The Backbones of a Nation: The Laborers Who Enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

“Labor Is Life” (U.S. Postal Service’s Labor Day Stamp, 1956, U.S. Library of Congress, public domain).

Bakers, blacksmiths, boatmen, butchers, carpenters, cabinetmakers, cigarmakers, coal miners, factory workers, farmers, gardeners, gold miners, iron workers, masons, quarry workers, teamsters, tombstone carvers. These were just a few of the diverse job titles held by the laborers who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry during the American Civil War.

Many returned to their same occupations after the war ended while others found new pathways for their life journeys. Far too many were never able to return to the arms of their loved ones and still rest in marked or unmarked graves far from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

In honor of Labor Day, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story is proud to present this abridged list of blue-collar men and boys who served with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry between August 1861 and January 1866, as well as the names of two of the women associated with the regiment who made their own unforgettable marks on the world.

* Auchmuty, Samuel S. (First Lieutenant, Company D): A native of Duncannon, Perry County and veteran of the Mexican-American War who was employed as a carpenter during the early 1860s, Samuel Auchmuty responded to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to defend the nation’s capital during the opening weeks of the American Civil War by enrolling as a first lieutenant with Company D of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry on August 20, 1861; after completing his three-year term of enlistment, he was honorably discharged in September 1864 and returned home to Pennsylvania, where he resumed his work as a house carpenter and launched a successful contracting business that was responsible for building new business structures, churches, single-family homes, and schools, as well as renovating existing structures; he died in 1891, following a brief illness;

First Sergeant Christian S. Beard, circa 1863 (public domain).

* Beard, Christian Seiler (First Lieutenant, Company C): A twenty-seven-year-old, married carpenter residing in Williamsport, Lycoming County when President Abraham Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand volunteers to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort Sumter in mid-April 1865, Chistian S. Beard promptly enrolled for Civil War military service before that month was out as a private with Company D of the 11th Pennsylvania Volunteers; honorably discharged in July after completing his Three Months’ Service, he re-enlisted as a sergeant with Company C of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers on August 19; after rising up through the ranks to become a first lieutenant, he was honorably discharged on Christmas Day, 1865, and returned home to his wife in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, where he continued to work as a carpenter; after having several children with his wife, he was widowed by her; remarried in 1884, he relocated with his wife and children to Pittsburgh, where he continued to work as a carpenter; ailing with heart and kidney disease, he died there on November 16, 1911 and was interred at that city’s Highwood Cemetery;

* Burke, Thomas (Sergeant, Company I): A first-generation American, Thomas Burke was a twenty-year-old cabinetmaker residing in Allentown at the dawn of the American Civil War; after enrolling for military service on the day that the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was founded (August 5, 1861), he was officially mustered in as a private; from that point on, he continued to work his way up the ranks, receiving a promotion to corporal on September 19, 1864 and then to sergeant on July 11, 1865; honorably mustered out with his company in Charleston, South Carolina on December 25, 1865, he returned home to Lehigh County, where he married and began a family; sometime in early to mid-1871, he and his family migrated west to Iowa, settling in Anamosa, Jones County, where he was employed as a carpenter and contractor; he died at his home there on October 22, 1910 and was buried at that town’s Riverside Cemetery;

* Colvin, John Dorrance (Second Lieutenant, Company C): A native of Abington Township, Lackawanna County who was a farmer when he enlisted for Civil War military service on September 12, 1861, John D. Colvin transferred to the U.S. Army Signal Corps on October 13, 1863, and continued to serve with the Signal Corps for the duration of the war; employed as an engineer, post-war, he helped the Pacific Railroad to extend its service from Atchison, Kansas to Fort Kearney in Nebraska before returning home to Pennsylvania, where he married, began a family and resided with them in Olyphant and Carbondale before relocating with them to Parsons in Luzerne County, where he became a prominent civic leader and member of the school board; initially employed as a machinist, he went on to become superintendent of the Delaware & Hudson Coal company before taking a similar job with the Lehigh Valley Coal Company; the U.S. Postal Service’s postmaster of Parsons during the early 1890s, he died there on March 15, 1901 and was buried at the Hollenback Cemetery in Wilkes-Barre;

* Crownover, James (Sergeant, Company D): A twenty-three-year-old teamster residing in Blain, Perry County when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 20, 1861, James Crownover rose up through the ranks of the 47th Pennsylvania from private to reach the rank of sergeant; wounded in the right shoulder and captured by Confederate troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864, he was marched to Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi River, where he was held as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on November 25, 1864; during captivity, he was commissioned, but not mustered as a second lieutenant; given medical treatment before he was returned to active duty, he was honorably discharged with his regiment in Charleston, South Carolina on December 25, 1865; after returning home, he found work at a tannery near Blain, married, began a family and then relocated with them to East Huntingdon Township, Westmoreland County, where he worked as a teamster; relocating with them to Braddock in Allegheny County after the turn of the century, he worked at a local mill there; he died in Allegheny County on July 18, 1903 and was buried at the Monongahela Cemetery in Braddock Hills;

Jacob Daub, circa 1862-1865 (carte de visite, Cooley & Beckett Photographers, Savannah, Georgia and Beaufort and Hilton Head, South Carolina, public domain).

* Daub, Jacob and William J. (Drummer Boy, Company A): A German immigrant as a child, Jacob Daub emigrated with his parents and younger brother, William, circa 1852; after settling in Easton, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, where his father found work as a stone mason, Jacob grew up to become a cigarmaker, and also became the first of the two brothers to enlist in the American Civil War; after enrolling at the age of sixteen, he was classified as a field musician and assigned to Company A as its drummer boy; his nineteen-year-old brother, William, a carpenter by 1865, followed him into the war when he enlisted as a private with the same company in February of that year; after the war ended, both returned home to Northampton County, where they married, had children and went on to live long, full lives; William eventually died at the age of eighty in 1928, followed by Jacob, who passed away in 1936, roughly two months before his ninety-first birthday;

* Detweiler, Charles C. (Private, Company A): Berks County native Charles Detweiler enrolled for Civil War military service on September 16, 1862; a carpenter who later became a farmer, he served with Company A until he was severely injured in the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia, October 19, 1864, when he sustained a musket ball wound to the middle of his thigh; treated at a Union Army hospital in Virginia before being transported to the Union’s Mower General Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he learned that the musket ball had damaged his femur and femoral arteries; following his wound-related death at Mower on March 12, 1865, he was buried at the Fairview Cemetery in Kutztown, Berks County;

* Diaz, John (Private, Company I): An immigrant from Spain’s Canary Islands, John Diaz emigrated sometime between 1862 and 1865 and settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he found work as a cigarmaker; on January 25, 1865, at the age of nineteen, he enlisted with the Union Army at a recruiting depot in Norristown, Montgomery County and served as a private with Company I of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry until it was mustered out on Christmas Day, 1865; following his return to Pennsylvania, he resumed work as a cigarmaker in Philadelphia, eventually launching his own cigarmaking firm, which became a family business as his sons became old enough to work for him; sometime between 1906 and 1910, he relocated with his wife and several of his children to Camden County, New Jersey, where he died on September 5, 1915;

James Downs (circa 1880s, public domain).

* Downs, James (Corporal, Company D): A twenty-three-year-old tanner residing in Blain, Perry County when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 20, 1861, James Downs was captured by Confederate troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864 and marched to Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi River; held there as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864, he received medical treatment and was subsequently returned to active duty; following his honorable discharge with his regiment in Charleston, South Carolina, on December 25, 1865, he returned home, married, began a family and relocated with his family to Phillipsburg, New Jersey; suffering from heart and kidney disease, and possibly also from post-traumatic stress disorder, rather than “insane” as physicians at the Pennsylvania Memorial Home in Brookville, Jefferson County, Pennsylvania had diagnosed him, he fell from a window at that home and died at there on September 16, 1921; he was subsequently interred in the Veterans’ Circle of the Brookville Cemetery;

* Eagle, Augustus (Second Lieutenant, Company F): A German immigrant as a teenager, Augustus Eagle arrived in America on June 23, 1855, two years after his brother, Frederick Eagle, had emigrated and made a life for himself in Catasauqua, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania; both men married and began families there, with Fred employed as a laborer and Gus employed by the Crane Iron Works; when President Abraham Lincoln issued his call for volunteers to defend the nation’s capital during the opening weeks of the American Civil War, both men enrolled for military service on August 21, 1861 as privates with Company F of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; in 1862, Fred fell ill and was honorably discharged on a surgeon’s certificate of disability, but Gus continued to serve, rising up through the regiment’s enlisted and officers’ ranks; commissioned as a second lieutenant, he was honorably discharged on September 11, 1864, upon completion of his three-year term of service; post-war, Fred became a successful baker with real estate and personal property valued at $4,200 (roughly $155,750 in 2023 dollars) and died in Catasauqua in 1885, while Gus owned a successful restaurant in Whitehall Township before operating the Fairview Hotel, which became a popular spot for political gatherings; after suffering a series of strokes in 1902, Gus died at his home on August 17 and was buried at the Fairview Cemetery in West Catasauqua;

* Eisenbraun, Alfred (Drummer Boy, Company B): A tobacco stripper and first-generation American from Allentown, Lehigh County, fifteen-year-old Alfred Eisenbraun became the second “man” from the 47th Pennsylvania to die when he succumbed to complications from typhoid fever at the Kalorama Eruptive Fever Hospital in Georgetown, District of Columbia on October 26, 1861; he still rests at the U.S. Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home Cemetery in Washington, D.C.;

* Fink, Aaron (Corporal, Company B): A shoemaker and native of Salisbury Township, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, Aaron Fink, grew up, began a family and established a successful small shoemaking business, first in Allentown and then in Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe) in Carbon County; on August 20, 1861, he chose to respond to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to help bring the American Civil War to a quick end when he enrolled for military service; shot in the right leg during the fighting at the Frampton Plantation during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862, he was treated at the Union Army’s hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina, but died there from wound-related complications on November 5, 1862; initially buried near that hospital, his remains were later exhumed by Allentown undertaker Paul Balliet and returned to Pennsylvania for reinterment at that city’s Union-West End Cemetery;

* Fornwald, Reily M. (Corporal, Company G): Born in Heidelberg Township, Berks County, Reily Fornwald was raised there on his family’s farm near Stouchsberg; educated in his community’s common schools and then at Millersville State Normal School, he became a railroad worker before returning to farm life shortly before the dawn of the American Civil War; after enlisting for military service at the age of twenty on September 11, 1862, he was wounded in the head and groin by an exploding artillery shell during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862; stabilized on the battlefield before being transported to a field hospital for more advanced medical care, he spent four weeks recuperating before returning to active duty with his regiment; promoted to the rank of corporal on January 19, 1863, he continued to serve with his regiment until he was honorably discharged at Berryville, Virginia on September 18, 1864, upon expiration of his term of enlistment; after returning home, he spent four years operating a blast furnace for White & Ferguson in Robesonia, Berks County; he also married and began a family; sometime around 1870, he left that job to become an engine operator for Wright, Cook & Co. in Sheridan and then moved to a job as an engine operator for William M. Kauffman—a position he held for roughly a decade before securing employment as a shifting engineer with the Reading Railway Company at its yards in Reading; following his retirement in 1905, he and his wife settled in Robesonia, where he became involved in buying and selling real estate; following a severe fall in May 1925, during which he fractured a thigh bone, he died at the Homeopathic Hospital in Reading on June 1 and was buried at Robesonia’s Heidelberg Cemetery;

Captain Reuben Shatto Gardner, Company H, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1863 (public domain).

* Gardner, Reuben Shatto, John A. and Jacob S. R.: Natives of Perry County, Reuben Shatto Gardner and his brothers, John A. Gardner and Jacob S. R. Gardner, began their work lives as laborers; among the earliest responders to President Abraham Lincoln’s call to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort Sumter in mid-April 1861, Reuben was a twenty-five-year-old miller who resided in Newport, Perry County; after enlisting as a private with Company D of the 2nd Pennsylvania Volunteers on April 20, he was honorably mustered out after completing his term of service; he then re-upped for a three-year tour of duty, mustering in as a first sergeant with Company H of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; also enrolling with him that same day were his twenty-three-year-old and twenty-one-year-old brothers, John A. Gardner and Jacob S. R. Gardner; John officially mustered in at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg on September 18 (the day before Reuben arrived), while Jacob officially mustered in on September 19; both joined their brother’s company, entering at their respective ranks of corporal and private, but Jacob’s tenure was a short one; sickened by typhoid fever in late December 1861, he died at the 47th Pennsylvania’s regimental hospital at Camp Griffin, near Langley, Virginia on January 8, 1862; his remains were later returned to Perry County for burial at the Old Newport Cemetery; soldiering on, Reuben and John were transported with their regiment by ship to Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida and subsequently sent to South Carolina with their regiment and other Union troops; shot in the head and thigh during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862, Reuben was treated at the Union Army’s hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina for an extended period of time, and then returned to active duty with his regiment; meanwhile, John was assigned with H Company and the men from Companies D, F and K to garrison Fort Jefferson in Florida’s Dry Tortugas; both brothers then continued to work their way up the regiment’s ranks, with John promoted to corporal on September 18, 1864 and Reuben ultimately commissioned as a captain and given command of Company H on February 16, 1865; both then returned home after honorably mustering out with the regiment in Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day, 1865; sometime around 1866 or 1867, Reuben and his wife migrated west, first to Elk River Station in Sherburne County, Minnesota and then to Stillwater, Washington County, before settling in the city of Minneapolis; through it all, he worked as a miller; Reuben and his family then relocated farther west, arriving in King County, Washington after the Great Seattle Fire of 1889; initially employed in the restaurant industry, Reuben later found work as a railroad conductor before prospecting for gold with son Edward in the western United States and British Columbia, Canada during the 1890s Gold Rush; employed as a U.S. Post Office clerk in charge of the money order and registry departments in Seattle from 1898 to 1902, Reuben died in Seattle at the age of sixty-eight on September 25, 1903 and was interred at that city’s Lakeview Cemetery; meanwhile, his brother John, who had resumed work as a fireman with the Pennsylvania Railroad after returning from the war, was widowed by his wife in 1872; after remarrying and welcoming the births of more children, he was severely injured on October 9, 1873 while working as a fireman on the Pacific Express for the Pennsylvania Railroad; unable to continue working as a fireman due to his amputated hand, he worked briefly as a railroad call messenger before launching his own transfer business in Harrisburg; after he was widowed by his ailing second wife, John was severely injured in a second accident in 1894 while loading his delivery wagon; still operating his business after the turn of the century, he remarried on January 3, 1900, but was widowed by his third wife when she died during a surgical procedure in 1911; he subsequently closed his business and relocated to the home of his daughter in the city of Reading, Berks County; four years later, he fell on an icy sidewalk and became bedfast; aged eighty and ailing from arteriosclerosis and lung congestion, he died at her home on February 20, 1918 and was buried at Reading’s Charles Evans Cemetery;

* Gethers, Bristor (Under-Cook, Company F): Born into slavery in South Carolina circa 1829, Bristor Gethers was married “by slave custom at Georgetown, S.C.” on the Pringle plantation in Georgetown sometime around 1847 to “Rachael Richardson” (alternate spelling “Rachel”); a field hand at the dawn of the Civil War, he was freed from chattel enslavement in 1862 by Union Army troops; he then enlisted as an “Under-Cook” with Company F of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in Beaufort, South Carolina on October 5, 1862, and traveled with the regiment until October 4, 1865, when he was honorably discharged in Charleston, South Carolina upon completion of his three-year term of enlistment; at that point, he returned to Beaufort and resumed life with his wife and their son, Peter; a farmer, Bristor was ultimately disabled by ailments that were directly attributable to his Union Army tenure; awarded a U.S. Civil War Soldiers’ Pension, he lived out his days with his wife on Horse Island, South Carolina, and died on Horse Island, South Carolina on June 24 or 25, 1894; he was then laid to rest at a graveyard on Parris Island on June 26 of that same year;

* Gilbert, Edwin (Captain, Company F): A native of Northampton County and a carpenter residing in Catasauqua, Lehigh County at the dawn of the American Civil War, Edwin Gilbert enrolled as a corporal on August 21, 1861; after rising up through his regiment’s officer ranks, he was ultimately commissioned as a captain and placed in charge of his company on New Year’s Day, 1865, and then mustered out with his company in Charleston, South Carolina of Christmas of that same year; resuming his life with his wife and children in Lehigh County after the war, he continued to work as a carpenter; after suffering a stroke in late December 1893, he died on January 2, 1894 and was buried at the Fairview Cemetery in West Catasauqua;

Mrs. Caroline Bost and Martin L. Guth celebrated the anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday with fellow Grand Army of the Republic and ladies auxiliary members in February 1933 (public domain).

* Guth, Martin Luther (Corporal, Company K): A native of Lehigh County and son of a farmer, Martin L. Guth was a seventeen-year-old laborer and resident of Guthsville in Whitehall Township at the dawn of the American Civil War; after enrolling for military service on September 26, 1862, he was officially mustered in as a corporal; he continued to serve with his regiment until he was honorably mustered out on October 1, 1865, upon expiration of his term of service; at some point during that service, he broke his leg—an injury that did not heal properly and plagued him for the remainer of his life; after returning home to the Lehigh Valley, he found work again as a laborer; married in 1883, he became the father of four children, one of whom was born in New Mexico and another who was born in California; he had moved his family west in search of work in the mining industry; documented as a “prospector” or “miner” records created in Nevada during that period, he was also documented on voter registration rolls of Butte City in Glenn County, California in August 1892; by 1900, he was living separately from his wife, who was residing in Bandon, Coos County, Oregon with their two children while he was residing at the Veterans’ Home of California in Yount Township, Napa County, California; subsequently admitted to the Mountain Branch of the network of U.S. National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Johnson City, Tennessee on February 11, 1912, his disabilities included an old compound fracture of his right leg with chronic ulceration, defective vision (right eye), chronic bronchitis, and arteriosclerosis; discharged on December 12, 1920, he was admitted to the U.S. National Soldiers’ Home in Leavenworth, Kansas on July 30, 1912, but discharged on September 29, 1913; by 1920, he was living alone on Fruitvale Avenue in the city of Oakland, California, but was remaining active with his local chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic as he rose through the leadership ranks of chapter, state and national G.A.R. organizations; after a long, adventure-filled life, he died on October 11, 1935, at the age of ninety-one, at the veterans’ home in San Francisco and was interred at the San Francisco National Cemetery (also known as the Presidio Cemetery);

Lieutenant Charles A. Hackman, Company G, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1864 (public domain).

* Hackman, Charles Abraham and Martin Henry (First Lieutenant and Sergeant, Company G): Natives of Rittersville, Lehigh County, Charles and Martin Hackman began their work lives as apprentices, with Charles employed by a carpenter and Martin employed by master coachmaker Jacob Graffin; members of the local militia unit known as the Allen Rifles, they were among the earliest responders to President Abraham Lincoln’s call to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort Sumter in mid-April 1861; both enlisted as privates with Company I of the 1st Pennsylvania Volunteers on April 20 and were honorably mustered out in July after completing their service; Charles then re-upped for a three-year tour of duty, mustering in as a sergeant with Company G of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; he then spent most of his early service in Virginia; meanwhile, his younger brother, Martin H. Hackman, who was employed as a coach trimmer in Lehigh County, re-enlisted for his own second tour of duty, as a private with Charles’ company, on January 8, 1862; working their way up the ranks, Charles was commissioned as a first lieutenant on June 18, 1863, while Martin was promoted to sergeant on April 26, 1864; Charles was then breveted as a captain on November 30, 1864 after having mustered out on November 5; Martin was then honorably discharged on January 8, 1865; initially employed, post-war, with the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad’s train car facility in Reading, Berks County, Charles was promoted to car inspector at the company’s Philadelphia facility in December 1866; he subsequently married, but had no children and was widowed in 1904; remarried, he remained in Philadelphia until the early 1900s, when he relocated to Allentown; Martin, who worked as a bricklayer in Allentown, did have children after marrying, but he, too, was widowed; also remarried, he became a manager at a rolling mill; ailing with pneumonia in early 1917, Charles was eighty-six years old when he died in Allentown on January 17; he was buried at Allentown’s Union-West End Cemetery, while his brother Martin was buried at the Nisky Hill Cemetery in Bethlehem, following his death in Bethlehem from a cerebral hemorrhage on December 14, 1921;

* Junker, George (Captain, Company K): A German immigrant as a young adult, George Junker emigrated sometime around the early 1850s and settled in Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, where he found employment as a marble worker and tombstone carver, and where he also joined the Allen Infantry, one of his adopted hometown’s three militia units; responding to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to defend the nation’s capital during the opening weeks of the American Civil War, George enlisted with his fellow Allen Infantrymen, honorably completed his Three Months’ Service, and promptly began his own recruitment of men for an “all-German company” for the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; commissioned as a captain with the 47th Pennsylvania, he was placed in charge of his men who became known as Company K; mortally wounded by a Confederate rifle shot during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862, he died from his wounds the next day at the Union Army’s division hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina; his remains were returned to his family in Hazleton, Luzerne County for reburial at the Vine Street Cemetery;

* Kern, Samuel (Private, Company D): A native of Perry County who was employed as a farmer in Bloomfield, Perry County when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 20, 1861, Samuel Kern was wounded and captured by Confederate troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; marched to Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi River, he was held there as a prisoner of war (POW) until he died from harsh treatment on June 12, 1864; buried somewhere on the grounds of that prison camp, his grave remains unidentified;

* Kosier, George (Captain, Company D): A native of Perry County and twenty-four-year-old carpenter residing in that county’s community of New Bloomfield at the dawn of the American Civil War, George Kosier became one of the earliest men from his county to respond to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort-Sumter in mid-April 1861, when he enrolled for military service on April 20 as a corporal with Company D of the 2nd Pennsylvania Volunteers; honorably discharged in July after completing his Three Months’ Service, he re-enlisted as a first sergeant with Company D of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; joining him were his younger brothers, Jesse and William S. Kosier, aged nineteen and twenty-three, who were enrolled as privates with the same company; all three subsequently re-enlisted with their company at Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida in 1863; sadly, Jesse fell ill with pleurisy and died at the Union Army’s Field Hospital in Sandy Hook, Maryland on August 1864; initially buried at a cemetery in Weverton, Maryland, his remains were later exhumed and reinterred at the Antietam National Cemetery in Sharpsburg, Maryland; both George and William continued to serve with the regiment, with George continuing his rise up the ranks; commissioned as a captain, he was given command of Company D in early June 1865; both brothers were then honorably discharged with their regiment on Christmas Day, 1865; post-war, both men married and began families; William died in Pennsylvania sometime around 1879, but George went on to live a long full life; after settling in Ogle County, Illinois, where he was employed as a carpenter, he relocated with his family to Wright County, Iowa, where he built bridges; he died in Chicago on December 3, 1920 and was buried at that city’s Rosehill Cemetery;

Anna (Weiser) Leisenring (1851-1942) , circa 1914 (public domain).

* Leisenring, Annie (Weiser): The wife of Thomas B. Leisenring (Captain, Company G), Annie Leisenring was employed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as a factory inspector after the American Civil War; she became well known through newspaper accounts of her inspection visits and also became widely respected for her efforts to improve child labor laws statewide;

* Lowrey, Thomas (Corporal, Company E): An Irish immigrant as a young adult, Thomas Lowrey emigrated sometime around the late 1840s or early 1850s and settled in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, where he found work as a miner, married and began a family; responding to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to defend the nation’s capital during the opening weeks of the American Civil War, Thomas enlisted with Company E of the 47th Pennsylvania on September 16, 1861; after completing his three-year term of enlistment, he was honorably discharged in September 1864 and returned home to Pennsylvania, where he resumed work as a coal miner near Shenandoah, Schuylkill County, and where he resided with his wife and children; after witnessing the dawn of a new century, he died in Shenandoah on January 11, 1906;

This image of Julia (Kuenher) Minnich, circa 1860s, is being presented here through the generosity of Chris Sapp and his family, and is being used with Mr. Sapp’s permission. This image may not be reproduced, repurposed, or shared with other websites without the permission of Chris Sapp.

* Magill, Julia Ann (Kuehner Minnich): Widowed and the mother of a young son at the time that her husband, B Company’s Captain Edwin G. Minnich, was killed in battle during the American Civil War, Julia Ann (Kuehner) Minnich became a Union Army nurse at Harewood Hospital in Washington, D.C. during the war in order to keep a roof over her son’s head; she then spent the remainder of her life battling the U.S. Pension Bureau to receive and keep both the U.S. Civil War Widow’s Pension and U.S. Civil War Nurse’s Pension that she was entitled to under federal law; forced to go on working into her later years by poverty, she finally found work as a cook at a hotel in South Bethlehem; she died sometime after 1906;

* Menner, Edward W. (Second Lieutenant, Company E): A first-generation American who was a native of Easton, Northampton County, Edward Menner was a sixteen-year-old carpenter when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 25, 1861; working his way up from private to second lieutenant before he was honorably discharged with his regiment in Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day, 1865, he was wounded in the left shoulder during the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia on October 19, 1864; after returning home to the Lehigh Valley, he secured employment as a hooker with the Bethlehem Iron Company (later known as Bethlehem Steel) on March 15, 1866; he married, begam a family and continued to work in the iron industry for much of his life; he died in Bethlehem on April 25, 1913 and was buried at that city’s Nisky Hill Cemetery;

* Miller, John Garber (Sergeant, Company D): A native of Ironville, Blair County, John G. Miller was a twenty-one-year-old laborer living in Duncannon, Perry County when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 20, 1861; captured by Confederate troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864 and marched to Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi River, he was held there as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864; returned to active duty with his regiment after receiving medical treatment, he continued to serve until he was honorably discharged with the regiment in Charleston, South Carolina on December 25, 1865; after returning home, he married, began a family and relocated with his family to Philipsburg, Centre County, Pennsylvania, where he was employed as a teamster; returning to Blair County with his family, he resided with them in Logan Township before relocating with them again to Coalport, Clearfield County; suffering from heart disease, he died in Coalport on February 16, 1921 and was interred at the Coalport Cemetery;

Captain Theodore Mink, Company I, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (circa 1870s-1880s, courtesy of Julian Burley; used with permission).

* Mink, Theodore (Captain, Company I): A native of Allentown, Lehigh County who was apprenticed as a coachmaker and then tried his hand as a whaler and blacksmith prior to the American Civil War, Thedore Mink became one of the “First Defenders” who responded to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for seventy-five thousand volunteers to defend the nation’s capital after the fall of Fort Sumter in mid-April 1861; after honorably completing his Three Months’ Service in July, he re-enlisted on August 5 as a sergeant with Company I of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; after steadily working his way up through the ranks, he was commissioned as a captain and placed in charge of his company on May 22, 1865; he continued to serve with his regiment until it was mustered out on Christmas Day, 1865; following his return to Pennsylvania, he was hired as a laborer with a circus troupe operated by Mike Lipman before finding longtime employment in advertising and then as head of the circus wardrobe for the Forepaugh Circus before he was promoted to management with the circus; felled by pneumonia during late 1889, he died in Philadelphia on January 7, 1890 and was interred in Allentown’s Union-West End Cemetery;

* Newman, Edward (Private, Company H): A German immigrant who left his homeland sometime around 1920, Edward Newman chose to settle in Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, where he found work as a baker; after enlisting for Civil War military service in August 1862, he mustered in as a private with Company I of the 127th Pennsylvania Volunteers and fought in the Battle of Fredericksburg from December 11-15 of that year; honorably mustered out with his regiment in May 1863, he re-enlisted on October 23, 1863 for a second tour of duty—but as a private with a different regiment—Company H of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers; he continued to serve with the 47th Pennsylvania until he was officially mustered out in Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day, 1865, he returned to Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, where he worked briefly as a baker; suffering from rheumatism that developed while the 47th Pennsylvania was stationed near Cedar Creek, Virginia during the fall of 1864, he was admitted to the network of U.S. Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers at the Central Branch in Dayton, Montgomery County, Ohio on July 17, 1877; still unmarried and still living there in 1880, his health continued to decline; diagnosed with acute enteritis, he died there on January 22, 1886 and was buried at the Dayton National Cemetery;

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

* Oyster, Daniel (Captain, Company C): A native of Sunbury, Northumberland County who was employed as a machinist, Daniel Oyster became one of the earliest men from his county to respond to President Abraham Lincoln’s call to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort-Sumter in mid-April 1861, when he enrolled for Civil War military service on April 23 as a corporal with Company F of the 11th Pennsylvania Volunteers; honorably discharged in July after completing his Three Months’ Service, he re-enlisted as a first sergeant with Company C of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers on August 19; his brother, John Oyster, subsequently followed him into the service, enrolling as a private with his company on November 20, 1863; after rising up through the ranks to become captain of his company, Daniel was shot in his left shoulder near Berryville, Virginia on September 5, 1864 and then shot in his right shoulder during the Battle of Cedar Creek on October 19; successfully treated by Union Army surgeons for both wounds, he was awarded a veteran’s furlough in order to continue his recuperation and returned home to Sunbury; he then returned to duty and was honorably discharged with his company on Christmas Day, 1865; post-discharge, he and his brother, John, returned home to Sunbury; Daniel continued to reside with their aging mother and was initially employed as a policeman, but was then forced by a war-related decline in his health to take less-taxing work as a railroad postal agent; his brother John, who was married, lived nearby and worked as a fireman, but died in Sunbury on April 20, 1899; employed as a bookkeeper after the turn of the century, Daniel never married and was ultimately admitted to the Southern Branch of the U.S. National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Hampton, Virginia, where he died on August 5, 1922—exactly sixty-one years to the day after the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was founded; he was given a funeral with full military honors before being laid to rest in the officers’ section at the Arlington National Cemetery on August 11;

* Sauerwein, Thomas Franklin (First Sergeant, Company B): The son of a lock tender in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, Thomas Sauerwein was employed as a carpenter at the dawn of the American Civil War; following his enrollment for military service in Allentown, Lehigh County on August 20, 1861, he was officially mustered in as a private with Company B of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; from that point on, he steadily worked his way up the ranks of the regiment, ultimately being promoted to first sergeant on New Year’s Day, 1865; following his honorable discharge with his company on Christmas Day of that same year, he returned home to the Lehigh Valley, where he found work as a carpenter, married and began a family; by 1880, he had moved his family west to Williamsport in Lycoming County, where he had found work as a machinist; employed as a leather roller with a tanning factory, he was promoted to a position as a leather finisher after the turn of the century, while his two sons worked as leather rollers in the same industry; he died in Williamsport on July 29, 1912 and was buried at the East Wildwood Cemetery in Loyalsock;

* Slayer, Joseph (Private, Company E; also known as “Dead Eye Dick” and “E. J. McMeeser”): A native of Philadelphia, Joseph Slayer was a nineteen-year-old miner residing in Willliams Township, Northampton County, Pennsylvania at the dawn of the American Civil War; after enrolling for military service in Easton, Northampton County on September 9, 1861, he was officially mustered in as a private with Company E of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers; he continued to serve with his company, re-enlisting as a private with Company E, under the name of Joseph Slayer, at Fort Jefferson in Florida’s Dry Tortugas on January 4, 1864; honorably mustered out with his company in Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day, 1865, he relocated to Zanesville, Ohio sometime after the war, where he joined the Grand Army of the Republic’s Hazlett Post No. 81; he may then have relocated briefly to St. Paul, Minnesota sometime around the 1870s or early 1880s, or may simply have had a child and grandchild living there, because newspaper reports of his death noted that he had been carrying a photograph of a toddler named Robert—a photo that had “To Grandpa” inscribed on it and indicated that the grandchild, Robert, was a resident of St. Paul in 1892; by the 1880s, Joseph had made it as far west as the Dakota Territory—but this was where his life’s journey took a strange twist; discarding the name he had used in the army (“Joseph Slayer”), he changed his name several times over the next several years, as if he were trying to shed his prior life and all of its associations; acquaintances he met in the southern part of the Dakota Territory during the early to mid-1880s knew him as “Dead Eye Dick” while others who met him after he had resettled in Bismarck, in the northern part of the Dakota Territory, knew him as “Eugene McMeeser” or “E. J. McMeeser” (alternate spelling: “McNeeser”); by the time that the federal government conducted its special census of Civil War veterans in June 1890, Joseph was so comfortable fusing parts of his old and new lives together that he was convincingly documented by an enumerator as “Eugene McMeeser,” a veteran who had served as a private with Company E of the 47th Pennsylvania Infantry from September 9, 1861 until January 11, 1866; in 1890, Joseph became a married man; documented as having rheumatism so severe that he was “at times confined at home,” he filed for a U.S. Civil War Pension from North Dakota on March 28, 1891—but he did so as “Joseph Slayer”—the name under which he had first enrolled for military service in Pennsylvania in 1861; ultimately awarded a pension—which would not have happened if federal officials had not been able to verify his identity and match it to his existing military service records, he was diagnosed with angina pectoris in 1904, but still managed to secure a U.S. patent for one of his inventions—a napkin holder; he died in Bismarck less than a month later, on January 12 or 13, 1905; found on the floor of his rented room, his death sparked a coroner’s inquest which revealed that he had been living under an assumed name; he was buried at Saint Mary’s Cemetery in Bismarck; the name “Joseph Slayer” was carved onto his military headstone;

* Snyder, Timothy (Corporal, Company C): A carpenter who was born in Rebuck, Northumberland County, Tim Snyder was employed as a carpenter and residing in the city of Sunbury in that county by the dawn of the American Civil War; after enlisting for military service as a private in August 1861, he was wounded twice in combat, once during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina (1862) and a second time, in the knee, during the Battle of Opequan, Virginia (1864), shortly after he had been promoted to the rank of corporal; he survived and returned to Pennsylvania, where he resumed work as a carpenter; after relocating to Schuylkill County, he settled in the community of Ashland; in 1870, he married Catharine Boyer and started a family with her; he continued to work as a carpenter in Schuylkill County until his untimely death in May 1889 and was laid to rest with military honors at the Brock Cemetery in Ashland; John Hartranft Snyder, his first son to survive infancy, grew up to become a co-founder of the Lavelle Telegraph and Telephone Company, while his second son to survive infancy, Timothy Grant Snyder, became a corporal in the United States Marine Corps during the Spanish-American War; stationed on the USS Buffalo as it visited Port Said, Egypt, he also served aboard Admiral George Dewey’s flagship, the USS Olympia, in 1899;

Drummer Boy William Williamson, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, Company A, circa 1863 (public domain).

* Williamson, William (Drummer, Company A): A farmer from Stockertown, Northampton County, William Williamson was documented by a mid-nineteenth-century federal census enumerator as an unmarried laborer who lived at the Easton home of Northampton County physician John Sandt, M.D.—an indication that William’s parents may have either died or were struggling so much financially during the 1850s and early 1860s that they had encouraged him to “leave the nest” and begin supporting himself, or had hired him out as an apprentice or indentured servant; like so many other young men from Northampton County, when President Abraham Lincoln issued his call for help to protect the nation’s capital from a likely invasion by Confederate States Army troops, he stepped forward, raised his hand, and stated the following:

I, William Williamson appointed a private in the Army of the United States, do solemnly swear, or affirm, that I will bear true allegiance to the United States of America, and that I will serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies or opposers whatsoever, and observe and obey the orders of the President of the United States, and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the rules and articles for the government of the Armies of the United States.

Later in life, William Williamson became a champion for an older woman who had been struggling to convince officials of the federal government that she was worthy enough to be awarded a U.S. Civil War Mother’s Pension, after her son had died in service to the nation as a Union Army soldier.

Post-war, William Williamson found work at a slate quarry, married, began a family in Belfast, Northampton County, and lived to witness the dawn of a new century. Following his death at the age of sixty in Plainfield Township on June 17, 1901, he was laid to rest at the Belfast Union Cemetery.

Sources:

“A Badge from Admiral Dewey and Schuylkill County” (announcements of Timothy Grant Snyder’s service on Admiral Dewey’s flagship). Reading, Pennsylvania: Reading Eagle: October 3, 1899 and November 21, 1899.
Baptismal, census, marriage, military, death, and burial records of the Snyder family. Pennsylvania, California, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, Ohio, etc.: Snyder Family Archives, 1650-present; and in Historic Pennsylvania Church and Town Records (baptismal, marriage, death and burial records of various churches across Pennsylvania). Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1776-1918.
Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
James Crownover, James Downs and Samuel Kern, et. al., in Camp Ford Prison Records. Tyler, Texas: The Smith County Historical Society, 1864.
Civil War Muster Rolls, 1861-1866 (47th Pennsylvania Infantry). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
Civil War Veterans’ Card File, 1861-1866 (47th Pennsylvania Infantry). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
Registers of Deaths of Volunteers, U.S. Army; Admissions Ledgers, U.S. National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers; federal burial ledgers, and national cemetery interment control forms, 1861-1935. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Office of the Adjutant General (Record Group 94), U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
Schmidt, Lewis. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.
U.S. Census Records, 1830-1930. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
U.S. Civil War Pension Records, 1862-1935. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

Occupation and Garrison Duties in Florida (July through August 1863)

Jul26

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

Still stationed at Fort Jefferson in Florida’s Dry Tortugas in July 1863, Lieutenant-Colonel George W. Alexander and the members of Companies F, H and K baked in the unrelenting heat while on duty and sought refuge in the cooler spaces of the fort and island when not. The inferior quality of water available to them continued to wreak havoc on their health. That month alone, twenty-three members of the regiment and twenty-six of the prisoners they were guarding were admitted to the fort’s post hospital with a range of ailments, including six cases of fever (five bilious remittent and one intermittent), seven with intestinal-related diseases (four with dysentery, two with chronic diarrhea, and one with hemorrhoids/piles that were likely caused by the prior two conditions), and three with inflammatory diseases or infections (boils or carbuncles, funiculitis, odontalgia (toothache), orchitis, otitis (earache), along with assorted injuries, including abrasions, sprains and hernia issues.

Meanwhile, the members of Companies A, B, C, D, E, G, and I were still stationed at Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida, under the command of the regiment’s founder, Colonel Tilghman H. Good. They too waged their own battles with the heat and disease.

* Note: The members of Company D had just returned to Fort Taylor from Fort Jefferson in mid-May 1863.

Taking time to record his thoughts in his diary throughout July, Private Henry J. Hornbeck of Company G noted that he was “busy in office” during the first two days of the month as he “procured Henry Kramer Company B as cook for our mess” on 1 July and as the “U.S. Gunboat Bermuda arrived from New Orleans,” that same afternoon, “having an old mail for this place, which had passed here, and had gone on there, some time ago…. Weiss & myself took a short walk towards the barracks, accompanying Pretz & Lawall. After which returned to office…. Ginkinger, Whiting & myself then went in bathing off the wharf. Retired at 11 p.m.”

On July 3, he noted, “Could not sleep tonight on account of the heat, sitting up greater portion of the night.”

First Lieutenant George W. Huntsberger, Company G, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1863 (public domain).

The year was also proving to be an unforgettable one for the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in an entirely different way—many of the carte de visite images taken of its members were taken in 1863, according to historian Lewis Schmidt, who has stated that the photographer of choice for the regiment’s officers was Moffat & Simpson on Duval Street in Key West.

Members of the regiment who were still serving at Fort Taylor during this time commemorated the Fourth of July in grand style as “the celebrations began at Key West at 9 AM,” according to Schmidt. Following an inspection and review of the five companies stationed at the fort by Brigadier-General Woodbury, “the regiment marched in a ‘street parade through the principal streets of the city in heat of 110 degrees Fahrenheit and the dust almost suffocating’. After which ‘each detachment was taken to their quarters, dismissed, and then to enjoy themselves as best they could… Col. Good fired the National Salute of 35 guns from Fort Taylor at Meridian [noon]…. There was a great amount of firing from the vessels in the harbor in honor of the day.’”

According to Private Hornbeck, his holiday was only partially duty free with “No work in office.” But he still had an early start to what became a very long, but memorable Fourth.

Rose at 4 a.m. went with Ginkinger to Slaughter House, procured rations of fresh beef for our mess. Mennig & Myself went to fish market, purchased two fish. Took a cup of coffee at café opposite Provost Marshals Office. After breakfast Whiting & myself played a game of billiards, then witnessed the parade of 47th P. V. 5 Companies with Band & Col. & Staff. Review by the Genl. At Headquarters. Dispersed at 11 a.m. Weather extremely hot. Provost Guard quarters finely decorated. Flags hoisted at great many places. Firing squibs &c, salute by Fort Taylor & Gunboats in harbor, as usual on such occasions. Remained in office all day. After supper Ginkinger & myself visited Capt. Bell, then went with Serg’t. Mink to procure ice cream at a Colored Woman’s establishment, after which returned to office. Many of boys, as usual upon such occasions, being today pretty well curried. Today the San Jacinto relieved the Magnolia as Flag Ship for this port. After taking a sea bath retired at 11 p.m.

From the perspective of C Company Musician Henry D. Wharton:

The city was gaily dressed in flags, and the prettiest thing of the kind was that at the guard station, under Lt. Reese of Company C. Five flags were suspended from the quarters, with wreaths, while the whole front of the enclosure of the yard was covered with evergreens and the red, white, and blue. The Navy had their vessels dressed in their best ‘bib and tucker’, flags flying fore and aft, of our own and those of all nations. It was a pretty sight, and in a measure paid for the fatigue of the boys on their march. At 12 noon, both Army and Navy fired a national salute of thirty five guns.

A day later, Private Hornbeck noted “News very bad. Lee’s army still in Pennsylvania making bad havoc,” and on July 7, “Weather sultry & mosquitoes again at work.” During this time, he was also hard at work updating the regiment’s commissary paperwork to enable the commissary staff to issue rations to members of the regiment later that week. On July 9, he recorded the following:

Busy today, moving the office next door to Provost Marshal’s office, fine place. Tug Reaney returned from Havana having a mail…. News very bad from Pa. Rebels about to attack Harrisburg. The Militia confident of holding the place. Bridges &c burnt on the Susquehanna…. Steamer Creole passed by this evening Pilot Boat brought in a paper up to July 3 reports 9000 Rebels to be Captured between Carlisle & Chambersburg. Genl. Hooker relieved from Command of Army of Potomac and Genl. Meade his successor, general satisfaction by this change…. Weather cool this evening.

Around this same time, Major William Gausler, who had been appointed by senior Union Army leaders to serve as the provost marshal of Key West, described the influence that the 47th Pennsylvania’s presence was having on local residents, noting “morals of the city in a good state,” and ascribing at least part of that success to C Company’s First Lieutenant William Reese:

The days are quiet, but the nights are a busy time for Lt. Reese at the guard station…. Woe betide those who imbibe sufficient to make them weak in the knees, for a soft plank in the lockup will be their bed, and a fine in the morning…. Reese is playing the deuce [with local residents selling liquor illegally] in the way of confiscating the ardent-stuff, sure to kill at forty yards. A few days ago he captured ‘eleven five gallon demijohns under the floor of a house, and another in a barrel covered with flowers in the lower part of the yard, where the [local resident] had been selling it to the sailors and soldiers in bottles containing scarcely a pint, at the exorbitant price of three dollars a bottle. A nice profit, as the stuff costs fifty five cents per gallon, clear of duties, being smuggled in at night.’”

That bootlegger was fined $400, according to Schmidt.

Captain Henry Durant Woodruff, commanding officer of Company D, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (public domain).

Also according to Schmidt, additional festivities ensued on July 16, 1863 when members of Company D “presented a magnificent sword, sash, and belt” to Captain Woodruff “at the US Barracks in Key West.”

The company was formed in front of their quarters at 8 AM, across the barracks ground from Company C, and Pvt. George W. Baltozer, a 24 year old teacher from Perry County, made the following remarks on behalf of the company:

‘The motives that assemble us on the present occasion are based on our mature confidence, the martial skill, the intrepid heroism, and the undaunted intrepidity of our leader in arms. It is manifestive of our consciousness of your noble ability to wield in the defence [sic] of the rights of our country, this glittering weapon, that we place it in your protective hand. Receive it, sir, as a token of our estimation of your promotion of our ease and comfort in quietude, and for your chivalrous spirit on the sanguine field, when the heavens glared with fire, and the earth trembled ‘neath cannons’ roar. May it never rest in its scabbard ’till rebellion is crushed and traitorism is banished from the land, and peace spread her white wings from the St. John’s to the sunny banks of the Rio Grande. May it ever bespeak in the heart of him that wields it, bravery, loyalty, heroism, and philanthropy. That it may ever benefit you in the hour of peril, and that you may undauntingly use it as opportunity is afforded, is the very ardent wish of your most obedient servants.'”

Captain Woodruff then responded to this touching tribute by presenting a surprisingly lengthy address to his men:

My companions in arms, your beautiful present is accepted with sincere satisfaction and heartfelt thanks. It affords the satisfaction that you still respect and have confidence in your commander, and he is thankful not only for the value of this noble gift, but for the rich token of your kind regard. And while I wear these arms and accoutrements, emblematical of my rank and office, may they never be worn unworthily, or the noble donors have cause to blush for the ungallant act of the wearer.

Two years have nearly elapsed since we have been associated as commander and commanded. Two years of privation and toil, yet your love for the cause and your ardor to serve your country has not abated.

When you entered upon this gigantic struggle, you were not prompted by large bribes or bounties, or intimidated by being forced in service by conscription. But inspired by a noble patriotism, you cheerfully volunteered for the longest period known to law.

Your conduct thus far has been in accordance with the honorable principles which caused you to volunteer. No discipline too strict, no privations too great, no toil too sore, but that your indomitable spirits have been able to accomplish, to undergo and overcome. And now allow me to say to you that I am proud of the noble men who compose this company; I am proud of your generous and gallant conduct; I am proud of your association; I am proud of the honor you have this day conferred upon your Captain.

In looking forward, I have no fears for you in the future, whatever you may be called on to do—in garrison—in the tented field, or on the sanguined plain, it will be bravely—it will be well done. Then until rebels and traitors shall become extinct, or have grounded their arms, and acknowledged the supremacy of the government and the law, let this our motto be: Give us death or give us liberty.

In his own account of that event, Sergeant Alan Wilson noted that Captain Woodruff’s speech was received with three cheers by the men of D Company and a reception at which they ate and drank heartily in his honor.

Two days later, on Sunday, July 18, two privates from Company B—Charles Knauss and Allen Newhard—missed the regiment’s regularly scheduled inspection at Fort Taylor. Absent from morning through evening, they returned to their quarters. In response to their unexcused absence, their superior officers confined them to the guard house for three days and fined them each five dollars.

On July 22, Captain Henry S. Harte conducted a formal inspection of his F Company soldiers, who were dressed in full uniform and carrying their rifles for the event. That same day, B Company Private William Geist was reported as being drunk in his company’s barracks. Citing previous episodes of drunkenness, he was ordered by his superior officers “to stand upon the head of a barrel in front of the guard quarters for six successive days from 7 to 10 AM, and be confined in the guard house in the interval,” according to Schmidt.

In a letter penned around this same time, I Company Private Alfred Pretz wrote:

The weather is pleasant here, nothing short of it. Here we are set down on a small key in the ocean with the cooling sea breezes continually blowing over us so that, although the rays of the sun parch the ground and wither the herbage, the air in the shade is temperate. From 10 to 3 we keep in doors, the early mornings are fine, the evenings are cool. We have the moonlight at night now too which makes it delightful. I have just returned from Fort Taylor. Col. Good was here with his carriage at 12 and asked me whether I would ride back to the fort with him. Of course, I went transacted a little business for headquarters down there and walked back, over a mile. It would be impossible, I believe, to walk so far at this time of day if the breeze were not so strong and cooling. Tomorrow evening the Colonel is to be presented with a magnificent sword by the citizens of Key West ‘as a token of [their] appreciation of his merits as a gentlemen and soldier,’ so the Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements said at their meeting the other evening. The sword was made to order in New York and cost $750. I have not seen it. I will describe it to you as soon as I have seen it. The Yellow Fever season commences about the 1st of August. I don’t think we will have any of it this year, as there are none of the usual signs. We haven’t had a death in the regiment in the last month. There are few sick.

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

Colonel Good received that sword from the citizens of Key West during a festive event on Saturday, July 25, according to Schmidt.

At 4 PM, Companies C and D which were stationed at the barracks, were marched to Fort Taylor where Companies A, B, and I were stationed. The companies were formed in a line under command of Col. Good and marched through several street to the front of the Custom House, where they formed in a square column at 5 PM, with the Colonel on his horse ‘in his regular position’ in front of the troops. ‘A fine stand had been erected on the piazza of the building, seats were placed for the ladies, flags were stretched across the streets, and everything so arranged as to give it the appearance of a holiday. On the stand were Rear Admiral Bailey, Capt. Templeton of the Navy, Gen. Woodbury and staff, Captains Hook and McFarland of the Army; besides Thomas J. Boynton, U.S. District Attorney, for the Southern District of Florida.’

Two citizens came down from the platform and Col. Good dismounted from his horse and took his cap in his hand, stepped between the two men and was escorted to the platform at the cheers of his men. He was presented with the sword, sash, and belt by Mr. Maloney, a Key West lawyer.

Maloney then delivered the following address:

The people of Key West have called upon me to represent them today, and in their name and on their behalf to present you with a sword as a token of their regard, and in appreciation of your merits as a gentleman and soldier. And permit me to say, sir, that heretofore in instances almost without number have I been called upon to serve this people, during a residence of 28 years among them. And that many of those calls have been attended with positions of honor, trust, and emolument; but upon no occasion have I felt the honor more great, or my sympathies more in accord with the good people of this island, than upon the present occasion.

You first came to our island, sir, nearly two years ago. You came then as a subordinate, but at the head of a regiment, which had met the armed enemies of the government of the United States on the fields of Virginia, and had shown its discipline and bravery in battle, which attracted the favorable attention of the General soon after appointed to the command of this island; and which caused your regiment to be selected by him to serve under his command at this point.

Transferred from Virginia to Key West. From scenes of carnage to the peaceful abode of an unarmed and loyal people, you met the inhabitants of this island, as they deserved to be met and as they met you, and all who came before you bearing the flag of the Union and the command at this post.

After a very short sojourn on the island, but not before you had succeeded in making a favorable impression on the inhabitants, the government found it necessary to transfer your regiment to South Carolina where it was expected fighting was to be done. And it was with pride and pleasure that your friends here learned that you met the enemy at Pocotaligo and Jacksonville and demonstrated that the most modest could be the most brave.

Unfortunately for us, sir, the transfer operated to bring into chief command on this island, one who had yet to learn to meet an armed foe. And I refrain from speaking of the administration, or more correctly speaking, the maladministration of that officer only because he is absent.

Wiser councils, and a good providence returned you to us, as chief in command, at a moment of great peril to a large number of our inhabitants, and you signalized your assumption of command by inaugurating renewed confidence in the good faith of the government of the United States. By discountenancing a vile system of clandestine attacks upon the reputation of quiet law abiding citizens. And by bringing order out of general confusion.

Your administration of affairs as chief of command was short, but such as to attract the respect sand esteem of the greater portion of the people of this island; and without disparagement to others, I can confidently say that no military officer of the United States more wisely and prudently governed on this island than yourself.

The citizens of Key West, in appreciation of your merits as a gentleman and a soldier, through me, now present this sword, asking your acceptance of the same, confident that they confide it to the hands of an officer who knows both how and when to use it.

In response, Colonel Good said:

Gentlemen, I accept at your hands this magnificent gift, and beg of you to accept in return my most heartfelt thanks. Duly sensible that no acts of mine as an individual have merited it, I shall regard the presentation of this testimonial as evidence of your attachment to the cause I have the honor to represent, and of your devotion to our common country. It shall ever serve as an additional memento, if one were needed, to remind me of the pleasant days passed among you, and of the loyalty of your citizens, to whom I am already greatly indebted for many kindnesses. It shall be sacredly preserved and I hope no act of mine will ever disgrace it or cause you to regret of your generosity. I am a man of action, gentlemen, and I know you will in these times, particularly, excuse a lengthy speech from me, it not being a soldier’s vocation. Imagine all a grateful heart could prompt the most eloquent to utter, and you will have the correct idea of my feelings.

A reception then followed, during which the 47th Pennsylvania’s Regimental Band performed Bully for You and other numbers and the assembled crowd of Key West residents and men from the 47th Pennsylvania gave rousing cheers for Colonel Good, the Army and Navy of the United States and its senior military officers, President Abraham Lincoln, and America’s Union. As the event wound down, the regiment’s various companies marched back to their respective quarters.

August 1863

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

During the month of August, forty-nine of the inhabitants of Fort Jefferson were admitted to the fort’s post hospital, twenty-nine of whom were members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. Among those admitted from the regiment were twenty-five soldiers who had contracted infectious or inflammatory diseases or developed other types of infections. Conditions identified during this period included: anthrax/fungus infections (two cases), bilious remittent or intermittent fevers (nine cases); conjunctivitis; constipation, dysentery/diarrhea, enuresis/bed wetting or other intestinal complaints (eleven cases); funiculitis and orchitis, as well as cases of cramp, debilitas, hemorrhage, and rheumatism.

That same month, the men stationed at Fort Jefferson continued their routine of morning infantry drills, followed by artillery practice in the afternoon, with Second Lieutenant Christian K. Breneman appointed as the fort’s post adjutant, Company K’s First Lieutenant David Fetherolf appointed as “A.A.G.M. & A.A.C.S. of Post in accordance with Spec. Order #98 HQ Fort Jefferson,” and Privates Alexander Blumer (Company B), Charles Detweiler (Company A), John Schweitzer (Company A), Charles Shaffer (Company E), and John Weiss (Company F) assigned to responsibilities, respectively, as a company clerk, nurse, baker, quartermaster department member, and ordnance department member. In addition, other members of the regiment were assigned to guard duty.

Lighthouse, Key West, Florida, early to mid-1800s (Florida for Tourists, Invalids, and Settlers, George M. Barbour, 1881, public domain).

Their routine changed dramatically for one day, however; on Thursday, August 6, 1863—the date President Abraham Lincoln had proclaimed as a nationwide day of Thanksgiving and reflection—and a date on which 47th Pennsylvanians at both of garrison sites most certainly took time to reflect on all that they had endured since enlisting.

While the majority of enlisted men and lower ranking officers stationed in the Dry Tortugas observed the national holiday there at Fort Jefferson, many of their superior officers headed to Fort Taylor, where every store in town was closed to ensure wider participation in the commemorative events that had been scheduled there, which C Company’s Henry Wharton described in his August 23, 1863 letter to the Sunbury American:

Thanksgiving, or the day set apart by the President for prayer and to return thanks to Him who has the control of battles, was properly observed by the Army and Navy at this place. The proclamation of the President was read from the pulpits of the different churches on the Sunday evening previous, and invitation extended to all who wished to participate in the services on that occasion. General Woodbury issued a circular requesting all of his command to observe the day in a becoming manner and to attend Divine service at their usual places of worship.– He ordered that all drills and policeing [sic] should be dispensed with, so that the men were at liberty to spend the day as their feelings best dictated. The invitation of the Clergy was accepted, and the Military, by companies attended church. Company C, headed by Captain Gobin and Lieutenant Oyster, marched to the Episcopal church, where an eloquent discourse was delivered by the Rev. Dr. Herrick, but owing to the great crowd many were compelled to retire, thus losing an intellectual treat that would have benefitted them more than the mere listening to a common sermon. The Reverend gentleman of this church has been very kind to our regiment in reserving seats for their accommodation. One act of his speaks for itself, viz: on our arrival here he addressed a note to the Colonel of the 47th, inviting the officers and men to attend the services at St. Marks church, and mentioned particularly that the seats were free.

On the Saturday following Thanksgiving a Yacht race came off on the waters between Sand Key Light House and Key West.– Some thirty boats were entered. Boats of all kinds, from a Captains gig to a thirty or forty ton schooner. The wind was fine and a splendid day they had for the purpose.– Each boat had a flag that it might be known, and as they moved off, the fleet made a grand display. From the ramparts of Fort Taylor the sight was magnificent, for from that point one had a full view, and an opportunity afforded of following the different parties, with the eye, until they gained the turning point and their return to the starting ground. A steam tug followed the party, having on board ladies, the committee and guests, who had a jolly time of it, and an opportunity of tripping the ‘light, fantastic toe,’ to the fine music of the 47th Band, lead by that excellent musician, Prof. Bush. Quartermaster Lock’s schooner ‘Nonpareil’ won the race, out distancing all of its competitors. Of that fact I was certain, for how else could it be, when its name belongs to the ‘art, preservative of all arts’ – printing.

Last Wednesday brought two-thirds of the ‘three years’ of the ‘Sunbury Guards’ to a close, when Lieut. Reese surprised the boys, agreeably, by giving them an entertainment. In this the Lieut., took the start of the other officers of the company, but as all joined in devouring the good things furnished, every one was in a good humor and satisfied, no matter who was the caterer for the occasion. Company C is blessed with good officers – men who do, as they wish to be done by. This little celebration had a good effect, for if there was any misunderstanding, previously, it is now settled, and no better conducted or well regulated family, where good feeling are exhibited, can be found among the soldiers of Uncle Sam. Our company is slightly envied on account of their good grub, but for this the boys should not be blamed for Gobin, who has charge of the company savings, is continually hunting the market for the best it affords, and Sergeant Piers and Johnny Voonsch serve it up in their best style, proving to others that soldiers can, if they good [sic] cooks, live a well as any ‘other man.’

The nomination of Governor Curtin for re-election was well received, and if they had the right to vote there would be no fear of the next Chief Magistrate of Pennsylvania being a copperhead. The decision of Judge Woodward, depriving the soldier of a vote, is looked upon as a bribe for not re-enlisting; and indeed it is, for does it not give the bounty of the right of suffrage to every elector who stays at home? The voting men of the 47th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers, are as a unit for the re-election of Andrew G. Curtin.

Blockade running is nearly played out, and is confined to Mobile and Wilmington, N.C. Very few vessels of this sort are brought into this port at present, owing to the strict watch that is kept on the above named places; however, a day or two ago, the U.S. Steamer De Soto brought in two very large river steamers laden with cotton. The cotton is being transferred to other vessels and will soon be sent North, where it will be put in market for sale.

One of the houses belonging to the Engineer Department was entirely destroyed by fire on last Thursday. It was occupied by the laborers as a sleeping apartment. How the fire originated is unknown, but it is supposed to have caught from a tobacco pipe of one of the men, or from a spark of the locomotive that is used in hauling material for the outside works at Fort Taylor. The boys are all very well and in fine spirits, only a little more active life, and occasional brush with the enemy, they think, would give them a better appetite and enable them to enjoy the rations fournished [sic] by Government….

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

As the month of August wore on, one of the 47th Pennsylvanians assigned to guard duty at Fort Jefferson was H Company’s Corporal George W. Albert, who was stationed at the wharf in the Dry Tortugas on August 24. Standing guard at the regimental post designated as No. 6, he was assigned to night duty, and was relieved the next morning at 8 a.m.

That same day, General Woodbury arrived at the Tortugas for an inspection. He was impressed by the regiment’s level of discipline according to H Company Captain James Kacy, who later wrote: “Men were fully armed and ready for march, splendid appearance…. Gen. Woodbury would not part with the 47th if he does not have to, and all the people at Key West and the Tortugas are pleased with the 47th more than any other regiment.”

With respect to the civilian population at Fort Jefferson and across Florida’s Dry Tortugas, life was also often surprisingly busy. According to Emily Holder, who was making a life with her physician-husband at a house on the fort’s grounds during this time:

The latter part of August 1863, Mr. Hall, who with his wife, had been long with us, was ordered away. He was a very efficient officer and we heard long afterwards that his bravery under fire was remarkable. Their departure was most tantalizing to them and to us somewhat amusing. It showed more clearly than anything else would our isolated condition, for our only legitimate means of getting away was by sail; whenever we had steam conveyance it was by special favor.

We had given some farewell entertainments to Mr. And Mrs. Hall, and Saturday afternoon saw them on board the boat that was to carry them directly to Pensacola. When ready to sail the wind suddenly failed, and the vessel could not get away from the wharf.

The doctor went down and brought them back with him to tea after which they returned to the boat, hoping that during the night a breeze would spring up, but in the morning there the boat lay, and they breakfasted with the colonel. Later all went down again to see them off, as a breeze gently flapped the flag, but it was dead ahead, making it impossible to get out of the narrow channel, which in some places was not wide enough for two vessels to pass each other, and beating out was impossible, so they came up to tea again and spent the evening.

The next morning the doctor looked out of the window and exclaimed: “There they go!” when suddenly as we were watching, the masts became perfectly motionless. We knew only too well what that meant. They had run on to the edge of the reef, within hailing distance of the Fort, and the doctor with others, went out and spent the morning with them, as they refused to come on shore again. Mr. Hall said he was going to “stand by the ship.”

In the course of the day, by kedging as the sailors call it, putting out the anchor and pulling the boat up to it, then throwing it out again further on, they managed to crawl to the first buoy, and there lay in the broiling sun….

Someone replied that it was fortunate that the Wishawken had captured the Atlanta and that the Florida after running the blockade from Mobile under the British colors, rarely came near our coast, for they certainly would have been captured had there been a privateer in those waters.

The next morning when we went on top of the Fort, the sails of the schooner were just a white speck on the northern horizon, and we could hear music from the steamer, which was bringing Colonel Goode [sic] for his monthly inspection of the troops.

Our rains continued occasionally later than usual, one in the middle of September almost ending in a hurricane; so rough was it that the Clyde, a long, graceful, English-built steamer, that came in for coal with the Sunflower, had to remain several days. The Clyde had quite a serious time in reaching the harbor. We watched it through a porthole with great anxiety. It was too strong a wind for us to venture on the ramparts, but we could walk all about inside seeing everything that came in from our safe lookout.

Colonel Goode [sic] on his last trip had left the regiment band for us awhile, so that guard mount and dress parade were important features, while the naval officers went about visiting the various houses, keeping us bright and gay while they were weather bound.

The high winds ended in a severe norther—an almost unheard of thing so early in the season. Later we saw by a paper that they had snow in New York the latter part of August; it might have been the same cold wave that swept down over the Gulf, for it housed us shivering.

While the band was with us the ramparts were the favorite places for viewing dress parade, and the colonel gave the ladies all the pleasure he could, having the band play on parade during the evening.

A remittent fever broke out and we were ill for three weeks. It was very much like the break-bone fever; extreme suffering in the limbs and back seemed to be the prevailing feature of the attacks. At the same time they were digging a ditch around close to the wall of the Fort, which made it pass between the house and kitchen as the latter was in the casemates.

The rains, of course, swelled the size of the brook so that the bridge over it, when the wind blew, as it seemed to most of the time, was rather an insecure passage, as it was five feet wide and from three to four deep, and to cross that every time one went into the kitchen was no small annoyance, and the contrivances to get the meals into the dining-room got required no little ingenuity.

Meanwhile, as summer progressed, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers continued to weaken Florida’s abilities to supply and transport food and troops throughout the area held by the Confederate States of America by capturing livestock and farm produce, as well as disrupting the manufacture of salt.

They also continued to train, keeping their battle skills sharp in readiness for the moment they would be ordered back into the fray in order to finally extinguish the faction of “fire-eaters” bent on dissolving the United States and all that the nation had stood for since its founding.

Sources:

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

Respect and Confidence: The Bond Between an Effective Commanding Officer and His Men

Jul20

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

July of 1863 was a very different experience for the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers than it was for many other members of the Army of the United States. Divided roughly in half, in order to provide garrison coverage at two federal military installations in Florida that had been deemed critical to the federal government’s ability to turn the tide of the American Civil War in the Union’s favor, their regiment was not involved in the epic Battle of Gettysburg that unfolded over three days on the soil of their home state that month.

But their service to the nation still mattered. Split between Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida and Fort Jefferson in Florida’s remote Dry Tortugas, their collective job was not only to hamper efforts by the Confederate States of America to move troops and supplies throughout the Deep South, but also to prevent Great Britain and other European nations from interfering in the war.

As winter gave way to spring and summer, individual companies of the regiment continued to drill in the use of their respective fort artillery batteries and their own rifles and were also assigned to provost duties, functioning both as military police who ensured that soldiers behaved themselves and were punished when they did not, and as civil justice officials who upheld the nation’s rule of law to protect the local citizenry by arresting and prosecuting criminals, preventing the illegal sale of alcohol and other prohibited goods and carrying out the enforcement of multiple federal laws, including the nation’s newly adopted “Lieber Code” for the Armies of the United States and President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation which freed the men, women and children who had been enslaved in their respective jurisdictions.

They were also still nursing their wounded bodies and souls as they came to terms with the deaths of their comrades and the emotional and physical injuries that they had sustained themselves during the bloody Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862.

Captain Henry Durant Woodruff, commanding officer of Company D, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (public domain).

It was in this spirit of reflection that a genuinely memorable event took place at Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida on July 16, 1863. That day, the members of the 47th Pennsylvania’s Company D “presented a magnificent sword, sash, and belt” to Captain Henry Durant Woodruff “at the US Barracks in Key West,” according to historian Lewis Schmidt.

The company was formed in front of their quarters at 8 AM, across the barracks ground from Company C, and Pvt. George W. Baltozer, a 24 year old teacher from Perry County, made the following remarks on behalf of the company:

‘The motives that assemble us on the present occasion are based on our mature confidence, the martial skill, the intrepid heroism, and the undaunted intrepidity of our leader in arms. It is manifestive of our consciousness of your noble ability to wield in the defence [sic] of the rights of our country, this glittering weapon, that we place it in your protective hand. Receive it, sir, as a token of our estimation of your promotion of our ease and comfort in quietude, and for your chivalrous spirit on the sanguine field, when the heavens glared with fire, and the earth trembled ‘neath cannons’ roar. May it never rest in its scabbard ’till rebellion is crushed and traitorism is banished from the land, and peace spread her white wings from the St. John’s to the sunny banks of the Rio Grande. May it ever bespeak in the heart of him that wields it, bravery, loyalty, heroism, and philanthropy. That it may ever benefit you in the hour of peril, and that you may undauntingly use it as opportunity is afforded, is the very ardent wish of your most obedient servants.'”

Also, according to Schmidt, Captain Woodruff responded to this touching tribute by presenting a surprisingly lengthy address to his men:

My companions in arms, your beautiful present is accepted with sincere satisfaction and heartfelt thanks. It affords the satisfaction that you still respect and have confidence in your commander, and he is thankful not only for the value of this noble gift, but for the rich token of your kind regard. And while I wear these arms and accoutrements, emblematical of my rank and office, may they never be worn unworthily, or the noble donors have cause to blush for the ungallant act of the wearer.

Two years have nearly elapsed since we have been associated as commander and commanded. Two years of privation and toil, yet your love for the cause and your ardor to serve your country has not abated.

When you entered upon this gigantic struggle, you were not prompted by large bribes or bounties, or intimidated by being forced in service by conscription. But inspired by a noble patriotism, you cheerfully volunteered for the longest period known to law.

Your conduct thus far has been in accordance with the honorable principles which caused you to volunteer. No discipline too strict, no privations too great, no toil too sore, but that your indomitable spirits have been able to accomplish, to undergo and overcome. And now allow me to say to you that I am proud of the noble men who compose this company; I am proud of your generous and gallant conduct; I am proud of your association; I am proud of the honor you have this day conferred upon your Captain.

In looking forward, I have no fears for you in the future, whatever you may be called on to do—in garrison—in the tented field, or on the sanguined plain, it will be bravely—it will be well done. Then until rebels and traitors shall become extinct, or have grounded their arms, and acknowledged the supremacy of the government and the law, let this our motto be: Give us death or give us liberty.

Later that year, multiple members of Company D would opt to re-enlist to finish the fight, serving valiantly until the leaders of the Rebellion finally surrendered in April 1865—and beyond—into the early months of the Reconstruction Era, until their regiment was finally mustered out at Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day in 1865.

Sources:

Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
Carnahan, Burrus. “Global Impact: The Lincoln Administration and the Development of International Law.” Washington, D.C.: President Lincoln’s Cottage, May 9, 2016.
“Florida’s Role in the Civil War: ‘Supplier of the Confederacy.’” Tampa, Florida: Florida Center for Instructional Technology, College of Education, University of South Florida, retrieved online January 15, 2020.
“General Orders 100: The Lieber Code,” in “The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy.” New Haven, Connecticut: Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School, Yale University, retrieved online April 3, 2024.
Gesley, Jenny. “The ‘Lieber Code’—the First Modern Codification of the Laws of War,” in “In Custodia Legis: Law Librarians of Congress.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online April 3, 2024.
“History: Crops (Historic Florida Barge Canal Trail).” Historical Marker Database, retrieved online December 30, 2023.
Lieber, Francis. Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1898.
Owsley, Frank Lawrence, and Harriet Fason Chappell. King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1959.
“Preventing Diplomatic Recognition of the Confederacy, 1861–1865,” and “The Alabama Claims, 1862–1872,” in “Milestones: 1861–1865.” Washington, D.C.: Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, United States Department of State, retrieved online December 30, 2023.
Schmidt, Lewis. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.
Wharton, Henry D. Letters from the Sunbury Guards. Sunbury, Pennsylvania, Sunbury American, 1861-1866.

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

Mar29

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life at Fort Jefferson

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

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

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

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

With respect to housing and feeding the soldiers stationed here:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1863

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Mighty excited, Missis,’ he replied….

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources:

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

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

Jan1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another Sea Journey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources:

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

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

Dec23

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Return to Civilian Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources:

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

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:

In Their Own Words: Soldiers Reflect on Life as Christmas and the New Year Approach During the U.S. Civil War

Dec22

Personal Letter from Captain John Peter Shindel Gobin, Commanding Officer of Company C, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (14 December 1862)

Captain John Peter Shindel Gobin, Company C, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (circa 1862, public domain).

Beaufort, So. Ca.
December 14, 1862

Dear Friends,

This is the last letter you will receive from me dated as above. For some time, our Regt. has been ordered to Key West again and we leave for there tomorrow. We are even now all packed up and I am writing amid the piles of rubbish accumulated in a five months residence in Camp. Gen. Brannen [sic] expects to go North and his object evidently is to get us out of this Department so that when he is established in his command, he can get us with him. If we remained here Gen Hunter would not let us go as he is as well aware as is Brannen [sic] is that we are the best Regiment in the Department. Although I do not like the idea of going back there, under the circumstances we are content. At all events we will have nice quarters easy times, and plenty of food. But for my part I would rather have some fighting to do. Since we have become initiated I rather like it. At Key West we will get none, and have a nice rest after our duties here. I will take all my men along – not being compelled to leave any behind. Direct my letters hereafter to Key West, Fla.

I supposed the body of Sergt Haupt has arrived at home long ere this. When we left Key West [Last?] Oyster & myself bought a large quantity of shells, and sent them to Mrs Oyster. If we got home all right [sic] Haupt was to make boxes for us. He having died, you and Mrs Oyster divide the shells, and you can take [two illegible words] and give them to our friends. Some to Uncle Luther [sp?], Jacob Lawk [sp?], Louisa Shindel and all friends. I can send some more when we get to Key West if they want them.

Arrangements are being made to run a schooner regularly between here and Key West, so your boxes sent to us will follow us. Neither Mrs Wilsons nor yours has been received yet.

I think I will send a box home from here containing a few articles picked up at St. John’s Bluff and here. They examine all boxes closely but I think I can get some few articles through. The powder horn bullet pouch and breech sight I got at St. John’s Bluff the rest here. I will write, as soon as we get to Key West. Let me hear from you often. With love to all I remain

Yours,
J. P. Shindel Gobin

P.S. Get Youngman & [illegible name] to publish the change of your address.

Letter to the Sunbury American Newspaper from Henry D. Wharton, Musician, Company C, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (published 10 January 1863)

USS Seminole and USS Ellen accompanied by transports (left to right: Belvidere, McClellan, Boston, Delaware, and Cosmpolitan) at Wassau Sound, Georgia (circa January 1862, Harper’s Weekly, public domain).

[Correspondence for the AMERICAN.]
Letter from the Sunbury Guards,
FORT TAYLOR, KEY WEST, Florida. }
December 21, 1862.

DEAR WILVERT:– Again at Key West. On Monday, December 15th we left Beaufort, S.C., on board the Steamer Cosmopolitan and proceeded to Hilton Head, where Gen. Brannen [sic] came on board to bid farewell to his regiment. Capt. Gobin addressed him in a neat little speech, which the General tried to reply to, but his feelings were too full and tears were in his eye as he bid the old word, ‘Good Bye.’ The boys gave him tremendous cheers as he left the vessel and the Band discoursed sweet music ‘till he reached the shore. The members of our regiment felt badly on leaving his command; but the assurance that we will soon be with him, in another department, makes them in a better humor; for with him they know all their wants are cared for, and in battle they have a leader on whom they can depend.

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

Fort Jefferson, Dry Torguas, Florida (interior, c.irca 1934, C.E. Peterson, photographer, U.S. Library of Congress, public domain).

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

The U.S. Gunboat ‘Sagamore’ has had good luck lately. She returned from a cruise on the 16th inst., having captured the English sloop ‘Ellen’ and schooners ‘Agnes,’ ‘By George’ and ‘Alicia,’ all hailing from Nassau N.P. The two former were cut out in India river by a boat expedition from the Sagamore. They had, however, previously discharged their cargoes, consisting principally of salt, and were awaiting a return cargo of the staple, (cotton) when the boats relieved them from further trouble and anxiety. The ‘By George’ was sighted on the morning of the 1st, and after a short chase she was overhauled. Her Captain, in answer to ‘where bound!’ replied Key West, but being so much out of his course and rather deficient in the required papers, an officer was placed in charge in order that she might safely reach this port. Cargo – Coffee, Salt, Medicines, &c. The “Alicia,’ cotton loaded, was taken in Indian river inlet, where she was nicely stowed away waiting a clear coast. The boats of the Sagamore also destroyed two small sloops. They were used in Indian river, near Daplin, by the rebels in lightering cargoes up and down the river. There are about twenty more prizes lying here, but I was unable to get the names of more than the following:

Schooner ‘Dianah.’ assorted cargo.
“         ‘Maria.’           “             “
“         ‘Corse.’           “             “
“       ‘Velocity.’        “             “
“ ‘W.E. Chester.’ sixty bales of cotton.

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

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

Two regiments of Gen. Bank’s [sic] expedition are now at this place, the vessels, on which they had taken passage for Ship Island, being disabled, they were obliged to disembark, and are now waiting transportation. They are the 156th and 160th N.Y.S. Vols. Part of the 156th are with us in Fort Taylor.

Key West is very healthy; the yellow fever having done its work, the people are very much relieved of its departure. The boys of our company are all well. I will write to you again as soon as ‘something turns up.’ With respects to friends generally, I remain,

Yours, Fraternally,
H. D. W.

Excerpts of Diary Entries from Henry Jacob Hornbeck, Private, Company G, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (December 1863 and Early January 1864)

Key West, Florida (circa 1850, courtesy of the Florida Memory Project).

December 1863. The workers at the fortification in Key West demanded back pay and a raise in December; their rate was $1.40 per day. The town had some excitement in December as a spark from a railway locomotive set the mess hall on fire, burning it to the ground; and nature retaliated with a violent storm, which caused heavy damage, putting the railroad out of service.

Friday December 25th. …. rose at 3 a.m. & proceeded to Slaughter House, had two Cattle & two Sheep cut up and served to the troops. Conveyed Fresh Meat to a number of citizens this morning, being Gen’l Woodburys [sic] gift, then had breakfast. Went to Fort Stables, had the horse fed, visited Mrs. Abbot in Fort Taylor, also Mrs. Heebner, from both of whom we rec’d Christmas Cakes & a drink, which were excellent…. We took dinner at Capt. Bells at 2 p.m. which was a splendid affair. A fine turkey served up, and finished up our dinner with excellent Mince pie, after the dinner we again took a ride about the Island, took the horse to Fort Stables and returned to office. At 5 p.m. a party of Masqueraders (or what we term in our State Fantasticals) paraded the street headed with music, a very comical party. Took a walk tonight, Churches finely decorated. Retired early at ½ past 8 p.m. Weather beautiful….

1864

January 1st Thursday. Rose as usual. After breakfast, went to office, kept busy all day on account of many steamers lying in port, waiting to coal. After supper took a walk about the city with Frank Good and Wm. Steckel. Heard music in a side street, went there and found the Black Band playing at the Postmaster’s residence. The Postmaster then called all the soldiers in, and gave us each a glass of wine.

He is a very patriotic man and very generous. I believe his name is Mr. Albury. We then went to barracks and retired.

January 2nd Friday…. After breakfast, work as usual in office. After dinner took a horseback ride to Fort Taylor…. Retired at 9 o’clock. Weather cool.

January 3rd Saturday…. Received our extra duty pay this afternoon. Purchased toilet articles. After supper went to the camp, took a walk about city, then went barracks & retired. Latest reports are that Burnside was defeated with great loss and the Cabinet broke up in a row. Retired at 10. Weather fine.

Sunday January 4th…. After breakfast, washed & dressed. After dinner John Lawall, Wm. Ginkinger & myself went to the wharf. I then returned to barracks and P. Pernd. E. Crader and myself went out on the beach, searching sea shell. Returned by 4 o’clock. I then cleaned my rifle. Witnessed dress parade. Then went to supper. After supper went to the Methodist Church, heard a good Sermon by our Chaplain. Retired at 9 o’clock.

Monday January 5th…. After breakfast went to office, busy, wrote a letter to Reuben Leisenring. At 11 o’clock the U.S. Mail Steamer Bio arrived from New York, having come in 5 days, papers dating 30th inst. The reports of a few days ago, are not confirmed, therefore they are untrue. She also has a mail on board.

Tuesday January 6th…. Received no letter yesterday, very small mail for our regiment. Busy all day in office. After supper, Wm. Smith, Allen Wolf & myself took a walk about the city, then went to barracks. Retired at 10 o’clock. Wrote a letter this afternoon to Uncle Ebenezer, sent him also by mail a small collection of sea shells. Weather fine.

Sources:

Gobin, John Peter Shindel. Personal Letters, 1861-1865. Northumberland, Pennsylvania: Personal Collection of John Deppen.
Hornbeck, Henry Jacob. Diary Excerpts, 1862-1864, in 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story. Retrieved online 1 December 2017.
Wharton, Henry D. Letters from the Sunbury Guards. Sunbury, Pennsylvania: Sunbury American, 1861-1868.

Faces of the 47th Project Honors History-Making Civil War Soldiers from Pennsylvania

Jun4

First Lieutenant William Wallace Geety, Co. H, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, c. 1864-1865.

A tantalizing new video released by 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story just opened an important new portal to the 19th century for Civil War enthusiasts, teachers, students, and genealogists.

Faces of the 47th is part of a larger, ongoing initiative to document and raise public awareness about the 47th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry – the only regiment from the Keystone State to fight in the Union’s 1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana. The video presents the photographic and illustrated images of more than two dozen men who fought with the all-volunteer unit between 1861 and 1865.

“Each one of these images holds the potential to help family history researchers feel closer to their Civil War-era ancestors while also enabling teachers, students and Civil War enthusiasts to deepen their connections to one of the most painful chapters in the American narrative,” explains Laurie Snyder, managing editor for the project. “By ‘putting faces to the names’ on military muster rolls, we’re bringing history to life while also paying tribute to those who fought to eradicate slavery and preserve our nation’s union.”

The photo digitization project received early support from Thomas MacEntee, founder of High-Definition Genealogy, via The Genealogy Fairy™ program, which enabled Snyder to locate and digitize photographs of key members of the regiment. Among the images preserved in this initial collection are the faces of a regimental chaplain, musicians, prisoners of war (POWs), military surgeons, and officers and enlisted men who were grievously wounded or killed in combat, as well as several men who became inventors, leading business executives and elected officials in and beyond Pennsylvania after the war.

George Dillwyn John (third from left; formerly, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers), Grand Army of the Republic gathering, Will Robinson Post, Illinois, c. 1926.

“At the time I applied for the grant, there were hundreds of photographs tucked away in public libraries, historical societies, universities, and private family history collections from Maine to California and Michigan to Louisiana. Most had not yet been digitized and might have been lost for all time had Thomas MacEntee not provided the support he did when he did,” said Snyder. “More work still needs to be done, of course, because there are photos still not yet scanned, but the project took more than two dozen giant steps forward with just that one grant from Thomas. He’s a hero in my book.”

Other significant support for the project has been provided by the Burrowes and Wasserman families.

About the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers

Joseph Eugene Walter, Regimental Band, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, c. 1861.

Recruited primarily at community gathering places in their respective home towns, 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 website of 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story, and follow the project on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube.

Honoring the Battle-Tested Soldier: The Meaning and Value of the Designation “Veteran Volunteer”

Jul5

A regiment, battalion, or company shall bear the title of ‘veteran’ only in case at least one-half its members, at the time of muster into United States Service, are ‘veteran volunteers.’ – excerpt from General Order No. 216, U.S. War Department, 14 July 1863

Second State Colors, 47th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers (presented to the regiment 7 March 1865).

Second State Color, 47th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry with stripe designating the unit as “P.V.V.” (Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers”). Presented to Company C Captain Daniel Oyster, 7 March 1865.

Those words above are at the very heart of what it meant when military units fighting for the Union during America’s Civil War were honored with the coveted and highly respected label of “Veteran Volunteer,” and further clarify the intent of General Order No. 191, which spelled out the expectations of the U.S. War Department for, and the benefits which accrued to, the individual soldiers and regiments ultimately awarded this designation.

A literal “badge of honor,” the appellation “Veteran Volunteer” conferred upon its recipients the right to sew “volunteer service chevrons“ (or service stripes) on their uniforms and regimental flags, signaling to all whom they encountered that they were battle-tested, long-serving and long-suffering combatants dedicated to the fight to preserve America’s Union.

In the case of the men who served with the 47th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, the designation was conferred most frequently in the latter part of 1863 and early 1864 during the regiment’s service in Florida. Assigned to garrison Forts Taylor and Jefferson in Key West and the Dry Tortugas, the 47th Pennsylvanians had already, by the fall of 1862, defended Washington, D.C. and played key roles in the capture of Saint John’s Bluff and Jacksonville, Florida, and had been severely bloodied during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina in late October of that same year.

In addition to having completed their initial three-year terms of service by the time they re-enlisted in 1863 or 1864, many had also fulfilled their “Three Months’ Service,” having been among the first responders to President Abraham Lincoln’s initial April 1861 call for volunteers to defend the nation’s capital following the fall of Fort Sumter.

U.S. General Order No. 191, issued by the U.S. War Department, 25 June 1863:

In order to increase the armies now in the field, volunteer infantry, cavalry, and artillery may be enlisted, at any time within 90 days from this date in the respective States, under the regulations hereinafter mentioned. The volunteers so enlisted, and such of the three-years troops now in the field as may re-enlist in accordance with the provisions of this order, will constitute a force to be designated ‘Veteran Volunteers.’ The regulations for enlisting this force are as follows:

I. The period of service for the enlistments and re-enlistments above mentioned shall be for three years or during the war.

II. All able bodied men, between the ages of 18 and 45 years, who have been heretofore enlisted, and have served for not less than nine months, and can pass the examination required by the mustering regulations of the United States, may be enlisted under this order as veteran volunteers, in accordance with the provisions hereinafter set forth.

III. Every volunteer enlisted and mustered into service under this order shall be entitled to receive from the United States, one month’s pay in advance and a bounty and premium of $402, to be paid as follows:

Upon being mustered into the service, he shall be paid
one month’s pay in advance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $13.00
First installment of bounty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25.00
Premium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.00
Total payment on muster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $40.00

At the first regular pay-day, or two months after
muster-in, an additional installment of bounty
will be paid. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $50.00
At the first regular pay-day after six months’
service, he shall be paid an additional
installment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $50.00
At the first regular pay-day after the end of the
first year’s service, an additional installment of
bounty will be paid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $50.00
At the first regular pay-day after 18 months’
service an additional installment of bounty will
be paid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $50.00
At the first regular pay-day after two years’
service an additional installment of bounty will
be paid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $50.00
At the first regular pay-day after two and a
half years’ service an additional installment of
bounty will be paid, $50.00
At the expiration of three years’ service the
remainder of the bounty will be paid . . . . . . . . . . $75.00

IV. If the government shall not require these troops for the full period of three years, and they shall be mustered honorably out of the service before the expiration of their term of enlistment, they shall receive, upon being mustered out, the whole amount of their bounty remaining unpaid, the same as if their whole term had been served. The legal heirs of volunteers who die in service shall be entitled to receive the whole bounty remaining unpaid at the time of the soldier’s death.

V. Veteran Volunteers enlisted under this order will be permitted at their option to enter old regiments now in the field, but their service will continue for the full term of their own enlistment notwithstanding the expiration of the term for which the regiment was originally enlisted. New organizations will be officered by persons who have been in service and have shown themselves properly qualified for command. As a badge of honorable distinction, ‘SERVICE CHEVRONS’ will be furnished by the War Department to be worn by the Veteran Volunteers.

VI. Officers of regiments whose term has expired will be authorized on proper application and approval of their respective Governors, to raise companies and regiments within the period of 60 days, and if the companies and regiments authorized to be raised shall be filled up and mustered in the service within the said period of 60 days, the officers may be commissioned of the date of their original commission, and for the time engaged in recruiting they will be entitled to receive the pa belonging to their rank.

VII. Volunteers or Militia now in service whose terms of service will expire within 90 days, and who then shall have been in service at least nine months, shall be entitled to the aforesaid bounty and premium of $402, provided they re-enlist before the expiration of their present term for three years or the war; and said bounty and premium shall be paid in the manner herein provided for other troops re-entering the service. The new term will commence from the date of re-enlistment.

VIII. After the expiration of 90 days from this date, volunteers serving in three year organizations who may re-enlist for three years or the war, shall be entitled to the aforesaid bounty and premium of $402, to be paid in the manner herein provided for other troops entering the service. The new term will commence from date of re-enlistment.

IX. Officers in service whose regiments or companies may re-enlist in accordance with the provisions of this order before the expiration of their present term, shall have their commission confirmed so as to preserve their date of rank as fixed by their original muster into United States service.

X. As soon after the expiration of their original term of enlistment as the exigencies of the service will permit, a furlough of 30 days will be granted to men who may enlist in accordance with the provisions of this order.

XI. Volunteers enlisted under the provisions of this order will be credited as three year men in the quotas of their respective states. Instructions for the appointment of recruiting officers and for enlisting Veteran Volunteers, will be immediately issued to Governors as states.

Secretary of War E. D. Townsend

Sources:

Reports of Committees of the Senate of the United States for the First Session of the Fifty-First Congress, 1889-90. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1890.
Schmidt, Lewis. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.

47th Pennsylvania Volunteers

ONE CIVIL WAR REGIMENT'S STORY

Tag Archives: Fort Jefferson

The Backbones of a Nation: The Laborers Who Enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

Occupation and Garrison Duties in Florida (July through August 1863)

Respect and Confidence: The Bond Between an Effective Commanding Officer and His Men

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

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

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

Learn More About the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers

In Their Own Words: Soldiers Reflect on Life as Christmas and the New Year Approach During the U.S. Civil War

Faces of the 47th Project Honors History-Making Civil War Soldiers from Pennsylvania

Honoring the Battle-Tested Soldier: The Meaning and Value of the Designation “Veteran Volunteer”