The Iron Brigade: A Military History / Edition 1 available in Hardcover
The Iron Brigade: A Military History / Edition 1
- ISBN-10:
- 0253341027
- ISBN-13:
- 9780253341020
- Pub. Date:
- 02/22/1994
- Publisher:
- Indiana University Press
- ISBN-10:
- 0253341027
- ISBN-13:
- 9780253341020
- Pub. Date:
- 02/22/1994
- Publisher:
- Indiana University Press
The Iron Brigade: A Military History / Edition 1
Hardcover
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$41.95Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780253341020 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Indiana University Press |
| Publication date: | 02/22/1994 |
| Edition description: | Indiana Univercity Press Edition |
| Pages: | 432 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Iron Brigade
A Military History
By Alan T. Nolan
Indiana University Press
Copyright © 1961 Alan T. NolanAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-253-34102-0
CHAPTER 1
A WINTER IN CAMP
"Time is a necessary element in the creation of armies...."
From General McClellan's Report
Brigadier General Rufus King collected his four scattered regiments during the first days of October at the Chain Bridge, east of the Potomac. On October 5th, in the first six of many miles the Wisconsin and Indiana men would travel together, the brigade marched from Washington across the Georgetown Aqueduct to Fort Tillinghast on Arlington Heights, Virginia. Near the home of Robert E. Lee, the brigade went into winter quarters with the army, to remain until March 10, 1862. The soldiers felled trees and constructed their own camp from the ground up, including officers' quarters, cookhouses, and stables. For themselves they erected small log cabins, roofed with canvas, with mud chimneys and sheet-iron stoves. As soon as these facilities were ready, there was time for the men to be trained in the manner of the day, in drill, target practice, and occasional picketing duty. It was also a time to get acquainted.
As of October 15, 1861, the Army of the Potomac was organized into divisions. King's Brigade was part of the division of General Irvin McDowell, the unsuccessful army commander at Bull Run. McDowell's Division also included the brigades of Brigadier Generals Erasmus Keyes and James S. Wadsworth. All of the regiments in Keyes' and Wadsworth's brigades were from New York. There were relatively few Western men in the armies of the East during any period of the war, and during the first year less than twenty Western infantry regiments were located in the Army of the Potomac. Dramatizing this sectional difference in typical fashion, one Westerner wrote home about the "cussed poor country" in the East: "I would not live here if i had the best farm in the country ... everything is so different from the west." Actually, the men from both sections of the North had more in common than they had differences between them. But the Western men, at least those born in the United States, represented a frontier spirit and pioneer experience and, as a whole, had a rural flavor, unlike the men from the cities of the seaboard states.
Of King's regiments, the Second Wisconsin was the only one that could boast of veteran status. The Nineteenth Indiana had seen some action and had lost five men during the Lewinsville affair, but this was insignificant compared to the concentrated and costly action of the Second Wisconsin at Bull Run. Although one of the Hoosiers in a newspaper letter prematurely claimed for the regiment the title of "Bloody Nineteenth," Lewinsville did not admit the Nineteenth to the ranks of the veterans. But all four regiments had other things in common. They were largely "country boys," from farms or very small towns, and engaged as civilians in agriculture or in the mechanical skills directly related to the farms. A small majority of the men in the regiments were native-born Americans. But the numbers of foreign born — especially Germans, Irish, and Scandinavians — were substantial enough to prevent anyone's feeling not at home. Although no precise data are available, it may be assumed that the estimates of Wisconsin's adjutant general were substantially accurate. He found that approximately 50 per cent of the Wisconsin volunteers were American born. The Irish and Norwegians — who were almost equal in strength — accounted for approximately 45 per cent of the men. The remainder were largely German, with a few Englishmen, Welshmen, and Canadians. The Nineteenth Indiana included fewer Scandinavians but made up for this with a correspondingly larger group of Germans and Irish. The Indiana regiment also included more Southern-born men, the states of the South having contributed a large share of the mid-nineteenth century Indiana immigration.
Like the men who have fought in other wars, the Civil War soldier did not ordinarily articulate his motives. Attitudes about slavery varied widely, and there was less of the true abolition influence in the West than in the East. Still, although slavery was not wrong in the eyes of some of King's men, to a majority, especially as the war progressed, the question of freedom seemed more and more to be involved, and the friendship of the Negroes came more and more to be appreciated. "May their hopes grow brighter and brighter to the perfect day/' wrote one Wisconsin soldier when telling of a Negro woman's saying that the Federal army was "God Almighty come to deliver his children." Another of the Badgers wrote crudely but feelingly of the death of a Negro who "was liked by the boys and treated by them more as a companion than a nigger." And a third man put it this way: "The contrabands are the only people we can depend upon. They tell us where the Secesh are — never lie to us — wish us God speed — and are of great use to us." For the soldiers it was difficult not to sympathize, at least, with an identifiable group of people who were on their side.
But the predominant motive among the soldiers was the maintenance of the national government. The recruitment pledges and slogans for King's regiments spoke entirely in these terms. The South was in rebellion against the "old Flag" and the national government with which the native-born Americans and the immigrants of the Northwest Territory identified themselves. The men enlisted to put down this rebellion. It was as simple as that. Some of the men may have gone beyond this — and beyond the question of slavery — to see a broad difference in cultures in the North and the South, with slavery as one symptom of the Southern culture. The Southern men in King's Brigade had the greatest reason to be aware of this difference. Southerners, like Solomon Meredith and Isaac May of the Nineteenth Indiana, were typically Southern whites who had no stake at all in a system of slave economy and planter politics. Meredith was a poor farmer and Isaac May was a cabinetmaker, competing in the South with slave cabinetmakers. In leaving the South these men presumably acted on the premise that there was nothing there for them. And in leaving the South, they also became interstate men, and therefore men with an identification with the national government.
Whatever their motives and sectional or national origins, King's men would fight hard enough when given the chance, and the general would have been reassured had he been able to anticipate the spirit that they would display. He should also have been reassured about the leadership the soldiers would receive from their field officers. Although only the youthful Colonel O'Connor of the Second Wisconsin was a professionally trained soldier, the Seventh's Colonel Robinson had been an officer during the Mexican War, and Colonel Cutler of the Sixth had at least some experience as a militia officer. In addition, Lieutenant Colonels Bachman of the Nineteenth and Fairchild of the Second and Major Allen of the Second had an interest in military affairs that predated the war, and some knowledge of military organization and discipline. In an army of wholly untrained civilians, even such slight military background counted for something. And what the field officers lacked in training and experience was certainly mitigated by their personal characteristics. All but two of them were men who had chosen to uproot themselves from their original communities and begin life again on the frontier. Half of them were men who had been elected to public office, an evidence before the days of mass public-relations techniques that they merited the respect of their contemporaries. Few brigades could claim two field officers who had traveled all the way to California and back, like Lieutenant Colonel Fairchild and Colonel Robinson. And there were not too many men like Colonel Cutler who had accepted employment to work alone in the Indian country. All in all, these were men with characters marked by ambition, courage, self-reliance, and a spirit of adventure, men accustomed to civilian occupations of trust, responsibility, and leadership. If General King thought about it at all, he must have known that once schooled in their new calling, such men would perform well in the business of war.
The differences among King's men and the differences between them and their Eastern colleagues were not apparent from the appearance of the troops. All of King's regiments had received the orthodox Federal blue uniforms in September. The Wisconsin soldiers were not pleased with the change, believing that their "good state clothing" was of better quality than the Federal issue. Indeed, some of the Badgers secretly kept their original overcoats, although all of the state-issue garb was supposed to have been sent to Washington. But except for the gray overcoats, gone at least were the days when Confederate gray was worn. And in spite of the preferences of the Wisconsinites, the men were well provided for. In a letter to his sister, Rufus Dawes requested her not to send any clothing to his men, since every man in his company had at least one cloth uniform coat, one overcoat, three pairs of pants, three to five pairs of stockings, two woolen shirts, one undershirt, and two pairs of shoes. According to Dawes, if these were piled onto a man along with two or three blankets, his musket and cartridge box, it was all that the soldier could do to carry the load. In spite of their ample clothing, the men were still poorly armed, and there was no standardization of their weapons. The Nineteenth Indiana had received Springfield rifled muskets, the common shoulder arm of the war, but the Second Wisconsin carried Austrian rifled muskets, the Sixth still had their Belgian rifled muskets, and the Seventh Wisconsin was equipped with a Springfield altered smoothbore. It was not until February, 1862, that the Wisconsin regiments received the new Springfields, a lighter and better gun than the variety of weapons previously available.
During the winter the strength of the four regiments varied from 996 in the Seventh Wisconsin to 821 in the Second Wisconsin. The Sixth Wisconsin claimed 960 and the Nineteenth Indiana 892. The bulk of the Second Wisconsin's loss was accounted for by its Bull Run casualties. The Second's strength report was also complicated by the detachment in December of its Company K, organized into heavy artillery. The replacement company, mustered in on December 20th, joined the regiment in camp in January, 1862, increasing the Dane and Milwaukee county representatives in the regiment. In February, 263 of the 3,669 men in the brigade were reported sick. Although measles and other trivial complaints were often at fault, fatalities were not uncommon, as evidenced by the death of almost sixty of the Hoosiers and an additional seventeen men of the Seventh Wisconsin. The death rate was exceeded only by the rate of discharge for illness. In the Sixth Wisconsin alone, eighty-five enlisted men were mustered out during the winter. Neither the hospitals, located in Washington away from the camp, nor the medical staffs were equal to the great and apparently unexpected task the winter presented. Goaded by the shortage of beds, but with what was surely a misplaced zeal, the surgeon of the Sixth Wisconsin wrote that "we have established a rule that profane words shall at once forfeit a place in the hospital." This professional standard presumably went unnoticed by the Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac, but that officer did demand the discharge of the Nineteenth Indiana's surgeon, citing the "incompetency ... manifested by the medical officers" of the regiment.
The military condition of the men was apparently superior to their physical condition. At least the state of discipline was satisfactory. General McDowell, with a touch of the age-old professional skepticism, reported to the assistant adjutant general of the army that the brigade was "well disciplined for volunteers." The general went on to say with reference to discipline that "the Nineteenth Indiana [was] the least so," without recording any basis for his qualification.
As the winter passed, the Army of the Potomac remained inactive. Except for Ball's Bluff in late October and Roanoke Island in February of 1862, the Eastern theater of the war was quiet. This was not so in the West where a man named Grant appeared at Belmont, Missouri, in November. The name was heard again in February of 1862, and Forts Henry and Donelson and "Unconditional Surrender" Grant entered the national vocabulary. Activity in the West was to flare up again in March, 1862, at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, and New Madrid in Missouri. But McClellan's men whiled away the winter in camp. "A military life in camp is the most monotonous in the world," wrote Dawes to his sister, in the oldest and newest of soldiers' laments. Of course, there were some interesting goings-on. Secretary Seward visited General King, his adjutant general during Seward's days as governor of New York, and Colonel Meredith, just re-elected as Clerk of Wayne County despite his absence in the field, was visited by Interior Secretary Smith, Meredith's Hoosier Republican colleague. Meredith also had an opportunity to talk with Governor Morton on the latter's winter tour of the Indiana encampments. And the Wisconsin soldiers were cheered by the presence of a party from home, including Governor Randall.
Additional amusement for the soldiers was provided by a controversy in the Seventh Wisconsin where Colonel Robinson had brought his family to Arlington Heights for the winter. In the Robinson household was a daughter, Leonora, who soon became the object of the attention of a lieutenant of the Seventh, twenty-five-year-old Hollon Richardson of Company A. From an objective view, Richardson seemed an eligible suitor. A native of Poland, Ohio, where he had been admitted to the bar in 1857, °f substantial construction contractor who had moved to Chippewa Falls in 1858. The youth also seemed to have good prospects of his own. In 1860, a comparative newcomer, he had been elected prosecuting attorney of Chippewa County. As the first man to enlist from that county, his zeal for the war was presumably unquestioned. But none of these things impressed Colonel Robinson, who strenuously objected to Richardson's interest in his daughter, and forbade the two to see each other. Armed with parental authority over his daughter and military jurisdiction over Richardson, the colonel may have felt more secure than most fathers in this age-old situation. But Robinson was defeated when Richardson and the girl eloped to Washington and were married. When the lieutenant returned to his regiment, the soldiers must have waited for the colonel's next move. No further record exists of the event, and there is nothing to show whether Robinson changed his mind or was simply resigned to an accomplished fact. But Lieutenant Richardson remained with the Seventh, and he and Colonel Robinson apparently worked together harmoniously, as their records were later to testify.
More significant than Hollon Richardson's love affair was the return to the brigade of prisoners exchanged during the winter. In January a group of men from the Second, captured at Bull Run, arrived from Richmond, an occasion that provoked a gala reunion. As evidence that the war was young, the returning men were well and "don't look so bad," as one of their comrades phrased it. In April, twenty-three more of the Second put in their appearance, and another celebration took place. Just previously, in March, a lieutenant of the Nineteenth Indiana, captured at Lewinsville, had been exchanged. Released after several months in a tobacco warehouse in Richmond, presumably Libby Prison or one of its predecessors, the poor man's homecoming was marred by the command problem his arrival precipitated. During the officer's absence, his place had been filled, with the result that either the ex-prisoner or his replacement was a supernumerary. The returned hero must have been chagrined when Colonel Meredith, pleading "fairness" to the replacement, solicited the governor to transfer the returnee.
Once their camp was erected, the routine for King's soldiers was not a strenuous one. Reveille sounded at 4.00 A.M. and battalion drill got under way at 4:30, followed by breakfast at seven o'clock. At 8:00 there was company drill for an hour and a half, and after supper at seven, a dress parade followed by tattoo at 9:30 P.M. During the free hours of the late morning and afternoon, the soldiers washed their clothes, maintained their guns and equipment, or were at leisure. In November, at Bailey's Cross Roads, the Army of the Potomac staged a grand review. Seventy thousand men paraded before President Lincoln, the members of the cabinet, General McClellan, and distinguished visitors. Again the band of the Sixth Wisconsin, described now by one of their comrades as "execrable" and "eternally playing the Village Quickstep," was disappointing. The mediocrity of the band was usually offset by the excellence of its drum major, "the finest adornment of the regiment," who "snuffs the air and spurns the ground like a war horse." But even the drum major had an off moment at the review. As the band passed the reviewing stand, Genera] McClellan doffed his hat in salute and the drum major dropped the baton. At a later review, Lord Lyons, the British ambassador, was in attendance, along with a number of officers of the British Brigade of Guards. The British delegation highly complimented the troops. They were "equal to the best of the English army in appearance and drill," which may have been more comforting to the Americans than to the visitors, some of whom were spoiling to embrace the Confederate cause.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Iron Brigade by Alan T. Nolan. Copyright © 1961 Alan T. Nolan. Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
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