91. E.W.D., Fifty-fourth Mass., to Editor, June 9, 1864, Morris Island, S.C., CR, June 25, 1864, p. 1. The same letter continued its jeremiad tone: “Under such wrongs [as unequal treatment] no nation can prosper. If a strong power crush the weak and deprive them of the blessings which God has ordained for them, it must fall. God’s supreme power will break them into pieces that will not obey His righteous laws.”
92. Sgt. Richard White, Fifty-fifth Mass., to Editor, May 1, 1864, Folly Island, S.C., A-A, June 4, 1864, p. 1.
93. Q.M. Sgt. George Binford, Eighteenth Tenn. (CSA), to cousin, March 2, 1864, near Atlanta, Binford Papers, VHS.
94. Pvt. Henry Patrick, Forty-first N.C., to wife, August 13, 1864, near Petersburg, Va., Henry Machen Patrick Letters, NCDAH. Patrick exaggerated the figures: from the battle of the Wilderness through the “Crater” (the failed attack following the mine explosion at Petersburg), Army of the Potomac casualties totaled approximately 65,000. See E. B. Long, The Civil War Day by Day: An Almanac 1861–1865 (New York: DaCapo, 1971), 494, 500, 548; McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 742. Yet Patrick rightly noted the impact of the high casualty count on both Union and Confederate morale.
95. Pvt. Thomas Kelley, unspecified Va. regiment in the ANV, but almost certainly the Thirty-second Va., to cousin, August 30, 1864, Henrico Co., Va., Thomas F. Kelley Papers, DU.
96. Drum Major Douglas Cater, Nineteenth La., to cousin, August 18, 1864, near Atlanta, Douglas J. and Rufus Cater Letters, PAW, Reel 11, Coll. 32.
97. Pvt. Peter Cross, Seventh N.C., to parents, March 30, 1864, Orange, Va., John Wright Family Papers, NCDAH.
98. Sgt. William Pitt Chambers, Forty-sixth Miss., journal, February 1864, Meridian, Miss., to Mobile, Ala., in Richard A. Baumgartner, ed., Blood and Sacrifice: The Civil War Journal of a Confederate Soldier (Huntington, W.Va.: Blue Acorn, 1994), 116–17. By 1864, Chambers also had reason to worry for the safety of Mississippi families at the hands of Confederate deserters and the irregular Confederate forces assigned to round up deserters, both of which preyed on civilians. See Weitz, More Damning Than Slaughter, 203–11.
99. Pvt. Louis Branscomb, Third Ala., to father, February 3, 1864, Camp Terrill, Va., Branscomb Family letters, ADAH. See also Pvt. John Everett, Eleventh Ga., who went “in for the hole Hog” for the sole reason that “I never intend to bee Cald a Conscript.” Everett to mother, March 7, 1864, Blue Springs, Tenn., John A. Everett Papers, EU.
100. Pvt. Daniel Abernethy, Eleventh N.C., to wife, February 4, 1864, near Orange Court House, Va., Daniel Abernethy Papers, DU.
101. Pvt. John Killian, Twenty-third N.C., to sister, March 5, 1864, Talersville Station, Va., Eliza C. Killian Papers, SHC.
102. Pvt. Andrew Edge, Fifty-second Ga., to wife, April 14, 1864, near Dalton, Ga., Andrew Edge Correspondence, EU. The following month, Edge was wounded at New Hope Church, and was furloughed to recover at home. Once at home, he simply ignored the furlough’s expiration date. Within the context of his regiment, Edge’s experience was not extraordinary; the Fifty-second Ga. is identified by Mark Weitz as one of Georgia’s “high desertion units.” See Weitz, A Higher Duty, Table 3, p. 71.
103. Pvt. Louis Branscomb, Third Ala., to sister, April 15, 1864, Camp Terrill, Va., Branscomb Family Letters, ADAH.
104. Commissary Sgt. [name omitted to protect family], First Miss. Mounted Rifles, to Aunt, April 8, 1864, Memphis, Tenn., Anonymous Letters, 1864, Civil War Collection, Federal Collection, TSLA. This letter was written by a Mississippian who actually deserted the Confederacy to fight for the Union, in part because he believed the Confederacy was defeating its purpose by violating its own racial order.
105. Sgt. Marion Hill Fitzpatrick, Forty-fifth Ga., to wife, March 6, 1864, near Orange Court House, Va., in Jeffrey C. Lowe and Sam Hodges, eds., Letters to Amanda: The Civil War Letters of Marion Hill Fitzpatrick, Army of Northern Virginia (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1998), 125.
106. Lt. E. L. Cox, Sixty-eighth N.C., diary, July 3, 1864, Norfolk, Va., CMM Ser. A, Reel 13. For another example of alarm about racial inversion, see Lt. James Ligon, Hampton’s Legion, S.C., to mother, August 25, 1864, Henrico Co., Va., James Blackman Ligon Papers, SCL.
107. Pvt. John Washington Calton, Fifty-sixth N.C., to brother and sister-in-law, March 27, 1864, Weldon, N.C., John Washington Calton Letters, NCDAH. That the stories Calton relayed were untrue did not lessen the belief of many Southerners in their veracity, or their impact on soldiers’ will to fight. For another soldier’s remarks on the dangers of black men seducing white women if the Yankees won, see Pvt. Thomas Kelley of Va. to his cousin, June 6, 1864, Henrico Co., Va., Thomas F. Kelley papers, DU.
108. Testimony of Pvt. George Shaw, Sixth U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery, Mound City Hospital, April 22, 1864, in “Fort Pillow Massacre,” Senate Report 63, Thirty-eighth Congress, First Session (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1864), 25.
109. Chaplain Richard Webb, Forty-fourth N.C., to fiancée, August 13, 1864, Petersburg, Va., Webb Family Papers, SHC.
110. Surgeon Charles Trueheart, Eighth Ala., to brother, August 28, 1864, defenses around Petersburg, Va., in Williams, Rebel Brothers, 115.
111. Capt. Reuben Allen Pierson, Ninth Ala., to father, April 19, 1864, Camp Hays, Va., in Cutrer and Parrish, Brothers in Gray, 234. Weitz details the depredations visited on Confederate civilians by both Confederate deserters and the regular and irregular Confederate Army forces detailed to round up deserters in More Damning Than Slaughter, esp. chs. 8 and 9.
112. Pvt. William Honnoll, Twenty-fourth Miss., to sister, April 13, 1864, Dalton, Ga., Honnoll Family Letters, EU.
113. Pvt. A. T. Holliday, First Ga. Militia, to Governor Joseph Brown, July 22, 1864, Washington, Ga., A. T. Holliday Letters, AHC. For many soldiers, the needs of their families were even more desperate, since few families were as well-to-do as Holliday’s was. The clash between duty to the Confederacy and duty to provide for one’s family is a major theme of Mark Weitz’s A Higher Duty, esp. chs. 4 and 5.
114. For Davis’s strategy, see Nelson, Bullets, Ballots, and Rhetoric. Desertion had been a significant fact of Confederate life since 1862, and it continued in the spring and summer of 1864 as Davis muted discussion of independence in hopes that Northerners would focus on the slavery issue, but it did not skyrocket. As had always been the case, exact desertion rates continued to vary by region. In More Damning Than Slaughter, Weitz shows that desertion rose for some states in 1864, but for others stayed steady or declined (see Tables 3 and 4, p. 246). Overall, he argues that desertion resulted from soldiers’ concerns for the safety and well-being of their own loved ones and their home communities: when the best way to protect one’s home and family seemed to be to fight against Yankees, men stayed in the ranks, but when the best way seemed to be to go home, they deserted. Weitz attributes fluctuations in different states not to Confederate political strategy or Davis’s attempts to influence the Union’s 1864 elections (which, logically, should have affected all states equally), but rather to the proximity of the Union Army, which made it easy for soldiers to cross over to Union lines and take an oath.
Other studies also show that factors other than Davis’s campaign rhetoric influenced desertion. According to Mark Weitz in A Higher Duty, his study of Georgia soldiers, February 1864 marked the high point of desertion among Georgia troops, which was before Davis’s strategy really came into play (see Table 2, p. 67). Ella Lonn and Bessie Martin identify the last quarter of 1864 as a period of high desertion, by which time Davis’s strategy no longer applied, but fresh disasters, especially the fall of Atlanta and Lincoln’s reelection, were raising new concerns for families’ safety while also making Confederate victory look increasingly unlikely. Lonn, Desertions During the Civil War, 27; Martin, Desertion of Alabama Troops from the Confederate Army, 26–27. Weitz also credits Lincoln’s reelection and the fall of Atlanta with boosting Confederate desertions in late 1864 (More Damning Than Slaughter, 270–71). The difference in timing noted by Wei
tz, Lonn, and Martin probably arises from the different sources used by the historians, and from different local triggers that made circumstances for Georgians different from circumstances for Alabamians (studied by Martin) or other Confederates. Weitz used the Register of Confederate Deserters, which counted only Confederates who deserted to the enemy and took the oath of allegiance, and did not come into existence until August 1863, while Lonn and Martin used the Official Records and newspaper advertisements for the capture of deserters. Also, the Union Army in Georgia in early 1864 both made it easier for Georgians to desert to the enemy and gave them more reason to worry about the safety of their families.
115. Pvt. Noble John Brooks, Cobb’s Ga. Cavalry, diary, May 24, 1864, near North Anna River, Va., Noble John Brooks Civil War Diary and Letter, GDAH.
116. Pvt. John Killian, Twenty-third N.C., to sister, March 5, 1864, Talersville Station, Va., Eliza C. Killian Papers, SHC.
117. Ibid.
118. Pvt. Noble John Brooks, Cobb’s Ga. Cavalry, diary, May 24, 1864, near North Anna River, Va., Noble John Brooks Civil War Diary and Letter, GDAH.
119. Sgt. Edward Brown, Forty-fifth Ala., February 5, 1864, Tunnel Hill, Ga., Edward Norphlet Brown Letters, ADAH.
120. Pvt. Joseph Stapp, Forty-first Ala., to mother, March 6, 1864, Petersburg, Va., Joseph Stapp Letters, VHS.
121. Lt. W. P. (“Joe”) Renwick, Third La., to wife, April 14, 1864, Shreveport, La., CMM Ser. B, Reel 20.
122. Capt. Reuben Allen Pierson, Ninth La., to father, March 22, 1864, Orange Co., Va., in Cutrer and Parrish, Brothers in Gray, 228.
123. For discussion of Holden and the peace movement, and of the Vance-Holden election, see Harris, William Woods Holden, 127–52; Kruman, Parties and Politics in North Carolina 1836–1865, 249–65; and Gordon B. McKinney, Zeb Vance: North Carolina’s Civil War Governor and Gilded Age Political Leader (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 197–230.
124. Governor Zebulon Vance, “Address of Gov. Vance on the Condition of the Country,” delivered in Wilkesboro, N.C., February 22, 1864, reprinted in The Daily Conservative, Raleigh, N.C., April 16, 1864, p. 1, from the shorthand report of G. Clinton Stedman, NCDAH.
125. Pvt. George Williams, Seventh N.C., to parents, April 5, 1864, near Gordonsville, Va., Williams-Womble Papers, NCDAH; Sgt. Martin Malone Gash, Sixty-fifth N.C., to sister, June 18, 1864, Kinston, Ga., Gash Family Papers, NCDAH.
126. Pvt. James M. Morris, Fifty-seventh N.C., to Governor Vance, April 27, 1864, near Kinston, N.C., Zebulon B. Vance Governor’s Papers, NCDAH. Weitz notes the particularly violent North Carolinian home front in More Damning Than Slaughter, 188–95.
127. Pvt. Daniel Abernethy, Eleventh N.C., to wife, February 25, 1864, and to father, February 25, 1864, near Orange Court House, Va., Daniel Abernethy Papers, DU.
128. Pvt. Adelphos Burns, Forty-eighth N.C., to father, July 17, 1864, Petersburg, Va., Adelphos J. Burns Letters, NCDAH.
129. Governor Zebulon Vance, “Address of Gov. Vance on the Condition of the Country,” reprinted in The Daily Conservative, Raleigh, N.C., April 16, 1864, p. 1, NCDAH.
130. Pvt. David Thompson, Twenty-seventh N.C., to mother, March 27, 1864, near Orange Court House, Va., Samuel Thompson Papers, SHC.
131. Pvt. Adelphos Burns, Forty-eighth N.C., to father, July 17, 1864, Petersburg, Va., Adelphos J. Burns letters, NCDAH. While neither Burns nor any other soldier who opposed Vance brought up the speech’s sections on slavery or racial disorder, troops who supported Vance cited those very passages to explain their support for the governor.
132. Petition signed by “North Carolinians in prison at Johnson’s Island, 231 in all,” March 30, 1864, Johnson’s Island, Ohio, Thomas Jefferson Green Papers, SHC.
133. Sgt. Isaac LeFevers, Forty-sixth N.C., to relatives at home, April 29, 1864, near Orange Court House, Va., Isaac Lefevers Papers, NCDAH.
134. On Union occupation of and black settlement in Plymouth, see Wayne K. Durrill, War of Another Kind: A Southern Community in the Great Rebellion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 181–83.
135. Affidavit of Sgt. Samuel Johnson, Second U.S. Colored Cavalry, in the field, Va., July 11, 1864, in Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 588–89. For more on Confederate killing of black Union prisoners and violence against the town of Plymouth, see Durrill, War of Another Kind, 204–08.
136. Richmond Examiner, April 28, 1864, repeated in the New Bern North Carolina Times, May 21, 1864, as quoted in Durrill, War of Another Kind, 208.
137. For election results, see Kruman, Parties and Politics in North Carolina, 1836–1865, 265. The lopsided totals resulted in part from coercion. Sometimes officers prevented North Carolina troops from casting Holden ballots, either with threats or by tearing up Holden votes before they could be counted. William Holden complained that fully two-thirds of soldiers in the field had their right to vote as they wished suppressed. See “The Vote of the Army,” North Carolina Weekly Standard, August 5, 1864, p. 3. Others without an obvious stake in the election’s outcome verified incidents of coercion, if not at the rate that Holden claimed: Union general Winfield Hancock noted that two North Carolina men deserted to his lines “because they were not allowed to vote yesterday.” See Official Records, series 1, vol. 40, part 3, p. 598; also available online through Cornell University’s Making of America Web site. McKinney discusses election coercion in the Army in Zeb Vance, 228–29. Yet reports from soldiers in the field indicate that while fraud and intimidation happened, they were not universal. Pvt. Henry Patrick, Forty-first N.C., concluded “from personal observation” of the voting in his own company that “there never was a fairer election held that I ever witnessed.” See Patrick to wife, August 13, 1864, near Petersburg, Va., Henry Machen Patrick Letters, NCDAH. Most men simply chose Vance of their own free will, and it is their behavior that needs explaining.
138. Sgt. Garland Ferguson, Twenty-fifth N.C., to brother, July 13, 1864, between Chattahoochee River and Atlanta, Evelyn McIntosh Hyatt Collection, NCDAH.
139. Sgt. Garland Ferguson, Twenty-fifth N.C., to brother, July 28, 1864, between Chattahoochee River and Atlanta, Evelyn McIntosh Hyatt Collection, NCDAH.
140. See Pvt. R. P. Allen, Fourth N.C. Cavalry, to wife, July 28, 1864, near Petersburg, Va., R. P. Allen Letters, MOC; Capt. Henry Chambers, Forty-ninth N.C., diary, July 1864, Suffolk, Va., Henry Chambers Papers, NCDAH; Richmond Mumford Pearson Papers, DU. The Richmond Mumford Pearson Papers contain not only election returns from numerous hospitals (General Hospital No. 5, Wilmington, N.C., and Tarboro Wayside Hospital, for instance), but also the returns for the First N.C. Battalion of Sharpshooters and for Yadkin County soldiers stationed at Salisbury, N.C., on July 28, the day of the vote. In each of these categories, Vance defeated Holden. All told, Vance won with 77 percent of the civilian vote and 87.
9 percent of the soldier vote. See McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 698. For more on the election, see Kruman, Parties and Politics in North Carolina, 1836–1865, 260–70; result statistics, 265.
141. Pvt. Henry Patrick, Forty-first N.C., to wife, August 13, 1864, near Petersburg, Va., Henry Machen Patrick Letters, NCDAH.
142. Pvt. William Templeton, Twelfth S.C., to sister, April 4, 1864, near Orange Court House, Va., Joseph and William Templeton Papers, SCL.
143. Pvt. John Everett, Eleventh Ga., to mother, March 7, 1864, Blue Springs, Tenn., John A. Everett Papers, EU.
144. Pvt. John Everett, Eleventh Ga., to mother, May 14, 1864, near Richmond, John A. Everett Papers, EU.
145. Drum Major Douglas Cater, Nineteenth La., to cousin, May 7, 1864, near Dalton, Ga., Douglas J. and Rufus Cater Letters, PAW, Coll. 32, Reel 11.
146. Exact numbers of Union dead are unobtainable because the regiments most heavily involved, the Sixth U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery, the Second U.S. Colored Light Artillery, and the Thirteenth Tenn. Cavalry (white unionists and some Confederate deserters), were all recruiting at the time, making the number of men on duty on
April 12 obscure. Somewhere between 277 and 297 Union soldiers were killed, compared to 14 Confederate dead, according to Trudeau, Like Men of War, 168. Regimental records reveal mortality rates at 36 percent for white unionist troops and 66 percent for black soldiers. See John Cimprich and Robert C. Mainfort, Jr., “Fort Pillow Revisited: New Evidence About an Old Controversy,” Civil War History 28:4 (December 1982), 295. Confederate sources first proclaimed a great victory at Fort Pillow and held the treatment of black troops up as a lesson intended for black soldiers and their supporters, but then downplayed the incident in response to harsh criticism and threats of retaliation from the Union. Northern sources immediately portrayed the event as a massacre, and a Congressional investigation revealed slaughter and atrocities such as the burning and burying alive of African Americans. The subsequently published Senate report, known as the “Fort Pillow Massacre Senate Report,” or simply the “Fort Pillow Report” (1864), was certainly intended to sway northern public opinion toward a hard-line approach to the rebels. Although the more lurid claims of northern propaganda have been toned down by historians, objective accounts based on research agree that a massacre of mainly black and some white unionist soldiers took place after they had surrendered, and that the slaughter was extraordinarily brutal. Even historians initially sympathetic to southern denials of a massacre concur: see Albert Castel, “The Fort Pillow Massacre: Fresh Examination of the Evidence,” Civil War History 4:1 (March 1958), 37–50. Castel admits that he began his study as “a wholehearted believer” in the southern version of Fort Pillow, but changed his mind in light of the evidence, 38. For additional accounts of Fort Pillow, see Bruce Tap, “‘These Devils Are Not Fit to Live on God’s Earth’: War Crimes and the Committee on the Conduct of the War, 1864–1865,” Civil War History 42:2 (June 1996), 116–32; Trudeau, Like Men of War, 156–69; and Richard L. Fuchs, An Unerring Fire: The Massacre at Fort Pillow (Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1994).
What This Cruel War Was Over Page 43
