A Journal of the American Civil War: V1-1

By Theodore P. Savas

Balanced and in-depth military coverage (all theaters, North and South) in a non-partisan format with detailed notes, offering meaty, in-depth articles, original maps, photos, columns, book reviews, and indexes.

Fredericksburg Artillery from Eacho’s Farm to Appomattox – First Gun at Gettysburg – 37th Illinois Infantry at Pea Ridge – Preservation Report – Capsule Unit Histories

• Language: English
• Publisher: Savas Publishing
• Release date: Dec 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781954547155

Book preview

Editorial Introduction

When Georgia Private Edwin Jennison enlisted to fight for the Southern Confederacy, he would have been surprised had someone predicted that in a few short months he would be killed while charging up a grassy hill in Virginia on a hot day in July, 1862. The teenage youth would have been even more shocked to see his likeness on the cover of Newsweek magazine 128 years later, his haunting dark eyes and youthful innocence gazing into the hearts and homes of millions of twentieth-century Americans.

The Jennison’s of the Civil War came from dirt farms and dry goods stores, plantations and the inner city, intent on playing their own unique roles in the great adventure that beckoned them to arms. By the thousands they enlisted, flocking to recruiting stations to join companies with such spirited martial sobriquets as the Raccoon Roughs and the Tioga Rifles. These companies would eventually become small parts in large, well-organized killing machines, but soldiers such as Pvt. Jennison reserved their greatest source of pride and loyalty for their regiment, the building block of the great Civil War armies. Composed of men often from the same area and usually well-acquainted with one another, the regiment became a home away from home for countless American boys who, like Pvt. Jennison, would never return to the one they had left.

As the war evolved so too did regiments, developing their own personalities and reputations as a direct result of the varied hardships of their wartime service. Happenstance placed one regiment in blissful repose miles from where the bullets flew, while another marched to its destruction across a lush summer field. Whether by fast marching and hard fighting in the Valley, or cutting a swath of desolation across the red clay of Georgia, experiences inextricably linked the soldier to his regiment. And it is with the regiment that any serious study of Civil War armies must begin.

The sheer number of regiments raised during the conflict is staggering. According to Frederick Dyer’s definitive A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, (Dayton, 1978), p. 39, Union authorities raised 2,144 infantry regiments, 272 of cavalry, 61 of heavy artillery, 13 of engineers, 9 light infantry battalions, and 432 artillery batteries. Correspondingly, the Confederacy raised 642 infantry regiments, 137 of cavalry, 16 of heavy artillery and 227 artillery batteries. Although some of these units have been able to partially evade historical obscurity as a result of a published history of their wartime experiences, most have not been so fortunate.

Civil War Regiments will provide a serial outlet for the research of historians, both professional and amateur. Each quarterly issue will provide a close-up look at two of those fighting units, one Union and one Confederate. Although many fine Civil War publications are available today, most provide the reader with a large picture format as opposed to a micro-historical approach, which examines the war with a much narrower and sharply defined lens. Civil War Regiments offers its readers the latter method of presentation not as a substitute for other sources, but as a supplemental reference tool.

Regimental Studies Inc., the publisher of Civil War Regiments, hopes to foster further study of our nation’s greatest upheaval by donating all revenues over expenses to the much-heralded but severely under-funded effort to preserve our embattled Civil War sites. Our readers will be able to live and march from Eacho’s Farm to Appomattox, with the Fredericksburg Artillery, but if a concerted effort on all fronts is not made today to save what remains of our Civil War heritage, it will be irrevocably lost forever. To walk across quiet fields and orchards that once shuddered under the thunder of deep-throated artillery, while dreaming of the tramp of thousands of marching feet, is a luxury that we, as Americans, can no longer take for granted.

Our premiere issue features a Confederate artillery battery and a Union infantry regiment, both unique in a number of ways. The Fredericksburg Artillery was atypical of other Virginia Confederate units in that it was predominatly composed of clerks, as opposed to farmers. At the end of the war, the battery could claim the rare distinction of having lost more men to enemy lead and iron than to disease. The 37th Illinois (Fremont Rifles) joined the war early and stayed late, serving entirely in the Western Theater from 1861-1866. From the northern counties of Illinois, farm boys mostly, they went to war as bright-eyed defenders of the Union, little suspecting that it would be five years and 18,000 miles before their service would end.

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The following individuals assisted us without compensation, other than a smile and a thank you: Robert K. Krick, Michael Mullins and Chris Calkins, without whom this journal would have remained but an idea; Timothy J. Thompson of Evansville, Ind., for technical and artistic support with our logo; Scot Halpin of San Francisco, Ca. for making the first contributions to our artwork library; Jerry Budwig of Walnut Creek, Ca. for intellectual inspiration; Leslie Waki of San Jose, Ca., for all her patient typing; and our first-run advertisers, who believed in the finished product. To our wives, Anne Tolbert Woodbury and Carol Rinehart Savas, a heartfelt thank you for their advice, patience and support, editorial and otherwise. And a special thanks to our Charter Subscribers, especially those who sent in contributions well in excess of their subcription rate in order to assist us in our endeavor.

Theodore P. Savas David A. Woodbury

From Eacho’s Farm to Appomattox:

The Fredericksburg Artillery

Robert K. Krick

¹

On January 19, 1861, a military affair of local note took place in Fredericksburg, Virginia. The Fredericksburg News reported the milestone with apparent pride:

An artillery company was organized on Saturday night, 37 members - 50 expected. An accomplished officer has been invited to instruct them in practice.²

John Brown’s insane behavior at Harper’s Ferry, and his fabulous apotheosis at the hands of Northern radicals, was fifteen months in the past. South Carolina had been out of the Union for a month and other states were heading in the same direction. Crisis was in the air and rumors of war abounded. All across the state men were banding together in groups like the new Fredericksburg artillery company. The time was not far distant when sizable bounties would be necessary to stimulate enlistments. In January 1861, however, young men were paying cash initiation fees for the privilege of joining.³

On February 21, the artillery boys were back in the news:

An artillery company was organized Thursday night. Captain, T. A. Curtis. Lieutenants, J.F. Alexander, A.C. Thom and C.M. Braxton. Orderly Sergeant, R.M. Hooe. Two cannons will arrive this week. Our Battalion is improving.⁴

The battery mustered into Confederate service on April 23, 1861. Although it was recruited to full strength before it finally saw action, the beginnings were sparse. Only forty men were mustered in on April 23. Thirteen more enlisted during May and a like number in June, bringing the battery’s paper strength to sixty-six men. Another twenty-eight men joined in July, finally bring the unit up to near the authorized level. The seventeen men who enlisted during the last five months of the year made a net of 111 men mustered in during 1861.⁵ Forty percent of the men for whom residences are known were from Fredericksburg, three times more than any other locality.⁶

Only fifteen battery members can be identified as illiterate, a statistic which might be traced to the origins of the unit in the city rather than the country. In addition, at least eighteen battery members attended college. Despite geographically divergent origins, the Fredericksburg Artillery was the most thoroughly Fredericksburg independent unit in the Confederate armies.⁷

Brigadier General Daniel Ruggles, in charge of Confederate affairs around Fredericksburg sent the raw battery, now under the command of Captain Carter Braxton, eastward a few miles to the hottest spot in the district, the banks of the Potomac River near the mouth of Aquia Creek.⁸ The battery spent most of its first year in Confederate service in this locale, marching from one threatened location to another as circumstances dictated. As it turned out, the Fredericksburg Artillery was enjoying what was to be the only quiet summer of the war.

Most of the Fall season was spent camped at the crossroads near Aquia Creek before the battery moved to its winter quarters in early November. This site, according to all surviving records for November 1861 through February 1862 was Camp Clifton, which apparently was somewhere along the Potomac River between Aquia and Evansport. According to one member, most of the battery’s winter duty was nothing more than guard duty in snow, although the Fredericksburg guns did get an occasional shot at a gunboat from near Glasscocks hill. The unit spent the war’s first winter in almost bucolic quietude. As the spring of 1862 drew nigh, it seemed apparent that the sitzkrieg would eventually turn into a shooting war.⁹

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The Fredericksburg Artillery had been under arms for almost one full year before leaving the vicinity of its hometown in April 1862. The battery enjoyed a heavy influx of new enlisted recruits into its ranks. Their motive was to avoid the onus of being a conscript, and the vagaries of being assigned at random by conscription officials. Scattered enlistments throughout 1862 would net the unit 97 new men.¹⁰

Braxton’s newly swollen battery became part of a different organization on April 7, 1862 when it was attached to the Tennessee Brigade commanded by Joseph R. Anderson. The brigade was composed of the 1st, 7th and 14th Tennessee infantry regiments and the Fredericksburg Artillery, a net strength of 2,030 men.¹¹ On the same day, the company joined the steady stream of Confederate units leaving northern Virginia and heading for the Peninsula east of Richmond to oppose General McClellan and the Army of the Potomac. After a brief stint in the Yorktown defenses, Braxton’s Battery joined in the Confederate retreat toward Richmond in early May. On May 23, Hatton, whose brigade had been acting on the rear guard for nearly two weeks, decided to turn on the methodically advancing Yankees the next morning and test their strength. The battle at Eacho’s Farm seemed much more intense than its merits warranted, but even so it was a crisp little affair.¹²

Although Hatton died before he could file a report, two unofficial accounts, one by a battery member and another by the anonymous Participator, tell in some detail the story of the battery in its first battle. Hatton drew his line across "a large field on both sides of the