Yankees: June 2009 Archives

Background post: The Union V Corps visits southwestern York County (account of the 118th Pennsylvania near Hanover)

I am up in upstate Maine on business this week (after a very active Civil War weekend in York County, PA). The weather is lousy (chilly, drizzle, fog), but the people are friendly and the scenery beautiful, particularly along the coast. Maine during the Civil War provided significant numbers of sailors to the Union Navy, as well as several regiments of infantry, a little cavalry, and some artillery. Perhaps the most famous (at least today to the modern casual Civil War buff) is the 20th Maine Infantry, which gained recognition from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Killer Angels and the later Ted Turner financed movie, Gettysburg. Commanding colonel Joshua "Don't Call Me Lawrence" Chamberlain's image to most people is the face of actor Jeff Daniels, who also portrayed the colonel in the prequel Gods and Generals.

But, what is the connection between the venerable Chamberlain, his regiment of woodsmen, fishermen, and townspeople from Maine, and York County, PA?

On July 1, 1863, the Union V Corps under Maj. Gen. George Sykes marched through extreme southwestern township, coming up from Maryland on the Hanover-Westminster Road (the same road used on June 30 by J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry to approach Hanover from Westminster). Much of the general area just a couple of days before had seen maneuvering of troops during what became the Battle of Hanover.

The V Corps camped on several farms near Hanover, but they did not stay very long (perhaps three hours, according to Hanover expert and Licensed Battlefield Guide John Krepps). By 7 PM, they were on the march for Gettysburg, having been ordered to move in that direction as the battle raged. Shortly after Sykes' men, including Chamberlain and the Maine boys, tramped through York County, the regiment entered Adams County, where their unknown destiny would take them to Little Round Top, where many would die or be wounded, and the rest achieve everlasting fame as one of the chief stops on the modern tourist route.

As soon as my photos I took today in Brewer, Maine, are developed of the mock "Little Round Top" hilltop memorial to Chamberlain and the 20th, I will post them here on Cannonball.

Following the cessation of the fighting at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in early July 1863, a huge issue emerged - how to deal with the thousands of wounded men left behind by the two armies as they left for Maryland and Virginia? Most houses, barns, churches, and public buildings in and around Gettysburg for several miles had become temporary field hospitals, but more permanent solutions were needed for those men able to be moved to formal hospitals in Baltimore, Washington, York, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and New York City. When the railroads damaged by the Rebels were repaired in the week after the battle, trainloads of wounded were taken from Gettysburg to Hanover Junction, PA, where they would be transferred to the north-south running Northern Central Railway for shipment to the designated hospital.

Representatives of the United States Sanitary Commission arrived in Hanover Junction and began tending to the comforts of the wounded men, as well as the throngs of relief workers headed into and out of Gettysburg.

Here are a couple of contemporary accounts from old books that shed some light on the workings of the USSC at Hanover Junction.

Dawn Roser of the Codorus Valley Area Historical Society unveils the newest Pennsylvania state historical marker, this one in the historic center square of Jefferson in southern York County. The CVAHS and the borough of Jefferson's combined efforts led to the installation of this marker, which commemorates the three separate times within a week in the early summer of 1863 that the town and the surrounding region were victimized by passing combatants during the Civil War.

The color guard of the 16th Pennsylvania Infantry reenactment group was among the participants in the hour-long ceremony, which occurred on the 146th anniversary of the first Confederate raid on Jefferson. On June 27, 1863, 250 troopers from Maryland and Virginia that comprised the 35th Battalion, Virginia Cavalry rode into the square. Commanded by Lt. Col. Elijah V. White (whose descendant attended the ceremony and spent some time talking with me about her ancestors in that battalion), the Confederates raided the region for horses. One trooper spotted a little girl along the square and handed her a brooch he had stolen from a Hanover jeweler that the Rebels had chased into the countryside before robbing him.

Col. Matthew S. Quay was one of the Civil War heroes from northern York County. Born and raised in Dillsburg, he took command of the 134th Pennsylvania when it was first organized in August 1862 at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg. The regiment was taken by train through York and Hanover Junction down to Baltimore, where it changed trains for the ride to the nation's capitol. In Washington's defenses, Quay and the 134th were attached to the 1st Brigade, 3rd Division, 5th Army Corps, Army of the Potomac.

They marched into Maryland from September 1-18, but did not see action at the Battle of Antietam. Along with the rest of George McClellan's army, they remained inactive at Sharpsburg until October 30. After a quick reconnaissance mission to Smithfield in what is now West Virginia, they marched to Falmouth, Virginia, where Quay's career reached a sudden unexpected crossroads...

Author Dennis W. Brandt, an expert on the 87th Pennsylvania Infantry, was one of the speakers at the June 25, 2009, Civil War Symposium at York College of Pennsylvania as part of the annual Patriot Days celebration.

According to Dennis, the 87th Pennsylvania was the only 3-year regiment raised primarily in York County during the American Civil War (some of its men came from Franklin and Adams Counties as well as York). Recruited and organized in early 1861, the 87th's main task early in the war was to guard railroads, including a stint in western Virginia (now West Virginia). In late 1862, they found themselves serving in the scenic Shenandoah Valley and by the end of the year, the 87th was part of the garrison at Winchester, Virginia.

Little did they know as they celebrated Christmas in the midst of one of the most rabid pro-Confederate towns in the Valley that, for many of the boys, the following summer WInchester would be the gateway to life as a prisoner of war. For some, December 25, 1962, would be their final Christmas on Earth.

The Stouffer name (in various spellings) is well established and well known within York County, Pennsylvania, particularly with the Stauffer cookie and cracker company, as well as a popular local grocery store. The rosters of Civil War soldiers by that name from Pennsylvania is long and varied, with Stouffers, Stoufers, and Stauffers abounding in various regiments, including York County's very own 87th Pennsylvania.

That regiment was the subject of an excellent book penned by Dennis Brandt, who will join Jim McClure, Terry Latschar, and me in presenting a special FREE symposium on the Civil War in York County at York College this Thursday from 6:30 until 9:00 PM as part of the annual Patriot Days celebration. (The symposium will be held in DeMeester Hall, which is the auditorium inside the MAC building, or Wolf Hall. It is on the left as you enter from Country Club Road. There is a parking lot right next to the building.)

Albert D. Stouffer was born in Carlisle into a farming family originally from York County. His parents eventually moved to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where his father died and his mother remarried. According to enlistment records, Stouffer was 5' 9" tall, blue-eyed, light haired and dark complected.

He was seventeen years old when he was pressed into the Confederate military service at the start of the war in April 1861. Stouffer soon made his escape, swam the Potomac River, and was wounded by the Rebels as he fled. He made it back to his native Keystone State, found work as a laborer in York, and celebrated his 18th birthday north of the Mason-Dixon Line. In late September of that same year, he joined the Union Army as a private in Company E of the 87th Pennsylvania. He served throughout the war in the 87th, mustering out with his regiment on June 29, 1865.

He was one of the very few men in York County to be able to claim that he served in both the Confederate Army and the Union Army during the Civil War!

Maj. G. O. Haller, courtesy of USAMHI, Carlisle.

Background posts: Major Granville Haller, To Surrender York or Not, Part II, York native orders civilians to blockade mountain passes near Dillsburg, Book chronicles York native dismissed from the U.S. Army for alleged disloyalty, York army officer's career destroyed by USN officer from Reading

Major Granville O. Haller of the 7th U.S. Infantry was the "Defender of the Susquehanna," the Federal officer in charge of the defenses of Adams and York counties and the vital river crossing at Wrightsville during the Gettysburg Campaign. Haller's actions were not without controversy, and some period observers such as Chambersburg storekeeper and author / writer Jacob Hoke and Professor Michael Jacobs of Gettysburg blamed Haller for his command decisions at Gettysburg in ordering untrained militia to resist the oncoming veteran Confederates. By contrast, some in York equally blamed Haller for his passive non-resistance in that town.

Cannonball reader Guy Breshears is a published author who has studied the life of Granville Oewn Haller. A few years ago, he wrote an interesting account of the July 1863 dismissal of the major for alleged improper remarks about the President and the fall of the Federal government, comments made in a toast that a rival officer trumped up into formal charges. It took Haller years to clear his name in a formal inquiry after the war.

Mr. Breshears, who visited York a couple of years ago to further research Haller, e-mailed me some photos related to Haller's career in the Pacific Northwest, where he was posted before the war at Fort Dalles.

Copyright 2007, Scott Mingus and Tom Poston, all rights reserved. Map of the June 28, 1863 skirmish of Wrightsville, Pennsylvania. No reproduction without written permission.

On the late afternoon of Sunday June 28, 1863, more than 1500 Confederate soldiers under Brig. Gen. John B. Gordon of the Army of Northern Virginia marched from York, Pennsylvania, eastward through Hallam to Wrightsville on the river, a distance of some 10-11 miles. Their goal was to seize the mile-and-a-quarter-long covered bridge over the Susquehanna River, a key military target that would allow passage into Lancaster County where several important railroads could be interrupted. Defending the bridge was a motley collection of hastily trained Pennsylvania volunteer militia, invalided veteran soldiers emptied from the beds of the U.S. Army Hospital in York and their guards, a handful of active duty troops from the 87th Pennsylvania who had been badly embarrassed at the Second Battle of Winchester by these same oncoming Georgians, and three small cavalry units, one of which was a parade show group from Philadelphia.

Looking southwesterly toward the fields through which Gordon's Rebels advanced.

Gordon formed the 31st Georgia into battle line in the fields beyond the white farm and slowly advanced the veteran regiment, while two other regiments skirted to the hills north of Wrightsville in a flanking movement and three regiments performed a similar flanking march near Kreutz Creek to the south.

This plaque on the north side of Penn Common depicts the Civil War-era U.S. Army Hospital that once was on the premises of what is now the park. The hospital was a sprawling complex that treated more than 14,000 patients during the war. The buildings were dismantled following the conflict and the cessation of military medical services in York.

Background post: York's Penn Common Civil War memorial

This graceful figure of Columbia tops the central column of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Penn Common.

One of downtown's York's most interesting places for the Civil War buff is the Penn Common (or Penn Park). It was the site of the U.S. Army Hospital which treated more than 14,000 wounded and ill soldiers during the war. Among them were hundreds of patients brought to York from the battlefield at Gettysburg.

Recently the state installed a series of historical wayside markers throughout southern Pennsylvania to commemorate the region's Civil War history. Among the Pennsylvania Civil War Trails sites is Penn Common.