On more fields than the Old Guard of Napoleon...

One of the interesting rewards when a book is reprinted (in this case In The Bloody Railroad Cut at Gettysburg with William J.K. Beaudot, by Savas Beatie) is the chance to again go over materials used in the writing so long ago. Among the items I rediscovered is a letter written by Rufus Dawes to those attending a Grand Army of the Republic reunion in Mauston, Wisconsin, where he was the first captain of a company of infantry raised to put down the rebellion. It became the Lemonweir Minute Men, Company K, of the Sixth Wisconsin Infantry in the famous Iron Brigade of the West.

 

The camp fire at Mauston in Juneau County that January 8,1885, was a great success despite temperatures that dropped to 20 below. There was music by the Cornet Band and singing by the Glee Club as well as several speeches, including one by Phil Cheek of nearby Baraboo, an old comrade in the Sixth Wisconsin. Young Arthur Patterson used a drum carried from Atlanta to the sea for his drum solo. The supper was “good, substantial repast, and was partaken of by a large number of people. But the reading of a letter from “Gen. R.R. Dawes” received the closest attention.

 

It was written November 23, 1884, from Marietta, Ohio, where Dawes as living, and included his regrets that he would not be able to attend the camp fire at Mauston. He went on to say that he did want to recall the memories of his old Company K. He wrote:

 

”Glancing this morning at the official record of Wisconsin in the war, I find that from one devoted company, 21 men were actually killed in battle, and 51 shot besides; of those wounded men you have many in Juneau County. I can think of Eugene Rose, Jim Barney, Dan J. Miller, Eugene Anderson, James Sullivan, Wm. H. Van Wie, Franklin Wilcox, Erastus Smith; and there are doubtless others.

 

“These are now your plain fellow citizens, but they were heroes tried and true as ever offered life on a field of battle. The young generation can hardly realize that their modest neighbors are soldiers who have fought on more fields of battle than the Old Guard of Napoleon, and have stood fire with far greater firmness. Where has the firmness of the Iron Brigade at Gettysburg been surpassed in history? Two thousand muskets were carried into battle and for four long hours these men breasted the billows of rebellion until twelve hundred were shot down under the colors. Then, with colors flying and an broken front, they retired to the Cemetary Hill. But that four hours time saved for our army the Cemetery Hill, and that enabled it to save the nation. Here, as everywhere, upon fifty fields of battle, Company K held its portion of the line.

 

“But it was my purpose to recall,” Dawes went on, “rather the memories of my friends who died in battle. They lie scattered over the land, and their names should be gathered up around your campfires, and their character and deeds presented….”

 

In so many ways, those few sentences are an explanation of why I write about days long ago and the “plain fellow citizens” and “modest neighbors” of my home state of Wisconsin who fought on more fields of battle than the Old Guard of Napoleon.

 

Rest in Peace, Black Hats.

Rifle-muskets, paper cartridges, and a cherished memory

One of the latest trends in the Civil War hobby is the use of original style paper cartridges to live fire rifles, rifled muskets, and rifle-muskets in the “traditional” manner, and I must admit I have crossed the river. After the recent Muskets and Memories Civil War weekend at Boscobel, Wis., I find myself left with an empty wooden St. Louis Arsenal box that was once full of 30 wrapped packets of 10 cartridges each, a work space littered with snippets of paper and string, and a sore left elbow from rolling tubes. It is all the fault of my grandson, Gabriel, and—bless him—my desire to show him a different side of musket shooting.

 The use of paper cartridges for as been around for a time and a number of shooters have enjoyed taking a step back in time to roll paper tubes, tie one end shut, then load a Minie ball and powder before folding the tale. It takes a while longer produce such cartridges then it does to type those words, however, and  the practice has been limited to the few individuals interested in trying to replicate the Civil War experience of live firing an 1861-65 style shoulder arm.

I must confess I have long been a member of the North-South Skirmish Association, Inc., the organization which holds marksmanship competitions for all sorts of Civil War firearms and artillery, first with the old Sixth Wisconsin Volunteers and now the Union Guards, as well as a longtime member of the American Civil War Shooters Association, a similar organization based in the Midwest.  The N-SSA is in the process of developing a “traditional” match for five-member teams using issue-style paper cartridges and firearms with original sight configurations.  The ACWSA actually put the idea to a test in a recent demonstration at Boscobel, Wis.

Nineteen participants, a mix of about a dozen living historians and a handful of ACWSA members, shot more than 240 paper cartridges in two five minute relays. The first target was a 4x4 foot sheet of drywall at 100 yards and the second a mass of mounted clay pigeons on a backer at 50 yards. The first event was by volley fire and the second rapid fire. The cartridges were issued in arsenal packs of 10 each from a replica wooden arsenal box. The cartridges contained a Burton-style hollow-base bullet of the type developed in the late 1850s along with an internal powder tube and 60 grains of Goex FFg black powder.

The living historians, with little live fire experience, seemed to be fascinated with the paper cartridges and the live fire experience. They were quick to point out how much they had learned about how potent the old rifle-muskets proved to be and how the ramming of actual bullets slowed the loading procedure. The shooters quickly adapted to the paper cartridges and some skirmishers with experience said they found them just as fast as the plastic tubes used to quick loading.

The chawing of cartridges and furious loading was a sight to see.  As my comrade from the old Sixth Wisconsin, Pvt. Johnny Dunn, likes to say, “Once you shoot paper you can never go back.”

As for my grandson, who began his reenacting as a drummer boy in the “Seeing the Elephant” in-the-round video for the Civil War Museum at Kenosha, Wis., and now plays “the devil’s tattoo” for Co. K, Second Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, the live fire of paper cartridges experience is a memory he will long cherish. The same can be said for his grandfather and the others who participated or watched.

A special thanks to the ACWSA for hosting and developing this event, and a nod to my friend N-SSA Commander Phil Spaugy and others for encouragement and help in making it a reality.

Now I am wondering how this traditional shooting of Civil War style muskets is going to develop. I know one thing—it sure is a lot of fun.

Videos of the traditional shooting can be seen at:

http://acwsa.org/Pages/SkirmishPhotoPages/2014Boscobel.htm.

A story of the Iron Brigade

One of the interesting incidents of book signing is having a descendant of some of the Iron Brigade people you are writing about show up. It happened again a couple of weeks ago at the Walworth County Historical Society in Elkhorn when a very nice lady showed me a small silver key  chain-like device with the name “Franklin Wilcox” engraved on it with a date in the 1890s. “He was in the Mauston Minute Men of the Iron Brigade,” she explained, and had been severely wounded at South Mountain in Maryland on September  14, 1862.

That’s when the fun began. The name was familiar.  I made a quick check of the index of my book, The Iron Brigade in Civil War and Memory: The Black Hats from Bull Run to Appomattox and Thereafter, and there he was—Frank Wilcox, Lemonweir Minute Men, Company K, Sixth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry.  He was on the skirmish line moving up the National Road when shot, and nearby an Irish private by the name of James P. Sullivan, known to one and all as “Mickey, of Company K.”

Sullivan was in discomfort at the time from a case of the mumps and his cheeks had reached “a respectable rotundity.” Lt. Lyman Upham had loaned “a big silk handkerchief” and the young private had tied it around his face. He soon discovered, however, the handkerchief obstructed his shooting and took it off and stuffed it in his pocket. Sullivan was fighting along with George Chamberlain of Mauston, Ephraim Cornish of Lindina, and Franklin Wilcox of Lemonweir.

Dusk was near and the light was fading. The four were behind a large boulder, said Sullivan, two firing from each side. Sullivan was working with Chamberlain, the boyish private who may have been his best friend in the army. Chamberlain had left a circus to enlist and it was said that he joined the army seeking relief from a hard life. Sullivan and Chamberlain were regarded as the “stray waifs” of Co. K and had “to suffer all the misdeeds or mistakes, no matter by whom committed.” It was a common statement, Sullivan said, that if Capt. Rufus Dawes would “stub his toe he’d put Mickey and Chamberlain on Knapsack drill.” Consequently, Sullivan said, he and Chamberlain were “inseparable companions and fast friends

The skirmish line of Company K men pushed forward. “Chamberlain, who was brave as a line, kept continually rushing forward leading the squad [and the skirmish line] and of course we had to follow up and support him" said Sullivan. “It was now sundown and being in the shadow of the mountain, it was getting dark very fast, and our fellows pushed the rebel skirmishers up to their line of battle, and our squad took shelter behind a big bounder and two of us fired from each side of it."

Sullivan was in a cluster of large boulders and found the air around him full of projectiles that splattered off the rocks and clattered around him. "When the crash came, either a bullet split in pieces against the stone or a fragment of the boulder hit me on the sore jaw, causing exquisite pain, and I was undetermined whether to run away or swear," he said. Somewhere in the shadow of the rock Eph Cornish cried out, "Mickey, Chamberlain is killed and I'm wounded." Then there was another "crashing volley" of musketry, said Sullivan, and "a stinging, burning sensation in my right foot followed by the most excruciating pain." Frank Wilcox, who was next to him, "toppled over wounded." Around him, the skirmish line was falling back and Sullivan, using his musket for a crutch, hopped downhill "a good deal faster than I had come up."

I must admit there is a kind of satisfaction passing that story along to a descendant of one of three men fighting with Sullivan that day long ago. Such occurrences happen every now and then and one of the most enjoyable was when I was able to give Sullivan’s account of Gettysburg to his elderly son who was unaware of his dad’s role in the Civil War. But I will let that bide for another time…  

 

Gettysburg and a distant voice calling out "Come on, Johnnie! Come on!"

      

            The Civil War Trust announced recently it is purchasing a parcel of land at Gettysburg by where units of the Iron Brigade made their last stand the afternoon of July 1, 1863. Long attached to the unit, Battery B of the 4th U.S. Artillery was formed by half battery on both sides of the railroad cut closest to the present day motel and abreast of what is known as Gen. Robert E. Lee’s headquarters. The right half battery under Lieutenant James Stewart was on the north side of the cut, slightly forward and facing west. The left half battery, under Lieutenant James Davidson, was in open order along the space between the turnpike and the railroad and faced southwest. In a small grove to the north were the 11th Pennsylvania and the 6th Wisconsin. The Wisconsin regiment was detached from its famous brigade for a successful attack against the railroad cut.

            The heavy brass Napoleons were firing with a fury late the afternoon of July 1 when heavy lines of Confederates began to close on the town. “Feed it to ‘em! God damn ‘em, feed it to ‘em,” Davidson was yelling in the smoke and confusion. Each of the heavy guns quickly fired savage blasts of double-canister that staggered the advancing Confederates. “Up and down the line men were reeling and falling,” one battery man wrote later of Gettysburg. “Splinters were flying from wheels and axles where bullets hit," said one gunner. "In the rear, horses were rearing and plunging, mad with wounds or terror, shells were bursting, shot shrieking over, howling about our ears or throwing up great clouds of dust where they hit; the musketry crashing on three sides of us; bullets hissing everywhere, cannon roaring, all crash on crash and peal on peal, smoke, dust, splinters, blood, wreck and carnage indescribable; but the brass guns of old B still bellowed and not a man or boy flinched or faltered.”

            The Confederate line came on under the storm of canister, “creeping toward” the battery “fairly fringed with flame.” The soldiers of the 6thWisconsin and 11th Pennsylvania crawled up over the bank of the railroad cut in rear of the caissons and added their musketry to the canister. Lieutenant Davidson was twice wounded and was so weak one of the men held up him. He could not stand because one ankle was shattered. The rebels fired volley after volley into the battery hitting men and horses. Finally Davidson was unable to stay in command and Sergeant John Mitchell took over the half battery. The water in the buckets used for sponging was “like ink,” one gunner remembered, saying a comrade nearby was smeared with burnt powder and “looked like a demon from below.”  North of the railroad cut, the three guns of the other half battery under Stewart “flashed the chain-lightning…in one solid streak.”

            Lt. Col.  Rufus Dawes of the 6th Wisconsin stood amid the guns watching the fighting. When the Confederates slowed under the canister and musketry, one of his infantrymen jumped forward, waving a fist, and calling over and over again, “Come on, Johnny! Come on!” It was going to be very close. Finally the order came from the rear to retreat. One Badger remembered how the Wisconsin men turned and poured in a volley to the Confederates who were so close “that we could hear them yelling at us to halt and surrender.”

            The orders were to retreat beyond the town and “hold your men together.” Dawes said he was astonished as the cheers of defiance along the line by the Lutheran Seminary buildings “had scarcely died away.” But a glance to the right and rear was sufficient: “There the troops of the eleventh corps appeared in full retreat and long lines of Confederates, with fluttering banners and shining steel were sweeping forward in pursuit of them without let or hindrance. It was a close race which could reach Gettysburg first, ourselves, or the rebel troops….” The officer wrote later that his regiment marched away with flag high and a steady step. One of his soldiers in the big hats said the order was more direct—run for it. “We obeyed this literally, and how we did run! As we came out of the smoke of the battle what a sight burst upon our gaze! On every side our troops were madly rushing to the rear. We were flanked on the right and on the left. We were overwhelmed by numbers. My heart sank within me. I lost all hope.”

            With his infantry supports retreating, Stewart of Battery B also gave the order to limber up. The left half battery withdrew along the Chambersburg Pike with the enemy within 50 yards, losing more men and horses. Stewart had to move his three guns across the railroad cut. When his three guns were clear, he rode back to check on the left half battery and found it gone and the place full of rebels. They called on him to surrender and fired, but Stewart jumped his horse over a fence and suffered only two bullet holes in his blouse. Stewart said the 6thWisconsin and his battery were the last to leave the field.

            To the south, just before the line gave way, the fighting at a make-shift barricade in front of the buildings of the Lutheran Seminary was furious. It was there the other regiments of the brigade—2nd and 7th Wisconsin, 19th Indiana and 24th Michigan—stayed until the end. But despite defiance in the face of defeat, the famous Iron Brigade of the West, which marched to the fighting with such a confident step at mid-morning on July 1, 1863, was wrecked.

            It is fitting that that small parcel of land is finally being conserved by the Civil War Trust. The soldiers who fought there so long ago have made it a hallowed place. The modern buildings will soon be removed and the land made to look as it did more than a century and a half ago. Perhaps, in the near future, when a visitor goes there, they will still be able to catch the distant voices of the past, especially a soldier in a battered black hat calling out, “Come on, Johnnie! Come on!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The

Belle Boyd and the Thirty-sixth Wisconsin

            This is a warm story about Confederate girl spy Belle Boyd and a forgotten Wisconsin monument in Virginia.

The rectangular granite stone stands on a slight rise of ground near what is the Richmond-Henrico Turnpike in Hanover County. The marker is 10 feet tall and is overgrown with weeds, brush and honeysuckle vines. The inscription reads: “This monument has been erected by one of their comrades, Charles A. Storke, in memory of the members of Companies B, E, F and G of the Thirty-sixth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry who fought here on the first day of June 1864.” Around its sides are carved the names of the 137 soldiers who were captured, wounded or killed in the battle. Storke’s name is one of the 137. He was 18 when he was captured during an attack on the Confederate lines. He was a member of Company G and later wrote an account of the attack in his memoirs. He remembered 44 men were killed or mortally wounded, 60 suffered from serious wounds and 33 were captured. Storke was captured and spent time in various Confederate prisons before being released in 1865.

Storke moved to Santa Barbara, Calif., after the war where he was district attorney and mayor. He later started the Santa Barbara News-Press newspaper. In the early 1900s, Storke revisited the site of his capture and began to make arrangements to buy the land. “I tried to look up their graves and could not find a trace of them,” he said. “I determined then to put up a monument where they had received their wounds.” The project was completed in October 1924 and the plot deeded to Hanover County. However, County officials said later they knew nothing of the deed and that it was apparently lost in the files. The monument stood mostly forgotten.

Then in the 1930, something changed. A neighbor, Lucile Luck, said in a newspaper interview in 1987 that a group of ladies would come out every year on June 1 and had some sort of service. She identified them only as an “auxiliary.”

            While touring battlefields near Richmond in 1956, I was taken to the Thirty-sixth Wisconsin monument by a contingent from the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The lead was Mrs. T.J. Nelson of Richmond, a kind gentlewoman with a keen since of the past. She proudly proclaimed her chapter of the UDC placed flowers at the Wisconsin stone each year after learning that a Grand of the Republic chapter had taken up the task of annually marking the grave of Belle Boyd, the famous spy of the Confederacy who is buried in the cemetery at Wisconsin Dells. She had died their while on a speaking tour about the turn of the century.

Mrs. Nelson also told of how she and several other UDC members traveled to Wisconsin one year to take part in the Wisconsin memorial for Belle Boyd and how much she was moved by the ceremony. The UDC delegation brought a container of Virginia soil to be spread over the gravesite to Belle would be buried beneath ground from home.

Is it not curious how the past can tie us together?

My, my…

The last man alive to see Lincoln in his coffin

When I was a young reporter working for United Press International, I found this story among the yellowing teletype files of the Milwaukee Bureau.

It was an interview with John Bowlus of Milwaukee, who may have been the last man alive to see the body of Abraham Lincoln in his coffin. It occurred during a little known event almost four decades after Lincoln died, and Bowlus recounted the story 90 years after the "Illinois Railsplitter" had been assassinated. The story was written in 1955. Bowlus was 68 at the time and died shortly thereafter.

Bowlus was present at Springfield, Illinois when the remains of Lincoln were unearthed for the last time before being permanently interred in steel and concrete at the base of the Lincoln Monument in Oak Ridge Cemetery at Springfield.

Bowlus said it was a cool evening that night of September 20, 1902, when a neighbor, a "Mr. Freeman," who was Illinois Superintendent of Education, asked him to drive "somewhere."

Lincoln's body had been moved several times to protect it from souvenir hunters who had raided his tomb. Bowlus said he drove through the gathering dusk to Oak Ridge where he and Mr. Freeman were met by a small group of Illinois officials. There he learned the body was to be uncovered for the last time and taken for permanent burial after the tamper-proof crypt had been made ready.

The party descended into the dark catacomb under a mausoleum where the remains of Lincoln lay hidden under a pile of loose board. In silence, Bowlus helped remove the top of three lids on the coffin.

"I can see his face as if it were yesterday," Bowlus recalled. "Even in death he was an awe-inspiring figure." A boy of 14 at the time, Bowlus said he had stood on tiptoe and gazed, awestruck, on the majestic features of Lincoln, almost too afraid to peer into the glass-topped casket. "The body was almost perfectly preserved," Bowlus remembered. "The face was darker... he lay with his head and shoulders and tips of his hands visible where they were crossed on his chest." It was awe-inspiring, almost frightening," he said. "The beard appeared to have grown longer, but the dignity of the great man could almost be felt through the air-tight casket which had preserved his body," Bowlus said.

A short while later, the body was sealed in the monument to rest undisturbed forever.

A poem from the Iron Brigade

        One of the fun things of historical research on the Iron Brigade is discovering the boys of the past were in truth just boys and not mystical figures of some fanciful epic. Today's case in point, this brief poem sent to the Wisconsin State Register newspaper by Charlie Dow of the Second Wisconsin. Young Dow was many of the "prints" or former newspapermen now serving in uniform with the Iron Brigade and had not lost his way with words. This "Soldier's Prayer" was printed in the Register on April 18, 1863:

Our Father, which art in Washington, Uncle Abram is thy name;
Thy victories won, Thy will be done in the South as it is in the North;
Give us this day our daily pork and crackers;
And forgive us our shortcomings, as we forgive our Quartermaster;
And forgive us not by traitors but deliver us from Skedaddlers;
For thine is the power over...the soldier "for the period of three years or during the war."

A New Banner for the Black Hats

One of prized holdings of the Wisconsin Veterans Museum in Madison is the flag presented to the regiments of the Iron Brigade 150 years ago this month. The new flag was the effort of a group of citizens. They were proud of the brigade’s record at Gettysburg and elsewhere (“one of the most glorious organizations in the entire army,” a New York Times correspondent called it), raised $1,000, and commissioned Tiffany & Co. of New York to produce a banner of the richest construction “as a testimonial of the appreciation in which the Brigade is held for its bravery, gallantry and valor.”  The flag carried the names of the five regiments and the various battle honors. It was mounted on a special staff with a massive silver spear head. It was to be presented on September 17, 1863, the one year anniversary of Antietam, with a great flourish. Before the event occurred, however, orders put the brigade on the march.

Nevertheless, on the appointed day, W. Yates Selleck of Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s military agent at Washington caught up with the brigade at Culpepper, Va. The regiments were drawn up in a square. The presentation had “no splendid bower nor distinguished guests,” said one officer, but the “victuals” were on hand and “the liquors.” Selleck gave a brief speech and presented the flag to Col. William Robinson of the 7th Wisconsin, then the brigade commander. As fitting, the oldest regiment, the 2nd Wisconsin, served as the official escort for the new colors. One of the highlights was the reading of a letter by Selleck from the army’s old commander, George B. McClellan: “My heart and prayers are ever with them, and that, although their new colors can witness no more brilliant acts of patriotism and devotion than those which the old torn flags have shared in, I know that on every future field, they and the whole Army of the Potomac, will maintain their part, and the honor of their country and their colors.”

Afterwards, the officers made for the full tables and a Wisconsin officer noted for his temperance views wrote his sweetheart that  it soon turned into “an affair that conferred little honor on the brigade, as gentlemen. I feel glad to say there were a few exceptions.” He also reported that the brigade officers and visiting generals “and staff officers within any convenient distance of us were almost unanimously drunk last night. We will see an account of the presentation in the New York Times, as I saw the ‘graphic and reliable’ correspondent of that paper guzzling champagne and wine with the rest of them.”

One Badger called it “a most disgraceful thing that spoiled the whole.” The officers had secured several barrels of whiskey and “most all got drunk.” A guard was posted by the whiskey barrels, the soldier said, but ‘the guard got drunk and the tables kicked down and the result was that most of the whole Brigade was drunk and the supper that was prepared for us was spoiled.” It was a spree of such epic proportions that it went on for two days and disturbed the sleep of the enlisted men. The rank and file, one private said, “got what they could swipe, which was not a small amount.” Another private called it “a gala day.” The new glorious flag had no official place with the brigade, however. Unable to keep it because regulations forbad all but official banners, the officers of the five regiments resolved to send the flag to Washington with Wisconsin Agent Selleck.

 

My, My...A FREE Copy of The Iron Brigade in Civil War and Memory

What is this?--A FREE BOOK OFFER: Each person who views the book trailer for my book “The Iron Brigade in Civil War and Memory: The Black Hats from Bull Run to Appomattox and Thereafter” and posts a comment about it here will be entered into a drawing. My book publisher Savas Beatie will choose one person at random who will win a FREE copy of the book. They will select a winner five days after this is posted, so don’t delay.

 

Link to trailer on YouTube: http://youtu.be/1NxoiCBfFvU

 

We knew that the rebs were scooped

In Gettysburg at midday July 3, 1863, one of the wounded Iron Brigade men--Pvt. James "Mickey" Sullivan of the 6th Wisconsin--found one of the band members to help him and, hanging onto the railing on the stairs, climbed to the cupola of the railroad depot. “I saw what appeared like the whole Rebel Army in a chunk start for our lines with their infernal squealing yell. It seemed as if everything stood still inside of me for a second or two, then I began to pray.”  An officer of his division, watching from Culp’s Hill with the Iron Brigade regiments, called it an irresistible sight: “On they came, banners waving in the battle smoke, cannon roaring, men shouting, horses neighing, small arms crashing in volleys! Still they came on…nothing stops them…. They almost reach our main line of battle with a fairly well-filled line of their own, as it seemed from our location.”

          Sullivan’s prayer (though he admitted he “was, and am not yet noted for the frequency and fervency of my prayers”), was that the Confederates would “catch h—l.” It seemed after a few long, anxious minutes he said, as “if the fire from our lines doubled and doubled again, and I could see long streaks of light through the Rebel columns, but they went forward. I was afraid they would capture our guns.” Another Wisconsin soldier said later watching the heavy Confederate losses that he “felt bad for the poor cusses who went down, but it had to be.”

        Sullivan watched as the Confederate infantry seem to melt as the Union infantry opened on them. “…[W]e could hear the Northern cheer. We knew that the rebs were scooped, and the old Army of the Potomac was victorious. The dozen or so wounded soldiers around Sullivan “were wild with joy, some cried, others shook hands, and all joined in with the best cheer we could get up. I forgot all about my wound and was very forcibly reminded of it when I went to shout as I had to sit down to keep from falling.” A Confederate officer came to see what the clamor was about and “when told that Lee was cleaned, he growled out if we d---d Yankees were able to cheer we were able to go to Richmond,” said Sullivan, who  admitted “our fellows felt good anyway, and the reb went out and we saw no more of him.”

To all appearances they saved the field

The survivors of the Iron Brigade watched the fighting of July 2, 1863, at Devil's Den, Little Round Top, the Wheatfield and Peach Orchard from their lines on Culp's Hill at Gettysburg.    “We could plainly see that our troops were giving ground,” said a Wisconsin officer. “Our suspense and anxiety were intense. We gathered in knots all over the hill watching the battle…. As the sun was low down a fine sight was seen. It was two long blue lines of battle, with twenty or thirty regimental banners, charging forward into the smoke and din of battle. To all appearances they saved the field.” Suddenly, in the fading light, about 7 p.m., the rebel yell went up in front of Culp’s Hill and the far right of the Union line was attacked by forces under the command of Confederate General Edward “Allegheny” Johnson. Another attack centered on Cemetery Hill, but it flared sharply and quickly stalled when it was not supported. Johnson’s men were more successful on the far right of the Union line. Most of the Culp’s Hill defenders from the Union Twelfth Corps, had been sent to the left and only a brigade of New Yorkers under General George S. Greene remained in position. Greene insisted on constructing defensive works proved the difference, although a portion of the abandoned Federal works on the lower part of Culp’s Hill were occupied. Just as the lines on the far left were firing volley after volley, an officer came looking for Rufus Dawes of the 6th Wisconsin with orders to report to Greene. The 6th Wisconsin and the 14th Brooklyn were sent to the right to assist in repelling an attack. In the brush and darkness, Wisconsin Color bearer I.F. Kelly remembered struggling in the brush, darkness, and trees with his 11-foot flag staff. The first mounted officer Dawes encountered in the darkness was Greene, who took a card from his pocket and wrote his name and command, handing it to the young officer. He told Dawes to take his regiment into the breastworks hold. Dawes ordered, “Forward—run! March!” As the 6th Wisconsin reached the line, rebels in the dark rocks rose up and fired a volley. Greene was unaware the Confederates were occupying the breastworks and the rebels were just as surprised by the arrival of the Wisconsin men. After the volley, the Confederates went back down Culp’s Hill. “This remarkable encountered did not last a minute,” said Dawes. “We lost two men, killed—both burned with the powder of the guns fired at them.” One of the wounded was Color bearer Kelly, struck by a spatter of lead off a rock that cut his neck. The wound bled freely. Soldiers around him found a rag and wet it from canteens before wrapping it around his neck. The 6th Wisconsin remained in the line until midnight when they were relieved by troops of the Twelfth Corps who returned to the works after supporting the far left of the Union line. The Wisconsin and New York regiment returned to their original positions without further incident.

A hard day for mothers

One hundred and fifty years ago tonight, the weary survivors of the 6^th Wisconsin of the Iron Brigade reached Culp’s Hill. They were greeted with friendly helloes from the Black Hats of the 2^nd and 7^th Wisconsin, 19^th Indiana, and 24^th Michigan. From a regimental wagon, a dozen spades and shovels were pulled and the soldiers began constructing earthworks. It was believed by some in the army that such breastworks made a soldier cautious and sapped his will to fight, but any such notions were knocked out of the Black Hats on McPherson’s Ridge earlier in the day. “The men worked with great energy,” one officer said. “A man would dig with all his strength till out of breath, when another would seize the spade and push on the work.” The spades were also passed to men from the other regiments and soon a strong defensive line was in place.

            The Iron Brigade regiments occupied the far left of the Union line along Culp’s Hill, almost facing north. A 7th Wisconsin officer remembered the “rocky faced hill” as “not hard to hold against attack. We piled stone along our front. Dandy for defence, and got water…from springs at the foot of the hill.” Rations were issued, but coffee fires were banned. The men quietly ate sugar and hardtack and “water was our helper with the cold grub.” With the work finished, the men settled in and reflected on what had befallen their Western Brigade.

           The officers of the regiments called the rolls on Culp’s Hill and were staggered by the grim final numbers. The brigade had taken 1,883 into the fighting that morning. Now only 691 remained around the battle flags. The 6th Wisconsin, which escaped the heavy fighting on McPherson’s Ridge, sustained losses of 48 percent. The 7th Wisconsin lost 42 percent, the 19th Indiana 72 percent, and the 2nd Wisconsin 77 percent. The newest and largest regiment of the brigade, the 24th Michigan, suffered an 80 percent loss—the largest number of casualties of all the Union regiments in the battle. Among the captured and wounded were three of the five regimental commanders—Lucius Fairchild of the 2nd Wisconsin, John Callis of the 7th Wisconsin, and Henry Morrow of the 24th Michigan.

           Rufus Dawes of the 6^th Wisconsin tried to put the somber night into words: “Our dead lay unburied and beyond our sight or reach. Our wounded were in the hands of the enemy. Our bravest and best were numbered with them…”

          July 1, 1863, had been a hard day that would be long remembered by mothers in faraway Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan....

 

June 30 -- A day of reflection

A century and a half has passed and it is a time of reflection and memory about the Iron Brigade of the West at Gettysburg.

 

           The Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan soldiers camped at Marsh Creek south of town that night of June 30th some 150 years ago were much changed since being called to Washington. Later it was said to be a sight never seen again—the Western regiments  swinging along with an easy stride toward the Marsh Creek camp, the famous black hats now more serviceable than showy. One who saw them said they “looked like giants with their tall black hats,” and recalled the veterans of the  2^nd, 6^th, 7^th Wisconsin, 19^th Indiana, and 24^th Michigan moved with a “steady step” and filling the “entire roadway, their big black hats and feathers conspicuous….”

         Two years of service, the letters, journals, and diaries they left, revealed the bright hopes of 1861 and 1862 were gone for the veterans. The survivors gathered in close, tight messes to share food, drawing on each other support. While they marched and died, enduring unspeakable hardship, the homefolk “growled” about high prices, short money and hard times. The army tossed out the used-up soldier and the “patriotic” speculators fleeced them of their pay. The soldiers fought well, but were denied victory by incompetent generals. Officers used their rank to get through sentry posts to forage and their authority to execute a weak soldier unable to face combat.

         Only one of three soldiers was still in ranks from the regiments formed in 1861; the others dead from battle or illness or even homesickness. Scores of the early volunteers were sent home sick and disabled; some gone only God knows where or why. The survivors were first dependent on the men of their campfires and then to their small companies and then to their regiments. They were isolated from the homefolk, misused by their generals and the country’s leaders, cheated by sutlers, snubbed by Easterners because of their Western origins. They trusted only their comrades and the few officers who have proved to be skillful and brave. They are a hard lot, good soldiers, and proud of their reputations.

            Only the men of the 24^th Michigan, even after 10 months in service, marched toward Gettysburg feeling they still had something to prove. The Michigan regiment and its famous brigade saw only limited service at Fredericksburg when the Wolverines first came under fire and their colonel called out, “Steady, men, those Wisconsin men are watching you.” The Michigan regiment joined in the spirited river crossing during the Chancellorsville Campaign, but it was not the kind of fighting endured at Second Bull Run, South Mountain and Antietam. It was only after Chancellorsville that the Michigan regiment’s coveted black hats arrived. “They made our appearance,” a Wolverine said, “like the name of the brigade, quite unique.”

            The Western men would regard the upcoming fighting at Gettysburg as the turning point of the Civil War. In many ways it was the last great fight for the “Boys of ’61,” those bright volunteers who flocked to the National flag in a swell of patriotism after Fort Sumter. The army itself was changing into something that seemed more sinister. In the camps, the veterans were unsettled by recruits who enlisted to collect bounties and newspapers reporting lack of support for the war back home. After the first three days of July 1863, it would all be different, partly to a change in the way the war was fought and partly because of the men brought in fill the battle-diminished regiments.

                     But on that quiet evening of June in 1863 at Marsh Creek, all that was yet to come…

Men of the Cloth in the Civil War

Religion in the army was largely a personal matter. Many soldiers carried their own bibles and religious objects. The more formal service was left to regimental chaplains, who usually received appointment by the unit commander on the vote of field officers and company commanders. Such chaplains had to be a regularly ordained minister of a Christian denomination and received the pay and allowances of a captain of cavalry. The chaplain’s main duties included overseeing the moral condition of the men in their regiments, conducting Sunday services, and assisting at the burial of soldiers. Conscientious chaplains also visited hospitals and guard houses and ministered to the individual needs of soldiers. Military officials made regular efforts to weed out the incompetent, but were often unsuccessful. The proportion of Catholic to Protestant chaplains was one to 20 although Catholic historians believe the ratio of their faith to Protestants in the Army was at least one in six. There was little friction between the Catholic and Protestant chaplains and most men of the cloth were regarded as sincere, hard-working religious men.   

Hardtack, Salted Pork and Soldier Food

Now I sit me in my seat,

And pray for something fit to eat.

If this damn stuff my stomach brake,

I pray that God my soul will take.

 

Oh, thou who blessed the loaves and fishes,

Look down upon these old tin dishes;

By thy great power those dishes smash,

Bless each of us and damn this hash.

            A Volunteer’s Prayer

 

           Rations for the soldiers had to be easily transported as well as resistant to spoilage. Fresh cuts of beef, soft bread and vegetables could be issued in established camps, but soldiers on the march existed on what they could carry in their haversack—coffee, salt, sugar, hard bread and salted beef or salted pork. Regulations called for a daily issue of 16 ounces of hardtack, 20 ounces of salt beef or 12 ounces of salt pork. The meat was packed in a brine solution sufficient to preserve it for two years.

           By late 1863, desiccated potatoes and desiccated vegetables, which were scalded and then pressed and dried into sheets, were issued as an antiscorbutic to prevent scurvy.  The soldiers in the Iron Brigade called them “desecrated vegetables” and generally did not eat them.
          Coffee, usually issued in bean form, was always popular and was pounded or crushed, then boiled in water in tin cups.
          Hardtack was a square biscuit made of salt, flour and water and then baked. It could be soaked in water and fried in the sizzling fat of the issue salt pork which was called “sowbelly” by the soldiers.
          Soldiers on both sides took to “foraging” to supplement their food rations. Orders generally prohibited the theft of private property in the form of pigs, chickens, corn and sweet potatoes.  A brigade commander requested his men not steal, but added, “Boys, do not go hungry,” which, one Black Hat private observed, “in war time means take what you want whenever you can get it.”
          One French officer with the Army of the Potomac in 1862 an estimated 2,000 wagons, drawn by some 12,000 animals, were necessary to feed an army of 100,000 men and 16,000 horses at only two days march from a base of operations.

 

 

Moses Ladd of the 21st Wisconsin

     One Badger soldier always catches my interest is Pvt. Moses Ladd of the 21st Wisconsin.
     He was was born June 28, 1828 in what is now Wisconsin. His mother was a Menominee and his father of Ojibwa/Ottawa mix. He married Mary Grignon sometime before the Civil War. She was the daughter of Charles Grignon, a well-known fur trader for the Hudson Bay Company. The Grignon family included the Langlade and Brunette families, all active in settling northeast Wisconsin.
     Ladd, despite his mixed Menominee/Ojibwa/Ottawa heritage, enlisted in the 21st Wisconsin Infantry in 1861. He suffered a minor wound at the battle of Perryville, Kentucky, where he was cited with saving the life of Jeremiah Reardon, who later became Manitowoc County Sheriff. Near the end of the war, he served as a chief scout for General William Sherman on the March to the Sea. Ladd mustered out with his regiment in 1865 and returned to the Poygan area.
     He was singled out by Sherman in 1880 when the general visited in the Winneconne and Oshkosh area. Seeing Ladd in the audience, Sherman stopped a speech to go over and greet him. He also offered Ladd a home in Washington. Ladd refused, however, saying he could not leave his hunting and fishing grounds. Sherman again stopped Ladd during the 1889 Reunion in Milwaukee telling him, “Moses, you are one of the best men I had.” Ladd died May 30, 1920 at the Soldiers Home in King, Wisconsin. He is buried in the 21st Wisconsin plot.

Western Style and Prairie Manners....

---From the La Crosse Democrat

Re-printed in the Prairie du Chien [Wisconsin] Courier, Thursday, June 17, 1864

 

Since the opening of the present war we have watched with the closest eye and careful scrutiny the conduct of our Northern troops. Before the May battles began, the Western men were more than in advance of those in the East, and the events of the present month have faded the laurels for the East and brightened those of the West till the latter are truly entitled to the proud title of American Heroes.

The battles fought lately in the West have been of terrific carnage. The victories Western men have successfully won have been at the bayonet point, after a display of courage and endurance like that of the ancient Romans who used the shield less for defense than to rest the heads of dying braves on. The troops under Grant - the divisions of Logan, Steele, Sherman, Quimby, McClernand, McArthur, and McPhereson in the late battles before Vicksburg have covered themselves with glory enough for a lifetime, no matter what reverses in the Providence of the war may overtake them in the future. Where death held highest revel - where the bursting shell - screaming rifle ball and howling rifled shot dealt destruction the brave troops of Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio and Kansas have with unfaltering firmness and unfinishing bravery beat back the pride of the rebel forces and made the rebel chivalry forces to acknowledge the superiority of Western pluck, muscle, bravery, and endurance.

When the full accounts of the battles of Jackson, Raymond, Edward's Depot, Big Black Bridge, Barker's Creek, Vicksburg and other fields are given, each one will be a chapter of bravery which will make Grant's army the envied of the war. All through this war, the entire record of Western troops is one of undaunted spirit. In defeat or victory they have never become demoralized, or given up in despair. Western men don't know the meaning of defeat. At Boonville, Carthage, Wilson's Creek, Springfield, Lexington, Frederickstown, New Madrid, Cape Giradeau [sic] - at Corinth, Fort Donelson, Columbus, Pea Ridge, Pittsburg Landing - at Boston Mountain, Fayetteville, Island No. 10, Bowling Green, Shiloh, and Murfreesboro our Western men have proved themselves.

While the West has fought to win, with a life, pluck and energy to make us feel more than proud, the armies of the East have become demoralized, politicalized and manipulated that no one dare bet on them for fighting. The retreats, flights and foot races in and out of Washington have caused us to lose much of the respect once felt for the eastern troops.

Had it not been for the Western troops, the forces on the Potomac, Rappahannock and about Washington would have been a mob long since. There is contagion in example. The pride of Western men has kept them from following the lead of Eastern army styles - we hope the pride of Eastern men will enable them to emulate the glorious example of Western soldiers from this time on. Hair-oiled Bostonians, black-coated New Yorkers and white-necktied Philadelphians may turn up their noses at the brusqueness of the Hoosiers, Badgers, Pukes, Buckeyes, &c, of the western prairies - they may laugh at western style and smile at prairie manners, but when it comes to making a country, to whipping rebels, or otherwise proving title to the name of MAN, the "uncouth" sons of the west take front seats.

(Thanks to my friend Mike Thorson)

How the Minie-ball changed war in 1861-1865

I used to spend a good amount of time on the firing line with the North-South Skirmish Association shooting Civil War era weapons in marksmanship competitions. Along the way I picked up some thoughts on whether the new so-called “Minie-ball” (my friend Phil Spaugy would say “Burton bullet”) of the Civil War era changed the war.

Technology had stepped ahead of the tactics and experience in the 1861-65 and the officers of both sides—trained in the linear infantry movements of Napoleon—were slow to catch up. The foremost innovation was the new "rifle-musket “which became standard for both armies. Rifles had long been used in war, but they were slow to load and the basic infantry firearm until the mid 19th century was the muzzle-loading smoothbore musket. The smoothbore was quick to load, but its effective range was limited.

The new .58-caliber "rifle-musket" (with the length of a musket and the rifling of the rifle) was adopted for U.S. service in 1855, just six years before the start of the Civil War. It was still a muzzle-loader, but had grooves in the barrel to spin and stabilize a new hollow-based bullet the soldiers called the "Minie-ball" and it produced surprising accuracy and velocity. Accepted tactics of the day, however, were based on massed formations that could deliver dense swarms of bullets. The training was designed to bring soldiers quickly and in good order to a place where they could fire. The regiments fought with companies abreast, forming a long, double rank of men.

It all was based on the accepted theory a regiment was able to advance within 100 yards of an enemy position without taking significant causalities (given the limited range of smoothbores), then make the quick dash to close with bayonets. The emphasis in the volunteer camps was on marching in well-closed, disciplined formation; bayonet drill, and instruction for the individual soldier in loading quickly and firing on command. Marksmanship training was limited.

While the new rifle-musket made much of such training obsolete, it would be easy to overstate the importance of improved accuracy and point to it as the reason for the terrible casualty rates of 1861-65. The technology did not increase the rate of fire by individual soldiers (about two or three shots per minute) and, in fact, there was a drawback. If a soldier under ideal conditions was able to hit a man-sized target at 500 yards, the lobbing arc of the "minnie-ball" (as it was called by the soldiers) was about 12 feet above the point of aim at mid-range—causing infantrymen to over or under shoot at the longer distances. Even clear-eyed marksmen would find it difficult to consistently strike a moving line of infantry at distances of more than 300 yards.

The tragic significance of the rifle-musket and Minie-ball came at ranges less than 200 yards—it was there massed fire knocked apart battle lines with brutal efficiency. The point-blank killing range became 150 yards (not 50 yards) and all the previous experience of officers and the training of soldiers involved the short effective range of the smoothbores.

 

Other observations can be made on the subject, but let those bide for another time.

A soldier cemetery at Gettysburg

Frank Haskell of the 6th Wisconsin of the Iron Brigade was serving as a aide to Gen. John Gibbon when the two went to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in November 1863. They were there to represent the Army of the Potomac at the special dedication of a new federal soldier cemetery. The neat row of stones of the fallen was troubling to Haskell. He wrote his brother a short time later:

“…[W]hat is so appropriate for the soldier’s rest as the spot where he died nobly fighting the enemies of the country,--where perhaps the shout of victory went up with his spirit to Heaven—where his companions in arms, his survivors, had lovingly wrapped him in his blanket, and wet with brave men’s tears, had covered him with the earth his blood had consecrated…. But no,--these things were not to be. The skeletons of these brave men must be handled like the bones of so many horses, for a price, and wedged in rows like herrings in a box, on a spot where there was no fighting—where none of them fell! It may be all right, but I do not see it…but as it is now…we have instead a common, badly arranged grave yard, in which names, and graves, if designated at all, are as likely to be wrong as right. But read the newspapers,--Every body says this is splendid, this making the ‘Soldiers’ Cemetery,’ and I suppose it is.”

Frank Haskell was himself killed in 1864 leading a charge of the 36th Wisconsin near Cold Harbor, Virginia. His body was returned to Wisconsin for burial at Portage.

 

Terrible would have been the fate of the 19th Indiana

Thinking today about Fredericksburg in December 150 years ago, and of  the Iron Brigade and Lt. Clayton Rogers:

Left behind a mile beyond what had been the Iron Brigade line in the retreat from Fredericksburg was the 19th Indiana, whose job it was to watch the Rebels and keep them at a distance. General John Reynolds had made the decision to abandon the Hoosiers to prevent an alarm during the withdrawal, but Colonel Lysander Cutler pleaded with the general and gotten permission to make an effort to save the regiment. When the Iron Brigade began marching for the bridges, Cutler sent his aide, Leutenant Rogers, with an order for the commander of the 19th Indiana to call in his pickets and march for the pontoon crossing. The splendidly mounted Rogers, a man with an eye for good horses, “rushed to the extreme left with no regard to roads but straight as a bee flies.” “The left once gained,” a friend wrote, “he moderates his pace and whispers into the ear of each astonished officer.” The order is passed by whispers and Rogers moved out to the picket line in a movement hidden by the stormy weather. A witness described the scene: “One by one our drenched boys are falling back and drawing in together. Silently as shadows the whole picket line steals across the plain. And now as the ranks closed up for rapid marching, ‘double double quick’ is about the pace.” One bridge remained at the crossing point, and engineers were standing by with axes to cut it loose. It is only after the last of the 19th Indiana has passed that the mounted Rogers, “grimly smiling,” rode onto the bridge himself. The rearguard of the regiment arrived a short time after the bridge lines were cut. They climbed into skiffs the engineers had held back for them and began paddling for the north bank. “[I]f we had been left as our head General at first designated terrible would have been our fate,” a private in the 19th confessed in his diary, “or we would have known nothing of the retreat, and when the enemy advanced the 19th is not the Reg’t to surrender without any fight.” The consequence, he added, “would have been a wiping out of the old 19th.”