Civil War Times October 2017

Regarding the image of Confederate Brig. Gen. Micah Jenkins in the June 2017 account of James Longstreet’s wounding (page 30), are you sure that identification is correct? If you look at the image of Jenkins in Ezra Warner’s Generals in Gray, it appears to be a different person. Your photo depicts someone wearing what looks to be a Union colonel’s uniform but Jenkins was never part of the United States Army. In addition, note the difference in hairstyles and that the part in his hair is on two different sides in the images. The eyebrows and mouth also seem to be different. I do acknowledge that the cap emblem with the #5 on it does seem to fit the fact that Jenkins was in command of the 5th South Carolina. William…

A hand-drawn map of a Confederate battery at Gloucester Point, Va., depicts the 11 guns, star-shaped fort, guardhouse, and hospital—even the flagpoles—that stood opposite Yorktown defending the eastern side of the York River in early 1862. The document, drawn by Piedmont Artillery member William Powers, was passed down for decades by the descendants of Henry Black, a fellow artillery member, according to a report on dailypress.com. The Confederates retreated from the site and Yorktown on May 3-4, 1862, during the early phases of the Peninsula Campaign.…

AT ANTIETAM, a family’s missing Civil War soldier has been found at last. Porter Austin was only 22 when he bid his parents goodbye in August 1862, leaving Camillus, N.Y., to join the 122nd New York’s Company H. Porter and his mates experienced their first combat in a skirmish at Williamsport, Md., on September 20. By October 19— barely two months into his service—Porter Austin was dead from typhoid fever, which a friend claimed had been aggravated by drinking a quart of fresh cider. Porter’s parents never recovered their son, recording only “died in the Civil War; body not returned.” Porter Austin had disappeared. After 155 years, Porter has been found through the efforts of descendant David Welker and the historians at Antietam National Battlefield. Their research found Porter correctly identified…

UNION AND CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS from Missouri were honored in a rededication of a 100-year-old monument at Vicksburg National Military Park in Mississippi on May 27. The ceremony recognized a $375,000 repair to the imposing bronze and granite memorial. One of only two monuments honoring both sides on U.S. battlefields (the other is Shiloh), it remembers 27 Union and 15 Confederate units that served from Missouri. Erected at a spot where opposing Missouri regiments clashed, it was dedicated in October 1917 in an effort to reconcile sectional divisions in the leadup to World War I. The repair itself stems from a local effort. The Department of Missouri Sons of Union Veterans applied for state funds to repair the damage. But the state ultimately refused to pay because the monument is in…

In the spring of 1865, about a month before the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, Union Lieutenant Richard Baxter Foster waged a very different war in the Trans-Mississippi West. Baxter was, he explained in a March 8 letter to his wife, Lucy, “teaching a school of the Sergeants and Corporals of the Company about one hour each day.” It was a task in which he took “great pleasure,” enjoying the fact that the “men are very much interested and thank me every night for the lesson. I never saw a body of men so anxious to learn as our regiment now are.” A native of New Hampshire and graduate of Dartmouth College, Baxter had moved to Illinois and then Iowa in the 1850s, where he was teaching African-American students…

CAMP LETTERMAN, GETTYSBURG For more than a decade, Glenn Hayes of Pleasanton, N.Y., has worked to preserve hallowed ground near Gettysburg where the famed Camp Letterman once stood. Camp Letterman housed more than 3,000 Union and Confederate wounded after the July 1863 Battle of Gettysburg, with some soldiers remaining there until November 1863. Neglect of the site has haunted Hayes since his first visit to Gettysburg, and he is now working to prevent the real estate company S&A, based in State College, Pa., from building homes on 17 acres once occupied by part of the hospital. For an extended interview with Hayes, go to historynet.com. CAMP DOUGLAS, CHICAGO A prisoner of war camp where prisoners died of smallpox is slated to become the site of Culvers, a burger chain, according to a local…