Dr. Angela Zombek, Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, will join CWI Director Dr. Peter Carmichael and John Heckman (The Tattooed Historian) to discuss Civil War prison camp escapes. The livestream will take place on Monday, April 20th at 7pm EST. The livestream will happen concurrently on the Tattooed Historian’s Facebook page and the Civil War Institute’s Facebook page.
Dr. Zombek is the author of “Penitentiaries, Punishment, and Military Prisons: Familiar Responses to an Extraordinary Crisis during the American Civil War” (Kent State, 2018) and has provided a primary source that will be discussed during the livestream. This newspaper article comes from the December 5, 1863 edition of the Portsmouth Daily Times (Portsmouth, Ohio).
During the Fall of 2019, a handful of first-year Gettysburg College students traveled down to the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C. to conduct primary source research into a group of Civil War soldiers whose “dog tags” now reside in the collections of the Texas Civil War Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. This post is the second in a short series highlighting the stories of the men who wore these unique identification tags into battle. For a short history of military identification tags, or “dog tags,” check out Savannah Labbe’s (’18) 2016 article on the evolution of the dog tag.
Many thanks to Ray Richie, President of the Texas Civil War Museum, for his generosity in sharing these fascinating items from the museum’s collection with our students!
Minturn’s gold identification pin on display a the Texas Civil War Museum
James B. Minturn was born in 1833 in New York City, New York. When the Civil War broke out, he decided to leave his work as a merchant to enlist in the Union Army on August 12, 1862. Minturn was mustered into Company B. of the 127th New York Infantry on September 8, 1862, when he was 29 years old. He was promoted to Corporal on January 10th, 1863 and then to 1st Sergeant on August 1, 1863. However, was later Minturn demoted on March 11, 1864 for reasons unknown. On August 11, 1864, he asked for a furlough to attend the Free Military School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Free Military School of Philadelphia was established in 1863 by both abolitionists and Union officers as an institution for the training of white Union soldiers to become officers of the United States Colored Troops (USCT). The school recruited their students from deeply Republican units and trained both soldiers and non-commissioned officers. Private Minturn, however, never became an officer of a USCT unit. Minturn ultimately was dishonorably discharged by the 127th New York on September 24, 1864, but proceeded to accept a commission in the 38th New Jersey Volunteers. James Minturn survived the war and was mustered out in Charleston, South Carolina on January 30th 1865.
The 127th New York Infantry Regiment, also known as the “Monitors,” was under the command of Colonel William Gurney, who organized the regiment in Staten Island, New York. After leaving New York state on September 8, 1862, the 127th served in the defenses of Washington, D.C., eventually joining John J. Abercrombie’s Division, of the 12th Corps, until February of 1863 before transferring to the 22nd Corps (Department of Washington), commanded by General Samuel P. Heintzelman, until April of 1863. The 127th participated in the April Siege of Suffolk as well as Dix’s Peninsula Campaign (June 24-July 7). After short stints in the 7th and 11th corps, the regiment served out the rest of the war, from August, 1863 through June of 1865, in the 12th corps, Department of the South, along the coast of South Carolina, where it participated in the sieges of Forts Wagner, Gregg, and Sumter in August, and in the on-going operations against Charleston. The regiment lost 35 enlisted men killed or fatally wounded and one officer and 94 soldiers to disease during its service in the Civil War.
Fry, Zachery A. “Philadelphia’s Free Military School and the Radicalization of Wartime Officer Education, 1863–64.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 141, no. 3 (2017): 275. https://doi.org/10.5215/pennmaghistbio.141.3.0275.
During the Fall of 2019, a handful of first-year Gettysburg College students traveled down to the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C. to conduct primary source research into a group of Civil War soldiers whose “dog tags” now reside in the collections of the Texas Civil War Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. This post is the first in a short series highlighting the stories of the men who wore these unique identification tags into battle. For a short history of military identification tags, or “dog tags,” check out Savannah Labbe’s (’18) 2016 article on the evolution of the dog tag.
Many thanks to Ray Richie, President of the Texas Civil War Museum, for his generosity in sharing these fascinating items from the museum’s collection with our students!
Brierley’s Dog Tag on display at the Texas Civil War Museum.
William H. Brierly, alternatively spelled Bryerly, was born in about 1822 in either Ireland or Lancashire, England. He immigrated to the United States and settled in Bucks County in eastern Pennsylvania, and was living there in 1862 as the American Civil War entered its second year.
As a result of the Federal Militia Act of 1862, William was drafted at age 39-40 and entered as a private into a nine-month regiment, Company A, 174th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment (Drafted Militia) on October 2, 1862, while residing in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Eight of the regiment’s ten companies (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and K) were drawn primarily from eligible male citizens living in Bucks County, with Companies H and I from Northampton County. Private Brierly was mustered into federal service on October 29, 1862. The 174th Pennsylvania was organized at the general camp of rendezvous in West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in late October and November of that year, and on November 19 the following field officers were selected: Colonel John Nyce, Lieutenant Colonel Edward T. Hess, and Major Joseph B. Roberts. Later that month the regiment moved to Washington, D.C., then to Suffolk, Virginia, where it was assigned to duty and attached, along with the 176th Pennsylvania Infantry, to Brigadier General Orris S. Ferry’s brigade of Major General John J. Peck’s division at Suffolk, Virginia, 7th Corps, Department of Virginia. In late December the regiment was ordered south and moved to New Bern, North Carolina from December 31, 1862, to January 6, 1863, and there was attached to the 2nd Brigade, 3rd Division, 18th Corps, Department of North Carolina. The regiment, as part of the forces in North Carolina under Major General John G. Foster, was ordered to reinforce the army operating in front of Charleston, South Carolina.
Brierly’s pension paperwork at NARA.
The 174th sailed for Port Royal Harbor, South Carolina, on January 27, 1863, and on February 5, the regiment debarked at St. Helena Island, South Carolina, where it was attached to the 2nd Brigade, 2nd Division, 18th Corps, Department of the South. The regiment remained in camp until February 27, when it moved to Beaufort and was attached to the District of Beaufort, South Carolina, 10th Corps, Department of the South. In June, the regiment was stationed at Hilton Head, South Carolina, and attached to the District of Hilton Head, South Carolina, 10th Corps, Department of the South. On July 28, 1863, the regiment embarked for Philadelphia and was mustered out on August 7. During its nine months and nine days of service, the regiment had served on occupation and garrison duty, and Company A did not suffer any deaths, though the regiment had lost 14 men due to disease. Five died in Company F alone. According to the regiment’s final roster, of the 87 members of Brierly’s company, a staggering total of 41, or 47%, deserted while in service, likely due to low morale among the drafted men worsened by their monotonous routine of rear echelon service and the proliferation of camp disease. Private William H. Brierly was mustered out of federal service with his regiment in Pennsylvania on August 7, 1863, having seen little combat but having played a necessary role in Union operations along the South Atlantic Coast.
Pvt. William Brierly’s headstone in Lower Saucon, Northampton County, Pennsylvania.
William Brierly married Sarah Weaver, née Moatz / Moths (born May 14, 1838) in 1867, and with her had four children, all born in eastern Pennsylvania: Mary Alice Brierly (March 17, 1868–May 3, 1936), Anna Dora Elizabeth Brierly (December 7, 1869–January 31, 1912), James Albert Monroe Brierly (December 21, 1873–December 10, 1929), and Ida Savanna Brierly (January 9, 1876–September 11, 1945). William applied for an invalid pension from Pennsylvania on November 14, 1881, but died in Bucks County, Pennsylvania on July 31, 1882, of fatal cancer of the liver. He was 59-60 years of age. The Civil War veteran was buried in the New Jerusalem Old Cemetery in Lower Saucon, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, and his grave was furnished with a U.S. government upright marble headstone that reads “Wm Bryerly CO. A. 174th PA. INF.” In 1888, his wife Sarah Brierly applied for a widow’s pension from Pennsylvania, but her pension application was denied on March 25, 1895. She died on December 6, 1899, at age 61, and was buried with her husband in the New Jerusalem Old Cemetery in Lower Saucon, Northampton County, Pennsylvania. All four of William and Sarah’s children married and had families of their own and lived out their lives in eastern Pennsylvania.
This post comes from the exhibit catalog for “Right to Serve, Right to Lead: Lives and Legacies of the USCT,” an exhibition inSpecial Collections and College Archives at Musselman Library, Gettysburg College. During the spring of 2017, we asked the CWI Fellows to select a item on exhibit and discuss its history and context. The resulting exhibit catalog is available at Special Collections, where the exhibit will runthrough December 18, 2017.
Sutler’s Token. This coin would be used as credit with a sutler, or vendor, who followed the Union Army, selling a range of luxury items from toothbrushes and soap to tobacco, cheese, and custom identification tags. Courtesy of Special Collections and College Archives, Gettysburg College.
The Civil War caused an unmistakable strain on production and the allocation of resources in the North as well as the South. In order to keep armies in good order, a steady influx of supplies was needed, leading to shortages of food on the home front and in places like prisoner of war camps. The armies were typically well-fed, and many rations commonly consisted of small amounts of coffee, salt pork, and hardened bread called “hard-tack.” While enough to keep one from starvation, rations could hardly be described as appealing, and soldiers spent much of their time in camp devising new and innovative ways to make them more appetizing. Foraging for supplies yielded resources for combatant armies, but the practices of foraging depended on different commanders’ interpretations of official policies and unofficial social contracts. Soldiers were capable of living off of the land, and sometimes taking supplies from hapless farmers at the point of a bayonet was the only way to stay well-fed. Clearly the rationing system had its downsides.
There are few ways to better immerse oneself in the past than through food. It is relatively easy to follow a recipe from the Civil War era and enjoy the same cuisine as Union and Confederate soldiers. In this way, one can experience the past in a most interactive way. Experiencing the past was accomplished in the lecture “Hearth, Hardtack, and Hospital: A Close Look (and Taste) of Civil War Era Food,” given by Gettysburg National Military Park education specialist Barbara J. Sanders. The lecture focused on the topic of the interaction between history and food, specifically in the Civil War.
Many soldiers would fry their hardtack to make it more appetizing. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Sanders’s lecture, while directed at an older audience, was just as interactive as one she might give to a younger audience. She provided samples of food from the Civil War era for the audience to try and showed the audience how rations were issued, having an officer stand with his back to the rations, randomly reading off names of the soldiers to make sure that no soldier was purposefully getting a larger ration than another. She also ground up some coffee beans with a bayonet, as the soldiers would have done. All of these activities helped the audience better experience and imagine what a soldier’s diet and food preparation habits would have been. Continue reading “A Taste of the Civil War: Barbara Sanders’ Lecture on Civil War Era Food”
Over the course of this year, we’ll be interviewing some of the speakers from the upcoming 2017 CWI conference about their talks. Today we are speaking with Dr. Kenneth Noe. Dr. Noe is the Draughon Professor of Southern History at Auburn University, where he teaches classes on the American Civil War and Appalachian history. He is the author or editor of seven books, including Southwest Virginia’s Railroad: Modernization and the Sectional Crisis (University of Illinois Press, 1994); A Southern Boy in Blue: The Memoir of Marcus Woodcock, 9th Kentucky Infantry (U.S.A.) (University of Tennessee Press, 1996); The Civil War in Appalachia: Collected Essays, (co-edited with Shannon H. Wilson, University of Tennessee Press, 1997); Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle (University Press of Kentucky, 2002); Politics and Culture of the Civil War Era: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Johannsen, (co-edited with Daniel J. McDonough, Susquehanna University Press, 2006); Reluctant Rebels: The Confederates Who Joined the Army After 1861 (UNC Press, 2010); and, most recently, The Yellowhammer War: Alabama in the Civil War and Reconstruction (University of Alabama Press, 2014). He also has written many articles and essays for publications in scholarly journals such as Civil War History and The Journal of Military History.Dr. Noe was a Pulitzer Prize entrant and the winner of the 2003 Kentucky Governor’s Award, the 2002 Peter Seaborg Book Award for Civil War Non-fiction, and the 1997 Tennessee History Book Award. He currently is writing a book on Civil War weather. Dr. Noe is a frequent speaker on the Civil War Round Table circuit, a participant in the Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lectureship Program, and served as the 2008-2009 president of the Alabama Historical Association. He currently serves on the Board of Editors of Civil War History, and was a consultant for the NBC series Who Do You Think You Are?
CWI: Who do you define as a “reluctant rebel,” and why were these individuals “reluctant?”
NOE: In my study, “reluctant rebels” are men who enlisted in the Confederate Army no earlier than January 1862. While I also look at a few draftees, my real interest is the men who could have enlisted at the beginning of the war but chose not to do so. Their reluctance, I concluded, stemmed from many individual reasons, but generally speaking they were less politicized than those who went before them. Their decisions to not enlist after Fort Sumter and also to sign up later usually reflected more practical concerns, notably the threat of Union troops wrecking their small local worlds. Continue reading “Reluctant Rebels? Historian Kenneth Noe Talks Late-Enlistees in the Confederate Army”
How did one transform a group of raw recruits, of men who had no military knowledge, into soldiers? It was not an easy task, especially since many of the men had never even touched a weapon, let alone knew how to use one. This task often fell to private citizens, who, out of patriotic sentiment or the prospect of becoming commissioned, persuaded their neighbors to join their regiment. While this method was convenient and inexpensive for the government it often meant that the commissioned officers were inexperienced and underqualified, chosen only for their skills of persuasion. Because of this, transforming a group of men who were more skilled as farmers or lawyers into soldiers prepared for battle could prove to be a daunting task. It is also a subject that is paid little attention, outshone by the great battles and leaders of the Civil War. However, these regiments and the efforts of the men that raised them allowed for the possibility of those battles to occur and those leaders to emerge.
Major General Adelbert Ames, who earlier in the war had served as the first colonel of the Twentieth Maine. Photo from the Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons.
In an effort to recognize the importance of the act of raising a regiment, Ellis Spear of the Twentieth Maine wrote the story of the establishment of his regiment, entitled The Story of the Raising and Organization of a Regiment of Volunteers in 1862. While it is the story of the Twentieth Maine, it is one that is reflective of the process of raising most Civil War volunteer regiments. For the Twentieth Maine, their story began in the summer of 1862 when Lincoln called for 30,000 more troops. Maine needed to provide four regiments, resulting in the raising of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Maine regiments. The response of Maine men to this call was so overwhelming that they had enough men for a fifth regiment, the Twentieth Maine. Because of this, the Twentieth Maine was a kind of surplus regiment, made up of men from all over the state as opposed to just one region. Continue reading “From Farmers to Soldiers: Raising a Civil War Volunteer Regiment”
A sleeping soldier dreams of returning home to his wife and child. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress. Currier & Ives. New York.
I am in the middle of a retail store that is similar to a Christmas Tree Shop or Walmart, but this one has a nautical theme. While shopping with my mother I see her take something, put it in her purse, and start for the automatic sliding doors at the entrance. Like a good store patron, I naturally try to prevent my mother from shoplifting. I call out to her, “Mom!” She doesn’t turn around. “MOM!” All of the other moms in the store stare at me except for my own. “APRIL!” I yell so loud that I wake myself up to find my whole family stirring awake in our hotel room in Hershey, Pennsylvania and my half-asleep mother, April, voicing her unhappy opinion.
Now, before I go on, I must make clear that my mother is not a shoplifter. So, why in the world would I have a dream like this? Why do we, as humans, dream at all? The popular answer among scientists is that they don’t know. So how can something for which we have no explanation impact us individually and culturally so much? All throughout human history, dreams have left people both baffled and with answers. Albert Einstein discovered the principle of relativity, Paul McCartney composed the song “Yesterday,” and Abraham Lincoln might have predicted his own assassination according to Ward Hill Lamon, Lincoln’s friend and bodyguard, all while dreaming. Continue reading “Dream Weavers: Civil War Soldiers After Hours”
Snowball fights during the Civil War were a pretty big deal.
In fact, sports and fitness in general played a role in shaping ideals of honor, courage, and idolization among the Armies of the Potomac and Northern Virginia, and they proved to have an impact on the life of the individual soldier by distracting him (or possibly her) from the monotonous routine of camp life and establishing bonds of comradeship.
Boredom seems a triviality compared with the tragedy and hardships of the war’s famous battles, but it took its toll on the outlook and mental health of soldiers. The mundane repetition of everyday army life along with grief for lost friends and fear of impending violence caused depression, homesickness, loneliness, and anxiety and contributed to a general gloom among the armies. Soldiers felt captive in their own camps.
The remedy? Sports. A few men would organize a game of baseball and moods were instantly lifted, grievances temporarily forgotten. The physical exertion itself was beneficial to the soldiers’ stiff limbs and offered a refreshing change of pace and atmosphere compared to the doldrums of boredom and inactivity. Immersing oneself in the game allowed an escape from plaguing thoughts and an outlet for expression.
Baseball game between Union prisoners at Salisbury, North Carolina, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration via Wikimedia Commons
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.
