A deserter from the 48th Alabama writes the regiment’s history

No sooner had the last shot of the war ended than there was a push to write a history of the conflict. Edward A. Pollard, a newspaper editor from Richmond, released The Lost Cause in 1866. While often considered a “pro-Confederate” volume, Pollard’s text was very critical of both Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. Another newspaper editor, but in New York, Horace Greeley released volume 1 of The American Conflict in 1864. The second volume was released in 1866. An abolitionist, Greeley incorporated his own partisan views about the cause of the war, much like Pollard did with his work.

John D. Taylor (findagrave)

As time went on, the men who had fought the war began to pen their own accounts. In the north, veterans’ organizations would appoint one of their members as the regimental historian. This person would then gather materials and correspond with other veterans to write a regimental history. The South was less organized. It was not until 1885 that the United Confederate Veterans began to push for histories written by former Confederates. Over the next couple of decades, a trickle of books appeared.

We are not sure what prompted John Dykes Taylor to pick up his pen and draft a history of his regiment, the 48^th Alabama Infantry, before his death in 1888. This short survey was not published until 1902 in the Montgomery Advertiser, and later in pamphlet form by both the Confederate Publishing Company and Morningside. These later editions have a forward by William Stanley Hoole and additional notes by William C. Oates (of the 15^th Alabama fame.)

Taylor was born in Habersham, Georgia, in 1830. As a young man he moved to Jackson, Alabama, to study law and was admitted to the bar in Marshall County, Alabama, in 1857. Taylor must not have found the practice of law to his liking, as in 1860 he was working for a wholesaler in Nashville, Tennessee.[1]

Taylor did not answer the call to enlist until March 1862 when he joined Company E, 48^th Alabama as a private. He was present through all of the muster rolls through October 1864, often listed as the ordnance sergeant for his company. On August 27, 1864, his company commander actually wrote to Richmond, asking that Taylor be officially promoted to ordnance sergeant, a position he had unofficially held. The War Department agreed. It is unclear if Taylor ever received word of the promotion. In November 1864, Taylor was granted a furlough for 30 days. We assume he returned home. And he never returned. The major of the regiment wrote to the secretary of War on February 18, 1865, asking that Taylor be dropped from the rolls of the regiment. “He has not been heard from since [leaving on his furlough], and from all the information that I have, I do not think he intends to return to the Regiment,” Major J.W. Wiggonton wrote.[2]

Taylor survived the war, married twice, and lived in Guntersville, working as a wholesaler and commission merchant, along with being a notary public and justice of the peace. He died on May 9, 1888.[3]

The 48^th Alabama was mustered into service in Auburn, Alabama, in May 1862. It was composed of men from Blount, Calhoun, Cherokee, DeKalb, and Marshall Counties. The regiment was sent east, becoming a part of Brig. Gen. William B. Taliaferro’s brigade, fighting at Cedar Mountain, Second Manassas, Sharpsburg, and Fredericksburg. Later the regiment was transferred to Brig. Gen. Evander M. Law’s Alabama brigade, Hood’s Division, Longstreet’s Corps, and fought at Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain, and then back east, through the Overland Campaign, Petersburg Campaign, and Appomattox Campaign. At Appomattox, the regiment surrendered 122 men.[4]

The detail that Taylor provides is good, just not deep or in great detail. For example, in writing about Chickamauga, he sums up the action of the brigade with: “Throughout the two days of terrific fighting Law’s Alabamians won new laurels and received the compliments of [illegible].[5]

But why Taylor? He ends his narrative toward the end of October 1864, about the time he heads home on his furlough. Never throughout the text does he criticize his commanders; he is not disgruntled by the outcome of the war. What were the underlaying issues that caused him to pen this short account of the regiment he served in? Are there any other cases of a soldier, who deserted toward the end of the war, who later penned a history of his regiment?

The 48^th Alabama does have a modern regimental history, written by Joshua Glenn Price and released in 2017.  

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[1] Taylor, History of the 48^th Alabama Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 6-7.

[2] J.D. Taylor, CMSR, RG109, Roll0437, National Archives.

[3] Taylor, History of the 48^th Alabama Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 8.

[4] Taylor, History of the 48^th Alabama Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 14-20.

[5] Taylor, History of the 48^th Alabama Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 21.

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. 

Tuscaloosa’s Prisoner of War Camp

Henry Wirz, second commander of the
Tuscaloosa Prison Camp. 

   Early during the war, one local Alabama historian wrote, Tuscaloosa became a camp for Federal prisoners. Federal soldiers captured at the battle of First Manassas were sent to Tuscaloosa. The thinking is that Tuscaloosa was so far south, no prisoners would try to escape. At first, warehouses and hotels near the river were used to house the prisoners. Later, a larger camp was constructed elsewhere.[1] Maybe there is some truth in this assessment.

   On October 25, 1861, Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin wrote to Alabama governor A.B. Moore about a facility to house prisoners: “I am told,” Benjamin wrote, “you have at Tuscaloosa not only legislative buildings, but an insane asylum and a military institute, all unoccupied. We are greatly embarrassed by our prisoners as all our accommodations here are required for our sick and wounded. It would be a great public service if you can find a place for some, if not all, of our prisoners. We have over 2,000 here.”[2] Added to this, in November 1861, a group of Union operatives destroyed several bridges through East Tennessee. Those who were caught and “identified as having been engaged in bridge-burning” were tried by a “drum-head court-martial” and, if found guilty, were “executed on the spot by hanging.” Those without proof of involvement but suspected, were arrested and sent to Tuscaloosa, imprisoned “at the depot selected by the Government for prisoners of war.”[3] By November 28, some twenty-two prisoners from Carter County had been arrested, sent to Nashville, and were expected to be sent to Tuscaloosa (it is not clear if all twenty-two were to be sent, or just “5 or 6 known to have been in arms.”)[4]

      An abandoned paper mill that was totally unsuited for the job as a prison was selected. When the prisoners began to arrive, some locals were used as guards.[5] Prisoners, at least those captured in the east, were transported via rail from Petersburg, Wilmington, and Montgomery, then steamboat via the Alabama, Tombigbee, and Black Warrior rivers.[6]

   Were all 2,000 prisoners that Benjamin referenced, plus an untold number from the bridge burners, sent to Tuscaloosa? Probably not, but just how many were sent is unclear. There were enough for new Alabama governor John G. Shorter to write to Benjamin on December 19 that he had “Better send no more prisoners to Tuscaloosa . . . Accommodations exhausted.” Also, the state asylum was not available to be used as a prison.[7]

   In December 1861, Capt. E. A. Powell organized a company of prison guards. Powell stepped aside and the company became known after their new captain, C.D. Freeman (Freeman’s Company of the Alabama Prison Guards. They served at the prison in Tuscaloosa until the fall of 1862 when they were transferred to the prison in Salisbury.[8]

   On March 5, 1862, Braxton Bragg ordered that the Federal prisoners in Memphis were to be forwarded to Tuscaloosa.[9] After the skirmish on the Elk River near Bethel, Tennessee, on May 9, 1862, the prisoners were sent “over the mountain by the turnpike road to Tuscaloosa”[10] As early as December 1861, Capt. Elias Griswold was reported as in command of the prison at Tuscaloosa. Griswold apparently held this command through April 11, 1862, when he was promoted to major and ordered to Richmond, Virginia, to be provost marshal.[11] On learning that Griswold was heading to Richmond, local citizens asked that his assistant, Henry Wirz, be placed in command.[12]

   Some of the Federal prisoners from the battle of Shiloh in April 1862 were sent to the prison at Tuscaloosa.    

The Confederate prison in Tuscaloosa was closed by the fall of 1862 and the prisoners were paroled or sent elsewhere.[13] Tuscaloosa was later reopened in the spring of 1864, housing Federal soldiers captured during the Overland Campaign and Brice’s Cross Roads.[14] Just when the prison finally closed and if it was still using the old paper mill is unclear.

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[1] Hubbs, Tuscaloosa, 40.

[2] Sanders, While in the Hands of the Enemy, 49.

[3] Official Records, Series 1, Vol. 7, 701.

[4] Official Records, Series 1, Vol. 7, 701.

[5] Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons, 64.

[6] Colton, Travels in the Confederate States, 60.

[7] Sanders, While in the Hands of the Enemy, 49.

[8] CSR, Roll 0502, M331, RG109.

[9] Official Records, Series 1, Vol. 10, part 2, 298.

[10] Official Records, Series 1, Vol. 10, part 1, 887.

[11] CSR, M331, RG109.

[12] CSR, M331, RG109.

[13] Sanders, While in the Hands of the Enemy, 122.

[14] Sanders, While in the Hands of the Enemy, 219; Radley, Rebel Watch Dog, 170,

The Fate of the Confederate Governors

   As the war ground to a close, orders went out for the arrest of various political figures, including both sitting governors and former governors.

Alabama had three men who served as governors. Andrew B. Moore served from 1857 to 1861. The Alabama constitution did not allow Moore to run for a third term, although he remained active in the war effort. Moore was replaced by John G. Shorter, who served one term, and was replaced by Thomas H. Watts, then serving as Confederate Attorney General. Watts served as governor until the end of the war. US Secretary of War Edwin Stanton ordered Moore to be arrested on May 16, 1865. He was imprisoned at Fort Pulaski in Savannah until being released in August 1865. Shorter apparently avoided arrest, while Watts was arrested on May 1, 1865, and sent to Macon, but appears to have been released by mid-June 1865.

Arkansas had three men in the governor’s chair during the war years. Henry M. Rector served from November 16, 1860, until he resigned after losing an election on November 4, 1862; President of the Senate Thomas Fletcher served from November 4, 1862, until November 15, 1862, when Harris Flanagin was elected. Flanagin served until May 26, 1865, often as governor in exile. None of these men appear to have served jail or prison time after the end of the war.

Florida had two war-time governors. Madison S. Perry and John Milton. Perry could only serve two-terms, and following his second term, became colonel of the 7^th Florida Infantry. His health was poor, and he returned to Florida, dying at home in March 1865. John Milton, realizing that the war was over, took his own life on April 1, 1865.

Georgia had one war-time governor: Joseph E. Brown. He was in office from November 6, 1857 to June 17, 1865, when he resigned. Brown was arrested on May 23, 1865 and imprisoned at the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C. He was released after meeting with President Andrew Johnson. (The Atlanta Constitution, August 7, 1910)

Kentucky, as a border state, is complicated. George W. Johnson was the first Confederate governor. He was serving as an aide-de-camp on Breckinridge’s staff at Shiloh when his horse was shot from under him. Johnson continued on foot, attaching himself to the 4^th Kentucky Infantry (CS). Johnson was mortally wounded in the afternoon of April 7, 1862, dying two days later. Richard Hawes was selected by the state council as Johnson’s replacement, often making his headquarters with the Army of Tennessee. Hawes returned home after the end of the war.

Louisiana had two Confederate governors: Thomas O. Moore and Henry Watkins Allen. Moore could only serve two terms. He returned to his home near Alexandria, but after Federal troops burned his plantation, he fled to Mexico, and then Cuba. He eventually returned to Louisiana. Hawes also lost his home to fire, and with Moore, also went to Mexico. Allen, who was colonel of the 4^th Louisiana infantry, was wounded at Shiloh and Baton Rouge and died of his unhealed wounds in Mexico City on April 22, 1866.

Mississippi had John Pettus and Charles Clark. At war’s end, Pettus, wanted for questioning regarding the Lincoln assassination, went into hiding. He died of pneumonia in Lonoke County, Arkansas, on January 28, 1867. Clark was arrested and imprisoned at Fort Pulaski and was held until he took and signed the Oath of Allegiance in September 1865.

Missouri’s Claiborne F. Jackson took office on January 3, 1861, and after June 1861, was basically a governor in exile. Jackson was deposed by the General Assembly in July 1861, followed various Confederate military forces around on campaign, and died in Little Rock, Arkansas, December 7, 1862. Lieutenant Governor Thomas C. Reynolds assumed the role of governor, but really did not have a large role in political affairs. At the end of the war, he also went to Mexico, but returned to St. Louis.

North Carolina had three war-time governors. John W. Ellis led the state out of the Union in May 1861, only to die in July 1861. He was replaced by Speaker of the North Carolina Senate Henry T. Clark. Clark did not pursue election and stepped down at the end of the term in September 1862. Zebulon Baird Vance, colonel of the 26^th North Carolina, was elected as governor twice during the war years. At the end of the war, he attempted to surrender and was told to go home. In Statesville, he was arrested on his birthday, May 13, 1865, and imprisoned in Old Capital Prison. Vance was released after receiving his parole on July 6, 1865.

South Carolina had three men in the role of governor: Francis W. Pickens, Milledge L. Bonham, and Andrew G. Magrath. Pickens and Bonham were limited in the number of terms they could serve. Pickens retired to his plantation, and Bonham was reappointed a Confederate general and served in the Army of Tennessee. Magrath was arrested and imprisoned at Fort Pulaski, not being released until December 1865.

Tennessee had only one Confederate governor: Isham G. Harris. After the fall of Nashville, Harris served on the staffs of several Confederate generals, including Joseph E. Johnston, Braxton Bragg, and Albert S. Johnston. The US Congress issued a $5,000 reward for the capture of Harris at the end of the war. He fled to Mexico, then England, only returning to Tennessee once the bounty was removed.

Texas had Sam Houston, who was removed in March 1861; Edward Clark, the lieutenant governor, who lost the election in November 1861; Francis Lubbock who did not run for reelection and stepped aside in November 1863; and Pendleton Murrah.  Houston died in 1863. Clark served as colonel of the 14^th Texas Infantry but fled to Mexico at the end of the war. Lubbock was commissioned lieutenant colonel on the staff of Maj. Gen. John B. Marguder, and then aide-de-camp for Jefferson Davis. Lubbock was captured with Davis in Georgia and imprisoned at Fort Delaware for eight months.

Virginia had two governors. John Letcher and William Smith. Letcher’s arrest order was issued by U.S. Grant, and he was taken into custody on May 20, 1865, and imprisoned at Old Capital Prison. He was released forty-seven days later. Likewise, Smith turned himself in on June 8, 1865, and was paroled.

More information on these governors can be found in Years, editor, The Confederate Governors. For information on biographies on each governor, check out this link.  

Famous Confederate Nurses

Drew Gilpin Faust, in Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in American Civil War, writes that it was “not the Confederacy’s ladies but its African Americans who care for the South’s fallen heroes. In the domain of nursing, as in the domestic world of cooking and washing, many Confederate ladies would prove themselves less able and less effective than their supposed inferiors.”[1] If Faust has any background research that examines the numbers of White verses Black hospital workers, it is seems to have been left out of her end notes. Of course, part of the problem with Mothers of Invention is that it focuses too much on women from slaveholding families, and not the other 99% of the Southern population.

The work of those mostly silent voices of Black hospital workers I cover in a post that you can read here. They were vital members of the staffs of Southern hospitals during the war. But to say that White Southern women were “less able and less effective” is a stretch. There were undoubtedly some African-American women who balked at the sight of the wounded and sick. Their voices are just silent, unrecorded then as they are now. There were many Southern women who did answer the call to serve as nurses and matrons in hospitals, and countless others who took soldiers into their homes to care for them when the hospital system became overwhelmed.

Others have pointed out conflicting evidence regarding Faust’s assumptions. In Susan Barber’s thesis “Sisters of the Capital: White Women in Richmond, Virginia, 1860-1880,” she found “that more upper class women worked as matrons than Faust suggests in Mothers of Invention.”[2] Elise A. Allison in her thesis, “Confederate Matrons: women who served in Virginia Civil War hospitals,” argues that Faust (and others) “focus their analyses on the writings left by a few prominent matrons and draw generalizations about all matrons based on this unrepresentative sample.”[3]

The Hospital Bill, passed into law in September 1862, stated that each hospital could employ two chief matrons, two assistant matrons, and two ward matrons for each ward. The chief matrons “exercise a superintendence over the entire domestic economy of the hospital.” The assistant matrons supervised the “laundry. . . the clothing of the sick, [and] the bedding of the hospital, to see that they are kept clean and neat.” The duties of the two war matrons were “to prepare the beds and bedding of their respective wards, to see that they are kept clean and in order, that the food or diet for the sick is carefully prepared and furnished to them, the medicine administered, and that all patients requiring careful nursing are attended to.”[4]

Ada Bocot was born in South Carolina in 1832. A widow by the time of the war, she volunteered as a nurse and in December 1861, arrived in Charlottesville, Virginia, working in the Monticello Hospital. She continued nursing through 1863 when she returned to her home in South Carolina. Her diary was published in 1994 and offers glimpses of her life while in Charlottesville. Berlin, ed., A Confederate Nurse: The Diary of Ada W. Bacot, 1860-1863.

Emily Mason was born in Kentucky, but by the time of the war was living in Virginia. Mason helped establish the hospital at White Sulphur Springs, and later worked at hospitals in Charlottesville, Lynchburg, and Richmond. Her war-time accounts were also published in The Atlantic Monthly: “Memories of a Hospital Matron,” 90, No.1039 (September 1902).  

Kate Cumming, born in Scotland, came to the United States with her family, settling in Mobile, Alabama. She volunteered as a nurse in Corinth, Mississippi, in April 1862, and went on to serve in several different hospitals throughout the war, including those in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Her diary was published in 1866: A Journal of Hospital Life in the Confederate Army of Tennessee.

Juliet Opie Hopkins was born in present-day West Virginia, and after her marriage, relocated to Mobile, Alabama. During the war, she helped establish Alabama hospitals in Richmond, Virginia, and earned the title “Florence Nightingale of the South.” She was wounded twice in the left hip while supervising the removal of wounded soldiers during the battle of Seven Pines in May 1862. Hopkins died in 1890 and was buried with military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.[5]

Sallie Chapman Gordon Law was born in Wilkes County, North Carolina, and later moved to Georgia, and then to Tennessee. In April 1861, she helped organize a hospital in a home in Memphis. Later, Law worked at Overton Hospital in Memphis, and then Law Hospital (named for her) in La Grange, Georgia. In 1892, her story was published in Reminiscences of the War of the Sixties between the North and South.  

Ella King Newsom was born in Mississippi and, after marrying, moved to Tennessee. She worked on the Southern Mothers’ Home Hospital and the Overton Hospital, both in Memphis. Newsom also organized or worked in hospitals in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Corinth, Mississippi, the Crutchfield House Hospital in Chattanooga, and in Marietta and Atlanta. The Newsom Hospital, originally organized in Chattanooga, was named for her. Newsom was also called “The Florence Nightingale of the South.”[6]

Phoebe Yates Levy Pember was born to a Jewish family in Charleston, South Carolina. She was widowed and living in Georgia when, in December 1862, she began working at Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond, Virginia. Pember was chief matron of one of the five divisions at Chimborazo, the largest military hospital in the world, and left some remarkable and often quoted details of her experience in A Southern Woman’s Story: Life in Confederate Richmond, published in 1879.

Kate Mason Rowland was born in Detroit, Michigan, and moved to Richmond, Virginia, prior to the war. During the war, she worked in several hospitals and was matron at the Marine or Naval Hospital at the end of the war. Her diary has never been published.

Sally Tompkins, from Matthews County, Virginia, ran the Robertson Hospital in Richmond during the war. When the Confederate government began consolidating small hospitals in the summer of 1861, the Robertson Hospital, due to its efficiency, remained open. To circumnavigate the regulation requiring hospital administrators to be commissioned, Jefferson Davis appointed Tompkins a captain of cavalry. Her hospital had the lowest death rate of any hospital in Richmond, although many serious cases were sent there. Tompkins’s hospital remained open until June 1865.[7]

Joanna Fox Waddill was born in Pennsylvania and moved to Mississippi when young. When the war came, she served in hospitals in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee, eventually becoming a matron in a hospital in Lauderdale, Mississippi.

Augusta Jane Evens Wilson was born in Columbus, Georgia, and lived in Russell County, Alabama, and San Antonio, Texas, prior to the war. In 1860, she was living in Mobile, Alabama. She worked at a hospital in Mobile during the war and corresponded with Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard.[8]

These are just a few of the many women who were clearly able and effective in their roles as caregivers for the injured and sick, regardless of their stations in Southern society.  

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[1] Faust, in Mothers of Invention, 112.

[2] Barber, “Sisters of the Capital,” 103-104.

[3] Allison, “Confederate Matrons,” 7.

[4] Official Records, Series IV, Vol. II, 199.

[5] Schroeder-Lein, Civil War Medicine, 138-39.

[6] Schroeder-Lein, Civil War Medicine, 229-30.

[7] Schroeder-Lein, Civil War Medicine, 303-04.

[8] http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1072

Et Tu Dahlgren?: The Plot against Jefferson Davis

   Plots to kill political leaders are nothing new. Julius Caesar, Caligula, Pope John VIII, William II, Henry VI and many others have all fallen victim to their own people in some form or fashion. Jefferson Davis was no different. John B. Jones, the famous war clerk, wrote on August 16 that Davis rode through the streets of Richmond every day, with not even aides accompanying him. “[I]t is incredible that he should be ignorant of the fact that he has some few deadly enemies in the city.”[1] Mary Chesnut made that same observation on December 10, 1863. Walking with Varina Davis toward the Executive Mansion, they encountered the President riding alone. “Surely that is wrong,” Chesnut wrote. “It must be unsafe for him, when there are so many traitors, not to speak of bribed negroes.”[2]

   In 1887, Davis was interviewed on the matter of attempts on his life. The article, originally appearing in a Baltimore newspaper, appeared nationwide. When asked on the matter, Davis said: “While the Confederate Government was at Montgomery, Ala., in 1861, I received an anonymous letter from Philadelphia, the substance of which was that the Governor of Pennsylvania had released a noted desperado from the Penitentiary upon the condition that he would go to Montgomery and assassinate me, with the promise of a reward of $100,000 if he succeeded. That after release the man stated that he could not probably succeed alone, and gave the name of another convict of character like his own with whose assistance he felt sure of success, and that the second convict was released to accompany the first.” 

   Davis went on to describe other events. “Once he discovered a man watching him behind a brick wall surrounding his residence,” and Davis followed the man. “The man ran and apparently escaped through the barn…” On another occasion, while “riding out to visit the defensive works around Richmond, accompanied by Col. Wm. Preston Johnson, a pistol ball, evidently intended for ‘business,’ passed just between them. This shot came from an apparently vacant house. Subsequent search revealed an armed man under the floor. He was sent to Gen. Lee by Mr. Davis’ orders, with an explanatory note, and the hope he would be ‘put in the front line to stop a ball intended for a better man.’ On another occasion, in the suburbs of Richmond, a shot was fired at the President of the Confederacy from behind a high wall.” While traveling via railroad on another occasion, Davis was approached by a woman who informed the President of an overheard conversation in which a group was planning to place obstructions on the track. A detachment of Confederate troops was “sent who found the obstructions, and some United States soldiers secreted in a barn near the place where the train was expected to be wrecked.” [3]

   The former president made no mention of an attempt to burn the Executive Mansion in Richmond. War Department Clerk John Jones did. He noted that on the night of January 21-22, 1864, someone tried “to burn the President’s mansion. It was discovered that fire had been kindled in the wood-pile in the basement. The smoke led to the discovery, else the family might have been consumed with the house.” Jones blamed the Black population for the fire. He wrote on January 22 that “one of the servants of the War Department” was under arrest for “participating in it.”[4] The Richmond Dispatch also reported on the event. Someone broke into the “President’s storeroom,” stealing various items, and then setting the room on fire.[5]

   One event that Davis made mention of in his 1887 interview, and a quite famous episode of the War, is the Dahlgren Raid in late February 1864. The raid was billed as an effort to liberate Federal prisoners being held in Richmond, and to destroy lines of communications and supplies. There has been much written on this event, and to summarize, the raid was a failure. Found on the body of a dead Federal colonel on the outskirts of the city, Ulric Dahlgren, were papers stating that after the prisoners on Belle Island were freed, they were to “burn the hateful city, and…not allow the Rebel leader, and his traitorous crew to escape.” This, of course, produced an uproar in the Southern press. Many in the Confederate cabinet favored hanging those Federal cavalrymen caught during the raid. A photographic copy of the documents was made and sent by Robert E. Lee to Federal commander George Meade. Lee asked if this was now official Federal policy, and Meade said no. The debate over the authenticity of the papers continues.[6]

   Any time there are covert activities during a war, the truth of these activities remains difficult to obtain. William Cooper writes in his biography of Jefferson Davis, that Davis, in a private letter, “disputed the accuracy of the published account [in the Baltimore newspaper], leaving the question of real threats unanswered.”[7] After 160 years, that is probably the best we can do.

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[1] John, Clerk, 2:16.

[2] Woodward, ed., Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, 503.

[3] St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 10, 1887.

[4] Jones, Clerk, 2:133.

[5] Richmond Dispatch, January 22, 1864.

[6] Furgurson, Ashes of Glory, 253-255.

[7] Cooper, Jefferson Davis, American, 429.

Confederate Hospitals in Alabama

 

Marker for the Confederate Hospital in Greenville, Alabama

   In the past, I have written about Confederate Wayside and General Hospitals (read here), Confederate Hospitals in North Carolina (read here), and Support Staff at Confederate Hospitals (read here). The information about Confederate general and wayside hospitals outside those in Virginia is rather slim.

   Cunningham, in his foundational 1958 book Doctors in Gray: The Confederate Medical Service, lists only four wayside hospitals: Demopolis, Eufaula, Selma, and Talladega. Wayside hospitals were usually located beside railroads and were charged with feeding soldiers, re-dressing their wounds, and providing other services for wounded men in transit. They were usually staffed by women, with a doctor, surgeon, or assistant surgeon in charge.

   Cunningham goes on to list the regular Confederate hospitals in Alabama. Added to this is an article from the Mobile Daily Advertiser, January 9, 22, 1861.  The list of Alabama hospitals includes:

 

Auburn             Texas Hospital (Old Main Hall), Asst. Surgeon L. A. Bryan

                          Langdon Hall, East Alabama Male College

                          Chapel, East Alabama Male College

Greenville         Miller Hospital, Surgeon G. Owen, 170 beds

                          General Hospital, Surgeon R. B. Maury, 150 beds

Mobile              Heustis Hospital, Surgeon J. M. Paine, 90 beds

  Nott Hospital, Surgeon G. A. Nott, 51 beds

                          General Hospital (Ross), Surgeon S. L. Nidelet, 250 beds

                           General Hospital (Moore), Surgeon W. C. Cavanaugh, 123 beds

                           General Hospital (Cantey). Surgeon W. Henderson, 150 beds

                           General Hospital (Le Vert), Surgeon R. H. Redwood, 30 beds

Montgomery       Ladies Hospital, Surgeon T. F. Duncan

                            Madison House, Surgeon C. J. Clark

                            Stonewall Hospital, Surgeon W. M. Cole

                            St. Mary’s Hospital, Surgeon J. H. Watters

                             Concert Hall Hospital, Surgeon W. J. Holt

                             Watts Hospital, Surgeon F. M. Hereford

Notasulga            General Hospital (Camp Watts), Surgeon U. R. Jones

Selma                    General Hospital, Surgeon A. Hart

Shelby Springs     General Hospital (Camp Winn), Surgeon B. H. Thomas

Spring Hill           General Hospital, Surgeon G. Owen

Tuscaloosa          General Hospital (University of Alabama), Surgeon R.N. Anderson

Uniontown         Officer’s Hospital, G. C. Gray

   Are there others? Over time, I hope to flesh each of these places out with descriptions and possibly photographs.