Black Powder, White Smoke — November 2016

Black Powder, White Smoke

I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of George Lomas of The Regimental Quartermaster sutlery in September. I realize that almost everyone reading this column is aware of George’s passing by now, but I wanted to pay my own personal tribute to him in this column. George was the first sutler I ever had the pleasure to meet when I joined the North-South Skirmish Association back in 1980. The Regimental Quartermaster occupied a large booth at the N-SSA Nationals at Fort Shenandoah, and it was always my first stop once I had arrived at the semi-annual shoots. George had about everything you needed to get started in either live-fire skirmishing or reenacting. George was honest, knowledgeable, friendly to everyone and had a great sense of humor. The hobby, and I, will miss him greatly.

Note: The Regimental Quartermaster will continue its business as usual.

In his “Watchdog” column in the April issue of Civil War News, Craig Barry wrote about the famed and much-repeated account of the 24,000 muskets, many of them with a number of loads in their barrels, retrieved from the field at Gettysburg after the battle. Craig did some interesting research that led to a bit of debunking. He could not find any official provenance for the story, and traced it back to an 1867 West Point textbook which, unfortunately, gave no source. When you think about it, it does seem unlikely that you could cram two dozen or so loads down a rifle musket barrel, even under the stress of combat. Craig is an assiduous researcher, and I am sure that if there was primary source material available relating to the details of the story, he would have found it.

And yet I seemed to recall reading a primary source document, somewhere, someplace that seemed to corroborate the Gettysburg story. It turned out that I had not actually found anything to confirm the numbers of loaded muskets strewn about Gettysburg, but I did, looking through my research material, find something interesting that related to the story. The source was a copy of an order in the Regimental Books of the 15th New Jersey Volunteer Infantry.

In April 1864, the Provost Marshal of the Army of the Potomac, citing the lack of firearms instruction in the army, posited that many men in the ranks had never fired their muskets. He instructed all units to have each man load and fire his musket in the presence of an officer. One reason he cited for the necessity of such training was that muskets had been found on the battlefield “loaded to the muzzle” with cartridges. The only significant battlefield the Army of the Potomac had held after the fighting in the previous year was --- Gettysburg.

Not all the shooting ended with the demise of the Confederacy in 1865. In the years after the war, there was skirmishing here and there, including feuds initiated by the war resolved by post-conflict violence and outright banditry. A generation of young men inured to violence had repercussions. We usually think of such incidents as restricted to frontier areas, but on June 21, 1865, there was a riot and a shootout on Staten Island.

The 133rd New York Infantry had traveled a good many miles and fought in a number of battles since it departed the city in 1862. The regiment, also known as the “Second Metropolitan Guard,” was recruited in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and organized and mustered in on Staten Island. The 133rd served in the Department of the Gulf with the XIX Army Corps and then in the Shenandoah Valley in 1864-1865. On arrival back on Staten Island, local citizens staged a welcome home “entertainment” for the regiment, which no doubt involved considerable consumption of spirits.

The “entertainment” was joined by some soldiers from the 66th New York, a regiment raised in 1861 in New York City (with a few New Jerseyans in the ranks) which had served in all the major battles of the Army of the Potomac’s II Army Corps. In May 1865 the 66th was transferred to Fort Richmond, Staten Island, and a detachment was assigned to guard cotton stored “on the quarantine grounds” which was adjacent to the 133rd’s party.

Unsurprisingly, “a discussion sprang up, as to the merits of the two regiments” which ended in a fight in which citizens joined in. The outnumbered men from the 66th got the worst of it, ran back to their quarters and returned with loaded rifle muskets with fixed bayonets, and “using offensive language.” The crowd subdued and disarmed them and then pursued them back to the quarantine grounds, where more men from the 66th appeared behind the gate with loaded muskets and began to fire into the crowd, and were answered with a barrage of stones. According to the press, a “Lieutenant Colonel Nelson” of the 66th arrived and tried to establish order, but his men ignored his command to cease and desist, and he ended up getting shot himself. Some research reveals that there was no lieutenant colonel named Nelson in the regiment, but there was a Major Peter N. Nelson, who had been a POW but had returned to the unit after exchange in the spring of 1865. In the end, the disturbance was quelled by the Navy, when Captain Wilson of the USS Naugatuck dispatched a detail of sailors “armed with minnie rifles” who disarmed the combatants and arrested some.

For all the shooting, which went on for half an hour, casualties were surprisingly light, estimated at “some 20 to 30 wounded” indicating that the shooters may have been firing over the crowd’s head or, mayhap, were just bad shots, which, considering the level of marksmanship training during the Civil War, is a distinct possibility. Two men were seriously wounded, one a former soldier who had to have his leg amputated and another a member of the 133rd, who had his arm amputated. Both regiments were subsequently mustered out of service.

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