Thanks to a resounding wave of recent public support, the Texas Civil War Museum’s board of directors has decided to keep the museum in Fort Worth, Texas, open, reversing a decision made earlier this year to permanently close the facility to the public on December 30, 2023. Museum artifacts currently in possession of The Horse Soldier Antiques in Gettysburg, Pa., and Heritage Auctions in Dallas, will continue to be sold and auctioned off to endow the museum.

The museum’s current hours of operation will remain the same: Thursday through Saturday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Marcus Richey, son of retired museum president Ray Richey, will continue in his present role as museum director. 

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It was a fear Milton Smith Littlefield Jr. simply couldn’t shake whenever speaking before an audience. Though well-respected, the Presbyterian minister and editor of hymn books agonized about being recognized as the son of Civil War General Milton Smith Littlefield. The younger Littlefield did what he could to squash this controversial legacy, even tearing out, upon his father’s death, the pages of the general’s scrapbook to conceal his crimes from curious readers.

Was General Littlefield really worthy of such shame, however? He had been a rising star in the U.S. Army—a friend of Abraham Lincoln and, during the war, a distinguished commander of African American troops.

The elder Littlefield befriended Lincoln while working as a lawyer and newspaper reporter, and enthusiastically lent his support during the 1860 presidential election. His brother, John H. Littlefield, worked as a clerk in Lincoln’s Springfield, Ill., law office and was later appointed a U.S. Treasury Department clerk.

Elected a captain in the 14th Illinois Infantry, Milton Littlefield Sr. led a company at Shiloh, drawing praise from one of his sergeants for standing “erect in front of his men, during the whole engagement” and escaping “injury, except having about three inches torn from the left shoulder of his coat, by an [enemy] ball.”

In November 1862, Littlefield was aboard the steamer Eugene when it struck a sunken ship and sank in the Mississippi River, about 12 miles above Fort Pillow. While trying to keep passengers calm, the future general was knocked overboard and drifted downriver until rescued by Union soldiers at the fort.

Four months later, Littlefield was sent to South Carolina to organize and lead African American troops. As colonel of the 21st U.S. Colored Infantry, he was attached to Brig. Gen. Quincy A. Gillmore’s staff and, during the famed assault on Fort Wagner in July, was among those noted for “doing all in their power to sustain the courage of the troops and urge on reinforcements” while under “constant” fire. Littlefield assumed command of the 54th Massachusetts, replacing slain Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, and in November 1864 was brevetted a brigadier general.

Erasmus W. Jones, 21st USCI chaplain, would write that Littlefield’s “unflinching perseverance, united with that perfect moral integrity that have so far elevated him, will soon raise him to higher dignities and honors.” The general’s postwar endeavors erased any chance of that, however.

In 1867, he and George W. Swepson, president of the Western North Carolina Railroad, were involved in a multi-million-dollar embezzlement scheme. Having fled to Florida, he evaded prosecution despite multiple attempts to extradite him.

After relocating to New York in his later years, he was arrested for other offenses, including grand larceny and misappropriation of a mortgage bond. He died in Vadhalla, N.Y., on March 6, 1899—his burial service lightly attended, no surprise.

Perhaps Milton Littlefield Jr. had his father in mind with this entry in his Hymns of the Christian Life: “Those who never knew Thee, Those who’ve wandered far, Guide them by the brightness Of Thy guiding star….To that heavenly home, Where no sin nor sorrow Evermore shall come.” 

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

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Finding enthusiastic volunteers to serve was not a problem for the 1st Alabama Infantry at the outset of the Civil War. Young soldiers flocked to fill the regiment’s ranks, with 90 percent of the privates who signed up no older than 25, and its officers averaging 30 years of age.

Organized at Pensacola, Fla., in February 1861, the 1st Alabama consisted of 10 companies, all raised and transported to Pensacola independently. Henry D. Clayton served as the regiment’s first colonel.

During the first few months of the war, the regiment enjoyed relatively easy service. The men occupied the Barrancas Barracks and had their slaves do most of the menial work, including cooking, cleaning, and washing of clothes. They received a daily ration of one pound of fresh bread and another pound of beef, which they supplemented with boxes of provisions sent to them by their friends and families.

Because the men would be paid in gold and silver, the camp was transformed into a gambling den every payday. And, as happened in so many units during the war, disease wracked the regiment not long after it formed, meaning the regiment’s first casualties and deaths were the result of measles, malaria, or typhoid fever.

Although organized as an infantry unit, the 1st found itself initially under the watchful eye of Brig. Gen. Braxton Bragg, who had won acclaim during the Mexican War as an artillery officer, particularly at the Battle of Buena Vista on February 22-23, 1847—famously ordered by General Zachary Taylor to fire “a little more grape, Captain Bragg.” Throughout the war, the 1st Alabama received praise for its ability to seamlessly transition from infantry to artillery and back again whenever needed.

On November 22-23, 1861, the 1st participated in the bombardment of Fort Pickens, Fla. Not only did the Alabamians suffer no casualties, Bragg called the regiment “a well-instructed body of artillery”—high praise from the typically gruff general, who also authorized the 1st to list the date of engagement on its battle flag to recognize the exemplary marksmanship and discipline they had shown.

On March 5, 1862, the 1st was ordered to Missouri. In his official report, Maj. Gen. Leonidas Polk referred to the Alabamians as “Bragg’s best artillerists.” They eventually helped at Island No. 10 on the Mississippi River. After weeks of intense bombardment, Union forces surrounded the Rebel bastion with superior numbers of men, gunboats, and heavy artillery. With its lines of retreat cut and its ammunition nearly exhausted, the 1st surrendered with the rest of the island’s garrison on April 8, 1862. 

Roughly 400 members of the regiment died from either the fighting or disease during its 27-day defense of Island No. 10.

Victorious Federals sent the regiment’s officers to the prison camp at Johnson’s Island on Lake Erie and the enlisted men to prison camps in Wisconsin and Illinois. In Wisconsin alone, 105 members of the regiment died, and most of them remain buried there today. Survivors of the 1st Alabama still in prison camps were exchanged starting on September 7, 1862. According to one account, young girls pelted the Alabamians with apples along the road, although it is not clear if the girls intended this an attack on their hated enemies or as an act of kindness to hungry men in desperate need of fresh produce.

On October 4, 1862, the 1st reported for duty at Port Hudson, La., on the Mississippi River. The depleted regiment entered Port Hudson with only 700 combat troops and a brass band. Less than half of those men were fit for active duty, the rest being too sick to participate in the fighting. The regiment served in Port Hudson as infantry and as heavy artillery during the siege. A small detachment from the regiment served as the Port Hudson “coast guard” operating small boats in the Mississippi River where they kept a lookout for Union forces. When not busy on lookout, the Alabamians used their small boats to go fishing, occasionally with the aid of artillery shells which became improvised depth charges that provided huge catches of tasty—possibly mangled—fish.

On March 14, 1863, as Union ships ran past the Port Hudson batteries, the regiment played a leading role in battering those vessels. According to one 1st Alabama veteran, Edward McMorries, “the scene became one of indescribable grandeur” as “the river and our line of fortifications looked like a solid sheet of electric glare and flame.” Unable to hear their officers over the horrific racket of artillery, the 1st’s gunners fell back on their training, loading and firing their cannons as quickly as possible without even trying to speak. Every man knew his duty and every man did his part. The Union fleet suffered dreadfully in sailing within range of the 1st Alabama’s expert gunners, and the Yellowhammer State boys congratulated themselves on a job well done.

Union forces returned to Port Hudson several weeks later and launched major assaults on May 27 and June 14, along with countless smaller attacks and constant artillery barrages. Members of the 1st Alabama took great pride in their work at Port Hudson, and one member of the regiment bragged that he and his comrades “repulsed with slaughter” every Union attack on their position. Major General Franklin Gardner, Port Hudson’s Confederate commander, praised the 1st Alabama for its “gallant conduct,” saying it was “deserving of highest praise.”

Despite the 1st’s courage and skill, the Federals slowly ground down the garrison. With Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton’s surrender of Vicksburg, Miss., on July 4, 1863, Port Hudson became the last major Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River.

Alone, surrounded, and nearly out of supplies, further resistance seemed futile. On July 9, 1863, Gardner surrendered Port Hudson and the 1st’s officers became prisoners of war once again, but this time the enlisted men were paroled and allowed to return home until they were exchanged.

On November 10, 1863, the 1st Alabama’s officers were again exchanged and assigned to service with the Department of the Gulf. The Alabamians helped defend Mobile Bay, patrolling the coast, manning the heavy artillery of Fort Gaines, and feasting on seafood that they supplemented with produce from a personal 10-acre vegetable garden. They saw little action, their most noteworthy moment coming when they executed a man they suspected was a Union spy. Confederate forces in Georgia needed reinforcements and the 1st Alabama received orders to stiffen the line. The regiment marched north but left its cannons behind. The men once known as “Bragg’s best artillerists” would serve as infantry for the remainder of the war.

On May 18, 1864, the 1st joined the Army of Tennessee near New Hope, Ga. Sherman’s blue-clad attackers gave the regiment little time to acclimate to its new home, launching a series of attacks on its positions on May 25–27. The 1st played an important role in the Atlanta Campaign, particularly at the Battle of Peachtree Creek on July 20, 1864. Nevertheless, Atlanta eventually fell to Union forces on September 2, 1864.

With Atlanta in Union hands, the 1st remained with the Army of Tennessee during its desperate offensive across Georgia, Alabama, and into Tennessee. The regiment crossed the Tennessee River near Florence, Ala., on November 20, 1864. As the Alabamians shuffled their bare feet across the snow-dusted ground, several ladies stood along the roadside, waving their handkerchiefs and crying. Decades later, a member of the regiment recalled that “their tears revealed that we were without any hope of success.”

At the Battle of Franklin on November 30, the 1st Alabama formed on the Confederate right. The regiment had come within about a hundred yards of the Union position when the Federals unleashed a volley. The veteran Alabamians responded with “rebel yells” and charged forward without waiting for orders or bothering to fire. When they got to the Union breastworks, the Alabamians reached over the works and fired their rifles at the Federals at point-blank range. Without time to reload, the sons of Alabama resorted to grappling hand-to-hand with Federals from Indiana and Illinois.

According to one veteran of the regiment, the Federals vastly outnumbered their attackers, but “men have never been made so brave as to be wholly unmoved by such audacity as the Confederates exhibited.” For a short time, the battle’s outcome hung in the balance at the bottom of a muddy ditch. Quantity, however, proved to have a quality all its own, as the Federals used their numerical advantages to force the Alabamians to retreat with heavy losses. The Union army evacuated Franklin that night , falling back toward Union-occupied Nashville, followed closely by the Army of Tennessee’s shattered remnants.

At the Battle of Nashville on December 15-16, 1864, the 1st again faced heavy fighting, serving near the center of the Confederate line on the battle’s opening day and withdrawing only when ordered to retreat. On the second day, the Alabamians once more found themselves near the center of the fighting. They successfully repelled repeated Union attacks until realizing in horror that the Confederate left flank was disintegrating, forcing members of the regiment to flee to avoid capture. On December 24, after a long and difficult retreat, survivors joined the remnants of the Army of Tennessee just south of the Tennessee River.

In 1865, the 1st Alabama received orders to join Confederate forces assembling in North Carolina for a last stand. Of the more than 3,800 men who had once served in the regiment, only about 100 were left—but those 100 or so answered the call. In what would be the Army of Tennessee’s final battle and the war’s last major clash, the 1st fought at Bentonville, N.C., on March 19-21, 1865.

With the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, and the collapse of the Confederate government, the war was all but over. On April 26, 1865, the 1st Alabama surrendered along with the rest of the Army of Tennessee. After more than four years of war, the regiment’s handful of survivors returned home to rebuild their lives and their communities.

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

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About one-fifth of military-age White men in the South perished during the war—a chilling statistic that reinforces the argument that steadfast devotion to the Confederate cause compelled these soldiers to continue fighting despite the relentless carnage. But before soldiers faced the clang of the battlefield, how did they decide to mobilize, and what part did Confederate law and culture play in promoting military service?

Initially, the cause of secession attracted fervent volunteers. Young men who had forged their convictions during the sectional crisis rushed with friends and neighbors to assert their martial fidelity, chanting songs about defense of home, political power, and slavery. But as 1861 drew to a close without a decisive repelling of Union forces, Confederate leaders looked ahead with uncertainty, as many thousands of volunteer enlistments were to expire by late spring. In December, the Confederate Congress enticed soldiers with a promise of furloughs and cash upon re-enlistment, but with only limited success.

Alongside formal legislative efforts to promote volunteer service, Confederate nationalists did their best to inculcate a spirit of sacrifice and duty in the public consciousness. That would include contributions on the literary front, as artists joined the push to convince the population the war was a defensive revolution and not a slaveholders’ rebellion.

At the forefront of this push was William Gilmore Simms, a novelist, editor, and planter from Charleston, S.C. Despite early opposition to the nullification movement, Simms had become increasingly sectional after 1833, even theorizing that slavery was a traditional and munificent institution. Aware the South had a reputation for lagging behind the North’s literary accomplishments, Simms sought to bolster the intellectual credibility of his section while defending its distinctions, including the sunny agricultural landscape and chivalric culture.

In late 1861, as the Confederate government debated the furlough and bounty system, Simms produced a poem in the Romantic style that exemplified the proper manner for a man of the South. The ballad’s protagonist, however, was no Lowcountry gentleman or plantation prince. Instead, Simms cast his vision of a noble soldier as a backwoods warrior, “The Mountain Partisan.”

My rifle, pouch, and knife!
My steed! And then we part!
One loving kiss, dear wife,
One press of heart to heart!
Cling to me yet awhile,
But stay the sob, the tear!
Smile—only try to smile—
And I go without a fear.

Our little cradled boy,
He sleeps—and in his sleep,
Smiles, with an angel joy,
Which tells thee not to weep, 
I’ll kneel beside, and kiss—
He will not wake the while, 
Thus dreaming of the bliss
That bids thee, too, to smile.

Think not, dear wife, I go,
With a light thought at my heart
’Tis a pang akin to woe,
That fills me as we part;
But when the wolf was heard
To howl around our lot,
Thou know’st, dear mother-bird,
I slew him on the spot!

Aye, panther, wolf, and bear,
Have perish’d ’neath my knife;
Why tremble, then, with fear,
When now I go, my wife?
Shall I not keep the peace,
That made our cottage dear;
And ’till these wolf-curs cease
Shall I be housing here?

One loving kiss, dear wife,
One press of heart to heart;
Then for the deadliest strife,
For freedom I depart!
I were of little worth,
Were these Yankee wolves left free
To ravage ’round our hearth,
And bring one grief to thee!

God’s blessing on thee, wife,
God’s blessing on the young:
Pray for me through the strife,
And teach our infant’s tongue.
Whatever haps in fight,
I shall be true to thee—
To the home of our delight—
To my people of the free!

Although we tend to associate “partisan” with political parties today, the term meant “irregular soldier” or “guerrilla” in the 19th century. Simms, who had begun building his literary bona fides with an 1835 novel The Partisan, hoped to connect Rebel soldiers with their Revolutionary War forebears, including South Carolina partisan heroes Francis Marion, Thomas Sumter, and Henry Lee III.

His 1861 poem joined a wider Confederate effort to make secession seem congruent with the American Revolution and not destructive of the union that struggle had created. Likewise, Simms rendered his volunteer as an idealistic pioneer, an equestrian rifleman on the edge of settlement—one who had slain wild animals to “keep the peace” and was ready, too, to slay Lincoln’s “wolf-curs.” In his absence, the partisan’s wife was to remain sturdy, all while tutoring his heir, maintaining the homestead, and offering protective prayers. Simms wanted to make the compelling national narrative of wilderness conquest and republican motherhood “Confederate,” not American.

When the poem appeared in Southern Literary Messenger in March 1862, it had a new title, “The Border Ranger,” part of a push by Simms to present irregular warfare in a wider national scope—beyond merely South Carolina.

To address the Army’s tumbling manpower levels, Congress passed a conscription law in early 1862 mandating service for most White men ages 18–35, and that April issued the Partisan Ranger Act, pulling independent guerrillas into the Confederate command structure in an effort to maximize the benefits of “partisan” warfare while tempering any of its infamous excesses through supervision by the formal military.

Yet what seemed rational for Simms’ archetypical “Border Ranger” would be harrowing for thousands of men and women on this new borderland of whirling violence. Indeed, the poem’s new title reads not only as an invocation of the frontier spirit, but as a plea for faithfulness from those on the Confederacy’s geographical margins. Partisan warfare on the border produced provocative heroes for the South (William Quantrill, John Singleton Mosby, etc.), but it also blurred into bushwhacking and spurred Union sympathizers to take up arms themselves. Southern Unionists, such as the bridge-burning Tennessee mountain men under David Fry, inflicted their share of partisan terror to preserve the United States.

The effort to inculcate a national feeling for the South by Simms, who died in 1870, did not alter the war’s outcome, but the literary story had just begun. As former Confederates endeavored to explain their subjugation, new myths of untainted chivalry in the coming decades would help to solidify the memory of an honorable cause and an honorable defeat.

Literary works present a challenge for those who love history. Parsing an author’s intentions, the context of the time, the allusions and hidden references, and the representation of the truth can seem daunting. But such literary endeavors also offer an opportunity to scrutinize how contemporaries painted their beliefs and assumptions. 

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

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Hiram Dryer is not a name that readily comes to mind when we ponder leaders who stood out during the Battle of Antietam. He remains largely unknown to all but the battle’s most ardent students, yet the impact Captain Dryer had on the fighting September 17, 1862, should not be underestimated.

A New York native, Dryer was 53 years old at Antietam. Relatively little is known about his early years, but on October 1, 1846, during the Mexican War, he enlisted in the Regular Army. Assigned to the newly organized Regiment of Mounted Riflemen, he rose rapidly in rank to first sergeant, and then earned a commission on July 31, 1848, as a second lieutenant in the 4th U.S. Infantry for gallantry at the battles of Chapultepec and Garita de Belan. He served for a time with future Civil War luminaries Ulysses S. Grant, Phil Sheridan, and George Crook. In 1852, the 4th U.S. was transferred to the West Coast, which required the regiment first to cross the Isthmus of Panama and then journey by ship to the Pacific Northwest. Passage across Panama’s isthmus was a nightmare, as a cholera breakout killed 104 enlisted men and one officer. In November 1853, while stationed at Fort Vancouver in Oregon, Dryer displayed trademark courage in volunteering to lead a supply expedition to a group of settlers trapped by a blizzard in the Cascade Mountains.

Dryer returned with his regiment to the East in the fall of 1861 and was assigned to the Army of the Potomac. The early war period was a time of great change for the Regular Army, its leadership decimated both by officers assuming commissions of higher rank in the U.S. Volunteer service and Southern-born officers who resigned to fight for the Confederacy. Individuals pulled from civilian life frequently filled the resulting vacancies.

The enlisted ranks were also in flux due to the expansion of the Regular Army, featuring nine new regiments of infantry and one each of cavalry and artillery. Some of the noncommissioned officers serving under Dryer were no doubt grizzled veterans, but many of his soldiers had enlisted in 1861. Rigorous training and discipline was what set Regulars apart from most volunteer regiments, and the heightened attention they received in skirmishing and marksmanship would prove particularly crucial.

Dryer, who saw service during the 1862 Peninsula and Second Bull Run campaigns, was his regiment’s senior officer when fighting broke out at Antietam. At about 10 a.m. September 17, Maj. Gen. George McClellan ordered his cavalry commander, Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton, to cross Antietam Creek at the Middle Bridge with his troopers and horse artillery in order to provide a diversion and support to the current Union attack on the Confederate position along the Sunken Lane.

A diversion was a sound idea; using cavalry was not. Most Union troopers lacked carbines or training in fighting dismounted, so Pleasonton’s men were forced mainly to hide from enemy artillery either behind Joshua Newcomer’s large barn or on the Antietam Creek bank. This left the horse artillery exposed to long-range fire from skirmishers and sharpshooters. Disgusted that his guns and the others had been sent into harm’s way without proper support, one horse battery commander, John C. Tidball, sought infantry help.

Pleasonton managed to get two companies of the 1st Battalion/12th U.S. Infantry (1/12th) to support his batteries, and then for Brig. Gen. George Sykes, commanding the 5th Corps’ 2nd Division (which included all of the army’s Regular regiments) to send in the entire 2nd/10th U.S. Infantry, commanded by Lieutenant John Poland.

Fierce artillery duels and skirmishing continued well into the afternoon. Worried the Confederates had large reserves concealed behind Cemetery Hill and Cemetery Ridge, Sykes was reluctant to send more infantry across the creek but acquiesced on Poland and the 2nd/14th U.S., and then, at 2 p.m., ordered Dryer to cross the creek with the 4th U.S. and the 1st/14th U.S. and to assume command of all Regular forces there.

Described by a peer “as one of the coolest and bravest officers in our service,” Dryer proceeded to justify such high praise. He first reinforced the Regulars’ skirmish line west of Newcomer Ridge—high ground several hundred yards west of the Newcomer farmhouse. Then, he ordered skirmishers forward on both sides of the Boonsboro Pike, toward Cemetery Hill south of the pike, and Cemetery Ridge, north of it. Unlike commanders who liked to test enemy strength and position by an all-out attack with massed infantry, resulting in extensive casualties—Maj. Gen. William H. French, for instance—Dryer used the superior training, leadership, and marksmanship of the Regulars to probe and press the enemy defenses, his men deployed in dispersed order, offering no inviting targets for Confederate artillery or riflemen.

Backed by plentiful artillery deployed along Newcomer Ridge, the Regulars worked their way forward, advancing on the left as far as the Sherrick Farm lane and on the right, north of the pike, using four companies (at most 130 men) to dislodge Confederate defenders on Cemetery Hill. While forcing the artillery there to withdraw, they advanced within 450 yards of the Lutheran Church on Cemetery Hill’s western slope. But that would be their high-water mark, not because of Rebel resistance, but because of General Sykes. What Sykes saw in Dryer’s advance was an unnecessary risk rather than an opportunity. He found it highly unlikely the Confederate center was simply a hollow shell, only that his Regular infantry faced potential destruction with Dryer exceeding his orders.

Sykes’ orders directing him to immediately withdraw his forces to Newcomer Ridge left Dryer incredulous. Asking if there was any discretion, he was told the “order was imperative.” Gathering up their dead and wounded, Dryer and his Regulars fell back.

At a cost of 11 killed and 75 wounded, they had cleared Cemetery Ridge of Confederates and threatened to capture Cemetery Hill. It would be an exemplary yet virtually unknown achievement. When one considers that the 1st Delaware lost 230 men alone in French’s failed frontal assault upon the Sunken Lane, Dryer’s proficiency in tactics and managing his troops is remarkable.

Dryer went on to receive brevet promotions for courage at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville but, surprisingly, not for Antietam. He apparently lacked political clout, or had no interest in taking a volunteer commission, for there is no evidence he sought or was considered for promotion to higher rank in the volunteer service.

Thrown from a horse in June 1863, Dryer would miss the Gettysburg Campaign. The injury apparently affected his ability to return to the field, for he spent the rest of the war in staff duties. He was remembered by a fellow officer as “always kind and friendly.” We might add that he was also a man of remarkable, daring skill and competence who deserves to be remembered.

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

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Thanks to modern media, Joshua L. Chamberlain is remembered today for his bravery on Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg. He was much more than a Civil War hero, however. A new biopic by award-winning historian Ronald C. White examines the full breadth of the man who went from mild-mannered college professor to Medal of Honor recipient and one of the Union Army’s most respected generals. On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (Penguin Random House, 2023) offers a deep dive into Maine’s native son, who spoke nine languages, served as a four-term governor of Maine, was president of his alma mater Bowdoin College, and, yes, had a remarkable mustache. Chamberlain was the real deal: honorable, dutiful, religious, intellectual, compassionate and committed to the ideals of the Republic. America’s Civil War recently spoke with White about his new book and what he learned about the “Lion of Round Top.”

After writing about Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant, what drew you to Chamberlain?

I was speaking about Grant at the Jonathan Club in downtown Los Angeles and someone said, “What is your next book? And I said, “I’m not exactly sure. Do you have any ideas?” And suddenly this fellow literally leapt up in the back of the room and shouted out, “Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain!” Well, I didn’t really know that much about him, so I took it to my editor and publisher. We looked at the things that were already out there and realized there was a need for a full-scale biography—not simply Chamberlain at Little Round Top, which is very important, but an in-depth book. So that’s how it all started. 

What surprised you the most about him?

To me, it was the whole religious story. His father wants him to go to West Point, his mother wants him to be a minister or missionary, so he goes to Bangor Theological Seminary after Bowdoin College. At the end of those three years, Chamberlain receives three calls to Congregational churches in Maine and New Hampshire, but he offers an address at Bowdoin’s commencement. It is so successful they offer him a teaching position. In all other biographies, those three years at Bangor are literally erased. I mean, they were important for him. All the records of the seminary, which was founded in 1814, are at the Maine Historical Society. I realized that if I was going to devote two chapters to Chamberlain’s four years at Bowdoin College, I needed to devote at least one chapter to his three years at the Bangor Theological Seminary. I was able to find things that no one else had ever looked at before. This is part of his formation, part of his shaping, part of the values that he will carry forward. 

Chamberlain has a strong sense of duty and honor. Where does that come from?

As a professor at Bowdoin during the first year of the Civil War, he saw how many of his students volunteered, how many of them were captured, how many of them were killed. He watched as these 17-, 18-, 19-year-olds go off to war. Finally he comes to the conclusion that this war cannot simply be fought by boys. It has to be fought by men of his distinction and substance. He was 33 years of age with a wife and two young children, so no one would criticize him for not serving. Yet he decides he must do this. His sense of duty compels him to do it. 

When Chamberlain volunteers for the Army, he turns down his first commission. Why?

I love that. The governor of Maine said, “I’ll make you colonel.” He responds, “No, I don’t deserve that title. Make me lieutenant colonel. I’m not a military man, but I can learn.” That was terrific. It shows the humbleness of the man. 

What impact did his religious and educational background have on his service in the military?

People went off to the Civil War in those days with patriotic values and Christian values, both of which would be severely tested. They were not at all prepared for what they would encounter in the Civil War in terms of the suffering and death. His strong faith helped him get through a horrible war and gave him the strength to survive a wound that would impact his life for 50 years. 

How important was Chamberlain’s role at Little Round Top? 

It was a very important moment at the Battle of Gettysburg. Chamberlain never demeaned—he actually lifted up—the role of Union Colonel Strong Vincent. He gives him incredible credit. Vincent is the one who, before the battle begins, says, “You will hold this line.” The same with General Gouverneur Warren, who was the first to see that Little Round Top was in danger because it wasn’t defended. Years later, Chamberlain will become an important witness for Warren, who was trying to restore his rank after he had been relieved of command by General Phil Sheridan. There’s not just one person who needs to be remembered at Little Round Top. In 1889, Chamberlain is at a reunion of the 20th Maine. He acknowledges that many things had been claimed about that engagement. He said, “We’re all right. We’re all correct.” I thought that was really a statesman-like comment. Years later, there’s no point trying to argue who did or didn’t do that. “We are all right.” That, to me, is Chamberlain. 

When things were dire at Little Round Top, Chamberlain gives a one-word order.

He later said he didn’t have time to give some embroidered command. It was simply, “Bayonet.” That was understood by the men under his command. They were running low on ammunition and knew what they had to do. 

Little Round Top was Chamberlain’s first serious introduction to combat.

This is what surprised many people and why I use “Unlikely Hero” in the title of my book. You wouldn’t think of a mild-mannered college professor being willing and able to act with courage and be so daring in battle. When I was at West Point a few years ago, several members of the faculty told me they believe Chamberlain is an embodiment of what military leadership should be all about. My friend David Petraeus [retired U.S. Army general and former CIA director], who thinks Grant is the greatest general of all time, also thinks Chamberlain is a great, great military leader. So it’s not just me, someone writing a biography, but it’s military people themselves who are validating Chamberlain’s leadership. 

Chamberlain is given the nickname “Lion of Round Top.” Does he deserve it?

I think it is well deserved. He earned it. Chamberlain led by example. When the 20th Maine rushes down the hill with bayonets, Chamberlain is out front with them. He confronts an officer with a sword and a pistol [Lieutenant Robert H. Wicker, 15th Alabama] and he convinces him to surrender. That’s an amazing story. He was not afraid to face death. 

What happens to Chamberlain at Petersburg in June 1864?

He almost died at Petersburg. Chamberlain was shot through the hip and it caused severe internal damage. It was a horrible injury that would plague him for the rest of his life. He had several surgeries and suffered terrible pain and infections until the day he died. He never, never complained and never really talked about it. He earns the nickname Bloody Chamberlain that day. He suffered a terrible pelvic wound that probably would have killed another man, then he’s leading his troops again less than a year later. His mother says to him, “Have you not given enough of yourself? You’ve done more than enough. Let other people do it.” He answers, “No, I have yet to finish this job.” The record is not clear, but Chamberlain may have used a catheter for the rest of his life. With the Civil War, we often focus on amputations as a big thing. What I learned from several scholarly articles was that it was really these invisible wounds hidden from sight that were the most prevalent and the most terrible. They went on for the rest of your life. You never got rid of them. Chamberlain finally dies, ultimately from the infections from his wounds, in 1914. He is considered the last Civil War veteran to die from his injuries. 

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

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His wound likely caused incontinence, constant pain and maybe sexual dysfunction. How does he endure this?

Again, he never talks about it, but you have to imagine what this meant for his entire life, for 50 years after the Civil War. That’s a long, long time. I think his faith enables him to accept it. I was surprised to learn that several people would see him in pain and ask why he never talked about it. He was not the kind of man who would do that. Not at all. 

Chamberlain, a strong Unionist, did not believe in the Confederate cause. Yet he does something unusual during the surrender at Appomattox.

This, to me, was so much the essence of who Chamberlain is. He never accepted their cause, but he always applauded their courage by ordering his troops to salute the surrendering soldiers. This can be difficult for contemporary audiences who are revisiting Confederate monuments and wondering if Robert E. Lee was a traitor. I want to emphasize he never, ever accepted the cause of slavery or the cause of disuniting the Union, but he never gave up his compassion for the courage of these men. He could hold both of those views at the same time.I don’t think the salute was a planned thing. I would argue that like his actions at Little Round Top, this all ultimately grows out of his whole set of values. It’s understandable because this is who he was. His whole idea of wanting reconciliation with the South as just a part of his faith, his values, the formation of his life. 

Some historians claim Chamberlain embellished his Civil War record, but you don’t think so. Why?

I found confirmation for several of his claims. For example, John Brown Gordon, the Confederate general who surrendered at Appomattox. He and Chamberlain were really on the same page about what happened. That discovery was quite fascinating. Chamberlain was also accused of changing his speeches. After the war, he was reading all these regimental histories. When he got new information, he put that into his addresses. It says a lot about who he is. I think it is a great quality that he wanted to set the record straight. 

What do you want readers to take away from your book? How do you want them to remember Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain?

As a rediscovered hero of America who has the kind of values that we need to have in our society today. And what is the source of those values? It’s both his classical education and his Christian education. And I think he is a great example of what a person can do, even facing immense difficulty with his wounds for 50 years. He perseveres and becomes not simply the Civil War hero, but the governor of Maine, president of Bowdoin College, and one of the great speakers about the values of the American democracy in those decades after the Civil War. No one spoke more eloquently than Chamberlain about what it meant to be an American in the last part of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century. I wish we had people like him around today. Chamberlain had integrity and duty and loyalty. Those were the bedrock values in his life.

On Great Fields

The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
By Ronald C. White, Penguin Random House, 2023

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John Brown’s body had almost no time to molder in the grave before the first biography of his life appeared in 1861. Since then he has been the subject of full-length biographies, novels, poems, plays, songs, even an opera. So is there anything new to say about the abolitionist firebrand?

For readers interested only in the history-altering raid and not in the complicated life that led Brown to the picturesque town at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers, this detail-filled and briskly written story adds rich context to an oft-told tale. Of course, readers have to get past Dennis Frye’s “Twilight Zone” foreword, an eerily atmospheric sense of place that would make Rod Serling envious. But Frye, the longtime National Park Service historian at Harpers Ferry, understands the power of the landscape and Gilot and Pawlak build on the symbiotic relationship between Brown, the raid, and the town, which culminated in the 36-hour occupation that failed to free any slaves but helped spark the irrepressible conflict that exploded 18 months later.

The authors quickly dispose of Brown’s early life and his bloody exploits in Kansas. They explain that Brown carefully chose Harpers Ferry not merely because it was a transportation hub and the site of a federal arsenal with its thousands of arms. “The mountainous topography of the South Mountain range and the Allegheny Mountains farther to the west,” they write, “offered Brown the ideal terrain to launch his ‘lightning raids’. Believing he could destabilize the slave market in the border South, Brown hoped economics would prove more lethal to slavery than the sword.” Throughout the summer of 1859, Brown’s “army” arrived by ones and twos, slipping by at night into the nondescript farmhouse Brown had leased about seven miles above Harpers Ferry. Gilot and Pawlak build their narrative with a sense of anticipation and dread that must have prevailed among the raiders as they awaited details of Brown’s intentions.

Brown’s audacious plans called for “slipping into Harpers Ferry and holding the town and government facilities while slaves and hostages were gathered. From there, they would strike plantations, gathering slaves and retreating back into the mountains, the sort of lightning strikes that had long appealed to Brown.” Not all in his irregular army agreed; even his three sons and daughter Annie opposed it. But after a vote was taken, all decided to stay with Brown and his plan, finally launched on October 16, 1859.

The book thankfully includes a number of fascinating anecdotes and a detailed timeline, and some historical myths are dispelled (e.g., Brown kissing a slave child on his way to the gallows). A feature seen in other Savas Beatie “Emerging Civil War” monographs, there is an excellent walking tour of Harpers Ferry as well as a self-directed driving tour of pertinent nearby places, enabling modern-day enthusiasts to follow in the footsteps of Brown and his raiders from their initial hideout to the gallows in Charles Town, where Brown and six of his followers were hanged for treason on December 2, 1859. (Ten raiders died of wounds incurred during the abortive raid, and five escaped.) This is a satisfactory examination of the incursion that sparked the Second American Revolution.

John Brown’s Raid

Harpers Ferry and the Coming of the Civil War
By Jon-Erik M. Gilot and Kevin R. Pawlak, Savas Beatie, 2023

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It has been more than 20 years since the appearance of the last truly major study of the 1862 Maryland Campaign, Joseph L. Harsh’s magnificent 1999 study Taken at the Flood. To be sure, it can hardly be said that the campaign that produced the greatest surrender of American troops until 1942 and what is still the bloodiest day in American military history has been neglected since then. After all, a number of fine works on the Maryland Campaign have appeared in the past two decades—the most important being the three-volume edition of Ezra Carman’s study that Thomas G. Clemens superbly brought to print in 2010-2017. Still, the absence of a major scholarly study since Harsh’s work is notable given the importance of the Maryland Campaign, and the fact that significant studies of Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and other great Civil War campaigns have appeared since 1999. Consequently, the appearance of the second in D. Scott Hartwig’s massive and grandly executed two-volume study of the campaign is a decidedly welcome event.

Hartwig takes his title from Iron Brigade stalwart Rufus Dawes’ comment as he contemplated the possibility of the Army of Northern Virginia’s crossing of the Potomac River in 1863 bringing the Army of the Potomac back to the environs of Sharpsburg—and it is fitting. Among the many things that set Hartwig’s study apart from previous studies of the Maryland Campaign is just how effectively and powerfully he communicates and keeps central to the story of Antietam the raw brutality and violence of the battle and the frightful damage the two armies inflicted and suffered. After a preface summarizing the events that brought the armies to Sharpsburg on September 17, 1862, (the 231st anniversary, interestingly, of the momentous clash between Gustavus Adolphus’ and Count Tilly’s armies at Breitenfeld), Hartwig opens his narrative of the battle with Dawes and his comrades as they prepare for the advance toward the Dunker Church that set off the day-long fight that produced horrific carnage. From there, the book follows the battle as it moves from the North Woods to the Miller Cornfield to the West Woods to the Sunken Road to the fields south of Sharpsburg where the timely arrival of A.P. Hill’s Division brought the 9th Corps to grief.

Of course, the general course of Antietam is well-known to students of the Civil War. What Hartwig provides in his chronicle of the battle, as well as the September 19 clash at Shepherdstown, is a level of detail rivaled only by Carman’s work and one informed by access to sources Carman did not have available. Indeed, readers who have done battle with publishers over word and page counts will applaud (and envy) the amount of space Johns Hopkins University Press gave Hartwig. All readers will be impressed with the skill with which he tells the story of Antietam. Any future author who hopes to produce a work that challenges Hartwig’s deeply researched and splendidly written study as the standard work on the Maryland Campaign will have a formidable challenge indeed. 

‘I Dread the Thought of the Place’

The Battle of Antietam and the End of the Maryland Campaign

By D. Scott Hartwig, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023

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Read our recent interview with author D. Scott Hartwig about the Battle of Antietam and the writing of I Dread the Thought of the Place.

A rare gem of a Civil War memorial can be found in the small coastal town of Eastport, Maine. Patriotic and corps badge murals adorn the walls of a Grand Army of Republic meeting hall there, uncovered when modern construction was stripped away. Although thousands of G.A.R. buildings sprang up around the country after the war—and there were many far grander—Eastport can take pride in that its hall is one of the few that still exists. Countless others, in fact, have been modernized or repurposed beyond recognition, if not razed all together. Also fortunate is that Eastport’s G.A.R. Hall was recently donated to the Tides Institute & Museum of Art, a local powerhouse of preservation already involved in expert conservation of the facility.

It is no exaggeration to call Eastport “downeast,” for you can go no farther in that direction without leaving the United States and entering Canada. Despite its distance from the centers of the first European settlements on the continent, covetous eyes were eventually cast upon the region’s lush forests, fertile soils, and rich fishing grounds. In 1745, during the struggle between Britain and France for control of what is now Canada, members of a British expedition preparing to lay siege to France’s Fortress Louisbourg took note as they sailed past and later returned to claim the region, wresting it from its original inhabitants, the Passamaquoddy Indians.

The New Englanders, however, were not the only ones who recognized its value. When the British took a worrisome interest in the area in the early 19th century, the fledgling United States built Fort Sullivan on a hill above Eastport’s deep water harbor in 1808. Lest that defensiveness seem unwarranted, during the War of 1812 a British flotilla led by Admiral Sir Thomas Hardy of HMS Victory fame took possession of the town. It was held in what Britain was calling New Ireland until 1818, when it was returned to the United States.

When the Civil War tore the country apart roughly a half-century later, it roused men and boys of this far corner of the Union from their homes. Maine, of course, made a remarkable contribution to the Civil War. Despite a relatively small population—just more than 600,000—it sent 31 regiments of infantry, two regiments of cavalry, one regiment of heavy artillery, and seven sharpshooter companies into action, and raised coast guard infantry and artillery units to watch over the state’s line of ports.

Remarkably, 72,945 men between the ages of 18 and 45 (60 percent of the state’s population) would serve, purportedly the largest proportion of any state in the Union. That also meant a high proportion of fatalities: 9,398 (3,184 killed or mortally wounded in battle, twice that number from disease). Although the 1860 population of Eastport was a mere 3,850, the little town sent 614 men to serve in the Army and Navy, leaving scarcely a Maine regiment without an Eastport man in its ranks.

Those lucky enough to return home after the war soon came to accept that those with whom they served best understood the terrific impact their wartime experiences had had on their lives. Many served with men from their hometowns, where what kept a man going was the desire to not let down his brother, his cousin, or his best friend. But there were also relationships forged in moments as disparate as those of mortal danger, or those hours of paralyzing boredom, loneliness, and homesickness.

For many veterans, the answer was the Grand Army of the Republic, and though Maine’s population was small, by 1868 the state saw more than 167 G.A.R. posts in towns across the state, with more to follow. The posts served many of the veterans’ needs including ones beyond camaraderie. There were bereaved families, and those whose loved ones had returned disabled, who needed financial assistance and support.

It was also important that those who never returned would be remembered and honored. Eastport’s Post #40 hoped to memorialize Captain Thomas Roach of the 6th Maine Infantry, who had been mortally wounded during Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick’s Second Fredericksburg assault on May 3, 1863, during the Battle of Chancellorsville. Roach had his wounded leg amputated below the knee and would die several weeks later after gangrene set in.

The Eastport veterans initially committed to naming their post in Roach’s honor, but it eventually became known as the Meade Post in honor of Army of the Potomac commander Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade, who in 1869 had been instrumental in stymieing plans to use Eastport as a staging area for a possible attack by the Fenian Brotherhood on British interests in the Canadian province of New Brunswick. The Fenians hoped that in posing an armed threat against New Brunswick, British naval vessels would be forced to remain engaged in nearby waters and would be unable to recross the Atlantic Ocean to defend against an armed insurrection in Ireland.

After a ship loaded with weapons and ammunition for the Fenians arrived in Eastport’s harbor in April 1869, Meade, on behalf of the U.S. government, quickly seized the ship’s cargo and effectively put an end to the threat.

Not all memories were grim for Eastport veterans, as Maine soldiers acquired a reputation for valuable skills other than their tenacity in battle. The number of lumberjacks in the 6th Maine, for instance, made them a handy addition to any army. Their proud commander decreed to one visiting general, astonished as a work party hewed trees in the Eastern Theater, that the 6th Maine was “axing” its way to Richmond.

The Maine boys were also known for their adept foraging skills. When asked how far Union troops had advanced toward the enemy, their division commander at the time, Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, responded: “That’s uncertain; but if you want to know, go out and pass the picket line and go as much farther to the front as you think it safe to do; then climb the tallest tree you can find, and off in the distance you will still see men from the Sixth Maine in the corn field stealing corn.”

Since many an Eastporter made his living on the sea, plenty chose to serve in the U.S. Navy during the war. They served on more than 200 ships, most enduring the tedium aboard vessels assigned to blockade duty, but a number volunteered for the naval shore parties that assisted in the capture of North Carolina’s Fort Fisher in January 1865. Two Eastport men, Edward Bowman and Clement Dees, received Medals of Honor for their Fort Fisher contributions.

Dees, unfortunately, forfeited his medal by going AWOL after the war, but the Navy saw to it that another participant in the Fort Fisher assault, Joseph Cony, was not forgotten—naming the destroyer USS Cony, built in August 1942 at Maine’s Bath Iron Works, in his honor.

Yet another Eastport sailor whose Civil War service was anything but routine was Eastport’s Captain John Crosby, acting commander of USS Housatonic—the first ship sunk by a submarine in warfare. In a night attack by the Confederate vessel H.L. Hunley, Crosby first believed the long, thin shadow in the water was a log, but as it continued to approach his ship ordered the crew to quarters, the ship’s chains slipped, and its engine backed, although it would be too late. Hunley’s spar torpedo struck Housatonic amidships near its magazine, and the resulting explosion sealed its fate. Hunley’s eight-man crew, however, paid for their heroics with their lives.

The restoration of the Meade Post #40 G.A.R. Hall is an outstanding memorial to the Eastport veteran soldiers and sailors, always lionized by the town’s residents, but particularly so in their later years—usually finding a prominent place in the annual July 4 parade. Two of Eastport’s last surviving Civil War veterans were Peter Kane, who rode and fought in the 1st Maine Cavalry, and Fred Call, who served in the 7th Maine Infantry as a teenager. All five Call family boys—William, John, Stephen, Levi, and Fred—served in the Union Army, with all, by great fortune, surviving.

Fred and Peter made the trek to Gettysburg for the milestone 50th anniversary, and on their return, the hometown newspaper reported, “The Gettysburg veterans are home again, coming back with weary feet and tired body but filled to the brim with delightful memories, not only of scenes of half a century ago renewed, but with the realization of the unitedness of this great nation….”

That a historic structure such as Eastport’s G.A.R. hall has survived, and its importance recognized, is gratifying for many.

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

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Diane Smith, an author of several military histories (dianemonroesmith.com), writes from Holden, Me. She thanks Tides Institute’s Hugh French and her husband, Ned, for their help.

William S. Love of the 1st Special Battalion of Louisiana Infantry had little time to revel in his army’s victory at the First Battle of Manassas. For nearly three weeks, the Confederate surgeon from New Orleans found himself “constantly employed” treating wounded from both sides at the Carter House, a Manassas hillside homestead now serving as a field hospital. Finally, on August 9, 1861, Love fired off a quick note to his father, apologizing that it had taken him so long to do so. “I have had charge of some thirty or forty wounded prisoners,” he professed. “I got rid of them two or three days ago and have now here only [Captain] George McCausland who had gotten into a conflict wounded in a duel [and] is not in a condition yet to be moved.”

The Civil War’s first major battle on July 21, 1861, had sent a shockwave across both sides of the fractured country. As the clash on the plains of Manassas, Va., teetered on the edge of an expected Union victory that many believed would quell the Southern states’ burgeoning rebellion, fate played its hand, allowing the combined armies of Confederate Generals P.G.T. Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston to storm back and claim a victory.

Hand-picked to win it all, Union Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell attempted a bold advance that morning against the Southern forces assembled both on Matthews Hill and along the Warrenton Turnpike. Buckling under intense pressure on Matthews Hill, Love’s Louisiana Tigers—along with their beleaguered comrades from South Carolina and Virginia cobbled together in Colonel Nathan “Shanks” Evans’ 7th Brigade—withdrew in disarray toward Henry Hill, where the Southern commanders settled into a defensive posture.

Flush with grandiose visions of victory, McDowell ordered his troops to “press the Confederates.” At midday, astride his horse, he galloped along his lines shouting, “Victory! Victory! We have done it! We have done it!” The Union commander’s euphoric cries, however, produced ill-advised inaction among many of his troops—and soon a Herculean effort by their Confederate counterparts.

Patiently awaiting the Union advance behind a slope near Henry Hill were an unassuming former Virginia Military Institute professor named Thomas Jonathan Jackson and his contingent of Virginia infantry. The subsequent stand by the Old Dominion native would become immortal, of course, as was the Confederates’ remarkable rally on the field, which by evening had the Union troops and hordes of resident bystanders scampering back to Washington, D.C., as fast as the roads would allow.

The Southerners had indeed grasped victory from the hands of defeat. 

A Duel… and a Prince

The letters Love finally sent to his father, parts of which are published here for the first time, were heartfelt and in places detailed, particularly his descriptions of the incident involving Captain George McCausland and a visit to the battlefield by Prince Napoleon, the cousin of French Emperor Napoleon III.

Joining Wheat’s Tigers in Colonel Evans’ Brigade at Manassas were the 4th South Carolina; the 30th Virginia Cavalry, Troops A and I; and a section of the Lynchburg (Va.) Artillery. Poor McCausland, a volunteer aide-de-camp on Evans’ staff, had gotten into an altercation with Captain Alexander White, commander of the 1st Special Battalion’s Company B. Only 24, McCausland was a native Louisianan—considered “a strikingly handsome man,” but a little unwise perhaps. White was a notorious character, having once been convicted of murder during a poker game. When McCausland made insulting remarks about the Tigers in the wake of the victory, White was outraged. To satisfy his honor, he challenged the youngster to a duel.

McCausland accepted the challenge, and on July 24 the two squared off near their camp with Mississippi Rifles at “short-range.” White fired first, sending a .54-caliber bullet through both of McCausland’s hips. McCausland, who had fired but missed, languished with the wound in Love’s hospital for more than a month and ultimately perished “in great agony” of pneumonia on September 17. His body was returned to New Orleans for burial at his home in West Feliciana Parish.

Corporal Robert Gracey was among the captured Federals for whom Love also cared at his field hospital. As Gracey later conveyed to a New York newspaper, his two-week stay at the Carter House had been pleasant enough. He revealed that after being wounded he was taken to the hospital “in one of our own ambulances, captured at Bull Run,” and had been “placed…under [the] guard of Lt. Thomas Adrian and his command of Tiger Rifles, of Louisiana.”

The kindly Confederates, Gracey recalled, furnished him with “more condiments, luxuries and personal attentions than were bestowed upon their own sick. Lt. Adrian frequently and jocularly remarked, as an excuse for this, that his object was a selfish one. He wanted to take [him] to the South, and exhibit him, a la [Phineas T.] Barnum, as a fine specimen of the living Yankee who couldn’t be killed.”

As for Prince Napoleon, he did visit the Manassas area in the days following the battle and shared a carriage with Beauregard, escorted by more than 100 cavalrymen under that flamboyant Virginian, Colonel J.E.B. Stuart. According to one unidentified observer, Beauregard and his guest disembarked at the now-famous Stone Bridge and strolled about before returning to their carriage and arriving “on the bare plateau rising above the Bull Run, at the very center of the action, amidst corpses, dead horses and freshly-dug graves.”

The battlefield excursion would end at 11 a.m.

Winter in Virginia

Desperate for news from home to distract him from his exhaustive duties, Love implored his father to direct any letters to him “at Manassas, Wheat’s Battalion. The letters all go addressed to it into our box are taken out and sent as directed.”

“I hope to join the Battalion soon,” he divulged. “[I]t is encamped at Bull Run, where the Battle of the 18th alto [Blackburn’s Ford] was fought. I hear that we are to be kept to the sea, but I hope not.” Love also informed his father that he had sent him “by the Southern Express Company fifty dollars some days ago. I now enclose you the receipt for it lest you might have trouble getting it. I would have sent it long since….[but] the Post Office is at Manassas some eight miles from here and I could not get them to mail a letter….”

By the end of November, Love wrote his father again about the “very cold” weather where he was staying at Camp Florida, outside Centreville, Va. It was something to which the Louisiana native was certainly not accustomed. “I would have obtained a furlough ’ere this to have gone to Richmond probably to New Orleans,” he explained, “but that being in daily expectation of a grand battle with [George] McClellan’s whole Yankee army, I did not like to be absent from the company.”

By mid-December, Wheat’s Tigers were still recuperating their strength. Now camped east of Manassas Junction, they stored their flimsy canvas tents and built more substantial log cabins to weather the increasing winter temperatures. It had been less than a year since they had arrived in Virginia.

Although, as Love noted, offensive actions in the area had halted for the most part as winter approached, he elaborated: “Our scouts report the Yankees to be advancing in immense force. The battle is expected to take place in two days. Whole brigades of our army are sent out on picket duty and daily are capturing bodies of Yankee scouts and foraging parties. We are all sanguine and entertain no apprehensions as to the result. From all accounts it will be a bloody battle. But pray God will give us victory.”

The only “grand” battle of any consequence nearby would be known as the Bog Wallow Ambush, occurring December 4. Tired of Confederates capturing their men, the Yankees began probing enemy positions and finally launched a trap that produced a narrow victory, with five Confederate and four Federal casualties.

Eager for a Fight

The group that had first organized six months earlier at Camp Moore in southeast Louisiana proved a raucous assortment of men. Recruited from the alleyways and docks in the seedier side of New Orleans, they were at least experienced fighters, just not disciplined. While at Camp Moore, a young private from another company, John F. Charlton, wrote in his diary: “Our excitement in camp with the Tiger Rifles was our first experience being often aroused during the night by cries of ‘fall in fall in’ expecting to be attacked by the Tigers. They never liked us because we often accused them of Stealing.”

Initially they were all adorned with regular-issue Confederate uniforms, but they did wear distinctive wide-brimmed hats with slogans painted on the bands such as “Lincoln’s Life or a Tiger’s Death” and “Tiger in Search of Abe.” A rich benefactor, Alexander Keene Richards, admired them and purchased one company (the “Tiger Rifles”) wildly colored Zouave-style uniforms consisting of a red fez and shirt, a dark blue jacket trimmed in red, baggy blue-and-white-striped pants, and white gaiters to fit over most of their blue-and-white-striped socks. They were armed with .54-caliber Mississippi rifled muskets and had huge Bowie knives strapped to their waists. Stitched on their flag, ironically, were the words “As Gentle As” adjacent to a resting lamb in the center.

A Virginia native, Chatham Roberdeau Wheat was a veteran of many wars, and during the fighting in Mexico in 1846-48 received particular praise from General Zachary Taylor, who described him as “the best natural soldier he had ever seen.” He followed that up with military forays in Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Italy.

In addition to being a born leader, Wheat was a physically imposing figure, standing 6-feet-4 and weighing nearly 275 pounds. He demanded respect from the soldiers serving under him and was stout enough to earn it. At one point, Wheat was overheard screaming at his men, “If you don’t get to your places, and behave as soldiers should, I will cut your hands off with this sword!” It was widely acknowledged that his men feared him and that he was the only person able to control them.

Despite his rough exterior, Wheat interacted gentlemanly with the ladies of New Orleans. One Crescent City girl, 16-year-old Clara Solomon, was highly impressed with the major and was a family friend of one of his company commanders, Captain Obed P. Miller. Before the Tigers were scheduled to head off to war on June 15, 1861, Solomon traveled to Camp Moore in a desperate attempt to see “Maj. Wheat’s first special battalion.”

The giddy teen jotted in her journal:

“But hush! we are nearing Tangipahoa [where Camp Moore was situated]! The whistle is sounding! we are at the depot! ‘What hope, what joy our bosom’s swell!!’ Quickly my head is thrust out the window in search of one familiar, well beloved form [Battalion Adjutant Allen C. Dickinson]. The report! It is seen!! A moment more and we are with it. Our fears are ended. They have not gone! But one received the ‘kiss salute.’ How tantalizing!! He [Dickinson] was glad to see us! Sufficient! We slowly wind our way to the Hotel. We remain there a few moments and then proceed to the seat of action, ‘The Camp,’ accompanied by Capt. White and his wife.”

Unexpectedly, the unit’s departure to Virginia was delayed until the following Thursday. The soldiers were eager for a fight and seemed somewhat blue because of the delay. As Solomon would recall, “When we arrived at our quarters, the first object that attracted our attention was our ‘handsome Major [Wheat],’” who, she wrote, “greeted them very cordially.” Lamenting that Wheat was without a female companion, she offered to be his escort for the evening activities and later chided the major for not relaying his “proper” goodbyes to her at night’s end.

Once Wheat and his men finally departed on trains to Virginia, they found themselves packed tightly in the rail cars, much like sardines in a can. The companies comprising the battalion consisted of the Walker Guards (Robert A. Harris, commander); Tiger Rifles (Alexander White); Delta Rangers (Henry C. Gardner); Catahoula Guerrillas (Jonathan W. Buhoup); and Old Dominion Guards (Obed Miller). It was a plodding, uncomfortable ride, but it allowed for overnight stops. Local crowds cheered them on and often convinced the train to stop so they could pass out goodies to the Louisianans. One gift was a big cake made especially for Wheat.

The trip, though, was not entirely pleasant. During a stop at Opelika, Ala., Wheat’s men left the train and seized control of a hotel, including the bar inside. Unable to clear the troublesome men out of the building, the local authorities sought assistance from the major, who at the point was fast asleep on the train. Wakened, Wheat rushed to the scene, pistol drawn, and immediately ordered the belligerents to disperse and return to their railcars. But for a few men, all obeyed the order. Of those continuing to resist, two ruffians were clearly identified as the ringleaders. A witness, Colonel William C. Oates of future Gettysburg fame, later disclosed: “Wheat shot both of them dead. He told me the only way to control his men was to shoot down those who disobeyed or defied him, yet they loved him with the fidelity of dogs.”

Upon the battalion’s arrival in the Old Dominion, the men made an impression on the soldiers of the 18th Virginia Infantry, one of whom recalled witnessing “one freight car…pretty nearly full of Louisiana ‘Tigers’ under arrest for disorderly conduct, drunkenness, etc., most of which were bucked and gag[ged].”

At Lynchburg, former bookstore-clerk-​turned-Catahoula Guerrilla Lieutenant William D. Foley wrote: “Our destination is ‘Manassas Gap’. We will have the gratification to participate on the ‘Big Fight’ on Virginia’s soil, the first of Louisiana’s troops. The enemy outnumber us, but we are all prepared, and more than anxious for the Conflict. Troops from Richmond are being sent to the Gap. Tiz a place we must and will hold. The God of battles being with us.”

Before they could reach Manassas, however, the battalion clashed with Federal soldiers at Seneca Dam on the Potomac River.

“Our blood was on fire”

Many of the Tigers were immigrants—a large number from Ireland who had fled that country’s potato famine. As the New Orleans Daily Delta noted, “As for our Irish citizens—whew!—they are ‘spiling’ for a fight.”

It wouldn’t take long for them to get their wish. After McDowell’s forces were rebuffed attempting to cross Bull Run Creek at Blackburn’s Ford on July 18, the Union general was convinced it was too heavily defended and began looking for another point along the Confederate lines to assault. He moved his forces upstream and on the morning of July 21 put his renewed attack plan in place.

Just before daybreak, Southern pickets near the Stone Bridge heard a large movement of troops approaching their position. Colonel Evans deployed one of Wheat’s companies and some of his South Carolinians as skirmishers by the bridge, while the rest of his brigade took position on the nearby hills overlooking the bridge and the Warrenton Turnpike. The Union threat at the Stone Bridge, however, was merely a demonstration. The bulk of McDowell’s force was intending to cross 2½ miles north at Sudley Ford.

Soon, a Confederate signal station in Manassas—manned by future Confederate luminary Edward P. Alexander—alerted Evans that a large Union force was moving to turn his left flank. Evans and Wheat agreed they had to shift their lines to meet this new enemy front, hoping reinforcements would hastily arrive. With no desire to abandon such an important position entirely, the commanders left Lieutenant Adrian and a contingent of Tigers guarding the Stone Bridge.

Confusion among the Louisiana and South Carolina troops proved a problem, as the latter unwittingly fired on their Pelican State comrades while navigating a wooded area, and the Louisianans returned the fire. Wheat rushed to the scene to stop the shooting, but not before two of his men lay mortally wounded.

At about 9:45 a.m., Union Colonel Ambrose Burnside’s men advanced with bayonets fixed through a heavily wooded area into a clearing and found themselves flushing out the Catahoula Guerrillas, then hiding in the tall brush. Relayed Guerrilla Sergeant Robert Richie: “[T]he enemy opened on us, and we had the honor of opening the ball, receiving and returning the first volley that was fired on that day….After pouring a volley, we rushed upon the enemy and forced them back under cover.”

The Guerrillas’ advance at the double-quick forced Burnside’s startled men back into the cover of the forest. The Union colonel, however, had six cannons total, and some were lined up to repulse the Southerners. Guerrilla Drury Gibson remembered the deadly fire, writing, “The balls came as thick as hail [and] grape, bomb and canister would sweep our ranks every minute.”

Some of the Tiger Rifles and Catahoula Guerrillas dropped their Mississippi Rifles, which were bereft of lugs to hold bayonets, and unsheathed their Bowie knives before charging the Federals with ferocity. In later describing the conflict, one Alabama soldier called the Louisianans “the most desperate men on earth,” crowing that when they threw their knives at the enemy, they “scarcely ever [missed] their aim.” Worse for the Yankees, those large knives had strings attached, allowing them to be retrieved after they plunged into an enemy soldier’s body.

Vividly portraying the attack’s desperate moments, Ritchie crowed: “Our blood was on fire. Life was valueless. They boys fired one volley then rushed upon the foe with clubbed rifles beating down their guard; then they closed upon them with their knives. I had been in battles several times before, but such fighting was never done, I do not believe as was done for the next half hour[;] it did not seem as though men were fighting, it was devils mingling in the conflict, cursing, yelling, cutting, shrieking.”

One Tiger’s account of the battle found its way into a Richmond newspaper:

“As we were crossing a field in an exposed situation, we were fired upon (through mistake) by a body of South Carolinians, and at once the enemy let loose as if all hell had been left loose. Flat upon our faces we received their shower of balls; a moment’s pause, and we rose, closed in upon them with a fierce yell, clubbing our rifles and using our long knives. This hand-to-hand fight lasted until fresh reinforcements drove us back beyond our original position, we carrying our wounded with us. Major Wheat was here shot from his horse; Captain White’s horse was shot under him, our First Lieutenant [Thomas Adrian] was wounded in the thigh, Dick Hawkins shot through the breast and wrist, and any number of killed and wounded were strewn about.

“The New York Fire Zouaves, seeing our momentary confusion, gave three cheers and started for us, but it was the last shout that most of them ever gave. We covered the ground with their dead and dying, and had driven them beyond their first position, when just then we heard three cheers for the Tigers and Louisiana. The struggle was decided. The gallant Seventh [Louisiana Infantry] had ‘double quicked’ it for nine miles, and came rushing into the fight. They fired as they came within point blank range, and charged with fixed bayonets. The enemy broke and fled panic-stricken, with our men in full pursuit.

“When the fight and pursuit were over, we were drawn up in line and received the thanks of Gen. Johnston for what he termed our ‘extraordinary and desperate stand.’ Gen. Beauregard sent word to Major Wheat, ‘you, and your battalion, for this day’s work, shall never be forgotten, whether you live or die.’”

The Shreveport Daily News described the battalion as “a specimen of the toughest and most ferocious set of men on earth,” and an account that ran in the Wilmington [N.C.] Journal provided input by Tiger Lieutenant Allen C. Dickinson, who had been shot in the thigh by a Minié ball. “[O]ut of 400 which constituted that command, there were not more than 100 that escaped death and wounds. Maj. Wheat was shot through the body, and was surviving on Wednesday, although his case is exceedingly critical.” According to Dickinson, Captain Buhoup and his Guerrillas “fought with desperation.”

Dickinson, a Virginia native who had been living in New Orleans for several years, had been the one to draw Clara Solomon’s interest back at Camp Moore. When news of the battle reached New Orleans, she lamented, “No news about our Lieut. Dickinson.” Informed of Wheat’s fate, she wrote: “Just think the two persons, for whom we care most in the war, we should hear, in the very first battle, of one being seriously wounded, and nothing of the other.”

A contributor to the Richmond Dispatch, writing under the pseudonym “Louisiana,” tried to clear things up, including the status of the battalion’s leader. “The gallant Colonel Wheat is not dead,” he wrote. “I have just got[ten] a letter from Capt. Geo. McCausland, Aid[e] to Gen. Evans, written on behalf of Major Wheat, to a relative of Allen C. Dickinson, Adjutant of Wheat’s Battalion.”

The contributor went on to describe Dickinson’s injury in detail: “The wound is in his leg, and although not dangerous….His horse having been killed under him, he was on foot with sword in one hand and revolver in the other, about fifty yards from the enemy, when a Minie ball struck him. He fell and lay over an hour, when fortunately, Gen. Beauregard and staff, and Capt. McCausland, passed. The generous McCausland dismounted and placed Dickinson on his horse. Lieut. D. is doing well and is enjoying the kind care and hospitality of Mr. Waggoner and family, on Clay Street, in this city.”

The Shreveport Weekly News published the lyrics of a song written expressly about the battalion’s exploits. Borrowing its tune from the song, “Wait for the Wagons,” it had three stanzas praising the Louisianans at First Manassas—the song’s title aptly changed to “Abe’s Wagons.”

We met them at Manassas, all formed in bold array, 
And the battle was not ended when they all ran away. 
Some left their guns and knapsack, in their legs they did confide, 
We overhauled Scott’s carriage, and his epaulets besides. 
[Chorus]
Louisiana’s Tiger Rifles, they rushed in for their lines, 
And the way they slayed the Yankees, with their long Bowie knives. 
They laid there by the hundreds, as it next day did appear, 
With a countenance quite open, that gaped from ear to ear. 
[Chorus]
The battle being ended, and Patterson sent back, 
Because he did not fight us, for courage he did lack. 
Abe Lincoln he got so very mad, when his army took a slide, 
And we jumped into his wagons, and we all took a ride.

A British reporter recalled a peculiar tactic practiced by the Louisianans, writing, “[T]hey would maintain a death-like silence until the foe was not more than 50 paces off; then delivering a withering volley, they would dash forward with unearthly yells and [when] they drew their knives and rushed to close quarters, the Yankees screamed with horror.”

Lieutenant Adrian rejoined the battalion with his scant force, and after being wounded in the thigh fell to the ground. When he noticed some of the Tigers falling back, he propped himself up on one elbow and shouted at the top of his lungs, “Tigers, go in once more. Go in my sons, I’ll be great gloriously God damned if the sons of bitches can ever whip the Tigers!”

First-person reports were published in New Orleans’ Daily True Delta after the unnamed “vivandier of the Tiger Rifles” strode into their offices with letters from some Tigers to their friends back home. The newspaper cited:

“These letters give a detailed history of the Tigers’ sayings and doings since their departure hence, and especially their participation in the battles of…Manassas. The loss among them, we are pleased to say, is much less than has been reported. They have twenty-six of their seventy-six, wholly uninjured, and several more who are but slightly wounded. That they fought like real tigers everybody admits and Gen. Johnston, it is said, complimented them especially on the brave and desperate daring which they had exhibited.

“[Lieutenant] Ned Hewitt reported here as having been killed, did not receive the slightest wound. Moreover, none of the officers of the Company were killed. Two of the Tigers who had been missing for several days after the fight, made their way to Manassas on Thursday last, one being slightly and other pretty badly wounded. The kindness of the Virginia ladies to the wounded soldiers is said to be beyond all praise—like that of a mother to a child or a wife to a husband. Soldiers so nursed and attended can never be anything else than heroes and conquerors.”

Having defied death—and skeptical doctors—when gravely wounded at First Manassas, Wheat would not be so lucky when shot in the head 11 months later at the Battle of Gaines’ Mill, the third of the Seven Days’ Battles on June 27, 1862. His purported final words—“Bury me on the field, boys!”—were to open a poem in his honor. Wheat had been the only one to truly rein in the rambunctious battalion, which formally disbanded on August 15, 1862. Fortunately, their legend survives. 

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

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A frequent contributor, Richard H. Holloway is a member of America’s Civil War’s editorial advisory board. He thanks Glen Cangelosi for his help in preparing this article.

What can we learn from an old photograph, a moment in time captured on a glass plate negative? In the case of the image above—taken by Alexander Gardner and Timothy O’Sullivan on September 19, 1862, two days after the Battle of Antietam—the answer is quite a bit. It appears to be a burial detail, but we will discuss this more later. The granite outcropping and boulders piled on it make the identification of this site straightforward. It is marked today by the unique 90th Pennsylvania Infantry monument of three stacked rifles supporting a water or coffee bucket with the inscription: “Here fought the 90th Penna (Philadelphia) Sept 17, 1862 A Hot Place.”

The last three words of the inscription are an apt description of this spot on September 17. Few locations on the Antietam battlefield saw more sustained combat than what swirled around this point. It is located about 50 yards south of David Miller’s famed Cornfield. The camera is facing slightly southwest with the Cornfield directly behind the viewer. The woods visible behind the group of four living soldiers on the right are the West Woods. Midway between the outcropping and the West Woods the line of occasional brush marks a fence line that ran east-west from the Hagerstown Pike to the southern tip of the East Woods and was used as cover by Colonel Marcellus Douglass’ Georgia brigade in its fierce engagement with the Union brigades of Brig. Gens. Abram Duryée, John Gibbon, and George Hartsuff.

The first troops heavily engaged near this point were the 97th, 104th, and 105th New York of Duryée’s 1st Brigade in Maj. Gen. James Ricketts’ 2nd Division, 1st Corps. They would be relieved by the 12th Massachusetts, part of Hartsuff’s brigade, also in Ricketts’ division. Around this outcropping, they engaged the 13th and 60th Georgia, and Brig. Gen. Harry Hays’ Louisiana brigade, which launched a counterattack that was repulsed with significant losses. “Never did I see more rebs to fire at than that moment presented themselves,” recalled Corporal George Kimball of the 12th Massachusetts—hit hard, too, with 49 killed, 165 wounded, and 10 missing.

Typically, struck soldiers drop their weapons and/or equipment (belts, canteens, cartridge boxes, haversacks, etc.), lose their hats, tear off pieces of clothing to locate their wounds, or grab for blankets to help carry wounded to the rear. Walking this ground on September 21, physician and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. found it “strewed with fragments of clothing, haversacks, canteens, cap-boxes, bullets, cartridge-boxes, cartridges, scraps of paper, portions of bread and meat.” We can see in the foreground what Holmes is referring to. The ground is literally covered with discarded clothing and gear.

There are seven dead bodies and, on the far right, what looks like a dead horse. All appear to be Confederates, but who? Numerous Rebel units passed this point or fought in its immediate vicinity: the 2nd and 11th Mississippi of Evander Law’s Brigade; the 1st and 3rd North Carolina of Roswell Ripley’s Brigade; and the 28th and 23rd Georgia of Alfred Colquitt’s Brigade. All had high casualty counts—the 3rd North Carolina suffered an appalling 116 killed or mortally wounded and the 1st 50 in this area alone. Illustrating just how lethal the fighting was, the 3rd North Carolina at one point had to change front to the northeast to counter an advance by the 128th Pennsylvania, a maneuver in which seven of the regiment’s 10 companies had every officer killed or wounded.

What seems odd is that no dead are visible beyond the outcropping, but they may already have been picked up for burial, or buried, by the time the photographers arrived. That no Union dead appear in the image is evidence that burial details had already been at work here.

We can presume that the five living soldiers looking upon the dead are a burial party, but unlike another set of soldiers Gardner and O’Sullivan photographed near the Miller Farm, these men have no tools. Jeff Dugdale, who produced a fascinating book about Confederate uniforms during the Maryland Campaign, believes the two men sitting and crouching in front of the two men on top of the outcropping are prisoners, based on their clothing. If they are Confederates, which might explain the one Union soldier behind them holding his musket, they may have been stragglers, captured when the Army of Northern Virginia retreated the night of September 18 and put to work gathering the dead for burial. Perhaps the four bodies in front of them had been moved, laid out in a rough line. The other three bodies seem to have remained where they fell or where they were dragged by comrades during the fighting.

It is remarkable that members of the burial detail—if that is what this is—seem grim but otherwise unaffected by the carnage before them. September 19 was warm—75 degrees—and the rapidly decomposing bodies were emitting an offensive odor. A Massachusetts soldier in a West Woods burial party described the work that day as “very unpleasant,” that he “tasted the odor for several days.” And according to civilians from Lancaster, Pa., who visited immediately after the battle, “the stench…from the decomposing bodies was almost unendurable.” The soldiers here have made no effort to ward off that odor by covering their mouths or noses with a handkerchief or bandanna. Perhaps they believed it would make no difference, as the smell penetrated everything.

Because the photographers made no known effort to identify either the living or the dead in this image, we are left to speculate, which perhaps makes it easier for a viewer to remain emotionally detached from the scene. It is horrifying, but we do not know who the dead are. One conceivably is Anson W. Deal, a 25-year-old private in Company B, 3rd North Carolina, who in the summer of 1862 had been conscripted from his family farm in Duplin County, N.C. Deal was initially listed as missing and presumed captured, and his family surely held out hope that he had survived. Months later, though, the remarks on his fate were changed to “supposed to have been killed in battle at Sharpsburg” and then to “killed at Sharpsburg.” He was almost certainly buried as an unknown soldier in a mass grave with other Confederates. His name, and the family that grieved his death, are a reminder that every anonymous body we peer at in photographs from that fateful day had a story to tell and deserves to be remembered as a person and not a prop. 

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

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As Brig. Gen. Benjamin Alvord sat in his office at Fort Vancouver contemplating the operational season that had just concluded, he had every reason to feel satisfied about his first full year as District of Oregon commander. Almost everything he had asked of his forces, especially the 1st Oregon Cavalry, had been achieved. The only thing his mounted command had not done was largely out of its control: “chastise” the Snake Indians, more specifically the Northern Paiute. To accomplish that, as regimental commander Colonel Reuben Maury could point out after two years, one needed to find them first.

During the winter of 1863–64, Alvord mulled over how to make certain the Oregon Cavalry found the Snakes. On February 10, 1864, he mapped out his plans for the coming campaign in a letter to Oregon Governor Addison Gibbs, telling Gibbs: “I shall recommend to the general commanding the department [Department of the Pacific] that troops be sent to traverse thoroughly the whole region” from Canyon City to the California border, and as far east as Fort Boise.

While the Oregon Cavalry had spent the past two summers and falls in the field, Alvord planned to deploy them differently in 1864. “I hope to put two expeditions in the field the whole season for that purpose against the Snake Indians…,” he detailed. “I shall also recommend a movement from Fort Klamath easterly; but as that post is not in my district I cannot speak so definitely in reference to it.”

The plan was textbook military strategy: Alvord’s concept was to constrict the open spaces as the various Oregon Cavalry companies moved toward each other. If all worked well, one or more of those contingents would finally have the clash they sought with Chief Paulina’s band of Northern Paiutes. This differed in two ways from what the Oregon Cavalry had done the previous two years. First, the operations area would be shifted; instead of spending most of their time from Fort Boise eastward, along the immigrant trails, they would operate in eastern Oregon and western Idaho Territory, south of Canyonville, Ore. Next, this would entail multiple expeditions taking place at the same time.

With the three-year enlistments of most of the Oregon cavalrymen set to expire between December and March, this was likely the troopers’ last chance to prove their loyalty to the Union. Alvord was empathetic, knowing the “ardent desire of many of them would be to join in the war in the East.” Since that had never been possible, a well-coordinated military campaign to stamp out any Indian raiders along the immigrant trails was their only chance to prove their patriotism for the larger Union cause.

Raising a Loyal Regiment

It had been more than two years since federal officials finally decided to raise a regiment of Oregon volunteers to replace the departing Regular Army units in the District of Oregon. From its origins, the 1st Oregon Cavalry was different than the Union’s other volunteer commands. Not only would its service be different, the manner in which it was formed also differed from other volunteer commands. While governors in other states played prominent roles in raising regiments by appointing officers to lead them, that was not the case in Oregon.

From the start of the war, federal officials had concerns about the loyalty of Oregon’s governor, John Whiteaker, who had supported John Breckinridge’s presidential candidacy in 1860. Since the start of the secession crisis, Whiteaker had made a number of public statements supporting the South’s right to leave the Union. Those comments culminated with a set of lengthy remarks that were widely circulated in the Oregon newspapers in June 1861. Not only did the South have the right to secede, but, according to the governor, the Confederates had the right “if need be, to use every just means within their power to defend themselves, their property and institutions, against the unjust encroachments of the North.”

As the Army authorized the raising of a regiment of Oregon volunteers, the only question was whether Whiteaker was a Confederate sympathizer or just a local Copperhead. One regional newspaper editor felt Whiteaker was the former, calling him “as rank a traitor as Jolane [Joe Lane],” the former Oregon senator who ran as the vice presidential candidate on John Breckinridge’s ticket. Federal military and political officials in Washington, D.C., agreed and decided they would not work through the governor, opting to maneuver around him. Doing so was not an easy matter, even as his popularity eroded considerably throughout the summer.

The political and military leaders in the U.S. capital had not circumvented a governor before and did not have a clear alternative in place. They knew they needed to ensure that any Oregon Volunteers were led by men loyal to the Union cause, but they were not sure how to go about it. So, on September 24, the adjutant general of the Union armies informed Thomas Cornelius, Reuben Maury, and Benjamin F. Harding they had been selected, “upon the strong recommendation” of Oregon Senator Edward Baker—President Lincoln’s dear old friend—who “relies confidently upon the prudence, patriotism, and economy with which you will execute” the raising “for the service of the United States one regiment of mounted troops.” The three men were informed they would “be governed by any directions sent to you by Col. E.D. Baker, and will under all circumstances report your conduct to the premises of the War Department.”

Senator Baker’s role ended abruptly on October 21, 1861, when he was killed at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff, Va. Upon his death, the challenging task of recruiting what became the 1st Oregon Cavalry fell solely to the trio in Oregon. The difficulties were exacerbated by the onset of the worst winter in a generation. Desperate to put a large mounted force in the field, the U.S. Army decided it could not wait to recruit a full complement of men, if it were even possible. In March 1862, the regiment formed with just six companies. A seventh company was added the following year.

For two years, the seven companies traversed thousands of miles in some of the country’s most inhospitable regions, from north central Oregon to southeastern Idaho Territory. At times, individual companies went into the field; at others, several served together for as long as seven straight months. They rode through mountain passes in the midst of snowstorms as late as June and as early as September, and across scorching high plains deserts. During those first two years, they had provided security for whites streaming into the Northwest, but they had not forced a large engagement on the various tribes they simply called Snakes. Despite their frustration, they were achieving part of the objective their leaders set for them—just not the one most of the troopers had sought. Alvord’s plan for 1864 just might give them the opportunity to finally prove, in the only way they could, “to the world, by acts rather than by words, our love and veneration for this blessed heritage bequeathed us by our [fore]fathers.”

Engaging the Paiutes

Four weeks into the 1864 campaign, Captain John M. Drake had nothing to show for his efforts except growing frustration over the numerous delays. As a result, the column had reached a point only about 125 miles southeast of his base at Fort Dalles. While he and some of his men took note of the vegetation and nature of the terrain they had ridden over, most of that land had been explored before. The fact his column had ridden on existing, though rough, roads most of the way, made it clear they had yet to explore any true frontier regions. Worse, given Alvord’s objectives, the only Indians the Oregon Cavalry had encountered during the campaign thus far were their own Warm Springs scouts. As his force continued southeast, he sent small patrols and some of his Indian allies fanning out on his forward flanks to find Paiute encampments or at least some indication they had been in the area. On May 17, that discovery occurred two miles below Drake’s camp, at the junction of the North Fork Crooked River and the main river channel. A Warm Springs scouting party that Drake subsequently sent out revealed a Paiute “camp about 12 or 15 miles [northeast] distant, numbering 9 lodges, and a large band of horses, 100 or more.”

Eager to engage the Paiutes, either in a confrontation of arms or to verbally impress upon them the cost of attacking Whites, Drake moved quickly. He ordered Lieutenant John M. McCall to make a night march to the site of the Paiute camp with a force including 26 of his own men from Company D; Lieutenant Stephen Watson and 10 men from Company B; and 21 Warm Springs scouts led by Stock Whitley. The objective was for McCall to surprise the camp in the pre-dawn hours, despite having no evidence they had done any raiding. Drake would follow with the rest of the command in the early morning.

At 9:30 p.m., McCall left Drake’s camp on the Crooked River and headed in a northeasterly “direction over an extremely rockey [sic] country for some 12 miles,” before coming to “the vicinity of the camp, where we found our [Warm Springs] scouts.” Traveling guardedly in the dark, McCall’s force did not reach his scouts’ location until about 2 a.m. He sent four Warm Springs scouts ahead to find the best way to close the mile gap between his men and the Paiute camp. The scouts reported they could close to within 500 or 600 yards without being discovered. McCall quietly moved his force as near as possible, noticing the camp was on flat ground, under juniper trees, with the Paiute horses herded together in two groups above and below the camp.

On his scouts’ advice, McCall decided to approach from the west, dividing his force into three groups. Watson would be in the center, as Whitley and his 21 Warm Springs scouts moved to the left and McCall advanced with Company D on Watson’s right.

The crucial coordination between the three columns—made more challenging in the dark—quickly unraveled after the advance started about 4 a.m. The eager Watson, who had the easiest path, quickly outpaced the other two wings. McCall’s men literally bogged down while crossing treacherous ground and then having to traverse “a quagmire” with some difficulty.

By this point the Paiutes, discovering they were being attacked by a force of undetermined size, sent a man out to gather their horses. McCall’s men drove the man off and “immediately secured these, and put them in charge of a corporal and two men.” The struggle through the quagmire and disorganization caused by capturing the horses left McCall well behind Watson’s group, although the Warm Springs scouts were making steady progress on the far left.

After detailing the three men to take charge of the horse herd, McCall moved the rest of his wing toward the Paiute encampment. According to McCall, upon hearing firing to their left, they turned to find “we were going directly under the fire of Lieutenant Watson’s men.” Shifting to the right to get out of the line of fire as they moved forward, McCall’s men “found Lt. Watson’s party all cut to pieces.” As Watson’s men emerged into the open, the Paiutes had fallen back to a defensible position among some rocks on the hill, where they fired both guns and bows. “Lieutenant Watson was the first to arrive in front of the Indians,” one of his men observed, “and on the first fire fell mortally wounded from his horse—two of his men were killed at the same time.”

Others were hit during the ensuing firefight, including five more troopers. A civilian named Richard Barker was shot in the thigh, breaking the bone, and one of the Warm Springs scouts was also hit. Their leader, Whitley, was struck at least four times. One of the bullets “entered just under his ear and came out of his mouth carrying away two teeth, another fracturing his collar bone.”

After emerging on the right, and out of the line of friendly fire, McCall “found on examination that the Indians were completely fortified in a cliff of rocks.” With both Watson’s troopers and the Warm Springs Indians receiving heavy fire and his own group of troopers starting to come under fire, McCall decided that if he was going “to save my wounded men and the horses, my only recourse was to retire to a safe place, and send for reinforcements.” At 6 a.m., McCall’s situation was precarious; he believed reinforcements were nearly 30 round-trip miles away. About 8 a.m., a worried McCall “reached what I considered a safe place” near a spring.

Fortunately for McCall’s force, Drake had led a patrol out of camp at the usual time, heading generally in McCall’s direction. Thus, Drake was already an hour out of his camp when he saw two riders “approaching at full speed.” Learning from the messengers—a trooper and one of the Warm Springs Indians—that Watson had been killed and McCall was in danger, Drake “and a detachment of 40 men” from Captain Henry Small’s Company G “proceeded with all possible speed to the scene of the conflict.” 

Having ridden “at a plunging trot,” Drake arrived at McCall’s defensive position three long hours after the call for reinforcements had gone out. While his surgeon attended to the wounded, Drake rode the extra mile to the scene of the firefight. As near as Drake could tell the Paiutes had left in considerable haste about an hour before his arrival, leaving a large quantity of provisions and some equipment. They fled on foot because the Warm Springs scouts managed to capture the horse herd after the three cavalrymen fell back with the rest of McCall’s command, abandoning their prizes. Drake’s men also recovered the bodies of their dead comrades, who had been stripped and mutilated. The Warm Springs scout had been disemboweled and scalped.

After burning the Paiute encampment with “an immense amount of provisions, robes, saddles and plunder,” Drake’s men gathered the remains of their dead comrades and headed back to McCall’s position. From there, the wounded who were able to ride mounted horses while the two most severely wounded were carried on impromptu stretchers; they slowly returned to the campsite selected by Lieutenant William Hand, finally reaching it at 11 p.m.—in Drake’s words, “weary, tired and gloomy.”

May 19 “was consumed in the necessary preparations for the burial of our fallen comrades,” Drake recorded in his journal. “Their graves were dug side by side on a small knoll south of camp in the edge of the timber and the three bodies were buried with appropriate [military] honors.” The surviving Warm Springs scouts gathered their wounded and dead and returned to their reservation. Drake acknowledged “a sad feeling pervades the command on account of Watson,” who, according to one trooper, “was about the most popular officer in the regiment.”

Once their dead comrades were buried and the initial shock wore off, the camp was rife with talk about Lieutenant McCall’s conduct during the firefight. Most blamed him for the disaster. Drake, however, did not. While he repeatedly criticized his fellow officers when he felt they were not performing their duty effectively, he was pragmatic and restrained in his assessment of McCall’s actions. Drake told Lieutenant John Apperson: “I am not disposed to censure McCall in this matter at all. He obeyed his orders. I did not send him out there to get a lot of men butchered for the mere glory of the thing.”

Drake dismissed camp talk that McCall had not moved fast enough to relieve Watson’s force, noting that the Paiutes’ position was strong and they had already shown their ability to crush a frontal attack. Even criticism that he could have used his remaining force to pin the Paiutes in their position did not impress Drake, who noted McCall had no way of knowing how long it would take for help to arrive. In the meantime, “the wounded were groaning and writhing in their agony, and a man whose heart is not very hard, could not be blamed much for trying to alleviate their sufferings as much as possible.”

Drake’s command spent the next 17 days building a defensible supply depot before resuming the march deeper into southeastern Oregon. Once the depot was fully constructed, most of the troopers continued their march to meet up with Captain Currey’s eastern prong of the operation. While the meeting eventually occurred, neither Drake’s nor Currey’s columns (nor Lt. Col. Charles Drew’s third column) ever caught up with a large body of raiders. In October, after an arduous seven months, the Oregon Cavalry companies returned to their bases of operation—Forts Dalles, Walla Walla, and Klamath—with most mustering out when their enlistments expired during the winter.

“[T]he results achieved,” Captain Drake candidly admitted, “are not all that I hoped for at the beginning” of the 1864 campaign. In truth, it was the Paiutes who had defeated the Oregon Cavalry twice—one of those, near the Crooked River, was the bloodiest day of the Oregonians’ cavalry service. Though disappointed at missing their last chance, to “chastise” the Paiutes, the Oregon cavalrymen had, to a large degree, succeeded in their three years of service. Indian raids in the District of Oregon did not end during the war years, but the cavalry’s roving presence did at least provide considerable protection, especially for inbound immigrant trains. Had they failed, there would have been no choice but to redirect forces recruited for the main fronts of the war, as had happened during the fighting against the Sioux in Minnesota and the Dakota Territory in 1862.

There would be no national coverage of romanticized raids as there would be for Confederates such as J.E.B. Stuart or Union leaders like Benjamin Grierson. After gathering reports from several Oregon Cavalry officers in 1866, Cyrus A. Reed, the state’s adjutant general, concluded that even though serving in the Pacific Northwest was different than service elsewhere during the Civil War, the Oregon troopers were “ready and willing…to imperil lives in their country’s cause.”

Noted Reed: “[O]ur troops have not been idle; that a large scope of our country has been explored, which is now being settled under their protection, metals brought into circulation, and, I can say without fear of contradiction, that for long, and tedious marches, excessive privation and hardship, that our troops can produce as fair a record as any; still they have encountered a sufficient number of hostile Indians in every conceivable phase of attack to demonstrate how ready and willing they were to imperil lives in their country’s cause.”

Not long after the Oregon Cavalry’s defeat near the Crooked River, one of Drake’s men wrote to a Portland newspaper, observing bitterly that “though public opinion did not so vote, it was just as deserving of praise to die here in the discharge of one’s duty as it would have been to fall at Chickamauga or Gettysburg.” This was their war. 

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

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James Robbins Jewell, a frequent America’s Civil War contributor, writes from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. This article is adapted from his latest book Agents of Empire: The First Oregon Cavalry and the Opening of the Interior Pacific Northwest During the Civil War (University of Nebraska Press, 2023).

In 2002, I ventured to Culpeper, Va., to satisfy a particular quest of mine: to explore the route that Brig. Gen. Evander Law’s Alabama Brigade, in Maj. Gen. John Bell Hood’s Division, undertook from Raccoon Ford to Gettysburg in June 1863. Hood’s command was present at the massive cavalry reviews that Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, the Army of Northern Virginia Cavalry Corps’ commander, conducted in the vicinity of Brandy Station on June 5 and 8.

Leaving the crass commercial sprawl of the I-95 corridor and Spotsylvania County, I traveled west on Virginia State Route 3 to the vast open space of Culpeper County. Since first visiting Culpeper in the early 1990s, I could not help but feel the county seat was a somewhat odd place, suffering perhaps from an identity crisis or cultural amnesia. It appeared to be a town lost in time, not knowing how to, or not interested in, capitalizing on heritage tourism. Although Culpeper was not unique, the song remained the same in many historic towns in Virginia and beyond. But Culpeper had been so significant in the war.

The town and surrounding area held a wealth of history that had not been tastefully capitalized on. Perhaps it was lofty idealism on my part, sprinkled with unreasonable economic considerations.

The architecture of Lt. Gen. A.P. Hill’s hometown was impressive and hopefully a future anchor for downtown redevelopment. One could see the potential of investing in history, especially in the wake of Ken Burns’ pop-culture phenomenon, The Civil War.

Just north and east of Culpeper is the battlefield of Brandy Station—known as the largest cavalry battle in the war (though folks heavily interested in the 1864 cavalry battle at Trevilian Station, Va., might argue otherwise). Of course, as many know, Brandy Station has the often-common layers of Civil War history—from Maj. Gen. John Pope’s 1862 Federal occupation to the massive 1863 battles, to the grand encampment of the Army of the Potomac, to nearby Kelly’s Ford, Rappahannock Station, Cedar Mountain, and so on. It is indeed a target-rich environment, as all these sites are within a few miles of each other.

Many modern preservation battles have been fought here as well. In the past 40 years, the county has been on the front-line of the see-saw preservation saga. Because Culpeper is located on the U.S. Route 29 highway—which provides a corridor for quicker ingress and egress, thus accommodating the growing Washington, D.C., regional commuting population movement in that direction—developers have long salivated over exploiting the area. Traditionally, many members of the Culpeper Board of Supervisors have not exactly gone out of their way to care for their historic pearl, as their voting records will attest.

Despite the constant development hurdles, much property has been protected through the yeoman service of long-term Culpeper–Brandy Station advocate Clark “Bud” Hall. The founder of the Brandy Station Foundation has fought much for the battlefield land around Culpeper —from thwarting a proposed Formula 1 racetrack in the mid-1990s to efforts by Southern California land developers looking to exploit and radically change the area.

Until 1987, not a single acre of Brandy Station had been saved. Since then, the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites (APCWS), which became the Civil War Trust (now the American Battlefield Trust), and others have saved 1,872 acres of the Brandy Station battlefield, including Fleetwood Hill, the site of J.E.B. Stuart’s headquarters and the epicenter of the battle. Because the battle was so massive, and substantially a cavalry fight, it covers a lot of ground—more than 10,000 acres.

The Brandy Station preservation issue begs reoccurring questions: How much land needs to be saved? Why should it be saved? How does one quantify preservation? Who benefits from it? Time is dwindling to save this vast historic and natural area from the advancing Washington, D.C., commuter traffic and population. The area is indeed fragile.

On my 2002 trip to Culpeper, many of the historic sites were threatened, and I was concerned I perhaps would never get to see them. Yet my schedule dictated a fast pace, negating extensive exploration—always a big draw when traveling into history in the Old Dominion. My focus this time was on Law’s Yellowhammer Brigade in June 1863 at Brandy Station.

A Massive Mounted Force

Law’s Brigade camped with John Bell Hood’s Division southeast of Culpeper, near Pony Mountain and paralleling the Fredericksburg Pike (modern-day Virginia Route 3), from June 5 through June 15.

A soldier in Hood’s Division wrote of the town: “Once more we stand with shattered walls of Culpeper, and again our line of operations points onward to the Potomac….Shaken by the shock of twenty battles, mutilated by four barbaric invasions, her sanctuaries defiled, devastated by pestilence and famine and the citizens driven from their hearths depending on God alone for food….”

In early June 1863, J.E.B. Stuart had assembled a force of 10,000 troopers around Culpeper. The size of a mounted force that large made me wonder about the forage and logistics of the horse and mule element of Lee’s army; it was a part of military strategy of which I often feel ignorant.

Peter Wellington Alexander, the popular partisan reporter from The Savannah Republican newspaper, would write about forage and logistics of equestrian sustenance while at Culpeper: 

“The number of horses [and mules] in this army, including the cavalry, artillery, quartermaster’s department, and field and staff, is not far from 35,000….To supply these horses with the usual rations of corn and hay, would require 7,500 bushels or 420,000 pounds of the former and 490,000 pounds of the latter, per day. The labor and expense of supplying so large a quantity of forage are necessarily very heavy.

“Fortunately for us, as well as for the horses, neither army has occupied this part of the State since last fall, and consequently the supply of grass, clover and timothy is abundant, otherwise it would be impossible to subsist so many animals with our limited wagon and railroad transportation, and at a time of so much scarcity as the present. You will be surprised to hear, therefore, that the horses receive no hay at all, and very seldom and fodder, and only one third the usual ration of corn. And yet I have never seen them in better condition.

“It is reported that the grazing in the counties between the Rappahannock and the Upper Potomac is equally as good as it is in this vicinity. Many of the farms have been abandoned, and much of the fencing destroyed, but it is believed that the supply of grass, though not as abundant as in times of peace, is ample for our wants, should the army advance. The farmers are allowed ten cents per day for the grazing of each horse, which would make the total cost of grazing 35,000 horses, $3,500 per day.”

That account underlines the logic of necessity for Lee to move his army to another region to survive. I have often overshadowed the Confederate desire for supplies as a major reason for their movement north in 1863; however, the mathematical logic illustrated by Alexander’s account partially illuminates the hard realities of supply and logistics.

On June 5, and three days later, Stuart conducted massive cavalry reviews near Culpeper. Hood’s Division attended both events; General Robert E. Lee attended the latter.

A Southern soldier-reporter in Hood’s Division said of the June 5 equestrian spectacle: “It was an imposing sight. One hundred and forty-four companies passed in review in the most splendid order. I counted twenty-six stands of colors, exclusive of those belonging to Stuart’s horse-artillery. After the review there was a sham fight, in which the artillery fired over one hundred and sixty rounds, and the cavalry made several brilliant charges. The horses were generally good, and everything indicated a good degree of discipline. Many ladies, blooming in health and beauty, were present. Gen. Hood marched his whole division out to witness the review.”

Such accounts always spur my imagination and whet my appetite to travel back in time. It is hard to fathom what 10,000 cavalrymen would look like thundering ahead. To what can we truly compare the sound of 40,000 charging hooves?

“On the 8th of June General Lee ordered a review of the whole of General Stuart’s Corps,” recalled Robert T. Cole, the 4th Alabama’s adjutant. “The 4th…was present and witnessed the grandest and most spectacular display of the largest body of cavalry they had ever seen massed on one field. General Stuart was in all his glory. Mr. Davis, his cabinet, and a large number of ladies from Richmond and the surrounding country were among the spectators.”

Wrote one of Hood’s infantrymen: “Yesterday we had a great review. Thousands of cavalry and infantry were upon the ground. The infantry rested on their arms and the cavalry pranced and maneuvered over the field to the delight of about 500 young and thoughtless beauties. The cavalry looked fine with the Prince of showy men at their head, dressed with gold and yellow trappings glistening on the plain grey surface like fire-flies on a darkening night. They were essentially a collection of pretty men, dressed in their best, while the poor, tattered, worn and tired infantry received not one smile from the light-hearted beauties who were out on that day….The cavalry parade was a beautiful sight, but I have no patience for such tomfooleries.”

I could relate somewhat to that soldier’s words; in my reenacting days, the grimy, hardcore, authentic types rarely got the attention of the fairer sex—but the cavalry did, especially if they wore “glittery” things.

“A Sham Battle”

Alexander, usually writing under the acronym “PWA”, was a notorious Stuart critic. On June 8 he penned an article that would appear in the June 15 Savannah Republican, declaring: “Gen. Stuart has assembled a heavy cavalry force here….Some of the ladies adorned him and his horse with flowers, and in this condition he presented himself to General Lee, who, it is reported, having surveyed him from head to foot, quietly remarked: ‘Do you know General, that Burnside left Washington in like trim for the first battle of Manassas. I hope your fate may not be like his.’ Unfortunately, Stuart was too much occupied with his flowers to take the hint.”

That evening, observed Cole, “General Stuart entertained his visitors with a sham battle. To several members of the 4th Alabama there was only one thing to mar the occasion—the absence of the dashing Alabama artillerist of Stuart’s Horse Artillery, John Pelham, who was killed leading a cavalry charge [at Kelly’s Ford] only a few miles from where we then were, on the 17th of March 1863.”

Continued Cole: “That night the little village of Culpeper was filled to overflowing with beautiful women and brave men, where a dance…inaugurated by the cavalry continued until long after we infantry had retired…”

Early the next morning, true fighting broke out at Brandy Station, although Hood’s Division was held back in a concealed support position near Pony Mountain. Although the Federal horsemen were repelled after a hard-fought clash, Lee’s troop concentration at Culpeper had been revealed. Wrote Alexander: “Lee’s flank movement, like a coal of fire on the terrapin’s back, has had the effect to put [Hooker’s Army of the Potomac] in motion….”

The Gettysburg Campaign had begun.

Visiting Culpeper last October, I was struck by the new sense of community building with a historic bent. As I drove by the nearby fields of Brandy Station, it felt good to know much is now protected and that a new state park incorporating neighboring Brandy Station and Cedar Mountain is being developed. It’s the kind of development I love to see. I thought of Bud Hall, whose incredible efforts over the years have helped bring this park to fruition. Without him, so much would have been lost, denying me and others the opportunity to easily imagine the historic events that had transpired there, such as those glamorous Confederate cavalry reviews of June 5 and 8. 

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

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Condemning slavery was a dangerous business in the 19th century. As a small, vocal, and growing group of Americans began to agitate in favor of abolition in the 1830s, they were often met with mob violence.

The attacks sometimes made headlines. William Lloyd Garrison was dragged through the streets of Boston by a mob in 1831, and preacher and newspaper editor Elijah Lovejoy was shot and murdered during a shootout with an anti-abolition mob in 1837. The abolitionist-funded Pennsylvania Hall was burned to the ground by arsonists only days after it opened in 1838. For many abolition evangelists, however, violence and threats were merely a fact of life. In an 1840 letter to abolitionist leader Theodore Dwight Weld, one traveling lecturer noted an uptick in violence but remarked wearily, “I have not reported them to any of the papers because I am tired of [reading] about them….”

Abolitionists were quick to argue their traveling lecturers and newspapers should be protected by freedom of speech and the press guaranteed by the Constitution. That included Cassius Marcellus Clay, scion of one of the most influential slaveholding families in Kentucky, who had embraced abolitionism while studying at Yale. Although Clay supported a more gradual approach than radicals like Garrison, his politics generated many enemies in his home state. Undeterred, he began publishing an anti-slavery newspaper, True American, in Lexington in 1845.

When a group of men in Lexington met and demanded he cease publication, Clay responded with venom: “Go tell your secret conclave of cowardly assassins that C.M. Clay knows his rights and how to defend them.”

A second meeting, held two days later, would be attended by more than a thousand residents. Thomas F. Marshall, a local lawyer and nephew of former Chief Justice John Marshall, was asked to address the crowd and outline a legal pretext for shutting Clay down. Marshall offered a rousing, remarkably explicit justification for vigilante action against abolitionists. Though he could cite no specific law, Marshall succeded in giving the crowd’s planned suppression of Clay a veneer of legal legitimacy by highlighting the danger abolitionists supposedly posed to a slave society. The Lexington community, he argued, had an inalienable right to defend itself against Clay’s incendiary writing:

A formidable party has arisen within a few years in the United States….They aim at the Abolition of Slavery in America and halt not at the means. They are organized, active, united in pursuit of this object, and desperately fanatical. They have found their way into the National Legislature, and already exercise a threatening influence there. They command a powerful press in the United States. They have among them a burning zeal, commanding talent, and a large amount of political influence and monied capital….They maintain that the negro slave here is an American born, entitled to the full benefits and blessings of republican freedom, under the Declaration of Independence, which freed all of American birth. They maintain for him the right of insurrection and exhort him to its exercise.…

In proceeding by force and without judicial process, to arrest the action of a free citizen, to interfere in any degree with his private property, and if the necessity of the case and the desperation of the man require it, to proceed to extremities against his person, we owe it to our own fame, and the good name of our community, to set forth the facts upon which rises in our justification the highest of all laws, the law of self defense and preservation from great and manifest danger and injury.…

Such a man and such a course is no longer tolerable or consistent with the character or safety of this community. With the power of a press, with education, fortune, talent, sustained by a powerful party…who have made this bold experiment in Kentucky through him, the negroes might well, as we have strong reason to believe they do, look to him as a deliverer. On the frontier of slavery, with three free states fronting and touching us along a border of seven hundred miles, we are peculiarly exposed to the assaults of abolition. The plunder of our property, the kidnapping, stealing, and abduction of our slaves, is a light evil in comparison with planting a seminary of their infernal doctrines in the very heart of our domestic slave population. Communities may be endangered as well as single individuals. A great and impending danger over the life or personal safety of a single man, justifies the employment of his own force immediately in his own defense, and to any extent that may be necessary for his protection….

Our laws may punish when the offense shall have been consummated; but they have provided no remedial process by which it can be prevented. To war with [a newspaper] of Abolition by action or indictment for libel, would make that powerful party smile….An Abolition paper in a slave state is a nuisance of the most formidable character—a public nuisance—not a mere inconvenience, which may occasion delay in business or prove hurtful to health or comfort, but a blazing brand in the hand of an incendiary or madman, which may scatter ruin, conflagration, revolution, crime un-nameable, over everything dear in domestic life, sacred in religion, or respectable in modesty. Who shall say that the safety of a single individual is more important in the eye of the law than that of a whole people? Who shall say that when the case of danger—real danger, of great and irreparable injury to a whole community, really occurs—that it is not armed legally with the right of self defense?

….An unauthorized crowd, who inflict death upon persons or destruction upon property, for the gratification of passion or even for the punishment of crime, is a mob, and is the most fatal enemy to security and freedom. But as in the case of sudden invasion, or insurrection itself, the people have at once, independent of the magistrates, the right of defense, so when there be a well-grounded apprehension of great, and, it may be, irreparable injury, the use of force in the community is lawful and safe. We hold the abolitionists traitors to the constitution and the country, and enemies to the terms upon which the Union was originally formed, and the only terms upon which it can continue to subsist. When they bring their doctrines and their principles into the bosom of a slave state, they bring fire into a magazine. The “True American” is an abolition paper of the worst stamp! As such, the peace and safety of this community demand its instant and entire suppression.

Inspired, the meeting adopted a series of resolutions condemning abolition and formed a committee to seize and ship the printing press and other items in the True American offices across the Ohio River to Cincinnati. Bedridden with typhoid fever, Clay was in no position to contest the seizure. His foes would also publish a pamphlet decrying his conduct and defending seizure of his press.

Upon recovery, Clay sought prosecution. Several committee leaders won cases defending their actions as lawful abatement of a public nuisance, arguing the True American was a danger to the community and its removal was justified to preserve public safety. In an 1847 trial against one ringleader in a neighboring county, however, Clay was awarded $2,500 in damages from a jury unconvinced that he needed to be silenced for the public good.

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

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In the early morning hours of April 2, 1865, a collection of Vermont soldiers and Rhode Island artillerymen performed what was aptly remembered as “one of the most perilous exploits of the war.” During the Union assault at Petersburg, Va., the New Englanders captured two Confederate howitzers and, as the battle raged around them, reversed the guns and began firing at the Rebels. For their contributions in the eventual Union victory that broke the Confederate lines around Richmond, leading to Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox one week later, seven members of the battery and two Vermonters received Medals of Honor.

Representing the Ocean State in this daunting mission was Battery G of the 1st Rhode Island Light Artillery. No surprise, as artillerymen from Rhode Island were regarded by many as the best in the Union Army. The nation’s smallest state would, in fact, send 10 batteries to the front during the war, all of them trained by the Providence Marine Corps of Artillery, a militia organization dating back to 1801. Battery G was mustered in in the fall of 1861, the unit an amalgamation of Yankees from the rural parts of Rhode Island, the sons of the business elite from Providence, and Irish and German immigrants.

First engaged at Yorktown, Va., in April 1862, as part of the 2nd Corps, the battery would fight at Fair Oaks on the Virginia Peninsula and in the subsequent Seven Days’ Battles. At Antietam in September 1862, its guns were heavily engaged at the Dunker Church and in the Bloody Lane and were again in the fray that December at Fredericksburg. In May 1863, Battery G suffered severely during the fighting at Chancellorsville and, after being transferred to the 6th Corps, took part in a rear-guard action near Gettysburg in July.

Time to Strike

The following spring, the 1st Rhode Island Light Artillery, still attached to the 6th Corps, served prominently in the Overland Campaign, and in the fall was engaged in the Shenandoah Valley. Early in the clash at Cedar Creek on October 19, 1864, the battery—now under the command of Captain George W. Adams, a tough, no-nonsense but respected combat veteran—was overrun. It would lose nine men killed and two guns before reinforcements helped produce a monumental Union victory. 

After a winter spent reorganizing the unit, including consolidation with the 1st Rhode Island Light Artillery’s Battery C, the refurbished Battery G arrived back at the Petersburg siege lines in February 1865. By late March, after the Army of the Potomac had spent nine grueling months besieging Richmond and Petersburg, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant sensed a potential breakthrough for his Union forces. Lee’s lines were stretched to the breaking point, as his 40,000 or so men tenuously defended a 40-mile front. With Confederate deserters pouring in each day, Grant felt it was time to strike.

His plan to capture Richmond and end the war was set in motion on March 29, as the Cavalry Corps and the 5th Corps swung to the left and on April 1 captured the strategic crossroads at Five Forks. Yet Grant, unable to flank Lee’s defenses, ordered a frontal assault by the Army of the Potomac on Petersburg itself, to begin at 4 a.m. April 2.

It was the task of Major Andrew Cowan’s 6th Corps’ Artillery Brigade to provide supporting fire for the assault. After receiving notice of the charge, Adams met with corps commander Maj. Gen. Horatio Wright, offering a mission the captain had been considering since arriving in Petersburg. During a charge on the Confederate lines, infantrymen accompanied by select cannoneers would attempt to capture enemy artillery—guns that could then be used both to boost the assault and repel any Confederate counterattack. Adams’ remaining cannoneers in Battery G, meanwhile, would provide support with their own 3-inch Ordnance Rifles.

Before granting Adams permission, Wright “warned him of its extreme danger”; Adams, though, would not back down, finally receiving Wright’s consent. The captain would take only volunteers, however, fearing it was likely to be a costly assault. Stressing the mission’s extreme importance and danger, Adams said none who chose not to volunteer would be looked down upon. Every member of the battery stepped forward instantly, with 20 eventually selected.

Unlike the infantrymen, who were armed with muskets and bayonets, the cannoneers would carry only their friction-primers, sponge-rammers, lanyards, and artillery spikes, which, if the men faced trouble, could be pounded into the guns’ vents to render them inoperable.

“A short but desperate fight”

At 10 p.m. on April 1, all eight 6th Corps batteries launched a heavy bombardment on the Confederate defenses, which fortuitously masked the noise of the forming infantry. By midnight, the 6th Corps infantry had formed en masse in front of the Confederate works.

Axmen would lead the assault, cutting away defenses so the infantrymen could quickly exploit the breach. The soldiers were ordered to load but not cap their weapons, to prevent accidental firing. Silence was vital. The men were threatened with death if they spoke.

Adams’ detachment reported to Colonel Thomas W. Hyde’s 3rd Brigade, moving into position near Fort Welch. The 6th Corps formed in the shape of a spear, with Maj. Gen. Frank Wheaton’s 1st Division on the right, the 2nd at center, and the 3rd on the left—roughly 14,000 men total. Hyde’s brigade, in Wheaton’s center, was to swing left after entering the entrenchments to cut off the Boydton Plank Road and then the South Side Railroad. It was a moonless, misty night with a heavy ground fog hanging over the trenches—so thick that most soldiers couldn’t see 20 yards ahead. After 4 a.m. passed without a signal, as Grant waited for the fog to lift so the advancing columns would not be struck by friendly fire, Adams asked his men once more if any wanted to return to Battery G’s main position. Three did.

The first shot was finally fired at 4:40 a.m. by the 1st Rhode Island Light Artillery’s Battery E on the corps’ extreme left. Immediately, every gun in the Army of the Potomac opened fire, including Battery G’s four pieces. Because of the cannonade’s immense noise, there was a 10-minute delay before the men realized the barrage had been the signal to advance.

Recorded Dr. George Stevens of the 77th New York: “Without wavering, through the darkness, the wedge which was to split the Confederacy was driven home.” Many of the 6th Corps’ batteries, however, fired only about a dozen rounds before stopping to avoid the “friendly fire” casualties Grant had feared.

As Hyde deployed his brigade, Adams and his men lost contact with the New Yorkers to their right and instead angled left, following Brig. Gen. Lewis A. Grant’s Old Vermont Brigade. The Vermonters rushed onward in total darkness, aiming for a 600-yard long ravine leading directly to an expected weak point in the Confederate line.

As the Federals advanced, the Confederate defenses came alive. The Rebels, though poorly equipped, clearly had plenty of fight left in them. The guns Battery G had been sent to capture happened to be firing canister and were wrecking the Vermont lines. In merely 15 minutes, 1,100 6th Corps soldiers went down.

Regardless, the 17 Rhode Islanders pushed ahead, and within minutes Union infantry were scrambling into the Confederate forts, many firing a single volley and going in with bayonets. After crossing the deadly killing ground, the Rhode Island detachment angled for its prime destination, an earthen gun emplacement near a swamp in a woodlot. They promptly obeyed a “Capture that battery!” directive from the Vermonters.

Defending the line of earthworks around the fortification was a North Carolina brigade under the command of Brig. Gen. James H. Lane, who had positioned two 24-pounder howitzers at a vulnerable opening and another howitzer, two cannons, and an 8-inch mortar on the right of the ravine through which the Vermonters were charging.

Captain Charles Gould’s Company H, 5th Vermont, which had lost its way crossing no-man’s land during the initial bombardment, leaped into the redoubt, with 30 men following Gould for the cannons. A fervent hand-to-hand clash ensued.

Gould, who would receive a Medal of Honor for his actions, recalled it as “a short but desperate fight.” After the defenders abandoned the position, his unit quickly re-formed and pushed on.

Following directly behind Gould was Major William J. Sperry of the 6th Vermont. Upon seeing the two abandoned howitzers, he directed a dozen men to have the guns reversed and then fired at the fleeing Confederates. Some of his men and a few wayward members of the 11th Vermont were ordered to load the pieces, but Sperry, unable to locate friction primers, resorted to having his soldiers fire blanks into the cannons’ vents.

When the Battery G gunners arrived to find the Vermonters furiously working the howitzers, Sperry surrendered the position to Adams’ men. (The major later received a Medal of Honor as well.)

Some of Adams’ men had understandably worried the assault would inflict a high casualty count, but that was not the case. A ragged final volley by the scrambling North Carolinians did wound two cannoneers, however. Private Luther Cornell received a devastating right shoulder wound from a Minié ball, an injury from which he never recovered, and Private George W. Potter was blinded in the left eye.

Knowing a fierce struggle still lay ahead, Adams had little choice but to relieve his severely wounded cannoneers, ordering them to the rear. Cornell succeeded on his own, but Potter needed to be carried by two comrades. That left Adams with 13 men.

Victory and Recognition

At the South Side Railroad, the 6th Corps re-formed and swung left, capturing hundreds of prisoners while tearing up the tracks but also taking heavy losses as they pushed toward Hatcher’s Run. Nearly 50 Confederate guns would be captured, including a dozen in Battery G’s sector alone, but the remaining 13 Rhode Islanders could man only the two captured 24-pounder howitzers.

Union officers had trouble keeping their commands together, with their men, on the brink of victory, excited and energized. As the sun rose, however, the Confederates made a determined stand to hold their line and directed their fire at Battery G’s new position. Despite a hurricane of lead, the Rhode Island boys stood firm.

In the early morning light, with the unnerving cavalcade of shouting and Minié balls providing perhaps a perfect backdrop, the artillerists continued to load and fire their captured howitzers. The sustained fire and additional Union reinforcements finally pushed back the last remaining Confederate defenders.

The Rhode Islanders would fire nearly 100 rounds total during the brief engagement. According to one postwar account: “The men who served this gun so nobly, standing up unflinchingly before the terrific fire of the enemy were rewarded for their bravery and daring.”

Corporal Edward P. Adams was among the members of Battery G to be excluded from the assault force despite volunteering. He never forgot his comrades’ heroism, writing, “The Captain and his trained men with steady tread marched up with the Corps until the opportune moment when, rushing with great impetuosity they scaled the earthworks and crowned their undertaking with success….”

A good cross-section of the state was represented in what was labeled by one historian as “Adams’ intrepid band of cannoneers.” Sergeant Archibald Malbourne, a mill worker from West Greenwich, had recently transferred from Battery C, as had Sergeant John H. Havron, an Irish immigrant now living in Providence. Corporal James A. Barber was a fisherman from Westerly who joined in 1861 and was one of the few surviving Westerly Boys. Private John Corcoran was a machinist from Pawtucket who had served in Battery C. Private Charles D. Ennis came from a farm in Charlestown, while Corporal Samuel E. Lewis and the grievously wounded George W. Potter were from Coventry. 

Adams nominated all 17 men who followed him into the “jaws of hell” for Medals of Honor, but trouble lay ahead. The commander had led 17 cannoneers into the assault, although only 13 were there to work the captured cannons after two were wounded and two others detailed to help those comrades to the rear. Adams never equivocated in establishing that all had been incredibly brave to volunteer.

In April 1866, the 17 Rhode Islanders were recognized with Medals of Honor, and in striking and engraving the 17 medals, the War Department did not differentiate among the names of those who had entered the fort and those who had gone to the rear—the citation on each reading: “For gallant conduct at Petersburg, VA., April 2, 1865. Being one of a detachment of twenty picked artillerymen who voluntarily accompanied an infantry assaulting column and who turned upon the enemy the guns captured in the assault.” Nevertheless, because of federal bureaucracy, only seven would receive theirs. The existence of the other 10 medals has been lost to history.

On June 20, 1866, four medals were delivered to Rhode Island for Sergeants Malbourne and Havron and for Corporals Barber and Lewis, the non-commissioned officers who had led the detachment in the action. There was no formal presentation; they arrived at the men’s homes in simple boxes along with a certificate announcing the award. Unfortunately, the officer in charge of the process failed to mail them to the privates who had also been recognized.

Potter, Corcoran, and Ennis received theirs in 1886, 1887, and 1892, respectively. When Adams inquired why the Medal of Honor had not been awarded to all at an earlier occasion, he received a nonplussed response: “It is possible that these soldiers have been overlooked, this particular service having been performed so near the close of the war.”

Adams already had a brevet of major for his heroism at Cedar Creek. Instead of receiving the Medal of Honor for planning and executing the mission, he was rewarded with brevets of lieutenant colonel and colonel. He wasted no time in sewing his eagles to his uniform, but his pay grade remained at the rank of captain.

The Battery G men took part in the pursuit of the Army of Northern Virginia to Appomattox and were then mustered out in June 1865. Now part of Pamplin Historical Park near Petersburg, the site of Battery G’s charge remains one of the most decorated places in American military history.

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

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Although often overshadowed by the exploits of its Iron Brigade comrades in the 1st Division, 1st Corps, Army of the Potomac, the men of Brig. Gen. Lysander Cutler’s brigade turned in a first-rate performance at the Civil War’s most celebrated battle. The first infantry brigade to arrive on the battlefield north and east of Gettysburg that John Buford had selected the fateful morning of July 1, 1863, Cutler’s command quickly found itself in a fierce fight with Joseph R. Davis’ Brigade that ended with the Confederates trounced. They then helped repulse attacks by Robert Rodes’ Division and beat back attacks by Alfred Scales’ Brigade before being compelled to retreat to the high ground south of Gettysburg. Despite the heavy losses Cutler’s command suffered on July 1, the men of the 7th Indiana, 76th New York, 14th Brooklyn (84th New York), 95th New York, 147th New York, and 56th Pennsylvania had enough fight left in them to make significant contributions to the defense of Culp’s Hill on July 2-3. When the guns fell silent at Gettysburg, four of the men who led Cutler’s regiments into battle on July 1 had been killed or wounded, and the brigade was one of only five that had suffered more than 1,000 casualties during the battle.

The Bullets Flew Like Hail is the third revised edition of James L. McLean Jr.’s study of Cutler’s command at Gettysburg. (The first appeared in 1987—four years after McLean began his much-loved Civil War publisher Butternut and Blue—the second in 1994.) For Gettysburg enthusiasts, especially those with an interest in “microhistory,” there is a lot to like here. McLean’s clear writing and fine attention to detail make the movements of Cutler’s units and the course of the fighting easy to follow, as do the plentiful, superbly crafted maps. His scholarship and the adeptness with which he addresses such issues as claims by 6th Wisconsin partisans regarding the defeat of Davis’ command at the Railroad Cut are likewise remarkable. So, too, is his account of the ordeal of 14th Brooklyn Private John Jochum after being wounded in the fight for the Railroad Cut, which offers a compelling reminder that the blocks on the book’s maps were composed of human beings for whom the great actions chronicled had personal, painful, and enduring consequences.

“The Bullets Flew Like Hail”

Cutler’s Brigade at Gettysburg From McPherson’s Ridge to Culp’s Hill

By James L. McLean Jr., Savas Beatie, 2023

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When Colonel Ambrose Stevens died in 1880, a correspondent with The New York Times wrote: “[W]ith him have probably died some most interesting chapters of the unwritten and secret history of the War of the Rebellion.” In 1872, when that correspondent met Stevens at a veterans reunion at the Judson House in Lockport, N.Y., the colonel revealed to him “a very curious and rather startling episode of the war,” claiming Confederate agents had planned to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln five months before John Wilkes Booth did in April 1865.

Stevens had no military experience before the war but studied law, was fluent in several languages, and served as a representative in the New York General Assembly. He was also one of the top breeders of fine cattle serving the United States and Europe, praised by The New York Herald as an “authority upon all questions of fine stock raising, and…considered the best informed man in the world on short-horned pedigrees.”

He entered the war on May 7, 1864, joining the 46th New York Infantry as a major just prior to the Battle of Spotsylvania. By the end of the month, he had been promoted to lieutenant colonel and assigned to Maj. Gen. John A. Dix’s staff.

In July, Confederate agents and commissioners tried to arrange a peace conference at the Clifton House on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. Stevens claimed that he received permission from Dix to go undercover and investigate the Southern sympathizers.

When he arrived, he mingled with Confederate agents and Northern Copperheads, passing as one of them, known as a prominent Democrat and for having many acquaintances in the South. Fortunately, none of them was aware he was working for General Dix.

Allegedly, one of the men recognized Stevens and, after a long conversation, invited him to his room. There, under a pledge of secrecy, he revealed to Stevens that some of them planned to assassinate Lincoln the night before the November election. They hoped it would allow George B. McClellan, the Democratic candidate for president, to win the election and end the war.

Stevens rushed back to New York and reported what he had learned to Dix. The general in turn passed the intelligence on to Lincoln. According to Stevens, Lincoln preferred news of the plot not be leaked to the press, believing it would do more harm than good. It would remain a secret.

Finally in 1875, the aforementioned correspondent claimed in his New York Times article: “The story is truly an extraordinary one, but, considering the time, the situation, the position of the narrator, and some of the events the following April [1865], I fully believe it.”

The correspondent wouldn’t reveal Stevens’ identity, however, declaring that he “did not feel at liberty at that time to mention the name of my informant.”

On December 10, 1880, Stevens passed away at the age of 73 and was interred in Batavia Cemetery in Batavia, N.Y. He would take to the grave the truth of that alleged Lincoln assassination plot.

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

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A handsome stone church, nestled in the intersection of Fairfax and South Washington streets, embodies the central history of this “little city” in Northern Virginia. Established in the early 1730s as a member of the official Church of England, the then-wood church became known as the one “near the falls” of the Potomac River, and soon thereafter as “The Falls Church,” a name adopted by the community that developed around it and the city itself when it was incorporated in the 20th century. George Washington was an early vestry member and participated in the decision-making that led to the building of the current, Georgian-style stone structure with Palladian windows, completed in 1769.

Located just six miles from Washington, D.C., and settled by many northern colonists, the city’s population was divided in 1861 over secession and many left town when the state of Virginia ultimately voted in favor of it. Confederates occupied the town and the church until silently withdrawing in September 1861 to Centreville, Va. By 1862, the Federals had moved in to occupy the town, the neighboring high grounds at Munson’s and Upton’s Hills, and the church, which was used as a hospital and later a stable.

Confederate Ranger Colonel John S. Mosby reigned terror over the city, conducting raids of it throughout the summer and fall of 1864. In October, his men shot and killed Frank Brooks, a Black member of the highly unusual interracial Falls Church Home Guard, and kidnapped and later killed abolitionist John Read, who is buried in the Falls Church Cemetery. A visit to the church and its cemetery are a must for history enthusiasts on any tour of Falls Church. A half dozen Civil War Trails signs lay mostly within walking distance and will bring you along the city’s journey from sleepy colonial town, through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and to its reemergence as a metropolitan provision for the capital of the United States.

Written in Stone
115 E. Fairfax St.

Several memorial stones lay within the Falls Church Episcopal Church Cemetery to commemorate its history, especially during the Civil War. The New York Memorial Stone commemorates New York soldiers buried in the churchyard, including many who died while camped at nearby Upton’s Hill. Some of their remains have been removed to Arlington National Cemetery or family plots. A separate memorial stone in the graveyard commemorates Union soldiers buried here and another commemorates Confederate soldiers buried here, including several unknown. Two poignant markers lay at the head of the walkway leading to the church, including one for James Wren, who designed the church and one “with gratitude and repentance” to honor “the enslaved people whose skills and labor helped build The Falls Church.”

Fort Taylor Park
15 N. Roosevelt St.

On June 22, 1861, Thaddeus Lowe and 15 men arrived here, at the site of Taylor’s Tavern, with his balloon Enterprise. Earlier that day, Lowe and his team had inflated it at the Washington Gas Works. Over the next three days, Lowe made several tethered ascents, the first aerial reconnaissance in American military history. Over a 34-day period that summer, Lowe made 23 flights from nearby Fort Corcoran and Ball’s Cross Roads (present-day Ballston). These ascents drew the first rifled artillery fire at a balloon from Confederate positions.

Galloway Methodist Church Cemetery
306 Annandale Rd.

In 1867, African Americans built Galloway United Methodist Church and established the historic cemetery here. According to local tradition, before and during the Civil War, enslaved people on the Dulany plantation secretly worshiped in the grove of trees at the center of the cemetery. Those buried here include Harriet and George Brice and Charles Lee, a free man of color, who served in the 10th USCI. A large grave marker notes the burial site of Eliza Hicks Henderson, who escaped bondage after the Battle of Vicksburg in 1863, and walked from Vicksburg to Washington, D.C., to rejoin her family. She concealed her young son, William Henderson, in a trunk.

Cherry Hill Farmhouse 312 Park Ave.

Although soldiers repeatedly overran and raided Cherry Hill Farm during the Civil War, this circa 1845 farmhouse and the 1856 barn behind it survived almost intact. William Blaisdell of Massachusetts paid $4,000 for the 66-acre property in 1856. The migration of Northerners to this area resulted in a populace of mixed loyalties on the eve of the Civil War. Blaisdell and 25 others in the Falls Church District voted against secession in the statewide referendum held on May 23, 1861, while 44 voted in favor. The Blaisdells, like most families in town, felt the effects of both Confederate and Union occupation. Cherry Hill offers free tours of the farmhouse Saturday mornings, April through October, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Private tours can also be scheduled year round. cherryhillfallschurch.org

Northside Social
205 Park Ave.

The original house here, “Cloverdale” has late–18th century roots and once faced the Leesburg & Alexandria Turnpike. It saw its fair share of marauding armies during the Civil War, and by the 20th century the building was home to the American Legion Post 225. After years of neglect, instead of demolition, the structure was adaptively reused into the restaurant and cafe it is today. If you are lucky you can catch one of their afternoon tea events. www.northsidesocialva.com/location/falls-church

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

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The Texas Civil War Museum in Fort Worth, one of the country’s largest such facilities, will close its doors on December 30. After 16 years of operation, Texas oilman Ray Richey and his wife, Judy, have decided to retire. “It was a hobby that got out of hand,” Richey professed in 2006 when he opened the 15,000-square-foot facility to house his extensive personal artifact collection.

Touted as the largest Civil War Museum west of the Mississippi River, the building has more than 5,000 artifacts on display, valued at $15 million–$20 million. Included are Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s presentation sword, Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart’s saber and personal battle flag, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler’s dress uniform, and Maj. Gen. Phil Sheridan’s saber and saddle blanket. The country’s second largest Civil War gun collection is also on display.

The north wall of the exhibit hall features Union artifacts, the south wall Confederate. In addition to the Civil War artifacts, Victorian-era dresses are featured, including one worn by Lady Randolph Spencer Churchill, Winston Churchill’s mother.

The Richey collection will be auctioned off by The Horse Soldier Auctions in Gettysburg, Pa. The Civil War artifacts of the Texas United Daughters of the Confederacy—also displayed at the museum—will be stored at another location, with portions to be occasionally loaned to other museums.

“What a great gift Ray and Judy provided,” says Texas historian Don Frazier. “Ray had an eye for antiques. There’s not another collection like it. It’s the end of an era.” 

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

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As it is for so many of us today, coffee was an essential treat for soldiers during the Civil War. That was particularly true for members of the 1st Special Battalion of Louisiana Infantry — better known as Wheat’s Tigers. So attached to their New Orleans-brewed Joe with added chicory, the Tigers had a thousand pounds of beans transported by train to Richmond leading up to the First Battle of Manassas. Café du Monde was a Crescent City hot spot during the war, and it remains so today. Recently author Richard Holloway indulged himself at the historic café.