This illustration by John L. Magee depicts the assault on U.S. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts by Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina on the Senate floor on May 22, 1856, days after Sumner had delivered his “Crime Against Kansas” speech, in which he condemned the tactics of pro-slavery supporters in the territory.

It was the sound that most people noticed first. “My attention was suddenly attracted by a noise,” recalled one bystander. Another remembered hearing “a noise, thumps, pounding, and rustling disturbance.” A third “heard a scuffle, and some disturbance.” Several witnesses reported the sound of a “blow” being struck, while others described what they heard as “a crash,” “a sudden and unusual noise,” “a sharp crack.”¹ No one expected to hear a cane striking a man’s skull—not in the Senate chamber of the U.S. Capitol.

It was approximately 1:30 p.m. on May 22, 1856, and the Senate had adjourned, yet the chamber was not empty. Several senators lingered, writing at their desks. There were visitors and men stood conversing in small clusters. The murmur of voices drifted around the room. Everything sounded precisely as usual, for that time, for that place, until the first, sharp crack sliced through the air, demanding attention, signaling something extraordinary.

The Senate chamber reflected the majesty of the U.S. Congress. A semicircle 75 feet long and 50 feet wide, it was topped by an ornately carved half-dome ceiling and lit from above by skylights. The floor was carpeted in blood red, there were masses of gold-accented crimson drapes and rows of lustrous mahogany desks and chairs, with marble columns on one side and cast-iron pillars on the other. A golden carving of a mighty eagle perched on a shield and Rembrandt Peale’s portrait of George Washington looked over the resplendent space, proudly conveying the decorum and authority of the U.S. Senate.

Library of Congress

Stephen Douglas (left) and Henry Alonzo Edmundson

At the same time, it was a busy workplace. Whether the Senate was in or out of session, the place was in constant motion: senators moving back and forth from their desks to the lobby area, separated from the rest of the room by a glass screen; visitors thronging the galleries overhead or seeking out senators on the floor below. Dozens of the desks were crammed together. And then there was the carpet. While visiting Washington in 1842, Charles Dickens attended the Senate regularly, describing it as a “dignified and decorous body,” but one whose carpets were greatly stained “by the universal disregard of the spittoon.” “I will merely observe,” he wrote, “that I strongly recommend all strangers not to look at the floor; and if they happen to drop anything … not to pick it up with an ungloved hand on any account.”²

So this was a room both grand and grubby; a bustling legislative marketplace and a place of awesome solemnity; a place where the work of governing was done, whether noble or otherwise; a place of venomous invective as well as soaring debate. But on that May afternoon, none of the business of the Senate made the loud wooden crack any less jarring.

The violence that took place that day stemmed, as violence often does, from words, words spoken that week, in that room, by Senator Charles Sumner. A consummate Bostonian, Sumner, 45, was intellectually rigorous, well traveled, deeply knowledgeable in the classics and the law, invested in schemes to better the human condition that ranged from penal reform to the peace movement to abolitionism. Elected from Massachusetts in 1851 to succeed Daniel Webster, he was smarter and better read than almost everyone around him—and he knew it. At 6 feet, 2 inches tall, he was an imposing presence; he’d had to have his desk in the chamber raised some inches to accommodate his long legs. A photograph taken around this time shows a somewhat haughty countenance, his features firm but beginning to melt into the softness of middle age, his head topped with an impressive mane of thick, untamed hair and his bushy sideburns beginning to gray. He had the sunken eyes of a man who worked too much, read too much—and the resolute eyes of a man certain it was all for noble purposes.

Sumner was known for delivering long, erudite speeches, sprinkled with classical and literary references, and sometimes including clever personal insults. That week, he had outdone himself. For three hours on the afternoon of Monday, May 19, and continuing the following day, Sumner delivered “The Crime Against Kansas,” a major intervention in the debate over the looming admission of the new state. Sumner was appalled by what he saw as a far-reaching conspiracy to ensure that Kansas welcomed slavery and slaveholders, a campaign orchestrated by the “Slave Power”—a term northerners were increasingly using to describe slaveholders’ schemes to bolster the “peculiar institution.” Sumner decried “the rape of a virgin territory, compelling it to the hateful embrace of slavery.” In violently imposing slavery upon Kansas, slaveholders and their allies were attacking the foundation of their government, and even civilization itself.

Library of Congress

At the time of Brooks’ assault on Sumner, the Senate chamber (depicted above in an antebellum lithograph) was a room both grand and grubby, a resplendent space with carpets stained “by the universal disregard of the spittoon,” in the words of one contemporary observer.

For most of the speech, Sumner castigated the Slave Power in general terms. But he targeted specifically two fellow senators: Stephen Douglas of Illinois and Andrew Butler of South Carolina. He mockingly compared the two men to the principal characters in Cervantes’ 17th-century classic, Don Quixote; Butler was the aging, delusional, wannabe-knight Don Quixote while Douglas played his bumbling sidekick, Sancho Panza. Sumner’s harshest invective was reserved for Butler, who “has read many books of chivalry and believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight—I mean the harlot, Slavery.” Mocking a South Carolinian’s sense of honor and chivalry; likening the acquisition of land to rape; depicting slavery as a repulsive prostitute—Sumner certainly knew which insults to hurl.³

These were indisputably fighting words. Perhaps it was lucky for Sumner that Butler was absent from the Senate that day. On the other hand, perhaps an immediate response from Butler would have been preferable to what did take place.

The immediate reaction from several senators—including northern Democrats—was hardly friendly. The day it concluded, Lewis Cass of Michigan called the speech “the most un-American and unpatriotic that ever grated on the ears of the members of this high body.” Douglas wondered about Sumner’s goal, “Is it his object to provoke some of us to kick him as we would a dog in the street, that he may get sympathy upon the just chastisement.” More quietly, he muttered, “That damn fool will get himself killed by some other damn fool.”⁴

Then there was Preston Brooks. Within days he would become a household name, but as he listened to Sumner’s tirade in the Senate chamber, he was little known. Brooks, 36, was the eldest son of a moderately successful upcountry South Carolina planter. Having served a term in the state Legislature, he volunteered to lead a company during the Mexican War, established himself as a sometime-lawyer, sometime-planter, and in 1853 won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Described by a fellow South Carolinian as “tall and commanding, standing six feet in his stockings … [and] remarkably handsome,” Brooks had thus far made few waves in Washington. He was a moderate in politics, at least by South Carolina standards. He was charming—a nice man, by all accounts, the kind you might enjoy meeting but would promptly forget about.⁵ He had bright, piercing eyes, and flowing brown hair swept back from his forehead, his earlobes barely protruding. He cultivated a flourishing goatee that started toward the bottom of his chin, stretched wide across his jaw, and was just a little too long to be neat. In an 1850s photograph, Brooks projected pride, determination, ambition. He bristled at Sumner’s attacks, like all southern congressmen did. But for Brooks, the attacks were personal; Senator Butler was his father’s cousin.

Brooks believed he had no choice but to act, that Sumner’s incendiary language demanded a physical response.

The question was, what kind of response? Dueling was a well-worn means of vengeance in Brooks’ world. Indeed, he had already been involved in a duel and other “affairs of honor.” But he did not challenge Sumner to a duel, knowing full well that Sumner would refuse the challenge; dueling remained popular among wealthy white southerners but not so much in Massachusetts, and especially not in Sumner’s circle of pacifists and social reform activists. More importantly, duels were meant to be fought between social equals. Brooks most certainly did not regard Sumner as a social equal, and so he did not seek a duel. Instead, he resolved to inflict dramatic corporal punishment.

On Wednesday, May 21, the day after the speech concluded, Brooks lurked on the Capitol grounds, waiting to intercept Sumner, who did not appear. That night, Brooks accompanied two of his closest friends in the House, South Carolina’s Laurence Keitt and Virginia’s Henry Alonzo Edmundson, to Gautier’s, a well-known Washington restaurant, in the hopes of encountering Sumner—and perhaps administering the punishment there. But Sumner was not to be seen. Brooks hardly slept that night. It’s easy to imagine his friends urging him on, offering their support, ratcheting up the pressure to do something. By some accounts Brooks was drinking too much—presumably trying to relieve his tension but surely compounding it instead.

The following morning, Thursday, May 22, Brooks waited again, taking up a position in the porter’s lodge at the western edge of the Capitol grounds, looking down Pennsylvania Avenue, hoping to see Sumner arriving and intercept him before he reached the Senate chamber. Again, Sumner did not appear. Eventually Brooks gave up and went into the Capitol.

The House met only briefly that day, from noon until 12:30, adjourning early out of respect for a Missouri representative who had recently died. It must have been a relief for the restless Brooks to learn that the Senate would also adjourn early, for the same reason. He went to the Senate chamber and stood at the back of the room, just a few seats away from Sumner. More waiting. Finally, at around 1 p.m., the Senate adjourned.

But Brooks had to wait a little longer. He watched as Sumner sat at his desk, preparing copies of his speech—that speech, “The Crime Against Kansas”—to mail out to supporters. He waited between 15 and 30 minutes, though it probably seemed longer. Brooks felt he couldn’t confront Sumner because there were ladies present and what he meant to do was appropriate for a male audience only.

As was true for most of the bystanders, the first inkling of the attack came not through Sumner’s eyes but through his ears. “I was not aware of his presence until I heard my name pronounced,” he later recalled.

As I looked up, with pen in hand, I saw a tall man, whose countenance was not familiar, standing directly over me, and at the same moment, caught these words: “I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine—.” While those words were still passing from his lips, he commenced a succession of blows with a heavy cane.⁶

National Portrait Gallery

Preston Brooks (left) struck Charles Sumner (right) about 30 times in his assault, inflicting significant head wounds and rendering him briefly unconscious. After the assault on Sumner, many friends of Brooks believed further violence was inevitable. “If the northern men had stood up,” one wrote, “the city would now float with blood. The fact is the feeling is wild and fierce.”

According to Brooks, “at the concluding words I struck him with my cane and gave him about 30 first rate stripes with a gutta percha cane.” Brooks was confident that “every lick went where I intended. For about the first five or six licks he offered to make fight but I plied him so rapidly that he did not touch me. Towards the last he bellowed like a calf.”⁷

Some observers described Sumner as trying to resist, “clutching at the cane or at Mr. Brooks,” “defending himself from his blows,” or “striving to grasp Mr. Brooks.” But it was exceedingly difficult for Sumner to rise, trapped as he was beneath his desk. Senate desks were screwed to the floor to keep them in place, and the chairs were on rollers that required the user to slide back before standing up. Eventually Sumner wrenched the desk free from its fastenings, it toppled over, and he was able to lurch forward. With the desk overturned, however, Brooks had more room to maneuver and the ability to land more forceful blows. It was then that the cane began to break into pieces. In the confusion, a second desk next to the chamber’s central aisle was toppled, in front of and to the left of Sumner’s. Following a few more strikes, Sumner fell to the ground in the aisle, briefly unconscious and with several significant head wounds, two of them down to the bone.⁸

When Brooks’ friend Keitt wrote to his fiancee about the caning, he revealed the likelihood of further violence. “If the northern men had stood up,” he wrote, “the city would now float with blood. The fact is the feeling is wild and fierce.” Such a charged atmosphere would make it difficult to avoid additional fights. “Everybody here feels as if we are upon a volcano,” Keitt continued, hinting at the catharsis he suggested only violence could provide. “I am glad of it, for I am tired of stagnation.”⁹

Library of Congress

Laurence Keitt (left) and James L. Orr

The “sharp crack” that sliced through the normal soundscape of the Senate that day not only signaled an appalling assault on Senator Charles Sumner. It also heralded a new phase of the nation’s political conflict over slavery. As so often happens, violence spawned further violence. More immediately, though, the caning unleashed volley after volley of rhetoric—words justifying the violent act, words decrying it, words trying to make sense of what it really meant that one man had beaten another man unconscious in the Senate chamber. After May 22, 1856, aggressive language and aggressive behavior would spiral together with new intensity, driving the political polarization that ultimately led to civil war.

Most white southerners and the supporters of slavery lauded Brooks for inflicting a just punishment on an enemy who had gone too far in criticizing the South. Across the South, in private letters as well as newspaper columns, expressions of approval rang out. Brooks also received “rewards”: commemorative silver goblets, pitchers, and a large number of replacement canes. A public meeting at Clinton, South Carolina, praised Brooks for “using arguments stronger than words,” and presented him with a cane marked “Use knock down arguments.” Supporters rallied around the catchphrase “hit him again.” Although some southerners quietly bemoaned the caning, particularly the fact that it had taken place in the revered space of the Senate, these voices were drowned out by enthusiastic cheerleading, often tinged with support for more violence in the future.¹⁰

On the other end of the spectrum, African Americans and many white northerners were appalled, seeing Brooks’ act as an unjustified—and dishonorable—surprise attack. “To take a man at a disadvantage is as dastardly, as to attack a child or a woman,” commented The New-York Observer. “There is no courage, no chivalry, no manliness in such a deed.” This was more than an attack on the body of Charles Sumner. It was an attack on free speech—an attack on the principle that senators and congressmen, in particular, ought to be able to express themselves freely in debate without fear of physical reprisal. The best-known lithographic depictions of the caning published in the wake of the incident make this point powerfully. In John Magee’s “Southern Chivalry,” Brooks brandishes a stout stick (thicker than the real-life cane) while Sumner holds a pen in one hand and rolled-up papers in another. In Winslow Homer’s “Arguments of the Chivalry,” Sumner holds a pen, an apparently feeble defense against Brooks’ cane, and the image’s caption includes “the symbol of the North is the pen; the symbol of the South is the bludgeon.” Words against violence, free speech against slaveholder tyranny—this is what the caning boiled down to in northern eyes.¹¹

Brooks “was but the agent of the Slave Power: all the South will justify his deed,” declared one Boston minister. In recent years northerners had become increasingly resentful of slaveholders’ grip on political power. To them, violence in Kansas and Congress indicated a troubling escalation of attempted Slave Power domination. As The New York Times put it, “The logic of the plantation, brute violence and might, has at last risen where it was inevitable it should rise to—the Senate of the United States.”¹²

In the eyes of many northern commentators, a line had been crossed and it was now time to actively resist the tyranny of the Slave Power. “In short, violence is the order of the day,” concluded the New York Evening Post. “[T]he North is to be pushed in the wall by it, and this plot will succeed, if the people of the free States are as apathetic as the slaveholders are insolent.” In other words, northerners must fight back. An Ohio newspaper reached the same conclusion after reflecting on the pattern of slaveholder brutality from the Sumner caning to the proslavery “border ruffians” who assaulted their “Free-Soiler” opponents in Kansas. Either the free states must submit “or else violence must be met by violence; blow given back for blow, blood demanded for blood, and life for life.”¹³

Library of Congress

Reactions to Brooks’ assault on Sumner broke down largely along sectional lines, with southerners generally offering words of support and encouragement and northerners voicing outrage and disdain. Among the latter expressions was Winslow Homer’s lithographic depiction of the attack titled “Arguments of the Chivalry” (above).

There were more moderate voices in both regions, to be sure. Southerners in cities like Baltimore, Louisville, and St. Louis were less likely to support Brooks. Their most frequent complaint was not that the attack should not have occurred, but that it should not have taken place in the Senate. In the North, newspapers affiliated with the Democratic Party blamed Sumner’s intemperate language as much as Brooks’ thirst for revenge for what had happened. Yet for the most part the caning drove the wedge of North-South division deeper, separating a growing number of Americans into those who believed abolitionist words justified proslavery violence and those who did not.

Some commentators rued the political purposes to which extremists were putting the caning. In North Carolina, the Fayetteville Observer was alarmed by the escalating dynamic of polarization, lamenting how Brooks’ attack had galvanized northern indignation, which in turn motivated southerners to circle their wagons around Brooks. A Tennessee newspaper disapproved of both Sumner’s speech and Brooks’ response—and the way partisans of both men were now agitating around the event. Particularly maddening were northern newspaper editors “making most precious asses of themselves” as they gave “a sectional and political character and importance to an outrage committed under passion, kindled by language toward an absent kinsman, such as had never before been heard in the Senate chamber.”¹⁴

In the weeks afterward, several northern newspapers reprinted selections of commentary on the caning from a variety of other publications. Reflecting their readers’ seeming appetite for sensational news, editors reprinted excerpts that illustrated each section at its most extreme. Abolitionist publications such as The Liberator and The National Era were clearly pleased to reproduce from southern newspapers “displays of Southern billingsgate, cowardice and ruffianism.” When The National Era printed a selection of excerpts from both northern and southern newspapers, it chose articles that were particularly extreme: a northern paper that advocated more violence in response to the caning, and several southern papers that not only approved of Brooks’ act but also called for additional violence where necessary. The editors involved surely recognized what they were doing in reprinting stories about violence that stimulated violence. The continuum of pugnacious words and acts would go on and on.¹⁵

The most significant political effect of the caning was to turn moderate northerners away from longstanding party alliances with their southern counterparts. Before the mid-1850s, America’s party system cut across regional lines, dampening the potential for North-South conflict; now, it mirrored and aggravated the regional divide. It happened that 1856 was a crucial election year and Brooks’ May 22 assault was perfectly timed to exacerbate the forces already upending national politics. The old party system of Democrats versus Whigs was breaking down, but it was not yet clear what new configuration would replace it. Provocative depictions of the man behind the cane, vilified as the embodiment of Slave Power aggression, galvanized support for the new Republican Party. During 1856, Republicans transitioned from minor players to a major political force, in part because they capitalized so effectively on the Sumner caning and the growing violence in Kansas, portraying themselves as the party of free speech in opposition to the vicious Slave Power.

Politicians on both sides of the divide recognized the power of the caning to inspire northern support for the new party and its presidential candidate, John C. Frémont. During the run-up to the election, Brooks’ fellow South Carolina congressman James L. Orr protested northerners’ use of the caning “to operate on the public mind in regard to the coming presidential election.” Noting that 100,000 additional copies of Charles Sumner’s speech were being printed for circulation, Orr called it “an electioneering document for the Republican party.” Years later, Republican politician Alexander K. McClure reflected on the crucial political turning point of 1856: “By great odds the most effective deliverance made by any man to advance the Republican party was made by the bludgeon of Preston S. Brooks.”¹⁶

Frémont’s opponent, Democrat James Buchanan, won the White House. Yet the election, thanks to the caning among other factors, was a consequential fork on the road to the Civil War. By cementing the upward trajectory of the Republican Party, 1856 pointed toward the election of a Republican candidate in 1860. And the fact that the new party’s appeal was largely confined to the northern states pointed toward an increased likelihood of political division sparking a regional conflict.

By the time the Republican Party prevailed in 1860, Preston Brooks was dead. Following his historic attack in May 1856, he came to an ironically pitiful end the next January, asphyxiating from a throat disease in a Washington hotel room.

After Brooks’ death, with national political tensions ever deepening, congressmen became more likely than ever to resort to violence. Historian Joanne Freeman has noted an increasing willingness among northern congressmen to fight back against southern oppression in the years after the caning. As one New Jersey newspaper noted, the caning reinforced an unfortunate tendency “to introduce violence as a means of political action and to intimidate into submission those who think fit to oppose certain public measures.” According to South Carolina Senator James Henry Hammond, in the late-1850s Congress “the only persons who do not have a revolver and a knife are those who have two revolvers.” During a House debate over the Lecompton Constitution—a proposed proslavery constitution for Kansas—in February 1858, Brooks’ South Carolina comrade Keitt came to blows with Pennsylvania Republican Galusha Grow. After Grow knocked Keitt down, Democrats and Republicans rushed in, instigating a general melee that involved some 30 combatants. Comedy helped defuse the fray when an opponent grabbed Mississippian William Barksdale by the hair—only for Barksdale’s toupee to fall off.¹⁷

The decade’s most spectacular act of violence took place in October 1859 in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. The abolitionist John Brown and his comrades entered the town with the intention of stealing firearms from the federal armory there, weapons that could then be used to arm an uprising of enslaved people. The raid failed miserably, leaving 10 of Brown’s men and six civilians dead. Brown would be hanged for committing treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia—though not before cultivating a public image of himself as a noble martyr, using righteous violence to fight a holy war against slavery. Brown’s message resounded across the country, that violence was the only means capable of bringing an end to the sinful institution. His message was framed in large part as a necessary and proportionate response to the endemic violence of slavery: the everyday abuse of enslaved people, the brutality of proslavery settlers in Kansas, and the public violence of slaveholders embodied by Brooks. It was a message that echoed loudly among northerners in the coming years, perhaps most memorably in Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address in 1865—words that helped spur John Wilkes Booth to his own act of political violence.

It would be going too far to claim that Preston Brooks’ caning of Charles Sumner caused the Civil War. However, 170 years after that fateful afternoon, Brooks’ act looms large among incidents on the road to open sectional conflict. Brooks’ anger became one of the most powerful symbols of the Slave Power, which generated so much northern hostility against the South. In facilitating the rapid rise of the Republican Party in 1856, the caning helped set the stage for Republican success in the presidential election of 1860, which, of course, triggered secession and then war.

The caning also transformed the way Americans thought about the role of violence in the ongoing political fight over slavery. It was not the first offensive in the struggle. Violence was already underway in Kansas, in Washington, D.C., on plantations across the South, and in those parts of the country where abolitionists fought to free victims of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. Yet the caning stood out then, as it stands out now, as a watershed moment. An unprecedented incursion into the sacred space of the U.S. Senate, it sparked wide-ranging debate over the right to free speech versus the right to use force against it, and it evoked dangerous desires for further bloodshed on both sides of the conflict. In assaulting Sumner, Brooks shifted prevailing beliefs about what kinds of speech, and what kinds of actions, were conceivable in the fight over slavery. Violence begat violence. The ultimate results would unfold over four long years of war that ended with hundreds of thousands of Americans dead, 4 million African Americans freed—and a nation preserved through bloodshed.

Paul Quigley is James I. Robertson Jr. Associate Professor of Civil War Studies at Virginia Tech, where he also serves as director of the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies and director of the Center for Humanities. His latest book is The Man Behind the Cane: Preston Brooks, Political Violence, and the Road to the Civil War (Oxford University Press), on which this article is based.

Harlan Paige, 4th Vermont Infantry

Harlan Paige arrived in Washington on September 24, 1861, fresh from his family’s farm near the town of Barnard, in the green hills of eastern Vermont. At 22, he enlisted as a private in the 4th Vermont Infantry, which was brigaded with the state’s 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 6th regiments in what was soon dubbed the Vermont Brigade, commanded by William F. “Baldy” Smith. It would become well known as one of the most dependable, hard-fighting units in the Army of the Potomac.

The son of a church deacon and farmer, Paige was accustomed to manual labor on Vermont’s rugged soil and adapted easily to army life. Hardy, good-natured, and patriotic, he rarely complained of the rigors of campaigning and was sustained through some of the war’s bloodiest battles by an almost mystical conviction that he would survive. Highly literate, he wrote regularly and vividly to his younger brother Asa, his fiancee, Carlin Elizabeth Moulton, and other family members and friends. His letters, never before published, eloquently chronicle his evolution from a callow farm boy into a tough veteran soldier.

The 4th Vermont was initially billeted near Chain Bridge, one of the strategic crossings of the Potomac River into Virginia. “Although it is Sunday,” Paige wrote home, “it seems very much like the Fourth of July; the band is playing and companies are marching; men are at work on all sorts of business. I am well and think this life will agree with me. Still, I would not have any suppose that I like to be fooling about doing nothing, as we are, for I am here to work.”¹ Like most volunteers in the war’s early months, Paige expressed confidence that the war would be brief. “We are in plain sight of old Virginia, and all I want is a word to send us over there pell mell,” he wrote cockily, on September 24. Six weeks later, he still remained buoyant. “I think the war will be pushed forward with the greatest possible vigor now and be closed up soon.”²

Library of Congress (McClellan), National Portrait Gallery

Ambrose Burnside (left) and George B. McClellan

The months passed slowly. With little else to write about, Paige reported on his health (generally good except for a bout of dysentery), his occasional battles with the “white horse cavalry” (that is, lice), and his receipt of boxes from home.³ Paige fretted that the war would end before he even saw a battle. In March 1862, he finally got his wish when the Vermont Brigade moved south as part of William B. Franklin’s newly formed VI Corps to join the 120,000 soldiers mobilized for George B. McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign against Richmond. (En route, at Fortress Monroe, Paige saw “the little iron gun-boat, Monitor, which gave the rebel Merrimac so good a service. It looked like a little mud scow among the many large vessels around.”⁴) He had his first taste of battle on April 16, near Yorktown, where the Vermont Brigade “had a little squabble with Secesh.” He lightly reassured Asa, “I am not scratched, though I thought I heard humming birds”—that is, bullets—flying past his ears.⁵ At Williamsburg, he was again close enough to the action to hear “the whizzing of shot and shell, the popping of muskets and the yells of the men, as they made several charges.”⁶ Afterward, he saw the debris of battle for the first time: “the road was strewn with wagons, horses, mules, quartermasters’ stores, parts of cannon, and all sorts of camp equipage. Everything spoiled, of course, especially the horses and mules, which were smelling nicely.”⁷

By May 27, the 4th Vermont was camped 8 miles from Richmond. Paige brightly quipped, “I would like to go over to Richmond and take dinner some day, but we are not allowed so far from camp yet.”⁸ He wasn’t alone in wondering why the army was moving so slowly when it was close enough to the Confederate capital to hear church bells ringing. “[S]till it is better to move slow and sure than to move fast and make bad mistakes. I think McClellan is doing nobly and, if let alone, will do the work before him to the satisfaction of all concerned.”⁹

In fact, McClellan’s hapless campaign had already passed its high-water mark. He was forced by repeated Confederate jabs at Mechanicsville, Gaines’ Mill, Savage’s Station, White Oak Swamp, Glendale, and Malvern Hill to back away from Richmond. By July 10, to Paige’s puzzlement, the army had retreated to the James River. He reported, “I certainly can’t see the need of falling back…. [W]e took our time and whipped the scoundrels in every battle.” But he remained irrationally hopeful. “We are now near Harrison’s Landing. We have any amount of boats here, and I hope some move will be made to prove that our retreat was not made merely to save our bacon.”¹⁰

In truth, of course, McClellan’s campaign had been a strategic failure. In the following weeks, a note of discouragement began to surface in Paige’s correspondence. On July 26, he confessed to Carlin, “Many hours, too, the soldier passes in solitude, his mind far away among his friends, where he himself would soon be, could he be free to do as he chose. But can we gain a lasting and honorable peace, I, for one, will never regret the inconvenience and privations incident to a soldier’s life. But what is the use of talking of war, and things we cannot prevent?”¹¹ More caustically, he wrote to Asa, “What this war is agoing to amount to, I don’t know, nor care much. I am getting sick of it, and would be glad were I never to see or hear another sight or sound of war.”¹² By the end of August the Vermont Brigade was back at Alexandria, which it had left armed with high hopes in the spring. To Carlin, he groused, “Quite a tour we have had, exploring the Chickahominy and other places on the Peninsula. I don’t know, or care, what is to be done now, hope [the generals] will drive their team to suit them.”¹³

Library of Congress

As with many wartime volunteers, Harlan Paige’s first months in the army went smoothly and without incident. “[I]t seems very much like the Fourth of July; the band is playing and companies are marching…. I am well and think this life will agree with me,” he wrote home shortly after arriving in Virginia with the 4th Vermont Infantry. Above: Members of the 4th Vermont’s band.

Although some units of the Army of the Potomac arrived in northern Virginia in time to take part in Second Bull Run, the VI Corps was not among them in that Union defeat. However, the Vermont Brigade soon saw enough action during the Maryland Campaign to make up for what they had missed. On September 20, 1862, Paige reported to presumably worried friends in Boston, “I scratch a few words to let you know that I survived two battles.”¹⁴ On September 14, the Vermonters overran the Confederate lines to seize Crampton’s Gap at South Mountain, taking 75 prisoners and the colors of the 16th Virginia Infantry. Three days later, in the charnel house of Antietam, the brigade was held in reserve in a cornfield near the Piper farm, but it was no picnic. “We marched through a piece of corn, with a small rise of ground between us and secesh,” Paige wrote to Asa. “We threw out skirmishers, on the top of the rise, and were then ordered to lie down. Cannonading and infantry firing was kept up that day, and ceased only with the shades of evening, when the groans of the wounded only disturbed the quiet of the night. The next morning all was gone in the shape of rebs. We then took a view of the field, which was strewn with dead and wounded; the dead very much swollen and black. Everywhere fences were torn down, houses shattered and burned, horses and man—parts of cais[s]ons stove up all in confusion. We then left the field, which I hope is the last I ever shall see of that kind.”¹⁵

By November, the Lincoln administration had finally lost patience with McClellan, whose dilatory behavior had repeatedly hobbled his army and was felt to have cost it a more decisive victory at Antietam. To replace him, the president selected the reluctant Ambrose Burnside, commander of the IX Corps, who had performed well as a subordinate but doubted his ability to lead the entire army. Even after his dismissal, “Little Mac” remained widely popular with ordinary soldiers, including Paige. To Carlin, Paige grumbled, “Was not McClellan all we could ask for in a leader? Ask the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac where their confidence is. Their answer will be, ‘In God and McClellan.’” Recently promoted to sergeant, Paige blamed McClellan’s removal on the unfriendly northern press. Writing to Asa from “Camp Desolation, in the cursed wilderness of Virginia,” he furiously declared, “All those miserable newspapers are good for is to keep soldier’s friends in anxiety, and to ruin Geo. B. McClellan, the best general our army ever had. Oh! I could shoot some of those editors, with a relish, and ’twould be a blessing to the country, too.”¹⁶

Barely a week later, on December 13, Burnside led the army to disaster in what Paige caustically described as “the grand squeegee” at Fredericksburg.¹⁷ The 4th Vermont lost some 50 men killed and wounded as they fought in support of John Gibbon’s division at the so-called “Slaughter Pen,” on the southern part of the battlefield. On December 18, Paige wrote to Asa: “I had the best chance for a view that I have ever had; that is, the nearest to ’em. We had a reb battery in front of where our company was skirmishing, and Co. B of the 4th, got a charge of cannister from it which killed two and wounded eighteen; pretty good shot that! But our batteries kept playing on them, and soon blew up a caisson for them (which made the third blown up that day) and we boys played the Minnies to them and soon had the satisfaction of seeing the cannoneers skedaddle.” Paige emerged from the battle unscathed. The army as a whole was less fortunate, losing twice as many men as the enemy in its worst defeat of the war. Paige added gloomily, “Give us little Mack again is all I ask, and that is the cry generally among the soldiers here.”¹⁸

The winter’s chill only added to Paige’s discouragement, a feeling he shared with the rest of the army. “The nights are cold enough to freeze the feathers off a cast-iron chicken,” he told Asa.¹⁹ His depression grew after Burnside’s attempted offensive in January—the hapless “Mud March”—was derailed by days of heavy rain. “Well, the whole thing made a charge on a mud-hole and we carried everything before us,” he complained to a friend. “But you ought to have seen the mud fly, ha! Wasn’t it fun? No sir, I reckon not!”²⁰

In May 1863, Paige was on furlough in Vermont during the Chancellorsville Campaign, where the Vermont Brigade saw fierce action in the capture of Marye’s Heights and then at Salem Church. In July, at Gettysburg, the brigade was held in reserve at the extreme left of the Federal line. The Union triumph renewed Paige’s hope that the war’s end might actually be at hand after all. “The rebels were well whipped, and if the reports [of the fall of Vicksburg] are correct, the rebellion is near an end,” he wrote excitedly to Carlin on July 8.²¹ Two days later, the Vermont Brigade found itself in fierce, if little-remembered, combat, at Funkstown, Maryland, where it bravely fended off a spirited Confederate attack by George T. Anderson’s Virginians, in the last blood shed before the Army of Northern Virginia slipped back across the Potomac River into Virginia. Paige wrote to Carlin, “We found the rebels plenty, but gave them better than they sent,” losing two men killed and about twenty wounded.²² To Asa he added a few days later, with what amounted to a verbal shrug, “I suppose we shall start for Richmond again, very soon and, as it is the third time, I hope it may be the last and I think it will.”²³

While the Army of the Potomac rested and refitted, in mid-July New York City exploded in bloody riots against the new federal military draft. For five days, mobs of working men and women, many of them Irish, battled city policemen and a handful of soldiers, attacking the homes of abolitionists and prominent Republicans, and murdering at least a dozen black civilians. Approximately 500 New Yorkers may have died before the turmoil was finally quelled by veteran troops hurriedly dispatched from the Army of the Potomac. The 4th Vermont was among the units sent “to keep order among the miserable foreigners,” as Paige put it in a letter to Carlin, on September 7.²⁴ (Betraying a nativist streak not uncommon among New England Yankees, Paige later wrote to Asa, on December 19, “I wouldn’t care if those N.Y. Paddies could be put to sea in a leaky boat; I think the country would be well off.”)²⁵

Harper’s Weekly

Not long after taking part in the Union victory at Gettysburg, Paige and the 4th Vermont were among the troops dispatched to New York City to aid in quelling violent riots (depicted above in an illustration from Harper’s Weekly) that had broken out protesting the federal military draft.

Paige’s brief tour of duty in Manhattan was a welcome holiday from campaigning. The Vermonters were billeted in Washington Square Park, in the heart of Greenwich Village. “There is quite a difference, soldiering in the wilderness of Virginia, and soldiering in the heart of New York City; I think I prefer the latter,” Paige wrote dryly to Asa, on August 24. “Were on the boat three days and nights; I was not much sea-sick, though there were a great many of the boys who raised things at a terrible rate. We arrived here last Friday and have been having a very good time ever since. If I could get a short furlough, you would see me over in Boston some morning, but that I cannot do. But perhaps you might contrive to get up a little riot, and get us ordered over there.” Grateful New Yorkers brought the Vermonters books, papers, religious tracts, and foodstuffs. “All sorts of people are in here to see us, for old troops from the field are something like a menagerie, everyone wants to see how they look,” he wrote to Carlin on the 29th. “Then we have music plenty, of all kinds; hand organs, violins, harps, accordions, and all sorts of instruments are made to squeak from morning till night.”²⁶ To Asa, he dryly added, the regiment also enjoyed “the amount of feminines in the park, who style themselves ladies, though I reckon there is some doubt about it.”²⁷

In the autumn, Paige and the 4th Vermont returned to Virginia. They spent weeks marching and countermarching to little effect as the Army of the Potomac jockeyed with Robert E. Lee’s Confederates for advantage across the region. The Vermonters eventually settled with resignation into winter quarters at Brandy Station. “This makes the sixth time this brigade has crossed to the south side of the Rappahannock.” Paige added, with an almost audible sigh, “What more is to be done, I don’t know.”²⁸

The Union’s ranks were sorely depleted. Draft evasion was widespread, and desertions on the rise. With the three-year enlistments of Paige and the rest of the Vermont Brigade—as well as scores of other regiments—due to expire in 1864, official pressure built on veteran units to reenlist. States, counties, and towns were offering generous bounties. But Paige declared to all and sundry that once his term expired he was done with soldiering. To Carlin, he asserted, “Money never hired me to go into the army, and never will. They may pile greenbacks as high as a mountain but it will not tempt me, for money should not tempt men to risk their lives. This is my last winter in Dixie.”²⁹ To Asa, he wrote on November 15, “The big bugs at home, and here too, are trying to get us to reenlist, but it is a long day hence that will see my name on their papers. I do not wish you to think that I am losing my patriotism, or that I am sorry in the least that I came out here, but I do curse the dastardly hounds”—presumably politicians—“who are making capital out of our misery and sufferings, and are still trying to keep us in the field.”³⁰

Harlan Paige Papers, Silver Special Collections, University of Vermont

Paige was adamant that his younger brother Asa (pictured above with his wife) stay out of the army. In March 1864, he wrote Asa, “I will do the fighting for us both…. I never want to see you in the service, and never will, so long as I can keep you out.”

On December 19, in a letter to Asa, he added, “I guess the reenlisting of this regiment will pretty much fall through; it is a regular pack of nonsense anyway and only makes a bother. Yesterday the boys had a chance to witness an affair that will encourage them to enlist greatly. Two men were executed, by shooting in our Brigade; Blowers, of Co. A, 2nd Vt., and Tague, of Co. A, 5th Vt., both for desertion. The ceremony was performed in the usual way; the men rode in ambulances, on their coffins, to the place of execution. Reaching the place, the coffins were placed at the ends of their graves, and the men came forward, took off their hats, received their sentence, then went back beside their coffins and a short address was made by the chaplain of the 5th, after which they kneeled on their coffins and were shot; both were very cool. This seems rough, but I think it is just, for a man has no excuse for doing what they did.”³¹

Although Asa’s letters to his brother do not survive, they may have discussed Asa’s suggestion that he take Harlan’s place in the regiment. In his replies, Paige had usually avoided overly graphic details of suffering and battlefield horrors, instead opting for a tone of jaunty self-confidence that minimized what he had seen and experienced. If Paige had borne the trial of war so well, Asa may have reasoned, then he could too. But Paige was adamant, virtually ordering Asa to pay for a substitute in case he was drafted. He wrote to Asa on February 2, 1864, “If money will clear you, keep out, and if you have not money enough I have some for you.”³² In March, he wrote again: “If there is a draft, look out for No. 1, sharp. (Don’t you come.)”³³

But after his months of promises to come home to civilian life, Paige’s friends and family were in for a shock. “Perhaps you will be surprised by what I am going to tell you, but when you hear my reasons, I think you will say I am right,” he wrote to Asa on March 28. “I have reenlisted and my reasons are that I am in the service, have become accustomed to the life and can get along here as well as at home. Then I have just got to where I can get some benefit of this thing. I have served so long for merely nothing, now I want to get some of the greenbacks.” He had totaled up the rewards: his sergeant’s pay of $20 per month, plus another $7 from the state of Vermont, a federal bounty of $702, plus another bounty of $300 from the Town of Barnard. Paige continued, “I have been Orderly Sergeant for nearly two months and stand a good chance to get a commission before many months, that is another inducement. Now, were I to go home at the expiration of my first term, I should not have money enough to start with; but as I am, I am coming out with a decent pile. I will do the fighting for us both and you go home onto the farm, what do you say? I never want to see you in the service, and never will, so long as I can keep you out.”³⁴

Reenlistment also rewarded Paige with another monthlong furlough, during which he married Carlin, on April 27. His absence from the army delayed his return to Virginia just long enough to ensure that he missed the initial hellish battles of Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign—the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House—where the Vermont Brigade suffered heavy losses. “Don’t you think I was lucky reenlisting? I dodged the greatest ball of the season,” he wrote to Asa on May 21.³⁵ Four men were killed and about 20 wounded in his company, several of them men from Barnard. Despite the regiment’s losses, he felt a renewed optimism. “I think this fight will decide the thing,” he wrote to Carlin on May 16. “I think Grant is coming out all right.”³⁶ It was the first time he had praised a commander since McClellan.

Paige rejoined his regiment in time to fight with it at Cold Harbor. The Vermont Brigade was one of those tapped to charge the maze of impregnable Confederate breastworks, in what Grant later admitted was his worst decision of the war. Grant lost almost 13,000 men, more than 1,800 of them killed in the hopeless assaults. Paige wrote to Carlin, with almost unbelievable nonchalance, on June 5, two days after the battle, “I will say that I got a little tunk on my head yesterday by a stray ball, but it is not worth mentioning. I am not hurt scarcely at all, just a graze of the skin. I am in the best of spirits, and feel that I shall come out all right.”³⁷ To Asa, he added, the next day, “I have bled a few drops for my country. But I am all right, and the little scratch is getting fast well.”³⁸ In fact, he had nearly been killed, having been struck by a bullet on the left side of his head halfway between his ear and his crown. Three weeks later, the wound still had not healed, although he again insisted to his wife that “it had been of no trouble to me, more than to make it quite sore.”³⁹ Nonetheless, against the odds, Paige had once again survived. At the start of the Overland Campaign, the Vermont Brigade had mustered 2,850 men; now only 1,200 were left.

By the end of June, the Vermonters were in the trenches before Petersburg. There, they lived in relative comfort, Paige assured Asa, “as we have splendid earthworks, and can sit or stand in them, read, write, or cook as we like, and are relieved often to go back and rest up.” At Petersburg, he also encountered black troops for the first time. To Carlin he wrote, “We have just been laughing at the remarks of some negro soldiers who are here. They are death on rebs, and when they get a chance at one, he has to suffer. They want to fight and we fellows want they should. [They] were guarding the rebs [prisoners], and it was terribly galling to the consciences of the Graybacks.”⁴⁰ Paige’s ambivalence toward blacks reflected that of many—probably most—northerners, even those from New England, the heartland of the abolitionist movement. Paige opposed slavery, but sprinkled his letters with occasional racial slurs, and at least implicitly supported the idea of sending emancipated slaves back to Africa, a policy known as “colonization,” as an alternative to integrating them into American society. (Back in 1862, on May 28, he had written, “We see plenty of slaves, and I am heartily tired of it; and God speed the time when the negro shall be free and on his own side of the Atlantic.”)⁴¹

Library of Congress

Paige first encountered black soldiers in the trenches at Petersburg (some of whom are shown in the above photo from August 1864). He noted in a letter home, “They are death on rebs, and when they get a chance at one, he has to suffer. They want to fight and we fellows want they should.”

In the weeks and months to come, the Army of the Potomac steadily pushed its lines westward around Petersburg in an effort to isolate the city and cut the railroads that carried supplies from the Confederacy’s hinterlands to Richmond. In a movement against the Weldon Railroad, on June 23, the 4th Vermont was deployed as skirmishers and found itself far in advance of the rest of the brigade. Confederate troops from Mississippi and Florida suddenly appeared from the surrounding woods, cutting the Vermonters off and taking prisoner nearly 400 of its men in the regiment’s worst defeat of the war. As many as 70 percent of the captured men may have died in Confederate prison camps. When the regiment reassembled, only 110 men were left. One of them, in another instance of his extraordinary good fortune, was Harlan Paige. “We had close work and I thought I had a through ticket for Richmond sure, but I am all right, safe and healthy,” he wrote to Asa. “We saved our colors and are now organized into two companies. Our colors have over a hundred bullets in it.”⁴² To Carlin he added, on June 24, “I have always felt that I should be protected, and I am still sure of it.”⁴³

In an attempt to loosen Grant’s grip on Petersburg, Lee embarked on a bold and risky strategy by ordering an army corps under Jubal Early to surge north through the Shenandoah Valley to threaten Washington and Baltimore—and prompt Grant to weaken his besieging army by sending reinforcements northward. After breaking through an outnumbered Union line at the Monocacy River, Early’s force bore down on the nation’s capital, which had been nearly denuded of troops. On the night of July 9, the Vermont Brigade and other elements of the VI Corps were suddenly pulled out of the Petersburg lines and ordered posthaste to the defense of Washington. On July 12, Early’s exhausted troops were defeated by Union forces at Fort Stevens, inside the boundary of the District of Columbia, within sight of the Capitol dome, and forced to fall back toward their base in the Shenandoah Valley.

Paige wrote to Carlin on July 13, “I had just got fairly asleep when the order came to pack up and fall in, which we did, and marched to City Point and took transports and came to [Washington]. We found that the rebs were within four miles of Washington and the citizens of that little place well frightened, all armed and very glad to see us. We know that the Capital is safe, for the 6th Corps is here, and if Secesh wants a quantity of the biggest kind of shell, we want them to come, but we do not fear that they will. Yesterday a lady went on the line and fired away at the rebs a number of times. Old Abe was out, but he did not shoot.” He added blithely, “It is a beautiful day and I have been picking blueberries this morning.”⁴⁴

With the siege of Petersburg settling into a stalemate, Grant had dispatched the VI Corps to the Shenandoah Valley to lend additional heft to the new army that was gathering to pursue Early. Under that army’s aggressive commander, Philip Sheridan, the Vermont Brigade played a pivotal role at the Battle of Opequon, or Third Winchester, on September 19. The 4th Vermont formed part of the VI Corps’ left flank, charging through low, swampy terrain to appear in the face of Stephen Ramseur’s Confederate division, which they decisively put to flight. Paige was exhilarated. The regiment, he wrote to Carlin, “had the most splendid fight that I ever saw. The Vermont Brigade was in the front line and did nobly. I came out without a scratch and feeling first rate, well and hearty. We drove them like a herd of sheep. We are doing a glorious business. Hurrah! How we did scatter them!”⁴⁵ Two weeks later, on October 4, he wrote again to Carlin: “I never enjoyed a campaign as I have this. Oh! We have had a splendid time!” Paige also liked the well-stocked larders of the valley, enjoying quantities of—presumably looted—beef, pork, mutton, chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks, as well as plentiful fruits and vegetables. “We have lived tip-top here. The boys do not scruple to take apple-butter, honey and anything else they can find in the houses.”⁴⁶

As Sheridan’s army pushed up the valley, the presidential election was climaxing. As recently as July, Lincoln had feared defeat by McClellan—now his foe as the Democratic candidate—as war weariness beset the North, the appalling toll of the Overland Campaign sank into public consciousness, and antiwar Copperheads stridently attacked the administration. Like most soldiers after three years of bloody struggle, Paige felt outrage at those who called for peace at any price. There were even Copperheads in staunchly Republican Vermont, he learned. To Asa, he wrote, “It seems that your Secesh throw stones at your speakers, in public meetings, why don’t you fellows shoot a lot of the *****? Curse the hounds they deserve it! I would as soon fight a secesh in N.E. as in the south! And of the two, I think the southern rebs have the most honor about them. Old Abe is the man, and Abe we will have.”⁴⁷ Bolstered by William Tecumseh Sherman’s capture of Atlanta on September 2 and by other Union victories, Lincoln would ultimately trounce McClellan in November.

For Sheridan’s overconfident army in the Shenandoah Valley, the party ended, albeit only temporarily, at Cedar Creek. Early’s battered force proved to have more fight in it than the Federals expected. Early on the morning of October 19, the Confederates launched a surprise attack on the unsuspecting Union camp. They came close to crushing Sheridan’s entire army, overrunning the still-sleeping soldiers of the VIII Corps and much of the XIX Corps, harvesting prisoners by the thousands, and capturing scores of cannon. They were halted by the Vermont Brigade, which anchored the center of the VI Corps’ line. The Vermonters managed to cover the Union retreat until Sheridan arrived on the battlefield, stabilized his shaken troops, and led a triumphant counterattack that won the day. The Union lost some 4,000 men that day, more than 300 of them from the mauled but unbroken Vermont Brigade.

Harlan Paige Papers, Silver Special Collections, University of Vermont

Shortly after news of Robert E. Lee’s surrender reached him, Paige wrote his wife, Carlin (above), “I hardly know how to express my feelings. It seems as though I had awakened from a horrid dream…. Yes, thank God, the awful work is done.”

On the cusp of his 26th birthday, Paige wrote to Carlin: “Yesterday was a blue day with us but we came out alright. We had a hard fight, got driven in the morning, but charged them in the afternoon and captured fifty pieces of artillery, all the rebel wagon train, and a large number of prisoners. I was not injured, though a shell cut my saber and scabbard in two and hit my foot, so that I thought part of it was gone for a minute, but I am all right now. Three cheers for Gen. Sheridan and our glorious flag! I don’t think the Secesh will pitch into us again, as they got more than they bargained for.”⁴⁸ Paige’s assessment was correct. Early’s depleted army had no fight left in it. The Shenandoah Valley was now Union territory.

By December, the VI Corps was no longer needed in the valley and had returned to the trenches at Petersburg. Promoted to lieutenant, Paige now enjoyed the relative comfort of a large, well-heated tent shared with one fellow officer and furnished with a comfortable bunk, chairs, table, and plenty of good wool blankets. “And further we have a smart little Irishman to build our fire, cut the wood, bring water, black boots, make bed and keep tent in order,” he informed Carlin on January 1, 1865.⁴⁹ With Sherman’s capture of Savannah on December 22, and swelling numbers of Confederate deserters flowing into the Union lines, Paige felt that the end, at last, was near.

On April 2, the Vermont Brigade spearheaded the final, triumphant Federal assault on the overstretched and weakened Confederate line at Petersburg. At 4:30 a.m., the Vermonters broke from Fort Fisher to dash in the predawn gloom across a half-mile of open ground, tearing away obstructions, to take the Confederate breastworks in a storm of hand-to-hand fighting. The Confederate line soon crumbled. Thousands of Rebels surrendered as others fled into the surrounding woods. Although the Vermont Brigade lost 33 men killed and 161 wounded, Paige emerged from the battle, his last, once again unscathed.

On April 3, he wrote to Carlin, “Glory Hallelujah, Petersburg is ours! and Lee’s army is awfully whipped. Richmond is reported officially to be ours. I was in the fight all day yesterday, and am, thank God, still safe and unharmed. The 6th Corps, with the Vermont Brigade at its head, charged the Reb works yesterday morning at half an hour before daylight, and carried at the first onset. We then moved by the left flank, and charged down the line toward Hatcher’s Run, and swept everything before us for two miles, when we met the 24th Corps. Then we faced about and rushed for Petersburg, and charged the enemy about two miles in that direction. We lost but few. I am so much excited that I can hardly stop to write. Three cheers for the old flag—Hip! Hurrah!”⁵⁰

With the rest of the VI Corps, the Vermonters then joined Grant’s dogged pursuit of Lee’s dwindling army, sweeping up thousands of prisoners every day as they neared Appomattox Court House. News of Lee’s surrender reached Paige at the 4th Vermont’s bivouac at Farmville. On April 11, he wrote to Carlin, “I hardly know how to express my feelings. It seems as though I had awakened from a horrid dream, but Petersburg is taken and Lee has surrendered. We have heard the whistle of the last bullet, the whizz of the last shell. Yes, thank God, the awful work is done. Now we are indeed free; now the soldier can go home and feel that his work is well done; now we have a government that will stand come what may.”⁵¹ The next day, he wrote to her again, from his camp near Burkeville: “We see the Rebels, officers and men, traveling along with our own army; and when we ask them where they are going, they say ‘Home.’ Everyone here is talking of going home. Home is the word now; war is done. There is an intense satisfaction in knowing that I have done my duty in the war, and seen it closed.”⁵²

After the war, Paige and his wife moved to Dorchester, Massachusetts, a part of Boston. He never returned to farming. He served for a time as a policeman in Boston, “but the duties were not congenial,” his obituary somewhat cryptically stated. For the rest of his life Paige worked as a researcher and collector of fees for the publisher of the Dorchester city directory, a forerunner of what would later become the White Pages. In his 50s, he served on Dorchester’s common council and as a commander of the local branch of the Grand Army of the Republic. His war record was an honorable one, his obituary noted, “but one of which he is very modest in speaking.” He died on December 6, 1901, at 63, survived by his wife and two sons.⁵³

Fergus M. Bordewich’s most recent book is Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction (Knopf, 2023).

At the end of World War II, the United States squared off against its ally Russia for political and military supremacy in Europe—and then across the globe. This “cold war” involved Americans attempting to spread democratic ideals through Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America while simultaneously fighting communism. From Burt the Turtle teaching Atomic Age schoolchildren to “duck and cover” to McCarthyism and the fight against the “Red Menace” to Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev’s iconic “Kitchen Debate,” this undeclared war encompassed many facets of American life—and inevitably spilled into popular culture.

On the Hollywood front, nothing better signified how patriotic Americans imagined themselves—which is to say as rugged, independent, just, and democratic—than the protagonists of western movies. And given that scripting, no one carried more sway as a leading man with six-gun and saddle in the 1940s and 1950s than John Wayne. In Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Rio Grande (1950), and The Searchers (1956), Wayne portrayed tough but endearing characters—men with the kind of grit, fighting prowess, and can-do spirit that tamed the frontier, defeated fascism, and would rise to shield Americans from the false allures of communism.

Interestingly, the Civil War, or memories of it, often played a major role in promoting American values in these films, particularly with the inclusion of Confederate veterans. For example, in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Wayne’s Captain Nathan Brittles of the 2nd U.S. Cavalry—charged with corralling a band of armed Indians who, prompted by news of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, had fled their reservation—allows southern members of his command to conduct a special funeral service for a slain trooper who’d been a Confederate brigadier general in the war. They bury the man with a homespun Saint Andrew’s Cross atop his coffin and Brittles labels him “a gallant soldier and a Christian gentleman.” Scenes such as these presented audiences with a version of the conflict in which Confederate soldiers had been honorable men waging an honorable war with little or no connection to slavery. In other words, if they had ever stopped being true Americans, this made it much easier to bring them back.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the popularity of western movies combined with a booming postwar economy and technological advances (i.e., higher wages and affordable television sets). This was the formula for a surge in weekly, western-themed TV programs. Virtually all the new shows featured Civil War episodes that mirrored the Confederate “re-Americanization” model established in movie westerns of the previous decade. And because they were on television and didn’t require travel or tickets, these 30- and 60-minute stories were accessible to a wide new audience.

Cinematic/Alamy

In this still from the 1949 movie She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Captain Nathan Brittles of the 2nd U.S. Cavalry (John Wayne) and fellow troopers pay their respects to a fallen comrade who had served as an officer in the Confederate army—one of many portrayals of ex-Rebels in popular media at the time that glossed over the war’s causes and deep sectional animosities.

An episode of The Lone Ranger from 1955 began with a Confederate officer named Jeff Stanton returning home to learn that Union soldiers had destroyed much of his family’s farm. Worse still, his destitute father had been forced to sell the property to a “Yankee” just weeks earlier. Stanton curses northerners and heads with his younger brother to find work out west. In the wake of war, they can’t find employment, but do bump into the Lone Ranger (Clayton Moore), who asks about the Confederate insignia on Stanton’s hat. “I served with Early and Jackson,” Stanton answers defiantly, to which the Lone Ranger replies, “Both brave soldiers and fine gentlemen.” The brothers are surprised to learn that the Lone Ranger doesn’t consider himself either a southerner or a northerner: “I like to think of myself as an American who believes in the future of our country with its people living and working together.” Later in the episode, after the Lone Ranger saves the Stantons from a scheming banker, one of the brothers asks the sheriff about the masked man’s true identity. “I don’t know his real name, son,” the sheriff confesses, “but I do know that he believes in our country as one nation, indivisible.”

The plot of a 1958 episode of Have Gun–Will Travel called “The Teacher” involved the enigmatic Paladin (Richard Boone) protecting a western school teacher from former Confederate bushwhackers. The Rebels allege the teacher has been lying to children about the infamous war-era guerrilla leader William Clarke Quantrill and threaten to burn down the school. Paladin attempts to rally the townspeople, some southern, some northern, but they all refuse to fight. When the Rebels show up to make good on their threat, Paladin guards the school, staring down all five of them with an American flag in the background. As the fight begins, a Yankee shopkeeper grabs a pistol and runs to help. Then three Confederate veterans—one having lost an arm at Chickamauga—come charging down the street in their old uniforms, giving a Rebel yell. They force the leader of the Rebs to face Paladin, whence he’s exposed as a coward. The story ends with the townspeople putting their old regional differences behind them for the sake of their children and the future of the country.

In 1960, Bonanza revived the secession crisis with “A House Divided.” In the episode, a one-armed silver exporter named Frederick Kyle arrives in Virginia City looking for Little Joe Cartwright. Refined, honorable, and physically powerful even without his left arm, Kyle builds a friendship with Joe after saving him from a pair of thuggish card sharks. Joe’s late mother hailed from New Orleans, so he is the only member of the Cartwright family sympathetic to the “Southern Cause.” Kyle uses his connection with Joe to meet various mine owners in the Comstock area. Gradually, the rest of the Cartwrights discover that Kyle’s son died promoting secession, that Kyle lost his arm doing the same, and that he is now working as a financier for the Confederacy. If Kyle can secure enough precious metal for Jefferson Davis’ government, the war will begin in earnest. By episode’s end, Joe has, at least for the time being, come to his senses and rejoined his father and brothers on the Ponderosa.

All these programs prioritized the integration of ex-Confederates over recognition of the issues—among them being the expansion of slavery in the West—that had underpinned secession and triggered the war. The Lone Ranger promoted the bravery and honor of Stonewall Jackson and Jubal Early (while also disparaging William T. Sherman, a clear and easy nod to southern audiences); Have Gun–Will Travel allowed Confederate veterans to heroically distinguish themselves from murderous rabble and save the town schoolhouse in full uniform; and, in Bonanza, even after being exposed and temporarily thwarted by Ben Cartwright and his sons, Frederick Kyle is still presented as a dedicated, principled, even tragic figure.

Thus, through feats of commemorative sleight-of-hand, men who attempted to destroy the Union are almost offered as further evidence of American exceptionalism. And it’s worth pointing out that these episodes were hardly unique in their genre in the 1950s and 1960s. Over their various seasons, Gunsmoke, Wanted: Dead or Alive, The Rifleman, Wagon Train, and Rawhide all had scripts with similar themes. Whether one preferred Rowdy Yates (Clint Eastwood), Joshua Lucas (Steve McQueen), Matt Dillon (James Arness), or any of the other heroes of the TV West, the underlying moral was the same: Americans might clash with one another from time to time, but they were still rugged, independent, just, and democratic. As long as they came back together before the credits rolled, they were, this time, Cold War victors.

Matthew Christopher Hulbert is Elliott Associate Professor of History at Hampden-Sydney College. A specialist on the Civil War in the West, guerrilla violence, and film history, he is the author or editor of five books. His current projects include a new, narrative history of the Lawrence Massacre and a book about Abraham Lincoln in film.

The New Gymnastics for Men, Women, and Children (1862)

Illustration of a man wearing a crown from The New Gymnastics for Men, Women, and Children.

In 1862, New York physician Diocletian (“Dio”) Lewis, a longtime advocate for the benefits of physical exercise, published The New Gymnastics for Men, Women, and Children, a copiously illustrated primer on calisthenics. While most of his proposed workout routines incorporated dumbbells, beanbags, and 6-inch wooden rings, one featured an invention of his own creation: a weighted “gymnastic crown” to help its wearers achieve “an erect spine and an elastic gait.”

Lewis recommended that the “beautifully painted, and otherwise ornamented” iron device (depicted here in an illustration from the book)—which came in weights from 3 to 100 pounds and was padded so that it rested “pleasantly on the entire top of the head”—be worn by users “five to fifteen minutes morning and evening” while engaged in “ten different modes of walking” (including on the tips of the toes and with bent knees). As a result, Lewis assured readers, “the various muscles of the back will receive the most invigorating exercise” and “persons of both sexes, and of every age, who have round shoulders or weak backs, are rapidly improved.” It’s unknown how many people outside of Lewis’ own devoted followers ever tested the apparatus.

Library of Congress

Alexander Gardner photo

In this September 1863 image of war correspondents working for the New York Herald, Alexander Gardner makes a rare appearance in one of his studio’s images. Gardner, who had started working for Mathew Brady and now had his own studio—and his own fame—is seated at right. His face cannot be seen, but Gardner can be identified by his hat, his distinctive beard, and his hands and fingernails, which are blackened by the silver nitrate used in the process of preparing and developing glass plate negatives.

Timothy O’Sullivan, who worked for Gardner, made this and several other images of Herald headquarters and correspondents in the field at Bealeton, Virginia. The Herald, with an 1861 readership of 84,000, advertised itself as the “most largely circulated journal in the world,” and had at least 40 correspondents in the field during the Civil War, with one assigned to each division of the Army of the Potomac.

On November 8, just months after this image was made, Gardner would take his famous “Gettysburg Portrait” of Abraham Lincoln—one of the best-known wartime images of the president—days before Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address.

Bob Zeller is president of the nonprofit Center for Civil War Photography, which is devoted to collecting, preserving, and digitizing Civil War images.

Ronald S. Coddington Collection

Portrait of Abraham Joseph Mabbett

Behind this portrait of Abraham Joseph Mabbett, well-groomed and meticulously dressed in a tailored suit and military hat with a star on one side, is the story of a man who served the U.S. Army without enlisting.

Born in New York and raised in Maryland, Mabbett grew up in a Society of Friends settlement outside Washington, D.C. As a Quaker, he faced a dilemma shared by many of his faith when the Civil War came: how to support the Union without violating the peace testimony central to his religion. Rather than enlist, he served as a sutler to the 123rd New York Infantry, supplying goods to soldiers in the field. Sutlers were entrepreneurs, selling food, clothing, and small luxuries otherwise not available to troops. The best were honest traders, the worst, opportunists who preyed on men far from home. Mabbett seems to have been among the former, as evidenced by the distinctive star on his hat—the badge of the XII Corps, to which the 123rd belonged.

Organized in late 1862, the regiment fought its first battles at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. Newspaper reports indicate that Mabbett shuttled back and forth to Washington, probably gathering items to sell.

In late 1863, when the regiment received orders to head to Nashville, Mabbett followed. He posed for this portrait in a Nashville photographer’s gallery.

The 123rd went on to participate in various campaigns with Major General William T. Sherman’s army. Just how long Mabbett operated his sutlery is unknown, but anecdotes suggest he ended it before the 1864 Atlanta Campaign.

Mabbett returned to Maryland and made his home in Baltimore, where he prospered as owner of the Empire Steam Laundry. He died in 1893 at 57, a Quaker who found a way to serve without taking up arms.

Ronald S. Coddington is publisher of Military Images, a magazine dedicated to showcasing and preserving photos of Civil War soldiers and sailors.

An artistic rendering of what the site around the demolished Gettysburg Battlefield Military Museum on Baltimore Pike will look like after restoration.

More than 160 years after the fighting there, the Gettysburg Battlefield stands as a breathtaking witness to one of our nation’s defining moments. We at the American Battlefield Trust are in the midst of several transformational projects, including removing non-historic structures, restoring those that bore witness to the battle, installing needed interpretive markers and signage, and revitalizing the landscape so that the battle’s remarkable history more clearly emerges.

December 2025 marked a milestone in our ongoing restoration efforts when we completed the demolition of the building that once housed the Gettysburg Battlefield Military Museum and the other structure along Baltimore Pike. The removal of these modern buildings allows a much-improved view of Stevens’ Knoll, an area of the battlefield set aside for preservation in the 1860s. Additionally, the historic James McKnight House located nearby, fronting Baltimore Pike, is undergoing a dramatic restoration to its 1863 appearance. Ultimately, the Trust plans to have walking trails with interpretive signage and markers to help visitors better connect with events that took place on this part of the battlefield.

The power of place on the Gettysburg Battlefield is indisputable. I know this work to date will lead to a richer and deeper experience on what is hallowed ground, and I cannot wait for you to see it for yourself. But other ambitious projects are also on the horizon, which you can support by visiting battlefields.org/restore-gettysburg.

For decades, General Pickett’s Buffet was an iconic site in the Gettysburg community. But when the restaurant’s operation relocated to a new, larger venue, its longtime owners sold the original property to the Trust. Following a successful fundraising campaign, the Trust is engaged in a planning and permitting process to remove the building that has always marred the landscape of Pickett’s Charge and integrate the site into the adjacent parkland. This will make way for state-of-the-art interpretation, including place-based augmented reality tools. Before its demolition, the building will be available to the Gettysburg Fire Department for training exercises.

Across town, the area between McPherson Ridge and Herr’s Ridge, and just past Willoughby’s Run, saw intense fighting on the battle’s first day, July 1, 1863. In the 1940s, some 110 acres here became the Gettysburg Country Club, which operated into the 21st century. After the club closed, the course was added to the national park, but the remainder was proposed for intensive residential development. However, after significant local opposition and a permitting setback, the Trust was able to acquire the site in a series of good-faith negotiations. Our long-term plans envision removal of intrusive modern elements but retention of the original clubhouse, which was frequented by former President Dwight D. Eisenhower during his retirement years in Gettysburg. For the time being, that space is occupied by Cumberland Township; the Trust offered it rent-free to local police and administrators during a renovation of their permanent office space.

David Duncan is president of the nonprofit, nonpartisan American Battlefield Trust, which is dedicated to preserving America’s hallowed battlegrounds—Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and Civil War—and educating the public about their significance.

While McPherson didn’t make this statement with any one soldier’s wartime writings in mind—he examined countless such collections as part of his research—it certainly applies to the letters written by Harlan Paige during his Civil War service. Paige, who enlisted in the 4th Vermont Infantry in August 1861 and served through war’s end, regularly wrote home—mainly to his brother Asa and fiancée Carlin, whom he married in 1864. He shared his day-to-day life as a soldier, his thoughts on the war and its progress, and his several close calls in battle. His letters, often detailed and elegant, offer a telling look at the evolution of a raw recruit into a determined veteran soldier.

In this issue’s cover feature, “The Survivor,” author Fergus Bordewich tells Paige’s story through his trove of wartime letters, a source on Civil War soldiering as rich and candid as most any to be found. Have a comment about this or other articles in this issue? Email us at letters@civilwarmonitor.com.

Podcast News

The second season of our Civil War Curious podcast, where experts answer listeners’ questions about the conflict, will premiere in mid-March. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Not familiar with this or our other podcast series? Learn more on our website: civilwarmonitor.com.

Thank you for the terrific roundup of the Civil War’s biggest celebrities in your Winter 2025 issue [“The Headliners,” Vol. 15, No. 4]. It’s hard to argue with any of the names your panel of historians included on their list, though I was mildly surprised not to see Laura Keene among them. The British-born actress made a big name for herself as a performer in America in the 1850s and even opened her own theater in New York City a few years before the Civil War. However, Keene’s likely best known to Monitor readers as the lead actress in the performance of Our American Cousin held at Ford’s Theater on April 14, 1865, which Abraham Lincoln was seeing when he was assassinated. After John Wilkes Booth fled the theater, Keene made her way to the presidential booth and cradled the dying president’s head in her lap. She continued acting after the war and died of tuberculosis at 47 in 1873.

E.M. Mayer
Via email

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There is a more objective way to determine the biggest celebrities of the Civil War besides asking a panel of historians for their thoughts: Identify those people whose images appeared in mass-produced cartes de visite during the war. As it happens, comic singer Tony Pastor compiled a list of over 30 such celebrities for his song (published in May 1864) titled “The Carte-de-Visite Album.” Some of the names he mentions—Harriet Beecher Stowe, Horace Greeley, Elmer Ellsworth—made your list, while many others—including abolitionist Wendell Phillips, actress and painter Adah Menken, and prizefighter John Heenan—did not. A celebrity that both the Monitor and Pastor omitted but who deserves mention is humorist Charles Farrar Browne, better known as Artemus Ward, whose columns were often found on page one of period newspapers (a rare honor for a humorist).

John Braden
Fremont, Michigan

DRESSER QUESTION

Something seems off in Ronald Coddington’s profile of Union officer George Warren Dresser [“Faces of War: Wartime Zelig,” Vol. 15, No. 4]. Dresser was a West Pointer and served from 1861 to at least August 1864. He was brevetted to captain in that time. How is it that a West Pointer remained a lieutenant for at least three years? Did he get on the wrong side of too many commanding officers or was he just a screwup? In a war where commanding officers were sometimes in their twenties, it is hard to comprehend that Dresser’s only real promotion was from second to first lieutenant.

I always look forward to the arrival of the Monitor.

Henry Schwarzberg
Via email

Ed. Thanks for your comment, Henry, which we forwarded to Ron Coddington. He responds: “I can appreciate your surprise. The comparatively small size of the Regular Army to the Union volunteer forces resulted in fewer promotions for Dresser and other capable soldiers who remained in the Regulars during the conflict. A look at Dresser’s West Point Class reveals that roughly half ranked as captain and the other half as first lieutenant at the war’s end. His classmates who joined the volunteer army achieved higher rank. In Dresser’s case, I found no evidence of professional wrongdoing or ineptitude.”

MY WAR STORY

My thanks to Robert Lee Hodge for his presentation of Alexander Hunter’s detailed description of his experiences at Second Bull Run [“My War Story,” Vol. 15, No. 4]. I’ve read countless firsthand accounts of Civil War combat, and Hunter’s catapults toward the top of the list when it comes to capturing the fear, confusion, and adrenaline experienced by Billy Yank and Johnny Reb in battle. Please consider publishing similarly curated eyewitness descriptions of the conflict in future issues.

Kevin Manning
Via email

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I love The Civil War Monitor. I’m a Virginian and a recovering Lost Causer. I grew up a mile from Brandy Station, on the ground of J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry review before the battle there.

Your editorial in the Winter 2025 issue [“The Face of Battle,” Vol. 15, No. 4] spoke of the technological enhancement you had performed on the only known wartime photo of Confederate soldier Alexander Hunter. “We hope you agree that the results are powerful,” you wrote. Powerful, yes. However, I believe that it is wrong to manipulate the historical record in this way. Why not use the original wartime photo? I believe we are able to appreciate as much original information as possible in your journal.

Suzanne Crockett
Spring Hill, Florida

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I enjoyed the people-centric perspective of your Winter 2025 issue, as it brings us right into their stories as participants instead of just reading accounts of battles we’ve already read about. I was struck by the lifelike picture of Private Alexander Hunter on the issue’s cover. It shows a real person with a look of intensity in fighting for his cause, a character that the slow-motion photography of 1860–1865 could not capture. To me, the most interesting aspect of Hunter’s wartime story was how he was captured three times and spent so much time in northern POW camps. That must have become a routine experience for him by the third time, but he kept returning to duty and fought to the end. (I can imagine the Yankees saying, “You must like it up here, since you keep coming back.”)

Alan F. Sewell
Via email

BEST SHERMAN BOOKS

I eagerly devoured four of the five books recommended by Bennett Parten in your Spring 2025 issue [“The Five Best Books on William T. Sherman,” Vol. 15, No. 1] and was richly rewarded for having done so. (I skipped Sherman’s memoirs.) As these books make clear, Sherman was much more than Ulysses S. Grant’s trustworthy subordinate; his pre- and postwar life was similarly fascinating, eventful, and significant in developing him into the person he was. Thank you, Mr. Parten!

Larry Sykora
Seaside, Oregon

THE ENEMY WITHIN

Ben Roy’s article in your Fall 2025 issue on soldiers’ use, or lack thereof, of latrines [“The Enemy Within,” Vol. 15, No. 3] is one of the most interesting works to appear in the Monitor since its inception. Too often, studies of the war focus on the proliferation of disease in the army as a result of the association between soldiers from cities and those from rural areas, the latter of whom may have not obtained immunity due to lack of exposure to such illnesses. In Roy’s piece, we learn that in addition to Victorian (and indeed modern) sensibilities about privacy for the most intimate bodily functions, discipline was a key factor in preventing the proper positioning and employment of the “sinks.”

Historian George Washington Adams, in his work Doctors in Blue, is in agreement with Roy. Adams notes that some officers, especially those from the Regular Army, took such sanitation seriously and rigorously enforced hygiene as incidents of illness increased. Adams points out that William T. Sherman not only chose the location of the latrines but ensured that his men knew how to construct them. This likely helped not only with the cleanliness of water sources but encouraged the troops to dig sinks that were more than just holes in the ground. Indeed, the Army of the Cumberland, as Adams observes, constructed sinks “covered with tight, board platforms” that were topped with cracker boxes to serve as makeshift seats. Rather than simple pits with dirty edges—which, as Adams observes, “repelled [their] users, and would be condemned today”—the officers in that army made their best effort at providing some degree of comfort and cleanliness for the men. Adams notes that, by 1864, sanitary regulations were sufficiently instituted, especially within veteran units in which the officers finally comprehended the importance of cleanliness in reducing disease.

Bryan Meyer
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

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Re: Ben Roy’s article “The Enemy Within”: What a crappy subject to include in your otherwise fine magazine!

Michael Grimes
Via email

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I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the Fall 2025 issue. One of my favorite articles was Ben Roy’s “The Enemy Within.” The indelicacy of the subject of latrines should not keep one from realizing just how much damage was done by the armies’ neglect of simple waste management. Most Civil War buffs know that deaths by illness far outnumbered those caused by battle action; however, it’s a staggering fact that so many soldier deaths could have been avoided simply by improved camp hygiene.

James N. Kocur
Linden, New Jersey

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I learned a great deal from Ben Roy’s article “The Enemy Within” on the deadly consequences of the distant siting of latrines in army camps and the resulting overall poor adherence to latrine discipline on soldiers’ health. This was no doubt a major factor in deaths from disease accounting for about two-thirds of all Civil War fatalities. I would like to have seen some commentary on what impact these unsanitary army camps had on the health of the nearby civilian population. Indeed, any army just passing through a populated area would have posed a health risk to civilians, as thousands of men would have stopped to answer the call of nature on roads, fields, and even in people’s front yards. This is a subject that has been neglected by historians for far too long.

Dennis Middlebrooks
Brooklyn, New York

WHO ARE THOSE GUYS?

I’m a new subscriber to your magazine; I think your work is outstanding and look forward to years of enjoyment. I received the Fall 2025 issue and hoped to find in “Dispatches” some information regarding the two soldiers on the front cover of the Summer 2025 edition. Would you have, and are you allowed to give out, information (names, home towns, units, etc.) on them? My own great-grandfather served in the 12th Michigan Infantry.

Thanks again for a great publication!

Alden Marvin
Via email

Ed. Thanks for your letter, Alden. The image on the cover of our Summer 2025 issue is a famous photo (titled “All Enmity Forgotten”) of two aged veterans—one Union, one Confederate—shaking hands at the 50th reunion of the Battle of Gettysburg held in 1913. The Library of Congress’ description of the image unfortunately does not include the men’s names or former units—though it does indicate that the Confederate veteran was wearing a uniform “with Maryland state buttons.” If any of our readers have more information on either of these men, and would be kind enough to share it with us, we would gladly pass it along.

KUDOS

Many magazine readers lament the passing of the Golden Age of magazines when publications like Life, National Geographic, and Ladies Home Journal were in their prime. But with its scholarly but crisply written articles, complementary and often unexpected photographs, and fascinating feedback from its readers, The Civil War Monitor testifies that the Golden Age lives on. And now I wonder what treasures abound as I eagerly sit down to read the new issue. To those of you who toil so creatively to make the Monitor the wonderful publication it is, I say God bless.

Roger Kolb
Somerville, Massachusetts

LINCOLN’S LEARNING

I enjoyed your Fall 2025 issue’s article on Lincoln [“The Military Education of Abraham Lincoln,” Vol. 15, No. 3], and noticed the author Kenneth Noe’s comments on how Lincoln’s reading habits were not as widespread as we always assumed.

I have something to contribute on that subject. Back in the 1990s I went to an antiques fair in Tupelo, Mississippi, and browsed a number of 19th-century books one seller had on his table. I picked up a small 1832 volume titled Select Speeches of John Sergeant; a signature on the bottom third of the title page, in clear, bold handwriting, read “A. Lincoln.” The book was priced at $15, which made no sense if the signature was legit, so I asked the seller, who said he had seen the signature yet hadn’t had time to have it authenticated. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he held the book back, but he let me have it, which makes me think he thought it was a fake.

I never had the funds to have an authentication done myself, but I enjoyed having the book for the next 20 years. After I turned 60, it occurred to me that it could be lost if I kept it too long and died, so I contacted a friend who owned an antiques showroom and auction house, told my story, and sold it to him for a small profit. I saw him again about a year later and asked about the book. He had sent it to be authenticated, and it was a genuine Lincoln signature. I feel blessed to have had a tiny piece of Lincoln’s life for so long.

Who was John Sergeant, and why was he presumably of importance to Lincoln? Sergeant, who died in 1852, was a popular speaker, a brilliant lawyer (he argued several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court), and a congressman from Pennsylvania. Friends persuaded him to let them publish some of his speeches, resulting in the book, a copy of which found its way into Lincoln’s possession. There were no notes in the margins, no underlined passages, just his bold signature on the title page, and the book itself was well preserved. I like to imagine Lincoln, in his circuit riding days, resting with lawyer friends in front of a fire at some inn, maybe reading passages from Sergeant’s speeches and discussing them together.

I have never seen Sergeant’s name mentioned in any books about Lincoln, so I wonder if the man had any influence on Lincoln’s ideas. Lincoln certainly thought enough of the book to keep it and put his name in it. Maybe this is some lost nugget of his background that Lincoln scholars might want to know about. Please bring this note to their attention if you think it could be useful.

Thank you for your time and for your fine magazine.

Richard Wilkinson
Amory, Mississippi

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Let me add my voice to the others (I’m sure there are others) who seek to correct one word in Kenneth W. Noe’s excellent article, “The Military Education of Abraham Lincoln.” Robert Anderson was a major, not a colonel, when he defended Fort Sumter at the outset of Lincoln’s presidency.

Candice Shy Hooper
Via email

Ed. Believe it or not, Candice, yours is the only letter we’ve received about this. Thanks much for the correction!

CIVIL WAR CURIOUS

I’ve been listening to your Civil War Curious podcast and I absolutely love it. I appreciate how each episode addresses the backstory and/or little-known facts on an interesting topic. Whoever is choosing your subjects is doing a superb job, as are the various historian-guests. Also, the short episode length is appreciated; we don’t always have as much time as we’d like to devote to listening.

Please continue this series!

Wayne Cukras
Via email

Ed. Thanks for the kind words, Wayne. I’m happy to report that the second season of Civil War Curious will be launching soon. As previously, you can listen to episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Those unfamiliar can learn more about this or our other podcast series at our website: civilwarmonitor.com.

Letters to the Editor

Email us at letters@civilwarmonitor.com or write to The Civil War Monitor, P.O. Box 3041, Margate, NJ 08402

Library of Congress

A man pretends to fire a faux cannon devised from a wooden log found in abandoned Confederate defensive works at Centreville, Virginia, in March 1862. Such so-called “Quaker guns” were employed by Confederates there and at Yorktown to fool Union general George B. McClellan into believing he faced a better-equipped and more-fortified enemy, thereby slowing his advance toward Richmond.

quak•er•guns | noun | An imitation of a gun made of wood or other material, and placed in the port-hole of a vessel, or the embrasure of a fort, in order to deceive the enemy; so called from its inoffensive character.¹

The Confederate position at Yorktown in the spring of 1862 appeared impenetrable to commander George B. McClellan and his Army of the Potomac. The enemy line—which was stretched across the Virginia Peninsula between a fortified outpost at Point Gloucester, across the York River to Yorktown, and down the James River to Mulberry Island—bristled with artillery and swarmed with at least 100,000 men in gray. McClellan made repeated appeals to Washington for additional manpower, but President Abraham Lincoln refused, opting to keep the 30,000 men of Irvin McDowell’s I Corps near the capital to protect it against Confederate threats, including the presence of Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s Rebels in the Shenandoah Valley. “Our neighbors are in a very strong position,” McClellan concluded in early April. “I cannot turn Yorktown without a battle, in which I must use heavy artillery & go through the preliminary operations of a siege.”² In truth, the overly cautious McClellan faced not a massive army at Yorktown, but a small force of around 8,000 to 10,000 soldiers commanded by a master of theatrical disguises.

John Bankhead Magruder, nicknamed “Prince John,” was an amateur actor well known for his flamboyant mannerisms and lavish lifestyle. Born in 1807 in Port Royal, Virginia, he secured an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1826. Seemingly immune to the rules and rigors of military life, the cadet gleefully participated in the infamous “Eggnog Riots” and routinely slipped away to Benny Havens’ Tavern. After graduating, Magruder was stationed in North Carolina, Maryland, Florida, and later Texas, where his idiosyncratic habits and charm made him a favorite among his fellow soldiers. As one historian noted, “his eccentricities … endeared him to most fellow officers, especially those who enjoyed his elaborate military reviews.”³

In Texas under General Zachary Taylor in 1845–1846, Magruder developed a theater and put on several plays, including a much-loved rendition of Shakespeare’s Othello. He turned up to a ball in Washington, D.C., dressed as the king of Prussia, his authentic outfit complete with velvet cuffs and silver collar buttons. In yet another “performance,” Magruder hosted a reception for British officers when they were stationed together along the Canadian border. Having rented the finest china, glassware, and furniture available, Magruder was asked by an astonished guest, “American officers must be paid enormously. What is your monthly pay?” “Damned if I know,” Magruder replied. Turning to a servant, he said, “Jim, what is my monthly pay?” The servant prudently elected not to answer.⁴ The native Virginian resigned from the U.S. Army just three days after his state seceded from the Union. A year after joining the Confederate cause, Magruder—by then a major general—found himself opposite McClellan near Yorktown, his troops standing in the way of a Union advance toward Richmond.

Outnumbered four-to-one by McClellan’s approaching army, Magruder acted quickly and decisively by establishing a defensive Confederate line with infantry outposts and artillery redoubts across the peninsula. ‘‘Genl. Magruder was well fitted for the task confided to him,’’ observed a staff officer. ‘‘He had the faculty of an engineer in discovering strong and weak localities intended to be defended, and allowed no detail to escape him in the way of preparation.’’⁵ Intending to deceive the enemy with an elaborate charade, Magruder ordered his men to install cannon-size black painted logs along their artillery position and march back and forth as officers frequently shouted orders and bugles and drums blared. “This morning we were called out by the ‘Long roll’ and have been traveling most of the day, seeming with no other view than to show ourselves to the enemy at as many different points of the line as possible,” reported an exhausted soldier from Alabama.⁶

Robert Miller of the 14th Louisiana Infantry explained the strategy, “the way Magruder fooled them was to divide each body of his troops in two parts and keep them travelling all the time for twenty-four hours, till reinforcements came.”⁷ The ruse worked. A Union soldier from Maine “saw across the open space a long line of rebel earthworks with a stream in front, the rebel flag was flying and we could see the secesh officers riding along their lines inside the works.”⁸ In the face of Magruder’s elaborate deception, McClellan delayed his advance, allowing time for the arrival of much-needed Confederate reinforcements, including Joseph E. Johnston’s force of over 40,000 men.

Library of Congress

This Julian Scott painting depicts Union soldiers discovering dummy defenders and Quaker guns in an abandoned Confederate earthwork.

McClellan continued to amass heavy artillery and smaller batteries, as the two armies settled into what would be a monthlong siege. On April 29, Johnston, who had assumed overall command of the Confederates on the peninsula, concluded “the fight for Yorktown … will be one of artillery, in which we cannot win.” Four days later, the Confederate army slipped away under cover of darkness.⁹ Advancing Union soldiers were startled to discover harmless logs among the 77 pieces of captured enemy artillery. “In the inside intrenchments were wooden guns projecting from the embrasures. Fort Magruder, which we built strong works to reduce, was found to be a weak place. Its inside works were sand bags, filled up with logs of wood painted black on the end,” reported a correspondent from a Philadelphia newspaper.¹⁰ McClellan had—yet again—been bamboozled by Quaker guns.

Two months earlier, Johnston’s men had pulled off the same ruse against McClellan at Centreville, Virginia. “The fancied impregnability of the position turned out to be a sham…. [S]ome of the forts have maple logs painted to resemble guns…. Some of our soldiers cried when they found that ‘quakers’ were mounted on the Rebel breastworks,” reported the New-York Tribune on the Centreville sham.¹¹ Recalling the Union advance on the Virginia Peninsula, New York soldier Charles O. Shepard wrote, “I remember our cautious advance, in constant expectation of the terrible slaughter which must come when these guns opened up on us; but ne’ery a slaughter. The ‘Rebs’ retreated as we advanced, changing to another and more favourable base, leaving us the mortification of having been held in check with wooden guns.” He went on, “the ‘Rebs’ had taken away all the real guns from their forts and put painted wooden ones in their stead, and thus McClellan was completely befooled…. With shame and confusion of face we marched back to Alexandria.”¹²

Although many Americans first learned of Quaker guns during the Civil War, the phrase had made it into print several decades before. In his 1808 account of the American Revolution, Nathaniel Fanning, an American naval officer, described a British privateer with “ten wooden (or Quaker), guns manned with twenty-five officers, men and boys.”¹³ Then, in 1810, William Duane, a self-described “late Lieutenant colonel in the Army of the United States, and author of the American Military Library,” included the phrase in his new A Military Dictionary. Defining a French term, he wrote, “Passe-volans likewise means those wooden pieces of ordnance which are made to resemble real artillery, and fill up the vacant places in a ship. They were first adopted by the French, inconsequence of regulation, which was made by M. de Pontchartrain, when he became minister of the marine department. He gave orders, that no vessel, except such as carried 16 guns, should sail to and from America. In order to comply, at least in outward appearances, with this regulation, the merchants had recourse to passe-volans, or wooden substitutes, that are called by us quaker guns. More advantages than one are indeed derived from this invention, which has been adopted in every civilized country.”¹⁴ Such acts of military deception were hardly new in 1810. Yet linking this concept of military trickery to the pacifist Quakers, or the Religious Society of Friends, was a uniquely American concept.

Today, if any Americans encounter Quaker guns, it would be with their appearance in modern text or daily conversation. As the United States confronts another ideological and political battle between diametrically opposed forces, a growing number of citizens are reassessing the strength of the nation’s founding principles. Are our civil and political rights firm against attack or are they Quaker guns only looking invulnerable to assault? Assessing the sanctity of the First Amendment’s free speech protections in a September 2025 case, a district court judge in Massachusetts declared, “Small wonder then that our bastions of independent unbiased free speech—those entities we once thought unassailable—have proven all too often to have only Quaker guns…. [L]aw firms cower, institutional leaders in higher education meekly appease … [and] media outlets from huge conglomerates to small niche magazines mind the bottom line rather than the ethics of journalism.”¹⁵

Tracy L. Barnett is a visiting assistant professor of history at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. She has a doctorate in American history from the University of Georgia. Firearms—their meaning to men and their availability in 19th-century America—are the center of her scholarship.

“[U]nder the energetic and liberal administration of the War Department, the wants of the troops have been regularly supplied, their comfort, health, and efficiency have been amply and regularly provided for.”

So wrote Montgomery C. Meigs in his November 1865 report to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton detailing the enormous expenditures the government had made—and which he had overseen as the Union army’s quartermaster general—in the previous four years. Among those many “wants” was clothing, from outfitting new recruits to supplying veterans in need of replacement items. By war’s end, over $292 million alone (more than $5 billion today) had been spent clothing the approximately 2.1 million men who served in the Union army.

Shown here are figures associated with the procurement of some of the more common uniform pieces donned by “Billy Yank.”

Key

Total number of items obtained for army use*
Lowest to highest price paid for item during the war

Heritage Auctions

Civil War forage cap

Forage caps

4,766,100

$0.35 to $1.04

Heritage Auctions

Civil War hat

Uniform hats

2,347,524

$1.62 to $2.19

Heritage Auctions

Civil War sackcoat

Sack coats

6,025,169

$2.10 to $5.09 (lined)

$1.88 to $4.38 (unlined)

Heritage Auctions

Civil War greatcoat

Greatcoats

3,827,050

$6.50 to $13.17 (infantry)

$7.74 to $16.11 (cavalry)

Heritage Auctions

Civil War shirt

Shirts

11,091,639

$0.45 to $3.01 (flannel)

$0.69 to $2.34 (knit)

Heritage Auctions

Civil War trousers

Trousers

7,756,795

$2.05 to $5.40 (infantry)

$3.32 to $5.89 (cavalry)

Heritage Auctions

Civil War socks

Stockings

20,319,896

$0.23 to $0.53

Heritage Auctions

Civil War bootees

Bootees and Brogans

8,437,216

$1.71 to $3.24 (sewed)

$1.33 to $2.45 (pegged)

Heritage Auctions

Civil War blanket

Blankets

7,803,066

$2.19 to $7.75 (woolen)

$2 to $5 (rubber)

$1.99 to $2.35 (painted)

Heritage Auctions (HA.com)

Copy of Herman Melville’s Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War.

Ode to a Hero

The Artifact

An inscribed copy of Herman Melville’s Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War

Condition

The book has some very slight signs of wear (including rubbing, soiling, and blisters), stray ink spots on the upper cover, and faint ring stains on the finish on both covers. Otherwise, it is an extremely bright and fresh copy.

Details

At the time of the firing on Fort Sumter, William Francis Bartlett, 20, was in his junior year at Harvard. He immediately gave up his studies and enlisted as a private in the 4th Battalion Massachusetts Infantry in his native state. When that unit’s 90-day enlistment term expired, he signed up with the 20th Massachusetts Infantry—the so-called “Harvard regiment”—as a captain. The following spring, Bartlett was shot in the left knee during the siege of Yorktown, a wound that would result in the amputation of his leg. He returned home, finished his degree, then reenlisted as a colonel in the newly forming 49th Massachusetts Infantry. In May 1863, Bartlett was shot twice while leading the 49th in battle at Port Hudson, Louisiana, wounds that led him to resign his commission that September. While he was recuperating, he joined yet another regiment, the 57th Massachusetts, which comprised mostly veterans whose terms of enlistment in other units had expired. At the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864, Bartlett was again wounded, in the head; promoted to brigadier general the following month, he was captured during the Battle of the Crater in July (he was stranded after his prosthetic leg was shot away) and spent several months in Richmond’s Libby Prison.

Bartlett’s postwar return with the 57th to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, inspired one of the town’s natives, author Herman Melville, to write a poem about the heroic young officer, “The College Colonel,” which appeared in his first book of poetry, Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866). The following year, Melville gave a copy of the book (shown here) to Bartlett, which he inscribed: “Brevt Major Genl. Wm. F. Bartlett / with the respects of the Author / Arrowhead 1867.” After the war, Bartlett worked in manufacturing and eventually settled in Pittsfield, where he died of tuberculosis in 1876 at 36.

Quotable

“The College Colonel” describes the return home of a young officer—inspired by Bartlett—and his men: “He rides at their head; / A crutch by his saddle just slants in view, / One slung arm is in splints, you see, / Yet he guides his strong steed—how coldly too…. // A still rigidity and pale— / An Indian aloofness lones his brow; / He has lived a thousand years / Compressed in battle’s pains and prayers, / Marches and watches slow. / There are welcoming shouts, and flags; / Old men off hat to the Boy, / Wreaths from gay balconies fall at his feet, / But to him—there comes alloy.”

Price

$50,000 (realized at Dallas, Texas, in June 2024). “Inscribed copies of Battle-Pieces are rare,” a Heritage Auctions representative noted then. “According to online records, only one other copy has appeared at auction since 1991.”

Gary W. Gallagher is the John L. Nau III Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Virginia. He is now working on a study of the Chancellorsville Campaign.

What are you currently reading?

Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 (W.W. Norton, 2020).

What drew you to this book?

I have been reading a great deal about World War II in the Pacific Theater while editing my mother’s diary and memoir. A 22-year-old professional musician from Los Angeles, she performed with Eddie Bracken’s USO show. The troupe traveled to Guam, Tinian, Saipan, Ulithi, and Peleliu, which collectively had seen some of the bloodiest fighting in the Pacific. My mother played before more than 700,000 Marines, soldiers, and sailors on these islands, as well as on various vessels including the Essex-class aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga. She kept a diary during the trip and later used it, together with other materials, to write a memoir. I have prepared an edition of the two documents illustrated with several dozen images taken by Navy photographers and titled With the USO in the Pacific during World War II: The Memoir and Diary of Shirley Rose Gray, June–August, 1945. LSU Press will publish the book on its autumn 2026 list.

What was your favorite book as a child and why?

The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War, with text by Bruce Catton (Doubleday, 1960). I bought the book when I was 10 years old and simply devoured it. Exposure to this combination of images, Catton’s arresting prose, and David Greenspan’s “picture maps” of major battles, more than any other single factor, placed me on a path toward a lifelong engagement with the topic.

What kind of reader were you?

I spent my formative years on a farm in southern Colorado, where I had a great deal of time to read. Random House’s “Landmark Books” and Grosset & Dunlap’s “We Were There” children’s titles were early favorites. I routinely checked out the maximum number of titles from my local library in Alamosa and also began, as an 11-year-old who asked for books at Christmas and on my birthday, to build a library. By the time I entered high school, I had accumulated about 150 volumes on the Civil War, among them works by Catton and Douglas Southall Freeman, firsthand accounts by Union and Confederate figures, and many of the foundational sets reprinted by publisher Thomas Yoseloff. I also read a good deal about ancient Rome and a bit of fiction, including Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and Little Men and the Sherlock Holmes stories.

You’re forming a new book group. Who would you invite and why?

I currently belong to a book group of retired UCLA professors and interested non-academics that explores works of military history very broadly defined. If I started another group, I would seek people eager to revisit (or read for the first time) classic titles, both fiction and nonfiction.

Where do you like reading?

My two favorites are rocking chairs in my second-floor study and in the living room. I am surrounded by bookcases in the study that feature several hundred inscribed copies of books written by friends and five shelves of publications by former graduate students at Penn State and UVA. I also can gaze at John Rogers’ 1868 sculpture titled “The Council of War,” which anchors one corner of the study, and at a small linen hanging that reminds me to “Keep Calm and Read Jane Austen”—an admonition I honor every year by rereading five of her six novels (I always skip Northanger Abbey). I also “read” books on the 5-mile walks I take every day in the Santa Monica hills. The number of Audible titles on my phone has climbed to more than 130.

Do you have a favorite bookstore? What about it appeals to you?

I have spent untold hours in antiquarian and used bookstores all over the United States. My current library numbers just more than 1,500 titles (the smallest it has been since I entered graduate school), but over the years I acquired more than 15,000. Favorite bookstores included Fred Rosenstock’s in Denver, the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago (where I purchased “The Council of War”), Vroman’s in Pasadena, California, Ron Van Sickle’s shop in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and Tom Broadfoot’s store in Wendell, North Carolina. What appealed to me in every instance was the pure pleasure of scanning shelves to find titles on my want lists and talking to people who shared my love of books.

What’s next on your reading list?

I have just started David Nasaw’s Andrew Carnegie (Penguin Press, 2006) and look forward to forthcoming books by Caroline E. Janney on John S. Mosby and KT Shively about Jubal Early’s impact as a historian, archive builder, and lecturer.

Any reader of Civil War history can easily find a large coffee table book overladen with colorful pictures. But only a handful of works consider those images as evidence. Just as they did with words, Americans could translate the experience of civil war through oil paints and watercolors. Genre painters like Winslow Homer captured informal camp scenes and brightly clad Zouaves, while landscape artists such as Frederic Edwin Church used the natural environment to meditate on sectional divide and armed conflict. A vast array of canvases emerged between the 1860s and the early 20th century that depicted subjects ranging from the mundane to the momentous. Of equal importance, but outside the framework of this essay, is the illustrated journalism that flooded print media with thousands of black-and-white engravings and lithographs.

Art historians, museum professionals, and scholars of the Civil War era have found deep meaning in paintings from the period. And the five books featured below are richly rewarding. The authors, or editors, offer thoughtful analyses of art and artists, and maintain that through images we can imagine a new view of war. Formally trained painters grappled with the conflict’s transformative impact on society by combining the subjects of their prewar canvases with the events of their day, while soldier-artists brought an unparalleled degree of realism to their work informed directly by their time in the ranks. Each volume under review includes scores of color plates with excellent reproductions of images, and exhibits the highest level of scholarly yet accessible writing.

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: The Civil War in Art

By Harold Holzer and Mark E. Neely Jr.
(Orion Books, 1993)

Published over 30 years ago, Harold Holzer and Mark E. Neely Jr.’s stirring survey of military paintings remains a standard reference. The enormity of the conflict demanded artist treatment and resulted in a massive corpus of work. Holzer and Neely Jr.’s extensive review of paintings considers works produced from the war years through the 1910s. Thematically arranged chapters consider portraiture, cycloramas, genre scenes, and the common soldier among other subjects. Rather than another illustrated history of the Civil War, this volume discovers the meanings of those paintings and was among the first to do so. The work’s impressive breadth gives readers a fulfilling range of subjects and scenes from well-known military painters such as Thure de Thulstrup and William D. Washington and lesser-known figures, at least outside Civil War circles, like Julian Scott and James Hope.

Conrad Wise Chapman: Artist & Soldier of the Confederacy

By Ben L. Bassham
(Kent State University Press, 1998)

Conrad Wise Chapman came to the Confederate military as a trained artist. He served in three theaters (in the West, in Virginia, and in Charleston, South Carolina) and sketched or painted whenever possible. Chapman rendered highly accurate paintings of artillery batteries, fortifications, camp scenes, and the submarine H.L. Hunley. Bassham offers a thorough biography of the soldier-artist and a compelling record of his paintings. As he asserts, Chapman is singular among Confederate artists because of the firsthand knowledge he gleaned from an arduous service record. He created an incredible visual record of the Confederacy including, perhaps most notably to many readers, 31 small panels of Charleston that were once displayed at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia.

Eye of the Storm

By Robert Knox Sneden and edited by Charles F. Bryan Jr. and Nelson D. Lankford
(The Free Press, 2000)

With an incredibly observant eye, Robert Knox Sneden produced one of the most remarkable visual records of the Civil War. He enlisted in the 40th New York Infantry, but by 1862 was serving as a mapmaker at corps headquarters of the Army of the Potomac. Captured in 1863, Sneden was sent to Andersonville but survived the notorious prison. He later produced a 5,000-page memoir that served as the basis for this wonderful, edited volume of his wartime diary lavishly illustrated with the maps he drew and the watercolors he created. Sneden’s detailed and extensive pictures of the 1862 Peninsula Campaign are particularly compelling. Remarkably, it was not until 1994 that the Virginia Historical Society (now Virginia Museum of History and Culture) acquired Sneden’s maps and watercolor drawings through a generous gift and a remarkable series of events.

Bold, Cautious, True: Walt Whitman and American Art of the Civil War Era

by Kevin Sharp with contributions by Adam M. Thomas
(Dixon Gallery and Gardens, 2009)

Walt Whitman is widely considered America’s national poet. And, fittingly, his prose is often found in studies of the nation’s defining conflict. Based on an exhibition at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, Tennessee, the museum’s director Kevin Sharp created a highly innovative narrative of the Civil War that paired Whitman’s words with paintings from the period. Each chapter deftly entwines Whitman’s wartime experiences with key subject matters including disunion, service, medicine, emancipation, and the homefront. Passages from Whitman’s writings pepper the chapters, while a narrative guides the reader through the labyrinth of images and ideas that attempted to find meaning in war.

The Civil War and American Art

by Eleanor Jones Harvey
(Yale University Press, 2012)

Based on the 2012 blockbuster exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Civil War and American Art examines how famed artists such as Winslow Homer and Eastman Johnson represented the conflict. In a marked departure from the tradition of the grand history painting, American artists used genre and landscape paintings to translate the experience of war. Eleanor Jones Harvey’s volume stands unique for its extended attention to how painters dealt with the conflict metaphorically. The powerful landscapes that once compelled figures like Frederic Edwin Church and Sanford Robinson Gifford became the expressive medium to voice their concerns over war and hopefulness for the new nation. Generously illustrated and powerfully argued, Harvey discerns how the war lent layers of meaning in paintings and photographs often flatly considered. In fundamental ways, this volume is the definitive statement on how the Civil War shaped and changed American art.

James J. Broomall is the William Binford Vest Chair in History at the University of Richmond and the author of Private Confederacies: The Emotional Worlds of Southern Men as Citizens and Soldiers (UNC Press, 2019).

In this illustration from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, William T. Sherman’s army is depicted crossing the Saluda River on its way north through South Carolina. A month later, in March 1865, Sherman’s soldiers would clash with Confederates at the Battle of Averasboro in North Carolina.

On the afternoon of March 15, 1865, Union cavalrymen plodding along a rural North Carolina road were shot at by enemy skirmishers posted in the rain-drenched woods and fields ahead of them. Behind them, the left wing of Major General William T. Sherman’s vaunted army had been on the march with little interruption since leaving Savannah and entering South Carolina almost two months earlier. Near the farming village of Averasboro, this would change, as the Rebels finally made their first major attempt to blunt Sherman’s trek through the Carolinas.

The Confederacy was dying, General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia stagnant and starving in the Petersburg-Richmond defenses. Sherman had burned a destructive path through South Carolina, and Rebel forces in the West were beaten, weak, and scattered. North Carolina was a microcosm of southern misery that early spring. The fall of Wilmington—the Confederacy’s last seaport—on February 22 felt like a salted wound as Sherman’s army bore into the state.

Library of Congress (Sherman); South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina

William T. Sherman (left) and Joseph E. Johnston

That army consisted of about 60,000 veterans, men who had fought from Chattanooga through Georgia’s mountain wilds to seize Atlanta and then embarked on the epic March to the Sea, climaxing with Savannah’s capture on December 21, 1864. After resting and refitting there, Sherman had plunged northward in the new year. Beyond punishing South Carolina, which he and many other northerners considered the nest of secession, Sherman intended to keep marching, destroying railroads and other key installations en route to joining Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia for what both men hoped would be the war’s final campaign. Divided into two wings, his army feinted toward Augusta, Georgia, and Charleston, drawing Rebel units to those points and away from the Yankees’ intended route through the heart of the state. Columbia fell to Sherman on February 17, 1865, much of South Carolina’s capital going up in flames that night, each side blaming the other for the conflagration.

Early March found the Yanks slashing into North Carolina. Major General Henry Slocum commanded the left wing of Sherman’s army, composed of the XX Corps, led by Brigadier General Alpheus Williams, and Brevet Major General Jefferson Davis’ XIV Corps. Major General Oliver Howard headed the army’s right wing, consisting of Major General John Logan’s XV Corps and Major General Frank Blair’s XVII Corps. Sherman’s 5,600 cavalrymen were led by Brigadier General Judson Kilpatrick. The approximately 30,000 troops in each wing, plus their supply wagons, artillery, and ambulances, necessitated that they move on different roads, usually several miles apart but always in the same general direction.

It was about this time that Sherman learned that his old opponent from the Atlanta Campaign, General Joseph E. Johnston, was facing him again. Now, Johnston had orders from Lee to try to block Sherman’s advance. Johnston was to reassume command of what was left of the Army of Tennessee as well as scattered troops in the Confederate Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, assemble them, and stop Sherman. A few days after Lee’s February 22 directive, all Rebel troops in North Carolina also were placed under Johnston’s authority.

Johnston was in Charlotte on February 25 when he issued his first general orders to his new command. He wrote that he had “strong hope” and urged “all absent soldiers of the Army of Tennessee to rejoin their regiments and again confront the enemy they so often encountered in Northern Georgia, and always with honor.” Johnston began to concentrate his force in North Carolina, hoping to pounce on one of Sherman’s wings, since he was not strong enough to tackle the entire army.

By March 8, all of Sherman’s army had entered North Carolina, its immediate goal to capture Fayetteville and Goldsboro, both important railroad and industrial centers. Plodding north a few miles ahead of the Yankees was the enemy. A Confederate corps commanded by Lieutenant General William J. Hardee had evacuated Charleston with the rest of the Rebel garrison on February 18 and was retreating before Slocum’s troops. Hardee had started from Charleston with about 13,000 men, but by early March widespread straggling and desertion had whittled his force to about 6,400. Supporting Hardee were some 5,000 cavalrymen under Major General Joseph Wheeler. Short on rations, the outnumbered Rebs “ate parched corn, pickled pork, roots, grub worms—anything they could swallow,” one soldier recalled.¹

Hardee reached Fayetteville on March 9, but he couldn’t hold it. Two days later, civilian officials surrendered the town to Sherman, Hardee’s men having withdrawn across the Cape Fear River, burning the bridge behind them. The Confederates were unsure of Sherman’s next move. Would he strike for Goldsboro or Raleigh? Johnston decided to marshal his troops at Smithfield, a town about halfway between the two, and await developments.

Richland County Public Library, Columbia, SC

Before it entered North Carolina, Sherman’s 60,000-man army had carved a destructive path through that state’s southern neighbor. Above: A depiction of the burning of Columbia, South Carolina, on February 17–18, 1865, for which neither side claimed responsibility.

Lee wanted Johnston to be as aggressive as practical in battling Sherman, but informed him on March 15, “a disaster to your army will not improve my condition,” adding that, “I would not recommend you to engage in a general battle without a reasonable prospect of success.” Lee also stated that Johnston and an independent force under General Braxton Bragg should look for an opportunity “to unite upon one of their [Sherman’s] columns and crush it.”²

By March 15, Sherman was across the Cape Fear River and menacing Goldsboro, some 70 miles from Fayetteville. He planned to feint toward Raleigh and turn toward Goldsboro with both wings. There the army could rest and resupply before continuing its march toward Richmond. Sherman knew that Johnston was massing somewhere ahead of him, yet he remained confident. “The enemy is superior to me in cavalry, but I can beat his infantry man for man, and I don’t think he can bring 40,000 men to battle,” he wrote Grant on March 14. “Keep all parts busy and I will give the enemy no rest.” Still, Sherman was more cautious and battle-ready when his columns left Fayetteville.³

Kilpatrick’s cavalry was sent northeast up the Raleigh Plank Road toward Averasboro, followed by four divisions of Slocum’s left wing and a few wagons. The rest of the baggage train, accompanied by the left wing’s two other divisions, was to take a shorter route toward Goldsboro, some 60 miles distant. Sherman also instructed Howard to have four divisions from the right wing ready to move to Slocum’s assistance if the latter was attacked.

Johnston, meanwhile, had posted Wheeler on the Raleigh Plank Road while the rest of his cavalry protected the Goldsboro route. Hardee was ordered to continue shadowing the Union force advancing up the Raleigh Plank Road, blocking its advance if possible. Kilpatrick’s men sparred with Wheeler’s troops and shoved them back on the afternoon of March 15. About 3 p.m., however, Kilpatrick’s Second Brigade, commanded by Brevet Brigadier General Smith Atkins, smacked into Rebel skirmishers defending the road near the rural community of Smithville (not to be confused with Smithfield), some five miles south of Averasboro. These Confederates belonged to Colonel Alfred Rhett’s brigade in Brigadier General William Taliaferro’s division of Hardee’s corps and were mostly coastal artillerymen or garrison troops fighting for the first time as infantry.

Library of Congress

Among the Confederates engaged at Averasboro was Colonel Alfred Rhett (above), a member of the fire-eating Rhett family of Charleston whose brigade held the first of three Confederate defensive lines.

Hardee had decided to make a stand. His corps, consisting of Taliaferro’s men and a division commanded by Major General Lafayette McLaws, a veteran of the Virginia campaigns, had been encamped near Smithville and intent on a day’s rest. The Union threat, however, forced Hardee to make a choice: He could continue to fall back or he could fight and determine if he was being followed by all or only a portion of Sherman’s army. Nicknamed “Old Reliable,” the Georgian was a career soldier who had seen much action in the war’s western campaigns, and had faced Sherman at Shiloh, Atlanta, and Savannah. A South Carolinian who fought at Averasboro remembered Hardee as “a courtly and knightly soldier, and a great favorite with the men.”⁴

Hardee dug in on a narrow neck of land between the Cape Fear and Black rivers at Smithville, blocking the Raleigh Plank Road. The surrounding landscape was a patchwork of farm fields, swamps, and thickets, all saturated by recent rains. Presiding over the countryside were three plantation homes of the Smith family: “Lebanon,” the Farquhard Smith house, where 18-year-old Janie Smith would experience the war’s horrors firsthand; the William Turner Smith residence; and “Oak Grove,” built in the 1790s by the John Smith family. All three houses would soon become field hospitals, crammed with wounded from both sides.

Hardee placed his troops in three lines, putting his greenest soldiers in the first and second positions while McLaws’ veterans occupied the third. Rhett’s men held the first line, posted on both sides of the Raleigh Plank Road and about 400 yards north of Oak Grove. Most of these Rebels entrenched along a field on the right, the position extending across the road into some woods. They built makeshift breastworks “as the scanty means at my command permitted,” reported Taliaferro, who also brought up three cannons, which were positioned on the extreme right of Rhett’s line. Taliaferro’s other brigade, commanded by Brigadier General Stephen Elliott Jr., composed the second line, positioned to the rear of swampy land some 200 yards behind Rhett. McLaws’ third line was located some 600 yards behind Elliott.⁵

Library of Congress (Slocum); South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina

Henry Slocum (left) and William Taliaferro

Rhett was a member of the fire-eating Rhett family of Charleston who had stoked the secession blaze during the Confederacy’s infancy. Indeed, his father, Robert Barnwell Rhett, was considered by many to have sired the disunion movement, and the younger Rhett had commanded Fort Sumter for a time, meaning that both men were well known in the North. Rhett’s brigade included the 1st Regiment, South Carolina Regular Artillery, which had endured bombardments by Union warships and field guns while posted in the Charleston defenses. “The regulars were very particular as to the good appearance of their guns, their dress, and everything appertaining to them,” a southern young woman wrote of them, “those who were disposed to be critical, even called them dandies.” Lugging muskets and packs and on the miserable march since Charleston’s evacuation a month earlier, these “dandies” were now hunkered in the mud, yet no less resolved to fight.⁶

Rhett’s skirmishers clashed with Atkins’ lead regiment, the 9th Michigan Cavalry. With the superior firepower of their Spencer repeating carbines, the Michiganders were able to push Rhett’s skirmishers back to their breastworks. Confederate artillery opened on the bluecoats at this point, however, and Kilpatrick sent in the rest of Atkins’ brigade, which dug in on each side of the road. Sniping continued until dark when heavy rain drenched the foes.

Slocum ordered a XX Corps brigade to bolster the cavalry in their hastily prepared defenses. These men, Colonel William Hawley’s command in Brigadier General Nathaniel Jackson’s First Division, received the order to move about 7:30 p.m. They hurried ahead by torchlight as best they could through the muck, enduring a miserable five-mile march. Sometime after midnight, they filtered into position in the center of the cavalry line, relieving Atkins’ troops.

Rhett, meanwhile, had been captured late that afternoon by the Yankees in a most embarrassing manner. Seeing some cavalrymen he believed to be from Wheeler’s command in a ravine to his front, he and an aide had ridden out to communicate with them. In reality, the unidentified riders were Union troopers, disguised as Rebels and led by Captain Theo Northrop, Kilpatrick’s chief scout. The captain pointed a pistol in Rhett’s face and told him, “You must come with me.” Replying, “Who the hell are you?” Rhett drew his revolver, but was quickly staring into the barrels of several carbines. The flustered Rebs were hustled to the Union rear, word of Rhett’s capture spreading quickly through the Federal ranks. “He was dressed in a new uniform and was as clean as a new pin,” remembered W.H. Morris of the 10th Ohio Cavalry. “He had on a very fine pair of patent leather boots, and the boys said they were so small that none of us could get them on.”⁷

Rhett was taken to Slocum, who had known him from prewar days when Slocum was posted at Charleston. Rhett was “handsomely dressed in the Confederate uniform, with a pair of high boots beautifully stitched,” Slocum related. “He was deeply mortified at having been ‘gobbled up’ without a chance to fight.” Sherman, who was traveling with Slocum’s wing at the time, also encountered Rhett, describing him as “a tall, slender, and handsome young man,” who was “dreadfully mortified to find himself a prisoner in our hands.” Sherman and Blair, who also was present, “were much amused at Rhett’s outspoken disgust at having been captured,” the colonel freely telling his captors that his men were garrison artillerymen who “had little experience in woodcraft.” Slocum recalled that Rhett spent the night in his tent and they had “a long chat over old times and about common acquaintances in Charleston.” In the morning, Rhett was turned over to the provost guard, which had orders to treat him “with due respect” and give him a horse to ride.⁸

Library of Congress (2)

Alpheus Williams (left) and Judson Kilpatrick

There was little firing overnight, the enemies content to rest and gird for the coming battle. Both sides were entertained by the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry’s regimental band in Hawley’s command, which played when the rain slackened. In the Confederate defenses, Colonel William B. Butler had assumed command of Rhett’s brigade, his soldiers cooking a meager ration of cornmeal and bacon, eating some and saving the rest for the next day. Hardee, meanwhile, had ordered Taliaferro to hold the first line “until it was no longer tenable” and then fall back on Elliott. The Confederates would man this second line as long as possible before retiring to Hardee’s extended main defenses, where McLaws’ division waited. Overnight, Sherman issued several orders about the expected battle. He wrote to Howard—whose right wing was a few miles away—about 2 a.m. on March 16: “Hardee’s whole force is in our front near the forks of the road, and I have ordered Slocum to go at him in the morning in good shape but vigorously and push him beyond Averasboro.” He added, “I think Hardee will try and fight us at the cross-roads,” and also mentioned Rhett’s capture. “Hardee is ahead of me and shows fight. I will go at him in the morning with four divisions and push him,” he noted in another dispatch.⁹

About 6 a.m., the 8th Indiana Cavalry, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel F.A. Jones, drove in Wheeler’s pickets before tangling with Taliaferro’s skirmishers on the right side of the Federal line east of the Raleigh Plank Road. Captain Thomas A. Huguenin of the 1st South Carolina Infantry, who had been the last Rebel commander at Fort Sumter before Charleston fell, led the skirmish line. The captain exhibited “conspicuous coolness” this day, recalled Arthur Ford, a soldier in Rhett’s brigade. “During the hardest of the fighting he walked slowly immediately behind the line … smoking his pipe as calmly as if he had been at home.”¹⁰

Jones’ dismounted troops met with initial success, primarily due to the intensity of their seven-shot Spencer carbines, but Butler deployed more skirmishers as the combat crackled over the gloomy landscape. Soon outnumbered, Jones retreated, his brigade commander, Colonel Thomas Jordan, sending the 9th Pennsylvania and the 2nd and 3rd Kentucky cavalry regiments to solidify the position. Jordan’s brigade repelled several enemy thrusts as the fighting intensified in this area, and Kilpatrick hurried forward Atkins’ brigade for more support.

Williams, the XX Corps commander, received word from Kilpatrick about 7:30 a.m. that Rebels still opposed him in force. He immediately ordered Brigadier General William Ward to march his Third Division to this danger point, followed by the other two brigades of Jackson’s division, Hawley’s brigade being already at the front. Lead elements of Ward’s units reached the rear of Hawley’s position about 9:30 a.m. after a five-mile march. Ward was ordered to relieve Hawley’s troops, who had been on duty through the night and engaged in severe skirmishing to that point in the morning. “It was a wretched place for a fight,” related Captain Daniel Oakey of the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry. “At some points we had to support our wounded until they could be carried off, to prevent their falling into the swamp water, in which we stood ankle deep.”¹¹

Ward pushed his division into position on the left, Jackson’s other brigades going into line on Hawley’s right, facing north on both sides of the Raleigh Plank Road by early afternoon.¹² As these units aligned for battle, the 10th Wisconsin Battery, commanded by Lieutenant E.W. Fowler and assigned to Kilpatrick’s calvary, dueled with the enemy cannoneers, rounds howling both ways over the fields around Oak Grove. Fowler’s gunners encountered artillery fire as they unlimbered on a rise in a field some 1,500 yards from the Confederate earthworks. “I commenced firing with singularly good effect as reported by prisoners taken,” Fowler related. The Federal line soon advanced to within a few hundred yards of Butler’s defenders, concentrating on his main position north of Oak Grove. Colonel Daniel Dustin’s brigade was in the immediate front of these works, three of his four regiments exposed to cannon fire as they lay in open fields south of the house, the fourth deployed in woods.

The battle in this sector, however, was about to shift in favor of the bluecoats. Three batteries commanded by Major John Reynolds, the XX Corps artillery chief, arrived sometime midmorning, relieving Fowler’s battery and unlimbering on a gentle elevation within 500 yards of the Rebel defenses. At this short range, they unleashed a hellish fire on the enemy guns, exploding a limber, disabling artillery horses, and ripping the crest of the enemy rifle pits, killing and wounding a number of Confederates. “The practice of these batteries was very superior,” Williams related; Taliaferro noted that the Union cannon “shelled our lines with great determination and vigor….”¹³

Harper’s Weekly

This illustration from Harper’s Weekly depicts Union artillery and infantry, positioned on either side of Raleigh Plank Road, engaging with entrenched Confederates during the Battle of Averasboro.

Sherman was on the field by now, issuing orders about 10:30 a.m. that a brigade should be sent wide to the left to flank Butler. Williams ordered Colonel Henry Case’s brigade to make the attempt, Case having to pull his troops out of line, march behind Dustin’s position, and plunge into the swamps and thickets west of Oak Grove. Hindered by thick underbrush, Case’s men encountered enemy skirmishers, scattering them before they could warn Butler’s main force. Case himself went forward to reconnoiter and soon found himself looking down the unsuspecting right flank of Butler’s position about 300 yards away. He quickly returned to his men and prepared to attack. The 102nd Illinois and 79th Ohio infantry regiments led the assault minutes later with the 129th and 105th Illinois in support. “The men sprang forward with alacrity, with a deafening yell,” Case recalled, the Illini and Ohioans roiling out of the woods to unload “a destructive fire” on the startled Rebels. “So sudden and so desperate was the charge that the enemy … fled precipitately in the utmost confusion….” The Carolinians frantically tried to save their cannon, mired in the mud, but the Yanks were too near and too many, shooting artillery horses and overwhelming gunners amid the chaos. “In vain the enemy resisted,” stated Lieutenant Colonel Azariah Doan of the 79th Ohio, “in vain he labored to get his artillery off the field.” Case effectively crumpled Butler’s line, “driving the rebels out at a run,” Williams reported.¹⁴

During Case’s flank attack, Dustin launched a frontal assault in support, his men charging into the teeth of heavy musketry. While Dustin’s 33rd Indiana and 22nd Wisconsin infantry regiments were sheltered somewhat from this lethal fire by the Oak Grove house and its outbuildings, his 85th Indiana and 19th Michigan advanced over open ground. Dustin executed a left oblique so that these latter regiments were also given some cover by the structures. From the farm, Dustin’s men sustained a brisk return fire and continued the onslaught, his skirmishers and the 19th Michigan being first into the enemy works, where they linked up with Case’s men. “The enemy fled in great confusion,” reported Ward, who also reported his division captured Butler’s three artillery pieces and 100 prisoners, not including 68 wounded men scattered in the defenses. Soldiers of the 105th Illinois assisted Reynolds’ gunners in turning the captured guns against the Confederates, “giving them half a dozen shots in their retreating ranks,” an officer recorded. “The ground was thickly strewn with the enemy’s dead and wounded,” related Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Flynn of the 129th Illinois. “The prisoners were so numerous that they were simply ordered to the rear without a guard.”¹⁵

Under this duress, Taliaferro ordered a withdrawal to Elliott’s second line about 11 a.m. “The fighting was severe during the entire morning, and men, as well as officers, displayed signal gallantry,” he wrote. “Our loss was heavy, including some of our best officers.” Trudging across this hard-won terrain, Captain Oakey paused over a slain Confederate, “a very young officer, whose handsome refined face attracted my attention.” Oakey knelt by him for a moment. “His buttons bore the arms of South Carolina. Evidently, we were fighting the Charleston chivalry.”¹⁶

While the Federals in this sector rested and regrouped after the assault, a clatter of musketry signaled trouble on the far right. Colonel James Selfridge’s brigade of Jackson’s division, which had been guarding a wagon train well to the rear, finally reached the action about 12:30 p.m., going in to line to the right of Robinson’s command. Filtering through the trees to link with Kilpatrick’s cavalry, which was still on the extreme right, they were startled to see Union troopers suddenly crashing to the rear in confusion. These were elements of Jordan’s brigade, which had been surprised by a small force of Butler’s southerners. Now it was the turn of these Confederates to be shocked, as they burst out of marshy woods less than 100 yards from Selfridge’s infantry. The Rebels were “met by a simultaneous volley from the whole brigade” that was “evidently unexpected,” related Colonel James Rogers of the 123rd New York Infantry. The massed musketry caused the Rebs to retreat in disorder. Selfridge reported that 40 dead Confederates were later buried in front of his brigade.

Hardee, meanwhile, had already sent a dispatch to Lieutenant General Wade Hampton, Wheeler’s superior, when he fired off another message to the cavalry chief at 11:30 a.m. In the latter communication, he stated that “the enemy attacked me this morning … and we have been fighting him ever since. Rhett’s brigade fell back in some disorder, but rallied on Elliott. My principal fight will be at this point, where McLaws has his entire division…. Unless the enemy brings up a heavier force than he has yet shown, I have no doubt of my ability to hold my position till night, when I shall retire, in obedience to what I regard as General Johnston’s wishes….”¹⁷

The divisions of Ward and Jackson, along with Kilpatrick’s cavalry, pressed forward about 1 p.m., testing the Confederates’ second line where Elliott’s brigade and Butler’s survivors were dug in astride the Raleigh Plank Road. Federal cavalry scouts soon reported finding a road behind the Confederate left flank, and Kilpatrick sent Colonel William Hamilton’s 9th Ohio Cavalry of Atkins’ brigade to occupy it and outflank the enemy. Hamilton’s horsemen rumbled out, despite being low in ammunition. Shortly thereafter, McLaws, whose third line was strung much wider than Elliott’s, was alerted that enemy cavalry was menacing Elliott’s left. McLaws immediately ordered two of his infantry regiments—the 32nd Georgia of Colonel George Harrison’s brigade and the 1st Georgia Regulars of Colonel John Fiser’s
brigade—to meet this threat. The Ohioans were moving in column through an opening in the swamp to reach the road when they banged into these Rebels, unseen in the dense woods, about 1:30 p.m. The southerners “opened a most murderous fire,” one Union officer wrote, pushing back Hamilton’s horsemen and pursuing them. Hamilton rallied on high ground some 200 yards to the rear and, aided by troopers of the 9th Pennsylvania and 2nd Kentucky cavalry regiments of Jordan’s brigade, commenced fire of their own, repelling the threat.¹⁸

Concerned about Elliott’s right flank, McLaws earlier had dispatched the 2nd South Carolina to that point. It was not enough, however, as Ward and Jackson continued forward with overwhelming numbers. Even as McLaws’ two regiments were fighting the Union cavalry, Taliaferro, faced with the enemy’s “immense superiority in numbers,” ordered his division to fall back to McLaws’ main line about 1 p.m. His division withdrew “with no difficulty and little loss,” the 2nd South Carolina serving as rear guard. At this point, Hardee had about 8,000 men to hold off the approximately 20,000 Federals on the field.¹⁹

Library of Congress

The day after the battle, William J. Hardee (above) offered his defeated men his thanks “for their courage and conduct of yesterday, and congratulates them upon giving the enemy the first serious check he has received since leaving Atlanta.”

A light rain that had fallen much of the day added to the already slow troop movements as more Federals tried to reach the action. Brigadier General James Morgan’s XIV Corps division arrived by early afternoon and went into position on the left of Ward’s division. Morgan was intent on turning Hardee’s right flank, but he was unaware that the Confederate defenses had been extended almost to the river by Wheeler’s cavalrymen. About 3 p.m., Morgan sent Brevet Brigadier General Benjamin Fearing’s brigade on this end run, and the Midwesterners were confounded to find an enemy battle line in the dank woods. Fearing sent Morgan word of this obstacle, but Morgan had advanced his First Brigade, led by Brigadier General William Vandever—who was to go in on Fearing’s left and try to get around the Rebel right—before he received the message. Impeded by tough terrain, Vandever’s five regiments labored forward, only to be halted by a stout fire from Wheeler’s troopers. Morgan promptly recalled Vandever’s brigade, later stating that “it would have been worse than folly to have attempted a farther advance.”²⁰ Late in the afternoon, Hardee sent word to Johnston that he had stalled the Union advance and that he would retreat toward Smithfield after nightfall.

Like Oak Grove, the two other Smith homes were now clogged with wounded soldiers. At “Lebanon,” which was still in Confederate hands, Janie Smith was kept busy making bandages and offering food or water to these men. Writing on scraps of wallpaper and book fly leaves, she described the awful scene in an April 12 letter to a friend. “One half of the house was prepared for the soldiers … but every barn and out house was filled, and under every shed and tree the tables were carried for amputating the limbs,” she wrote. “I just felt my heart would break when I would see our brave men rushing into the battle and then coming back so mangled. The scene beggers description, the blood lay in puddles in the grove, the groans of the dying and the complaints of those undergoing amputation was horrible, the painful impression has seared my very heart.” The horrors were little different at the William Smith home a mile or so to the south, where Union forces established a field hospital. The family piano was used as an operating table and some dead were buried in the garden. Janie Smith wrote that this house, occupied by her widowed Aunt Mary and her four daughters during the battle, “is ruined with the blood of the Yankee wounded.”²¹

Heavy skirmishing occurred along the last Confederate line after nightfall, even as the Rebel artillery pulled back. Hardee’s infantry followed, beginning about 8 p.m., leaving campfires burning to try to deceive the Federals. There was sporadic fighting into the early morning of March 17 as some of Wheeler’s troopers covered the Confederate withdrawal, fighting dismounted among Hardee’s abandoned earthworks until almost sunrise. Janie Smith wrote that Wheeler himself “took tea” at her home about 2 a.m. before joining the retreat. “We held our position until about midnight when we fell back,” related the Rebel Arthur Ford. “This night’s march was a very trying one. The road was terribly cut up by the wagons and artillery, and as the rains had been frequent it seemed as if the clay mud was knee deep.”²²

Hardee was some five miles north of Averasboro about 1 a.m. when he dispatched another message to Johnston regarding the battle. He reported losses of “between 400 and 500” and added, “Enemy’s loss not known but believed to be heavy.” Some of the exhausted Confederate units were halted about dawn and finally fed. “We floundered along for about six hours, and at daylight … were given some rations,” Ford remembered. “Most of us had not had a morsel of food since the night of the 15th.” The Federals realized the Confederates were gone well before sunup and followed in pursuit—Kilpatrick’s cavalry and Ward’s infantry in the lead—finding the four miles of road to Averasboro strewn with the carnage of Hardee’s exodus. There was “evidence of great haste on the part of the retreating rebels, who abandoned wagons, ambulances containing their wounded, and left a portion of their wounded on the field and in the adjoining houses without surgical attendance,” recalled Lieutenant Colonel Philo Buckingham of the 20th Connecticut Infantry, part of Ward’s division. Amid the battlefield gore lay seriously wounded Captain Armand DeRosset of the 2nd North Carolina Infantry Battalion, one of six brothers in Confederate service. He survived, and in later years credited a Union surgeon for saving his life.²³

Hardee’s battered corps reached the hamlet of Elevation shortly after noon on March 17, where the general issued orders commending his soldiers for their mettle at Averasboro. He offered thanks “for their courage and conduct of yesterday, and congratulates them upon giving the enemy the first serious check he has received since leaving Atlanta.” Hardee told the men they had faced three times their number, which was basically true, but his casualty totals were wildly inaccurate, whether by design to bolster morale or just due to bad information: He claimed the corps had lost fewer than 500 men while inflicting some 3,300 casualties. “The lieutenant-general augurs happily of the future service and reputation of troops who have signalized the opening of the campaign by admirable steadiness, endurance, and courage,” Hardee closed. At Smithfield that morning, Johnston sent word of the Averasboro battle to Lee. “He [Hardee] was repeatedly attacked during the day … but always repulsed him [the enemy].” Hardee had stymied the advance of one of Sherman’s wings for about 36 hours and had paid for it. The 1st South Carolina Artillery of Rhett’s brigade suffered 215 casualties, almost half of its strength. Union losses were set at 682, including 95 dead, 500 wounded, and about 50 missing or captured.²⁴

At Oak Grove, Union physicians treated about 70 Confederate wounded before leaving them in the care of an officer and several prisoners. Sherman “visited this house while the surgeons were at work, with arms and legs lying around loose, in the yard and on the porch,” he later wrote. Inside, he encountered a young Rebel, Captain J.R. Macbeth, whose left arm had just been amputated. Sherman had been acquainted with the Macbeths while posted at Charleston before the war. “I inquired about his family, and enabled him to write a note to his mother,” Sherman remembered, adding that the letter was mailed a few days later. Taliaferro wrote that his men “fought admirably” despite their inexperience. “Although unaccustomed to field fighting, they behaved as well as any troops could have done. The discipline of garrison service, and of regular organizations, as well as their daily exposure for eighteen months past to the heavy artillery of the enemy, told in the coolness and determination with which they received and returned the heavy fire of this day.”²⁵

Hardee’s stand not only bought time for Johnston, it also served to further separate Sherman’s army, since Howard’s right wing had continued its march while Slocum’s troops fought at Averasboro. Presented with this opportunity, Johnston struck Slocum at Bentonville, about 20 miles north of Averasboro, on March 18-21, with Hardee’s corps among the 21,000 Confederates engaged. The battle was the largest fought in North Carolina during the war, but its 4,200 total casualties accomplished little other than to halt half of Sherman’s army for a few days more and further bleed the Confederates. Hardee’s 16-year-old son, Willie, was among the slain.

Just as much a part of the story is the encounter of one of Slocum’s officers, who happened upon the cavalier Colonel Rhett plodding along as a prisoner, without his fine boots, shortly after the fight at Averasboro. Believing that Rhett had earlier mistreated some of his captured men, Kilpatrick had taken his horse. As for his splendid footwear, a “soldier had exchanged a very coarse pair of army shoes for them,” Slocum stated. “Rhett said that in all his troubles he had one consolation, that of knowing that no one of Sherman’s men could get on those boots.”²⁶

Sherman and Johnston continued to spar before Johnston, knowing Lee had surrendered more than two weeks earlier, capitulated near present-day Durham on April 26. Averasboro was thus soon forgotten, the pageantry and agony of Appomattox and President Lincoln’s assassination headlining the American saga in the spring of 1865.

Derek Smith has written a number of books on the Civil War, including Lee’s Last Stand: Sailor’s Creek, Virginia, 1865 (2004) and In the Lion’s Mouth: Hood’s Tragic Retreat from Nashville, 1864 (2011). A resident of Bishopville, South Carolina, he is currently writing a book about soldiers from that state who fought at Antietam.

Library of Congress

Thomas L. “Stonewall” Jackson is depicted leading a prayer in a Confederate camp in this 1866 print by Peter Kramer.

“I don’t believe a bullet can go through a prayer…. [I]t is a much better shield than … steel armor.”

Louisiana soldier Edwin Fay, in a wartime letter to his family

“What would I do if I had no hope in Christ[?] I should almost be tempted to run away; but I will, with the help of God, do my duty as far as I know how. Pray for me, my dear, that I may be spared to you and our little ones; but if God otherwise determines, let us be sure to meet in heaven—we can if we will—God is true.”

A soldier from the 124th New York Infantry, in an undated letter to his wife before the Battle of Chancellorsville, in which he was killed

Library of Congress

Civil War camp gathered in prayer

“Today is Sunday…. A prayer meeting is being held on my right, and another on my left. Almost all tents have men singing psalm tunes, and it really seems tonight more like one vast camp meeting than like a soldiers’ camp….”

Colonel Hiram G. Berry, 4th Maine Infantry, in a letter to his family, June 1, 1861

Harper's Weekly

Cover of Harper’s Weekly depicting The Prayer at Sumter

“The question arises, to whom are we indebted for these great victories? To Grant? To Mead[e]? To Hancock? Or to the men who fight under them? No! Then, to whom is it? To none other than the great Supreme Ruler of the universe.…”

John R. Pillings, 86th New York Infantry, in a letter written during the Siege of Petersburg, June 1864

Library of Congress

Colonel Robert Gould Shaw

“Such things oblige a man to believe that God is not very far off.”

Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (above), 54th Massachusetts Infantry, on observing the “extraordinary change” in the lives of recently liberated slaves (“they all … go to school and to church, and work for wages!”) on St. Helena Island, South Carolina, in a letter home, July 3, 1863