What This Cruel War Was Over

by Chandra Manning

  70. Chaplain William Gibson, Forty-fifth Pa., to children, March 25, 1862, Otter Island, S.C., William J. Gibson Letters, HCWRTC.

  71. Lt. George Landrum, Second Ohio, to sister, April 23, 1862, Huntsville, Ala., George W. Landrum Letters, WRHS.

  72. Pvt. Constant Hanks, Twentieth N.Y. Militia, to wife, May 13, 1862, Camp Stink near Fredericksburg, Va., Constant Hanks Papers, DU.

  73. Lt. P. V. Wise, First Wis., to hometown paper, April 4, 1862, Columbia, Tenn., Quiner Papers, Reel 1, vol. 2, p. 154.

  74. Cpl. Rufus Kinsley, Eighth Vt., diary, August 25, 1862, New Orleans, Rufus Kinsley Diary, VTHS.

  75. “R.,” First Wis., to hometown paper, April 21, 1862, Mt. Pleasant, Tenn., Quiner Papers, Reel 1, vol. 2, pp. 159–60.

  76. Pvt. Constant Hanks, Twentieth N.Y. Militia, to wife, May 1, 1862, Fredericksburg, Va., Constant Hanks Papers, DU; The Illinois Fifty-Second, 1:1, January 15, 1862, Stewartsville, Mo., p. 3, ISHL.

  77. Pvt. James H. Hougland, First Ind. Cavalry, diary, January 24, 1862, Pilot Knob, Mo., James H. Hougland Diary, JCHS.

  78. Lt. Charles Brewster, Tenth Mass., to mother, March 5, 1862, Washington, D.C., in David W. Blight, ed., When This Cruel War Is Over: The Civil War Letters of Charles Harvey Brewster (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992), 92. Officers in many regiments were slower to embrace emancipation than enlisted men. Their reluctance could have arisen from several sources. More likely to come from the elite of society than enlisted men were, some officers may have distrusted disruptions to hierarchy. Officers may also have had to face more directly the practical complications of emancipation, such as what to do about the bands of freedmen and freedwomen who entered camps or tried to join in on marches. Gen. Henry Halleck, for example, fretted about the military burden that freedpeople would impose (see McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 498). Enlisted men themselves sometimes, especially in 1863 and later, grumbled that officers dragged their feet more than enlisted men because it was enlisted men who bore the brunt of the war, and who therefore were quickest to champion steps to end it.

  79. Congress ended slavery in the District of Columbia in April 1862. West Virginia’s state constitutional convention came within one vote of enacting gradual emancipation on May 23, 1862, and submitted a state constitution to Congress without mention of emancipation. Congress added emancipation as a condition of admission, and West Virginians accepted the condition in December 1862. West Virginia entered the Union on July 4,1863. See Richard Orr Curry, A House Divided: Statehood Politics and the Copperhead Movement in West Virginia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994); and McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 297–304.

  80. The Second Confiscation Act was signed into law on July 17, 1862. See “An Act to Suppress Insurrection to Punish Treason and Rebellion to Seize and Confiscate Property and for Other Purposes,” July 17, 1862, U.S. Statutes at Large, 12: 589–92. For more on the Second Confiscation Act, see Siddali, From Property to Person, esp. ch. 6 and the Conclusion.

  81. Pvt. George Mowry, Seventh Kans. Cavalry, to sister, July 22, 1862, near Corinth, Miss., Webster Moses Letters and Diaries, KSHS.

  82. Lt. P. V. Wise, First Wis., to hometown paper, May 1, 1862, Mt. Pleasant, Tenn., Quiner Papers, Reel 1, vol. 2, pp. 161–62. Wise’s celebration regarding West Virginia was a little premature, since West Virginia did not complete its emancipation process for almost a year, but he was sure he saw the direction the new state was heading.

  83. Sgt. Henry Hubble, Seventy-sixth N.Y. Militia, to father, May 22, 1862, Edisto Island, S.C., Henry Hubble Papers, NYHS.

  84. “Boone,” First Wis., to the Sentinel, January 3, 1862, Munfordsville, Ky., Quiner Papers, Reel 1, vol. 2, p. 137.

  85. Pvt. Phillip Hacker, Fifth Mich., to father, April 17, 1862, Yorktown, Va., Hacker Brothers Papers, Schoff.

  86. Pvt. Adin Ballou, Tenth Maine, to parents, November 7, 1862, Camp Berlin, Md., Adin Ballou Papers, ISHL.

  87. Pvt. Roland Bowen, Fifteenth Mass., to mother, July 19, 1862, near Harrison’s Landing, Va., in Coco, From Ball’s Bluff to Gettysburg, 115–16.

  88. Pvt. Leigh Webber, First Kans., to Miss Brown, August 30, 1862, Gibson Co., Tenn.; and Leigh Webber to Brown family, July 24, 1862, Gibson Co., Tenn., John S. Brown Family Papers, Reel 2, KSHS.

  89. Pvt. Edwin Wentworth, Thirty-seventh Mass., to father, September 17, 1862, Arlington, Va., Edwin O. Wentworth Papers, LC; “Marion,” First Wis., to Daily Wisconsin, May 1, 1862, Mount Pleasant, Tenn., Quiner Papers, Reel 1, vol. 2, p. 162.

  90. Pvt. Constant Hanks, Twentieth N.Y. Militia, to mother, August 8, 1862, Fredericksburg, Va., Constant Hanks Papers, DU.

  91. Cpl. James Jessee, Eighth Ill., diary, August 16, 1862, Jackson, Tenn., James Jessee Diary, KU.

  92. Lt. P. V. Wise, First Wis., to Wisconsin State Journal, January 20, 1862, Camp Wood, Ky., Quiner Papers, Reel 1, vol. 2, pp. 139–40. See also Pvt. J, First Wis., to Times (in Wisconsin), March 18, 1862, Nashville, Quiner Papers, Reel 1, vol. 2, p. 150.

  93. Sgt. Major Elisha Hunt Rhodes, Second R.I., diary, May 20, 1862, Gaines Mills, Va., in Robert Hunt Rhodes, ed., All for the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes (New York: Orion, 1991), 66.

  94. Pvt. Byron Strong, Twenty-fourth N.Y., to family, April 22, 1862, Falmouth, Va., Byron Strong Papers, NYSL. See also Cpl. Newton Perkins, Thirteenth Conn., to parents, May 3, 1862, Ship Island, Miss., Montgomery Family Papers, LC.

  95. Pvt. “M.,” First Wis., to Times, March 23, 1862, Nashville, Tenn., Quiner Papers, Reel 1, vol. 2, p. 151.

  96. Pvt. Leigh Webber, First Kans., to Brown family, July 11, 1862, Gibson Co., Tenn., John S. Brown Family Papers, Reel 2, KSHS.

  97. Pvt. James Miller, 111th Pa., to brother, August 17, 1862, near Culpeper, Va., Miller Brothers Papers, Schoff.

  98. Pvt. Constant Hanks, Twentieth N.Y. Militia, to wife, April 14, 1862, Hospital, Washington, D.C., Constant Hanks Papers, DU.

  99. Lt. George Landrum, Second Ohio, to sister, April 23, 1862, Huntsville, Ala., George W. Landrum Letters, WRHS.

  100. Capt. William Dunham, Thirty-sixth Ohio, to wife, June 3, 1862, Meadow Bluffs, Va., William Dunham Letters, CWMC.

  101. “Marion,” First Wis., to Daily Wisconsin, May 1, 1862, Mt. Pleasant, Tenn., Quiner Papers, Reel 1, vol. 2, p. 162.

  102. Pvt. Lewis Jones, Seventy-ninth Pa., to his wife, March 12, 1862, near Nashville, Tenn., Lewis Jones Letters, CWMC.

  103. Capt. William Dunham, Thirty-sixth Ohio, to wife, January 14, 1862, Summersville, Va., William Dunham Letters, CWMC.

  104. Sgt. Cyrus Boyd, Fifteenth Iowa, “Sketches of Lives,” in the back of his diary, vol. 1, which he kept in 1862, mainly in Tenn., Cyrus F. Boyd Collection, KCPL.

  3: “Kingdom Coming in the Year of Jubilo”: Revolution and Resistance

  1. The dream disturbed Harrison so deeply that he wrote about it to his parents, describing it in detail and explaining how much it upset him, even though he could not imagine that his Aunt Polly would ever allow such a scene to take place in her home. Lt. James Harrison, Fifteenth Ark., to parents, January 13, 1863, Grenada, Miss., James M. Harrison Letters, UAR.

  2. Pvt. Charles Tubbs, Twenty-seventh Mass., to wife, May 18, 1863, Newbern, N.C.,C. H. Tubbs Letters, NCDAH.

  3. “Resolutions adopted by the 102d Ill. in camp,” transmitted by Cpl. Stephen Fleharty to the Chicago Times, Chicago Tribune, Galesburg Democrat, Knox Republican, Aledo Record, Monmouth Atlas, Keithsburg Observer, Rock Island Argus, and Cambridge Chronicle, March 17, 1863, Tenn., in Philip J. Reyburn and Terry L. Wilson, eds., “Jottings from Dixie”: The Civil War Dispatches of Sergeant Major Stephen F. Fleharty, U.S.A. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999), 11–12. The Rock Island Argus refused to print the resolutions, which caused Fleharty to stop corresponding with that newspaper.

  4. Pvt. Leigh Webber, First Kans., to Brown Family, July 24, 1862, Gibson Co., Tenn., John S. Brown Letters, Reel 2, KSHS.

  5. Pvt. Thomas Covert, Sixt
h Ohio Cavalry, to wife, January 11, 1863, Stafford Co., Va., Thomas Covert Papers, WRHS. In Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), Garry Wills makes the eloquent and persuasive case that in the 272 words of the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln revolutionized the relationship between the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the American nation. By writing that each listener to the address “was having his or her intellectual pocket picked” (38), Wills depicts Lincoln as ahead of the public in his new understanding of a nation that must reform rather than merely preserve itself, and he may well have been ahead of the bulk of the civilian population. In contrast, soldiers’ words in late 1862 and 1863, months ahead of the Gettysburg Address, show that Lincoln was not ahead of much of the rank and file in his vision of the Union transformed.

  6. Capt. Amos Hostetter, Thirty-fourth Ill., to sister and brother-in-law, January 29, 1863, Murfreesboro, Tenn., ISHL. Orra Bailey agreed that “God is punishing this nation for letting this great sin to exist amongst us.” See Pvt. Orra Bailey, Seventh Conn., to wife, February 16, 1863, Fernandina, Fla., Orra B. Bailey Papers, PAW, Coll. 10, Reel 2.

  7. Pvt. Orra Bailey, Seventh Conn., to wife, February 16, 1863, Fernandina, Fla., Orra B. Bailey Papers, PAW, Coll. 10, Reel 2.

  8. Surgeon Thomas Hawley, 111th Ill., to parents, January 17, 1863, LaGrange, Tenn., Thomas S. Hawley Paper, MOHS.

  9. Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858, in Basler, Collected Works of Lincoln, 2:461.

  10. See Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic.

  11. For a long time, popular assumptions about soldiers’ resistance to the Emancipation Proclamation have gone largely unchallenged by scholarship. Even Allan Guelzo’s recent book Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004) repeats the received wisdom about the proclamation nearly “triggering a military coup d’état by General George McClellan and the Army of the Potomac” (6, 187–89). This claim inaccurately conflates McClellan’s views with those of ordinary soldiers, who expressed much different sentiments, but very few of whose writings Guelzo cites.

  Many other key works on the Emancipation Proclamation dedicate their attention to aspects other than soldiers’ reactions. John Hope Franklin’s The Emancipation Proclamation (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1963) examines the creation of the document and its impact on the war, but concludes that “it is not possible to know the prevailing reaction of the average soldier” (127), and speculates that the ordinary soldier’s reaction was probably “not very important anyway,” as long as he spread the news of the proclamation to slaves in the South (128). Louis Gerteis in From Contraband to Freedman (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1973) assesses official union policy toward former slaves, and evaluates its impact on postwar conditions for African Americans, but does not examine soldiers’ responses to the proclamation. In “From Preliminary to Final Emancipation Proclamation: The First Hundred Days,” Journal of Negro History 48:4 (October 1963), 260–76, Roland McConnell notes the proclamation as a turning point for both Union and Confederate armies, but devotes little attention to soldiers’ responses.

  Studies of soldiers often discuss soldiers’ views of slavery, but generally do so over the course of the war as a whole, rather than scrutinize opinions at any one time. James McPherson finds a significant degree of Union support for emancipation and explains its origins sensitively in Battle Cry of Freedom and For Cause and Comrades. McPherson does devote a little space to soldiers’ reactions to the proclamation, finding a broad array of opinion in the Union rank and file. He notes that the proclamation “intensified a morale crisis in Union armies” (123), but also argues that a significant portion of the troops endorsed the proclamation, mainly on utilitarian grounds. Reid Mitchell offers a brief but balanced assessment, writing that when the proclamation “made the war an antislavery war, some soldiers were jubilant, others horrified, and still more accepted the war’s transformation with troubled minds” (Civil War Soldiers, 126). Useful as the insights of McPherson and Mitchell are, they have thus far made little dent in the popular view; each year students come into my class confident in the assumption that Union soldiers hated emancipation.

  12. See, for instance, Bell I. Wiley, The Life of Billy Yank; and Wiley, “Billy Yank and the Black Folk,” Journal of Negro History 36:1 (January 1952), 25–52.

  13. The most thoroughgoing treatise on racism among Union soldiers is Leon Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York: Knopf, 1979). Bell Wiley lays heavy emphasis on what he calls “an enormous amount of antipathy toward Negroes” in “Billy Yank and the Black Folk” (35). The Life of Billy Yank also recounts anecdotes of soldier animosity and even cruelty toward blacks. Litwack never addresses soldiers’ responses to the proclamation, and Wiley does so with only two fleeting sentences. One asserts that “the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation aroused opponents of a ‘Negro War’ to the highest level of bitterness” (Billy Yank, 42). The other suggests that the proclamation had an uplifting effect on Union morale in the long term by ennobling the northern cause, but exerted a dispiriting influence in the short run of January 1863 (Billy Yank, 281).

  14. Frank Klement, “Midwestern Opposition to Lincoln’s Emancipation Policy,” Journal of Negro History 49:3 (July 1964), 169–83, examines the negative response of Democratic newspapers to the Emancipation Proclamation, and links that response to deep-rooted midwestern racial prejudice. W. Sherman Jackson’s “Emancipation, Negrophobia, and Civil War Politics in Ohio,” Journal of Negro History 65:3 (July 1980), 250–60, shows opposition among Ohio civilians and state government to the Emancipation Proclamation based on antiblack attitudes and fears of “amalgamation,” but indicates that the opposition had faded by the 1863 gubernatorial election. Other works demonstrate northern racism, but show that such racism did not necessarily lead to opposition to emancipation. Eugene Berwanger’s The Frontier Against Slavery: Western Anti-Negro Prejudice and the Slavery Extension Controversy (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1967) makes antiblack feeling among Midwesterners clear, but also shows how that feeling could also lead to opposition to the institution of slavery, since the absence of slavery meant the absence of black slaves. In Free but Not Equal: The Midwest and the Negro During the Civil War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), V. Jacque Voegeli convincingly details racism among Midwesterners, but also shows that, though most midwestern civilians opposed the Emancipation Proclamation at first, racial prejudice often coexisted with support for the proclamation, and that condescending attitudes did not always preclude favor for vigorous antislavery policies. Neither Jackson, Berwanger, nor Voegeli addresses soldiers’ views of the proclamation. T. Harry Williams briefly discusses soldiers and the proclamation in “Voters in Blue: The Citizen Soldiers of the Civil War,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 31:2 (September 1944), 187–204. He portrays the proclamation as a source of much discussion, but does not characterize the discussion as pro- or antiproclamation. He does reveal that Copperhead newspapers in strongly Democratic southern Illinois circulated fabricated (or at least highly exaggerated) reports that Illinois soldiers mutinied or deserted in response to the proclamation, but notes that such reports had little basis in fact.

  15. Pvt. Dayton Flint, Fifteenth N.J., to father, January 27, 1863, near White Oak Church, Va., Dayton Flint Letters, CWMC, Ser. 2.

  16. Lt. Charles Brewster, Tenth Mass., to mother, November 5, 1862, near Uniontown, Va., in Blight, When This Cruel War Is Over, 189.

  17. Lt. Benjamin Ashenfelter, Thirty-fifth Pa., to mother, November 12, 1862, near Rappahannock Station, Va., Benjamin Ashenfelter Letters, HCWRTC.

  18. Sgt. John Babb, Fifth Md., to mother, December 18, 1862, Harpers Ferry, Va., John D. Babb Family Papers, EU.

  19. Cpl. Adam Muezenberger, Twenty-sixth Wis., to wife, February 16, 1863, between Stafford Courthouse and Brooks Station, Va., Adam Muezenberger Letters, SHSW.<
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  20. Sgt. Thomas Smith, Sixth Pa. Cavalry, to brother, May 8, 1863, near Chancellorsville, Va., in Eric J. Wittenberg, ed., “We Have It Damn Hard Out Here”: The Civil War Letters of Sergeant Thomas W. Smith, 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1999), 88.

  21. Pvt. Charles Musser, Twenty-ninth Iowa, to father, February 3, 1863, near Helena, Ark., in Barry Popchock, ed., Soldier Boy: The Civil War Letters of Charles O. Musser, 29th Iowa (Iowa City: Iowa University Press, 1995), 28, 25. Just as desertion had become a problem for Confederates in 1862, it plagued the Union Army in 1863. While most historians regard its figures as too high, Ella Lonn’s Desertion During the Civil War remains the most extensive treatment of the topic. Lonn estimates that as many as 25 percent of Union troops were improperly absent from the Army of the Potomac on January 26, 1863. In the West, there were about half as many unaccounted-for soldiers. Despite these high figures, Lonn regards most 1863 absences as temporary (some men left and returned; others had been captured and were later exchanged or paroled), and shows that as 1863 progressed, desertion and straggling dramatically declined in the Union Army. See Lonn, Desertions During the Civil War, 145–46, 152, and Tables 3 and 5 in the Appendix. Desertion rates varied by region. Lonn reveals comparatively high rates for Illinois and Indiana as well as Wisconsin, and reports “the height of the Copperhead sympathy in 1863” as a time when “absenteeism” was especially “brazen” among Indiana and Illinois troops (152, 204).

  22. Pvt. Dayton Flint, Fifteenth N.J., to father, January 27, 1863, near White Oak Church, Va., Dayton Flint Letters, CWMC, Ser. 2.

  23. Pvt. Freidrich Ledergarber, Twelfth Mo., to uncle, September 2, 1862, Helena, Ark., Engleman-Kircher Papers, ISHL.

  24. Lt. Joseph Trego, Third Kans. Cavalry, to wife, September 30, 1862, Helena, Ark., Trego Collection, KSHS.

  25. Cpl. Elijah Penny, Fourth N.Y. Artillery, to wife, November 30, 1862, Penny Family Papers, NYSL.