Top 2019 posts: Skulls at Chickamauga to graves at Antietam

Confederates advance through the woods at Chickamauga. (Alfred Waud | Library of Congress)

Like this blog on Facebook | Follow me on Twitter | 2018 most popular
Three of my top-10 most popular blog posts in 2019 are about long-ago battlefield visits by a Philadelphia reporter named George Morgan.  Two are about one of the saddest places on Earth: Andersonville. In 2019, we surpassed 3.1 million page views all time on the blog and topped 7,100 followers on my Civil War Facebook page. Thanks for being part of our community.

---

1. Skulls, scarred trees: A reporter's 1882 visit to Chickamauga

"I saw a skull as yellow as the stones around ...," George Morgan wrote in a lengthy story about his visit to the battlefield in northwestern Georgia in the summer of 1882. "The round thing of bone, with unsightly sockets and the pitiful seeming of poor Yorick's skull, lay in a sort of hollow, with the green leaves of plantain for a pillow." Read more.

---

2. Bones, rusty gun barrels: 1881 tour of Seven Days battlefields

"He felt his spade grate against something hard and a moment later he cast up a skull. With more of a twitching of his fingers than Hamlet's first grave-digger felt, Swiffer stooped, scratched away the sand and disclosed a complete skeleton, which, from bits of blue and brass buttons about it, was pronounced to be that of a Federal soldier." Read more.

---

3. 'Find of a lifetime' at vanishing Stones River (Tenn.) battlefield

Sweating profusely in the early evening heat, Stan Hutson swung his Fisher F75 metal detector back and forth across the barren landscape. He had arrived at the construction site in Murfreesboro, Tenn. --- scene of opening action of the 1862 Battle of Stones River -- at 5 p.m., but in 90 minutes' hunting his finds included just two round balls, a 58-caliber Minie and camp lead. At about 6:30 p.m., Hutson heard a promising signal in his metal detector headphones. "I knew it was something good," he said." Read more.

---

4. 'Hidden' details in 1865 Bull Run monument dedication photos

The day was well documented photographically. At the Henry House Hill monument dedication, a photographer shot a series of images. At first glance, his two uncropped, glass-plate photographs in this post seem unremarkable. When we zoom in, however, fascinating details emerge. Arms folded almost defiantly, a soldier stands atop the mound of dirt next to a monument. Next to him is an imposing artillery shell. Read more.

---

5. Last days of Richard Ewell, who sparked Gettysburg furor

In the final days of his life, Richard Stoddert Ewell sensed something was terribly wrong. A "pall had fallen upon" his farmhouse in Spring Hill, Tenn., and "a feeling of depression ... was visible on every countenance." For nearly two weeks, his wife of nearly eight years took care of the former Confederate lieutenant general as he battled typhoid fever. But now she was nowhere to be found. Read more.

---

6. Now & Then: In their own words, POWs on Andersonville 'hell'

"... there never was such misery known since the world stood as there is on the streets in this den of Hell. There is no tounge or Pen that can discribe the situation of the sick Wounded & Rotten men in hear. God help the Prisoner for their life is a horable one especially those confined in hear" Read more.

---

7. In 10 images: A walk in Andersonville National Cemetery

At Andersonville National Cemetery, the rows of pearl-white tombstones are mind-numbing, almost impossible to process in just one visit. Nearly 13,000 Union soldiers who died at the prison camp a quarter-mile away rest in the red Georgia clay. Under a leaden sky, we examined the names on scores on the gravestones in the well-kept cemetery. The unknowns drew special attention. Read more.

---

8. In 15 images: A ballgame on hallowed ground at Shiloh

On a spring day in 1862, soldiers in opposing armies aimed to kill each other in farmer Joseph Duncan's field at Shiloh. On a Saturday in April, the 157th anniversary of the first day of the battle in southwestern Tennessee, opposing forces merely wanted to outscore each other on the same turf. At the invitation of the National Park Service, teams in the Tennessee Association of Vintage Base Ball played two games on the hallowed ground. Gods of sport smiled. Read more.

---

9.'Afraid of soldiers' ghosts?': A reporter's 1882 visit to Resaca

"In this way Guide Brown showed me the whole line of defense until we came to the thick timber on the western bank of the Conasauga, where the works end. Having seen this line and having visited several points occupied by the Union troops, we found ourselves almost at the end of our Resaca rope. A ruined house or so, with chimneys standing in the midst of rank weeds, particularly fine patches of Egyptian clover, to which now clung romantic interest, and a few forgotten graves in the woods ..." Read more.

---

10. Letter from Sharpsburg: 'Autumn sun kisses ... soldier-graves'

"In the orchard, back from the stream, I saw seventeen graves in a row, each with its little pine board, with names or initials, “Sept. 17,” etc, etc. How many tearful eyes, in far distant homes, have looked in imagination to those graves beneath the old apple trees! The rabbit skips around them, the quail pipes his melancholy notes from the fence side, and the Autumn sun kisses those soldier-graves, day after day, and yet no kindred sheds a tear upon them. Alas! the poor soldier." Read more.

---

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

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

                                     Click at upper right for full-screen, interactive panorama.
  Like this blog on Facebook | Follow me on Twitter
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.

'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.

Like this blog on Facebook | Follow me on Twitter

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."

---

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

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

                                             Union perspective at Battle of Gaines' Mill.
Like this blog on Facebook | Follow me on Twitter
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.