Across the Divide: Union Soldiers View the Northern Home Front 9780814760178

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Across the Divide

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Across the Divide Union Soldiers View the Northern Home Front

Steven J. Ramold

a NEW YORK UNIVERSIT Y PRESS New York and London

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York and London www.nyupress.org © 2013 by New York University All rights reserved References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ramold, Steven J. Across the divide : Union soldiers view the northern home front / Steven J. Ramold. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8147-2919-9 (cl : acid-free paper) ISBN 978-0-8147-6017-8 (ebook) ISBN 978-0-8147-6037-6 (ebook) 1. United States. Army—History—Civil War, 1861-1865. 2. United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865—Social aspects. 3. Soldiers—United States—Social conditions—19th century. 4. Civil-military relations—United States—History—19th century. 5. Northeastern States— Social conditions—19th century. I. Title. E491.R358 2013 973.7’4—dc23 2012045596 New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books. Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Paula

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Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction 1. “Such a Dirty Set of Creatures”: The Divide between Union Soldiers and Civilians

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2. “A Land of All Men and No Women”: Soldiers and the Gender Divide

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3. “This Is an Abolition War”: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Purpose of War

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4. “A Sin to Join the Army”: The Debate over Conscription

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5. “The Ranting of the Black-Hearted Villains”: Soldiers and the Anti-War Movement

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6. “The Sky of Our Political Horizon”: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln

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Epilogue

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Notes Bibliography Index About the Author

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Acknowledgments

A number of people have made this book possible, and their contributions are deeply appreciated. From Eastern Michigan University, I would like to thank the Provost’s Office for providing a Faculty Research Fellowship that granted a semester of release time to complete the original draft of the manuscript. Several members of the Department of History & Philosophy also deserve a great deal of thanks, especially Department Head Kate Mehuron for the department’s generous research support, and two colleagues, John McCurdy and Richard Nation, for reading and commenting on various portions of the original draft. A number of librarians and archivists also deserve mention for their generous assistance, especially Jeff Flannery at the Library of Congress and Don Pfanz at the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. Lastly, my wife Paula deserves the biggest thanks of all, for her constant support, encouragement, and proofreading skills.

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Introduction

“The people up North do not know what war is,” John Brobst, a Union Army private from Wisconsin, wrote a friend. “If they were to come down here, they would soon find out the horror of war.”1 Brobst spoke for many Union soldiers during the Civil War who held views of their own families, communities, and home states that defy the traditional picture of national unity based on their perception that civilians did not comprehend what it meant to be a Union soldier. Stressed by the demands of combat, often frustrated by the lack of success, and burdened by the hardships of army life, many Union soldiers adopted attitudes and opinions about various facets of the war quite different from those of civilians, positions often elucidated in their letters to family members. Soldiers who, as an army, roundly supported President Abraham Lincoln perceived members of his Democratic opposition as enemy adversaries. Soldiers became irate about civilian actions that failed to support wartime measures of which the army approved, or who engaged in activities the army perceived as against its interest. Some of the disgruntlement came in the form of lack of support, whether real or imagined, for soldiers by those at home. “Those who complain of the war the most,” Private Wilber Fisk wrote, “are generally those who have suffered the least,” and few Union soldiers would have disagreed with him.2 Union soldiers left their homes expecting to fight their Confederate enemies, but clashes with family and communities at home emerged unexpectedly. The issues that divided soldiers and the Union home front were numerous, complex, and long-lasting. While some issues emerged only during certain periods of the war, others caused friction for the duration of the war. Several themes emerge when considering the perception held by Union soldiers of home communities. First, soldiers tended to lash out at things about which they could not immediately do anything. Soldiers at the front, unable to return home, felt frustrated at their inability to influence events. Consequently, their only recourse was to encourage certain courses of >>

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and communities by long distances. For most young men, military service created the first opportunity to leave their hometowns and undergo new experiences. The early war excitement induced many men to volunteer as soldiers, but recruits soon found their new lives much different from their old lives. Military existence proved very different than anything the volunteers anticipated, and the separation from home became something many soldiers came to regret. Soldiers left behind families, and often their spouses had to fend for themselves. The stress of separation became only worse as the war, so optimistically estimated at only a few weeks in 1861, stretched into months and years. Soldiers matured, changed, and evolved over time, and wartime separation usually meant young recruits were quite different when they returned as veterans at the end of their service. Compounding the emotional difficulties of the physical divide was the experience divide, as soldiers believed civilians often simply did not understand or comprehend their wartime experiences. Civilians, soldiers complained, had no concept of the risks, constraints, and difficulties of soldier life. They grumbled that civilians did not recognize that soldiers had a different mindset and separate priorities than those unfamiliar with military life. Private William Bentley summed up the lack of understanding when he tried to explain to his family how “a soldier, when he enters the Army, almost loses his Individuality and becomes a very small portion of the great machine.”3 Even more difficult, soldiers struggled to make civilians who were relatively safe in their homes comprehend the stress of living under constant threat of death, illness, or serious injury. Civilians certainly worried about the physical well-being of their relatives and loved ones in the army, but soldiers often believed their families equated the difficulties and hardships of the civilian home front with the deadly business of being a soldier. Such dissonance might not have occurred except for a communication divide. Soldiers and civilians had only limited means to convey their thoughts, opinions, and ideas, primarily through letters and newspapers. Both methods, however, had limitations that prevented a closing of the communication gap between the army and Northern civilians. Newspapers held a bias for one political party or the other, slanting the news into pro- or antiAbraham Lincoln rhetoric that skewed the progress of the war or the collective attitudes of a community. The absence of modern journalistic standards meant that newspapers became less a forum for public debate and more a clearinghouse for random tidbits of information, with rumors and rabid editorials substituting for accurate information. Letters exchanged between soldiers and civilians were not an entirely clear conduit. Positive letters from home were always welcome, but less optimistic content exacerbated the

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whose firsthand experiences with slaves and slave-owners shaped a more diverse debate among them. In addition to the anti-abolitionist element of the army, soldiers divided themselves into those who wished only limited abolition for the slaves and those who favored full emancipation of the slaves by granting rights as well as freedom. As another element of the racial divide, opinions on the intelligence and ability of the former slaves determined allegiance to the abolition or emancipation camps. The experience of fighting in the South and viewing slavery firsthand either reinforced prewar dedication to abolition or anti-abolition, or caused a change of heart. Shift of opinion happened in each direction, as sympathy made abolitionists or war-weariness turned anti-slavery soldiers against their prewar beliefs. The emancipation debate also directly fueled the political divide. Accustomed to the traditional rights of citizens in peacetime, Northern civilians were not inclined to accept changes to their political and procedural rights in wartime. Although acknowledging the military crisis of the Civil War, citizens expected the government to engage in normal discourse and process when it came to political decisions, a position the soldiers did not share. Asserting they did not have the luxury of equivocating on key political issues, soldiers demanded clear and decisive action on the part of the Lincoln administration and state governments. Any less, they believed, threatened their lives, prolonged the bloodshed, or threatened to make the outcome of the war meaningless. The different perceptions clashed most directly over the crucial political decisions coming out of Washington, D.C. As the war continued, civilian disenchantment with Lincoln’s performance as President rose dramatically, especially in the aftermath of controversial and divisive actions like the Emancipation Proclamation and the establishment of compulsory military service. Disenchantment turned into outright resistance in the form of anti-draft organizations, riots, and efforts to deny Lincoln a second term. Soldiers, viewing the Northern resistance though the experience divide, perceived Lincoln’s actions quite differently. Although some soldiers experienced defeatism that led them to support anti-war measures, the vast majority of the army viewed Lincoln as sharing their determination to win the war at all costs. Denouncing Northern opposition as unpatriotic and treasonous, Union soldiers defended their side of the political divide by suppressing Northern dissent where possible, declaring their support for Lincoln’s policies, and actively promoting Lincoln’s reelection bid. Ensconced in different situations and outlooks, Union soldiers struggled to communicate with those they left behind. Through often unreliable communications, soldiers tried to describe and explain their experiences during wartime. As the hardships of the war took their toll, however, soldiers

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occupation duty. “How the civilized home folks will ever be able to live with them after the war is, I think, something of a question. If we don’t degenerate into a nation of thieves, t’will not be for lack of the example set by a fair sized portion of our army. Do you remember that I used to write that a man would no sooner lose his morality in the army than at home? I now respectfully beg to recall the remark.”4 For most, the loss of prewar morals was the fault of the war, an attitude that absolved soldiers of personal responsibility. “War is a horrible thing,” Private John Follmer realized. “It makes men heartless, brutal, and in many instances sinks out of sight all higher and nobler manhood.”5 Instead of excusing the shift in conduct, other more conscientious soldiers recognized that simple explanations did not absolve them of amoral behavior. “Many a man does that here that he would be utterly ashamed to do at home,” a New York soldier detected, “and excuses himself by saying that others do it or that it is customary in the Army to do it. But that is no excuse . . . it is worse than no excuse at all.”6 Reflecting upon the impact of combat and army life, some veterans feared that they could never readjust to civilian life and that the change in their persona was permanent. Although he sometimes pondered returning home when his enlistment ended in 1864, Isaac Abraham predicted he would reenlist, admitting “I expect I would be lost in civil life.”7 Others feared the change in them made it impossible to pick up their lives where they left off. “To-day makes four years soldiering for me,” a thoughtful veteran pondered, “It is a terrible waste of time for me to have to make a start in life yet . . . I have almost a dread of being a citizen.”8 Many soldiers never did adjust. Private Herman White took a long time to settle after the war, moving from town to town in search of work, his sleep plagued by “dreams of war & fighting.”9 An indicator of changing and hardening attitudes amongst veterans was their declining acceptance of traditional social mores. Manifesting a willingness to ignore conventional conduct, soldiers began to think and act in a manner that shocked the sensibilities of their families at home. Thus, while confessing his love for his wife, Corporal Leander Davis did not dwell upon it in his letters. “Love and war don’t go well together,” he wrote to her. “My business is killing instead of talking love.”10 John Holahan, surrendering his traditional values, wrote “My virtues and vices must correspond to that of my fellows. I must lie to the rebels, steal from the rebels, and kill rebels— Uncle Sam making vicarious atonement for these sins.”11 Responding to his wife’s query if he looked the same as the photograph taken when he left for the war, John Brobst replied he looked the same, but “only a little more fierce perhaps . . . after hunting men and helping to kill them for three years.” Brobst also confessed that he and his comrades were not the same innocent

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across a flat for some ways and climb a bank 6 to 10 feet high. Cale was very anxious to have a fight. Oh, he’s a blood-thirsty wretch.”19 Commenting on the “utmost barbarity and vindictiveness” of his comrades, Private William Bradbury claimed “the 9th Ohio Regiment boasts that none of their men ever took any prisoners.”20 In response to his sister’s letter of when to expect him home, Private Eli Lilly delayed his response because “I want to kill another rebel, then I will Be ready to Come home.”21 Often on the receiving end of violence, soldiers took little notice of the death around them. In civilian life, a corpse or a funeral elicited deep emotional responses, but amongst the vast casualties of the Civil War, such niceties disappeared. “Nothing special happening,” Private Evan Davis wrote in his diary, “than one of Co. H shooting (killing) his brother.”22 Captain George Hugunin and a comrade, searching for somewhere to sit for a meal, “looked around and close by us were two of our dead boys close together so we sat on one and used the other for a table.” Thinking back on his callous behavior, Hugunin joked, “suppose our folks could drop in and see us eating—do you think it would take away their appetite? . . . I don’t believe they would sit down and eat with us on this table.”23 Inured to the sight of death, a Pennsylvania private observed a hasty funeral for a dead soldier: as “the grave is dug, four men carry the corpse . . . in a blanket, and thus it is buried without coffin, and without ceremony.”24 This was not just the case with strangers. Confessing that the death of even one of the best men in the regiment earned nothing more than to “talk about him . . . for a day or two and then forget all about him,” Lawrence Van Alstyne understood what only a year in the army had done to harden him, revealing “two years more and we will be murdering in cold blood.”25 After admitting such hardening of their own outlooks on the war, it should be no surprise that soldiers took a blunt line toward even Northern civilians when the two groups came into contact. After dealing with a lethal enemy on the frontlines, soldiers saw little need to alter their behavior around civilians, and their crude and violent conduct was the civilian world’s first introduction to what hardening did to veteran soldiers. An argument between civilians and members of the 39th New York in Washington, D.C., escalated into a brawl. With no officers present, the brawl turned into a riot that damaged several civilian homes in the neighborhood. When members of the 76th Ohio became rowdy in a local theater, local police “undertook to suppress their applause and hilarity” and only the intercession of their officers prevented a “first class riot.” In two separate occasions, Wisconsin troops rioted (in one instance, while being reviewed by their governor) because of late pay and substandard rations. In 1862, the 3rd Minnesota, campaigning on

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soldiers adopted the mantle of protectors of the American identity and caretakers of the nation’s future. In accepting the burden, soldiers believed civilians should recognize the importance of their struggle and celebrate it, as the soldiers’ struggle was by extension the nation’s struggle.32 From a narrower local view, soldiers also represented their states and communities, and reflected the loyalty of their places of origin. Communities made up of loyal citizens announced their support for the Union by providing soldiers and material support to the army, and soldiers keenly felt the burden to uphold the honor and reputation of their state and community by fighting honorably and avoiding the stigma of failure. The civilian component of the state/ community perspective was, again from the soldier’s point of view, complete support for the soldier in the field. States and communities needed to reiterate their support for the war by politically backing the prosecution of the war and providing for the soldiers’ families at home. Lastly, there was the personal family view of the war, the perspective most important to the individual soldier. Men enlisted in the Union Army for any number of reasons: patriotism, youthful adventure, financial gain, or to avoid compulsory conscription. But regardless of the motivation, soldiers expected their families to be a source of strength as they confronted the often harsh and lethal reality of soldier life. Union men expected their families to carry on without them, bearing the burdens of civilian life just as soldiers bore the yoke of military life. They also expected political, financial, and economic support from families at home, but more than anything, they expected emotional support. Family members who complained of separation, economic privation, and physical hardship found little sympathy among their relatives in the army, who faced all of those troubles in addition to the load of national expectation and the prospect of possible death. Overall, soldiers did not expect to be celebrated, but they did anticipate understanding of their tasks, reinforcement from their institutions, and sympathy for their sacrifice. For many Union soldiers, however, these expectations clashed with the realities of a nation at war. Soldiers found, on the one hand, civilians who manifested a grateful appreciation of their effort and, on the other, citizens with their own interpretation of who carried the burdens of war. When encountering examples of positive reinforcement, soldiers reveled in the attention. Passing through New York City, Private Alfred Bellard of the 5th New Jersey met a man whose nephew also served in the 5th. Taken to a local hotel, Bellard was “treated to drinks and cigars, and was introduced to all hands as a soldier from his nephew’s Regt.”33 On his way home to recover after a prisoner exchange freed him from the notorious Andersonville POW camp, Charlie Mosher found himself on a train without a ticket or money.

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William Sherman claimed that “Cincinnati furnishes more contraband goods than Charleston and has done more to prolong the war than the State of South Carolina. Not a merchant there but would sell salt, bacon, powder and lead, if they can make money by it. I have partially stopped this and hear their complaints.”38 The perception of southern Ohio had not changed by 1865. Passing through the area with his regiment, William Bentley and his comrades encountered “several young ladies . . . with baskets of nice eatables,” but “greenbacks were essential to obtain them.” Dejected, Bentley surmised, “I am afraid that a great many of the Ohio boys left their native state feeling the patriotism of the citizens of the north was composed in a great part of gas, which is a cheap method of showing their feelings toward those who are fighting for them.” Bentley, resenting the lack of charity, guessed “perhaps if Mr. [Confederate General John Bell] Hood or [Confederate General Nathan Bedford] Forrest had found their way across the Ohio river and we had come to protect them, they might have acted differently, but who cares, we don’t ask any favors of them.”39 Civilians expected non-interference with their lives and business, but soldiers expected the same in return. Unlike the civilian business of making money, the soldiers’ business was fighting, killing, and winning the war, a much more lethal enterprise. A soldier who interfered with a civilian’s pursuits led to the loss of money, but a civilian who failed to support the army led to the loss of lives. Thus, soldiers came to view the lack of civilian enthusiasm and sustainment as a risk to their own well-being. Such behavior reeked of treason, and Union soldiers identified weak civilian resolve with concurrence with the Confederate cause, thereby making civilians an equivalent enemy. “If our friends at home join hands with the citizen rebels here and advocate their cause,” Wilbur Fisk warned, “they will expect to receive the same regard from the soldiers that we give these; and that is just what we are obliged to give them and no more.”40 Private Jacob Bechtel was even more ominous. He looked forward to returning home, as the “traitors of whom I am acquainted with will be remembered after this little fuss is ended.” Telling his wife that “Every Union soldier has his traitor friend picked out” for retribution, he continued to mention that “if those young men only knew the result of acting the traitor to their country they would not act so, [for] it will follow them to their graves.”41 Other soldiers already knew whom they intended to target. Responding angrily to a letter from a local man forwarded to him by his wife, Private Henry Heisler retorted, “If I can get home this winter, I’ll give him a fun lesson on ‘who we are fighting for.’ If I ever meet him it will be a sorry time for him. I will make him come before my face and if he dares to say anything to me I’ll tear his insides out and if I can’t do it with my hands I can find something else to do it

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them blow after I get home, I’m sick of them.”48 Private James Miller agreed with Bentley. “I do hope that some of the grumblers in the Country will have to shoulder their guns and take the chances of a soldier life,” he wrote, “and I think that when they march through . . . the rain and sleep in the mud and . . . see their comrades shot down by their sides . . . they would not find so much fault with the government.”49 Emphasizing the ignorance of civilians who knew nothing of battle and its consequences, Union soldiers criticized those who did not share the risks of battle with them in the few times the opportunity presented itself. The Confederate Army only operated on Northern soil on a few occasions and even then for only brief periods. After the Union Army repulsed a Confederate advance, soldier accounts depict an army offended by the lack of civilian support during and after the battle. Civilians left the fighting up to the army, but soldiers engaged in dire combat believed the local citizens did nothing to defend their homes or thank the soldiers afterwards. The Union victory at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 generated many such soldier responses. James Dunn scornfully wrote of the city’s residents “who did not lift a hand to defend their homes but slink away out of sight,” only to overcharge men for fresh bread after the battle. Dunn also castigated the town of York for paying a levy of $28,000 to the Confederates, calling them “cowardly skunks.”50 Dunn was not the only soldier angered by the local residents’ entrepreneurial attitude. “After all we have sacrificed for them, the women have the contemptible meanness to charge us two dollars for a loaf of bread that could be bought for seventy-five cents in Rebel Maryland,” Charles Haley bitterly rebuked the residents of Gettysburg. “Even the proverbially mean New England Yankee would blush to ask twenty-five cents for it. One old female sauerkraut had the sublime cheek to cut a loaf into twelve slices and ask twenty-five cents a slice.”51 Brigadier General Marsena Patrick, the Provost Marshal of the Army of the Potomac, also believed Gettysburg was full of disloyal elements. Ordered to hire local laborers to bury the dead after the battle, Patrick “had a great deal of difficulty in getting hold of some respectable parties to do anything  .  .  . , the people being nearly all Copperheads.” Patrick soon became angry with “the whole Copperhead fraternity in Gettysburg . . . as they came in swarms to sweep & plunder the battle grounds,” and also had to make arrangements to imprison “a Copperhead Editor,  .  .  . for pointing out the refuge of Union soldiers to Rebel Officers” and other activity deemed treasonous.52 “In looking back over our short stay in Pennsylvania, I cannot help but feel sorry there is such a dirty . . . set of creatures living within her borders,” Abraham Hilands complained to his wife after leaving Gettysburg, “I hope we may never be called again to drive the Rebel Army off Penn. soil. If their Army gets there

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news, information about local events, and reminders of civilian life. Soldiers looked to newspapers to keep them informed of what was happening in their home communities, enabling them to connect with their past lives through vicarious participation in local social events. Newspapers also kept soldiers informed on local and national political news, albeit with a slant. With many newspapers dedicated to espousing the position of a major political party, the perception of national events varied widely from source to source. Perhaps most important, however, was the newspapers’ function as a barometer of public opinion. Through editorials and the nature of what the newspaper reported, soldiers estimated the level of Northern public support for the war, gained insight to how civilians perceived the soldiers and their accomplishments, and judged if the war and their place in it were as important to their families as it was to the soldiers themselves. Newspapers also served as a platform for the soldiers. Writing to their hometown newspapers, soldiers attempted to shape public opinion at home and correct what they determined to be faulty assumptions about the war and its course. Newspapers also served as a place for soldiers to complain beyond any possible repercussion for insubordination. Unable to receive satisfaction, enlisted men often used their hometown papers to air their complaints about army life, be it harsh discipline, late pay, or incompetent leadership. Lacking an avenue to complain to higher Army authorities about the punishment they received for stealing fence rails, Indiana soldiers protested to the Indianapolis Daily Journal, “It is a burning shame to make the brave men of our army hold sacred guard over the property of those who are struggling to bury the edifice of our liberties.”58 Soldiers were happy when newspapers supported their cause and recognized their service. When newspapers did not fulfill the functions that soldiers wished or thought they should, then newspapers became a symbol of a Northern public that did not support its army, and clashes became inevitable. The press had a constitutional right to print stories that criticized the war, but soldiers saw it much differently. Publishing the news was one thing, but circulating stories that attacked their efforts or undermined their cause was quite another. Soldiers, for instance, had no regard for journalists like the editor of a Pennsylvania paper who exhorted his reader to “For God’s sake, resist the draft!”59 The New York Times mocked the army’s complaints about desertion but its inability to curb the practice. “General [Henry] Halleck has announced, either twelve or fourteen times, that desertion from the Union Army is not permissible,” the paper reproved. “If he continues to reiterate this statement long enough, there is hardly a doubt that some of the twenty thousand men  .  .  . absent without leave will finally get indoctrinated with

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The army also resented newspapers that involved themselves in military affairs. In 1863, the Cincinnati Daily Commercial became the battleground in a controversy over harsh leadership in the 18th Regiment of the Regular Army. The paper accused the officers of the 18th, which included men recruited from Ohio, of imposing excessive discipline. It further complained, “Many of the men who have been induced to join this regiment with falsehood and flattery, now find themselves, instead of soldiers in the regular army, regularly enslaved . . . Many of the men, thus brutally treated, are of excellent families, and have been educated in the best institutions of Ohio.” The officers of the 18th defended their actions, and instead blamed their disciplinary woes on the corrosive effect of a nearby volunteer regiment, described as “that infamous horde of Ruffians, mustered into U.S. Service as Soldiers, & called the 9th Ohio Volunteers. That Regt. is a disgrace to our or any other service.”67 In Boston, the army’s prosecution of two sergeants brought the affair into the public light. The Democratic Boston Pilot assailed Colonel Patrick Guiney for accusing the sergeants of desertion despite government amnesty for all deserters who returned to their units. Describing Guiney’s punishment as “extreme,” the paper accused him of demoting the two men because of family spats at home. In return, the Republican Boston Post defended Guiney’s actions and praised him for maintaining the discipline of his unit.68 When a disgruntled lieutenant of the 19th Indiana smeared the reputation of Colonel Solomon Meredith in his hometown Delaware County Free Press, Meredith’s men rose in his defense. In a series of prepared articles, junior officers extolled Meredith’s military successes, while painting the lieutenant as “a loafer, a gambler, a liar, and a coward.”69 Perceiving the national media as a potential enemy, the army attempted to shape the message reaching their men by censoring the flow of information. To prevent the growth of anti-war sentiment within the army, officers proved willing to engage in censorship, although the effort proved largely unsuccessful. Iowa regiments, at the behest of the state government, began to censor soldier mail to intercept anti-war materials. In a wider campaign, the army suppressed the circulation of Democratic Party–controlled newspapers and discouraged soldiers from acting as correspondents for their local papers.70 Democratic soldiers became incensed when the army blocked the distribution of pro-Democratic newspapers, viewing the action as an infringement upon their rights. “I suppose you have seen how they tried to stop the Chicago Times from coming into military Distribution,” David Meyers wrote to his brother. “The reason of that was simply because it tells the truth.” Most soldiers, however, had no issue with blocking the circulation of the Times, labeling it a “Copperhead sheet.”71 In other areas, the army considered no

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As journalists found themselves unpopular figures in many units, soldiers chose to remove correspondents from their camps, by force if necessary. “It needs a strong arm to deal with this army just at present,” Lt. Colonel Charles Haydon opined. “I hope the next move . . . will be to expel that lying, thieving, contemptible class of persons known as ‘Reporters’ from the army.”78 Haydon did not have to wait long, as soldiers, sometimes under order and sometimes on their own, ejected reporters from their presence. “A reporter who had libeled the army was drummed out of camp,” Sgt. Austin Sterns wrote approvingly; “the boys jeered and laughed good to see him. A couple of drummers led the procession beating the rouges march, then came the libeler on a led horse, with a large placard on his back on which was printed ‘Libeler of the Army,’ and a file of soldiers at the rear.”79 A Pennsylvania cavalry regiment removed another reporter in a similar fashion. “Sitting backwards in the saddle, his face to the rear, [a reporter] was marched through the camps, having boards over his shoulders . . . on which were displayed in large letters his name, the fact that he was a newspaper reporter, and his offense,” described an observer. “Surrounded by a mounted guard with drawn sabers . . . he was . . . driven out of our lines toward the rear in disgrace, with orders not to return.”80 Soldiers hoped exercises such as these would “not only deter others from committing like offenses, but . . . give publicity to [their] lie and the truth” of their disloyalty.81 Those reporters who were expelled from Union camps at least had the opportunity to practice their profession elsewhere. Journalists who crossed too many professional boundaries, however, risked the possibility of arrest and prosecution under Article 57, and several reporters found themselves facing military justice. No officer had such a toxic relationship with reporters as General William T. Sherman, who held all journalists in low regard, considering “these newspaper harpies as spies.”82 Sherman’s battles with reporters started early in the war, when newspaper stories promoted the perception that he was mentally unstable. Thereafter, in addition to reporters he deemed hostile to the war effort, Sherman punished those who published falsehoods and personal attacks. In a note to Samuel Sawyer, editor of Memphis’s proNorth Union Appeal, Sherman urged Sawyer to “Use your influence to reestablish system, order, [and] government. . . . If I find the press of Memphis actuated by high principle and a sole devotion to their country, I will be their best friend.” Conversely, Sherman warned, “if I find them personal, abusive, dealing in innuendoes . . . and looking to their own selfish aggrandizement and fame then they had better look out; for I regard such persons as greater enemies to their country . . . than the men who . . . have taken up muskets and fight us.”83 Apparently, Sawyer did not listen. When the Union Appeal

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‘a blessing in disguise,’ in saving me from a similar experience of twenty months in Rebel prisons.”89 Sherman was not the only general who had personal issues with reporters. Joseph McCullaugh, a reporter for the Cincinnati Commercial, fell afoul of Ulysses Grant after he printed a story featuring an interview with Robert Murphy, the former colonel of the 8th Wisconsin. The army had recently dishonorably discharged Murphy for his battlefield failures, but Murphy claimed his defeats were Grant’s fault because he detailed too many soldiers to seize and transport captured cotton. Murphy further accused Grant of financial nepotism by giving his father, Jesse Grant, a license to trade in cotton. Grant angrily confronted McCullaugh and expelled him from his area of command.90 In August 1862, Sherman, acting upon direct order from Grant, arrested Warren P. Isham, a correspondent of the Chicago Times. Isham had filed a number of stories from Memphis, where Sherman served as military governor of the captured city. Neither Sherman nor Grant offered an explanation for the arrest, but Grant’s order sent Isham to the military prison in Alton, Illinois, for confinement until the end of the war. Ultimately, Isham spent three months at Alton before his release, again with no explanation.91 In addition, Grant ordered the expulsion of two reporters from the Army of the Potomac in 1864. One was William Swinton of the New York Times, who eavesdropped on a conversation between Grant and Meade; the other, William Kent of the New York Tribune, was removed for writing stories “full of malicious falsehoods” for which he ”should be punished.”92 Only good fortune saved another New York Herald correspondent from arrest. In December 1863, amidst false rumors that Lincoln intended to relieve General George G. Meade of command of the Army of the Potomac, Thomas Cook, traveling with General William H. French’s III Corps, published a story claiming that Meade’s departure was imminent. Outraged by the story and convinced “that this fellow is employed by French & his Clique” to promote French as the new army commander, Meade sent General Marsena Patrick, the Provost Marshal of the Army of the Potomac, to arrest Cook. Patrick just missed his man, however, as “Mr. Cook had gone to Washington.”93 * * * Newspapers provided information, but as a source of comfort and domestic reinforcement, nothing came close to the mail. A letter from home served a multitude of purposes. It connected soldiers to family members at home, especially wives and children. Soldiers, especially unmarried ones, wrote a vast number of letters to their parents, but they are notes between adults and,

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Regiment every day,” he observed, “and as there are 2,000 Regiments in the field, you may fancy the work of the General Post Office.”100 Because the army ensured the soldiers received their mail so reliably, when a soldier did not receive any letters, he could only conclude that no one bothered to write to him. Insofar as the receipt of a letter brought intense joy, the absence of one created an equal sense of isolation and depression. In his postwar memoir, Private Theodore Gerrish described the emotions generated by the arrival of the post. “The orderly sergeant stands in the street and cries out, ‘Fall in for your mail,’” he wrote. “The men need no second invitation; eagerly they watch and listen; name after name is called, until every letter has been delivered . . . Some are joyous over the messages they have received, others are disappointed . . . a few look on sadly and think there are no friends to send them tiding of sympathy and love.”101 The lack of communication with spouses was particularly difficult to bear. “Dear, you don’t know how lonsom [sic] I am when I don’t get any letter,” a Union corporal complained to his wife, “and I feel it more than common today.”102 Instead of sorrow, other soldiers expressed a sense of anger and betrayal over the ingratitude of those at home who could not bother to write a soldier enduring the privations of army life. Although admittedly serving in a remote post, Sergeant George Hand still expected to receive regular correspondence. “Rec[eive]d. no letter by last mail,” he complained to his diary. “I am disgusted with this country and ashamed of my very good friends. I should have a letter from some of my father’s family every mail and from other friends occasionally. I get one from home occasionally and none from others.”103 An Iowa private complained, “It seems strange to us that we don’t get letters from home more frequently. Three weeks (and we don’t yet know how much longer) is too great an interval.”104 The absence of mail particularly rankled soldiers who made a point of writing frequently, communicating in the hopes of receiving a valued response that brought news from and connections with home. Many soldiers were prolific writers. Corporal Cornelius Courtright maintained a massive correspondence, on one occasion receiving thirty-six letters and writing thirty-eight in a single day.105 When mail calls brought them no letters, soldiers wondered why their families did not reciprocate their effort. Chiding his sister for indulging in frivolous wintertime recreation, Paul Hilliard charged, “It is nearly three weeks since I wrote you a letter and I have heard nothing from it since. Why don’t you answer it? Have you lost your pen or is skating so sweet that you cannot get time to write to an anxious brother?”106 Private Marcellus Darling, perhaps only half-joking, suggested that his parents might motivate his younger brother to write more often if they “Take him by the coat collar and tell him you will whip him if he does not write to me and see what effect that will have.”107 Angry

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of slave-owners and pro-Confederate sentiment, some residents of the Border region might have been pro-Union, but Union soldiers saw them as far from loyal. Increasingly conditioned to use hostility as a defense mechanism, soldiers adopted the attitude that Border State residents had to prove their reliability instead of proving their treacherous allegiance. Inevitably, those who demanded the rights of loyal citizens fell afoul of soldiers inclined to see treachery where it may or may not have existed, and clashes between the two groups increased in frequency. Violence also became common when soldiers confronted pro-Confederate elements in the Border States, with soldiers accepting little blame for shedding blood of those whom they considered traitors. The first examples of Border States clashes occurred in Maryland, a vital region with strong economic and political ties to the Confederacy. Seeing the area as a hotbed of disloyalty second only to Charleston in the early months of the war, Union soldiers welcomed a chance to demonstrate the consequences of not supporting the Union cause. In April 1861, the 6th Massachusetts passed through Baltimore on its way to Washington, D.C., when a pro-secessionist mob initiated a clash resulting in the deaths of four soldiers and twelve civilians.114 Anticipating trouble, other regiments passing though Baltimore prepared for the worst. Colonel Henry Hoffman of the 23rd New York took the precaution of ordering his men to load their weapons. “About ten miles out of Baltimore they stopped and were told by Colonel Hoffman to ‘load at will,’” a soldier in the regiment recounted; “they passed through Baltimore without incident except for vocal harassment.”115 For months thereafter, the security of Baltimore remained in question, and soldiers presumed the worst about the city’s residents. Assigned to arrest Baltimore citizens disrupting the city, Private James Miller could barely contain himself when some local women “cheered for Jeff Davis.” Miller confessed, “I never thought that I should feel like shooting a woman, but if our officers had given us the order to fire I would have shot some of the women of Baltimore.”116 Private Edward Bassett concurred. When his unit moved through the city, he noted how “one man of Company B . . . collared a man who was cheering for Jeff D[avis], and ordered him to cheer for the Union or he would knock his damned head off. He complied with the order.”117 Private Charles Allen sounded almost disappointed when he wrote of marching through Baltimore with live rounds available, but no opportunity to use them, “for when we arrived we found the Union men had possession of the city.”118 While Baltimore was a flash point of confrontation, the army also did not accept pro-Confederate behavior exhibited by locals elsewhere. In Kentucky, an army official reported he had arrested a civilian named Rolly Yates after

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* * * Although many Union soldiers went off to war with the pronounced intent of fighting for the Union, their enemies were ill-defined. Soldiers wanted to shoot “Jeff Davis” or some “Reb” to bring about the end of the war, but that amorphous enemy was always Southern, always a representative of the Confederate enemy, and always a man. In an incredibly quick transition, however, soldiers had redefined and expanded whom they identified as their enemies and why they considered their enemies to be so. Soldiers found the war they experienced was not the war they expected in their romanticized visions. Nor was the enemy what they envisioned. Moreover, the civilians around them and at home behaved unpredictably. Already isolated in their military existence, soldiers found themselves even more isolated in ways they never anticipated. Instead of giving soldiers steadfast support, civilians at home did not always approve of the war. Rather than agree with all soldier views of military leadership, civilians pressed for victories and wondered why the army could not defeat the Confederacy sooner. Instead of printing stories filled with patriotic anthems and unmitigated enthusiasm, newspapers became instruments for criticizing the army instead of a source of desperately needed information from home. Besieged by perceived negativity on all sides, Union soldiers defended their accomplishments and hardened themselves against the world around them. In the process, they could come to view as potential antagonists the same civilians whom they swore to defend. The surprising rivalry between army and civilians became even more disjointed when the war caused a shifting perception of gender roles.

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2 “A Land of All Men and No Women” Soldiers and the Gender Divide

The Civil War created any number of divides between soldiers and the civilians they left behind. The most personal one, however, was the gender divide between Union soldiers and Northern women. Northern men went off to war with a well-defined concept of gender roles. Changes in the antebellum economy, especially for the middle class, had established clear social and economic roles for both genders, defining women as the centers of religious and moral purity and men as economic providers and family protectors. The Civil War, however, shattered that conception and placed both men and women in roles unfathomable before the war. Women, forced to shoulder the economic burden of family support for absent husbands, demonstrated that the “fairer sex” could perform many of the same duties as men. The shifts in gender roles were most disconcerting in cases where women temporarily bridged the gender divide as participants in the war. In this context, when soldiers and women did mix, soldiers’ prewar expectations were often challenged. If women behaved according to the old rules, soldiers welcomed their presence. Visits by officers’ wives, for instance, became a civilizing event, giving soldiers the chance to observe ladies behaving in a manner similar to prewar gender expectations. Other women in camp, however, were less well received because there was no context for them in men’s prewar gender expectations. Soldiers had to create a place for these women—prostitutes, women employed by the army, and even women fighting in the ranks—within their side of the gender divide, and the newness of their presence caused difficulty in establishing parameters of gender behavior. Northern soldiers were participants in the vast war that was creating a new gender reality, but the divided world in which they lived kept them from observing how and why this new reality was developing. >>

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as their participation in the war placed them in the realm of men.5 As the war revealed, although all women felt the hand of war, those who lived up to expectations received more protection than those who stepped out of their gender roles. While seemingly clearly delineated in principle, the actual antebellum relationship between men and women was much more complex, especially in the agricultural economy that continued to dominate the Northern states despite the emergence of industry. Agricultural success still relied heavily upon female labor, especially at labor-intensive times such as planting and harvesting. The farm economy was one of separate, but equal, partnerships. Women maintained the home and labored at domestic agrarian tasks, and men completed the exterior and physically demanding tasks of growing crops and managing livestock.6 The arrival of the war threatened the stability of this arrangement. As an extension of their political duty, Union men felt the patriotic urge to volunteer for military service and preserve their country. Doing so was part of their gender role and its concomitant obligations. At the same time, leaving their families for war caused a moral and economic quandary. Men were absenting themselves not only from their roles as fathers and husbands, but also from their responsibility to provide for the care and comfort of their wives and children. Soldiers could justify doing so if soldiering provided sufficient compensation to replace the wages of male farm labor. Some men did opt to become soldiers less out of patriotic duty than from an opportunity for economic improvement. Even at only $13 per month (increased to $16 in 1864), a private’s wages were comparable to what a common laborer or farmer might earn in civilian life after ancillary benefits, such as food or clothing, were included. When the government began offering substantial enlistment bounties, many Northern men found soldiering more appealing than farming. Corporal Leander Davis wanted to be with his family, but recognized that enlisting in the army was the best financial situation at the time. Davis told his wife “I think the eight hundred dollars [his enlistment bounty] besides my pay will be a recompence [sic]” for his time away, Davis saw military service as a way to “do better by you and the children than I could if I was at home working myself to death on a farm.”7 Soldiers also pondered taking on additional military responsibilities for the financial gain. “If it was not so sickly here,” a Pennsylvania soldier wrote of Washington, D.C., “I would enlist again & get a commission of office . . . I could clear a thousand dollars a year.”8 Such opportunities came with risks, however, and a soldier had to ponder the possibility of leaving his wife a widow while searching for monetary gain. Private Joshua Jones had no illusions about his

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his wife. After reminding her not to go into debt, he instructed her to purchase more expensive flour instead of wheat to avoid the cost of milling, use cheaper wool rather than expensive cotton, and to buy a “a good thrifty sow pig.” Aware of rising prices at home, the soldier admitted, “I expect pigs are high now,” but advised the price of the pig and its offspring “will grow just as fast and be worth more when you want to sell.”17 In a lengthy letter from Kentucky, a surgeon instructed his wife on the operation of their farm, telling her how many pigs to keep and how many to sell, which pastures should be used for the cows, and how to store hay in the barn. Reminding her about outstanding debts to the family, he offered instructions on what obligations were due her and how to collect them. He advised her to be tough with a local farmer who owed them firewood, telling her to “have it understood that this is the way you do business and no other.” In case of trouble, he reminded her she could “consult your father and then do as you think best.”18 Intermixed with descriptions of his military existence, Private Edward Rolfe peppered his wife with questions about the farm, asking “how does Edward [his son] get along with the cattle?” “have you got the Threshing done?” and “is Lewis Reed at work on the waggon [sic]? If he is not, Hurry him up for you will need it.” In a later letter, Rolfe advised his wife to plant potatoes in addition to wheat, buy more pigs, and to follow “what I think should be done about the crops, sowing, and planting.” Instead of deferring to his wife’s wishes, Rolfe instead believed his son “can plant and sow just what he thinks Best, and if he don’t know he can ask” a neighbor for advice.19 Unable to remain aware of all goings on at their farms, other soldiers offered only occasional and topical advice. “Take good care of your cow & feed her well,” a soldier advised, “you ot [ought] to buy 2 hogs so that you can feede your milk & they will grow into money for you.”20 Private Lafayette Church offered a mix of praise, advice, and concern when he wrote his wife in Michigan, “I am very glad you have made sale of that horse. How do you get along with our threshing? Have you done it yet? . . . have you suffered for any want of wood?”21 When his wife prepared to move to another farm, an absent soldier consented to the move, telling his wife, “do as you think is best but take all the lumber & tubs & everything” to tend to the livestock, “hall [haul] everything that is iron along & take good care of my cradle and sise [scythes] & the carriage & also of yourselves.”22 Before the war, men provided most of the labor on their farms, as well as management, but, as soldiers, they were temporarily in no position to do either. Consequently, the supply and management of labor became a vital task for Northern women. In running the nation’s farms, however, women faced a dual problem. Those who managed larger farms had the option to generate surplus

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In addition to concerns over their wives’ capacity to perform and acquire labor, some soldiers worried about their wives’ ability to handle money and deal with creditors, especially if the creditors were men, whom a woman might be hesitant to confront or who might take advantage of a lone woman. “I am pleased to here [sic] that you are making good use of your money,” a Pennsylvania soldier praised his wife. “Some solgers [sic] is afrade to send their money home to their women for fear they will spend it for them.”29 Such concerns were common, as soldiers wanted to see the benefit of their sacrifice. “If you put the money in the Bank it will draw 6 percent interest,” a concerned soldier told his wife, reminding her he had earned his pay “by the hardest effort.”30 After sending his pay home, an Iowa private asked his wife to disburse it to his creditors. Eager to settle all of his debts honorably, a soldier asked his wife “to take 11 dollars that I borrowed . . . and give it to Bradford Kinyon, he lives with the man’s wife that I borrowed it [from] but the man has Died since.”31 Officers, earning greater pay and enjoying more financial security, worried less about the safety of their money than how their families spent it. General John Geary had financial interests beyond what he considered manageable by his wife. Through his correspondence, Geary provided his wife precise instructions regarding the rental of his tenant farm, where they would make their postwar home, and the sale of an investment property. He also put firm limits on his wife’s expenditures. In a note to her, Geary told her to “Send me a detail account of the bills paid” and how much she intended to spend to furnish their new home. Geary was willing to accommodate her intent if she abided by his request that she “do not go in debt.”32 Beyond the worry their wives would not manage their money well was the fear of their families falling victim to unscrupulous merchants and creditors. “You said they want to sell the corn,” an Indiana private wrote his wife of his creditors, “but don’t worry because they cannot do it before I get home. Don’t shorten your life by worrying.”33 Private John Henry reported to his wife, “goods, groceries & provisions are very loathe to come down in proportion because [the prices] are chiefly in the hands of heartless, remorseless, godless Speculators who thrive & fatten on the life blood of us poor Soldiers, who are not paid enough to decently support our families.”34 Concerned that his wife’s landlord would take advantage of her economic situation by raising the rent, Private Timothy Messer preferred force over reason. Convinced the landlord “is getting on his high healed [sic] shoes in regard to his price for board,” Messer decided “I am afraid that I shall have to come out there and talk to him a little,” but, considering his distance from home, conceded “I guess I will let you talk a while first.”35 Unable to go home and correct

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reality than a conscious solution.41 As separation went from months to years, soldiers accepted they simply did not know the local market and conditions to the same extent as their wives. Although he objected to his wife moving to another residence closer to her family, Private Thomas Odell could not fault her reasoning. “Everything is more convenient there,” he conceded, and “I would rather you lived near someone.”42 Lieut. John Puterbaugh acquiesced to his wife’s decision to move based upon his wish that she and their son be in comfortable surroundings. “You wanted me to say whether you should go to town to live with Ma or stay on the Prairie,” Puterbaugh replied; “I thought I had furnished you a place to live, but . . . choose for yourself, for I am far away.” Puterbaugh’s only wish was “Make yourself . . . comfortable this winter, let it cost what it may.”43 Soldiers who recognized the reality of their situation proved willing to let their wives make major decisions regarding their joint financial future, including the purchase of property. “You rote [sic] to me that you are going to by [sic] a lot,” Samuel Ensminger wrote in response to his wife’s purchase of a new homestead; “under my sercumstancs I can’t advise you what is best.” Similarly, Private John Benton left the sale of property up to his wife, telling her, “I wish you to manage just according to your own wishes and judgment and I will be satisfied.44 Soldiers also had to maintain faith in their wives to behave prudently in other risky circumstances, besides economic ones. Concerned about his wife should unrest break out in his native Pennsylvania, Lt Col. James Campbell instructed her that “if any outbreak shall be threatened, run no risk but pack up the silver and take the children . . . until all danger is over. You can close the house, run no risk, use your judgment.”45 For a smaller number of women, the solution to economic duress was in industrial work. Women found new roles in office work for the first time during the war, including the Federal Government. The Treasurer of the United States, Francis E. Spinner, employed nearly five hundred women to ease the shortage of male clerks. Women earned $720 per year by the end of the war, one of the most lucrative occupations open to women anywhere in the country. The Post Office Department also began hiring female workers when male clerks became scarce.46 Such employment, however, was the exception rather than the rule, and wide wage disparities appeared between male and female war workers. In the 1860s, a male farmhand could command wages as high as $200 per year, a miner earned nearly $500, while railroad workers earned upwards of $700. Female textile workers, burdened by the assumption that marriage and a husband to support them was in their future, received lower pay for equal work. Taking advantage of cheaper immigrant labor, mill owners drove down wages. From a third of textile workers in 1850, female Irish

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letter. “I expect you will think hard of me for writing such a plane [sic] letter,” he wrote, “I do sincerely think you have spent too much money.” Apparently, Carrie did not listen, as only a few months later, when shopkeepers threatened to suspend his wife’s credit, Majors could only forward the three dollars he had, promise to send more, and encourage his wife to hope for better future times despite the hardships, “for this is a troublesome world.”51 To be fair to Carrie, wives were not the only ones squandering money. “There is men here that has got wives at home that is needy,” Joshua Jones lamented, “and they are Spending their money for whiskey and getting drunk and buying all other foolery that does not profit them one cent.”52 Issues of late wages only ended when the army caught up with delinquent pay. “The long looked for Pay Master came at last,” a Minnesota officer rejoiced, “He paid this regiment about $35,000  .  .  . I tell you it makes the boys feel good.”53 Receiving pay made soldiers feel better, but getting their pay home to their families was the next problem. Soldiers received their pay in cash, but moving such an irreplaceable item made matters difficult. Jacob Early had funds to forward to his wife, but he held off sending the letter because “the rebs are a little too close to the mail route.”54 An Iowa soldier noted the various means of ensuring safe delivery of their precious pay. Some soldiers, he observed, opted to use the regular mail, but sent only a portion of their money at a time to ensure the loss of a single letter would not impoverish them. Others sent it via the Adams Express company, a reliable but more expensive means as the company charged a small fee to insure a letter’s contents. Searching for someone trustworthy, other soldiers sent money home via the regimental sutler or in the hands of the chaplain. To allow them to send as much money home as possible and compensate for delinquent military pay, enterprising soldiers found ways to raise additional funds to fulfill their obligations as family provider. Major John Reid observed of his men “It is really amusing to see what spirit of barter and trade . . . they buy and sell almost anything you could think of; some of the more thrifty ones pick up considerable profit in so doing.”55 Private John Majors made extra money by applying his peacetime skills, telling his wife “I have made a good many new bridles for the officers. They are fine bridles and they are well-pleased with them.”56 Corporal Leander Davis proved “smart a nuff [sic] to make my own spending money;” selling stationary sent to him by his wife he made “27 cents on a pack of the invelopes [sic] and 18 cents on a quire of paper,” netting Davis “200 dollars on what I have got.”57 Private Edward Rolfe established a booming business in pharmaceuticals, selling anti-diarrhea pills to his fellow soldiers. Rolfe wrote his wife reminding her to “don’t forget the pills, if you can’t send a box or 2, send some in a letter.

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the war or upon their early discharge from the army, soldiers eagerly awaited the day of their return home. In the meantime, however, soldiers had to contend with the conflict between wanting to see their families and obligations that forced them to stay where they were. When a new volunteer observed, “I like solgerin [sic] only that I have to be from home,” he described the condition of many soldiers who found themselves in a situation for which they had volunteered but for which they were not prepared.65 The yearning for home created an emotional void soldiers found difficult to fill. “I dreamed of huging [sic] and kissing you all night last night,” a soldier described; “Oh, how happy I was but how bad I did feel this morning.” In a later letter, the same soldier confessed, “Celia, I would sell my intrest [sic] in this war to See you and our little boy. I have often wanted to see you, but never So bad as I do now.”66 The end of the war brought equally great relief and joy when soldiers could realize their dreams of going home. When news the war was over reached Jacob Early’s regiment, “The tears stood in many a soldiers’ eyes. Tears are scare among soldiers but joy is more affecting than grief. We do not feel like soldiers any more for our minds are off of it and are placed on other matters at home. I intend to go to house keeping in a short time.”67 Homesickness was also a manifestation of conflicting responsibilities. Soldiers, responding to the call of patriotic duty, had the masculine responsibility of caring for their families, and separation led to fears they were not fulfilling their obligations as husbands and fathers. Responding to his wife’s query if he ever felt homesick, Private Timothy Messer replied, “I don’t get very homesick and I cannot say that I wish I never had enlisted but sometimes I feel unwell [and] I wish that I was at home but . . . if I had not enlisted at all I should keep thinking that I ought to. So, I guess it is all for the best any way, let us call it so until it proves different.”68 The same attitude applied to the separation of fathers from their children. “I beg of you to do all in your power to care well for him,” a worried soldier asked his wife in regards to his ill son; “I cannot bear the idea of either yourself or that of our dear child being unwell while I am far away in a distant country.”69 Soldiers found separation during a child’s developing years particularly difficult. “I must tell you that I do not know when I felt so much like seeing you and being with you as I do today,” a soldier wrote longingly; “I would give most anything to be at home today, for just think there is [his daughter] Minnie growing out of my sight. I expect that I would not know her if she was to come in my tent today.”70 Soldiers also regretted the emotional burden caused by their absence. “You say the children are hearty . . . I wish I were home to help you take care of them,” a private wrote to his wife; “I would give anything in the world . . . I know it’s hard on a woman to get along without a man.”71

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old girls here their faces freeze all sorts of magnetism out of my senses.” Voris greatly appreciated they were “good at heart, no doubt, but with awfully unattractive arrangements . . . [for] the first time in my life ever I failed for want of utterance before the fair daughters of Eve.”75 Nurses were not the only women to provide services for the army. According to the Army Regulations, each company could employ four women as laundresses. Each laundress received standard rations from the army, but negotiated the price of washing with the soldiers. In this regard, laundresses functioned more like sutlers, providing a service sub-contracted by the army, than part of the military itself.76 Despite the official sanction of their presence, even laundresses received a mixed reception. Private Charles Haley had great respect for “Dutch Mary,” a German immigrant who accompanied her husband and made “an honest penny” by cooking and washing for the regimental officers. Mary held her own with the men, sometimes drilling with them, and, when a soldier tried to kiss her, she “seized a wet shirt and belabored him right and left, pursuing him out of camp.”77 Despite such displays of personal strength, not all women were welcome, and their usefulness became the measure of how much or how little soldiers tolerated a woman’s presence. Lieut. Lucius Shattuck wrote to his family of women accompanying his regiment but serving no purpose. Quite the opposite, Shatuck complained of their “baggage having to be carried” in wagons intended for “provisions, or knapsacks for sick men.” He hoped “no lady friend of mine will ever attempt anything of the kind,” noting that even as nurses they had no place as “a Regimental hospital is such that women can be of no use.”78 In addition to the women working for the army on a semi-permanent basis, Northern women also made temporary visits to the army because of restrictions placed upon their husbands’ movements. The army permitted soldiers to request furloughs to go home temporarily, but because of the fear of desertion, the army was reluctant to grant furloughs on a large scale. Consequently, soldiers who received bad economic news from home had little chance to go home and rectify the situation. Private Benjamin Pierce was one of the few to receive a furlough, returning home after his young daughter had died of diphtheria. Pierce spent his two-week liberty helping his wife get their farm in order and selling his cattle to a neighbor to provide cash for his wife’s expenses. Although pleased to see her husband, the second parting when he returned to the army was difficult his wife, who noted, “it has been one of the saddest days of my life. I had to part with by dearest husban[d].”79 Such emotional disruption dissuaded some soldiers from going home even if they could. “Do you think that I had better come home on a furlow [sic] if I could get one?” Jacob Early inquired of his wife. “Would you not feel worse

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Other soldiers welcomed the presence of women as a sign of civility, morality, and all the Victorian attitudes embodied in the female gender that reminded them of better times. “It does a fellow good to see a white woman down here,” James Dunn wrote of a comrade’s sister who arrived to tend to her wounded brother, instead of the “snuff eating, snuff dipping, half-civilized” women with which he usually dealt.86 Another soldier echoed the sentiment, writing “I see a nice yankee woman in camp and that does me some good.”87 Among the “good” that visiting women provided was a social outlet and a sense of refinement. During the winter of 1863–1864, Colonel Elijah Cavins observed, “there are several hundred ladies in the army, usually the wives or daughters of officers.” To raise funds for the regimental hospital, the ladies put on a charity ball which “Over a thousand persons attended, and nearly as many more tried to get in.”88 Despite the positive aspects of their presence, wives also faced opposition in camp from those who deemed their presence inappropriate. Defending the ideal of womanhood, many thought an army camp was no place for a respectable woman. “She wants to come here very much,” a soldier wrote of his wife, but as “It is no place for an honest woman,” he refused her request to visit.89 Although he considered her “as calm and courageous as anyone,” Colonel Elijah Cavins did not approve of a fellow officer’s wife staying with the regiment. “I don’t think it looks well to see ladies in the army,” Cavins explained to his wife. “The influences and impulses of army life are certainly incompatible with the duties of a true woman. Her mission on earth is certainly of a more peaceful and quiet nature.”90 General John Geary agreed: “This is no place for ladies. Officers who have wives here are considered a nuisance, both them and their wives, and there is now an order requiring everybody not connected with the army to leave. I am most heartily glad of it.”91 One such nuisance was Elizabeth Custer, wife of General George A. Custer, who made such an annoyance of herself in camp by intruding into military affairs that General Judson Kilpatrick soon grew weary of her behavior and requested her departure.92 Rather than focusing on individual women, the War Department also issued blanket orders for non-essential personnel, including wives, to leave army camps. In preparation for the 1864 campaign, officers ordered the removal of women to permit immediate movement of the army. An order in the 39th New York stated that “the Ladies now with the army . . . can no longer remain with it”; officers were required to “make the necessary arrangements to send beyond the lines of the army with as little delay as possible, the Ladies at present visiting them.”93 Noting the positive effect that women had on camp life, other officers wished to keep their wives close by, and deemed orders intended to remove them

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Vermont officer observed; “The Corporal had never lost a day’s duty since in service (2 years), until taken very sick with Typhoid Fever  .  .  . expecting to die [she] sent for tent mate and made known to the Surgeon that she (the Corporal) was the wife of the soldier. If she recovers, I am told she will be commissioned and honorably discharged.” Writing of the same woman, a Union private wrote “Both Mother and child are doing well” and regretted the army planned to void her commission and discharge her because “I think she deserves it.”100 The last group of women commonly seen in army camps were the least likely to receive an official invitation, but were welcomed just the same. Although many soldiers preferred a more moral path, many other soldiers had no qualms about soliciting prostitutes, and ladies of the evening were a common sight wherever the army went. Unlike other moral issues within the army, such as drinking and swearing, soldiers’ carnal behavior received little attention. The army maintained a hands-off approach to soldiers’ sexual practices and with whom they were practicing, intervening only if venereal disease threatened the overall health of the army.101 In this “boys will be boys” world, soldiers, even married ones, partook in the services of prostitutes to the extent that a newspaper reported, “Quinine may be the need in the Confederate Army, but copavia [a remedy for gonorrhea] is certainly the necessity in ours.”102 Private Charles Tallman of the Sixth New York Heavy Artillery, agreed with his friend when “you say there is no harm in it [soliciting prostitution]. . . . for my part, I dont [sic] think there is, and I would not care if there was. If I could come acrost some gall down here that sold tail to the boys, but we are so far from any city or village they are some thing that we dont see very often.”103 Other soldiers, however, did have access to prostitutes, especially in the red-light districts of major cities, although their practices were seldom selfrecorded and only noted as observations by other, more moral, soldiers. “[This] evening two Ladies (?) call on Capt., whereupon I left the tent,” a sergeant wrote his wife, “But Cap and Lieut put their arms around them before I got out. O, where are their marriage vows?”104 Rare was the admission of soliciting prostitutes, and even then euphemisms disguised the true nature of the relationship. “We could get permission to take girl friends on walks in camp and into its environs,” a soldier noted while on leave; “Such meetings were never tame, and many a kiss spiced the farewells.”105 Prostitutes in camp also generated some embarrassment and humiliation. When President Lincoln arrived unannounced in General Joseph Hooker’s camp, his aides had to quickly evacuate a number of prostitutes.106 The arrival of an officer’s spouse also caused a disturbance. “Quite a number of officers’ wives are out

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Not surprisingly, the separation of spouses and the unreliability of communication created suspicion of infidelity and adultery. Separated by vast distances, soldiers worried about the fidelity of their spouses. One soldier, writing of a friend who had not received a letter from home in a long time, told his wife “Dave [Hall] . . . thinks she has gon [sic] back on him, and I don’t blame him either for I should by you, if you did not write me more than one letter in two months.” A full month later, Private Hall finally received a letter from his wife, but it only made the situation worse. The letter complained of a lack of money, and Hall’s wife did not even sign the letter, prompting him to proclaim the “damed [sic] bitch mite go to hell before he would send her any money.”112 Connecting the infidelity of a wife with the treasonous actions of the South, a Union soldier reported the news that “Pitts D. Frank’s wife has seceded” from him and taken up residence with another man.113 Often, mere rumors of adultery were enough to cause serious anger and distrust. When soldiers received rumors that a draft-dodger at home was “conducting himself toward a Soldiers Wife in such a manner that would make anything but a drunkard hate himself to death,” they professed their willingness to shoot him “with about the same feeling as they would a skunk.”114 Like many other problems at home, however, there was little a soldier could to do remedy the situation. “You would be surprised at the number of wives that have proved unfaithful to their husbands in their absence,” a Pennsylvania chaplain observed to his wife; “One of the boys came to me last night sweating with agony over a letter informing him that his wife was living with another man.”115 The worry manifested by the sweating soldier was very real. While the divorce rate during the Civil War was miniscule compared to a century later, the number of divorces during the Civil War did increase notably, with adultery being among the most common reason for a soldier/husband to initiate the proceedings.116 Wives at home were not the only perpetrators of adultery, however, as soldiers violated their wedding vows beyond dalliances with prostitutes. As with other vices and behaviors written off as the attributes of military life, soldiers justified sexual relations away from home as part of the life of a soldier.117 One soldier confessed to his wife about his philandering in Georgia, but assured her “we are going to leave heare [sic] in a few days, so I will forget by reb girle and be as good as ever.”118 Officers also violated their wedding promises to their wives. “This man has a large house and two girles [sic] but one of them is married and her husband in the rebbel army but that makes no difference,” a soldier wrote disapprovingly of some local Confederates; “she gets as many bauxs [beaus] as the other one and who do you think they are? They are our officers. There is about a half dozen every day and they

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ought to enlist and direct ‘their ideals at the point of the bayonet’ to the rebel hearts . . . . Let them who believe in this war and regard it a great and glorious enterprise, let them go and do the fighting. But the Abolition war-preachers do not enlist.”4 While the opposition to abolition war unified those who would preserve slavery, a more widely divergent set of viewpoints emerged in justification, if not outright support, for abolition war. Some Union advocates embraced abolition as a potent economic tool against the South. “I am very sorry to learn there are so many men in the North who are dissatisfied with the means used to put down the rebellion,” Private Samuel Evans wrote to his father. “This is called an ‘abolition war.’ For the sake of a little argument, call it an abolition war. . . . So far as I am concerned about the matter it suits me in a good many points of view. My doctrine has been anything to weaken the enemy.”5 Other proponents of abolition war justified its existence by blaming the slave-owners for bringing the war upon themselves. “The adverse party charge that this is an Abolition war,” stated Charles Anderson, a Southerner who rallied to the Union cause. “They say the Abolitionists of the North have harassed and goaded into frenzy the Southern people, until they have been driven to adopt a scheme which is not at all native to their disposition. Now, I have said as much against the Abolition party  .  .  . [but] I never thought them altogether evil, or all disunionists or fanatics. I thought them in grievous error . . . [but] I must now declare that I don’t believe this party has had anything to do in getting up the war, except being used as a sham and a lie on the part of the South.”6 Yet others supported abolition war as an anti-Southern tool while still embracing the racial perceptions that maintained slavery in the first place. “I admit this to be an abolition war and it will be continued as an abolition war so long as there is one slave at the South to be made free,” pronounced Iowa Governor William M. Stone. “I would rather eat with a nigger, drink with a nigger, live with a nigger, and sleep with a nigger than with a Democrat.”7 Governor Stone’s statement underscored the spectrum of Northern thought: one could be an emancipationist who desired the end of slavery and its human abuses without being an abolitionist who favored the equality of the races. No one so thoroughly embraced the potential of an abolition war as did Frederick Douglass. “I am one of those who believe that it is the mission of this war to free every slave in the United States. I am one of those who believe that we should consent to no peace which shall not be an Abolitionist peace,” Douglass told an anti-slavery convention. “It cannot be denied that this war is at present denounced by its opponents as an Abolition war. . . . I hold that it is an Abolition war, because slavery has proved itself stronger

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and many were aware of that reality. Major James Connolly, for instance, wrote to his wife on the eve of the Emancipation Proclamation “I am not an abolitionist, i.e., a political abolitionist. I have no affiliation with or sympathy for the political abolitionist, for they are a canting hypocritical set of cowards, having courage only to support their peculiar opinions with their tongues, they can’t be found in our armies now, but are at home, holding their tea party conventions, mourning over ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ and adopting addresses to the President entreating him to proclaim to the world the negro is the equal to the white man, and that it is an abolition war. The fanatical fools! Can’t they see, without conventions or proclamations, that it is an abolition war?”10 * * * Recognizing that an abolition war was inevitable, soldiers of the Union Army split into three broad categories in defining what the war should achieve relative to the slavery issue: abolitionists who favored full and immediate freedom for the slaves; their natural opponents, the anti-abolitionists; and a third moderate camp of emancipationists who reflected the characteristics of the antebellum abolition movement. The positions of the anti-abolitionists were plain: maintenance of slavery, rejection of equality for anyone of African descent, and a war only for the reunification of the Union. Driven by the racial attitudes of the day, anti-abolitionists rejected the idea that the Civil War should become an abolition war because it was neither the central purpose of the war nor a desirable outcome. To the anti-abolitionists, the Civil War was a conflict to reunite the Union, and the fact that the South had legal slavery was an incidental matter. For them, the future of slavery as an economic system was an issue for political debate. To risk one’s life for the betterment of a slave whom one deemed inferior was anathema to antiabolitionists. Those most hostile to the combination of freedom and rights for the slaves before the war easily fell into the anti-abolitionist spectrum of the Union Army once the war began. Soldiers of Irish descent in particular opposed increased freedoms for slaves, as Irish immigrants and Irish-Americans had already established an active rivalry with free Northern blacks for labor on the lowest rungs of the American economic ladder. Opposed to the idea of expanded freedoms for the slaves, the anti-abolitionists also opposed anyone who proposed means to achieve the end of slavery. Anti-abolitionists were among some of President Abraham Lincoln’s most vocal critics, and his 1862 announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation became a lightning rod for dissent against the direction of the war.

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in the Union Army actually paralleled the beliefs of many abolitionists during the antebellum period. At that time, many Northerners opposed slavery because it represented an economic threat to their way of life, and not because of any innate concern about the plight or future of the slaves themselves. Just as those prewar economic abolitionists desired the end of slavery without granting any elevated status to the slaves, so did emancipationist soldiers want to end slavery as a weapon against the Confederacy without changing the racial makeup of America.13 No classification of soldier attitudes is perfect. Belief systems changed, both progressively and regressively, based upon personal experience and individual ideology. Many soldiers established themselves within, and stayed within, the general categories of anti-abolitionists, emancipationists, and abolitionists, though some soldiers exhibited the full range of opinion. Private James Dunn was one of those who underwent a major change in attitude as the war progressed. In a June 1862 letter to his wife, Dunn wrote extensively about the large numbers of slaves fleeing into Union lines in Missouri and expressed concern about the Union Army becoming an army of abolition. By the time he had reached Georgia in December 1864, however, Dunn had become an outspoken critic of the evils of slavery and of the hypocrisy of slave-owners using “the cruel lash of the slave driver in a land that boasts of its extended freedom.”14 Dunn was not alone. Charles Wills, who started the war as a private and ended as a lieutenant colonel, had a remarkable transformation of opinion. Initially, Wills stated a clearly anti-abolitionist viewpoint in that “I don’t care a damn for the darkies,” although he also admitted he would not “help to send a runaway nigger back” to his owner. Soon, however, he adopted an emancipationist attitude, especially with regard to African American soldiers. In his opinion, “They will probably be fit for freedom after a few years as soldiers.” By the end of the war, Wills was a full abolitionist, admitting “A year ago . . . I didn’t like to hear anything of emancipation . . . Last fall [I] accepted confiscation of Rebel’s negroes quietly. In January took to emancipation readily.”15 * * * Because of their prewar actions, the abolitionist contingent of the Union Army was the most organized in the first months of the war and was made up of both prewar activists who answered the call to arms and newly acquired adherents to their cause. Although most soldiers who fell into the abolitionist category simply maintained the beliefs they held before the war, other soldiers converted to the abolitionist cause based upon what they viewed or

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impact their crusade might have on the Northern war effort. “We have grate [sic] reason to be thankfull that we air made the honered instraments in gods hands of removing the curse of slavery from our land,” wrote a New York soldier.19 It also gave abolitionist soldiers the strength to endure defeats, confident in their belief that such setbacks were God’s way of testing their resolve. Chaplain Hallock Armstrong wrote to his wife, “I am now satisfied there will be no peace until our army has run all over the South. God has decreed for them this fate, and their infatuation [with slavery] will be kept up, like Pharaohs, until every negro is free, and every planter a pauper.” A few days later, Armstrong reiterated his view, stating that slavery as an institution “is not only dead, but stinks.”20 Lastly, it removed any restraint from their campaign not only to free the slaves but also to punish the Southerners for their decades of committing the sin of enslaving humans. Thus, the physical fire and destruction of war were characterized as the equivalent of the cleansing fire of religion.21 Captain Rufus Kinsley, exulting in the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation, wrote in his diary, “The South is being burned with fire and drowned in blood. Her villages are desolate, her lands . . . laid waste, the wings of commerce idle . . . [because they were] tied to the hideous monster—slavery—which is marching with rapid strides to death.” The South continuing to fight, however, caused Kinsley both confusion and determination. “Strange they are so infatuated they will not sever the connection,” he continued, “. . . [but] Slavery must die; and if the South insists on being buried in the same grave, I shall see in it nothing but the retributive hand of God . . . and that it is my privilege to help kindle the fires.”22 For the abolitionists, divine guidance was manifested in the form of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, although the meaning and purpose of the Proclamation were, and continue to be, debated.23 Announced in September 1862 after the Union victory at Antietam, the Proclamation declared that all slaves in areas still in rebellion would be free when the act went into effect on January 1, 1863. While emancipationists and anti-abolitionists either debated or rejected the Proclamation, abolitionists saw in the document only the fulfillment of their expectations and evidence of their claims of divine direction.24 “The cause is sacred indeed,” wrote a Massachusetts soldier. “We hoped so always; we know it now. The Proclamation of Emancipation . . . sweeps from our minds all doubts.”25 While others dreaded the post-Proclamation reality, abolitionist soldiers eagerly anticipated it. Robert Tarrant, a soldier in the 89th Illinois wrote on New Year’s Eve, 1862, “Tomorrow, the President will issue his Emancipation Proclamation which if carried into effect will strike at the very root of the Rebellion and take from them

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abolitionist soldier, who embraced the idea of joining in such a crusade with obvious religious overtones. “Ere long, men made free by this Proclamation will have the privilege of fighting to sustain it,” Private Henry John wrote enthusiastically. “Six months will not roll away before we have many a corps de Afrique. Let them come; with their own red right hands let them carve out for themselves honor, freedom, and nationality.”30 But simply arming blacks and issuing them uniforms were not enough to complete the transformation from slave to citizen. To accept African American soldiers as equals, the army and government had to treat them as equals to white soldiers—a goal for which abolitionist white soldiers constantly strived. On the issue of equal pay for USCT units, Wilbur Fisk wondered why “Congress has wrangled over that question all winter . . . It seems strange that a question . . . should require any wrangling or debate at all. They seem to think it degrading to the white soldier to pay the black equally as well. . . . it is doubtless true the golden rule applies to colored as well as white people, and Congress as well as everyone else will do well to bear this mind and act accordingly.”31 Moreover, African American soldiers also needed protection from the Confederates, who often threatened to summarily execute or enslave any black soldier who fell into their hands. If Southerners did not accept the new status of black troops, then abolitionist Union troops did, and acted to support their black comrades. Sergeant John Westervelt, for instance, refused to back down in the presence of Confederate threats to shoot African American troops on picket guard, as shooting exposed and vulnerable pickets was a serious breach of military etiquette, because of their hatred for black soldiers. Writing dismissively of the Confederates, Westervelt noted, “They do not like the idea of our darkey pickets. They have sent some threatening messages but no notice has been taken of their boast of what they would do if we did not picket with white soldiers.”32 Despite the ambivalence of emancipationist troops or the hostility of antiabolitionist troops, the presence of African American soldiers eventually became a normal part of the war, and achieved a degree of acceptance. During the Siege of Petersburg, a white soldier related that the USCT troops next to his camp was “a jolly set. It is astonishing to see the harmony that exists between them and the white troops. They fight, work, & eat together without regard to color & set and chat together about the war and such and such a battle like old chums. . . . We are all willing the black soldiers should take or constitute the frunt [sic] line of battle. They fight for the freedom of their race, we for the integrity of the Union and maintenance of the laws & I wish we have 500,000 of them in the field this day.”33

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anti-abolitionists, who refused to support the war because of the freedom it extended to slaves, or ultra-abolitionists, who would not support the war because slaves had not received enough freedoms.38 Such ambivalence among emancipationist soldiers came to the fore in the case of John Brown, the most infamous of the antebellum abolitionists, who was executed in Virginia in 1860 for his failed raid on Harper’s Ferry. Brown was a martyr as far as abolitionists were concerned, and a common moralistic image of Northern participation in the Civil War was columns of blue-suited soldiers marching to the tune of “John’s Brown’s Body.” In reality, the largest component of emancipationist (not to mention anti-abolitionist) soldiers had mixed feelings or even hostility about Brown’s legacy. Soldiers viewed him as, at best, a misguided but well-intentioned advocate for his cause or, at worst, as one of the key causes of the war that led them away from their homes and forced them to risk their lives on the battlefield. On one end of the spectrum was Captain John W. DeForest, who, in June 1862, wrote enthusiastically in his diary, “Who said John Brown was dead? There are six hundred thousand John Browns now in the South. The old enthusiast is terribly avenged. The rotten post of slavery is getting a rousing shake.”39 Others, however, on the opposite end, were less enamored with the doomed radical. “There are those [in the army] who consider John Brown a martyr,” Private John Haley wrote in his diary. “Slavery is wrong, but his method of getting rid of it certainly wasn’t right. . . . He was a misguided old man whose motive might be right but whose judgment was decidedly weak.”40 One element emancipationist soldiers shared with the abolitionists was sympathy toward the plight of the slaves. As most were not prewar abolitionists, this sympathy for many was new, discovered after viewing slavery firsthand, instead of simply hearing or reading about it. Such sympathy did not translate into abolitionists’ belief in the equality of African Americans, but it certainly shaped these soldiers’ desire to end slavery and its violent and degrading tendencies. Lafayette Church, writing from Virginia, expressed to his wife his pity for an elderly slave whom he found at a local mill and who related that he had had three wives and their children all sold from him. While he knew nothing of their whereabouts, he hoped his sons were “fighting on the right side in this war” against the South. “How I pitty [sic] him,” Church related. “He is possessed of much more true ‘chivalry’ (the Southerner’s boast) and true manhood than his master.”41 A common focus of sympathy was the plight of mixed-race children, who were often the result of slave-owners’ sexual predations upon their female slaves and who faced a life of servitude despite their parentage. “Time after time, the Southerner’s own children have been forced upon the auction block

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“and when slaves in the vicinity of the camp would run away and come to our men, there would be no special effort made in persuading them to return to their owners, and they [the slave-owners] would come in search of their slaves foaming with wrath.”46 Refusing to return slaves and encouraging slaves to escape to their lines were more than just manifestations of anti-Southern attitudes; they were also direct violations of federal law. The Fugitive Slave Act, enacted by Congress as part of the Compromise of 1850, mandated that all branches of the federal government, including the army, were responsible for the detection and apprehension of escaped slaves. The penalty for abetting or harboring an escaped slave was a maximum fine of $1,000 and six months in prison. Thus, when Union soldiers protected escaped slaves, they defied the very government they had to sworn to defend. Expecting that the army was there to enact the laws of the land, slave-owners believed slaves hiding in army camps were still within their reach, and approached the army about recovering their property. To their surprise, many Union soldiers did not agree with their view. Following the “contraband” policy first devised by General Benjamin Butler at Fort Monroe, Virginia, Union regiments refused to turn escaped slaves over to their owners on the grounds that the slaves, or more specifically their labor, were contraband of use to the enemy war effort and therefore subject to seizure under the traditional laws of war. Other Union soldiers reasoned the Confederacy, no longer a part of the United States, was no longer entitled to the protection of its laws. The Lincoln administration, however, never recognized Confederate sovereignty and always considered the Southern states as part of the United States, albeit in rebellion, which is why Lincoln did not and could not ignore the Fugitive Slave Act until its formal repeal in 1864. Issues with the Fugitive Slave Act were particularly touchy in the Border States in the first months of the war, where Lincoln tried to maintain Union control while accommodating slavery, a situation that often caused divided loyalties and uncertainty in making decisions. Captain William Miller of the 25th Missouri, for instance, faced a court-martial for returning seven escaped slaves to their Missouri owners. Miller justified his actions on the grounds that he expected to return to Missouri when the war ended and had to maintain cordial relations lest he make enemies amongst his neighbors. The court-martial dismissed him from the service anyway.47 On the opposite side of the debate, when General Henry Halleck assumed command in St. Louis in November 1861 he immediately issued his General Order No. 3, ordering the army to deny sanctuary to escaped slaves. The move antagonized emancipationists, but was entirely within the bounds of the law.48

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they were less likely to defy the law due to their fear of sanction or to their own anti-abolitionist attitudes. This, in turn, led to clashes between officers and their own men when slave-owners demanded the return of their slaves. The day after two slaves fled to the protection of the 21st Wisconsin, two slave-owners arrived “armed each with a long whip and . . . a navy revolver.” When rebuffed by the Wisconsin men, the slave-owners refused to leave, and were soon surrounded by the 21st and the other two regiments in the brigade, the 79th Pennsylvania and 24th Illinois. A barrage of “corncobs and other missiles” and threats to hang the slave-owners forced them to withdraw, but not retreat. Instead, they appealed for assistance from the division commander, General Lovell H. Rousseau, a Kentucky-born officer who supported the Union but not emancipation. Rousseau returned to camp accompanied by the slave-owners to demand the return of the slaves, but the Wisconsin men refused to give them up despite Rousseau’s threats to have the other regiments in the brigade surround and shoot them. Outraged but frustrated, Rousseau conducted his own search, but could not find the escaped slaves, whom the Union men had hidden in an ambulance under a pile of knapsacks. Unwilling to risk an open rebellion in his command, Rousseau finally let the matter drop. In retaliation for entering their camp, soldiers of the 21st burned down the plantation of the slave-hunters.55 When slave-owners requested the return of an escaped boy from the camp of the 26th Pennsylvania in January 1862, Colonel Rush Van Dyke ordered George Coburn, one of the regimental teamsters, to locate the boy and turn him over. Coburn refused, “declaring that he did not enlist in the army to hunt slaves, nor would he hunt them for anyone else.” When Van Dyke ordered Coburn’s arrest, found someone else to search for the boy, and turned the boy over to the slave-hunters, the move was not popular with the soldiers. “There is quite an audible murmur here about the return of the fugitives,” a soldier wrote. Another officer told the departing slave-owners that he “would not guarantee [any] life for five minutes in the [Union] lines on a slave hunt” should they ever return. A few days later, Union soldiers learned of the boy’s whereabouts, and once again took him under their care, noting that “Returning fugitive slaves is growing daily to be up hill work.56 The debate on the propriety of returning escaped slaves finally ended on March 13, 1862. Congress enacted a law forbidding the U.S. military from “employing any of the forces under their respective commands for the purpose of returning fugitives from service or labor who may have escaped from any persons to whom such service or labor is claimed to be due,” and threatened a court-martial for any officer or enlisted man who violated the law. While seemingly an open act of emancipation, the restriction on the return

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hopefully leading to a more aligned postwar America. That, however, did not necessitate the elevation of former slaves to equal status with whites. Therefore, it was not a discrepancy for emancipationist soldiers to desire the end of slavery, but still maintain racist attitudes. This, in turn, led to the odd dichotomy of emancipationists believing that peoples of African descent were inferior to whites, yet also being committed to the task of ending their state of slavery. “Every one has a mind of their own about it,” John Burrill reasoned. “I have mine and it is that a negro is none too good to be held as a slave. But I believe in putting away any institution if by doing so it will help put down the rebellion, for I hold that nothing should stand in the way of the Union— niggers or anything else.”60 Another Union soldier clearly expressed the discrepancy between objecting to slavery and regarding African Americans as inferior: “[T]he African race should be a separate nation . . . neither should we associate with them as have thousands of our race,” Private Elisha Odle wrote to a friend; “yet as a true republican I believe slavery to be a great evel [sic] and should bee glad to see them immencipated.”61 Many Union men shared this attitude, especially after seeing slavery up close and personal for the first time. “I have thought very much of the slavery question since I have been in a country where it is tolerated,” Colonel Cavins wrote his wife on the eve of the Emancipation Proclamation. “I don’t believe in negro equality, but on the contrary, I think they are an inferior race. . . . But, there are certain inalienable rights which God has given them, and which he now intends they shall enjoy—and they are the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”62 There was also a practical and realistic expectation among the emancipationists that words mattered little and fighting was the only solution to the country’s political divide. Recognizing that Southerners were determined to hold onto their slaves and their new nation, emancipationists accepted that only fighting would decide the outcome of the war and the future of slavery in America. Instead of expounding upon political and philosophical goals and objectives, emancipationists viewed the war as a military struggle much more than the abolitionists did. Thus, emancipationists were able to separate the future of the slaves (a postwar concern) from freeing the slaves through military action (an immediate concern). “The war will never end until we end slavery,” Private Edward Bassett wrote in his diary on New Year’s Eve, 1861. “There is no alternative but to fight,” he said, and he was not alone.63 “I . . . expect to see the slaves all set free before the end of the war,” Private James Ames wrote to his mother in November 1861, “and . . . I shall fight for that end, as if the word ‘Emancipation’ was emblazoned on all our banners. Slavery has brought death into our households already in its wicked revolt

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African American soldiers through a set of practical considerations. A Massachusetts newspaper voiced the opinion of many a soldier when it described the conflict as “a war between the defenders of slavery and the advocates of freedom,” and pointed out that although the “proclamation of the President has nominally made millions of freedman . . . that Proclamation must be published at the point of the bayonet,” and that those most capable of delivering the message were the “colored freedman of the whole country, the escaped slaves of the South.”69 Many emancipationists, especially those who had experienced combat, had no problem with African Americans taking their place in the battle line and sharing the risks of the battlefield, especially if it meant their own survival at the expense of a former slave. “I see by the proceedings of Congress they are going to arm the Negro. And why not?” an anonymous private asked his hometown newspaper. “Is he any better than we are? Is it committing a sin to set him up for a mark to be shot at any more than us? . . . I say arm them; put them in the front rank if need be. I would as soon have one of them killed on the battle-field as to have my brother or father.”70 Benjamin Baker agreed, writing to his mother in Illinois, “The boys many of them don’t like the idea of making soldiers of negroes. But after all they will do to shoot at as well as anybody if we could only think so.”71 Initially, arming the slaves was not a popular idea, but considering the alternative of risking their own lives, more and more Union soldiers overcame their qualms. “For my part,” wrote another private, “I would like to see all the negroes we could raise armed and put under military discipline although there are a great many of the soldiers who are so foolish as to say they would not fight if the negroes are armed. But I think if a negro could save their lives by sacrificing theirs they would be willing.”72 Although skeptical of the abilities of African American troops, at least some were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. “The negroes certainly possess general intelligence sufficient to make as good soldiers as anybody,” a Vermont soldier wrote, “but as to their bravery, of course no one can tell, not even the man himself, perhaps, until it is tried.” The former slaves could become a valuable asset, the soldier believed, “under the cloak of military discipline, to impose upon them a slavery more severe than that from which they have escaped.”73 Moreover, arming slaves had another advantage, as it demonstrated to the South the North’s determination to end slavery, the emancipationists’ primary goal. “It does me good to see the old master look upon his slave with fear when he gets a musket in his hands,” a sergeant wrote in his diary. “After seeing the negro drill and go through the Manual of Arms, the master turns upon his heel convinced for the first time in his life the darky has an intellect, which can be cultivated and, when cultivated, is bound to shine.”74

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soldiers who scorned their ideals. Instead of advocates of the oppressed and uplifters of the downtrodden, abolitionists became, in the eyes of the antiabolitionists, the instigators of the war. At best, anti-abolitionists perceived the abolitionists as meddlesome and squabbling agitators who corrupted the pure fight for the preservation of the Union with their ideals that inferior peoples of African descent deserved rights equal to whites. Consequently, anti-abolitionists blamed the abolitionists for causing and prolonging the war, forcing others to fight and die for ideals they did not hold, and turning those who bore some sympathy for the slaves toward the anti-abolitionist cause. Scorning the abolitionists for failing to fight in defense of their ideals, an Illinois captain claimed that “Those who have been the most effective in bring about the Bloody Contest are the last to rally in defense of their sacred rights. I will venture to say you may go along the whole line of the Northern Army & you will not find more than one out of ten who will step out & say that he is an Abolitionist.”79 Reacting to Challenging the campaigning of abolitionists in his home state, Private George Parks asked whether any one of them, safe at home for the present, would change his attitude if “he saw as much as I have since I have been in the army.” Parks explained himself to his wife by stating, “You must think that I am against the Union. I am far from that but I cannot be for a man [Lincoln] that thinks more of the niger [sic] than a white man.”80 George Merryweather, who believed abolitionists lacked the courage to put their words into action, charged in a letter to his parents that “Massachusetts, although the first to get up the war, is the last state in the Union to furnish her quota of men [in the latest draft call]. These New England Abolitionists talk the most of giving one’s life for his country & they are the last to think of doing it.”81 Instead of instilling a desire to free the slave, the abolitionist message became a loathsome note to anti-abolitionists, who found their opposition to slave freedom either reinforced or even created by the constant demand for something they neither wanted nor could achieve on the battlefield. Private William Phelps of the 10th Minnesota had enough of soldiering and emancipation by January 1863. “I have made up my mind the Southern rebellion is a big thing on ice and can’t be put down,” he wrote to his cousin at home. “I begin to think that abolitionism is the twin brother to the devil, and I should think the North would be tired of the Nigger and would be willing to mind their own business.”82 Private James Smith of the 44th Massachusetts grew tired not only of the Emancipation debate, but the endless arguing over the topic. “I am tired of hearing the darkey question argued,” he wrote his family; “they begin at reveille and keep it up until after Taps when the sergeants have to stop them; they will never agree and it does no good.”83 The hatred

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in my boots. . . . There is not one soldier in out of 100 but what is against Lincoln’s proclamation. I would do most any thing to get out of this army.”88 So disruptive was the impact of the Emancipation Proclamation that its passage still caused friction well after it had become established policy. In June 1863, Private Francis Elliott, a Pennsylvania soldier, wrote his family “thay [sic] ar inlisten dam black nigars” close to where his regiment was encamped, and questioned “who is it that would fight in this war with A free wil [sic] and stand up by the Side of A nigar and fight for thare freedom[?] it is not I.”89 Eventually, however, passions cooled, and soldiers came to accept the new reality of the war. Private James Greenalch observed that initial anger regarding the Emancipation Proclamation had calmed within a few months. “Things apeer [sic] to have a more cheerful turn for the boys . . . [as] even in my own company that two months ago were as near a traitor or copperhead as could be, the biterest kind on the Presadent’s Procklamation and the administration which are going in for it,” he described to his wife. “As they [now] say, they think the Presadent sees that his Procklamation isnt agoing to work and the only way it [the end of slavery] can be done is to whip them out of it.”90 Robert Mitchell, a surgeon in the 10th Wisconsin, noted how the Proclamation changed the nature of the military campaign beyond its social consequences. Recognizing the South was likely to fight even harder to maintain its institutions, Mitchell despaired that “The only way to close this war is to fight it to the bitter end and now we have nothing to gain and everything to lose by truces and attempts to patch up the peace.”91 Another officer also saw the Proclamation as leading only to stronger and more resolute Confederate armies. “There is now no room to doubt the President’ proclamation of emancipation, though in itself right and intended for good, has come far short of his and many others’ wishes and expectations,” George Squier confessed to his wife from Nashville on Christmas Eve 1862. “That proclamation will . . . add one hundred thousand men to the rebbel’s [sic] army and take nearly as many from our army. Men are deserting every night by scores. . . . Many in our regt . . . say that if the Proclamation be put in force they will no longer carry a musket. These facts together with our late reverses [in] Virginia cast a gloom over the whole army.”92 The Proclamation had the same effect upon Ulysses Grant’s army operating against Vicksburg. Private Edgar Richmond reported that due to the “emancipation bill men . . . are deserting & going home every day. They say they didn’t come down here to free the niggers.”93 Soldiers believed the Proclamation was very much a military strategy as much as a racial one, although not all were convinced it was a successful one. In November 1862, J. F. Culver wrote to his wife that “The

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realm. Officers also believed that associating with African American soldiers further threatened their lives beyond the existing risks on the battlefield. The Confederate government issued orders of retaliation for any officer leading black troops in combat, increasing the risks of an already highly lethal war.98 Positions on the slavery issue also caused internal divisions within regiments. In the 14th Connecticut, the abolition issue split the unit into rival segments, with half supporting the reelection of Republican Governor William Buckingham, and others, like Sergeant Benjamin Hirst, backing the Democratic challenger Thomas Seymour, even “if they do call him a Copperhead.” The split became so bad that pro-Buckingham elements, led by Captain Samuel L. Davis, asserted that only Republican soldiers of the regiment made a doomed charge at the Battle of Fredericksburg “while the Democrats stayed in camp.” Hirst considered Davis a “damned liar,” and related how pro-Seymour soldiers played practical jokes on Davis due to his political leanings.99 Officers were clear in their opposition to abolitionists, whether in the army or in the government, who were shaping the war in a way that served a political rather than military purpose. In December 1861, Henry Livermore Abbott, the son of upper-class Bostonians, expressed his opposition to abolitionist attempts to influence the war effort. “The abolitionists are making a great row in Congress, but they will get floored as they deserve,” Abbott wrote to his aunt, “I haven’t seen any men or officers in this part of the loyal army who are willing to fight for abolitionists.”100 Regarding the cause for which they fought, many anti-abolitionist officers could see a clear difference between the necessary reestablishment of the Union versus the unnecessary crusade to end slavery, the latter being a task better suited to politics than to war. “You must not make an Abolitionist out of me,” Captain George Avery wrote to his wife in Illinois. “It is not for the emancipation of the African race I fight. I want nothing to do with the Negro. I want them as far from me as possible. . . . Already we have more colored population in the Northern States than is agreeable or profitable, then why fight for more.” Avery then enunciated principles of states’ rights with which any Southerner would agree. “We the people of the free states have no right even if we were so disposed to interfere with that ‘peculiar institution.’ Each state is vested with power to regulate her own domestic affairs,” he continued, “and I am in favor of that right being enjoyed to its fullest extent. . . . I am simply fighting for the Union as it was given to us. I want nothing more, I will have nothing less. When President Lincoln declares the slaves emancipated, I will declare myself no longer an American citizen.” A few months later, Avery’s attitude had not changed. Writing of the escaped slaves that entered their lines in northern Arkansas, Avery noted, “We receive them as a general rule, but I avoid them

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their transition back into the Union, or, at best, cause them to abandon the rebellion altogether once cooler heads had prevailed. A key element of Soft War was the protection of property rights, explicitly the protection of slavery. The Union war goal was to reestablish the Union, a purely military objective, without freeing the slaves, a political issue that military officers believed they needed to avoid. In a report to President Lincoln, George McClellan outlined his views on how Soft War could pacify the mass of Confederate citizens while permitting military action against the Confederate government; the plan centered on the preservation of slavery and the avoidance of the emancipation issue. “This rebellion has assumed the character of a war,” McClellan explained, “and it should be conducted upon the highest principles. . . . It should not be a war looking to the subjugation of the people. . . . It should not be at all a war upon a population, but against armed forces and political organizations. Neither the confiscation of property, political execution of prisoners, territorial organization of States, or forcible abolition of slavery, should be contemplated for a moment.” McClellan further emphasized that “In prosecuting the war, all private property and unarmed persons should be strictly protected. . . . Military government should be confined to the preservation of public order and protection of political rights. Military power should not be allowed to interfere with the relations of servitude . . . by . . . impairing the authority of the master. . . . A declaration of radical views, especially upon slavery will rapidly disintegrate our present armies.”106 McClellan was not the only officer with such leanings. Assigned to General Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio, the commanding officer of the 10th Indiana assured local Kentucky residents in December 1861 that “We wage no Abolition crusade” and that his men were not sympathetic to the abolitionists.107 Believers in Soft War remained, albeit in small numbers, even after the nature of the war changed and the seizure of Confederate property became official Union policy. Proponents of the strategy, for instance, charged that the preliminary announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation drove down the number of Union volunteers while bolstering the number of Confederate recruits.108 Officers, as a group, were not the only ones to oppose abolition in sizeable numbers. While tension between free African Americans and Irish Americans existed well before the Civil War, abolition became a major cause of disagreement between the two groups during the war. In addition to resenting economic competition with African Americans, Catholic Irish immigrants objected to the pious Protestantism of the abolitionists, whom the Irish characterized as “bigoted and persecuting religionists . . . [seeking] the extermination of Catholics by fire and sword.”109 Irish troops, like their

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desire to see all of them put away at our first opportunity,” he penned. “I do not believe it right to make soldiers of them and call & rank with our white soldiers. It makes them feel and act as our equals. I do despise them and the more I see of them, the more I am against the whole black crew.”113 A common result was a virulent hatred and perception that black soldiers received preferential treatment over their white counterparts, despite evidence to the contrary. “Just as soon as we get a line of breast-works built or forts, we have to leave them. They put nigger regiments in them,” John Smith complained during the Siege of Petersburg. “Why don’t they make them build their own fortifications?” Smith was also unhappy about stories in the Philadelphia Inquirer claiming that USCT regiments had seized positions actually captured by white troops. Smith promised that if an Inquirer reporter visited his regiment, “we would hang him without a trial for writing those articles in his paper, saying the niggers can fight as good as the white men, which is a lie.”114 Despite opportunities to correct racial stereotypes, some white soldiers chose to maintain them. “There are some negro troops laying in the woods near us & it is as good as a circus to go see them,” John Vautier wrote in his diary. “They call one another all the ‘Cat fish mouths,’ ‘Wooly Heads,’ ‘Nigger Heels,’ & all sorts of names. I don’t think they would amount to much in a fight.”115 Segregated in their own formations and under the command of white officers, the USCT units often fought well and bravely, but were never able to overcome the opposition of the anti-abolitionist segments of the Union Army, who viewed them as lesser soldiers and problems to be overcome rather than assets to be utilized. At the core of the problem was the persistent racism of the anti-abolitionists, who could not perceive any other reality than black inferiority. Thomas Bennett, stationed at Fort Baranacas, Florida, wrote to his sister regarding the disruption caused by the question of “Is a white officer to touch his hat to a nigger just because he is higher in rank? Two companies of white men with their officer have been put under arrest . . . because they would not acknowledge a ‘nigger’ officer of the day. You cannot imagine how exciting the topic is . . . Massachusetts is an abolition place, but the idea of the best blood of Boston being placed under a nigger office don’t seem to agree with it.”116 At best, African American regiments provided an opportunity for advancement into the officer ranks, although such a promotion came with perceived risks and burdens. One NCO weighed the pros and cons of becoming an officer in a USCT regiment, balancing pay, comfort, and status over the value of leading men into combat. “Chance of getting shot greater; Accommodations and comforts generally smaller, but pay much larger than what I have now,” he measured in a letter to his parents; “And above all, an

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especially in conflicts with Native Americans.2 There was also a state precedent. In 1862, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio conducted their own state drafts to fill the ranks of new regiments a year before the federal government imposed such an obligation.3 Lastly, there was a Confederate precedent. Facing the dissolution of an army consisting mainly of one-year volunteers, the Confederate government instituted a comprehensive conscription policy on April 16, 1862, nearly a full year before the Enrollment Act. While both credit and blame for the draft usually lands on Lincoln’s shoulders, Carl Sandberg points out in his biography of Lincoln that Congress itself conceived the wording of the law, with Senator Henry Wilson, a Massachusetts Republican, introducing the legislation.4 Congress and the Lincoln Administration justified the draft on several philosophical grounds. Asserting the nation had provided rights and privileges to its citizens, the government believed citizens were obliged, in turn, to defend the nation. Citing the sacrifices of the founders of the nation, the government used conscription as a form of compelled volunteerism to persuade contemporary Americans to repay the efforts of the revolutionary generation. The government also shaped the war as a defense of Constitutional principles, and citizens had to defend those principles against the destructive effects of secession and division.5 Conscription was also an element of the Republicans’ intellectual conception of themselves. Connecting economic success to the concept of the Protestant work ethic, the national leadership tied active support for the war through compliance with conscription (work) with victory in the war (success). This was especially evident in the party’s antebellum Free Soil roots, and was an idea that resonated with many soldiers already in the army. It was not enough that soldiers fought for the success of the country; the failure of a healthy man at home to do his part counteracted any effort by a patriotic soldier in the army, and success was impossible if more men stayed home than fought.6 The Enrollment Act required every man of draft age (20 to 45 years old) to submit to enrollment as a precursor to a potential draft call. Evading the enrollment process, or abetting evasion, risked a maximum sentence of two years in federal prison and a $500 fine. If drafted, a man had ten days to report for assignment to a regiment, which gave time for the draftee either to pay the $300 commutation fee or procure a substitute. Failure to report for duty without commutation or substitution meant the draftee faced a charge of desertion and a possible death sentence. There were four draft calls for a total of 776,289 men, of which only 46,347 actually donned a uniform.7 The Enrollment Act exempted practitioners of certain professions (such as transportation), immigrants (except those who stated their intent to become

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would fill its quota with men willing to volunteer for military duty. If enough volunteers enlisted, the state did not have to hold a draft, and if a state generated a surplus of volunteers, the state received a credit for the surplus toward future draft calls. If an insufficient number of volunteers came forward, the army conducted a draft to fill the state’s quota. The need to conduct a draft depended on the state and the draft call. Indiana, for instance, filled the first two draft calls entirely with volunteers and did not need to draft until the third call in 1864. In late draft calls, however, fewer volunteers meant more drafting. In the third draft call, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Kansas were the only states to meet their obligations entirely with volunteers.11 As a further enticement to volunteer, the government augmented the Enrollment Act with the first federal bounty money, financial enticements justified as a means of providing for a soldier’s family while he was away. Drafted soldiers, however, received no bounty money, thus providing the clear incentive to volunteer.12 In a direct plea to Abraham Lincoln, James Alexander, an Illinois draftee, begged the President to redress the plight of the drafted soldier. Complaining that “There is a prejudice against drafted men and against being drafted widely extended over the nation,” Alexander bemoaned his perceived lower status because “The draft has come to be considered a kind of plague to be shunned by all means, and a drafted man is regarded as an unfortunate person upon whom a great disgrace has fallen.” Alexander further complained that “Congress has offered liberal bounties to volunteers while the drafted men get nothing,” situations the government ought to remedy because “the government bounties no doubt drew a number of good men into the army who would otherwise have remained [at home].” Draftees also deserved bounties, Alexander reasoned, because “If a man cannot be allured from his home for $300 ought he therefore to be compelled to leave it for nothing?”13 The enrollment of potential soldiers did not always go smoothly. There were legal exemptions to the draft, but a draftee could present his petition for exemption only after the army claimed him for service, creating much redundant paperwork compared to an alternative system that exempted men before putting their name on the eligible list.14 How some names wound up on the eligible list remained a mystery. William Bentley, a private in the 104th Ohio stationed in Georgia, received a copy of his hometown newspaper and was amused to find his name among those eligible for the draft. After three years of fighting, Bentley thought “it would be a good Joke if I should be drafted.”15 Other enrollment officers enlisted the obviously infirm, beyond the age limits, and, in at least one case, drafted a woman.16 What is most surprising is that more errors did not occur. The recruiting process required

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Despite the PMC’s effort to complete a legitimate enrollment, some soldiers claimed they were the victims of illegal conscription. Members of Congress complained about residents from their districts who, drugged by unscrupulous conscription agents, awoke to find themselves in the army. One soldier of the 17th Maine appealed to his state governor for relief, claiming “I have been against my will drafted  .  .  . I have been once discharged from the service on account of disability.”25 While a doubter might dismiss these examples as merely cases of disgruntled soldiers looking for an excuse to get out of the army, illegal recruiting of foreign citizens was a very real problem. “Crimping” was the process of luring foreigners, exempt from the Enrollment Act, onto U.S. soil for the purpose of enrolling or drafting them. Crimping was a particular problem along the Canadian border, where many of its ”victims” were often soldiers from the British Army who deserted in favor of the high bounty money offered in the United States Despite British protests, the United States made only minimal efforts to halt the process; for most of the war, the fine for crimping was only $50 although it went up to $160 late in the war.26 In addition to finding draftees within their own jurisdictions, states and communities began to poach recruits from other areas to make up their shortfalls. While it was legal for a recruit voluntarily to enlist in another community across state lines for larger bounty payments, states passed laws that made the enticement of such recruits illegal. To counter this, many states began to search for recruits further and further away. One of the main sources, after the government permitted states to conscript African Americans, were former slaves from Southern states enrolled in Northern states. Quickly, however, competition for former slaves became intense. When representatives of Northern states recruited African Americans out of the District of Columbia, the local population considered the act akin to kidnapping. As a local observer noted, “A Washington citizen might be averse to educating Negroes or sitting next to them in the streetcar; but his heart yearned toward his black brother as a man who could shoulder a gun.”27 Finding enough volunteers alleviated the risk of conscription for those hesitant to face combat. If one was unfortunate enough to find his name selected for the draft, an alternative was to pay the $300 commutation fee. Although unpopular, the portion of the Enrollment Act permitting the payment of a commutation fee was not new. The law drew upon long-established practices in the state militias that had existed since colonial times and did not intend, as indicated by some critics, to favor one class over another.28 Dennis Mahoney, an Iowa newspaper editor, voiced such opposition to the draft in economic terms in his anti-Lincoln pamphlet, The Four Acts of

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commutation or find a substitute if called up for state service.39 Hiring a substitute, however, became increasingly more difficult as the war went on. The unwillingness to die on the battlefield was an obvious detriment to finding a substitute, but there were other economic and political issues. As inflation increased, the cost of substitutes went up accordingly, placing them beyond the price range of most Northerners. The availability of bounty money also lured away many substitutes, as they could earn more by enlisting themselves than by hiring themselves out. As with the commutation fee, draft opponents found ways to take advantage of the substitution provisions, and the practice fell victim to institutional corruption. Conscription agents and districts, under pressure to fill their quotas, enlisted unsuitable or illegal substitutes, and unscrupulous officials even released prison inmates to serve as substitutes, as in the instance of a man convicted for robbery who “escaped” from a New York jail in exchange for splitting his substitution fee with his jailer.40 Moreover, in the mass of paperwork surrounding the Enrollment Act, substitutes proved difficult to track. Thomas Carney was a good example of someone who slipped through the cracks. After he received a wound in battle, the army discharged Carney and granted him a pension of $4 per month for his disabling wound. Carney, however, soon enlisted in a 100-day battalion, collected his bounty, but deserted after a brief period of service. He then reentered the army as a substitute for a draftee in the 29th Pennsylvania under his own name, but escaping detection, served out the rest of the war, and collected further pension money afterwards.41 Like the commutation fee, substitution faced criticism because only the wealthy could afford to hire someone else to take their place, creating a situation that promoted the class differences at the heart of anti-conscription activity. For instance, a resident of Chautauqua County, New York, complained to his local Provost Marshal because the period between the draft and the date in which draftee reported for duty was too brief and “there is no time to get a substitute.” Instead of recognizing that the marshal was only following regulations, the resident went on to say, “it is not fair to use civilized people in this way. It [the draft] is a swindling operation and . . . you are in a low-lived piece of business which will cause the death of many poor people.”42 There is evidence, however, that the cost of a substitute was not as onerous as perceived. In March 1864, a Provost Marshal in Pennsylvania’s 3rd District reported that nine men had procured substitutes that month and had listed their professions. Among the nine were four farmers, two students, a merchant, a miller, and a coachwright.43 The marshal did not include the fee paid for the substitute’s services, but the fact that a farmer or a student

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New York, which gives its volunteers as much as $1,500. If only we’d thought of it in time, we could have gone to New York and enlisted there. If one is going to sell his life, he might as well get all he can out of it.”48 Another problem were unscrupulous “bounty brokers,” con men who lured unsuspecting recruits into accepting their services to find the highest bounties in exchange for a portion of their monies. Brokers also took advantage of federal conscription regulations that paid $2 for each volunteer whom a citizen persuaded to enlist. Moreover, by directing men to whichever state district provided the highest bounty, regardless if the recruit lived in that district or not, brokers created mass confusion as to whether a district had filled its quota.49 While local Provost Marshals tried to rein in the bounty brokers, the brokers were adept at finding loopholes in the Enrollment Act, and they often used their illicit profits to purchase influence with local police and courts.50 Brokers were also the cover for bounty-jumpers, men who enlisted to collect a bounty in one community, only to immediately desert and enlist in another community for another bounty. Some such criminals enlisted and deserted numerous times, collecting a tidy sum for their criminal activities.51 Although the government had offered bounty money to recruits in all of America’s previous wars, a gulf existed amongst the soldiers of the Union Army. Thousands of men had heeded the government’s initial call for volunteers to defend the Union in 1861, doing so with no promise of financial reward or compensation beyond their army wages. As volunteerism declined in subsequent months, however, the government provided ever-increasing bounties to entice recruits. The separation between the early uncompensated volunteers and the later “bounty-men” established two distinct classes in the Union Army. Established volunteers, proud of their nationalistic impulse, scorned the later soldiers for their perceived lack of nationalism. Considering themselves true patriots, veteran soldiers looked down at those who needed a financial incentive to join. “I am no creature of Sale,” Charles Musser wrote to his family in Iowa. “I came into the army for my country’s good and not for money. There is too much of this ‘Green Back Patriotism’ in the army.”52 Another soldier agreed, stating “Money is the last thing a man should enlist for. It was shameful to see men . . . waiting for a profitable moment to offer their services.”53 Complaining about the meager money he received as an early volunteer, a Maine soldier compared his army service to that of a slave when he wrote, “I would feel better, though, if we had brought at least as much as the festive negro is worth at auction.”54 Veteran soldiers, or at least those who survived, got their opportunity to take advantage of the bounty system when their initial three-year enlistments ended in 1864. At that time, veterans had the option of going home,

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opposed as unpatriotic or even dangerous. In eastern coal-mining regions of Pennsylvania, critics usually blamed any violent anti-draft activity on the Molly Maguires, the secret Irish nationalist organization. Anti-draft activity was so virulent among the largely Irish miners that William Meredith, a Philadelphia politician, warned Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin of anti-war disturbances that interfered with coal-mining to such an extent that the ability to provide fuel for both military and civilian needs would be threatened.64 Taking a political page from the Confederacy, some regions, especially in the Midwest, defended their resistance as a manifestation of states’ rights in the face of the growing authority of the federal government. In Terre Haute, Indiana, local opponents of the draft issued a poster calling on the citizens to attend an “Old Fashioned Barbacue [sic]” to organize against conscription, as it was “time for action by the friends of the Constitution and the White Man’s Liberty” to stand up against the draft. “United we stand in defiance of Tyrants!”65 the poster proclaimed. Other resisters of the draft were driven by anti-abolitionist sentiment; for some, the war was “unquestionably for the benefit of the abolitionists, who are all crazy as march hares.”66 Regardless of who opposed the draft, resistance increased dramatically from individual opposition to mass organized disruption of the enrollment process. As with later wars, conscription brought with it draft dodgers, men capable of military service who did not wish to perform military service. Draft dodging took a number of forms. In Indiana’s 7th District, the local Provost Marshal reported claims for draft exemption in order of frequency. The most common exemption was the assertion the draftee was under the age of 21; this was followed by claims of dependent parents, religious obligations to avoid violence, status as a deserter from the rebel army, importance as a skilled worker, and status as a foreign national coming in last, with the marshal remarking that most of the latter had only recently discovered their connection to the “old country.”67 Desperate to escape the draft, other potential recruits purposely failed their physical exam or bribed a doctor to diagnose a falsified ailment.68 An easy means to dodge the draft was simply to avoid enrollment. Draft opponents, often tipped off to the presence of an enrollment officer, avoided their residences until the enrollment was over, although this practice sometimes meant lengthy times away from home or long journeys. To this end, opponents of the draft exploited an early loophole to protect themselves from prosecution. The language of the Enrollment Act imposed punishment only on those impeding the draft, but it did not explicitly provide punishment for resisting the initial enrollment. Opponents to the draft refused to

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local taxes, so property owners in the army paid taxes to allow their fellow New Yorkers to avoid the same military service in which they risked their lives, a position the soldiers found untenable.75 Other communities established draft insurance societies whereby a group of draft-aged men paid a premium into a general account that paid his commutation fee or paid for a substitute if they were unlucky enough to face conscription. Most towns paid for the draft insurance with local taxes, again to the anger of soldiers who paid money so others could stay at home.76 Private William Charles hated the bounty payments. “There are [sic] many a soldier in the army that has a little property at home,” he complained, “but it takes all he can earn and more to pay the taxes on it, in order to pay others to do . . . nothing.”77 When the brother of one soldier joined the local insurance association, it caused a major rift in the family. “I feel sorry and ashamed to think that so many of the men [at home] showed the coward by joining those clubs,” Private James Miller wrote to his brother regarding the draft insurance societies; “I do hope the government will make another draft soon and keep on doing so until they get all the men they want.” Wilson further considered any resister as little more than “a white livered piece of poltroonery” who was to be pitied “for the fear of dieing [sic] is worse, a great deal worse, for cowards than it is for brave men.” In an earlier letter, Miller asked his brother to send him a list of the men from his home county who were drafted and who “belong to the club as to give it its proper name, the Farmington Cowards Mutual Insurance society.” Later, when his own brother joined the draft insurance society, Miller made his displeasure known to him. “I am sorry to hear that you joined that white livered thing which you call the Club, but I think the best name it could have would be the Coward’s retreat,” he berated his sibling, “for . . . if we would only go ahead and flog the rebels and crush the rebellion your friends of the club would be very much pleased and would pat us on the back and call us good fellowes [sic] as long as you can stay home and have someone else do the fighting, marching, and dieing [sic]. . . . [B]y your actions, you say that you would rather the rebels would succeed than to help us flog them. You are in favor of the draft if it don’t call you from your homes and families.”78 * * * As an outgrowth of the increasing vitriol against conscription, there was also active physical opposition to the draft. Provost Marshals faced mobs that blocked their paths and threatened their lives, prompting retaliatory responses from the government. Troops had to restore order after more than

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upon an Officer of the Prov[ost] Mar[shal] Dep[artmen]t when employed in serving notices on drafted men” and sentenced them to six months in prison.89 In the face of deadly violence, enrollment officers became inclined to use force in return, as when Provost Marshals shot and killed a Pennsylvania man resisting arrest. The marshals had tried to apprehend him at the funeral of his sister, perhaps not the most appropriate event at which to act.90 Besides the negative backlash from individual citizens, conscription also faced considerable opposition in political circles. State governors, who bore the brunt of local criticism over the draft, expressed their disapproval of the process or tried to restrict its more unpopular elements. Governors soon became aware that the Enrollment Act stripped them of their traditional controls over the state militias and that the federal government possessed the right to bypass state governors in military matters. These developments did not sit well with Democratic leaders, especially. Unable to halt the enrollment policy, governors could still hold the process hostage by resisting cooperation unless the Lincoln administration heeded their special requests, which ranged from changes in emancipation policy to the removal of unpopular officers from command.91 Particular political issues also attracted the interest of state leaders, who invariably tied it to the issue of conscription. For example, there was initial, and incorrect, confusion that the Enrollment Act made the enlistment of free Northern blacks possible—a perception that caused further opposition because of the tension over African American participation in the war. In unsecured areas like the Border States, the possibility that they could become soldiers caused considerable alarm. General Jeremiah Boyle, the Military Governor of Kentucky, urged the government to avoid enlisting African Americans; otherwise “K[entuck]y will never see another day of peace.”92 Even Lincoln’s most steadfast supporters criticized the enrollment process in their respective states. Andrew Curtin, governor of Pennsylvania, was one, and he penned a lengthy critique of the draft process to the President in January 1865, charging that the Provost Marshals often “took a strange misconstruction of the [Enrollment] Act” by enrolling people usually exempt, miscalculated the quotas for several districts, and even failed to produce enough shoes for the draftees. Curtin closed by pleading with the President to personally “regulate a matter of such deep and delicate moment as the enforcing [of] a draft for the military service.”93 In an attempt to clarify who was liable to be drafted and who was not, Curtin issued a set of ”Instructions to Commissioners” that unfortunately clashed with some elements of the Enrollment Act in that Curtin cited state laws that prevented the enrollment of some persons subject to drafting by federal law. That is, although Curtin confirmed

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Chief Justice Roger Taney, who believed the legislation unconstitutional as it violated the reserved powers of the states to establish their own militias— a predictable opinion from the author of the Dred Scott Decision. No case ever reached the Court, however, and Taney’s opinion never found a public forum.97 From a legal standpoint, Lincoln never opposed a Supreme Court challenge to the Enrollment Act, but he would not support a moratorium on enrollments while a challenge worked its way through the lower courts.98 The most serious legal challenge to the Enrollment Act came from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Draftees received ten days to settle their affairs before reporting for duty, but draft resisters began using that time span to obtain writs of habeas corpus from local judges to avoid service. In October 1863, a marshal in Indiana recorded the popularity of the practice, reporting he faced ninety-eight habeas corpus cases filed against him, thirty-six in U.S. district court and sixty-two in local state courts.99 Efforts by the Provost Marshal Corps to end the practice by refusing to accept habeas corpus restrictions culminated in the case of Kneedler v. Lane in November 1863. By a 3–2 ruling, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court deemed the Enrollment Act an unconstitutional violation of states’ rights, and issued an injunction against further enrollments in the state. For opponents of the draft, however, their success was short lived, as the ruling did not reflect the attitudes of most Pennsylvanians. Shortly after the Kneedler ruling, Justice Walter Lowrie, a Democrat, lost his bid for reelection to the state high court and Daniel Agnew replaced him. Two months later, Agnew, a Republican, voted to void the earlier ruling when the court entertained a government request to suspend the injunction against the draft. Now on the losing side, the judges who had previously supported the injunction protested against any change in the court’s ruling without the introduction of new evidence, but had to accept the new majority.100 Because of the depth of opposition and discord it generated, the general impression of Civil War Union conscription is one of failure. Overall, despite the massive effort and expense of the PMC, the draft yielded few soldiers. In the four draft calls, the army drew the names of 776,829 men, of whom 161,244 failed to report for duty. Of the remaining 522,187 draftees, 315,509 received an exemption from service at their entrance examination. Among the 206,678 accepted by the army after their initial examination, 83,724 paid the commutation fee and 73,607 provided a substitute, leaving only 46,347 (6% of the starting number) as actual draftees.101 Such minimal acquisition of manpower became even more apparent on the local level. In one draft office in Baltimore, on January 12, 1864, a marshal examined 73 potential draftees; of these, 12 paid the commutation fee, 16 had a verifiable disability,

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to the lowest ranking private, the Union Army welcomed the flood of manpower that conscription promised to deliver. The Army and Navy Journal, the leading military publication of its day and a barometer of the attitudes and beliefs of senior officers, favored the draft. Calling conscription a “vital, practical necessity,” the publication declared “the duty of bearing arms, when called upon in the defense of the Government and the laws is obligatory upon all able-bodied citizens. This is a sovereign right which the State must be able to demand.”108 The army’s leadership in the field was equally supportive of conscription, but for more practical reasons. By 1864, General Ulysses Grant believed that bounty money furnished only a soldier of lesser physical ability and patriotic motivation compared to earlier troops, and thus recommended against any more payments.109 While avoiding the legal ramifications of conscription, Grant understood the political dimension of the draft as it appeared to the Confederates. Grant pushed the idea of conscription to Lincoln through Secretary of War Stanton, writing in September 1864 that the “enforcement of the draft and prompt filling up of our armies will save the shedding of blood to an immense degree” by creating overwhelming military force. A vigorously conducted draft would also demonstrate resolve to the Confederates. “Prompt action in filling our armies will have more effect upon the enemy than a victory over them,” Grant continued to Stanton. “They profess to believe, and make their men believe, there is such a party [in the] North in favor of recognizing southern independence the draft cannot be enforced. Let them be undeceived.”110 Common soldiers had no such political agenda regarding conscription; all they knew was that more soldiers meant larger armies. Private James Dunn wrote to his wife in March 1863 complaining of the rain, but was at the same time optimistic for the future, believing the mass of new soldiers meant reinforced Union armies capable of quickly ending the rebellion.111 Soldiers in the field were certainly aware, through newspapers and letters from home, of the depth of opposition to the draft, sometimes by members of their own families. Soldiers countered the anti-conscription arguments with appeals of their own based upon their wartime experiences and expectations. Just as anti-conscription arguments often became emotional and rhetorically charged, so did the counter statements of soldiers in the field. The core statement in support of conscription from soldiers was the expectation that civilians should support the law, accept conscription if unwilling to volunteer, and share the burdens of defending the country. In support of this, Union soldiers believed a suitable alternative to the draft was universal military service. Instead of permitting slackers at home to pay commutation fees, find substitutes, or seek an exemption, soldiers wanted all Union men to

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accepted their duty to come out and fight. “We are anxiously looking for the new draft,” George Beidelman wrote his father; “Hope it will not be delayed. It is a time when every soul should ‘be subject unto the higher powers.’”118 In addition to the soldiers in the field, families at home also supported the draft to ensure the survival of their loved ones. Writing to Lincoln in January 1865, Elisha Blackman, a 64-year old Indianan, asked why Lincoln did not ask for as many men as he could: instead of a few hundred thousand, why Lincoln did not “call out at once a million men,” a tidal wave of manpower so massive that “the rebellion could not last three months.” Blackman was not some fair-weather patriot; he told Lincoln, “I have had three sons in the army. Two are dead, one is with [General William] Sherman. Another would willingly go.”119 Creating such an irresistible force would also prevent one of the Union soldiers’ greatest fears of waging such a bloody war and enduring such sacrifices in vain. “If . . . men will not be aroused to see the peril their country is in, all will be lost,” Private David Nichol feared. “The soldier, who has poured forth his hearts blood on the Battlefield, will go unrevenged. The Widows & Orphans, who are mourning for those who will never return, cannot be consoled.”120 Veterans expressed pity for those who resisted the draft, perceiving them as nothing but cowards who lacked the courage to face the enemy and the manliness to accept their obligations to the nation. Instead of permitting them the shame of their cowardice, most veterans believed that forcing the resisters into the army would actually benefit them by instilling some courage, as well as increasing the strength of the army. “I see by the papers there will be a draft on the 10th of March,” Private Henry Mathes wrote to his sister in Pennsylvania. “That will make the big bugs shell out their greenbacks or shoulder a musket,” although he believed the $300 commutation fee was not sufficient to justify exemption from the draft.121 Exasperated by the long list of exempted men printed in his local newspaper, Captain John Willoughby thought it “outrageous that so many were exempt  .  .  . If the affair is conducted thus we may draft until doomsday before our armies are to be filled as they should.”122 Captain George Squier relished the idea of commanding some of the cowardly resisters from his native Indiana if he could actually get them into the army. “If I could have my way, every man subject to military duty in the Northern states would have a musket in their [sic] hands in less than thirty days,” Squier wrote to his wife, “and I would not deal very gently with them either. I would like to command a company of those conscripts. It would do me good to bring the cowardly snakes to time to show them the beauties of soldiering.”123 Soldiers also had little regard for those who talked more than they acted. Private John Dunbar favored the draft and hated draft

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conscription would lead to desertions by soldiers unwilling to fight because the government compelled them to do so, Captain Charles Mattocks, serving on court-martial duty, believed that “The Court Martial will probably continue all winter, as the new Draft will make new [desertion] cases.”130 Other soldiers hated the draft because it placed them at a disadvantage with respect to civilians. Sergeant John Westervelt, an army engineer, wrote of his disgust when he employed “two or three hundred civilians . . . at 30 dol[lar]s per month and rations” to work on a harbor construction project, which was nearly twice what a Union private earned. Westervelt realized that this was heavy work soldiers were usually glad to avoid, but “Why should these men get more pay than soldiers, and escape the draft in the bargain[?] . . . Why are those who do the real work paid so little while those who do next to nothing are paid such extravagant wages[?].” In Westervelt’s view, “Were things conducted with more justice to the soldier, there would be no need for a draft.”131 From an economic perspective, soldiers also understood that the offer of bounty money only begat more demands for bounty money. “It seems to me, men will not come out in their Country’s service at this time unless they get their weight in gold,” Private David Nichol complained. “The larger the bounty, the fewer the men still hold back, expecting a fortune. Will such men fight, actuated by such motives as this?”132 The main source of opposition to the draft among soldiers in the Union Army, however, was the belief that it would not provide suitable replacements—that, on the contrary, conscription captured only those incapable of military service. The first impression veteran soldiers had of new recruits seemed to justify their fears. Chaplain John Stuckenberg wrote derisively of the new draftees assigned to the 145th Pennsylvania and their disruptive influence. He described the new men as shirkers (one shot off his little toe to gain a discharge), a former slave trader, drunks, thieves, and gamblers. He also noted that a wooden ”horse” to punish minor offenders had appeared in front of the regimental headquarters, “a disgrace to the regiment” as the unit had not required one before.133 Observing a mixed bag of new recruits, Private George Beidelman described them as young men leaving their wives and children, an old man “his hair already frosted by the winters of nearly five score years,” and a collection of “the sick as well as the poor and the growlers who have been sitting at home fighting the battles over their newspapers.”134 A New Hampshire soldier derisively portrayed the behavior of new recruits as “they get drunk, fight, disturb the camp, break heads, steal, lie, fall asleep at their posts, desert the guard, and serve the evil one generally.”135 Besides objecting to the poor quality of new recruits, many veterans maligned them for possessing a base motives. The original volunteers

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will find the old men of our regiment will shoot them like dogs as they will deserve.”141 Veterans also derided the economic and ethnic backgrounds of recruits. The 104th New York received amongst their seventy replacements in September 1863 a recruit who “has been in the rebel army.” There was also a “rebel deserter” amongst the recruits sent to the 83rd Pennsylvania, along with men disparagingly described as “the grandest scoundrels that ever went unhung.” These included men accused of murder, thievery, and arson, and representing “every nation under the sun. English, Irish, French, Germans, Russians, Danes, and Swedes.”142 Concerned about the quality of the new recruits, officers believed them unreliable and predicted the need for harsh discipline to keep them in line. To prevent desertions among Maine soldiers, for instance, Provost Marshals housed them on a small island in Casco Bay before transferring them to their units in the field. Moving men to their units, however, was a risky business for all involved. Those eager to avoid military service were quite willing to use violence to escape, and, in turn, their guards proved equally willing to apply violence in return. “The guards shot four of our conscripts while marching them to deliver to the regiment,” Private John L. Smith reported to his mother. “They tried to desert. These men are worth-less, hard-looking fellows.”143 * * * In the end, no one won the conscription battle. The Enrollment Act provided the army only angry draftees or ”volunteers” who enlisted merely to collect large bounties. The government damaged its relationship with citizens otherwise supportive of its policies. Diehard backers of the Democratic Party were never inclined to champion Lincoln’s initiatives, but many citizens who desired a reunified country found their dedication tested by a conscription policy that seemed to justify the conspiracy theories of malevolent government expansion of power. Instead of creating a massive army of the citizenry, the Enrollment Act created a violent internal dissent that siphoned off military forces to contain it. Soldiers and their families lost the most of all. In far too many instances, soldiers lost faith in those at home upon whom they counted for support. Many Union families sent their sons, brothers, and fathers into the Union Army and loyally supported them against its enemies at home. Just as many established for themselves how much sacrifice was enough, and when the government asked them to sacrifice more than they were willing, the result was a sense of alienation and hostility between soldiers who fought and those at home who had agendas and reasons of their own to avoid front-line service.

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actions that antagonized segments of the Northern population, individual demands to end the war coalesced into a growing peace movement. Initially, the Democratic Party tried to distance itself from charges of traitorous Copperhead sympathies. “Every man must be for the United States or against it,” Stephen Douglas proclaimed only weeks before his death in June 1861, “There can be no neutrals in this war, only patriots or traitors.”4 But as the perceived party of the South and the opponent of President Lincoln, the Democratic Party found itself cast by the Union Army as part of the Copperhead movement by default. This is particularly the case of the Peace Democrats, political opponents of Lincoln, who decried his controversial actions such as conscription, the Emancipation Proclamation, and determination to continue the war in times of Confederate ascendency on the battlefield. The Peace Democrats favored a negotiated end to the war, even if that meant a separation of the country and recognition of Confederate victory. Opposing them were large numbers of Democrats, the War Democrats, who sided with the Lincoln administration. “There are two kinds of Democrats, war and peace,” a Maine soldier commented, “and I think the war element of the party are virtually Republicans in their sentiments.”5 Their goal was preservation of the Union, although their commitment to emancipation remained uncertain. On the distant battlefield, few soldiers made the distinction between the Peace and War Democrats and labeled all Democrats as a common enemy.6 Although the Peace Democrats were the political face of the anti-war movement and the original Copperheads, the definition of the typical anti-war advocate was much more diverse. Identity with the Copperheads was very individualistic, with pro- and anti-war beliefs separating communities and families as much as the war itself. In general terms, however, anti-war sentiment existed highest in rural regions (especially in the Midwestern states just above the Ohio River), amongst immigrants (particularly Irish immigrants who resented Protestant nativism), and all those who grew weary of the conflict as it dragged on. Pro-Lincoln supporters saw sinister intent in even legitimate political actions taken by the Democrats. In the 1862 elections, for instance, the Democrats gained control of the state legislatures in both Illinois and Indiana. As part of their anti-war stance, both legislatures began proceedings to reduce the authority of the governor in budgeting and military matters relative to the legislature. The embattled governors, Richard Yates in Illinois and Oliver Morton in Indiana, used claims of Copperhead influence to cast the proposed changes in a bad light. Yates overcame his hostile state legislature only by invoking his right to dismiss the legislature to prevent it from passing laws

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once arrested, with a view to being tried as above stated, or sent beyond our lines into the lines of their friends.”11 Burnside did not issue an idle threat, but instead began to crack down on Copperheads in his department. “Gen. Burnside is distressing the Copperheads in his department very much, sending some to jail, some being fined, and put at hard labor, and two [Kentucky men caught recruiting for the Confederate army] have been sentenced to be shot on the 15th of May,” Private Elisha Peterson informed his father, “They are to be sent from Cincinnati to [the POW camp on] Johnson’s Island, in Sandusky Bay, where the sentence is to be executed.”12 Such campaigns by the army were common, but Vallandigham sought to use Burnside’s General Order 38 to his own ends. By purposefully violating the order, Vallandigham could, at best, stay in the public eye while he planned his political future, or, at worse, suffer punishment that would cast him as a martyr to the anti-war factions of the public. In a speech in Cincinnati aimed directly at General Burnside, Vallandigham cast aside claims the war was for the preservation of the Union. Instead, he claimed a “war for the purpose of crushing out liberty and erecting despotism; a war for freedom for the blacks, and enslavement of the whites,” and castigated the Lincoln administration for refusing an honorable negotiated end to the war in order to pursue their unconstitutional goals.13 Burnside responded quickly, dispatching army troops to arrest Vallandigham at his home. Upon receiving news of Vallandigham’s arrest in Dayton, an angry mob burned down the local Republican newspaper, and a soldier shot a rioter as he attempted to cut the fire hoses trying to douse the flames.14 The following day, a military tribunal spent only three hours trying and convicting Vallandigham of violating General Order No. 38, and sentenced him to imprisonment for the duration of the war. When notified of the sentence, Lincoln found himself in a quandary. Lincoln had no sympathy for anti-war proponents such as Vallandigham, but he dreaded the political implications of jailing a former Democratic congressman. Freeing Vallandigham, however, would undermine the prosecution of other less prominent opponents, and Lincoln had to support Burnside. Instead of imprisonment, Lincoln seized upon Burnside’s own warning to send violators “into the lines of their friends” by commuting Vallandigham’s sentence to exile in the Confederacy.15 Vallandigham challenged his expulsion from Union territory, but the Supreme Court eventually rejected his plea in Ex Parte Vallandigham. Speaking for the court, Justice James Moore Wayne, a Democratic appointee, declared the Court had no power to review the proceedings of a duly appointed military commission. Burnside’s trial of Vallandigham was brief, but it was legitimate under General Order 100, the standing orders of the

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the Buckshots, the American Association, the Paw Paws, or the Southern Association, all such groups gained notoriety for purportedly existing only as fronts for the KGC. Even national organizations with more open policies, like the Order of American Knights and Order of the Sons of Liberty, faced the perception their public face hid the private KGC. The elusive nature of the KGC, however, made the organization difficult to define. Because Civil War participants themselves could not establish a firm shape for the KGC, subsequent studies of the group are equally uncertain. One historian underscored the vague nature of the KGC in perspective when he described the organization: “Its purposes and ritual were a glorification of state rights and the strict construction of the Federal Constitution. A majority of its members . . . believed they had joined merely a Democratic club.” Yet, the same author also admits “It is true they procured arms and drilled in out-of-theway places, but they were not planning a large-scale insurrection. Individual members . . . did aid the Confederacy by supplying arms and munitions . . . [and] there were at times communications carried from the North to points within the Confederate lines, but this does not appear to have been very extensive.”21 With equal uncertainty, another writer described the KGC as “an organization which covered anything from a dark lantern democratic organization, as an anti-war party, to actual constructive treason.”22 While it is easy to accuse paranoid Northerners and worried politicians of exaggerating the KGC’s abilities, it is just as easy, in the midst of the Civil War, to believe the visible activities of the KGC were merely the tip of a larger iceberg. Like most conspiracies, KGC allegiance proved an accusation easy to make, but difficult to prove. Many rumors regarding the KGC gained credence when Joseph Holt, the Judge Advocate General of the army, issued a report based upon his investigation of alleged anti-war organizations. Conducted at the behest of Secretary of War Stanton, the investigation tied, with only the slimmest of evidence, all anti-war activities into a vast conspiracy driven by the KGC. Any anti-war opposition, every riot, and each plot was a part of the KGC, according to Holt, led by Clement Vallandigham, whose arrest the report fully justified. Not coincidentally, Holt issued the report just weeks before the 1864 elections, and Republican candidates used it to good effect against ‘disloyal’ Democratic opponents.23 Although the precise scope of the KGC’s activities remains open to debate, Union soldiers certainly believed the KGC represented a vast hidden attempt, funded by the Confederate government and conducted by traitorous Northern civilians, to undermine and destroy the Union war effort. Studied from an objective position, belief in the existence of the KGC seems somewhat odd, but considering that crises tend to promote belief in extremist views,

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his rumors.24 Joseph Holt alleged the KGC enrolled 40,000 members in Missouri, but the organization itself claimed only 23,000 members. Even if the highest number was accurate, KGC members accounted for only 3% of Missouri’s 1860 census population of 1.2 million residents.25 Claims of KGC membership in Indiana ranged between 50,000 and 125,000 (out of an 1860 census population of 1.35 million residents), and critics portrayed Indiana as the “storm center of such movements.”26 Prepared to believe that Copperhead resistance was everywhere, Union officials made plans to address the threat. Claiming that KGC men were intimidating local Unionists in western Missouri, General Clinton Fisk identified those whom he believed were KGC members and promised “If any more of our men are molested, I have victims spotted for hostages to retaliate on.”27 Ignoring the publicly stated goals and actions of anti-war advocates, supporters of the war instead saw far larger and more ominous conspiracies afoot. Believers in the Copperhead conspiracy accused them of broad offenses against the government: organizing the opposition to the draft, encouraging and abetting the desertion of soldiers, and intimidating supports of the government and the war. Opponents of the Knights blamed them for killing enrollment officers, manipulating local election, orchestrating riots against government authority, and acting as a “fifth column” to prepare Northern soil for Confederate invasion.28 Any unfortunate event became the nefarious product of KGC plotting, such as the burning of barns belonging to Unionists.29 Fear of Copperhead influence tended to turn innocent events and occurrences into sinister dealings with hidden meanings. In Indiana, when locals tried to “raise money to purchase exemptions of every Democrat who may be drafted,” worried state officials used this as evidence of KGC activity, ignoring that such insurance associations were commonplace in the age of conscription.30 A sudden crisis triggered claims of KGC influence even in areas that had no previous reason to suspect anti-war activity. When Confederate General John H. Morgan raided north of the Ohio River in the summer of 1863, local citizens in Michigan feared a “gigantic plot by the Knights of the Golden Circle” to seize the state arsenal, a plan put down only by “several stout loyal hearts” who defended the arsenal and pointed authorities to suspected KGC members.31 Given its mysterious nature and the propensity of its critics to promote its influence, the Knights of the Golden Circle soon attracted rumors that its members included powerful members in positions capable of affecting the outcome of the war. Former President John Tyler, who also served as a member of the Confederate Congress was, according to anti-KGC sources, a founding member of the organization. Other suspected influential members included former Democratic Presidents Franklin Pierce

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force. One example of the application of military power involved 2nd Lieut. Thomas Durham. Sent to Parke County, Indiana to confront a lack of internal security, Durham found a group he labeled the Knights of the Golden Circle monitoring the movement of federal forces, impeding the draft, and “burning houses of Union men and committing all kinds of depredations.” Cowed by the large number of Copperheads, local law enforcement did little to stop them. Durham, reinforced by a handpicked squad, determined to show the locals “these copperheads were cowards and all a fellow had to do was go at them like he was killing copperhead snakes and they would stampede.” Durham managed to round up twenty suspected Copperheads, but his success put him in danger. In the following nights, Copperhead raiders tried to kill Durham, but they managed only to enrage the local population by murdering an elderly Union man. Eventually, Durham broke up the local Copperhead/KGC group, pacifying a region Durham referred to as “Hell’s Half Acre.”37 Efforts to contain the Copperheads, however, never seemed to have any effect. Because of the conspiratorial perception of the Copperhead movement, adherents of the anti-war conspiracy believed that suppressing one group killed only one segment of a multi-headed hydra, and the task of stopping the Copperheads seemed endless because no one knew the true extent of the conspiracy’s efforts. Instead of seeing a weakened Copperhead movement, soldiers saw only growing unrest, especially when violent anti-war riots occurred and intensified. Protest, by the soldiers’ reckoning, was one thing, but behavior that threatened anarchy and violence on a large scale was quite another. From the viewpoint that the northern purpose for fighting the war was to uphold the sanctity of law and order, and that chaos and lawlessness were the death knell of a republic, the solders viewed anarchy at home as unpatriotic and intolerable. Disruptive behavior was an attribute of the rebellious Confederates, and if military force was an acceptable means of quelling the rebels, then force was also appropriate for such behavior at home as well. Consequently, soldiers looked with great disfavor on civic unrest in the North, and accepted the possibility that violent responses were the solution. When riots broke out in Northern cities at various times in the war, soldiers immediately associated the violence and defiance of authority with the work of Copperhead conspirators. Because they defied basic law and order and threatened the lives of citizens who obeyed the law and/or supported the administration, those who participated in riots immediately became obvious enemies of soldiers fighting to save the Union, and thereby deserved the harshest repercussions. Understanding that a lethal enemy lurked potentially in every Northern city, soldiers feared that Copperhead

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with reinforcements from the 28th Wisconsin. Pors supervised the arrest of 130 rioters and held them for trial, but a local judge upheld their request for a writ of habeas corpus and ordered their release a month later.40 The anti-war activity, however, was not over. In June 1863, a mob in Dodge County west of Milwaukee murdered a marshal enrolling for the draft, and other government officials faced constant harassment from women and children, upon whom they were hesitant to use force. Reporting on the action in Wisconsin, a Nashville newspaper described the opposition by local women as so fierce the Provost Marshals had to request armed guards to “protect them against the Amazons.”41 As the war progressed, rioting became more violent and pointedly aimed against specific political targets. Because no one could predict what circumstance might trigger a disturbance, riots occurred in a wide range of places and for an array of reasons. Regardless of its site, origin, or justification, any riot became part of the Copperhead plot in the soldiers’ opinion because it targeted Lincoln and Republican policies. No region of the Union was immune from rioting, as the circumstances that led to violent outbursts or anti-government resistance varied depending upon the locale and its particular fears and concerns. The rioting in Holmes County, Ohio in June 1863, for instance, was unique due to its location and local demographic. The most active anti-war resistance was in southern Ohio, an area with economic and social connections to the South, but Holmes County was in the northeastern part of the state. It was largely Democratic at a time when the state increasingly identified with Republican Party goals. It was also relatively isolated, described by one source as “a most miserable country . . . the God of nature most evidently designed it as a habitation for wild beasts,” with only limited outside communication. This isolation helped to generate what one historian has described as “a worldview that was localistic rather than cosmopolitan,” and, in turn, created a situation where “citizens incorporated  .  .  . antiwar sentiment into an ideology of localistic patriotism that could justify armed opposition to the federal government.”42 Rioting began when a Provost Marshal tried to arrest several residents for conspiring to kill local abolitionists, a charge generated less by hard evidence and more on a tip from the marshal’s brother, who had overheard the plot. When the marshal attempted to arrest four of the conspirators, a mob of anti-draft men freed the prisoners at gunpoint and threatened to kill the marshal if he returned. Fearing the arrival of more federal authorities, nearly one thousand draft resisters established a fortified position to withstand any further attempts to enroll them for the draft. The position was far from a makeshift affair, with sturdy walls and defended by four cannon, one nicknamed the ‘Baby Waker.’ Reinforced

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The closest thing to a direct draft riot occurred in New York City, leading to four days of unrest beginning on July 13, 1863, that left at least 119 people dead and more than 300 injured.48 The riot coincided with the first draft drawings, making the New York Riots the first true anti-draft conflict, although, like in other communities, there were other extenuating circumstances. New York expressed a commitment to the preservation of the Union in the early stage of the war, but a growing pro-peace/anti-war sentiment soon emerged as the city’s financial health suffered with the loss of Southern trade. As a demonstration of its willingness to act in its own interests, New York tried to declare itself an ‘open city’ in 1861, claiming its effective neutrality in the conflict to maintain commerce with the Confederacy.49 The economic situation was of real concern as it also exacerbated racial issues as in other cities where poor whites (in the case of New York, Irish immigrants) competed with African Americans for positions as laborers. Already antagonized by the labor situation, Irish immigrants opposed to the conscription they believed would fall most heavily upon them, acted to disrupt the draft proceedings. The riot started when an Irish mob burned down an enrollment office, but the mob then began to swell in numbers and attack additional targets. Rioters initially had little resistance beyond the outnumbered local police, as most of the federal troops in the area were in Pennsylvania, gathered there to assist in the repulse of Lee’s army at Gettysburg. According to correspondence with the War Department, there were only 460 federal soldiers in the city at the outbreak of the riots.50 Many racial and demographic groups joined in the rioting, but one in particular stood out in descriptions of the event. Irish immigrants , including a notable number of women, were the most prominent element, and they vented their wrath on symbols of their perceived oppression. Diarist George Templeton Strong described that “stalwart young vixens and withered old hags were swarming everywhere, all cursing the ‘bloody draft’ and egging on their men to mischief.”51 Sergeant Peter Welsh, an Irishman himself, found the Irish prominence in the New York mobs embarrassing. “I am very sorry the Irish men of New York took so large a part in them disgracefull [sic] riots,” Welsh wrote to his wife in the aftermath of the turmoil, “God help the Irish. They are to easily led into such snares which gives their enemys an oppertunity to malighn and abuse them.”52 Offices of the Provost Marshals and the hated draft were specific targets, as were Protestant churches. 53 African Americans also suffered in the mob frenzy. Black resident that fell into the mob’s hands became the victims of beatings and lynchings, and arsonists burned the Colored Orphan Asylum.54 Only after the arrival of veteran soldiers, some directly from the Battle

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one observer described the mob as “all daring, hilarity, hooting, hallooing, and pouring in all the missiles they could lay their hands on.” The observer concurred with Cabot about the paver barrage, but stated the stones were no threat to those inside the armory, firing into the crowed was unnecessary, and only the authorities were to blame for an unprovoked incident where “several men and youths were ushered into the presence of their Maker.”60 The only thing worse than urban rioting, in the soldiers’ opinion, was the specter of insurrection, a massed attempt by Copperheads and their Confederate allies to disrupt or overthrow the national or local government. As the war progressed and Confederate hopes dimmed, such a possibility seemed more and more likely. By late 1864, with Union armies pressing deep into Confederate territory, the chances of Union victory never seemed higher and the Confederacy became increasingly desperate. At the same time, the high casualties that accompanied the Union victories, especially in Ulysses Grant’s campaigns in Virginia, gave new life to the anti-war movement. In an election year, Abraham Lincoln’s presidency was at a crossroads, and antiCopperheads feared any defeat or setback would give the anti-war Democrats enough leverage to win the White House. They also worried Copperheads might take advantage of the election year to improve the Confederate chances of victory. Events in Indiana seemed to fulfill those fears. In 1864, after an investigation of Copperhead activity in Indiana, army officials arrested a number of prominent Copperheads and charged them with concocting a plan subsequently known as the Northwest Conspiracy. The Copperheads in question, acting in concert with Confederate agents operating in Canada, planned to free thousands of Confederate POWs at Camp Douglas near Chicago. Armed with weapons stockpiled by the Copperheads and joined by thousands of KGC members, the new Confederate army on northern soil planned to overthrow the governments of the Old Northwest States and take them out of the war. At the very least, the plotters believed a sizeable uprising might force the recall of General William Sherman’s armies from Georgia to put down the insurrection. According to the government, the plan failed because a “mole” named Felix Stidger had infiltrated the KGC and undermined the conspiracy. 61 Military authorities in Ohio also made arrests in conjunction with the Indiana conspiracy. Private Elisha Peterson received a letter from his father detailing the arrests. “A conspiracy to release all the rebble [sic] prisoners on Johnson’s Island in Sandusky Bay, Camp Chase, Cincinnati, and elsewhere has been discovered and measures taken to thoroughly check it,” the elder Peterson described, “The plan included the distruction [sic] of Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and as many of the towns and as much damage as otherwise possible. There have been about a half a dozzen persons arrested . . . and

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* * * Struggling and dying to save the Union, soldiers had difficulty in accepting the peace movement. Believing that civilians at home did not understand the suffering and hardships of military life along with their ignorance of the consequences of defeat, soldiers became disillusioned with a peace movement that seemed willing to give up the Union and make their sacrifices meaningless. “When I see the . . . treason that is showing itself in the North, the gloom grows darker and heavier,” John Campbell wrote in his diary, “When I hear of the traitors boldly proclaiming their hostility to our government . . . my faith in the American people is much shaken.” Campbell, however, was not willing to give up. “But the contest must be continued and directed by the true patriots of the land,” he resolved, “The sheet lightening patriotism of our country has spent itself, but . . . the Union must stand, undivided, entire, triumphant . . . and is worth the sacrifices and suffering of a generation.”67 Such disillusionment, in turn, generated desires for retribution, and peace agitators became the target of soldier anger. “If we succeed in putting the rebellion down, and are spared to get home without being mangled by the steel of the Graybacks,” an Indiana private wrote, “God have mercy on the Northern croakers, I know very well the soldiers will not.”68 The basis of opposition to the war, the soldiers recognized, was the right to talk freely about the war, and soldiers wished to silence those whom they believed were poisoning the well of support. “But what of the Northern Traitors,” Private James Abraham wrote to his brothers, “Will ‘Uncle Abe’ not also have to seal their mouths and stop their wind? If there is anything on God’s green earth I could love to hate, it would be a Northern rebbel [sic] & traitor.”69 Angry with disillusioned soldiers who went home after their discharges and related tales of defeatism in the army, Charles Musser had only hatred for “the sneaking, cowardly, villainous Copperheads are the ones that keep up such a ‘fire in the rear.’” Musser rejected their former status as honorable soldiers, stating “there are some men . . . that if they were here with us would ride on the Bayonette very quick . . . It would have been better for them if they had went and hung themselves to a man.”70 Connecting public support for the war to success on the battlefield, many soldiers believed they could not win the war without unity at home, and silencing Copperheads offered improved military prospects. “I would like to have the power to clean out some of the copperheads up North,” Abraham Hilands wished, “and it would not be safe for them to come down here and preach the doctrine they do at home. They appear to be trying to get the soldiers uneasy and dissatisfied but their efforts are in ruin.” Hilands wanted more Northerners to join

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Americans upon Fort Phil Kearney in the Nebraska Territory, believed the Indians “are no doubt led on by rebbels [sic] and Secession sympathizers.”78 Suspicion of Copperheads turned innocent meetings into conspiratorial cabals and spontaneous anti-war reactions into prearranged assault. William Johnson, the Provost Marshal for New Jersey’s 5th District, described local Democrats as “discontented people in this City” who “are holding meetings nightly organizing and arming themselves to resist the Draft.” In subsequent days, Johnson reported “they soon assaulted my business office, braking [sic] in the doors and windows,” followed by an attack upon “my house and assaulted it with stones, braking the windows and blinds.” Throughout the attack, which Johnson construed as a prearranged plot, “the Sherriff of the County, though present, made no effort to suppress it. The Mayor dare not if he would and would not if he could.”79 Soldiers blamed the Copperheads for prolonging the war by creating an internal revolt against the Lincoln administration. “Do you suppose that if every rebel soldier in the Southern States was to ground his arms tomorrow and swear allegiance to the old Government  .  .  . the war would cease,” a Pennsylvania soldier asked his brother, “[not] unless Northern traitors would also stop their howl.”80 Soldiers found Copperheads not only in their communities, but also in positions of power where their actions in opposition to the war seemed to identify them as enemies of the state. Judge Charles Constable, sitting on the bench in Coles County, Illinois, quickly earned a reputation as a Copperhead sympathizer. When he permitted Indiana deserters to escape arrest by crossing the border into his jurisdiction, however, Indiana Governor Oliver Morton had seen enough. Morton ordered troops to cross into Illinois and arrest Constable, and they nearly succeeded before a federal district court judge ordered Constable’s release.81 Copperheads found themselves the target of civilians who shared the army’s distrust of their political motivations. Sergeant Delazon Ketchum, exasperated by Copperhead activities in his native Wisconsin, hoped that, if public opinion sided with the soldiers, “Copperheads will yet be an abomination to all people.”82 An Iowa man proudly related to his brother in the army how he dealt with a local Democrat, a “disgusting pup  .  .  . [who] attends every copperhead meeting anywhere near, [and] calls himself a copperhead,” who publicly supported Jefferson Davis. Reacting to the provocation, the soldier’s brother “told him he was a lying scoundrel and . . . I would knock him over. That cooled him off considerably.”83 Efforts by civilians to silence Copperhead sentiment received universal soldiers’ support as a means of sharing the war’s burdens. “Now, if you in the North will try to convert the Copperheads and the Irish [into Union supporters], we will attend to the rest,”

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at the government’s treatment of Vallandigham, nominated him by a nearly unanimous vote. He lost in a landslide defeat to Republican candidate John Brough, however, and soldiers rejoiced in his electoral misfortune. “There are some for him,” wrote a soldier of the 122nd Ohio in the days before the election, “but the most of them would vote for him to go to purgatory before they would vote for him to be governor.”92 After Vallandigham lost, soldiers hoped his defeat might generate more anti-Copperhead sentiment. “Poor Vallandigham will hardly march in triumph to the State Capitol [after losing his bid for the Ohio governorship],” Alvin Voris cheerfully wrote his wife, “My men gave nine hearty cheers when the news was communicated to them . . . the citizens at home . . . would take care of the miserable traitors at home & not permit a fire to gut us in the rear while were fighting rebels in the field.” Not content with only Vallandigham’s political defeat, Voris hoped “the Vallandigham party ought not only be vanquished at the elections but should be punished in our prisons for their filthy acts of treason,” and “I hope the people will mock these traitors and forever after shut them out of the control of public matters.”93 In the army, even the name of Vallandigham became a sign of weakness and failure. In the 39th Ohio, Private George Cadman wrote there was only one soldier in the regiment named Vallandigham and he was the worst man in his company.94 Among the means described by Union soldiers to deal with the Copperhead threat was the use of violence and murder. Although such threats seemed sincere and cold-hearted, very few instances existed of soldiers acting upon their threats. Instead, uttering threats became a means of venting frustration and dealing with a situation beyond the soldier’s control as the physical divide prevented them from acting upon their impulses. Noticeably, the soldiers’ threats against the Copperheads were very general in nature, wishing hostile action against their enemies at home, but seldom identifying any Copperhead in particular. “Some of the boys have had letters about Copperheads,” a soldier wrote from Tennessee, “Tell me the names of those Copperheads. I think they ought to be rode [out of town] on a rail.”95 Another common theme amongst soldier threats is the desire to go home and administer the punishment themselves. Soldiers always wanted to go home, and returning to their communities to stamp out the Copperheads was a manifestation of their wish to see home while still aiding in the war effort. In the end, however, soldier on civilian violence was rare, as the notion of military repression, while useful as a means of blowing off steam, was still an anathema to their American sense of liberty.96 That did not prevent soldiers, however, from desiring a range of retribution upon Copperheads in their home communities. If “a copperhead that would insult me or abuse me in any way

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enemies. “If circumstances render it necessary, I would just as soon shoot a northern traitor,” wrote a disgruntled Union veteran, “who openly avows his sympathy with the rebellion and does all in his power to discourage union men  .  .  . as a southern rebel, who has the courage to take up arms.”102 By placing the Copperheads on a plane beneath the Confederates, Union soldiers found any number of reasons to threaten violence upon them. “You may tell every man of Doubtful Loyalty for me, up there in the north, that he is meaner than any son of a bitch in hell,” Henry Bear wrote his family, “I would rather shoot one of them a great deal more than one living here [in the South].”103 Finding the Confederates enough of an enemy for one day, some soldiers proved willing to wait to deal with the Copperheads until after the war. “Those copperheads that are so afraid have no cause to be so,” John Brobst opined, “for I think it will soon be over, and we will all be at home to tend to them.”104 Private Miller hoped for the day “when after this war is over that with our own strong arms we will take vengeance on those cowardly skunks that are a disgrace to our country.”105 Most soldiers, however, stated their immediate willingness to cleanse the country of the Copperhead menace. “I have just been reading the netorias [sic] outrage of them hell doomed Copperheads,” an Illinois private entered in his diary, “My blood boyls at the thought of it. . . . It is rong far rong to take any of them prisoners. I would hang or shoot them down as quick as caut.”106 That soldier had plenty of company. “I wish every copperhead rascal was hung before one inch of Illinois soil shall be added to the Confederacy,” George Cram desired, “I would like have the 105th Regt. set to work among the Northern villains awhile and perhaps we might straighten out their disordered brains a little.”107 Soldiers reserved their most intense hatred for the rioters who threatened the government and security at home. Soldiers viewed the chance to inflict violence upon rioters as an opportunity to destroy the Copperheads now they had finally emerged from the shadows and displayed their true allegiance. Only a handful of soldiers could find a thin justification for the New York riots by blaming it on the nature of mobs rather than any planned anti-government protest. “Originating among those who dreaded being conscripted . . . it soon degenerated into the hands of the thieves and vagabonds to whom public disorder is a harvest day,” wrote one soldier to a New York newspaper, “Once the movement fall under the control of this class, it was directed to the accomplishment of purposes of indiscriminate plunder  .  .  . Such is the tendency of mob law.”108 Instead, soldiers placed the blame for the riots squarely on the administration’s Democratic opposition. “I am sorry to hear of the organized resistance to the draft in New York,” Private James

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full down here.”116 It was not only officers who favored firepower over negotiation. “The idea of firing on such a crowd with blank cartridges was ridiculous and rather encouraged the mob,” Private William Bentley decided, “I hope they will deal with them in such a manner there will be no trouble hereafter.”117 Private Edward Bassett, one of the soldiers sent into New York, promised “I don’t expect we will use too many blank cartridges in our guns if we have to calm them down.”118 Another private assigned to restore order in New York came away disappointed. “I took my gun . . . the same gun that had shot at rebels at Gettysburg and other places, [and] would have rebels to shoot in New York City,” Private Lewis King recalled, but later wrote in disappointment that he “never got to shoot a single one of them.”119 No one was more prepared to kill the rioters than Major James Ames. “I never saw men choke with rage before . . . ,” he wrote to his mother, wishing he had “the luxury of firing into the crowd, of bayoneting rascals, men, women and children, of piling up the dead bodies as we have seen them here [on the battlefield]. To men who have campaigned it for a year or two . . . the sacredness of human life is ‘played out.’”120 Because the government feared that local troops might be unwilling to use sufficient violence against their erstwhile neighbors to quell the New York mobs, the army sent in regiments from the western states that presumably had no issue with killing Easterners. As one soldier stated “Western Troops were sent here because they would have less sympathy for the mob.”121 Among the regiments sent to New York were formations from Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio, as noted by an Ohio soldier who recorded in his diary “We received orders to  .  .  . take cars for Alexandria and from there go on steamer to New York City to aid in quelling the . . . ‘Draft Riot.’”122 One of the Michigan soldiers described the preparation for trouble in the aftermath of the rioting when he estimated “that thirty-five thousand troops will be in the City, and there will be no blank cartrages [sic] issued to the soldiers so if there is forcible resistance to the draft there will be bloodshed. What a sad state of affairs, it is enough to make a man sometimes doubt man’s ability for self-government.”123 The army need not have worried, as New York soldiers expressed no qualms about shooting their fellow New Yorkers. “I wish our brigade & the battery [of artillery] that is with it could be sent to the city,” desired a member of the 154th New York, “They would make short work of the riot. They would not fire blank cartridges at the mob.”124 Describing the New Yorkers in his brigade, an officer noted “Several New York regiments have been sent to N.Y. City, and if they get an opportunity to fire, it will be done right. If the 7th N.Y. regiment had been there, the rioters and thieves would soon have been dispersed.”125

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especially prohibited from so doing by laws which they have positively sworn to obey, and I am determined hereafter to prefer charges against man or officer in the service who I hear so denouncing the President.”4 For those opposed to Lincoln, 1864 was an especially crucial year because it gave them the opportunity to remove him from office, and most were convinced that Lincoln’s days in the White House were numbered. Indeed, as 1864 progressed, Lincoln himself was uncertain of his own reelection. The seeming failure of major military campaigns that summer only fueled the optimism amongst Lincoln’s critics, both within the army and without. “I believe the Democratic Party will win this time,” wrote a weary Union soldier; “Abraham is getting very unpopular among the soldiers, he . . . can prepare for an evacuation of the White House the 4th Day of March next. . . . I hope we will get a President that will end the war quickly and honorably. I do not want to see this war last another twelve months longer. Lives enough have been lost, and treasure enough has been expended for a century to come.”5 Another soldier was even more graphic in his depiction of Lincoln’s shortcomings. “Mr. Lincoln . . . has become a vampire that gnaws into the very bowels of the country,” he wrote dramatically to a New York newspaper. “Give us any man but Abraham Lincoln and we will support him, if he be true to the cardinal principles which ought to actuate an Executive in these disastrous times. . . . We want a man for the Presidency. Let us light our lanterns and, Diogenes-like, go and seek one.”6 Dismayed by the erosion of political support, soldiers began to pay closer attention to state and local politics between 1862 and 1864, viewing the local elections as an opportunity to bolster Lincoln’s cause and gauge the loyalty of families and communities back home. Election victories in 1863 helped to redress some of Lincoln’s political losses from the previous year and encouraged soldiers regarding Lincoln’s chances in 1864. Private Henry Kauffman was pleased that John Brough won the Ohio governor’s race against anti-war Democrat Clement Vallandigham, declaring “the news of his election was a great pleasure to a true union soldier, and I think it was a great victory won.”7 William M. Clark of the 147th Pennsylvania was pleased that Governor Andrew Curtin’s reelection campaign was going well. “I am glad to hear the Curtain [sic] men are straining every nerve to re-elect him,” he wrote to his brother. “You can’t help do it, if he is defeated it will be a gross insult to the sons of the Keystone who have left their homes and everything near and dear to fight for the Flag. I see Maine has gone Union, so will Ohio, if the Soldiers from Ohio are allowed to vote, Could we only get a lift at Curtain, he would be all right. For I believe the soldiers are as a unit for him.”8 James Newton was similarly happy when, in the same year, the Wisconsin Republican James

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after Republican General James Wadsworth lost the 1862 gubernatorial election to Democrat Horatio Seymour, with Wadsworth believing he had lost because many Republican voters were in the army. Despite Seymour’s opposition, the New York legislature approved a bipartisan amendment to the state constitution to permit voting in the field.11 Other states soon followed suit. By the time of the 1864 elections, four states (Minnesota, Ohio, Vermont, and Wisconsin) permitted soldiers to vote in the field, with their votes tallied in their home districts. Thirteen other states (California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and West Virginia) permitted soldiers either to vote in the field with their tallies counted as a separate category or to appoint a proxy to vote for them in their home precincts. The remaining five states (Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, and Oregon) still required their soldiers to vote in their home districts and would not permit absentee balloting.12 For soldiers from these last five states, there were other means of voting. Some soldiers temporarily deserted, taking ”French leave” to cast their votes in their local districts, while other soldiers received legitimate furloughs to go home. Assistant Surgeon Albert Sprague described to his wife how he received orders from his superiors to prepare a list of men from Maryland, Connecticut, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Indiana “who would not be fit for duty for 20 days, so they could go home and vote” on a leave of absence.13 The Republicans needed all of the votes they could get to defeat the Democrats in 1864 because the Democrats nominated as their candidate General George B. McClellan of New Jersey, a former commander of the Union Army of the Potomac. The selection of McClellan was a calculated move by the Democrats, who hoped the former general retained enough fame to transform soldier dissatisfaction with Lincoln into Democratic votes. At a certain level, the Democratic strategy had merit in that McClellan enjoyed the political support of some soldiers for a number of reasons. Although historically labeled a failed general, McClellan had developed a loyal following amongst his men in the early months of the war. After the debacle at First Bull Run, as many raw recruits transformed themselves from civilian volunteers into soldiers, McClellan had rebuilt their morale and strength. Then, having restored the Army of the Potomac’s self-esteem and confidence, McClellan had led the army into battle with the objective of taking Richmond by, in McClellan’s judgment, the route most likely to yield success. Instead of a direct overland march against a number of hostile river crossings, McClellan led the Army of the Potomac on the Peninsular Campaign, approaching Richmond from the east after a march up the York/James River peninsula from Fort Monroe.

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fallen off from your faith of McClellan,” a Massachusetts officer chided his friend at home. “The great cry against McClellan’s slowness arose from the too great impatience of men who forgot that Rome wasn’t built in a day.” The same officer furthermore defended McClellan through conspiratorial claims that McClellan’s losses were due to insufficient forces because he was “cheated of his men by the War Dept.”17 Yet other soldiers, unimpressed with the quality of army leadership since the removal of McClellan, welcomed the prospect of a general/President who would reinvigorate the conflict. “I will vote the Democratic ticket,” Private George Parks confided to a friend at home in New York two months before the election. “In our Co., if we hold an election tonight, it will be 10 to one against Abe. We do not think G. B. McClellan will stop the fight. He will make us fight more and lick the Rebels in about six months.”18 Considering McClellan had previously commanded the Army of the Potomac for more than six months and had not defeated the rebellion, Parks’ confidence was perhaps misplaced. Past performance and foundation loyalty were not the only reasons why soldiers favored their former commander. The lengthy conflict, the lack of success, and the massive casualties combined to create a significant amount of pessimism about the Union’s chances in the outcome of the war. While many a soldier professed confidence in the Union’s likelihood of winning, a significant element of the army sought peace as soon as possible, before all was lost. A Democratic victory on a McClellan ticket would provide such peace sooner rather than later. “If a peace man is nominated for the presidency he would have the strong support of the army,” a New York soldier wrote to his wife. “I do not look upon Father Abraham in the same light as when [at] home. My politics have undergone some changes and Abe and no more of his stripe gets my vote this fall. . . . If you underwent what I have, you would say the same.”19 The last sentence underscored the division between soldiers’ and civilians’ lives. Rather than relying on political argument to persuade his spouse, this particular soldier relied upon the element of the unknown experience to justify his position—only a soldier could know what shaped his opinion, which meant a civilian never could. He was not alone in his desire for peace at any price. Pessimistic soldiers who believed themselves to be in the majority wanted the same, but their reasons for wanting political change varied. Even a year after the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation, the freeing of the slaves still caused a negative reaction among those who did not want to see their war for the Union devolve into a war to support abolitionist agendas. “I want you all do the best you can for McClellan,” Francis Elliott wrote to his family in Pennsylvania two days after McClellan accepted the Democratic nomination. “He is our only hope. Think of your

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national savior; he was just another general in an army full of them. And that was just the attitude of the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac. The soldiers of the Western Theater, having never served under McClellan, had even less of an opinion of him. Soldiers in the Eastern Theater followed the 1864 election very closely based upon their interest in McClellan’s candidacy, but soldiers in the Western Theater were much less personally concerned. With the exception of regiments transferred from the East, soldiers in the West had never served under McClellan’s command and did not hold the former commander in any particular esteem. Western soldiers had their own commanders whom they loyally supported and victories of their own which they celebrated, so interest in McClellan beyond his affiliation with the Democratic Party was rare among them. Some soldiers, such as those in the Army of the Cumberland, supported the Democrats based more upon their dissatisfaction with Lincoln than loyalty to McClellan. Far more common than McClellan advocates were soldiers who had little or no interest in the political process. Consequently, support for Lincoln remained consistently much higher, even in the direst months of the war.23 Generals came and went, but soldiers were quick to understand that the constant throughout the war was Lincoln. As soldiers fought, suffered, and endured, they came to recognize their service had to mean something. If no great outcome came of the war, soldiers reasoned, then what was the purpose of their service and sacrifice? This viewpoint became the counterweight to the soldiers who sought peace at any price. Reelecting Lincoln, soldiers came to realize, was to continue the struggle, fight another battle, and take another step toward victory. Associated with this realization was a view of Lincoln as a comrade or even a father figure. Soldiers often referred to Lincoln familiarly as “Abe” or “Old Abe,” and even reverentially as “Father Abraham.” But it was the familiar names identifying Lincoln as almost a colleague rather than a commander in chief that made it easy for soldiers to cast their votes for him and to convince their family, friends, and neighbors at home to do the same. Charles Hickox pleaded with his family at home to cease their criticism of Lincoln and join the army in supporting him. “We want men with back bone in them; and let me tell you the eyes of the whole country are turned towards you. The whole North, the old fathers of the Republic, the most with babes in their arms, the maidens anxious for their lovers, all look to you. I therefore entreat you, I beg you to forget for the time your little difference with Mr. Lincoln and save the country! Without you we are powerless; with you we can be miracles.”24 Because of this devotion to Lincoln, soldiers were also quick to defend him from what they regarded as irrational or incorrect accusations from his

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South; another was that they failed to prevent the war becoming one over the slavery; and yet another was that, as the minority rival party of the current administration, they obstructed and hindered Lincoln’s ability to wage the war aggressively. On the Democratic side, their being perceived as the party responsible for recent political disasters forced Democrats to struggle with the guilt by association that tied them to their antebellum pro-Southern identity. Saddled with the failures of the past, Democrats faced accusations they were inadequate to achieve success in the current crisis, despite their lengthy tradition and considerable membership. And because Democrats coalesced into such a large political entity, the Democratic Party itself, and not individual members beyond George McClellan, became the enemy. Consequently, Democrats, regardless of individual ability, became a faceless and amorphous adversary, and one that came to include anyone who opposed Lincoln’s conduct. When his father disagreed with his support of Abraham Lincoln, Private George Beidelman was quick to set him straight. “I am sorry you find so much in our noble-hearted President  .  .  . to complain of,” he chided his father, “[but] the Democrats can never save the country, but to disgrace it, and eventually bring a tenfold misery upon us.”28 Private Edward Wightman, weary of the political divide in the North, wanted the Democrats to support Republican policies and create political unity between the parties because “this is no time to carp at things which, compared with the success and re-establishment of the Republic, are insignificant.” Instead, Wightman feared that, like the biblical Sampson, the country would suffer from “Rebel agents working in this way to annihilate our strength. Shall we let our hair be shorn, to be content with the poor privilege of pulling down our temples of liberty on our own heads or on our enemy’s [?]”29 Private James Miller shared the opinion of many soldiers that any election that returned the Democrats to power would bring peace, but “I think that if the Democrats in the North are successful in their efforts to close this war they will have another, only a worse one, in less than ten years if we are not allowed to crush the traitors now once and for all.”30 Perceiving Democrats as subversive enemies of the Union, Northern soldiers acted upon their impulses to oppose their foes, less to promote Lincoln than to disrupt McClellan. Due to the threat of soldiers interfering with pro-McClellan rallies in St. Louis, Colonel Joseph Baker, commanding the 10th Minnesota, had to restrain his troops from interfering with Democratic political rallies. In a General Order, Baker reminded his men that “The soldier has the same political rights as citizen. . . . But a republic may justly be jealous of military interference with rights so sacred as those of free assemblages and free discussion of all legitimate purposes. Reflection will teach

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could not control and which would result in slaughter of white Southern civilians, an act that “the civilized world will denounce as an uneffaceable disgrace to the American people.”34 In Crawford County, Pennsylvania, local Democrats passed several resolutions opposing Lincoln’s policies ranging from the suspension of habeas corpus, to the Emancipation Proclamation, to the imposition of the draft.35 Similar resolutions appeared in Maine, which had elected a series of Republican governors starting in 1857. The Maine Democrats voiced opposition to the war in resolutions that evoked sympathy for “our brethren in the Southern states” who, they believed, had acted in self-defense “caused by agitation of the slavery question” with the resulting Civil War eventually leading to a “day of retribution [that] will soon overtake the Republican leaders for their unwise and unpatriotic course in preferring . . . the horrors of civil war and national ruin.”36 No state resolution, however, generated as much soldier backlash as that of New Jersey. In 1863, the state legislature passed a joint resolution of rescission that overturned the state’s previous endorsement of the Thirteenth Amendment to end slavery. The timing of the resolution was no coincidence. Only two months before, Joel Parker, a staunch anti-Lincoln Democrat had replaced Republican Charles Olden when the latter left office due to term limitations. Parker was an opponent of the Emancipation Proclamation, the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment granting citizenship to African Americans, and, after the war, would also lead New Jersey’s successful resistance to the Fifteenth Amendment’s guarantees of voting rights to former slaves. As one of Abraham Lincoln’s most vocal critics, he also contested the suspension of habeas corpus and the granting of statehood to West Virginia. Backed by a large Democratic majority in both houses of the legislature, Parker approved the resolution of rescission, which further called for negotiations that would end the war with a divided nation. Lt. Edmund Halsey expressed scorn when he wrote, “I never was so supremely disgusted with them [the state legislature] as in reading their . . . resolutions passed March 24 and read at the head of every regiment in this brigade. Its smooth noncommittal unminded sleek style with its sly references to the ballot box . . . made the thing a party slur unworthy to issue.”37 Writing to his hometown newspaper, another New Jersey soldier declared, “I am ashamed at . . . those cowardly Peace Resolutions.  .  .  . It is irritating enough to have enemies in front with arms in their hands; but worse—far worse—to have them behind, trying to embarrass the government and discourage the soldiers in the field.”38 The men of the 11th New Jersey, encamped at Falmouth, Virginia, responded to the Peace Resolutions with a published declaration of their own. Declaring that the state legislature and governor had “sought to tarnish its high honor”

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necessary outcome. Private Henry Kauffman, although a prewar Democrat, sided with the majority of his regiment when he cast his vote for Lincoln, giving the President the two hundredth of the 254 regimental votes. “I voted the Union ticket,” Kauffman told his brother and sister. “I cannot vote for one thing and fight for another and if I should have voted the Democratic ticket I would be voting for one thing and fighting for another. So I will have to vote for old Father Abraham for our next President.”42 Private Leander Davis, in a letter to his wife, used virtually the same words: “I can’t fite [sic] for the Union and vote against it.”43 Private Edwin Marsh applied the same logic. “How can a soldier be a peace man when they are fighting to crush the rebellion by force of arms?” he wrote to his aunt, proclaiming that he would never vote for McClellan lest the “spirits of our murdered comrades would stand constantly before us, calling upon us to avenge their death.”44 Another reason to support Lincoln was the rationale that Lincoln represented legitimate constitutional government while the rebel Confederates represented illegitimate political radicalism. General Benjamin Butler, a prewar Democratic senator from Massachusetts who once endorsed Jefferson Davis for President, told his troops, “The present Government was not the Government of my choice. I did not vote for it, or any part of it, but it is the Government of my country . . . I believe the Government to be honestly administered, [and] I will throw a mantle over any mistakes that I think it has made.”45 Such a statement from a former senator was one thing— and Butler was prone to making grandiose pronouncements—but common soldiers were just as convinced of the need for constitutional adherence as career politicians. Private Robert McMahan was a prewar Democrat, but also supported Lincoln because he was the legitimately elected President. “Abraham Lincoln was fair and constitutionally elected President of these United States,” McMahan wrote in his diary, “therefore, any true Democrat should support [the] Administration and he who does not is not for his country but against it.”46 Election legitimacy was a strong justification to support Lincoln, but it was not the only one. Abolitionism also became an increasingly important element in deciding soldier votes. Abolitionists never represented the majority of Northern opinion before the war, so relatively few soldiers went off to war with the pointed intent of freeing the slaves. Quite the opposite, the administration’s actions, including the Emancipation Proclamation, alienated many soldiers. But to those who endorsed Lincoln’s leadership, the necessity of emancipation became part and parcel of their acceptance of Republican leadership. Besides those who grudgingly accepted the new racial reality, some soldiers came to see emancipation with moral clarity and to support

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of believing the country is fast tending toward anarchy and despotism[,] I believe the sky of our political horizon is growing brighter and lighter each day.”50 Although a Lincoln victory in November 1864 was a solid political blow to the Confederates, even the most optimistic soldiers recognized that political statements themselves would not win the war. Quite the opposite, soldiers tended to believe that, deprived of the hope for a negotiated settlement with the Democrats, the Confederacy would fight all the harder as victory was the only route to independence. Therefore, Lincoln’s military supporters tempered their enthusiasm for Lincoln’s political chances with the reality that votes were only symbolic weapons and that the rifles in their hands were the surest way to guarantee victory. Soldiers may have supported Lincoln, but his reelection was only part of the solution. “Don’t allow yourself to carried off in the political whirl,” a Pennsylvania soldier wrote to his siblings as the election loomed. “Voting can’t save our country. Bullets and the Bayonet is the only Remedy. This is not time for experiments or changes. All true men should stand by our old time honored institutions, the old Constitution, and last but not least the old flag.”51 A soldier from Iowa, George Remley, echoed the sentiment. “The Presidential question is exciting considerable interest among the soldiers and animated discussion upon the merits and demerits of the several candidates are becoming more frequent every day,” Remley wrote to his parents. “The soldiers as a class are ‘true as steel’ and will show at the coming election they can fight for their country with ballots as valliantly [sic] as they do with bullets . . . there would probably be between thirty and forty votes cast for McClellan [in the entire regiment].”52 The ”ballot vs. bayonet” statement is an interesting commentary on the divide between the army and civilian realms. To civilians, accustomed to viewing military power as anathema to liberty and freedom, statements from soldiers espousing the use of military force to achieve a domestic political goal was a clear departure from the norm. From the Founding Fathers up to the Civil War era, the public consensus favored small armies rather than large ones, and, more importantly, the rule of law and democratic institutions to coercive military power in the hands of a ruling class. It must have seemed odd to hear the soldiers of a large standing army professing their willingness to use violence to address an essentially political issue. But as a demonstration of the philosophical and practical gulf between themselves and civilians, soldiers recognized that politics without force could possibly result in politics without effect. Without force of arms, the will of the majority, the essence of the democracy the civilians recognized and cherished, was not possible in the current violent dispute. Civilians could couch the Civil

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cowardice.54 Philosophically, McClellan’s nomination was no different from the illegitimate insubordination of an individual soldier. McClellan was acting in his own interests instead of in the interests of the army, he did not get a group consensus that his actions were necessary, and his behavior, by threatening to remove Lincoln, caused hardship for the army as a whole. Therefore, McClellan’s presidency was not just a political move by an ambitious officer, but a crime against army discipline and the need for order in the ranks. “There was a time when he [McClellan] was very popular in the Army,” William Bentley wrote to his family, “but that has passed away and he has but few admirers in this army at least, and they are the poor, ignorant white trash who can only say against Lincoln that he freed the niggers.”55 McClellan’s loss of status within the army occurred well before the 1864 election. Marching toward Gettysburg in July 1863, a body of Michigan cavalrymen met an enthusiastic officer spreading rumors that “Little Mac in is command and we are whipping them.” Either unconvinced of the rumor or unenthusiastic with its truth, “there was scarcely a faint attempt to cheer. There was no longer any potency in the name.”56 Compounding McClellan’s philosophical insubordination was the perception that the Democratic Party that nominated him was, at best, advocating a defeatist position or, at worst, committing active treason. The War Democrats were already aligning themselves with the Republicans, and the bipartisan nature of their alliance meant Lincoln officially ran for reelection on the Union ticket rather than simply the Republican one. When the Democrats met in Chicago for their convention in August 1864, the Peace Democrats dominated the meeting and forged a party platform that included a proposal for negotiations with the Confederacy on the topic of peaceful secession, but with an end of the fighting as a precondition. Recognizing their demands for negotiation diminished their chances of gaining a significant portion of the soldier vote, moderates succeeded in nominating McClellan in hopes that his military reputation and that he was someone other than Abraham Lincoln might produce ballots. McClellan accepted the nomination, but, recognizing the potential damage from the peace plank, immediately disavowed any agreement with its terms.57 Placing the plank at arm’s length did not save McClellan from the backlash. Soldiers either simply made no differentiation between McClellan and the peace plank, or they misinterpreted its language to imply that secession negotiations would begin before the fighting ended. To the soldiers, this amounted to surrender, and all of the hardships they had endured were for naught if the Democrats won the election. Confederate enthusiasm for McClellan’s candidacy only sealed the impression in the minds of Union troops. Paul Hilliard of the 21st Connecticut seethed with

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Despite such anger against the Democrats and support for Lincoln, soldiers were aware McClellan might win the civilian vote despite their opposition to him. Some in the army believed that Democratic voting fraud might nullify their important and hard-won votes, an accusation that threatened to come true. McClellan received the backlash when, in October 1864, army Provost Marshals arrested several Democratic Party employees from New York City and charged them with illegally acquiring absentee ballots, a task assigned to specially appointed state agents. Instead of a civilian trial, the agents faced a military tribunal that sentenced them to life in federal prison. Although the government released them after three years, many New York soldiers hoped for the death penalty.63 Soldiers also feared that Democratic fraud might deny them Republican victories in local elections. Writing to a politically connected friend at home, Private Frank Shiras described the fears in camp regarding elections in his native Pennsylvania: “We Soldiers feel very anxious about the result of the fall elections in Ohio & Pennsylvania. The Success of the Union Party is all important, [and] every vote ought to be polled.”64 Faced with possible Democratic denial of their votes, a few soldiers suggested an increase in the pace of military operations to render the election outcome moot. “It is very necessary to take Richmond before [the] elections,” Private John Brobst wrote to his wife. “I hope they will get that place soon, for I want to see old Uncle Abe elected again. He is the only man that can settle this war up and do it as it should be settled.” McClellan, on the other hand, meant the country would have “peace sooner than Abe, but by letting them [the rebels] have their slaves. Then we can fight them again in about ten years. But let Old Abe settle it, and it is always settled.”65 Despite representing a large voting bloc in their own right and possessing great influence with their families at home, soldiers were limited in how much they could affect the outcome of the presidential campaign. They were far from home, able to communicate only through limited channels, and restricted by army discipline. Left with little ability to convey their will across the political divide, soldiers did what they could to promote Lincoln’s candidacy. One method of asserting influence was to conduct a pre-election straw vote or mock election as a form of opinion gathering. The mock vote served the purpose of demonstrating that an individual soldier’s support for Lincoln was not just a singularity, but also the will of a majority of his unit. Volunteer regiments were state entities, but the separate companies often had a local affiliation. A number of soldiers from a particular city or county voicing their opinion regarding the election in favor of Lincoln exerted a great deal of concentrated influence upon their home region that civilians could hardly ignore. In a mock election a month before the national election, Lieut.

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elect its president. I hope and trust that you are all trying to get old Abraham in again,” Henry Kauffman said to his family only days before the polling. “If he is not elected I am afraid our cause is lost. So therefore it is every true patriot’s duty if not struggling in the field he ought to struggle at the ballot box . . . we must do our part and do it right.”70 If cajoling did not work, than disparaging McClellan and plainly explaining the army’s opinion of him might. Cornelius Tenure was blunt with his brother when he heard of his family’s support of McClellan. “You wish me for two years to vote for a traitor [McClellan],” Cornelius ranted at his brother John. “That I can’t see yet, for Lincoln must be Elected again and again until this cruel war is over. I am very glad that you have not a vote, for if those are your principles I prefer Jeff Davis before you . . . I hope that you are not so foolish as to think that he will be elected, poor McClellan.”71 The appeals to patriotism and to the rejection of McClellan, though seemingly opposite arguments, make a unified sense in the context of the separate nature of soldier and civilian life. While civilians viewed McClellan as a former general and current politician, and could easily separate the two identities, soldiers made no such distinction. A civilian could view McClellan as a politician only and see voting for him as an entirely appropriate act. Through the soldiers’ prism of insubordination, however, McClellan’s disloyalty prevented any separation of his military and political careers. Therefore, soldiers promoted the concept that one could not be a loyal citizen who shared the burden of saving the Union and still vote for McClellan. If cajoling did not work, many soldiers turned to the only method left and threatened the cohesion of their own family units. This was an extension of the tactic of labeling McClellan as a failure and a traitor: if McClellan was a traitor, then those who supported him were also traitors; if the soldiers rejected McClellan, then any family member who supported McClellan also faced rejection. This was the ultimate manifestation of the soldier/ civilian divide, a separation wherein soldiers, faced with a choice of where their true loyalties lay, chose the army over their own families. It also demonstrated the width of the communication divide. Regardless of whatever information their families had, soldiers believed that they themselves had superior knowledge. Soldiers knew what was needed to win the war, they knew what was at stake when Confederate victory was still entirely possible in November 1864, and, most importantly, many of them knew the qualities (or lack thereof) of General McClellan. Presuming their families did not have the breadth of knowledge they possessed and that their military service gave them special insight into the war their families lacked, soldiers considered that they could better judge who was suited to be President than the

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in turn, expected their families at home to share their dedication and loyalty to Lincoln, a man whom many civilians believed was leading the country down a path to ruin. The bitter political fight in 1864 ended with Lincoln’s reelection, but his continuation in office was no sure thing. If military victories had not occurred, if the Democrats had selected a different candidate, or if the states were not willing to let soldiers vote in the field, the outcome of the election might have been quite different. Instead, the pleading and arguing of soldiers helped to shape public opinion in favor of an otherwise controversial figure, but only after an active and often hostile debate between a common people separated by their different views of the same war. The election of 1864 also brought the divide between soldiers and civilians to a climax. All of the pressures of the previous months and years merged at that critical moment, and the divides threatened to end in disastrous Union defeat. The communication divide limited the ability of the two sides to judge each other’s political motivations, while the experience divide shaped perceptions of who was best suited to select the nation’s leadership. The soldiers who opposed Lincoln did so because of the effects of the social divide, especially the issue of slavery and emancipation, a lingering debate that nearly cost Lincoln the Presidency. Only the urgency of the moment and the dire consequence of an incorrect decision led to attempts to limit the divide at the most important of times. The ability to narrow the separate military and civilian spheres was also a portent of the future. The reelection of Abraham Lincoln heralded the ultimate Union victory only months later, when soldiers had to consider crossing the divide and returning to civilian life.

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Epilogue

Although wartime divides isolated soldiers from civilian communities, differences of opinion soon vanished, making the soldier/civilian divide a lost narrative of the Civil War. Wartime debates caused major divisions between Union soldiers and the civilian communities around them, but the divisions lasted only as long as the war. When peace came in 1865, the divisions between soldiers and civilians closed as the pressures of wartime existence disappeared and citizen-soldiers became just citizens again. Soldiers who only a short time before had risked death in battle, criticized Northern civilians, and viewed Southern civilians as potential enemies now faced the long-desired transition back into civilian life themselves. Consequently, the wartime divisions disappeared from the historical memory of the war. Eager to put the war behind them, soldiers either ignored the earlier debates or believed them resolved by the war itself. The end of the war brought a cessation of conscription, a policy that did not resurface until World War I. Soldiers no longer had to worry about families fending for themselves because they were home to shoulder the economic burden with them. The mail became just a means of communication instead of a vital source of what was happening at home. Membership in the Democratic Party went from a status tantamount to treason to a common political affiliation, and a Copperhead referred only to a snake. The outpouring of Northern enthusiasm at the arrival of peace certainly aided the closing of soldier/civilian divides. Antagonisms and differences of opinion became easier to forgive and forget when soldiers received the grateful embrace of the victorious Union, and a welcome they believed they deserved. The reestablishment of relationships strained by the conflict began as soon as the war ended, and soldiers performed their final acts as members of the army by accepting the public’s acclaim before their final discharge. The Grand Review held in Washington, D.C., on May 23 and 24, 1865, was but the most notable of countless public events to commemorate the end of the war. >>

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replacing individual recollections with more publicly palatable ones.5 As with the hibernation mode, the revival mode had no place for reminders of the unpleasantness that had existed between soldiers and civilians. By the time the revival phase was flourishing, soldiers had moved on with their lives, and the separations that generated such passionate clashes during the war now seemed petty in the larger sense. As time passed, the problems that drove a wedge between soldiers and civilians became a forgotten element of the war, as the issues evolved or disappeared. The end of the war, for instance, caused a cessation of anti-war activities. Furthermore, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln turned the former President from an object of scorn into a martyr of the Union cause, a total transformation of Lincoln’s image. Emancipationism achieved success in freeing the slaves, but the quest for racial equality promoted by the abolitionists proved a more difficult process. As the nineteenth century progressed, Northerners who had fought for the rights of slaves favored reconciliation over continued internal strife, a position embodied in Ulysses Grant’s presidential slogan of “Let us have peace.” The common cause and purpose of the war shared by Northerners and African Americans during the war became a unity of white Americans after the war, leaving African Americans the victims of growing Jim Crow segregation.6 Northern women, so successful in maintaining the Northern economic home front during the war, became partners in the economy once again. Women’s rights in the workplace remained limited, but the importance of female labor in agriculture remained vital, as reflected in the considerable number of female claimants to the Homestead Act.7 The divides that separated the soldiers of the Union Army from civilian populations proved, in the end, to be a byproduct of the economic, political, and social fractures caused by the Civil War. Peace brought about a reconciliation and reconnection between those separated by distance and military service in a new postwar America that had been changed forever by the war. Future conflicts would see similar disconnections, but not to the extent of those in the Civil War. Divides of distance and political opinions appeared in subsequent wars, but the conflict of Americans fighting other Americans created divides that only peace could bridge.

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Notes

Notes to the Introduction 1. John Brobst, letter to M. E. Englesby dated April 15, 1864. John F. Brobst Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin. 2. Emil Rosenblatt, Anti-Rebel: The Civil War Letters of Wilbur Fisk (New York: Crotonon-Hudson, 1983), 68. 3. Barbara B. Smith and Nina B. Baker, “Burning Rails as We Pleased”: The Civil War Letters of William Garrigues Bentley, 104th Ohio Volunteer Infantry (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2004), 110. 4. James M. McPherson, Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 58.

Notes to Chapter 1 1. War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1880–1901. (Hereafter as Official Records) , Series I, Volume 24, 234. 2. Reid Mitchell, The Vacant Chair: The Northern Soldier Leaves Home (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 7–12. 3. See Eric T. Dean, Shook Over Hell: Post-Traumatic Stress, Vietnam and the Civil War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997) for an excellent comparison of mental duress and its impact in Civil War and Vietnam War veterans. 4. Mary E. Kellogg, Army Life of an Illinois Soldier: Including a Day-by-Day Record of Sherman’s March to the Sea (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), 135. 5. John Follmer, diary entry for July 7, 1863,John Follmer Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. 6. Mark E. Dunkelman, Brothers One and All: Esprit de Corps in a Civil War Regiment (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004), 181. 7. Isaac Abraham, letter to brother dated September 21, 1864. Civil War letters of James, Isaac, and William Abraham and James Sturgis, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 8. Kellogg, 370. 9. Kathleen Kroll and Charles Moran, “The White Papers,” Massachusetts Review Volume 18, Summer 1976, 266. 249. 10. William C. Niesen, “The Consequence of Grandeur: A Union Soldier Writes of the Atlanta Campaign,” Atlanta History, Volume 33, Fall 1989, 13. 11. Reid Mitchell, Civil War Soldiers (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 81. 12. Brobst Papers, letters to wife dated January 19, May 12, and September 15, 1864. >>

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34. Wayne Mahood, Charlie Mosher’s Civil War: From Fair Oaks to Andersonville with the Plymouth Pilgrims (85th N.Y. Infantry) (Hightstown, NJ: Longstreet House, 1994), 292–293. 35. Karla J. Husby, Under Custer’s Command: The Civil War Journal of James Henry Avery (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2000), 156. 36. Peter H. Buckingham, All’s for the Best: The Civil War Reminiscences and Letters of Daniel W. Sawtelle, Eighth Maine Volunteer Infantry (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001), 63. 37. William E. Hughes, The Civil War Papers of Lt. Colonel Newton T. Colby, New York Infantry (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2003), 254–256. 38. Mark A. Howe, Home Letters of General Sherman (New York: Scribner’s, 1909), 232. 39. Barbara B. Smith and Nina B. Baker, “Burning Rails as We Pleased”: The Civil War Letters of William Garrigues Bentley, 104th Ohio Volunteer Infantry (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2004), 133–134. 40. Rosenblatt, 69. 41. Jacob Bechtel, letter to wife dated August 23, 1863, Jacob Bechtel Papers, National Park Service, Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park, Fredericksburg, VA. 42. Henry Heisler, letter to wife dated September 12, 1864, Henry C. Heisler Papers, Library of Congress (Manuscript Division), Washington, DC. 43. David W. Blight, When This Cruel War is Over: The Civil War Letters of Charles Harvey Brewster (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992), 212. 44. John Burrill, letter to parents dated August 12, 1862,John H. Burrill Papers, Civil War Times Illustrated Collection, United States Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, PA. 45. George Wagner, letter to friend dated January 20, 1862,George E. Wagner Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville. 46. Blight, 298. 47. Jenny O’Leary and Harvey H. Jackson, “The Civil War Letters of Captain Daniel O’Leary, U.S.A.,” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Volume 77, Summer 1979, 183. 48. Smith and Baker, 143. 49. Jedediah Mannis and Galen R. Wilson, Bound to Be a Soldier: The Letters of Private James T. Miller, 111th Pennsylvania Infantry, 1861–1864 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001), 36. 50. James Dunn, letters to wife dated July 5 and August 2, 1863, James L. Dunn Papers, Alderman Memorial Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. 51. Ruth L. Silliker, The Rebel Yell and the Yankee Hurrah: The Civil War Journal of a Maine Volunteer (Camden, ME: Down East Books, 1985), 108. 52. Marsena Patrick, diary entry for July 5, 1863,Marsena Patrick Papers, Library of Congress (Manuscript Division), Washington, DC. 53. Abraham Hilands, letter to wife dated July 18, 1863, Abraham F. Hilands Papers, National Park Service, Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park, Fredericksburg, VA. 54. Orson B. Curtis, History of the Twenty-fourth Michigan of the Iron Brigade (Detroit: Winn and Hammond, 1891), 183.

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80. Regimental History Committee, History of the Third Pennsylvania Cavalry, Sixtieth Pennsylvania Volunteers, in the American Civil War, 1861–1865 (Philadelphia: Franklin Printing, 1905), 433. 81. George Meade, The Life and Letters of General George Gordon Meade (New York: Scribner’s 1913), 2:203. 82. Official Records, Series I, Volume 17, 178. 83. William T. Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman (New York: Appleton, 1889), 1:298. 84. David B. Sachsman, et al, The Civil War and the Press (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2000), 412. Marszalek, 118. 85. Stanley P. Hirshson, The White Tecumseh: A Biography of General William T. Sherman (New York: John Wiley, 1997), 124. 86. Official Records, Series I, Volume 17, 580. 87. Official Records, Series I, Volume 24, 234. 88. James M. Perry, A Bohemian Brigade: The Civil War Correspondents—Mostly Rough, Sometimes Ready (New York: John Wiley, 2000), 144–155. 89. Thomas W. Knox, Camp Fire and Cotton Field: Southern Adventure in Time of War (Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 1865), 260. 90. Walter B. Stevens, “Joseph B. McCullaugh,” Missouri Historical Review, Volume 25, April 1931, 427–428. 91. Marszalek, 117. 92. Richard A. Sauers, Meade: Victor of Gettysburg (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2003), 93. Michael Bacarella, Lincoln’s Foreign Legion: The 39Th New York Infantry, The Garibaldi Guard (Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Publishing, 1996), 74. 93. Patrick Papers, diary entry for December 6, 1863. 94. Smith and Baker, 109. 95. James Wiggins, letter to parents dated December 17, 1861,James B. Wiggins Papers, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond. 96. Brobst Papers, letter to wife dated January 19, 1864. 97. Paul M. Angle, Three Years in the Army of the Cumberland (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 225. 98. Smith and Baker, 109. 99. Frank B. Marcotte, Private Osborne, Massachusetts 23rd Volunteers: Burnside Expedition, Roanoke Island, Second Front Against Richmond (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1999), 106. 100. Theodore Dodge, diary entry for February 15, 1863,Theodore A. Dodge Papers, Library of Congress (Manuscript Division), Washington, DC. 101. Theodore Gerrish, Army Life: A Private’s Reminiscences of the Civil War (Portland, ME: Thurston, 1882), 69. 102. Niesen, 18. 103. Neil B. Carmony, The Civil War in Apacheland: Sergeant George Hand’s Diary: California, Arizona, West Texas, New Mexico, 1861–1864 (Silver City, NM: High-Lonesome Books, 1996), 173. 104. Julie Holcomb, Southern Sons, Northern Soldiers: The Civil War Letters of the Remley Brothers, 22nd Iowa Infantry (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004), 34. 105. Cornelius Courtright, diary entry for March 26, 1865, Cornelius Courtright Papers, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL.

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5. Stephanie McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 98–100. 6. Nina Silber, Daughters of the Union: Northern Women Fight the Civil War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 44. 7. Niesen, 13. 8. Clarence M. Swinn, Letters to Lanah: A Series of Civil War Letters Written by Samuel Ensminger, a Drafted Union Soldier (Gettysburg, PA: self-published, 1986), 46. 9. Eugene H. Berwanger, “absent So long from those I love: The Civil War Letters of Joshua Jones,” Indiana Magazine of History, Volume 88, September 1992, 208. 10. Mannis and Wilson, 36. 11. Fred A. Shannon, The Farmer’s Last Frontier, 1860–1897 (New York: M. E. Sharp, 1945), 127. 12. David E. Schob, Hired Hands and Plowboys: Farm Labor in the Midwest, 1815–60 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), 69. 13. Lee A. Craig and Thomas Weiss, “Agricultural Productivity Growth during the Decade of the Civil War,” Journal of Economic History, Volume 53, No. 3, September 1993, 536–537. 14. Joe L. Anderson, “Farm Work,” in Lisa Tendirch Frank, ed., Women in the American Civil War (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2007), 1:259. 15. Craig and Weiss, 531. 16. Shannon, Farmer’s Frontier, 127. 17. Niesen, 12. 18. Sylvia B. Morris, Jerome: To My Beloved Absent Companion (self-published, 1996), 20. 19. Laurence F. Lillibridge, The Edward Rolfe Civil War Letters and Diaries: A Civil War Union Soldier Describes his Army Life (Prescott Valley, AZ: Lillibridge Publishing, 1993), 36 and 54. 20. Swinn, 32. 21. Lafayette Church, letter to wife dated January 24, 1864, Lafayette Church Papers, Clarke Library, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI. 22. Swinn, 26. 23. Richard L. Manion, “The Civil War Homefront in Seneca County: Two Letters of Sophia Clark Dunn,” Northwest Ohio Quarterly, Volume 62, No. 1, Winter/Spring 1990, 11 and 14. 24. Giesberg, 31 and 159–160. Faust, 115–120. 25. Osterud, 381. Geisburg, 19. 26. Giesberg, 26. 27. Manion, 13. Emphasis in original. 28. Julie McCune, “Mary Austin Wallace: Her Diary” in Michigan Women in the Civil War (Lansing: Michigan Civil War Centennial Observance Commission, 1963), 138–144. 29. Swinn, 46. 30. Berwanger, 220. 31. Lillibridge, 35 and 85. 32. William A. Blair, A Politician Goes to War: The Civil War Letters of John White Geary (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 59–60, 68, 139, and 159. 33. Joseph Hotz, letter to wife dated December 14, 1861, Joseph Hotz Papers, Indiana Civil War Commission, Indianapolis, IN. 34. John M. Priest, Turn Them Out to Die Like a Mule: The Civil War Letters of John N. Henry, 49th New York, 1861–1865 (Leesburg, VA: Gauley Mount Press, 1995), 439.

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65. Swinn, 20. 66. Berwanger, 216 and 233. 67. Driver and Driver, 102A. 68. Phelps, 12. 69. Kilbourn, 109. 70. Driver and Driver, 54. 71. McQueen, 61. 72. Mark H. Dunkelman, “Hoop Skirts in Camp: When Women Visited the Front,” North & South, Volume 7, No. 7, November 2004, 24. 73. Lisa A. Long, Rehabilitating Bodies: Health, History, and the American Civil War (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 180–188. 74. Peoria Daily Transcript, May 22, 1862. 75. Voris Papers, letter to wife dated September 2, 1864. 76. War Department, Revised United States Army Regulations of 1861 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1863), 24. 77. Silliker, 64. 78. Lucius Shattuck, letter to family dated October 17, 1862, Lucius L. Shattuck Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. 79. Cumberworth and Biles, 24 and 133. 80. Driver and Driver, 53 and 57. 81. McQueen, 28. 82. Hallock F. Raup, Letters from a Pennsylvania Chaplain at the Siege of Petersburg, 1865 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1961), 12–13. 83. Dunkelman, 51. 84. Haydon Papers, diary entry for January 26, 1862. 85. Samito, 169. 86. Dunn Papers, letter to wife dated December 18, 1863. 87. Dunkelman, 51. 88. Smith, Elijah Cavins, 221. 89. Dunkleman, 51. 90. Smith, Elijah Cavins, 159. 91. Blair, 91. 92. Minnie D. Millbrook, “Michigan Women Who Went to War” in Michigan Women in the Civil War (Lansing: Michigan Civil War Centennial Observance Commission, 1963), 32. 93. Bacarella, 162. 94. James Sligh, letter to wife dated December 12, 1861, Sligh Family Collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. 95. Gaff, 220. 96. Bonnie Tsui, She Went to the Field: Women Soldiers of the Civil War (New York: TwoDot, 2006), 1. 97. Bell I. Wiley, The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1952), 339. 98. Lauren C. Burgess, An Uncommon Soldier: The Civil War Letters of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, alias Private Lyons Wakeman, 153rd Regiment, New York State Volunteers (Pasadena, MA: Minerva Center, 1994), 31–37. 99. Smith, Elijah Cavins, 132.

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6. Charles Anderson, The Cause of the War: Who Brought it On, and for What Purpose? (New York: William C. Bryant, 1863), 5. Born in Kentucky, Anderson later moved to Texas, where he was an outspoken critic of secession, eventually leaving to accept an officer’s commission in the Union Army. 7. R. G. Horton, A Youth’s History of the Great Civil War in the United States from 1861 to 1865 (New York: Van Evrie, Horton, & Co., 1867), 227. 8. Frederick Douglass, in Proceedings of the American Anti-Slavery Society (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1864), 111–112. 9. New York Tribune, January 14, 1864. 10. Robert E. Hunt, The Good Men Who Won the War: Army of the Cumberland Veterans and Emancipation Memory (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2010), 10. 11. Peter P. Hinks, et al., Encyclopedia of Anti-Slavery and Abolition (New York: Greenwood, 2007), 333. 12. Proceedings of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 111–112. 13. James B. Stewart and Eric Foner, Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery (New York: Hill and Wang, 1976), 100–105. 14. Dunn Papers, letters to wife dated June 30, 1862, and December 20, 1864. 15. Kellogg, 83, 167, and 184. 16. Church Papers, letter dated January 24, 1864. 17. Nolin, 81–83. 18. David C. Rankin, Diary of a Christian Soldier: Rufus Kinsley and the Civil War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 99, 102, and 104. 19. Dunkelman, 201. 20. Raup, 22 and 27. 21. Milton C. Sernett, Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory and History (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 72. 22. Rankin, 119. 23. See Allen C. Guelzo’s Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006) for contemporary interpretations of the Proclamation as an instrument of divine guidance. 24. Stephen J. Ochs, A Black Patriot and a White Priest: Andre Cailloux and Claude Paschal Maistre in Civil War New Orleans (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000), 200. 25. Murray, 172. 26. Robert Tarrant, diary entry for December 21, 1862, Robert Tarrant Papers, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL. 27. Donald Yacovone, A Voice of Thunder: The Civil War Letters of George E. Stephens (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 144–146. 28. George Squier, letter to wife dated May 11, 1865, George W. Squier Papers, Lincoln Museum, Fort Wayne, IN. 29. Joseph T. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), 228–234. 30. Murray, 173. 31. Fisk Papers, letter to Green Mountain Freeman dated July 11, 1864. 32. Palladino, 126. 33. Murray, 265. 34. Yacovone, 146.

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68. Kenneth W. Noe, A Southern Boy in Blue: The Memoir of Marcus Woodcock (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996), 147–148. 69. Richard F. Miller and Robert F. Mooney, The Civil War: The Nantucket Experience (Nantucket, MA: Wesco Publishing, 1994), 27. 70. Jack K. Overmyer, A Stupendous Effort: The 87th Indiana in the War of the Rebellion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 51. 71. Benson Bobrick, Testament: A Soldier’s Story of the Civil War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 227. 72. Victor Hicken, Illinois in the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 137–138. 73. Rosenblatt, 302. 74. Coe, 97. 75. Horace Emerson, letter to sister dated May 21, 1862, Horace Emerson Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, WI. 76. Coe, 42. 77. Kroll and Moran, 259. 78. Civil War Letters: Rochester Writes Home: http://www.wxxi.org/warletters/civil.html. 79. George Avery, letters to his wife dated January 26 and July 30, 1862, George Avery Papers, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL. 80. James M. Overfield, The Civil War Letters of Private George Parks, Company C, 24th New York Cavalry Volunteers (Buffalo: Gallagher Publishing, 1992), 41. 81. George Merryweather, letter to parents dated November 16, 1862, George Merryweather Papers, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL. 82. William Phelps, letter to cousin dated January 4, 1963, Phelps Family Papers, Clements Memorial Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. 83. John Smith, letter to family dated February 17, 1863, John R. Smith Papers, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL. 84. Burrill Papers, letter to parents dated February 6, 1863. 85. Daniel Myers, letter to cousin dated March 8, 1863, Daniel Myers Papers, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL. 86. Perret, 295. Kellogg, 52. 87. Charles, 5. 88. Kroll and Moran, 257–258. 89. Peter C. Boag, “Dear Friends: The Civil War Letter of Francis Marion Elliott, A Pennsylvania Country Boy,” Pittsburgh History, Volume 72, Holiday Issue, 1989, 194. 90. Knox Mellon, “Letters of James Greenalch,” Michigan History, Volume 44, June 1960, 202. 91. Robert Mitchell, letter to wife dated February 22, 1863, Robert Mitchell Papers, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL. 92. Squier Papers, letter to wife dated December 24, 1862. 93. Susan T. Puck, Sacrifice at Vicksburg: Letters From the Front (Shippensburg, PA: Burd Street Press, 1997), 47. 94. Leslie W. Dunlap, Your Affectionate Husband, J. F. Culver: Letters Written during the Civil War (Iowa City: Friends of the University of Iowa Libraries, 1978), 41. 95. Rosenblat, 69. 96. Noe, 149.

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6. Peter Levine, “Draft Evasion in the North during the Civil War, 1863–1865,” Journal of American History, Volume 67, No. 4, March 1981, 830. 7. Fred A. Shannon, The Organization and Administration of the Union Army, Volume II (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1965), 305–307. Geary, 67. Levine, 816. 8. Charles E. Canup, “Conscription and Draft in Indiana during the Civil War,” Indiana Magazine of History, Volume 10, June 1914, 75–76. Sandburg, 14. Murdock, 9. 9. For a full account of Fry’s wartime activities, see James B. Fry, Military Miscellanies (New York: Brentano’s, 1889). 10. Margaret Leech, Reveille in Washington, 1860–1865 (New York: Harper, 1941), 272. 11. Canup, 79. Murdock, 12. 12. Murdock, 10. 13. National Archives and Records Administration (hereafter cited as NARA), Record Group 110: Records of the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau, Entry 18, Box 2. 14. Geary, 66. 15. Smith and Baker, 112. 16. Murdock, 46. 17. Shannon, 186–187. 18. NARA, Record Group (hereafter cited as RG) 110, Entry 18, Box 4. 19. NARA, RG 110, Entry 18, Box 3 and Box 4. 20. NARA, RG 110, Entry 18, Box 2. 21. NARA, RG 110, Entry 18, Box 2. 22. NARA, RG 110, Entry 18, Box 2. 23. NARA, RG 110, Entry 18, Box 7. 24. NARA, RG 110, Entry 19, Box 4. 25. Shannon, 70. Jordan, 97. 26. Robin W. Winks, The Civil War Years: Canada and the United States (Montreal: McGillQueen’s Press, 1998), 178–194. 27. Stuart Murray, A Time of War: A Northern Chronicle of the Civil War (Lee, MA: Berkshire House, 2001), 139. Ira Berlin, Slaves No More: Three Essays on Emancipation and the Civil War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 198–201. Leech, 272. 28. Weigley, 235. 29. Dennis A. Mahoney, The Four Acts of Despotism (New York: Van Evrie, 1863), 22. 30. Susannah U. Bruce, The Harp and the Eagle: Irish-American Volunteers and the Union Army, 1861–1865 (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 173. 31. Boston Pilot, July 25, 1863. 32. Bruce Catton, This Hallowed Ground: The Story of the Union Side of the Civil War (New York: Wordsworth, 1988), 317–318. 33. Jack F. Leach, Conscription in the United States: Historical Background (Rutland, VT: Tuttle, 1952), 501. 34. Sandburg, 6. 35. Arnold M. Shankman, The Pennsylvania Antiwar Movement, 1861–1865 (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1980), 144. 36. Canup, 76. 37. Smith and Baker, 109. 38. Franklin Boyts, letter to wife dated July 31, 1864, Franklin Boyts Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.

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71. Albany Argus, July, 25, 1863. 72. Henry F. Charles, “Civil War Record, 1862–1865,” www.dm.net/~neitz/charles/. 73. NARA, RG 110, Entry 18, Box 3. Orr Kelly and Mary D. Kelly, Dream’s End: Two Iowa Brothers in the Civil War (New York: Kodansha, 1998), 87. 74. Perret, 290. 75. Murdock, 21–24. 76. Weston A. Godspeed, A History of Cook County, Illinois (Chicago: Godspeed Historical Association, 1909), 490. 77. Dunkelman, 70. 78. Mannis and Wilson, 110–115. 79. Cole, 305. 80. John W. Oliver, “Draft Riots in Wisconsin during the Civil War,” Civil War History, Volume 7, 1961, 336. 81. Shannon, 197. 82. Shankman, 147. 83. NARA, RG 110, Entry 18, Box 3. 84. Murdock, 28–30. 85. NARA, RG 110, Entry 18, Box 7. 86. NARA, RG 110, Entry 18, Box 5. 87. William H. H. Terrell, Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Indiana (Indianapolis: Conner, 1869), 287. 88. Albany Law Journal, Volume 29, 1884, 331. 89. NARA, RG 153: Records of the Judge Advocate General (Army), File NN2492. 90. Shankman, 147. 91. Forrest McDonald, States’ Rights and the Union: Imperium in Imperia, 1776–1876 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000), 199. 92. Richard D. Sears, Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002), xxxi. 93. Andrew Curtin, letter to Abraham Lincoln, Society Miscellaneous Collection, Box 14-B, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. 94. Andrew Curtin, “Instructions to Commissioners,” Society Miscellaneous Collection, Box 14-B, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. 95. Kime, 68–71. 96. Sandburg, 17. 97. Weigley, 235. 98. Geary, 108. John Nicolay and John Hay, “Abraham Lincoln, A History,” The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Volume 37, April 1889, 927. 99. NARA, RG 110, Entry 18, Box 4. 100. J. L. Bernstein, “Conscription and the Constitution: The Amazing Case of Kneedler v. Lane,” American Bar Association Journal, Volume 53, August 1967, 706–712. Shankman, 150–153. 101. NARA, RG 110, Records of the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau, Final Report of the Provost Marshal General (1866). 102. NARA, RG 110, Entry 18, Box 5. 103. NARA, RG 110, Entry 3831: Description of Exempted Recruits (District of Columbia). 104. Levine, 821. 105. Milton H. Shutes, Lincoln and California (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1943), 86.

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138. Scott, 205. 139. Husby, 139. 140. Rosenblatt, 183. 141. Mannis and Wilson, 112–113. 142. Gary E. Swinson, The Civil War Letters of Charles Barber, Private, 104th New York Volunteer Infantry (Torrance, CA: Swinson, 1991), 143. Michael Schellhammer, The 83rd Pennsylvania Volunteers in the Civil War (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003), 189. 143. Jordan, 89. Smith Papers, letter to mother dated August 6, 1863.

Notes to Chapter 5 1. NARA, RG 110, Entry 18, Box 3. 2. Curtis H. Morrow, “Politico-Military Secret Societies of the Northwest, 1860–1865,” Ph.D. dissertation, Clark University, 1929, 83–86. 3. Harold Holzer, Dear Mr. Lincoln: Letters to the President (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1993), 249. 4. Clark E. Carr, Stephen A. Douglas: His Life, Public Services, Speeches, and Patriotism (New York: McClurg, 1909), 138. 5. Silliker, 196. 6. Stephen A. Oates, With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 342–344. 7. Jack Nortrup, “Yates, the Prorogued Legislature, and the Constitutional Convention,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Volume 62, Spring 1969, 5–17. 8. Ralph D. Gray. Indiana History: A Book of Readings (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 162. 9. Clarence W. Alvord, The Centennial History of Illinois (Springfield: Illinois Centennial Commission, 1920), 5:212–213. 10. Holahan Papers, diary entry for January 15, 1863. 11. Benjamin P. Poore, The Life and Public Services of Ambrose E. Burnside: Soldier, Citizen, Statesman (Providence, RI: Reid, 1882), 206–207. 12. Peterson Papers, letter to father dated April 30, 1863. 13. Perret, 303. 14. Mark E. Neely, “The Lincoln Administration and Arbitrary Arrests: A Reconsideration,” Papers of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Volume 5, 1983, 11. 15. Frank L. Klement, The Limits of Dissent: Clement Vallandigham & the Civil War (New York: Fordham University Press, 1998), 175–178. Poore, 210. 16. Lucas A. DeWitt, “Lieber’s Code and International Law,” M.A. thesis, Iowa State University, 1997, 83. Mark E. Neely, The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 65–69. 17. James Criswell, letter to wife dated March 23, 1863, James Criswell Papers, National Park Service, Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park, Fredericksburg, VA. 18. Sylvester, 59. 19. C. A. Bridges, “The Knights of the Golden Circle: A Filibustering Fantasy,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 44, No. 3, January 1941, 287–288. Robert E. May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 261–262. 20. Frank L. Klement, Dark Lanterns: Secret Political Societies, Conspiracies, and Treason Trials in the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1984), 7–16.

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45. Charles H. Coleman and Paul H. Spence, “The Charleston Riot, March 28, 1864,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Volume 33, 1940, 7–39. 46. Chicago Times, April 1, 1864. 47. Bobrick, 247. 48. Ernest A. McKay, The Civil War and New York City (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1990), 191–213. 49. William H. Rehnquist, All the Laws But One: Civil Liberties in Wartime (New York: Knopf, 1998), 6 50. McKay, 71. 51. George T. Strong, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Volume 3 (New York: Octagon Press, 1952), Volume 3:336–342. 52. Welsh Papers, letter to wife dated August 2, 1863. 53. Wilton P. Moore, “The Long Arm of the Military: A History of the Development of the Northern Provost-Marshal System in the Civil War,” M.A. thesis, Arizona State University, 1957, 109. 54. Leslie M. Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626–1863 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 280–281. 55. Laurence M. Hauptman, “John E. Wool and the New York City Draft Riots of 1863: A Reassessment,” Civil War History, Volume 49, No. 4, 2003, 384. 56. Hauptman, 380–382. 57. Official Records, Series 2, Volume 27, 925. 58. Edward Everett, The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events, Volume 7 (New York: Putnam, 1864), 435. 59. Stephen Cabot, Report of the ”Draft Riot” in Boston, July 14, 1863 (Boston: Veteran Association, 1863), 3. 60. Anonymous, The Boston Riot, July 14, 1863: A Plain Statement of Facts by a Plain Man (Boston, self-published, 1863), 5–6. 61. Stampp, 241–245. 62. Peterson Papers, letter to son dated November 17, 1864. 63. Of the conspirators charged with actually storming Camp Douglas, one turned state’s evidence and was acquitted for testifying against his co-conspirators, one committed suicide while in custody, another received a five-year prison sentence, and the court sentenced the last defendant to death but Lincoln commuted the sentence to life in prison in the Dry Tortugas. Chicago Tribune, November 2, 1958. 64. Ex Parte Milligan, 71 U.S. 2 (1866). Kermit L. Hall, ed., The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 549–550. 65. George F. Milton, Abraham Lincoln and the Fifth Column (New York: Vanguard Press, 1942), 278–304. 66. Morrow, 74. 67. John Campbell, diary entry dated February 10, 1863, John Q. A. Campbell Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, OH. 68. Gaff, 229. 69. Abraham and Sturgis Papers, letter to brothers dated November 21, 1861. 70. Popchock, 86. 71. Hilands Papers, letter to wife dated March 20, 1863. 72. Silliker, 196.

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109. Mannis and Wilson, 96. 110. Charles Jarvis, letter to family dated July 18, 1863. Charles Jarvis Papers, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago. 111. Captain John H. Howell of the 3rd New York Light Artillery confronted a stonethrowing mob and, fearing they intended to seize his guns, fired six rounds of canister each from his two light field howitzers. Joel T. Headley, The Great Riots of New York, 1712–1873 (New York: Trent, 1873), 231–232. 112. Longacre, 142. 113. Samito, 203. 114. Smith, 176. 115. Nolin, 90. 116. Scott, 197. 117. Smith and Baker, 60. 118. Bassett, 30. 119. Lewis King, “Scraps from My Army Life,” Lewis King Papers, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis, IN. 120. Ames Papers, letter to mother dated July 18, 1863. 121. Bassett, 30. 122. Jason H. Silverman, “The Excitement Had Begun: The Civil War Diary of Lemuel Jeffries, 1862–1863,” Manuscripts, Volume 30, No. 4, Fall 1978, 275. Smith, 182. 123. Nathan Church, letter to wife dated July 19, 1863, Frederick O. Howes Collection, Clarke Historical Library, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI. 124. Dunkleman, 61. 125. Smith, 174.

Notes to Chapter 6 1. Smith. Elijah Cavins, 99. 2. Scott, 192. 3. Aaron Mean, letter from sister dated February 7, 1862, Aaron Mead Papers, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL. 4. Roger Tusken, “In the Bastile of the Rebels,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Volume 56, Summer 1963, 324. 5. Popchock, 148–149. 6. New York Sunday Mercury, June 5, 1864. 7. David McCordick. The Harmony Boys Are All Well: The Civil War Letters (1862–1865) of Private Henry Kauffman (Queenstown, Ontario: Mellen Press, 1991), 51. 8. William Clark, letter to his brother dated September 19, 1863, William Clark Papers, Fredericksburg National Military Park, Fredericksburg, VA. 9. Newton Papers, letter to mother dated November 7, 1863. 10. Josiah H. Benton. Voting in the Field: A Forgotten Chapter of the Civil War (Boston: Plimpton Press, 1915), 189. 11. Jonathan W. White, “Canvassing the Troops: The Federal Government and the Soldier’s Right to Vote,” Civil War History, Volume 50, Fall 2004, 294–297. 12. John C. Waugh. Reelecting Lincoln: The Battle for the 1864 Presidency (New York: Crown, 1997), 339–340. 13. Albert Sprague, letter to wife dated October 21, 1864, Albert G. Sprague Papers, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL.

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45. Melinda Lawson, “A Profound National Devotion: The Civil War Union Leagues and the Construction of a New National Patriotism,” Civil War History, Volume 48, Winter 2002, 357. 46. Dennis K. Bowman, “Conduct and Revolt in the Twenty-Fifth Ohio Battery: An Insider’s Account,” Ohio History, Volume 104, Summer/Autumn 1995, 164–165. 47. Dunkelman, 67. 48. Gould and Kennedy, 157. 49. Bohrnstedt, 108. 50. Dickerson Papers, letters to father dated November 11 and 18, 1864. 51. Abraham and Sturgis Papers, letter to brother dated September 21, 1864. 52. Holcomb, 160. 53. Post, 416. 54. Ramold, 190–194. 55. Smith and Baker, 116. 56. James H. Kidd. Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman (Ionia, MI: Sentinel Publishing, 1908), 133–134. 57. Jennifer L. Weber, Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 178–180. Charles R. Wilson, “McClellan’s Changing Views on the Peace Plank of 1864,” American Historical Review, Volume 38, 1933, 498–505. 58. Hilliard Papers, letter to sister dated September 5, 1864. 59. White, 312. 60. Annette Tapert, The Brothers’ War: Civil War Letters to Their Loved Ones from the Blue and Gray (New York: Vintage, 1989), 225. 61. Popchock, 159. 62. Elmore Day, letter to family dated November 8, 1864, Elmore Day Papers, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL. 63. White, 302–306. 64. Wallace F. Workmaster, “The Frank H. Shiras Letters, 1862–1865,” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, Volume 40, Fall 1957, 183. 65. Brobst Papers, letter to wife dated September 27, 1864. 66. Voorhis, 233. 67. Heffelfinger Papers, diary entries for June 7 and October 17, 1864. 68. Dunkelman, 62–63. 69. Klement, ”Illinois,” 165. 70. McCordick, 84. 71. Whiteaker and Dickinson, 76–77. 72. John Beatty, letter to fiancée dated October 30, 1864, John Reed Beatty Papers, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, MN. 73. Bianca M. Federico, Civil War: The Letters of John Holbrook Morse (Washington, DC: Vantage, 1975), 155. 74. David E. Long, The Jewel of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln’s Re-Election and the End of Slavery (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 1994), 285. 75. Francis Walter, diary entry for November 11, 1864, Francis Walter Papers, Civil War Miscellaneous Collection, United States Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, PA. 76. Newton Papers, letter to mother dated November 9, 1964.

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Sears, Richard D. Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002. Sears, Stephen W. George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon. New York: DaCapo Press, 1999. Sernett, Milton C. Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory and History. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. Shamir, Milette. Inexpressible Privacy: The Interior Life of Antebellum American Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. Shankman, Arnold M. The Pennsylvania Antiwar Movement, 1861–1865. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1980. Shannon, Fred A. The Civil War Letters of Sergeant Onley Andrus. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1947. ———. The Farmer’s Last Frontier, 1860–1897. New York: M.E. Sharp, 1945. ———. The Organization and Administration of the Union Army. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1965. Sharp, Ronald. Anti-Government Movement in the Middle West. Syracuse, IN: Sharp News Service, 1995. Sheehan-Dean, Aaron, ed. The View from the Ground: Experience of Union Soldiers. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007. Shutes, Milton H. Lincoln and California. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1943. Siegel, Alan A. Beneath the Starry Flag: New Jersey’s Civil War Experience. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001. Silber, Nina. Daughters of the Union: Northern Women Fight the Civil War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005. Silliker, Ruth L. The Rebel Yell and the Yankee Hurrah: The Civil War Journal of a Maine Volunteer. Camden, ME: Down East Books, 1985. Simpson, Brooks D. Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity, 1822–1865. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Smith, Barbara A. The Civil War Letters of Col. Elijah H.C. Cavins, 14th Indiana. Owensboro, KY: Cook-McDowell Publications, 1981. Smith, Barbara B., and Nina B. Baker. “Burning Rails as We Pleased”: The Civil War Letters of William Garrigues Bentley, 104th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2004. Spann, Edward K. Gotham at War: New York City, 1860–1865. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2002. Stampp, Kenneth M. Indiana Politics during the Civil War. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1949. Starr, Stephen Z. Jennison’s Jayhawkers: A Civil War Cavalry Regiment and Its Commander. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973. Stewart, James B., and Eric Foner. Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery. New York: Hill and Wang, 1976. Swinn, Clarence M. Letters to Lanah: A Series of Civil War Letters Written by Samuel Ensminger, a Drafted Union Soldier. Gettysburg, PA: self-published, 1986. Strong, George T. Diary of George Templeton Strong. New York: Octagon Press, 1952. Swinson, Gary E. The Civil War Letters of Charles Barber, Private, 104th New York Volunteer Infantry. Torrance, CA: Swinson, 1991. Syrett, John. The Civil War Confiscation Acts: Failing to Reconstruct the South. New York: Fordham University Press, 2005.

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———. “McClellan’s Changing Views on the Peace Plank of 1864.” American Historical Review, Volume 38, 1933. Workmaster, Wallace F. “The Frank H. Shiras Letters, 1862–1865.” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, Volume 40, Fall 1957.

Newspaper Sources Albany Argus. Boston Pilot. Johnstown [PA] Democrat. Chicago Times. Chicago Tribune. Detroit Tribune. Grand Rapids [MI] Eagle. Milwaukee Sentinel. Milwaukee Wisconsin. Nashville Daily Union. New York Sunday Mercury. New York Times. New York Tribune. New York World. Peoria Daily Transcript. Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.

Thesis and Dissertation Sources DeWitt, Lucas A. “Lieber’s Code and International Law.” M.A. thesis, Iowa State University, 1997. Frank, Lisa Tendrich. “To Cure Her of Her Pride and Boasting: The Gendered Implications of Sherman’s March.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Florida, 2001. Moore, Wilton P. “The Long Arm of the Military: A History of the Development of the Northern Provost-Marshal System in the Civil War.” M.A. thesis, Arizona State University, 1957. Morrow, Curtis H. “Politico-Military Secret Societies of the Northwest, 1860–1865.” Ph.D. dissertation, Clark University, 1929. Patton, Rodney L. “Knights of the Golden Circle: Fact or Fiction.” M.A. thesis, Kansas State College of Pittsburg, 1964. Radabaugh, Jack S. “The Military System of Colonial Massachusetts, 1690–1740.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 1965.

Online Sources Civil War Letters: Rochester Writes Home: http://www.wxxi.org/warletters/civil.html. Henry F. Charles: Civil War Record, 1862–1865: http://www.dm.net/~neitz/charles/obit. html.

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Index

abolition and abolitionism, 5, 55–61, 66–67, 71–86, 99, 103, 117, 127, 150–158, 167, 171; among officers, 81–82; anti-South but still racist, 57; army freed more slaves than abolitionists, 66; as a means to punish the South, 63; as a war measure, 57–58, 68, 72; blame war on slave-owners, 57; blamed for causing the war, 77; claim of divine guidance, 60–63; damages unit cohesion, 81; fear of race war, 56; in the army, 59; opposed to colonization of freed slaves, 60; opposition to, 56, 57, 85; slavery as economic threat to North, 61; supports equality for former slaves, 60–64; supports immediate end of slavery, 60; talk instead of fight, 56, 59, 77; unpopularity, 60, 77, 157; violence of slavery converts soldiers to, 62 abolition war: Civil War as, 57–59; fear of, 55–59 Adams Express Company, 43 adultery, 51–54 antebellum period, 4, 30, 33–36, 56, 59–61, 67, 76, 89, 120, 153; pro-slavery fillibusters, 120 anti-abolitionism, 5, 59–61, 67, 76–86, 99; among officers, 71, 80–82; converts to, 78; hatred of abolitionists, 76; in the army, 59; perceptions of slaves, 76; Antietam, Battle of, 50, 63, 72, 82, 148 Articles of War, 22 Border States, 28–29, 69, 80, 103 Brown, John, 67; soldier view on, 67

Buell, Don Carlos, 83 Bull Run, Battle of, 72 Burnside, Ambrose, 78, 118–119, 148; General Order No. 38, 118–119 Butler, Benjamin, 69, 74, 157 Canada, 93, 100, 131–132, 136 Confederate Army, 10, 17, 119–120, 131 Confederate States of America, 17, 18, 22, 24, 30, 53, 64, 66, 72, 80, 82, 89, 107, 125, 136, 139, 159–160; brought war upon themselves, 60; government, 81, 82, 83, 120, 121 Confiscation Acts, 68 Congress, 65, 71, 75, 81, 88–96, 104, 116, 118, 123, 166; after 1860 election, 144; after 1862 election, 144; House of Representatives, 90, 118, 144, 166; Senate, 89, 94, 104, 162 conscription, 87–114, 123, 130, 136, 169; bounty brokers, 97; bounty jumpers, 97; bounty money, 35, 91–107, 111–113; causing family disgreements, 101; commutation fee, 89, 92–96, 100–101, 105–109; Confederate, 89; conscientious objectors, 92; crimping of foreign nationals, 93; draft calls, 89–91, 94, 98, 105, 109, 128; draft Copperheads as punishment, 136; draft dodgers, 100; draft insurance societies, 101, 123; drafted men, 90, 96, 100, 103–106, 111–113; enlisting to avoid conscription, 13, 91; enlistment oath, 78; Enrollment Act, 87–99, 103–105, 110, 113; exemptions, 89–92, 96, 99, 106; failure of, 105; health-related discharge, 78, 112; >>

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soldiers, 66, 106, 151–152, 163; assassination of, 171; calls for compensated emancipation, 74; defended against accusations of tyranny, 152; election of 1864, 143; officers opposed to, 144; opposition to, 144; soldier criticism of, 78, 145, 149; soldiers defend from criticism, 151; soldiers have confidence in, 152; uncertain of reelection in 1864, 145; viewed as preserver of stability, 157 Lincoln, Mary, 144 mail, 3; importance of mail, 25, 26, 27; preserving privacy, 52; self-censorship, 28 McClellan, George, 82, 124, 147–153, 156–166; candidacy as insubordination, 160; disavows Democratic Peace Plank, 161; failure as general, 147, 148; hatred for running against Lincoln, 160–165; opposed to freeing slaves, 83; reason for Presidential run, 160; soldier opinion of, 150, 151; soldier support for, 147–150 Meade, George, 20, 25 Memorial Day, 170 Mexican War, 7 military necessity justification, 14, 68, 72 military/civilian relations, 7; civilians expect noninterference, 15; price gouging by civilians, 14, 17; soldiers glad North is invaded, 18; threats of violence toward civilians, 15 militia, 18, 104, 126, 128, 130; Militia Act (1792), 94; Militia Act (1862), 88 morals and morality, 8–10, 28, 33–35, 49–52, 60, 106, 138, 157 Morgan, John, 18, 123, 162 Morton, Oliver, 117, 118, 135, 164 nativism, 98, 117, 130 New York City, 13, 96, 98, 116, 129–132, 140–141, 163 newspapers and reporters, 3, 18–26, 31, 51, 91, 100, 107, 109, 111, 122, 126–28, 139, 155, 164; as forum of soldiers’ complaints, 19; as source of news from home, 19; censorship and punishment of, 21–25; function as opinion barometer, 19;

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Vallandigham, 119; Lincoln exiles, 119; runs for governor of Ohio, 120; soldier pleased with his punishment, 120 Veteran Reserve Corps, 14 Vicksburg, Battle of, 24, 78–79 vote, soldiers’ right to, 143–147 War Department, 49, 92, 94, 100–107, 120–121, 124, 162 War of 1812, 7, 18 Washington, D.C., 11, 29–30, 68, 82, 90, 93, 106, 169 Western Theater of war, 151 women: as army nurses, 46–50; as civilizing influence, 34, 49, 52; as farm laborers, 35–37; as farm managers, 38–40; as industrial workers, 41–42; as participants in anti-war riots, 127–129; as soldiers, 50–51; concept of domesticity, 34–35; farm advice from husbands, 36–37; gender roles, 4, 33, 46, 50; in army camps, 33, 46–50; not wanted in camp, 47- 50; prostitution, 4, 33, 51,–54 Yates, Richard, 29–30, 46, 117

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About the Author

Steven Ramold, Associate Professor of American History at Eastern Michigan University, is the author of two previous books, Slaves, Sailors, Citizens: African Americans in the Union Navy (2002) and Baring the Iron Hand: Discipline in the Union Army (2009). He and his wife reside in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

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