147. Sgt. Achilles Clark, Twentieth Tenn. Cavalry, to sister, April 14, 1864, near Brownsville, Tenn., quoted in Cimprich and Mainfort, “Fort Pillow Revisited,” 297–99. Though more reticent than Clark, Samuel Caldwell also emphasized “how terrible was the slaughter” at Fort Pillow, and attributed the bloodletting to the fact that black Union soldiers “incensed our men.” See Surgeon Samuel Caldwell, Sixteenth Tenn. Cavalry, to wife, April 15, 1864, near Brownsville, Tenn., quoted in Cimprich and Mainfort, “Fort Pillow Revisited,” 300–01. Troops who heard about Fort Pillow, but did not participate in it, wrote favorably of the incident. Macon Bonner approved of the Fort Pillow affair, expressly because the victims were mainly black, while Thomas Warrick greeted word of the killing of blacks captured at Fort Pillow as “all good news.” See Lt. Macon Bonner, Fortieth N.C. Artillery, to wife, April 21, 1864, Ft. Holmes, N.C., Macon Bonner Papers, SHC; Pvt. Thomas Warrick, Thirty-fourth Ala., to wife, April 18, 1864, in Ga., Thomas Warrick Letters, ADAH.
148. Pvt. Henry Bird, Twelfth Va., to fiancée, August 4, 1864, Petersburg, Va., Bird Family Papers, VHS. For more accounts of the killing of black prisoners at the Crater, see Pvt. Robert Mabry, Sixth Va., to wife, August 1, 1864, trenches around Petersburg, Robert C. Mabry Papers, NCDAH; Pvt. Peter Cross, Seventh N.C., to brother, August 2, 1864, Petersburg, Va., John Wright Family Papers, NCDAH; Pvt. Daniel Abernethy, Eleventh N.C., to wife and father, August 7, 1864, Petersburg, Va., Daniel Abernethy Papers, DU; Pvt. R. P. Allen, Fourth N.C. Cavalry, to wife, August 1, 1864, near Petersburg, Va., R. P. Allen Letters, MOC.
149. Capt. Henry Chambers, Forty-ninth N.C., diary, March 9, 1864, Suffolk, Va., Henry Chambers Papers, NCDAH.
6: “Slavery’s Chain Done Broke at Last”: The Coming of the End
1. Sgt. John N. Keirns, Fifty-first Ohio, to wife and six children, February 1, 1865, near Huntsville, Ala., Tina May Doud Papers, JCHS. The song “Take Your Gun and Go, John,” was written by an anonymous Union soldier in a Maine regiment; John Keirns probably received just the words and not the tune, because he referred to the piece as a “poem” rather than a song.
2. For accounts of the fall of Atlanta, see Albert Castel, Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign, 1864 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1992); McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 774–76; Robert A. Doughty and Ira D. Gruber, The American Civil War: The Emergence of Total Warfare (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1996), ch. 5; and Glatthaar, The March to the Sea and Beyond, 1–10.
3. Capt. Thomas Honnoll, Ninety-ninth Ohio, to friend, September 25, 1864, Decatur, Ga., T. C. Honnoll Papers, KSHS.
4. Chaplain Henry McNeal Turner, First U.S. Colored Troops, to Editor, September 10, 1864, Harrison’s Landing, Va., CR, September 17, 1864, p. 1.
5. Sgt. Horatio Barrington, Fourteenth Ill., to Editor, December 18, 1864, Savannah, Ga., Bloomington Pantagraph, January 7, 1865, p. 1. Barrington wrote the letter weeks later in Savannah, based on his experiences in Atlanta.
6. For the centrality of Lincoln’s election to Union victory, see David Long, The Jewel of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln’s Re-Election and the End of Slavery (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1994); and Zornow, Lincoln and the Party Divided, chs. 14–16.
7. Capt. Thomas Honnoll, Ninety-ninth Ohio, to friend, September 25, 1864, Decatur, Ga., T. C. Honnoll Papers, KSHS.
8. Maj. W. W. Boatright, Seventy-first U.S. Colored Troops, to friend Harper, September 8, 1864, Natchez, Miss., in Crawford Co. (Ill.) Argus, September 22, 1864. Cpl. Charles Harris, 157th New York, also explained that McClellan catered more to soldiers’ “self-interest” than Lincoln did, but that there was no way “any body which has suffered the hardships of a soldier two years could be willing to let every thing that has been accomplished be of no account,” which is what would happen if McClellan won and instituted an “armistis.” See Harris to parents, October 10, 1864, Morris Island, S.C., Charles J. Harris Letters, DU.
9. Lt. Nelson Newton Glazier, Eleventh Vt., to parents, August 31, 1864, hospital, Annapolis, Md., recovering from arm amputation, Nelson Newton Glazier Letters, VTHS. See also Lt. Sam Evans, Fifty-ninth U.S. Colored Troops, to father, October 16, 1864, Memphis, Tenn., Evans Family Papers, OHS; Pvt. George Hudson, One Hundredth Ill., to parents, September 11, 1864, Atlanta, George A. Hudson Collection, PAW, Coll. 138, Reel 54; Pvt. William Kesterson, Invalid Corps (USA), to brother, October 28, 1864, hospital, Springfield, Mo., William H. H. Kesterson Letters, MOHS.
10. Pvt. Oscar Cram, Eleventh Mass., to wife, September 11, 1864, near Petersburg, Va., Oscar Cram Letters, CWMC. See also Capt. Peter Eltinge, 156th N.Y., to brother, September 2, 1864, near Charlestown, Va., Eltinge-Lord Family Papers, DU; Sgt. Edward Griswold, First Conn. Light Artillery, to sister, September 10, 1864, near Petersburg, Va., Edward, Charles, and Joel Griswold Papers, DU.
11. Pvt. George Hannaford, Seventeenth Conn., to wife, October 1864, St. Augustine, Fla., George W. Hannaford Letters, SHSW (typescript of letter also available at CAH). Naval engineer Augustine Sackett echoed Hannaford’s sentiments when he described Republican victories in the October voting states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana as equally “important to the preservation of the union as a great victory in the battlefield.” See 2d. Asst. Engineer Augustine Sackett, U.S. Navy, October 14, 1864, aboard USS Matabesett, Fortress Monroe, Va., Augustine Sackett Letters, CTHS. For analysis of the “October states,” see Long, The Jewel of Liberty, 244–48; and Zornow, Lincoln and the Party Divided, ch. 15.
12. Pvt. John Brobst, Twenty-fifth Wis., to Mary, September 27, 1864, hospital near Atlanta, in Margaret Brobst Roth, ed., Well Mary: Civil War Letters of a Wisconsin Volunteer (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1960), 92–93. Pvt. John Foote agreed that “in [Lincoln’s] hands [the war] will be closed right or not at all.” See Foote to sister, November 10, 1864, near Richmond, John B. Foote Papers, DU.
13. Pvt. Oscar Cram, Eleventh Mass., to wife, September 11, 1864, near Petersburg, Va., Oscar Cram Letters, CWMC.
14. Sgt. Hermon Clarke, 117th N.Y., to father, October 3, 1864, Temple Hall Court House, Va., in Jackson and O’Donnell, Back Home in Oneida, 166. Lifelong Democrat Pvt. William Bean of the 182d Ohio also promised to vote the straight Democratic ticket as his family had always done. See Bean to brother, October 26, 1864, Camp Chase, Ohio, William E. Bean Papers, UMOC.
15. Pvt. Edwin Horton, Fourth Vt., to wife, November 6, 1864, Strasburg, Va., Edwin Horton Letters, VTHS.
16. Sgt. Charles Bates, Fourth U.S. Cavalry, to parents, November 15, 1864, near Nashville, Tenn., Charles Edward Bates Papers, VHS.
17. Sgt. James Taylor, Ninety-third U.S. Colored Troops, to Editor, April 14, 1865, Brashear City, La., CR, May 6, 1865, p. 4.
18. David R. Brown, Thirty-first U.S. Colored Troops, to Editor, November 15, 1864, City Point, Va., A-A, December 16, 1864, p. 2. Many black troops wrote to Lincoln requesting aid for their families, better conditions for soldiers, or clemency. Pvt. Samuel Roosa of the Twentieth U.S. Colored Troops wrote to the president to plead the case of some illiterate black troops accused of violating regulations. They had not been taught the rules and therefore, Roosa hoped to persuade the president, should not be harshly punished for disobeying. See Roosa to President Lincoln, January 24, 1865, Ft. Jefferson, Fla., in Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Black Military Experience, 477–78.
19. Chaplain Henry Turner, First U.S. Colored Troops, to Editor, September 10, 1864, Harrison Landing, Va., CR, September 17, 1864, p. 1. See also another soldier who withheld praise from Lincoln because the president decided only “tardily to do justice” to slaves when emancipation was “forced upon him by the irrepressible conflict of the times.” R.H.B., Third U.S. Colored Troops, to Editor, September 7, 1864, Jacksonville, Fla., CR, September 17, 1864, p. 1.
20. Some states, such as Pennsylvania, had allowed absentee voting by soldiers in the election of 1812, but in 1862 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court prohibited the practice. See Margaret McKelvy Bird and Daniel Crofts, “Soldier Voting in 1864: The Da
vid McKelvy Diary,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 115:3 (July 1991), 373. Many state constitutions specifically barred absentee voting. Josiah Henry Benton, Voting in the Field: A Forgotten Chapter of the Civil War (Boston: privately printed, 1915), surveys each Union state’s constitution and applicable statutes.
21. Cpl. Charles Harris, 157th N.Y., to parents, October 15, 1864, Morris Island, S.C., Charles J. Harris Letters, DU.
22. Sgt. Nathan Parmater, Twenty-ninth Ohio, diary, October 11–12, 1864, near Atlanta, Nathan Parmater Papers, OHS. Parmater described the process by which his regiment conducted its state elections. Most regiments who voted in the field rather than sending ballots home, including Parmater’s, followed similar procedures for the presidential election, though he did not describe the process so fully the second time around. J. Q. A. Campbell’s Iowa regiment voted by a similar process, and Campbell himself served as judge. See Campbell, Fifth Iowa Cavalry, diary, November 8, 1864, near Mammoth Cave, Ky., in Grimsley and Miller, The Union Must Stand, 191.
23. Sgt. Henry Hart, Second Conn. Light Artillery, to wife, November 4, 1864, New Orleans, Henry Hart Letters, EU.
24. Sgt. Henry Hart, Second Conn. Light Artillery, to wife, October 21, 1864, New Orleans, Henry Hart Letters, EU.
25. Sgt. Charles Musser, Twenty-ninth Iowa, to father, November 9, 1864, Little Rock, Ark., in Popchock, Soldier Boy, 160–61. Musser reported the results from several other regiments, as follows. Thirty-third Iowa: Lincoln 431, McClellan 42. Third Iowa Battery: Lincoln 90, McClellan 14. Thirty-sixth Iowa: Lincoln 134, McClellan 6 (its numbers were depleted since many of its men had been taken prisoners of war months earlier); First Iowa Cavalry: Lincoln 480, McClellan 1. Several other regiments voted for Lincoln by wide margins, according to Musser, though he did not always give totals. In the Fortieth Iowa, an overwhelmingly Democratic regiment, Lincoln still beat McClellan by 25 votes.
26. For election results see Long, The Jewel of Liberty, 257–58 and Appendix D, 284–85; McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 804–05; Zornow, Lincoln and the Party Divided, 200–202; and Nevins, The War for the Union, vol. 3, The Organized War, 138–40. In response to the lopsided vote, Democrats cried foul, alleging fraud and bullying of potential Democratic voters, but soldiers (including McClellan supporters) denied that unfair practices or tampering with the results had occurred, and historians have since validated soldiers’ claims. Zornow examines various states where Democrats complained of fraud, and concludes that in some, such as Indiana, vote tampering probably occurred, but not enough to change the outcome dramatically (Lincoln and the Party Divided, 203–204). In The Jewel of Liberty, Long denies that tampering occurred in any meaningful way. McPherson points out that both parties habitually engaged in irregularities, and that “their partisan benefits tended to cancel each other out.” New York Democratic commissioners, for instance, admitted to forging McClellan votes. In all, as McPherson concludes, “the voting of the soldiers in 1864 was about as fair and honest as 19th-century elections generally were, and Lincoln’s majority was probably an accurate reflection of soldier sentiment” (Battle Cry of Freedom, 804–805 and n. 69). Some soldiers heard the charges and responded to them. Charles Tubbs, for instance, assured his wife that rumors of vote selling and other malfeasance were false, since he had seen no evidence of any such thing, even in Washington, D.C. “If there was aney such a thing in the Armey it would be practiced here as every thing that is rackaty is practiced here,” he pointed out. See Tubbs to wife, September 17, 1864, Washington, D.C., C. H. Tubbs Letters, NCDAH.
27. Sgt. Henry Hart, Second Conn. Light Artillery, to wife, November 4, 1864, New Orleans, Henry Hart Letters, EU. Benton contends that only in Maryland did soldiers’ votes make the difference between loss or victory for McClellan (Voting in the Field, 223, 313), while Zornow and Long argue that only in Connecticut and New York did soldiers’ votes provide the difference (Lincoln and the Party Divided, 202; The Jewel of Liberty, 256).
28. Pvt. Chauncey Welton, 103d Ohio, to father, September 19, 1864, Decatur, Ga., Chauncey B. Welton Letters, SHC. See also Cpl. James Beard, 142d N.Y., to brother and sister-in-law, October 23, 1864, before Richmond, James Beard Letters, CWMC, Ser. 2. Henry Riggs of the Ninety-second U.S. Colored Troops urged Democrats to do “as I have done” and “turn with disgust from their own political party” rather than elect a “double-dyed Jeff Davis” like McClellan. See Riggs to Editor, October 3, 1864, Morganza, La., Bloomington Pantagraph, October 19, 1864.
29. Lt. J. Q. A. Campbell, Fifth Iowa Cavalry, diary, November 16, 1864, Nashville, Tenn., in Grimsley and Miller, The Union Must Stand, 193.
30. Pvt. Justus Silliman, Seventeenth Conn., to mother, November 9, 1864, Jacksonville, Fla., in Marcus, A New Canaan Private in the Civil War, 83.
31. Pvt. John Brobst, Twenty-fifth Wis., to Mary, September 27, 1864, near Atlanta, in Roth, Well Mary, 92; Pvt. Wilbur Fisk, Second Vt., to Green Mountain Freeman, April 9, 1865, City Point, Va., in Rosenblatt and Rosenblatt, Hard Marching Every Day, 322–33. For just a few of the many additional examples of soldiers referring to the president as “Uncle” or “Father,” see Pvt. Constant Hanks, Twentieth N.Y. Militia, to mother, September 13, 1863, Va., Constant Hanks Papers, DU; Pvt. Charles Tubbs, Tenth Veteran Reserve Corps, to wife, September 17, 1864, Washington, D.C., C. H. Tubbs Letters, NCDAH; Pvt. Amos Breneman, 203d Pa., to friend, October 25, 1864, near Richmond, Amos Breneman Letters, CWMC, Ser. 2; Pvt. Justus Silliman, Seventeenth Conn., to brother, April 24, 1864, Jacksonville, Fla., in Marcus, A New Canaan Private in the Civil War, 100.
32. Pvt. R. Matthew Perry, Fourteenth Wis., to brother, September 20, 1864, near Atlanta, R. Matthew Perry Letters, SHSW.
33. Many historians have characterized Sherman’s March as an example of total warfare, by which they (and I) do not mean complete, indiscriminate destruction, but rather warfare waged between societies, not merely armies, with the home front as well as the front lines as its battlefield, and with social and political considerations as well as strictly military ones influencing strategic and tactical decisions. The Union Army’s relative restraint in areas less associated with secession, but more ruthless destruction in South Carolina, which was most closely associated with secession, clearly meets this definition. See, for instance, Doughty and Gruber, The American Civil War; The Emergence of Total Warfare, ch. 5; Mark Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War; and Allan Nevins, The War for the Union, vol. 4, The Organized War to Victory (New York: Scribner, 1971), 144–69, 193–94.
34. For analysis of the march from the perspective of soldiers who took part, see Glatthaar, The March to the Sea and Beyond, which emphasizes the veteran character of Sherman’s army, the commitment of the men to the campaign and to the cause of Union and emancipation that they believed it served, and soldiers’ impressions of and interactions with black slaves and southern whites.
35. “Marching Through Georgia,” by Henry Clay Work, 1865.
36. Pvt. Theodore Upson, One Hundredth Ind., diary, February 15, 1865, near Columbia, S.C., in Oscar Osburn Winther, ed., With Sherman to the Sea: The Civil War Letters, Diaries & Reminiscences of Theodore F. Upson (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1943), 136.
37. Cpl. Abial Edwards, Twenty-ninth Maine, to Anna, February 26, 1865, Camp Sheridan, Va., in Kallgren and Crouthamel, Dear Friend Anna, 117. See also Jacob Seibert, Ninety-third Pa., to father, February 24, 1865, in front of Petersburg, Va., Seibert Family Papers, HCWRTC.
38. Sgt. David Blair, Forty-fifth Ohio, to sister, September 29, 1864, Atlanta, David Humphrey Blair Civil War Diary and Letters, CWMC. On October 13, Pvt. Charles Tubbs of the Tenth Veterans Reserve Corps, also wrote that “the constatution as it was looks to me as an utter imposability.” See Tubbs to wife, Washington, D.C., C. H. Tubbs Letters, NCDAH.
39. Capt. Henry Riggs, Ninety-second U.S. Colored Troops, to Editor, October 3, 1864, Morganza, La., Bloomington Pantagraph, October 19, 1864.
40. Pvt. John Foote, 117th N.Y., to sist
er, September 28, 1864, near Petersburg, Va., and November 10, 1864, near Richmond, John B. Foote Papers, DU. For a description of the trials and sacrifices of war as “seeds sown” in the cause of national redemption, see The Guidon, 1:5, December 29, 1864, p. 3, MOHS. The Guidon was the camp paper of the Twelfth Pa. Cavalry.
41. Sgt. Henry Hart, Second Conn. Light Artillery, to wife, October 3, 1864, New Orleans, Henry Hart Letters, EU.
42. Asst. Surgeon John Moore, Twenty-second U.S. Colored Troops, to wife, September 25, 1864, Hanscom’s Landing, Va., James Moore Papers, DU.
43. Grant’s Petersburg Progress, 1:2, April 5, 1865, Petersburg, Va., p. 1, UVA. Grant’s Petersburg Progress was written by a captain and a major in the Army of the Potomac, rather than by enlisted men in a particular regiment, as most camp newspapers were.
44. Chaplain Henry McNeal Turner, First U.S. Colored Troops, to Editor, September 10, 1864, Harrison’s Landing, Va., CR, September 17, 1864, p. 1.
45. Asst. Surgeon John Moore, Twenty-second U.S. Colored Troops, to wife, February 7, 1865, Federal Point, N.C., James Moore Papers, DU. See also Sgt. J. Q. A. Campbell, Fifth Iowa, who committed to his diary the hope that “the doom of slavery may be irrevocably fixed” while “the nation is suffering from its chastisements.” Campbell, diary, November 16, 1864, Nashville, Tenn., in Grimsley and Miller, The Union Must Stand, 193.
46. Lt. Henry Grimes Marshall, Twenty-ninth Conn., to folks at home, November 6, 1864, in the field, Va., Henry Grimes Marshall Papers, Schoff. For emancipation in Maryland, see Barbara Jeanne Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland During the Nineteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 131–35, 142.
47. For more on the Maryland and Missouri state legislatures’ overtures against slavery in 1864–65, as well as soldiers’ votes in favor of emancipation in both states, see Michael Vorenberg, Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 186–87; Benton, Voting in the Field, 46.
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