Pennsylvania’s safe

Posted on May 2, 2013 by SUMPTER
Gov. Andrew Curtin, PA (between 1855 and 1865; LOC: LC-DIG-cwpbh-01288)

Curtin calling (well, telegraphing)

150 years ago today, as the Battle of Chancellorsville continued, President Lincoln assuaged the fears of Pennsylvania Governor Curtin: the rebels weren’t threatening his state – no need to call out the militia.

From The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Volume Six:

TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR CURTIN.
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, April 28, 1863.

HON. A. O. CURTIN, Harrisburg, Penn.:

I do not think the people of Pennsylvania should be uneasy about an invasion. Doubtless a small force of the enemy is flourishing about in the northern part of Virginia, on the “skewhorn” principle, on purpose to divert us in another quarter. I believe it is nothing more. We think we have adequate force close after them.

A. LINCOLN. …

TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR CURTIN,
EXECUTIVE MANSION, MAY 1, 1863

GOVERNOR CURTIN, Harrisburg, Penn.:

The whole disposable force at Baltimore and else where in reach have already been sent after the enemy which alarms you. The worst thing the enemy could do for himself would be to weaken himself before Hooker, and therefore it is safe to believe he is not doing it; and the best thing he could do for himself would be to get us so scared as to bring part of Hooker’s force away, and that is just what he is trying to do. I will telegraph you in the morning about calling out the militia.
A. LINCOLN,

TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR CURTIN
EXECUTIVE MANSION, MAY 2, 1863

GOVERNOR CURTIN, Harrisburg, Penn.:

General Halleck tells me he has a despatch from General Schenck this morning, informing him that our forces have joined, and that the enemy menacing Pennsylvania will have to fight or run today. I hope I am not less anxious to do my duty to Pennsylvania than yourself, but I really do not yet see the justification for incurring the trouble and expense of calling out the militia. I shall keep watch, and try to do my duty.

A. LINCOLN P. S.—Our forces are exactly between the enemy and Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, after a quiet day during which some men in the NY 33rd Volunteers visited the exact spot where little George Washington felled his father’s cherry tree, the regiment crossed the Rappahannock below Federicksburg. From The story of the Thirty-third N.Y.S. vols.; or, two years campaigning in Virginia and Maryland (by David W. Judd (page 287-289)):

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Collision Expected

Posted on May 1, 2013 by SUMPTER
fredericksburg-map harper's Weekly 5-16-1863

“neighborhood of Chancellorsville”

From the Richmond Daily Dispatch May 2, 1863:

The news from the Rappahannock — the movements of the Hammy [Enemy] — a fight Hourly anticipated.

The news from the armies now confronting each other on the Rappahannock is highly important and it is more than probable that one of the severest conflicts of the whole war will take place to-day or to-morrow. The enemy, in very heavy force, have crossed, and are now on the south side of the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers. They were not disposed to again attempt to force their way to Richmond by assaulting our position on Marye’s Heights and along the line of the Messappuax, and have consequently sought crossings for the main body of their forces some seventeen to twenty miles above Fredericksburg, at Ely’s Ford and Germans. These points are on the Rapidan, a few miles above its junction with the north fork of the Rappahannock. The advices received by the train last evening represent that the advance of the enemy had reached a point within two miles of Spotsylvania Court House at noon yesterday–In view of this change in the movements of the enemy, it is probable that our whole front will be changed, and, instead of the general conflict taking place in front of Fredericksburg, or on the same ground of the battle of the 13th of December, it will doubtless be fought in the vicinity of the Court-House, or near the centra of the county.

A heavy artillery duel was fought on Thursday afternoon, near the mouth of Deep Run, but without any decisive result on either side.

Another report states that the enemy has also crossed a considerable body of troops at United States Ford, six miles above Fredericksburg, and that a collision was expected to occur in the neighborhood of Chancellorsville.

The map was published in the May 16, 1863 issue of Harper’s Weekly and can be viewed at Son of the South

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Something’s up

Posted on April 30, 2013 by SUMPTER

In Richmond the news from Fredericksburg was only a day late 150 years ago. By April 29th Federal forces had crossed the Rappahannock in the same vicinity that General Franklin’s Grand Division had crossed back in December, as part of General Burnside’s failed attempt to drive the rebels out of Fredricksburg.

Based on the following account, the plan of current Union commander, Joe Hooker, seemed to be working. He wanted to use part of his army to “hold those Confederates in place” in Fredericksburg while the rest of his army flanked the rebels by crossing the river northwest of town. The reporter in Fredericksburg seems to be only aware of the crossing to the south.

From the Richmond Daily Dispatch April 30, 1863:

Important from the Rappahannock.
the enemy Crossing in force!
fight at Deep Run.

The advices from the Rappahannock, received yesterday, leave no doubt as to the fact that the Yankee army has at last commenced a movement in the neighborhood of Fredericksburg. A gentlemen who left Hamilton’s Crossing yesterday morning. Informs us that the enemy, on Tuesday night, under cover of a dance [dense] fog, succeeded in laying down two of their p[o]nt[o]on bridges, over which they crossed a force, variously estimated at from 5,000 to 10.000. At the time of the crossing the 18th Georgia regiment were on picket at the mouth of Deep Run, and a brisk fight ensued, which lasted from daylight until 10 o’clock, at which time the Georgians were relieved by the 6th Louisiana regiment. Our picket force had fallen back from the river to the road running parallel with the Rappahannock.

A general fight is anticipated within the next few days, as it is believed that the movement is a general one.

In the fight yesterday morning, it is reported that there were two killed and some half drown wounded.

The mouth of Deep Run, at which this morning was effected, is about one and a half miles below Fredericksburg, and is the same point at which that portion of the enemy’s forces crossed that engaged the right wing of our army in the battle of the 13th of December. The land on this side in the immediate vicinity of the river is a level plain of nearly two miles in width, across which the enemy must advance to attack our position on the hills in the neighborhood of Hamilton’s Crossing. It was as they advanced over this plain in December that they suffered such terrible loss. On the opposites or Stafford side of the river the country is hilly, and affords admirable positions for the batteries of the enemy, under cover of which they have successfully thrown their forces over the river.

The VI corps under John Sedgwick was one the three corps operating below town in the vicinity of Hamilton’s Crossing. Part of the VI corps was the 33rd New York Infantry Regiment, whose two-year enlistment was scheduled to end on May 22nd.

According to The story of the Thirty-third N.Y.S. vols.; or, two years campaigning in Virginia and Maryland (by David W. Judd (page 280 and following)) the 33rd was called off picket duty on the afternoon of April 28th to join the rest of the corps down by the river:

The 33rd, as part of Howe’s Division crossed the Rappahannock on Saturday, May 2nd.

PONTOON BRIDGES ERECTED FOR GENERAL SEDGWICK'S CORPS TO CROSS.—SKETCHED BY MR. A. R. WAUD (Harper's Weekly, 5-16-1863)

pontoon bridges for General Sedgwick’s corps

Image by Alfred R. Waud in the May 16, 1863 issue of Harper’s Weekly at Son of the South

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He had a dream

Posted on April 29, 2013 by SUMPTER
Alexander Thomas Augusta

Alexander Thomas Augusta

From the Richmond Daily Dispatch April 29, 1863:

“Nigger” Surgeons.

–The recently appointed negro surgeon, Dr. A. S. Augusta, writes to the Washington Star that he holds the appointment of full regimental surgeon U. S. V. instead of assistant surgeon, as heretofore stated.

Alexander Thomas Augusta was born free in Norfolk in 1825. He was determined to become a doctor but was blocked at medical schools in the United States because of his race. He earned a medical degree from Trinity College at the University of Toronto in 1856. He returned to Baltimore in 1861.

Augusta went to Washington, D.C., wrote Abraham Lincoln offering his services as a surgeon and was given a Presidential commission in the Union Army in October 1862. On April 4, 1863, he received a major’s commission as surgeon for African-American troops. This made him the United States Army’s first African-American physician out of eight in the Union Army and its highest-ranking African-American officer at the time. Some whites disapproved of him having such a high rank and as such he was mobbed in Baltimore during May 1863 (where three people were arrested for assault) and in Washington for publicly wearing his officer’s uniform On October 2, 1863 he was commissioned Regimental Surgeon of the Seventh U.S. Colored Troops.

Dr. Augusta was the only African-American on the faculty of the medical school at Howard University when it opened in 1868. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, where “Augusta’s grave, set apart from the rows of white headstones, identifies him as “the commissioned surgeon of colored volunteers.”

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Coming Home

Posted on April 27, 2013 by SUMPTER

From a Seneca County, New York newspaper in April 1863:

The 33d regiment will be mustered out of service on Friday the 22d of May. The boys ought to have a magnificent reception upon their return home. The old 19th, now the 3d N.Y. Artillery, will be mustered out out at the same time.

A Southern correspondent said he thought the whole Army of the Potomac was going to leave. From the Richmond Daily Dispatch April 27, 1863:

From Fredericksburg.

[from our Own Correspondent.]

Fredericksburg, April 26, 1863.

The facts from Port Royal seem to be that on Thursday about a hundred Yankees creamed [?] over and destroyed the solue [?] with which some of our soldiers had been fishing and the boats, and burned five wagons carried off the mules, robbed several houses, and returned. We had only a few cavalrymen in the neighborhood. It is reported that a large force of Yankee infantry have marched through King George county, and their artillery and cavalry are seen in large numbers opposites. …

No news here. The sun and wind to day have dried the roads very much. We are quiet but expectant, hopeful and confident. My private opinion still is the Yankees are leaving.

Fredericksburgh, from near Lacy House. Taken during the battle of May 3, 1863 (by Andrew J. Russell, c.April, 1863; LOC: LC-DIG-ppmsca-07262)

33rd (pretty near) outta here (Fredericksburg, Va. from Union side of river, April 1863)

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TIK toc

Posted on April 26, 2013 by SUMPTER
Price level in the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Based on Lerner (1956), Journal of Political Economy.

rising prices

150 years ago this week the Confederate government revived an old idea in order to obtain new supplies for its armies in the field. On May 24, 1863

To combat spiraling inflation, the Confederate Congress levies a 10 percent “tax [in] kind” on [seemingly] all produce harvested throughout the South. This move is resented greatly by the agrarian sector, which is already subject to requisition by the Confederate commissary and quartermaster offices.[1]

An editorial from the Richmond Examiner on April 3, 1863 supports a tax-in-kind as a way to control the money supply. “Inflation of the currency is the source of the chief evils which now disturb us.” The government is forced to print hundreds of millions of dollars every year to buy supplies at relatively high prices for its huge armies. And maybe also for the populace to pay their taxes?

There is but a single remedy…which promises relief. It is to make a levy of taxes in kind.–This will at once take the Government out of the market as a purchaser of the heaviest part of its stores and supplies. Consequently, the issue of Treasury notes will be so much diminished, that the absorption caused by the Tax and Currency Bills will be greater than the quantity of new paper thrown on the markets.–The volume of the currency will be rapidly diminished to a manageable amount, and the relative values of gold and everything else restored to their usual state.

And the editorial points out that the new kind of tax wouldn’t require a new bureaucracy because the government was already impressing goods and labor for the war effort.

From the same article at Encyclopedia Virginia:

Enacted in April 1863, tax-in-kind operated similarly to the Impressment Act. Farmers were required to donate 10 percent of certain crops, such as corn, wheat, and sweet potatoes, to tax-in-kind collectors operating under the auspices of the War and Treasury departments. As with impressments, the collectors and farmers negotiated how to calculate 10 percent. Also as with impressments, fake agents stole crops and the government enforced the law haphazardly, causing some Confederate citizens to ask which was the worse scourge, the Union army or Confederate impressment and “TIK-men,” as the tax-in-kind agents were derisively called. Still, at least one scholar has estimated that tax-in-kind generated $62 million for the Confederacy between 1863 and 1865.

You can read the amended April 24, 1863 law at the University of North Carolina. The tax in kind was aimed at farmers, but there were many other taxes that effected large parts of the population, including a tax on salaries. Many professions and businesses were levied specific taxes. There were taxes on butchers and bakers, brewers and bankers, and on and on. While books and newspapers were exempt, bowling alleys, billiard rooms, and circuses were assessed taxes. Jugglers were charged $50 – the category “juggler” contained “other persons exhibiting shows” and “Every person who performs by slight of hand shall be regarded as a juggler under this act …” … pickpockets? … politicians?

J.T. Doyle [holding 2 burning juggling clubs (c1902; LOC: LC-USZ62-73888)

going for the juggler – $50, please (c.1902 photo)

  1. [1]Fredriksen, John C. Civil War Almanac. New York: Checkmark Books, 2008. Print. page 285.↩
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A young man’s fancy turns to …

Posted on April 25, 2013 by SUMPTER

Swordplay?

This photograph from April 1863 is titled “Falmouth, Virginia. A muss at headquarters, Army of the Potomac”

Falmouth, Virginia. A muss at headquarters, Army of the Potomac (by James F. Gibson, april 1863; LOC: LC-DIG-cwpb-00323)

En garde!

Alfred Tennyson’s poem “Locksley Hall” “narrates the emotions of a weary soldier come to his childhood home” and contains the following lines:

In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin’s breast
In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest
In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove
In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

But in the spring, as dirt roads start drying out, a general’s fancy turns to thoughts of battle.

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patriotic rags

Posted on April 24, 2013 by SUMPTER

and earn a good (Confederate) dollar

150 years ago this week a Richmond newspaper was offering top dollar for the material necessary for its publication.

From the Richmond Daily Dispatch April 22, 1863:

Rags! Rags!! Rags!!!

–The highest market price will be paid at this Office for all kinds of cotton and Linen Rags, in large or small quantities. Bring them in without delay.

And the Dispatch certainly tried to keep the home-front fired up for the war effort. It seems that it was irresistible to compare the Southern rebellion to the American Revolution. Who wouldn’t want fight a pampered despot?

From the Richmond Daily Dispatch April 23, 1863:

A Picture of Lincoln drawn from an old Gallery.

–Edmund Burke, while Great Britain was prosecuting the war against the American colonies, wrote the following to the Sheriffs of Bristol:

“The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending to save himself from injustice and oppression, is an object respectable to God and man. But I cannot conceive any existence under heaven (which in the depths of its wisdom tolerates all sorts of things,) that is more truly odious than an impotent, helpless creature, without civil wisdom or military skill; without a consciousness of any qualification for power; calling for battles which he is not to fight; contending for a violent dominion be can never exercise, and satisfied to be himself miserable in order to make others wretched.”

As the Newseum points out:

Before the 1880s, manufacturers made newspapers from cotton and linen rags boiled to a pulp, spread into a mold and dried between pieces of felt. These newspapers have a slightly thick texture and may feel rough to the touch. Due to the molding process, the edges of the paper are sometimes imperfect.

Depending on the purity of the rags, old newsprint usually appears white, cream or gray in color. There were times when cotton or linen materials were in short supply, and manufacturers printed on “necessity” paper such as wallpaper, cornhusks, lined notepaper or other suitable material.

Around 1880 wood pulp became the predominant material used to make newspapers.

President Abraham Lincoln posed with Union officers and soldiers during his visit to Antietam, Maryland, October 3, 1862 (by Alexander gardner, 1862; LOC: LC-USZ62-8118)

His Highness at Antietam

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Wily Yankee Propaganda?

Posted on April 23, 2013 by SUMPTER
Falmouth, Va. Aides de camp to Gen. Joseph Hooker: Capts. William L. Candler, Harry Russell, and Alexander Moore (by Timothy H. o'Sullivan, 1863 April; LOC: LC-DIG-cwpb-04042)

all dressed up and nowhere to go? – General Hooker’s aides de camp in April 1863

Here a Richmond paper tries to make sense of various prognostications coming out of the Northern press.

From the Richmond Daily Dispatch April 22, 1863:

The wait and Watch System.

Several Federal journals intimate that no active hostilities on their part need be expected this spring, but that the North will stand on the defensive till autumn. Various reasons are assigned for this important modification of the “short-sharp, and decisive” It is alleged that the two years men, embracing a large number of their most efficient soldiers, will soon be discharged, and that their army generally is not in a condition to the aggressive, whilst the Southern army, on the other hand was never in a more efficient state, both as regards discipline and numbers. It is further asserted that the raise [rains?] and bad roads of this season in the South forbid a spring campaign, whilst summer operations, they have learned by experience are not to be thought of. During the summer they can gather in and drill their new conscripts, and by autumn be prepared to take the field once more and crush the rebellion. In the meantime their great hope is that the South will suffer from want of food and be so financially strangulated that, when the hour of battle comes we shall not be able to stand up against the over whelming masses of the enemy. They profess, also, to believe that, rather than wants [waste?] the interval in inaction, we shall attack them in their strongholds, when they will have all the advantages of a defensive position, and we shall suffer as they have whenever they have been the assailants.

President Lincoln reviewing the Army of the Potomac on Monday, April 6, 1863 (by edwin Forbes, 1863 Apr. 6; LOC: LC-DIG-ppmsca-19523)

the best offense is a good defense? – President Lincoln reviews the Army of the Potomac in early April 1863

Whether a particle of confidence ought to be placed in these prognostications, we leave to those who can see through the murky waters of Yankee deception to the bottom, to decide. Our Government and our Generals understand too thoroughly the army [?], tortuous ways of Yankeedom, to be put off their guard. All this may be only a prelude to some sudden and desperate rush of the Federal armies at a vital point of the Confederacy. It is impossible for us to put faith in anything these people say. It seems improbable that, if they intended to remain inactive during the spring and summer, they would inform us of it. Their real object, therefore, may be to full [lull?] us into a dream of security, and spring upon us as we sleep. If, however, their armies are so disorganized and demoralized that they cannot push on till next fall, what becomes of the late emphatic declarations of the New York Tribunes, that if the rebels were not conquered in three months, the North might as well give up the contest; and the threat of the Herald, that unless the rebellion were crushed before fall, Lincoln and his Cabinet ought to be impeached? Can the North afford to wait five or six months, with an enormous debt rolling up mountain high every day, on the fragile hope that the South will be starved or whipped out next fall? What reason have they to calculate on the South being starved out? Even if our condition were now as close on the borders of famine as their journals represent, how do they know but the same beneficent Providence which has hither to go [so?] interposed wonderfully in our behalf will not crown the labors of our husbandmen with plenty, and give us abundant harvests? As to their congesting us by any other mode than starvation, we do not believe they themselves after the experience of the past have the slightest confidence in such an achievement. If they wait till fall they need not expect that the North will be the only party prepared for the conflict. The South will avail itself of every hour of the interval to multiply its means of defence, till every hillside becomes a [?], and every valley a valley of the shadow of death to the invaders.

The press did not like price speculation (below the fold), but it sure did a lot of its own kind.

But it was true that some two-year regiments in the Union were scheduled to be mustered out at the end of May.

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Where’s that draft?

Posted on April 22, 2013 by SUMPTER

Right on Time

According to this editorial Congress did a great job timing the implementation of the Enrollment Act because it takes time to set up a new bureaucracy. If there is an emergency in the meantime, the volunteer spirit in the North will come to the rescue.

From The New-York Times April 18 1863:

When Will the Draft Be Enforced ?

It seems to have been contemplated by the framers of the Conscription act of the late Congress that it w[o]uld not be possible to arrange all the details for putting it in operation before the 1st of July next. The 10th section of the act provides that the general enrollment of the militia for the purpose of drafting “shall only embrace those whose ages shall be, on the first day of July thereafter between twenty and forty-five years.” And the 11th section provides that “all persons thus enrolled shall be subject for two years after the first of July succeeding the enrollment, to be called into the military service of the United States, and to continue in service for three years or during the war.” It seems from this reading that persons liable to military duty under the Conscription act, cannot be called into the service previously to the “first of July.”

It appears from the Washington correspondence of an evening co[n]temporary, that this clause in the eleventh section of the act is considered by some an inadvertence, and a very unfortunate one, as causing an unnecessary delay in the raising of troops by conscription. But the fixing of the 1st of July for the beginning of liability to do military service was not an oversight. It was a matter of deliberate calculation, as the 10th section of the act clearly proves; for that section fixes the 1st of July as the date from which the years of age are to be reckoned that begin and limit the period of liability to military service. It is evident from sections 10 and 11, that the lawmakers meant to date the beginning of Conscript Service from July 1.

It is not at all clear to us that any needless delay in raising troops by draft will occur from the provision of the Conscript act in question. It is an enormous labor to enroll the militia of a great nation. It cannot be done in one month, nor in two. It is a month and a half since the act was passed, and yet, in all that time the War Department has not been able to fix upon suitable agents to execute the law in the various States. The district provost-marshals and enrolling boards are not yet appointed, though we learn that the list is nearly complete, and will be announced in a few days. It will certainly require a longer time for the Board of Enrol[l]ment in every district to number the people subject to military duty than has been consumed in their own selection and appointment. Our experience in this City, last Fall, where an enrollment commenced in September was not completed till late in November, teaches us what a cumbrous and dragging work it is. If the enrolling Boards are appointed, organized, and ready to begin their duties by the 1st of May, it will be as much as we expect. Give them only six weeks for the completion of their herculean labors, and we shall have the lists prepared for drafting not before the middle of June. Suppose the draft to take place instantly, the act allows the drafted men ten days before they are required to report for duty. In this time they may procure substitutes, or close up their business and prepare to take the field. It thus appears, that under the most energetic and expeditious execution of the act that is possible, it must necessarily be the last week of June before troops can be obtained under it. The fixing of the 1st day of July for the beginning of its operative power to put men in the field is, therefore, not a blunder, but a careful and successful calculation to make available every day of the duration of the act, for the national defence.

We do not anticipate any great emergency that will call for reinforcements of the armies in the field before the Conscript act can yield them. If there should, however, be a crisis demanding extraordinary efforts to meet the enemy, the volunteer spirit of the country would be equal to the emergency, as it has been time and again heretofore.

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