Civil War Times February 2017

BEER HERE! I found Eric J. Mink’s article “Hops and History” in the October issue a refreshing read on a hot summer day. In September 2016, a new craft brewery called Oozlefinch opened at Fort Monroe, Va., and each of its beers is inspired by a different aspect of the fort’s history. My favorite, “Short Fuse,” is brewed in honor of Lawrence Murray, a hotheaded sailor aboard USS Monitor who had a penchant for getting drunk and causing trouble. In July 1862, Congress banned spirituous liquor on board Union vessels unless it was being used for medicinal purposes. Shortly after the ban went into effect on September 1, Murray seized an ax and tried to kill another sailor. He was placed in chains on the deck but later fell overboard (perhaps…

High winds and rain from Hurricane Matthew hammered historic forts along the southern Atlantic coast, and the high tide on October 8, 2016, helped lift the storm surge to damaging levels. In Charleston, Fort Moultrie National Monument and Fort Sumter National Monument were able to reopen soon after the storm, although Fort Sumter’s restrooms remained closed due to storm damage at press time. Fort Pulaski National Monument, off Savannah, Ga., was flooded when the storm surge topped its 12-foot walls. Civil War artifacts had been moved to higher ground before the storm, but the fort itself suffered the loss of tin roofs, 300 trees and the drawbridges that provide access to the bastion. At press time, the site was still closed, though repairs were in the works. The rough waters…

THIS IMAGE OF UNION SOLDIERS by Andrew Russell provides a cautionary tale in the use of primary sources. When the National Archives purchased it from Mathew Brady’s studio in the mid-1870s, accompanying notes claimed that it showed the troops in the 1864 trenches of Petersburg, Va. The picture appeared in numerous books for years identified as such. But a copy of the photograph at the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland includes Russell’s handwritten caption that explains these are New Jersey troops of Brig. Gen. William Brooks’ VI Corps division in trenches along the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg, Va., just prior to the May 3, 1863, Second Battle of Fredericksburg. During that struggle, a portion of the Chancellorsville Campaign, the VI Corps applied pressure on the right flank of the…

CIVIL WAR BATTLEFIELDS bring the past vividly to life. Walking these sites enables us to make a connection with earlier Americans that cannot be duplicated in a classroom or anywhere else. I have taken students to Antietam, Gettysburg, Chancellorsville, Bull Run, Petersburg, Cedar Creek, and other sites for more than 30 years, and the experience has proved singularly effective in helping illuminate 19th-century attitudes and motivations. I want to focus on Antietam to illustrate how battlefields resonate with students. Readers of Civil War Times, unlike many undergraduates when they begin my classes, know that Antietam, fought on September 17, 1862, closed Robert E. Lee’s first invasion of the United States and produced approximately 23,000 casualties. My students and I follow the battle chronologically during a six-hour walk ing tour. Traversing the…

LEGEND HAS IT that gray coats became popular military attire because General Winfield Scott’s Regulars wore them, due to a shortage of blue wool, at the Battle of Chippewa during the War of 1812. Many Northern Civil War regiments were formed out of local militia units outfitted in gray uniforms, and the untried troops often wore those clothes as they marched off to what was supposed to be a very short war. The result was a great deal of battlefield confusion. Some Union units wore gray well into 1862. Just before Shiloh, on April 3, 1862, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant reviewed his army and noted many men were “still in…gray uniforms.” The following is just a small sample of the North’s uniform irregularity.…

CANADIAN MILITARY OFFICER and historian Ian C. Hope combed through the records of West Point graduates and turned up 1,135 who served the North or the South. He began studying their education and how it influenced the Civil War. He found that about one-third of West Point graduates had prewar military experience, almost one-third served as general officers, and they also commanded most military departments. He gathers his results and how they fit into the history of American military doctrine in A Scientific Way of War: Antebellum Military Science, West Point, and the Origins of American Military Thought (2015). CWT:Is the West Point education uniquely American? ICH:Selection into the academy and class ranking within the institution was based strictly upon merit, and not social class or accidents of birth, or birth right.…