Turkey Break

There won’t be much – if any – activity here for a while as I take a little holiday break.  Nope, no burnout.  I do have some posts to make, but won’t be able to get to them for a week or so.  Anyway, I try only to post when I a) have something to say and b) have the time.  This is a case of b.  When things break, I’ll finish four more posts on my Springfield trip, and hope to pick up the pace with Resources posts.  While I’m away from the blog, take some time to surf around it – go to the resources section; click on some of the tags in the tag cloud in the lower part of the right hand margin.  Also look for me in print in the upcoming Civil War Times magazine – I think I have a news item and a book review in there.  Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Manassas News

Reader Keith Yoder sent these links (here and here) regarding preservation efforts/studies at Manassas National Battlefield Park.  The first summarizes the situation, and the second is a PDF document of the Prince William County study in question.  I think he may have sent me these as a result of some of the comments made to the Dress-Up post.  Check them out.

Rowland Ward

A while back I ran this article explaining my tag line to the right (Dulce Bellum Inexpertis).  Today I received a message from Charles Mills, a descendant of the man pictured in that article.

Rowland Ward was my great-great-grandfather. Born in 1818 in Lincolnshire, England, he came to America as a young man and settled in Hunts Hollow, NY. This is just south of Letchworth State Park. He raised a family there. He enlisted in the NY 4th Heavy Artillery. Some of his early training took place on the Parade Grounds that still exist in the park. Assigned to Fort Ethan Allen, he helped man the heavy guns which protected Washington, DC. Grant reassigned many of these units to combat duty in the Spring of 1864. He was at the Battle of the Wilderness. After his massive injury at Reams Station, the Confederates initially captured him but gave him back to the Union medical people. He spent a year at Lincoln General Hospital before returning home. Remarkably, he lived until 1898 in Hunts Hollow. On a government pension, he outlived his first wife and remarried. Apparently he had some celebrity status in the area. We have photos of the reconstructive process. He grew a beard to cover the injury. I believe his food intake was limited to soft and liquid foods for the rest of his life. My grandfather had fond memories of him from his youth. He was able to verbally communicate to some extent. He had a lot of heart problems after the injury. He is buried in Hunts Hollow.

Thanks for the background on Rowland Ward.  One of the really gratifying things about writing this blog is hearing from kin of the folks discussed here. It’s nice to know that Ward’s story had a not so unhappy ending.   From page 150 of Photographic Atlas of Civil War Injuries, here are some images of Ward’s surgical progress (click on the image for a larger version – click the larger image for a ginormous one):

Dress-Up

Kevin Levin has posted this article over at Civil War Memory.  I have no dog in this fight: I am not nor have I ever been a re-enactor or “living historian”, whatever that means.  And I don’t attend – purposely, anyway – re-enactments.  I was vaguely planning to be in the area for the 150th anniversary of the battle, in part because I’ve been considering joining the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, and friend Robert Moore tells me the national convention of that organization is planned for 2011 in Manassas.  $350,000 ($100,000 from Manassas, $250,000 from the State of Virginia) seems like a lot of scratch, even in these times when government dollars are basically Monopoly money.

Diaries and Letters

I don’t know how many of you have noticed this, but there are very few published collections of soldiers’ diaries and letters that discuss First Bull Run.  I sometimes run across various sites that have letters transcribed on them, and I think I’ll start a new section on my links page for them.  But here’s how you can help:

If you have in your possession any diaries or letters written by campaign participants or even civilian commentators, please let me know via this comments section. 

If you’d like to share any family diaries or letters here, that’s great – I’ll include attribution, and if you want to provide a biographical sketch of the writer that can be generally confirmed I’ll include that too.  Images of the documents themselves are a plus – I have to be responsible and try to limit the risk of posting phony stuff.

And, if you know of a published work or website, even if it should be obvious to me, shout it out.

Letter above by a civilian observer from this site.

CWPT Website

The Civil War Preservation Trust (CWPT) has resource pages for various battles, including First Bull Run here.  There’s some pretty cool stuff there, including a link to a video tour by R. E. L. Krick, and also one to Bull Runnings.  Check it out.

Good Job, True Blood Writers!

I was watching an older episode of HBO’s True Blood series in which Bill Compton, aka Vampire Bill, was addressing a historical society.  He mentioned that he served during the Civil War (remember, he’s a vampire) in the 28th Louisiana Infantry, formed in 1862 under a Colonel Gray.  Later in the episode, he recalled making his way back home to Bon Temps, when he stopped by a cabin in the woods.  The female occupant informed Bill, before turning him into a vampire of course, that her husband was a member of the 13th Louisiana and had fought at Shiloh under Colonel Gibson.  What’s so cool about this?  Well, other than Bill being a vampire and all, it’s historically accurate.  The 28th was raised in 1862 under Colonel Gray (keep in mind there were two 28th LA regiments), and the 13th did fight at Shiloh under Colonel Gibson (who I think was actually in command of his brigade there).  Nice going, guys!  Now, about the yellow trim on Bill’s uniform jacket…

Not So Exciting After All

I was excited.  Author Jack C. Mason had discovered a hundred or so letters written by Israel B. Richardson – mortally wounded as a major-general at Antietam and a colonel and brigade commander in Daniel Tyler’s division at First Bull Run – and used them to produce Until Antietam: The Life and Letters of Major General Israel B. Richardson, U. S. Army.  Great – fair usage would allow me to add to the resources section Richardson’s letters pertaining to Blackburn’s Ford and Bull Run.  After a long wait for the publication, I ordered the book from Amazon and received it last week.  The book is 202 pages of text, and in addition to other sources used Richardson’s unpublished letters as a basis for a full biography.  But silly me, I assumed by something in the title (oh, I don’t know, maybe the Life AND LETTERS part?) that the letters were included.  Sadly they are not.  This may be a kick-ass biography (I don’t know, I haven’t read it yet), but it is not a Life and Letters book.  Oh well, you live and learn

Springfield, IL: Part III – Lincoln-Herndon Law Offices

On Saturday, Oct. 10 this year my family and I visited the Lincoln-Herndon Law Offices in Springfield, IL (see overview of the trip here).  After our tour of the Abraham Lincoln Home National Historic Site, we headed to 6th and Adams Streets where the offices are located across Adams from the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln served in the legislature.  It was pretty cool to realize how closely these three critical Lincoln sites are situated to one another.  Adams St. from 6th to 5th is closed off into one of those urban malls that were all the rage in the 1970s.  Unlike most of those, however, this one seems to work, probably due to the tourist factor.

The law offices are maintained by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, and for now, at least, it is open on Saturday.  The building is three stories, and when Lincoln had offices there from 1843 to 1852 with first Stephen Logan and later William Herndon, they were located on the third floor.  Exactly where is not certain, but it is believed they were on the 6th St. side, two floors above the Post Office – the left end of the building in the first image below.  The building in Lincoln’s day extended further up Adams, but that part of it was demolished later, so it is possible that the actual space occupied by Lincoln’s offices is gone.

   

Our tour began on the first floor, where we heard some of the story of the building’s use and learned a little about the post office.

   

The Federal court and offices were located on the second floor.  The old Capitol can be seen out the window of the courtroom in the front of the building.

       

Then to the third floor, which has a recreation of the Lincoln-Herndon office as described by Herndon, but set up in the front of the building.  Two long tables were arranged in a “T”, and a couch representing a custom seven-footer upon which Lincoln would lounge to read the paper each morning sat in a corner.  The room in the last picture is where the office was more likely located, in the rear above the Post Office.

   

The Lincoln-Herndon Law Offices is a must-see, despite some questions about where the actual office was located.

Part I

Part II

Part IV

Part V

Irvin McDowell in America’s Civil War Magazine

The January 2010 issue of America’s Civil War magazine features an article by author and fellow blogger Michael Hardy, Irvin McDowell: The Most Unpopular Man in America.  Let me start by saying that Mr. Hardy is a fine writer, and this article is a good read.  Not a lot gets written about McDowell (see here), and anything that starts a discussion of the man is a good thing.  However, since some of the opinions or characterizations in the article are generally at odds with my own as stated here on several occasions, I think I’m obliged to address them.  I’ll add that I’m at odds with just about everybody over these issues, not just Mr. Hardy.

I: McDowell’s Rank

Mr. Hardy writes that McDowell’s promotion to brigadier general displeased Winfield Scott; that Scott would have preferred the promotion went to Joseph Mansfield, and that Mansfield held a rank superior to McDowell.  All-in-all, these facts are true, but their juxtaposition implies that Scott’s objection was born strictly of preference.  As I pointed out here, rank and seniority weren’t the most important things in the antebellum army – they were the only things.  As a 1st lieutenant and brevet major who never had a field command, McDowell was very low on the army’s totem pole.  Mansfield, for example, had been a full colonel since 1853.  I think Scott’s problems with McDowell’s elevation make a little more sense in light of this fact.

II: McDowell’s Connections

Mr. Hardy also writes that in the early days of the Lincoln administration, McDowell “quickly impressed Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, a fellow Ohioan.”  As I discussed here, I’m not sure that this “impression” was as serendipitous as is generally assumed.  McDowell’s grandfather was a politico in Kentucky, his father had been mayor of Columbus, and McDowell himself had attended the U. S. Military Academy, indicating some political influence or connection.  As Mr. Hardy points out, McDowell was also a cousin by marriage of Ohio Governor William Dennison.  Later, McDowell would take an active role in preparations for the marriage of Chase’s daughter Kate to Rhode Island Governor William Sprague, and later still Ohioan James Garfield would name a son after McDowell.  I think pre-war political connections and the role they may have played in McDowell’s meteoric rise in 1861 need to be examined more closely.

III: McDowell’s Plan

This is the big one.  Mr. Hardy, like most every other person who has written about First Bull Run before him, casts McDowell in the passive role of a man whose plans were undone by circumstances beyond his control:

But the key to McDowell’s plan was out of his hands.  Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston had 11,000 men in the Shenandoah Valley.  Union Maj. Gen. Robert Patterson and his 15,000 man army stationed near Harpers Ferry would have to prevent Johnston from reinforcing the Confederates at Manassas.  A Federal victory depended on Patterson’s success in the Valley.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you probably know that this summary of McDowell’s plan is one with which I disagree vehemently.  The reason for its amazing staying power in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary can be found in the various testimonies before the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War and in the Committee’s report (find it all here).  “What?”, you ask, “Are you saying Johnston’s arrival did not spell defeat for the Federal forces?”  No, what I’m saying is that McDowell’s plan, while assuming Patterson’s success, did not depend on it; because, as I explained here, the plan also assumed that all available CSA forces would be forwarded to the Bull Run line, bringing the force there to 35,000 troops.  That’s maybe a little more than McDowell actually wound up facing, including Johnston.  (In addition, after reading McDowell’s plan you’ll see that it neither anticipated nor depended on celerity as attendant to success.)

These issues aside, I think the article is good and raises some interesting points.  Check it out.

Photo from this site.