Building Bailey’s Dam on the Red River, Alexandria, Louisiana, Late April to Mid-May, 1864

The Union’s Army of the Gulf marched into Alexandria, Louisiana, during the weekend of April 22, 1864 (Harper’s Weekly, public domain; click to enlarge).

Resupplied with ammunition and food by the Union Navy’s fleet of quartermaster ships after reaching Alexandria, Louisiana on April 26, 1864, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers and other Union infantry and artillery troops were placed temporarily under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Bailey and assigned to the hard labor of fortification work. Throwing their backs into erecting “Bailey’s Dam,” they helped to create a timber dam that was designed by Bailey to enable the Union Navy’s gunboats and other vessels to be able to travel along the Red River without fear of running aground. This construction was undertaken, according to C Company Musician Henry D. Wharton, because:

The water in the Red river had fallen so much that it prevented the gunboats from operating with us, and kept our transports from supplying the troops with rations, (and you know soldiers, like other people, will eat) so Banks was compelled to relinquish his designs on Shreveport and fall back to the Mississippi. To do this a large dam had to be built on the falls at Alexandria to get the ironclads down the river.

Brigadier-General Joseph Bailey, shonw here circa 1865, was responsible for designing and overseeing the construction of Bailey’s Dam nexr Alexandria, Louisiana during the spring of 1864 (public domain).

Historian Steven Clay notes that, by this point in the Red River Campaign, “The depth of the river was only between three and four feet; it took seven feet of water to get the gunboats over the rocky bottom at the rapids.” To make that happen, Lieutenant-Colonel Bailey had initially floated the idea to build a dam while also sinking “several stone-laden barges to block the passage of water and cause the river to pool up behind them.”

There would be three narrow chutes constructed in the middle to allow passage of the largest gunboats. Then when the depth was sufficient, the boats would steam over the rocks, through the passageways, and into safe and deep waters below the dam.

According to archaeologist and military historian Steven D. Smith, Ph.D. and staff of the Louisiana Archaeological Survey and Antiquities Commission, “Military engineer Joseph Bailey’s presence with the Red River expedition was, in a sense, one of those coincidences of history that sometimes result in turning the course of events.”

His knowledge of engineering was not acquired through formal study at West Point. Instead, he had learned practical engineering on the Wisconsin frontier, where damming was a skill perfected by lumbermen to float logs to their sawmills.

Born in Ashtabula County, Ohio on May 6, 1827, Bailey grew up in Illinois. In 1850 he moved to Wisconsin, where for the next 20 years he was involved in the construction of dams, mills, and bridges. At the beginning of the war, Bailey formed a company of lumbermen and became a captain. Soon, though, his construction genius was recognized and he was supervising various engineering projects for the North, including construction at Fort Dix in Washington D.C….

In 1863 Bailey won distinction at the battle of Port Hudson. There, despite the scoffs of formally trained military engineers, he constructed a gun emplacement in full sight of rebel fortifications and proceeded to silence the Confederate guns. He also built a dam during the siege to refloat two grounded steamboats.

Christened “Bailey’s Dam” in reference to the Union officer who designed and oversaw its construction, Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Bailey, this timber dam was built by the Union Army on the Red River near Alexandria, Louisiana in May 1864 to facilitate Union gunboat passage (U.S. Library of Congress, public domain; click to enlarge).

The construction of Bailey’s Dam near Alexandria during the spring of 1864 was described by Lieutenant-Colonel Bailey in a post-construction report to his superiors as follows:

…. Immediately after our army received a check at Sabine Cross-Roads and the retreat commenced I learned through reliable sources that the Red River was rapidly falling. I became assured that by the time the fleet could reach Alexandria there would not be sufficient water to float the gun-boats over the falls. It was evident, therefore, that they were in imminent danger. Believing, as I did, that their capture or destruction would involve the destruction of our army, the blockade of the Mississippi, and even greater disasters to our cause, I proposed to Major-General Franklin on the 9th of April, previous to the battle of Pleasant Hill, to increase the depth of water by means of a dam, and submitted to him my plan of the same. In the course of the conversation he expressed a favorable opinion of it.

During the halt of the army at Grand Ecore on the 17th of April, General Franklin, having heard that the iron-clad gun-boat Eastport had struck a snag on the preceding day and sunk at a point 9 miles below, gave me a letter of introduction to Admiral Porter and directed me to do all in my power to assist in raising the Eastport, and to communicate to the admiral my plan of constructing a dam to relieve the fleet, with his belief in its practicability; also that he thought it advisable that the admiral should at once confer with General Banks and urge him to make the necessary preparations, send for tools, &c. Nothing further was done until after our arrival at Alexandria. On the 26th, the admiral reached the head of the falls. I examined the river and submitted additional details of the proposed dam. General Franklin approved of them and directed me to see the admiral and again urge upon him the necessity of prevailing upon General Banks to order the work to be commenced immediately. There was no doubt that the entire fleet then above the rapids would be lost unless the plan of raising the water by a dam was adopted and put into execution with all possible vigor. I represented that General Franklin had full confidence in the success of the undertaking, and that the admiral might rely upon him for all the assistance in his power. The only preliminary required was an order from General Banks. On the 29th, by order of General Franklin, I consulted with Generals Banks and Hunter, and explained to them the proposed plan in detail. The latter remarked that, although he had little confidence in its feasibility, he nevertheless thought it better to try the experiment, especially as General Franklin, who is an engineer, advised it. Upon this General Banks issued the necessary order for details, teams, &c., and I commenced the work on the morning of the 30th.

I presume it is sufficient in this report to say that the dam was constructed entirely on the plan first given to General Franklin, and approved by him.

During the first few days I had some difficulty in procuring details, &c., but the officers and men soon gained confidence and labored faithfully. The work progressed rapidly, without accident or interruption, except the breaking away of two coal barges which formed part of the dam. This afterward proved beneficial. In addition to the dam at the foot of the falls, I constructed two wing-dams on each side of the river at the head of the falls.

The width of the river at the point where the dam was built is 758 feet, and the depth of the water from 4 to 6 feet. The current is very rapid, running about 10 miles per hour. The increase of depth by the main dam was 5 feet 4 inches; by the wing-dams, 1 foot 2 inches; total, 6 feet 6 inches. On the completion of the dam, we had the gratification of seeing the entire fleet pass over the rapids to a place of safety below, and we found ample reward for our labors in witnessing their result. The army and navy were relieved from a painful suspense, and eight valuable gunboats saved from destruction. The cheers of the masses assembled on the shore when the boats passed down attested their joy and renewed confidence. To Major-General Franklin, who, previous to the commencement of the work, was the only supporter of my proposition to save the fleet by means of a dam, and whose persevering efforts caused its adoption, I desire to return my grateful thanks. I trust the country will join with the Army of the Gulf and the Mississippi Squadron in awarding to him due praise for his earnest and intelligent efforts in their behalf. Major-General Banks promptly issued all necessary orders and assisted me by his constant presence and co-operation. General Dwight, his chief of staff, Colonel Wilson and Lieutenant Sargent, aides-de-camp, also rendered valuable assistance by their personal attention to our wants. Admiral Porter furnished a detail from his ships’ crews, under command of an excellent officer, Captain Langthorne, of the Mound City. All his officers and men were constantly present, and to their extraordinary exertions and to the well-known energy and ability of the admiral much of the success of the undertaking is due….

The crib dam designed by Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Bailey to improve the water levels of the Red River near Alexandria, Louisiana, spring 1864 (Joseph Bailey, “Report on the Construction of the Dam Across the Red River,” 1865, public domain).

According to Smith, “Historical documents indicate that Bailey first built his dam just above the lower, downstream rapids.”

By constructing the dam at that particular location, he hoped the water would rise enough behind the dam to allow the gunboats to float over the upper rapids. Then, with the built-up water pressure, the dam could be broken through at the proper time and the gunboats could rush over the lower rapids, carried by the force of the released water.

Following Bailey’s practical nature, the dam was built with any locally available material readily at hand. To do so, he used different methods of construction for each riverbank. On the west (Alexandria) bank, he built the dam of large wooden boxes called cribs. Bailey constructed a number of cribs which were placed side by side from the bank out into the river.

Historical accounts indicate that lumber from Alexandria mills, homes, and barns was quickly stripped for use in building the cribs. Bricks, stone, and even machinery were used to fill and anchor the cribs. Additionally, historical illustrations show that iron bars were placed vertically in the four corners of each crib, to provide a supporting framework….

On the east (Pineville) bank, there were no town buildings to strip for lumber but there was, quite conveniently, a forest. With abundant trees available, Bailey constructed a ‘self-loading’ tree dam. According to historical diagrams, trees were stacked lengthwise with the flow of the stream. The upstream treetops were anchored to the river bottom with stones. The downstream trunks were raised higher than the upstream tops by alternating layers of other logs running perpendicular to, or across, the stream. This technique presented a dam face of logs angled upward with the stream flow. As the river was held back by the log face, the water pressure actually made the dam stronger or ‘self-loading.’

The tree dam designed by Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Bailey for the Red River near Alexandria, Louisiana, spring 1864 (Joseph Bailey, “Report on the Construction of the Dam Across the Red River,” 1865, public domain).

Putting readers into the shoes of the Union Army troops on the ground during those days, the 1868 publication, The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events, noted that:

Oak, elm, and pine trees … were falling to the ground under the blows of the stalwart pioneers of Maine, bearing with them in their fall trees of lesser growth; mules and oxen were dragging the trees, denuded of their branches, to the river’s bank; wagons heavily loaded were moving in every direction; flat-boats carrying stone were floating with the current, while others were being drawn up the stream in the manner of canal boats. Meanwhile hundreds of men were at work at each end of the dam, moving heavy logs to the outer end of the tree-dam, … wheeling brick out to the cribs, carrying bars of railway iron to the barges, … while on each bank of the river were to be seen thousands of spectators, consisting of officers of both services, groups of sailors, soldiers, camp-followers, and citizens of Alexandria, all eagerly watching our progress and discussing the chances of success.

Initially, according to Smith, the “dam complex” worked well. “By May 6, the water held by the dam had risen 4 feet. By May 8, the water level was up 5 feet 4 inches.” But then the water levels continued to increase to such an extent that “the pressure against the dam became tremendous,” causing the dam to burst.

Two of the barges used in the dam had broken loose, and the water was gushing through. Porter, seeing the crisis, quickly ordered the gunboat Lexington to run the gap….

The Lexington’s run was followed by the three gunboats waiting behind the dam. Had the rest of the fleet been prepared, all of the boats might have escaped at that time. However … valuable time was wasted as the fleet gathered steam to attempt the run. Eventually, the water behind the dam fell and six gunboats still remained trapped.

But the Lexington’s adventure had proven that the dam could work, and troops confidently went back to work. Bailey worried that the dam would break again and decided to leave the 70-foot gap in the dam as it was. But this time he added smaller, lighter dams near the upper rapids. Like the dam sections at the lower rapids, both crib and tree dam methods were employed. These dams helped channel the water while reducing the pressure on the main dam. Thus, instead of relying on one dam to hold back the water until another run could be made, a series of dams were built to create a deep channel of water along the whole course of the shoals in that part of the Red River.

And, at that point, “Bailey’s Dam” became “Bailey’s Dams.”

“Passage of the Fleet of Gunboats Over the Falls at Alexandria, Louisiana, May 1864 (Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, July 16, 1864, U.S. Library of Congress, public domain; click to enlarge).

“While the army labored to build the upper dam, the navy … worked to lighten the loads on the trapped gunboats,” according to Smith.

From May 10 through 12, the remaining gunboats above the rapids struggled through the upper shoals to the pool behind the main dam. Yet another dam had to be built to refloat a gunboat that got stuck during this passage. Then on the twelfth of May, the Mound City, the largest gunboat of the fleet, ran for the gap in the main dam. The previous scene was repeated, with thousands lining the banks to watch the excitement. Marching bands played the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ and the ‘Battle Cry for Freedom [sic, ‘Battle Cry of Freedom’].’ Like the Lexington before it, as the Mound City hit the gap, it ground against the rocky river bottom, and then shot through. The next day all of the trapped vessels lay safely below the rapids.

Through it all, members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry put their backs into their work, along with multiple other Union Army soldiers, including men from the 16th and 23rd Ohio Volunteers, the 19th Kentucky, the 23rd and 29th Wisconsin Volunteers, the 24th Iowa, the 24th and 27th Indiana, the 29th Maine, the 77th and 130th Illinois Volunteers, and the 97th and 99th U.S. Colored Infantry.

Lieutenant-Colonel Bailey later stated that his “details labored patiently and enthusiastically by day and night, standing waist deep in the water, under a broiling sun,” adding:

Their reward is the consciousness of having performed their duty as true soldiers, and they deserve the gratitude of their countrymen.

The massive construction project lasted roughly two weeks, according to 47th Pennsylvanian Henry Wharton, but proved to be worth it.

After a great deal of labor this was accomplished and by the morning of May 13th the last one was through the shute [sic], when we bade adieu to Alexandria, marching through the town with banners flying and keeping step to the music of ‘Rally around the flag,’ and ‘When this cruel war is over.’

The Army of the Gulf’s departure, however, also brought shock and heartache; according to Major-General Banks:

Rumors were circulated freely throughout the camp at Alexandria that upon the evacuation of the town it would be burned. To prevent this destruction of property – part of which belonged to loyal citizens – General Grover, commanding the post, was instructed to organize a thorough police, and to provide for its occupation by an armed force until the army had marched for Simmsport [sic, Simmesport]. The measures taken were sufficient to prevent a conflagration in the manner in which it had been anticipated. But on the morning of the evacuation, while the army was in full possession of the town, a fire broke out in a building on the levee, which had been occupied by refugees or soldiers, in such a manner as to make it impossible to prevent a general conflagration. I saw the fire when it was first discovered. The ammunition and ordnance transports and the depot of ammunition on the levee were within a few yards of the fire. The boats were floated into the river and the ammunition moved from the levee with all possible dispatch [sic]. The troops labored with alacrity and vigor to suppress the conflagration, but owing to a high wind and the combustible material of the buildings it was found impossible to limit its progress, and a considerable portion of the town was destroyed.

According to Smith, “It is unclear who started the fires, as some accounts describe soldiers looting and setting fires, while other accounts note that army guards shot looters.” What is known for certain is that the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers could not possibly have taken part in Alexandria’s destruction because they had actually left the city before the fire had even begun. According to Henry Wharton:

The next morning, at our camping place, the fleet of boats passed us, when we were informed that Alexandria had been destroyed by fire – the act of a dissatisfied citizen and several negroes. Incendiary acts were strictly forbidden in a general order the day before we left the place, and a cavalry guard was left in the rear to see the order enforced.

Injured or Sick:

Private Abraham Wolf, Company B, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1861 (public domain).

Wolf, Abraham: Private, Company B; developed first signs of rheumatism, a condition that would last for the remainder of his life; also fell ill with chronic diarrhea during the construction of Bailey’s Dam due to poor water quality; subsequently developed hemorrhoids as a direct result of that illness.

Captured and Held as Prisoner of War (POW):

Maul, Adam (alternate spellings: Moll, Moul): Private, Company C; captured by Confederate forces at the Cane River on May 3, 1864 while assigned to duties away from the regiment’s Alexandria, Louisiana encampment—possibly during the construction of Bailey’s Dam; held as a prisoner of war (POW) at Camp Ford, a Confederate Army prison camp near Tyler, Texas until being released as part of a prisoner exchange between the Union and Confederate armies on July 22, 1864; received medical treatment, recovered from his experience, and returned to duty with Company C.

Smith, Frederick: Private, Company D; possibly wounded in action during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; captured by Confederate States Army troops during that battle and marched one hundred and twenty-five miles to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, where he was held captive as a prisoner of war (POW) until his death on May 4, 1864.

Sources:

Bailey, Joseph. “Report on the construction of the dam across the Red River,” in Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, at the Second Session Thirty-Eighth Congress, Red River Expedition, Fort Fisher Expedition, Heavy Ordnance. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1865.
“Bailey’s Dam.” Washington, D.C.: American Battlefield Trust, retrieved online May 6, 2024.
“Bailey’s Dam,” in Anthropological Study No. 8. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Archaeological Survey and Antiquities Commission, Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, March 1986.
Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
Clay, Steven E. The Staff Ride Handbook for the Red River Campaign, 7 March-19 May 1864. Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: Combat Studies Institute Press, U.S. Army Combined Arms Centers, 2023.
Dollar, Susan E. “The Red River Campaign, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana: A Case of Equal Opportunity Destruction,” in Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, vol. 43, no. 4 (Autumn 2002), pp. 411-432, accessed April 22, 2024. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana Historical Association.
Moore, Frank, editor. “The Red River Dam,” in The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events, vol. 11, pp. 11-12. New York, New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1868.
Prisoner of War Records, Camp Ford and Camp Groce (47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry). Tyler Texas: Smith County Historical Society, 2010.
“Report of Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks, U. S. Army, Commanding Expedition and Department of the Gulf” (to Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War), in Annual Report of the Secretary of War, in Message of the President of the United States, and Accompanying Documents, to the Two Houses of Congress, at the Commencement of the First Session of the Thirty-Ninth Congress. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1866.
Schmidt, Lewis G. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.
The History of the Forty-Seventh Regt. P. V.” Allentown, Pennsylvania: The Lehigh Register, July 20, 1870.

Battle of Monett’s Ferry/Cane River, Louisiana, April 23, 1864

Apr22

Breastworks manned by the 1st Missouri Artillery, Grand Ecore, Louisiana (C. E. H. Bonwill, illustrator, public domain).

As seventeen 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantrymen were being spirited away to Texas for imprisonment by Confederate troops at Camp Ford, following the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana in mid-April 1864, the remaining members of their regiment were receiving orders to march for the village of Grand Ecore as part of a massive retreat by the Union’s Army of the Gulf that was commanded by Major-General Nathaniel P. Banks. Upon their arrival, the Union infantry and artillery troops reconnected with the Union Navy’s fleet of quartermaster ships that were carrying food and fresh ammunition for them. They then “immediately began entrenching,” according to military historian Lieutenant-Colonel Steven E. Clay (U.S. Army, retired).

On 11 April, two days after the battle at Pleasant Hill, Banks’ engineer officers supervised the layout and construction of a three-mile, semicircular line of entrenchments around the little hamlet. The works were substantial and utilized, in part, existing works previously prepared by [Confederate General Richard] Taylor’s men. The infantry troops felled large trees to build breastworks and reinforce the earthworks. The engineers constructed abatis and other obstacles, while the artillerymen built battery positions along likely avenues of approach. Each location was chosen to take advantage of the high ground and maximize kill zones. Though there was some skirmishing around Grand Ecore and later at Alexandria, the works were never seriously challenged by Taylor’s forces. The Confederate commander simply did not have enough men to make costly frontal assaults against entrenched troops.

* Note: Prior to that return to Grand Ecore, Banks was initially planning to continue with his original Red River Campaign objective to march his Army of the Gulf to Shreveport. According to historian Steven Clay:

Apparently buoyed by the army’s performance at Chapman’s Bayou and Pleasant Hill, Banks’ confidence had returned. Indeed, he even dispatched a message to Lee to turn around the trains and bring them back. Smith was in agreement with commanding general’s decision and rode off to tend to his troops and prepare them for the advance. All this, however, was before Banks met with other generals later that evening.

That plan changed, however, when three of Banks’ senior generals—Emory, Franklin and Mower—expressed their concerns about the feasibility of the proposed march “for several reasons.”

First, on the army’s present route there was no easy access to Porter’s naval support until arrival at Shreveport. Also, Banks’ next resupply of food and ammunition was located on the transports moving with Porter. Additionally, Emory’s division was almost out of food.

Second, no one knew the status of Porter’s flotilla, whether it was still moving north or if it had been captured or destroyed. There was no word even on whether Porter could reach Shreveport given the falling water level. Third, Banks had not heard anything regarding Steele’s progress in Arkansas. Was that column still en route, or had it met disaster? Fourth, it was now 10 April and Banks only had five days to capture Shreveport before Smith’s troops had to depart for Memphis. Was it possible to reach the city and take it in five days? Finally, there was still the lack of water in the pine barrens and precious little remained at Pleasant Hill. What was remaining would be gone by the morrow. Franklin offered that the army should march for Blair’s Landing to link there with Porter and be resupplied. From there a decision could be made about what to do next. Emory concurred. Dwight, Banks’ closest confidant, suggested that the army return to Grand Ecore since nothing had been heard from Porter. After considering the three options, Banks gave in, but selected the advice of the most junior general, Dwight.

Scrapping most of his original campaign objectives on 20 April 1864, Banks ordered the Army of the Gulf to retreat further—this time to Alexandria. That move unfolded over a period of several days, beginning with the departure of one of the Union’s cavalry units at 5 p.m. on 21 April.

The 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers departed the next day. While marching toward Alexandria, they were attacked again—this time at the rear of their retreating brigade but were able to quickly end the encounter and continue on, reaching Cloutierville at 10 p.m. that same night—after a forty-five-mile trek.

Battle of Monett’s Ferry and the Cane River Crossing

The 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were stationed just to the left of the “Thick Woods” with Emory’s 2nd Brigade, 1st Division as shown on this map of Union troop positions for the Battle of Cane River Crossing at Monett’s Ferry, Louisiana, April 23, 1864 (Major-General Nathaniel Banks’ official Red River Campaign Report, public domain; click to enlarge).

The next morning (23 April 1864), episodic skirmishing with Confederate troops quickly roared into the flames of a robust fight. As part of the advance party led by Union Brigadier-General William Emory, the 47th Pennsylvanians took on the Confederate cavalry of Brigadier-General Hamilton P. Bee in the Battle of Monett’s Ferry (also known as “the Affair at Monett’s Ferry” or the “Battle of Cane River/the Cane River Crossing”).

Responding to a barrage from the Confederate artillery’s twenty-pound Parrott guns and raking fire from enemy troops situated near a bayou and on a bluff, Brigadier-General Emory directed one of his brigades to keep Bee’s Confederates busy while sending his other two brigades to find a safe spot where his Union troops could ford the Cane River. As part of the “beekeepers,” the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers supported Emory’s artillery.

Meanwhile, other troops serving with Emory’s brigade attacked Bee’s flank to force a Rebel retreat, and then erected a series of pontoon bridges that enabled the 47th and other remaining Union soldiers to make the Cane River Crossing by the next day. As the Confederates retreated, the Rebels torched their own food stores, as well as the cotton supplies of their fellow southerners.

U.S. Army of the Gulf crosses the Cane River following the Battle of Monett’s Ferry, April 23, 1864 (Harper’s Weekly, public domain; click to enlarge).

In a letter penned from Morganza, Louisiana on 29 May, Henry Wharton described what had happened to the 47th Pennsylvanians during and immediately after making camp at Grand Ecore:

Our sojourn at Grand Ecore was for eleven days, during which time our position was well fortified by entrenchments for a length of five miles, made of heavy logs, five feet high and six feet wide, filled in with dirt. In front of this, trees were felled for a distance of two hundred yards, so that if the enemy attacked we had an open space before us which would enable our forces to repel them and follow if necessary. But our labor seemed to the men as useless, for on the morning of 22d April, the army abandoned these works and started for Alexandria. From our scouts it was ascertained that the enemy had passed some miles to our left with the intention of making a stand against our right at Bayou Cane, where there is a high bluff and dense woods, and at the same attack Smith’s forces who were bringing up the rear. This first day was a hard one on the boys, for by ten o’clock at night they made Cloutierville, a distance of forty-five miles. On that day the rear was attacked which caused our forces to reverse their front and form in line of battle, expecting too, to go back to the relief of Smith, but he needed no assistance, sending word to the front that he had ‘whipped them, and could do it again.’ It was well that Banks made so long a march on that day, for on the next we found the enemy prepared to carry out their design of attacking us front and rear. Skirmishing commenced early in the morning and as our columns advanced he fell back towards the bayou, when we soon discovered the position of their batteries on the bluff. There was then an artillery duel by the smaller pieces, and some sharp fighting by the cavalry, when the ‘mule battery,’ twenty pound Parrott guns, opened a heavy fire, which soon dislodged them, forcing the chivalry to flee in a manner not at all suitable to their boasted courage. Before this one cavalry, the 3d Brigade of the 1st Div., and Birges’ brigade of the second, had crossed the bayou and were doing good service, which, with the other work, made the enemy show their heels. The 3d brigade done some daring deeds in this fight, as also did the cavalry. In one instance the 3d charged up a hill almost perpendicular, driving the enemy back by the bayonet without firing a gun. The woods on this bluff was so thick that the cavalry had to dismount and fight on foot. During the whole of the day, our brigade, the 2d was supporting artillery, under fire all the time, and could not give Mr. Reb a return shot.

While we were fighting in front, Smith was engaged some miles in the rear, but he done his part well and drove them back. The rebel commanders thought by attacking us in the rear, and having a large face on the bluffs, they would be able to capture our train and take us all prisoners, but in this they were mistaken, for our march was so rapid that we were on them before they had thrown up the necessary earthworks. Besides they underrated the amount of our artillery, calculating from the number engaged at Pleasant Hill. The rebel prisoners say it ‘seems as though the Yankees manufacture, on short notice, artillery to order, and the men are furnished with wings when they wish to make a certain point.

The damage done to the Confederate cause by the burning of cotton was immense. On the night of the 22d our route was lighted up for miles and millions of dollars worth of this production was destroyed. This loss will be felt more by Davis & Co., than several defeats in this region, for the basis of the loan in England was on the cotton of Western Louisiana.’

After the rebels had fled from the bluff the negro troops put down the pontoons, and by ten that night we were six miles beyond the bayou safely encamped. The next morning we moved forward and in two days were in Alexandria. Johnnys followed Smith’s forces, keeping out of range of his guns, except when he had gained the eminence across the bayou, when he punished them (the rebs) severely.

* Note: According to historian Steven Clay, sometime before or during this engagement, engineers from the Army of the Gulf were sent back to the Cane River (on 23 April) in order to lay out a pontoon bridge near Monett’s Ferry, an objective they completed by or before 7 p.m.

All that night, the army retreated over the river and completed the crossing by noon the following day. The pontoon bridge was laid twice more during the retreat of the Army of the Gulf toward Simmesport [giving] the Army of the Gulf a significant mobility capacity that enabled it to easily cross what might otherwise have been major impediments to the movement of the force.

Killed or Wounded in Action:

Private Reuben Moyer Sheaffer, Company H, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (shown circa 1860s-1870s, public domain).

Sheaffer, Reuben Moyer (alternate spellings: Schaeffer, Schaffer, Shaffer): Private, Company H; reported as wounded in action during either the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads/Mansfield on April 8, 1864 or the Battle of Pleasant Hill on April 9, he marched with his regiment to Grand Ecore. Although reported in U.S. Army records to have died at Grand Ecore on April 22, 1864, Private Sheaffer actually died sometime during the forty-five-mile march toward Cloutierville, according to a letter subsequently written by his commanding officer, Captain James Kacy, to First Lieutenant William Wallace Geety on May 29. According to Captain Kacy, “Schaffer died on the march of excessive fatigue. We marched in retreat from 1 AM to 11 PM 49 miles, and several died of it.” Prior to his death, Private Sheaffer had been in poor health. According to historian Lewis Schmidt, Private Sheaffer had been “hospitalized for five days with dysentery at Fort Jefferson on January 25, 1863; and again on February 18 with ‘Debiletas’ (rheumatism) for almost two weeks, as he was returned to duty on March 2.”

Captured and Held as Prisoner of War (POW):

Maul, Adam (alternate spellings: Moll, Moul): Private, Company C; captured by Confederate forces at the Cane River on May 3, 1864 while assigned to duties away from the regiment’s Alexandria, Louisiana encampment; held as a prisoner of war (POW) at Camp Ford, a Confederate Army prison camp near Tyler, Texas until being released as part of a prisoner exchange between the Union and Confederate armies on July 22, 1864; received medical treatment, recovered from his experience, and returned to duty with Company C.

How Did Union Army Leaders Communicate During the 1864 Red River Campaign

Union Navy gunboats, Alexandria, Louisiana, 1864 (public domain).

According to Clay, “Banks’ strategic line of communication was by way of courier boat down the Red and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans.”

From there, ocean-going ships took messages directly to Washington, DC, or to another port which had telegraphic communications with the capital. It was usually about a month-long process under the best of conditions. Thus, Lincoln, Halleck, and Grant were forced to provide suggestions, instructions, and orders that were broad in nature and allowed Banks to manage the details.

At the tactical level, Banks and his subordinates typically communicated by horse-mounted courier, both up and down the chain of command and laterally. Though Banks possessed trained signal teams in his army, the nature of the terrain precluded effective use of flag and light signals. The only time the Signal Corps was able to function in battle with flag teams was briefly at the battle of Monett’s Ferry and at Alexandria, after the retreat from Grand Ecore. At Alexandria, Capt. Frank W. Marston, Chief Signal Officer for the department, was later able to set up a line of signal stations to facilitate communications between Banks’ headquarters with the outlying headquarters of the army’s major commands and Porter’s gunboats.

Additionally, the Army of the Gulf possessed a tactical telegraph capability during the Red River Campaign. It consisted of a telegraph train of five wagons, three of which carried large reels of wire. There were four civilian telegraph operators and several other teamsters and support personnel, all under the command of Capt. Charles S. Bulkley.

Entry into Alexandria, Louisiana

The Union’s Army of the Gulf marched into Alexandria, Louisiana, during the weekend of April 22, 1864 (Harper’s Weekly, public domain; click to enlarge).

After reaching Alexandria on April 26, 1864, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers and other Union artillery and infantry troops reconnected once again with the Union Navy’s fleet of quartermaster ships, which provided them with additional ammunition and food. When Confederate States Army troops “closed off the Red River below the city,” shortly thereafter, according to Clay, Major-General Banks ordered his troops “out on forays into rebel-held areas outside the city” to ensure that the U.S. Army of the Gulf would have enough food and other supplies to last a planned two-week occupation of the city.

Taylor responded by ordering his troops to take or burn anything the Federals could possibly use within miles of Alexandria. Eventually, however, Porter’s gunboats reopened the river and forage arrived in enough quantities for the horses to pull their loads southward. Soon after, Banks ordered the surplus stores, tools, and equipment loaded on army transports and sent down river. On 12 May, the army started its return trip back to Simmesport. The train was now up to 976 wagons, 105 ambulances, and 12,000 horses and mules. Few supply problems were encountered en route. Indeed, in actions which presaged Sherman’s forthcoming Savannah Campaign, many soldiers, especially A. J. Smith’s men, helped themselves to whatever foodstuffs (and other things) they wanted from the homes and farms along the way.

Sources:

Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
“Battle Detail: Monett’s Ferry,” in “The Civil War.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Park Service, retrieved online April 21, 2024.
Clay, Steven E. The Staff Ride Handbook for the Red River Campaign, 7 March-19 May 1864. Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: Combat Studies Institute Press, U.S. Army Combined Arms Centers, 2023.
Dollar, Susan E. “The Red River Campaign, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana: A Case of Equal Opportunity Destruction,” in Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, vol. 43, no. 4 (Autumn 2002), pp. 411-432, accessed April 22, 2024. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana Historical Association.
Prisoner of War Records, Camp Ford and Camp Groce (47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry). Tyler Texas: Smith County Historical Society, 2010.
“Report of Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks, U. S. Army, Commanding Expedition and Department of the Gulf” (to Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War), in Annual Report of the Secretary of War, in Message of the President of the United States, and Accompanying Documents, to the Two Houses of Congress, at the Commencement of the First Session of the Thirty-Ninth Congress. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1866.
Schmidt, Lewis G. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.
“The History of the Forty-Seventh Regt. P. V.” Allentown, Pennsylvania: The Lehigh Register, July 20, 1870.
“War on the Red: A look at the Red River Campaign of 1864,” in “News.” Natchitoches, Louisiana: Cane River National Heritage Area, retrieved online April 22, 2024.
Wharton, Henry D. “Letters from the Sunbury Guards, 1861-1868. Sunbury, Pennsylvania, Sunbury American.

Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana, April 9, 1864 — Casualties and POWs from the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

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Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana, April 9, 1864 (Harper’s Weekly, May 7, 1864, public domain).

Arriving at Pleasant Hill, Louisiana around 8:30 a.m. on April 9, 1864, after having retreated from the scene of the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads just before midnight on April 8, and with the enemy believed to be in pursuit, Union Major-General Nathaniel Banks ordered his troops (including the (47th Pennsylvania Volunteers) to regroup and ready themselves for a new round of fighting. That fight would later be known as the Battle of Pleasant Hill.

In his official Red River Campaign Report penned a year later, Banks described how the day unfolded:

A line of battle was formed in the following order: First Brigade, Nineteenth Corps, on the right, resting on a ravine; Second Brigade in the center, and Third Brigade on the left. The center was strengthened by a brigade of General Smith’s forces, whose main force was held in reserve. The enemy moved toward our right flank. The Second Brigade [including the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers] withdrew from the center to the support of the First Brigade. The brigade in support of the center moved up into position, and another of General Smith’s brigades was posted to the extreme left position on the hill, in echelon to the rear of the left main line.

Light skirmishing occurred during the afternoon. Between 4 and 5 o’clock it increased in vigor, and about 5 p.m., when it appeared to have nearly ceased, the enemy drove in our skirmishers and attacked in force, his first onset being against the left. He advanced in two oblique lines, extending well over toward the right of the Third Brigade, Nineteenth Corps. After a determined resistance this part of the line gave way and went slowly back to the reserves. The First and Second Brigades were soon enveloped in front, right, and rear. By skillful movements of General Emory the flanks of the two brigades, now bearing the brunt of the battle, were covered. The enemy pursued the brigades, passing the left and center, until he approached the reserves under General Smith, when he was met by a charge led by General Mower and checked. The whole of the reserves were now ordered up, and in turn we drove the enemy, continuing the pursuit until night compelled us to halt.

First State Color, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (issued September 20, 1861, retired May 11, 1865).

The 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers had been ordered into a critically important defensive position at the far right of the Union lines that day (April 9, 1864), their right flank spreading up onto a high bluff. According to Bates, after fighting off a charge by the troops of Confederate Major-General Richard Taylor, the 47th was forced to bolster the buckling lines of the 165th New York Infantry—just as the 47th was shifting to the left of the massed Union forces.

Nearly two decades later, First Lieutenant James Hahn recalled his involvement (as a sergeant in that battle) for a retrospective article in the January 31, 1884 edition of The National Tribune:

A PENNSYLVANIA SOLDIER’S EXPERIENCE.

Lieutenant James Hahn, of the 47th Pennsylvania infantry, writing from Newport, Pa., refers as follows to the engagements at Sabine Cross-roads and Pleasant Hill:

‘The 19th Corps had gone into camp for the evening about four miles from Sabine Cross-Roads. The engagement at Mansfield had been fought by the 13th Corps, who struggled bravely against overwhelming odds until they were driven from the field. I presume the rebel Gen. Dick Taylor knew of the situation of our army, and that the 19th was in the rear of the 13th, and the 16th still in rear of the 19th, some thirteen miles away, encamped at Pleasant Hill. They thought it would be a good joke to whip Banks’ army in detail: first, the 13th corps, then 19th, then finish up on the 16th. But they counted without their hosts; for when the couriers came flying back to the 19th with the news of the sad disaster that had befallen the 13th corps, we were double-quicked a distance of some four miles, and just met the advance of our defeated 13th corps – coming pell-mell, infantry, cavalry, and artillery all in one conglomerated mass, in such a manner as only a defeated and routed army can be mixed up – at Sabine Cross-roads, where our corps was thrown into line just in time to receive the victorious and elated Johnnies with a very warm reception, which gave them a recoil, and which stopped their impetuous headway, and gave the 13th corps time to get safely to the rear. I do not know what would have been the consequence if the 19th had been defeated also, that evening of the 8th, at Sabine Cross-roads, and the victorious rebel army had thrown themselves upon the ‘guerrillas’ then lying in camp at Pleasant Hill. It was just about getting dark when the Johnnies made their last assault upon the lines of the 19th. We held the field until about midnight, and then fell back and left the picket to hold the line while we joined the 16th at Pleasant Hill the morning of the 9th of April, soon after daybreak. It was not long until the rebel cavalry put in an appearance, and soon skirmishing commenced. About 4 o’clock in the afternoon the engagement become general all along the line, and with varied success, until late in the afternoon the rebels were driven from the field, and were followed until darkness set in, and about midnight our army made a retrograde movement, which ended at Grand Ecore, and left our dead and wounded lying on the field, all of whom fell into rebel hands. I have been informed since by one of our regiment, who was left wounded on the field, that the rebels were so completely defeated that they did not return to the battlefield till late the next day, and I have always been of the opinion that, if the defeat that the rebels got at Pleasant Hill had been followed up, Banks’ army, with the aid of A. J. Smith’s divisions, could have got to Shreveport (the objective point) without much left or hindrance from the rebel army.’

According to Major-General Banks, “The battle of the 9th was desperate and sanguinary. The defeat of the enemy was complete, and his loss in officers and men more than double that sustained by our forces.”

Even so, casualties for the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry that day were high. The abridged lists below partially documents the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers who were declared as wounded in action, killed in action, missing in action, or captives of the Confederate States Army (POWs) after the Battle of Pleasant Hill:

Killed or Wounded in Action:

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

Alexander, George Warren: Lieutenant-Colonel and second in command of the regiment; struck in the left leg near the ankle by a shell fragment which fractured his leg; recovered and returned to duty; was honorably discharged upon expiration of his three-year term of service on September 23, 1864.

Baldwin, Isaac: Corporal, Company D; twice wounded in action in 1864, he was first wounded during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company D; wounded in action the second time during the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia on October 19, 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company D; subsequently promoted to the rank of sergeant on January 20, 1865; was honorably discharged on December 25, 1865.

Buss, Charles (alternate spelling: Bress): Private, Company F; initially declared missing in action following the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864, Union Army leaders ultimately determined that he had been captured by Confederate States Army troops during that battle; marched one hundred and twenty-five miles to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas; held captive there as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864. (Note: This was likely the “Charles Bress” shown on Camp Ford prisoner records as a private from Company D.) After recovering from his POW experience, he remained on the Company F rosters until he was honorably discharged in January 1865.

Clouser, Ephraim: Private, Company D; shot in the right knee and then captured by Confederate Army troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; marched or was transported one hundred and twenty-five miles to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, where he was held as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on November 25, 1864; date of discharge unknown.

Crownover, James: Sergeant, Company D; survived slight breast wound during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862; sustained gunshot wound to the right shoulder and was captured by Confederate States Army troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; marched or was transported to Camp Groce or Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, where he was held until he was released during a prisoner exchange on November 25, 1864; while he was being held as a POW, he was commissioned, but not mustered as a second lieutenant on August 31, 1864; recovered following medical treatment; returned to duty with Company C and was promoted to the rank of first sergeant on July 5, 1865; was honorably discharged on December 25, 1865.

Dingler, John: Private, Company E; wounded in action during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company E; was honorably discharged upon expiration of his three-year term of enlistment on September 18, 1864; later re-enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania’s B Company on February 13, 1865; was honorably discharged on December 25, 1865.

Dumm, William F. (alternate spellings: Drum or Drumm): Private, Company H; killed in action during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864.

Fink, Edward: Private, Company B; killed in action during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864.

Frack, William: Corporal, Company I; declared missing in action and “supposed dead” following the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; was ultimately declared as killed in action.

Hagelgans, Nicholas: Private, Company K; killed in action during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864.

Hahn, Richard: Private, Company E; killed in action by a musket ball during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864.

Haltiman, William (alternate spellings: Haldeman or Halderman): Second Lieutenant, Company I; wounded in action during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company I; promoted to the rank of sergeant on January 1, 1865; promoted to the rank of second lieutenant on May 27, 1865; felled by sunstroke while on duty in mid-July 1865, he died in Pineville, South Carolina on July 21, 1865.

Hangen, Granville D.: Private, Company I; wounded in action during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company I; was honorably discharged on December 25, 1865.

Hartshorn, John (alternate spelling: Hartshorne): Private, Company H; initially listed as missing in action following the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864, Union Army officials ultimately determined that he had been captured by Confederate States Army troops and marched one hundred and twenty-five miles to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, where he was held captive as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864. (Note: His surname was spelled as “Hartshorne” in Camp Ford’s prisoner records, which also described him as “illiterate” and incorrectly listed his company as “K.”) He subsequently died at a Union Army hospital in New Orleans, Louisiana on August 8, 1864.

Huff, James: Corporal, Company E; wounded in action and captured by Confederate States Army troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; marched or was transported to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, where he was held as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on August 29, 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company E; was captured again by Confederate States Army troops during the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia on October 19, 1864; was marched or was transported to the Salisbury Prison Camp in Salisbury, North Carolina, where he was again held captive as a POW—this time, until his death on March 5, 1865. Per historian Lewis Schmidt, it was “reported [by a fellow soldier that] ‘he got his throat cut with a ball and I sott him up against stump to die.’” He was subsequently buried by Confederate States Army soldiers in one of the unmarked trench graves at the Salisbury Prison Camp.

Jones, John L.: Private, Company F; wounded in action and captured by Confederate troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; marched one hundred and twenty-five miles to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas; promoted by his regiment on September 18, 1864 while he was still being held as a POW at Camp Ford, he was finally released during a prisoner exchange on September 24, 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company F, he was promoted to the rank of sergeant on June 2, 1865; was honorably discharged on December 25, 1865.

Kennedy, James: Private, Company C; sustained gunshot fracture of the arm and gunshot wound to his side during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; was transported to the Union Army’s St. James Hospital in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he died from his battle wounds on April 27, 1864.

Kern, Samuel M.: Private, Company D; wounded in action and captured during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; marched or was transported to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, where he was held in captivity as a prisoner of war (POW) until he died on June 12, 1864.

Kramer, Cornelius: Private, Company C; wounded in the leg during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company C; was honorably discharged on December 16, 1865.

Matter, Jacob (alternate spelling: Madder): Private, Company K; initially reported as missing in action following the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864, his status was subsequently updated to “died of wounds” from that battle.

Mayers, William H. (alternate spellings: Mayer, Mayers, Meyers, Moyers; shown on regimental muster rolls as “Mayers, William H.” and “Meyers, William H.”; listed in Samuel P. Bates’ History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5 and various other records as “Moyers I, William H.”): Corporal, Co. I; wounded in action during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company I; promoted to the rank of sergeant on September 19, 1864; was subsequently wounded in action again—this time during the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia on October 19, 1864; recovered and returned to duty; promoted to the rank of first sergeant on May 27, 1865; was commissioned, but not mustered as a second lieutenant on July 25, 1865; was honorably discharged on December 25, 1865.

McNew, John: Private, Company C; wounded in action and captured by Confederate States Army troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1964; marched to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas and held captive there as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864. (Note: Camp Ford records incorrectly listed him as a member of Company D and also described him as “illiterate.”) Promoted to the rank of corporal on December 1, 1864; reduced to the rank of private on April 22, 1865; was honorably discharged on December 25, 1865.

Miller, George: Private, Company C; wounded in the side during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; was honorably mustered out upon expiration of his three-year term of service on September 18, 1864; died suddenly in his hometown in 1867.

Miller, John Garber: Corporal, Company D; wounded in action and captured during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864, he was marched one hundred and twenty-five miles to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, where he was held captive as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864. (Note: Camp Ford records incorrectly listed him as a member of Co. G.) Recovered and returned to duty with Company D, he was subsequently promoted to the rank of sergeant on September 19, 1864; was honorably mustered out on December 25, 1865.

Moser, Peter (alternate spelling: “Moses”): Private, Company F; survived arm wound sustained during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862; was honorably discharged on a surgeon’s certificate of disability on February 24, 1863; recovered and re-enlisted with Company F on December 19, 1863; initially declared missing in action following the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864. Union Army officers subsequently determined that he had been captured in battle at Pleasant Hill and marched one hundred and twenty-five miles to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas where he was held captive as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864. (Note: His surname was listed on Camp Ford prisoner records as “Moses,” which also described him as “illiterate.”) Transported to New Orleans for treatment at a Union Army hospital, he remained “Absent and sick at New Orleans since 22 July 1864,” according to his Civil War Veterans’ Card File entry in the Pennsylvania State Archives, which also noted that he was “Supposed to be Dis. Under G.O. #77 A.G.O. W.D. Series 1865.” He ultimately survived the war and died in Pennsylvania in 1905.

O’Brien, William H.: Private, Company H; wounded in action during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company H; was honorably discharged on December 6, 1864.

Offhouse, William: Private, Company F; wounded in action during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company F; was honorably discharged upon expiration of his three-year term of service on September 18, 1864.

Private Nicholas Orris, Company H, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1863 (public domain).

Orris, Nicholas: Private, Co. H; killed in action during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; burial location remains unknown.

Petre, Pete: Private, Company D; wounded in action during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company D; was honorably discharged on December 25, 1865.

Powell, Solomon: Private, Company D; possibly wounded in action, he was captured during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; he then died from his battle wounds at Pleasant Hill, Louisiana either that same day or on June 7, 1864 while still being held by Confederate troops as a prisoner of war (POW). According to historian Lewis Schmidt, “Privates Powell and Wantz were probably buried in a cemetery at Pleasant Hill, ‘at the rear of the brick building used for a hospital,’ and after the war reinterred at Alexandria National Cemetery at Pineville, Louisiana in unknown graves.”)

Pyers, William: Sergeant, Company C; wounded in the arm and side while saving the flag from fallen C Company Color-Bearer Benjamin Walls; recovered and returned to duty with Company C; killed in action during the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia on October 19, 1864.

Reinert, Griffin (alternate spelling: Reinhart, Griffith; known as “Griff”): Private, Company F; sustained a gunshot wound to his jaw during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; was transported to the Union Army Hospital in York, Pennsylvania for more advanced medical care; was discharged on a surgeon’s certificate of disability on December 28, 1864.

Reinsmith, Tilghman: Private and Field Musician—Bugler, Company B; wounded in action during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company B; promoted to the rank of corporal on October 1, 1864; was honorably discharged on December 25, 1865.

Scheetz, Robert (alternate spelling Sheats): Private, Company F; wounded in action during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company F; was honorably discharged upon expiration of his three-year term of service on September 18, 1864.

Schleppy, Llewellyn J. (alternate spelling “Sleppy”): Private, Company F; wounded in action during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company F; was honorably discharged upon expiration of his three-year term of service on September 18, 1864.

Shaver, Joseph Benson: Private, Company D; wounded in action during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company D; was honorably discharged at Washington, D.C. on June 1, 1865.

Smith, Frederick: Private, Co. D; possibly wounded in action during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; captured by Confederate States Army troops during that battle and marched one hundred and twenty-five miles to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, where he was held captive as a prisoner of war (POW) until his death on May 4, 1864.

Sterner, John C.: Private, Company C; killed in action during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864.

Stewart, Cornelius Baskins: Corporal, Company D; after surviving a wound sustained during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862, he recovered, was released to the regiment on December 15, 1862, and returned to active duty on March 1, 1863; shot in the right hip during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864, he recovered and returned to duty again with Company D; he was honorably discharged upon completion of his three-year term of service on September 18, 1864.

Wagner, Samuel: Private, Company D; wounded in action during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864, he was lost at sea while being transported for medical care aboard the USS Pocahontas when that steam transport foundered off of Cape May, New Jersey after colliding with the City of Bath on June 1, 1864.

Walls, Benjamin: Regimental Color-Sergeant, Company C; sustained gunshot wound to his left shoulder while trying to mount the 47th Pennsylvania’s flag on a piece of Confederate artillery that had been re-captured by the regiment; recovered and attempted to re-enlist, but was denied permission due to his age. (At sixty-seven, he was the oldest man to serve in the entire regiment.) Was honorably discharged upon expiration of his three-year term of service on September 18, 1864.

Wantz, Jonathan: Private, Company D; possibly wounded in action during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1863; captured by Confederate States Army troops during that battle, he was then held captive as a prisoner of war (POW) until he died at Pleasant Hill—either the same day or on June 17, 1864 while he was still being held as a POW by Confederate troops. According to historian Lewis Schmidt, “Privates Powell and Wantz were probably buried in a cemetery at Pleasant Hill, ‘at the rear of the brick building used for a hospital,’ and after the war reinterred at Alexandria National Cemetery at Pineville, Louisiana in unknown graves.”)

Weiss, John: Private, Co. F; Wounded in action and captured by Confederate States Army troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; marched or was transported to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, where he was held captive as a prisoner of war (POW) until his death on July 15, 1864; his burial location remains unknown.

Wieand, Benjamin: Private, Company D; Survived wound to his right thigh during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862; recovered and transferred to Company D, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers on December 15, 1863; wounded in action and captured by Confederate States Army troops during Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864, he was marched or was transported to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, where he was held captive as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange (possibly after July 1864); was honorably discharged on July 21, 1865.

Wolf, Samuel: Private, Company K; initially declared as missing in action following the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864, he was ultimately declared as having been killed in action during that battle after having been absent from muster rolls for a substantial period of time.

Zellner, Benjamin (alternate spelling: Cellner): Private, Company K; wounded in action four times in 1864; was shot in the leg and lost an eye during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; captured during that same battle by Confederate States Army troops, he was confined initially at Pleasant Hill and Mansfield before being marched or transported to Camp Ford near Tyler Texas, where he was held captive as a prisoner of war (POW). Note: Although Camp Ford records (under surname of “Cellner”) stated in 2010 that he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864, Zellner stated in multiple newspaper accounts after war’s end that he was one of a group of three to four hundred men who had been deemed well enough by Camp Ford officials to be shipped to Shreveport, Louisiana, where they were then processed and sent by rail to Andersonville, the notorious Confederate POW camp in Georgia. Finally released from Andersonville in September 1864, he recovered and returned to duty with Company K. He was then wounded in the leg and also suffered a bayonet wound during the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia on October 19, 1964; recovered from those wounds and returned to duty with Company K; was honorably discharged on December 25, 1865. During a newspaper interview in later life, he told the reporter that his bayonet wound had never healed properly.

Captured and Held as Prisoners of War (POWs):

This image depicts life at Camp Ford, the largest Confederate Army prison camp west of the Mississippi River (Harper’s Weekly, March 4, 1865, public domain).

Brown, Francis: Private, Company D; captured by Confederate States Army troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864 and marched one hundred and twenty-five miles to Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, where he was held captive as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864; subsequently awarded a furlough, he allegedly deserted while on leave on September 16, 1864.

Buss, Charles (alternate spelling: Bress): Private, Company F; initially declared missing in action following the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864, Union Army leaders ultimately determined that he had been captured by Confederate States Army troops during that battle; marched one hundred and twenty-five miles to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, he was held captive there as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864. (Note: This was likely the “Charles Bress” shown on Camp Ford prisoner records as a Private from Company D.) After recovering from his POW experience, he remained on the Company F rosters until he was honorably discharged in January 1865.

Clouser, Ephraim: Private, Company D; shot in the right knee and then captured by Confederate Army troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; marched or was transported one hundred and twenty-five miles to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, where he was held captive as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on November 25, 1864; date of discharge unknown.

Crownover, James: Sergeant, Company D; survived slight breast wound during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862; sustained gunshot wound to the right shoulder and was captured by Confederate States Army troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; marched or was transported to Camp Groce or Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, where he was held captive until he was released during a prisoner exchange on November 25, 1864; while he was being held as a POW, he was commissioned, but not mustered as a second lieutenant on August 31, 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company C; promoted to the rank of first sergeant on July 5, 1865; was honorably discharged on December 25, 1865.

James Downs (circa 1880s, public domain).

Downs, James: Private, Company D; captured during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864 and marched one hundred and twenty-five miles to Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, where he was held captive as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company D; promoted to the rank of corporal on July 5, 1865; was honorably discharged on December 25, 1865.

Fisher, Charles B.: Private, Company K; captured during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; marched one hundred and twenty-five miles to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, where he was held captive as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864. (Note: Camp Ford’s prisoner records described him as “illiterate.”) Recovered and returned to duty with Company K; was honorably discharged upon expiration of his three-year term of service on September 18, 1864.

Huff, James: Corporal, Company E; wounded in action and captured by Confederate States Army troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; marched or was transported to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, where he was held captive as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on August 29, 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company E; was captured again by Confederate States Army troops during the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia on October 19, 1864; was marched or transported to the Salisbury Prison Camp in Salisbury, North Carolina, where he was again held captive as a POW—this time, until his death on March 5, 1865. Per historian Lewis Schmidt, it was “reported [by a fellow soldier that] ‘he got his throat cut with a ball and I sott him up against stump to die.’” was buried by Confederate States Army soldiers in one of the unmarked trench graves at the Salisbury Prison Camp.

Jones, John L.: Private, Company F; wounded in action and captured by Confederate troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; marched one hundred and twenty-five miles to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, where he was held captive as a prisoner of war (POW); promoted by his regiment on September 18, 1864 while he was still being held as a POW at Camp Ford, he was finally released during a prisoner exchange on September 24, 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company F, he was promoted to the rank of sergeant on June 2, 1865; was honorably discharged on December 25, 1865.

Kern, Samuel M.: Private, Company D; wounded in action and captured during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; marched or was transported to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, where he was held captive as a prisoner of war (POW) until he died on June 12, 1864.

McNew, John: Private, Company C; wounded in action and captured by Confederate States Army troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1964; marched to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas and held captive there as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864. (Note: Camp Ford records incorrectly listed him as a member of Company D and also described him as “illiterate.) Promoted to the rank of corporal on December 1, 1864; reduced to the rank of private on April 22, 1865; was honorably discharged on December 25, 1865.

Miller, John Garber: Corporal, Company D; wounded in action and captured during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; marched one hundred and twenty-five miles to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, where he was held captive as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864. (Note: Camp Ford records incorrectly listed him as a member of Co. G.) Recovered and returned to duty with Company D, he was subsequently promoted to the rank of sergeant on September 19, 1864; was honorably mustered out on December 25, 1865.

Moser, Peter (alternate spelling: “Moses”): Private, Company F; survived arm wound sustained during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862; was honorably discharged on a surgeon’s certificate of disability on February 24, 1863; recovered and re-enlisted with Company F on December 19, 1863; initially declared missing in action following the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864, Union Army officers subsequently determined that he had been captured in battle at Pleasant Hill and marched one hundred and twenty-five miles to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, where he was held as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864. (Note: His surname was listed on Camp Ford prisoner records as “Moses,” which also described him as “illiterate.”) Transported to New Orleans for treatment at a Union Army hospital, he remained “Absent and sick at New Orleans since 22 July 1864,” according to his Civil War Veterans’ Card File entry in the Pennsylvania State Archives, which also noted that he was “Supposed to be Dis. Under G.O. #77 A.G.O. W.D. Series 1865.” He ultimately survived the war and died in Pennsylvania in 1905.

Powell, Solomon: Private, Company D; possibly wounded in action, he was also captured during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; he then died from his battle wounds at Pleasant Hill, Louisiana either that same day or on June 7, 1864 while still being held by Confederate troops as a POW. According to historian Lewis Schmidt, “Privates Powell and Wantz were probably buried in a cemetery at Pleasant Hill, ‘at the rear of the brick building used for a hospital,’ and after the war reinterred at Alexandria National Cemetery at Pineville, Louisiana in unknown graves.”)

Smith, Frederick: Private, Company D; possibly wounded in action during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; captured during that battle by Confederate States Army troops, he was marched one hundred and twenty-five miles to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, where he was held captive as a prisoner of war (POW) until his death on May 4, 1864.

Smith, John Wesley: Private, Company C; captured by Confederates during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; marched one hundred and twenty-five miles to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, where he was held captive as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company C; was honorably discharged on December 25, 1865.

Smith, William J.: Private, Company D; captured by Confederate States Army troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; marched one hundred and twenty-five miles to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, where he was held captive as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1874. (Note: Camp Ford’s prisoner records described him as “illiterate.”) Honorably mustered out on December 25, 1865, he died in Pennsylvania in 1891.

Wantz, Jonathan: Private, Company D; possibly wounded in action during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1863, he was then captured by Confederate States Army troops and held captive as a prisoner of war (POW) until he died at Pleasant Hill—either the same day or on June 17, 1864 while he was still being held as a POW by Confederate troops. According to historian Lewis Schmidt, “Privates Powell and Wantz were probably buried in a cemetery at Pleasant Hill, ‘at the rear of the brick building used for a hospital,’ and after the war reinterred at Alexandria National Cemetery at Pineville, Louisiana in unknown graves.”)

Sources:

“A Pennsylvania Soldier’s Experience.” Washington, D.C.: The National Tribune, January 31, 1884.
Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
Prisoner of War Records, Camp Ford and Camp Groce (47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry). Tyler Texas: Smith County Historical Society, 2010.
Schmidt, Lewis G. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.

Battle of Sabine Cross Roads/Mansfield, Louisiana, April 8, 1864 — Casualties and POWs from the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

Apr9

Battle of Sabine Cross Roads/Mansfield, Louisiana (Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 14 May 1864, public domain).

At 4 p.m. Louisiana time on April 8, 1864, during the American Civil War, the left flank of the Confederate States Army, which was commanded by Major-General Richard Taylor, slowly began an echelon formation attack on troops commanded by Union Major-General Nathaniel Banks, forcing the Union’s cavalry line to buckle. During the first fourteen minutes of the opening charge of this combat engagement, which later became known as the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads (by Union troops) and the Battle of Mansfield (by Confederate troops), eleven out of fourteen Confederate officers were killed in action.

Shortly thereafter, Banks’ left Union flank also collapsed, and Taylor’s troops continued forward, puncturing a secondary Union Army position three quarters of a mile behind the Union’s front line.

In response, Banks ordered Brigadier-General William Emory to move his 1st Division, 19th U.S. Army Corps to the front. Among Emory’s 5,859 men were nine New York regiments, three from Maine—and the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. Ninety minutes and seven miles of marching later, Emory’s men waited for the Confederates on the ridge above Chapman’s Bayou.

* Note: The 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were positioned behind the 161st New York, 29th Maine, and other Union regiments at or near the farm of Joshua Chapman, about five miles southeast of Mansfield, Louisiana. The battles here were termed the “Peach Orchard” fight by Confederates and “Pleasant Grove” by 47th Pennsylvanians—a name attributed by several historians to the live oak trees in front of Chapman’s house. The fighting at the peach orchard was particularly brutal.

19th U.S. Army Map, Phase 3, Battle of Sabine Cross Roads/Mansfield (8 April 1864, public domain; click to enlarge).

Confederate troops next attacked the center of the Union line, causing the lines of the 161st New York Volunteers to buckle; the 29th Maine stood firm, however, and repulsed the enemy.

In response, Confederates from the 1st, 26th, 36th, and other Texas Cavalry units then attempted an end run on the Union’s right flank, but the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were ready for them. Initially positioned to the right of the 13th Maine Infantry, the 47th Pennsylvania and 13th Maine marched into the fray, pinwheeling to head off an attack by the cavalry group led by Confederate Brigadier-General Thomas Green, halting that flanking maneuver.

As darkness fell on April 8, 1864, the fighting gradually waned and then finally ceased as exhausted troops on both sides collapsed between the bodies of their dead comrades. Although the full scope of the carnage was not immediately evident, Union rosters were eventually updated, confirming that seventy-four men were dead, at least one hundred and sixty-one were wounded, and hundreds more were declared missing in action, including one hundred and eighty-eight soldiers from the 19th U.S. Army (to which the 47th Pennsylvania was attached). Some of these missing men (including men from the 47th Pennsylvania) were subsequently found and declared as wounded or dead; others (including 47th Pennsylvanians) ended up as prisoners of war (POWs), at Camp Ford, which was located near Tyler, Texas and was the largest Confederate prison located west of the Mississippi River.

Sadly, a significant number of 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers remain missing to this day, having been hastily interred somewhere on or near the Mansfield battlefield sites by fellow soldiers or local residents. (No remains were found during archaeological excavations of the area during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, but one possible answer to the mystery surrounding the burial locations of these men was in provided in 1996 by L. P. Hecht, who reported in Echoes from the Letters of a Civil War Surgeon, that wild hogs had eaten the remains of at least some of the federal soldiers who had been left unburied.)

The abridged lists below partially document the members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry who were declared as wounded in action, killed in action, missing in action, or captives of the Confederate States Army (POWs) after the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads/Mansfield:

Killed or Wounded in Action:

Second Lieutenant Alfred Swoyer, Company K, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1862 (public domain)

Barry, William: Private, Company H; killed in action during the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads/Mansfield, Louisiana on 8 April 1864.

Fries, John: Private, Company B: Wounded in action during the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads/Mansfield, Louisiana on 8 April 1864; recovered and returned to service with Company B; honorably mustered out from the 47th Pennsylvania on 29 June 1865.

Haas, Jeremiah: Private, Company C; survived breast and face wounds sustained during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on 22 October 1862; killed in action during the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads/Mansfield, Louisiana on 8 April 1864.

Marshall, Charles L. (alias: Lothard, Thomas): Private, Company C; survived gunshot wound(s) to his head and/or body during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on 22 October 1862; sustained additional gunshot wounds to the top of his head, the right side of his body and/or arm, and his left shin during the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads/Mansfield, Louisiana on 8 April 1864; recovered and returned to duty a second time; was honorably mustered out on 5 July 1865; lived out his later years at the U.S. National Soldiers’ Home in Marion, Indiana, and was interred at that Soldiers’ Home Cemetery following his death there.

McIntire, John (alternate spelling: McIntyre): Private, Company H; wounded in action during the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads/Mansfield, Louisiana on 8 April 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company H; killed in action during the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia on 19 October 1864.

Nipple, Thomas: Private, Company C; wounded in the stomach during the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads/Mansfield, Louisiana on 8 April 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company C; was honorably discharged on 25 December 1865.

Sanders, Francis (alternate spellings: Xander, Xandres): Corporal, Company B; wounded in action during the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads/Mansfield, Louisiana on 8 April 1864; died shortly after being carried to the rear by his brother; burial location unknown; his death was documented in the obituary of his widow, Henrietta Susan (Balliet) Sanders, in the 15 May 1916 edition of Allentown’s Morning Call newspaper, which reported that Francis Sanders “enlisted in the Forty-seventh regiment and saw service for two enlistments until the battle of Sabine Cross Roads, La., where he was wounded and carried to the rear by his brother. From that day to this not a word was heard from him and the supposition was that he died from his wounds….” That obituary also stated that Francis Sanders was likely interred in an unknown, unmarked grave.

Seip, Lewis H.: Private, Company B; wounded in the leg during the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads/Mansfield, Louisiana on 8 April 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company B; was promoted to the rank of corporal on 19 September 1864; although reported as having been dishonorably discharged on 4 October 1865 in Samuel P. Bates’ History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, per other records, he mustered out with his regiment on 25 December 1865.

Swoyer, Alfred P.: Second Lieutenant, Company K; killed instantly after being struck by a minié ball in the right temple during the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads/Mansfield, Louisiana on 8 April 1884; burial location unknown.

Captured and Held as Prisoners of War (POW):

This image depicts life at Camp Ford, the largest Confederate Army prison camp west of the Mississippi River (Harper’s Weekly, 4 March 1865, public domain).

Firth, John Wesley (known as “Wesley”): Captured by Confederate forces during the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads/Mansfield, Louisiana on 8 April 1864; marched by Confederate States Army troops to Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, and held there as a prisoner of war (POW) until released during a prisoner exchange sometime between July and November 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company C; was honorably discharged on 25 December 1865.

Holman, Conrad: Private, Company C; Survived being hit by a rifle ball to the face during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on 22 October 1862, which destroyed all of his teeth; received medical treatment, recovered and returned to duty with Company C; was captured by Confederate forces during the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads/Mansfield on 8 April 1864 and marched to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas; released during a prisoner exchange on 22 July 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company C; honorably discharged on 18 September 1864.

Matthews, Edward: Private, Company C; captured by Confederate forces during the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads/Mansfield, Louisiana on 8 April 1864; held as prisoner of war (POW) at Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas until being released as part of a prisoner exchange on 22 July 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company C; honorably discharged on 1 October 1865.

Miller, Samuel W.: Private, Company C; captured by Confederate forces during the Battle of Sabine Cross Roads/Mansfield, Louisiana on 8 April 1864; held as prisoner of war (POW) at Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas until being released as part of a prisoner exchange on 22 July 1864; recovered and returned to duty with Company C; honorably discharged on 25 December 1865.

Sources:

Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
“Henrietta Sanders Dies in Her 90th Year” (obituary of Francis Sanders’ widow). Allentown, Pennsylvania: The Morning Call, 15 May 1916.
Prisoner of War Records, Camp Ford and Camp Groce (47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry). Tyler Texas: Smith County Historical Society, 2010.
Schmidt, Lewis G. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Learn More About the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers

Oct11

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

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

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

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

1861:

1862:

1863:

1864:

1865:

New Website Tells the Story of Nine Black Soldiers of the American Civil War

Sep5

Largely forgotten for more than a century after honorably completing their historic military service during the American Civil War, nine formerly enslaved Black men who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry 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.

Until now.

Thanks to a special initiative of “47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story,” researchers have been locating and digitizing a wide range of local, state and federal records over the past five years—records that have uncovered critical details about the lives of each of these nine Black soldiers—four of whom were from South Carolina, five of whom were from Louisiana/Mississippi.

“Many of these documents hold the potential to help family history researchers feel closer to their Civil War-era ancestors while also enabling historians, teachers, students, American History enthusiasts, and Civil War buffs to deepen their understanding of one of the most painful chapters in the American narrative,” explains Laurie Snyder, the founder of and managing editor for the project. “One soldier’s U.S. Civil War Pension file revealed the name of his father and wife, as well as the surname of the family in Louisiana that had enslaved him prior to the Civil War while the U.S. Freedmen’s Bureau records for a second man shined a light on what his life was like after the war ended.”

It was this newly uncovered data that led Snyder to create a new website to make these records easily available, free of charge, for researchers and the general public. That website, “Freedmen of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry,” launched on Labor Day weekend 2022, and is already receiving positive reviews.

“We’re still in the process of adding records to the site, and will continue to do so throughout the next year as more records are found and digitized, but the data contained in these records is so important that I wanted to make the documents we’ve already amassed available now so that historians at colleges and universities across the United States and educators teaching history in middle and high school classrooms across Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina can begin making use of the site this fall.

About “Freedmen of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry”

“Freedmen of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry” is a special educational initiative 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 during the American Civil War—1862 and 1864.

About the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

Recruited primarily at community gathering places in their respective hometowns, the soldiers who served with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were primarily men of German heritage whose families still spoke German or “Pennsylvania Dutch” more than a century after their ancestors emigrated from Germany in search of religious and political freedom. Still others were recent immigrants from Germany, Ireland and Cuba. Formerly enslaved Black men who had been freed by the regiment from plantations in South Carolina and Louisiana were added to regimental rosters in 1862 and 1864.

In addition to fighting in the battles of Sabine Cross Roads/Mansfield, Pleasant Hill and Monett’s Ferry/Cane River during the Red River Campaign, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers also engaged in the defense of Washington, D.C. in 1861 and again in 1865, following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln; the capture of Saint John’s Bluff, Florida and Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina (1862); the garrisoning of Forts Taylor and Jefferson in Key West and the Dry Tortugas, Florida (1863); Union Major-General Philip Sheridan’s tide-turning Shenandoah Valley Campaign (1864), including the battles of Berryville, Opequon, Fisher’s Hill, and Cedar Creek; and provost (military police) and Reconstruction duties in Savannah, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina (1865). Most were finally released from duty when the regiment formally mustered out on Christmas Day in 1865.

Learn More and Support

To learn more about the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers and lend your support to this historic initiative, visit the websites of “47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story” and “Freedmen of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry,” and follow the project’s updates on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube.

47th Pennsylvania Volunteers

ONE CIVIL WAR REGIMENT'S STORY

Category Archives: Louisiana

Building Bailey’s Dam on the Red River, Alexandria, Louisiana, Late April to Mid-May, 1864

Battle of Monett’s Ferry/Cane River, Louisiana, April 23, 1864

Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana, April 9, 1864 — Casualties and POWs from the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

Battle of Sabine Cross Roads/Mansfield, Louisiana, April 8, 1864 — Casualties and POWs from the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

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

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

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

Uniforms and Insignia of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

Learn More About the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers

New Website Tells the Story of Nine Black Soldiers of the American Civil War