Weapons of War

By Alison Arnold

Springfield rifled musket, the most commonly used weapon in the Union army.

One of the basic items needed to fight a war—any war—are weapons.  While the average American at the time of the Civil War was familiar with firearms, he was not familiar with the tactical employment of individual weapons in a battle.  The new recruits had to be trained in how to maintain and properly use these weapons in battle as a group, loading and firing at the same time on command. The cavalrymen had to be trained how to fight both mounted and dismounted with different types of weapons.

In the early stages of the war, there was a problem with the lack of modern weapons for the South.  Many Confederate troops initially used antiquated flintlock smoothbore muskets which had been supplied to the various state militias prior to the war. This type of gun had been in use since the early 18th century.  This musket fired a round lead ball.  The barrel was smooth all the way down to the bottom (thus the name smooth bore).  The ball was tamped into the barrel with a powder charge and wadding.  The effective range of this weapon was 40 yards, meaning that to kill someone you had to be pretty close. It was heavy and the best you could do is fire once a minute. Eventually, new Southern munitions factories began making more advanced weapons and many were purchased from Europe—especially Enfield muskets from England. The North, on the other hand, had access from the start to many weapons manufacturers churning out the most advanced firearms.

The rifled musket eventually became the primary weapon on the battlefield.  It was an improvement over the smoothbore musket because of its improved firing system—a percussion lock as opposed to a flintlock. The percussion lock was easier and faster to load. Also, the weapons were rifled which meant the inside of the barrel had small spiral grooves that caused the bullet to spin. Thus the bullet traveled farther and straighter. With weapons that were lethal up to 400 yards instead of 40, the tactics of massed formations, volley fire and the use of a bayonet in hand to hand combat became obsolete…although it took a long time for commanders to fully understand that.

Artillery also played an important role in the Civil War.  Field Artillery units were organized into batteries of 4 to 6 cannons commanded by a captain. The guns used were light and mobile enough to be used to support infantry on the battlefield.  The different types of ammunition were the solid shot, shells or canister.  The solid shot, or cannonball, was the ammunition of choice when used against a large concentration of troops.  A shell contained a bursting charge that would cause it to explode, showering the troops with metal, and canister was used for close range targets.  Canister (literally a can filled with large shot or shrapnel) was devastating against personnel.  The drawback with artillery was that the cannon had no aiming system other than the sharp eye of the cannoneer who had to see his target and gauge the distance.

For centuries, the horseman and his saber were the image of battle, but by the Civil War, the horseman, along with his horse, were vulnerable to rifle fire which would take them out of the battle long before they ever got close enough to use their saber.  The saber remained the symbol of the cavalry and were still carried by virtually all riders despite their ineffectiveness in battle.

The most prized weapon for the cavalry was the breech loading carbine which essentially is a short rifle.  It loaded the cartridge from the rear which made it quicker to load and easier to fire and it gets three shots off to every one fired by the muzzleloader.  It also is small and lightweight which comes in handy when you are sitting on a horse.  Of course, every cavalryman carried one or more pistols to use at close quarters.  The US Army supplied Colt revolvers to its mounted troops.  Most revolvers used by the Southern troops were obtained from captured supplies or battlefield scrounging.

Of all the lessons learned with regard to using, handling and maintaining the weapons, the biggest was that firepower, unless effectively employed on the battlefield, is useless.

The Odyssey Begins: Charlotte Bradford and the USSC Transport Ships

by Carolyn Ravenscroft

Charlotte Bradford (1813-1893)

On May 22, 1862 Charlotte Bradford found herself in Boston completing the last of a long list of tasks in preparation for her departure for Virginia to become a matron aboard the United States Sanitary Commission’s transport ships.  Similar to Louisa May Alcott’s heroine, Tribulation Periwinkle, of Hospital Sketches, Charlotte’s last days in Massachusetts were a mad rush to visit friends, run errands and solicit family to send forgotten items for her trunk.  As she awaited the arrival of the floating hospital, Daniel Webster, which would carry her south to her new life, she stayed with a friend, Mrs.Whipple, at 20 Broad Street and wrote one last letter home in which she enclosed a small, four-penny photograph of herself.  Little did she know, she would not return to Duxbury for over three years.

At the time of her departure, Charlotte was 48 years old and had never traveled out of her home state.  The idea of becoming a nurse had probably seemed the stuff of fantasy until her niece’s husband, Frederick Newman Knapp, became the Special Relief Agent for the USSC.  Along with Frederick Law Olmsted, Knapp was in charge of fitting out large steamships to be used as floating hospitals on the Virginia Peninsula, assisting McClellan’s Army of the Potomac.  As sick and wounded soldiers were brought from the battlefield to river landings, they would be loaded aboard the ships and ferried to northern hospitals.  Each ship was staffed with a surgeon-in-charge, 8 medical students, 20 male ward-masters and nurses, contraband slaves and four “lady nurse superintendents” or matrons. It is very likely that, upon hearing of the opportunity to assist in the war effort in this meaningful way, Charlotte solicited Knapp to secure a position with the transport service.

The matron’s role included making patients’ beds, stocking the kitchens, maintaining locked storage areas for wine, spirits and valuables, arranging shelves and generally making themselves available to assist when needed. Katherine Wormley, a fellow transport matron, correctly described the type of work expected of the women when she wrote, “as far as I can judge, our duty is to be very much that of a housekeeper.”  However, once onboard the vessels, the matrons found themselves taking on a far greater role. After the battle of Fair Oaks in early June 1862 nurses worked for days with little time for rest.  Charlotte wrote in her diary on June 4, “…received and fed that evening 470 wounded which kept us till 12.  Did not know it was Sunday until after I went to bed.  I got so much exhausted that I did not know as shall be able to stand it.”

By the end of the summer, the Union Army was taking over the transport vessels.  One by one, the female nurses went back to their homes or on to other relief work.  Charlotte was uncertain of her fate.  Despite the many aspects of the transport service that were almost intolerable: the horrific sights; the fatiguing work; the boredom between assignments; the scarce and almost inedible food,[1] Charlotte had experienced a sense of independence and purpose aboard the ships that she was loath to give up. During her tenure as a matron aboard the steamers, Knickerbocker, and Elm City and the clipper ship, St. Mark, she traveled to “Washington, Fortress Monroe, Albany, New York and also Baltimore.” She viewed the end of the campaign with regret, writing in her diary, “No one can tell how sorry I shall be to give up this service.”

Charlotte Bradford’s nursing odyssey may have begun as a volunteer matron aboard transport vessels, but it would eventually lead her to become a Union Army Nurse at various hospitals in Washington, DC under Dorothea Dix and culminate in her position as Matron at the United States Sanitary Commission’s Home for Soldiers.  In future posts I will write more of her trials and tribulations in each of these phases.  In the meantime, beginning on May 30th, we will begin posting her diary entries daily on her own facebook page.  I hope you enjoy learning more about this remarkable Duxbury woman.

 

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[1] The food was particularly troublesome for Charlotte.  She was a vegetarian and, according to a diary entry, had not eaten “flesh” in 14 years.  Because of the scarcity of food she had to eat whatever was available which meant at times she had to eat meat.  In addition, as an advocate of temperance, she was fearful of being “obliged to take spirits” whenever she became ill.

Baptism of Fire for the “Duxbury Company”

150 years ago this month, in April 1862, the storm of Civil War had been raging for a full year. The so-called “Duxbury company,” that is Company E of the 18th Massachusetts Infantry, had been serving for roughly eight months but had not yet seen combat.

They spent the fall and winter of 1861-1862 in camp at Hall’s Hill, Virginia, just on the outskirts of Arlington. There they drilled, conducted reconnaissance marches, endured tedious picket duty and drilled some more. Camp life was by no means comfortable but it had its advantages. Food was generally in good supply, the occasional day pass allowed small groups of soldiers to trek into Washington to buy additional clothes or food, mail arrived frequently, and there were baseball and football games to keep them amused. In March 1862, all that would change.

The 18th Massachusetts was part of the Army of the Potomac commanded by Major General George B. McClellan. “Little Mac,” as he was known, had been preparing all winter to launch a massive campaign against the Confederate capital of Richmond in the spring. He would mobilize the largest army assembled on the North American continent up to that time…roughly 150,000 men. Rather than take an overland route from Washington to Richmond, McClellan intended to ship his army down to Hampton Roads, disembark them at Fortress Monroe (a Federal foothold in Virginia) and then march swiftly up the Virginia Peninsula. The subsequent six months of marching and fighting would be known as the Peninsular Campaign.

On March 10, the 18th Massachusetts packed up and left their Hall’s Hill camp. They boarded the steamer Elm City on March 21 at Alexandria, and on March 23 they arrived at Fortress Monroe. Some delay followed as McClellan organized his huge force. Then, on April 4, the 18th Massachusetts (along with most of the Army of the Potomac) began to march west towards Richmond. The scant Confederate troops in the area fled before them. It seemed for a day or two that it would be a quick march to Richmond. Then they reached Yorktown.

Yorktown, Virginia, the very spot where the final drama of the Revolutionary War had played out, lay about one-quarter of the way up the Peninsula. There, Confederate Brigadier General John B. Magruder dug in with roughly 11,000 men, prepared to slow the advancing Yankee force numbering over 100,000. By constructing formidable earthworks extending almost the entire width of the Peninsula, and through various ruses intended to make his force look much larger, Magruder managed to stop McClellan in his tracks.

Reaching the outskirts of Yorktown on April 5, 1862, the 18th Massachusetts found various elements of the army, particularly the artillery, engaged with the Confederates entrenched in Yorktown. That day, for the most part, the 18th Massachusetts were spectators, watching the artillery duel. Corp. Thomas Mann of Middleborough wrote in his memoir of the profound impression made by the first shell to strike near their ranks. “…Crashing into and bursting among the rails of that fence, even knocking them out from under several of the boys, [the shell] did more in five minutes to teach every blessed mother’s son of them the value of discipline than the whole previous year’s training.”

The next day, April 6, their brigade was deployed forward to probe the extent of the enemy trenches. This was their first action under fire. Duxbury’s Pvt. David Meechan wrote in his journal that day, “We are moving in front of the enemy exchanging shots from artillery. We can see the great earthworks of the enemy by climbing trees.” We do not have records of any casualties suffered by the 18th Massachusetts during their first brush with Confederates in front of the earthworks at Yorktown. If there were any at all, they were probably quite light. Regardless, the Duxbury boys had seen battle for the first time.

Union siege guns outside of Yorktown

General McClellan, unnerved, believing the force in front of him to be much larger, settled in for a siege rather than taking Yorktown by assault. He has been soundly criticized for this over the years. The one-month siege severely damaged the campaign’s chances of success, primarily because it gave the Confederates time to gather troops around Richmond. General Joseph Johnston, commanding Confederate forces in Richmond wrote of the siege, “No one but McClellan could have hesitated to attack.”

On April 9, David Meechan of Duxbury wrote, “We move our camp about a mile today, to the right of our line near the bank of the York River in a very large peach orchard. Trees in bloom…We are sending home peach blossoms in our letters. We are ordered to establish our camp here. Looks as if we were going to commence a siege and not to storm the entrenchments. We are hungry again…”

It would be weeks before they got past Yorktown.

Eden Sampson (1820-1890): News from the Home Front

by Carolyn Ravenscroft, Archivist

Eden Sampson, who wrote his soldier son about hard times in Duxbury during the war, was fortunate to get a job making these cotton gins in Bridgewater

Endless marches, barely edible rations, unsanitary camp conditions and the horrors of battle are only some of the travails that come to mind when we think of the soldier’s life during the Civil War.  In contrast, the home front conjures up images of warm hearths and good food.  But for many Northern families the war years presented hardships equal to those experienced by the men fighting in the South.  As a community already suffering a depressed economy, the citizens of Duxbury often fared worse than others.

Life in Duxbury from the point of view of a struggling, working class citizen is illustrated in the correspondence of Eden Sampson.  Sampson wrote numerous letters to his son, Sgt. Horace E. Sampson (see earlier blog post) detailing the unemployment, illnesses and scandals faced by his neighbors.

By the time the Civil War began in 1861, Duxbury had long since lost its luster as a shipbuilding mecca.  While there was work to be had, the wages were often low—too low in some instances to pay for the inflation that resulted from the war.  Sampson was lucky in that he found employment as a carpenter in the Eagle Cotton Gin Company in Bridgewater, Massachusetts during the war.  He worked long hours with a gang of other men, most of whom boarded together.  Other members of the family found work as housekeepers and shopkeepers in and around Boston.  One relation, Hattie Vadakim, became a factory worker 130 miles away in Easthampton, MA.  According to Sampson, earning wages far from home was the only way to survive as Duxbury was “all peace and poverty…and always will [be].  It will do for fishermen and shoemakers to live there, that is all it is fit for.  There is nobody left there, what is will starve this winter.”

In early 1864 Duxbury had an even larger problem with which to deal—diphtheria.  Several in town had died from the illness in the latter months of 1863. Then, from January to April 1864, diphtheria seemed to rage, killing 21 people in Duxbury. Most of them were young children.  There was no known cure for the disease at the time and most succumbed within ten days of contracting it.  Diphtheria often caused a patient to seemingly choke to death as their airways became blocked. In a particularly sad case, Eden Sampson described Thomas Chandler’s son begging his father to shoot him and “put and end to his suffering.”  Horace Sampson’s good friends, William Swift and his young wife, Mary, died in February 1864.  Swift had just found a job for the winter building a fort when he was taken ill.  Smallpox reared its head as well.  When Eden Sampson came home from Bridgewater for a visit he was driven off and had to spend nights in the “old shop” as the family was afraid he was infected.

While it must have been difficult for Sgt. Sampson to hear such distressing news from home, his father also had a knack for spreading local gossip that could only have made his son chuckle.  Eden Sampson found other people to be loose lipped, i.e. “Duxbury is the same old place, they don’t have business enough to keep them from [talking] about others,” but he also never seemed to shy away from a good story. The most sordid tale of the war years involved a Duxbury native, Rev. Charles Briggs Thomas.  Rev. Thomas had been leading a Unitarian parish in Chicago when he involved himself with the wife of one of his parishioners.  Eden Sampson did not hold back when he described the debacle:

“Charles B. Thomas is in Duxbury. Had to leave a salary of 3500 per year with 12 hours’ notice or have his damned brains blew out of him, that has put a [curse] on him for life.  So much for troubling another man’s wife.  He took a pistol and called on him and told him to leave the city.”

Other lurid gossip promulgated by Sampson involved the marital strife of Jane and Alden Cushman (she was locked out of the house after a fight), the split of Alfred Rogers and his wife (she went to “keep house” for Don Winsor) and the probable divorce of John Alden and his wife.  Perhaps the most humorous story came from Horace Sampson’s sister, Ellen.  She regaled her brother with the story of a fight between Capt. Briggs Thomas (the father of the aforementioned Rev. Charles Briggs Thomas) and Philip Chandler.  The two men came to blows in the Union Store after an argument.  According to an eye-witness, Chandler “double up his fist and placed it pretty near the Capt’s nose, he not liking the smell of it, grabbed him by the throat.”

While soldiers facing the battlefield may have longed for the comforts of home and fantasized about easier times, those left behind, like Eden Sampson, often had to struggle to survive.  Their letters to the front are as important in illustrating the ramifications of the Civil War as any soldier’s correspondence.  If you would like to read more from Eden Sampson, his letters are part of the Cushman Family Collection at the Drew Archival Library.

A Stroke of Good Luck

by Erin McGough, Collections Manager

Watch carried by Julius Chandler, 12th Massachusetts Infantry

Have you ever picked a penny up from the sidewalk, or rubbed a rabbit’s foot? Do you have a special trinket that you believe brings you good luck? This pocket watch is now missing its case, but was made sometime around 1860 by Joseph French, in Liverpool, England. It was owned by Julius Bernard Chandler, a 25 year old house painter from Duxbury who signed up to serve as a private in the Civil War with the 12th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. He served nearly the entire war, serving from June 1861 – July 1864 and then again from September 1864 – June 1865. With such a lengthy service, it is little wonder that Chandler felt the need for some good luck, and he carried this pocket watch with him during the war, believing it to be some kind of talisman.

The 12th Massachusetts was a regiment formed on June 14, 1861 in Boston, Massachusetts. Its original commander was Colonel Fletcher Webster, son of the famed U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, Daniel Webster. It is from this connection that the unit got its nickname, the “Webster Regiment,” although, Colonel Webster would later be killed at the Second Bull Run. A three-year unit, the 12th was trained at Fort Warren in Boston harbor, and on July 19, 1861 the regiment was reviewed by Governor John Albion Andrew on Boston Common and presented with its colors. A few days later, the 12th Massachusetts departed Boston for the war front.

The pocket watch was indeed well-traveled: the 12th Massachusetts saw significant action on some of the most infamous battlefields of the Civil War, including Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Spotsylvania. In many of these places, casualty rates for the 12th Massachusetts were high, exemplified perhaps by their experience at Antietam, where the 12th Massachusetts suffered the highest percentage of casualties among all Union Army regiments present at the battle. Of the 334 that went into battle, 224 were killed, wounded or missing, resulting in a casualty rate of 67% (some accounts give even higher casualty rates). When the 12th Massachusetts regrouped after battle, only 32 men were standing to rally around the colors. Today, a Massachusetts State monument stands on the battlefield at Antietam in the approximate location where the 12th saw action.

Despite the significant losses by the 12th Massachusetts, Julius Bernard Chandler survived to return to Duxbury, and in 1871 he married Mary Louise Bradley (1839-1913). He died of rheumatism in Duxbury in 1885, at the age of 49. Julius Bernard and Mary Louise Chandler had a daughter named Mary E. Chandler (1873-1957); she married Joseph Van Buskirk Merry (1868-1957). It is through the Merry family that the pocket watch would continue its journey, as it descended to their son, Frederick Merry (1894-1978). It seems fitting that the grandson of Civil War soldier Julius Bernard Chandler carried the watch during his two years of service in World War I. Hopefully the pocket watch elicited for him the same type of good luck on the battlefield.

You Are What You Eat…

by Alison Arnold

Hardtack

Morale, as well as the physical stamina of soldiers in the Civil War, was directly dependent on what he ate each day. This was as true in the 1860s as it is today. The quartermasters who oversaw the food supply for the armies were among the most important officers because if they failed, an army could literally collapse from hunger.

Vast amounts of food and other supplies had to be constantly acquired and moved in an organized manner across often-impossible terrain under the most chaotic and harrowing of conditions. Did you know that General Ulysses S. Grant spent part of his earlier military career as a quartermaster?

In an era before refrigeration or modern food processing techniques, the soldiers had to make do with the best fare that could be sent to them. But infestation along with scarcity and unpalatability of rations made it necessary for soldiers to supplement their diets.

All of the quotations below are taken from the Civil War journal of Duxbury Private David Meechan. As we learn, a soldier could often gain a larger variety of foods either by foraging/raiding, by receiving food boxes from their families, buying from the local residents:

“February 6, 1862, …I had a good dinner of fish and potatoes…I bought some hot biscuits from a colored woman who was peddling in the camp.”

A soldier might also purchase items from sutlers—civilian merchants who sold provisions to the army in the field or in camp. They traveled with the army selling their goods out of a tent or the back of a wagon.

“January 20, 1862 Hall’s Hill Virginia, …There has been much complaining about the mean tricks of the sutler (Edward Pearl or Cheney) has been abusing his privilege and cheating our men. Exhorbitant, saucy, impudent. A plan to take him out and give him a coat of tar and feathers. Some of the men recommend tossing him in a blanket. The fun was to commence this evening. Colonel heard of the proposed rumpus and immediately took steps to stop it. Ordered a strong guard around the sutler’s entire premises…”

The most common, and likely the most despised, of all their foods was hardtack and salt pork.

March 7, 1862 –  …We were ordered to boil coffee and eat some hard tack and salt junk out of our haversacks.

January 31, 1862 – Cooks all sick, nothing to eat but raw pork and hardtack. Lot of grumbling.

January 22, 1862 – We had salt junk for breakfast, horribly salty and tough, but glad to get it. Hard tack with rice for dinner. Dry hard tack for supper.

These were the two things that every soldier carried in his rucksack because both were designed to withstand field conditions without going bad. Hardtack was a simple cracker made of flour and water, mixed and rolled to a thickness of about 3/8 of an inch. It was cut into squares and poked with a fork to speed baking time. It was described by the men as, “indestructible, imperishable, practically inedible, too hard to chew, too small for shoeing mules and too big to use as bullets.” Salt pork, as it is referred to sometimes as “salt junk” had a double duty in that the excess salt could be scraped off the meat to supplement the soldier’s salt ration.

“February 1, 1862 -  . . We had soup for dinner. Would not enjoy such in civilized society, but gulped it down with a relish. Ham Wadsworth called it fried water.”

In general, Union soldiers had enough food, even if it sometimes tasted terrible. The exceptions were when inexperienced or incompetent officers were in charge of distributing rations or when supply depots couldn’t keep up with troops in times of quick troop movement and battle.

Gershom B. Weston: Recruiter and Friend of the Soldier

“I told Mr. Weston I was more than willing to enlist, but I could not see my way clear to leave my wife in the condition in which she was…He was so enthusiastic, and so thoroughly in earnest, and so anxious to secure the other young men, my friends, that he gave a solemn promise. If I would go to war, he would look after my family in my absence, and see that they had everything necessary for their comfort…I want to say right here and now that the Hon. Gershom B. Weston kept his pledge to me faithfully, fully and honorably.”

Pvt. David C. Meechan of Duxbury

When the Civil War began on April 12, 1861, Gershom B. Weston, eldest son of the late shipbuilder “King Caesar,” took it upon himself to lead recruiting efforts in Duxbury. As one of the scions of Duxbury’s largest mercantile empire, Weston was a prominent and influential figure. He was also a highly controversial one.

Weston led a successful political career as Town Selectman, State Representative and State Senator before the war. He made an unsuccessful bid for a seat in Congress as a member of the Free Soil Party, losing by just 150 votes. He was an ardent temperance and antislavery activist and strongly in favor of a war to end slavery.

Weston’s earnest antislavery efforts and his family’s business interests are strangely paradoxical. The Weston shipping firm managed for decades by his father, Ezra Weston II, made most of its considerable fortune by shipping cotton from the American South. King Caesar might have been described as a “Cotton Whig,” a conservative member of the Whig party with interests in the textiles industry and therefore an economic supporter of slavery. Gershom Weston seems to have broken from his father in this regard and might have been described as a “Conscience Whig” opposed to slavery, except for the fact that, even after King Caesar’s death in 1842, Weston and his brothers continued to be heavily invested in the cotton trade.

How Weston might have reconciled this paradox is unknown. But one thing is clear. His antislavery efforts stirred tremendous controversy in Duxbury. He caused a great rift in town in 1851 when he invited abolitionist Theodore Parker to speak at the First Parish Church. Duxbury’s minister, Rev. Josiah Moore, declared Parker’s views “unchristian” and would not consent to his speaking in the church. A large portion of the congregation shared Moore’s views. The disagreement led to contentious public meetings and years of bitterness.

By the time the Civil War broke out, Weston was too old to serve as a soldier. Instead, he viewed it as his duty to busily recruit men from Duxbury once it began. The recruits included two of his sons who served in the army and navy. Weston was particularly energetic in recruiting Duxbury’s first group who went off to war, 52 men who formed the majority of Company E of the 18th Massachusetts regiment. He managed to secure a vote of town meeting to grant each man a $100 bounty. However, after the boys went off to war, as Private David Meechan put it, “some of Mr. Weston’s political enemies called a meeting to rescind said vote.”  The soldiers of the 18th therefore had to sue the town to secure their promised bounty. Their agent at home in prosecuting this case was Gershom B. Weston.

As this unfortunate disagreement wore on, Private David Meechan was elected by his fellow soldiers to carry on correspondence with Gershom B. Weston back in Duxbury to determine how their case was proceeding. One letter Meechan writes is telling of the way the Duxbury soldiers felt about Weston:

Sir, you will no doubt think it strange…my writing to you, but knowing as I do the lively interest you have always taken in our Company and the earnest desire you have always manifested in the promotion of our well being…it is on these considerations and on behalf of the remaining few of our Duxbury boys that I have taken the liberty to address you…Your name is mentioned on many a bivouac when we are grouped about our Camp fires and our thoughts revert to home…you are spoken of as the only man who has ever tried to assist us…

Weston helped to organize shipments of supplies and food to Duxbury boys at the front. In one case he paid to have the body of a Duxbury soldier returned home. Soldiers at the front sometimes referred to him as “Uncle Gersh” and knew that they could appeal to him for help.