Thanks to reader Robert Moore II of Cenantua’s Blog for the numerous contributions he has made to this site over the past few days, while most of us were in turkey induced comas. As a result, I have fixed a couple of inaccuracies in my CSA and CSA Artillery orders of battle (I had conflicting info noted on the OOBs – I try to do that when I’m not sure). Check out the comments to posts here, here, here, and here. Now it’s a question of me getting all this other good stuff incorporated into the site. Thanks Robert for this and all the other help you’ve provided. This type of reader participation is what I had in mind when I started this blog. No blogger is an island.
Lest you think I just take anyone’s “word” for stuff, I do check everything out as much as possible. In the case of the Culpeper/Newtown artillery, Robert is uniquely qualified to render advice because he has authored books on four of the Confederate batteries (including Newtown) present at First Bull Run. These books are part of the Virginia Regimental History Series (VRHS), aka the Howard Series (those thin, gray volumes you see at NPS bookstores). I plan on collecting the volumes for those units present at Bull Run, but individually and new they are not cheap. Anybody want to trade any for OR volumes?
In the course of the flurry of comment exchanges this weekend, I wrote something along the lines of the the following, but it must have gone MIA. Tell me if this is something you’d like to see:
I plan to write regimental biographies, which will work as follows:
- A full biographical sketch based on sources like Dyer, The Union Army, and Crute. This will be easier for USA units than CSA, I think.
Harry Smeltzer
Bull Runnings 
Sie sind willkommen!
Hope I can contribute more as time permits! Nice to work with the company level stuff again. I always enjoy understanding the battles from the “bottom up,” as opposed from the “top down.”
– Robert
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Harry,
The chatter over the weekend about companies and militias being the building block of the armies early in the war….New York City and New York State also had companies and militia units often known by their original names rather than by their regiment numbers or company letters. One comes to mind the 2nd Scott’s Life Guard organized in New York City (38th NY.)
Related, information, …named militia units from New York State appear in an article I found recently in the New York Times archives. What caught my attention with this particular article is the information it contains about militias for the year 1861 which would include those that served during Bull Run 1. If I’m not mistaken one colonel mentioned with the 12th NYSM is Daniel Butterfield who would later in the Civil War become General Butterfield?
The report by New York State’s, Adj-Gen. Thomas Hillhouse, also addresses the peculiar status of militias that volunteered for the war. Questions arose as to how the state’s militia laws should apply in certain instances. Hillhouse uses an election dispute that arose within Co A of the 14th NYSM Regiment as one that set up a precedence in helping to develop criteria when dealing with militia issues. Interesting stuff, article details the early issues confronting New York when faced with raising a volunteer army for the federal cause and at the same time meeting the state’s defense needs with her volunteer militias.
Linda
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9901E2DA113FEE34BC4E52DFB7668389679FDE
Article:
State Military Affairs
Report of Adjutant-General Hillhouse published Jan. 16, 1862.
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Thanks Linda. The 12th NYSM and Butterfield were, I think, with Patterson in the Valley. Amann’s Volume II of Personell of the Civil War covers Northern companies – there are just as many, if not more, company names in the Northern volume as the Southern, and they were just as colorful.
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