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.”

Old Mickey Sullivan returns for a story or two...

Sgt. James Patrick Sullivan made an appearance at Freedom Hall in the Civil War Museum at Kenosha, Wis., a few days back and it was the same old “Mickey, of Company K”—sharp of tongue, a glint in his eye, and full of Irish blarney.

It was good to see the old veteran of the Sixth Wisconsin and listen as he talked about attending the 1883 reunion of the Iron Brigade Association at La Crosse.

Mickey was to give a talk, he explained, and was trying to catch a few words on paper. He is the first enlisted man asked to formally address the annual gathering, and he admitted looking back to his soldier days triggered a flood of memories.

Sullivan laughed in telling how his new company—the Lemonweir Minute Men—drilled at the Mauston Park in Juneau County before the call to go to Camp Randall at Madison in 1861. School children, fathers, mothers sisters, friends and girls that had not yet been left behind stood watching, he recalled with a smile, and “if they judge by the loudness of the tones of command and our ability to charge the school house or church, they must have felt the rebellion would soon be a thing of the past.”

A couple of darker memories gave Mickey pause. It was at Gettysburg, in the bloody railroad cut, that he was shot in the shoulder and taken to the town on the back of a cavalry horse ordered up by Gen. James Wadsworth himself. At the Court House, he said, he found doctors “busy cutting up and patching up the biggest part of the Sixth Regiment, A good number of the Company K boys were in the same fix I was, and some a great deal worse.”

And there were other memories as well—of “Old Boo” the famous pet jackass of Company K, and a drill session with two new recruits, one German and one Irish, and, of course, Sullivan had to pull from an old chest his faded blue coat and the misshapen famous Black Hat of the Iron Brigade. The old coat was a little tight around the middle and the hat had seen better days, he admitted as he put them on, and then pulled himself up erect soldier fashion to begin his poem:

            There are hats in the closest, old, ugly to view,

             Of very slight value they may be to you.

             But the wreath of the Astors should not buy them to-day,
         
              With letters of honor, old Company K.

            At the end, Sullivan saluted the way the old boys,did in 1861, and then he was gone.

            His return was a funded by a grant given to the Civil War Museum from the Wisconsin Humanities Council. The 40-minute performance featured actor T. Stacy Hicks as Mickey Sullivan. The script was written by Playwright Jim Farris from Sullivan’s Civil War writings as found  in An Irishman in the Iron Brigade: The Civil War Memoirs of James P. Sullivan, Sergt, Company K, 6th Wisconsin Volunteers, by William J.K. Beaudot and Lance J. Herdegen.           

 

Was it a lock of hair of President Lincoln?

While I was working at the Institute for Civil War Studies at Carroll College, a visitor came to show me a small rectangle of glass with a lock of hair inside and tied with a red ribbon. On a card on the opposite side was the note: "A lock of Lincoln's Hair." The relic had been found in an old trunk left at a Milwaukee hotel the family had operated long ago. It was discovered after the fellow living there, Charles King, the famous author, died and trunk was left. A quick comparison showed the handwriting on the note was similar to that of Charles King. He was the son of General Rufus King of the Iron Brigade and served as his father's "aide" early in the war. He was one of four cadets appointed to the U.S. Military Academy by President Lincoln. (Another of the four was William Upham of the Second Wisconsin after he was severely wounded at First Bull Run.) I asked the visitor for just a few hairs from the lock, but was turned down with a smile. For the record, the hair was dark brown and very coarse. Was it the real hair of Abraham Lincoln? I like to think so, but we will never know for sure.

The Black Hats meet Old Abe, the War Eagle.

As the Seventh Wisconsin was at Camp Randall at Madison preparing to leave for Washington and the warfront, companies of the Eighth Wisconsin were arriving. The one from Eau Claire in north central Wisconsin caught the attention of the Western boys. It included the "proud form" of a live bald eagle perched on a painted shield and carried by a bearer. The eagle liked to spread its wings to retain its equilibrium while being carried, presenting a martial tableau. "It was the center of attraction during the day," said a Seventh Wisconsin man. "The [Eau Claire] boys say they were going to take him with them and are not going to return until he shapoos his head in the Gulf of Mexico." Of course, the bird became famous as "Old Abe, the War Eagle" and was carried into skirmish and battle over the coming years. The Seventh Wisconsin was soon a part of the storied Iron Brigade.