by Terry Smyth
Of some 120 Australians known to have fought in the American Civil War, the vast majority joined US infantry regiments or the US Navy. Of those, most are listed as having been born in Sydney, with less than a dozen from Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia. The exact birthplace of many veterans is unknown, recorded only as Australia. About 20 New Zealanders also fought in the war, all on the Union side.2
A roll call of Australian Confederates is problematic, but that’s hardly surprising. The lists do not take into account overseas-born Australian residents who took up arms for the South, nor can they include those men who secretly and illegally joined the crew of the Shenandoah, some of them using aliases, and whose fates are shrouded in mystery.
It’s uncertain how many were native-born and how many were overseas-born Australians. This is not unusual. Australia, at that time, was the name of a continent but not of a nation. There was no such thing as an Australian passport, nor a colonial passport, nor even a British passport. Britain had abolished passports for travel within the Empire back in 1826.
Australian colonials, old and new, tended to identify with their ethnic origins first, their colony second, and the continent hardly at all. Thus, they would commonly refer to themselves as say, English, Irish, Scottish or German, even if they had been born in Australia. For example, William Kenyon, of Irish heritage but born in Victoria, is listed on the Shenandoah’s crew register as Irish, presumably because he identified himself as such.
(To add further confusion, many among the crew of the Shenandoah will later hope to avoid the noose for piracy by pretending to be Dixie born and bred.)
And it’s no surprise that so many men find Mr Powell’s vague temptation irresistible. The 1851 Victorian gold rush brought a flood of adventurous and desperate men from other Australian colonies and from overseas. Now, 14 years on, the easily won alluvial gold is running out and the roaring days are fading fast. Yet many of the adventurers and desperados are still here, as are the thousands of Melburnians who fled to the goldfields in the 1850s – leaving the city almost a ghost town – and have now returned with empty pockets and bleak prospects.
The smoke of the Eureka Stockade Rebellion has long since cleared but the wounds are still raw. In 1854, on the Ballarat goldfields, under a flag of the Southern Cross, diggers outraged by the imposition of miner’s licences and government abuses took up arms against the colonial authorities. The diggers had sworn by the Southern Cross ‘to stand truly by each other, and fight to defend our rights and liberties’.3
On Sunday 3 December, a force of redcoats and police troopers laid siege to the stockade. The battle was bitter and bloody, and cost the lives of 22 diggers and six soldiers and police. But while the rebellion was mercilessly put down and its wounded leader, Peter Lalor, and 12 other survivors charged with treason, the spirit of Eureka prevailed. It was surely present at the treason trials of Lalor and the others, when, after only 25 to 40 minutes’ deliberation, and despite all evidence to the contrary, the juries found all 13 men not guilty.
The American writer Mark Twain, after visiting the Ballarat goldfields, would call the rebellion ‘the finest thing in Australian history … It was a revolution small in size but great politically; it was a strike for liberty, a struggle for a principle, a stand against injustice and oppression.’ Comparing the Eureka Rebellion to the standoff between the barons and King John that led to Magna Carta, and the battles of Lexington and Concord that marked the outbreak of the American War of Independence, Twain said, ‘It was another instance of a victory won by a lost battle. It adds an honourable page to history; the people know it and are proud of it. They keep green the memory of the men who fell at Eureka Stockade, and Peter Lalor and his monument.’4
That memory is very green indeed in 1865. It may be that hard times and the spirit of Eureka have kindled in some an emotional attachment to the Confederate cause and empathy with the underdog, but for how many we can only guess. What we do know for sure is that idle hands and broken hearts make ideal fodder for foreign wars, and, for Australians, it wouldn’t be the first time.
Colonial Australia, despite being an outpost of the powerful British Empire, is dogged by insecurity. Britannia rules the waves, but the Mother Country is so very far away. Napoleon has gone but France is still seen as a threat, as is America.
Lingering suspicion of American intentions harks back to the morning of 30 November 1839, when Sydney woke in fright to find a squadron of American warships anchored in the harbour – having slipped in uninvited and unnoticed during the night. The arrival of the American ships, which were not hostile but on a voyage of exploration, set off frantic moves to strengthen coastal defences. In Sydney Harbour, Pinchgut Island, which had been used to isolate troublesome convicts, was fortified in 1841 and renamed Fort Denison.
And then there were the Russians. Many in the young colonies were convinced that the Czar of all the Russias was plotting to extend his reach to Australia, and there had been a series of invasion scares in the first half of the 19th century. Such fears were fuelled by increasingly regular visits by Russian warships to Australian waters, notably the Pacific cruise of a Russian naval fleet in 1854, the year Britain and France entered the Crimean War.
Turkey had gone to war with Russia the previous year, when Russian forces invaded what is now Romania, then under Turkish control. Fearful that Russian expansion would continue its march into Afghanistan and India, upsetting the balance of power, Britain and France entered the fray, which was mostly fought on the Crimean Peninsula and would end in 1856 with Russia defeated.
While a mere handful of Australians (Australian members of British regiments) fought in the Crimean War, public support in the colonies for Britain’s participation in the conflict was at fever pitch. Invasion hysteria, fanned by anti-Russian propaganda, conjured up images of Russian barbarians attacking and occupying Australian cities.
Typical of the enduring rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne, there was debate over which city the invaders would prefer to pillage. Some Melburnians, boasting that the Victorian gold rush had made their city the richest in the world, were hopeful the Russians would be content to plunder the gold from the city’s banks and go away. Other less optimistic souls suspected their worst fears had been realised when their sleep was shattered one night by explosions and rockets’ red glare, and rushed down to Hobson’s Bay to defend their fair city.
‘It threw the city and its suburbs into a state of great excitement,’ The Argus reported. ‘The military in the barracks were under arms for some hours, waiting intelligence and orders, if necessary, to proceed to the scene of action. Thousands of people were hurrying from all directions down the road to Sandridge, determined to see what was up, and by no means inclined to turn tail upon the Russians, even if they were there. Should it ever happen that an enemy should enter our port, the people, if armed, would fight like tigers.’
As it turned out, no Australian tiger had to face the Russian bear. The explosions and rockets were fireworks and guns from a British ship celebrating its release from quarantine. The newspaper added that the excitement was heightened by some ‘young rascals’ moving among the crowd, pretending to be newsboys selling an extra edition of The Argus, shouting, ‘Full particulars of the battle of Melbourne!’5
Although such worries were unfounded, insecurity became ingrained in colonial society. Clinging to the edges of a continent on the far side of the world, Australians were all too aware of their vulnerability. Life as they knew it could change overnight. All it would take was for a hostile man-of-war to sail through the heads.
The 1860s brought another rush to foreign killing fields. During the Maori Wars in New Zealand, the Victorian colonial navy sent the sloop-of-war Victoria – five years later it will be nestled nervously in Hobson’s Bay, moored near the Shenandoah – to support the conflict. The first Australian warship deployed to a foreign war, the Victoria carried out shore bombardments and coastal patrols, and suffered o
ne casualty – a sailor shot dead by friendly fire.
In 1863 and 1864, more than 2,400 Australians, mostly from Victoria, enlisted in militia to fight the Maori. The conflict also involved British regiments based in Australia.
The 1863 Waikato War, fought on the North Island of New Zealand, was the largest campaign in a series of battles history would call the New Zealand Wars. Second only to the American Civil War in the size of opposing forces, it involved 14,000 imperial and colonial troops, and some 4,000 warriors from a confederation of Maori tribes. The Maoris, determined to turn back the tide of land-hungry Europeans driving them from their territories, faced off against an invading force equally determined to prosecute the case for Manifest Destiny.
In August of 1863 – while, in America, Union forces under Ulysses S. Grant were laying siege to Vicksburg, Mississippi – recruiters in Australia for the Waikato War were promising land in New Zealand in exchange for service. For three years’ service, plus pay, recruits would be granted from 50 to 400 acres – depending on rank – of land taken from the Maori. The recruiters were all but trampled in the rush as, in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania, would-be farmers took up the offer. Even though many of them – luckless diggers from the oldfields, townsmen and assorted misfits and adventurers – couldn’t milk a cow to save themselves, the lure of acres for bullets was irresistible. Off they sailed to a foreign war, more as mercenaries than loyal volunteers, and often leaving their wives and families destitute.
Nine months, 1,000 Maori and 700 British and colonial lives later, the Waikato War ended. For the victorious imperial forces it was a Pyrrhic victory. Four million acres of land were seized from the Maori tribes as the price of rebellion, but all that did was to provoke another war, then another and another, and a dispute over land title that would continue – albeit peacefully – into the 21st century.
Of the Australians who fought in the New Zealand Wars, 31 were killed in action. Medals were awarded to veterans who had been under fire, and, arguably, the most decorated Australian was Captain John Phelps, of Sydney, who had served in both the Crimean and New Zealand wars.
Of some 1,500 Australians who settled on confiscated Maori land, most failed to make a go of it. The land offered was of poor quality and the New Zealand Government’s promises of support were never honoured. It was the first and last time Australians would be offered acres for bullets.
For most Australians who fought for the Union in the American Civil War, there is little or no flesh upon the bones of history; most are merely names on a muster roll or a headstone; footnotes in the fortunes of war. Yet there are standout stories to be found, such as that of George Robert Scott.
Born in the Sydney suburb of Punchbowl, in 1846, Scott was the son of a cabinet-maker who, drawn by the California gold rush, took his family to America, joining the thousands of Australians there hoping to strike it rich.
George Scott was just 15 when the Civil War began. A year later, in July 1862, he joined the Union Army, enlisting in the 3rd California Volunteer Infantry. But although Scott had signed on for three years, he deserted after only seven months. In those seven months, Private Scott never once set eyes on a grey uniform or heard the rebel yell. His company was posted to Fort Gaston, in the redwood forests of Northern California, as far from the action as it was possible to be, and ordered to fight not Confederates but Native Americans. Scott saw action in a skirmish at Light Prairie, near Fort Gaston, after which his company was posted to Camp Union, California. It was there, on 21 February 1863, that he stole away and was listed as a deserter.
We can only guess why this 17-year-old soldier decided to risk shame and execution, but it may be because of his regiment’s involvement, a few weeks earlier, in an incident known as the Bear Creek Massacre. On 29 January 1863, in the early hours of a cold winter morning, a detachment of California Volunteers, under Colonel Patrick Edward Connor, attacked the village of Shoshone chief Bear Hunter. Connor, whose several requests to be transferred to the ‘real war’ in the east had been denied, was determined to win military glory by suppressing Indian resistance to invasion by white settlers into what is now Idaho. Crossing the creek, the soldiers charged the village, firing indiscriminately. Bear Hunter and his warriors put up a courageous defence but soon lay dead in the snow, and while the fight could have ended there, Connor let his men run amok. Women were raped and killed, children and infants were bludgeoned to death, lodges were torched and people found sheltering inside were shot and killed, many of them at point-blank range. Almost 500 Shoshone men, women and children died that day. The California Volunteers’ casualties were 14 killed and 49 wounded.
For his role in the massacre, Colonel Connor was decorated and promoted to General. George Scott, meanwhile, made his way safely back home to Australia. He settled in Kempsey, in northern New South Wales, where he married twice, fathered five children, and spent the rest of his days as the respected proprietor of the local newspaper, The Macleay Chronicle.
Another George Scott who fought in the Civil War is better known to history as the bushranger Captain Moonlite (his spelling). The son of an Anglican minister, cultured, handsome and homosexual, Moonlite wasn’t your average bushranger. Born in Rathriland, Ireland, and educated in London, where he qualified as an engineer, he served with Garibaldi’s redshirts in Italy, then with the Waikato Militia during the New Zealand Wars. Wounded in action but dishonourably discharged for malingering, he headed for the California goldfields, joined the Union Army after the Civil War broke out, and – legend has it – turned a dishonest dollar selling confiscated cotton on the black market.
In 1868, Scott turned up in Australia, where, after a short period as a lay preacher in Ballarat, Victoria, he turned to robbery under arms, reinventing himself as Captain Moonlite, leader of an outlaw gang which included his lover, James Nesbitt.
In 1879, during a hold-up at a sheep station near Wagga Wagga, in southern New South Wales, Nesbitt and another gang member were shot and killed in a gun battle with police. A police trooper, Constable Bowen, was also killed, shot down by Moonlite, who was then captured while grieving over Nesbitt’s body. Convicted of Bowen’s murder, Moonlite went to the gallows in January 1880, wearing a ring woven from a lock of his lover’s hair. His request to be buried alongside Nesbitt, at Gundagai, was denied.
There’s a postscript, however. The location of Moonlite’s unmarked grave, in Sydney’s Rookwood Cemetery, was unknown until discovered in 1984 by researcher Roy Parker while searching for graves of American Civil War veterans. In 1995, the bushranger’s dying wish was honoured at last. His remains were exhumed from Sydney and taken to Gundagai, to be buried alongside James Nesbitt.
Of all the tales of Australians who fought for the North, the most intriguing is surely that of Morris Mason Farrar. Born in Sydney, in 1844, to an American father and an Irish mother, he migrated to the United States and settled in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. In 1862, at 18 years old, Morris Farrar joined the Union Army, enlisting as a private in the 53rd Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry for service in the Civil War.
Deployed to Louisiana, the 53rd engaged Confederate General Richard Taylor’s Army of Western Louisiana at the Battle of Fort Bisland, pushed the enemy back after five hours under heavy fire, and was the first Union regiment to plant its flag on the ramparts. The 53rd lost one officer and 13 privates, killed and wounded, in the battle, but Private Morris Farrar wasn’t one of them. Luck was with him.
In pursuit of the retreating Confederates, the men of the 53rd again found themselves under heavy fire during the attack on Port Hudson. Once more, they drove the rebels back, but the surrender of Port Hudson was won at the cost of seven officers and 79 men killed and wounded. Private Morris Farrar wasn’t among them. Luck was still with him.
By the time the 53rd, having done its duty, was ordered back to Massachusetts, met by cheering crowds and mustered out of service, it had lost almost half its 300 officers and men. Private Morris Farrar’s luck had
held out. Again, he was not among the casualties.
The 1865 Massachusetts census listed Farrar as born in New South Wales, Australia, and his occupation as soldier, living in the family home in Fitchburg with his mother, Rosa, and 11-year-old sister, Harriet. The 1870 census found him still in Fitchburg, working at a woollen mill, married to Irish-born Catherine Tierney and with a one-year-old daughter, Alice.
It seems civilian life simply didn’t suit Morris Farrar. Two years later, he gave up his job sharpening tools, kissed his wife and daughter goodbye and leapt into the saddle and into history. On 23 January 1872, he enlisted in the US Seventh Cavalry, Company E, and, in June of 1876, rode with US General George Armstrong Custer into eastern Montana Territory to suppress Native American resistance to white invasion – an expedition that would end at Little Bighorn.
The Battle of the Little Bighorn, commonly known as Custer’s Last Stand, has often been portrayed as a short, sharp engagement but was in fact three separate battles fought over two days between the Seventh Cavalry and combined forces of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. Custer himself and five of the 12 companies of his command – 264 men – were annihilated in the second engagement, on 25 June.
Cut off at the end of a long ridge after fighting a running battle, Custer and his men stood exposed on what would be called Last Stand Hill, with relentless gunfire from the south-east making it impossible to secure a defensive position. According to Native American accounts, a charge from the north-east led by the Lakota leader Crazy Horse caused the troops to panic, some throwing down their weapons as the warriors charged in for the kill. Witnessing Crazy Horse’s charge, a Northern Cheyenne leader reputedly cried, ‘I have never seen anything so brave!’6