The Gettysburg Compiler

The Fragility of History: William H. Harris’ West Point 1861 Album

Musselman Library’s Special Collections & College Archives at Gettysburg College is a center for undergraduate student and faculty research and houses and maintains several types of primary source materials, including rare books, letters, diaries, maps, works of art, and photographs. Carolyn Sautter, the director of Special Collections, said, “one of the best ways of learning about historical eras is to actually see the images of the time period.” Special Collections provides researchers and visitors opportunities to visually engage with objects through either the exhibit cases in the Collection’s Reading Room or on the GettDigital website, a venue on which poeple can explore the Civil war by seeing peoples’ faces. Especially with fragile materials such as William H. Harris’ West Point 1861 Album, Special Collections’ online resource provides access to objects that would otherwise be inaccessable to students and faculty.

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Henry A. Kircher’s Unalterable Past

By Emma Murphy ’15

Analyzing soldiers letters’ home gives deep insight into not only the political tensions during the time they were writing, but also the personal struggles they went through during combat. What was it like seeing a close comrade killed during a battle that was viewed as pointless? How did dreams affect soldiers’ views on the war?

While researching Henry A. Kircher of the 12th Missouri Volunteer Infantry, I found a collection of his letters written to loved ones back home during the time he served in the Civil War. Born in Illinois from German immigrants, Kircher spent much of his early years surrounded by German-Americans. Despite his social separation due to his decent, his devotion to the Union led Kircher to enlist in the 9th Illinois Infantry at the age of nineteen. While still with the ninth, he wrote to his father of an accident in camp. A young man had tripped and his rifle fired into the guardhouse, hitting another soldier in the abdomen. “Life and death are fighting,” he wrote of the experience. “Probably the latter one will win.” It did not take long for the young Kircher to be exposed to death.

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Before He Was Supreme: Eisenhower’s WWI Days in Gettysburg

By Avery Lentz ’14

Dwight D. Eisenhower was a man of many talents. He served as one of America’s most distinguished presidents and possessed an abiding love for the military, a passion that led him to become General Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during WWII. He was the man behind the “Liberation of Europe” and led the way for his forces to rid the world of tyranny. However, before he was a president and before he was a general, Ike was a captain fresh out of West Point who wanted to achieve fame and glory on the battlefields of World War I. Instead of being sent abroad to active duty, Ike was assigned the domestic duty of training potential tank crews at a new army camp on the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

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Richard D. Dunphy: The Measure of Honor

By Kevin Lavery ’16

On September 20, 2013, I had the pleasure of attending a town hall meeting at Gettysburg College featuring three members of Congressional Medal of Honor Society (CMOHS). Each had served our country with bravery and valor, each had gone above and beyond the call of duty, and each had earned the same medal as the man whose life I have been exploring for the past several months.

The first question from Chris Wallace, moderator of the event, asked the veterans about their service. In turn, each bearer of the medal humbly rejected the title of “hero.” To them, they had simply been doing their duty. These soldiers did not seek glory or commendation; they did as they were trained to do in order to protect those they fought with and fought for. Now retired, they act as advocates of the need for brave men and women to fight for freedom, liberty, and security. Continue reading “Richard D. Dunphy: The Measure of Honor”

A Man of Mystery: An Introduction to Mr. Clark Gardner

By Brianna Kirk ’15

Clark Alving Gardner was born on June 20, 1839, to Peleg and Julia Gardner in Rodman, New York, a town in Jefferson County. He was the oldest of five children. On July 31, 1862, at the age of twenty-three years, Gardner enlisted in the Black River Artillery, and was called to service on September 11 of the same year.

The Black River Artillery originated from Sackett’s Harbor, New York, located off the Black River Bay in Jefferson County. The 4th, 5th, and 7th Battalion units of the Black River Artillery were consolidated to form the 10th New York Heavy Artillery regiment on December 31, 1862, shortly after Gardner had joined and one day before President Abraham Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation. Continue reading “A Man of Mystery: An Introduction to Mr. Clark Gardner”

“Consternation was depicted on all their countenances”: Gettysburg’s African American Community and Confederate Invasion

By Brian Johnson ’14

On June 15, 1863, Albert Jenkins’s Confederate cavalry brigade became the first of Lee’s men to enter the North when it crossed the Potomac River and headed for Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Lee had issued strict orders forbidding his men to damage or confiscate private property unless it was a requisition made for necessary supplies, and overseen by authorized Confederate staff. Jenkins’s men half-heartedly obeyed, and scoured the area for anything valuable, including African Americans, fugitive or legally free, who might be sold into slavery. One horrified Chambersburg resident watched local blacks attempt to hide in cornfields only to have troopers chase them down through the young stalks. Others capitulated after troopers fired at them. When Lee arrived in Chambersburg on June 27, his horror at scenes of looting and robbery compelled him to reissue his order concerning private property. But he made no mention of over 200 captured African-Americans – some of whom had been born in Chambersburg – removed south by Jenkins’s cavalry. On the same day in nearby Mercersburg, one startled local watching fugitive-filled wagons roll towards Maryland asked a guard how he could do such a thing. Confederates, he replied, were simply “reclaiming their property.” Continue reading ““Consternation was depicted on all their countenances”: Gettysburg’s African American Community and Confederate Invasion”

The Storm Breaks: Gettysburg’s African-American Community During the Battle

By Brian Johnson ’14

By late June 1863, though rebel troops had already occupied Gettysburg briefly, the threat to the borough grew still more ominous. Rebel troops had cut the town’s railroad lifeline to the north by destroying a bridge across Rock Creek, and convinced the local telegraph operator to flee with his equipment. The new isolation from news accentuated scattered reports of large forces, rebel and federal, approaching the borough from all directions. When federal cavalry arrived on June 30 to take up defensive positions west of town, Gettysburg residents sensed a looming battle. Continue reading “The Storm Breaks: Gettysburg’s African-American Community During the Battle”

“We Stared Death in the Face”: Confronting the Realities of War

By Heather Clancy ’15

Another Compiler post, another letter between brothers. This time we will turn to Alexander “Sandie” Murdoch, an Ordinance Sergeant in the 2nd North Carolina State Troops. Engaged in combat during the battle of Gettysburg, Murdoch faced his understandings of mortality perhaps even more immediately than did F.M. Stoke. On August 10, 1863, Murdoch wrote home to relay his reflections on the battle’s conduct. While several weeks had passed since his involvement in the fighting on the first week of July and although he rarely identifies them as such, Murdoch’s letter is full of references to death and his own mortality.

In the most explicit reference he makes to the very real possibility of his own death, Murdoch writes the following of laying in expectation of the order to attack:

There we lay looking around upon our comrades and wondering who would be the ones who would be taken from us and in full health with the life blood coursing joyously through our veins we stared death in the face.

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“No More”: F.M. Stoke’s Letter Home

By Heather Clancy ’15

On October 23, 1863, F.M. Stoke paused from his duties at the Gettysburg Hospital to write a letter to his brother. More than three months had passed since Union and Confederate troops had brought war to the rolling ground of rural Pennsylvania, but reminders of the recent conflict were everywhere. Stoke apologized for the span of time since his last letter home. He had been busy lately writing letters for the patients in the hospital and had found no time for even a brief note for his own loved ones. Things were going well enough at the hospital, he wrote.

The impromptu clinic was located about a mile east of town (about where Ewell formed his battle line, he added) and consisted of large tents set up over approximately eighty acres of land. The tents were organized in “streets,” much as in military camps, an outline that made the hospital look nearly like a city of its own. When he first arrived, there were already 5,000 sick and wounded convalescing in the tents and it was not uncommon for seventeen men to die in one day. Continue reading ““No More”: F.M. Stoke’s Letter Home”

Richard D. Dunphy: A Frank Request to Gideon Welles

By Kevin Lavery ’16

By January 1866, the war had concluded and the country’s divisions had begun to heal. Richard Dunphy, meanwhile, devoted himself to claiming his pension and his medal. When the Medal of Honor he had earned during the Battle of Mobile Bay was lost amidst the naval bureaucracy, Dunphy took it upon himself to write a letter directly to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles. He believed that Welles, who had been involved in the creation of the award, would be able to help obtain his well-deserved medal. This letter, owned by the Gilder Lehrman Institute, provides unique insight directly into Dunphy’s mentality during the years immediately following the war.

The letter begins with an apology for Dunphy’s audacity in addressing Gideon Welles directly, rather than filing his request through the Navy. He explains that Admiral Farragut had planned to send the medal through a mutual acquaintance, but that it had never arrived. “I place a great value on it and I believe I am justly entitled to it,” he writes. The medal had been awarded for the same action during which Dunphy lost both of his arms, and so it was an important memento of his experience and a reward for his gallant sacrifice that warranted a direct appeal to the highest authority.

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