Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Sergeant George Marsh: First Connecticut death at Antietam?


A daguerreotype (top) and tintype of 8th Connecticut Sergeant George Marsh, who was
 killed at Antietam. (Photos: Blogger's collection)
 
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Shortly after sunrise on Sept. 17, 1862, “some curious fools” in the 8th Connecticut climbed atop a knoll on Henry Rohrbach’s farm to sneak a peek at their enemy, alerting Rebels on the far side of Antietam Creek. Suddenly, a 12-pound solid shot burst from a cannon and crashed into the regiment’s ranks in a field near Rohrbach's farmhouse, killing Sergeant George Marsh and two other soldiers, wounding four, and splattering 19-year-old Lieutenant Marvin Wait with blood and dirt.

At least one report speculated that railroad iron fired by the Rebels killed Marsh, but the real cause was the massive concussion of the solid shot that plowed into the ground in front of the prone soldier. A "trusty soldier with a spotless reputation," the 29-year-old Marsh, who was "ill that morning but determined to be at his post," may have been the first soldier from Connecticut killed at the Battle of Antietam.

George Marsh's family: Father Guy (top), mother 
Lamira and sister Susan. The Marsh family was 
from Hartford.
(Photos: Blogger's collection)
For his parents Lamira and Guy and sister Susan back in Hartford, George's death must have been a crushing blow. An unmarried carpenter and polisher for a silversmith, Marsh financially supported his sickly father, who worked in a sash and blind factory and was described as a man of "feeble strength, and never able to do anything like hard labor." From 1855 until George's death, Guy Marsh made from $1.25 to $2.25 a day. Two years before his son enlisted in the army, the elder Marsh, who barely weighed 110 pounds, had a "long and dangerous sickness" that the family physician attributed to the "effects of working with paints" at the factory.

While he served in the Union army, George frequently sent money home, sometimes as much as $40 at a time, and often inquired about his father's health, noting in one letter that he thought it "will do father good to take a trip to Waterbury [Conn.]." In rich detail, he also wrote about his war experience, telling his parents of skirmishing against Rebels, frustrations and boredom with army life and about prisoners of war.

"Today I have tattoo'd about 2 dozen men with India ink just to keep myself busy," he wrote in one letter.

In another letter, he wrote about a young Rebel POW: "One man showed me his thigh today where he had a bayonet put through it for putting his head over the line to vomit, and that was by a boy not over 14 years old."

In late spring 1862, George proudly told of his promotion from corporal to sergeant.

"I am fourth sergeant now," he wrote on June 3, 1862 from New Bern, N.C., "our orderly having been promoted to be second lieutenant of our company. Lieutenant [Wolcott] Marsh is captain of Company F now. I have to do the duties of 2nd sergeant as the 2nd is color bearer and the 3rd has done no duty since we left the Banks and I guess never will do any more. He is the tallest man in the regiment and I am the shortest sergeant so we look gay marching near each other and are known as the 'long' and 'short' sergeants of Company A."  (Marsh, who had a light complexion, hazel eyes and light hair, stood only 5-4, about four inches shorter than the average height for a Civil War soldier.)

Added Marsh in the same letter: "Some of this military business is like a farce but I like to see the whole performance and think I shall be able to if I don’t get killed in a battle or by disease."

Oliver D. Seymour, Marsh's brother-in-law, went to the battlefield to retrieve George's body, which was sent to New York by steamer. In late September, Marsh's remains arrived on a noon train to Hartford, and three hours later, a funeral service that "was very largely attended" was held at his parents' house at 77 Main Street. Afterward, his remains were buried a short distance away at Hartford's Old North Cemetery.

Today, on the battered, brownstone Marsh family memorial at the ancient Hartford cemetery, the word "Antietam" is barely legible.


Have something to add (or correct) in this post? E-mail me here.


SOURCES:

-- Croffut, William Augustus, and John Moses Morris. The Military and Civil History of Connecticut During the War of 1861-65, New York: Ledyard Bill, 1868.
-- George Marsh pension file, National Archives and Record Service, Washington, D.C.
-- Hartford Daily Times, Sept. 27, 1862.
-- PG 80, Box 3, Connecticut State Library, Hartford, Conn.

George Marsh's state-issued tombstone in Old North Cemetery in Hartford.

Sunday, July 27, 2014

Harrison's Landing: Where Lincoln met 'Little Mac' in 1862

                                     Click at upper right for full-screen, interactive panorama.
 
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In July and August 1862, 140,000 Union troops camped here at Harrison's Landing, Va., site of George McClellan's infamous "change of base" after the Peninsula Campaign debacle that summer. President Lincoln conferred with the general at Harrison's Landing on July 8, 1862, seven days after the Union army's victory at nearby Malvern Hill, the last of the Seven Days' battles. 

Lincoln reviews Union troops in July 1862 in this painting, part of a Civil War display in the
 basement of the Berkeley Plantation mansion. The mansion appears in the
 far right background of the painting.

No fan of the president's, McClellan supposedly gave Lincoln an undersized horse to make the tall chief executive look a little silly during a review of troops at Harrison's Landing. "Little Napoleon" also handed Lincoln a letter that outlined his vision for how to conduct the war -- a vision that noted that "neither confiscation of property, political executions of persons, territorial organization of states or forcible abolition of slavery should be contemplated for a moment."

Lincoln read the letter without comment, disappointing McClellan, who wrote to his wife that the president "really seems quite incapable of rising to the heights of the merits of the question & the magnitude of the crisis." (On Sept. 22, 1862, five days after the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, leading to the abolition of slavery in states that were still in rebellion.)

Marker at Harrison's Landing field in honor of Union drummer boy Willie Johnston.

It was also at Harrison's Landing that "Taps" may have been played for the first time, by a private named Oliver Norton, although that's in some dispute. It's also where 11-year-old Willie Johnston, the only drummer boy to retain his instrument throughout the disastrous Union retreat during the Seven Days' battles, played for a division review on July 4, 1862. For his spunk and bravery, the lad in the 3rd Vermont was awarded the Medal of Honor by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton on Sept. 16, 1863, when he was 13 -- the youngest person to earn the honor.

The Berkeley Plantation mansion was built in 1726.

By the time the Union Army had arrived at Harrison's Landing, many soldiers were exhausted and ill from continuous fighting in the grim, swampy land around Richmond.

William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of the U.S., was born
at Berkeley Plantation in 1773.
"The malaria from the borders of the Chickahominy and from the swamps throughout the Peninsula to which it had been so freely exposed now began to manifest its baneful effects upon the health of the men," Union army medical director Jonathan Letterman wrote. "In addition to this the troops, just previous to their arrival at this point, had been marching and fighting for seven days and nights in a country abounding in pestilential swamps and traversed by streams greatly swollen by the heavy rains, which made that region almost a Sarbonean bog."

On July 1, 1862, Letterman established at hospital at the Berkeley Plantation mansion, also used by McClellan as a headquarters. Berkeley Plantation was the birthplace of Benjamin Harrison, a signer of the Declaration of  Independence, and his son, William Henry, the ninth U.S. president. The mansion -- "the only available building for the purpose in that vicinity," according to Letterman -- proved "wholly inadequate."

"Only a few wall tents could be obtained at that time with which to enlarge the capacity of the hospital," Letterman wrote. "No hospital tents could be procured.

                                 Click at upper right for full-screen, interactive panorama.

While his troops staved off disaster at Malvern Hill, McClellan found comfort aboard a gunboat in the James River, near Harrison's Landing, drawing the ire of some Army of the Potomac soldiers. Private Robert Sneden disgustingly noted that McClellan was not on the ground (as usual) until the battle was over."

Two years later, a political cartoonist used the incident to lampoon McClellan, Lincoln's Democratic opponent in the 1864 presidential election."Fight on my brave soldiers and push the enemy to the wall," reads the thought bubble above the general, who eyes the fighting at Malvern Hill, "from this spanker boom your beloved general looks down upon you."


But not all soldiers found McClellan's behavior unsettling. Three days after Malvern Hill, on the Fourth of July, Elisha Hunt Rhodes, an officer in the 2nd Rhode Island, recalled meeting the general at Harrison's Landing:

This morning all the troops were put to work upon the line of forts that have been laid out. As I was going to the spring I met General McClellan who said good morning pleasantly and told our party that as soon as the forts were finished we should have rest. He took a drink of water from a canteen and lighted a cigar from one of the men's pipes. At Malvern Hill he rode in front of our Regiment and was loudly cheered. I have been down to the river. I rode the Adjutant's horse and enjoyed the sight of the vessels. Gun boats and transports are anchored in the stream. Rest is what we want now, and I hope we shall get it. I could sleep for a week. The weather is very hot, but we have moved our camp to a wood where we get the shade. This is a queer 4th of July, but we have not forgotten that it is our national birthday, and a salute has been fired. We expect to have something to eat before long. Soldiering is not fun, but duty keeps us in the ranks. Well, the war must end some time, and the Union will be restored. I wonder what our next move will be. I hope it will be more successful than our last.
                                   Click at upper right for full-screen, interactive panorama.

By mid-August 1862, the Union army had been transported north on the James River, its hopes to take Richmond and end the war that year over. Although Interstate-95 is only miles away, I had the feeling I was in the middle of nowhere when I shot the image above from the shores of the river -- until I glanced to my right and saw a huge power plant in the distance.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Cold Harbor National Cemetery interactive panorama

                              Click on image above for a full-screen interactive panorama.

The Tomb of The Unknown Soldier at Cold Harbor National Cemetery was built in 1877.
Perhaps no Civil War photo depicts the horror of war better than the iconic, and horrific, image below of remains of soldiers on the Cold Harbor battlefield. It was taken less than a year after the war by John Reekie, a photographer employed by Alexander Gardner, and it shows African-American workers and soldiers disinterring remains from the scarred landscape. The uncropped version of the image may be viewed here on the Library of Congress web site.

Of the nearly 2,000 Civil War soldiers buried in Cold Harbor National Cemetery, more than 1,200 are unidentified, so it's possible that the remains of the soldiers in Reekie's image ended up there in trenches near the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  "Near this stone," the inscription on the sarcophagus at the back of the cemetery reads, "rest the remains of 889 Union soldiers gathered from the battle fields of Mechanicsville, Savage-Station, Gaines-Mills, and the vicinity of Cold-Harbor." 

After the war, a massive federal effort sought the remains of Union soldiers in the South for reburial in newly established national cemeteries. But even well into the 20th century, woods and fields near the Cold Harbor battlefield gave up their dead. A relic hunter told me he had unearthed more than 70 skeletons, most likely all Civil War soldiers, on private land in the area.   


In this enlargement of a photo taken by John Reekie, the remains of at least five soldiers have been placed on a stretcher-like device ....


... and in this macabre enlargement of the same image, a shoe is still attached to the remains of a leg...


... while in yet another enlargement of the same image, three skulls and other bones appear with the remains of a soldier's clothes. (Click here for the original of this image on the Library of Congress web site.)

Monday, July 21, 2014

Cold Harbor visit: Spiritual, frustrating

Click here for my interactive Antietam, Cedar Mountain, Chickamauga, Cold Harbor, Gettysburg, Harris Farm, Manassas, Malvern Hill, Salem Church and Spotsylvania Courthouse battlefield panoramas. 

     2nd Connecticut Heavies suffered more than 300 casualties here on June. 1, 1864. 
                (CLICK ON IMAGES FOR FULL-SCREEN INTERACTIVE PANORAMA.)

It's 6:15 on a Monday morning, and as I stand on a bed of pine needles behind the remains of Rebel earthworks, I gaze across a field where vultures circled, circled, circled ... and then dived to pick at scores of Union dead and wounded more than 150 years ago. Even this early, the air is thick with humidity, and aside from a man in his early 70s chugging along a path, I may be the only other soul in the national park.

Nothing much has changed at Cold Harbor battlefield since my first visit here three years ago. Towering pines stretch to the sky, giant gnats are as pesky as ever and the grass is still tall and unmowed. Trenches, which offered some protection to both armies during the Civil War, zig-zag through the woods, heaps of earth still packed fairly high in places.

There's something spiritual about Cold Harbor early in the morning. Something frustrating, too.

I feel a little bit guilty when I kick at the sandy soil, hoping to uncover evidence of the terrible slaughter that occurred here in early June 1864. A piece of artillery shell or a button. Perhaps a bullet or a knapsack hook.

This sign denotes where the 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery paused before making final, 
and futile, push toward Rebel lines.

When I walk in the footsteps of the 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery, mostly men and boys from Litchfield County, I hope to find answers but never do. I wonder where Private Charles Hoyt of Company K took a bullet that he carried in his body until his death at 86 in 1932.

German-born Edward Reicker, a private in Company E, lost an arm at Cold Harbor. After the war, he returned to his native country but came back to the U.S. in June 1891, telling a comrade he "wanted to get back to God's Country to be laid away." Less than a month later, he died in Bridgeport and was buried in New Britain, Conn. Another German, Private Augustus Hain of Company E, was shot through the chest at Cold Harbor and lay on the battlefield for hours, "his fallen trunk a breastwork" for retreating troops.

Where were they wounded? Where did they suffer? What were they thinking?

In their first major fighting of the Civil War, more than 300 "Heavies" were casualties at Cold Harbor. In a clearing, the names of the regiment's dead appear on a bronze plaque on a block of white granite -- the only monument to a regiment for either side on the battlefield. When I saw it for the first time after a walk through a strip of  woods in 2011, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

It was here in this clearing, so tidy today, that the "shrieks and howls of more than 250 mangled men." according to 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery adjutant Theodore Vaill, "rose above the yells of triumphant rebels and the roar of their musketry."

                          Visitors are discouraged from walking on remains of earthworks.

                                 Union dead and wounded lay in this field in June 1864.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

'It was murder': A tour of Malvern Hill (Va.) battlefield

Rebels never got close to expertly placed Union artillery at the top of the Malvern Hill slope.

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On July 1, 1862,  Robert E. Lee attacked a position head-on that bristled with artillery ... and failed miserably. Troops mistakenly took a road leading away from the battlefield. A plan for a grand artillery bombardment never materialized. And Confederates, so successful in pushing the U.S. Army from Richmond in the previous Seven Days' battles, simply ran out of steam. "It wasn't war; it was murder," Confederate general D.H. Hill famously said after the Battle of Malvern Hill.

 (CLICK ON EACH IMAGE BELOW FOR FULL-SCREEN INTERACTIVE PANORAMA.)


The Union Army massed up to 36 cannon at the top of this plateau, only about 900 yards wide at its crest. Once Yankee cannoneers had silenced Rebel artillery, they turned their attention to masses of infantry moving up the gentle slope. (It's a misnomer to call it a hill.) Their work was effective and deadly.

"The battle-field, surveyed through the cold rain of Wednesday morning, presented scenes too shocking to be dwelt on without anguish," the Richmond (Va.) Examiner reported three days after the battle. "The woods and the field ... covered with our dead, in all the degrees of violent mutilation."  The Rebels suffered more than 2 1/2 times the casualties (5,600 to 2,100) as the Union army at Malvern Hill.

Even U.S. gunboats anchored in the nearby James River joined the fight, although their effect may have proved more damaging to their own troops; three soldiers in the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery were mortally wounded by fire from the gunboats.

The Examiner reported:

"To add to the horrors, if not the dangers, of the battle, the enemy's gunboats, from their position at Curl's Neck, two and a half miles distant, poured on the field continued broadsides from their immense rifle guns, Though it is questionable, as we have suggested, whether any serious loss was inflicted on us by the gunboats, the horrors of the fight were aggravated by the monster shells, which tore skrieking through the forests, and exploded with a concussion, which seemed to shake the solid earth itself. The moral effect on the Yankees of these terror-inspiring allies must have been very great; and in this, we believe, consisted their greatest damage to the army of the South."

The U.S. Army anchored its right in front of the home of Nathaniel West. The current structure, seen by panning to the left, was built in the early 20th century on the foundation of the original house. Although his house survived the fighting, Farmer West's field were ruined.

Wrote the Examiner reporter afterward:

Great numbers of horses were killed on both sides, and the sight of their disfigured carcasses and the stench proceeding from them added much to the loathsome horrors of the bloody field. The cornfields, but recently turned by the ploughshare, were furrowed and torn by the iron missiles. Thousands of round shot and unexploded shell lay upon the surface of the earth. Among the latter were many of the enormous shells thrown from the gunboats. They were eight inches in width by twenty-three in length. The ravages of these monsters were everywhere discernible through the forests. In some places long avenues were cut through the tree-tops, and here and there great trees, three and four feet in thickness, were burst open and split to very shreds.

The Union Army anchored its left flank here on Malvern Cliffs, which really is a large hill rather than a cliff. In 1862, this area was largely treeless and provided Yankee artillery and infantry a superb field of fire. Rebels from Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia and Louisiana negotiated a series of ravines and ridges as they approached this high ground near the James River.


"The last hill we passed over, the Yankee canister killed our men in large numbers," wrote Private Asa Winn of the 3rd Georgia Infantry. "We ran up [to] the top of the hill and poured volleys into them and would run back under the hill and load. ... Every time we would go to the top to fire, someone would fall." Winn, according to this letter from a comrade, survived the battle "without a scratch."


2nd Louisiana Private Edwin Jemison
 was born in Georgia.
 (Photo Library of Congress)
Among the Rebel casualties was Edwin Jemison, whose haunting image has been used in scores of  Civil War publications. His hands folded in front of him, the 2nd Louisiana private with the sad eyes and look of innocence was killed near here, likely a victim of Yankee artillery fire from the top of the slope.

Only 17 years old, he reportedly was decapitated.  None of the attacking Rebels, who used two small slave cabins in this field as cover, reached the line of Union artillery in the distance. (Remains of the historic trace to the cabins may be seen by panning to the right.)

"The long line of dead extended towards our right until lost in the woods and sloping ravines towards the river, and then extended forward, contracting from our left upon our center, until its apex reached halfway up [to] Crewe's quarters," wrote Major Joseph Brent. "Crewe's quarters" was a reference to the house owned by the farmer whose property a major portion of the battle was contested. (The Crew house was used as Union headquarters and a field hospital
The original building burned after the war and remains in private hands, although the property is targeted by the American Battlefield Trust.)


Lee planned for his artillery to bombard Union lines from two positions, including the one here. But the strategy failed because the Rebels couldn't mass enough cannons at either spot. Accurate Union fire from the plateau 1,500 yards away had a lot to do with that.


Confederates poured from these these woods, moving up the slope of Malvern Hill to attack the Yankees, whose artillery often fired into the treetops.

"As we came fully in sight of the Federal batteries, not 400 yards in our front, the open space behind them became black with troops, thousands of whom issued from the woods in their rear," wrote Sergeant James J. Hutchinson of the 5th Alabama. "It was madness to go on, but our men moved steadily forward till within 250 yards, when the order was given to fire, and they immediately without orders, dropped to the ground and began loading and firing as fast as possible."

Depressions left for gravesites of two Rebel soldiers can still be seen in the woods across the road.



In the clearing at left, Confederates attacked the right flank of the Union army, whose position proved impregnable. Ruins of the Willis parsonage, which burned in 1988, are in the right background. Rebels formed on this property for their assault. "I must confess that I slept through most of the uproar of this battle -- slept the sleep of the thoroughly tired out," a Maine soldier wrote years later, "and I understand that all that could of the army did so, too."

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Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Gaines' Mill panoramas: 'Like a swarm of angry bumblebees'

                                             Union perspective at Battle of Gaines' Mill.

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When Rebels charged from these woods during the latter stages of the Battle of Gaines' Mill (Va.) on June 27, 1862, they were hot on the heels of Federal troops, preventing nearby Yankee artillery from immediately blasting away with canister.

Lieutenant Charles Phillips witnessed the
rout of the Union Army at Gaines' Mill.
 "The woods were full of smoke and bullets buzzed round our heads like a swarm of angry bumblebees," Lieutenant Charles Phillips of the 5th Massachusetts Light Artillery wrote after the battle. "... My horse had a bullet in the flank and one sergeant's horse lay dead on the ground. As yet no men were hit, but louder and louder roared the musketry, and thicker and thicker buzzed the bullets, and suddenly out poured our infantry in disorder, frightened and reckless -- they made an attempt to rally, rushing out right in front of the muzzles of our guns, which were right in front of the trees, but broke and retreated."

The Confederates' attack was so overwhelming that Phillips was forced to abandon his cannon, galloping away on his wounded horse. When the animal was struck in the leg by an enemy volley, he tumbled to the ground and was stunned to see a Rebel flag planted on his cannon.

"By this time," Phillips wrote, "all was confusion, the road was filled with fugitives, the officers in vain trying to rally their men, and the thunder of artillery and musketry incessant."

Phillips, a 21-year-old Harvard law school graduate, left behind his pocket testament, bridle, saddle, and blanket. It could have been worse. In its defeat at Gaines Mill, the largest of the Seven Days' battles near Richmond, the Union Army suffered 6,800 casualties.

                        Another view of Gaines' Mill battlefield from Union perspective.

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Author Q & A: Lesley Gordon's 'A Broken Regiment'

The 16th Connecticut was routed in John Otto's cornfield at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862.
 The monument to the regiment was dedicated on Oct. 8, 1894.

Inexplicably thrown into the fighting at a critical juncture at Antietam, its first battle of the war, the 16th Connecticut was routed -- a debacle that defined the regiment. Many 16th Connecticut soldiers skedaddled on Sept. 17, 1862, one deserting and fleeing all the way to England. Less than two years later, nearly the entire regiment was captured at Plymouth, N.C., and sent to a Rebel prison in Andersonville, Ga., where many were among the nearly 13,000 Union soldiers who died there. 

While much has been written about Antietam and Andersonville, comparatively little has been written about the hard-luck 16th Connecticut, which was recruited mainly from prosperous Hartford County communities such as Hartford, Avon, Bristol, Farmington and Glastonbury and elsewhere. Due out in November, Lesley Gordon's book, A Broken Regiment (Louisiana State University Press), aims to fill that void.  A professor of history at the University of Akron, Gordon spent 10 years researching the book, combing through diaries, old newspapers, soldiers' letters and a trove of documentation on the regiment at the Connecticut State Library in Hartford. 

"I knew I couldn’t write 1,000 individual biographies -- how could I say something fresh and different about this group of individuals?" wrote Gordon in explaining the lengthy process of researching and writing the book. "It took me a long time to figure that out." Gordon, who grew up in East Granby and Simsbury in Connecticut, recently took time out to answer my questions about A Broken Regiment.

Lesley Gordon's book, A Broken Regiment, will be available
 in November 2014.
Let's get right to the title of the book, A Broken Regiment. Why did you call it that?

Gordon: The title comes from a quote -- a Rhode Island colonel referred to the 16th CV at Antietam as a “broken regiment,” in describing their rout and his own unit’s (the 4th RI’s) collapse.  I like how it also speaks to the 16th’s general state after the battle, where they struggled to replace their numbers and their morale.  They never really did; less than two years later they were captured at Plymouth and most spent months at Andersonville. There were moments of hope when members talked of “regeneration,” believing they had moved on from the debacle at Antietam, but they never really did recover. Also, the title underscores the notion of a “broken” narrative; many of these soldiers struggled to make sense of their experience and construct a familiar, in many ways, heroic story about themselves (as Civil War soldiers often did). But their experiences didn’t quite fit. There were just too many jagged edges.

The book took more than a decade to complete. Why did it take so long?

Gordon: There are a few reasons why this took me so long -- I became involved in other projects, including a CW textbook This Terrible War and editing two essay collections.  I also became editor of Civil War History.  But I also had so much material -- the George Q. Whitney papers at the Connecticut State Library, for example, are very large and chock full of rich materials. I read through as many soldiers’ letters and diaries as I could, as well as the major local newspapers, transcribing, sifting, and thinking for a long time about what to do with all this information.  It was a challenge for me after writing a biography (My first book, General George E. Pickett in Life and Legend). I knew I couldn’t write 1000 individual biographies -- how could I say something fresh and different about this group of individuals? It took me a long time to figure that out.

Author Lesley Gordon on the 16th Connecticut: 
 "There were moments of hope when members 
talked  of  'regeneration,' believing they had moved 
on from the debacle at Antietam, but they never 
really did recover."
Much has been written, of course, about Antietam, the 16th Connecticut's first battle of the war. What new did you learn about the regiment's experience there?

Gordon: I already knew the basic contours of their experience -- that is what first drew me to their story (Stephen Sears’description of them in Landscape Turned Red).  What struck me as I dug deeper was how quickly their individual (and candid) accounts of panic, anxiety and sheer terror evolved into a story of heroism. You can see a transformation within a matter of weeks in soldiers’ letters and in newspaper accounts. I found that process fascinating.

Tragically, many soldiers in the regiment died at Andersonville, the most notorious Civil War prisoner of war camp. What story about the regiment's experience there stands out most?

Gordon: Probably the fact that several members accepted Confederate paroles to leave the pen. This is something denied or glossed over in the public record and in most published accounts -- but prisoners talked about it openly and bitterly in their diaries.  It was a shameful thing on one level to do such a thing; but it also became a simple matter of survival for others.


More than a dozen soldiers in the 16th Connecticut, including Lieutenant Colonel John Burnham and Private Bela Burr, ended up in insane asylums after the war. Can this be tied directly to their war experience?

Gordon: I can’t make a direct tie, but it has made me wonder.  I’ve been able to confirm 16 members classified as “insane.” It is important to note that in the mid-19th century, this term did not necessarily mean the same thing as it does today; nonetheless, given this unit’s unique and uneven service, especially their long imprisonment, I do think there may well be a connection.

Not all stories about the regiment involve tragedy. Are there any soldiers who either during the war or post-war could be called heroes?

Lieutenant Colonel John Burnham
died in an insane asylum after 

the Civil War. (Mollus Collection)
Gordon: Three in particular come to mind:  Color Corporal Ira Forbes, Lieutenant Bernard Blakeslee and Lieutenant Colonel John Burnham. Each of these men exhibited undeniable personal bravery in battle, a deep commitment to the war and a love for their regiment. Forbes in particular is credited with helping to save the regimental colors at Plymouth, which were torn and preserved by many members, even while imprisoned.  But their stores are not without complications:  Forbes wrote extensively about the unit (and individual members), after the war, yet he ended up alienating his closest friends and former comrades when he began expressing (and publishing in local newspapers) apologetic views toward the former Confederacy, especially on the issue of race; Blakeslee authored the only complete regimental history of the 16th, but stirred controversy because he angrily insisted that Confederates “massacred” African-Americans at Plymouth; and Lieutenant Colonel. Burnham drew anger and resentment when he sought to discipline the troops. Each of these men ended up committed and dying in the Hartford Insane Asylum.

Finally, what do you hope that the reader takes away from your book?

Gordon: The 16th Connecticut had a unique military service; yet they sought desperately to make it fit into a larger conventional narrative of gallant soldiers and glorious battles.  I hope readers will see how important those ideals were to mid-19th century Americans (and remain to present-day Americans); but also that much of what they endured was not that uncommon at all: their failings and disappointments, their anger and resentments were all part of the human experience, particularly in a war of this scope.

Monday, July 14, 2014

Malvern Hill: Tragic evidence of a long-ago war

Union artillery shelled these woods during the Battle of Malvern Hill.

One of the best-preserved Civil War battlefields, Malvern Hill, near Richmond, is always a treat to visit. During a stop there early this morning, it also served up a surprise: Just off a path in woods where Rebel troops formed and later sought shelter from Yankee artillery, two depressions in the ground, each about six feet long, are easily seen. According to a National Park Service marker, the depressions once probably were graves for Rebel soldiers, most likely casualties during the battle on July 1, 1862. After the war, the remains may have been disinterred and re-buried in a cemetery in Richmond. Union dead from the area were re-buried at the nearby Glendale National Cemetery.

Depressions in the woods at Malvern Hill probably held the remains of Rebel soldiers, 
according to the National Park Service.

Saturday, July 12, 2014

Faces of the Civil War: 45th North Carolina Private James Hill

James H. Hill (right) shown with family members in this circa-1888 tintype.
(Photos courtesy Kim Hill Marley)

Descendants of Civil War soldiers often e-mail me, eager to tell the story about an ancestor. Here’s one sent by blog fan Kim Hill Marley, whose great-great grandfather served in the 45th North Carolina and was wounded in the arm at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863.

“Not really a heroic war history,” she wrote, “but I'm sure he was a 22-year-old not ready for what he got himself into!”

James H. Hill's gravestone in the Rockingham County (N.C.) 
pasture that he farmed long ago. 
Private James H. Hill was born in Rockingham County, N.C., where he was a farmer. He enlisted on Feb. 12, 1862, deserted six months later and returned to Company A of the 45th North Carolina  sometime before Nov. 1, 1862.  He left his company again and was court-martialed in early January 1863 for being absent without leave. The penalty: 25 days' hard labor with a ball and chain weighing 12 pounds attached to his left leg and seven days' solitary confinement on bread and water.

Besides Gettysburg, the 45th North Carolina  saw action in some of the fiercest battles of the war -- including Malvern Hill on July 1, 1862 and at Cold Harbor in June 1864 before it  surrendered with Lee’s Army at Appomattox. But the war for Hill was largely over by July 1864, when he was retired to the Invalid Corps, perhaps still plagued by his Gettysburg wound.

Hill  survived fierce fighting on July 1 at Gettysburg when his 600-man regiment suffered 63 killed and 156 wounded in fields west of town. Two days later, the regiment fought up Culp's Hill, and a few minutes after it took an abandoned line of breastworks, it opened fire on exposed Union soldiers.

"At that time almost every man of the regiment was firing into them as they passed the opening, certainly killing a great number," an after-battle report by 45th North Carolina Captain J.A. Hopkins noted. "At times it seemed as if whole masses of them would fall.  At one time this continued cross-fire kept up for about   five minutes, in which time we killed more than in all our fighting before and after."

It's unclear when Hill suffered his wound.

 “I picture in my dreams and thoughts that he was wounded at the Culp's Hill battle (at Gettysburg),” Marley wrote, “but will never know. His gravesite is on his old farm pasture. Wish I owned that land but can visit whenever I want at least.”

Hill was 65 when he died 13 days before Christmas in 1905. The United Daughters of the Confederacy placed a marker in his honor near his small, weathered gravestone that includes the inscription "a kind husband and a faithful friend."

The United Daughters of the Confederacy placed this marker for Hill in a farm field near his grave.


Tuesday, July 01, 2014

Touching history: Envelope to N.Y. cavalry officer's father

Envelope addressed to the father of  Charles Greenleaf, a lieutenant in the 5th New York Cavalry.

Charles Greenleaf did not survive the war.
(Photo: Connecticut State Library)
Research at the National Archives can be a crap shoot. Sometimes you hope for big things and nothing pans out, and then there are days like Tuesday, when I found more than 20 letters written by soldiers from Connecticut to their parents back home. I doubt that the large, musty envelopes that I found the letters in had been touched in decades. I also found another neat nugget: an envelope in which Charles Greenleaf, a lieutenant in the 5th New York Cavalry, mailed $40 to his needy parents back in Hartford. Sadly, Greenleaf didn't survive the war. The 22-year-old soldier, who also served in the 1st Connecticut early in the war, was mortally wounded in a skirmish near Harpers Ferry, W.Va., on Aug. 25, 1864. He died two days later at U.S. General Hospital in Sandy Hook, Md.

The Adams Express Co., which Greenleaf entrusted with his hard-earned money, also handled and shipped more precious cargo during the war: bodies of soldiers. Although not the norm, the company shipped the body of Union General Nathaniel Lyon, who had been killed at the Battle of Wilson Creek, back to Connecticut from Missouri for free.