The skirmish at Oyster Point was a small engagement that took place in late June 1863 in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania between Confederate forces under General Albert G. Jenkins’ command and Union militia from New York under General William F. Smith’s command. After Confederates entered Mechanicsburg, General Jenkins set up artillery and sent Virginia cavalry in pursuit of Union militia who had been in the town. At Oyster Point the Confederates encountered two militia regiments from New York and Landis’ Philadelphia Battery of Light Artillery. Later that day General Jenkins ordered his force to withdraw to the Rupp House in Mechanicsburg. Confederates returned on June 29, but they were unable to dislodge the Union militia. The Battle of Sporting Hill took place on the following day as Confederates left Mechanicsburg and marched towards Gettysburg. As a veteran who served with the 22nd New York Regiment recalled:

While this skirmish was of no particular account in itself, it is really historic. It was at the furthest northern point which was reached by the invaders, and marks the crest of the wave of the invasion of Pennsylvania. The retreat of the Confederate force there commenced did not end until the Potomac was crossed. The success obtained must be largely ascribed to the gallant conduct of Landis’ Battery,….”

A historical marker is located at the intersection of 31st Street and Market Streets in Camp Hill. You can read more about this battle in an essay on ExplorePAhistory.com, Robert Grant Crist’s article “Highwater 1863: The Confederate Approach to Harrisburg” (Pennsylvania History 1963), and in Wilbur Sturtevant Nye’s Here Come The Rebels! (1965).

While previous posts have discussed political cartoons from American publications like Harpers Weekly, Punch was a popular periodical in England. Art Historian Allan T. Kohl works at Minneapolis College of Art & Design and has put together an interesting collection of Punch’s “principal cartoons” related to the Civil War. Weekly editions “featured a principal cartoon, sometimes called the “big cut,” commenting on a significant event or issue,” as Kohl explains. Each cartoon includes a short description and one can browse this collection in several different ways. In addition, Kohl discusses the various ways that historic individuals and national symbols appeared in the cartoons. The chief illustrator at Punch during this period was John Tenniel (1820-1914) , who also provided the illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1872). You can learn more about Tenniel in Frankie Morris, Artist of Wonderland: The Life, Political Cartoons, and Illustrations of Tenniel (2005). Both Google Books (1862) and the Internet Archive (June-Dec. 1860) have digitized some issues of Punch from this period.

One hundred and fifty years ago today, the Charles Town, Virgina (there wasn’t a West Virginia yet)Free Press commented on reports that the state’s Breckinridge Democrats had abandoned a plank from their “national” party platform by repudiating support for the Pacific Railroad. This one little piece of fewer than 200 words illustrates how complicated the 1860 election was and how challenging it is for students to read nineteenth-century newspapers. The Free Press was a loyal southern rights Democratic paper run by the Gallaher family. They supported John Breckinridge, the nominee of the Southern Democrats and his new party’s attempts to cultivate western support through actions such as endorsing the Pacific (or transcontinental) Railroad and by anointing Senator Joseph Lane from Oregon as the party’s vice-presidential nominee. Yet the article, entitled “A Broken Platform,” reads like harsh criticism of the decision. “So we see,” reads the piece, “that the Breckinridge party in Virginia have destroyed their own platform, vitiated their own creed, and rendered their own canons null and void.” However, a careful reader will note that the piece begins with a parenthetical aside “(says the Richmond Whig)” referring to a leading paper in the state capital that supported John Bell and the Constitutional Union Party. Supporters of Breckinridge and Bell vied fiercely across southern states during the 1860 contest and by quoting from the Richmond Whig the Virginia Free Press was being sarcastic. Nineteenth-century readers understood the nuances (or so we imagine) but the finer differences and unique customs of partisan journalism are very difficult to explain to modern-day students.

The Rupp House in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania served as the headquarters for Confederate General Albert G. Jenkins’ brigade during the Gettysburg campaign in late June 1863. On June 28 Jenkins’ troops captured Mechanicsburg without encountering any resistance. Two days later, however, Jenkins received General Robert E. Lee’s order to regroup at Gettysburg. As Jenkins’ brigade left on June 30, his rearguard became involved in the Battle of Sporting Hill. The Rupp House was built in 1787 by Jonas Rupp. His grandson’s family owned the house in 1863 and they remained in Lancaster, Pennsylvania while the Confederates were in Mechanicsburg. The Rupp House is at 5115 East Trindle Road, but it is currently not open to the public.

You can learn more in an essay on ExplorePAhistory.com, Robert Grant Crist’s article “Highwater 1863: The Confederate Approach to Harrisburg” (Pennsylvania History 1963), and in Wilbur Sturtevant Nye’s Here Come The Rebels! (1965).

Image courtesy of Flickr user cthoyes.

House Divided is in the process of adding interactive essays to the database as a part of its Journal Divided project.  I created an essay on the Philadelphia refreshment saloons that specifically focused on the Cooper Shop Volunteer Refreshment Saloon and its contribution to the city’s home front relief efforts during the Civil War.  The Cooper Shop opened on May 26, 1861 and went on to add a hospital in October that cared for sick and wounded soldiers throughout the duration of the war.  Although larger refreshment saloons formed in the city, Philadelphia’s residents warmly remembered the Cooper Shop because of the dramatic individual efforts of its three leaders:  William M. Cooper, the president of the establishment, Dr. Andrew Nebinger, the head surgeon of the Cooper Shop Hospital, and Anna M. Ross, the Lady Principle of the hospital.   Visiting physicians such as Dr. C.E. Hill described the positive atmosphere created by the committee’s hospitality and claimed, “soldiers were never better cared for than in this hall.”  The refreshment saloons are still remembered in modern scholarship as historian J. Matthew Gallman commented, the saloons “greatest benevolent contribution cannot be measured by returns on ledger sheets, but by the long hours devoted to sewing clothes, cooking food, and ministering to wounded soldiers.”  The saloons closed in late August 1865 as the war came to an end and they were no longer needed.

For more interactive essays, visit the Journal Divided Site.  Click on any of the images below to view a slide show of the Philadelphia Volunteer Refreshment Saloons during the Civil War in Flickr.

John Cantilion

The House Divided project received permission from the Cumberland County Historical Society to post articles that explore topics related to the Civil War era in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. These essays originally appeared in the Cumberland County History Journal. Right click on the links below and select “save as” to download the article as a PDF file. (Adobe Reader is a free program that is required to vide these documents).

Patricia Coolmeyer, “Southern Sentiments: A Look at Attitudes of Civil War Soldiers ,” Cumberland County History 7 (1990): 68-79.

• Patricia Coolmeyer’s essay explores the different ways that soldiers and residents of southern Pennsylvania saw the South during the Civil War. Coolmeyer uses a wide variety of sources in her account, including letters, diaries, local newspapers, and other nineteenth-century publications.

James A. Holechek, “From Carlisle and Fort Couch: The War of Corporal John Cantilion,” Cumberland County History 10 (1993): 71-80.

• James A. Holechek’s article focuses on Corporal John Cantilion’s experiences in central Pennsylvania during the summer of 1863. Cantilion served in the 4th United States Cavalry and was stationed at Carlisle Barracks in early June 1863. This essay includes transcripts of letters that Cantilion wrote from Carlisle Barracks on June 19 and from Fort Couch on June 23. Holechek also provides the transcript of a letter that Cantilion’s wife, Sarah, wrote in early November 1863. However, Cantilion died on November 12, 1863 and never received that letter. In addition, photographs of John and Sarah Cantilion are reproduced in this essay.

The Battle of Sporting Hill, which was part of the Gettysburg Campaign, took place on June 30, 1863 in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania between elements of the 16th Virginia Calvary Regiment and two New York Militia Regiments. The Confederate forces at Sporting Hill served as a rearguard for General Albert G. Jenkins, whose brigade was stationed several miles away in Mechanicsburg. Early on June 30, however, Jenkins moved out after he received General Robert E. Lee’s order to regroup at Gettysburg. The 22nd and 37th New York Militia Regiments, which were under the overall command of General Darius N. Couch, were out on reconnaissance when they engaged Jenkins’ rearguard. (Union General William F. Smith had ordered a patrol once he realized that Confederates were withdrawing from the area). As John Lockwood recalled, the two New York regiments were:

“ordered out to reconnoiter. Expecting to return in course of the day left everything behind except arms and ammunition and thus passed through rest of campaign! They moved along the Carlisle road to ‘Sporting Hill’ where had a skirmish.”

Union forces forced Confederates to withdraw after they brought in a detachment from Landis’ Philadelphia Battery of Light Artillery, but they were unable to pursue them. Reports indicated that approximately sixteen soldiers died during the engagement. A historical marker is located at the intersection of 31st Street and Market Streets in Camp Hill. You can read more about this battle in an essay on ExplorePAhistory.com, Robert Grant Crist’s article “Highwater 1863: The Confederate Approach to Harrisburg” (Pennsylvania History 1963), and in Wilbur Sturtevant Nye’s Here Come The Rebels! (1965).

Even though Hinton Rowan Helper published The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It in 1857, the book was still a factor in the election of 1860.  While Helper was born in North Carolina to a family that owned more than 200 slaves, he used the Impending Crisis to call for the South to end slavery. That institution, as Helper argued, limited the economic potential of white labor and prevented the South’s economy from developing. In 1859 Helper published the Compendium of the Impending Crisis of the South – a cheaper edition of that reached thousands of readers. By the election of 1860 northern Democratic editors like James Gordon Bennett, who owned the New York Herald, used Helper’s book as evidence that the Republican party was dangerous to the United States. On election day in November 1860 the Herald warned voters that Republicans had “circulated hundreds of thousands of Helper’s handbook of treason.” Prominent Republicans had endorsed the book, which as the Herald explained, were “[distributed] to abolitionize the Northern mind.” If Abraham Lincoln became President, the Herald argued that “one phase of [his] administration [would be] to engender or to inaugurate, if possible, a civil war at the South between the non-slaveholding whites of that section (excited by abolition emissaries) and those who own slaves.” One of the best secondary sources on Helper is David Brown’s Southern Outcast: Hinton Rowan Helper and The Impending Crisis of the South (2006).

This weekend, Northfield, Minnesota, has been host to the 2010 Vintage Band Festival.  The four-day festival draws brass bands from as far away as Helsinki, Finland.  One of the highlights of the weekend was a reenactment of a Civil War “battle of the bands,” with two bands in historical costume facing off across the Cannon River, which flows through the middle of Northfield.  On the east side of the river was Newberry’s Victorian Cornet Band, from Maryland, which specializes in music from the period 1870 to 1900.  On the west side of the river was the 1st Brigade Band, from Watertown, Wisconsin, which specializes in music of the Civil War era. The band members play “over the shoulder” instruments, the bells of which face backwards toward the soldiers who were marching behind the band.  You can see an over the shoulder bugle in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art here.

During the Civil War, a “battle of the bands” generally took place in the evening, when two opposing armies had gone into bivouac, and the bands on either side played back and forth across the lines.  Sam Seay, of the 1^st Tennessee Infantry, described one especially poignant “battle of the bands”on the eve of the Battle of Stones River (the Battle of Murfreesboro) on December 30, 1862:

Just before ‘tattoo’ the military bands on each side began their evening music. The still winter night carried their strains to great distance. At every pause on our side, far away could be heard the military bands of the other. Finally one of them struck up ‘Home Sweet Home.’ As if by common consent, all other airs ceased, and the bands of both armies as far as the ear could reach, joined in the refrain. Who knows how many hearts were bold next day by reason of that air?

The modern 1^st Brigade Band was founded in 1964, one hundred years after the original 1^st Wisconsin Brigade Band marched to the sea with Gen. William T. Sherman.  During that campaign, the band found itself in a hard-fought “battle of the bands” with another Union brigade band from Michigan.  Here’s how bandmaster E.O. Kimberly described the “battle”:

“They were a very fair band: they would play a piece and then we would.  After playing 3 or 4 pieces, we then played a new piece we had just learned, a fine thing; after finishing it ,they struck up with the same thing, which of course was considered an insult.  Our boys then swore they would run them out, determined to play the last piece, and the other band also made the same determination that they would play the last piece and run the d….d Badgers out.  Of course on such occasion both bands had been drinking pretty freely and were excited and maddened to no low pitch.  We kept on, as soon as they finished a piece we were ready to start in, playing every piece they did if we had it.  They sent a man over to see what we had to play and we had done the same.  Their colonel was with them and swore that he would hang the first men that gave out.  The whole affair was just like a hard contested battle.  At one o’clock we were still going at it, as quick as they would stop, we would start right in.  We were determined to play until 8 o’clock in the morning if necessary.  The Doctor said he would get us some breakfast.  Liquors were set out on a table for the boys to drink just when they had a mind to.  Both bands kept on until 3 o’clock: it was their turn to play but they failed to come out; we waited patiently.  Our spy came back and informed us they had given up.  We played ‘Yankee Doodle’ double quick.  The boys shouted Victory!  We had whipped them and forced a retreat.”

In Northfield this weekend, the Newberry Victorian Cornet Band retired from the field after a rousing rendition of “Dixie,” which you can listen to here.

You can find a history of the 1^st Brigade Band on the modern band’s website, and photographs of the original band members in the digital collections of the University of Wisconsin.  The Library of Congress American Memory collection has an excellent online exhibit of “Band Music from the Civil War Era,”including audio files of some of the music and downloadable scores.

Click here for a small slideshow (six photos) of the 2010 battle of the bands in Northfield, and here for a video of the battle of the bands during the 2006 Vintage Band Festival in Northfield.

“The war was a good time for the study of the conflict between Athens and Sparta,” Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve (1831-1924) wrote in 1897.  “It was a great time for reading and re-reading classical literature in general, for the South was blockaded against new books as effectively, almost, as Megara was blockaded against garlic and salt… The Southerner, always conservative in his tastes and no great admirer of American literature, which had become largely alien to him, went back to his English classics, his ancient classics.  Old gentlemen past the military age furbished up their Latin and Greek.  Some of them had never let their Latin and Greek grow rusty.”

Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and received his first schooling from his father, who was a Presbyterian clergyman and newspaper editor.  Young Gildersleeve was reading ancient Greek fluently at the age of twelve, and at nineteen had graduated from Princeton (class of 1849) and had set off for Göttingen, Germany, where he earned a doctorate in classical philology in 1853.  He was a professor of Greek at the University of Virginia from 1856 until 1876, when he left to become the first professor of Greek at the new Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. 

From 1861 to 1864, Gildersleeve served as a staff officer with General John B. Gordon.  A staunch supporter of the Confederacy, he also contributed regular wartime editorials to the Richmond Examiner, edited by John Moncure Daniel, which have been collected by Ward W. Briggs, Jr. in Soldier and Scholar: Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve and the Civil War  (University Press of Virginia 1998).  Gildersleeve’s service with the Confederate army ended in September 1864, during the Valley Campaigns, when a bullet shattered his leg. 

“I lost my pocket Homer, I lost my pistol, I lost one of my horses and, finally, I came very near losing my life,” he later wrote.  General Gordon, in his memoirs, praised Gildersleeve’s “courage and composure” under fire, and Gildersleeve claimed that the general’s praise meant more to him than any of the academic honors he had received.

At Johns Hopkins after the war, Gildersleeve founded the prestigious American Journal of Philology, wrote a Latin grammar that would become a standard for generations to come, and reflected on the Civil War in essays like “The Creed of the Old South,” which promoted the idea of the Lost Cause. (Writing about Demosthenes in the American Journal of Philology in 1906, Gildersleeve called the Greek orator “a champion of a lost cause,” and added, “some of us who have championed lost causes are not so enthusiastic about other people’s lost causes.”) In “A Southerner in the Peloponnesian War,” quoted above, Gildersleeve reflects on the American Civil War in light of the Peloponnesian War, the conflict in the fifth century BCE between the northern Greek Athenians and the southern Greek Spartans.

“States rights were not suffered to slumber,” he wrote in that essay.  “The Southerner resented Northern dictation as Pericles resented Lacedaimonian [i.e., Spartan] dictation, and our Peloponnesian War began.” 

For more on Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve online, see James Stimpert, “Hopkins History: First Greek Prof., Basil Gildersleeve,” The Johns Hopkins Gazette, September 18, 2000; and Michael Dirda, “To Understand Ourselves,” Johns Hopkins Magazine, August 27, 2009. Both “The Creed of the Old South” and “A Southerner in the Peloponnesian War” can be read on Google Books.