New and Noteworthy---Eyes, Ears, Nose, Mouth, Skin During the Civil War: A Michigan War Studies Book Review

The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege: A Sensory History of the Civil War, Mark M. Smith, Oxford Univ. Press, 2014. pp. 197, 19 b/w photographs and maps, bibliographic notes, index, $26.95.

Review by Donald Lateiner, Ohio Wesleyan University for Michigan War Studies  Review. Volume 2014. [Below are the first two paragraphs of Lateiner's review; at the bottom is the link to the entire review.]

The first historian to mention smells, in battle and beyond, was the first historian of war and polities—Herodotus. He notes the intoxicating hashish of the Massagetai , the sweet smell of perfumed Arabia, a smellscape, an "Ethiopian" spring of water redolent of violets, and the most foul smelling thing—the beard of he-goats from which the Arabs concoct a perfume. In a military context, he writes that, when Croesus’s Lydian cavalry attacked Cyrus’s Persian forces before Sardis, Cyrus, on the advice of a Mede Harpagos, had set his baggage camels in front of them as a stratagem, because horses are frightened by camels’ odor and appearance . Thucydides has less to say about sensory impressions, but does mention the unendurable stench of the quarries where Athenian POWS were penned by their Syracusan captors . Prisoner of war camps were no better in the American Civil war, as photographs of maltreated and emaciated Union prisoners at Andersonville prove. But The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege is the first work to examine sensory perceptions in war in a sustained fashion .

Historian Mark Smith (Univ. of South Carolina) aims to provide "a sensory history" of the US Civil War; he explores not only the war’s smells (gunpowder, decomposing corpses, etc.) and tastes of (e.g., the cooked mules and rats in besieged Vicksburg, spoiled army rations), but also its horrific sights (wrecked homes and towns and broken bodies), sounds (booming cannons), and tactile sensations (e.g., the unwashed, lice-ridden bodies of the men turning the crankshaft in the cramped spaces of the CSS Hunley). Mid-nineteenth-century Americans had passed noise regulations, started to develop urban sewer systems, segregated certain offensive industries, and rushed to be photographed, eternalizing the sight. But how we in the era of jets and jackhammers and processed foods perceive loudness or freshness and taste differs from the nineteenth century’s experience of sensory data. Can one even aspire to write a history of the senses? Smith has explored this conundrum before, and the "sensory turn" has become a trendy methodology.

Lateiner's Review Continues at Michigan War Studies Volume 2014-127.

New and Noteworthy-----Murdered, Captured and Imprisoned; A Broken Regiment: The 16th Connecticut

A Broken Regiment: The 16th Connecticut's Civil War, Lesley Gordon,  Louisiana State University Press, 416 pp., 14 b/w illustrations, 2 maps, bibliographic notes, bibliography, index, $49.95.

From The Publisher:

A Broken Regiment recounts the tragic history of one of the Civil War s most ill-fated Union military units. Organized in the late summer of 1862, the 16th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry was unprepared for battle a month later, when it entered the fight at Antietam. The results were catastrophic: nearly a quarter of the men were killed or wounded, and Connecticut s 16th panicked and fled the field. In the years that followed, the regiment participated in minor skirmishes before surrendering en masse in North Carolina in 1864. Most of its members spent months in southern prison camps, including the notorious Andersonville stockade, where disease and starvation took the lives of over one hundred members of the unit.

The struggles of the 16th led survivors to reflect on the true nature of their military experience during and after the war, and questions of cowardice and courage, patriotism and purpose, were often foremost in their thoughts. Over time, competing stories emerged of who they were, why they endured what they did, and how they should be remembered. By the end of the century, their collective recollections reshaped this troubling and traumatic past, and the unfortunate regiment emerged as The Brave Sixteenth, their individual memories and accounts altered to fit the more heroic contours of the Union victory.

The product of over a decade of research, Lesley J. Gordon's  A Broken Regiment illuminates this unit's complex history amid the interplay of various, and often competing, voices. The result is a fascinating and heartrending story of one regiment's wartime and postwar struggles.

From The Publisher: Praise for A Broken Regiment

“In this fantastic microhistory of the Sixteenth Connecticut, Gordon gives us an intimate portrait of war’s reverberating damage through the eyes of men who were broken on the field, broken at Andersonville, and still broken in old age as wounds of all kinds took their toll on minds, bodies, and memories. The ‘regimental history’ was a lost genre—until now. This is just the reboot the regimental history needs and deserves.”—Stephen Berry, author of House of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds, A Family Divided by War

“In this deeply researched and wonderfully nuanced study, Lesley Gordon examines how the damaged regiment fought to reconstruct its memory for decades after the war. Throughout this often sad odyssey, which took the regiment from Maryland to Virginia to the coast of North Carolina and finally to the horrors of Andersonville Prison, the men of the 16th suffered, endured, and found sources of honor in a war that brought them few moments of martial glory. A Broken Regiment tells the gripping story of a regiment, and also a war, in ways that we rarely contemplate.”—J. Matthew Gallman, author of America’s Joan of Arc

“Gordon has written a regimental biography that embraces the uncommon story of Civil War soldiers. Shifting our focus from heroic stories of sacrifice at well-known battlefields, Gordon presents everyday men horrified by their failure in combat; men who clamored to reclaim lost honor and rewrite their story. A Broken Regiment challenges assumptions about civilians’ successful transition into citizen-soldiers and linear interpretations of Civil War soldier motivation, home front and battlefront interactions, and Civil War memory. Gordon has answered the call to challenge decade-old assumptions within the field of Civil War scholarship by building on the best work of the past and highlighting questions that new studies of Civil War soldiers will need to consider.”—Susannah J. Ural, author of Don’t Hurry Me Down to Hades: The Civil War in the Words of Those Who Lived It

“Lesley Gordon’s ‘microhistory’ of the Sixteenth Connecticut Volunteers is as compelling as it is revealing. Not content merely to describe the wartime experiences of these men, Gordon proposes new ways to understand how Civil War soldiers first survived then relived the conflict, both collectively and individually, for decades thereafter. This is much more than a portrait of a single regiment. It is a unique work, brilliantly realized.”—Daniel E. Sutherland, author of A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War

“In this beautifully written and deeply researched new book, historian Lesley Gordon explores the emotional and physical roller coaster endured by the men who served and suffered in the Sixteenth Connecticut. A Broken Regiment reveals how a group of brave and optimistic soldiers faced a disheartening and horrific trial by fire, bookended by military failure at Antietam and six months of misery at Andersonville. The veterans who endured the war forced their communities to comprehend that sometimes heroism and suffering are synonymous in the midst of so much unprecedented chaos and destruction. This is simply one of the finest regimental histories ever produced.”—Brian Craig Miller, author of Empty Sleeves: Amputation in the Civil War South

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A Broken Regiment

The 16th Connecticut's Civil War

by Lesley J. Gordon

Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War 416 pages / 6.00 x 9.00 inches / 14 halftones, 2 maps


ebook available
Civil War

ADD TO CART | $49.95

  Hardcover / 9780807157305 / November 2014

• Description
• About the Author
• Praise
• Extras
• Press Kit

Praise for A Broken Regiment

“In this fantastic microhistory of the Sixteenth Connecticut, Gordon gives us an intimate portrait of war’s reverberating damage through the eyes of men who were broken on the field, broken at Andersonville, and still broken in old age as wounds of all kinds took their toll on minds, bodies, and memories. The ‘regimental history’ was a lost genre—until now. This is just the reboot the regimental history needs and deserves.”—Stephen Berry, author of House of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds, A Family Divided by War
“In this deeply researched and wonderfully nuanced study, Lesley Gordon examines how the damaged regiment fought to reconstruct its memory for decades after the war. Throughout this often sad odyssey, which took the regiment from Maryland to Virginia to the coast of North Carolina and finally to the horrors of Andersonville Prison, the men of the 16th suffered, endured, and found sources of honor in a war that brought them few moments of martial glory. A Broken Regiment tells the gripping story of a regiment, and also a war, in ways that we rarely contemplate.”—J. Matthew Gallman, author of America’s Joan of Arc
“Gordon has written a regimental biography that embraces the uncommon story of Civil War soldiers. Shifting our focus from heroic stories of sacrifice at well-known battlefields, Gordon presents everyday men horrified by their failure in combat; men who clamored to reclaim lost honor and rewrite their story. A Broken Regiment challenges assumptions about civilians’ successful transition into citizen-soldiers and linear interpretations of Civil War soldier motivation, home front and battlefront interactions, and Civil War memory. Gordon has answered the call to challenge decade-old assumptions within the field of Civil War scholarship by building on the best work of the past and highlighting questions that new studies of Civil War soldiers will need to consider.”—Susannah J. Ural, author of Don’t Hurry Me Down to Hades: The Civil War in the Words of Those Who Lived It
“Lesley Gordon’s ‘microhistory’ of the Sixteenth Connecticut Volunteers is as compelling as it is revealing. Not content merely to describe the wartime experiences of these men, Gordon proposes new ways to understand how Civil War soldiers first survived then relived the conflict, both collectively and individually, for decades thereafter. This is much more than a portrait of a single regiment. It is a unique work, brilliantly realized.”—Daniel E. Sutherland, author of A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War
“In this beautifully written and deeply researched new book, historian Lesley Gordon explores the emotional and physical roller coaster endured by the men who served and suffered in the Sixteenth Connecticut. A Broken Regiment reveals how a group of brave and optimistic soldiers faced a disheartening and horrific trial by fire, bookended by military failure at Antietam and six months of misery at Andersonville. The veterans who endured the war forced their communities to comprehend that sometimes heroism and suffering are synonymous in the midst of so much unprecedented chaos and destruction. This is simply one of the finest regimental histories ever produced.”—Brian Craig Miller, author of Empty Sleeves: Amputation in the Civil War South

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“In this fantastic microhistory of the Sixteenth Connecticut, Gordon gives us an intimate portrait of war’s reverberating damage through the eyes of men who were broken on the field, broken at Andersonville, and still broken in old age as wounds of all kinds took their toll on minds, bodies, and memories. The ‘regimental history’ was a lost genre—until now. This is just the reboot the regimental history needs and deserves.”—Stephen Berry, author of House of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds, A Family Divided by War - See more at: http://lsupress.org/books/detail/broken-regiment/#sthash.BeBctzd1.dpuf

- See more at: http://lsupress.org/books/detail/broken-regiment/#sthash.BeBctzd1.dpuf

“In this fantastic microhistory of the Sixteenth Connecticut, Gordon gives us an intimate portrait of war’s reverberating damage through the eyes of men who were broken on the field, broken at Andersonville, and still broken in old age as wounds of all kinds took their toll on minds, bodies, and memories. The ‘regimental history’ was a lost genre—until now. This is just the reboot the regimental history needs and deserves.”—Stephen Berry, author of House of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds, A Family Divided by War - See more at: http://lsupress.org/books/detail/broken-regiment/#sthash.BeBctzd1.dpuf

Praise for A Broken Regiment

“In this fantastic microhistory of the Sixteenth Connecticut, Gordon gives us an intimate portrait of war’s reverberating damage through the eyes of men who were broken on the field, broken at Andersonville, and still broken in old age as wounds of all kinds took their toll on minds, bodies, and memories. The ‘regimental history’ was a lost genre—until now. This is just the reboot the regimental history needs and deserves.”—Stephen Berry, author of House of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds, A Family Divided by War
“In this deeply researched and wonderfully nuanced study, Lesley Gordon examines how the damaged regiment fought to reconstruct its memory for decades after the war. Throughout this often sad odyssey, which took the regiment from Maryland to Virginia to the coast of North Carolina and finally to the horrors of Andersonville Prison, the men of the 16th suffered, endured, and found sources of honor in a war that brought them few moments of martial glory. A Broken Regiment tells the gripping story of a regiment, and also a war, in ways that we rarely contemplate.”—J. Matthew Gallman, author of America’s Joan of Arc
“Gordon has written a regimental biography that embraces the uncommon story of Civil War soldiers. Shifting our focus from heroic stories of sacrifice at well-known battlefields, Gordon presents everyday men horrified by their failure in combat; men who clamored to reclaim lost honor and rewrite their story. A Broken Regiment challenges assumptions about civilians’ successful transition into citizen-soldiers and linear interpretations of Civil War soldier motivation, home front and battlefront interactions, and Civil War memory. Gordon has answered the call to challenge decade-old assumptions within the field of Civil War scholarship by building on the best work of the past and highlighting questions that new studies of Civil War soldiers will need to consider.”—Susannah J. Ural, author of Don’t Hurry Me Down to Hades: The Civil War in the Words of Those Who Lived It
“Lesley Gordon’s ‘microhistory’ of the Sixteenth Connecticut Volunteers is as compelling as it is revealing. Not content merely to describe the wartime experiences of these men, Gordon proposes new ways to understand how Civil War soldiers first survived then relived the conflict, both collectively and individually, for decades thereafter. This is much more than a portrait of a single regiment. It is a unique work, brilliantly realized.”—Daniel E. Sutherland, author of A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War
“In this beautifully written and deeply researched new book, historian Lesley Gordon explores the emotional and physical roller coaster endured by the men who served and suffered in the Sixteenth Connecticut. A Broken Regiment reveals how a group of brave and optimistic soldiers faced a disheartening and horrific trial by fire, bookended by military failure at Antietam and six months of misery at Andersonville. The veterans who endured the war forced their communities to comprehend that sometimes heroism and suffering are synonymous in the midst of so much unprecedented chaos and destruction. This is simply one of the finest regimental histories ever produced.”—Brian Craig Miller, author of Empty Sleeves: Amputation in the Civil War South
- See more at: http://lsupress.org/books/detail/broken-regiment/#sthash.BeBctzd1.dpuf

New and Noteworthy---- Rape, Reality, and Recovering Testimonies During the Civil War Era

I Had Rather Die: Rape in the Civil War, Kim Murphy  Coachlight Press, 2014. 180 pp. 8 b/w photographs, bibliographic notes, index,$14.95 (paper),$21.95 (cloth),

Reviewed by Laura Mammina (University of Alabama)
Published on H-CivWar (December, 2014)

Review's Text: 

Kim Murphy’s I Had Rather Die is the first book-length project examining sexual violence during the Civil War. In it she levels some rather damning although not unwarranted charges against historians who argue that the conflict was a low-rape war. Murphy persuasively asserts that focusing on the number of rapes stems from a misguided assumption that calculations reveal something meaningful about wartime sexual violence. By reframing rape as a crime of power, she attempts to sidestep the numbers game in order to expose a seemingly genteel and restrained Victorian society that in reality provided few protections for white and black rape victims and often freed convicted rapists.

Murphy frames her study by examining the evolution of rape law in early America. Legal standards, informed by popular conceptions that rape was a detestable crime but also a charge that was easily made, placed the burden of proof on the rape victim by requiring her to testify that she had cried for help, had physically resisted the assault, had not enjoyed the sexual act, and had notified someone soon after the encounter. Inability to prove any of these could result in the charges being dropped or reduced. Murphy notes that for centuries the American legal system applied these protections only to white women and that black men received much harsher sentences for the crime of rape than white men. Even white women found their trustworthiness questioned during rape trials, as the admission of character evidence in the nineteenth century allowed courts to judge the veracity of a woman’s rape claim on her past sexual history. Here Murphy misses an opportunity to link the admission of character evidence to emerging nineteenth-century ideas, which, as Sharon Block argues, held women to be innately virtuous. This meant that they had a responsibility to control their own passions as well as men’s base urges. Even so, Murphy does well to argue that such a high burden of proof for rape might have discouraged women from charging their assailants.[1]  

Antebellum patterns persisted in wartime courts-martial as racial, class, and gender bias resulted in light sentences and low rates of conviction. Murphy finds that black soldiers faced harsher prosecutions for rape than white soldiers, especially if they raped white women, and yet the Union army executed few black men for the capital crime of rape. White soldiers executed for rape were overwhelmingly privates and many were German or Irish immigrants, while white officers faced very light punishment when convicted of rape. White and black soldiers who raped black women were given lighter sentences than those who raped white women, while soldiers who raped wealthy white women received the harshest punishments. But no matter who the victim was, Murphy finds that soldiers accused of rape often had their sentences reduced or were given pardons unless there was a male witness to the crime.

While Murphy’s evidence is detailed, she seems more comfortable describing her findings rather than incorporating them into a more sustained argument. Because of this, she never fully examines the ways in which rape highlighted the discrepancy between Victorian morality and tolerance for male misbehavior or the ways in which rape reinforced or destabilized social hierarchies. Murphy is also unable to fill a void in current scholarship by linking her findings to many excellent recent studies on rape in the United States. It is left to future scholarship to demonstrate the ways in which wartime rape trials differed from or conformed to patterns established before and after the war.

Throughout the book, Murphy argues that misogyny in the American legal system, not Victorian restraint, is the reason that relatively few Civil War soldiers faced court-martial for rape. Frequent accounts of rape in archival sources as well as the surgeon general’s documented 170,000 cases of gonorrhea and syphilis demonstrate that Civil War soldiers hardly refrained from sexual encounters whether forced or consensual. But Murphy succumbs to the same allure of numbers as the historians she criticizes by insisting that unsubstantiated reports in newspapers and private papers should be treated as instances of sexual assault. Instead of using the reports to examine how fear and perception operated during the war, Murphy focuses on numbers, undermining her own claims that rape often went unreported. As Murphy well knows, the crime of rape defies precise counting especially in the nineteenth century and especially during a time of war because it is an intimate crime so tied up in sexuality, and therefore in power, fear, violence, and shame that the strands become nearly impossible to unravel. While her study tries to fill the void in scholarship on rape during the Civil War, it never quite addresses how sexual violence illuminated relationships of power. It does, however, begin a conversation that is long overdue.

 [1]. Sharon Block, Rape and Sexual Power in Early America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 44, 50, 129-137.

Full Text Source: H-Net Reviews

News---Gettysburg Railroad Station and Base of East Slope of BRT Transferred To GNMP

Federal Legislation Adds Gettysburg Lincoln Railroad Station and 45 Acres at Big Round Top to Gettysburg National Military Park, Gettysburg Foundation, December 22, 2014

The Gettysburg Foundation can move forward with the plan to donate the Gettysburg Lincoln Railroad Station and an undeveloped 45-acre parcel of battlefield land to the National Park Service now that federal legislation has added it to the Gettysburg National Military Park boundary. Gettysburg's Lincoln Railroad Station is an 1858 structure on the National Register of Historic Places.  It served as a hospital during the Battle of Gettysburg and the wounded and the dead were transported from Gettysburg through this station after the battle. Abraham Lincoln arrived at the station when he visited to give the Gettysburg Address.   The 45-acre parcel at the base of Big Round Top is vacant land that abuts the southeastern boundary of the park.  Cavalry skirmishes occurred near this site and it has critical wetlands and wildlife habitat related to Plum Run.  Wayne and Susan Hill donated the property to the Gettysburg Foundation in April 2009.  The Gettysburg Foundation and the park will work together to create a plan and a timeline for transfer of the properties, and an operating plan for the train station.  An anticipated date for public access and information center operations would be in the spring of 2015. Text and Image Source: Gettysburg Foundation

NEWS--- National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 3979) Reauthorizes Existing Civil War Matching Grants Program, Adds Rev War and War of 1812 Battlefields

Congress Enacts Landmark Legislation to Preserve America's Endangered Battlefields, The Civil War Trust, December 12, 2014.

The Civil War Trust today applauded members of U.S. Senate and House of Representatives for enactment of landmark legislation to preserve America’s endangered battlefields.  The legislation, part of an omnibus lands package included in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 3979), reauthorizes a highly successful federal matching grant program for the preservation of Civil War battlefields.  In addition, the bill expands that existing program to provide grants for the acquisition of land at Revolutionary War and War of 1812 battlefields.

“This is a historic moment for the battlefield preservation movement,” remarked Civil War Trust president James Lighthizer.  “For 15 years, the Civil War Battlefield Preservation Program has been an invaluable tool for protecting the hallowed battlegrounds of the Civil War.  Now, for the first time, battlefields associated with America’s other formative conflicts, the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, will also benefit from this public-private partnership.”

Mary Thompson House on the Gettysburg Civil War Battlefield, Gettysburg, Pa. The Mary Thompson House served as General Robert E. Lee’s Headquarters during the battle. The 4.14-acre Lee’s Headquarters property was acquired by the Civil War Trust in 2014 with a federal matching grant from the American Battlefield Protection Program. (Civil War Trust photo)

The legislation, originally introduced in 2013 as the American Battlefields Protection Program Amendments Act (H.R. 1033), reauthorizes the Civil War Battlefield Preservation Program, a matching grants program that encourages private sector investment in historic battlefield protection.  Since the program was first funded by Congress in FY 1999, it has been used to preserve more than 23,000 acres of battlefield land in 17 states.  The battlefields protected through the program include some of the most famous in the annals of America, including Antietam, Md., Chancellorsville and Manassas, Va.; Chattanooga and Franklin, Tenn.; Gettysburg, Pa.; Perryville, Ky.; and Vicksburg, Miss.

Text Source, Image Source and Full Text Available at The Civil War Trust

Forthcoming---A Guide To the Richmond-Petersburg Campaign

Guide To the Richmond-Petersburg Campaign, edited by Charles R. Bowery, Jr. and Ethan S. Rafuse, maps by Steven Stanley, University of Kansas Press, 420 pages, 47 maps36 illustrations, $34.95 hardcover, $19.95 paper.

Text From The Publisher:  Lasting from June 1864 through April 1865, the Richmond-Petersburg Campaign was the longest of the Civil War, dwarfing even the Atlanta and Vicksburg campaigns in its scope and complexity. This compact yet comprehensive guide allows armchair historian and battlefield visitor alike to follow the campaign’s course, with a clear view of its multi-faceted strategic, operation, tactical, and human dimensions.
A concise, single-volume collection of official reports and personal accounts, the guide is organized in one-day and multi-day itineraries that take the reader to all the battlefields of the campaign, some of which have never before been interpreted and described for the visitor so extensively. Comprehensive campaign and battle maps reflect troop movements, historical terrain features, and modern roads for ease of understanding and navigation. A uniquely useful resource for the military enthusiast and the battlefield traveler, this is the essential guide for anyone hoping to see the historic landscape and the human face of this most decisive campaign of the Civil War.
Charles R. Bowery, Jr. is an officer in the U.S. Army who has taught Civil War history at West Point, led tours of Civil War battlefield sites, and authored Lee and Grant: Profiles in Leadership from the Battlefields of Virginia. Ethan S. Rafuse is a professor of military history at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. He is the author, editor, or coeditor of nine books, including McClellan’s War: The Failure of Moderation in the Struggle for the Union and Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy, 1863-1865.

Blurbs: “A stellar contribution to the long and excellent tradition of the U.S. Army War college guide that covers one of the most important campaigns of the Civil War. The authors’ organization and contextualization of their story are superbly done and the maps are outstanding, among the best I have ever seen depicting the action and topography of the Richmond Petersburg battle sites.”—Earl Hess, author of Into the Crater: The Mine Attack at Petersburg

“A much needed edition on the final campaign to capture Richmond and Petersburg.  This book brings together the events on both sides of the James River enabling readers to understand this very complex and prolonged military event.”—Chris Bryce, Chief of Interpretation, Petersburg National Battlefield

“The most thorough, detailed, and accurate books of their kind. Indeed, they are unique. I have used them to lead guided tours of several battlefields, with great success.”—James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom

CHARLES R. BOWERY, JR. is an officer in the U.S. Army who has taught Civil War history at West Point, led tours of Civil War battlefield sites, and authored Lee and Grant: Profiles in Leadership from the Battlefields of Virginia. ETHAN S. RAFUSE is a professor of military history at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. He is the author, editor, or coeditor of nine books, including McClellan’s War: The Failure of Moderation in the Struggle for the Union and Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy, 1863-1865.

News----Georgia's Ebenezer Creek, The March To The Sea Interrupted, And 40 Acres And A Mule

Historic Hebenezer Creek Property Protected For Future Greenway, by The Trust For Public Land, Atlanta Georgia, December 2, 2014.

The Ebenezer Creek site of a frantic and tragic moment of Civil War history has been protected as a new public park. On December 9, 1864 hundreds of freed slave refugees died trying to cross Ebenezer Creek to avoid confederate troops pursuing General William Tecumseh Sherman during the union Army’s “March to the Sea.” Public outcry over the deaths led President Abraham Lincoln to appro
ve Sherman’s Special Field Orders No. 15 that were intended to redistribute to former slaves 400,000 acres of confiscated coastal property in 40-acre tracts. The order was revoked by President Andrew Johnson following Lincoln’s death.

The 275-acre property protects almost two miles of rivers and streams at the confluence of the Savannah River and Ebenezer Creek. For the residents of the City of Springfield the property becomes a key piece in the proposed Ebenezer Greenway planned along the creek to the river.
“The City of Springfield is pleased to announce the acquisition of the Ebenezer Crossing property. This purchase will be important for Springfield, Effingham County and the State of Georgia due to the historical and cultural nature of the property. It has been our dream to preserve Ebenezer Creek’s natural beauty for the enjoyment of future generations. Our hope is that the Creek will remain as it is now, bringing tourists to enjoy the peace and serenity of the area, said Mayor Barton Alderman. “We would like to thank The Trust for Public Land, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the R. Howard Dobbs Jr. Foundation and the Knobloch Family Foundation for making this dream a reality.“

“This coastal Georgia property is quite special for people, history, and the environment,” said Curt Soper, The Trust for Public Land’s Georgia state director. “The public recreational benefits along Ebenezer Creek to the Savannah River will benefit generations of people to come. And the historical significance of the Ebenezer crossing is immense and this land is protected in memory of the many lives that were lost here 150 years ago in the pursuit of freedom.”

Sherman’s Brigadier General Davis destroyed a pontoon crossing which stranded 5,000 freed slaves on the wrong side of the creek. Remnants of the pontoon bridge have been located on the property.
“I am very pleased that the site of the crossing on Ebenezer Creek is going to be preserved for future generations. Saving unspoiled land associated with the Civil War is becoming increasingly difficult and The Trust for Public Land is to be commended for their vision and leadership,” said Dr. W. Todd Groce, President and CEO of the Georgia Historical Society. “Although not a battlefield, the site is still historic ground filled with meaning for all Americans. As the scene of one of the war’s most tragic events, it sheds light on the plight and courage of African Americans during the war and illustrates the extent to which human beings will go in order to be free.”

The diverse and productive habitat on the property, including fresh water tidal wetlands and bottomland hardwood forest, has been coveted for protection by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. The National Park Service lists the land as a National Natural Landmark for its cypress-gum swamp forest. Federally listed rare species on the property include the wood stork and the shortnose sucker.

Funding for the acquisition of this property included a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Coastal Wetlands Conservation grant to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources as well as grants from the R. Howard Dobbs Jr. Foundation and the Knobloch Family Foundation.

Full Text Source: The Trust For Public Land
Image Source: Historic Marker Database 
and  Effingham Today

News--NYT's Review of Embattled Rebel Gives McPherson Good Marks For Putting Davis In Military Context

Embattled Rebel by James McPherson,  Steven Hahn, New York Times, November 20, 2014

Steve Hahn: "Yet, there is a larger and more unsettling issue. Treating Davis as commander in chief risks lending the Confederacy a legitimacy it never achieved at the time. No foreign country accorded the Confederacy diplomatic recognition, at least in part because of an unwillingness to openly support a slaveholders’ rebellion. Only after the war, as part of a reconciliation process, were Confederates spared serious punishment and then tendered respect as a cause and a state, enabling men like Davis and subsequent devotees of the “lost cause” to get a hearing for their version of events."

A full text ink is below.

Text and Image Source:  Sunday Book Review New York Times, November 20, 2014

News---Ohio's Camp Chase Cemetery: Are Yankees Buried Among Rebel POWs?

Blue Among Gray?, Jeb Phillips, The Columbus Dispatch , May 28, 2012 

On Row 41 of Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery — one of only two places in Ohio officially designated for Confederate dead — is a marker for a John Kennedy. It’s actually a double marker, number 2100. The top half is for a Texas soldier. But the bottom part is what caught the eye years ago of an amateur historian from New Albany who now lives in Georgia.

The stone reads: “John Kennedy; 33 KY VOLS; C.S.A.” The Confederate States of America regiments in Kentucky didn’t have numbers that high, Dennis Ranney knew. Maybe an extra “3” was added by mistake. Ranney, 59, likes to learn about Civil War prisons and had first visited Camp Chase, at 2900 Sullivant Ave. on the West Side, as a teenager. Most of the people buried there also were prisoners there. Ranney decided to research the dead and write small biographies about five years ago. “Some of them have stories to tell,” he thought. One of the people he pursued was Kennedy.

No matter how hard Ranney looked in Confederate records, he couldn’t find Kennedy. Then, “just for the heck of it,” he looked in Union records. And there he was. This John Kennedy who had been called a Confederate since at least 1869 was actually: “John Kennedy; 33rd Kentucky Infantry; U.S.A.” “Oh my God,” Ranney said he thought to himself.

In 1867, Ohio Gov. James Cox ordered a military chaplain to identify all of the war’s dead buried in Ohio. The chaplain did the best he could with spotty records, according to historians. Some he determined were Confederates were disinterred and reburied at Camp Chase in 1869. Many of those, including Kennedy, have markers in Row 41 — the last full row nearest the Hill Top Dairy Twist on Sullivant Avenue. It’s the most likely row for identification mistakes. Ranney used online records and physical ones at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., to research other names in that row. He has found five other Union soldiers who he believes are mistakenly called Confederates on their markers:
• James Lykens, Co. A, 12th Ky. Cavalry, CSA, is actually James Likens, Co. A, 12th Ky. Cavalry, USA.
• Jacob Lake, Co. G, 90th Tenn. Regiment, CSA, is Jacob Lake, Co. G, 90th Penn. Infantry, USA.
• J.A. Stilzer, Co. A, 9th Ky. Cavalry, CSA, is J.W. Stitzer, Co. A, 9th Ky. Cavalry, USA.
• Taylor Ellis, Co. B, 1st W. Tenn. Regiment, CSA, is Taylor Ellis, Co. M, 6th Tenn. Cavalry, USA.
• John Clark, Co. G, 3rd Va. Cavalry, CSA, is John E. Clark, Co. D, 3rd W.Va. Cavalry, USA.

Ranney says he has doubts about four other markers but hasn’t been able to prove any errors yet.
Members of the Hilltop Historical Society learned of Ranney’s work last week. The society leads tours of the cemetery, keeps some historical records and organizes a memorial ceremony every June.
“It’s very plausible,” Dick Hoffman, a society board member, said of Ranney’s findings
.
“I believe there’s a good possibility that (Ranney’s work) is correct,” said Monty Chase, another board member and a distant cousin of the cemetery’s namesake and Abraham Lincoln’s treasury secretary, Salmon P. Chase.

Camp Chase has some known errors, and it’s not surprising that there would be others, Hoffman said. Historians know that some people buried at Camp Chase aren’t marked at all. They also know that the stones themselves are just approximations of where the soldiers are buried. Ranney’s findings are so new that no one knows if any changes can be made at the cemetery. Monty Chase suggested leaving the stones in place and carving updates on the backs. The big arch at the cemetery says “Americans,” and that’s just as true now as it ever was, he said.

The Dayton National Cemetery, which oversees Camp Chase, didn’t respond to a request for comment.Ranney has also discovered that the same John Kennedy from Kentucky, identified as a Union soldier, has a marker at Green Lawn Cemetery. Ranney expects that there’s more work to be done to sort out Columbus’ burial records. Now, though, he’s satisfied that for the first time since the end of the Civil War, six soldiers can be remembered on Memorial Day for who they really were.

Text and Image Source:  Columbus Dispatch, May 28, 2014

New And Noteworthy---Montana's Confederate Heritage

Confederates In Montana Territory: In The Shadow of Price's Army, Ken Robison, History Press, 192 pp.,49 illustrations, 4 maps, index, chapter bibliographies, $19.99. 

Montana was not an organized territory until the spring of 1864 and was over a thousand miles away from military operations in Kansas and New Mexico. During the first three years of the war the region that would become Montana was divided between the territories of Washington, Idaho and Dakota. During the war there were those Confederate soldiers that deserted or Confederate civilians who drifted into this region. In the southwest area one community wished to name itself Varina, in honor of Varina Davis, the wife of  the Confederate president. This was dismissed by a regional judge who was a native of Connecticut but did allow a substitute name, Virginia. In 1862, gold was discovered in the region and one strike was named Confederate Gulch. Such loyalty issues arose and caught the attention of Unionists in the region who brought it to the attention of the national government which remedied the situation by creating the Montana Territory.

Ken Robison, the author of Confederates In Montana Territory is a Montana native, historic preservationist, newspaper columnist, historian and retired captain of the U.S. navy's intelligence branch. He has authored four other books on Montana's early history and a frequent contributor to the Montana: The Magazine of Western History and other regional journals.

Confederates In Montana Territory: In The Shadow of Price's Army offers detailed and entertaining stories regarding Confederate veterans commanded by William Quantrill,  Bill Anderson, Nathan Bedford Forrest and John Mosby. Robison's focus includes particular cavalry regiments and the unique adventures that the Confederate veterans experienced during the war. The Moore brothers accompanied Jefferson Davis during his flight from Richmond, Virginia; others were veterans of the Confederate Marine Corps. Robison uniquely captures the lives of former slaves who migrated to Montana during and after the war. His work is a biography driven account of Confederate soldiers, civilians and contrabands living together on western frontier.   Confederates In Montana Territory: In The Shadow of Price's Army offers a clear and concise account which is a fine example of local and regional historical research done well.