Yankees: July 2009 Archives

Background post: Wounded Ohio soldier boards the governor's special train at Hanover Junction.

Today we pick up Captain Nickerson's narrative of his excursion to see the dedication ceremony. It's just one of dozens of eyewitness accounts of Lincoln's speech, but it's one of the best commentaries.

Dignitaries, politicians, reporters, and soldiers all appear in this November 1863 photograph (courtesy of the Library of Congress). Taken facing north at Hanover Junction, Pennsylvania, it shows a part of the crowd that have arrived with Governor Andrew Curtin (R-PA) as the delegation changed trains at Hanover Junction to head west for Gettysburg and the dedication ceremonies for the new National Cemetery.

Among the people at Hanover Junction that day was a northern Ohio infantry captain named Azor H. Nickerson. Badly wounded on Cemetery Ridge during the Battle of Gettysburg, the 8th Ohio officer had spent four months in various field hospitals and Camp Letterman before being allowed to travel back home to recuperate. November found him in Washington D.C. awaiting a medical decision on when he could return to active duty. Nickerson decided to go to Gettysburg for the dedication of the cemetery, so he took a train to Baltimore, switched there to the Northern Central Railway, and then rode up to Hanover Junction, where he managed to get onto Governor Curtin's train and kibbitz with him and other leading politicians of the day.

The future Wild West Indian fighter left one of the few descriptions of his brief time at Hanover Junction and the ensuing train ride through Hanover to Gettysburg. Here is a portion of his out-of-print account from the popular 19th century magazine, Scribner's.

Background posts:
Dr Henry Palmer ran York's U.S. Army Hospital
Gettysburg wounded soldiers entrain for York Hospital

During the last three years of the American Civil War, the U.S. Army Hospital in York, Pennsylvania, treated more than 14,000 patients, ranking it among the largest such facilities erected during the war. It had the enviable record under superintendent and chief surgeon Dr. Henry Palmer of having relatively very few fatalities. A stickler for orderliness and cleanliness, Palmer and Dr. A. G. Blair not only ran an extraordinarily sanitary hospital, they were by all accounts also very good surgeons and doctors.

Here are just a few accounts of patients known to have been cared for at the York facility.

Dr. Henry Palmer played a prominent role in events in York, Pennsylvania, during the Gettysburg Campaign. He helped organize his patients into a fighting force that drilled each day on the hospital grounds. When the Confederates approached York, he hastened the removal of most of the non-ambulatory patients to Columbia under the supervision of his assistant surgeon. However, Dr. Palmer stayed behind in the hospital with a handful of men too badly wounded to be safely moved. He was captured by Jubal Early's Rebels on Sunday, June 28 when they occupied the hospital. Palmer later managed to escape during the Battle of Gettysburg and return to York.

After the Confederates left town, he began the process of sanitizing the hospital (it was filled with lice) and made it presentable by the time that trainloads of wounded men began arriving a week later from the Battle of Gettysburg. He stubbornly refused to treat any Rebels, however, and they were instead taken to the nearby Odd Fellows Hall.

During the war, Palmer's 5-year-old daughter, Kittie, died after a lingering illness of three weeks. She was buried in Prospect Hill Cemetery. Palmer and his wife Edna intended to exhume the body and take her home to Janesville, Wisconsin, after the war. According to Jim McClure's East of Gettysburg, the child's current gravesite is unknown.

Many of you know I have a special fondness for human interest stories from the Gettysburg Campaign. Some of it stems from old family stories passed down from my paternal great-great-uncles who fought in the 7th West Virginia at Antietam and Gettysburg, or from my maternal great-great-grandfathers who fought in various Ohio regiments, mostly in the Western Theater. My father was born in 1914, and as a young lad, he heard many tales (perhaps exaggerated, but unfortunately not documentable) from the aged Civil War vets who lived in his home of Athens County, Ohio.

I am now n the process of writing a new Civil War book manuscript for Ten Roads Publishing entitled Gettysburg Glimpses 2: More Stories from the Gettysburg Campaign. I have been perusing old newspapers, books, journals, letters, etc. for fresh stories that have seldom been used (if at all) since they were written by the eyewitnesses in the 19th century. Some of these anecdotes take place here in south-central Pennsylvania, including a few interesting ones from that I found in Harrisburg in the state damage claims. There are also some fascinating incidents from this area that appear in the regimental histories of troops that passed through here en route to Gettysburg.

Here's one story from I particularly like, as it includes alleged dialogue between the soldiers and an unnamed Hanover area farmer. Was he one of the very men mentioned by Licensed Battlefield Guide John T. Krepps in an earlier post on the Union V Corps' movements through the region, perhaps even Jesse Keller, on whose Adams County farm Ayres' Division camped?

A while back, I posted an account of the 118th Pennsylvania Infantry of the Union V Corps entering southwestern York County on July 1, 1863. They were among a seemingly endless series of armed troops to pass through the region over a 5-day period, finishing with a portion of the First Troop, Philadelphia City Cavalry which approached Hanover from York on July 5. They passed through Spring Grove (then Spring Forge) according to the battalion historian, but did not make it all the way to Hanover as far as I know.

We are blessed in York County today to have several local men and women serving as Licensed Battlefield Guides at the nearby Gettysburg National Military Park, including Larry Wallace, Bobby Housch, and John Krepps of the Hanover area. I have been on some of Larry's battlewalks in the past. The Hanover contingent, and all LBGs, are experienced and well trained, and I recommend the services of an LBG if you are interested in a solid tour of the Gettysburg battlefield. Guided tours may be reserved in advance through the National Park Service at the new Gettysburg Visitors Center.

John Krepps has consolidated nearly all of the available information on the June 30, 1863, battle of Hanover in his excellent recent book, A Strong and Sudden Onslaught: The Cavalry Action at Hanover, Pennsylvania. A faithful reader of Cannonball, he was kind enough to offer some deeper insight in the route the 118th Pennsylvania, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the 20th Maine, and the rest of the V Corps used to reach the Hanover area, as well as his best estimation of the roads they used and the places they camped. I will post some photos of these areas in some upcoming blog entries.

For now, here are John's scholarly and well researched comments on the V Corps at Hanover.

July 1, 1863, saw the opening actions of the Battle of Gettysburg in nearby Adams County, Pennsylvania. However, even while the artillery roared and musketry crackled from the fields and woods north and west of Gettysburg, thousands of troops from both armies were hustling to reach the scene.

Late in the afternoon the 146th New York Volunteer Infantry reached the picturesque town of Hanover, Pennsylvania. Near the crossroads were lying the bloated carcasses of half a dozen cavalry horses, slain in the brief skirmish between Judson Kilpatrick's and J.E.B. Stuart's cavalrymen the previous day. Close to the road, near the scene of the main cavalry fighting, stood an old farmhouse, at the gate of which was an old-fashioned pump and horse trough. The pump handle was in constant motion, as the weary, foot-sore soldiers flocked around it to quench their thirst with the delicious water that flowed into the mossy trough.

What follows is the memory of a veteran of the regiment, perhaps a bit fanciful, but it makes for a good human interest story...

Maj. Gen. Jubal A. Early arrived in York on the afternoon of Sunday, June 28, 1863. He established his headquarters in the sheriff's office in the columned York County Courthouse on East Market Street. He ordered an aide, William Thornton, to transcribe a requisition for supplies--165 barrels of flour or 28,000 pounds of baked bread; 3,500 pounds of sugar; 1,650 pounds of coffee; 300 gallons of molasses; 1,200 pounds of salt; 32,000 pounds of fresh beef or 21,000 pounds of bacon or pork. All were to be delivered at the market house on Main Street at 4:00 p.m. Early's chief quartermaster, Major Charles E. Snodgrass, wrote a second requisition, calling for clothing - 2,000 pairs of shoes or boots, 1,000 pairs of socks and 1,000 felt hats and $100,000.

Chief Burgess David Small informed Early that the town's banks had already sent off their assets, and could not raise that amount of cash. Snodgrass eventually wrote a receipt for $28,610 collected from York's citizens, as well as the remaining goods that had been requisitioned. Attorney James W. Latimer "very foolishly gave them one hundred dollars" John Evans donated $50, W. Latimer Small $25, and the firm of P. A. & S. Small contributed $752. Gettysburg resident Sallie Broadhead wrote in her diary that the people of York were "dunce-like" in paying this ransom to the Rebels, "which they pocketed."

Following the Battle of Gettysburg, Union cavalry of Judson Kilpatrick's division captured scores of Confederate supply wagons retreating across South Mountain near Monterey Pass. Among the diverse items in the wagons were supplies taken from York to fulfill General Early's controversial ransom, as well as personal property stolen from York County residents. However, the goods were never returned to their owners. Instead, most received the torch.

Early in the Civil War, regiments were all-volunteer, including the 7th New York, shown here in this old woodcut marching off to the South in front of cheering citizens.

As the Civil War progressed and the need for manpower increased, the U. S. government resorted to conscription in 1863 to raise additional troops with the passage of the Enrollment Act on March 3. It was not a new practice in military circles, with many European countries having widely used forcible means to ensure compliance with orders to join the army or navy. However, the draft was new to America, and many citizens resented the concept. It had been tried earlier in the war to fill the ranks of drafted militia regiments, including here in York County, Pennsylvania, in 1862 by the state government.

The controversial 1863 act required the enrollment of every male citizen and those immigrants who had filed for citizenship between ages twenty and forty-five. The War Department did provide a way out. If a man was drafted and ordered to report to the service, he could legally avoid the order by providing a willing substitute who would serve in his place.

The catch?

The draftee had to pay a bounty to the "volunteer" replacement. If you were relatively wealthy, you could afford to hire a sub and stay home. If you were poor, welcome to the Union Army. Even President Abraham Lincoln hired a substitute, John Summerfield Staples from rural Monroe County, Pennsylvania, as a gesture of support for the measure. Staples received a bounty of $500 and served in various rear lines posts until the end of the war.

I was in several places in Maine this week on business. By chance, I happened by the Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain memorial in his hometown of Brewer, Maine (Chamberlain was in southwestern York County, PA on July 1, 1863 en route to Gettysburg and his actions on Little Round Top). In a fog and drizzle early in the morning, I snapped some quick photos using a disposable camera I bought at an adjacent gas station, so I apologize for the poor quality of the photos. However, they should give the Cannonball reader a sense of the impressive and innovative memorial, which evokes images of Little Round Top).