The Class of 1846
Page 66
7. Price, Across the Continent with the Fifth Cavalry, pp. 26–29, pp. 30–31.
8. Jay A. Matthews, Jr., “The Second U.S. Cavalry in Texas, 1855–1861,” Military History of Texas and the Southwest 11 (1973), p. 230; Price, Across the Continent with the Fifth Cavalry, pp. 29–30.
9. The Indian problems in Texas are discussed at length in George D. Harmon, “The United States Indian Policy in Texas, 1845–1860,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 17 (December 1930), pp. 377–403.
10. The numbers are from Simpson, “The Second Cavalry in Texas,” p. 59. The line of march is from Price, Across the Continent with the Fifth Cavalry, p. 32.
11. Roland and Robbins, “The Diary of Eliza Johnston,” pp. 467–68.
12. Quoted in T. E. Ballenger, “Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston’s March through Indian Territory in 1855,” Chronicles of Oklahoma 47 (Summer 1969), p. 133.
13. Ibid., p. 136.
14. Eliza Johnston’s description of these terrible five days is in Roland and Robbins, “The Diary of Eliza Johnston,” pp. 483–85.
15. Albert Sidney Johnston to William Preston Johnston, 17 January 1856, in William Preston Johnston, The Life of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston (New York; D. Appleton and Company, 1878), p. 188.
16. Roland and Robbins, “The Diary of Eliza Johnston,” pp. 483–85; Johnston, The Life of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, p. 188.
17. Price, Across the Continent with the Fifth Cavalry, p. 41, pp. 280–81, pp. 44–45.
18. Simpson, “The Second Cavalry in Texas,” pp. 61–62, p. 70.
19. Charles P. Roland, Albert Sidney Johnston: Soldier of Three Republics (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964), pp. 182–83. For an account of the Second Cavalry’s early activity in Texas see Price, Across the Continent with the Fifth Cavalry, pp. 41–50. In August 1861 all of the mounted regiments of the army were reshuffled, reorganized, and redesignated to fight the Civil War. At that time the Second Cavalry became the Fifth Cavalry.
20. U.S. Military Academy, Cadet Application Papers, No. 321, 1842.
21. Jerusha Wilcox Sturgis, “Life of Mrs. S. D. Sturgis,” typescript copy, Sturgis Family Papers, U.S. Military Academy Library, p. 6, p. 7.
22. The circumstances that made Sturgis a prisoner of war in Mexico are described in Samuel E. Chamberlain, My Confession (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956), pp. 106–7.
23. Quoted in Robert W. Frazer, ed., Mansfield on the Condition of Western Forts, 1853–54 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963), p. xvi.
24. Sturgis’s pursuit of the Apaches is recounted in Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, pp. 150–51.
25. Maury, Recollections of a Virginian, p. 113.
26. Eugene Bandel, Frontier Life in the Army, 1854–1861, ed. Ralph P. Bieber (Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1932), p. 79.
27. Percy Gatling Hamlin, “Old Bald Head” (General R. S. Ewell): The Portrait of a Soldier (1940; reprint, Gaithersburg, MD: Ron R. Van Sickle Military Books, 1988), p. 19.
28. The biographical information on Sedgwick is from Patricia L. Faust, ed., Historical Times Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), p. 665.
29. Sturgis, “Life of Mrs. S. D. Sturgis,” p. 12.
30. The account of the buffalo stampede is from R. M. Peck’s journal in LeRoy R. Hafen and Ann W. Hafen, eds., Relations with the Indians of the Plains, 1857–1861: A Documentary Account of the Military Campaigns, and Negotiations of Indian Agents—with Reports and Journals of P. G. Lowe, R. M. Peck, J. F. B. Stuart, S. D. Sturgis, and Other Official Papers (Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1959), pp. 100–3. Peck was a soldier in Sturgis’s company.
The Bloody Saddle
1. Benjamin Franklin Manring, The Conquest of the Coeur d’Alenes, Spokanes and Palouses: The Expeditions of Colonels E. J. Steptoe and George Wright against the “Northern Indians” in 1858 (Spokane, WA: John W. Graham & Co., 1912), p. 123, p. 277.
2. Ibid., pp. 67–73. Also see Dunn, Massacres of the Mountains, p. 284.
3. Steptoe’s report to the Department of the Pacific in San Francisco, 23 May 1858, in Manring, The Conquest of the Coeur d’Alenes, Spokanes and Palouses, p. 127. In the narrative of the Steptoe expedition and the fight that follows I have relied, but for the exceptions specifically cited, on Manring’s detailed account, pp. 67–157.
4. Quoted in Manring, p. 91.
5. Ibid., p. 103.
6. Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, p. 205.
7. George Wright to W. W. Mackall (Assistant Adjutant General in San Francisco), 30 September 1858, in Manring, The Conquest of the Coeur-d’Alenes, Spokanes and Palouses, pp. 255–56.
8. Lawrence Kip, Army Life on the Pacific: A Journal of the Expedition against the Northern Indians … (New York: Redfield, 1859), pp. 111–12.
9. Ibid., p. 110, pp. 116–17.
10. Wright to Mackall, 30 September 1858, in Manring, The Conquest of the Coeur d’Alenes, Spokanes and Palouses, p. 254.
11. Kip, Army Life on the Pacific, pp. 122–24.
12. Bailey, “My Boyhood at West Point,” p. 19.
13. The reburial of Taylor and Gaston at West Point is described by Schaff, who was present, in The Spirit of Old West Point, pp. 117–19.
14. Taylor to George C. Cullum, 20 July 1855, Cullum File.
The Courtship of Miss Nelly
1. Several books describe Ellen Marcy, none in great detail: W. Eugene Hollon, Beyond the Cross Timbers: The Travels of Randolph B. Marcy, 1812–1887 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955), p. 190; James I. Robertson, Jr., General A. P. Hill: The Story of a Confederate Warrior (New York: Random House, 1987), p. 27; Sears, George B. McClellan, p. 60; William Woods Hassler, A. P. Hill: Lee’s Forgotten General (1957; reprint, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962), pp. 17–18; William Starr Myers, George Brinton McClellan: A study in Personality (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1934), p. 130. The few existing photographs don’t do her justice. But it was generally conceded she was compellingly attractive, bright, and highly gifted in the social graces.
2. Randolph B. Marcy to Ellen Marcy, 20 May 1846, McClellan Papers, B1:44.
3. Myers, George Brinton McClellan, pp. 125–26.
4. Marcy to Ellen Marcy, 20 May 1846, McClellan Papers, B1:44.
5. For a good example of Marcy’s nonstop advice to his daughter see Marcy to Ellen Marcy, 4 February 1849, McClellan Papers, B1:44.
6. McClellan to Mary Marcy, 14 May 1854, McClellan Papers, B2:44.
7. Elizabeth B. McClellan to George McClellan, 15 April 1854; Sears, George B. McClellan, p. 41.
8. McClellan to Mary Marcy, 14 May 1854, McClellan Papers, B2:44.
9. Quoted in Hollon, Beyond the Cross Timbers, p. 172.
10. McClellan to Mary Marcy, 27 August 1854, McClellan Papers, B3:44; Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, act 3, scene 1, line 246.
11. McClellan to Mary Marcy, 10 September 1854, McClellan Papers, B3:44.
12. McClellan to Mary Marcy, 22 March 1855, McClellan Papers, B3:44.
13. Quoted in William J. Robertson, “ ‘Up Came Hill’—Soldier of the South,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, Sunday Magazine Section, part 4 (4 November 1934), p. 8.
14. Ibid., part 2 (21 October 1934), p. 8.
15. Hill to Frances Russell Hill and Thomas Hill, 8 November 1847, Hill Family Papers.
16. Robertson, General A. P. Hill, pp. 11–12.
17. Hassler, A. P. Hill: Lee’s Forgotten General, p. 17; Robertson, General A. P. Hill, p. 19.
18. Hollon, Beyond the Cross Timbers, pp. 191–92.
19. U.S. Military Academy, Cadet Application Papers, No. 131, 1842.
20. Marcy to Ellen Marcy, 22 May 1856, McClellan Papers, B3:44.
21. Marcy’s scorcher was written to Ellen on 28 May 1856, McClellan Papers, B3:44.
22. Marcy to Ellen Marcy, 3 June 1856, McClellan Papers, B3:44.
23. Marcy to Ellen Marcy, 12 June 1856, McClellan Papers, B3:44. This narrative has the ef
fect of appearing one sided, because none of Ellen’s letters to her father are extant. We catch only a fleeting glimpse of her arguments between the lines of his letters.
24. Robertson, General A. P. Hill, p. 28.
25. McClellan to Mary Marcy, 14 January 1856, McClellan Papers, B3:45.
26. McClellan to Mary Marcy, 22 July 1856, McClellan Papers, A8:4.
27. Ibid.
28. Marcy to Ellen Marcy, 31 July 1856, McClellan Papers, B3:44.
29. Quoted in Hollon, Beyond the Cross Timbers, pp. 193–94.
30. Hill to Randolph Marcy, 29 May 1857, McClellan Papers, B4:45.
31. Quoted in Hassler, A. P. Hill: Lee’s Forgotten General, p. 21.
32. Background on Kitty is mainly from Robertson, General A. P. Hill, pp. 30–31.
33. Hill to McClellan, 18 June 1859, McClellan Papers, All:5.
34. Hassler, A. P. Hill: Lee’s Forgotten General, p. 24; Robertson, General A. P. Hill, p. 32.
35. The Marcy expedition is described in detail in Hollon, Beyond the Cross Timbers, pp. 215–24.
36. McClellan to Ellen Marcy, 17 March 1858, McClellan Papers, B5:45.
37. McClellan to Ellen Marcy, 11 September 1859, McClellan Papers, B5:45.
38. Marcy to Ellen Marcy, 4 February 1857, McClellan Papers, B3:45.
39. Marcy to McClellan, 16 September 1859, McClellan Papers, B5:45.
40. Hollon, Beyond the Cross Timbers, pp. 236–37.
41. W. H. Lewis to Ellen Marcy, 13 October 1859, McClellan Papers, B6:46.
42. George Granger to Ellen Marcy, 25 October 1859, McClellan Papers, B6:46.
43. From extracts of letters from McClellan to Ellen Marcy before their marriage, 1859–60, McClellan Papers, A11:5.
44. Ibid.
45. Elizabeth McClellan to Ellen Marcy, 5 January 1860, McClellan Papers, B6:26.
46. New York Herald, 23 May 1860; William W. Chamberlaine, Memoirs of the Civil War between the Northern and Southern Sections of the United States of America, 1861 to 1865 (Washington, DC: Press of Byro S. Adams, 1912), p. 109. We are not absolutely certain the Major Hill listed in the newspaper account was A. P. Hill. Chamberlaine in his memoirs says Hill was there as one of McClellan’s groomsmen, but Chamberlaine had this second or third hand. I like to think, for the sake of romance, that it was indeed our Hill. This is, after all, a love story.
47. Diary entry, 22 May 1860, McClellan Papers, D4:67.
PART 3 AND THE WAR CAME
Our Men at Sumter
1. The record of Seymour’s army career is in Cullum, Biographical Register vol. 2, pp. 270–72.
2. Kent Ahrens, “The Drawings and Watercolors by Truman Seymour,” in Water Color and Drawings by Brevet Major General Truman Seymour, USMA 1846 (Published on the occasion of an exhibit of Seymour’s work at West Point, NY, 1974), p. 3.
3. U.S. Military Academy, Cadet Application Papers, No. 284, 1840.
4. Abner Doubleday, Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860–61 (1876; reprint, Spartanburg, SC: The Reprint Company, 1976), p. 22.
5. Detail of this incident is from Truman Seymour, “Memo of a Circumstance of 1860, Fort Moultrie, S.C., Recorded November 2, 1874,” handwritten copy, U.S. Military Academy Library. Also see Doubleday, Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie, pp. 30–31.
6. Doubleday, Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie, p. 22. For details on Foster’s army career and a biographical sketch, see Cullum, Biographical Register, vol. 2, pp. 256–60. Also: W. A. Swanberg, First Blood: The Story of Fort Sumter (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957), p. 5.
7. John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, 10 vols. (New York: Century Co., 1886), vol. 2, p. 439.
8. Abner Doubleday, “From Moultrie to Sumter,” in Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 4 vols. (1887; reprint, Secaucus, NY: Castle, n.d.), vol. 1, p. 43. Also see James Chester, “Inside Sumter in ‘61,” in Battles and Leaders, vol. 1, p. 50; and Samuel Wylie Crawford, The Genesis of the Civil War: The Story of Sumter, 1860–1861 (New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1887), p. 4.
9. U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 70 vols. in 128 parts (1880–1901; reprint, Harrisonburg, PA: Historical Times, 1985), ser. 1, vol. 1, p. 77. (Hereafter, this indispensable multivolume work will be cited as O.R.)
10. Quoted in Crawford, Genesis of the Civil War, p. 6.
11. Moultrie at that time is described in Doubleday, “From Moultrie to Sumter,” p. 40; and in Crawford, The Genesis of the Civil War, p. 6.
12. O.R., ser. 1, vol. 1, p. 5; Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, vol. 2, p. 440.
13. Crawford, The Genesis of the Civil War, pp. 21–23.
14. George Templeton Strong, The Diary of George Templeton Strong, ed. Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas, 4 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1952), vol. 3, p. 95.
15. Crawford, The Genesis of the Civil War, p. 23, pp. 213–14; Doubleday, Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie, p. 18.
16. Doubleday, Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie, pp. 18–19, p. 22.
17. O.R., ser. 1, vol. 1, pp. 72–73.
18. Doubleday, Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie, pp. 41–42.
19. Keyes, Fifty Years’ Observation of Men and Events, pp. 367–68.
20. Paul M. Angle and Earl Schenck Miers, Tragic Years, 1860–1865: A Documentary History of the American Civil War, 2 vols. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), vol. 1, p. 10.
21. Doubleday, Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie, 41.
22. Anderson’s portrait is sketched from Keyes, Fifty Years’ Observation of Men and Events, p. 368; The Battle of Fort Sumter and the First Victory of the Southern Troops (Charleston, SC: Evans & Cogswell, 1861), pp. 29–30; and Theodore Talbot to his mother, 26 November 1860, Theodore Talbot Papers, Documents Division, Library of Congress. Also see Clarence E. E. Stout, “John Gray Foster,” The Granite Monthly 5 (May 1882), p. 260.
23. O.R., ser. 1, vol. 1, pp. 74–76.
24. Ibid., pp. 89–90.
25. Ibid., p. 103. Also see Eba Anderson Lawton, Major Anderson and Fort Sumter, 1861 (New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1911), pp. 3–5.
26. O.R., ser. 1, vol. 1, p. 79.
27. Ibid., p. 78.
28. Doubleday, “From Moultrie to Sumter,” pp. 41–42.
29. O.R. ser. 1, vol. 1, p. 88, p. 93.
30. Ibid., p. 95.
31. Ibid., p. 82.
32. Ibid., pp. 91–92.
33. Doubleday, Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie, p. 31, p. 33; Doubleday, “From Moultrie to Sumter,” p. 43.
34. Foster’s gun incident is described in O.R., ser. 1, vol. 1, pp. 95–101.
35. Quoted in Crawford, The Genesis of the Civil War, p. 100.
36. Doubleday, “From Moultrie to Sumter,” p. 43.
37. O.R., ser. 1, vol. 1, p. 105.
38. Anderson’s account of the move is in Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, vol. 3, p. 47n. Also see John G. Nicolay, The Outbreak of Rebellion (1881; reprint, Wilmington, NC: Broadfoot Publishing Company, 1989), p. 28.
39. Crawford, The Genesis of the Civil War, pp. 102–3.
40. Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, vol. 3, p. 45.
41. Doubleday, Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie, p. 61.
42. Truman Seymour, “An Episode of Fort Sumter: 1860,” handwritten chiefly from the dictation of his wife, Louisa Seymour, 20 October 1874, U.S. Military Academy Library, p. 1.
43. Doubleday, “From Moultrie to Sumter,” p. 44.
44. Ibid., p. 45.
45. “Report of Major General J. G. Foster,” in U.S. Congress, Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, Supplemental Report, 2 vols. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1866), vol. 2, p. 6.
46. Details of the transfer from Moultrie to Sumter are distilled from accounts in Doubleday, “From Moultrie to Sumter,” p. 45; and Nicolay a
nd Hay, Abraham Lincoln, vol. 3, pp. 52–53.
47. Doubleday, “From Moultrie to Sumter,” p. 46n.
48. O.R., ser. 1, vol. 1, p. 2. Mary Doubleday’s activity is described in Doubleday, “From Moultrie to Sumter,” pp. 45–46.
49. Foster’s Report to the Committee on the Conduct of the War, pp. 6–7; Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, vol. 3, p. 55.
50. O.R., ser. 1, vol. 1, p. 124.
51. Seymour, “An Episode of Fort Sumter,” pp. 1–2.
52. O.R., ser. 1, vol. 1, p. 3.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid., p. 90.
55. Ibid., p. 3.
56. Talbot to his mother, 31 December 1860, Talbot Papers.
57. Seymour, “An Episode of Fort Sumter,” unnumbered page.
58. Ibid., p. 2.
59. Seymour’s wanderings in Charleston are recounted in a second unnumbered page in “An Episode of Fort Sumter.”
60. The account of these conjugal visits is also taken largely from Seymour, “An Episode of Fort Sumter,” pp. 2–4. But also see Doubleday, Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie, pp. 95–96, and “From Moultrie to Sumter,” p. 46. The Seymour and Doubleday accounts are remarkably dissimilar. Doubleday’s version has his wife coming over with the boatload of workmen and returning with Mrs. Seymour in the sutler’s boat. Seymour’s account has Mrs. Doubleday coming over in the rowboat with Louisa as well as leaving with her. I have used Doubleday’s version for his wife’s visit and the Seymour version for Louisa’s.
61. Mrs. Anderson’s recruitment of Peter Hart is from Benson J. Lossing, Mathew Brady’s Illustrated History of the Civil War (1912; reprint, New York: Fairfax Press, n.d.), pp. 82–84.
Waiting for the Ball to Begin
1. The scene is set from detail in Doubleday’s two works, Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie, p. 100; and “From Moultrie to Sumter,” p. 46.
2. Captain McGowan’s troubles are recorded in an account in Harper’s Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, 26 January 1861.
3. H. M. Clarkson, “Story of the Star of the West,” Confederate Veteran 21 (May 1913), pp. 235–36.
4. Harper’s Weekly, 26 January 1861.