New and Noteworthy—The Seventh West Virginia Infantry: Embattled Regiment for the War’s Most Divided State

The Seventh West Virginia Infantry: An Embattled Union Regiment From the Civil War’s Most Divided State, David W. Mellott and Mark A. Snell, University of Kansas Press, 354 pages, epilog, 4 appendices, index, 38 illustrations, 11 maps, bibliographic notes, bibliography, $34.95.

Some regiments were known as ‘Bloody’, ‘Hard Luck’, ‘Cowards’; some brigades were known as ‘Iron’, ‘Irish’ or ‘Excelsior’.  There was one Gibraltar Brigade and the Seventh West Virginia was a four year member of it.  The Seventh West Virginia had a four year enrollment of 1,528 soldiers and 315 total deaths in battles, wounds and disease. Of the 315 deaths, 108 were killed outright or mortally wounded on the battlefields. During the Battle of Antietam  the Seventh sustained a casualty rate higher than 45 percent with 12 percent of those killed or mortally wounded when it took flanking fire from Confederate troops in the Sunken [Bloody Lane] Road. 

Through much of the war, the Gibraltar Brigade was composed of the 4th Ohio Infantry, 8th Ohio Infantry, 14th Indiana Infantry, and the 7th West Virginia Infantry. The brigade was augmented by the 24th and 28th New Jersey before the Battle of Fredericksburg. Before the Overland Campaign in early 1864, its ranks were bolstered by the addition of the 1st Delaware, 12th New Jersey, and the 10th New York Battalion. It was commanded by brigadier generals Nathan Kimball, Samuel S. Carroll, and Thomas A. Smyth.  By the battle of Gettysburg, the Seventh West Virginia’s ten companies were consolidated into five companies and recognized as a battalion.

On April 17, 1861, the Virginia state convention in Richmond declared secession. Nearly all delegates from counties west of the Allegheny Mountains voted against secession. On May 15, western Virginia Unionists convened in Wheeling, Virginia located in the northern panhandle of the state. The convention only denounced secession and called for a formal election of delegates. Elected delegates met in the second session on 11 June 11 and on the 20^th created the Restored Government of Virginia.

Comparatively speaking, Mellot’s and Snell’s is much like the ‘drum and bugle’ histories similar to Pullen’s 20^th Maine, Gibbs’ 11^th Pennsylvania Reserves and Moe’s 1^st Minnesota regimental histories but Mellot and Snell have crafted their Seventh West Virginia story similar to Gordon’s A Broken Regiment: The 16^th Connecticut and Brandt’s 87^th Pennsylvania works. Yet, socioeconomic, military, medical, political and personal perspectives are blended together. 

In four appendices the authors provide the age distribution, the birth places and the prewar occupations of all enrolled soldiers. Additionally hospitalization statistics are offered. Statistics, letters, diaries, journals, newspapers, official correspondence are honed and balance to create a compelling story of a distinctly ‘bloody’ regiment. The authors acknowledge the assets offered by Shepherd University [WV] and the George Tyler Moore Center which have compiled both pertinent West Virginian statistical databases and primary source collections. 

 

The Seventh West Virginia Infantry: An Embattled Union Regiment From the Civil War’s Most Divided State is a splendid contribution to the field of American Civil War regiments. 

From The Publisher: Though calling itself “The Bloody Seventh” after only a few minor skirmishes, the Seventh West Virginia Infantry earned its nickname many times over during the course of the Civil War. Fighting in more battles and suffering more losses than any other West Virginia regiment, the unit was the most embattled Union regiment in the most divided state in the war. Its story, as it unfolds in this book, is a key chapter in the history of West Virginia, the only state created as a direct result of the Civil War. It is also the story of the citizen soldiers, most of them from Appalachia, caught up in the bloodiest conflict in American history.

The Seventh West Virginia fought in the major campaigns in the eastern theater, from Winchester, Antietam, and Fredericksburg to Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Petersburg. Weaving military, social, and political history, The Seventh West Virginia Infantry details strategy, tactics, battles, campaigns, leaders, and the travails of the rank and file. It also examines the circumstances surrounding events, mundane and momentous alike such as the soldiers’ views on the Emancipation Proclamation, West Virginia Statehood, and Lincoln’s re-election. The product of decades of research, the book uses statistical analysis to profile the Seventh’s soldiers from a socio-economic, military, medical, and personal point of view; even as its authors consult dozens of primary sources, including soldiers’ living descendants, to put a human face on these “sons of the mountains.” The result is a multilayered view, unique in its scope and depth, of a singular Union regiment on and off the Civil War battlefield—its beginnings, its role in the war, and its place in history and memory.

About the Authors

David W. Mellott is a lawyer in Cleveland, Ohio. Several of his ancestors fought in the Seventh West Virginia.

Mark A. Snell is the retired professor of history and director of the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War, Shepherd University, in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Snell is the author of many works on Civil War history, including West Virginia and the Civil War: Mountaineers Are Always Free.

New and Noteworthy---History and Guide to Civil War Shepherdstown: A Community of Suffering

A History and Guide to Civil War Shepherdstown: Victory and Defeat in West Virginia's Oldest Town, Nicholas Redding, Schroeder Publications, 144 pages, 56 illustrations, 6 maps, 2 appendices, order of battle, endnotes, index, 2012, $14.95.

 A History and Guide to Civil War Shepherdstown: Victory and Defeat in West Virginia's Oldest Town offers a intriguing description  of a village that began the war in Virginia and ended the war in West Virginia. Nicholas Redding finely balances aspects of Shepherdtown's citizens, it buildings and industries, and its proximity to Harpers Ferry, South Mountain, and the Battle of Sharpsburg. A third of the book presents Shepherdstown in the path of war. Wesley Culp, a recent immigrant from Adams County, Pennsylvania is typical of the town's  citizens who are divided in their allegiances. Reddington relies on eyewitness accounts of Shepherdtown's conflicted loyalities: Dr. Charles Wesley Andrew, Caroline Bedinger, and Henry Kyd Douglas and the Shepherdstown Register newspaper.

The middle third of the book is a guide to the Civil War sites in present-day Shepherdstown. The first third of the book is not retold; the discussion offers additional information that further clarifies the suffering and destruction of the town. The burning of the covered, two lane Potomac River bridge is well told and illustrated. Redding presents a black and white illustration of the bridge intact and a photograph of the remnants of the pilings.  Remarkably the illustration and the photograph were made from nearly the same location and reveals much about Shepherdstown. Ferry Hill in Maryland overlooks Shepherdstown and was the home of Henry Kyd Douglas, whose father practiced law across the river. Hotels, the town hall,  graffitti, homes that became hospitals, the residence of a Confederate spy, the site of the wagon shop where Wesley Culp was employed, churches and the cemetery are described and presented with personal primary source accounts of the structures' appearance and uses.

The final third of the book is a clear and concise history and guide to the September 1862 battle at Shepherdstown. Offered as a appendix, Mary Bedinger Mitchell's article in the 1886 Century Magazine recounts Shepherdstown citizens' experiences of the battles of South Mountain, Antietam and Shepherdstown. A second appendix is Henrietta Lee's lamentation addressed to Union general David Hunter; it presents the heartfelt anger of woman whose ancestral home was intentionally burned on the orders of the general.

History and Guide to Civil War Shepherdstown: Victory and Defeat in West Virginia's Oldest Town is both a satifying portrait of a border community overcome by the war and a guide book to the historic town. Redding's use of period photography, pen and ink sketches and primary sources is commendable. He introduces intriguing episodes that may compel readers to look further into Shepherdstown's history:  the Confederate spy network in the county, the printing of money that could be spent only in the town and the African Americans who remained in the town during the course of the war. 

Nicholas Redding's interview by the Civil War Trust

New---First Civil War Amputee Makes Lemonade From Wound

West Virginia Event Marks 150th Anniversary of Battle of Philippi, Len Barcousky, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Monday, May 30, 2011.

James E. Hanger lost a limb but found his profession at the Battle of Philippi, W.Va. Hanger, an 18-year-old Confederate cavalryman, had his leg shattered by a Union cannonball on the morning of June 3, 1861, during what was the first land battle of the Civil War. A re-creation of the amputation of Hanger's leg and an unusual nighttime skirmish each will be part of the Blue & Gray Weekend 150th anniversary commemoration of the battle and its aftermath.

Events begin Thursday with an afternoon craft fair and food festival in the square in front of the Barbour County Courthouse in Philippi. The four-day festival will end Sunday with an 1860s-style church service and a battle re-enactment. In-between activities will include an artillery demonstration (11 a.m. Saturday) and fireworks (10 p.m. Friday). A complete schedule of events is available at blueandgrayreunion.org. Reunion organizers can be reached at 1-304-457-4265 or 1-304-457-2368. Philippi is about 120 miles south of Pittsburgh.

About 250 Union and Confederate re-enactors are expected to participate, said Edgar Brown, chairman of the reunion committee. Between 2,000 and 3,000 visitors are expected to attend the weekend events. That latter number is about equal to the number of Union troops who took part in the battle. They sought to capture a smaller force of 800 Confederates who held the town of Philippi and a 300-foot-long covered bridge over the Tygart River.

Reconstructed several times, the two-lane bridge continues to carry automobile and foot traffic across the river. Serving Route 250, it is the only covered bridge in the country to be part of a national highway. Although almost all of the Confederates escaped when the nighttime attack began prematurely around 4 a.m., their panicked retreat in heavy rain provided another name for the clash: The Philippi Races.

The all-volunteer Blue and Gray Reunion Committee has been marking the anniversary of the battle annually since 1987, Mr. Brown said. A little more than a skirmish when compared to the deadly actions to come, the Battle of Philippi had at least two long-term consequences. The battlefield amputation of James Hanger's leg ended his fighting days, and he became a Union prisoner of war. After his release in a POW exchange, he designed his own hinged prosthetic limb.

After the war, he patented his design and created a company that still exists as part of Hanger Orthopedic Group, Mr. Brown said. The victory by the North at Philippi also encouraged anti-slavery and pro-Union Virginians in the northwest corner of the state to take political action against secession. Meeting about a week after the battle, delegates to the Second Wheeling Convention voted to stay in the union. They first formed a "restored" state government and then created the new state of West Virginia.

"The delegates probably would have done it anyway, but the Union victory certainly helped encourage them," Mr. Brown said.

Text Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.com May 30, 2011

Top Image Source: Greg Clemmer

Bottom Image: Flicker

Other Voices: ISO Black West Virginians in Blue Wool

State Still Was Civil War Medals 200 In Black Union Companies, Rick Steelhammer, Staff Writer, Charleston Gazette, December 9, 2007

Seven months after the Civil War ended and one week before ratification of the 13th Amendment made slavery unconstitutional, two West Virginia companies of an all-black Union Army regiment gathered near Philadelphia to receive their final pay and discharge papers.

The date was Dec. 13, 1865, and the place was Camp Cadwalader, an Army base a few miles from Camp William Penn, where the men of the 45th U.S. Colored Infantry began their basic training in June 1864. Among the regiment’s recruits, according to Army records, were 212 “colored men mustered into the service of the United States to the credit of West Virginia.”

“A lot of the men appear to be escaped slaves or freedmen who were living in Virginia or what was then the new state of West Virginia,” said state Archives historian Greg Carroll. The discharge formation at Camp Cadwalader ended an 18-month tour of duty that took the men of the 45th from trenches facing the Confederate capital of Richmond to the Mexican frontier. Fourteen soldiers were killed or wounded in battle, and another 50 died of disease — many of them in lonely Texas border towns, months after the war ended.

The regiment was one of 170 African-American military units organized near the end of the Civil War, when the Union Army hierarchy finally recognized the value of the black fighting man — even if they were not yet ready to commission black officers to lead them in battle. Col. Ulysses Doubleday was the 45th U.S. Colored Infantry’s commanding officer. Other white officers served on Doubleday’s regimental staff or as company commanders, while all sergeants, corporals and enlisted men were African-American.

“Many black people in the North wanted to join the Army back in 1861, during the first flush of patriotism, but were quickly told to forget it,” said Carroll. “The Army finally realized they could get another 100,000 troops by recruiting young black men, and by 1864, they really needed them.” While the federal government was finally eager to make use of black troops in combat roles, it was reluctant to pay them equally. Until June 15, 1864, when Congress passed pay equity laws, black soldiers were paid about 30 percent less than their white counterparts.

Successes by trailblazing African-American units like the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteers, who fought off Confederate attacks during the Battle of Island Mound, Mo., in September 1862 and Port Hudson, La., in May 1863, paved the way. The best-known battle fought by black Union Army troops was the bloody July 1863 assault on Fort Wagner, S.C., by the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry, the regiment memorialized in the movie “Glory.”

From Arlington Heights to Appomattox
The men of the 45th U.S. Colored Infantry, also known as the 45th U.S. Colored Troop, were needed even before their basic training was complete. In July 1864, four companies of the new regiment were diverted from Camp William Penn and rushed to active duty on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. Their mission was to help defend the nation’s capital against Confederate Gen. Jubal Early, who had recently invaded Maryland.

The men of the 45th were assigned to a defensive position in Arlington Heights, where they served side by side with white units through the winter, waiting for an invasion that never materialized. As part of their duty, they were the only African-American unit to take part in President Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural procession. In September 1864, the regiment’s six remaining companies were sent to the front lines near Petersburg, Va., and as part of an all-black division of 10,000 soldiers, crossed the James River and took part in the Union victories at the Battle of Chaffin’s Farm and the seizure of Fort Harrison.

After spending the winter either in trenches facing Richmond or in the defensive perimeter surrounding Washington, all 10 companies of the 45th reunited in March 1865. On March 26, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and President Lincoln reviewed the regiment as it crossed the James River as part of Grant’s Army of the Potomac. On March 30 and April 1, the regiment took part in Union victories in engagements with Confederate forces at White Oak Road, Hatchers Run and Gravelly Run, and on April 2, took part in the third and final assault on the remaining Confederate lines at Petersburg.

The fighting in late March and early April left one member of the 45th dead and 11 others injured. On April 3, the regiment entered a deserted Petersburg with other victorious elements of Grant’s Army of the Potomac, but did not linger to savor the victory. They pursued Gen. Robert E. Lee and his remaining forces as they made their way toward Appomattox Court House. After helping block a possible western escape route for the beleaguered Southerners, the 45th was present at Appomattox when Lee capitulated. In May, the regiment was sent to Texas to guard the Mexican frontier in the vicinity of Edinburg. Dozens of soldiers in the unit died from disease before they were finally ordered back to Philadelphia.

If the men of the 45th expected a hero’s welcome, they didn’t get one. “They had heard a lot of vague promises about pensions when they enlisted, but after the war was over, very little was done for black veterans,” said Carroll. “Twenty-five years after the end of the war, Northern and Southern soldiers got together and shook hands, yet no black veterans were invited to join them.”

The year after the war ended, the state of West Virginia issued 26,000 medals to honor West Virginia troops for their service. The two West Virginia companies of the 45th Colored U.S. Infantry were among those authorized to receive the medals, but only two or three were ever collected, according to Carroll. The more than 200 medals from the two West Virginia African-American infantry companies are among about 4,000 unclaimed West Virginia Civil War service medals still being held at the Cultural Center for descendants to claim.

“They are beautiful medals, made of real brass, with white and red ribbons, still in their original boxes,” said Carroll. “Each soldier has his name engraved on the edge.” Among the few descendants to claim a medal for an ancestor in the 45th Colored U.S. Infantry is William Davison of Waynesburg, Pa. Private Jeremiah Alpheus, a member of Company G, was the brother of Davison’s great-great-grandmother. Alpheus survived the war, served on the Mexican frontier afterward, and was among members of the regiment mustered out of service in Philadelphia as 1865came to an end.

“<“I knew his name, because I’d already done a lot of family history research, and when I saw his name when I came across a roster for the regiment on a Web site, I thought we must be related, since there are very few people named Alpheus,” Davison said. According to Davison’s research, Alpheus and a sister were slaves owned by William Shaver in Marion County when the Civil War broke out.

“Both Jeremiah and his sister, Allison, were in William Shaver’s last will, to be freed upon his death,” Davison said. “Two other sisters had already been freed.” Since Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation did not cover slaves living in the section of Virginia that would become West Virginia, precisely when or how Jeremiah Alpheus became a free man remains a mystery. Davison marvels at what it must have been like “to go from being a slave to fighting for your country in such a short period.”

'People don’t understand why blacks volunteered to fight’
Despite Civil War service by more than 170,000 African-Americans, nearly one-third of whom died in the struggle, equality remained elusive for blacks in the military for generations.
“Dad went through the same thing in World War II,” said Davison. “He was in an all-black unit, the 320th Antiaircraft Barrage Balloon battalion. On D-Day, they landed on Omaha Beach with the Rangers, and got shot at as they set up their Volkswagen-sized balloons, which were tethered to 2,000-foot cables, to keep German airplanes from strafing the beach.

People don’t understand why blacks volunteered to fight in the Civil War, or why Japanese-Americans fought in World War II despite the way they were being treated,” said Davison, a Navy Vietnam veteran who served with a Marine reconnaissance unit. “But the answer’s simple — we fight to serve our country. It’s not politics, it’s our home.”

Davison said he treasures the West Virginia Civil War service medal he collected in behalf of his ancestor. “It’s a unique medal,” he said. “I plan to pass it along to my daughter.” In addition to having roots in 19th century West Virginia, Davison’s mother is a native of the state.

“Whenever I cross the border into West Virginia now, I wonder who from my family might have spent time there and what their lives were like. It’s a different feeling now. It feels more like home.” Carroll said one reason so few state Civil War medals have been claimed by descendants of the men of the 45th is that “there were so few records kept for black people prior to the 1880 Census.” Also, many men in the regiment did not come from West Virginia, or return here after the war.

For those wanting to determine whether an ancestor served in the all-black West Virginia unit, the State Archives and History Library has available a document titled “List of colored men mustered into the service of the United States, to the credit of the State of West Virginia, since April, 1864, assigned to the 45th Regiment U.S. Colored Troops.” The list names each soldier, his date of enlistment and discharge, and sometimes the city and county of birth. Descendants who can show documented evidence that they are related to a soldier in one of the regiment’s two West Virginia companies are entitled to file a claim for the medal issued to that man. A Web page maintained by Linda Fluharty, www.lindapages.com/45/cw-45us.htm, has more information about the 45th, and includes a list of soldiers whose names appear on the unclaimed medals.

Source: http://sundaygazettemail.com/section/News/2007120818

CWL --- Faithful Traitors: The Creation of West Virginia

The Tarnished Thirty-Fifth Star, C. Stuart McGehee, in Virginia at War, 1861, William C. Davis and James I. Robertson, Jr., University of Kentucky, 2005, pp. 149-158.

"I should show those traitors at Richmond . . . that we are not to be transferred like the cattle on the hills or the slaves on their plantations, without our knowledge and consent," wrote a delegate from Ohio County, Virginia upon hearing of the April 1861 secession ordinance. Because of sentiments like this one and due to the fact the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad passed through the northern counties of Virginia, 20,000 Union troops were rushed into the region immediately after the ordinance passed in a May plebiscite.

In the summer skirmishes of Philippi, Rich Mountain and Carnifex Ferry Union troops roughly handled Confederate forces. Within two years, this region would repudiate Virginia secession ordinace and choose to remain in the Union. The Mountain State was offically recognized on June 20, 1863 in a ceremony at Wheeling, which lies about 20 miles from Pennsylvania to the east and the width of the Ohio River from Ohio on the west. Voters who had cast their ballots for Breckinridge in the 1860 presidential election, were soon to be voting in the 1864 election.

The completion of the state's constitution in February 1862 provided for a govenor with a two-year term, established the position of lieutenant governor, withdrew the powers of county courts and gave them to newly formed townships, established an appellate court system, switched to paper ballots from voice ballots in all elections, created three new counties, made Wheeling the state capital, institution a state wide system of education with support for teacher training colleges (normal schools), put a university in Morgantown and a state prison in Moundsville and exluded negroes from the state. The U.S. Congress sent the document back to the assembly, the exclusion clause was removed and the document sent back to the U.S. Congress, which then accepted it. The likely first governor of West Virginia dropped out of the race, when the negroe exclusion clause was removed.

In Washington, D. C. Lincoln and his party relished the forthcoming Republican delegation which Democrats reviewed what the Constitution said about no state being created from a that was already in the Union. Lincoln signed the bill that admitted the new state of West Virginia on December 31, 1862 not quite 24 hours before the Emancipation Proclamation was signed on January 1, 1863. Fifty counties of the Old Dominion, a number greater than the new state's founders imagined, came into the Union. West Virginia's membership in the Union was a mixed blessing for the Republican Party. The citizens of the state were primarily Democrats and validated their memberships in the party in the next several national elections. By 1870, the founders were out of office.

The history of West Virginia, as it was written in the first 125 years, did not speak of the intense political animosities between the Republican founders and the Democratic voters. State history as taught in the Mountaineer school books often deflected, disguised or hid elements of the intense political, social and economic struggles of West Virginia families. The school books attempted to generate pride for a state whose national reputation included stereotypes of hillbillies and mountain dew. The books reported that the creation of West Virginia in 1862-1863 was a product of genuine loyalty to the Union, a devotion to democracy, and the nation as a whole. C. Stuart McGehee, the essay's author, states that "history is not an instrument of patriotic sympathy; it is the effort to study the past to undestand the rpesent and learn lesons that may help prepare for a brighter future."

On West Virginia's Civil War: http://www.randolphcountywv.com/HistoricSites/CivilWarDrivingTouroftheHeartofWestVirginia.htm