Although a bit difficult to see in this photograph, the Federal skirmish earthwork line just west of Nine Mile Run is slightly visible running through the center of the image. Confederates from McLaws’s division attacked from the left background (east). This perspective is looking south.

(Tim Talbott)

Introduction

The two most recent traditional histories covering the Battle of Chancellorsville, those by Ernest B. Furgurson (1992) and Stephen W. Sears (1996), offer readers little about the Union and Confederate soldiers battling it out on the Army of the Potomac’s Second Corps front on May 3, 1863. Those studies only offer brief mentions about how things wrapped up on that part of the battlefield. Relying solely on these works, one would not know important details about the determined assaults by Brig. Gen. William Wofford’s Confederates, and the resolute defensive effort of the entrenched Federal skirmish line initially led by Col. Nelson Miles on and near the CVBT-owned property along the meandering stream known as Nine Mile Run.

 A much more thorough examination of the Second Corps participation is available in Carol Reardon’s article, “The Valiant Rearguard: Hancock’s Division at Chancellorsville,” which is available in Chancellorsville: The Battle and Its Aftermath, edited by Gary Gallagher. Unfortunately, however, it too excludes a number of fascinating period accounts that provide colorful perspectives from the soldiers and officers who fought at Nine Mile Run.

 In this CVBT History Wire, we’ll explore in greater depth the preceding days’ sequence of events that set the stage for this largely overlooked part of the battle, what occurred here during the morning of May 3, and the outcome of the fighting.

May 1, 1863 – Prelude and Position

“Victorious Advance of Genl. Sykes (regulars), May 1st”

This sketch by Alfred Waud shows Maj. Gen. George Sykes’s Fifth Corps division attacking east along the Orange Turnpike on May 1, 1863. Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock’s Second Corps division provided support, occupying the position in the foreground before being ordered to withdraw west to Chancellorsville by Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker.  (Library of Congress)

When two divisions of the Army of the Potomac’s Second Corps set out from their Stafford County camps near Falmouth in late April 1863 and marched west in what was to become the Chancellorsville Campaign, one of the division’s commanders, Brig. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, was already known as “Hancock the Superb” for his impressive fighting during the early portion of the Peninsula Campaign the year before. Now commanding a division of four brigades, Hancock’s men, along with Samuel French’s division, crossed the Rappahannock River at United States Ford on April 30—some units helping lay the pontoon bridges—and bivouacked that evening near Chancellorsville.

 Hancock’s immediate superior, Second Corps commander, Maj. Gen. Darius Couch, received orders on the afternoon of May 1 for Hancock’s division to support Maj. Gen. George Sykes’s Fifth Corps division, which engaged with Maj. Gen. Richard H. Anderson’s Confederates after advancing east along the Orange Turnpike. Hancock’s men, led by Brig. Gen. John Caldwell’s brigade, positioned on the high ground east of Nine Mile Run near the Newton house. Col. Nelson Miles’s 61st New York served as skirmishers on the south side of the turnpike, while on the north side of the road companies from Col. Daniel Bingham’s 64th New York (Col. John R. Brooke’s brigade) bolstered the skirmish line. The 64th New York’s skirmishers soon received orders to move forward and across the road in an attempt to link up with the left flank of the 61st New York, while the rest of Hancock’s regiments served as reserves on the Newton house ridge for Sykes’s soldiers fighting desperately just to the east.

 Sykes’s men, many of whom were Regulars, encountered stiff resistance from Anderson and supporting troops from the division of Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws. Sykes reported his critical situation to the Army of the Potomac’s overall commander, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, who in turn ordered Sykes, along with the other Fifth Corps and Twelfth Corps forces, to withdraw to Chancellorsville.

 Fifth Corps commander Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade, and Twelfth Corps head Henry Slocum, were dumbfounded at Hooker’s order to relinquish the advantageous defensive positions they had attained.

 As Sykes’s men withdrew toward the Chancellor House, Hancock held the Newton house ridge position and then, too, fell back. Gen. Couch ordered the skirmishers to withdraw from their advanced position as well. According to Confederate Brig. Gen. Paul Semmes, the Federal withdrawal was not an orderly one. In his report, Semmes claimed, “The road, the woods, and fields on either side, over which the enemy retired, were strewn with knapsacks, blankets, overcoats, and many other valuable articles.” The closely pursuing Confederates received encouragement to finally slow their advance by Federal artillery near the Chancellorsville crossroads and by Sykes’s reorganized units.

Col. Nelson A. Miles, 61st New York Infantry, (shown here later as a major general) was placed in command of the Second Corps picket line on the night of May 1. Miles was wounded on May 3 and later received the Medal of Honor for his actions that day. 

(Library of Congress) 

During the night of May 1-2, Hancock received orders to change position from the south side of the Orange Turnpike to the north side and established a new line facing east. Throughout the night, the Confederate artillery, now on the Newton house ridge, shelled Hancock’s line as they tried to entrench in between incoming rounds.

 Col. Daniel Bingham of the 64th New York reported that just before dusk he sent out five of his companies to serve as skirmishers. The skirmishers placed their right flank on the Orange Turnpike and their left connected with skirmishers from Caldwell’s brigade. Confederate artillery shelled the companies of the 64th who remained on the main line, and at least “One charge of grape or canister was thrown through the line of skirmishers. . . .,” reported Bingham.  

 Col. Miles received orders during the night to take charge of the skirmish line in front of Hancock’s division. Miles noted that he was ordered to “establish my line on the most favorable ground in its front.” The companies and regiments that made up the initial skirmish line came from three of Hancock’s four brigades. Apparently, the skirmish line troops completed some work on abatis and earthwork defenses to potentially slow any attempted Confederate attack.

May 2, 1863 – Skirmishing

“Three Soldiers in Action” 

Although the location and date of this sketch by Alfred Waud is not noted, it shows soldiers who could be skirmishers. Serving as the armies’ forward troops in battle situations, skirmishers played an important but dangerous role in the Civil War.

(Library of Congress)

The skirmish line established by Col. Miles basically followed the contours of Hancock’s main line, which by daybreak on May 2 connected with Twelfth Corps units on the right on the south side of the Orange Turnpike and with the Fifth Corps to their left.

 Miles’s skirmishers were posted on the west side of Nine Mile Run and perpendicular to the Orange Turnpike. The picket line then curved back almost parallel to the road and then ran to the southwest. An uncomfortable day was ahead for these sentries throughout May 2. Col. Miles reported, “We were constantly engaged skirmishing with the enemy during the day, and at about 3 p.m. the enemy commenced massing his troops in two columns, one on each side of the road, flanked by a line of battle about 800 yards in front in the woods.” Miles noted that “Their orders could be distinctly heard.”

 This movement by the Confederates was, of course, by design as a means of keeping the Federal troops on this part of the field occupied while Lt. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson completed his winding march to the get in position on the Eleventh Corps right flank for an attack. “They soon advanced with a tremendous yell, and were met with a sure and deadly fire of one simple line. A very sharp engagement continued about an hour, when the enemy fell back in disorder,” Miles commented. Apparently, the Confederates sold the diversion well, as Miles wrote, “Their charge was impetuous and determined, advancing to within 20 yards of my abatis, but were hurled back with fearful loss, and made no further demonstrations.”

 One of the Confederate attackers was Lt. William R. Montgomery who led a company in the 3rd Georgia Sharpshooter Battalion, which served in Brig. Gen. William Wofford’s brigade. Montgomery wrote to his mother and sister on May 7, briefly describing their role in the May 2 fighting. As to their responsibilities, Montgomery wrote, “We are always in front of the Brigade, about 300 or 400 yds., to clear out the way & I tell you we done it too, to perfection.” He added, “You ought to hear Gen Wofford praise us.” Concerning the combat, Lt. Montgomery noted, “Saturday evening [May 2] our little Battalion charged the Yankies breast work, one whole Brigade behind it, charged three times but the fire was hot from the enemy. We had to fall back. Our loss was quite heavy.”

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Gen. McLaws in his report seemed to concur partly with Lt. Montgomery. McLaws wrote: “I was ordered to advance along the whole line to engage with skirmishers, which were largely re-enforced, and to threaten, but not attack seriously; in doing General Wofford became so seriously engaged that I directed him to withdraw, which was done in good order, his men in good spirits, after driving the enemy to their intrenchments.”

 Lt. Samuel Burney, who served in Cobb’s Legion, another regiment in Wofford’s brigade, took a minute to write home to his wife on the night of May 2. Burney explained that “we have seen hard times to be sure,” but “There has been no general engagement yet. . . .” However, danger abounded. Burney explained, earlier that evening, “while our brigade was passing through a field at the double quick, we were severely shelled.” He “narrowly escaped a shell.” Burney continued, “As I write I hear the skirmishers on the front, but that has been going on all day.” Describing his temporary camp, he penned, “We are at the place where the Yankees camped last night. The ground is covered with their leavings—knapsacks, haversacks, old clothes, blankets, &c.”

 In Col. John R. Brooke’s brigade, Capt. John F. Reynolds of the 145th Pennsylvania noted in a May 11 letter describing May 2, that at about 6 p.m. “the Rebels having placed a battery in position commenced shelling us . . . in a hour’s time they ceased firing. . . .” Reynolds did not know why, but again, it was probably to keep their attention and prevent assisting in the defense of Jackson’s flank attack. Fortunately, for Reynolds and his comrades, “none of us were hurt as we lay in the intrenchments and could not be hit unless the shell should happen to burst over our heads.”

 The 64th New York’s Col. Daniel Bingham noted that during the day his regiment was ordered back to the main line near the Chancellor house. However, “About dusk, Colonel Brooke ordered me to deploy the whole regiment as skirmishers in front of [the] brigade and parallel to the front of the new intrenchments, and advance about 600 yards to the front, and connect with Colonel Miles on the right,” Bingham reported.

 It would be in this forward position, just west of Nine Mile Run and along a line of improvised earthworks, that the 64th New York and other regiments of Brooke’s brigade would fiercely fight it out with William Wofford’s Confederates the following day.  

 Many of these units had faced each other in battle only five months earlier at Fredericksburg as the Federals assaulted what were now Wofford’s Georgians in the famous Sunken Road. However, now the role of attacker and defender would be reversed.

May 3, 1863 – A Time to Fight

This photograph shows a view from the Federal picket line earthworks looking east toward Nine Mile Run and the Confederate attack position. (Tim Talbott)

Just before daybreak on May 3, and from their entrenched picket line, Bingham’s 64th New York heard Confederate officers giving commands, “and immediately after[,] a line of skirmishers appeared in our front, and advancing with their peculiar yell, commenced the attack,” but after about a half hour the Southerners retired. Soon came a “regular line of battle, extending along our whole front, with closed ranks.” This more concerted assault moved “to within 5 or 6 rods [about 30 yards] of our breastworks.” Bingham reported, “The men of the Sixty-fourth worked coolly and steadily, taking good aim, and but few shots were thrown away.” After roughly an hour of fighting the Confederates “retired in confusion,” with the New Yorkers cheering their departure.

 Wofford’s sharpshooters participated in this initial assault by the Confederates skirmishers. Among them was Capt. William Montgomery of the 3rd Georgia Sharpshooter Battalion. Montgomery recalled in a letter four days later to his wife that “Soon Sunday morning the Gen[eral Wofford] sent us in again. We charged again under the most deadly fire. Got within a few feet of the works, but it was fixed with brush [abatis] that we could not climb then & had to fall back. Our loss was again more.”

 Along with the 64th New York in the forward entrenched skirmish line, men from the 145th Pennsylvania (also a unit in Brooke’s brigade) soon joined them. Early on May 3, the regiment’s colonel, Hiram Brown, reported that he received orders from Brooke to “detail 166 men and 10 officers . . . to report to Colonel Miles . . . for picket duty.” Lt. Col. David McCreary led this skirmisher detail.

 One soldier in McCreary’s detachment was Pvt. James Harris. Harris wrote about his May 3 experience in the forward position near Nine Mile Run a week later in a letter to his wife. He explained, “We were soon ordered out on the advanced post. There was a breast work there, but rather poor. Just before we got there they commence firing at us. We got behind the work as soon as possible and lay waiting for them to advance.”

Pvt. Eli Pinson Landers  Pvt. Landers, like several other soldiers on both sides, left a vivid account of his experience fighting along Nine Mile Run.   (Public domain)

One of Wofford’s men, J. R. Parrott, wrote to the Atlanta Southern Confederacy newspaper after the battle explaining that the brigade “advanced upon the foe to the right of the road [north side] about a half mile below [east of] Chancellorsville, when the gallant men encountered the terrible fire of the foe, well secured behind breast works . . . through a very dense woods with large trees and undergrowth naturally so thick that it was difficult to get through.” If that was not trouble enough, “the enemy have felled trees and small brush cross and pile so as to make it difficult to charge the works, or even to see things,” Parrott noted.

 A third concerted attack by Wofford’s men soon followed the second. Col. Bingham reported, “Another line of the same character [as before] took their place, and the contest kept on.” Unlike the day before, when McLaws’s men were only expected to keep Hancock’s troops occupied while Jackson’s flank attack shattered the Union’s right flank, on May 3, the attackers were as determined to break their foe’s line as the defenders were resolute to hold it. This situation created some fierce combat.

 Pvt. Eli Pinson Landers of the 16th Georgia, who was fighting in the center of Wofford’s brigade, wrote to his mother five days after the fight. He penned, “We have lost a many a good solger . . . but the 3rd of May our Brigade got into it heels over head and our regiment lost more men than we ever have in arry fight yet. We had to fight them behind their entrenchments. There was some in our company killed 15 steps from their trench. Our company is nearly ruined.” During the fighting, Landers noticed when his friend Jim Matthews fell. “The poor fellow looked very pitiful at me when he got shot and begged me to help him but I had no time to lose. It was everyman for himself for they was falling on my right and left and my disposition inclined to try to return the fire with as much injury [to the enemy] as possible.” Landers himself was wounded in the hand but remained with his company.

 J. R. Parrott concurred with Landers about the dangerous position of the 16th Georgia. He mentioned in his letter to the Atlanta Southern Confederacy newspaper that due to the way Wofford’s brigade had to attack, “some regiments and parts of regiments [were] much nearer than others to the enemy, very near the works.” Parrott wrote, “The 16th [Georgia] was very near and greatly exposed.”

Lt. Horatio David, 16th Georgia Infantry Lt. David received a painful wound during the May 3 fighting at Nine Mile Run. (Library of Congress)

Another 16th Georgia soldier to fall wounded during the fighting along Nine Mile Run was 20-year-old Lt. Horatio David. Chancellorsville was his first battle as an officer. A comrade who received a wound to the thigh wrote Lt. David’s family on May 7 from a Richmond hospital that Horatio’s wound was “Jest a flesh Wound.” Horatio may have told him that so as not to cause overconcern, but his injury was much more serious. In a May 20 letter home, Horatio explained that sometime during the fighting, a “ball struck me on the hipbone in front where it joins the backbone and then it glanced and struck the backbone and ranged up the back bone 2 inches and stopped.” On June 12, Horatio was able to travel home to Georgia with his mother, who came to Richmond to help him recover.

 The conspicuous part played by the 16th Georgia in the fight is evidenced by a number of references to them. For example, Col. Bingham reported, “One of the regiments in this line was the Sixteenth Georgia, whose battle-flag was brought up to within 2 rods of our breastworks. . . .” Bingham related that this happened “in front of the opening left for the skirmishers to come in [through the breastworks].” Here, the “opening had been filled with logs, but no earth had been thrown against them, and no ditch had been dug.” Additionally, Bingham explained, “the abatis was also light, and no men behind it.”

 This was obviously a weak spot that the Georgian’s hoped to exploit. However, Bingham stationed himself there, “which was left to the center of the regiment.” To make the site less vulnerable, Bingham “ordered the two companies on the right and left to right and left oblique their fire,” and in doing so they “enfiladed the front of the opening which checked the advance, but did not drive the enemy back.” Bingham noted, “The colors of the Sixteenth Georgia fell twice, and were afterwards placed against a tree, when our men ceased to fire upon it.”

 J. R. Parrott’s letter to the Southern Confederacy also explained that “Cobb’s Legion were greatly exposed and fought very near the works.” The wounded in Cobb’s Legion included the previously mentioned Lt. Samuel Burney, who had just written to his wife the day before informing her he had fortunately made it safely through May 2. Burney’s good fortune ran out on May 3 at about 8:00 a.m. Burney was “struck above the left eye on the side of my temple, the ball passing out below my left ear,” he informed his wife four days after the battle from his Richmond hospital room. “The Company suffered much in the fight,” Burney added, and then listed over 20 comrades and their various wounds. Yet, he claimed “Cobb’s Legion had made an immortal name. Wofford proposed three cheers for it & declared that we had killed more Yankees than any battalion in his Brigade, and that we were closer to the breastworks of the enemy. We were not more than 30 yards from the Yankees, and they were in breastworks.”

According to the identification by the Library of Congress, this 1866 photograph shows “Federal entrenchments across Plank Road about one mile west of Chancellorsville.” However, the improvised works east of Chancellorsville along Nine Mile Run probably looked similar to these. (Library of Congress)

The 64th New York’s Pvt. Warren Persons, too, detailed the ferocity of the fight along Nine Mile Run. In a letter home to his mother on May 11, he wrote about the foe’s determined charge: “They came up as if they had no fear of death, and at one time came within a few feet of our works, so that we were ordered to fix bayonets, and just as they broke and ran [we] were nearly out of ammunition, and we went in with sixty rounds. It was hot work there for a little while and if it had not been for our intrenchments but few of us would have escaped to tell the story of the rest.”

 Pvt. Persons noted witnessing comrade after comrade being hit all around him. As he and a comrade, Corp. Russel T. Wilmarth, were busy digging their entrenchment deeper, Wilmarth hinted that perhaps they were digging their own grave, and “alas so it proved to him.” Persons wrote that during the battle, Wilmarth “was in the act of leveling his gun on a field officer when a ball from the left went crashing through [Daniel] Ely and [then Wilmarth’s] brain.” Wilmarth “dropped in a sitting posture, and died almost instantly without uttering a sound,” Persons noted. The casualties continued: “Philander Kellogg was the second man on my left, he was struck with two bullets at the same instant, one from the front going through his heart and the other from the left going through the brain, he merely exclaimed Oh dear: and fell dead. Charles Morey was the fourth man on my left, he was struck in the side of the head near the ear and fell like a log, the blood spouting in a torrent from the wound. These were the only ones I saw fall, except Daniel Ely and I was not near him I merely saw him fall into his brothers arms.” It is no wonder that Persons expressed, “It was a sickening sight to see young men, strong and healthy, in the full flush and vigor of life, suddenly struck down without a moments time for thought or preparation for eternity. It was such a sight as I wish never to see again and especially on the Sabbath. . . .”

 Pvt. Persons summed up his May 3 battlefield experience much like other survivors probably did or would have that day: “Death and eternity have been brought very near to me and I have realized them as I never did before, and I feel it stands me in hand to be prepared and in constant readiness to meet any change. I hope never to pass through such scenes again, but I am ready for the conflict whenever wherever duty calls.”

 As things got hot for the Federals, the 64th New York began to run out of ammunition. As previously mentioned, the 145th Pennsylvania joined them. The unit’s lieutenant colonel, David McCreary, who brought his troops to the picket line, sent some to the south side of the Orange Turnpike to connect with skirmishers on the right. There, near the road, McCreary heard Col. Miles receive a wound to the stomach by a Confederate bullet as Miles rode along the Orange Turnpike. For his “Distinguished gallantry while holding with his command an advanced position against repeated assaults by a strong force of the enemy; [and] was severely wounded,” Miles received a Medal of Honor almost 30 years later. McCreary moved three companies to support the 64th New York to the north side of the road. 

 Pvt. Samuel V. Dean of the 145th wrote to his wife on May 21 about their ordeal three weeks earlier. Dean related that “we went in under a heavy fire from the Rebs But with no [loss] in our company.” There they found the 64th New York and Col. Bingham “out of ammenshion + the Rebs within Six Rods of the Entrenchments Bound to Break through our lines But we gave them Rebs fits  we gave volley after voly.” Bingham reported that he spread the 145th out “along the line, and directed them to share their ammunition with us.” There was a problem though. The 145th “used the buck-and-ball cartridge” with their smoothbores while the 64th had Austrian rifles, into which the big .69 caliber ball would not fit. Col. Bingham told his men “to tear off the ball and use the buckshot, which was efficient for such short range.”

Buck and Ball Cartridge. The Civil War buck and ball cartridge typically consisted of three buckshot at the top, a .69 caliber musket ball beneath them, and the black powder charge. (Union Drummer Boy, uniondb.com)

Firing grew heavier and Pvt. Dean noted that many of the men killed near him were hit in the head. “One man was kild By the Side of me we laid him on the Bank Behind us But he Bled so much it made a Puddle where I stood.” Pragmatically, Dean took the dead soldier’s “Rifful and cattridges.” Standing beside Col. Bingham, Dean explained “Bingham of the 64[th] tore cattridges for me to load + fire[;] he[,] Conl Bingham[,] is a Brave man + a good fellow.”

 A little ammunition finally arrived via the pioneers of the 64th New York, but not enough for everyone, so they fixed bayonets in anticipation of another charge. Fortunately for Col. Bingham, Wofford’s men fell back. One 64th soldier jumped over the earthworks and captured six soldiers from the 16th Georgia. At about this time, around 9:00 a.m. according to Bingham, the 27th Connecticut (another unit in Brooke’s brigade) relieved the 64th New York, who fell back to the line near the Chancellor house, and later eventually to the third line.

 After their breakfast on May 3, eight companies of the 27th Connecticut received orders to relieve the 64th New York. According to the unit’s regimental history (published in 1866), the 27th went forward to “the intrenchments we had thrown up . . . the Friday [May 1] night previous. These works now formed the picket line of the army, and from the nature of the position and its relation to the movements of the enemy, a large force was required to hold it.” As they marched “double-quick, down the hill [east] into the ravine, it was met with a heavy fire of musketry. A number were wounded, and several shot through the head as they entered the breastworks.” Although not offering another assault, the Confederates, “concealed in the thick woods, continually annoyed us with a scattering fire.”

 Also still holding the line were men from the 2nd Delaware and the previously mentioned 145th Pennsylvania. Pvt. Dean of the 145th was not impressed with the 27th Connecticut’s soldiers, “that Regt I did not think much of[,] Both officer[s] and men wer Scard,” Dean wrote. He explained the 27th colonel, Richard S. Bostwick, “laid flat on the ground Behind a Tree + So did the major of that Regt[.] ther men were So Scard + Excited I was afraid they would Shot me they Being behind me[.] I Jawed them like Sixty [with zest] + told them not to fire until they new what they fired at[.] But they Sooned got composed and done Better[.]”

 Soon the entrenched Federal picket line along Nine Mile Run started receiving artillery fire from the rear. Thinking that their own artillery near the Chancellor house was firing too short, Lt. Col. McCreary sent a courier to tell them they were firing too low. The courier did not return. Infantry fire from McCreary’s rear now came in a couple of rifle volleys. It was not friendly fire. McCreary, who at this time was about 50 yards on the northside of the Orange Turnpike, explained, “About this time a rebel officer came up the road [Orange Turnpike] in front of the line waving a white handkerchief.” McCreary sent a lieutenant to see what the Confederate wanted. He returned with “word that the rebel officer demanded our surrender.” With his rear support having retreated, and now basically surrounded, McCreary had little other choice.

 After capitulating, McCreary later wrote in his report to Miles: “I conversed with a number of their officers & men and . . . they all expressed the greatest surprise when they learned how small a force held the line against them and said they had supposed we has a strong line of battle behind the breastworks.”

 For the captured Federals along Nine Mile Run their fighting was over at Chancellorsville. According to the 27th Connecticut’s 1866 regimental history: “As soon as the surrender had been consummated the men threw away their guns, many of them with the cartridges, into a rivulet [Nine Mile Run] near the intrenchments, and some cut up their equipments, determined to afford as little aid and comfort to the rebels as possible.” The prisoners were marched off the field and to “General Lee’s headquarters, where the rebels took away our knapsacks, rubber blankets, shelter-tents, and canteens, and registered our names.”

“Parole Camp Annapolis Maryland” Some of the Union prisoners captured at Nine Mile Run spent time at Camp Parole waiting to be formally exchanged.  (Library of Congress)

As was often the case with assaults against entrenched positions, the Confederates suffered significantly more casualties in terms of killed and wounded on May 3 at Nine Mile Run than the Federals. According to the Official Records, Wofford’s brigade suffered 491 men and officers killed and wounded during Chancellorsville. The vast majority of those occurred on May 3. The brigade’s two hardest-hit regiments were Cobb’s Legion (157) and the 16th Georgia (133). 

 While the killed and wounded in Brooke’s Federal brigade was relatively light at 83 total for its five regiments, their greatest loss came in prisoners of war on May 3. The 27th Connecticut had 283 officers and enlisted men captured, while the 145th Pennsylvania had 112. The 2nd Delaware, who was ordered to detail 75 men to the entrenched forward picket line at Nine Mile Run on the morning of May 3 lost 40 captured. The prisoners were fortunate to only have to endure a short stay in actual Confederate POW facilities. Marched to Richmond, by one soldier’s account they arrived there on May 9 and received paroles on May 14 at City Point. Most ended up at holding facilities like Camp Parole in Annapolis, Maryland, until they were properly exchanged, which in some cases took months.

Some Sources and Suggested Reading

George Montgomery, Jr. (editor). Georgia Sharpshooter: The Civil War Diary and Letters of William Rhadamanthus Montgomery. Mercer University Press, 1997.

 Carol Reardon. “The Valiant Rearguard: Hancock’s Division at Chancellorsville,” in Chancellorsville: The Battle and Its Aftermath, edited by Gary W. Gallagher. University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

 Elizabeth Whitley Roberson (editor). In Care of Yellow River: The Complete Civil War Letters of Pvt. Eli Pinson Landers to His Mother. Pelican, 1997.

 Verel R. Salmon. Common Men in the War for the Common Man: The Civil War of the United States of America – History of the 145th Pennsylvania Volunteers From Organization through Gettysburg. Xlibris, 2013.

CVBT’s Nine Mile Run Battlefield (Tim Talbott)

In 1868, five years after Chancellorsville, Rev. Isaac Moorhead traveled with Lt. Col. David McCreary of the 145th Pennsylvania to visit the Virginia battlefields where McCreary fought. As they rode west from Fredericksburg to the Chancellorsville battlefield they approached where the Nine Mile Run fighting occurred and where McCreary was captured.

 At the Newton house ridge, McCreary told Moorhead, “We certainly came to the top of this hill—where we ought to have stayed—and then double-quicked back again, and, yes, I do believe that at the foot of this hill you will find our advanced works where I was captured.” Rev. Morehead explained, “Driving down the hill I almost recognized the locality from my friend’s [McCreary’s] frequent descriptions of it. The earthworks were still quite complete, although somewhat washed by rain. They lay directly across the road, and extended on either side into the deep woods. Immediately in front of them the heavy timber had been cut, but in the wonderful luxuriance of the soil, the second growth had sprung up everywhere, varying in height from four to twelve feet. Remains of uniforms, cartridge boxes, canteens, haversacks and some human bones lay in the trenches. Dead branches were hanging on all of the trees, and all the bodies of them were scarred with shot and shell.”

 Moorhead continued: “In front of this advanced line and scattered all through the woods we found the graves of many of the enemy’s dead marked with head and foot stakes, the pencil tracings obliterated and a tangle of second growth already covering them. I cut a hickory walking stick that had grown right out of the breast of some brave fellow from McLaw’s or Anderson’s commands.”

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“Surgeons Call” from “Life in Camp, Part 1” by Winslow Homer. 

(Library of Congress)

Introduction

Illnesses and disease ravaged the ranks of the contending armies throughout the Civil War. Historians estimate that for every soldier who died in battle, two died from disease. Fighting illness often began before fighting the enemy. Camps of instruction, both North and South, struggled with limiting illnesses that we today usually consider childhood diseases and fortunately often receive immunizations at an early age to prevent or mitigate. However, for mid-19th century Americans diseases like mumps, measles, chicken pox, smallpox, and tuberculosis often proved fatal. Soldiers who were fortunate enough to survive these illnesses, or in rare cases received vaccinations for some of them, still had other health threats to contend with.

Waterborne diseases were particularly common among Civil War soldiers. It was the fortunate soldier who was able to fill his canteen from a clean well or farm spring. More often than not fighting men scooped up water wherever they found it. Whether their thirst relief came from a stream along the march, a stagnant pond, or a muddy ditch, soldiers were usually more concerned with finding it rather than worrying about its cleanliness or taste. After all, Civil War soldiers were not operating under the knowledge and fear of germ theory, which came later.

 Diarrhea, dysentery, and typhoid all took their toll on soldiers’ bodies. Extreme dehydration caused by the body’s attempt to rid itself of the illness-inducing bacteria often created a vicious cycle of sickness that too often resulted in an extremely painful death. Dehydration also adversely affected soldiers’ mental health. Improper sanitation facilities, consuming undercooked meat, and the lack of personal hygiene resources created situations that contributed to thousands of deaths.

Sick Confederate soldiers in central Virginia who were not able to recover in their camps were often sent to convalescent hospitals like Chimborazo in Richmond, pictured here. (Library of Congress)

If all of that was not enough, soldiers also encountered disease-carrying insects. Malaria, caused by mosquitoes, manifested in extreme fevers that too often reappeared throughout the victim’s life. Lice, fleas, and chiggers sometimes carried and spread typhus, which also produced fevers, chills, body aches, and vomiting. Insects like flies also helped spread camp diseases like diarrhea and dysentery.

 And, then as now, the common cold created misery for tens of thousands of soldiers. But unlike today, where we can receive antibiotics if a cold graduates to something more life-threatening like pneumonia, Civil War soldiers had no proven remedy.

 In this CVBT History Wire, we will explore some of the non-combat-related health issues that soldiers who served in central Virginia encountered and mentioned in their letters, diaries, and memoirs. Concerns about their health, sickness, and disease received almost as much mention by the soldiers in their correspondence as their worries about food and the weather. With much of the scholarly focus on Civil War medicine falling on wounds that soldiers received during combat, this aspect of soldiers’ military medical experiences is too often overlooked.

November and December 1862

“Fall in for Your Quinine” Sketch by Charles Wellington Reed”In response to this call, some who were whole and needed not a physician, as well as those who were [genuinely] sick, reported at the surgeon’s tent for prescriptions.” (From Hardtack and Coffee, or the Unwritten Story of Army Life by John D. Billings, published 1887) (Library of Congress) 

Soon after arriving in Stafford County in November 1862, the 121st New York Infantry’s assistant surgeon Daniel Holt wrote to his wife explaining his regiment’s thinned ranks. “Our regiment is growing less and less every day from a variety of causes,” Holt noted. Chief among them, “sickness has thinned the regiment very much.” He estimated that between the several hospitals “nearly one hundred and fifty” were seeking treatment for illnesses. Holt was not only concerned about his men’s health, but his own as well. A week later he wrote home again telling his wife he had dropped 15 pounds since he joined up. More troubling perhaps, Holt added, “I have not been able to get rid of that cough yet, and I fear unless we get into winter quarters soon . . . it will trouble [me] all winter.” 

 In a November 27, 1862, letter to his wife from “near Fredericksburg,” the 3rd South Carolina Infantry’s Alexander McNeill wrote, “The health of our army is about as when I wrote you. We understand that smallpox is prevailing in Richmond. Some two hundred cases was reported there a few days ago. The utmost consternation exist among the citizens. They keep to their houses as much as possible. The disease is as yet confined to military hospitals.” With army officers and supplies constantly coming and going from Richmond to Fredericksburg at the time, soldiers likely worried that the disease would spread. 

 Union surgeon, William Watson of the 105th Pennsylvania was happy in early December 1862 that his hospital in Stafford County now had better facilities. He wrote his sister, “Before it was really distressing to see the poor sick fellows lying on the ground sheltered by the cold and inclement weather by only one old tattered [tent] fly.” Watson was also pleased that he would be receiving a fresh supply of medical supplies. Additionally, Watson thought, “One other source of congratulation is the riddance by discharge of a great many of my old chronic cases. They were constant inmates of the Hospital or regular attendants at the sick call every morning.” Watson does not say if their “discharge” meant they went back into the ranks or if they were sent to hospitals in Washington D.C, but from a following letter, perhaps, he meant both.

 On December 10, in anticipation of the Battle of Fredericksburg, Watson received orders “to send all my sick in hospital to Genl. Hospital and to report for duty every man on the sick list able to march 10 miles or do one day’s duty.” Watson wrote that the surgeon for the 141st Pennsylvania “sent 169 [men] to Genl. Hospital, the other Regts. [of the brigade] in the same proportion.” Watson “sent but 29.” He did not have an easy time convincing some that they were able. “Many of them wish to remain behind, not caring to engage in [a] fight. Those I found playing off I of course reported for duty. They cursed me right smartly, I understand, after getting out of hearing,” Watson explained. He noted that it was pretty common for doctors, or as the soldiers often called them, “Old Quin,” for quinine, to get cussed, especially by those “who try their very best to play sick and so get off duty.”

“Playing the Old Soldier” By Winslow Homer  While some soldiers bravely fulfilled their service obligations despite being sick, others tried to use medical issues to avoid unpleasant or dangerous duties.  (Public Domain) 

Georgian Samuel Burney of Cobb’s Legion explained to his wife in late November 1862, his thoughts on why he believed he was fortunate to maintain good health: “I attribute my good health in a great measure to the manner in which I was raised; not being allowed to go in any kind of weather, being kept at home at night, thereby preventing late hours, dissipation & excess. I thank my parents for the good seeds sown so early, for now in an important period of my life, I am reaping good fruit therefrom.” Later in the letter Burney commented on the health of his regiment, calling it “very good” and that there were “only four on the sick list.” However, Burney noted that “Some of the boys have had the small pox,” but he had been vaccinated “& my arm is a little sore—[with the vaccination] just taking.”

 Capt. Lewis Perrin Foster, 3rd South Carolina Infantry, penned a letter from his “Camp near Fredericksburg” on December 7, 1862. Foster started his letter by complaining about the cold weather. “I have been thawing my ink for some time, but find it rough business,” he scribbled. He’d already broken one vial, apparently trying to melt it. “I never felt much colder weather then we now have. The ground is covered with snow and froze perfectly hard,” Foster lamented. Hard times came with soldiering, but Capt. Foster related that, “Had a man told me before this war broke out that I could have endured at all what I endure with comfort I would have believed him a fool, a maniac or a columinator.” However, he felt, “I can not say that I have yet suffered in this war badly,” and believed, “I feel grateful for the fine health that I now enjoy.” Soldiers who developed symptoms associated with rheumatism and arthritis likely held different thoughts.   

 On December 10, William Cowan McClellan of the 9th Alabama reiterated the struggles of soldiering in a letter to his father that Foster hinted at. Writing from Fredericksburg, he mentioned again his need for footwear. He explained, “I am now compleatly bare footed. The snow two inches deep[,] raw hides have been issued to the troops to make [moccasins] which last about a weak or ten days. Please have a pair of boots maid and send them too as soon as possible.” Laboring under such circumstances, one wonders how any similarly ill-equipped soldier maintained any semblance of health.

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Capt. Samuel Fiske of the 14th Connecticut Infantry was sidelined due to sickness and missed the Battle of Fredericksburg. (Library of Congress)

Writing under the pen name of “Dunn Browne” (a pun on something that is done well) to the Springfield, Massachusetts Republican newspaper, Capt. Samuel W. Fiske, 14th Connecticut Infantry, explained that he missed the battle of Fredericksburg because he was “Sick for two weeks from a fever and diarrhoea.” Getting permission from a surgeon, he left the field hospital in an attempt to get to his regiment before the battle by hitching a ride in a medical wagon. He did not reach his “post till the day after the battle.” Fiske, perhaps expressing some survivor’s remorse, explained: “My heart is sick and sad. Blood and wounds and death are before my eyes; of those who are my friends, comrades, brothers; of those who have marched into the very mouth of destruction as cooly and cheerfully as to any ordinary duty. Another tremendous, terrible, murderous butchery of brave men had made Saturday, the 13th of December, a memorable day in the annals of this war.”

 Not all soldiers’ illnesses manifested signs usually associated with physiological sickness. On the day before the Battle of Fredericksburg, Col. William J. Bolton of the 51st Pennsylvania noted the tragic suicide death of their quartermaster sergeant, William Jones. Bolton wrote, “Having been for several days in a depressed state of mind he was left back in camp when the regiment was ordered to cross the river. The act was done in rear of his tent.”

 During the Battle of Fredericksburg, assistant surgeon Daniel Holt remained in the 121st New York’s Stafford County camp to attend to 32 of their sick soldiers. Left without help or proper provisions, the frustrated Holt vented to his wife in a long letter, “I have thus had to act as physician without medicines, surgeon without instruments, hospital steward without supplies, Quartermaster without means, baggage wagon without horses, and a mule team without harness.” A couple of days before, Holt had to bury a soldier who “died of chronic diarrhoea,” and eulogized him in his letter: “Poor fellow, he has made his last march; he has traveled his last weary step, and now, upon the other side of the river, he is borne on Angel’s wings to join his God in glory.” Holt also commented on his personal health. Despite the recent trials, Holt felt he was personally “getting along better than I expected I should.” Yet, he still complained of “soreness of lungs and oppression of breathing” as well as “rheumatism in my hips and legs,” but most troublesome was his insomnia. He explained nights seemed “long and tedious” as “I lie and listen to every cough that break the stillness.”

 Among those who fell during the Battle of Fredericksburg was Lt. Charles Wilson Duke, who also had the unfortunate distinction of being the 90th Pennsylvania Infantry’s first officer killed in battle. Despite obtaining a leave to remain at home for an unknown sickness, Lt. Duke returned to his regiment when battle appeared imminent and performed his duty. His selfless act inspired William Fayette, a drummer in the regiment’s Co. C, to pen “A Tribute in Memory of Captain Charles W. Duke.” It reads in part:

Rest warrior though thy slumbers,

Ne’er shall waken here,

There are true friends without number,

Holding they memory dear.

Hastening from a couch of sickness,

Girding on his sword,

Showing all who looked for weakness,

That he was no coward.

Heeding no the bullet’s whistle

Sounding his death knell;

Till at last a rebel missile

Struck! And poor “Duke” fell.

Exposure to the elements in camp and on marches like the ill-fated “Mud March” in January 1863, only increased the soldiers’ chances of becoming sick or worsening an illness. Sketch by Alfred Waud. (Library of Congress)

The day after Christmas 1862, Pvt. Edward King Wightman wrote to his brother from his camp near Falmouth. In his missive Wightman mentioned that a comrade recently died. “On the 16th we buried one man from the company who had long been ill with fever. It was Rosenbery [Pvt. Thomas H. Roseberry], one of my first tentmates. I wrote to his mother last night, by the Captain’s request, to communicate the tidings. . . .,” he explained. 

 A couple of weeks after the Battle of Fredericksburg, not only were Union soldiers feeling in the dumps about their recent defeat, but according to Union artillerist Capt. Thomas Ward Osborn, the recent weather added to the poor morale. “The condition of the Army in camp is at present very bad. For two weeks past the thermometer has registered below zero, wood is scarce, open shelter tents, one blanket for each man, clothing badly worn, wounded men frozen to death, half rations for the artillery, horses, etc., etc.,” he wrote. Exposure to the extreme elements during this period likely added to the army’s sick lists.

 A day later, but on the Confederate side, Samuel Pickens of the 5th Alabama noted in his diary that that “eveng went to Dr. Tom Hill & got some turpentine to rub breast & a powder of morphine to make me sleep. Have severe pains in breast every night & can’t sleep much—” On December 28 Pickens noted that he went on the sick list. He jotted that he “Didn’t sleep off effects of Morph. & got up to Roll call sick at stomach & feeling badly.” Pickens’s heath continued to trouble him the following day. “I had to go on the sick list again this morning and I have severe pains in my breast,” he wrote. He could not sleep at night. The regiment’s assistant surgeon, Dr. Hill, told Pickens he “has no cough remedies & nothing but the coarsest & strongest remedies.” Pickens believed he “took the bad cold & bro[ugh]t on pains in my breast I think by stripping & washing in [a creek] bout 2 wks. ago—on a very cold day.”

January through May 1863

“An Army Graveyard. Winter Camp near Stoneman’s Switch, Falmouth, Va.”  Sketch by Edwin Forbes   Disease took its toll on the Army of the Potomac camps in Stafford County. (Library of Congress)

South Carolinian Alexander McNeill wrote to his wife on January 3, 1863, explaining, “I regret to say that my health has not been quite so good as formerly. I am again hindered with symptoms of my old disease [diarrhea], but I hope that I will be well again in a few days. As yet, I am able for all duties, but I am so well acquainted with this disease that I fear it.” McNeill also brought up the threat of smallpox again. He noted, it “is getting a foothold among the citizens of the town and surrounding country.” However, he admitted, “I have never seen a case yet and do not think it exists to any extent in our army.”

 Assistant Surgeon Daniel Holt confirmed such suspicions in early January 1862. “The health of the regiment [121st New York] is bad. Death is upon our track, and almost every day sees its victims taken to the grave. Yesterday two, and to-day two more were consigned to their last resting place, and still the avenger presses harder and harder claiming as his victim the best and fairest of men.” 121st New York soldier Sgt. William Remmel concurred with Holt: “There are a great many sick in our regiment and more or less are constantly dying. Hardly half of the boys that started with us are here now. Many have died and many more are lying in hospitals.”

 A perfect example comes from the January 10, 1863, letter from Pvt. Alonzo Bump, 77th New York Infantry. Camped in Stafford County, Pvt. Bump wrote to his wife Mary that he was not feeling well, but hoped that she was. Not having been paid recently, Bump asked Mary to send him an account book. “You can by one Big enough for 25 cents,” he explained. Bump was also looking for an expected box from home, that probably contained at least some food items. “I think we will get it in a few days or i hope so at least.” Alonzo told Mary not to go without anything that she needed, but at the same time he asked her, “if you can spare me one Dollar or t[w]o i would like it.” He felt that having some spare money increased his chance of surviving. He penned, “i finde that when a man is sick hear with out money he minte as well make up his mind to Die for if he has money he can By something that he can eat when hee cant eat hardtacks.”

Much of the Army of the Potomac’s Sixth Corps camped during the winter of 1862-63 near White Oak Church in Stafford County. It still stands today. As evidenced by this photograph, the United States Christian Commission, a religious soldiers’ relief organization that attempted to meet both their spiritual and physical needs, worked out of the church for a time. (Library of Congress)

From his camp near White Oak Church, in Stafford County Lucien A. Vorhees and his 15th New Jersey comrades experienced trouble with camp disease in mid-January 1863. “The sick are getting numerous in the regiment, and funeral escorts are quite frequent,” Vorhees wrote to his home newspaper. He blamed the suffering on what he called “Camp Fever,” (probably typhoid) and explained that it “seizes upon the vitals of existence and lays the victim prostrate with scarcely a moment’s warning.” Vorhees noted that they had two cases in his company, “who [were] in the vigor of health one day, [and] were laid prostrate and nearly beyond hope of recovery the next; and so it is throughout the army—men dying daily from the ravaging effects of this fever.”

 Although they did not fight at Fredericksburg, Corp. Rice Bull and comrades arrived in Stafford County around January 20, 1863. They occupied a camp previously held by the 26th Wisconsin of the Eleventh Corps. As Bull recalled, “It was unfortunate that we moved into this old camp, it proved to be a most unhealthy place.” Apparently, the water source had been polluted by the previous inhabitants. “Typhoid fever soon developed in our Regiment and many men were ill. There were some who died, three from our Company,” Bull explained. He was not immune either. “I remember how miserable I felt, feverish, faint, weak and with no desire for food,” Bull remembered. Unwilling to miss duty, he fell sicker while on picket. Somehow surviving, he made it back to camp where he was attended to by Dr. Richard Connelly, the regimental assistant surgeon who gave Bull some medicine and explained he “would have a run of fever.” After recuperating for a few days Corp. Bull returned to full duty. 

 During the winter of 1863, a pseudonymed soldier in the 83rd New York Infantry going by the tag “Ferris,” wrote to the New York Sunday Mercury explaining, “No one knows how we suffer out here.” As an example, he noted, “If one is sick, he must remain out here; if he gets well, it is a miracle.” Sickness and disease were taking a toll according to Ferris: “[N]o less than forty men have died at the General Hospital at Acquia Creek in a single day,” he jotted.

 Writing his sister on February 1, 1863, Richard S. Thompson, an officer in the 12th New Jersey Infantry, mentioned that he had lost two of his enlisted men to disease recently, “one Francis Husted by inflammation of the brain, and W. D. Hendrickson a very fine young man of 20, by typhoid fever. Thompson noted, “Henrickson’s death is a very sad case. He leaves a widowed mother who depended entirely upon him for support.” Despite these loses, Thompson wrote that “There is very little sickness in our Regiment compared with those around us; some bury two or three everyday. . . .” As Thompson mentioned, not only did disease thin the army’s manpower, it also grieved loved ones at home who often depended on their soldier’s income to meet financial obligations.

Eating uncooked or under-cooked food often caused gastrointestinal complications for soldiers. Drawing by Allen C. Redwood. (Battles and Leaders of the Civil War)

With few other alternatives, Alabamian Samuel Pickens bathed again in a creek about three weeks before the Battle of Chancellorsville. That evening he complained to his diary that he was unable to finish a letter because he came down with the chills. The following day he mentioned having “a miserable night of it[,] after the chill went off, a hot followed & lasted a long time.” He tried to take some of his clothes off and threw off his blanket, which helped but complained ,“It seemed the longest night to me I had ever seen.” That morning he was visited by the regimental assistant surgeon who “gave me a blue mass pill.” Blue mass pills were compounded partly of mercury and often served as a cure-all. Still not feeling well, he received more medication from Dr. Hill which came in the form of a “dose Salts wh[ich] took in Red pepper tea & 12 Gr[ains] Quinine which I made into 3 pills & took during the day.” Pickens’s illness made him think of home: “Suppose Dear Mama who is so very careful with us & solicitous about us when sick could look in & see me lying wrapped in my blankets on the ground & the rain beating in the tent door. . .wouldn’t she be uneasy & think I would be sure to have the chill.”

 On May 5, 1863, First Sgt. John F. L. Hartwell jotted in his diary, “now it rains in torrents & we are wet for all of our tents. Water pours through many of our tents like a flood[,] driving out its occupants. Now we have to lay down in the mud & go to sleep.” The following day it was more of the same, “It has rained all night & rains again today . . . It Is cold[,] wet[,] & gloomy.” That evening at 6:00 p.m., Hartwell noted yet more bad weather, “Still rains[,] is very muddy & cold. Our clothes & blankets are nearly all wet so we have a poor sight for a comfortable nights rest.” Even more rain fell on May 7 and on May 8 Hartwell mentioned, “We are all very tierd.” It is no surprise then that on May 10 he wrote his family, “I have been sick all the forenoon. . .”

 As mentioned before, too often we overlook the impact combat had on some soldiers’ mental health. Writing to his wife following the Battle of Chancellorsville, Pvt. John Futch (3rd North Carolina Infantry) explained that “I am yet spared I was not hurt . . . .” But his regiment saw hard service on May 2, 1863, when “our Regiment commenced fighting . . . A Bout 4 o’clock and fought until 8 that night.” Thrown into battle again on May 3, they fought from 7:00 am to 10 or 11:00 am, in his estimation. On picket duty at U.S. Ford at the time of his letter, Futch was “Expecting to leave here every day.” However, all was not well: “After the fight I was unnerved and went to the hospital and remained there three days & nights then I returned Back to my Company oh I seen a great [d]eal of trouble since you left me I want to see you worse then I Ever did Before,” Futch penned. Futch met his breaking point soon after Gettysburg, where he saw his brother killed beside him. He and a group of comrades decided to desert. Soon caught, they were eventually executed on September 5, 1863.

The physically challenging and emotionally draining nature of soldiering left some men with mental illnesses that lasted long beyond their years in service. Sketch by Alfred Waud. (Library of Congress)

Like most of the enlisted men and non-commissioned officers mentioned above. Numerous officers also suffered from various illnesses. Some historians believe that Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson was suffering from a minor illness before his May 2, 1863, mortal wounding at Chancellorsville. Robert K. Krick writes, “Pneumonia killed Stonewall Jackson on May 10. The fatal malady’s etiology likely lay in an upper-respiratory infection that predated the wounds.” It was his Chancellorsville wounds and subsequent injuries during his battlefield evacuation that “impaired his body’s ability to fight its battle against pneumonia, which almost certainly would not have developed, or at least proved fatal, without the injuries, Krick explains. Dr. Matthew Lively, documents that Jackson’s physician, Hunter Holmes McGuire, said that Jackson had a “cold” before the battle. Lively writes, “the most likely conclusion—as his physicians maintained at the time—is that pneumonia was the initial disease triggering the sepsis that led to his death.”    

 In late May, after escorting Jackson’s body to Richmond and then Lexington for burial, one of the general’s staff members, Alexander “Sandie” Pendleton, experienced his own bout with illness, dysentery. The inconvenient bowel disease troubled tens of thousands of soldiers during the Civil War and was considered a serious illness. When his father Gen. William Nelson Pendleton learned of his son’s affliction, he attempted to find a convenient place for Sandie to recover. Apparently, a nearby home, the domicile of “a 76-year-old [woman], vulgar, & worthless as humanity can be without degrading vice,” would not allow Sandie to stay with her, probably believing that she might contract the disease. Unable to find comfortable quarters, Gen. Pendleton turned to the Chandler family where Jackson spent his last days, hoping their hospitality toward Confederate officers would continue. Under the care of Ms. Chandler, Sandie recovered enough within about 48 hours to return to the army. While there he stayed in the same room and bed that Jackson occupied.

Conclusion

“Aquia Creek Landing” (Library of Congress) While in the Fredericksburg area during 1862-63, the worst cases of disease in the Army of the Potomac often went from the camp hospitals to Aquia Landing and then by boat to better facilities in Washington D.C. and Alexandria. Virginia.

A couple of weeks after Chancellorsville, Georgian William Stilwell began a letter to his wife Molly from his “Camp [with]in sight of Fredericksburg” explaining that he was not feeling well. “I am quite sick and have been for over a week though I am better this morning than I have been in several days,” Stilwell explained. He thought it was a cold, that it was improving, and would continue to do so “If we don’t have to march. . . .” Later, at the letter’s end, Stilwell hoped Molly would “not be uneasy.” He added, “You know I never deceive you. If I was in danger from my sickness I would tell you. Of course I am sick or at least not well but I think it is nothing more than a cold.” Although Stilwell saw his fair share of dangers through the remainder of the war he survived to return home.

 Many others, as the evidence above shows, were not as fortunate as Pvt. Stilwell. Tens of thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers from diseases and sicknesses that ranged from the common cold to smallpox to mental illness. With medical knowledge being what it was at the time, the surgeons attempted to treat their charges as best they could. Sometimes their efforts succeeded and often they did not. Like combat wounds, the knowledge that doctors gained from the disease cases they observed and documented during the Civil War helped advance medical science. However, for those who fell victim to the ravages of illness, as well as those who grieved them at home, future advances proved of small consolation to losing one’s life or that of a loved one in service.

Some Sources and Suggested Reading

Alfred Jay Bollet, M.D. Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs. Galen Press, 2002.

 Peter S. Carmichael. The War for the Common Soldier: How Men Thought, Fought, and Survived in Civil War Armies. The University of North Carolina Press, 2018.

 James M. Greiner, Janet L. Coryell, and James R. Smither. A Surgeon’s Civil War: The Letters and Diary of Daniel M. Holt, M.D. Kent State University Press, 1994.

 Paul Fatout. editor. Letters of a Civil War Surgeon. Purdue University Press, 1996.

 John Herbert Roper, editor. Repairing the March of Mars: The Civil War Diaries of John Samuel Apperson, Hospital Steward in the Stonewall Brigade, 1861-1865. Mercer University Press, 2001.

Parting Shot

(Pun not intended)

Civil War Vaccination Kit (In the collection of the Mutter Museum, Philadelphia,photo by J.D. Howell, McMaster University)

“The small pox has had but few victims. The disease, I am happy to state, does not take hold in the army, and the cases reported are those of men who have been absent from camp. On their return, the small pox had broken out upon them. They are at once sent to the Small Pox Hospital, near Fredericksburg. The whole army has been vaccinated, and by order of General Lee, every officer, private, attache and servant, have been revaccinated”

 Excerpt from a letter written by “Tivoli,” on January 20, 1863, from “Near Fredericksburg” and published in the Atlanta Southern Confederacy newspaper on January 28, 1863. 

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“United States Sanitary Commission: Our Heroines” (Harper’s Weekly, April 9, 1864)

If you wish to read Part I, you may do so here.

Introduction

In the often quoted The Road to Richmond: The Civil War Memoirs of Major Abner R. Small of the 16th Maine Volunteers, Small included a section at the end aptly titled “Conclusions.” In it, he offered some thoughts about different soldier topics such as “Danger and death,” “Defeat and loyalty,” and “Sickness and other adversities,” among a number of others. In his brief discussion on sickness, Small noted, “At first the ‘Surgeon’s Call’ suggested care for the sick, and certain remedies for nostalgia; but our soldiers became disinclined to heed the call, and shrank from the mysteries of that long, white tent, with its rows of cots so close together that a patient could reach over and clasp the feverish hand of his neighbor. The interior arrangements were horrible in suggesting illness, suffering, and death away from home, between the sick man and eternity there was only a thin canvas which flapped restlessly in the wind as if impatient to open its loose seams and let some tired spirit through.”

 However, according to Small, as time passed, with experience gained, and battlefield dangers realized, some soldiers evolved into ‘hospital bummers.’ Small recalled that “Mingled with pity was a feeling of indignation at seeing so many able-bodied men fall into line at the head of each company street every morning at ‘Surgeon’s Call,’ and march to the hospital tent, and swallow with evident relish a blue pill, bitter morphine or quinine, and brandy. Boys of seventeen would watch this funeral procession, so filled with disgust and anger that no discipline could prevent the most extreme profanity.”

 Perhaps Small’s less-than-empathetic impressions of soldier sickness and hospitals came from a jaded perspective. Or maybe he was one of the fortunate with a hardy constitution and suffered little from illness. The accounts that follow mostly paint a somewhat different picture of sick Union and Confederate soldiers. Whether dealing with annoying minor illnesses or struggling to survive a deadly disease in central Virginia, there appears to be more concern for one’s health and the wellbeing of comrades than Small exhibited. Covering the two later war periods of November and December 1863, and January to May 1864, this CVBT History Wire shares the voices of the rank-and-file soldiers, their officers, and even those attempting to provide care.   

November and December 1863

“Issuing Rations of Whisky and Quinine”

Although this image depicts a scene during the last winter of the war at Petersburg, officers in the Army of the Potomac often attempted to take measures to keep their soldiers healthy.   (Harper’s Weekly, March 11, 1865)

Following the Battle of Gettysburg, the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac moved back into the Old Dominion, and for the next three or four months maneuvered both north and south while fighting a few smaller engagements. Eventually establishing their camps on opposite sides of the Rapidan River, most soldiers hoped the active campaigning was finally over for the year. However, static camp conditions often resulted in growing sick lists.

 Capt. Charles Mattocks, 17th Maine, wrote in his journal at Warrenton on November 5, 1863, after returning from a trip north that, “By some very mysterious plan of Providence I have got [a] cold.” Depending on its severity and without proper treatment a cold in the nineteenth century could develop into something much more serious. But Mattocks, perhaps knowing he could rely on the care of those around him if needed also noted, “I am glad to be back in the ‘bosom of my [army] family’ once more.”

 Falling ill in his Orange County camp before the Mine Run campaign, the army sent Pvt. M. Benson Lassiter of the 38th North Carolina Infantry to Richmond to recover. In a letter home on November 15, Lassiter mentioned that he had “been unwell for some time but I am some better than I was a week ago. . . .” He noted that he was unable to do duty, but hoped “it will not be long until I can go back to camp. I am anxious to see the boys and you know how bad I dread to stay in the Hospital.” Lassiter felt he had improved since arriving in Richmond. “I think I am clear of the chills & fever, but the Doctor says that is not all that ails me,” he wrote.

 Officers found that in addition to battle wounds and resignations, a sickness in the chain of command could change one’s responsibilities drastically. The previously mentioned Capt. Charles Mattocks, wrote in his journal on Nov. 30, 1863, during the severe cold and wet weather of the Mine Run Campaign that “Lt. Col. Merrill went to the rear sick this afternoon. So I am now 2d in command by seniority.” With the emphasis he placed on “sick,” Mattocks was probably being sarcastic. Regardless, depending on an officer’s level of experience, sudden changes in one’s role could be anxiety-inducing and frustrating.

 If sick while on campaign, soldiers could easily become prisoners. Early on December 2, the 53rd North Carolina’s Louis Leon and his battalion of sharpshooters moved carefully toward the Federal earthworks, where they thought they saw a section of artillery. Given the order to “Charge!” they “did so with a rebel yell, and as we got upon their breastworks, lo and behold, there were no Yankees, and the cannon we saw were nothing but logs.” Following closely, Leon and his comrades netted “a great many of their sick and stragglers” as prisoners.

Assistant Surgeon Daniel Holt, 121st New York Infantry Holt understood the unfavorable consequences to soldiers’ health when exposed to the elements.(From History of the 121st New York State Infantry, by Isaac O. Best, published 1921) 

Upon returning to camp from the Mine Run Campaign, Daniel Holt, the assistant surgeon for the 121st New York Infantry wrote his wife. Holt complained about the conditions that the soldiers had to live in and the exposure to the elements that the campaign inflicted upon them. “You hear about men becoming toughened to it:—so they do, to considerable of an extent, but it is done at the expense of health in nine cases out of ten. Were it designed that man should endure all the rigors of a Northern Winter without covering sufficient to ensure a proper degree of warmth, God would have given us scales and coats of hair and fur such as cover the horse and beaver, and envelope like a blanket the thick hide of an elephant or rhinoceros: but instead not a living thing on the face of the earth has a less protected natural body than man. For a while we can be brought to bear extreme low and high degrees for temperature and have the power of throwing off attacks of disease, which if inflicted upon more sensitive persons would surely produce death; but not long even upon the most thoroughly trained subject can the elements be brought to bear in vain. Nature true to herself at last must give out and then both alike are brought to grief.” 

 Seeing comrades healthy one day and sick to the point of dying the next was a disturbing experience for soldiers. Not knowing exactly how volatile a sickness might be produced worry in both the patient and those who cared about them. The 27th North Carolina’s Lt. James Graham wrote his father from camp near Orange Court House just before the Mine Run Campaign. He explained, “I was at brother Joe’s camp day before yesterday and I found him in bed. He had been unwell for a week or so and was afraid that he was going to have Camp fever, but the doctor told me that he was getting better.” Graham saw his brother five days later and wrote home informing his folks that, “He has gotten well.” A couple of weeks later Graham mentioned to his mother in a letter, “We are back in our old Camp and have almost recovered from our colds which we caught on the last march [Mine Run Campaign] or rather ‘freeze out.’”

 Exposure to the bitter elements during the Mine Run Campaign likely precipitated the complaints that Col. Robert McAllister shared with his wife and family in a letter on December 6 that limited his leadership abilities. He explained, “I am now very well but I had a bad cold on the march and was quite sick. I improved before we returned to camp. I was so hoarse that I could not give an order, and I had command of the Brigade the day of the intended charge [at Mine Run].”

 Writing to the New York Sunday Mercury newspaper, a soldier only self-identified as “J. J.” from the 14th New York National Guard (84th New York Infantry), explained that the extreme low temperatures during Mine Run took the lives of some soldiers. J. J. penned that “On the night of the 30th November, five men from the Fifth Corps froze to death, and four sick men died in the ambulances, very likely from the intense cold.” It was so cold that some soldiers mentioned that the water in their canteens froze solid.

“General Stuart’s Head-Quarters on the Rapidan”.

This image of Confederate winter quarters in Orange County provides a view of how soldiers attempted to deal with cold weather. Despite their best efforts, sickness flourished in winter camps. (Illustrated London News, April 30, 1864)

Pvt. Samuel Pickens of the 5th Alabama Infantry noted a different, but common, kind of illness—and an ironic twist—in his diary entry for December 10. He concluded that day’s thoughts by writing, “I find myself in very low spirits & home-sick at seeing John [a Pickens family enslaved man] start home to spend Xmas there—when that inexpressible pleasure is denied me. Oh! what w[oul]d I give to be as free to go there as John is!!” Homesickness (sometimes referred to by doctors as nostalgia) was an emotional and mental malady that plagued thousands of soldiers, especially around traditional times of family gatherings or anniversaries. Pickens does not mention beyond his written line whether he fully caught the irony of a soldier bound to military service feeling he had less liberty than an enslaved man who was allowed to travel between the army in central Virginia and home in Alabama.

 A few days later Pickens expressed that by necessity the war had changed his thoughts and habits. On Dec. 15, he noted that he and two comrades “took a wash in [a] creek, mountain run, this evening. Water very cold. Before [the] war [I] would never have thought of doing such a thing as bathing  [in a] creek in [the] middle [of] Dec[embe]r.” The following day Pickens penned, “Jack is laid up to-day with fever—no doubt brot on by his exposure yesterday [bathing in the cold creek].”

 On December 12, 1863, artilleryman Pvt. George Perkins, Sixth New York Independent Battery, jotted, “My right ear began to grow very sore ” in his diary, describing what appears to be an annoying earache or ear infection. The next day the pain was more intense, so Perkins “Went to the doctor at sick call who prescribed a roast onion be bound on.” On December 14, with the roast onion prescription apparently not working, he wrote, “Ear still very sore, excused from duty by the Dr.” Perkins was also excused on the following day. Finally, on December 16, he noted, “My ear much better. The Dr. marked me for light duty.” However, by Christmas Eve, Perkins was ailing again. That day he “Could not do my guard duty being ill. Felt Feverish. Went to Dr. and got excused from duty and received some cathartic pills [a cure all medication]. Felt miserable and feverish all day.” He “felt no better” on Christmas. On December he was “Worse.” Perkins received another doctor’s excuse from duty. He “Took pills and salt,” and apparently did not have an appetite. His undescribed illness, which may have been a mild case of influenza or typhoid caused him to “Lay abed [a] portion of the day.” Over the next few days, Perkins seemed to finally recover.

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January to May 1864

Brig. Gen. Robert McAllister McAllister, born in 1813, suffered from intermittent health issues during his Civil War military career. (From Sketch of General Robert McAllister by J. Watts de Peyster, published 1875)

Col. Robert McAllister, 11th New Jersey Infantry, wrote his wife about the recent sickness he and one of his Black camp servants endured at Brandy Station early in the new year. “I feel very well now, have very little diarrhea, and am in hopes I will soon be entirely clear of it. It is so unpleasant to have. Morris White has been very ill but is now better and will soon be about again. He took ill very sudenly.”

 Having returned to his Brandy Station camp after a 10-day furlough, Pvt. Joel Molyneux of the 141st Pennsylvania promptly wrote home to his brother. In doing so, he reported about some of his ill comrades, but also his own good health: “I found our boys in the same place. William Rogers is sick with a bad cold. Wm. Bedford is not as well as he might be near, and James Pardoe was complaining of feeling unwell. I must say this country agrees the best with me, for before I got back I felt like myself again, which I did not scarcely any of the time while at home.” On January 17, Pvt. Molyneux wrote to his sweetheart, “Am sorry to report our friend Will Rogers as being quite sick. [He] Has been unwell ever since I have been back. He has the symptoms of typhoid fever, but trust it can be broken before it goes much farther. Was over for to see him last evening, but found him asleep. He is at the hospital. The doctor thought him not dangerous.” Whether Molyneux meant the doctor thought Rogers was not contagious or near death is not clear. 

 Army doctors often found themselves in uncomfortable positions. On one hand, they wanted to provide and recommend the best care possible, but on the other hand, they felt pressure to keep soldiers on duty should a sudden need arise. Camped near Orange Court House, the 13th South Carolina Infantry’s surgeon, Spencer Glasgow Welch, wrote on January 30, 1864: “I received a letter from [Pvt.] Robert Land’s wife begging me to give her husband a sick furlough, and I told him to write her that if he could ever get sick again he certainly should go at once.” 

 Soldiers’ concern for their comrades—those both personally close and at large—comes through in accounts like the one left by Pvt. Molyneux in a letter on January 31. “Will R. is able to sit up some, and hope to see him walking around in a few days. I have heard it said that the small pox was breaking out in the army. I have seen no cases of it yet. At Washington, I heard it was raging quite fearfully, but hope it may not be as bad as represented.”

 John Samuel Apperson, a hospital steward in the Stonewall Brigade, noted a sad reality in his journal on January 25, 1864. While Apperson felth “The health of the army is very good. Not more than ten men are rec’d [admitted to the hospital] per day.” He also related that “The mortality [rate of those there] however is very heavy.”

 Col. McAllister informed his wife in early February 1864 that he was “having one of my usual billious attacks,” but this time it was not as bad as normal. He blamed his condition on eating “salt fish—salmon and mackeral,” for the last few weeks. “You know that salt fish always destroyed that regularity which is so essential to my health. When I have fresh meant, I am always healthy,” he reminded her. Apparently, his condition was so bad that he “had to take pills.” However, “They did not operate until about the middle of the day, after which I felt better.” He hoped he would return to duty soon, but felt certain “that if I had not taken care of myself and taken the medicine, I would have been quite sick.” McAllister also noted that Helen Gilson, an assistant at the Division Hospital and “a most amiable and excellent lady and a good nurse,” informed McAllister that if he “got worse she would come and attend to me.” 

 Helen L. Gilson  Col. (later Brig. Gen.) Robert McAllister mentioned the caregiving skills of nurse Helen Gilson in his letter on February 5, 1864, from Brandy Station.    (Library of Congress)

In a letter on February 7, Pvt. Molyneux noted that yet another disease making its rounds. Nutritional deficiency issues were common among Civil War soldiers. “There has been a few cases of the scurvy or something very similar here among the boys, but nothing very serious,” he wrote. Additionally, he mentioned rumors of smallpox and that “The drs. have been vaccinating the troops all through the army by a general order. I had it tried upon my arm, and it is just about as sore now as there [is] any use being.”

Measles and smallpox threatened both armies during the winter of 1863-64. From his camp on the Rapidan River, Corp. Benjamin Freeman for the 44th North Carolina noted in mid-February 1864, “One of my messmates was taken with the measles and is sent to the Hospital . . . there is but little sickness now[.] sometimes Small pox brake out in the Regt there was a case of small Pox out of the Co F . . . and Co E.”

 During the late winter of 1864, Chester K. Leach, 2nd Vermont Infantry, wrote his wife from Brandy Station that his comrades were all well except one, his older brother William, who was “quite sick & I am rather afraid he is going to have a run of fever before he gets over it.” William told Leach he was not well when they went out on a recent march, so Leach “told him to go to the Surgeon & get excused & stay in Camp which he did, but when we got back I found him quite sick.” Leach explained, “He stays in his tent yet but if there was room in the Hospital I think it would be best for him to go there for he could have better care.” Whether William felt he could better care on his own or in the hospital went unstated. A day later Leach provided William’s diagnosis. “The Dr says he has the Typhoid Fever, & I am afraid he is not going to wear it out. He has very bad spells, when he can hardly breathe, or talk, & wants water to drink all the time,” Leach wrote.

 A few days later Leach provided an update on his brother. “William I must say in no better, & yesterday . . . he was much worse, not resting but very little, & last night or late in the day was taken with Hemorrhage of the bowels, & by his looks & actions . . . I should not have been surprised if he had not lived till morning.” A hospital steward told Leach that William had been resting easier on March 14, but the previous evening “three pints of blood came from him. . . .” William finally took a turn for the better on March 18, and by March 20 Leach wrote that he had stopped by and found “him on the gain, & I think he will get along now all right.” However, unfortunately, on March 26, Leach wrote his wife, “I have not such news to tell as I could wish I had, but probably before this reaches you you will learn of William’s death” on March 24. Leach had his brother’s body sent home for burial. In the same letter Leach mentioned that “[Samuel or George] Crown has got better of his measles & got back to the Co, but [Charles] Spaulding & Edgar [Montague] are in the Hospital now with the measles. . . .”

 On March 5, while working in the field hospital at Orange Court House, John S. Apperson noted, “We had a very interesting case of diphtheria in hosp’t to-day. The patient came in yester-day. His throat eventually showed some enlargement. To-day the organs of respiration seemed to be impeded in their action so much as to require an operation to prevent asphyxia. Dr. Wilkerson opened the trachea but there was not life or sensibility enough in the parts to produce any evidence that it would be of any use. No coughing symptoms or irriation was produced.” The soldier “died in a few hours afterwards” and an autopsy found that the “Larynx and appurtenant of the trachea entirely covered with pseudo membrane” that Apperson described as “whitish with red blotches.” The thick membrane coating prevented the patient from breathing and he suffocated.

Camp of the 18th Pennsylvania Cavalry Despite the army’s best efforts, sanitary conditions were less than ideal in large camps like those at Brandy Station where thousands of men, horses, and mules lived in close confines. (Library of Congress)

Soldiering without adequate rations and proper equipment increased one’s chances of becoming ill. The 48th North Carolina Infantry’s Pvt. Edward Sowers wrote his wife on March 7, 1864, explaining that he “had to march the first day of the month barefoot and I wore the skin off my feet and frose them and my toe nailes will come off and they paine me all most to death you never see sich feet [as] I got.” One can only wonder if these afflictions did not contribute toward his death by disease two months later.

 Describing the conscripts that came into the army during the spring of 1864, Surgeon Thomas Fanning Wood of the 3rd North Carolina Infantry remembered: “Bad water, badly cooked food, unventilated quarters (in Winter) always disturbed their bowels and they were in majority upon the sick list. Coming from the country, where most of them had lived with out ever haven seen a town larger than the ‘store town,’ the cross road village with a hundred inhabitants, remote from railroads therefore uncommunicable with the outside world, the trials which usually come to children, they escaped, and measles and small pox were usually their fate.” Wood recalled that “almost the entire 57th North Carolina (conscripts), to be sick at one time with the measles, and it was so with most of the regiments enlisted from the country as most of them were in N.C.”

 Similarly on the other side, from his camp near Culpeper, the 7th Wisconsin’s Capt. Henry F. Young wrote to his wife Delia on March 12 that his regiment had received some new recruits and his responsibility was drilling them. “Some of the[m] have the mumps & and others the measles but all are doing well,” Young wrote. However, about two weeks later, Capt. Young told Delia that yet another of his new charges, Henry L. Sprague, “has been sent to the hospital with the mumps.” That spring, Young himself, complained that “This bad weather has given me the Rheumatism in my neck and right shoulder. It troubles me most at night after i go to bed.” He hoped “a few days of good weather will set me aright again.”

 Soon after returning to camp at Orange Court House, Lt. Lewis Warlick, 1st North Carolina Infantry, wrote his newlywed wife Cornelia on March 29. In his missive he wrote “I have taken severe cold since I returned; for three or four night after my arrival it was very cold and being rather scarce of bedding the consequence was I slept cold therefore I think is the cause of my having such a cold.”

 Starting on April 2, 1864, and lasting almost a month, the diary of the 116th Pennsylvania’s Daniel Chisholm is an almost daily listing of sick misery at Brandy Station. That day he wrote, “My jaws are swelled up like a lager beer Dutchman’s, I cannot eat with any comfort at all. This has been a very bad day, snow and slush over the shoe mouth. I am afraid I will get [a] cold.”

April 3 – “My jowls are very sore. This morning I went over to the Surgeon’s he examined my jaws and pronounced my ailment the mumps, and excused me from all duty.”

April 4 – “My jaws are bad, I have an old stocking tied around my neck. I am running around all the time.”

April 5 – “‘Oh Jeminee.’ My jaws are still bad, swelled out even with my face. I am still off duty, and yet it rains.”

April 6 – “My jaws are still sore.”

April 7 – “Mumps are better, can eat very well and have plenty to eat.”

April 9 – “My jaws are still swelled, but not painful.”

April 10 – “My Jaws are a little better.”

April 11 – “This is a beautiful day, mumps about the same.”

April 14 – “My jaws are better, I have taken the stocking off

April 16 – “I had a bad head ache to day, laid in my tent nearly all day, as it rains nearly all the time.”

Finally, on April 25, Chisholm noted, “I feel first rate, and my mumps are entirely gone.”

Quarters of the US Sanitary Commission at Brandy Station The Sanitary Commission worked hard to prevent and treat sicknesses like typhoid fever in the Union camps at Brandy Station. (Library of Congress)

The 5th Alabama’s Henry Beck jotted in his diary on April 10, 1864 that he “was taken sick today. Dr. Hill gave me order to go to hospital for treatment.” Apparently the hospital’s care worked or Beck recovered quickly as he also penned that “At the request of Col. Hobson, we sang hymns.” Beck also apparently felt well enough to write to his brother. The following day Beck mentioned, “Was on the sick list today,” but still he “Went to see the 3rd Ala. Regt. hold dress parade.” How closely regimental surgeons and hospital staff monitored soldiers who reported themselves as sick seemed to fluctuate from regiment to regiment. 

 Writing to his family on April 21, 1864, from Orange County, Alvira B. Taylor of the 31st North Carolina Infantry explained, “John had a very sick day yesterdy he was sick when M H started but had got a little better but soon after he took hemorage of the bowels but the Doctor give him something that checked it.” Taylor included that “t[h]is evening he has not had it any more [but] he is very sick now . . . . I hope he wil get well and go home with me.”

 In preparation for the beginning of what would be the Overland Campaign, on May 3, 1864, many of the Union sick in their Brandy Station camps were sent to hospitals in Alexandria and Washington D.C. Daniel Holt, assistant surgeon of the 121st New York penned in his diary: “Went to-day with sick from Division Hospital, on the grounds of J[ohn] M[inor] Botts, to Brandy Station. Had a rough time of it generally. Got down there at 2 P.M. and remained until 11 P.M. Saw all [of the sick] off upon the last train which left the depot. Had a case of small pox with them.”

Dr. Spencer Glasgow Welch. Welch served as the surgeon for the 13th South Carolina Infantry. (Find A Grave)

Anticipating the upcoming fights and knowing what that would bring, Surgeon Spencer Glasgow Welch of the 13th South Carolina Infantry wrote on May 4, 1864, from Orange Court House that one of his fellow doctors went to Richmond and another had not returned, “so I am alone. I have very little to do, as there is scarcely any sickness.” However, he explained, “If we get into a battle soon I will have a tight time, but I hope to have someone with me before then.”

 For Pvt. James Pickens, who briefly served in the 5th Alabama, the Wilderness was his first experience in battle. Pickens, unlike his brother Sam, was not cut out for soldering. He wrote in his diary on May 5, “Sam got a permit for me signed by Capt. Williams and Col. Hall, to leave & go to the hospital, as I was very unwell.” The following day James wrote, “Got a signature to my permit from Major Whiting, to pass guard & set out for hospital getting here about or before sun-rise.” At the hospital Dr. Hill advised James to remain there, which was about 2 ½ miles from the front lines. There James witnessed the damage of war. “Oh the horrors of war! no one knows until he sees for himself how much suffering & distress there is in battle. Would to God the strife were over & that peace again blessed our land!,” he scribbled down.

 During the May 6, 1864, Wilderness fight, while attempting to hold off Confederate Gen. James Longstreet’s assault, Maj. Thomas Halsey, 11th New Jersey, penned, “We had two officers & 19 men wounded. Col. McAllister had two horses shot [from] under him & was slightly wounded himself.” Halsey expressed his wish that all was well at home and hoped that “I may come out all right, as I have so far.” Battle stress and physical exhaustion could potentially increase the sick lists, too. “I am sick, tired, and dirty and my hand trembles,” so Halsy asked to be excused for his “hasty scrawl as it is the best I can do.”

 Capt. William Henry Harrison, 31st Georgia, echoed much of what his counterpart Maj. Halsey noted above. On May 12, 1864, he wrote, “I am by God’s will still unharmed . . . We have done more fighting since May the 4th than we did the whole of last year. The wonder is that I have any body [left] at all. I draw rations for twenty-seven men . . . On the 5th I carried 52 men in the engagement on that day. On the 10th I had 39 left; on the 12th I had 39 and lost 8 wounded and 8 prisoners . . . Several have been unable to do duty at time from sickness and sore feet.”

 As mentioned in Part I, battle induced stress could create mental health issues as well. Pvt. Richard Allen of the 13th Virginia Infantry wrote from Spotsylvania Court House on May 19, “We have been in line of battle ever since the 5th of this month. We has had a hard time. There hasn’t been no rest night or day. I never saw such hard fighting in my life as we had down here, and I am afraid the hardest fighting hasn’t come off yet.” “I would be so glad if they Yankees would go back across the river so we could get some rest, for I feel like I am exhausted.” “You all must write to me. I has lost so much sleep. I am so nervous I can’t write and I can’t compose my mind to write this morning. . . .” Please excuse this bad letter as . . . I did not sleep any last night.”

 Similarly, the 11th Georgia Infantry’s Pvt. John Everett wrote his mother right after the Battle of the Wilderness explaining his mental anguish at not knowing what happened to his brother during the fight: “it Seames to me lik I Can heare Him Calling me. I hear his voice all the time. ma, you will have to Excuse me for not writing along letter, for my tears air blinding my Eys and I Cant Half See and my mind is in trouble. you have no idia how much truble I am in. I dont See any peace at all.”

Conclusion

“Caring for the Sick” (New York Public Library)

Experiencing sickness and disease in the mid-nineteenth century was usually an extremely anxiety-producing event for both soldiers and their loved ones at home. Even under the best circumstances, with a caring family at hand and a knowledgeable and attentive physician seeing to one’s symptoms, people feared the power of illnesses. It was rare if families or individuals had not observed first-hand the pain, suffering, and death of loved ones due to some sickness. At a time before germ theory, antibiotics, and a much more complete understanding of disease transmission and vaccinations, people usually dealt with illness with time-proven remedies, faith, and hope.

 In the Union and Confederate armies that camped in Virginia during late 1863 and into the spring of 1864, thousands of soldiers became sick suffering from everything from the common cold to scurvy to venereal diseases to typhoid fever to dysentery to diphtheria to mental issues, and just about every other ailment. As seen above, soldiers were concerned about their health, that of their comrades, and loved ones at home. They knew all too well how precarious a soldier’s life could be, on or off the battlefield.

Some Sources and Suggested Reading

James A. Davis. Music Along the Rapidan: Civil War Soldiers, Music, and Community during Winter Quarters Virginia. University of Nebraska Press, 2014.

Frank R. Freemon. Gangrene and Glory: Medical Care during the Civil War. University of Illinois Press, 2001. 

Clark B. Hall. “Season of Change: The Winter Encampment of the Army of the Potomac, December 1, 1863 to May 4, 1864.” In Blue and Gray Magazine, April 1991.

Donald B. Koonce, editor. Doctor to the Front: Confederate Surgeon Thomas Fanning Wood. University of Tennessee Press, 2000.

Spencer Glasgow Welch. A Confederate Surgeon’s Letters to His Wife. Neal Publishing Company, 1911.

Parting Shot

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“Done Up” (Public Domain)

“Our Reg[iment] fought some day before yesterday & yesterday we were fighting all day. We had one of the most terrific battles yesterday I have seen, but we fought behind Breast Works & did not lose many men. I was exhausted last night & this morning at three o’clock had a hard chill. I am now at the Hospital & am some better.” 

 Maj. Thomas Halsey, 11th New Jersey Infantry, May 7, 1864, excerpt from a letter to his wife. 

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For additional past “CVBT History Wire” and informative articles, visit the Blog Section of the CVBT website.

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“Hard Tack,” from “Life in Camp” by Winslow Homer.  (Library of Congress)

Introduction

A couple of weeks before the Battle of Fredericksburg, Sgt. Lucien A. Vorhees of the 15th New Jersey Infantry wrote to his hometown newspaper from his Stafford County camp. In part of the letter, Vorhees provided a thorough and light-hearted discussion about life in camp, including the distribution of rations and their preparation. “When we arise the first impulse is to look out for something to gratify our ever devouring appetites, and as we now cook our individual ‘grub’ we pay strict attention to it,” he began. Vorhees then noted, “In the first place we draw our rations from the Commissary, which are generally Salt Pork, or in lieu thereof Salt Beef, commonly called ‘Salt Hoss,’ or in lieu thereof Fresh Beef, of which each man is entitled to 1 ½ lbs. Beef, or ¾ lb. of Pork and ‘Hard Tac,” 1 lb. to a man of Rice, Beans, Sugar, Coffee. . . .” Vorhees noted that, the rations were brought to camp and divided as equally as possible, “for if there is the least perceptible difference a series of growls is the consequence.” He explained that growls were a “contagious malady” and “prevails to an alarming extent in the regiment.” Growls were heard “when we draw rations,” “when we march,” “when we don’t march,” and “you are certain to hear it when we don’t draw rations, in fact it is heard continuously.” However Vorhees saw the grumbling as “an ally, for it crowds depression of spirits to the fair winds, and we thank God that it prevails among us.”

 Next, Vorhees turned his discussion to cooking. “After the distribution [of rations] we repair to our fires and cook in the following manner. The meat is prepared for digestion in several ways, the most usual of which is to fry it till done, after which (the meat being fryed in grease, obtained from the pork,) we fry some ‘Hard Tac,’ which makes them very portable.” Other cooking methods included “‘broiling’ meat on a stick, toasting crackers, &c.” Vorhees said that beans and rice were not supplied on their marches, but they “get them when we are encamped for any length of time.”

 If there is anything that Civil War soldiers mentioned more often in their letters and diaries than their desire for more news from home or the weather, it is probably food. Diary entries are particularly rich sources since they potentially recorded daily activities, one of which, of course, was hopefully cooking and eating.

Hardtack was a dietary staple for Civil War soldiers. (Hardtack and Coffee, Or the Unwritten Story of Army Life by John Billings, 1887)

Soldiers’ complaints about their appetites, much like sleep deprivation, were usually temporary conditions. However, when rations ran short, they sought ways to supplement them. Whether that was begging at a stranger’s door, foraging a chicken, roasting ears, and sweet potatoes, fishing, or even requesting a box of provisions from home, soldiers more often than not found ways to temper their hunger pangs. Additionally, with the majority of Civil War soldiers being young men who burned tremendous amounts of calories on the march and doing fatigue duties, their appetites usually outsized their allotted rations. Were Civil War soldiers literally starving? In most cases outside of prisoner-of-war camps, no, they were not. But, were they often hungry? Yes.

 US Army regulations in 1861 called for daily rations of meat and bread to consist of 12 ounces of pork or bacon; or 1 pound, 4 ounces of fresh or salt beef. For their bread ration, soldiers were to receive 1 pound, 6 ounces of soft bread or flour, or 1 pound of hard bread, which was approximately the equivalent of 9 or 10 individual hardtack crackers.

 Hardtack crackers were a staple diet for campaigning Federal soldiers during the Civil War, and Confederate soldiers received them sometimes, too. Usually consisting of only baked flour and water, hardtack provided filler field rations for soldiers. Soldiers often joked about hardtack’s durability. Sometimes called “sheet iron crackers,” or “teeth-dullers,” and packaged in leaky wooden boxes, these army bread rations were often issued moldy, and sometimes infested with weevils. The monotony of army bread as part of their diet inspired soldiers to alter the title and lyrics of the popular period song “Hard Times Come Again No More” to “Hard Tack Come Again No More.” Regardless of its seeming limitations, soldiers developed numerous ways to prepare hardtack to fit their tastes.

 While enlisted men and non-commissioned officers received their rations—drawing rations as they called it—officers normally had to supply their own rations or pay for them from the commissary.

 This CVBT History Wire will explore soldiers’ comments about food around the time of and during the Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville Campaigns. A Part II post will follow next month with examples from the Mine Run Campaign and the Battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House.

Poultry like, turkeys, chickens, ducks, and geese were coveted by soldiers at holiday times. (Library of Congress)

Writing home to his brother and sister on Thanksgiving Day, 1862, just a couple of weeks before the Battle of Fredericksburg, Pvt. Henry Howe, Oneida (New York) Independent Cavalry—which served as the Army of the Potomac’s headquarters guard—was on the Stafford County bank of the Rappahannock River across from Fredericksburg. “I wonder what you are all about today about dinner time. I suppose you will be eating chicken pie or something of that sort,” Howe opened. Probably expecting the war to be short, Howe explained that last year he thought that he would already be back home for Thanksgiving 1862, “instead it will be in Va.” However, he retained hope that he would return home for the holiday in 1863. As a soldier’s thoughts often turned to food, so did Howe’s: “What do you think my thanksgiving dinner will be,” he asked. “I will tell you—it will be fresh beef soup & crackers. It is prepared by our ‘French cook’ for you may believe we have one.”

 Like Pvt. Howe, the Thanksgiving holiday reminded the 11th New Jersey’s Pvt. Alonzo Searing of food. He described his Thanksgiving meal in a letter home while camped near Falmouth. “On Thanksgiving Day as I was eating the bountiful dinner of fried pork and hard tack, and drinking the coffee so generously provided by Uncle Sam I thought about home and the table spread with chicken, turkey, and other good things.” Searing expressed the wish that his family would “save me some.”

 Leading up to the Battle of Fredericksburg, the fare was pretty lean for the men in the 5th Alabama Infantry. On December 7, Samuel Pickens noted his diary that he “Had poor supper Corn bread & cold boil beef without any salt. Rations are short ¾ lb. flour other day and three crackers. March one day on 1 ½ crackers.” On the morning of the battle he noted, “Got up hungry as ate no supper & boiled some fresh pork we had & ate all corn bread.” Later in the day Pickens wrote about food again: “Made fires & Col. [Edwin Lafayette] Hob.[son] gave me 2 bis.[cuits] gave 1 to Ned B.[ayol] & then we’d one apiece & broiled rest of Pork on coal & ate our scant supper & went to bed.” While apparently Pickens and his comrade scavanged some food from the Federal dead and wounded on the battlefield in the following days, by December 19, he penned “Often have been without salt given out & biscuits without grease—not even beef tallow & no salt.”

 Writing to his wife, Margaret, on December 8, 1862, Corp. Peter Welsh, 28th Massachusetts, advised not to worry so much about what she read in the newspapers “not even the Generals themselves can tell when a battle will take place, it all depends on circumstances and there is no probability of our having a battle here at present. . . .” Corp. Welsh quickly turned his thoughts to food: “we all cook our own coffe in our company and we serve out our pork and bacon raw except when we have beans to boil with our pork i youst [used] to get meal when I had a chance and fry flap jacks  you would laugh to see us frying them on a tin plate  and our crackers[:] we sometimes soak them and fry them  they go very well for a change  our coffe is very good and that is a great thing for a good mug of coffee when a man is cold or tired refreshes him greatly.” Welsh survived the Battle of Fredericksburg, although his Irish Brigade suffered heavy casualties.

Pvt. Eli Penson Landers, 16th Georgia Infantry, was surprised to find some food stashed in a coat sent to him.  (Public Domain) 

On December 10, 1862, Pvt. Eli Penson Landers, 16th Georgia Infantry, wrote to his mother. In the letter, Landers thanked her for the overcoat she sent him by way of a friend. Folded within the coat were potatoes. Pvt. Landers wrote, “I said I would not take 5 dollars for them. I roasted them last night.”

 Pvt. William Stilwell, 53rd Georgia Infantry, wrote to his wife Molly on December 11, 1862, about a recent treat. Apparently, one of the men in his company received some ingredients from home that included “butter, large yam potatoes, [and] dried fruit.” Stilwell explained he served as “chief cook and bottle washer” and turned the items into “an old fashioned sliced pie, yes, a great big sliced pie.” Stilwell continued that he ate so much pie “I had to unbutton most all my clothes.”  

Some Civil War soldiers could find a bit of humor in almost any situation. Pvt. David Holt, 16th Mississippi Infantry, recalled an incident during the Battle of Fredericksburg involving his comrade, Pvt. John Stockett and a close call. Fighting to the left of Marye’s Heights in Gen. William S. Featherston’s brigade, Holt and Stockett hugged the ground. Holt remembered: “During the day [Stockett] took a piece of bread from his haversack and raised up to eat, and just at that moment a bullet flicked the bread out of his hand without touching him.” An astonished Stockett exclaimed, “Well, I call that a lowdown Yankee trick. If that fellow wanted my bread, he ought to have been more polite and come and asked for it. I believe they want to starve us out as that was the last piece of bread I had.”

 The 51st Pennsylvania Infantry’s Col. William J. Bolton wrote in his diary on December 13 that “In coming off the field, many a poor fellow was trodden on, and it was truly heartrending to hear their groans and cries for water. The night was spent by all in cooking and sleeping, for it had been seven or eight days since the regiment had an hour or unbroken rest, and a great deal of that time without food.”

 Charles Bowen of the 12th US Infantry wrote to his wife Kate about their adventures in Fredericksburg. “All through the streets, soldiers were eating & cooking, smashing chairs for fuel & eating off china dishes. We finally halted & stacked arms & went in for making up our fast. I broke into a dwelling & found a barrel of pork, a barrel of flour & some fish, this was rolled out and divided up. Some of the boys found a lot of preserves & canned fruit, & we set too & cooked hot cakes & eat our fill.”

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The day after the Battle of Fredericksburg, Maj. James Wren, 48th Pennsylvania, wrote a humorous account in his diary. Three of his men broke into a Fredericksburg house and found a “Carpenter’s store room.” One of the men thought he had found a cache of flour and told his pards, “We be got him now, lads. Fill your haversacks.” After all loaded up, one said “Now, lads, let’s go down to the fire & we will have some Johnny Cakes.” One got firewood, another got water, and the other started whipping up a batter. The cooking got underway, but the flap jacks weren’t browning. “Turn ‘em over any’ow,” said one. The chef said they were hard, but passed them out anyway. One soldier couldn’t cut his with his knife. Another grabbed a rock to break his and “tried to bite it.” One exclaimed after a taste, “Damn ‘em . . . is plaster [of] Paris!” Another said, “Well, Jack, I did think it was Damn heavy flour in my haversack.”

 Spencer Bonsall, a hospital steward in the 81st Pennsylvania, wrote in his diary on December 14, 1862, that he was quartering in the Fredericksburg home of Rev. Alfred Randolph, an Episcopalian minister. He noted, “We found some fat chickens in a coop in the yard of our premises, flour, etc. in the pantry, and potatoes in the cellar, so we made a tolerable Sunday dinner for soldiers.” To make the occasion more special “Our table was laid with white cloth, plates, dishes, knives, forks, and spoons belonging to the Reverend absentee. . . .”

 Col. Regis de Trobriand, 55th New York Infantry wrote his wife Lina on December 15, 1862, while still on the field and noting the difficulty of getting food: “Yesterday, we still had to maintain our position and finally, today the 55th [New York Infantry], is in the front line, one hundred yards from the enemy’s lines that we couldn’t take by assault the day before yesterday. No fire! Little food; only a few [hardtack] crackers to nibble on and a great number of bullets in the air, this is our position.”

Some Union soldiers pillaged Fredericksburg’s damaged and abandoned houses for food and valuable items. (Library of Congress)

Less than two weeks after the Battle of Fredericksburg and back in their Falmouth camps, the 9th New York Infantry’s Edward King Wightman commented on his Christmastime fare: “We enjoyed Christmas hugely here. There were multitudes of sutlers around with everything that nobody wanted to buy.” However, some had food, which was always in high demand to supplement monotonous army-issued rations. Butter, cheese, sausage, and apples were expensive, but a treat. Wightman and some of his comrades got a pass to go into Falmouth to find something for Christmas dinner but could only purchase a “haversack full of meal” at five cents and “3 small papers of black pepper” for eight cents. Sounding as if read by a waiter explaining the day’s special in a fine restaurant, but with primarily soldiers’ ingredients, Wightman wrote, “Our dinner consisted of fresh meat boiled and spiced with pepper sauce, crackers buttered and crowned with toasted cheese, sprinkled with black pepper, boiled pork cut up in pepper sauce, 2 onions in vinegar, and a pan full of warm mush.” A bit of holiday cheer came from “1/2 a bottle of what was called port wine, the ½ bottle costing $1.”

 Like Thanksgiving the month before Christmas had soldiers thinking of food and good cheer, too. Two days before Christmas, 1862, Pvt. Alonzo Bump, 77th New York Infantry, wrote to his wife Mary asking for things to help his cooking and diet. He requested her to send him a “small sheet iron Spider,” a skillet with legs, “with a handle on it.” Pvt. Bump also requested mustard, “for we have Lots of Fresh Beeaf now [that] we are in Camp.” Asking to make sure the box that she sent was not too large, because he would have to probably carry it, he mentioned some comrades who had received one recently and had “to Lug it 3 miles.” However, when they opened it they were rewarded for their hard work. “the Boys Give me a Peace of Bread and Butter and 2 round Shurgar cakes and some small crackers and I tell you they Did taste good. it made me think of home when I was eating them,” Bump wrote. He wanted more bread and butter and mince pies. Explaining he could put the mince pies in his haversack if they had to move quickly, he implored her to “hurry it up for we all feal ancious to get Something from home. it will taste so Good the boys are saying when I Git my Box from home I will have about 3 inches [of fat] on the ribs the first Day.” An additional request was for a fruit cake made by Bump’s mother, “for i can eat Like a horse down hear when i ame well,” he begged.

Loved ones on the home front often sent foodstuffs in soldier care boxes that came to the camps via Adams Express, the UPS of the day. (Public Domain)

Between the Battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, and while camped near Falmouth, Thaddeus Donnelly, 130th Pennsylvania Infantry (a nine-month regiment), took a few minutes to write to his friend Henry Bitner back home. In his letter Donnelly shared a little about his food and how it is prepared: “whe are just now cooking Dinner[.] whe have some potatoes and parsnips that I got in a garden when out picketing[.] I think it will make a fine dish. Whe have to manage a great many way to make hard tack and salt pork keep one alive[;] fried crackers and crackers hamered up and cakes made out of them is the principal living[.] I tele you I wish I had some of the siders and apples that are in Cumberland Co.[,] I could do well[.] their is not an apple to be had [here.]

 Capt. Richard S. Thompson and his 12th New Jersey Infantry missed the Battle of Fredericksburg, but they were near Falmouth by Christmas. Writing home on January 4, 1863, Thompson shared his New Year’s Day meal. “Well, New Year’s day I dined on an inch of pork fat, two army crackers, some molasses, and a cup of tea. I trust you at least thought of me while eating your fine things at home,” he noted.

 Capt. Henry Livermore Abbott, 20th Massachusetts Infantry, wrote soon after the 1863 new year to his mother that, “Your letter opens with such a charming scene that I wish I were with you.” The privations of soldiering, which at that time for Abbott was food, continued, “We haven’t been able to get anything of the commissary for 4 days but hard bread and rice,” and increased a sense of homesickness in Abbott. 

 Camped at Belle Plain in Stafford County, Henry Matrau, 6th Wisconsin Infantry (Iron Brigade), wrote home to his mother on January 14, 1863. Young Henry, only 17 at this time explained that “we have been camped here for about 6 weeks and have got pretty good winter quarters up, so we are beginning to live quite comfortably.” Matrau went on to detail the process of constructing and furnishing his shared dwelling and how it was stocked. “Our cupboard comprises a shelf on which you can see a frying pan, plate of beans, tin coffee cups, sugar & coffee bags, knife, fork, & spoon, big chunk of mess pork pies, and tobacco, & c, &c.,” Matrau penned.”

 As the first month of 1863 came to an end, a soldier from Gen. Alexander Lawton’s Brigade penning under the name “Camp,” wrote from “near Port Royal” to the Atlanta Southern Confederacy newspaper to inform readers about the army’s situation. Camp was confident. After recently visiting other parts of the army, he found all “them in good health and spirits—ready as they have ever been, to meet the insolent foe,” and claimed the army “in its present position, is invincible.” Still, the army had needs. Camp penned that the men were largely in winter quarters and he found it “amusing to see what a variety of crude huts are constructed.” “Rations now are flour and pickled pork,” he noted, but “rather short” because the roads made delivery difficult. Camp suggested that the army would need to corduroy the road leading from the railroad to properly supply the men “with commissary stores” or “the army will have to change its position.”

The Chancellorsville Campaign

“Stoneman’s Station”  The United States Military Railroad (USMRR) stockpiled boxes of hard bread and barrels of salt pork for distribution to and consumption by Union soldiers just before the Chancellorsville Campaign. (Library of Congress)

In preparation for what would be the Chancellorsville Campaign, the United States Military Railroad (USMRR) stockpiled boxes of hard bread and barrels of salt pork for consumption by Union soldiers. Pennsylvania soldier, Charles Hunter, writing home to family in Philadelphia commented on April 20, 1863, that, “We are expecting to march every day as we are under orders.” Added to the weight of the load Hunter was expected to carry as a soldier was most of the food he was to eat while on campaign. “We have 8 days of rations to carry with us when we do go and every man has to carry that much,” he explained. Army rations typically consisted of about 9 or 10 hardtack crackers and a pound of salted pork per day per soldier. “So you can form some idea what a load, we will have 80 crackers, that is 10 a day,” he noted. Hunter also explained he would get “3 lbs. of fat pork for 3 days.” To fill out the other days’ meat rations, he stated that “the cattle will follow us up for the other 5 days for our fresh beef.”

 In anticipation of his Chancellorsville Campaign experiences, Corp. Rice Bull of the 123rd New York Infantry similarly remembered that “We were issued eight days’ field rations consisting of hardtack, coffee, pork and sugar. Since our haversacks only had capacity for three days, the extra rations had to be stowed in our knapsacks. We were notified under no circumstances were we to part with either our rations or ammunition, except when their use became necessary. There would be no further issue of food . . . for eight days. . . .” Corp. Bull added that “our knapsacks which after they were strapped in the usual way presented a very inflated look. When we slung them on our shoulders they were heavy.”

 Like many Union soldiers, Charles Bowen complained about the trouble of carrying so many days’ of ration on their person. “We now have to carry eight days rations when we march, three days in the haversack & five in the knapsack, & its more than men are able to bear, but they have no more mercy on us in this respect than they would have on a mule, so we have to take our choice, carry the load or go without food.”

Carrying eight days of rations (three in their haversacks and five in their knapsacks) created a heavy load for Union soldiers in the Chancellorsville Campaign. (Library of Congress)

While on the move through Stafford County toward U.S. Ford on April 29, 1863, Pvt. George Perkins of the Sixth New York Independent Battery wrote in his diary, “Had a good dinner of ham and eggs, the latter being obtained by bartering coffee and sugar with the [local] inhabitants.” On the retreat a week later, Perkins jotted that he had watched a farmer’s house while he went to find some of his cattle. Apparently in thanks, Perkins wrote that the farmer “invited us to take dinner. Had bread and butter, fresh milk, and peach sauce. Tasted delicious.”

 Lt. Cornelius Moore, 57th New York (Second Corps), wrote to his sister following the Battle of Chancellorsville and explained at on May 1 “we had scarcely swallowed our cup of coffee and eaten our allotted number of crackers, which constituted our breakfast, partaken of with astonishing zest . . . when firing (both musketry and artillery) was heard at the front and kept up at intervals for hours.”

Samuel Pickens of the 5th Alabama Infantry noted in his diary on the evening of May 1 that “Had eaten very little for Brkfst. Carey [an enslaved camp servant] brot us biscuits Thurs. [April 30] morng. at day light & we had a little smoked beef wh[ich] we had lived on 2 days.” On May 2, Pickens wrote, “Stopped to rest a few min. & gave Matt Jones ½ biscuit & ate the other & scrap meat & afterwards 2 or 3 little butter crackers—while not more than 1 biscuit.” Soon after participating in Gen. Jackson’s famous flank attack, Pickens had some down time. “When it ceased a squad of men came by with some Prisoners & we started on back to go over the field & get some rations as we were very hungry. I had one crack[er] that [I] had taken fr[om] a Yank. Havresak, going on & divided it with J. Arrington,” wrote Pickens. But he was out of luck “did n’t  find any plunder or rations—the troops behind had swept them [up].” However, someone in the Pickens’s company must have had better fortune as he noted “Stacked arms, made fires & ate supper wh[ich] was taken fr[om] Yanks. they best [I] had [in] some time. Crackers, ham & Coffee. Yanks had 8 da[ys] rations with them 5 in kn[apsack] and 3 in Haver s[ac[k.” Pickens was captured on May 3. 

 Lt. David Champion, 14th Georgia Infantry, remembered that on May 2, 1863, “Parts of the enemy lines were driven in two miles before dark and hundreds of men and quantities of supplies were captured. We were very hungry after an all-days march, so I cut a canteen and haversack from a dead Yankee and was sitting on a log enjoying a sumptuous meal, when a Minnie ball sang right by my head . . . I moved to a less conspicuous place and kept on eating.”

 Writing to his father about Chancellorsville, Sgt. Oliver C. Hamilton, 38th North Carolina (Pender’s Brigade) stated that following Jackson’s flank attack the Federals “left their rations which they were cooking . . . scattered in great confusion, though we has not time to plunder and picked up but little more than some fresh cooked beef which they had just cooked and of which we were greatly in need.”

 Attending to one’s basic needs sometimes tempered soldiers’ rejoicing. Twenty-one-year-old Pvt. Thornton Sexton, 37th North Carolina Infantry, wrote to his father and mother following the Battle of Chancellorsville. Written with phonetic spelling, and perhaps by semi-literate friends, Sexton had little to nothing to say about his army’s recent stunning triumph. Basic needs and making a connection with home dominated his letter. “I Can in form you that I have not had nothing to eat in two days an I am al Moost starved I want you Bring Mee a box of pervines [provisions] if you Can for times is hard hare now,” Sexton wrote. He assured his father of his safety by explaining: “i Com thru the Battle Safe an Was not hirt Maryin [brother Marion] was not hirt it was Bad looken times the trees an bushes was coot all to peses With balls an grap shoot” Turning to his mother, Sexton wrote her, “I would like be at hom if I cood mitey Well i never node what bad times before in my life all my frends my best respets i gve them I hauve not received no mooney Sence I was at home i need somthing to eat Mity bad if i cood git it” In closing, Sexton asked for a return letter and ended, “I still remin loving Son tel dath Thonten Sxten . . . My love an true respts to My father and mother”

Maj. Walter Taylor on Robert E. Lee’s staff wrote his sister looking for some food for himself and his messmates. (Public Domain)

Camped in Stafford County, Pvt. Alonzo Bump, 77th NY Inf. wrote to his wife Mary that he was not feeling well but hoped that she was. Not having been paid recently, Bump asked Mary to send him an account book. “You can by one Big enough for 25 cents,” he explained. Bump was also looking for an expected box from home, that probably contained at least some food items. “I think we will get it in a few days or i hope so at least.” Alonzo told Mary not to go without anything that she needed, but at the same time he asked her, “if you can spare me one Dollar or t[w]o i would like it.” He felt that having some spare money increased his chance of surviving: “i finde that when a man is sick hear with out money he minte as well make up his mind to Die for if he has money he can By something that he can eat when hee cant eat hardtacks.” He was also out of postage stamps and pled “send me some stamps fore i have not got eny.” In addition, he remembered from a previous letter that some of the neighbor ladies “were going to send me a nice necktie and if they Do I will send them somthing for it . . . as soone as i can git it to send.”

 Writing in his diary on May 8, 1863, First Sgt. John F. L. Hartwell, 121st New York Infantry, jotted “I have got our tent repaired & a good fire burning to warm us. Have had a good supper of beans & [hard]tacks. We feel very contented but lonely as we have lost many of our brave fellows.” Four days later he noted: “We are drawing some better rations now since coming to camp. We have all gone hungry to bed every night or should if I had not found some beans that wer left when we started on the march. At any other time any one would not have thought them fit to eat as they wer wet & swollen from rains & sun & many wer spoild but I made a good meal of them for 3.”

 Pvt. William Stilwell wrote to his wife Molly on May 10, 1863, explaining that during the campaign, “I never drew but a days ration of meat in nine days, but I had plenty, captured my rations from the Yankee; meat, sugar, coffee, crackers, salt, pepper. . . .” But three days later he again wrote that, “The whole army is on quarter rations. A lb. and a half of meat for six days—take it as it comes—bone, skin, an dirt, and it was so rank that it can hardly be eaten, and ou know that I never could eat old bacon but I could now if I could get it.”

 While enlisted men and noncommissioned officers seemed to refer to food much more often in their letters and diaries than officers, following the Battle of Chancellorsville, food was clearly on the mind of Maj. Walter Taylor of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s staff. Writing to his sister Mary Lou, Taylor explained: “I am caterer this month.” Which probably meant that Taylor was responsible for the food for his fellow messmates. “Can Mr. Wilson get me anything to eat? Can a fish be had now & then? piece of fresh beef? butter? Vegetables &c. If you see a chance of getting anything, buy it for me. Thomas can always bring it up.” Thomas may have been one of the Taylor’s enslaved men. “We have peas, rice, & potatoes. Can we not get greens of some sort? I would like also to buy a jar or two of pickles, can they be had. Never mind the price.”

 Soldiers eagerly awaited care boxes from home with supplemental clothing and foodstuffs. Despite recovering from a digestive illness, and being warned to temper his desire to overconsume, Lt. Irby G. Scott, 12th Georgia Infantry, was thrilled to receive his box just after Chancellorsville. “My box and Abner’s came to hand last night all right. Dr. Etheridge says I must eat light but I could not make any promises on that score for to just peep into one of the boxes to make him feel like eating and I am going to eat (moderately though),” Lt. Scott wrote to his father.

 Sgt. Shepherd Pryor, 12th Georgia Infantry, wrote to his wife Penelope on May 9, 1863, with a request common to soldiers: “I want Uncle Spencer to come see us right away now and bring us a trunk of some thing to eat. I think now will be the best time he will have to get to us.”

Conclusion

“Scenes on the Road: roasting corn and foraging.”  Sketches by Alfred R. Waud (Library of Congress)

The saying that “an army marches on its stomach” has been attributed to both Napoleon and Frederick the Great. Regardless of who said it first, there is certainly something to it. Without food, soldiers do not have the energy and ability to perform well and their health suffers. Without food, morale dissolves and discipline breaks down. 

 As the accounts above show, and like with so many other facets in their military lives, soldiers could get inventive when it came to feeding themselves. And while for the most part their governments supplied the basics, when rations ran short, or opportunities for supplementing or relieving their monotonous diets appeared, they usually took advantage of them while risking the consequences.

 Additionally, too little has been made in previous scholarship about how much soldiers’ families supplied dietary wants and needs. However, the primary source evidence clearly shows the large degree to which soldiers on both sides relied on support from home when the army would not or could not provide.

Some Sources and Suggested Reading

John D. Billings. Hardtack and Coffee, Or the Unwritten Story of Army Life. George M. Smith and Company, 1884.

Peter S. Carmichael. The War for the Common Soldier: How Men Thought, Fought, and Survived in Civil War Armies. The University of North Carolina Press, 2018.

William C. Davis. A Taste For War: A Culinary History of the Blue and the Gray. Stackpole Books, 2003

Bell Irvin Wiley. The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union. Louisiana State University Press, (reprint 2008).

Parting Shot

“Hard Tack” Capt. J. W. Forsythe with hardtack boxes at Aquia Landing. (Library of Congress)

“Let us close our game of poker,

Take our tin cups in our hand,

While we gather ’round the cook’s tent door,

Where dried mummies of hard crackers

Are given to each man;

Oh hard crackers come again no more.

 ‘Tis the song of the soldier, weary, hungry, and faint.

Hardtack, hardtack, come again no more;

Many days have I chewed you and uttered no complaint,

Oh hard crackers, come again no more.”  

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A camp cooking scene by Charles Wellington Reed.  (Library of Congress)

Introduction

As discussed in Part I, Civil War soldiers had the unique ability to find sustenance even when their governments failed to provision them properly. Whether those deficiencies developed due to a lack of raw materials, manufacturing breakdowns, or distribution issues, soldiers often supplemented particularly bleak periods by foraging and requesting food items from home.

 The food-related situations that soldiers experienced and mentioned during the Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville Campaigns carried on through 1863 and into 1864 for the most part. The Mine Run Campaign, and the Battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House all include soldiers’ accounts discussing food and cooking, but interestingly, the Mine Run Campaign seems to have the largest number of food references out of the three. That may be because of a couple of factors. First, the Mine Run Campaign resulted in less fighting than the other two battles, which in turn offered more extended periods during the campaign for soldiers to write letters and record their thoughts in their dairies. Additionally, the soldiers on both sides returned to their winter camps following the Mine Run campaign to share their recent adventures with friends and family back home. Conversely, the first two battles of the Overland Campaign offered little time for such activities. Between the fighting and maneuvering in early and mid-May 1864, soldiers did not have as much time or energy to leave large amounts of immediate documentation as they did in late November and early December 1863.    

The Mine Run Campaign

“Thanksgiving in Camp”

Although this Harper’s Weekly woodcut print from a Winslow Homer sketch depicts a Union camp during the 1862 Thanksgiving season, each Thanksgiving of the war had a unique way of making soldiers on both sides think about the differences between food at home and their army rations. (Harpers Weekly, November 29, 1862)

Just before the Mine Run Campaign, William McKenzie Thompson of the 15th New Jersey wrote to his local newspaper with some sarcasm about their delay in supply due to railroad disruptions. “Army pies (hard tack) are not usually in very great demand in camp of late, particularly as they are so full of worms. Even if we are accustomed to privations and hardships, we can scarcely relish Uncle Samuel’s mode of giving us a combination of meat and bread, especially worms. Sometimes we are fortunate to get good hard tack—and any one who ever saw them knows they are hard enough even at the best—but of late we more frequently are unfortunate in getting poor ones.”

 The campaign’s timing coincided with the traditional observance of Thanksgiving time. Naturally, army movements at this time of year made some soldiers, including Lt. Cornelius Moore of the 57th New York, think about better fed times at home. Lt. Moore noted of his special meal: “My ‘Thanksgiving Dinner’ consisted of ‘hard tack,’ fat pork, cold, and water, ditto, –was partaken of on the river’s bank. I seldom, if ever, relished one more,” he wrote to his sister.

 Similarly, the 14th Connecticut Infantry’s Capt. Samuel W. Fiske, who regularly wrote to the Springfield, Massachusetts Republican newspaper under the pseudonym Dunn Browne, sent an article titled “The Soldier’s Thanksgiving” on November 25, 1863, on the eve of the Mine Run Campaign. In the essay, Fiske noted that he sent a requisition to the brigade commissary for his officers’ mess for a turkey, three chickens, 11 mince pies, 200 oysters, two bushels of winter apples, one pumpkin, eight dozen eggs, one gallon of milk, ten pounds of hardtack, and four pounds of pork. He explained that his list was returned with all items “crossed out except the last two—the pork and crackers!” He closed that he hoped “some of you will have considerably forestalled me and set forth your festive table with a big chunk of fat pork and a plate of hard bread to sympathize with a soldier’s Thanksgiving dinner.”

Foraging activities supplemented army rations but often came with risks. By Winslow Homer  (Library of Congress) 

While still in their camps, some soldiers mentioned eating well. For example, the day before heading out on the Mine Run Campaign, Pvt. George Perkins, Sixth New York Independent Battery, wrote in his diary that he “Occupied most of the afternoon in boiling some pork and cabbage.” However, it did not take long for supplies to begin to run low and soldiers began to forage. Perkins supplemented his rations on November 29 when his battery was allowed to go away from the lines to forage for their horses and themselves. In doing so, “We came across a drove of small pigs and charged them,” Perkins explained. Finally catching one they took the fresh pork to camp. According to Perkins, comrades came back with “chickens, pigs, potatoes, cabbages, onions, all sorts of other stuff.”

 Lt. Robert S. Robinson, 93rd New York Infantry, noted in his diary on November 29, 1863, that “We received instructions this evening from Gen. Meade that the rations and forage must be used sparingly, and not wasted, for we may have to live on half rations before the Campaign is over. The boys find a good deal to eat in the shape of poultry, sheep and hogs, as the army had never been through here before, and as long as they find something to steal, I don’t believe they will live on half rations. Marauding is strictly forbidden, but all the orders will not stop the men from regaling themselves on fresh meat & poultry when they can find it.”

 The 8th Ohio Infantry’s, Sgt. Thomas Galwey remembered that where his regiment was positioned at Mine Run there was “a farm house and numerous outhouses, pigsties, chicken coops, etc. These last are soon emptied. A confusion of sounds reaches the ear. There is the gabble of frightened poultry, running to save their necks, and the squeal of pigs as they felt the cold steel of a soldier’s bayonet. The men are hallowing to one another as they try to find their companions in the now thickening darkness of night. But as soon as the coffee is boiled, the fresh pork and the fowl consumed, quiet grows apace, and all who are not on guard are soon asleep.”

 The 17th Maine’s Pvt. John Haley found himself on picket duty on the night of November 29 where he “found a rare thing: a farmhouse full of eatables.” Believing there was more there than the inhabitants required, the men “proceeded to lay out such things as we had need of—and we had need of everything. Most of the night was spent in bringing in poultry, mutton, pigs, fruit, and flour.” Preoccupied with their gathering they did not take time for cooking, and when morning came, Haley noted they “had to put as much as we could in our haversacks, leaving the rest for whoever saw fit to care for it.” Three days later, after mentioning on November 30 about being on half rations and on December 1 about suffering “a miserable apology for a breakfast,” Haley and his comrades finally received rations of fresh beef. However, Haley used a biblical reference to note that “the measure of our needs is so great that it was another case of dividing the five loaves and two fishes among the multitude.” Although not satisfied, they “gnawed bones like dogs,” and “stripped fat from the entrails with . . . a relish.” Haley explained that their “greediness is partially the result of the extraordinary cold, and partly due to the fact that our rations have dwindled to next to nothing.”

“An Innocent Victim” – Illustration by William Ludlow Sheppard From Detailed Minutiae of Soldier Life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 by Carlton McCarthy, published in 1899.

Elisha Hunt Rhodes, 2nd Rhode Island Infantry, noted in his diary on December 1, 1863, that the regiment’s mess servant found a turkey. “This they roasted, and with sweet potatoes and new bread and butter they appeared to us at about 2 P.M.,” Rhodes jotted. Joined by an officer of the 10th Massachusetts, they were ready to feast and have the chaplain give thanks, when “bang went a gun, and a shell from the enemy howled over our heads.” Bundling up the meal in a rubber blanket, they “moved under a knoll where we enjoyed a feast,” Rhodes wrote.

 Pvt. David Holt of the 16th Mississippi Infantry remembered a soldier’s humorous quest to capture a rooster at house between the opposing lines at Mine Run. After hearing the rooster crow, the soldier, laying his gun on the ground, ran through the skirmish line to the house. “He caught up with the rooster on our side of the house and the chase commenced,” Holt recalled. “We opened up a brisk fire on the Yanks to protect him all we could and when the chase went to the Union side of the house they “popped away at him.” Falling down several times, the soldier finally “caught the bird against the door jam[b]. The rooster squalled, the man whooped, we hollered and the Yanks huzzahed.” Apparently, all could commiserate with a hungry soldier’s quest for a meal.

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Along with confiscating foodstuffs, soldiers also appropriated the most readily available fuel sources for cooking. Whether that was cutting down trees, pulling buildings apart, or scavenging fence rails, wood, much like livestock and crops, often disappeared when armies were around. Sketch by Alfred Waud. (Library of Congress)

On November 30, 1863, William Ray of the 7th Wisconsin Infantry, wrote in his diary, “We drew Beef this evening and a little later we drew 5 days rations of sugar, coffee, meat and hardtack & salt. Some or most of the boys was out of rations. Some had not bread for 4 or 5 meals back. I, having more than I would eat gave some 25 crackers to them. I have a good large haversack and took care of & drew all I get. While some of those hungry chaps was playing Poker instead of drawing their full rations.” 

The extreme cold experienced during the Mine Run Campaign made things particularly difficult for the soldiers. The 121st New York Infantry’s surgeon, Daniel Holt, noted that the cold was bad enough on its own, but “the still greater suffering of not being permitted to light a fire at which you might warm your freezing feet and hands,” was miserable. Not having fires also meant not being able “to boil our coffee—a beverage the most highly prized of anything which a soldier can enjoy. . . .” Holt viewed the “no fires” order as ridiculous. According to him, the Confederates knew they were there “and every rebel knew as well or better than we, that the object of the move was to offer battle on the day succeeding.”  

 When Gen. Meade decided not to attack the Confederate fortifications at Mine Run, his soldiers were relieved to hear the news. However, depleted food supplies caused grumbling while awaiting orders to withdraw. On the way back to their Culpeper County winter camps, New York artillerist George Perkins wrote, “Rations getting short. Nothing but a little flour and some boiled beef furnished just on meal and which was all we had this day.” Corp. Thomas Mann, 18th Massachusetts Infantry, wrote about December 1: “our rations had now given out and I had been 26 hours without a morsel of bread.” Mann added, “From Thursday [December 1] noon I eat nothing until 12 o’clock at night when our rations came up so that all I could get to eat for over 40 hours was 1/4th lb raw pork and 2 ½ hardtack. Likewise, Massachusetts soldier Corp. Joseph Hodgkins concurred with Perkins and Mann, writing in his diary about the slim rations at the end of the campaign. On December 2, Hodgkins wrote “Had but a little over four hardtack since yesterday.” Massachusetts artillery bugler Charles Wellington Reed, wrote to his mother soon after the campaign and in answering her question about how the mission went, he noted, “if I must speak the truth we did suffer both from the severity of the weather and scarcity of rations.” He elaborated by stating, “our rations were only coffee, hard tack, and pork scant at that[.] vegetables are altogether out of the question on a campaign, in fact we have had potatoes and onions but twice since we have been back.”

 Even Confederate soldiers noted their foe’s food woes. Pvt. Walter Battle, 4th North Carolina Infantry, wrote to his mother from his camp near Morton’s Ford on December 3, 1863. After providing a run down on the recent events, Pvt. Battle mentioned that while following the Union army to the Rapidan River his regiment captured some stragglers. Several, being without food for a few days, tried to buy some from the Confederates. One famished Federal soldier offered to give Walter “his knapsack and everything in it” if he gave the hungry soldier a cracker. Walter thought the deal was too good to pass up. Inside the knapsack were several valuable items: “A pair of new shoes and a Yankee tent are things that money will not buy. I would not take $25.00 for my tent which he gave me. They are large enough for two [men], and so light that you can roll them in your knapsack and not feel the weight at all,” he cheerfully wrote.

 Some soldiers commented on the stinginess of their comrades when food got short. The 15 New Jersey’s Sgt. Lucien A. Vorhees, wrote to the Hunterdon Republican newspaper upon returning to camp after Mine Run. He explained that “Our marches have been rapid, and what was most appalling starvation threatened us. Hard tack gave out with many, and had it not been for the timely arrival at a depot of supplies and the kind sharing of comrades who were fortunate enough to have a few crumbs, our case would have been deplorable. I regret to mention that we have comrades who, with hard tack in their haversacks, when asked by hungry mouths for ‘just one’ gruffly retorted, ‘I have none to spare.'”

As long as the armies maintained lines of communication with bases of supplies, their soldiers usually received rations on a regular basis. Shown here is an overturned train on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad near Brandy Station. (Library of Congress)

It was like a supply faucet turned back on when Union soldiers returned to their winter camps. Corp. Hodgkins, now back in camp, penned in his diary, “Received some rations and not one moment sooner than needed.” Corp. Mann wrote, “We now have plenty and today got a ration of soft bread.”

 While the Federals ate much better once they returned to their Culpeper camps and had the convenient Orange and Alexandria Railroad supply line handy, rations remained tight for their Confederate counterparts who were mostly spread through northern Orange County. Writing to his mother a couple of weeks after the conclusion of the Mine Run Campaign, Jerome Yates of the 16th Mississippi expressed that he wished that his regiment had been sent to Western Virginia. “That part of the country is such a good country for something to eat,” Yates explained. He noted that “Rations are pretty scarce here at present. Only one [ration of] flour and one of meat per day, which is not more than half what a man can eat when he does not get anything else to go with it.” Additionally, he felt “Money is still scarce and what we have we can not b[u]y anything with [it to eat] as everything is so high. . . .”

The Battle of the Wilderness

“Wagon Park- Brandy Station, Va., May 1864”   Supplies like food for both the soldiers and the animals had to be transported via wagons once the armies left their railroad connections. (Library of Congress)

As was the case with most campaigns, logistical preparation began long before the marching and fighting started. That preparation usually involved gathering food supplies from whatever sources possible when rations were scarce, and issuing and cooking rations on the eve of the campaign when more prevalent.

 On April 29, 1864, just before receiving orders for what would be the beginning of the grueling Overland Campaign, Sgt. Marion Hill Fitzpatrick, 45th Georgia Infantry, gleefully wrote to his wife Amanda about the box she sent. “The weather is pleasant, and we are living high on the contents of our box. We have biscuits for breakfast every morning and cornbread for supper or dinner. I do not know which you would call it, as we only eat twice a day and have no regular time to do that. My piece of meat is of great value. The [ration] meat we draw is very inferior, and come in small doses,” Sgt. Fitzpatrick explained from his Orange County camp. Later in the same letter he wrote about some variety added to their diet: “We had a mess of fish for breakfast this morning which was quite a treat to us. We also has biscuits and coffee which went fine with the fish and gravy.” It would be some time before he would eat as well again.   

 Writing regularly to the Springfield, Massachusetts Republican newspaper, Connecticut soldier Capt. Samuel Fiske, who used the pseudonym Dunn Brown, shared some thoughts about food rations on the eve of the Battle of the Wilderness. “Does it ever occur to anyone who is thinking of the liberal rations of our government, to ask whether the soldier, as a matter of fact, gets that full allowance [of rations]?” Fiske explained that if a soldier did indeed receive the additional foodstuffs that regulations suggested (beans, rice, molasses, potatoes, etc.) “he would be able to satisfy his appetite very reasonably, and even have something over.” But, as it traditionally went, when on campaign, soldiers only received hardtack and a meat ration “and nothing else except a small allowance of sugar and coffee.” Fiske went on to note that “This hard bread is frequently spoiled by wet, and some part of it unfit to eat by reason of bugs and worms.” Fiske suggested that when supplementals like beans and rice are not issued, “at least 12 pr 14 crackers a day should be issued to make a ration good.” 

During much of the winter of 1863-1864, Confederates lived on reduced rations in their Orange County winter quarters. 

(Illustrated London News, April 4, 1864)

On May 3, 1864, as he and his comrades were about to start heading east to meet the Federals crossing the Rapidan River and what would become the Battle of the Wilderness, Henry Beck of the 5th Alabama noted in his diary, “Our long-expected box cam to hand this morn’g about 11 or 12 o’cl’k. Almost all its contents were ruined. But the pepper, sage, catsup, ham, candy & some of the cake, were all pretty good—the first three articles being as good as ever. We gave a sort of treat of the articles to our mess.” Company comrade James Pickens penned the following day, May 4, “So we were up at about 3 or 3 ½ o’cl’k this morn’g, & after eating a breakfast of some our ham broiled I corn-bread, got ready. . . .” Later that evening James wrote, “We were supplied with rations to-night, & those detailed to cook them made so much noise & bustle all the night that Sam & I got very little sleep.” Their comrade Joel McDiarmid noted that they “Got two days rations.”

 The 121st New York’s First Sgt. John F. L. Hartwell penned in his diary on May 4 that “At day light we moved out of Camp on our Spring Campaign with 6 days rations.” Later the same day, Hartwell jotted that “We got Supper & drew rations of fresh beef.”

 The day before the Battle of the Wilderness began, Lt. William C. Nelson wrote to his mother with an update. Toward the end of the letter, he noted the scarcity of food. “For the past two month we have been living quite hard, in the Army of [Northern] Virginia, the officers ration messes have has proven a lamentable failure, an officer and his servant are now compelled to live on one ration,” Nelson explained. He then ran down their typical meals: “Breakfast, a piece of cornbread, they give us no flour now, a piece of meat about 2 inches square, ½ inch thick, a cup of coffee, quite frequently we have no meat for breakfast, when we eat hearty dinners, we dine on meat and bread without the coffee and sup on nothing.” Regardless, Lt. Nelson wrote, “I am perfectly contented and never enjoyed better health.” He felt fortunate to recently buy some bacon with gold, but noted that near Richmond it cost $7 or $8 per pound and that flour went for $1.25 per pound. “We must grin and endure,” Nelson ended. 

Unidentified Union soldier.

Soldiers typically carried their rations in their haversack. As one might image, with salt pork and hardtack crumbs, haversacks could be messy. Some Union haversacks came with removable button-in liners that could be replaced or removed for washing. Some soldiers carried their rations in individual cotton bags inside their haversacks. (Library of Congress)

Few things were more exasperating to a soldier than losing a vital piece of equipment. During their early May 1864 movement from Ely’s Ford and then through the old Chancellorsville battlefield, Pvt. George Perkins and his Sixth New York Independent Battery stopped and watered their horses twice. Apparently, along the way Perkins, “Lost my haversack on the road with all my rations.” However, he seemed more upset with the loss of his “knife, fork and spoon.” One wonders if he lost it, or if it was taken by a hungry comrade.

 On the first day of the Battle of the Wilderness, Alabamian James Pickens explained that they got breakfast at about 6:00 am. He wrote that it “was very good one, of some of our sausages & corn-bread.” On the morning of the 6th, James detailed in his diary that he “Ate a hasty breakfast of a mouthful or two of fish & crackers & a cup of coffee,” before going to a nearby hospital to recuperate from illness. An Army of the Potomac counterpart, New Yorker First Sgt. John F. L. Hartwell, wrote in his diary on May 6: “Soon after daylight we joined our Brigade which by some mistake we got strayed from during the night. After we halted we got breakfast of hardtack & coffee & some lay down to sleep.”

 Pvt. Wilbur Fisk of the 2nd Vermont Infantry wrote to his newspaper on May 9, describing the terrible fighting at the Wilderness that his famous Vermont Brigade endured. After witnessing a comrade killed beside him and then having an officer’s horse step on his foot, Fisk made his way to the rear. As he explained, “all I thought of was a cup of coffee, and a dinner of hard tack.” Feeling that “My patriotism was well nigh used up, and so was I, till I had some refreshments. I made a deep impression on my haversack, which nourished my fighting qualities so I could return to my regiment,” Fisk penned. Such “self-care” measures during campaigns were fairly common. 

“As You Were” By Charles Wellington Reed While on campaign, Civil War soldiers typically cooked in “messes,” a small group of men who rotated duties and pooled their rations and resources.

(Library of Congress)

The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

On May 7, 1864, Sgt. Charles McKnight of the 88th Pennsylvania Infantry scribbled in his diary about his regiment’s recent marching and fighting. That day’s entry included that they “Built two lines of Brest Works and at night marched to the rear Where We Cooked Coffee and Beef Steaks and then marched for Spotsylvania. Marched all night.” Similarly, McKnight’s fellow 88th comrade, Pvt. John Vautier, wrote in his journal the same day: “Clear, Hot, and Sultry. The first thing after we cooked our coffee, and eat our hard tack and pork, was to throw up breastworks on the Germanna Ford Road.” Soldiers like McKnight and Vautier became resourceful scavengers when it came to finding fuel to cook their food and boil their coffee. “Late in the afternoon we marched back to the center and massed. There was no firewood around for the men to make fire with, but there was a frame schoolhouse near by, and that was torn to pieces in a little while and fuel obtained to cook coffee with,” Vautier noted.

 New Yorker Sgt. John Hartwell wrote in his diary the following day that “Through the night we lay on our arms in line of battle but before laying down we drew 5 days rations & one ration of fresh beef.” 

 While lying in battle at the Po River on May 8, Lt. Robert Robertson of Gen. Nelson Miles’s staff noted in his diary, “About half past 3 Capt. Thompson brought up 5 wagons of rations and two bullocks for the brigade and began distributing rations. The wagons were partially unloaded and the cattle were hamstrung to prevent them from running away, when suddenly a volley of musketry . . . startled us, and all was in confusion for a moment.” The confusion turned into a withdraw, thus “The wagons were sent back, and 17 boxes of hard bread were left in front of us. The hamstrung bullocks were wild and crazy with the noise [of battle], and rushed madly about goring everything that came in their way, and I saw one of them kill a wounded man who was going to the rear.”

“Beef for the Army – On the March” Sketch by Edwin Forbes While on campaign, herds of beef cattle often supplied fresh meat rations to the soldiers of both armies.

(Library of Congress)

Mississippian Pvt. David Holt remembered keenly that “On the night of May 11th, we halted in a pasture on the right hand side of the road. It was raining hard and we were too worn out to attempt making a fire and cooking mush. We laid down on the wet ground with about as much comfort as a wet starving steer.” Exhausted from the near constant fighting of the last week, Holt recalled that “I had a few morsels of wet corn pone and a small piece of bacon which was not dry nor cooked, and, after eating that moist ration, I wrapped a soaking wet blanket around me and went to sleep in a puddle of mud.”

 Brig. Gen. Nelson Miles’s brigade fought with other Second Corps troops at the Muleshoe Salient on the morning of May 12, but being shattered after about three hours of fighting in a downpour, and with the enlisted men refusing to go forward again, they withdrew and worked on entrenchments. Establishing a headquarters, Lt. Robert Robertson of Miles’s staff noted that “There was now by little firing and we had time to recollect that we had fasted all day, and were very tired besides, so a fire was built to cook our supper and dry us, for we were chilled in our wet clothes.” As soon as they kindled a fire, Confederate bullets came whizzing through the woods aimed at their silhouettes. The group of officers doused the fire, built a screen of tree boughs and started another fire. “We had a cup of coffee and a supper of ‘Hard tack’ and beef, and rarely have I relished a supper as I did that, lying on the battlefield, scarcely knowing but that each morsel we ate might be our last. We had finished our coffee and another pot was boiling for the orderlies, when—ping! Came a bullet, passing through the pot and letting out the coffee,” Lt. Robertson noted.

 While serving as a staff officer for Sixth Corps commander Maj. Gen. Horatio Wright, Lt. Col. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. took time to jot in his diary on May 12, 1864, at Spotsylvania. On what may be the fiercest day of fighting in the whole Civil War, Holmes at one place in that day’s longer-than-normal entry, briefly broke from reporting on the battle to mention a trivial observance. “All day we have been fighting & are banging away still—bullets are now whistling round these H.Q. & meanwhile a flock of little chickens are peeping & cheeping—their mother no doubt being in the belly of some soldier,” Holmes wrote. 

“The Turkey He Didn’t Catch” Hardtack and Coffee, Or the Unwritten Story of Army Life by John Billings, published 1884. Poultry was a particular treat to foraging soldiers when they could catch them.

On May 12, Fifth Corps Chief of Artillery, Charles Wainwright, noted in his diary that “In our domestic affairs we manage to rub along, not expecting much luxury in eating or comfort in sleeping in such times as these.” Wainwright wondered how he was able to go on “only four or six hours’ sleep,” but explained that “excitement does wonders” for keeping one awake. Being an officer, Wainwright had the option of having a servant forage and prepare meals, a luxury not afforded to enlisted men and non-commissioned officers. He mentioned that “Dr. Thompson’s boy [servant] acts as cook. He does quite tolerably, considering; better a good deal than Ben [Wainwright’s servant]. Fried potatoes is his ‘piece de resistance.’”

 Left to tend to Federal wounded, and for a time behind lines and cut off from supplies when the Army of the Potomac moved from the Wilderness to Spotsylvania, Maj. William Watson, who served as surgeon for the 105th Pennsylvania Infantry, found himself in an unenviable position. In an attempt to get help, he sent a letter to an unidentified superior on May 19, 1864. In the letter, Maj. Watson explained his dire circumstances: “I have in charge 275 wounded, including 50 amputations and resections and have neither food, clothing, nor supplies of any kind, the men have been living on hard bread and water for three days, the Coffee was expended on Sunday [May] 12, the sugar on the 13th,  and I feel satisfied that many have already died from want of proper sustenance.” Having previously tried other means, Watson ran into red tape and excuses from his side as well as the enemy. Exasperated, the surgeon continued that, “our last cracker was issued this morning and if relief is not afforded the men will die of sheer starvation. I applied to the Confederates, they replied that nothing prevented us from receiving supplies from our own lines.” Watson and his patients finally received help on May 28, when Federal authorities in Fredericksburg sent cavalry, infantry, and 36 ambulances for them.   

 The 5th Alabama Infantry’s James Pickens, who at the time of Spotsylvania was helping in field hospital noted in his diary on May 13 that “Maj. Webster recd me kindly & gave me a very nice warm dinner. Rice, nice hot biscuits, ham (broiled) & coffee with sugar.”

 Elisha Hunt Rhodes, 2nd Rhode Island Infantry, penned in his diary on May 18, 1864, that after an attack on the Confederate line that day he ushered his men back into the protection of a woods. In doing so he met a staff officer of Gen. Frank Wheaton’s who had his servant with him and invited Rhodes to breakfast with them. Rhodes wrote that “We had some hot bread and broiled shad which some one had caught in one of the streams. Notwithstanding the Rebel shells I enjoyed my breakfast.”

 Writing to his sister, Theora, at the tail end of Spotsylvania, Lt. James B. Thomas, 107th Pennsylvania, noted his worries about his horse getting enough food. As for himself he seemed pleased that “Last night we secured a ham for our mess which is quite a treat. Hard tack, coffee & pork[,] chip beef, flannel cakes [pancakes] and an occasional cup of tea” rounded out his recent meal.

 As previously mentioned, cattle herds followed the armies in almost every campaign providing fresh beef to soldiers and adding a bit of variety to the more common salt pork for meat rations. The 141st Pennsylvania’s Pvt. Joel Molyneux wrote in his diary on Wednesday, May 18, 1864, from Spotsylvania, that in addition to all the military action and moving about that that day they drew “fresh beef, get supper, go to bed,” but that they were “routed out at 11 [p.m.] to move [to a new position].

 Describing the action at Harris Farm on May 19, 1864, in his diary First Sgt. Hartwell noted that “In the afternoon just at sunset the rebels made a desprate Attempt to turn our right by charging which at first seemed likely to be suckcessfull. they were finaly put to rout by the 2nd Corps & some heavy Artillery.” Hartwell explained that “The rebs took 18 wagons loaded with harde bread[,] as they could not readily take them away they commenced to deal them out to their men.”

 Almost a week later, Holmes jotted that he arrived at Army Headquarters at 8:50 a.m. and [Capt. Charles] “Cadwalader gave me a swallow of brandy & [Lt. Col. Theodore] Lyman 2 hardtack & some guava wh[ich] revived me after riding all yesterday, last night & this morning & having nothing since dinner yesterday & no sleep.”

Conclusion

“Going into Bivouac at Night” By Edwin Forbes (Library of Congress) At night, when on campaign, soldiers kindled thousands of small campfires to create enough heat to cook rations and boil coffee.

Through 1863 and into 1864, Civil War soldiers’ dietary staples of salt pork, fresh beef, hardtack, and cornmeal remained ever-present. However, when supply and distribution issues arose, causing a reduction in rations, the above primary sources make it clear that soldiers tried to find ways to feed themselves and also introduce some variety into their diets. 

 Other than potatoes and onions, and an occasional pilfered apple or sweet potato, or dried fruit sent from home, soldiers rarely mentioned consuming fruits and vegetables. Not eating these vitamin-rich foods consistantly wreaked havoc on their health. Some did recognize their benefit. For example, a couple of weeks before the beginning of the Overland Campaign, Walter Battle of the 4th North Carolina Infantry noted in a letter home that “nearly the whole regiment amused themselves gathering wild onions. The doctors recommend them very highly on account of their preventing scurvy. Gen. Ransom had a kettle for each company brought down the line, for the purpose of cooking them.” But other than some soldiers occasionally receiving desiccated (dried) vegetables, there was not much at the time that the armies could do to prevent their rapid spoilage. 

 When it came to food shortages and monotonous diets, as Mississippian Lt. William C. Nelson noted above, soldiers often had to just “grin and endure.”

Some Sources and Suggested Reading

John D. Billings. Hardtack and Coffee, Or the Unwritten Story of Army Life. George M. Smith and Company, 1884.

 Peter S. Carmichael. The War for the Common Soldier: How Men Thought, Fought, and Survived in Civil War Armies. The University of North Carolina Press, 2018.

 William C. Davis. A Taste For War: A Culinary History of the Blue and the Gray. Stackpole Books, 2003

 Carlton McCarthy. Detailed Minutiae of Soldier Life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865. B. F. Johnson Publishing Company, 1899.

 Bell Irvin Wiley. The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union. Louisiana State University Press, (reprint 2008).

 Bell Irvin Wiley. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy. Louisiana State University Press, (reprint 2008). 

Parting Shot

“The Coffee Call” By Winslow Homer (Library of Congress)

“Sometimes, where companies preferred it, the rations were served out to them in the raw state; but there was no invariable rule in this matter. I think the soldiers, as a whole, preferred to receive their coffee and sugar raw, for rough experience in campaigning soon made each man an expert in the preparation of this beverage. Moreover, he could make a more palatable cup for himself than the cooks made for him; for too often their handiwork betrayed some of the other uses of the mess kettles to which I have made reference. Then, again, some men liked their coffee strong, others weak; some liked it sweet, others wished little or no sweetening; and this latter class could and did save their sugar for other purposes.”

 Capt. Augustus C. Brown, 4th New York Heavy Artillery, diary entry May 6, 1864. 

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“The Battle of Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862” by Carl Rochling depicts Col. Charles H. T. Collis leading his 114th Pennsylvania Zouaves forward on what is now known as the Slaughter Pen Farm portion of the battlefield.

(Public Domain)

Introduction

During the Battle of Fredericksburg, the 21st Massachusetts Infantry of Edward Ferrero’s Ninth Corps brigade moved toward the Confederate line at the base of Marye’s Heights. When they cleared the streets of Fredericksburg and were well within the range of the Rebels’ rifle fire, Color Sgt. Joseph H. Collins received a mortal wound to his left thigh. Collins fell, dropping the regiment’s national colors. Quickly, however, Sgt. Thomas Plunkett snatched up the colors and carried them forward, leading the regiment toward the enemy’s lines. As the 21st Massachusetts attempted to maneuver to get in some shots at the ensconced Confederates, an artillery shell aimed at the unit’s flag fell with incredible accuracy. The shell took off both arms of Sgt. Plunkett, and again the colors fell, “wet with the bearer’s blood.” Pvt. Bradley L. Olney of Company H immediately seized the flag and carried it through the remainder of the fight, somehow avoiding being hit. In addition to the ordeal faced by those who carried the national colors, Corp. Elbridge Barr, who held the regiment’s state colors, was shot and mortally wounded. Fully realizing the danger, but yet willing to take the risk, Corp. Richard Wheeler wrested the flagstaff from Barr’s hands and claimed the hazardous post of honor.

Sgt. Thomas Plunkett received the Medal of Honor for courageously carrying his regiment’s national colors at Fredericksburg where he lost both arms.

(Library of Congress)

Scenes like that described above played out time and time again on the battlefields of central Virginia. Some, like Sgt. Plunkett’s sacrifice, were rewarded with Medals of Honor. Others received mention in officers’ reports or comrades’ letters, journals, and diaries. Yet others, probably due to perceived notions of a soldier’s duty and thus the expectedness of such actions, sadly received no mention at all.

 It is difficult for us in the 21st century to fully understand the importance that those of the past placed on battlefield flags. Throughout history flags have symbolized individuals, religions, and of course, represented national pride. Flags have the unique ability to convey a shared purpose or struggle. Since ancient times, banners, flags, and colors have been carried by military units for identity. They affirm group distinctiveness, help create solidarity, and inspire unity. During the Civil War, national and regimental flags built pride, stoked morale, and served to represent the group’s honor. 

Images and items adorned with flags and color bearers, like these envelopes, were popular choices to express one’s patriotism on the frontlines and the home front during the Civil War.

(Library of Congress)

Civil War regiments, both North and South, often held sendoff ceremonies upon departing from their home communities. Occurring particularly early in the war, a presentation of the colors—usually crafted by the local town or county women where the unit was raised—was central to these events. These occasions also often included patriotic speeches, band music, and other shows of community support; all in an effort to reinforce the importance of the colors to the men who would fight beneath them.

 A regiment’s color guard, normally made up of non-commissioned officers, protected the flag. To carry the flag was a post of honor, but often a deadly one. Enemy soldiers targeted flag bearers to disrupt the continuity of the enemy’s battle line and demoralize the foe. The unit’s flag was always held in great reverence, as a regiment’s honor was displayed in, and often on, its flag. Battle names sometimes graced the regimental or national colors to show that the unit had been in the thick of the fight and had performed bravely. Of course, the entire regiment was disgraced if its colors were lost in battle.

 As previously mentioned, Union soldiers who captured enemy colors or saved their own unit’s flag from the enemy often received recognition; some became recipients of the Medal of Honor. In fact, a large proportion of the soldiers who received Medals of Honor during the Civil War did so for actions involving colors.

 This CVBT History Wire will share a number of accounts involving colors and color bearers at the Battle of Fredericksburg and during the Chancellorsville Campaign. A follow-up post will do the same for the Mine Run Campaign, the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Court House. 

The Battle of Fredericksburg

“The Battle of Fredericksburg, VA, Dec. 13, 1862” by Currier and Ives

(Library of Congress)

Perhaps due to the nature of the combat at the Battle of Fredericksburg, with the Confederates fighting primarily on the defensive, their accounts involving colors seem to appear less frequently.  However, there are some mentions by them watching the spectacle of the Union assaults, and in doing so, noting the flags. One example comes from Capt. Thomas Henry Carter, who commanded a Confederate artillery battery on the south end of the battlefield. In a letter to his wife written four days after the fight, Carter explained that his battery was initially in reserve, occupying defensive high ground in a wooded area. To reach the Confederate lines, the Federal forces who occupied the “flats in front of Mr. Bernard’s house [Mannsfield],” had to traverse the open ground with only the protection of a few “ditch banks.” However, Carter also noted that there was little to no artillery in the center of that part of their line. “This was our weak point and they [Federals] knew it,” he penned. “Their troops were drawn up all along our front, about 1000 yds to the front line.” Carter explained “They made a feint at our right after some maneuvering & then formed in six or seven lines opposite our centre & charged. The whole scene was grand. Their troops superbly drilled, coming on with flying colors & marched boldly across the plains to the woods & gained it notwithstanding the fire of artillery.”

 From his position near the center of the Confederate line, Capt. Matthew Nunnally of the 11th Georgia Infantry had a good view of the actions at Marye’s Heights as well as those to the south at Slaughter Pen Farm. He wrote to his sister and brother-in-law soon after the battle describing his view of the fight below Marye’s Heights: “I saw as many as three Yankee lines advance slowly and steadily with colors flying and in beautiful battle array. . . . Soon our brave boys told them where the Rocks of Gibraltar were; our artillery ploughed through their ranks cutting down whole platoons at a single shot, our musketry killed them by the hundreds. I saw Commanders of Regts. and Brigades with dashing steeds and waving sabres leading their command onward. I saw horses run out riderless, and lastly, though not with colors flying, I saw the last line in retreat pass out of sight.”

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“Fredericksburg”

(A Life of Robert E. Lee by John Esten Cooke, published in 1883) 

Fighting on the north end of the battlefield, William Cowan McClellan of the 9th Alabama, wrote a letter to his father describing not only what he saw, but also what he heard. McClellan penned, “Our men heard the Col of the 49th N[ew] York Reg[iment] Say men will you charge again. all silent. Says he[,] I will carry the Flag from one end of the line to the other. Our boys looked at each other and smiled, now we will give it to them Boys. aim low; down goes the Brave Col. and his colors, men begin to fall thick and fast now.

Perhaps the most notable personality among the Medal of Honor recipients at the Battle of Fredericksburg was Col. Charles H. T. Collis, who led the 114th Pennsylvania Infantry, a Zouave regiment. (Collis and his regiment are depicted in this post’s header image.) Fighting in John C. Robinson’s Third Corps brigade on the Slaughter Pen Farm portion of the battlefield, Collis and his regiment entered the fray to thwart a Confederate counterattack. Many of his soldiers were experiencing their baptism under fire and most were stunned at the destruction happening around them, including seeing Gen. Robinson’s horse being torn to pieces by a cannon ball and in turn toppling Robinson. In an attempt to steady and inspire his men, Col. Collis grabbed the regiment’s flag, rode to the center of its front holding the regimental standard aloft, and yelled, “Remember the stone wall at Middletown!;” where Collis and some of his men had fought in the Shenandoah Valley in the spring of 1862. Roused to the moment, the 114th linked with other units and pushed ahead.

 During the 9th New Hampshire Infantry’s movement toward Marye’s Heights, they ran into several obstacles including fences and ditches that caused some of the companies to separate. While maneuvering through these a piece of shell hit Sgt. [Edgar] Dinsmore in the left chest, mortally wounding him and causing him to fall on the national colors. Several of the color guard were also killed. Without hesitation, Lt. Charles D. Copp pulled the flag from under Dinsmore, and calling “Forward, boys forward!” carried the flag up to the front lines. Copp received the Medal of Honor for his courageous act.

Lt. Charles D. Copp, 9th New Hampshire Infantry, received the Medal of Honor at Fredericksburg where he “Seized the regimental colors, the color bearer having been shot down, and, waving them, allied the regiment under a heavy fire.”

(History of the Ninth Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers, edited by Edward O. Lord, 1895)

Later, when Gen. Andrew Humphrey’s division attacked Marye’s Heights, Col. Jacob Frick’s, 129th Pennsylvania Infantry, a nine-month regiment, endured about 30 percent casualties. Frick led by example in their effort. He was hit in the thigh and ear by shell fragments. In addition, a shell hit a horse standing beside him and the explosion covered him in the animal’s gore. During the assault, the regiment’s color bearer was wounded but Frick took up the colors and charged forward. The Confederates in his front concentrated their fire on him and shot the flag’s staff in two near Frick’s head causing the flag to drape across his shoulders. Disregarding the danger, the colonel continued to lead his men through the bedlam of the battle.

“Gallant Charge of Humphrey’s Division at the Battle of Fredericksburg” Sketched by Alfred R. Waud and originally published in Harper’s Weekly, January 10, 1863. 

(Library of Congress)

Unlike the more mature Col. Frick, youthful enthusiasm probably played a part in Pvt. George Sidman’s Fredericksburg colors moment. Only 18 years old and serving in the 16th Michigan Infantry, Sidman had already distinguished himself for bravery when wounded at the Battle of Gaines’ Mill, for which he would eventually receive the Medal of Honor. Sidman’s battlefield heroics continued at Fredericksburg.  When his regiment was requested to offer up a volunteer to carry the new brigade flag, Sidman eagerly stepped forward for the dangerous duty. Sidman’s past performance in battle helped Col. Thomas Stockton, the brigade commander, make the choice. Sidman led the brigade and although wounded again, carried the colors to within 150 yards of the Confederate line and stayed there with its shattered staff and pierced folds until withdrawn by order.

 As indicated by these last couple of accounts, flagstaffs and flags were often abused by the fury of lead and iron in battle. The 4th Vermont Infantry’s Lt. William Henry Martin, whose unit lost over fifty soldiers on the skirmish line, wrote to his family shortly after the battle explaining: “You will see our account of it in the papers. Our flag was torn into threads, the eagle shot off & the flag ridled by bulets. The Colnel intends sending it home to the Govner.”

English immigrant Pvt. Philip Petty, 136th Pennsylvania Infantry received the Medal of Honor for his willingness to carry the colors at Fredericksburg.

(Deeds of Valor: How America’s Civil War Heroes Won the Congressional Medal of Honor by W. F. Beyer and O. F. Keydel, 1903)

At least three Federal soldiers who were immigrants received Medals of Honor for their heroic flag deeds at Fredericksburg. During the battle, the 136th Pennsylvania, a nine-month regiment and part of Col. Peter Lyle’s Brigade, John Gibbon’s Division in the First Corps fought on the south end of the battlefield. There they engaged with Gen. James Lane’s North Carolina brigade and endured fire from Confederate artillery to their right front. Pvt. Philip Petty, an English immigrant, described the situation: “the color bearer being wounded, the colonel called at once for someone to carry the fallen colors.” When no one else answered the call, Petty did “and carried them in the advance. . . .” He went just past the [Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac] railroad tracks where he “planted the flagstaff in the ground and fired about thirty rounds into the rebels. . . .” Petty’s inspiring performance elicited cheers from his regiment.

Also fighting in Col. Lyle’s brigade, Pvt. Martin Schubert of the 26th New York Infantry did not even need to be in the battle. He had obtained a furlough to go home and heal his Antietam wound. Instead, Pvt. Schubert, a native of Germany, decided to pocket his ticket home and join his comrades at Fredericksburg, where he received another wound. Later when asked why he stayed and fought, Schubert simply but profoundly replied, “I thought that the government needed me there.”  In recognition of his bravery, Schubert received the Medal of Honor in 1863. His citation reads: “Relinquished a furlough granted for wounds, entered the battle, where he picked up the colors after several bearers had been killed or wounded, and carried them until himself again wounded.” One of Schubert’s comrades in the 26th New York, Pvt. Joseph Keene, who was born in England, became the regiment’s last color bearer during the battle. His Medal of Honor citation reads: “Voluntarily seized the colors after several color bearers had been shot down and led the regiment in the charge.” Keen, who was serving a two-year enlistment, later received a promotion to corporal and mustered out in 1863. Apparently, wanting to see the war through to its conclusion, he reenlisted a month later in the 3rd New York Light Artillery and served with it to the end of the war.

The Chancellorsville Campaign

“Rebel prisoners and battle flags captured at Chancellorsville, being taken to the rear by cavalry and infantry guards.” Sketched by Edwin Forbes

(Library of Congress)

The fighting at Chancellorsville, Second Fredericksburg, and Salem Church produced numerous instances in which colors and color bearers received mention.

Sometimes, becoming a color bearer came by way of unexpected circumstances.  For example, during the Battle of Chancellorsville, Corp. Andrew Proffit, 18th North Carolina Infantry, apparently became a flag bearer for the regiment by happenstance. He described how he found himself in the honorable but unenviable position in a May 15, 1863, letter to his father. “On Saturday night [May 2] there fell a bomb in my company & exploded [with]in 4 or 5 feet of me & wounded the flag bearer and five or six of my co[mpany] taking off one mans leg & wounded my lieutenant. When the flag of my country fell to the earth I grabbed it with my own hands. My colonel told me to throw down my gear and hold on to my flag which I did,” Proffit wrote. However, Corp. Proffit’s time as standard bearer was brief. On May 3, in the severe back and forth fighting, Proffit became trapped. “I lay there with two lines of battle cross fireing at me at a short distance & three batteries throwing grape at me not more than 3 or 4 hundred yards distant. The first I knew the yanks were in five steps when two jumped over the breast works & grabbed the flag out of my hand & said to me fall in John ha ha ha. John fell in but did not like to do it,” Proffit explained. The 7th New Jersey was Proffit’s and the flag’s captor.

 Col. Louis Francine, 7th New Jersey, made his after-battle report on May 7, which covered his regiment’s combat on May 3 and included the capture of the 18th North Carolina’s flag, among others: “After a short time, my regiment advanced into the woods in front of the breastworks, and, by maintaining a flanking position under a very heavy fire for over three hours, captured five stands of colors and over 300 prisoners, among the latter 1 colonel, 1 major, and several line officers. The colors were taken from the Twenty-first Virginia, Eighteenth North Carolina, First Louisiana, Second North Carolina, and the fifth from some Alabama regiment. The Second North Carolina Regiment was captured almost in toto.” Col. Francine added, “It would be impossible for me to single out individual cases of courage where all of my officers and men behaved with such gallantry and discretion. The trophies they took from the enemy speak more eloquently for their actions than any words I might use.”

Commander of the Eleventh Corps, Maj. Gen. O. O. Howard attempted to rally his retreating soldiers by hoisting the colors on May 2, 1863, near Dowdall’s Tavern. 

(Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. 3, 1887)

In battle, desperate times sometimes called for desperate measures. As we saw in our discussion about Fredericksburg, it was not uncommon for an officer to become a flag bearer in an attempt to rally troops. In the chaos of the May 2nd flank attack by Gen. “Stonewall” Jackson’s force on the Eleventh Corps., corps commander Maj. Gen. Oliver Otis Howard attempted to stem the tide. Lt. Frederick Otto Von Fritsch, a staff officer for Brig. Gen. Alexander Schimmelfennig, recalled, “Just in front of Dowdall’s [Tavern] I noticed General Howard holding a flag under his arm and shouting: ‘Rally round the flag; rally round the flag!’ Mechanically I drew my sword and stopped some of the men coming up the road, but my voice gave out and I felt a new and fearful pain in my stomach.”

 Lt. Theodore Dodge, 119th New York Infantry, an Eleventh Corps regiment, noted in his journal his inability to rally his troops around the flag during the retreat. Dodge wrote, “They broke and retreated by Companies, slowly though not in good order. Rally them we could not. Poor Colonel [Elias] Peissner had received his death wound and fell waving his sword. The Lieut Col.’s horse had been shot under him, ditto mine, which reared and threw me, falling heavily on me. I got a little group around the colors, but when the boys who had never been under fire before saw others running, they could not be kept together.”

Fighting during some of the Chancellorsville Campaign’s engagements raged within in close confines. Some of these resulted in captured soldiers and flags. During the May 1 fighting and battling on the left of the 7th U.S. Infantry, the 10th U.S. captured 27 prisoners including an officer. According to Lt. Edward Bush, Sgt. John Crotty, the 10th’s flag-bearer, “distinguished himself by his soldierly conduct under fire and capturing one of the enemy.” The 10th U.S. lost 12 men wounded.

 Corp. John Young, 14th U.S. Infantry, told his wife Rosetta in a May 16, 1863, letter about his experiences on May 1: “The first shell that the rebels throwed killed one man on my left, the third man from me. He was in the ranks and I was the file closer. Well I thought all the side of my head was gone, there was a piece of shell went so close to my ear, but it did not touch me, and I thank the Lord for it. Well the shells fell all around us for a while. One cut one of our color-guards right square in two and killed three more. We never heard it till it struck. It looked hard to see our men fall so fast.” Color bearers in Sykes’ Division had a rough day on May 1. The 7th U.S. Infantry fought along the north side of the Orange Turnpike. The battalion suffered two killed, nine wounded, and five missing in the action. Corp. Stephen C. O’Neill received special mention from Capt. David Hancock in his after-action report. Hancock noted, “when the color-bearer was shot down, [O’Neill] gallantly picked [the colors] from his hands, and bore them during the remainder of the engagement.” O’Neill later received the Medal of Honor for his heroism.

“Battle of Chancellorsville, VA, May 3rd, 1863” by Currier and Ives.

(Library of Congress)

Regiments that lost their flags in battle sometimes felt an obligation to explain what happened. Col. Samuel E. Baker of the 16th Mississippi Infantry noted in his report following Chancellorsville that “The color-bearer was severely wounded and the flag-staff shot in two near the colors a short time after we got into the enemy’s trenches. The colors were then passed to Color Corporal W. M. Wadsworth, who was shortly afterward wounded in the leg and who in turn passed these colors to Corporal W. J. Sweeney, who came to me as we were following the enemy and reported that he had the colors safe. Soon after this the enemy opened on us with a destructive fire of grape when Corporal Sweeney was wounded and borne to the rear, taking the colors with him.” Baker wrote that Sweeney was sent to Richmond for medical attention and therefore he was “unable at present to state what became of the colors.” Baker also noted that he heard a member of their brigade had died at a field hospital who was “wrapped in a battle-flag and think it not unlikely it may have been the one belonging to my regiment; and, as my regimental colors had no letters or distinguishing marks upon them, it would be impossible to identify them. By the time Corporal Sweeney was wounded . . . the whole of my color guard had been disabled with wounds more or less severe. One of them has since died, and the color-bearer had his left arm amputated. My center companies also were severely cut to pieces, and to these facts and these alone, I attribute the loss of the battle-flag of my regiment. . . .” Corp. Harry Lewis of the same regiment echoed his colonel’s sentiments in describing the dangers of the color bearers in a letter to mother on May 7, 1863: “All the color guard were shot down. There were five of them, two of them were killed, one mortally wounded and one slightly. The sergeant charged over the works with his flag in his hand and commenced knocking the Yanks over the head with the staff, which was shot in two and himself was shot in the arm which afterward was amputated. . . .”

 Not all attempts to take prisoners or capture flags were successful. Confederate Gen. Willam Dorsey Pender, noted in his report that on May 3, the 13th North Carolina’s Corp. Monroe Robinson “chased a [Federal] color-bearer so closely that [the color bearer] tore off the colors, and threw down the staff, which was secured.”

Heavy Confederate attacks against Federal infantry and artillery at Chancellorsville eventually succeeded in gaining the field and winning the battle. However, it cost a high price in casualties and lost colors.

(Tim Talbott) 

At Chancellorsville, infantry and artillery worked together on at least in one occasion to capture flags of the enemy. Capt. Thomas Ward Osborn, who served as the Chief of Artillery for the 2nd Division, 3rd Corps, wrote five days after the terrible battle of May 3 that “Just before the last charge of the Jersey brigade, in front of my battery, the enemy came down the slope in solid masses covering, as it were, the whole ground in front of our line, and with at least a dozen stand of colors flying in their midst. I ordered the guns loaded with solid shot as our line fell back and wheeled to the left, unmasking the battery, I fired at one and a half degrees elevation. The effects were remarkable. A few rounds threw them into great confusion and drove them up the hill whereupon our infantry again charged and took several stand of colors.” However, “In a few moments, the enemy planted their colors in the road 100 yards to my right and on my flank and with their sharpshooters were busy in picking off my men and horses.” Then, “When about 20 had gathered about the colors, I turned my guns with canister upon them and drove them back. This was several times repeated.”

 Col. William Sewell, of the 5th New Jersey, who was commanding the Third (also known as the Second New Jersey) Brigade on May 3, after Brig. Gen. Gersham Mott was wounded, reported, “It has been the fortune of this brigade to have participated in many hard-fought actions, but former experience was nothing in comparison to the determination of the enemy to carry this position. Battalion after battalion was hurled against our ranks, each one to lose its colors and many of its men taken prisoners. The Seventh New Jersey here took five of the enemy’s colors; the Fifth New Jersey took three. The brigade took at least 1,000 prisoners.”

Col. Alexander Shaler rallied his brigade at Second Fredericksburg by leading with the colors. Shaler later received the Medal of Honor. (Deeds of Valor: How America’s Civil War Heroes Won the Congressional Medal of Honor  by W. F. Beyer and O. F. Keydel, 1903)

Numerous mentions of colors also came from the men of the Sixth Corps battling at both Second Fredericksburg and Salem Church on May 3. William Mackenzie Thompson of the 15th New Jersey wrote to the Hunterdon Republican newspaper on May 18, 1863, about Second Fredericksburg: “During all this time the firing from our batteries on the right was terrific, and they had succeeded in driving the enemy from their redoubts and rifle-pits in the rear of Fredericksburg. Our troops were marching up the Heights, taking possession of their works, driving the Rebels before them. Still they advance with the ‘Flag of our Union’ flying in the breeze, and before the enemy can secure their artillery drive them from their works and take the battery as a prize.”

 Col. Alexander Shaler of the 65th New York, who commanded a brigade at Second Fredericksburg, performed an act of heroism that earned him the Medal of Honor. After Col. George C. Spear of the 61st Pennsylvania Infantry fell mortally wounded assaulting Marye’s Heights on May 3, 1863, it demoralized the attackers. “Seeing this, Colonel Shaler caught up the standard of the regiment, rushed forward, calling upon the two regiments of his brigade to follow him, forced the passage, advanced up the hill and captured two guns, one officer and a few men of the Washington Battery of artillery, New Orleans, posted in a redoubt on the right of the road. The other regiments of this brigade, soon after greeted him within the enemy’s works with cheers and congratulations. His men had not expected to again see him alive.”

Among the Federal regiments that mentioned colors and color bearers at Salem Church was the 15th New Jersey Infantry. Their monument at Salem Church is shown here.

(Tim Talbott) 

Fellow Sixth Corps soldier Capt. John S. Kidder of the 121st New York explained in a May 4, 1863, letter to his wife about May 3 at Second Fredericksburg: “On Saturday night we prepared to storm the heights above the city, started at 2 o’clock in the morning [on] Sunday. Our regiment supported the left while some of the Vermont and New Jersey with the 43rd New York carried the heights and the U.S. flag was planted in their forts by eleven o’clock A.M.”  In the same letter Capt. Kidder shared some thoughts about the fight at Salem Church: “There were about 75 men of our Regt. and the Major of the 96th Pennsylvania with 15 of his men that rallied around our colors and succeeded in driving back the Rebels into the woods. The 2nd line of battle that was back of us did not support us properly and, if it had not been for our Col. [Emory Upton] with his band of 75 men (for I think that there was not more than that number), it would have been a roust.” Kidder included that “Capt. [Andrew E.] Mather was wounded in the shoulder but he stood by the colors until dark.”

 Capt. Kidder’s 121st New York comrade, Sgt. William Remmel had a similar story. Remmel wrote two days after Salem Church explaining that “The regiments all fought well, until the ranks were killed almost half, when they were driven back by the rebs about ½ mile. Our regiment then rallied around the flag and our brave Colonel [Upton], and we soon drove them back to their holes, with the assistance of the artillery. When we rallied around our flag, there could not have been more than 100 men out of the regiment together.”

 Another Sixth Corps regiment that saw hard fighting at Salem Church was the 15th New Jersey Infantry. In their regimental history, Chaplain Alanson Haines wrote that “David Eugene Hicks, Company A, was our First Color Sergeant. When the color guard was selected, he was chosen for his fine soldierly qualities to be the standard-bearer. He was a tall, noble-looking young man, and had endeared himself by his generosity and courage to all who knew him. When the order to advance was given, as we charged into the woods, he sprang forward at once, carrying his colors straight on until a bullet pierced his brain, and he fell clasping them in his hands. Corporal Samuel Rubadon seized the fallen flag and carried it forward through the rest of the fight.”

At Salem Church, Corp. Edward Browne, 62nd New York, remained with the colors despite being wounded. Deeds of Valor: How America’s Civil War Heroes Won the Congressional Medal of Honor by W. F. Beyer and O. F. Keydel, 1903)

The 62nd New York’s Corp. Edward Browne received the Medal of Honor for his actions at Salem Church. He remembered the hard-fought battle: “Suddenly our boys came in hurried retreat from the woods, followed by the enemy in good form. I was at that time in front of the line waving the colors, when, on turning to the right, I observed a line of the enemy emerging from a belt of woods in that direction, and called the colonel’s attention to it. At the same time I was wounded in the side. The colonel noticed that I had been hit, and suggested my retirement to the rear. But they boys were coming across the open field between the woods and our line, and I remained with the colors open so that they might know they had something to rally about, and to show the enemy that we were not in a panic. I remained at my post until the boys had crossed the open and were within our lines, and the enemy had been brought to a halt by our fire.”

 Pvt. William Stilwell’s 53rd Georgia Infantry, which served in Gen. Paul Semmes brigade, wrote a letter to his wife Molly two days later about Salem Church. He explained that “Our brigade covered itself with glory, they whipped a whole corps of Yankees, the noble 53rd captured two stands of colors, one national flag and a white flag they raised to deceive our men, pretending that they had surrendered, but our regiment shot down their flag bearer and took the white flag.”

Conclusion

Unknown Federal soldier, and Sgt. William Crawford Smith, 12th Virginia Infantry. 

(Library of Congress)

Flags played crucial roles in Civil War combat. Not only were they an inspiring symbolic representation of the regiment or brigade that carried them, but they also served practical purposes as visible battle line markers and rally points. Those who carried the colors did so knowing that it was a hazardous but respected position, and as many of the accounts above show, soldiers held their unit colors in high esteem. Courageous acts involving flags usually drew a significant amount of attention, respect, and recognition. 

 In the next CVBT History Wire, we will share additional accounts of colors and color bearers during the Mine Run Campaign, at the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania.   

Some Sources and Suggested Reading

F. Beyer and O. F. Keydel. Deeds of Valor: How America’s Civil War Heroes Won the Congressional Medal of Honor. Smithmark Publishing, 2000 (reprint of 1903 version).

 Robert F. Bonner. Colors and Blood: Flag Passions of the Confederate South. Princeton University Press, 2002.

 John M. Coski. The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem. Harvard University Press, 2005.

Col. Francis Marion Parker, 30th North Carolina Infantry

(Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina, Vol. II, edited by Walter Clark, 1901)

“I noticed the colour bearer of one of our Regts. lying cold, the top of his flag staff shot away, but the gallant fellow was grasping the part which was left, with both hands. I called my own colour bearer to witness the scene. Poor fellow, it was not long before he too was shot down, and has since had a leg amputated. A second man took the flag, he too was struck down; but not killed; the third one bore it safely through the remainder of the day, but ran a narrow risk, he had a ball put through the top of his hat.”

 Col. Francis Marion Parker, 30th North Carolina Infantry, in a May 9, 1863, letter to his wife.

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“Sergeant James B. Stormes of Company A, 44th New York Infantry Regiment in uniform with regimental flag.” Sgt. Stormes enlisted in the summer of 1861. He was wounded at Fredericksburg and Gettysburg and mustered out in October 1864. 

(Library of Congress)

Introduction

In submitting a list of casualties for his Vermont Brigade from losses at the Battle of the Wilderness, Brig. Gen. Lewis Grant noted, “The whole number of casualties at the present time is 1,363. It is with a sad heart that I inform you of so great a loss of Vermont’s noble sons, but it is with a certain pride that I assure you there are no dishonorable graves.” The brigadier fully understood the symbolism of his regiments’ colors and the honor and inspiration they provided for his soldiers. “The flag of each regiment, though pierced and tattered, still flaunts in the face of the foe, and noble bands of veterans with thinned ranks, and but few officers to command, still stand by them; and they seem determined to stand so long as there is a man to bear their flag aloft or an enemy in the field,” Grant concluded.

 The following accounts in this Part II CVBT History Wire come from actions during the Mine Run Campaign, the Battle of the Wilderness, and the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House. They provide abundant additional evidence of the importance of colors to the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia.  

The Mine Run Campaign

Maj. William Terry (shown here later in the war as a brigadier general), 4th Virginia Infantry,  praised the courage of wounded Color Sgt. Jacob H. Lawrence, and Pvt. Ted Barclay, who picked up the colors in Lawrence’s stead at the Battle of Payne’s Farm on November 27, 1863, during the Mine Run Campaign.

(Library of Congress)

As mentioned in Part I, it was fairly common for officers to mention courageous and inspirational acts involving the colors in their battle reports. Following the Mine Run Campaign’s November 27, 1863, Battle of Payne’s Farm, Maj. William Terry, then commanding the 4th Virginia Infantry, noted in his after-battle report that “Among the non-commissioned officers wounded is Color Sergt. J. H. Lawrence, who was severely wounded through both legs while gallantly bearing the colors of the regiment against the foe; and I desire to mention specially the conspicuous gallantry of Pvt. A. T. Barclay, Company I, who seized the colors when Sergeant Lawrence fell and carried them through the balance of the fight.”

 Pvt. Alexander Tedford “Ted” Barclay provided his own perspective and additional details about the incident in a December 5 letter to his sister Hannah in Lexington, Virginia: “We drove their line of skirmishers back upon their line of battle, when the firing commenced in earnest on the Yankee side. As yet our line had fired very little. At this time our color bearer [Jacob H. Lawrence] was shot through both legs and the colors fell to the ground. I threw down my gun and took the colors. The line was reformed and with a rebel yell we dashed forward, but were met with such a terrible fire that we were compelled to halt, formed our line along a fence, and held our ground until dark when we withdrew, being under fire about four hours.” Ted proudly but humbly added that “I was complemented on the field by General Walker’s Adjutant General, and General Walker also took my name, as you see I have endeavored to do my duty. Major Terry also, since our return to camp, has complimented me very highly.” Pvt. Barclay understood that “I now have a very honorable place, though by some considered dangerous, but I think that one place is as dangerous as another, for God has appointed our day and we are perfectly safe until that day comes. Whether I will continue to hold it I cannot say, as the colors do not properly belong to our company. But enough about self, for fear you think I am disposed too much to blow my own horn, a thing above all things I despise.”

Maj. Gen. Edward “Allegheny” Johnson mentioned the “Stonewall Brigade” commander Brig. Gen. James Walker’s (pictured here) gallant act with the colors at the Battle of Payne’s Farm in his battle report (Find a Grave)

Division commander Maj. Gen. Edward “Allegheny” Johnson praised a couple of his brigadiers for their conspicuous courage at Payne’s Farm. Johnson wrote that “General [James] Walker, when during the engagement one of his regiments staggered under a terrific fire, seized the colors, leaped his horse over a fence and into an open field in front of his command, and waved his men on, while the lines of the enemy, 80 yards distant, directed a converging fire upon him. General Stafford acted with similar daring, but, fortunately, neither was wounded.” Gen. Johnson knew that such actions by his officers inspired the men and non-commissioned officers on the battlefield and would be remembered, and hopefully imitated, in future contests.

 Likewise, the 10th Louisiana Infantry’s Lt. Col. Henry D. Monier also mentioned one of his soldier’s courage with the colors at Payne’s Farm. Monier reported, “I will only state that Color-Bearer [John] Boykin, of Company E, was conspicuous for his coolness and bravery, bearing his colors within 40 or 50 yards of the enemy’s line.” 

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The Federals were not without their exciting colors moments at Payne’s Farm either. The 11th New Jersey’s commander, Col. Robert McAllister, wrote to his wife Ellen on December 3, about the November 27 fight, which was the baptism under fire for their new set of flags. McAllister wrote, “I forgot to tell you that we have new colors presented to us by the State. This is the first battle that they were in. [Corp. George H.] Johnson, who carries the American flag, was determined to show the Star-Spangled Banner to the best advantage before the enemy. When retreating, and on reaching the open space at the crossroads, he unfurled the flag to the breeze and waved it right and left in the very face of the enemy. He is one of the bravest men I have ever seen.” McAllister also mentioned Johnson’s bravery in his report on the campaign.

 A regiment’s pride in their colors is further illustrated in a comment made by a soldier in McAllister’s 11th New Jersey Infantry. In a letter to his sister a couple of days after returning to their Culpeper County camps from the recent Mine Run Campaign, Pvt. Alonzo Searing also wrote beamingly about the retirement of their old colors and the adoption of their new colors. “The two flags which we carried with us from Trenton in August, 1862, were so badly shot and staffs so shattered in the different battles, that they were unfit for service and on [Nov.] 20 Gen. A. T. A. Torbert, of the First New Jersey Brigade on behalf of the State of New Jersey accompanied with an appropriate address, presented us with a new stand of colors.” Searing thought “They are very pretty and on one side of the State flag is the coat-of-arms of our State and this inscription in gold letters: ‘Presented by New Jersey to her 11th Regiment.’ The old ones have been sent to Trenton and will be preserved in the State House as relics of war. The new ones are made of heavy silk with gold bullion fringe on the State flag, while the stripes of our United States flag in golden letters is inscribed the names of the different battles in which we have taken part.”

 The 20th Indiana’s William C. H. Reeder wrote a letter to parents on December 3, 1863, about Payne’s Farm and how the presence of the colors on the battlefield buoyed his morale in a time of combat stress. Reeder penned, “When we rushed to relieve the front line we found them coming out and the bravest rallying on their colors, turning and firing whenever the chance afforded. There was one squad coming out with their colors, singing ‘Rally Round the Flag Boys, Rally Once Again.’ I suppose you are familiar with the song, but I will guarantee that no one heard it when it sounded more sweet and appropriate. It cheered and nerved me to the work, and I felt no fear, but went in regardless of danger.”

William C. H. Reeder, 20th Indiana, noted the inspiring effect that the colors and the singing of “The Battle Cry of Freedom” had on the men at Payne’s Farm. 

(Library of Congress)

The Battle of the Wilderness

“Army of the Potomac – Bartlett’s Brigade of Warren’s Charging the Enemy [at the Wilderness].”  A Michigan soldier noted of Bartlett’s Brigade: “They were splendidly in line, moved rapidly, their colors all unfurled, and formed as they advanced one of the finest battle pictures that I can remember.”

(Harper’s Weekly, May 28, 1864)

Often fighting in the dense thickets of the Wilderness on May 5-6, 1864, did not seem to totally prevent opportunities for soldiers to comment on incidents involving flags. However, as one might imagine, most colors accounts at the Wilderness occur in the area’s few open spaces—fields and roadways—where they were better observed.

 Sgt. George F. Williams, a color bearer for the 146th New York, a Zouave regiment, was among those fighting at Saunder’s Field during the opening actions of the Wilderness. Williams received three wounds and fell wounded. A member of the color guard picked up the standard, but he, too, was soon killed. Finally, Corp. Conrad Neuschler grasped the flag and started to withdraw to prevent their capture. Neuschler, however, fell in a ditch and there was wounded and captured, but fortunately, Sgt. J. Albert Jennison plucked the flag and flagstaff from Neuschler before the Confederates arrived. “Unheeding the demands of the gray-clad soldiers to stop and surrender, and dodging the bullets they fired at him . . . [Jennison] reached the woods in safety. The flag, torn and soiled, was preserved to the regiment.”

 On the south side of the Orange Turnpike, Gen. Joseph Barlett’s mixed brigade of Michigan, New York, Massachusetts, Maine, and Pennsylvania soldiers went forward. A Michigan soldier who was serving as a skirmisher noted of his brigade mates: “They were splendidly in line, moved rapidly, their colors all unfurled, and formed as they advanced one of the finest battle pictures that I can remember.”

 In the see-saw fighting at Saunders Field, some of Ewell’s Confederates captured several pieces of hard-fought-over artillery previously commanded by Lt. William Shelton. Alabamians from Gen. Cullen Battle’s brigade joined in the rush and were ecstatic at the prize. An officer in the 6th Alabama jumped up on one of the guns and waved a flag in celebration. North Carolinians in Gen. George Steuart’s brigade, who had actually battled for the guns, believed the credit belonged to them. A brief standoff was settled between the contending Confederates when Battle’s men were outnumbered by Steuart’s soldiers.

Saunders Field, shown here in 1866 looking west, was the scene of several dramatic instances involving colors at that Battle of the Wilderness. 

(Library of Congress)

Also fighting on May 5, but south of Saunders Field, Sgt. Abram J. Buckles of the 19th Indiana Infantry and their Iron Brigade comrades had their hands full. Buckles received the Medal of Honor for his actions and remembered later that “Just then we got the order to advance and away we went down into the dense woods, and almost immediately striking the enemy’s line of battle, we struck them hard, Iron Brigade fashion, and drove them back until we reached a cleared place, where our line stopped to reform.” Sgt. Buckles recalled the challenges of his job in the thick woods: “Meanwhile the Johnnies crossed the clearing and posted themselves in a dense thicket. Up to this time I had been unable, because of the bushes and trees, to unfurl my colors, but on coming into the clearing I loosened its folds and shook the regiment’s flag free to the breeze.” Buckles noted that time was of the essence in this situation: “From their covered position the enemy had begun to pour a withering fire into us, comrades were dropping at every hand and delay was fatal, while retreat was never dreamed of. The only possible safety lay in a charge, and believing that a short, quick rush with such a line as we had, a heavy one, would force the Confederates to fly, I ran to the front. Waving the flag above my head, I called on the boys to follow. To a man they responded, and together we dashed toward the troublesome thicket. We were going in fine style when I was struck, shot through the body. I fell, but managed to keep the flag up until little John Divelbus, one of the color-guard and as brave a man as ever lived, took it out of my hands, to be killed a few minutes later.”

 Another brigade that found itself in hot fighting was the Vermont Brigade, which was detached along with Gen. George Washington Getty’s Sixth Corps division. Pvt. Wilbur Fisk of the 2nd Vermont wrote to the Green Mountain Freeman newspaper, describing their May 5 fight along the Orange Plank Road and noted how the Confederates had bravely followed their colors: “No serious attack, however, was made directly in our front, but to the left, where we advanced in the first place, they tried to break our lines and they tried it hard. They charged clear up to the breastwork, and fairly planted the colors on the top of it, but they did not live to hold them there long. The ground in front of the works was literally covered with the rebel dead after they left. One Colonel lay dead clear up to the breastwork.”

First Sgt. Patrick DeLacy, 143rd Pennsylvania Infantry, received the Medal of Honor for capturing the enemy’s colors and helping his comrades take their earthworks on May 6, 1864.

(Deeds of Valor: How America’s Civil War Heroes Won the Congressional Medal of Honor by W. F. Beyer and O. F. Keydel, 1903)

High drama raged on May 6, both at the Orange Plank Road sector as well as near the Orange Turnpike during the day and evening. The color bearers’ experiences served as a bit of a microcosm of the fighting at large.

 Several men received the Medal of Honor for courageous actions on May 6 involving colors. Among them was Sgt. Leopold Karpeles, who was born in Prague and served in the 57th Massachusetts Infantry (Ninth Corps) at the time of the Battle of the Wilderness. Karpeles had previously served in the 46th Massachusetts, a 12-month regiment, and had received praise for being a brave color bearer. He later remembered that “I received my Medal of Honor as color sergeant. . . . during the Battle of the Wilderness on May 6, 1864. When a general stampede occurred, I was the only color sergeant to stand the ground during the evening of May 6. With the assistance of some officers, we succeeded in rallying around my colors a sufficient number of men to keep the Rebels in check, and prevented the capture of the stragglers in the woods. Our small body of men succeeded in holding them until after dark.”

 Although he did not receive the Medal of Honor, Col. Charles E. Griswold of 56th Massachusetts (in the same brigade as Karpeles’s 57th Massachusetts) received praise for his bravery from Lt. Charles J. Mills, who was serving then as adjutant of the First Division of the Ninth Corps. Lt. Mills wrote home that Col. Griswold “behaved with the utmost gallantry, rallied the men, holding the colors himself. He was killed instantly just afterwards, the ball passing through his throat. He never spoke a word. His body had to be left and was not recovered until the next day.”

 Another soldier who received the Medal of Honor on May 6 was First Sgt. Patrick DeLacy of the 143rd Pennsylvania Infantry. Previously, at Gettysburg, Sgt. Ben Crippen set a high standard when he was killed while holding the flag and shaking his fist in defiance at the Confederates; an act immortalized on their regimental monument there. Ten months later at the Wilderness, DeLacy had just rescued a comrade when he returned to his lines and found that he was now in command of his company, all of the officers having been killed or wounded.  After receiving orders to retake an earthwork, DeLacy went “Running ahead of the line, under a concentrated fire, he shot the color bearer of a Confederate regiment on the works, thus contributing to the success of the attack.” DeLacy captured the foe’s banner and his efforts helped recapture the earthworks.

Scenes depicting colors and color bearers appeared on much of the Union and Confederate war-time print media. Images like this one on a piece

of sheet music reinforced the cultural significance of flags.

(Library of Congress) 

Sgt. Stephen Rought’s brief Medal of Honor citation obscures the bravery he displayed on the morning of May 6 during the fighting by Maj. Gen. Winfield Hancock’s Second Corps along the Orange Plank Road. While the citation merely reads, “Capture of the flag of the 13th North Carolina (C.S.A),” things played out much more dramatically. Spying the 13th North Carolina’s colors on the improvised works, Sgt. Rought told his comrades with an expletive, “I’ll have that flag!” Ordered to charge, but without a bayonet, Rought and his comrades flew forward through “the whiz of bullets in our ears—through the powder-smoke, and through the bramble bushes.” Rought went over the works and demanded the surrender of the flag. When the Confederate color bearer boldly refused, “Rought with his clubbed musket split his head open and felled him prostrate at his feet, at the same time breaking his own musket off at the stock.” Rought grabbed the flag as the defender fell. A Confederate in the color company attempted to shoot Rought with his rifle, but Capt. Marcus Warner pulled his revolver and shot the Confederate soldier before the southerner shot Rought. Rought turned the flag in to Gen. David B. Birney. It was displayed at the Philadelphia Sanitary Fair and then stored at the War Department. Sgt. Rought was awarded his Medal of Honor on December 1, 1864.

 On the north end of the Union line, and fighting with the Sixth Corps, Sgt. Charles E. Morse, 62nd New York, performed a heroic deed involving the colors that also earned him the Medal of Honor. His citation reads: “Voluntarily rushed back into the enemy’s lines, took the colors from the color sergeant, who was mortally wounded, and, although himself wounded, carried them through the fight.” Like Sgt. Rought’s account above, Morse’s story was also much more intense than his citation and was chronicled in Deeds of Valor. After attempting to dislodge the Confederates from their position, Sgt. Morse and the 62nd received an order to fall back to their hastily built earthwork line. The account explains that “Though this movement was carried out in perfect order, the Confederates concluded that the men were in full retreat and at once started in hot pursuit. They failed to bring the lines of the New York regiment into disorder, however, and the men continued to fall back, all the time loading, facing about and firing. Presently, the color-sergeant was struck by a ball. He staggered, reeled and dropped, covering the colors with his body. Then someone shouted: ‘The colors are down!’” As anxiety gripped those who heard the cry, “Two men at once broke out of the ranks and started toward the spot where the dying color-sergeant lay. The rebels, too, were rapidly approaching the coveted spot. Who would be the first to reach it, the enemy or the daring New Yorkers? The latter was Corporal [Michael] Deitzel and Sergeant Morse. Morse was first at the side of his almost lifeless comrade and in an instant secured the precious colors. He was soon joined by Deitzel and both then retreated to their lines, holding the enemy at a safe distance by keeping up a well-directed fire. In the retreat Sergeant Morse was shot in the knee, but notwithstanding the painful wound he pluckily remained with his company all during the subsequent fighting, carrying aloft the banner he had so heroically saved.”  

Widow Tapp Field at the Wilderness.

(Tim Talbott)

Conspicuous actions on the part of the Confederates drew comments, too. In Widow Tapp field, during Longstreet’s counterattack on May 6, Col. William F. Perry, who was commanding a brigade of Alabamians in the assault, later remembered that Maj. George W. Carey, commanding the 44th Alabama, “was in front of the center of his line, his countenance ablaze, the flag in his left hand, and his long sword waving in his right,” encouraging his men.

 Following Longstreet’s counterattack, and during the subsequent flank attack on May 6 that utilized an unfinished railroad bed, the assaulting force had to navigate some swampy areas. When Ensign Benjamin May of the 12th Virginia got stuck in some mud, Lt. Col. Moxley Sorrel told him to “Give me the colors and I will lead the charge.” The stubborn standard bearer, unwilling to part with his flag, told Sorrel no thank you, but “We will follow you.” Ensign May did not relinquish his colors, but did follow as Sorrel led. Not long after this episode, and in the confusion of the attack along the Orange Plank Road, Longstreet fell wounded by his own troops. When someone asked to “Show your colors!” in an attempt to determine if the force was friend or foe, Ensign May bravely stepped from the cover of the woods into the openness of the Orange Plank Road so he could be seen and waved his banner to show who was there, certainly an underrated act of bravery.

The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

The opening shots of what would end up being an almost two-week fight at Spotsylvania Court House occurred on May 8, 1864, near the Spindle Farm, and now known as Laurel Hill. Making the attacks on the previously arriving Confederate troops were the soldiers of Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren’s Fifth Corps. After marching down Brock Road early that morning, several of the brigades in Warren’s Corps filed to the right and into position to make attacks on their foes across the way. Warren hoped to secure the Confederate position before it became too strong. In an effort to meet the emergency, the Federal attacks happened largely in piecemeal fashion. Getting enough reinforcements into position in time proved troubling, and little effort went into maneuvering to find an advantage. The defenders rebuffed the assaults. At one point in the fighting, Gen. Warren rode forward, grabbed a flag, and attempted to rally the troops. It proved futile as the casualty count continued to grow.

“Gen[era]l Warren rallying the Marylanders.” Sketch by Alfred R. Waud

(Library of Congress)

During the May 8 fighting, Lt. Abner Small of the 16th Maine Infantry remembered that “One of the first men hit was Corporal [Charles F.] Palmer, carrying our national color. While we had been in the woods, the color had been carried in the case to protect it . . . but when the charge was ordered, Palmer stripped off the case and flung the [flag] to the air. A bullet struck him in the arm and side, yet he held up the flag until it was taken from his grasp by our other color-bearer Corporal [William J.] Manchester, who gave the state flag into the hands of Corporal [Robinson] Fairbanks. The banners went forward together in the charge.”

 On the Confederate side, Brig. Gen. Cullen Battle wrote to Maj. Gen Robert Rodes on May 9 about the fighting the day before in an attempt to explain his actions. Battle claimed “The simple truth is that in obedience to your order I advanced, passing a line of our troops then engaging the enemy on our front; charged the enemy and drove him rapidly for about 600 yards. At this point I encountered the enemy’s works, supported by two lines of battle. My left was originally nearest the enemy, and as a consequence the Twelfth Alabama, Sixth Alabama, and Sixty-first Alabama Regiments first encountered the works, and the colors and some officers of the Sixth and Sixty-first were captured within the enemy’s works. Just at this time, too, there was much confusion on my right, caused in great measure by the crowding together of troops of my own and other brigades. At least three brigades of your division were represented. Believing from the evident demoralization of the enemy that his position could be carried, I attempted to lead forward all the troops at that point. To accomplish this purpose, I took the colors of the Third Alabama in my hand, went forward, and asked the men to follow. I regret to say that the result did not correspond with my high hopes and confident expectations, a result no doubt greatly attributable to physical exhaustion from long marching, constant labor, and their rapid advance.” 

 Even when not in battle proper, the colors drew attention to those holding them. Such was the case in an incident involving the 15th New Jersey along the Sixth Corps lines. Their regimental historian, who was also their chaplain, remembered that “On the morning of May 9 a rebel rifleman was posted on our right, in a tree. He seemed to kill at almost every shot, and was said to have taken twenty lives. As a change was being made in the position of our regiment, he caught sight of the colors, and as Samuel Rubadeau, the Color Sergeant, rose with them, a ball struck him in the breast, passing through his body. He was taken back to our field hospital and died a few moments after. He was of French Canadian descent, an excellent soldier, of great bravery, and attentive to all the duties of his station. The same bullet, after passing through him, struck Sergeant Israel D. Lum, wounding him in the thigh.”

“Spot where Gen[era]l Sedgwick was killed”

Sketch by Alfred R. Waud

The location shown in this sketch was probably near where the 15th New Jersey’s color bearer,

Sgt. Samuel Rubadeau, was killed.

Federal attempts to dislodge and or pin down the Confederates at Laurel Hill resulted in more assaults on May 9 and 10. In an attempted attack on May 10, Pvt. John Vautier and his 88th Pennsylvania comrades returned to their Spotsylvania earthworks, while another “heavy force was massed in our rear for the purpose of storming the enemy’s lines.” Vautier noted in his diary that most of one regiment behind the 88th lay “flat on their stomachs,” however, their color bearer “stood upright with the flag in his right hand.” While Vautier was looking at him, “A shell fell and exploded in the soft ground right in front of him. An immense cloud of smoke and dust was raised and we thought the poor fellow gone. The smoke rolled away, and the dust settled down but our flag was still there and the brave man still stood there are if nothing happened.”

 Near the same area of Laurel Hill, Lt. Abner Small and his 16th Maine comrades participated in a charge on the evening of May 10. As mentioned above, the 16th Maine had lost a color bearer two days before when Charles F. Palmer was wounded. Small explained that in the May 10 fight “Corporal [Robinson] Fairbanks, being wounded, gave the State colors to Corporal [Luther] Bradford, of Company E. During the charge, Corporal [William J.] Manchester was wounded, when Bradford, the only one of the color guard left, seized the colors and carried both, until relieved by [Pvt.] Barney Boyle . . . who, mixing [Irish] brogue and courage, stuck by Bradford, swearing by all saints in the calendar that he would ‘stand by the ould flag as long as there was a gray divil in front.’” 

 As a participant in Col. Emory Upton’s famous May 10 charge, Sgt. Alexander Q. Smith of the 5th Wisconsin had a front-row view of the evening assault and wrote about it to his sister on May 16. Smith explained that during the assault, “our Color Sergt. Was killed and the Colors came near falling into the rebels hands, but when I saw the man fall I ran and grabbed the flag and brought it off the field with a shower of bullets after me. But I escaped them all except one which burnt my right side a little, but not enough to draw blood, I have been acting as Color Sergt. since that night. . . .”

“Army of the Potomac – The Struggle for the Salient, Near Spotsylvania, Virginia, May 12, 1862.” 

Based on a sketch by Alfred R. Waud

(Harper’s Weekly, June 11, 1864)

No matter the weather, colors and color bearers were present. The horrific fighting on May 12, produced many memorable moments for those that carried the flags. As the 1st Delaware Infantry, a Second Corps regiment, in Col. Samuel Carrol’s brigade lined up to make the charge, Sgt. David Riggs, of Company D, who served as the regiment’s color-sergeant, made a bold proclamation. Sgt. Rigg’s said, “I’ll plant this [flag] on the rebel breastworks or die in the attempt.” His vow proved true as he was “killed near the slope of the enemy’s work, and another member of the color-guard carried the flag upon the crest.”

 Fighting to the right of the Second Corps, and among the Sixth Corps units, the 15th New Jersey lost more than half its men killed, wounded, or missing. From the regiment’s color guard of nine soldiers, only one man came through the storm of shot, shell, and bullets unscathed. Their regimental colors were brought off by a sergeant from outside the color company. Their regimental historian profiled two of the color guard who fell: “Color Corporal John L. Young, of Hackettstown, had crawled apart from the rest, and lay behind a log. With his hands clasped and uplifted, as though in the very act of prayer, he was found dead. A handsome boy of eighteen years, he lay there in all the beauty of his young manhood, with his Testament in his bosom, and his blue eyes opened toward heaven. . . . Corporal Joseph G. Runkle, Company A, of the color guard, had his right arm pierced by bullets, and it fell paralyzed by his side. He continued to carry the colors with his other hand, until the contest ended. He died from his wounds, at the hospital in Washington June 7.”

 When the Confederates counterattacked, Gen. Nathaniel Harris’s brigade was sent forward to the Bloody Angle. In one account from the 16th Mississippi Infantry, “Apprehending the desperate bloody character of the prospective charge, the men at first hesitated, but seeing their colors moving forward borne by . . . Alexander Mixon, whose clarion-like voice resounded along the line urging the men to follow, they hesitated no longer, but rushed forward through a storm of bullets and were in a short time in possession of the trenches.” The regiment’s Pvt. David Holt later wrote about how close the two contending forces were and that their flags almost touched each other. “The battle flag of the Sixteenth Mississippi was right in the angle of the salient. The enemy clambered up the embankment and planted the United States flag and the flag of New York right on top of the embankment, but the man that held the Confederate flag did not move an inch. The Federal and Confederate flags flapped together, but not a man was left living around the Federal battle flag, and the Confederates pushed over the dead. Eight times the Federals picked up their flags and endeavored to place them on the top of the breastworks, and eight times the determined men were killed, and the Confederate flag was in the hands of the third man who had borne that day, and he was wounded in the arm,” Holt wrote.

 Also, during the Confederate counterattack at the Mule Shoe on May 12, Pvt. Charles Whilden inspired his 1st South Carolina Infantry and McGowan’s Brigade comrades by taking the battle flag and advancing into danger. Shot in the left shoulder, another bullet took off the tip of the staff, freeing the top of the flag. Seeing it about to fall, Whilden tore the flag’s other ties from the staff and wrapped it around himself, and continued forward. His armed comrades followed, slamming into the surging Federal tide and stalling its momentum.

Lt. Charles Harvey Brewster of the 10th Massachusetts commented on damage inflicted on his regiment’s flagstaffs

and flags on May 12, 1864, at Spotsylvania.

(Library of Congress)

Pvt. John Weeks of the 152nd New York Infantry received the Medal of Honor for his display of bravery on May 12. Weeks remembered: “About this time I saw the enemy give way on the left wing, and among the rest was a color-guard surrounding its flag. These men fired their muskets at us in a volley and broke for their rear. They had to pass down our front to get out of the angle. I had discharged my gun, but, making up my mind to have those colors I ran up to the sergeant and snatched the flag from him, threw it on the ground and put my foot on it. I cocked my empty gun and told them that the first man that moved out of his tracks would be shot, and ordered them to throw down their guns and surrender. The sergeant said to them: ‘Boys, they have our colors; let us go with them.’ They threw down their guns and marched to the rear as my prisoners.”

 The 10th Massachusetts of the Sixth Corps suffered terribly on May 12, too. Lt. Charles Harvey Brewster, wrote to his sister Mary the day after that “I do not know how many men we have lost as we have not got but about 30 muskets with us this morning . . . both flagstaffs were hit three times and the state flag was cut short off.”

Conclusion

“Tattered flags of the 19th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment after a battle.” 

(Library of Congress)

In particularly tough fights, commanders sometimes measured success by taking ground, weapons, men, or flags. The day after the hard-fought May 12 battle at Spotsylvania, Maj. Gen. George G. Meade issued a congratulatory message to the Army of the Potomac via circular: “For eight days and nights, almost without intermission, in rain and sunshine, you have been gallantly fighting a desperate foe, in positions naturally strong and rendered doubly so by intrenchments . . . now he has abandoned the last intrenched position, so tenaciously held, suffering in all a loss of 18 guns, 22 colors, and 8,000 prisoners, including two general officers. Your heroic deeds and noble endurance of fatigue and privations will ever be memorable.” Despite Meade’s laudatory sentiments, few probably felt like victors.

 Of course, the bloody fighting for the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia was far from over. They would continue to battle at Spotsylvania for another week. The armies then moved on to other famous battlefields: North Anna, Totopotomoy Creek, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and finally Appomattox. Along that long road of war, many more opportunities arose for colors and color bearers to hold a line, lead a charge, or provide a boost of morale just when it was needed most to the soldiers who were worn down by almost constant fighting, maneuvering, and being away from home and loved ones. 

Some Sources and Suggested Reading

F. Beyer and O. F. Keydel. Deeds of Valor: How America’s Civil War Heroes Won the Congressional Medal of Honor. Smithmark Publishing, 2000 (reprint of 1903 version).

 Gordon C. Rhea. Carrying the Flag: The Story of Private Charles Whilden, The Confederacy’s Most Unlikely Hero. Basic Books, 2003.

Parting Shot

  Medal of Honor recipient Sgt. Conrad Noll, 20th Michigan Inf. (Ninth Corps),

May 12, 1864.

(Public domain)

Citation: “Seized the colors, the bearer having been shot down, and gallantly fought his way out with them, though the enemy were on the left flank and rear.”

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For additional past “CVBT History Wire” and informative articles, visit the Blog Section of the CVBT website.

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