Mr. Dunn Browne's Experiences in the Army: The Civil War Letters of Samuel Fiske 9780823296248

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MR. DUNN BROWNE'S EXPERIENCES IN THE ARMY

Mr. Dunn Browne's Experiences in the Artny The Civil War Letters of Samuel W. Fiske Edited by

STEPHEN

w. SEARS

Fordham University Press New York

1998

Copyright © 1998 by Stephen W. Sears All rights reserved. LC 98-14100 ISBN 0-8232-1833-3 (hardco'Ver) ISBN: 978-0-8232-1834-9 (paper) ISSN 1089-8719 The North's Civil War, No. 6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fiske, Samuel Wheelock, 1828-1864. Mr. Dunn Browne's experiences in the Army: the Civil War letters of Samuel W. Fiske I edited by Stephen W. Sears. p. em.- (The North's Civil War; no. 6) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8232-1833-3 (hardcover) ISBN: 978-0-8232-1834-9 (paper) 1. Fiske, Samuel Wheelock, 1828-1864-Correspondence. 2. United States. Army. Connecticut Infantry Regiment, 14th (1862-1865) 3. Connecticut-History-Civil War, 1861-1865-Personal narratives. 4. United States-History-Civil War, 1861-1865-Personal narratives. 5. Connecticut-History-Civil War, 1861-1865Regimental histories. 6. United States-History-Civil War, 1861-1865-Regimental histories. 7. Soldiers-ConnecticutCorrespondence. I. Sears, Stephen W. II. Title. III. Series. E499.5 14th.F57 1998 973. 7' 446-dc21 98-14100 CIP

CONTENTS Introduction

1. Dunn Browne Goes To War

vii

1

2. In Camp in the Field

14

3. A Winter Campaign 4. Dunn Browne Visits Dixie

36 58

5. Gettysburg 6. Marking Time 7. Campaigning to Little Purpose 8. Winter Quarters 9. Into the Wilderness Index

89 124 168 214 237 251

INTRODUCTION During the years of the Civil War, the Springfield Republican unblushingly described itself as "The leading journal of New England," and aspired to even more: to be the voice, indeed the conscience, of all New England. Springfield, in southwestern Massachusetts, was centrally located for this self-proclaimed role. The Republican's flagship weekly edition, published Saturdays, had a circulation of 12,000 across the Northeast, which its publisher claimed was "greater than that of any other interior journal in the country" and exceeded by "but few of the city papers." In these years the weekly's eight pages were crowded with political news from all across the North, with local news from all the New England states, with reviews of books and the arts, with stories "original and selected" from literature, with news of business and the farm, with "six to eight columns of leading editorials, and editorial paragraphs," and, most extensive of all, with reports of every sort from the war. An important feature of this war coverage was column after column labeled "Correspondence of The Republican"-letters from the paper's special correspondents. "Van" reported from Washington, "Periwinkle" from New York, "Warrington" from Boston, "R.W.B." from the lOth Massachusetts in the field, "E.S.S." from the 37th Massachusetts. The most prominently displayed of these special correspondents, with a letter almost every week, was published under the heading "Dunn Browne at the War." The use of a nom de plume was common newspaper practice in mid-nineteenth-century America. The tactic was said to allow the correspondent to speak his mind without fear of retaliation or repression. For Dunn Browne, on those occasions when he unleashed what he termed his "grumblings" against army bureaucracy or commanding generals, his nom de plume was surely a comfort. The Springfield Republican would reveal Dunn

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Introduction

Browne's identity only on May 16, 1863-in decidedly odd circumstances, to be described shortly-but even then there was no pulling of punches by the \\Titer of these observant, witty, sometimes angry, frequently profound letters from the battle lines to the folks back home. In the guise of Dunn Browne was a man of manifold talentsSamuel \Vheelock Fiske, captain, 14th Connecticut volunteers, Army of the Potomac. Fiske was not at all the typical Civil War soldier, or even the typical officer. That he had joined up at all, and then in the infantry, was the mark of a man to whom the Union cause was simply the Cause. Samuel Fiske, born in 1828 in Shelburne, Massachusetts, had entered Amherst College at age sixteen, slight of stature, charmingly personable, and very bright. Coming from a family of slight means, he worked his way through college, mostly by laboring in a book bindery. That he flourished in the atmosphere of a classical education of the time was evident at commencement in 1848, when he delivered, in the words of one of his professors, "a salutatory oration as full of fun as the grave and stately 'lingua Latina' could be made to carry." Two years of teaching in academies and three of studying theology followed. In 1853 Fiske returned to his alma mater as a tutor. Then, in 1855, he set off for Europe and the Middle East, acting as "a kind of guide and historiographer" for a party of a dozen fellow travelers embarking on what was called in that day the Grand Tour. It was during these travels abroad that readers of the Springfield Republican first made the acquaintance of Dunn Browne. Fiske's letters sent back to the newspaper, over the signature of his newly adopted nom de plume, made him, it was said, "one of the most racy, witty and spicy of all our newspaper correspondents" (surely "racy" and "spicy" being relative terms in that more innocent age). He was described as a model traveler, "inexhaustible in wit, never at a loss for an expedient, master of himself, and more than a match for Greeks and Jews, Arabs and Turks, believers and infidels .... " In 1857 these travel letters were published as Dunn Browne's Experiences in Foreign Parts. In an author's note, Fiske, carefully remaining offstage, remarked that Browne had not always been his name. It was originally Greene, he explained. Over time the salutary lessons of life's experiences had "scorched as it were his verdancy into a

INTRODUCTIOK

ix

sober russet hue, in consequence of which experience the writer has, in the lapse of years (without once applying to the legislature for a change), gradually come to be called Browne." As to his chosen Christian name he was silent; of course his readers knew dun to be a shade of brown. As his profession Fiske had elected the ministry, and he became pastor of the Congregational church in Madison, Connecticut. At age thirty he married nineteen-year-old Elizabeth Foster, the daughter of a minister, and a year later their first child, a boy, was born. At the time of Fort Sumter, then, Samuel Fiske was nearly thirty-three, married and a father, and a full-time pastor to a Congregational parish. It appeared to him, in those heady days of 1861, to be a younger, less-obligated-man's war; and it was from that pool of manpower that Connecticut filled its first quota of volunteers in expectation of putting down the rebellion in short order. By the summer of 1862, however, the scene had changed, and darkened. McClellan's massive Peninsula campaign against Richmond was a failure, and Mr. Lincoln was obliged to call for 300,000 more volunteers. "I stood it just as long as I possibly could & then caved in," Fiske wrote his brother Asa; " ... I do not despair of the republic." He had just turned thirty-four, with a family and his wife eight months' pregnant, and if he had to go to war at all he most properly ought to have signed up as a chaplain-brother Asa, also a minister, was chaplain to the 4th Minnesota-but he spoke of a greater obligation: "I want to fight for my country." Raising what he described as a squad of men from among his neighbors, he signed his enlistment papers on August 8, 1862, and was made a second lieutenant in Company I of the newly authorized 14th Connecticut regiment. By August 25 the raw new Connecticut 14th was on its way to the seat of war. Fiske found time to make an arrangement with the editor of the Springfield Republican, and in less than a week after starting for the front he had the first of his ninety wartime Dunn Browne letters on the way to the Republican. Ten months and some thirty-five Dunn Browne letters later, Fiske sought to explain to his readers what he was about in his reporting. Of a battle, he wrote, "Your correspondent can only give the impressions of one soldier, 'vho is acting his own small part somewhere under the smoky cloud.'' His scenes were neces-

X

Introduction

sarily fragmentary, "because they are genuine, such as they are-daguerreotypes, and not fancy sketches." However modest they may be, Samuel Fiske's daguerreotypes have the same qualities as Brady's-great clarity and striking depth. His account of his green regiment's baptism of fire, at Antietam, is one such example. To understand what that holocaust of a battle was like for an entire untrained regiment-the officers knew as little as their men-meeting hostile fire for the first time in their lives, one need look no farther than Fiske's letter. Another example is his reporting from Gettysburg-an eyewitness, on the firing line, writing virtually contemporaneously with events, and far more perceptive than any newspaper correspondent on that field of battle. In his reporting of events, whether they be battles, skirmishes, or marches, Samuel Fiske represented a unique combination-an experienced correspondent conscientiously reporting to an audience, on the one hand, and, at the same time, with no choice in the matter, an infantry soldier undergoing the actual minute-by-minute, often very deadly experience. There is nothing comparable in Civil War literature. It was just this sort of circumstance that led the Republican to reveal Dunn Browne's identity prematurely. In the confusing woodland tangle at Chancellorsville, in May 1863, Captain Fiske disappeared and was presumed killed; so stated the first reports. In fact, in the deep woods, Fiske had stumbled on a band of armed Confederates and been forced to surrender-a scene he renders with his usual ironic humor-and this fact did not make its way back to Springfield before the paper had printed the obituary of Samuel W. Fiske, "our Dunn Browne." Much would be made, of course, after Fiske's exchange, of Dunn Browne's reading his own obituary. Alas, his good luck was not to be repeated. In the Army of the Potomac during the twenty-month period of Fiske's service-Antietam to the Wilderness-the fighting was of course not continuous. Consequently, Dunn Browne took the opportunity, between battles, to explore numerous military questions and issues for the people on the home front. He acted, in the terminology of the modern press, as an investigative reporter, and investigating in uniform, from the inside. He was boldly candid-breaking the story, in effect-when he revealed that his fellow Yankee soldiers coursed through the Maryland

INTRODUCTION

xi

countryside like a plague of locusts. That was not what other papers were reporting. Frequently, too, he found the army bureaucracy a fertile field for expose. When issues at home promised to affect the troops on the firing line, Dunn Brmvne responded righteously. In the spring elections of 1863, for example, Connecticut Democrats put up a peace candidate for governor, and Fiske's avowal that the Copperhead credo was a stab. in the back of every fighting man at the front surely helped influence the electorate to vote down the Democrat. One of the most interesting of Dunn Browne's crusades was launched against the abuses of conscription in the North. To most readers of the Republican, the draft and its evasive provisions must have seemed more theory than practice. Then, in a series of letters from the banks of the Rapidan in Virginia, Dunn Browne provided the practice. He vividly described the fruits of conscription: the scum-of-the-earth substitutes and the duplicitous bounty-jumpers coming into the army-and into the Connecticut 14th in particular-prodded into the ranks at gunpoint, their every effort focused on the first opportunity to desert. Fiske aimed a variety of tactics-cajoling, appealing to patriotism, shaming-at draft-age New Englanders, urging them to sign up voluntarily and help finish the job. There is no knowing how effective he was, of course, but at least he contributed strongly to the public discourse on the thorny questions of conscription. The Springfield Republican was a staunch supporter of the administration, and an influential one, although, like Fiske, it recognized much room for improvement in Washington's war policies and practices. The paper was both willing and able to showcase Fiske's efforts to educate and influence and inspire the home front on the great issues of the war. Republican editorials frequently echoed Fiske's crusades; the editor might position a Dunn Browne letter as obvious support, from the firing line as it were, for some stance of the paper's. For example, the Dunn Browne letter castigating the Copperheads as betrayers of Connecticut's gallant fighting men was prominently displayed in the Republican just days before the state election. Numerous Northern newspapers carried letters from the battle fronts, some sent to family and then passed on to editor, others written deliberately for publication. But Samuel Fiske stands well ahead of the crowd on several counts. First, he had

xii

Introduction

perfected the art of newspaper correspondence with his prewar travel letters to the Republican-and in the process gained an audience for his later work. Second, his choice of subject matter was varied, yet always focused on the interests and concerns and morale of those on the home front. Finally, Fiske had mastered the art of the small essay. He clothed his sharply aimed purposes in wry, self-effacing humor, and he had perspective and a point of view. It would be hard to find another soldier, on either side in this war, who was more consistent, and more eloquent, in expressing just what it was he was fighting for. It is soon obvious, in reading these letters, that Captain Samuel Fiske was a good soldier as well as a good essayist. He believed in his cause-the Cause-and as the spring campaign of 1864 approached, he elected to stay on in the army and see it through. He was not obligated to do so-his original agreement with his parish was for a one-year leave of absence, and he had already exceeded that-but he felt his true obligation was to the men with whom he had enlisted. Leadership was a rare commodity in the Civil War; good leadership at the company level required constant risk and exposure to enemy fire. Captains of companies-good captains-perforce led from the front, not from the rear. So it was that Captain Fiske was at the front in the Battle of the Wilderness, May 1864, and so it was that he was wounded there. He was shot through a lung, a type of wound all too often fatal. He lingered sixteen days and, on May 22, 1864, he died. He was buried at his birthplace, Shelburne, Massachusetts. At the funeral it was said of Samuel Fiske, and of Dunn Browne, "Not one of his talents will be lost. Not one of his sufferings and sacrifices will be in vain. They are all a part of the price that must be paid for the redemption of the country." Of the ninety-two letters reproduced here, ninety were printed in the Springfield Republican, and one appeared in a newspaper serving Fiske's Connecticut parish. The opening letter, written to his brother Asa Fiske, is included for its explanation of Fiske's decision to enlist. In 1866 the letters to the Republican were collected by Asa Fiske and published as Mr. Dunn Browne's Experiences in the Army (Boston: Nichols and Noyes). For this volume, the letters have been transcribed just as they appeared in the Springfield Republican and arranged in proper sequence. Headings are those of the Republican's editor or supplied by the

xiii

INTROOl'CTION

editor of this volume. The editor has also supplied the chapter headings and headnotes for the letters. The headnotes utilize material drawn from the columns of the Republican accompanying the Dunn Bro"me letters. Additionally, extensive use has been made of Samuel Fiske's wartime letters to his family, and of letters by Asa Fiske, in the John Aldrich Stephenson Collection of the Papers of the Hand, Fiske, and Aldrich Families, in the Library of Congress. The editor wishes to acknowledge the assistance of Jeffrey M. Flannery at the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, of Thomas Knoles at the American Antiquarian Society, and of Janice Pruchnieki, Madison, Connecticut, who is preparing a biographical study of Samuel W. Fiske. STEPHEN

W.

SEARS

1

DUNN BROWNE GOES TO WAR The 14th Connecticut was mustered into Federal service at Hartford on A~.;;t 23, 1862. A few days pre