Another Famous Mainer

Oliver Otis Howard

Oliver Otis Howard, born November 8th, 1830, in Leeds, Maine, was a star-crossed general in the Federal Army during the Civil War. He was an officer of unquestioned bravery, with a deep devotion to his Christian faith, and terribly maligned for actions that, in the main, were beyond his ability to control.  Despite the political ravages of his enemies, his life was one of great accomplishment in the face of adversity, and for the benefit of others.

Howard lost his father at the age of 9, and with it the innocence of youth. His schooling included Monmouth Academy, Yarmouth Academy, and Kent’s Hill School, prior to graduating from Bowdoin College at the age of 19, in 1850. Afterward, he gained acceptance to the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he graduated in 1854, 4th in a class of 46 cadets. He was commissioned as a brevet 2nd Lieutenant of Ordnance, and posted to Watervliet Arsenal in New York. Shortly thereafter, he became the commander of the Kennebec Arsenal, in Augusta, Maine.  

It was at Kennebec that Howard started his real career. Maine, with it’s many rivers and tidal estuaries, had 11 rolling mills producing black powder. By 1865, those mills had produced a staggering 1/3 of ALL the black powder used for small arms ammunition in the Federal Armies during the civil war. The oversight by Howard set the Kennebec Arsenal in good stead to start production of small arms cartridges, which it did, along with other items, through the course of the war.

In 1861, Howard was granted a leave of absence from the Regular Army to accept a volunteer commission  as a Colonel, leading the newly-formed 3rd Regiment, Maine Volunteer Infantry. Shortly after arriving in Washington, DC, Howard was  placed in charge of the brigade to which the 3rd was attached, and for his conduct at Bull Run in July, 1861, he was promoted on September 3rd to Brigadier General.

In 1862, during the Peninsula Campaign, Howard received two wounds to his right arm which eventually resulted in it’s loss by amputation. While recuperating, he was cheered on by his old friend. Phil Kearny, another Federal general, who had previously lost his left arm. Kearny remarked that Howard should look happily upon his wound, as it would save him money since both he and Kearny could now buy their gloves together.

Promoted to major General, and given command of the XIth Corps, Howard faced his first test at Chancellorsville. Howard’s men had seen Confederate General "Stonewall" Jackson’s troops moving to the right to flank them, but despite his (Howard’s) protestations to General Hooker, commanding the Army of the Potomac, Howard was ordered to disregard those observations, and to stop bothering Hooker with nonsense.

Later that evening, Howard’s corps was struck en flank by Jackson’s troops, and the XIth Corps' right hand division routed, forcing the entire corps to withdraw in haste. Howard felt the sting of this immensely, especially as he was personally, and wrongly,  blamed for the debacle by Hooker.

Later that year, at Gettysburg, while marching north on the Emittsburg Road to support the 1st Corps, Howard recognized the strength of the Culp’s Hill/Cemetery Ridge position, and dropped off a brigade (Von Steinwehr) there to act as an anchor if things went bad. It was a prescient move. While deployed north of Gettysburg, One of Howard’s generals (Barlow) failed to adequately deploy his division, resulting in the entire collapse of the XIth Corps, with the Ist Corps quickly following. However, Howard’s men were able to reform upon Von Steinwehr’s brigade and, as a result, further damage was avoided.

Howard engaged in a nasty political fight with Major General Hancock, whom Meade had sent to Gettysburg to assume command of what were erroneously thought to be a shattered Federal force. Howard protested that he was the senior officer present and should be given command. In any case, after much debate, Howard gracefully allowed Hancock to take over, and to Hancock’s chagrin, he realized that Howard had, in fact, found the best defensive position available and his previous work was of unquestioned value. Hancock kept Howard’s deployments intact.

After Gettysburg, the badly hit XIth & XIIth Corps were merged into a new corps, titled the XXth, and sent west ti support Sherman. Following the death of Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson, in July 1864, Howard became commander of the Army of the Tennessee,  leading it through the remainder of the  Atlanta campaign, and eventually led the entire right wing of Sherman’s famous March through Georgia, and then up through the Carolinas.

After the war, through 1874, Howard was in charge of the Freedman’s Bureau, and was noted for his founding of Howard University, incorporated by Congress in 1867. Howard later led the campaign against the Nez Perce, served as Superintendent of West Point, and finally retired from the Army in 1894, with the rank of Major General. He passed away on October 26th, 1909, in Burlington, Vermont, where he is buried.

Howard is often thought of by many less-read individuals as a poor leader, but his career, and the comments and remembrances of those who served with him, speak otherwise. He was a competent leader, and bold tactician with a keen eye for details, and his life’s work speaks volumes for what one single man can accomplish when he sets his sights on a goal. Rising from a junior Ordnance officer to command of an entire army, founding a University of note, Howard left his mark on everything he touched, and we as a nation are the better for it.

Howardloc

 

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Rations, 1864

An Army Travels On It’s Stomach

There is a military axiom which says: Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics.  Great captains from our earliest days have understood that having an army does you no good if you cannot feed it, clothe it, arm it, and train it.  This was a lesson learned, and that right well, by both sides during our own Civil War.

During the Civil War, the daily ration for an enlisted man in the Federal Army was as follows: (from US Army Regulations, (rev) 1863)

Meat:          12 ounces of pork or bacon, or
                   1 pound and 4 ounces of salt or fresh beef
Bread:         1 pound and 6 ounces of soft bread or flour, or
                   1 pound of hard bread [hardtack] or
                   1 pound and 4 ounces of corn meal
To every 100 rations:
                    15 pounds of beans or peas, and
                    10 pounds of rice or hominy
                    10 pounds of green coffee, or
                     8 pounds of roasted (Or roasted and ground) coffee, o
                    1 pound and 8 ounces of tea
                    15 pounds of sugar
                    4 quarts of vinegar
                    1 pound and 4 ounces of adamantine, or star candles
                    4 pounds of soap
                    3 pounds and 12 ounces of salt
                    4 ounces of pepper
                    30 pounds of potatoes. when practicable. and
                    1 quart of molasses

Paragraph 1191: "Desiccated [dehydrated] compressed potatoes, or desiccated compressed mixed vegetables, at the rate of 1 ounce and ½ of the former, and I ounce of the latter. to the ration, may be substituted for beans, peas, rice, hominy, or fresh potatoes.

MARCHING RATION;
Meat and Bread; same as above
Coffee, Sugar, and Salt; same as above

For it’s time, the Federal Army ate very well. Even the Confederate Armies ate pretty well, their failures in supply being, in almost every case, the result of a lack of transport rather than of the rations themselves.

The image accompanying this short article is of a group of Clerks of the Commissary Depot at Aquia Creek Landing, Va. It was taken in February, 1863. Even in the CW there were REMF, and from their clothing it appears they lived rather well in the field.

Having said that, I would ask the reader to look at the pile of boxes in the background. Those are boxes of hard bread, the ubiquitous “Hardtack” of so many songs, commentaries, and jokes. It was a cracker made of flour and salt water, about 3” square by ½” thick, baked and then air-dried until it was hard as a rock. A common moniker was “sheet-iron shingle”.  It’s advantage was simple: It would provide basic nutrition for a soldier in the field, traveled well, and would last almost forever as long as moisture was kept out of the boxes.

Regardless of the stories, hardtack kept very well, and it became such a staple of the American Diet that one company, Bent’s Crackers, still makes it today.

The boxes in the image each hold 50lbs of hardtack, and are made of white pine board. The ends were strapped with bands made of stripped saplings, and if you look at the ends of the boxes, those dark lines are the bands. Note also on top of the pile that a portion of the tarpaulin which keeps the weather out has been pulled back to show off the pile.

Now, to bring this back to the beginning, chew on this fact: A soldier, being issued 1lb of hard bread a day, requires a steady supply to keep him fed. To ameliorate the problem, 3 days’ rations were issued to the soldiers at a time when in the field. If you look at the 30 June 1863 returns for the Army of the Potomac, you will see there are approximately 85,000 men. That’s 42.5 TONS of hard bread a day just to provide the bread ration.  To put it into perspective, that is a train of 50 wagons a day, just to get bread to the army, and those wagons also require forage for their teams. Which means more wagons to haul just forage along the route. Now add the meat and coffee rations, and you begin to understand why accurate maps of road networks, of route of march planning, and the locations of water and rail lines are so vital to a commander.

This was just one army. The Federals also had the armies of the James, the Ohio, the Tennessee, the Gulf, and various smaller commands to supply.

This is also why virtually every campaign keeps it’s route of march within 3 days’ march of a railroad. A wagon is useless beyond 3 days’ because you cannot carry enough forage for the teams as well as it’s cargo. You simply couldn’t keep an army in the field for any length of time without adequate resupply, and the only way to maintain momentum and maneuver, and prevent losses due to foraging, was to use the railroads.

The wonder is not how well those planners and supply folks provided for the armies. The wonder is that they were able to do it at all.

ACWREMF

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The Bayonet

The Bayonet

In American Civil War literature, no single item of equipment has had such a poor treatment as the bayonet.  Appearing in the 17th century, the first known examples were said to have derived their name from the French Town of Bayonne, where it is alleged they were developed. Hard to say for certain.

What can be said for certain is that, by the time of the Civil War, the bayonet was still seen as an integral part of the Infantryman’s kit, and many descriptions of both fact and fantasy were given of bayonet charges, coupled with cries of “Give ‘em the cold steel, boys!” by writers and politicians alike.

However, after the civil war, and interesting thing happened. Historians started to report that, despite all it’s reputation, the bayonet was hardly used at all! How could this be? How could so many period letters and accounts be so wildly inaccurate?

The allegation of the rarely-used bayonet is a case of examining a fact out of context. The claim is based upon fact: The Surgeon General of the Army of the United States, in 1870,  caused a series of books to be printed entitled: The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, (1861-65) .  These books, in several volumes, outlined all of the actions, capabilities, results, orders and letters of both armies Medical Departments during the course of the war.  Among the many fascinating tidbits is a table of types of wounds treated in Federal Hospitals. Fewer than 1,000 bayonet wounds are listed.

Historians jumped upon this and began to proclaim that, far from being the decisive weapon, the instrument of close-order combat, the bayonet was by and large an impediment to the soldier, who had little use for it other than as a tool about camp or bivouac. Other writers, following the initial wave of books and articles, continued to report the same, and it has influenced many an arm chair general’s discussions of ACW period combat.

Yet, there remains all those pesky letters, diaries, and other contemporary accounts, such as Jonathon Newcomb’s letter regarding his unit (3rd Maine Infantry) and their actions during the 7-day’s battles of 1862. Newcomb writes that the 3rd was posted in line of battle behind a rail fence, half-obscured with tall grass and ordered to lay prone.  As the 8th & 11th Alabama approached, the 3rd Maine “rose up and fired a volley, then pitched into them with bayonets and clubbed muskets and drove them back for nearly a mile”.

The answer to the question is elegantly simple and involves the bayonet itself. The weapon was an 18” long steel triangular shape, with fluted blade which tapered into a solid triangle, attached to a socket via a curved steel shank. It was not sharpened, and was designed for thrusting and parrying.  It’s cross-section created a wound that would not close easily, and as a result, was normally fatal. Yes, fewer than 1,000 wounds from bayonets were treated at Federal Hospitals during the war. That is because the majority of bayonet wounds were fatal, or were so slight that surgeons could deal with it and return the man to his unit without having to go to the hospital.

Litter bearers only picked up the wounded. Burial details only rarely remarked upon the nature of wounds. Thus, they were not included in the statistical abstracts put out by the Surgeon General’s Office.

Bayonets were used, and often with deadly effect. At times, the sight of a determined force advancing with fixed bayonets was enough to cause the other side to “skedaddle” before they came to close-quarters. However, the myth that bayonets were never actually used in combat should be put to rest alongside those of the “ragged Reb” and the ‘well-fed Yank” and others I will address in coming posts.

Private, 33rd NY Infantry

 
 

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Jonathon Letterman & Battlefield Medicine

  Jonathan Letterman was appointed to the position of  Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac in June of 1862. He was given Carte Blanche to enact such reforms and organization as he thought best and he engaged his duties with great vigor.

  Prior to his appointment, virtually all medical services of the AoP were on the regimental level. Each regiment had a surgeon, an assistant surgeon, a Hospital Steward, and 2-3 men detailed to act as orderlies. Each regiment usually had a motley collection of ambulances and wagons to support the medical staff, and the entire system was broken and inefficient. Letterman set about to rectify that.

  One of his first actions was to  form separate Ambulance trains by stripping away the vehicles from the regiments, and  assigning them at the Division level. Each train consisted of 40 ambulances under the command of a Lieutenant. Men were permanently assigned to be drivers and litter bearers, and standard training was instituted.

  Secondly, Letterman established Division-level field hospitals by removing the surgeons from the regimental level and assigning them to the new Division hospitals. Each one was tested and the surgeons assigned to duty that best reflected their skills. Some remained as “operators” performing surgical duties, while others were assigned to deal with the administrative side of things. Some few were left at lower levels to handle sick call, etc.

  Next, Letterman set out to deal with battlefield casualties. He established a system of “Field Dressing Stations”. These were manned by an assistant surgeon and  an orderly with a knapsack containing palliatives, bandages and tourniquets.  Field Dressing Stations were set up directly behind the battle line, as close as was safely possible, and sheltered to whatever extent the ground, walls, trees, etc, could provide. The location was marked by a small red flag, and wounded men who could walk, and litter bearers carrying wounded were instructed to proceed to such stations first, where the wounded were stabilized prior to transport to the Division hospital, or treated and returned to the front.

  Above all else, Letterman established, for the first time, the system of triage which is still in use today. Patients were divided into three categories: Those who would die from their wounds, those who would live, regardless of their wounds, and those who could go either way. Initial treatment was given to the latter category of wounded, and they were evacuated first. The remainder were given palliative care, their wounds dressed, and they were made as comfortable as the situation and resources allowed. They, too, were evacuated when conditions permitted.

  Dr. Letterman established the basic organization and treatment protocols that exist to this very day. His ideas were revolutionary and their impact saved tens of thousands of lives during a terrible period of our history. They continue to do so today.

There are many myths about medicine and medical care during the civil war. I hope to dispose of some of them in future articles.

Lettermanwarrentonva

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Jonathan Letterman & staff, Warrenton, Virginia.
Image from Library of Congress, public domain.

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Thomas Worcester Hyde

Thomas Worcester Hyde

Thomas Worcester Hyde, was born in Florence, Italy, on January 15, 1841, while his parents were touring Europe. Returning to Bath, Maine, he led a somewhat privileged life, graduating from Bowdoin College in 1861. He also received a concurrent degree from the University of Chicago at the same time.

Hyde had gone to Chicago earlier, enrolled in the University, and while there, met and was befriended by Elmer Ellsworth, then a leading Militia Officer in Illinois, and famous for introducing the Zouave style of uniform and light infantry drill during the 1850’s.  Ellsworth taught Hyde the Zouave Drill, as it was then known, and also took Hyde to the WigWam, where he was present when Lincoln was nominated for the Presidency as the Republican candidate.  After his election, Hyde was introduced to Lincoln, who had heard of the young man, and who offered Hyde the job of providing security for the President-Elect on his trip to Washington. Hyde was flattered, but fearing he was too young graciously declined the job, which was then offered to Ellsworth, who accepted.

Hyde returned to Bowdoin College where he was tasked with training the Corps of Cadets on campus. He gladly accepted and spent the next several months training them in the new “Zouave Drill” he had learned in Chicago. His cadets, he once remarked, were well trained in practice assaults down Brunswick’s Maine Street and against the old Fort Andross Mills and Topsham Bridge. One of the keen observers of Hyde’s instructions was a professor of Rhetoric at Bowdoin, who was so impressed with the martial ardor displayed, that he finagled himself a leave of absence from his teaching position, and coerced the governor of Maine to grant him a commission as a Lt. Colonel of Volunteers. Thus was Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain placed upon a glorious road to a secure place in history by the well done actions of a 20 year old gentleman instructor.

As to Hyde, after hostilities commenced, he raised a company (“D”) of the 7th Maine Infantry. He was quickly promoted to major, where he remarked that his duties chiefly consisted of riding his post on the left flank of the line, looking well, and longing for promotion. At Antietam, as the ranking officer, he led his men on an assault of the orchards of Piper Farm, against great odds, and under the orders of a drunken brigade commander. The 7th Maine consisted of roughly 180 men and officers at that moment, and upon being ordered to withdraw, Hyde brought back fewer than 70.  His actions did not go unnoticed, however, and he was awarded the Medal of Honor for his gallantry.

Hyde was transferred shortly after to the staff of the 6th Army Corps, under General John Sedgewick. There, he met and made a lasting friendship with another young staff officer, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.  Hyde was a favorite of Sedgewick, and always saw that Hyde was nearby. In that regard, Hyde was present when Sedgewick was killed at Spotsylvania, and Hyde’s uniform was drenched in blood as the General fell over and into the young officer’s arms. It was Hyde who rode back to Meade’s HQ to inform them of Sedgewick’s death.
Later, when Hyde’s old regiment, the 7th Maine, was mustered out, Hyde was promoted to Colonel and given command of the newly-formed 1st Maine Veteran Volunteers. He was later promoted to Brigadier General, and returned to Maine after the war ended.

In later life, Hyde served 3 terms in the Maine Senate, a term as mayor of Bath, but his most lasting action was to purchase a small iron foundry operation on the banks of the Kennebec River, in Bath, and turn it into Hyde Windlass Company. His products and fittings were of exceptional quality and the business flourished. After his death, the business was sold to a group of businessmen who renamed it Bath Iron Works, which is still in existence today, making warships for the US Navy and other commercial customers.  

Hyde passed away from Bright’s disease in 1899, and is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Bath, in a beautiful mausoleum befitting his status and marked with a plaque recognizing his Medal of Honor status.

His papers, along with those of other Bowdoin graduates, including Hiram Berry, Oliver Otis Howard, & Joshua Chamberlain, are available for research in the George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives at Bowdoin College.

Hyde1876

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Sarah Sampson, Volunteer

NOTE: This post first appeared as an edition of "Civil War Saturday" on Murdoconline. See sidebar for links, et al.

Sarahsampson

Sarah S. Sampson

“They also serve, who only stand and wait”.

As the last line in John Milton’s Poem “On His Blindness”, he uses the phrase to point out that, despite his seeming disability, he has a place in God’s plans for the world.

    Sarah S. Sampson also had a bar to serving her country: She was a woman. Born in Maine in 1832, she married Charles A.L. Sampson, of Bath, Maine, on Valentine’s day of 1855. Theirs was a happy, if childless, marriage, with Charles being noted as a sculptor of figureheads for sailing ships. One of his works still survives today in Mystic Seaport’s museum.

    When war broke out in 1861, Charles was commissioned into the 3rd Maine Infantry, two of whose companies (A&D) were recruited from the city of Bath. The original Colonel of the 3rd  was Oliver Otis Howard, later to command the 11th Corps and then the Army of the Tennessee on the march through Georgia.  All that was to come much later, though.

    Unwilling to be left behind, Sarah chose instead to accompany her husband’s regiment as a volunteer nurse. By all accounts she excelled at her duties, and came near to being captured at Savage’s Station, in 1862, by fast-advancing Confederate columns. She fled ahead of them, along with the medical staff and wounded who could be evacuated, but lost her trunk which she was forced to abandon.

    Shortly thereafter, she secured a position as a field agent for the Maine State Soldier’s Relief Agency, whose purpose was to provide those articles and services to Maine soldiers which the Federal government either would not, or could not provide.  Her service as such was well received and remarked upon by many. Constantly traveling from one battlefield hospital to another, from  convalescent wards to  General hospitals, she sought out Maine soldiers and sailors and did everything she could for them. Writing letters, seeing that paperwork was in order, helping to mend clothing , providing fresh fruits or other small foods, she exemplified the better angels of our  nature.

    In one of her many reports, she writes of caring for a soldier of the 3rd Maine who lay mortally wounded in a Federal Hospital. His only wish was to return to Maine so that he could die there, rather than in a distant hospital. The regiment had just been mustered out (4 June, 1864), and was on it’s way home. Knowing the route they must take, Sarah made arrangements for all the soldier’s paperwork and effects to be in order, and had the young man taken by ambulance down to meet the 3rd as it passed by. She describes the poignant scene as the little band of men, barely 100 strong, stopped and helped their comrade from the ambulance, and bore him on his litter along with them, slowly marching away towards the train station, there to board the cars that would take them all home together.

    After the war, Sarah returned home and worked at what would later be known as the Bath Children’s Home, caring for orphans of soldiers and sailors.  When her service there ended, she took a position in Washington DC, with the Pension Bureau, assisting applicants from Maine whose military service rendered them unable to gain employment.

    When she passed away on 22 December, 1907, Sarah was laid to rest befitting her status, in Arlington Cemetery,  alongside the soldiers for which she cared so much.  Her gravestone, in Section 1 of Arlington National Cemetery is engraved:

 “ Sarah S. Sampson, Volunteer Nurse, Civil War.
Wife of Lieutenant Colonel Charles A.L. Sampson, 3rd Maine Volunteer Infantry.
This tablet is dedicated in loving memory of Sarah S. Sampson by the 3rd Maine Regiment Association, Civil War.”

    We think of modern folks like “Soldier’s Angels”, the USO, and other service organizations, but theirs is but the latest in a long line of volunteers who did their part to help bring about victory, and to assuage the sufferings and privations of those who wore the uniform.

    Sarah Sampson  lived a life of service to others, a life which brought her into contact with both common soldiers, and the generals and politicians who led them. As such, she is an example of those ideals we seek to instill in our children, and one worthy of both recognition and emulation.

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Well, here we are…

  Well, here we are.  I'd like to thank those brave you who saw the door open and ventured in to see what's going on.

  I've been asked to do this be several folks and I finally set about to put some things down on paper for others to read, and also have a place where i can speak my mind on some things, from time to time, blow off steam, and hopefully give others a few laughs too.

  I likely won't be posting daily, but I will try to get into a routine. There are three or four areas where i want to explore, including my interest in Maine in the Civil War, Civil War period Medicine, and the ACW in general.

  So, feel free to check in, post some comments, send me emails, etc. If there is something regarding ASW or the ACW, let me know and I'll post about it if I can get all the proper data together.

 Most of all, it's a learning experenece for me as well and learning is always a good thing.

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