"Roundheads and Ramblings"
Civil War
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Posted on Tuesday, May 15, 2012 9:57 AM
What fascinated me in Sunday's Civil War notes was the mention of a fight at Fort Pillow. The remains of the fort are just a few miles up the road from my house, but I was unaware of the actions that took place there in 1862. Here's a summary of what I learned.
At
the start of 1862 the line that separated Union and Confederate territory ran
along the Kentucky-Tennessee border, reaching the Mississippi at Columbus.
However, after the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson by U. S. Grant in
February 1862, the Confederates had to abandon that line in favor of one that
that ran through Tennessee. The western end of that line was located at New
Madrid and Island No. 10. However, even these new positions were dangerously
exposed to Union attack. At the end of February a force of over 20,000 men
under General John Pope marched overland to capture the two strongholds. On 3
March Pope began a siege of New Madrid, on the northern bank of the river. On
13 March the Confederate defenders of the town pulled back to Island No. 10,
abandoning the town.
Pope, with 20,000 troops launched his attack on 7 April. Two gunboats
bombarded the Confederate positions at Watson’s Landing, south of New Madrid,
and west of Island No. 10. Pope’s troops landed soon after. Trapped by greatly
superior forces, the Confederate defenders of Island No. 10 had no choice but
to surrender.
The capture of Island No. 10 was a key moment in opening of the
Mississippi. Only one more position, Fort Pillow, a Confederate fort on the
Tennessee bank of the Mississippi River. remained between the Union fleets and
Memphis. On the same day that Island No. 10 fell, U.S. Grant launched his
counterattack at Shiloh,
forcing General Beauregard to retreat to Corinth and destroying any chances
that Fort Pillow might be held. After
a Union army expedition against the fort was abandoned, the burden of capturing
the position fell to the Western Flotilla, a collection of ironclads and
gunboats.
The Confederate defenders of the Mississippi had constructed their own
fleet of rams. On 10 May, those rams launched a surprise attack on the Union
fleet attacking Fort Pillow. The Union fleet’s response was not well
coordinated. Two of their ironclads were badly damaged by ramming attacks,
before the Confederate fleet retreated into the shelter of Fort Pillow’s guns.
The Confederates soon evacuated Fort Pillow itself. The main Confederate
army had been forced to retreat from Corinth. This left the fort exposed to an
attack from the rear, and so Gen. Beauregard
ordered the garrison to leave, after destroying the fort. During the night of 4
June they carried out that order, before withdrawing towards Memphis. The next
morning the Union fleet occupied the site of the fort.
After the evacuation of Fort Pillow, the next Union target was Memphis.
On 6 June, the Union’s Western Flotilla, reinforced by their own rams, fought
and defeated the Confederate fleet at Memphis, and
captured the city. Fort Pillow remained in use. It returned to prominence later
in the war, when Confederate cavalry under Nathan Bedford Forrest captured the
fort, and massacred dozens of black soldiers (Fort Pillow Massacre, 12 April
1864).
This is a summary of two articles found at
http://www.historyofwar.org/americancivilwar/index.html: Rickard,
J (14 August 2007), Battle of Island No. 10, 7 April 1862 ,
http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/battles_island_10.html Rickard, J (23 February 2007), Battle of Fort Pillow, 10 May 1862 ,
http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/battles_fort_pillow_1862.html
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Posted on Monday, May 14, 2012 11:43 AM
In response to a reader's comment yesterday, here's a summary of how a gentleman could hire a substitute during the Civil War. It is borrowed with permission from "Articles Exploring the Civil War."
When
the Civil War began, there was no shortage of able bodied men who
volunteered for service in both the U.S. Army and the Confederate Army.
Eager to show their patriotism, convinced that their cause would be
victorious in a matter of months at the most, men gathered in cities
and towns throughout America to form volunteer regiments, clamoring to
assist in the war effort.
However, by late 1862 and early 1863, the patriotic fervor that had
characterized the war effort early on was wearing thin in both the
Confederacy and the United States, and finding men to replenish the
armies of both nations was becoming difficult. Those who wanted to serve
were already engaged; those who did not had either refused to serve,
or, having volunteered and found the experience to be much more arduous
than it seemed at first, had deserted or refused to re-enlist. This
necessitated instituting a draft to choose men for service, and, in
both the North and the South, the practice of hiring substitutes to
serve in the place of those who were called and did not want to serve.
Long before the United States began the draft process, the Confederate Congress had allowed men to forgo service in
the Confederate Army if they met certain occupational criteria –
criteria that mostly exempted owners of large plantations or other
enterprises, leading to the phrase “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight”
to describe the Confederate war effort. Southern men who did not meet
exemption criteria but whom were otherwise able to fight often hired
substitutes to serve for them. Yet by 1863, exemptions were outlawed in
the Confederacy, where men willing to fight were becoming too scarce
to exempt from service. This practice was just beginning, however, its
travel north.
When the draft laws – known as the Enrollment Act – were first
placed on the books in the United States in 1863, they allowed for two
methods for avoiding the draft – substitution or commutation. A man who
found his name called in the draft lotteries that chose men for
mandatory service could either pay a commutation fee of $300, which
exempted him from service during this draft lottery, but not
necessarily for future draft lotteries, or he could provide a
substitute, which would exempt him from service throughout the duration
of the war.
With the Enrollment Act, the Civil War truly began to be known as a
rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight throughout the entire nation. The
$300 commutation fee was an enormous sum of money for most city
laborers or rural farmers, and the cost of hiring a substitute was even
higher, often reaching $1000 or more.
In small towns where the potential loss of their entire population
of able-bodied men became an imminent possibility, taxes and other
means were raised in order to pay commutation fees, and, as commutation
was outlawed, substitutes. These “bounties,” as the fees were called,
would pay substitutes in lieu of townsmen.
The practice of hiring substitutes for military service took hold
quickly in the North, becoming much more widespread than it had ever
been in the South. For one thing, there was a much larger pool of men to
draw from; immigrants that flowed into the ports of the North, even in
a time of war, provided a large number of the substitutes hired by
those who did not wish to serve. As the duration of the war lengthened,
African-American soldiers, who’d thus far been only nominally accepted
by the U.S. Army as viable soldiers, also became part of the pool of
potential substitutes; many of the recruitment posters from the time
explicitly solicit African-Americans for substitution.
Although the hiring of substitutes seems mercenary, and in many
cases, resulted in the desertion of the substitute, many who went to
war as hired men went because they were unable to enlist through the
regular channels. This included the recent immigrants who were anxious
to fight for their new country, and, importantly, the African-Americans
who found going to war as substitutes the only way to fight for their
freedom. For these men, the war was indeed a “rich man’s war and a poor
man’s fight,” but from the perspective that poor men were more willing
to fight for the possibilities they saw in their country.
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Posted on Sunday, May 13, 2012 3:13 PM
In recognition of the Civil War Sesquicentennial, "Civil War-Era
Memories" features excerpts from The Memphis Daily Appeal of 150 years
ago.
May 7, 1862
Corinth. - Scouting parties report the enemy is digging
entrenchments, laying plank roads and building bridges over the swamps
and ditches as he advances. General Beauregard ...made a speech in which
he said he hoped soon to be in possession of some northern cities to
compensate for the loss of New Orleans.
May 8, 1862
WANTED. A GENTLEMAN wishes a SUBSTITUTE, with the privilege of going
into cavalry, infantry or artillery. Will pay a liberal price.
The Poor and the Erring. - Struck with the need there is for a place
that should prove an asylum for the wretched and a place of reform for
the erring, the good ladies of this city, in April, 1860, organized the
society of the "Home for the Homeless." Since then they have contributed
and expended a large amount of money, and performed a good deal of
downright hard work...
May 12, 1862
There is no longer any choice about taking Confederate money. In
compliance with orders from General Beauregard, Colonel Rosser,
commander of the post here, has ordered the provost marshal to arrest
anyone who refuses to accept Confederate bills in their ordinary
business transactions and all banks and corporations must accept the
currency.
May 13, 1862
The Gunboat Fight at Fort Pillow. - We fought the enemy with four of
our lightest boats, one hour and thirty minutes. ...our sharpshooters
literally mowed them down. We fought side by side with the enemy, and
not one shot passed through our cotton breastworks. But although our
upper works are riddled, we are all ready to butt again. We will be able
to hold the river.
W. C. C.
Street railroads - What a blessing it would be to have street
railroads in the city at this moment, that we might ride along in
comfortable cars ...protected from the clouds of dust that annoy the
weary plodder on foot on soil covered sidewalks.
Compiled by Rosemary Nelms and Jan Smith, The Commercial Appeal News Library
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Posted on Monday, May 07, 2012 2:58 PM
In recognition of the Civil War Sesquicentennial, "Civil War-Era
Memories" features excerpts from The Memphis Daily Appeal of 150 years
ago.
May 1, 1862 BY TELEGRAPH / Corinth - Forrest's cavalry met the enemy just between
Monterey and Purdy roads. After a conflict in the commencement of which
our cavalry had been partially surprised, losing a few men . . . two
pieces of the Washington artillery came to their relief and drove the
enemy to the rear with loss to them.
May 4, 1862 Municipal Election - On the 26th of June, seven weeks from Thursday
next, our regular annual city election takes place. Up to this time, not
a single person has announced himself as a candidate for the place of
Mayor, or for any other office.
The fall of New Orleans has virtually opened the navigation of the
Mississippi river to the enemy's gunboats, from its mouth to its source.
Forts Pillow and Wright can now serve only as temporary defenses to
delay and not altogether impede the approach of the enemy from above.
May 5, 1862 In Pants. -- Among the parties introduced in court yesterday to the
Recorder was Miss Lydia Angela, who, having become disgusted with
crinoline, and especially with the frightful outspreading, skyscraping,
flower-bed-containing fashionable bonnet, had put on a neat coat and
pants, a tidy white stand up collar and a felt hat, and was parading the
town unencumbered by flowing garments or head covering monstrosity. For
thus indulging her dislikes, and entering her practical protest against
the fashionable bonnet she repudiates, Lydia was compelled to pay six
dollars to the city treasury.
May 6, 1862 Federal Intelligence from Memphis -- There are 5000 bales of cotton,
7000 bbls. sugar and 20,000 bbls. molasses, now lying upon the levee, of
which the cotton will be burned, and the sugar and molasses rolled into
the river on the approach of the Federal forces. The citizens and
newspapers are opposed to burning the city, but soldiers and country
people favor it. |
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Posted on Thursday, May 03, 2012 1:50 PM
This week we will celebrate the 187th birthday of Laura Matilda Town, who just happens to be the main character in my next book, The Road to Frogmore. Laura was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on May 3, 1825, the middle child in a large family; she had a brother and two sisters who were older than she was, and a brother and two sisters who were younger. Her mother died when Laura was nine--a tragedy that left its mark on all of her children, and particularly on Laura. As she admits at one point in the book, she always felt responsible for her mother's death. Maybe, if she had just been a better child, she thought, her mother wouldn't have tried to give birth to a new baby.
Laura grew up to be an unconventional woman. She was a Unitarian in an era of evangelical fervor. She studied to be a doctor, when women doctors were still a rarity. She refused to marry, in an age when every woman was expected to become a dutiful wife. Instead, she set up her own household with her lifelong companion, Miss Ellen Murray. But nothing she did was more outrageous than her decision to travel to South Carolina in the middle of the Civil War so that she could bring medical care and education to the slaves who were just learning that they were going to be free.
Her efforts on behalf of the people she came to know on St. Helena Island did not stop when the war was over. She felt responsible for all the evils of slavery, which was not surprising, given her character, and she refused to abandon the people she had come to love. Instead, she and Ellen bought a former plantation right there on the island, and built a school financed entirely from Laura's own inheritance. The two women adopted several black children and raised them as their own. They continued to teach for the rest of their lives. They provided an education that was the equivalent to (or perhaps better than) the state-provided education of white children. Laura died on St. Helena Island in 1901, and Ellen followed her in 1908.
Their school, however, outlived them. Known first as The Penn School, so named in honor of the Freedmen's Aid Society of Pennsylvania, it has evolved today into The Penn Center, whose purpose is the preservation of the Gullah language and heritage of the people of St. Helena Island. This year, you will note, is the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Penn School, and the Penn Center will be honoring Miss Towne and her amazing contributions to the welfare of the people she helped to transform from slaves into citizens. So happy birthday, Laura. We're still trying to live up to your ideals.
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