Sitting in Judgment: Four Officers of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers Oversee Court Martial Proceedings (1862–1863)

Captain John Peter Shindel Gobin, Company C, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, shown here circa 1863, went on to become lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania after the war (public domain).

One of the terms that crops up when researching the history of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers is “court martial”—a phrase that often conjures images of soldiers deserting their posts or behaving in some other dishonorable manner, and who then ended up facing charges of “conduct unbecoming.”

With respect to the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, the phrase “court martial” appears, more often than not, in relation to the service by multiple officers of the regiment who were assigned to serve as judges or members of the jury during trials of civilians in territories where the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were assigned to provost (military police and civilian court) duties, or as judges or members of the jury during the court martials of other members of the Union Army during the American Civil War.

This article presents details about two of the multiple military courts martial in which members of the 47th Pennsylvania were involved.

1862

In mid to late December 1862, Brigadier-General John Milton Brannan directed the three most senior officers of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry—Colonel Tilghman H. Good, Lieutenant-Colonel George Warren Alexander and Major William H. Gausler—to serve on a judicial panel with other Union Army officers during the court martial trial of Colonel Richard White of the 55th Pennsylvania Volunteers. Brannan then also appointed Captain John Peter Shindel Gobin of the 47th Pennsylvania’s C Company as judge advocate for the proceedings.

Of the four, Gobin was, perhaps, the most experienced from a legal standpoint. Prior to the war, he was a practicing attorney in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. Post-war, he went on to serve in the Pennsylvania State Senate and as lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

On December 18, 1862, The New York Herald provided the following report regarding Colonel White’s court martial:

A little feud [had] arisen in Beaufort between General [Rufus] Saxton and the forces of the Tenth Army corps. Last week, during the absence at Fernandina of General Brannan and Colonel Good, the latter of whom is in command of the forces on Port Royal Island, Colonel Richard White of the Fifty-fifth Pennsylvania, was temporarily placed in authority. By his command a stable, used by some of General Saxton’s employes [sic, employees], was torn down. General Saxton remonstrated, and … hard words ensued … the General presumed upon his rank to place Colonel White in arrest, and to assume the control of the military forces. Upon General Brannan’s return, last Monday, General Saxton preferred against Colonel White several charges, among which are ‘conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline’ and ‘conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.’ General Brannan, while denying the right of General Saxton to exercise any authority over the troops, has, nevertheless, ordered a general court martial to be convened, and the following officers, comprising the detail of the court, are to-day [sic, today] trying the case:— Brigadier General Terry, United States Volunteers; Colonel T. H. Good, Forty-seventh Pennsylvania; Colonel H. R. Guss, Ninety-seventh Pennsylvania; Colonel J. D. Rust, Eighth Maine; Colonel J. R. Hawley, Seventh Connecticut; Colonel Edward Metcalf, Third Rhode Island artillery; Lieutenant Colonel G. W. Alexander, 47th Pennsylvania; Lieutenant Colonel J. F. Twitchell, Eighth Maine; Lieutenant Colonel J. H. Bedell, Third New Hampshire; Major Gausler, Forty-seventh Pennsylvania; Major John Freese, Third Rhode Island artillery; Captain J. P. S. Gobin, Forty-seventh Pennsylvania, Judge Advocate. Among the officers of the corps the act of General Saxton is generally deemed a usurpation on his part; and, inasmuch as this opinion is either to be sustained or outweighed by the Court, a good deal of interest is manifested in the trial.

White, whose regiment had just recently fought side-by-side with the 47th Pennsylvania and other Brannan regiments in the Battle of Pocotaligo, was ultimately acquitted, according to subsequent reports by the United States War Department.

1863

Major William H. Gausler, third-in-command of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, 1861-1864 (photo used with permission, courtesy of Julian Burley).

Three months after the aforementioned court martial proceedings, Major William Gausler was called upon again to oversee legal proceedings against his fellow Union Army soldiers—this time serving as president of the courts martial of two members of the 90th New York Volunteer Infantry. Those trials and their resulting findings were subsequently reported by the Adjutant General’s Office of the U.S. War Department roughly a year later as follows:

General Orders, No. 118
War Department, Adjutant General’s Office
Washington, March 24, 1864

I. Before a General Court Martial, which convened at Fort Taylor, Key West, Florida, March 23, 1863, pursuant to Special Orders, No. 130, dated Headquarters, Department of the South, Hilton Head, Port Royal, South Carolina, March 7, 1863, and of which Major W. H. Gausler, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, is President, were arraigned and tried—

1. Captain Edward D. Smythe, 90th New York State Volunteers.

CHARGE I.—“Violation of the 7th Article of War.”

Specification—“In this, that Captain Edward D. Smythe, 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers, did join in a seditious combination of officers of the 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers. This at Key West, Florida, on or about the 20th day of February, 1863.”

CHARGE II.—“Violation of the 8th Article of War.”

Specification 1st—“In this; that Captain Edward D. Smyth, 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers, being present at an unlawful and seditious assemblage of officers of the 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers, held at the Light-house Barracks, Key West, Florida, on or about the 20th day of February, 1863.”

Specification 2d—“In this; that Captain Edward D. Smyth, Company ‘G,’ 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers, having knowledge of an intended unlawful and seditious assemblage of officers of the 90th New York State Volunteers being held at the Light-house Barracks, Key West, Florida, did not without delay give information of the same to his Commanding Officer. This at Key West, Florida, on or about the 20th day of February, 1863.”

CHARGE III.—“Rebellious conduct, tending to excite mutiny.”

Specification 1st —“In this; that Captain Edward D. Smyth, Company ‘G,’ 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers, did, with, thirteen other officers of the 90th New York State Volunteers, tender his resignation, and insist upon its being forwarded, at a time when there were apprehensions of a general resistance to the execution of an order from the Headquarters of the Department of the South. This at Key West, Florida, on or about the 20th day of February, 1863.”

Specification 2d—“In this; that Captain Edward D. Smyth, Company ‘G,’ 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers, did, after so tendering his resignation, positively refuse to withdraw the same when requested to do so by his Commanding Officer, Colonel Joseph S. Morgan, 90th Regiment New York State Volunteers, then commanding the post, he having been notified by Commanding Officer that there were apprehensions of imminent danger at the post. All this at Key West, Florida, on our about the 20th day of February, 1863.”

To which charges and specifications the accused, Captain Edward D. Smyth, 90th New York State Volunteers, pleaded “Not Guilty.”

FINDING.

The Court, having maturely considered the evidence adduced, finds the accused, Captain Edward D. Smyth, 90th New York State Volunteers, as follows:

CHARGE I.

Of the Specification, “Not Guilty.”
Of the Charge, “Not Guilty.”

CHARGE II.

Of the 1st Specification, “Not Guilty.”
Of the 2d Specification, “Not Guilty.”
Of the Charge, “Not Guilty.”

CHARGE III.

Of the 1st Specification, “Guilty, except the words ‘insist upon its being forwarded at a time when there were apprehensions of a general resistance to the execution of an order from the Headquarters of the Department of the South.’”

Of the 2d Specification, “Guilty.”
Of the Charge, “Not Guilty.”

And the Court, being of opinion there was no criminality, does therefore acquit him.

2. 1st Lieutenant Charles N. Smith, 90th New York Volunteers.

CHARGE I.—“Neglect of duty.

Specification—“In this; that the said Lieutenant Charles N. Smith, Company ‘G,’ 90th New York Volunteers, did, on the night of the 10th of March, when he was the Officer of the Day, permit and encourage an enlisted man who was drunk to occupy and sleep in his, the said Lieutenant C. N. Smith’s quarters, and to create an uproar, to the disturbance and annoyance of the officers in the same building, and did not send him, the said enlisted man, although after ‘taps,’ to his proper quarters, or cause him to be quiet.”

CHARGE II.—“Conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, and prejudicial to good order and military discipline.”

Specification—“In this; that the said Lieutenant Charles N. Smith did allow and keep in his quarters all night a drunken enlisted man, and encourage him to speak disrespectfully and abusively of his superior officers; and upon the said enlisted man saying ‘that every officer who had sent in his resignation was a cock-sucking son-of-a-bitch,’ did reply ‘that’s so;’ and did further permit, encourage, and agree to many other things said of a like nature. All this at Key West, Florida, on or about March 10, 1863.”

To which charges and specifications the accused, 1st Lieutenant Charles N. Smith, 90th New York Volunteers, pleaded “Not Guilty.”

FINDING.

The Court, having maturely considered the evidence adduced, finds the accused, 1st Lieutenant Charles N. Smith, 90th New York Volunteers, as follows:

CHARGE I.

Of the Specification, “Guilty, excepting the words ‘encouraged’ or ‘cause him to be quiet.’”
Of the Charge, “Guilty.”

CHARGE II.

Of the Specification, “Guilty of allowing and keeping in his quarters all night a drunken enlisted man.”
Of the Charge, “Guilty, except the words ‘unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.’”

SENTENCE.

And the Court does therefore sentence him, the said Charles N. Smith, 1st Lieutenant, 90th New York Volunteers, “To be reprimanded by his Commanding Officer.”

Trusted to honorably and faithfully fulfill their responsibilities by senior Union Army leaders, those and other officers of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry would be called upon repeatedly for the remainder of the war to serve in similar judicial roles throughout the remaining years of the war.

Sources:

General Orders No., 118, Washington, March 24, 1864, in Index of General Orders Adjutant General’s Office, 1864. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1865.
“Our Hilton Head Correspondence.” New York New York: The New York Herald, December 16, 1862.
“South Carolina.; Military Organization of the Department of South Carolina.” New York, New York: The New York Times, August 8, 1865.

New Year, New Duty Station: Adjusting to Life at Fort Jefferson in Florida’s Dry Tortugas (Late December 1862 – Late February 1863)

Mar29

Brigadier-General John Milton Brannan, U.S. Army (public domain).

“It is hardly necessary to point out to you the extreme military importance of the two works now intrusted [sic, entrusted] to your command. Suffice it to state that they cannot pass out of our hands without the greatest possible disgrace to whoever may conduct their defense, and to the nation at large. In view of difficulties that may soon culminate in war with foreign powers, it is eminently necessary that these works should be immediately placed beyond any possibility of seizure by any naval or military force that may be thrown upon them from neighboring ports….

Seizure of these forts by coup de main may be the first act of hostilities instituted by foreign powers, and the comparative isolation of their position, and their distance from reinforcements, point them out (independent of their national importance) as peculiarly the object of such an effort to possess them.”

— Excerpt from orders issued by Brigadier-General John Milton Brannan, commanding officer, United States Army, Department of the South, to Colonel Tilghman H. Good, commanding officer of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in December 1862

Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas, Florida, view from the sea, 1946 (vacation photograph collection of President Harry Truman, November 1946 U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, public domain).

Having been ordered by Union Brigadier-General John Milton Brannan to resume garrison duties in Florida in December 1862, after having been badly battered in the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina two months earlier, the officers and enlisted members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were also informed in December that their regiment would become a divided one. This was being done, Brannan said, not as a punishment for their performance, which had been valiant, but to help the federal government to ensure that the foreign governments that had granted belligerent status to the Confederate States of America would not be able to aid the Confederate army and navy further in their efforts to move troops and supplies from Europe and the Deep South of the United States to the various theaters of the American Civil War.

As a result, roughly sixty percent of 47th Pennsylvanians (Companies A, B, C, E, G, and I) were sent back to Fort Taylor in Key West shortly before Christmas in 1862 while the remaining members of the regiment (from Companies D, F, H, and K) were transported by the USS Cosmopolitan to Fort Jefferson, the Union’s remote outpost in the Dry Tortugas, which was situated roughly seventy miles off the coast of Florida. They arrived there in late December of that same year.

Life at Fort Jefferson

Union Army Columbiad on the Terreplein at Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas, Florida (George A. Grant, 1937, U.S. National Park Service, public domain).

Garrison duty in Florida proved to be serious business for the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers. Per records of the United States Army’s Ordnance Department, the defense capabilities of Fort Jefferson in 1863 were impressive—thirty-three smoothbore cannon (twenty-four of which were twenty-four pounder howitzers that had been installed in the fort’s bastions to protect the installation’s flanks, and nine of which were forty-two pounders available for other defensive actions); six James rifles (forty-two pounder seacoast guns); and forty-three Columbiads (six ten-inch and thirty-seven eight-inch seacoast guns).

Fort Jefferson was so heavily armed because it was “key in controlling … shipping in the Gulf of Mexico and was being used as a supply depot for the distribution of rations and munitions to Federal troops in the Mississippi Delta; and as a supply and fueling station for naval vessels engaged in the blockade or transport of supplies and troops,” according to historian Lewis Schmidt.

Large quantities of stores, including such diverse items as flour … ham … coal, shot, shell, powder, 5000 crutches, hospital stores, and stone, bricks and lumber for the fort, were collected and stored at the Tortugas for distribution when needed. Federal prisoners, most of them court martialed Union soldiers, were incarcerated at the fort during the period of the war and used as laborers in improving the structure and grounds. As many as 1200 prisoners were kept at the fort during the war, and at least 500 to 600 were needed to maintain a 200 man working crew for the engineers.

With respect to housing and feeding the soldiers stationed here:

Cattle and swine were kept on one of the islands nearest the fort, called ‘Hog Island’ (today’s Bush Key), and would be compelled to swim across the channel to the fort to be butchered, with a hawser fastened to their horns. The meat was butchered twice each week, and rations were frequently supplemented by drawing money for commissary stores not used, and using it to buy fish and other available food items from the local fishermen. The men of the 7th New Hampshire [who were also stationed at Fort Jefferson] acquired countless turtle and birds’ eggs … from adjacent keys, including ‘Sand Key’ [where the fort’s hospital was located]. Loggerhead turtles were also caught … [and] were kept in the ‘breakwater ditch outside of the walls of the fort’, and used to supplement the diet [according to one soldier from New Hampshire].

Second-tier casemates, lighthouse keeper’s house, sallyport, and lean-to structure, Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas, Florida, late 1860s (U.S. National Park Service and National Archives, public domain).

In addition, the fort’s “interior parade grounds, with numerous trees and shrubs in evidence, contained … officers’ quarters, [a] magazine, kitchens and out houses,” as well as a post office and “a ‘hot shot oven’ which was completed in 1863 and used to heat shot before firing,” according to Schmidt.

Most quarters for the garrison … were established in wooden sheds and tents inside the parade [grounds] or inside the walls of the fort in second-tier gun rooms of ‘East’ front no. 2, and adjacent bastions … with prisoners housed in isolated sections of the first and second tiers of the southeast, or no. 3 front, and bastions C and D, located in the general area of the sallyport. The bakery was located in the lower tier of the northwest bastion ‘F’, located near the central kitchen….

According to H Company Second Lieutenant Christian Breneman, the walk around Fort Jefferson’s barren perimeter was less than a mile long with a sweeping view of the Gulf of Mexico. Brennan also noted the presence of “six families living [nearby], with 12 or 15 respectable ladies.”

Balls and parties are held regularly at the officers’ quarters, which is a large three-story brick building with large rooms and folding doors.

Lieutenant-Colonel George Warren Alexander, second-in-command, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, standing next to his horse, with officers from the 47th, Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas, Florida, circa 1863 (public domain; click to enlarge).

Shortly after the arrival of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers at Fort Jefferson, First Lieutenant George W. Fuller was appointed as adjutant for Lieutenant-Colonel George Warren Alexander, who had been placed in command of the fort’s operations. Assistant Regimental Surgeon Jacob Scheetz, M.D. was appointed as post surgeon and given command of the fort’s hospital operations, responsibilities he would continue to execute for fourteen months. In addition, Private John Schweitzer of the 47th Pennsylvania’s A Company was directed to serve at the fort’s baker, B Company’s Private Alexander Blumer was assigned as clerk of the quartermaster’s department, and H Company’s Third Sergeant William C. Hutchinson began his new duties as provost sergeant while H Company Privates John D. Long and William Barry were given additional duties as a boatman and baker, respectively.

When Christmas Day dawned, many at the fort experienced feelings of sadness and ennui as they continued to mourn friends who had recently been killed at Pocotaligo and worried about others who were still fighting to recover from their battle wounds.

1863

Unidentified Union Army artillerymen standing beside one of the fifteen-inch Rodman guns installed on the third level of Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, Florida, circa 1862. Each smoothbore Rodman weighed twenty-five tons, and was able to fire four-hundred-and-fifty-pound shells more than three miles (U.S. National Park Service, public domain).

The New Year arrived at Fort Jefferson with a bang—literally—as the fort’s biggest guns thundered in salute, kicking off a day of celebration designed by senior military officials to lift the spirits of the men and inspire them to continued service. Donning their best uniforms, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers assembled on the parade grounds, where they marched in a dress parade and drilled to the delight of the civilians living on the island, including Emily Holder, who had been living in a small house within the fort’s walls since 1860 with her husband, who had been stationed there as a medical officer for the fort’s engineers. When describing that New Year’s Day and other events for an 1892 magazine article, she said:

On January 1st, 1863, the steamer Magnolia visited Fort Jefferson and we exchanged hospitalities. One of the officers who dined with us said it was the first time in nine months he had sat at a home table, having been all that time on the blockade….

Colonel Alexander, our new Commander, said that in Jacksonville, where they paid visits to the people, the young ladies would ask to be excused from not rising; they were ashamed to expose their uncovered feet, and their dresses were calico pieced from a variety of kinds.

Two days later, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers’ dress parade was a far less enjoyable one as temperatures and tempers soared. The next day, H Company Corporal George Washington Albert and several of his comrades were given the unpleasant task of carrying the regiment’s foul-smelling garbage to a flatboat and hauling it out to sea for dumping.

As the month of January progressed, it became abundantly clear to members of the regiment that the practice of chattel slavery was as ever present at and beyond the walls of Fort Jefferson as it had been at Fort Taylor and in South Carolina. It seemed that the changing of hearts and minds would take time even among northerners—despite President Lincoln’s best efforts, as illustrated by these telling observations made later that same month by Emily Holder:

We received a paper on the 10th of January, which was read in turns by the residents, containing rumors of the emancipation which was to take place on the first, but we had to wait another mail for the official announcement.

I asked a slave who was in my service if he thought he should like freedom. He replied, of course he should, and hoped it would prove true; but the disappointment would not be as great as though it was going to take away something they had already possessed. I thought him a philosopher.

In Key West, many of the slaves had already anticipated the proclamation, and as there was no authority to prevent it, many people were without servants. The colored people seemed to think ‘Uncle Sam’ was going to support them, taking the proclamation in its literal sense. They refused to work, and as they could not be allowed to starve, they were fed, though there were hundreds of people who were offering exorbitant prices for help of any kind—a strange state of affairs, yet in their ignorance one could not wholly blame them. Colonel Tinelle [sic, Colonel L. W. Tinelli] would not allow them to leave Fort Jefferson, and many were still at work on the fort.

John, a most faithful boy, had not heard the news when he came up to the house one evening, so I told him, then asked if he should leave us immediately if he had his freedom.

His face shone, and his eyes sparkled as he asked me to tell him all about it. He did not know what he would do. The next morning Henry, another of our good boys, who had always wished to be my cook, but had to work on the fort, came to see me, waiting until I broached the subject, for I knew what he came for. He hoped the report would not prove a delusion. He and John had laid by money, working after hours, and if it was true, they would like to go to one of the English islands and be ‘real free.’

I asked him how the boys took the news as it had been kept from them until now, or if they had heard a rumor whether they thought it one of the soldier’s stories.

‘Mighty excited, Missis,’ he replied….

Henry had been raised in Washington by a Scotch lady, who promised him his freedom when he became of age; but she died before that time arrived, and Henry had been sold with the other household goods.

The 47th Pennsylvanians continued to undergo inspections, drill and march for the remainder of January as regimental and company assignments were fine-tuned by their officers to improve efficiency. Among the changes made was the reassignment of Private Blumer to service as clerk of the fort’s ordnance department.

Three key officers of the regiment, however, remained absent. D Company’s Second Lieutenant George Stroop was still assigned to detached duties with the U.S. Army’s Signal Corps aboard the Union Navy’s war sloop, Canandaigua, and H Company’s First Lieutenant William Wallace Geety was back home in Pennsylvania, still trying to recruit new members for the regiment while recovering from the grievous injuries he had sustained at Pocotaligo, while Company K’s Captain Charles W. Abbott was undergoing treatment for disease-related complications at Fort Taylor’s post hospital.

Disease, in fact, would continue to be one of the Union Army’s most fearsome foes during this phase of duty, felling thirty-five members of its troops stationed at Fort Jefferson during the months of January and February alone. Those seriously ill enough to be hospitalized included twenty men battling dysentery and/or chronic diarrhea, four men suffering from either intermittent or bilious remittent fever, and two who were recovering from the measles with others diagnosed with rheumatism and general debility.

Fort Jefferson’s moat and wall, circa 1934, Dry Tortugas, Florida (C. E. Peterson, U.S. Library of Congress; public domain).

The primary reason for this shocking number of sick soldiers was the problematic water quality. According to Schmidt:

‘Fresh’ water was provided by channeling the rains from the fort’s barbette through channels in the interior walls, to filter trays filled with sand; and finally to the 114 cisterns located under the fort which held 1,231,200 gallons of water. The cisterns were accessible in each of the first level cells or rooms through a ‘trap hole’ in the floor covered by a temporary wooden cover…. Considerable dirt must have found its way into these access points and was responsible for some of the problems resulting in the water’s impurity…. The fort began to settle and the asphalt covering on the outer walls began to deteriorate and allow the sea water (polluted by debris in the moat) to penetrate the system…. Two steam condensers were available … and distilled 7000 gallons of tepid water per day for a separate system of reservoirs located in the northern section of the parade ground near the officers [sic, officers’] quarters. No provisions were made to use any of this water for personal hygiene of the [planned 1,500-soldier garrison force]….

Consequently, soldiers were forced to wash themselves and their clothes using saltwater hauled from the ocean. As if that were not difficult enough, “toilet facilities were located outside of the fort.” According to Schmidt:

At least one location was near the wharf and sallyport, and another was reached through a door-sized hole in a gunport, and a walk across the moat on planks at the northwest wall…. These toilets were flushed twice each day by the actions of the tides, a procedure that did not work very well and contributed to the spread of disease. It was intended that the tidal flush should move the wastes into the moat, and from there, by similar tidal action, into the sea. But since the moat surrounding the fort was used clandestinely by the troops to dispose of litter and other wastes … it was a continuous problem for Lt. Col. Alexander and his surgeon.

When it came to the care of soldiers with more serious infectious diseases such as smallpox, soldiers and prisoners were confined to isolation roughly three miles away on Bird Key to prevent contagion. The small island also served as a burial ground for Union soldiers stationed at the fort.

* Note: During this same period, First Lieutenant Lawrence Bonstine was assigned to special duty as Post Adjutant at Fort Taylor in Key West, a position he continued to hold from at least January 10, 1863 through the end of December 1863. Reporting directly to the regiment’s founder and commanding officer, Colonel Tilghman H. Good, he was essentially Good’s right hand, ensuring that regimental records and reports to more senior military officials were kept up to date while performing other higher level administrative and leadership tasks.

On February 3, 1863, Colonel Tilghman Good, visited Fort Jefferson, in his capacity as regimental commanding officer and accompanied by the newly re-formed Regimental Band (band no. 2). Led by Regimental Bandmaster Anton Bush, the ensemble was on hand to perform the music for that evening’s officers’ ball.

Sometime during this phase of duty, Corporal George W. Albert was reassigned to duties as camp cook for Company H, giving him the opportunity to oversee at least one of the formerly enslaved Black men who had enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry while the regiment was stationed in Beaufort, South Carolina. Subsequently assigned to duties as an “Under-Cook,” that Black soldier who fell under his authority was most likely Thomas Haywood, who had been entered onto the H Company roster after enrolling with the 47th Pennsylvania on November 1, 1862.

* Note: This was likely not a pleasant time for Thomas Haywood. One of the duties of his direct superior, Corporal George Albert, was to butcher a shipment of cattle that had just been received by the fort. Both men took on that task on Saturday, February 24—a day that Corporal Albert later described as hot, sultry and plagued by mosquitoes.

Based on Albert’s known history of overt racism, their interpersonal interactions were likely made worse that day by his liberal use of racial epithets, which were a frequent component of the diary entries he had penned during this time—hate speech that has all too often been wrongly attributed to the regiment’s entire membership by some mainstream historians and Civil War enthusiasts without providing actual evidence to back up those claims. There were a considerable number of officers and enlisted members of the 47th Pennsylvania who strongly supported the efforts of President Lincoln and senior federal government military leaders to eradicate the practice of chattel slavery nationwide with at least several members of the regiment known to be members of prominent abolitionist families in Pennsylvania.

Officers’ quarters and parade grounds, interior of Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas, Florida, 1898 (U.S. National Park Service and National Archives and Records Administration, public domain).

During this same period, Private Edward Frederick of the 47th Pennsylvania’s K Company was readmitted to the regimental hospital for further treatment of the head wound he had sustained at Pocotaligo. As his condition worsened, his health failed, and he died there late in the evening on February 15 from complications related to an abscess that had developed in his brain. He was subsequently laid to rest on the parade grounds at Fort Jefferson.

In a follow-up report, Post Surgeon Jacob H. Scheetz, M.D., the 47th Pennsylvania’s assistant regimental surgeon, provided these details of the battle wound and treatment that Frederick had endured:

Private Edward Frederick, Co. K, 47th Pennsylvania Vols, was struck by a musket ball at the battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina, October 22, 1862. The ball lodged in the frontal bone and was removed. The wound did well for three weeks when he had a slight attack of erysipelas, which, however, soon subsided under treatment. The wound commenced suppurating freely and small spiculae of bone came away, or were removed, on several occasions. Cephalgia was a constant subject of complaint, which was described as a dull aching sensation. The wound had entirely closed on January 1, 1863, and little complaint made except the pain in the head when he exposed himself to the sun. About the 4th of February he was ordered into the hospital with the following symptoms: headache, pain in back and limbs, anorexia, tongue coated with a heavy white coating, bowels torpid. He had alternate flashes of heat; his pupils slightly dilated; his pulse 75, and of moderate volume. He was blistered on the nape of the neck, and had a cathartic given him, which produced a small passage. Growing prostrate, he was put upon the use of tonics, and opiates at night to promote sleep; without any advantage, however. His mind was clear til [sic] thirty-six hours before death, when his pupils were very much dilated, and he gradually sank into a comatose state until 12 M. [midnight] on the night of the 15th of February when he expired.

Another twelve hours after death: Upon removing the calvarium the membranes of the brain presented no abnormal appearance, except slight congestion immediately beneath the part struck. A slight osseus deposition had taken place in the same vicinity. Upon cutting into the left cerebrum, (anterior lobe) it was found normal, but an incision into the left anterior lobe was followed by a copious discharge of dark colored and very offensive pus, and was lined by a yellowish white membrane which was readily broken up by the fingers. I would also have stated that his inferior extremities were, during the last four days, partially paralyzed.

Lieutenant-Colonel George Warren Alexander, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1861 (public domain).

As Private Frederick’s body was being autopsied, the unceasing routine of fort life continued as members of the regiment went about performing their duties and the USS Cosmopolitan arrived with a new group of prisoners. On February 25, 1863, Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander issued Special Order No. 17:

I. Company commanders are hereby ordered to instruct the chief of detachment in their respective companies to see that all embrasures in the lower tier, both at and between their batteries, are properly closed and bolted immediately after retreat.

II. As the safety of the garrison depends on the carrying out of the above order, they will hold chiefs of detachments accountable for all delinquencies.

In addition, orders were given to company cooks to relocate their operations to bastion C of the fort, which was a much cooler place for them to do their duties—a change that was likely appreciated as much or more by the under-cooks as the higher-ranking cooks who oversaw their grueling work.

This was the first of several initiatives undertaken by Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander who, according to Schmidt, “was having some difficulty in exercising proper control over Fort Jefferson as it related to the Engineering Department and persons in their employ.”

It was his duty to train the garrison, guard the prisoners, and provide the necessary protection for the fort and its environs, a situation fraught with many problems not always understood by other military and non-military personnel on station there. It was during this period that relationships between the various interests began to deteriorate, as overseer George Phillips, temporarily filling in for Engineer Frost, refused the request of Lt. Col. Alexander to have as many engineer workmen removed from the casemates as could be comfortably accommodated inside the barracks outside the walls of the fort. Phillips lost the argument and the quarters were vacated, but the tone of the several letters exchanged between the two commands left much to be desired. Differences were aired concerning occupations of the prisoners and their possible use by the engineers; the amount of water used by the workmen as Alexander limited them to one gallon per day per man; Engineer Frost arriving and reclaiming for his department the central Kitchen, and another kitchen near it that had been used by Capt. Woodruff and others; stagnant water in the ditches which involved the post surgeon [Jacob H. Scheetz, M.D.] in the controversy; uncovering of the ‘cistern trap holes’ located in the floors of the first or lower tier, which allowed the water supplies to become contaminated; who exercised jurisdiction over the schooner Tortugas of the Engineering Department; depredations of wood belonging to the engineers; and many other conflicts….

Around this same time, Corporal George Nichols, who had piloted the Confederate steamer, the Governor Milton, behind Union lines after it had been captured by members of the 47th’s Companies E and K in October, was assigned once again to engineering duties—this time at Fort Jefferson—but he was not happy about it, according to a letter he wrote to family and friends:

So I am detailed on Special duty again as Engineer. I cannot See in this I did not Enlist as an Engineer. But I get Extra Pay for it but I do not like it. So I must get the condencer redy [sic, condenser ready] to condece [sic, condense] fresh water. Get her redy [ready] and no tools to do it with.

Corporal Nichols’ reassignment was made possible when the contingent of 47th Pennsylvanians at Fort Jefferson was strengthened with the transfer there of members of Companies E and G from Fort Taylor on February 28. That same day, the men of F Company received additional training with both light and heavy artillery at the fort while the men from K Company gained more direct experience with the installation’s seacoast guns. In addition, members of the regiment finally received the six months of back pay they were owed.

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

It was also during this latest phase of duty that Regimental Chaplain William DeWitt Clinton Rodrock was transferred from Fort Taylor to Fort Jefferson—possibly to render spiritual comfort after what had been a brutal month in terms of hospitalizations. Among the seventy members of the 47th Pennsylvania who had been admitted to the post’s hospital in the Dry Tortugas were fifty-four men with dysentery and/or diarrhea, four men with remittent or bilious remittent fevers, three men suffering from catarrh, one man who had contracted typhoid fever, one man who had contracted tuberculosis and was suffering from the resulting wasting away syndrome known as phthisis, and three men suffering from diseases of the eye (two with nyctalopia, also known as night blindness, and one with cataracts).

One of the additional challenges faced by the men stationed in the Dry Tortugas (albeit a less serious one) was that there was no camp sutler available to them at Fort Jefferson, as there was for the 47th Pennsylvanians who were stationed at Fort Taylor. So, it was more difficult, if not impossible, to obtain their favorite foods, replacements for worn-out clothing, tobacco, and other items not furnished by the quartermasters of the Union Army—making their lives more miserable with each passing day as they depleted the care packages that had been sent to them by their families during the holidays.

Stationed farther from home than they had ever been, they could see no end in sight for the devastating war that had torn their nation apart.

Sources:

Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
“Florida’s Role in the Civil War: ‘Supplier of the Confederacy.’” Tampa, Florida: Florida Center for Instructional Technology, College of Education, University of South Florida, retrieved online January 15, 2020.
Holder, Emily. “At the Dry Tortugas During the War.” San Francisco, California: Californian Illustrated Magazine, 1892 (part four, retrieved online, March 28, 2024, courtesy of Lit2Go, the website of the Educational Technology Clearinghouse at the Florida Center for Instructional Technology, College of Education, University of South Florida).
“History: Crops (Historic Florida Barge Canal Trail).” Historical Marker Database, retrieved online December 30, 2023.
Malcom, Corey. “Emancipation at Key West,” in “The 20th of May: The History and Heritage of Florida’s Emancipation Day Digital History Project.” St. Petersburg, Florida: Florida Humanities, retrieved online March 28, 2024.
Owsley, Frank Lawrence, and Harriet Fason Chappell. King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1959.
“Preventing Diplomatic Recognition of the Confederacy, 1861–1865,” and “The Alabama Claims, 1862–1872,” in “Milestones: 1861–1865.” Washington, D.C.: Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, United States Department of State, retrieved online December 30, 2023.
Schmidt, Lewis G. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.
Staubach, Lieutenant Colonel James C. “Miami During the Civil War: 1861-65,” in Tequesta: The Journal of the Historical Association of Southern Florida, vol. LIII, pp. 31-62. Miami, Florida: Historical Museum of Southern Florida, 1993.
Wharton, Henry D. Letters from the Sunbury Guards. Sunbury, Pennsylvania: Sunbury American, 1861-1868.

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

Feb23

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.

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:

“Bounties to Volunteers.” Washington, D.C.: National Republican, January 5, 1864.
“Comfort of the Soldier.” Washington, D.C.: Daily National Republican, February 23, 1863.
“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.
“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.
“Important Diplomatic Circular by Secretary Seward: Review of Recent Military Events.” Washington, D.C.: The Evening Star, September 15, 1863.
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.
“Military Notices” (Fourteenth United States Infantry). Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 14, 1864.
“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.
“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

Feb1

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:

“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.
“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.
“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.
“The Conscription Act.; Judge Cadwallader’s Opinion Establishing Its Constitutionality.” New York, New York: The New York Times, September 13, 1863.
“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

Jan16

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:

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.
Blight, David W. Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.
Foner, Eric. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. New York, New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.
“Garris, Presto” [sic, “Gethers, Bristor”], in Civil War Veterans’ Card File, 1861-1866. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
“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.
“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.
“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.
“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.
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.
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.
Smith, John David. Black Soldiers in Blue: African American Troops in the Civil War Era. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina, 2002.
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.
“The Confiscation Act.” New York, New York: The New York Times, July 15, 1862.
“The Confiscation Acts of 1861 and 1862.” Washington, D.C.: United States Senate, retrieved online January 14, 2024.

New Year, Familiar Duties: Preventing Assaults on Federal Forts by Confederate Troops and Foreign Powers (Florida, late December 1862 – early February 1864)

Jan1

Brigadier-General John Milton Brannan, U.S. Army, circa 1863 (public domain).

— Excerpt from orders issued by Brigadier-General John M. Brannan, commanding officer, United States Army, Department of the South, to Colonel Tilghman H. Good, commanding officer of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in December 1862

Colonel Tilghman H. Good, commanding officer, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (public domain image, circa 1863).

With those words above, Colonel Tilghman H. Good, the founder and commanding officer of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, learned that he and his subordinates were being sent back to Florida to resume their garrison duties at Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida. Far from being a punishment, following the regiment’s performance during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862, though, as several historians have claimed over the years, those words written to Colonel Good make clear that the return of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers to Florida was viewed by senior Union military officers as a critically important assignment, not only for the regiment, but for the United States of America.

More simply put, senior federal government officials, in consultation with senior Union Army officers, had determined that two key federal military installations in Florida—Fort Taylor in Key West and Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas—were at continuing risk of attack and capture by foreign powers, as well as by Confederate States Army troops, because Confederate States leaders had been able to secure support from several European nations, despite promises by the leaders of those nations that they would remain “neutral” as the American Civil War progressed. In addition to helping Confederate troops defeat the Union’s blockade of Confederate States ports that had been established in 1861, enabling the Confederacy to raise financial support for its war efforts through the sale of cotton to European nations, Great Britain had been “provid[ing] significant assistance in other ways, chiefly by permitting the construction in English shipyards of Confederate warships,” according to historians J. Matthew Gallman and Eric Foner.

The most serious incidents of this nature were initiated with the launch of the Confederate cruiser, Alabama, on July 29, 1862. Per research completed by historians at the United States Department of State:

[The Alabama] captured 58 Northern merchant ships before it was sunk in June 1864 by a U.S. warship off the coast of France. In addition to the Alabama, other British-built ships in the Confederate Navy included the Florida, Georgia, Rappahannock, and Shenandoah. Together, they sank more than 150 Northern ships and impelled much of the U.S. merchant marine to adopt foreign registry. The damage to Northern shipping would have been even worse had not fervent protests from the U.S. Government persuaded British and French officials to seize additional ships intended for the Confederacy. Most famously, on September 3, 1863, the British Government impounded two ironclad, steam-driven “Laird rams” that Confederate agent James D. Bulloch had surreptitiously arranged to be built at a shipyard in Liverpool.

The United States demanded compensation from Britain for the damage wrought by the British-built, Southern-operated commerce raiders, based upon the argument that the British Government, by aiding the creation of a Confederate Navy, had inadequately followed its neutrality laws. The damages discussed were enormous. Charles Sumner, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, argued that British aid to the Confederacy had prolonged the Civil War by 2 years, and indirectly cost the United States hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars (the figure Sumner suggested was $2.125 billion)….

As a result, senior federal government and military officials grew increasingly worried that Confederate States troops would attempt to take over Forts Taylor and Jefferson—possibly in much the same way that Rebel forces had captured Fort Sumter in April 1861.

Ordered to prevent those takeovers from happening by Special Order No. 384, which was issued by Brigadier-General Brannan of the United States Army’s Department of the South, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were specifically chosen for this mission because of the reputation they had built during their first sixteen months of Civil War service. Cited by senior Union Army leaders as being “specially worthy of notice by their bravery and praiseworthy conduct” during the Battle of Pocotaligo, members of the 47th Pennsylvania had already become known for their “attention to duty, discipline and soldierly bearing” as early as 1861, according to historian Samuel P. Bates.

Another Sea Journey

Elisha Wilson Bailey, M.D., Regimental Surgeon, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, circa 1863 (used with permission; courtesy of Julian Burley).

After packing their belongings at their Beaufort, South Carolina encampment and loading their equipment onto the U.S. Steamer Cosmopolitan, the officers and enlisted members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry sailed toward the mouth of the Broad River on December 15, 1862, and anchored briefly at Port Royal Harbor in order to allow the regiment’s medical director, Elisha W. Baily, M.D., and members of the regiment who had recuperated enough from their Pocotaligo-related battle injuries at the Union’s General Hospital at Hilton Head, to rejoin the regiment.

At 5 p.m. that same evening, the regiment sailed for Florida, during what was later described by several members of the regiment as a treacherous and nerve-wracking voyage. According to historian Lewis Schmidt, the ship’s captain “steered a course along the coast of Florida for most of the voyage,” which made the voyage more precarious “because of all the reefs.” On December 16, “the second night, the ship was jarred as it ran aground on one during a storm, but broke free, and finally steered a course further from shore, out in the Gulf Stream.”

Woodcut depicting the harsh climate at Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida during the Civil War (U.S. Library of Congress, public domain).

In a letter penned to the Sunbury American on 21 December, C Company Musician Henry Wharton provided the following details about the regiment’s trip:

On the passage down, we ran along almost the whole coast of Florida. Rather a dangerous ground, and the reefs are no playthings. We were jarred considerably by running on one, and not liking the sensation our course was altered for the Gulf Stream. We had heavy sea all the time. I had often heard of ‘waves as big as a house,’ and thought it was a sailor’s yarn, but I have seen ‘em and am perfectly satisfied; so now, not having a nautical turn of mind, I prefer our movements being done on terra firma, and leave old neptune to those who have more desire for his better acquaintance. A nearer chance of a shipwreck never took place than ours, and it was only through Providence that we were saved. The Cosmopolitan is a good river boat, but to send her to sea, loadened [sic, loaded] with U.S. troops is a shame, and looks as though those in authority wish to get clear of soldiers in another way than that of battle. There was some sea sickness on our passage; several of the boys ‘casting up their accounts’ on the wrong side of the ledger.

According to Corporal George Nichols of Company E, “When we got to Key West the Steamer had Six foot of water in her hole [sic]. Waves Mountain High and nothing but an old river Steamer. With Eleven hundred Men on I looked for her to go to the Bottom Every Minute.”

Although the Cosmopolitan arrived at the Key West Harbor on Thursday, December 18, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers did not set foot on Florida soil until noon the next day. The men from Companies C and I were immediately marched to Fort Taylor, where they were placed under the command of Major William H. Gausler, the regiment’s third-in-command. The men from Companies B and E were assigned to the older barracks that had been erected by the United States Army, and were placed under the command of B Company Captain Emanual P. Rhoads while the men from Companies A and G were placed under the command of A Company Captain Richard A. Graeffe, and stationed at newer facilities known as the “Lighthouse Barracks” on “Lighthouse Key.”

Lieutenant-Colonel George Warren Alexander, second-in-command, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, with officers from the 47th, Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas, Florida, circa 1863 (public domain; click to enlarge).

Three days later, on Saturday, December 21, 1862, Lieutenant-Colonel George Warren Alexander, the regiment’s second-in-command, sailed away aboard the Cosmopolitan with the men from the regiment’s remaining companies—Companies D, F, H, and K—and headed south to Fort Jefferson, where they would assume garrison duties at the Union’s remote outpost in the Dry Tortugas, roughly seventy miles off the coast of Florida (in the Gulf of Mexico). According to Henry Wharton:

We landed here on last Thursday at noon, and immediately marched to quarters. Company I. and C., in Fort Taylor, E. and B. in the old Barracks, and A. and G. in the new Barracks. Lieut. Col. Alexander, with the other four companies proceeded to Tortugas, Col. Good having command of all the forces in and around Key West. Our regiment relieves the 90th Regiment N.Y.S. Vols. Col. Joseph Morgan, who will proceed to Hilton Head to report to the General commanding. His actions have been severely criticized by the people, but, as it is in bad taste to say anything against ones [sic, one’s] superiors, I merely mention, judging from the expression of the citizens, they were very glad of the return of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers….

Key West has improved very little since we left last June, but there is one improvement for which the 90th New York deserve a great deal of praise, and that is the beautifying of the ‘home’ of dec’d. soldiers. A neat and strong wall of stone encloses the yard, the ground is laid off in squares, all the graves are flat and are nicely put in proper shape by boards eight or ten inches high on the ends sides, covered with white sand, while a head and foot board, with the full name, company and regiment, marks the last resting place of the patriot who sacrificed himself for his country….

Although water quality was a challenge for members of the regiment at both of these duty stations, it was particularly problematic at Fort Jefferson. According to Schmidt:

‘Fresh’ water was provided by channeling the rains from the fort’s barbette through channels in the interior walls, to filter trays filled with sand; and finally to the 114 cisterns located under the fort which held 1,231,200 gallons of water. The cisterns were accessible in each of the first level cells or rooms through a ‘trap hole’ in the floor covered by a temporary wooden cover…. Considerable dirt must have found its way into these access points and was responsible for some of the problems resulting in the water’s impurity…. The fort began to settle and the asphalt covering on the outer walls began to deteriorate and allow the sea water (polluted by debris in the moat) to penetrate the system…. Two steam condensers were available … and distilled 7000 gallons of tepid water per day for a separate system of reservoirs located in the northern section of the parade ground near the officers [sic, officers’] quarters. No provisions were made to use any of this water for personal hygiene of the [planned 1,500-soldier garrison force]….

Fort Jefferson’s moat and wall, circa 1934, Dry Tortugas, Florida (C.E. Peterson, U.S. Library of Congress, public domain).

As a result, the soldiers stationed at Fort Jefferson washed themselves and their clothes, using saltwater from the ocean. As if that weren’t difficult enough, “toilet facilities were located outside of the fort,” according to Schmidt:

At least one location was near the wharf and sallyport, and another was reached through a door-sized hole in a gunport, and a walk across the moat on planks at the northwest wall…. These toilets were flushed twice each day by the actions of the tides, a procedure that did not work very well and contributed to the spread of disease. It was intended that the tidal flush should move the wastes into the moat, and from there, by similar tidal action, into the sea. But since the moat surrounding the fort was used clandestinely by the troops to dispose of litter and other wastes … it was a continuous problem for Lt. Col. Alexander and his surgeon.

As for housing and feeding the soldiers stationed here, as well as daily operations, there was a fort post office and the “interior parade grounds, with numerous trees and shrubs in evidence, contained … officers quarters, [a] magazine, kitchens and out houses,” according to Schmidt, as well as “a ‘hot shot oven’ which was completed in 1863 and used to heat shot before firing.”

Most quarters for the garrison … were established in wooden sheds and tents inside the parade [grounds] or inside the walls of the fort in second-tier gun rooms of ‘East’ front no. 2, and adjacent bastions … with prisoners housed in isolated sections of the first and second tiers of the southeast, or no. 3 front, and bastions C and D, located in the general area of the sallyport. The bakery was located in the lower tier of the northwest bastion ‘F’, located near the central kitchen….

Additional Duties: Diminishing Florida’s Role as the “Supplier of the Confederacy”

On top of the strategic role played by the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers in preventing foreign powers from assisting the Confederate Army and Navy in gaining control over federal forts in the Deep South, members of this regiment would also be called upon to play an ongoing role in weakening Florida’s abilities to supply and transport food and troops throughout the area held by the Confederate States of America.

Prior to intervention by Union Army and Navy forces, the owners of plantations and livestock ranches, as well as the operators of small, family farms across Florida, had been able to consistently furnish beef and pork, fish, fruits, and vegetables to Confederate troops stationed throughout the Deep South during the first year of the American Civil War. Large herds of cattle were raised near Fort Myers, for example, while orchard owners in the Saint John’s River area were actively engaged in cultivating large orange groves (while other types of citrus trees were easily found growing throughout the state’s wilderness areas).

The state was also a major producer of salt, which was used as a preservative for the foods. As a result, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers and other Union troops across Florida were ordered to capture or destroy salt manufacturing facilities in order to further curtail the enemy’s access to food.

And they would be undertaking all of these duties in conditions that were far more challenging than what many other Union Army units were experiencing up north in the Eastern Theater. The weather was frequently hot and humid as spring turned to summer, the mosquitos and other insects were an ever-present annoyance and serious threat when they were carrying tropical diseases, and there were also scorpions and snakes that put the men’s health at further risk.

Consequently, the time spent in Florida during the whole of 1863 and early 1864 was most definitely not “easy duty” for the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers. It was a serious and perilous time for them, and it would prove to be one that a significant number of 47th Pennsylvanians would not survive.

Sources:

Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
“Florida’s Role in the Civil War: ‘Supplier of the Confederacy.’” Tampa, Florida: Florida Center for Instructional Technology, University of South Florida (College of Education), retrieved online January 15, 2020.
Gallman, J. Matthew, editor, and Eric Foner, introduction. The Civil War Chronicle: The Only Day-by-Day Portrait of Americas Tragic Conflict as Told by Soldiers, Journalists, Politicians, Farmers, Nurses, Slaves, and Other Eyewitnesses. New York, New York: Crown, 2000.
“History: Crops (Historic Florida Barge Canal Trail).” Historical Marker Database, retrieved online December 30, 2023.
Mathews, Alfred and Austin N. Hungerford. History of the Counties of Lehigh and Carbon, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Everts & Richards, 1884.
Owsley, Frank Lawrence and Harriet Fason Chappell. King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1959.
“Preventing Diplomatic Recognition of the Confederacy, 1861–1865,” and “The Alabama Claims, 1862–1872,” in “Milestones: 1861–1865.” Washington, D.C.: Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, United States Department of State, retrieved online December 30, 2023.
Schmidt, Lewis G. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.
Staubach, Lieutenant Colonel James C. “Miami During the Civil War: 1861-65,” in Tequesta: The Journal of the Historical Association of Southern Florida, vol. LIII, pp. 31-62. Miami, Florida: Historical Museum of Southern Florida, 1993.
Stuckey, Sterling, Linda Kerrigan and Judith L. Irvin, et. al. Call to Freedom. Austin, Texas: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 2000.
Wharton, Henry D. Letters from the Sunbury Guards. Sunbury, Pennsylvania: Sunbury American, 1861-1868.

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

Dec23

“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:

Boissoneault, Lorraine. “A Civil War Cartoonist Created the Modern Image of Santa Claus as Union Propaganda.” Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Magazine, December 19, 2018.
“Drawn Together: The Friendship of U.S. Grant and Thomas Nast” (video). Wilton, New York: Grant Cottage, May 14, 2022.
“Santa Claus,” in “Thomas Nast.” Columbus, Ohio: University Libraries, The Ohio State University, retrieved online December 23, 2023.
“Santa Claus in Camp (from ‘Harper’s Weekly,’ vol. 7, p. 1).” New York, New York: The Met, retrieved online December 23, 2023.
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.

The Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina: Unpredictable Outcomes

Nov8

“The Commencement of the Battle near Pocotaligo River” (Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, October 1862, public domain; click to enlarge).

And among them Strife and Tumult joined, and destructive Fate, grasping one man alive, fresh-wounded, another without a wound, and another she dragged dead through the melee by the feet; and the raiment she had about her shoulders was red with the blood of men. Just like living mortals joined they and fought; and they each were dragging away the bodies of the others’ slain.”

—Homer, The Iliad, Volume II, Book 18

October 22, 1862 was a deadly day for the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, and the succeeding days throughout that month and beyond proved to be deadlier still, as one member of the regiment after another succumbed to the wounds they had sustained in battle—or to complications that arose from the multiple surgeries that had been performed by Union Army surgeons in valiant, but vain attempts to save their lives.

Excerpt from “A Golden Thread” (John Melhuish Strudwick, circa 1885, public domain).

What will be striking to any student of history engaged in even just a cursory review of this regiment’s medical and death records during this period of American Civil War-era service, is the seeming fickleness of who lived or died—as if Lachesis and Atropos had debated and determined their fates while Clotho spun out the thread of each life, giving them no say in their individual destinies.

Or was it the decision-making mind and finger of God? “You, but not you.”

This randomness dawns with startling clarity when examining the vastly different outcomes of Sunbury, Pennsylvania brothers, Samuel and Peter Haupt, and of company commanding officers Charles Mickley, George Junker and William Wallace Geety.

Captain Charles Mickley of G Company was killed instantly, early on in the Battle of Pocotaligo on October 22, 1862—brought swiftly to the ground by a rifle shot to his head. He never knew what hit him—or what happened to the men of his company who were marching head on with him into an intense barrage of canister and grape shot, mingled with rifle fire and artillery shell shrapnel.

Captain George Junker of Company K was felled by a minié ball fired from a Confederate rifle during his company’s advance on the Frampton Plantation. Initially stabilized in the field before being transported back to Hilton Head, where he was hospitalized at the Union Army’s post hospital, he died there the next day. He, too, had been shot in the head.

But First Lieutenant William Wallace Geety miraculously survived the gunshot that he sustained to his head—despite having been initially described by The New York Times in its list of Pocotaligo casualties as “mortally wounded.” His survival subsequently became the subject of multiple newspaper reports and medical journal articles. According to the Commemorative Biographical Encyclopedia of Dauphin County, he was wounded in action when “grape shot struck him between the eyes and passing to the left destroyed the eye, shattered the bones of the face, injuring the nerves and lodged near the carotid artery. While lying upon the field he was for a while given up for dead.”

The Union Army surgeons who treated him throughout his convalescence provided even more telling and precise accounts, documenting that William W. Geety had been struck between the eyes by a one-half-inch-diameter iron ball propelled by a cannon shrapnel shell which had exploded on impact in front of him while he was commanding his men on the field. As the shrapnel peppered the air around him, the ball traveled upward through his head before striking the back of his skull, where it then reversed course, traveled down toward his left jaw and neck, and lodged behind the carotid artery. In the process, his left eye was destroyed along with nerve sensation on his left neck and face, which was also disfigured. When battlefield surgeons realized that one of the major fragments was located perilously close to his carotid artery and could not be removed without killing their patient, they opted to leave that piece of shrapnel in place, stabilized Geety, and continued to care for him until he could safely be moved to one of the Union’s larger and better equipped hospitals for more advanced treatment.

Finally well enough to pen a letter home to his wife and children on November 19, 1864, Geety wrote:

I have lost my left eye, the base of the nose has been taken out. My jaw has been splintered besides some other bones about the brain being cracked. I am very thankful that I got through so safely, as my life was despared [sic] of at first.

In later accounts, he recalled that the grapeshot had struck him near the bottom of his nose, and “after knocking a piece out of my skull, turned and lodged in my throat against the carotid artery from whence I had it cut, at the same time part of the casing of the shell struck me in the face, making a longitudinal cut across my left eye, breaking the lower jaw, and staving in the upper jaw bone on the right side of the face. The socket for the lower jaw to work is broken off, so that every time I open my mouth the jaw flies out of joint.”

Astoundingly ambulatory just a month after the battle, he continued to receive medical care at the Union Officers’ Hospital in Beaufort, South Carolina, and was actually able to walk around the city under his own power.

* For more information about what happened to First Lieutenant William W. Geety after he was released from the Union Army’s hospital in South Carolina, read “First Lieutenant William W. Geety — Battling Back from a Nearly Fatal Head Wound.”

But a Foot Wound Was Fatal?

Atropos, one of the Three Fates in Greek mythology, cuts the thread of life (bas relief image, public domain).

Also wounded that same day, but seemingly less seriously than their commanding officers had been, were the Haupt brothers of the 47th Pennsylvania’s C Company (the color-bearer unit). Private Samuel Haupt was struck in the chin—presumably by one of the countless artillery shell fragments flying through the air as the enemy unleashed a barrage of cannon fire on their company as it advanced toward its target—while his brother, Sergeant Peter Haupt, was struck in the foot that had been fired by a musket or rifle ball.

Sam survived, but Peter did not.

A seemingly minor wound, ballistic injuries to a foot are often extremely painful and traumatic—even today. According to the editors of Ballistic Trauma: A Practical Guide, “There are three mechanisms whereby a projectile can cause tissue injury:

In a low-energy transfer wound, the projectile crushes and lacerates tissue along the track of the projectile, causing a permanent cavity. In addition, bullet and bone fragments can act as secondary missiles, increasing the volume of tissue crushed.
In a high-energy transfer wound, the projectile may impel the walls of the wound track [and] radially outwards, causing a temporary cavity lasting 5 to 10 milliseconds before its collapse in addition to the permanent mechanical disruption produced….
In wounds where the firearm’s muzzle is in contact with the skin at the time of firing, tissues are forced aside by the gases expelled from the barrel of the fire, causing a localized blast injury.”

In Peter Haupt’s case, the high degree of damage to his foot was compounded by the fact that his wound was caused by a musket or minié ball that was made of lead—a substance known to cause blood poisoning and damage to human tissue and organs—and likely also by surgical procedures that were less than sterile, which resulted in a subsequent infection. His cause of death at the Union Army’s post hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina on November 14, 1862—just over three weeks after the battle—was “traumatic tetanus,” according to the Union Army’s Registers of Deaths of Volunteer soldiers.

The Consequences of Human Conflict

Random, divergent and seemingly senseless fates.

Whether determined by the finger of God, the pre-battle machinations of the Moirai of Greek mythology, or the sheer dumb luck of being positioned at precisely the wrong spot in the regiment’s line of march that terrible day, the final outcomes of the 47th Pennsylvanians who did or did not make it home stand as a testament to the often inexplicable and heartbreaking nature of war.

Sources:

“A Soldier’s Death” (obituary of Captain W. W. Geety). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Harrisburg Telegraph, 20 January 1887.
Affidavit Regarding Peter Haupt’s Death (written by Second Lieutenant Daniel Oyster on August 14, 1863 and certified by Captain John Peter Shindel Gobin on August 20, 1863, Company C, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, Fort Taylor, Key West, Florida). Washington, D.C.: Officer of the United States Commissioner of Pensions.
Burial Ledgers, in Record Group 15, The National Cemetery Administration, and Record Group 92, United States Departments of Defense and Army (Quartermaster General). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration: 1861-1865.
Commemorative Biographical Encyclopedia of Dauphin County, Containing Sketches of Representative Citizens, and Many of the Early Scotch-Irish and German Settlers. Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: J. M. Runk & Company, 1896.
“Extraordinary Case” (account of the injury and treatment of William Wallace Geety). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Patriot & Union, June 12, 1863.
Haupt, Peter, in Registers of Deaths of Volunteer Soldiers, United States Army, 1862. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
Homer, The Iliad, II, Book 18 (A. T. Murray, translator). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1924.
Junker, George, in Registers of Deaths of Volunteer Soldiers, United States Army, 1862. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
“Lead Toxicity: Biological Fate,” in “Environmental Health and Medicine.” Atlanta, Georgia: Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, United States Centers for Disease Control, May 2023.
Letter from Captain James Kacy from Beaufort, South Carolina, October 25, 1862, regarding H Company casualties sustained during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina, October 22, 1862. Bloomfield, Pennsylvania: The Perry County Democrat, November 6, 1862.
“List of Casualties: Forty-Seventh Pennsylvania Volunteers—Col. T. H. Good.” New York, New York: The New York Times, October 29, 1862.
Mahoney, Peter F., James Ryan, et. al. Ballistic Trauma: A Practical Guide, Second Edition, pp. 31-66, 91-121, 168-179, 356-395, 445-464, 535-540, 596-605. London, England: Springer-Verlag London Limited, 2005.
Reimer, Terry. “Wounds, Ammunition, and Amputation.” Frederick, Maryland: National Museum of Civil War Medicine, 2007.
Reports of Col. Tilghman H. Good, Forty-seventh Pennsylvania Infantry and Report of Col. Tilghman H. Good, Forty-seventh Pennsylvania Infantry, commanding First Brigade, Tenth Army Corps, in The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Prepared Under the Direction of the Secretary of War, By Lieut. Col. Robert N. Scott, Third U.S. Artillery, and Published Pursuant to Act of Congress Approved June 16, 1880, Series I, Vol. XIV. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1885.
Schroeder-Lein, Glenna. “The Wounded,” in “Essential Civil War Curriculum.” Blacksburg, Virginia: Virginia Center for Civil War Studies, Virginia Tech University, retrieved online November 8, 2023.
“The Killed and Wounded in the Battle” (casualty list from the Battle of Pocotaligo). New York, New York: The New York Herald, October 29, 1862.
“Younker, George [sic],” in United States Records of Headstones of Deceased Union Veterans, 1879-1903.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
“Zurückgefehrt” (announcement of the return to Pennsylvania for reburial of the remains of Captain George Junker, Henry A. Blumer, Aaron Fink and Henry Zeppenfeld). Allentown, Pennsylvania: Der Lecha Caunty Patriot, December 3, 1862.

Uniforms and Insignia of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

Oct27

Captain Richard A. Graeffe, Company A, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1862 (public domain).

Upon mustering in at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in August and early September of 1861, the men who had enrolled for military service with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were assigned to their respective companies and issued standardized uniforms—the same style of dark blue, wool uniforms that were worn by the regular officers or enlisted members of the U.S. Army. The uniform of Captain Richard Graeffe (pictured at right) shows the typical details of a company commander’s uniform with shoulder bars, hat and sword.

Initially equipped with Mississippi rifles, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were then provided with basic training in light infantry tactics through mid-September. Presented with the regiment’s First State Color on September 20, 1861 by Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin, they were subsequently marched to Harrisburg’s train station, and were transported to Washington, D.C., where they participated in the first of multiple duty assignments that would take them from the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War to the Western and Trans-Mississippi theaters between early 1862 and March of 1864 before being transported back to the Eastern Theater for the fateful and tide-turning Shenandoah Valley Campaign, which unfolded during the summer and fall of 1864.

Army of the United States, Corps Badges, 1865 (U.S. Library of Congress, public domain; click to enlarge).

Along the way, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry would be attached to the:

U.S. Army of the Potomac (“Mr. Lincoln’s Army”) in the Eastern Theater (1861);
U.S. Army’s Tenth Corps (X Corps) in the Western Theater (Occupying force duties and battles in Florida and South Carolina, early winter 1862 through early winter 1864);
U.S. Army’s Nineteenth Corps (XIX Corps) in the Trans-Mississippi Theater (Red River Campaign, spring and early summer 1864);
U.S. Army of the Shenandoah, Nineteenth Corps (XIX Corps) in the Eastern Theater (Battle of Cool Spring and Sheridan’s 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign, summer and fall 1864);
U.S. Army of the Shenandoah, Nineteenth Corps (XIX Corps) in the Eastern Theater (Defense of Washington, D.C., late winter 1864 through the immediate aftermath of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865);
Selected units of the U.S. Army’s former Nineteenth Corps (XIX Corps (Reconstruction duties in Savannah, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina, June through late December 1865); and
Camp Cadwalader (final discharge, early January 1866).

Each time that the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were attached to a different Union Army corps, they were issued specific insignia that were then sewn onto their uniforms. The chart pictured above shows the different insignia that were worn by the various Union corps’ members.

First Blood: The Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina (47th Pennsylvania Volunteers’ Perspective, October 22, 1862)

Oct24

Colonel Tilghman H. Good, commanding officer, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1863 (public domain image).

They were steady, true and brave. If heavy losses may indicate gallantry, the palm may be given to Col. Good’s noble regiment, the Forty-seventh Pennsylvania Volunteers. Upon this command the brunt of battle fell. Out of 600 who went into action, nearly 150 were killed or wounded. All of the Keystone troops did splendidly….

– Newspapers across America, October and November 1862

Although reports penned by senior military officials immediately following the combined Union Army-Navy Expedition to Pocotaligo provide an important overview of the incidents leading up to the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862, it is the individual reports penned by the brigade and regimental commanding officers on site which provide the most detailed accounts of how this Union military engagement changed from an “expedition” to a raging battle.

Perhaps the most important of these front-line accounts come from members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry themselves because the regiment’s founder, Colonel Tilghman H. Good, served that day as both commanding officer of his own regiment and as the commanding officer of the U.S. Tenth Army’s First Brigade, to which the 47th Pennsylvania was attached, and because the enlisted men and their direct superiors were involved in the most heated parts of this particular battle.

Highlighted version of the U.S. Army’s map of the Pocotaligo-Coosawhatchie Expedition, South Carolina, October 22, 1862. Blue Arrow: Mackay’s Point, where the U.S. Tenth Army debarked and began its march. Blue Box: Position of Union troops (blue) and Confederate troops (red) in relation to the Pocotaligo bridge and town of Pocotaligo, the Charleston & Savannah Railroad, and the Caston and Frampton plantations (blue highlighting added by Laurie Snyder, 2023; public domain; click to enlarge).

Colonel Good’s first account of the battle was written on October 24, 1862, two days after the engagement with the enemy occurred, and was penned at his desk at the headquarters of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in Beaufort, South Carolina.

SIR: I have the honor to submit the following report of the part taken by the Forty-seventh Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers in the action of October 22:

Eight companies, comprising 480 men, embarked on the steamship Ben De Ford [sic, Ben Deford], and two companies, of 120 men, on the Marblehead, at 2 a.m. October 21. With this force I arrived at Mackays Landing before daylight the following morning. At daylight I was ordered to disembark my regiment and move forward across the first causeway and take a position, and there await the arrival of the other forces. The two companies of my regiment on board of the Marblehead had not yet arrived, consequently I had but eight companies of my regiment with me at this juncture.

At 12 [noon]. I was ordered to take the advance with four companies, one of the Forty-seventh and one of the Fifty-fifth Pennsylvania Volunteers, and two of the Sixth Connecticut, and to deploy two of them as skirmishers and move forward. After moving forward about 2 miles I discerned some 30 or 40 of the enemys [sic] cavalry ahead, but they fled as we advanced. About 2 miles farther on I discovered two pieces of artillery and some cavalry, occupying a position about three-quarters of a mile ahead in the road. I immediately called for a regiment, but seeing that the position was not a strong one I made a charge with the skirmishing line. The enemy, after firing a few rounds of shell, fled. I followed up as rapidly as possible to within about 1 mile of Frampton Creek. In front of this stream is a strip of woods about 500 yards wide, and in front of the woods a marsh of about 200 yards, with a small stream running through it parallel with the woods. A causeway also extends across the swamp, to the right of which the swamp is impassable. Here the enemy opened a terrible fire of shell from the rear, of the woods. I again called for a regiment, and my regiment came forward very promptly. I immediately deployed in line of battle and charged forward to the woods, three companies on the right and the other five on the left of the road. I moved forward in quick-time, and when within about 500 yards of the woods the enemy opened a galling fire of infantry from it. I ordered double-quick and raised a cheer, and with a grand yell the officers and men moved forward in splendid order and glorious determination, driving the enemy from this position.

Lieutenant-Colonel George Warren Alexander, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1861 (public domain).

On reaching the woods I halted and reorganized my line. The three companies on the right of the road (in consequence of not being able to get through the marsh) did not reach the woods, and were moved by Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander by the flank on the causeway. During this time a terrible fire of grape and canister was opened by the enemy through the woods, hence I did not wait for the three companies, but immediately charged with the five at hand directly through the woods; but in consequence of the denseness of the woods, which was a perfect matting of vines and brush, it was almost impossible to get through, but by dint of untiring assiduity the men worked their way through nobly. At this point I was called out of the woods by Lieutenant Bacon, aide-de-camp, who gave the order, ‘The general wants you to charge through the woods.’ I replied that I was then charging, and that the men were working their way through as fast as possible. Just then I saw the two companies of my regiment which embarked on the Marblehead coming up to one of the companies that was unable to get through the swamp on the right. I went out to meet them, hastening them forward, with a view of re-enforcing the five already engaged on the left of the road in the woods; but the latter having worked their way successfully through and driven the enemy from his position, I moved the two companies up the road through the woods until I came up with the advance. The two companies on the right side of the road, under Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander had also worked their way up through the woods and opened fire on the retreating enemy. At this point I halted and reorganized my regiment, by forming close column by companies.

This image of Captain Edwin G. Minnich is being presented here through the generosity of Chris Sapp and his family, and is being used with Mr. Sapp’s permission. This image may not be reproduced, repurposed, or shared with other websites without the permission of Chris Sapp.

I then detailed Lieutenant Minnich, of Company B, and Lieutenant Breneman, of Company H, with a squad of men, to collect the killed and wounded. They promptly and faithfully attended to this important duty, deserving much praise for the efficiency and coolness they displayed during the fight and in the discharge of this humane and worthy trust.

The casualties in this engagement were 96. Captain Junker of Company K; Captain Mickley, of Company I [sic, “G”], and Lieutenant Geety, of Company H, fell mortally wounded while gallantly leading their respective companies on.

I cannot speak too highly of the conduct of both officers and men. They all performed deeds of valor, and rushed forward to duty and danger with a spirit and energy worthy of veterans.

The rear forces coming up passed my regiment and pursued the enemy. When I had my regiment again placed in order, and hearing the boom of cannon, I immediately followed up, and, upon reaching the scene of action, I was ordered to deploy my regiment on the right side of the wood, move forward along the edge of it, and relieve the Seventh Connecticut Regiment. This I promptly obeyed. The position here occupied by the enemy was on the opposite side of the Pocotaligo Creek, with a marsh on either side of it, and about 800 yards distant from the opposite wood, where the enemy had thrown up rifle pits all along its edge.

On my arrival the enemy had ceased firing; but after the lapse of a few minutes they commenced to cheer and hurrah for the Twenty-sixth South Carolina. We distinctly saw this regiment come up in double-quick and the men rapidly jumping into the pits. We immediately opened fire upon them with terrible effect, and saw their men thinning by scores. In return they opened a galling fire upon us. I ordered the men under cover and to keep up the fire.

Excerpt from the U.S. Army map of the Pocotaligo-Coosawhatchie Expedition, October 22, 1862, showing the Caston and Frampton plantations in relation to the town of Pocotaligo, the Pocotaligo bridge and the Charleston & Savannah Railroad (public domain).

During this time our forces commenced to retire. I kept my position until all our forces were on the march, and then gave one volley and retired by flank in the road at double-quick about 1,000 yards in the rear of the Seventh Connecticut. This regiment was formed about 1,000 yards in the rear of my former position. We jointly formed the rear guard of our forces and alternately retired in the above manner.

My casualties here amounted to 15 men.

We arrived at Frampton (our first battle ground) at 8 p.m. Here my regiment was relieved from further rear-guard duty by the Fourth New Hampshire Regiment. This gave me the desired opportunity to carry my dead and wounded from the field and convey them back to the landing. I arrived at the above place at 3 o’clock the following morning.

* Note: All of this unfolded without two of the 47th Pennsylvania’s more seasoned officers: Major William H. Gausler, Colonel Good’s third-in-command, and Captain Henry S. Harte, the commanding officer of Company F. Both had been ordered to return home to Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley in July to resume their recruiting efforts, which ran through early November 1862. Major Gausler persuaded fifty-four new recruits to join the 47th Pennsylvania while Harte rounded up an additional twelve. Meanwhile, back in the Deep South, Captain Harte’s F Company men were commanded by Harte’s direct subordinates, First Lieutenant George W. Fuller and Second Lieutenant August G. Eagle. As a result, neither Gausler, nor Harte participated in their regiment’s first truly significant military engagements at Saint John’s Bluff and Pocotaligo.

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

In a second letter to his superiors, Colonel Good presented his “report of the part taken by the First Brigade in the battles of October 22,” which included further details about the 47th Pennsylvania’s role that day:

After meeting the enemy in his first position he was driven back by the skirmishing line, consisting of two companies of the Sixth Connecticut, one of the Forty-seventh Pennsylvania, and one of the Fifty-fifth Pennsylvania, under my command. Here the enemy only fired a few rounds of shot and shell. He then retreated and assumed another position, and immediately opened fire. Colonel Chatfield, then in command of the brigade, ordered the Forty-seventh Pennsylvania forward to me, with orders to charge. I immediately charged and drove the enemy from the second position. The Sixth Connecticut was deployed in my rear and left; the Fifty-fifth Pennsylvania on my right, and the Fourth New Hampshire in the rear of the Fifty-fifth, both in close column by divisions, all under a heavy fire of shell and canister. These regiments then crossed the causeway by the flank and moved close up to the woods. Here they were halted, with orders to support the artillery. After the enemy had ceased firing the Fourth New Hampshire was ordered to move up the road in the rear of the artillery and two companies of the Forty-seventh Pennsylvania to follow this regiment. The Sixth Connecticut followed up, and the Fifty-fifth moved up through the woods. At this juncture Colonel Chatfield fell, seriously wounded, and Lieutenant-Colonel Speidel was also wounded.

The casualties in the Forty-seventh Pennsylvania amounted to 96 men. As yet I am unable to learn the loss of the entire brigade.

“The Commencement of the Battle near Pocotaligo River” (Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, October 1862, public domain).

The enemy having fled, the Fourth New Hampshire and the Fifty- fifth Pennsylvania followed in close pursuit. During this time the Forty-seventh Pennsylvania and the Sixth Connecticut halted and again organized, after which they followed. On coming up to the engagement I assumed command of the brigade, and found the forces arranged in the following order: The Fourth New Hampshire was deployed as skirmishers along the entire front, and the Fifty-fifth deployed in line of battle on the left side of the road, immediately in the rear of the Fourth New Hampshire. I then ordered the Sixth Connecticut to deploy in the rear of the Fifty-fifth Pennsylvania and the Forty-seventh Pennsylvania to deploy on the right side of the road in line of battle and relieve the Seventh Connecticut. I then ordered the Fourth New Hampshire, which had spent all its ammunition, back under cover on the road in the woods. The enemy meantime kept up a terrific fire of grape and musketry, to which we replied with terrible effect. At this point the orders were given to retire, and the Forty-seventh Pennsylvania and Seventh Connecticut formed the rear guard. I then ordered the Thirty-seventh Pennsylvania to keep its position and the Sixth Connecticut to march by the flank into the road and to the rear, the Fourth New Hampshire and Fifty-fifth Pennsylvania to follow. The troops of the Second Brigade were meanwhile retiring. After the whole column was in motion and a line of battle established by the Seventh Connecticut about 1,000 yards in the rear of the Forty-seventh Pennsylvania I ordered the Forty-seventh to retire by the flank and establish a line of battle 1,000 yards in the rear of the Seventh Connecticut; after which the Seventh Connecticut moved by the flank to the rear and established a line of battle 1,000 yards in the rear of the Forty seventh, and thus retiring, alternately establishing lines, until we reached Frampton Creek, where we were relieved from this duty by the Fourth New Hampshire. We arrived at the landing at 3 o’clock on the morning of the 23d instant.

The casualties of the Sixth Connecticut are 34 in killed and wounded and the Forty-seventh Pennsylvania 112 in killed and wounded. As to the remaining regiments I have as yet received no report.

The Post-Battle Confederate Response

In the days following the Battle of Pocotaligo (known today as the Second Battle of Pocotaligo or the Battle of Yemassee due to its proximity to the town of Yemassee, South Carolina), newspapers across the Confederate States carried comments attributed to Confederate Brigadier-General Pierre Gustave Toutant de Beauregard on October 23:

The enemy advanced yesterday morning in two columns, one against Coosawhatchie and the other against Pocotaligo. They were repulsed from Pocotaligo by our forces, but at Coosawhatchie they succeeded in gaining the Railroad, yet, before they could do it much damage, our troops came up and drove them off.

The Railroad and Telegraph lines have been mended and are again in working order.

The enemy’s gunboats are anchored below Coosawhatchie.

Intent on leaving no doubt as to what the Confederate States Army was actually fighting for, General Beauregard then wrote:

The Abolitionists attacked in force Pocotaligo and Coosawhatchie yesterday. They were gallantly repulsed to their gunboats at Mackey’s Point and Bee’s Creek Landing, by Col. W. S. Walker commanding the District, and D. P. Harrison, commanding the troops sent from here. The enemy had come in thirteen transports and gunboats. The Charleston and Savannah Railroad is uninjured. The Abolitionists left their dead and wounded on the field, and our cavalry is in hot pursuit.

Among the Confederate regiments that battled the U.S. Tenth Army Corps that day, according to southern newspaper accounts, were the Virginia Artillery, Captain J. N. Lampkin, commanding, the Beaufort Volunteer Artillery, Captain Stephen Elliott, Jr., commanding, the Charleston Light Dragoons, and the Rutledge Mounted Riflemen.

Commendations Received by Members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers

Captain John Peter Shindel Gobin, Co. C, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, shown here circa 1863, went on to become Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania after the war (public domain).

Praise for the performance of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers quickly followed after the regiment returned to Hilton Head. Brigadier-General Brannan praised Colonel Good twice, noting:

Col. T. H. Good, Forty-seventh Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers (Colonel Chatfield being wounded early in the day), commanded the First Brigade during the latter part of the engagement with much ability. Nothing could be more satisfactory than the promptness and skill with which the wounded were attended to by Surg. E. W. Bailey [sic, Baily], Forty-seventh Pennsylvania Volunteers, medical director, and the entire medical staff of the command.

He then added this update:

I herewith transmit the reports of Brig. Gen. A. H. Terry and Col. T. H. Good, Forty-seventh Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers, who commanded brigades during the late expedition, under my command, to Pocotaligo, S.C., and would beg respectfully to bring them to the favorable notice of the department for their gallant and meritorious conduct during the engagement of October 22….

In addition to those officers mentioned in my report of the expedition I have great pleasure, on the recommendation of their respective commanders, in bringing to the favorable consideration of the department the following officers and men, who rendered themselves specially worthy of notice by their bravery and praiseworthy conduct during the entire expedition and the engagements attending it: First Lieut. E. Gittings, wounded, lieutenant Company E, Third U.S. Artillery, commanding section, who served his pieces with great coolness and judgment under the heavy fire of a rebel battery; Lieutenant Col. G. W. Alexander, Forty-seventh Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers; Maj. J. H. Filler, Fifty-fifth Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers; Capt. Theodore Bacon, Seventh Regiment Connecticut Volunteers, acting assistant adjutant-general Second Brigade; First Lieut. Adrian Terry, Seventh Connecticut Volunteers, and Second Lieut. Martin S. James, Third Regiment Rhode Island Volunteer Artillery, staff of Brigadier-General Terry; Capt. J. P. Shindel Gobin, Company C, Forty-seventh Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers; Capt. George Junker, killed, Company K, Forty-seventh Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers; Captain Mickley, killed, Company G, Forty-seventh Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers; First Lieut. W. H. R. Hangen, adjutant, wounded, Forty-seventh Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers; First Lieutenant Minnich, Company B, Forty-seventh Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers; First Lieut. W. W. Geety, severely wounded, commanding Company H, Forty-seventh Pennsylvania Volunteers; Second Lieutenant Breneman, Company H, Forty-seventh Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers; Private Michael Larkins, wounded, Company C, Forty-seventh Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers….

Brigadier-General Alfred H. Terry, commanding officer of the U.S. Tenth Army’s Second Brigade that day, had this to say about the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers:

The Forty-seventh Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers was for a short time under my immediate command, and, although they are not a portion of my brigade, I cannot forbear mentioning the steadiness and discipline by this admirable regiment during our movements to the rear.

47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Casualty Reports by Officers of the Regiment

Captain Charles Mickley, Company G, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1862 (public domain).

Losses for the 47th at Pocotaligo were statistically significant. Two officers and eighteen enlisted men died; an additional two officers and one hundred and fourteen enlisted men from the 47th were wounded.

Der Lecha Caunty Patriot, an Allentown-based German-language newspaper, reported that Captain Charles Mickley, the commanding officer of Company G, had suffered a fatal head wound during the Battle of Pocotaligo on “the railway between Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia.” His “remains were brought immediately after his death to his home in Allentown.” Captain Mickley’s subsequent funeral service, which was officiated by the Reverands Derr and Brobst at the local Reformation Church, was widely attended by a “suffering entourage.”

Also among the G Company casualties were Privates Benjamin Diehl, James Knappenberger, John Kuhns (alternate spelling: Kuntz), and George Reber. Privates Knappenberger and Kuhns were killed in action during the 47th’s early engagement at the Frampton Plantation; George Reber, a resident of Thorntown, Pennsylvania, sustained a fatal gunshot wound to his head. Private Franklin Oland subsequently died from his wounds at the Union Army’s general hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina on October 30, and Private John Heil, who had sustained a gunshot wound (termed “Vulnus Sclopet” in his medical records), succumbed to his own battle wound-related complications at Hilton Head on November 2, 1862.

Daniel K. Reeder, former corporal, Company H, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (National Republican, December 1, 1887, public domain).

On October 25, 1862, Captain James Kacy of Company H penned the following letter to his company’s hometown newspaper, The Perry County Democrat. Writing from the regiment’s headquarters at Beaufort, he asked for the community’s help in reaching a decedent’s family:

Jason Robinson, a printer, joined my company, from your place and was killed at the battle of Pocotaligo on 22d inst. I do not know his relations or where to write to them. Probably you do. The following is a list of killed and wounded in my company:

COMPANY H. – Killed – Henry Stambaugh, Jefferson Waggoner, Peter Deitrick, Jason P. Robinson. – Wounded—First Lieutenant W. W. Geety, mortally, Orderly Sergeant, George Reynolds; Sergeant Reuben S. Gardner, in head and leg; Corporals Daniel Reeder, David H. Smith, Peter W. Stockslager; privates Jerome Briner [sic], Henry Bolinger, Augustus Rupp, Samuel Huggins, Comley Idall, Patrick Mullen, Jefferson Haney.

We did not lose a prisoner but took some. Total loss in the 47th Reg. 99 wounded, 23 killed. Several have died since. Our boys fought like Turks. We ran out of ammunition and had to leave the field.–We are going back soon.

The effects of Robinson will be sent home as soon as I can put up and forward by express.

Reeder, who had been shot in the arm, was wounded so severely that surgeons were forced to amputate his damaged limb above the elbow. After convalescing briefly at the Union Army’s General Hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina, he was discharged on a surgeon’s certificate of disability on November 24, 1862, and sent home to Pennsylvania.

Geety’s survival was nothing short of miraculous, according to accounts by physicians who provided follow-up treatment for him in 1863 Harrisburg, where he had been reassigned to recruiting duties for the 47th Pennsylvania and quartermaster duties for Camp Curtin. (See Geety’s bio on our website for details.)

Idall, Reynolds and Huggins, however, were less fortunate. Idall died from gunshot-related complications eight days after the battle, while undergoing care at the Union Army’s post hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina. Reynolds also succumbed to complications there on November 8 while Private Huggins, who had sustained a wound to his leg (also described on his Army death ledger entry as “Vulnus Sclopet”) died there from his wounds on December 16, 1862.

Captain Daniel Oyster, Company C, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1864 (public domain).

The losses within Company C were higher, in many cases, than those of other companies within the regiment, largely due to one simple fact—Company C was the color-bearer unit. As such, it came under heavier fire than many of the 47th’s other units because the red, white, and blue American flag carried by the company was easy to spot for sharpshooters and artillerymen, even through the smoky air of battle. In one heartbreaking “twist of fate” tragedy, Sergeant Peter Haupt and his brother, Private Samuel Y. Haupt, initially were counting their lucky stars after being hit—Samuel sustaining a wound to his chin and Peter sustaining a wound to his foot, only to learn later that Peter’s foot injury was resisting the best treatment efforts of regimental and division medical personnel. In a stunning turn, Peter Haupt died at the Union Army’s post hospital at Hilton Head, just over three weeks later. According to an affidavit submitted to the Commissioner of Pensions, United States by Second Lieutenant Daniel Oyster at Fort Taylor, Key West, Florida on August 14, 1863, and certified at Fort Taylor on August 20, 1863 by Captain John Peter Shindel Gobin in his acting capacity as Judge Advocate:

This is to certify that Sergeant Peter Haupt of Company (C) 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers died at Hilton Head South Carolina November 14th 1862 of wounds received at Pocotalico [sic] South Carolina;

That the said wounds were received by the said Peter Haupt during an engagement with the enemy at the place aforesaid and were caused by a Rifle or Musket ball having entered his left foot and which resulted in his death at the time and place aforesaid that I was present and have personal knowledge of the facts.

The actual cause of Sergeant Peter Haupt’s death, which was listed by his physician on the Union Army hospital’s death ledger, was “traumatic tetanus.” His remains were subsequently returned home; he was then laid to rest at the Sunbury Cemetery in Sunbury, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania.

Also on the roster of C Company wounded was Private Timothy Matthias Snyder. Unlike so many others in the 47th, Tim survived, recuperated and returned to duty, serving with the regiment until its final muster out on Christmas day in 1865. His son, John Hartranft Snyder, grew up to become a pioneer in the telephone industry.

Among the Company E injured was Corporal Reuben Weiss. Wounded in both legs (including a gunshot to the left leg), he returned to duty after convalescing, and served for another two years until being honorably discharged on a surgeon’s certificate.

One of the Company I casualties was Edwin Dreisbach, who also survived and continued to serve for the duration of the war. Sadly, though, his later life was altered by mental illness (possibly “Soldier’s Heart,” which is more commonly known today as post-traumatic stress disorder).

As hard as this battle was on Company C, though, it was Company K that suffered many of the regiment’s most severe casualties. Private John McConnell died on the field of battle while Captain George Junker was mortally wounded by a minie ball fired from a Confederate rifle during the intense fighting near the Frampton Plantation. Also mortally wounded were Privates Abraham Landes (alternate spelling: “Landis”) and Joseph Louis (alternate spelling: “Lewis”). All three died the next day while being treated at the Union Army’s General Hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina.

Private John Schuchard, who was also mortally wounded at Pocotaligo, died at the same hospital on October 24. Private Edward Frederick lasted a short while longer, finally succumbing on February 16, 1863 at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, Florida to brain fever, a complication from the personal war he had waged with his battle wounds. He was initially buried at the fort’s parade grounds.

Private Gottlieb Fiesel, who had also sustained a head wound, initially survived. Although his skull had been fractured and the left side of his head badly damaged by shrapnel from an exploding artillery shell, physicians were hopeful that Fiesel might still recover since surgeries to remove bone fragments from his brain had been successful—but then he contracted meningitis while recuperating. He passed away at Hilton Head on November 9, 1862, and was one of those interred at the Beaufort National Cemetery.

Private Jacob Hertzog, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers – Co. K, successfully recovered from a gunshot wound to his right arm, circa 1866 (U.S. Surgeon General’s Office, public domain).

K Company’s Corporal John Bischoff and Privates Manoah J. Carl, Jacob F. Hertzog, Frederick Knell, Samuel Kunfer, Samuel Reinert, John Schimpf, William Schrank, and Paul Strauss were among those wounded in action who rallied. Private Strauss survived an artillery shell wound to his right shoulder, recuperated, and continued to serve with the regiment. Private Hertzog, who had been discharged two months earlier on his own surgeon’s certificate, on February 24, 1863, had sustained a gunshot wound to his right arm; his treatment, like that of the aforementioned Private Fiesel, was detailed extensively in medical journals during and after his period of service. (See his bio on our website for more details.)

In late October and early November, newspapers nationwide began publishing more detailed casualty lists. Even just as partial tallies, they were still jaw-dropping, in terms of numbers and in terms of the severity and types of battle wounds sustained by members of the regiment:

Regimental Officers:

Hangen, Regimental First Lieutenant and Adjutant Washington H. R.: Severely wounded in the knee; narrowly avoided amputation; survived and returned to duty after lengthy convalescence period;

Company A:

Ferer (alternate spelling: Fever), Sergeant William: Slight wound;
Fraunfelder (alternate spelling of surname: Trumpfelder), Corporal Levi: Slight wound;
Strauss, Corporal David: Severe thigh wound;

Company B:

Fink, Corporal Aaron: Sustained gunshot wounds to both legs, below the knees; died from wounds at the Union Army’s post hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina, November 5, 1862;
Gaumer, Sergeant Allen: Killed, Frampton Plantation;
George, Private Nathan: Died from battle wounded-related complications at the Union Army’s post hospital, Hilton Head, South Carolina, November 14, 1862;
Kern (alternate spelling: Hern), Private William: Sustained service-related wound the day before the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina; died from military wound-related complications at the Union Army’s post hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina, October 23, 1862;
Leisenring, Private Martin: Unspecified wound;
Pfeifer, Private Obadiah: Leg amputated after being wounded in action during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina, October 22, 1862; discharged on a surgeon’s certificate of disability, March 16, 1865, due to loss of leg;
Raymond, Private Haldeman: Gunshot wound to left arm;
Ruttman, Private Ernst (alternate spelling: Rothman, Earnest): Unspecified wound;
Savitz, Private Charles J.: Finger shot off;
Wieand (alternate spellings: Weiand, Wiand), Private Benjamin: Unspecified wound;
Wieand (alternate spelling: Wiand), Private John: Leg amputated after sustaining gunshot or shrapnel wound; discharged on surgeon’s certificate of disability, December 3, 1862;

Company C:

Bartlow, Private John: Leg wound;
Billington, Private Samuel H.: Leg wound;
Deibert, Private Seth: Killed;
Finck, Corporal William F.: Leg wound;
Haas, Private Jeremiah: Breast and face wounds;
Haupt, Corporal Samuel S.: Chin/face wound;
Haupt, Sergeant Peter: Ankle/foot wound;
Holman, Private Conrad: Face wound;
Horner, Private George: Killed;
Kiehl, Private Theodore: Face wound;
Larkins, Private Michael: Hip and side wounds;
Leffler, Private Charles: Leg wound;
Lothard, Private Thomas (also known as Marshall, Charles): Body wound;
O’Rourke, Private Richard: Side wound;
Rhine, Private James R.: Leg wound;
Snyder, Private Timothy: Unspecified wound;
Wolf, Private Peter: Killed;

Company D:

Baltozer (alternate spelling: Balltager), Private Jacob: Arm wound;
Crownover, Corporal James: Slight breast wound;
Musser (alternate spelling: Muiser), Private Alex: Killed;
Sheaffer, Private Benjamin: Slight breast wound;
Stewart, Corporal Cornelius: Severe side wound;

Company E:

Adams, Private William: Leg wound;
Bachman (alternate spelling: Bauchman), Private Henry A.: Killed (possibly killed at the actual Pocotaligo bridge; military affidavits for his mother’s U.S. Civil War Pension stated that his death occurred at “the battle of Pocotaligo Bridge, South Carolina”);
Coult, Private George: Hip wound;
Derr, Private Nathan: Shoulder wound;
Force (alternate spelling: Farce), Private William H.: Wrist wound;
Hahn, Private George: Leg wound;
Harkins, Private Daniel F.: Arm wound;
Jacoby (alternate spelling of surname: Jacobs), Private Moses: Hand wound;
Kirkendall (alternate spelling: Kerkendall), Private Jacob: Unspecified wound;
Lind, Private John: Wounds to both legs;
Minnick (alternate spelling: Minnich), Private Samuel: Killed;
Munday (alternate spelling: Monday), Private John: Neck wound;
Rose, Private George: Killed;
Stem (alternate spellings: Stein, Stern), Private Samuel: Shoulder wound;
Weiss, Corporal Reuben: Wounds to both legs;

Company F:

Eberhard (alternate spellings: Eberhart, Everhart), Corporal Augustus: Wounds to both legs;
Fink, Private William: Thigh wound;
King (alternate spelling: Ping), Private Charles: Arm wound;
Moser (alternate spelling: Morser), Private Peter: Arm wound;
O’Brien (alternate spelling: O’Brian), Private John: Gunshot wound to face;

Company G:

Ambrum (alternate spellings: Ambron, Arnbrunn), Private Richard: Unspecified wound;
Beidleman (alternate spelling: Beidelman), Private Jacob: Unspecified wound;
Diehl, Private Benjamin: Killed at the Frampton Plantation;
Fornwald, Private Reily M. (alternate spelling: Reilly Fernwald): Sustained shrapnel wounds to the head and groin; spent four weeks recuperating at the Union Army’s post hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina before returning to duty;
Hallmeyer, Private Max Joseph: Wounded in the right leg and back; discharged on a surgeon’s certificate of disability October 28, 1862; died from wound-related complications at home in 1869;
Heil, Private John: Died from gunshot wound-related complications at the Union Army’s post hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina, November 2, 1862;
Hensler (alternate spelling: Hansler), Private William: Unspecified wound;
Hoffert (alternate spelling: Huffert), Private Franklin: Unspecified wound;
Kemmerer, Private Allen: Sustained gunshot wound(s), possibly to his right leg and/or left foot;
Knappenberger, Private Jonas: Killed at the Frampton Plantation;
Kramer, Private William H.: Unspecified wound;
Kuhns (alternate spelling: Kuntz), Private John Henry: Killed at the Frampton Plantation;
Moser (alternate spelling: Mazer), Private Franklin: Unspecified wound;
Mickley, Captain Charles: Killed by fatal head shot;
Oland, Private Franklin: Unspecified wound; died at the Union Army’s post hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina, October 30, 1862;
Raber (alternate spelling: Reber), Private George: Unspecified wound;
Wieder (alternate spelling: Weider), Private David: Unspecified wound;

Company H:

Bigger, Private Alexander: Unspecified wound; discharged on a surgeon’s certificate of disability, November 18, 1862;
Bollinger (alternate spelling: Bolinger), Private Henry: Unspecified wound;
Bupp (alternate spelling: Rupp), Private Augustus: Unspecified wound;
Bryner, Private Jerome (alternate: Briner, James): Unspecified wound;
Deitrick (alternate spellings: Deitrich), Private Peter: Killed near the Frampton Plantation;
Gardner, Sergeant Reuben Shatto: Head and thigh wounds; recovered after a long period of convalescence and returned to duty;
Geety, First Lieutenant William W. Geety: Initially listed as mortally wounded due to a severe head wound, he survived, following multiple surgeries; assigned to recruiting duty for the remainder of his military career so that he could continue his medical treatment;
Handy, Private Jefferson (possibly: Haney, Thomas J.): Unspecified wound;
Huggins (alternate spelling: Higgins), Private Samuel: Sustained gunshot wound to leg; died from wound-related complications at the Union Army’s post hospital at Hilton Head, December 16, 1862;
Idall, Private Comley: Sustained gunshot wound; died from wound-related complications at the Union Army’s post hospital at Hilton Head, October 30, 1862;
Johnson, Private Cyrus: Unspecified wound; discharged on a surgeon’s certificate of disability, December 16, 1862;
Kingsborough, Private Robert Reid: Unspecified wound; discharged on a surgeon’s certificate of disability, October 26, 1862;
Mullen, Private Patrick: Unspecified wound;
Reeder (alternate spelling: Ruder), Corporal Daniel: Wounded in the arm, resulting in the amputation of that arm above the elbow and subsequent discharge on a surgeon’s certificate of disability, November 24, 1862;
Reynolds, Orderly Sergeant George: Unspecified severe wound; died from wound-related complications at the Union Army’s post hospital at Hilton Head, November 8, 1862;
Robinson: Private Jason F.: Killed near the Frampton Plantation;
Smith, Corporal David H.: Unspecified wound;
Stambaugh, Private Henry: Killed near the Frampton Plantation;
Stockslager, Corporal Peter W.: Unspecified wound;
Waggoner, Private Jefferson: Killed near the Frampton Plantation;

Company I:

Baudenschlager (alternate spellings: Bartenslager, Bondenschlager), Private John: Unspecified wound; discharged on a surgeon’s certificate of disability, October 29, 1862;
Cole, Private James B.: Unspecified wound; discharged on a surgeon’s certificate of disability, November 15, 1862;
Dreisbach, Private Edwin: Unspecified slight wound;
Druckenmiller, Private Lewis (alternate given name: Daniel): Killed;
Kramer, Private Daniel Joseph: Leg wound;
Metz (alternate spelling; Mertz), Private Jeremiah: Killed;

Company K:

Bischoff (alternate spelling: Bishop), Corporal John: Leg wound;
Carl, Private Manoah: Foot wound;
Fiesel, Private Gottlieb: Left side of head damaged and skull fractured by shrapnel from exploding artillery shell; physicians at the Union Army’s post hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina were hopeful that he might recover since surgeries to remove bone fragments from his brain had been successful, but he contracted meningitis while recuperating and died at Hilton Head on November 9, 1862;
Frederick (alternate spelling: Fredericks), Private Edwin: Head wound;
Hertzog, Private Jacob: Sustained severe gunshot wound (“Vulnus Sclopet”) to his right elbow joint; treated initially in the field and at his regiment’s hospital before being admitted to the U.S. Army’s Hospital No. 1 at Beaufort, South Carolina for more advanced care; underwent surgery of his right arm October 26, 1862, his sutures were removed November 15; by December 15, 1862, he was dressed and walking around the grounds of the Beaufort hospital; sent north via the steamer Star of the South December 28, 1862; discharged from Fort Wood in the New York Harbor via a surgeon’s certificate of disability February 24, 1863;
Junker, Captain George: Mortally wounded in action by a minie ball fired from a Confederate Army soldier’s rifle; died October 23, 1862 at the Union Army’s post hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina; his remains were returned to his family in Hazleton, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania for reburial;
Knell, Private Frederick: Unspecified wound; discharged on a surgeon’s certificate of disability, May 9, 1863;
Kolb (alternate spellings: Holb, Kolp), Private Hiram: Finger shot off; sent north for more advanced care, ultimately hospitalized at the Union Army’s general hospital in York, Pennsylvania;
Kunfer (alternate spelling: Cunfer), Private Samuel: Unspecified wound;
Landes, Private Abraham: Gunshot wound to breast; died from battle wounds, October 23, 1862, while being treated at the Union Army’s post hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina;
Louis (alternate spelling: Lewis), Private Joseph: Mortally wounded by gunshot; died October 23, 1862, while being treated at the Union Army’s post hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina;
Marder, Private Jacob (possibly Matter, Jacob): Stomach wound;
McConnell, Private John: Killed;
Miller, Private Louis: Wounded in both thighs;
Reinert, Private Samuel: Right shoulder wound;
Schiff (possibly Schimpf), Private John: Thigh wound;
Schrank, Private William: Arm wound;
Schuchard (alternate spelling: Shuckard), Private John: Mortally wounded; died from battle wounds October 24, 1862 while being treated at the Union Army’s post hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina; and
Strauss, Private Paul: Sustained artillery shell wounds to his right shoulder and back.

Battered, But Not Cowed

Described as “shattered” by one newspaper correspondent, the 47th Pennsylvania rested, recuperated, regrouped, and they soldiered on in their fight to preserve America’s Union and eradicate slavery nationwide. The only regiment from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to participate in the Union Army’s 1864 Red River Campaign, the 47th Pennsylvanians helped turn the tide of war firmly in the Union’s favor by re-engaging with the enemy time and again during Sheridan’s Shenandoah Valley Campaign in the fall of that same year.

But they would always remember the cost of that terrible day in 1862. Surviving veterans of the 47th Pennsylvania never failed to honor the memory of their friends who never made it home, paying tribute through annual reunions of the regiment, which were typically held in October to mark the anniversaries of the Battle of Pocotaligo (October 22, 1862) and the Battle of Cedar Creek (October 19, 1864).

For the remainder of their lives, they continued to be steady, true and brave.

Surviving members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry at their 1923 reunion, Odd Fellows Hall, Allentown, Pennsylvania (public domain).

Sources:

Burial Ledgers, in Record Group 15, The National Cemetery Administration, and Record Group 92, U.S. Departments of Defense and Army (Quartermaster General). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration: 1861-1865.
Civil War Muster Rolls, in Records of the Department of Military and Veterans’ Affairs (Record Group 19, Series 19.11). Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.
Peter and Freeman Haupt, in Card Records of Headstones Provided for Deceased Union Civil War Veterans, in Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General (Record Group 92, Microfilm M1845). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives.
Peter and Mary Haupt, in U.S. Civil War Widows’ Pension Files. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
Report of Col. Tilghman H. Good, Forty-seventh Pennsylvania Infantry and Report of Col. Tilghman H. Good, Forty-seventh Pennsylvania Infantry, commanding First Brigade, Tenth Army Corps, in The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Prepared Under the Direction of the Secretary of War, By Lieut. Col. Robert N. Scott, Third U.S. Artillery, and Published Pursuant to Act of Congress Approved June 16, 1880, Series I, Vol. XIV. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1885.
“The Killed and Wounded in the Battle” (casualty list from the Battle of Pocotaligo). New York, New York: The New York Herald, October 29, 1862.
“The Latest Telegraphic News: Advance of the Enemy to Pocotaligo—Repulsed by Our Forces.” Raleigh, North Carolina: The North Carolina Standard, October 28, 1862.
“The Fight at Pocotaligo—Further Particulars.” Camden, South Carolina: The Camden Confederate, October 31, 1862.
“The Recent Battles Near Charleston—The Rebels Driven to Pocotaligo Bridge,” in “The War News.” Baltimore, Maryland: The Baltimore Sun, October 30, 1862.

47th Pennsylvania Volunteers

ONE CIVIL WAR REGIMENT'S STORY

Category Archives: 1862

Sitting in Judgment: Four Officers of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers Oversee Court Martial Proceedings (1862–1863)

New Year, New Duty Station: Adjusting to Life at Fort Jefferson in Florida’s Dry Tortugas (Late December 1862 – Late February 1863)

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

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

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

New Year, Familiar Duties: Preventing Assaults on Federal Forts by Confederate Troops and Foreign Powers (Florida, late December 1862 – early February 1864)

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

The Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina: Unpredictable Outcomes

Uniforms and Insignia of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

First Blood: The Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina (47th Pennsylvania Volunteers’ Perspective, October 22, 1862)