Tag Archives: CivilWar

Civil War

Relics

Civil War Relics

Relics

For such a young country, the United States has a lot of history. Just taking into account the American Revolution and the Civil War, we also have a lot of battlefields in the east. Many of these battlefields are still full of relics that enterprising people will go out and find. Sometimes they do it to sell what hey find, sometimes they do it to try to persevere history. For the most part, relic hunting on government-owned land is illegal and some may even question the morality of it. These battlefields are mass grave yards where many hundreds even thousands of people have died.

For collectors there is a draw to these relics. Holding a piece of history in your hand is something beyond words. Stories become real and a sense of magnitude takes over. Guessing how the pieces got to where they were found, who may have touched them, what stories do they hold. Sure, you can go to a museum and see them behind glass, in cases, up on walls, but you can’t touch them or feel them.

Now of course besides the legal issue, you also have the issue of authenticity. Generally of the price is too good to be true, it is. Sometimes though that doesn’t really matter if you need a certain piece for your collection. Price and value are relative in many ways.

Shrapnel

Above is a picture of some pieces from my personal collection. They were supposedly dug from the Seven Pines battlefield in Henrico County Virginia. The battle took place May 31st to June 1st 1862 as part of the Peninsula Campaign during the Civil War.

As you can see they are not cleaned up and only a few pieces are easily recognizable. In the upper left you the broken pieces of an artillery shell (round hollow ball with a fuse that explodes into shrapnel). The Lower left you have a prick, which was used with cannons, once the tube was loaded you would shove the prick into the touch hole to expose the powder. In the upper right is  a nail. The rest appears to be iron banding and other scraps.

Are these really artifacts from a Civil War battlefield? I can not say for certain, but I think they are and that makes it pretty cool to have.

Civil War

As Close As We Can Get: Lincoln’s Masks

Lincoln Death Mask

As Close As We Can Get

Gettysburg is more than a battlefield. It is also the home to a very good museum with a number of fantastic exhibits and artifacts at the visitor center. One artifact worth mention is the plaster mask of President Abraham Lincoln pictured above.

The practice of creating “life” and “death” masks dates far back into antiquity when men of note would allow a mask to be made of their features using plaster. Sometimes done during their life, sometimes not until after they died. These masks are the closest we may ever get to seeing what these men of legend actually looked like.

Lincoln himself had two life masks done . The first in 1860 before becoming president. The second in 1865, just months before his untimely death.  The one pictured above comes from a cast of the 1860 original. It shows a Lincoln, sans beard, before the tolls of politics and war took their toll.

For more information on the masks themselves and the story of their castings visit Abraham Lincoln Online via this link.

Lincoln: Myth or Man?

No matter how you view Lincoln seeing his face, even in plaster, is sobering. Generally considered the best President of the United States he has become more myth than man. In recent years there has been a movement to try to demystify him, to make him more human and flawed. From efforts to paint him as a racist, who only used the issue of slavery as a political tool,  to efforts underway to prove he was homosexual, Lincoln is still a touchstone for controversy.

But seeing that face, as close to reality as you will ever get, shows that he was a man upon which the history of the nation turned on. Standing in front of the exhibit at Gettysburg just adds to the over all feeling of awe at the place.

 

Civil War

The Last Wagon From A Long March

A Civil War Supply Wagon

The Last Wagon

That wagon you see in the picture is special and the last of its kind. If the picture was a little better and a different angle you would see names carved into it. Names of cities and battlefields. Many names that even to this day when people see they will recognize and either smile or grimace. Actually seeing this wagon during the war meant different things to whoever viewed it. For the Union soldier it carried supplies or wounded and represented forward movement and that the war was one step closer to being over. For someone in the Confederacy, seeing that wagon meant one thing. That devil Sherman and his minions had arrived.

Yes, this wagon is the last of those that General Sherman used during his infamous March to the Sea.

The March

After his successful campaign to capture Atlanta from May to September 1864, Sherman started planning his next move. He would send his army from Atlanta to Savannah carving a path of destruction and devastation along the way. The army would leave its supply base and live off the land, in effect it would be on its own behind enemy lines and taking what it needed to survive.

The idea would be to either capture or destroy any and all war materials along the way and to, honestly, terrorizes the civilians and undermine their will to fight. Was it harsh? Yes. Was it immoral and improper? Depends on what side you were on.

What no one can argue is that the march was one of the most famous military campaigns ever. And that wagon in the picture, it was there. Oh the stories I am sure it could tell…

 

 

Book Reviews, Civil War

Book Review: Lincoln’s Lieutenants: The High Command of the Army of the Potomac

 

Lincoln’s Lieutenants: The High Command of the Army of the Potomac

by Stephen W. Sears

 

On paper it should have been easy for the United States of America to put down the rebellion that broke out in April 1861. The North had the population, resources and industrial capacity that the people of the South could only dream of. The first battle, fought at Bull Run, should have been the first battle, but there was one problem that the Union had that almost cost it the war. A lack of military leadership that hamstrung every attempt to put the rebellion down by force. No where was this lack of leadership so apparent as in the Army of the Potomac, the Union Army that was tasked with capturing Richmond and ending the war.

Starting with General McClellan, who loved the army so much he refused to actually have it fight. To General Meade who took command two days before the largest battle ever fought on the continent, the leadership had issue that allowed the Confederates to win almost every major battle in the first few years of the war.

This book by Stephen Sears digs deep into the officer corps of the Army in a way that a general history of the conflict will not. Several times I found myself thinking how a single sentence about a battle would open up into a flurry of blame throwing and general incompetence that other wise would be missed.

As a general example: General Meade ordered an assault on a fortified Confederate position at 6;30pm on a given day. Orders were sent to all his Corps commanders to make the  attack at that time. Where a general history of the battle would say, “the attack did not launch as planned”. In this book you learn that several commanders claimed to not have received there orders, or decided that they were not ready so attacked later, earlier or whatever. Then each blames the other and in the meantime the rebellion continues.

Sears’s cast of characters is wide and varied and he does a good job in making sure you never lose track fo who is who among the officers. Each has their moment, some heroic, some less than but all are heard from.

This book is recommended if you have a general knowledge of the Civil War and are ready to start the deep dive. The focus on the Army of the Potomac means not much is covered in the Western Theater or other areas and that is good. I would love to see the same sort of book done to bring the same level of focus to the other main Armies of the Republic.

As always, you can get a copy of this book by clicking the cover pic above.

Civil War

At A Loss

The surgeons kit above was fairly standard equipment for Civil War doctors. You can see there is not a lot there that is not made for cutting or sawing, that is mainly because that is what a doctor on the battlefield would do most, cut and saw.

It is estimated that over 60,000 battlefield surgeries were done during the war, and of those almost 45,000 were amputations. While it may seem extreme today at the time amputation was done to protect the patient against gangrene which was almost always life threatening. What made it worse was that there was really no anesthetic available, and even if the patient did survive the surgery, infection could always make the entire point moot. Needless to say amputation was something that many soldiers feared.

If whoever the amputation went well and the patient survived the recovery, there was a good chance they would be able to live a very productive life. Even though it was still not as advanced as today, prosthetics, artificial legs and even hands, were available to the men. In fact in the years between 1861 and 1873 over 150 patents were issued for artificial limbs. Both sides during and after the war provided funds to the veterans that needed these devices.

So for many the site of that kit in the photo above being brought out led to outright terror, for most of them it also meant a chance at life.

Civil War

Sic Semper… Oops!

 

We all know the story. April 14th, 1865 the Civil War was all but over and President Lincoln decides (OK, Mary decides) that they need so enjoy a night at the theater. Originally General Grant and his wife we supposed to accompany them, but using many skills I assume he learned on the battle field, Grant was able to get out of going.  Instead it would be Henry Rathbone and his fiance that would accompany the Lincolns to the Ford Theater and “Our American Cousin.”

Joining that night would also be John Wilkes Booth, a famous actor and Southern sympathizer that wanted Lincoln dead. His story goes well beyond the scope of this brief article, but the important thing is that during the play he found himself with unfettered access to the President’s box and the man himself. A small pistol in one hand and a dagger in the other he looked to “avenge” the Confederacy.

Sneaking into the box he moved behind Lincoln and fired his pistol, jumped onto the ledge of the box and by most accounts yelled, “Sic Semper Tyrannis!” and leaps from the box to the stage. It would have been perfect if he had not caught his spur on one of the bunting flags that hung on the outside of the box. That snag of his boot caused him to land awkwardly and severely injury his leg. From that point on the story is well-known.

In the photo above is the flag from the box that Booth snagged his spur on. If not for that flag and the injury that Booth sustained, it is very possible that he may have avoided capture. That makes that relic pretty darn cool.

 

 

 

Civil War

The Sniper Rifle of Artillery

 

The above shell is from a Whitworth Breechloading Rifle a nice piece of lang range artillery. The gun (and consequently the shell) are classified as a 12 pounder, was made of steel and manufactured in England. They saw most of their Civil War service with the Confederate army and approximately 50 were known to be in service.

These guns had exceptional range, up to 10,000 yards and due the fact the barrel was rifled it was incredibly accurate. A 1864 magazine stated that in a test one of these guns fired 10 shots with a deviation of only 5 inches. This kind of accuracy made them incredibly effective in counter-battery fire (against the opponents artillery) and in this regards they were employed almost the same way that a sniper rifle would be deployed by the infantry.

Most of the units in service were imported via Britain through the US Naval blockade of the South, though in 1861 a single battery of the guns was fielded by the US. As effective as these guns were they did come with a number of draw backs.

The ammunition, such as that above, was difficult to manufacture and the cost of importing through the blockade made the gun very expensive to operate. It could not fire the standard ordinance of the day so it would never reach the heights of popularity. The projectile was actually a long bolt that was twisted to conform with the barrel’s rifling, so it was less of a shell and more of dart.

The second draw back had to do with mechanical issues. Originally the gun was designed as a breech-loader meaning that it was loaded from the rear. This method was faster and actually safer for the crews. However many of the guns in service developed issues with the breech as the mechanism jammed. This caused the gun to revert almost back to the muzzle-loading of a standard cannon. This combined with the cost of ammunition meant the Whitworth was doomed to be a footnote in the war’s history.

 

Civil War

Too Tents

During the Civil War, shelter was one of the main concerns for the troops. Rain, cold, heat, any of the elements were just as deadly to the army as the guns of the enemy. The most basic level of shelter for the soldiers was the cotton tent.

For ease of transport the standard issue tent came in two halves with poles so that each man would be responsible for his half of the tent. Designed to be connected at the top, either through grommets or snaps, they would come with other options such as A-frames and front and back pieces.

The half tent in the picture belonged to a union soldier who took the time to inscribe his half of the tent with the battles and campaigns that he had participated in. He saw a lot of action and took part in most of the major engagements of the Atlanta campaign and looks to have actually been used during Sherman’s March to the Sea.

Civil War

Douglas and Lincoln

In the contest for the Illinois Senate in 1858 Stephen A Douglas and Abraham Lincoln faced off in a series of seven debates that went on to become probably the most famous debates in history. At the heart of the debates was the question of the expansion of slavery in the territories of the  United States. Douglas, a Democrat, espoused the idea of Popular Sovereignty. Under this plan the people of the territories would decide themselves if they would form in Free or Slave states. Lincoln, a Republican, stood firm against any expansion of the peculiar institution. These debates, though only for a state seat, would soon become a national phenomenon as both sides followed them intensely.

The issue of what to do about slavery in the United States had been haunting the country since its very founding. Was it protected by the Constitution? Could the courts decide the issue? Would the growing divide between the sections of the country develop into an irreconcilable split? Time and time again the question was kicked down the road by the government by a series of compromises that were intended to keep the balance of power between Free and Slave states.

The debates between Lincoln and Douglas did not start the Civil War, the country was already well on that path. What they did do was set the stage for what would be the last gasp of the attempts to resolve the issue peaceably. Douglas won the debates and his re-election to the Senate. In the process though, because he equivocated on the issue lost the support of the Southern Democrats which would lead to his failed presidential run a few years later. Lincoln lost the debates, but enjoyed an increased national profile that would lead him to win the next presidential election.

And that led directly to the Civil War…

Civil War, Movie Reviews

Movie Review: Glory

Glory (Mastered in 4K) (Single-Disc Blu-ray + Ultra Violet Digital Copy)

Glory

No list of Civil War movies is complete with out Glory. Few would argue that it is one of the best of the genre, even if the history is a little loosey goosey. The actors are all A List and put everything they had into their roles.

Glory tells the story of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, one of the first all black Union regiments of the Civil War. Made up of freemen and runaways this group of people wanted a chance to fight for their beliefs. This at a time when it was assumed that all men of color were cowards who would run rather than fight when the time came. Up to this point these men were simply used as manual labor by the army. That rarely changed when they started to wear the uniform. Commanded by white officers their lot didn’t really change that much. The 54th was very lucky that the man chosen to lead them, Robert Gould Shaw, saw them their brave souls.

Matthew Broderick has had many unforgettable roles in his life, but as Shaw he helped to bring to life a unique person at a unique time. With such heavy weights as Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington and Carey Elewes (yes, I put him up there!) the story is expertly brought to life and even when i saw it twenty years ago made me want to learn more about this unit and these men.

So yes, one of the best Civil War movies, but also one with very few actual battle scenes. This only adds to the fabric of the movie. You as the viewer had the chance to build up the same anticipation as the members of the 54th. Both wanting to see the action and both in awe when the big battle finally dawns. The final battle at Ft. Wagner is one of the most visceral and heartbreaking scenes of any military movie. I would say spoilers, but, c’mon we all know how the war ends.

If you have not seen it, watch it. If you have not seen it in a while, watch it again. It holds up and should be held up.

 

As always, clicking on the image will take you to Amazon where you can buy this fantastic movie.