Union which I love.” E. Delafield Smith,
summer of 1858, Echo left the coast of Africa with some 455 New York City’s federal prosecutor, joked, “We
captives, but by the time it reached Cuba in August 1858, more than will have to run you for President yet.”
100 of the slaves had died. The USS Dolphin seized Echo before it On one occasion, Marshal Murray asked
could land its illegal human cargo, as depicted above. The ship was Tillman, “Did they beg, any of them?” Tillman
“filled with Africans,” wrote one of Dolphin’s officers. “There were replied, “They didn’t have any chance to beg.”
328 negroes crowded together between decks….The poor wretches Tillman admitted that he had initially thought
looked half starved, and some of them were mere skeletons.” about trying to capture all five of his captors,
Dolphin brought Echo to Charleston Harbor, and placed the but quickly determined that this would not be
African captives in Fort Sumter, where they continued to die. practicable. “There were too many for that; there
“Thirty-five died while in my custody,” wrote the U.S. marshal to were five of them and only three of us. After this
a friend. “I wish that everyone in South Carolina who is in favor I said, well, I will get all I can back alive, and the
of reopening the slave trade could have seen what I have been rest I will kill.”
compelled to witness….It seems to me that I can never forget it.” Tillman became something of a celebrity
Eventually the 271 surviving Africans would sail back to Africa, in New York City and throughout the nation.
but 72 of them perished on that journey. Of the 455 originally One photographer advertised his photograph
plundered from Africa, only 199 returned—and they to Liberia, not “for sale at wholesale,” while Barnum’s American
their original homes. Museum announced that he “will receive visi-
Meanwhile, the officers and crew of Echo sat in prison at tors at the Museum at all hours, and relate his
Charleston, wondering what fate would befall them. The ship’s experiences with Southern chivalry and exhibit
captain was a man from Boston; most of the officers and crew were the Secession Flag which the rebels made out of
American. But in truth, they had little reason to be apprehensive. the schooner’s American Flag; also a Rebel Cut-
Despite the overwhelming evidence, a Charleston grand jury refused lass and THE IDENTICAL HATCHET with
to indict them, which one observer called “a monstrous piece of which Tillman killed the ocean robbers.”
absurdity.” –J.W. William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator noted

TILLMAN BECAME
SOMETHING OF A
CELEBRITY
A SHORT TIME IN THE LIMELIGHT

After his escape from Waring, above, Tillman was so
popular that photographers sold his tintype. But his
fame eventually faded and his later years are obscure.
Census records from the 1870s indicate he resided in
Rhode Island. By the 1880s, he was divorced and living
in San Francisco. His death date is unknown.
that one print depicted Tillman “as an embodiment of black that Tillman belongs to that class of persons who, according
action on the sea in contrast with some delinquent Federal to Southern expounders of law, have no status in a United
officer as white inaction on land.” It continued: “This one sig- States Court, and no rights, either, which a white man is
nal act of colored American executiveness, thus exhibited in bound to respect.”
shop windows and elsewhere to the masses, outweighs any Southern newspapers offered little reaction to the case,
amount of argument or rhetoric—for here is a palpable fact, simply reporting the verdict without much commentary.
directly appealing to their sense of justice, and invested, let us The editors of the New Orleans Times-Picayune took notice
hope, with a potent and magical influence towards conquer- of Barnum’s advertisements for the public to come see Till-
ing that offspring of slavery, prejudice of color.” man, writing with derision, “This enables the public to see the
greatest hero of this war!”
On October 29, 1861, Tillman, Stedding, McLeod, and Larger, bloodier events quickly pushed the story of Till-
McKinnon sued in the federal court in New York City, claim- man’s fight for freedom on the high seas out of the headlines,
ing the value of the ship as salvage. The owners of the vessel and he ended up being a footnote of Civil War history. But in
and cargo objected, asserting that Tillman could not claim a addition to making for a stirring tale of a man battling to stay
share of the salvage because he had been “animated by a desire free, the reception to Tillman’s story and his court case forced
to escape the doom of Slavery, to which he feared, not without Confederates leaders to realize that they needed to maintain
reason that his captors intended to consign him.” But a recent respectability among the powers of the world. The civilized
precedent led the local press to believe that the court would world had rejected both privateering and the trans-Atlantic
likely rule in favor of Tillman and “will make his ebony face to slave trade over the previous five decades. If the Confederacy
shine with joy.” And that is precisely what happened. Tillman wanted to gain international recognition, it could not permit
and Stedding offered gripping testimony before the court. its privateers to engage in a black market slave trade.
And in a remarkable decision, Judge William D. Shipman, a
President James Buchanan appointee, awarded Tillman and
the other plaintiffs a $17,000 judgment in the case. Roughly
half of that award went to Tillman, while Stedding received
the next largest share. Jonathan W. White is the author or editor of eight books, includ-
The abolitionist editors of The Liberator noted the irony ing Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams
of Tillman’s legal victory in light of the 1857 Dred Scott deci- During the Civil War (2017) and “Our Little Monitor”: The
sion—a case that held that African-Americans were not citi- Greatest Invention of the Civil War (2018), with Anna Gib-
zens and could not sue in federal court. “It will be recollected son Holloway. Check out his website at www.jonathanwhite.org.

The setting sun mimics a
shellburst over Benner’s Hill,
east of Gettysburg.
THUNDER AT
GETTYSBURG
“I DON’T THINK THERE WAS EVER in our war
a hotter, harder, sharper artillery afternoon than this.” So Colonel Edward Porter
Alexander, commander of Lt. Gen. James Longstreet’s First Corps artillery, described
G E T T Y S B U RG the shellfire that raged on July 2, 1863, the second day of the monstrous Battle of
Gettysburg. That’s quite a statement, considering the iron hail that also flew on
July 1 and 3. The armies brought 653 cannons to the Pennsylvania crossroads, 372 in
the Army of the Potomac, and 281 in the Army of Northern Virginia. It’s impossible to mention here all
the interesting artillery stories of Gettysburg. Take for example the hand-to-hand fighting that occurred
among the Union guns on Cemetery Hill, or the Confederate Whitworth cannons, breechloaders imported
from England, on Oak Ridge that fired the signal to begin the massive artillery bombardment that presaged
Pickett’s Charge. But the sites described on these pages have always piqued my interest and present a nice
mix of both obscure and frequently visited artillery battlefield locations. And you might be surprised at the
tender age of those who led their batteries into the Pennsylvania tempest. –D.B.S.

DEAD AT HIS GUNS As Confederate soldiers surged toward the famous “Angle” in the stone wall on Seminary
Ridge at the height of Pickett’s Charge, the cannons of Battery A, 4th U.S. Light Artillery stood in their path. The injured
battery commander 1st Lt. Alonzo Cushing was holding his entrails with his hands when a bullet hit him in the head and
killed him as he gave his final commands. The 22-year-old West Pointer received a posthumous promotion to lieutenant
colonel, and after decades of delay, the Medal of Honor in 2014 for his redoubtable courage at Gettysburg.
Barlow’s Knoll
FAKE
GUNS
LOST BATTALION
Head north on the Old Harrisburg Road,
and east of the road, across from the
Gettysburg High School, you’ll see a bronze
tablet marking the location of the narrow
NPS road that threads through a housing
development to the guns of Lt. Col. H.P.
from Jones’ Battalion swept across Barlow’s
Knoll on July 1.
YOUTHFUL FORTITUDE
A shell from Jones’ Battalion nearly tore
off Lieutenant Bayard Wilkinson’s right
leg as he commanded Battery G, 4th U.S.

In the 1890s,
a cannon shortage
hampered the
battlefield’s inter-
pretation, and the
War Department
ordered the Gilbert
Foundry of Gettys-
burg to cast non-
firing replicas of
12-pounder Parrot
Jones’ four-battery artillery battalion, one of Artillery, on Barlow’s Knoll. The 19-year- and 3-inch Ordnance
the battlefield’s least visited sites. Shellfire old amputated the limb with his own Rifles between 1895
pocketknife, but soon died. His father, and 1913. Many of
Samuel, reported for The New York Times those tubes, indicated
and accompanied the Army of the Potomac. by the casting seam
He found his son and wrote an article that runs down both
detailing the awful circumstances. “Oh, you sides of their barrels,
dead, who at Gettysburgh [sic] have baptized remain on display.
with your blood the second birth of Freedom There are about
in America, how you are to be envied!,” read 370 cannons on the
Jones’ Battalion one line. President Lincoln posthumously battlefield today.
promoted Wilkinson to captain.

“The sound of my guns will be
encouraging to our troops....”
First Lieutenant Charles E. Hazlett, as he observed the Gettysburg
battleﬁeld from the summit of Little Round Top, July 2, 1863
Little Round Top was a terrible place to deploy cannons. Nonetheless, 1st Lt. Charles Hazlett
somehow managed to hoist and wrestle the guns of his Battery D, 5th U.S. Artillery to the narrow
ridgetop to help secure the hill. A Rebel bullet struck the 24-year-old battery commander in the
head and killed him as he was trying to assist mortally wounded Brig. Gen. Stephen H. Weed.
BENNER’S HILL
Youthful courage was also on display
on this narrow ridge east of Gettys-
burg. On July 2, Union shells fired
from Culp’s Hill, Cemetery Hill,
and Stevens Knoll devastated Major
Joseph Latimer’s Confederate artillery
battalion. A fragment tore off the
right arm of Latimer, a 19-year-old
Virginia Military Institute graduate,
as he was attempting to withdraw
his cannons from the cauldron. The
esteemed “Boy Major” died of the
wound on August 1, 1863, and is bur-
ied in Harrisonburg, Va.
ACCIDENTAL ARTILLERY
The 3rd Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery Powers Hill
monument on the north side of the
Hanover Road, about 1.5 miles east
of Rte. 15, exemplifies the role fate despite the fact they were not formally HIDDEN HQ
plays in battles. The heavies had been part of the Army of the Potomac. From Powers Hill is just east of the Baltimore
assigned fieldpieces and easy duty near the position of their monument, the Pike off of Granite Schoolhouse Lane.
Frederick, Md., when they had to flee 3rd fired on Brinkerhoff ’s Ridge to the It’s worth the short hike to see the
J.E.B. Stuart’s notorious pre-battle raid. west, which helped prevent the famous three Union battery monuments on
The gunners ran into Union cavalrymen Stonewall Brigade from participating in the summit. Their guns fired to the
and went with them to Gettysburg the July 2 evening attacks on Culp’s Hill. northeast and shredded the left flank of

Confederate attacks on Culp’s Hill on Orchard and the Wheatfield. Before
the morning of July 3. And Maj. Gen. long, a Confederate attack slammed LOCAL
George Meade used Powers Hill as his
temporary HQ when the Confederate
into the battery. Bigelow’s men
conducted a desperate fighting retreat
COLOR
artillery made his Leister House HQ for 400 yards back to the Trostle House,
untenable before Pickett’s Charge. and continued to fire blasts until they
were surrounded. The battery lost four
BLOODY DEBUT cannons, 80 horses, and 27 casualties,
At 4 p.m. on July 2, 22-year-old including Bigelow, who was shot twice.
Captain John Bigelow took his 9th The stand of the gritty Bay Staters,
Massachusetts Battery, 110 men, 88 however, stopped the Rebel onslaught
horses, and six cannons, into its first long enough for a critical reserve Union
battle at a position between the Peach line to form. Check out the pocked
south face of the gray-
painted brick Gettysburg home at
GUNNER EXTRAORDINAIRE 407 S. Washington St., known as
Anywhere from 150-170 cannons took part in the the Jacob Stock House during the
pre-Pickett’s Charge bombardment on July 3, and battle. Some historians believe that
the shellfire lasted from one to two hours. The Minié balls made the more than 70
final numbers for both may always remain elusive, very evident holes in the bricks, but
but without question, Colonel Edward P. Alexan- others think Union canister rounds
der, the 28-year-old artillery commander of Gen- fired from cannons on Cemetery Hill
eral Robert E. Lee’s First Corps, did a masterful job caused some of the damage as the
deploying his guns and coordinating their fire. His gunners tried to silence Confederate
published memoir, Fighting for the Confederacy, sharpshooters. Please observe from a
remains the best primary account of the Army of respectful distance, and be mindful
Northern Virginia’s artillery actions at Gettysburg. of the property owner’s privacy.

HERITAGE TRAVEL &
LIFESTYLE SHOWCASE
Home to more than 400 sites, the Civil Explore Maryland with once-in-a- here’s no other place that embodies To discover more about Tennessee and Known for sublime natural beauty,
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Greeneville, TN
Founded in 1783, Greeneville has a rich Walk where Civil War soldiers fought Join us for our Civil War Anniversary Lebanon, KY is home to the Lebanon History lives in Tupelo, Mississippi.
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such important igures as Davy Crocket a long journey into America’s history! atractions and tours, exhibitions, Civil War Park, and it’s part of the Batleield, Natchez Trace Parkway,
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Plan your visit now! ReadySetRutherford.com from Fort Fisher. VisitLebanonKY.com today. Hills Exhibit Center and more.
Richmond,
Kentucky
“Part of the One and Only Bluegrass!” North Litle Rock, Arkansas, is one of A vacation in Georgia means Experience the Civil War in Jacksonville Explore the past in Baltimore during
Visit National Historic Landmark, only two places to have two vessels that great family experiences that can at the Museum of Military History. two commemorative events: the War of
National Civil War Trust tour, historic bookend World War II: tugboat USS only be described as prety sweet. Relive one of Arkansas’ irst stands at 1812 Bicentennial and Civil War 150.
ferry, and the third largest planetarium Hoga and submarine USS Razorback. Explore Georgia’s Magnolia Midlands. the Reed’s Bridge Batleield. Plan your trip at Baltimore.org.
of its kind in the world! www.AIMMuseum.org jacksonvillesoars.com/museum.php
Are you a history and culture buf? Experience living history for Experience the Old West in action with he Mississippi Hills National Heritage Once Georgia’s last frontier outpost,
here are many museums and he Batles of Marieta Georgia, a trip through Southwest Montana. Area highlights the historic, cultural, now its third largest city, Columbus is
atractions, Civil War, and Civil Rights featuring reenactments, tours and For more information on our 15 ghost natural, scenic and recreational treasures a true destination of choice. History,
sites just for you in Jackson, Mississippi. a recreation of 1864 Marieta. towns, visit southwestmt.com or of this distinctive region. theater, arts and sports—Columbus
www.marietacivilwar.com call 800-879-1159, ext 1501. www.mississippihills.org has it all.
H I S T O R I C
Roswell, Georgia
Tishomingo County, MS
Fayeteville/Cumberland County, North Whether you love history, culture, the Over 650 grand historic homes in three Six major batles took place in Winchester With a variety of historic atractions
Carolina is steeped in history and patri- peacefulness of the great outdoors, or the National Register Historic Districts. and Frederick County, and the town and outdoor adventures,
otic traditions. Take a tour highlighting excitement of entertainment, Roswell Birthplace of America’s greatest play- changed hands approximately 72 times— Tishomingo County is a perfect
our military ties, status as a transporta- ofers a wide selection of atractions and wright, Tennessee Williams. he ultimate more than any other town in the country! destination for lovers of history
tion hub, and our Civil War story. tours. www.visitroswellga.com Southern destination—Columbus, MS. www.visitwinchesterva.com and nature alike.
History surrounds Cartersville, GA, Relive history in Hopkinsville, Seven museums, an 1890 railroad, a hrough personal stories, interactive here’s a place where a leisurely stroll
including Allatoona Pass, where a ierce Kentucky and explore Jeferson British fort and an ancient trade path can exhibits and a 360° movie, the Civil War might lead to an extraordinary historic
batle took place, and Cooper’s Furnace, Davis’ birthplace, the Trail of Tears be found on the Furs to Factories Trail Museum focuses on the war from the home, a beautiful monastery or a lush
the only remnant of the bustling Commemorative Park and the vigilante in the Tennessee Overhill, located in the perspective of the Upper Middle West. peach orchard. hat place is Georgia.
industrial town of Etowah. rebellion of the Black Patch Tobacco War. corner of Southeast Tennessee. www.thecivilwarmuseum.org ExploreGeorgia.org/HistoricHeartland
Harrodsburg, KY—The Coolest Place Williamson County, Tennessee, is rich in Explore the Natchez Trace. Discover Come to Helena, Arkansas and see Join us as we commemorate the 150th
in History! Explore 3000 acres of Civil War history. Here, you can visit the America. Journey along this 444-mile the Civil War like you’ve never seen anniversary of Knoxville’s Civil War
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Hill and 1774 at Old Fort Harrod State House, Fort Granger and Winstead Hill from the Mississippi River in Natchez www.CivilWarHelena.com www.knoxcivilwar.org
Park. www.HarrodsburgKy.com Park, among other historic locations. through Alabama and then Tennessee. www.VisitHelenaAR.com
Cleveland, TN
Near Chatanooga, ind glorious Charismatic Union General Hugh Sandy Springs, Georgia, is the perfect Treat yourself to Southern Kentucky Hip and historic Frederick County,
mountain scenery and heart-pounding Judson Kilpatrick had legions of hub for exploring Metro Atlanta’s Civil hospitality in London and Laurel Maryland is home to the National
white-water rafting. Walk in the footsteps admirers during the war. He just wasn’t War sites. Conveniently located near County! Atractions include the Levi Museum of Civil War Medicine, unique
of the Cherokee and discover a charming much of a general, as his men often major highways, you’ll see everything Jackson Wilderness Road State Park and shopping, dining covered bridges and
historic downtown. learned with their lives. from Sandy Springs! Camp Wildcat Civil War Batleield. outdoor recreation. www.visitfrederick.org
Alabama’s
Gulf Coast
If you’re looking for an easy stroll Southern hospitality at its inest, the Relive the rich history of the Alabama Just 15 miles south of downtown St. Mary’s County, Maryland. Visit Point
through a century of ine architecture or Classic South, Georgia, ofers visitors a Gulf Coast at Fort Morgan, Fort Gaines, Atlanta lies the heart of the true Lookout, site of the war’s largest prison
a trek down dusty roads along the Blues combination of history and charm mixed the USS Alabama Batleship, and the South: Clayton County, Georgia, camp, plus Confederate and USCT
Trail, you’ve come to the right place. with excursion options for everyone area’s many museums. where heritage comes alive! monuments. A short drive from the
www. visitgreenwood.com from outdoorsmen to museum-goers. Fort-Morgan.org • 888-666-9252 nation’s capital.
CIVIL WAR MUSEUM

of the Western Theater
Vicksburg, Mississippi is a great place Follow the Civil War Trail in Meridian, Fitzgerald, Georgia...100 years of bring- Hundreds of authentic artifacts. Come to Cleveland, Mississippi—the
to bring your family to learn American Mississippi, where you’ll experience ing people together. Learn more about Voted fourth inest in U.S. by North & birthplace of the blues. Here, you’ll ind
history, enjoy educational museums and history irst-hand, including Merrehope our story and the commemoration of the South Magazine. Located in historic such legendary destinations as Dockery
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and more. www.visitmeridian.com. conclusion at www.itzgeraldga.org. www.civil-war-museum.org www.visitclevelandms.com
Historic Bardstown, Kentucky
Dstination
Jessamine, KY
Prestonsburg, KY - Civil War & Search over 10,000 images and primary History, bourbon, shopping, sightseeing London, KY–he reenactment of the Batle STEP BACK IN TIME at Camp Nelson
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dates at PrestonsburgKY.org. Home to of Hampton Roads, now available in he you’re sure to ind it in beautiful Site, Wilderness Road Trail & Boones Trace supply depot and African American
Jenny Wiley State Park, country music Mariners’ Museum Library Online Catalog! Bardstown, KY. Plan your visit today. Trail, & antique and lea market shopping. refugee camp. Museum, Civil War
entertainment & Dewey Lake. www.marinersmuseum.org/catalogs www.visitbardstown.com www.LaurelKyTourism.com Library, Interpretive Trails and more.
UNDER
CHANCELLORSVILLE’S
CLOUD
REVIEWED BY ROBERT K. KRICK
T
HE NORTH CAROLINIANS of the
Branch-Lane Brigade will forever be remem-
bered for mortally wounding Stonewall Jack-
son in the moonlit Chancellorsville woods.
The brigade served steadily in Robert E.
Lee’s army, with somewhat less drama, before and after that
disastrous episode. No one had written its history until now.
Brigadier General Lawrence O’Bryan Branch commanded
General Lee’s Immortals:
the brigade (7th, 18th, 28th, 33rd, and 37th North Caro- The Branch-Lane Brigade in
lina) at its formation through the Battle of Sharpsburg. After the Army of Northern Virginia
Branch’s death at Sharpsburg, James H. Lane, a Virginia
Michael C. Hardy
Military Institute graduate, politicked successfully to fill the
Savas Beatie, 2018, $34.95
vacancy, despite being a Virginian in the midst of Carolinians.
Although the Tar Heel troops would have preferred one of
their own at the head of the brigade, Lane remained in com-
mand the rest of the war.
More than two score men, many of them colorful or distin- of the brigade’s two commanders; and a variety of primary
guished, led the five regiments as field officers during the war. accounts in non-Carolina newspapers. Was Branch drunk,
Four colonels went on to become generals. Colonel William cowardly, and incompetent at New Bern, as a colonel claimed
Morgan Barbour spent some time as a prisoner of war and was in the Richmond Dispatch? Probably not—but surely worthy
wounded three times before suffering a fatal wound at Peters- of mention and evaluation.
burg. To the bewilderment of posterity, he signed as Barbour Most important, the book does not draw on the wealth
most frequently, including on a historical sketch of the 37th of primary material in the National Archives about the reg-
(not cited by Hardy) that he wrote. But he also sometimes iments. Due diligence for a work such as this must include
signed as Barber. If there was a reason for the occasional shift examining the important correspondence between field units
to the tonsorial spelling, it is not of record. and the various branches of the War Department. Those files
Given the rich trove of sources available on Confederate contain ordnance returns, praise for officers seeking promo-
units, exhaustive research must be the single most important tion, screeds against other officers by their enemies, and the
criterion in gauging success. Hardy, author of a 2003 book rest of the paperwork tapestry inherent in managing a large
on the 37th North Carolina, worked in local sources with military organization. Ignoring the official correspondence
diligence in preparation of this history. His primary sources of the brigade and its components misses the best chance to
disgorged enough detail to make a good book, but the result reveal the organizational culture.
falls short of definitive because of other sources missed. Those Maps with useful content illuminate the experiences of the
include two large sets of soldier letters in Georgia reposito- brigade. An array of illustrations includes two dozen superb
ries; several dozen Lane letters at Harvard; published sketches uniformed photos from obscure sources.

AN ODD COUPLE
AT FIRST BLUSH, a book comparing

REVIEWED BY RICK BEARD
Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill as wartime

leaders would seem an odd conjunction of two very dif-
eral, but his treatment of his military leaders lacked the
contempt Churchill sometimes displayed toward the
British military hierarchy. Both men embraced and were
ferent men. One was a self-educated lawyer born in poor embraced by enlisted men. Lincoln was the far more
circumstances, while the other was a lifelong politician patient and self-sufficient of the two. He shined his own
from an aristocratic family. One’s military experience boots, while Churchill was what one might characterize
was laughable, while the other had a series of wartime as “high maintenance,” reliant on a retinue of caregivers.
adventures as a young man in India and the Sudan about Both men were tireless, and both at times succumbed
which he wrote extensively. As Lehrman demonstrates, to depression, or what Churchill called his “black dog of
however, both men would prove essential in preserving melancholy.”
two great democracies during wars of national survival. Readers can find more than 15,000 books about Abra-
Lewis Lehrman, a partner in such praiseworthy ham Lincoln and Winston Churchill at Amazon.com.
ventures as the Gilder-Lehrman Institute for American Lehrman’s Lincoln & Churchill: Statesmen at War is an
History and the Gilder-Lehrman Center for the Study extensively researched, well-written addition that offers
of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition as well as the a thoughtful, detailed introduction to “the genius, virtue,
establishment of several prestigious history book prizes, and hope” embodied in two men who, the author rightly
is a retired businessman, philanthropist, historian, and insists, are “to be studied, admired, and emulated for all
author of several previous books on Abraham Lincoln. time to come.”
Lincoln & Churchill, his most recent work, is a detailed
analysis of the wartime strategies and policies the two
men employed during the Civil War and World War
II, respectively. Lehrman is a tenacious reader and
researcher, relying on an impressive expanse of second-
ary sources well-documented in his endnotes, two bibli-
ographies, and a historiographic essay.
The book begins with a helpful glossary of sorts that
details the two leaders’ prewar chronologies as well as
lists of the men that surrounded them and a few key
battles. The author highlights the yawning gulf between
their political experience, Churchill’s self-absorption and
marital enthusiasms, and Lincoln’s self-discipline. More
important than their differences, Lehrman argues, was
their shared “strength of character and force of personal-
ity [that] fueled their will to win in a just cause.”
In 16 chapters and an epilogue, the author examines
topics such as their unlikely emergence as wartime lead-
ers, their rhetoric, their virtues as leaders, their manage-
ment of legislators and generals, their actual experiences
during wartime, and their legacies. With characteristic
felicity, Lehrman describes Churchill’s rise to power so:
“After decades of striving and waiting, fortune would
yield to Churchill’s embrace.” Both men relied on the
power of words—to the author this is “vocabulary as Lincoln & Churchill: Statesmen at War
strategy”—with Churchill reaching millions more than Lewis E. Lehrman
Lincoln via radio and the newsreels. Stackpole Books, 2018, $34.95
Lincoln famously had trouble finding the right gen-

CHARLESTON’S
HISTORIC STRUGGLE

REVIEWED BY GORDON BERG
illiam Faulkner under- that “No place in America has spent as
W stood that “The past

is never dead. It’s not
even past.” Nowhere
is this truer than in Charleston, S.C.,
birthplace of secession and scene of the
much time and energy selling memo-
ries—most whitewashed, others unvar-
nished—of its past.”
After 1865, two competing and dia-
metrically opposed memories of slav-
Civil War’s opening shots. Ethan Kytle ery and the Civil War flourished in
and Blain Roberts, a husband-and-wife Charleston. One was overwhelming
partnership, have done more than make white socially and Democratic polit- Denmark Vesey’s Garden:
Slavery and Memory in the
a stunning contribution to the histo- ically. It sought to redeem antebellum Cradle of the Confederacy
riography of Civil War memory stud- life as it flourished in the Old South,
Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts
ies. They have linked the memories and albeit without slavery. Later, using the
actions of black and white Charlesto- power of Jim Crow laws, a powerful The New Press, 2018, $28.99
nians over the years to the present-day press, and segregationist ideology, a
ideas motivating extremists like Dylann sanitized version of Southern life and
Roof, the 21-year-old man who in 2015 history became the public facade of a dynamic, yet still divided, city trying
slaughtered nine black parishioners as modern day Charleston and promoted to understand its dark place in Amer-
they prayed in Charleston’s venerable the city as an exemplary representative ican history. By studying how these
Emanuel AME Methodist Episcopal of the New South. competing memories were filtered and
Church, a church co-founded by Den- The other memory was predomi- altered over time, their book becomes
mark Vesey. nantly black and politically Republi- “a rejection of historical inaccuracy, a
Vesey was a free, self-educated, black can. It sought to memorialize the brutal rejection of whitewashed memories of
carpenter who conspired to lead a mas- reality of slavery and use the hard-won slavery.”
sive servile insurrection in 1822, nine promises of emancipation to nurture the Germany struggled for decades
years before Nat Turner’s better-known ideals of equality. This memory was fos- before it could admit to the abomi-
revolt in Virginia. Vesey’s plot was tered and preserved by the black com- nations of its Nazi past; South Africa
uncovered before it began and he and munity in public festivals, segregated needed its Truth and Reconciliation
35 of his followers were hanged. His private schools, churches, and oral fam- Commission to help break the shack-
conspiracy ironically helped politicize ily traditions passed down through the les of its apartheid heritage. America
black communities throughout the generations. These memories became has never honestly faced its conflicted
United States, particularly after abo- a powerful source of inspiration and attitudes about race and it remains the
litionists began referring to Denmark power during the 20th-century years of great unfinished business of the brutal
Vesey as a hero. civil rights agitation. Civil War.
The authors use Charleston, the Kytle and Roberts have scrutinized Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, John
site of Vesey’s “trial,” as a laboratory to both of these belief systems in their Brown, Frederick Douglass, and Abra-
explain how it is that “Americans do not historical context by analyzing a pleth- ham Lincoln all cast a bright light on
share a common memory of slavery.” ora of public rituals, memorialization, the injustice that has persisted through-
Charleston, according to the authors, music, and other cultural activities that out our history. They all sowed righ-
“is the best portal to the antebellum evolved in both Charleston communi- teous seeds in Denmark Vesey’s garden.
South.” Today, by touting it as Amer- ties over time. Years of archival research It remains for the living to reap their as
ica’s Most Historic City and draw- and personal interaction with the people yet untapped bounty.
ing millions of visitors to its historic of Charleston have enabled the authors This book speaks to the present as
places, Kytle and Roberts maintain to create a fair and balanced portrait of eloquently as it narrates the past.

WHAT WAS
GENERAL
SHERMAN’S
NICKNAME?
Slow Trot, Cump, Sparky,
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ANSWER: HIS FRIENDS AND FAMILY CALLED
HIM ‘CUMP’. WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN
ATTRIBUTED HIS MIDDLE NAME TO HIS
FATHER HAVING ‘CAUGHT A FANCY FOR THE
GREAT CHIEF OF THE SHAWNEES, TECUMSEH’.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
the hard hand of war and knew continued hostility was
unlikely to bring victory. But its political elite and many in
THE END IN the state’s plantation-dominated Black Belt continued to

prosper and loudly beat the drums of war. By closely examin-
ALABAMA
ing regional newspapers, McIlwain concludes that “Alabama’s
officials and public figures, most of whom had never fired a
shot in anger but who had the most to lose financially if the
cause was lost, seemingly tried not to allow the conflict to
end.”
The first months of 1865 proved to be a harsh reality

check for Alabamians. Major General James Harrison Wil-
son and 12,000 blue-coated cavalrymen invaded the state in
March and Confederate cavalry could not stem the Union
tide and prevent the destruction of Selma and Tuscaloosa,
two of the few Southern cites still capable of producing war
materials. Lincoln’s conciliatory second inaugural speech
upped an already high Confederate desertion rate. This
prompted die-hards to form The Society of Loyal Confed-
erates, a quasi-conspiratorial organization determined to
quash growing anti-Confederate activities and concocting
desperate “twilight of the gods” plans to reinvigorate Confed-
erate morale. Here, McIlwain cannot resist trying to connect
the society with blood money for the Lincoln conspirators,
Northern opposition to Reconstruction, and Lincoln’s sup-
posed belief that colonization for freed slaves was still the
best solution for the nation. It makes for a highly speculative
digression at best.
More pragmatic Alabamians like E.W. Peck were already
colluding with Union officers, hoping to avoid, albeit unsuc-
cessfully, infrastructure destruction. Nevertheless, rabidly
pro-war editors of the Demopolis Herald were simultaneously
denying the reality of Lee’s surrender. The only question left
in spring 1865, McIlwain concludes, was “who would fill the
power vacuum and control policies in the postwar period?”
Any hope for the state’s economic reconstruction, he main-
tains, lay in its rich mineral deposits and the willingness of
Northern capitalists to invest in Alabama’s future.
1865 Alabama: From Civil War to Uncivil Peace
The second half of the book is a litany of poor decisions,
Christopher Lyle McIlwain Sr. missed opportunities, ineffective leadership, and widespread
University of Alabama Press 2017, $49.95 violence. According to McIlwain, all the state’s problems
were home grown and all were avoidable. Blaming Yankee
carpetbaggers was a crutch employed by later generations;
there were plenty of home-grown villains determining
REVIEWED BY GORDON BERG Alabama’s postwar future. There was, however, unanimity
of opinion when it came to the fate of the freed people. “As
hristopher McIlwain writes like a lawyer. As evidence, before the war,” McIlwain reminds us, “designing politicians
C see his 86 pages of footnotes and 50 pages of
bibliography. Like presenting a well-prepared legal brief, he
were using racial paranoia to encourage white solidarity and
racial repression.” In-depth studies like McIlwain’s will give
is careful to leave nothing to misinterpretation. Unlawyer- students of the Civil War a better understanding of how the
like, however, is his fondness for some far-fetched conspiracy complexities of Reconstruction bedeviled both the victors
theories that give his otherwise thorough investigation a and the vanquished. Clearly, the first months of “peace” in
tinge of undeserved mystery. Alabama, McIlwain concludes, set the tone for the state’s
The year 1865 was pivotal for Alabama. McIlwain economic, political, and social evolution even to the present
adroitly describes a state in the throes of internal drama. day. Judging from the convincing arguments herein pre-
Unionists in northern Alabama had, ironically, already felt sented, this lawyer has won his case.

Lincoln: The Man
Who Saved America
David J. Kent
Fall River Press
2017, $13.48

REVIEWED BY
JONATHAN WHITE
Among the thousands

of books that have been
published about Abraham
Lincoln, I have never seen
one quite like this. Lavishly
and beautifully illustrated,
Lincoln: The Man Who Saved
America tells the story of our
16th president through a
wonderful blending of lively
prose and attractive imagery.
David J. Kent is a scientist
who has authored several
books on the history of
science, but he has had a life-
long fascination with Abra-
ham Lincoln. In this volume
he seeks to reach general
readers who are not likely
to pick up a scholarly book
about Lincoln. He succeeds
admirably. The writing style
should engage readers who
generally don’t delve into his-
tory books. But what really
jumps out are the images.
The book contains a wide
array of illustrations—paint-
ings, lithographs, newspa-
per prints, cartes de visite,
tintypes, maps, documents,
and mid-20th-century com-
ics. Many will be familiar
to readers of this magazine.
But they will be new to our
friends and neighbors. In
our modern, graphically
oriented culture, this book is
an excellent primer for the
uninitiated. Hopefully read-
ers will be captured by the
images when they see it in a
bookstore, read the text, and
become Abraham Lincoln
enthusiasts themselves.
“Our Little Monitor”
explores many facets
of the ship’s history,
including John
Ericsson’s evolving
concepts for an
ironclad warship. He
presented this design
for an “impregnable
battery and revolving
cupola” to France in
1854. It was never built.
CHEESEBOX
ON A RAFT
U

REVIEWED BY FRANK J. WILLIAMS
ntil this handsome, well-illustrated, and provocative book, the best

account of the clash between USS Monitor and CSS Virginia was
William (“Jack”) Davis’ Duel Between the First Ironclads (1975). Both
tell a familiar tale of the construction and deployment of the armored warship.
“Our Little Monitor:” The Greatest
Invention of the Civil War
Anna Gibson Holloway
and Jonathan W. White
Kent State University Press
2018, $34.95
The federal government received intelligence that the Confederates were
transforming the hull of the captured frigate USS Merrimack into a casemated
ironclad. President Abraham Lincoln urged the Union to harness its industrial Monitor was celebrated in prints, tokens,
might to answer the challenge. The result was Monitor, which fought the newly and household gimcracks. Crude models
christened Virginia to a draw at the Battle of Hampton Roads on March 9, of the ironclad ended up in parades, Sani-
1862. As this volume’s authors make clear, Monitor won a strategic victory that tary Fairs, and politics. I do not think that
preserved the naval balance of power. Ericsson, who signed 100-day contract with
Monitor sank off Cape Hatteras on December 31, 1862, and the remains the federal government to design, construct,
of inventor John Ericsson’s 210-ton vessel are preserved at the USS Monitor and trial test a ship that changed naval war-
Center in Newport News, Va. Those remains have provided a plethora of fare expected to be hailed as a savior of the
knowledge, and Holloway and White use information recently gleaned Union and the object of ephemera that
during the vessel’s ongoing restoration to provide important details about its included advertisements for alcohol.
construction. The massive ironclad relic serves, as Hol-
Original manufacturer symbols have become visible during the cleaning, loway and White indicate in their worthy
and the tools left behind by Monitor’s crew give us a sense of the men who book, “a snapshot of a moment...that took
lived within its dark, clanking confines. The authors also inform us as to what the lives of 16 men and took the ‘pet of the
is was like for the crew to serve on the unique vessel, and how the turreted people’ down 240 feet into the dangerous
ironclad and its sailors became celebrities. waters of the...Graveyard of the Atlantic....”

CREDITS
Cover: Granger, NYC/Photo
Illustration: Brian Walker; P. 2: Photo
by Dana B. Shoaf; P. 3: From Top: Niday
Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo;
Private Collection/Photo ©Don Troiani/
Bridgeman Images; Courtesy Columbia
University Library; P. 4: The Battle of
Gettysburg, Baraldi, Severino (b.1930)/
Private Collection/©Look and Learn/
Bridgeman Images; P. 6: Left: Courtesy,
Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia
Collection, fra112; Right: The American
Civil War Museum; P. 8: From Top:
Jason Martz/NPS Photo; Nathan King/
NPS Photo; P. 9: Left: Courtesy David
McLaughlin; Right: Library of Congress;
P. 10: National Library of Medicine; P. 11:
Melissa A. Winn; Bottom Right: Google
Earth; P. 12-13: Courtesy Gettysburg
National Military Park; P. 14: Chronicle/
Alamy Stock Photo; P. 16: Courtesy
Southern Historical Association; P. 18:
From Top: Heritage Auctions, Private
Collection/Photo ©Don Troiani/
Bridgeman Images; P. 19: From Top:
Heritage Auctions, Private Collection/
Photo ©Don Troiani/Bridgeman Images
(2); P. 20: From Top: Lathan Goumas/
The News & Advance via AP; AP Photo/
STEEN CANNONS
Manufacturer of:
REINFORCEMENTS
Bruce Smith; P. 23: Melissa A. Winn;
Full Scale, Authentic
MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE!!!
P. 24-25: Photo by Library of Congress/ Reproduction Artillery
Corbis/VCG via Getty Images; P. 26:
Photo by Fotosearch/Getty Images; P. 27: 515 29th Street Phone/www
©Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images; P. 28: Ashland KY 41101 606-326-1188
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Images; Right: Underwood Archives/
Getty Images; P. 30: Top: Library of
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Left: Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG
via Getty Images; Right: Courtesy Daniel
Weinberg, Abraham Lincoln Book Shop
Inc.; P. 32: Courtesy Missouri Historical
Society, Acc# 1992.57.1; P. 33: Courtesy
Daniel Weinberg, Abraham Lincoln The
Book Shop Inc.; P. 34-35: Niday Picture
Library/Alamy Stock Photo; P. 36: From
Unforgiven Nobody even comes close to building
Robrt E. Lee, the
Top: Photo by Marc Anderson; Courtesy
Emily Street; P. 37: The American Civil
Sins of the Su&th, a Civil War tent with as much
Redemptin attention to reinforcing the stress
War Museum; P. 38: The American Civil Rejectin
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America’s almost-war duty reinforcing is just one of the
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Museum; P. 42-43: Courtesy Bill Christen;
P. 44-45: Courtesy Doug Bast Collection,
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attack on U.S. soil tentage the best you can buy!
+ PIONEER WOMAN
Boonsborough Museum of History (6); Mary Hamilton’s memoir of
living rough in Mississippi PANTHER’S Catalog No. 26 ... $2.00
P. 46: Clockwise From Top Left: Courtesy
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Richmond in 1865 to June 2018
HistoryNet.com
126 pages of the best
Collection, Boonsborough Museum of
a vandalized home.
selection of historical
History; P. 47: Doug Bast Collection, re-enactment items
Boonsborough Museum of History; P. 48:
AMHP-180600-COVER-DIGITAL.indd 1 2/21/18 3:53 PM
from medieval era to
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over 60 pages on our
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Museum of History; P. 50-51: Courtesy refundable with first P.O. Box 32C
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Heritage Auctions, Dallas; P. 53: The TODAY www.pantherprimitives.com
Library Company of Philadelphia; P. 54:
From Top: William Tillman, the Colored
Steward, ca. 1861. Lithograph by Currier
& Ives, image no. 79100d, New-York
Historical Society; Georgetown University
Library (3); P. 55: Naval History and
Heritage Command; P. 56: Frank Leslie’s Sign up for our free monthly
Illustrated Newspaper, October 9, 1858; E-NEWSLETTER at
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$ 24,600
THE APTLY NAMED LINCOLN RIPLEY STONE was a committed
abolitionist and doctor who volunteered in February 1863 to be the surgeon of the then-
forming 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the famous African American regiment.
He owned this surgeon’s kit, sold by Skinner Auctions, and may have used it when he
examined the 54th’s recruits. Stone allowed only the fittest men to join the unit, and
regimental commander Colonel Robert G. Shaw boasted that Stone was “picking them
carefully & we shall have a very sound set.” As the regiment’s heroic, but tragic, attack
at Fort Wagner proved, Stone had indeed selected able soldiers of freedom.-D.B.S.

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★ BIG GUNS OF GETTYSBURG ★ FREEDOM BY HATCHET ★

AUGUST 2018 CIVIL WAR TIMES 3

STEPHEN KAMIFUJI CREATIVE DIRECTOR

SHENANDOAH SANCHEZ PHOTOGRAPHER AT LARGE

Civil War Times (ISSN 1546-9980) is published bimonthly by HistoryNet, LLC

Author Scott Fink responds:

6 CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2018

AUGUST 2018 CIVIL WAR TIMES 7

8 CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2018

AUGUST 2018 CIVIL WAR TIMES 9

O entered Ward E of Wash-

FORT NEGLEY SUCCESS

10 CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2018

AUGUST 2018 CIVIL WAR TIMES 11

$1.59 2. Young children, probably students from the school,

PER the young from war’s horrific cost.

12 CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2018

AUGUST 2018 CIVIL WAR TIMES 13

TIRED OF THE FIGHT

Ella Lonn’s career overlapped with

HER TIME and the 1950s. Educated at the Uni-

14 CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2018

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16 CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2018

‘I KNOW ...1940s STYLE Pontiac’s War

TOO Gen. Meade’s quick and

MUCH’ FORGOTTEN HERO

GEORGE GORDON Ilse Hirsch’s innocent

THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL

The British Pattern 1853 rifle-musket,

On April 1, 1862, Major Caleb Huse, one of the Confederacy’s

18 CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2018

AUGUST 2018 CIVIL WAR TIMES 19

CWT: How did you become a Civil War reenactor?

20 CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2018

AUGUST 2018 CIVIL WAR TIMES 21

Mystery of the Lincoln Watch Solved!

AUGUST 2018 CIVIL WAR TIMES 23

CLEAR PURPOSE AND

24 CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2018

26 CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2018

AUGUST 2018 CIVIL WAR TIMES 27

On the Three recent books go

28 CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2018

AUGUST 2018 CIVIL WAR TIMES 29

manifest in Grant’s willingness to tion as general-in-chief plunged him

30 CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2018

A cartoon, far left, mocks the Whiskey Ring

honored place in American history,

AUGUST 2018 CIVIL WAR TIMES 31

32 CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2018

TWO LETTERS BY NORTH CAROLINA

34 CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2018

AUGUST 2018 CIVIL WAR TIMES 35

August 4, 1863 dier, Ramseur, seeing the advantage,

36 CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2018

38 CIVIL WAR TIMES AUGUST 2018

AUGUST 2018 CIVIL WAR TIMES 39

flattened in 1921 by a violent storm. The church was rebuilt

The first months of 1865 proved to be a harsh reality

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