HARDTACK
A Publication
of the Indianapolis Civil War Round Table – November 2001
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President – Dave
Sutherland Secretary – Dr. Betty Enloe
Vice President – Dr.
Lloyd Hunter Treasurer – Doug Wagner
Hardtack Editor – Debby Chestnut
Distribution
Managers – Dorothy Jones & Peg Bertelli Quiz Master – Tony Trimble
November 12, 2001
Monday – 7:30 p.m. at
the Indiana Historical Society
450 W. Ohio St.
(Parking in lot north
of the Society off New York St. – Please enter via Northeast Door)
The Battle of Franklin, TN
Presented by David
Fraley
David Fraley’s presentation
will focus on the Battle of Franklin itself, but he intends to put it into
focus with later historical and contemporary events, including the Siege of
Pelaliu, the battles for Guadalcanal and Tarawa, the D-Day invasion of June 6,
1944, the Tet offensive in Vietnam in l968, and the recent attack on
America. This should be an informative,
intriguing, and perhaps provocative experience for the Indianapolis Civil War
Round Table.
About the Speaker: A native of Anderson, Indiana, David Fraley
currently serves as the historian and assistant curator at the Carter House
Museum in Franklin, Tennessee. He also
lectures nationally on the American War Between the States (especially on the
Battle of Franklin). He has appeared on
A & E’s “Civil War Journal, “ as well as that channel’s “Combat
Series.” In addition to various
television appearances, David has offered battlefield tours along with such
historians as Ed Bearss, Wiley Sword, Thomas Cartwright, and James McPherson.
David’s first book, “The Maury Greys,”
Co. H, lst Tennessee Infantry, C.S.A., is to be published by late spring
2002. David resides in a l829 farmhouse
on the Franklin, Tennessee battlefield.
Be sure and invite a friend to hear our speaker.
DINNER
AT SHAPIRO’S
ALL MEMBERS AND GUESTS ARE
INVITED TO SHAPIRO’S DELI AT 5:30 P.M.
TO ENJOY DINNER AND FELLOWSHIP PRIOR TO THE MEETING.
Coming Events
¨ 21st
Annual Midwest Civil War Round Table Conference hosted by the Chicago and
Milwaukee
CWRT’s
– April 19-21 at Lisle, Illinois, 20 miles west of Chicago. More information at a later date.
¨ June
24-28 – ICWRT Trip – Kentucky and Southern Indiana. Nikki Schofield has
tentative agenda.
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President
If anyone is interested in serving on a
committee to write and prepare a pamphlet marking the Indianapolis Civil War
Round Table’s upcoming 50th anniversary, please let Dave Sutherland know. So far there has been one volunteer.
Hardtack Editor
Please
send book reviews, interesting articles, etc. to place in the Hardtack to me at
the following: Debby Chestnut, 441 S. Catherwood Ave., Indianapolis, 46219;
E-Mail: dchad@indy.net or chestnud@mail.ips.k12.in.us. Phone:
356-5117 (home) or 226-4101 (work):Fax: 226-3444. Deadline for December Hardtack: November 21.
Treasurer
Just a reminder that enlistment for the
2001-2002 campaign is due. Please mail your check to: D.A. Wagner, 5245 Kathcart Way, Indianapolis, IN 46254.
We still plan to deliver the Hardtack via E-mail for as many members as
possible. Our goal is to reduce the
costs as much as possible so that funds can be used for other purposes. Please make your E-mail address available to
Dorothy Jones (joejones@iquest.net)
and Doug Wagner (dougwag@msn.com).
New
Book
Littleton
Washington’s Journal
Life in Antebellum Washington,
Vigilante San Francisco & Confederate
Richmond
Edited
by: Douglas Lee Gibboney
Born in Washington, D.C. to one of the First Families
of Virginia, Littleton Q. Washington attended Dickinson College in Carlisle,
Pennsylvania, before securing a clerkship at the U.S. Treasury Department. In l855, he joined the U.S. Customs House in
San Francisco and became embroiled in that city’s Vigilante Uprising. Dismissed from office during James
Buchanan’s administration, Washington made a wild and dangerous journey home
across Mexico, which was then entering a bloody reform war. An ardent secessionist, Washington secured a
lieutenant’s commission in the Confederate Army and served at First Bull
Run. He briefly edited the Richmond
Examiner before joining the Confederate State Department where he worked with
Judah Benjamin for the balance of the war.
This journal is a fascinating character study of one man caught up in
the most turbulent period of American History.
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CIVIL WAR QUIZ
By Tony Trimble
1. Name the Union Major General, a non West-Pointer, who faced a court of inquiry after the federal right was shattered at Chickamauga.
2. Name the Confederate brigade commander who suffered a near-fatal shot
through the lung at the Battle of Hatcher’s Run.
3. Name the Confederate naval captain who became a brigadier general in order
to take command of the outer defenses of Mobile Bay.
4. What was boiled rye?
5. What besieged stronghold was know as “Prairie Dog Town”?
Answers to Sept. Quiz: 1) 40th Mississippi; Battle of Bentonville,
N.C.; 2) John L. Routt; 3)
Louisiana Tigers; 4) Gray Eagle; 5)
Covered Bridge Gun
2
Bristoe Station Threatened
October 14th was
the 138th anniversary of the Battle of Bristoe Station, one of the
123 times Union and Confederate forces clashed on Virginia soil during the
Civil War. The battle on October 14, 1863 went this way: Confederate Lt. Gen.
Ambrose Hill’s Corps came upon two corps of the Union army apparently fleeing
across Broad Run near Bristoe Station and attacked without proper
reconnaissance. Union soldiers, commanded by Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren,
and hidden behind a railroad embankment, decimated the attacking Confederate
ranks with withering rifle fire at close range. More than a month later,
Confederate Commander Robert E. Lee, in a report, wrote: “General Hill explains
how, in his haste to attack the Third Army Corps of the enemy, he overlooked
the presence of the Second, which was the cause of the disaster that ensued.”
Union Brig. Gen. Alexander
Hays described the volleys that tore into the Confederate ranks as a “perfect
hurricane of shot.” So many Confederates fell during the brief encounter that
most were buried where they fell. “Long lines of pits marked the last resting
places of those who were no longer our enemies,” Hayes quoted. Hundreds of
Confederate soldiers are there to this day. Precise locations of many graves in
the area still are unknown. The Sons of Confederate Veterans conducted a
thermal-imaging search by airplane and discovered approximately 600 graves,
leading to believe that this could be the largest known Confederate
cemetery. More exist in the area and
might not be found in time because Centex Homes has designs on developing the
property. Centex Homes has offered about 120 acres to preserve the graves
already found. Is this battlefield yet
another one transformed forever into another housing development? The clock is ticking. For
more information contact: Bobbie McManus at bobbiemc@erols.com
Congress Allocates $11M for Battlefield
Preservation
The
Civil War Preservation Trust (CWPT) applauded House and Senate conferees for
including a provision in the Fiscal Year 2002 Interior Appropriations Act (H.R.
2217) for Civil War battlefield preservation. The funding bill allocates $11
million over three years for a competitive grant program to save endangered
Civil War battlefields. The bill now moves on to the House and Senate for a
final vote, then to the President for his signature. Little opposition to the measure is anticipated. This money will
allow preservation of thousands of acres of historic land that would be lost to
urban sprawl.
With
35,000 members, CWPT is the largest nonprofit battlefield preservation
organization in the United States. Its
mission is to preserve our nation’s endangered Civil War battlefields and to
promote appreciation of these hallowed grounds.
Please write your Senators (c/o
U.S. Senate, Washington DC 20510) and Members of Congress (c/o House of
Representatives, Washington DC 20515), and tell them of your support for HR 2217. The appropriation has been recommended,
but must be voted on by the Senate and House. YOUR letters CAN make a
difference. For a list of
congressional supporters of the program, refer to: www.civilwar.org/newsroom/append.
3
Thanksgiving Proclaimed During The Civil War
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION
The year that is drawing toward
its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful
skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to
forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so
extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften the heart
which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.
In the midst of a civil war of
unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states
to invite and provoke their aggressions, peace has been preserved with all nations,
order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony
has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while
that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of
the Union.
Needful diversions of wealth and strength from the fields
of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the
shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and
the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded
even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased,
notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the
battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented
strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large
increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised,
nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious
gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins,
hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
It has seemed to me fit and
proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as
with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore,
invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those
who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of
November next as a day of thanksgiving
and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions
justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also,
with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend
to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or
sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged,
and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds
of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine
purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.
In testimony whereof I have
hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington this third day of October, in the year of our
Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the
United States the eighty-eighth.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Thaddeus Sobieski Lowe
1832-1913
Impressed with the intelligence-gathering unpredictable
nature of balloon flights, were possibilities of manned balloons, Abraham
Lincoln appointed Thaddeus Lowe chief of army aeronautics in 1861; by the time
he resigned his post in 1863, Lowe and his crew had made more than 3,000
flights over enemy territory.
A few months before he
received his appointment, Lowe, a renowned aeronautic scientist, made a 9-hour,
900-mile flight from Cincinnati, Ohio to Unionville, South
Carolina. Unfortunately, his trip followed the fall of Fort Sumter by
just a week; when he arrived in South Carolina, the Confederate army summarily
arrested him on charges of spying for the Union. Lowe managed to convince them
of his innocence but, being a die-hard Union man, immediately rushed back to
Washington to do just what he'd been accused of doing: he offered his services
for intelligence-gathering to the Union army.
Working under the auspices
of the War Department, Lowe received the pay of a colonel, plus materials and
labor. His first mission involved gathering information on
Confederate troop deployment shortly after First Bull Run in mid-July
1861. During George B. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign in the summer and fall of
the same year, Lowe conducted almost daily flights over the Virginia landscape,
producing reports and photographs of the Confederate position.
Thanks to additional army
appropriations, Lowe was able to expand and improve his fleet. He built seven
airships of various sizes and equipped them with newly designed generators that
could produce hydrogen gas in the air. The largest of his ships, the Intrepid,
was 32,000 cubic feet in size and required 1,200 yards of silk ' He
used it to conduct surveillance during and after Fredericksburg.
Although the Confederate
Army lacked the resources to launch its own full-scale aeronautics program,
Captain E. Porter Alexander oversaw several ascensions by
Confederate aeronauts in 1861 and 1862, who reported on Union troop
deployment during the Peninsula and Seven Days campaigns. Balloons were often
shot down behind enemy lines or, due to the unpredictable nature of balloon
flights, were unable to return to camp in time to provide crucial information
to the command. The last use of balloons by the Confederate army took place in
1863, after its largest balloon was swept away by a strong, high wind.
The Union soon abandoned
the often risky use of surveillance balloons as well. Lowe ended his career
with the Union army when the newly appointed commander, Joseph Hooker sharply
reduced the role of aeronautics in the Army of the Potomac in late 1863.
Shortly after the war ended, Lowe moved to California, where he continued
experimenting with aeronautics and other new technologies. The Lowe Observatory
in Pasadena, California, was built as a testament to his scientific
accomplishments.
A
Little Civil War Humor
A commanding officer who heavily waxed his
moustache was teased by his soldiers, who would shout at him “take those mice
out of your mouth, we can see their tails hanging out.”
5
Drinks for the Sick
As
cold weather sets in, so does sickness. Here are a few old time remedies that
you may want to try for your ailments. These may have worked wonders for our
Civil War era relatives.
Apple Tea: Roast sour apples and pour boiling water upon them. Drink it when
cold.
A Very Refreshing Draught in a
Fever: Put a few sprigs of
sage, balm and sorrel into a jug, having first washed and dried them. Take off
the yellow part of the rind of a small lemon; remove the white, slice the lemon
and put it into the jug with part of the peel; pour in three pints of boiling
water, sweeten it and stop it close.
Another
Drink [untitled]: Boil an ounce
and a half of tamarinds, three ounces of currants, and two of stoned raisins,
in three pints of water until near one third is wasted; then strain it.
Another Drink [also untitled]: Put a teacup of cranberries in a cup of water,
and mash them. In the mean time, boil two quarts of water with one large
spoonful of Indian or oatmeal, and a piece of lemon peel; add the cranberries
and some loaf sugar, but take care to leave a strong flavor of the fruit. Put
in a gill of sherry wine, or less if required, and boil it half an hour more.
Then strain it. [I think the addition of wine is the key to this drink's
success.]
From The
Young Housekeeper’s Friend
INDIANAPOLIS CIVIL WAR ROUND TABLE
Campaign
2001-2002 Presenter’s & Speakers
MEETING DATES PRESENTER SUBJECT
September 10, 2001 Nikki
Schofield The
Confederate Secret
Service
in Canada
October 8, 2001 Bill Anderson The 19th Michigan
November 12, 2001 David Fraley The Battle of
Franklin, TN
December 10, 2001 Dale Phillips Ben Butler and the
Occupation
of New Orleans
January 14, 2002 Dan Mitchell The Mississippi
February 11, 2002 Steve Jackson My Boys in Blue: A Tribute
March 11, 2002 Dick
Skidmore John Hunt
Morgan: Then and Now
April 8, 2002 Peter Carmichael TBA
May 13, 2002 Gary Ecelbarger Frederick W. Lander: The
Great
Natural American Soldier
June 10, 2002 Herman Hattaway The Presidency of Jefferson
Davis
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