Ladies again I must thank you for an excellent dinner. Can't forget about breakfast - thanks Molly. I thought Ralph was supposed to cook.
This was a typical Memorial weekend, a good event, and.......RAIN. At least the battle was a little different. We even got to see some Yankees .......FALL. but the only thing that matters is we had a good time. "KENSINGTON" another great event. The 9th Kentucky, "Mac" did a great job. Tim, thanks for helping out on Friday - even though you had no choice. That's what happens when we get there early. Again my thanks to the ladies, and Paul for dinner. I was glad to see our Canadian friends there, and also a couple of "hopefully" new recruits Ken and Eric, maybe we'll see them at CLAWSON. I think the tactical and the battle went well. The cannon demonstration looked good. REBELS falling dead again! What about the band? They sounded real good. I think we should give them a call and see what they charge. We'll need some one for the BALL.
Again another good event and........ RAIN. I think everyone had a good time there. If anyone has any ideas for next year please let me know. I think that's all for now. I missed last month's column so I made up for it now. I hope everyone can be at the CLAWSON EVENT. I'm sorry to say that I cannot make that event. I hope everyone has fun, and........NO RAIN!
Yours respectfully,
Leo
By: Scott W. Owens, Copyright 1996 21st Alabama Volunteer Infantry Reenactors, (SCV) Rapheal Semmes Camp11
Sgt. Thomas Marbaker of the 11th New Jersey described the scene. "Upon the open fields, like sheaves bound by the reaper, in crevices of the rocks, behind fences, trees and buildings; in thickets, where they had crept for safety only to die in agony; by stream or wall or hedge, wherever the battle had raged or their weakening steps could carry them, lay the dead. Some, with faces bloated and blackened beyond recognition, lay with glassy eyes staring up at the blazing summer sun; others, with faces downward and clenched hands filled with grass or earth, which told of the agony of the last moments.
"Here a headless trunk, there a severed limb; in all the grotesque positions that unbearable pain and intense suffering contorts the human form, they lay. Upon the faces of some death had frozen a smile; some showed the trembling shadow of fear, while upon others was indelibly set the grim stamp of determination.
"All around was the wreck the battle storm leaves in its wake--broken caissons, dismounted guns, small arms bent and twisted by the storm or dropped and scattered by disabled hands; dead and bloated horses, torn and ragged equipment's and over all, hugging the earth like a fog, poisoning every breath, the pestilential stench of decaying humanity."
More than 39,000 Americans were killed or wounded and more than 10,000 were listed as missing in the Battle of Gettysburg--the largest battle every fought in the Western Hemisphere.
When Gettysburg resident Isaac Lightner returned home after the battle, he found his house being used as a field hospital and his family huddled in the barn. When allowed back in their house, they found the stench to be so horrible that they could not live there again.
LONG RETREAT BACK TO VIRGINIA: More than 18,000 Confederate soldiers were wounded in the 3-day Battle of Gettysburg. Taking them on the long retreat back to Virginia was a major concern of Gen. Robert E. Lee. Some 7,000 of them were too badly hurt to be moved and had to be abandoned to the care of Union surgeons. The walking wounded who were strong enough were sent back to their units to march with their commands, and the rest were packed into thousands of ambulances and wagons.
During a driving afternoon rainstorm on July 4, 1863, the day after the battle ended, the long Rebel wagon train set out on the 40-mile trip to the Potomac River. A Rebel brigade of cavalry, commanded by Gen. John D. Imboden, and 23 guns accompanied the 17-mile long train to move at all speed--and not to stop for any reason.
"Many of the wounded in the wagons had been without food for 36-hours," remembered Gen. Imboden. "their torn and bloody clothing, matted and hardened, was rasping the tender, inflamed, and still oozing wounds. Very few of the wagons had even a layer of straw in them, and all were without springs. The road was rough and rocky from the heavy washings of the preceding day. The jolting was enough to have killed strong men, if long exposed to it.
"From nearly every wagon as the teams trotted on, urged by whip and shout, came such cries and shrieks as these: "O God! why can't I die?" "My God! will no one have mercy and kill me?" "Stop! Oh! for God's sake, stop just for one minute; take me out and leave me to die on the roadside"..........Some were simply moaning; some were praying, and others uttering the most fearful oaths and execrations that despair and agony could wring from them......During this one night I realized more of the horrors of war than I had in all the two preceding years."
While the train was passing through Greencastle, PA, 30 or 40 of its citizens "attacked the train with axes, cutting the spokes out of 10 or a dozen wheels and dropping the wagons in the streets."
The federal drive for recruits among Confederate prisoners of war started in the fall of 1864. But it was probably a desire to escape harsh prison conditions--not support for the Union cause--that influenced most of the 6,000 men to take the oath of allegiance and join the Union ranks. Galvanized Yankees were shipped to forts in Minnesota and the Dakota Territory, while others saw service in posts as far west as Salt Lake City. Their duties included restoring stage and mail service, escorting supply trains, repairing telegraph lines, guarding telegraph stations and railroad surveying parties, and scouting trails through the wilderness. They were also detailed to rescue kidnapped white women from their Indian captors.
Commanded by Union officers, the volunteers were distrusted at first, but they proved their loyalty in numerous skirmishes and one bloody battle with the Indians. Galvanized Yankees who fell into Southern hands could expect rougher treatment than that doled out to other captives. Yet the desertion rate among these units was only slightly higher than in other Northern volunteer units.
After the last of the Galvanized regiments was disbanded in late 1866, its members scattered. Ignored by Union veterans' groups and viewed as traitors in the South, some settled in the North or changed their names to escape the hostility of their neighbors--never able to participate fully in the mystique of the Civil War vet.
Through the Galvanized Yankees and other units, probably 100,000 Southerners served in the Union army throughout the war.
Most modern warfare prior to the Civil War was based on Napoleonic tactics, which taught that large, dense formations could make successful crushing attacks across open country. But the development of rifled infantry arms and the minie bullet--advancements that increased the accuracy and range of infantry fire--soon made Napoleonic tactics obsolete. While the artillery and cavalry altered their battlefield tactics in order to adjust to the new situation, infantry commanders were much slower to make the necessary changes. Soldiers learned that even rudimentary fortifications aided immensely in repulsing enemy attacks. Earthworks interwoven with advantageous terrain that was bristling with cannon and rifles became the norm for defensive positions. Infantry commanders, however, clung to their outmoded tactics and continued to attack formidable lines with massed formations and faced slaughter and tremendous casualties as a result.
One common tactic during the war involved the rapid and concealed movement of troops around the flank of an enemy. From there the enemy line could be "rolled up," or attacked from the end; or, the enemy's communications and line of retreat to the rear might be severed. Defensive tacticians devised maneuvers, such as "refusing" the flanks to form a line perpendicular to the main line, to counter the attacker's movements. As commanders gradually learned the futility of attacking strong earthworks, the Civil War began being fought below ground in endless and intricate miles of trenches.
Attacks were usually made with the soldiers deployed in line of battle (a long formation only 2 ranks deep). They sometimes would attack in column (a formation with a much narrower front but with 8 to 20 or more ranks).
"Just finished putting Vol5 No 6 on the web page. Not sure when we will see you on the field. But would like to continue work on web page. I am trying to update our Web page. If anyone has any photo's I would love to put them on the web. Check us out at the following URL:
www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/7600.
On June 18, 1861, from a balloon 1,000 feet in the air over Washington's defenses, Lowe sent a telegram to President Abrham Lincoln in the White House. The message read in part: "Sir, this point commands an area 50 square miles in diameter. I have pleasure in sending you this telegram, the first ever dispatched from an aerial station." Lincoln was so impressed with the exploit that he asked the War Department to approve funds for a fleet of 5 balloons, and the equipment and crew necessary for their support. Thus began the United States's first "aeronaut corps," the forerunner of the modern air force. Lowe was made chief of the corps and given the pay of a colonel. He soon had 50 seamstresses busy sewing pongee silk into balloons. Hydrogen gas was used to float the balloons instead of hot air, because hydrogen gave greater lifting power and achieved higher and safer altitudes.
Lowe had a coal barge rebuilt with a flattop for balloon use. This vessel, the USS George Washington Parke Custis, designed to launch and retrieve balloons and to be towed behind a tugboat, is considered the world's first true aircraft carrier.
From high in a balloon on September 24, 1861, Lowe directed artillery fire against Rebel forces near Falls Church, VA. This was the first time in military history that gunners successfully hit enemy targets they could not see.
The balloons were intended to be used tethered, but one day a balloon broke loose with Union Gen. Fitz-John Porter aboard and sailed behind Rebel lines. Porter was fortunate that a change in wind direction brought him back to Union lines.
Lowe's Corps grew to 7 balloons (hydrogen powered aerial instruments) which he used in Union Gen. George B. McClellan's Peninsular campaign to locate enemy positions and troop movements. Lowe directed artillery fire with a telegraph line from his basket and provided information that saved the Union army from a surprise attack at Fair Oaks. Another time, Lowe and his men shouted observations from far above the fighting during the Battle of Fredericksburg.
McClellan, sharing Lincoln's enthusiasm, urged his commanders to make use of observation balloons and even made several flights himself to scout the Warwick River during the Yorktown skirmish. But after a wind gust created a near-disaster runaway flight, McClellan prohibited flights by officers. He said to his wife, "You may be assured of one thing; you won't catch me in the confounded balloon, nor will I allow any other generals to go up in it."
The North's use of observation balloons handicapped the movements of the Confederates, causing them to use concealed roads and to spend precious time hiding undercover in the woods. The Rebels could not shoot the balloons down since they had no high-range artillery. Despite the success of his enterprise, Lowe resigned in 1863, disgusted with the underutilization of his Air Corps. Without his expertise, the enterprise became seriously disabled and ended shortly afterward--to the relief of the Confederates.
The Rebels, low on silk, were able to make one balloon out of a silk dress, but the balloon soon came down, wrecked in a nearby woodland. They did not pursue ballooning further.
Jayhawking was a synonym for stealing, and Jayhawkers stole, burned, and occasionally murdered for the Union cause in the guerilla warfare that raged in the area before, during, and after the Civil War. Their Confederate counterparts were called Bushwhackers and were cut from nearly the same cloth as Jayhawkers. Both were quasi-military forces made up of so-called border ruffians who used the war as an excuse to continue the violence that began with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854.
Occasionally one or the other of the factions would contribute a significant military action to the war effort, but their style of warfare was mostly an embarrassment to their governments. Bushwhackers such as "Bloody" Bill Anderson and William C. Quantrill recruited murderers such as Frank and Jesse James and their cousins, the Younger brothers. They used these savages to pillage stagecoaches, banks, and towns, and to massacre any Union soldiers they could catch. Jayhawkers were generally not as bloodthirsty as Bushwhackers but were as ruthless in other ways. Led by men such as horse thief Charles R. "Doc" Jennison and U.S. Congressman James H. Lane, they preyed upon the friends and families of the Bushwhackers. By the end of the war, Jayhawkers had turned the western counties of Missouri into a depopulated and burned-out wasteland.
For years, the pedigree of many good horses in Iowa and Illinois was simply stated as "out of Missouri by Jennison," meaning their ancestors were stolen from proslavery Missourians by "Doc" Jennison.
The Confederacy had about 600,000 soldiers in the war, and it was estimated that, on average, each soldier needed medical attention approximately 6-times during the war. The monthly Journal wrote of the typical soldier being "but half-prepared for the exposures of camp and wholly ignorant of the precautions needed to resist disease." The Journal also addressed the lack of hygiene and poor nutrition. The Journal's editor, Professor James Brown McCaw from Virginia Medical College, knew firsthand of the Confederate doctor's plight, as he was commandant of Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond.
Moore not only set up medical agencies in Nassau and London to coordinate drugs and supplies for blockade runners, but he was able to disseminate the most current European medical research and practices through the South via the Journal. The publication also included such medical directives as which native plants could provide needed drugs, and it conveyed hospital reports with numbers of patients, diseases treated, and success rates. The Journal denounced the Union for calling drugs and medical equipment "contraband," which put undue hardships on many, including Union prisoners. Surgical articles informed doctors on everything from bone-pinning techniques to skull wounds. The Journal was published 14 times; all issues of its 15th edition for March 1865 were destroyed when parts of Richmond burned.
Chimborazo Hospital was the largest military hospital in the Western Hemisphere, treating almost 76,000 soldiers.
Hello Everybody,
We certainly had a great time at Clawson in spite of the fact that NO Yankees showed up, it was a 100 degrees, RAIN, and not to forget those darling little ear wigs some of which hitch hiked home with us. Oh my how could I forget "Zero" who was most memorable. "Zero" is kind of hard to explain - it was one of those things you had to be there to appreciate.
I did lose my sanity at one point during the meeting when I found myself volunteering to be the Ball Chairperson. I thought Juli was gonna fall off his chair - the look on his face was priceless. While cleaning up from construction I've been organizing my thoughts and shared them with President Leo. Now that I have his blessing to forge ahead I'll share some of them with you.
We have outgrown the Harrington Inn and will be looking into some other halls. Of course none of them will have the atmosphere of the Harrington but what I'm checking into will be just as nice. Which brings me to a most unpleasant subject - money.
The ticket price will have to be increased to $15.00 per person this year to help defray the costs of a new location and a new band - both of which will cost more.