2 CIVIL WAR APPS: FIGHT THE WAR ON YOUR TABLET 2

THE VIOLENT,
SEXY AND
BIZARRE DREAMS
OF CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS

NIGHT
TREMORS
THE MUDDY MISERY OF
SPOTSYLVANIA

THAT’S ONE BIG GUN

THE GIANT RODMAN CANNON
DECEMBER 2015
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CIVIL WAR TIMES
DECEMBER 2015

32

ABOVE: Spotsylvania’s Bloody Angle did not look this pleasant and tranquil in May 1864.
ON THE COVER: An unidentified Union soldier poses in front of a flag tinted by the photographer.

26
FEATURES

26 In Their Heads
By Jonathan W. White
Erotic dreams and violent nightmares
haunted soldiers North and South
32 ‘Another Butchery’
By Chris Mackowski and Kristopher D. White
The last Federal assault on the ‘Bloody Angle’
did little more than swell casualty lists
40 Master Spy
or Scoundrel ?
By Julia Bricklin
Vigilante-turned-sleuth Lafayette Baker
inspired multiple scandals before he was finally
20 kicked out of the White House
46 Rodman’s Big Gun
By Andrew Masich
Thomas J. Rodman figured out how to build
a ship-killing cannon, the war’s largest gun
54 Tablet Wars
By Megan Kate Nelson
A young buff evaluates Civil War game apps
54
DEPARTMENTS

4 Editorial Island prison in Ohio

40 6 Letters
Battle flag flap, Liberty Ship Longstreet
10 News ! Preserving Virginia slave quarters

46 14
16
Details U.S. Colored Troops with a garrison cannon
Insight Southern staff officers’ memoirs
20 Materiel 5 Confederate kepis
22 Interview
Seminary Ridge Museum Director Daryl Black


58 Explore Battle of Cedar Creek
62 Reviews
Engineering Victory: The Union Siege of Vicksburg
70 Etc. Sherman on vigilante justice
72 Sold ! Prized 12-pounder
EDITORIAL

LAKESIDE REST
This handsome iron
gate stands on the
east, or Lake Erie,
side of the cemetery.
A Moses Ezekiel
statue serves as a
centerpiece for the
burial ground.


A LONG WAY FROM HOME
Some Rebel prisoners never left Ohio

MAJ. GEN. EDWARD “ALLEGHENY” JOHNSON was captured twice in 1864. The first time
occurred on May 12 at Spotsylvania (P. 32). He was paroled, but recaptured at the December 16 Battle of
Nashville. Johnson then made the long trek to Ohio and the Johnson’s Island Confederate prison camp,
located on an island in Lake Erie’s Sandusky Bay, which was reserved for Rebel officers. Over 9,000
prisoners moved through the depot during the war. Development has taken over most of the island, and
much of the prison is now gone, although an archaeological dig is being conducted on a portion of the site
(johnsonsisland.heidelberg.edu). More than 200 Confederate prisoners are still there, however, interred
in the Johnson’s Island Confederate Cemetery. This small spot of land is open to the public and very
well maintained by the Johnson’s Island Preservation Society (johnsonsisland.org). During a recent visit,
I was pleased to see a number of visitors touring the cemetery. It’s odd to contemplate the white marble
headstones while pleasure boaters zip by just offshore, their recreational fun marking a sharp contrast to
the confusion the POWs must have felt while facing death in that alien environment. We can’t say for sure
what those men dreamed about during their last days (P. 28), but it was likely of a home far away.–D.B.S.

4 CIVIL WAR TIMES

 MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER
DIONISIO LUCCHESI PRESIDENT
WILLIAM KONEVAL ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

EDITOR IN CHIEF ROGER L. VANCE

DECEMBER 2015 Vol. 54, No. 6

EDITORIAL
DANA B. SHOAF EDITOR
JENNIFER M. VANN ART DIRECTOR
NAN SIEGEL MANAGING EDITOR
CHRIS K. HOWLAND SENIOR EDITOR
SARAH RICHARDSON SENIOR EDITOR
SARAH J. MOCK PHOTO EDITOR/SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR

SHENANDOAH SANCHEZ PHOTOGRAPHER AT LARGE

ADVISORY BOARD
Edwin C. Bearss, Gabor Boritt, Catherine Clinton, William C. Davis,
Gary W. Gallagher, Lesley Gordon, D. Scott Hartwig, John Hennessy,
Harold Holzer, Robert K. Krick, Michael McAfee, James M. McPherson,
Mark E. Neely Jr., Megan Kate Nelson, Ethan S. Rafuse, Susannah Ural

2 CORPORATE 2
DAVID STEINHAFEL DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS
CIVIL WAR
TIMES
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KAREN G. JOHNSON BUSINESS DIRECTOR
ROB WILKINS DIRECTOR OF PARTNERSHIP MARKETING
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ADVERTISING The reviled Confederate general
(above) deserves more credit for his
BARBARA JUSTICE Senior Graphic Designer/Advertising Services BJustice@historynet.com accomplishments
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MARYLANDERS FOR DIXIE
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DIRECT RESPONSE ADVERTISING belonged to the Maryland “Band of
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LETTERS

THE BATTLE FLAG

As expected, our October cover story generated considerable feedback:

To those who make the argument that the Confederate flag

celebrates a unique heritage in American history and not racism: ★ REAL REALIT
Y TV: KEN BUR
NS’ THE CIVIL
WAR ★
You should be very angry. Symbols will be interpreted by those using
them. When I see Confederate flags flying in upstate New York by
those with no connection to the South, I feel it is a subtle message
of white supremacy. When I see people at a rally using the flag in
concert with swastikas, their message is much clearer. Keep in mind,
the swastika was long a symbol of peace until appropriated by the
Nazis. Supporters of the flag with no hatred in their heart need to
steal it back from those who misuse it.
Brandon M. O’Connor
Grand Island, N.Y.

Cancel my subscription. The article on the Confederate flag

was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. Up to this issue
I had always looked forward to reading the magazine from cover
to cover. I believe that the two people you had in the article who
gave their own opinion, Mr. Dabney and Mr. Prillaman, were a
poor choice. Clearly Mr. Dabney had an ax to grind for his hatred
of the flag and America itself and should not have been given this
forum. Mr. Prillaman, who I assumed was to be the counterpoint
of Mr. Dabney, came across weak and apologetic. One reason I
had looked forward to reading the magazine was it was a source OCTOBER 2015

that was free of the political correctness that is contributing to

the destruction of our society. Is nothing sacred?
Nick Perko III
Highland, Ind.

Here’s a sample of commentary on the flag article from our Facebook page:

Michael Kelter: Garry W. Roberts: Garland Holt: Ivan Carter: Shirley Holland
After 10 years I Thanks for posting Yes, this is very Good, informative, Goss:
will no longer be this! This is good. I like the read. Keep that I have my
reading Civil War one of the most statement: flag in museums Confederate
Times due to their informative, fair “Studying the where it belongs. battle flag and
policy of political and balanced flag’s full history It’s a relic of I will fly it
correctness. You articles on the also allows us to history. If folks proudly!
have killed my flag I’ve seen engage in a more want to fly it on
interest. everywhere. I constructive their property,
have two Civil War dialogue about its bumper sticker
ancestors, both proper place in the etc., so be it. Free
were great-great- present and in the country.
grandfathers, but future.”
on opposing sides.

6 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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In time for the holidays
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8 CIVIL WAR TIMES
PHOTOGRAPHER IDENTIFIED I enjoyed your photograph of
blacksmiths aboard the USS Lehigh in the October 2015 issue.

The box at the right of the image belonged to photographer
Egbert Guy Fowx, who taught Andrew Russell the wet plate pro-
cess. Fowx’s equipment appears in several of his wartime photos.
Robert Gray, Port Richey, Fla.
LONGSTREET THE LIBERTY SHIP 7 DEADLY SHELLS
I very much enjoyed reading about Liberty Ships Before a day’s yard-
(October 2015), as I have long been interested in work in our Virginia
them and their history. Many years ago we used to sunshine, I’m enjoy-
visit Cape Cod for vacation, and there was what ing my August 2015
the locals called “the target ship in the bay” always issue of Civil War
prominent on the horizon. On April 25, 1945, the Times, particularly
SS James Longstreet was deliberately sunk in Cape the article “7 Deadly
Cod Bay, to be used as a target ship by the U.S. Navy. Shells.” I read USS
This was discontinued in the early 1970s. The hulk Monitor crewman
of the Longstreet remained visible for many sub- William F. Keeler’s
sequent years, but storms and natural decay have diaries many years
finally relegated James Longstreet to memory only. ago and have many
Norman Marten times tried to visual-
Bainbridge Island, Wash. ize artillery projec-
tiles. Thanks for the
Always enjoy reading Civil War Times. After read- great photographs.
ing the article regarding Liberty Ship names from John E. Bishop
WWII in the October 2015 issue, I thought I’d drop Virginia Beach, Va.
a note about one such vessel. The SS James Longstreet
was built and launched in Houston, Texas, on Octo-

ber 31, 1942. She made three wartime voyages, car-
rying various materials, but had somewhat hard luck WE WANT
and an undistinguished career. She ended up being TO HEAR
towed to a mooring off the coast of North Eastham, FROM YOU!
on Cape Cod Bay in Massachusetts, on April 25, e-mail us at
1945, to serve as a target ship for airmen flying out cwletters@
of Otis Air Field on Cape Cod. That’s where her historynet.com
remains rest today, marked by Coast Guard hazard or send letters to
buoys, the namesake of one of Lee’s stalwart lieuten- Civil War Times,
ants rusting away in Northern waters. 19300 Promenade Dr.,
Leesburg, VA
L. Byrne 20176-6500
Brewster, Mass.
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NEWS!

 RESTORATION
C L E R M O N T FA R M S L AV E Q U A R T E R S

Clermont Farm, just outside Berryville, Va., became the temporary home for
Historicorps volunteers this past summer as they worked to rebuild slave quarters
constructed in 1823. In addition to making foundation repairs, teams restored the
chimney, log framing, floor joists and sill logs, as well as exterior siding and the roof,
windows and doors. In the process of those repairs as well as an archaeological dig, the
staff uncovered the foundation of an additional slave quarters structure and a trove of
Civil War–era artifacts. Clermont, which was established on land in the Shenandoah
Valley surveyed by George Washington in 1750, has remained a farm ever since that time.
The property has been owned by just four families, remaining in the hands of the last
owners, the McCormick family, for 185 years. When the last private owner, McCormick
descendant Elizabeth Rust Williams, died in 2004, she donated it to the Virginia
Department of Historic Resources, establishing the Clermont Foundation to manage the
property. Thanks to her foresight, Clermont remains an active farm to this day—which
also functions as a research and training facility for history, historic preservation and
agricultural programs. To find out more about the farm, see clermontfarm.org

10 CIVIL WAR TIMES

 QUOTABLE
They couldn’t hit
an elephant
at this distance
— Union Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick,

exhorting his troops to ignore Rebel
sharpshooters while supervising
artillery placement at Spotsylvania…
moments before he was shot dead.
CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL
AT ARLINGTON
Amid ongoing national debate about
the heritage value of Confederate sym-
bols and monuments, conservators from
Conservation Solutions Inc. are restoring
the Confederate Memorial at Arlington
National Cemetery. The United Daugh-
ters of the Confederacy hired sculptor
Moses Ezekiel—a Southern veteran—to
create the 32-foot monument in 1910.
The memorial, now surrounded by the
graves of 482 Southern veterans and fam-
ily members, was unveiled in 1914 before
a crowd including both Union and Con-
federate veterans. —Kim A. O’Connell
GENERAL
GEORGE G. MEADE
200th Anniversary
CELEBRATIONS
A rmy of the Potomac commander Maj. Gen. George Meade
may have been overshadowed by General Ulysses Grant
at Spotsylvania (see P. 32) in 1864, but members of the General
Meade Society of Philadelphia have been dedicated to “preserving
the memory of the architect of the Union victory at Gettysburg” since
the group’s founding in 1996. This fall and winter, to commemorate
the 200th anniversary of Meade’s birth in Cadiz, Spain, the society
is sponsoring a series of events—some including champagne toasts
(bubbly was reportedly Meade’s favorite tipple):
O C TOBE R 3
Picnic on the grounds of the Meade Monument in Philadelphia
NOV E M BE R 6
Anniversary dinner at the Union League of Philadelphia
NOV E M BE R 20
Meade Symposium in Gettysburg
DEC E M BE R 3 1
Birthday Celebration at Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery,
where Meade was buried.
TO LEARN MORE, CHECK OUT GENERALMEADESOCIETY.ORG.
DECEMBER 2015 11
NEWS!

URAL ON URLS: THE WAR ON THE NET

veterans has a colored arrow indicat-

ing their path. Click on the colored
arrows or the colored bars in the
timeline to read the veterans’ stories.
While Neatline does not allow for an
entirely smooth viewing experience,
it offers one of the best opportunities
we have found to map the routes
taken by Confederate veterans on
their long road home.
Some notable trends emerge from
the men’s writings. None mention the
assassination of President Abraham
Lincoln, for example. Perhaps they
could focus on nothing but their own
misery—or maybe they worried a
journal might be seized and accusa-
tions made against them by Union
forces. Then too, most veterans cut far
south toward Atlanta and then moved
westward, rather than traveling
through east Tennessee, a more direct
a l l a nb r a n s t it e r. n e t / L o n g R o a d H o m e /
n e at l i n e / f u l l s c r e e n /s a m p l e
route. Perhaps they feared tensions in
Unionist Eastern Tennessee, an issue
that surfaced for the two men who

 THE LONG ROAD HOME  bucked the trend and followed that
route. None of the men mentioned
continuing the fight with Confeder-
n mid-April 1865, four Texans wearing tattered Confederate uniforms ates in North Carolina. Lee’s veterans

I
walked south from Appomattox Court House bearing freshly printed Fed- were done with the war. Finally, Rebel
eral paroles promising free transportation and food, and the right to travel veterans’ attitudes toward Union
home unmolested. Two of those men, A.B. Green and Denis Rowe, had troops varied. Some interacted with
enlisted together in 1861. Green bore wounds from Second Manassas and Federals and sought food or protec-
the Wilderness, while Rowe was missing the middle finger of his right hand, tion from soldiers bent on revenge.
the result of an accidental shooting two springs before. John Calvert and John But other Texas Brigade veterans
Wesley, who accompanied them, had waited until 1862 to enlist. Those four went out of their way to avoid contact
Texans were among thousands of Confederates who marched away from Appo- with their old foes.
mattox and into obscurity, leaving very few records of their journey back home. To be clear, one of my doctoral
For the most part, we know little of the soldiers’ thoughts about defeat or students, E. Allan Branstiter, and I
surrender, or what routes they took. “The Long Road Home” was designed to created this website. Yes, it seems a
shed light on this brief but significant phase of postwar history by mapping the bit odd to write about myself in this
travels of veterans of John Bell Hood’s Texas Brigade from the moment they column. But there is a wealth of work
received their paroles on April 13, 1865, until they reached Texas and Arkansas. that needs to be done to document
Visitors to the site can slide the timeline bar (left click and hold, scroll to the the months that followed the war’s
right or left) to watch the journey. It’s also possible to zoom out from the open- end, and I hope this project can
ing view of the map (an 1870 railroad map overlaid on a modern Google map), inspire others to embark on similar
but don’t zoom out so far that you miss the details. Each veteran or group of undertakings. —Susannah J. Ural

12 CIVIL WAR TIMES

 Drought
Exposes
Soldier’s
Grave
Corporal John McBride
survived the war, but was shot 20 years
later during a squabble over stray cattle
at a California ranch. His grave—along
with the tiny town of Playto that he
once called home—was inundated in
1965 by what would be known as Lake
NATIONAL CIVIL WAR San Antonio. A cemetery for townsfolk
of the ghost town of Playto had been
MUSEUM EARNS HONORS relocated, but since McBride’s grave was
off by itself and no descendants could

H
arrisburg Magazine recently announced that the National Civil be found, the consensus was to let the
War Museum had earned its 2015 Readers Choice Award. Civil War veteran rest where he was.
Though such a tribute—generated by voting readers—would McBride would doubtless have been
always be welcome, the public recognition was especially significant forgotten to history were it not for
at a time when the NCWM has been caught up in political crossfire climate change—or whatever forces
in Pennsylvania’s capital, due to a conflict between current Harrisburg are behind the drought that has drawn
Mayor Eric Papenfuse and former Mayor Stephen Reed. down state reservoirs, including Lake
Acknowledging the Harrisburg Magazine award, Museum CEO San Antonio. According to the San Jose
Wayne Motts said, “All of us here are humbled and honored” by the Mercury News, a passing camper discov-
recognition by Harrisburg area readers. He added, “As a national and ered McBride’s headstone. Joseph Botts


international destination of choice for so many travelers from around
the globe, to be honored on the home front is truly gratifying.”
The travel website TripAdvisor.com also currently lists top marks
for the NCWM, describing it as “Not only a great museum for Harris-
burg” but also the top “Civil War museum in the country.”
Jr., a retired park ranger familiar with
the gravesite, conjectured that McBride
had probably ended up in Playto as
“an unemployed soldier looking for a
quiet way of life in a peaceful valley.”

QUIZ: SMALL FIGHT

NAME THE LOCATION of this small but important fight

that triggered a congressional investigation and send your
answer via e-mail to DShoaf@historynet.com or via regular mail
(19300 Promenade Dr., Leesburg, VA 20176) marked “Small Fight.”
The first correct answer will win a book.

Congratulations to last issue’s winners, Stephen Borsh of Lusby, Md.,

(e-mail), and Gerald Smith of Homeland, Calif. (mail), who correctly
identified the August 1862 Chantilly battlefield in Chantilly, Va.

DECEMBER 2015 13
DETAILS

1
At Ease
THIS REMARKABLE IMAGE recently became
part of the Liljenquist Collection at the Library of
Congress. It shows Lieutenant Samuel K. Thompson
and soldiers of his 54th United States Colored Troops
posed next to a monstrous garrison cannon. Unlike in
many stiffly composed photographs of soldiers during
the war, the men seem relaxed and at ease with one
another—a snapshot, if you will, of the march of racial
progress. There is also a bit of mystery connected with
this photo. The 54th USCT, not to be confused with
the 54th Massachusetts of the movie Glory fame,
served in the Indian Territory and Arkansas, and
garrisoned posts like Fort Gibson and Fort Smith. But
the armament and brickwork visible in this photograph
are more indicative of a large seacoast fort.
1. Lieutenant 2. Rodman cannons, 3. The massive 4. Most of the men 5. A “photobomber”
Thompson is developed by U.S. cannon, which in the 54th USCT stands atop the
smartly turned out ordnance officer appears to be a were freed slaves. ramparts, which
in a straw boater Thomas Rodman 10- or 15-inch, sits The regiment are made of brick-
hat and white just before the war on a swiveling entered service in reinforced earth.
private-purchase (see P. 46), were cast-iron carriage. September 1863 as Also note that this
trousers. usually reserved for A rod was inserted the 2nd Regiment, image is beautifully
seacoast forts. through the ratchet Arkansas Volunteer tinted.
mechanism at the Infantry (African
breech to elevate Descent), but was
the barrel. redesignated the
54th in March 1864.

5
3

4
DECEMBER 2015 15
INSIGHT
By Gary W. Gallagher
RIGHT-HAND MEN

Confederate staff officers had
a unique view of the war
STUDENTS OF THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA know that
staff officers left a great deal of wonderful testimony about prominent
generals, less famous officers, and the campaigns and battles in which
they participated. Any list of essential works on the army would include
Jedediah Hotchkiss’ Make Me a Map of the Valley: The Civil War Journal
of Stonewall Jackson’s Topographer (edited by Archie P. McDonald), which
includes indispensable material on the Second Corps; Thomas J. Goree’s
Longstreet’s Aide: The Civil War Letters of Major Thomas J. Goree (edited by
Thomas W. Cutrer), a collection that includes wartime and postwar let-
ters relating to Goree’s Confederate service; and Walter H. Taylor’s Lee’s
Adjutant: The Wartime Letters of Colonel Walter Herron Taylor, 1862-1865
16 CIVIL WAR TIMES
‘MAKE ME A MAP’
Jedediah Hotchkiss,
Stonewall Jackson’s
topographer, created this
sketch of Chancellorsville,
Salem Church and
Fredericksburg.
(edited by R. Lockwood Tower), a major source
on Lee and the army’s headquarters.
The best memoirs include G. Moxley Sor-
rel’s Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer,
an unusually literate and revealing source on
James Longstreet and the First Corps; Henry
B. McClellan’s The Life and Campaigns of
Major-General J.E.B. Stuart, which remains
the best published source on the cavalry and its
colorful commander; and Walter Taylor’s Four
Years With General Lee and General Lee: His
Campaigns in Virginia, 1861-1865, two titles
that supplement Taylor’s letters. Other fre-
quently cited postwar accounts by staff officers
include Henry Kyd Douglas’ dramatic but often
unreliable I Rode With Stonewall, Heros von
Borcke’s equally exaggerated account of cavalry
affairs titled Memoirs of the Confederate War for
Independence and William Willis Blackford’s
highly engaging War Years With Jeb Stuart.
 Friction of the frontier between Europeans and the Native peoples
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force to react to a threat.
Nothing could have been more terrifying to an isolated family or small
community on the frontier than the sudden appearance of a war party.
Harvest time was often the season that Europeans and Native peoples
alike made war, knowing that destroying the enemy’s food crop before
winter would be devastating.
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A number of less well-known staff officers also wrote
memoirs that merit serious attention, including
George Campbell Brown, Francis W. Dawson
and Joseph Lancaster Brent. Brown’s memoir,
edited by Terry L. Jones as Campbell Brown’s Civil War: With Ewell and
the Army of Northern Virginia (LSU Press, 2001), takes readers into
the company of one of the army’s great characters. The son of Richard
S. Ewell’s wife Lizinka, Campbell, as he was known, chronicled his
stepfather’s operations from First Manassas through Sailor’s Creek
(the Ewells were married in May 1863). Brown’s memoir does much
to humanize Ewell, who appears in many other accounts—especially
Richard Taylor’s widely quoted Destruction and Reconstruction—as a
deeply eccentric character, more comic relief than serious soldier among
the high command of Lee’s army.
Brown served alongside Ewell at Gettysburg and during the first
three weeks of the Overland Campaign, a period when Robert E. Lee
decided Jubal A. Early would do a better job as head of the Second
Corps. Bitter and despondent after Lee broke the news, Ewell believed
that Early and perhaps others had conspired to force him out. Campbell
Brown, who remained at Second Corps headquarters after Early took
over, shared the general’s anger. “Old Early did not ask me how you
were,” Brown wrote Ewell on June 13, “but I made my speech so that he
will hear it….I intend seeing little of Early—& will get along finely. He
looks at me like a sheep-stealing dog, out of the corner of his eye.”
Dawson’s Reminiscences of Confederate Service was first published in an
edition of 100 copies in 1882 and reprinted by Louisiana State Univer-
sity Press with an introduction by Bell I. Wiley in 1980. An Englishman
who began his Confederate career in the Navy, Dawson joined Long-
street’s staff as a lieutenant of ordnance in 1862, served with “Old Pete”
for roughly two years and later transferred to Fitzhugh Lee’s staff in
the cavalry. Dawson’s portrait of Longstreet combines praise with fairly
strong criticism. “The reputation that Longstreet had as a fighting man
was unquestionably deserved, and when in action, there was no lack of
energy or quickness of perception,” wrote the Englishman, “but he was
somewhat sluggish by nature, and I saw nothing in him to make me
believe that his capacity went beyond the power to conduct a square
hard fight.”
Dawson’s book includes memorable accounts of several famous inci-
dents—including Robert E. Lee’s reaction to news that Longstreet had
been grievously wounded in the Wilderness on May 6, 1864. “We lifted
Longstreet from the saddle, and laid him on the side of the road,” Daw-
son recalled of the moments after his chief was struck down: “It seemed
that he had not many minutes to live.” But Longstreet rallied, and as
18 CIVIL WAR TIMES
his staff accompanied the general’s ambulance
away from the battlefield they met Lee. “I
shall not soon forget the sadness in his face,”
Dawson observed, “and the almost despairing
movement of his hands, when he was told that
Longstreet had fallen.”
Joseph Lancaster Brent, a native of Mary-
land who spent much of his antebellum career
in California, served as chief of ordnance on
John Bankhead Magruder’s staff during the
Peninsula Campaign and the Seven Days’ Bat-
tles. Brent’s Memoirs of the War Between the
States, published in a limited private edition
in 1940 and never reprinted, contains invalu-
able material about Magruder’s actions during
the spring and early summer of 1862. Sympa-
thetic to his superior, whom he described as
“a most energetic commander” who prepared
“with care and precision for the contingencies
which so often decide battles,” Brent none-
theless sketched Magruder as an officer who
suffered serious physical and mental lapses at
crucial moments. The morning of the Battle
of Glendale showed Magruder at his worst:
“General Magruder was on horseback, gallop-
ing here and there with great rapidity,” remem-
bered Brent. “He seemed to me to be under
a nervous excitement that strangely afflicted
him.” Brent asked the general if he was well,
to which Magruder replied that he “was feel-
ing horribly” due to a lack of sleep and the
effects of ingesting medicine containing mor-
phine. According to Brent, Magruder thanked
him for his concern and “strove to assume his
ordinary deportment.” Brent’s depiction of
Magruder provides an instructive comparison
to the many accounts of “Stonewall” Jackson’s
poor performance during the Seven Days’.
Readers looking for published primary
material on Lee’s army would do well to set
aside a shelf for staff officers—and to reserve
space on that shelf for Brown, Dawson and
Brent as well as their more famous comrades. ✯

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MATERIEL

5 CONFEDERATE
CAPS
MOST REBELS preferred wide-
brimmed “slouch,” hats, but the Confed-
eracy also issued kepis to its troops, hats
inspired by headgear worn in the French
army since the 1830s. Southern officers
in particular liked to customize their caps,
coats and trousers. Rebel kepis and their
derivatives came in assorted colors and
varied in quality of cloth and construction.

TALL TOPPER
This is a forage cap, the kepi’s
taller, floppier cousin. Made of
“jean cloth,” a blend of cotton and
wool woven in a Southern mill,
this officer’s hat is set off by a
black band, bullion tape and an
embroidered infantry bugle.

SARTORIAL SPLENDOR
The gunners of the Washington Artillery of New Orleans, a unit
made up of the scions of the Crescent City’s upper class, might
have worn the best-looking cover of the war. This example retains
its “W.A.” and crossed cannons.

20 CIVIL WAR TIMES

 SPARE NO
EXPENSE
Maj. Gen. John B. Magruder was
nicknamed “Prince John” for, as
a fellow Rebel officer put it, the
“splendor of his appearance.”
This braid-encrusted kepi made
in Paris helped the prince live
up to his reputation.

FADE AWAY
The officer who wore this kepi would have cut a dashing
figure, with all that gold bullion and the elaborate
quatrefoil on its top. Though this cap has faded to
what is sometimes referred to as “butternut,” it
was likely dyed a shade of gray originally.

WAR SOUVENIR
A Union soldier reportedly brought
home this tall kepi variant, sometimes
called a “chasseur” cap, after those
worn by French light infantry units.
The badge on the front of the officer’s
cap consists of a wreath enclosing
“SC,” perhaps for South Carolina. Its
fine blue wool was likely imported
from Europe.

DECEMBER 2015 21
INTERVIEW

CWT: What are the Lutheran

Visitors can tour the Seminary’s cupola. Theological Seminary’s origins?
DB: It’s a seminary where abolition-
ists, ministers and scholars taught
classes and thought about the issues
that were dividing the country.
Samuel Schmucker, who founded the
seminary in 1826, was an abolitionist,
and that part of the story brings in
human interest, in addition to mili-
tary history and the moral and ethical
questions surrounding the conflict.

CWT: Why should visitors

come to your museum?
DB: This is where the fight starts.
The Seminary’s cupola is where John
Buford envisions the positioning of
his cavalry that brings the battle on.
It’s where infantry forces became
entangled in the struggle that spreads
beyond the imagination of anybody,
frankly. This institution interprets the


battle at a high level, tells the story
well and then gives the orientation for
what happened here on McPherson’s
Gettysburg artifacts fill the museum. Ridge and with the U.S. Army’s I
Corps. In a larger sense, this
institution sits in the middle of a
graduate Lutheran seminary, a
professional graduate school. We
STEP INSIDE A want to make this a place where


GETTYSBURG scholars and the public can come
together to think about religion and
the war—a fairly understudied area in

RELIC Civil War history. We want to help

lead the expansion of the study of
religion in the war.

CWT: What do you showcase

DURING THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG, the
Lutheran Theological Seminary was used as a Union
observation post and later as a field hospital for both
Federals and Confederates. In 2013 the Seminary opened
that historic building as a museum to showcase military
and medical perspectives on the engagement as well as
explore religion and race in antebellum history. Daryl
Black, the museum’s new director, points out that the
Seminary also has ties to the tragedy at Emanuel Church
in Charleston, where nine members were murdered on June 17, 2015. Daniel
Alexander Payne, a free black man from Charleston, attended LTS for his
doctorate in divinity because he could not get an education at the seminary
in Charleston. After the war ended, Payne returned to Charleston to reestab-
lish Emanuel Church, which had been meeting in secret since 1834.
that people won’t see elsewhere?
DB: The museum is organized to
show the stories of medical history
and the Civil War side by side. I
think that visitors will be surprised
by the treatment in terms of thinking
about what the costs of war are, while
also getting an explanation of what
happened to the men on the fields
around the building, in addition to
exploring race and abolitionism.
CWT: How is the museum organized?
DB: Visitors start at the fourth floor,

22 CIVIL WAR TIMES


with the story of the first day’s
battle. We want them to think about
what was going on here before this
became the most famous small town
in America. On the night of June 30,
Buford’s cavalry troops begin to de-
ploy around the building, and the
Seminary itself becomes an observa-
tion spot for the Union army. Visitors
can take a cupola tour—go up and
stand where Buford stood and take
in the view that gave the Union
a strategic advantage on June 30
and July 1. It shows how the initial
contact shaped the battle’s dynamic.
We want visitors to think about
what happened on the first day—the
sacrifices made by John Reynolds’
I Corps, for example: They march
into the battle with 9,500 men or so,
and 6,500 or so are wounded or killed
or missing in action. That fight was
about buying an hour or two hours at
the end of the day to give Winfield
Hancock the opportunity to put
together the line on Cemetery Ridge.
It’s a really compelling story.
On the third floor visitors are con-
fronted with the cost of battle. What
does the aftermath look and feel
like, when men have been standing
up in fields, shooting and clubbing
each other and shooting mortars and
cannons at each other? What does
that do to the body physically? That
is part of the war that sometimes
gets overlooked. Then consider the
organizational technology, the Union
hospital service, and the ways that
Dr. Jonathan Letterman put together
this complex system of hospitals, as
well as triage and the treatment of
the wounded on the battlefield. It’s a
sobering moment for a lot of people.
CWT: Where do you address the
causes of the war?
DB: The museum’s second floor takes
you back to a much broader pro-
gram—to look at the conditions that
caused the war to break out. There’s
abolitionism, and the proslavery
religion developing in the South. A
wonderful interactive exhibit asks you
to think through the dilemmas facing
Americans of the 1840s and 1850s,
and try to put yourself in the place
of people making those decisions.
It helps us understand that people
have made decisions in the past that
shape the way we are today, shape
the people we can become—that we
hope to become. The second floor
exhibits also include treatment of the
African-American community. About
220 African Americans lived in
Gettysburg during the conflict. Their
experience is instructive in thinking
about the war’s causes—the tenuous
position that free people had here, on
the border of slavery and freedom.
CWT: Is there a particular
artifact or feature you like most?
DB: There’s a letter by an Alabama
soldier in one of the rooms of a house
here that says: “we might be gone
now and remember that our families
homes are being destroyed now. Yours
may be standing now but maybe next
year it won’t be.” What’s happening to
many Southern farmers and Southern
families is something we need to take
very seriously. That raises all kinds of
dilemmas regarding the way we think
about morality and the war’s effects.
Other favorites include one of John
Burns’ guns, the original barn door
with bullet holes from the McPher-
son Farm, chairs from Thaddeus
Stevens’ office in Gettysburg, and a
surgeon’s kit. The great thing about
museums is they put you physically in
the presence of objects from the past
in ways that nothing else does.
CWT: What about the tour of
the grounds?
DB: As a part of the rehabilitation of
Schmucker Hall and the museum’s
creation, the Seminary invested in a
walking trail—one mile around the
seminary grounds. It tells the semi-
nary’s history and also takes you to
interesting parts of the battlefield
that are kind of difficult to get to. It’s
particularly instructive to get up in
the cupola and then go down onto
WE WANT
TO MAKE THIS
A PLACE WHERE
SCHOLARS
AND THE
PUBLIC
CAN COME
TOGETHER
TO THINK ABOUT
RELIGION
AND THE
CIVIL WAR
the battlefield. That famous swale
between Seminary Ridge and Ceme-
tery Ridge—from a distance it doesn’t
seem like much of a terrain feature,
but when you actually get down in it
you realize how quickly it swallows
up people—a vast open space, with
very constricted sightlines. It’s a great
way for visitors to begin thinking
about how eyesight shaped the battle,
how this landscape affected the men
deciding where to put soldiers.
CWT: What is the museum’s position
on the current controversy over Con-
federate monuments and flags?
DB: We want to help facilitate a
conversation about Confederate sym-
bolism as it relates to the battle flag.
A museum is the perfect environment
to speak to these issues. The fight
over the flag says a lot about where
we are now as a nation. Perhaps the
fight about symbolism is obscuring
broader questions in American social
and cultural life where discussion
is long overdue. The talk needs to
move beyond discussing the flag and
focus on real history, and the real lives
affected by the conflict. The unfin-
ished business of the Civil War is very
present in everyday life today.
Interview conducted by Senior Editor
Sarah Richardson
DECEMBER 2015 23
 THE CIVIL WAR IN
GEORGIA
2
RINGGOLD The Civil War’s impact on Georgia was greater than any other event in
the state’s history. Home to more than 400 Civil War sites, Georgia has
1 a wealth of battlefields, cemeteries, arsenals, museums, mansions,
trains, towns and parks, all with fascinating stories to tell!

From Chickamauga, the largest national military park and the

second-bloodiest battle of the Civil War, to the escape and
capture of Jefferson Davis, arguably the last major event
3 4 of the war, Georgia Civil War Audio Tours offer visitors
the opportunity to hear stories about all facets of the
war in Georgia.

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IN THEIR
HEADS

26 CIVIL WAR TIMES


HOMECOMING FANTASY
A sleeping warrior dreams of
returning to his family, in an
illustration for sheet music of
Cornelius Everest’s 1862 song
“The Soldier’s Vision.”
SOLDIERS DREAMED OF
BATTLE, LOVED ONES AND
INFIDELITY. AND CHEESE
By Jonathan W. White
PRINTS, ENGRAVINGS and postal
covers abounded with titles like The
Soldier’s Dream of Home, The Soldier’s
Dream of Peace or The American
Patriot’s Dream during the war. The
images in them were similar: A
sleeping warrior, dreaming of home.
Sentimental depictions like these
were especially popular with troops,
as they captured the kinds of dreams
so many young men experienced.
“Is not this beautiful,” enthused one
Ohio soldier to his fiancée in April
1862, referring to the poem “The
Soldier’s Dream.” A Confederate
man wrote his wife: “Did you ever see
a picture called the soldiers dream?
I have seen it somewhere, possibly
in an old magazine. The artist had
certainly seen life in camps and had
a wife and baby.”
DECEMBER 2015 27
S oldiers and their families not only found solace and comfort in such
poems and prints, they also relished sharing their own dreams—
sometimes even when doing so meant divulging insecurities or secrets.
In some cases this may have contributed to the sense of closeness that
endured between men and their families despite long separations.
Home was the most common dream theme for soldiers both North and South. For
example, one New York soldier wrote his wife, “Last night I dreamed of being at home
as I often do and sweet were the kisses what I took all around.” A 36-year-old Virginia
man told his 16-year-old sweetheart, “I dream about you som times three or four nights
TAKE FIVE
Bandsmen of
the 4th Vermont
Infantry take
a break to
read, write
and daydream
in a Virginia
encampment.
in succession.”
But sometimes rather than dwelling on loved ones, troops dreamed about things they
missed. In 1864 Private Chauncey H. Cooke of Wisconsin, camped in Georgia’s pine
woods, wrote his mother, “I dreamed last night about the cheese which you wrote about
in the letter I got three days ago,” and how much “I would like a taste of it.”

Pleasant dreams often turned to disappoint-
ment when the soldiers woke. “I dreamed of
huging and kissing you all night last night,” one
Indiana man wrote his wife. “Oh, how happy I
was but how bad I did feel this morning.” After
having a dream that “I am hugging you to my
heart,” one Connecticut volunteer told his wife,
“then I awaken and find myself lying in this
damd place. it makes me swear some, but that
does no good.” A private from Georgia wrote,
“Dear Malinda, I dream of you often and oh,
what pleasure it is to be with you but when I
awake [and] find its all a dream, how sad I feel.”
Dreams could also lead to awkward situa-
tions. One Georgia soldier wrote his wife that
he “dream[ed] of hugging you” but woke up
“hugging the boys” in his tent. After dreaming
that his wedding day had finally arrived, Lieu-
tenant John V. Hadley of Indiana “awoke and
found nothing but the rough touch of Captain
Banta.”
Dreams often revealed soldiers’ anxieties.
One Virginia man was plagued by nightmares
about his pregnant wife until he received news
that mother and baby were fine. “I have dreamed
about you several times lately,” Captain Jacob
Ritner wrote his wife in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. “I
dreamed the other night that I had you in my
arms and was kissing you. I thought you were
just as pretty and sweet as ever, but that you
looked pale and thin, like you had been sick for
a long time,” adding, “I hope you have taken
medicine and got over that bad cough.”
Guilt and anxiety frequently haunted
dreamers. Men feared their wives or sweet-
hearts might lose hope that they would return

28 CIVIL WAR TIMES

home, and some soldiers became convinced their lovers had
abandoned them. A few soldiers were remarkably candid
about fears of abandonment. Captain Thomas Jefferson
Hyatt of the 126th Ohio Infantry related that he’d had sev-
eral “very queer” dreams one night. “First I dreamed that
we had been married some years, and the time had run out
and we were about arranging another term,” he wrote his
wife. But then “I dreamed you had abandoned me and had
or was about to form an alliance with
Lt. [ Joseph C.] Watson of this Regt.”
At first, Hyatt went on, he was con-
tent with this new arrangement, “as
I supposed I was free to go where I
chose.” But soon he “began to feel Guilt and
very badly, and could not think of the
separation.” His wife seemed “offish,” anxiety
he said, and he grew jealous of how
she looked at Lieutenant Watson.
But eventually she began “to regret
often haunted
the steps you had taken and began to
think I was a little better than your
dreamers,
second choice.” He added, “I just
then awoke, and behold it was all a especially
dream, and I was very glad of it.”
In some cases, abandonment
dreams were very explicit. With-
when it came
out a letter from his wife for almost
two months, Wisconsin soldier
"*?$)k'$"3
Miles Butterfield had a “very strange
Dream” that he had gone home to
his wife and baby, but she would not
“take any notice of me.” Eventually he learned that she “did
not intend to live with me anymore.” He pleaded with her
to no avail, then walked to town and saw several friends,
including one named Cram, who said that “all knew that
you was going to leave me and they all looked at me so that
I did not know what to do and then Cram told me that he
had been living with you about 3 weeks and that he was not
the only one that had been with you, but he was the one
that you was going off with.” Butterfield told his wife he
could “forgive all and live with you as before,” but again she
rejected him, and left town on a train. “I was going to wait
until the next train come along and I would put an end to
my Miserable life by lying down on the track and letting
the cars run over me, for now I had nothing to live for as
you and the Baby was gone, but I began to think how you
had been acting, and concluded that I would go back and let
you go, and thought that it was a good thing that you had
gone as I did with one once before as you know.” Butterfield
concluded by pleading with his wife to write more often.
Some dreams were filled with violence. On September
4, 1861, William Harris Hardy dreamed that when he re-
turned home to Mississippi, his wife Sallie “received me
cooly.” He watched her get into “a buggy with a young man
and left in a gay and fastidious manner,” then followed them
to a party, where he now saw her “in a fine glee, entertained
by two nice-looking gentlemen.” Sallie still ignored Wil-
liam, so that his “heart sunk, and the tears gushed forth from
my eyes.” She chastised him and “rejoined your two favorite
beaux.” At this point Hardy “became enraged and deter-
mined to settle the matter. I got my double barrel shotgun
heavily loaded, and after killing both the young men, I drew
a dagger and determined to terminate your life and my own
with the same knife at the same time.” But before he could
execute “this horrible deed, I awoke.” Hardy attributed his
nightmare to having heard that a comrade’s wife had been
unfaithful, in addition to being “tired
and worn down, completely exhaust-
ed from a long and tedious drill.”
Women were also haunted by fears
of infidelity. Knowing their partners
were surrounded by other women—
including nurses and prostitutes—
wives and sweethearts worried the
men might give in to temptation.
When an Irishwoman in New York
dreamed her husband left her and
married “a nigger winch,” he play-
fully replied, “i am not as yet i dunt
now howe soon i may get one the[y]
are [as] plnty [as] cattle around.” He
closed by saying, “give my love to
the children and a bushil of kisses to
each one and 2 bushil for your self.”
A New Hampshire soldier reassured
his wife: “I hardly know what to say
to your dream. I will not say you was
silly to tell me of it, but you was silly
to dream any such things about your
husband who loves you better than all the rest of the world.”
Sometimes such fears resulted in bizarre imaginings.
Emma Crutcher of Natchez, Miss., wrote to her husband,
Will, telling him of the “maximized joy” she felt when she
dreamed he had been shot in the leg and had it amputated.
“Now, thought I, he will never leave me again, for he will
be of no use, in the army, and—if I die, he will never marry
again, for no one but me would love a lame man—he is mine
now.” When she awoke, she breathed a sigh of relief that “it
was not reality, lameness and all,” but assured him, “I had
rather take you now, lamed for life, than wait for months
and maybe years longer, with the chance of [not] having you
back with me.” At least Will could rest assured of Emma’s
abiding faithfulness. Of course, dreamers like these might
have been trying to urge their spouses to remain faithful by
sharing their night visions. But it seems ironic that, even as
husbands and wives suffered from doubts about faithfulness,
they were still inclined to share their insecurities.
Not all soldiers were monogamous in their dreams. One
Rebel officer dreamed of visiting a Miss Sallie. “She was
standing on [the] porch,” he wrote. “I was coming in on
side-way….I cried out to Miss S., ‘Here comes your sweet-
heart.[’] She ran in the house. Met me at door. Went in and
was having a nice time when awoke & ’twas all a dream.”
Two nights later he dreamed of a different girl: “Suddenly
Miss Kate opened the door and came in looking beautiful
as an angel. I spoke to her. Told me, she congratulated me
DECEMBER 2015 29
FAMILY TIES
Private Edward
A. Cary of the on being married. Told the miss she was mis-
44th Virginia taken, but if she was willing I’d soon be. Don’t
Infantry posed for remember her answer.” And four days later he
a wartime portrait dreamed that he was about to “pop the ques-
with his sister, tion” to a “Miss Frances.”
Emma. Soldiers Some dreams were just incomprehensible.
A South Carolinian dreamed that when he
most commonly
went to visit a former love interest, he found
dreamed of the
her father “perfectly nude—scabs, scales,
loved ones they
and dirt covered his entire body, and in this
left behind. predicament he ushered me into the presence
of his daughter.” A Wisconsin soldier dreamed
“there was a million angels in rebel uniforms,
poaching eggs for me.” After eating “poor
quality” ginger cakes, a Georgia infantryman
reported a series of dreams to his wife. First he
was an instructor at a female military academy,
then a member of the Confederate Congress,
then an army surgeon, then he saw British
minister Lord Lyons, and finally he went home
and impregnated his wife.
As might be expected, combat was
frequently a part of soldiers’ dreams. Some had
recurring nightmares of battles, perhaps due to
guilt for having survived when others had not.
Captain Henry T. Owen of the 18th Virginia

30 CIVIL WAR TIMES

Infantry wrote his wife in December 1863 about a dream of
Gettysburg that tormented him night after night. Standing
amid a long line of troops and looking off into the distance,
he “saw the dim outlines of lofty hills, broken rocks and
frightful precipices which resembled Gettysburg.” He and
his men marched forward, “fighting that great battle over
again.” But in his dreams something was different: A “thin
shaddow” kept appearing between Owen and the Union
troops amassed along Cemetery
Ridge. No matter how he tried to get
around it, it kept getting in front of
him. “Nobody else seemed to see or
notice the shaddow which looked as
thin as smoke, and did not prevent
Not surprisingly,
my seeing the enemy distinctly thru’
it.” When the guns ceased firing, the undernourished
shadow spoke to him, saying: “I am
the angel that protected you. I will
never leave nor forsake you.” Owen
prisoners
reported that he awoke and “burst
into tears,” wondering why he should
dreamed of
be protected while so many of his
comrades had perished.
sumptuous
One night when an 8th Vermont
soldier yelled in his sleep, “The rebels
are coming!” the entire camp fell into
meals
a panic. His regiment formed and
waited 30 minutes for a Confederate
attack while the colonel investigated. In the 12th Wisconsin
Infantry’s camp, two bellowing oxen led a soldier to dream
the camp was encircled by Rebels. After he shouted, “My
God! we’re all surrounded!” his comrades began “a hurried
search for trousers, and a seizing of guns.”
Battle dreams could be intense, even for those who had
never come close to combat. In September 1864, after read-
ing about General William T. Sherman’s capture of Atlanta,
a Philadelphia woman dreamed she was in a hotel fighting
several armed Confederates. “I was lying on the floor to pre-
vent their bullets striking me,” she wrote. “I know I expected
to be killed and I wondered if I would be much missed. I
was just as cool as you please and wondered if everyone was
as cool when in action.”
Perhaps no one suffered more from wartime stresses
than POWs. Not surprisingly, undernourished prisoners
often dreamed of sumptuous meals. A starving POW from
Michigan, incarcerated at the notorious Belle Isle camp
in Richmond, recorded in his diary: “Dream continually
nights about something good to eat.” At Andersonville, Ga.,
months later, the same man wrote, “In our dreams we see
and eat bountiful repasts, and awake to the other extreme.”
A Pennsylvania cavalryman at Belle Isle remembered after
the war that his “hours of slumber were full of dreams, and
the burden of these visions was food—food!” In his dreams
the cavalryman “was always sitting down to tables that
groaned under the choicest viands, and, although I appeared
to partake freely of these, I never seemed to be surfeited.”
But when morning came, “everlasting hunger was [still]
upon me, from which there was no escape.” According to
another Belle Isle prisoner, several of his comrades “often
dreamed of eating and woke up to go through the motions
frothing at the mouth.”
POWs also dreamed repeatedly of escaping or prisoner
exchanges, as well as giant lice and death. After spending
three months at Andersonville, Corporal Samuel J. Gibson
of the 103rd Pennsylvania reported a recurring dream. “I
thought I was in a steamboat in a deep & muddy river, the
water ran wildly,” he wrote. “I thought
the Boat I was on was sinking & I
sprang from the Hurricane deck
upon the hurricane deck of another
Boat, which to my horror I found
was also sinking, springing from this
upon some pieces of broken wreck,
I got safely to shore dry shod, while
many of my comrades went under.” A
few weeks later, while suffering from
scurvy, Gibson mused that he hoped
he would “outlive this misfortune
of being a Prisoner but I am not
made of iron; still I consider myself
pretty tough.” Then, referring to his
dream, he wrote that he would “try
to keep my head ‘Above water’ but I
am seeing my dream verified every
day; by seeing scores of my fellows
carried out dead.” True to his dream,
Gibson survived the war, but he witnessed the burials of
many comrades.
Confederate POWs at Point Lookout, Md., clamored
for images of soldiers dreaming of home. Prisoner James T.
Wells of the 2nd South Carolina Infantry recalled, “There
were many portrait and landscape painters, and many fine
pictures were produced there. One, ‘The Prisoner’s Dream
of Home,’ was greatly admired and coveted by many, but
money could not purchase it from the owner.” Perhaps in
response, prisoner John Jacob Omenhausser of the 46th
Virginia painted several copies of a colorful scene he called
“The Rebel’s Dream in Prison.” Omenhausser found ea-
ger buyers for his work among fellow prisoners—as well as
their guards.
As illustrated by Omenhausser’s success at Point Look-
out, soldiers from North and South were fascinated by
their dreams, as were the loved ones back home. Nighttime
visions were part of the experience of war shared by both
Unionists and Confederates alike. ✯
Jonathan W. White teaches at Christopher Newport University
and is the author of several books, including Emancipation, the
Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln, which
won the Abraham Lincoln Institute’s 2015 book prize and was
also a finalist for both the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize and
Jefferson Davis Prize. He is writing a history of dreams during
the Civil War. Check out his website: jonathanwhite.org.
DECEMBER 2015 31
‘
RAIN HAD SOAKED THE
GROUND FOR 5½ DAYS,
and the stench rising out of the gore-
tinged Virginia mud on May 18, 1864,
“was so sickening and terrible that
many of the men and officers became
deathly sick from it,” said William
Mitchell, a staff member for II Corps
commander Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott
Hancock. “[B]lack, bloated bodies
were sitting up and reaching out from
the earth,” wrote one Pennsylvanian.
Those were the remains of men who
had fallen on May 12, 1864, when for
22 consecutive hours in pouring rain
the Army of the Potomac and the
THE THIRD AND FINAL Army of Northern Virginia slugged
UNION ATTACK ON it out in mud up to their knees near
Spotsylvania Court House—the war’s
SPOTSYLVANIA’S most sustained hand-to-hand combat.
Now, six days later, the Federal troops
‘BLOODY ANGLE’ were assembling for another attack on
the stretch of earthworks known as
ACCOMPLISHED LITTLE the “Bloody Angle.”
Hancock’s battered corps had been
ASIDE FROM SWELLING Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s hammer of

CASUALTY LISTS choice, and Grant intended to swing

it again across the bloody landscape
to strike a Confederate position that
by Chris Mackowski he believed was too weak to resist.
and Kristopher D. White General Robert E. Lee, meanwhile,
needed to remain the unmovable
object—an ironic task considering his
army’s superior maneuverability over the previous two weeks.
The road to Spotsylvania began on May 5 some 12 miles to the
northwest, in the Wilderness of Orange and Spotsylvania counties.
That 70 square miles of second-growth forest was so thick it was a “wil-
derness in the most forbidding sense of the word,” said one of Grant’s
aides. The Union commander brought 123,000 men with him into the
campaign, while Lee countered with 66,000. From May 5-7, 2½ days
of stalemate bled some 30,000 men out of the armies. Grant decided to
try to maneuver Lee out of position to bring the Confederates to battle
on ground more favorable to the larger Union army. “Where Lee goes,

32 CIVIL WAR TIMES

FACE TO FACE
N.C. Wyeth’s grim painting
The Bloody Angle depicts
the brutal struggle at
Spotsylvania’s Mule Shoe.
you shall go too,” Grant ordered Army of the Potomac commander Maj. position that closed off the base of the Mule
Gen. George Gordon Meade. Shoe, and artillery fire discouraged any Federal
This reflected a significant shift in strategy. Formerly, Union armies pursuit. Despite 9,000 casualties—compared
had tried to capture Richmond and force the Southern government to 8,000 Confederate casualties—Grant had
to capitulate. Grant instead intended to use his superior numbers to little to show for his efforts.
“hammer continuously against the armed force of the enemy and his He remained set on his course, however.
resources, until by mere attrition if in no other way, “I intend to fight it out
there should be nothing left to him....”
Grant sidestepped Lee with a May 7–8 over- ‘MUD WAS ALMOST along this line if it takes
all summer,” he had de-
night march, but Lee ordered his men to march
twice as far as the Federals and block the road to
the key junction of Spotsylvania Court House. By
KNEE clared, a comment that
made headlines across
the country. He had said
7:30 a.m. on May 8, Confederates filed into place
just in time to block the Union V Corps, which
then sent piecemeal attacks across Sarah Spindle’s
DEEP’
WROTE CAPTAIN planning another attack.
there would be “no turn-
ing back,” and he began

farm in a vain attempt to dislodge them. GEORGE BOWEN But miserable, muddy
Undeterred, Grant looked for ways to push roads hampered Federal
through to Spotsylvania Court House. The Confederates took advantage maneuvering. “The roads were simply awful,
of the topography to extend their line and stymie him. The Confederate rained continuously and mud was almost knee
position had one weakness, though: a salient that resembled and was deep in places,” wrote Captain George Bowen
nicknamed the “Mule Shoe,” which bulged forward from the main line of the 12th New Jersey. Rain, in fact, had been
in order to encircle and prevent the Federals from occupying a piece of a miserable accompaniment to nearly all the
high ground. fighting at Spotsylvania. “The whole country
Grant launched major assaults against the Mule Shoe salient on May is a sea of mud,” a Federal artillerist muttered.
10 using techniques developed by a VI Corps officer, Colonel Emory On May 17, a Federal reconnaissance
Upton. His plan called for forming an attack column—rather than a tra- probed down the Fredericksburg Road, which
ditional line of battle—and punching through the Confederate position ran into Spotsylvania from the northeast.
using speed and surprise. On May 10, his 7,000-man assault pierced the Grant had hope to find a weak spot south of
Mule Shoe, but was thrown back because of lack of support. Grant tried the Mule Shoe and launch a successful assault
the tactic again on May 12 with Hancock’s entire 20,000-man corps, into the town along the road that would split
supported by the 20,000 troops of Maj. Gen. Horatio Wright’s VI Corps. Lee’s army in two and make the Spotsylva-
That assault split the Confederate position wide open, and Lee had nia line untenable for the Confederates. The
to lead desperate countercharges to plug the gaping half-mile wound. By 3rd and 10th Vermont, both of the VI Corps,
the morning of May 13, Lee’s men had pulled back into a new defensive found the Rebels too well positioned, however.

MISERY ON MANY LEVELS Rain soaks Union troops waiting their turn to attack the Mule Shoe salient on May 12, 1864.
Alfred Waud, who sketched this scene, wrote on the back of his drawing that the engagement was the “toughest f ight yet.”

34 CIVIL WAR TIMES

 With the Fredericks-
burg Road no lon-
ger a viable option,
Grant looked back
to the old battlefield
on May 10 and 12.
If Lee’s right and
center were strong,
the Union leader rea-
soned, Lee must have
stripped his line some-
where. He targeted Lee’s left,
anchored on ground where the base
of the Mule Shoe had been, which had already
gained the nickname the Bloody Angle.
“The Second and Sixth Corps are to return
to the old ground on the right and pitch in
there,” one Federal soldier learned. “[G]reat
things are hoped from it by Grant. I fear he
will not find Lee asleep.”
In a letter to his wife, Meade expressed a
degree of relief after days of fruitless marching.
“To-morrow we shall begin fighting again,
with, I trust, some decided result,” he wrote,
“for it is hardly natural to expect men to
maintain without the limit the exhaustion of
such a protracted struggle as we have been OPPONENTS
carrying on.” Maj. Gen. Winf ield
As the Union troops slipped in and swore at Scott Hancock (seated
the mud, the Confederate Second Corps had above) and his
been settling into its new defensive line south division commanders,
of the Edgar Harrison Farm with a kind of from left to right,
mad zeal. They cut logs to hold up the earthen Generals Francis
walls of their trenches and provide themselves Barlow, David
extra protection. They dug traverses—lines Birney and John
perpendicular to the main line—that pro-
Gibbon. Confederate
vided additional cover and, if necessary, defen-
Brig. Gen. Armistead
sive positions in the event of a breakthrough.
Long (left) massed
Sharpshooters even built small towers to
shoot from. “I never saw any like them,” one of artillery pieces that
Meade’s staffers recalled. shattered Hancock’s
In front of their position, Confederates May 18 attack.
cleared open fields of fire all the way to the
plateau of the Neil McCoull Farm, half a mile
in front of them. That open landscape, roll-
ing with small swales and knolls, eventually
dropped into a marshy lowland before ascend-
ing back toward the Confederate position.
Confederates had littered the ground with
abatis, sharpened logs and stakes, to slow any
Federal advance. Twenty-nine artillery pieces
commanded by Brig. Gen. Armistead L. Long,
DECEMBER 2015 35
a practiced hand with a good eye, bolstered the Rebel position. The Army Gibbon’s and Barlow’s. The II Corps men lined
of the Potomac was preparing to attack the strongest field fortifications up along a sunken lane that led to a farm owned
yet seen in the Eastern Theater. by Willis Landrum. They were positioned to
To get his men into place for a dawn assault, Grant had to swing the cross over the same ground they had crossed
II Corps and the VI Corps from the extreme left of the army’s position only six days earlier, nearly to the hour. “The
to the extreme right. It looked easy on paper, but the muddy roads troops were in position before day light,” Brig.
mired the movement from the start. Complicating Gen. Phillippe Régis De
matters was the fact that Hancock’s II Corps had Trobriand of Hancock’s
moved farther out of position than Grant realized; DAYS OF WAR HAD corps recalled. “It was
unaware of Grant’s new plan, Hancock had still been TRANSFORMED THE hoped to surprise the
moving into a position assigned in previous orders.
He had to double back, compounding the delay. AGRARIAN enemy sleeping: but he
had his eyes open, and
Wright was ordered to the far right, stacking up LANDSCAPE INTO was protected by acres of
his divisions in massive assault columns similar to
the tactic proposed by Upton a week earlier. Brig.
FIELDS OF impenetrable abatis.”
Days of war had
Gen. David A. Russell would be on the far right,
Brig. Gen. James A. Ricketts in the center and
Brig. Gen. Thomas H. Neill on the left. Next to
DESTRUCTION transformed the agrarian
landscape into fields of
devastation “strewn with
Neill, Hancock would line up his divisions in traditional lines of battle. clothing, knapsacks, canteens, muskets, dead
Brig. Gen. John Gibbon would be on the right, linking up with Neill. On horses and broken artillery caissons, and the
Gibbon’s left, Brig. Gen. Francis Barlow’s division would advance in sup- trees were riddled with bullet, shot, and shell,”
port. Brig. Gen. Robert O. Tyler’s newly formed division would protect recalled a drummer boy with the 2nd New
the left flank, and Brig. Gen. David Bell Birney’s division would hang York Heavy Artillery, who had recently been
back as the reserve. Neill got into place, but Ricketts didn’t show. Neither added to Hancock’s corps from the Wash-
did Russell. Both divisions had been swallowed by the darkness and mud. ington Defenses. Grant had called for some
To Neill’s left, however, two of Hancock’s divisions had formed up— 30,000 reinforcements from the capital to
replace his mounting casualties, and the heavy
artillerists—trained as infantrymen to protect
and support the massive guns of D.C.’s defen-
THE PROBLEM WITH SALIENTS sive works—had just begun arriving.
Below, an image of the Mule Shoe salient. Salients are At 4 a.m., off to the left the boom of artil-
problematic because they jut out in front of the main line. lery announced the start of Maj. Gen. Ambrose
Defenders shooting outward have a difficult time con- Burnside’s diversionary attack. Hancock and
centrating their firepower, while attackers can focus their Wright dared not send their own men forward
gunfire on one spot, or bear down on the salient from yet, though—not without the missing Ricketts
three directions at the same time. Plus a breakthrough at and Russell. Finally, by 4:20, unable to wait any
any one spot puts attackers in the rear of nearly all the longer for fear of completely losing the element
defenders, making a position untenable once breached. of surprise, the corps commanders sent their
men forward.
“Early on the morning of Wednesday, May
18, the whizzing of shells announced that the
second great battle of Spottsylvania [sic] Court
House had been commenced,” wrote VI Corps
surgeon W.G.T. Morton. Under the cover of
“tremendous artillery fire,” said James Bowen
of the 37th Massachusetts, “the devoted lines
moved forward to the assault.” And with that,
one Rhode Islander wrote, “another butchery
has begun.”
“Smoke and mist hung pale, heavy and
motionless over the troops” as the infantry
advanced, Morton said. Federal pieces moved
up close behind them to offer as much support
as they could. Long’s artillery, protected in its
bunkers, responded. It was the largest bom-

36 CIVIL WAR TIMES

 WAR’S HORRORS
Thousands died in the Spotsylvania f ighting,
including this Confederate soldier shot dead
on May 19. Union troops hurled muskets
with f ixed bayonets at the Rebels during the
horrif ic Mule Shoe battle.
bardment in the East since Pickett’s Charge
and the most effective use of artillery since the
two armies had entered the Wilderness two
weeks earlier.
From the Confederate line, fog shrouded the
oncoming wave, but skirmishers, falling back,
signaled the Federal approach. Confederate
artillery commander Major Wilfred Cutshaw,
who knew the effect his artillery would have,
was stunned. “All were astonished,” he said, “and
could not believe a serious attempt would be
made to assail such a line as [General Richard]
Ewell had, in open day, over such a distance.”
Once the Confederate skirmishers fell back,
“the restrained tempest broke forth, and with
shriek and scream and hissing, poured its death
blast in the faces of the Union soldiers,” said
Captain George Bowen of the 12th New Jer-
sey. The Federals were only 300 yards away as
Long’s artillery poured canister and case shot
into them. “[T]heir artillery cut our men down
in heaps,” reported one member of the 2nd
Rhode Island.
Hancock’s men pushed forward as far as
they could, but the Confederate abatis tangled
them midway between the McCoull Farm and
the new Confederate position. Barlow reported
to Hancock that the abatis was impenetrable.
By Barlow’s estimates it was 100 yards deep in
places, and had been pre-sighted by Confeder-
ate gunners.
From that position, though, Barlow’s men
attempted several runs at the Confederate
works—only to be blasted back to the for-
mer Confederate trenches. As it was the only
available cover in the open field, they hunkered
down and reversed the works. “Many brilliant
efforts were made to penetrate the enemy lines,
but without success,” one II Corps officer said.
Less brilliant were the actions of the vet-
eran Philadelphia Brigade in John Gibbon’s
division. Brig. Gen. Joshua T. Owen refused to
advance his men into the maelstrom, although
in the confusion Gibbon hadn’t even noticed
they were missing until Hancock called it to
Gibbon’s attention. Embarrassed and angry,
Gibbon ordered Owen forward, but Owen
made only a half-hearted go of it before decid-
ing the situation was too dangerous. His dis-
obedience would eventually lead to charges
that resulted in his dismissal.
New arrivals to the army tried to show
their mettle to the veterans. Colonel Matthew
Murphy’s brigade of four New York regiments
anchored the left of Gibbon’s division. These
recent additions, coupled with Tyler’s heavy
artillery regiments, increased the II Corps’
numbers by nearly 8,000 rifles. Despite the
DECEMBER 2015 37
38 CIVIL WAR TIMES
THREE STRIKES On May 10, Brig. Gen. Emory Upton’s attack pierced
the Mule Shoe, but he eventually had to turn back. Two days later
Hancock’s II Corps collapsed the salient, but the Confederates sealed off
the break. After fruitless, miserable countermarching on muddy roads, the Mule Shoe salient had become a killing
Hancock’s men lined up for one last attack on May 18. It too failed. ground. “After the fight, the battle field pre-
sented a horrible spectacle, some having their
heads and limbs torn away from their bodies,”
said one Confederate artillerist, whose work on
weight of their numbers and bravado, they too came to grief assaulting the guns had contributed to that horror.
Ewell’s heavily fortified line. Dr. Morton, writing years later, recalled a
Murphy advanced toward the Bloody Angle, but his brigade became sulphurous scene. “The smoke of battle of more
separated due to botched orders from Gibbon’s staff. His soldiers made than two hundred thousand men destroying
it to within a few hundred yards of the Confederate line, but wither- each other...filled the valleys, and rested on the
ing small-arms fire, mainly from Brig. Ben. Clement Evans’ all-Georgia hills of all this wilderness, hung in lurid haze
Brigade and the Stonewall Brigade, pinned them all around the horizon,
down. Confederate artillery, positioned on Mur- and built a dense canopy
phy’s right and left flank, swept the Union position
with a deadly crossfire. Hunkered down, all the
THE LAND overhead,” he wrote.
Grant had finally had
SURROUNDING THE
New Yorkers could do was call for help. enough. After weeks
To Hancock’s right, Wright’s attack met similar
results. Neill’s VI Corps division had not stepped
MULE of stalemate, unable to
break through or out-
off in concert with Gibbon’s men, nor had they
caught up. Brig. Gen. Frank Wheaton’s lead bri-
SHOE flank the Confederate
position, he decided
gade marched along the eastern face of the old
salient, scarred with deep trenches that wrecked its
SALIENT again to move left and

formation. In slight disarray, they swept down into

HAD BECOME A south in an attempt to
maneuver Lee out of
a swale that offered cover—but from which they
could not advance.
Their predicament resulted in an unfortunate KILLING position. That afternoon
he cut orders for a with-
drawal, set to begin on

GROUND
chain reaction. Colonel Oliver Edwards’ brigade the evening of May 19.
got backed up as a result, and that stacked up But Lee’s Second Corps
Brig. Gen. Daniel Bidwell’s brigade. The Vermont would delay that depar-
brigade of Colonel Lewis Grant, nearly bled-out ture by mounting a raid
weeks earlier at the Wilderness, were supposed to on the Federal rear near
bring up the rear, but the traffic jam forced them to the front. “We soon the Harris Farm, along Grant’s vital line of
overtook the front line and were kindly permitted to take the front,” supply, the Fredericksburg Road. The fight
a survivor noted wryly. The “bursting shell and rattling musketry” also would prove to be a bigger bite than Ewell’s
pinned them down. men could chew, however; after nearly getting
Confederates began slipping around the flank of the trapped brigades, overpowered, they managed to withdraw after
triggering an unsteady retreat by first Edwards’ men and then by Neill’s dark to the safety of their fortifications.
entire division. Their retreat took them “through the tempest of fire,” one And so the fighting around Spotsylvania
soldier said, back to “the sheltering earthworks from which it had come.” Court House drew to a close. Grant kept his

There, they found Ricketts’ division finally in place at its intended jump- word, fighting along the line that summer. But
ing-off point—but watching the carnage on the field, they in no way the exhausting warfare kept going into the fall
intended to jump off. Meanwhile Russell never showed at all. and winter, leading inexorably to Appomattox
To the east, Burnside’s diversion hit a heavily fortified Confederate the following April. ✯
position called Heth’s Salient, where the Federals never stood a chance
of success. Grant, keeping tabs on the stalemate, finally conceded by 10
a.m. that his grand assault was a failure and sent word to his corps com-
manders to call it off. Chris Mackowski, a former historian at Fred-
“This morning, we advanced...over essentially the same ground we ericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military
did on the 12th without accomplishing anything except to meet with Park, teaches at St. Bonaventure University.
very considerable loss,” groused Captain George Bowen. Indeed, North- Kristopher D. White is a former staff historian at
ern losses exceeded 1,500 dead, wounded and missing. Southerners, by Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania NMP and an
contrast, suffered only 250 casualties. “We went it, lost some men and instructor at the Community College of Allegheny
came out again,” one Federal lamented matter-of-factly, “that is all there County. Co-founders of the blog “Emerging Civil
was to it!” War” (emergingcivilwar.com), they have collabo-
For the second time in the span of a week, the land surrounding rated on numerous books and articles.

DECEMBER 2015 39
SHADY SLEUTH
Vigilante-turned-
detective Lafayette
C. Baker assembled a
force of spies to help
eradicate rebellion in
Washington, D.C.

40 CIVIL WAR TIMES

MASTER SPY
SCOUNDREL
OR

LAFAYETTE BAKER, THE NATION’S FIRST FEDERAL
?
POLICE CHIEF, PLAYED ROUGH AND DIRTY
by Julia Bricklin

Among the many colorful characters thrust into the national

spotlight during the war, few have as checkered—and confusing—a story as Lafay-
ette C. Baker, the vigilante-turned-detective appointed by Winfield Scott to head
spying operations for the North. That agency, known as the National Detective
Bureau, was the federal government’s first formal intelligence-gathering operation,
and Baker had free rein in deciding how agents went about spying for the North
and rooting out Confederate sympathizers. ¶ Fast forward a century to the 1960s,
and Baker takes center stage in a controversial theory about a conspiracy to assas-
sinate Abraham Lincoln, headed by Secretary of State Edwin Stanton. Evidence
of such a scheme was based on a welter of details and documents, with the core
evidence being two coded messages in invisible ink—supposedly in Baker’s hand—
alluding to the plot and expressing fears for his life (see sidebar, P. 43). How
might such a theory, now discredited, emerge? Consider the duplicitous tac-
tics Baker employed throughout his life.¶ Baker’s Washington, D.C., career began
after Lincoln appointed Stanton secretary of war and Stanton hired the sleuth as a
special provost marshal. Stanton, who shared Secretary of State William Seward’s
passion for rooting out subversives, funded Baker in assembling a force to eradicate
rebellion in the capital. But Stanton’s staunch anti-subversive stance and Baker’s
thirst for respect and political power would prove to be an unhealthy union.

DECEMBER 2015 41
 The 1856 Committee of Vigilance dis-
banded in August, mostly because its
members had managed to get one of their
own, James Curtis, elected chief of police.
That December, when the city reor-
ganized its law-enforcement forces,

“
L
Baker made the cut. For two years he
immersed himself in crime-fighting.
By July 1857, Officer Baker routinely
appeared as a prosecution witness in City
AFE” BAKER was born on October 13, 1826, in Genessee Court. That August Curtis made him a
County, N.Y., to Remember and Cynthia Baker. Baker’s grandfather, also detective. On December 18, 1857, Baker
named Remember, was a cousin of Ethan Allan who helped capture Fort testified for the prosecution in the rape
Ticonderoga with Allan and the other “Green Mountain Boys” in 1775. case of 12-year-old Margaret Taylor, but
Lafayette’s father served as an officer to General Winfield Scott during the he did not support or refute either side.
War of 1812, and it seems likely that Baker used that family connection to Instead he suggested a third scenario, in
secure an interview with Scott when the Civil War broke out. When Baker which the youngster had been violated
was a teen, the family moved to Lansing, Mich. As a young adult, he traveled by a different person, whom he testified
to New York and then Philadelphia to establish a mercantile business. to having seen taking the girl for buggy
In 1853 Baker decided to try his luck selling goods to gold prospectors in rides away from public eye “at least ten
California. He worked as a paper mill machinist to pay the bills, eventually times.” The detective was apparently not
setting up a mercantile agency with a real estate agent and newspaper distrib- sanctioned at all when the rape story
utor. The two also served as consultants for merchants interested in advertis- turned out to be completely fictional—the
ing in San Francisco papers. Later “Baker & Hoogs” advertised their services girl’s father had made a false accusation
as debt collectors, “prepared to make Collections or demands of any nature,” against her stepfather, in retaliation for
throughout the Western states, territories and British Columbia. This taught not handing over money and property.
Baker how to shape stories for the press, and also enabled him to hone his Baker sometimes followed would-be
strong-arm tactics, always executed in the name of the “public good.” criminals around for days, retrofitting
It’s not surprising that Baker soon enlisted in what became information to make himself look bril-
one of the West’s most successful vigilante organizations. liant. On March 21, 1858, for example,
In the mid-1850s, San Francisco was plagued by the Daily Alta reported how
vice, corruption and crime. The San Francisco Baker nabbed shoplifters at
Committee of Vigilance, organized on June 14, a boot store: “Detective
1851, enrolled more than 700 members and Baker, who has had his
maintained a headquarters where suspects suspicions of certain well
were incarcerated, interrogated and tried known thieves, took it
without counsel and due process. By the time it into his head yesterday to
disbanded that September, the Committee had secrete himself into a room
arrested hundreds and executed four men. next to theirs, and boring
In 1856 the Committee reorganized with a a hole in the intervening
vengeance, partially in response to the murder of wall, awaited with his usual
a local newspaper editor, but largely because its patience their arrival.”
officers—many of whom had headed the 1851 When the alleged thieves
committee—saw an opportunity to cleanse the arrived, they apparently de-
city of Democratic Party influence and incorpo- tailed the entire theft ring to
rate its own “People’s Party.” The Committee of each other, but implicated some-
1856 enrolled about 5,000 men who patrolled SILVER one else entirely, one John Smith,
the streets, conducted investigations, held trials SHIELD alias “Old Man.” Baker subsequently
without benefit for the accused, deported citi- As head of the U.S. arrested Smith who, he said, was the cul-
zens and defied writs of habeas corpus. Military Detectives in prit he had suspected all along.
Jacob Mogelever, author of Death to Traitors: 1865, Baker helped track On April 29, 1858, Baker resigned for
The Story of General Lafayette C. Baker, Lincoln’s down John Wilkes Booth reasons that are unclear, though they might
Forgotten Secret Service Chief, writes: “Baker and Dr. Samuel Mudd. have had something to do with increasing
gloried in his service as a Vigilante. It gave him scrutiny of Curtis’ department, which was
a sense of power even though he never achieved a higher rank than that of accused of profiting from reward money
private….He ran with the pack, but he learned the twin arts of disguise and handed out by insurance companies and
deception.” Mogelever also notes that Baker thought a brain was better than a banks. That summer Baker drifted, seem-
gun, perhaps a kind nod toward Baker’s later avoidance of combat in the war. ingly unable to shed his cloak-and-dagger

42 CIVIL WAR TIMES

routine, and even telling the Sacramento Bee that he had
been hiding in a Nevada prison, disguised as an inmate so
he could gain further particulars from three men accused of
robbing a Wells Fargo stagecoach.
That August Yuba County officials arrested Baker for
receiving stolen property, though the charges were ulti-
mately dropped. The ex-officer tried desperately to hold
onto his law-and-order image in civilian life, setting up a
telegraph office in downtown San Francisco and delivering
what he deemed interesting updates to the newspapers.
Baker sailed for New York on the ship Golden Age on
January 1, 1861. He later claimed he had planned to attend
to some mercantile business back east for a short period.
But Mrs. Baker accompanied her husband. Regardless of
his actual purpose, according to Edwin C. Fischel, author
of The Secret War of the Union, Baker entered the service in
February 1861, perhaps as a detective for Charles P. Stone,
the new inspector general of Washington, D.C., under Scott.
Initially, Baker was responsible only for helping secure
Lincoln’s safety in and around the capital. Even after the
inauguration and the commencement of war that April, his
duties were fairly mundane: recovering government horses,
and securing shipping depots, train stations and abandoned
Confederate property in Virginia. But meanwhile Scott
formed the National Detective Bureau, and on February
15, 1862, Secretary of State William H. Seward transferred
the Bureau to the War Department, then under Edwin M.
Stanton. Baker brought nearly 60 subordinate detectives
with him when he moved to the War Department.
C. Wyatt Evans, who has examined Secret Service
accounts and written numerous articles on Baker, says the
detective’s extensive travels and ability to hire so many sub-
ordinates so quickly were likely part of Seward’s efforts to
establish a network of agents in the major cities, ports of
entry and along the Canadian border. On March 30, 1862,
Baker was appointed a special agent of the War Depart-
ment, and the expenses paid to him and his network reveal
he was aggressively tracking down and arresting individuals
deemed disloyal—numbering in the hundreds.
But as the war continued, reports of Baker’s alleged
solicitation of bribes and unsubstantiated finger-point-
ing started to appear in the newspapers. Perhaps officials
would have continued to look the other way—after all, the
spies and contraband-movers flitting in and out of Wash-
ington needed to be tracked—but he started to become a
real nuisance. Baker’s men repeatedly ran afoul of military
officers, according to Edwin Fischel. Brig. Gen. Marsena
Patrick finally complained to Maj. Gen. Daniel Butterfield,
saying, “[Baker’s] detectives have systematically robbed the
officers and men of this Army of Clothing, subsistence,
mess & other stores and necessaries.” He added, “…from
my knowledge of their Chief ‘Baker’ I believe him to be
capable of making any statement however false, & of com-
mitting any act, however criminal and damaging the Public
Service to gratify his own passions.” Maj. Gens. Ambrose
Burnside and Joseph Hooker reportedly looked the other
way at Baker’s intrusions because the detective was aware of
their own indiscretions, involving prostitutes and gambling.
LAFAYETTE BAKER
CONSPIRACY
THEORIST
Did Edwin Stanton engineer President
Lincoln’s assassination, as part of a plot
to seize control of the U.S. government?
Was Lafayette C. Baker, former chief
of Stanton’s National Detective Police
Force, poisoned to ensure his silence
about that bizarre scheme?
THOSE QUESTIONS were raised by Robert H.
Fowler, then editor of Civil War Times Illustrated.
Fowler went so far as to devote his entire
August 1961 issue to sensational theories
based on research by Ray Neff, an
Indiana State University professor and
Civil War buff who claimed to have
discovered two ciphered messages by
Baker in an 1864 volume of Colburn’s
United Secret Service Magazine.
According to theories promulgated by
Neff and others during the 1960s, the plot came
about because Stanton, as well as Vice President
Andrew Johnson and Congressional Radicals, had
been furious that Lincoln planned to treat the South
leniently during Reconstruction—so they enlisted
Baker and Assistant Secretary of State Major
Thomas Eckert to recruit a presidential assassin.
In the ciphers supposedly discovered by Neff,
written in invisible ink and resurrected using tannic
acid, Baker detailed how Stanton plotted Lincoln’s
murder, conspiring with at least 11 members of
Congress as well as a governor. Baker also wrote of
“constantly being followed” and expressed fear for his
life before dying in 1868. Conspiracy theorists seized
on this story to speculate that Baker had actually
died of arsenic poisoning rather than succumbing to
meningitis, as certified by his doctors.
The provenance of Neff’s ciphers has never been
confirmed, and numerous historians later criticized
both Neff and Fowler for promoting unfounded con-
spiracy theories in the magazine. And 20 years later
William C. Davis, a subsequent Civil War Times Illus-
trated editor, ran a series of editorials about the 1961
article, effectively debunking many of the outlandish
claims that had been promoted via the story.
DECEMBER 2015 43
O N NOVEMBER 10, 1863, the Washington Evening Star
reported Baker’s provost marshal position had been eliminated. There were
rumors that the detective had attempted to gather intelligence on his own
boss, Stanton, by tapping telegraph wires—but it could also be that Bak-
er’s force was seen as superfluous. Baker himself was still paid by Stanton
subordinates for various duties, and he even headed his own “First District
Calvary” for awhile, though he was paid on an ad-hoc basis.
Shortly after Baker’s formal separation from the War Department, he
was indicted for trespass, as well as libel and false imprisonment of Treasury
employee Dr. Stewart Gwynne, whom he had accused of stealing and put in
Old Capitol penitentiary for three months. What Secretary of the Treasury
Salmon P. Chase had intended to be a perfunctory audit, under pressure from
New York Congressman James Brooks, turned out to be a disaster; Baker
interviewed and harassed the Treasury staff for weeks on end. According to
several newspapers, including the Chicago Times, Baker even hired prostitutes
to testify that they had participated in orgies with Treasury employees.
A congressional committee chaired by James A. Garfield that investigated
those charges in June 1864 found Baker was very active during the whole
investigation in assisting Brooks to find testimony, and that “nearly every wit-
ness summoned to prove the alleged immoralities in the Treasury was previ-
ously manipulated by him…a written abstract was made by him of what the
testimony would be.”
At one point just before Baker arrested Gwynne, he reportedly “arrested
a funeral procession, took from the coffin the corpse a young lady, late an
employee of the Treasury Department, charging that she had died in an
attempt to procure an abortion, the result of immoralities in the Treasury FORT VIGILANCE
Department.” Not surprisingly, Chase and Stanton did not lend any support During Baker’s membership in the San
to Baker when that episode came to light. But Baker was not punished— Francisco Committee of Vigilance, the
other than being fined $1. vigilantes incarcerated and interrogated
The court of public opinion turned against Baker after those revelations. suspects inside this converted warehouse
The once admiring San Francisco Bulletin reported: “He is sharp, shrewd, on Sacramento Street.
unscrupulous. He was for awhile our municipal police, while Curtis was
Chief, but was expelled for what particular offense we do not remember.
During his service, his house “was robbed” just as he had collected $1,000 of bizarre behavior in other cases could have
license money.” The article went on to say that Baker’s mercantile business supported such theories. It’s also worth
had solicited funds from businessmen and placed them on the “exchange in noting that Baker pursued a prolonged
New York, which turned out to be utterly worthless.” The paper also invited fight for the bulk of the reward money for
“the Administration” to look no further than San Francisco if it needed more capturing Booth in the press and with a
testimony to his wickedness or untrustworthiness. congressional committee, and this public
Baker’s public career might have ended then had it not been for Lincoln’s fracas undid any goodwill he had earned
murder. Desperate times call for desperate measures, however; Stanton with Booth’s capture. The resulting noto-
recalled Baker, who used his network to help corner John Wilkes Booth at riety also led to speculation the detective
Richard Garrett’s farm. Baker was promoted to brigadier general as a result. had produced a corpse in order to obtain
It is in connection with the assassination that the conspiracy theories the lion’s share of the reward.
involving Baker, Booth, Stanton, Seward and others later surfaced. One story Baker’s subsequent escapades provided
is that Baker’s men actually killed a fellow named Boyd, rather than Booth, the newspapers with even more fodder.
but succeeded in passing Boyd’s corpse off as the presidential assassin’s. The On November 16, 1865, a grand jury in
myriad details of that plot are hard to follow, but it’s easy to see that Baker’s the District of Columbia indicted him for

44 CIVIL WAR TIMES

unlawfully imprisoning Joseph Cobb on charges of pardon
brokering, and robbing Lucy, Cobb’s wife. On March 28,
1866, Baker was found guilty of some of those charges, but
once again was fined only $1 plus costs. That same month
he informed newspapers that he suspected Andersonville
prison chief Henry Wirz would try to take his own life to
martyr himself for the South. Then Baker claimed he had
prevented Mrs. Wirz from slipping her husband a dose of
strychnine while giving him a kiss in his Old Capitol cell.
But Mrs. Wirz’s attorney produced affidavits from wit-
nesses who swore that she had actually been hundreds of
miles away at the time.
The War Department eventually stopped paying Baker’s
expenses. And in January 1866, President Andrew Johnson
had Baker escorted from the White House, after discover-
ing that the former detective had been spying on him too.
Baker moved back to Philadelphia sometime before May
1867 and began working on a book of his “remembrances”
with the Rev. J.T. Headly, and probably a few others. During
many of his final days the former detective was often fever-
ish and bedridden. He died on July 3, 1868, at age 42, of
what his physician specified was meningitis.
Mrs. Baker would try for years to get her widow’s pen-
sion increased. In the process, she had various doctors write
affidavits stressing virtually the same thing—that her hus-
band had not been “afflicted with any mental aberration
of the mind” between his discharge from service and his
death. Yet she simultaneously sought to connect his death
to “mental excitement to which he was subjected while in
the service.” In retrospect, both types of testimonials seem
to suggest that her late husband might not have been a very
stable individual.
The question remains: Did the former chief of detectives
write ciphers in a detective manual that was penned after
his dismissal, alluding to a government conspiracy against
Abraham Lincoln? Maybe, maybe not. But it is all too
plausible, given the many enemies he had made during his
career, that Baker believed government agents wanted to kill
him. If there was anyone in Civil War history who was likely
to make up such a story, it was Lafayette C. Baker—and he
would have believed his own words. ✯
Julia Bricklin last contributed to CWT in December 2013,
when she profiled Thomas Brigham Bishop, “The Music Man.”
DECEMBER 2015 45
RODMAN’S

BIG GUN

A MASSIVE NEW UNION WEAPON

COULD SINK A SHIP WITH A SINGLE SHELL,
BUT WAS NEVER FIRED IN ANGER

BY Andrew Masich
SLOW SPIN
Thomas Rodman’s
huge 20-inch
cannon rests atop an
equally huge lathe
in the Fort Pitt
Foundry. Foundry
superintendent Joseph
Kaye sits at right.
T
HE MASSIVE CANNON belched smoke and VIP MISADVENTURE
flame, hurtling a 10,080-pound shell from its A 12-inch wrought-iron
cannon explodes (above)
barrel at more than 1,700 feet per second—nearly during a February 1844
twice the velocity of a Minié ball fired from a rifle. demonstration aboard
Nearby windows rattled and broke as the shock USS Princeton. That
horrif ic accident spurred
wave traveled from Fort Hamilton over Brooklyn, Lieutenant Thomas
N.Y. Then the gun crew reloaded the behemoth, Rodman to experiment
lowering the barrel to an elevation of 25 degrees. with a “water-core” casting
method (illustrated in the
This time the 20-inch ball hurtled through the air for a full 24 seconds, patent drawing, opposite).
splashing into the water 3½ miles away. Thomas J. Rodman’s ship-
killing cannon, the largest gun made during the Civil War, had spoken.

48 CIVIL WAR TIMES

 The genesis of that gun and the new gen-
eration of armament it inspired was rooted in
a tragic mishap on February 28, 1844, when
Commodore Robert Stockton hosted a who’s
who of Washington society. He had invited
some 400 guests for a Potomac River cruise
aboard USS Princeton, including President
John Tyler, Secretary of State Abel Upshur,
Navy Secretary Thomas Gilmer, Senator
Thomas Hart Benton and former First Lady
Dolley Madison. The VIPs were to be treated
to a demonstration of the fleet’s most powerful
cannon, dubbed the “Peacemaker,” a 12-inch
wrought-iron gun with a reinforcing band
shrunk onto its breech, designed by John Erics-
son. Though skilled British workers had forged
a prototype to Ericsson’s exacting specifica-
tions, the Peacemaker commissioned by Com-
modore Stockton was an American-made copy
that did not measure up to those standards.
When the gun captain pulled the lanyard
aboard Princeton, an explosion rocked the
ship, killing six people and seriously wounding
another 20. The gun had been blown to pieces,
along with the closest dignitaries, including
Upshur and Gilmer.
Ordnance Department Lieutenant Thomas
Jackson Rodman, then only three years out of
West Point, set out to get to the root of the
accident. He would focus his considerable tal-
ents on finding a solution to the problem of
catastrophic failure in large-caliber guns. Rod-
man recognized that wrought-iron and bronze
weapons could not withstand the high stresses
demanded of Columbiads—America’s largest
class of guns, introduced by Colonel George
Bomford in 1811 for seacoast defense—and
warship cannons. Though iron had been used
to manufacture cannons for hundreds of years,
large-caliber guns made of that metal had
earned a reputation for blowing up.
Rodman theorized, however, that the fault the inside out. He would cast the guns hollow, pouring molten metal into
lay not with the iron itself but the casting a mold around a hollow iron core, an iron pipe through which air and
process. As a newly cast cannon cooled in its cold water could be pumped, to cool the casting from the inside.
mold, it hardened from the outside, until the But when Rodman explained his proposed manufacturing method at
molten core finally set up. The gun was then Pittsburgh’s Allegheny Arsenal, where he was stationed, and also to then
laboriously bored to the desired caliber and Chief of Ordnance Colonel Bomford and General George Talcott, there
finished on the outside. Raised rings known as was little interest. The lieutenant was told that the Army was not inter-
reinforces, positioned where the gun telescoped ested in his idea—though he was free to pursue it on his own.
from the thickest part of the breech down to
the narrowest part at the muzzle, were believed ON AUGUST 14, 1847, Rodman was awarded Patent No. 5,236 for
to strengthen the weapon. Speculating that his cannon. By 1849, he had worked out a partnership with Pittsburgh’s
air-cooling made the guns harder and denser Charles Knapp and William Totten, owners of the Fort Pitt Foundry,
on the outside and left them relatively soft and assigning his patent to them. In exchange for their funded research and
weak in the center, Rodman found he could development of his weapon, they agreed to pay him a half cent per pound
drive a cold chisel its entire length into the for every finished cannon cast using his system. The foundry soon cast a
cast-iron core as easily as if it were wood. prototype 8-inch Columbiad on Rodman’s principle, followed by 10-inch
He opted instead to cool the casting from Columbiads. Finding that cracks usually occurred at any spots where a

DECEMBER 2015 49
gun’s exterior contour abruptly changed, Rod-
man eliminated any reinforces. His cannons
took on the smooth “soda bottle” shape that
became their most distinguishing character-
istic. Testing with double charges and double
shots, followed by repeated firing with service
Thomas
loads, demonstrated the design’s efficacy. A
solid-core gun cast from the same batch of iron
Jackson
burst after only 74 test rounds, while Rodman’s
“water-core” gun showed no discernable wear
Rodman
to the bore, chamber or vent after 1,300 rounds.
By 1860, the Ordnance Department had
ordered 8- and 10-inch Columbiads, as well
as a 15-inch version with a 16-foot-long bar-
rel weighing nearly 50,000 pounds. The largest
gun cast in America to that time, it was dubbed
the “Union Gun” and sent to Fort Monroe, Va.,
for further testing in March 1860.
As Southern states began seceding from the Thomas Jackson Rodman was born in 1816 near Salem, Ind., the son
Union in 1861, the War Department ordered of James Rodman and his Virginian wife, Elizabeth Burton. Entering
the U.S. Military Academy in West Point in 1837, Thomas would
Rodman guns in 8-, 10- and 15-inch calibers.
graduate seventh of 52 cadets, and in 1841 was appointed a brevet
On April 15, soon after Confederate guns
second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Ordnance Department.
blasted Fort Sumter into submission, Rod- At Pittsburgh’s Allegheny Arsenal, Rodman built the first machine
man signaled that he could cast an even bigger capable of making Minié balls and other bullets by compression
weapon—weighing more than 100,000 pounds rather than casting molten lead. He received patents for hollow
and capable of hurling a 20-inch, half-ton iron casting large cannons as well improvements in cartridges for breech-
ball up to five miles and destroying a ship with loading small arms. His progressive-burning perforated cake gun
a single shot. But initially the need for 8-, powder for seacoast and naval artillery is still used today.
10- and 15-inch weapons to protect cities— Rodman spent most of the war years commanding the Watertown
including Washington—and seacoast defenses Arsenal in Massachusetts, and his inspector’s initials can be seen
took precedence over the 20-inch project. stamped on the muzzles of U.S. ordnance ranging in size from the
diminutive 12-pounder mountain howitzer to the largest Rodman
BY LATE 1863, Rodman’s hollow-casting Columbiads. By the war’s end, he was still an “unconfirmed major,”
technique was standard for Model 1860 Co- according to his own testimony before Senator Ben Wade’s Joint
lumbiads of his own design as well as other Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War, which was
cannons, including Admiral John A. Dahl- investigating charges of war profiteering and disloyalty.
gren’s 9-, 11- and 13-inch naval shell guns. Suspicions about Rodman likely resulted from jealousy within the
Though Fort Pitt Foundry was still producing Army over royalties (a half cent per pound) he supposedly received
most of the big guns, the West Point Foundry for the guns cast using his hollow-casting method. But enemies and
in New York, Boston’s Cyrus Alger works and competitors questioned his loyalty when he failed to fire salutes at
Seyfert, McManus & Co. in Reading, Pa., also the war’s end—and the fact his mother was a Virginian could also
began manufacturing siege guns, mortars, naval have raised concerns (she may have been a relative of Confederate
chief of armories James H. Burton). Though admired for his work in
guns and Columbiads using Rodman’s process.
the Ordnance Department, Rodman spent many years defending
When Rodman was finally authorized to
his conduct. He ended his career as commander of the Rock Island
create a 20-inch weapon, Charles Knapp and Arsenal in Illinois, where he died in 1871.
new partner H.F. Rudd supervised 280 work-
ers at the Fort Pitt Foundry who excavated a
casting pit so deep that it had to be shored up and lined, to prevent the into the mold at 10 a.m. The foundry men
water table from filling it. The pit was engineered to accommodate a pumped water down through the core at a rate
multi-piece iron flask containing a sand mold formed on an oversized of 60 gallons per minute, then captured the
wooden model measuring 6 feet, at it widest point, by 25 feet. Five fur- heated water as it returned to the top through
naces burned for five hours to melt the 105 tons of “Juniata” pig iron flutes scored into the fire clay coating that sur-
needed for the continuous pour. Two smaller furnaces stood by as back- rounded the core barrel. Two days later the
ups, while the three primary furnaces were connected by troughs, to pool water was shut off and cold air was forced
their molten streams in a clay-lined collector before the molten metal through the core. Four days after that, cranes
was funneled into the mold. hoisted the cooled casting from the pit and
On February 11, 1864, Rodman joined ordnance officers and observ- moved it to the boring machine, which enlarged
ers from England and Italy to watch as the red-hot metal began flowing the bore from 17 to 20 inches. A mammoth

50 CIVIL WAR TIMES

‘FORGE OF THE UNION’
Vignettes published in Harper’s Weekly in 1862
show Fort Pitt Foundry’s skilled workers at a
number of their tasks. From right: Ironworkers
f inish the trunnions that attach the barrel to
a carriage; molten iron pours into a vertical
cannon mold and a huge lathe slowly rotates
a Rodman tube as it is bored out. The last
illustration shows the molds used in casting one
of USS Monitor’s Dahlgren cannons.

DECEMBER 2015 51

Rodman’s Huge cannon
returns to Pittsburgh
Well, to be fair, it’s actually a
copy of the original, but still
majestic. In 2013, the LF Creative
Group created a styrofoam
model, reinforced with steel and
coated with black fiberglass, of
Thomas Rodman’s enormous
20-inch cannon that was placed
on display at the Senator John
Heinz Regional History Cen-
ter (heinzhistorycenter.org)
in downtown Pittsburgh. The
massive barbette carriage that
supported the gun was also
re-created. Together the repro-
duction items weigh an impres-
sive 18,000 pounds.
The images above show the
re-created barrel being installed
and displayed. The Heinz History
Center is located very close to
the original location of the Fort
Pitt Foundry, a source of local
52 CIVIL WAR TIMES
pride for Pittsburghers during the
Civil War. Some residents were
even concerned that General
Robert E. Lee’s 1863 Pennsylva-
nia campaign might turn toward
Pittsburgh in an effort to destroy
its military industry. Their fears,
of course, were unfounded.
Current residents and visitors
to the museum can share in that
sense of pride when they take in
the stunning size of the cannon
exhibit. As author Andy Masich,
who is also the president and
CEO of the Heinz History Cen-
ter, said in an interview when
the facsimilie went on display,
“Pittsburgh was the arsenal for
the Union, and factories here
could do things that could not be
done anywhere else in the world.
Nothing epitomizes that better
than a 20-inch Rodman cannon.”
lathe then turned and smoothed the 80-ton
casting into a finished gun more than 20 feet
long and weighing 116,497 pounds.Twen-
ty-four horses and an army of foundry workers
maneuvered the barrel to a railroad spur, where
two flatcars with double trucks (iron wheels)
waited. The journey to Brooklyn’s Fort Hamil-
ton took nearly a month, moving at a crawl, to
avoid excessive friction on the rails.
Rodman had an 18-ton, front pintle, iron
barbette carriage fabricated at the Watertown
Arsenal that was placed at Fort Hamilton’s
lower battery, alongside the 15-inch Rodmans
overlooking the mouth of the Hudson River.
The upper portion of the riveted iron carriage
that would cradle the gun was designed to slide
on rails pitched at a 15-degree angle, but the
huge barrel was expected to absorb most of the
recoil. Rodman was so confident the powder
charges would not budge the barrel from its
balance point that the oversized pivoting trun-
nions were not even capped.
THE BIG GUN would be fired only six times
during the war, using charges of slower-burn-
ing gunpowder (each grain measured nearly
an inch across)—also designed by Rodman—
varying from 50 to 150 pounds (regular can-
non powder was too fine-grained and would
burn too rapidly, creating dangerously high
pressures even for Rodman’s guns). To make
the powder burn more thoroughly and pre-
dictably, the inventor formed cylindrical and
hexagonal cakes of compressed powder, pierced
with wires: perforated cake powder that would
burn progressively, to ensure internal pressures
remained within the safe range while impart-
ing maximum propellant force to the projectile.
Secretary of War Edwin Stanton attended
the test firing, as a nine-man crew loaded the
gun with a 100-pound blank charge. The first
shot was a misfire, since the standard friction
primer was not strong enough to send a flame
the full 24-inch length of the vent hole drilled
through the cannon’s thick iron breech, known
as the “preponderance.” Once the charge was
pulled and the vent cleared by a volunteer,
who crawled 20 feet down the bore and con-
firmed the primer flash had been inadequate,
the gun was reloaded and its vent filled with
fine-grained powder. The roar was deafening
when the lanyard was yanked this time, report-
edly breaking windows in Brooklyn. The bar-
rel remained in the iron cheeks, but the entire
upper carriage recoiled 6 feet 10 inches, sliding
back along the iron rails as envisioned.
Once they saw Rodman’s big gun worked,
however, officials apparently lost interest. Fur-
ther testing was not carried out until 1867,
when—loaded with 200-pounds of Rodman’s
improved cake powder—the half-ton ball flew
nearly five miles, obliterating a target ship.
Rodman went on to design devices to more
accurately measure projectile velocities (1,735
feet per second), and the internal and exter-
nal forces exerted by his weapons. Though his
20-inch gun was never deployed against an
enemy—and only two of the giant cannons
were cast—Rodman’s guns were regarded as a
potent symbol of the North’s industrial might.
IN 1876, when America celebrated its cen-
tennial with an exposition in Philadelphia,
one of every Rodman weapon was exhibited,
including one of the 20-inch guns, which had
formerly guarded Norfolk, Va., and Hampton
Roads. Getting the biggest gun to the expo-
sition was no easy task. The 100-ton ship on
which it was loaded nearly capsized when the
crane operator failed to center the big gun on
the deck. The big gun was the hit of the expo-
sition. Displayed with it were the 20-foot long
rammers and hook-shaped winch used to hoist
CELEBRITY ORDNANCE The big Rodman commanded attention for
years after the Civil War. This image shows it at the 1876 Centennial
International Exposition in Philadelphia. The loading crane holds a
1,080-pound solid shot, which the cannon could f ire as far as 4½ miles.
the ball and load the gun, as well as a variety of 20-inch rounds: explosive
shells (each capable of holding a 25-pound bursting charge), solid shot
(weighing 1,080 pounds each) and “cored shot” (with a small hollow
cavity to reduce weight and extend the gun’s range).
The Ordnance Board eventually tried to upgrade the big smooth-
bores by reducing the bore diameter with inserted rifled sleeves, creating
elongated projectiles and designing more easily traversed gun carriages,
but by the 1880s most ordnance experts realized that built-up guns fab-
ricated from steel were the future.
Though Rodman’s mammoth guns never fired a shot in anger, they
were spared the scrap drives occasioned by subsequent wars. The largest
iron cannons ever cast, they can still be seen today at Fort Hamilton and
across the Narrows at Sandy Hook, N.J. ✯
Andrew Masich is president and CEO of the Senator John Heinz History
Center, the largest history museum in Pennsylvania, and chairman of the
Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.
DECEMBER 2015 53
 TABLET WARS
CIVIL WAR APPS LET YOU
ENTER THE FIGHT FROM THE
COMFORT OF YOUR COUCH
review by Megan Kate Nelson

There are several different kinds of Civil War apps out there. Mostly they fall into four categories:

1 BATTLEFIELD GUIDES
Download these before a visit to
a battlefield park, and the app
3 RANDOM CONTENT
DELIVERY SYSTEMS
There are several of these.
4 GAMES
Surprisingly few and
far between, Civil
provides an interactive 3D map I downloaded one: a Civil War War game apps put
and guide. Photographs app, which launched the player “on the
into a very basic interface ground” in a series

2 EDUCATIONAL TOOLS
Want to test your own knowledge
about the war? Or need an
intuitive app to help your kid
study for a history test? These are
the apps for you.
displaying more than 50 images
(likely cribbed from the Library
of Congress website). They are
of battles. They
require multiple
tasks, but mostly the
organized into thematic sections player moves troops
but include no citations, context around and shoots
or actual historical content. to kill.

T
hat last category of apps interested me most, as single and
multi-player games seem to be the most creative use of app
technology for (potentially) historical purposes, with the
widest audience appeal. So on a dreary Saturday in March I
sat down on a couch with a 10-year-old boy named Caleb and handed him my
iPhone. I would not do this in the ordinary course, you understand. But I am not
what one would call a “gamer,” and I needed an expert in such matters—who
also happens to be a pint-sized Civil War buff—to try three different game apps,
which I downloaded from the Apple App store. Caleb agreed to help out, and we
settled in for the greater part of the afternoon.

54 CIVIL WAR TIMES

 F
CANNON irst up was Cannon Shooter: American Civil War (Onteca
SHOOTER: Ltd., 2014), a simple, single-shooter game in which the
AMERICAN player is an artilleryman, adjusting the cannon’s height and
CIVIL WAR direction in order to blow away groups of enemy soldiers approaching
from all directions.
The game did not get off to a good start; yellow boxes appeared
where I presume text or images should have been. We could only guess
that these were options for battle sites and situations. Caleb: “I’m
already not liking this much.”
After some random pressing and swiping on different boxes, we
were suddenly in the action. The battery was on a low ridge overlooking
a valley, with a high railroad bridge soaring up over it in the far left
“The graphics distance. Caleb figured out how to play the game pretty quickly and
proceeded to take out groups of enemy soldiers. When the shells
are really bad. landed, the explosions catapulted the digital bodies into the air. Some
The shooting never returned, others landed with an audible thud on the ground. The
itself was player must keep sweeping the area, as enemy combatants continue to
too easy.” appear. You accumulate points with kills, of course. But we are not sure
how the game comes to a natural end, for ours ended with a pop-up ad.

CIVIL WAR:
N
ext we uploaded Civil War: 1864 chose the first on the list, probably for expedi-
1864 (Free version, Hunted Cow Stu- ency’s sake. This one is called “Ascension,” for
dios Ltd., 2014), a game that’s no apparent reason. Finally, the player chooses
much more complicated than Cannon Shooter. to make the game “easy,” “standard,” or “hard.”
We also moved from the iPhone to my com- Caleb chose “easy,” as it was his first time.
puter, although this game is probably ideal for In this initial foray into the game, however,
an iPad. There’s martial music from the start he did not bother with the tutorials. This led
(heavy on the trumpet and drums) and sophis- to some nice surprises as the game unfolded,
ticated graphics. And there is some attempt and as he figured out how to move his troops
to bring actual history into it—although you around and fire guns and artillery. The player
have to click through to the Game Summary has only a certain amount of time to do this;
“Easy to and “1864” to read a very short explanation then the “enemy” (the program) takes its turn.
control, but of the events during that year. The summary Note that the screen did not capture the entire
the game is emphasizes Grant’s war of attrition, Sherman’s battlefield, so every now and again an enemy
hard because campaign in Georgia and the fact that at this unit popped up, seemingly out of nowhere.
there are point “the Confederacy was ultimately fight- Caleb: “Whoa! What was that? Man!”
time limits.” ing and losing a defensive war.” It did not take him very long to get wise
Civil War: 1864 is a tactical game in which to these tactics, though, and he scanned the
the player moves infantry, cavalry and artillery battlefield whenever he wasn’t moving troops
around in order to defeat the enemy on
an unspecified battlefield. The fights are
in close quarters, with massed troops of
only about 100 soldiers on each side.
First the player chooses a side,
Union or Confederate. Caleb clicked
on “Union” without hesitation. He had
no explanation for his choice, but it was
likely because he is a Massachusetts boy,
born and bred.
Next the player chooses a cam-
paign—but actually there is no choice
if you don’t want to pay. You can play
“Division” for free but must purchase
the right to play “Cold Steel,” “Duty
and Pride,” and “Blockade.” The free
play offers four different games; Caleb

56 CIVIL WAR TIMES

or firing on Confederates, guessing where the
next group of enemy infantry would appear.
Most of the time he was right—and he started
talking back to the game: “I did NOT see that
coming! BOOM! Neither. Did. They.”
The player can win Civil War: 1864 in
several different ways: by completely elimi-
ULTIMATE
GENERAL:
GETTYSBURG
“A ton easier to control,
graphics are great.”
“There are no turns,
everybody is moving all
the time, like a real battle.”
T
he final game of the day was
Ultimate General: Gettysburg
(version 1.1.2; Gamelabs LLC,
2015). You must pay for this game, and it’s
pricey: $14.99, and downloadable to your
computer or iPad. The graphics and music are
impressive. The map of the town of Gettys-
burg and the battlefield are incredibly detailed
and look to be accurate. As in Civil War: 1864,
first the player chooses a side. In Ultimate
General: Gettysburg, though, there are expla-
nations:
“The Union deploys efficient artillery, bet-
ter drilled infantry, and better equip-ment….
However, most Union generals are uninspir-
ing comparing [sic] to the Confederate army
leaders. This causes poor performance in close
contact and average morale.”
“Confederate soldiers are universally high
spirited and courageous. They are able to sus-
tain heavy fire without breaking and are hard,
experienced troops. Confederate equipment is
though [sic] less advanced and they lack pro-
fessional military training, leading to disad-
vantages in prolonged engagements at range.”
There are many sweeping generalizations in
these descriptions, and they hew quite closely
to the tenets of the Lost Cause narrative. Based
on these portrayals, I think the programmers
are steering you toward the Confederates.
But once again Caleb chose the Union. Why?
nating all of the enemy’s soldiers; by killing
the opposing general; or by protecting the
majority of his own troops by the time the
game reaches its 20th “turn.” Caleb lost the
first game—an artillery assault took out his
general—and that stoked the fire. “I want to
try again,” he said. “This game is more like it.”
“Because I feel like it,” he said with a shrug.

Next up: difficulty level. The options here
are nuanced and offer a range of strategic
attitudes, from “cunning” to “dynamic” to “bal-
anced.” Caleb chose “cautious,” again because
it was his first game. He also skipped the tuto-
rials and went straight to the game; therefore, RECAP
it took a little while for him to figure out how
to move his troops in and out of position. ★★★★★
Me: “How are you doing that?” Caleb: “I have Ultimate General:
no idea.” Gettysburg:
But moving troops around—and learning 5 out of 5 stars
from your mistakes—is the entire point of “Great. Amazing.
the game. The player controls several differ- Greatazing.”
ent units on the battlefield, enabling them to
charge or fall back, firing rifles or artillery. The ★★★★★
game progresses in something approximat- Civil War: 1864:
3 out of 5 stars
ing real time: about 10 seconds of game per
minute of battle, on either July 1, 2 or 3. There “Not a total
is a clock running, and a bar in the upper left nightmare.”
corner of the screen keeps tabs on casualties,
troop morale and ammunition availability. ★★★★★
Other updates appear in pop-ups: “9:52 a.m. Cannon Shooter:
American Civil War:

General Wadsworth’s division has arrived
0 out of 5 stars
from the south. The Iron Brigade will teach
“Horrible. Don’t buy
the Rebels a good lesson!”
it, even if it’s free.”
There are no points to accumulate in
Ultimate General: Gettysburg, no real way of
comparing your tactical skill to John Buford’s
or George Meade’s. The player’s actions and
achievements depend on the side, the day (and
time of day), and the portion of the battlefield.
On the morning of July 1, Caleb’s job was to
delay the Confederate advance and protect
his reinforcement and supply line. He was
transfixed.
When the first part of the game came to
an end (around noon on July 1), he frowned.
“I really like this one! I want to keep going!”
His parents let him play into the afternoon of
the 1st and he blissed out, using the track pad
to trace arrows on the battlefield, directing
regiments back and forth, yelling periodically.
When dusk ended the battle for the day (both
digitally and in real life), it was time for me to
shut down the game, pack up my laptop and
go. Caleb was mournful. “I’m sad to have it
leave,” he said. ✯
DECEMBER 2015 57
EXPLORE

REBEL CROSSING
Maj. Gen. Joseph Kershaw’s
Confederate division splashed
across Bowman’s Mill Ford on
Cedar Creek during its night
march to surprise the Union army.


CEDAR CREEK
Desperate Struggle in a Beautiful Place

THE OCTOBER 19, 1864, Battle of Cedar Creek was one of the war’s great seesaw affairs. Lt. Gen.
Jubal Early’s Army of the Valley boiled out of the early-morning darkness and slammed into Maj. Gen.
Philip Sheridan’s Army of the Shenandoah, camped across high ground above Cedar Creek, a picturesque
Shenandoah Valley stream just south of Middletown, Va., routing the Union troops. But by mid-morning
Sheridan, who had been away in Washington, arrived from Winchester in time to rally his troops for a
counterattack that carried the day for the Union. That victory came three weeks before the Northern
presidential contest and helped secure Lincoln’s reelection. The battle was a sprawling affair that traversed
some eight miles of ground along the Valley Pike, on which Middletown sits, and which today is known
as Route 11. Despite the site’s significance, not a lot of the land was protected until 1988, when the Cedar
Creek Battlefield Foundation bought a section of the core battlefield. Several organizations now partner
to protect the Cedar Creek battlefield, with more acreage saved every year. Despite being located just 20
minutes south of Winchester and near the intersection of busy Interstates 81 and 66, Middletown remains
a quaint town with one stoplight, great mountain views and restaurants to reenergize battlefield explorers.

58 CIVIL WAR TIMES

BELLE GROVE Before the battle, Sheridan pitched
his headquarters tents at the stately home that Isaac Hite
Jr. and his wife Nelly, James Madison’s sister, built in 1797
Maj. Gen. Stephen Dodson Ramseur, one
of Jubal Early’s division commanders, was
mortally wounded during the Union’s afternoon
counterattack at Cedar Creek. Federal cavalrymen
captured Ramseur’s ambulance and brought him
back to Belle Grove. A number of Northern friends

out of local limestone—with features inspired by Thomas from his days at West Point, including George
Jefferson’s Monticello. Newspaper correspondent and sketch Custer, came to pay their respects before he died,
artist James E. Taylor recalled that by 1864, “ruthless war a scene depicted by James Taylor.
had already made a waste of the ornate grounds.” Things
got worse on October 19, when the Confederate attack tore
through the XIX Corps camps on Belle Grove’s front lawn.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Belle
Grove Plantation Foundation have restored the home to
its former glory. The view of Massanutten Mountain is
magnificent, but also remember to look for the bullet-struck SHERIDAN’S TRUSTY
column at the mansion’s front entrance. bellegrove.org
(and stuffed) STEED
Sheridan’s incredible ride to regroup his army
NPS VISITOR STATION RIENZI KNOLL ROAD was glorified in song and poem in the North. If you
Start your visit at the A Route 11 highway visit the Smithsonian National Museum of American
National Park Service marker on the north end History in Washington, D.C., you can see the stuffed
Visitor Contact Station for of Middletown marks
hide of the steed that made it possible.
the Cedar Creek and Belle the spot where General
Grove National Historical Sheridan arrived from Sheridan changed Rienzi’s name to
Park located at 7712 Main Winchester riding his Winchester after their famous ride.
Street in Middletown. black horse Rienzi at about
A narrated electric map 10:30 in the morning. He
explains the course of the rode down the adjacent
October 1864 battle. Pick farm lane to a knoll where
up the park’s excellent he conferred with his
driving tour of the battle officers and then set off
and accompanying CD on his famous ride to rally
narration here. It takes you his retreating troops. The
on twisting gravel roads Civil War Trust preserved
past areas of heavy fighting, 64 1/2 acres on the west
beautiful antebellum farms side of the Valley Pike at
and along the scenic Cedar this location that is leased
Creek and the North Fork for farming and open for
of the Shenandoah River. special tours and events.
(nps.gov/cebe) (civilwar.org)

DECEMBER 2015 59
SIGNAL KNOB Massanutten Mountain rises from the Valley floor south of Middletown. Early and his generals
observed the Union lines and planned their attack from Signal Knob, on the mountain’s north end.
Today Signal Knob is part of the 1.1-million-acre George Washington National Forest. If you’re up for a strenuous 10-mile
hike, you too can enjoy the vantage point’s stunning views from its heights. hikingupward.com/GWNF/SignalKnob

CEMETERY DOWN THE ROAD

STRONGHOLD
Despite withering artillery
fire and Confederate
attacks, a beleaguered
Union division command-
ed by Brig. Gen. George
W. Getty held onto high
ground occupied by Mt.
Carmel Cemetery, on the
northwest corner of
Middletown, to stop the
Rebels’ morning advance.
Mt. Carmel is still an active
cemetery; please respect fu-
neral services during visits.
HUPP’S HILL
The Cedar Creek Battle-
field Foundation operates
the Hupp’s Hill Civil War
Park and Cedar Creek
Museum, located south of
Middletown. The museum
END OF THE LINE interprets the 1864 Valley
The 128th New York monument, on the west side of Campaign and features a
Route 11 south of Belle Grove, honors the regiment large topographic map of
that held the left end of the XIX Corps line. The the area. Union earthworks
Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation preserves 123 built after Cedar Creek to
acres behind the monument that feature original prevent another rout are
XIX Corps trenches. Passes for touring the site preserved on the grounds.
are available at the CCBF headquarters. (ccbf.us)
Strasburg, just down the
road from Middletown and
Hupp’s Hill, also has Civil
War sites, as well as antique
shops, cafes and lodging.
It’s well worth a visit, and
will be the subject of a
future “Explore.”
VALLEY THUNDER
The Cedar Creek Bat-
tlefield Foundation hosts
the largest reenactment
in Virginia every October
on a weekend close to the
anniversary of the battle.
Thousands of reenactors
participate each year to
reenact Cedar Creek on
a portion of the original
ground that borders Route
11, one of the first tracts
of land bought by the
foundation.
SAD TALE
The Heater House, owned
by Solomon and Caroline
Heater during the war, still
stands on the ground where
the reenactment occurs.

60 CIVIL WAR TIMES

Solomon sided with Vir-
ginia, while Caroline was
a Unionist. Two of their Confederate General
three sons served in the 7th JOHN B. GORDON


Virginia Cavalry, and both describes the
died while fighting for the Battle of Cedar Creek
Confederacy. in his 1903 memoirs:
PARTNERS IN
PRESERVATION
A number of partners have
banded together to own “Other days during
and protect portions of this our war witnessed a
sprawling battle site. They brilliant triumph or
include the National Park
Service, the Cedar Creek a crushing defeat for
Battlefield Foundation, the one army or the
the Civil War Trust, the other; but no other
National Trust for Historic single day saw each
Preservation, Belle Grove
Inc., and the Shenandoah
of the contending
Valley Battlefields Asso- armies victorious
ciation (shenandoahatwar. and vanquished on
org). Thousands of acres the same field and
still remain unprotected, between the rising
however, many of them in
areas that are vulnerable and setting of
to ongoing development. the same sun.”
Continued vigilance and
oversight in this entire area
of the Valley is vital.

TAKE A Middletown’s Wayside Inn, founded in 1797, claims to be one of the oldest continually operating inns in the
BREAK United States. Don’t miss the small monument to Brig. Gen. Charles Russell Lowell III, an esteemed Union
officer who was mortally wounded at Cedar Creek, that stands in front of the inn. (waysideinn1797.com)
Nana’s Irish Pub, also located in Middletown, serves local craft brews and gets great Yelp reviews for its fish and chips.
Both restaurants are excellent bets for historic travelers in need of sustenance between battlefield visits in the Valley.

Wayside Inn

Nana’s Irish Pub

DECEMBER 2015 61
REVIEWS

Slow But Steady Wins

Reviewed by Timothy B. Smith

T
he Western Theater remains underrepresented in both academic
and popular thought, but at least Vicksburg has recently
received significant attention—only fitting, because it was one
of the war’s most decisive campaigns. But in such a long and
complex campaign, certain events still get short shrift, and the Union siege
of Vicksburg itself is one of those often-overlooked events. Most historians
prefer to analyze the thrilling lead-up to the siege rather than detailing the
mundane watching-and-waiting of that midsummer standoff.
In Engineering Victory, Justin Solonick has produced a first-rate piece
of scholarship that focuses on the engineering aspects of the Union’s
siege against Vicksburg. He argues that many factors influenced the siege,
including terrain, the West Point training of the engineers attached to the
Army of the Tennessee, and the western soldiers’ ingenuity. He explains how
the siege moved from one step to the other in theoretical manner, augmented
by the ingenuity of nonprofessionals, and concludes that engineering efforts,
not a lack of food or other factors, really doomed Vicksburg. Though there is Engineering Victory:
some repetition to be found, it serves to drive Solonick’s point home. The Union Siege
It is curious that Solonick chooses to use George McClellan’s “quasi- of Vicksburg
siege” as a contextual example leading up to Vicksburg when much better Justin S. Solonick
examples could perhaps have been found in the attempts to hem in and Southern Illinois
approach Confederate lines at Fort Donelson and Corinth, where Grant and University Press,
$37.50
many of the officers with him in 1862 dealt with some of the same problems


facing them the next year at Vicksburg. Those concerns aside, Solonick
should be congratulated for crafting a unique study that is both fascinating
and educational. One hopes he will now turn his attention to writing a
corresponding volume on Confederate siege activities at Vicksburg.

The Final Four Months

Reviewed by Gordon Berg men in the Union’s armies. example of how to analyze a
General Orders No. 35 of complicated action in engag-

T he Sesquicentennial’s
last year has spawned
a tsunami of books covering
1865. Some focus on particu-
lar theaters of conflict or spe-
cific armies, while others try
to capture the chaos, death
Their Last Full and destruction of those final
Measure: The Final
Days of the Civil War four months. Joe Wheelan
Joseph Wheelan has produced one of the most
readable accounts of the
Da Capo Press,
$26.99 latter type by describing the
major events of each month,
ending with the demobiliza-
tion of more than a million
June 28, 1865, issued by Lt.
Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, suc-
cinctly stated the reality: “By
virtue of Special Orders No.
339, current series, from the
Adjutant-General’s Office,
this army, as an organization,
ceases to exist.”
But even as the conflict
wound down, the bloodlet-
ting continued. Wheelan’s
analysis of the March 19-21
Battle of Bentonville, the
largest engagement fought in
North Carolina, is a textbook
ing yet incisive prose. After
months of dodging Gen-
eral William T. Sherman’s
juggernaut through three
states, Rebel General Joseph
Johnston gamely turned and
blocked the Goldsboro Road,
attacking part of Sherman’s
XIV Corps. Johnston suffered
2,606 casualties, about 1,000
more than Sherman. While
the Confederates slipped
away, Sherman’s bummers
foraged the countryside on
their way into Goldsboro.

62 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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Founded in 1783, Greeneville has a rich
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Kentucky
“Part of the One and Only Bluegrass!”
Visit National Historic Landmark, Na-
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Are you a history and culture buff? There
are many museums and attractions, Civil
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Jackson, Mississippi.
Fayetteville/Cumberland County, North
Carolina is steeped in history and patriot-
ic traditions. Take a tour highlighting our
military ties, status as a transportation
hub, and our Civil War story.
Explore Maryland with once-in-a-
lifetime commemorations—all at one
destination. Create your family history by
exploring ours. Go to visitmaryland.org to
plan your trip today.
Walk where Civil War soldiers fought and
died. A short trip from Nashville and a long
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Call (800) 716-7560.
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Visit Chattanooga’s pivotal Civil War
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Combine your stay in this top rated tourism
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Experience living history for The Battles
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Whether you love history, culture, the
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There’s no other place that embodies the
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rich and varied expressions—Mississippi.
Find Your True South.
Join us for our Civil War Anniversary
Commemoration including attractions
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a selection of artifacts from Fort Fisher.
A vacation in Georgia means great family
experiences that can only be described as
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Midlands.
Experience the Old West in action with
a trip through Southwest Montana.
For more information on our 15 ghost
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Over 650 grand historic homes in three
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To discover more about Tennessee and
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Lebanon, KY is home to the Lebanon
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Experience the Civil War in Jacksonville
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Relive one of Arkansas’ first stands at the
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Six major battles took place in Winchester
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Known for sublime natural beauty,
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Explore the past in Baltimore during two
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With a variety of historic attractions
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County is a perfect destination for lovers
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Near Chattanooga, find glorious
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If you’re looking for an easy stroll through
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Vicksburg, Mississippi is a great place
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Tennessee’s Farragut Folklife Museum
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Williamson County, Tennessee, is rich in
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Historic sites throughout the county
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Southern hospitality at its finest, the
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Follow the Civil War Trail in Meridian,
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Search over 10,000 images and primary
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Sandy Springs, Georgia, is the perfect
hub for exploring Metro Atlanta’s Civil
War sites. Conveniently located near
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Alabama Gulf Shores
Known for its important role in the 1864
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Morgan stands today as a testament to
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History, bourbon, shopping, sightseeing
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Treat yourself to Southern Kentucky
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Hip and historic Frederick County
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St. Mary’s County, Maryland. Visit Point
Lookout, site of the war’s largest prison
camp, plus Confederate and USCT
monuments. A short drive from the
nation’s capital.
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Destination
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STEP BACK IN TIME at Camp Nelson
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ugee camp. Museum, Civil War Library,
Interpretive Trails and more.
 Wheelan rightly includes events
behind the battle lines, like the Hamp-
ton Roads peace initiative in February
and the last conference among President
Lincoln, his military leaders and Con-
federate emissaries, held on March 28
aboard the steamer River Queen. At the
March conference, for example, Lincoln
asked Sherman and asked the general
if he knew why the president “took a
shine to Grant and you.” Then he added,
“Well, you never found fault with me.”
The Confederate home front
gets equal billing, as when Wheelan
describes the evacuation of Richmond
and Petersburg during the night of April
2: “The tread of marching men, the
clatter of cavalry horses, and the creak of
wagons, filled the streets of Richmond
and Petersburg as the long-suffering
Army of Northern Virginia converged
on the bridges over the James and
Appomattox Rivers.”
Good works of historical synthesis
rarely get the accolades they deserve.
At best, they can engage specialists and
general readers alike. The root of “his-
tory” remains the “story”—and Wheelan
tells a good one.
66 CIVIL WAR TIMES
Essays on Greatness
Reviewed by Louis P. Masur
T he Lincoln Forum, an annual No-
vember gathering in Gettysburg,
has been going strong for 20 years. In
Exploring Lincoln, Harold Holzer and
Frank J. Williams, two of the founders,
and Craig L. Symonds, a regular par-
ticipant, gather some of the work pre-
sented over the past few years.
Many of the essays serve as précis
for notable books that have since been
published by the authors (Eric Foner’s
The Fiery Trial; Amanda Foreman’s A
World on Fire; and Craig Symonds’ Lin-
coln and His Admirals). Others discuss
such issues as the alleged Baltimore
plot to assassinate President-elect Lin- Exploring Lincoln: Great
coln in February 1861, the origins of Historians Reappraise
“The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” Our Greatest President
and the personal losses suffered by both Edited by Harold Holzer,
Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. Craig L. Symonds and
Especially valuable are pieces that Frank J. Williams
discuss Lincoln’s relationship to peo- Fordham University Press,
ple and places. Walter Stahr shines a $21.29
light on Lincoln and William Seward,
exposing as myth the story that the two
shared a hotel room in Worcester, Mass., in 1848 after they first met while
campaigning for Zachary Taylor. It would be 12 years before they met again.
Seward, of course, would serve as secretary of state, and though the two dis-
agreed on such issues as compromise and Fort Sumter at the war’s beginning,
their working relationship was so close that it engendered jealousy among
other Cabinet members.
John C. Waugh focuses on Lincoln’s relationship with George B. McClel-
lan, a self-made man who, as John Bright once quipped in another context,
worshipped his creator. McClellan dismissed Lincoln as a “well meaning
baboon,” and in November 1862, after more than a year of frustration with
the recalcitrant general, Lincoln dismissed McClellan. Waugh cites several
reasons for McClellan’s failure—he was pedantic, misjudged Northern opin-
ion and treated Lincoln as an enemy. Some, including Robert E. Lee, judged
him a great general, but most people then as now side with Ulysses S. Grant’s
assessment: “McClellan to me is one of the mysteries of the war.”
Holzer explores a different kind of relationship in “Lincoln and New
York,” calling the connection “complex and curiously conflicted.” The
reasons were political, as New York City voted Democratic whereas upstate
New York endorsed the Republican Party. In 1863 both the Draft Riots
and Democratic opposition in Albany to military arrests caused Lincoln
concern. The latter elicited one of his finest letters, to Erastus Corning. In
it Lincoln asked: “Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts,
while I must not touch the hair of a wiley [sic] agitator who induces him
to desert? I think that in such a case, to silence the agitator, and save the
boy, is not only constitutional but a great mercy.” A year later, he sent the
Albany Fair the manuscript of his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
Lincoln’s Cooper Union Address on February 27, 1860, had helped make
him president; on April 24, 1865, Lincoln’s casket arrived in New York, and
the city that had opposed him now draped itself in mourning black.
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 A Bohemian
Revolution
Rebel
Souls: Walt
Whitman and
America’s
First
Bohemians
Justin Martin
Da Capo
Press, $27.99

Reviewed by Gordon Berg

I n World War II Casablanca,

everyone came to Rick’s
nightclub. In Civil War New York,
artists, actors, writers and journal-
ists congregated at Pfaff ’s Restau-
rant and Lager Bier Saloon, hidden
underground at 647 Broadway.
There, Henry Clapp Jr. sought to
re-create la vie Boheme.
Justin Martin’s descriptions
of Pfaff ’s denizens—including
Fitz Hugh Ludlow, author of The
Hasheesh Eater; “actresses” Adah
Isaacs Menken and Ada Clare;
journalist Fitz-James O’Brien;
comic Artemus Ward and poet
Walt Whitman—paint a picture
of intellectual life in Manhattan.
The war, Martin maintains, pushed
these eclectic personalities “in
unexpected directions.” He also
describes how these outsized per-
sonalities carried “the Bohemianism
forged in that underground saloon
out across the land.”
Readers seeking incisive literary
analysis or prescient cultural
insights in Martin’s book should
probably look elsewhere. These
would be antithetical to the irrev-
erent wraiths that might very well
still haunt the basement recesses of
the woman’s shoe store which now
occupies Pfaff ’s former premises.
Martin has clearly heard those
American originals whispering, and
through the pages of Rebel Souls he
invites readers to eavesdrop on their
lively repartee.

68 CIVIL WAR TIMES

 With Pride We Honor The Brave Men Of the
Union Who Fought The Civil War.
With Patience We Preserve Their Memory,
Their Monuments, and Their Legacy.
With Persistence We Educate The Children of
<WLIaIJW]\\PM;IKZQÅKM[WN <PM8I[\
With Passion We Promote A Sense of Patriotism
and Citizenship For The Common Good.

If you share our goals of Education, Preservation,

Honor, Patriotism, and Citizenship:
THE SONS OF UNION VETERANS OF
THE CIVIL WAR WANT YOU!
Both Regular and Associate Membership
Applications as well as information are available
at: http://www.suvcw.org/member.htm

Back
Issues
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a single copy.
Order today!
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ETC.


Vigilante Critic

Union General William T. Sherman

witnessed the San Francisco vigilante
movement described in the Lafayette Baker
story on P. 40. Sherman, who distrusted
the vigilantes, wrote in his memoirs that
“the world generally gives them the credit
of having purged San Francisco of rowdies
and roughs; but their success has given
great stimulus to a dangerous principle, that
would at any time justify the mob in seizing
all the power of government; and who is to
say that the Vigilance Committee may not
be composed of the worst, instead of the
best, elements of a community?”

 STILL AROUND 
ortunately, Thomas Rodman’s two massive 20-inch cannons (P. 46)

F were never thrown on the scrap heap. Today the barrel pictured
above is located in Fort Hamilton Park in Brooklyn, N.Y., keeping
watch over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. “No. 1, FORT PITT, PA.,
S.C.L., 1864, 116497 lbs.,” is stamped on its muzzle. “S.C.L.” are the ini-
tials of Stephen Carr Lyford, an inspecting ordnance officer who served Civil War Times’ first col
or cover,
at the arsenal. The second Rodman 20-inch cannon, which was cast in April 1962, featured Thure
de
1869, not long after the war, can be seen at Fort Hancock, in Sandy Hook, Thulstrup’s painting of the
Mule
N.J. It’s shocking to think that these barrels each weighed about 60 tons, Shoe at Spotsylvania (P.
32).
which is nearly the same weight as a modern M1 Abrams tank.

CREDITS Cover: Library of Congress; P. 2: Shenandoah Sanchez; P. 3: From Top: Library of Congress; Heritage Auctions, Dallas, TX; Jennifer E. Berry;
Cowan’s Auctions, Cincinnati, OH; Library of Congress; P. 4: Counselman Collection; P. 5: Library of Congress; P. 8: Library of Congress; P. 10: Sarah J. Mock (2);
P. 11: From Left: Tim Evanson; Brian Hunt & Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee; P. 12: Courtesy Long Road Home; P. 13: From Top: National Civil War Museum;
Google Earth; P. 14-15: Library of Congress; P. 16-18: Library of Congress (2); P. 20-21: From Top Right: Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, VA; Heritage Auctions,
Dallas, TX (4); P. 22: Courtesy of the Seminary Ridge Museum (3); P. 26-31: Library of Congress (3); P. 33: N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945), The Bloody Angle, 1912, oil on canvas,
46 1/4 x 33 1/4 inches, Brandywine River Museum of Art, Gift of Charles S. Crompton, Jr., in memory of his wife, Milbrey Dean Crompton, 2014; P. 34-35: Library of Congress (3);
P. 36: Library of Congress; P. 37: From Top: Library of Congress; Missouri History Museum; P. 40: Cowan’s Auctions, Cincinnati, OH; P. 42: Heritage Auction, Dallas, TX;
P. 43: Library of Congress; P. 45: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library; P. 46-47: Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Department; P. 48: Library
of Congress; P. 49: National Archives; P. 50: Harper’s Weekly, November 19, 1864; P. 51: Harper’s Weekly, August 23, 1862; P. 52: Courtesy of the Heinz History Center (2);
P. 53: Free Library of Philadelphia/Bridgeman Images; P. 55: Jennifer E. Berry; P. 56: Courtesy HexWar Games Ltd; P. 58: Sarah J. Mock; P. 59: From Top Left: Sarah J. Mock;
Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, OH; National Museum of American History/Smithsonian Institution; P. 60: Sarah J. Mock (2); P. 61: Clockwise from Top: Library
of Congress; Courtesy of Nana’s Irish Pub; Courtesy of Wayside Inn; P. 70: Left: Leonard Zhukovsky/123RF; P. 72: Courtesy of Skinner Auctions, www.skinnerinc.com

70 CIVIL WAR TIMES

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SOLD !

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

$ 2,952
The Union government purchased or produced 1,674,163 projecticles
for smoothbore cannons like the 12-pounder case shot pictured here,
which would have been fired by a bronze Napoleon cannon. The
Confederacy used hundreds of thousands more. Though surviving
examples of these bombs are relatively common, this one, which
came from the Gettysburg battlefield, was beautifully engraved with
the name and year of the battle, greatly increasing its value. 2

72 CIVIL WAR TIMES

“This should be considered the
definitive biography on Stanton
. . . Incredibly researched,
amazingly written and packed
to the seams with information,
it should be on the shelf of every
Civil War historian.”
—Gettysburg Chronicle
“Filled with impressive research and
superb writing, this book provides
wholly new perspectives on Grant’s
Overland campaign and stands as
a vital contribution to our under-
standing of the Civil War.”
—Steven E. Woodworth,
Texas Christian University
“A detailed and fascinating analytical
narrative. . . . A model of well-
written Civil War History.”
—Library Journal
“Reads like a staff ride organized
by an officer intimately familiar
with the area’s topography. . . .
Hess makes a convincing case
for the importance of this still
unappreciated battle.”
—Civil War Times

“Offers compelling and important
ideas that challenge our assumptions
about post–Civil War America. An
exceptional work.”
—Aaron Sheehan-Dean, author of
Why Confederates Fought
“This is the best published recollec-
tions we have of a Virginia artillery
commander. Superbly edited,
this book is a necessary source
for any study of the Army of
Northern Virginia.”
—James I. Robertson Jr., author of
Stonewall Jackson
“Captain Hinrich’s character sketches “An extremely useful resource for
of the legion of Southern generals making one’s way intelligently
whom he came to know intimately across the battleground as well as
are among the most penetrating I a stirring account of the battle and
have ever read. This book is sure to its varied meanings in the past
become a Confederate classic.” and present. . . . no matter how
—Peter Cozzens, limited or extensive one’s Civil
author of Shenandoah 1862 War library, it deserves a special
place on the shelf.”
—Civil War Monitor

The official journal of the
Society of Civil War Historians
Journal of the
Civil War Era
visit journalofthecivilwarera.org
Omnibus
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Visit www.uncpress.unc.edu and search for Omnibus.
Most UNC Press books are
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