The Republican Party held its second national convention beginning at noon on May 16, 1860 in Chicago.  The presidential nominees included the veteran statesmen Edward Bates, Salmon P. Chase, Simon Cameron, and William H. Seward, as well as a new senator from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln.  Although Seward was the favorite going into the convention and led the nominees on the first two ballots, Lincoln won the Republican presidential candidacy. Republican delegates had looked to back the candidate they felt could generate the most electoral support.  Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune, had the ears of 48 delegates.  Greeley’s battle cry was “anyone but Seward!” and initially gave his support to Bates.  According to Greeley’s recent biographer Robert Chadwell Williams, as Lincoln began closing in on Seward in the third ballot, Greeley shifted his 48 votes over to Lincoln, giving him the candidacy.

This Currier & Ives political cartoon shows Seward drowning of the pier after being pushed in by Greeley (the figure in the top hat). Drawn by Louis Maurer and published in 1860, “Impending Crisis” satirizes the influential role of newspapermen in Civil War-era politics.  Henry J. Raymond (in the police uniform), founder of the New York Times, also helped write the charter of the Republican Party in 1856 and later was a New York Representative.  James Watson Webb (on the left dressed as a newspaper boy), editor of Courier & Esquirer, recently threw his support behind the Republican Party.  The title of the cartoon refers the book written by Hinton Rowan Helper in 1857, The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It, which denounced slavery from an economic viewpoint—slavery prevented a diverse economy, disadvantaging poor Southerners. Although Seward is undergoing the crisis of losing the Republican presidential candidacy in this cartoon, he would become Lincoln’s Secretary of State, a member of a cabinet filled with Lincoln’s previous political rivals.

The Battle of Petersburg, also known as the Assault on Petersburg, took place from June 15-18, 1864 in the city of Petersburg, Virginia.  Led by Union General Ulysses S. Grant, the Union forces left Cold Harbor and attacked the Confederate forces under the command of General Pierre Beauregard.  General William F. Smith’s failure to take advantage of the low number of Confederate forces initially present allowed General Robert E. Lee to send reinforcements and the Confederates were able to defend Petersburg from capture.  This battle marked the beginning of the siege of Petersburg.  The National Park Service’s website includes an overview on the opening of the fighting as well as short biographies  on the commanding officers for each army.  The website also offers lesson plans, travel trunks, and information for teachers on planning a field trip to the battleground.  The Civil War Preservation Trust’s website  provides a list for recommended reading, historical articles, and quick facts on the Battle of Petersburg.  Beauregard commented  on the mistakes of the Union forces that prevented the capture of Petersburg:

“Strange to say, General Smith contented himself with breaking into our lines, and attempted nothing further that night.  All the more strange was this inaction on his part, since General Hancock, with his strong and well-equipped Second Army Corps, had also been hurried to Petersburg, and was actually there, or in the immediate vicinity of the town, on the evening of the 15th.  He had informed General Smith of the arrival of his command and the readiness of his two divisions- Birney’s and Gibbon’s- to give him whatever assistance he might require.  Petersburg at that hour was clearly at the mercy of the Federal commander, who had all but captured it, and only failed of final success because he could not realize the fact of the unparalleled disparity between the two contending forces.”

Some other resources that may be useful are Armistead Long’s Memoirs of Robert E. Lee: His Military and Personal History and Ulysses S. Grant’s Personal Memoirs which could provide opposing views of the Battle of Petersburg from the Union and Confederate commanding generals.  In terms of modern scholarship, James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom is available as a preview on Google Books and contains a concise summary of the events of the battle.  The Battle of Petersburg could be related to a lesson on black soldiers and their role in the Civil War as the 6th and 43rd United States Colored Troop  Regiments either fought in this particular battle or in the following battles during the siege of Petersburg.  The National Park Service also provides an article on black soldiers at the siege which may be helpful to browse.

On November 23-25, 1863 the Battle of Chattanooga took place in Hamilton County, Tennessee.  Beginning in late September, the Confederate forces under the direction of General Braxton Bragg  placed Major General William Rosecrans’s Union forces under siege and cut off its supply line.  In October and November, Union General Ulysses S. Grant and the Union soldiers were able to capture Orchard Knob, Lookout Mountain, and also forced the Confederates off of Missionary Ridge.  The National Park Service’s website provides an overview of the battle as well as information on planning a visit to the battlefield.  The website also offers two pamphlets that may be useful: The Campaign for Chattanooga (1932) and Chickamauga and Chattanooga Battlefields (1956). The battle could be connected to a lesson on Sherman’s March to the Sea in 1864 since Union General William T. Sherman was able to use Chattanooga as the base for his march as a result of the Union victory in 1863.  Grant commented on Chattanooga in his memoirs:

“Sherman had, as already stated, crossed to the north side of the Tennessee River at Brown’s ferry, in full view of the troops on Missionary Ridge until they met their assault.  Bragg knew it was Sherman’s troops that had crossed, and, they being so long out of view, may have supposed that they had gone up the north bank of the Tennessee River to the relief of Knoxville and that Longstreet was therefore in danger.  But the first great blunder, detaching Longstreet, cannot be accounted for in any way I know of.  If he had captured Chattanooga, East Tennessee would have fallen without a struggle.  It would have been a victory for us to have got our army away from Chattanooga safely.  It was a manifold greater victory to drive away the besieging army; a still greater one to defeat that army in his chosen ground and nearly annihilate it.” 

Some other resources that may be helpful to browse are Battles and Leaders of the Civil War which gives a firsthand account of the campaign and battle from General Grant, and Three Days Battle at Chattanooga which provides a copy of the dispatch on the battle from General Meigs to the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton.  The Library of Congress’s website contains a few different letters with transcriptions, including one from General Grant reporting the beginning of the conflict and one reporting its end.  Also, the Civil War Preservation Trust’s website provides historical articles on the battle, including “Chattanooga, Lookout Mountain, and Missionary Ridge Battles” that gives a detailed summary of the actions and consequences for the Union and Confederate forces at each location.

On September 23, 1897 Horatio Collins King, a member of Dickinson College Class of 1858, received a Medal of Honor for his acts of bravery during the battle of Five Forks.  As quartermaster of the first cavalry division of the Army of the Shenandoah, King fought in one of the final Eastern battles of the Civil War in Five Forks, Virginia on April 1, 1865.  Maj. General Philip Sheridan led 50,000 Union troops in a victory over a Confederate force only one-fifth the size.  In his military history, Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac (2008), William Swinton explains the Union victory and capture of the Southside Railroad at Five Forks in terms the battle’s greater significance in the war.  Within the eight days following the battle of Five Forks the Confederate Army had retreated from Petersburg and Richmond and General Robert E. Lee had surrendered his army to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse.

Nonetheless, for the soldiers who fought at Five Forks, the battle remained a personal experience.  In his Civil War Journal (digitized in the Dickinson College database “Their Own Words”), Horatio King did not go to lengths to discuss the meaning of the battle and the Confederate retreat. Instead, King wrote a poignant passage describing a dead Southern soldier he encountered while collecting the wounded: “his face was raised toward heaven and the open eyes & sweet expression of countenance together with the hands uplifted as in prayer gave me the impression that he still lived.”  Battles were personal affairs for generals as well, as exemplified by Gouverneur Kemble Warren’s obsession with Five Forks. After the battle, Sheridan relieved Warren of his command of the V Corps, and when Warren “personally sought of General Sheridan a reason for his order,”  “he would not or could not give one.” After more than a decade of seeking an explanation, Warren finally received official recognition of his unjust treatment when President Rutherford B. Hayes authorized a court of inquiry on December 9, 1879.

The National Park Service has preserved Five Forks as part of the larger Petersburg National Battlefield. Their website contains Five Forks resources including multiple battle maps. J. Tracy Power’s Lee’s Miserables : Life in the Army of Northern Virginia from the Wilderness to Appomattox (1998) is a unique military history of the last year of the war that uses Confederate soldier’s letters and diaries as a primary source of evidence, giving readers a different angle on the battle of Five Forks.

To view a Flickr slideshow on this battle, click on any of the images below:

On June 9, 1863, the Battle of Brandy Station, also known as the Battle of Fleetwood Hill, took place in Culpeper County, Virginia.  Early in the morning, Union Major General Alfred Pleasonton and his forces began a surprise attack on the Confederates and General James Ewell Brown Stuart.  Brandy Station was one of the largest cavalry battles and marked the opening of the Gettysburg Campaign.  The National Park Service’s website provides a summary of the battle as well as a list of different stops and descriptions of each for those planning on visiting or taking a field trip.  The Brandy Station Foundation has a website that includes tour dates as well as information for visiting  Brandy Station’s “Graffiti House” which contains messages and signatures of Union and Confederate soldiers.  In his book, War Years with Jeb Stuart, W.W. Blackford commented on the battle:

“At that time their cavalry could not stand before us at all, and it was not until the great battle on this same ground on the 9th of June, 1863, “Fleetwood Fight,” that they offered us any determined resistance.  From that time the difficulty of getting remounts acted disastrously upon the strength of our cavalry arm, not only in diminishing the numbers but impairing the spirit of the men.”

Another resource that may be valuable to look at is Henry McClellan’s book I Road with Jeb Stuart: the Life and Campaigns of Major General J.E.B. Stuart; both McClellan and Blackford’s recollections provide a firsthand perspective of General Stuart from men who fought alongside him in battle.  In terms of modern scholarship, Emory Thomas’s Bold Dragoon: The Life of J.E.B. Stuart, available as a preview on Google Books, gives a concise overview of the battle and a map that depicts Stuart’s movements into Pennsylvania during the Gettysburg Campaign.   Also, Brandy Station 1863: First Step Towards Gettysburg  includes a list of all the Union and Confederate troops present at the battle.

Albert Hazlett was among several of John Brown’s raiders who were not with their leader on the morning of October 18, 1859 when US Marines attacked the engine house at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Instead, Hazlett and Osborne Anderson watched the short battle from afar. The two men had left Harpers Ferry undetected late on October 17. After they could not find the five raiders who also escaped, they decided to head north – which eventually brought them into southern Pennsylvania. While Anderson lived to publish a book in 1861 about his experience, Hazlett was arrested in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania on October 22, 1859. Local authorities, however, at first thought that they had in custody “a man supposed to be Capt. Cook.” (John E. Cook was arrested three days later outside of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania). The initial confusion offered an opportunity for Hazlett, who claimed that he was actually William Harrison and had nothing to do with Brown’s raid. On October 29 Hazlett appeared before a judge in Carlisle on a writ of habeas corpus, but Hazlett’s claim that he was the wrong person failed to convince the judge. While “there is no evidence that we have any man in our custody named Albert Hazlett,” the court ruled that “we are satisfied that a monstrous crime has been committed [and] that the prisoner…participated in it.” Hazlett was sent back to Charlestown, Virginia on November 5 for a trial and was executed on March 16, 1860. Historian David Reynolds, who wrote John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights, notes that the judge sent Hazlett back to Virginia “even though the evidence linking him to Harpers Ferry was circumstantial.”

In its inaugural issue published on March 15, 1862 the New South, a weekly periodical with Northern sympathies, described the Union capture of Port Royal, South Carolina on November 7, 1861 as a “brisk little engagement with the enemy at Port Royal Ferry, in which the National forces, both Army and Navy manifested pluck and coolness the most desirable qualities in soldier’s or sailors.” This newspaper, which was highlighted in a previous post, documents life in occupied Port Royal through 1866 and is available online.  As part of Union efforts to enforce the executive-mandated blockade on the South, Captain Samuel F. Du Pont, commander of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron was sent to Port Royal, South Carolina where he helped capture Fort Walker and Fort Beauregard in the largest combined naval and military operation up to that point. The Civil War Blockade Strategy Board met during the summer of 1861 created a series of reports that informed the Union’s naval blockading strategy including Du Pont’s attack on Port Royal.  Matthew Parker made these reports fully available on “Thomas Legion” a website that organizes Civil War primary documents for easy research.  Other useful resources include the Library of Congress’s visual time line of the Civil War, which contains a collection of photographs from Port Royal, South Carolina from 1861 to 1865, a detailed essay on the battle of Port Royal, which appeared in the January 2001 issue of America’s Civil War.

On August 10, 1861 about ten miles south of Springfield, Missouri Confederate forces under the joint command of General Benjamin McCulloch and Major General Sterling Price of the Missouri State Guard, defeated General Nathaniel Lyon’s Union troops at the battle of Wilson’s Creek. The National Park Service provides information geared towards teachers on their website, which highlights the field trip-friendly nature of the Wilson’s Creek battlefield. According to historian James McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom, although the Confederate victory at Wilson’s Creek did not affect national public opinion, the battle had a direct impact on communities within Missouri. The Missouri State Senate officially declared Missouri’s secession from the Union on October 28, 1861, only three months after the battle at Wilson’s Creek. The Journal of the Missouri Senate’s Extra Session of the Rebel Legislature has been digitized as part of the Missouri Digital Heritage Initiative and is available here.  Another rich online source for teachers exploring the Western theater of the Civil War is the website “Community and Conflict,” which documents the impact of the Civil War in the Ozarks from 1850 to 1875. By searching the Wilson’s Creek Collections researchers can access the journal of Captain Asbury C. Bradford of Company E, 2nd Regiment, 8th Division, Missouri State Guard, which includes Asbury’s hand-drawn map of the battle at Wilson’s Creek. Another unique resource is the memoir of Louisa Cheairs McKenny Sheppard, a 12-year-old resident of Springfield, who documented the effects of the Civil War on her family. The night before General Lyon was killed at Wilson’s Creek he dined at the McKenny home, an event that Louisa recorded in her memoir:

• “During dinner he [Lyon] raised his wine glass to Mother, and said, ‘Madam, you wish us success?’ ‘Sir,’ she answered with grave dignity, ‘I am a Southern woman.’ He looked at her in utter amazement, then said, ‘And you have sons in the Confederacy?’ Mother’s fine grey eyes were dark with trouble, as she made answer; ‘Four,’ then with a sudden flash of spirit, ‘and I wish they were fifty and I were leading them.’”

The Battle of Cold Harbor (also known as Second Cold Harbor) took place in Hanover County, Virginia from May 31-June 12, 1864.  As a part of the overland campaign to Richmond of 1864 General Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia defeated Ulysses S. Grant and the Army of the Potomac.  On June 3, the Union II, XVIII, and IX Corps attacked the Confederates at the Bethesda Church-Cold Harbor line and were massacred.  The casualties sustained by the Union Army led Grant to say that  “this charge seemed to revive [Confederate] hopes temporarily.”  The National Park Service’s  website provides an overview of the battle that recounts the day to day activity of the fighting as well as a list of Union and Confederate troops present at the battle.  The National Parks Service’s website also includes a list of suggested readings for teachers and offers interactive travel trunks that are available for loan to classes.  There is a link available that presents visitors with a map  of different stops throughout a tour of the battlefield and gives suggestions for teachers to plan a fieldtrip to the battleground.  The Civil War Preservation Trust ’s website has links to suggested readings, online resources, and battle facts about the events at Cold Harbor.  The site includes a map that details the plan of battle for the Union and Confederate forces.  Another resource that may be interesting to browse is Gordon C. Rhea’s Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee, May 26-June 3, 1864 , available in limited view on Google Books, which gives a rather detailed preview regarding the events of the battle.  Grant commented on the battle in his memoirs:

“I have always regretted that the last assault on Cold Harbor was ever made.  I might say the same thing of the assault of the 22 of May, 1863, at Vicksburg.  At Cold Harbor no advantage was ever gained to compensate for the heavy loss we sustained.  Indeed, the advantages other than those of relative losses, were on the Confederate side.”

On September 8, 1865, the New York Tribune commented on the unusual amount of fanfare the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry received on their return to Boston.  The author of the editorial explained the public response reflected the 54th’s status as the first northern regiment of black soldiers and the reputation the regiment earned as being “the one on whose good conduct depended for a long time the success of the whole experiment of arming black citizens in defence of the Republic.”  Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War, gave Massachusetts governor John A. Andrew permission to begin recruiting black troops on January 26, 1863.  Andrew carefully hired officers to lead the black regiment, including the regiment’s future commander Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, because the 54th was in his opinion “perhaps the most important corps to be organized during the whole war.”  The 54th is well known for their participation in the assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina on July 18, 1863. The same Tribune article equated the battle’s significance to African-Americans as “Bunker Hill has been for ninety years to the white Yankees.” Captain Luis F. Emilio of Company E published a reflective history of the 54th, A Brave Black Regiment…  (1894), which is partially available on Google Books.  HistoryNet, as mentioned in this previous post, has also published a background article on 54th regimental history that originally appeared in the October 2000 issue of American History magazine.
Members of the 54th who resided in Pennsylvania include:
Sergeant William Harvey Carney of Company C (1840-1908): received a Medal of Honor in 1900 for keeping the regiment’s colors from falling to the ground after Colonel Robert Gould Shaw was shot during the assault on Fort Wagner, the earliest African-American action to be recognized with a Medal of Honor.
Private John Henson of Company C (1843-1880): reassigned to the Ordinance Department of his regiment from November 1864 to February 1865.
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