Touch the Elbow - Blogging the Civil War

Theirs was to be a life of certainty, that it would be slam in the face hard, that they would struggle to scratch life from a small parcel of land where soil lay shallow over a bed of rocks deposited by glacial movement thousands of years before European shoes first left their imprint. Theirs, too, was to be a life of uncertainty, where life itself could be cruel and twisting and sweep away a babe still suckling at a mother’s teat.

They knowingly leapt into this life hand in hand, Sarah Reed, then 16 and two months pregnant, and Charles Austin, four years older, when they married on January 20, 1857. They harbored no illusions, no fanciful dreams. Their strength, they were directed, was to rest in each other, their vow to draw the other up in the face of this certain reality, and mourn uncertainty together if and when it came like a howling nor’easter, merciless and dry eyed to sorrow.

Their first child was born in the heat of an August drought that laid waste to fields that had held promise in the spring, sickening corn, withering the winter’s salvation that was to be gotten from a vegetable garden not twenty feet from the front door, a drought that siphoned off the last remaining droplets from a well that in the end yielded pebbles and dirt in the bucket. They named the child Arthur for reasons unknown, thirty years before Tennyson would reincarnate the romance of a long ago King in his prose, and forty years before such a name would come into vogue.

She did not whisper her thoughts to him in the darkness, this orphaned woman-child. He was half a brother, half a father, she a mother to herself, a child to herself still, her own parents dead these past few years. She would turn from his touch, forsaking duty as wife, until he would have his will and way. Her tears would later drop as illumined diamonds in a tallowed glow when a second wrinkled baby failed to take breath. She would not look, turning her head away, and upon his return did not tell where he buried this still born son or daughter. He would not say which and she did not ask until in a moment of melancholy a month later. Even then he would not answer and himself turned away to an envelope of silence.

Winter came, dry and bitter, threatening to tear the front door from its hinges when opened and push the glass from each pane. Soil crumbled in the hand through the spring, into the summer, and he took work wherever it was to be found. She peddled the few small eggs gathered from an ever-shrinking flock, twisting the last hen’s neck in November to give meager thanks for an abundance that was never theirs or promised to them. He had reasoned going to sea, for their future he told her, and she railed at him for the ease in which he would abandon her and his only child just now learning to talk, the ease at which he would consider tempting fate in the swirl and churning of the deep.

The first rain came in mid-March, a sprinkling so spare that the drops seemed to strike the hardened ground and rebound back to the clouds, leaving piles of dust quivering like beads of mercury. There were prayers rising to an invisible deity from pews packed tightly with those who implored the benevolence that came from the bounty of a green, yellow, gold, and ripened harvest. For one more week there was the starkness of the thin overhang of white clouds. They gradually massed, grew darker, and finally let loose for four days

Two summers pass and there is news. The buried child long since discovered by wild rooting hogs is forgotten by the hungry suckling of a son they name George, a curiosity to his brother who expresses his displeasure by pinching folds of skin. He is whipped mightily when his mother discovers the trigger for the infant’s sudden screaming bouts. There is to be no Cain and Able in this house he’s warned as the leather strap slaps against his skin. By the time a sister Sarah Ellen is born on August 14, 1861, he is older, wiser, and an adoring older brother.

The rumors that were just that have faded away, replaced by men feverish with patriotism amid the fevore of war. Sarah begs. He listens and watches as friends gather on a railroad platform wearing uniforms surrounded by mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, their children, and those who wish them well. They are all proud men. Men who talk of bravery and daring, of Union, of country. They do not talk of dying. They wave from the open car windows and his envy almost overwhelms him. He feels almost a coward, safe as he is in his Massachusetts town. Almost disloyal. What does he believe in? It gnaws at his conscience, gnaws at his belief system, gnaws at his manhood, like a saw biting into wood.

Fifteen months of war. More are needed in the aftermath of Bull Run, Balls Bluff, and the Peninsula. All have combined to bleed the Union, slowly, surely. The Recruiters come and the town sweetens the pot in order to meet their quota. $100 bounty to all those who answer the call. He signs his name where required on August 7, 1862. He barely has time to say goodbye, though they’ve said their goodbyes the night before and on this morning. He kisses Arthur and George. They do not understand. They remain dry eyed. She is not dry eyed. She is not proud. She is not brave. She fears, is consumed by fear. She has heard the newspapers read aloud and has seen the families of the deceased consumed by grief. He will write he tells her. Every day. She nods, promising the same. It is time. He climbs aboard the train with his friend Benjamin Sampson. They do not turn to wave. There is grimness in their demeanor. They have spoken to each other of death.

You’re going to have to forgive me Jimmy Quackenbros of Muscatine, Iowa, because I know you want to hear all about the Wheatfield tour at Gettysburg. All in due time little man, all in due time, because it’s starting to creep into the wee early hours of the morning. But I did want to tell you this. Fed up and suffering with an ever-shrinking number of Civil War titles at your local Barnes and Nobel or Borders bookstores, then head to the vastly expanded bookstore at the new Gettysburg Visitor’s Center. Granted you can order books on line, but there’s nothing like pursuing hundreds of titles neatly arranged on shelves. I’m not guaranteeing they’ll have every book you’re looking for, probably not, but with the number of Civil War related books this place definitely has the feel of a bag of Lay’s potato chip. Bet you can’t buy just one. Even our favorite ranting historian and his saber rattling buddy will like the place, because they’ll find multiple copies of “Plenty Of Blame To Go Around,” on display.

The book that caused my heart to beat the fastest though was one of the thinnest and least expensive. And, if not the book with the most copies in stock, it came pret-ty darned close. I counted thirty copies. Thirty! That’s five times the number I’ve seen in any one bookstore previously. So, why the excitement you ask? Because it was our little book, “The Civil War Research Guide,” right there on a top shelf between James Marten’s “The Children’s Civil War” and Wiley Sword’s “Courage Under Fire.” Trust me, the thrill of seeing this little tome on display never wears off and probably never will.

Well, we’ve now confirmed that we have at least one person who reads Touch the Elbow. Not half bad, what eh? Jimmy Quackenbros of Muscatine, Iowa sent an email saying he was, of all things, a fan and that my approaching trip to Gettysburg had inspired him to include an attachment with his email. He also posed a very serious and difficult question. Who would win a steel cage grudge match between Benjamin “The Beast” Butler and the current reigning WWE champion The Undertaker? Jimmy thought "The Beast" would win, because anybody nicknamed "The Beast" had to be "a very, very bad man." Jimmy’s mother Helen added in a post script: “Jimmy reads very well for a seven year old.”

While Donald has been happily visiting all over the place and sending fantastic pictures of said visits all over the Intraweb (a “The Simpsons” reference); I’ve been stuck trying to get a house ready to sell so that I can move into a new one that is part of a housing development named after a plantation that never existed. I know, only in South Carolina.

That isn’t to say I haven’t been enjoying Civil War related life, quite the contrary. Lots of new books, a visit (two actually) with an author and lots of crazy comments keep surrounding me. I’ll have to talk about those later.

Now though, I thought I would show a picture of a wonderful shirt that I just bought for myself and my son. I’ll let it do the talking.


This can be yours for the small price of $15 at http://shirt.woot.com/friends.aspx?k=5229. My son begged for it when he saw it. He is becoming quite the History Geek like his dad!

Dale, a co-worker who originally hails from the Bronx, is keeping me apprised of the progress on the new Yankee Stadium. She returned from the most recent visit to her old haunts with Part One of a Sunday series the Daily News is running on The House That Ruth Built. I’m getting more and more tempted to shell out the big bucks it’s going to take to secure seats to the final game on September 21st. Of course that then merits another consideration. If I go to the wake doesn’t that then obligate me to attend a christening next spring when the new park opens. Ah, the complexities that life presents to us; complexities that make us poorer for the experience.

I was looking at page five of the supplement and read this interesting little tidbit.

When the White Construction Co. finished its work in the Bronx in early 1923, it hadn’t merely built the biggest ballpark in the country, it had built the funkiest right-field wall in the annals of the game, one that caused injuries and mayhem. It was aptly called “The Bloody Angle.”

Named after a Civil War battlefield in Spotsylvania, Va., “The Bloody Angle” of the wooden right field fence jutted out 12 feet into fair territory, perpendicular to the right-field foul line…Then the 12-foot-high fence ran straight back to the wall.

The result was a triangular crapshoot for rightfielders in front of a fence that was just 257 feet from home plate…

The Bloody Angle was eliminated prior to the 1924 season…By then it had caused a season’s worth of agita for unsuspecting outfielders, and just as many bizarre caroms as balls would hit it and ricochet back toward the infield.

That someone saw fit to tie the New York Yankees to the Civil War got me to thinking about whether there were other connections. Afterall, it’s probable that some veterans and possibly a few who saw action at Spotsylvania actually attended games, cheering as the Babe stepped to the plate. With a little investigation I found one additional connection (no, not the name “Yankees"), which you can see for yourself by following this link. And, no, contrary to rumors circulating on the Internet, John Wilkes Booth did not survive Garrett’s Farm and sing the National Anthem on Opening Day in 1923.

You stand in any checkout line and you can’t help but notice People magazine. No, I didn’t buy a copy, but the latest edition touted actress Kate Hudson as the most beautiful of the beautiful. Kate Hudson? Ok, what do I know? I’m not certain of the criteria or how the selection is made, but my guess would be by a small group sitting in a room at Time-Life tossing comments back and forth.

So a comparison is in order between 2008’s standard of beauty versus the Civil War’s standard of beauty. And who better to represent the latter than Kate Chase, the daughter of Treasury Secretary Salmon P., reputed to be the most beautiful woman in all of Washington and who, legend has it, drove Mary Lincoln to fits of jealousy.





Done looking? Ok, then lets move on to Martinsburg, West Virginia where another legendary beauty, Belle Boyd, got her start in life as a femme fatale and Confederate spy extraordinaire. Called the “Cleopatra of Secession,” Belle reportedly charmed her way into the lusting hearts and minds of more Union officers than any other woman of the South, using those charms to develop information and track Union troop movements. She was rewarded with a personal note of thanks from Stonewall Jackson, the Southern Cross of Honor, an honorary captaincy, and three short stints in Washington's Old Capitol Prison for her efforts on behalf of the Confederate States of America. Ironically she'd take a Union Naval officer as the first of three husbands and die in 1900 while on her way to lecture at a Grand Army of the Republic Post in Wisconsin. Seems the boys in blue couldn't get enough of her right up to the very end.

This excerpt from the August 27, 1884 edition of the Boston Globe





For several years past the Eighteenth Massachusetts Regiment has held no reunion, but this year, by the earnest work of Colonel [William B.] White, Sergeant [Levi] Hawkes and Lieutenant [George W.] Smith, a notice was sent out, and yesterday, in response to the call, nearly 100 of the old soldiers met at the Unites States Hotel [Boston] to hold a reunion. Many and warm were the greetings, and one and all agreed that from this time forward the members should meet each year to have a reunion.

At 1.30 the meeting was called to order by Colonel White, and Sergeant Hawkes read the report of the committee who met at the Crawford House to take steps to form an association in order for the Gettysburg monument be secured. The report was accepted, and several designs for a monument submitted for the consideration of the regiment. A committee was appointed to select a design for a monument and another appointed to proceed with the work. The committee was Lieutenant G.W. Smith, Sergeant Levi N. Hawkes, Colonel W.B. White, Captain Louis N. Tucker, Captain W.W. Hemenway. A subscription was opened to add to the State appropriation, and about $200 was raised, General [Joseph] Hayes, formerly a [Colonel] of the regiment, heading it with $100. All subscriptions are to be paid within twenty days. It was then voted to make the organization of the regiment permanent, and that the annual reunion be held August 26 of each year.

This excerpt from the July 1, 1885 edition of the Boston Globe




Yesterday a party of Massachusetts veterans visited Westerly, R.I. to examine the work being done by the Smith Granite Company upon monuments which are being built for the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association. The party comprised the following among others: Comrades W.H. Ward, James H. Cruff, Joseph H. Brown and W.H. Brown of the Eleventh Regiment; George E. Muzzey, Joseph W. Thayer, and George Kimball, Twelfth Regiment; William B. White, Levi Hawkes, W.W. Hemenway, C.H. Smith, J.A. Pratt, and E.B. Smith, Eighteenth Regiment; J.C. Chadwick and George E. Teel, Nineteenth Regiment; John D. Reed and Benjamin B. Brown, Third Battery, Fred A. Lull and W.A. Waugh, Fifth Battery. Colonel J.B. Batchelder of Hyde Park, the government historian of the battle, and a number of veterans from Providence and vicinity also joined the party. The Thirteenth Regiment and the First Battery, although having monuments in process of construction by the Smith company were not represented.

The excursionists left Boston at 10 a.m. in a special car provided by Superintendent Folsom of the Providence railroad, and on reaching Westerly, after a rapid trip, took dinner at the Dixon House. Here they were shown pleasant courtesies by Budlong Post, G.A.R. of Westerly…They then proceeded to the quarries where the afternoon was spent in examining the outlines of the work being done, being politely shown about by Mr. Walter E. Wheeler, representing the company.

I’ll be heading up to Gettysburg on Friday night, the first of two visits I’ll be making this year. The second visit will occur on July 2nd to commemorate what I’ve labeled the 18th Massachusetts Infantry’s “Big Day at Gettysburg,” during which time I’ll lay a wreath at 18th’s monument in “The Loop,” a tradition that started a couple of years ago.

Friday night’s planned arrival is in preparation for the following day’s activity, a walking tour of the Wheatfield sponsored by the Civil War Education Association. One of the leaders of that tour will be Jay Jorgenson, who’s written the only published account devoted exclusively to the July 2nd fighting at the Wheatfield. As much as I’ve read about the fighting at the Wheatfield and walked that ground, this tour should hopefully provide a unique perspective of the fighting that raged there on the second day of the battle. It should also allow an opportunity to see first hand the new Visitor’s Center everyone’s been raving about.

Speaking of Gettysburg, one of the recent acquisitions that came into hand were six glass plate lantern slides of Massachusetts monuments at Gettysburg. These slides, which date to the 1890’s, once hung in an unidentified G.A.R. Post in Massachusetts. Among the group, and the primary reason for purchasing them, was one of the 18th Massachusetts’ monument. I’m still trying to figure out how best to display them. One of the ideas I have is to mount them as a group in some type of box with backlighting. I’m not good at making things, nor, as my father used to say, should I be trusted with electric wiring, so I’ll have to mull this over a little bit more.



1st Massachusetts Battery


3rd Massachusetts Battery


7th Massachusetts Infantry


13th Massachusetts Infantry


18th Massachusetts Infantry


37th Massachusetts Infantry

One of the more familiar songs to emerge from the Civil War and one that still makes its way into the recording studio is The Vacant Chair. For some reason though, this song has taken on a country or bluegrass feel and, even though written in the form of a poem by a Massachusetts minister and set to music by one of the most prolific tunesmiths of patriotic songs for the North, seems to be increasingly identified as a melancholy anthem to the Lost Cause. I found eight recorded versions of the song on Rhapsody, six of which were rendered as I’ve suggested.

The song, like Lorena, was one that struck a chord in the ranks of the opposing armies and civilians both North and South, few who, by war’s end, had emerged unscathed from the sorrow of its savagery. What we are less familiar with is the story behind the song, of whom it was written for and why. That history begins with an 18-year-old student from Worcester, Massachusetts by the name of John William Grout.

New England was full of them at the approach of the Civil War. A quasi aristocracy of moneyed and privileged young men, educated in private preparatory schools, who advanced their studies at the most prestigious colleges and universities in preparation for assuming by right of supposed natural superiority their place on the top rungs of society as lawyers, politicians, businessmen, and bankers. They were labeled the blue-eyed children of fortune, destiny’s darlings, who were to lead America into the future by virtue of their breeding and polish.

That future was interrupted by war, but none shied away. This was their chance to grab at glory and they enlisted in droves, for duty, for honor, in adherence to a code of chivalrous manhood, taking command of regiments or companies, or lesser responsibility as a first or second lieutenant; never in the ranks or among the Non-commissioned. They used their own influence, or that of fathers, grandfathers, or uncles to situate themselves in elite regiments that would single-handedly reel the rebellious back into the fold.

Grout had martial blood coursing through his veins and gene pool. Descended from English nobility and a fifth great-grandfather who gained a captaincy during the King Philip War, when a confederation of Massachusetts, Wampanoag, and Narragansetts waged bloody retribution against European interlopers, Grout enrolled at the Highland Military Academy, where he became commander of cadets soon after his admission. With his father’s hand guiding him toward a future career as a diplomat, Ft. Sumter mercifully intervened and after wearing down his parents’ objections secured a commission as a second lieutenant in Company D of the 15th Massachusetts Volunteers in July of 1861.

This was no ordinary 18-year-old. Described as being “endowed by nature with rare gifts, physically and mentally” Grout was immensely popular in the regiment and was given responsibility for drilling the men in the art of war, a task he relished and handled with the aplomb of one wizened by experience.

The repetition of training exercises is calculated to ensure the cohesiveness of a fighting force in warfare. But it doesn’t fully prepare men for the initial shock of actual combat, when bullets whiz, when smoke obliterates the surrounding terrain, when the concussion of artillery assaults the senses in surround sound, when the world suddenly compresses into a disorienting whirl of slaughter as comrades fall.

Mudskows ferried the 15th down the Potomac to where bluffs rose above the water, their orders to root out a force of Confederates congregated above the heights. Ball’s Bluff was to become a Union debacle of the highest order. Meeting Confederate skirmishers at the top of the cliffs, Union commanders simply unraveled and withdrew their troops to a battle line at the edge of the precipice, where a turkey shoot ensued. Panicked Union infantrymen scrambled down the embankments for the safety of their boats, only to expose themselves to a further galling fire.

The reports of survivors were all unanimous in their praise of an 18-year-old second lieutenant who maintained calm and presence, assisting the wounded in their crossing of the river to the opposite shore. He was returning for a second attempt at helping his men when pierced by a bullet in midstream. Those closest to where slipped beneath the water remembered his final words, “Tell Company D I could have reached the shore, but I’m shot, I must sink.”

His bodied was later recovered and borne back to his family’s home in Worcester. An entire city mourned as the funeral cortege escorted by the Mayor and a cadre of cadets from the Highland Military Academy marched in slow cadence to the Rural Cemetery where a coffin was lowered into the ground. And it was in that city that the father of a childhood friend of Grout’s, the Reverend Henry Stevenson Washburn, while walking the streets shortly before Thanksgiving in November 1861 turned his thoughts to the death of one so young and full of promise. Those thoughts were expressed in a poem Washburn sent as a condolence to the Grout family and later published in a Worcester newspaper.

The poem probably would have remained an item of local interest but for its discovery by George F. Root. The composer of The Battle Cry of Freedom, Just Before the Battle, Mother, and Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! (The Prisoner’s Hope), Root set Washburn’s words to music, giving them new meaning, bringing them into homes where those who sat together and broke bread would leave a place set in front of chair that would be occupied no more.

You can follow this link to a very, very dated video of Kathy Mattea, who by the way puts on an incredible live show, to hear one of the better versions of The Vacant Chair.





We shall meet, but we shall miss him
There will be one vacant chair
We shall linger to caress him
While we breathe our evening prayer;
When a year ago we gathered
Joy was in his mild blue eye,
But a golden chord is severed
And our hopes in ruin lie.

Chorus
We shall meet, but we shall miss him
There will be one vacant chair
We shall linger to caress him
While we breathe our evening prayer.

At our fireside, sad and lonely,
Often will the bosom swell,
At remembrance of the story
How our noble Willie fell;
How he strove to bear our banner
Through the thickest of the fight,
And uphold our country's honor
In the strength of manhood's night.

Chorus

True, they tell us wreaths of glory
Ever more will deck his brow,
But this soothes the anguish only
Sweeping o'er our heartstrings now.
Sleep today, Oh early fallen,
In thy green and narrow bed,
Dirges from the pine and cypress,
Mingle with the tears we shed.

Chorus

Since 1880 he’s guarded his post day and night, through barren winters, interminable summers, the first signs of spring, and as the last leaves have swirled and danced in the November wind to the ground. His eyes are ever watchful, surveying the countryside, musket ready by his side, all part of a standing order to keep safe those who began their sleep at Antietam or in hospitals that stretched from Boonsboro to Sharpsburg. He rises above all of us and the markers that lay at his feet. 4,776 markers. 1,836 nameless, lost forever to those who loved them. As he first saw his own light in the mind of his creator James G. Battersson and took shape and form from James Pollette’s chisel, he rises 43 feet into the sky, where his head can graze the arc of morning sun, ever faithful to those forever reposed and now returned to dust.

This letter to the Editor appeared in the Friday, April 26, 1912 edition of the Boston Globe. I thought it was appropriate for today, due to the fact that it was published 96 years ago yesterday, when memories of the Civil War remained relatively fresh in people’s minds and “The Bloody Shirt” was still waving in the breeze.


Editor People’s Column – I have read the recent letters in the [Boston] Globe comparing the Northern and Southern prisons during the Civil War.

There is one fact which should settle forever any controversy in regard to their respective merits or demerits, and that is the burial grounds. The graveyards speak for both sides. Compare the graveyard of the Confederate dead at Camp Morton with that of the Federal dead at Camp Sumpter. The one at Indianapolis, Ind. the other at Andersonville, Ga. Of the two, Camp Morton contained much the larger number of prisoners. You can count the graves at Andersonville by the hundreds, those at Indianapolis by the tens. The soldiers who died at Camp Morton were buried in coffins, inclosed in boxes, those at Andersonville in trenches without boxes or coffins. A record of every death, cause of death, name, rank, regiment, company, date of death, name and address of nearest relative and the graves marked and numbered, was kept at Camp Morton.

The Confederate prisoners had ample room, plenty of shade trees on the grounds, and a roof either of wood or canvas under which to sleep or lounge. There was also a good stream of running water wherein he could bathe or fish at times. At Andersonville there was no protection from the sun or storms. A line 20 feet from the stockade kept the soldiers from the shade of the stockade and many a poor man, over-heated, delirious with fever, wandered over the line to reach the little shade near the stockade was shot down. Wood was so scarce in the camp that the roots of the tree stumps were dug up. Within 30 minutes walk of the stockade was timber enough to build a city larger than any in Dixie at that time.

The Southern sun of Sumner killed the Northern bred men like frost kills flies. Dysentery and scurvy and sunstroke claimed thousands. These conditions were inexcusable. Nearby were plenty of shade and good cool water. The scurvy could have been prevented by an issue of fresh vegetables which were grown all about that neighborhood. There were a few issues of green corn, potatoes, onions and melons. The woods were full of wild berries and cherries. Old Wind and Wirz would rather dig trenches for the prisoners than potatoes.

At Camp Morton some did suffer from the cold at times. One winter it was so cold that several guards on duty were frozen to death. What wonder that men from the South should suffer. The hospital where the Confederate prisoners were treated is to this day used by the City of Indianapolis as it city hospital. I lived in that same hospital for two years and know that it is a good, clean, comfortable building. Some additions were made to it and some of the old wooden portions replaced by brick. But the executive or central portion stands just as it did 50 years ago. The prisoners were allowed to have luxuries and dainties sent to them by the Southern sympathizers of which the city had hundreds. They had sent to them great quantities of reading matter, until one day an employee let fall a box, labeled “Sunday School Papers,” which burst, exposing a lot of Navy revolvers and cartridges. That was the beginning of the exposure of the conspiracy of the Knights of the Golden Circle to organize the Northwestern Confederacy. The arming of the prisoners and Morgan, the raider, coming to their aid, and Gov. Morton’s prompt action preventing the success of the conspiracy is another story.





There’s lot of information on the Internet about Camp Morton, but this link provides a good starting point.

During my last road trip I made a return visit to the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, Maryland. The first visit occurred shortly after the Museum opened, so long ago I can’t even remember the year (2000, I think, maybe), and before they moved to their present location at 48 East Patrick St. There have been so many changes they’re too numerous to mention, but if you’re ever in the neighborhood of the Antietam battlefield add the museum to your itinerary.

Rather than writing up a review of museum though, I thought it might be more fun to play a game based on information culled from the NMCW. So put on your thinking caps and lets play Jeopardy!

I’ll take “1858 Medical School Final Exam” for a hundred.

Answer: The Inferior phrenic; celiac; superior mesenteric; middle suprarenal; renal; gonadal; lumbar; inferior mesenteric; median sacral; and common iliac

Question: What are the branches of the abdominal aorta?

“1858 Medical School final exam” for 200.

Answer: Erythrocytes, leukocytes, and thrombocytes

Question: What are the constituents of the bloods?

Same category for 300

Answer: But Ms. Scarlett, I don’t know nothin’ about birthin’ no babies

Question: What are the conclusive signs of pregnancy?

Answer: 42

Question: What was the number of medical schools in the United States at the outbreak of the Civil War?

Answer: The Medical College of Charleston (in 1824)

Question: What was the first medical school established in the South?

Answer: August 2, 1862

Question: When was the Union Ambulance Corps established?

Answer: 4,000

Question: What was the number of six mule team wagons that entered the Wilderness with the Army of the Potomac during the Campaign Against Richmond?

Answer: 44,558

Question: What was the number of Union deaths attributed to diarrhea?

Answer: 12

Question: How many pounds of oats or corn did a horse eat per day?

Answer: 15

Question: How many gallons of water did a horse drink each day?

Answer: The techniques included pushing on the chest and waving a fan near the nose.

Question: How did they wake a patient after administering anethesia?

Answer: 8 to 15 minutes

Question: How long did it take surgeons to perform an amputation?

Answer: 83 per cent

Question: What was the percentage of patients shot in the hip who died following surgery?

Answer: Half and of the women, 75 per cent.

Question: How many of the attendants, nurses, matrons, laundresses, or cooks at Chimborazo hospital were black?

Answer: Fortress Monroe

Question: Where was Seminary Hospital located?

Answer: 10 to 40,000

Question: How many Union dead were embalmed?

Answer: 94 per cent

Question: What was the percentage of all recorded wounds caused by a Minie ball?

Answer: In the arms or legs

Question: Where did 70 per cent of all gunshot wounds occur?

Answer: Clara Barton

Question: Who was the Detroit Free Press referring to in 1912 when they said “She was perhaps the most perfect incarnation of mercy the modern world has known”?

Final Jeopardy. The category is Civil War Chaplains.

Answer: 14 out of 165

Da, da, da, da, da, da, da
Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da
Da, da, da, da, da, da, da
Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da

Question: What was the number of black regiments that had black chaplains?

And you, whoever you are, who probably cheated by looking up the questions on the Internet, are our new Jeopardy champion. Congratulations! You’ll return next time to defend your title. Until then, remember that mules only consumed nine pounds of oats or corn per day. making them more cost efficient than horses.

Imagine for a moment if you will that you were on the Board of the Historical Society of Frederick County, Maryland and found out 73 years after purchasing a historic home that it was not what you thought it was and never was what you thought it was. You’d probably suffer through the embarrassment and then bring in a big gun, in the form of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William H. Rehnquist, to make some remarks at the 2004 rededication of the former “Roger Brook Taney House” as the “Roger Brooke Taney House and Museum.”

This sounds like an episode from, take your choice, Antique Road Show or the History Detectives, but the 1798 home purchased by the HSFC in 1930, with the belief that it was once the principle residence of Roger Brooke Taney turned out to be a rental property he had acquired. Some things are better left undisturbed. In this case, research on the home’s history in 2003 uncovered the truth about Taney’s role as landlord. I know my immediate reaction, when I was informed of this by Jennifer, a museum docent, was to look longingly at the front door and rack my brain for a polite way to exit the premises. Why tour something that was not? I shrugged it off and figured what the heck; I had already paid the admission fee. Besides, the opportunity for an individualized tour doesn’t come along everyday.

Taney, who practiced law in Frederick, rented out the property during the period he owned the house from 1815 to 1823, while he himself resided in the center of Frederick in a house since torn down. What you’re left with then is a beautifully restored example of an early 19th century middle class dwelling, replete with a furnished parlor and dining room on the first floor, two second floor bedrooms, one of which is a shrine to the fifth Chief Justice, a kitchen attached to the back of the home, a smoke house, and slave quarters.

Jennifer indicated that the house, which is open only on weekends from April through December, draws about 700 to 1000 visitors a year, a large number of whom are drawn simply by curiosity and without any idea of who Taney was. She seemed impressed by the fact that I pronounced Taney’s last name correctly (Tawn-ee). This has to be a tough gig for any docent, but Jennifer pulled it off with enthusiasm and the tour, as it turned out, was really enjoyable.

Of interest in the home was a larger than life sized bronze replica of a bust of Taney, the original being on display at Frederick City Hall. The bust was the work of Frederick native Joseph Urner, who also sculpted the Alabama monument at Gettysburg. There was also a document signed by Taney which commutated freedom for one of his slaves. I may have misread the document, but it appeared to have been dated in 1848, which is much later than I understood Taney to have taken this action with regard to slaves he inherited.

Taney’s legacy remains under fire in Maryland. Civil rights groups have demanded the removal of his bust from the Frederick City Hall and a statue from the grounds of the State Capitol building at Annapolis. I admitted to Jennifer that I had a tough time with Taney. All this ill feeling harkens back to his majority opinion in the Dred Scott decision, feelings that aren’t going to disappear any time soon and the volume of which may increase in the future.

I admit to having a slightly warped sense of humor. So you’ll have to take that into consideration when I state that one of the truly comical events of the Civil War happened in New Orleans, one orchestrated by Benjamin “The Beast” Butler. The story’s pretty familiar. After the city surrendered, occupying Union troops were subjected to all sorts of verbal insults, incidents of spitting, and other overt displays of hostility by those flowers of Southern womanhood, the ladies of New Orleans. One even took it upon herself to dump a chamber pot on David "Damn the Torpedos" Farragut’s head when he walked underneath her window. That could have been pretty funny if you had been there to see it and I’m sure some who witnessed the incident split their sides laughing. Kurt Vonnegut explained it this way, that humor is derived at the expense of misfortune to others. I’m just wondering what Farragut said when it happened. Could have been something like “Ah, sh_t!”

The culprit in that incident has never been identified. But she played a prominent role in Butler's decision to issue General Order Number 28, which loosely translated said, "Ok ladies, you want to act like whores, I’ll treat you like whores. Any further assaults on my men by bombarding them with loogies, insults against their manhood, their mothers or sisters, or off-key renditions of Confederate fight songs, and I’m going to consider you operating under the influence of a red light and throw your scrawny little Rebel posteriors in jail." Butler’s decree worked, leaving in its wake a chorus of “Well, I declare, never in all my life…”

Legend has it that the North had its own chamber pot lady. Well, not really a chamber pot lady, because Barbara Fritchie showed a little more restraint when Confederate troops marched past her house in Frederick, Maryland on their way to Antietam. Fritchie reportedly waved the American flag out her window and got in some good verbal licks, hurling verbage like “Yeah, I could smell you comin’ when you wus still a mile away.” Her housekeeper was rumored to have been yelling in the background, “Get away from that window before you get shot, you old hag!”

Barbara Fritchie’s story of flag waving in the faces of the invading Confederates was compelling enough to be immortalized in an 1864 poem by John Greenleaf Whittier. But like another epic poem from one of his contemporaries, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere," it’s more about metre and rhyme than truth perhaps. In spite of the likelihood that Rebel troops did not approach her home, the myth, or truth if you still cling to it, led to the reconstruction of her home from its original materials and reopening as a museum at 154 West Patrick Street, Frederick in 2005. Unfortunately the door was locked when I tried the knob and I had to settle for peering in the windows. Luckily for me Frederick police, who arrived a short time later to investigate a report of a Peeping Tom, grew restless during my my recitation of Whittier's poem and decided to head for a local donut shop. "Nothing here Sarge. Just another one of those Civil War kooks."