John C. Caldwell: The Most Important Division Commander in the Army of the Potomac You’ve Never Heard Of

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Brigadier General John C. Caldwell (ca. 1862-1863)

I’ve spent several years trying to find more than bare-bones information about John C. Caldwell (1833-1912). Until recently, I had very little show for my efforts. Caldwell, as some of you might know, took over the 5th New Hampshire’s brigade (1st Brigade, 1st Division, II Corps) right after Oliver Otis Howard was shot twice in the right arm at the Battle of Fair Oaks (which led to an amputation from which “Old Prayer Book”—as he was called by his men—recovered very rapidly). I think Edward Cross, commander of the 5th New Hampshire, must have been a bit miffed at the appointment since he wanted the position for himself. For one thing, he was the senior colonel in the brigade. For another, Caldwell, who had led the 11th Maine up until that point, had practically no combat experience whatsoever.

No one in his brigade knew much about Caldwell at the time of his appointment, aside from the fact that he seemed to be a well-educated gentleman. Born in Lowell, Vermont, he was a graduate of Amherst College (class of 1855). When the war broke out, he was the principal of Washington Academy in East Machias, Maine, a small but thriving town on the far eastern end of the Pine Tree State’s coast, known primarily for lumbering and shipbuilding. Caldwell raised the 11th Maine in November 1861 and, after a relatively peaceful six months, found himself in command of Howard’s old brigade. He made a positive impression on many of Howard’s friends. In mid-June 1862, Samuel Sewall wrote to Howard that Caldwell was “a man of high character” as well as “a gentleman in every respect . . . and a strict temperance man.” Several days later, George Balloch, a member of the 5th New Hampshire who had served on Howard’s staff, wrote “I cannot speak of him yet as a military man, but he is most certainly a finished gentleman and scholar.” Over a month later, Balloch added Caldwell “is a very fine gentleman, and a man of large and cultivated mind.” In this context, it’s worth recalling that Thomas Livermore, another member of the 5th New Hampshire, who was often critical of his fellow man, remembered Caldwell in Days and Events as “hearty [and] good-natured.”

The only additional fact I’ve been able to learn is that Caldwell came from a hard-scrabble background. His father, George M. Caldwell, seems to have been a not-so-successful farmer who moved from Vermont to Massachusetts and back again. By 1860, he was “Buying & Selling Produce” in Swanton, Vermont, his estate amounting to a mere $400. It appears to be the case, then, that John C. Caldwell was a poor boy who made good.

In any event, for years I had wondered how Caldwell came to command a brigade. More specifically, who were his political patrons? I had spent a good deal of time trying to track down these people before finding out about the Records of the Appointment, Commission, and Personal Branch (ACP) which appear in Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, 1780’s-1917 (Record Group 94). These records include:

The letters and enclosures reproduced in this publication were received from Regular and Volunteer officers, noncommissioned officers, and enlisted men; heads of War Department bureaus; Cabinet members, the President; Congressmen; State, Territorial, and local officials; and private citizens. The correspondence concerns primarily appointments, transfers, assignments, duties, examinations, promotions, discharges, courts-martial, resignations, and pay of individual officers, hospital stewards, ordnance sergeants, post and regimental sutlers, and superintendents of military cemeteries; it also concerns applicants for all of these positions.

In other words, these records, which are reproduced on almost 500 rolls of microfilm (M1064), were the likeliest place to find the letters of recommendation that supported Caldwell’s application to become a brigadier general. It was only a month ago that I discovered (thanks to a very helpful archivist at the National Archives) these microfilms were posted on FamilySearch.org to which I already had a membership.[i]

I found Caldwell’s file (thanks again to that very helpful archivist), and I discovered two things.[ii] First, I found out who his political patrons were. Second, I discovered who deep-sixed his military career. I’m usually a bad-news-first, good-news-second, kind of person, but let’s start with the good news.

The vast majority of files in M1064 were generated in 1863 or later. There is some earlier material in these files, but not much. That might explain why there is only one letter regarding Caldwell’s promotion to brigadier general (he obtained that rank in late April 1862). This missive came from Israel Washburn (1813-1883). If you were going to have only one letter of reference, however, Washburn’s was the one to have. One of the founding members of the Republican party in 1854, Washburn had served in the House of Representatives from 1851 to 1861 before becoming governor of Maine in the latter year. He was also a member of the extremely powerful Washburn clan that included brothers Elihu B. Washburne (a congressman from Illinois who was a friend of Abraham Lincoln’s and furthered Ulysses S. Grant’s career), Cadwallader Washburn (a congressman from Wisconsin who served as a general under Grant), William D. Washburn (active in Minnesota politics after the Civil War), Samuel Benjamin Washburn (a naval officer during the conflict), and Charles Ames Washburn (a prominent political figure in California who served as the US minister to Paraguay between 1863 and 1868).

Israel Washburn (ca. 1861)

Israel Washburn’s letter of March 28, 1862 states, among other things:

If another Brigadier General is to be appointed from Maine, as I believe there should be, and energy, capacity, soldierly bearing, mastery of detail, education, & high culture, are recommendations for this place, as I presume they are, it will in all my acquaintance be difficult to find one possessing superior qualifications to Col. Caldwell.

Washburn’s letter is interesting for several reasons. First, there is the assumption that Maine was “owed” another brigadier general. This attitude was very common at the time and part of the politics that governed promotion during the war. Scholars often speak of “political generals” (e.g. Benjamin Butler, Nathaniel Banks, John C. Fremont, and Franz Sigel), but to be honest, every appointment was political. That was part of the game. And it appears that Caldwell was better at it than Edward Cross (whose attempts to obtain a star by gathering support from New Hampshire’s congressional delegation will constitute the subject of another post later).

Second, Washburn was compelled to use the phrase “soldierly bearing” because Caldwell had no military accomplishments to speak of. Were there no politically reliable Maine colonels senior to Caldwell who had military accomplishments of one sort or another? I don’t know.

Third, I like how Washburn believed that “education & high culture” were necessary for elevation to command of a brigade. A number of people seemed impressed by Caldwell’s educational attainments and gentlemanly demeanor.

The first page of Washburn’s letter on behalf of Caldwell.

Caldwell’s attempt to secure a promotion to brevet major general in 1865 only confirmed that he was politically well connected to Maine’s Republicans. Caldwell’s file had references from Sidney Perham (congressman from Maine’s 2nd District), Hannibal Hamlin (who had been a senator from Maine before serving as Lincoln’s first vice president), and John H. Rice (congressman from Maine’s 4th District).

Before we conclude that promotion during the Civil War depended on politics instead of merit, we need to remember that while politicians could help an officer ascend to a higher rank, they could not help him if his superiors were determined to be rid of him. And that appears to have been what happened to Caldwell.

Caldwell seems to have managed all right during the Seven Days Battles (June 25-July 1, 1862), although his brigade was not hotly engaged during this series of confusing fights. Livermore, however, made the following curious observation about the Battle of Malvern Hill: “At this time Colonel [Francis] Barlow, of the 6ist New York [which formed part of the brigade], was with General Caldwell, and seemed to be maneuvering the brigade for him and in a very cool manner.”

After the Battle of Antietam (September 1862), Cross accused Caldwell of hiding behind a haystack for much of the fight. It’s not clear if this was the truth or if Cross was still sore about not obtaining command of the brigade. Whatever the case, members of the brigade had difficulty locating Caldwell during the hottest part of the fight. Caldwell demanded a board of inquiry to clear his name, and this board, which met in October 1862, did indeed have the desired effect. (Soon, I will try to obtain a copy of this board’s records which appear to be at, of all places, the Gettysburg National Military Park Research Center). But as we shall see, some people did not soon forget Cross’ charges.

No one appeared to have any complaints about Caldwell’s performance at Fredericksburg, where he was wounded twice (December 1862), or Chancellorsville (May 1863)—by which point Caldwell had been put in charge of the 1st Division, II Corps, with Cross finally obtaining command of the 1st Brigade of the division.

Gettysburg, where Caldwell was placed in an exceedingly difficult position, was another matter. On the second day of the battle, his division was loaned to George Sykes, commander of V Corps, and placed between that unit and Daniel Sickles’ III Corps. The general idea was for Caldwell to assist in preventing Longstreet’s assault from steamrolling the Army of the Potomac’ flank on the southern end of the battlefield. To make a long story short, Caldwell rushed his division to the appropriate position (the infamous Wheatfield) and made contact with the division generals on either side of his command. He then launched the largest federal assault of the battle (his division was a large one consisting of four veteran brigades) and attained substantial local success. But the collapse of Sickles’ position to the north and Sykes’ apparent unwillingness to oversee the situation in the Wheatfield doomed Caldwell’s initiative. His division retreated precipitously, and Caldwell took some heat for what almost amounted to a rout. Hancock, the commander of II Corps, launched an investigation that cleared Caldwell and his division of the charge of misbehavior.[iii] And yet. . .

. . . I found another document in Caldwell’s microfilmed file.

Hancock’s letter to Meade asking for Caldwell’s removal.

Dated March 23, 1864, it’s from Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, who led II Corps, to Major General George Gordon Meade, commander of the Army of the Potomac. It reads as follows:

I do not consider that Brig General Caldwell is sufficiently competent to command a Division of troops, and my opinion has been deliberately formed after an experience dating from the battle of Antietam. Gen. Caldwell is too mild and lacks self-reliance at critical times. I request that he may be relieved.

Hancock’s letter was calculated to be devastating. The reference to Antietam resurrected memories of the board of inquiry. It also suggested that Caldwell’s shortcomings were chronic. And who better to note these shortcomings than Hancock, who had been Caldwell’s immediate superior since Antietam? Meade’s notes on the left-hand side of the sheet show that he fulfilled Hancock’s request immediately.

It’s hard to say if Hancock supplied the real reasons for Caldwell’s dismissal. In some ways, the timing seems strange. If Caldwell had shown his limitations since September 1862, why wait almost nine months after the Army of the Potomac had fought its last major battle to can him? Then again, perhaps the timing made sense. Hancock wrote his letter when Grant had been in the east for a couple of weeks, and another campaign was in the offing. Maybe there was something of a housecleaning taking place in the Army of the Potomac. Is it a coincidence that George Sykes was relieved at almost exactly the same time?

Although Caldwell was no doubt disappointed, he should have felt little shame since he was replaced by one of the great federal division commanders of the war, Francis Barlow. Barlow, if anything, was much more a man of “energy, capacity, soldierly bearing, mastery of detail, education, & high culture.” In addition, Barlow was in no way mild, nor did he want for self-reliance. He needed no help in maneuvering a division. But he was not “hearty and good natured.” Barlow was a hard man and a fighter, just the person needed to command a division during the Overland Campaign.

Caldwell never saw action again. In 1865, he was promoted to brevet major general of volunteers and served in the honor guard that brought Abraham Lincoln’s body back to Springfield, Illinois, after the president had been assassinated. Caldwell later became an attorny, dabbled in state politcs, and enjoyed a small diplomatic career in South and Central America. In between all that, he lived in Topeka, Kansas, where he worked and eventually retired. He died while visiting his daughter in East Machias. Since the daughter had married into the Murchie family of St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Caldwell’s wife had been buried in the Murchie family plot when she died in East Machias the year before. And thus Caldwell, too, ended up in the Murchie plot, making him one of very few Union generals to be buried outside the United States.

[i] The file is located in Letters received by the Commission Branch of the Adjutant General’s Office, 1863-1870, NARA Series M1064, Roll 78. For those of you who have access to FamilySearch, the entire collection is located here: https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/catalog/koha:629169

[ii] When I met this archivist in person at the National Archives in Washington, DC, he was wearing a Tottenham Hotspur t-shirt. It was at that moment I knew my research trip was going to be a huge success.

[iii] For this interpretation of Caldwell’s actions at Gettysburg, see D. Scott Hartwig, “’No Troops on the Field Had Done Better’: John C. Caldwell’s Division in the Wheatfield, July 2, 1863” in ed. Gary W. Gallagher, The Second Day at Gettysburg: Essays on Confederate and Union Leadership (Kent OH: The Kent State University Press, 1993), 136-171. Hartwig relied, in part, on the Bachelder Papers at the New Hampshire Historical Society. Off I go!

The Winding Career Path of Ira McL. Barton

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Ira McL. Barton (ca. 1861-1862)

I’ve long been interested in what happened to various officers or soldiers who left the 5th New Hampshire in the middle of the war. Sometimes their stories are unlikely. A good example is 1st Lieutenant James B. David of Company K, who, along with his captain, Richard Welch, was discharged from the 5th New Hampshire for “having been reported on adversely by Boards of Examination” in February 1862. A little over 15 months later, David resurfaced in Iowa, of all places, where he became a Captain in the 7th Iowa Cavalry. This unit spent most of its war (1863-1866) fighting Native Americans in the Dakota Territory. Of course, even on the remote plains, David managed to get into some kind of trouble; he was discharged dishonorably in May 1866, had this discharge revoked in July 1866, and received an honorable discharge in August 1866. I have no idea what accounted for whatever hot water he got into, but I’d really like to find out.

But I digress. This post is about Ira McLaughlin (or “McL.” as he preferred) Barton whose Civil War career took all sorts of twists and turns. His father, Levi Barton (1818-1899), looms large in this story. The elder Barton had been raised in straitened circumstances, but through sheer grit and application, he managed to attend Kimball Union Academy before moving on to Dartmouth, where he graduated in 1848 (at the unusually advanced age of 30). A career in law followed in Newport, and Levi became an important part of the Republican Party machine in western New Hampshire.

Levi Barton

His son, Ira, however, did not appear to show the same gumption. Like his father, he attended Kimball Union Academy before matriculating at Dartmouth. Unlike his father, however, Ira only stayed at Dartmouth for a year as part of the class of 1862 before dropping out. In My Brave Boys, Mike Pride and Mark Travis describe him as entitled and “bookish.” When the war broke out, Ira was something of a shiftless schoolteacher. As Pride and Travis write, Levi saw an “opportunity” in the war for Ira to “raise his standing” and help pay off the family’s debts. A good portion of this interpretation is probably true. And yet, it’s hard not to sympathize with Levi, who had hustled and scrapped for everything he had. He now found his son floundering about and—evidence suggests—sinking into alcoholism. How to find Ira a métier appears to have been the father’s concern, something to which many modern-day fathers can probably relate.

Levi helped his son recruit a company in the Newport area and pulled strings to have him made a captain in the 1st New Hampshire. Soon after this three-month regiment was mustered out in August 1861, Ira—again assisted by his father—started recruiting for what he thought was going to be a battery of field artillery. Eventually, he and the men who volunteered in the Newport area became Company E in the 5th New Hampshire. No doubt, Colonel Edward Cross made Ira a captain on the strength of his experience in the 1st New Hampshire (military expertise in the state was thin on the ground).

Barton’s career with the 5th New Hampshire was undistinguished. In February 1862, he heard a rumor had reached Newport that he was a drunk and lazy officer. His father confronted the source of the gossip in town, and although he reassured his son that the hearsay had been squashed, he must have felt some concern that his son was, indeed, drunk and lazy. At his first and only battle with the 5th New Hampshire, Fair Oaks, Ira and his company got lost in the woods before blundering into the 64th New York (which belonged to the same brigade as the Granite Staters) and opening fire. His performance as a company commander had been lamentable, and Cross wanted him out of the regiment. A discharge did not occur immediately, though, largely because Cross had been shot in the thigh at Fair Oaks and evacuated to a hospital up north before convalescing at home in New Hampshire for several months.

Meanwhile, Barton checked himself into the 5th New Hampshire’s hospital around June 10, 1862, and did no duty afterwards. It appears from Thomas Livermore’s Days and Events, however, that Barton remained with the regiment at Harrison’s Landing throughout July and August, spending much of his time drinking. Livermore remembered that when the 5th New Hampshire struck its tents and cleared out of camp in mid-August, “the dozens of bottles under Captains Cross [Colonel Cross’ brother] and Barton’s beds testified to their capacity as topers [drunkards].”

Only six days after Colonel Cross rejoined the 5th New Hampshire, Luther Knight, the regiment’s surgeon, examined Barton at Camp California, outside Alexandria, Virginia, on August 29, 1862. The timing could not have been coincidental; Cross probably made it clear that Barton had to go. Knight diagnosed “chronic hepatitis accompanied with diarrhea” and recommended Barton’s discharge, which took place a week later. Knight’s finding is interesting, since the symptoms of alcoholic and viral hepatitis are very similar.

Levi must have wondered where Ira would land now.

In December 1862, Ira set up shop at “Levi W. Barton’s Law Office” in Newport as an attorney to assist people in pressing “claims against the United States whether for BOUNTY, PENSIONS, for INVALID SOLDIERS, WIDOWS, HEIRS general.” “Having formed a partnership with a gentleman in Washington,” his ad in the New Hampshire Argus and Spectator continued, “patrons can rest assured that they will receive a most prompt return and get their money sooner than through other attorneys.” Since Ira had not yet been admitted to the bar (this would not occur until September 1863), one wonders if Levi was responsible for most of the legwork in this new endeavor.

It’s not clear how that venture went. But several months later, in April 1863, as the machinery for the draft was being assembled, Levi angled to get Ira a position on the 3rd District’s enrollment board as the Provost Marshal. In a letter to President Abraham Lincoln, Levi declared that many of the state’s most prominent Republicans—Daniel Clark (Senator for New Hampshire, 1857-1866), Thomas Edwards (House of Representatives, New Hampshire’s 3rd District, 1859-1863), James Patterson (House of Representatives, New Hampshire’s 3rd District, 1863-1867), Gilman Marston (House or Representatives, New Hampshire’s 1st District, 1859-1863), and Mason Tappan (House of Representatives, New Hampshire’s 2nd District, 1855-1861)—would all write on Ira’s behalf. He also claimed that Governor Nathaniel Berry supported Ira over Henry O. Kent (whom many supposed had the inside track on the job). But Levi’s most shameless claim of all was that, “Gov. Berry himself stated to the friends of Capt. B[arton] who called on him at his room in Concord that Capt. Barton ought to have had the command of the 5th NH Regt. instead of Col. Cross.” Levi’s efforts proved unavailing; Chester Pike became the Provost Marshal of the 3rd District in late April 1863.

Next month, Barton attempted to join the Invalid Corps as an officer. Men who intended to secure commissions in the Invalid Corps needed recommendations from their former superiors, but Barton did not contact Cross—probably because he knew the colonel would not support his application. The latter found out anyway about Barton’s plans and wrote a stiff letter to his brigade headquarters: “I beg leave to state that Capt. Barton has received no recommendation from me nor from the Brigadier [O. O. Howard] under which he served nor will he receive any.”

Ira McL. Barton (ca. 1864-1865)

Only a couple of months later, in August 1863, Barton finally landed on his feet, receiving an appointment as Captain in the 2nd Company of New Hampshire Heavy Artillery which was soon stationed at Fort McClary on Maine’s Kittery Point. In May 1864, the 2nd Company was moved to Washington, DC, and shortly thereafter, Barton obtained permission to recruit more men for a regiment-sized heavy artillery unit. Volunteering went exceedingly well since men were eager to avoid the draft by joining a regiment that would probably do cushy service in the forts around the federal capital. In September 1864, after enough men had been recruited, Barton’s company joined the 1st Regiment of New Hampshire Heavy Artillery as Company B. Not only that, Barton was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. His immediate superior, Colonel Charles H. Long, was an alumnus of the 5th New Hampshire who had also served as a captain in the regiment before his arm was mangled at Antietam. Although some companies of the 1st New Hampshire Heavy Artillery were distributed to various divisions, most remained with Barton for the remainder of the war in the Washington, DC area.

Barton was breveted a colonel in March 1865 and mustered out in June, but he was not done with the army. In May 1866, he was appointed 2nd Lieutenant in the 19th US Infantry which was then stationed in Arkansas, charged with overseeing Reconstruction. In September 1866, when the 19th US Infantry, which consisted of three battalions, was broken up into three one-battalion regiments, Barton’s battalion became the 28th US Infantry. Barton was assigned to Pine Bluff where he served under the chief quartermaster of the Fourth Military District (which included Arkansas and Mississippi). His superiors appear to have been satisfied with his performance since he was promoted to 1st Lieutenant in August 1867.

Front page of the Jefferson Republican (March 1, 1873)

Barton left the army in 1870 to live in Pine Bluff. He became the district attorney for the Tenth District in Arkansas and latter served as judge of the criminal court in Jefferson County. He then became part owner and chief editor of the Jefferson Republican in Pine Bluff. He left Arkansas in 1875 “to practice law with his father” (according to one source), but I suspect ill health brought him back to New Hampshire, for he died in January 1876. His death certificate listed the cause of his demise as “mania a potu” which translates as “madness from drink,” caused by alcohol abuse or severe alcohol withdrawal (the term “mania a potu” is often associated with delirium tremens). He was only 35.  

As always, at this distance in time, it’s hard to know what to make of Ira’s short life. What exactly was the relationship between father and son? How was this relationship affected by Barton’s addiction, which must have taken a toll on both men? I can’t help but feel that when Ira joined the regular army in 1866, he was declaring independence. A lieutenancy in the post-war regular army which was tasked with enforcing Reconstruction in the South does not sound like the kind of position that Levi Barton had in mind for Ira. It was not related to the law, and it was certainly not something that would “raise [Ira’s] status.” But Ira fashioned his own life in Arkansas, eventually making a career of sorts in law and journalism. It’s quite possible, however, that the end of Reconstruction in Arkansas in 1874 put paid to this new path. Or maybe years of heavy drinking had caught up to him at this point. Or both. I wonder if Ira viewed his return to New Hampshire as a mark of his failure to live his own life. Maybe, at this point, he was too ill to care; death through long-term alcohol abuse is a terrible way to go.

Assistant Surgeon John Bucknam, Soup-Taster

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John Bucknam (1833-1870)

During my recent visit to the National Archives in Washington, DC, I trawled through the 5th New Hampshire’s regimental order and letter books, mainly because I was interested in locating regimental court martial records. I found those records but also so much more that was of interest. Imagine my delight when I ran across the following:  

Hd Qrs 5th N.H. Vols
April 12, 1863

Lieutenant,

In regard to the soup made in the companies to-day and tested by me I have the honor to report the following

Co. A Good
” B Extra Good
” C Slightly burned
” D Extra Good
” E Good
” F To [sic] much grease
” G Slightly burned
” H To [sic] much pork and grease
” I Extra good
” K Good

Respectfully submitted
John W. Bucknam
Asst Surg
5th N.H. Vols.

Lt. Dodd
Adjt

I can just imagine Bucknam, wandering from company kettle to kettle, as a sort of David Portnoy-esque figure, rating soup—“One bite, everybody knows the rules.” Of course, I posted about this document so you, the reader, could have a gentle laugh at Bucknam’s expense. But this was not the first time that the higher-ups in the regiment expressed concern about what and how the soldiers ate.

On May 27, 1862, only a couple of days before the Battle of Fair Oaks, Colonel Edward Cross issued a general order pursuant to a directive of Major General George B. McClellan’s “that soup should be made every day when possible and the preserved vegetables used.” Cross added his own recommendations in his order to the effect that “nothing is so unhealthy in a hot Climate as grease fried bread and half boiled meat.” “Good fresh beef broiled on the coals,” he continued, “or boiled and well salted or made into soup is the most healthy.” This concern with the preparation of food was most likely due to the prevalence of sickness in the regiment at the time; the Army of the Potomac was struck by a public health crisis of huge proportions as soldiers succumbed to malaria, yellow fever, typhoid, and a host of other water- and mosquito-borne diseases. Grease-fried bread didn’t account for these illnesses, but an army doing battle with sicknesses it did not understand was trying its best to preserve the health of its soldiers.

And that observation brings me to a more important one. Bucknam’s report, entertaining as it is, was just the tip of the iceberg so far as the control that general orders sought to exert over soldiers. The regimental books are full of orders praising, correcting, forbidding, advising, shaming, promoting, educating, organizing, detailing, reminding, encouraging, and so on. If we consider only court martials and punishment when we think of discipline, we lose sight of the bigger picture. Military discipline during the Civil War was ambitious. It aimed to regulate as much of the soldiers’ behavior as possible, operating under the assumption that men habituated to discipline in camp would behave in a disciplined manner on the battlefield. Discipline came in the form of the court martial, the police detail, the captain drilling his company, the corporal reduced to the ranks, the sergeant preventing straggling, the regimental inspection, and the informal word between superior and inferior. And it came in the form of the general order.

The regimental books contain order upon order, from every level of command, that aimed to govern almost everything soldiers did: how they dressed, how they spoke, how they did their jobs, where they went, and, yes, how they ate. It is worth noting that almost all of these orders were fully congruent with the Articles of War, which highlights the degree to which that document—read periodically to enlisted men—was demanding.

Clearly, many of these orders did not succeed in reshaping volunteer soldiers. Indeed, orders were often issued to stop behaviors that prevailed in the regiment (e.g. gambling with cards). A number of scholars have pointed out that military discipline during the Civil War had to be flexible and often lenient. This was largely because volunteer soldiers pushed back against discipline to preserve some degree of freedom as citizens and dignity as men. This much is certainly true. If the Articles of War had been followed to the letter, federal armies would have mutinied. But the order book reveals the other side of the equation—the relentless desire on the army’s part to control soldiers.

“SERVING OUT RATIONS AT THE COOK’S SHANTY” from John D. Billings, Hard Tack and Coffee (1887)

The Brawl between 2nd Lieutenant George Goodwin and Private Patrick Maley

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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.

That Time Francis Barlow Bathed His Feet

~ hdubrull ~ 3 Comments

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).

The Mysterious H.T.H. Pierce

~ hdubrull ~ 2 Comments

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.

The patent accelerating wheel-head developed by Ezekiel Pierce.

#2 Pierce attended Norwich Military Academy

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.

The Long Strange Trip of Bazile Bouchard

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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

[Page 2]

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

[Page3]

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

[Page 4]

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?

Stephen Emery’s Fractured Ulna

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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.

The 5th New Hampshire’s Draftees: Better Than We Thought?

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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.

Reading New Hampshire Newspapers from the Summer of 1862

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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.