Strange and Obscure Stories of the Civil War

by Tim Rowland

  A young orphan named John Rowlands suffered a miserable upbringing in Wales, spending his formative years at an abusive workhouse before jumping a ship to New Orleans as a teenager. There, Rowlands caught the attention of a wealthy trader named Henry Hope Stanley who treated the boy as his own son. He groomed the young man in business and became the father Rowlands never had. In tribute, Rowlands took the name of Henry as well as the Stanley name.

  The newly anointed Stanley wound up running a store in a rough-and-tumble county in Arkansas, where in 1860 talk of secession was all the rage. The immigrant viewed politics as “too dry,” and only read the local papers for their shipping and commerce news. But increasingly, news of the secession and impending war could not be ignored. Without much luck, Stanley tried to get it through his head that the merchants and business associates in Cincinnati were now to be considered his “enemies.”

  Still, the entire county got war fever and it eventually swept up a reluctant Stanley—but only after he received a package from an unnamed girl that included a set of women’s underwear. This was a tactic of Southern fire-eating women, designed to shame reluctant fellows into battle by raising questions about their gender. “[I]nflamed as the men and youths were,” Stanley wrote, “the warlike fire that burned within their breasts was as nothing to the intense heat that glowed within the bosoms of the women. No suggestion of compromise was possible in their presence. If every man did not hasten to the battle, they vowed they would themselves rush out and meet the Yankee vandals. In a land where women are worshipped by the men, such language made them war-mad.” He knew enough to enlist.

  As a recent immigrant fighting for the South, Stanley was something of an oddity, but making matters worse was his complete disinterest in politics—he needed to learn Southern politics on the fly from his fellow soldiers as their feet blistered under the strain of their first lengthy march. War made for teachable moments, such as the instruction that it was OK to go out and steal food from Unionists. “Secretly, I was persuaded that it was as wrong to rob a poor Unionist as a Secessionist; but the word ‘foraging,’ which, by general consent, was bestowed on such deeds, mollified my scruples.”

  The men spent the winter of 1861- 1862 in winter quarters, fighting only bad weather, poor food, and flu. When Forts Henry and Donelson on the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers fell in February—the North’s first significant land victories—the troops were hustled by foot and rail to a place that became known as Shiloh on the Tennessee River, with the idea of stopping the successful advance of an army under the command of Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.

  Everything up until “Shiloh, Bloody Shiloh” had been child’s play. Dangerous, to be sure—a fellow could get hurt—but nothing on the scale of Shiloh, where rows of men were dropped in their tracks, courtesy of two massive armies opposite each other standing, pointing, and shooting. After Shiloh, nothing would be a total shock. Before Shiloh, no one had a clue. Certainly not Stanley:

  Day broke with every promise of a fine day. Next to me, on my right, was a boy of seventeen, Henry Parker. I remember it because, while we stood-at-ease, he drew my attention to some violets at his feet, and said, “It would be a good idea to put a few into my cap. Perhaps the Yanks won’t shoot me if they see me wearing such flowers, for they are a sign of peace.” “Capital,” said I, “I will do the same.” We plucked a bunch, and arranged the violets in our caps. The men in the ranks laughed at our proceedings, and had not the enemy been so near, their merry mood might have been communicated to the army.

  The troops stood in rank for half an hour prior to sunrise, as Southern commanders took care of last-minute details. Then forward, through field and wood the men marched, anxious and curious at once, for many had never experienced anything beyond a light skirmish. They didn’t know what to expect. They didn’t know how much farther they had to march before meeting the enemy. They didn’t know—a roar of gunfire erupting from the left interrupted their daydreaming, and Stanley knew at least one regiment had found action. Within minutes it was his turn. “There was another explosive burst of musketry, the air was pierced by many missiles, which hummed and pinged sharply by our ears, pattered through the tree-tops, and brought twigs and leaves down on us. ‘Those are bullets,’ Henry whispered with awe.” In an instant, the world as they knew it disintegrated around them, in a sheet of sound, flame, and smoke. As Stanley looked his comrades over, there was no sign of patriotism now, just survival. “[I]t was impossible for me to discover what they thought of it; but, by transmission of sympathy, I felt that they would gladly prefer to be elsewhere.”

  The miracle of Shiloh, in some regards, is that it wasn’t worse. But storms of projectiles aren’t conducive to concentration and a lot of men, hearts pounding, loaded and fired, aiming only in the general direction of the enemy. This was typical. In the chaos, soldiers were known to pack round after round into their weapons without tearing open the powder, dutifully ramming home bullets that would never fire. A horrible embarrassment it was to forget to remove the ramrod from the barrel before pulling the trigger, sending it flying across the battlefield.

  Nor was it easy to see the target, for the thick smoke of spent gunpowder that hung over every battlefield. Stanley said he could not see the faces of his enemies, and was only aware of a haze of blue across the field as he and some members of his company took shelter behind a fallen log and poked their guns through a fifteen-inch gap between the timber and the ground. On one side of him, curiosity got the better of a soldier who popped his head over the log like a prairie dog and was immediately greeted with a bullet square in his forehead. Slowly, “he turned on his back and showed his ghastly white face to the sky.” On the other side, a soldier stretched “as if to yawn” and turned toward Stanley, his face destroyed by a lucky shot that had traveled under the log and lengthwise through the man, the ball finally lodging in his chest.

  But it was a terrible period! How the cannon bellowed, and their shells plunged and bounded, and flew with screeching hisses over us! Their sharp rending explosions and hurtling fragments made us shrink and cower, despite our utmost efforts to be cool and collected. I marvelled, as I heard the unintermitting patter, snip, thud, and hum of the bullets, how anyone could live under this raining death. I could hear the balls beating a merciless tattoo on the outer surface of the log, pinging vivaciously as they flew off at a tangent from it, and thudding into something or other, at the rate of a hundred a second.

  A shell mangled young Henry Parker’s foot and left him wailing for his company to wait up. But, of course, waiting was not the plan. By single steps or full-out charges, the Confederates were pushing back the stubborn Federals and slowly but surely winning the field. In the middle of the advance, Stanley was knocked senseless by a bullet that hit him in the belt buckle. He would not regain his faculties until early in the afternoon, when he scrambled back to the ever-advancing front.

  The Federals had been caught that morning sleepily boiling their coffee and leisurely pulling on their pants. That part of the Confederate plan at Shiloh had worked perfectly. As the Southern army advanced it overtook the Union tent cities frozen in the time in which their residents had been so rudely awakened. Clothes and blankets were strewn everywhere and Southern soldiers happily traded in their antiquated muskets for the latest U.S. Army–issue rifles that had been left behind. The Confederates called off the attack as darkness approached, and they dropped their exhausted selves beneath the Federal tents and dined on captured Federal rations of biscuits and molasses. Those who were still alive went to sleep believing they had won a great victory.

  After the war, Horace Greeley ran for president against Ulysses Grant and lost. The great newspaper editor retreated to his weekend getaway, where he became known as the Sage of Chappaqua. John Rowlands, aka Henry Stanley, left the Civil War early and went on to become a journalist, among other adventures. In this cartoon from 1872, Stanley comes across the ever-more reclusive Greeley in a jungle. (Courtesy Library of Co
ngress)

  They had, but they hadn’t. As disastrous as the day had been for them, the Yankees caught a couple of breaks. Confederate Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston was killed early in the afternoon, leaving the South in the hands of Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard, who did not have a clear idea of Johnston’s tactical plan. Second, by 9 AM, two Federal divisions occupied a forward field on a slightly sunken road and for seven hours absolutely refused to budge, no matter what the Rebels threw at them. The position wasn’t strategically important, but Beauregard became obsessed with it and, rather than bypass what would become known as the Hornet’s Nest, he charged it unsuccessfully as many as fourteen times. For the Federals, the Hornet’s Nest had bought them enough time.

  That night a merciless thunderstorm added to everyone’s discomfort, and as Gen. William T. Sherman dragged himself back to headquarters he came across Grant sitting under a tree and contemplatively smoking a cigar, the pouring rain dripping off the brim of his soggy hat. “Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day,” Sherman said. Grant solemnly agreed. Then he took a big long draw on his cigar and blew out a cloud of pungent smoke before adding, “Lick ’em tomorrow, though.”

  The Confederates awoke in the morning to a new, unwelcome deck of cards. The time bought by the Hornet’s Nest and the desperate Union defense had allowed 15,000 reinforcements to move into place at Pittsburg Landing and now the North had a strength advantage approaching 2 to 1.

  The soldiers in Stanley’s regiment made a brief advance before a swell of advancing blue changed their minds. Unfortunately, no one told Stanley, who was leading the advance; he turned to discover Union troops where his comrades had been just a minute before. The young immigrant was now a prisoner of war.

  Although, through his Southern indoctrination, he had considered himself to be among the best of the rabid fire-eaters, Stanley was open to compromise as circumstances made necessary.

  On the way, my guards and I had a discussion about our respective causes, and, though I could not admit it, there was much reason in what they said, and I marvelled that they could put their case so well. For, until now, I was under the impression that they were robbers who only sought to desolate the South, and steal the slaves. But when the Southerners ... began to seize upon government property, forts, arsenals, and war-ships, and to set about establishing a separate system in the country, then the North resolved that this should not be, and that was the true reason of the war. The Northern people cared nothing for the ‘niggers,’ — the slavery question could have been settled in another and quieter way, — but they cared all their lives were worth for their country.

  Along with a number of other forlorn prisoners, Stanley was sent off to prison camp where, due to a multiplicity of miseries, “we were soon in a fair state of rotting, while yet alive … dead to everything but the flitting fancies of the hopeless.”

  There were no blacks in Wales, and Stanley for the life of him could not understand how a race of Africans could intercede between “white brothers.” His allegiance remained primarily with the South on this matter, but after six weeks in the hellish conditions of Camp Douglas, he was not going to allow principle to stand in the way of his right “to die in the fresh air.” He swore an oath to the Union and signed on to a Federal artillery squad, becoming one of a handful of men who fought on both sides. On reaching Harpers Ferry, (West) Virginia, however, the diseases Stanley had been exposed to at Camp Douglas caught up to him. He was discharged from service in June 1862, and, near death, struggled to make his way north to Hagerstown, Maryland. He was taken in and nursed back to health by a family three miles north of Sharpsburg whose house, unbeknownst to them, would in another ninety days be sitting smack on McClellan’s right flank during the devastating Battle of Antietam.

  Stanley went on in life to become a journalist; in his autobiography, he devotes only three chapters to the Civil War, a pity since he was such a marvelously descriptive writer. His writing career took him around the world, and in 1871 he found himself in the African bush surrounded by a friendly, he hoped, tribe of natives. Out of a grass hut stepped a weary-looking white man with a long gray beard and a blue cap.

  Henry Stanley offered his hand and uttered four words that have echoed through history:

  “Dr. Livingstone, I presume.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Horses: Backbone of an Army

  Fifteen years after the war, the shots may have ceased, but the North and South were still arguing over their horses. In an 1878 letter to The Nation, Confederate Gen. Richard Taylor chided Northern horsemen for wearing protective breastplates and strapping themselves to their horses to keep from falling off. In New England, he alleged, “horsemanship is an unknown art.” This lit a fuse under Northern cavalryman J. A. Judson, who felt the need to drop this bomb:

  People in the North certainly do not ride horseback as universally as they do South, and for the good reason that as we here are half a century in advance of most of that region in civilization, as a consequence among other things we have good carriage roads everywhere where we haven’t steam transportation, so that horseback riding, save as a recreation, is unnecessary.

  Communication speed was not then what it is now, and Taylor was dead by the time Judson’s letter in reply was published, so there was no need to separate the two as they threw gloves and paced off ground with their pistols.

  The plight of the horse—his sheer numbers, his numerous duties, his nutritional demands, his struggles, and his impact—might be one of the more severely underreported parts of the war’s history. The average horse in service of the Civil War lasted somewhere between four and eight months before dying from wounds, disease, or exhaustion. More horses died in the war (1 million) than men (618,000). After the Battle of Gettysburg, Lee’s army of Northern Virginia included 6,000 sick or injured horses. “What made us heart-sick,” a soldier wrote, “was to see a stray cavalry or artillery horse, galloping between the lines, snorting with terror, while his entrails, soiled with dust, trailed behind him.”

  But they were the backbone of the armies, and a quartermaster in charge of horses had to line up some serious product. It would not have been remarkable for the horses in one cavalry division alone to require ten tons of hay in a single day. One single cannon required a team of six horses to haul the gun and ammunition chest, while another team hauled more armaments and spare parts. The army diet for a working horse was fourteen pounds of hay and twelve pounds of oats a day. Pasture was not a substitute, because fresh grass didn’t contain enough calories. Hay arrived by the freight car.

  Though it took an average of five rifle shots to bring down a horse, it was a popular target during battle. Putting a team of horses out of commission effectively crippled a big gun. And being harnessed together, one thrashing horse could wreck a team and tear apart any member of the artillery team who happened to become tangled in the leather. Soldiers would have to pull their pistols and shoot the team in total before the dying horse kicked apart man and machine.

  Horses were a tempting target, since they were the engine that ran the war machine. Here, Confederates assess the loss of a team and a caisson knocked out by a Federal artillery shell. (Courtesy National Archives)

  Along with the mighty draft horses of the supply trains and the swift fighting horses of the cavalry, thousands of general utility horses were needed for officers and for pulling ambulances. Moving an army of men was bad; moving an army of horses was a nightmare. When Gen. Robert E. Lee invaded Maryland in 1862, a set of his secret orders fell into Union hands. Armed with this knowledge, swift action on the part of Gen. George McClellan might have quite literally divided and conquered the Rebels on a picturesque plane known as Pleasant Valley. But as the Union supply trains lurched west, they got hung up in hopeless animal gridlock at a crossroads in the small city of Frederick.1

  A Southern officer once remarked that Confederate ground troops teamed with Union artillery could beat any army on earth. There was historic reason for this, and p
art of it involved the horse. Southerners grew up riding elegantly atop their mounts. Northerners were more likely to be riding behind them in a wagon as they plodded to and from the factory. Southern horses could fight. Northern horses could pull machinery. It was the industrialized North against the agrarian South all over again.

  As General Taylor had pointed out, horses were more celebrated in the South. Riding was more of a tradition and horsemanship more of an art. And behind every good horse, there usually stood a good man. None was better than James Ewell Brown Stuart.

  In the hands of Jeb Stuart, a thousand horses were less of a cavalry than a symphony. For the first half of the war, no one could touch him. It was only at Brandy Station, Virginia, in the early summer of 1863 that his horses suffered their first defeat—defeat being relative; Stuart still held the field at day’s end, but his horsemen had been surprised twice and had not downright throttled the enemy as was customary, so the Southern press was not in a charitable mood.

  Expectations for Stuart were that high. Few in military history have been so dominant in their disciplines as Stuart was with his mounts. It took the Federals two years and an untold number of lives to catch up.