The Gettysburg Compiler

When History Clicks: An Audio Interview with Kevin Levin

Kevin Levin will be speaking at the 2014 Civil War Institute’s Summer Conference on the War in 1864. He will be conducting a lecture entitled, “The Battle of the Crater in Memory,” a Dine-in Discussion, and a breakout session, “Re-Thinking Confederate Defeat in the Summer of 1864.” Levin is a historian, blogger, and history educator. His book, Remembering the Battle of the Crater: War as Murder, was published in 2012 by the University Press of Kentucky. In anticipation of the Summer Institute, Kevin Levin answered student questions about teaching history and about the legacy of the Civil War.

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What Makes a Man?: A Historiography on the Common Soldier and Masculinity

By Brianna Kirk ’15

The American Civil War ended with Union victory on April 9, 1865, in the front parlor of the McLean House in Appomattox, Virginia. Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Ulysses S. Grant ensured the southern states would return to the Union and begin the process of Reconstruction. Union soldiers, flushed with victory, reveled in the knowledge that their cause triumphed, that their masculinity and honor was upheld while the southern men were forced to reconcile with their failure as soldiers and men. This victorious sentiment and love toward the Union Army has transcended the celebratory jubilees in which northern soldiers engaged in the years after the war, emerging through the words of historians into the late twentieth century. For generations, historians focused on the broader wartime actions and achievements of generals and politicians compared to the soldiers who did the actual fighting. This changed, however, in the mid-twentieth century.

In 1952, Bell Irvin Wiley took the first step towards examining the daily life of soldiers and their reasons for fighting in The Life of Billy Yank. Wiley’s analysis of the common Union soldier reinforced the idea that he was a man to be revered; his narrative celebrated the masculinity of the average enlisted man and feted his devotion to the country. Wiley’s depiction of honorable and courageous enlisted men held strong for decades. Few historians, the lone exception being Gerald Linderman through his book Embattled Courage, leveled any serious challenges to Wiley’s sterilized narrative. Subsequent historians like James McPherson adopted this approach, contending that the men who fought did so to prove their personal honor and masculinity, both to themselves and society. These scholars preferred to recount tales of common soldiers who, with clenched jaw and burnished bayonet, charged the rebel enemy with ideological conviction.

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Soldier Experiences in Elmira Prison Camp: A Common Captivity

By Meg Sutter ’16

Elmira’s history is very similar to that of Camp Chase. Before it was a prison camp, Elmira had been a military depot for training. The Elmira Depot in Elmira, New York, was a great place for a military training camp because of the railroad junctions running in and out of the town. These railroads would be necessary for transporting prisoners to Elmira later in the war. Like Camp Chase, Elmira became an overflow prison camp after the cartel failed in 1863. Many of the prisoners came from Point Lookout along the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. Elmira was made up of barracks with the Chemung River running behind the prison. There was a pool of water in the middle of the camp three to six feet deep and forty feet wide. At one point there were approximately 10,000 prisoners at Elmira. There was only one successful escape made by ten prisoners, including Berry Benson, on October 6, 1864. There are fewer memoirs and diaries from Elmira than from Southern prisons, but many Confederate ex-prisoners published their experiences in the Confederate Veteran and other newspapers and journals.

Rations at Elmira were similar to those at Camp Chase. There was a regular routine with two meals a day; “so many days we had pork, so many days we had beef, so many days bean soup for dinner, so many days vegetable soup.” Sometimes there was even extra soup in the kitchen and the officers would tell the men to fall in line for extras. They also received bread in the morning and at dinner. While these rations were initially good, they soon decreased in quality. Bread was replaced with crackers in the winter, and King said the crackers caused diarrhea. While the rations were not ideal, compared with prisons in the South, the men at Elmira were well-off and had two meals cooked for them each day.

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Class of 2014 Bio: Brian Johnson

Brian Johnson is a recent graduate from the Gettysburg College Class of 2014. He is incredibly grateful for all of the opportunities provided by Gettysburg College and the Civil War Institute. Over the last four years, Brian has had the chance to work for the National Park Service, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, and, of course, as a Fellow at the Civil War Institute. Inside the classroom he has enjoyed many fantastic courses offered through Gettysburg’s phenomenal history department. Each of these experiences has taught Brian to write well, think critically, take initiative, and do his best possible work. Although American history and the Civil War will always be near and dear to Brian, in the coming years he hopes to pursue a career in higher education administration, particularly in academic affairs and student development. He hopes to ensure that students at other colleges and universities can have the same rigorous, rewarding academic experiences that he enjoyed at Gettysburg. After graduation, Brian will be working for the Civil War Institute helping with preparation for summer conferences. Come fall, he hopes to serve with Americorps in Ohio community colleges before returning to graduate school in higher education administration next year.

A Reasonable Captivity: Soldier Experiences in Camp Chase

By Meg Sutter ’16

Even compared to Libby Prison and Andersonville, one can recognize that conditions in Northern prisons like Camp Chase and Elmira Prison Camp were not ideal. Indeed, disease, death, and starvation were abundant in both Camp Chase and Elmira. However, they contrast greatly to the even more appalling conditions later in Libby and Andersonville.

While Camp Chase, with an average of 8,000 Confederate prisoners, was not the largest prison camp in the North during the war, it represents the typical conditions in Northern prisons. Initially a training camp for Union soldiers, Camp Chase was built four miles outside Columbus, Ohio, and by 1861 it was already holding many Confederate “political prisoners.” It was meant to be a temporary prison, as the North was unprepared for the amount of prisoners that flooded their makeshift prisons. With the end of the cartel, Camp Chase was forced to become a permanent prison. The prison was divided into three prisons, though they all shared one wall separated by partitions. Prison 1 was the smallest, prison 2 was larger, but prison 3 was larger than 1 and 2 combined, measuring, as Private James Anderson described, about four acres. The prison consisted of barracks with bunks three tiers high and one stove each. Three memoirs of Confederate prisoners in Camp Chase give historians a good understanding of the general conditions and life they experienced while captive.

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“The Battle of Cold Harbor & the Soldier’s Psyche”: An Interview with Ashley Luskey

By Emma Murphy ’15

Ashley Luskey will be speaking at the 2014 Civil War Institute’s Summer Conference on the War in 1864 during which she will give a lecture on Cold Harbor and its contested memory. Luskey is currently a Park Ranger at Richmond National Battlefield and is working towards her PhD in History at West Virginia University. In anticipation of the Summer Institute, Ashley Luskey answered student questions about her research, her lecture topic, and her connection with Gettysburg College and the Civil War Institute. Let’s see what she has in store for us this summer:

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Baltimore on the Border: The Occupation

By Kevin Lavery ’16

Why is “Maryland” like a blind bird – because she can’t ‘See-Seed’ (Secede)
-Joke told by Samuel Epes Turner, Jr. to his father

Though Baltimore and Maryland were preserved for the Union, it was a victory won at gunpoint. Historian Harry Ezratty describes one occasion when Governor Dix, Butler’s successor in the Middle Department, demonstrated “a genuine display of gentlemanly tactfulness” and Victorian cunning when he invited overly influential local ladies to discuss matters of the occupation. According to his memoirs, he then pointed to a gun stationed at Fort McHenry and diplomatically asked his guests where it was directed. They observed that it was pointed to Battle Monument Square: a site of local importance commemorating the War of 1812. He promised them that if they stopped sowing the seeds of insurrection, there would be no more trouble. Otherwise, “that gun is the first that I shall fire.”

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Baltimore on the Border: First Blood

By Kevin Lavery ’16

Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecked the streets of Baltimore…
-Maryland, My Maryland

In the study of the Civil War, the violence between brothers, neighbors, and countrymen is most frequently explored through the eyes of great armies clashing on the field of battle. But in the American Civil War, as in any modern conflict and especially those dividing a people amongst themselves, a citizen did not have to wear blue or grey to feel passionately about the war. In Baltimore, Mayor George William Brown and paper merchant Samuel Epes Turner, took strikingly different stances on the war despite their geographical proximity to the fighting. Fort Sumter may have seen the first shots of the war, but the infamy of first blood belongs to the civilians of Baltimore and the Union soldiers they confronted.

As a border state that was considered by Brown to be “neither dead nor asleep on the subject of slavery,” Maryland found itself sharply divided in loyalty. Brown, a Confederate sympathizer, reasoned that “the house of every man is his castle, and he may defend it to the death against all aggressors.” Epes, meanwhile, was “almost ashamed . . . that in this age of the world, enough men could be found to break up such a government as ours.” He was not representative of most Baltimoreans. In general, Maryland – especially in its most eastern reaches – was initially inclined toward ambivalence or the South.

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“All hope is banished”: Life in Andersonville Prison

By Meg Sutter ’16

“When our country called for me we came from forge and store and mill.
From workshop, farm and factory the broken ranks to fill;
We left our quite happy home, and ones we loved so well;
To vanquish all the Union foes, or fall where others fell;
Now in a prison dear we languish and it is our constant cry;
Oh! Ye who yet can save us, will you leave us here to die?”

Libby Prison in Richmond became known for its horrible conditions; however, no prison during the war can compare to the cruelty at Andersonville Prison. It was built in February 1864, fourteen months before the end of the war, and in that short time devastating atrocities occurred which made Andersonville the most infamous of the Civil War prisons.

Camp Sumter, more commonly referred to as Andersonville, was a stockade prison near Andersonville, Georgia. Hemmerlein describes the fence as twenty feet high “made of trunks of pine trees set vertically into the ground” which surrounded the stockade. It was originally seventeen acres, enough for 10,000 prisoners; however, in June 1864 the Confederates were forced to expand it another ten acres. This was still not enough space for the 45,000 prisoners that were captive here throughout the war. The largest number of prisoners at Andersonville at one time was 33,000 in August of 1864. Nineteen feet from the fence was the “deadline” which became famous for the deaths of many prisoners who went near or touched the line. There was no shade or vegetation, and only a small stream ran through the middle of camp; it soon became contaminated with the soldiers’ waste. The only shelter prisoners had were tents that they erected if they had the means. While diaries from Libby Prison give historians a good understanding of the conditions of that prison, they cannot compare to the death and atrocities at Andersonville.

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“Years of Anguish” at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park

By Avery C. Lentz ’14

Back in February of 2014, I was rather surprised to receive a phone call from a Mr. John Hennessey, head of interpretation at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. John had been chatting with my advisor, Dr. Peter Carmichael, and had heard the story about my interesting ancestry and its connection to the Battle of Gettysburg. John then called me after getting my information from Professor Carmichael and invited me to be a part of the “Years of Anguish” Program that was being held at the Salem Baptist Church on April 5^th, 2014. The themes of the panel were presidents, generals, and descendants of the American Civil War and John invited me to share the story of my ancestors’ involvement in the war as part of the lecture. I was truly honored and hit with a jolt of excitement when I realized that I would be telling my story to a crowd of people who were just as passionate about the Civil War as I was.

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