Shiloh National Military Park, Shiloh, Tennessee and Corinth, Mississippi

After the Confederate victory at Manassas and its invasion and retreat from New Mexico, both sides hunkered down, went into winter headquarters, recruited and trained new soldiers, and sought ways to implement their overall strategies. The focus of this posting is the Union campaign into the South using the waterways of the Ohio, Tennessee, and Mississippi Rivers. We will look at the Battle of Shiloh this week and Antietam next week.

The woodlands of the South hindered overland travel. The thick forests slowed foot and wagon passage and prevented the rapid movement of large numbers of soldiers and materiel. A better way, used by humans for millennia, is water. The major rivers that coursed through the South -- the Mississippi, the Tennessee, the Cumberland, and the Ohio -- opened up wide avenues for transportation and invasion. River travel became so important in this theater of the war that the Union leased almost 150 steamboats to prosecute the war.

Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River (Photo by Hunner)

The Union forces pried open the Tennessee River in February 1862 when General Grant’s troops captured Forts Henry and Donelson and forced the Southern troops to abandon northwestern Tennessee. Once those forts fell, Union troops steamed upriver in paddle wheeled riverboats to Pittsburg Landing, about thirty miles north of Corinth Mississippi. Corinth, a key railroad junction, connected the Deep South with its north and west and proved a prime target for the North to divide and conquer the South.

General Grant had fought gallantly in the Mexican-American War but grew bored with the peacetime Army and his drinking led to his resigning from the military. Once the Civil War started, he took over first supplying troops and eventually leading the soldiers from his state of Ohio. At Shiloh, he had 40,000 soldiers.

General Grant, left, and General Johnston below, faced each other at Shiloh.

Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston had other ideas. He marched his 44,000 men from Corinth to force the issue on open ground around the small Shiloh Church, near the Union beachhead at Pittsburg Landing. Over the thirty-four hour battle, nearly 24,000 men were killed, wounded, or captured.

Grant had orders not to engage the enemy until General Don Carlos Buell’s troops coming from Nashville joined him. But on April 6^th, a Union patrol encountered a Confederate picket line around 5 am. They exchanged gunfire for an hour, and then General Johnston launched his Army of the Mississippi against the Union forces. For the rest of the morning, rebel troops pushed back the Northerners’ three-mile wide front in vicious fighting. 

At the Hornet’s Nest (so named for the buzz of bullets flying through the air) in the center of the Union line, forces defended at least three assaults. After six hours of intense and bloody combat, the Northerners still held the dense oak thicket at the center of the battlefield. Confederates brought artillery from other parts of the battlefield and pounded the Hornet’s Nest from 300 yards away into submission. 2,200 Union soldiers surrendered due to “the Confederates [concentrating on them] the greatest collection of artillery yet to appear on the American Continent.”[1] 

On top, the Hornets' Nest point of the battle.  Above, Confderate cannons lined up to pound the Hornets' Nest at the tree line in the distance. (Photo by Hunner)

After capturing the Hornet’s Nest, Johnston’s forces advanced, threatening the Union base at Pittsburg Landing. Northern soldiers straggled back to the earthworks around the landing all afternoon and aided by a heavily wooded ravine in front of them, held their position as the day ended. Johnston and his staff predicted an easy victory the next day.

The battle map toward the end of the first day, April 6th. (From  exhibit panel on driving tour of battlefield).

But the battle was already turning against the men in gray as the advance units of Buell’s Army of the Ohio were ferried across the Tennessee River and joined the defense of Pittsburg Landing. That Sunday night, more than 20,000 Northerners crossed the river. 

Steamboats supplying the Union war effort along a river in the SOuth (From exhibit at the Shiloh Visitors Center).

On April 7^th, Grant’s and Buell’s Divisions attacked the Confederates and drove them back. Riding near the frontline, Johnston was struck by a bullet which severed his femoral artery, and he died on the battlefield. Thus fell the highest ranking officer from either side during the Civil War. Beauregard, who had already distinguished himself at Fort Sumter and at First Manassas, took over command of the Southerners. Pressed by the fresh Union troops, Beauregard ordered his troops to leave the field around 4 pm. They retreated to Corinth.

Gerneral PGT Beauregard who replaced Gen. Johnston (From exhibit in Shiloh Visitor's Center)

A total of 23,746 men were killed, wounded, or missing. Both sides suffered greatly but “the battle mutilated the western army of the Confederacy, which lost key officers, 10,000 men, and perhaps its best opportunity to destroy a Union army in the field.”[2]

The Union army followed the Confederates to the railroad town of Corinth, Mississippi for a final reckoning. Two of the most important railroads in the Confederacy crossed at Corinth—the Memphis & Charleston and the Mobile & Ohio. 

The crossroads at Corinth today (Photo by Hunner)

They linked the Mississippi River to the Atlantic seaboard and the Gulf Coast to Kentucky. This made Corinth the most strategic transportation hub in the western part of the Confederate states. Under siege from April 29 to May 30, Confederate troops built several miles of rifle pits, trenches, and earthworks around the small town. They abandoned Corinth in May but returned at the beginning of October to retake the town. One observer said: “In places, you could walk on the dead.” This intense assault by the Confederates on the earthworks that they had initially built earlier that spring failed with 8,000 men combined from both sides killed, wounded, or missing.

At the same time as the attack on Corinth in October 1862, a Confederate force under General Bragg marched through Kentucky toward Cincinnati, more important to the Union than Chicago as an industrial and railroad center. If the South could cross the Ohio River and capture Cincinnati, they could accomplish subject the Union with what Grant was trying to do to the Confederacy. Bragg’s invasion failed at the Battle of Perryville. As military historian John Keegan explains about the defeats at Corinth and Perryville: “the failure in the West was a grave blow to the Confederacy, reducing their range of strategic options to the well-worn pattern of keeping alive Union fears of an advance against Washington or feints at Pennsylvania and Maryland, theaters where the North enjoyed permanent advantages.”[3]

After May 1862, slaves who had fled their plantations found refuge in Corinth. Called “contrabands of war,” some 6,000 African-American ex-slaves created a thriving community of homes, a church and school, a hospital, and a cooperative farm. From the Corinth Contraband Camp, nearly 2,000 ex-slaves enlisted in the Union’s First Alabama Regiment of African Descent to join the over 150,000 Blacks who fought in the Civil War.

"Contrabands of War" African Americans who fled planations and found
refuge behind Union lines (From exhibit at Cornith Civil War Interpretive Center) 

Freed slaves fighting for the Union
(From Corinth Interpretive Center)

The soldiers required special care from the devastation that minnié ball bullets and artillery shells wreck on the human body. To care for the wounded, each regiment of 200-300 soldiers had a surgeon, an assistant surgeon, and a hospital steward. During a battle, the number of casualties often overwhelmed the surgeons, who treated them just behind the front lines. Triage was fast. Soldiers with minor wounds underwent dressing and then returned to combat. Those more seriously wounded were evacuated to a field hospital further away from the battle, often a barn or residence.

Wounded outside a field hospital in the Peninsular Campaign in Virginia, 1862 (From exhibit at Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center)

The surgeon's tool kit for treating the wounded from combat ( From exhibit at the Corinth Civil War Intrepretive Center)

Shattered limbs had little chance of healing as the many splinters of bone and open wounds proved difficult to treat. Amputation was rapid, partially because the ether or chloroform wore off quickly and partially because new casualties arrived constantly. Without antibiotics, gangrene from a wound could set in and kill a patient. If a soldier survived the cutting off of a limb, they still could succumb to complications like pneumonia.

Medical officers from both armies cared for the 16,420 wounded men after Shiloh. Once stabilized, most of the 8,408 Union wounded went by steamboat to Savannah, Tennessee. Most of the Confederate wounded first went to Corinth and then by railroad to other towns and cities in the western Confederacy. At Corinth, almost every building served as a hospital to care for the men. Churches, aid societies, and soldiers’ families rushed medical supplies and people to help. As with most Civil War battles, nearby towns served as hospitals for months afterward.

Kate Cumming, a nurse at Shiloh after the battle (From exhibit at the Shiloh Visitors' Center).

One of those who heeded the call for help was Kate Cumming, whose brother fought at Shiloh. Here are some quotes from her journal: “Corinth is more unhealthy than ever. The cars have just come in, loaded outside and inside with troops…they have endured all kinds of hardships; going many days with nothing but parched corn to eat, and walking hundreds of miles…without shoes.” Another entry: “I have been through the ward to see if the men are in want of anything; but all are sound asleep under the influence of morphine. Much of that is administered; more than for their good…. I expressed this opinion to one of the doctors; he smiled, and said it was not as bad as to let them suffer.” Here is another observation from Kate: “There is a Mr. Pinkerton from Georgia shot through the head. A curtain is drawn across a corner where he is lying to hide the hideous spectacle, as his brains are oozing out.”[4]

Bernard Irwin's field hospital at Shiloh lcreated a new way to take care of the wounded after a battle that was used throughout the war. (From exhibit at Shiloh Visitors' Center)

The battle at Shiloh Church and the subsequent siege and occupation of Corinth shifted the war in the West. Vital transportation and communication lines were severed for the Confederacy, and the paths to both Chattanooga on the Tennessee River and Vicksburg on the Mississippi River lay open to Grant and his men. If the Union could crack Chattanooga, a path to Atlanta would open up. But Chattanooga would prove a tough nut to crack.

Steamboats played a vital role in the river campaigns in the South. (From exhibit at the Shiloh Visitors' Center)

Shiloh became a National Military Park in 1894 managed by the Department of War and was transferred to the National Park Service in 1933.

---

[1] From the exhibit panel at the Shiloh NMP Visitors’ Center.

[2] From the Shiloh Visitors’ Center.

[3] John Keegan, The American Civil War (New York: Vintage Books, 2009), 160-61.

[4] Kate Cumming, A Journal of Hospital Life in the Confederate Army of Tennessee. Quotes found in the exhibit at the Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center.

Manassas National Battlefield Park, Manassas, Virginia and the Glorieta Battlefield unit of the Pecos National Historical Park, Pecos, New Mexico

The rupture had happened, the first cannons fired. Now how to put soldiers in the field ready to fight? And not just fight, but win? In this posting, we will look at two early battles in the Civil War that foretell the bloody future as well as the broad shadow it cast upon the continent —the First Battle of Manassas and the Confederate invasion of New Mexico culminating in the Battle of Glorieta east of Santa Fe. Manassas and Glorieta offer ample examples of how each side made mistakes and capitalized on the mistakes of the other side.

A Confederate cannon pointed at the Union stronghold of Henry House. (Photo by Hunner)

In the summer of 1861, as the nascent armies formed and moved towards each other, each side came up with their master plan. Lincoln and his generals decided to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond in Virginia and attack the rest of the South through the Ohio, Tennessee, and Mississippi Rivers. Davis and his Confederate generals chose a strategy similar to that of George Washington during the Revolution —fight a defensive war and keep the South’s armies in the field. With these best laid plans and with politicians and newspapers crying out for action, the North and South grappled near a stream called Bull Run.

Armies at the beginnings of wars often fail to fight effectively. Generals struggle to adapt to new weapons and tactics, inexperienced soldiers face death and mayhem, jealousy and infighting with officers all contributed to mistakes that cost men their lives and lost each side opportunities to seize a crippling victory and put an early end to the war. Manassas was just the beginning of the North and the South figuring out how to fight.

Two classmates from West Point’s class of 1838 commanded the opposing armies at Manassas. General P. G. T. Beauregard from Louisiana had distinguished himself in the Mexican American War and in 1861 was the head of West Point. He left there to take charge of the Confederate forces in Virginia. He had to protect Richmond and threaten Washington. Beauregard’s army on the eve of battle amounted to 20,000 troops, but Johnston’s soldiers in the Shenandoah Valley rushed to the battle at a key moment.

The commander of the Union forces, General Irvin McDowell, also served in the Mexican American War and was an instructor at West Point. On July 1, 1861, the Union Army had 186,000 soldiers, of which McDowell devoted 30,000 to attack Beauregard. Both sides thought that an early victory would led to a quick war. Both looked to Manassas for that victory.

A replica of the Henry House is the white one on the right  This would have been the view that Confederates had as they advanced on this strong hold of Union cannons. (Photo by Hunner). 

The Union’s march on Manassas slowed due to ambling troops and supply wagon delays. Men carried only three days of rations with not enough supply trains to deliver more. On July 21^st, McDowell’s troops tried to skirt around the Confederate left, but scouts saw the glinting of the sun off of weapons in the slow moving columns and warned Beauregard that his flank was getting turned. Then the two sides fell on each other with fury and fear. At first, Union soldiers and cannonry pushed the Confederates back toward the railroad line. An eager battery led by Capt. James Ricketts advanced to the hill near the Henry House and blasted shrapnel into the advancing Confederates as sharpshooters picked off the Union artillery men.  

Enter General Thomas J. Jackson. Also a veteran of combat during the Mexican American War, Jackson commanded of a large contingent of Virginians. At Manassas, the arrival of his troops in the afternoon rallied the retreating Southerners and gave rise to “There stands Jackson like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginians!” 

Statue of Stonewall Jackson at the spot he stood to rally the Confederates at the First Battle of Manassas
(Photo by Hunner)

More Confederate troops arriving by train from the Shenandoah Valley flooded onto the battlefield and started pushing Union soldiers back. Perhaps the mad dash to the rear by a horse drawn wagons dispatched to get more ammunition for Ricketts’ cannons set off the retreat among the green Union troops.

Ricketts' batteries near Henry House (Courtesy Manassas NBP web site)

The retreat turned onto a rout as Northern soldiers fled to D. C. Union forces hunkered down around their capital with Confederates poised only twenty-five miles away. In the eleven hour long battle at Manassas, the South lost 2,000 men killed, wounded, or missing. The North lost 3,000.

The number of casualties shocked everyone. Much worse would come. Manassas smacked away any notion that this would be a quick war.

Confederate artillery proved vital for their victory at Manassas (Photo by Hunner) 

After Manassas, most northern states quickly responded to Lincoln’s call for more troops, but they saddled the federal army with a major flaw. Troops voted for their officers who sometimes had little combat or even military experience. Many Confederate officers graduated from West Point or fought in the Mexican American War. At first, Southern troops had better leadership, while Northerners had better engineers.  

An important lesson learned at this early point was the importance of railroads in the Civil War. They provided rapid deployment of troops as well as supplied the necessary materiel and food to keep men fighting. Railroads also brought the battered wounded back to hospitals. Railroad junctions proved vital for rapid responses to wide flung theaters of the war.

Another early lesson was to standardize uniforms and flags to prevent confusion in combat about whether you were fighting was friend or foe. 

In the same month as the First Battle of Manassas, action out West also gave the South an early victory. On July 24th, 1861, 250 Texans invaded southern New Mexico and captured the village of Mesilla in a brief exchange of muskets and mountain howitzer fire. That winter, General Sibley and his 2,500 men reinforced Mesilla with the ultimate goal of capturing the gold and silver mines in Colorado. If that went well, they wanted to continue onto the ports in California.

Once assembled at Mesilla, the Confederates marched up the Camino Real to Santa Fe. They avoided the strongly defended Fort Craig but did beat back the Union forces who guarded the ford of the Rio Grande at Valverde on February 21st. Union troops retreated before the advancing troops, burning supplies along the way. Within a few weeks, a Confederate flag flew over the Palace of the Governors on the central plaza in Santa Fe.

Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe (Photo by Hunner)

After resting in ancient Santa Fe, the Confederates headed east along the Santa Fe Trail towards Colorado. Twenty-five miles out, they ran into Union soldiers and cannons at Glorieta. The Union forces fell back, waiting for reinforcements and getting closer to their own heavily defended Fort Union fifty miles away.

Live fire demonstration of a Mountain Howitzer at Glorieta (Courtesy Pecos NHP website) 

On March 28, 1862, the two sides with about 1,300 soldiers each clashed along the Santa Fe Trail. By day’s end, Union forces had retreated another mile or so. As both sides bedded down, news came to electrify the New Mexicans and Coloradans. The previous night, a column of Union soldiers led by Major John Chivington slipped around the Confederates and found the 100 plus wagons that held all of the Texans’ ammunition, supplies, and personal belongings. Although the South was winning on the battlefield, it had to retreat back down the Camino Real with little food and low morale. Several years later, Chivington led the raid at Sand Creek.

Why mention the Battle of Glorieta along with First Manassas? First, from Virginia westward, across farmlands, through dense forests, and over swollen rivers and parched deserts, armies fought in large and small battles. This was a continental wide conflict with many side theaters. In fact, two weeks after Glorieta, the Battle of Shiloh on the Tennessee River began to pry open the South to water borne invaders from the North. We will go to Shiloh and Corinth in next week’s blog.  Second, the Union forces that remained in New Mexico then targeted Apaches and Navajos for removal to an inhospitable stretch of the Pecos River far away from their ancestral homelands. Third, as a proud New Mexican, I take any opportunity to tell the history of my state.

The Civil War did not go well at first for the North. Both sides bivouacked for the winter of 1861-62, recruited and trained new soldiers, and looked for the weaknesses in their enemies. Each side hoped for decisive victories in the coming year.

The ruins of the Pecos Pueblo became a National Monument to preserve the Indian town and the Spanish colonial church. In 1990 with the addition of the Forked Lightening Ranch and the Glorieta Battlefield, it became the Pecos National Historical Park.

Fort Sumter National Monument, Charleston, South Carolina

From afar, Ft. Sumter looks like the stump of a tree cut off at its base. It was. From 1861 to 1865, tens of thousands artillery shells fell on or near it. I admit I was a bit disappointed. I had trouble imaging the drama and recreating the fort prior to April 1861. What helped was Paul, a guide on the ferry, who said that Fort Point under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco was a sister fort. Below is Fort Point last summer. Once I recalled that, I realized that I was looking at a stump of a fort, its fifty-five foot high walls demolished by Confederate and then Union bombardments.

Fort Sumter from the ferry (Photo by Hunner)

Fort Point, a sister to Fort Sumter (Photo by Hunner)

Charleston has perhaps the best harbor for a port along the Atlantic South coast. Founded in 1670, it helped shape the South and the country. Patriot soldiers fought off nine British warships who tried to capture the port in 1776. Native son Charles Pinckney helped draft the Constitution in 1787. As the port closer to Africa than most other colonies, it was the biggest slave market in the country.  A center for business and culture of the South, by 1790 Charleston was the 4^th biggest city in the new nation.

In downtown Charleston, the Old Slave Market tells the history of slavery, from Africans captured and crammed onto ships and suffering through the Middle Passage to slave markets to forced labor in harsh conditions. Many of the European colonies in North, South, and Central America imported more than 9,000,000 slaves to the New World.[1]

Northern states began to abolish slavery in the 1780s, and the U.S. Constitution banned the importation of slaves by 1808. But the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793 invigorated the South. With this machine, fifty times as much cotton could be cleaned than by hand. Since plantation owners needed more labor to grow and process cotton, a slave society grew.

Cotton harvesting (From exhibit at the Civil War Interpretive Center, Corinth, Mississippi)

From 1789 to 1865, one million American born men, women, and children of African descent were bought and sold. The Old Slave Market notes that “splitting families was a business decision.”[2] By 1860, 4,000,000 slaves worked in the South. For more about slavery and the causes of the civil war, please go to these postings at Driven by History: African Burial Grounds and the causes of the Civil War.

In 1856, Charleston outlawed the outdoor auction of slaves, so the markets went indoors. In the four block area around the Old Slave Market, forty indoor marts sprang up. The building that houses the museum was one—Ryan’s Mart. The last auction at Ryan’s occurred on November 1863. In this building, a healthy man sold for around $36,000 in 2007 dollars, a woman, $ 32,000, and a girl between $21,000 to $26,000. In 1860, Charleston had a population of 44,000 including 14,000 slaves, and 3,000 free blacks.[3]

To protect Charleston's harbor, the U.S. built Fort Sumter in 1829 by dumping New England granite onto a sand shoal at the mouth of the harbor to create an island. To construct the fort, slaves made bricks and used them to make the massive walls. No one entered Charleston without sailing past the guns on the island.

Fort Sumter before the war (From exhibit at Fort Sumter)

Charleston was no stranger to protesting the federal government. During the Nullification Crisis in 1828 and again in 1832, South Carolina called for secession. It refused to pay taxes on imported manufactured goods. Such tariffs protected the northern states’ growing industries like textile factories, but penalized the southern states who produced the cotton. It also harmed the South’s trade relations with England. Vice President John Calhoun resigned, and federal troops arrived in Charleston to collect the back duties. Even though a compromise tariff calmed the waters in 1833, taxation continued to raise hackles in the new Republic.

Technology changed in the first half of the 19th century, not only in weaponry but perhaps just as important for armies this big, in transportation. Initially canals, then railroads and river traffic knitted the Republic together. Steamboats toted heavy loads of cargo and people up shallow rivers, and railroads did the same through the heart of the continent. These steam powered conveyances connected farms to markets, towns to cities, and during the war, battlefields to battlefields and soldier to soldier.

As the movement to abolish slavery in the North grew, a new national party emerged. The presidential election of 1860 saw a four-person race, including the first time the Republican Party offered a candidate- Abraham Lincoln. The Republican platform did not call for the abolition of all slavery, but did want to close off the western territories to it. Lincoln won as the vote splintered among the four men, and the South rose up to challenge the power of the federal government to limit their rights to own slaves.

The presidential and vice presidential candidates for the Republican Party in 1860
(From exhibit at the Civil War Interpretive Center, Corinth, Mississippi)

The Secession winter tore the country in two. Southerners argued about whether to stay in the Union or not. Addressing the South Carolina’s Democratic convention in 1860, J.S. Preston said: “Slavery is our King. Slavery is our Truth. Slavery is our Divine Right.”[4] That state seceded first on December 12, 1861, followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana in January, Texas in February (when the government of the Confederate States of America formed), Virginia, Arkansas, and North Carolina in April, and Tennessee in June.   

The North and the South organized their armed forces on massive scales, but to win with such large armies took time to figure out. New armies don’t win overnight. Organizing the training, the movement of troops, the supplying of food, ammunition, clothing, and medical support takes coordination. An army at dawn learns by the mistakes it makes.[5] Those mistakes cost men their lives, both in the early battles as well as in the missed opportunities that could have ended the war sooner, for either side. Few anticipated the wrath and sorrow that was descending on the people of the crumbling Republic.

And so, in what seemed like a blink of an eye, a civil war erupted. Confederate shells fell on the Union fort at the mouth of Charleston Harbor. After South Carolina seceded, eighty-five Union soldiers under Major Robert Anderson bolted from Fort Moultrie and rowed over to Fort Sumter. There they holed up in a fort meant to be defended by 650 and waited for reinforcements.

The bombardment of Fort Sumter on April 13, 1861 (From exhibit at Fort Sumter)

Having been warned by Lincoln that a Union supply ship was due, Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered Fort Sumter fired on. On April 13, General P.G.T. Beauregard (one of Anderson’s students at West Point) opened up with his batteries from Fort Moultrie against Fort Sumter. The bombardment lasted for thirty-four hours, and then Anderson, low on men and supplies, surrendered.

Once the Confederacy had Fort Sumter, much of the blockade running that supplied the South with goods from Europe sought the safe harbor of Charleston. Davis stated: “Fort Sumter, where was first given to the breeze the flag of the Confederacy.” Lincoln had his own thoughts: “The last ray of hope for preserving the Union peaceably expired at the assault on Fort Sumter.”[6]

The first state to secede, the first shots of the Civil War, and now a haven for Southern supplies, Charleston and South Carolina attracted the North’s ire. The Union focused on Fort Sumter as a key target. For twenty-two months, Union cannons from first sea and then land targeted the fort. A Confederate log book from the fort recorded the action: “Aug. 18, 1863- enemy opened fire 5 am to 7 pm. 876 shots and shells fired. 452 struck outside, 24, inside, 180 passed over.” In total, Union cannons shot more than 44,000 shells during its almost two year long bombardment. At the fort, 309 Southern soldiers died.

Confederate held Fort Sumter under attack (From exhibit at Fort Sumter)

Fort Sumter sparked the Civil War and was reduced to almost rubble. Standing on the rail of the ferry after the 1 ½ hour visit and watching it recede, I imagined an overlay of a multi-storied brick fortress rising out of the straits at the mouth of Charleston Harbor but saw a short stump, a symbol of the amputated country, of the veterans without limbs, and how the legacy of Civil War continues to impact the country.

The fort as the ferry sails back to Charleston (Photo by Hunner)

Fort Sumter joined the NPS as a National Monument in 1948 under President Truman. Fort Moultrie was acquired on May 1, 1963 and added to Fort Sumter.

---

[1] From exhibit at Old Slave Market, SC. Web?

[2] From exhibit at the Old Slave Market, Charleston, SC. Web?

[3] From exhibit at the Old Slave Market, Charleston, SC,

[4] From the Fort Sumter exhibit at Liberty Square, Charleston, S.C.

[5] I borrowed this term from Rick Atkinson’s title of the same. He wrote about the Allied forces at the beginning of World War II in north Africa.

[6] Both quotes come from the exhibit at Fort Sumter.

Harpers Ferry NHP, Harpers Ferry, West Virginia and Maryland

The tragedy of a country founded on freedom engaging in a war to keep some of its citizens enslaved and the tragedy of Americans fighting Americans, with hundreds of thousands of men killed by their fellow countrymen challenges our comprehension. Perhaps these two facts help illustrate the tragedy: on a single day in September 1862 at the Battle of Antietam, more than 23,000 men were killed or injured.  This totals more than all of the causalities in all of the battles that the United States had fought up to that time.  During the four years of the Civil War, over 600,000 men died -- with 360,000 killed from the North and 258,000 from the South. Many more died of their injuries in the months and years after combat.  The legacy of the Civil War continues as its sites still attract tourists from around the country and the world, as its battle tactics are still studied, and even after 150 years, as its causes and effects still stir heated debates.

Volunteer Burt leads a tour of Harpers Ferry to a group of tourists (Photo by Hunner)

A conflict that engulfed millions of people and lasted four years took a long time to develop. Driven by History will focus on the causes of the conflict over the next few weeks and has already posted a history of slavery in New York City at African Burial Ground For now, let’s focus on the beginnings of the armed conflict that occurred in Kansas and Harpers Ferry.

Harpers Ferry sits at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. Thomas Jefferson passed by the valley with his daughter in 1783 on his way to serve in the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. He wrote in his Notes on the State of Virginia that it was “one of the most stupendous scenes in nature” and “worth a trip across the ocean” to witness.

The Thomas Jefferson Rock overlooking Harpers Ferry.  (Photo by Hunner)

President George Washington established a federal armory and arsenal there. In 1803, Meriwether Lewis obtained guns, powder horns, bullet molds, knives, and an iron frame for a portable boat to take on the Voyage of Discovery. It was an important place in the 19^th century.

A replica of Lewis's steel framed boat which he had made at Harpers Ferry (Photo by Hunner)

Dennis Frye, the Chief of Interpretation at Harpers Ferry, laid out its importance for me. First, Harpers Ferry was one of the earliest industrial centers in the U.S. The falls at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers provided ample water power for the mills that produced manufactured goods for the new republic. In 1819, John Hall used his government contract to make guns at Harpers Ferry with a revolutionary idea of manufacturing interchangeable parts that fit every musket.[1]

Muskets made at the Armory at Harpers Ferry (From exhibit at Visitors' Center)

Second, transportation innovations that transformed the United States came to Harpers Ferry in the 1830s. From Baltimore, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad raced to the west through Harpers Ferry to tap into the verdant region in Ohio. The route through this valley continues as trains screeched by my RV park day and night in nearby Brunswick, Maryland.

Harpers Ferry and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad bridge over the Potomac River (From the exhibit at the Visitors' Center)

Third, the military importance of the gap through the Blue Ridge Mountains manifested itself even before the Civil War when John Brown raided the armory and arsenal at Harpers Ferry to supply a slave revolt. Some say that the Civil War started then. During the war, the town changed hands eight times since it served as a strategic gateway to both the Shenandoah Valley and as an invasion route to the north for the Confederates. Harpers Ferry had more than 1,400 days of contest during the Civil War, even more if you factor in John Brown’s raid in 1859. By comparison, the battles of Antietam and Gettysburg lasted one and three days respectively.

Troops crossing the Potomac on a temporary bridge during the Civil War (From the exhibit at the Visitors' Center)

And fourth, civil rights in the 20^th century got a start here with the Niagara Movement in 1906 that helped found the NAACP in 1909. From industrialization to transportation to war to civil rights,

Harpers Ferry saw some of the most significant events in our nation’s history in the 19^th and early 20^th century. So Harpers Ferry played an important role both before and after the Civil War. It is a town anchored in many of the main developments in our nation’s past.

Students at Storer College in Harpers Ferry (From exhibit at the Visitors' Center)

Let’s focus on the beginning of the Civil War with John Brown and his raid. For an opportunistic attack on a nexus of the nation that targeted slavery, Harpers Ferry was ideal for Brown.

Born in 1800 to a family that farmed the hard hills of Connecticut, Brown embraced Calvinism, an austere faith that fought sin and material attachments. He also embraced the precepts of the young nation, especially the promise that all men are created equal. His fierce belief in this founding principle fueled a passionate drive to rid the nation of slavery.

Portraits of John Brown over the years (From the exhibit at the Visitors' Center)

Brown arrived in Kansas Territory in October 1855. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 had opened up those territories to a popular vote on slavery. Pro and anti-slavery advocates moved in to contest the vote, and emotions ran hot. As one pro-slavery newspaper proclaimed: “We will continue to tar and feather, drown, lynch, and hang every white-livered abolitionist who dares to pollute our soil.”[2]

In May 1856, 400 “Border Ruffians” attacked the Free State enclave at Lawrence, Kansas and anti-slavery settlers elsewhere. In retaliation, Brown, with four sons and two other men, descended on pro-slavery homes along the Pottawatomie Creek where they hacked to death five men. Violence continued to flare in Kansas, including the "Battle of Osawatomie" where Brown and forty men fought with several hundred Border Ruffians. Then Brown, now nationally known as the fiery abolitionist of Bleeding Kansas, left the territory to hatch a bigger plan to abolish slavery.

Tragic Prelude by John Steuart Curry

Brown wanted to capture the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry with its 100,000 guns and distribute those weapons to start a slave rebellion. He recruited men, raised money from abolitionists, and infiltrated the area in July 1859. Brown declared: “I want to free all the Negros in this state. If the citizens interfere with me, I must only burn the town and have blood.”[3]

On Sunday evening, October 16, John Brown, two of his sons, and eighteen other men, including five African Americans, set out from a nearby farm through the autumnal chill to attack Harpers Ferry. They quickly captured the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad bridge across the Potomac River, while shooting Heyward Shepherd, who died the next day. Shepherd, a free black luggage porter for the B & O, was their first victim.

A tribute to Heyward Shepherd near where he was killed from the United Daughters of the Confederacy (Photo by Hunner) 

 Quickly, Brown’s raiders secured the railroad bridge and parts of the town and kidnaped several plantation owners. Local men began to snipe at the raiders, and then militia from nearby Charlestown arrived. They recaptured the B & O Railroad bridge and continued shooting at Brown and his men, who had holed up in the Armory, the arsenal across the street, and the Rifle Works down the road. Brown’s headquarters in the Armory was in the Engine House, a thick brick building where he held the captives. A few of Brown’s men, particularly in the Rifle Works, tried to slip away, and most were gunned down by the militia. Brown’s son Watson was shot as he escorted a hostage out in the street to negotiate. The local men had no patience for any raiders who wanted to free slaves.

A replica of the Engine House, Brown's headquarters during the raid. (Photo by Hunner)

Two future commanders of the Confederate Army responded to the raid. Lt. Jeb Stuart, a cavalryman with the Army, led the ninety marines sent to the conflict. From D.C., they arrived by train at Harpers Ferry around 11 pm on the 17^th.  After calling for surrender, which Brown ignored, the marines stormed the Engine House. In his report on the action, future Confederate General Robert E. Lee commented that in a few minutes, ten of Brown’s men died as well as five hostages, including the mayor of Harpers Ferry and one marine.[4]

A  drawing of the interior of the Engine House with Brown's raiders and their hostages. (From the exhibit at the Visitors' Center)

Punishment came swiftly to Brown and his surviving men. One week after the raid, Brown faced trial in Charlestown. After a week of testimony, the jury needed only forty-five minutes to convict him of treason and murder. On Dec. 2, 1859, John Brown was hung.

The raid failed to start a slave rebellion. But it did spark an increase in abolition action in the north, and in the south, increased fears of both slave revolts and northern attacks on slavery. Brown’s intention of forcing the issue of slavery onto center stage worked.

Harpers Ferry continued to see action in the Civil War. In April 1861, Virginian troops, led by Thomas (later dubbed Stonewall) Jackson, captured the town and sent it weapons-making machinery south to produce arms for the Confederacy. In the fall of 1862, Jackson and his troops returned, laid siege to the town, and forced the surrender of the federal troops there, the largest such Union surrender during the Civil War.

After the war, Free Will Baptists created Storer College to teach ex-slaves, which became a center for civil rights struggles in the later part of the 19^th and into the 20^th centuries. At the second meeting of the Niagara Movement at Storer College, W.E.B. DuBois called for changes, including the vote for African American men; an end to discrimination in public accommodations; that the 14^th and 15^th amendments be honored and that laws be enforced “against the rich as well as the poor… against white as well as black;” and that “we want our children educated.”[5] This meeting helped create the NAACP in 1909.

The second meeting of the Niagara Movement at Storer College. W.E.B. DuBois is seated, fourth from the right. (From the exhibit of the African American Museum at Harpers Ferry)

Harpers Ferry has played a significant role in our nation’s history.  As a transportation center, a gateway to the west, a site in the industrial revolution, a flash point for the Civil War, and a center for civil rights, this place instigated and witnessed major events in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry helped realize of one of the founding promises of the country, that all men are created equal. Over the next few weeks, Driven by History will visit other Civil War parks will explore the history of the bloody conflict.

President Franklin Roosevelt signed legislation creating Harpers Ferry National Monument on June 29, 1944. It became a National Historical Park in 1963.

A monument to John Brown at Harpers Ferry with the Engine House on the left. (Photo by Hunner)

---

[1] Horowitz, 69.

[2] Horwitz, 45.

[3] Horwitz, 131.

[4] Horwitz, 291-92.

[5] From the exhibit at the African American Museum at Harpers Ferry.