Diary of 1st Sergeant John L. Ransom: March 8, 1864

Were unloaded last night and given a chance to straighten our limbs. Stayed all night in the woods, side of the track, under a heavy guard. Don't know where we are, as guards are very reticent.

SOURCE: John L. Ransom, Andersonville Diary, p. 39

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: March 31, 1863

Another stride of the grim specter, and cornmeal is selling for $17 per bushel. Coal at $20.50 per ton, and wood at $30 per cord. And at these prices one has to wait several days to get either. Common tallow candles are selling at $4 per pound. I see that some furnished houses are now advertised for rent; and, I hope that all the population that can get away, and subsist elsewhere, will leave the city.

The lower house of Congress has passed a most enormous tax bill, which I apprehend cannot be enforced, if it becomes a law. It will close half the shops — but that may be beneficial, as thousands have rushed into trade and become extortioners.

I see some batteries of light artillery going toward Petersburg. This is to be used against the enemy when he advances in that direction from Suffolk. No doubt another attempt will be made to capture Richmond. But Lee knows the programme, I doubt not.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 283

Diary of 1st Lieutenant Lemuel A. Abbott: Monday, September 19, 1864 – Part 1

We received orders at 10 o'clock last night to march at 2 o'clock this morning which we did. Daylight brought us up near Opequan Creek on the Winchester-Berryville pike. Wilson's Cavalry had charged and carried the enemy's picket line and earthworks protecting the pike near both the East and West entrance of the gorge through which this road runs, taken a goodly number of prisoners, and it looked like business again. A large number of troops moved in two or more columns across the Opequan for about a mile and then up the narrow winding pike in one column through a little valley or gorge, known as the Berryville canyon to us, but as Ash Hollow locally, with second growth or scrub oak and ash trees and underbrush coming close down its scraggy abrupt banks two hundred feet high more or less in places after crossing Abraham Creek, to the road and rivulet winding along the gorge for nearly three miles— the source of which stream is wrongly given on all maps pertaining to this battle — on past General Sheridan near the west end of the canyon towards Winchester sitting on his horse a little off the road to the right in the open field on slightly ascending ground watching the column our brigade was in which, owing to its plucky fight under great disadvantages at the Battle of the Monocacy which largely saved the city of Washington barely nine weeks before, he had selected for the most important point in his line of battle at the head of the gorge on the pike to Winchester with our valiant regiment and the Fourteenth New Jersey planted across it even the colors of each which were in the centre of the regiments, being in the center of the pike and the rest of the army ordered to guide on us. Surely this was the place of honor in the battle that day for the Sixth Corps followed the pike in all the assaults of the day which was quite crooked including the first one until the enemy was driven completely routed through the city of Winchester when night put an end to the fighting,

Where Sheridan's army crossed Opequan Creek, Va., Sept. 19, 1864:
steel bridge built 1907; view of Winchester-Berryville pike looking
west towards Wood's Mill and Winchester, taken from the spring
June 29, 1908. [Click on the picture to enlarge.]

SOURCE: Lemuel Abijah Abbott, Personal Recollections and Civil War Diary, 1864, p. 150-1

Diary of Private Charles Wright Wills: May 17, 1861

Sun and dust. Hot as —— the deuce. Lots of drilling and ditto fun. Suits me to a T. Am going in for three years as quick as I can. All chance for fight is given up here. We are getting sharp. We trade off our extra fodder for pies, milk and good things.

It's too hot to write. I am going to sleep.

SOURCE: Charles Wright Wills, Army Life of an Illinois Soldier, p. 14

Diary of Sergeant Major Luman Harris Tenney: March 6, 1863

In the morning the colonel called the officers together and stated in tears that he should resign if the thing were not ferreted out. I was in Case's tent. C. and H. burned their property. Officers feigned a search but found nothing. In the evening officers held a meeting and passed resolutions. Medary received at the cars by democrats.

SOURCE: Frances Andrews Tenney, War Diary Of Luman Harris Tenney, p. 58

Diary of 1st Lieutenant John S. Morgan: Tuesday, July 4, 1865

National salute at daybreak. Ship starts at 6. A. M. sea very smooth, day pleasant. See lines of vegetation on the water

SOURCE: “Diary of John S. Morgan, Company G, 33rd Iowa Infantry,” Annals of Iowa, 3rd Series, Vol. 13, No. 8, April 1923, p. 607

Official Reports of the Operations in Charleston Harbor, S. C., December 20, 1860 – April 14, 1861: No. 20. – Report of Lieut. Jacob Valentine, commanding enfilading battery.

No. 20.

Report of Lieut. Jacob Valentine, commanding enfilading battery.

DEAR SIR: According to General Orders No. 20 I send a report of the firing from and against the enfilade battery and the conduct of the officers and men under my command. Number of shots fired from battery, 611. The object of our firing was to sweep the crest of the parapet, the roofs of the quarters within Fort Sumter, to dismount the barbette guns, if practicable, and to drive the enemy from the parapet. The latter object was accomplished. At this distance it is impossible to discern accurately the result of the firing. The firing from Fort Sumter against our battery was heavy, but, I am happy to say, ineffectual, and resulted in neither injury to the battery or to the men.

I take great pleasure in bringing to your notice Lieut. B. S. Burner, who, from the commencement to the last, was steady at his post, giving all necessary orders, and by his example gave double courage to the men under my command. I would also mention First Sergeant P. Cummings, Fourth Corporal G. Kay; also Privates Tracy, Stewart, Grant, Rawlins, Wheelis, Keen, Cody, Dwyer, and, indeed, the whole company, with but few exceptions, performed their duty to my entire satisfaction.

I cannot close my report without favorable mention of a volunteer (Charles Farelly), who in the working of the guns rendered us material service.

I am, colonel, your very obedient servant,

JACOB VALENTINE,

Lieutenant, Commanding Enfilade Battery.

 Col. R. S. RIPLEY.

SOURCES: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume 1 (Serial No. 1), p. 53-4; This report is quoted in Samuel Wylie Crawford’s The Genesis of the Civil War: The Story of Sumter, 1860-1861, p. 429.

James H. Lane to John Brown, October 30, 1857

Falls City, Oct. 30, 1857.

Dear Sir, — By great sacrifice we have raised, and send by Mr. Tidd, one hundred and fifty dollars. I trust this money will be used to get the guns to Kansas, or as near as possible. If you can get them to this point, we will try to get them on in some way. The probability is Kansas will never need the guns. One thing is certain: if they are to do her any good, it will be in the next few days. Let nothing interfere in bringing them on.

Yours,

J. H. Lane.

SOURCE: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, p. 405

Diary of Gideon Welles: Sunday, May 24, 1863

We have had gratifying intelligence from the Southwest for several days past, particularly in the vicinity of Vicksburg. It is pretty certain that Grant will capture the place, and it is hoped Pemberton's army also. There is a rumor that the stars and stripes wave over Vicksburg, but the telegraph-wires are broken and communication interrupted.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30, 1864, p. 311

Diary of John Hay: February 10, 1864

. . . . . Yesterday I had a number of copies of the Proclamation posted through the town. The few citizens gathered around, the lettered reading the unlettered listening with something that looked like a ghost of interest. . . .

At 2½ p. m. General Gillmore and staff came clattering into the cabin of the Ben Deford. They seemed greatly elated by the success of the expedition, and were full of Col. Henry’s achievement in the capture of artillery beyond Camp Finegan. In the afternoon Lieut. Michir came in with his railway train from Baldwin. He had four mules for locomotive who had a playful habit of humping themselves and casting off their riders. He had a young woman on board to whom he showed the usual courtesies of railroad Conductors.

SOURCES: Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 163; Tyler Dennett, Editor, Lincoln and the Civil War in the diaries and letters of John Hay, p. 160

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes: Monday, August 25 & Tuesday August 26, 1862

In Washington. Here all arrangements connected with army matters are perfect. An efficient military police or patrol arrests all men and officers not authorized to be absent from their regiments, and either returns them to their regiments or puts them under guard and gives notice of their place. A good eating-house feeds free of expense and sleeps all lost and stray soldiers. An establishment furnishes quartermasters of regiments with cooked rations at all times; fine hospitals, easily accessible, are numerous. The people fed and complimented our men (chiefly the middling and mechanical or laboring classes) in a way that was very gratifying. We felt proud of our drill and healthy brown faces. The comparison with the new, green recruits pouring in was much to our advantage. Altogether Washington was a happiness to the Twenty-third.

SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 330

Diary of 1st Sergeant John L. Ransom: March 7, 1864

On The Cars. — We were roused from our gentle slumbers during the night, counted off and marched to the cars, loaded into them, which had evidently just had some cattle as occupants. Started southward to some portion of Georgia, as a guard told us. Passed through Petersburg, and other towns which I could not learn the names of. Cars run very slow, and being crowded, we are very uncomfortable and hungry. Before leaving Richmond hard-tack was issued to us in good quantity for the Confederacy. Have not much chance to write. Bought some boiled sweet potatoes of the guard, which are boss. The country we pass through is a miserable one. Guards watch us close to see that none escape, and occasionally a Yank is shot, but not in our car. Seems as if we did not run over thirty or forty miles per day. stop for hours on side tracks, waiting for other trains to pass us.

SOURCE: John L. Ransom, Andersonville Diary, p. 39

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: March 30, 1863

Gen. Bragg dispatches the government that Gen. Forrest has captured 800 prisoners in Tennessee, and several thousand of our men are making a successful raid in Kentucky.

Gen. Whiting makes urgent calls for reinforcements at Wilmington, and cannot be supplied with many.

Gen. Lee announces to the War Department that the spring campaign is now open, and his army may be in motion any day.

Col. Godwin (of King and Queen County) is here trying to prevail on the Secretary of War to put a stop to the blockaderunners, Jews, and spies, daily passing through his lines with passports from Gens. Elzey and Winder. He says the persons engaged in this illicit traffic are all extortioners and spies, and $50,000 worth of goods from the enemy's country pass daily.

Col. Lay still repudiates Judge Meredith's decision in his instructions to the Commandants of Camps of Instruction. Well, if we have a superabundance of fighting men in the field, the foreign-born denizens and Marylanders can remain at home and make money while the country that protects them is harried by the invader.

The gaunt form of wretched famine still approaches with rapid strides. Meal is now selling at $12 per bushel, and potatoes at $l6. Meats have almost disappeared from the market, and none but the opulent can afford to pay $3.50 per pound for butter. Greens, however, of various kinds, are coming in; and as the season advances, we may expect a diminution of prices. It is strange that on the 30th of March, even in the “sunny South,” the fruit-trees are as bare of blossoms and foliage as at mid-winter. We shall have fire until the middle of May, — six months of winter!

I am spading up my little garden, and hope to raise a few vegetables to eke out a miserable subsistence for my family. My daughter Ann reads Shakspeare to me o' nights, which saves my eyes.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 282-3

Diary of 1st Lieutenant Lemuel A. Abbott: Sunday, September 18, 1864

It's cloudy with a gentle south breeze. We had company inspection at 9 o'clock this forenoon and monthly at 4 o'clock this afternoon. The supply train came at 8 o'clock a. m. with four days' rations. We got orders at 3 o'clock p. m. to strike tents which we did, and march at once, but the order was countermanded. We shall probably move early in the morning. There's a high south wind this evening, but it doesn't look like rain. Sheridan's army now consists of three infantry corps, three divisions of cavalry and the usual complement of artillery, in all about 30,000 men, as follows; The Sixth Corps, Major General H. G. Wright, U. S. V. commanding; the Eighth Corps, Major-General George Crook, U. S. V. commanding; the Nineteenth Corps, Brevet Major-General W. H. Emery commanding; Brevet Major-General A. T. A. Torbert, U. S. V., Chief of Cavalry; the First Division of Cavalry, Brigadier-General Wesley Merritt, U. S. V. commanding; the Second Division of Cavalry, Brigadier-General W. W. Averell, U. S. A. commanding; and of the Third Division of Cavalry, Brigadier-General James H. Wilson, U. S. V. commanding. Lieutenant-General Jubal A. Early commands the Confederate army with about the same force.

SOURCE: Lemuel Abijah Abbott, Personal Recollections and Civil War Diary, 1864, p. 149-50

Diary of Private Charles Wright Wills: 6 p.m., Sunday, May 12, 1861

Several men from Alabama arrived here to-day with their backs beaten blue. We caught another spy last night. The drums rolled last night at 11 and we all turned out in the biggest, dark and deepest mud you ever saw. It was a mistake of the drummer's. Six rockets were let off and he thought that they stood for an attack but they were only signals for steamboats. We thought sure we were attacked, but the boys took it cool as could be, and I think never men felt better over a prospect for a fight. Two hundred troops have landed since I commenced writing this time. Just now the clouds seem to be within 100 yards of the ground. Prospect of a tremendous storm. I am writing standing up in ranks for evening roll call.

SOURCE: Charles Wright Wills, Army Life of an Illinois Soldier, p. 14

Diary of Sergeant Major Luman Harris Tenney: March 5, 1863

My back quite well. Not much going on during the day. In the evening the boys mostly went out to town and mobbed the “Crisis” and then went to the “Statesman” but did no damage. Medary and the press were in Cincinnati. The boys carried off all the books, etc., they could find.

_______________

Note — The episode briefly referred to under date of March 5, 1863, was of this nature: At that time Samuel Medary, formerly a state official of considerable prominence, was conducting a weekly newspaper called "The Crisis" at Columbus. This periodical was perhaps the most bitter and dangerous and disloyal "Copperhead" sheet published in the North. Its utterances distinctly encouraged the Rebellion, instigated desertions of Union soldiers and thus promoted disunion, prolonged the war and increased the slaughter of Union troops. On the night of March 5th, a considerable number of Second Ohio boys mysteriously got through the guard line of the Camp Chase encampment, went quietly down town, threw out pickets for protection from the police, entered "The Crisis" office and thoroughly gutted it, throwing the type, presses, paper, etc., out of the back windows into the Scioto River. Then as quietly as they came they returned to camp, still unobserved by the sentinels on guard at camp, and went to bed. As mentioned in the subsequent entries in the diary, it proved impracticable to identify any of the participants and nobody was punished. The then Colonel of the Regiment, August V. Kautz of the Regular Army, and a son-in-law of then Governor Tod, was naturally greatly wrought up over the circumstance. — A. B. N.

SOURCE: Frances Andrews Tenney, War Diary Of Luman Harris Tenney, p. 58-9

Diary of 1st Lieutenant John S. Morgan: Monday, July 3, 1865

Run into Galveston at 8. A. M. lie all day with orders to proceed at high tide tomorrow, business part of town dead. Suburbs beautiful, fine residences, with shade trees & flowers in profusion. Citizens scarce. 29th Ill. Vets. just arrived this morning. 7th Mass. Bat arrives on the steamer U. P. Banks, at 6 P. M.

SOURCE: “Diary of John S. Morgan, Company G, 33rd Iowa Infantry,” Annals of Iowa, 3rd Series, Vol. 13, No. 8, April 1923, p. 607

In The Review Queue: Lincoln and Congress

Lincoln and Congress

By William C. Harris

In Lincoln and Congress, William C. Harris reveals that the relationship between the president and Congress, though sometimes contentious, was cooperative rather than adversarial. During his time as president, Abraham Lincoln embodied his personal conviction that the nation’s executive should not interfere with the work of the legislature, and though often critical of him privately, in public congressional leaders compromised with and assisted the president to unite the North and minimize opposition to the war.

Despite the turbulence of the era and the consequent tensions within the government, the executive and legislative branches showed restraint in their dealings with each other. In fact, except in his official messages to Congress, Lincoln rarely lobbied for congressional action, and he vetoed only one important measure during his tenure as president. Many congressmen from Lincoln’s own party, although publicly supportive, doubted his leadership and sought a larger role for Congress in setting war policies. Though they controlled Congress, Republican legislators frequently differed among themselves in shaping legislation and in their reactions to events as well as in their relationships both with each other and with the president. Harris draws intriguing sketches of nineteenth-century congressional leaders and shows that, contrary to what historians have traditionally concluded, radical Republicans such as Representative Thaddeus Stevens and Senator Charles Sumner did not dominate their party or Congress. Harris includes the minority party’s role, showing that Northern Democrats and conservative Unionists of the border states generally opposed Republican policies but worked with them on support for the troops and on nonwar issues like the Pacific Railroad Bill.

Lincoln and Congress sheds new light on the influence of members of Congress and their relationship with Lincoln on divisive issues such as military affairs, finance, slavery, constitutional rights, reconstruction, and Northern political developments. Enjoyable both for casual Civil War readers and professional historians, this book provides an engaging narrative that helps readers redefine and understand the political partnership that helped the Union survive.

About the Author

William C. Harris is the author or editor of twelve books, including Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union, which won the 2012 Lincoln Prize; Lincoln’s Rise to the Presidency; and a previous Concise Lincoln Library book, Lincoln and the Union Governors. He is a professor emeritus of history at North Carolina State University, Raleigh.

ISBN 978-0809335718, Southern Illinois University Press, © 2017, Hardcover, 176 pages, Photographs, End Notes, Essay on Sources & Index. $24.95. To purchase this book click HERE.

James Chesnut Jr. & Captain Stephen D. Lee to Major Robert Anderson, 3:20 a.m., April 12, 1861

FORT SUMTER, S.C., April 12, 1861 — 3.20 a.m.

SIR: By authority of Brigadier-General Beauregard, commanding the Provisional Forces of the Confederate States, we have the honor to notify you that he will open the fire of his batteries on Fort Sumter in one hour from this time.

We have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servants,

JAMES CHESNUT,  JR.,

Aide-de-Camp.

STEPHEN D. LEE,

Captain, C. S. Army, Aide-de-Camp.

Maj. ROBERT ANDERSON,

U. S. Army, Commanding Fort Sumter.

SOURCE:  Samuel Wylie Crawford, The Genesis of the Civil War: The Story of Sumter, 1860-1861, p. 426; The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume 1 (Serial No. 1), p. 14.

Edmund B. Whitman to John Brown, October 24, 1857

Lawrence, Oct. 24, 1857.

My Dear Friend,—Your first two messengers are sick at Tecumseh. I helped them start back with the information that you should soon hear from me, but they were taken sick on their way. Mr. Tidd has been waiting some time for me to receive remittances from the East; but as the crisis approaches I feel in a hurry to get him off. You are wanted here a week from Tuesday. I will wait no longer, but by great personal exertion have raised on my personal responsibility one hundred and fifty dollars. General Lane will send teams from Falls City, so that you may get your goods all in. Leave none behind if you can help it. Come direct to this place and see me before you make any disposition of your plunder, except to keep it safe. Make the Tabor people wait for what you owe them. They must. Make the money I send answer to get here, and I hope by that time to have more for you. Mr. Tidd will explain all.

Very truly yours,

E. B. Whitman.¹

_______________

¹ Indorsed by Brown: “Received at Tabor, Nov. 1.”

SOURCE: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, p. 404