The Gentlemen and the Roughs: Violence, Honor, and Manhood in the Union Army 9780814728581

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The Gentlemen and the Roughs

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The Gentlemen and the Roughs Manhood, Honor, and Violence in the Union Army

Lorien Foote

a NEW YORK UNIVERSIT Y PRESS New York and London

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York and London www.nyupress.org © 2010 by New York University All rights reserved Portions of chapter 5 were previously published as “Rich Man’s War, Rich Man’s Fight: Class, Ideology, and Discipline in the Union Army,” Civil War History 51 (September 2005): 269–287, and are published here with permission of Kent State University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Foote, Lorien, 1969– The gentlemen and the roughs : violence, honor, and manhood in the Union Army / Lorien Foote. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978–0–8147–2790–4 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0–8147–2790–5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978–0–8147–2795–9 (ebook) ISBN-10: 0–8147–2795–6 (ebook) 1. United States. Army—History—Civil War, 1861–1865. 2. United States. Army—Military life—History—19th century. 3. Soldiers—United States—Social conditions—19th century. 4. Social classes—United States—History—19th century. 5. Social conflict—United States— History—19th century. 6. Violence—United States—History—19th century. 7. Honor— United States—History—19th century. 8. Masculinity—United States—History—19th century. 9. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Social aspects. I. Title. E491.F66   2010 973.7’1—dc22     2009053606 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 Dedra, Eric, and Rachel and Heather, Mark, Eric, and Nathan

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Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction: The Contested Terms of Manhood

ix 1

1 “A Good Moral Regiment”: Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman

17

2 “The Model of the Gentleman”: Gentility and Self-Control

41

3 “A Regular Old-Fashioned Free Fight”: Physical Prowess and Honor

67

4 “If You Will Go with Me outside the Lines”: Dueling and the Degenerate Affair of Honor

93

5 “The Thick-Fingered Clowns”: Social Status and Discipline

119

6 “The Shoulder-Strap Gentry”: Officers, Privates, and Equal Manhood

145

Conclusion: The War for Manhood

171

Appendix: Note on Method and Sources

181

Notes

185

Bibliography

213

Index

225

About the Author

237



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Acknowledgments

Many colleagues, friends, and students have aided me in the research and writing of this book. I am grateful for their hard work, support, and advice, and for the personal and professional courtesy that has been extended to me over the course of this project. First I must thank those who offered unusually generous hospitality to me during my months of research in Washington DC: Greg Eastman, Holly and Kevin Fletcher, and Tom and Bev Lowry. Greg seems to move to the location where I need to research for every new project I undertake, and his free housing has helped support two books and counting. Holly and Kevin allowed me to stay long past the time I probably wore out my welcome and even put off a move to fit my summer research schedule. They are true friends. The Lowrys deserve thanks not only for wonderful mid-afternoon snacking but also for their work creating a searchable electronic record of Union courts-martial. Their years of hard work enabled my project. I extend special thanks to Dr. Roger Burk of the West Point Systems Engineering Department, who wrote the program that created the database for my project. It was kind of him to take time from his busy teaching and research schedule to help an Excel-challenged historian. A host of people in a variety of positions at the University of Central Arkansas deserve credit for their assistance with this project. The chair of the History Department, Ken Barnes, supported me in numerous ways for which I am truly grateful. Dean Maurice Lee and the College of Liberal Arts provided me with reassigned time to complete my research. Graduate student Elena Friot entered thousands of pieces of data into an Excel worksheet. Amber Castor was a model summer research assistant who mined the Official Records for orders relating to discipline. Other graduate students who worked on the database for this project or who assisted me in finding sources were Chris Bynum, Rebekah Bilderback, Melissa Moore, John Fisk, Rebecca Stone, and James Conway. My colleagues on the University Research Council granted me the necessary funds to support my research in Washington.

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Donna Johnson, Judy Huff, and Charlene Bland cheerfully performed any random task that I asked for, and I know I asked for a lot. Student workers Clayton Howell, Sean Flowers, and Kady Williams xeroxed, taped, and pasted on my behalf for hours at a time. Lisa Jernigan is an able and friendly ally in the constant quest for books from interlibrary loan. The ideas found in this book progressed during the course of several years of thinking, reworking, and rewriting. I owe the evolution of this book and the final product to several generous colleagues who read various stages of the work, provided me with insightful analysis, and offered intriguing ideas for new directions. In particular, a penetrating conversation with Richard Godbeer after he had read a much different version of this work helped to shape the final direction of this project. Michael T. Smith asked me to consider what this book was really about and pointed out the relevance of the Davis-Nelson incident to my work. Andrew Slap returned me to the basics of matching conclusions with evidence and being clear about methodology. Elizabeth Leonard reminded me not to oversimplify. Christian Samito talked me through early ideas for the project. Wendy Lucas-Castro asked me to rethink the final two chapters, and Michael Schaeffer’s close reading helped to clarify and strengthen the writing. I also would like to thank Amy S. Greenberg and Peter S. Carmichael, who read the manuscript for New York University Press. Their thoughtful and insightful comments offered suggestions that vastly improved the work. This is the place to admit that I did not always listen to advice that I received, and so I take full responsibility for the final content of this book. It has been a pleasure to work with New York University Press. My editor, Debbie Gershenowitz, recognized the potential of this project in its early stages and has effectively advocated for this book. Her edits made the content better. Perhaps most important, she has made what is often a stressful process seem smooth and pleasant. I work in a department with a special group of people who are true friends to me. I must thank them for making me laugh when I needed it and for providing support when I was just overwhelmed. You know who you are. Finally, I would like to thank Jay Dew, because I forgot to last time.

x  |  Acknowledgments

Introduction The Contested Terms of Manhood

Abraham Lincoln once termed the American Civil War “a people’s contest.” In contrast to European wars of empire waged by kings and aristocrats, Lincoln believed, it was the northern people who fought the war through democratic institutions to save the world’s only true republic. The most important institution that fought Lincoln’s “people’s contest” was the Union Army, a citizen army composed of millions of volunteers and draftees whose numbers dwarfed the small band of regular soldiers and West Point– trained officers. The Union Army in the Civil War was northern society in miniature, reflecting its culture and values and imbued with its strengths and weaknesses. The Union Army, like the society from which it sprang, was cohesive enough to face many desperate hours and to emerge triumphant after four long years of war. But social divisions rent the army just as they did the republic for which it was fighting. Conflicts related to class differences and to competing conceptions of manhood pervaded its institutional life and the daily interactions of its officers and privates. In the Union Army, an educated, refined, morally sensitive, and wealthy twenty-year-old lieutenant could find himself commanding a hard-drinking group of prizefighters from the north’s lowest social class. For the army to fight effectively, it had to overcome tensions in the ranks born out of the many cleavages within northern society—tensions that often erupted into violence and threatened to destroy the basic discipline necessary for fighting. Sometimes, the shared experience of war brought men together. Sometimes, men found that army life revealed differences, exacerbated distinctions, and created conflicts among the very “people” engaged in the great contest for national unity. When Thomas P. Southwick, an employee of the Third Avenue Railway Company in New York City, decided to volunteer for the Union Army, he sought a regiment “composed entirely of gentleman’s sons.” To his disappoint

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ment, none matched that description. First he tried Company C of the 10th New York. When the men of the prospective regiment assembled, Southwick was horrified. “There were about eight hundred in the room, rough, hearty looking fellows, the very best material for soldiers, but not good for companions, especially when under the influence of John Barleycorn,” he recalled. Southwick refused to join up with men whose “tastes and inclinations were so different.”1 Southwick eventually enlisted in the 5th New York, also known as Duryée’s Zouaves. Gentlemen of high social standing recruited and served as the officers of this regiment. Nevertheless, it still contained its share of men that Southwick labeled “roughs.” One of Southwick’s companions in Company F was the Irishman Sullivan, “a noisy, turbulent and blustering little bully.” Sullivan fit the description of many other men in the Fifth—“strong, active and formidable with a very quarrelsome disposition.” The short and stout Irishman was “rough and rude in speech, but plucky as a game rooster and ready to fight with anybody.” Sullivan tried to engage every man in a physical tussle and judged each man by the result. He soon tested Southwick.2 One day the company captain placed Southwick at the extreme left of the line during drill. This had been Sullivan’s place. During the exercises, Sullivan attempted several times to pass around Southwick to get to his left. Every time Sullivan did, Southwick would slide left and block the attempt. Eventually the two of them ended up some distance from the rest of the company. The captain ordered them to dress the line. Once again, Sullivan sought to move left. The exasperated Southwick grabbed Sullivan by the collar and hurled him out of the line. Rather than angering the Irishman, Southwick won his respect. Over time and shared hardship, the two men became friends. “Away down in the depths of Sullivan’s turbulent nature there was a current of affectionate kindness, a little bubbling fountain of tenderness, unperceived except by those for whom he expressed regard,” Southwick fondly recalled after the war. “I have occupied the same tent, drank from the same cup, and slept under the same blanket and underneath the roughness of the surface I found all the tenderness of a woman.”3 Southwick and Sullivan were from different social classes and seemingly embraced different ideals of manly behavior. Southwick valued gentility; Sullivan sought to prove his manhood through physical prowess and domination. Eventually the two men discovered that their conceptions of manliness had elements in common. Southwick violated the genteel code according to some of his contemporaries when he lost his cool and manhandled the Irishman. His response to a rough was roughness. Sullivan, for his part, revealed 2  |  Introduction

to those he knew well the same tenderness—that of a woman—which some genteel men proudly displayed. Southwick’s short reminiscence about his Irish companion in arms demonstrates the complexities of mid-nineteenthcentury gender assumptions. Northern men, to a greater extent than their southern counterparts, did not conform to a singular understanding of manhood or to a uniform ideal of what constituted manly behavior. Although recent scholars are beginning to explore the diversity in the ideals and practices of southern manhood, particularly for men outside the planter class, they acknowledge that a dominant manly ideal of honor and mastery pervaded the south. Men in the south engaged in acknowledged public rituals to establish a reputation sanctioned by the community; they acquired personal manliness through mastery of a set of dependents located in the household.4 The relatively coherent manhood ideal of southern men for the most part stemmed from the centrality of slavery to southern society and reflected the south’s more rural and traditional nature. Northerners, who experienced transformative social and economic changes during the antebellum era, developed a variety of manly ideals that reflected both the social diversity of the region and the new class structures that accompanied modern life. Manhood in the mid-nineteenth century indicated an achievement rather than an innate nature that all biological males possessed. As one Union soldier aptly put it: “I see some men that are men in mind and body and a great many that are only men in body.” The generation who fought the Civil War thought of manhood in terms of the attributes a man displayed that marked him as worthy of the designation. While this conception appears to assign a moral component to manhood, this was not necessarily the case. Men sought to prove their manhood in a variety of ways: some through physical domination, some through the acquisition of an upright and self-controlled character, some through economic success, and some through a combination of attributes. What a man needed to achieve in his quest for manhood was a central question that received many different answers in the Civil War era.5 Historians who study gender in the nineteenth century have identified and attempted to define the various ways that men practiced manhood, although they admit that all men cannot fit into the neat categories they have devised. Scholars have employed a variety of labels in their attempts to describe broad patterns of behavior and shared assumptions about manhood among subsets of men. Most recently, Amy Greenberg has argued that amid the cacophony of options, two were preeminent and competed for dominance: the “restrained man,” who centered his identity on the practice

Introduction  |  3

of evangelical Christianity, his family, and his success in the business world; and the “martial man,” who rejected the moral standards of restrained men, placed little value on domesticity, and proved his manhood through physical domination rather than economic success.6 There is an alternative way to think about manhood in the nineteenth century other than creating artificial types and attempting to reduce men to categories. A man’s underlying values and the attributes that he sought to acquire and display informed his conception of manhood. As gender scholars, including Greenberg, already know, men of the Civil War era combined values and attributes in a variety of ways; there was a diversity of models and patterns. Whether the process occurred consciously or subconsciously, men chose from a spectrum of options when they pieced together the component parts of their manly identities. At the same time, men shared a common goal or expectation: others would recognize and respect their manhood. The volunteers and conscripts in the Union Army, who reflected the socioeconomic diversity of the northern population, represented the full spectrum of choices available to men in the mid-nineteenth century. During the war they lived (and often died) together on terms of enforced intimacy under intense circumstances when the fate of the nation hung in the balance. Americans had always believed that the survival of the republic depended on the manhood of its citizens, and now the Civil War presented a critical test. Northerners assumed that manliness in civilian life should naturally produce model citizen-soldiers whose manhood would carry northern armies to victory. At a time when it seemed so important that northern men be manly, however, it became clear that no consensus existed as to what that meant. As the soldiers and officers of the Union Army looked around them, they were able to articulate the differences between their understanding of manhood and the competing versions they saw all around them. Indeed, during the war men were able to define manliness by pointing to their comrades as good examples of what it was not. Army life exposed in a very unsettling fashion the conflicts between northern men over how to define the attributes essential to manhood and how to recognize manliness in other men. This study’s contribution to the scholarship on gender lies not in its description of different “types” of manhood practiced during the Civil War. Rather, it emphasizes the contested terms of manhood in the nineteenthcentury north. Men’s experience in the army—particularly the close living quarters in camp, the importance of reputation, the need for discipline, and the authority of officers—exposed conflict over how to define and measure manliness that centered on the attributes of moral character, gentility, 4  |  Introduction

physical prowess, honor, and social status. The attributes some men deemed essential to manhood—such as moral character or physical prowess—others disdained. Words that were widely used when men defined manhood—such as honor—had different meanings to different men. Men whose manhood was respected among their peers in civilian life, whether through displays of physical domination or mastery of refinement, failed to earn recognition of their manhood when confronted with those who adhered to different standards of manliness. The army’s apparatus of discipline and justice became the battleground on which the war for manhood was fought. Tensions in northern men’s conception of manhood affected how officers used their authority and tried to lead, how men responded to their officers, and how military courts made decisions. Some officers used army discipline as a tool to promote the values and attributes they deemed essential for manhood; for other officers and enlisted men, army discipline impinged on some elements of their manly identities and they sought ways to resist. The ongoing battle over manhood within the larger society was intricately related to a conflict over the particular practices of manhood that were best suited for war. This study utilizes extensive research into primary source materials that previous scholars of Civil War soldiers have virtually ignored: courts-martial records and regimental order books (for an explanation of methodology, see the appendix). Building their evidence base around the letters soldiers sent home and the diaries they used to record their experiences, historians have focused almost exclusively on the ideology of northern soldiers and what motivated them to fight.7 While these sources are useful, and form an important component of this study, they have limitations when used alone. Soldiers may have filtered their letters when writing to wives and family; nineteenth-century men used diaries not only to record events but also to self-consciously construct an identity and impose order on their experiences.8 Courts-martial records—the verbatim testimony of thousands of officers and privates—allows us to hear the voice of the illiterate for the first time, witness the interactions among men that they did not always describe in letters home, and uncover how men actually spoke to one another. Regimental order books, previously the exclusive province of regimental historians, contain trials and orders generated within the volunteer regiments that address the daily concerns and experiences of officers and soldiers. Through these records, we see what soldiers actually did and said. This book moves us past the well-worn ground covered in most studies of Civil War soldiers and into different fields of inquiry. By using new sources, this book captures a

Introduction  |  5

side of the war that soldiers rarely wrote about in their letters home, and calls into question what we thought we knew about life in the ranks of the Union Army. The central contribution of this book may be its recovery of the place honor held in northern men’s conception of manhood and in their daily interactions with one another. Honor, simply put, is when a man’s self-worth is based on public reputation and the respect of others. An insult to such a man is a shaming that requires a public vindication of worth.9 The current literature confines honor in the United States during the mid-nineteenth century almost exclusively to southerners. Most historians assume that honor had waned in the modernizing north by the time of the Civil War, yet this study demonstrates that honor thrived to a degree scholars have not recognized.10 Men in the Union Army spoke to one another using the language of honor, they engaged in affairs of honor (including issuing verbal and written challenges to duels), and they fought and killed men who had insulted them, often with the open or tacit approval of their comrades and military authorities. Honor was a contested term of manhood, however, and the reaction to these affairs within the ranks and within the system of military justice revealed a divided opinion about the definition of honor and its claims over a man. This book exposes other holes in our understanding of Civil War soldiers and the social landscape of the Civil War north. One of the most glaring is the influence of class, a topic obscured by historians’ reliance on the letters and diaries of elite and middle-class soldiers. While class tensions were manifest in the records consulted for this project, the sources shed little new light on issues of race, which have been well treated in recent articles and fulllength monographs of black soldiers in the Union Army.11 The final chapter provides a discussion of how race compounded the tensions between officers and privates that existed in white regiments as well, but class is the theme that runs throughout the book. Perceptions of manliness were deeply intertwined with perceptions of social status, particularly with a distinct class of men labeled “roughs”: those from the very bottom of the economic ladder whose manly identities seemed to be centered on violence and drink. Men from all social classes participated in a culture of boisterous and aggressive male camaraderie, but the behavior of the roughs, in combination with their low social status, raised doubts about their manliness. Officers believed that roughs lacked the manly qualities necessary to be effective soldiers, and were convinced that it would take force to induce such men to do their duty and fight. 6  |  Introduction

The intersection of social status—and race—with perceptions of manhood had serious ramifications for discipline in the Union Army. By using untapped courts-martial records and regimental order books, this study presents a portrait of how discipline was actually wielded in the Union Army. For the first time, through their words and actions, we see how Civil War officers governed the rank and file. The explosive issue of social status and its relation to manhood exacerbated the practical problems officers faced. Assumptions about social status shaped officers’ use of authority and methods of discipline, just as the reactions to those assumptions shaped how enlisted men responded to the efforts of their officers. Historians who rely on letters home or memoirs written long after the war tend to overemphasize the esprit de corps of Civil War regiments and its ability to transcend differences in the ranks. Comradeship, as practiced in day-to-day army life, was complicated. The war generated intense bonds and intense friction between men. We know enough about the bonds between northern soldiers; it is time to balance that perspective with a discussion of the endemic nature of conflict and violence among the men of the Union Army.12 Union soldiers engaged in regular fistfights with each other, talked back to superiors, refused orders, and hit officers who tried to assert authority. Without a combined use of regimental order books, courts-martial records, and letters and diaries, historians have lost the extent to which officers employed violence as they exerted authority and led men into battle. Although this study moves away from questions about why men fought in the Union Army, it highlights what other scholars overlook: the brute force that kept so many soldiers in the ranks. The topic of violence brings us back to northern conceptions of manhood and two common misconceptions among scholars who study manhood in the nineteenth century. Northerners who proclaimed the superiority of selfcontrol often branded passion and violence as negative, particularly southern traits, and some historians have likewise tended to emphasize the contrast between self-controlled northern manhood and passionate southern manhood.13 This characterization has masked both the ambiguities in men’s understanding of self-control and the widespread presence of northern men who shared much in common with their southern counterparts when it came to unleashing violence. On the other hand, other scholars have overemphasized the extent to which the Civil War temporarily promoted a type of “hypermasculinity” over the other manly practices that northern men had embraced in the antebellum period. The demands of the march and battle, the all-male environment, and the violent nature of warfare, they argue,

Introduction  |  7

encouraged men to cultivate manly prowess rather than refined delicacy.14 But this study found that men who valued gentility and domestic morality, no less than tougher and rougher men, found ample support for the values they cherished. Army rules and regulations usually reinforced rather than challenged their standards and gave such officers an opportunity to demand good morals and good manners. It was the hard-drinking, cursing, and fighting men of the army who were on the defensive in the military justice system when they faced prosecution for conduct unbecoming a gentleman. Army experience taught an outspoken group of Union soldiers that an underclass of undesirable men existed in northern society: men whose violence and disorder threatened the discipline of the army and undermined its success on the battlefield. Many northern officers and soldiers left the army with a clear mental image of the “rough” and the danger he posed to society. The men who had truly saved the Union, they believed, were its gentlemen, men with domestic virtues, moral character, and proper manners. They had needed no discipline and they fought out of courage rather than coercion, unlike their baser opposites. This simplistic but widespread perception of the component parts of the Union Army served as a counterpoint to any “hypermasculinity” that the aggression and violence of the war promoted. The war energized rather than muted genteel values and served to separate further the different types of men in the Union Army who lived and fought together. This study is about manhood in the north as it played out in the specific context of the Union Army. The term “north” as employed in this book, therefore, encompasses several regions of the United States, since the men of the Union Army hailed from states as distant as Maine, Kentucky, and California. This approach recognizes that it is impossible to fix rigid lines around the cultural regions of the United States that neatly correspond to political or geographic boundaries. The men from Kentucky shared much in common with their southern neighbors in seceded Tennessee and with their northern neighbors in Indiana. Soldiers from Illinois were different from their Vermont compatriots, yet in other ways they were much alike. While some military historians emphasize the difference between “western” and “eastern” soldiers, the contested terms of manhood cut across regions and divided men who hailed from the same locales. Men in the Union Army who followed the code of honor came from Massachusetts and Kentucky. Soldiers and officers who were moral and genteel could be found in rural and urban units from every state. Hard-fighting, hard-drinking, and boisterous men showed up in the Army of the Cumberland and the Army of the Potomac. Different companies in the same regiment fought the battle for manhood: while the slov8  |  Introduction

enly men from Company B beat one another senseless in a drunken melee, the men of Company K attended a weekly temperance meeting in their neat uniforms with polished buttons. While the insights of this study apply to a broadly conceived “north,” the conclusions that follow also address questions about the self-contained world of the army. All the chapters include a simultaneous discussion of manhood and discipline/military justice; the last two chapters differ somewhat in tone from the rest and particularly focus on an extended analysis of discipline and military leadership in the Union Army. A quick summary of the basic structure of the army, military discipline, and military justice is therefore necessary to provide the background for readers to understand the chapters that follow. The Union Army during the Civil War was a citizen army, built around a very small cadre of regular (professional) soldiers and a very large group of volunteers. It was sustained later in the war with volunteers who reenlisted and with conscripts and substitutes (men who were paid to serve in the place of a man who had been drafted). The bulk of the substitutes and conscripts were immigrants and men from the north’s lowest socioeconomic classes; volunteers generally viewed these men as quite different from themselves.15 But volunteers and conscripts did share a lack of military experience. Since the American Revolution, Americans had struggled to reconcile the authoritarian and hierarchical nature of an army with the republican foundational principles of their Union. In each of its previous wars, the United States had relied heavily on volunteers, who refused for the most part to adopt the discipline of the regular army. In 1861, the United States fielded the largest army in its history and faced the monumental task of transforming over two million citizens into soldiers. This process was complicated by how the Union chose to raise, train, and equip its regiments. Previous historians have amply demonstrated how the Union’s state-centered efforts created a myriad of problems for the army. States raised the regiments and commissioned the officers who were mustered into the federal service. State and local politics dominated the process of selecting officers to staff regiments, either because companies of recruits from the same area elected their officers or because governors made many of the appointments. Although governors appointed some qualified men, other commands went to grossly incompetent officers who received their position through political influence or the need to appease a certain constituency. The short term of initial enlistments (only three months) and the political nature of the inexperienced volunteer officers in state regiments combined to create

Introduction  |  9

a notable lack of training and discipline among Union regiments in the first few months of the war. After the fall of 1861, the picture changed mainly as a result of lessons learned at the disastrous First Bull Run. The federal government called for two- and three-year volunteers. The fall and winter of 1861–1862 provided an opportunity for officers and regiments to receive extensive training once their units were assigned to a brigade in the federal army. Army commanders implemented orders that began the process of disciplining recruits and weeding out incompetent volunteer officers through officers’ schools and exams.16 It mattered whether regimental officers were competent and well trained because throughout the war, the regiment remained the basic unit of command, organization, and administration for the Union Army. Soldiers were loyal to their company and regiment, which were small communities of men usually from the same geographic areas, and often with the same cultural and economic background. Some regiments, especially those recruited in major cities, contained companies of men from more divergent social and economic classes than were represented in other companies in the regiment. The bonds of unity and the forces of conflict from civilian life were transferred directly into the volunteer regiments. Federal armies experienced frequent reorganization and changes of command at the brigade, division, and army level, a factor that tended to reinforce the regimental orientation of the Union Army, which did not have enough competent brigadier generals to go around. Training, drill, and discipline remained for the most part in the hands of regimental officers. For this reason, the quality of training and discipline varied widely across the regiments composing the Union Army.17 Military discipline was a shock to many Union soldiers, most of whom had no prior military service. Civilians were nourished on ideals of independence and equality; military discipline required unquestioned obedience to the commands of officers who were to be treated as superiors. The most individualistic society on earth now demanded that its free men submit to the control of others and subsume themselves into units that acted with the efficiency and precision of a machine. The army provided a remedy for those who were not disciplined and for those who violated the rules under which the military was governed. Every volunteer and conscript experienced the army’s system of discipline simply by being present. Although there are holes in the record, it is reasonable to estimate that approximately 75,000–100,000 men were subject to military justice during the war. Discipline and justice operated on several planes in 10  |  Introduction

the Union Army: on a personal level between regimental officers and the men they commanded, and through various levels of courts-martial. Officers in a regiment, from lieutenants to the colonel, could punish infractions of military discipline on the spot. Custom sanctioned this use of an officer’s authority. The decisions to inflict summary punishment rather than prefer formal charges, as well as the extent of the punishment imposed, were entirely in the hands of individual officers.18 An officer could assign a soldier extra duty, confine him to the guardhouse, or choose from a host of other punishments, most of which imposed either physical chastisement or shame on the offender. Officers in the Civil War ordered men to stand at attention on a barrel, hung men from trees by the thumbs, and tied soldiers in uncomfortable positions with gags in their mouths. John D. Billings, who served in the Army of the Potomac, recalled that the methods of punishment in his army were as “diverse as the dispositions of the officers.”19 Military justice officially began when officers formally charged offenders and brought them before courts-martial. According to the Articles of War, the commanding officer of a regiment or garrison could appoint three commissioned officers (those with the rank of 2nd lieutenant or above) to try cases and sentence those found guilty. A regimental court-martial had its limits: it could not try commissioned officers or capital cases. Its officers could not impose a fine that exceeded one month’s pay or sentence an offender to more than one month’s hard labor or imprisonment. The commanding officer of a regiment had to approve the proceedings, findings, and sentence of regimental courts-martial and had the power to pardon or mitigate any punishment.20 Probably tens of thousands of soldiers experienced military justice at the regimental level. The results of regimental courts-martial were published in regimental order books, but the records, unlike those of the general courts-martial, provide very little information about the offense of the soldier or the proceedings of the trial. Generally regiments only listed the charge (without specifications), the plea, the finding of the court, and the sentence. A survey of regimental order books conducted for this study demonstrates anecdotally that nearly all the accused at this level of trial pled guilty. The vast majority of those who did not plead guilty were found guilty. Regiments generally held the trial within a few days of the incident and tried several men before the same court. The officers presiding over the court usually inflicted similar punishments on all the men tried, regardless of the offense. The officers of the 23rd Ohio, for example, sentenced nearly every man to hard labor. Officers in regimental courts-martial distinguished between the severity of the offense

Introduction  |  11

through differences in the duration or amount of punishment. In the 33rd Wisconsin, a man who missed roll call was fined one dollar, a man who was absent for a day paid four dollars, and a private who was missing for thirteen days forfeited one month’s pay and spent three days confined to his barracks with a ball and chain. Men from different regiments experienced widely differing punishments for similar offenses. Soldiers in the 33rd Wisconsin were fined for being absent without leave; men who did the same thing in the 23rd Ohio performed days of hard labor.21 Regimental courts-martial could try a wide range of offenses. According to the 99th Article of War, “all crimes not capital,” “all disorders and neglects,” anything, in short, that fell under the catchall phrase “to the prejudice of good order and military discipline” could be tried by either a regimental or general courts-martial, “according to the nature and degree of the offence.” Officers had a wide degree of latitude in deciding what behavior fell under this category and where it merited trial. An officer’s conclusion had serious consequences, since regimental courts-martial were limited in the punishments they could inflict, but general courts-martial were not limited. Other Articles of War gave officers some discretion in choosing where to prefer charges. The 6th Article of War, for example, stated that any soldier who behaved with “contempt or disrespect” toward a commanding officer should be punished “by the judgment of a court-martial.” Since this article did not specify that disrespect was a capital crime, officers frequently used regimental courtsmartial to try such cases.22 Very early into the conflict, the exigencies of civil war made the use of regimental courts-martial problematic for units that experienced heavy attrition of officers. It was difficult to find enough officers to serve on courtmartial without placing an undue burden on the regiment. To remedy this problem, Congress in July 1862 established field officer courts. Under the provisions of the congressional act, a regimental commander could designate a field officer to hear and determine all charges against enlisted men. Scholars who study discipline and military justice have all but ignored this type of court. Joseph Fitzharris examined field officer courts in his study of the 3rd Minnesota, but suggested that since other historians do not mention them, much of the army must not have followed the 1862 act.23 While units continued to use regimental courts-martial after 1862, I have found that implementation of field officer courts was in fact widespread in the Union Army and was enforced through orders descending from the War Department and issued through brigade and division headquarters. Inspectors in the Army of the Potomac investigated compliance and reported that 12  |  Introduction

field officer courts were established in every regiment in accordance with the orders of the War Department.24 Justice under field officer courts was similar to that of the regimental courts-martial. The field officer tried several cases in one sitting, usually within a few days of the alleged incidents, and dispensed the same category of punishments to all offenders. Nearly all the accused pled guilty. Soldiers were not completely at the mercy of the field officer trying their cases. Regimental records of field officer courts indicate that commanding officers and brigade commanders reviewed the findings and sentences of field officer courts. Occasionally they reduced or remitted the sentences.25 It is impossible to estimate the number of regimental and field officer courts held during the war. General courts-martial, bodies appointed by the president or the commander of an army or military division, tried over 75,961 cases. A general court-martial consisted of thirteen commissioned officers, unless that number could not be assembled without “manifest injury to the service.” Under the circumstances of the Civil War, many courts had fewer than thirteen members, but no court could have fewer than five. Usually the officers constituting the court represented several different regiments from the same brigade. Often members of a court tried men from their own regiments; sometimes no members came from the same regiment as the accused. Thousands of volunteer officers, many of whom had no legal experience before the war, were members of general courts-martial. A ubiquitous part of a volunteer officer’s Civil War experience was dispensing military justice.26 General courts-martial had jurisdiction over any category of offense: violations of specific Articles of War and any case that fell under the 99th Article of War’s catchall provision for conduct “to the prejudice of good order and military discipline.” Only general courts-martial could try commissioned officers and capital cases. These courts could impose a wide variety of punishments, although the Articles of War prescribed punishments for some offenses. Only a majority was needed to convict in cases that were not capital, which meant that court members who had voted to acquit a defendant voted on the type and extent of punishment the court assigned. In capital cases, two-thirds of the officers had to concur in order to impose the death penalty. The general officer who appointed the court reviewed all proceedings before any sentence was carried out. Any sentence that involved the dismissal of a general officer had to be sent to the president via the secretary of war for confirmation or disapproval. In times of war, the death penalty could be executed without confirmation from the president, and this was done during the

Introduction  |  13

Civil War. In January 1864, however, Lincoln issued orders that suspended execution in all capital cases because he wanted to review the proceedings before the sentence was carried out.27 Officers who sent men before general courts-martial wrote the charges and specifications on which the accused was tried. Henry Coppée, one contemporary expert on courts-martial, explained that the charge “should be a general statement of the crime or offense against the articles of war,” and the specification “points out in detail the act committed.” The sample he provided exemplifies the general form that was used consistently throughout the Union Army during the Civil War: Charge 1st: Disobedience of Orders Specification: In this, that he, private ———, of company A, 1st artillery, being ordered by his commanding officer, Lieutenant ———, of the 1st artillery, to proceed to the guard-house, and report himself to the sergeant of the guard, did fail to obey said order. This at Fort Columbus, New York harbor, on or about the 11th day of December, 1861.

Officers in the Union Army, most of whom had no legal training in civilian life, had to write specifications that succinctly and accurately described the criminal actions of the accused and had to place the specifications under the appropriate charge. The decisions officers made when they specified and classified the crime were vital to the subsequent trial. The evidence had to prove the specifications, and the specifications had to support the charge. An appointed judge advocate served as the prosecutor during the court-martial, but he had not written the charges.28 The most important single figure in the proceedings of a general courtmartial was the judge advocate. This was an officer appointed in the order convening the court to prosecute in the name of the United States. As writers on military law pointed out with disgust, there were few regulations in the legislation establishing military justice that touched on the position of judge advocate. Most judge advocates in the Civil War had no previous military experience, although some of them probably had legal experience in civilian life. The judge advocate advised the court in matters of form and law and was charged to protect the rights of the prisoner. Although he was the prosecutor, military law and custom required the judge advocate to identify himself with the interest of the prisoner to a certain extent, regardless of whether the prisoner had counsel. The 69th Article of War specifically instructed the judge 14  |  Introduction

advocate to “so far consider himself as counsel for the prisoner, after the said prisoner has made his plea, as to object to any leading question to any of the witnesses, or any question to the prisoner, the answer to which might tend to incriminate himself.”29 When the courts closed for deliberation of the verdict, the judge advocate remained present to advise the court on legal points if they asked for his opinion. He was not permitted to urge a verdict of guilty or to present any argument to the court. This feature of military justice was in some measure a necessity; officers who served as members of the court were supposed to have studied the laws and practices of courts-martial, but in reality many officers did not have the time or the ability to become experts in military justice. Most courts needed the sound advice of a competent legal adviser. But this necessity gave the prosecution an unfair advantage if the judge advocate was not an impartial man.30 The Articles of War and army regulations provided some protection of the rights of the accused who were brought before general courts-martial. They received a copy of the charges against them before the trial, could secure counsel, challenge members of the court (as could the prosecution), question witnesses, and call defense witnesses. The accused could object to questions posed by the judge advocate, although only another court member could object to a question posed by the court. The prisoner also had the right to address the court with a summary of his defense and to impeach with evidence the character of the witnesses brought against him.31 Some protection was afforded the accused through the power of reviewing authorities to overturn the findings and sentence of general courts-martial where courts violated procedures or made errors in law. Through this procedure, the army bureaucracy tried to ensure that justice was done in cases where the original court had erred. In the courts-martial records examined for this study, reviewing generals regularly overturned convictions because they believed that the evidence had not sustained the charge. In many instances soldiers were returned to duty because of minor technicalities.32 Military justice was a pervasive feature of the Civil War experience for Union volunteers—the majority of commissioned officers likely served on a regimental or general court-martial and enlisted men from nearly every regiment in the army were tried for military crimes.33 Discipline was a daily part of army life for all officers and soldiers. The rest of this book reveals how the contested terms of manhood affected the discipline of men at the regimental level and the implementation of all levels of military justice. At times

Introduction  |  15

men in the Union Army were self-conscious; some officers openly advocated different treatment for the men they labeled “roughs” and framed their arguments around the inferior manhood of such men. Everyone knew that ideals of manhood were at stake when officers were tried in general courts-martial under charges that they had behaved in ways unbecoming a gentleman. At other times the officers and soldiers of the Union Army seemed unaware that the actions they took reflected deeply held beliefs about what constituted manly behavior. Through their experience of discipline and military justice, however, northern men from all ranks of life became more aware of the differences between them.

16  |  Introduction

“A Good Moral Regiment”

1

Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman

John Hartwell was by no means a rich man when he enlisted as a private in Company C of the 121st New York Volunteers. It would be a stretch to label him as middle class. He was a thirty-three-year-old carpenter who lived on a small subsistence farm outside the town of Herkimer, New York. He served most of the war as a corporal and never attained the rank of a commissioned officer. Despite his rather lowly status in civilian life and in the army, Hartwell conceived of himself as a gentleman. He strove to attain gentlemanly attributes and judged other men by that standard as well. One aspect of gentlemanly character in Hartwell’s view was to do his duty in the war despite his own personal sufferings and his fluctuating feelings about the army in which he fought. Like many soldiers, Hartwell was disillusioned by the experience of war and the physical hardships he had to endure. He wrote his wife that the men were taken no better care of than old horses “who are let loose by a short rope to shift & take care of ourselves.” The marches, the sleeping in mud, the constant pain in his eyes from campfire smoke and in his feet from the repetitive drills led Hartwell to believe he had “done wrong” to enlist. He hated some of his duties as corporal. He was deeply shaken when he had to tie a man by his thumbs to a tree for the offense of appearing on guard without his boots blacked. Grant’s style of fighting in Virginia dispirited Hartwell. He wrote his wife that he had “seen enough of this butchery” and meditated that men had become “cattle driven up to be slaughtered at will.”1 Despite all this, Hartwell displayed the will and stability of character that he thought should earn the respect of other men, an ideal he termed an “honorable name.” During exhausting and debilitating marches in the summer of 1864, Hartwell reported that “hundreds are unable to reach Camp for lack of strength & perseverance but I came in & stacked arm although nearly discouraged. Pride only kept me in the ranks.” Many men had urged him to

|  17

join them in deserting. “I would not entertain such a thought no more than I would a viper in my bosom & so I escaped from disgrace & persuaded many others to do the same.” Hartwell refused to even acknowledge the manhood of those who would not do their duty. When his company had to cut and haul small logs during a raging rainstorm, he was disgusted that “many of the men sneak off like little boys to avoid helping their more manly comrads.”2 At the core of Hartwell’s conception of the honorable gentleman was strict moral rectitude. He catalogued for his wife, Calista, the worst “evils” he observed in the behavior of the men around him in the army—intoxication, profanity, licentiousness, and gambling—and his studious avoidance of each. Sexual immorality was the worst, according to Hartwell, for men who engaged in such behavior had “cast aside all honor” and were “like a beast.” Hartwell believed that character was the ultimate test of manhood. “By their voracious ways our soldiers are many of them ruining themselves for future usefulness for a lack of a little will or stability of character at the right time,” he concluded. “A man can make himself happy & useful, he can command the respect of all by his demeanor before his comrades. He can choose between evil & good. He can make himself a failure or a gentleman.”3 Hartwell’s marriage was integral to his definition of manhood and to his motivation to maintain moral behavior at all times. He loved his wife passionately and through her experienced the tenderness that counterpoised the sterner side of his manhood. Hartwell spent sentimental evenings by his campfire recalling the comforts of home and envisioning the caresses of his Calista. He believed these memories, though they could not shield him from the barbarity of war, would protect him from becoming a barbarian himself. The love of his wife would inspire him to maintain his character during the trials of war and camp life. Though other men chased women, drank, gambled, and quarreled, he assured Calista that “all of these I have ever shunned & shall ever do the same or be unworthy of your love.”4 Hartwell epitomized many northern men’s conception of manhood. Historian Reid Mitchell uses such men in his portrayal of the northern soldiers who centered their identities within the domestic family circle, a place where virtuous mothers raised virtuous, self-controlled, and hard-working men. Gender historian Amy Greenberg would place Hartwell under the rubric of “restrained men” for whom moral character and domestic values were central to their understanding of what it meant to be manly.5 Northern men combined moral character with other attributes in a variety of ways. As later chapters will demonstrate, some men who valued moral character sought 18  |  Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman

gentility and refinement while others rejected those qualities. Hartwell did not seem concerned with proving his physical prowess; Samuel Cormany, a Pennsylvania cavalry officer whose ambition was to achieve “exemplary Christian manhood,” valued athleticism and boxed a man in his regiment who challenged him.6 What unifies men such as Hartwell and Cormany around the core value of moral character was not only its central place in their self-conceptions but their expectation that other men acquire this aspect of manliness. Their assessment of another man depended on their assessment of his character. The war made morality as a defining element of manhood even more urgent to them. The success of the Union cause, they believed, depended on the superior morality and character of its citizens. Such an attitude was deeply embedded in the consciousness of nineteenth-century Americans, who had been nourished on ideals inherited from the founding generation. The founders of the republic linked the nation’s success to the virtues of its male citizens and warned that the republic would fail if its men succumbed to corruption and vice. Virtue in the eighteenth century meant civic-mindedness and a willingness to set aside selfish interest for the common good. Over the course of time, Americans had developed subtle variations in the definition of republican virtue, but they continued to make a connection between manhood and the survival of the nation. As historian Earl J. Hess has discussed in his study of the home front during the war, many northerners had expected the rank-and-file members of the army to “exemplify morality.” These soldiers should reflect “the republican institutions” that bred a “solid foundation of character” in its citizens. Although northerners recognized that a soldier’s life tested a man’s moral qualities, they believed their citizen-soldiers would remain uncorrupted. Indeed, the volunteers would purify the small standing army of the republic. “Strive to join a regiment or company that rejects hard cases and men of vicious habits,” advised Orville J. Victor, the author of a well-known handbook for enlisted men. “A soldier’s life is embraced by the vicious man from an inclination to indulge his vicious propensities, and it should be the volunteer’s aim to elevate the service.”7 The reality of army life suggested that many men were not purified by the experience. Soldiers often commented on the men who failed the test of moral manhood. “We have many good men and this is the place to find them out for those that are men, it seems to divest them of all else but their manliness and those that are not seems to loose all the principle they had,” Taylor Pierce, a forty-year-old commercial laborer in the 22nd Iowa, wrote

Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman  |  19

his family in 1862.8 Those who valued moral character were shocked to discover in the army a group of men in northern society who were, or became, completely degraded and demoralized. Morality and manhood were intricately linked for evangelical Christians especially, who sought to convert and redeem the army. In the years before the Civil War, most areas in the north had experienced a series of religious revivals that converted millions of Americans to evangelical Protestantism. These Christians were convinced that every individual was an agent in his or her own salvation and sanctification. Once a person chose to accept Christ, they could throw sin aside and work toward moral perfection. The revivals also challenged northerners to seek a social redemption that would bring the kingdom of God to earth. Workers for the faith sought to cure the sins that pervaded the world, especially alcohol abuse.9 Christian soldiers sought to redeem the unconverted men in the army. Many Christians reached out in love to the individuals around them and had no other motive but to win souls for Christ. One young drummer boy in the 143rd New York accepted Christ at a Christian Commission revival meeting in 1863. He began praying for one of his friends in the regiment, who then experienced conversion. The two then united their prayers for another, who also came to Christ. Over time, the group expanded to ten men.10 Samuel Cormany kept a detailed diary that recorded his spiritual state and his quest to attain his ideal of the “Man-Soldier-Christian.” Cormany and likeminded friends formed the “Christian Association of the 16th Pa Cavalry,” whose object was Christian fellowship and development. The desire to be an effective witness to men around him infused Cormany’s constant labors to achieve spiritual growth and true manhood. He sought to be the “ideal of a Man, a real noble image of the handiwork of God, an example for other men to follow, to imitate, a man who can always easily say no to the appearance of Evil.”11 Moral character was foremost among the contested terms of manhood because those who embraced it determined to reform those who did not. The men in the Union Army who linked moral character to manhood sought to stamp out immorality in the army and to create moral regiments. Prewar revivals in the north, unlike those in the south, encouraged converts to seek both personal salvation and social redemption; likewise many Christian volunteers in the army wanted cleansed regiments, not just cleansed individuals. Proponents of morality often had army regulations on their side; these northern volunteers would claim that moral character was necessary to produce a well-disciplined army that could carry the Union to victory. 20  |  Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman

Officers used their positions of leadership to encourage spirituality and to stamp out sin. This was most obvious in efforts to enforce observance of the Sabbath. On the home front, every Sunday followed a familiar pattern. It was a day of quiet and rest, where a man wore his best clothes and avoided activities like cardplaying that might be tolerated on other days. The necessities of army life often disrupted this pattern, but army regulations and the Lincoln administration encouraged soldiers to continue these practices. The Articles of War “earnestly recommended” that all officers and soldiers attend divine service and imposed reprimands and penalties on officers and soldiers who behaved indecently or irreverently there. Lincoln issued an order that enjoined “the orderly observance of the Sabbath” and permitted labor only in case of “strict necessity.” This order was continually reaffirmed by army commanders.12 Regiments imposed varied expectations on enlisted men regarding worship and the Sabbath. In some units officers complied with army regulations and merely encouraged enlisted men to attend services. The commander of the 143rd New York, for example, issued a general order conceding that worship was not compulsory. He reminded his men, however, that they were dependent on God for every want and that the army had made worship a voluntary act in order that “each should receive the credit for its observance.” He concluded his order in the hope that “full attendance on all occasions of Divine Worship will be the happy result.” Other officers exceeded army regulations and forced men to attend services. On Sundays officers of the 23rd Ohio formed the men by companies on the regimental parade ground and marched them to services under direction of the officer of the day. The 17th Maine required each company to provide at least fifty men in full dress uniform to worship each Sunday. The regiment also strictly enforced the Sabbath rest in standing orders: “Manly sports will be encouraged at all proper times, but any disorder in the evening, or upon the Sabbath, will be severely punished.”13 Some officers offered incentives for the men to choose divine services. In the 20th Massachusetts, attendance at worship began to dwindle after the colonel made it clear that attendance was voluntary. One Sunday, three men from Lt. Henry Livermore Abbott’s company did not fall in for service. Abbott could not do anything directly after his colonel’s order, so he made the men carry water for the duration of the service and for two hours afterward. After that, he proudly reported, “no one from my company has availed himself of the col.’s permission to stay away from religious services.” Under the leadership of a different colonel than the one who merely encouraged his

Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman  |  21

men to worship, general orders in the 143rd New York required all officers and enlisted men to attend either worship or a reading of the Articles of War and army regulations. The commander of the 110th New York confined all men to quarters who were not present at worship.14 Pious officers could enforce the Sabbath, but it was more difficult for them to rid the camps of gambling, profanity, alcohol, and sexual immorality. Some men in the Union Army disputed the standards of morality set by evangelical Christians or reformers. They resisted any attempt to save their souls, mold their characters, or discipline them beyond what they perceived as necessary for good fighting. With so many men practicing so much vice so openly, soldiers who valued character often felt that they inhabited a different moral world than their fellow men-at-arms. Charles Musser, a farm boy in the 29th Iowa, felt “lonesome wherever I go, in a crowd or anywhere.” He wouldn’t associate with some of the men in his regiment whose “only pastime is drinking and gaming.” Musser found solace in his visits to the reading rooms of the Sanitary Commission. Wisconsin teacher James Newton asked his mother to pray that God would keep him from the temptations surrounding him. He was in a place where “all kinds of iniquity are openly practiced without being reproved by anyone.”15 The temperate and chaste sometimes simply avoided the vice in their regiments; in other cases they sought to stamp out the evils around them. They could face strong resistance. In some regiments, such as the 11th New Jersey, the 58th Indiana, and the 154th New York, open warfare erupted between the advocates of moral character and the men who rejected this aspect of manhood. The colonel of the 11th New Jersey, Robert McAllister, purposely waged war on sin. The prevalence of profanity, drunkenness, and impiety in the Union Army deeply disturbed this Presbyterian railroad contractor. He invited the Christian Commission to preach to his regiment and to distribute tracts to every enlisted man. He held nightly prayer meetings and organized a temperance society that eventually claimed half of the regiment as members. A visitor to the Eleventh’s camp commented that McAllister used every means at his disposal to “persuade his men to be habitually and thoroughly sober.”16 A large component of men in the regiment inverted the moral and selfimprovement associations of McAllister and his followers. A group of line officers and enlisted men formed an anti-temperance society, “pledging themselves to destroy (by drinking) all the liquor they could get.” They created badges for their order and wore them on their uniforms; one was a grain of corn that represented commissary whiskey. The line officers McAllister 22  |  Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman

termed “lovers of pleasure” formed a society, the “Independent Order of Trumps,” which deliberately mocked the ideals of moral manhood; a similar society existed in the 58th Indiana. The order’s humorous constitution specified that its members “resolved to acquit ourselves like men, and other things.” It excluded from membership “those of loose moral character,” such as “Chaplains” and “Colonels.” The bylaws required members to act with decorum at all times, noting that “drinking, eating, smoking and chewing will be considered decorum.” The Trumps’ drink-all tested the ardent spirits; its judge advocate “cussed in members”; its door-tender knocked down and dragged out all unruly members.17 Through its sarcastic references to manly resolutions, moral character, and decorum, and its celebration of intoxication, profanity, and disorder, this constitution represented a determination to undermine the “moral regiment” McAllister sought to create. Open confrontations between the moral reformers and those who resisted them marred the unity of Civil War regiments and brigades. When religious members of the 154th New York met for prayer meetings in a large wall tent, their irreligious comrades on one occasion sprayed them with mule urine and on another set off explosions to break up the meeting. Colonel McAllister and some members of the 11th New Jersey joined a group of regimental chaplains to oppose the use of the brigade chapel as a dance hall. When their efforts failed, one night the ecstatic dancers tore down the Christian Commission flag flying from the chapel and replaced it with one of their own. Further protests effectively prevented the chapel from being used for such purposes again, so men from several regiments banded together and built a brigade dance hall that became the scene of numerous dances and shows. One Sunday morning, McAllister heard loud cheering from the men who were leaving church. As he exited the chapel, he saw that the great dance hall was on fire. To his great satisfaction, someone had torched the building.18 Officers such as McAllister who sought to suppress vice in the army were supported for the most part by army regulations. The army prohibited gambling as a practice that demoralized soldiers and undermined discipline and good order. Many of the regiments studied for this project were zealous in their attempts to enforce these regulations. Regimental order books are replete with orders prohibiting gambling and instructing company officers to arrest offenders. Usually regiments would confiscate the stakes and apply them to the general or hospital fund of the regiment. The commander of the 23rd Ohio, Col. E. P. Scammon, issued orders that forbade gaming and commanded all officers to put a stop to the practice. Playing cards and dice, Scammon commented, “begets a degree of vice and dishonesty destructive

Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman  |  23

of all discipline. It makes men bad, and bad men cannot be good soldiers.” Scammon encouraged the soldiers of the Twenty-third to engage in athletic sports, “calculated to promote their health and efficiency.” A regimental court-martial in the 4th Ohio reduced to the ranks a sergeant who played cards for money and fined him thirteen dollars.19 More rarely, some regiments attempted to curb sexual immorality. Officers of the 56th Massachusetts made frequent and thorough searches of the men’s quarters for obscene books and pictures. Any found were destroyed and the owners punished in regimental courts-martial. The 17th Maine punished soldiers caught singing obscene songs. Col. Cleveland Winslow of the 5th New York could not stop his men from visiting brothels, but he made sure they did not escape the consequences of their actions. When an increasing number of men in the regiment were unable to perform duty in 1864 because they had contracted syphilis, Winslow ordered company commanders to ensure that “this class of delinquents” made good the time lost to the “loathsome disease.” Because officers in the U.S. Colored Troops were held to higher moral as well as professional standards than their counterparts in the white volunteers, authorities brought charges for “conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman” against officers in those units who contracted a venereal disease.20 A host of organizations aided officers who valued moral character in their quest to convert the army and root out immorality. Northern society would not let pious officers and soldiers fight the battle alone. The Christian Commission was an ever-present representation of Christianity to the men of the Union Army. A product of the YMCA, the organization’s goal was to “bring soldiers to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” and “to develop, organize and make effective the religious element in the army and navy.” The Christian Commission sent delegates, all of whom were orthodox Protestants, to each army corps. Over 4,859 served in the field. These agents sought to introduce soldiers to Christ by ministering to their physical and emotional needs. As chair George Stuart put it, “When we met a wounded, dying soldier we first healed his wounds as far as we could, bound them up, put a clean shirt on him, gave him some nourishing drink, tried to soothe him, and then you found your way to the soldier’s heart. Then you could speak to him of Jesus.” Soldiers in many regiments took up collections and donated money to the commission. The men of Company E in the 82nd Pennsylvania formed a society “to aid the labors of the Christian Commission.”21 Regimental chaplains served as another institutional support for the proponents of morality. When Congress organized the volunteer army, it pro24  |  Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman

vided the methods for each regiment to select a chaplain. The vote of the field officers and company commanders would be respected as long as the chaplain was an ordained minister in a Christian denomination (Congress changed this in July 1862 to “religious denomination”). During the war, 2,300 ministers, priests, and rabbis served the volunteer regiments in a variety of ways. They conducted religious services, held daily prayer meetings and Bible studies, visited sick soldiers, administered regimental loan libraries, and attended to dying men. Overt cooperation between officers and chaplains existed in many places within the Union Army. Officers in the 121st New York under the leadership of Col. Emory Upton agreed to set an example for the men to assist chaplain John R. Adams in his efforts to promote morality: they abstained from alcohol and agreed not to swear at the men.22 Soldiers often created their own organizations to promote moral behavior. Some were offshoots of national bodies, some were formed at the behest of regimental chaplains, but others were not. The most common of all types were temperance societies where soldiers cooperated with reformers who continued the great temperance campaigns of the antebellum era. Chaplain Arthur B. Fuller, the brother of famed transcendentalist Margaret Fuller, formed a Division of the Sons of Temperance in the 16th Massachusetts and initiated over one hundred officers and soldiers. The organization sought general moral uplift through literary activities such as recitations, debates, and essay contests. Chaplains in the Irish Brigade formed a temperance society with over seven hundred members. The organization administered the “Pledge,” provided members with medals and sponsored a lecture series. After the officers of Robert McAllister’s 11th New Jersey founded a temperance group, the enlisted men of the 11th Massachusetts and the 26th Pennsylvania met to form one of their own.23 The conflict over temperance and alcohol was part of the larger conflict over the proper attributes of manliness and must be placed in that context. For many of the men in the Union Army, abstinence was an integral attribute of ideal manhood. Men who drank were not just immoral; they were unmanly. The officer who exemplifies this attitude and who found himself embroiled in controversy with his brother officers over their vices was Rufus Kinsley, a staunch and radical abolitionist who had worked for two temperance newspapers in Boston before the war. He enlisted in November 1861 and mustered into the 8th Vermont Volunteers. Eventually, Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks issued Kinsley a commission he did not apply for, that of 2nd lieutenant in the 2nd Louisiana Native Guards, an African American regiment that was re-designated the 74th U.S. Infantry (Colored) in 1864.24

Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman  |  25

Kinsley and the officers he encountered on Ship Island, Mississippi, which the Second garrisoned, immediately went to war over morality. The exceptions were Capt. James Noyes, a staunch teetotaler and pious Wesleyan Methodist; and an old friend from the 8th Vermont, 1st Lt. Charles Cephas Colton. According to Kinsley, Colton was “one of the very few men who will not be likely to forget his manhood, or his mother, and engage in drunken broils with the majority of officers, simply because that sort is a majority.” The commanding officers of the Second were a notoriously immoral lot; every one of them eventually faced courts-martial for improper conduct. Col. William Grosvenor was dismissed for keeping a “steamboat,” slang for prostitute, in his quarters. The peer pressure to drink with other officers was overwhelming. “Many men who never drank at home, and who had no difficulty in resisting the temptation while ­in the ranks­of the army, no sooner pocket their commissions, than they become drunken, because it will not do to reproach other officers by refusing to drink with them,” was Kinsley’s perspective.25 Kinsley and Noyes did what they could to promote temperance in the regiment in the face of opposition from what Kinsley called the “gang of rumsucking officers.” On Christmas Day, 1863, officers were allowed to draw whiskey from the commissary for the men in their companies. Kinsley drew his company’s whiskey, stood on the barrel, and delivered a temperance lecture. After his performance, few of the men drank, and Kinsley gleefully poured most of the rations in the sand. When Noyes found his younger brother, a 2nd lieutenant in the regiment, “dead drunk,” he broke every bottle in a “case of choice wine,” and then faced down the owners, who threatened to press charges. The intemperate officers in the regiment at various times physically threatened Kinsley, filed formal complaints against him, and openly declared their purpose to “shove [him] out of the Regiment.”26 The inflamed rhetoric throughout Kinsley’s diary revealed how much he believed was at stake in his battle against the officers in his regiment who had “forgotten their manhood.” Spiritual concerns and ideals of manliness did not motivate all Union officers and soldiers who sought to create a temperate army. Many of these men believed their values coincided with the professional requirements of military service. The Scientific American echoed this belief in a widely reprinted article. “It is not bulldog courage in soldiers which makes them efficient in war, but moral courage, intelligence, and bodily capacity,” claimed the author. “Good behavior is the first essential quality of soldiers, and unless they are temperate they will not be well behaved. Dissipated men are never reliable, and they cannot endure the fatigue like sober men  .  .  . Intemperance is the polluted fountain of demoralization in most armies.”27 26  |  Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman

Soldiers from regiments in both eastern and western armies reported that the Christian and temperance organizations were successful in converting soldiers and changing the moral tone of the army. By January 1865 Robert McAllister could proudly proclaim to his wife that he had not heard a profane word uttered in a month in the Eleventh’s camp and that the “moral tone” of the New Jersey regiment was “good.” Taylor Pierce of the 22nd Iowa reported to his wife in December 1864 that “whiskey is not of much account in this army for there is but few who use it any more. We have a good moral regiment now.” John Haley of the 17th Maine recorded in his diary that a “decidedly moral tone pervades” Company I, where not less than thirty men were pious. Joseph Ward of the 39th Illinois reformed his way of living in August 1864. He promised to “read more, think more  .  .  . and I am going to waste less time in card playing, swearing for I have indulged sometimes, many other things.”28 Scholars who have studied religion in the Union Army agree with the observation of these soldiers. David Raney believes that the Christian Commission’s massive loan library project, which circulated Christian material throughout the army, made an evangelical impact on the soldiers. Historian Steven Woodworth, in his comprehensive study of religion and Civil War soldiers, found that a series of revivals in 1862 and 1863 greatly affected the Union Army as a whole. The behavior of many soldiers changed, entire regiments were transformed, and the moral condition of the army permanently improved.29 But positive assessments of the moral state of the Union Army must take into account the distinction volunteers made between themselves and the conscripts. Volunteers often made seemingly inclusive pronouncements about the honorable or moral manhood of the soldiers in their regiments and then betrayed in later comments that conscripts had been excluded from their observations because they did not consider such men to be their comrades. Volunteers, especially those who had enlisted in 1862, believed that the conscripts and substitutes who flooded the army after 1863 were mostly men of immoral character who threatened the success of the Union cause. The conscripts were men from the north’s lowest socioeconomic classes, and their low social status meshed with negative assessments of their manhood. Many of the conscripts were “roughs” who participated in a culture of male camaraderie centered on drink and violent assertions of honor. As later chapters will discuss, conscripts would be targeted after 1863 in regimental orders regarding drinking, gambling, and fighting. Even as observers praised the positive transformation of the army, regiments cracked down on the con

Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman  |  27

scripts who were perceived to be an undesirable and distinct element. Chaplains, regimental societies, and revivals improved the morals of the army, but so did intensive efforts to discipline the lower-class conscripts whose manhood, as we shall see, was consistently denigrated. Army regulations reinforced expectations of moral behavior and provided a mechanism for punishing officers and privates—whether they were volunteers or conscripts—whose manly ideals did not include strict moral rectitude. 2,206 officers in the Union Army faced a general court-martial under the charge “Conduct Unbecoming an Officer and a Gentleman.” The cases involved covered an array of offenses, many of them deadly serious, including murder and robbery, but often the charge was used to punish officers for immoral behavior. In the vast majority of cases, at least one of the specifications of this charge was the use of profane language. The trials of 5,223 privates in general courts-martial included specifications of profanity in the charges leveled against the soldier.30 Moral volunteers in the Union Army were disgusted with the prevalence of profanity among soldiers. They believed this type of language was immoral and that the ideal man avoided it. Charlie Brandegee, a seventeen-year-old private in the 5th New York, was more disturbed by the language used in the army than anything else. “I have not used any form of swearing since my arrival, although I have it on every side,” he said. “There are 100 men in this co. on an average each man uses 25 oaths a day 2500 oaths a day!” Brandegee joined with a few like-minded men to infuse the regiment with an alternative influence. “I have always protested against profane language and think there is less swearing in our tent than in any other,” he told his father. “Whenever anybody commences to swear the rest sing out ‘English language, English language in this tent.’ This has the effect of improving the conversation.” Daniel Holt, a surgeon in the 121st New York, believed that profanity fed other forms of vice. “It is like water spilt upon the ground; lost to all appearances, yet watering and vitalizing evil passions and ultimately developing a nature fraught with propensities to evil, as naturally as smoke curlingly ascends the zenith.”31 For officers who shared Holt’s view, army regulations provided a method for addressing the evil. The 3rd Article of War provided penalties and fines for soldiers and officers who used “any profane oath or execration.” A few regimental officers enforced this article. The commander of the 45th Wisconsin reduced two corporals to the ranks for using profane language. Charles Russell Lowell, who sought above all to exemplify gentlemanly virtues as commander of the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry, found that he had to stop the 28  |  Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman

foul practice in both himself and his men. “I to-day had to call attention in a general order to the prevalence of profanity in the command, and at the same time to add that perhaps I had not set them a good example in this respect,” he wrote his fiancée. “Of course I shall stop it in myself entirely; I shall enforce the Articles of War if necessary.”32 Men were punished for using foul language but the practice continued, of course. As we have seen, officers who attempted to establish a moral tone for the Union Army faced resistance from those who openly and unashamedly rejected ideals of purity and abstinence. The experience of the army revealed how many northerners had not been touched by the moral reforms of the antebellum era. This was evident in the widespread and open indulgence in drinking at all levels of the volunteer army, a problem that impinged directly on the implementation of military discipline. Alcohol use and abuse was not just an issue related to manhood; drinking created endemic disorder that hindered the army’s effectiveness. On one level, drinking in the army reflected the fact that a large segment of northern men did not believe that temperance was a necessary attribute of ideal manhood. Officers and soldiers had widely varying views about the morality of drinking and its relationship to the display of one’s manhood. Some men, discussed in a later chapter, defined their manhood through participation in a culture of boisterous male camaraderie centered on drinking and fighting. For other Union volunteers, drinking was simply an acceptable form of entertainment that accompanied leisure activities. John Haley of the 17th Maine enjoyed “making merry” while the men of his regiment diverted themselves with hurdle races and competitions to catch greased pigs. Many immigrant soldiers came from cultures where drinking was viewed differently than it was among Americans who had embraced temperance. In the ethnically German 9th Ohio, the men drilled from the Prussian Army manual and consumed copious quantities of beer. As one historian described the Ninth, “The regiment fought hard and played hard.”33 On another level, drinking in the army created a severe discipline problem when drunken officers neglected or mishandled their duties and when intoxicated soldiers disrupted their units and spread disorder. A major problem for the Union Army occurred when groups of soldiers indulged in periodic “sprees” of heavy drinking. Billy Davis, a grocery clerk in the 7th Indiana, recorded a simple incident in his diary that became ubiquitous in the letters and journals of Civil War soldiers: “Several of Co. H went to town. When they returned they was drunk.” Although some sprees occurred on no particular occasion, usually they capped a long period of inactivity and boredom.

Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman  |  29

Sprees were also common at the end of campaigns. After his men entered Petersburg, Charles Francis Adams Jr. reported to his father that there was “necessarily a great deal of drunkenness.” Maj. James Connolly witnessed the drunken behavior of Union soldiers after they entered Atlanta. “The soldiers fought for it and won it, let them enjoy it,” was his only comment.34 “Sprees” inevitably led to boisterous behavior and brawling. When the men of William Winters’ 67th Indiana received marching orders after a month of inactivity in December 1863, they stayed up all night drinking, “hooping and yelling.” “We got little sleep,” Winters said, “those few of us that had respect enough for ourselves and our family to keep sober.” John Haley recalled that some of the men after a spree “made the night hideous with their howling, ribald songs, and vulgar jokes.” Robert Knox Sneden rode south with a set of men who “sang and brawled into the night.” The situation was worse when he reached his regiment’s camp near Alexandria, Virginia. Soldiers returning from “sprees” in the city would fight with men from other regiments on the way back to camp. The guardhouse was usually full of such soldiers.35 Soldiers under the influence of alcohol frequently engaged in behavior that led to trial and severe punishment. Alcohol use and abuse plagued the Union Army and created serious discipline problems. Alcohol was involved in 18 percent of the incidents that came before general courts-martial; 3,133 men were charged with being drunk on duty in general courts-martial, and a conservative estimate is that thousands more were punished for this military crime at the regimental level. Observant officers believed that alcohol was at the root of most disciplinary issues in the army. John W. DeForest told his wife about a regimental court-martial that tried fifty men and found fortyfive of them guilty. Every single case of misbehavior “originated in whiskey.” Not a single man insulted an officer, refused an order, or was AWOL without first getting drunk.36 When officers “made merry” or indulged in “sprees,” the consequences could be serious. Whether these men had “forgotten their manhood,” to use Kinsley’s phrase, could become the subject of trial in general courts-martial. The 83rd Article of War stated that “any commissioned officer convicted before a general court-martial of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, shall be dismissed the service.” According to one expert on military law, the words “officer and a gentleman” in the article represented “one, single, and indivisible term.” Northern volunteers would come to recognize the significance of that fact. “Under the 83rd article of war the official character is merged into the social character of the gentleman,” the counsel for one Union officer commented during a court-martial. “The question is not—Is 30  |  Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman

the conduct unbecoming an officer?—but, is this conduct becoming, and consistent with, the character and position of a gentleman.”37 Army regulations thus required officers to maintain the character of a gentleman. As we have seen, many Union volunteers equated gentlemanly character with temperance and abstinence from profanity and sexual immorality. Ideals of manhood impinged on military justice when officers had to decide whether a man who violated these standards of manly behavior deserved the punishment of dishonorable dismissal. Common specifications under the charge that an officer had violated the 83rd Article of War were allegations of intoxication and profanity. It is important to be clear at this point that officers tried under this charge and specifications were not brought to trial because they had violated an ideal of manhood. They had committed a serious breach of military discipline and undermined the good order and proper functioning of the army. Once this charge was leveled, however, the officers sitting in judgment on the court were thrust into the position of considering and ultimately deciding on the characteristics that society required from a gentleman. It is possible that some men in the Union Army had not considered that question in civilian life or in the course of their regular duties as officers, but once they were a defendant or a member of the court, military law required them to overtly debate the standards of moral behavior expected from gentlemen. Civil War trials under this article often hinged on officers’ interpretation of one point: what was the character of a gentleman? The results from the cases used for this study indicate that most officers considered vices such as intoxication and profanity to be incompatible with gentlemanly behavior. Courts in this project’s sample usually declared that intoxicated officers who used profane language were not gentlemen and convicted them under the 83rd Article of War. There were several problematic legal issues surrounding this article and an officer’s moral behavior. Experts at the highest levels of the regular army had not achieved consensus regarding the 83rd Article of War when the Civil War began. “It may have had meaning in the British service, with its commonly accepted aristocratic values, but it was too vague to serve as a normative guide for a body of men as heterogeneous as the American officers corps,” one historian of the antebellum army has noted.38 The decisions of courts-martial in the regular army, the actions of reviewing authorities, and the advice of legal experts provided conflicting interpretations of the article. In the British service, the charge used the words “scandalous and infamous.” Americans incorporated the same words into the rules and articles for the army enacted in 1776 and 1786, but Congress dropped the phrase when it revised the regula

Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman  |  31

tions and Articles of War in 1806. The two most widely used treatises on military law reflected dissenting views about the application of the charge based on different interpretations of the revisions Congress had made.39 William C. DeHart, the former judge advocate general for the army, argued that the terms used in the British article, though discarded, were still implied and should serve as the standard for judgment in courts-martial. For an officer to be convicted, his conduct must “reflect disgrace” on the army. “This disgrace must not be such as the accidental or capricious judgment of different courts-martial might view it,” DeHart argued, “but be referable to the certain and expressed opinions or feelings of the community at large.” The standard of conduct applied to officers should be “the established and acknowledged morals of the Christian world.” Any moral breach an officer committed, DeHart warned, must involve scandal and infamy for it to fall under the cognizance of the article. An immoral act was not necessarily infamous, he claimed, and courts must distinguish between the two. An infamous act debased a man in the eyes of the entire community and excluded him from society. DeHart cautioned officers who held “high notions of personal and professional honor,” or who possessed “very refined and delicate” perceptions of the “proprieties and decorum” that should distinguish a gentleman, not to pronounce a verdict of guilty based on their own standards of conduct. Military law, he reiterated, covered only conduct that “impugns the character of an officer and a gentleman” and “at the same time casts upon the military community a shade of discredit and reproach.”40 According to DeHart’s analysis, then, intoxication and profanity alone would not be enough to convict an officer. S. V. Benét, a former assistant professor of law and ethics at West Point, took issue with DeHart’s commentary on the 83rd Article of War. Congress had dropped the phrase “scandalous and infamous” by design; this was the “equivalent” to a “declaration” from Congress that it was no longer necessary for an officer’s conduct to meet that standard in order for the court to find guilt. Benét’s opinion relied heavily on general orders issued in 1852 by the secretary of war, Charles Magill Conrad, after a court-martial had acquitted an officer charged with violating the article. The facts established that the officer, in full view of civilians and soldiers, without sufficient cause and with premeditation, had struck another officer who was looking in another direction and was unprepared for the assault. Conrad explicitly denied that conviction required an officer’s conduct to have been scandalous and infamous and instead declared that the standard was whether an officer’s behavior “would be considered highly reprehensible if committed by any one in civil life.”41 32  |  Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman

Conrad’s opinion, which on some points seemed so decided, contained some ambiguity. “An officer of the highest merit may, from indiscretion or thoughtlessness, or from momentary excitement, do an act which all right minded persons would consider as highly unbecoming a gentleman, and yet if it involved nothing dishonorable or morally wrong, he would not thereby forfeit his character as a gentleman,” the secretary had stated in his order.42 From neither his words nor their context is it clear how Conrad meant this statement to apply to interpretations of the 83rd Article of War. Did the conduct have to involve dishonorable or morally wrong behavior so that the man’s character was forfeit? Or was the indiscrete act that all persons considered highly unbecoming enough? The behavior of the officer in the case that prompted the orders had been, according to Conrad, “highly reprehensible,” but were community standards of “reprehensible” behavior as clear-cut as the standards for “scandalous” behavior? The confusion that reigned over the legal meaning of the Articles of War was magnified by the fact that northern men did not agree on the standards of moral behavior necessary to claim gentlemanly status. The “certain and expressed opinions of the community at large” that DeHart recommended as a guide for what would bring disgrace on the army simply did not exist. The men of the Union Army did not agree about the degree of moral turpitude involved in drinking, gambling, profanity, and sexual immorality. The behavior that some men judged scandalous or even reprehensible was behavior that other men displayed as conduct necessary to earn a manly reputation among their peers. As later chapters will demonstrate, men from all social classes embraced ideals of manhood that centered on rough male camaraderie involving drink, profanity, and displays of aggressive physical prowess. Additionally, the discussion of courts-martial here and in the next chapter will highlight the fact that some men who avoided profanity and sought to achieve self-control believed that certain circumstances required a gentleman to use strong language or even to fight. The lack of clarity over standards of moral behavior and questions over how the 83rd Article of War should be applied were apparent in the range of offenses for which officers appeared before Civil War courts-martial under its rubric. Courts tried officers under this charge who had committed murder, stolen property, publicly groped women, struck other men in drunken fits of anger, or disrupted public places with obscene tirades. The conduct of officers in many of the cases that appeared before courts-martial was indeed scandalous. At other times, the choice to bring charges under the 83rd Article of War reflected the strict standards of propriety and the high moral expecta

Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman  |  33

tions that some officers applied to the character of a gentleman. Officers who answered the call of nature in the company cookhouse or broke a promise to a fellow officer faced the charge that their behavior violated the article.43 Most men charged under the 83rd Article of War, judging from the sample used for this study, faced a variety of specifications that usually revolved around three broad categories of behavior: intoxication, profanity, and verbal or physical altercations. The cornerstone of ungentlemanly conduct was this set of interrelated behaviors. The specification of profane language provided a particular challenge to officers on the court who had to determine whether the use of such language supported the charge. Judge advocates and defendants debated what words qualified as profanity and whether the use of profanity violated the moral behavior expected from a gentleman in northern society. The trial of a young officer in the U.S. Colored Troops stationed in the rough and disorderly post at Helena, Arkansas, illustrates how courts attempted to judge the gentlemanly status of men who engaged in such behavior. The charges against Moses L. Bradley specified that he was under the influence of liquor in a “place of public resort” and used “opprobrious words” during a political discussion with Col. William Crooks of the 6th Minnesota. Bradley’s ungentlemanly language, according to the specifications, was the use of the phrase “God-damned son of a bitch.”44 The bartender of a saloon in Helena and witnesses from the 6th Minnesota and the 60th U.S.C.T. testified that Bradley was playing pool with several men. During the course of conversation about the upcoming presidential election, Bradley cheered, “Hurrah for Lincoln! Damn the man who says otherwise!” Bradley then turned to a lieutenant in the 6th Minnesota and said, “I understand Col. Crooks is going to vote for McClellan. Any man who votes for McClellan is a rebel God-damned son of a bitch.” The two men began an exchange of heated words that continued outside the saloon and eventually included a challenge to a duel, although friends and Bradley’s commanding officer intervened and the fight never took place.45 The judge advocate, an officer in the 23rd Wisconsin, and Bradley’s counsel, M. H. Wygant, provided dueling interpretations of how damning such conduct was to a man’s reputation as a gentleman. In this court, everything revolved around Bradley’s profanity. Wygant conceded that some members of the court might think that a gentleman never departed from “nice precision of language,” but he urged them to reconsider. He reminded them that an electoral victory for McClellan had portended disaster for the Union cause. Any man who loved the Union would be highly indignant at the thought and would need strong language to express his feelings. Wygant found nothing 34  |  Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman

ungentlemanly about Bradley’s use of profanity in such circumstances. “I am only a civilian, a moderate man, and profess to be a gentleman,” he told the court, “but I am not ashamed to admit that I more than once damned Genl. McClellan and all who voted for him.” According to Wygant, any loyal soldier who read a Democratic newspaper or overheard a person advocate Democratic positions and did not “swear or think swear” needed to be checked “to see whether he really had got any blood in him.”46 This kind of extraordinary legal argument was not uncommon in Civil War trials under the 83rd Article of War. Military law required the court to decide whether the specification of profanity supported the charge of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman even in cases where there were several more serious specifications. With experts divided over the standards of conduct necessary for conviction and with officers on the court bringing to the table varying opinions about the precise moral behaviors the community expected from gentlemen, trials often devolved into debates over exactly what language qualified as obscene and disgraceful. The defense lawyer in the court-martial of Brig. Gen. T. W. Sweeney, for example, argued that “son of bitch” was neither because anyone who had mingled with the highest bred gentlemen, who would “shrink from using obscene or disgusting language,” had heard such men use the words in question. The judge advocate in the trial strongly disputed this claim. “No gentleman ever used them except in anger, and never even repeated them after another in his calmer moments without feelings of disgust.” Any high-bred gentlemen who did use such an expression would afterward experience “the blushes of shame for the language they had used.”47 Accusations of using profane language could seriously damage the reputation of an officer and if proved could lead to his dishonorable dismissal. Therefore, courts were very careful to establish the truth of such accusations. In many courts-martial involving specifications of profanity, the judge advocate and other members of the court tried to determine the exact words that an officer or soldier used. First Lieutenant John T. Scott, an officer in the 16th U.S.C.T., became intoxicated during a jubilee among officers of the regiment who were celebrating a friend’s discharge. One unhappy result of that evening for the young lieutenant was a trial under the 83rd Article of War that specified he had used “profane” language in a “loud and boisterous manner.” The officers judging his case were careful to ask each witness exactly what phrases Scott used during the evening. Surgeon John Welsh testified that he heard the “profane” phrases “you are a god damned liar” and “you are a god damned shit-ass.” The judge advocate asked Capt. W. J. Abdell, “Did

Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman  |  35

you hear any language used at the time that was immoral or profane.” Abdel responded with a yes; he heard Scott say “damn shit ass.” The damning, if one will excuse the phrase, nature of Abdel’s testimony was apparent in a guilty verdict under this charge and specification despite the fact that Scott convinced the court that the charges were preferred against him only because of malicious persecution by his commanding officer.48 Many officers would not have prosecuted Scott in the first place. He only came before the court because another officer had a personal vendetta against him. But once he was there, and his exact language proved, his fate was sealed. Most of the courts examined for this project likewise found that the language he had used was not that of a gentleman. The same would be true for the McClellan-hating Bradley, who ultimately rested his defense on the fact that scores of officers in Helena daily engaged in the behavior for which he was charged and that his status as a gentleman was secure because he, unlike so many of them, had reformed. He had vowed, along with two other officers whose support would sustain him, to abstain from liquor in the future. This defense revealed that however rampant such behavior was, Bradley believed that intoxication and profanity were not generally considered compatible with a reputation as a gentleman. Indeed, his counsel begged the court not to send Bradley “back into civil society with a character blighted for life” but to give him “a chance to retrieve a name and good reputation and serve his country.” The officers sitting in judgment found Bradley guilty of the specifications and the charge, but were clearly moved by his youth and his promises to reform. Bradley laid claim to a common belief that self-improvement was an important mark of manhood. All members of the court signed a petition recommending Bradley to the mercy of the commanding general. They cited his former good conduct, his youth and inexperience, his “unfortunate, though not guilty impulsiveness,” and the belief that “his rash and improper conduct was an error of the head and not of the heart.” The court was also influenced by Bradley’s argument that he had been singled out. Their petition noted “the great prevalence of the use of intoxicating drink, and of profane language in all grades of commissions in the army from the highest to the lowest and the general recklessness on the subject of Morality and religion.” The court had judged that Bradley’s behavior was not consistent with that of a gentleman, but it seemed that many officers in the army were not gentlemen either. The officers who composed this court-martial accepted that moral character was necessary to the conduct of a gentleman, and thus to the judgment necessary in court, but outside the military justice system and in actual practice other standards of manhood often prevailed.49 36  |  Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman

A problem inherent in all the courts-martial under the 83rd Article of War was that neither military authorities nor the typical man in the Union Army knew how to apply it fairly when men who were considered gentlemen varied so widely in their conduct. The defense counsel for surgeon William Jett of the 26th Kentucky made this point succinctly. The drunken Jett had insulted another officer and was additionally accused of using “vulgar and Blasphemous language” in the presence of ladies.50 Jett’s counsel disputed the assumption underlying the 83rd Article of War: that a common code of conduct recognized by everyone marked a man as a gentleman. How was the court to decide if Jett was a gentleman when every gentleman “has his own standard of decorum?” he asked. “While all agree that anything which stamps a man with dishonor, is clearly conduct no gentleman would be guilty of, still a thousand things may be and indeed are continually occurring, which are denounced by some, approved or countenanced by others,” he commented. The prime example of this was drinking when not on duty. Some gentlemen abstained from liquor, some gentlemen drank on occasion, and some gentlemen became intoxicated at times. Jett’s conduct therefore was not dishonorable because his behavior was common to the experience of many gentlemen.51 Although a man such as Rufus Kinsley or John Hartwell had no doubt that drunkenness was reprehensible conduct, other men had difficulty deciding how much drunkenness should count against a man’s general character or his status as a gentleman. Kinsley and Hartwell believed that every man, no matter how rich or poor, could obtain an honorable character through temperate habits. Conversely, any man could disgrace himself through drunken and riotous behavior. For other northern men, however, perceptions of manliness were often deeply intertwined with perceptions of a man’s social status. Men from the lowest socioeconomic classes who drank were denigrated for their lack of manhood, whereas a man from the right social class with the right deportment was free to engage in reckless behavior and indulge in vice without losing his reputation as a gentleman. Maj. Charles Porter Mattocks, an upper-class officer of the 17th Maine, epitomized this attitude. In March 1864 the young major was ordered to take command of the 1st U.S. Sharp Shooters, a unit in a low state of discipline, severely censured by army inspectors, and without any field officers present. Mattocks’s reputation for strict discipline earned him the job and he was expected to bring the regiment up to regular army standards. Mattocks was tested when his adjutant, Roswell Weston, the well-educated scion of an elite family, made a drunken fool of himself in the presence of

Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman  |  37

every man in the regiment and then spent an evening in a state of complete insensibility.52 To understand the importance of how Mattocks perceived and handled Weston’s case, it is necessary to comment that previous to this, Mattocks had preferred charges against dozens of men and officers. He had personally beaten intoxicated and disorderly conscripts and recruits, recording this in his diary with something akin to glee. But those had all been men of low social status. Mattocks did prefer charges against Weston because his sense of duty required it. “I am death on a man who will get drunk on duty. They may be drunk in battle,” he wrote in his journal. As a new commander, Mattocks knew that how he handled this case would set the example for the men and officers of his regiment. But unlike previous cases of discipline, Mattocks privately expressed his distaste that this particular young man had to be the example. “I have never had a case of discipline that was so much contrary to my personal inclinations,” Mattocks told his mother. “This fellow is a perfect little gentleman and in every way a person one would like to have about him.”53 Despite an open display of intemperance that subjected him to what Mattocks called the “ridicule as well as contempt” of “every man” in the regiment, Weston was still a “perfect little gentleman.” His social class and education overcame a public behavior that would have blasted the character of another man. For men in the Union Army like Charles Mattocks, manhood and social status were unconsciously, and in some cases consciously, linked. A reputation for military ability in addition to a man’s social class could also overcome a notoriously bad moral character. When Col. Emory Upton, a West Pointer, commanded the 121st New York, he did more than implement regular army discipline; he also set a high moral tone. A religious man who abstained from alcohol and avoided profanity, he kept a well-worn Bible on his desk and expected his officers to follow his example. But Upton was promoted and command of the unit devolved onto Egbert Olcott, an Albany law student who upheld Upton’s military standards but whose life was openly immoral. He gambled to support his “appetite” for “wine and women.” Other officers followed his example and enlisted men soon noticed the nightly debaucheries.54 In early January 1864, some of the moral officers in the regiment preferred charges against Olcott after a particularly disturbing episode. In front of enlisted men, he had forced liquor down another officer’s throat while shouting, “Will you take it Captain? Drink it! Drink it!” Olcott was found guilty. Where other officers were dismissed from the service for similar behavior, Olcott’s sentence was a severe reprimand. “This was very mild on the Colo38  |  Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman

nel, for his character as a man is bad enough,” the disappointed regimental surgeon Daniel Holt noted. Despite his personal antagonism toward Olcott because of his immoral behavior, Holt knew why the colonel was still in command. He was, Holt said, “a first rate officer even though he does sometimes imbibe.” Even through the drunkenness, Olcott maintained the discipline of the regiment and kept the men on the necessary drills and duties, evidenced by the outstanding battlefield performance of the unit, known as Upton’s Regulars.55 Army regulations and the needs of military discipline on the one hand required moral character from soldiers and officers. Under the army’s rubric of behavior, men would attend services, and avoid profanity at all times and drunkenness while on duty, while officers would exemplify gentlemanly character. On the other hand, the army needed to win battles and wars, and if immoral officers could get that done, the standards might be set aside. Ultimately, the army hierarchy valued a reputation for military ability above moral character. This was anathema to the officers and soldiers of the Union Army who believed that ideal manhood required moral character and that only an army of men could achieve victory over the rebellion. These volunteers denigrated the manhood of the intemperate and profane. They established organizations to promote moral regiments and used army regulations liberally to punish the immoral. Some officers forced enlisted men to attend divine services, searched men’s quarters for obscene books, and punished men for singing ribald songs. But for other officers and soldiers, men from all social classes, drink and profanity constituted a necessary part of manly camaraderie, and therefore they resisted such attempts to control their behavior. One focal point of the conflict, as we have seen, was military justice. In the courts-martial of officers for “conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman,” courts generally upheld the ideal that gentlemen avoided profane language and intemperate behavior. At the same time, however, the cases studied here reveal that northern men did not share a common understanding of the words and behaviors that should exclude a man from the society of gentlemen. Many officers and soldiers believed that men who sprinkled their conversation with profanity, enjoyed a good glass, and sometimes even drank too much were still men of character who were entitled to the status of a “gentleman.” But the discussion in this chapter has begged one of the key questions: What was a gentleman? This question was more difficult for northerners to answer than it was for southerners, who possessed a more widely shared,

Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman  |  39

although not uncontested, understanding of the term. In the south, honor was the essence of white manhood, but a gentleman mastered other recognized marks as well, particularly high social position, refinement, and sociability. Because southern social life was based on local reputation, the community ultimately authorized a man’s claim to be a gentleman.56 The term was more amorphous for northern men. It was used so often and applied to men with such different characteristics that few people were sure what the word really meant. One critic worried that there was no longer “anything substantial in the character it designates” and that the word had become little more than caricature.57 Did a “gentleman” possess more than a reputation for moral character? Did ideal manhood imply that a man possessed education, refinement, and civility—in short, gentility? Those questions sparked another battle in the war for manhood in the Union Army.

40  |  Conduct Unbecoming a Gentleman

“The Model of the Gentleman”

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Francis Lieber, émigré professor of political philosophy and author of General Order 100, the code that governed the conduct of Union armies, was also the north’s expert on gentlemanly behavior. His book on that subject, The Character of the Gentleman, was in its third edition by 1864. Lieber believed that a gentleman was “distinguished by strict honor, self-possession, forbearance . . . essential truthfulness, courage, both moral and physical, dignity, selfrespect, a studious avoidance of giving offense to others . . . and loftiness of conduct to the rigid dictates of morality.” A gentleman possessed “calmness of mind” that led him to “use temperate language, and prevents him from indulging in careless vulgarity, unmanly exaggeration, or violent coarseness.” In his description thus far, Lieber shared with men such as John Hartwell a concern for moral character in his conception of the ideal man. The two men parted ways, however, on the subject of gentility. Lieber thought a gentleman manifested “polished deportment,” and believed that “even the least educated have an instinctive regard for the high-bred gentleman.”1 Lieber’s construction of manhood required the acquisition of education and social refinement, two attributes that were often included under the rubric of gentility. Perhaps no young man in the army felt more pressure from his family to live up to Lieber’s standards of the gentleman than John Rodgers Meigs, the scion of a socially prominent military family. His maternal grandfather was Commodore John Rodgers, a naval hero of the early republican period, and his father was Montgomery C. Meigs, the quartermaster general of the U.S. Army after June 1861. When John Meigs entered West Point in September 1859, his family wrote him regularly with advice and rebukes regarding every aspect of his conduct. His parents expected Meigs to maintain rigid honor and morality, to develop a driving ambition that sought glory and recognition, and to acquire a polished deportment and social manner commensurate with the high station in life that should be his goal.

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Montgomery and Louisa Rodgers Meigs scrutinized every detail of their son’s manner. “You do not date your letter, I see. Do you not know the day of the month?” Montgomery admonished his son in one letter. John was to present himself before the world so that none could find fault or reproach him. “Be careful of your language. Do not use slang terms,” Montgomery wrote. “Cultivate a taste from reading good books, history and letters. Avoid novels and tales which teach nothing but baseness and vice, which give false views of life and manners.” John was to read Latin and Greek and gain a wide knowledge of history and art. “No man is an elegant or polished member of society without a good knowledge of this so fixed in his mind as to be part of him,” his father decreed.2 His mother honed in on “some little peculiarities” that needed to be addressed. Louisa informed her son that one his day his little cousin Minnie had mimicked the loud sipping sounds he made when he ate. The horrified adults “checked” the girl. “It shows how your manner impressed her,” Louisa wrote. “I want you to set about the reform at once. If you do not you will be the slave of habit.” His mother suggested in a later letter that perhaps John needed to seek the society of ladies more often in order to gain the proper refinement and polish. She advised him to take dancing lessons and dedicate his winter to making improvements in “polite accomplishments.” She reminded John continually of the flaws he needed to correct, particularly his bad habits of biting his nails and spooning tea.3 Gentility had been the special province of a distinct social class in both the north and the south when the nineteenth century began. Gentlemen and ladies in the revolutionary era were set apart from the rest of the population. Only the great merchants and planters, the clergy and professionals, and the officers of courts and governments had the means, the leisure, and the status to acquire the education and deportment necessary for gentility. Gentlemen were a select company of men who adopted the behavior and manner of European courtiers and sought to elevate human life above the ordinary. The members of genteel society sought to please others; gentlemen presented immaculate bodies, engaged in flawless conversation, and meticulously avoided any action or word that might offend others. The overarching trait of the genteel, according to historian Richard Bushman, was “taste,” the cultural mission to beautify all one possessed and influenced. “Taste has everywhere the same Rules,” summarized one eighteenth-century proponent. “It wills, that we erase everything that can give an unlovely impression, and that we offer all that can produce an agreeable one.”4 42  |  Gentility and Self-Control

Military law in the Civil War, with its 83rd Article of War, was one legacy of the eighteenth-century assumption that all officers would be products of this distinct social class. According to Caroline Cox, the Americans who created and led the Continental Army during the American Revolution took it for granted that poor men would be soldiers and that the officers leading them would be gentlemen. Gentlemen possessed an inherent ability to lead and could demand subordination from men who were their social inferiors in civilian life. Men in the revolutionary generation recognized a gentleman immediately from his character and behavior: refined manners, personal restraint, sensitivity to beauty and elegance, and most important, his sense of personal honor. The men around him acknowledged and respected his rank; he in turn paid proper respect to the men above and below him on the social scale. The Continental Army recognized and reinforced the social distinctions of civilian life within the army hierarchy. “Through levels of pay, clothing, accommodation, and physical treatment,” Cox argues, “the army would enforce the distinction of rank in every detail of daily life.”5 In the decades before the Civil War, however, change had obliterated the association between gentility and a distinct ruling class. The unintended social consequences of the American Revolution disrupted the inherited patterns of colonial society. When middling and lower orders assaulted authority, proclaimed equality for white males, and sought to pull down distinct privileges, they also claimed gentility for themselves. A “dilute gentility associated with respectability,” to use Bushman’s terms, spread through northern society between 1790 and 1850. On the eve of the Civil War, gentility was a powerful cultural system that had captured the imagination and behavior of the northern middle classes in particular. This extension of gentility distinguished the north from the south, where the middle classes did not embrace the total genteel regime.6 Northerners domesticated gentility and made it accessible to the masses. Genteel families built parlors to receive company, acquired decorative objects to beautify the rooms of their home, learned the social graces, read good books to improve their conversation, and taught children to be well-groomed and mannerly. A proliferation of advice manuals available in northern bookstores in the mid-nineteenth century reflected the widespread desire to acquire gentility. “Fundamental to the popularity of manuals of etiquette was the conviction that proper manners and social respectability could be purchased and learned,” concluded historian John F. Kasson.7 Although gentility was widely diffused throughout northern culture at the time of the Civil War, it had lost little of its inherent exclusiveness. Consider

Gentility and Self-Control  |  43

the language in one popular etiquette manual, Beadle’s Dime Book of Practical Etiquette for Ladies and Gentleman—Being a Guide to True Gentility and Good Breeding. The genteel were morally pure, never laid a fork on its back at the dinner table, and thought and talked of art and music. They found the doors to advancement open to them and obtained their sure reward. In contrast were the “vulgar,” the “coarse,” and the “boors.” They had a habit of swearing and spent their time in the bars, clubs, and sporting halls. They were not intellectual but focused their lives on “physical enjoyment and grossness.” Their society and haunts should be avoided, their behavior shunned if one hoped to achieve any measure of respectability and social success. Participants in genteel society believed the unlovely and rude marred the pleasure of the refined, sensitive souls that composed the best company. Since gentility was supposedly available to anyone in the democratic United States, those who did not acquire it lost the claim to simple respectability. “It is a shame and disgrace to any American, whether of high or low degree, if he be not a gentleman,” concurred one writer.8 Gentility was not universally accepted as a guiding standard in American culture, however, and was under assault from many directions in the midnineteenth century. Not all Christians found refinement compatible with their faith and they questioned its expense, superficiality, and worldliness.9 Even its proponents often displayed ambivalence about the attributes necessary to claim gentility, especially social polish and manners, which were the most overt reminders of gentility’s origin within the European aristocracy. For example, editorials and articles in Harper’s Weekly, the most widely read magazine of the Civil War era, veered between sharp criticisms of the trait and proclamations that some degree of refinement was necessary for respectability. One writer pointed out that refinement was not the equivalent of good character and might serve as a mask that allowed men without moral worth to rise above the truly deserving. In the context of the Civil War, he turned to southern planters as examples of men with outwardly refined manners but inwardly “dishonorable” hearts. It would be northern gentlemen with “less manners and loftier honesty” who would save the “national honor.”10 Another attack on the demands of gentility came from men who either refused to conform to its standards or who flatly denigrated the manliness of the genteel. Their voices will be heard in more detail in the next chapter, but here it is important to note that the advocates of gentility recognized that other men questioned their manliness, just as they denied respectable manhood to the vulgar. The writers of Beadle’s Dime Book lamented that a “large class” of men viewed “politeness as something effeminate, or as fit only for 44  |  Gentility and Self-Control

fops.” The key revelation of this admission is that the “boors” not only failed to acknowledge the validity of genteel cultural standards, but also refused to recognize the manhood of the men they supposedly should be imitating. The writers sarcastically commented that such men thought it “so manly to be coarse and to do just as one pleases.” They were more insightful than it seems at first glance. As we shall see, men who practiced a rougher manhood did seek to do as they pleased, and although they would not use the same words, they did believe that manliness required a degree of coarseness.11 Gentility was, then, a contested term of manhood in the Civil War north, and one with a complicated relationship to northern conceptions of class. Gentility on one level was a cultural standard with wider implications than its meaning for manhood. Both men and women sought gentility, and it was widely perceived to be a necessary mark of the respectability required for social advancement and acceptance in the middle and upper classes. On another level, gentility, or its absence, could serve as an important measure of manliness. At one extreme, a genteel man might refuse to accord true manhood to the vulgar; on the other, a rough man would dismiss a gentleman as effeminate. In between those extremes were conflicted and varied conceptions of what gentility entailed and confusion over the very nature of a “gentleman.” The lengthy and frequent discussions in popular newspapers and magazines over the question of whether perfectly polished manners were really a requirement of gentility indicate that it was not a well-defined concept in the nineteenth-century north. Nor was there agreement over the extent to which gentility served as an accurate measure of a man. Whereas experts such as Francis Lieber had a coherent construction of the “character of a gentleman,” ordinary men often used bits and pieces of his whole, sometimes without consciously thinking of themselves as “gentlemen.” Life in the Union Army reflected all these tensions and ambiguities. In civilian life, some officers and soldiers believed that only those who were clean, educated, and had mastered the art of manners and refinement separated themselves from the working classes and earned the respect of those around them. They assumed it was their duty to help uplift those whose deficiencies resulted from ignorance and lack of proper training. Military life could serve as a venue for that training; in turn, gentility would make men better officers and soldiers. In the army just as in civilian life, advocates of genteel virtues argued that the acquisition of their values enabled upward mobility and professional success. In the hands of some Union officers and soldiers, army regulations became a vehicle to promote cultural standards of gentility. Such men sought a genteel, as well as a moral, tone for the army.

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These men particularly valued cleanliness, refinement, and education. For those officers who believed the acquisition of these attributes marked a man as a gentleman, the army’s rules and regulations allowed them to impose standards of gentility on their men. A widespread effort in the Union Army to bring genteel culture to enlisted men was enacted through regimental schools and libraries. Even northerners who did not embrace gentility recognized the importance of education, and many well-educated men were not genteel, but the possession of books remained the symbolic mark of a cultivated person. “Literature, it was believed, ingrained refined habits into the minds, hearts, and speech of readers,” Richard Bushman comments. Reading was associated with the powerful nineteenth-century idea of “improvement,” meaning not just advancement in the world but also the acquisition of intellectual culture. One could not engage in good conversation without knowledge of books.12 Reform-minded officers and chaplains used the army as a vehicle to bring education to immigrant, working-class, and African American soldiers. No one illustrates this desire better than Arthur Fuller, chaplain of the 16th Massachusetts. The brother of Margaret Fuller and the pastor of the famed Unitarian New North Church in Boston, located in an area being overrun with immigrants, Fuller was active in the temperance movement and directed the Home for the Fallen. Besides running his regiment’s temperance society, Fuller organized a regimental school. He selected five teachers from among the noncommissioned officers and privates. They met every Friday to work out methods of instruction and to develop a unified teaching plan. The school taught all the “primary branches” used in the common school districts of New England. The mostly foreign-born scholars at the school were “uncultured,” Fuller wrote, but “desire strongly improvement.” Others organized circulating libraries. James Marks, in the 63rd Pennsylvania, collected over four hundred books and three hundred magazines and reviews. The massive Christian Commission library was the brainchild of chaplain Joseph Conable Thomas of the 88th Illinois, who convinced Gen. George Thomas to appoint him “General Reading Agent for the Army of the Cumberland.” Over time the project expanded to four hundred loan libraries scattered throughout the Union Army, with each library typically holding 125 volumes (categories included history, biography, science, fiction, and religion).13 Many officers in the U.S. Colored Troops believed that educating soldiers was an essential part of their job description. None of these men went further in viewing the army as an opportunity to elevate blacks than Charles Francis Adams Jr., an officer in the African American 5th Massachusetts Cavalry. 46  |  Gentility and Self-Control

Adams wrote his father that the army could become a school for the black race as well as an engine of war, where colored soldiers would learn skilled labor and self-reliance. He induced his close friend Col. Henry Sturgis Russell to use discipline to “cultivate forms of industry,” and enthusiastically discussed his “philanthropic” plan of attaching schoolmasters to every regiment. He believed that his men were slovenly and approached tasks hastily, but he intended to “break” them and ingrain habits of craftsmanship and pride in their work as they became builders, carpenters, and mechanics through their experience in the army.14 Formal education did become part of the regime in the U.S Colored Troops. Most of its officers were educated and a large percentage of them were teachers and college graduates. Regiments established schools—daily education was in place in nearly every unit during Reconstruction—under the leadership of the chaplain and a few officers. A few regiments hired civilians and paid them from company funds. Regimental commanders found a variety of ways to support the schools; some instituted awards for educational achievement or assigned spelling lessons as punishments for minor military infractions. Historian Joseph Glatthaar found that some black soldiers made remarkable progress during the term of their enlistment: after five months of school one illiterate corporal could prepare company reports and read the Bible, after six months five hundred ex-slaves in one brigade could read and write, and in Company C of the 44th U.S.C.T., where only nine were literate when they enlisted, the entire company could read and write when it was mustered out.15 Education would serve soldiers once they returned to civilian life. Advocates of gentility were convinced that new standards of cleanliness would as well. Cleanliness was one of the most noticeable areas of difference between genteel households and others. “If there be one thing we should recommend more than another, it is cleanliness,” the authors of Beadle’s Dime Book urged their readers. Rural and working-class Americans, who used basins and sinks located in full view of others, rarely washed more than the hands and face. Many farm families did not build privies and instead used the closest patch of woods or brush. But more prosperous households in cities and smaller villages had moved sanitation equipment from shared space into private space. With washstands in the bedroom, these Americans took daily baths. Material historian Jack Larkin notes that a significant minority of American households possessed “chamber sets”—“the genteel ideal of domestic sanitation.” These sets included matching basins and ewers for private bathing, a cup for brushing teeth, and a chamber pot with cover to minimize odor and spillage.

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With these tools, “the better-off became cleaner than ever before,” while “the poor stayed dirty.”16 For some proponents of gentility, cleanliness was one of the essential marks of the gentleman. A classic example of this underlying attitude appeared in an obituary published after the war for Ignatz Kappner, a Hungarian-born officer who commanded the 1st Tennessee Heavy Artillery of African Descent. “He maintained, in every sense of that abused word, both the appearance and the substance of a gentleman,” his colleagues in the Military Order of the Loyal Legion proclaimed. “He kept his shirt, his tongue, and his conscience clean.” Stephen Minot Weld refused to abandon gentlemanly standards of cleanliness even under the severe circumstances of a Confederate prison camp in Columbia, South Carolina. He and the other genteel officers imprisoned with him “tried to regulate things so as to live decently.” Weld recorded in his diary regular efforts to wash and clean his living area in the jailhouse and to maintain a civilized privacy. He scrubbed the floors with bricks and sand; he fenced off one corner of the room with a blanket to create a private bathroom where he could bathe regularly in half an old barrel.17 Proponents of gentility were shocked and dismayed to find that many volunteer Union soldiers had no interest in meeting basic standards of cleanliness. Charles Russell Lowell wrote his fiancée, “It is astonishing how much easier it is to make men do their military duty than it is to make them appreciate neatness and cleanliness.” Henry Livermore Abbott, the genteel major of the 20th Massachusetts, revealed his assumptions about gentility when he equated cleanliness with morale. In an August 1862 letter, Abbott contrasted the morale of the Army of the Potomac with the Army of Northern Virginia. “The rebels, with their vile butternut clothes, illmade & illfitting, their wretched food, & personal filthiness, can’t be in as good spirits as we are,” he told his father.18 Cleanliness of person was a requirement of army regulations. When possible, the men were to bathe once or twice a week and wash their feet twice a week. Noncommissioned officers were charged with the task of seeing that men daily washed their hands and faces and brushed their hair. Regulations required hair to be short and beards neatly trimmed. General orders from army headquarters reinforced these regulations. McClellan required his troops to bathe once a week; later Hooker required bathing twice a week with a change of clothing once a week.19 Army rules addressed cleanliness for reasons unrelated to gentility; it was a question of health. Observant volunteers recognized this fact. Henry Kircher, the well-educated, first-generation German American who fought 48  |  Gentility and Self-Control

in the 12th Missouri, believed that Germans enjoyed better health than nonGermans in the army because they practiced better personal hygiene.20 But his attitude reflected the complexity involved in the seemingly straightforward issue of personal cleanliness. The connotations went beyond the army’s health. Kircher used his observation to conclude that Germans were culturally superior to the men with whom he fought. This was not an isolated attitude nor was it foreign to American soil, as we have seen. Genteel standards of cleanliness were one way to measure others and to assign them either respectability or vulgarity. In turn, many northerners either overtly rejected gentility or preferred to maintain the less rigorous requirements of personal cleanliness common in previous generations. The result was a conflict between army requirements and the behavior of a large number of Union volunteers. Officers in most of this study’s regiments found that they had to enforce regulations regarding personal cleanliness through the use of punishments or supervision by company officers. Obviously the fact that a set of officers implemented army regulations regarding cleanliness did not necessarily indicate that those officers were genteel or that they measured the manhood of their men through the lens of gentility, although in some cases this seems to be the case. The widespread and open resistance to being clean on the part of so many enlisted men, however, must be understood in its wider nineteenth-century context. Men who refused to bathe when they had the opportunity were necessarily men who in civilian life rejected cultural standards of gentility or the concept of genteel manhood. Their persistent disobedience to requirements they saw as needless ended up consuming much of their officers’ time, particularly when their officers were advocates of gentility determined to enforce regulations to the letter. Members of the elite social classes in the north denied respectability to men who were not clean; elite officers often pronounced a similar judgment on entire regiments. Such officers were determined to ensure that their own units could endure genteel scrutiny. Nothing escaped their attention. Charles Francis Adams, the genteel descendant of two presidents, performed daily inspection of the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry to check the hair length of the men and the soil level of their clothes. The 5th New York, a regiment whose officers were experienced West Pointers and gentlemen from New York City’s most elite social class, detailed a private to cut every man’s hair and set up a daily schedule by company. After that date, any man with hair longer than regulation was fined. At inspections the adjutant reported to the commander in writing the name of every man who offended regulations regarding personal cleanliness. A man with dirty hands was fined fifteen

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cents. Company records contain the lists of offending men and the subsequent fines.21 Regiments whose officers were not prominent gentlemen also went to great lengths to overcome men’s resistance to cleanliness. The 110th New York, in order to ensure that men bathed twice a week, divided each company into four squads and set a schedule of bathing for each squad superintended by officers of the regiment. The commander appointed a surgeon “sanitary inspector” of the regiment with orders that he report in writing whether the men washed their “whole head” every morning. Some western regiments also enforced army standards of cleanliness on recalcitrant soldiers. In 1862, the 58th Indiana implemented an order to cut the hair of all company officers and men in the regiment. The 5th Ohio cracked down after division inspectors reported that many men in the regiment had long hair and unkempt beards.22 Some of the officers who enforced these orders explicitly made the claim that cleanliness marked a good soldier and made him deserving of success. “As personal cleanliness and neatness of appearance are characteristic of a good Soldier, each should endeavor to outdo his companions, and merit the praise of his commanding officer and the Colonel Commanding,” read orders to the men of the 143rd New York. “Promotion is in the reach of every enlisted man, and good soldiership will enable him to attain a position of honor and distinction.” The 59th Massachusetts only approved passes for men whose “neat & soldierly appearance and good conduct shows they are deserving of such indulgence.” Such statements must be considered against the backdrop of genteel standards of manhood and social class, which likewise overtly linked opportunities for advancement and professional success to a person’s adherence to gentility. Whereas the genteel would earn notice and praise, the doors would be closed to the “coarse” and “vulgar.”23 A reminder is in order here that even among adherents to gentility its nature was contested and complex. Some soldiers of the Union Army needed no coercion to keep their persons and their tents clean. Like the genteel Stephen Minot Weld in Confederate prison, these men worked hard to maintain their cleanliness under the difficult circumstances of camp and the march. One such man was Billy Davis, a Christian farm boy and clerk from Indiana who served as a private in the 7th Indiana. “Our Tent, has adopted a Rule that everyone must clean his boots good before stepping inside,” he recorded in his diary, “and take their boots off and set them near the door, just inside. Paddles for cleaning and a bootjack have been provided.”24 Davis and his tent mates established parlor rules amid war; his action of proudly recording the 50  |  Gentility and Self-Control

fact in a diary likewise separated him from the type of men who would never think to do either. Yet Davis did not display many other attributes of refinement or express overt concern with gentility as did Montgomery Meigs in his letters to his son. Even for those with a well-developed sense of gentility, the circumstances of war challenged its practice. In the first place, it was not always possible to be clean. Stephen Minot Weld tried to maintain his standards of cleanliness in a southern prison, but he could not do it while participating in the nonstop fighting of Grant’s summer 1864 campaign. He had no chance to bathe his entire body as he didn’t dare leave the regiment long enough to find a brook. He was filthy and his clothes filled with vermin. Even the most severe critics of the Union Army recognized that at times it was no mark of indiscipline to be dirty and that in general the Union Army was a clean one. Charles Francis Adams Jr. was very offended when a London Times correspondent commented on the filth of the American soldier. Adams supposed that he compared foreign armies in garrison with the Union Army in the field. He reminded his father that an army necessarily carried a great deal of filth with it, since it was in essence a city without sewerage.25 In the second place, at times dirt indicated manly accomplishment. Genteel officers who otherwise openly scoffed at the unclean and unpolished men around them took pride after difficult marches or terrible battles in the grime that marked them as veterans and fighters. John Chipman Gray, a socially elite New Englander, reported that when his division arrived in South Carolina, the other troops laughed at the “dirt and raggedness of our men.” He and his men “did not conceal their contempt for the soldiers who had never traveled except by steamboat.” Despite his men’s air of superiority, Gray did note that the laughter of the other troops “had a good effect in stirring up the men and officers in the improvement of their appearance.”26 In this case, cleanliness signified the men who had not been proved and tested, and who therefore deserved the contempt of veterans with their hard-earned dirt. But Gray and his men were unwilling to remain dirty for long. In their case, the demands of gentility resulted in a quick transformation; for these men, unlike for so many of their comrades, dirtiness was not a permanent state. Related to cleanliness of person was cleanliness of equipment. The army had less trouble imposing cleanliness in this area, as men recognized the importance that clean guns would play in battle. Theodore Lyman, the Boston Brahmin for whom the army usually did not meet his standards of discipline, commented, “It is singular . . . however dirty or slovenly the men may

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be, their muskets always shine like silver; they know it is an important member.” His observation is confirmed in regimental order books and inspection records collected for this study. In 1863, the 40th New York, employing a common technique, listed in general orders the men found best and worst at inspection; only four men did not meet the regimental standard for cleanliness of arms.27 When soldiers saw the link between an expectation of cleanliness and battle performance, they readily complied with military standards. But where the relationship was more ambiguous or went against deeply entrenched behaviors, some soldiers continued to live as they did in civilian life. Rural northerners unashamedly continued the sanitation practices with which they were familiar. The army had trouble getting the men to commit “nuisance” in the “sinks”—in other words, men refused to use the designated toilet facilities. Judging from the regimental order books, this was a pervasive problem, despite efforts to convince enlisted men that sanitation was directly related to health. Commanders issued order after order concerning the men’s habit of answering nature’s call anywhere they found convenient; some resorted to mass arrests. One frustrated corps commander at Vicksburg declared that any man who committed a “nuisance” within one hundred yards of camp would be “armed with a stick and placed sentinel over it for two hours to warn persons that way of the danger after which he may be permitted to bury it.”28 The values of a regiment’s officers and its soldiers were on public display in camp. Volunteers commented constantly in their letters and diaries about the appearance of a regiment’s camp. There the contrast between men in the Union Army who displayed domestic gentility juxtaposed clearly with those who did not. Essential to the popular gentility that had spread through American culture in the early nineteenth century was the display of taste in the home; the little touches that beautified and elevated the surroundings of even the most humble person. Some Civil War soldiers did not enjoy roughing it and went to incredible lengths to recreate the comforts of the genteel home amid war. They tried to civilize their surroundings as much as possible in order to fulfill the genteel cultural mission: to beautify all one possessed and influenced at every moment. Efforts to refine a camp’s appearance ranged from decorating with flowers and garlands to arranging tents in “squares” with the streets graded “smooth as a floor.” Officers enforced neatness and order through inspections of individual tents, requirements that men air out bedding daily, or awarding premiums to companies with the neatest quarters.29 52  |  Gentility and Self-Control

The genteel in the army, just as in civilian life, took pride in the superior state of their own camps and judged neighboring regiments according to that standard. They believed that men who inhabited disordered, dirty, and undecorated camps displayed a moral failing, or, to use the jargon of the time, were not respectable, and, even worse for the success of the army’s efforts, showed a complete want of discipline. Henry Lee Higginson compared his Massachusetts cavalry regiment’s camp to a neighboring one with a simple comment: “They are pigs.”30 The ideal of a clean and domesticated camp seems to have been more prevalent than other aspects of gentility in the Union Army. In the army, just as in civilian society, it was social polish and refined manner that were the most contested. Historians who study the evolution of manners in American life have observed that many middle- and upper-class Americans, in the northeast at least, were adopting increasingly formal and complex rules of etiquette in the mid-nineteenth century. In the new urban environments of the industrializing sections of the country, where interaction with strangers was common and the social world was more anonymous, a person’s mastery of the proper rituals marked his position in society and earned him recognition in the right circles. Previously, according to historian Karen Halttunen, the urban middle-class ideal was “unconstrained manners . . . exemplified in the republican concept of the natural gentleman, who possessed gentlemanly attributes without artificially cultivated refinements.” After the 1850s, this ideal “yielded to an increasingly frank reverence for social expertise.”31 Those who embraced this version of refinement found military etiquette compatible with the manners they had adopted in civilian life and expressly linked the two. Officers and publications from the regular army encouraged the connection. August V. Kautz, a product of West Point, wrote a handbook for enlisted men that explained military rules and gave advice about life in the army. Kautz, whose parents had immigrated to the United States from Germany when he was an infant, advocated ideas about professionalism and social relations between officers and privates in the military that were decidedly European. Eventually promoted to brigadier general, he became the highest-ranking German immigrant to command black troops. In the second edition of his manual, he explained that every soldier had to learn military deportment. “This is nothing more than the military way of performing the courtesies required from a well-bred man in civil life,” he explained. “A punctual performance of them is as much to his credit as the observance of the ordinary rules of common politeness.” A writer for the United States Service Magazine argued that a positive by-product of the war would be the

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revival in civilian life of the “rules of courtesy.” We find in the soldier, he pointed out, “the model of the gentleman,” which included not only courage and honor but also deference to social etiquette.32 Military etiquette, as did social refinement, required attention to the smallest details. It reinforced social status by separating officers from men and by drawing attention to dress and appearance. The commander of the 184th Pennsylvania explained that etiquette included proper salutation of officers and attention to “such apparently small items as the blackening of shoes, the polishing of brasses” in order to provide a unit with “uniformity when in line.” Military standards corresponded nicely with the regime of the genteel, who would agree that even the shoes of a soldier mattered.33 Some of the regimental order books read for this study are replete with orders relating to military etiquette, but an important caveat must be inserted here. Not all officers who enforced military etiquette and style were genteel or did so as a conscious effort to train soldiers in “rules of courtesy.” There were many reasons regimental officers might strictly observe this aspect of discipline: a sense of duty to implement all military regulations, a belief in its efficacy as a tool to train men in obedience and uniformity, or the strict oversight of a brigade commander. What instigated conflict in the Union Army over military etiquette was the need to enforce military discipline and not the wider cultural conflict over manliness; however, the depth of resistance to military etiquette, just like the depth of resistance to cleanliness, must be placed in the context of a nineteenth-century culture engaged in ongoing debate over social polish and refinement. A survey of regimental orders from units in different armies and inspection reports from the Army of the Cumberland and the Army of the Potomac indicates that a large minority of regiments attempted to implement the regular army regulations for military etiquette. Charles Musser’s 29th Iowa was one of these. “There are heaps of forms and ceremonies to be performed in the army that look like foolishness, and our regiment is one that has to come up the ‘Army Regulations’ to the very letter,” he told his father. Standing orders of the 28th Michigan called for the full “style of military etiquette.” The 59th Massachusetts required its men to stand at the approach of an officer and sentries had to learn the proper salute for each grade of officer.34 Most regiments did not go this far, although the majority appear to have paid some attention to military etiquette and tried to present a military appearance at inspections and parades at least. Others never accepted the standard and made no effort to implement military etiquette. Wherever officers did demand even a modicum of military etiquette, however, they faced 54  |  Gentility and Self-Control

strong resistance from soldiers who did not accept this mark of status in society and who saw little relevance for it even in the context of the military. This was an area of military discipline that was among the most difficult for officers to enforce. Soldiers who were otherwise well disciplined simply and quietly refused to exhibit the full form of military etiquette, a requirement that they nicknamed “style.” This derisive term raised connotations of the excessive social polish and fashion that critics of gentility questioned on the home front. Capt. John W. DeForest of the 12th Connecticut observed that the men of his regiment, who were proficient in drill and normally as “obedient and quiet as sheep,” consciously avoided etiquette. They would not touch their caps when they met an officer and did not salute promptly and stylishly. John Haley, a private in the 17th Maine who hated the socially elite and genteel officers leading his regiment, exemplified those who viewed “style” with scorn and contempt. He filled his diary with sarcasms over the absurdity of worrying about whether a man’s coat was properly buttoned before he went into battle.35 Many men were simply unused to the kind of pomp and circumstance associated with the rituals of etiquette and found the military version to be unsettling, even embarrassing. Often these soldiers used negative references to the people, behaviors, or dress they associated with fashionable gentility. “We put on more airs than a french Dancing Master,” Charles Musser told his father. Taylor Pierce of the 22nd Iowa described his feelings when he first had to appear at dress parade as a recently commissioned officer. “How do you think I felt the first time I took my place before the Regiment looking as if I had just been spilled from the bandbox?” he asked his wife. “I guess I felt a good bit like a girl does the first time she has been stayd with and thinks everybody knows it.” Pierce’s comment was a subtle variation of the common theme that excessive refinement was effeminate rather than manly.36 Gentility was less accepted in the wider culture and in northern ideals of manhood when it demanded social polish. Gentility had the most power when it joined forces with the virtues of Christian manhood. In Francis Lieber’s catalog of traits essential to the character of a gentleman, many of them centered on self-control and a strict regard for the feelings of others. Lieber listed “self-possession,” “calmness of mind,” and “a studious avoidance of giving offense to others.” The gentleman never “indulged in careless vulgarity, unmanly exaggeration, or violent coarseness.” A literary review in the New York Illustrated News expressly linked manners with moral virtues: “All can be kind and gentle, forbearing, not hasty to provoke, charitable of failings, in honor preferring one another, in love helping one another; for these are

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the attributes of good manners,” the author proclaimed. “Let us have a new chivalry instituted—a new order of intellectual and moral knighthood.” Men who sought to acquire moral character could agree with advocates of civility that a true man always acted with self-command and an awareness of how his actions affected others. This assumption was so widespread that historian Reid Mitchell places manly self-restraint at the center of the dominant northern understanding of manhood.37 Self-control did not prohibit manly displays of sincere and tender emotion. Anger and outbursts of passion were suspect, but a gentleman was sensible to pain and suffering. An article in the Continental Monthly about Jesus as the ideal man felt compelled to explain his outburst of passion on the occasion when he drove the money changers from the temple: “the only instance on the record of history which might be quoted against his freedom from the faults of humanity.” The same writer later praised Jesus for shedding tears of compassion and friendship. “There is a sacredness in tears, they are not marks of weakness, but of power,” agreed another writer for a popular paper. “Scoff not if the stern heart of manhood is sometimes melted to tears—they are what help to elevate him above the brute. I love to see tears of affection.”38 True manliness, according to the way some northerners conceived of gentility, combined the “soft” virtues of womanhood with the “hard” virtues of manliness. Historian Donald Yacovone has already made the point that many nineteenth-century men developed emotionally fervent and affectionate bonds with each other based on ideals of Christian agape love. These men were comfortable with open displays of physical affection and expressions of their feelings for each other. The highest compliment was to describe such a man as “brave and tender-hearted” or as possessing a “tough moral fibre and delicacy.”39 Manly restraint did not require the suppression of feeling, but a man was not to lose control of his emotions. Samuel Cormany, an officer in the 16th Pennsylvania Cavalry, recorded in his diary the line he drew between manly and unmanly displays of his emotions. Cormany exemplified the desire to “control myself all around and in all cases—always correct and erect and immovable.” He constantly examined his moral state and his struggle to “control my lower—my animal self.” He showed no concern when he cried during his wife Rachel’s recovery from the birth of their child. It was a difficult time for the family. Cormany was ill and Rachel disregarded his advice (he practiced hydrotherapy), which he thought hindered her recovery. “I feel very sad over it—Had to yield to a weep,” he wrote. This and other incidents 56  |  Gentility and Self-Control

of weeping were different for Cormany than the episodes of emotion that threatened his self-control. To describe such cases, he used very different language. “I am so completely unmanned that I have no control of my feelings,” was a typical entry of this type. During Cormany’s battles with alcohol in the army, he also considered himself to be “unmanned” when he drank enough to lose his self-control. Because Cormany believed manhood was an achievement, such behavior caused him to view himself as “less of a man” than he was before.40 If a man with no self-control was “unmanned,” the man who displayed it under stressful circumstances was “cool.” At a moment of crisis, in the heat of battle, a gentleman commanded his emotions and displayed the calm demeanor that marked his manly self-restraint. Scholars of Civil War soldiers have identified courage as a defining attribute of nineteenth-century manhood and have debated whether soldiers maintained traditional conceptions of courage as they came to understand the reality of modern warfare and its potential for destruction. Gerald Linderman began this debate with his thesis that soldiers eventually rejected ideals of courage and viewed it as useless against the unsparing effects of rifled weaponry. I concur instead with James McPherson’s argument that courage and honor remained central to the identity of most men.41 It is important to link courage with related traits of manhood, something that Linderman does not do adequately, in order to understand its continued power. Courage was intimately connected with honor, an ideal of manhood historians rarely credit to northern soldiers, and with self-control, one of the most powerful concepts in northern society. Obviously a man overcome by his fear had lost control of his emotions and was, to use the contemporary phrase, “unmanned.” Courage itself was not enough; the ideal man mastered his emotion and was able to display “coolness” in battle. Soldiers who wrote home about their battle experiences bragged to their families about their self-possessed manner. Officers at all levels throughout the war assumed that visible displays of coolness were important to the men; privates who gushed in their letters and diaries when they witnessed such displays confirmed their officers’ beliefs. George Whitman, the brother of Walt Whitman, wrote his mother after his regiment, the 51st New York, attacked Confederate forces on Roanoke Island, “I was calm and cool during the whole affair as I am at any time.” John Hartwell was proud of his behavior at the Battle of Salem Church, where he was “perfectly cool” and had enough mastery to aim each shot with precision. His control was no different than it was when he was home shooting squirrels. Even after Hartwell

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had seen enough of war and admitted that he desired never to see another battle, he still felt compelled to describe his anticipation of the next battle as “cool dread (not fear).”42 Coolness could be the measure of self-control, or it could be an outward display of the persona necessary to establish honor in front of one’s peers. Coolness was a measuring stick of worth and a necessity for an honorable reputation. Henry Livermore Abbott, a member of Boston’s most elite social class and a line officer in the 20th Massachusetts, understood that his first battle would confirm his honor or destroy it. “It would be hard to be frightened when men whom you are accustomed to think more ignoble than yourself are cool all around you,” he told his father after he had passed this test of manhood. Abbott’s friends spread reports of his reputation for coolness to peers who served in other regiments and to family and friends on the home front. After Fredericksburg, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote that Abbott led two platoons into a slaughter pen “with the same indifferent air that he has when drilling a [battalion].”43 Coolness was not just important for a man’s battle persona; it was required in the many personal confrontations and physical conflicts that soldiers faced. Daily interactions between men in the Civil War were potentially fraught with a different kind of danger that gentlemen handled with a form of self-control that was a mixture of coolness and civility. Essential to the spirit of civility, according to historian John Kasson, was a man’s studious avoidance of any extreme emotion or dispute that would arouse the notice of others. Anger particularly revealed a loss of control and thus a gentleman controlled his temper no matter how provoking the circumstances. Even if a man was forced to employ violence in self-defense, he did so without betraying any hint of anger or passion.44 Officers and soldiers in the Civil War who sought to exemplify self-control routinely faced circumstances that tested their restraint and demanded coolness in the face of provoking rudeness or even physical danger. A writer for New York Illustrated News, in his attempt to skewer the “habitual rudeness” that “betokens a coarse and ugly mind,” cataloged behaviors that men who served in the Union Army would regularly encounter. These behaviors disrupted the harmonious society genteel persons sought to create and revealed the disregard for the happiness of others that was characteristic of the rude: “to answer with a leering countenance, or in a rough tone of voice. All jostling of persons, practical jokes, insisting upon preference in matters of place—all loud talking, disrespectful words, nick-names, laughter at personal peculiarities and deformities, bad language.”45 This list is a useful description of the daily behavior 58  |  Gentility and Self-Control

of thousands of Union soldiers, for some of whom, as we will see in the next chapter, such manners were integral to their expressions of manliness. How was a gentleman to behave when he was faced with this type of rudeness? Obviously he maintained his own civility and restraint despite great provocation. How was a gentleman to behave when he was insulted and even physically attacked, a circumstance that occurred frequently in the stressful world of an army at war? Restrained men expected a gentleman to harness his passion, yet instinctively they understood that it was not manly to submit to the aggression of another. Nor could a gentleman ever act in a manner that caused others to question his courage. The struggle of men who sought to personify gentlemanly coolness under such circumstances was evident in the record of Union courts-martial. Officers sitting in general courts-martial judged cases where the officers charged with violating the 83rd Article of War had physically assaulted men who challenged their character or manhood. These trials reveal much about northern conceptions of honor, a topic considered in a separate chapter, but they also provide insight into concerns about self-control. Witnesses to these incidents and the officers of general courts-martial clearly believed that a gentleman had no choice but to defend his honor and reputation when it was challenged. When engaged in such a defense, however, a gentleman displayed self-control and command of his emotions. Officers involved in these types of incidents invariably, as they attempted to prove that their behavior was “gentlemanly,” asserted that they had maintained self-control and selfpossession until their challenger had forced them to act. Officers presiding over the trials asked questions that demonstrated how essential they believed “coolness” to be in a gentleman’s behavior. A representative violent episode in a Kentucky cavalry regiment painted the contrast between the cool civility of the gentleman and the rude, rough, and aggressive behavior of his adversary. The volunteer officers who presided over the court-martial of Maj. William W. Bradley clearly believed that the code of the gentleman required self-possession, yet they also thought a gentleman could be pushed to the point where it was necessary to unleash his passion. Bradley was an admired and beloved officer in the 7th Kentucky Cavalry who had risen from humble circumstances. Officers from several other Kentucky regiments signed a testimonial regarding his “untarnished” reputation for “character, industry, & courage.”46 The fact that testimonials routinely included courage when they established an officer’s honorable reputation is more evidence that northerners continued to consider courage essential for ideal manhood.

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Bradley took another man’s life to defend the honor and reputation of his nineteen-year-old ward. His conduct during the affair only proved to those around him the truth of this testimonial to his status as a gentleman. In midJanuary 1864 the Seventh was on the move toward Dandridge, Tennessee. It was part of a long column of troops from several states. Lt. Col. Thomas Vimont rode up to a party of officers and looked directly at 1st Lt. John McGinety. He proclaimed in a loud voice, so that those near in the column could hear, “There is a Lieutenant that asked for a position in a nigger regiment. It is to be hoped that all such would get out of the regiment for they are a disgrace to the white race of people.” Vimont then nudged his horse closer to Lt. Andrew Jones, the young ward of Major Bradley. “You asked for a position in the rebel army, you now ask for a position in a nigger regiment. You are not worth hell room nor none of your friends.”47 At this point Bradley intervened. He approached Vimont and informed him that Jones was his friend and had never applied for a position in the rebel army. Later Bradley commented that Vimont had made a charge that was “grave but also blasting in its very nature.” The whole regiment had heard the statement. “It amounted in fact to a charge of treason, and the loyal Officers and men from Ky. had it been true, would have scorned to hold fellowship with a man who had been guilty of conduct, which, is a crime of the blackest character.” Bradley could not allow Vimont “to fix an indissolvable stain upon a young soldier and one of his officers.”48 Bradley asked Vimont kindly but firmly to retract his statement. Since Bradley was a gentleman, his assurance should have satisfied Vimont. Instead, the lieutenant colonel shook his fist and replied, “I want you to distinctly understand that I retract or take back nothing I have said, God damn you.” Bradley refused to take this bait and rode on. About twenty minutes later, Vimont came near Bradley and Jones, who were riding near the regiment’s adjutant. Vimont commenced cursing and asked the adjutant, “What will you have you little Pennsylvania puppy?” Bradley again asked Vimont to retract his statement regarding Jones and assured him of his personal knowledge that Jones never applied for a position in the rebel army. “I do not retract anything. I am a lone Kentuckian and owe allegiance to neither Abe Lincoln or any of his God damned followers. And you are a damned liar.” At this, Bradley, Jones, and the adjutant drew their pistols, but held them downward so as not to point them at Vimont. Bradley again asked for a retraction and added, “You ought not to call me a damned liar as I have always been a friend to you.” When Vimont refused, the three men re-holstered their weapons and rode on.49 60  |  Gentility and Self-Control

But Vimont would not let the matter drop. He followed Bradley and uttered a curse that none of the witnesses could understand. Bradley replied, “Colonel you are my superior and you must not curse me.” “Why did you not shoot me back there, you God damned cowardly abolitionist Son of a Bitch?” Vimont taunted. “I don’t want to shoot you. I don’t want to hurt you. I want you to take back what you said.” “Why don’t you shoot me, you cowardly puppy you? I dare you or any of your comrades to discharge one load of your pistol at me. You are afraid to do it.” As he said this, Vimont shook his fist in Bradley’s face. “Why don’t you shoot?” he repeated and slapped his hand on his holster. Bradley drew his revolver and fired two shots. Reeling, but not unhorsed, Vimont pulled at his holster. Bradley fired twice more. Vimont fell from his horse mortally wounded. He died the next day.50 The witnesses to this incident were deeply impressed with the gentlemanly manner Bradley maintained under Vimont’s aggressive provocation. Men from other regiments who passed by during the altercation contrasted the behavior of Bradley and Vimont. Assistant surgeon William Rankin of the 1st Tennessee Cavalry testified that he and a number of men from his regiment heard the conversation between the two men. In an unsolicited remark, Rankin commented that Vimont “was treating the Major ungentlemanly at the time.” The judge advocate suggested that Bradley could have provoked Vimont in some portion of the exchange that Rankin did not witness. Rankin responded that from what he saw, Bradley spoke every word in a “very mild manner.” Sgt. Eli Hodson of the 14th Illinois Cavalry also testified that Bradley always “spoke mildly.” One officer from the Seventh remarked that Bradley “looked just as careless as if there was nothing the matter or wrong.” Another recalled, “He seemed very cool and quick all the time.”51 Bradley maintained the self-control and self-possession that marked him as a gentleman. The testimony in this case is particularly revealing because the witnesses employed identical language to that which soldiers used to describe a cool and courageous battle persona. A courageous officer was “cool” and “careless” amid the chaos around him. His command of himself was so sure that he behaved no differently during battle than he did during normal activities. Hartwell acted in battle just as he did while shooting squirrels; an officer in Taylor Pierce’s Iowa regiment walked through the shot and shell “as unconscious of danger as when he used to walk the streets of Des

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Moines.”52 Likewise, Bradley appeared completely unperturbed. Despite the escalating threat from Vimont, he acted as if nothing unusual was happening to him. Such mastery of self was the essence of “coolness.” Vimont, on the other hand, had clearly lost control. All witnesses agreed that he was drunk. But his rage and aggression stemmed from a previous incident within the regiment. The court heard testimony that further established the gentlemanly character of Bradley in contrast to the dishonorable character and actions of Vimont. The year before, when the position of lieutenant colonel was vacant, the colonel of the regiment submitted Bradley’s name for promotion and more than two-thirds of the officers in the regiment signed a petition recommending Bradley for the position. Instead, Vimont secured the appointment using the influence of wealthy friends who interceded on his behalf at the state level.53 The deeply dissatisfied line officers of the regiment complained to Bradley and revealed to him the existence of the petition. Bradley advised them to acquiesce. “If I am satisfied, you ought to be,” he told them. Bradley then stated that he was in the army for the good of the service and would serve his best wherever they put him. When some officers later came to him with the idea of circulating another petition asking Vimont to resign, Bradley told them not to do it. Despite his disappointment, Bradley remained privately and publicly respectful toward Vimont and never changed his manner toward his rival. Vimont’s scheming ambition, self-serving promotion, and excitable jealousy, on the other hand, were the antithesis of Bradley’s gentlemanly behavior. After his appointment, Vimont bragged openly that he had higher-ranking friends than Bradley who had interceded for him. Although Bradley calmly accepted Vimont’s promotion, Vimont could not accept the obvious preference nearly every man in the regiment had for Bradley. He could not control his jealousy.54 At his trial, Bradley argued that Vimont’s malice had created a malevolent purpose during the deadly march toward Dandridge. “He intended to disgrace [Bradley] in the eyes of the whole Regt., whose love and esteem he had none, if [Bradley] tamely submitted to his abuse in its character so outrageous.” Vimont had called Bradley a “liar,” a “coward,” a “Son of a Bitch,” had shaken his fist in a violent and insulting manner, had dared Bradley to shoot him, and had slapped his hands on his holster in a “menacing manner.” Vimont had tried to back his nemesis into a corner. If Bradley submitted to this treatment, “it would damn him in the estimation of his friends.” If he resisted, Vimont could kill him. In the face of such a deadly purpose, Bradley argued, his actions amounted to self-defense. The officers presiding over 62  |  Gentility and Self-Control

the court-martial—men from Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana—agreed. They returned a verdict of not guilty to a charge of murder. It was “a case of Justifiable Homicide” and the court did “honorably acquit the accused.”55 In the end, despite his humble circumstances, Bradley had obtained and maintained the unquestioned status of gentleman. Nothing that he did in shooting Vimont negated his position in the eyes of his fellow men. Witness after witness in his trial, from within and without his regiment, praised him. “I have known the Major ever since he has been in the Regiment; he has never shown any act of cowardice and never committed an ungentlemanly act since I have known him,” affirmed Capt. Charles McNealy. When asked about Bradley’s character “for bravery, efficiency as an Officer and gentlemanly bearing as a man,” Colonel Faulkner responded, “I think he is unsurpassed in the Army for either of these qualifications.”56 An important mark of the gentleman was that he used force only under extreme provocation. All the witnesses and the members of the court believed Vimont had pushed the cool and civil Bradley too far. To lash out too quickly, however, indicated a loss of control. A Christmas incident near Topeka, Kansas, illustrates the difference between the gentlemanly behavior of Bradley and the false claims of a first lieutenant in the 15th Kansas Cavalry. Thomas J. Bragg had a difficult time with the men in his regiment. “It is quite a different affair to manage Western Volunteers, from that of regulating old Veteran Soldiers,” he noted. “The best of soldiers in a fight, but quite too apt, at other times to imagine that they are Lords of the Universe, and perhaps disposed to think, that independence of their officers and disobedience of orders, indicate the brave and loyal soldiers.” Intoxication and vice were prevalent among the troops as well.57 The day after Christmas was a particular nightmare for Bragg. Drunken soldiers were everywhere. One man, a Private Ashmore, was notorious for his dangerous behavior when under the influence. Bragg ordered Ashmore to go to the guardhouse. When he refused, Bragg ordered the men who were standing around in the street to take him. Most men continued to stand there, but three of them stepped forward, seized Ashmore by the arms, and began to drag him away. Ashmore struggled, turned his head around, and called Bragg a “cowardly son of a bitch.” Bragg pulled his revolver and tried to shoot Ashmore, hitting instead one of the privates taking Ashmore away.58 Bragg believed he had acted consistently with the character of a gentleman. A man of desperate nature had attempted to reach his person and called him “a cowardly son of a bitch.” “What would any man do?” he asked the officers at his court-martial. “The answer it seems to me, springs

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spontaneous to the lips of everyone: shoot him like a dog. The officer who would submit to such degradation & tamely pass such language by, from any one, is an unfit associate for Gentlemen.” But Bragg’s behavior was not that of Bradley or other men who were acquitted. Those men had shown self-control under extended provocation before acting. Bragg did not demonstrate this coolness. He pulled a weapon at the first insult and shot a man under the physical control of three others. Witnesses would not support his assertion that his life was in danger. One of the guards stated simply, “I think that the two men who had hold of Ashmore, with myself, could have taken him away.” The court found Bragg guilty of conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline and assault with intent to kill. He was cashiered.59 The Bradley and Bragg cases expose subtleties in northern men’s conceptions of self-control and honor. Gentility required coolness and disparaged aggressive behavior, yet a gentleman under the right circumstances could kill a man who insulted him. As we will see, this applied to men from many northern states and happened more frequently in the Union Army than historians have previously thought. What northerners meant by self-control, then, becomes less clear when we consider the new evidence of courts-martial records. Apparently most soldiers sought to display “coolness” in battle and civility in personal interactions. Men struggled, however, to define the appropriate response when other men violated the code of civility. A gentleman should harness his passion, yet it was unmanly to submit to the aggression of another. The courts-martial records of men who assaulted or killed those who challenged their character or manhood reveal the ambiguities of northern definitions of genteel self-control. Witnesses to such incidents and military courts usually sanctioned a gentleman’s use of violence to defend his honor and reputation. Self-control, seemingly the most widely accepted aspect of gentility among northern volunteers, was more ambiguous than historians have recognized, and other manifestations of gentility were openly contested. When northern men considered whether gentility was a necessary attribute of ideal manhood, they found little common ground. Many Union soldiers embraced the domestic gentility that required clean bodies and tasteful camps. A sizeable and noticeable group rejected these standards. They remained personally dirty and refused to conform to army regulations regarding sanitation, despite officers’ efforts to force recalcitrant soldiers to wash their bodies and use the “sinks.” Few northerners could even agree on what constituted gentility. The most controversial aspect in civilian life and in the army was the 64  |  Gentility and Self-Control

refinement and social polish that demanded perfect manners and adherence to military etiquette, or “style.” The sketch of northern manhood becomes even more complicated to draw when the men who rejected self-control altogether are brought into the picture. In the next chapter, we will see that some men defined manliness through attributes that revealed a disdain for self-control and encouraged violent passion and licentious indulgence. The marked contrast between the self-controlled genteel manhood of some men and the noisy, unruly, boisterous manhood of others serves as another window into the war for manhood in the Union Army.



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“A Regular Old-Fashioned Free Fight”

3

Physical Prowess and Honor

Even a cursory reading of Union Army records and the letters and diaries of Civil War soldiers and officers uncovers the rampant minor tussles and even brutal fighting that made up every day life in the army. Moral and self-controlled Union soldiers generally avoided physical confrontations with their comrades, but others regularly engaged in fights and bouts of heavy drinking. These men participated in a culture of male camaraderie centered on boisterous noise, unruly behavior, and feats of prowess. They tested the strength of other men and expected newcomers to prove their manhood in physical contests. They had particular trouble with authority figures and often resented their officers. And to the dismay of many Union soldiers, such men could be found everywhere. Alfred Bellard, although he had no relish for fighting himself, participated in the culture of male camaraderie that valued physical prowess and uncontrolled behavior. Bellard emigrated from Hull, England, to New York City with his parents in the 1850s. His father, a skilled engraver and coppersmith, owned a shop and saved enough money to purchase a decent home in Hudson City, New Jersey, and hire a live-in maid. When the war started, Bellard was eighteen years old and working as a carpenter’s apprentice. He joined Company C of the 5th New Jersey, a company of immigrants mainly from Ireland, Germany, and England. A wound at Chancellorsville, for which he spent the summer of 1863 in the hospital, sent him into the Invalid Corps, renamed the Veteran Reserve Corps, until his enlistment expired. He spent the last months of his service performing provost marshal duty in Washington DC.1 Bellard and his companions were a noisy and boisterous lot. When his regiment departed for the south in August 1861 by train, Bellard reported, “We amused ourselves by singing, shouting, and making as much noise as

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possible.” They drank freely whenever possible and needed little provocation to break into fistfights and melees. Waiting for transports and drinking whiskey in December 1861 afforded the rowdy men of the 5th New Jersey one opportunity. Two officers began to fight each other and drew swords. This instigated “a regular old-fashioned free fight” between two companies that lasted half an hour and produced numerous bloody noses and black eyes. The violence continued the next night on the transports, when a company of city recruits stationed themselves on the gangway, challenged each passerby to name his company, and summarily knocked down any man from one of the rural units. Bellard found similar companions in the Veteran Reserve Corps. To celebrate July 4, 1864, the men tapped two kegs of beer. “Some of the boys made good use of it by getting tight and having a free fight, which resulted in black eyes and bloody noses,” Bellard recalled.2 Bellard did not want to fight, but like others who encountered these men, he had to prove his manhood in physical confrontations in order to be let alone. One of his bunk mates tested him with a hard kick in the middle of the night. The blow forcefully propelled Bellard out of bed and onto the stove. Bellard immediately jumped to his feet and pulled his comrade’s red beard until the man “cried enough.” Bellard had no more trouble after that. The first two colonels of the 5th New Jersey, Samuel H. Starr and William Joyce Sewell, likewise had to establish their physical dominance in order to lead such men effectively. The first night on the transports, a group of them rushed Colonel Starr’s cabin with the intention of chucking him overboard. Starr, a veteran of the regular service who served with the dragoons on the frontier for years, was not intimidated. He swung the door open with sword drawn and cut one of the men down. “This had the effect of cooling them off and they had more respect for the old man ever afterwards,” Bellard commented. A year later, the Irish immigrant Sewell commanded the regiment. When one soldier refused an order to disperse, Sewell pushed the man, who blustered that if the colonel did not have on his shoulder straps he would not do it. “The colonel informed him that he would take his straps off and lick him,” Bellard reported with admiration. The soldier’s friends quickly removed him from the scene.3 German immigrant August Scherneckau served with similar men in the 1st Nebraska. The educated Scherneckau had little respect for many of his comrades and often felt lonely and homesick. “We just have too many evil and rough fellows among us,” he recorded in his diary. “Only a very few satisfy the requirements that I demand from an educated person.” The men spent Sundays singing “songs of the most indecent kind.” The regiment was 68  |  Physical Prowess and Honor

building Fort Davidson at Pilot Knob, Missouri, in the summer of 1863. A Fourth of July celebration led to the inevitable drunkenness and fights. “I saw really brutal fights; the men struck each other with their fists until the blood flowed freely. Large crowds gathered around these fighters and encouraged them all the more,” Scherneckau wrote. “The officers who are not on duty are usually the first among the public watching the fight and trying to regulate and coordinate the battles systematically.” What Scherneckau found especially puzzling was the relationship between the men who fought. “There were bloody heads among the best of friends. It is really brutal how these men beat up each other!”4 Scherneckau referred to the men in his regiment as “roughs.” Roughs were the hard and dangerous men frequently discussed by officers and soldiers in both the eastern and western armies. This widely disparaged group brought disorder, drunkenness, and violence to every corner of the Union Army. James Newton of the 14th Wisconsin told his father that this group of men did nothing but “fight” and “raise cain.” The roughs wreaked havoc in the ranks. The commander of the 33rd Wisconsin was compelled to address the issue in general orders because several of his men had been disabled. “All wrestling and scuffling among the men of this command is positively prohibited,” he ordered in January 1864. The commander of the 17th Maine wrote the governor of the state asking for the regiment to be transferred to the Department of the South. He claimed that there were so many “thugs” in the 1st, 37th, and 101st New York that serving with them in Brig. Gen. Hiram G. Berry’s 3rd Brigade in the Army of the Potomac was too great a hardship.5 Regimental and general courts-martial records reveal the presence of habitual drunks and toughs who created discipline problems for the army. At the court-martial of Thomas Freel of the 123rd Indiana, a parade of witnesses testified to his frequent drinking, cursing, fighting, and drawing knives on other privates. “I never knew him to carry a musket more than three weeks together,” one officer told the court. A classic example of this type of character was Michael Farrell, a man whose comrades in the 4th Kentucky Cavalry called him a “dangerous drunk” and who had already stabbed a man in the regiment. When the Fourth halted at a river, the intoxicated Farrell began brandishing a sword he had stolen from a man in an infantry unit. When Lt. Sylvester Raplee ordered Farrell to drop the sword, Farrell instead advanced on the officer. After ineffectually throwing a rock to halt the advance, Raplee pulled his revolver and killed the drunken Irishman. “I thought the Lieut. did right in shooting him,” a private later testified.6

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Roughs openly reveled in the vices that men such as John Hartwell eschewed. Some Civil War soldiers believed that the conscripts and substitutes who infused the army in 1863—as opposed to the earlier volunteers— were mostly roughs and that their vices were a danger to the army. Historian Steven Woodworth concluded after his research on the Union Army that the conscripts were perceived to be “the most debauched and spiritually hardened class on the continent.” This study’s sample of regimental records does indicate an increase in drinking, disorder in the camps, and gambling after conscripts entered Union regiments in 1863. The vast majority of regimental orders prohibiting such practices and taking dramatic steps against them occurred after 1863. A few commanders openly attributed their actions to the changed conditions of their regiments. One was “forced to this step by the alarming increase of drunkenness.” Maj. F. A Atwater of the 42nd Illinois commented that he “regretted” issuing an order forbidding gambling and card playing in a regiment where public opinion had been against the practice, but new circumstances required new orders.7 Men such as Hartwell, for whom moral character was central to his manhood, expressed dismay over the widespread vice in the Union Army. Alfred Bellard, on the other hand, showed little interest in religion and passed no moral judgment on the many vices of the men he encountered. He instead indifferently described the “various amusements” that went on in the 5th New Jersey “to suit the tastes of the different companys.” One company held a camp meeting every evening whereas others enjoyed bawdy theatricals. Bellard witnessed the seamy side of Washington DC when he patrolled some of the city’s most notorious houses of ill repute as a member of the provost guard. The contrast between John Hartwell’s outrage over such behavior and Alfred Bellard’s matter-of-fact descriptions captures an essential difference between the two men. One den in Tin Cup Alley provided black and white prostitutes “on the principle that you pays your money and takes your choice.” The worst place was a shanty on the banks of a canal where the stench was overpowering. Bellard was shocked when he found a soldier there in bed with a woman, but not for the same reason Hartwell would have been. “He must have had a cast iron stomach,” was Bellard’s only comment.8 The soldiers with whom Bellard associated, in his company of the 5th New Jersey and in the Veteran Reserve Corps, were careless of their duty and unhesitatingly committed military crimes such as leaving their posts to drink. Bellard acted no differently when detailed as guard over the camp of his regiment. The men were under strict orders not to leave camp, but they employed “various modes” to “get in a supply of the ardent.” One of those 70  |  Physical Prowess and Honor

modes was the cooperation of guards like Bellard. One night he heard some men cautiously coming through the woods to avoid being seen. He halted one man and ordered him to give the countersign. “But instead of the countersign, a suspicious looking bottle was placed in my hands, and taking a refreshing pul at the contents, I reported the countersign correct, and they passed on,” Bellard remembered with satisfaction.9 This episode illustrates how far Bellard and his companions would go to procure alcohol, but these men also placed some limits on their willingness to defy military rules. They recognized the value of some military discipline and were proud of their units. Bellard bragged about the Veteran Reserve Corps’ precision in drill and soldierly bearing. He and his friends contributed money to purchase expensive uniforms for the band. Bellard was angry when a “fool” objected to orders from a captain who was not wearing his shoulder straps: “As the order was proper, he should have obeyed without comment.” Bellard believed that military discipline made men better fighters. When the 5th New Jersey had a confrontation with the 120th New York, a new regiment with three times the number of the veteran Fifth, Bellard commented, “If a fight had taken place, I think the new recruits would have been driven off the field at the point of bayonette, as they were fresh and knew very little about discipline, while we were old hands at the bussines.”10 These characteristics supposedly differentiated Bellard and his companions from the “roughs.” Bellard and his friends separated themselves from what he called the “dregs of New York City” and “the hard lot.”11 Men in the 5th New Jersey such as Bellard had a stake in society and in the outcome of the war. Bellard’s father was a man of property who was able to pass marketable skills on to his son. The “dregs” drank and fought just as the boisterous men of the Fifth did, but to Bellard there was a marked difference between them. Some men in the Union Army would not recognize the distinction between Bellard and such men, but for others the designation “rough” implied a separate class of men in the army marked by low social status and a complete alienation from the mainstream of American life. Men who did not value self-control and who did value assertions of physical domination hailed from every social class in northern society. Most often, however, when Union officers and soldiers employed the term “rough,” they perceived the men they described to be those from the bottom of the economic ladder who lived on the margins of society. With no education, no social status, and apparently no hope of acquiring either, these men recognized no boundaries to their behavior. Unable to support their families adequately, they could not earn recognition of their manhood through economic

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success. They proved their manhood through the ability to give and take pain. Under appropriate circumstances, as we will see, any man might have to fight. Roughs seemed to lack any quality to their manhood but fighting. Roughs were the counterpart in the Union Army to the type of men that historian Michael J. Bennett identified as composing the bulk of enlisted sailors in the Union Navy. The “Union Jacks” were disproportionately poor and working-class urban males from the east, over 45 percent of whom were immigrants. Cynical, unpatriotic, and hostile to religion, the typical sailor was “rough, dirty, and profane.” Their culture of aggressive masculinity revolved around constant teasing, mocking, joking, and a “bitter” and “relentless” sarcasm that contrasted with the sentimentality prevalent among the middle classes. They played cruel tricks, even on children and animals, and centered their expression of manliness on roughhousing. Sailors called their free fights “fistanna.” Bennett found that “sailors on ship and on land proved susceptible to massive and chaotic fights of enormous scope and violence.” Observers described the roughs in the army, who came from every geographic region of the north, and the sailors in the navy with similar adjectives: “rubbish,” “scum,” “offscourings,” “hard characters,” and “bad men.”12 In his portrayal of the Union Jacks, Bennett contrasts the Yankee sailor with the typical Union soldier, and in doing so accepts the conclusion of most Civil War scholars, who have portrayed the average Billy Yank as a man of virtue, self-control, and domesticity. This study challenges that conclusion. While certainly the roughs of the Union Army were not the majority, their presence was widespread. Additionally, there is good reason to question what self-control actually meant within the rubric of northern conceptions of manhood. The scholarly literature assumes that self-control was a coherent and fixed concept, whereas reality was more complicated in the lived practice of northern manhood. The roughs were not the only men in northern society who tested the boundaries of self-control, who embraced violent displays of physical prowess, or as we shall see, were guided by a code of honor. But northern men often interpreted violence through the lens of social class, and the violence of a man from the middle or upper classes could be accepted when similar behavior from a “rough” inspired condemnation of his manhood. Men who valued gentility or moral character did not necessarily reject demonstrations of physical prowess as legitimate expressions of manliness. At times they could enjoy elements of the more boisterous aspects of manhood, such as mild hazing and rough jokes. Samuel Cormany, who celebrated his domestic virtues and sought to exemplify upright Christian manhood, loved 72  |  Physical Prowess and Honor

to watch “slack sheet,” a hazing ritual common in the eastern armies. “This is fun! Sometimes quite rough,” he wrote in his diary as he described the “sidesplitting affair.” An undressed soldier was forced to stand on a large piece of heavy canvass and told to keep on his feet while two strong men jerked the canvass up and down before a crowd of hundreds. Cormany also tested his manhood in a boxing contest with another soldier in his regiment, identified only as Blair. After watching Blair box several others, Cormany “chafed” him in order to get a challenge to a match. “We had a lively time,” Cormany wrote proudly that evening. Cormany hit Blair on the left ear in a stunning blow that sent his adversary reeling against the rope; the fight ended when one of Cormany’s punches “lifted Blair’s head” and “the blood spurted from his nose.”13 Boxing was a symbol of the contested terms of manhood in the nineteenth-century north. The controversial sport highlighted different conceptions of manliness and intersected with class and cultural conflicts within the larger society. Immigrants to the urban northeast in the 1820s and 1830s from England and Ireland brought with them the violent and bloody sport of bare-knuckle boxing. As boxing grew in popularity among the ethnic working classes, it became a symbol to some in the middle and upper classes of the threats they faced from those who did not share their values. The sport produced a torrent of outrage. Its opponents sought to stamp it out through legislation and through constant attacks on the status of those who attended prizefights. Northerners who were proponents of self-control and upright morality portrayed the vast crowds who attended fights as vulgar, debased mobs that undermined civilized society in orgies of violence, base passion, drink, and gambling.14 Such rhetoric reflected more than just class bias; early prizefighters and their followers had a completely different understanding of manhood than did their critics. In the subculture of the urban streets, a man earned respect through his ability to give and take pain. Fighters represented the honor and manly prowess of the neighborhood, gang, or ethnic group for which they fought. John Morrissey, one of the ring’s great champions during the Civil War era, represented the type. Manual laborer, gang member, strong arm for a Tammany Hall chieftain, Morrissey earned a reputation in brutal street fights over turf, women, and gambling and was arrested several times for burglary and assault. His prizefights were more than sporting events or entertainment; they were part of the gang, neighborhood, and ethnic warfare within which his personal life was interconnected.15 But the public controversies regarding the boxing ring reflect the complicated nature of nineteenth-century manhood. Despite the thuggish image

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of Morrissey and his ilk, many men who possessed social status and genteel manners enjoyed boxing and recommended it for young men who sought physical training. Montgomery C. Meigs, the quartermaster general of the U.S. Army, encouraged his son to follow boxing and to incorporate it into his exercise program. Young John received letters from his mother and father advocating polished deportment, gentility, and intellectual culture; they encouraged “manly” sports as well. “If you get a chance, learn to box,” Montgomery wrote his son in 1859. “It is good to have a sound mind in a sound body.” The elder Meigs sent clippings of prizefights and praised pugilists for their exhibitions of courage and endurance. “This life is full of competition, and only those who are strong can hope to outrun their competitors,” he lectured.16 The debate over boxing took place within the context of a wider reform movement that advocated gymnasiums for exercise and physical education in the public schools. Those who advocated such programs were concerned that American men were becoming weak, soft, and sickly. One advocate of the gymnasium deplored the debility of young men, who possessed mental ability but lacked “bodily weight and proportion.” Boxing clubs and public gymnasiums would transform the youth of the United States; once young men were “wrapped in solid muscles of iron,” they would “stand erect in the dignity of perfect manhood.” A lengthy article in Atlantic Monthly linked excessive gentility to illness and claimed that true manliness combined the refinement of the gentleman with the physical prowess of the manual laborer. The gymnasium gave to the gentleman a “refined strength” that enabled him to best his social inferiors in athletic feats.17 Proponents of the gymnasium and programs of exercise that included boxing were careful, however, to disassociate their exercises and sport from rough manhood and debauchery. They strenuously argued that men who developed the physical side of their manhood would be less likely to engage in vice. They did not challenge the ideal of self-control but instead claimed that their program would reinforce this virtue. “The animal energy cannot and ought not to be suppressed; if debarred from its natural channel, it will force itself into unnatural ones. A vigorous life of the senses not only does not tend to sensuality in the objectionable sense, but helps to avert it,” claimed one writer. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper praised those who built gymnasiums as true Christian reformers. Exercise programs required the self-control to master elaborate training exercises designed to benefit both the mind and body. The modern gym effectively separated “physical culture from the filth of dissipation and debauchery.”18 74  |  Physical Prowess and Honor

The defenders of physical prowess recognized that many gentlemen associated both boxing and gymnasiums with rough men and vulgar crowds; they went to great lengths to demonstrate that physical development and athletic sports were in fact refined. It was not a given in northern society that physical culture was compatible with gentility; proponents felt called to disassociate themselves from lower-class sports, unthinking aggression, or rough vulgarity. One writer argued that athletic sports actually stimulated “delicacy in the choice of diction, precision in the accents of vocalization, and a certain indescribable dignity and grace of moral deportment.” Men who exercised were calmer and more self-possessed than those who did not: “So perishes all rowdyism!” Other writers emphasized that the modern gymnasium contained “every aid to cleanliness” and boasted “refined and gentlemanly” clients who developed agility and grace. “Brute bulk” and “monstrous arms and shoulders” were not the goals.19 At the same time, however, advocates of gymnasiums and boxing despised a type of gentility they associated with excessive luxury, indolence, and weakness. The place of physical prowess in a gentleman’s makeup was clearly a complicated issue for many nineteenth-century men who revealed great ambivalence about the proper combination of gentility and physical prowess in ideal manhood. These issues from the home front transferred to the theater of war. Writers for popular periodicals and the men who joined the army believed that the fighting and brutality of war would enhance men’s aggressiveness and powers of physical domination. Whether this was a positive development for American manhood was the subject of intense personal thought and social discussion. Some believed that American men would emerge from the war, as they did from athletic competition, with a loftier manhood that was both stern and refined. Because gentility could so easily degenerate into a weakening self-indulgence and luxury, military discipline would be good for U.S. youth. “It is a wholesome change for our young men of luxurious habits to leave for a while their lounge in the street, their tailors, and the solemn ritual of the dining table, with its ten courses and closing glass of Curacoa,” claimed a typical writer with this perspective, “for the city of tents, where they must sleep hardly, and brave the storm without an umbrella, and themselves wash their few flannel shirts.” Service in wartime would correct the degenerate manhood of both the upper and lower social classes. “The higher class has been steadily aping the extravagance of Europe without its refinement,—rich, fast, effeminate; and its lower type is seen in the Bowery boy, the most disgusting of all popular formations,—smart, brutal, and lawless.”20

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One volunteer officer in the Union Army who thoroughly considered the role of warfare in developing the proper balance between gentility and manly prowess was John W. DeForest, an established writer in the 1850s who would produce the well-known novel Miss Ravenel’s Conversion from Secession to Loyalty in 1867. DeForest believed that the United States needed gentlemen and that few could be found. His ideal gentleman was “a man of uncommon refinement—of good breeding and high ideals—but also a man of strength— of daring and courage and force.” DeForest deplored the “loss of ancient wildness and romance” in the modern United States. For this captain in a Connecticut infantry regiment, the battles of the Civil War combated the decadence of modern civilization and restored to northern men the strength and heroism they lacked. He gloried in the martial virtues produced through participation in warfare.21 On the other hand, aggression and violence had the potential to reduce men to brutes. One writer believed the war had purged northern men of selfishness and materialism and replaced them with the stern virtues necessary for true manliness: courage (“hard, muscular, manly courage”), fortitude, self-denial, and discipline. These hard virtues were incomplete, however, without softer ones. “Always with the highest courage there lives a great pity and tenderness. The brave man is always soft hearted,” he proclaimed. “The highest manhood dwells with the highest womanhood. So the heart of the nation has been touched and softened, while its muscles have been steeled.”22 The officers and soldiers fighting the war had the same concern that brutal killing would destroy their moral character and undermine the softer side of their manhood. DeForest, despite his celebration of war, reflected on the change in his men after their first two battles. “The men are not so good as they were once; . . . they drink harder and swear more and gamble deeper,” he wrote. His observation brought to mind a quote from British author Thomas de Quincey: “If homicide is habitually indulged in, it leads to immorality.” John Hartwell, who recalled scenes of his tender domestic circle to sustain himself through the war, maintained his moral integrity but knew the war had hardened him. He walked by hundreds of mangled corpses without the tender emotions such scenes initially inspired. “I could bayonette a man with less feeling than I would have had years ago to kill a favorite cat or dog,” he sadly told his wife.23 Some thoughtful commentators observed among their comrades over the course of the war an increased aggression that resulted in pervasive fistfights. Charles Mattocks, a genteel and snobbish officer from the 17th Maine, witnessed men deteriorate in a Confederate prison camp, where “fisticuffs” 76  |  Physical Prowess and Honor

became common. “It is indeed degrading for two officers to settle their troubles by pounding each other, yet it cannot be denied by the gravest philosophers that it is a more natural than refined method of proceeding,” he wrote in his diary. “Then, too, there is a sort of demoralizing influence in this manner of life that makes a man feel more like fighting than doing anything more useful or dignified. When an officer is, or thinks he is insulted, the only question he asks himself is whether he is physically superior to his opponent. Sometimes one is so far gone as to neglect this important precaution.”24 The disdain that so many Union soldiers expressed for the roughs must be placed in the context of Hartwell’s and Mattocks’s comments. Many men incorporated displays of physical prowess into their conception of the ideal man. Some men who valued gentility or moral character at times had to fight to prove their manhood. What was problematic about the roughs—whose appearance and behavior stamped them as men from the lowest economic classes—was their seeming lack of tender emotion (which suggested brutality), their constant need to fight (which implied degeneracy and demoralization), and their habitual aggression (which demonstrated an inability to restrain themselves). The historical record indicates that a few roughs posed a danger to every man around them. In their drunken violence they attacked innocent men and assaulted the officers and guards who tried to control them. Such men, as we will see in a later chapter, were swiftly and brutally punished. It would be misleading, however, to portray “roughs” as the only northern men who valued aggressive displays of physical prowess or who rejected aspects of the pervasive ideal of self-control. Bellard and his friends represent others. In addition, men from all social classes in the Union Army fought and even killed men who insulted or attacked them. What is instructive about these instances of violence was the support the perpetrators received from the army hierarchy, from other soldiers, and even from popular newspapers. The current scholarly depiction of northern men uniting around manhood models of virtuous self-control cannot explain why northern men who killed over a verbal insult got away with it. Scholars have overlooked almost completely another commonly held attribute of ideal manhood in northern society: honor. The common denominator between the fights of the men labeled as roughs and the fights of men from other social classes was honor. Honor, simply put, is when a man’s self-worth is based on public reputation and the respect of others. An insult to such a man is a shaming that requires a public vindication of worth. In an honor-based society, men cannot claim sta

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tus or self-worth unless the public or members of their peer group confirm their claim. In a culture of honor, Kenneth Greenberg argues, people value appearances. Members of these societies project an image through conduct and speech. When others respect those projections, a person is treated honorably. The concern of men in such a culture is not “some underlying reality but the acceptance of their projections.”25 The core of southern manhood in the nineteenth century was a public reputation for honor. Although there were dissenters from the dominant view, including southern evangelicals, the vast majority of southern men had united behind this ideal. Southern white men of all social classes desired honor, and southern communities maintained a commonly understood standard for honor and shame. Through specific cues, the community recognized when a man was shamed. A man had to defend his honor if he received a certain type of verbal insult or if another man disrespected the public presentation of his body—pulling a man’s nose being the most common example of this. Specific rituals enabled the community to recognize when a man satisfied the demands of honor. Indeed, according to Bertram Wyatt-Brown, the “larger male community sometimes determined who should fight and why.”26 But men from different social classes in the south manifested honor through different rituals. Gentlemen utilized a code of conduct governed by the duel: notes and the use of seconds for all negotiations. The duel was for gentlemen only, because supposedly only men of high social status had carefully cultivated the ability to channel and control passion. Gentlemen distinguished themselves through their persona of coolness and self-restraint on the dueling ground. Gentlemen would not duel social inferiors and instead used other sanctioned methods—such as horsewhipping—to “chastise” men beneath them who had insulted them. Rising young men from the professions—law, politics, and journalism—could launch their status as a gentleman and their claim to public leadership by fighting a duel. Such men often published their insults and their intentions to duel in order to establish before a wide audience that they possessed honor and were worthy companions for gentlemen. Southern men from the lowest socioeconomic classes also had honor, but they satisfied their peers’ demands through brutally violent rituals such as rough and tumble fighting.27 Scholars who write about honor in the United States tend to be southern historians who believe that honor had faded in the north by the time of the Civil War. Supposedly northerners were too mobile and diverse to develop a single standard around which everyone judged a man’s reputation; suppos78  |  Physical Prowess and Honor

edly the cultural influence of the puritan tradition and the reform movements of the antebellum period emphasized internal restraint and called for men to spurn the opinions of others. These scholars point to northern denunciations of southern duelists and negative descriptions of southern culture as evidence for their claims. They acknowledge that northerners often talked about honor, but claim that they instead meant something more akin to dignity or virtue.28 Northern society was indeed diverse, and as we have seen, part of its diversity was varied and conflicting ideals of manhood. A large component of men in northern society no longer thought in terms of honor, it is true, and the number of duels fought in the north declined over the course of the antebellum period. But it is also true that honor guided the manhood of significant numbers of northern men. Southern historians such as Edward Ayers and Bertram Wyatt-Brown ignore the flourishing culture of honor in the working-class neighborhoods of northern cities.29 Roughs centered their identity on honor. Outside of work, they formed a community of male camaraderie within which a man had to maintain a reputation through public displays of his prowess. A rough projected an image; if others did not ratify this image, he lost his honor. If his peers refused to acknowledge his status as an equal, he was shamed. The only way for such a man to restore his honor, writes historian Elliott Gorn, was through public acts of valor, especially violent retribution. Only such acts could prove one’s mettle and “expunge the sense of shame.” In the lives of the north’s poor and marginal, honor was the “acid test of personal worth in a male peer society.”30 Honor in the north was not limited to men with low social status, a fact that most historians of northern society and of Civil War soldiers have missed. The following discussion of affairs of honor in the Union Army will demonstrate the pervasive claims of honor over northern men and the widespread acceptance of the resulting acts of violence, especially when they were committed by men from the middle-to-upper social classes. Honor continued to function in a socially mobile society because men who sought advancement in the world believed that their reputation mattered. A stain on their character or rumors that other men did not treat them with respect might blast their chances of success. Men gained and kept reputations in local communities; this sense prompted John Hartwell’s comment that men would either return home with the same “honorable name” they had when they left for war, or they would not. Men who sought a wider sphere of action and who moved around the north’s vast geographic spaces likewise had a basis

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for their belief that reputation mattered. The communication revolution of the early nineteenth century created a large reading public with access to an endless stream of information about the business, civic, and political leaders of northern society. The imperatives of army service reinforced the need of some northern men to maintain a reputation either among the men of their regiments or among their brother officers. Communities received word of men’s behavior in the army through letters and even newspaper reports. Soldiers and officers knew that other men from their hometown wrote to parents, wives, sweethearts, and friends with news and gossip from the regiment. Whether a man maintained an “honorable name” in his regiment affected for good or evil the reputation he carried in his community. Additionally, slights on a man’s courage and honor could be devastating in a military environment where his reputation for these qualities was necessary to maintain a leadership position and to gain the promotion up the ranks that many northern volunteers and regular army officers sought. The cases of three officers, one young and socially prominent, another older and obscure, and a third a brigadier general, illustrate how the manhood of some northern men demanded recognition and validation from others. John Rodgers Meigs engaged in a “rough and tumble” fight at West Point in 1862 to defend his honor. The twenty-year-old faced incredible pressure from his parents to achieve honor and glory in the eyes of the world. Letters from every member of his family made it clear to him that nothing less than graduation at the head of the class and public prominence on a national scale would be acceptable. His worth would be measured by the reputation he secured. When demerits piled up on John’s record, his aunt wrote him, “The world would not ask whether you were dismissed for leaving your wardrobe in disorder, your coat unbuttoned and such like, or whether it was for dishonesty, drunkenness, or bad morals, you would be disgraced for life.”31 Meigs imbibed this family code and became sensitive to any slight on his personal honor. In his first year at West Point he complained that his lieutenant did not grant him proper military and personal respect. Two and a half years later, when Meigs was an acting assistant professor teaching calculus and surveying, another incident involving his desire for honor led to his court-martial. One afternoon during drill, Meigs did not keep dressed in the line during a wheeling maneuver. Cadet-Captain William Marye spoke harshly to Meigs, and without prefacing his name with the “Mr.” that was required by West Point regulations, told him to keep the line dressed. Meigs turned his head and looked directly at Marye. Marye ordered Meigs to cast 80  |  Physical Prowess and Honor

his eyes to the right. Marye later claimed he had never spoken to Meigs before that moment, although Meigs wrote his father that Marye’s “manner to me has been rather insolent ever since I came here.”32 Meigs was furious; Marye had spoken to him in a way “I could not tolerate from anyone.” Marye’s tone and manner had been “rough” and “offensive” and Meigs supposed he had been “intentionally insulting.” At first he determined to fight Marye only if the cadet-captain reported him but with the encouragement of friends decided that he could not submit to the treatment he had received. A fact that was particularly important to Meigs, as it would be to men guided by a sense of honor, was that other cadets had noticed how Marye had spoken to him. Meigs hoped to get an explanation or apology. He was ready, but not eager, for a fight. “I do not like fighting, and I expected to be whipped in less than 5 minutes, as he was a strong, active fellow, which I am not,” Meigs admitted.33 At six o’clock on the morning of May 17, 1862, Marye awakened to find Meigs and a cadet from New York named James Reid in his room. Marye, still half asleep, heard Meigs say something about insult and explanation. “If you are not satisfied, you can have all the satisfaction you want,” Marye replied. Marye jumped up and began dressing. Meigs asked if he wished to ask for a friend. Marye sent for Cadet-Captain James Rollins. From this point on, Meigs and Marye communicated only through their seconds. Reid inquired how the two men should fight. Rollins conferred with Marye and replied, “A rough and tumble.” As the seconds watched, the conflict commenced. The two cadets choked each other and struck heavy blows repeatedly until the floor was covered and the walls and ceiling spattered with blood. Finally the brutalized Meigs admitted he “was unable to strike another blow.”34 Marye’s choice of the rough and tumble was an intriguing one. The phrase implied a style of fighting where opponents were allowed free reign without interference until one of the parties was incapacitated. In the eighteenth century, men from all classes chose this method to resolve affairs of honor, but by the late eighteenth century, dueling replaced hand-to-hand combat among gentlemen, while rough and tumble fighting was generally confined to the southern backwoods. In this marginal region, according to Elliott Gorn, “unflinching toughness” was the “touchstone of masculinity.” Participants in a rough and tumble sought to inflict maximum disfigurement; the equivalent of a knockout punch was gouging out an opponent’s eye.35 After his recovery from the fight, which required hospitalization for both cadets, Meigs was court-martialed. His explanations for his conduct reveal much about his conception of manhood and honor. Meigs believed that

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Marye’s manner to him at drill was an intentional personal insult, especially the omission of the respectful “Mr.” that was due to every cadet. No true gentleman could tolerate such disrespect. Meigs claimed that he went to Marye’s room only to ask if Marye meant to insult him (an explanation the court found unbelievable since Meigs had brought a friend with him). Once Marye offered to give him satisfaction, however, Meigs had no other alternative. “I was compelled by his conduct there in the room, to fight him,” Meigs told the court. “Or else be branded with the imputation that I was afraid of him.” Meigs assured his father that he had acted on the “only course possible to pursue” and bragged about his conduct during the fight, when he had established his physical prowess. “I was very much surprised and rejoiced to see how badly I used him up, as I expected it to be the other way entirely. He will not be able to see any ladies for a month and may carry my mark on his broken nose as a remembrance of his impudence to the day of his death.”36 The court found Meigs and Reid guilty of conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline and sentenced Meigs to one year’s suspension from West Point. But Meigs would not have to serve this sentence. The members of the court petitioned the reviewing authorities and asked for mitigation “in consideration of his general good conduct and standing in the Military Academy.” The military bureaucracy sent mixed signals about Meigs’s conduct. The secretary of war remitted the sentences in one breath and in the other proclaimed that his leniency should not be considered a justification of the young men’s conduct: “The course of these Cadets is inconsistent with the respect, forbearance, and self command which are essential in an officer.” Meigs graduated first in his class on June 11, 1863, and was assigned to the Corps of Engineers. He was shot to death on the evening of October 3, 1864, near Dayton, Virginia, while returning to camp with two orderlies. His father found some small measure of comfort in the honor John achieved and the “name” he made before he died.37 John Rodgers Meigs fought brutally to repay a perceived insult and defend his honor. He had high social status and education, and he valued moral character (he avoided drinking and swearing).38 His habitual interaction with other men did not involve tests of manhood based on fighting, yet his one fight with Marye had much in common with the frequent fights of the roughs in the 1st Nebraska. The role honor played in the fights of the roughs was generally ignored. When society recognized a man as a gentleman, his rough behavior was understood, tolerated, or, as in Meigs’s case, forgiven. Meigs and Marye followed forms of the code duello in their fight, using friends as seconds and speaking of satisfaction. The records of Union courts82  |  Physical Prowess and Honor

martial reveal cases where officers simply killed men who challenged their honor. In both cases examined here, the officers shot unarmed men and were not punished. In the first case, that of Bernard McMahon, the judge advocate general expressly sanctioned and vindicated his behavior. In the second, that of Brig. Gen. Jefferson C. Davis, soldiers who served in his army as well as the leading periodicals of the northern press defended both his action and his manhood. The result of these cases would be inexplicable without a widespread understanding among northern men that a gentleman valued his honor and reputation above his life. Any challenge to honor that took place in front of others required a response. Few northern men dueled, but they would fight and kill for honor. Bernard J. McMahon was a soldier most of his life. The Ohio native left home with two brothers to fight in the Mexican War, but he alone survived. He rose from private to sergeant and served in various garrisons across the western territories. After his discharge, he made his way to California and worked in a sulfur mine. When Fort Sumter fell, McMahon wanted to use his army experience in the Union cause. He went to San Francisco and organized a company that was duly mustered into the federal service in August 1861. McMahon was chagrined to discover that his unit would never see active service because of its distance from the main theaters of the war. He resigned his commission and went east in search of a regiment that would fight the rebels. In February 1862 he was commissioned 1st lieutenant in the 71st Pennsylvania. His Civil War career was successful for the first year of his new commission. He rose to the rank of captain, served at times as the acting brigade quartermaster, had charge of the organization of the ambulance corps for Sedgwick’s Division, and commanded his company at Fredericksburg.39 Despite his obvious military talents, McMahon was not accepted by the other line officers of his regiment. They never let him forget that he was a stranger in a unit recruited mostly from Philadelphia. McMahon testified that he experienced a “kind of social ostracism” and suffered under what he termed “petty spite and jealousy” until he became quite uncomfortable and depressed. The worst treatment came at the hands of Capt. Andrew McManus, an officer in the 69th Pennsylvania and a good friend of McMahon’s enemies in the Seventy-first. McManus began to circulate the rumor that McMahon had stated he would not cross over to Fredericksburg again even if ordered to do so. This was a devastating charge of cowardice that challenged McMahon’s reputation as a brave and manly soldier. McMahon responded as a gentleman would; he sent McManus a private note denying the charge. “I am not

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aware of ever saying so, in fact I could not dare so much I have come a long way to give my life if needs be for the Cause which we are all fighting,” he wrote. “You will be so kind as to remember a charge of that kind sometimes causes a great deal of mischief.” McManus’s reply was brief and harsh: “Anything that I have said concerning the language that you use in your note as a man of honor I am responsible for. The words I throw back on your own head with the following addition that I believe you to be a coward.”40 McMahon reeled under the malevolence of this note, but determined to ignore the insult. He wrote a brief reply to McManus: “Your opened note has been received and its contents noted. I am really sorry you have so far stepped away out of your usual way and even then to design to write to a Coward.” McMahon for two days avoided McManus and shunned the places he frequented. The Californian was determined to master the natural anger induced by such treatment. “My education as a soldier—that severest mental discipline which has become an instinct with me in the progress of long years—came to my aid and effectually quelled any rebellious thought which might naturally have been evoked by such language,” McMahon later claimed. McMahon knew well the Articles of War. McManus had violated the 24th, which prohibited officers from using reproachful or provoking speeches to another. McMahon would not respond by violating the 25th article, which precluded the sending of a challenge to a duel.41 For some reason, McManus seemed determined to provoke the outsider. On the night of May 27, 1863, two days after the exchange of notes, McManus visited several officers of the Seventy-first in a tent located next to that of McMahon’s. For over an hour, McManus loudly and roundly abused McMahon, who lay listening in his own tent. McManus frequently described McMahon as a “loafer and a coward.” Some officers of the Seventy-first laughed; a young lieutenant defended McMahon and then left in disgust. The verbal onslaught against McMahon continued. Finally he could stand it no longer. McMahon strode into the tent with a pistol and asked McManus if he had been talking about him. McManus, sitting in a chair, looked boldly up and said, “I have, you are a coward and a loafer.” McMahon lifted the weapon and fired.42 “Who among you gentlemen could have remained calm and collected under circumstances of such atrocious aggravation,” McMahon asked the officers at his court-martial for murder. “Let the first stone be cast by him who could retain his sanity in face of the gross and heinous provocation to which I was subjected. A moment, and phrenzy, delirium, a whirlwind of passion, possessed me; reason tottered and became dethroned; and the brute 84  |  Physical Prowess and Honor

impulse predominated with the extermination of a slanderer.” Only a man of honor would lose his self-control over a verbal insult the way that McMahon did, yet he did not try to defend his actions using the language of honor. He had not killed his adversary in a duel; he had shot an unarmed man. After his passion passed, McMahon was “struck with horror at the commission of such a deed; it is opposed to my natural instincts; opposed to my religious convictions.” In his written statement, McMahon placed the error of his deed before God rather than the members of the court: “No earthly tribunal has terrors for me; that Eye which seeth in secret knows of my great sorrow and contrition. . . . God knows my heart. . . . He knows that if by laying down my poor blasted life I could call back the dead to life, how willingly this moment would that life be lain down for Andrew McManus, the unfortunate victim of my insanity.”43 The officers at his court-martial found McMahon guilty of murder and sentenced him to be shot. Before the sentence could be carried out, the Army of the Potomac moved to meet Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania. When the Battle of Gettysburg began, McMahon was a prisoner under guard. He procured a gun and cartridge box, went to the front under heavy fire from the enemy, and asked to fight. During the battle, Colonel Richard Penn Smith, the commander of the Seventy-first, reported to his superiors, “He acted the part of a soldier and a man.” The reprieve from execution gave McMahon’s friends time to appeal his case and ask for his pardon. Smith sent the case up the chain of command. General George Gordon Meade, commander of the Army of the Potomac, recommended commutation. Testimonials poured in from prominent men such as Major Generals Oliver O. Howard and John Sedgwick. It would be up to judge advocate general Joseph Holt to make the final recommendation to the president.44 Holt was a fiery Unionist from Kentucky who had served briefly as secretary of war during the waning days of the Buchanan administration and who had endeavored to oppose secessionists in the federal bureaucracy and in his home state. Lincoln appointed Holt judge advocate general in September 1862, a position he held until 1875. Holt organized the Bureau of Military Justice in June 1864. A man with extensive legal experience and fame as an orator, Holt governed his conduct according to a strict sense of propriety and duty. He cared deeply about his own reputation for upright character and integrity.45 Holt briefly summarized the facts of the incident before delving into the general character of McMahon. McMahon had never been guilty of cowardice, Holt concluded; instead, his character as a soldier and man was that of

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a gentleman. He had “excellent character,” and was a “faithful soldier” and “brave and useful.” McManus’s repeated accusations of cowardice were inexplicable and unjustified. “This course of base and unmannerly calumny was pursued not only without justification but without the shadow of excuse,” Holt proclaimed. “Under these circumstances the deceased must be regarded as having wantonly and wickedly thrown his life away.” Holt would do more in his statement of the case than recommend a full pardon; he would offer McMahon vindication. “The outrage which [McManus] committed on the sensibilities and character of the accused would scarcely have been more aggravated had he applied a horsewhip to his shoulders,” he wrote in his report. “Had the accused borne longer than he did, without resentment, the brutal contumely and persecution to which he was subjected, he would have shown a want of spirit that would have totally unfitted him to confront the public enemy.” Holt admitted there was no legal justification for McMahon’s action, but more powerful arguments for clemency existed in the “unendurable provocation,” the “defense of his honor and reputation,” and his gallant conduct at Gettysburg, “which was at once a vindication from the slanders of his enemy, and an expiation to his country.” Lincoln issued the pardon on September 9, 1863.46 This is one of several cases in this study’s sample where Holt, or the officers sitting on the original courts-martial case, allowed a man who was perceived as a gentleman to assault and even kill one who challenged his honor. If an officer could prove that other men recognized him as a gentleman—whether through moral behavior, outstanding courage, a usual demeanor of self-control, or education and refinement—other officers and the military hierarchy would sanction the violence used by such a man to defend his honor. Ironically, a man who regulated his own behavior and displayed self-control in all other situations was freed to unleash passionate, uncontrolled aggression in situations where his honor was questioned. In the case of McMahon and McManus, the offense had been a verbal attack on McMahon’s reputation for courage. Because a reputation for an upright character was an essential mark of a gentleman, any aspersion on a man’s character was devastating. For northern men of honor, to challenge a man’s reputation was the equivalent of a physical assault. The only response of a true man was self-defense. Another important element in these incidents, as we saw in the case of Bradley and Vimont in the last chapter, was the ungentlemanly behavior of the man who challenged the character of the gentleman. In the mind of those witnessing and then judging these cases, this man would be the guilty party who, in Holt’s words, had “wantonly and wickedly thrown his life away.”47 86  |  Physical Prowess and Honor

Courts did apply this standard to black men in the army as well. Historian Joseph Glatthaar, in his research on the U.S. Colored Troops, found a courtmartial that exonerated a sergeant who deliberately shot a man who had intercepted his letters, convinced his wife he was dead, and then seduced her. This was a devastating assault on the man’s honor. The court acquitted the sergeant because of the “deadly and unpardonable offense given.” In remarks reminiscent of Holt’s comment that McManus deserved death for his offense, this court stated that “a man that wantonly violates the domestic relations of a soldier by seducing his wife while he is absent in the service of his country, deserves the heaviest punishment known to law.”48 In the most famous incident in the Union Army of one man killing another over a personal insult, the offender was never tried in a military or civil court. The case of Brig. Gen. Jefferson C. Davis and Brig. Gen. William “Bull” Nelson highlights the complicated northern attitudes regarding honor and rough manhood. Davis and Nelson were men who were separated from the roughs only by social status; their conception of manhood was otherwise the same. Unlike McMahon, neither possessed an unblemished character. Thin, sickly Davis hailed from Indiana and had years of service in the regular army, where his mentors had regularly solved disputes with fisticuffs. The giant Nelson (over six feet four inches tall and weighing more than three hundred pounds) was the product of a well-connected Kentucky family and transferred from the navy to the army when the war began in order to help organize troops in his home state. Genteel in some ways, such as in his love for books and opera, Nelson was a rough in others. Like Davis he cursed incessantly and fought other men frequently. Neither was concerned with the genteel desire to avoid offending others and to establish harmonious social intercourse. Davis was “blunt” and “recklessly insensitive.” Nelson was “arrogant and abusive,” a notorious tyrant. Neither man controlled his passions. Although they frequently insulted others, neither man could endure an insult.49 The two generals converged on Louisville in September 1862 when Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell sent portions of the Army of the Ohio to Kentucky to meet the Confederate invasion of the state. Nelson was in command and preparing a defense of the city when Davis arrived. He ordered Davis to organize and prepare a hodgepodge of local citizens. Davis apparently did little. Nelson called Davis to headquarters located in the fashionable hotel Galt House and took him to task. The two men exchanged heated words and Nelson relieved Davis from duty and ordered him to report to Cincinnati to Maj. Gen. Horatio G. Wright, commanding the Department of Ohio. The incident furthered bad blood already existing between Nelson and the Indi

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ana men in Buell’s army. Everyone knew Nelson despised Hoosiers for being descendants of the south’s “poor trash.” The tyrannical general had cursed and struck with his sword some volunteers from Indiana in a previous campaign. Indiana Gov. Oliver P. Morton declared that Nelson’s conduct to Davis was an insult to the state.50 Davis was back in Louisville five days later. By this time Buell and the rest of the Army of the Ohio had arrived in the city. On September 29, Davis was in the great hall of the Galt House with Governor Morton and his staff. Nelson entered the room and walked toward the group; Davis moved forward and confronted him. The crucial moment occurred when Nelson shouted, “Go away, you damned puppy! I don’t want anything to do with you.” Davis then “insolently” flipped at Nelson’s face a crumpled piece of paper he had been holding. Nelson slapped Davis, who “clenched his fist” and “demanded an apology.” Nelson slapped him again, “cursing him for a coward.” Davis immediately walked off and procured a pistol from a bystander who was an old friend from Indiana. He followed Nelson out of the great hall and caught up with him at the foot of a stairway. “Not another step farther,” he said as he stopped a few feet from the mammoth Nelson. “General Nelson, take care of yourself.” Nelson turned toward Davis. Davis fired. The bullet entered Nelson’s chest. Within an hour he was dead.51 The immediate reaction from most of the men in the Army of the Ohio, many of whom had been subjected to Nelson’s violent outbursts, was celebration. The 105th Ohio was one of several regiments that expressed wholesale delight in outbursts of cheering for Davis. The modern historian of the Army of the Ohio found in his research that the “killing was met with expressions of almost universal satisfaction.” John Bross, of the 88th Illinois, reported, “Almost everybody says served him right.” “Every man in the 22nd [Indiana] deeply sympathized with General Davis, and believed him fully justified in the course he pursued,” wrote one member of the regiment. Some men had mixed feelings but did not condemn Davis. Nelson was a “rough old customer, and but very little of the true gentleman about him, but he was brave, and a good general, a fighting man, for these qualities I mourn his loss,” said one soldier. “But I suppose he gave Davis sufficient cause.”52 Davis had been immediately arrested, but events and the decided lack of outrage combined to free him. The same morning as the shooting the Army of the Ohio experienced a brief period of chaos when Buell received an order that placed Gen. George H. Thomas in command. Buell was soon reinstated, but he had to move his army out of Louisville immediately to meet the Confederate invasion and could not spare the time or the manpower to assemble 88  |  Physical Prowess and Honor

a court-martial. He left Davis in Louisville. Gen. Wright released Davis on October 13 and telegrammed the War Department that he could not hold Davis any longer without charges. Wright proclaimed that Davis had acted in “self-defense.” Davis returned to duty on October 21. A grand jury in Louisville indicted Davis for manslaughter on October 27, but the politically influential Governor Morton of Indiana, probably through a meeting with Lincoln and Stanton that took place right after Nelson’s death, secured for Davis the able representation of James Speed. Lincoln’s friend and future attorney general was able to postpone the case for almost two years until it was removed from the docket.53 Modern readers have difficulty understanding how one general could kill another with impunity. Circumstances, such as the pressing Confederate invasion and the subsequent death at the Battle of Perryville of the Kentuckians who might have pressed the issue, played a small role. Political expediency mattered as well. Lincoln needed Oliver P. Morton, the Republican governor of a Democratic state, to maintain Indiana troops in the field.54 Another important explanation, however, is that many northerners did not view the killing as intolerable and did not define it as murder. Commonly held beliefs about manhood and honor sanctioned Davis’s act. According to a widespread understanding of manhood, Davis had no choice but to act as he did, a belief Davis expressed immediately after he killed Nelson. “I had to do it. I belong to the regular army and not to resent an insult of that kind would have been to make me shunned by all my brother officers,” Davis told his friends. “I must either call him to account or be as the dog that sleeps under my father’s floor. I regret the necessity, but could not have done otherwise.” Newspapers across the north accurately reported the major facts of the case and defended Davis. “General Nelson treated General Davis with unbearable insult,” reported Harper’s Weekly. The Cincinnati Gazette provided a portrait of the heinous deeds and character of Nelson to justify Davis’s action. “Men who came within the range of his caprice were compelled to have their manhood crushed to the endurance of the foulest insult and brutality,” the article claimed. Nelson was “unbearably rough, arrogant, insulting, ungentlemanly, profane, and even obscene.” The “character of the man” proved “how richly, according to present lights, he deserved the sudden fate he met.” This article did for Davis what Joseph Holt had done for Bernard McMahon: paint the contrast between a gentleman and a malevolent accuser who deserved death.55 The support Davis received within the Army of the Ohio and from the northern press, particularly periodicals such as Harper’s Weekly that represented the ideals of middle-class gentility, demonstrates that elements of

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northern society sanctioned ideals of honor. But not all voices joined in the chorus of approval or justification. Honor was a contested term of manhood, and it is equally true that other northerners rejected its demands. They reacted with horror both to Davis’s actions and to the fact that he was never prosecuted. Many men in the north—the “restrained men” of Amy Greenberg’s study, for example—were men whose self-worth was not dependent on their reputation. They were men of self-control who could walk away from a fight secure in their internalized sense of worth. In their eyes, men who acted like Davis were unmanly. Northern men who were not guided by honor spoke a different language, which reflected their inability to understand what motivated the actions of men of honor. Where men of honor believed Nelson’s behavior was an “unbearable insult,” soldier Levi Ross believed the “provocation was trivial.” Men whose self-worth was not based on reputation found no insult to be unbearable; words to them were not the equivalent of a horsewhipping that they were to Holt. Those who did not adhere to honor actually feared what it did to other men since they identified honor with a loss of self-control. The New York Times referred to Davis’s act as a “terrible outrage” and called for “a swift and relentless penalty”; otherwise the army would “degenerate into a mob, where unbridled rapine bears sole sway.” Other papers overtly linked Davis to the roughs and their unacceptable manhood. An article in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper pointed out the fact that three Union officers had recently died at the hands of their fellow officers. The writer demanded that the War Department stringently enforce the regulations designed to stop such behavior and “deter officers of our army from giving way to unbridled passions and drawing weapons on each other, degrading men of rank and education to the level of the ruffians of the worst portions of great cities.”56 Nineteenth-century cultural views of manliness were indeed complex and nuanced. The drunkenness and fighting of the roughs was a sign of savagery that brought their manhood into question, yet other men received plaudits when they vindicated their manhood by killing their adversaries. This discrepancy reflected more than competing ideals of manly behavior—it was also a symptom of the tendency among many northerners to conflate social status with manhood. Yet contested conceptions of physical prowess and honor cut across social class and contributed to the dissonance in public discussion of violence in the Union Army. Roughs centered their manhood on displays of physical prowess and dominance over other men. They lived by a code of honor; other men had to accept the image they projected. If another man did not, immediate retribu90  |  Physical Prowess and Honor

tion and a public vindication were required. For some men on the economic margins of northern society, aggression and fighting was a way of life. Men of education and social status likewise drank and fought on a regular basis. They tested other men habitually through verbal assaults and challenges. They governed their conduct by honor and expected other men to validate their claims. When such men fought or even killed other men, the public mind was divided. Some accepted their display of honor; others looked on in horror. Other men incorporated physical prowess but not honor into their conception of the ideal man. They enjoyed boxing and athletic competition as a way to demonstrate their manly prowess, but in their personal interactions with other men they were careful to avoid fights and never measured their manhood by testing their relative strength. They would not retaliate if a man insulted them; comfortable with their own sense of dignity, they did not view an insult as a public shaming. The confusion over honor made difficult the task of assessing the claims of men to be gentlemen. Bernard McMahon and Jefferson C. Davis killed unarmed men who insulted them. The deed hurt Davis’s career and sullied his reputation in some quarters; he never obtained the promotions others did, and ended the war with the same rank he held in 1861. Despite the fact that all men believed they could recognize gentlemanly behavior when they saw it, there were actions and circumstances open to interpretation. And regardless of whether men could agree on what a gentleman was, apparently most could agree that to be considered a gentleman was important. Dishonorable dismissal from the service threatened to blast a man’s status as a gentleman on the home front and undermine his prospects in civilian life. Men in the Union Army lived under Articles of War that assumed officers were men of honor. Those found guilty of violating the 83rd Article of War or those who dueled were dismissed from the service. The purpose of this punishment—a product of the Revolutionary generation, when officers were in fact gentlemen—was shame. “All men possessed honor,” historian Caroline Cox wrote of the officers and soldiers in the Continental Army. “It was a gentleman’s particularly refined sense of honor that made corporal punishment too degrading for him. In punishing soldiers, corporal and other kinds of public punishment were used because everyone knew that soldiers had honor and reputation to lose.”57 Despite all that had changed since the Revolution, northern men still talked about honor. This concept remained central to manly identity. To further explore what honor meant to Civil War northerners, we turn to the formal challenges to duels they issued and the duels that actually took place in the Union Army during the war years.

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“If You Will Go with Me outside the Lines”

4

Dueling and the Degenerate Affair of Honor

In June 1863, Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside was in command of the Department of the Ohio and his headquarters were located in Cincinnati. Several captains who served on his staff shared an office in departmental headquarters. On June 18, Capt. Charles Gordon Hutton was seated at a desk in the front of the room when Capt. J. M. Cutts entered. “You have no right to any desk in this office. You are not on duty,” Cutts told Hutton in an abrupt manner. “I beg your pardon, Capt. Cutts,” Hutton replied. “I have a right to any desk which is unoccupied.” “You have no right to my desk and if you take it again I will report you,” Cutts responded. “You report me? I beg you to understand I do not acknowledge your right to report me. I am not accustomed to that mode of settling difficulties which may arise among gentlemen.” “It may not be the mode among blacklegs and bullies,” Cutts retorted. “Stop, Sir. Do you apply those remarks to me?” Hutton asked. Cutts never answered this question, although Hutton repeated it at least once. “I shall notice these remarks at a proper time and place and I decline having any further conversation with you at present,” Hutton finally told the now silent Cutts.1 Two hours later, in his own room, Hutton wrote Cutts a note requesting an apology and an express retraction of the expression “blacklegs and bullies.” Hutton informed Cutts that he presumed the remarks had been directed at him. The purpose of this note was to give Cutts an opportunity to disclaim any intention of insulting Hutton. Cutts did not take the opportunity given him. Very late in the evening, Cutts returned Hutton’s note with an endorsement that stated he refused to consider the subject.

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According to the code of honor by which Hutton lived, injury now had been added to insult.2 Hutton considered his options. He could not file charges against Cutts since the matter was personal and not official. Another option, he thought, was “to use my hand at the first opportunity.” This, however, would create a “public scandal derogatory to private gentlemen, still more so to an officer.” He could send Cutts a challenge to a duel, but this would violate the 25th Article of War. Yet to do nothing was unthinkable. If he submitted to the indignity, he would be “unworthy of my claim to be considered an officer and a gentleman.” The challenge had to be sent. “Under the very gross insult inflicted upon me by Capt. Cutts, his refusal to apologize, or retract the expressions made use of, I had no other course to pursue,” Hutton decided. He had spent many years residing in foreign countries, and he “regarded as the only mode of settling difficulties when gross insults had taken place, the usual recognized code of duello.”3 The next morning Hutton wrote another note: “My note of last evening requesting an apology for and retraction of the insulting expression applied to me in our discussion of yesterday having been returned . . . I presume that you are willing to afford me the satisfaction to which I am entitled and which I now formally demand. This will be handed you by my friend Major Cutting who is authorized to receive any communication from you and to make all necessary arrangements for a meeting.” Maj. William Cutting carried this note, in an open envelope, to Capt. Cutts at ten in the morning. Cutts read it and acknowledged its receipt. “Do you have anything further?” Cutting asked. “I will take action on this, or respond to it at the proper time and place,” Cutts responded.4 As soon as Cutting left the room, Cutts forwarded the note to Major General Burnside and asked him to investigate the subject. Burnside did so, and preferred charges against both Hutton and Cutting. The cases against the two officers should have been open and shut. Hutton pled guilty; the prosecution had the note he had written. Cutting pled not guilty and claimed that he did not know the contents of the note, an absurd statement contradicted by several facts: the wording in the note that Cutting was “authorized to receive any communication,” the open envelope when it was delivered, and Cutting’s manner to Cutts.5 During his trial, Hutton admitted he sent a challenge, but asked the court to consider whether he had any other option. He insisted his behavior had been consistent with that of a true gentleman who had been insulted. Burnside, the only defense witness, confirmed that Hutton was a real gentleman. 94  |  Dueling and the Degenerate Affair of Honor

“In point of subordination, decorum and bearing in his official intercourse, I don’t think I have ever seen any one excelling him,” he told the court. The general did not have such kind words for Cutts. Many officers on his staff had complained about Cutts, who possessed an “overbearing and abrupt manner.” Cutts, he implied, was not a gentleman. “He has the reputation of not being decorous in his intercourse with his brother staff officers,” Burnside testified.6 Hutton believed that the insult he had received from such a man constituted extenuating circumstances. He suggested in his defense statement that if the court agreed, the language used in the 25th Article of War gave the court some discretion over his sentence. They could decide, he claimed, that the circumstances of the case did not warrant the penalty set forth in the article—to be cashiered.7 The officers presiding over the courts-martial of both Hutton and Cutting clearly sought for a way to get around the Articles of War. They found Cutting not guilty, a verdict that reviewing authorities found unfathomable. In Hutton’s case, the court took three days to investigate the question of whether the 25th Article of War gave them discretion over the sentence. The judge advocate submitted a several-page opinion that the article did prescribe and direct the punishment. The 25th Article of War read: “No officer or soldier shall send a challenge to another officer or soldier, to fight a duel, or accept a challenge if sent, upon pain, if a commissioned officer, of being cashiered.” The court listened politely and then ignored the opinion. The court entered into the record its decision that the article “leaves with the Court a discretion as to the penalty to be inflicted.” Hutton was sentenced to be reprimanded by the president of the United States.8 When the case reached the judge advocate general, Joseph Holt, he rejected this action by the court. Writers on military law, he told the secretary of war, generally agreed that there was only one way to construe the article. “It is believed that this is the first instance on record, in which a sentence other than cashiering has followed a conviction of having sent a challenge to fight a duel,” he wrote. “And if approved will probably establish a precedent whereby the purpose of the law may be defeated.” Stanton agreed and dismissed Hutton from the service.9 As the Hutton episode indicates, many officers found it difficult to condemn a gentleman who resorted to a challenge in order to defend his honor. The Union Army had to contend with more such gentlemen than previous historians have recognized. During the Civil War, at least two duels were fought in the Union Army and two young cadets at West Point engaged in a

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“rough and tumble” fight that followed the forms of the code duello.10 Thirtyone men were charged in general courts-martial with sending a written challenge or issuing a verbal challenge to fight a duel. The circumstances in most of these cases were nearly identical, but only twelve of the men were found guilty.11 Officers at the company and regimental level handled untold numbers of challenges and stopped duels before they got started. These incidents never made the official records of the Union Army because the men involved were never formally charged. Hints and accounts of such incidents are scattered in the surviving letters and diaries of Civil War soldiers, but historians have mistakenly viewed them as aberrations rather than recognizing them as part of a pattern of behavior among northern men that marked their sense of honor.12 It is time to uncover the affairs of honor in the Union Army and consider what they tell us about northern conceptions of manhood. We have already seen that honor guided some northern men, especially the “roughs,” but that others rejected honor as a guide to manly behavior. Honor among men in the north is sometimes difficult for modern scholars to recognize because there were various methods that men employed to defend honor. In the south, as discussed in the last chapter, well-defined rituals sanctioned by the community governed men’s behavior. The duel was reserved for gentlemen and rising young professionals, who carefully followed prescribed forms regarding the insult, the exchange of notes, the duties of the seconds, and the persona required for the dueling ground. In the southern backwoods, rough and tumble fighting was the mode for affairs of honor. Northern men tended to avoid the formal rituals of dueling. Instead they engaged in altercations that borrowed forms and phrases from the duel. Were these altercations affairs of honor? Often they were. Although some northern men believed that an affair of honor required strict adherence to the formal code duello, other men defended honor through informal challenges to fight with either fists or weapons. Northerners did not adhere to a single standard that prescribed how honorable men should behave if they were insulted. What made honor in the north even more complicated was the fact that some northern men used the language of dueling without any intent to defend honor. Under these conditions, men did not always recognize the behavior of other men as honorable, an inherently frustrating situation for a man of honor seeking public vindication. Military courts reflected the confusion that was apparent in the wider society. Officers had not reached a consensus about what actually constituted an affair of honor or how honorable men should achieve vindication in the 96  |  Dueling and the Degenerate Affair of Honor

eyes of the public or their peers when they had been insulted. This problem exemplifies how the contested terms of manhood in the Civil War north made the implementation of discipline and military justice difficult in the Union Army. Three Articles of War encompassed the official prohibitions against dueling. The 25th stated that no officer or soldier should “send” a challenge to fight a duel or “accept a challenge if sent.” The 26th Article laid out a series of regulations designed to discourage duels. Under its provisions, any officer who knew about an intended duel and did not stop it, or any man who promoted a duel, served as a second, or carried a challenge, would be prosecuted and given the same punishment as the man who issued the challenge. The 28th Article required the punishment of any man who upbraided another for refusing a challenge. This last article sought to absolve men from the social pressure that was inherent in the duel. It announced that all officers and soldiers were “hereby discharged from any disgrace or opinion of disadvantage which might arise from their having refused to accept challenges, as they will only have acted in obedience to the laws, and done their duty as good soldiers who subject themselves to discipline.”13 These articles were a product of the numerous duels fought by officers in the U.S. Army and Navy in the early years of the republic. Foreign officers during the American Revolution had introduced the duel to the United States, and its codes had found the strongest adherents among the nascent U.S. professional officer corps, prominent politicians in the north and south, and southern gentlemen. Dueling took root in the culture of honor that flourished within these groups. In the early republic, before the birth of formal political parties, politicians in both the north and south acted according to the dictates of honor. A man who sought or held office in this time period asserted his claim to be a gentleman and a leader. He was dependent on the public to validate his personal honor and to maintain his public career. In the personal realm of early nineteenth-century politics, a man’s reputation was everything. An assault on his character by a political opponent required a demonstration of honor that vindicated his character and justified his claim to leadership. The rituals of the duel provided men with this opportunity.14 Affairs of honor did not necessarily end in a duel; the purpose of the rituals was to give each participant an opportunity to demonstrate his honor in a manner that the public would acknowledge. According to historian Joanne B. Freeman, any man who applied certain words—“coward,” “liar,” “rascal,” “scoundrel,” or “puppy”—to another man was declaring his intention to engage in an affair of honor. These words, which implied a lack of manly

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character, required an immediate challenge from the insulted man. The written challenge followed a set form: the author repeated the offending remark to ensure agreement on the offense and then demanded that the recipient of the note either “avow or disavow” the insult. If the offender did not disavow the insult, the writer provided the name of his second, who would arrange a “meeting”—the duel. Each man who was a principal in the affair relied on a second, called a “friend,” to conduct all negotiations. The principals could not negotiate; each had to demonstrate that he was willing to duel in order to prove his courage. Skillful seconds could end an affair of honor without a duel; they could conclude the matter so that both principals believed their honor had been vindicated. Deeply offended principals could provoke a duel by demanding, through their seconds, an apology too humiliating for the other man to accept. Once the challenge was accepted, the duel was inevitable.15 Most historians assume that the culture of honor necessary for dueling waned in the north during the antebellum period but retained its stronghold in the south and among some members of the U.S. Army’s officer corps. Historian William B. Skelton, in his study of the officer corps between 1784 and 1861, reports that duels declined during that period. There were only eleven duels “or duel-like confrontations” between 1827 and 1861 that involved commissioned officers of the regular army; in only four “were both participants officers.”16 We saw in the last chapter, however, that honor still thrived among northern men. Not surprisingly, officers and soldiers in the Union Army engaged in the rituals of honor. Whereas Skelton found only eleven “duel-like confrontations” in a thirty-four-year period, during the four years of Civil War northern men engaged in a bare minimum of thirty-four incidents that included some element of the dueling ritual—whether it was a written or verbal challenge to a duel or an offer to fight that borrowed language from the code duello. This statistic vastly underrepresents the actual number of affairs of honor that occurred in the Union Army, since it only includes men who were charged in general courts-martial for violating the Articles of War that prohibited challenges and dueling. The count of thirty-four also does not incorporate men such as Bernard McMahon or Jefferson C. Davis who killed for honor.17 A few northern men adhered rigidly to the forms of the code duello and believed that an important gauge of honor was whether a gentleman followed the proper rituals. These men tended to be elites whose activities brought their name before a wider public, although some were not prominent men. 98  |  Dueling and the Degenerate Affair of Honor

Other men felt bound by honor to issue verbal challenges to the men who had insulted them, but they did not observe the formal requirements of notes, seconds, and negotiations. A few men, afraid that dueling brought public censure rather than vindication, issued challenges and then retracted them. Civil War courts had a difficult time sorting out the implications of men’s behavior in a time when honor was still widely valued but the exacting rituals of the duel were not. Northern men, and military courts, no longer agreed how a gentleman satisfied the requirements of honor in the face of insult. This made it difficult to consistently interpret and apply the Articles of War. Before we evaluate duels and challenges within the Union Army, it is important to recognize that some northern men conceived of the war itself as a duel. They believed they were fighting for the national honor. “Every man of us is a challenge to fight a dual [sic]—but the challenge came from them,” Samuel Cormany wrote from the 16th Pennsylvania Cavalry’s training camp. Harper’s Weekly reported the story of a private meeting among some of the leading gentlemen of New York City in the tense days of the secession crisis. When one participant proposed to “accede” to all the south’s demands, others jumped to their feet to denounce such a “total, unqualified, abject surrender in advance of all national and individual honor.” They demanded that the men of the north at least “strike one blow for our own honor” rather than “deliberately to relinquish our manhood.” The popular northern journal that reported this scene often used the terminology of honor to describe the war. The rebels took up arms “to chastise us,” and “when they have whipped us in, there will be loathing in their contempt.” Contemporary readers would have understood the reference to the code of honor, under which a gentleman used a whip to chastise a man who had injured him in order to inflict shame and disgrace. Gentlemen chastised those beneath them in social rank to signify that the other man did not possess the status necessary to engage in a duel.18 New England elites, particularly young officers from Massachusetts, often invoked the motivation of honor when they described why they fought. The “Boston Brahmins” were a self-conscious and distinct social class whose influence permeated the economic, social, and political institutions of their era. Through constant intermarriage, a coherent set of related families dominated the public sphere and viewed themselves as the inheritors of a special call to leadership and service. Young men from this class were part of a small peer group of exclusive gentlemen with shared values; simultaneously it was essential that their families maintain a public reputation. This combination fostered the development of honor.

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A striking component of honor for this group of young men was courage on the battlefield and an unflinching sense of duty. Both were necessary to sustain their public reputation and the continued respect of their peers. One young man of this class even argued that for this reason only prominent gentlemen made good officers. Lt. Henry Ropes of the 20th Massachusetts wrote his brother that the instinct to succumb to fear during a battle was overwhelming. Natural bravery was not enough in such circumstances. No powerful motive actuated “a common man,” even one who was “good,” “honest,” and “plucky,” to hide his fear and rise above his men. “Officers as a class, must be men to whom the slightest taint of cowardice or the exhibition of fear before an enemy would be perfect destruction and everlasting indignity,” Ropes concluded. “They must have a Gentleman’s sense of honor and regard for character.”19 Supposedly, the Boston Brahmins are exemplars of the contrast between the traditional, honor-bound culture of the south and the modernizing ethos of the north. In many ways they were, yet these self-conscious gentlemen atop the social hierarchy could be as sensitive to the demands of honor as any southern planter, with whom they shared the ideal that elite gentlemen should possess social and political leadership. Dueling was not a typical manifestation of honor for New England’s social elite, although one young man from this class did follow the forms of the code duello. For Capt. Charles P. Horton, the taint of neglecting his duty portended “everlasting indignity” and demanded that he chastise his adversary with a horsewhip in defense of his honor. The slim, blue-eyed, athletic Horton was a coal merchant who had spent some time in the south as a business agent for his father before the war started. He enlisted immediately after Fort Sumter in the 2nd Massachusetts, a regiment filled with other elite Boston Brahmins. He became a staff officer and served at Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. He earned promotion and praise, for he possessed the qualities that the elite young men of the Second sought to cultivate: courage, efficiency, and a gallant and cool bearing in the field. By the late summer of 1864, Horton was serving on the staff of Gen. Samuel Peter Heintzelman. In that capacity, he was ordered to Cincinnati to coordinate with Brig. Gen. August Willich’s staff about the arrival and deployment of new regiments. Horton worked in the same office as Capt. Charles A. Booth, Willich’s assistant adjutant general. Booth was twenty-four years old and from a different social class than Horton. Horton made that social distance clear in all the interaction between the two young men. Booth deeply resented Horton’s patronizing manner.20 100  |  Dueling and the Degenerate Affair of Honor

Horton’s business in Cincinnati often took him out of the office he shared with Booth and the rest of General Willich’s staff. Booth used this circumstance to his advantage. He sent a message, using General Willich’s name, to Horton’s immediate superior at General Heintzelman’s headquarters that implied Horton was neglecting his duty. The thunderstruck Horton demanded that Booth repair the damage with an explicit retraction and apology. Friends advised him that if Booth did not comply with this demand, he should “chastise” Booth. Horton’s high-ranking friend Maj. Henry Lawrence Burnett, the judge advocate of the Northern Department, interceded with Booth on Horton’s behalf. After Booth wrote a letter to Heintzelman that Horton considered insufficient vindication, Burnett told Booth to make the retraction “like a man.” After what Booth had done, an “amendé honorable” was required. Booth stood firm and refused to sign a missive Horton had composed for him.21 Burnett reported this conversation to Horton with the advice that there was nothing more to be done. Burnett neither shared Horton’s sensitive honor nor condoned the rituals of the duel. When Horton broached the idea of chastising Booth, Burnett encouraged him to avoid “any such scandal.” Horton, however, had received a devastating blow to his honor from a man that was his social inferior. As was the case with Charles Gordon Hutton, to do nothing was unthinkable. The next day, on his way to the office, Burnett saw Horton standing in the street, tapping his pants with a riding whip. “What are you doing?” Burnett asked. Horton replied that he was going to chastise Booth. The young Bostonian asked the judge advocate for his military department whether he should do this in the office or wait until Booth came out to the sidewalk. “I gave him my counsel not to do it,” Burnett recalled. “It was ill-advised, would be fruitless and wrong. My advice had no weight. He felt outraged and was going to have his satisfaction.”22 A little later, Horton entered the office. He thrust his letter in front of Booth and asked for a signature. Booth tried to show Horton the letter he had already written. While Booth searched for the letter in his records, Horton walked around the desk and struck Booth lightly three times with the riding whip. Horton then turned to the other officers who were present, including Burnett. “Gentlemen,” he said, “You see me horsewhip this officer.” Horton walked to the door, turned toward Booth, and said, “I shall be at the Burnett House until morning, where I shall be glad to receive any communication from you.” Horton had initiated an affair of honor; he expected that Booth would have to challenge him to a duel.23

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Instead, Booth preferred charges against Horton for “conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.” One can only imagine the agony this must have caused a man of honor such as Horton. Standing trial and facing dishonorable discharge was the kind of “taint” that blasted a man’s reputation. His defense rested on the two familiar claims we have seen in previous cases, such as that of Bernard McMahon: the adversary’s ungentlemanly behavior and unbearable provocation. Much of Horton’s defense was an attack on Booth’s character. The defense painted Booth as a man who resented Horton and sought to undermine him through malicious lies. Booth was neither a gentleman, the defense claimed, nor was he “frank and manly.” Horton’s counsel, judge W. M. Dickson, then argued that the “deep indignity” committed against Horton provoked him to action. “Now how do they stand?” Dickson asked. “Capt. Booth is smarting under the indignity of having been pro forma horsewhipped. Are they not about equal? Should not the judgement of most men say ‘served him right’?” Dickson concluded with an appeal to the common experience of men of honor: “Is it an unusual thing for a worthy officer under the provocation of a wrong, feeling that he has been greatly injured, to redress that wrong?”24 Horton faced two problems at his court-martial. One was that he had committed a military crime when he sought to provoke another officer into sending him a challenge. Another was that northern men did not adhere to a clear standard of behavior regarding how a gentleman redressed an injury to his honor. Horton and the friends who advised him believed that ritual chastisement met the demands of honor, but Burnett and other officers did not. The judge advocate who prosecuted the case, 1st Lt. L. H. Bond of the 88th Ohio Volunteers, was incensed into stinging and often sarcastic responses to defense arguments. Bond pointed out that Booth’s conduct had nothing to do with whether Horton was guilty. He repeatedly used the word “assault” in his description of the pro forma horsewhipping. More important, Bond claimed that Horton had acted dishonorably throughout the affair. Horton could have preferred charges against Booth, but instead he “conceived the brave and chivalric idea of inflicting personal violence upon a youth whose physical power in all probability was not equal to one fourth of his own.” Bond turned upside down defense assertions that Booth was not manly. Booth had already written a letter disclaiming any intention of reflecting on Horton’s character. “Because Capt. Booth would not get down on his face, and put his mouth in the dust before the accused, because he would not sacrifice his spirit and manhood at the imperious and insolent commands of another, he was most shamefully assaulted,” Bond argued.25 102  |  Dueling and the Degenerate Affair of Honor

Horton and the judge advocate at his trial presented two dueling, if one will excuse the phrase, interpretations of manhood. Horton’s birth, education, and deportment had won him recognition as a gentleman. Out of jealousy another officer had sought to damage his reputation. Horton believed that his honor required satisfaction. He followed the form of behavior laid out in the code duello very carefully: he sought a written explanation and apology and he chastised his adversary using a recognized custom. If Booth had done nothing after the pro forma whipping, honor was satisfied. If Booth had challenged Horton to a duel, honor was satisfied. Lieutenant Bond articulated the position of men who viewed the matter through a different lens. Bond conceded nothing to the rituals of honor. He did not recognize why Booth’s actions had constituted such an injury in the first place. The “explanation” in his eyes became the demand for a humiliating apology to which no true man would submit. The “chastisement” in Bond’s construction was simply a criminal assault. Bond inverted the assumptions of honor when he assigned shame to Horton’s actions. The aftermath of the court-martial revealed northern men’s divided mind when it came to gentlemen and honor. The court, in accordance with military law, found Horton guilty and dismissed him from the service. But Horton’s powerful friends would intercede. Sen. John Sherman of Ohio endorsed a petition from twenty-three wealthy and influential citizens of Cincinnati that asked Lincoln to reinstate Horton. The petition described Horton’s offense as a “personal altercation” that was “pressed too far by him, but under extreme provocation.” While Horton should be punished, his permanent exclusion from the army went too far. “His previous character forbids this,” the petitioners claimed. “His correct bearing and gentlemanly deportment, while here, have won for him the respect and kind regards of those of our Citizens who have become acquainted with him.” Eight officers from the staff of the general commanding the Northern Department, including Burnett, petitioned on Horton’s behalf as well. Just as the “leading citizens” had done, these officers referenced Horton’s status as a gentleman, a status he had apparently earned through his cultivated manners as much as through his character. “We regret,” the petition stated, “that we are to be deprived of the society of so genial a companion and of such an affable, high-toned gentleman.”26 Lincoln asked for a report from the judge advocate general of the army. Holt mildly censured Horton’s behavior but proposed a critical “nevertheless” that would let Horton off the hook. “As the punishment of dismissal must have already conveyed severe rebuke to an officer of his reputation and standing,” Holt wrote, “it is possible that an otherwise unsullied record of

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nearly four years honorable and meritorious service need not be effaced by perpetual exclusion from the army, on account of a single act of indiscretion.” Testimonials established that Horton had an excellent character as an officer. Whether that justified his restoration, Lincoln could decide. On April 11, 1865, just a few days before the assassin Booth took his life, Lincoln wrote on Horton’s file, “Let the sentence of Captain Horton be remitted and let him be restored to his former position.”27 The support for Horton among prominent Ohioans and the equivocation of Holt over the severity of Horton’s crime revealed a fundamental tension in northern views of the gentleman. Because dueling was disreputable in so many circles, there was no united public opinion that ascribed honor to the practice. At the same time, however, honor was essential to the manhood of many northern men. Such men resented an insult and would not tamely submit to aspersions from another man. They responded in various ways— from killing their adversaries, to fistfights, to using elements of the dueling ritual. Because enough northerners recognized the demands of honor, it did not damage a man’s status as a gentleman to have challenged a man who truly injured him. Horton benefited from these assumptions. Because he had manner, education, and wealth, his defense of his reputation through a ritualistic application of chastisement was tolerated, although it was not universally approved. Horton was still a “gentleman” who had committed an “indiscretion.” His reputation would remain intact. The Horton case provides one final insight into the nuances of honor in the Civil War north. Honor was about reputation and external appearances; Horton’s self-worth depended on whether others ratified the image he projected. Although we cannot know the state of his mind, evidence suggests that Horton was not concerned with developing the internal character to match his reputation. Upon his death years after the war, an impoverished lower-class woman came forward to claim she was Horton’s common-law wife and that she had borne his child. Federal investigators for the pension office established that Horton had secretly lived with the woman at various intervals but kept the relationship secret because of her social status. The affair apparently ended when Horton slept with her mother.28 Based on his actions, some northern men would not concede that Horton was a man of honor. John Hartwell believed a man’s reputation mattered— remember his belief that northern men sought an “honorable name”—but honor for Hartwell likewise involved the internal reality. Hartwell used the term in other contexts to signify a man with virtue. Samuel Cormany—who called the war a duel between north and south—conceived of honor as a com104  |  Dueling and the Degenerate Affair of Honor

plicated mix of reputation and of Christ-like internal character. His detailed diary reveals a deep desire that other men concede his worth; he had a hard time passing over minor slights that were publicly given, and his ambition was to be an outward model for other men “to follow” and “to imitate.” Yet he frequently meditated that he must “maintain the inner worthiness of all honors conferred.”29 Hartwell and Cormany participated in the mutation of the meaning of honor for northern manhood. Their usage of the word at times indicated moral character rather than honor. The varied uses of honor in the conception and vocabulary of northern men obscured both its meaning and its place in the construction of northern manhood. The men in the Union Army—such as Captain Horton and the earlier example of Captain Hutton, whose sense of honor was essentially similar to that of elite southerners—were often elites who had traveled or resided for a period of time either in the south or abroad. Or they were young men with familial ties to the regular army and with ambition to make the army a profession, like John Rodgers Meigs. But men who were not prominent also displayed honor. Two duels appear in Union courts-martial records. One was fought in Missouri in October 1864, between two officers from European armies who had volunteered their services to the Union cause.30 The other involved Pvt. Charles Paul of the 2nd New York Cavalry and a young man “who had grossly insulted” him. At his trial for desertion, Paul told the court that “the affair turned out in such a way that I was compelled to leave Saratoga immediately.” No details of the incident were revealed in his trial.31 That fights among roughs were often matters of honor was something the military justice system and apparently most Union officers did not recognize. Many of the fistfights among roughs—ubiquitous in regimental order books, comments in letters and diaries, and general courts-martial records under charges ranging from assault to conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline—were in fact affairs of honor. But these men were never charged under the 25th Article of War; challenges and dueling were not the rituals roughs employed. Some Civil War soldiers settled personal quarrels according to prizefight rules, but those outside working-class culture failed to make the link between these incidents and the rough’s strong sense of honor. Men from the upper and middle classes did not always recognize honor in the lower classes and instead attributed their brutal fighting to a lack of manhood. Perceptions of manliness and perceptions of class were intricately connected in the Union Army.32 Apart from the roughs, professional officers, and a few northern elites, engaging in the formal rituals of honor was not a widespread practice among

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volunteers in the Union Army. Soldiers from every social class, however, mimicked the rituals of dueling when they arranged fights to resolve points at issue between them. Two privates in the 1st Illinois Light Artillery, Matthew Callahan and Gavin Clark, arranged a “duel” after Callahan beat Clark with a saber during a drunken episode. Once Clark recovered, several men in the regiment heard him discuss a duel with Callahan. The two agreed to fight the next morning, but as they parted, Clark hit Callahan in the stomach. Callahan ran to his tent, grabbed a revolver, and stood in the street. Clark then advanced on his adversary, who aimed and snapped the revolver. Clark continued to move forward, daring Callahan to shoot, which he did twice more before bystanders intervened. A similar incident occurred in the 52nd Ohio.33 Clark and Callahan were not acting according to the formal requirements of an affair of honor as did Charles Horton or Charles Hutton. They were not elites and their reputation did not extend to the public sphere. But they demonstrated honor to their peer group through their willingness to fight. Some northern expectations of manly behavior created a degenerate version of the affair of honor in which a man responded to an insult with an immediate verbal challenge to “fight.” Among these men, just as with those who rigorously followed the code duello, to give someone the lie invited an immediate demand for “satisfaction.” According to historian Kenneth Greenberg, the central insult that turned a disagreement into a duel was a direct or indirect attack on someone’s word, what southerners called “giving the lie.” This attack, by proclaiming that a man’s projection of himself to the public was false, exposed and shamed the man. The accuser therefore declared his dominance over the other. For this reason, a man could not “submit” to such an insult.34 Northern men of honor also could not submit to the dominance of another, but they employed a different ritual than the duel. Courts-martial records indicate that these episodes followed a predictable pattern of speech and behavior. The moment one man directly accused another man of lying, the altercation changed tone immediately. At that point, men adopted ritualistic language indicating that honor was now involved. The exchange always culminated in an offer to fight, although bystanders usually acted to prevent violence. The classic incident that exemplified the pattern occurred in the 3rd Connecticut in mid-June 1861. The men of the regiment had enjoyed a closely contested foot race between two of its officers. After the race ended, several of the officers, who, we can presume, had bets on the race, engaged in some sort of lively discussion about whether one of the contestants had somehow cheated. The next morning several officers were in the sutler’s tent. Capt. John A. Nelson approached Capt. George Lewis. “I understand you told a man I 106  |  Dueling and the Degenerate Affair of Honor

helped Captain Fry along,” Nelson said. “I did say so,” Lewis replied. “You are a god-damned liar and I will get square with you when I get my uniform off,” Nelson responded. “You can do it as soon as you please,” Lewis retorted. “If you ever lay a finger upon me I will make daylight through you.” Nelson could not let such a challenge pass. “I will go outside the line and fight you with pistols,” he said. At that point the major of the regiment intervened.35 Nelson faced court-martial on two counts: conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline for using “profane and threatening language” to Lewis and violating the 25th Article of War for challenging Lewis to a duel. Nelson’s defense witnesses—of which there were several—proved that Lewis was the first to mention pistols (“I will make daylight through you”). “I had no idea of using pistols or insulting language until after Captain Lewis insulted me,” Nelson told the court. “Having left a position in Society, in Social life, to defend the Flag of our Country, I could not be so far lost to all sense of honor as willingly to forget my manhood.”36 Nelson implied in this statement that a duel would have been dishonorable, yet his exchange with Lewis indicates that an offer to fight was necessary in order to maintain honor in front of the watching Connecticut officers. Notice that Nelson said he had no thought of pistols or insults until “after Captain Lewis insulted me.” Nelson’s instinct when another man publicly attacked his character was first to assert his physical prowess through the threat of a beating, and then to issue a verbal challenge to fight with pistols. He could not simply call the man names and walk away. Nelson was not being disingenuous when he claimed to be a man of honor and disclaimed any real intention of dueling. Honor in the north did not require a ritual that might end in death; but it did require that a man be ready to fight in some way for his reputation. Accusations of dishonesty and lying were what escalated the exchange between Nelson and Lewis to threats of fighting with pistols. Again and again this pattern was repeated in the Union Army. In the 31st Illinois, stationed at Vicksburg in October 1863, Capt. Jessie Robards and 1st Lt. John Curry began with an argument about wagons. At one point, Curry called Robards a liar. In the words of one witness, “He gave him, Captain Robards, the lie.” This moment changed the encounter from an argument to a defense of honor. Immediately Robards offered to fight Curry with fists. Curry had a sore hand and could not fight that way, but he replied that he would take an Enfield rifle and meet Robards outside the camp. Robards agreed, but other officers intervened before the intended fight took place.37 The argument turned to an affair of honor the instant Curry called Robards a liar. These two Illinois officers understood and followed the sequence of an

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informal ritual that invoked the language of dueling to set up a very different type of encounter. The initial offer from Robards, just like that from Nelson, was not a duel but rather a fistfight. In the degenerate version of the affair of honor that men like Robards and Curry practiced, there was no sincere intention to endure the rigorous and formal process of the duel. When Curry called Robards a liar in front of his peers, Robards defended his honor with symbolic language and an offer to fight. Both of these elements were necessary to maintain reputation in his situation. Curry did not use his physical injury to get out of the fight; rather he suggested the two men duel with rifles. Honor compelled both men to engage in the public display of an acknowledged ritual—whether the fight actually took place was less important. They had spoken the right words and showed their watching comrades that they were at least willing to fight. A southern duelist would scorn this pretension to honor—if a man did not engage in the accepted rituals of the duel, how could he demonstrate to the public that he was truly willing to face death for his reputation? Northern men without public reputations found other ways than dueling to maintain honor in front of their peers. But the critique of the hypothetical southern duelist reveals what made honor in the north nebulous. There was no one accepted way to demonstrate honor because there was no singular “public opinion.” Northern society contained too much socioeconomic diversity for a standard of honor to be widely shared across a larger community as was the case in the south. All men did not value honor in the first place; among those who did, there were different standards of worth and different methods to prove worth to one’s peers. Charles Hutton and Charles Horton believed that honor required the formal rituals of the duel; John Nelson and Jessie Robards turned first to informal fistfights to maintain their reputations in the face of insult; roughs engaged in the northern version of the brutal rough and tumble. Earlier in the century, an elite social class of gentlemen with public reputations tried to monopolize standards of worth, and dueling flourished among them. In the century’s middle age, democratic aspirations had blasted such pretensions and undermined a single standard of worth. Ordinary men claimed honor as their own; even men who had no public reputations appropriated the language once associated with their social superiors. They used the words of honor but had divested them from their original context. The records of Union courts-martial also reveal that some men issued challenges in a manner that proved honor had not guided their behavior. In several instances, the men were drunk when they issued the challenge. First Lieutenant James O’Rourke, for example, challenged another lieutenant to 108  |  Dueling and the Degenerate Affair of Honor

a duel with swords or fists and declared that if the man did not accept his challenge “he was a God damned coward.” After O’Rourke sobered up, he sought out his adversary to make amends for his conduct. “I took the earliest opportunity to express to Lt. Price my regrets for what happened,” O’Rourke stated at his trial. “When I became cool I will say on my honour that I would not have fought a duel under any circumstances.” During a dispute with a private, a lieutenant in the 19th Pennsylvania Cavalry offered to provide a pair of pistols so his adversary could “have his satisfaction at ten paces.” “I can’t fight,” the young man responded. “You are an officer and I a poor private.” The lieutenant immediately apologized, and did so again the next day, pleading that he was so drunk he “didn’t know what he was about.”38 Men who adhered to the code duello would consider such behavior to involve a devastating blow to a man’s reputation. To retract a challenge or to apologize entailed an immediate loss of honor. But O’Rourke’s offer to duel was not a sincere challenge in the first place. Whereas other men who issued challenges defended their actions with reference to the needs of honor, O’Rourke swore on his “honor” that he would never fight a duel. O’Rourke simultaneously rejected honor and borrowed from its norms. In the heat of drunken anger, O’Rourke chose words that were still familiar to all northern men, and in doing so indicated how thoroughly honor had influenced northern ideals of manhood. If men who did not seek honor had its language at the tip of their tongues, the men who did desire it were more than ready to challenge those who did not accord them the honor they sought. A man’s knowledge that others did not consider him a gentleman was the source of more than one court-martial in the Union Army during the war years. In these incidents, officers issued challenges in a desperate attempt not to restore honor but to gain it. They were not respected by other officers in their regiments and were treated as outsiders. They grasped at the rituals of the duel to establish their reputation and prove the worth that others had not yet conferred on them. But their actions only served to expose their pretensions and further undermine their claims to gentlemanly status. A man who possessed reputation and honor, such as Charles Horton, used the rituals of the duel with impunity; a man without them could not do so. There was a fine line between the sensitivity of the honorable gentleman and the touchiness of the pretender, whose quickness to look for insult belied the claim to gentlemanly status that he so forcefully asserted. One young lieutenant’s touchiness resulted from what were apparently unfair attempts to exclude him from the circle of gentlemen within his regi

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ment. On the afternoon of April 24, 1865, 1st Lt. Julius Sauer was in the Continental Hotel in Alexandria, Virginia, drinking with a corporal and Herman Strüder, a hospital steward. Sauer and Strüder began to quarrel over who had done more service than the other. Strüder struck Sauer with his hand, and immediately Sauer challenged him to a duel with pistols. At that point another lieutenant from the regiment, John Gerish, entered the hotel and heard part of the discussion regarding pistols and fighting. “Gentlemen I don’t like to hear that,” Gerish told them. “You know what the regulations say.” But neither party desisted. Sauer approached Capt. Louis Geable, of a different company than his own, told him of the duel the next morning, and asked Geable to serve as his second. Geable refused to have anything to do with the business. The final arrangements for the duel never took place.39 The story of Julius Sauer’s treatment by the officers of the 46th New York emerged during his court-martial on the charge that he violated the 25th Article of War. With the cooperation of the judge advocate, Sauer presented evidence that the charges against him were the product of long-standing personal hatreds against him. His key witness was Lt. Col. Adolph Baker, who testified, “I know the accused in every respect to be a gentleman, through and through, and a good efficient officer.” Baker, answering questions posed by the judge advocate, stated that a feeling of jealousy and personal hatred against Sauer existed in the regiment. Sauer had been a sergeant whom the colonel had nominated for a commission. Sauer had received several anonymous letters telling him to decline promotion or else the authors of the letter would be sure he was forced out of the service. Baker believed the current charges were preferred for just that purpose. The most compelling defense witness was Capt. E. Gerhardt. He confirmed Baker’s testimony, with the addition that several officers had told Sauer to his face that “he was not soldier enough” to accept the commission. Gerhardt initially held the same opinion of Sauer, but admitted that he had changed his opinion after Sauer received the promotion. “I have since that time always found him a good and faithful Officer and a Gentleman,” Gerhardt informed the court. “The opinion I first formed of him was formed from hearsay, and not from personal acquaintance.”40 Sauer’s enemies had the best of him in the end. Laboring under the disrespect of the men around him, Sauer snapped when Strüder attacked his service record. Sauer admitted that he had not acted with cool deliberation. “When I had the quarrel with Hospital Steward Strüder I was in a state of too much excitement to consider, what I had to say,” he told the court in his brief statement. “After I was calm again, and reflected, I took the right course, and 110  |  Dueling and the Degenerate Affair of Honor

preferred a charge and specification against Hospital Steward Strüder.”41 To defend himself at his court-martial, Sauer disclaimed any intention of following through on the duel and attributed his actions to uncontrollable passion. The necessity of making such a defense served to undermine his reputation among men who valued honor. A gentleman such as Charles Horton did not lose self-command in public. When Horton horsewhipped Booth, he did so as a deliberate, rational act that capped a period of negotiation. Another stain on Sauer’s name was that ironically he took his challenge both too far and not far enough. Men such as Jessie Robards and John Curry of the 31st Illinois issued verbal challenges to each other in front of their peers. Sauer, unlike them, initiated the first step in the formal ritual of the duel: he sought a second, an action that brought wider attention to his challenge. Once he did so, his retraction of the challenge only served to confirm that he had no honor. Although Sauer did nothing to enhance his reputation, some officers in the regiment did not include honor in their conception of ideal manhood. They defended Sauer at his trial and testified that he was a gentleman “in every respect.” Sauer’s enemies in the 46th New York did not necessarily value honor either, but their antagonism denied him reputation and destroyed his career. The court found Sauer guilty and cashiered him. Unlike Charles Horton, Sauer had no influential friends to intervene on his behalf. In his case there were no petitions and no remission of the punishment. The contrast between the fate of Charles Horton and Julius Sauer highlights the disparate outcomes in the trials of men charged with violating the 25th, 26th, or 28th Articles of War. Courts and reviewing authorities alike were inconsistent. Charles Hutton sent a written challenge, yet his court sought to get around the law and sentenced him to a reprimand. Sauer issued a verbal challenge only but was cashiered. The judge advocate general, Joseph Holt, opined that Hutton must be dismissed, yet recommended clemency in the case of Charles Horton. Holt’s legal opinions in courts-martial cases related to honor border on the schizophrenic. When European officers fought a duel in Missouri, all members of the court that cashiered them, prominent citizens of the state, and several brigadier generals intervened on their behalf, submitting to Lincoln in 1864 the exemplary service record of the three men and asking the president for an executive clemency that would reinstate them into federal service. Holt advised Lincoln that the sentence must stand. Because so many officers in the federal service held “sensitive ideals of honor,” if the government was lenient, Holt predicted, the custom of dueling would soon become

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general in the army.42 Just as in the Hutton case, Holt insisted that men who actually fought duels or followed rigidly the form of the code duello must be dismissed from the service. With one hand he sought to stamp out honor and its associated rituals; with the other he encouraged men who yielded to their “sensitive ideals of honor.” Holt had vindicated Bernard McMahon, who shot an unarmed man who repeatedly called him a coward, and had ensured that Jefferson C. Davis was not prosecuted for killing William Nelson. The message Holt sent was that dueling posed a threat to good order in the military, but men who defended their honor, even to the point of murder, without following the forms of the duel were justified. One explanation for the discrepancies in verdicts and sentencing between different courts might be the different assumptions regarding honor held by the officers who were members of the court. Another might be the different circumstances of each case. When Jessie Robards offered to fight John Curry, the injured Curry retorted with a verbal challenge to meet with rifles; Julius Sauer issued a verbal challenge and then sought a second; Charles Hutton sent a written challenge through a friend. The problem for the military justice system during the Civil War was how to define the duel and recognize an affair of honor when most incidents involved a degenerate version of them. What about the verbal exchange between those foot-racing Connecticut officers: “I will go outside the line and fight you with pistols?” How should military authorities interpret 1st Lt. George Sweeney’s offer to fight his captain “at any time or place, with any weapons even with fists?” A witness who testified during one general court-martial summarized the problem succinctly. When the court asked 2nd Lt. D. S. Dickenson if he heard the challenge in question, he responded, “As regards to a challenge I do not know how you would accept that term. I heard the accused offer to fight Captain Galloway with pistols but I did not consider it in the form of a challenge.”43 The record of general courts-martial indicates that officers struggled to correctly interpret and apply the Articles of War when faced with such widely varying circumstances and with such different understandings of what constituted a challenge. The problem revolved around the language of the 25th Article of War and the precedent established in prewar courts-martial. The article prohibited any officer or soldier from sending a challenge, but orders issued from the Department of War in 1858 had broadened the scope of this regulation. The court-martial of Col. E. V. Sumner of the 1st United States Cavalry set the legal precedent. Civil War officers and counsel in Civil War courts-martial referenced this case, which was well-known throughout the army because of the prominence of the two men involved. Sumner had sent 112  |  Dueling and the Degenerate Affair of Honor

Brevet Brig. Gen. William S. Harney a series of letters demanding an explanation and apology for remarks Harney made about Sumner during a previous court-martial. One of the letters read as follows: “As more than 24 hours have passed, since my note to you of yesterday I have a right to presume that you do not intend to answer it; I have therefore to invite you to leave this city with me tomorrow morning to go any place you may designate. I send this note privately to avoid committing any friend as long as possible.” Harney preferred charges against Sumner for violating the 25th Article of War. The court-martial found him not guilty.44 The secretary of war, John Floyd, issued a lengthy order disapproving the findings of the court. He proclaimed that Sumner’s letter was a challenge to a duel within the meaning of the 25th Article of War. Military authorities and the decisions of previous courts-martial laid down a clear doctrine, he claimed. “No particular phraseology, no set form” was necessary for a challenge, nor even a “formal invitation to fight.” “A mere hint or suggestion” and even “such a defiance as casts the burden on the other party” was covered by the article. Sumner’s note plainly expressed a challenge. The not guilty verdict, Floyd insisted, “would render the article of war void and inoperative, by indicating a mode of doing without breach of the law what it is the exact purpose of the law to forbid.”45 Despite this clear injunction, members of courts-martial during the Civil War tended to look for particular phrases and the set forms of the code of honor. They asked questions aimed to determine if several key elements were in place: Was there a deliberate intent to duel or was this a heat-of-themoment offer to fight? Was the word satisfaction used? Were weapons mentioned? Did the accused seek a friend or second? Did bystanders understand the words used to be a challenge? Courts varied, however, in their interpretation of the facts thus determined. There was a clear contradiction between two courts’ judgments in the cases of Julius Sauer, the despised outsider whose commission prompted anonymous threats, and surgeon William Jett, whose refusal to sit next to paroled Confederate officers at a hotel dinner table led to an altercation. Sauer took pains in his defense to demonstrate that no arrangements for a duel had ever been made, but the court found that he had violated the 25th Article of War and specifically had “challenged” and “offered to fight with pistols.” The facts in Jett’s case were nearly identical, but the verdict would be quite different. Jett verbally challenged a man to a duel, used the word “satisfaction,” asked the man he challenged to name weapons, and asked two different men to serve as seconds. Jett’s counsel even referenced the 1858 Sumner case and

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conceded that no particular words or phrases were necessary to constitute a challenge. Unlike the Sumner case, defense argued, Jett did not deliberately write a challenge. Testimony had shown that Jett started to write a challenge but did not. “If there was an intention to challenge, it was not completed,” counsel argued. “The words used amount to nothing save an indication of an intention unexecuted.” Without something in writing and without securing seconds, there was no challenge given. “Deliberation is the leading characteristic of a challenge. It is a deliberate, written invitation to another to meet you in deadly combat subject to the code of honor,” the defense counsel told the court. Its members agreed and found Jett not guilty of “giving a challenge to fight a duel.”46 Other courts took the same line as the members sitting at Jett’s courtsmartial. Despite the clear orders of the secretary of war after the Sumner case, some officers sought to separate men who strictly followed the code of honor from those whose challenges represented the more degenerate version of the offer to fight that was used in the north. These courts listened to defense arguments that claimed there was no challenge unless a man followed the acknowledged public rituals of the duel. An officer in the 7th Veteran Reserve Corps, Terrence Reilly, who drew a pistol and asked another lieutenant to fight him in his room or at fifteen paces, told the court that he had not technically issued a challenge because his act did not follow the “Code of Honor.” The counsel for Brig. Gen. T. W. Sweeney insisted that the 25th Article of War only encompassed a written challenge. “Any one who is sufficiently conversant with the code to seek satisfaction in this way, is sufficiently punctilious to take the customary manner of invitation to fight,” he told the court. John T. Scott, a lieutenant in the 16th U.S. Colored Troops, argued that the articles of war did not apply to his verbal challenge. “No duelist would claim that any obligation could arise out of the verbal challenge of a drunken man,” he told the court.47 Courts also tended to absolve defendants who argued that a challenge required deliberation and an absence of passion. Julius Sauer was ineffective in this plea, but in other instances courts differentiated between the impulsive act of a man in the heat of anger (the verbal challenge) and the cool and deliberate act performed after the passage of time (the written challenge). The three defendants considered in the previous paragraph, all of whom were found not guilty, successfully argued for this distinction. Only the deliberate act of a written challenge, they argued, indicated an intention to fight. Scott, who wrote his own defense, claimed that the 25th Article of War was “confined” to the written challenge “sent with deliberate intention and 114  |  Dueling and the Degenerate Affair of Honor

malice aforethought.” These officers relied on the fact that it was common for men in the north to use the language of dueling divested from the context of honor. Men in the north still talked of satisfaction, pistols, and paces when they had conflicts with one another, but the men watching did not necessarily consider these words “the form of a challenge.”48 When courts made a distinction between a verbal challenge and a written challenge, they violated the previous rulings of military authorities. In his general order, secretary of war John Floyd had clearly stated that a formal invitation to fight was not necessary; a “hint,” a “suggestion,” or even “such a defiance as casts the burden on the other party” constituted a challenge. Courts who ignored these instructions could not plead ignorance. The judge advocates who prosecuted cases involving challenges during the Civil War widely referenced the Sumner case and Floyd’s ruling. Lt. Col. George H. English of the 32nd Illinois, for example, correctly explained military law. He read an excerpt from Floyd’s general orders and reminded court members that “the manner of invitation is not to be confined to one particular form.”49 The officers who served as members of some Civil War courts rejected two assumptions that underlay Floyd’s order. The secretary of war based his interpretation of military law on the presumption that all officers had honor and that the language of honor indicated a man of honor. According to Floyd’s construction of manly interaction, an officer, because of honor, would be bound to fight when faced with language that even hinted at a challenge. Some Civil War courts did not operate under these assumptions. They presumed some of the defendants were not men of honor, that men used the language of honor without intending to duel, and that the “hint” of a challenge did not bind a man to fight. In essence, some courts sought to stake out a difference between defending one’s honor and asserting one’s manhood during an altercation. In this construction, honor was simply equated with the formal rituals of dueling. As we have seen, in northern society the one did not necessarily require the other, but many officers clearly operated under this interpretation of honor. In several cases courts substituted words within the specifications of a charge to make the distinction between men setting up a duel and men who wanted to fight. When Capt. William Hexamer of the 1st New Jersey Artillery was charged with “conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline,” one of the specifications was that he “challenged” Lt. J. W. B. Wright “to a duel.” Hexamer said to Wright, “You load your revolver and I will load mine, and you come out of your tent and give me satisfaction. If you have any courage you will come out and fight me.” The court substituted the words “asking for

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a fight” for the words “challenging to a duel” in the specifications before they found Hexamer guilty.50 Officers who preferred charges also made these distinctions. Some men who issued verbal challenges were not charged specifically under the 25th Article of War or under any specification that necessarily imputed that a challenge to a formal duel had taken place. Such was the case with Pvt. James Brophy of the 11th Missouri Cavalry. Brophy entered his company quarters in Little Rock and told Pvt. James Bowman he had better “go to grubbing government stumps.” Bowman recalled, “I told him he had better go to doing something instead of doing what he was.” The two men exchanged a few more words. “I told him there were other men in the company who could use revolvers as well as he could,” Bowman later testified. “And he said if I thought so I could just come around behind the stable, and he would try me with revolvers.” The officer who preferred charges against Brophy did not utilize the 25th Article of War. Instead, he charged Brophy with “conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline.” He specified that Brophy had “challenged” Bowman to “fight him with pistols.” The use of the word “fight” rather than “duel” was significant and probably reflected this officer’s understanding of the difference between men who followed the code of honor and men such as Brophy.51 As we have seen, however, different officers and different courts offered inconsistent interpretations of what constituted a challenge to a duel. Only rarely during the Civil War did a court find a man guilty of violating the 25th Article of War if he only issued a verbal challenge. It happened in the case of Pvt. Ell C. Lacy of the 91st Indiana. One evening Lacy stepped out of ranks during his company’s roll call. His 1st lieutenant, George Clark, ordered him back to his place. Instead Lacy went to his quarters. When Clark followed him, Lacy said, “Your shoulder straps are all that save you from a thrashing. Get your revolver and I’ll get one and we can step out and exchange shots.” The sergeant who testified to this exchange commented, “It was only a verbal challenge.” The court found Lacy guilty of the charge “giving a challenge to fight a Duel” and the specifications that he did “challenge 1st Lieut. George T. Clark . . . to fight a duel in violation of the 25th Article of War.” The verdict in Lacy’s case was unusual; perhaps it merely reflected the likewise unusual circumstance that he was a private who challenged an officer, and did so while simultaneously disobeying legitimate orders.52 But Lacy was not charged under the Articles of War that covered disobedience or threatening an officer. The officer who preferred charges inter116  |  Dueling and the Degenerate Affair of Honor

preted Lacy’s words as a challenge to a duel and charged him under the 25th Article of War. Where other courts altered the wording of specifications to indicate the difference between a challenge to a duel and an offer to fight, this court apparently agreed with the interpretation of the original officer. This brings the discussion back to the point made by a lieutenant in the U.S. Colored Troops: “As regards to a challenge I do not know how you would accept that term.” What constituted a challenge among northern men was no longer clear-cut. Northern men spoke of honor incessantly during the Civil War, but they did not necessarily indicate quite the same concept when they used the word. Charles Horton, the Boston Brahmin, claimed honor; his worth depended on the reputation that the public bestowed on him, and he followed the rituals of the code duello. John Hartwell, the New York subsistence farmer, claimed honor; he had a “name” in his small community and possessed moral virtue. John Nelson, the foot-racing Connecticut officer, claimed honor; he offered to use pistols during a verbal altercation but swore he would never fight a duel. Historians have mistakenly focused on the waning of the duel when they have dismissed northern men’s concern for honor. They have misunderstood the centrality of reputation to northern manhood—the essence of honor. They have ignored the pervasive language of dueling. The varied practices through which northern men acted out honor did not indicate its total collapse as a component of northern manhood. Honor was contested but still evident in the Civil War north. Its rituals and spoken expressions retained a hold even over those men who did not claim honor. And the men who shared an understanding of honor based on reputation were still a substantial presence in northern society. These were the men in the Indiana and Ohio regiments who defended Jefferson C. Davis for killing a man who had “unbearably” insulted him. Popular newspapers understood their audience when they likened the war to a duel and called for northern men to defend their honor against southern contempt. Prominent New England gentlemen chastised adversaries and maintained their reputations among the social elite. Privates and officers in the Union Army who would not submit to an insult challenged one another to fight with fists or pistols to maintain the reputation for toughness that was necessary to earn the respect of their peers. The Articles of War sought to stamp out affairs of honor among the gentlemen officers of the regular army. Ironically, these articles did not cover or recognize the affairs of honor most prevalent in the Civil War north. Untold numbers of poor and marginal Union soldiers from the streets of urban

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neighborhoods upheld traditional conceptions of honor in their brawls and fights with other soldiers. Rather than project his disdain for death in the cold ritual of the duel, as did the southern gentleman, a rough engaged in the brutal rituals necessary for honor among his peers. The Articles of War did not recognize their rituals, and their officers categorized their fights as senseless acts of violence. But they, too, were men of honor in the Union Army.

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“The Thick-Fingered Clowns”

5

Social Status and Discipline

Northern men pieced together their manly identities in a bewildering variety of ways. Some men adhered to a strict moral character while maintaining a sense of honor that required violent retaliation. Other men defined honor in terms of virtue and viewed traditional honor as a loss of self-control. Some men who acquired genteel manners drank and boxed for sport; for others, true refinement required a temperate self-control and an avoidance of rough play. Some men participated in a culture of male camaraderie centered on drink and fighting that many of their comrades witnessed with disgust. A man’s social status intersected with the other manly attributes he displayed, and it informed whether other men acknowledged his manhood. Perceptions of manliness were deeply intertwined with perceptions of social class in the Civil War north. Previous chapters have introduced this connection through the group of men in the Union Army that other officers and soldiers called the “roughs.” Roughs constituted a distinct class of men from the lowest economic classes whose wild fighting and drinking particularly worried and repulsed observers. Roughs shared with other northern men a culture of male camaraderie and a strong sense of honor, but their marginal status and complete alienation from mainstream society separated them from the other men who drank and fought. At the other end of the spectrum existed an elite class of men who explicitly tied social status to their conception of manhood. Whether they hailed from Boston, New York, or Chicago, these men sought the exclusive company of other “gentlemen,” defined by them as men who had attained social prominence and a set of attributes that usually included superior education, travel, and civil leadership. Their views on the other attributes necessary for manhood varied, but they agreed that only a man of status qualified as a gentleman, and that only gentlemen had attained the highest ideals of manhood.

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Historians of Civil War soldiers have generally ignored the role of class in shaping interactions between men in the Union Army, which has distorted historical reconstruction of the lived experience of volunteers and conscripts who served in the war. Men at the very bottom of the socioeconomic ladder were perceived to be less manly; many upper- and middle-class officers questioned the moral character, self-control, and courage of the roughs. These officers believed that only harsh external discipline and brute force would induce such men to do their duty and fight. They employed violent physical punishments and the threat of death as a routine method of discipline over the classes of men in the Union Army thought to lack the manly attributes necessary to make good soldiers. At the same time, the presumptions of socially elite officers regarding their special claims to gentlemanly status could shape the interaction between officers and privates. The army equivalent of class conflict erupted in regiments where elite gentlemen strictly enforced the authority of officers and the subordination of privates. Although many soldiers deeply resented the class distinctions of the army that served to highlight the influence of wealthy men, they generally shared their officers’ disdain of the unmanly roughs and applauded when their officers brutally suppressed the men from the lowest classes of northern society. This chapter and the next provide the first extended analysis of how Civil War officers actually governed the rank and file. What will emerge in this chapter is a clear pattern of interactions between officers and privates that began in a very small number of regiments and spread to include seemingly most regiments in the Union Army during 1863. The story presented in this chapter will follow that pattern, and begins with an admittedly unusual group of officers and regiments that contained a particularly volatile mix of men. The industrial revolution and its resulting reconfiguration of social class were most advanced in the states of the northeast on the eve of the Civil War. A distinctive upper class emerged that controlled the financial machinery and the philanthropic institutions of their respective cities. They assumed that gentlemen of superior fortune and education were the natural leaders of society’s social and political institutions. During the Civil War, these selfconscious elites of the metropolitan north played a vital role in the Union war effort. In Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston, members of the upper classes founded Union Leagues, exclusive clubs that brought intellectuals and businessmen together. These leagues, as historian Melinda Lawson explains, facilitated the cohesion of the upper classes even as they promoted patriotism, a strong national state, and a vigorous prosecution of the war. Union Leagues organized enlistment committees that raised tens of thou120  |  Social Status and Discipline

sands of troops, sponsored speakers on national topics, and wrote pamphlets, distributed to millions through their publication societies.1 The northeast’s upper classes also sent the younger generation to serve as officers in the Union Army. A few regiments, such as the 20th Massachusetts or the 5th New York, boasted particularly high concentrations of officers from socially elite families. Wherever they were found, however, officers from this class shared a set of assumptions about social status and manhood that informed how they disciplined and led their men. At the root of elite officers’ leadership style was their open disdain of those who did not possess social status. While proclaiming great faith in the people, and in their letters sincerely praising the character and virtues of the average soldiers, they also distrusted and maligned many of the men they commanded. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., a lieutenant in the 20th Massachusetts, who usually wrote in a self-mocking tone during the war, told his sister, “While I’m living en aristocrat I’m an out-and outer of a democrat in theory, but for contact, except at the polls, I loathe the thick-fingered clowns we call the people.” One of his elite companions in the Twentieth, Henry Livermore Abbott, described Pennsylvania and New York regiments as “half-clad savages” and mocked their “unsophisticated” questions about the outside world. Another officer divided the men in his cavalry regiment into “good men” and “the tough set of men of all sorts of occupations, among them prize-fighters, barkeepers and the like.”2 Officers from the northeast’s elite classes reserved their worst suspicions for lower-class immigrants and their strongest disdain for “roughs,” “toughs,” and “prizefighters.” Henry Livermore Abbott made the clearly biased statement that desertion in the field was almost unknown before the jumble of “French, Italians, Germans, & in some cases, Chinese, came to us.” He told his mother they were “more stupid than it is possible for an American who has never seen them to conceive of.” Referring to Germans in the army as the “offscourings of great cities,” Theodore Lyman worried that the army did not “have the machinery to work up poor material. They won’t let us shoot the rascals, and few regiments have the discipline to mold them into decent troops.”3 In civilian life, these attitudes had nurtured among men from elite social classes an acute sense of separation from those beneath them in status and its accoutrements, particularly that of self-culture. In the army, elite officers socialized nearly exclusively with a small circle of gentlemen, a term in their case that implied the meshing of gentility with social status. As attrition destroyed the officers of the 2nd Massachusetts, John Chipman Gray

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found his friends there dispirited because “the newcomers are not generally men with whom they care to associate.” Francis Channing Barlow wrote his mother dejectedly from his New York regiment, “I have not seen one person in Washington who was above the rank of Commonplace & should like to get into the society of intelligent people.”4 The elites’ sense of special status and their disdain for the lower classes intertwined in their understanding of their role in society, and during the war, of their mission as officers. They viewed those at the top of society as naturally selected leaders with a duty to guide the community; they envisioned their role as that of shepherds to sheep. The self-conscious elites of the metropolitan north believed they should direct and uplift the masses through educational and philanthropic efforts, and maintain control and order over the masses, who lacked the capacity to govern themselves. Theodore Lyman expressed these related ideas succinctly in his musings over one of the privates he encountered in the army. “No one had ever taught him,” he wrote. “It was a clear waste of fine material, left in all its crudity instead of being worked up.” The young man would have been better with better officers, Lyman thought, but unfortunately the upper class in the United States could not produce enough officers for the army. Regiments under the command of “educated gentlemen,” he concluded, had “invariably” performed well.5 Men from the most elite social classes who received commissions in the Union Army already had a strong sense of leadership and the purpose for which it should be used. The shepherd must first take care of his sheep. Most of them believed it was their duty as officers to provide for the needs of their enlisted men and they worked long hours to ensure the men were properly fed and housed. In some regiments, elite officers contributed their own money to provide stoves and flooring for winter camps; in others, they visited all the men in the regiment who were hospitalized after battles. In an example of the personal interest officers could take in their men, Francis Channing Barlow used his contacts to find the seven-year-old son of one of his privates after the boy had been placed in a state institution. Elite officers who promoted the welfare of the enlisted men and demonstrated such genuine concern earned a measure of respect from soldiers in their regiments. Charles Francis Adams Jr. knew that the enlisted men in his regiment were not personally attached to him because they found him cold, reserved, and formal. Yet they sought him out to decide their bets and settle questions for them.6 If leadership imposed duty on the class with the special calling, it also granted authority. Authority was especially important to elite officers because they distrusted the capacity of most enlisted men to govern themselves. They 122  |  Social Status and Discipline

found themselves surrounded by “trash,” “savages,” or “a pack of roughs” who reveled in drink and out-of-control melees. Not all men were that unmanly, but too many were uneducated, unclean, and uncouth. In letters home, elites made fun of men who could not spell or speak properly, and commented constantly on the dirty appearance of enlisted men. Under these circumstances, elite officers knew they had to exert the full authority the army regulations granted them. Some of that authority was deployed to clean the men and lay out orderly camps. But much of that authority was used for more serious purposes. Because elite officers intended to establish coercive external discipline over their men, they established a rigid regimen that emphasized the authority of officers and the unquestioned subordination of enlisted men. In the early years of the war, officers and enlisted men in many regiments socialized together in officers’ tents. Elite officers never allowed this level of familiarity. Standing orders in Stephen Minot Weld’s 56th Massachusetts, for example, forbid any officer to speak to an enlisted man except on duty. Any officer “who shall suffer such men to sit in his presence” would be publicly reprimanded. Weld frequently reduced noncommissioned officers (corporals and sergeants) for “undue familiarity” with men or with superior officers.7 Enlisted men had to understand that they were subject to their officers. Only a strong show of authority and the use of army discipline would ensure the men’s orderly behavior in camp and their performance in battle. Doubting that immigrants and roughs possessed the manly internal mechanisms of self-control and courage, elite officers turned to external coercion. While individual men were capable of moving in the paths of duty and self-sacrifice, Maj. Wilder Dwight suggested in a representative comment that the mass of men needed system and discipline to achieve those goals. When he and the other officers of the 2nd Massachusetts found the troops’ initial enthusiasm for war wearing off under hard work and homesickness in August 1861, he decided, “The only remedy for the trouble is to bring the men to their duty with a strong hand.”8 Regiments with a high percentage of elite officers were distinctive for the discipline they instituted; behind that discipline was an urgent sense that enlisted men needed to be controlled. Officers in elite regiments never tolerated disobedience to any order, and they enforced this standard through the application of violence, the external mechanism that would replace the manly quality of self-control so many enlisted men supposedly lacked. Henry Livermore Abbott relied on his sergeant, Leander Alley, who had been first mate on a whaler, to enforce obedience through a long flat stick known as “Alley’s

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Spanker.” In the 56th Massachusetts, Stephen Minot Weld arrested “roughs” and kept them on a platform built twenty feet high.9 Elite officers did not hesitate to shoot men who disobeyed their orders. When the newly formed 56th Massachusetts reached its camp in Annapolis in 1864, many of the enlisted men hit the town on a drinking binge. Weld ordered one of the offenders, a man named Casey, to be tied by the thumbs and gagged with a bayonet. Casey kicked the officer attempting to administer the punishment. Weld told Casey that he would shoot him. At that moment, another officer walked by and Casey tried another kick. Weld drew his pistol and fired twice, hitting Casey’s arm and the bayonet tied into his mouth. The bayonet saved the drunken soldier’s life. “I meant to kill him,” Weld said. “And was very sorry I did not succeed.” But he found the incident still worked its purpose. “The shots had a wonderful effect on quieting the men, and I had very little trouble with them after that.”10 Col. Charles Russell Lowell killed his man. This Boston Brahmin found insubordination particularly infuriating and would not abide challenges to his authority. While he was in Boston recruiting for the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry, he checked in at the recruiting station early one morning and found a small squad of new recruits in a state of mutiny. The sergeant had ordered a man to be handcuffed, but the recruits felt this was unjust and resisted. Lowell informed them that the order must be obeyed. He would hear their side and decide the case on its merits, but the order should be obeyed first. “God knows, my men, I don’t want to kill any of you,” Lowell said. “But I shall shoot the first man who resists.” When the sergeant stepped forward with the irons, the recruits rushed forward, and Lowell shot the leader, a twentythree-year-old Irish immigrant named William Pendergast.11 The necessity of deploying violence to enforce obedience extended to the battlefield. Because they distrusted the courage and self-control of men from the lower classes, elite officers also used external coercion to enforce discipline during battle. After action in June 1862, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. reported to his parents that his company, “although roughs and poor material,” fought splendidly. But he attributed this to his file closers, whom he had given orders to shoot any man that ran in battle. During the fight they had bayoneted several faltering soldiers, and Holmes had personally rapped a cowering private with his sword, pulled his revolver, and swore to shoot any man who fired against orders. Stephen Minot Weld, using an old technique of the British regulars, forced all the men of the 56th Massachusetts to take the caps off their guns before a charge. With caps, he believed, they would charge to a few yards of the objective, fire, and run. Without caps, they would 124  |  Social Status and Discipline

have to rush over the enemy works.12 Unsure about the manhood of their men, Holmes and Weld were prepared to make them fight. Francis Channing Barlow, who enlisted as a private, rose to command the 61st New York Infantry, and was promoted to brigadier general, mastered these tactics, and had the opportunity to employ them on a large scale as a division commander. On the march, he established a provost guard to follow behind the column and drive all stragglers with the bayonet. Barlow personally beat soldiers—punching them with his fists and kicking them wherever he could hit—who straggled or attempted to leave the field of battle. At Cold Harbor, he put stragglers into an open field under the fire of Confederate shells.13 As members of an elite class with long experience in civil leadership, officers from the upper classes knew that it took more than a strong show of authority and force to claim obedience. They balanced strict discipline with leadership methods that employed incentive and reward. Weld, for example, followed up with the man he had shot. He believed he could distinguish between the “totally bad” and those “temporarily led astray.” Weld called Casey into his tent and told him he would forego a court-martial if Casey promised to relinquish liquor. Weld proceeded to treat Casey just as he did the other men, and “tried to reform him by showing that I had confidence in him.” This method worked for four months, as Casey reformed his behavior and was promoted to 1st sergeant. Later Casey fell off the wagon and Weld busted him back to private, but Weld still worked with the man and had confidence in his eventual reformation. Other elite officers gave incentives to their men such as additional leaves and privileges. Henry Livermore Abbott, who was not loath to use force, recognized that violence alone did not work. He identified the “spirit of emulation” as the “most powerful governing spirit of American troops.”14 Upper-class officers claimed obedience in battle through personal example as well as coercion. Because they envisioned themselves as the natural shepherds of society, they had to model the manly behavior they sought to instill. As we have seen in the previous chapter, elites in northern society believed that honor and courage were integral parts of manhood. These elite young men viewed their behavior in battle not only as a measuring stick of their own character but also as an essential tool to inspire appropriate battle discipline in their men. In his first battle, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. positioned himself in front of the men to encourage them forward. When a spent ball hit him, he started to crawl to the rear but realized his injury was not severe enough to excuse him. He leapt up, returned to the front, waved his sword, and asked his men to follow him. He was then shot again. Charles

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Russell Lowell, even toward the end of the war, made sure his men saw him coolly and calmly riding his horse in exposed places along the line of battle. He wore a bright crimson sash in battle, even though he believed it made him a target, because it was “good for the men to have me wear it.”15 Elite officers who combined personal courage, a system of incentives, and a genuine concern for the men’s welfare earned the respect of some of their troops. At the same time, even the most authoritarian officer could find that he developed a deep bond with some of the privates in his regiment. The shared hardships of war and the surprising courage of some enlisted men softened elite views. While class-conscious officers never altered their disciplinary methods, they granted that at least some of their enlisted men had proved worthy. Henry Livermore Abbott, one of the more snobbish officers in the 20th Massachusetts, admitted that he was attached to some of his men and found it harder to “rough them.” He would rebuke privates in a “pleasant, goodnatured way, instead of the proper short, sharp, curt, military style. One can’t help it; they are such a fine set of fellows.” Other officers eventually desired affection as well as respect from the enlisted men. In his earliest days in the army, Barlow announced that he had no “desire to make the damned scoundrels like me & I do not think they do especially.” But later in the war he frequently commented in letters to his family that he thought his men liked him, a sure sign that he wanted the “attachment” of his troops.16 Elite officers and soldiers bonded as the enlisted men learned to recognize the need for discipline in camp and battle. In regiments where the elite officers were efficient, soldiers appreciated that they ate better and fought more effectively than men who served under incompetent officers. The outstanding military leadership of some upper-class officers did earn the respect, admiration, and instant obedience of the men. Charles Humphreys, the chaplain for Charles Russell Lowell’s 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry, recalled that at first soldiers chafed under the strict discipline the colonel enforced. “It was hard for a free man nourished in independence to submit absolutely to the will of another,” he later wrote. Over time, however, the men recognized that Lowell was a brilliant tactician, a courageous man who led from the front, and an officer whose judgment they could trust. Charles Fuller, in his memoirs of the 61st New York, noted that Barlow was at first hated for his exacting requirements and his severity. This animosity eventually turned to confidence and admiration when the men saw that Barlow knew what he was doing, made every effort to ensure their welfare, and led by example.17 But some soldiers rejected the lessons of their elite officers and even doubted their right to lead. The Union Army experienced its equivalent of 126  |  Social Status and Discipline

class conflict in the form of socially elite officers pitted against resentful and mutinous enlisted men. This happened in the 20th Massachusetts, where the class consciousness of a conservative clique of officers such as Abbott undermined morale in the regiment and led the soldiers to embark on a formal protest. In early June 1863, 210 enlisted men—three-quarters of the regiment—signed a petition to the governor that claimed they were “subjected to a tyranny worse than African slavery.” The specific tyrant was a recently commissioned 2nd lieutenant with no military experience who had been twice suspended from Harvard. The men demanded that the officer be removed from command, and claimed that he had been promoted only because of his family connections.18 The enlisted men who signed this petition claimed that their treatment tended to “destroy their manhood.” They told the governor about the extreme punishments employed by this officer “for the most trifling of causes”: men were suspended from trees, put in stocks, “or elevated on instruments of torture.”19 The petitioners recognized the link between the methods of punishment this officer employed and his lack of respect for their manhood. In the context of the nineteenth-century United States, the men likened their treatment to that of another group intentionally stripped of their manhood—African slaves. When officers hung men from trees, as opposed to incarceration in the guardhouse, they chose a punishment with symbolic connotations of slavery; such punishments, which involved public shame and the imposition of a vulnerable and subordinate physical position, were applied to slaves in part to symbolize their lack of honorable manhood. The negative connotations of corporal punishment provoked enlisted men to mutiny when they saw officers apply such methods. Elite officers who regularly used corporal punishment faced resistance from enlisted men in other regiments as well as their own. On one occasion, officers in the 2nd Massachusetts punished a drunken and insubordinate man by tying him to a tree for one hour on three successive days. On the third day, a large crowd of men from neighboring regiments gathered around the edge of the Second’s camp. Hurling insults at the officers, the crowd took up a cry of “cut him down!” Officers eventually used force to suppress the mob. After this incident, officers from several other regiments approached Colonel George H. Gordon, commander of the Second, and asked him to punish the man in a more private place. Gordon refused. Maj. Wilder Dwight commented bitterly to his family that the Second was the only regiment that attempted to maintain discipline. “Even the officers among our neighbors discountenance the severity which alone insures our discipline,” he lamented. “To-day our

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army is crippled by the ideas of equality and independence which have colored the whole life of our people. When this defect is cured, and men recognize authority and obey without knowing why, we shall begin to get an army. In war, one will must act through all the others.”20 It is easy to miss the significance of Dwight’s statement that severity alone insured his regiment’s discipline. Early in the war, many officers assumed that strict discipline was not necessary because northern volunteers had the manhood necessary to be natural soldiers. The volunteers would be self-disciplined in camp and courageous in battle. And those officers who placed little value on self-control were confident for other reasons; they believed that their aggressive and hard-fighting peers displayed just the kind of manliness necessary for war. But elite officers did not share these assumptions. They did not trust the inherent courage and self-discipline of the roughs and immigrants they commanded; they feared the aggressive manliness of the lower-class men as a sign of savagery and disorder. Only the strong hand of authority and the use of army discipline would ensure that such men would clean up, sober up, and fight. In the earliest months of the war, the leadership and discipline of elite officers who commanded some of the northeastern regiments appear to be relatively unique. There were regiments in both the eastern and western armies that were commanded by officers with extended experience in the regular army before the war, and often these officers imposed draconian discipline on their troops. Elites from the northwest, many of them with economic and social connections to their counterparts back east, shared the same assumptions about social status and manhood, and they used similar methods if they commanded regiments that contained a high proportion of urban roughs and lower-class immigrants. Although there were other pockets of officers who employed the same methods as the men considered thus far, in the first year of the war elite officers from the northeast were hardly typical of officers in the Union Army as a whole. But they were not unique for long. They foreshadowed the methods that officers in all the Union armies, east and west, would increasingly employ. Whenever a unit experienced an influx of men from the economic margins of northern society—whether they were urban roughs, lower-class immigrants, or propertyless rural laborers—officers asserted their authority, implemented stringent discipline that relied on corporal punishment, and used force against their men during battle. Historians who write about Civil War soldiers have overemphasized the lax discipline in the Union Army. According to the common depiction of most Civil War units, officers familiarly fraternized with soldiers, over128  |  Social Status and Discipline

looked the finer points of military discipline, and relied on their personal example and the soldiers’ own conception of courage during battle. Scholars agree that discipline tightened over the course of the war, but they attribute this tendency to an almost democratic understanding between veteran soldiers and their officers, both of whom had learned the value of discipline through practical experience. Veteran enlisted men understood the need for command and obedience, so they willingly submitted to the orders of their officers. When scholars composed this picture, however, they relied almost exclusively on letters, diaries, and memoirs, ignoring regimental order books and courts-martial records.21 A survey of regimental order books and courts-martial records conducted for this study found that many regiments implemented more stringent discipline and stricter punishments after 1863. This finding aligns with the observation of other scholars that after 1863 more regiments began employing file closers and issuing orders to open fire on broken units.22 But the reasons for this go beyond the fact that veteran soldiers appreciated the need for discipline. The records also reveal the connection between this tighter discipline and officers’ assumptions about social status and manhood. There was a widespread perception during and after 1863—reflected in order books, courts-martial cases, and letters and diaries—that a class of undesirable men had infiltrated the ranks of the army and that these men had to be handled with strict discipline, harsh punishments, and coercion. An influx of conscripts, bounty men, and substitutes flooded the Union Army after Congress implemented the draft. In his groundbreaking article on the federal conscription of 1863, historian Tyler Anbinder confirms that a disproportionate number of immigrants and poor, native-born Americans entered the army that year. The “overwhelming majority” of the immigrants, who made up about half the new soldiers, entered the army voluntarily as substitutes. The men whom the draft forced into the army were “native-born citizens on the bottom rungs of the North’s socioeconomic ladder, especially unskilled workers living in the countryside.”23 Some northerners viewed these immigrants and unskilled laborers with the same suspicions and concerns as did elite officers. The low social status of the conscripts called into question their manhood and whether they possessed the attributes necessary to make manly soldiers: a sound moral character, self-control, and courage. During the second half of the war, the attitudes of soldiers from other social classes mirrored those of elite officers and instigated more widespread use of the disciplinary methods of the elite officers from the northeast, who had always commanded such men. Rather

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than implementing uniform institutional discipline after 1863, officers implemented harsh discipline and the use of coercive mechanisms over those men who came from certain social classes in civilian life. The modified picture ties discipline in the Union Army to interrelated perceptions of class and manliness. The clashes in the army between the economically marginal substitutes and draftees and the volunteer enlisted men and officers took place in the context of increasing class tensions on the home front. Several states and cities across the north experienced deadly riots and working-class uprisings between 1862 and 1865. The explosive combination of class tensions and conscription rocked the Union and threatened the social cohesion many felt was necessary for victory. Historians who write about the northern home front depict a middle and upper class there that remained anxious about the teeming masses in their cities, who seemingly threatened the social order and successful prosecution of the war. Their concerns related to long-standing assumptions about the correlation between the survival of the republic and the manhood of its citizens. Civic virtue required men to achieve economic independence, a stake in society, and moral character; the urban working classes represented the potential to corrupt the republic through their permanent economic dependence and what was perceived to be their proclivity to savagery and vice.24 Irish immigrants were the focus of particular concern, despite the significant number of Irishmen who had volunteered early in the war and who had bled for the Union in well-known battles. Native-born Americans had long distrusted Irish loyalty to Ireland and Catholicism as well as Irish affinity for ethnic neighborhoods and organizations. They despised the “white slaves” or “white niggers,” who usually held the lowest-paying and most degraded jobs in the urban United States. This prejudice had abated slightly during the Irish rush to the colors in 1861 and their subsequent bravery on the battlefield, but this goodwill had been contingent on continued Irish support for the war. When the support of many Irish Americans began to wane—due to perceived mistreatment in the army, devastating casualty rates in the Irish Brigade, and government policies that seemed to oppose Irish interests, such as the Emancipation Proclamation and the provisions of conscription—prejudice resurfaced. The stereotype of Irishmen as natural fighters, which had served them early in the war, now worked against them. The New York City draft riots seemed to confirm that the inherent brutality of the Irish threatened the United States. Irishmen in the army were perceived differently after the summer of 1863 than they had been in 1861.25 130  |  Social Status and Discipline

The anxieties of middle- and upper-class Americans increased as these masses seemed to constitute an ever-increasing percentage of the army. Urban middle-class and rural soldiers observed that the number of foreigners in the army increased after the draft, and they described these men using common phrases and incidents that indicated questions about their manhood. Robert McAllister, the colonel of the 11th New Jersey, complained to his wife in September 1864 that too many of the new recruits were foreigners: “worthless men” and “trash.” Henry Livermore Abbott, the elite officer of the 20th Massachusetts, claimed that desertion was unknown before the immigrants arrived; when Isaac Best wrote the regimental history of the 121st New York, he made the impossible statement that he never heard a wounded man shriek until the Battle of Cold Harbor in 1864. “Usually our men endured the greatest pain with stoicism, muttering perhaps, and groaning, and grinding their teeth,” he remembered. “If an outcry was made it was usually in the voice of a foreigner.” In Best’s colored memory, only native-born Americans had the manly self-control to endure pain silently.26 Most immigrant volunteers had served in units where they were mixed with native-born soldiers and a variety of other ethnics, and scholars who have studied the subject find that relations between the two groups were generally good. A few immigrants joined ethnic regiments that united men from the same background and proudly proclaimed the group’s heritage. Many native-born American soldiers admired the ethnic regiments who fought gallantly under the Union flag. This study found nothing to contradict those points. At the same time it is true that open hostility between American soldiers and immigrants was a common feature of the Union Army, especially when class, ethnic prejudices, and differing conceptions of manhood intertwined, and when Americans believed the type of immigrant who entered the army after 1863 was different from the earlier volunteers. Typical was the relationship between the 121st New York and the 96th Pennsylvania, two regiments within the same brigade. Daniel Holt, the assistant surgeon of the New Yorkers, displayed nothing but contempt for the Germans who composed the Pennsylvania unit. “From the first our boys could not endure the Saerkrout illiterate lunk heads,” he recalled. “They were cowards; and like all other cowards, were braggadocios and abusive. Until we had fairly knocked it into them by fisticuffs and blackened their eyes . . . they kept up their taunts and insults; but after they came slowly to realize that a man was none the less because he could read and write, they ceased to annoy us.” Fights between the units were common. Holt recorded one such incident in his wartime diary. While sailing on the transport Tappahannock, the colo

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nel of the 96th and an enlisted man of the 121st had “a tussle in which swords and guns are used.” Holt clearly shared some manly attributes with the “illiterate lunk heads” he despised. He participated in the fighting necessary for the men of the 121st to establish their manly reputation in the brigade. But without education and social status, the Pennsylvania Germans never earned his respect.27 The other widely disparaged group of men infiltrating the ranks of the Union Army was, of course, the “roughs.” They seemed more prominent after 1863. The chaplain of the 58th Indiana, John J. Hight, recorded in his diary that he was deeply disappointed in the conscripts. There were some “substantial citizens” among them, but for the most part they were the “scrapings of society.” They were “wild young men” who engaged in a catalog of evils: profanity, drinking, fighting, cardplaying, and fiddling and dancing on a Sunday evening. John Haley, a private in the 17th Maine, described the conscripts in his regiment as a pack of “villains” and “cutthroats” who were always “spoiling for a fight.” One night when he and his messmates returned from picket duty, they found some of the new conscripts waiting for them in their tent. “We were more than willing to oblige,” Haley recorded in his diary. What differentiated the roughs was not just their desire to fight—Haley and his companions were ready to oblige—but their low social status and the perception that they lacked any other attribute of manliness.28 Soldiers believed, as did the northern public, that bounty jumpers were nearly exclusively men of this class. Such men collected a bounty for enlisting in one district, deserted at the first opportunity, and went to a new location to enlist and collect another bounty. The perception that bounty jumping was a widespread practice raised alarms across the north about the presence of socially undesirable elements in northern cities. Historian Michael T. Smith chronicled how the northern reaction to bounty jumpers was tied to public fears of an unruly underclass that threatened social order. The northern press portrayed bounty jumpers as an outgrowth of a criminal class that prowled urban areas or as part of a dangerous urban subculture of “sporting men.” These men, also characterized at times as “roughs,” avoided employment, valued only the ability to fight and drink, and dressed with gaudy affectation. Many northern soldiers in the field thought that all bounty jumpers were unassimilated immigrants. These perceptions, though different in some ways, had similar results. Because the public and the soldiers identified bounty jumpers as a separate and undesirable class of men, Smith argues, they were subjected to a different standard of treatment in the army, including summary execution, torture, and harsher penalties for desertion.29 132  |  Social Status and Discipline

This did not apply just to bounty jumpers. Officers and soldiers in the Union Army believed that all immigrants, conscripts, and roughs had to be subjected to harsh discipline to keep order in the camps and to force the men to fight. “It will be a great while before men who have sold themselves into slavery can be made to have the honorable and manly instincts that prevailed or were easily stimulated in the volunteer,” Henry Livermore Abbott commented, expressing a sentiment that was echoed again and again in letters soldiers wrote home. His regiment’s solution: “We have put the screws to them like the devil.”30 Abbott was an officer in the class-conscious 20th Massachusetts, but more and more officers and soldiers became class-conscious after 1863. The Union Army, with the approbation of apparently most of its volunteer officers and soldiers, increased the severity of its discipline and its enforcement of authority over the undesirable class of men. Regimental order books and general courts-martial records reveal two particularly striking features of this discipline: the increased willingness of officers to use violence and corporal punishment against subordinates who refused to obey orders, and the increased use of coercion at all levels to force men to stay in the army and fight. The treatment of lower-class immigrants and roughs was expressly linked to their lack of manliness: those who were “hardly worthy to be called men” and had “sold themselves into slavery” could not be expected to display the self-control, fortitude, and courage of the manly volunteers.31 Regiments that were already noted for discipline increased the severity of punishments and depended even more on violence to enforce order after 1863. A classic example was what happened in the 5th New York Veteran Volunteers, a strictly disciplined regiment from its inception. Abram Duryée, a wealthy mahogany importer and a twenty-year veteran of the New York State Militia, organized the original two-year unit and officered the regiment with experienced West Pointers, veterans of the New York National Guard, and young men from New York City’s most elite social class. He intended to create a model regiment that would exemplify the drill and discipline of the regular army. Even young men of good social standing who joined the unit as privates found that officers would not breach the strict line of separation between themselves and the men. “A private is looked on as little better than a nigger,” seventeen-year-old Charles Brandegee told his father. “There is great dissatisfaction with the officers and I don’t believe there are 5 officers liked by the men. Our Lieut Col is especially hated and some of the boys go so far as to swear they will shoot him in the 1st battle.”32 Class tensions would become more overt and discipline increasingly harsh when the regiment was reconstituted in 1863. The two-year volunteers

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headed home; the three-year men were transferred to the 146th New York. Col. Cleveland Winslow, the twenty-seven-year-old son of the Episcopal regimental chaplain and originally a captain of Company K, was the fourth man to command the regiment. Winslow reorganized the unit with new enlistments and veterans transferred in from several hard-fighting New York volunteer regiments. He was in command of a very different group of men than the original Fifth; it was now a regiment of working-class immigrants. When Brandegee, now a disgruntled member of the 146th New York, saw the 5th Veteran Volunteers in the field, he wrote his brother, “You must not compare that scaly lot of roughs to the men that composed the 5th. They are as different as white is from black.”33 Winslow, and later Col. Fredric Winthrop, subjected the immigrants of the 5th New York to draconian discipline that surpassed anything the regiment had experienced before. The regimental order book of this unit is a meticulous record of strict orders and summary punishments. Winslow created a long list of expectations for the men’s appearance at inspection, including the proper alignment of the backpack, and assigned a fine, ranging from twentyfive to fifty cents, for each deficiency. He published the names of men and the amount they were fined in regimental orders. Winslow’s punishments for any offense were extreme. One man was chained in stocks and put on bread and water for thirty days. He was only let down for three hours out of every twenty-four to sleep. Over a several-month period stretching from October 1863 to January 1864, Winslow and his officers employed water torture as a method of punishment. During that time, a field officer court-martial sentenced twenty-six men to “stoppage of one months pay and imprisonment in Slave Pen for 30 days with from One to 3 shower baths per day.” The “Slave Pen” was a guardhouse for Union soldiers in Alexandria, Virginia. A literal slave pen before federal occupation of the city, it was a single cell about sixtyfoot square encased by walls twenty-feet high with no windows or roof. Winslow did not bother to try seventy-eight other men, who had been reported for offenses such as absence from roll call or overstaying passes; they were “fined by order of Commanding Officer from 5–8 dollars, and imprisoned in Slave Pen with shower baths from 24 hours to five days.”34 These tactics had not been necessary when the unit was not so working class and foreign. From its inception, the officers of the Fifth wanted to mold a tightly disciplined unit that operated along the lines of the regular army. To achieve that goal with this set of men required a new set of methods. In March 1864, Cleveland Winslow wrote Hiram Duryea that his unit was in fine condition. “I had to work very hard to get it so as I think I never saw a 134  |  Social Status and Discipline

more demoralized set of men,” he said. Earlier Winslow had written his commanding generals with the suggestion that one of the drill manuals needed to be simplified. “The explanation of the movement is long and complicated,” he explained. “With the class of men now enlisting in the army it would require much time and practice to insure rapidity and perfection in its execution.”35 Regiments turned to external coercion and corporal punishment to establish discipline over the undesirable class of men whose behavior on the home front was disturbing order. Meanwhile, individual officers throughout the Union Army increasingly turned to force to assert their authority and ensure obedience to their commands. In particular, those officers in charge of transporting substitutes and conscripts to the armies in the field believed they had to deploy violent methods to suppress and govern the out-of-control mobs by which they felt surrounded. Maj. Charlie Mattocks, of the 17th Maine, handled his task in a typical way. In the fall of 1863 he brought conscripts to Virginia on a transport steamer. Among them was a New Hampshire detachment of two hundred men whom Mattocks called “the merest trash—hardly worthy to be called men.” Nearly all were drunk and they spent most of the voyage fighting one another. When Mattocks discovered two of the men boxing while a large ring watched, he pushed through the ring and choked the two participants. A few minutes later another officer engaged in a physical tussle with several men and ended up pulling his revolver. Mattocks spent most of that journey suppressing violent behavior through retaliatory violence and the application of corporal punishment. “When I went below at the first of the trouble one of the ‘roughs’ made a pass at me behind my back, but was brought up very suddenly by one of my own men,” he said of the incident. Mattocks tied the rough to the rigging for two hours. These methods highlight the connection, seen in earlier chapters, between social class and a man’s ability to unleash violence. When middle- and upper-class officers used the methods of the roughs to deal with roughs—it was not necessary for Mattocks to choke the two boxers in order to stop the fight—their violence was perceived to be necessary and acceptable.36 Courts-martial records reveal that officers were increasingly willing to shoot men who disobeyed orders. Officers in the Union Army had used deadly force against enlisted men from the war’s inception, and in these rare incidents the army hierarchy had affirmed that such measures were sometimes necessary to establish the quintessential element of military discipline: automatic obedience to the command of an officer. Typical was the case of Capt. Charles G. Stone of the 17th New York. There had been a disturbance in the regiment, and the officer of the guard had arrested enough men to cre

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ate a tent full of prisoners. The men became mutinous, one of them fired a pistol, and a man named O’Keefe threatened one of the guards. When Capt. Stone was informed of these proceedings, he ordered the prisoners tied and O’Keefe brought to his tent. Stone took out a rope and told O’Keefe to sit down so he could tie his hands. When O’Keefe did not respond, Stone told him he had one minute to sit down or be shot. O’Keefe replied that he did not care for Stone nor fear him. After waiting one minute, Stone shot and killed the private. The court of inquiry, composed of officers from volunteer New York, Vermont, and Maine regiments, recommended that no charges be brought against Stone as he acted to quell insubordination and enforce orders. Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell approved these conclusions.37 Although O’Keefe had verbally threatened Stone during this August 1861 incident, all witnesses testified that he was not aggressive toward the captain. Few officers at that stage of the war would have shot O’Keefe under those circumstances, but rather would have ordered the guards to use the bayonet in order to tie the man. After 1862, however, the number of officers willing to shoot subordinates to back up their authority increased. In the record of Union courts-martial, there are at least fifty-two cases of officers shooting subordinates who refused to obey orders. This reflects only the number of cases that reached the level of general courts-martial; a court of inquiry would have handled many other cases without charges being brought against the officer. Of the incidents recorded in general courts-martial records, only three occurred before August 1862.38 Most of the cases involved officers shooting privates who were attempting to escape arrest, who were violently resisting punishment, or who were threatening the officer. But the record indicates that the influx of substitutes, conscripts, and bounty men—the men perceived as roughs—can partially account for the increased willingness of officers to use force. Some officers who shot enlisted men explicitly linked their actions to the character of the roughs. They portrayed roughs as a separate class of men, dangerous and habitually immoral, who needed summary punishment. No one explained this better than Maj. John Jordan of the 57th Indiana. He acted as legal counsel for 1st Lt. Robert H. Morgan, of the same regiment, who was court-martialed for ordering a drunken private, Thomas Baxter, to be shot. Men like Baxter had to be eliminated from the army, Jordan told the court. “There is to be found among us, a class, who are distinguished for a low and depreciating sense of their moral obligations and especially the reverence due the constituted authorities,” Jordan claimed. “When such men come into our camps and associate with those who have up to the date of their enlist136  |  Social Status and Discipline

ment, been surrounded with Christian influences, it is not long before the moral influences are deadened and the immoral strengthened.”39 Other officers mentioned the character of the roughs in their legal defenses, but an even more compelling relationship between the influx of conscripts and officers’ increased use of violence was the number of cases in which the officers involved were in charge of transporting detachments of conscripts and substitutes. In July 1863, for example, Lt. E. J. Parker, from his position on the bank of a canal, shot a substitute on the deck of a steamer who had escaped the hold and was advancing on another officer. Parker described the man he had shot as “a well-known character, he being a prize fighter and a very hard case.” Capt. Benjamin Tucker shot a private who defied his authority in front of a detachment of conscripts he had transported from the draft rendezvous in Boston to the exchange barracks in Louisville. The detachment contained, according to Tucker, “the worst lot of men ever sent from that place.” When he arrived in Louisville, Tucker was bringing these draftees up some stairs when a group of privates, who were not part of his command, attempted to come down the stairs. Tucker ordered them back, and all complied but one, a private who stated he had been ordered on detail and had to go below. Tucker coupled another order to move with a shove, but the private still tried to argue his case. Tucker drew a pistol, at which point the man stepped back but again started to argue, and so Tucker fired a shot that took off part of the man’s cheek. In his written defense, Tucker pointed out that the man had disputed his authority, “significantly trying to show, by his demeanor, to the crowd of men there assembled, that I had no right to command him.”40 The pressure of handling the roughs changed many officers’ perceptions about authority and force. Union officers who commanded the new class of men in the Union Army could no longer afford to tolerate the behavior that had been allowed volunteers in many regiments. Those who faced courts-martial for shooting enlisted men increasingly defended their actions with a sophisticated articulation of their rights as military officers. They understood the power they possessed and were able to explain why it was necessary for them to deploy that power. Edward Underhill was this type of officer in late 1864. Before the war this native of Bath, New York, was a man with education, some business experience, and a middle-class income. He entered the service as a commissary sergeant, was eventually promoted to 1st lieutenant, fought in eighteen battles, and earned the commendation of his superiors. In October 1864 he was appointed to command the military post in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. One unit under his new command was the Independent Company Patapsco Guards, Maryland

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Volunteers, a disorderly group known for its rough characters, hard-drinking habits, and defiant temperament. They had already threatened the life of a corporal who had arrested several men found in town without passes. Underhill immediately sought to bring these men to heel with a series of strict orders.41 On the evening of December 3, 1864, Underhill heard a disturbance in the town. In the company of another officer, Underhill entered the small alehouse that was the favorite of his unruly subordinates. In one room he found eight soldiers playing dominoes; none of them had passes. He informed them that they were under arrest and would have to accompany him back to camp. Underhill then went into an adjoining room to question other enlisted men. As soon as he did this, the arrested men jumped up and ran, some out a side door and some out the back. Underhill ran to the back door and yelled “halt!” twice. He then pulled a pistol and fired four times. One shot hit Pvt. John Redman in the back and killed him.42 Consistent with the results in similar incidents at this point in the war, a court of inquiry found that Underhill was not at fault in the shooting. But the civil authorities did not see the incident in a military light. The local district attorney took steps toward prosecution. Rather than allow that action to go forward, military authorities tried Underhill before a military commission. Underhill, who had no counsel, presented a sophisticated defense of his actions. The military code, he argued, “recognizes as its chief Corner Stone, the fundamental duty of implicit and instant obedience by the Soldier to all the lawful commands of his superior Officer. If you knock away this corner stone the whole fabric of military discipline falls to pieces, and the organization of the army becomes as unstable as the sands on the seashore.” Underhill understood his rights as an officer. “In order to compel the performance of this duty of obedience, the military code clothes the officer with authority and power over his men sufficient to deprive them of liberty and even of life itself whenever the exigency of the occasion demands such stringent measures.”43 Officers during the final years of the war invoked military law to support the deadly actions they now believed were necessary to ensure that the army held together. In fairness to the officers discussed here, the surviving documents indicate that many of the roughs were a genuine threat to the order and proper functioning of the army, and officers necessarily moved to crush their abusive and violent behavior. Officers transporting roughs did face a crowd of drunken men who attacked passersby, instigated large-scale melees, and defiantly disobeyed necessary and legitimate commands of their offi138  |  Social Status and Discipline

cers. When the conscripts arrived in the regiments, gambling, drunkenness, and fighting increased. Thomas Baxter, the private in the 57th Indiana who was shot on the orders of Maj. John Jordan, was a danger to the men around him. When he announced that he would kill someone in the regiment with a cheese knife, officers in the regiment had reason to believe him. It is also clear, however, that in many cases officers conflated low social class and low moral character. Men at the bottom of the economic ladder who drank and fought could be perceived differently than men from other social classes who engaged in similar behavior. Critical to the behavior of officers toward conscripts after 1863, then, was the perception that all men in this group were out of control. Roughs were a separate class of men, different from the early volunteers, and officers believed they had to back up their authority over this class with violence. This assumption extended to the battlefield, as officers increasingly employed harsher methods to coerce men to fight. Army regulations provided a framework for officers to use force on the march and in battle to keep men in the ranks. Sergeants were appointed file closers and were posted in the rear of each company. It was their duty to see that the lines were closed and that no man left his place. File closers could use the bayonet, or, if necessary, shoot men down.44 A few regiments, especially northeastern units with a high concentration of elite officers, followed these regulations from the start. Some brigade commanders who were regular army officers employed file closers in the earliest months of the war and implemented strict orders for the use of force against stragglers in the march. Soldiers recorded isolated incidents of officers using force during battle before 1863, particularly when officers had to contain mass panic at the brigade level. After 1863, the use of coercion in battle found institutional support and wider acceptance. The Army of the Potomac implemented designated units of provost guards to drive stragglers into line. Brigade- and corps-level commanders issued orders to these provost guards that would have provoked outrage in the first year of the war. In May 1864, the provost guard of the 2nd Division, 9th Army Corps, Army of the Potomac, was ordered to prevent straggling with “free use of bayonets and bullets.” A month later, Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock of the 1st Division, 2nd Corps, ordered the provost guard to shoot down skulkers who attempted to abandon the battlefield. A survey of regimental order books demonstrates that more regiments used file closers during and after 1863. The 42nd Illinois ordered company commanders to be sure that file closers did their duty. The 143rd New York reminded its line officers that file closers “are not appointed for ornament but for use.”45

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File closers were not the only coercive mechanism officers used during battle. More and more line officers intended to carry out the use of force personally. John Kidder was the captain of Company I, 121st New York Volunteers. An immigrant from England, he owned a carriage shop and was a founding member of the Republican Party in his county. He did not always agree with the methods of his regiment’s commanding officer, Emory Upton, a West Pointer who implemented strict military standards along the lines of the regular army, weeded out officers who would not conform, and molded one of the most efficient and professional volunteer units of the war. “As our Colonel is a regular officer, we have to style a little and we are not permitted to be intimate with our men,” Kidder told his family. “I think this is a mistaken notion, but we must obey orders.” Kidder disagreed when Upton promoted Andrew Mather to the rank of major over the popular Henry Galpin because the latter was too familiar with his men.46 Yet by the Battle of Gettysburg, Kidder was willing to shoot his men. As his regiment moved onto the slope of Little Round Top, Kidder noticed one of his men moving to the rear. “I drew my pistol and told him he could march in the ranks or die. He walked up promptly as he knew I would have shot him,” Kidder reported home with pride. “We were ordered to shoot any man that shows any cowardice and as sure as any of my men turn to run, I will shoot them. I have told them so and they know what to depend on.” In a later letter to his wife, Kidder referenced his file closers. He was anxious to use them on Copperheads: “They would be put into the front rank and if they showed any disposition to run, my file closer would bayonet them.”47 The men detailed as file closers also seemed more than willing to perform their duty. Capt. John W. DeForest of the 12th Connecticut had no trouble when he ordered his file closers to shoot a new recruit at Fisher’s Hill, Virginia, in September 1864. Artillery shells sailed over the regiment as it marched forward, and the young man dropped his gun and ran in terror. “It was not my duty to sympathize with a dastard,” DeForest recorded in his diary, “and I angrily ordered the rearmost file to shoot him.” They immediately faced about and cocked their rifles, but the appearance of another regiment interfered with their aim. “As you were,” DeForest called out, and the men promptly resumed their forward march.48 Regiments even punished men who shirked their roles as file closer. In September 1864, a field officer court in the 23rd Ohio tried a sergeant for misbehavior in the face of the enemy. The evidence proved that the man acted bravely in battle, but he was reduced to the ranks because he did not perform his duty as a file closer “efficiently.” “The duty of a file closer does 140  |  Social Status and Discipline

not end with his going into action himself,” regimental orders on the case proclaimed. “He must see that his men go into action, and do their duty. It is more important that a file closer should see that a dozen men do their duty properly, even if he does not fight at all himself, than allow them to shigle out of the fight, and himself fight on so bravely. Twelve men doing their duty in a fight are better than one man.”49 The assumption behind this order was that at least a dozen men would try to escape the fight and that it took the presence of a file closer to ensure that men did their duty during battle. The pervasive distrust of the class of men who entered the army after 1863 meant that officers no longer relied on the self-control and courage of all their men. The evidence that Union regiments implemented orders to coerce men during battle sheds some new light on a question that has been the focus of much recent scholarly debate: why men fought in the Civil War. Gerald Linderman initiated the discussion with his contention that the experience of combat undermined ideals of courage among veteran soldiers. At the same time that their enthusiasm for war waned, the army received an influx of problematic conscripts and bounty men whom volunteers agreed needed to be handled with a strong hand. Linderman argues that by 1864, strict discipline replaced ideals of courage as the force that kept men in the ranks and fighting. James McPherson, whose evidence base included thousands of letters from the volunteers of 1861 and 1862, countered that among this group, who constituted the majority of the “genuine fighting men” of the Union Army, courage and honor remained important values that motivated men to fight. Their strong ideological commitment to the cause impelled them to enlist, helped them endure the rigors of battle, and enabled them to persist until the end of the war. Discipline improved but remained weak as the army continued to rely on soldiers’ internal motivations and character.50 This study serves to bridge the gap between these two historians, each of whom has captured important elements of truth. The Civil War did not shatter ideals of courage among a core set of volunteers. Men who valued honor when the war began continued to value honor throughout the war. Indeed, it was because so many men adhered to manly ideals of courage and honor that discipline changed. Volunteers continued to believe that courage mattered; they were just afraid that the kind of men who entered the army once the draft was implemented did not possess it. If that was the case, then such men needed different treatment than their more manly comrades. McPherson accurately portrays his group of volunteers, but his evidence base ignores the tens of thousands of men who fought because brute force kept them in

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the ranks. Although this study cannot support Linderman’s argument about the loss of courage, he did recognize an important point: discipline in the Union Army became more stringent over time and its severity was targeted on the post-1862 conscripts. The reason for this was not a pervasive demoralization among the volunteers, as he claims, but rather their widespread distrust of the conscripts, bounty men, and substitutes. A core group of volunteers fought for the cause; thousands of other Union soldiers fought because they had to. Without the overwhelming force used against them—on the transports south and on the battlefield—they would not have fought. The use of force and the conflict among officers, roughs, and immigrants changed the Union Army. By 1864–1865 it looked more like the antebellum regular army, which had long reflected the social divisions of civilian life. Scholars who write about the antebellum institution portray an army riven by social conflict and harsh discipline. Men from middle- and upper-class families dominated an officer corps that commanded working-class enlisted men from northern cities, two-thirds of whom were immigrants. This social gap generated incredible tensions and disciplinary problems that presaged the experience of the Civil War volunteer units discussed here. Officers viewed enlisted men as a “menacing mass” that did not possess moral character, self-control, or a sense of duty. As a result they employed strict discipline and harsh, often extralegal punishments. Rampant violence characterized the relationship between officers and enlisted men.51 Social conflicts had shaped the interaction between officers and their troops during the Mexican War as well. According to historian Paul Foos, in the units of the regular army, officers tried to enforce absolute authority over soldiers who were often “a drunken and unruly mob.” Officers injured or killed unruly soldiers with something near impunity, while courts-martial applied severe whippings and ritual humiliations to enlisted men. The volunteer units raised in the north to fight the war for manifest destiny also experienced chaotic expressions of class tension and urban discontent. A Philadelphia street gang known as the “Killers” sent a company to war with the Pennsylvania regiment. As the company traveled through other American cities on its way to Mexico, the Killers broke up theater performances, battled with other street gangs and local police, looted stores and houses, and threatened to assassinate their captain. The Massachusetts regiment, with its heavy contingent of Irish, experienced scorn from the upper classes of Boston. Disciplinary problems and company strikes plagued the unit. One company of men, who refused to board the transport steamer south because they objected to their treatment, was marched at gunpoint to the departure point 142  |  Social Status and Discipline

to the hisses and insults of an angry crowd. New York’s regiments, filled with “dregs and roughs,” many of whom had been coerced into volunteering, were kept in line, according to Foos, “by brutal discipline which only intensified the class conflicts in the regiments.”52 What happened in many Civil War volunteer units was not an anomaly in the American military experience but instead was typical of its institutionalized army and its previous wars. Harsh discipline and violent interactions between officers and soldiers reflected the social issues of American society, where class conflict intertwined with divergent conceptions of manhood. Early in the Civil War, it was mostly the socially elite volunteer officers who mimicked the methods of West Point–trained officers. After 1863, when volunteer perceptions about the social composition of the army changed, more volunteer officers acted like their regular army counterparts. They no longer tolerated indiscipline and defiance of orders and they were ready to back up their authority with force. Veteran experience played a role in this transformation, but so did fear of the north’s undesirable underclass. A man’s social status influenced whether other men acknowledged his manhood, yet men from every social class expected other men to respect them. Northern men diverged on other attributes of manhood, such as moral character, gentility, physical prowess, or honor, but all men sought equality, despite the elusiveness of this concept in the nineteenth-century United States. The contrast between the ideal—that other men would respect one’s manhood—and practice—that in various ways men refused to acknowledge the manhood of others—produced pervasive conflict on the home front and within the ranks of the Union Army. Equality was a contested term of manhood, and this contest would shape the daily lives and personal interactions of the men who fought for the Union.



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“The Shoulder-Strap Gentry”

6

Officers, Privates, and Equal Manhood

Capt. Daniel Link of the First Maryland Cavalry had posted his guards over a store near a railroad depot in West Virginia in late December 1864. Carloads of Union soldiers, often drunk or rambunctious, passed through the depot on their way to the fighting in Virginia. To maintain order and protect the store, Link gave his guards orders that only three men could enter the store at a time. Later in the day, a train arrived carrying the men of the 36th Ohio, who disembarked and all tried to enter the store. When the guards stopped John Clute and prevented him from joining his friends inside, Clute became verbally abusive. The guards called Captain Link, but when he began issuing orders to Clute, a group of men from the Thirty-sixth who were lounging around the depot arose and began yelling at Link. A witness recalled that they “hollered and wanted to know what shoulder straps were worth. They spoke a great deal of shoulder straps.” One of the men threw a rock at Link and several men began daring Link to come over to them. Clute turned to Link and said, “If you will lay off your shoulder straps I will give you a damn good whipping.”1 On these details the witnesses at Daniel Link’s court-martial agreed. What happened next was a subject of dispute. According to the guards, Clute then drew back his fist, but before he could strike the captain, Link whipped out his revolver and shot the insubordinate private. The guards testified that they were in the process of drawing their weapons when Link fired because they believed he was under attack. But the men of the 36th Ohio told another story. They claimed that after Clute challenged Link, the captain drew his revolver and that Clute was turning to run when he was shot.2 The officers presiding over Link’s court-martial believed the men of the 36th Ohio, found Link guilty of murder, and sentenced him to two years hard labor at the nearest penitentiary. But Link would never serve this sentence. Under army regulations, higher commanders reviewed the results of

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all courts-martial. Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock disapproved the sentence and restored Link to command. “The evidence shows insubordination, insult, contempt, threats of violence and conduct of the most aggravating character by a number of soldiers towards an officer commanding a post and in the rightful discharge of his duties,” the outraged general commented. “The interests of the service in enforcing good order and military discipline demand that Captain Link should be exonerated.”3 The contempt the men of the 36th Ohio displayed toward “shoulder straps” was a pervasive problem in the volunteer Union Army. Within regiments, this contempt was manifested in back talk to officers, a defiant slowness to obey orders, and verbal or physical assertion of equality on the part of enlisted men. Even more damaging to the discipline and the cohesiveness of the army was the tendency of some enlisted men to attack officers who tried to assert authority. According to the database of general courts-martial records compiled by Tom and Beverly Lowry, striking a superior officer was the second-most-common offense in the army. This database undercounts the number of incidents that would have occurred in the army since it only includes general courts-martial.4 Regimental order books contain records of punishments inflicted at the unit level against soldiers who struck or attacked officers, but not enough order books survive to provide even a rough estimate of how many times this happened during the war. Judging from the order books consulted for this study, it was a common occurrence. The frequent incidents of small-scale violence between men in the same uniform that characterized the Union Army ultimately stemmed from the central place that most men at mid-century assigned to equality as an attribute of manhood. Equality in this context meant that other men recognized and respected one’s manhood. Northern men expected other men to grant them the equal treatment that their manhood deserved. While nearly all men in the north, who were nourished on the ideals of a democratic republic, paid lip service to equality in both the political and social realm, northerners believed that manhood was an achievement rather than an inherent possession. This ambiguity made equality a contested term of manhood. Northern men did not consider all men to be their equals and did not grant manhood automatically to those they encountered. Rufus Kinsley, the Vermont native surrounding by “rum-sucking” officers in the 2nd Louisiana Native Guards, believed that his immoral colleagues were not manly and treated them accordingly. Advocates of gentility offered the acquisition of manner and cleanliness to men from every social class and promised respectability and equality to the genteel poor, but the rude and vulgar would never be 146  |  Officers, Privates, and Equal Manhood

treated as gentlemen. Elite officers incorporated social status into their conception of manliness and openly flaunted their superiority while denigrating the manhood of poor immigrants and native-born roughs. For their part, roughs only respected the manhood of those who proved their prowess in feats of physical domination. When the widespread expectation of equality between men collided with the reality of unequal designations of manliness, one result was rampant discipline problems for the Union Army. Many soldiers reacted with force to officers when they believed that officers did not respect the equality between them. The army context exacerbated difficulties between men. Civil War soldiers often resented the army hierarchy and its imposition of a clearly defined class structure. Men reared to be independent, to claim equality with every man, and to value individualism were now asked to respect hierarchy and to submit to the will of another. Even worse, the selection and promotion of officers starkly revealed how much social status mattered in American society in the mid-nineteenth century. Enlisted men saw that officers often attained their place through special influence and that some officers were social elites who enjoyed “lording it” over the men. Many soldiers identified officers as a separate class of “shoulder-strap gentry” whose authority needed to be challenged. The issue of status was intertwined with soldiers’ assertions of manhood. As in the case of Daniel Link, soldiers often wanted officers “to lay off the shoulder straps” and fight man to man. These enlisted men, and even some commissioned officers, viewed a strong assertion of authority as a challenge to their manhood and reacted to any perceived slight with a fighting stance. While all men expected others to respect and acknowledge their equality, not every man responded with physical force if such treatment was not forthcoming. Many men embraced genteel attributes of civility and self-control that forbade fighting under any circumstances, or believed that dignity and moral worth were more important than the perception of others. But men with different manly ideals believed that to tolerate even the suggestion of inequality between themselves and other men was unmanly. They could not discard this assumption even in the context of the Union Army. In these circumstances, officers who wanted to lead volunteer troops effectively had to cultivate a leadership style that could assert authority and impose discipline while recognizing the social equality and the manhood of their soldiers. At the root of much of the physical violence between officers and privates in the volunteer army was the overt contempt so many soldiers held for officers as a class. Soldiers deeply resented the army hierarchy and the expec

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tation that they must submit to the authority of another man. One soldier who exemplified in his attitude and behavior the democratic spirit of some men in the Union Army was John Haley, of Company I, 17th Maine Volunteers. From the moment his service began, Haley despised the ranking system of the military because he resented the fact that men who were no better than he had authority over him. On his first day in the army he recorded his sense of injustice: “Our officers, by reason of their shoulder straps, are (in their minds, at least) the embodiment of human wisdom. They look in lofty scorn upon men who are their superiors in everything but rank.” Haley could never contain his sarcasm toward army rank and authority, and always felt relief when he was away from officers. After serving a picket duty that he considered unnecessary, Haley recorded in his diary that “it was not tiresome because we had no restraint, no shoulder-strap gentry to put on airs and order us about.”5 Significant was Haley’s use of the term “gentry,” a word that conjured up images of England’s landed elite and their superior social and political privileges. For Union soldiers who shared Haley’s perspective, the authority that officers tried to assert represented a loss of freedom and an attack on the sacred American values of individualism and independence. Taylor Pierce was a forty-year-old commercial laborer who had immigrated to Iowa from Pennsylvania in the mid-1840s. He joined Company C of the 22nd Iowa as a 3rd sergeant. “This is a curious kind of life for one like me that has always been used to acting as he pleases and would bear no control,” he wrote his wife within days of enlisting. “If we start to go 20 yards we have a man poke his sword in our face and if we have no pass we must turn back and the etiquett that is in use here is perfectly ridiculous.”6 Soldiers also resented the loss of social equality that marked their manhood and supposedly characterized men in a free society. Pierce revealed his values when he disparaged eastern regiments with whom he served in Louisiana. “I tell you the eastern troops have not the sense to fight that our western boys have for the reason the officers put on to much style and make underlings of the soldiers and break their spirits before they come in contact with the enemy,” he commented. Eastern men were “so degraded that they only fight from a sense of submission to the orders of their officers and not from an inate sense of right and manhood.” Pierce linked submission to officers with a loss of manhood and claimed that western men were better men because they did submit to their officers: “The principal of the western boys is such that the officers are not above us.”7 Although some eastern regiments practiced strict military discipline, Pierce misrepresented the bulk of volun148  |  Officers, Privates, and Equal Manhood

teers, who were no more willing to give up their equality and manhood than western men. Because of these underlying attitudes about equality and manliness, soldiers hated officers who flaunted authority or enforced superfluous rules. John Haley practically rejoiced when the lieutenant of Company A was killed in action. “He caused more fellows to be punished than all the other officers in the regiment,” Haley wrote. “His whole aim seemed to be to catch the men in some trifling violation of orders and then have them punished out of all reason. At the Resurrection morning he will probably be found crawling out of some other person’s grave whither he had been to see whither the rightful occupant hadn’t done something punishable.” Iowan Charles Musser wrote his parents about the change in one of the men in the regiment after he became an officer: “Shoulder straps takes his attention too much. got the swelled head a little. the boys lost all the confidence they used to have in him. not the man we supposed him to be. very passionate and Tyranical.”8 Another reason soldiers were so sensitive to “airs,” as Randall C. Jimerson has pointed out, was that the army hierarchy actually revealed the inequalities of social status within northern society and reinforced the influence of the educated and wealthy. Irishman Peter Welsh believed he was more competent to serve as an officer than most who filled the position, and he wanted to be promoted, but he found that “it is the influence of friends that gets a man promoted here.” Daniel Holt, the assistant surgeon of the 121st New York, had to explain to his wife why he was not promoted. “Favoritism,” was his one-word answer. “Having none to press my claims or in any way to interest themselves in my behalf, I remain where I started with all the work to do.” John Hartwell, a private in the same regiment, took the sergeant’s exam but did not expect anything as he was “not one of the favorites.” In August 1864 Hartwell wanted another position but knew that it would take a recommendation from “men of Great Influence.”9 The reality was that the officers in some regiments did represent the elite social classes and often these officers used their influence to promote only men of wealth, stature, and education. In the 20th Massachusetts, elites held every field and staff position in a regiment where nearly half the men were immigrants. The regiment at first overcame its social divisions under the leadership of Col. William Raymond Lee and Maj. Paul Joseph Revere, officers who could relate to men from other classes and who valued ability over social rank. This changed after the regiment was decimated at Ball’s Bluff late in 1861. Leadership devolved onto a group of class-conscious offers such as Lt. Col. Frank Palfrey, Capt. William Francis Bartlett, and Capt. Henry Liver

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more Abbott. Cliques based on status and ethnicity formed in the regiment. Palfrey, Bartlett, and Abbott repeatedly used their civilian influence to deny commissions in the regiment to men they deemed socially unworthy and to promote those they favored. In the 5th New York, the initial officers were “nearly all young men of good positions in society” and New York City’s social elite would work to keep it that way. Attrition during Grant’s summer campaigns of 1864 opened the way for Capt. George Guthrie, an Irish-born bookkeeper, to take command as ranking officer, but socially prominent officers in the regiment and brigade intervened. They created a board of examiners that declared Guthrie unfit. Col. Frederic Winthrop, a direct descendant of the first governor of Massachusetts, replaced him.10 Even in regiments where there was no concentration of social elites, there were upper-class officers whose class attitudes were apparent to the men. The behavior of wealthy, educated, and refined officers who believed deeply in their own superiority was a constant reminder of real social distinctions. It was overused, but the phrase “shoulder-strap gentry” did describe some officers. John Haley’s “pompous officer” in the 17th Maine was Maj. Charles Porter Mattocks, the stepson of a successful Maine lumberman. A graduate of Bowdoin College, Mattocks openly preferred the company of “gentlemen,” by which he meant men of good family and education. Mattocks did not value the opinion of soldiers and bragged about his contempt for their goodwill. He disciplined his inferiors with zeal. His letters and diary reveal that his goal was to create an efficient military regiment, but his men could not separate his behavior as an officer from his status in civilian life. Everything Mattocks did served to reinforce the inequality between him and his men in both civilian and army life. After the war, he was one of seven officers from the 17th Maine to join the Maine commandery, Military Order of the Loyal Legion. Formed during the war as a social club for commanding officers, the organization welcomed officers of “good family” who “enjoyed the social attributes of a fine dinner.” It limited membership to officers with the proper social and business standing in their home communities who could “harmonize socially.”11 Not only did the army hierarchy render the social distinctions of northern society obvious, it encouraged subordinates to behave in a manner the soldiers found decidedly undemocratic and unmanly. Civil War soldiers hated to witness the fawning of other enlisted men that seemed to undermine independence and equality. Charles Musser had nothing but contempt for a man who “knuckles and fawns before officers for small favors.” John Haley 150  |  Officers, Privates, and Equal Manhood

despised a lieutenant in his regiment who behaved like “a little dog who wags his tail in the presence of a big dog with a bone.” The deferential air of this officer in the presence of his superiors inspired nothing but contempt in his men.12 The response of many men in the Union Army, both privates and officers, was to subvert class distinctions and to undermine the military hierarchy. There were many ways that officers displayed open contempt for the military’s system of rank, but the most pervasive was to refuse to wear the symbols of authority. Noncommissioned officers were especially reluctant to bear the marks of authority and distinction. Throughout the army, across all the years of the war, many noncommissioned officers would not wear their chevrons. The exasperated Maj. John Higgins of the 143rd New York issued an order in March 1864 requiring noncommissioned officers to wear their chevrons at all times. “If they are ashamed to wear them their places will be filled by men who are not,” he threatened. Some commissioned officers shared the same reluctance. The colonel of the 56th Massachusetts had to order his officers to don the insignia of their rank and had to explain to them why it was important that they do so. Officers could not demand or expect “proper respect from non-com officers and men, unless they wear, on duty, the uniform and badge of their respective grades.” As late as June 1864, inspectors in the Army of the Cumberland found that a few officers still did not wear the prescribed uniform. In September 1864, an inspector in the Army of the Potomac reported to Meade that soldiers who paid the proper respect to officers were the exception rather than the rule. To correct this problem, he suggested that officers needed to wear the badge indicating rank.13 The reluctance of many Union officers to wear the proper insignia contributed to discipline problems within the army. Courts-martial records are full of incidents that arose because the parties involved were unaware of each other’s rank. A perfect illustration is an altercation that occurred between two officers, Lt. Col. A. W. Dwight of the 122nd New York and Col. Edwin C. Mason of the 7th Maine. During a march, as Dwight rode past the Seventh, he exchanged words with some of the men about his horse. Mason approached and told Dwight not to interfere with his men. Dwight immediately questioned his authority since Mason was not wearing anything indicative of his rank. When Mason insisted that he was a full colonel, Dwight called him a liar and refused to answer his questions. During Dwight’s court-martial for disobedience and disrespect, he defended himself by arguing that he had no way of knowing that he was addressing a superior officer.14

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Even as some officers refused to accept the symbols of their authority, many privates tried to erase distinctions of rank within the army by wearing those symbols. The same inspector in the Army of the Potomac who suggested that officers should indicate their rank also reported that it was not uncommon to see soldiers with commanding officers’ cords and hat ornaments. He recommended that every enlisted man must be forced to remove those symbols. Regimental order books indicate that commanding officers from units in other Union armies repeatedly dealt with the same issue. The 50th Ohio, for example, issued orders requiring company commanders to remove cords and tassels, “such as are worn by officers,” from enlisted men’s hats.15 Officers and privates also tried to erase social distinctions of rank through fraternization. The 143rd New York exemplified this effort to undermine hierarchy within the army. Brigade commanders chastised the regiment because “the men do not pay proper respect to their Officers regarding to salute them when they should.” They called attention to the fact that “too much familiarity exists between officers and men.” Officers and men messed together; the men were allowed to enter the officers’ tents on terms of equality. The regiment’s commander, Maj. J. B. Taft, tried to explain to his men that it was necessary for officers to be identified with authority and superiority. But his argument catered to the democratic principle that each man had the opportunity to rise in the world. Promotion from the ranks was possible to every soldier, Taft promised, and every soldier had the duty to make promotion the great object of his desire. But promotion was only desirable “when Shoulder Straps are invested with a meaning.”16 Soldiers found myriad other ways to demonstrate that they held no respect for rank or for the men who wore the shoulder straps. Regimental order books and general courts-martial records are replete with incidents of soldiers “hallowing” and “yelling” at officers or making noises with their mouth “like breaking wind” when officers tried to speak. In some regiments enlisted men wouldn’t touch their caps when they met an officer and were slow to salute. Line officers often displayed the same contempt for officers above them in the hierarchy. The classic example occurred in the 12th Connecticut. One recently promoted lieutenant was seated on a barrel eating an apple when the brigade general, J. W. Phelps, approached. The general halted and glared. The lieutenant did not rise, but saluted as he continued to munch on his apple. “You may be a good carpenter, but you’re a damn poor officer,” Phelps berated him. Later the general told his aide, “I wouldn’t have been so mad with that fool lieutenant if he hadn’t saluted me with his apple core.”17 152  |  Officers, Privates, and Equal Manhood

Soldiers did more than resist the distinctions of rank. Seemingly thousands of Union soldiers asserted the right to maintain some independence rather than submit to unquestioned obedience to authority. Because so many men, such as Taylor Pierce and John Haley, overtly linked abject submission to officers with a loss of manhood, they found it difficult to obey orders automatically. They were reluctant to give up what they considered to be the essential attribute of manhood—equality—when they joined the army. This conception clashed with army regulations that were explicit about the duty of every soldier and the proper relationship between privates and officers. Inferiors had to obey “strictly and with alacrity the lawful order of superiors.” The 6th Article of War provided that any officer and soldier who behaved “with contempt or disrespect toward his commanding officer” would be punished by court-martial. The 9th Article of War inflicted death or other punishment, depending on the nature of the offense, on any officer or soldier who “shall disobey the lawful command of his superior officer.”18 In the volunteer Union Army, soldiers violated these provisions on a regular basis. They believed their inherent equality to the men who were temporarily their officers must never be compromised, and thus they never granted officers automatic obedience. They only obeyed an order when it fit with their own sense of duty and justice. General courts-martial records from 246 Union regiments indicate that many soldiers in the Civil War would perform with diligence everything that they conceived to be their duty, and would obey officers promptly when an officer’s orders conformed to that sense of duty. But these soldiers also used personal judgment to decide what their duty was and was not. They disobeyed authority whenever an order did not conform to their own sense of duty. A classic example was Pvt. Jacob Piatt of the 42nd Illinois, a good soldier whose officer detailed him for the Ambulance Corps. While serving in that capacity, Sgt. E. C. Brown of the 65th Ohio ordered him to chop wood for the hospital. Piatt replied that he had not been detailed for such duty and would not do it. When another sergeant, Thomas Little of the 24th Wisconsin, tried to remonstrate with Piatt, he continued to insist that his detail did not call on him to do hospital duty. Perley Johnson, wagoner in the 3rd Michigan, likewise refused an order he considered inconsistent with his duty. When the quartermaster ordered him to drive a team, Johnson refused and told his superior that he had not enlisted as a teamster and could not be compelled to drive a team. He said he would be glad to do the duty for which he enlisted. Several men testified at his court-martial that wagoners

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in that brigade had never been drivers and that Johnson had never before disobeyed an order.19 Because of soldiers’ attitudes toward authority, which were derived from their conception of equal manhood, automatic and consistent obedience to officers was never established in many regiments of the Union Army. It was a common practice for privates to argue with officers about orders and to back talk to superiors, even in regiments held up as models of military discipline. A typical case occurred in the 23rd Ohio. Corporal Benjamin Killian ordered Pvt. Sanford Fitch to go for water to supply the mess. When Fitch returned with the water, the men of the mess used the water for their washing. Killian then ordered Fitch to go and get more water for cooking. Fitch replied that it wasn’t his turn and he wouldn’t go. When Killian turned to walk away to report Fitch for disobedience, the private grabbed him by the collar. At his court-martial, Fitch stated that ultimately he did not intend to refuse going, but merely wanted to state his case to the corporal. A similar incident, one of thousands, took place in the 5th New York, a regiment placed in a brigade with regulars because of its model discipline. Sgt. Thomas Frazier ordered Pvt. James Weir to get wood for the company fire. Weir replied that he would not do so until he received his rations. Frazier repeated the order with the comment that he could make Weir do worse. Weir challenged the sergeant to do so.20 Soldiers frequently asserted their social equality and their innate independence during these incidents. In the 7th New York, Pvt. Carl Schartz was making a lot of noise, and Capt. Edwin Wratislaw ordered him to be quiet. “You have no command of me; you are no better than I am,” Schartz responded. “You can kiss my arse.” When the 3rd Michigan marched toward the division review ground, Corp. William Van Dyke was loud and boisterous; his lieutenant ordered him to desist. “Generals can issue orders but they cannot make me obey them,” Van Dyke responded. “I guess this is a free country yet, and men can talk as much as they please.” At his court-martial for conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline, Van Dyke received an added punishment for his “contemptuous & disrespectful behavior in the presence of the court.”21 Regimental order books as well as general courts-martial records indicate that most regiments had a difficult time finding noncommissioned officers who were not insubordinate. Nearly every regiment used in this study had to bust several sergeants and corporals back down to privates over the course of the war for this military crime. These incidents were recorded in the regiment’s general orders and usually followed a set form. Typical was Special Order 16, issued December 28, 1864, in the 184th Pennsylvania: 154  |  Officers, Privates, and Equal Manhood

I. Corporal George Hudson Co K is hereby reduced to the ranks for insubordination, and lack of knowledge of the first duty of the soldier— prompt obedience to orders. II. The Captain of his Co. will cause his chevrons to be taken off immediately in the presence of the company.

Other cases reached general courts-martial. Capt. Philip Wagner of the 187th New York ordered 1st Sgt. Charles Hoffman to issue rations and return the empty boxes to him. Hoffman instead took the boxes into his tent. When Wagner sent a lieutenant to relieve Hoffman of commissary duty, Hoffman loudly proclaimed that “he did not care a damn for any officer in the regiment.” When Wagner emerged from his tent, Hoffman was cutting off his own chevrons, an act of defiance loaded with symbolism. Wagner gave Hoffman thirty minutes to put them back on. When he did not comply, Wagner arrested him.22 Commissioned officers engaged in this type of behavior as well. With the encouragement of the company officers, the men of Company A in the 121st New York would not obey orders from any other officer in the regiment. The captain of another company, John Fisk, reported that on several occasions when he was officer of the day, if he wanted an order executed, he had to go to Company A’s captain before the men would obey. In the 28th Michigan, Col. William W. Wheeler ordered 1st Lt. Walter J. Lee to report for temporary duty in Company E since the only officer present in that company was its captain. Lee replied that he would rather not and that there was nothing in the regulations that compelled him to do duty in any company but his own.23 The pervasive balking at authority in the Union Army had serious consequences, for it often escalated into violence between officers and privates. Soldiers not only disobeyed their officers, but also were quick to strike out with force when officers attempted to assert control. During the course of the war, 1,993 soldiers were tried in general courts-martial for violating the 9th Article of War, and 2,764 were charged with exciting, causing, or joining in a mutiny.24 These numbers vastly underrepresent the number of such incidents in the Union Army, for officers handled probably the majority of cases with summary punishment or with regimental or field-officer courts-martial. This study found dozens of these incidents in the record books of just a few regiments. The case of Pvt. Thomas Carroll of the 5th Ohio was typical of those dispensed with at the unit level: he had to pay a thirteen-dollar fine, do fatigue duty for twenty-five days, and apologize to the sergeant whom he struck.25

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When a soldier struck a superior, the assault typically resulted from an escalation of confrontation that began with a soldier refusing to obey an order. On the march after Gettysburg, 1st Lt. George Young repeatedly ordered Pvt. Nathan Goff, who was straggling, to keep his place in the column. Goff once replied, “Mind your own business you damn fool, I’ll let you know those shoulder straps can’t rule me.” Later in the march, Goff fell back again and moved into Young’s path. Young put his hand on Goff ’s shoulder and told him to get out of the way, upon which Goff raised his gun as if to strike the officer. Young was too quick for the fifty-year-old Goff; he caught his arm and easily threw him to the ground.26 The frustrated officers of the Union Army, faced with continual resistance to authority and constant back talk from soldiers, often resorted to force immediately when a soldier was slow to obey orders. Officers grabbed, hit, kicked, and pulled swords on recalcitrant enlisted men. Capt. John W. DeForest commented, “We are all irritable through hardship, and passionate through habits of domination coupled with imperfect obedience.”27 Because army regulations sanctioned the use of physical coercion from officers when inferiors disobeyed lawful orders, and because inferiors resisted orders so readily, regiments faced a volatile situation that could explode into violence at any moment. The problem was exacerbated because volunteer officers differed over when it was appropriate to use force and how much force should be applied. When officers deployed force to compel obedience, other officers often intervened. This only served to escalate the incident and to create more physical confrontation. The 110th New York experienced the perfect storm on January 6, 1863, when disobedience, an officer’s use of force, and the intervention of another officer created chaos in the regiment. The incident began when the officer of the guard, Lt. Chancy Gardner, of Company K, tried to keep a disobedient and disrespectful private contained in the guardhouse. The private, a man named Rowland, who was enlisted in Company F, tried to come outside, was ordered back in, and then told other prisoners, “The shoulder strap men thought themselves pretty smart, and if he ever got into battle, they were the men he was going to pick.” A little later, Rowland emerged from the guardhouse again. Gardner told Rowland to get back in the tent or he would make him go. Rowland drew his fist and threatened to knock Gardner down if he touched him. Gardner hit him—by his own account “a little slap in the face.” Rowland ran to the quarters of his company captain, Edwin H. Boyd, and told Boyd he was being mistreated. Boyd told him to go back and behave himself. At this point the guard arrived to escort Rowland back. Once he 156  |  Officers, Privates, and Equal Manhood

returned to the guardhouse, Rowland became increasingly rowdy. He repeatedly tried to leave and even yelled for the colonel. According to Gardner, Rowland said, “All that saved me was my shoulder straps, if I hadn’t them on, he would whip me in a minute.” When Rowland tried to leave again, Gardner ordered a corporal to iron him. Rowland, a stout and strong man, resisted “powerfully,” in the words of a witness, and eventually Gardner and two noncommissioned officers resorted to blows and kicks in their efforts to subdue him. Rowland also landed several blows during the struggle.28 At this point, Rowland’s company captain, Boyd, entered the tent, grabbed Gardner by the shoulder, and jerked him back. “What in the hell are you doing?” he demanded. Boyd angrily told Gardner he had gone too far and that he was bound to protect Rowland. Boyd threatened to knock Gardner down if he touched Rowland again. “Captain, I haven’t hurt the man any more than I was obliged to,” Gardner responded. Gardner again ordered the corporal to use the irons; Boyd told Rowland to let him. Gardner then left the tent to find a crowd of about one hundred privates milling around outside because they heard about the ruckus; Boyd followed. “Any man who would strike a private is a damned coward,” Boyd said. “I could whip you in a minute.” The two officers engaged in a heated exchange of words. “If I had seen you strike him, I should have struck you,” Boyd added. “If you think you are man enough to lick me, we will pull off and go out and try it,” Gardner responded.29 Later in the day, Boyd and the other officers of Company F wrote out charges against Gardner on behalf of Rowland, who could not write, and took them to the colonel. Instead it was Boyd who ended up facing a courtmartial for conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline, mutiny, and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. The privates who testified as witnesses revealed the attitude of the men about the incident. On one level they enjoyed watching “the scuffle.” Many men out of curiosity passed in and out of the tent during the fight (the sentinel never stopped them, to the obvious amazement of the court). One man recalled, “There was a general squabble, could not tell which was a head, thought it was a draw game.” But the privates were unhappy with Gardner as well. Among the crowd milling around outside the guardhouse there was a “general talk” that it was not right to kick a man when he was down. Thomas Lake agreed but didn’t say much else. “I always made it a point to keep out of such scrapes.” But other men in the regiment uttered more dangerous sentiments. David McHenry refused to tell the court what he said during the incident because his answer might tend to incriminate him.30

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The court found Boyd guilty and dismissed him from the service. The members of the court were not impressed with any of the officers in this regiment, including Gardner. One of them asked, “Why did you repeatedly give your orders to the prisoner to stay in the guard tent and why did you not direct the Sentinel at the guard tent to put his bayonet into Rowland, or shoot him down if he attempted to escape?” The officers of the 110th New York did not handle any aspect of this situation well, and officers in some regiments could have avoided creating a general mêlée from the disobedience of one prisoner. But these incidents were not uncommon. Many volunteer officers had a difficult time figuring out what to do when faced with such defiance, nor could they agree about what was an appropriate level of force.31 An underlying factor during this incident in the 110th New York and in other cases of violence was how quickly men took a fighting stance. Boyd and Gardner immediately chose language that challenged the other man to a physical test of manhood: “I could whip you in a minute,” and “If you think you are man enough to lick me, we will pull off and go out and try it.” This exchange followed a pattern that was replicated time and again, particularly in conflicts between officers and soldiers. Before continuing this point it is important to acknowledge that confrontations within the ranks did not begin because men sought to assert their manhood. The need to enforce military discipline initially instigated conflict between officers and soldiers. Once the confrontation began, however, ideals of manhood contributed to the shape and outcome of the conflict. Many officers and privates believed an essential attribute of manliness was that other men, to use a modern phrase, “gave you props.” These men judged other men on the qualities of strength and aggression. A man proved his manhood by the fact that other men treated him as an equal and that no man was allowed to assert dominance over him; indeed, he dominated others in public displays of manliness.32 Because his manhood was only validated through the respect of other men, such a man could not let any slight or perceived insult go unchallenged. When this perspective united with realities of social class, as was the case with the roughs, the mixture was volatile. A man who valued these manly attributes could not retain any sense of manhood if he let the “shoulder strap gentry,” particularly officers who felt themselves socially superior, push him around. When an officer attempted to assert authority or treated a soldier as an inferior, many men perceived this not just as an attempt to impose military discipline but also as a slight to their manhood. Such soldiers felt compelled to posture and verbally threaten their officers. Their response was often a 158  |  Officers, Privates, and Equal Manhood

statement that if the officer were not wearing “shoulder straps” the soldier could easily whip him. John Clute told Capt. Daniel Link, “If you will lay off your shoulder straps I will give you a damn good whipping,” just as Rowland told Gardner, “All that saved you was your shoulder straps, if you hadn’t them on, I would whip you in a minute.” In the 23rd Ohio, Sgt. George Lighthisen ordered Pvt. Martin Duncan to work on the fortifications; Duncan refused. Later that day Lighthisen put him on extra fatigue duty. Duncan did the duty but told the sergeant, “I will whip you later.”33 Just as damaging to the good order of the army was the aggressive response to verbal abuse that both soldiers and officers assumed. Verbal exchanges often escalated into physical confrontations. Many men were quick to draw weapons or hit other men who insulted them. In the ethnic German 7th New York, during dinner one evening Capt. Arthur Brandt and Lt. Augustus Nelle hotly disputed Brandt’s decision to sign his morning report even though he had reported sick. Nelle claimed that if Brandt signed the morning report he should be reported for duty. “You are [a] loafer,” Nelle said. “The officers of this regiment are shitasses,” Brandt responded. “You are a coward,” Nelle replied. Brandt immediately drew his sword, but another officer intervened and disarmed him.34 This verbal conflict escalated because Nelle attacked Brandt’s character— he was a “loafer” and “coward”—in the presence of other officers and enlisted men. Brandt could not tolerate such blatant disrespect and retain his sense of manhood. The public insult Nelle inflicted required an immediate assertion of dominance. Even in cases that did not evolve into physical confrontation, officers and soldiers alike rarely tolerated a direct attack on their characters. Because so many officers resorted to verbal abuse when they did not know how to handle men, verbal altercations were a daily feature of army life. A typical incident occurred in the 42nd Illinois after a long march. When the unit arrived in camp, Pvt. William Thompson was not with his company. When he arrived the next morning, he told his lieutenant that his feet were blistered and sore. When asked why he did not report this, Thompson claimed he was too far back and could not come up. At that point Captain Vardon “mixed in”: “You are a damned shirk, you are always shirking.” Thompson replied, “I leave it to any member of the company if I ever shirked any duty.” Vardon ordered him to shut up. Thompson replied that he had a right to defend his honor. The two men commenced with “hard language” on both sides.35 The interaction between officers and soldiers in the Union Army was fraught with difficulties. Officers had to enforce military discipline over volunteer soldiers who resented army rules and regulations. Ideals of manhood

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compounded the problems that officers faced when they attempted to govern enlisted men. Previous historians have virtually ignored the practical realities of discipline in the Union Army. The use of courts-martial records uncovers the day-to-day language and actions of soldiers and officers who had to negotiate a power relationship not familiar in civilian life. These records also reveal the problems officers encountered when entire units of men challenged their authority. According to the general courts-martial records for a sample of 246 Union regiments, mass resistance and mob action occurred regularly in the Union Army for several reasons. Many riots were simply the product of intoxicated or troublemaking soldiers. But most riots and mob actions resulted from the calculated decision of a group of soldiers who intended to assert equality and democratic rule against perceived injustice, incompetence, or tyranny. Soldiers engaged in mass resistance to redress grievances or to protect the “rights” of other enlisted men. This was the most common cause of “mutiny” in the Union Army. The officers of the German 7th New York faced just such an incident on June 27, 1865, when the regiment was stationed at Hart Island, New York. Many men in the regiment believed that they had enlisted only for the duration of the war, and since the war was over, their enlistments had expired. Several men in Company B, including Pvt. Fernando Chasse, had been making speeches in the barracks asking the men to stand together and refuse to do duty. In this ominous atmosphere, the provost guard from another regiment used bayonets to disperse a crowd that had gathered around the sutler’s tent and had arrested Corp. August Gans.36 Gans’s arrest unleashed the discontent in the regiment. The men of Company B retired to the mess tent in an excited mood and began to loudly discuss their grievances. As the men became more agitated, one of the captains ordered them to be quiet. Private Chasse responded, “I won’t be quiet. I am a free man.” The colonel of the regiment ordered him to the guardhouse, but he refused to go. “My term of service has expired and I’m a free man,” he reiterated. After guards hauled Chasse to the guardhouse, Pvt. Henry Wickenhaffer delivered a verbal message from the men of Company B to their captain. Wickenhaffer said that the men had only enlisted for the war, that the government had no right to keep them, that the officers were keeping the regiment in the service against the rules, and that if the officers did not release Gans by 1:00 p.m., the men would liberate him. At one o’clock, a group of men fell in with muskets, but officers dispersed them.37 Up to this point, regimental officers had relied on force—bayonets and guards—to contain the enlisted men and prevent further violence. The cap160  |  Officers, Privates, and Equal Manhood

tain of Company B, whose soldiers formed the core of the discontent, understood that negotiation was also required. The incident began with the action of the enlisted men and ended only with their consent. The next day, recalled one of the men, “our Captain proposed, that the Company should drill for a while and show by that action, that the Company could be as orderly as any other of the Regiment in which proposition he was seconded by me, after which we drilled for a while.” The captain did not issue an order but rather made a “proposition” that the men found acceptable.38 The soldiers of the 7th New York granted authority to their officers when they believed such authority was legitimate, but refused to do so when they judged authority illegitimate. Enlisted men in other regiments acted on the same principle. Soldiers rarely conceded that the application of corporal punishment was a legitimate exercise of authority on the part of officers. The most common reason for enlisted men to resist officers in mass was the application of a punishment that was perceived to be too harsh. Throughout the war officers in every army had to quell riots over this issue. Soldiers, and many officers, were disgusted when men were tied, gagged, or bucked to a tree. These punishments in particular seemed degrading to a soldier’s manhood; and in the charged atmosphere of a war against a slaveholding society, such actions recalled the treatment afforded to slaves, who were in fact granted no claim to manhood. Soldiers who sighted such punishments often rescued the prisoner or tried to intimidate the officers or guards administering the punishment. These actions could involve anywhere from a handful of men to over a hundred soldiers from different regiments.39 Sometimes the mass defiance of soldiers had no particular cause and arose out of standing bad blood between officers and privates. In some cases soldiers hated an individual officer they perceived to be tyrannical or incompetent. Some men hated the officers of their regiment as a class. Regiments with these situations operated for periods of time under circumstances of near mutiny, as was the case with the 29th Iowa. In August 1864 the regiment was camped near Lewisburg, Arkansas, during a stretch of inactivity with no active campaigning in sight. The boredom unleashed the soldiers’ latent contempt for shoulder straps. “The officers can now hardly control the boys,” Charles Musser told his father. “If any Orders are issued that the boys do not like, the officers are hooted and booed every time they come into the quarters of the men.” The soldiers aimed their resistance at the colonel’s order to drill. “The boys concluded it would not do, so that night, the Officers was run out of their tents, and stones flew thick as hail around them.” The line officers caved under the pressure. They petitioned the colonel to countermand

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the order, which he did. “We now have but little drill,” the smug Musser reported. “The Officers are as good to us as can be. Their Stile and petty Tyranny is about played out.” Nearly a year later, the men of Musser’s Company A directed their resistance toward their hated captain. “We run him off,” Musser believed. “We refused to do duty under him and, the Col relieved him from the Comm. of the Co.” Musser described the man as “abuseive and tyrannical.” The soldiers concluded that “patience is no longer a virtue.” “We thought he was a Gentleman,” Musser told his sister, “but we found we could bear him no more.”40 The tensions between officers and privates in the Union Army were more complex in the regiments of the U.S. Colored Troops. The War Department established the Bureau of Colored Troops in May 1863 and appointed Maj. Charles W. Foster to oversee the controversial and politically volatile process of creating African American regiments. Under the direction of secretary of war Edwin Stanton, a supporter of black troops, the War Department set high standards in order to staff the U.S.C.T. regiments with only the best officers: men with military experience who were intelligent, moral, and genuinely committed to “uplifting” the black race. Because black troops faced opposition from white soldiers in the Union Army and even some supporters had doubts about their abilities, Stanton knew it was vital to select U.S.C.T. officers who could properly educate and discipline their enlisted men. Prospective officers faced the first thorough examination and screening process in American military history. Officers in the U.S.C.T., therefore, were usually skilled professionals who had met the highest possible standards.41 In many cases, U.S.C.T. regiments avoided the problems between officers and privates that were so prevalent in white units. Because of the generally effective screening process for U.S.C.T. officers, the enlisted men recognized that their officers had skills and previous military experience that they did not. As one U.S.C.T. officer remarked, “White troops regarded their officers more as ‘accidental superiors’ and challenged them frequently, whereas black troops were much more willing to admit they knew very little and that their officers were there for a purpose.” The social distance between blacks and whites in civilian life could also work to an officer’s advantage in the U.S.C.T. Whereas in white units some officers had to supervise friends and neighbors, one colonel pointed out, “Officers of the colored troops will not have to contend against this disadvantage of a previous social equality with their men.”42 In some U.S.C.T. regiments, however, officers had the same difficulties as their counterparts in white regiments when they attempted to demonstrate their authority. Black privates asserted their equality just as white soldiers 162  |  Officers, Privates, and Equal Manhood

did. Interactions between officers and privates mirrored those of white regiments. African American soldiers talked back to officers, refused to do duty, attempted to rescue men who were being punished, and acted to protect perceived rights. The courts-martial cases arising out of these incidents often read no differently than those from white regiments, in terms of the behavior of both the men and the officers. Additionally, as historian Christian G. Samito has proved in a recent study, African American soldiers who stood trial in this level of the military justice system received the same due process and the same treatment as white soldiers.43 When black privates asserted equality, however, there was often a different edge to it. For many African American men, their experience in the Union Army was an opportunity to prove their equality and their manhood at a time when most whites refused to acknowledge the validity of either. Black soldiers protested racial discrimination (sometimes successfully, as in the case of equal pay) and were increasingly strident in their calls for equal rights and equal treatment both as citizens and as men. White officers found that many of the black men they commanded behaved with a newfound aggressiveness and demanded that officers treat them with the respect and equality with which they would treat white soldiers. Soldiers revealed the racial element behind these demands in the language they used. One private who argued with a lieutenant insisted that “he was no slave to be driven.” An enlisted man who refused an order announced, “I am as good as any white man and I’ll be damned if I will be bossed over by any of them.”44 Episodes between officers and soldiers in the U.S.C.T. were the product of a unique dynamic because racial attitudes interplayed with the need for military discipline and with black men’s assertion of equal manhood. The white commanders of the U.S.C.T. were well qualified for their positions and believed, for the most part, that their men would make good soldiers. But they also harbored typical contemporary racist stereotypes and attributed some innate racial qualities, ranging from childlike irresponsibility to latent savagery, to the men they commanded. Officers’ racial assumptions often dictated the methods they used to train and discipline their men. Joseph Glatthaar, in his thorough examination of the officers and enlisted men of the U.S.C.T., summarized the different leadership methods that emerged among officers: “Those who had high regard for blacks treated them like men, developed them as soldiers, and eventually were able to delegate sundry responsibilities to them, whereas those who believed in racial stereotypes, such as that blacks were childlike and ignorant, had limited expectations of their men and received little in return.” Most white officers won the respect and

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support of their troops through consistent, fair, and just discipline, but many merely sought to instill fear and employed harsh and abusive punishments for even minor mistakes.45 Racial stereotypes resembled the ethnic and class stereotypes that attributed savagery and ignorance to lower-class immigrants and roughs, and there were similarities between the harsh discipline that some white officers imposed on black troops and the methods officers used to handle roughs and conscripts. Whenever officers doubted that their subordinates possessed true manhood, whether those officers viewed their men through the lens of class or race, they imposed coercive discipline that was not considered necessary for the manly white volunteers. But the relationship between officers and soldiers in the U.S.C.T. was fraught with landmines that did not exist in white regiments. Some black regiments contained a combination of potentially explosive elements: a racist officer who feared the latent savagery of his men, soldiers imbued with a new sense of self-respect and power who were anxious to test and establish the boundaries of their freedom, an officer’s need to discipline and punish, and the enlisted man’s recent experience of slavery. Methods officers had used in white regiments carried different connotations when they were applied to former slaves. Good officers recognized this fact. “Inexperienced officers often assumed that, because these men had been slaves before enlistment, they would bear to be treated as such afterwards,” Thomas Wentworth Higginson recalled. “Experience proved to the contrary. The more strongly we marked the difference between slave and soldier, the better for the regiment.”46 Arbitrary actions or punishments that resembled those blacks had endured under slavery usually enflamed any preexisting racial tensions within a regiment. Good officers of black troops were especially careful to explain the regulations and outline the consequences for misbehavior in advance. “Our old masters would get angry with us and sometimes punish us almost to death, and we not understand why,” one private recalled. “But here if we are punished, we know why for the officers tell us our duty and never punish us unless we disobey.” Since blacks in civilian life suffered from double standards, it was important for privates to see that their officers enforced regulations on white and black equally and that white officers who violated the rules were punished.47 Unfortunately, some officers in the U.S.C.T. ignored the symbolic implications for black troops of forms of punishment that were legal and widely used among the white volunteers. “Nothing instigated trouble within the U.S.C.T. like tying up black soldiers,” historian Joseph Glatthaar observed. Individual 164  |  Officers, Privates, and Equal Manhood

black soldiers violently resisted efforts to tie them and some men tried to cut their comrades loose. A private in the 38th U.S.C.T. kept an officer at bay with his bayonet while he tried to free two men. “No white son-of-a-bitch can tie a man up here,” he stated. These incidents frequently escalated into small- and large-scale mutinies. “We are free, our Colonel told us so, and we will fight before they shall keep our men tied,” one soldier proclaimed.48 Racial tensions often contributed to the initial insubordination of a soldier—particularly when it came to punishments—and then in turn to the violent response of the officer. This was the case during an incident in the 2nd Cavalry, U.S.C.T, in early August 1864. Lt. Edwin R. Fox detailed Pvt. Henry Edwards for guard duty. Edwards refused to go and Fox ordered him to carry a rail. The company’s captain suggested that Edwards should be tied. Fox approached Edwards and ordered him to lay down the rail. “You can’t tie me,” Edwards said. Fox sent for a corporal and two guards. As the guards arrived, Lt. L.B. Swarthout gave Fox some advice. “I thought Lieut. Fox was some excited,” Swarthout said. “I gave it as a caution, to let the men tie him, because Edwards seemed determined that Lieut. Fox should not tie him.” The guards tied Edwards’s hands. As they did, Edwards turned to Fox and said, “Lieut. will you allow me the privilege of speaking three words?” “I will,” Fox replied. “It is your time now & it is my time hereafter,” Edwards said. “My carbine never told me a lie.”49 At this point the exchange replicated that of thousands of others in the Union Army regardless of the race of the participants. But here the racist assumptions of an officer and the racial resentments of a soldier altered the pattern. This confrontation would end in tragedy. Fox was not happy with how the guard tied Edwards—who would have been able to pull his hands out—and stepped forward to retie the prisoner. “Will you let me tie you?” Fox asked. “Lieut. you can’t tie; but the corporal shall tie me,” Edwards responded. Fox repeated his question. “I will not let any white man tie me,” Edwards responded. Fox continued to insist that Edwards must be tied properly. Edwards continued to insist that only the corporal could tie him. Finally, Fox pulled his pistol. “I am going to ask you three times, & it will be the last,” Fox said. “Will you let me tie you?” No answer. “Will you let me tie you?” No answer. “This will be three times. Will you let me tie you?” Edwards deliberately turned his back. One of the guard recalled, “I turned my back and didn’t look. I heard the pistol.” Fox shot Edwards in the back of the head. For about two minutes there was dead silence. One private muttered that if a man had shot one of his own color he would never have lived to tell of it. Several men began to cry. That evening the men in the regiment “kicked up a

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considerable disturbance and threatened to kill all the white men there were around there.”50 Fox was tried for murder. His defense revealed the difficulties an officer faced in a regiment where racial issues combined with the normal tensions between privates and officers. Every white officer who testified at his trial commented that the state of discipline in Fox’s company was identical to that in the white regiments in which they had served. “It was like all others I have seen,” one lieutenant told the court. But Fox seemed at a loss to handle even the normal amount of insubordination. In one incident several months before Fox shot Edwards, a man in the company had refused to mount his horse. Fox drew his pistol and told the man he would be shot if he did not mount. “Shoot & be Goddamned,” the man replied. Fox backed down. “I didn’t like to shoot a man who was looking right into the muzzle of my pistol & I let him go,” Fox said. “Afterwards I found out my mistake, for several times when I ordered the man to do a thing he would wait for me to get my pistol before he would move.” Fox became free with the threat of his pistol. “When I first came into the regt. we were ordered to treat the men with kindness & punish them lightly,” he told the court. “I soon saw the mistake in that.”51 The court, composed of officers from the 9th New Jersey, the 7th Connecticut, the 47th New York, and some U.S.C.T. regiments, found Fox not guilty of murder. This finding was consistent with the pattern in the army as a whole; officers judging these cases usually sanctioned an officer’s use of deadly force even when a soldier had committed no physical resistance and the officer’s life was not in danger. In a case discussed previously, for example, a court of inquiry exonerated Capt. Charles Stone of the 17th New York, who shot and killed a private who refused to sit down and be tied. Stone made no effort to use other methods to compel obedience. He simply informed the private that he had one minute to sit down or he would shoot. In the case of Fox, however, higher authorities intervened to remove him from the service despite the court’s ruling. Maj. Gen. Ben Butler was deeply concerned that Fox thought it a mistake to treat his men with kindness. This rendered Fox “unfit as an officer of colored troops.” The secretary of war issued the order to dismiss Fox a month later.52 Fox was a terrible officer. So were many of those who faced insubordination and resistance. Their behavior often incited the soldiers to lash out, and they responded with force because they were poor managers of men. Good officers still had problems, but they generally avoided appearances in the courts-martial records, except as witnesses. 166  |  Officers, Privates, and Equal Manhood

Despite the widespread contempt for shoulder straps, the reluctance to submit to the army’s hierarchy, and the readiness to engage in mass disobedience, Civil War soldiers could accept authority when it was wielded in ways they recognized as appropriate. In particular, those officers who recognized and honored the men’s sense of equality could command respect and obtain obedience from their men. In his comprehensive study of the attitudes and motivations of Civil War volunteers, James McPherson found that soldiers believed the quality of officers mattered for their willingness and ability to fight. McPherson’s conclusions about effective leadership in the volunteer army match those of other historians. Soldiers agreed that a good officer was concerned for the welfare of his men, acted as if he was no better than his men, and led by example and personal courage. Since enlisted men believed they were as good as their officers, they resented those who flaunted their rank and acted with a superior manner. Particular antipathy was directed at officers who displayed petty authoritarianism, meted out harsh punishments for minor infractions, and enforced regulations the soldiers defined as senseless. Officers had to earn soldiers’ obedience rather than take it for granted; officers who did not meet these criteria could not effectively command.53 Effective officers used a variety of methods to demonstrate that they respected their men’s equality and thus deserved their respect. The colonel of the 125th Ohio, Emerson Opdycke, always walked during long marches rather than take advantage of his prerogative of riding a horse. “The men seem to feel ashamed to fall out, when their colonel walks,” he later commented. Rutherford B. Hayes, the future president who commanded the 23rd Ohio, was a master of exhortation and appeals to the men’s own sense of duty. Hayes faced a near mutiny when the regiment received its first issue of firearms, old flintlock muskets. The men refused to receive the inferior weapons; some simply stacked the guns in piles, while others stuck them into the ground by the bayonet and indignantly marched back to quarters. Hayes spent that day visiting each company pleading with the men to take the guns, assuring the men the muskets were useful for practice until better ones could be procured, and reminding them that their ancestors had won the Revolution with muskets worse than these. Eventually one of the listening men yelled, “Bully for Hayes, let’s get our guns!” Later in the war, Hayes continued his use of the appeal. On a particularly onerous march in West Virginia, Hayes constantly rode up and down the line, exhorting the men to continue, dismounting to let tired soldiers ride his horse, and calling on the band to play repeated refrains of “We Are So Glad to Get Out of the Wilderness.”54

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Civil War soldiers expected their officers to treat them as men, and they expected their officers to earn the right to lead. Enlisted men only respected officers who proved they were true men through the display of personal courage and “coolness.” Taylor Pierce of the 22nd Iowa praised his officers after his regiment’s first battle at Port Gibson, Mississippi. One walked amid grape and shell “as unconscious of danger as when he used to walk the streets of Des Moines.” Courageous officers who led by example on the battlefield exercised a kind of force over their men. At Chickamauga, the 125th Ohio was left exposed after the regiments on the left and the right fled from the field. Immediately one of the companies of the 125th arose and faced the rear. Col. Emerson Opdycke, who had established his courage in all the regiment’s previous battles, caught their eyes and said, “Back to your posts until I order you away.” The men obeyed instantly. “This thing of officers not exposing themselves is a gross mistake,” Opdycke said. “Men will fight, if the officers do their duty; but officers must ‘come up to it,’ or their men will go back from it!”55 Many Civil War volunteer officers were able to earn the respect of their men, and once that respect was earned, to demand and enforce strict discipline and obedience to officers. Competent Civil War volunteer officers combined their understanding of the democratic culture of the soldiers with a professional attitude toward their duty as officers. Middle- and upper-class northerners in the mid-nineteenth century generally embraced the notion of professionalism. When such men joined the Union Army they believed it was their responsibility to assume the duties and attitudes of the military profession. Once they had earned the right to lead in the eyes of their men, they were able to demand and receive professional behavior from their soldiers. Opdycke and Hayes, for example, commanded regiments universally praised and noted for their discipline, order, cleanliness, and obedience to officers. Opdycke had little patience for an officer not “stern enough to hold men under him in proper subjection.”56 Once Civil War soldiers became veterans, they came to appreciate this quality in their officers because they recognized the necessity of military discipline. Taylor Pierce commented to his wife, “There must be some regulations or the good of the whole must be forfeited.” Indeed, an important criterion that soldiers used to judge the effectiveness of an officer was whether he could maintain good order and discipline. Peter Welsh of the Irish Brigade was discontent with the lax discipline of his brigade. He wanted officers who were “strict military men.” At one point Welsh outlined what that meant. His description of a colonel he admired agreed with the consensus of most soldiers: “He will 168  |  Officers, Privates, and Equal Manhood

allow neither Officers nor men to shirk their duty there is no partiality shown to any he also looks out for the rights of his regiment if there is any cause of complaint he makes it his business to look after it immediately.”57 In a postwar article on the military, John W. DeForest, Civil War infantry captain and noted novelist, argued that many soldiers and officers recognized the need to put aside their cultural assumptions while in service. The stern demands of field service and an effective use of courts-martial weeded out most incompetent officers after the first year of the war. After that, claimed DeForest, the great mass of officers were brave, honorable, and “already military in their habits and ideas.” In addition, most men in the rank and file were men of character “who were determined to master their new duties and win.” The volunteer soldiers “soon discovered the necessity of discipline and aided their officers in establishing it.” But at the same time, DeForest conceded that the army’s success still lay with a popular decision made by the majority of soldiers: “Self-respect, a noble feeling of comradeship, earnest purpose, and common sense supplied in great measure the lack of complete discipline and of trained regimental officers.”58 While many officers still engaged in some sort of negotiation with their men, the outcome of that negotiation was the established authority of the officers. Apparently most soldiers became well disciplined because the men agreed that some discipline and obedience were needed for their success and survival. The democratic process itself could lead to effective discipline. In many regiments soldiers obeyed authority because the majority had made the decision to submit. But in some regiments the soldiers maintained a sense of equal manhood and democratic principles until the end of the war. These men believed that this spirit, not obedience to authority, made them better soldiers. As a result, interactions between officers and soldiers were fraught with difficulties that were only compounded when conscripts and substitutes arrived. DeForest remembered the men of “character” in the rank and file, but there were plenty of “roughs” among the enlisted men as well. Historians of Civil War soldiers have tended to focus on the Union’s moral, self-controlled, and genteel volunteers rather than the intemperate, rowdy, and aggressive volunteers and conscripts. Officers had to deal with both groups, and a range of men in between. The last two chapters have shown, for the first time, how officers actually governed the rank and file in this challenging situation. They used example and persuasion with some enlisted men and brute force with others. They earned respect and implemented effective discipline even as they dealt with constant insolence and struggled to maintain their authority.

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The requirements of military service dictated that officers establish effective military discipline. In addition, officers faced the complexity of negotiating differing codes of manhood among their peers and the men they commanded. In the same regiment, an officer who valued moral character attended temperance meetings in his company while other officers drank and fought with enlisted men. A genteel commanding officer enforced regulations that cleaned and polished his recalcitrant regiment, much to the disdain of the long-bearded and dirty men with whom the unit served. When two officers disagreed publicly, the argument could turn in a moment to a verbal challenge to fight. A simple order to a private might receive instant obedience, or the private might demand that the officer “lay off his shoulder straps” and fight it out man to man. Command under such circumstances was not easy. Good officers had to lead their men through the battleground of the Union Army, where the war for manhood raged across four long years.

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Conclusion The War for Manhood

A regiment that exemplified the war for manhood in the Union Army was the 58th Indiana Volunteer Infantry. The officers and enlisted men of this unit present a portrait of the different types of men that contended against one another during the Civil War. Its colonel, George P. Buell, was a temperance man who sought to suppress drinking in his command. On one occasion he knocked open the regiment’s ration of whiskey, and as chaplain John J. Hight noted approvingly, “the vile poison gurgled and splattered upon the soil.” The Methodist Hight, who valued gentility as well as moral character, often criticized the “uncouth” men of his regiment, and was embarrassed when they “bellowed” at the “better bred” soldiers from the east. Among the officers of the 58th, Hight particularly admired 1st Lt. George Raffan, a well-read native of Scotland who possessed “polished manners.” Hight also loved a morally upright private in Company D named William Robinson, a man of limited means who had donated more money to repair a church back in Indiana than many of its wealthiest members. Robinson was “somewhat rough in manner” yet had a “gentle disposition.”1 Unfortunately, in Hight’s view, there were other types of men serving in the unit. “Sometimes it seems that His Satanic majesty is in full control of our Regiment,” he recorded in his diary during one chaotic evening in October 1864. A few of the “rowdies” had created a society “devoted to whiskey and lewd women.” One of the instigators was noted for “kicking up all kinds of gymnastic feats.” The members of the society had serenaded several companies of the regiment for whiskey, become drunk, and then proceeded to beat one another. The most notorious fighter in the regiment was Hugh Shaw, a “desperate” man with a prison record, but one who could “assume some of the refinements of good society.” Shaw and several others from the Fifty-eighth once fought soldiers from a U.S.C.T. regiment in Chattanooga; Shaw and Pvt. Hiram Wright once attacked a major in the 3rd Ohio Cavalry with an axe.2

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The 58th Indiana boasted quite a mix of men. Its chaplain was moral and genteel; one private with moral character was rough and uncouth yet not devoid of tenderness. The boisterous, noisy men of the regiment disturbed others with their drunken antics and constant fighting. One of these men showed off his athletic prowess in feats of gymnastics; another sometimes displayed social polish when it suited him. The draft added another element to the Fifty-eighth in 1864—economically marginal men that Hight described as the “scrapings of society.” This wild lot of roughs increased the level of profanity, drinking, fighting, card playing, and, perhaps worst of all, fiddling in the regiment.3 Chaplain Hight faithfully kept a daily diary during the war and sent completed sheets—eventually totaling two thousand pages—home. In 1892 the Regimental Association of the 58th Indiana decided to use the diary as the basis of a regimental history. Gilbert R. Stormont, a former corporal of Company B, edited and arranged the manuscript Hight had prepared before his death. Stormont left intact Hight’s record of the differences between the men of the 58th Indiana. The unit’s official history, published in 1895, did not gloss over the conflicts the regiment experienced. Neither did the official history of the 39th Illinois, published in 1889. The author, Charles M. Clark, wrote the history from memory and research rather than a manuscript prepared during the war, but the long years had not erased his impressions of the different manly ideals present in his unit. He recorded a conflict between the “bummer” element—“noisy and belligerent” men—and the “peaceful and orderly” men of the regiment during the elections for the position of major in 1861. One group of men and officers enjoyed practical jokes, cards, dances, and whiskey, while Company G, “the Preacher’s Company,” was notorious for, as Clark sarcastically put it, “pretensions to more morality than the majority of their comrades.” Clark did not neglect the immigrant conscripts that joined the regiment in 1864, men who, he remembered, “gave us more trouble and annoyance than all the old soldiers put together.”4 At the end of the Civil War, and in the remaining years of the nineteenth century, there was no clear victor in the north’s war for manhood. Different ideals of manhood were still in contention. The war energized honor, boisterous manhood, and physical prowess at the same time that it reinforced the importance of domestic morality and gentility for those who embraced those attributes. There was, however, a clear loser in the battle—the undesirable roughs, the men of the north’s underclass who had seemed to pose a danger to the army and to the home front through their wild fights and uncontrolled behavior. Many of them were conscripts, and although the army’s coercive 172  |  Conclusion

mechanisms ensured that at least some of them fought in battle, other men rarely acknowledged them as comrades. When the men of the 40th New York formed a veterans’ association just before the unit was mustered out of the Union Army, they voted to exclude conscripts and bounty jumpers and confined membership to men who had served in the unit for at least two years.5 Regimental histories and memoirs produced years after the war sometimes ignore the roughs altogether, while others include them only for the purpose of slamming their manhood and highlighting the trouble they caused an otherwise exemplary unit of men. Recently historians have begun to explore how historical memory of the Civil War evolved in the decades after the conflict. The sudden plethora of regimental histories written in the 1880s and 1890s particularly intrigue those scholars who seek to understand how the war was remembered and its legacy manipulated to serve various political and social agendas in the late nineteenth century. Regimental histories often glorified the war and portrayed its veterans as united and valiant men whose courage and sacrifice saved the Union.6 These “official” histories, composed and published at the behest of the unit’s veterans’ association were produced, as the authors often overtly claimed, for honor. They served to record and publicize the reputation a regiment earned and to commemorate the honor its men established during battle. With honor a motivating force behind regimental histories, it is no wonder that so many of them omitted references to the men, conflicts, and incidents that might detract from the honor of the unit. The official histories of the 69th Pennsylvania and the 71st Pennsylvania, for example—the regiments that experienced the deadly and memorable personal conflict between Capt. Bernard J. McMahon and Capt. Andrew McManus—obscured the true nature of the incident. A Brief History of the 69th Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers listed McManus’s name under the roll of “Our Honored Dead,” which contained the “Names of those of the Regiment who were Killed in Battle, Died of Wounds Received in Battle, or while Confined as Prisoners of War, after being Captured in Battle.” The History of the Philadelphia Brigade was closer to the truth, but still sought to preserve McManus’s honor: “Captain Andrew McManus, a brave and spirited man, came to an untimely end on May 27th, in an altercation with a comrade.”7 Both these histories created a picture of regiments composed of honorable men renowned throughout the army for their drill, discipline, and bravery in battle. They are replete with the common terms of regimental histories: “noble,” “distinction,” “brave,” “manly,” “honorable.”

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At the same time, there are a number of published works that recalled the conflicts between men and emphasized the problems the unit experienced with immigrants and roughs. Although these regimental histories constantly referred to the honor and glory the unit achieved, and to the comradeship of the soldiers, they also portrayed the vices, the fights, the discipline problems, and the harsh methods that officers used. Veterans of the Civil War did remember the differences between the men who fought under the same flag and they wrote these differences into their official memory of the war.8 Both types of regimental histories have a critical element in common: an underlying assumption that manliness had been important to the regiment’s success and ultimately the Union’s victory. The authors of the History of the Thirty-sixth Regiment Illinois Volunteers commented, “When war and battles are resorted to in the settlement of difficulties, it should be no child’s play, but the desperate exercise of all the higher qualities of manhood; for unless troops are under the control of true men, defeat is inevitable.” During the war, the chaplain of the regiment had distributed an address to the men that repeatedly called on them to “Show thyself a man,” and the regimental history served to prove that they had done so.9 Although the Thirty-sixth’s official history acknowledges the unit’s noisy and boisterous “roughs”—the drunk men who attempted to run the guard, the captain who was shoved out of the regiment for brutality in his punishment of a drunken soldier, the common insubordinate behavior of officers and men—it also demands through a constant repetition of the theme that its readers recognize the honor and the manhood of the regiment’s soldiers and officers who glorified themselves and their country through their manly behavior in camp, march, and battle. Perhaps the writers of regimental histories who portrayed the conflicts between men were able to do so because ultimately they were confident that northern manhood had passed the test; the north, after all, won the war. The noble manhood of the 36th Illinois—or the 58th Indiana, or the 11th New Jersey—had saved the Union. To understand the significance and ongoing nature of the war for manhood, it is important to recognize that nineteenth-century northerners had always made a connection between manhood and the survival of the nation. When Americans first established their republic, they linked its success to the virtues of its male citizens, and predicted its downfall if men succumbed to corruption and vice. Virtue in the late eighteenth century was synonymous with civic-mindedness; a virtuous man set aside his selfish interests to pursue the common good. Although the meaning of republican virtue mutated and changed over time, the underlying mindset endured. Northerners knew 174  |  Conclusion

that men needed to possess the right qualities in order for the republic to flourish, and when sectional tensions and war threatened, for the nation to survive. But when the war began, northerners were not united behind a clear portrait of the qualities ideal manhood possessed. What did ideal republican manhood look like? What type of men could save the nation? And even more imperative in the context of civil war, what type of men might eventually destroy it? These were pressing questions, but northerners during the war had not, the portrayal in some of the postwar regimental histories notwithstanding, answered them in the same ways. Depending on a man’s point of view, the men he saw around him who possessed, or did not possess, certain attributes had undermined both the republic and the successful prosecution of the war. Those with overly polished manners and other genteel refinements were trapped in an effeminate luxury that sapped the hardy manhood necessary to sustain republican institutions. Those who were profane and intemperate lacked the moral character and selfcontrol to conquer themselves; they could not be expected to have the manhood that could conquer the rebellion. Men who fought for sport threatened the order and stability of the home front and the army. Men who did not fight were unmanly in their submission to the dominance of others and therefore lacked the manly independence essential to the republican spirit. Human beings are complicated creatures and can embrace two contradictory truths at the same time. Regimental histories affirmed the triumph of northern manhood, yet within the body of work produced by the veterans’ associations lurked the uncomfortable truth that northern men still had different conceptions of manhood. Perhaps the regimental histories in the 1880s and 1890s were anxious to affirm the manhood of northern men because there were still so many unanswered questions about manhood in the years after the war. Despite the fact that northern men emerged victorious, social problems and conflicts continued to plague the republic. Americans in the last three decades of the century still believed that democratic government depended on the manly character of its male citizens, but consensus on manly character remained elusive. The works of scholars who study gender at the end of the century suggest that men in both the north and south were engaged in a debate over how to define and demonstrate ideal manhood. Indeed, embedded in the work of these scholars is a discussion of the same terms that are central to this study: honor, physical prowess, moral character, gentility, and social status. They remained crucial in the ongoing struggle to construct the type of manhood that would ensure the success of the republic—or the continued march of civilization—during the postwar era.

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At the turn of the century, honor endured as one of the fundamental, albeit still controversial, attributes of manhood. The prominent place of honor in the production and language of the regimental histories was one testament to its lasting power in northern society. The political realm demonstrates honor’s continued hold over both northerners and southerners. As Kristin Hoganson has pointed out, American men invoked the needs of honor and repeatedly spoke of “insults” when they called for war with Spain in 1898. Jingoes agreed that just as a man would fight to protect his reputation, so should the nation. Hoganson identifies a widespread fear in the late nineteenth century that honor and the martial virtues were dying out with the Civil War veterans. The new generation of men sought to demonstrate their manhood with their own war, one that would prove American men possessed honor, physical prowess, aggression, and toughness. Just as it was in the Civil War, however, honor was a contested term of manhood. Opponents of war with Spain summoned images of degraded prizefighters and criminal duelists to attack what they perceived to be unmanly belligerence. These Americans agreed that men should have honor, but when they spoke of honor, they implied concepts such as self-control and moral character.10 Another battle in the war for manhood later in the century revolved around moral character, particularly self-control. During the Philippine War, anti-imperialists claimed that the war degenerated American manhood because it undermined these two most important attributes of manliness. Soldiers fighting the long and brutal war against savages in the Philippines became savages themselves—as could be seen, the anti-imperialists claimed, in the increased personal violence, drink, and sexual profligacy of American soldiers who served there. Americans who made these arguments measured men by their moral character and self-restraint; they viewed a man’s aggressive assertion of physical prowess as a sign of savagery. The men who had advocated war rejected these ideals and labeled men who practiced restraint as effeminate. A man’s character depended less on his morality and more on his willingness to fight and his ability to enforce his will.11 The debate over the Philippine War utilized a discourse that was not familiar to Civil War soldiers but reflected the same concerns and controversies about the nature of ideal manhood. White middle-class Americans in the decades after the Civil War increasingly thought about manhood in relation to civilization. Gail Bederman has proposed that the discourse of civilization was one way that men after the 1880s negotiated the many contradictory ideas about manhood that were available to them. The common assumption was that civilized white men were the most manly ever evolved, but within 176  |  Conclusion

that assumption men sought, in different ways, to develop, amend, or contest what it meant to be a man. At times, men claimed the moral character, the self-restraint, and the refinement of civilized white manhood in contrast to the savage brutality of the dark-skinned races. At other times, men asserted that they partook in a primitive “masculinity” shared with the savages; all men were inherently virile, violent, instinctive, and sought to dominate others through physical prowess. Within this complex discourse, some men feared that excessive civilization produced weak, decadent, and effeminate men, while others warned that those who had not developed civilized restraint and refinement were savage boys rather than fully developed men. Theodore Roosevelt, who embodied manhood for the generation born in the 1860s, tried to reconcile in his person the conflicting attributes of manhood that competed for dominance within the discourse of civilization. Roosevelt portrayed himself as a man with the virile strength and fighting prowess of the savage who retained the moral character and the necessary refinements of the superior civilized white man.12 Men continued to piece together their manly identities in a variety of ways, using and adapting the elements of honor, prowess, moral character, and gentility within a culture that was vitally concerned that its men achieve ideal manhood and simultaneously unable to paint a coherent picture of manliness. Social status complicated the picture even further, as it did during the Civil War. Indeed, class became more salient in the decades after the war as the industrial revolution accelerated and as class divisions rent American society during the violent labor conflicts of the 1880s and 1890s. Middle- and upper-class Americans, surely influenced by their experience of the roughs during the Civil War, remained concerned about the rough and degenerate manhood of the immigrant and working classes whose strikes seemed to threaten social order and the authority of superior men. At the same time, social changes that affected the middle classes in particular—such as bureaucratization and increased women’s activity in the public sphere—invigorated assertions of rougher manhood among middle-class men who feared that the men of their class were growing weak and soft. These men participated in rigorous athletics and sought to develop a strong male body that increasingly became an end in itself.13 The complex relationship between manhood and social status affected elite men as well as lower-class men. In the first two decades after the Civil War, in particular, some outspoken social elites claimed the right to lead and uplift the masses. They proclaimed the virtues of gentlemen—men of education, moral character, refinement, and public stature—and denigrated the vices of

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the dangerous northern underclass whose manhood—and at times whose right to vote—they questioned. Postwar northerners of other classes, however, were no more willing to concede authority to social elites than soldiers had been willing to concede authority to elite officers during the war. They spoke out against the dangerous concentration of wealth that occurred during the era and the materialistic extravagance of an upper class that increasingly seemed out of touch with the experience of ordinary Americans. The class conflicts of the Gilded Age spawned attacks on upper-class manhood as well as on upper-class wealth. Genteel elites, their critics proclaimed, were unmanly and soft; they cared only about money and possessed no character. The Spanish-American War at the end of the century provided a forum to test elite manhood at a time when it was under fire. Elite young men believed they had passed the test; their military exploits in Cuba supposedly affirmed their natural superiority and proved that perfect manhood combined physical prowess with good breeding.14 Men in the late nineteenth century, when they asserted that manhood required good breeding, or that all men shared a primitive nature that sought to dominate others, were echoing a contest for manhood with a long history. The landscape of the battlefield had changed, but in many ways what men fought for remained the same. The contested terms of manhood resonated with succeeding generations of men and informed both how they displayed their own manhood and how they assessed the claims of others. Scholars have struggled to present a coherent picture of manhood in the nineteenth century because they have sought to reconcile what men at the time could not. Some historians insist that one type of manhood or another was ascendant at different times, yet the evidence belies such conclusions. The real, living men of history rarely fit so nicely into the neat categories historians seek to impose. Historians of middle-class manhood in particular oversimplify when they argue that a clearly defined, self-controlled manhood of the antebellum and Civil War years eventually gave way to a more aggressive manhood predominant at the end of the century.15 This study suggests that scholars have misread the generation of men who fought the Civil War. Selfcontrol was not necessarily a coherent concept for all northern men, but even if it was, the attributes of honor and physical prowess always battled selfcontrol for dominance. Northern men of all social classes embraced aspects of aggressive manhood before, during, and after the war. The point, however, is that ideals of manhood were never neatly fixed at any given moment in the nineteenth century. There was no such thing, really, as “aggressive manhood.” Although men sought to define manhood and to 178  |  Conclusion

delineate a coherent picture, and although Americans believed that manliness was vital to the success of the nation, the culture produced contradictory and competing versions of manhood, just as individual men never fully conformed to any given definition or portrait. The men who fought in the Civil War embodied all the contradictions and ambiguities of nineteenthcentury manhood. The soldiers and officers who returned to civilian life lived with a complicated reality in the years after the war. The struggle to save the Union forged intense bonds between men with very different ideals of manhood. A common ideology about what the Union stood for and why it must be saved brought men together in moments that counted. Shared hardships created comrades who truly loved one another.16 Chaplain Hight expressed this side of war in his diary as he said goodbye to the men whose enlistments expired in November 1864: “I am better able to appreciate the love of David and Jonathan, than ever before. They were soldiers; their hearts were knit together by common trials and fatigues. Their love was stronger than the love of woman. Thus, soldiers are attached.”17 Hight was a man who expressed outright disdain for men in his unit and who faithfully recorded the frequent explosions between men in the regiment. Yet his assessment of the love between soldiers was sincere and reflected one side of reality in Civil War regiments. At the same time, the experience of camp life and battle exposed and exacerbated the fractures and divisions between men who held clashing ideals of manhood. Taylor Pierce, an enlisted man in the 22nd Iowa, found that he could not reconcile the two realities. In letters home during the war he mixed two complicated truths when he simultaneously praised and disparaged his company. Pierce proudly proclaimed that his Iowa regiment “would whip their equal number of any men the world has ever produced.” He wrote his wife that “every man was determined to whip the rebs and does everything he can to ensure success.” But in the very next sentence of the letter, he slips in a reference to other men in the unit who belie the claim he had just made: “Our co. now has 55 men present and 25 of them are shirking and the ballance are on duty all the time and I believe there is not a man but would rather die than let the rebs whip us.”18 When Pierce claimed that “every man” sought to ensure the success of the regiment, he did not really mean it. Pierce shared a bond with a core group of men in his company who did their duty and eventually developed an esprit de corps. The “shirks” and the “roughs” were outsiders, men that Pierce did not even consider when he used the seemingly inclusive pronoun “we.”

Conclusion  |  179

Veterans of the Civil War likewise handled the dual aspect of their war experience in different ways. Some preferred to reminisce about the bonds between men. They excluded the roughs when they made speeches or wrote histories after the war. Public presentations ignored or smoothed over the conflicts that occurred in Civil War regiments between different types of men from all social classes. Other veterans, however, could not speak or write about the war without recalling those tensions. They chose to remember the discord between men in the Union Army. Meanwhile, all of them participated in, and handed to the next generation, the new battles in the ongoing war for manhood.

180  |  Conclusion

Appendix Note on Method and Sources

The evidential centerpiece of this study was a database of 246 infantry and cavalry regiments in the Union Army. To establish this database, graduate assistants at the University of Central Arkansas created an Excel worksheet that contained every infantry and cavalry regiment in the Union Army: volunteer state regiments, regular army regiments, and U.S. Colored Troops. The worksheet contained information on volunteer units’ state of origin, date of muster, and length of service. Using this initial worksheet, Dr. Roger Burk of the West Point Systems Engineering Department used the program to select a database of 246 infantry and cavalry regiments. The database included regiments from every state that contributed forces to the Union Army; regiments that served three months, nine months, two years, three years, and that reenlisted; regiments that were organized before 1863; and regiments that were organized after 1863. The selected regiments represented (as nearly as possible) the proportions of infantry and cavalry regiments in each of these three categories in the Union Army as a whole. With the generous support of the Lowry Project (a searchable database of the 75,961 general courts-martial of the Union Army), I compiled the general courts-martial records and created statistics on general courts-martial for every regiment in my database—a total of 5,767 trials. This provided a picture of the common discipline problems that regiments experienced and allowed me to track changes over time. It was impossible to examine the thousands of trials for which I had statistics, so I identified the most common charges in general courts-martial for the 246 regiments. I visited the National Archives and read the trial transcripts for hundreds of cases involving conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline, disobedience and insubordination, mutiny, striking a superior officer, and sleeping on post.

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Courts-martial records provided insight beyond the particular case. Trial transcripts often yielded information about the general state of discipline in a regiment. The testimony of witnesses and the questions of the court sometimes revealed what the standing orders in a regiment were, whether the officers and soldiers in the regiment drilled regularly and were familiar with the Articles of War, or whether officers responded to indiscipline in a typical or atypical manner compared to other units in the division. Testimony also indicated whether the officers and soldiers who appeared at the trial had absorbed a professional view of their duties and service. The evidence base for this study extends beyond general courts-martial. It was important to build a more complete picture of life in Union regiments using as many different types of sources as possible. From my database of 246 regiments, I selected a small set of regiments—26—for which a substantial portion of the regimental order books survived. I read all these order books, which included information on orders, regimental courts-martial, and field officer courts. I made sure that I read the courts-martial cases for these regiments from my list of the most common charges. I also read the inspection reports and the correspondence of the inspector generals for the Army of the Cumberland and the Army of the Potomac. These records were particularly useful in determining the general state of cleanliness of the men and the camps, and the adoption of military etiquette in regiments, brigades, and divisions. The reports provided surprising material on religious services, whether officers wore their uniforms, and whether soldiers imitated officers’ dress. It was important to combine these official records with letters and diaries of officers and enlisted men, memoirs, newspaper and journal articles written during the war, and the official regimental histories published in the nineteenth century. Since other scholars have widely used these sources, I did not feel it was necessary to be exhaustive in my reading of letters and diaries. Instead I focused on studying officers and soldiers, when such material was available, who served in the regiments that were included in the twenty-six units with good regimental order books. This allowed me to build a more comprehensive picture of life in these regiments than studies of Civil War soldiers that have used only partial evidence. I then read any regimental histories produced by veterans of these units, although more often than not there was no such history written. I also read letters and diaries of officers and soldiers and regimental histories from other regiments in my database. 182  |  Appendix

Once this part of the research was completed, I read popular northern newspapers and journals. This book was originally intended to be a study of discipline and military justice in the Union Army. What I found in the sources, however, led me in unexpected directions. I did not set out to write about manhood or honor; I was compelled to do so by the surprising evidence I found during two unforgettable summers in the National Archives.



Appendix  |  183

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Notes

Introduction 1.  Thomas P. Southwick, A Duryee Zouave (Washington, DC: Acme Printing, 1930), 15–17. 2.  Ibid., 27–28. 3.  Ibid. 4.  Craig Thompson Friend and Lorri Glover, eds., Southern Manhood: Perspectives on Masculinity in the Old South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004), ix–x. 5.  Mark H. Dunkelman, Brothers One and All: Esprit de Corps in a Civil War Regiment (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004), 181; Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 17–19. Bederman’s distinction between Victorian middle-class definitions of “manly” and “masculine” has informed my definition of manhood, although I disagree with her that “manly” always had a moral dimension to its definition. I argue that men from all social classes conceived of manliness as the “conduct worthy of a man”—for some this implied moral conduct, but for others it did not. Indeed, the dispute over what conduct was worthy of a man is the subject of this book. According to Bederman, “‘masculine’ referred to any characteristics, good or bad, that all men had” (18). 6.  Clyde Griffin, “Reconstructing Masculinity from the Evangelical Revival to the Waning of Progressivism: A Speculative Synthesis,” in Mark C. Carnes and Clyde Griffin, eds., Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 185–188; Amy S. Greenberg, Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 9–12. 7.  Gerald F. Linderman, Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War (New York: The Free Press, 1987); Reid Mitchell, Civil War Soldiers (New York: Viking, 1988); Larry M. Logue, To Appomattox and Beyond: The Civil War Soldier in War and Peace (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996); James McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 8.  Thomas Augst, The Clerk’s Tale: Young Men and Moral Life in Nineteenth-Century America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 32. 9.  Edward L. Ayers, Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the NineteenthCentury American South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 12–13; Bertram WyattBrown, Honor and Violence in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 27. 10.  The exception is James McPherson, who argues in For Cause and Comrades that northern volunteers in 1861 and 1862 valued honor and that they believed it was central to their manhood.



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11.  Joseph T. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers (New York: The Free Press, 1990); Christian G. Samito, “The Intersection between Military Justice and Equal Rights: Mutinies, Courts-martial, and Black Civil War Soldiers,” Civil War History 53 (June 2007): 170–202; John David Smith, ed., Black Soldiers in Blue: African American Troops in the Civil War Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Versalle F. Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons: A Black Infantry Regiment in the Civil War (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999); James G. Hollandsworth Jr., The Louisiana Native Guards: The Black Military Experience during the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995); Howard C. Westwood, Black Troops, White Commanders, and Freedmen during the Civil War (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992). 12.  Some of the scholarly works that emphasize the bonds between men in the Union Army or shared ideology among soldiers are: Dunkelman, Brothers One and All; McPherson, For Cause and Comrades; Mitchell, Civil War Soldiers; Earl J. Hess, Liberty, Virtue, and Progress: Northerners and Their War for the Union (New York: New York University Press, 1988). 13.  Logue, To Appomattox and Beyond; Ayers, Vengeance and Justice. 14.  Griffin, “Reconstructing Masculinity,” 191–192. 15.  Tyler Anbinder, “Which Poor Man’s Fight? Immigrants and the Federal Conscription of 1863,” Civil War History 52 (December 2006): 344–372. 16.  The training process for officers improved drastically in the first year of the war. Most regiments established mandatory schools and required officers to meet twice a week to recite regulations and tactics. The army implemented system-wide exams for those officers reported to be incompetent, and inspectors in the Army of the Potomac and the Army of the Cumberland reported whether regiments were holding schools of instruction. Special Order (SO) 52, 18 October 1861, 23rd Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, Record Group (RG) 94, National Archives (NA); General Order (GO) 6, 27 December 1861, 58th Indiana Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA; SO 23, 27 December 1862, 143rd New York Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; GO 3, 13 August 1862, 110th New York Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA; GO 8, 18 December 1862, 50th Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA; SO 35, 25 October 1862, 42nd Illinois Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA; SO 1, 8 November 1863, 8 November 1863, 33rd Wisconsin Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; SO 33, 3 February 1863, 143rd New York Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 93, NA; GO 102 and 13, 4 June 1863 and 13 April 1864, 40th New York Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA; SO 13, 30 October 1863 and 14 March 1864, 5th New York Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; GO 22, 7 February 1864, 56th Massachusetts Regimental Order and Letter Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; GO 1, 20 September 1864, 59th Massachusetts Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; Inspection Report, January 1863, 3rd Division, 21st Army Corp, Army of the Cumberland, Entry 1058, No. 242, RG 393, NA; 5 December 1862 (Circular), 29 January 1863 (Circular), 23 February 1863 (General Order 16), 13 March 1863 (Circular), 12 February 1864 (General Order 3), 17th Maine Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA. 17.  Gerald J. Prokopowicz, All for the Regiment: The Army of the Ohio, 1861–1862 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 2–6, 19, 32–34. 18.  August V. Kautz, Customs of Service for Non-commissioned Officers and Soldiers as Derived from Law and Regulations and Practiced in the Army of the United States Being a Hand-Book for the Rank and File of the Army. 2nd Edition (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1865), 200–201.

186  |  Notes to the Introduction

19.  John D. Billings, Hardtack and Coffee, or The Unwritten Story of Army Life [1887] (Williamstown, MA: Corner House Publishers, 1973), 144–146. 20.  66th Article of War and 67th Article of War, War Department, Rules and Articles for the Government of the Armies of the United States (Washington, DC: A. O. P. Nicholson, Public Printer, 1857); William C. DeHart, Observations on Military Law, and the Constitution and Practice of Courts Martial, with a Summary of the Law of Evidence, as Applicable to Military Trials; Adapted to the Laws, Regulations and Customs of the Army and Navy of the United States (New York: Wiley and Halsted, 1859), 48, 62–64; S. V. Benét, A Treatise on Military Law and the Practice of Courts-Martial (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1863), 41–42. 21.  GO 52, 11 September 1863, 23rd Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA; 18 and 21 November 1864, 33rd Wisconsin Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA. 22.  99th Article of War, 6th Article of War, Government of the Armies of the United States; GO 12, 17 February 1863, 4th Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA; General Orders, 25 March 1863, 33rd Wisconsin Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA. 23.  Joseph C. Fitzharris, “Field Officer Courts and U.S. Civil War Military Justice,” Journal of Military History 68 (January 2004): 54–58. 24.  6 April 1863, Lt. Col. Alex Webb, Asst. Inspector Gen., to Inspector Gen. Ed. Schriver, Vol. 11/38, 39, 5th Army Corps, Entry 254, RG 393 (Part II); GO 155, 9 September 1862, Asst. Adj. Gen. S. William, Army of the Potomac, in War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1880–1901), Ser. 1, Vol. 19 (Part II): 226–227. Regiments issued regimental orders announcing the use of field officer courts in compliance with the congressional acts or simply began publishing the results of field officer courts. Battalion Order 19, 6 November 1863, 5th New York Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; SO 1, 26 September 1862, 5th Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA; Circular, 25 March 1864, 56th Massachusetts Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; SO 26, 6 April 1863, 23rd Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA. Other units that used field officer courts included: 47th Pennsylvania, 184th Pennsylvania, 17th Maine, 30th Maine, 40th New York, 110th New York, 42nd Illinois, 4th Ohio. I found many other units that used these courts as well, but I gathered evidence from the record books of these twelve regiments since they kept the best records. 25.  30 January 1864, 56th Massachusetts Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA. For instances of brigade commanders reviewing findings, see: GO 56, 9 December 1864, 23rd Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA; GO 7, 10 May 1862, 4th Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA; GO 42, 5 August 1862, 5th Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA; GO 18, 7 April 1864, 23rd Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA; Battalion Order 63, 4 April 1864, 5th New York Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; GO 68, 30 December 1863, 4th Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA. 26.  64th Article of War, 65th Article of War, Government of the Armies of the United States. 27.  65th Article of War, 87th Article of War, Government of the Armies of the United States; DeHart, Observations on Military Law, 190; William C. Davis, Lincoln’s Men: How President Lincoln Became Father to an Army and a Nation (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), 182. As S. V. Benét, a former assistant professor of ethics and law at West Point, summarized the law, the legal punishments for soldiers in 1863 were: death, confinement, confinement on bread and water, solitary confinement, hard labor, ball and chain, forfei-



Notes to the Introduction   |  187

ture of pay and allowances, discharge, and reprimand. Solitary confinement or bread and water punishments could not exceed fourteen days at a time, had to be spaced fourteen days apart, and could not exceed eighty-four days in one year. Benét, A Treatise on Military Law, 44–45. 28.  Henry Coppée, Field Manual of Courts-martial, Containing the Forms and Proceeding, of All Kinds of Courts-martial, and an Explanation of the Duties of All Persons Connected with Military Tribunals, in Any Capacity (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1863), 19–20. 29.  69th Article of War; Benét, Treatise on Military Law, 61–62, 195, 197–198; DeHart, Observations on Military Law, 195, 309–310, 313–314. 30.  DeHart, Observations on Military Law, 306–307, 323–325, 327–328; Benét, Treatise on Military Law, 70–71. 31.  DeHart, Observations on Military Law, 115, 118, 125, 132–134, 160–162; Benét, Treatise on Military Law, 65, 112–113, 116. Members of courts were regularly dismissed under challenge during the Civil War. H. R. Kittson objected to the presence on the court of one of the officers who drew up the charges against him. His objection was sustained (Courtmartial of 2nd Lt. H.R. Kittson, 5th New York, LL 286, RG 153, NA). For an example of the judge advocate challenging a member of the court, see Court-martial of Capt. Alfred Webber, 51st U.S.C.T., NN 3559, RG 153, NA. 32.  Court-martial of Theodore Carson, 28th Michigan, MM 3415, RG 153, NA; Courtmartial of Pvt. Hugh Shaw, 58th Indiana, KK 489, RG 153, NA. The War Department overturned a sentence because the court found the accused not guilty of the specifications but guilty of the charge (Court-martial of John McBride, 34th Illinois, MM 218, RG 153, NA). One court did not have enough members (Court-martial of Patrick McKinney, 5th New York, NN 717, RG 153, NA). One court forgot to record the length of the sentence (Court-martial of Sanford H. Fitch, 23rd Ohio, II 531, RG 153, NA). Judge advocate general Joseph Holt overturned one case because the reviewing officer failed to state his decision about the case at the end of the proceedings (Court-martial of Pvt. Ira Buck, 34th Illinois, MM 218, RG 153, NA). According to the 89th Article of War, the officer who ordered a general court-martial had the power to pardon and mitigate any punishment of the court except a death sentence or cashiering an officer. Only the president could pardon or mitigate in those circumstances. If a reviewing authority disapproved proceedings of a trial, he could reconvene the court for revision or release the prisoner and return him to duty. But if the court was illegally constituted or if there was any illegality in the charge, the court could not be reconvened. If a reviewing authority found the sentence was too severe or too inadequate, he could send the proceedings back for revisal, mitigate or remit the sentence, or confirm it. Once the officer who convened the court reviewed the proceedings, the president was the only other authority who could review the case. A superior military commander, however, could suspend the execution of a sentence and forward it to the president. Regulations also required that “all proceedings and decisions of reviewing authorities be submitted to the Judge Advocate of the Army at the War Department” (Benét, Treatise on Military Law, 159). 33.  Surviving records of military justice in Confederate armies are too scanty and incomplete to make fair comparisons between justice in Union and Confederate armies. For a good examination of one case of justice in the Confederate armies, see Peter S. Carmichael, “So Far From God and So Close to Stonewall Jackson: The Executions of Three Shenandoah Valley Soldiers,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 111, no. 1 (2003): 33–66.

188  |  Notes to the Introduction

Chap ter 1 1.  Ann Hartwell Britton and Thomas J. Reed, eds., To My Beloved Wife and Boy at Home: The Letters and Diaries of Orderly Sergeant John F. L. Hartwell (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997), 8–9, 41, 56, 67, 270. 2.  Ibid., 336, 239, 193, 162. 3.  Ibid., 336–337. 4.  Ibid., 217. 5.  Reid Mitchell, The Vacant Chair: The Northern Soldier Leaves Home (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Amy S. Greenberg, Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 6.  James C. Mohr, ed., The Cormany Diaries: A Northern Family in the Civil War (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982), 360. 7.  Earl J. Hess, Liberty, Virtue, and Progress: Northerners and Their War for the Union (New York: New York University Press, 1988), 75–76; Orville J. Victor, The Military HandBook, and Soldier’s Manual of Information (New York: Beadle, 1861), 25. 8.  Richard L. Kiper, ed., Dear Catharine, Dear Taylor: The Civil War Letters of a Union Soldier and His Wife (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 46. 9.  Nathan O. Hatch, Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 3–46; Ronald G. Walters, American Reformers, 1815–1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1997), 3–75, 125–146. 10.  United States Christian Commission, for the Army and Navy: For the Year 1863: Second Annual Report (Philadelphia, 1864), 249. 11.  Mohr, Cormany Diaries, 304, 350, 297, 414, 560. 12.  2nd Article of War, War Department, Rules and Articles for the Government of the Armies of the United States (Washington, DC: A. O. P. Nicholson, Public Printer, 1857); “General Order Respecting the Observance of the Sabbath Day in the Army and Navy,” 15 November 1862, Executive Mansion, Washington, DC, in War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1880–1901), Ser. 3, Vol. 2 (Part I): 783 (hereafter OR); General Order (GO) 12, 19 February 1863, Headquarters Army of the Potomac, OR, Ser. 1, Vol. 25 (Part II): 89–90; GO 31, 3 August 1864, Headquarters Army of the Potomac, OR, Ser. 1, Vol. 42 (Part II): 29–30. 13.  Special Order (SO) 22, 28 December 1862, 143rd New York Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, Record Group (RG) 94, National Archives (NA); GO 10, 20 July 1861, 23rd Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA; Regimental Order (RO) 26, 14 June 1863, 34th Illinois Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA; “To Company Officers,” 13 September 1862, 17th Maine Regimental Order Book, Vol. 6, RG 94, NA; Orders, 20 January 1864, 17th Maine Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA. 14.  Robert Garth Scott, ed., Fallen Leaves: The Civil War Letters of Major Henry Livermore Abbott (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1991), 86; Circular, 21 June 1863, 143rd New York Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; Order 11, 5 September 1862, 110th New York Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA. 15.  Barry Popchock, ed., Soldier Boy: The Civil War Letters of Charles O. Musser, 29th Iowa (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995), 170; Stephen E. Ambrose, ed., A Wisconsin Boy in Dixie: The Selected Letters of James K. Newton (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1961), 74.



Notes to Chapter 1  |  189

16.  James I. Robertson Jr., ed., The Civil War Letters of General Robert McAllister (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1965), 136, 281, 383; Thomas D. Marbaker, History of the Eleventh New Jersey Volunteers from Its Organization to Appomattox (Trenton, NJ: MacCrellish and Quigley, 1898), 276. 17.  Marbaker, History of the Eleventh New Jersey, 43–45, 154. The chaplain of the 58th Indiana noted in his diary that the “rowdies” in the regiment had formed a society, as he sarcastically noted, “probably devoted to whiskey and lewd women.” The society serenaded members of the regiment for whiskey and on one occasion obtained enough to intoxicate most of Company A. Gilbert R. Stormont, History of the Fifty-eighth Regiment of Indiana Volunteer Infantry: Its Organization, Campaigns, and Battles from 1861 to 1865: From the Manuscript Prepared by the Late Chaplain John J. Hight, During His Service with the Regiment in the Field (Princeton, NJ: Press of the Clarion, 1895), 382–383. 18.  Mark H. Dunkelman, Brothers One and All: Esprit de Corps in a Civil War Regiment (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004), 176; Robertson, Civil War Letters of General Robert McAllister, 392–393, 411. Dunkelman argues that the 154th New York, a relatively homogenous unit, exemplified the development of esprit de corps in Civil War regiments. But he acknowledges that “differing perspectives of morality pushed men apart instead of pulling them together,” and that religion, by setting devout men apart from their skeptical comrades, “was an impediment to esprit de corps” (170, 177). 19.  SO 32, 15 August 1861, 23rd Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA; GO 45, 9 June 1863, 4th Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA; GO 9, 10 July 1861, 2nd Iowa Regimental Order Book, Vol. 2, RG 94, NA; GO 3, 3 January 1864, 56th Massachusetts Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; GO 127, 3 October 1863, 40th New York Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA; GO 39, 16 May 1865, 23rd Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA; SO 4, 21 September 1864, 50th Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA; RO 30, 20 March 1863, 42nd Illinois Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA. 20.  GO 29, 14 February 1864, 56th Massachusetts Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; SO 3, 28 October 1863, 17th Maine Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA; SO 12, 11 March 1864, 5th New York Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; Joseph T. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers (New York: The Free Press, 1990), 44. 21.  U.S. Christian Commission, Second Annual Report, 15; David Alan Raney, “In the Lord’s Army: The United States Christian Commission and the Civil War” (PhD thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2001), 4–5, 22–23, 29–36, 106, 129. 22.  Warren B. Armstrong, For Courageous Fighting and Confident Dying: Union Chaplains in the Civil War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 2–5, 18–24, 47. 23.  Richard B. Fuller, Chaplain Fuller: Being a Life Sketch of a New England Clergyman and Army Chaplain (Boston: Walker, Wise, 1863), 193–94; Armstrong, Union Chaplains, 28; Robertson, Civil War Letters of Robert McAllister, 389. 24.  David C. Rankin, ed., Diary of a Christian Soldier: Rufus Kinsley and the Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 1–9, 17–19, 19–23, 26–31, 155, 169. 25.  Ibid., 49, 140–141, 145. 26.  Ibid., 140, 146, 157. 27.  “Temperance among Soldiers,” Scientific American, June 8, 1861, 357.

190  |  Notes to Chapter 1

28.  Robertson, Civil War Letters of Robert McAllister, 570; Kiper, Dear Catharine, Dear Taylor, 324–325; Ruth L. Silliker, ed., The Rebel Yell and the Yankee Hurrah: The Civil War Journal of a Maine Volunteer (Camden, ME: Down East Books, 1985), 23–24; D. Duane Cummins and Daryl Hohweiler, eds., An Enlisted Soldier’s View of the Civil War: The Wartime Papers of Joseph R. Ward Jr., 39th Illinois Volunteer Infantry (West Lafayette, IN: Belle Publications, 1981), 152. 29.  David A. Raney, “In the Lord’s Army: The United States Christian Commission, Soldiers, and the Union War Effort,” in Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller, eds., Union Soldiers and the Northern Home Front: Wartime Experiences, Postwar Adjustments (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), 275–277; Steven E. Woodworth, While God Is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001), 184–197, 218–225. 30.  The Lowry Project. This is a database of Union and Confederate general courtsmartial that is searchable by unit, name, charge, specification, rank, state, keyword, and other categories. It was compiled and is maintained by Thomas and Beverly Lowry. 31.  Charles Brandegee Livingstone, Charlie’s Civil War: A Private’s Trial by Fire in the 5th New York Volunteers, Duryée’s Zouaves, and 146th New York Volunteer Infantry (Gettysburg: Thomas Publications, 1997), 13–14, 32, 52; James M. Greiner, Janet L. Coryell, and James R. Smither, eds., A Surgeon’s Civil War: The Letters and Diary of Daniel M. Holt, M.D. (Kent: The Kent State University Press, 1994), 65; GO 9, 10 July 1861, 2nd Iowa Regimental Order Book, Vol. 2, RG 94, NA. 32.  3rd Article of War, Rules and Articles; GO 23, 21 May 1863, 45th Wisconsin Regimental Order Book, Vol. 2, RG 94, NA; Edward W. Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell (Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1907), 301. 33.  Silliker, Yankee Hurrah, 88; William L. Burton, Melting Pot Soldiers: The Union’s Ethnic Regiments (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1988), 95–96. 34.  Richard S. Skidmore, ed., The Civil War Journal of Billy Davis, from Hopewell, Indiana, to Port Republic, Virginia (Greencastle, IN: Nugget Publishers, 1989), 26; Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., A Cycle of Adams Letters, 1861–1865 (Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1920), 2:262; Paul M. Angle, ed., Three Years in the Army of the Cumberland: The Letters and Diary of Major James A. Connolly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1959), 301. 35.  Steven E. Woodworth, ed., The Musick of the Mocking Birds, the Roar of the Cannon: The Civil War Diary and Letters of William Winters (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 88; Silliker, Yankee Hurrah, 29; Charles F. Bryan Jr. and Nelson D. Lankford, eds., Eye of the Storm: A Civil War Odyssey: Written and Illustrated by Private Robert Knox Sneden (New York: The Free Press, 2000), 1, 5. 36.  The Lowry Project; John William DeForest, A Volunteer’s Adventures: A Union Captain’s Record of the Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946), 30. 37.  William C. DeHart, Observations on Military Law, and the Constitution and Practice of Courts Martial, with a Summary of the Laws of Evidence, as Applicable to Military Trials; Adapted to the Laws, Regulations and Customs of the Army and Navy of the United States (New York: Wiley and Halsted, 1859), 373; Court-martial of Brig. Gen. T. W. Sweeney, LL 2995, RG 153, NA. 38.  William B. Skelton, An American Profession of Arms: The Army Officer Corps, 1784–1861 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), 38–39.



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39.  DeHart, Observations on Military Law, 369; S. V. Benét, A Treatise on Military Law and the Practice of Courts-Martial (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1863), 222. 40.  DeHart, Observations on Military Law, 370–377. 41.  Benét, Treatise on Military Law, 221–223. 42.  Ibid., 222. 43.  In July 1861, Col. J. B. Richardson of the 2nd Michigan had to deal with a captain who appeared drunk on the regimental parade grounds. Richardson and three other officers decided not to prefer charges against Capt. John Lawson if he promised them he would not drink again during his connection with the regiment. Lawson “promised” on “the honor of a gentleman and an officer” that he would not “touch another drop.” When Lawson violated that promise, Richardson placed his broken promise as one of the issues before general courts-martial. It was the first specification listed under the charge of violating the 83rd Article of War (Court-martial of Capt. John Lawson, 2nd Michigan, II 503, RG 153, NA). 44.  Court-martial of Capt. Moses L. Bradley, 60 U.S.C.T., OO 324, RG 153, NA. 45.  Ibid. 46.  Ibid. Defense counsel continued with the interesting argument: “I candidly believe that although it would require some latitude in construction of the articles of war: in case of the success of Genl. McClellan and his party that the officer who did not damn the candidate and party could be convicted for the omission as conduct unbecoming an officer.” 47.  Court-martial of Brig. Gen. T. W. Sweeney. 48.  Court-martial of 1st Lt. John T. Scott, 16th U.S.C.T., OO 1237, RG 153, NA. According to Benét, military custom sanctioned courts expressing “severe censure” in the trial record when accusers brought “frivolous and vexatious” accusations or made out charges because of “personal ill-well and animosity” (Treatise on Military Law, 134). 49.  Court-martial of Capt. Moses L. Bradley. 50.  Court-martial of surgeon William H. Jett, 26th Kentucky, MM 2407, RG 153, NA. The officer who preferred the charges was a captain in the 91st Indiana. 51.  Ibid. 52.  Philip N. Racine, ed., “Unspoiled Heart”: The Journal of Charles Mattocks of the 17th Maine (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994), xiv, 109–110, 120. 53.  Ibid., 119–120, 131. 54.  Greiner, Coryell, and Smither, Letters of Daniel Holt, 169, 184; Isaac O. Best, History of the 121st New York State Infantry (Chicago: Lt. Jas. H. Smith, 1921), viii–ix, 28–29, 34; Britton and Reed, Letters of John F. L. Hartwell, 176, 275. 55.  Greiner, Coryell, and Smither, Letters of Daniel Holt, 169, 184; Best, History of the 121st New York, viii–ix, 28–29, 34; Britton and Reed, Letters of John F. L. Hartwell, 176, 275. 56.  Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Honor and Violence in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 40–41; Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 397; Craig Thompson Friend and Lorri Glover, eds., Southern Manhood: Perspectives on Masculinity in the Old South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004), 22–48. 57.  Francis Lieber, The Character of the Gentleman. 3rd Edition (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1864), 10–16.

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Chap ter 2 1.  Francis Lieber, The Character of the Gentleman. 3rd Edition (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1864), 18–19, 45, 116. 2.  Mary A. Giunta, A Civil War Soldier of Christ and Country: The Selected Correspondence of John Rodgers Meigs, 1859–64 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 3–7, 61, 57. 3.  Ibid., 110, 123. 4.  Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 96–97. 5.  Caroline Cox, A Proper Sense of Honor: Service and Sacrifice in George Washington’s Army (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 35. Military discipline and justice at the time of the Civil War continued to mark the separation between officers and enlisted men. While the penalty of death applied to both officers and soldiers for many serious crimes such as mutiny and desertion, the Articles of War distinguished between the two classes of men in some instances. The 25th Article of War, which prohibited officers and soldiers from sending a challenge to a duel, prescribed different punishments for offenders: officers would be cashiered and noncommissioned officers and soldiers would suffer corporeal punishment. According to the 77th and 78th Articles of War, an arrested officer could be confined to his tent, whereas privates were confined to the guardhouse. Army regulations and custom likewise separated noncommissioned officers from the rest of the enlisted men. “Where a non-commissioned officer is to be punished by confinement, hard labor, or ball and chain, he must first be reduced,” S. V. Benét explained in his treatise on military law, “as it is contrary to the principles of the service, and derogatory to the dignity of their position, to cause commissioned officers to be thus punished.” S. V. Benét, A Treatise of Military Law and the Practice of Courts-Martial (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1863), 45. 6.  Bushman, Refinement of America, xv, 397–398. 7.  John F. Kasson, Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1990), 43. 8.  Beadle’s Dime Book of Practical Etiquette for Ladies and Gentleman—Being a Guide to True Gentility and Good-Breeding, and a Complete Directory to the Usages and Observances of Society: By A Committee of Three (New York: Irvin P. Beadle, 1860), iii, 18, 42, 46, 59, 61; Bushman, Refinement of America, xv; “Literature. Gentility and Manners,” New York Illustrated News, March 23, 1861, 314. 9.  Bushman, Refinement of America, 302, 313. 10.  Harper’s Weekly, December 23, 1865, 811; “About Gentlemen,” Harper’s Weekly, April 11, 1863, 226. 11.  Beadle’s Dime Book of Practical Etiquette, 61. 12.  Bushman, Refinement of America, 283–286. 13.  Richard F. Fuller, Chaplain Fuller: Being a Life Sketch of a New England Clergyman and Army Chaplain (Boston: Walker, Wise, 1863), 186; Warren B. Armstrong, For Courageous Fighting and Confident Dying: Union Chaplains in the Civil War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 25; David Alan Raney, “In the Lord’s Army: The United States Christian Commission in the Civil War” (PhD thesis, University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, 2001), 60–63.



Notes to Chapter 2  |  193

14.  Worthington Chauncey Ford, A Cycle of Adams Letters, 1861–1865 (Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1920) 2:217–219. 15.  Joseph T. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers (New York: The Free Press, 1990), 12–18, 226–227. 16.  Beadle’s Dime Book of Practical Etiquette, 24–25; Jack Larkin, The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790–1840 (New York: Harper Perennial, 1989), 159–166. 17.  Martin W. Öfele, German-Speaking Officers in the U.S. Colored Troops, 1863–1867 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004), 191–192; War Diary and Letters of Stephen Minot Weld, 1861–1865. 2nd Edition (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1979), 361, 368. 18.  Edward W. Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell (Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1907), 251–252; Robert Garth Scott, ed., Fallen Leaves: The Civil War Letters of Major Henry Livermore Abbott (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1991), 133. 19.  Revised United States Army Regulations of 1861: With an Appendix Containing the Changes and Laws Affecting Army Regulations and Articles of War to June 25, 1863 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1863), 21–22; Orville J. Victor, The Military Hand-Book, and Soldier’s Manual of Information (New York: Beadle, 1861), 31; General Order (GO) 150, 2 August 1862, Hdqts. Army of the Potomac, in War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1880–1901), Ser. I, Vol. 2 (Part III): 349–350 (hereafter OR); GO 52, 15 May 1863, Hdqts. Army of the Potomac, OR, Ser. I, Vol. 25 (Part II): 491–492. 20.  William L. Burton, Melting Pot Soldiers: The Union’s Ethnic Regiments (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1988), 107–108. 21.  Ford, A Cycle of Adams Letters, 2:15–16; Battalion Orders 10 and 30, 22 January 1864 and 12 February 1864, 5th New York Regimental Order Book, Volume 3, Record Group (RG) 94, National Archives (NA). 22.  GO 52 and 55, 27 December 1862 and 3 January 1863, 110th New York Regimental Order Book, Volume 4, RG 94, NA; GO 8, 20 December 1862, 58th Indiana Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA; Circular, 19 April 1863, 5th Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA; GO 8, 18 April 1864, 30th Maine Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; GO 2, 25 August 1862, 17th Maine Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA; Special Order (SO) 47, 6 March 1863, 143rd New York Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; Regimental Order (RO) 53, 2 January 1862, 42nd Illinois Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA. The temporary commander of the 184th Pennsylvania was appalled that his men “seem to have the custom of lying down in the dirt whenever they wish.” He ordered that company commanders stop the practice and oversee the washing of all the men’s clothes (GO 9, 11 October 1864, 184th Pennsylvania Regimental Order Book, Vol. 1, RG 94, NA). The 23rd Ohio reduced Sgt. David White to the ranks for “personal uncleanliness” and a list of other charges, which included habitual use of abusive language and neglect of duty (GO 19, 15 March 1865, 23rd Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA). 23.  SO 10, 18 November 1862, 143rd New York Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; Circular, 8 April 1864, 5th Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA; GO 19, 8 May 1865, 59th Massachusetts Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA. 24.  Richard S. Skidmore, ed., The Civil War Journal of Billy Davis from Hopewell, Indiana, to Port Republic, Virginia (Greencastle, IN; Nugget Publishers, 1989), 95.

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25.  Weld, War Diary and Letters, 317; Ford, Cycle of Adams Letters, 2: 78–79. 26.  War Letters, 1862–1865, of John Chipman Gray and John Codman Ropes (Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1927), 231. 27.  George R. Agassiz, ed., Meade’s Headquarters, 1863–1865: Letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman from the Wilderness to Appomattox (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1970), 30; RO 85, 12 April 1863, 40th New York Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA. 28.  GO 6, 24 September 1864, 58th Massachusetts Regimental Order Book, Vol. 2, RG 94, NA; GO 3, 17 January 1863, 184th Pennsylvania Regimental Order Book, Vol. 1, RG 94, NA; GO 11 and 17, 15 February and 25 February 1863, 33rd Wisconsin Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; SO 29, 7 August 1861, 23rd Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA; GO 1–4, 30 August 1862, 50th Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA. The sanitary practices of one immigrant lieutenant were expressly linked to his lack of gentility in one of the more extraordinary cases to come before general courtsmartial. Second Lieutenant Emil Peterson of the 3rd Louisiana Native Guards Colored was charged with conducting unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. The specifications detailed his behavior: “Having a call of nature he did satisfy the same by depositing his excrement in the cook-shed of Co. H of said regiment there being other localities equally convenient and accessible and more appropriate.” Peterson pled guilty but had been unapologetic when his captain initially confronted him (Court-martial of 2nd Lt. Emil Peterson, 3rd Louisiana Native Guards, LL 851, RG 153, NA). 29.  Barry Popchock, ed., Soldier Boy: The Civil War Letters of Charles O. Musser (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995), 47; Article 36, Revised United States Army Regulations; RO 18, 35, 16, 6 May 1863, 1 August 1863, 3 April 1864, 34th Illinois Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA; GO 18, 30 January 1863, 17th Maine Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA; GO 10, 28 December 1861, 58th Indiana Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA; GO 6, 8 July 1861, 23rd Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA. Army regulations required a clean and orderly camp for soldiers. According to its provisions, regiments were to detail a police guard every day from each company. The officer of the day was in charge of the order and cleanliness of the camp, and he could order a fatigue party if the number of prisoners were insufficient to clean the camp. 30.  Bliss Perry, Life and Letters of Henry Lee Higginson (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1972), 157–159. 31.  Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 101, 153–157, 167, 187–189. 32.  August V. Kautz, Customs of the Service for Non-commissioned Officers and Soldiers as Derived from Law and Regulations and Practiced in the Army of the United States Being a HandBook for the Rank and File of the Army. 2nd Edition (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1865), 22; “Ethics and Humanity of War,” United States Service Magazine, February 1, 1864, 113–125. 33.  GO 12, 7 June 1865, 184th Pennsylvania Regimental Order Book, Vol. 1, RG 94, NA. 34.  Popchock, Soldier Boy, 109; GO 16, 1 May 1865, 59th Massachusetts Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; GO 19, 13 December 1864, 28th Michigan Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; Circular 3, 30 January 1864, 143rd New York Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA. 35.  John William DeForest, A Volunteer’s Adventures: A Union Captain’s Record of the Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946), 23–24; Ruth L. Silliker, ed., The Rebel



Notes to Chapter 2  |  195

Yell and the Yankee Hurrah: The Civil War Journal of a Maine Volunteer (Camden, ME: Down East Books, 1985), 235. 36.  Popchock, Soldier Boy, 167; Richard L. Kiper, ed., Dear Catharine, Dear Taylor: The Civil War Letters of a Union Soldier and His Wife (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 403. 37.  Lieber, The Character of the Gentleman, 18–19, 45, 116; “Gentility and Manners,” New York Illustrated News, March 23, 1861, 314; Reid Mitchell, The Vacant Chair: The Northern Soldier Leaves Home (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). 38.  “Ideal Man Jesus,” Continental Monthly, December 1, 1864, 651–663; “Sacredness of Tears,” Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times, April 15, 1865, 102. 39.  Donald Yacovone, “Surpassing the Love of Women: Victorian Manhood and the Language of Fraternal Love,” in Laura McCall and Donald Yacovone, eds., A Shared Experience: Men, Women, and the History of Gender (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 195–202. 40.  James C. Mohr, ed., The Cormany Diaries: A Northern Family in the Civil War (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982), 186, 197, 201, 249–250, 270, 562. 41.  James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Earl J. Hess, The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997); Gerald F. Linderman, Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War (New York: The Free Press, 1987). 42.  Jerome M. Loving, ed., Civil War Letters of George Washington Whitman (Durham: Duke University Press, 1975), 44; Ann Hartwell Britton and Thomas J. Reed, eds., To My Beloved Wife and Boy at Home: The Letters and Diaries of Orderly Sergeant John F. L. Hartwell (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997), 85, 104. 43.  Scott, Fallen Leaves, 73–74; Mark DeWolfe Howe, ed., Touched with Fire: Civil War Letters and Diary of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1946), 13–18, 90–91. 44.  Kasson, Rudeness and Civility, 70, 112, 114–116, 121–123, 146–147, 157. 45.  “Gentility and Manners,” 314. 46.  Court-martial of Maj. William W. Bradley, 7th Kentucky Cavalry, LL 2412, Folder 2, RG 153, NA. 47.  Ibid. 48.  Ibid. 49.  Ibid. 50.  Ibid. 51.  Ibid. 52.  Kiper, Dear Catharine, Dear Taylor, 107–108. 53.  Court-martial of Maj. William W. Bradley. 54.  Ibid. 55.  Ibid. 56.  Ibid. 57.  Court-martial of 1st Lt. Thomas J. Bragg, 15th Kansas Cavalry, LL 2332, LL 2268, RG 153, NA. 58.  Ibid. 59.  Ibid.

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Chap ter 3 1.  David Herbert Donald, ed., Gone for a Soldier: The Civil War Memoirs of Private Alfred Bellard (Boston: Little, Brown, 1975), vii–ix, xii–xiii, 224–227, 248. Bellard’s memoir was drawn directly from the transcribed letters he wrote to his father and the diary he kept during the war. David Herbert Donald, who authenticated and edited the documents, comments that the memoir “substantially reflects most of the opinions and attitudes Bellard held while a private soldier” (xii). 2.  Ibid., 12, 32–33, 266–267. 3.  Ibid., 242, 33–34, 82–83, 187–188. 4.  James E. Potter and Edith Robbins, eds., Marching with the First Nebraska: A Civil War Diary: By August Scherneckau (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007), xvi– xvii, 5, 185–186, 190, 193. 5.  Stephen E. Ambrose, ed., A Wisconsin Boy in Dixie: The Selected Letters of James K. Newton (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1961), 47; Barry Popchock, ed., Soldier Boy: The Civil War Letters of Charles O. Musser, 29th Iowa (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995), 89–90; General Order (GO) 3, 23 January 1864, 33rd Wisconsin Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, Record Group (RG) 94, National Archives (NA); William B Jordan Jr., Red Diamond Regiment: The 17th Maine Infantry, 1862–1865 (Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Publishing, 1996), 25. 6.  Court-martial of Pvt. Thomas Freel, 123rd Indiana, MM 3036, RG 153, NA; Courtmartial of 1st Lt. Sylvester Raplee, 4th Kentucky Cavalry, KK 150, RG 153, NA. 7.  Steven E. Woodworth, While God Is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001), 227; Special Order (SO) 137, 13 December 1863, 40th New York Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA; SO 1, Co. G, 15 January 1865, 58th Indiana Co A–K Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA; SO 34, 5 June 1863, 17th Maine Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA; Regimental Order (RO) 22, 7 November 1864, 42nd Illinois Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA; GO 59, 25 March 1864, 50th Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 54, NA. 8.  Donald, Memoirs of Private Alfred Bellard, 17, 254, 256–257. There is a hint in Bellard’s memoir that he did more than patrol these districts. The clue comes in the context of his recollection of the death of one of the men in the patrol squad. The man went “down to the Island one night to have a little fun with the girls, and he got it, being brought back to quarters on a shutter, with a bullet in his head.” He had been shot after a row with a jealous lover of one of the girls. This story prompted Bellard to write, “I had a little experience on the Island myself, that might have been a serious thing for me. As we were going our rounds one night with an officer in command (unusual) . . . ” The rest of this episode is missing; Bellard carefully cut this one page out of his notebook. 9.  Ibid., 21–22, 28–29. 10.  Ibid., 264, 162–163. 11.  Ibid., 126, 238–239. 12.  Michael J. Bennett, Union Jacks: Yankee Sailors in the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), x, 9, 20–24. 13.  James C. Mohr, ed., The Cormany Diaries: A Northern Family in the Civil War (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982), 244, 396.



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14.  Elliott J. Gorn, The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), 45–46, 120. 15.  Ibid., 108–113. 16.  Mary A. Giunta, A Civil War Soldier of Christ and Country: The Selected Correspondence of John Rodgers Meigs, 1859–64 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 31–32, 58, 69. 17.  “Gymnastics and Health,” New York Illustrated News, April 20, 1861, 378; “Gymnastics,” Atlantic Monthly, March 1, 1861, 283–302. 18.  “Gymnastics,” 283–302; “True Christian Reformers,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, March 10, 1860, 224. 19.  “Athletic Sports and Mental Culture,” New York Illustrated News, April 21, 1860, 354; “Misery vs. Muscle,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, February 25, 1860, 192; “Gymnastics,” 283–302; “Ethics and Humanity of War,” United States Service Magazine, February 1, 1864, 113–125. 20.  “Ethics and Humanity of War,” 113–125. 21.  James A. Hijiya, J. W. DeForest and the Rise of American Gentility (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1988), 1–2, 54. 22.  “Some Uses of a Civil War,” Continental Monthly, October 1, 1864, 361–371. 23.  John William DeForest, A Volunteer’s Adventures: A Union Captain’s Record of the Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946), 79–80; Ann Hartwell Britton and Thomas J. Reed, eds., To My Beloved Wife and Boy at Home: The Letters and Diaries of Orderly Sergeant John F. L. Hartwell (Madison: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997), 193. 24.  Philip N. Racine, ed., “Unspoiled Heart”: The Journal of Charles Mattocks of the 17th Maine (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994), 167. 25.  Edward L. Ayers, Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the NineteenthCentury American South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 12–13; Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Honor and Violence in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 14, 27; Kenneth S. Greenberg, Honor and Slavery (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 7–9. 26.  Ayers, Vengeance and Justice, 13, 28–30; Wyatt-Brown, Honor and Violence, 27, 36, 123, 142, 149; Greenberg, Honor and Slavery, 15–16. 27.  Dickson D. Bruce Jr., Violence and Culture in the Antebellum South (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979), 31–32, 40–41, 79; Ayers, Vengeance and Justice, 16–17; WyattBrown, Honor and Violence, 142, 152. 28.  Ayers, Vengeance and Justice, 19–26; Wyatt-Brown, Honor and Violence, 15, 20. 29.  In the conclusion to his study, Ayers notes that honor found a new breeding ground in twentieth-century American cities among urban youth. He does not address the fact that similar conditions produced the same urban culture of honor in nineteenthcentury northern cities. 30.  Gorn, The Manly Art, 143–144. 31.  Giunta, Correspondence of John Rodgers Meigs, 37, 39–41, 91–92, 121–122. 32.  Ibid., 24, 149–150; Courts-martial of Cadet John R. Meigs and Cadet James R. Reid, United States Military Academy, II 982, RG 153, NA. 33.  Giunta, Correspondence of John Rodgers Meigs, 150. 34.  Courts-martial of Meigs and Reid; Giunta, Correspondence of John Rodgers Meigs, 150; George W. Cullum, Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S.

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Military Academy at West Point, NY from Its Establishment, March 16, 1802, to the Army Reorganization of 1866–1867 (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1868), Vol. 2 (1841–1867). 35.  Elliott J. Gorn, “‘Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch’: The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern Backcountry,” American Historical Review 90 (February 1985): 18–43. 36.  Courts-martial of Meigs and Reid; Giunta, Correspondence of John Rodgers Meigs, 149–151. 37.  Courts-martial of Meigs and Reid; Giunta, Correspondence of John Rodgers Meigs, 176, 241–245. The Union officers with whom Meigs served believed his death was an act of murder perpetrated by bushwhacking Confederate citizens or guerillas. In retaliation, Gen. Philip Sheridan ordered all houses and barns burned within five miles of the spot where Meigs died. The order was carried out for a three-mile radius (Giunta, Correspondence of John Rodgers Meigs, 249). 38.  Giunta, Correspondence of John Rodgers Meigs, 34, 170. 39.  Court-martial of Capt. Bernard J. McMahon, 71st Pennsylvania, MM 651, RG 153, NA. 40.  Ibid. 41.  Ibid. 42.  Ibid. 43.  Ibid. 44.  Ibid. 45.  Elizabeth D. Leonard, Lincoln’s Avengers: Justice, Revenge, and Reunion after the Civil War (New York: Norton, 2004), 1–26. 46.  Court-martial of Bernard J. McMahon. 47.  Ibid. 48.  Joseph T. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers (New York: The Free Press, 199), 118. 49.  Nathaniel Chairs Hughes Jr. and Gordon D. Whitney, Jefferson Davis in Blue: The Life of Sherman’s Relentless Warrior (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002), xii, 2–21, 101–103. 50.  Hughes and Whitney, Jefferson Davis in Blue, 105–110. 51.  Later that day, Indiana Gov. Oliver Morton and Brig. Gen. Jeremiah Boyle had an argument about the incident that led to a fistfight. Hughes and Whitney, Jefferson Davis in Blue, 110–115, 117. 52.  Ibid., 115–116; Gerald J. Prokopowicz, All for the Regiment: The Army of the Ohio, 1861–1862 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 153–155. 53.  Hughes and Whitney, Jefferson Davis in Blue, 116–121. 54.  On October 27, Lincoln’s cabinet discussed the case. Chase, Blair, Seward, and Welles wanted a court-martial. For unknown reasons, Stanton argued against military prosecution. Ibid., 120. 55.  Newspapers generally provided exaggerated accounts of Nelson’s language to Davis when Nelson relieved him from duty and sent him to General Wright. The papers often portrayed Davis as more calm and dignified than he actually was during the confrontation that led to the murder. They did not include the moment where Davis flipped the paper in Nelson’s face. But the key parts of the exchange—the slap, Davis procuring the pistol, Davis following Nelson and shooting him without further provocation from Nelson—were accurately portrayed. Ibid., 118–119; “Murder of General Nelson,” Harper’s



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Weekly, October 11, 1862, 643; the Cincinnati Gazette editorial was reprinted in the New York Illustrated News, October 18, 1862, 371; “Notes on Military and Naval Affairs,” Scientific American, October 11, 1862, 227. 56.  Prokopowicz, All for the Regiment, 153–155; Hughes and Whitney, Jefferson Davis in Blue, 123; “Recontres between Army Officers,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, August 29, 1863, 358. Some observers made the obvious point that such an act undermined military discipline. “The killing of one of our Union Generals by another one, is an event that must be deplored by every loyal person, more perhaps for its possible effect upon the discipline of the army, than from any belief that the man who took into his own hand the avenging of his own wrong, even unto the slaying of the wronger, was not fully justified in so doing,” pointed out the New York Illustrated News (October 18, 1862, 371). Col. James B. Fry, Buell’s chief of staff, was so outraged he wrote a pamphlet about the incident in 1885. “The case is without parallel,” he wrote. “A Brigadier-General in the highly disciplined army of a law-abiding people, reaching the head-quarters just as the forces were ready to march to the battlefield, instead of reporting for duty against the common enemy, as he was under orders to do, sought out a Major General commanding a corps of the army to which they both belonged, killed him on the spot, and then went to duty without punishment, trial, or rebuke” (Whitney and Davis, Jefferson Davis in Blue, 122–123). 57.  Caroline Cox, A Proper Sense of Honor: Service and Sacrifice in George Washington’s Army (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 100.

Chap ter 4 1.  Court-martial of Capt. Charles Gordon Hutton, Aide-de-camp, MM 657, Record Group (RG) 153, National Archives (NA). 2.  Ibid. 3.  Ibid. 4.  Ibid. 5.  Ibid.; Court-martial of Maj. William Cutting, Aide-de-camp, MM 658, RG 153, NA. 6.  Court-martial of Capt. Charles Gordon Hutton. 7.  Ibid. 8.  Court-martial of Capt. Charles Gordon Hutton; Court-martial of Maj. William Cutting. 9.  Court-martial of Capt. Charles Gordon Hutton; Court-martial of Maj. William Cutting. 10.  This count is based only on the records of general courts-martial. 11.  Interesting cases that are not considered in this chapter include: Court-martial of Capt. John Warren, 63rd New York, II 761, RG 153, NA; Court-martial of Lt. Col. John Creighton, 6th New York, II 455, RG 153, NA; Court-martial of Capt. Henry W. Harback, 193rd Pennsylvania, LL 2499, RG 153, NA; Court-martial of Hospital Steward Theodore Heineman, 1st Excelsior Brigade, II 490, RG 153, NA; Court-martial of 2nd Lt. Frank Murell, 1st Colorado Cavalry, LL 428, RG 153, NA; Court-martial of Lt. Luther Wilson, 1st Colorado Cavalry, LL 428, RG 153, NA; Court-martial of Pvt. Joseph O’Neil, 6th Veteran Reserve Corps, MM 1850, RG 153, NA; Court-martial of Pvt. A. Niegeman, Stewart’s Cavalry, KK 180, RG 153, NA; Court-martial of Capt. Julius C. Hicks, 15th New York, II 682,

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RG 153, NA; Court-martial of 1st Lt. Craven L. Hartman, 3rd Iowa Cavalry, NN 2134, RG 153, NA; Court-martial of Capt. John D. Hearn, 164th New York, LL 6292, MM 574, RG 153, NA; Court-martial of 2nd Lt. Emil Peterson, 3rd Louisiana Native Colored Guards, LL 851, LL 849, RG 153, NA. Peterson was the officer discussed in the notes of chapter 2 who “deposited his excrement” in the cookhouse. When he was told he had acted ungentlemanly in doing so, he sent a written challenge to a duel to his captain. He pled guilty to violating the 25th Article of War. 12.  Stories in letters, diaries, memoirs, and regimental histories of officers stopping duels often involve Irishmen. Thomas D. Marbaker’s History of the Eleventh New Jersey Volunteers from Its Organization to Appomattox (Trenton, NJ: MacCrellish and Quigley, 1898) contains one example. Riley O’Brian and James King argued, agreed to settle their dispute according to the “rules of the code duello,” and took their positions with muskets; however, a company officer arrived on the scene just before the word “fire” was given (14). 13.  25th, 26th, and 28th Articles of War, War Department, Rules and Articles for the Government of the Armies of the United States (Washington, DC: A. O. P. Nicholson, 1857). 14.  Joanne B. Freeman has identified sixteen political affairs of honor in New York City alone between the years 1795 and 1807. Joanne B. Freeman, “Dueling as Politics: Reinterpreting the Burr-Hamilton Duel,” William and Mary Quarterly 53 (April 1996): 289–318. 15.  Ibid. 16.  William B. Skelton, An American Profession of Arms: The Army Officer Corps, 1784–1861 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), 195. 17.  As the rest of the chapter will demonstrate, it is disputable whether honor guided some of the men involved in these thirty-four incidents. But elements borrowed from the dueling ritual were in place in some way in all thirty-four incidents. 18.  James C. Mohr, ed., The Cormany Diaries: A Northern Family in the Civil War (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982), 250; “From a Diary,” Harper’s Weekly, July 18, 1863, 451; “The Lounger: Victory or Defeat,” Harper’s Weekly, February 28, 1863, 130. 19.  Richard F. Miller, Harvard’s Civil War: A History of the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2005), 152–153. 20.  Court-martial of Capt. Charles P. Horton, Aide-de-camp, NN 3749, RG 153, NA. 21.  Ibid. 22.  The prosecution at Horton’s court-martial found Horton’s question to Burnett to be “the most extraordinary question of law I have ever known to be mooted, viz: as to whether he had not better attack Capt. Booth outside his office.” Ibid. 23.  Ibid. 24.  Ibid. 25.  Ibid. 26.  Ibid. 27.  Ibid. 28.  Pension File of Capt. Charles P. Horton, NA. 29.  Mohr, The Cormany Diaries, 552, 260. 30.  Courts-martial of Capt. Ferdinand Hanson, 4th Missouri Cavalry, Capt. Gottlieb C. Rose, 4th Missouri Cavalry, and Maj. William M. Grebe, 4th Missouri Cavalry, LL 2952, RG 153, NA. Capt. Ferdinand Hanson of the 4th Missouri Cavalry pled guilty to the charge that he sent a challenge and then fought a duel with Maj. William Grebe, an aide-de-camp on the staff of the governor of Missouri. Hanson had served in the army of



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Schleswig-Holstein before coming to the United States. Grebe, who also pled guilty at his court-martial, had been in the United States for only two years. He served in the Union Army on furlough from his military service to the King of Norway. Another European officer, Capt. Gottlieb C. Rose, was present at the duel and furnished both principals with pistols. He, too, pled guilty to the charges preferred against him. 31.  In his statement to the court, Paul claimed he was absent from the regiment by a verbal order from his commanding officer, Col. Morgan H. Chrysler. After the incident, Chrysler told Paul to leave until the affair died away and promised that Paul would not be tried for desertion. Paul went to Canada for several months and then attempted to return to his regiment. He was arrested in Albany, New York. Court-martial of Pvt. Charles L. Paul, 2nd New York Cavalry, LL 2807, Folder 1, RG 153, NA. 32.  A good example of an incident recorded in a regimental order book is found in “Provost Court 58th Regt. Indiana Volunteers,” 9 August 1864, 58th Indiana Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA. A sergeant tried to stop a fight between Thomas McAllister of Company A and Jesse Frank of Company B. James Pearson had “encouraged” the fight and prevented the sergeant from interfering. “Stand back this is our fight and they shall not be parted,” he said. For soldiers and prizefight rules, see Elliott J. Gorn, The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), 162–163. Gorn observes that “boxing provided for foot soldiers a safe equivalent to the duels that military officers had favored a few decades earlier.” 33.  Court-martial of Pvt. Matthew Callahan, 1st Illinois Light Artillery, LL 2755, Folder 1, RG 153, NA; Court-martial of Pvt. Jacob Elder, 52nd Ohio, NN 113, RG 153, NA; Pvt. Jacob Elder, 52nd Ohio, Pension File, NA. Pvt. Jacob Elder was a stout twentysix-year-old farm laborer who lived with his propertyless parents when he enlisted in 1862. During his regiment’s participation in Sherman’s campaign for Atlanta in 1864, Elder was involved in what he called in letters home to his family “a scrape.” Elder and Pvt. John Martin were engaged in some long-standing quarrel. One evening they agreed to fight with muskets. A few days later, Martin stood on the parade ground with his gun and called for Elder. Elder, who was standing by a fire, walked toward Martin. He passed a woodpile, picked up an axe, and rushed the waiting Martin, who called out, “Come on you damned cowardly son of a bitch!” Martin fired and missed just before Elder struck the gun with the axe and whirled Martin out of position. Martin warded off several blows using his gun as a shield. In the melee, the gun fired and hit another man who was trying to intervene. Martin succeeded in knocking Elder down with the gun before a lieutenant successfully stopped the fight. The uneducated Elder’s only defense at his court-martial was a short statement: “On the morning of the fight, Martin brought liquor into the tent in order to get me drunk. He had said he could not whip me with his fist when I was sober, and that he was determined to get revenge out of me. I had never done him any injury. He was confined at the same time that I was, I was so drunk that I don’t recollect much about the disturbance.” Elder was found guilty of disorderly conduct and the specification that he had “accepted a challenge” to “fight with muskets.” 34.  Kenneth S. Greenberg, Honor and Slavery (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 8–9, 62, 74. 35.  Court-martial of Capt. John A. Nelson, 3rd Connecticut, II 389, RG 153, NA. The court found Nelson guilty of conduct prejudicial but not guilty of challenging Lewis to a

202  |  Notes to Chapter 4

duel. Nelson was merely reprimanded for his conduct. The court was lenient “on account of the provocation which led the accused to use such language to a brother officer.” 36.  Ibid. 37.  Court-martial of 1st Lt. John Curry, 31st Illinois, OO 111, RG 153, NA. 38.  Court-martial of 1st Lt. James O’Rourke, 4th New York Heavy Artillery, MM 2818, RG 153, NA; Court-martial of 1st Lt. Alexander Cummings, 19th Pennsylvania Cavalry, NN 2865, RG 153, NA. Another interesting case is that of Capt. John Lawson of the 2nd Michigan. When the colonel of the regiment arrested him for appearing drunk at drill, Lawson sent the following note to his commanding officer through the hands of a private: “Col. Richardson of the 2nd Mich. Dare you fight. If so send your friend to my tent any time between sunset & sundown.” He pled guilty and was found guilty of violating the 25th Article of War. Court-martial of Capt. John Lawson, 2nd Michigan, II 503, RG 153, NA. 39.  Court-martial of 1st Lt. Julius Sauer, 46th New York Veteran Volunteers, MM 2648, RG 153, NA; an example of a similar incident can be found in the court-martial of 1st Lt. George Sweeney, 1st New Jersey Militia, II 374, RG 153, NA. 40.  Ibid. 41.  Ibid. 42.  The case of these three officers is another example of men who engaged in affairs of honor without damage to their reputation. The petitioners admitted that the men committed a “grave military offence.” But the behavior of Hanson, Grebe, and Rose just before and during the courts-martial had confirmed rather than tarnished their reputations as gentlemen and men of honor. They had come forward immediately, confessed, and pled guilty. This proved that they deserved the “high reputation which they have always borne for all those manly qualities which are an ornament to every gentleman and more especially to a military officer.” Courts-martial of Capt. Ferdinand Hanson, Capt. Gottlieb C. Rose, and Maj. William M. Grebe. 43.  Court-martial of 1st Lt. John T. Scott, 16th U.S.C.T., OO 1237, RG 153, NA. 44.  Court-martial of Col. E. V. Sumner, 1st United States Cavalry, Folder HH 864, RG 153, NA. 45.  Ibid. 46.  Court-martial of Julius Sauer; Court-martial of surgeon William Jett, 26th Kentucky, MM 2407, RG 153, NA. 47.  Court-martial of 1st Lt. Terrence Reilly, 4th U.S. Artillery, Folder OO 1486, RG 153, NA; Court-martial of Brig. Gen. T. W. Sweeney, LL 2995, RG 153, NA; Court-martial of 1st Lt. John T. Scott. 48.  Court-martial of 1st Lt. John T. Scott. 49.  Court-martial of Col. E. V. Sumner; Court-martial of Brig. Gen. T. W. Sweeney. 50.  Court-martial of Capt. William Hexamer, 1st New Jersey Artillery, MM 18, RG 153, NA. 51.  Court-martial of Pvt. James Brophy, 11th Missouri Cavalry, MM 2104, RG 153, NA. 52.  Court-martial of Pvt. Ell C. Lacy, 91st Indiana, MM 404, RG 153, NA.

Chap ter 5 1.  Melinda Lawson, Patriot Fires: Forging a New American Nationalism in the Civil War North (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 98–128; E. Digby Baltzell, Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia: Two Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Class Authority and



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Leadership (New York: The Free Press, 1979); Robert F. Dalzell Jr., Enterprising Elite: The Boston Associates and the World They Made (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987); Betty G. Farrell, Elite Families: Class and Power in Nineteenth-Century Boston (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993); Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979); Edward Pessen, Riches, Class, and Power before the Civil War (Lexington, KY: D. C. Heath, 1973); Ronald Story, The Forging of an Aristocracy: Harvard and the Boston Upper Class, 1800–1870 (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1980). 2.  Mark DeWolfe Howe, ed., Touched with Fire: Civil War Letters and Diary of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., 1861–1864 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1946), 71; Robert Garth Scott, Fallen Leaves: The Civil War Letters of Major Henry Livermore Abbott (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1991), 44; Bliss Perry, Life and Letters of Henry Lee Higginson (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1972), 157–159. 3.  Scott, Fallen Leaves, 205, 237; George R. Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 1863–1865: Letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman from the Wilderness to Appomattox [1922] (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1970), 208–209. 4.  War Letters, 1862–1865, of John Chipman Gray and John Codman Ropes (Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1927), 23; Francis Channing Barlow (FCB) to Almira Barlow, 5 July 1861, Francis Channing Barlow Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society; Charles Fessenden Morse, Letters Written during the Civil War, 1861–1865 (Boston: T. R. Marvin and Son, 1898), 70. 5.  Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 207. 6.  Life and Letters of Wilder Dwight (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1868), 65, 173–74; War Diary and Letters of Stephen Minot Weld, 1861–1865. 2nd Edition (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1979), 267; FCB to Edward Barlow, 15 May 1862, FCB to Almira Barlow, 3 June 1862, FCB Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society; Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., A Cycle of Adams Letters, 1861–1865 (Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1920), 2:118–119. 7.  General Order (GO) 14, 18 January 1864, and Order, 14 June 1864, 56th Massachusetts Regimental Letter and Order Book, Vol. 3, Record Group (RG) 94, National Archives (NA). 8.  Life and Letters of Wilder Dwight, 66–67. 9.  Scott, Fallen Leaves, 86; Weld, War Diary and Letters, 265. 10.  Weld, War Diary and Letters, 262. 11.  Edward W. Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell (Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1907), 374–375. Biographer Carol Bundy reports that some of the Boston newspapers framed the Lowell incident in class terms. The antiwar, anti-Republican Boston Courier “claimed that the killing of Pendergast was an expression of class prejudice.” The paper reported that “officers had grown more officious, that they showed increasing contempt for enlisted men, and that they received their commissions only through influence.” Carol Bundy, The Nature of Sacrifice: A Biography of Charles Russell Lowell Jr., 1835–64 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 273, 366. 12.  Howe, Touched with Fire, 51; Weld, War Letters and Diary, 311–312. 13.  Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 157–158, 189; Charles A. Fuller, Personal Recollections in the War of 1861 (Sherburne, NY: News Job Printing House, 1906), 50; Thomas B. Buell, The Warrior Generals: Combat Leadership in the Civil War (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1997), 333.

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14.  Weld, War Diary and Letters, 266, 268, 351–352; Scott, Fallen Leaves, 170. 15.  Howe, Touched with Fire, 13–18; Emerson, Life and Letters, 42–43. 16.  Scott, Fallen Leaves, 51–52; FCB to Edward Barlow, May or June 1861, and 28 December 1861, FCB to Almira Barlow, 9 April 1864, FCB Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. 17.  Charles A. Humphreys, Field, Camp, Hospital, and Prison in the Civil War, 1863–1865 [1918] (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1971), 7; Fuller, Personal Recollections, 10. 18.  Richard F. Miller, “The Trouble with Brahmins: Class and Ethnic Tensions in Massachusetts’ ‘Harvard Regiment,’” New England Quarterly 76 (March 2003): 38–39. 19.  Richard F. Miller, Harvard’s Civil War: A History of the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2005), 248. 20.  Life and Letters of Wilder Dwight, 93–97. 21.  James McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Gerald F. Linderman, Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War (New York: The Free Press, 1987); Larry M. Logue, To Appomattox and Beyond: The Civil War Soldier in War and Peace (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996). 22.  McPherson, For Cause and Comrades, 48–51, 53–57; Linderman, Embattled Courage, 43–56, 171, 229; Logue, To Appomattox and Beyond, 32. 23.  Tyler Anbinder, “Which Poor Man’s Fight? Immigrants and the Federal Conscription of 1863,” Civil War History 52 (December 2006): 372. 24.  Philip Paludan, “A People’s Contest”: The Union and Civil War, 1861–1865 (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 170–198; Grace Palladino, Another Civil War: Labor, Capital, and the State in the Anthracite Regions of Pennsylvania (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Iver Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 259–264; Earnest A. McKay, The Civil War and New York City (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1990), 195–205; Jennifer L. Weber, Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 57. 25.  Susannah Ural Bruce, The Harp and the Eagle: Irish-American Volunteers and the Union Army, 1861–1865 (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 30–31, 47–48, 63–66, 77, 106–110, 120–121, 187–189. 26.  James I. Robertson, ed., The Civil War Letters of General Robert McAllister (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1965), 509; Scott, Fallen Leaves, 205; Isaac O. Best, History of the 121st New York State Infantry (Chicago: Lt. Jas. H. Smith, 1921), 161. 27.  James M Greiner, Janet L. Coryell, and James R. Smither, eds., A Surgeon’s Civil War: The Letters and Diary of Daniel M. Holt, M.D. (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1994), 13, 217. 28.  Gilbert R. Stormont, History of the Fifty-eighth Regiment of Indiana Volunteer Infantry: Its Organization, Campaigns, and Battles from 1861 to 1865: From the Manuscript Prepared by the Late Chaplain John J. Hight, during His Service with the Regiment in the Field (Princeton, NJ: Press of the Clarion, 1895), 468; Ruth L. Silliker, ed., The Rebel Yell and the Yankee Hurrah: The Civil War Journal of a Maine Volunteer (Camden, ME: Down East Books, 1985), 120. 29.  Michael T. Smith, “The Enemy Within: Corruption and Political Culture in the Civil War North” (PhD diss., Penn State University, 2005), 279–290.



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30.  Scott, Fallen Leaves, 208. 31.  Philip N. Racine, ed., “Unspoiled Heart”: The Journal of Charles Mattocks of the 17th Maine (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994), 67. 32.  Charles Brandegee Livingstone, Charlie’s Civil War: A Private’s Trial by Fire in the 5th New York Volunteers—Duryee’s Zouaves and 146th New York Volunteer Infantry (Gettysburg: Thomas Publications, 1997), 14, 32, 50; Patrick A. Schroeder, We Came to Fight: The History of the 5th New York Veteran Volunteer Infantry Duryee’s Zouaves (1863–1865) (Brookneal, VA: Patrick A. Schroeder, 1998), 15–37. 33.  Letter of Col. Cleveland Winslow, 9 November 1863, 5th New York Regimental Order Book, RG 94, NA; Livingstone, Charlie’s Civil War, 176–177; Schroeder, We Came to Fight, 25–35, 39–69, 119–121, 347–348. 34.  Thousands of Union soldiers were imprisoned in the Slave Pen during the course of the war. Its use provoked great controversy after a private in the 63rd New York froze to death in February 1862. Newspapers deplored the “degradation” of placing northern volunteers on the same level with slaves. Battalion orders from October 1863–January 1864, Battalion Order 12, 23 January 1864, Battalion Order 55, 25 December 1864, 5th New York Regimental Order Book, Vols. 3 and 7, NA; Company B Order Book, 21 March 1864, 10 May 1864, 16 May 1864, 5th New York Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA; “Frozen to Death—Scene in a Slave-Pen, Alexandria,” New York Illustrated News, March 1, 1862, 266–267. 35.  4 November 1863, 5th New York Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; Schroeder, We Came to Fight, 101. 36.  Racine, Journal of Charles Mattocks, 66–67, 110–111. 37.  Court of Inquiry of Capt. Charles G. Stone, 17th New York, II 967, RG 153, NA. 38.  The Lowry Project. This is a database of Union and Confederate general courtsmartial that is searchable by unit, name, charge, specification, rank, state, keyword, and other categories. It was compiled and is maintained by Thomas and Beverly Lowry. 39.  Court-martial of 1st Lt. Robert H. Morgan, 57th Indiana, RG 153, NA. 40.  Court-martial of Lt. E. J. Parker, 13th Pennsylvania Cavalry, MM 730, RG 153, NA; Court-martial of Capt. Benjamin W. Tucker, 22nd Massachusetts, NN 2072, RG 153, NA. 41.  Pension Record of Edward H. Underhill, NA; Military Commission Trial of 1st Lt. Edward Underhill, 1st New York Artillery, MM 1542, RG 153, NA. 42.  Trial of 1st Lt. Edward Underhill. 43.  Ibid. 44.  Revised United States Army Regulations of 1861: With an Appendix Containing the Changes and Laws Affecting Army Regulations and Articles of War to June 25, 1863 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1863), 96–98, 106; August V. Kautz, Customs of Service for Non-commissioned Officers and Soldiers as Derived from Law and Regulations and Practiced in the Army of the United States Being a Hand-Book for the Rank and File. 2nd Edition (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1865), 116–117; Orville J. Victor, The Military HandBook, and Soldier’s Manual of Information (New York: Beadle, 1861), 50. 45.  Special Order 36, 7 February 1863, 143rd New York Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; Regimental Order 37, 5 July 1863, 42nd Illinois Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA; Circular, 23 May 1864, Hdqts. 2nd Army Division, 9th Army Corps, Army of the Potomac, in War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1880–1901), Ser. I,

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Vol. 36 (Part III): 135 (hereafter OR); GO 22, 27 June 1864, Hdqts. 2nd Army Corps, Army of the Potomac, OR, Ser. I, Vol. 40 (Part II): 468; Circular, 28 May 1864, Hdqts. 5th Army Corps, Army of the Potomac, OR, Ser. I, Vol. 36 (Part III): 270. 46.  James M. Greiner, Subdued by the Sword: A Line Officer of the 121st New York Volunteers (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 36, 60–61; Best, History of the 121st New York, 28–29, 34. 47.  Greiner, Subdued by the Sword, 67–71, 88. 48.  John William DeForest, A Volunteer’s Adventures: A Union Captain’s Record of the Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946), 193. 49.  GO 41, 12 September 1864, 23rd Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA. 50.  Linderman, Embattled Courage, 1–16, 36–43, 56–60, 134–156, 169–176, 232–234; McPherson, For Cause and Comrades, 14–29, 46–51, 61, 77–89, 141–143, 173–178. 51.  William B. Skelton, An American Profession of Arms: The Army Officer Corps, 1784–1861 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), 158–161, 262, 264–265; James L. Morrison Jr., “The Best School in the World”: West Point, the Pre–Civil War Years, 1833–1866 (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1986), ix, 62; Edward M. Coffman, The Old Army: A Portrait of the American Army in Peacetime, 1784–1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 139–140. 52.  Paul Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair: Soldiers and Social Conflict during the Mexican-American War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 5–6, 13–16, 20–21, 42, 62–70, 76–81.

Chap ter 6 1.  Court-martial of Capt. Daniel Link, 1st Maryland Cavalry, MM 1709, Record Group (RG) 153, National Archives (NA). 2.  Ibid. 3.  Ibid. 4.  The Lowry Project. This is a database of Union and Confederate general courtsmartial that is searchable by unit, name, charge, specification, rank, state, keyword, and other categories. It was compiled and is maintained by Thomas and Beverly Lowry. 5.  Ruth L. Silliker, ed., The Rebel Yell and the Yankee Hurrah: The Civil War Journal of a Maine Volunteer (Camden, ME: Down East Books, 1985), 12–13, 28, 24–26, 179. 6.  Richard L. Kiper, ed., Dear Catharine, Dear Taylor: The Civil War Letters of a Union Soldier and His Wife (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 23. 7.  Ibid., 153–154. 8.  Silliker, Yankee Hurrah, 144, 129; Barry Popchock, ed., Soldier Boy: The Civil War Letters of Charles O. Musser, 29th Iowa (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995), 220. 9.  Randall C. Jimerson, The Private Civil War: Popular Thought during the Sectional Conflict (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), 198–199; Lawrence Frederick Kohl and Margaret Cosse Richard, eds., Irish Green and Union Blue: The Civil War Letters of Peter Welsh (New York: Fordham University Press, 1986), 135; James M. Greiner, Janet L. Coryell, and James R. Smither, eds., A Surgeon’s Civil War: The Letters and Diary of Daniel M. Holt, M.D. (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1994), 107; Anne Hartwell Britton and Thomas J. Reed, eds., To My Beloved Wife and Boy at Home: The Letters and Diaries of Orderly Sergeant John F. L. Hartwell (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997), 278.



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10.  Richard F. Miller, “The Trouble with Brahmins: Class and Ethnic Tensions in Massachusetts’ ‘Harvard Regiment,’” New England Quarterly 76 (March 2003): 40–44, 54–65; Charles Brandegee Livingstone, Charlie’s Civil War: A Private’s Trial by Fire in the 5th New York Volunteers—Duryée’s Zouaves and 146th New York Volunteer Infantry (Gettysburg: Thomas Publications, 1997), 14–15; Patrick A. Schroeder, We Came to Fight: The History of the 5th New York Veteran Volunteer Infantry Duryee’s Zouaves (1863–1865) (Brookneal, VA: Patrick A. Schroeder, 1998), 169–171, 193. 11.  Silliker, Yankee Hurrah, 144; Philip N. Racine, ed., “Unspoiled Heart”: The Journal of Charles Mattocks of the 17th Maine (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994), xiv, xix–xxi; William B. Jordan Jr., Red Diamond Regiment: The 17th Maine Infantry, 1862–1865 (Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Publishing, 1996), 251. 12.  Silliker, Yankee Hurrah, 26; Popchock, Soldier Boy, 110. 13.  Special Order (SO) 30, 18 March 1864, 143rd New York Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; Circular, 20 November 1863, 56th Massachusetts Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; Inspection Report, 1st Division, 20th Army Corps, June 1864, Entry 1058, No. 239, RG 393, NA; 20 September 1864, Inspector General to Gen. George Meade, Army of the Potomac, Entry 4021, No. 86/240AP, Part I, RG 393, NA. Other examples include: SO 27, 6 April 1863, 23rd Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA; General Order (GO) 17, 14 April 1864, 34th Illinois Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA; Regimental Order (RO) 33, 20 October 1862, 40th New York Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA. 14.  Court-martial of Lt. Col. A. W. Dwight, 122nd New York, LL 2251, RG 153, NA. Courts were correct if they did not convict men charged for violating the 9th Article of War under such circumstances. According to contemporary military legal expert S. V. Benét, “To constitute the offence, it must appear that the offender was aware of the rank or superiority of the superior.” S. V. Benét, A Treatise on Military Law and the Practice of Courts-Martial (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1863), 207. 15.  20 September 1864, Inspector General to Gen. George Meade, Army of the Potomac, Entry 4021, No. 86/240AP, Part I, RG 393, NA; GO 62 and 64, 8 and 10 April 1864, 50th Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 4, RG 94, NA; GO 8, 10 January 1864, 56th Massachusetts Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA. 16.  SO 43, 27 February 1863, 143rd New York Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA. For similar orders see: RO 41, 10 November 1861, 40th New York Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA; GO 14, 18 January 1864, 56th Massachusetts Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; GO 14, 19 November 1862, 4th Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA. 17.  Circular, 3 December 1863, 5th Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA; SO 6 and SO 24, 8 February and 21 June 1865, 143rd New York Regimental Order Book, Vol. 3, RG 94, NA; Court-martial of Lt. J. Burell, 121st New York, KK 493, RG 153, NA; John William DeForest, A Volunteer’s Adventures: A Union Captain’s Record of the Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946), 23–24. The lieutenant colonel of the 143rd New York, in his orders about the men yelling at officers, said that such behavior belonged to “children and calves that are not yet weaned.” 18.  Revised United States Army Regulations of 1861: With an Appendix Containing the Changes and Laws Affecting Army Regulations and Articles of War to June 25, 1863 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1863), 9; 6th Article of War, 9th Article of

208  |  Notes to Chapter 6

War, War Department, Rules and Articles for the Government of the Armies of the United States (Washington, DC: A. O. P. Nicholson, Public Printer, 1857). Although regulations required submission and obedience, the military code also protected inferiors. Regulations required that military authority be kind and just and that punishments conform to military law. Article I of the revised regulations of 1861 prohibited tyrannical or capricious conduct and abusive language on the part of superiors. The 24th Article of War required the arrest of any officer who used reproachful or provoking speeches. Soldiers guilty of the same offense would be confined and, in front of the commanding officer, would have to beg the pardon of the person he offended. The army also provided a system for soldiers or officers to bring grievances against a superior. 19.  Court-martial of Pvt. Jacob Piatt, 42nd Illinois, MM 1715, RG 153, NA; Court-martial of wagoner Perley Johnson, 3rd Michigan, LL 745, RG 153, NA. 20.  Court-martial of Pvt. Sanford H. Fitch, 23rd Ohio, II 531, RG 153, NA; Court-martial of Pvt. James E. Weir, 5th New York, LL 251, RG 153, NA. 21.  Court-martial of Pvt. Carl Schartz, 7th New York, II 396, RG 153, NA; Court-martial of Corp. William Van Dyke, 3rd Michigan, LL 266 Folder 2, RG 153, NA. 22.  SO 16, 28 December 1864, 184th Pennsylvania Regimental Order Book, Vol. 1, RG 94, NA; Court-martial of 1st Sgt. Charles Hoffman, 187th New York, LL 3269, RG 153, NA. 23.  Court-martial of Lt. J. Burell; Court-martial of 1st Lt. Walter J. Lee, 28th Michigan, MM 2407, RG 153, NA. 24.  The Lowry Project. 25.  SO 9, 26 January 1864, 5th Ohio Regimental Order Book, Vol. 5, RG 94, NA. 26.  Court-martial of Pvt. Nathan Goff, 143rd New York, NN 131, RG 153, NA; Courtmartial of Pvt. James D. Maloney, 40th New York, NN 2644, RG 153, NA; Court-martial of Pvt. Marion Blanchard, 30th Maine, OO 464, RG 153, NA. 27.  DeForest, A Volunteer’s Adventures, 43; Court-martial of Pvt. Francis Quinn, 40th New York, NN 160, RG 153, NA; Court-martial of Pvt. Cornelius Sullivan, 121st New York, KK 513, RG 153, NA. 28.  Court-martial of Capt. Edwin H. Boyd, 110th New York, MM 171, RG 153, NA. 29.  Ibid. 30.  Ibid. 31.  Ibid. 32.  Amy S. Greenberg, Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 9–12. 33.  Court-martial of Pvt. Martin Duncan, 23rd Ohio, LL 2954, RG 153, NA. 34.  Court-martial of Capt. Gustavas Becker and Capt. Arthur Brandt, 7th New York, NN 2786, RG 153, NA. 35.  Court-martial of Pvt. William Thompson, 42nd Illinois, KK 158, RG 153, NA. 36.  Courts-martial of Corp. August Gans, Pvt. Fernando Chasse, Pvt. Henry Wickenhaffer, Pvt. Adolph Simmell, Pvt. Louis Nestel, and Sgt. John Stahl, 7th New York, MM 2625, RG 153, NA. 37.  Ibid. 38.  Ibid. 39.  Court-martial of musician Richard Easler, 56th Massachusetts, OO 1126, RG 153, NA; Court-martial of Pvt. Albert M. Robinson, 142nd New York, LL 1584, RG 153, NA; Kiper, Dear Catharine, Dear Taylor, 242–243.



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40.  Popchock, Soldier Boy, 143, 213–214. 41.  Joseph T. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers (New York: The Free Press, 1990), 38–39, 53–55, 59; Martin W. Öfele, German-Speaking Officers in the U.S. Colored Troops, 1863–1867 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004), 42, 48, 50, 115–116. 42.  Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, 87–88, 107–108, 195. 43.  Christian G. Samito, “The Intersection between Military Justice and Equal Rights: Mutinies, Courts-martial, and Black Civil War Soldiers,” Civil War History 53 (June 2007): 170–202. 44.  Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, 113; Dudley Taylor Cornish, The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1861–1865 (New York: Norton Library, 1966); Martin H. Blatt, Thomas J. Brown, and Donald Yacovone, eds., Hope and Glory: Essays on the Legacy of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001); Versalle F. Washington, Eagles on Their Buttons: A Black Infantry Regiment in the Civil War (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999); James G. Hollandsworth Jr., The Louisiana Native Guards: The Black Military Experience during the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995); Howard C. Westwood, Black Troops, White Commanders, and Freedmen during the Civil War (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992). 45.  Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, 100–101. 46.  Ibid., 110–111. 47.  Ibid., 111–112. 48.  Ibid., 114–115, 222–223. 49.  Court-martial of Lt. Edwin R. Fox, 2nd Cavalry Colored, NN 2550, RG 153, NA. 50.  Ibid. 51.  Ibid. 52.  Fox also had introduced into evidence an order from the regiment’s commanding officer, Col. George W. Cole. It is unclear why Fox thought this order would help him. It read: “From this date all officers of this Regiment, guilty of Striking, kicking, or tying up for punishment or personally abusing enlisted men, will be severely punished. Guilty men may be punished in a legitimate manner by Court Martial or shot for insubordination at once.” Although the order sanctioned Fox’s action in shooting Edwards on the spot, it also showed that he had violated orders when he directed the private to be tied in the first place. His own disobedience was another factor in his removal, although it was less important than his disdain for his men. Court-martial of Lt. Edwin R. Fox; Court-martial of Capt. Charles G. Stone, 17th New York, II 967, RG 153, NA. 53.  James McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 53–57; Larry Logue, To Appomattox and Beyond: The Civil War Soldier in War and Peace (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996), 32; Randall C. Jimerson, The Private Civil War: Popular Thought during the Sectional Conflict (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), 200–201; Bruce Catton, “Union Discipline and Leadership in the Civil War,” Marine Corps Gazette 40 (January 1956): 19–20. 54.  Glenn V. Longacre and John E. Haas, eds., To Battle for God and the Right: The Civil War Letterbooks of Emerson Opdycke (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), xxvii, 90; T. Harry Williams, Hayes of the Twenty-third: The Civil War Volunteer Officer (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), 45–46, 129.

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55.  Kiper, Dear Catharine, Dear Taylor, 107–108; Longacre and Haas, To Battle for God and the Right, 100–101, 118. 56.  Longacre and Haas, To Battle for God and the Right, 216. 57.  Kiper, Dear Catharine, Dear Taylor, 29; Kohl and Richard, Irish Green and Union Blue, 27–28, 52; Ira Seymour Dodd, “The Making of a Regiment: What a Service of Seven Months Did for a Troop of Raw Volunteers,” McClure’s Magazine 9 (October 1897): 1034. 58.  John W. DeForest, “Our Military Past and Future,” Atlantic Monthly 44 (November 1879): 561–575.

C onclusion 1.  Gilbert R. Stormont, History of the Fifty-eighth Regiment of Indiana Volunteer Infantry: Its Organization, Campaigns, and Battles from 1861 to 1865: From the Manuscript Prepared by the Late Chaplain John J. Hight, during His Service with the Regiment in the Field (Princeton, NJ: Press of the Clarion, 1895), 192, 196, 231, 284, 304–305, 345. 2.  Ibid., 290, 382–383; Court-martial of Pvt. Hiram Wright, 58th Indiana, LL 339, Record Group 153, National Archives. 3.  Stormont, History of the Fifty-eighth Regiment, 120. 4.  Ibid., 12–13; Charles M. Clark, The History of the Thirty-ninth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Veteran Infantry (Yates Phalanx) in the War of the Rebellion, 1861–1865 (Chicago: Published under the Auspices of the Veteran Association of the Regiment, 1889), 1–5, 240–241, 482. 5.  Fred C. Floyd, History of the Fortieth (Mozart) Regiment, New York Volunteers, Which Was Composed of Four Companies from New York, Four Companies from Massachusetts, and Two Companies from Pennsylvania (Boston: F. H. Gilson, 1909), 110. 6.  Regimental histories that did not portray elements of the war for manhood included: R.B. Scott, The History of the 67th Regiment Indiana: Infantry Volunteers, War of the Rebellion (Bedford, IN: Herald Book and Job Print, 1892); Frederick E. Cushman, History of the 58th Regt. Massachusetts Vols. From the 15 Day of September, 1863, to the Close of the Rebellion (Washington, DC: Gibson Brothers, 1865); Orville Thomson, From Philippi to Appomattox: Narrative of the Service of the Seventh Indiana Infantry in the War for the Union (n.d.; reprint, Baltimore: Butternut and Blue, 1993); W. S. Morris, L. D. Hartwell, and J. B. Kuykendall, History of the 31st Regiment Illinois Volunteers: Organized by John A. Logan [1902] (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998). 7.  Andrew W. McDermott, A Brief History of the 69th Regiment Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers, from Its Formation until Final Muster Out of the United States Service (Philadelphia: D. J. Gallagher, 1889), appendix; Charles H. Banes, History of the Philadelphia Brigade. Sixty-ninth, Seventy-first, Seventy-second, and One Hundred and Sixth Pennsylvania Volunteers (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1876), 168. 8.  Regimental histories that reveal elements of the war for manhood include: L. G. Bennett and William. M. Haigh, History of the Thirty-sixth Regiment Illinois Volunteers, during the War of the Rebellion (Aurora, IL: Knickerbocker and Hodder, 1876); William Kepler, History of the Three Months and Three Years Service from April 16th, 1861, to June 22nd, 1864, of the Fourth Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the War for the Union (Cleveland: Leader Printing, 1886); Edwin W. Payne, History of the Thirty-fourth Regiment of Illinois Volunteer Infantry (Clinton, IA: Allen Printing, 1902); Thomas D. Marbaker, History



Notes to the Conclusion  |  211

of the Eleventh New Jersey Volunteers from Its Organization to Appomattox (Trenton, NJ: MacCrellish and Quigley, 1898); Frederic Denison, Sabres and Spurs: The First Regiment Rhode Island Cavalry in the Civil War (First Rhode Island Cavalry Veteran Association, 1876); Charles Barnard Fox, Record of the Service of the Fifty-fifth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (Cambridge, MA: Press of John Wilson and Son, 1868); Moses G. Young, A Condensed History of the 143rd Regiment New York Volunteer Infantry, of the Civil War, 1861–1865 (Newburgh, NY: Newburgh Journal Printing House and Book Bindery, 1909). 9.  Bennett and Haigh, History of the Thirty-sixth Regiment Illinois Volunteers, 36, 562–566. 10.  Kristin L. Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 8–11, 17–19, 20–21, 24, 36, 64–69, 85. 11.  Ibid., 167, 181–188, 193–195. 12.  Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 7, 44, 73–74, 172–186. 13.  E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 253, 265–267; Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood, 17–19, 34–35; Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 30. 14.  Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood, 26–27, 122–123. 15.  Rotundo, American Manhood, 2–6, 222–226, 265–267; Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood, 71. 16.  James McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 77–103. 17.  Stormont, History of the Fifty-eighth Regiment, 396–397. 18.  Richard L. Kiper, ed., Dear Catharine, Dear Taylor: The Civil War Letters of a Union Soldier and His Wife (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 131.

212  |  Notes to the Conclusion

Bibliography

Primary Sources Manuscrip ts National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC Record Group 94, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office Record Group 153, Records of the Bureau of Military Justice Record Group 159, Records of the Office of the Inspector General (Army) Record Group 393, Records of United States Army Continental Commands

Newspapers and Journals Atlantic Monthly Continental Monthly Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper Harper’s Weekly New York Illustrated News Scientific American United States Service Magazine Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times

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Index

1st Illinois Light Artillery, and degenerate duel, 106 1st Maryland Cavalry, and officer shooting, 145 1st Nebraska, and roughs, 68, 82 1st New Jersey Artillery, and challenge, 115 1st New York, and thugs, 69 1st U.S. Cavalry, and court-martial of E. V. Sumner, 112 1st U.S. Sharp Shooters, and discipline, 37 2nd Cavalry (U.S.C.T.), and officer shooting, 165 2nd Louisiana Native Guards, and conflict over morality, 25–26, 146 2nd Massachusetts: and discipline, 123, 127; and elite officers, 121; and mutiny, 127 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry: and leadership, 126; and mutiny, 124; and officer shooting, 124; and profanity, 28 3rd Connecticut, and challenge, 106 3rd Michigan, and disobedience, 153–154 3rd Minnesota, and field officer courts, 12 3rd Ohio Cavalry, and attack on officer, 171 4th Kentucky Cavalry, and officer shooting, 69 4th Missouri Cavalry, and duel, 210–202n30 4th Ohio, and gambling, 24 5th Massachusetts Cavalry: and cleanliness, 49; and education, 46 5th New Jersey: and camp meetings, 70; and confrontation with 120th New York, 71; and officer violence, 68; and rowdiness, 67–68



5th New York: and cleanliness, 49; and discipline, 133–134; and disobedience, 154; and elite officers, 121, 133, 150; and field officer courts, 134; and immigrants, 134; and profanity, 28; and roughs, 2, 134; and sexual immorality, 24; and slave pen, 134; and water torture, 134 5th Ohio: and cleanliness, 50; and striking officer, 155 6th Minnesota, and court-martial of Moses Bradley, 34 7th Connecticut, and court-martial of Edwin Fox, 166 7th Indiana: and drinking, 29; and gentility, 50 7th Kentucky Cavalry, and officer shooting, 59–63 7th Maine, and symbols of authority, 151 7th New York: and mutiny, 160–161; and physical conflict, 159 7th Veteran Reserve Corps, and challenge, 114 9th New Jersey, and court-martial of Edwin Fox, 166 9th Ohio, and drinking, 29 11th Massachusetts, and temperance, 25 11th Missouri Cavalry, and verbal challenge to fight, 116 11th New Jersey: and conflict over morality, 22–23; and immigrants, 131; and profanity, 27; and temperance society, 25 12th Connecticut: and authority, 152; and file closers, 140; and military etiquette, 55 12th Missouri, and cleanliness, 49

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14th Wisconsin, and roughs, 69 15th Kansas Cavalry, and officer shooting, 63 16th Massachusetts: and regimental school, 46; and temperance, 25 16th Pennsylvania Cavalry, and Christian Association, 20 16th U.S.C.T., and court-martial of John T. Scott, 35, 114 17th Maine: and authority, 148; and drinking, 29; and elite officers, 37, 55, 76, 150; and military etiquette, 55; and moral character, 27; and roughs, 69, 132, 135; and sexual immorality, 24; and worship, 21 17th New York: and disobedience, 154; and officer shooting, 135, 166 19th Pennsylvania Cavalry, and challenge, 109 20th Massachusetts: and class conflict, 127; and discipline, 133; and elite officers, 121, 126, 131, 149; and gentility, 48; and honor, 58, 100; and roughs, 133; and worship, 21 22nd Indiana, and Davis shooting Nelson, 88 22nd Iowa: and authority, 148; and leadership, 168; and military etiquette, 55; and moral character, 19, 27; and roughs, 179 23rd Ohio: and disobedience, 154; and file closers, 140; and gambling, 23–24; and leadership, 167; and regimental courtsmartial, 11; and verbal threats, 159; and worship, 21 24th Wisconsin, and disobedience, 153 26th Kentucky, and 83rd Article of War, 37 26th Pennsylvania, and temperance, 25 28th Michigan: and insubordination, 155; and military etiquette, 54 29th Iowa: and military etiquette, 54; and moral character, 22; and mutiny, 161 31st Illinois, and challenge, 107, 111 33rd Wisconsin: and regimental courtsmartial, 12; and roughs, 69 36th Illinois, and regimental history, 174 36th Ohio, and officer shooting, 145

226  |  Index

37th New York, and thugs, 69 38th U.S.C.T., and punishments, 165 40th New York: and conscripts, 173; and cleanliness, 52 42nd Illinois: and disobedience, 153; and file closers, 139; and gambling, 70; and verbal conflict, 159 44th U.S.C.T., and education, 47 45th Wisconsin, and profanity, 28 46th New York, and challenge, 110–111 47th New York, and court-martial of Edwin R. Fox, 166 50th Ohio, and symbols of authority, 152 51st New York, and coolness in battle, 57 52nd Ohio, and degenerate duel, 106, 202n33 56th Massachusetts: and authority of officers, 123; and officer shooting, 124; and sexual immorality, 24; and symbols of authority, 151 57th Indiana: and officer shooting, 136, 139; and roughs, 136, 139 58th Indiana: and cleanliness, 50; and conflict over morality, 22–23, 171; and conscripts, 132, 172; and fight with U.S.C.T., 171; and honor, 105, 202n32; and regimental history, 172; and war for manhood, 171–172 59th Massachusetts, and cleanliness, 50; and military etiquette, 54 60th U.S.C.T., and court-martial of Moses Bradley, 34 61st New York, and discipline, 125–126 63rd Pennsylvania, and libraries, 46 65th Ohio, and disobedience, 153 67th Indiana, and drinking, 30 69th Pennsylvania, and officer shooting, 83; and regimental history, 173 71st Pennsylvania: and officer shooting, 83, 85; and regimental history, 173 74th U.S. Infantry (Colored), and moral conflict, 25 82nd Pennsylvania, and Christian organizations, 24 88th Illinois: and libraries, 46; and view of Nelson killing, 88

91st Indiana, and challenge, 116 96th Pennsylvania, and fights with 121st New York, 131 101st New York, and thugs, 69 105th Ohio, and Davis killing Nelson, 88 110th New York, and cleanliness, 50; and disobedience, 156–158; and officers’ use of force, 156–158; and worship, 22 120th New York, and confrontation with 5th New Jersey, 71 121st New York: and fights with 96th Pennsylvania, 131; and force in battle, 140; and insubordination, 155; and morality, 25, 38–39; and social status, 149 122nd New York, and symbols of authority, 151 123rd Indiana, and roughs, 69 125th Ohio, and leadership, 167–168 143rd New York: and authority, 152, 208n17; and Christian Commission, 20; and cleanliness, 50; and file closers, 139; and fraternization, 152; and symbols of authority, 151; and worship, 21–22 154th New York, and conflict over morality, 22–23 184th Pennsylvania: and insubordination, 154; and military etiquette, 54 187th New York, and insubordination, 155 Abbott, Henry Livermore: and class attitudes, 121, 131, 149; and discipline, 123, 125–127, 133; and gentility, 48; and honor, 58; and worship, 21 Abdel, W. J., 35–36 Adams, Charles Francis, Jr.: and cleanliness, 49, 51; and drunken soldiers, 30; and educating soldiers, 46; and leadership, 122 Adams, John R., 25 Alcohol: and courts-martial, 30; and discipline, 22, 30, 38, 71; and disorder, 29–39; and manhood, 25–27, 29, 57. See also Drinking; Temperance Alley, Leander, 123 Anti-temperance societies, 22–23, 171 Army of the Cumberland: and libraries, 46; and manhood, 8; and military etiquette,



54; and officer training, 10, 186n16; and symbols of authority, 151 Army of the Ohio, 87–89 Army of the Potomac: and cleanliness, 48; field officer courts, 12; and file closers, 139; and manhood, 8; and military etiquette, 54; and officer shooting, 85; and officer training, 10, 186n16; and punishments, 11; and symbols of authority, 151–152; and thugs, 69 Army regulations: and battle, 139; and camp, 52, 195n29; and difference between officers and privates, 43, 193n5; and gentility, 8, 45–46, 48–49, 64; and morality, 20–21, 23, 28–29, 31, 39; and obedience of privates, 153; and physical coercion, 123, 156; and protection of inferiors, 153, 208-209n18; and review of courts martial, 145; and rights of accused, 15; and worship, 21–22 Article of War, 3rd, 28 Article of War, 6th, 12, 153 Article of War, 9th, 146, 151, 153, 155, 210n14 Article of War, 24th, 84, 153, 208-209n18 Article of War, 25th: and court decisions, 111–114; and court-martial of Charles Gordon Hutton, 94–95; and courtmartial of John Nelson, 107; and courtmartial of Julius Sauer, 110; definition of, 84, 97; and interpretations of, 116–117; and legal precedent, 112–114; and roughs, 105; and sentencing requirements, 43, 95, 193n5 Article of War, 26th, 97, 111 Article of War, 28th, 97, 111 Article of War, 69th, 14 Article of War, 77th, 43, 193n5 Article of War, 78th, 43, 193n5 Article of War, 83rd. See Conduct Unbecoming an Officer and a Gentleman Article of War, 99th (Conduct to the Prejudice of Good Order and Military Discipline): and challenges, 107, 115–116; and conflict between officers, 157; and court-martial of Edwin H. Boyd, 156; and court-martial of James Bowman, 116;

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Article of War, 99th (continued): and court-martial of Thomas J. Bragg, 64; and court-martial of William Hexamer, 115; and court-martial of John Rodgers Meigs, 82; and court-martial of John A. Nelson, 107; and court-martial of William VanDyke, 154; and courts-martial regulations, 12–13; and disobedience, 154; and fights among roughs, 105 Articles of War: and conduct of gentlemen, 32–33; and courts-martial, 13; and difference between privates and officers, 43, 193n5; and honor, 84, 91, 95, 97–99, 112, 114, 116, 117–118; and profanity, 28–29; and punishments, 13; and rights of accused, 15; and worship, 21–22 Atwater, F. A., 70 Authority: and corporal punishment, 133, 135; and effective leadership, 167–169; and equality, 147, 154; and incentive, 125; and manhood, 5, 147, 154, 158, 169; and privates’ attitudes, 147–149, 154, 158, 167– 169; and resistance, 156, 160; and roughs, 136–138; and shooting subordinates, 136–138; and striking a superior, 146; and social class, 120, 122–123, 125, 128, 133; and subverting, 151–152; and symbols of authority, 151–152; and U.S.C.T., 162; and violence, 133, 135–139, 143, 156 Baker, Adolph, 110 Banks, Nathaniel, 25 Barlow, Francis Channing, 122, 125–126 Bartlett, William Francis, 149 Baxter, Thomas, 136, 139 Bellard, Alfred, 67–68, 70–71, 77 Benét, S. V., 32 Berry, Hiram G., 69 Best, Issac, 131 Bond, L. H., 102–103 Booth, Charles A., 100–102, 111 Bounty jumpers: and discipline, 129, 132, 141–142; and officer shooting of, 136; and social class, 132; and veterans’ associations, 173 Bowman, James, 116

228  |  Index

Boxing: and class, 73–75; and contested terms of manhood, 73–75, 91, 119; and manhood, 19; and roughs, 135 Boyd, Edwin H., 156–158 Bradley, Moses L., 34, 36 Bradley, William, W., 59–64, 86 Bragg, Thomas J., 63–64 Brandegee, Charles, 28, 133–134 Brandt, Arthur, 159 Brophy, James, 116 Bross, John, 88 Brown, E. C., 153 Buell, Don Carlos, 87–88 Buell, George P., 171 Burnside, Ambrose, 93–95 Bureau of Military Justice, 85 Burnett, Henry Lawrence, 101, 103 Butler, Benjamin F., 166 Callahan, Matthew, 106 Carroll, Thomas, 155 Chaplains, 24–28, 46–47 Chasse, Fernando, 160 Christian Commission, 20, 22–24, 27, 46 Clark, Charles M., 172 Clark, Gavin, 106 Clark, George T., 116 Class: and antebellum army, 142; and army hierarchy, 147, 149–152; conflicts in Union Army, 1, 6, 9, 16, 120, 126, 128, 130, 133, 142; and discipline, 164; and gentility, 21, 43, 45, 49–50, 53, 75, and honor, 77–79, 81–82, 89–91, 99–100, 105, 108; and manhood, 27–28, 37, 71–73, 75, 77, 79, 90–91, 105, 119, 128–131, 139, 158, 164, 177–178; and Mexican War, 142; and northern society, 120, 130, 177; and Union navy, 72. See also Social status Cleanliness: and army regulations, 48–49; and enforcement, 49–50; and equipment, 51–52; and gentility, 45, 47–50 Clute, John, 145, 159 Colton, Charles Cephas, 26 Conduct to the Prejudice of Good Order and Military Discipline. See Article of War, 99th

Conduct Unbecoming an Officer and a Gentleman (83rd Article of War): and honor, 91, 102; and legal interpretations of, 31–33; and manhood, 16; and morality, 8, 24, 28, 30–37, 34, 39, 191n43; and physical assaults, 59, 157; and profanity, 28, 39; and sanitation, 52, 195n28; and social class, 43 n43 Connolly, James, 30 Conrad, Charles Magill, 32–33 Conscripts: and class, 9, 27, 120, 129–130, 132–133; and discipline, 10, 28, 38, 120, 129–130, 132–133, 135, 141–142, 164, 169; and force in battle, 139, 141–142; and manhood, 27–28, 129–130, 132–133; and perception by volunteers, 27–28, 70, 129– 130, 132–133; and regimental histories, 172; and shooting by officers, 135–137 Continental Army, 43, 91 Cormany, Samuel: and honor, 99, 104; and moral character, 19–20; and physical prowess, 72–73; and self-control, 56–57 Courage: and battle, 57–58, 125, 141; and gentlemen, 41, 59, 86, 100; and leadership, 168; and manhood, 57–59, 76, 80, 125, 141; and social status, 129, 141 Courts-martial: and disobedience, 153; and duels, 105, 111–112; and honor, 64, 81–87, 94–96, 98–99, 102–103, 105–117; and judge advocate, 14–15, 115; and morality, 24, 26, 28, 30–37, 39; and mutiny, 155, 160; and punishment, 12; and records as sources, 5, 7, 15, 129, 133, 135, 146, 160; and striking a superior, 146, 155–156; and U.S.C.T., 163, 165–166. See also Field officer courts-martial; General courtsmartial; Regimental courts-martial Crooks, William, 34 Curry, John, 107, 111–112 Cutting, William, 94 Cutts, J. M., 93–95 Davis, Billy, 29, 50 Davis, Jefferson C.: and shooting of Nelson, 83, 87–91, 89, 90, 98, 112, 117, 100–200n55, 200n56

DeForest, John W., and discipline, 169; and disobedience, 156; and file closers, 140; and gentility, 76; and military etiquette, 55; and regimental courts-martial, 30 DeHart, William C., 32–33 Dickenson, D. S., 112 Dickson, W. M., 102 Discipline: and alcohol, 26–27, 29–31, 38, 69–71; and antebellum army, 142; and authority, 120, 122–123, 125, 128, 133, 135–139, 143, 146, 154, 169; and battle, 124–126, 128, 139–142; and camp, 52–53; and cleanliness, 48–50, 52–53; and conscripts, 10, 15, 28, 38, 70, 133, 135–137, 139, 141–142; and Davis shooting Nelson, 90, 200n56; and gambling, 23–24, 70; and manhood, 5, 7–8, 15, 28, 75, 97, 120–121, 123, 125, 127–130, 132–133, 141, 143, 147–148, 154, 158–159, 163–164, 170; and methods, 7, 10–12, 38, 120, 123–129, 132–142, 164, 168–169; and Mexican War, 142; and military etiquette, 53–55; and obedience, 153–158, 168; and officers, 7, 10–12, 15, 28, 120–128, 133, 135–141, 143, 168–170; and perceptions of, 71, 127; and sanitation, 52; and social status, 7–8, 16, 28, 38, 120–130, 132–137, 139, 141, 143, 164; and symbols of authority, 151–152; and U.S.C.T., 162–166; and violence, 120, 123–125, 128, 133, 135–143, 156–158, 164, 169; and volunteers, 9–10, 15, 28, 133, 137, 141–143, 153–154, 159, 164, 169; and worship services, 21–22, 39 Disobedience, 153–156 Drinking: as attribute of manhood, 18, 22–23, 25–27, 29, 31, 33, 37, 57, 67–68, 119; and challenges, 108; and conflict over, 22–27, 29, 33, 37, 39; and conscripts, 70, 132, 139; and discipline, 30, 63, 70, 139; and military justice, 30, 32, 33–34, 36–37, 39, 70; and regimental orders about, 27; and social class, 38, 139 Duel: and affairs of honor, 6, 91, 97–99; and Articles of War, 97; and challenges in Union Army, 93–101, 105–117; and courts-martial, 98–99, 105, 112;

Index  |  229

Duel (continued): and Irishmen, 96, 201n12; and number in Union Army, 95, 98, 105, 111, 210n30; and public opinion, 104; and southern gentlemen, 78–79, 96, 108; and war as duel, 99 Duncan, Martin, 159 Duryea, Hiram, 134 Duryée, Abram, 133 Dwight, A. W., 151 Dwight, Wilder, 123, 127–128 Education: and gentility, 41, 46; and regimental libraries, 46; and regimental schools, 46–47 Edwards, Henry, 165 English, George H., 115 Equality: as contested term, 146; and disobedience, 153–154; and manhood, 143, 146–149, 153, 158; and mutiny, 160; and officer leadership, 167; and physical conflict, 158 Etiquette, 53–55 Farrell, Michael, 69 Field officer courts-martial: and file closers, 140; and implementation, 12, 13, 187n24; and mutiny, 155; and regulations about, 12–13; and water torture, 134 File closers, 124, 139–141 Fisk, John, 155 Fitch, Sanford, 154 Floyd, John, 113, 115 Foster, Charles W., 162 Fox, Edwin R., 165–166, 210n52 Frazier, Thomas, 154 Freel, Thomas, 69 Fuller, Arthur B., 25, 46 Fuller, Charles, 126 Galpin, Henry, 140 Gambling: and army regulations, 23; and conscripts, 27; and courts-martial, 24, 33; and moral character, 18, 22; and regimental orders, 23–24, 27, 70 Gans, August, 160 Gardner, Chancy, 156–159

230  |  Index

Geable, Louis, 110 General courts-martial: and dismissing members, 15, 188n31; and disobedience, 153–156; and 89th Article of War, 15, 188n32; and 83rd Article of War, 30–37, 39, 59, 157; and frivolous charges, 36, 192n48; and honor, 84–87, 94–96, 98–99, 102–103, 105, 107, 110–117; and insubordination, 152–157, 165–166; and judge advocate, 14–15; and jurisdiction, 13; and 9th Article of War, 146, 155–156; and 99th Article of War, 82, 105, 107, 157; and mutiny, 155–157, 160; and officers’ violence, 59, 63–64, 84–87, 135–137, 145–146, 156–157, 165–166; and profanity, 28; and punishment, 12; and regulations about, 13–15, 188n32; and review process, 15, 188n32; and roughs, 69; and symbols of authority, 151; and U.S.C.T., 163, 165–166 Gentility: and army regulations, 8, 45–46, 48–50; and camp, 52; and cleanliness, 45, 47–50, 52–53; and conflict over, 40 44–45, 48–50, 53–55, 64, 74–75; and gentlemen, 42–44, 48; and manhood, 2, 4, 8, 19, 44–45, 50, 74–77, 119, 146–147, 172, 177; and military etiquette, 53–55; and physical prowess, 72, 74–77; and refinement, 41, 44–45, 53–54, 75; and self-control, 55–56, 58–59, 64, 147 Gentlemen: and comparison between north and south, 43, 44, 100; and conflict over term, 31, 33, 37, 39–41, 44–46, 49, 91, 104; and duels, 78, 81, 104; and 83rd Article of War, 28, 30–37, 39, 59, 91, 102; and honor, 41, 43, 54, 82–83, 86, 89, 91, 93–100, 102–104, 109–111, 117, 203n42; and moral character, 17–19, 31, 33–37, 39–41; and perceptions of, 8, 17, 31, 36–38, 41–43, 48, 54, 62–63, 76, 86, 91, 119–121; and physical prowess, 74–76; and self-control, 55–61, 63–64; and social status, 38, 42–43, 54, 78, 82, 99–100, 120–121, 177; and violence, 59–64, 82–83, 86, 89, 91 Gerhardt, E., 110 Gerish, John, 110 Goff, Nathan, 156

Gordon, George H., 127 Grant, Ulysses S., 17, 51, 150 Gray, John Chipman, 51, 121 Grebe, William M., 105, 112, 201–202n30, 203n42 Grosvenor, William, 26 Guthrie, George, 150 Haley, John: and attitude toward officers, 148–150, 153; and conscripts, 132; and drinking, 29–30; and military etiquette, 55; and moral character, 27 Hancock, Winfield Scott, 139, 146 Hanson, Ferdinand, 105, 112, 201–202n30, 203n42 Harney, William S., 113 Hartwell, John: and drinking, 37; and gentility, 41; and honor, 17–19, 79, 104, 117; and manhood, 17–19, 70, 76; and roughs, 77; and self-control, 57, 61; and social status, 149 Hayes, Rutherford B., 167–168 Heintzelman, Samuel Peter, 100–101 Hexamer, William, 115 Higgins, John, 151 Higginson, Henry Lee, 53 Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 164 Hight, John J., 132, 171–172, 179 Hodson, Eli, 61 Hoffman, Charles, 155 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr.: and battle, 125; and class attitudes, 121; and file closers, 124; and honor, 58 Holt, Daniel: and immigrants, 131; and moral character, 39; and profanity, 28; and social status, 149 Holt, Joseph: and Davis killing Nelson, 112; and honor, 86, 89–90, 103, 111–112; as judge advocate general, 85; and review process, 15n32; and 25th Article of War, 95, 111–112 Honor: and affairs of honor, 6, 60–63, 79–91, 93–117; and battle, 57–58, 141; and black men, 87; and boxing, 73, 105, 201–202n32; and challenges, 6, 34, 84, 91, 93–99, 105–117, 106, 109, 202n33,

209n38; and code duello, 78, 82, 94, 96, 98, 100, 103, 106, 109, 112, 117; and comparison between north and south, 3, 6, 8, 78–79, 96–98, 100, 105, 108, 118, 176; as contested term, 5–6, 79, 90–91, 96–97, 102–105, 108, 117–118; and courage, 57, 100, 141; and duels, 78–79, 83, 85, 91, 95–99, 105–106, 111, 112, 202nn31, 33; and gentlemen, 41, 43, 54, 82–83, 86, 89, 91, 93–100, 102–104, 108–111, 117; and manhood, 5–6, 17–18, 27, 57, 59, 64, 73, 77–79, 81, 89–91, 96–98, 102–106, 109, 111, 115, 117, 119, 172, 176–178; and perceptions of, 17–18, 90–91, 105, 111, 115–17; and regimental histories, 173–174, 176; and roughs, 27, 72, 77, 79, 82, 87, 90, 96, 105, 108, 118, 202n32; and social status, 27, 77–79, 82, 90–91, 96, 99–100, 105, 108; and war as duel, 44, 99, 117 Hooker, Joseph, 48 Horton, Charles P.: and affair of honor, 100–106, 108–109, 117; and court-martial, 100–106, 111 Howard, Oliver O., 85 Hudson, George, 155 Humphreys, Charles, 126 Hutton, Charles Gordon: and challenge, 93–94, 106, 101, 112; and court-martial, 94, 111; and southern honor, 105, 108 Immigrants: and boxing, 73; and conscripts, 9, 129; and discipline, 123, 128–134, 142, 164; and drinking, 29; and education in regiments, 46; and 5th New Jersey, 67; and manhood, 123, 128–134, 147, 164, 177; and regimental histories, 174; and social status, 121, 123, 128–134, 147, 164; and 20th Massachusetts, 149; and Union Navy, 72 Independent Company Patapsco Guards, and officer shooting, 137–138 Insubordination, 152–157, 165–166 Irish Brigade, 25 Jett, William, 37, 113–114 Johnson, Perley, 153

Index  |  231

Jordan, John, 136, 139 Judge advocate: and court-martial of Charles Gordon Hutton, 95; and court-martial of Charles P. Horton, 103; and court-martial of John T. Scott, 35; and court-martial of Julius Sauer, 110; and court-martial of Moses L. Bradley, 34; and prosecuting challenges, 115; and prosecuting 83rd Article of War, 34–35; and regulations about, 14–15; and review process, 15n32 Kappner, Ignatz, 48 Kautz, August V., 53 Kidder, John, 140 Killian, Benjamin, 154 Kinsley, Rufus, 25–26, 37, 146 Kircher, Henry, 48 Lacy, Ell C., 116 Leadership: and coolness in battle, 57, 168; and equality, 167; and physical prowess, 68; and social class, 121–122, 125–126, 128; and U.S.C.T., 163; and volunteers, 147, 168–169 Lee, Walter J., 155 Lee, William Raymond, 149 Lewis, George, 106–107 Lieber, Francis, 41, 45, 55 Lighthisen, George, 159 Lincoln, Abraham: and court-martial of Bernard McMahon, 86; and courtmartial of Charles Horton, 104–105; and Davis killing Nelson, 89; and duel in Union Army, 111; and executions, 14; and Joseph Holt, 85; and orders about Sabbath, 21; and view of war, 1 Link, Daniel, 145, 159 Lowell, Charles Russell: and battle, 126; and cleanliness, 48; and profanity, 28; and shooting of William Pendergast, 124, 204n11 Lyman, Theodore, 51, 121–122 Manhood: and African Americans, 163; attributes of, 4, 18; and civilization, 176–177; and comparison between north

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and south, 3, 7, 39, 78–79, 96–98, 100, 175–176; and contested terms of, 4–6, 8, 19–20, 22–23, 29, 33, 37, 39, 44–45, 49, 64–65, 72–75, 77, 79, 90–91, 96–98, 102–105, 117, 119, 143, 146, 170, 171–172, 175–180; and courage, 57, 59, 76, 80, 125, 141; definition, 3, 185n5; and discipline/ justice, 9, 15–16, 28, 30–37, 39, 97, 120–121, 123, 125, 127–130, 133, 141, 154, 158–160, 164, 170; and equality, 143, 146–149, 153–154, 158, 163; and gentility, 4, 8, 44–45, 49–51, 55, 64, 75–77, 119, 172; and honor, 5–6, 17–18, 27, 57, 64, 72, 77, 79–81, 86–87, 89–91, 96–99, 102–109, 111, 115, 117, 119, 176, 172, 178; and moral character, 4, 7–20, 25–29, 31, 39, 55–56, 73, 76, 119, 130, 172, 176; and physical prowess, 5, 67–68, 72–77, 90–91, 158–159, 172, 178; and postwar conflict over, 175–180; and relation to republic, 4, 9, 130, 174–175, 179; and self-control, 7, 55–59, 64–65, 72, 74, 90, 119, 131, 176, 178; and social status, 5–7, 16, 27–28, 37–38, 71–72, 75, 77, 87, 90–91, 105, 119–121, 128–133, 139, 141, 143, 164, 177; and submission to officers, 148, 153–154; and temperance, 25–26, 29, 31, 119; and violence, 64, 67–68, 72–73, 75–77, 86, 89–91, 104, 119–120, 128, 139 Marks, James, 46 Marye, William, 80–82 Mason, Edwin C., 151 Mather, Andrew, 140 Mattocks, Charles Porter: and discipline, 135, 150; and fighting, 76; and roughs, 77, 135; and social status, 37–38, 150 McAllister, Robert: and conflict over morality, 22–23; and profanity, 27; and temperance, 22, 25; and view of immigrants, 131 McClellan, George, 34–35, 48 McDowell, Irvin, 136 McGinety, John, 60 McHenry, David, 157 McMahon, Bernard J.: and court-martial, 84–86, 102, 112; and honor, 85, 98; and regimental history, 173; and shooting of Andrew McManus, 83–84, 89, 91

McManus, Andrew: and regimental history, 173; and shooting by Bernard McMahon, 83–87 McNealy, Charles, 63 Meade, George Gordon, 85, 151 Meigs, John Rodgers: and boxing, 74; and court-martial, 81–82; and gentility, 41; and honor, 80–82, 105; and rough and tumble fight, 80–82 Meigs, Louisa Rogers, 42 Meigs, Montgomery C.: and boxing, 74; and death of son, 82; and gentility, 41–42, 51 Mexican War, 142 Military discipline. See Discipline Military etiquette, 53–55, 64 Military justice: and African Americans, 87, 163; and Confederate armies, 15, 188n33; and courts of inquiry, 136, 138, 166; and gentility, 8; and honor, 6; and judge advocates, 14–15; and manhood, 5; and military commission, 138; and moral character, 39; and social status, 43, 105; and types of courts-martial, 10–15; and U.S.C.T., 163. See also Field officer courts-martial; General courts-martial; Regimental courts-martial Moral character: and Christianity, 20–22, 24- 25; and conflict over, 4, 19–20, 22–29, 31, 33, 36–37, 39, 176; and courtsmartial, 28, 30–37, 39; and gentility, 41–44; and manhood, 17–20, 25–26, 28–29, 31, 37, 39, 55–56, 70, 72–73, 76–77, 119, 129–130, 172, 176–177; and physical prowess, 72, 77; and regimental orders about, 21–24; and regimental organizations, 20, 22–25, 27–28; and the republic, 19, 130, 177–175; and social status, 27–28, 37–38, 139; and temperance, 25–27, 29, 31 Morgan, Robert H., 136 Morrissey, John, 73 Morton, Oliver P., 88–89, 199n51 Musser, Charles: and attitude about officers, 149–150; and military etiquette, 54–55; and moral character, 22; and mutiny, 161

Mutiny: and common causes of, 160; and corporal punishment, 127, 161; and general courts-martial, 155, 160; and 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry, 124; and 2nd Massachusetts Infantry, 127; and 7th New York, 160; and U.S.C.T., 165 Nelle, Augustus, 159 Nelson, John A., 106–108, 117 Nelson, William, 87–90, 112 Newton, James, 22, 69 Noyes, James, 26 Officers: and attitudes of enlisted men, 67, 122, 127, 146–149, 161, 167–168; and authority, 5, 120, 122–123, 125, 128, 135–139, 143, 147–149, 154, 156, 158, 160, 162, 167–169; and conflicts with enlisted men, 116, 120, 126–127, 132, 135–138, 143, 145–148, 154–166; and courtsmartial, 11–15, 28, 30–37, 136–138, 169; and discipline, 10–11, 28–30, 120–128, 133, 135–143, 156, 162–164, 168–170; and gentility, 45–46, 49–50, 52, 64, 121; and honor, 80–91, 93–96, 98, 100; and leadership, 57, 68, 121–122, 125, 128, 147, 163, 167–170; and morality, 21–22, 24–26, 28–29, 31–37, 39; and obedience, 153–156, 167–168; and social status, 5–7, 16, 37–38, 54–55, 71, 105, 120–128, 133, 135, 137, 139, 143, 149–150, 164; and subverting authority, 151–152, 155; and training, 10, 186n16; and U.S.C.T., 162–166; and violence, 58, 59–63, 68–69, 76–77, 80–91, 105, 120, 123–125, 128, 132–133, 135–140, 142–143, 145–147, 155–159, 165–166 Olcott, Egbert, 38 Opdycke, Emerson, 167–168 Orders: and authority, 123; and camp, 52; and cleanliness, 48–50; and coercion in battle, 139, 141; and drinking, 27, 70; and equipment, 52; and fighting, 27, 69–70; and file closers, 139, 141; and gambling, 23, 27, 70; and gentility, 49–50; and insubordination, 154; and military etiquette, 54; and obedience, 153; and the Sabbath, 21–22; and sanitation, 52; and symbols of authority, 151–152

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O’Rourke, James, 108 Palfrey, Frank, 149 Paul, Charles, 105, 202n31 Pendergast, William, 124 Phelps, J. W., 152 Philippine War, 176 Physical prowess: and gentility, 72, 74–75, 77, 178; and gymnasiums, 74–75; and manhood, 2, 5, 19, 33, 67, 74–75, 77, 90–91, 107, 119, 147, 158–159, 172, 177–178; and social class, 33, 71–72, 74–75, 77, 90–91, 178 Piatt, Jacob, 153 Pierce, Taylor: and authority, 148, 153; and courage, 61, 168; and military etiquette, 55; and moral character, 19, 27; and roughs, 179 Profanity: as attribute of manhood, 22–23, 28–29, 35, 39, 87; and gentility, 44; and military justice, 28–29, 31–37, 39; and moral character, 18, 27, 38; and roughs, 132 Punishment: and antebellum army, 142; corporal, 127–128, 132–133, 135, 161; by courts-martial, 82, 85, 91, 103, 111–112, 134, 140, 145; for immoral behavior, 23–24, 26, 28, 30–31, 38; and manhood, 127–129, 132–133, 135, 161; and mutiny, 161; and regulations about, 11–15, 43, 95, 97, 153, 193n5, 208–209n18; and social status, 129–136; for striking officers, 146, 155; and types used by officers, 11–15, 14, 17, 21–23, 28, 38, 47, 49, 124, 127, 134–136, 167, 187–188n27; and U.S.C.T., 164; for violations of regulations, 21–23, 28, 30, 31, 49, 64, 155; and water torture, 134 Raffan, George, 171 Rankin, William, 61 Raplee, Sylvester, 69 Redman, John, 138 Refinement: and civilization, 177; and conflict over, 44–45, 53–55, 65, 75–76; and gentlemen, 40–41, 45–46, 54, 74–76, 86; and manhood, 5, 19, 44–45, 55, 74–76, 119;

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and military standards, 45–46, 50, 52–55, 65; and physical prowess, 75–76, 86 Regimental courts-martial: and alcohol, 30; and regulations about, 11–12; and roughs, 69; and sexual immorality, 24; and striking officers, 155 Regimental histories: and conscripts, 172– 173; and 58th Indiana, 172; and honor, 173–174, 176; and 39th Illinois, 172; and 36th Illinois, 174; and war for manhood, 172, 174–175, 180 Regimental order books: and cleanliness, 52; and discipline, 129; and drinking, 70; and fights, 105; and file closers, 139; and gambling, 23, 70; and insubordination, 154; and military etiquette, 54; and regimental courts-martial, 11; and roughs, 70, 105; as sources, 5, 7; and striking officers, 146; and symbols of authority, 152; and violence by officers, 133 Reid, James, 81 Reilly, Terrence, 114 Religion: and chaplains, 24–25; and conflict over, 23; and organizations to promote, 24–25, 27, 39; and regulations about, 21–22; and revivals, 20; in Union Army, 27, 70 Revere, Paul Joseph, 149 Robards, Jessie, 107–108, 111–112 Robinson, William, 171 Rogers, John, 41 Rollins, James, 81 Roosevelt, Theodore, 177 Ropes, Henry, 100 Rose, Gottlieb C., 105, 112, 201–202n30, 203n42 Ross, Levi, 90 “Rough and tumble”: and fight at West Point, 80–81, 96; and roughs, 108; and southern honor, 78 Roughs: and discipline, 16, 27, 70, 123–124, 128, 132–133, 135, 139, 142, 164, 169; and drinking, 27, 70, 90, 172; and equality, 158; and fighting, 2, 72, 77, 90, 105, 118, 135, 172; and gambling, 70; and honor, 27, 72, 77, 79, 82, 87, 90, 96, 105, 108, 118–119, 123; and manhood, 16, 27, 72, 90, 119, 128, 132–133, 147, 173, 177; and military justice,

105; and officer shooting of, 136–137; and perceptions of, 8, 132, 172, 179; and regimental histories, 173–174, 180; and social status, 6, 27, 71, 90, 105, 119, 121, 139, 147, 158, 164; and violence, 69, 72, 77, 79, 90, 105, 119, 128, 132–133, 135, 138–139, 142 Russell, Henry Sturgis, 47 Sanitary Commission, 22 Sanitation, 52, 64 Sauer, Julius, 110–114 Scammon, E. P., 23 Schartz, Carl, 154 Scherneckau, August, 68 Scott, John T., 35–36, 114 Sedgwick, John, 85 Self-control: and ambiguities of, 7, 33, 55–59, 64, 72, 178; and courage, 57–58, 61; and emotion, 56–57; and honor, 58, 64, 85–86; and manhood, 18, 55–59, 61–62, 64–65, 72, 77, 90, 119, 129, 131, 147, 176, 178; and physical prowess, 72–74; and violence, 33, 58–59, 64–65, 71, 72–73, 85–86, 90, 123 Sewell, William Joyce, 68 Shaw, Hugh, 171 Sherman, John, 103 Slave Pen (Alexandria, VA), 134, 206n34 Smith, Richard Penn, 85 Sneden, Robert Knox, 30 Social status: and discipline, 7–8, 16, 27–28, 38, 54, 120–130, 133, 135, 139, 142–143, 158, 164; and honor, 27, 77–78, 81, 82, 87, 90–91, 96, 99, 105, 108; and manhood, 5–7, 16, 27–28, 37, 45, 71–75, 77, 79, 82, 87, 90–91, 105, 119, 128–133, 139, 143, 147, 164, 177–178; and military justice, 43, 105. See also Class Southwick, Thomas P., 1 Spanish-American War, 176, 178 Speed, James, 89 Stanton, Edwin M., 89, 95, 162, 199n54 Starr, Samuel H., 68 Stone, Charles G., 135–136, 166 Stormont, Gilbert R., 172 Strüder, Herman, 110–111

Stuart, George, 24 Substitutes, and discipline, 129, 135, 142, 169; and manhood, 27; and officer shooting of, 136–137; and roughs, 70; and social class, 9, 129–130 Sumner, E. V., 112–115 Swarthout, L. B., 165 Sweeney, George, 112 Sweeney, T. W., 35, 114 Taft, J. B., 152 Temperance: as attribute of manhood, 25–26, 28–29, 31, 37; and conflict over, 22–26, 29, 31, 37, 39; and discipline, 26, 28–31, 38–39; societies, 22–25, 27, 46 Thomas, George H., 46, 88 Thomas, Joseph Conable, 46 Thompson, William, 159 Underhill, Edward, 137–138 Union Army: and affairs of honor, 79–91, 93–103, 105–118; and chaplains, 24–25, 28, 46–47; and class conflict, 126–128, 133, 143, 147; and discipline, 10, 20–24, 26, 28–31, 39, 49–50, 97, 120–143, 147, 155–156, 162–164; and drinking, 29–30; and education, 46; and gentility, 45–54, 76; and manhood, 1; and military justice, 10–15, 24, 28, 30–37, 39, 59, 64, 84, 87, 94–99, 102–103, 105–117, 134, 136–138, 140, 146, 155; and morality, 19–31, 33–37, 39, 70; and mutiny, 155, 160–161, 165; and northern society, 1; and obedience, 153–159, 168–169; organization and training, 9–10, 10, 186n16; and privates’ defiance of officers, 146–149, 153–162, 165–166; and professionalism, 168–169; and religious organizations, 20–25, 27; and social status, 7–8, 6, 27–28, 38, 71, 77, 79, 90, 105, 120–131, 133, 135–137, 139, 143, 49, 164; and subverting authority, 151–152; and Union navy, 72; and U.S.C.T., 162–165; and verbal altercations, 158–159; and violence, 7, 59, 64, 67–69, 77, 86–87, 90, 105–106, 120, 124, 128, 131–133, 135–143, 146–147, 155–156

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Union Leagues, 120–121 Union Navy, 72, 97 Upton, Emory, 25, 38, 140 U.S. Colored Troops: and education, 46–47; and 83rd Article of War, 24, 34; and fight with 58th Indiana, 171; and honor, 87; and relations between officers and privates, 162–166; and sexual immorality, 24 Van Dyke, William, 154 Veteran Reserve Corps, 67–68, 70–71 Victor, Orville J., 19 Vimont, Thomas, 60–63, 86 Violence: against officers, 145, 147, 155–159; and discipline, 38, 120, 122–125, 128, 133, 135–143, 156, 164; and drinking, 29–30; and honor, 59, 83, 86–87, 105; and manhood, 7, 29, 33, 59, 64, 67–68, 72–73, 75–76, 86, 89–91, 104–105, 128, 141; and military justice, 34, 59, 105, 136–138, 146; by officers, 7, 38, 60, 63, 68, 76–77, 83–91, 120, 122–125, 128, 132–133, 135–143, 145–147, 156–159, 165–166; perceptions of, 7–8, 27, 29, 64, 72–73, 86, 90–91, 105, 118, 128, 135; and regimental orders about, 27; and roughs, 69, 72, 77, 79, 90, 105, 108, 118, 120, 128, 133, 135–137, 139, 142; and self-control, 58–59, 61, 64, 76, 90; and social class, 135; in Union Army, 1, 7, 64, 67–69, 77, 83, 87, 90, 128, 131–133, 135–137, 141–143, 146–147, 155–156 Volunteers: and comparison with conscripts, 9, 27, 70, 139, 141–142; and courage, 141; and discipline, 10, 15, 28, 133, 137, 141–143, 153–154, 159, 164, 169; and disobedience, 63, 153; and 83rd Article of

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War, 30; and equality, 148, 169; and gentility, 48–49, 52, 64; and honor, 80, 106, 141; and immigrants, 131; and manhood, 4, 128, 133; and military justice, 15; and moral character, 19–20, 28–29, 39; and officers, 146–147, 167, 169; and social class, 120, 130, 143; and Union Army, 1, 9; and violence, 147; and William Nelson, 88 Wagner, Philip, 155 Ward, Joseph, 27 War Department: and Davis killing Nelson, 89–90; and field officer courts, 12–13; and U.S.C.T., 162 Weir, James, 154 Weld, Stephen Minot: and authority, 123; and force in battle, 124; and gentility, 48, 50–51; and leadership, 125; and officer shooting, 124 Welsh, John, 35 Welsh, Peter, 149, 168 Weston, Roswell, 37–38 West Point, 41, 80, 95 Wheeler, William W., 155 Whitman, George, 57 Wickenhaffer, Henry, 160 Willich, August, 100–101 Winslow, Cleveland, 24, 134–135 Winters, William, 30 Winthrop, Fredric, 134, 150 Wratislaw, Edwin, 154 Wright, Hiram, 171 Wright, Horatio G., 87, 89 Wright, J. W. B., 115 Wygant, M. H., 34–35 Young, George, 156

About the Author

L ori e n F o ot e is Associate Professor of History at the University of Central Arkansas and the author of Seeking the One Great Remedy: Francis George Shaw and Nineteenth-Century Reform.



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