ysis of the latest and most sign arship. Contact Stephen Davis, C
Untouched by the Conflict: The Civil War Letters of Singleton Ashenfelter, Dickinson College. Edited by Jonathan W. White and Daniel Glenn. 35 photographs, notes, index, 180 pp., 2019.
The Civil War letters of Union soldiers have been published by the score over the decades. However, those penned by Northern civilians, especiall those written by college student remain elusive. That may be a bi surprising, for while the popular image of young men rushing to enlist in the Union army afte the attack on Fort Sumter dominates historical memory, those who opted to stay home were not a small minority. In fact, sixty percent of white, Northern males of military age chose not to enl and fight in the Civil War. It is within this latter cate
that readers learn of Singleton (“Sing”) Ashenfelter, a seventeen-year-old, middle-class whit man, who, in 1862 was attending Dickinson College in Carlisle,
Pa. This revealing new work collects forty-nine letters that wrote to his good friend, Samuel
ur readers with timely analCivil War research and scholr News Book Review Editor.
Pennypacker, beginning in April 1862 through July 1865, which was just after the war and his studies ended. As the title of this book asser Ashenfelter truly was “untouched by the conflict,” not merely physically but emotionally as well. Indeed, his sense of detachment from the great rebellion is striking. He is, of course, aware of th war but it is always in the background. His letters contain little personal thought about the war or the broader Northern home front. For example, during the Confederacy’s September 1862 Maryland invasion which culminated in the battle of Antietam, w learn that Ashenfelter responded to the invasion by penning a patriotic poem that, by so doing, he felt he had displayed “sufficient patriotism.” Reconsidering, he then joined the local “milishe” but gave the impression he did so as a lark, rather than out of any profound sense of duty. Ashenfelter described himself as a pro-war abolitionist who disdained Northern Copperheads. He wrote how “the South should be made to understand that she cannot do just as she pleases,” ye he never mentions who should do the fighting or why. Some of these letters are rather short while others are quite lengthy. Yet throughout, the young author’s education, wit, command of the English language, and introspective intellect are self-evident. Like many young people, however, he struggled to find his place in the worl Ashenfelter consistently ruminated about himself, his beliefs, and his internal philosophical debates to the point that it bordered on
navel gazing. In this reviewer’s opinion, young Ashenfelter is not a likable character. He described himself as a materialistic atheist who looked
forward to the life of a hypocrite “and a fine prospect it is.” He held the concept of principle
in “utter contempt” and viewed “whatever contributes to my own personal pleasure is right: – all else, – wrong.” This type of person might be described today as a narcissist. As with many youthful men, Ashenfelter also wrote how he thoroughly enjoyed tipping the bottle and of his consistent focus on young women. As for his studies, he admitted he was not what his teachers would consider a good student, though his grades were never below average. Peer pressure was present in his life as well, for wrote how he placed more pride upon his position amongst his fel low students than with any honors that might be granted him by the faculty.
Editors White and Glenn have done impressive work in annotating these letters and adding extras that enhance the author’s mid-19th-century college experience for the modern reader. Noted scholar J. Matthew Gallman offers an insightful preface. Photographs of the work’s key participants abound as well as a descriptive listing of those persons. Four appendices include a record of Ashenfelter’s four-year curriculum at Dickinson, a fouryear summary of the expenses required to attend Dickinson, an es say on Dickinson College during the Gettysburg campaign, and Ashenfelter’s 1864 speech titled “Capital Punishment.” Despite Ashenfelter’s youthful challenges, he enjoyed a successful post-college career as both a newspaper editor and then as a U.S. attorney for the Territory o New Mexico. His Civil War-era letters offer a revealing and uncommon social history glimpse into the workings of a well-educated young man’s mind as he navigated the border between youth and manhood.
Paul Taylor is an award-winning author of seven books pertaining to the Civil War era. He has rece finished transcribing, editing, a annotating the Civil War letters Union engineer officer Orlando M. Poe to his wife. The manuscript i currently under publisher review.
Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King. By Thomas J. Balcerski. Appendices, notes bibliography, index, 352pp., 2019. Oxford University Press,
This wonderful new title con cerns a dual biography of two i portant 19th-century political ures and friends, William Rufus King and James Buchanan. Some people called them the “Siamese twins.” These men had a very close friendship that many individuals questioned, including the issues of whether there was sexual element. Or was it a ver close companionable friendship? Thomas Balcerski asserts that these lifelong bachelors formed a partnership that endured many tests during their public lives William Rufus King was older by five years and was a Southerner, living in North Carolina and Alabama. He held several important elected positions, including the House of Representatives and the Senate. Like James Buchanan, he also held positions that too him to Europe. Buchanan was from Pennsylvania, a successful lawyer who was also elected to the House and the Senate like his close friend. Both wer
Democrats who tried to avoid sectional conflict and were voic es for compromise. These two important individuals lived together in Washington D.C. Their friendship brought them messing together in boarding houses, where they often shared meals and drank together. Buchanan and King were not alone in sharing quarters in the nation’s quarters, as many elect
ed officials did not live with their wives and families while i Washington. Additionally, their salaries and per diem were quite small compared to the twenty-first century. While their relationship was not uncommon, both men voted consistently the same way. They supported the Democratic party’s agenda, including the independent subtreasury system, a compromise tariff, and expansion of federal land-holdings. King consistently balanced the interests of the slaveholding South with those of the Democratic Party. Buchanan joined King in doing everything possible to stop abolitionism, including a gag rule anti-slavery petitions. Both men strongly believed that their pol cal positions were the best way preserve the Union. However, their nearly ten-yea boardinghouse relationship was unique in several ways. The two men were from different parts of the U.S.: King from the South an Buchanan from the North. King hailed from a wealthy slave owning family, and Buchanan from a poor shopkeeping family. King was originally a DemocraticRepublican, and Buchanan was originally a Federalist. However they shared a few essential personal factors. Both were descendants of Scotch-Irish émigrés and shared ethno-cultural backgrounds. They both attended college, which in the early nine teenth century was a luxury and rare. Neither man ever married, which is one reason for gossip b
ds of mile 1844–1853 ister to an moved to Secret dent James es an inte oncerning ir waning eriod, mai munication omantic pu r consiste s importan ealing wit anan encou to gain ne o and Cuba fast again hese lands rmanently onship. ears of th itical par heights d Vice klin Pierc
and Buc in 1856 and pri ly of e running end, th a “bach sightfu that th only ab at a ti Whil offer a the int of Buch the ant cellent searche questio enterta century
David M school in the for the A lifeDavid i Civil W
ritualism in the Midst ar Ghosts: As reportnewspapers of the Michelle Hamilton. ootnotes, 169 pp., 201
burg’s ghost t y popular. Same for g, also known as where 3,650 soldiers
nd gray were killed in iest one-day battle in
ing battery at Charles gged fields of Shiloh. of the alleged haunts e ubiquitous across th
because Americans seem o see them, and someho past in eerie graveyar one at Trinity Church
tan, where Founding exander Hamilton was ter Vice President Aar ed him in a duel in 18 t believe in ghosts, b silent through the wee
hours in a Boston cemetery, sta ing at crumbling, tilted tombstones adorned with skulls and crossbones….you know….just in case. And that’s why Michelle L. Hamilton has written a book on Civil War ghost stories that’s to read, especially for people don’t know a battalion from a b gade, because it is not a war b She’s studied microfilm of Northern and Southern, and discovered many published accounts of ghost stories, reflecting a interest in the unknown. Her li tle book is a delight because i not only prints out her finding readable type, but also publish headlines and fuzzy microfilm images she had to strain her ey to read. One, on the front page of the Oct. 2, 1862, issue of t Savannah (Ga.) Morning News, is headlined “A GHOST” and relates at length how the citizen of Lynchburg, Va., had “been
thrown into a fever of exciteme by the appearance of a ghost in
lection of ghost stories, but o actual articles about “sighting
The country was being torn apar at the time and these accounts
documented chilling, terrifying tales of the paranormal that ma
have offered comfort to the mil lions in a time of massive deat People have always had difficul ty dealing with the death of lo
ones, which makes stories about ghosts—which would bolster a belief in an afterlife—very appealing, a balm for the soul. T explains why public interest in spiritualism surged during the
Programs for Civil War Round Tables and Historical Societies
period. Even Mary Todd Lincoln was a spiritualist who held séan es in the White House. The Richmond Enquirer reported that a New Jersey regiment, quartered in the Marshall House in Alexandria, Va.—whose proprietor James Jackson was killed by Union soldiers after he gunne down Elmer Ellsworth—claimed to have seen the hotelier’s ghos and “stampeded from the premises in great terror.” The Holmes County Republican in Mellersburg, Ohio, reported that “Clevelanders are getting a good deal excited about a certai ghost which it is said has been seen by sundry individuals in va ious parts of the city.” Still another paper, the Burlington (Iowa) Weekly HawkEye, headlined a story “Ghost! Ghost!! Ghost!!!” “An apparition, robed in white, was seen b a number of persons last night about eleven o’clock,” it declared. And the Keokuk (Iowa)
Constitution reported that twenty-five people saw the ghost and
were left quite spooked. It’s quite evident that peopl
of that age took ghosts more seriously than most folks do today You don’t have to be a Civil
War buff to get a kick out of Ms Hamilton’s book. It’s not about
fighting, but what people believed, or claimed they did. Also, Civil War-era newspapers—in the days before large re porting staffs and wire services when telegrams were very cost-
ly—had a hard time filling up enough space with “news” to justify the advertisements—the life blood of papers. “My interest in the paranorma is a way to connect to the past through a unique angle,” the author says. “I have worked in museums since I was 15. My first j was at the Whaley House in San Diego, which is famous for its paranormal activity. I learned t connect with the visitors throug highlighting and focusing on the history of the house by addressing their interest in the parano mal. They came for the ghosts but left learning about the hist of the house. The reason I wrote the book was to answer my own questions about what people believed during the Civil War.”
newspaper during the war, covered the conflict.
Reminiscences of Fort Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-’61 By Abner Doubleday (1876)
The summer of 1860 found me stationed at the head-quarters the First United States Artill at Fort Moultrie, South Caroli I was captain of Company E, an second in command to Brevet Colonel John L. Gardner, who was lieutenant-colonel of the iment. The regimental band and Captain Truman Seymour’s company (H) also formed part of t garrison. The other forts were unoccupied, except by the ordnance-sergeants in charge.
Thus begins Union general Abner Doubleday’s memoir, Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-’61 (New York, 1876; reprint, Nautical Aviation Publishing Company of America, 1998). For the latter reprint, my f in Charleston, Rick Hatcher, then Historian at the Fort Sum National Monument, wrote the Introduction. He notes tha Doubleday’s book was also reprinted in 1976, which signals
why I chose it for this month’s column. Because we know what’s going to happen at Fort Sumter, and Doubleday knows that we know, a valuable element of his memoir is its background for the start o the war, events of 1860-61. And because I know that you also know what’s going to happen at Sumter, I’m going to focus on the first part of this charming littl book. In the summer of 1860, “Charleston, at this period, was far from being a pleasant place for a loyal man.” “As early as July there was much talk of seces sion,” Doubleday wrote, yet he noted that Secretary of War John B. Floyd, a Virginian, sent 17,00 muskets to South Carolina. “By the middle of August the country people began to be quite violent in their language.” As th presidential election neared, “th disunionists became more bitter.” About this time a poor seamstress from New York was jailed in the city simply for saying that she opposed slavery. “Independent companies and minute men were everywhere forming,” the author observes. When a party from Moultrie’s garrison attempted to slip across the water to procure ammunition from the Charleston Arsenal, a mob stopped them. Days before the November election, Doubleday was in Fort Moultrie when he saw that “crowds of excited countrymen, wearing secession cockades…formed in procession and marched around it,” to show their martial ardor and perhaps intimidate the garrison. But they did n kick up a fight. The presidential election took place on Tuesday, November 6. Doubleday had learned that he was the only one of Moultrie’s seven officers supportin Lincoln; others may have favored the Northern Democrat, Douglas, or even the Southerner, John C. Breckinridge. Lt Col. John Gardner, garrison commander, was himself “in politics… quite Southern,” Doubleday commented. When news reached Charleston of Lincoln’s election the day afterward, excited secessionists marched in the streets shouting “Hurrah for Lincoln!” “By the 9th of November the whole state was swarming with minute
men,” Doubleday recalled. The judge of the U.S. District Court, then in session in Charleston, showed his sentiments by resigning. In Columbia the legislature set the date for a secession convention. Next door, in Georgia, Gov. Joseph E. Brown did, too; the state legislature voted a mil lion dollars to raise troops. Thu as Doubleday states, “the excitement in each state constantly reacted on the other.” Fort Moultrie’s garrison at the time numbered sixty-eight officers and men, plus thirteen musicians. Fort Sumter, out in the harbor about a mile west of Moultrie, was held by all of one man, an ordnance-sergeant, who lived on the man-made island with his wife and two young children. Castle Pinckney, on a low island three-quarters of a mile east of the city, also had its or nance sergeant. War Secretary Floyd had ordered workmen sent to Charleston Harbor to strengthen the three fortified places – Moultrie, Sumter, and Pinckney. A suspicious Abner Doubleday thought that Floyd was improving fortifications just before South Carolinians would seize them. When Doubleday learned that the Secretary of War had appro-
to finish Sumter, he formed the opinion that this “was simply an expenditure of public money for the benefit of the Secessionists. “Forts constructed in an enemy’s country, and left unguarded,” he acidly observed, “are built for t enemy.” One hundred and fifty brick masons from Baltimore arrived in early November to work on Fort Sumter. One officer at Moultrie suggested obtaining muskets from the arsenal to arm the masons to help them guard the gunpowder being stored at Sumter and also other property at Pinckney, but Floyd overruled the order. At the same time he dispatched two thousand more muskets to South Carolina. “This did not look much as if the Administration intended to sustain us,” Doubleday writes with understated sarcasm; “the honorable secretary was thus supplying our enemies with arms, and leaving the United States Arsenal, full of military stores, without a guard.” Floyd did send an officer (Maj. Fitz John Porter to Charleston to inspect things. After Porter recommended that Lieutenant Colonel Gardner be relieved (he was so old, he had fought in the War of 1812), Porter recommended Maj. Robert Anderson as his successor. Anderson arrived on November 21. By then Doubleday had
After secession, an outspo- of occupying Fort Sumter; I can ken Unionist in the city visit- only allow you twenty minutes ed Moultrie to express his sor- to form your company and be in row and regret. When asked if readiness to start.” he favored the state’s secession, As I said, you know the rest o Doubleday recorded his reply: “I the story…. should think not! South Carolina is too small for a republic, and Steve Davis and Jack Melton’s too large for a lunatic asylum!” new book is 100 Significant Civi Among Major Anderson’s offi- War Photographs: Charleston in cers there was talk about removing the War. In it we note that Abne the garrison from Fort Moultrie to Doubleday’s wife, Mary, sailed Fort Sumter. Anderson gradually north on Jan. 8, 1861, when thin came around to the idea, given were getting testy in Charleston Moultrie’s vulnerability to land Harbor.
Abner Doubleday (June 26, 1819–Jan. 26, 1893) may not have invented baseball, but he was certainly a soldier. His grandfather had fought in the Revolutionary War. His father, a New York congressman, aided his admission to West Point, from which he graduated in 1842. He fought against Mexicans and Indians (in Texas and Florida) before assignment to Atlantic coastal forts. The secession of South Carolina found him stationed at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island, second-in-command to Maj. Robert Anderson. The day after Christmas 1860, Robert Anderson moved his garrison quietly across the harbor to Fort Sumter. Captain Doubleday, as married officers at army posts usually did, had his wife Mary with him. After the withdrawal to Sumter, Mary with other officers’ wives found lodging in the city. Or tried to. Mrs. Doubleday was told by a boarding-house keeper, as Abner relates in his Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860–’61 (1876), “that, as the house depended on the patronage of the Southern people for support, she (the landlady) could not undertake to harbor the wives of Federal officers.” Mary Doubleday took the hint. On January 8, 1861, she and other Northern officers’ wives left Charleston, northward-bound.
The following Northerners and Southerners had their careers derailed or ended by misfortune—a battlefield defeat, o personal misconduct.
Can you name them from the clues below? 1. This Union major general,
what was his middle name? 3. When this Union brigadier general, in charge of Kentucky during the fall of 1861, told U Secretary of War Simon Cameron that he needed 200,000 men, Cameron exclaimed, “Great God! Where are they to come from?” Soon afterward, the Cincinnati Commercial headlined an article that the general was “insane.” Who?
of Mill Springs, Ky., in Januar 1862. Officers observed that he was “in a beastly state of into ication” during the engagement. Later, after Maj. Gen. William J. Hardee also found him drunk and Gen. Braxton Bragg deemed him unfit to command, he resigned on Oct. 23, 1862. Which Kentuckian? 5. As a brigadier in 1861 he was relieved of command in northeast Missouri for drunkenness. At Memphis he “resumed
under official scrutiny for allegedly accepting bribes from cotton speculators,” according Jeffrey Lash. Sherman relieved him from command on April 18, 1864, partly for having kept a
garrison of troops at Fort Pill Tenn. (which Forrest captured o April 12). What Union general?
near Petersburg on the morning of July 30, 1864, were in a bombproof drinking rum while their troops were being mauled by Confederates recovering from the blast. Which drinking/skulk ing duo? a) Edward Ferrero and James H. Ledlie b) William F. Bartlett and Simon G. Griffin c Orlando B. Wilcox and Elisha G. Marshall 10. This Confederate lieutena
April 19, 1864, he resigned his generalship and asked to be rea signed as a lieutenant colonel artillery. Who?
Stephen Davis’ newest book is Texas Brigadier to the Fall of Atlanta: John Bell Hood (Mercer University Press, 544 pp., foot notes, bibliography, maps by Ha
Revering Confederate Heroes, Ex Confederate Exceptionalism. Civil War Myth and Memory in the Twenty-First Century. By Nicole Maurantonio. Illustrations, endnotes, index, 250 pp., 2019. University Press
sure-to-be-controversial book, Nicole Maurantonio sets out to explore how some people today can view Confederate heroes and symbols with “reverence and affection” (as the SCV pledge recites) and at the same time distance those heroes and symbols from the American history of slavery, racial prejudi and repression (“heritage not hate,” as the saying goes).
exceptionalism, the process by which individuals can “dissocia Confederate symbols from the racist histories to which they intimately connected.” The author, who teaches at the University of Richmond, approaches Confederate exceptionalism by focusing on a half-doz en stories. First is how “Carry Back to Old Virginny”—written in the 1870s by a black New Yorker who had never been to Virginia—became the state song
key’s heart” and “I labored so hard for old Massa” were offensive references to slavery. So state legislature retired the s in 1997. The author demonstrate that this was a case in which a cultural artifact—a song written in the 1870s by a prominent black composer of minstrel music (James Bland’s other hit wa “Oh Dem Golden Slippers”)— very much became associated with the South’s history of
very and racism. As one state ator put it, his constituents d not want to be carried back where.” With the song’s reement, Confederate exceptionsts lost a round. Maurantonio ates attending an SCV meetin Virginia Beach, where a
y sang the old song with tears eaming down her cheeks.
George N.The Barnard’s Atlantaphotographs Campaign of the Atlanta Campaign The American Civil War was the first used entrenchments, repeating rifles, communications.
It was also the first American War to While Mathew Brady, Timothy Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner and T having made iconic photographs in the O’Sullivan and a few others won fame George N. Barnard deserves to be rank work in the war’s western theater.
A civilian photographer hired by Gen. as photographers of the American take pictures of fortifications aroun them in and around the city in the fa Union Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson’s Civil War’s eastern theater, George N. 1864. Thus far, no comprehensive, definitiv Barnard earned a reputation as the key work. The Library of Congress has 130 image Point, New York, has at least 98 phot cameraman of the war’s western area. Other repositories, such as the Gilde New York City, have smaller collectio Evidence of this is Barnard’s hundreds For this book we have chosen a hundre
We hope that this work will stimulate of photographs taken of Atlanta Barnardiana, and that other scholarly
Campaign scenes. Some were published in 1866, but many more have
appeared in the countless pictorial histories of the Civil War.
A Long and Bloody Task The Atlanta Campaign from Dalton through Kennesaw Mountain to the Chattahoochee Ri May 5–July 18, 1864
All the Fighting They Want The Atlanta Campaign from Peachtree Creek to the City’s Surrend July 18–September 2, 1864
With the Yankee army five miles outside of Atlanta, Hood promised not
which is all President Jefferson Davis asked. Davis’ companion volume, All
the Fighting They Want, describes Hood’s efforts to defend Atlanta. Its fall in early September 1864 was a mortal blow to Confederate hopes for independence and a big boost to Lincoln’s hopes for presidential reelection. Paperback, 192 pages.
To order a signed copy from author Stephen Dav
Davis’ nar Campaign i backs from Civil War and Bloody
to the Cha Confederat relieve it Johnston, John B. Ho
