Podcast: Justin Martin on his book, A Fierce Glory

In Episode 44, Justin Martin — author of A Fierce Glory about the Battle of Antietam and four other books — talks with co-hosts John Banks and Tom McMillan about the major personalities he weaved into his terrific book (Lincoln! Letterman! Gardner!). Plus, he dishes on the great lull in the fighting on Sept. 17, 1862 (and other surprises), Quentin Tarantino and driving a stick shift.

Surrender town: An 1881 visit to Appomattox Court House

The McLean house, where Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia.
(Library of Congress)

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In 1881-82, Philadelphia Times correspondent George Morgan embarked on an epic road trip to Civil War battlefields in the South. (Oh my, I wonder if the man had an expense account, and if so, how did he sneak it past his editor?)

Morgan's journey took him to hallowed ground from Bull Run in Virginia to Kennesaw Mountain in Georgia. His lengthy, detailed accounts of those visits appeared on the front page of The Philadelphia Times and in other newspapers throughout the country. 

In fall 1881, newspapers published Morgan's report of his visit to Appomattox Court House, Virginia, where Army of Northern Virginia commander Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses Grant on April 9, 1865.

"The Court House landscape, made up of a little valley and its bordering hills, seemed to me to be as soft and pleasant a picture as one could wish to see," wrote Morgan.

Here's Morgan's complete account from that visit as it appeared in The Times on Sept. 12, 1881:

---

Special correspondence of The Times

"A school in the jail!" I said in surprise.

"Yes," repeated Dr. Patterson, the obliging physician of the village, "we had school there all winter."

"Well, I should — irradiate!" remarked my jocose companion, who was here with [Phil] Sheridan sixteen years ago.

"But where were the prisoners?" I protested; "the thieves, vagabonds, cut-throats, forgers and awful creatures of that kind?"

"Why, sir, sometimes Appomattox Jail is without a tenant of that class for two or three years; we are a law-abiding people and love God."

"An',begad, strangers," interrupted a less polished native; "ef ye feel kind o' thirsty ye'll be 'bleeged ter g' way from heah ter git yo' licker, 'cause there aint a dran o' the critter in ole Appomattox."

Such was my introduction to the scene of Lee's surrender and Grant's triumph — as peaceful and pleasant a spot as can on the continent. What I take to be the common idea of the whereabouts of the out-of-the-way Court House and its apple tree is that they are lying around loose somewhere within an hour's ride or so of Petersburg.

At least that was my notion until I tried to get here. I had forgotten that when Lee left his Cockade City lines and that when Grant unleashed his army in hot pursuit the worn veterans of the one and the jubilant host of the other pushed westward on level land for five full days. So it was that when, with a fellow-traveler of chance acquaintance, I got out of the cars at Appomattox Station on the Southside Railroad I was surprised to learn that the smoke of busy Lynchburg could be seen on clear days just over among the mountains to the west. The station is a scraggy collection of stores, which apparently have more clerks than customers. The ride thence to the Court House is three miles northward, across flat fields and through thick timber.

Until we issued upon the Appomattox Valley the only thing that relieved a trot otherwise tiresome was the sight of a score of little darkeys at play around a school house, on the stoop of which sat the white-haired and strong-armed swinger of the hickory gad.

Appomattox in a beautiful valley

But as soon as we got out of the woods and drew near the village the whole surroundings took upon themselves that which forced our close scrutiny and admiration. The Court House landscape, made up of a little valley and its bordering hills, seemed to me to be as soft and pleasant a picture as one could wish to see. To the right from the roadway stretch rolling lands and to the left are similar clearings, with a plantation house a quarter of a mile distant, in the midst of its field.

Beyond and in the direction we were driving the road runs down a long declivity. At the foot of the hill is the Appomattox and crossing this stream, here a mere rivulet, the road ascends at slight grade until it is lost to sight in the horizon line to the north. Up the valley are hillocky fields and down the valley, which curves to the south, are hillside groves. Where we now rein in our horses to get a mental picture of the stretch of rolling earth Grant once stood, as with field-glass he scanned the tent-dotted slope whereon Lee's last bivouac was made. The sunlight is soft, the sky is one of pearl, the air is perfumed with the breath of the pine, the oak and the locust, and far away rise the Peaks of Otter, pyramids of blue beauty, standing as sentinel towers hard by the gateway of the sun.

Slightly below the point from which we see these sights is the Court House village. It is snugged up against the hill, half way down the slope, and is nearly hidden by shade trees. As we move on we pass a graveyard that covers less than a square rood of ground. Within the enclosure, as our driver tells us, are buried the last victims of Lee's last campaign. The only slabs in the place of burial are wooden ones, and the only tombstones are such rude rocks as have been gathered from the highway. A few hundred yards further along the road we come to the McLean House, the place of surrender, and a moment later we hitch our horses in front of the Court House, in the heart of the little settlement.

United States soldiers at the court house in Appomattox Court House, Va., in April 1865.
(Library of Congress)

An odd little place 

It is plain at first glance that the village was built with an eye to the geometrical. The half acre of grassy ground in which squats the Court House is of octagonal cut and hedge. Four short streets form a square around the octagon and along the outer sides of the streets are the one hotel, the three stores and the thirteen dwellings that constitute the village.

The Court House is a brick building of low pitch in a grove of locusts. Stone steps lead in steep succession up to a porch, passing which Judge or juror finds himself in the hail of justice. Blackstone is uppermost in the main room, but in the basement below the Bible holds sway, for upon occasion the Court House can serve as a church. The jail looks like a brick dwelling, and its harmless appearance is in keeping with every other thing about the delightful village. 

"The only excitements wo have," said Dr. Patterson, "are in court weeks. Court met yesterday and Colonel Readjuster Cameron spoke here, but, as you see, there isn't much stir. Yes, the apple-tree place is beyond the creek there, and, by the way, do you see that house ? Well, there's where Mr. Peers lives; in the yard of his house the last Confederate gun fired in Virginia went off on the Sunday morning of the surrender. On the other side of the county building is the McLean House; do you see, gentlemen? — that brick house.' "

In at the start and the death

We went to the McLean house and were pleasantly greeted by its occupant, Mrs. N. G. Ragland. It stands, with slight change, as it stood at the surrender. In 1861 Wilmer McLean, a quiet citizen, owned a farm near Bull Run stream, in Prince William county. When on Sunday, the 21st of July, in that year the great armies clashed for the first time his fields were devastated and his home despoiled. He jumped at the conclusion that the war would be waged in front of Washington, and so, to get away from the fuss, he pocketed his household goods and moved southward to the untroubled hills of Appomattox. 

Strange does it seem that he should have beheld the first act and the last act of the war in Virginia, but it was immediately around him that the conflict had its beginning and end. He was at Manassas when the gay young rebel, sashed and plumed, gave [Irwin] McDowell that first sockdolager, and he was here at Appomattox when the same rebel — ragged, shoeless, shirtless, the recipient of a thousand blows — stacked arms forever.

Where the war ended

An early 20th-century view of the ruins of the McLean house. (Read more on my blog.)

In Mrs. McLean's parlor Grant and Lee met to agree upon the terms of surrender. The house is a two-story brick structure, with a porch extending the full length of its front. It was intended originally for a tavern. The yard is a large square grass plot, bordered by six towering locust trees. A huge willow that stood at the time of the surrender has been cut away, stump and all. In the middle of the yard is a well of sweet water. The summer house that once covered the well is gone. At the edge of the porch are a number of geranium pots with flowers in bloom.

The pailings are white with a fresh coat of lime and altogether the property is as neat and pretty as it is possible to make it. A wide hall leads from the porch through the middle of the house. It was with one room only — the parlor to the left of the entrance — that the commanders had anything to do. An alleged engraving of the historic conference hangs over the parlor door, but the villagers say that several of the Federal officers who show their fine uniforms in the picture were not present except in the engraver's accommodating eye. The room would seat comfortably fifty or more persons.

There is a window at each end and both windows are wide. The fireplace is screened by a pictured board. Around the room are portraits of Ragland beauties and beaux, and while Mrs. Ragland's furniture and ornaments make the historic parlor quite pretty they also make it commonplace. The big chair in the corner suggests tender courting episodes rather than incidents of hard campaigning.

15th New York Cavalry
officer Augustus Root
was killed on April 8, 1865
at Appomattox Court House.
(Find a Grave)

A pleasant breeze was swaying the tops of the locusts as we left the McLean house and passed once more through the village, clear over which my companion swore that he could knock a base ball in sky-scraping curve, Here at this wheelwright shop fell the dashing [Lieutenant Colonel Augustus Israel] Root, the last officer of the Army of the Potomac to die. 

Further along we see an oak and black gum, uninteresting of their own account, but which enable the villager to get the bearings of the now uptorn locust where Grant and Lee first met to talk. That spot is in an open field, about two hundred yards north of the Court House and well down the slope towards the Appomattox.

When we forded that stream the clear, spring water flowing over sandy bottom did not so much as wet the hubs of our buggy-wheels. It is less than ten yards in width at this time, though in stormy weeks, when the red soil above takes to itself something of the fluidity as well as the color of blood, the rivulet truly swells into a river and passes eastward its one hundred and fifty miles to the James with rush and roar that tell of the highland bed wherein it was born. The source of the stream is three miles above — a spring that is visited daily by darkey boys who balance buckets upon their heads with as much dexterity as the thumb of the sweet swell at Long Branch throws into the twirl of his cane.

At the apple tree 

The spot where stood Lee's apple tree is soon reached, as leaving the creek we go a part of the way up the slope and halt by a roadside orchard. Persons have said that the hole left by the removal of the stump is now visible. If so it is microscopic. The driver showed us "near 'bout " and "put nigh" the place where the hole ought to be.

The day after the surrender the tree was removed root and branch by soldiers who wanted relics to take home to their wives and sweethearts. And as apple wood is apple wood, several other trees in the same orchard were cut up into relics also. This season a crop of oats was taken by Farmer E. G. Hicks from the field and September stubble now makes the whole hillside brown. It is true that Lee held a brief council under the apple tree and the story of the tree is not a myth. 

Lee's apple tree, locusts and poplar

The weary leader was hemmed in on all sides. The thousand days of fighting were over and the one day of parley had come. The Army of Northern Virginia had spent its strength in many manœuvres, in tireless marches and in terrific battles.

Robert E. Lee, days after his army's surrender,
poses for Mathew Brady in Richmond.

Hungry, sore and sick, the poor remnant of a once seemingly invincible host now under the bright light of an April moon slept its last sleep with the knapsack for its pillow. From the apple tree the rebel chief sent out his white sign of peace — a poor, torn rag, but how fateful! Riding down hill and across the stream he met Grant near the locust. County Clerk George T. Peers saw Grant and Lee meet. They saluted, chatted, touched hats, wheeled and rode in opposite directions.

To appearances it was an ordinary meeting of two mounted men. Soon afterwards Lee returned from the further side of the creek and, with Grant, entered the McLean house. Then the vanquished captain rejoined his comrades and under a poplar, now flourishing in its growth on the farm of J. W. Flood, one mile northeast of the Court House, bade farewell to battle-fields.

Here ended the long, fierce, pitiless struggle which in the record of the world's wars vastly overtops all others. Following the lines of scarred earth from Manassas hither, a youth predisposed to carp becomes aware of the smallness of closet critics and of after-battle valiants. He feels that the war was waged under mighty impulse and that those who taught overcame obstacles to which the labors of Hercules were as the tricks of toys. The footprints of the grand armies will outlast the generation that made them and grow to gigantic breadth and import for those who come after.

Myriad graves border the grounds of combat, but peacefully above each battle-field the flag of the Union has its place. — G.M.

Tales from the road: The little Irish chaplain 'worth ten men'

John McNamara (upper right) served as 1st Wisconsin chaplain.

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In Lake Geneva, they say Ulysses Grant, William Sherman, “Little Phil” Sheridan and Mary Todd Lincoln once visited their quaint Wisconsin burg. But I’m more interested in Civil War commoners, so I make my way to the town’s Pioneer Cemetery — it’s two blocks from the lake and across Maxwell Street from a vintage Rolls Royce parked next to a shiny, red Corvette in a driveway.

Nothing else calms jumpy nerves quite like a walk through a well-manicured graveyard, even one with grass coated thickly with dew, as Pioneer Cemetery is this morning. Here, in the town’s oldest cemetery, more than two dozen Civil War veterans rest.

You’ll find Ora Kimball, a “useful and upright citizen” who served in the 9th Vermont. He died in 1882. I wonder if he was among the United States soldiers Stonewall Jackson bagged in Harpers Ferry in mid-September 1862.

The broken tombstone of
Private Martin Ross of
the 22nd Wisconsin.

Nearby, under a low-hanging limb of a craggy oak, stands the pearl-white gravestone for William Stoodley of the 3rd Wisconsin Cavalry. As an early 50ish private, he fought in battles at Newtonia, Byram’s Ford, Little Blue River and other unheralded fights in the Trans-Mississippi Theater. 

Thirty yards or so from Stoodley, embedded in soggy turf, sits the broken tombstone for Martin Ross. In 1863, the 22nd Wisconsin private died in a regimental hospital in Danville, Kentucky.

And then there’s the grave of John McNamara, the diminutive, Irish-born Episcopalian minister who served as a chaplain with the 1st Wisconsin. Newspapers hailed him during the war as the “fighting chaplain” and “little chaplain.” Oh my, what a legacy he left. 

“Faithful and earnest,” a Wisconsin newspaper called McNamara.

“Worthy and respected,” wrote another.

By the end of 1862, McNamara — who, at 36, left a thriving ministry for the U.S. Army in October 1861 — had already endured major battles at Perryville in Kentucky and Stones River in Tennessee. Then, in September 1863, he witnessed the horrors of Chickamauga.

To soldiers, McNamara provided advice, comfort, and in 1862, mittens from home. The Irishman buried some of his soldier flock, too, including Lt. Collins C. McVean, the victim of an enemy “missile” in Georgia in the summer of ‘64.

“There are few regiments in the field that are blessed with so stirring and active a Chaplain,” a Wisconsin newspaper wrote. “We have heard wounded soldiers of the 1st say that on the field of battle, their Chaplain was worth ten men. Cool and collected when the bullets and balls fly thickest, not a soldier falls but receives his immediate and personal attention.”

In 1864, in appreciation for his service, the 1st Wisconsin gave McNamara an inscribed, silver meerschaum pipe with a mouthpiece made of amber. The Irishman, meanwhile, found time to give the army hell.

Before the war, McNamara — an ardent abolitionist — railed against the evils of slavery. In the 1850s, he lived in Missouri and Kansas Territory. Later, he published a book, Three Years on the Kansas Border, in which he wrote about the struggles of pioneers to bring that territory into the union as a free state. In 1856, his anti-slavery speech in New York drew praise from the New York Herald, but his courageous stand earned him scorn by some within his church.

The gravestone of Chaplain John McNamara caught my eye in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

In Tennessee in 1862, Chaplain McNamara complained about army rules allowing “negro catchers” into camps to search for escaped slaves.

"The chief business of our officers at this post is to issue passes to slave hunters, in obedience to higher authority,” he fumed in a letter. “The new article of war forbidding officers to aid in returning fugitives is carried out thus far that we need not show the claimants where they are, nor take hold of them and help to get them away. But, on the other hand, passes are given to search our camps, and if the negroes are found in them, a word of sympathy must not be expressed by us, nor a finger lifted to save! I will be candid and say that without our direct aid it is a matter to catch a man fleeing for his life.

“But this is because the men want freedom, and will run in hopes of securing it. Now, sir, we the officers and privates of this regiment, do not like this work. We came here to fight the common enemies of our country, and we want to do it. Field officers have ridden twenty-four hours in a drenching rain, in the night, too, to protest against their regiment being used in this way. Negro catchers say that Starkweather's brigade do not cheerfully obey orders. This unwillingness on our part to do the dirtiest of all work, is regarded by the negro claimants as ‘bad usage’ and in consequence reprimands have come down to us!"

After the war, McNamara served as president of a college in Nebraska, traveled to Europe and toiled in a home for the aged in New York. In October 1885, following a trip to the post office in North Platte, Nebraska, where he ministered, McNamara was stricken by paralysis. He died hours later, age 60.

“A good man closed his earthly work loved and is mourned by our whole people,” a Nebraska newspaper wrote.

In Wisconsin, a newspaper obituary noted McNamara's “energetic spirit.”

“[H]e has acquitted himself with entire fidelity and much zeal and ability," the publication wrote, "and it may truly be said of Dr. John McNamara: ‘Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou in the joys of thy Lord.’"

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SOURCES

• E.B. Quiner Scrapbooks: "Correspondence of the Wisconsin Volunteers, 1861-1865," Volume 2, page 160, Wisconsin Historical Society Collection
• Lincoln County (Neb.) Tribune, Oct 31, 1885 
• The Lake Geneva (Wis.) Herald, June 30, 1882
• The Telegraph-Courier, Kenosha, Wis., Apr 9, 1863, Nov. 26, 1863, July 7, 1864 
• Wisconsin State Journal, Madison, Wis, Jan 20, 1864

Podcast: Aaron Holley on Antietam battlefield maps

On Episode 43 of "The Antietam And Beyond Podcast," Aaron Holley — an Antietam Institute board member and West Virginia University graduate — talks with co-hosts John Banks and Tom McMillan about fields of fire, lost roads, hidden fence lines and other information derived from his fascinating battlefield mapmaking. 

Holley took the late 19th-century Ezra Carman-Emmor Cope Antietam maps and aligned them with locations on today's battlefield. Through remote and field-based work, dozens of locations were matched between those maps and actual locations on the ground. This process gives these classic maps a modern GPS usage while preserving their timeless aesthetic.

Podcast: Battlefield preservation at Antietam, elsewhere

In Episode 42 of "The Antietam And Beyond Podcast," co-hosts John Banks and Tom McMillan discuss battlefield preservation at Antietam, Gettysburg and elsewhere. Should all hallowed ground be saved?

Tales from the road: A purr-fect stop in Gettysburg

Rebecca Brown and Joanie, an eight-year-old pit bull mix, at the George Meade HQ diorama.

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Sometimes dreams do come true.

Instead of returning to home base for a cat nap, I stroll into the strangest place in all of Gettysburg. (And, no, it’s not the Lincoln Links miniature golf course on Steinwehr Avenue.)

At the entrance The Civil War Tails at the Homestead Diorama Museum on Baltimore Street, a smiling Rebecca Brown greets me. She, along with her twin sister, Ruth, created dioramas of famous Gettysburg battle scenes with thousands of miniature cats.

In all, Rebecca says they have 9,000 tiny soldier felines on display. But she and Ruth have created a shade over 10,000 total according to the sisters’ “cat census.” ( I didn’t have the heart to ask who counted all the faux critters, an egregious example of journalistic malpractice.)

“My God,” I say to myself soon after forking over my seven bucks to enter this wonder of history, “there’s a diorama of Pickett’s Charge!” 

And Devil’s Den… and the fighting at East Cavalry Field… and General Meade’s HQ… and Little Round Top, complete with a “Joshua Chamberlain” brandishing a sword.

“Look,” Rebecca says, “here’s Wade Hampton.”

"Joshua Chamberlain" (bottom middle) brandishes a sword in the Little Round Top diorama.

Union cats maneuver a cannon in the Devil's Den diorama.

Charge! A diorama of the fighting at East Cavalry Field.

“Our handmade miniature soldiers give you 3-D snap-shots of the American Civil War,” the museum web site says. “Get a bird’s-eye view of a battle or get down to eye-level and see what a soldier would have seen: soldiers, horses, cannons and places.”

Like a cat on a hot tin roof (sorry), I bound from room to room examining dioramas, which also include Fort Sumter, the Monitor and Merrimac duel and Andersonville. Meanwhile, Rebecca’s bemused mother Linda and bored 8-year-old pit bull mix named Joanie take in the weird scene.

For decades, the cat-loving sisters — like, no kidding — have been creating mini felines. Mom and Dad aid the effort on the dioramas.

“Anything made of wood is Dad,” Rebecca tells me. “Anything made of fabric is Mom.”

Before departing, I marvel at “Robert E. Lee” and “Ulysses Grant” sitting at their teensy-tiny desks. Then I briefly mull the purchase of a 100-piece jigsaw puzzle of Michigan cavalry cats on the attack — it’s called “Come On, You Wolverines!” and probably the perfect gift for Mrs. B back in Nashville. (Someone purr-suade me that’s a bad idea.)

I probably need to come in from the Civil War wild.

The diorama of Pickett's Charge from above.

Images found on Civil War battlefields: Who were they?

On March 23, 1924, the Des Moines Register reported about the image a young woman
discovered by a Confederate soldier on the Winchester (Va.) battlefield.

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For decades, the tiny photograph of the unidentified young woman charmed — and mystified — scores of visitors to the old Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va.

She stared straight ahead, her hair parted down the middle and smoothed behind the ears. A watch chain double looped around her neck — the shorter one included a heart-shaped charm. She wore a black ribbon on the crown of her head. For eye appeal, the photographic artist tinted the young lady’s lips and cheeks pink.

In late-summer 1864, a Rebel soldier plucked the image — a 1/16-plate tintype enclosed in a 1.5-x-2-inch case — as a souvenir from a fallen U.S. Army soldier on a Virginia battlefield. In the late 1890s, the veteran donated the photograph to the museum, the home of Jefferson Davis while he served as president of the Confederacy.

But who was she?

Image of  Georgiana (or Georgia Ann) Oxley Secrist
 of Marion, Iowa. It was found by a Rebel 
soldier on the Winchester (Va.) battlefield.
(The American Civil War Museum collection)

During an early 1920s visit to the museum, a couple from Cedar Rapids, Iowa recognized the photograph. Months later, they provided museum archivists with details. The brother of the young lady in the battlefield photograph supplied an early 20th-century image of his sister for comparison to the museum likeness. That evidence, along with snippets of information gleaned from the Confederate veteran, convinced museum authorities of the identity of the photograph.

The image that had long captivated museum visitors was of Georgiana (or Georgia Ann) Oxley Secrist of Marion, Iowa. The fallen soldier whom the Confederate snatched the image from was her fiancé, Albert Carmichael of the 24th Iowa, Company F. At the Battle of Winchester on Sept. 19, 1864, the 24-year-old private was mortally wounded by an artillery shell that also nearly severed the legs of another comrade, according to Georgiana’s brother, James Oxley, who also served in the regiment. Carmichael’s younger brother John — a private in the 24th Iowa, Company H — was mortally wounded in the same battle.

After the revelation, newspapers throughout the country published a long feature story about the discovery of the photograph’s subject and her long-dead fiancé. "Faded Portrait in Confederate Museum reveals Romance of Iowa Lovers," read one paper’s headline. "Old Picture of Civil War Days Breathes Pathos," read another.

Georgiana later in life
(Richmond Times-Dispatch,
March 23, 1924)

Secrist and Carmichael attended school together in a small, log structure in Iowa. She was the youngest of 10 children and four years younger than Carmichael. A romance blossomed. Albert continued the relationship while he attended Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa. They intended to marry and settle on a farm. But the war spoiled those plans.

Eager to aid the Union, male students at Cornell College formed a company in the 24th Iowa. Before Albert Carmichael enlisted in the summer of 1862, Secrist handed him the tintype — an image taken when she was 15 and lived in Pennsylvania. They most likely maintained their relationship through letter writing, although none are known to exist.

War rocked Carmichael’s family as it did thousands of others. At the Battle of Champion Hill in Mississippi on May 16, 1863, Albert was severely wounded. While convalescing in a New Orleans hospital, he wrote a poem that appeared in James Oxley’s journal. It included this grim reflection of the war’s cruelty:

Oh, the glorious cheer of triumph

When the foemen turned and fled 

Leaving us the field of battle 

Strewn with dying and dead 

Oh, the waiting and anguish 

That I could not follow on

 So, amid my fallen comrades I must wait til morning’s dawn

At Winchester National Cemetery, John’s remains rest in section 76, under gravestone 3545. Albert’s final resting place, however, is unknown. In 1885, nearly two decades after Albert Carmichael’s death, Georgiana married Albert Secrist, an old family friend. In 1913, more than a decade before the photo revelation, she died in Iowa. “She was a good woman,” wrote an obituary writer. 

While fortuitous, the unmasking of the identity of the photograph was not unique. Early 20th-century U.S. newspapers published accounts of at least two other, similar photographic revelations.

An image found near a fallen soldier in Virginia

In spring 1908, nearly 45 years after a daguerreotype of a young man and a girl was found near a fallen Union soldier on another Virginia battlefield, Edgar Whritenour returned the photograph to one of the subjects, Ellen “Nellie” Stowe. The New Jersey mineral water manufacturer’s effort astonished the 63-year-old woman.

“My husband is glad that I am to get [my] picture back,” Stowe wrote Whritenour. “I had forgotten that my name was in the case. Do you not believe that this is one case in a thousand — a picture restored to the original owner after forty-five years?” 

After the Battle of Chancellorsville in early May 1863, a Confederate soldier had picked up the photograph off the body of a dead Union soldier lying on the battlefield. Later, the soldier gave it to a 13th New Jersey soldier to take back north. He in turn gave it to his daughter, who married Whritenour. She gave it to her husband.

In 1875, Whritenour began a dogged search to trace the origin of the image. The names "John Rawson and Nellie Augusta Nettleton" were written on the back of the case. Also in the case were a needle, a piece of thread, and a lock of hair.

Whritenour “communicated with every Grand Army of the Republic post in the country” until he finally located “Nellie” in Milford, Conn. Rawson, a 27th Connecticut private, was killed May 3, 1863, during a desperate rearguard action at Chancellorsville that decimated the regiment. In Army of Northern Virginia commander Robert E. Lee’s greatest victory, eight of the 27th Connecticut’s 10 companies became prisoners of war. For nearly 10 years after the battle, Rawson’s fate was unknown to Stowe, believed to be the soldier’s sweetheart.

“I wish I could make good to you all the expense you have gone to find the owner,” she wrote Whritenour, who sent the daguerreotype to Stowe after he received photographic confirmation of her identity. “I am thankful that this little bit of my life's history has been handed down to me over the silence of so many years, and I admire your perseverance under such almost insurmountable obstacles.”

A remarkable reunification

Five years after Whritenour’s search concluded, a veteran reunited another battlefield-found photograph with its subject.

In a battle near Williamsburg, Va., in 1862, William H. Dunham picked up a knapsack lying among bodies of fallen U.S. Army soldiers. Inside it he discovered a daguerreotype of a young woman along with the usual kit equipment and a fork engraved with the initials “R.C.” and “11th P.V.” After he mustered out in 1865, Dunham — a Massachusetts 5th Light Artillery private — returned home with the image and the inscribed utensil. For more than 50 years, he figured the knapsack and his war souvenirs belonged to a soldier with the initials “R.C.” in the 11th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.

In 1913, the image was published in the New Bedford (Mass.) Sunday Times and a local resident, Rebecca Randall, found herself staring at her own photograph. Newspapers reported the photograph, knapsack, and utensil must have belonged to 7th Massachusetts Private Andrew Lawton, Randall’s friend, who was killed near Williamsburg, Va., on May 6, 1862. (How he acquired the engraved fork is unknown. A Massachusetts newspaper misidentified Lawton’s death site as the Wilderness.)

During an attack near Fort Magruder, the 20-year-old — a teacher as a civilian — was struck by an artillery shell. He “lived but a few moments,” a comrade recalled, “and died regretting he could not have been spared long enough to have got just one shot at the enemy before he died.”

Lawton’s friendship with Randall never turned to love — “on her part at least,” the Fall River (Mass.) Daily News later reported. A year before her friend was killed, Randall had married. But even in 1913, 51 years after Lawton’s death, the 66-year-old woman kept a darkened photograph of her friend.

"War Time Mystery Solved," read a headline in a Massachusetts newspaper about this remarkable reunification of photo with subject. But many other images — of families, sweethearts, and others — remain shrouded by the fog of war.

A mystery image with an Antietam connection

In the 1860s, Bascom William Tell Phreaner created this image, "copied from an
ambrotype found in the grave of a soldier" on the Antietam battlefield.

In the 1860s, Hagerstown, Md.-based photographer Bascom William Tell Phreaner created cartes-de-visite — small photographs pasted to a cardboard backing — of a young woman. Clad in a plaid dress, she stared intently at the camera. Her hair was pushed back in a popular, Civil War-era style. But the subject was unknown to the photographer, who didn’t even know if the woman were still alive. On the reverse of Phreaner’s CDV appeared these words:

"Copied from an ambrotype found in the grave of an Unknown soldier, on the Battle Field of Antietam."

An unknown number of the CDVs was distributed. But the effort to unmask the identity of the woman in the image — as well as the soldier in the grave where it was discovered — proved fruitless.

More mysteries linger

Efforts to identify photographs found on Civil War battlefields continue even today.

In a feature story published in 2012, Steve Szkotak of the Associated Press wrote about unidentified images in the vast collection of the American Civil War Museum (formerly Museum of the Confederacy) — a long-shot publicity effort the museum hoped would lead to the names of the subjects. Two poignant photographs were of little girls — one with pink-tinted cheeks and hair in ringlets, the other with her hair parted in the middle. 

A CDV of a young girl found
on a fallen soldier at Gettysburg.
(Jeff Kowalis collection)

A Confederate soldier found the former photograph at Port Republic (Va.), between the bodies of two soldiers — one U.S. Army, one Confederate. Another Rebel retrieved the later image from the haversack of a fallen U.S. Army soldier on a Virginia farm in April 1865. Days later, Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia in nearby Appomattox Courthouse.

The story mentioned six other unidentified images from the museum’s holdings. Some had been in its collection for 60 years or more. None included any identification. One, found by a U.S. Army soldier on the Fredericksburg battlefield, was of a couple with two young children. All these photographs remain unidentified.

In 2021, avid Civil War photography collector Jeff Kowalis shared copies of unidentified images — of a toddler, a young girl, and a woman — found by a New York colonel with a fallen U.S. Army soldier at Gettysburg. The officer believed the dead man served with the 9th Massachusetts Battery. Fred Cross, military archivist for the State of Massachusetts from 1918-38, believed the colonel was wrong. But the images moved him nonetheless. (For more on Cross, see my August 2018 story in Civil War Times).

“Who the owner was will probably never be known,” Cross wrote. “But some soldier carried them close to his heart, took them out at evening and gazed lovingly at them by light of flickering campfires, and murmured a prayer for his absent loved ones as he tenderly put them back into their accustomed place. And then came GETTYSBURG.”

SOURCES 

• Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Daily Republican, Jan. 9, 1913
• Des Moines Register, March 23, 1924
• Fall River (Mass.) Daily Evening News, Sept. 25, 1913
• Hutchinson, Nelson V., History of the Seventh Massachusetts volunteer infantry in the war of the rebellion of the southern states against constitutional authority, 1861-1865, 1890
• Los Angeles Daily News, April 10, 1924
• The Berkshire Country Eagle, Pittsfield, Mass., July 23, 1863
• The Delphos Herald, Delphis, Kansas, April 25, 1879
• Tyrone (Pa.) Daily Herald, May 21, 1908

Podcast: Historian Sarah Kay Bierle on 'Gallant' John Pelham

In Episode 41 of "The Antietam And Beyond Podcast," author/historian/speaker Sarah Kay Bierle chats with co-hosts John Banks and Tom McMillan about Confederate artillerist John Pelham, who played a pivotal role at Antietam. Her latest book is Glorious Courage: John Pelham In The Civil War, published in May 2025 by Savas Beatie. 

You may not know much about "The Gallant" Pelham, but you've surely seen the remarkable circa-1858 image of him by Mathew Brady in dozens of publications. Plus, Bierle dishes on the role of "Hancock The Superb" at Antietam and more.

A flight over Fort Negley, Nashville's 'masterpiece'

 

A reporter in 1862 described the forts defending Union-occupied Nashville as the "most complete of the kind in the country." Fort Negley, built on St. Cloud Hill with mostly African-American labor, was especially impressive. "A masterpiece," the Philadelphia Press correspondent called it. The fort was constructed under supervision of Captain James St. Clair Morton, a 33-year-old Philadelphian and West Point graduate.

Podcast: All things Michigan at Antietam

In Episode 40 of "The Antietam And Beyond Podcast," Brian James Egen of The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn and author/historian Jack Dempsey join co-hosts John Banks and Tom McMillan to talk all things Michigan at Antietam. That includes stories about U.S. Army generals Alpheus S. Williams and Israel B. Richardson, who suffered a mortal wound in the attack on Bloody Lane on Sept. 17, 1862. Plus, the Michiganders — co-authors of Michigan At Antietam — dish on their effort to place a Michigan monument on the battlefield.

Podcast: Linda Zimmerman on Antietam soldier Albion Brooks

In Episiode 39 of "The Antietam And Beyond Podcast," author Linda Zimmerman talks with John Banks about her book, A Civil War Soldier and Me, the story of 8th Connecticut Sergeant Albion Brooks. Zimmerman devoted 30 years of research and traveled thousands of miles to learn about Brooks, who survived the bloodbath at Antietam as a teen but died at Cold Harbor on June 3, 1864.

Podcast: Listener spotlight on Civil War-mad Canadian

In Episode 38 of "The Antietam And Beyond Podcast," Canadian and fan of the podcast Devan Sommerville joins co-host John Banks (Tom McMillan was off) for a 15-minute chat about his obsession with the American Civil War. Without prompting, he mentions John's favorite spot on the Antietam battlefield and educates us about an unheralded Canadian tie to the battle.

Tales from the road: Bullets, bottles and Bonnie and Clyde

Bonnie Parker's gravestone in Dallas' Crown Hill Memorial Park.

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Near Dallas’ Love Field, where JFK’s body began a heart-wrenching journey back to D.C in November of ‘63, I hang a right into Crown Hill Memorial Park, across the way from a 7-Eleven and a Fiesta Mart.

“Where’s Section 4?” I ask a man walking in the cemetery with a young girl.

Killers Bonnie and Clyde

On this overcast Saturday morning, the goal is to commune with the spirits of two of the more notorious criminals in American history — one of whom rests somewhere in this vast sea of green, gray and white. The man has no idea about Section 4, but his eyes brighten after he receives more intel. 

“I’m looking for the grave of Bonnie Parker.”

”Oh, she’s right over this way,” says the man, a visitor from Boston in Dallas with his teen daughter.

Roughly 30 yards from the gray-granite grave of Ray Bobo sits the marker for Parker, who, along with her paramour and partner in crime, Clyde Barrow, left a trail of death and destruction in the Southwest and elsewhere before lawmen sent them to their maker with volleys of lead on a lonely stretch of Louisiana road on May 23, 1934.

”I’ll leave you here to mourn,” the man says.

”Oh, I’m not here to mourn,” I tell him while staring at Parker’s flower-adorned grave. “This woman was a notorious criminal.”

Judging from those flowers and tokens of remembrance on her tombstone, Parker seems more celebrated than vilified. Atop her slab, a step from her mother’s grave, sit nine .44-caliber bullets and a bright orange Wing & Clay 12-gauge shotgun shell. Nearby rest a travel bottle of Maker’s Mark and other liquor containers, a Bud Light can, a half-smoked cigarette and a top for L’Oreal eye shadow — perhaps used by Parker to keep herself beautiful in hell.

“As The Flowers Are All Made Sweeter By The Sunshine And The Dew, So This Old World Is Made Brighter By The Lives Of Folks Like You,” reads the inscription on Parker’s gravestone — an affront to the roughly dozen folks Bonnie and Clyde are believed to have murdered in cold blood.

Bullets atop the grave marker for Bonnie Parker.

Minutes later, I find myself in the thick of notorious Dallas traffic, a Blue Bell banana fudge ice cream commercial blaring on the radio of our SUV rental. With Clyde’s South Dallas grave outside my comfort zone, I instead make a beeline for the A.H. Belo mansion in downtown Dallas, not far from where Jack Ruby gunned down Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement of the police department HQ. A funeral home in the 1930s, the mansion is where thousands viewed Barrow’s bullet-riddled corpse days after his demise.

While pulling into the mansion’s narrow driveway, I spy a few feet above my ride a small drone, deployed by a wedding photographer. How surreal. Minutes later, I maneuver from an illegal parking spot and meet the actual early 30ish groom who will exchange vows inside the mansion on this very day. Amazingly cheery (he’ll learn 😳), Mr. Groom talks about marriage.

“Ever hear of Bonnie and Clyde?” his one-track mind inquistor asks.

“Sure,” he replies with a wry smile.

“Well, his bullet-riddled corpse was viewed here in this mansion in 1934 by 20,000 people,” I say almost breathlessly.

“Well, we won’t have that many today,” he tells me.

It’s probably time for me to return to normal society.

Thousands viewed Clyde Barrow's bullet-riddled body at the A.H. Belo mansion in 1934.

Podcast: Ashley Whitehead Luskey of Civil War Institute

In a mini-podcast, historian Ashley Whitehead Luskey — assistant director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College — chats with co-hosts Tom McMillan and John Banks. On April 12, 2025, she was among the speakers at the Maryland Campaign Symposium at the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall in Carnegie, Pennsylvania. It also included historians Scott Harwig (I Dread The Thought Of The Place), Dennis Frye, Harry Smeltzer, John Hoptak and Kevin Pawlak. The podcast is brought to you by Civil War Trails.

Podcast: Jon-Erik Gilot on Maryland Campaign Symposium

In a mini-podcast, Jon Erik-Gilot — curator at the Thomas Espy Post at the Andrew Carnegie (Pa.) Free Library And Music Hall — dishes with co-hosts Tom McMillan and John Banks on the recently held Maryland Campaign Symposium he organized. It featured historians Scott Harwig (I Dread The Thought Of The Place), Dennis Frye, Harry Smeltzer, John Hoptak, Ashley Whitehead Luskey and Kevin Pawlak. The podcast is brought to you by Civil War Trails.

Podcast: Antietam potluck with historian Scott Hartwig, more

 In a freewheeling Episode 34 — taped before an audience at the Maryland Campaign Symposium at the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall in Carnegie, Pa. — historians Scott Hartwig (I Dread The Thought Of The Place), Kevin Pawlak and Harry Smeltzer, as well as Dana Shoaf and Melissa Hacker Winn of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, Md., visit with co-hosts Tom McMillan and John Banks. The podcast is brought to you by Civil War Trails.

Brain cancer, battlefields and lessons in life

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The first call from my friend Nick Picerno came before Christmas, amid the joys and anxieties of the holiday. I didn’t answer, knowing that any call with “Big Nick” would require at least an hour of my time. Now I love talking with Nick, who seems to have some magical magnetic field that attracts Civil War artifacts and ephemera, especially from his beloved John Gould of the 10th Maine Infantry. But this just wasn’t that day.

Days later came another call. I answered, but part of me wishes I hadn’t. Our chat became a blur, like a conversation in a bar with Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side Of The Moon” playing at full blast.

“Brain cancer.”

“Months to live.”

“I wanted you to know.”

Wait… what?!

Nick Picerno (left) with Ronn Palm
(and other pals) at Palm's excellent
 Gettysburg museum in 2000. (Image
courtesy Ronn Palm)

Truth be told, I didn’t hear much more than that. My heart hurt. If you relish walking Civil War battlefields in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, yours should hurt a little bit, too. That’s because “Big Nick,” the longest-serving board member of the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation, has for years helped save battlefield land — places such as Third Winchester, Tom’s Brook, Fisher’s Hill, Cedar Creek and more.

In the past decade, Nick and I have had dozens of conversations, nearly all about the Civil War.

“You have something I want,” he told me over the phone a day after my acquisition of late 19th-century photos of the Antietam battlefield by John Gould’s son with detailed descriptions on the reverse in the veteran’s own hand. I had no intention of selling the images then, but that magical force field and Picerno’s remarkable Italian powers of persuasion eventually swayed me.

Two years later, I sold the images to Nick. On a rainy day on the porch of the Widow Pence farmhouse at the Cross Keys battlefield in Virginia, we sealed the deal. The date, appropriately, was Sept. 17, the anniversary of the Battle of Antietam.

Last weekend, “Big Nick” and I intended to visit Antietam, perhaps stroll about the East Woods, where Gould had fought. But it wasn’t to be. “He’s too weak,” his lovely wife Kathy told me.

And so we sat in his living room in New Market, Virginia, amid hundreds of Civil War books, artifacts and no doubt the spirit of John Gould himself. On a shelf stands a battlefield preservation award he recently received — a high and well-deserved honor. We talked for two hours, mostly about the Civil War and a little bit about life.

“Nick,” I said as he sat in an easy chair, covered by a white blanket, “I’ve never even talked with my wife for more than an hour over the phone.”

Later, I showed him my favorite photo of him, taken at Cedar Creek holding a sword of a Union officer who was wounded on that battlefield. He reminded me that the image was before “Big Nick” became “Not-So-Big Nick.” By dieting, he had lost weight. We both chuckled.

Then, after planning another trip to Antietam together, we hugged and I walked toward the door.

“Thank you so much for coming,” he said in a tone that melted my soul.

“God bless you,” he said.

“God bless you,” I told my friend.

Until we meet again this summer for that trip to Antietam… ❤️

LEARN MORE about Picerno’s Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation.

Tales from the road: Underwear, battlefields and Horse Cave

House in Munfordville built by Union General Thomas Wood's father in 1834.

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Eager for adventure, I head north from Nashville, zooming at 80 mph by the Fruit of the Loom underwear world HQ and National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, before arriving in central Kentucky's cave and Lincoln country. My objective is Munfordville, one of those 10,000 places where the armies clashed and boyhood home of United States Army General Thomas J. Wood. On a rise behind the county courthouse, a musket shot from the Civil War mural just off Main featuring Wood's mustachioed mug, stands the house his papa built in the 1830s.

Thomas Wood appears on a
Civil War-themed mural
in Munfordville, Kentucky.

As a child in Hart County, it is said, Wood sought adventure underground with his friend, delightfully named Simon Bolivar Buckner, the future West Point grad, Mexican War vet, Rebel general and Kentucky governor. It’s a footnote that ignites a fire in some of us, until we realize, as Sherman supposedly said of war, “I am tired and sick of [it]. Its glory is all moonshine.”

Near downtown Munfordville, the railroad track and an 1,800-foot iron bridge over the meandering Green River, a 26-year-old Scotsman and Confederate colonel from Mississippi named Robert Alexander Smith fell — one of dozens of dead from the Battle of Munfordville, fought September 14-17, 1862. To honor Smith's memory, his brother commissioned a limestone battlefield monument — it stands on private property, behind a wrought-iron fence, among flags, inscribed markers and shadows. Visit it if you dare.

After exploring the Munfordville and nearby Rowlett Station battlefields, I steer south to Horse Cave (pop. of 2,300), home to Just In Gypsy Antiques and 5 Broke Girls, a favorite spot for country grub. At the corner of Main and Cave, across the street from a man sleeping in his beat-up black Chevy pickup near the “Welcome to Horse Cave” mural, I spy the entrances to Hidden River Cave and American Cave Museum. With time to spare before returning to the loving arms of Mrs. B, I venture inside. Rumor has it that the cave has a Civil War connection after all.

Hidden River Cave in
Horse Cave, Kentucky.

Inside the cave command center stand a few 20- and 30-somethings. Guides and staffers, as it turns out. They somehow endure a volley of questions from me.

“Didn't they hide horses in this cave during the Civil War?”

"No, not much happened here during the Civil War,” replies a long-haired, red-headed dude, instantly destroying a soul. Minutes later, he directs me to the cave entrance. At the bottom of a long staircase, a gratis view awaits.

By the yawning gap, I ponder whether Wood, Buckner or any other Civil War soldier had inscribed his name inside and consider taking a stroll across the “world's longest swinging cave bridge.” Instead, I retrace my steps, sending my FitBit heart rate into overdrive.

Upon returning to the CCC, I meet Al, a mandolin player in a bluegrass band. He’s a local who once lived in obscure places in west Tennessee. Al is a cave employee, too.

“What do people do in Horse Cave?”

"Not much besides caving,” he tells me. To catch a movie, locals visit “E-town” — Elizabethtown — roughly 40 miles away.

Then Al notices my T-shirt for Lambert's Cafe, the “throwed rolls” restaurant near Wilson's Creek battlefield in Missouri. In 15 minutes, we bond over memories of heaps of food at Lambert’s, bluegrass star Bill Monroe and Abe Lincoln, born over in Larue County, several hundred thousand roll tosses distant. Before my departure, Al waves me over to the front counter and signs off on a tour ticket for two, a $50 value. I’d use it today, but alas, those loving arms await.

Let’s keep history alive. 👊

My new pal Al, a Hidden River Cave guide and mandolin player in a bluegrass band.

Podcast: Antietam hero Rufus Dawes of the Iron Brigade

In a freewheeling Episode 33 of "The Antietam And Beyond Podcast," podcast hosts Tom McMillan and John Banks discuss Iron Brigade officer Rufus Dawes, who endured despite losing his best friend at Antietam. Plus, Tom dishes on his upcoming book, The Year That Made America, and John talks about staring into Ben Franklin's privy in Philadelphia and a post-Gettysburg battlefield tramping massage in Biglerville.

Tales from the road: A soldier's death near Cotton Grove Road

The Battle of Salem Cemetery resulted in few casualties.

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To get to the Salem Cemetery battlefield near Jackson, Tennessee, I hang a left on Cotton Grove Road to an area first settled in 1819. This swath of rolling land probably doesn’t look much different than it did in 1821, the year they began planting cotton seeds here in the loamy soil. Then I go past the Fraternal Order Police gun range and a Woodmen Of The World memorial for a man named E.E. Brooks before parking in a small gravel lot near a state historical marker.

Adam Huntsman's grave
in Old Salem Cemetery.

“No metal detectors,” reads a sign steps from a cannon and a covered wayside exhibit. 

Among those who rest in remote Old Salem Cemetery, the second-oldest cemetery in Madison County, are Susan H. Person, who, according to her broken tombstone, “departed this life Oct. 27, 1842,” and a colorful, one-legged pol/lawyer named Adam Huntsman, who sent Davy Crockett packing for Texas after defeating him in a congressional election in 1835.

After stepping from my SUV, I wonder: “How’d this battlefield almost become an industrial solar farm?”

Gloomy-gray skies threaten rain, but they’re mostly bluffing. So, too, was Nathan Bedford Forrest on Dec. 19, 1862, when “The Wizard of the Saddle” sent soldiers barreling into Midwesterners in and near the cemetery. The frigid, unforgiving night before the fighting and killing, Union soldiers spied campfires of Forrest’s soldiers off in the distance — a large, brown and white historical sign marks that area — so their commander forbade fires.

“Mortified,” 43rd Colonel Adolph Engelmann, a Bavarian-born Mexican War veteran, wrote later about his order.

The Confederate cavalry’s attack, a feint by Forrest because he had more important business elsewhere, came at daybreak the next morning.

“With loud cheers they charged upon my center,” Engelmann wrote. “As they approached they were received by a well-directed fire, some of the foremost horses falling and obstructing the road, those immediately behind came to a halt, while half a dozen riderless horses rushed madly through our lines.”

The broken grave of Susan H. Person in Old Salem Cemetery.

After the four-hour fight, Engelmann’s outnumbered soldiers retreated toward Jackson. The Battle of Salem Cemetery, of course, was no Antietam, Gettysburg or Cold Harbor. Casualties numbered perhaps 20 killed, wounded or missing on the Rebels’ side. The U.S. Army, meanwhile, suffered six wounded and two killed. But mommas and poppas — from Tennessee and Mississippi to Illinois and elsewhere — mourned just the same.

11th Illinois Cavalry private Adam Kehl of Company A, a blacksmith before the war, was among those killed that wintry day. He was the unmarried son of Rosina and Sebastian Kehl, who hailed from Hesse, Germany and settled in Peoria. Adam paid for his parents’ passage from the Old Country. A bullet to the chest sent him to his grave before they arrived in America.

“They came to the United States with the expectation of receiving assistance from their … son,” a friend of the family noted.

I don’t know where Private Kehl rests today. Perhaps he has a marker in the national cemetery in Nashville — the U.S. government recovered thousands of remains of Union soldiers following the war. Or perhaps his bones lie in an unmarked grave in a field or woods near Cotton Grove Road.

A grave for an unknown Confederate soldier in Old Salem Cemetery.

---

SOURCES

— Adam Kehl mother’s pension file, National Archives via fold3.com (WC140043)
— Official Records, Volume X Chapter 32, Pages 555-556

Tales from the road: I scored Lincoln bust, battlefield horsehoe

Glenn (left), a distant relative of Robert E. Lee, and Charles, the propietor of an
 antiques store in Eagleville, Tennessee.

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At 8:35 on a sun-kissed Saturday morning, I plop my heinie into the shotgun seat of battlefield tramping pal Jack's fancy SUV for our ride into the Civil War wilds of Middle Tennessee. We're rambling southeast to Shelbyville and points unknown.

Pal Jack holds my Lincoln bust.

At our first stop, an Eagleville antiques store that once served as a combo bank/dental office, we meet a retired railroad worker named Glenn, a distant relative of “Marble Man” Robert E. Lee, and the proprietor named Charles, a former Bible salesman and a friend of country star Marty Stuart who charms me into forking over 40 bucks for a circa-1940s typewriter and another 40 smackers for a plaster bust of Abraham Lincoln that is sure to cause a rupture in my solid-gold, 32-year marriage to Mrs. B. (Apologies to all English teachers for the length of the preceding sentence.)

While I suffer from buyer's remorse on our way to Shelbyville — site of a major cavalry battle on June 27, 1863 — we pass the delightfully named Morning Glory Catfish restaurant and a creamery where they serve midnight chocolate ice cream that’ll put a smile on your mug. Then, as we enter unincorporated Rover (population 357 hearty souls), master of historical trivia Jack poses a question. 

“Do you know the name of President Lincoln's dog?”

“I have no idea.”

“Fido.” (Amazingly spot-on!)

Fired bullet unearthed at Liberty Gap.

In Shelbyville — described by Union soldiers as “Little Boston” for its Unionist leanings — we don’t find the cavalry battle site. But we admire a Ms. PacMan video game ($2,200) in a collectibles shop and the dazzling inventory next door in the baseball card/sports store. (My gosh, they even have a Stan Musial glove in its original box.)

Back on the Civil War trails, we stop along the Liberty Pike, a few miles from magical Bell Buckle, where we meet my new pals Chuck and Perry next to their green pickup. 

With permission, they hunt for battle relics on farms at Liberty Gap, where the armies clashed in an unheralded Tullahoma Campaign battle from June 24-26, 1863. It's hallowed ground, unmarked and largely forgotten — one of those 10,000 places deep-voiced historian David McCullough told us about on Ken Burns' epic “Civil War” doc decades ago.

Under a cloudless, deep-blue sky, Perry and Chuck have had a good day. They show off their finds: bullets, a horseshoe and other detritus of war. 

Later, these good-hearted souls hand some of their haul to Jack and me. The horseshoe is destined for a place of honor in my office shelf; the bullets — one dropped and two fired — will go to our young friend Taylor, whose great-great-great-grandfather fought at Liberty Gap.

“Maybe his grandpappy fired one of 'em,” Perry tells us.

Battlefield horseshoe

Soon, we head deeper into the Civil War wilds. 

In Chapel Hill, we briefly visit the site of the birth of Nathan Bedford Forrest, “The Wizard Of The Saddle” himself. Then we venture on narrow, snaky back roads — passed a drooping “God, Guns And Trump” sign, empty fields and rickety barns — before arriving at the boyhood home of “The Wizard.” A locked gate prevents our entry to the site, but does it really matter?

If we set aside the near-removal of my fingertips on Jack’s car window (long story), we’ve made excellent memories overall. At a small, off-the-beaten path farm cemetery, a final stop, daffodils poke through the sod and an American flag flaps in a gentle breeze. In the back of my ride rests a rusty typewriter and Honest Abe, comfortably under wraps. At my feet sits an old horseshoe. It’s all plenty good enough.

Monument denoting birthplace of Nathan Bedford Forrest in Chapel Hill, Tennessee.