ON THIS DAY: Monday, Feb. 10, 1862

The giant stirs

Slowly—very slowly—the northern giant in this Civil War is beginning to stir after months of somnolence.

In northwestern Tennessee, Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant continues organizing his advance on Fort Donelson, now two days behind schedule—not for lack of aggressiveness on Grant’s part, but because of weather conditions.

In Washington, though distracted by family illness, President Abraham Lincoln continues to ponder how to get McClellan’s Army of the Potomac on the move. On the other hand, the commander of the Union’s biggest eastern army, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, ponders what to do when—McClellan believes—he is outnumbered by Confederate troops at Manassas, Virginia. If McClellan wants to find a way to get around the Confederates, he wants even more to get around Lincoln and do what he, McClellan, thinks is the way to run a war.

On Johnson’s Island, near Sandusky, Ohio, on the coast of Lake Erie, workmen are completing construction of a prison camp designed especially for officers. At the moment, many Confederate officers and enlisted men and even some civilians who have been captured in the Western Theater, are being held in one corner of Camp Chase, the big Federal training and staging area near Columbus, Ohio. But Federal authorities want to separate officers and their soldiers, thinking enlisted men without their usual leaders will be less apt to cause problems for their captors.

From the winter quarters of the 21^st Ohio in Kentucky, brothers Addison and Alfred Searles write short letters (dated February 10) to their family in Huron County, Ohio. The brothers say they have almost nothing to write about to write about and (in Addison’s words) “think that we will stay here for some time yet.” It’s one boring day after another in this man’s army.

But the brothers are about to be surprised. Apparently, they had finished their letters before another member of the 21^st, Cpl. Robert Caldwell of Company I wrote his, also dated February 10. He writes his father in Elmore, Ohio, how last night, lying on his back in bed and talking with his tent mates before they went to sleep, “tremendous cheering” was heard. “It appeared to be contagious as, the next moment, the 21^st broke out into one long, loud, hearty, ringing cheer.”

Then, “one of the boys” rushed into Caldwell’s tent with the news that the next morning they would strike their tents and start marching. “The boys” weren’t told where they were going, but they will learn soon enough that they are advancing on the big Confederate military base at Bowling Green, Kentucky. Hurrah! “The boys” are eager for action.

And in North Carolina, Brig. Gen Ambrose Burnside’s soldiers win a battle at Elizabeth City and are gaining firm control of a chunk of this Confederate state’s coastal area. Union navy vessels destroy North Carolina’s “Mosquito Fleet” of five small vessels. Having gained this foothold to use as a staging area, the question now is far inland Union forces will go. Will it be possible—as hoped—to attack Richmond, Virginia, from the south?

IT’S COMING SOONER THAN YOU THINK: April 12, 2011—less than 3½ years from now!—will be the 150^th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1861, April 12 was the day Confederates opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

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

For more information about the author and his newest book, please go to http://www.orangefrazer.com/btg

ON THIS DAY: Tuesday, Jan. 28, 1862

Reversal of Fortune

Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant (right), commander of the District of Cairo, returns this morning to his southern Illinois headquarters from a fruitless audience in St. Louis with his immediate superior, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck. Determined to carry the fight to the enemy, Grant wants to lead an assault on Fort Henry, the Confederacy’s gatekeeper on the Tennessee River.

But Grant ran into a stone wall of obstinacy. Not only did Halleck display the extreme cautiousness that would become his hallmark, he met Grant with a lack of enthusiasm akin to McClellan's months earlier. In both cases, Grant’s unjustified reputation as a drunkard may have played a part.

In his Memoirs, Grant would recall of his meeting with Halleck, “I was received with so little cordiality that I perhaps stated the purpose of my visit with less clearness than I might have done, and I had not uttered many sentences before I was cut short as if my plan was preposterous. I returned to Cairo very much crestfallen.”

But in one of the sudden reversals of fortune that will dot the history of the Civil War, Grant gets encouraging news at Cairo: In Washington, President Abraham Lincoln has just issued General War Order No. 1 demanding—not suggesting, as hitherto—that his generals begin moving against the Confederacy. And the force at Cairo is mentioned by name as one of those he expects to get moving.

In the wink of an eye, everything has changed—and Grant knows it. By telegraph, he fires off a terse message to Halleck: “With permission I will take Fort McHenry [Henry] on the Tennessee & hold and establish a large camp there.” Obviously, Grant thinks the shoe is on the other foot now.

Almost simultaneously, Flag Officer Andrew H. Foot, a well-regarded Naval commander attached to Grant’s command, also telegraphs Halleck: “Grant and I are of the opinion that Fort Henry on the Tennessee can be carried with four iron-clad gun-boats and troops….”

Halleck is cornered: Grant is a man with a plan, the esteemed Foote will support it, and the President is demanding action. And so…it will not be long before Grant, until now an obscure Western officer, will suddenly take the spotlight in the Civil War. Stay tuned.

ELSEWHERE IN THE CIVIL WAR: Beginning today, for several days the 1^st Ohio Volunteer Cavalry has been engaged in skirmishing near Greensburg and Lebanon, Kentucky, as it clears the area of Confederate guerrillas. A select and highly trained regiment, the 1^st Ohio will develop an almost legendary reputation during the war. In western Virginia, Capt. Tom Taylor of the 47^th Ohio is so peeved at having received no letters from wife Netta in 20 days that he suggests he might find “nice rebel lasses” and will “need all your matronly care to keep me from temptation.” Netta—whose regular letters have been delayed in the wartime postal system—will be furious when she gets this snarky letter. And at Camp Jefferson in Kentucky, Cpl. Robert Caldwell of the 21^st Ohio sends his sister, Juliet, some samples of hardtack, which he calls “crackers,” to give her friends (“the girls”) at Oberlin, where Juliet is a student. On each of the crackers, Robert has considerately written the name of a girl. Army “crackers” are notoriously hard, but Robert tells Juliet not to worry, as “we are all getting fat on them….This evening, after supper, I intend to place myself outside about a dozen of them.”

IT’S COMING SOONER THAN YOU THINK: April 12, 2011—less than 3½ years from now!—will be the 150^th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1861, April 12 was the day Confederates opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

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

For more information about the author and his newest book, please go to http://www.orangefrazer.com/btg

ON THIS DAY: Saturday, Jan. 25, 1862

“The Astronomer-Soldier”

Robert Caldwell of Elmore, Ohio, is a corporal in Company I, 21^st Ohio Volunteer Infantry, wintering at Camp Jefferson, Kentucky. Bored and lacking any combat experience, Caldwell longs to see some action—but when he does, he is confident that Brig. Gen. Ormsby M. Mitchel of Cincinnati (right) will provide the leadership needed to succeed . (Caldwell’s 21^st Ohio is brigaded with five other regiments, the brigade one of four forming Mitchel’s Third Division of Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio.)

Mitchel is, in a phrase, yet another of the remarkable, colorful men in an army that is full of them. A gifted child, he was raised in Lebanon, Ohio, by a widowed mother, who left him to his books for as long as she could, but finally had to send him to work in a store, at age 12, for 25 cents a week.

Mitchel entered West Point when he was only 15 and graduated in upper third of a class that included Robert E. Lee. After four years in the army, he resigned to become an esteemed professor of mathematics and science at what is now the University of Cincinnati.

Professor Mitchel is one of those high-energy Victorians who could do many different things and do them well. He was a compelling speaker, a design engineer for railroads, and a commander in the Ohio militia. It was astronomy, however, that brought Mitchel his greatest fame. He raised money to build a planetarium, became a popular lecturer on astronomy, and wrote several books on the stars and the planets. In the summer of 1861, he jumped into the war as a brigadier general.

“Gen Mitchel has the confidence of every man in his Division,” Corporal Caldwell wrote home. “You can see him at all times upon his horse riding through the various regts of his command, superintending the drill of his men….This forenoon he took command of the 21st while on battalion drill and put us through several new movements. He gave us great praise, for the promptness and accuracy with which we performed these new and difficult maneuvers. He is a strict disciplinarian and insists upon having everything done in a soldier-like manner.”

The “astronomer-soldier,” as Mitchel came to be known in the army, will rise like a shooting star in the Civil War and fade away as quickly. For an uncommon man, his story will become all too common.

IT’S COMING SOONER THAN YOU THINK: April 12, 2011—less than 3½ years from now!—will be the 150^th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1861, April 12 was the day Confederates opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

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

For more information about the author and his newest book, please go to http://www.orangefrazer.com/btg

ON THIS DAY: Thursday, Jan. 16, 1862

A Sham Battle

Today, Cpl. Robert Caldwell of Elmore, Ohio, settles down to finish a letter to his mother that he began writing yesterday. He only had time that evening to tell her that he now weighs 170 pounds (the hungry times will come later). Then came the last bugle call of the night.

The next morning, the men of the 21^st Ohio and some other regiments in camp at Camp Jefferson in Kentucky donned loaded backpacks and began marching at half past eight..

They were going to intercept an enemy supply train, ran one of the many rumors, but, after marching only a mile, they came to a large field. They were going to have a sham battle! Robert told his mother in some wonderment. Military exercises simulating combat, common practice in the 21^st century, were unusual in the 19^th.

Breathlessly, Robert writes that a company of the 4^th Ohio Cavalry—his neighbors in camp—pretended to attack the infantry from one direction, only to wheel, retreat, and attack from a different direction. Meanwhile, the infantrymen were popping away with guns loaded only with powder.

All the while, artillery pieces, pulled by horses, rushed “here and there wheeling and firing with empty guns, with terrible effect upon the imaginary enemy,” Robert wrote, quite impressed with it all.

Thus the fight raged for upwards of half a day (the young soldier continued), when thinking that the foe had been sufficiently chastised for the present, with tired limbs but fearless hearts we changed our mode of attacks and charged upon our dinner with equal effect, and [then] were ordered back to camp, where we arrived without any further adventure.

Thus terminated our first great fight in this part of Kentucky, I believe our loss consisted of one barrel [of] crackers, nothing more.

After that exciting news, Robert closed with the soldiers’ staple letter-filler, the local weather: cold, rain, one inch of snow, then rain again, meaning the soldiers are living in an ever-deepening mudhole. (Pictured above: an Illinois regiment in their tent near Corinth, Mississippi)

ELSEWHERE IN THE WAR: Confirmed by the Senate only yesterday, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton wastes no time in taking over the War Department with energy, enthusiasm, and little patience for corruption and inefficiency. Stanton discovers that the previous secretary, Silas Cameron, had left him “a rats’ nest” of problems. “We have had no war,” Stanton grumbles. “We have not even been playing war.” Things are going to change very fast. In southern Kentucky, meanwhile, a Confederate force led by Brig. Gen. Felix K. Zollicoffer unwisely camps with their backs to the Cumberland River and facing in the direction of a rumored Federal force led by Brig. Gen. George H. Thomas, a loyalist Virginia and a man Confederates would come to know well, to their regret.

IT’S COMING SOONER THAN YOU THINK: April 12, 2011—less than 3½ years from now!—will be the 150^th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1861, April 12 was the day Confederates opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

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

For more information about the author and his newest book, please go to http://www.orangefrazer.com/btg

ON THIS DAY: Sunday, Dec. 29, 1861

Love Letter

At Camp Chase outside Columbus today, a man who is having one love affair and beginning another writes his wife, Caroline, at their home in Millersburg, Ohio. The writer is Marcus M. Spiegel, a man passionately in love with Caroline, who he had met and married eight years earlier. But Spiegel (pictured here), who is captain of Company C in the newly formed 67^th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, is also falling in love with army life.

“My dear & much beloved wife and children!” Spiegel practically shouts at the beginning of his letter (For clarity, most of the spelling and syntax in these excerpts have been changed.). “Here we have barracks large and commodious….My quarters are prepared with [a] bunk also & [are] as warm as can be….If I could only see you and the children once a day, I would feel as happy as I could wish.

“While I write you I can hear 2 bands playing and the drummers beating. This is a most magnificent day and the guard mounting& dress parade today [were] splendid.”

Spiegel ends by urging his wife not to worry, a soldier’s typical words that are typically ignored. “Farewell, my loves, & remember your ever-loving husband & father,” he concludes.

Spiegel is a Jew in an age of open anti-Semitism, although his winning personality seems to have spared him much of the usual hostility. Still, the feeling is there, if not always spoken. Moreover, Spiegel’s work as a wholesale merchant in Holmes County had not spared him “pecuniary troubles…for the last 3 years.” So the army offers Spiegel a new opportunity to achieve success and esteem.

Eventually, Spiegel’s new love affair will affect his first one. Actions—especially those in war—have consequences.

Col. Marcus Spiegel’s picture appears here through the generosity of his great-great granddaughter, Jean Powers Soman. Colonel and Caroline Spiegel’s story is told in full in A Jewish Colonel in the Civil War, the colonel’s letters edited by Mrs. Soman and Frank L. Byrne.

OTHER OHIOANS TODAY: From Camp Union, Fayetteville, western Virginia, Lt. Col. Rutherford B. Hayes: of the 23^rd Ohio bombards Lucy with rhetorical questions about their newborn son, not yet named, “Does the ‘face of the boy’ indicate the heart of the boy’? Do you love him as much as the others? Do you feel sorry the fourth [son] was not a daughter?” We do not know how Lucy answered, but we can guess.

Also from Camp Union, Col. Eliakim Scammon’s expedition of 5 companies—about half a regiment—marches 25 miles south from Fayetteville to Raleigh (now Beckley), hoping to surprise a camp of sick Confederates further down the road. So far, the Federals have met no opposition nor surprised any Confederates. So it goes.

From Camp Jefferson in Kentucky, Robert Caldwell of the 21^st Ohio, Company I, cheerily writes his mother in Elmore, Ohio, that “We live top top.” The dutiful son assures his mother that his tent and the area around it “are thoroughly policed every morning” for cleanliness and that his company has a wonderful cook, a Mr. Barnes. Caldwell claims the company cook is skillful enough to work in a restaurant, making him a rarity among army cooks.

Another member of the 21^st Ohio is less chipper. Alfred D. Searles, one of two brothers from Fulton County, Ohio, who are enrolled in Company H, complains to his family, “Here in camp…they is so many men and they hurried here by the thousands and the tens of thousands all expecting to be led on to battle and now within a few miles of the enemy we are stopped and commanded to lay here for near 3 months and not a man of us even to our colonels can solve the mystery or even guess what the meaning may be.” Innocent young men like Searles cannot guess what is coming. Before the war is over, the 21^st will have seen all the combat it could ever want, and more.

Creating the mystery in Searles’ mind is Brig. Gen. Don Carlos Buell, commander of the Army of the Ohio. Washington is urging Buell to action, but the slow, stubborn general is secretly waiting for spring so he can attack Nashville and East Tennessee on his own schedule and in his own way. Buell does not realize he has less than a year to prove himself.

ELSEWHERE IN THE CIVIL WAR: Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant has returned from inspecting the troops under his command in the District of Cairo. Grant ordered some tweaking of troop locations, found many loyalist refugees living in a cave, and gathered intelligence about the number and disposition of Confederates in western Kentucky. Grant informs Union command in St. Louis that he also has a spy in Columbus, Kentucky, busily mapping Confederate earthworks and eavesdropping on enemy conversations.

DON'T FORGET: April 12, 2011 marks the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. That's less than 3 1/2 years from now!

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

For more information about the author and his newest book, please go to http://www.orangefrazer.com/btg