Category: 5th New Hampshire

Winslow Homer’s The Veteran in a New Field

~ hdubrull ~ 2 Comments


Winslow Homer, The Veteran in a New Field (1865)

Winslow Homer, Francis Barlow, and Two Degrees of Separation from the 5th New Hampshire

Today, I thought I’d do something different by discussing what I find to be one of Winslow Homer’s most moving works. How shall I justify this choice of topic? In other words, what does this have to do with the 5th New Hampshire? Homer was Francis Barlow’s cousin. Yes, that Barlow–the famous Union “boy general” who was the scourage of stragglers. Small world, isn’t it? Early in the war, Barlow was the colonel of the 61st New York which was brigaded with the 5th New Hampshire. Shortly after the Battle of Antietam, he left his regiment to assume command of a brigade which was the first step in his march to fame. Later, in 1864, he became commander of the 1st division in II Corps which is where the brigade containing his old regiment and our Granite Staters fit in the Army of the Potomac’s order of battle.


Winslow Homer, Prisoners from the Front (1866)

Any of you familiar with the Civil War and Winslow Homer knows the artist placed his general-cousin in one of the most important paintings generated by the conflict, Prisoners from the Front (1866) (to which the movie Gettysburg paid an awkward homage). This should come as no surprise. When Homer visited the Army of the Potomac, sometimes, but not always, as an artist-correspondent for Harper’s Weekly, he would avail himself of Barlow’s hospitality and stay with the 61st New York. If you look closely at the painting, you’ll see on the right margin a flag with the red trefoil of the 1st division, II Corps–Barlow’s division starting in 1864. And the Union soldier guarding the prisoners also sports a red trefoil on his forage cap—along with a brass “61” denoting his membership in the 61st New York.


Winslow Homer, Prisoners from the Front (1866) (details): The red trefoil of the 1st division, II Corps is everywhere!

In Prisoners from the Front as well as contemporary photos, Barlow looks like a genteel, fresh-faced boy who could have studied law at Harvard alongside the scions of Boston Brahmins (which he did). In this case, though, appearances are completely deceiving. Barlow was painfully blunt and fearless to the point of utter recklessness. He was also an iron disciplinarian. He became one of the North’s great division commanders of the war and helped II Corps win its reputation as the anvil of the Army of the Potomac.

But enough about Barlow. What of Homer and his painting?


Leaders of the II Corps (1864): These were the men who pushed II Corps through the Overland Campaign that drove the Army of Northern Virginia back to Petersburg. The exhaustion of this task is evident from their faces. Standing from left to right are Brigadier General Francis Barlow (1st division), Major General David Birney (3rd division), and Major General John Gibbon (2nd division). Seated is Major General Winfield Hancock (commander of II Corps).

The Mixed Messages of The Veteran in a New Field

The Veteran in a New Field is a great work of art. If you don’t agree, I hope at least you’ll understand why I like it so much. At first glance, the painting seems awfully simple. It depicts the sky, some wheat, a man, and his scythe. If you search the canvas a little more, you’ll find a cast-off jacket atop which lies a canteen. The simplicity of the composition provides the painting with much of its power. Yet The Veteran in a New Field is also intriguing because of its nuance, ambiguity, and contrasts. Through various symbols, the painting conveys a number of subtle messages, some of which complement and contradict one another. Finally, we must consider context; it’s hard to measure the force of this work unless we imagine it as a product of the immediate post-war era (various sources date the work to somewhere between April and October 1865). 


Winslow Homer, The Veteran in a New Field (1865) (detail)

Scholars have often claimed this work presents a national narrative. That is, the painting is about Northern victory, American regeneration, and so on. But I prefer to focus on the idea of the veteran. The title of the painting suggests the veteran is not literally harvesting a new field but that he has embarked on a new type of endeavor. Instead of the battlefield, he has moved on to the wheat field which signifies his embrace of peaceful pursuits. In 1865, the majority of Americans still earned their living from the land, and wheat was replete with symbolism for them. For one thing, unlike cotton, which was tainted with slavery and secession, wheat was a good, honest Northern crop (although it must be conceded that at this point, corn was the predominant cereal crop in New England). Wheat had long been associated with regeneration and fertility, so the mowing here speaks to hope for the future. These associations were closely related to the Parable of the Grain of Wheat (John 12:24-26):

Verily, verily, I say unto you, еxcept a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honour.

The parable suggests that like wheat left on the stalk, we must die. And we must accept our death before we can be reborn a true servant of Christ. Only then can we attain the Kingdom of Heaven. As the Apostle Paul stated in Corinthians 15:42, “What is sown in the earth is subject to decay, what rises is incorruptible.” The parable was also a metaphor for Christ’s own death and resurrection. What Homer seemed to imply was that America had been reborn only because hundreds of thousands of the North’s sons had sacrificed themselves to purify the country. In contemplating the Parable of the Grain of Wheat, I’m reminded here that the 61st New York, Barlow’s old unit, fought in the Wheatfield during the second day at Gettysburg. Bled white by two years of service, the regiment brought into action “only 90 muskets” of whom 65 were killed or wounded.


61st New York Monument in the Wheatfield at Gettysburg National Military Park

And that bring us to the veteran’s farming implement. Our veteran swings what contemporaries would have considered an archaic scythe. This was not a mistake on Homer’s part; it was a deliberate choice. If you look closely at the painting, he originally included a grain cradle on the scythe that would have brought it up to date. That Homer painted over the grain cradle indicates he reached for associations with the grim reaper who mowed men down with a traditional scythe. This metaphor of mowing men came naturally to Civil War soldiers, a majority of whom were farmers or farm laborers. At close range, volleys had a tendency to knock entire ranks of soldiers down like “wheat before the scythe” as the saying goes. In The Veteran in a New Field, the titular character is mowing wheat instead of men, but does the metaphor occur to him at this moment?


Winslow Homer, The Veteran in a New Field (1865) (detail)

What The Veteran in a New Field is Doing

What our veteran thinks as he mows his wheat is impossible to say. Because his back is turned to the viewer, he remains an enigmatic figure. Does he feel hopeful about a prosperous future? Is he traumatized and damaged by his wartime past? Who knows? The veteran’s back is turned to us, so we cannot read his expression. What accentuates the enigma here is that the veteran is also liminal. He is neither soldier nor civilian; he is a veteran. Unlike the soldier, he no longer serves in the army. Unlike the civilian, he knows what only a soldier who has seen combat can know. The veteran has taken off his old army jacket and canteen (which, by the way, bears the red trefoil of the 1st division, II Corps). But they still remain in sight, and he wears his army-issued pants. Commentary from one art historian I read pointed out that mowing was communal work, but, here, the veteran swings his scythe alone. He stands, thus, for all veterans, a unique class of men set apart from others. It occurs to me that as he toils, he is working out his future.


Winslow Homer, The Veteran in a New Field (1865) (detail): The veteran’s jacket lies on the ground in the bottom right-hand corner of the canvas. It appears to be the Union army’s standard-issue four-button sack coat. Atop this jacket lies an army canteen with the red trefoil of the 1st division, II Corps and the initials “W. H.”

These ruminations remind me of an important scene in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) one of the finest American films about veterans returning from war (in this case, it’s World War II). Toward the end of the movie, one of the main characters, Fred Derry (played by Dana Andrews), a former USAAF bombardier who suffers from PTSD and carries a chip on his shoulder the size of a Cadillac, has “a moment.” His marriage has collapsed, he’s lost his job as a soda jerk, and the woman he loves is unavailable. The contrast between his life as a bombardier, when he was a hero, and his failures as a civilian are too great for him to bear. He vows to leave his hometown of Boone City. While waiting for a flight to take him away from the scene of his failures, he walks, ironically enough, through an aircraft boneyard filled with B-17s of the type that he flew over Europe. He clambers into the nose cone of one of these bombers, goes into trance, relives his horrifying wartime experiences, and undergoes some sort of catharsis. When Derry emerges from his daze, he isn’t exactly a new man. The movie is too nuanced to do something like that. What is clear, though, is that he is now determined to do his best to put the war behind him and make the most of his situation.


The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) (still)

I imagine the veteran in Homer’s painting is doing the same thing. While working in the field, he is also working out his future. Neither the civilian nor the soldier can help him determine his fate; that is why he is alone in the new field. Will memories of a red-sodden past prevent him from realizing a golden and bountiful future? In other words, will his experiences of a time when men were scythed like wheat make it impossible for him to scythe wheat like men? As the veteran weighs his options, all we can hear is the scratch of the scythe gliding through the wheat. But does the veteran hear the same thing? Or does he remember the weighty buzzing of Minié balls and the strange sound they made as these projectiles splattered upon meeting human flesh?


Winslow Homer, The Veteran in a New Field (1865) (detail)

What I appreciate about this painting is that it doesn’t possess the treacly sentimentality that characterized most contemporary representations of the soldier’s homecoming. It is ambiguous and even, perhaps, ambivalent. What I also find interesting is that many art critics at the time disapproved of Homer’s style, which they described as unfinished. This criticism reminds me of the way art connoisseurs reacted to Edouard Manet’s technique in his groundbreaking Olympia, which paved the way for the Impressionists. But Homer’s approach to painting (like Manet’s) was entirely appropriate. In 1865, veterans were incomplete and works in progress. Only time would tell what and who they would become.

Who was Charles McCully, and What Might He Tell Us about the “Other Half” of the 5th New Hampshire?

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Charles McCully’s headstone at Westlawn Cemetery, Goffstown, NH

Shortly after Memorial Day, I walked through Goffstown’s Westlawn Cemetery. The cemetery forms part of a route I take through Goffstown Village that amounts to almost three miles. I noticed that a number of small American flags had been planted throughout the cemetery that strikingly indicated just how many of the dead had served in the armed forces throughout our nation’s history (Westlawn was opened around 1817, so it includes Revolutionary War veterans). While ambling along the main path through the cemetery, I thought I’d visit Joseph Caraway’s tombstone. I wrote a post about Caraway some time ago because I once believed he was the sole member of the 5th New Hampshire who had a Goffstown connection.

I found Caraway’s gravesite without difficult, but there was no flag. It occurred to me that nothing indicated he was a veteran—no inscription on his stone and no GAR marker—so that may have explained the absence of a flag. As I walked about that section of the cemetery, though, I noticed several government-issued headstones for Civil War veterans had no flags either. Among these was a marker for someone who had served in the 3rd New Hampshire and another for a veteran from a Vermont regiment. Between these two stones was an eroded marker that I could read only with difficulty. I don’t know why I tarried to decipher it but, eventually, to my delight, I realized it read:

Charles McCully

Co. G 5 REG. N.H.V.

1834-1903

The name didn’t ring a bell, so I looked him up as soon as I reached home. Sure enough, The Revised Register of the Soldiers and Sailors of New Hampshire in the War of the Rebellion 1861-1866 had a record for “Charles McCulley.”[i]

Tracing this soldier’s story was somewhat difficult since “McCully” was an alternate spelling of “McCullough,” and many people, especially in the New York area, where our man was born, bore that last name. Another issue was that McCully’s life was somewhat checkered, and he sought to keep parts of his past a secret. I’m about 90% sure, though, that the following story is correct; in a number of cases, I’ve found ways in which the various documents I used confirm each other.   

Charles McCully was born in New York, NY, in either 1833 or 1834. I could not locate him in the Census of 1850. However, I did find a likely candidate in the Census of 1860, a Charles McCully who was 26 years old, lived in Brooklyn, NY, and worked as a “Carman” (a driver of a horse-drawn delivery vehicle). He appears to have been married to an Ellen McCully, aged 22, but she makes no further appearance in any of the documents I found. McCully also lived with a pair of peddlers, Samuel Lockwood (50) and Charles William (22).[ii] So far, so good; nothing to see here.

Colonel William Wilson (seated, center) poses with two officers and members of his 6th New York. A very interesting biography of Wilson by Robert E. Cray, entitled, A Notable Bully: Colonel Billy Wilson, Masculinity, and the Pursuit of Violence in the Civil War Era appeared in 2021. In a review of this work, Lorien Foot quotes Cray to the effect that Wilson’s story is “worth knowing” if we want to understand the Northern public’s shifting attitudes toward bullying, masculinity, and violence. The problem is that “‘roughs’ did not leave diaries, letters, and papers for historians to examine their personal lives and private opinions.”

Only a couple of weeks after Fort Sumter was attacked, McCully enlisted in the 6th New York Infantry Regiment, otherwise known as “Wilson’s Zouaves” after its colonel, William Wilson. I love the Wikipedia description of the unit: “It was made up primarily of gang members, ex-cons, and criminals from the Bowery section of New York City. Rumor had it that a man had to prove he’d served time in jail before he was allowed to join.” Is this true?  I have no idea since no source for this information is provided. But I have read elsewhere that the regiment consisted of “rowdies” and that it was notoriously ill-disciplined. McCully enlisted on April 25, 1861 and was mustered in as a sergeant in Company D five days later. Only two months passed before McCully was busted down to private (on the 4th of July, no less). In August 1862, he was promoted back to corporal, and this was the rank he held when the regiment reached the end of its two-year term.[iii] The 6th New York appears to have done more posturing than fighting (unless one counts the fistfights in which it was involved with nearby Union units). It was initially stationed on Santa Rosa Island near Pensacola, FL, where it engaged in several small skirmishes with Confederate forces. The 6th New York was later transferred to New Orleans, LA, and thence to Baton Rouge. After participating in operations against Port Hudson, it fought some minor actions in western Louisiana before mustering out in New York in June 1863.[iv]

This image from the May 18, 1861 edition of Harper’s Weekly shows Colonel Wilson and his staff. The accompanying article stated that the 6th New York “has been recruited from the roughs and b’hoys of New York city.”

What McCully did for the next five months remains unclear. All I know is that in December 1863, he enlisted in the 5th New Hampshire and was mustered into Company G as a private. According to the muster roll, McCully was a “Drayman” with brown eyes, dark brown hair, and a ruddy complexion.[v] He stood 5’ 8 ¼”. Interestingly, every single man who appeared on the same page as he did was from out of state, and a very large proportion was foreign born.[vi]

It seems odd that a New Yorker would enlist in a Granite state unit, but there are possible explanations. To meet the manpower quotas set by the state, New Hampshire towns sent agents to New York to collect men who were willing to serve as substitutes for sums that in the summer of 1863 often topped $500. It appears these agents may also have collected some men who were attracted by the large bounties offered in New Hampshire for volunteers (towns, the state, and the federal government each contributed to these bounties). It’s possible McCully found these terms enticing. Since the 5th New Hampshire was then at Point Lookout, MD, guarding Confederate POWs, he may also have joined because he thought the regiment would spend much of its time performing cushy service.

The service was cushy. Until it wasn’t. In late May 1864, the regiment left Point Lookout to take its turn in the Overland Campaign. On June 3, 1864, a couple of days after reaching the Army of the Potomac, the 5th New Hampshire was thrown into the grand assault against Confederate forces at Cold Harbor. I’ve written about this battle elsewhere. It suffices to say here that the regiment performed well and was one of only two Union units to break through the front line of the Confederate defenses. Unfortunately, since other regiments did not advance with the same kind of spirit, the 5th New Hampshire’s flanks were uncovered. The rebels shot the regiment to pieces and took 40 men prisoner. Charles McCully was one of those who was wounded. For reasons that will become clear shortly, I have not been able to determine the nature of his wounds.

Alfred Waud, 7th N.Y. Heavy Arty. in Barlows charge nr. Cold Harbor Friday June 3rd, 1864 (1864): The 5th New Hampshire broke into the Confederate defenses at Cold Harbor right next to the 7th New York Heavy Artillery. After experiencing some local success, both regiments were cornered, badly used by rebel forces, and driven off.

McCully was transported to Harewood Hospital in Washington, DC (just like Ephraim Adams). From there, he was sent to a hospital in Philadelphia, PA. And there the record in The Revised Register ends with an ominous “N.f.r.A.G.O.” an abbreviation that signifies “No further record Adjutant General’s Office.” In my experience, this notation indicates a man probably deserted. This surmise is confirmed by a muster roll that notes: “No discharge furnished—Wounded June 3rd 1863—Abs[en]t in U.S. Hosp[ita]l Annapolis MD.”[vii] Desertion from hospitals was common. When some men felt well enough to leave under their own power, they checked themselves out, never to return to the army.

Except McCully did return to the army. In September 1865, he showed up at Fort Hamilton (which now sits under the Brooklyn end of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge) and enlisted in the 2nd battalion of the 12th US Infantry Regiment.[viii] In 1866, this battalion later became the 21st US Infantry Regiment after the army was expanded to assume the arduous responsibilities associated with Reconstruction. For most of the time that he remained with the regular army, McCully was stationed near Richmond, VA. He stayed with the 21st US Infantry until January 1867, when he was discharged at Petersburg, VA, for disability. It may seem odd that a sometime troublemaker and deserter would return to the army, but during the Civil War, some men developed a taste for the life and tried to make a go of it. The 5th New Hampshire had a number of such men.   

An image of the shoreline in front of Fort Hamilton at some point in the 1870s.

McCully then disappears from the documentary record for 13 years. Or at least, he seems to have disappeared from FamilySearch. One wonders if, as a deserter from the 5th New Hampshire, he sought to keep a low profile.

McCully next came up for air in Goffstown, NH. The Census of 1880 enumerates a “C. Worley McCully,” aged 45, born in New York, and boarding with the family of Franklin Tucker, a 41-year-old laborer. I have no doubt this is our man. So far as I can see in the Census of 1880, there was no other McCully living in New Hampshire whose first name started with a “C.” Why McCully moved to New Hampshire remains a mystery. One might be tempted to say he knew somebody there from his 5th New Hampshire days. However, nobody from Goffstown enlisted in the regiment during the war, and that meant very few people in town had any connection to the unit. (Franklin Tucker had spent most of the war with the 2nd New Hampshire and was also wounded at Cold Harbor, but there is no evidence that he knew McCully during the war.) If only we knew what McCully did during those lost 13 years, we might produce a reason for his move to the Granite State.[ix]

It’s worth noting here that when McCully appeared in Goffstown, he was unmarried. This in itself was unusual. Over 90% of the veterans of the 5th New Hampshire were married at some point in their lives. McCully appears to have been married in the Census of 1860, and it’s possible that he was married at some point during his 13 missing years. But even had he lost a wife due to death or divorce, there were strong incentives for a middle-aged laborer to remarry. One wonders in this case, then, if his marital status indicated that for some reason he was not a particularly eligible match.

A view of Goffstown Village in 1887.

Documents from 1890 reveal something about McCully’s outlook and situation. In July of that year, he filed for a pension. In all likelihood, he had avoided doing so until this point because he was afraid that his desertion would come to light. Desperation seems to have overborne his caution because his entry in the Veterans Census of 1890 indicates he was a “Pauper.” For obvious reasons, his pension index card listed his service with the 6th New York and the 21st US Infantry but left out his time with the 5th New Hampshire. A number of veterans played this game with the federal government—some got away with it, and some didn’t. But this game came at a cost; in angling for a bigger payment, McCully could not refer to the wound he had suffered at Cold Harbor while serving with the 5th New Hampshire. His entry in the Veterans Census also listed his service with the 6th New York and the 21st US, but left the 5th New Hampshire out. Under “Disability Incurred,” one finds “Rupture [Hernia] General Disability.” There is nothing about the wound from Cold Harbor.[x]

Charles McCully’s pension index card from 1890. Note that he did not refer to his service in the 5th New Hampshire. Henry F. W. Little (1842-1907), McCully’s pension attorney, won the Medal of Honor for heroic service on the picket line in September 1864 while serving with the 7th New Hampshire in front of Petersburg, VA. Little later wrote The Seventh Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion (1896).

The Census from 1900 does not list an occupation for McCully, and one wonders if his disability was such that he depended entirely on his pension. In any event, McCully did not have long to live. He appears to have contracted melanoma which chewed away at his face. He spent his last several months, no doubt in great agony, at the Hillsborough County Hospital in Goffstown where he died on May 9, 1903.[xi]  

Obviously, it is difficult to track marginal folks like McCully through documents. People like him did not want to be found until they were ready. In the meantime, nobody tried too hard to locate them. Folks in this position often left behind many mysteries. Some can be resolved with more research. For example, if I had the time to look through the 6th New York’s records, I could probably find out why McCully was reduced to the ranks from sergeant. Or, perhaps with a little more mental elbow grease, I could determine what happened to McCully between 1867 and 1880. Bringing obscure figures like McCully back to life is not just an exercise in antiquarianism, interesting though the process may be. Rather, it helps us understand how the “other half” in a regiment—the deserters, shirkers, malingerers, thieves, and even rowdies—lived both during and after its service. For obvious reasons, these types of soldiers have not made the same mark on the historical record as others. But their experiences are just as much a part of soldiering as anybody else’s.

So there are mysteries, and they are a bit difficult to clear up, but they are worth illuminating. I’ll leave you with one that some of the more attentive among you may have already noticed. It is probably the type of question that we can never answer for sure. The 5th New Hampshire was widely recognized as a storied unit, and literally hundreds of its veterans proudly proclaimed their service in the regiment through inscriptions on their headstones. Charles McCully, however, was an Empire City man, born and bred. He served in the field with the 5th New Hampshire for a mere five months. After he was wounded at Cold Harbor, he deserted. For that reason, after 1864, he did everything he could to conceal his service in the regiment. Yet, “Co. G 5 REG. N.H.V.” remains engraved on his tombstone to this day. How or why this occurred will probably remain unknown. But perhaps it provides us with insight into how some of those among the “other half” may have viewed their service with a famous regiment.

[i] https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015011525055&view=1up&seq=273

[ii] “United States Census, 1860″, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MC7R-7X8 : 18 February 2021), Charles Mc Cully, 1860.”United States Census, 1860”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MC7R-7X8 : 18 February 2021), Charles Mc Cully, 1860.

[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6th_New_York_Infantry_Regiment

[iv] https://museum.dmna.ny.gov/application/files/4515/5058/8660/6th_Infantry_CW_Roster.pdf

[v] A “Drayman” was someone who drove a dray, that is, a flatbed wagon. This description matches well with his occupation in the Census of 1860, which was a “Carman.”

[vi] “New Hampshire, Civil War Service and Pension Records, 1861-1866,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q27M-9MBF : 16 March 2018), Charles Mc Cully, 09 Dec 1863; citing Portsmouth, Portsmouth, Rockingham, New Hampshire, United States, New Hampshire Secretary of State, Division of Records Management & Archive; FHL microfilm 2,316,447.

[vii] “New Hampshire, Civil War Service and Pension Records, 1861-1866,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QLM8-CY5M : 16 March 2018), Charles H Mccully, 09 Dec 1863; citing Portsmouth, Rockingham, New Hampshire, United States, New Hampshire Secretary of State, Division of Records Management & Archive; FHL microfilm 2,319,539.

[viii] His occupation was listed again as “Carman.” “United States Registers of Enlistments in the U.S. Army, 1798-1914,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VRQ8-HSV : 12 March 2018), Charles Mccully, 23 Sep 1865; citing p. 224, volume 60, Fort Hamilton, , New York, United States, NARA microfilm publication M233 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), roll 30; FHL microfilm 350,336.

[ix] “United States Census, 1880,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MHRF-NTW : 14 January 2022), C. Worley McCully in household of Franklin Tucker, Goffstown, Hillsborough, New Hampshire, United States; citing enumeration district , sheet , NARA microfilm publication T9 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), FHL microfilm .

[x] “United States General Index to Pension Files, 1861-1934”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KDBC-BRC : 20 February 2021), Charles Mccully, 1890; see also “United States Census of Union Veterans and Widows of the Civil War, 1890,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K837-1NF : 8 March 2021), Charles A Mccolley, 1890; citing NARA microfilm publication M123 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 338,199.

[xi] “New Hampshire Death Records, 1654-1947,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FSNT-FHZ : 22 February 2021), Charles Mcculley, 09 May 1903; citing Grasmere, Hillsborough, New Hampshire, Bureau Vital Records and Health Statistics, Concord; FHL microfilm 2,110,576. See also https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/144382470/charles-c-mccully.

That Time that Placide and Ephraim Adams Deserted–or Didn’t

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Enlistment Form for Benjamin Adams (May 1861): The dispersal of the French-Canadian Adams family began in May 1861 when Benjamin Adams enlisted in the 2nd New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry.

On page three of the November 5, 1862 issue of the New Hampshire Patriot & State Gazette, one of the state’s leading papers, appeared a curious, anonymous letter. The author referred the paper to the case of Placide Adams. A “Frenchman [sic] with a very imperfect knowledge of the American language, he had acquired a taste for American institutions, and with patriotic zeal” enlisted in the 5th New Hampshire. His adult son had enlisted in the Federal army as well. Adams “had left, to care for and provide for his wife in his absence, his younger son, a mere boy of the age of fifteen.” Unfortunately, “men in higher position than this poor Frenchman induced this boy to follow the fortunes of the father, and the Colonel of the Regiment received him against the rights and protest of the father.” The colonel—Edward E. Cross—had refused to release the son. “That boy,” the writer continued, “had not the just chance of the soldier to live if not shot, since his tender years and the hardships of army life would ensure disease.” Adams apparently begged Cross to release the son and declared that if the colonel did so, Adams would remain in the regiment “and fight all the battles of his country till peace should be declared.” Cross was unyielding, and so Adams deserted with his son at “Middletown” and brought the boy back to Canada. The anonymous author wrote of Adams that “the intention of the man, the spirit of the act, does not imply desertion, as his heart is in the war.” The letter was signed, “One who sympathizes with this honest Frenchman, as well as with the Northern States.”

What are we to make of this story, and is it supported by any evidence?

Enlistment Form for Placide Adams (September 1861): Was this “poor Frenchman” inspired by “patriotic zeal” or three squares and $13 per month? We will probably never know, but many older men (Adams lied about his age on this form–he was actually 46) were inspired to enlist because of financial insecurity.

According to www.findagrave.com, Placide Adams appears to have been born on November 4, 1814 in Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade, which sits on the north bank of the St. Lawrence River, between Quebec and Trois Rivières.[1] At some point, Adams moved to Vermont where his two sons were born. The Census of 1860 found “Placey Adames,” then aged 43, in Canaan, NH. He was described as a “laborer” with $200 in real estate and some small (but illegible) amount of personal property. His household consisted of his wife Sarah (41), his son Benjamin (20), another son Ephraim (14), and a daughter Jane (11).[2] With the outbreak of the secession crisis, this household was soon broken up. On May 20, 1861, Benjamin (also described as a “laborer” in his enlistment papers) joined Company I of the 2nd New Hampshire.[3] He was mustered in on June 7, 1861.[4] Four months later, on September 12, 1861, Placide traveled to Grafton, NH, and volunteered for Company I of the 5th New Hampshire; he was mustered in the next month.[5]

Enlistment Forms for Ephraim Adams (August 1862): Ephraim Adams’ form was signed by “C. G. Morgan” (see lefthand image) who, I presume, was Converse Goodhue Morgan (1827-1880), a prosperous merchant in Enfield, NH, then recruiting a company for the 11th New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry. The “A. H. Robinson” who signed as examining surgeon (see righthand image) was most likely Abraham H. Robinson (1812-1898), a well-to-do physician in Concord, NH. Of especial interest to fans of the 5th New Hampshire is the witness who signed the lefthand page (the signature appears sideways): Milo M. Ransom. A Baptist minister from Lisbon, NH, Ransom (1834-1912) had enlisted in the 5th New Hampshire just two days before so he could assume his duties as the regiment’s second chaplain (the first chapain, Elijah Wilkins, also of Lisbon, having resigned in June 1862). In Days and Events, Thomas Livermore remembered Ransom as a “little, puling fellow”, but the minister may have been instrumental in ensuring that Ephraim ended up in the 5th New Hampshire with his father.

Ephraim did not remain at home long “to care for and provide for” his mother. On August 14, 1862, he enlisted in Enfield, NH, claiming he was 18 (when he was, at most, 16).[6] The man who best fits the role of somebody in a “higher position” who enticed or pressured young Ephraim to volunteer was Converse G. Morgan (Ephraim’s enlistment papers appear to bear the signature of a “C. G. Morgan”). Morgan was a prosperous Enfield merchant who was then raising what became Company H of the 11th New Hampshire.[7] A plurality of his company eventually came from Enfield with Lyme and Canaan also producing substantial numbers of men. For the sake of filling up his company, Morgan probably applied the hard sell to Ephraim.[8] The young man did enlist but somehow escaped Morgan’s clutches and ended up in the 5th New Hampshire. How Ephraim managed this feat remains unclear. Perhaps he made service by his father’s side father a condition of his enlistment. Whatever the case, Morgan and Ephraim went their separate ways with the latter, in some respects, having a better war (for Morgan’s fate, see this endnote).[9]

Converse G. Morgan (1827-1880): Could this be the man in a “higher position” who talked young Ephraim Adams into volunteering? At this great distance in time, we can’t know for sure, but he seems a likely candidate. The 1860 Census describes him as a “Merchant” in Enfield, NH, with $2500 in real estate and $2500 in personal estate. At the time that Ephraim Adams volunteered, Morgan was recruiting a company for the 11th New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry. Morgan’s military career was cut short by dismissal for deserting his post while on picket duty in 1863. For further details, see endnote 9.

Ephraim soon found himself serving next to his father in Company I.[10] So far, so good. The letter checks out.

The story that the letter relates also seems to fit with what we know about the military situation. The letter claimed that Placide spoke to Cross about his son. Having obtained no satisfaction, the Adamses deserted at “Middletown.” That statement suggests that if some sort of exchange took place between Placide Adams and Colonel Cross, it had to have occurred between late August and September 14, 1862. Why? Cross returned to the regiment from his convalescence in New Hampshire (he had been wounded at the Battle of Fair Oaks) on August 23, and Ephraim reached the 5th New Hampshire several days after that. September 14 is the very latest the discussion could have occurred because it was on that date the regiment was held in reserve during the Battle of South Mountain (which was often referred to as “Middletown Heights” after Middletown, MD, which lay several miles southeast of the battlefield).[11] Ostensibly, the desertion took place that day. 

One can easily understand why Placide Adams would have felt great consternation during these three weeks. His 16-year-old son had reached the regiment at exactly the same time as a military crisis loomed. Returning from the Peninsula, the 5th New Hampshire disembarked at Alexandria, VA, just as Pope’s Army of Virginia was mauled at the Second Battle of Bull Run. According to Cross’s diary, his regiment covered the retreat of Pope’s broken force. Only days later, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia commenced its invasion of Maryland. With each passing day, it became clear to all that a decisive battle was approaching. Understandably, Adams must have feared for his underage son’s safety and decamping on September 14 would have made sense. 

Likewise, military developments would have rendered Cross unsympathetic to Adams’s pleas. The 5th New Hampshire had suffered very heavily on the Peninsula. Cross had brought “900 officers & men” to Ship Point, VA, in early April 1862. By late August 1862, when the regiment returned to Alexandria, VA, it numbered only “three hundred and fifteen men fit for duty.” While quite a few had been killed in action, died of disease, or obtained discharges, a large number were in the hospital with a variety of ailments. While convalescing in New Hampshire, Cross had mistakenly believed he would be given 350 new recruits to fill his depleted ranks. He must have been disappointed to obtain just over 60. Moreover, the regiment was in poor condition, “weather-beaten, worn out, and ragged.” As he covered Pope’s retreat near Centreville, Cross worried that his soldiers, “greatly worn by long hardships on the Peninsula, had not the strength for such efforts.” Throughout the summer and fall, he would lose even more men to disabled discharges. Like Adams, Cross knew that a big battle was in the offing. Yet, on the morning of the Battle of Antietam (September 17, 1862), Cross could only produce “301 bayonets, and 18 commissioned officers” at roll call. It should come as no surprise that during this period, he would have been in no mood to countenance Adams’ request.

There is one problem with the letter, and it is a very big problem: there is no record in Ayling’s Revised Register of either Ephraim or Placide deserting in the fall of 1862. One person who did desert some months later, though, was Benjamin Adams, who left the 2nd New Hampshire. According to Ayling’s Revised Register, Benjamin deserted on April 8, 1863 in Concord, NH where the regiment had been camped since early March.[12] The reason is not difficult to find: on April 13, 1863, he married Mary Anne Bannoth in Canaan, NH.[13] His new life of married bliss, however, lasted less than year. He was apprehended at the end of February 1864 and brought back to his regiment. Eventually, he was discharged (time expired) near Richmond, VA, on April 14, 1865.

Placide eventually did desert, but not until much later: December 6, 1864. He was in Washington, DC, at the time, perhaps recovering from an illness in a hospital. He probably left in the company of Paul Pontin, a 29-year-old substitute from France recently transferred into Company I who is also listed as having deserted from Washington, DC, on the same day as well.

And what of Ephraim Adams? He was wounded at Cold Harbor, VA, on June 3, 1864 and transferred to the 2nd Company, 2nd Battalion of the Veteran Reserve Corps in October of that year. He bounced around between several Veteran Reserve Corps units before being discharged on June 22, 1865 in Washington, DC. And so, “that boy” who “had not the just chance of the soldier to live if not shot” avoided death by illness and survived a serious combat wound. One can’t help but wonder if Placide decided to run off now that there was no need to protect his son who was now safely ensconced in the Veteran Reserve Corps.

The letter in the New Hampshire Patriot & State Gazette, then, does not agree with Ayling’s Revised Register. What happened? There are three possibilities.

The first is that Ayling’s Revised Register is incorrect and Placide along with Ephraim deserted before the Battle of Antietam, returning at some point later. Admittedly, this explanation seems unlikely. Ayling’s Revised Register is fallible but could it have omitted both the desertion and the return (or apprehension) of the two men? Moreover, if Placide left the regiment to save his son, why would he return with that son some time later to continue their military service?

The second possibility is that the anonymous author knowingly presented a spurious charge against Cross. This answer is not terribly satisfying either. Why would somebody make such a charge in one of the state’s leading papers when it could be disproven so easily? (A great mass of correspondence passed between the regiment and New Hampshire the throughout the war.) This letter, though, may indicate something about Cross’s reputation in New Hampshire. In February 1862, Cross had released an underage soldier (Oratus Verry) from the regiment with the greatest ill-grace only after Thomas Edwards, New Hampshire’s congressman from the 3rd District, had intervened in the matter. Cross wrote an acerbic letter to the congressman that excoriated him for his interference. The letter ended up in the New Hampshire papers and elicited critical comments from a number of editors. Perhaps the author of the letter in the New Hampshire Patriot & State Gazette drew inspiration from this incident when depicting Cross.

The third possibility might be that the writer of the letter was confused. It turns out that on August 30, 1862, while the 5th New Hampshire marched in the rain toward Centreville, VA, just as the Second Battle of Bull Run was ending, two soldiers deserted from the regiment: Frederick Flury and Enos B. Nevers. Both men belonged to Company I where Placide and Ephraim also served. Flury, like Placide Adams, was from Canaan, NH. Not only that, but Flury was also a French-Canadian; he had been born in Trois Rivières, about 25 miles southwest of Placide Adams’s birthplace. Is it possible that the anonymous author of the letter to the New Hampshire Patriot & State Gazette somehow knew of Placide Adams’s distress regarding Ephraim and then, upon hearing of the desertion, mistook Flury, another French-Canadian from Company I, for the elder Adams? There are problems with this solution. Aside from the fact that such a mistake would have been a big one, the author identified “Middletown” as the scene of the desertion. This could only mean Middletown, MD, and as we have already seen, that would place the date of the desertion around September 14. Only one man deserted at roughly this time: Cpl. Charles H. Bartlett of Company D who hailed from Milan, NH (on September 15, 1862). Since no location for his desertion is given in Ayling’s Revised Register, we can’t even be sure he was with the regiment at the time; had he been ill, he could just as easily have deserted from a hospital elsewhere. Clearly, though, there was no mistaking Bartlett for Adams.

To get to the bottom of the matter, one would have to survey documents concerning Placide and Ephraim Adams that are stored at the National Archive. These would include Placide and Ephraim Adams’s compiled service records (CMSR) or their pension files. The “record of events” for Company I of the 5th New Hampshire would also shed some light on what happened. Frederick Flury is a person of interest too. He has proven especially elusive. On his enlistment form, he gave Canaan, NH as his residence, but the Census of 1860 did not find him at this location.[14] His post-war career has been difficult to trace; like many deserters, he probably stayed away from his pre-war residence.

Placide Adams, on the other hand, returned to his old stomping grounds after the war. If the letter indicated anything, it was sympathy for the “honest Frenchman,” and perhaps the people of Canaan bore him no grudge. The Census of 1870 located him and his wife (Sarah) in Hanover, NH, where he was described as a “Woodchoper.” By June 1880, when the next census took place, he had moved back to Canaan, NH, (now a “Farmer”) along with his wife. He lived next door to Ephraim who was married to Lucina Adams and had three children: Placide, John, and Esther. Placide only had five months left to live. Perhaps, even in those days, Placide and Ephraim reminisced about that terrible time in September 1862 when the father had feared for the son and led the boy out of the army—or did not.

[1] https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/124805117/placide-adams I have not been able to substantiate this information elsewhere. Ayling’s Revised Register lists Placide’s birthplace as “Canada East, St. Anne’s.”

[2] “United States Census, 1860”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M7WT-DGH : 14 December 2017), Ephraim Adames in entry for Placey Adames, 1860., Mauricie Region, Quebec, Canada.

[3] “New Hampshire, Civil War Service and Pension Records, 1861-1866,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2Q1-BD1X : accessed 20 September 2018), Benjamin Adams, 20 May 1861; citing New Hampshire, United States, New Hampshire State Archives, Concord; FHL microfilm 2,257,028.

[4] Ayling’s Revised Register, p. 29.

[5] Alying’s Revised Register. See also “New Hampshire, Civil War Service and Pension Records, 1861-1866,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2Q1-Y89F : accessed 20 September 2018), Placide Adam, 12 Sep 1861; citing Grafton, Grafton, Grafton, New Hampshire, United States, New Hampshire State Archives, Concord; FHL microfilm 2,217,640.

[6] The part of the enlistment form requiring parental consent for a minor was left unfilled. “New Hampshire, Civil War Service and Pension Records, 1861-1866,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2Q1-YKS4 : accessed 20 September 2018), Ephraim Adams, 14 Aug 1862; citing Enfield, Enfield, Grafton, New Hampshire, United States, New Hampshire State Archives, Concord; FHL microfilm 2,217,642.

[7] See Leander W. Cogswell, A History of the Eleventh New Hampshire Regiment, Volunteer Infantry in the Rebellion War, 1861-1865 (Concord, NH: Republican Press Association, 1891), 10-11.

[8] See Leander W. Cogswell, A History of the Eleventh New Hampshire Regiment, Volunteer Infantry in the Rebellion War, 1861-1865 (Concord, NH: Republican Press Association, 1891), 10-11.

[9] According to the 11th New Hampshire’s official history, in April 1863, Morgan was on picket duty outside of Mount Sterling, KY, when he, along with several soldiers, stopped by a house to find some food. It so happened, that General Edward Ferrero, the brigade commander (yes, that Ferrero, the one who sat in a bomb proof drinking while his division was shot to pieces during the Battle of the Crater), was at the home “in conversation with the ladies of the house.” Ferrero accused Morgan of deserting his post and recommended the captain’s dismissal from the service. Apparently, this was not Morgan’s first such infraction, and he was indeed dismissed. He found a job as a clerk in the Paymaster-General’s Office in Washington, DC, but he did not take the dismissal lying down. In 1867, he somehow managed to get it reversed and was retroactively given an honorable discharge dating to the date of his dismissal. He then quit his job at the Paymaster-General’s Office and returned to Enfield, his custom somewhat diminished and his health poor. He died in 1880. Cogswell, A History of the Eleventh New Hampshire Regiment, 244-246.

[10] Out of the 1000-odd men who joined the regiment in the fall of 1861, only about 50 were of Canadian origin, and of this fraction, only a third were French-Canadians (judging from the names). Company I had more than its share of Canadians—about ten men, half of whom may have been French-speakers. These five French-Canadians in Company I did not find life in the regiment congenial; all of them eventually deserted:

  • Joseph Piney (October 19, 1861)
  • Frederick Flury (August 30, 1862)
  • Joseph Sylvester (December 4, 1862)
  • Joseph Gravelle (March 31, 1864)
  • Placide Adams (December 6, 1864)

[11] There is a Middletown, VA, but this town sits at northern end of the Shenandoah Valley. The regiment did not visit this area in 1862.

[12] Ayling, p. 29. See also Martin A. Haynes, A History of the Second Regiment, New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry, in the War of the Rebellion (Lakeport, NH: 1896), pp. 154-157.

[13] “New Hampshire Marriage Records, 1637-1947,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FL6J-FKM : 26 September 2017), Benjamin W. Adams and Mary Anne Bannoth, 13 Apr 1863; citing Canaan, Grafton, New Hampshire, Bureau of Vital Records and Health Statistics, Concord; FHL microfilm 1,001,120.

[14] “New Hampshire, Civil War Service and Pension Records, 1861-1866,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2Q1-YZ7C : accessed 22 September 2018), Fredrick Flury, 10 Sep 1861; citing New Hampshire, United States, New Hampshire State Archives, Concord; FHL microfilm 2,217,640.

Why the Household Status of Soldiers in the 5th New Hampshire Matters

~ hdubrull ~ Leave a comment

Jonathan C. S. Twitchell (1834-1910): When he enlisted in 1861, Twitchell was a lumberman and millman living in his father’s household in Drummer, NH. At 27 years old, Twitchell was a bit older than most volunteers who still lived at home with their parents. But he was also typical in that his father, Ransom Twitchell, a farmer, had amassed an estate of almost $3000; soldiers who still lived with their parents tended to come from wealthier households. Starting out as a private, Twitchell was eventually appointed Captain of Company K in October 1864. This image shows him with the chevrons of a 1st Sergeant. He served with the 5th New Hampshire until the end of the war and was wounded only once (in the right leg). After the war, he married (1866), moved around a bit, and eventually ended up in Stonehouse, VA, where he worked as a grocer. (This carte de visite and the others displayed in this post are courtesy of David Morin.)

You never know where the data you collect will lead you, and the household status of soldiers in the 5th New Hampshire is a case in point. When I amassed information from the 1860 Census about the people with whom volunteers were living, I never imagined such stark patterns would emerge So, without further ado, let’s go look at the statistics. Yes, I’m afraid there will be lots of numbers in this post.

Varieties of Households

In my pool of 540 soldiers who enlisted in the 5th New Hampshire in September and October 1861, I found the household status of 423 men by using the Census of 1860. The results are below:

  • 155 lived in households headed by their fathers
  • 141 were the heads of their own households
  • 91 lived in households headed by people unrelated to them.
  • 13 lived in households headed by their mothers
  • 11 lived by themselves in various arrangements
  • 9 lived in households headed by their siblings
  • 1 lived in a Shaker community
  • 1 lived in the town poor house
  • 1 lived with his uncle

All of these situations interest me, and I could find something intriguing to say about all of them, but I’d like to focus on the three most common arrangements because they account for 91% of the men in the regiment.

Soldiers Living in Households Headed by Their Fathers (N=155)

Not surprisingly, this group, on average, was the youngest of the three (20.3 years old). The median age was 19. Like the other two groups I’ll be discussing, this one was relatively evenly distributed among all the 5th New Hampshire’s companies (although A and F were a bit on the short side).

This graph mirrors the overall profile of the regiment (see here). That surprised me somewhat; I would have thought this group would have been even younger since, after all, it was living at home with parents. What is not surprising is the drop off in numbers at 24; it was usually at this point that young men got married and left home.

This was also the wealthiest of the three groups. If we look at the estates of these men’s fathers, we see that they were relatively well-off (for the total value of the estate, I added personal and real estate as indicated by the Census of 1860).  

Farmers dominated among the fathers of these soldiers, making up just over 60% of the group (n=147). The value of most farms fell somewhere between $1500 (which seems to have constituted the minimum for a viable concern) and $4000. The prevalence of skilled labor, white collar workers, professionals, and owners of capital account for the wealth of these men.

  • Farmer: 89
  • Laborer/Farm Laborer/Day Laborer: 18
  • Carpenter: 7
  • Mechanic: 4
  • Physician: 3
  • Lawyer: 3
  • Trader/Merchant: 2
  • Marble Worker: 2
  • Teamster: 2
  • Cordwainer: 2
  • Blacksmith: 2
  • Iron Machinist: 2
  • Mason: 2
  • Millwright: 1
  • Box Maker: 1
  • Iron Manufacturer: 1
  • Shoemaker: 1
  • Painter: 1
  • Joiner 1:
  • Crockery and Looking Glass [Manufacturer]: 1
  • Bridge Builder: 1
  • Real Estate Broker: 1
  • Stone Cutter: 1
  • Miller: 1
  • Tailor 1:
  • Bank Cashier: 1

Keep these numbers in mind as you look at the other groups; the contrast is shocking.  

Thomas Folsom (1827-1863): Folsom was fairly typical of the heads of household who served in the 5th New Hampshire–he was older, married, a father, and man of small means. Born in Gilmanton, NH, whose population had been shrinking for decades, he married Mary Frothingham in 1850. By the time he enlisted, he had a seven-year-old son named George. According to the Census of 1860, Folsom still lived in Gilmanton, working as a day laborer with an estate that totaled $300. He was shot in the thigh at the Battle of Fair Oaks (June 1861) and mortally wounded at Chancellorsville (May 1863), dying three weeks later.

Soldiers Who Were Heads of Households (N=141)

Without looking at the figures, I would have guessed that this group was relatively young (20s and early 30s) with a little bit up capital saved up. And I would have been way off the mark.

The average age of these men was a stunning 34.4 years old.

  • 51 were in their 20s
  • 55 were in their 30s
  • 24 were in their 40s
  • 11 were in their 50s

Men in their 20s, who were probably the best suited for soldiering, formed just over a third of the group. Moreover, on average, the economic prospects of these heads of household did not look terribly good, especially when you consider they had enjoyed ample time to accumulate capital.

I found the value of the estates of 110 of these men, and they look as follows. (Please compare with the fathers of the men who were still living at home in 1860.)

The occupations of this group make it very clear why it was not as wealthy as the fathers of soldiers still living in their parents’ households.

  • Shoemaker: 37
  • Laborer/Farm Laborer/Day Laborer: 36
  • Farmer: 15
  • Factory Operative: 5
  • Machinist: 4
  • Blacksmith: 4
  • House Carpenter: 4
  • Joiner: 3
  • Tailor: 2
  • Cordwainer: 2
  • Brick Mason: 2
  • Coachman: 1
  • Stone Mason: 1
  • Stone Cutter:1
  • Saw Mill Laborer: 1
  • House Painter: 2
  • Shoe Cutter: 1
  • Booking Agent: 1
  • Stage Driver: 1
  • Printer: 1
  • Clergyman: 1
  • Railroad Laborer: 1
  • Music Teacher: 1
  • Ornamental Painter: 1
  • Cabinet Maker: 1
  • Worm Cutter: 1
  • Tanner: 1
  • Peddler: 1
  • Bit and Augur Maker: 1
  • Basket Maker: 1
  • Merchant: 1

Like the soldiers still living in their fathers’ households, this group was fairly evenly distributed among all the regiment’s companies (although they were overrepresented somewhat in A, D, G, and especially the band).

A poor man can be just as patriotic as a wealthy one, but in this case, one wonders if the financial motive for enlisting was somewhat stronger with this group. In the fall of 1861, bounties had not even begun to approach their stratospheric 1863 and 1864 levels. However, a number of these men, who must have suffered from the economic downturn associated with the Panic of 1857, may have thought that the prospects of army life, which included “three squares” a day and $13 per month, were attractive. Certainly, something important must have attracted these men. They left behind wives and children, thereby sacrificing a great deal more by leaving home than their younger, unmarried comrades did.

Henry McGann (1843-1919): Born in Bangor, ME, McGann found himself in Cornish, NH, in 1860, living and working on the farm of Nathaniel Pease, whose total estate amounted to about $2300. This was a common pattern among volunteers who lived in a household headed by someone not related to them; more often than not, these men were farm laborers who lived with their employers. McGann’s service record indicates he was a brave soldier. He was wounded three times–at Fair Oaks (June 1862), Fredericksburg (December 1862), and Farmville (April 1865). A pension payment form from 1888 mentions that he suffered from ““G. s. wds. r. knee & face” [gunshot wounds to the right knee and face]. McGann was appointed Sergeant and re-enlisted in 1864, serving until the end of the war. Here, however, he sports the chevrons of a Corporal. Original volunteers like McGann who later became NCOs seem to have been the glue that held the regiment together in the last 18 months of the conflict, when the rank and file consisted mainly of foreign-born substitutes. After the war, McGann appears to have been involved in the lumber industry for some time. He was married at least three–if not four–times. He ended his days at the New Hampshire Soldier’s Home in Tilton, NH.

Soldiers Living in Households Headed by Someone Not Related to Them (N=91)

I feel a little diffident making definitive statements about these men for several reasons. First, it’s not always easy to determine if people living in the same household are not related. Second, since these soldiers were not heads of household, I worry that census takers may have overlooked whatever personal property these men had acquired (only nine are listed as owning any property at all). Third, since it’s not clear who their parents were (as opposed to the soldiers who lived with their parents), it’s impossible to establish their class background.

Since these men did not head their own households, they too were fairly young (average age was 22.2 years old, median age was 20). Their age profile, however, is somewhat different from the soldiers who lived in their fathers’ households. This is largely the case because there are a number of older men who were farm laborers who appear to have lived with their employers who were farmers (more about that later).

The age profile is as follows:

I found occupations for 83 of these men. The distribution of occupations is as follows:

  • Farm Laborer: 43
  • Shoemaker: 5
  • Farmer: 4
  • Clerk: 4
  • Cordwainer: 2
  • Physician: 2
  • Carpenter: 2
  • Painter: 2
  • Glass Bottle Converter: 1
  • Teacher: 1
  • Looking Glass Man: 1
  • Millman: 1
  • Machinist: 1
  • Student: 1
  • Mechanic: 1
  • Stone Cutter: 1
  • Sash and Blind Maker: 1
  • Hostler: 1
  • Currier’s Apprentice: 1
  • Weaver: 1
  • Sawing: 1
  • Factory Operative: 1
  • Sailor: 1

Almost all of the laborers appear to have lived with their employers who were farmers. Many of the other men seem to have lived with their employers or boarded with a family for convenience’s sake.

A Final Experiment

For the heck of it, I used a simple measurement to compare the war experience of these three groups. What proportion of them died during the war, and what exactly did they die from? Here’s what I found.

Soldiers Living in Their Father’s Households (n=155):

  • 17 killed in action (11% of total)
  • 5 suffered mortal wounds (3% of total)
  • 21 died of disease (14% of total)

Over a quarter of this group died in the service (28%) with the total evenly split between combat and illness. This was the only group where such was the case; in the others, more men died from combat than disease.

Soldiers Who Were Heads of Household (n=141)

  • 10 killed in action (7%)
  • 10 suffered mortal wounds (7%)
  • 7 died of disease (5%)

Almost a fifth of this group died in the service (19%) with 5% dying of disease and 14% dying in combat. This group suffered an unusually low number of deaths from disease.

Soldiers Living in a Household Headed by Someone Unrelated to Them (n=91)

  • 16 killed in action (21%)
  • 5 suffered mortal wounds (5%)
  • 10 died of disease (11%)

Over a third of this group died in the service (34%) with 11% dying of disease and 26% dying in combat. This group experienced the highest overall mortality, largely because it suffered far more from combat than the other groups.

Each group underwent distinct experiences during the war. Soldiers who were heads of household suffered as much from combat as the soldiers still living in their father’s households but kept their overall mortality down by dying far less frequently from disease. Soldiers living in a household headed by an unrelated person suffered the highest overall mortality largely because over a quarter of them died in combat.

Some of these outcomes seem explainable. For example, it seems possible that the heads of households suffered less from disease because they were older, had been exposed to more illness, and built immunity over the course of their lives.

I don’t know what accounts for some of the other outcomes. Why, for example, were soldiers living in a household headed by someone unrelated to them almost twice twice as likely as other groups to die from combat?

Conclusion

Even though several types of households predominated among our sample, there was a great diversity of living arrangements. But what strikes me even more forcibly, though, is that every almost man, young or old, belonged to a household of one sort or other—either as a member of at its head. The number of men who lived alone in a boarding house or hotel was negligible.

The other fact that makes a great impression on me is that the young men who still lived with their fathers belonged to households that were wealthier than others. Indeed, their fathers seemed like the type of men who hired men from the other two types of households that predominated among the men who volunteered for the 5th New Hampshire.

Without a doubt, New Hampshire had its rich, middling, and poor people, and in return for a wage, some men worked for others. But it seems possible to exaggerate class differences during this period.

What perhaps mitigated these differences was that many owners of property still worked with their hands. Even though they all owned capital, the farmer on his land, the carpenter in his shop, and the blacksmith at his forge lived by the sweat of their brow. Indeed, most of the men who volunteered for the 5th New Hampshire were unfamiliar with the class relations we associate with modern industrial capitalism. True, by 1861, the factory system had reached New Hampshire, but operatives in the mills of small towns that dotted the countryside still mainly consisted of young women. Moreover, the smattering of iron molders, file cutters, and machinists who joined the 5th New Hampshire were highly skilled craftsmen who probably did not conceive of themselves as forming part of an urban proletariat.

Since these groups differed substantially in a number of ways (e.g. age, wealth, etc.), it should probably come as no surprise that their experiences of the war differed. At this point, though, I’m not prepared to explain exactly how and why. That’s a topic for another post.

Recruitment Patterns of the 5th New Hampshire

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Benjamin Morse’s Enlistment Form (1861): Morse was a 24-year-old weaver living in Concord, NH when he enlisted on September 1, 1861. Edward Sturtevant, who recruited Morse, signed the form in the bottom right-hand corner. Sturtevant, who was working as a police constable in Concord at the time, recruited just under 70% of the men in Company A (half of whom came from Concord). He became the captain of this company, and Morse served in it until he was badly wounded at Antietam. Morse was variously reported as having had his left leg or foot amputated. After the war, he returned to Concord and worked as a machinist before becoming a barber. He died in 1898.

As I explained in my last post, I recently finished collecting biographical information on 540 of the 1000 or so original volunteers who enlisted in the regiment in September and October 1861. I can’t thank Madison Lessard ’22 and Connor O’Neill ’22 enough for helping me with this data collection.

In 400 cases, I found the names of recruiting officers on volunteers’ enlistment forms. In all, I discovered the names of 50 different recruiters, and in most instances, I managed to identify them. I used this information to map the recruiting grounds of each company in the regiment. The resulting Google Earth maps are really cool and very informative. I’ve incorporated these maps into a video of a PowerPoint presentation (with a dramatic voice over) that you can watch here. I’ve included a number of photos as well, so it should be a relatively painless 33 minutes.

Thanks for reading and watching!

How Old Were the Men (and Boys) of the 5th New Hampshire?

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A young, unidentified private in the 5th New Hampshire. The Whipple hat indicates this image was probably taken in Concord, NH, shortly before the regiment entrained for Washington, DC, in late October 1861. (Image courtesy of David Morin.)

The numbers, so they say, are in. Over the last several years, with the help of numerous student research assistants, I’ve been able to compile biographical information for a randomly selected pool of soldiers amounting to more than half of the original volunteers of the 5th New Hampshire who enlisted in 1861.[i] Collecting the data for these 540 men was extremely labor intensive. We used Ayling’s Revised Register as well as a host of other sources on FamilySearch (e.g. census records, marriage records, death records, enlistment forms, pension forms, etc.).[ii] Although the students and I completed the work some months ago, it was only recently that I finished entering all the data in an Excel spreadsheet. I hope that the spreadsheet will facilitate the searching and sorting of data. The next series of posts will look at this data from various angles.

I thought I’d discuss the age of the men upon enlistment first because the numbers are relatively easy to manipulate on a spreadsheet and use to build a graph. Obtaining the numbers themselves, however, was not easy, and I have to warn my readers that in many cases, the figures are approximations. For one thing, census takers and recruiting officers did not ask people for their birthdays—they asked for ages. That makes it difficult to determine birth years. Depending in which month he was asked his age, a man could give different responses. For example, somebody who was 23 at the time of the Census of 1860 could have been born in either 1836 or 1837. This difficulty is compounded by the fact that ages were self-reported. From census to census, some folks were very inconsistent in relating how old they were (e.g., they appeared to have aged only 7 years between 1850 and 1860). In other cases, people had reason to lie about their age. Men who married much younger girls often shaved—or perhaps chopped—a decade off their age on the marriage record. Underage boys and overage men invariably lied to the recruiting officer—although, to be honest, I think recruiting officers and parents were often complicit in these lies. Under these circumstances, determining somebody’s age in 1861 is a matter of educated—but usually well-educated—guesswork.

All this lying to recruiting officers led to some strange results in Ayling’s Revised Register which used recruitment forms to determine the ages of the soldiers listed in that volume. If one accepts the listed ages at face value, one sees a great deal of “clumping” at either end of the age range of legal enlistment. For example, 150 volunteers (almost 15% of the entire regiment) claimed they were 18 while only 88 asserted they were 19. The same phenomenon occurred at the other end of the spectrum, if somewhat less spectacularly: where only 20 men claimed they were 42 or 43, 35 claimed they were 44 or 45. (It’s my understanding that at the time, only men between the ages of 18 and 44 were legally permitted to enlist.)

I’m sure I didn’t detect all those who lied about their ages, but I am pleased to see my graph shows no clumping at the age of 44. Is there clumping at the other end? Yes, but the number of 18-year-olds is now much reduced from what Ayling indicates. Moreover, 19-year-olds form the largest cohort. Finally, we must keep in mind that some clumping at this end of the graph makes sense since historians recognize that soldiering was a young man’s métier during the Civil War.

Interestingly, recruitment faltered substantially among those between the ages of 24 and 30 (with the exception of 26-year-olds). I think the explanation here is simple: men in this age range were more likely to be married and thus disinclined to volunteer. On average, the men in the pool who married in 1860 or earlier did so at the age of 23.3 (n=107). The group as a whole married, on average, at 25.9, with a median age of 24 (n=261). I’m going to guess that the average for the group as a whole is higher because many single men who fought in the war put off marriage later than they might otherwise have done.  

The average age upon enlistment of the soldiers in the pool was 25.5 years. The median age was 23 years. The difference is explained by the fact that a huge number of soldiers are concentrated in the younger age cohorts but there is a very long “tail” extending all the way out to men in their mid- to late 50s. The most common age was 19 (n=51). Those who were 17 years old or younger (that is, not legally eligible to enlist) amounted to 10.2% of the pool. Those 45 years or older (and also not legally eligible to enlist) were 5.7% of the pool.

Another young, unidentified volunteer whose image was captured shortly before the 5th New Hampshire left Concord in October 1861. This one, though, looks like he’s spoiling for a fight. (Imagine courtesy of David Morin.)

According to the figures I found, fighting in the 5th New Hampshire was a young man’s occupation.

  • Volunteers between the ages of 18 and 23 constituted 45% of the regiment.
  • Volunteers under the age of 25 were 58.9% of the regiment.
  • Volunteers under the age of 29 formed 77% of the regiment.

Two age-related facts surprised me the most. First, the pool had a dozen men who were 50 years of age or older. If 50 is the new 40 these days, what are we to say about these men? That 50 at the time was equivalent to the current 65? I’d like to think these soldiers were superior physical specimens for the 1860s, but such does not seem to be the case. Three died of disease in the service, and one died almost 15 years after the war, partly due to his wounds. Of the remaining eight, one died in his 50s, one died in his 60s, two died in their 70s, and four died in their 80s.

Second, the number of boys in the regiment who were 17 years or younger is also surprising. That so many were so young helps explain the contretemps involving Colonel Edward Cross, Oratus Verry, and New Hampshire Representative Thomas M. Edwards. Apparently, Verry, who was 19, lied on his enlistment form and claimed he was 20 when he volunteered for the 5th New Hampshire (20 was the minimum age at which a volunteer could enlist without obtaining parental permission). Verry found he did not like army life, and asked his parents to help him get out of the regiment. They contacted Edwards, their congressman, who arranged to have the boy discharged on that grounds that he was underage. These proceedings infuriated Cross who wrote a blistering letter to Edwards which included the following passage: “Private Orastus [sic] J. Verry, Company F, will be discharged according to orders; but allow me to say that his discharge is an outrage against military custom, against law, and cannot fail to have a bad example. The young man is strong, able-bodied, and if he is discharged, with equal reason might one-half of our army be discharged” (italics added). [iii] What this incident signifies (among other things) is that much of the regiment was underage, and Cross knew it. If the precedent set by Verry would not have led to the discharge of half the army, it certainly would have released a substantial number of boy soldiers who should never have enlisted with or without parental permission. 

As we shall see in further posts, the youth of these men very much dictated their social circumstances. The majority were unmarried, which meant that most of them lived in somebody else’s household—often that of their parents. That being the case, very few possessed any capital or cash of their own. In other words, they seemed poor, but the story was more complicated than that. The fathers of these young men often owned real estate of some sort—a workshop or, most commonly, a farm. Many of the sons clearly aspired to follow in their fathers’ footsteps and become capitalists in the same occupations. (Indeed, a quick survey of my spreadsheet seems to indicate that the sons of small farmers constituted the backbone of the 5th New Hampshire.) But at the time they enlisted in the 5th New Hampshire, they hadn’t enjoyed enough time to accumulate capital to marry, start a household of their own, and make a go at their chosen calling—whether it was farming, carpentry, shoemaking, or blacksmithing.

[i] For this particular bit of work, the students included Stephen Hanabergh ’22, Connor O’Neill ’22, and Madison Lessard ’22.  

[ii] Augustus D. Ayling, Revised Register of the Soldiers and Sailors of New Hampshire in the War of the Rebellion. 1861-1866 (Concord: I. C. Evans, 1895).

[iii] Mike Pride and Mark Travis, My Brave Boys: To War with Colonel Cross & the Fighting Fifth (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2001), 57.

The 5th New Hampshire at Andersonville

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Andersonville (1864): Andrew Jackson Riddle took this image as part of a series on August 16, 1864. This daguerreotype captures the ration wagon (center) as corn bread and beans are being distributed to the prisoners. By this date, the population of prisoners had reached its greatest extent. Some 31,000 Union POWs were then confined at Andersonville, making it the third-largest city in what remained of the Confederacy, behind Charleston and Richmond.

I recently completed William Marvel’s Andersonville: The Last Depot. I have not surveyed the entire historiographic debate concerning Civil War prison camps, and my reading of Marvel was not an attempt to start that project. I read his work because I picked it up at a library book sale in the fall and thought it looked interesting. I must admit that I found his argument compelling: logistical difficulties, incompetence, corruption, and numerous other difficulties rather than malevolence accounted for the massive loss of Union prisoners’ lives at Andersonville. But I will keep an open mind until the time comes for me to attack the topic of Civil War prisons in earnest.

In any event, Marvel writes in passing about the experiences of the 5th New Hampshire’s Hiram Jepperson at the camp. I was thus inspired to find out what happened to men from the regiment who were captured around the time of the Union assault at Cold Harbor on June 3, 1864, many of whom ended up at Andersonville. Only when I looked into their experiences did I realize how diverse they were. The other thing I realized, too, was that the members of the 5th New Hampshire who became captives in the spring and summer of 1864 were much more likely to see the inside of a Confederate prison for a long span of time than those who were captured before or after. The main reason for the difference was that the Dix-Hill Cartel that governed prisoner exchanges fell into abeyance in July 1863. Large-scale exchanges did not resume with any regularity until early 1865.[i]

I’ve briefly described the Battle of Cold Harbor from the 5th New Hampshire’s perspective while examining Cornelius Stone’s harrowing experience. The long and short of it is that the 5th New Hampshire and the 7th New York Heavy Artillery were the only two Union regiments to break through the Confederate position. After experiencing some local success and capturing a number of rebel prisoners, the two units were driven back and almost surrounded. Both the Granite Staters and the New Yorkers were eventually driven off with heavy casualties. The viciousness that characterized the close-quarter fighting in which the 5th New Hampshire was engaged on that day explains why 46 of the 200 casualties the regiment suffered were killed in action, a high proportion of dead to wounded.[ii] 

Ayling’s Revised Register indicates that two members of the 5th New Hampshire were captured shortly before the battle. The regiment lost another 39 prisoners during the assault at Cold Harbor on June 3.[iii] Among the 39 men captured that day were two 1st lieutenants, four sergeants, and ten corporals. In other words, almost two-fifths of those captured were commissioned or noncommissioned officers. That’s an extraordinarily high proportion. My instinct was to speculate that these officers may have been original volunteers who had taken it upon themselves to lead their untrustworthy substitutes, draftees, and bounty men by example (although, strictly speaking, non-commissioned officers pushed from behind as file closers). That view possesses some merit, but it doesn’t capture the whole case. Ten of the officers (including both of the 1st lieutenants) were indeed original volunteers, but the captured sergeants and corporals also included four substitutes and one draftee. That suggests the regiment found some decent noncom material from among men who were often scorned for their lack of patriotism. Or it suggests that the number of qualified original volunteers was no longer sufficient to serve as the exclusive source of NCOs.

For a variety of reasons, many of the 41 men captured around the time of the battle never went to a Confederate camp, let alone Andersonville. Thirteen of the prisoners were wounded, and seven of them died in Richmond. Another two men are described as having died in Richmond shortly after the battle—one from disease and the other from unspecified causes.[iv] We should also keep in mind that the two 1st lieutenants who were captured at Cold Harbor, Robert S. Dame and John A. Duren, did not end up inside the Andersonville stockade either: the prison exclusively held enlisted men. What exactly happened to both of these officers remains unclear; Ayling’s Revised Register mentions they were “released,” but gives no date.[v]

Robert S. Dame (1840-1916) is the only soldier from the 5th New Hampshire captured at Cold Harbor whose image I possess. Born in Portsmouth, NH, 1860 found him living in Concord, NH, with his parents. His father was a blacksmith, and Dame himself was listed in the census as a blacksmith’s apprentice. In April 1861, he enlisted in the 1st New Hampshire (a three-month regiment), serving in Edward Sturtevant’s company. His enlistment papers describe him as having grey eyes, black hair, and a light complexion. His height is listed as 5’ 6” ½. He enlisted in the 5th New Hampshire at the end of October 1861, but was not mustered in until the very beginning of November, by which point, the regiment had already left New Hampshire. Dame was placed in Sturtevant’s Company A and appointed a corporal, no doubt because of his experience in the 1st New Hampshire. Dame is a good example of the 5th New Hampshire’s tendency to promote almost exclusively from within. He was promoted repeatedly, finally attaining the rank of 1st lieutenant in March 1863. Wounded and captured at Cold Harbor, he somehow returned to the federal army in time to be discharged in October 1864. After the war, Dame may have served in the Marine Corps. He later moved to Erie, PA, where, among other things, he worked as a “mariner.” He married Emma Dame and had two children, Claire (b. 1879) and Robert (b. 1882).

It appears, then, that only 30 of the men captured around the time of Cold Harbor may have ended up in a Confederate POW camp. According to the National Park Service’s Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System’s Search for Prisoners, 19 of these prisoners did time in Andersonville:

  • Pvt. Charles Farley, born in Ireland, living in New York, NY, volunteer from 1863 (wounded)
  • Pvt. George Bell, born in Ireland, living in New York, NY, volunteer from 1863 (wounded)
  • Pvt. Daniel Bradbury, born in Haverhill, MA, living in Haverhill, MA, substitute from 1863
  • Cpl. George Brooks, born in Charlestown, NH, living in Charlestown, NH, volunteer from 1861
  • Cpl. William Gilson, born in New Hampshire, living in Concord, NH, substitute from 1863
  • Pvt. Hiram Jepperson (aka Jefferson), born in Lisbon, NH, living in Lisbon, NH, volunteer from 1862
  • Sgt. Albert O. Johnson, born in in Northfield, MA, living in Northfield, MA, volunteer from 1861
  • Pvt. Ludwig Lucht, born in Germany, living in New York, NY, substitute from 1863 (wounded)
  • Pvt. Peter Melliot, born in Montpellier, France, living in New York, NY, substitute from 1863
  • Pvt. Charles Morton, born in Quebec, Canada, living in Quebec, Canada, substitute from 1863
  • Pvt. Samuel Parson, born in England, living in England, substitute from 1863
  • Pvt. Peter Quinn, born in Ireland, living in Concord, NH, substitute from 1863
  • Pvt. Charles Reynolds, born in Durham, NH, living in Newmarket, NH, volunteer from 1861
  • Cpl. Nathaniel Smith, born in Cornish, NH, living in Cornish, NH, volunteer from 1861 (wounded)
  • Cpl. John Sutton, born in Canada, living in Lancaster, NH, volunteer from 1861
  • Pvt. Andrews B. Taylor, born in Great Barrington, MA, living in Great Barrington, MA, substitute from 1863
  • Pvt. James Thomas, born in St. John, New Brunswick, living in Canada, substitute from 1863
  • Pvt. James Walker, born in Canada, living in Canada, substitute from 1863
  • Pvt. Alonzo Wyman, born in Manchester, NH, living in Manchester, NH, substitute form 1863[vi]

This group presumably arrived together on June 15, 1864 (the Consolidated Monthly Report of Federal Prisoners of War Confined at Andersonville, GA tersely notes “1108 men f[rom] Richmond” with another 1069 arriving from the same location the next day).[vii] Jumping out of their boxcars at Andersonville Depot, these men walked the quarter mile to the stockade. Once inside the gate, they encountered 16 acres of muddy, fetid, densely populated, and rapidly growing misery.

“Al. Jer. Klapp,” The Andersonville Stockade (1903): According to Marvel, shooting prisoners for crossing the “deadline” at Andersonville (which is what the guard at left is doing) was a relatively rare event. This image, though, gives a good idea of how crowded the prison was at its height. The 16 acres enclosed by the stockade contained 31,000 prisoners by August 1864, which means each captive had 22 square feet to himself or an area of just over seven feet by three feet.

In mid-June, the camp, as Marvel describes it, was a “slurry” after three straight weeks where it rained almost every day, often very heavily. Stockade Creek, which ran through the camp, providing drinking water while flushing the latrines, became a polluted swamp. The spread of illness accelerated. It did not help that the number of prisoners had passed the 20,000 mark about a week into June. By the end of the month, over 26,000 men were packed together in the 16-acre stockade. Confederate authorities had begun work on expanding the camp in late May, but it seemed almost impossible for them to keep up with the incessant influx of prisoners. Moreover, rebel officers found it increasingly difficult to supply the growing prison population with the standard but bland and nutritionally deficient diet of corn pone and bacon. Scorbutus (scurvy) has made an appearance in the camp, and this disease would become increasingly prevalent. Finally, it was also in June—about two weeks after the men from the 5th New Hampshire arrived—that the Georgia Reserves who guarded the camp, along with the Regulators (a vigilante group of prisoners) suppressed the Raiders who had preyed upon the prisoners for some time.[viii]

Robert Knox Sneden, Plan of Andersonville Prison (ca. 1864-1865): Sneden, who served as a topographical engineer on Samuel Heintzelman’s III Corps staff, produced a large number of watercolors and maps during the war. He was a prisoner at Andersonville from March to September 1864.

How well equipped were our Granite Staters to deal with challenges presented by the worst prisoner of war camp in the south? In one respect, these men were very lucky: they had missed the bulk of the Overland campaign. For almost seven months (early November 1863 to late May 1864), the 5th New Hampshire had guarded the prison camp at Point Lookout, MD. Here, the volunteers, substitutes, and draftees that had filled the ranks in the summer of 1863 were drilled under the watchful—and sometimes scornful—eyes of the remaining original volunteers. When they were not drilling or performing guard duty, the men fished and clammed. The officers went for rides, flirted with local women, and attended dances.[ix] All in all, it was light duty, and the regiment was well rested by the time it returned to II Corps in the field at the beginning of June. Not only that, the men were well shod, well clothed, and well fed. They had avoided the rigors of Grant’s hard-fought May campaign, and they had missed the bloodbaths at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania. In all likelihood, they were better prepared to meet the physical challenges of imprisonment at Andersonville than many other Union captives were.

Unfortunately, however, they were a small and miscellaneous group. Nineteen men did not make for a social network of sufficient size to allow prisoners to survive in a place like Andersonville. Moreover, the camp had few soldiers from New Hampshire (of the 41,000 or so prisoners who passed through Andersonville, only 364 belonged to Granite State regiments).[x] That being the case, our small group probably could not have relied on prisoners from their native state for help. In any event, many of our captives from the 5th New Hampshire had no connection with New Hampshire whatsoever. That point highlights the degree to which certain divisions must have undermined the cohesiveness of this group. All the NCOs were original volunteers from 1861, and all of them had either been born in New Hampshire or had resided there. The great majority of the later volunteers and substitutes were foreign-born and had never lived in the Granite State.

The sheer diversity of experiences among these men as they suffered through their captivity is surprising. Six of the 19 died at Andersonville—a mortality rate of 31% which was roughly the same as that of the camp as a whole:  

  • Pvt. Andrews Taylor died July 16, 1864 of anasarca (i.e. generalized edema often associated with protein deficiency or kidney/liver failure)
  • Pvt. Peter Melliot died August 29, 1864 of “debilitas” (i.e. weakness).
  • Pvt. George Bell died September 11, 1864 of scorbutus (scurvy)
  • Sgt. Albert Johnson died September 18, 1864 of scorbutus (scurvy)
  • Pvt. Samuel Parson died October 18, 1864 of scorbutus (scurvy)
  • Pvt. Ludwig Lucht died October 26, 1864 of scorbutus (scurvy)[xi]

The latter four must have been in a bad way for some time because Confederate authorities began rapidly evacuating prisoners from the camp in early September 1864 after Hood’s Army of Tennessee abandoned Atlanta. A number of badly ill patients were left behind. Since so many of their comrades had departed, nobody remained to look after them, and a high proportion of them continued to die.[xii]

And what of the others? In November 1864 Lt. Col. John G. O’Neill of the 10th Tennessee swung by Andersonville to see if he could recruit desperate Yankees for Confederate military service.[xiii] At this point, having fought at Chickamauga and the Atlanta campaign, the 10th Tennessee numbered just over 120 men. Since almost all the healthy prisoners had already left, O’Neill only found eight volunteers. (He would later return in January 1865 and scoop up almost 200 more prisoners as recruits.)[xiv] These included three former members of the 5th New Hampshire who probably felt there was no other way to escape Andersonville besides dying: Charles Farley, Hiram Jepperson/Jefferson, and Edward Kelley (who had been captured several weeks after Cold Harbor during the fighting around the Jerusalem Plank Road near Petersburg). Union forces captured all three in late December at a skirmish near Egypt Station, MS. Surely, they must not have fought terribly hard for the Confederacy. Understandable as their behavior might have been, the federal government took a dim view of their having technically committed treason. All three were flung into the 5th US Volunteer infantry, a regiment that consisted mainly of “galvanized rebels” who had been recruited from Northern POW camps to fight Native Americans out west. (Ironically, many of the men in this unit consisted of Confederate prisoners who had been held at Point Lookout, where the 5th New Hampshire had been stationed before fighting at Cold Harbor.) Both Farley and Kelley deserted in Illinois in April 1865 en route to their new unit. Jepperson/Jefferson, however, stuck it out until he was mustered out in October 1866 at Fort Kearney, NE.

Robert Knox Sneden, “Camp Lawton” at Millen Georgia (ca. 1864-1865): Sneden, like many other Union prisoners, was held here briefly in 1864.

What happened to the others is a bit more difficult to decipher. When General Winder started emptying the Andersonville stockade in September 1864, he sent prisoners to what remained of the eastern Confederacy’s prison system: Millen, GA, Savannah, GA, Florence, SC, and Charleston, SC. Although most men left that month, the rebels continued to ship prisoners out for the next couple of months. By the end of November, Andersonville was pretty much cleaned out, and only 1400 prisoners remained.[xv] Most of the men from the 5th New Hampshire were probably scattered to different camps and shuffled about as Confederate authorities tried to keep them out of the reach of Union forces. In November, as Sherman started marching from Atlanta eastward, Winder emptied the prison camp at Millen, sent the healthy prisoners to Blackshear, GA (which consisted of some rudimentary earthworks in a pine forest) and exchanged the sick ones in Savannah.[xvi] George Brooks, Charles Reynolds, John Sutton, and Alonzo Wyman are all described as having been “released,” “paroled,” or “exchanged” in November 1864, so it seems likely they were among those shipped to Savannah for exchange. Smith and Walker were both “released” or “returned” in February 1865, which is when Charleston was captured, so it appears (and this is speculation) that they were freed when Union troops captured the city and liberated the prison camp there.

Robert Knox Sneden, Plan of the Rebel Prison in Savannah, Georgia (ca. 1864-1865)

In the meantime, the Blackshear prisoners had been moved to Thomasville, GA, and thence back to Andersonville by December (at the end of that month, the number of prisoners at the latter place rose to 4,700 men).[xvii] By March 1865, the cartel was back up and running, and about 1,500 ill prisoners from Andersonville were exchanged in Vicksburg, MS. Among them was probably William Gilson, who was exchanged that month.[xviii] Gilson died of disease in a hospital at Annapolis, MD, shortly thereafter. That left Thomas and Morton as the last members of the 5th New Hampshire captured at Cold Harbor who still remained in Confederate custody. The former was released in early May and the latter exchanged on May 20, 1865 after almost a year in captivity.[xix] It seems likely that these two men were among the last to remain at Andersonville; every other major Confederate prison camp had been closed or liberated by this point.

It’s hard to say what happened to the other 11 POWs captured at Cold Harbor who never saw the inside of the Andersonville stockade. I have good information that several members of the 5th New Hampshire who were later captured during the fighting around Petersburg were kept at Millen and the infamous camp at Salisbury, NC.[xx] The only way, of course, to figure out what happened to these men is to look at their pension records.

What is there to learn from all of this? To my mind, it’s this: there was no such thing as a typical POW experience. Even men from the same unit captured at the same battle and sent to the same prison underwent very different ordeals. The chaotic nature of the Confederate prison system in the last year of the war only amplified these differences as Union POWs were sent to different camps, shuttled about hither and thither, and released intermittently. Of course, as always, I need to investigate this topic more thoroughly, but this blog is where I do some preliminary research and think “aloud.”

[i] Only 11 men were captured in 1862 and 1863, and it appears most of them were released or exchanged fairly quickly. It was around Cold Harbor in 1864 that the 5th New Hampshire first lost a substantial number soldiers as prisoners—just over 40 men. This ill-starred group appears to have been shipped off to several Confederate camps, with a minority going to Andersonville. From that point to the end of the summer, another 16 men were captured in the fighting around Petersburg. The fortunes of these men differed dramatically; some were paroled and exchanged in October while others did substantial time in Confederate camps. There were only two other episodes during where the regiment lost a significant number of prisoners: the fighting around Fort Stedman (March 25, 1865) and Farmville (April 7, 1865). In both cases, these soldiers never saw the inside of a rebel prison. Those captured at Fort Stedman were released five days later (the Confederates were preparing to abandon Richmond and had nowhere to keep them). The men who surrendered at Farmville accompanied the Army of Northern Virginia on the road for a couple of days until Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.

[ii] For a good recent account of the battle, see Gordon C. Rhea, Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee May 26-June 3, 1864 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002), 324-327. For the 5th New Hampshire’s casualties, see William Child, A History of the Fifth Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers (Bristol, NH: R. W. Musgrove, Printer, 1893), 270. Marvel’s figure appears in William Marvel, Andersonville: The Last Depot (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 83.

[iii] Pvt. Albus R. Fisk, of Lisbon, NH, who had volunteered in the summer of 1862, was captured on May 30, 1864. William Farley, an Irish-born volunteer from New York who had joined the regiment in the summer of 1863, was wounded and captured on June 2, 1864. 

[iv] Levi Newspaun died on June 14, 1864 while William S. Kimball died on June 20, 1864.

[v] Dame, who had been wounded at Cold Habor, was promoted to captain in August 1864 and discharged in October 1864. The implications seems to be that he was released quite quickly, possibly due to his wounds. Duren appears to have remained in captivity somewhat longer. He was discharged in March 1865 and may have died shortly thereafter in Washington, DC. 

[vi] Two more prisoners captured on June 22 during the fighting on Jerusalem Plank Road were also sent to Andersonville: Pvt. Marshall Dion, born in St. Helen, France, credited with Warner, NH, substitute from 1863, and Pvt. Edward Kelley, born in Galway, Ireland, living in New York, NY, substitute from 1863.

[vii] See page 7 on https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G979-N4J2?wc=MW44-H23%3A341349601%2C341351701&cc=2019835

[viii] For discussions regarding conditions in the camp at about this time, see Marvel, 77-149.

[ix] For information on how the officers spent their spare time at Point Lookout, see Thomas Livermore, Days and Events 1860-1866 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1920), 312-328.

[x] See https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-prisoners.htm

[xi] See https://hdl.handle.net/2027/loc.ark:/13960/t1fj2ws7t?urlappend=%3Bseq=40

[xii] Marvel 198-205.

[xiii] Ibid., 223-205.

[xiv] Ibid., 231.

[xv] https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G979-N481?i=16&wc=MW44-H23%3A341349601%2C341351701&cc=2019835

[xvi] Marvel, 222.

[xvii] Ibid., 225-227.

[xviii] Ibid., 234-235.

[xix] Ibid., 239-240.

[xx] For example, Pvt. George Lolley, an 1863 volunteer from Portsmouth, NH, was captured on June 18, 1864 at the battle of Second Petersburg and died at Millen in October 1864. Pvt. Joseph Whitten, an original volunteer from Moultonborough, NH, was captured at Ream’s Station in August 1864 and died at Salisbury in January 1865.

What _A Brotherhood of Valor_ Confirms about the 5th New Hampshire

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Just over a month ago, I attended my college’s library book sale which was soon followed by a similar such sale at the Goffstown Public Library . I’m a sucker for these events and brought in a haul of roughly 20 books for $15 or something absurd like that. Over half of these books (which now sit in a box in my crowded office) were on the Civil War. A fair number of them were academic, but I also found a nice collection of more popular works. Truth be told, I’m starting to read popular history more frequently in an attempt to make my prose my accessible.

One of the first books out of this batch that I read was Jeffry D. Wert’s A Brotherhood of Valor which is a comparative history of the Stonewall and Iron brigades. I read this work mainly because I wanted to see if these elite units shared something in common with the 5th New Hampshire. In what ways might their experiences have been similar? Having completed Wert’s book, I reached four conclusions.

Traditional Measures of Discipline Did not Capture a Unit’s Will to Combat

According to Wert’s account, the Stonewall Brigade suffered from poor march discipline and experienced high rates of desertion. There are mitigating circumstances that explain this behavior. For one thing, the brigade was pushed very hard (especially during the Valley Campaign). For another, it had been recruited in the Shenandoah Valley, so whenever the men marched anywhere near their homes, the temptation to leave the army—whether it be temporarily or permanently—was often too great to resist.

“A Straggler on the Line of March”: This image, by Allen C. Redwood, appeared in the article “Our March against Pope” on page 515 in Volume II of Century Magazine’s Battles and Leaders of the Civil War.

Despite these problems, Wert argues that in the summer of 1862, the Stonewall Brigade was the best unit of its type in the Army of Northern Virginia. What he means is that few Confederate brigades demonstrated the same will to combat as these Virginians. I suppose that such an assertion is arguable (what about the Texas Brigade?). But Wert produces plenty of evidence to back his claim; the Stonewall brigade suffered enormous casualties over the course of 1862 yet continued to perform extremely well on the battlefield.

The experience of the Stonewall brigade seems to demonstrate that traditional measures of discipline do not necessarily capture a Civil War regiment’s will to combat. In this case, there seems to be a substantial difference between the Stonewall brigade and the 5th New Hampshire. By all accounts, the latter was a well-drilled regiment. It is also evident that Edward Cross, the first colonel of the 5th New Hampshire, was a stickler for discipline—even if he didn’t always apply it consistently or fairly. In his assessment of Cross’s leadership, Thomas Livermore wrote that the colonel taught “us . . . that implicit obedience to orders was one of the cardinal virtues in a soldier” and he succeeded in doing so by importing “several excellently drilled men into the regiment who aided us exceedingly in acquiring a correct drill.”[i] Among the original volunteers, desertion was only about 8% over the entire course of the war, which was below the average for the Union army as a whole. Undoubtedly, drill and discipline helped the regiment attain its reputation as one of the best fighting units in the Army of the Potomac.

Having said that, there was more to the 5th New Hampshire’s effectiveness than drill and discipline. In his estimate of Cross, Livermore added that the colonel “had impressed those under him with his martial spirit, and I believe that the regiment as little contemplated retreating as he himself did.”[ii] In this context, Livermore remembered one particular episode that occurred towards the end of the Battle of Chancellorsville. After the regiment—which had served as part of the rear guard for the Army of the Potomac—was forced to beat a hasty retreat from its position near the Chancellor House, Livermore said in the colonel’s hearing that “he wished we were across the [Rappahannock] river” or “wondered when we should be.” Cross responded, “’What do you want to go across the river for?’ in such a tone that I knew he was displeased at the idea of any one’s suggesting retreat.”[iii] Livermore recalled, “It did me good then and I think it did afterwards, and it was the same spirit that he infused into the regiment.”[iv] In other words, discipline was no good without a pugnacity of spirit.

Disputes among Officers Did not Necessarily Impede Effectiveness

It is no secret that in both the Stonewall and Iron brigades, brigadiers found themselves at odds with field officers, and field officers found themselves at odds with company commanders. Stonewall Jackson thought his successor, Richard Garnett (whom Jackson later arrested after the Battle of Kernstown), was unfit for the task. The brigade heartily despised Charles Winder, who followed Garnett as its commander. Upon hearing that Elisha Paxton had become the head of the brigade, the officers fell into an uproar because they felt that Andrew Grigsby, then commander of the 27th Virginia, should have received the honor. And so it went. The situation in the Iron Brigade was not quite so volatile, but many officers and soldiers thought John Gibbon, a regular army officer (West Point class of 1847) who commanded the unit from May to November 1862, was a martinet. And Gibbon’s dislike of Solomon Meredith, who led the 19th Indiana before succeeding Gibbon as commander of the brigade, was widely known.

Soldiers from Company C, 2nd Wisconsin Infantry Regiment (1861): This tintype was taken early in the war when the regiment still sported a combination of grey militia uniforms and Yankee blue. What they all have, however, are the famous Hardee Hat (otherwise referred to as the Model 1858 Dress Hat or more colloquially, the “Jeff Davis”) associated with the Iron Brigade. See https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wisconsin_Iron _Brigade_Troops.jpg

The situation in the 5th New Hampshire was just as explosive if not more so. In this blog, I’ve already adverted to Colonel Edward Cross’s run-ins with his company commanders. He arranged to have Edmund Brown (Company B) and Richard Welch (Company K) dismissed by a brigade board of review for incompetence in February 1862. He obtained Richard Davis’ (Company H) resignation in July 1862. He hounded Ira Barton (Company E) out of the regiment in September 1862. He maneuvered Horace Pierce (Company F) into resigning in January 1863. In the meantime, Cross’s accusations of cowardice compelled his superior, Brigadier General John Caldwell, to call for a board of inquiry to clear his name (October 1862). Shortly before the Battle of Fredericksburg, Cross had two of his captains (James Perry of Company C and James Larkin of Company A) court martialed for mutiny. Perry and Larkin returned the favor by bringing charges against Cross. Even after Cross was killed at Gettysburg, disputes continued to roil the regiment. In the spring of 1864, Charles Hapgood (colonel of the regiment) and James Larkin (now a major) brought charges against Richard Cross (the regiment’s lieutenant colonel and Edward’s younger brother) and had him cashiered.[v]

When I first contemplated these disputes, I was inclined to conclude that these units were highly effective despite the bitter disputes that characterized relations among their officers. Surely, conflict within a regiment or brigade had to be confined within certain limits for the unit to avoid utter dysfunction. But as I thought about this issue more, it occurred to me that the same qualities which contributed to battlefield effectiveness also sparked internecine disputes. High quality units consisted of brave, strong-willed, and ambitious men who competed for promotion through conspicuous displays of valor on the battlefield. That same bravery, strong will, and ambition—stoked to high heat by competition—probably also contributed to numerous quarrels.

Elite Civil War Regiments Could Absorb Enormous Punishment and Remain Effective. . . .

Over the course of 1862, the Stonewall Brigade suffered over 1,200 casualties.[vi] Wert emphasizes the degree to which the brigade was very much reduced by the Maryland campaign in which it lost large numbers of men to combat and desertion. And yet, the next year, the Stonewall Brigade displayed its old will to combat as it participated in Jackson’s great flanking movement at Chancellorsville and suffered over 500 casualties.

From the fight at Brawner’s Farm (August 28, 1862) to the eve of the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863)—that is, in less than a year—the Iron Brigade suffered 1,800 casualties in combat. Even after sustaining these heavy losses, the brigade fought with tremendous courage at Gettysburg where it lost another 1,200 men.[vii]

7th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment (1862): This image of what appears to be a company of the 7th Wisconsin was purportedly taken in Virginia in 1862. If this was a company, I’m going to guess this photo was taken at during the first half of the year before the Iron Brigade suffered such catastrophic losses. See https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iron_Brigade_7th_Wisconsin_Group.jpg

Likewise, the resilience of the 5th New Hampshire was impressive. The regiment had suffered heavy casualties in three major battles: Fair Oaks, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. By the time the regiment went into action on the afternoon of July 2, 1863 at Gettysburg, combat and illness had reduced the unit to just under 180 effectives. Nonetheless, the 5th New Hampshire performed magnificently, stopping elements of the Texas Brigade in their tracks and almost driving them out of Rose Woods. By the end of the day, the regiment had lost another 80 casualties or 45% of its numbers.

. . . . until They Couldn’t

At a certain point, neither the Iron or Stonewall Brigades could not sustain continued losses and remain their old selves. Wert claims that in the summer of 1862, the Stonewall Brigade was the best infantry brigade in the Army of Northern Virginia. His implication is that after this point, it was so badly used up that its effectiveness began to decline. Wert seems to intimate that it had ceased to be an elite unit well before it was literally wiped out at the Mule Shoe during the Battle of Spotsylvania. The loss of qualified and experienced officers along with attrition among the rank and file had proved too much.

Wert is much more explicit about the degradation of the Iron Brigade’s combat effectiveness. Gettysburg did it in. It never recovered from the loss of so many experienced officers and men. The conscripts who subsequently filled up the ranks, Wert writes, were not up to the task of hard fighting (although, in all likelihood, most of these replacements were substitutes). At the same time, the remaining few veterans had seen enough; they were not willing to engage in “headlong recklessness.”[viii]

The case was much the same with the 5th New Hampshire after Gettysburg. Edward Cross was mortally wounded in the Rose Woods while leading the brigade to which his old regiment belonged. His demise seemed to mark a turning point in the 5th New Hampshire’s story. Years later, Livermore wrote that with Cross’s death, “the glory of our regiment came to a halt.”[ix] Livermore was right—but only up to a point; even had Cross lived, the regiment had suffered too many casualties to ever fight as it had at Antietam or Fredericksburg. In August 1863, when the 5th New Hampshire returned to Concord, NH, to rest and recruit, only about 125 officers and soldiers were able to march from the train station into town under their own power.[x] Over the coming months, although the regiment did attract some volunteers to the colors, it relied mainly on substitute to fill the ranks. While the company officers did their best to whip the new men into shape, the 5th New Hampshire suffered badly from desertion for the rest of the war. It is emblematic of the regiment’s subsequent fortunes that the two most important engagements in which it fought during the remainder of the war—Cold Harbor and Farmville—were disasters in which substantial numbers of men were both killed and captured.

Conclusions

When I first chose the 5th New Hampshire as a vehicle by which to explore the various dimensions of soldier life, I did have reservations about the appropriateness of my selection. Aside from the fact that there is no such thing as a typical Civil War regiment, I feared that the unit I’d selected was too unusual. After all, over the course of the war, if it suffered more combat fatalities than any other Union regiment. I justified my pick by rationalizing that the very experiences that made the 5th New Hampshire unusual—its huge losses, the heavy reliance on substitutes after 1863 (many of whom were foreign-born), the wave of desertions that followed, and the fact that its soldiers served as captors and captives in prison camps—allowed me to explore various topics that the study of other units would not permit. But having found in this post some interesting points of comparison between other units and my chosen regiment, I’m starting to think that the 5th New Hampshire was not exactly unique. Surely, it does not resemble all other regiments. Then again, no unit can. But perhaps it is the archetype of a certain kind of regiment, and that is something I need to think about as I move on with my research.

[i] Thomas Livermore, Days and Events 1860-1866 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1920), 256.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid., 209.

[iv] Ibid., 257.

[v] See http://ourwarmikepride.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-nasty-scrap-with-col-crosss-brother.html

[vi] Jeffry D. Wert, A Brotherhood of Valor (New York: Touchstone, 1999), 215.

[vii] Ibid., 279.

[viii] Ibid., 280.

[ix] Livermore, Days and Events, 255.

[x] Mike Pride and Mark Travis, My Brave Boys: To War with Colonel Cross & the Fighting Fifth (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2001), 248. See also New Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette, August 5, 1863, 2.

Love versus Sex: William and Carrie Child Undergo a Self-Taught Correspondence Course in Marriage Therapy

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Having just finished reading William Child’s Letters from a Civil War Surgeon, I cannot move on without writing a post about his relationship with his wife, Carrie (née Lang).[i] The state of their marriage constituted one of the most important topics they wrote about throughout Child’s military service. While the general outlines of their marital problems are fairly easy to establish from their correspondence, the particulars are not. I have little information about what transpired between them before Child joined the 5th New Hampshire as an assistant surgeon in August 1862.[ii] Moreover, Carrie’s half of the correspondence is no longer extant; the reader must give shape to her grievances by interpreting Child’s responses to her letters. Under these circumstances, rescuing Carrie’s voice is not easy.[iii] Child’s own personality both helps and hinders this operation. As revealed by his letters, Child was sensitive, introspective and, at times, almost neurotic. He tended to mull matters over and worry his problems at length. A naturally anxious person, Child bundled his concerns together which had the effect of compounding his overall apprehension. On the one hand, then, the reader of his letters obtains much detail. On the other, Child’s habit of incessantly reflecting on his difficulties makes one wonder if he made mountains out of molehills.

So what do the letters indicate about their marital troubles?

Starting fairly early in his military service, Child nagged Carrie to write more frequently. It’s not clear how Carrie responded to this hectoring, but since Child complained about this issue to greater or lesser degrees for their entire wartime correspondence, it appears she never met his expectations. Child employed different tactics to extract more missives from her. He pleaded loneliness and homesickness. He told her that he dreamed about her constantly. He complained about how miserable he felt when other husbands in the regiment received letters from their wives and he didn’t. He proclaimed that the women of the North had a duty to support their menfolk. He related stories of war widows who grieved that they no longer had husbands with whom to commune. While we can understand Child’s point of view, he was unfair to his wife. Carrie had to raise several small children (Clinton, born in 1859, and Kate, who arrived in 1861, were eventually joined by Barney in 1863), oversee a household, collect debts owed to Child, fight the town to obtain his bounty money, and perform all manner of miscellaneous tasks—all of which left little time or inclination for writing letters. 

William Child (ca. 1862-1864) while he was still an assistant surgeon with the 5th New Hampshire. It’s possible that this picture was taken in October 1863 while he was stationed in Concord, NH. (See Child, Letters from Civil War Surgeon, 165).

It was not just the infrequency of Carrie’s letters but their tone and content that concerned Child. He wished she would drop her “reserve” and freely share her thoughts.[iv] What really seemed to distress him was that although he wrote that he loved her, she never responded as he would have liked to these declarations. Indeed, it appears, she ignored them altogether in her replies.

In a variety of ways, Child sought to elicit some sign of Carrie’s love. He wrote about how much pleasure he derived from the memory of falling in love with her. He described how her love could make him a better man. He even cited a long passage about love in Thomas Thackeray’s The Virginians (which he read during the Gettysburg campaign), and asked her if she agreed that the English author knew something of human nature. The key passage he quoted was as follows:

Canst thou O friendly reader count upon the fidelity of an artless and tender heart—and reckon among the blessings heaven hath bestowed on thee, the love of faithful woman, purify thine own heart and try to make it worth hers. On thy knees, on thy knees give thanks for the blessing awarded to thee. All the prizes of life are nothing compared to that one.[v]

In his darker moments, his letters became more direct; he wondered if she really loved him since she never said so.

By resorting to a variety of techniques to get Carrie to open up, Child showed himself a subtle and practiced correspondent. But despite his cajoling, it was not until the end of 1863 that Carrie began to reveal the sources of her discontent. One obtains the impression from Child’s letters that Carrie’s grievances trickled out only slowly in their correspondence. Either she was reluctant to remonstrate with him or felt it would do little good.

Explicit references to the troubled state of the Childs’s relationship were strewn across many letters spanning about a year (December 1863 to December 1864). For the sake of concision, I will condense their points. While doing so distorts the character of the correspondence by giving their arguments a cohesion that they did not always possess, it also provides greater clarity.

This image of Carrie Child may have been captured in the late summer of 1862 (see Child, Letters from a Civil War Surgeon, 31.).

Carrie was clearly very unhappy. At one point, she asked if Child had regretted marrying her.[vi] Before the war, she charged, he had been inattentive, and they had done little together. She appeared to believe that their marriage had never been characterized by true love. Indeed, she wrote that he had not loved her as she wished to be loved, and she questioned the purity of his love. One interesting charge she brought against him was that his letters were sometimes “sarcastic.”[vii] It is hard to find much sarcasm in in what Child wrote, but perhaps that’s because our own ironic age is less sensitive to this mode of expression. Or maybe, in her subtle way, Carrie sought to point out the discrepancy between the honeyed words in her husband’s letters and his pre-war treatment of her.

Carrie’s statements must have wounded Child deeply. The surgeon was acutely conscious that he was no lady’s man. Keenly aware that he was not handsome, he wrote that he looked “like an honest big faced New England farmer.” What’s more, despite his skills as a correspondent, he felt he was strange, graceless and without charm.[viii] The way in which Child responded to Carrie’s accusations goes some way toward contextualizing and illuminating them. He continued to insist, of course, that he loved and had always loved her. He pointed out that before the war he had not spent as much time with her as he would have liked because he had needed several years of hard work to establish his medical practice. He also contended that the two of them had much to be grateful for, and he refused to believe that they had not been happy together. Perhaps most interesting, though, he met her charges by recognizing his flaws. He referred to his “peculiar temperament,” “peevishness,” and “hasty temper” that had lost him friends in the past. He admitted that he was “too original, odd [and] unreasonable.”[ix] But he also revealed “that I have the most violent passions to contend with—and the strongest appetites to control.”[x] Child’s references to his “passions,” his insistence that his love was not impure, and his repeated declarations that he would strive for purity in the future all point in a similar direction. The clincher, however, is a passage that appears in a letter he wrote in November 1864:

I love—love you. I can not express the strong, intense feeling—passionate love I have for you. You often ask if my love is that pure love which your heart so much desires,–and which you once said you had not found. O my wife why have you ever doubted that I did not love you as you desire. What can I say or do to convince you. To suppose that I have not the common passions of all men would be to expect from your husband what most wives do not expect from their husbands. . . . But yet with all this there is a feeling within me of a higher and purer nature—the feeling that first came over me so suddenly and strongly If man ever had a pure love for woman such then was my feeling to-ward you.

In other words, it seems to be the case that Carrie believed she was unloved because she felt her husband only wanted sex from her. Since they had never confided in one another on this topic, Child argued, there had been a fundamental misunderstanding. He sought to convince his wife that he desired her physically (because all men had such needs) and loved her.

The correspondence seems to have reached a critical point at the end of 1864. Carrie apparently wrote something that staggered Child. His response testifies to his skills as a writer and serves as a good example of his prose. A letter like this one makes it extremely difficult to doubt his sincerity:

Camp near Petersburg, Va., Dec. 28th, 1864

My Dear Wife:

It has been nearly two weeks since I have received a letter from you but I suppose you have so much time occupied by the care of our babies that you can not write just when you wish. We are now fairly in our winter quarters I think. The time passes very slowly and tediously. Only about an hour is occupied with the sick. So you see we have a long time to read write and sleep. Now and then I become very uneasy and nervous just because I have nothing to do.

Carrie, I can not forget that sentence in your last letter. I have had continually in mind our first acquaintance and life since. I have attempted to ascertain the real and true condition of your own and my heart during all this time. I think we have both been wrong. I have been too carless of your feelings—and you have not been free to communicate to me what was in your heart. But I can not believe but that we have truly loved each other. Yet we each have feared that we were not loved by the other as we wished to be loved. I have had terrible days and nights of doubt. You never caressed—never kissed me of your own account—and I felt that I was not the person who could command all your love for I was neither a hero or a genius—nor perfect. How would come the awful idea that perhaps you might love some man not your husband I can never tell you the perfect agony I have endured. But now I believe I will not believe otherwise—that I have been and am now the person you love, though I do not believe that you have in me your once ideal of what you would have for your husband. One thing is very certain if either of us have the least suspicion that we are not loved—really and truly loved then indeed our domestic happiness is on the very brink of ruin.

It does seem to me that you would not have become my wife had you not loved me. I can not think of the least circumstance that could have influenced you do to so. I am certain that none of our friends were over anxious that we should be married—and neither of us would believe that you could not resist my “blandishments” and “taking arts” [talking arts?]—or that you were deceived. I have not shrewdness to conceal or art to deceive. No, Carrie, nothing except your own lips would convince me that you did not once love me—really love me as my most romantic desire would have it. It may be that you thought you had been deceived in respect to the love I had for you but you were not if I know my own heart.

And although you once told me you did not love me as expected to love your husband yet I hope, believe I shall yet hear you say that you do love me just as you expected to love your husband. While I do hear that word and know that you feel it I shall not have all the happiness I expected in my life of love and marriage. Carrie, I beg, entreat you to freely tell me all your heart—have confidence in me. Distrust excites distrust. Coolness begets coolness. Confidence begets confidence and with it will come love if ever. Carrie, these two years were unpleasant unhappy to us both just because there was not a full, free, confidential understanding between us. But can we say—dare we acknowledge to ourselves that we did not love each other? Can we believe that our children were not begotten in love. The very thought is cruel and unnatural. I suppose neither of us found just what we expected in marriage—or rather we found many unexpected things. But this has been true from Adam and Eve until now—and ever will be so.

Now and hence forward we will not doubt each other’s love. Each shall know the heart of the other. No matter what may appear to be we will only wish to know what is. We shall know and be convinced that love is not a mere romantic idea gone when real life comes, but an existence of two souls in sympathy, bound not merely by law, but by an inexplainable, delicious, lasting affinity which will exist beyond this life. Troubles anxiety trials struggles will come to us as to all others, but we will never cease to love each the other—to make our hearts one. Then there will be a joy a happiness for us both which no person or circumstances can deprive us even though life itself be taken. I will live for you—I will try to be worthy of your love, I desire to be –and if I am not it is because I am naturally weak. I know I am not all that you may wish your ideal husband to be, but in heart I wish to be. It may be that I have had as high aspiration for the good and pure as you, but you must remember that I have been more in the world than you—and have not attained to all I have aspired. But God will judge our hearts—and where I have been weak he will judge lightly—where I have sinned he will—as I hope you will—forgive.

Carrie I must say good-night. My Darling Wife I love, love you. God bless you is ever my sincere, heartfelt prayer. Good night. Kisses to you and the babes. Good night. Good night.

W.[xi]

It remains unclear to what degree this letter alleviated matters between Child and his wife. Unbeknownst to both of them, their wartime correspondence was drawing to a close. The war in the east had a little over three months left to run, and in March 1865, Child obtained a furlough to visit his family (meaning he missed the Appomattox campaign and Lee’s surrender in on April 9, 1865). Child rejoined the 5th New Hampshire in late April and was mustered out in late June. Among the few letters from 1865 that passed between Child and Carrie, one sees little evidence of the crisis that loomed so large during the previous year. I’d like to think that their relationship was on the mend. . . . And yet, in February 1865, Child wrote to Carrie asking for more details of her visit to her mother’s. Child complained,

I can get but little idea of what you are doing or how you are feeling from anything you write. Sometimes I can hardly understand why it is so. I make up my mind not [to] be troubled about it. . . . I know you must have thought and feelings of some kind—either good or bad—pleasant or unpleasant—happy or unhappy. But it is all unknown to me—and I have fully concluded that I never can or shall know your mind exactly. You sometimes bewilder me. Then again I am certain that you love me but I won’t write another word of this—It makes me unhappy to write and you unhappy to read it. You will, I know, write to me more often—and longer letters.[xii]

Perhaps instead of resolving their differences, Child and Carrie had come to accept them. Maybe Carrie, who was not as neurotic as her husband, did not feel compelled to spill all her thoughts across the page. It might have been the case that she sought to keep a part of herself free and independent from her ever-inquisitive husband. In so doing, of course, she kept herself free and independent of historians who now experience that much more trouble in rescuing her voice.

Many readers will find the epilogue to this tale unsatisfying. Once the war ended, William and Carrie Child did not have long together. On May 10, 1867, less than two years after her husband had returned from the war, Carrie died of apoplexy.[xiii] She was only 33. Just over a year later, on September 3, 1868, Child married Carrie’s younger sister, Luvia.[xiv]

[i] William Child, Letters from a Civil War Surgeon (Solon, ME: Polar Bear & Co., 2001).

[ii] All I know is that they appear to have been married in 1854 and that he attended Dartmouth College between that year and 1857 to obtain his medical degree. See https://www.familysearch.org/tree/pedigree/landscape/MMW4-WR8

[iii] I am here reminded of Jill Lepore’s article on microhistory that my colleague, Matt Masur, and I use in History 112: History’s Mysteries. Lepore argues that where “biographers generally worry about becoming too intimate with their subjects and later betraying them,” “microhistorians, typically denied any such intimacy, tend to betray people who have left abundant records in order to resurrect those who did not.” See Jill Lepore, Historians Who Love Too Much: Reflections on Microhistory and Biography” Journal of American History 88: 1 (June 2001): 141.

[iv] Child, Letters, 123.

[v] Ibid., 133.

[vi] Ibid., 225.

[vii] Ibid., 214.

[viii] Ibid., 359.

[ix] Ibid., 314.

[x] Ibid., 313.

[xi] Ibid., 309-311.

[xii] Ibid., 327-329.

[xiii] “New Hampshire Death Records, 1654-1947,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FSKN-R8F : 22 February 2021), Caroline Child, 10 May 1867; citing Bath, Bureau Vital Records and Health Statistics, Concord; FHL microfilm 1,001,067.

[xiv] “New Hampshire Marriage Records, 1637-1947,” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FLFR-WLV : 22 February 2021), William Child and Luvia Lang, 03 Sep 1868; citing Bath, Grafton, New Hampshire, Bureau of Vital Records and Health Statistics, Concord; FHL microfilm 1,000,975.

“All True Men Must See That Their Country Needs Aid”: William Child on the Election of 1864

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This blog has been quiet as of late, largely because I’ve been blogging elsewhere. Since August 2020, along with three other scholars, I’ve been serving as a guest blogger on H-CivWar. In fact, by the time you read these lines, I will just have posted “Is Thomas Livermore Trustworthy?: A Story about Memory, Memoirs, and the Civil War” on H-CivWar. You can see that post here.

Of course, in addition to guest blogging elsewhere, I had to deal with the pandemic which made the job of teachers everywhere much more complicated and time consuming. But nobody wants to hear about that. In any event, I have not forgotten my obligations to this blog, which is why I’m posting today.

Over the last week, I’ve been performing a close reading of William Child’s missives which appear in Letters from a Civil War Surgeon.[i] Child (1834-1918) was mustered into the 5th New Hampshire as the second assistant surgeon and eventually became the regiment’s surgeon in October 1864. Born and raised in Bath, NH, Child obtained a medical degree from Dartmouth College in 1857 and returned to Bath to set up his practice. He joined the 5th New Hampshire in August 1862, shortly before the regiment evacuated the peninsula, and he remained with the unit until he was mustered out in June 1865. After the war, he returned to Bath where he practiced medicine for many years and became something of a local worthy.

Those who know something about the 5th New Hampshire will recognize Child as the author of the regiment’s “official” history, A History of the Fifth Regiment, New Hampshire Volunteers in the American Civil War 1861-1865 (1893). The more I think about it, the more I feel that Child was an unusual choice for this task, but that’s a topic for another post.

William Child while he was still an assistant surgeon with the rank of 1st Lieutenant (ca. 1862-1864).

The picture of Child that emerges from his letters is not always flattering. He appears to have been something of a neurotic character—sensitive, self-absorbed, needy, fussy, and mercurial. It is wise to remember, however, that he meant his letters for his wife, Carrie (née Lang). In all likelihood, none of us would show our best selves to our spouses as we bared our souls. Yet Child himself seemed to realize that he was something of an odd duck and often referred to his strong passions, independence, and peevishness. Having just read Thomas Livermore’s memoir, I can’t help but think that he and Child would not have gotten on very well.

Child returned to a number of topics repeatedly. He declared his love for Carrie incessantly and hectored her to write back to him. He spent a great deal of time analyzing their relationship and expressed a desire to become a better person. He invariably discussed family finances, speculated about his chances of promotion, and listed what he ate. He described battles he witnessed, marches he undertook, and incidents of camp life. And occasionally, he articulated his political views.

When I ran across the letter below, I just had to share it. Prompted by something “John” did (more about that anon), Child revealed something of the political journey he had undertaken in the previous four years. In 1860, Child had cast his ballot for Stephen A. Douglass, the northern Democratic candidate for president (who won the second-highest number of popular votes after Lincoln). Child was largely inspired to do so because he believed that Douglass’s moderation and justice would avert war. But now, in 1864, Child proclaimed himself a die-hard supporter of Lincoln who was committed to crushing the rebellion. To those in Bath who argued that he had changed his views, Child retorted that he had not changed—rather, the circumstances had. Once the Southern states had seceded and taken up arms, he argued, the federal government had to put down the rebellion for the sake of the nation and its future greatness.

What is remarkable about this letter is that it shows how secession and the war had transformed Child from a self-proclaimed political moderate into a radical who supported policies that would have been unthinkable in 1860. By 1864, he backed abolition, the arming of formerly enslaved men, and education as well as material support for their wives and children. Such a transition is especially interesting since several of Child’s letters reveal that he was a racist who found Black people physically repulsive.[ii] At the same time, when compared to Child’s other letters, this one is almost unique for its assertiveness and emphatic character. There is none of the wavering or second-guessing that one sees in many of his missives.

Finally, I should mention something about “John.” Who was this person, and what did he do to prompt such a reaction from Child? A glossary of names at the end of Letters from a Civil War Surgeon reveals that both Child and his wife, Carrie, had brothers named John. According to the 1860 Census, John D. Child (1842-1910) lived in Bath with his parents, Dwight and Nancy.[iii] John H. Lang (1827-1898), Carrie’s brother, is also listed as living in Bath that year, but as the head of a household.[iv] I’m inclined to think that John Child is our man. For one thing, William Child wrote that “John” was young (in 1864, John Child was 22 as opposed to John Lang’s 37). For another, in a later letter, Child had this to write: “If John did not wish to go in the army a few hundred dollars would have obtained a substitute. I would not advise my brother to go if drafted so long as all others send substitutes. But the true way is for all that are drafted to go.”[v] Obviously, John avoided the draft somehow, but what exactly he did remains a mystery. Sounds like more research is required!

Here follows the letter:

Fort Stedman, Near Petersburg, Va., Oct. 29th, 1864

My Dear Wife,

Lives there a man with soul so dead
Who to himself hath not said
This is my own—my native land?[vi]

The quotation may be incorrect, but you have the idea. What a thrill fills every true, manly breast at this sentiment. How destitute of every noble feeling must be the man who could not be aroused by this. The man whose blood would not thrill with the sentiment is not worthy of a country—nor can he appreciate its value.

These general remarks I have written on the receipt of yours of the 25th. You know well enough what my feelings were when I heard that any of my friends had acted so unwisely. Any one doing this does not understand fully his position or must be destitute of every noble feeling of love for his country or respect for his old flag. He must be either a traitor or a coward. I think John will see the time when he will regret the act. He will see that he was blinded by political and local prejudice and was thus led to do an unwise act. I can not believe that he fully understood the matter. I never supposed that he would do so. Perhaps he was not directly influenced to do so, yet I believe he has been surrounded by influences that encouraged it. He is young and probably did not understand affairs in their true light. Certainly the act by itself is a cowardly and disgraceful one—and would lose the respect of a true man.

The fact is but very few in our region have a just conception of the condition of our country. At heart they may be loyal, but they are governed too much by party and neighborhood prejudice. All parties are alike. They fall over party stumbling blocks, and forget the great and vital truths of the times.

There never was a time in our country’s history, when so much calm deliberation was necessary as now. All party prejudice should be forgotten. Every voter has a great responsibility. There will be difference of opinion, yet all true men must see that their country needs aid. The only important question is how shall the rebellion be crushed. By every means possible. Show no yielding until there is not a man in arms against the government. If it is my view that the re-election of Lincoln is best who shall say that I have not the right. I do think so, and shall vote for him if I can. This I shall without fear of loss of friendship or hope of reward, except the reward of having done my duty.

No, Carrie, I never had any sympathy with those who have appeared to sympathize with rebels. I voted for Douglas [sic] because I thought his principles if followed by both north and south would have prevented the war and have given justice to all. And it is most gratifying to know how he would have acted had he lived. The fact is he occupied the true position between the two extremes, which unfortunately is unpopular until too late to avoid disaster. I then said I would vote to give the South justice, but when they rebelled I would compel them to return if possible.

Some talk of peace. I am for peace when the rebel states return to the Union. Others say let them go. Examine their country. Shall we give up all this territory and great rivers. I believe this is too absurd to talk about.

Why should we prefer Lincoln to McClellan. There are very many reasons, which I would give did I think it necessary.

Now my “friends” say I have changed my political views. There is not one question before the people now like those of four years ago. I only differ with them on the present political questions. Our policy now is to free every slave possible, put the able men into the army and give the women and children homes—and educations. We do not sufficiently realize the influence of our present acts on the future of the nation. Are we to be a great and powerful nation—or are we to be broken into weak and envious fragments. This is the great point to be considered. Better that every inhabitant of the South be banished than that our nation be divided. Now McClellan is probably, undoubtedly a true and loyal man. There is doubt in regard to many of his associates and supporters. There is none in regard to Lincoln and his supporters. Read E. Everitt’s [former Massachusetts senator Edward Everett] speech made in Boston a few days since. He speaks reason.

My Dear Wife, I do not think you have reason to suppose that I should not act as I thought was just—or according to my real views. I think those who know that I am not afraid to act or speak as I think.

I have not much to write you of the two days past. There has been some severe fighting on the extreme left. I think the results are not very favorable to either army. I have not learned the particulars however. Along our line we had a furious cannonade night before last. A great number of shells came into our for, but no one was injured. The greatest danger is in the day tie. In the night we can see them and doge them. Men soon become careless of danger. But I do not like them.

My Dear Carrie, I think of you often. I wish to see you—and dream of you day and night. I often think I will write what I would like to have you do if I should be killed, but I know you would do what is right and what you think would please me, if I could know at all. I hope I may be spared to return to live with you and help to care for and educate our children. I feel the importance of this more and more. Good bye.

                                                                                                                   W.[vii]  

[i] William Child, Letters from a Civil War Surgeon: The Letters of Dr. William Child of the Fifth New Hampshire Volunteers (Solon: ME: Polar Bear & Company, 2001).

[ii] See for example his letter of October 22, 1863 from Long Island in Boston Harbor. Child, Letters from a Civil War Surgeon, 169.

[iii] “United States Census, 1860”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M7WR-13B : 18 February 2021), John D Childs in entry for Dwight P Childs, 1860.

[iv] “United States Census, 1860”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M7WR-13V : 18 February 2021), John H Lang, 1860.

[v] Child, Letters from a Civil War Surgeon, 284.

[vi] These lines come from Canto VI of Sir Walter Scott’s “The Lay of the Last Minstrel.” The actual lines are as follows:

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!

These lines also appear in Edward Everett Hale’s famous short story, “The Man without a Country” (1863). It’s possible that Child picked up the lines here instead of from Scott’s poem.

[vii] Child, Letters from a Civil War Surgeon, 281-283.