Jonathan R. Allen asked:




A few Civil War horses and their riders:

Traveller and Robert E. Lee

Confederate General Robert E. Lee came to Richmond, Virginia in the spring of 1861. During this visit, Lee was given a bay stallion named Richmond. Richmond was a nervous horse, and proved unsatisfactory. When Richmond was near strange horses, he would tend to squeal. This was not a good thing for a Civil War horse to do. Lee took Richmond to West Virginia and purchased another horse called The Roan or Brown-Roan. Unfortunately, The Roan began to go blind during the Seven Days’ Battle in June and July of 1862. The horse Richmond died after Malvern Hill. After Second Bull Run, cavalryman Jeb Stuart got Lee a mare named Lucy Long. Also around this time, Lee received a sorrel horse named Ajax.

When Lee rode to Appomattox Court House to surrender on April 9, 1865, he was riding his favorite and most known horse. This gray colored horse was Traveller. After the Civil War, when Robert E. Lee was president at Washington University (later renamed to Washington and Lee University), Lee’s favorite old war-horse Traveller was still with him. When Lee died, the horse Traveller walked behind Lee’s hearse in the funeral procession. Traveller walked with his head bowed and in a slow gait. Traveller is buried outside of the Lee Chapel on the campus of Washington and Lee University. Robert E. Lee is interred in a crypt beneath the Lee Chapel.

Lexington, Sam, and William Tecumseh Sherman

William Tecumseh Sherman had two horses that were his favorites during the Civil War. These horse’s names were Lexington and Sam. Sherman rode Lexington at Atlanta and in the Grand Review in Washington at the close of the war. Sam was injured several times during the Civil War. At Shiloh, three of Sherman’s horses were killed during the battle. Two of these three horses died as an orderly held their reigns.

Cincinnati and Ulysses S. Grant

As a young man, Ulysses S. Grant developed a love of horses when he worked at his father’s farm. Grant became a skilled equestrian. While a cadet at West Point, Grant was an exceptional equestrian and he did not stand out as having special talents in anything else while at West Point. Grant wanted a commission in the cavalry when he finished at West Point. Instead, he wound up in the infantry because the cavalry had no vacancies. The infantry assignment must have been a disappointment for the horse-loving equestrian Ulysses S. Grant.

Grant’s favorite horse during the Civil War was Cincinnati. An admirer gave Cincinnati to Grant after the Battle of Chattanooga. Cincinnati was seldom ridden by anyone other than Grant, one notable exception being President Abraham Lincoln when Lincoln last visited City Point, Virginia. Other horses Grant had in the Civil War were Jack, Fox, and Kangaroo. Kangaroo was left on the Shiloh battlefield by the Confederates. This horse was described as ugly and raw-boned. Grant however, having an eye for horses, knew that Kangaroo was a thoroughbred. After becoming a Yankee horse, Kangaroo got rest and care and became a fine horse.

Old Sorrel and Stonewall Jackson

Old Sorrel was Confederate General Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson’s horse. Stonewall was riding this horse when he was shot by friendly fire at Chancellorsville. Old Sorrel became Jackson’s horse in May of 1861 at Harpers Ferry. The horse was about eleven-years-old at this time.

That Devil Dan and George B. McClellan

Union General George B. McClellan’s favorite war-horse was named Daniel Webster. Members of General McClellan’s staff began to call this horse “that devil Dan” because Daniel Webster was a speedy horse. The horses of McClellan’s staff members had trouble keeping up with “that devil Dan.” Daniel Webster was with McClellan at Antietam. This horse was described as being a dark bay, about seventeen hands high, a pure bred, handsome, and he seldom showed signs of fatigue. Daniel Webster was a fine example of a horse. When McClellan retired from military service, the horse Daniel Webster went with him. The horse nicknamed “that devil Dan” became the family horse of the McClellan family.

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Maggie MacLean asked:




General Robert E. Lee left his most seriously injured Rebels to the mercy of Union doctors, nurses, and civilians after the Battle of Gettysburg. Of course, the Union surgeons did their duty and cared for the boys in blue first. The Confederate wounded had to wait their turn, and there was an extremely high mortality rate among them.

Volunteer nurse Cornelia Hancock wrote:

It took nearly five days for some three hundred surgeons to perform the amputations that occurred here, during which time the rebels lay in a dying condition without their wounds being dressed or scarce any food. If the rebels did not get severely punished for this battle, then I am no judge.

This article, titled Inhumanity and Poltroonery of the Rebel Surgeons, appeared in the Adams Sentinel, in July 1863:

The infamy and cowardice of the Rebel surgeons in deserting the men of their army wounded at the battle of Gettysburg is without parallel in the war. In every battle in which fortune has been adverse to our arms and our wounded have been temporarily left within the Rebel Lines, the brave and self denying surgeons of the regiments have either remained with the fallen or have immediately applied for peace within the Rebel lines, that they might be cared for.

But the Rebels left lying on the field many thousand of their wounded-Dr. Veliom reports the number at ten thousand and one with them neither surgeons, stores, nor nurses but literally abandoned them to their fate. These men complained bitterly of the cruelty of their surgeons in thus forsaking them, but bore up patiently under their sufferings for many days until they could be attended to by some of our own surgeons most of whom had at once to hasten forward with their own regiments to other fields.

We published yesterday a thrilling letter from the battle field written on Thursday last, six days after the close of the contest, which stated that there were hundreds of the Rebel wounded not then reached that hundreds of them it had been found impossible even to cover and they lay in the woods with broken limbs and torn bodies drenched in the rain, some having been drowned in the floods which rose around them.

Of course everything possibly was being was being done for them, and doctors, wound dressers and nurses were arriving. We were not prepared for, and could not have foreseen the flight of all the Rebel surgeons. It will long be remembered to their disgrace both by the unfortunate Rebels and by the whole country.

The Confederate dead were abandoned altogether. They were buried along roads, in ditches, shoved into trenches, or consigned to common graves. The Southerners were seen as traitorous invaders, and their bodies were not respected as were the men in blue.

From the New York Times, July 15, 1863:

The last of the rebel dead on the battlefield were buried only yesterday. They were principally found near the foot of Round Top Ridge, where some of the most terrific fighting of the battle took place, between a portion of Longstreet’s forces and the Excelsior brigade. The bodies numbered, in all, about fifty. Quite a number, nearer the centre, had been buried the day previous.

After the Civil War ended, the Southern states launched efforts to return the bodies of the Confederate dead buried in the Northern states to their native states for burial. In Virginia, the citizens began to raise money to bring the Rebel soldiers from Gettysburg to Richmond for reburial in Hollywood Cemetery.

On June 15, 1872, a steamship docked at the wharf at Rocketts on the James River with boxes containing the Confederate dead. The soldiers who had left Virginia to fight for the cause they thought was just, had come home. No one will ever know for sure, but in one of the precious boxes were probably the unidentified remains of Brigadier General Richard B. Garnett, who was killed while leading his men in what history has labeled Pickett’s Charge.

On June 20, 1872, fifteen wagons were assembled at Rocketts to carry the boxes containing the remains of the Confederate dead. Each wagon was draped in mourning and was escorted by two former Confederate soldiers with their muskets reversed.

The funeral procession, which included political and military leaders slowly made its way up Main Street. The buildings along the route were draped in black. When the procession reached Hollywood Cemetery, the boxes were unloaded and buried in a section known as Gettysburg Hill.

There was nothing comparable to the Gettysburg Address for these soldiers-only a prayer by Reverend Moses Hoge of Richmond’s Second Presbyterian Church, which contained these lines:

We thank Thee that we have been permitted to bring back from their graves among strangers all that is mortal of our sons and brothers. Engrave upon the hearts of…all the young men of our Commonwealth the remembrance of the patriotic valor, the loyalty to truth, to duty, and to God, which characterized the heroes around whose remains we weep, and who surrendered only to the last enemy…death.

Following the prayer, three musket volleys were fired in a final tribute.

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Jonathan R. Allen asked:




“I want sudden, bold, forward, determined war,” Senator Edward D. Baker’s reaction to Fort Sumter, as he declared it to the Senate. Baker was a unique individual, and he would play a key role in the Battle of Ball’s Bluff.

When Edward D. Baker was four, his family moved from England to Philadelphia. Baker later lived in Illinois where he was admitted to the bar in 1830. In 1835, he started in local Illinois politics and along this path he met Abraham Lincoln. In 1837, Baker was elected to the United States Congress and in 1840, to the United States Senate. Edward D. Baker defeated Abraham Lincoln in 1844 for the United States congressional seat, and was elected. Despite this, Lincoln and Baker were good friends and later Lincoln named his second son (Edward Baker Lincoln) after him.

Baker was a veteran of the Black Hawk War of 1832, and the Mexican War, where he served as a colonel of the 4th Illinois Volunteers. After this he moved to Galena, Illinois to run for the United States Congress, thus avoiding running against his friend from Springfield, Abraham Lincoln (whom he had previously defeated). Baker was elected. Baker failed to obtain a cabinet appointment from President Franklin Pierce in 1852, so he moved on west to follow the California Gold Rush and was admitted to the bar in California. In 1860, Baker was on the move again, this time to Oregon, and following in his tradition of political success, was elected to the United States Senate. At Abraham Lincoln’s first inauguration, Edward D. Baker rode in the presidential carriage and introduced Lincoln before his inaugural address.

In May, of 1861 Baker’s star again was on the rise as the Civil War began to heat up. He was authorized by the Secretary of War to form an infantry regiment that would be counted as part of the California quota. Baker raised the 71st Pennsylvania Infantry (also known as the 1st California), mostly recruiting the troops from Philadelphia, and served as this regiment’s colonel. Only a few month’s following, Baker gained command of a brigade in General Charles P. Stone’s division. Baker’s work as brigade commander was to guard fords of the Potomac River north of Washington.

In the fall of 1861, Edward D. Baker was now fifty-years-old, handsome, beardless, a close personal friend of President Abraham Lincoln, and a staunch Union supporter. He was both an Oregon senator and a colonel in the army. After distinguishing himself at many levels of law and politics, apparently further achievement awaited him as a Civil War officer.

He was a man fond of reciting poetry, was always on the move, was larger than life, and soon Baker would have the opportunity to “promote sudden, bold, forward, determined war.” With a Civil War now underway, may God bless and protect any Confederate found in Colonel Edward D. Baker’s path.

Ball’s Bluff is along the Potomac River about 35 miles northwest of Washington, D.C., and is northeast of Leesburg, Virginia, it is a steep 100-foot-high bank rising above the Potomac on the Virginia shore. It has a 50-yard-deep flood plain from the river, and the bluff itself is about 600 yards wide. The steep, wooded, bank of the bluff has a 10 to 12 foot-wide cow or cart path meandering from the shore up to the top.

At Ball’s Bluff, approximately halfway across from the Virginia shore of the Potomac River, is Harrison’s Island, the water runs swiftly through this narrow channel. From Harrison’s Island across the Potomac over to the Maryland shore, the channel is wider and shallower.

After First Bull Run, the Confederates were firmly planted in northeast Virginia and controlled most of it. In October, Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston had accumulated the majority of troops at Centerville. There were still some Rebel troops around Leesburg, north of Centerville, but there were rumors (a black deserter of the 13th Mississippi had told that the Confederates at Leesburg had removed supplies back to Manassas, thus preparing for a retreat) floating about that Johnston was pulling his Leesburg men back.

Union General George B. McClellan thought it might be worthwhile to see how sincere Johnston was about keeping troops at Leesburg. Camped at Langley (on the Virginia side of the Potomac), was the Pennsylvania Reserves division, it had 13,000 troops and was led by George McCall. McClellan sent McCall to Dranesville (about halfway between Leesburg and Washington, D. C.) on October 19, thinking this advancement of Yankee troops might help urge Joe Johnston to move his troops out of Leesburg.

Contrary to McClellan’s desires, Confederate commander Nathan “Shanks” Evans took up a defensive position west of Dranesville instead of withdrawing. Then to complicate the situation, on the morning of October 20, McClellan received an incorrect message saying that the Confederates had responded to McCall’s movement by withdrawing. Shanks Evan’s defensive actions west of Dranesville were misinterpreted as withdrawal.

McClellan wanted to be sure about the Confederate retreat, so he sent an order containing these following words to General Charles Stone on the Maryland side of the Potomac: “keep a good lookout upon Leesburg, to see if this movement has the effect to drive them away. Perhaps a slight demonstration on your part would have the effect to move them.”

General Stone interpreted McClellan’s orders freely and proceeded to cross a regiment or two at Edward’s Ferry below Ball’s Bluff, and sent other troops three miles up the Maryland side of the Potomac so they could cross over to Virginia at Harrison’s Island. Stone’s thoughts were that he could apply some pressure to the Confederates, and urge them to retreat from Leesburg. Learn More Civil War History…

Stone’s men marching toward the crossing at Harrison’s Island were the 20th Massachusetts. It was a nighttime march, and by midnight they found themselves making the crossing from the Maryland shore. This crossing was difficult because they only had three small boats that could only ferry a combined total of 25 men at a time. There was a lot of standing around and waiting, and confusion, for those waiting to cross and those who had crossed. Near dawn on October 21, all the 20th Massachusetts found itself on Harrison’s Island looking out at the remaining river crossing of 150 yards over to the Virginia shore. There was a high and wooded bluff, Ball’s Bluff was its name. They also learned the evening previous, the 15th Massachusetts was able to get five companies over to the Virginia shore. Those men were now up on the bluff… and something was going on up there.

That morning the 20th Massachusetts made its crossing from Harrison’s Island, and climbed up Ball’s Bluff by the meandering cow or cart path. At the top, they found themselves in a glade of open ground, and with not much going on. Earlier that dawn, Colonel Charles Devon of the 15th Massachusetts had taken some troops almost all the way to Leesburg, west of Ball’s Bluff. Devon ran into some Confederate outposts during his foray, and some shots were fired. Devon was now back at the glade.

Confederates were off somewhere in the woods beyond the glade, on higher ground, and there were some pickets doing some shooting. No one knew exactly where the Rebels were, nor how many of them there might be. Colonel Devon sent word off to General Stone, reporting what he knew. Stone sent word back telling Devon to wait for Colonel Edward D. Baker, who would arrive soon with more troops, and take charge.

After some delay, Colonel Baker arrived at Ball’s Bluff and took command, ready to satisfy his want of; “sudden, bold, forward, determined war.” Lincoln’s close friend was now in charge, ready to move (remember, Baker was a man on the move) against the Confederates. One can only imagine how much Baker, the successful lawyer and politician, had longed for this moment. He was known to occasionally recite poetry, and once on a battlefield had told a friend to “Press where ye see my white plume shine amidst the ranks of war.”

As Baker assumed command he told Colonel Devon, “I congratulate you, sir, on the prospect of a battle,” and to the troops nearby he inquired, “Boys, you want to fight, don’t you?” The boys responded positively. The fight was on.

The Rebel fire was becoming more and more frequent, and the Johnny Rebs were concentrating in greater numbers on beyond in the woods, on the high ground. Baker had gotten a couple of guns up on the bluff, and they were put to work shelling the woods where the Rebel sniping came from. The 20th Massachusetts returned fire and men were being hit, falling. The boys were green and new to all this, the idea that enemy shot at them, and accurately. The boys felt their nerves as they saw the elephant first-hand, this was no drill, blood flowed and lives ended.

Baker returned to the edge of the bluff and saw a New York regiment, the Tammany Regiment it was called, making its way up the path. With the arrival of the Tammany men, there would be a total of four Union regiments on Ball’s Bluff. Colonel Baker felt more and more confident. Seeing the Tammany Regiment’s colonel, Milton Cogswell, approaching the top of the bluff, Baker waved and greeted the colonel with a line from Sir Walter Scott’s “The Lady of the Lake; “One blast upon your bugle horn is worth a thousand men.”

Now, Colonel Milton Cogswell was not a lawyer-politician-officer, no sir, Cogswell was a genuine West Point professional soldier, and he saw the situation at the top of the bluff differently than Colonel Edward D. Baker. To Cogswell’s trained military eye, things looked bad, very bad. The Confederates held the high ground in woods, brush, and timber, and were picking off Union men at will, just like a turkey-shoot. Cogswell knew the Confederates were building up to a an attack. The Union boys were backed up to a steep bluff, with an unfordable river below. To increase the trouble that Cogswell saw, soon one of the guns recoiled over the cliff’s bluff. This left the Union boys with no big gun, because the Rebels had already silenced the other with sniper fire.

Colonel Baker may have been a lawyer-politician colonel, but he was not an idiot. Baker immediately caught on to the dire circumstances. He moved along the Union line encouraging the boys to stand fast. Perhaps Baker realized that if they retreated down the bluff, with only three small boats it would take hours to ferry everyone across the river. It was better to stay and fight. Certainly, Baker must have had a plan in mind for success, and to save the day for the Union boys. We’ll never know.

A Rebel sharpshooter (perhaps one not fond of poetry) drew a bead on Colonel Edward D. Baker’s pumpkin and killed him instantly with a bullet through the brain.

The Union boys had lost their poetry quoting lawyer-politician turned colonel. Baker’s body would now be on the move down the bluff. Things began to erode into a complete skedaddle. After all, how can you conduct a battle on a bluff, where you are sitting ducks, without poetry recitation?

Some resistance and maneuvering was attempted, but as dusk began, the day was lost for the Union. As Rebel Mississippians and Virginians shot at the compacted group of Yankees, men went over the bluff as fast as they could. Union boys toppled over the bluff and in their haste to flee, they fell agonizingly onto the bayonets and heads of others making their way down the bluff. In places, the sides of the bluff were worn down to the dirt and smoothed over by men and bodies. After making it down to the narrow shore, more horror awaited.

Two boatloads of wounded soldiers (the wounded had been brought down the bluff for evacuation all day long) were trying to make their way over to Harrison’s Island. These boats were swamped by panicked men jumping onboard in their rush to save their own skin. Bullets from Rebels firing down from the bluff turned the water; “as white as in a great hail storm” as one man described. Many of the wounded of the swamped boats could not help themselves, they drowned and were swept downstream. A remaining sheet-metal skiff soon sank after being shot full of holes, now there were no boats.

Night fell with bright, scarlet muzzle flashes continuing from above. Some Union boys surrendered, some stripped down and swam to safety, others found a neck-deep ford and made it over to Harrison’s Island. Finally, over 200 Union men were killed or injured, and over 700 were taken prisoner. The Confederate losses were minimal.

Ball’s Bluff was a Union disaster. A day that was once interlaced with poetry, was now more appropriate as a subject for a dirge.

Back in Washington, Abraham Lincoln would now mourn a Union loss, and the death of a close friend.

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Steven Chabotte asked:




It’s hard to imagine a time before television news and radio news, not to mention news on the Internet, but during the Civil War, citizens had to rely on two major sources of news – word of mouth and newspapers.

Although word of mouth was the most expedient source of news about the war, newspapers provided citizens and soldiers alike with the most detailed accounts of war that that had ever been published in America or in any other country for that matter. New printing technologies allowed newspapers and magazines alike to publish another new technology – photographs. The advent of the telegraph made news from the front lines of the war available to the press room in minutes rather than days or weeks. Newspapers provided a tangible account of a war that developed by the day.

By the time the Civil War began in 1860, newspapers had expanded from the large cities in the northeast to almost all major cities throughout the United States, and even into some smaller towns, where an enterprising publisher could set up a press.

However, at the outset of the war, most newspapers were still yet unequipped to cover the war. Not only was the Civil War one of the most geographically large wars fought to the time, but the sheer numbers of those involved made the task mind-boggling. Although most of the larger papers, such as The New York Herald, The New York Times and Harper’s Weekly had Washington correspondents, few had ever employed correspondents for the wide expanse of country the war encompassed. Thus a new position in the American newspaper office was born – the war correspondent.

War correspondents were sent out to the front lines, along with special artists, who until photographs became widely used toward the end of the war, sketched the action. These brave writers and artists experienced the same harsh conditions of life in a military camp as the soldiers did.

The ability of newspapers to get information from the front lines was often troubling for officers and others in positions of authority during the war. At various times, newspapers were censored for fear that the news they reported would be used by the enemy to advance their cause. This was more a problem in the North than in the South for obvious reasons – the South had had fewer major newspapers before the war, and blockades had resulted in such a shortage of paper, ink, and other supplies necessary that many papers shut down, never to reopen. But in the North, the threat of the press was taken in hand; Lincoln himself feared the repercussions of newspapers that were either opposed to the war or sympathetic to the Confederate cause, and suppressed many of these papers.

But Lincoln’s courting of editors that supported his cause sometimes came back to haunt him, as is the case of his supporter Horace Greeley, of the New York Tribune, whom, in an effort to stir up support for the Union, undoubtedly contributed to the battles at Bull Run, which were both notorious losses for the Federal Army.

By far the most popular newspaper during the Civil War era was Harper’s Weekly. Harper’s was one of the more even-handed newspapers, due mostly to its popularity in the South. Although the paper supported Lincoln and the Union, it still reported with disinterest, and remained a mainstay of the Southern household during the war.

Aside from its impartiality, Harper’s circulation of more than 200,000 during the Civil War era is attributable to the fact that the paper employed some of the most distinguished writers and artists of the time. Political cartoonist Thomas Nast was a mainstay of Harper’s, as was artist Winslow Homer. Other notable artists who contributed to Harper’s during the Civil War era include Theodore R. Davis, Henry Mosler, and the brothers Alfred Waud and William Waud.

Newspapers were the most reliable source of news during Civil War America. While newspapers served the citizens of the time well, they are also an invaluable resource for historians who study the war, providing insight not only into the actions of the war, but into the popular opinion of the war, as well.

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Talia Eaton asked:




Abraham Lincoln, although Kentuckian by birth, has ancestry that stems from proper Virginia heritages. Thomas Lincoln moved into Kentucky when it was merely an extension of Virginia. When Kentucky was on its way to becoming a state, the frontier beckoned the family and they moved into the frontier of what later became Indiana. It was the influence of the Kentuckian Daniel Boone that drove the Lincolns and so many other Kentuckians into the frontier. Indeed, the general perspective of frontier life was that when a neighbor moved closer, usually a distance amounting to three miles or so, it was time to consider moving to yet another frontier. Abraham Lincoln’s perspective was forever colored by this viewpoint. In his last days he was considering the move to California at the end of his Presidency. The idea was that a frontier would afford his sons opportunity, much as his opportunity came from the frontier of the West at the time.

For decades after Lincoln’s death, national figures have sought how to categorize that uniqueness that was Lincoln’s. The fact that Lincoln could rise above the impression of being a backwoods frontiersman and could integrate into the socialized society of New York and Washington was the key to the increased perception of Lincoln as representative of the totality of America.

Woodrow Wilson correctly identified this synthesis of rural and urban American when he said, “In Henry Clay East and West were mixed without being fused or harmonized…. In Jackson there was not even a mixture; he was all of a piece and altogether unacceptable to some parts of the country, a frontier statesman. But, in Lincoln the elements were combined and harmonized. It is the conclusion of all observing students of history that Lincoln was literally ‘The First American.’ “

In fact, Lincoln struggled to become this American. In life, he was vilified for his backwoods ways. Yet, Lincoln studied and learned the ways of city social life well. He crafted a persona that blended backwoods stories to the situations he encountered in the cities. It was not always a seamless performance as he was portrayed as vulgar and base in his ways many times in his life. It was the cleansing martyrdom of that Good Friday of 1865 that washed away all the perceptions of impropriety and made Lincoln’s backwoods manners an accepted part of what makes an American.

These days Abraham Lincoln’s legacy and contributions are to American society remembered through various writings including biographical and similar Lincoln books, artwork including many Abraham Lincoln photographs, prints, posters. His 200th birthday was recently celebrated in 2009 and he remains an icon in history.

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