A Union officers’ thoughts on the South

 

So many times, we want to see the War as a conflict pitting a unified North against a unified South. Nothing could be further from the truth. In a previous post, we discussed the way in which Northern famers produced foodstuffs that were sold to brokers, transported through Northern ports, then loaded onto ships that made their way to the Bahamas, and were then sold to Southerners and transported into Southern ports on blockade runners. You can check out the post here.

John Pelham (Digital Archives Alabama)

Recently, while reading Sarah Kay Bierle’s new Emerging Civil War biography on John Pelham, I came across another example of the blurring  of those lines between what we think we know and the reality of this situation. A native of Alabama, Pelham was trying to finish his senior (fifth) year at West Point when the war erupted at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Pelham promptly submitted his resignation and returned to Alabama.

A host of Pelham’s fellow West Point cadets became common names in Civil War historiography. They include Wesley Merritt, Horace Porter, Stephen D. Ramseur, Joseph Wheeler, George A. Custer, and James Dearing.   One of Pelham’s classmates was future Union artillery commander and Medal of Honor winner Henry DuPont. From Delaware, DuPont provides a differing perspective on both the struggles that Southern cadets endured and the thoughts of some of those who stayed with the Union.

You do not understand the position that Rosser and Pelham are in. They are not in the service of the Southern confederacy now, as they have not accepted the appointments; in fact, they know nothing more about it that you or I do, only having seen them in the paper. Take Pelham, for instance, and a man of nicer and more honorable feelings never lived. Some months ago the Governor of his state wrote to him offering him a high rank in the state forces if he would resign and come home. He would have nothing to do with it & did not even answer the letter and had not applied for any position in the confederate troops. But, like many others, they have appointed him a first lieutenant, that is, have published in the newspapers his appointment, there having been no application made for the place. He does not intend to serve in the [United States] army but will resign as soon as he graduates, which is quite right under the circumstances, as he cannot be expected to fight against his home and friends. He will, though, as an honorable man, never accept a commission from the Confederate States until he has resigned the one he holds in that of the United States. He thought that, painful as it would be to give up his diploma after having undergone so much to obtain it & the many advantages which the possession gives, that, nevertheless, if he receives an official notification that his services were solicited in the defense of his home, that it would be his duty to give up his own inclinations & interest and tender his resignation & go home and accept the position offered to him, and was very glad that they did not send him any official information consequently. (24-25)

After commanding a battery at First Manassas, Pelham became JEB Stuart’s Chief of Artillery. It was Pelham who flanked the advancing Federal infantry at Fredericksburg in December 1862. At the battle of Kelly’s Ford on March 17, 1862, Pelham was struck in the head by shell fragments. He died at Culpeper Courthouse the following morning. Pelham was posthumously promoted to lieutenant colonel and is buried in Jacksonville, Alabama.