Touch the Elbow - Blogging the Civil War

Excerpt from Powell’s History of the Fifth Corps

Having marched over sixty miles since the morning of June 29th, and twenty-six of the sixty since 7 P.M., July 1st, the Fifth Corps reached Gettysburg about 5 A.M. July 2d, and was placed in reserve on the right of the line.


Excerpt from “Fighting with the Eighteenth Massachusetts; The Civil War Memoirs of Thomas H. Mann,” Edited by John Hennessey

The 5th Corps reached Gettysburg at five o’clock on the morning of July 2d, after a march of 60 miles since the morning of June 29th, and was held as a reserve in support of batteries until three in the afternoon. By that time all the stragglers who cared to be at the front had come up, and they made up full half of the Eighteenth – which was, no doubt, in about the same exhausted condition as other veteran regiments of the Corps. About two o’clock in the afternoon the 6th Corps came straggling up in very much the same condition in which the 5th Corps did in the early morning, taking the place of the latter as a reserve while the 5th was sent to the front to have its little experience in the edge of the “Devil’s Den.”

At three o’clock in the afternoon of July 2d the Fifth Corps went to the front to retrieve the ground lost by Sickles’ 3d Corps. General [James] Barnes was in command of the division, Colonel [William S.] Tilton, of the 22d Massachusetts, commanded the 1st brigade and Lieut. Col. [William B.] White led the Eighteenth. The 3d brigade was sent to Little Round Top…The 1st and 2d brigades undertook to fill the gap between the right of the 5th Corps and left of the 3d Corps, which brought them a little to the right of the foot of Little Round Top and to the edge of the “Devil’s Den.”

In moving to the front Tilton’s and [Jacob] Sweitzer’s brigades, the 1st and 2d, passed to the left of a stone house and across a lane leading to it that was heavily fenced by rolling large boulders together to form a wall.[1] Then they entered a piece of woods where a small brigade was passed over that it was understood belonged to the 3d Corps; it was lying down upon the ground. The line of Barnes’s division was formed in the edge of this piece of woods that was 200 yards or move away. It was hardly straightened in position to the satisfaction of General Barnes before an unusual movement was observed in the edge of the woods beyond, an in another moment a rebel line of battle emerged with that peculiar Indian yell that was very familiar to these veteran brigades. The line was a heavy one, struck the 1st brigade, on the extreme right of which was the Eighteenth, at an angle of 23 degrees, and lapped a long distance past where any troops were at hand to face it.[2]

A quick, sharp order was passed along the line: “Reserve your fire till the order is given!” As the Greybacks scattered out of woods, an instant’s halt was observed while they straightened out their lines, the the [Confederate] order to fire was distinctly heard by the right half of Barnes’s line, and it was quickly executed. Its effect was astonishing though not unusal. The volley was delivered at a distance of 200 yards, and from a line that was 40 or 50 feet below the elevation of the Union line, so instead of doing the fearful execution that was expected, nearly the whole shower of bullets passed harmlessly 10 or 20 feet over these Yankee heads. As the rebel order – “fire!” - was heard, the counter order – “down!” – was given by General Barnes, but too late to be effective even if it had been necessary to preserve lives.

Then the enemy sprang forward, and as they emerged from the smoke of their own volley, half way up the slope, the order for which the Union line was impatiently waiting – “aim, fire!” – sent a raking swarth of bullets into the yelling ranks that made many gaps and cause a decided check. Barnes’s men aimed for the rebels’ feet, having been taught in an instant not to fire over their heads, while the lack of casualties from the heavy rebel delivery had decidedly steadied their aim.

But half that charging line had no such fire to meet and was rapidly wrapping itself around Barnes’s right. The 1st Brigade must immediately change its line by facing about and making almost a half wheel to the rear. This was done, and the movement required the longest race on the part of the Eighteenth, because it was on the extreme right, while Sweitzer’s brigade to the left was disturbed but very little.

In making this change the swing back took the regiment again across the lane and heavy stone walls that fence it, and as the men jumped them advantage was taken of each to give the rebels a volley or two and to reload under their protection. The brigade thus swung back some 500 or 600 yards to where it was able to hold its ground without any further flanking on the part of the enemy. But by this time – nearly dark – its ammunition was exhausted, and a brigade of Pennsylvanians[3] from the 5th Corps came to its relief.

Although not a man of the Eighteenth was injured by that first, full volley from the rebel line, the formation of a new line in the face of the charging, flanking enemy, cost this regiment 32 men out of a total of only 108[4], nearly all of whom were only slightly wounded or taken prisoner….

The corporal [Thomas Mann, Co. I] had disposed of half his 40 rounds of ammunition, had just discharged his musket in the face of the advancing line of rebel flankers – which was less than 50 yards away – and was crouching behind the last wall of the lane when one of his comrades undertook to climb over it and was shot dead. The body fell across Tom in such a manner as to pin him and his musket, which he was in the act of reloading, to the ground. Not dreaming that the comrade was dead, [Mann] berated the prostrate form as a careless “lunkhead” until the copious stream of warm blood, which was thoroughly saturating him, led him to conclude the state of things and to untangle himself from the corpse. [5] But the incident had so absorbed [Mann’s] attention that he did not observe his live comrades moving still farther to the rear, and by the time he was ready to move the Johnnies were leveling their muskets across the wall, over his head, and into the ranks of the 1st Brigade.

[Mann] had no alternative but to lie quietly while the Greybacks took their turn in firing several volleys after his vanished comrades. Then they jumped the wall and moved a few yards farther toward the Union lines, which made [Mann] a prisoner of war. To make a picture of the the situation complete it must be understood that a dense pall of smoke, from the heavy fire of musketry, hung so close to the ground at this stage of the action that nothing could be seen 15 yards away.

As Barnes’s lines were brought fairly to face the charging foe they remained firm, and the further onward movement of the rebels was checked. A lull in the battle occurred that lasted 15 or 20 minutes, though quite a scattering fire was always dropping its hissing and zipping bullets against the walls and boulders that covered these fields, making [Mann’s] position a hot one from the fire of his own comrades.

A little later several members of the rebel hospital department made their appearance while attending to their duty of helping the wounded, and one of them, noticing the live corporal all saturated with blood by the side of the dead man, asked how badly he was hurt. At the same time, in a matter of fact manner, he reached for Tom’s musket, which he immediately clubbed across the wall in such a manner as to ruin it. Like a flash the condition he presented prompted Tom to reply in a faint voice: - “ Don’t know, but think I am used up.”

“Well, you all do the best yo’ knows and we’uns’l tote yo’ back d’rectly.” And away they moved, leaving the corporal to his devices.

[Mann] immediately crawled between a big boulder and the wall where he was not only pretty well protected from stray bullets, but well hid, though he was hardly settled into a comfortable position when the Pennsylvania Reserves, of the 5th Corps, charged won, cleared the field and lane, and gave the corporal a chance to crawl out, pick up a serviceable musket, and report to his regiment. He was received back by company “I” just at dusk as one raised from the dead, for [1st Lt. William W.] Hemenway was about to send in the company reports for the day, in which [Mann] appeared as “left on the field mortally wounded.”

…. Considering the reduced numbers of the Eighteenth, therefore, which were reported present for duty – only 314 – in contrast to the 108 that were found at the front during the afternoon of this July 2d, the real fighting strength of the army must always have been far below the numbers represented in reports and upon paper. Some of these absentees were necessarily disabled in the forced marches to the front; others were detailed to guard wagon trains and camp equipage, but the fact remains that it is a rare thing for much more than half of the supposed strength of a regiment to be found in the line when a charge is made upon or received from the enemy.[6]

[1] John Hennessey, Editor, notes the house belonged to J. Weikert and is still standing, while the road was called the “Wheatfield Road.”
[2] The Confederate troops were from South Carolina and part of Joseph Kershaw’s Division
[3] Pennyslvania Reserves, commanded by Brig. Gen. Samuel W. Crawford
[4] Company A had only 11 men in action at Gettysburg
[5] Sgt. James Leavens, Co. A, then 24 years of age, was the only man from the Regiment to be killed at Gettysburg. Capt. Louis Tucker of Co. A stated in a deposition that Leavens “was wounded first and on the way to the rear was hit again and killed. Leavens is buried at the Gettysburg National Cemetery, Section C, Grave 27. Donald Thompson has in his possession a stencil Leavens used to mark his clothing.
[6] Fighting with the Eighteenth Massachusetts, pp. 175-181


The Wheatfield












Regiments of the 1st Brigade, 1st Division, 5th Corps at the Wheatfield

Today we begin a journey along the banks of the Potomac River in Maryland, where Union troops waded through the water to reach the West Virginia shore on September 19 and 20, 1862. We'll then travel to the West Virginia side and climb the bluffs that rise at certain points fifty to sixty feet above River Road, which runs alongside the river in Shepherdstown. We'll then emerge into still open pasture through which A.P. Hill's Division charged and drove back Union troops, viewing the scene from the perspective of the 118th Pennsylvania Infantry.

Quick note: the very narrow pictures were taken in panoramic mode. Unfortunately the confines of the space allotted doesn't do them justice.


Excerpt from Fighting With the Eighteenth Massachusetts; The Civil War Memoirs of Thomas M. Mann; Edited by John J. Hennessey

Early the next morning [September 20, 1862] a larger force was sent across at the same ford, including the whole of Barnes’s brigade….The river where this brigade crossed is 300 or 400 yards wide and the ford, was made passable at low water by a kind of bar thrown up by the action of the swift running water after flowing over a dam that was a hundred yards above….With the utmost care in pcking one’s way the water was found to be waist deep, while very few succeeded in crossing without wading to the armpits, and many were swept from their feet by the strong current….




Looking from the Maryland side of the Potomac toward Shepherdstown

As the troops left the river they moved by a narrow cart-path that followed one of those ravines that cut through the cliffs on the Virginia short, and bearing to the right by an easy ascent it led into the village of Shepherdstown. Some of the buildings of this place almost overhung the river from the top of the cliff, which was 100 to 150 feet and almost perpendicular in height. The path that Barnes’s brigade followed was used to reach a large stone mill, built down near the water’s edge, which was grinding what is known as Portland cement from the rock of which the cliff was largely composed.







Maryland from the West Virginia side of the Potomac

[The brigade] formed into line of battle on the cliffs above, pushed a skirmish line to the front, and commenced to move cautiously forward. It was soon stopped, however, by the appearance of an overwhelming force of rebels who had not retreated so far as was supposed. A few rounds were exchanged, but it was plainly seen that unless the river was regained in double-quick time this brigade would be scooped in. “About-face! Double-quick, - march!” was the order rolled out by “Jimmy Barnes,” and back the whole force went in a hurry.


The start of the trial leading toward the top of the cliffs







As the brigade was driven back, the 18th and 22d Massachusetts, 13th and 25th New York, 1st Michigan, and 2d Maine, about 1,200 men in all, upon reaching the top of the ravine marched by the left flank and filed into it, thus practically dropping out of reach of the rebel fire for a time. But the 118th Pennsylvania, hardly three weeks in the service, with nearly as many men as the other six regiments combined, were driven to the crown of the cliff where no means of escape seemed available except down its precipitous face to the river, and to the damn that was abreast of the cliff.

Naturally they huddled a few moments, like sheep, on the brink. There they presented the best possible targets for the pursuers and were also in the range of the Union artillery on the opposite cliffs, which was being effectively used to check the hooting, yelling, rebel brigades. To all appearances it was every man for himself with this unfortunate regiment, and soon they began to drop over the cliff by the score. Some crawled down along safe crevasses to the dam; others found the ford. The whole brigade afforded targets for a scattering fire from the Johnnies as it recrossed the river, though soon as the “Corn Exchange” regiment left the cliff the Union guns re-opened and kept back the main body of pursuers. Many of this unfortunate regiment tried to cross on the slippery dam, which barely afforded a foot-hold for a single person, and many deaths from drowning was the result.

The whole loss to the brigade was 361 killed and wounded, but of this number the 118th lost 269. The Eighteenth lost [five killed and mortally wounded, with ten others wounded].



Approximate view of the 118th Pennsylvania Infantry as Confederates advanced on the First Brigade's position










Early in the morning of September 20, movements were made by Gen. McClellan to ascertain the position of the Army of Northern Virginia. Maj. Charles S. Lovell’s Brigade (1st and 7th, 2d and 10th, the 11th and the 17th U.S. Infantry) Sykes Division, Fifth Corps, crossed the Ford and pushed out on the Charlestown Road. Barnes’ Brigade, Morrell’s Division was ordered to cross and move on Shepherdstown. Lovell had gone about a mile and a half on the Charlestown Road when he met the Confederates in force. The Brigade was deployed, about-faces and fell back to the bluffs bordering the river and on either side of the Charlestown Road. The 2d and 10th Infantry were deployed as skirmishers in a belt of woods on the left front. Warren’s Brigade (5th and 10th New York Infantry), Sykes Division crossed at the Ford and formed on Lovell’s left. Barnes, being ordered by Sykes to form on Lovell’s right suspended his movement on Shepherdstown and went into position west of the mill, 220 yards north of this point. Lovell’s skirmishers and some cavalry, which had crossed and gone to the front, were now pressed back by the advance of A.P. Hill’s Confederate Division and Sykes ordered the entire command to recross the Potomac, which was done in good order by Lovell’s and Warren’s Brigades. The Confederate advance on the part of the line held by them being checked by the fire of Weed’s, Randol’s and Van Reed’s batteries posted on the heights of the Maryland side of the river. Barnes’ Brigade, the last ordered withdrawn met with great loss at the mill and on the bluffs and the river bank beyond.

Shepherdstown, West Virginia held its annual Street Fest this past Saturday. Sitting at one end of German St., the town’s main thoroughfare, which had been blocked off to traffic, near Church St., was the Shepherdstown Battlefield Preservation Association booth, which I helped to man from 2 to 6 p.m. The booth featured maps showing Union and Confederate troop movements on September 19th and 20th, 1862, informational brochures on efforts to save the battlefield, and other really neat stuff like hats, pins, T-shirts, haversacks, and autographed copies of Thomas McGrath’s book “Shepherdstown: Last Clash of the Antietam Campaign.” It gave me the opportunity to meet other members of the dedicated crew fighting the good fight to save the battlefield, as well as people attending the Fest who stopped to learn more about a piece of history that is still very much in danger of disappearing under the planned foundations of 150 houses. What would Jimmy Barnes and Little Powell think if we didn't try to stop it?


Carol Dunleavy, an SBPA member, on duty at the booth appropriately decked out in a hat, T-shirt, and haversack.



To personally help out a cause we hope is not lost, I bought this:



And this:



And this:





The next post will take you on site of the Shepherdstown battlefield, an experience that very few people have had in the past 147 years.

This announcement from the Shepherdstown Battlefield Preservation Association:

Shepherdstown Preservation Group Announces the Establishment of a Historical Advisory Board

The Shepherdstown Battlefield Preservation Association Inc. (SBPA) has established a Historical Advisory Board (HAB). Edward E. Dunleavy, President of SBPA, announced today the establishment of the HAB. Dunleavy stated that “the HAB was organized by Dr. Peter Carmichael, the West Virginia University (WVU) Eberly Professor of Civil War Studies. The Board of Directors of SBPA and its more than 130 members wish to thank Dr. Carmichael for his effort. The HAB includes many of today’s most respected scholars and Civil War historians.”

Dr. Carmichael stated that “the outpouring of support from the academic community in forming a Historical Advisory Board attests to the undeniable historic importance of the Battle of Shepherdstown. Among the scholars who have joined the board, all are recognized experts in the field of Civil War history, and many have received national attention for their work, including James McPherson, Gary W. Gallagher, Elizabeth Pryor, and William Link. Their support of the Shepherdstown Battlefield Preservation Association is indispensable to saving what they uniformly believe is sacred historical ground.”

Dunleavy added that “importantly West Virginia is well represented on the HAB with Civil War historians from WVU, Marshall University and Shepherd University. The HAB ensures that SBPA's portrayal of the Battle of Shepherdstown is historically accurate and we thank the members of the HAB for their participation.”

Members of the SBPA HAB are:

Kevin T. Barksdale – Marshall University
Stephen W. Berry II - University of Georgia
Keith S. Bohannon - West Georgia State University
Peter S. Carmichael - West Virginia University
Thomas W. Cutrer - Arizona State University
William C. Davis - Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
William W. Freehling – Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
Gary W. Gallagher - University of Virginia
Lesley Jill Gordon – University of Akron
A. Wilson Greene – Petersburg, Virginia
Clark B. Hall – Fairfax, Virginia
Earl J. Hess – Lincoln Memorial University
Caroline E. Janney - Purdue University
Robert E. L. Krick – Richmond, Virginia
Susanna Michele Lee – North Carolina State University
William A. Link - University of Florida
Thomas A. McGrath – North Country College
James M. McPherson - Princeton University
Frank A. O’Reilly – Fredericksburg, Virginia
Elizabeth B. Pryor - Washington D.C
George C. Rable – University of Alabama
Gordon C. Rhea – Charleston, South Carolina
Mark A. Snell - Shepherd University
Susannah J. Ural – University of Southern Mississippi
Joan Waugh – University of California, Los Angeles

Biographies of members of the HAB are available on the SBPA website by clicking here:

The Battle of Shepherdstown was fought on September 19 – 20, 1862 over approximately one square mile, east of what was then Shepherdstown, Virginia and south of the Potomac River and Boteler’s (aka Packhorse) Ford. The battle was the last of three battles fought during the Army of Northern Virginia’s (ANV) Antietam or Maryland Campaign. Approximately 9000 troops took part in the Shepherdstown battle with 677 casualties about equally divided between the Union Army of the Potomac and Robert E. Lee’s troops. The battle’s significance is that it was a contributing factor in Lee’s decision to reverse the order to move north back into Maryland. As a consequence, the ANV retreated up the Shenandoah Valley toward Winchester. That retreat allowed the Union Army to declare a military victory and enabled President Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

The Shepherdstown Battlefield Preservation Association Inc. (SBPA), organized in 2004, is a non-profit, Section 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to saving and preserving the site of the 1862 Battle of Shepherdstown. SBPA has preserved 84 acres by way of conservation easements granted by members who own property on the site. For more information and to purchase the book entitled: Shepherdstown: Last Clash of the Antietam Campaign September 19 – 20, 1862 ; please visit by clicking here

We had a recent email from Peter Alter of the Chicago History Museum who was looking for information on Joseph Cullen Ayer, a 1st Lieutenant who served with the 18th Massachusetts. The museum had a trunk that belonged to Ayer in their collection and were contemplating including it in an exhibit that will start on July 4, 2010. Needless to say, after responding to the email, I was already stuffing a suitcase in anticipation of a trip to the Windy City next year. However, Peter cautioned the trunk might not actually make it into the exhibit. So, we’ll have to bide our time until we get the definitive word.

When you learn of things like the existence of Ayer’s trunk, it makes you wonder about the journey it’s been through and how objects wind up where they do. Obviously when the trunk was donated to the CHM in 1976, someone thought it more fitting to house it in a museum than to keep it in private hands. But where it was between May 22, 1918, when Ayer died of facial cancer at the Mountain Branch of the National Soldier’s home in Johnson City, Tennessee until Robert Anderson, a collector got his hands on it is anybody’s guess.

Ayer had one surviving relative, a son who bore his name and from whom he had been estranged from for years. The son, Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., a Harvard educated minister and historian of some note, traveled to the home to make arrangements to ship the body home to Massachusetts and collect the $22.75 in cash that his father had in his possession.

George M. Barnard, Jr., another Lieutenant in the 18th Mass., who knew Ayer as well as anyone in the Regiment and shared his opinions on everyone in letters to parents, labeled Ayer “a jackass.” Judging by Ayer’s later abandonment of his wife and child and seemingly endless wandering from one National Home to another late in life, Barnard’s assessment of Ayer, a practicing attorney before and a land speculator after the war, may not have been far off base.

I’m speculating myself, but there are events that cross as shadows over people’s lives that crush the spirit in some and serves to strengthen another. Ayer spent a year with the 18th before he was appointed as the head of the 1st Division Ambulance Corps for the Fifth Corps shortly before Antietam. Overseeing the removal and transportation of the sick, mangled, and dying for a year can worm into your psyche and leave one unable to cope with tragic news from home carrying the announcement a year old son had died. Plagued by health problems, including rheumatism and kidney disease, Ayer was subsequently discharged from military service on December 17, 1863, four months after he was ordered to return for duty with the 18th Mass., something he never did.

I’m speculating that he was a failure as a businessman after the war, because he seemed to pursue deal after deal, bouncing from Boston to Tennessee, where he speculated in land, to New Zealand, where he speculated in mining, until almost broken down physically at age 58 he entered the Togus Branch of the National Home in Augusta, Maine and applied for a pension.

Ayer’s was the second trunk belonging to a member of the 18th Mass. we’ve located. The first was that of Albert Sturdy, which I happened on purely by accident when I visited the Maine Military Museum in Augusta years ago. At the time I visited, the museum was only open every other Sunday. The curator gave me his undivided attention, which wasn’t hard to do, particularly since there was only one other visitor in the building. We spent time at the Civil War section, most of which was devoted to Joshua Chamberlain and featured such personal artifacts as a pistol and sword. I began pumping for information on Colonel Joseph Hayes, a Maine native who served with the 18th, and, as if on cue, I happened to turn around and my eyes fell on a chest clearly marked with Sturdy’s name. Believe me when I say that my mouth literally dropped open.

Sturdy, who was cited for bravery at the battle of Fredericksburg, where he nearly had his left foot blown off, made a small fortune in the jewelry manufacturing business in Attleboro, Mass. following the war and had purchased a farm in Washington, Maine as a summer retreat. Decades later, the trunk was discovered in a barn on the property and subsequently donated to the museum.

Whereas Ayer seemingly stumbled into self-created misfortune after his military service, Sturdy led a privileged life, including long stints as a bank director and secretary for the local gas company. He and his brother built enough wealth that they were sole benefactors of the local hospital in Attleboro, which still bears the family’s name.

If you thought the answer to yesterday’s question might in some way be related to the 18th Massachusetts Infantry, then your instincts were correct. If you then suspected it might have been Joseph Hayes, who succeeded James Barnes as commanding officer of the Regiment, then you scored a bull’s eye.

Hayes, an 1855 graduate of Harvard College, commanded the 18th Massachusetts from August 25, 1862, when Barnes was promoted to Brigade command, until May 12, 1864, when he, himself, was promoted to Brigadier General. The promotion came a week after Hayes received a gunshot wound to the forehead during action at the Wilderness, a wound he not only miraculously survived, but from which he recovered and returned to duty less than three months later. At that time he was placed in command of the First Brigade, Second Division of the Fifth Corps, the Brigade, comprised, in part, by the 10th, 11th, 12th, 14th, and 17th United States Infantry regiments. Hayes, thus, became the only Volunteer officer placed in command of regular army units.

His time in command was brief, as he was taken prisoner toward the close of the battle of Weldon Railroad on August 19, 1864 and, after first being held prisoner at Danville was then carried to Richmond, where he was confined at Libby Prison and Belle isle. While a prisoner, he was made U.S. Commissioner of Supplies, in charge of aid sent from the North to Union prisoners. He returned to the field April 2, 1865, and commanded the advanced brigade of the Fifth Corps, joining in the pursuit of Lee until the surrender of Appomattox. After the disbandment of the Army of the Potomac, he commanded a brigade in the Provisional Corps designed to operate against the French in Mexico, but declined to accept a commission in the Regular Army. He was made brevet major general, U.S.V. March 16, 1865, and mustered out of service Aug. 24, 1865.

Just out of curiosity, and because I had the class biographies in front of me, I did a quick survey of the record of military service for the Harvard class of 1857. I tried doing the same thing with Joseph Hayes’ class of 1855, but the biographies weren’t complete and failed to address military service. However, for the 65 men who entered Harvard Yard in 1853 and were living when war erupted, 21 served in the Union army, four in the Confederate army, while the remaining 40 members saw no military service at all, electing instead to pursue vocations such as the practice of law, medicine, the ministry, or traveling throughout Europe.

There was one, and only one, Volunteer officer in the entire Union army who was placed in command of a Brigade of Regular U.S. Army Infantry troops. Before war's end this same officer was offered a commission in the Regular Army, but turned it down. Can you identify this seemingly unheralded, but courageous and remarkable citizen soldier? The answer tomorrow.

Yesterday I put in plugs for a few books by different authors well worth your money and time. Today I’m going to do a flip and write briefly about a book that I had looked forward to reading and ultimately, after closing the cover on the last page, felt sorely disappointed in.

“Lincoln’s Fifth Wheel” was written by Robert Quentin Maxwell in 1956. Don’t ask me who Maxwell was, because the only mention of him found on the Net, beside the book, is the fact that he was a Fulbright Scholar. He had to have been a bright guy by virtue of that fact alone. Combine this with an introduction penned by Allan Nevins and the potential for a great history on the United States Sanitary Commission was seemingly at Maxwell’s fingertips.

Maxwell covered all the bases, from the Commission’s inception, through its battles with the military and, in particular, the Medical Department, it’s fund raising efforts, its recommendations and struggles to improve medical care, diet, and sanitation in the Union army, its recruitment of doctors and nurses to provide better care for the wounded and sick, its efforts to provide soldiers with supplemental clothing, and it’s eventual transformation into the American branch of the International Red Cross.

So, where, in my estimation did Maxwell fall on his face? By using last names only for virtually every person named in the book, with the exception of a woman named Harris, who did receive a first name, Miss; by the fact that he used a total of three footnotes; by the fact that he was seemingly so familiar and intimate with the principals that he wrote in a style that reminded me of someone sitting in front of their fireplace talking about a neighbor's vacation photos to a total stranger.

There’s an enormous amount of primary source material available on the Sanitary Commission and it’s evident Maxwell utilized them. However, this isn’t the book one should cite as the end all on the Commission. For that I’m probably going to have to look at others such as “Civil War Sisterhood” by Judith Ginsberg or Nancy Scripture's “With Courage and Delicacy.”

Which brings me to another equally disappointing book I read about seven or eight years ago, John Hope Franklin's “Reconstruction After the Civil War.” I have no quarrel or axe to grind with the late Dr. Franklin, who was celebrated in his lifetime as one of this country’s greatest historians. I remember selecting the book because I wanted to get an African-American perspective on Reconstruction. What I got instead was, in my estimation, a poorly written and poorly researched book which didn’t challenge and was little more than a standard recapitulation of accepted Reconstruction history. Thank God for Eric Foner, who came along a few years later and wrote the definitive book on the subject.

And finally this. A while back I mused on the subject of whether Shelby Foote’s three volume history of the Civil War was, in fact, the greatest multi-volume work ever produced, something I was personally unable to answer because I hadn’t read Allan Nevins’ eight volume “The Ordeal of the Union.” I took my own bait and am expecting all eight volumes to arrive in about a week’s time. I’ll give you my opinion as to how the two stack up after I wade through Nevins’ 4,000 plus pages. It may take me all summer. Hell, it may take me all summer and fall. Hell, it may take me the rest of my life, so look for the Blog post sometime in the year 2014. Opps, according to the Mayan calendar none of us will be around then, so I’ll try to have the post out earlier than that. Maybe on December 22, 2012. That’ll give everyone one last day to read what I’ve written provided you’re all not too busy kissing your asses goodbye.

My apologies for the lack of posts over the past two weeks. I can attribute it to being under the weather. Even though I try to convince myself I don’t have allergies, I seem to come down with flu like symptoms this time every year when the pollen count peaks in the D.C. area.

Amazon sent me an email advising that my advance order of Eric Whittenberg’s latest book “Like a Meteor Burning Brightly: The Short But Controversial Life of Colonel Ulric Dahlgren” was going to be delayed and asking if I still wanted the book. I knew the book was going to be delayed from reading Eric’s Blog, so I responded, yes, I still wanted the book.

I’ve been looking forward to this book for the past two years, or ever since Eric allowed me to read two chapters pertaining to the Dahlgren Raid on Richmond from the manuscript he was working on. Eric was the one who finally broke my resistance in believing the Dahlgren papers were forgeries and in convincing me of their authenticity.



I’ve finished one and am just about halfway through the other, but have a recommendation for two books which bookend very well together. Both are highly recommended and should be included on future purchase lists if you haven’t read them yet: “The Hard Hand of War, Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians 1861-1865,” written by Mark Grimsley in 1995, and Bruce Tap’s 1998 book “Over Lincoln’s Shoulder: The Committee on the Conduct of the War.”

Grimsley presents a treatise on the evolution of Union political and military policy in waging war on the South, a policy that began with “Conciliation,” i.e. a concerted effort by the Union to protect the rights and property of Southerners, the abandonment of conciliation through selected destruction and confiscation of property, to a final policy of hard war, in which war was brought directly to the front doors of civilians. It’s a fascinating and well written book and while Grimsley doesn't condone actions from the likes of William T. Sherman and David Hunter, he provides insight into the hows and whys of their destruction. According to Grimsley, in spite of that destruction, the Union army showed considerable restraint and he argues that things could have been a lot worse for the South without that restraint.



Tap examines one of the most influential Congressional committees to have existed during the war. Begun as a seven member committee to investigate the fiascos at First Bull Run, Ball’s Bluff, and John Fremont’s dismissal, the political agenda and the war aims of Radical Republicans, who dominated the committee, quickly came to the fore. Although Tap points out the committee technically wielded little power, this “Star Chamber” was feared by generals and politicial opponents alike. They were, as a committee majority, in the early vanguard for advocating a hard war policy against the South and in demanding that the abolishment of slavery be the primary objective of the war. Like most Radical Republicans, the four members of the committee who sat in that political camp, viewed Lincoln as weak and incompetent, West Point graduates as wholly sympathetic to the Confederacy, and just about anyone not of their mindset as harboring treachery and traitorous thoughts. This book is well worth your time.



I was at the National Archives on Friday and ran into an old acquaintance, Roger D. Hunt. I met Roger a few years back when I was pulling pension files on veterans of the 18th Massachusetts and, seeing him there night after night, became curious about the research he was doing. He’s the author of four books, including Brevet Brigadier Generals in Blue, and has published three volumes of his series on “Colonels in Blue.” Thus far he’s covered Colonels from the New England States (2001), New York (2003) and the Mid-Atlantic States (2007), including Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, and Washington, DC. He’s currently researching a volume on Colonels with Ohio regiments. These are remarkable books as they contain CDVs, a large number from his personal collection, and biographies on every man who achieved that particular rank that you can read and flip through at leisure over and over again without tiring of the content.

Most remarkable to me is Roger’s memory. If you give him a name he can probably provide information off the top of his head. He did this with my third great-grandfather Stephen Bucklin, citing the fact that Bucklin served as a Captain with the 1st Rhode Island Infantry and was later a Lt. Colonel with the 3rd Rhode Island Heavy Artillery. He earned additional brownie points by telling me he had visited the grave of Colonel Joseph Hayes of the 18th Massachusetts in South Berwick, Maine. But what really made me drop my jaw occurred on Friday. I was there to review a pension file for a Captain Dennis B. Dailey. There will be more on the Dailey story in another post, but I had mistakenly written the last name as Bailey on my call slip. I was telling him the story, when he looked at my paper and asked me if I didn’t mean Dennis B. Dailey rather than Bailey. He then proceeded to tell me exactly what I already knew, that Dailey had been promoted to the rank of Major by war’s end and had lived in Council Bluffs, Iowa after the war. I know a lot of people can pull facts about battles or generals or particular regiments, but I’ve never met anyone with Roger’s memory. He floored me even further when he added that he had visited Dailey’s grave and then with a little smile said “I get around.”








And finally the last author, who is none other than Mr. Randy Johnson, authored what may have been the last time a pitcher will ever achieve 300 wins in Major League Baseball. I had the good fortune to be there Thursday, June 4th at Nationals Ball Park. Johnson pitched six innings of two hit baseball, giving up one unearned run, before leaving the game. Whether anyone in the stands would witness something that had only been done 23 times before or not came down to one pitch. Bottom of the eighth. Giants 2, Nationals 1. Bases loaded, two out, three balls, two strikes. If Brian Wilson of the Giants threw a ball, or gave up a hit, some fans elsewhere would have the opportunity to see history made. Time literally slowed before Wilson delivered the next pitch to Adam Dunn. Dunn stood there looking at the pitch as it zipped past his knees and popped into catcher Benji Molina’s mitt. There was a seemingly half-hour delay before the ump finally raised his right hand signaling strike three. All two thousand of us in the stands erupted, because we knew right then and there that sitting through a steady rain had been worth it. And it was, because the Giants scored three in the top of the 9th and the rest, including the bottom of the inning, was, as they say, on their way to enshrinement at Cooperstown.

A couple of posts ago I mentioned my role as a volunteer with Gettysburg’s “Adopt a Position” program in keeping the site around the 18th Massachusetts’ monument on Sickles Avenue looking presentable. What I didn’t mention was that on April 17th I was one of ten volunteers from the Shepherdstown Battlefield Preservation Association who helped cut a 600 yard trial from the base of a ravine situated on River Road, at Shepherdstown, West Virginia, up a very steep slope, that rose about 50 to 60 feet above the road, and finally settled into level ground.

Our group divided into two, one working its way from the bottom and toward the top, while my group had the easier task, as we essentially worked on level ground, which extended from the top of what amounted to cliffs and wound it’s way back to open farm land. The purpose in clearing a path was to allow graduate history students from the University of West Virginia to post markers for a planned podcast, detailing the battle at various stops, that will be in place by the beginning of June. The SBPA has been very fortunate in obtaining permission from various landowners allowing access to that portion of the Shepherdstown battlefield.

Even though I had visited the site a number of times, I had never been on top of the cliffs and thus never had the opportunity to see where the First Brigade of the First Division of the Fifth Corps had climbed those same cliffs on September 20, 1862 and formed in line of battle on the farmland above. I had ventured onto the farmland from another direction in the past, although I have to admit I had done so by ignoring “No Trespassing” signs. I was told when we reached the very end of path we had cleared, that this was the area where the 118th Pennsylvania had braced itself before being routed by A.P. Hill’s brigades. “My dead guys,” the 18th Massachusetts, were further to the right, on what is, again, private property, and currently not accessible. It was humbling to be there, knowing that very few of the general public has had that opportunity over the past 146 years.

When we had completed that work, we then moved back down the ravine. When I mentioned steep, I wasn’t kidding and I couldn’t imagine a hurried, every man for themselves, lemming-like scramble to the road below. The steepness explained why men, particularly those of the 118th Pennsylvania, the last Union regiment to withdraw, lost their footing and plunged into trees or even the road below in their attempt to escape the hail of bullets raining down on them from Confederates muskets at the top of the cliffs.

Our group then moved across the road and worked to cut a 50-yard path along the Potomac, which led to the ruins of an old Cement Mill, where members of the 118th tried to take refuge and were subjected to errant fire by Union artillerists from across the river. A.P. Hill, himself, described the shelling as the most devastating he had encountered to that point in the war.

Note to self: someday I’ll find my pictures of Shepherdstown. Stupid computer. Stupid digital photography. Stupid me for forgetting which drive I have them stored on.

Keeping my spirit of volunteerism alive, this past Saturday I answered the call to help in a cleanup at Ft. Stevens in Washington. Ft. Stevens, as a quick refresher, is where Abraham Lincoln came under fire from Confederate sharpshooters during Jubal Early’s raid. Although legend has it that Lt. Oliver Wendall Holmes shouted “Get down you old fool,” according to Park Ranger Ron Harvey, there were at least nine others who also warned Lincoln. Holmes is the only one who made it into the history books, though.

This was light work in comparison to Shepherdstown. Our ten member group fanned out picking up paper, some broken glass, flattened soda cans, and twigs. I myself found a child’s shoe, while Ron deposited an abandoned pair of pants into his trash bag. We didn’t find evidence of the needles, syringes, or crack pipes that we had been warned to expect. We also made quick work of clearing debris, mostly grass clippings, from the concrete gun emplacements.

Fort Stevens is the only surviving remnant of forts and battery emplacements that once ringed Washington. Forts Reno, Du Russey, Foote, Stanton, Rickets, Dupont, Chaplin, Bunker Hill, Totton, Slocum, Davis, Greble, Mahan,Bayard, Kemble, Corcoran, and Marcy have all disappeared from the Washington landscape, most covered by houses or other buildings, while a few, which have been preserved as open urban spaces, bear no testimonial to their past aside from their names.

Fort Stevens is in little or no danger of being lost. To the contrary there is money being funneled to restore the fort closer to its original condition. The last restoration, completed in 1937 by a Work’s Progress Administration work crew, features cement retaining walls, shaped like logs, on two sides to simulate the fort’s interior walls. That same crew also rebuilt the magazine house by mounding ten feet of dirt and propping a door against the dirt to suggest the entrance. The current plan is to replace all the cement with wood.

The 145th anniversary of the battle will be commemorated on July 11th with re-enactors sweating like pigs in their wool uniforms under what historically promises to be a scorching sun. Hopefully the Fort will still look as good as when we left it on Saturday.

On Fame’s eternal camping-ground
Their silents tents are spread,
And Glory guards, with solemn round,
The bivouac of the dead.

Theodore O’Hara



Andersonville National Cemetery






Antietam National Cemetery





Arlington National Cemetery









Balls Bluff National Cemetery






Battleground National Cemetery





Cold Harbor National Cemetery




Gettysburg National Cemetery







Glendale National Cemetery




Loudon Park National Cemetery




Melrose Cemetery, Brockton, MA




Richmond National Cemetery






Grace Episcopal Church, Silver Spring, MD



To the Memory of
Seventeen
Unknown
Confederate Dead
Who Fell In Front of
Washington, D.C.

July 12, 1864

By Their
Comrades

The following is from C-Span’s Book TV interview with James McPherson, which was taped at his very modest split level home in Princeton, New Jersey and originally aired in October 2008, shortly after publication of “Tried By War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander-in-Chief.” I happened to catch a rebroadcast while at a Lexington, Virginia motel in March.

When writing McPherson tends to be “a morning person.” He organizes notes on 5 x 8 cards, putting the date in the upper left hand corner with a descriptive heading and “tries to be careful in putting a quotation in quotation marks.” He “arranges notes by category” and admits to being “old fashioned. I’m not a computer person.” He does the first draft in long hand. “I’ve always done it that way. It feels more comfortable.” How long he works depends, but he may write for six to eight hours at a sitting. It’s “typical” for him to work through the morning and into the afternoon. If he doesn’t have information on hand he can find it at the Princeton University library. “I’ve never gotten accustomed to the Internet”… “No, no Google in “Tried by War.””

After completing ten chapters in long hand, he then goes through the manuscript carefully, making notes on the page in long hand, before starting a typewritten second draft. He’s “discovered the basic infrastructure of the first draft remains pretty intact." He sends a third draft to the publisher or editor, who review and make suggestions to add material. He receives good editorial help and suggestions from colleagues.

McPherson does virtually all his typing on an “old Olympian typewriter,” a machine he bought second hand in 1980. He’ll sometimes use a computer for shorter essays, but “likes the rhythm of things using a typewriter.

“The beginning of a book is the most important and what draws the reader in. It’s also the most difficult to write.” Sometimes he “may come up with the beginning while walking to the store. Sometimes I’ll start a sentence not knowing how it’s going to end. Writing begets more writing.”

McPherson selects photos for his books by working with the editor, a process that starts when the book is submitted to the publisher. He personally chose the dust jacket photo of Lincoln with McClellan and his staff after the battle of Antietam for “Tried by War.” Lincoln, sitting in a chair with glasses while Tad is looking on is his favorite picture of the 16th President. Commenting on Lincoln, McPherson noted, “Lincoln loved gadgets and tools,” and cited a book by Robert Bruce and Benjamin Thomas aptly named “Lincoln and the Tools of War.” “It’s sort of an off the beat book,” in which the Chief Executive sometimes “tried to be his own ordnance officer,” but one that he found “useful” in his own writing.

He prefers to have footnotes at the bottom of the page, but conceded “publishers have the final say.” His wife is his only research assistant and helped greatly in combing through the thousands of letters and hundreds of diaries that were read during the research on “For Cause and Comrades.” He did use Princeton students as assistants much earlier in his career, but over the past couple of decades has worked by himself. “Sometimes secondary sources can be valuable.” Some that he’s been using for years include historian Alan Nevins. Still McPherson tries to work almost exclusively from primary sources. “It’s amazing how much you can find out by going after sources others don’t think of.” He cited Harold Holzer’s 2008 book, “Lincoln-President-Elect,” as an example. Holzer based much of his work on obscure newspapers from the towns that Lincoln’s train passed through on his trip from Springfield to Washington. Michael Burlingame’s two volume “Abraham Lincoln: A Life,” was another recent work where an author dug up new material on a man who has been the subject of an estimated 50,000 books, essays, and magazine articles. From a personal perspective, McPherson allowed that “Tried by War” “doesn’t have so much new information as new ways of conceptualizing.”

McPherson has more Civil War related titles in his home library than twenty, perhaps even a hundred, Barnes and Nobles stores. His oldest book is Francis Carpenter’s 1866 “Six Months in the White House.” The book is drawn from diaries Carpenter kept while living at the White House during a period he was commissioned to paint a portrait of Lincoln. He has books on foreign policy, medicine, women, “a whole lot of books on the Confederacy and Jefferson Davis, three to four books on Andersonville, Regimental histories and the Army of the Potomac, guerilla warfare, the Committee on the Conduct of the War."

He paused in the interview to comment on the Committee, stating “It took on all sorts of powers for itself,” including calling generals on the carpet. “Lincoln used it to put pressure on his generals.” The Committee was “strongly anti-slavery and got Congress involved in managing the War. Lincoln was able to manipulate Committee members in some way, much as he manipulated his cabinet to get them to go the way he wanted to go.”

There are “lots of biographies of Grant, almost a whole shelf on Sherman, the Confederacy, and almost a whole shelf on Lee.” He has works on campaigns and battle histories “that start in the library and continue on shelves in guest bedrooms.”

He had some practical advice for first time writers. “A book is like an iceberg. You only see one-seventh on the surface. The same is true of writing. You can’t crowd all your research into a book. You have to figure out what’s important. It’s up to you the author to write it out into a story and tell the tale you want to tell.”

The second speaker at the Surratt Society’s conference, “The Lincoln Assassination, All Things Considered” was Kenneth J. Zanca, a Professor of Religious Studies at Marymount College in Palos Verdes, California. His topic “The Catholics and Mary Surratt.” Among the many conspiracy theories that have been floated about over the past one hundred and forty-four years, and one still very much alive today, suggests Catholics, manipulated by their Vatican puppet masters, plotted and carried out Lincoln’s murder.

After a brief self-introduction, Zanca stated, “the context of Mary Surratt’s life was more complex because of her religious beliefs.” Most mainstream religions during her lifetime supported slavery, capitalism, and the repression of women. In contrast the “conscience of abolitionism grew from women.”

Most literature begins with the fact that Mary Surratt lived anonymously until the last three months of her life, when John Wilkes Booth made his entrance into her world. Zanca still has questions about her guilt and has studied her as a Catholic woman in mid-nineteenth century history.

Maryland, originally founded as a haven for English Catholics, was home to some of the wealthiest and most powerful men in America, men who bore the name of Brent, Brookes, and Carroll. Charles Carroll was the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence, while two other Carrolls signed the Constitution. The city of Washington itself was largely carved out of land donated by two Maryland Catholics, while the Washington-Baltimore area gave birth to Georgetown, the first Catholic college, and the first order of African-American nuns.

Catholics made up five per cent of the population in 1830. With increased immigration over the next two decades, from 1840 to 1860, that population climbed to 14 per cent, with as many as 80,000 Catholics residing in Maryland alone. From 1830 to 1860 the number of churches nationwide rose from 230 to more than 3,400, ministered to by 2700 priests. Protestants and Catholics both brought a “legacy of hatred and prejudice to America.” An 1844 riot in Philadelphia, for example, was sparked by efforts to force the Protestant Bible to be read during Mass. Irish and German immigrants, viewed as “puppets of the Pope,” gravitated toward the Democratic Party, while Whig and Republican ranks drew in the native born and their “Nativist sentiments.”

During the Civil War more than 200,000 Irish Catholics populated Union and Confederate ranks, while nuns, particularly the Sisters of Mercy, nursed the wounded and dying. Catholic converts such as William T. Sherman, Philip Sheridan, and George Meade were entrusted with significant command roles, while Roger B. Taney and Cardinal John Hughes ruled over the Supreme Court and New York City respectively. Jefferson Davis attended a Catholic School in Kentucky, James Longstreet and his wife both converted to Catholicism, P.T. Beauregard was raised in the faith, Dixie was composed by a Catholic, while James Ryder Randall penned the words to “Maryland, My Maryland.” In spite of this influence and their numbers, “no Catholic held political office above the local level until the 1900’s.”

“How was Mary Surratt typical of Catholics?” The Church taught, “slavery was the result of sin and supported by Holy Scripture.” “Jesus never chastised one slaveholder.” In 1839 Pope Gregory “condemned the international slave trade, but not the ownership of slaves.” Mary’s children received a Catholic education. She was active in parish life and valued the sacraments. In Zanca’s opinion “she was more than a common seasonal Catholic.” Lincoln, for his part, was “not popular with the Catholic community,” due to actions such as suspending the writ of habeas corpus, preventing the flying of Confederate flags and wearing of allied symbols, ordering the arrest of members of the Maryland legislature, and placing Maryland under marshal law.

“What sets Mary apart as a Catholic,” according to Zanca, was the fact she was not born into the faith, but converted when she was 12-years of age. She was not an immigrant, nor Irish or German, “was educated, owned lands, owned slaves, owned a business,” and identified herself as a Southerner.

There is “no record that one can find that she was a rabid secessionist.” She didn’t belong to Pro-Confederate groups or sewing circles. The one activity she can be linked to is running a bizarre for St. Aloysius Church in Washington, to which John Wilkes Booth donated five dollars.

Lincoln’s death sent the nation into a state of shock. Catholic Unionists in the North accepted the Military Commission’s findings, fearful of a Catholic backlash. The fear of a backlash was very real due to the fact that five of the nine named conspirators, including Mary and her son John, Samuel Mudd, David Herold, and Samuel Arnold were all Catholics. Bishop Spaulding put a mussel on priests, and in particular Father Walter, forbidding them from speaking out publicly about Mary’s possible innocence. Wide spread condemnation of the “judicial murder” eventually did emerge among “Pro-Surratt Southerners” and subsequent Catholic sentiment was awash with the belief “Seward, et al had murdered Mary Surratt.” Even the reigning Pope was kept informed of the trial proceedings and execution.

This post is way overdue and one that I started writing shortly after attending the Surratt Society’s March 21st conference. However, to borrow from that age-old adage, better late than never.


Having read Kate Clifford Larson’s “The Assassin’s Accomplice,” a book on Mary Surratt and her role in the Lincoln assassination, I was looking forward to hearing her speak at the Surratt Society’s conference, “The Lincoln Assassination, All Things Considered.” But not for the reasons one might immediately suspect. For beginners, I had found three glaring errors while reading the book. Although I’ve read eight books on the assassination, with two more in the future reading stack, I’m not in the same league as serious students of the assassination. Suffice it to say, though, I know my stuff and the errors literally leapt off the page. In the scheme of things they weren’t major factual errors, but they were disconcerting nonetheless. Reading that Mary Surratt was buried in Baltimore, when she was in fact buried at Mt. Olivet cemetery in Washington, made me wince. I have to admit, walking into the Colony South hotel, where the conference was held, I didn’t envy Kate, because I had a feeling she was walking into the lion’s den and risked getting ripped to shreds by assassination groupies.

So, who should happen to be sitting at the row of tables directly in front of me when I took a seat? Why, none other than Kate Clifford Larson. I told her I had read her book and, before I could say anything more, she volunteered there were errors, saying they’d be corrected in the paperback edition. She had worked with two editors and a research assistant, who was supposed to check facts, but, still, no one caught the errors. I found myself sympathizing with her and laughingly advised her to blame the three aforementioned parties when she got up to speak. In the end, all was forgiven, a task made easier by virtue of the fact that she was, be still my beating heart, a very attractive lady and gracious in consenting to autograph my copy of her book.

After awards were given out, including to the youngest conference attendee and the person who traveled the furthest to attend (Hawaii), Kate was introduced. She began by thanking the Surratt Society for their assistance in allowing her access to their archives and then, again, openly admitted errors appeared in the book. Her audience seemed to appreciate that.

Larson, who earned a PhD in history from the University of New Hampshire and currently teaches at Simmons College in Boston, had never heard the name of Mary Surratt until she was close to completing research for a book on Harriett Tubman. She was fascinated by the story, initially believing Surratt had been victimized, but ultimately came to the conclusion she was guilty of complicity in Lincoln’s murder.

The story, as told in “The Assassin’s Accomplice,” is of “an incredibly fascinating character,” both “head strong” and “defiant,” a woman, who, in many ways, defied convention. Better educated than most women of her station, a convert to Catholicism, she became an astute businesswoman by default due to her husband’s own failings, caused in large part by alcoholism and gambling debts. It was also rumored that she was carrying on an illicit affair with a priest. Whether it was true, or she had simply found a sympathetic ear is open to conjecture, but the priest was transferred from his Oxon Hill, Maryland parish, in large part, based on those rumors.

Possessing a poor business sense and sniffing an opportunity to get out from under a pile of debt led John Surratt to purchase a wayside tavern at a crossroads in what is now known as Clinton, Maryland. Even before his death, this “smart” and “capable” woman, with a natural business acuity, took over the operation of the tavern and assumed the duties of postmaster from her husband, a move that, in Larson’s opinion, “ultimately sent her to the gallows.” There’s little doubt about the reputation of Surratt’s Tavern as a safe house for Confederate mail couriers and spies, nestled as it was in an area of Prince George’s County where residents made no bones about their sympathies toward Richmond.

According to Larson, Mary Surratt “had to have known the plot was afoot. I don’t believe she participated in Booth’s plot because she was in love with him. I just don’t believe that.” What Larson does believe is that Mary was motivated by “ideology.” “As you move closer and closer to the assassination the evidence is overwhelming…” “Although the government had lots of evidence against her…the evidence of her guilt was overwhelming,” Larson admitted though, she was “surprised they hung her.” She finds it equally “interesting that people continue to call the witnesses who testified against Mary liars and argue she’s totally innocent.”

In spite of her belief in Mary’s guilt, Larson has deep-seated sympathy for her. “Newspapers painted a very ugly picture of her.” The stories that ran in the daily papers were “very cruel,” but spoke to the anger of both the papers and northerners. Neither “vilified the conspirators the way they did Mary.” Larson speculates that “Mary didn’t help herself by wearing a heavy veil over her face during the trial.” During interrogations she presented as “defiant,” and sought to “protect her son,” and in a sense “overplayed her hand.” Her defiance, demeanor in the courtroom, and “the most incompetent legal representation in history,” all contributed to a finding of guilt. Larson admitted that she was “stunned” at the number of times witness were recalled by defense attorneys “to repeat damning against Mary.” Nine priests, most of who did not know her, were called to the stand. There was little in their testimony, like most witnesses called on her behalf, that served her case.

What Larson wanted her audience to take away most from her book on Mary Surratt was “this is a very strong woman in a man’s world. She never stood in the background.”