By Emily Jumba ’24
Beaufort, South Carolina’s The Free South’s“Victory! Gettysburg; General Lee Defeated; Thirty Thousand Prisoners” and Delaware, Ohio’s The Delaware Gazette’s “The Great Battle in Pennsylvania” both describe some of the aftermath of the battle of Gettysburg, although with extremely different tones. Both newspapers expressed strong pro-Union sentiments and supported the Republican party. Federal treasury agents founded The Free South in January of 1863 in Beaufort, South Carolina, which, by 1863, was mostly home to freedmen and occupying Union soldiers, both of whom were supportive of the Union.[1] Beaufort began experimenting with Reconstruction soon after the battle of Port Royal, in late 1861. The fact that this small pro-Union paper was based in South Carolina, which not only was a slave state, but was also the first to secede from the Union, makes the position of The Free South somewhat unique. The Delaware Gazette, on the other hand, was the product of a northern state and was slightly older, having first been published in 1855 in Delaware, Ohio.[2] This paper initially leaned towards the Whig Party, but after the party’s collapse, it switched its loyalties to the new Republican Party, which likely represented many of its constituents, as Ohio was both a free state and a loyal member of the Union. The varied focus and tone of these staunchly pro-Union papers’ reports on the aftermath of Gettysburg is intriguing to unpack.
“Victory! Gettysburg; General Lee Defeated; Thirty Thousand Prisoners” (The Free South) reports mostly on the Confederate retreat from Gettysburg in a straight-forward “factual” manner, without much flourish or pathos. The article also focuses on tallying the number of prisoners the federal troops managed to take, between the quantity of wounded men the Army of Northern Virginia left behind in Pennsylvania and those that surrendered mid-battle or during the retreat. It is important to note that, while the article focuses on numbers, some of them are just estimates, as the article was written less than two weeks after the battle, and it draws heavily from articles in the New York Herald, which were published even closer to the battle, on July 3rd and 7th.[3] Occasionally these estimates are a bit high; at one point, the Free South article approximates the total number of prisoners taken by the Army of the Potomac at a quarter of General Lee’s forces.[4] In addition to the prisoner counts, the article also briefly mentions which generals on each side were casualties, but gives no further details about the circumstances of their injuries or deaths, staying true to its lean and blunt reporting style.
The Free South’s heavy emphasis on prisoners is a consistent pattern throughout the newspaper’s short time in publication (from January of 1863, to November of 1864).[5] After various battles occurred, the paper often reported on the number of prisoners taken both by federal and Confederate troops. This may be due to the Beaufort population consisting of predominately freedpeople. United States Colored Troops had been fighting in the war since the fall of 1862, opening the potential for African Americans to be taken as prisoners of war during the time frame the paper was in print.[6] This scenario was of particular concern for the consumers of The Free South (whether they could read the news for themselves or had it read to them by Union occupiers), as on numerous occasions, when Confederate soldiers encountered African American soldiers who surrendered, they killed them rather than accept their surrender, and when they did take African Americans prisoners, they often refused to parole them or sent them back into slavery.
Both of these scenarios were featured within the paper in early Fall of 1863, just two months after Gettysburg. On September 19, 1863, an article described the delay in the exchange of prisoners because, “the rebels refused to eat their words,” regarding the USCT troops who had been captured.[7] A month prior, the United States War Department released General Order 252, in which Lincoln demanded the equal treatment of prisoners and threatened to execute a Confederate prisoner for every USCT soldier that the rebels murdered.[8] If there were any freedpeople from Beaufort who had joined the USCTs, such occurrences could potentially involve them and significantly impact the lives of their loved ones back at home, who were trying to establish new lives for themselves. In addition, the white federal soldiers occupying Beaufort were also likely interested in reading these statistics because they would also want to see the reports of USCT prisoners taken, especially as the Confederates committed similar atrocities against the white officers commanding USCT units. On a broader scale, by following statistics of prisoner tallies, the soldiers could track the progress of the war and which side seemed closer to winning while they remained stationed at Beaufort, away from the action of the war.
This article only briefly mentions the possibility of the Union suffering heavy losses to General Lee, but does not dwell on the idea, perhaps, in part, as an attempt to bolster previously sagging Union morale by focusing more squarely on the enemy’s losses than those sustained by the North’s for its reading constituency. Additionally, as there were no USCTs involved in the battle of Gettysburg, concerns about brutal treatment of captured federal troops and officers was not as much of a concern as it would have been in the wake of other battles. This common theme of focusing on prisoners of war as part of a larger emphasis on a battle’s raw numbers likely was a trend that carried over from the paper’s typical battle reporting style.
“The Great Battle in Pennsylvania” (Delaware Gazette)also mentions prisoners taken after the battle of Gettysburg and some numerical counts, although its aftermath-focus is centered on the battle’s cost in human lives. The article builds to the reveal of the horrors of battle by first relaying the events of the Pickett-Pettigrew Assault on July 3rd in a grandiose manner, almost as if relaying the plot of a dramatic novel. The account contains a series of events and surrounding context that are described in sentimental detail, such as: “There was not wanting to the peacefulness of the scene the singing of a bird, which had a nest in a peach tree within the tiny yard of the white-washed cottage.”[9] The article’s author immediately annihilates this bucolic image by describing cannon shot beginning to tear through the house as the bird is mid-song. The descriptive scenes eventually culminate in a description of men’s violent (but honorable) deaths that awaited on the battlefield: “They rushed in perfect order across the open field, up to the very muzzles of the guns, which tore lances through them as they came.”[10] The author clearly wants his audience to immerse themselves in the full picture of the fighting and the horrors that the soldiers experienced, with tugs at both the imagination and the heartstrings of the reading public, even though he himself was not present at the battle.
Simultaneously, details such as these conveyed to communities back at home that the soldiers’ fight was a courageous, romantic display of sentimental sacrifice in the face of a brutal enemy, and under enormously trying circumstances, that ultimately won the day in the name of Union and patriotism. Courage and sentimental sacrifice were expected, hallmark facets of Civil War soldiers’ conduct, as they tied into essential Victorian ideals, such as martial masculinity, honor, and righteousness, that both soldiers and civilians believed in to help justify the horrors and grief ensuing from war.[11] For example, at the end of the article, the author depicts Jesus standing over the battlefield, welcoming the righteous dead through the gates of Heaven—and what made these dead righteous was that they fought courageously, upholding their honor until their dying moment.[12] Civil War soldiers on both sides often believed that if they were righteous, Providence would at least ensure their souls went to Heaven if it did not protect them from injury in battle. The author likely included such evocative details in part because he was writing for an extremely pro-Union audience in Delaware who likely sought such affirming framing in reading about the details of a large Northern victory. The article in The Free South utterly skips past this sort of description, focusing squarely on numbers and cold calculations of POWs rather than on the human details of, say, how those large numbers of soldiers reached a position in which surrender proved the only option.
Although published within a mere day of each other, both for pro-Union audiences, and both clearly recognizing the Union victory at Gettysburg, the difference in these two articles’ tone and content reveals the important role that not only the expectations, but also the needs of the readership played in shaping how Civil War battles were portrayed in the press.[13] One paper was consumed by a community of newly freed former slaves who were in the process of starting new lives in a state that was still fighting against the Union, as well as by Union occupiers who were expected to continue their tenure at Beaufort until the end of the war; their desire for battle news likely was motivated by practical, pragmatic concerns about numbers and raw facts that could alter the scales for or against an ultimate Union victory and emancipation. The other paper was produced for a well-established town of largely white civilians in central Ohio with pro-Republican leanings who craved a battle narrative that propped up both their cultural and political ideals that justified the sacrifice of so many white soldiers on behalf of Union and democracy. These two articles underscore just how intertwined the press and individual readership communities were in shaping how the war was reported and recorded for future generations.
Bibliography
“Gettysburg Prisoners of War – Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine (U.S. National Park Service).” https://www.nps.gov/fomc/learn/historyculture/gettysburg-prisoners-of-war.htm.
“Battle History | Gettysburg PA.” https://www.gettysburgpa.gov/history/slideshows/battle-history.
“Beaufort National Cemetery–Civil War Era National Cemeteries: A Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary.” https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/national_cemeteries/south_carolina/beaufort_national_cemetery.html.
Delaware Gazette. “The Great Battle in Pennsylvania.” July 10, 1863, sec. Image 2. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83035595/1863-07-10/ed-1/seq-2/#date1=07%2F01%2F1863&index=2&date2=07%2F16%2F1863&searchType=advanced&language=&sequence=0&words=Gettysburg+prisoners&proxdistance=5&state=&rows=20&ortext=&proxtext=Gettysburg+prisoner&phrasetext=&andtext=&dateFilterType=range&page=2.
Library of Congress. “Delaware Gazette (Delaware, Ohio) 1855-1886.” https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83035595/.
Library of Congress. “The Free South (Beaufort, South Carolina) 1863-1864.” Stickney, Latta & Reed. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026962/.
Linderman, Gerald. Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War. New York: The Free Press, 1987.
The Free South. “Important Order from President Lincoln.” August 15, 1863, sec. Image 2. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026962/1863-08-15/ed-1/seq-2/#date1=01%2F01%2F1777&index=4&date2=12%2F31%2F1963&searchType=advanced&language=&sequence=0&lccn=sn84026962&words=prisoner+prisoners&proxdistance=5&rows=20&ortext=prisoner&proxtext=&phrasetext=&andtext=&dateFilterType=range&page=1.
The Free South. “Once Free, Always Free.” April 25, 1863, sec. Image 1. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026962/1863-04-25/ed-1/seq-1/#date1=01%2F01%2F1777&index=5&date2=12%2F31%2F1963&searchType=advanced&language=&sequence=0&lccn=sn84026962&words=prison+prisoner&proxdistance=5&rows=20&ortext=prisoner&proxtext=&phrasetext=&andtext=&dateFilterType=range&page=1.
The Free South. “Protection of Colored Troops.” August 15, 1863, sec. Image 2. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026962/1863-08-15/ed-1/seq-2/#date1=01%2F01%2F1777&index=4&date2=12%2F31%2F1963&searchType=advanced&language=&sequence=0&lccn=sn84026962&words=prisoner+prisoners&proxdistance=5&rows=20&ortext=prisoner&proxtext=&phrasetext=&andtext=&dateFilterType=range&page=1.
The Free South. “The Exchange of Prisoners—Status of Officers of Negro Regiments.” September 19, 1863, sec. Image 2. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026962/1863-09-19/ed-1/seq2/#date1=01%2F01%2F1777&index=9&date2=12%2F31%2F1963&searchType=advanced&language=&sequence=0&lccn=sn84026962&words=prisoner+prisoners&proxdistance=5&rows=20&ortext=prisoner&proxtext=&phrasetext=&andtext=&dateFilterType=range&page=1.
The Free South. “Victory! Gettysburg; General Lee Defeated; Thirty Thousand Prisoners.” July 11, 1863, sec. Image 1. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026962/1863-07-11/ed-1/seq-1/#date1=07%2F01%2F1863&index=3&date2=07%2F16%2F1863&searchType=advanced&language=&sequence=0&words=Gettysburg+prisoners&proxdistance=5&state=&rows=20&ortext=&proxtext=Gettysburg+prisoner&phrasetext=&andtext=&dateFilterType=range&page=1
[1] Library of Congress. “The Free South (Beaufort, South Carolina) 1863-1864.”
[2] Library of Congress. “Delaware Gazette (Delaware, Ohio) 1855-1886.”
[3] The Free South. “Victory! Gettysburg; General Lee Defeated; Thirty Thousand Prisoners.” July 11, 1863, sec. Image 1.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Library of Congress. “The Free South (Beaufort, South Carolina) 1863-1864.”
[6] “Beaufort National Cemetery–Civil War Era National Cemeteries: A Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary.”
[7] The Free South. “The Exchange of Prisoners—Status of Officers of Negro Regiments.” September 19, 1863, sec. Image 2.
[8] The Free South. “Important Order from President Lincoln.” August 15, 1863, sec. Image 2.
[9] Delaware Gazette. “The Great Battle in Pennsylvania.” July 10, 1863, sec. Image 2.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Gerald Linderman, Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War (New York: The Free Press, 1987).
[12] Delaware Gazette. “The Great Battle in Pennsylvania.” July 10, 1863, sec. Image 2.
[13] “The Great Battle in Pennsylvania” was published on July 10, 1863, and the “Victory! Gettysburg; General Lee Defeated; Thirty Thousand Prisoners” was published on July 11, 1863.
