Captain George F. Goodwin (1836-1864): This image was taken at some point after March 1863, when Goodwin was promoted to captain.
On October 13, 1862, while the 5th New Hampshire was in camp at Bolivar Heights near Harper’s Ferry, a fight broke out between Lieutenant George Goodwin and Private Patrick Maley, both of Company F.
The trouble started when Goodwin ordered Maley to put on his equipment and join the company in preparation for dress parade. Maley apparently continued to dawdle, and Goodwin repeated the order again, this time in a louder voice. Maley later claimed at his general court martial that he told the lieutenant he would put his equipment on as soon as he could. But eventually, 1st Lieutenant William Moore of Company E heard Maley exclaim, “I’ll be damned if I will!” Goodwin repeated his command yet again and grabbed Maley by the shoulder or collar. Maley defiantly threw his equipment to the ground, and Goodwin drew his sword. At this point, Maley had bitten off much more than he could chew because, at 6’ 2”, Goodwin was a big man, among the tallest in the regiment.
Accounts of the fight between the two men differ, but it looked something like the following. Maley advanced on Goodwin in preparation to “throw” him. In return, Goodwin tried to strike Maley on the head with the flat of his sword several times. Apparently, Colonel Edward Cross, who witnessed the altercation, urged Goodwin “to split [Maley’s] head open.” Goodwin went to Maley’s tent and somebody, possibly Cross, ordered Maley to follow the lieutenant and confine himself there. Instead, Maley, “using abusive language,” told Goodwin that if the lieutenant would “lay down his sword, he [Maley] would finish him.” Goodwin then tackled Maley and brought him to the ground. Maley kicked the lieutenant several times and tried to grab Goodwin’s sword. Unbelievably, throughout the fight, Goodwin repeatedly attempted to extract a pledge from Maley that he would behave better in the future. Having pinned Maley to the ground, Goodwin finally obtained this promise after he had subdued the unruly private by alternately punching him in the face and choking him. The violence of the fight was well captured by the testimony of witnesses at Maley’s court martial. When asked by the court if Maley had been intoxicated, 1st Lieutenant Moore responded simply, “Only with rage.”
Having vanquished Maley, Goodwin dusted himself off, and very coolly walked off to dress parade. This nonchalance–as well as much other evidence I’ve gathered over the years–indicates to me that the 5th New Hampshire’s officers, taking their cue from Cross, frequently used their fists to impose order. Maley ended up in the guardhouse and was subjected to a general court martial nine days later.[i] The charges against him were 1) “Disobedience of orders” and 2) “Striking his superior officer.”
Well before this point, Maley had earned a bad reputation in the regiment which did him no favors. At his court martial, both witnesses for the prosecution testified that Maley was a bad seed. Moore stated “all the officers in the company have had just such times [as Goodwin had] with the prisoner only worse.” Bugler Melvin Ingalls stated that Maley’s “general character is a willful ugly and disobedient soldier.” And with reason. Back in November 1861, when Sergeant Emery Gould attempted to instruct Maley in the proper loading of his rifle, Maley had exasperatedly exclaimed the he knew how perform this task just as well as the sergeant. An altercation ensued, and Maley hit Gould on the head with the barrel of a loaded rifle. A regimental court martial ordered Maley to be shackled to a 32-pound ball and chain for a month. He also had to forfeit ten dollars of pay during that span of time.[ii]
Maley probably learned from this experience that a direct attack on an officer’s authority was an unprofitable venture. He offered no statement at his October 1862 court martial, so we can only speculate about what his intentions were in defying Goodwin. The preliminaries of his fight with the lieutenant indicated that, initially, Maley sought to push limits as far as he could without overstepping any boundaries. Ingalls stated that after Goodwin ordered Maley “to pick up his cap which was on the ground,” the dillydallying private said “he wanted to put on his equipment first.” In other words, Maley was saying: “I will do what you want eventually, but in my own way, and so long as it looks like I’m cooperating, you cannot lose patience. Acting this way will give me the space to take my sweet time.” Here was an oblique way of challenging Goodwin’s authority without overtly doing so. This move reminds me of what a time-wasting child will do to a parent who is eager to get the kid in his snow clothes before the school bus arrives: “No, I won’t put my hat on first, I will put on my coat.” Maley, however, grew weary of this game before Goodwin did; it was the private who crossed the line first by exclaiming he’d be damned if he would put on his equipment for dress parade. Perhaps Maley was triggered by Goodwin’s persistence in ordering him to get moving. Having crossed the line with an officer—a bigger man armed with a sword—Maley tried to save face by claiming that but for the sword, he could knock Goodwin down. Asserting one’s masculinity as well as preserving one’s dignity in the face of military authority was important to enlisted men during the Civil War. But, unfortunately, Maley had maneuvered himself into a cul-de-sac from which there was no escape.
Goodwin showed great patience throughout this altercation. Since joining the company in early August 1862, he had probably been subjected by Maley to small acts of disobedience that never quite crossed the threshold of requiring disciplinary action. I suspect the lieutenant was glad that Maley had been flushed out into the open for what he was—in front of Colonel Cross, no less. Cross was a no-nonsense disciplinarian with an extremely short fuse, and there he was exhorting Goodwin to split Maley’s head open. Goodwin knew he had to bring all force to bear on the recalcitrant private.
The court martial found Maley guilty of both charges (as well as the accompanying specifications) and sentenced him to 12 months of hard labor at the “Rip Raps” or “some other similar place” with forfeiture of pay for the entire period. The severity of the sentence indicates the seriousness with which the court viewed Maley’s infraction. The Rip Raps was a shoal in Hampton Roads on which the army was then building Fort Wool; hard labor there involved moving large granite blocks in hot, humid weather. Although Brigadier General Winfield Scott Hancock, commander of the division, approved of the sentence, for some reason the Rip Raps part of the sentence could not be executed (a fact that Hancock lamented). Ayling’s Revised Register indicates that Maley was discharged from the regiment in early November 1862. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that since he couldn’t send Maley to the Rip Raps, Cross wanted him out of the 5th New Hampshire. Maley eventually joined the Veterans Reserve Corps a year later. Within days of his disabled discharge in August 1865, he began collecting a pension.
Goodwin was not so lucky. Wounded at Fredericksburg, he was promoted to Captain and led Company D at Chancellorsville, where he was wounded again. At Cold Harbor, in June 1864, the brave captain was killed in action at the head of his company.
[i] The record of this court martial provides most of the information for this post. This record can be found at the National Archives (Washington, DC) in RG 153 Judge Advocate General, Entry 15A, Court Martial Case Files 1809-1894 (KK-867). Maley’s name is misspelled as Malia or Molia.
[ii] I found a record of this court martial in the 5th New Hampshire’s regimental order book, photographed it, and saved the image on my laptop, but I don’t have it to hand at the moment (it’s in a large folder and not yet labeled). A brief recounting of this incident occurs in Mike Pride and Mark Travis’ My Brave Boys.
Matthew Brady, General Hancock and Division Commanders (ca. June 12, 1864): Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, commander of II Corps is seated. Standing, from left to right: Brigadier General Francis Barlow, Major General David Birney, and Major General John Gibbon. This photo was taken only days before the incident related below. Richard Welch writes that Barlow’s “sarcastic smile” is “clearly in evidence and his expression goes beyond self-confidence into an almost belligerent insolence.” That may be, but there is exhaustion written on some of these faces, too. These men had gone through the wringer at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor. Before the year was out, Hancock had given up his field command, Barlow was on an extended leave of absence, and Birney had died of typhoid fever.
For various reason that I will clarify later, I intend to post much more frequently on this blog, so be prepared for all manner of ruminations great and small.
Yesterday, I was reading Richard F. Welch’s The Boy General: The Life and Careers of Francis Channing Barlow. This reading was part of an effort to familiarize myself with the various generals who sat atop the 5th New Hampshire in the Army of the Potomac’s order of battle. Barlow (1834-1896), as you may recall, was the ferocious, baby-faced Boston Brahmin who proved to be one of the Army of the Potomac’s best brigadiers before becoming one of its best division commanders. He is of interest to me for two reasons. For one thing, during the summer of 1864, he led the 1st Division, II Corps—the division whose badge was the red trefoil—which was the 5th New Hampshire’s division. For another, he got his start as a field officer in the 61st New York which was brigaded with the 5th New Hampshire throughout the war.
In any event, I could not help but share the following anecdote from Welch’s book which is very funny, very human, and very consequential. This incident occurred on June 15, 1864, just as the Army of the Potomac completed the Overland Campaign and sought to take Petersburg by a coup de main. As Welch points out, the failure of this operation was due to the “difficulties in coordinating the complex movement of a large army after they were across the James [River]” (149). Moreover, the Army of the Potomac, and particularly II Corps, was exhausted after having suffered colossal losses in almost non-stop fighting for the last month and a half.
During the crossing of the James (June 13), Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, commander of II Corps (whose nickname, “Hancock the Superb,” cannot be matched by any other I can think of), wanted to confer with Barlow, who led the corps’ 1st Division. Barlow, however, was asleep. Hancock was annoyed, but kept his feelings to himself—for the moment. A day or two later, on June 15, Hancock ordered Barlow to move into position for an assault on Petersburg. Unfortunately, Barlow had been issued a faulty map and started taking the wrong road—even though, apparently, his staff had figured out the correct route and Hancock’s staff had given him proper directions. Barlow eventually realized his mistake, but his command was late in reaching the jumping-off point for the attack, and it was postponed until the next day (June 16). In the meantime, the following occurred.
When Barlow’s division finally trudged into the Petersburg lines, he sent a member of his staff, Major Marlin to ask where he should place his troops. Hancock, clearly under a great deal of stress and plagued by recurrent pain from his Gettysburg wound, pointed to the left and told Marlin they should go there. Marlin turned to pass on the order to the fourth brigade commander, Colonel James A. Beaver. At that point, Hancock, who had been speaking facetiously, quickly interjected, “Yes, put ‘em there, if you want every one of them killed.” Then he went on impatiently, “Where’s General Barlow?” Marlin replied that his commander had stopped a small distance back to bathe his feet. Hancock immediately became agitated, dropped his reins and began wringing his hands “as if in agony.” “That’s it; that’s it,” he exclaimed, “always asleep or washing his feet.” Marlin and Beaver were unsure how to take Hancock’s outburst and began to laugh nervously, treating it as a ludicrous jest. Hancock turned his horse and rode away. Clearly, finding Barlow asleep had rankled him, whatever the rationale, and Barlow’s delayed appearance and use of a staff officer to report aggravated him more (150).
Hancock’s facetiousness, his wringing of hands “as if in agony,” his ludicrous exclamation that Barlow was “always asleep or washing his feet,” and the officers’ equivocal tittering all make for a laughable scene—almost. Hancock’s anxiety to get moving and make up for lost time is palpable. Both Hancock and Barlow had been, and would continue to be, under tremendous stress. This stress, compounded by a bad case of dysentery and the death of his wife, compelled Barlow to take a prolonged leave of absence in August 1864. Hancock, “The Thunderbolt of the Army of the Potomac” (yes, he had the best nicknames), had never recovered from a wound suffered at Gettysburg, when a bullet hit the pommel of his saddle, driving a nail and wood splinters into his inner thigh. Throughout the Overland Campaign and the early months of the Siege of Petersburg, as his wound continued to suppurate, he had thrown II Corps about in an attempt to destroy the Army of Northern Virginia. As a result, his command had suffered enormous casualties and been hollowed out. By November 1864, he, too, had reached the end of his tether and gave up leadership of II Corps.
More immediately, however, Hancock’s June 16 assault on Petersburg failed. Hancock blamed the failure on Barlow’s tardiness. Had the II Corps been able to attack on the previous day, when the rebels were less prepared, so the argument went, the Army of the Potomac could have captured Petersburg and forced the Army of Northern Virginia out of Richmond. From late June to early July, an unseemly exchange of memoranda and letters ensued between the two. Barlow refused to take any blame for the blunder and attempted to shove responsibility onto Hancock’s chief of staff. To make a long story short, Barlow lost the argument. Welch states that Barlow’s “campaign to absolve himself from blame did him no credit, and showed him at his worst” (162).
Horace T. H. Pierce’s Enlistment Form for the 1st New Hampshire (1861): Pierce initially enlisted as a private in the 1st New Hampshire before being appointed 1st Lieutenant a little over a week later. According to this form, he had blue eyes, sandy hair, and a sandy compleixion. He was 5′ 9″. This is the only physical description of Pierce that I’ve been able to locate.
While working on my project, I’ve encountered a number of figures who remain mysteries to me. Often, in these cases, there’s enough information to raise all sorts of questions—but not enough to provide satisfactory answers. Welcome Crafts, who joined the 5th New Hampshire as a 1st Lieutenant and eventually became the unit’s commander (albeit once it was downgraded to a battalion), falls in this category. In this particular case, the mystery is why he was so widely disliked. Most people who expressed an aversion for him (Thomas Livermore in Days and Events, 1860-1866 is an excellent example) never explained what exactly was so distasteful about Crafts. Yes, Crafts lent money to his men at usurious rates of interest. Yes, he fell asleep in a barn and was captured by the rebels during the Peninsula campaign. Yes, he beat a captured deserters to within an inch of his life. But, at the same time, Crafts had the wherewithal to raise 20 men for the regiment in 1861. Edmund Brown, his first company commander, certainly saw something in Crafts and stuck with him despite the strenuous efforts of Lancaster’s Republican party machine to revoke his commission. Edward Cross, the regiment’s colonel, expressed exasperation with Crafts on occasion, but he, too, stuck by Crafts. Moreover, Crafts showed no lack of bravery in action. So the mystery is, why all the hate?
But this is not a post about Welcome Crafts. That will have to wait. No, this is about Captain H. T. H. Pierce (1822-1877)—Horace Truman Hawks Pierce, to be exact—who is even more of a mystery. While residing in Keene, Pierce raised Company F of the 5th New Hampshire in Cheshire County and commanded it until January 1863. Although he served with the regiment for 15 months, Pierce remains a ghostly figure. Mike Pride and Mark Travis mention Pierce only once in My Brave Boys:To War with Colonel Cross and the Fighting Fifth—to describe his dismissal: “After accusing Captain Horace Pierce of ‘tardiness in sending a detail for guard,’ the colonel [Cross] asked for his resignation—and got it.” Exit Pierce. Likewise, in his biography of Cross, Rob Grandchamp’s sole comment about Pierce is that the colonel thought the captain was a “good soldier” but “lazy and inattentive in his duties.”
So what is there to know about Pierce, and what does it all add up to?
#1 Pierce came from a prominent Chesterfield family
Pierce’s father, Ezekiel P. Pierce (1788-1865), was reputedly a distant cousin of Franklin Pierce, but I haven’t been able to establish the exact relationship between the two. Although he wasn’t the eldest son of John Pierce, Ezekiel inherited the family homestead in Chesterfield. He was one of those energetic, entrepreneurial men that just about every town in New Hampshire possessed at the time: he ran a farm; manufactured “patent accelerating wheel-heads” for spinning wool (as well as bits and augurs); added a two-story stone house to the family’s old, wooden home and turned it into a tavern/stagecoach stop; bought a sailboat and arranged tours of Spafford Lake; and served as a selectman and state representative. Pierce senior was a vociferous advocate of temperance and the abolition of slavery. It was widely said (note the passive voice—the following quote appeared in an obituary) that he was “eternally grateful” to have lived to see the demise of slavery and the Southern states. Though he started adulthood as a Jacksonian Democrat, it seems pretty clear that Ezekiel finished life as a Republican.
Ezekiel P. Pierce (1788-1865)
Two of his Ezekiel’s daughters (Horace’s sisters) worked as schoolteachers—one of the few respectable careers available to educated women—and one of them, Augusta, was renowned for her outspoken support for her father’s causes. Horace’s older brother, Lucius, became a prominent lawyer, and a younger brother, Benjamin, took over the family businesses in Chesterfield. By 1860, Ezekiel had built a small business empire worth $8500—almost eight times the median value of an estate in New Hampshire.
The question here is, where did Horace fit into all of this? The answer seems to be that he didn’t.
Like his older brother Lucius, Horace (Class of 1846) attended Norwich Military Academy. That makes Horace an exact contemporary of Stonewall Jackson and George B. McClellan (see John Waugh’s book, The Class of 1846: From West Point to Appomattox). But Horace was not destined to become famous.
I don’t know what kind of student Horace was, but I read some of the letters he wrote to the state adjutant general’s office in 1861. The capitalization, diction, and grammar are all idiosyncratic. That might explain why Lucius used his education as a springboard to become a lawyer while Horace became a brick mason.
Two other officers in the 5th New Hampshire were Norwich alums: George Balloch ‘47 and Charles Long ‘55. (Elijah Johnson appears to have claimed that he attended Norwich—or allowed such claims to go uncorrected—but such was not truly the case, and he was canned by a board of review in early 1862.) Balloch would go on to enjoy a magnificent career as chief commissary of subsistence for several corps and army commands, play an important role in the Freedmen’s Bureau, and serve as the first treasurer of the Board of Trustees of Howard University. Long was a promising officer (even Cross liked him) until his left arm was mangled at Antietam; he finished the war as colonel of the 1st New Hampshire Heavy Artillery.
No such fate awaited Pierce.
#3 Pierce was a brick mason
The Census of 1850 has Pierce living in Chesterfield with his wife—next door to his father. His occupation is listed as “Farmer” with an estate of $1000. By 1852, however, he had moved to Keene where his oldest son, William, was born (Pierce already had a daughter born in either late 1850 or in 1851). By 1860, Pierce had become a brick mason with an estate totaling $1800. The work was hard, but it was enough to sustain a comfortable standard of living. A number of the houses that Pierce built still stand in Keene. Why he left Chesterfield and became a brick mason, however, remains unclear.
Horace T. H. Pierce’s family in Keene’s Census of 1860.
We often imagine that commissioned officers in volunteer regiments engaged in farming or white-collar occupations. Such, however, was often not the case. Several of the other officers in the 5th New Hampshire worked with their hands. Among the regiment’s captains, Edmund Brown worked as a joiner, John Murray was a teamster, and Richard Davis cut sole leather. One finds the same thing among the 5th New Hampshire’s lieutenants: this group included an ornamental painter, a currier, a shoemaker, a laborer, a carpenter, and a mechanic. So Pierce’s occupation would not have made him an odd man out among the junior officers in the regiment.
#4 Pierce appears to have been financially embarrassed in 1861
In 1860, Pierce’s estate was well above the state’s median ($1100). However, he seems to have suffered financial embarrassment upon the war’s outbreak. On April 22, 1861, Pierce enlisted as a private in the 1st New Hampshire (a three-month regiment). A week later, he was appointed a 1st Lieutenant, no doubt because he had attended Norwich. The 1st New Hampshire was mustered in at the beginning of May and mustered out at the start of August. During that span of time, Pierce’s wife, Sophia, and their three children (Julia, William, and Frank) received $31 in support from the selectmen of Keene. What does this signify?
Pierce’s family makes an appearance in Keene’s record of family disbursements (1861).
Keene’s town report for the fiscal year ending in March 1862 (from which I obtained this information) indicates that indigent families of men serving in the army were allowed to buy goods on the town’s tab. The accounting of what they purchased and how much was paid makes it pretty clear that $31 could buy a great deal of food and clothing. In other words, Pierce family experienced real need.
But what of Pierce’s pay? As a 1st Lieutenant, he was owed $105.50 per month by the federal government. The only explanation I can think of is that throughout the war, pay often arrived late and irregularly. Perhaps such was the case with Pierce during his service with the 1st New Hampshire.
Interestingly, after Pierce returned to Keene to recruit for the 5th New Hampshire in September and October, disbursements to his family from the town ceased. That leads me to believe he was working throughout this period. Pierce was mustered in as a captain in the 5th New Hampshire at the end of October and left with his regiment for the front. The next month (November), his wife was treated to another $14. For the rest of the fiscal year, the Pierces drew nothing from the selectmen.
Was this reliance on town charity the result of a temporary cash flow problem or a sign of something more serious? I’m inclined to think it was the former. The secession crisis led to a sudden downturn in the Northern economy, and Pierce may have been blindsided by this slump. It’s even possible that the economic situation encouraged him to undertake military service for both the 1st and 5th New Hampshire. What I do know for sure is that Pierce made a great success of his business after the war. In 1870, he was still a brick mason, but he had built up an estate worth $6300, which leads me to believe that he was not the kind of person who was chronically short of money.
# 5 Pierce experienced tremendous difficulty in raising Company F of the 5th New Hampshire
I have gone into much more detail about this incident in my manuscript, but the outlines of the difficulty were as follows. Recruiting for the 5th New Hampshire began in earnest in early September 1861. At some point during that month, Cross named Pierce a captain and charged him with recruiting a company in Cheshire County. Toward the end of September, Keene’s newspapers announced that several companies for the 6th New Hampshire would be raised in Cheshire County and that the regiment’s rendezvous would be located in Keene. This news inspired a great deal of enthusiasm in the county seat, and a wave of Keenites started enlisting in the new regiment so they could serve with their friends, relatives, and neighbors. Poor Pierce struggled to recruit against this tide. Moreover, recruiting officers for the 6th New Hampshire appear to have displayed a hostile attitude toward Pierce, encouraging his volunteers to abandon his company. When all was said and done, Pierce only managed to recruit about half a company’s worth of men. The rest had to be found elsewhere in the state by other recruiters. And thus, recruiting went far worse in Cheshire County for the 5th New Hampshire than in any of the other nine counties from which it drew volunteers.
To what degree was Pierce responsible for this failure? It’s hard to say. The newspapers suggest that he began recruiting in Keene in mid-September, which was relatively late (the 5th New Hampshire’s companies began showing up at the regiment’s rendezvous in Concord at the end of that month). It’s not clear if Pierce was dilatory in his duty, his commission was slow in reaching him, or he was bad at recruiting. One explanation could be that he was distracted from his recruiting duties because he took on work to to prevent his family from becoming a charge on the town again.
#6 Pierce committed suicide in 1877
According to the New Hampshire Sentinel (January 11, 1877, 2), “Mr. Horace T. H. Pierce committed suicide by hanging, at his residence on Washington street, Sunday evening, Jan. 7th. His mind had become impaired by long-continued ill health, and the fatal act was caused by the great mental depression from which he suffered. During the late war, Mr. Pierce was two years in active service, and held the rank of captain in the 5th regiment N.H. volunteers, and was known among his associates as a brave and efficient officer, and in this city, where he resided for twenty years, as an estimable citizen. His age was fifty-three years.”
A death by suicide always seems to exercise an irremedial influence on our impressions of someone’s life; we feel compelled to rummage through a suicide’s experiences to find out why they ended it all. That’s a problem. Pierce’s suicide does not bring clarity to his life. Instead, it adds another data point that does not necessarily make everything else fall into place.
It was a life that began in privilege, but it was also a life of ups and downs. Graduation from Norwich led to manual labor. But Pierce appears to have been very successful in his line of work. There is a hint—but only a wispy one—that he distanced himself from the family. Why, we cannot say. He may have suffered financial troubles upon the war’s outbreak, and he was a disappointment as a recruiter. These two facts may have been related. After the war, though, Pierce built up a successful business. Yet he seems to have suffered from some sort of illness that contributed to depression and led to suicide.
During his service, Pierce appears to have flown largely beneath the radar. Cross did not think of him as a drunken incompetent (like Ira Barton), nor did the colonel clash with him (as he did with James Larkin and James Perry). At the same time, Pierce never won Cross’s lasting admiration (like Charles Long or John Murray) or attain command of the regiment (like Charles Hapgood and, yes, Welcome Crafts). All we have are two references to Pierce in Cross’s official report on the Battle of Antietam and its preliminaries. Pierce was commended (along with five other captains) for the handling of his skirmishers as they chased the Confederate rearguard from Boonsboro to Antietam Creek on September 15, and he was mentioned for “gallant conduct” in the ensuing battle of September 17 (with fourteen other officers). That’s it.
Perhaps Pierce was reticent, gentle, or self-effacing. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for the drinking, rough humor, and blaspheming of military life under Edward Cross. It’s possible that the war itself horrified him. There’s a chance that he needed to go home to prevent his family from becoming a charge on the town. Was this a man who felt himself pulled in different directions by his obligations? All or any one of these surmises may explain why Pierce allowed Cross to push him into resigning from the 5th New Hampshire.
It’s possible that I’ve found somwhat more about Pierce than others have. But what I’ve discovered has just led toward more speculation and more questions. Is there anything left to discover? I sincerely hope to find more about Pierce during my next visit to NARA in Washington, DC.
Although I doubt that my subscribers have been lying awake at night wondering what’s become of me, I must apologize for having neglected this blog for almost seven months. I can only plead that those seven months were filled with frenetic activity. I took research trips to NARA Boston as well as NARA Washington, DC, moved out of my house in preparation for a huge remodeling project, taught a heavy course load in the fall, wrote a 25,000-word chapter for my manuscript (which I realize is far too long), and just reassumed my duties as department chair to cover for a colleague who is now on sabbatical.
I felt compelled to post today because, having just finished my oversized chapter, I started looking through some notes and rediscovered a remarkable letter that I had photographed at NARA Washington, DC, and promptly forgotten about. This document appears in the compiled service record (RG 94) for Bazile Bouchard (also referred to as Bazile Boucher) of the 5th New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry who deserted in November 1864, was recaptured in January 1865, and subsequently placed before a court martial.
There is much I do not know about Bouchard. It’s clear that he was a very recent immigrant, but how, when, and why did he come to the United States? To what degree was his account truthful? What happened at his court martial?
Here’s what I do know. It is far more likely that French-speaker Bouchard was born in Saint Hyacinthe (45 miles due east of Montreal) than he was born in Acton (45 miles west of Toronto), as the official record indicates. Bouchard enlisted as a substitute in Portsmouth, where the 1st Congressional District’s enrollment board (aka draft board) was located, on September 20, 1864. The “Register of Accepted and Rejected Drafted Men, Recruits, and Substitutes, Showing Bounty Received 1st District June 1864-April 1865” (RG 110 647) shows an entry on that date for “Bazile Bouchoe,” aged 20, who resided in Canada East (French-speaking Canada). The entry indicates that Bouchard was a substitute for Ebenezer Hanson of Alton, NH. For his trouble, Bouchard received $300 in substitute money, his unscrupulous brokers (Resicot and Brooks) having taken the majority of the monies owed to him.
Bouchard ended up in Company I of the 5th New Hampshire. Captain John W. Bean, of Danbury, NH, commanded that company at the time, so he was probably the one who beat our poor substitute because he could not understand English. Bean had been with the regiment from the very beginning and was wounded twice—at Fredericksburg (December 1862) and Cold Harbor (June 1864). In fact, when Bouchard arrived at Petersburg, Bean had just returned to the 5th New Hampshire after recovering from his Cold Harbor wound. Bean would go on to serve in the regular army after the war.
This image of 28-year-old John W. Bean was taken at Matthew Brady’s studio in Washington, DC, around December 1861, when he was still a 2nd Lieutenant.
I don’t know exactly under what circumstances the statement below was taken. As the document indicates, Bouchard gave his testimony at the Prince Street Military Prison in Alexandria, VA, where his court martial took place. It was usually the prerogative of the accused at a court martial to give a statement, but this document does not look like part of a general court martial record. I suspect it was taken after the court martial in light of the fact that Bouchard could not speak English. This statement may have played some role in the mitigation of his sentence.
Without further ado, I should let you read Bouchard’s account of his strange odyssey. Then it’ll come time for the big reveal where I’ll tell you what happened to him.
Statement of Bazile Bouchard Co. I. 5th N. H. Vols.
I was born in Saint Hyacinthe, Lower Canada I cannot speak nor understand any English. I came to New Durham [N.H.] with a man named Baptiste Resicot [?] who promised me to give me work at making amm unition and give me $3.00 a day. At New Durham I met a man named John Brooks who said he came from Canada. These 2 men took me to Ports- mouth, N.H. and tried to enlist me but I would not enlist. They took me back to New Durham and I stayed with these two men at a house for nearly 3 weeks when they took me again to Portsmouth on the promise of giving me work there. They took me to an office where there were some Soldiers, but I did not know what they were doing. I was told by John Brooks that I would be able to get work there making ammunition, but that I would have to sign some papers first. This was about the end of July 1864. I signed 3 or 4 papers and the man who had the papers gave me two or three hundred Dollars. I was told by John Brooks that this money was for the work I was to do and that I could leave any time I choosed. I held up my hand as I was told to do so with 7 or 8 others while the same man who gave me the money said something that I could not understand. I was sent along with the other men to the guard house under charge of the soldiers was
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there all night and the next morning I was taken to Concord N.H. was put in the barracks there for about 7 or 8 days. I was sent to Galloups Island Boston Harbor was there about a week and then sent with a squad to City Point, Va. I joined my regiment (5th N.H. Vols.) in front of Petersburg, Va. and was sick about a week after getting there, doing nothing during that week. After I got well enough to drill, I was sent to drill, but not be- ing able to understand English and the Captain not speaking French, he beat me often because I I could not understand the drill. I was with the reg iment, about a month and a half I learned from another Canadian Frenchman who belonged to another regiment, and of whom I do not know the name, that if I would go over to the rebels they would send me home. This man deserted a few days before I did. About the middle of the month of September 1864 on a dark rainy night I left my company about 7 or 8 oclock with the intention of deserting and try to get home to New Durham but had no intention of deserting to the Rebels. I did not see any of our pickets and got up to the rebel pickets before I knew where I was. I could not understand what the Rebel pickets said nor could they understand what I said so they took me to Petersburg and I was kept in a room with 4 or 5 prisoners dressed like rebels no clothing nor anything was
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taken from me. The next day I was taken to Richmond, no one I saw at Petersburg could speak French. I saw one person at Richmond who could speak French and he asked me what sort of pro visions, our army had to eat. He did not ask or say anything more. I was kept at Richmond in prison along with 4 or 5 or 6 other prisoners, who were dressed like rebel citizens. I did not know who they were. I was sent about 300 miles from Richmond under guards with 20 or 30 more prisoners on the R. R. cars and was put to work as a teamster. No one ever asked me in French if I was a deserter nor if I wished to go home, nor if I wished to join the rebel army, but they put me to work for a farmer. I do not know the name of the place nor the farmers name who could not speak French. I was only with the farmer about 4 or 5 hours and then ran away into the woods along with the other prisoners, 3 or 4 days begging from the farmers and walking along. We then go to Kentucky, when we separated. I saw no rebel sol diers, from the time I left the farmer until I got to Kentucky. I saw to [sic] guerillas who searched me but found nothing on me. I went to work on a Rail Road in Kentucky of which I do not know the name. I worked there about 6 days when I was arrested about the 1st of January 1865 by a citizen who took me to the Provost Marshal who sent me to several places with handcuffs
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on I finally got to Prince Street Prison. I do not know the name of any place I have been at since I left Richmond. I do not know the name of the place I am in now.
(sd) Bazile X Bouchard
Witnesses R.W. Roberts 1st Lt. 12th Regt. V.R.C in charge Prince St. Mil. Prison
R. L. Kilpatrick Capt. V.R.C.
As I mentioned earlier, I don’t have the court martial record, but the next time I’m at NARA Washington, DC, I’ll certainly look for it. Initially, Bouchard was sentenced “to be dishonorably discharged from the service of the United States, and be confined at the Dry Tortugas [Fort Jefferson], or such other place as the Secretary of War shall direct, for the period of five years.” This was indeed a rough sentence, but we also have to remember that soldiers—including several in the 5th New Hampshire—were shot or hanged for desertion to the enemy.
Fortunately for Bouchard, his sentence was reduced by the military governor at Alexandria, VA, to “imprisonment for four months.” Interestingly, the State Prison at Concord was “designated as the place of confinement.” I wonder if the court showed took mercy to Bouchard because, if we take his statement at face value, he appeared to be a young, guileless, soldier who couldn’t speak a word of English.
What happened to Bouchard afterwards is unclear. I found a Joseph Basil Boucher who lived in Massachusetts after the war, but something tells me that this isn’t our man. Much more tantalizing, however, is a lead that I cannot pursue. On FamilySearch, I found a reference to a pension index card, dated 1916, for a “Bazile Bouchard” in the 5th New Hampshire. Unfortunately, the card itself is on fold3.com, which I cannot access. This research cul-de-sac is by turns frustrating, exciting, and puzzling. How on earth did our Bazile Bouchard end up with a pension?
Last week, I was at the National Archives in Washington, DC, combing through the compiled service records of soldiers in the 5th New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry (RG 94), when I ran across Stephen Emery’s envelope. Inside, I located his certificate of disability for discharge. Glued to the back of this document, I found the image you see here. This is the only image I’ve ever found attached to a certificate of disability.
Stephen Emery was born in either 1826 or 1827 to Isaac and Susan Emery in Bartlett, NH, up in the White Mountains. By 1850, he had moved to Lowell, MA, where he worked as a shoemaker. There, he met Sarah Hunt, a native of that town, and in April 1851, the two were married in Nashua, NH. Just over nine months later, in February 1852, their son George was born in Lowell. Sarah passed away in April 1852 of consumption, and shortly thereafter, Emery married another native and resident of Lowell—17-year-old Maria Bunker—in November 1852. By 1860, he and Maria had three sons—William, Frank, and Charles. The census of that year reveals that Emery was by no means wealthy; his personal property amounted to only $100. In October 1861, he was recruited for the 5th New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry by Milo Ransom who later became the regiment’s chaplain. By this point, Emery had moved back to Bartlett with his family, which now included a very young daughter named Ellen.
On June 1, 1862, Emery suffered a gun shot wound in the right shoulder at Fair Oaks where the 5th New Hampshire was heavily engaged (losing about 200 dead and wounded). In February 1864, he re-enlisted as a veteran volunteer while the regiment was stationed at Point Lookout, MD, guarding rebel POWs. For some reason, he overstayed the furlough that all re-enlisting veterans obtained and was considered a deserter by the regiment. He was arrested but escaped before being recaptured. I found no evidence, however, of a court martial. Whatever the case, Emery was in the ranks of the 5th New Hampshire when it rejoined the Army of the Potomac in early June 1864. At the Battle of Cold Harbor (June 3, 1864), the 5th New Hampshire was one of the few federal regiments to breach Confederate lines and found itself involved in a vicious short-range firefight. At some point during the battle, Emery was shot in the wrist and sent to Harewood Hospital in Washington, DC. where he arrived on June 7. His bed card reads:
“G[un] S[hot] W[ound] left Forearm
lower-third fracture
lower end of ulna”
I presume this photo was taken at Harewood on the orders of a surgeon who found Emery’s case of special interest. You can clearly see the bullet hole in Emery’s wrist. Emery’s recovery apparently consumed a great deal of time. In March 1865, he was granted a 15-day furlough from Harewood. He overstayed his leave and was charged with desertion again—until he returned 21 days late. A board of officers eventually cleared him of the desertion charge.
On June 22, 1865, Emery finally received a discharge for disability. His certificate reads: “Gun shot wound of the left wrist received June 3, 1864 in battle at Coal [sic] Harbor in consequence of which he is totally disabled for military service and for civil [illegible] one third.”
After the war, Emery returned to his occupation of shoemaker and bounced around quite a bit between New Hampshire and Massachusetts. He appears on The List of Pensioners on the Roll (1883) as receiving $12.00 per month, but for his Fair Oaks wound, not the Cold Harbor one. In 1887, his wife Maria passed away in Haverhill, MA, of consumption. Emery himself died of “epilepsy” in Brownfield, ME, in 1894. According to Find a Grave, there is no currently known marker or lot for Emery at Pine Grove Cemetery in Brownfield.
In a well known article (at least among historians), Jill Lepore stated that one of the tasks of microhistory consists of betraying “those who have left abundant records . . . in order to resurrect those who did not.” Everybody who knows something about the 5th New Hampshire remembers Colonel Edward Cross, and rightly so, but as part of my project, I’d like to devote a good deal of time to resurrecting the Stephen Emerys of the regiment.
An intense George F. Guppy (1840-1900) looks past the camera in this image. Born in Rochester, he was the son of a wheelwright. The war found him working in his native town as a clerk in some sort of commercial establishment. Drafted in the 1st District on August 14, 1863, he joined the 5th New Hampshire in Concord. Guppy rose quickly through the ranks to become a 1st Lieutenant. He went missing at the Battle of Farmville but reappeared in time for the surrender at Appomattox. After the war, he worked as a clerk in a dry goods store in Dover before ending up in the New Hampshire Soldiers’ Home in Tilton where he died.
Throughout my involvement with the 5th New Hampshire Project, I’ve been interested in how things work. For example, from the start, I wanted to know how exactly recruitment was conducted in New Hampshire in 1861. What did the entire recruitment machinery look like, and who was responsible for what? What was the relationship of this machinery to the men who eventually officered the regiment? Each question I asked led to more questions, and answering these questions eventually proved profitable. I now understand how the entire, messy process worked.
Having also completed my study of the way recruitment worked in the summer of 1862 under the Militia Act, I have now commenced studying how the Enrollment Act (which implemented the federal draft) operated starting in the summer of 1863. In an attempt to come to grips with this matter, I decided to look at the 5th New Hampshire’s draftees and figure out who they were. With the help of two students, Annabella Pizzi ’25 and Isabella Uva ’26, I tracked down information on every draftee who served with the regiment. With their help, I sought to find out what manner of men were conscripted—and thereafter reviled for their supposedly poor fighting qualities.
David O. Davis (1831-1922) was born in Alton. Before the war, he worked on his father’s small farm and hired himself out to neighbors. In late May 1861, he volunteered for the 2nd New Hampshire. Quickly promoted to Corporal, he served with that regiment until September 1862, when he obtained a disabled discharge due to rheumatism. He was drafted in mid-August 1863 and placed in the 5th New Hampshire where he was promoted to Corporal in November. During the fighting around Fort Stedman in late March 1865, he was badly wounded, and his left arm was amputated. After the war, he worked as a mail carrier in Durham before settling down in Newmarket. Married in 1854, he had nine children with Martha Davis. In his later years, he moved to be with family in Manchester where he died at the ripe old age of 90.
One of the most interesting facts I uncovered, perhaps, was the most immediately obvious. Only 87 draftees served in the 5th New Hampshire.[i] And all but one were drafted in the late summer and early fall of 1863—despite the fact that there were three later drafts.[ii] Countervailing forces acted on draftees or potential draftees, inclining most to avoid military service while enticing a select few to embrace their fate.
Perhaps the most important factor among these countervailing forces was that there were many illegal and legal ways for a conscript to avoid the army. A man could hide from the enrollment officer or skip town. He could sham disability. And, in New Hampshire, he could run away to Canada. However, resorting to these antics was not always necessary since there were many legal means of dodging the draft. A draftee could plead exemption due to hardship as defined by Article 2 of the Enrollment Act (e.g. he was the only son of an aged parent [or parents] who depended on his support, he was the sole adult brother of children having neither father nor mother, he was the father of motherless children dependent on his support, and so on and so forth). Others could fail the physical. If a man could not obtain exemption on any of these grounds, he could pay a commutation fee of $300 or purchase a substitute. The Enrollment Act did not stipulate the price of a substitute, but so long as commutation remained on the books (it was repealed in July 1864), the market rate for a substitute hovered in the same neighborhood as the commutation fee. Three-hundred dollars may sound like a great deal of money, but when there was a will, there was usually a way. Farmers usually managed to produce this sort of money out of pocket or through a mortgage. If a potential conscript did not have that kind of cash on hand, for a small fee, he could join an insurance society or commutation club that pooled the money from its members to pay for commutation or a substitute in case one of their number was drafted. Some church congregations did essentially the same thing. In New Hampshire, however, many communities actually voted in a town meeting to protect their men from the draft by raising taxes to pay for substitutes. The money thus collected was entrusted to an agent who would locate a substitute broker and obtain the necessary number of men to fulfill the town’s quota. It was through the hiring of substitutes that the Granite State fulfilled 75% of its various quotas—a higher proportion than in any other state.[iii]
Isaiah Robbins (1840-1908) was born in Surry, but his family soon moved to Keene where his father owned a moderately prosperous farm. Robbins worked as a carpenter before the war. In September 1861, he enlisted in what became the 3rd Massachusetts Cavalry. He served with this unit until he was discharged for disability in New Orleans in July 1862. He was drafted in October 1863 and sent to the 5th New Hampshire. At Cold Harbor (June 1863), while fighting in his first battle with his new regiment, he was shot in the right side of his torso. He eventually received a disabled discharge in May 1865. After the war, he married (1867) and settled down in Nashua where, at various times, he sold liquor and tobacco.Note that he wears a small red trefoil badge that represented the 1st division, II Corps in the Army of the Potomac. This was where the 5th New Hampshire was placed in the Army of the Potomac’s order of battle.
With so many ways to avoid conscription, it may seem like a miracle that any draftees were netted at all. However, there was a powerful incentive to serve that told with a small proportion of conscripts: money. In New Hampshire, draftees were allowed to collect the same federal, state, and town bounties as volunteers and substitutes. In the summer of 1863, before the bloodbath of the Overland Campaign and the miseries associated with the Siege of Petersburg, some draftees, for the sake of making a bundle, seemed willing to run the risk of getting struck by a rebel bullet. That being the case, perhaps we should rethink the traditional distinctions between Civil War volunteers, substitutes, and draftees during the second half of the conflict. All three groups possessed a certain amount of agency. The contours of that agency might have differed, but the important thing is that all of these men had choices about whether to serve or not.
Take the case of 24-year-old George F. Guppy of Rochester who was drafted in August 1863 and joined the 5th New Hampshire shortly thereafter. Rochester had voted a “$300 bounty to each drafted man or substitute, to be paid ten days after being mustered in, and the same aid to drafted men as heretofore to families of volunteers.” When the draft for Rochester was held in Portsmouth, where the enrollment board sat, 97 names were drawn (since it was anticipated that so many men would be exempted for one reason or another, 50% more men were drafted than required to meet the quota). Out of these 97, two men paid the commutation fee of $300. Another 26 obtained substitutes. Sixty-six “were rejected for disability or declared legally exempt for family reasons.” In the end, only three men entered the army as draftees, one of whom was Guppy.[iv] It is hard to believe that Guppy, who had lived in Rochester all his life and worked as a clerk (and then a trader on his own account) in a large-ish industrial town, did not have the financial or social resources to evade the draft when so many others did. What is more likely is that he was attracted by the prospect of the federal bounty of $300, the state bounty of $100, and Rochester’s bounty of $300. The zest with which he took to the military life—he was promoted from private to 1st lieutenant in just 14 months—suggests he had deliberately chosen this course.
So who were the men who entered the army as draftees? A healthy majority of the 5th New Hampshire’s draftees (47) like Guppy came from the 1st District. Another 29 originated in the 3rd, and 12 were picked up in the 2nd. I have no idea what explains this disproportionate reliance on the 1st District. Nor do I understand why the draftees were distributed as they were: the vast majority were sent to Company D and Company F (38 in the former and 30 in the latter), with the remainder dispersed among the other companies. In the fall of 1863, Company D was the most depleted in the regiment, and while F was also undersized, it was not among the smallest. Your guess is as good as mine as to why the conscripts were lumped together.
The draftees were older than the original volunteers (and the substitutes), with an average age of just over 28 (and a median age of 27). Two-thirds were between the ages of 25 and 35. Not surprisingly, then, a very large proportion were married. Of the 66 for whom I could find the year of their first marriage, 41 had wed in 1860 or earlier. Many had been married for quite a bit longer than that. Not surprisingly, then, many had children. A number of considerations influenced a man’s decision to enlist, but it seems likely that these draftees had felt reluctant to volunteer because of their family obligations.
Of the 21 who lived in their father’s (or in one case, mother’s) household in 1860, several belonged to well-off families. For instance, draftee John L. Woodman’s father, Peter, a farmer living in Deerfield, was worth $10,000, according to the 1860 Census. John left the household when he married in 1862, but all things being equal, nothing barred the father from assisting the son financially. Had Peter done so, John might not have suffered a terrible thigh wound at Cold Harbor that crippled him with a left leg four inches shorter than his right. Even less wealthy fathers would have been capable of helping their sons. Couldn’t farmer Israel Richardson of Derry, worth $2000, have found some cash to spare his son, Nehemiah, from the horrors of Cold Harbor and the wound he suffered there? Perhaps these men, like Guppy, were interested in large bounties.
Many draftees who were heads of household appear to have been too young to have accumulated sufficient capital to pay for commutation or a substitute. Many older draftees looked like they were also too poor to produce the necessary money. But even in this group we find men who had sufficient funds to evade the draft. Benjamin Mead was a 37-year-old farmer from Deerfield worth $3,000. Like Guppy, Mead must have chosen his fate. Unlike Guppy, he chose poorly. Drafted in August 1863, he died of disease less than a year later.
Born in Grafton, John D. K. Marshall (1837-1910) moved with his family to Londonderry where he helped his father run a small farm. Drafted in August 1863, he joined the 5th New Hampshire. At Cold Harbor (June 1864), he was shot clean through the shoulder. Once he recovered—more or less—he served a six-month stint with the Veteran Reserve Corps. He was discharged due his wound in July 1865. He returned to Londonderry where he worked as a farmer pretty much up until his death. He was one of the very few draftees who never married.This photo was taken later in life, possibly at a veterans’ reunion or encampment. Note that he sports a badge and ribbon where the red trefoil of the 1st division, II Corps figures prominently. Draftees like Marshall were obviously proud of their military service.
Generally, the occupations of these draftees were what you would expect to find among twenty-somethings just starting out in life—or older men whose careers had never really taken off. I looked up their occupations on the Census of 1860 as well as on the muster rolls in 1863. The occupations younger men pursued at these two points often did not jibe, largely because they tended to meander from job to job. The following figures are based on the muster rolls, largely because I was able to find my draftees more frequently in these documents than in the census. Of the 79 for whom I could find an occupation, 19 described themselves as “Farmers,” but when one consults the census data, it’s quite clear that most of these were laborers who worked on a farm (the information on the muster rolls was clearly self-reported). We can lump this group together with the 13 who appeared on the rolls as “Laborers.” Another 19 were “Shoemakers,” an occupation that, in most cases, was not particularly remunerative, especially in the wake of the Panic of 1857. These three groups accounted for almost two-thirds of the draftees.
The remainder of the conscripts pursued more skilled avocations—blacksmiths, carpenters, coopers, jewelers, masons, moulders, and tailors. The 5th New Hampshire even picked up a chaplain from among the draftees—Silas Dean, a peripatetic 33-year-old clergyman who had fallen on hard times.
Thus far, we have seen hints that at least some of the draftees who had the means to avoid military service still joined the federal army. The war records of these soldiers, as a group, provides another interesting piece of evidence as to their character. Two conscripts rose from the ranks to become commissioned officers (1st Lieutenants Thomas Warburton and George F. Guppy). Moreover, 23 out of the 87 died in the service (24%), with 12 of them being killed in action or suffering mortal wounds. According to a variety of sources, an additional 37 suffered a total of 40 wounds (this figure is a minimum since there might have been other casualties that I did not detect).[v] At least 49 (56%), then, became casualties as a result of combat. On the other side of the scale, only one, Colby E. Moses, a tailor from Newmarket, deserted. In other words, the draftees generally proved themselves faithful soldiers who suffered heavily for placing themselves in harm’s way
Whatever route these conscripts took that landed them in the army, they appear, in the gross, to have committed themselves to the project. The reason is not far to seek. Unlike substitutes, the great majority of whom had no connection to New Hampshire, conscripts could not desert or otherwise bring dishonor to their names without suffering from the opprobrium of their communities. That concern with honor and reputation seems to have followed them throughout their lives as veterans all the way to the grave. Dozens of draftees (or their families) proudly memorialized their service with the 5th New Hampshire on their headstones in cemeteries across New Hampshire and the rest of the United States. In light of these facts, it may be worth revising the low opinion of draftees that arose during the Civil War and has persisted ever since.
Edward Parmelee (1841-1913) was born in Walpole but spent most of his life in Claremont. The Census of 1860 found him living at home with his father (who was a bootmaker), his mother, and his twin brother (Albert Parmelee). He was drafted in October 1863 in West Lebanon and joined the 5th New Hampshire shortly thereafter. During the fighting around Fort Stedman at the end of March 1865, he was shot in the foot and badly wounded. According to the List of Pensioners on the Roll (1883) and the Veterans Census of 1890, his foot was amputated at the “instep.” Parmelee had been a “Laborer” before the war but afterwards found a career as a butcher and married in 1874. Towards the end of the century, he appears to have lived off of his army pension. When he died, Claremont’s National Eagle eulogized, “He was a good citizen, and will be missed by all who knew him.”Like many draftees, Parmelee’s service with the 5th New Hampshire was memorialized on his headstone.
[i] The 86 draftees who were placed with the regiment in October 1863 constituted only 15% of the 550 recruits who joined at that time (most of whom were substitutes). After that point, the vast majority of recruits were substitutes with a smattering of volunteers. See the Regimental Return for the 5th New Hampshire for October 1863, New Hampshire State Archives.
[ii] No draft was held in New Hampshire in March 1864 because the state was found to have supplied 500 more men than what had been required by the various calls made by the federal government up until that point. During the draft that took place in fall 1864, the regiment picked up one additional conscript, 26-year-old, Canadian-born Tristam Glidden. He was, perhaps, the only one because, by that point, almost all of New Hampshire’s towns had adopted the practice of purchasing substitutes to keep their men out of the army. As for the draft call of December 1864, that was never really carried out in New Hampshire. See Coos Republican, February 16, 1864, 2.
[iii] The two leading, comprehensive works on the Civil War draft in the North are Eugene C. Murdock, One Million Men: The Civil War Draft in the North (Madison: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1971) and James W. Geary, We Need Men: The Union Draft in the Civil War (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1991).
[iv] Franklin McDuffee and Silvanus Hayward, History of the Town of Rochester, New Hampshire, from 1722 to 1890 (Manchester, NH: J. B. Clarke, 1892), 200.
[v] To count wounds, I consulted Augustus D. Ayling, Revised Register of the Soldiers and Sailors of New Hampshire in the War of the Rebellion, 1861-1866 (Concord: Ira C. Evans, 1895), List of Pensioners on the Roll, January 1, 1883 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1883), and the Census of Union Veterans and Widows of the Civil War, 1890.
The National Eagle (Claremont, NH), October 2, 1862, 2: On this page one finds an editorial on the overall military situation, a discussion of Nathaniel Berry’s participation in the governors’ conference at Altoona, the Claremont town fair, a letter from Captain Charles Long of Company G, 5th New Hampshire, describing the casualties in his unit suffered during the Battle of Antietam, the recipe for an “omelet,” Lincoln’s proclamation suspending habeas corpus, an explanation of Britain’s industrial power, a reprint of a New York Times article about French policy in Mexico, a notice about how “Ayer’s Sarsaparilla” purifies the blood, an account of the surrender of Harper’s Ferry, a speech by General James W. Wadsworth (then running for governor of New York on the Republican ticket), a rough calculation of how many soldiers the Army of the Potomac lost at Antietam, and much, much, more.
In an attempt carry on with research during the academic year, convince myself that I’m making progress on my book, and maintain some sanity, I’ve taken to reading New Hampshire newspapers from the Civil War period at the New Hampshire Historical Society and the New Hampshire State Library (usually on Fridays or Saturdays). It might sound strange to say that reading 160-year-old newspapers on microfilm allows me to “maintain some sanity,” but honestly, it’s a nice change of pace that permits me to reset and stop thinking about the zoo that the college can sometimes resemble; both the historical society and the state library are very quiet.
When I write “reading,” though, I’m usually not reading in any depth. I survey the pages quickly but with some diligence, recognizing that much of what I’m looking for is usually on the second page, where the editorials, local news, and correspondence are. If I find something that looks interesting, I scan it, give the resulting pdf a name so I can locate the file later, and save it on a thumb drive.
This manner of proceeding got me thinking about the following obvious point: I am not at all reading the newspaper in the way that Granite Staters did during the Civil War. They read the paper once a week (almost all New Hampshire newspapers were weeklies); they read more carefully and slowly; they sometimes (or often) read the paper aloud to friends, family, and work colleagues; and they were immersed in the world that the newspaper represented.
And what a world it was! Nothing like a mid-19th-century newspaper exists anymore, with its large pages and small, dense print. And what an emporium of varied knowledge! Newspapers carried serialized fiction and history, essays, advertisements (with much space set aside for quack medicines), the doings of the state legislature, new state laws, morbid news (drownings, suicides, immolations, and other fatal incidents), legal notices, court cases, recipes, local color, anecdotes, folk wisdom, curious tales, reports from town and county fairs, pieces by the humorist Artemus Ward, cattle prices at the Brighton market in Massachusetts, the state of business, swipes at rival journals, railroad timetables, and advice for farming. But after 1861, alongside the usual noise was war news. There were also reports about national and state politics, speeches by prominent political figures, war meetings, foreign news, recently passed federal and state legislation, correspondence from soldiers and civilians alike, chatter about Granite State regiments in the field and those still being organized at home, and reprinted columns from a wide variety of newspapers, including London, New York, Boston, Concord, and even Southern journals. This was not the 24/7 news cycle associated with cable news augmented by the internet and social media, but it conveyed a scene of great energy and simultaneity.
Lately, I’ve been focusing my attention on the summer of 1862 which was one of the most consequential periods of the war. I’ve been particularly interested in recruitment during this period, specifically the operation of the Militia Act (1862) and how New Hampshire fulfilled its quota for the federal government’s July 1862 call for 300,000 three-year volunteers. The Militia Act is intriguing because it served as a kind of halfway house between the voluntarism that characterized recruitment in 1861 and the federal draft (along with substitution) implemented by the Enrollment Act (1863).
Surgeon’s Report of Killed and Wounded of the Fifth Regiment N. H. Volunteers at the Battle of Sharpsburg, Sept. 17, 1862. New Hampshire Statesman (Concord, NH), October 4, 1862, 2. By the time this report was published, a substantial number of the men listed as wounded had succumbed to their injuries. When all was said and done, almost twenty men were killed or mortally wounded as a result of the battle. Another ninety were wounded. These figures amounted to about a third of the regiment that was present for duty on the day of the battle.
Of course, in the summer of 1862, nobody knew the Militia Act was a halfway house to something different, and that’s what makes this pivotal period so fascinating. The federal government, with the support of many Northerners, made a series of choices that set the war on a new course whose destination they could not entirely foresee. The Militia Act yielded to the Enrollment Act. The Confiscation Act (1862) was superseded by the Emancipation Proclamation (1863). McClellan’s war was replaced by “hard war” (to use Mark Grimsley’s phrase). The “Constitution as it was” fell before an amended constitution. Overall, the war was moving in a harder, more radical direction, and while I can see it now very clearly, I’m not sure that readers then found it easy to synthesize the wild diversity of information in their papers. This is yet another way in which my reading differs from theirs. As C. V. Wedgwood wrote in her biography of William the Silent, “History is lived forwards but it is written in retrospect. We know the end before we consider the beginning and we can never wholly recapture what it was to know the beginning only.”[i] I have both the advantage and disadvantage of hindsight. I know the whole story, but that means I cannot “recapture what it was to know the beginning only.”
What I can recapture is the sense of crisis that seemed to infuse New Hampshire newspapers in the summer of 1862. There was an understanding that the war in Virginia (the theater to which these journals paid the most attention) was not going well. Charged with delivering a great knock-out blow against the rebellion, General McClellan and the Army of the Potomac had, instead, “changed base” to Harrison’s Landing. The Peninsula campaign had cost many lives, and soldiers sent correspondence to their hometown newspapers explaining who in their companies had been killed or wounded. These missives were followed by surgeon’s reports that enumerated the dead and injured in New Hampshire regiments. These long lists, with their descriptions of wounds, must have felt terribly foreboding. The newspapers also issued notices of which New Hampshire soldiers had been sent to federal hospitals all along the eastern seaboard, from Alexandria, Virginia to New York City. The price in blood of putting down the rebellion could not have been more evident.
Cheshire Repubican (Keene, NH) July 23, 1862, 2:This “Union Mass Meeting” was headlined by Daniel Clark, then sitting in the U.S. Senate, and Thomas M. Edwards, who represented New Hampshire’s 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Attendees pledged themselves to use their “best endeavors to induce the town of Keene to pay each volunteer from [the] town the sum of $25 extra, beyond what is already offered to volunteers from this state.” Over “$3900 was subscribed by individuals present as a gaurantee for the above mentioned additional bounty, should the Town fail to make the provision.”
Meanwhile, the recruitment machinery in New Hampshire strained to meet the state’s quota as defined by the federal government’s July 1862 call. Between August and October of that year, the state raised and organized six regiments of three-year men and two nine-month regiments—roughly the same number of men as had been recruited in all of 1861. Recruiters combed the countryside, and every settlement, no matter how inconsequential, held a war meeting led by the great and the good to encourage volunteering. Towns raised bounties to meet their own quotas, and wealthy individuals often pledged funds to assist this effort. All of this frenetic activity occurred even as news of enormous casualties flooded the columns of local newspapers.
Against this backdrop of recruitment for the meat-grinder in Virginia, news emerged of prospective legislation that would have been unthinkable just a year before. The Militia Act (July 1862) brought the Northern states one step closer to conscription. The Confiscation Act of the same month permitted federal forces to free enslaved people in conquered rebel territory and recruit them. At the same time, there was extensive talk about imposing greater pain and costs on the Confederacy, with much of this discussion referring to some sort of act of emancipation.
Nobody could view these developments with perfect equanimity. The Cheshire Republican (Keene, NH), like other Democratic papers, saw only portents of disaster. It argued that the Republican administration’s policy, which amounted to “prolongation of the war, with all its accompanying loss of blood and treasure,” was “traceable to the fanatical blundering of the Northern anti-slavery fanatics.”[ii] (Apparently, Horatio Kimball, the editor, was so outraged he felt compelled to write “fanatical” and “fanatics” in the same sentence.) Meanwhile, on the other side of the partisan divide, the Independent Democrat (Concord, NH) asserted that:
The white-kid-glove policy is a thing of the past; there are to be no restrictions as to the employment of men to put down this infernal rebellion; the armies of the Union will subsist upon the enemy’s country; in fine, all the means recognized in civilized warfare will be used against the barbarous rebels who use all the means which human malignity can devise, or the devil can give them.[iii]
No doubt, Benjamin Prescott, the doughty Republican editor of the Independent Democrat, believed this approach to war would deliver victory. And we now know in retrospect that it did—though it cost hundreds of thousands of American lives. But at the time, Prescott promised a hard road, and victory must have seemed uncertain. Readers must have quailed before this prospect. What if this policy failed, people must have asked themselves, then what? Embracing all-out war involved a great act of faith. These mixed feelings probably characterized what it was like to “know the beginning only.”
[i] C. V. Wedgwood, William the Silent: William of Nassau, Prince of Orange 1533-1584 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1944), 35.
[ii]Cheshire Republican (Keene, NH), August 6, 1862, 2.
[iiI]Independent Democrat (Concord, NH), July 24, 1862, 2.
What follows are the last of the excerpts from Trask’s papers that I will publish on this blog. There is, of course, more interesting material than what I’ve posted, but final exams and committee work call. After all the grading and hoopla are over, I plan to spend December and much of January overhauling my classes and trying to get some newspaper research done at the state library.
The first excerpt comes from a letter Trask wrote to his parents when he was with the 5th New Hampshire just south of Petersburg. The letter is dated June 20, 1864 at 6:30 PM, so the Siege of Petersburg was barely ten days old.
Sister Sarah—don’t you wish you were a Maj. General’s wife—so that you could come out on to the battle field and sleep in a tent on the ground with your husband? I hardly think you could muster courage enough to do it if you were a general’s wife. But Bill Burlow’s [Francis Barlow’s] wife can. He commands our Division. His wife has followed he army since we joined it—(how long before do not know) which is quite a novelty and unusual—when in so active operations. She stays mostly at Division Hospital and takes right hold to wait on wounded & sick—fixing up little delicacies etc. and the night before last after the charging and fighting of the day came up and stay with the General untill [sic] morning—not more than 500 yds. in rear of front line of battle. He is a fighting man of the first water and she is a loving woman—her fighting qualities don’t know—but surely she has good pluck.
The only known likeness of Arabella Barlow (1824-1864); this image is a detail from a much larger photo taken in 1864.
“Bill Burlow” refers to Francis Barlow who then commanded the 1st division of the II Corps (I don’t know why Trask referred to Barlow as “Bill”). Barlow was the scourge of stragglers and certainly one of the most pugnacious division commanders in the Army of the Potomac at the time. It is interesting, though, that Trask spends more time discussing Barlow’s wife, Arabella, who was an exceedingly interesting person in her own right. They married in April 1861, the day before Barlow left to join his three-month New York militia unit.. She was ten years older than Barlow, and an extraordinarily well educated woman with a brilliant mind. George Templeton Strong, whose famous diary frequently provided pungent descriptions of the prominent people he encountered, wrote that Arabella Barlow was “certainly the most brilliant, cultivated, easy graceful, effective talker of womankind, and [she] has read, thought and observed much and well.” Coming from Strong, this was a heck of a compliment. Arabella was also possessed by a strong sense of duty (she joined the US Sanitary Commission in 1862). Twice, she nursed her husband back from the brink of death—once after he was wounded by a shell in the face and grapeshot in the groin at Antietam, and once when he was shot in the abdomen at Gettysburg. Arabella spent much of her time taking care of the sick and wounded throughout the war, and the beginning of the Siege of Petersburg found her at the 1st division’s hospital. It was there that she contracted typhus and died on July 27, 1864, only five weeks after Trask’s letter was written.
Winfield Scott Hancock (seated), leader of the II Corps, with his division commanders. From left to right: Francis Barlow, David Birney, and John Gibbon. According to Trask, Barlow was a “fighting man of the first water.”
Trask wrote the next letter to his brother from the trenches before Petersburg on July 2, 1864.
I hope you will twitch every mothered son of those damned skeedaddlers back into their own states, & send them out here doubly quick to serve their country 10 years if needed as long. The extra 7 yrs. for deserting their Government in this time of peril. It will take five hundred thousand more men to subdue this rebellion, and the sooner they run this way instead of running to Canada the better it will be for our nation. Uncle Abe, is much to [sic] slow about calling out men, we want them now, but have got to wait & wait until the old army is all dead before he will get them raised.
The men . . . are kept at work nearly all the time on fatigue duty. To day our Div. is in the trenches digging where the 5th corps is stationed. I am out in front with my regt. We are digging a trench 12 ft. wide & four feet deep, to take in large guns & ammunition to a large fort which is just completed. Have seen the greatest thing to day of all, since I have been in the army. Went out to our 2nd line of works in 5th corps, which is in plain sight of the Rebs, works for more than a mile in length, and not over 300 yds. distant from our works. The two lines are so near to each other that they put out no pickets in the day time. I was within good musket range of the Rebels but they don’t fire on either side here in front of the 5th corps. There I could look up and down the Rebel line of works for over a mile, & 3 of their forts in plain view. And I had the pleasure of seeing one of our mortar shell strike the magazine of one of their forts on the right of me and she went up with a fearful explosion. This is the 2nd one which has come under my notice within 3 days. Our shell annoy them a great deal. I saw 5 strike fair in their works within 15 or 20 minutes. The 9th corps have picket firing—on account I suppose of the hatred of the Rebs against the n*****. It is delightful to see the mortar shell go up over in the air at night time. Look much like a comet passing through the air. Yesterday we were blessed with a good steady rain, for the first since the 30 of June. The sky looks like more rain to night. It will do more good to our army than all the pills and drugs which the Surgeons can dispense. . . .
I intend to leave the service when my 3 yrs. are up if I can possibly get out of it. Let some one else have my change for 3 yrs. Then I will come back again if needed. There are any quantity of them that want to come I suppose & I am willing they should. Three years is long enough to serve at one time unless a man intends to follow the army, which I have not decided to do, as yet. Don’t know but what I may be obliged to follow it longer than untill [sic] winter, but hope not.
“THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG–THE 5TH AND 9TH ARMY CORPS IN POSSESSION OF THE WELDON RAILROAD- VIEW OF THE FORTS JUST COMPLETED TO PROTECT THE POSITION” from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (September 24, 1864). This sketch was made from where Fort Wadsworth later stood, looking east. Did Trask enjoy a similar view of both rebel and federal lines before writing his letter? (This image with the captions in red comes from The Petersburg Project–an excellent website.)
In the first paragraph of this excerpt, Trask criticizes men who sought to avoid the draft by fleeing to Canada. We have to remember that Stewartstown, Trask’s pre-war residence, was only half a mile from the Canadian border.
It’s not clear to me exactly where the 5th New Hampshire was when Trask wrote this letter. The regiment had been involved in the II Corps’ embarrassing defeat at Jerusalem Plank Road (June 22, 1864). Its next major action took place at the first battle of Deep Bottom (July 27-29, 1864). I suspect that on July 2, 1864, the 5th New Hampshire was somewhere near the Weldon & Petersburg Railroad. I don’t know which forts he refers to, but I’d very interested in finding out. The source that William Child relied on while writing his semi-official history of the regiment also describes the spectacle of mortar shells fired at night during this portion of the siege: “The mortar shells can be seen at night as their fuse burn during passage in great arcs across the sky.”
That’s all for now. If I can, I’ll try to produce something noteworthy or interesting over my winter break.
As promised, I’m back with more passages from the Trask papers. And as before, I must issue the disclaimer that the transcription might not be entirely 100% accurate.
Again, I have selected excerpts from two letters. Trask wrote the first letter from camp in Falmouth, VA on March 15, 1863 to his brother Clark. Apparently, his brother claimed he sent the Coos Republican to Trask every week. Trask, however, complains that he received, on average, only “one per month.” (The Coos Republican was a weekly.) He surmises that the orderlies and mail carriers steal the papers because they are hungry for reading material. Trask then continues by discussing politics:
Col. Harraman’s [Walter Harriman] letter of acceptance as Candidate for governor, I endorse most fully. He talks the sentiments of a true patriot. But the old farmer of Ill. [Lincoln] caps the whole, wish to God and for the safety of our beloved Government, that there were more farmers the likes of him in N.H.
It seems by the papers—N.Y. Herald and Washington Chronicle that you had a very close run for Governor [New Hampshire’s state election took place on March 10, 1863], and had it not been for the third candidate [Walter Harriman] you would have lost it. The Herald goes on to comment upon the matters, as the Democrats having gained so much from 1860 to 1862 up to election 1863. I do not see it in that light—that so many Republicans have turned and voted the Democratic Ticket—but rather that they are here in the field armed & equiped [sic] ready for the next battle, which we expect before long.
In 1863, the Republicans feared that their candidate for governor, Joseph Gilmore, a railroad executive, stood a good chance of losing the election. They thus sponsored the candidacy of Walter Harriman, a War Democrat, to split the Democratic vote. Matters turned out exactly as the Republicans hoped. Gilmore lost to his Democratic rival, Ira Eastman. But thanks to Harriman, Eastman only obtained a narrow plurality of the vote. By law, the governor needed a majority. The election was thus thrown to the state legislature which had a healthy Republican majority, and Gilmore emerged victorious.
Joseph Gilmore (1811-1867) (left) and Walter Harriman (1817-1884) (right) later in life. To run for governor, Harriman resigned his colonelcy in the 11th New Hampshire. After the election was over, he went back to his regiment where he compiled an excellent war record. After the war, he became a Republican and served as governor between 1867 an 1869.
There may have been some substance to Trask’s speculation that a large portion of the state’s Republican voters were in the army. Certainly, the Republican party thought such was the case. New Hampshire Republicans repeatedly supported legislation that would have allowed the state’s soldiers to vote in the field. They never succeeded, however, in passing such a bill. So during the elections of 1864 and 1865, the Republican state administration strategically granted furloughs to soldiers who could be counted on to vote for the party when they came home.
Trask next turns his attention to General Joseph Hooker who had been appointed in January 1863 to lead the Army of the Potomac.
Since Hooker came in command there has been an improvement of the army. Close and careful attention has been paid to the sanitary conditions of Hospitals and Camps of the soldiers, and vegetables, soft bread, and more beef for subsistence has been furnished—and when the soldier gets his big fat boiled potatoes with beef and soft bread on his plate before him, he exclaims exultantly “look at dan” and cry out “bully for Hooker.” Good discipline by drilling daily, and frequent inspections has been carried out to greater extent than heretofore.
The next two months will tell the fate of gen. Hooker. Much depends on his first battle in opening the spring campaign. If he is successful and leads us on to victory, the people will overwhelm him with honors and praises, but if he is not successful, they will denounce him as loud and strongly on the other hand, and down he goes. The people have come to that, that they will not tolerate any thing except the perfect success in this army of the Potomac.
These observations align with what we know of Hooker’s tenure as commander of the Army of the Potomac. Interestingly, it was under Hooker that corps badges were introduced to the army, and the 5th New Hampshire received what became its beloved red trefoil, representing its place in the Army of the Potomac’s order of battle: 1st division of the II Corps. Trask, of course, understood what awaited Hooker. Hooker’s defeat at Chancellorsville in May 1863—and particularly the manner of this drubbing—not only undercut his position in the army but also diminished Lincoln’s faith in him. Hooker lasted until late June 1863 when he was sacked and replaced by General George Meade shortly before the Battle of Gettysburg.
Joseph Hooker (1814-1879) in 1862.
Trask wrote the next letter from Point Lookout, MD, on January 27, 1864 to his father and mother.
A large number of the rebel prisoners here have taken the oath of allegiance, and about one thousand already have enlisted into our service. Dr. Child, asst. Surg. of our regt. is now examining those that enlist, finds them very good soldiers. I enclose a ring to Mother made by a reb prisoner showing their ingenuity. They made thousands of such little things and sell them—this one is made of Gutta Percha. I think it very appropriate for Mother, and hope she will wear it.
In Days and Events, 1860-1866, Thomas Livermore, also of the 5th New Hampshire, writes of having drilled a regiment-sized group of Confederate prisoners. If I recall correctly, Livermore was offered a commission in this unit of “galvanized Yankees,” and felt tempted to accept but eventually thought the better of it. This unit very well may have been the 1st United States Volunteer Infantry which was initially deployed in Virginia and North Carolina before being sent out west to fight Native Americans. There’s a movie in there somewhere. It’s interesting that where Trask’s tentmate, William Child, found “them very good soldiers,” Livermore was stunned by their ignorance and the extent of their illiteracy.
We have a very nice pleasant camp, the best one on the Point, are now building a church forty by twenty ft. which is to be used for religious & Massonic [sic] purposes. Our chaplin [sic] is a drafted man from N. H. who was a regularly ordained minister of the Baptist creed, yet in indigent circumstances was obliged to come into the service as a private, and having no chaplin [sic] at the time, he has been favored with that office. He is a very good man, and worthy of the position. Have a moderate number of sick for the number now in the regt. and none dangerous, but shall have any amount of sick if they keep on sending us such recruits as the last lot we received last week. They were volunteer men—twenty of them, and scarcely a sound man in the lot. They furly [sic] rob the insane asylums, poor houses and almost the grave yards to fill up quotas with. If N.H. thinks of putting down rebellion with such subjects—she is woefully mistaken.
One can find a small illustration of the church Trask describes in William Child’s semi-official history of the 5th New Hampshire (see above). The “chaplin” Trask refers to was Silas Dean of Londonderry, who had been drafted in August 1863 and was appointed chaplain in February 1864, shortly after Trask wrote his letter. The regiment had been without a chaplain since Milo Ransom’s resignation in January 1863. Livermore described Ransom variously as a “little, puling fellow,” a “weak sister,” and “our little, insignificant chaplain.” It should come as no surprise that according to Livermore’s account, Ransom was the subject of much rough humor at the hands of the field and staff. Dean, however, proved more to Livermore’s liking. The latter later wrote in Days and Events:
We had been without a chaplain since little Ransom had left us, and it was thought wise by some to get another. [John] Ricker and I, disgusted with our previous chaplain, opposed it in the meeting of the officers (who had the election of the chaplain) but the majority being in favor of having one, a private soldier named Dean, who had, in civil life, been a preacher, was elected, and until the regiment was mustered out, filled the place to the satisfaction of all.
Trask’s observations about the volunteers who joined the regiment during this period is especially interesting. Veteran soldiers tended to be very critical of substitutes (they also had a low view of draftees, but these were few and far between). However, veterans usually did not speak so harshly of volunteers. Trask’s assessment of these men is worth investigating. How and why were they induced to enlist? By the summer of 1863, somewhere over a quarter of the eligible male population in New Hampshire between the ages of 18 and 44–more than 15,000 men–had already entered the service. Volunteering in the North had all but dried up which was why the federal government opted to pass the Enrollment Act of 1863 which used the threat of a draft to obtain thousands of substitutes. After the implementation of the draft, the 5th New Hampshire only picked up an additional 100 volunteers during the rest of the war. Another 90 draftees joined the regiment over this span of time. The main source of manpower during this period was substitutes; over a thousand joined the regiment in the last 20 months of the war.
That’s it for now. I hope to be back with more passages from Trask’s letters soon.
Sharpsburg, MD (October 3, 1862): President Abraham Lincoln (left) visits Major General George B. McCellan (right) at the latter’s camp near the Antietam battlefield.
Since I acquired the Civil War letters of Charles M. Trask, several people have asked me if I would share some of the interesting passages I found in his correspondence. Below, I include two lengthy excerpts about very different topics. Keep in mind as you read that I only had time to produce a hurried transcription that relied, partly, on the one that the previous owner of the papers produced.
The first comes from a letter Trask wrote on September 28, 1862, while the 5th New Hampshire was encamped on Bolivar Heights near Harper’s Ferry (which then formed part of Virginia). In this letter, he shares some interesting observations about the war, the Emancipation Proclamation, and General George B. McClellan, who then commanded the Army of the Potomac (but only for about five more weeks).
We have a mighty and powerful foe to conquer. Northern Editors have rated him to low, has been underrated in every respect by newspaper editors, and the majs. [majority] of New England people to willing to believe the same. I tell you it is Greek against Greek. Brother arrayed on the battle field against brother, all of the same blood, and all fighting with an unconquerable will, such as history never recorded of any other nation. To be convinced of this fact one would only need to be present during our last battle, or visit the hard fought ground the following day. What effect the Presidents late Proclimation [sic], on the 22nd inst., is going to have in subduing rebellion, time will only tell. There are ten thousands [sic] speculations and as many minds as people here in regard to this matter. I must say the step the President has now taken after so long deliberate consideration, declaring the Slaves all free on and after the first day of Jan. next year strikes me favorably and is going to be the death stroke on rebellion, and I only hope that that Proclimation will be litterally [sic] carried out. It must weaken the strength of the Southern army in great measure. Just let the slave be assured that he or she will be protected by our army, and I will assure you they will soon find their way within our lines, by the thousands. Then the enemy cannot have all their fatiguing labor done by servants, and save the soldiers strengths [sic] for the battle field, as they say. We can make very good use of them in building our fortifications, digging trenches and building corduroy roads & bridges, by which work so many of our soldiers have been disenabled and rendered unfit for service, either in the army, or in civil life. I noticed in yours of the 13th you express but little of no faith or confidence in little Mack’s [McClellan’s] ability to command this army on the battle field, and was rejoycing [sic] over the report at that time, so, [David] Hunter was to take command of the army of the Potomac, hoping such a change would take place. Well thus far your hopes have been in vain, and I am glad of it. Such a change has not yet been made, and I hope to the God of all battles that it never will be, untill [sic] something different from what has been, can be brought against McClellan. I cannot see in Gods name, or any other man, what he has done to cause his removal. If you can, will you please to tell me. I know of nothing unless it was the act he performed in going up to Centerville [sic] and Bull Run, planed [sic] and executed with great success the retreat of the great fighting cock [John] Pope’s army [after the Second Battle of Bull Run], who plans no retreat. Shovels and spades to the rear. Muskets to the front.
“All the Breastworks a true solder needs, [is] an open field and a fair fight.”
He, Pope, had his fight. It was not so open field as might be, and how fair it was I don’t know, but I do know one thing he got damndly [sic] whiped [sic]! And had it not been for little Mack, his whole army would have been anihilated [sic], I say if that act was or is derogatory to him and sufficient cause to remove him I can’t see it, without a candle. He has even been successful in every battle he has yet planed [sic] and fought, and especially the last one [Antietam] in which the enemy had all their leading Generals [Thomas] Jackson, [James] Longstreet, [Robert E.] Lee, [Daniel Harvey] Hills [sic], and the heaviest force they have ever concentrated, and on the most open field, with all, Little Mack licked them most shockingly and gained a complete victory over the strongest heaviest & hardest fought battle on the face of the earth. So admitted by every one as you well know. Give me little Mack for all or any of your Hunters, [Henry] Hallecks, or Popes to engineer, plan, execute and lead to victory by taking command on the battle field. We have no other Generals the rebs so much fear as McClellan, I have heard rebel prisoners say they did not care for any of our other Generals but little Mack, they did not like his maneuvering. Where is your fighting Pope now? Gone out west again with our [rest of letter missing].
What is perhaps most interesting about the letter is that Trask, who was well disposed to President Abraham Lincoln (other letters indicate as much) and the Emancipation Proclamation was also a stout defender of McClellan. This stance is especially puzzling when one considers that tensions between the president and the general were public knowledge. In fact, Lincoln would sack McClellan only five weeks later. Also of interest is the position of Trask’s brother, Clark, who had been “rejoycing” at the rumor that David Hunter would soon become the commander of the Army of the Potomac. At this point, Hunter’s main claim to fame was his arming of escaped slaves in South Carolina and the emancipation decree he issued in his capacity as commander of the Department of the South liberating all enslaved people in Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina in May 1862. In all likelihood, then, Trask’s brother was an abolitionist and a radical Republican.
Westover Landing, VA (August 1862): During the Peninsula Campaign, officers of the 4th Pennsylvania Cavalry treat their counterparts from the 3rd Pennsylvania Cavalry to some libations.
The other excerpt comes from a letter that Trask sent to his father from Falmouth, VA, on December 28, 1862. In this missive, Trask discussed the behavior of the Army of the Potomac. General observations about drinking, rowdyism, and religious observance led him to examine his own conduct.
You speak of profligacy that exists in some portions of the Union army, of which I am well aware, there is to [sic] much especially in the western Divisions, but am happy to say that in the army of the Potomac so far as I am acquainted there is comparatively little, yet quite enough. One reason is because whiskey is not so plenty as out West, another is better dicipline [sic] through the army generally and still another, it is a very hard matter to procure it here because they wont allow transportations for it. Consequently but little is had except for what is smuggled through. For instance Thanksgiving our commissary of the Brigade drew enough to issue one ration, which is one gill, to each man, and Christmas the same again, which is all that I have known being issued for several months. Really I think and know there is not so much rowdism [sic] and drunkenness in our army, here as in New Hampshire in civil life, for the reason the liquors cannot be had. Of course in regard to those matters you have much anxiety in your sons well being and conduct. My own case is different from the above in regard to obtaining it. We usually have some kind of spirit on hand in the Hospital department, which have access to at any time, and could drink it daily, if I chose to in small quantities. But instead on some occasion of hard labor and exposure I drink some, which I think in such cases in this climate does not harm, but does one good. And I know that I have stamina of character enough to govern the apetitie [sic] properly not to make imprudent use of the stimulus. Our regt. Is a temperate one, the daily surroundings here are not so bad as many and most places of any size in New England. Surg. [Luther] Knight is a member of the church, never heard him use profane language and does not like, nor allow his men about hospital to sware [sic]. The morals here of my intimate associates are better than when at home, and I do not think my morals are any more corrupted now, than when at home. But I would not be understood to say that the army is pure. By no means it is full of evil and wickedness, and plenty of vice that one can fall into if he chooses. But if a man has not moral character and principal enough to resist and turn aside from the vice here, he will not any where you may place him civil life, unless in a very nice community or reform school. To some the army is a reform school, I have heard them say that before entering it they were pretty hard boys, so called, but now are not. Our worst regt. in regard to morals are from the cities. Some of them are very bad in profanity. In relation to the Bible I sent home it was done unintentionally, but at the same time I had another, and since found another, so that now I have two good Bibles on hand, yet I must say do not read so much as I ought for, I do not get but little spare time to devote to reading, or any other business, yet perhaps I could get more if I should try hard for it. I well know there is need of studying the bible thoroughly to become a more useful being in the hands of the all Supreme Ruler through the great drama of life to pass here below, as well as fitting for that future existence, to which in the army we are more liable to be sent at any moment than in the civil pursuits in life, and I feel to thank and praise God for this safe deliverance of myself thus far through the murderous conflicts of that battle field. It seems only for him I escaped unharmed through the last and worst of all [the Battle of Fredericksburg]. Such a battle I never wish to experience again.
Aside from the fact that this letter is equivocal or, perhaps, more accurately, contradictory, there are several interesting points in this passage. Trask’s assertion that “there is not so much rowdism [sic] and drunkenness in our army, here as in New Hampshire in civil life” is striking since the state legislature, as part of the Know-Nothing agenda, passed a law against the sale of alcohol in 1855. Perhaps this legislation was not terribly effective in curbing the consumption of spirits (what a surprise!). Whatever the case, the officers of the 5th New Hampshire were a hard-drinking crew. Colonel Edward Cross did not seem to experience trouble in locating booze for his “soirées,” and according to Thomas Livermore’s Days and Events, 1860-1866, several of the regiment’s lieutenants and captains were confirmed alcoholics (or “topers” as he referred to them). Then again, officers had much easier access to alcohol than enlisted men, so perhaps the rank and file were much more sober.
I look forward to locating similarly interesting passages in Trask’s correspondence. Hopefully, there will be a “Part 2” and “Part 3” with more excerpts.
The 5th New Hampshire Project 