ON THIS DAY: Friday, Dec. 27, 1861

Headaches in Camp

During the war’s winter hiatus, many soldiers complain there is nothing to do but “drill, eat, and sleep.” For the officers, however, it’s not that simple. Trying to keep order and maintain morale among thousands of energetic young men who are homesick, bored, and restless is a constant challenge.

At Camp John McLean near Cincinnati, the 75^th Ohio has been slow to fill its ranks. Higher authority has decided to speed things up by merging another partially filled regiment—the 79^th Ohio—into the 75^th. The men of the 79^th come from the vicinity of Athens and the coal-mining region of southeastern Ohio. Like many other Civil War regiments drawn from distinct regions, they have a strong sense of their own identity and oppose losing it to the 75^th.

Sgt. Oscar D. Ladley of the 75^th writes his family that the angry men taken from the 79^th threatened to return home. “They seem dissatisfied since they came down here and threatened to leave last night whether or no, and if we attempted to stop them, they would ‘clean us out’ and then go,” Ladley writes his mother and sisters.

However, Col. Nathaniel C. McLean of the 75^th, son of the Judge John McLean (for whom the camp is named) and a Harvard-trained lawyer, used his formidable powers of persuasion last night to talk the rebels around and, Ladley writes, “I think they are quieted down now.”

At Camp Union, Fayetteville, western Virginia, Lt. Col. Rutherford B. Hayes has a different problem with some men of the 23^rd Ohio. A disagreement arising from gambling arises. (Pictured above: “Gambling in Camp,” by Winslow Homer) Two men from Company C complain two other men misled them. Hayes shows the complainers no sympathy, saying they had allowed themselves to be misused as “stool-pigeons” (he means “decoys”), but he orders the other two men to contribute their ill-gotten gains to the Company C common fund. “It will be used to buy gloves and such other comforts as the Government does not furnish for all the company,” the Solomon-like Hayes pronounces.

IN NATIONAL NEWS: American pick up their newspapers to learn that Confederate envoys Mason and Slidell, forcibly removed from a British ship by the Union navy, are being freed. That defuses an escalating crisis between the Lincoln Administration and Great Britain—much to the disappointment of the Confederacy, which had been hoping the Union would be forced into a two-front war.

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ON THIS DAY: Thursday, Dec. 26, 1861

Too Many Cooks

From Gallipolis, Ohio, where he has paused while traveling with the army paymaster for western Virginia, Capt. Tom Taylor of the 47^th Ohio writes his wife, “Netta,” in Georgetown, Ohio. Yesterday, he tells her, he enjoyed “roast possum and turkey” for Christmas supper. Not so pleasant was the report he passes on to Netta of how bushwhackers in western Virginia murdered two Union couriers. He tells his wife—who had dreaded his going to war—how the bushwhackers had been urged to kill the Union men by a woman who wanted to “dance in their blood.” Why Taylor thought his wife would find this interesting instead of frightening is not known. (Pictured: a bushwhacker or guerrilla fighter drawn by Thomas Nast.)

At Camp Union in Fayetteville, western Virginia, Lt. Col. Rutherford B. Hayes writes in his diary about Colonel Scammon’s plans. Scammon, commander of the 23^rd Ohio, has come up with the idea of sending an expedition nearly 70 miles over muddy roads to surprise and capture an enemy camp of 600 sick men guarded by about a hundred Confederate soldiers. Already thinking like a tactician, the unblooded Hayes has his doubts about Scammon: “He does not seem willing to look the difficulties in the face, and to prepare to meet them.” Another problem: despite the prevailing Unionist sentiment in western Virginia, there are still plenty of Confederate sympathizers lurking in the hills and valleys, so n“surprising” the enemy will be quite a trick indeed.

From Cairo, Illinois, Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, (commander of the District of Southeast Missouri, now called the Department of Cairo) writes Brig. Gen. Don Carlos Buell in Louisville, Kentucky (commander of the Department of the Ohio), describing the boundaries of his own command and asking for a clarification of Buell’s.

Grant commands the military in southern Illinois, southeastern Missouri, and Kentucky west of the Cumberland River, while Buell is responsible for the territory east of the Cumberland. The division of the Western Theater into multiple commands will cause problems until a single commander is put in charge of it all--a clear case of "too many cooks spoiling the broth." Remedying this will not happen any time soon.

Your suggestions, comments, and questions about this blog are always welcome. Address the author: Ohioan@bloodtearsandglory.com

For more information about the author’s book, go to http://www.orangefrazer.com/btg

ON THIS DAY: Wednesday, Dec. 25, 1861

Merry Christmas!

It is Christmas in a divided America, 1861, and everyone tries to make the best of it, some more successfully than others. (Pictured: "The Soldier's dream of Home," by Currier & Ives, ca. 1861-65.)

Lt. Col. Rutherford B. Hayes writes Lucy from Camp Union, Fayetteville, western Virginia: “A merry Christmas to you and the little stranger (I suppose he is a stranger to you no longer)—and to all at home. At this home-happiness time I think of you constantly.”

Hayes dines in the sergeants’ mess of one of the companies of the 23^rd Ohio, sharing in “an eighteen-pound turkey, chickens, pies, pudding, doughnuts, cake, cheese, butter, coffee, and milk, all abundant and of good quality.” Later, in his own quarters, Hayes entertains a dozen officers with oysters and crackers, and retires at 11 p.m.

Sgt. Oscar D. Ladley, stuck with the 75^th Ohio while it fills its ranks at Camp John Mclean near Cincinnati, yearns to go home in Yellow Springs but lacks the money for train fare. “I don’t like [camp life] nor never did,” he grumbles, never mentioning Christmas in his letter home. “It may look romantic to an observer, but to one who has to go through with all the hardships connected with it, it will make him think home in spite of himself.”

Cpl. Robert H. Caldwell and the 21^st Ohio in Kentucky are given Christmas Day as a holiday, free to visit brother soldiers in neighboring camps or explore local curiosities. Caldwell and another soldier elect to explore a large cave about a mile from camp. They spent most of the day investigating the cave’s many rooms, sometimes crawling on their hands and knees, returning to camp “well satisfied” with their excursion.

Another corporal in the 21^st, William Shanks, records in his diary, “We have a good dinner and I go out and take a walk for the first time.”

THE BIG PICTURE: Lincoln’s Cabinet spends four hours, from 10 1.m. to 2 p.m., discussing what to do about the Trent affair. That evening, President Lincoln entertains a number of guests for Christmas dinner, advising one of them afterwards that the Trent affair has been settled satisfactorily.

Your suggestions, comments, and questions are always welcome. Address the author: Ohioan@bloodtearsandglory.com

For more information about the author’s book, go to http://www.orangefrazer.com/btg

ON THIS DAY: Tuesday, Dec. 24, 1861

“I had not the faith”

It is Christmas Eve and across the nation tens of thousands of families must face a Christmas with fathers, sons, husbands, and brothers absent. In army camps, cooks are preparing—in some cases, with limited resources—for a holiday dinner on the morrow. And, at Benton Barracks nears St. Louis, Brig. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman ponders recent events and shares his thoughts.

To his foster father, Sen. Thomas Ewing in Washington, Sherman candidly admits, “I was convinced in Kentucky that I could not guide events, that I either grossly misapprehended them or was unprepared to lead in them. To guide I had not the faith that would inspire success.” He rejects his foster father’s advice to bring a libel suit against the newspapers, preferring to remain silent. He finds no fault with the Lincoln administration’s conduct of the war, but thinks that fighting on Southern ground puts the Union at a great disadvantage.

He also tells Senator Ewing that Maj. Gen. Halleck, his superior officer, has assigned him to duty at Benton Barracks where “a large body of men” await arming and training. (Pictured above: Indiana volunteers arrive at St. Louis.) Presumably, Halleck thinks a training camp is a place where his friend Sherman will not careen out of control.

To his brother John, Cump apologizes “for the stain I may have cast on you all, of my name.” He repeats his belief that the Union is at a disadvantage for standing “in the nature of invaders,” and once again admits, “I have not the faith for a leader.” He still fears that the “House committee” (presumably the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War) “will fix on me more than my share in the Bull Run disaster.”

After explaining he is in charge of drilling and supplying 12,000 men at Benton Barracks, he concludes, “All I ask & hope for is to be allowed to remain in as much obscurity as possible till we see some …hope of ending the war….”

Cump will not get his wish.

Your suggestions, comments, and questions are always welcome. Address the author: Ohioan@bloodtearsandglory.com

For more information about the author’s book, go to http://www.orangefrazer.com/btg

ON THIS DAY: Monday, Dec. 23, 1861

Christmas Comes Early

At dinner time, Lt. Col. Rutherford B. Hayes, who is sequestered with the 23^rd Ohio in Fayetteville, western Virginia, receives a telegram sent from Cincinnati by his brother-in-law, a physician:

Wife and boy doing well. Stranger arrived Saturday, nine o’clock P.M.

The “little stranger,” as the newcomer will be called for a while, is the fourth child and fourth son to Rutherford and Lucy Hayes. Hayes exults to his diary, somewhat curiously:

Good! Very! I preferred a daughter, but in these times when women suffer so much, I am not sure but we ought to rejoice that are girls are boys. What shall I call him?

Quickly, he dashes off a note to Lucy:

Dearest: I am so happy to hear today by telegraph that…”mother and son are doing well.” Darling, I love you so much and have felt so anxious about you. The little fellow, I hope, is healthy and strong. It is best it was not a daughter. These are no times for women….Kiss the boy, yes, “all the boys” for me.

Notes go out as well to Uncle Birchard in Fremont, Ohio, and Rud’s brother-in-law, the physician (“You will of course stay with Lucy until after she is out of all danger.…Get Lucy for me some ring or ‘sich’ thing that she will like—something nice.”

The child will be named Joseph Thompson Hayes. He will live for only 19 months.

He immediately dashes off a note to Lucy:

I am so happy to hear today…that “mother and son are doing well.” Darling, I love you so much and have felt so anxious about you….Kiss the boy, yes, “all the boys” for me.

Other happy notes go off immediately to Uncle Birchard and Rud’s brother-in-law, the doctor. This is a time for happiness in the Hayes family; the time for sorrow will come soon enough.

THE BIG PICTURE: With Great Britain threatening action against the United States (and the Confederacy looking on gleefully), Secretary of State William H. Seward, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Wells, and Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase meet with President Lincoln at the White House to discuss the thorny Trent affair. Influential Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner, a Radical Republican, advises Lincoln to release Confederate envoys Slidell and Mason.

ON THIS DAY: Sunday, Dec. 22, 1861

And the Rains Came

Cpl. Robert Caldwell, 21, youngest son of William and Jane Caldwell of Elmore, Ohio, had worked in his father’s lumber mill before joining the 21^st Ohio, now in Kentucky.. His older brother, William C., serves as a hospital steward with the 72^nd Ohio and their only sister, Juliet, is a student at Oberlin College.

On this Sunday, Corporal Caldwell and the 21^st Ohio, part ofo Buell’s Army of the Ohio, are enduring a rainy day in camp near Leesville, Kentucky. The 21^st Ohio is camped near the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, with eight other regiments within sight, all of which are protected by three batteries of artillery on a hill overlooking the camp.

The day starts badly and gets worse. With the rain descending “in torrents” (Caldwell writes his parents), the company cook—working outdoors—has to “take the rain as it came.” On returning to his tent, Caldwell discovers a stream of water running through it. Racing to get a spade, he furiously enlarges the ditch that had already been dug around the tent, and then notices that “the whole camp was alive with soldiers engaged in the same occupation and…the dirt flew….”

This is only one of many ways in which the young soldiers learn that army life is usually less than glamorous.

THE BIG PICTURE: In Washington, all minds are on the headache du jour: what to do about the Navy’s capture of two Confederate envoys, removed forcibly from a British ship. Britain is furious and threatening war; the Confederacy is delighted at the Union’s discomfiture and is hoping war between the Union and Britain will, in fact, break out. Time is running out for a decision by the Lincoln administration as Britain’s deadline for a solution approaches.

ON THIS DAY: Saturday, Dec. 21, 1861

Bodyguard of Lies

Louisville, Kentucky, is a beehive of Union activity. "Several thousand” Louisville women, reduced to poverty by the war, have been hired as seamstresses for government contractors to turn out blue uniforms. Other Louisville women, serving as volunteers, have in the past two weeks produced 2,370 articles of clothing, 1,630 articles of bedding, 95 “army bags,” 62 bottles of wine, and many other items for the soldiers.

The headquarters of the Army of the Ohio is busy as well. It has been under the direction of Brig. Gen. Don Carlos Buell since last month, when an emotionally exhausted Brig. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman gave up command here and was ordered to St. Louis. Orders and reports flow in and out of Buell’s headquarters as he reorganizes his forces. Occasionally he sends a note to Washington for the Union army’s general-in-chief, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, whom he addresses as “my dear friend.”

Buell and Sherman, both Ohio-born, are two very different men. Sherman is imaginative, lively, emotive and changeable, a man of big ideas and strong opinions; Buell is quiet, aloof, rigid, a master of details and a bureaucrat by temperament. There is one other difference: while Sherman blurted out that he needed 200,000 men to do the job in Kentucky, Buell carefully says he does not “need” more men, but he could use more to go on the offensive. Instead of Sherman’s blunt demands, Buell hints at what he could do if he only had the men. A master of the inter-office memorandum, Buell is not seriously planning the massive drive south rumored by the newspapers and desired by Washington.

And something else: in today’s The New York Times, the paper’s correspondent in Louisville reports that Buell has 110,000 men and soon will have 120,000. Not so. Within two days, Buell will quietly report to Washington that he has 70,000, of which only 50,000 could be called “efficient.” Most of Buell's troops are from Ohio and Indiana.

It looks as if Buell is hoping to keep the enemy at bay with some bluffing. It’s a time-honored military technique, and in the 21^st century we call it “disinformation.”