What This Cruel War Was Over

by Chandra Manning

  106. Capt. John Ellis, Sixteenth La., to sister, December 12, 1862, Eaglesville, Tenn., E. P. Ellis and Family Papers, CMM Ser. B, Reel 5.

  107. The Vidette, November 2, 1862, Springfield, Tenn., p. 3, TSLA.

  108. Antoine Prudhomme, Second La. Cavalry, to father, October 11, 1862, Camp Vincent, La., Prudhomme Family papers, CMM Ser. B, Reel 15. For a good survey of white fears of black violence see William F. Messner, “Black Violence and White Response: Louisiana, 1862,” Journal of Southern History 41:1 (February 1975), 19–38.

  109. Lt. James Harrison, Fifteenth Ark., to brother, August 2, 1862, Camp Priceville, Miss., James M. Harrison Letters, UAR.

  110. I. A. Dodge, Tex. Cavalry, “The Southern Star,” Public Information Files, ADAH.

  111. Cpl. John Williams, Tenth Va., to sister, November 1, 1862, Battery 2 near Richmond, John A. Williams Letters, VHS.

  112. The Vidette, November 2, 1862, Springfield, Tenn., p. 4, TSLA.

  113. Capt. Christopher Winsmith, First S.C., to father, October 4, 1862, near Winchester, Va., John Christopher Winsmith Papers, MOC.

  114. Chaplain Robert Bunting, Eighth Tex. Cavalry, to Houston Telegraph, February 2, 1863, near Shelbyville, Tenn., Robert Franklin Bunting Papers, TSLA.

  115. In “Reaction in North Carolina to the Emancipation Proclamation,” North Carolina Historical Review 44 (January 1976), 53–71, Harold Moser argues that the Emancipation Proclamation divided public opinion in North Carolina, alienating many ordinary Confederates by making the war explicitly about slavery rather than “states’ rights” (undefined by Moser). The analysis here, which comes to the opposite conclusion, is based on soldiers’ responses to the proclamation, while Moser included no testimony from soldiers.

  116. Pvt. John Street, Eighth Tex., to wife, October 2, 1862, Miss., John K. and Melinda East Street Papers, SHC.

  117. The Reveille, December 4, 1862, Shelbyville, Tenn., pp. 1–2, TSLA.

  118. Pvt. Jonathan Doyle, Fourth La., to Maggie, May 27, 1863, Jackson, Miss., Josiah Knighton Family Papers, CMM Ser. B, Reel 11.

  119. Lt. David Ballenger, Twenty-sixth Ala., to wife Nancy, March 22, 1863, Caroline Co., Va., David Ballenger Papers, SCL.

  120. Pvt. James Branscomb, Third Ala., to sister, March 8, 1863, Branscomb Family Letters, ADAH.

  121. Pvt. Hodijah Meade, Richmond Howitzers, to brother, February 12, 1863, near Harrison’s Crossing, Va., Meade Family Papers, CMM Ser. A, Reel 27.

  122. Sgt. Archie Livingston, Third Fla., to mother, October 27, 1862, Knoxville, Tenn., Livingston Family Letters, MOC. Livingston also noted that sickness carried off some slaves. See also Capt. John Ellis, Sixteenth La., to sister, October 29, 1862, Knoxville, Tenn., in which Ellis reported that “a good many negroes have gone to the Yankees” (E. P. Ellis and Family Papers, CMM Ser. B, Reel 5). In another instance, Capt. Christopher Winsmith, First S.C., received a letter of July 25, 1862, reporting that a favorite slave had run off (John Christopher Winsmith Papers, MOC).

  123. Lt. Macon Bonner, Co. B, N.C. Artillery, to wife, October 20, 1862, Ft. Fisher, N.C., Macon Bonner Papers, SHC.

  124. Pvt. Leander Parker, Thirtieth Ga., to mother, May 23, 1863, Vaughan Station, Miss., Leander Parker Letters, AHC. See also James Harrison’s fears of equality finding expression in his dream of eating alongside a black man at his Aunt Polly’s house, Chapter 3, note 1, above.

  125. Chaplain Robert Bunting, Eighth Tex. Cavalry, to San Antonio Herald, November 19, 1862, Murfreesboro, Tenn., Robert Franklin Bunting Papers, TSLA.

  126. Cpl. John Williams, Tenth Va., to sister, February 11, 1863, near Richmond, John A. Williams Letters, VHS. See also Capt. William Pegram, Purcell’s Light Artillery, to sister, January 8, 1863, near Port Royal, Va., Pegram-Johnson-McIntosh Papers, VHS.

  127. Pvt. J. W. Gambill, Twenty-first Tex. Cavalry, to wife, January 10, 1863, Des Arc, Ark., J. W. Gambill Letters, UAR.

  128. Surgeon John Kinyoun, Sixty-sixth N.C., to wife, September 15, 1862, Hinder Hospital, Va., John Kinyoun Papers, DU.

  4: “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory ”: The War and the Hand of God

  1. Lt. J. Q. A. Campbell, Fifth Iowa, diary, July 4, 1863, near Vicksburg, Miss., in Grimsley and Miller, The Union Must Stand, 110.

  2. Surgeon Thomas Hawley, 111th Ill., to parents, July 5, 1863, Young’s Point, La., Thomas S. Hawley Papers, MOHS.

  3. Pvt. Lewis Bissell, Second Conn. Heavy Artillery, to brother, July 4, 1863, Fort Lyon, Va., in Mark Olcott and David Lear, eds., The Civil War Letters of Lewis Bissell (Washington, D.C.: Field Educational School Foundation, 1981), 132.

  4. The Union Volunteer, July 10, 1863, Louisville, Ky., ISHL. Quotation from p. 2. The Union Volunteer was the camp newspaper of Illinois soldiers in Louisville.

  5. Pvt. Joseph Scroggs, 104th Ohio, diary, July 4, 1863, Marine Hospital, Cincinnati, Joseph Scroggs Diary, CWTIC.

  6. Cpl. Rufus Kinsley, Eighth Vt., diary, July 19, 1863, New Orleans, Rufus Kinsley Diary, VTHS.

  7. For more on the application of antebellum northern millennialism to the Civil War, see Robert Bellah, The Broken Covenant, 53–56; Miller, Stout, and Wilson, Religion and the American Civil War, esp. the Introduction and ch. 1, “Religion and the American Civil War,” by Phillip Paludan; and Moorhead, American Apocalypse, ix–x, chs. 2 and 3. Bellah in particular argues that the Civil War made the long-developing “fusion” between “Protestant covenant theology and republican liberty…complete” and cites “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address as evidence (53).

  8. Lt. J. Q. A. Campbell, Fifth Iowa, diary, November 12, 1863, near Winchester, Tenn., in Grimsley and Miller, The Union Must Stand, 131.

  9. 2d Lt. Sam Evans, Fifty-ninth U.S. Colored Troops, to father, September 15, 1863, LaGrange, Tenn., Evans Family Papers, OHS.

  10. The Corinth Chanticleer, July 31, 1863, Corinth, Miss., p. 2, MNHS. The Corinth Chanticleer was the regimental newspaper of the Second Iowa. See also “No Failure for the North,” Stars and Stripes, 1:1, December 1, 1863, Jacksonport, Ark., UAR. Stars and Stripes was the newspaper of the Third Mo. Cavalry (Union).

  11. Sgt. James Jessee, Eighth Ill., diary, December 31, 1863, Helena, Ark., James W. Jessee Diaries, KU. A New Hampshire soldier agreed that God had sent a “durstructive war” as a rebuke to all who, through sins of commission or omission, allowed slavery to woo them away from “the side of truth and rite.” See Pvt. Roswell Holbrook, Fourteenth N.H., to cousin, January 11, 1864, Washington, D.C., Roswell Holbrook Letters, VTHS.

  12. Pvt. Ransom Bedell, Thirty-ninth Ill., “American Slavery,” an original essay written for his cousin, summer 1863, Ransom Bedell Papers, ISHL.

  13. Pvt. (acts as Assistant Surgeon) Robert Winn, Third Ky. Cavalry, to sister, November 20, 1863, and December 11, 1863, Bowling Green, Ky., Winn-Cook Papers, FC.

  14. Pvt. Henry Matrau, Sixth Wis., to parents, July 29, 1863, and August 16, 1863, Rappahannock Station, Va., in Marcia Reid-Green, ed., Letters Home: Henry Matrau of the Iron Brigade (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 59–62. I am indebted to Jim Reid for first drawing my attention to Matrau’s reaction to Gettysburg.

  15. Cornelia Hancock to sister, July 14, 1863, Gettysburg, Pa., and Hancock, undated essay, in Henrietta Stratton Jaquette, ed., South After Gettysburg: Letters of Cornelia Hancock from the Army of the Potomac, 1863–1865 (New York: Crowell, 1956), 10, 7.

  16. On the draft riots, see Iver Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); and Adrian Cook, The Armies of the Streets: The New York City Draft Riots of 1863 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1974). On pp. 196–97, Cook details the class and occupations of the rioters, and notes that two-thirds of the rioters whose place of birth is known were born in Ireland. Some Northerners interpreted the riots mainly as one more reason to distrust the Irish. A Protestant immigrant from the northern Irish county of Derry was di
sgusted but not surprised by reports that “the Irish papist has raised a great roit in new york.” He wished that all Irish Catholics would be “sent out of this Country.” Pvt. William McSparron, Fifty-first Pa., to niece, July 30, 1863, New Vernon, Pa., recovering from wound to jaw, in William McSparron Letters, PRONI. Upper-class New Yorkers in particular exploited the opportunities presented by the draft riots to vent long-standing hatred of the Irish. Elite lawyer George Templeton Strong maintained that “every brute in the drove [of rioters] was pure Celtic-hod-carrier or loafer,” and claimed that he would “like to see war made on Irish scum.” George Templeton Strong diary, July 13, 1863; July 30, 1863. Some newspapers, such as the New York Evening Post and the New York Times, also characterized the rioters as Irish rabble. In fact, hostility between Irish and native-born ran so high in New York that Catholic Archbishop John Hughes was compelled to deliver a public address calling for peace, restraint, and good behavior. For many Irish Catholic Union soldiers, the riots constituted a gigantic embarrassment. Peter Welsh was mortified that “the Irish men of New York took so large a part in them disgracefull riots,” in part because he regarded the riots as hateful and disloyal, and in part because such behavior provided Americans who harbored anti-Irish prejudice “an opportunity to malighn and abuse” the entire ethnic group. See Sgt. Peter Welsh, Twenty-eighth Mass., to wife, July 17, 1863, Pleasant Valley, Md., and July 22, 1863, Bloomfield, Va., in Lawrence Frederick Kohl and Margaret Cosse Richard, Irish Green and Union Blue: The Civil War Letters of Peter Welsh, Color Sergeant, 28th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers (New York: Fordham University Press, 1986), 115. Although Adrian Cook’s account is thorough and largely persuasive, his interpretation of the riots as primarily instances of lashing out at government authority does not seem quite complete, since attacks on nongovernmental institutions such as churches, and on private homes, indicate that mobs were striking out against many forms of authority, not simply at governmental authority.

  17. Although sources at the time counted the death toll as high as 1,462, Cook, in Armies of the Streets, shows that 105 riot-related deaths can be documented with certainty, and 14 more might have been attributable to the riots (193–94). In The New York City Draft Riots, Bernstein does not materially dispute Cook, though he leaves more room for uncertainty and posits between 100 and 150 deaths (288 n. 8). The number of wounded was much higher, and harder to establish. Cook estimates the number of seriously wounded at 128, and admonishes that there is no way to determine the number of slightly wounded (195). Finally, he notes that the names of 352 rioters can be positively identified, but the actual number of rioters was many times that number (195). As Bernstein points out, a “precise body count” of rioters or their casualties is “impossible to draw up,” but the riots can still safely be called “by far the most violent civil disorder in nineteenth-century America” (288).

  18. Reilly was the Missouri private who in March had accused the federal government of turning into a “bold Highwayman [who] says to every man in the loyal states ‘three hundred dollars or your life!’” thanks to commutation (see Chapter 3). Pvt. Phillip Reilly, Twenty-ninth Mo., to brother, March 31, 1863, before Vicksburg, Miss., Phillip A. Reilly Letters, UMOR.

  19. Pvt. Lewis Bissell, Second Conn. Heavy Artillery, to father, July 26, 1863, Fort Lyon, Va., in Olcott and Lear, The Civil War Letters of Lewis Bissell, 139. Hermon Clarke agreed that soldiers felt “anything but friendly” toward riot-inciting troublemakers. See Sgt. Hermon Clarke, 117th N.Y., to brother, July 23, 1863, Camp Haskins, Va., in Henry F. Jackson and Thomas F. O’Donnell, eds., Back Home in Oneida: Hermon Clarke and His Letters (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1965), 94.

  20. Lt. Peter Eltinge, 156th N.Y., to father, August 5, 1863, Baton Rouge, La., Eltinge-Lord Family Papers, DU.

  21. Pvt. Chauncey Cooke, Twenty-fifth Wis., to mother, July 25, 1863, Snyder’s Bluff, Miss., in “A Badger Boy in Blue: The Letters of Chauncey H. Cooke,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 4:4 (June 1921), 454.

  22. G.E.S., Fifty-fourth Mass., to Editor, August 7, 1863, Morris Island, S.C., A-A, August 24, 1863, p. 1.

  23. Pvt. Joseph Scroggs, 104th Ohio, diary, October 12, 1863, hospital in Cincinnati, Joseph Scroggs Diary, CWTIC; Pvt. Chauncey Welton, 103d Ohio, to parents, October 13, 1863, near Knoxville, Tenn., Chauncey B. Welton Letters, SHC. See also The Knapsack, September 3, 1863, Gauley Bridge, W.Va., p. 2, DU. One column predicted that Vallandigham would not get a single vote from anyone in the regiment, and elsewhere the paper instructed Ohio soldiers on how to mail their ballots properly.

  24. For more on soldier animosity toward Vallandigham, which the author maintains was much stronger than civilian antipathy, see Frank L. Klement, The Limits of Dissent: Clement L. Vallandigham and the Civil War (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1970), 234–35, 240–43. See also Allan Nevins, The War for the Union, vol. 3, The Organized War (New York: Scribner, 1971), 177. John Brough’s party affiliation defied easy categorization. A lifelong Democrat, he broke with the Peace Democrats, but never officially joined the Republicans. For a while he called himself a member of the “Union Party,” which included Republicans and War Democrats. After the war some Republicans claimed him, but Brough himself died in 1865 before the collapse of the Union Party coalition, and therefore before having any reason to identify himself as a Republican. Keeping his affiliation fluid in 1863–65 served his purposes. Historians who identify Brough as a War Democrat include John Niven in Salmon P. Chase: A Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) and Eugene H. Roseboom and Francis P. Weisenburger in History of Ohio (Columbus: Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, 1954). Thank you to Christine Dee for helping me sort through Brough’s convoluted political identity.

  25. Sgt. John Baldwin, Seventy-fourth Ohio, to wife, October 18, 1863, Stevenson, Ala., John W. Baldwin Papers, OHS. Brough won with 61 percent of the total vote, including 94 percent of the soldiers’ vote. See Klement, Limits of Dissent; and McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 688.

  26. Lt. John Inskeep, Seventeenth Ohio, diary, October 18, 1863, Chattanooga, Tenn., John Inskeep Diary, OHS. Isaac Raub of the 105th Ohio claimed that Vallandigham “did not get a vote in our regiment,” while Julius Wood reported results in the Ninety-sixth to be 230 for Brough to 5 for Vallandigham. See Pvt. Isaac Raub, 105th Ohio, to wife, October 25, 1863, Chattanooga, Tenn., James Nesbitt-Isaac Raub Papers, WRHS; Pvt. Julius Wood, Ninety-sixth Ohio, to family, October 17, 1863, near Vermillion, La., E. G. Wood Family Papers, WRHS. The Chattanooga Army Bulletin reported that among Ohio soldiers in Libby Prison, Richmond, who mailed their ballots to Columbus, Ohio, Vallandigham had not received a single vote. The Chattanooga Army Bulletin, December 25, 1863, Chattanooga, Tenn., p. 3, WRHS.

  27. Cpl. George Cadman, Thirty-ninth Ohio, to wife, October 18, 1863, Memphis, Tenn., George Cadman Hovey Letters, TSLA. Cadman was an immigrant who had not yet attained citizenship status or voting rights, and he claimed that the same was true of many in his regiment. If he and other nonvoters had a say, he maintained, “Brough’s vote would have been much larger.”

  28. Ordnance Sgt. John Marshall, Ninety-seventh Ohio, journal sent to wife, October 15–17, 1863, John Wesley Marshall Papers, OHS. Civilians also opposed Vallandigham (though by a narrower margin); as Frank Klement and Allan Nevins have shown, soldiers were more emphatic in their opposition.

  29. Pvt. (acts as Ass’t Sgn.) Robert Winn, Third Ky. Cavalry, to sister, October 28, 1863, Bowling Green, Ky., Winn-Cook Papers, FC. The necessity of emancipation to end the war and prevent its recurrence by rooting out the cause stands out as the most common theme (aside from personal topics) in soldiers’ letters in this time period. In addition to soldiers cited above, see (among others) Pvt. Frederick Pettit, One Hundredth Pa., to father, August 15, 1863, Camp Nelson, Ky., in Gavin, Infantryman Pettit, 106; “Death of Slavery,” an original poem by Pvt. John Hamer, Fifty-fourth Pa., for his sister, August 23, 1863, Romney, Va., John and Samuel Hamer Papers, HC
WRTC; Pvt. Samuel Richards, Sixteenth Conn., to friend, August 31, 1863, Portsmouth, Va., Samuel F. Richards Letters, CWTIC; Sgt. Adelbert Bly, Thirty-second Wis., to sweetheart, November 1863, Memphis, Tenn., Adelbert M. Bly Correspondence, SHSW; Capt. James Lawrence, Sixty-first Ill., to wife, December 19, 1863, Little Rock, Ark., James Lawrence Letters, UAR; Sgt. James Jessee, Eighth Ill., diary, December 31, 1863, Helena, Ark., James W. Jessee Diaries, KU; Pvt. Constant Hanks, Twentieth N.Y. Militia, to mother, January 4, 1864, near Brandy Station, Va., Constant Hanks Papers, DU; Sgt. E. C. Hubbard, Thirteenth Ill., to brother, January 17, 1864, Woodville, Ala., E. C. Hubbard Letters, UAR; Sgt. Hervey Howe, Eighty-ninth N.Y., to brother, January 30, 1864, Folly Island, S.C., Hervey Lane Howe Letters, SU.

  30. In Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War, Eric Foner discusses the concern of northern Republicans with the threat that slavery posed to the status and advancement of white farmers and laborers. A wide array of Union troops, Republican and Democrat, voiced similar concerns in the first year of the war. While some soldiers still made similar observations when Sherman’s army marched through Georgia and the Carolinas in late 1864 and 1865, the theme of slavery’s blighting effects on free white labor captured comparatively less attention than it had in the early part of the war.

  31. Sgt. James Jessee, Eighth Ill., diary, December 31, 1863, Helena, Ark., James W. Jessee Diaries, KU.

  32. Pvt. Levi Hines, First Vt. Artillery, to parents, May 10, 1864, Fort Slemmer, D.C., Levi Hines Papers, Schoff. Hines was especially sensitive to the effect of name tarnishing; he had grown up in an otherwise upright Vermont farming family that suffered humiliation as a result of the exploits of one black-sheep brother. Maj. James Connolly, an Illinois former Democrat, also referred to the need to relieve the nation of “its incubus of slavery.” See Connolly to wife, June 9, 1864, near Acworth, Ga., in Paul M. Angle, ed., Three Years in the Army of the Cumberland: The Letters and Diaries of Major James A. Connolly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1959), 217.