Civil War Manuscripts

CIVIL WAR MANUSCRIPTS CIVIL WAR MANUSCRIPTS MANUSCRIPT READING ROW '•'" -"•••-' -'- J+l. MANUSCRIPT READING ROOM CIVIL WAR MANUSCRIPTS A Guide to Collections in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress Compiled by John R. Sellers LIBRARY OF CONGRESS WASHINGTON 1986 Cover: Ulysses S. Grant Title page: Benjamin F. Butler, Montgomery C. Meigs, Joseph Hooker, and David D. Porter Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Library of Congress. Manuscript Division. Civil War manuscripts. Includes index. Supt. of Docs, no.: LC 42:C49 1. United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865— Manuscripts—Catalogs. 2. United States—History— Civil War, 1861-1865—Sources—Bibliography—Catalogs. 3. Library of Congress. Manuscript Division—Catalogs. I. Sellers, John R. II. Title. Z1242.L48 1986 [E468] 016.9737 81-607105 ISBN 0-8444-0381-4 The portraits in this guide were reproduced from a photograph album in the James Wadsworth family papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. The album contains nearly 200 original photographs (numbered sequentially at the top), most of which were autographed by their subjects. The photographs were collected by John Hay, an author and statesman who was Lin- coln's private secretary from 1860 to 1865. For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402. PREFACE To Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War was essentially a people's contest over the maintenance of a government dedi- cated to the elevation of man and the right of every citizen to an unfettered start in the race of life. President Lincoln believed that most Americans understood this, for he liked to boast that while large numbers of Army and Navy officers had resigned their commissions to take up arms against the government, not one common soldier or sailor was known to have deserted his post to fight for the Confederacy. Unfortunately, secession- ist leaders also believed that their cause was just, if not God ordained. Confederate apologists argued that in seceding from the Union the Southern States had only exercised their consti- tutional right to withdraw from a voluntary combination of states after the authorized government of those states demonstrated it was bent on a course destined to disrupt the South's established institutions. Any attempt to coerce the newly inde- pendent states back into the Union was both an act of aggres- sion and a violation of individual liberty. This ideological impasse resulted in the bloodiest war ever fought by the Ameri- can people. Nowhere is the story of the Civil War better told than in the papers and records of the participants held by the Manu- script Division of the Library of Congress. But even the most talented researcher must have access to a specially prepared subject guide to survey effectively the Civil War manuscript holdings of a repository that contains over 40,000,000 original items in 10,000 separate collections. Civil War Manuscripts evolved from a checklist prepared between 1965 and 1967 by Lloyd A. Dunlap, a specialist in American history in the Manuscript Division. After Mr. Dun- lap's death in 1968, various individuals, including Gayle Thornbrough, Margherita E. Pryor, Frank J. Tusa, and Oliver H. Orr, expanded the checklist. Continuing public interest in the Civil War and the consequent demand for information about the Library's manuscript holdings suggested the production of a more comprehensive, annotated Civil War guide, using as a foundation the Dunlap manuscript, which was compiled largely from catalogs, finding aids, and other administrative tools. Eventually, this task was placed in the hands of John R. Sellers, an expert in 18th- and 19th-century American military history who personally examined each collection, with the following results. It is hoped that with its expanded format the guide will satisfy the needs of present and future generations of Civil War scholars and contribute to a better understanding of the single most important challenge to our national form of government. James H. Hutson Chief, Manuscript Division vi INTRODUCTION On the morning of April 20, 1861, a large hydrogen-filled balloon drifted serenely over the South Carolina countryside, the tranquillity of its noiseless flight belying the boisterous calls to arms then echoing throughout the Palmetto State. In the gondola the pioneer aeronaut, Prof. Thaddeus S. C. Lowe, looking strangely out of place in a long Prince Albert coat and black silk top hat, was listening anxiously to trailing sounds of gunfire, slightly muffled by the sea of green below, as he searched for a place to land. Professor Lowe had been in free flight from Cincinnati, Ohio, since 3:30 a.m., in an attempt to test a theory that he could cross the Atlantic Ocean in a gas balloon by entering the steady eastward flow of air in the mid- dle atmosphere. To prove that he actually had traveled in the jet stream, Lowe had made his ascent while the ground wind blew toward the west, and true to expectations, at an altitude of about 7,000 feet, he was wafted eastward on currents of air that followed the undulations of the land like an invisible high- way in the sky. Professor Lowe's flight was supposed to have ended some- where along the New Jersey coast; unfortunately, when his rud- derless craft cascaded down the eastern slope of the Appala- chian Mountains, it was caught in a deep and fast-moving southerly flow of air and set adrift several hours later over South Carolina. Lacking enough buoyancy to sail back over the mountains and unprepared for an ocean crossing, Lowe was forced to the ground, ironically, in Union County, S.C., near the town of Unionville. The scenes that followed are wor- thy of a tale by Charles Dickens or Samuel Clemens, for it taxed the imagination of local officials and dignitaries to con- vince the thousands of suspicious secessionists who poured into the county seat to witness a Yankee hanging that the young scientist was not a spy or saboteur. The whole experience so exasperated Lowe that within a few weeks of his return to the free states he was again sailing over the southern landscape, this time as the chief aeronaut of the Army of the Potomac. The military career of Professor Lowe, the manufacture and use of aerial reconnaissance balloons, and the organization and function of the U.S. Aeronautic Corps, which was first vii established as a branch of the Army's Department of Topo- graphical Engineers, are all possible subjects of Civil War research in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astro- nautics collection in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. Interesting as such studies may seem, however, they constitute only a fraction of the research opportunities on the Civil War in 1,064 separately identifiable collections in the Manuscript Division's holdings. For example, the collections provide an abundance of information on the basic motivations and political attitudes of early volunteer soldiers on both sides of the war, Union and Confederate military and political organization and reorganizations, war finance, inflation, and diplomacy. Civil War scholars can also study the organization and service of philanthropic societies such as the United States Christian Commission, the United States Sanitary Commission, and the National Freedmen's Relief Association; follow hun- dreds of soldiers to their respective enlistment centers, training camps, bivouacs, battlefields, and graves; examine the per- formance and service records of companies, regiments, brigades, and divisions; trace the changing attitudes of Union soldiers toward noncombatants and "contrabands" in the South; assess the ability and contributions of individual political and military leaders; investigate the relationship between Union and Confederate soldiers both as prisoners of war and during their occasional peaceful encounters in the field; cringe at 19th- century medical practices; inquire into the role of women in the war; and refight a seemingly endless array of battles and skirmishes. Also represented in the collections are the often baleful effects of Federal, State, and local bounty systems. Sometimes devoted family men such as Corp. John C. Arnold sought to avoid financial ruin by obtaining a bounty for joining the U.S. Army. Corporal Arnold, a laborer from Snyder County, Pa., enlisted in the 49th Pennsylvania Regiment for the support of his wife Mary and their three children. Arnold demonstrated his love for his family in regular letters of encouragement and instruction, which he occasionally closed with a careful draw- ing of his and Mary's joined hands. But Arnold's dreams of a better future ended at the Battle of Sayler's Creek, the last major engagement of the war. Less conspicuous in the competi- tion for enlistment bounties were the bounty agents who pock- eted thousands of dollars intended for soldiers, presumably for worthwhile services, and enterprising clerks like Orra Bailey, who was able to forward a considerable amount of money home to his wife in Hartford, Conn., through his association with the office of the provost marshal and the Board of Enrollment in the District of Columbia. viii Many documents in the collections of the Manuscript Divi- sion highlight the early enthusiasm for war, North and South. Both military and civilian observers commented on the flood of volunteers, the growth of enlistment centers and musters, and the establishment of new training camps. Some observers also noted, albeit shamefacedly, the cooling effect on this war fever of casualty reports and the sight of sick and wounded soldiers. In addition, scholars can study the adoption of and reaction to conscription and perhaps uncover fresh examples of the extreme methods adopted by a few officers to fill their ranks. One Con- federate officer was not above immediately forcing into line any eligible young man who strolled to the roadside to watch his unit march past.

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