Category Archives: Abraham Lincoln

Black History Month: The Authorization, Duties and Pay of “Under-Cooks”

One of several U.S. Civil War Pension documents that confirmed the Union Army enrollment of Hamilton Blanchard and Aaron Bullard, known later as Aaron French, as Cooks (a higher rank than under-cook) with Company D of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry (U.S. Civil War Pension Files, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain).

Following executive orders promulgated by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862 and legislation enacted that same year by the United States Congress to facilitate the enrollment by free and enslaved Black men with Union Army regiments, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry began processing the enlistments of four of the nine formerly enslaved men who would ultimately be entered onto the rosters of this history-making regiment.

Enrolled as “Negro Under-Cooks” while the regiment was stationed in Beaufort, South Carolina as part of the U.S. Department of the South and Tenth Army (X Corps), Bristor Gethers, Thomas Haywood, Abraham Jassum, and Edward Jassum ranged in age from sixteen to thirty-three.

Roughly two years later, officers from the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers then processed the enlistment paperwork for an additional five formerly enslaved men in Natchitoches, Louisiana in April 1864 while the 47th Pennsylvania was stationed there (as the only regiment from Pennsylvania to participate in the Union’s Red River Campaign across Louisiana). Hamilton Blanchard, Aaron French (who was known at that time as Aaron Bullard), James Bullard, John Bullard, and Samuel Jones ranged in age from sixteen to twenty-nine.

All but one of the nine would go on to complete their three-year terms of enlistment and be honorably mustered out in October 1865.

What Were Their Job Duties?

General Orders No. 323 (enlistment and pay of under-cooks of African descent), U.S. War Department and Office of the Adjutant General, September 28, 1863 (U.S. Library of Congress, public domain).

The duties and other pertinent details about the military tasks performed by Cooks and Under-Cooks of the Union Army were explained as follows by August Kautz in his 1864 manual, Customs of Service for Non-Commissioned Officers and Soldiers as Derived from Law and Regulations and Practised in the Army of the United States:

“108. DAILY DUTY.—A soldier is on daily duty when he is put upon some continuous duty that excuses him from the ordinary company duty but does not entitle him to additional pay from the government,—such as company cooks, tailors, clerks, standing orderlies, &c. These duties may be performed by soldiers selected on account of special capacity or merit, or detailed in turn, as is most convenient and conducive to the interest of the service.

109. The company cooks are one or more men in each company detailed to do the cooking for the entire company. This is the case usually in companies where it is not the custom to distribute the provisions to the men; for in this case the messes furnish their own cooks, and they are not excused from any duty except what is absolutely necessary and which their messmates can do for them.

110. The law authorizes the detailing of one cook to thirty men, or less; two cooks if there are more than thirty men in the company. It also allows to each cook two assistant cooks (colored), who are enlisted for the purpose, and are allowed ten dollars per month. (See Par. 269.)

111. The cooks are under the direction of the first sergeant or commissary-sergeant, who superintends the issue of provisions and directs the cooking for each day. Company cooks for the whole company are generally detailed in turn, and for periods of a week or ten days….

269. Cooks. — The law now allows the enlistment of four African under-cooks for each company of more than thirty men; if less, two are allowed. They receive ten dollars per month, three of which may be drawn in clothing, and one ration. (See Act March 3, 1863, section 10.) They are enlisted the same as other enlisted men, and their accounts are kept in the same way: they are entered on the company muster-rolls, at the foot of the list of privates. (G. 0. No. 323, 1863.)

270. These cooks are to be under the direction, of a head-cook, detailed from the soldiers alternately every ten days, when the company is of less than thirty men; when the company is of more than thirty men, two head-cooks are allowed. These are quite sufficient to cook the rations for a company; and, by system and method, the comfort and subsistence of a company may be greatly improved. The frequent changing of cooks under the old system worked badly for the comfort of the soldier and they were often treated to unwholesome food, in consequence of the inexperience of some of the men.

271. The object of changing the head-cooks every ten days, as required by section 9, Act March 3, 1863, is to teach all the men how to cook; but it will follow that the under-cooks, who are permanently on that duty will know more about it than the head-cooks. They will simply be held responsible that the cooking is properly performed.”

From Under-Cook to Private

Samuel Jones was an enslaved Black man who enlisted as an Under-Cook with Company C of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in Natchitoches, Louisiana on April 5, 1864. Official regimental muster rolls confirmed that he was a private at the time of his honorable discharge in 1865 (Registers of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-1865: 47th Regiment, in “Records of the Department of Military and Veterans’ Affairs,” Pennsylvania State Archives, public domain; click to enlarge).

As the officers and enlisted members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry interacted more frequently with the nine formerly enslaved men who had enlisted with their regiment, their trust in, and respect for, those nine men grew. Over time, several of the nine men were assigned to increasingly responsible duties, which ultimately led to their respective promotions to the ranks of cook and private—ranks that were documented on official muster rolls of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers.

About “Faces of the 47th: Freedmen of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry”

“Faces of the 47th: Freedmen of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry” is a special project of 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story, an educational program designed to teach children and adults about the history of the 47th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers, a Union Army regiment which served for nearly the entire duration of the American Civil War and became the only military unit from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to participate in the Union’s 1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana.

This important initiative is dedicated to researching, documenting and presenting the life stories of nine formerly enslaved Black men who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry during two of the regiment’s most eventful years of service to the nation—1862 and 1864.

Largely forgotten for more than a century after honorably completing their historic military service, these nine men have been repeatedly overlooked by mainstream historians over the years as potentially important subjects for research and have also been an ongoing source of mystery and frustration to their descendants because the majority of their military service records have still not been digitized by state and national archives.

The purpose of this initiative is to remedy those failures and create a lasting tribute to these nine remarkable men.

Learn more about their lives before, during and after the war by visiting “Freedmen of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.”

 

Sources:

  1. “Bounties to Volunteers.” Washington, D.C.: National Republican, January 5, 1864.
  2. “Comfort of the Soldier.” Washington, D.C.: Daily National Republican, February 23, 1863.
  3. “Garris, Presto” [sic, “Gethers, Bristor”], and “Jones, Samuel,” in “Registers of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-1865” (47th Regiment, Companies F and C), in “Records of the Department of Military and Veterans’ Affairs” (RG-19). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
  4. “General Orders No. 323” (enlistment and pay of “under-cooks of African descent”). Washington, D.C.: U.S. War Department and Adjutant General’s Office, September 28, 1863.
  5. “Important Diplomatic Circular by Secretary Seward: Review of Recent Military Events.” Washington, D.C.: The Evening Star, September 15, 1863.
  6. Kautz, August V. Customs of Service for Non-Commissioned Officers and Soldiers as Derived from Law and Regulations and Practised in the Army of the United States, pp. 41-42 (definitions and responsibilities of cooks and under-cooks), 68-69 (special enlistments: African Under-Cook), 84-88 (cooking responsibilities of hospital stewards), 90-9 (special enlistments: African Under-Cook, definition, enlistment and record-keeping for, and pay), and 93 (cooks and attendants in hospitals) . Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1864.
  7. “Military Notices” (Fourteenth United States Infantry). Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 14, 1864.
  8. “Official: Laws of the United States, Passed at the Third Session of the Thirty-seventh Congress.” Washington, D.C.: Daily National Republican, March 27, 1863.
  9. “Under Cooks of African Descent.” Washington, D.C.: National Republican, May 8, 1865.

 

Black History Month: Paving the Way for the Integration of the Union Army

Abraham Lincoln in New York City on Monday morning, February 27, 1860, several hours before he delivered his Cooper Union address (Matthew Brady, U.S. Library of Congress, public domain).

Acutely aware that Union military casualty figures had continued to climb as the American Civil War moved into and through its second year, President Abraham Lincoln and his senior military advisors soon realized that more drastic measures would need to be taken—and far more volunteer soldiers would need to be recruited if they were to ever begin healing their divided nation.

During the summer of 1862, President Lincoln kicked off that series of drastic measures by issuing his July 2 call for volunteers in which he pressed state governors of Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, Tennessee, and Wisconsin, as well as the president of the Military Board of Kentucky, to furnish an additional three hundred thousand men for military service. That action was followed by the passage, two weeks later, of the Militia Act of 1862 on July 17, through which the U.S. Congress empowered Lincoln to “make all necessary rules and regulations to provide for enrolling the militia,” and also authorized state and federal military units in Union-held territories to recruit and enroll enslaved and free Black men to fill labor-related jobs.

Starting on July 17, according to section twelve of that legislation, President Lincoln was “authorized to receive into the service of the United States, for the purpose of constructing intrenchments, or performing camp service or any other labor, or any military or naval service for which they may be found competent, persons of African descent.” In addition, the new law’s next section specified that “when any man or boy of African descent, who by the laws of any State shall owe service or labor to any person who, during the present rebellion, has levied war or has borne arms against the United States, or adhered to their enemies by giving them aid and comfort, shall render any such service as is provided for in this act, he, his mother and his wife and children, shall forever thereafter be free, any law, usage, or custom whatsoever to the contrary notwithstanding: Provided, That the mother, wife and children of such man or boy of African descent shall not be made free by the operation of this act except where such mother, wife or children owe service or labor to some person who, during the present rebellion, has borne arms against the United States or adhered to their enemies by giving them aid and comfort.”

The subsequent two sections of this act then spelled out how the newly enlisted Black soldiers would be compensated for their work, stating that “the expenses incurred to carry this act into effect shall be paid out of the general appropriation for the army and volunteers,” and that “all persons who have been or shall be hereafter enrolled in the service of the United States under this act shall receive the pay and rations now allowed by law to soldiers, according to their respective grades: Provided, That persons of African descent, who under this law shall be employed, shall receive ten dollars per month and one ration, three dollars of which monthly pay may be in clothing.”

Adding More Teeth to the Fight’s Bite

That same day (July 17 1862), the U.S. Congress then also passed the Confiscation Act of 1862, proclaiming that “every person who shall hereafter commit the crime of treason against the United States, and shall be adjudged guilty thereof, shall suffer death, and all his slaves, if any, shall be declared and made free.”

A subsequent push that same summer by President Lincoln and his senior military advisors to state leaders to furnish an additional three hundred thousand men—for a revised total of six hundred thousand new volunteer soldiers—resulted in the enlistment of more than half a million men—with an additional ninety thousand troops added to Union rosters through the implementation of a nationwide draft.

Freeing More Enslaved Men and Enabling Them to Enlist

Page one of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln, September 22, 1862 (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain; click to enlarge).

President Lincoln followed up his blistering recruitment drive of the summer of 1862 by adding even more support for his plan to increase federal troop strength by issuing his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. Giving a preview of what he intended to do in 1863 if Confederate States officials failed to cease hostilities and rejoin the Union, he began paving the road for Union regiments to rescue and recruit larger numbers of enslaved men:

By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation.

I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy thereof, do hereby proclaim and declare that hereafter, as heretofore, the war will be prosecuted for the object of practically restoring the constitutional relation between the United States, and each of the States, and the people thereof, in which States that relation is, or may be, suspended or disturbed.

That it is my purpose, upon the next meeting of Congress to again recommend the adoption of a practical measure tendering pecuniary aid to the free acceptance or rejection of all slave States, so called, the people whereof may not then be in rebellion against the United States and which States may then have voluntarily adopted, or thereafter may voluntarily adopt, immediate or gradual abolishment of slavery within their respective limits; and that the effort to colonize persons of African descent, with their consent, upon this continent, or elsewhere, with the previously obtained consent of the Governments existing there, will be continued.

That on the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

That the executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States, and part of States, if any, in which the people thereof respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof shall, on that day be, in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States, by members chosen thereto, at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States.

That attention is hereby called to an Act of Congress entitled ‘An Act to make an additional Article of War’ approved March 13, 1862, and which act is in the words and figure following:

‘Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That hereafter the following shall be promulgated as an additional article of war for the government of the army of the United States, and shall be obeyed and observed as such:

Article-All officers or persons in the military or naval service of the United States are prohibited from employing any of the forces under their respective commands for the purpose of returning fugitives from service or labor, who may have escaped from any persons to whom such service or labor is claimed to be due, and any officer who shall be found guilty by a court martial of violating this article shall be dismissed from the service.

Sec.2. And be it further enacted, That this act shall take effect from and after its passage.

Also to the ninth and tenth sections of an act entitled ‘An Act to suppress Insurrection, to punish Treason and Rebellion, to seize and confiscate property of rebels, and for other purposes,’ approved July 17, 1862, and which sections are in the words and figures following:

Sec.9. And be it further enacted, That all slaves of persons who shall hereafter be engaged in rebellion against the government of the United States, or who shall in any way give aid or comfort thereto, escaping from such persons and taking refuge within the lines of the army; and all slaves captured from such persons or deserted by them and coming under the control of the government of the United States; and all slaves of such persons found on (or) being within any place occupied by rebel forces and afterwards occupied by the forces of the United States, shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be forever free of their servitude and not again held as slaves.

Sec.10. And be it further enacted, That no slave escaping into any State, Territory, or the District of Columbia, from any other State, shall be delivered up, or in any way impeded or hindered of his liberty, except for crime, or some offence against the laws, unless the person claiming said fugitive shall first make oath that the person to whom the labor or service of such fugitive is alleged to be due is his lawful owner, and has not borne arms against the United States in the present rebellion, nor in any way given aid and comfort thereto; and no person engaged in the military or naval service of the United States shall, under any pretence whatever, assume to decide on the validity of the claim of any person to the service or labor of any other person, or surrender up any such person to the claimant, on pain of being dismissed from the service.’

And I do hereby enjoin upon and order all persons engaged in the military and naval service of the United States to observe, obey, and enforce, within their respective spheres of service, the act, and sections above recited.

And the executive will in due time recommend that all citizens of the United States who shall have remained loyal thereto throughout the rebellion, shall (upon the restoration of the constitutional relation between the United States, and their respective States, and people, if that relation shall have been suspended or disturbed) be compensated for all losses by acts of the United States, including the loss of slaves.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington this twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord, one thousand, eight hundred and sixty-two, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty seventh.

[Signed:] Abraham Lincoln
By the President

[Signed:] William H. Seward
Secretary of State

Page one of the Emancipation Proclamation issued by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, January 1, 1863 (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain; click to enlarge).

When those state officials failed to comply, President Lincoln officially issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863:

By the President of the United States of America:
A Proclamation.

Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:

‘That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be, in good faith, represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States.’

Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.

And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the eighty-seventh.

By the President: ABRAHAM LINCOLN

WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.

Adding More Teeth to the Fight’s Bite

This Civil War-era recruiting flyer documents the service of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry at Forts Taylor and Jefferson, Florida, under the leadership of Colonel Tilghman Good, as well as the premium and bounty added to standard pay to inspire more men to enlist (public domain).

Just over a month later, in February 1863, the United States Congress passed U.S. Senate Bill 511 (“An act for enrolling and calling out the national forces, and for other purposes”). Better known as the “Enrollment Act of 1863” or “Conscription Act,” it was signed into law by President Lincoln on 3 March 1863, and gave state officials throughout the north the ability to draft men to serve whenever those officials were unable to meet their federal troop quotas through volunteer recruitment drives. It also allowed draftees to recruit others to muster in and serve for them.

Whereas there now exist in the United States an insurrection and rebellion against the authority thereof, and it is, under the Constitution of the United States, the duty of the government to suppress insurrection and rebellion, to guarantee to each State a republican form of government, and to preserve the public tranquility; and whereas, for these high purposes, a military force is indispensable, to raise and support which all persons ought willingly to contribute; and whereas no service can be more praiseworthy and honorable than that which is rendered for the maintenance of the Constitution and Union, and the consequent preservation of free government: Therefore—

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That all able-bodied male citizens of the United States, and persons of foreign birth who shall have declared on oath their intention to become citizens under and in pursuance of the laws thereof, between the ages of twenty and forty-five years, except as hereinafter excepted, are hereby declared to constitute the national forces, and shall be liable to perform military duty in the service of the United States when called out by the President for that purpose.

SEC 2. And be it further enacted, That the following persons be, and they are hereby, excepted and exempt from the provisions of this act, and shall not be liable to military duty under the same, to wit: Such as are rejected as physically or mentally unfit for the service; also, First the Vice-President of the United States, the judges of the various courts of the United States, the heads of the various executive departments of the government, and the governors of the several States. Second, the only son liable to military duty of a widow dependent upon his labor for support. Third, the only son of aged or infirm parent or parents dependent upon his labor for support. Fourth, where there are two or more sons of aged or infirm parents subject to draft, the father, or, if he be dead, the mother, may elect which son shall be exempt. Fifth, the only brother of children not twelve years old, having neither father nor mother dependent upon his labor for support. Sixth, the father of motherless children under twelve years of age dependent upon his labor for support. Seventh, where there are a father and sons in the same family and household, and two of them are in the military service of the United States as non-commissioned officers, musicians, or privates, the residue of such family and household, not exceeding two, shall be exempt. And no persons but such as are herein excepted shall be exempt: Provided, however, That no person who has been convicted of any felony shall be enrolled or permitted to serve in said forces.

SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That the national forces of the United States not now in the military service, enrolled under this act, shall be divided into two classes: the first of which shall comprise all persons subject to do military duty between the ages of twenty and thirty-five years, and all unmarried persons subject to do military duty above the age of thirty-five and under the age of forty-five; the second class shall comprise all other persons subject to do military duty, and they shall not, in any district, be called into the service of the United States until those of the first class hall have been called.

SEC. 4. And be it further enacted, That, for greater convenience in enrolling, calling out, and organizing the national forces, and for the arrest of deserters and spies of the enemy, the United States shall constitute one or more, as the President shall direct, and each congressional district of the respective states, as fixed by a law of the state next preceding the enrolment, shall constitute one: Provided, That in states which have not by their laws been divided into two or more congressional districts, the President of the United States shall divide the same into so many enrolment districts as he may deem fit and convenient.

SEC 8. And be it further enacted, That in each of said districts there shall be a board of enrolment, to be composed of the provost-marshal, as president, and two other persons, to be appointed by the President of the United States, one of whom shall be a licensed and practising physician and surgeon.

SEC. 10. And be it further enacted, That the enrolment of each class shall be made separately, and shall only embrace those whose ages shall be on the first day of July thereafter between twenty and forty-five years.

SEC. 11. And be it further enacted, That all persons thus enrolled shall be subject, for two years after the first day of July succeeding the enrolment, to be called into the military service of the United States, and to continue in service during the present rebellion, not, however, exceeding the term of three years; and when called into service shall be placed on the same footing, in all respects, as volunteers for three years, or during the war, including advance pay and bounty as now provided by law.

SEC. 12. And be it further enacted, That whenever it may be necessary to call out the national forces for military service, the President is hereby authorized to assign to each district the number of men to be furnished by said district; and thereupon the enrolling board shall, under the direction of the President, make a draft of the required number, and fifty per cent, in addition, and shall make an exact and complete roll of the names of the person so drawn, and of the order in which they are drawn, so that the first drawn may stand first upon the said roll and the second may stand second, and so on; and the persons so drawn shall be notified of the same within ten days thereafter, by a written or printed notice, to be served personally or by leaving a copy at the last place of residence, requiring them to appear at a designated rendezvous to report for duty. In assigning to the districts the number of men to be furnished therefrom, the President shall take into consideration the number of volunteers and militia furnished by and from the several states in which said districts are situated, and the period of their service since the commencement of the present rebellion, and shall so make said assignment as to equalize the numbers among the districts of the several states, considering and allowing for the numbers already furnished as aforesaid and the time of their service.

SEC. 13. And be it further enacted, That any person drafted and notified to appear as aforesaid, may, on or before the day fixed for his appearance, furnish an acceptable substitute to take his place in the draft; or he may pay to such person as the Secretary of War may authorize to receive it, such sum, not exceeding three hundred dollars, as the Secretary may determine, for the procuration of such substitute; which sum shall be fixed at a uniform rate by a general order made at the time of ordering a draft for any state or territory; and thereupon such person so furnishing the substitute, or paying the money, shall be discharged from further liability under that draft. And any person failing to report after due service of notice, as herein prescribed, without furnishing a substitute, or paying the required sum therefor, shall be deemed a deserter, and shall be arrested by the provost-marshal and sent to the nearest military post for trial by court-martial, unless, upon proper showing that he is not liable to do military duty, the board of enrolment shall relive him from the draft.

SEC. 16. And be it further enacted, That as soon as the required number of able-bodied men liable to do military duty shall be obtained from the list of those drafted, the remainder shall be discharged; and all drafted persons reporting at the place of rendezvous shall be allowed travelling pay from their places of residence; and all persons discharged at the place of rendezvous shall be allowed travelling pay to their places of residence; and all expenses connected with the enrolment and draft, including subsistence while at the rendezvous, shall be paid form the appropriation for enrolling and drafting, under such regulations as the President of the United States shall prescribe; and all expenses connected with the arrest and return of deserters to their regiments, or such other duties as the provost-marshal shall be called upon to perform, shall be paid from the appropriation for arresting deserters, under such regulations as the President of the United States shall prescribe: Provided, The provost-marshals shall in no case receive commutation for transportation or for fuel and quarters, but only for forage, when not furnished by the government, together with actual expenses of postage, stationery, and clerk hire authorized by the provost-marshal-general.

SEC. 17. And be it further enacted, That any person enrolled and drafted according to the provisions of this act who shall furnish an acceptable substitute, shall thereupon receive from the board of enrolment a certificate of discharge from such draft, which shall exempt him from military duty during the time for which he was drafted; and such substitute shall be entitled to the same pay and allowances provided by law as if he had been originally drafted into the service of the United States.

SEC. 18. And be it further enacted, That such of the volunteers and militia now in the service of the United States as may reenlist to serve one year, unless sooner discharged, after the expiration of their present term of service, shall be entitled to a bounty of fifty dollars, one half of which to be paid upon such reenlistment, and the balance at the expiration of the term of reenlistment; and such as may reenlist to serve for two years, unless sooner discharged, after the expiration of their present term of enlistment, shall receive, upon such reenlistment, twenty-five dollars of the one hundred dollars bounty for enlistment provided by the fifth section of the act approved twenty-second of July, eighteen hundred and sixty-one, entitled “An act to authorize the employment of volunteers to aid in enforcing the laws and protecting public property.”

SEC. 25. And be it further enacted, That if any person shall resist any draft of men enrolled under this act into the service of the United States, or shall counsel or aid any person to resist any such draft; or shall counsel or aid any person to resist any such draft; or shall assault or obstruct any officer in making such draft, or in the performance of any service in relation thereto; or shall counsel any person to assault or obstruct any such officer, or shall counsel any drafted men not to appear at the place of rendezvous, or wilfully dissuade them from the performance of military duty as required by law, such person shall be subject to summary arrest by the provost-marshal, and shall be forthwith delivered to the civil authorities, and upon conviction thereof, be punished by a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding two years, or by both of said punishments.

SEC. 33. And be it further enacted, That the President of the United States is hereby authorized and empowered, during the present rebellion, to call forth the national forces, by draft, in the manner provided for in this act.

Those combined actions by President Lincoln and the U.S. Congress enabled the officers of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry to enroll the first four of nine formerly enslaved men in their regiment in early October 1862 while it was stationed in Beaufort, South Carolina—and then enabled the regiment’s officers to enroll five more formerly enslaved men in early April 1864 while the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were stationed in Natchitoches, Louisiana.

Initially assigned the rank of “Under-Cook,” and entered on regimental muster rolls below the names of the men who had enrolled at the rank of private, several of these nine formerly enslaved men were later awarded the rank of private, according to subsequent regimental records. After completing their respective terms of enlistment, all but one were honorably discharged during the fall of 1865 with several also being awarded U.S. Civil War Pensions in later life. Their life stories are now being documented on the website, “Faces of the 47th: Freedmen of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.”

Next: Black History Month: The Authorization, Duties and Pay of “Under-cooks”

 

Sources:

  1. “An Act for enrolling and calling out the national Forces, and for other Purposes,” Congressional Record. 37th Cong. 3d. Sess. Ch. 74, 75. 1863. March 3, 1863.” New Haven, Connecticut: Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University, retrieved online February 1, 2024.
  2. “Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863,” in “Presidential Proclamations, 1791-1991” (Record Group 11: General Records of the United States Government). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
  3. “Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, September 22, 1862,” in “Presidential Proclamation 93” (Record Group 11, vault, box 2: General Records of the U.S. Government). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
  4. “The Conscription Act.; Judge Cadwallader’s Opinion Establishing Its Constitutionality.” New York, New York: The New York Times, September 13, 1863.
  5. “The Law of the Draft.; Important Circulars Issued by the Provost-Marshal General. No Escape After a Name is Enrolled. Penalties of a Failure to Respond The Treatment of Deserters. The Question of Exemptions.” New York, New York: The New York Times, July 19, 1863.

 

 

Research Update: Additional New Details Learned About Bristor Gethers, One of the Nine Formerly Enslaved Men Who Enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers

Page one of the U.S. Army’s Civil War enlistment paperwork for Bristor Gethers (mistakenly listed as “Presto Garris”), 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, Company F, October 5, 1862 (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain; click to enlarge).

Fleeing the brutal experience of chattel slavery in Georgetown County, South Carolina, a thirty-three-year-old Black man was willing to enlist for military service in the fall of 1862 as an “undercook”—a designation within the United States Army that was first authorized by the U.S. War Department on September 28, 1863—in order to ensure his freedom in America’s Deep South during the American Civil War.

Arriving at a federal military recruiting depot in Union Army-occupied Beaufort, South Carolina, that man—Bristor Gethers—was certified as fit for duty by Dr. William Reiber, an assistant surgeon with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, and was then accepted into that regiment on October 5, 1862 by Captain Henry Samuel Harte, a German immigrant who had been commissioned as the commanding officer of that regiment’s F Company.

The reason that officers of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were able to enroll Bristor Gethers, along with three additional formerly enslaved men that fall (roughly three months before U.S. President Abraham Lincoln officially issued the nation’s Emancipation Proclamation), was because the U.S. Congress had previously passed the Militia Act of 1862 on July 17, 1862, which authorized state and federal military units in Union-held territories to recruit and enroll enslaved and free Black men to fill labor-related jobs.

According to section twelve of that legislation, starting on that date, President Lincoln was “authorized to receive into the service of the United States, for the purpose of constructing intrenchments, or performing camp service or any other labor, or any military or naval service for which they may be found competent, persons of African descent, and such persons shall be enrolled and organized under such regulations, not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws, as the President may prescribe” while the next three sections specified the following additional details of that military service:

SEC. 13. And be it further enacted, That when any man or boy of African descent, who by the laws of any State shall owe service or labor to any person who, during the present rebellion, has levied war or has borne arms against the United States, or adhered to their enemies by giving them aid and comfort, shall render any such service as is provided for in this act, he, his mother and his wife and children, shall forever thereafter be free, any law, usage, or custom whatsoever to the contrary notwithstanding: Provided, That the mother, wife and children of such man or boy of African descent shall not be made free by the operation of this act except where such mother, wife or children owe service or labor to some person who, during the present rebellion, has borne arms against the United States or adhered to their enemies by giving them aid and comfort.

SEC. 14. And be it further enacted, That the expenses incurred to carry this act into effect shall be paid out of the general appropriation for the army and volunteers.

SEC. 15. And be it further enacted, That all persons who have been or shall be hereafter enrolled in the service of the United States under this act shall receive the pay and rations now allowed by law to soldiers, according to their respective grades: Provided, That persons of African descent, who under this law shall be employed, shall receive ten dollars per month and one ration, three dollars of which monthly pay may be in clothing.

Seeking to add more teeth to its anti-slavery legislation, the U.S. Congress then also passed the Confiscation Act of 1862 that same day, proclaiming that “every person who shall hereafter commit the crime of treason against the United States, and shall be adjudged guilty thereof, shall suffer death, and all his slaves, if any, shall be declared and made free.”

General Orders No. 323 (enlistment and pay of undercooks of African descent), U.S. War Department and Office of the Adjutant General, September 28, 1863 (U.S. Library of Congress, public domain; click to enlarge).

By taking that important step toward securing what he hoped would be permanent freedom from the plantation enslavement he had endured in South Carolina for more than three decades, Bristor Gethers was, in reality, trading one form of backbreaking labor (slavery) for another that was only marginally better because he was entering military life as an “undercook”—a designation that placed him on the very bottom of the 47th Pennsylvania’s military rosters—beneath the names of soldiers who were listed at the rank of private or drummer boy.

His status clearly improved enough over time, though, that he was willing to stay with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry for nearly the entire duration of its service to the nation. Traveling with the 47th to Florida, where the regiment was stationed on garrison duty at Forts Taylor and Jefferson from late December 1862 through early February 1864, he likely participated side by side with the regiment’s white soldiers as they felled trees, built new roads and engaged in other similar tasks designed to strengthen the fortifications of those federal installations. It was during this same time that he would have learned from his commanding officer, Captain Harte, that President Abraham Lincoln had officially issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 and that the U.S. War Department and Adjutant General’s Office had issued General Orders No. 323 on September 28th of that same year, which authorized all Union Army units “to cause to be enlisted for each cook [in each Union Army regiment] two under-cooks of African descent, who shall receive for their full compensation ten dollars per month and one ration per day” (three dollars of which could be issued to undercooks “in clothing,” rather than money).

Bristor Gethers was listed as a private on the final version of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s “Registers of Volunteers, 1861-1865” for Company F of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry (Pennsylvania State Archives, public domain; click to enlarge and scroll down).

Promoted to the rank of Cook by the spring of 1863, according to regimental muster rolls, his duties were also likely expanded to include the job of caring for the regiment’s combat casualties by the spring and fall of 1864, when the 47th Pennsylvania was engaged in the Union’s 1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana and the 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign across Virginia. In addition to rescuing and carrying wounded men from multiple fields of battle under fire as a stretcher bearer during this time, as many other undercooks in the Union Army were ordered to do, he may very well also have helped to dig the graves for his 47th Pennsylvania comrades who had been killed in action.

Apparently so well thought of by his superior officers, according to the regiment’s final muster-out ledgers, Bristor Gethers was ultimately accorded the rank of private—a hard-won title that, on paper in the present day, may seem as if it were a minor achievement.

It wasn’t. It was, in reality, historic.

About “Faces of the 47th: Freedmen of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry”

“Faces of the 47th: Freedmen of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry” is a special project of 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story, an educational program designed to teach children and adults about the history of the 47th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers, a Union Army regiment which served for nearly the entire duration of the American Civil War and became the only military unit from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to participate in the Union’s 1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana.

This important initiative is dedicated to researching, documenting and presenting the life stories of nine formerly enslaved Black men who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry during two of the regiment’s most eventful years of service to the nation—1862 and 1864. Largely forgotten for more than a century after honorably completing their historic military service, these nine men have been repeatedly overlooked by mainstream historians over the years as potentially important subjects for research and have also been an ongoing source of mystery and frustration to their descendants because the majority of their military service records have still not been digitized by state and national archives.

To learn more about the life of Bristor Gethers before, during and after the war, and to view his U.S. Civil War military and pension records, visit his profile on “Freedmen of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.”

 

Sources:

  1. Berlin, Ira, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland. Freedom’s Soldiers: the Black Military Experience in the Civil War. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
  2. Blight, David W. Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.
  3. Foner, Eric. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. New York, New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.
  4. “Garris, Presto” [sic, “Gethers, Bristor”], in Civil War Veterans’ Card File, 1861-1866. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
  5. “Garris, Presto” [sic, “Gethers, Bristor”], in “Registers of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-1865” (47th Regiment, Company F), in “Records of the Department of Military and Veterans’ Affairs” (RG-19). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
  6. “Garris, Presto” [sic, “Gethers, Bristor”], in U.S. Civil War Compiled Military Service Records, 1862-1865. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
  7. “Garris, Presto” [sic, “Gethers, Bristor”], in U.S. Civil War General Pension Index (veteran’s pension application no.: 773063, certificate no.: 936435, filed from South Carolina, February 1, 1890; widow’s pension application no.: 598937, certificate no.: 447893, filed from South Carolina, July 27, 1894). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
  8. “Garris, Presto” [sic, “Gethers, Bristor”], in U.S. Civil War Muster Rolls (47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, Company F), 1862-1865. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
  9. McPherson, James M. The Negro’s Civil War: How American Blacks Felt and Acted During the War for the Union. New York, New York: Ballantine Books, 1991.
  10. Oakes, James. The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics. New York, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2007.
  11. Smith, John David. Black Soldiers in Blue: African American Troops in the Civil War Era. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina, 2002.
  12. The Militia Act of 1862, in U.S. Statutes at Large, Treaties, and Proclamations of the United States of America, vol. 12, pp. 597-600: Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Company, 1863.
  13. “The Confiscation Act.” New York, New York: The New York Times, July 15, 1862.
  14. “The Confiscation Acts of 1861 and 1862.” Washington, D.C.: United States Senate, retrieved online January 14, 2024.

 

 

 

Attempts to End Chattel Slavery Across America: President Abraham Lincoln Issues the Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863)

President Abraham Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 (W.E. Winner, painter, J. Serz, engraver, circa 1864; public domain, U.S. Library of Congress).

“I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.”

—President Abraham Lincoln, “Emancipation Proclamation,” January 1, 1863

 

With those words, President Abraham Lincoln and the United States of America took another step forward in the nation’s long process of ending the brutal practice of chattel slavery in America. Issued on January 1, 1863, “the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways,” according to historians at the U.S. National Archives. “It applied only to states that had seceded from the United States, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy (the Southern secessionist states) that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union (United States) military victory.”

Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation, it captured the hearts and imagination of millions of Americans and fundamentally transformed the character of the war. After January 1, 1863, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. Moreover, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.

From the first days of the Civil War, slaves had acted to secure their own liberty. The Emancipation Proclamation confirmed their insistence that the war for the Union must become a war for freedom. It added moral force to the Union cause and strengthened the Union both militarily and politically. As a milestone along the road to slavery’s final destruction, the Emancipation Proclamation has assumed a place among the great documents of human freedom.

By the time that President Lincoln had issued this proclamation, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry had already become an integrated regiment, having enrolled four formerly enslaved Black men in October and November 1862 while the regiment was assigned to occupation duties with the United States Army’s Tenth Corps (X Corps) in Beaufort, South Carolina—a process the regiment would continue during its tenure as the only regiment from Pennsylvania to participate in the Union’s 1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana—an integration process that was supported by President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.

Page one of the Emancipation Proclamation issued by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, January 1, 1863 (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain; click to enlarge).

The Full Text of the Emancipation Proclamation

January 1, 1863
By the President of the United States of America:
A Proclamation.

Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:

That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

‘That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be, in good faith, represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States.’

Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.

And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the eighty-seventh.

By the President: ABRAHAM LINCOLN

WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.

 

 

Sources:

  1. “Establishing Slavery in the Lowcountry,” in “African Passages, Lowcountry Adaptations.” Charleston, South Carolina: Lowcountry Digital History Initiative, retrieved online January 1, 2024.
  2. “Franklin, John Hope. “The Emancipation Proclamation: An Act of Justice,” in Prologue Magazine, Summer 1993, vol. 25, no. 2. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
  3. Snyder, Laurie. “Freedmen from South Carolina,” in “Freedmen of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.” 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story, 2023.
  4. “The Emancipation Proclamation.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, May 5, 2017.
  5. “Transcript of the Proclamation” (transcription of the Emancipation Proclamation).” Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, May 5, 2017.

 

 

Sheridan’s 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign: Camp Fairview, Charlestown, West Virginia (December 20, 1864 – early April 1865)

Charlestown West Virginia, circa 1863 (public domain).

Encamped in early December 1864 with the United States Army of the Shenandoah at its winter quarters at Camp Russell, which was located just west of Stephens City (now Newtown) and south of Winchester, Virginia, the members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were learning that their stay at this Union Army complex was destined to be shorter than they had hoped. Ordered to prepare for yet another march, they were informed by their superiors that they were being reassigned yet again—this time to help fulfill the directive of Major-General Philip H. Sheridan that the Army of the Shenandoah search out and eliminate the ongoing threat posed by Confederate States Army guerrilla soldiers who had been attacking federal troops, railroad systems and supply lines throughout Virginia and West Virginia.

So, after packing up and saying goodbye to the new friends they’d made at Camp Russell, they began a new, thirty-mile march, five days before Christmas. Trudging north during a driving snowstorm on December 20, 1864, they finally reached Charlestown, West Virginia, where they quickly established their latest “new home” at Camp Fairview, which was situated roughly two miles outside of the village.

Per an 1870 edition of The Lehigh Register, while marching for Charlestown, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers made their way through Winchester and followed the Charlestown and Winchester Railroad line “until two o’clock the following morning” when they were forced to sleep on their arms “until daylight, the guide having lost his way.”

Initially using this camp as the regiment’s winter quarters, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were soon “on constant active duty, guarding the railroad and constructing works for defense against the incursions of guerrillas. The regiment participated in a number of reconnoissances [sic] and skirmishes during the winter”—as the old year of 1864 became the New Year of 1865.

More specifically, by 1865, according to historians at the Pennsylvania State Archives, who had uncovered details about the 47th Pennsylvania’s time at Camp Fairview by reading the diaries of Jeremiah Siders of Company H, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers “were employed building blockhouses at all the railroad ‘posts’ (meaning loading stations).”

A Chaplain Expresses His Thoughts on the Ongoing War

Rev. William DeWitt Clinton Rodrock, chaplain, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas, Florida, 1863 (courtesy of Robert Champlin, used with permission).

On New Year’s Eve in 1864, the Rev. William DeWitt Clinton Rodrock, the regimental chaplain of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, penned the following words in a report to his superiors:

Camp, 47th Reg. Pa. Vet. Vol’s
Near Charlestown Va, Dec. 31st 1864

Brig. Gen’l L. Thomas,
Adj. Gen’l, U.S. Army

Sir.

I respectfully, beg leave to state that absence from the Reg. accounts for my failing to report for the previous month.

And in submitting my report for the present month it affords me great pleasure to state that the condition and morale of the Reg. is in every respect encouraging.

Of the large number of wounded in the terrible battle of Cedar Creek, Oct. 19th/64, comparatively few have died, probably fourteen, or even a less number will cover the entire loss, whilst nearly all the surviving ones, will be able to join our ranks.

No deaths have occurred in the Reg during the month, whilst few are sick in Hospital, and the health generally is good.

For some time past, the Reg. had been deficient in its quota of officers, but this deficiency is now being happily filled by suitable promotions from the ranks.

In the aggregate it now numbers 882 men. Of which 24 are officers.

In a moral and religious point of view, there is still a large margin for improvement and it is my earnest endeavor to devote all proper and available means for the spiritual welfare of the command.

Under its new organization and in the fourth year of its history, our Reg. has an encouraging future before it.

In conclusion, I may yet say that the review of our National life during the year that is about being numbered with the past, affords rare promise for the future. At no period in the history of our great contest for freedom and Unity has the prospect of returning peace, through honorable conflict, been so promising.

The efforts, the sacrifices, the patience of the loyal states and People are crowned, at last, with triumphs worthy of the holy cause of liberty.

Yet a little while, and we shall rejoice in a peace based on the everlasting foundations of Religion, Humanity, Nationality, and freedom.

For this defeat of traitors at home as well as of Rebels in arms and their sympathizers abroad, for this expression of stern and resolute purpose, for this unshrinking determination to make the last needed sacrifice, how can we be sufficiently grateful?

May the God of our fathers still smile upon us.

I have the honor, Gen’l, to remain,
Very Respectfully, Your Obed’t Serv’nt

W.D. C. Rodrock, Chap., 47th Reg. P.V.V.
2nd Brig. 1st Div. 19th A.C.

* Note: Chaplain Rodrock’s December 31, 1864 report to superiors had noticeable errors, including his significant underestimation of his regiment’s casualty figures during Sheridan’s 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign. During the Battle of Cedar Creek alone, more than one hundred and seventy-four members of the 47th Pennsylvania were declared killed, wounded, captured, or missing (forty killed in action, ninety-nine wounded in action, fifteen of whom later died, twenty-five captured, ten of whom later died while still being held as POWs or shortly after their release by CSA troops, nine missing, one unresolved). While he may not yet have had full casualty figures by the time he penned the report above, he would certainly have been able to at least obtain accurate figures regarding the number of men who had been killed and mortally wounded.

Page one of a report written by the Rev. William DeWitt Clinton Rodrock, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Regimental Chaplain, from Camp Fairview, West Virginia to his superiors, January 31, 1865 (U.S. Army, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain).

Exactly one month later, Rev. Rodrock was putting the final touches on his latest report:

Camp Fairview.
Two miles from Charlestown, Va
January 31st, 1865

Brig. Gen’l L. Thomas
Adj. Gen’l, U.S. Army

Sir.

I have the honor respectfully, to submit the following report for the present month.

Although God is not in men’s thoughts; his law being violated with impunity and his authority contemned “at will”; yet as a nation, our God is the Lord. The mind rest with pleasure on the abounding proof of this great fact. The history of the past, how full of it!

From the first planting of our Fathers on this soil, onward to this day, the true God has been claimed as ours. The foundations of our government were laid in the full and firm apprehension and acknowledgment of this fact. There is one scene recorded in our history which more than all others prove this; we have it commemorated in the engraving of the First Prayer in Congress.

There were the sages and patriots of our land – the representations of the whole country. They had reached a most critical point in their deliberations. They felt the need of higher wisdom than their own. They call in the minister of God, the servant of Jesus Christ; and there and then, in most affecting, service, our country – our whole country is laid at the foot of the Divine throne.

If ever there was heartfelt acknowledgment of a living and true God, and most hearty and sincere invocation of his favor, it was there. For themselves, for their living countrymen, for those to come after them, they cast their all on God, and bound themselves and all to him! Most touching and ever-memorable scene! Worthy the occasion and worthy of a great nation. In this spirit the Christian and the patriot, whether in civic or military life strive to labor, and should fire all hearts and nerve all arms in our present fiery struggle for universal freedom.

I am happy to report the favorable and healthy condition of the Reg. Our aggregate is 891. Of these 19 are transiently on the sick list. No deaths have occurred during the month.

We employ all available means for promoting the temporal and spiritual welfare of the command.

Having a large library of select books, I am prepared to meet the wants of the men in this direction.

Besides I distribute several hundred religious papers among them every week. I am convinced, by experience, that this is one of the effectual and welcome means of gaining the attention of the mass of the men to religious truth, and keeping up the tie between them and the Church at home.

Ever striving to labor with an eye single to the glory of God and our country.

I have the honor,
Gen’l to remain
Your Obed’t Servant

W. D. C. Rodrock
Chaplain, 47th Reg. P.V.V.
2nd Brig. 1st Div. 19th Corps

Page one of a report written by the Rev. William DeWitt Clinton Rodrock, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Regimental Chaplain, from Camp Fairview, West Virginia to his superiors, February 28, 1865 (U.S. Army, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain).

While Rev. Rodrock’s next monthly report conveyed the following to his superiors:

Camp Fairview
Near Charlestown, Va
Feb. 28th 1865

Brig. Gen. L. Thomas
Adj. Gen’l U.S. Army

Sir.

I have the honor herewith, to present my report for the month of February.

That blessed peace whose type and emblem is our holy Gospel it is as yet not ours to enjoy. The stern alarums of war still resound in the ears of the nation. And as our victorious columns are marching on, they are sounding the death-knell of the so called Southern Confederacy.

In the strange system and series of paradoxes which make up human life, it often happens that the very disciples of “good will” and brotherly love must buckle on the harness of war. Such emphatically is the case in our present contest. Nor should it be otherwise.

Even our Saviour [sic] came not to bring peace, but a sword until the right should triumph and the sword be beat to a ploughshare. And as our present struggle involves on our side, all that is worthy living for and all that is worth dying for, it may very well fire all hearts and nerve all arms in its behalf.

The Flag which Hernando Cortes carried in that most extraordinary of expeditions in Mexico had for its device, flames of fire on a white and blue ground, with a red cross in the midst of the blaze, and the following words on the borders as a motto, ‘Amici, Crucem sequamur, et in hoc signo vincemur!’ Friends, let us follow the cross, and, trusting in that emblem we shall conquer!’

In these more enlightened times, with more intelligent soldiers, with a purer Church at our back, and with a holier cause, we will keep the motto of Cortes steadily before our eyes; and in personal as in national experience, we shall turn the war into a blessing to the country and to humanity.

It gives me great pleasure to report the improved condition and general good health of the Reg. A large influx of recruits has materially increased our numbers; making our present aggregate 954 men, including 35 commissioned officers.

The number of sick in the Reg. is 22; all of which are transient cases, and no deaths have occurred during the month.

Whilst in a moral and religious point of view there is still a wide margin for amendment and improvement; it is nevertheless gratifying to state that all practicable and available means are employed for the promotion of the spiritual and physical welfare of the command.

And in this connection, I desire to mention our indebtedness to the U.S. Christian Commission for furnishing us with a large supply of excellent reading matter and such delicacies as are highly useful for the Hospital.

That God is in this war of rebellion, that he has brought it upon us, that He over rules it, that its issues are in his hand, that he intends to teach us and the whole world some of the greatest and most sublime lessons ever taught in his providential dealings since the world began, is becoming more and more manifest.

To Him, we will ascribe all Honor and Glory, now and forever.

I have the honor, Gen’l, to remain
Respectfully, Your Obed’t Servant.

W. D. C. Rodrock,
Chaplain, 47th Reg. P.V.V.
2nd Brig. 1st Division, 19th A.C.

Page one of a report written by the Rev. William DeWitt Clinton Rodrock, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Regimental Chaplain, from Camp Fairview, West Virginia to his superiors, March 31, 1865 (U.S. Army, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain).

In his final report from Camp Fairview, Rev. Rodrock wrote:

Camp Fairview.
Near Charlestown, Va.
March 31st/65

Brig. Gen’l L. Thomas
Adj. Gen’l U.S. Army

Sir.
I have the honor herewith, to transmit my report for the present month.

Very Respectfully Yours,

W. D. C. Rodrock
Chapl’n, 47th Reg. P. Vols

 

Camp Fairview
Two Miles from Charlestown, Va.
March 5th/65

Brig. Gen’l L. Thomas
Adj. Gen., U.S. Army

Sir.

I hereby enclose my report for Feb. It having been returned from Brig. Hd. Qrts, to be forwarded direct. In accordance with Gen’l  Orders No 158, dated Apl. 13th 1864, I hitherto forwarded my reports through the “usual military channels”. Why I am now ordered to forward direct, is not clear to my mind. Would you have the kindness to forward me any orders issued since the one of the above date & bearing on the duties of Chaplains etc.

If any have been issued, I never recd [sic] them.

I have the honor, Gen’l
To remain, respectfully,
Your Obed’t Servant

W. D. C. Rodrock
Chap. 47th Reg. P.V.V.
2nd Brig. 1st Div. 19th Corps
Washington, D.C.

 

Camp Fairview, Va.
March 31st 1865

Brig. Gen’l L. Thomas
Adj. Gen’l, U.S. Army

Sir.

Amidst the general glory and success attending our arms on land and sea, it is my pleasant duty to report also the favorable and improved condition of our Reg. for the present month.

In a military sense it has greatly improved in efficiency and strength. By daily drill and a constant accession of recruits, these desirable objects have been attained. The entire strength of the Reg. rank and file is now 1019 men.

Its sanitary condition is all that can be desired. But 26 are on the sick list, and these are only transient cases. We have now our full number of Surgeons, – all efficient and faithful officers.

We have lost none by natural death. Two of our men were wounded by guerillas, while on duty at their Post. From the effects of which one died on the same day of the sad occurrence. He was buried yesterday with appropriate ceremonies. All honor to the heroic dead.

In a moral and religious point of view, we can never attain too great a proficiency. And in our Reg. like in all others, the vices incident to army life prevail to a considerable extent, whatever means may be employed for their restraint.

Still it affords me pleasure to state, that every possible facility is extended the men for moral and religious culture. Divine services are held whenever practicable, and a good supply of moral and religious reading matter, in the form of books and papers, is furnished to the command.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

I have the honor, Gen’l
To remain, Respectfully
Your Obed’t. Servant.

W. D. C. Rodrock
Chapl’n, 47th Reg. P.V. Vols

Another New Mission, Another March

“The capitulation and surrender of Robt. E. Lee and his army at Appomattox C.H., Va. to Lt. Gen. U.S. Grant. April 9th 1865” (Kurz & Allison, 16 September 1885, U.S. Library of Congress, public domain).

According to The Lehigh Register, as the end of March 1865 loomed, “The command was ordered to proceed up the valley to intercept the enemy’s troops, should any succeed in making their escape in that direction.”

By April 4, 1865, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers had made their way back to Winchester, Virginia and were headed for Kernstown. Five days later, they received word that General Robert E. Lee had surrendered the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. The long war appeared to be over.

But it wasn’t. In a letter penned to the Sunbury American on April 12, 47th Pennsylvanian Henry Wharton described the celebration that took place following Lee’s surrender while also explaining to residents of his hometown that Union Army operations in Virginia were still continuing in order to ensure that the Confederate surrender would hold:

Letter from the Sunbury Guards.
CAMP NEAR SUMMIT POINT, Va.,
April 12, 1865

Since yesterday a week we have been on the move, going as far as three miles beyond Winchester. There we halted for three days, waiting for the return or news from Torbett’s cavalry who had gone on a reconnoisance [sic] up to the valley. They returned, reporting they were as far up as Mt. Jackson, some sixty miles, and found nary an armed reb. The reason of our move was to be ready in case Lee moved against us, or to march on Lynchburg, if Lee reached that point, so that we could aid in surrounding him and [his] army, and with Sheridan and Mead capture the whole party. Grant’s gallant boys saved us that march and bagged the whole crowd. Last Sunday night our camp was aroused by the loud road of artillery. Hearing so much good news of late, I stuck to my blanket, not caring to get up, for I suspected a salute, which it really was for the ‘unconditional surrender of Lee.’ The boys got wild over the news, shouting till they were hoarse, the loud huzzas [sic] echoing through the Valley, songs of ‘rally round the flag,’ &c., were sung, and above the noise of the ‘cannons opening roar,’ and confusion of camp, could be heard ‘Hail Columbia’ and Yankee Doodle played by our band. Other bands took it up and soon the whole army let loose, making ‘confusion worse confounded.’

The next morning we packed up, struck tents, marched away, and now we are within a short distance of our old quarters. – The war is about played out, and peace is clearly seen through the bright cloud that has taken the place of those that darkened the sky for the last four years. The question now with us is whether the veterans after Old Abe has matters fixed to his satisfaction, will have to stay ‘till the expiration of the three years, or be discharged as per agreement, at the ‘end of the war.’ If we are not discharged when hostilities cease, great injustice will be done.

The members of Co. ‘C,’ wishing to do honor to Lieut. C. S. Beard, and show their appreciation of him as an officer and gentleman, presented him with a splendid sword, sash and belt. Lieut. Beard rose from the ranks, and as one of their number, the boys gave him this token of esteem.

A few nights ago, an aid [sic] on Gen. Torbett’s staff, with two more officers, attempted to pass a safe guard stationed at a house near Winchester. The guard halted the party, they rushed on, paying no attention to the challenge, when the sentinel charged bayonet, running the sharp steel through the abdomen of the aid [sic], wounding him so severely that he died in an hour. The guard did his duty as he was there for the protection of the inmates and their property, with instruction to let no one enter.

The boys are all well, and jubilant over the victories of Grant, and their own little Sheridan, and feel as though they would soon return to meet the loved ones at home, and receive a kind greeting from old friends, and do you believe me to be

Yours Fraternally,
H. D. W.

Two days later, that fragile peace was shattered when a Confederate loyalist fired the bullet that ended the life of President Abraham Lincoln.

 

Sources:

  1. “Camp Russell.” The Historical Marker Database, retrieved online December 27, 2023.
  2. “Civil War, 1861-1865.” Stephens City, Virginia: Newtown History Center, retrieved online December 27, 2023.
  3. Diaries of Jeremiah Siders (Company H. 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry), in “Pennsylvania Military Museum Collections, 1856-1970” (MG 272). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
  4. Dyer, Frederick H. A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, p. 1589. Des Moines, Iowa: The Dyer Publishing Company, 1908.
  5. Letters home from ”H.D.W.” and the “Sunbury Guards.” Sunbury, Pennsylvania: Sunbury American, 1864-1865.
  6. Noyalas, Jonathan. “The Fight at Cedar Creek Was Over. So Why Couldn’t Union Troops Let Their Guard Down?” Arlington, Virginia: HistoryNet, 27 February 2023.
  7. Reports and Other Correspondence of W. D. C. Rodrock, Chaplain, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry (Record Group R29). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, 1864-1865.
  8. “The History of the Forty-Seventh Regt. P. V.” Allentown, Pennsylvania: The Lehigh Register, July 20, 1870.

 

Thoughts of Home at Christmas: The Influence of Thomas Nast’s Art During a 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer’s Lifetime

“Christmas Eve,” 1862 (Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, Vol. 7, pp. 8-9, Christmas edition, 1862, public domain; click to enlarge).

When thinking about what life was like for the Pennsylvania volunteer soldiers who served their nation during the American Civil War, the influence of nineteenth century artists on their lives would likely not be the first thing that comes to mind. The orders they received from their superior officers in the Army and the “trickle down” effect of the directives issued by state and federal elected officials to those Union Army officers, yes, but visual artists? Probably not.

But artists and their artwork—paintings and illustrations created during and after the 1860s—did leave their mark on the psyches of soldiers in ways that were profoundly illuminating and long lasting.

Many of the most powerful artworks that were likely seen and reflected on by members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were those drawn by Thomas Nast (1840-1902), a native of Germany who had emigrated to the United States from Bavaria with his mother and siblings in 1846. He spent most of his formative years in New York City, where he took up drawing while still in school. As he aged, he came to view America as his homeland, but still grew up experiencing many German traditions—as had many 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers during their own formative years. (Company K, for example, was established in August 1861 as an “all-German company” of the 47th Pennsylvania.)

Nast’s first depiction of the Christmas season (shown above) was created for the cover and centerfold of the Christmas edition of Harper’s Weekly 1862, shortly after he was hired as a staff illustrator.

“Santa Claus in Camp,” 1863 (Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, January 3, 1863, public domain; click to enlarge).

He then continued to create illustrations of Santa for Harper’s Weekly in subsequent years. According to journalist Lorraine Boissoneault:

You could call it the face that launched a thousand Christmas letters. Appearing on January 3, 1863, in the illustrated magazine Harper’s Weekly, two images cemented the nation’s obsession with a jolly old elf. The first drawing shows Santa distributing presents in a Union Army camp. Lest any reader question Santa’s allegiance in the Civil War, he wears a jacket patterned with stars and pants colored in stripes. In his hands, he holds a puppet toy with a rope around its neck, its features like those of Confederate president Jefferson Davis….

According to historians at Grant Cottage, “In 1868, newly elected 18th President U.S. Grant paid tribute to Thomas Nast by saying, ‘Two things elected me, the sword of Sheridan and the pencil of Thomas Nast.’”

As a result, members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry had ample time to become well acquainted with Nast’s artistry and his support for their efforts, as part of the United States Army, to end the Civil War and preserve America’s Union. An ardent abolitionist, Nast also actively supported the federal government’s efforts to eradicate the brutal practice of chattel slavery.

Fort Taylor, Key West, Florida (Harper’s Weekly, 1864, public domain).

Nast’s first illustrations of Santa Claus and depictions of soldiers longing for family at Christmas would initially have been seen by 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers while they were stationed far from home at Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida—just two months after the regiment had sustained a shockingly high rate of casualties during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862. More than one hundred members of the regiment had been killed in action, mortally wounded, grievously wounded, or wounded less seriously, but still able to continue their service.

So terrible was the outcome that it would have been enough to make an impression even on individual 47th Pennsylvanians who hadn’t been wounded. They were not only now battle tested, they were battle scarred, according to comments made by individual members of the regiment in the letters they wrote to families and friends back home during that Christmas of 1862.

No matter how strong their capacity for overcoming adversity had been before that battle, their hearts and minds would never be the same. It would take time to heal and move forward—time they were given while stationed on garrison duty for more than a year.

Fort Jefferson (Harper’s Weekly, August 26, 1865, public domain; click to enlarge).

By the time that the American Civil War was ending its third year, the mental wounds of Pocotaligo were far less fresh than they had been the previous Christmas. Still stationed in Florida on garrison duty in 1863, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was now a divided regiment. While slightly more than half of the regiment was still on duty at in Key West, as companies A, B, C, E, G, and I remained at Fort Taylor, the remaining members of the regiment—companies D, F, H, and K—were now even farther away from home—stationed at Fort Jefferson, the Union’s remote outpost that was situated so far off of Florida’s coast that it was accessible only by ship.

Letters penned to family and friends back in Pennsylvania during the early part of 1863 capture a sense of sadness and longing that pervaded the regiment—as 47th Pennsylvanians mourned the loss of their deceased comrades and thought about how deeply they missed their own families.

Gradually, as the year wore on, those feelings turned to acceptance of their respective losses and, eventually, frustration at still being assigned to garrison duty when they felt they could and should be helping the federal government bring a faster end to the war by defeating the Confederate States Army through enough tide-turning combat engagements that the Confederate States of America would finally surrender and agree to re-unify the nation.

By early 1864, the wish of those 47th Pennsylvanians was granted by senior Union Army officials. They were not only given the opportunity to return to combat, but to return to intense combat as a history-making regiment.

The only regiment from Pennsylvania to fight in the Union’s 1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana, the 47th Pennsylvanians repeatedly displayed their valor as the blood of more and more of their comrades was spilled to eradicate slavery across the nation while also fighting to preserve the nation’s Union. By the fall of 1864, they were participating in such fierce, repeated battles across Virginia during Union Major-General Philip Sheridan’s 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign that President Abraham Lincoln was able to secure his reelection and the tide of the American Civil War was decisively turned in the federal government’s favor once and for all.

Ruins of Charleston, South Carolina as seen from the Circular Church, 1865 (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain).

By April 1865, the Confederate States Army had surrendered, the war was over and President Lincoln was gone, felled by an assassin’s bullet that had too easily found its target. So, once again, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were in mourning.

Sent back to America’s Deep South that summer, they were assigned to Reconstruction duties in Savannah, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina, where they helped to reestablish functioning local and state governments, rebuild shattered infrastructure, and reinvigorate a free press that was dedicated to supporting a unified nation—all while other Pennsylvania volunteer regiments were being mustered out and sent home.

Finally, after a long and storied period of service to their nation, the 47th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers were given their honorable discharge papers at Camp Cadwalader in Philadelphia, and were then sent home to their own family and friends in communities across Pennsylvania in early January 1866.

Return to Civilian Life

“Santa Claus and His Works,” 1866 (Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, December 29, 1866, public domain; click to enlarge).

Attempting to regain some sense of normalcy as their post-war lives unfolded over the years between the late 1860s and the early 1900s, many of the surviving veterans of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry resumed the jobs they held prior to the war while others found new and better ways to make a living. Some became small business creators, pastors or other church officials, members of their local town councils or school boards, beloved doctors, or even inventors. One even became the lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Most also married and began families, some small, some large. Still others made their way west—as far as the states of California and Washington—in search of fortune or, more commonly, places where war’s Grim Reaper would never find them again.

“‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” 1866 (Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, December 25, 1886, public domain; click to enlarge).

As the years rolled on, they saw more and more of Thomas Nast’s work as it was published in Harper’s Weekly, particularly at Christmas. But the Santa Claus of war was now transformed by Nast as the Saint Nicholas of his childhood in Germany—kind, altruistic, loving, and jolly.

Over time, those illustrations collectively formed the “mind pictures” that the majority of American children and adults experienced when they imagined Santa Claus. So powerful has Nast’s influence been that, even today, when Americans encounter the many variations of Santa used to promote products in Christmas advertising campaigns, they see images that are often based on Nast’s nineteenth century drawings—drawings that had their genesis as beacons of light and hope during one of the darkest times in America’s history.

Like Abraham Lincoln, Nast has been helping Americans to summon and follow “the better angels of our nature” for more than one hundred and sixty years. May the power of his art help us all continue to do so this year and for the remainder of our days.

 

 

Sources:

  1. Boissoneault, Lorraine. “A Civil War Cartoonist Created the Modern Image of Santa Claus as Union Propaganda.” Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Magazine, December 19, 2018.
  2. “Drawn Together: The Friendship of U.S. Grant and Thomas Nast” (video). Wilton, New York: Grant Cottage, May 14, 2022.
  3. “Santa Claus,” in “Thomas Nast.” Columbus, Ohio: University Libraries, The Ohio State University, retrieved online December 23, 2023.
  4. “Santa Claus in Camp (from ‘Harper’s Weekly,’ vol. 7, p. 1).” New York, New York: The Met, retrieved online December 23, 2023.
  5. Vinson, J. Chal. “Thomas Nast and the American Political Scene,” in American Quarterly, vol. 9, no. 3, Autumn 1957, pp. 337-344. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

 

Camp Griffin (also known as “Camp Big Chestnut”), Langley, Virginia

The Big Chestnut Tree, Camp Griffin, Langley, Virginia, 1861 (U.S. Library of Congress, public domain).

Located near Langley, Virginia, Camp Griffin was a key muster-in point for multiple Union Army units during the early years of the American Civil War. Originally named “Camp Big Chestnut” in recognition of the large chestnut tree that was one of the earliest defining features of the campground, it quickly became a major training base and staging area for multiple state volunteer infantry and artillery units that fought under the banner of the United States government.

During the fall of 1861, it was renamed as “Camp Griffin” to honor Captain Charles Griffin, who had distinguished himself in combat as the commanding officer of the United States Artillery’s 5th Regiment, Battery D (the “West Point Battery”) during the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861. Griffin was then also later promoted to Brigadier-General of Volunteers on June 12, 1862.

The 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers at Camp Griffin

The Sibley tents of an unidentified Union Army regiment, Camp Griffin, Virginia, fall 1861 (U.S. Library of Congress, public domain; click to enlarge).

“Camp Big Chestnut” (later known as Camp Griffin) was the first “real home” of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry after its extended muster-in and basic training period at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania from August through mid-September 1861. Initially transported by rail to the Washington, D.C. area and stationed on the Kalorama Heights in the District of Columbia, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were ordered to set up and tear down their camps multiple times during their earliest weeks on the job, moving from Camp Kalorama to Camp Lyon, Maryland on the Potomac River’s eastern shore during an intense, two-hour rainstorm, and then across the “Chain Bridge” into Virginia, where they briefly encamped before marching for Camp Advance near Falls Church the next day. During their brief stay there, they were situated close to Fort Ethan Allen and the headquarters of Brigadier-General William Farrar Smith (also known as “Baldy”).

Shortly after that, they were ordered to move yet again—this time, to “Camp Big Chestnut” near Langley, Virginia. They couldn’t have known it at the time, but it was here where they would spend the bulk of their assigned duties from the fall of 1861 through early January 1862.

It was from this point that they were sent out to perform picket duties and skirmish with Confederate troops that were stationed nearby, and it was here and near this camp that they continued to drill daily and participate in Grand Reviews with multiple other Union Army units to demonstrate their readiness for battle to the most senior of Union Army leaders like General George B. McClellan, commanding officer of the U.S. Army of the Potomac—and even to their commander-in-chief, President Abraham Lincoln.

It was also here that they also served as part of that Army of the Potomac (“Mr. Lincoln’s Army”), ensuring that no troops from the Confederate States Army were ever able to breach the Union’s defensive lines and enter Washington, D.C. Quite simply put, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry’s job was to defend the nation’s capital—a task which its members performed well and faithfully. No Rebel ever carried a Confederate flag into the U.S. Capitol Building or White House during its time on the job.

On October 11, the 47th Pennsylvania marched in a review of massed troops that was held near the camp. In his letter of  October 13 to the Sunbury American newspaper, Henry Wharton described their duties, as well as their new home:

The location of our camp is fine and the scenery would be splendid if the view was not obstructed by heavy thickets of pine and innumerable chesnut [sic] trees. The country around us is excellent for the Rebel scouts to display their bravery; that is, to lurk in the dense woods and pick off one of our unsuspecting pickets. Last night, however, they (the Rebels) calculated wide of their mark; some of the New York 33d boys were out on picket; some fourteen or fifteen shots were exchanged, when our side succeeded in bringing to the dust, (or rather mud,) an officer and two privates of the enemy’s mounted pickets. The officer was shot by a Lieutenant in Company H [?], of the 33d.

Our own boys have seen hard service since we have been on the ‘sacred soil.’ One day and night on picket, next day working on entrenchments at the Fort, (Ethan Allen.) another on guard, next on march and so on continually, but the hardest was on picket from last Thursday morning ‘till Saturday morning – all the time four miles from camp, and both of the nights the rain poured in torrents, so much so that their clothes were completely saturated with the rain. They stood it nobly – not one complaining; but from the size of their haversacks on their return, it is no wonder that they were satisfied and are so eager to go again tomorrow. I heard one of them say ‘there was such nice cabbage, sweet and Irish potatoes, turnips, &c., out where their duty called them, and then there was a likelihood of a Rebel sheep or young porker advancing over our lines and then he could take them as ‘contraband’ and have them for his own use.’ When they were out they saw about a dozen of the Rebel cavalry and would have had a bout with them, had it not been for…unlucky circumstance – one of the men caught the hammer of his rifle in the strap of his knapsack and caused his gun to fire; the Rebels heard the report and scampered in quick time….

In his own mid-October letter home, Captain John Peter Shindel Gobin, the commanding officer of C Company, reported that the right wing of the 47th Pennsylvania (companies A, C, D, F and I) was ordered to picket duty after the left-wing’s companies (B, G, K, E, and H) were forced to return to camp by Confederate troops:

I was ordered to take my company to Stewart’s house, drive the Rebels from it, and hold it at all hazards. It was about 3 o’clock in the morning, so waiting until it was just getting day, I marched 80 men up; but the Rebels had left after driving Capt. Kacy’s company [H] into the woods. I took possession of it, and stationed my men, and there we were for 24 hours with our hands on our rifles, and without closing an eye. I took ten men, and went out scouting within half a mile of the Rebels, but could not get a prisoner, and we did not dare fire on them first. Do not think I was rash, I merely obeyed orders, and had ten men with me who could whip a hundred; Brosius [sic, Brosious], Piers [sic, Pyers], Harp and McEwen were among the number. Every man in the company wanted to go. The Rebels did not attack us, and if they had they would have met with a warm reception, as I had my men posted in such a manner that I could have whipped a regiment. My men were all ready and anxious for a “fight.”

On Friday, October 22, the 47th engaged in a Divisional Review, described by historian Lewis Schmidt as “about 10,000 infantry, 1000 cavalry, and twenty pieces of artillery all in one big open field.” Four days later, Company B’s drummer boy, Alfred Eisenbraun, was dead—the second “man” from the regiment to die since the 47th Pennsylvania’s formation. (The first was another drummer boy, John Boulton Young of C Company, who was felled by smallpox at the Kalorama eruptive fever hospital in Georgetown on October 17.)

Of all of the dangerous foes the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers would encounter during their stay at Camp Griffin, it seemed that disease would prove to be the most persistent—and deadliest. In subsequent letters home, Captain Gobin asked Sunbury residents to donate blankets for the Sunbury Guards (the men of Company C):

The government has supplied them with one blanket apiece, which, as the cold weather approaches, is not sufficient…. Some of my men have none, two of them, Theodore Kiehl and Robert McNeal, having given theirs to our lamented drummer boy when he was taken sick… Each can give at least one blanket, (no matter what color, although we would prefer dark,) and never miss it, while it would add to the comfort of the soldiers tenfold. Very frequently while on picket duty their overcoats and blankets are both saturated by the rain. They must then wait until they can dry them by the fire before they can take their rest.

In late October 1861, the men from Companies B, G and H woke at 3 a.m., according to Schmidt, assembled a day’s worth of rations, marched four miles from camp, and took over picket duties from the 49th New York:

Company B was stationed in the vicinity of a Mrs. Jackson’s house, with Capt. Kacy’s Company H on guard around the house. The men of Company B had erected a hut made of fence rails gathered around an oak tree, in front of which was the house and property, including a persimmon tree whose fruit supplied them with a snack. Behind the house was the woods were the Rebels had been fired on last Wednesday morning while they were chopping wood there.

Less than a month later, in his letter of 17 November, Henry Wharton revealed more details about life at Camp Griffin:

This morning our brigade was out for inspection; arms, accoutrements [sic], clothing, knapsacks, etc, all were out through a thorough examination, and if I must say it myself, our company stood best, A No. 1, for cleanliness. We have a new commander to our Brigade, Brigadier General Brannen [sic, Brannan], of the U.S. Army, and if looks are any criterion, I think he is a strict disciplinarian and one who will be as able to get his men out of danger as he is willing to lead them to battle….

The boys have plenty of work to do, such as piquet [sic] duty, standing guard, wood-chopping, police duty and day drill; but then they have the most substantial food; our rations consist of fresh beef (three times a week) pickled pork, pickled beef, smoked pork, fresh bread, daily, which is baked by our own bakers, the Quartermaster having procured portable ovens for that purpose, potatoes, split peas, beans, occasionally molasses and plenty of good coffee, so you see Uncle Sam supplies us plentifully….

A few nights ago our Company was out on piquet [sic, picket]; it was a terrible night, raining very hard the whole night, and what made it worse, the boys had to stand well to their work and dare not leave to look for shelter. Some of them consider they are well paid for their exposure, as they captured two ancient muskets belonging to Secessia. One of them is of English manufacture, and the other has the Virginia militia mark on it. They are both in a dilapidated condition, but the boys hold them in high estimation as they are trophies from the enemy, and besides they were taken from the house of Mrs. Stewart, sister to the rebel Jackson who assassinated the lamented Ellsworth at Alexandria. The honorable lady, Mrs. Stewart, is now a prisoner at Washington and her house is the headquarters of the command of the piquets [sic]….

Since the success of the secret expedition, we have all kinds of rumors in camp. One is that our Brigade will be sent to the relief of Gen. Sherman, in South Carolina. The boys all desire it and the news in the ‘Press’ is correct, that a large force is to be sent there, I think their wish will be gratified….

Springfield rifle, 1861 model (public domain).

On 20 November, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers marched in The Grand Review of the Army of the Potomac at Bailey’s Crossroads, Virginia. According to National Portrait Gallery historian James Barber:

For three hours some 70,000 polished troops marched passed the reviewing stand, where the president, members of his cabinet, and Washington dignitaries were in attendance. It was the largest military assemblage up to that time in North America. ‘The Grand Review went off splendidly,’ wrote McClellan that night in a letter to his wife, ‘not a mistake was made, not a hitch. I never saw so large a Review in Europe so well done—I was completely satisfied & delighted beyond expression.’

Among the 20,000 spectators to witness the Grand Review was the poet and social activist Julia Ward Howe of Boston, Massachusetts, who was visiting the Washington area with her husband, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe.

After leaving the review, during the carriage ride back to Washington, she heard troops singing the song ‘John Brown’s Body.’ A companion suggested that she should write new lyrics to the song, the melody of which lingered in her mind that night in her room at Willard’s Hotel in Washington. She awoke ‘in the gray of the morning twilight’ with the song still in her head and ‘the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind.’ She arose quickly and in the dimness of the early hour she began scribbling the verses on stationery ‘almost without looking at the paper.’

Her poem, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, was first published in The Atlantic Monthly in February 1862; the magazine paid her five dollars. Soon thereafter her verse was set to music and her inspirational song became a wartime favorite….

The November 30, 1861 edition of the Sunbury American carried the good news of pay sent home to loved ones by Sunbury’s boys in blue (public domain; click to enlarge).

The next day, according to Schmidt, the regiment participated in a morning divisional headquarters review overseen by the 47th Pennsylvania’s commanding officer, Colonel Tilghman H. Good, followed by brigade and division drills all afternoon. According to Schmidt, “each man was supplied with ten blank cartridges.” Afterward, “Gen. Smith requested Gen. Brannan to inform Col. Good that the 47th was the best regiment in the whole division.” As a reward—and in preparation for bigger things to come, Brannan obtained new Springfield rifles for every member of the 47th Pennsylvania.

As November came to a close, Captain Gobin helped a number of Sunbury Guardsmen to send a total of $900 from their collective pay back home to their families and friends in Pennsylvania. The editors of the Sunbury American subsequently announced the names of the family members and others who could expect to receive the sorely needed financial support from their boys in blue via a special notice in the newspaper’s November 30, 1861 edition.

Winter Quarters at Camp Griffin

Sketch of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers’ winter quarters at Camp Griffin, near Langley, Virginia, by Second Lieutenant William H. Wyker, Company E, December 1861 (public domain).

As fall deepened and progressed into winter, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was ordered to batten down the hatches and establish its winter quarters—during a time when the guns on both sides of the war fell silent as snow blanketed Virginia, making it nearly impossible for Union and Confederate troops to march over the slippery, icy farm grounds around them—let alone drag their artillery into fighting positions in order to continue blasting away at one another.

It was simply too cold and too miserable to expend energy as combatants. But there were lighter moments as well.

Quartermaster James VanDyke procured a holiday surprise for the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (Sunbury American, December 21, 1861, public domain).

According to the December 21, 1861 edition of the Sunbury American, Regimental Quartermaster James Van Dyke, who was enjoying an approved furlough at home in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, was able to procure “various articles of comfort, for the inner as well as the outer man.” Upon his return to camp, many of the 47th Pennsylvanians of German heritage were pleasantly surprised to learn that the well-liked former sheriff of Sunbury had thoughtfully brought a sizable supply of sauerkraut with him. The German equivalent of “comfort food,” this favored treat warmed stomachs and lifted more than a few spirits that first cold winter away from loved ones.

Also, in a letter written sometime around Christmas 1861, Captain Gobin reported that Private John D. Colvin had been detailed to special duty with the signal corps in Washington, D.C. while Musician Henry D. Wharton, increasingly known to folks back home for his letters to the Sunbury American, had assumed additional responsibilities as a clerk who was assigned to the staff of Brigadier-General Brannan at Brigade Headquarters.

As fall fell away, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers continued to wait for better weather, hunkered down in their sturdier, winter quarters at Camp Griffin, remaining here until January 22, 1862, when the regiment was ordered to pack up and march for the railroad station at Falls Church. Transported from there by rail to Alexandria, they then sailed the Potomac via the steamship City of Richmond to the Washington Arsenal, where they were reequipped before being marched off for dinner and rest at the Soldiers’ Retreat in Washington, D.C. The next afternoon, they hopped cars on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, and headed for Annapolis, Maryland.

Arriving around 10 p.m., they were assigned quarters in barracks at the United States Naval Academy. They then spent that Friday through Monday (January 24-27, 1862) loading their equipment and other supplies onto the steamship Oriental, before sailing away at 4 p.m. that final afternoon. They were headed for America’s far warmer Deep South—and a very long time away from the arms of their loved ones and the comforts of home.

To learn more about the 47th Pennsylvania’s next phase of duty, read “Late Winter through Early Spring 1862 (Florida): Serving as Soldiers and Surrogates for Family.”

 

Sources:

  1. Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, vol 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
  2. Gobin, John Peter Shindel. Personal Letters, 1861-1865. Northumberland, Pennsylvania: Personal Collection of John Deppen.
  3. “Lincoln and McClellan: An Army Ready for War.” Washington, D.C.: National Portrait Gallery, retrieved online December 1, 2023.
  4. Schmidt, Lewis G. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.
  5. Wharton, Henry D. Letters from the Sunbury Guards. Sunbury, Pennsylvania: Sunbury American, 1861-1868.

 

Abraham Lincoln’s Road to the Presidency

Abraham Lincoln in New York City on Monday morning, February 27, 1860, several hours before he delivered his Cooper Union address (Matthew Brady, U.S. Library of Congress, public domain).

During the almost quarter of a century that he resided in his adopted hometown of Springfield, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln was transformed from an average, young adult, who was embarking upon a crucial phase of his life’s journey in early nineteenth-century America, into the lawyer-turned-civic leader that would place his feet on the path to the White House.

A product of rural America, his formative years had been spent in Kentucky and southern Indiana. A resident of New Salem, Illinois in 1831, he was just twenty-five when he was elected to his first term in the Illinois State Legislature and began to study law more seriously. By 1837, he was a solicitor who lived and practiced law in Springfield. Married to Mary Todd five years later, he built his life with her at their Eighth and Jackson street-corner home, while also carving out a name for himself as a skilled and trustworthy legal scholar and successful courtroom attorney. Avidly interested in politics, he also became an active member of the Whig Party.

Persuaded by his wife and political associates to run for federal office in 1846, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in that same year. His initial service was short-lived, however; he had pledged to serve only one, two-year term, hoping to secure a more stable, federal government job in the administration of U.S. President Zachary Taylor. But when that opportunity fell through, he returned home to Springfield and threw himself back into the practice of law.

* Note: During his tenure with the U.S. House of Representatives, Abraham Lincoln co-wrote a bill with Congressman Joshua R. Giddings that he hoped would end the practice of slavery in the District of Columbia. Lacking support from his fellow Whig Party members, however, he subsequently chose to withdraw that bill.

By the mid-1850s, Abraham Lincoln was realizing that his conscience would no longer permit him to sit on the sidelines, politically, when there was so much in his country that needed to be changed. Incensed by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, which paved the way for the brutal practice of chattel slavery to spread like a wave of toxic sludge over newly-forming states, Lincoln left the Whigs behind to join a new, more forward-thinking political organization—the Republican Party.

Four years later, he mounted a campaign against U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas. Although he lost that race, he would forever become linked to that Democrat as a result of their famously intense Lincoln-Douglas Debates, a forum that gave him a nationwide name recognition so high that it enabled him to become President of the United States.

Chosen by the Republican Party in 1860 to be its candidate for the highest office in the nation, Abraham Lincoln was elected as President on November 6, 1860.

How That Crucial Election Day Unfolded

Hand-sewn banner used in Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 campaign for President of the United States (Lincoln Home, U.S. National Park Service, public domain).

According to Jamie Malanowski, a former editor at Time magazine:

“There were no surprises: the long-settled Yankees in Maine and New Hampshire and pioneering Germans of Michigan and Wisconsin delivered the expected victories. And then came news from Illinois: ‘We have stood fine. Victory has come.’ And then from Indiana: ‘Indiana over twenty thousand for honest Old Abe.’

The throngs in the streets cheered every report, every step towards the electoral college number, but news from the big Eastern states was coming painfully slowly…. The advisers paced the floorboards, jumping at every eruption of the rapid clacking of Morse’s machine….

It wasn’t until after 10 that reports of victory in Pennsylvania arrived in the form a telegram from the canny vote-counter Simon Cameron, the political boss of the Keystone State, who tucked within his state’s tallies joyfully positive news about New York: ‘Hon. Abe Lincoln, Penna seventy thousand for you. New York safe. Glory enough.’

Not until 2 a.m. did official results from New York arrive … the one-time rail-splitter won by 50,000 votes.”

The Aftermath

“As the votes were counted, Lincoln had about 40 percent of the popular vote and 180 electoral votes, compared with 133 for his opponents combined,” according to historians at the National Constitution Center, but events in America’s Deep South “cast a pall over the upcoming Electoral College voting process”:

“What if the southern states refused to take part in the Electoral College? Or what if a unified front to avoid secession could convince enough ‘faithless electors’ to switch sides to derail the election?

And what if the southern states boycotted the Electoral College?”

Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer sums up what was in the minds of many Americans in the days following the 1860 presidential election:

“If these states did not participate in the traditional process, could the Electoral College proceed? What would constitute a quorum? No one, least of all Lincoln, knew the answers to these vexing questions.”

Those questions were finally answered when those southern states agreed to participate in the Electoral College process of the United States.

“But there was a greater than normal military presence on Capitol Hill” to ensure that the peaceful transfer of power would take place that certification day, according to historians at the National Constitution Center. And it did.

Abraham Lincoln’s election was officially certified by the U.S. Congress on February 15, 1861.

 

Sources:

  1. Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.
  2. Foner, Eric. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. New York, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2010.
  3. Harris, William C. Lincoln’s Rise to the Presidency. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2007.
  4. “Lawyer to President,” in “Virtual Museum Exhibit.” Springfield, Illinois: Lincoln Home National Historic Site, retrieved online November 6, 2023.
  5. Malanowski, Jamie. “Lincoln Wins. Now What,” in “Disunion.” New York, New York: The New York Times, November 7, 2010.
  6. Oates, Stephen B. “Abraham Lincoln 1861–1865,” in C. Vann Woodward, ed. Responses of the Presidents to Charges of Misconduct. New York City: Dell Publishing Co., Inc. pp. 111–123, 1974.
  7. Oates, Stephen B. With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln. New York, New York: Harper Collins, 2011.
  8. “On This Day, Abraham Lincoln Is Elected President.” Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: National Constitution Center, November 6, 2023.
  9. “President Abraham Lincoln.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online November 6, 2023.

Learn More About the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers

First State Color, 47th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry (presented to the regiment by Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin, 20 September 1861; retired 11 May 1865, public domain).

Largely forgotten by mainstream historians, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was a Union Army unit which served for nearly the entire duration of the American Civil War. Formed by the fruit of the Great Keystone State’s small towns and cities, the regiment was born on August 5, 1861, when its founder, Tilghman H. Good, received permission from Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Gregg Curtin to form an entirely new regiment in response to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for additional volunteers to help preserve American’s Union. It ended its service during the early months of the nation’s Reconstruction Era, officially mustering out at Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day in 1865, its members receiving their final discharge papers at Camp Cadwalader in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in early January of 1866.

Along the way, the 47th Pennsylvania made history, becoming an integrated regiment in 1862 and the only regiment from Pennsylvania to participate in the Union’s 1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana. Its members also distinguished themselves in battle, repeatedly, including during Union General Philip Sheridan’s Shenandoah Valley Campaign, which unfolded between August and December of 1864.

Learn more about key moments in this regiment’s history by reading the following posts:

1861:

1862:

1863:

1864:

1865:

Black History Month: New Details Uncovered Regarding the Formerly Enslaved Black Men Who Enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

Research regarding the lives of the nine formerly enslaved Black men who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in 1862 and 1864 has continued to progress—even in the middle of a pandemic that has forced the closure of numerous local, state, and national archives.*

In addition to uncovering details about the life of the soldier from South Carolina who was mistakenly listed on muster rolls for the 47th Pennsylvania as “Presto Gettes” (learn more about him in this article here), researchers for 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story have been able to determine more about what happened to two of the other men post-war, and have also located records which seem to indicate that there may have been two or three other Black men who enlisted with the regiment (potentially bringing the total number of Black enlistees in the regiment to twelve).

Aaron French (enlisted as Aaron Bullard):

Muster roll entries for Aaron Bullard and Hamilton Blanchard, Company D, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (U.S. National Archives, public domain).

1864 was a life-changing year for Aaron Bullard and four other young Black men in Louisiana. After enlisting with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry on April 5 while the 47th was stationed at Natchitoches, Louisiana, Samuel Jones, Hamilton Blanchard (also known as John Hamilton), and Aaron, James, and John Bullard traveled with the 47th Pennsylvania as it participated in the multiple battles associated with the Union’s 1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana. On or about June 22, they were formally mustered into the regiment at Morganza, Louisiana.

Sometime later (possibly post-war), Aaron Bullard changed his surname to French. After the American Civil War, he married, became a land-owning farmer—and a dad.

Post-Civil War, Aaron French and his family resided in Issaquena County, Mississippi (U.S. Census, 1870, public domain).

In August of 1870, Aaron French and his wife, Amanda, lived with their eight-month-old daughter, “Simpy” (also known as Cynthia or Cyntha) in Skipworth Precinct, Issaquena County, Mississippi. Still residing in Issaquena County a decade later when the June 1880 federal census was taken, Aaron and Amanda were the proud parents of three daughters: Cynthia (who would go on to marry Samuel L. Dixon on March 20, 1890), Jesanna (also known as Jessie/Jesse), and “Arctavia” (also known as Octavia). Jessie, who later went on to wed John B. Cobb on January 28, 1892, made a life with her husband and son in Mayersville, Mississippi, where she was a teacher in the local schools. Octavia married Frank Childress on March 20, 1894.

U.S. Civil War Pension Index Card for Aaron French, who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers in Louisiana in 1864 (U.S. National Archives, public domain).

Sadly, Aaron French did not live to see his two youngest daughters marry because he died in Mississippi on January 30, 1891. He was just 40-43 years old, according to U.S. Census records and other data, which indicate that he was born in Louisiana sometime between 1848 and 1850.

Hearteningly, though, an even more intriguing piece of data has recently been uncovered about the later life of Aaron French—one that indicates that he had become active in politics prior to his death. According to the Vicksburg Evening Post, Aaron was appointed as a delegate from Issaquena County to the Republican Congressional Convention for the Third District, which was held in Greenville, Mississippi on August 7, 1886. Researchers are continuing to search for further details about his political activities and untimely death, as well as the exact location of his gravesite.

Thomas Haywood (alternate spellings of surname: Hayward, Haywood, Heywood) and Jack Jacobs:

Muster roll entries of Thomas Haywood and Edward Jassum, Company H, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (U.S. National Archives, public domain).

Born into slavery in South Carolina sometime around 1832, Thomas Haywood enlisted for a three-year term of service as an Under Cook with Company H of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry at Beaufort, South Carolina on November 1, 1862. He and three other formerly enslaved Black men—Abraham and Edward Jassum and “Presto Gettes”—who had previously enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania at Beaufort in October of 1862, then traveled with the 47th Pennsylvania as it participated in multiple military engagements, including the 47th’s garrisoning of Fort Taylor and Fort Jefferson in Florida in 1863 and 1864, the battles of the Union’s spring 1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana, and the battles of Sheridan’s tide-turning Shenandoah Valley Campaign across Virginia in the fall of 1864.

On or about June 22, 1864 all nine of these Black soldiers were formally mustered into the regiment at Morganza, Louisiana; Thomas Haywood and seven of the eight others all successfully completed their tours of duty, and were honorably mustered out upon expiration of their respective terms of enlistment. In Thomas Haywood’s case, that honorable discharge was awarded on October 31, 1865.

Post-war, it appears from various Freedmen’s Bureau records that he may have entered into yearly contracts with several men who had previously been plantation owners in the Beaufort, South Carolina area. In exchange for agreeing to plant and cultivate cotton for those men on three to five-acre parcels of land that had been leased to him by those white men, he was allowed to keep portions of the cotton sales (the largest portions of which went to the former plantation owners who had also most likely been slave owners prior to and during the Civil War).

U.S. Civil War Index Card for Thomas Haywood, who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers in South Carolina in 1862 (U.S. National Archives, public domain).

His body warn out from years of slavery prior to the war, difficult military service during the war, and harsh sharecropping experiences post-war, Thomas Hayward applied for, and was awarded a U.S. Civil War Pension on April 30, 1888. That pension was subsequently renewed by the federal government in 1907 at the rate of $15 per month (roughly $415 per month in today’s U.S. dollar equivalency).

By 1890, Thomas Haywood was living in Sheldon Township, Beaufort County, South Carolina. After a long life, he died on January 13, 1911. Unfortunately, his burial location has also not yet been identified by researchers.

In 1890, Thomas Haywood lived near Hanna Jacobs, the widow of Jack Jacobs, who may have been another Black soldier who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (U.S. Census, 1890, Sheldon Township, Beaufort County, South Carolina, public domain).

One other piece of tantalizing data that has recently been discovered is that a woman named “Hanna Jacobs” lived near Thomas Haywood in 1890. This information may be significant because Hanna was described on the 1890 U.S. Census of Union soldiers and widows as the widow of “Jack Jacobs,” who had served in the same company with Thomas Haywood (according to that special census).

Researchers currently believe that Jack Jacobs may, in fact, have been another formerly enslaved Black man who had enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania when it was stationed near Beaufort in 1862, and are currently conducting a Go Fund Me campaign to raise funds to purchase the Civil War military and pension records of Hanna and Jack Jacobs, as well as the nine known formerly enslaved Black men who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in 1862 and 1864.

Jackson Haywood:

General Index Card for Jackson Haywood, who may have been a Black soldier who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (U.S. National Archives, public domain).

According to the “Index to Compiled Service Records of Volunteers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Pennsylvania,” which was created by staff at the U.S. National Archives, a General Index Card was created for yet another mystery man—a soldier named “Jackson Hayward.”

To date, researchers have only been able to determine that he may have enlisted with Company K of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry as a cook—a rank similar to that at which the known nine formerly enslaved Black men who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania were entered on the muster rolls of the regiment.

Researchers hope, with time and the continued financial support of the followers of 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story, to be able to confirm the dates of military service and race of this individual, as well as that of “Jack Jacobs.”

As always, we appreciate everyone’s help in ensuring that the service to the nation of these soldiers will never be forgotten. They helped to preserve our Union and deserve to be recognized more fully for their heroism and dedication.

* Our most important goal continues to be the purchase of the Compiled Military Service Records (CMSR) and U.S. Civil War Pension records for each of these remarkable men in order to document and freely share their stories with the widest possible audience. We continue to await word from staff at the U.S. National Archives regarding the timeframe for their resumption of digitization and reproduction services that have temporarily been suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic. As soon as those services have resumed, we will request an update regarding their estimated timeframe for fulfilling our records requests. In the interim, we will seek out further details about each of these soldiers via local and state archival resources across the nation, and will post updates as we confirm more data.

Sources:

  1. Bullard, Aaron, in Index to Compiled Service Records of Volunteers. Washington, DC: U.S. National Archives, 1861-1865.
  2. Bullard, Aaron and French, Aaron, in U.S. Civil War Pension Index Cards. Washington, DC: U.S. National Archives, 1890-1891.
  3. Bullard, Aaron, Presto Garris, Thomas Haywood, et. al. in U.S. Civil War Muster Out Rolls (47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry). Washington, DC: U.S. National Archives, 1865-1866 (available via Ancestry.com).
  4. French, Aaron, in “Proceedings of the Third District Republican Convention.” Vicksburg, Mississippi: Vicksburg Evening Post, August 9, 1886.
  5. French, Aaron and Family, in U.S. Census Records (Issaquena County, Mississippi): Washington, DC: U.S. National Archives, 1870-1910.
  6. Haywood, Jackson, in Index to Compiled Service Records of Volunteers. Washington, DC: U.S. National Archives, 1861-1865.
  7. Haywood, Thomas, in Index to Compiled Service Records of Volunteers. Washington, DC: U.S. National Archives, 1861-1865.
  8. Haywood, Thomas, in U.S. Civil War Pension Index Cards. Washington, DC: U.S. National Archives, 1888, 1907.
  9. Haywood, Thomas, in U.S. Veterans’ Administration Pension Payment Cards. Washington, DC: U.S. National Archives, 1888, 1907.
  10. Haywood, Thomas, in U.S. Census (Beaufort County, South Carolina): Washington, DC: U.S. National Archives, 1890.
  11. Hanna Jacobs, widow of Jack Jacobs, in U.S. Census (Beaufort County, South Carolina): Washington, DC: U.S. National Archives, 1890.