— From a colored lithograph in the Society CAMP DENNISON, 1865 BULLETIN of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio CINCINNATI

July, 1961 CINCINNATI Vol. 19 No. 3

Camp Dennison, 1861 -1865

by STEPHEN Z. STARR

On Sunday, April 14, 1861, Major Robert Anderson and his artillerymen marched out of Fort Sumter with colors flying and drums beating. On the same day, the Cabinet in Washington agreed upon a presidential proclamation to be issued on the morrow. In stately language the proclamation recited that the execution of the laws of the United States had been obstructed in seven seceded states "by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings" wherefore "I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, in virtue of the power in me vested by the Constitution and the laws . . . hereby do call forth the militia of the several States of the Union to the aggregate number of 75,000, in order to suppress said combinations and to cause the laws to be duly executed." By a law of 1795 the president had authority to call state militia into the federal service for only three months, and it was for this brief period that the 75,000 militia were called out. There were not many in the North who doubted that ninety days would be ample to put down the rebellion. 163 The Bulletin In the Northern states, the President's proclamation brought to an abrupt end the long period of depression and uncertainty which began with the secession of South Carolina on December 20, 1860. It was now made plain to all that the Union was to be vindicated and the authority of the national government reas- serted. The Chicago Tribune spoke for the entire North when it declared: 'The gates of Janus are open; the storm is upon us. Let the cry be, The Sword of the Lord and of Gideon!"1 The presidential proclamation was to be followed by a War Department directive to the governors of the states which had not seceded, establishing the quota of each such state. But Governor William Dennison of Ohio, a native of Cincinnati,2 did not wait for orders from the War Department. He wired the President direct: "What portion of the 75,000 militia ... do you give Ohio? We will furnish the largest number you will re- ceive. . . ."3 Governor Beriah Magoffin replied to the call for Kentucky's quota of militiamen with the defiant message: "I say emphatically Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern States." When Dennison learned of Magoffin's response, he sent off another telegram to Washington: "If Kentucky will not fill her quota, Ohio will f 11 it for her."4 This was not an idle boast. While Fort Sumter was still under attack, and before it was known what the reaction of the national government would be, twenty militia companies from all parts of Ohio offered themselves to the Governor for immediate service. Within days of the announcement that Ohio's quota was 13,000 men, more than 30,000 were enrolled.5 In every corner of the state, companies and regiments were being formed. By April 18, the First and Second Regiments of Ohio Volunteer Infantry had been organized from the first twenty militia companies to be called to Columbus, and were about to

Quoted in Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln — The War Years, 4 vols. (New York, 1936-1939), I, 215. 2His father was the owner of the Dennison House, considered to be the best hotel in Cincinnati in the 1830's. 3Kenneth P. Williams, Lincoln Finds a General, 5 vols. (New York, 1949- 1956), I, 61. 4Whitelaw Reid, Ohio in the War: Her Statesmen, Her Generals, and Soldiers, 2 vols. (Cincinnati, 1868), I, 42. 5Charles B. Galbreath, History of Ohio, 5 vols. (Chicago, 1925), I, 595. Ohio's quota was exceeded only by the 17 regiments to t>e furnished by New York and the 16 regiments from Pennsylvania. Camp Dennison, 1861-1865 169 depart for Washington. The Second Regiment contained three companies from Cincinnati: the Rover Guards, Zouave Guards and Lafayette Guards. it was apparent from the very beginning that Ohio had men enough and to spare. But how were these thousands of enlistees to be armed, clothed, fed, housed, organized and trained? This question, with its many ramifications, was to plague the national and the state government during the first eighteen months of the war, and never more so than at the very beginning. The North was totally unprepared for war. After years of profound and appar- ently perpetual peace, the government not only had no materiel beyond the modest needs of its peacetime army of 16,000, but it had neither the skill nor the personnel to mobilize rapidly the already formidable industrial potential of the North.6 Hence everything had to be improvised and much reliance had to be placed upon the ingenuity and energy of the state governors. Governor Dennison did not lack energy, but he was badly hampered by his lack of familiarity with military problems. However, help was at hand. When the crisis came, George Brinton McClellan, one of the ablest of the younger officers in the army at the time of his resignation in 1856, was living in Cincin- nati. He was president of the Eastern Division of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad with the then magnificent salary of $10,000 per annum. We may note incidentally that he and his young wife were charmed with Cincinnati; Mrs. McClellan wrote that they had "met some pleasant people — They are really quite Eastern and quite civilized... ,"7 When the call for 75,000 troops came, McClellan was offered command of the Pennsylvania militia, and he left Cincinnati on April 23 with the intention of accepting Governor Curtin's offer. He stopped in Columbus on his way to Harrisburg to inform Governor Dennison about the condition of affairs in Cincinnati. Dennison offered him command of the Ohio militia with the rank of major-general, and McClellan at once accepted.8 For the harassed governor, overburdened with a thou- sand novel problems, this was a most fortunate appointment;

6 At the start of the war, the total civilian staff of the War Department in Washington consisted of 93 clerks. Cf. Alexander H. Meneely, The War Depart- ment, {861: A Study in Mobilization and Administration (New York, 1928). 7William Starr Myers, General George Brinton McClellan (New York, 1934), 156. 8George B. McClellan, McClellan's Own Story (New York, 1887), 40-41. 170 The Bulletin in McClellan, he acquired professional ability and organizing talent of a high order.

— From a colored lithograph in the Society MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE B. McCLELLAN To call McClellan's task formidable is greatly to understate the case. His job was, quite literally, to create an army out of nothing. The magnitude of his task was made clear to him when, Camp Dennison, 1861-1865 171 on the morning after his appointment, he visited the State Arsenal in the company with newly-appointed Brigadier-General Jacob D. Cox in search of arms and materiel. He found only "a few boxes of smooth-bore muskets which had once been issued to militia companies and had been returned rusted and damaged. No belts, cartridge boxes or other accoutrements were with them. ... In a heap in one corner lay a confused pile of mildewed harness which had once been used for artillery horses, but was now not worth carrying away."9 In the meantime, the drums were beating in every town and village and the thousands of men for whom there were neither arms, equipment nor uniforms were gathering throughout the state. In Cincinnati, the pre-war militia companies, bearing such picturesque names as Lytle Grays, Guthrie Grays and Storer Rifles, lost no time in responding to the presidential call. Many new units were also organized, most notably the Burnet Rifles composed of 33 members of The Literary Club with future Major- General John Pope as Drillmaster and future President Rutherford B. Hayes as moving spirit and one of the volunteers. Before daybreak on April 18, some old and some new companies were marching to camps hastily established on the outskirts of the city and named Camp Colerain, Camp McLean and Camp Harrison. On the same morning, the Rover Guards, Lafayette Guards and Zouave Guards departed for Columbus, after partak- ing of a bounteous breakfast at the Gibson House at the invitation of the patriotic proprietor, Colonel Geoffrey. On the evening of the eventful 17th of April, a mass meeting of German-Americans was held in the Turner Hall on Walnut Street to plan the formation of an exclusively German infantry regiment. The lead in this project was taken by Robert L. McCook, an attorney associated in the practice of law with Judge Johann Bernhard Stallo, a leader of the German community. The hall was filled to overflowing and in short order the plan to form a German regiment was enthusiastically adopted. In less than twenty-four hours, the muster-roll of the regiment had been signed by 500 men in excess of the 1,014 who could be accepted. Three hundred members of the regiment were Turners, and of the 1,035 officers and men who eventually comprised the regiment,

9Robert U. Johnson and Clarence C. Buel (Eds.), Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 4 vols. (New York, 1884-1887), I, 90. 172 The Bulletin all but one were Germans, the sole exception being McCook him- self, who was elected Colonel and who was later to refer to him- self as "only a clerk for a thousand Dutchmen."10 The regiment was designated the 9th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, but to its members and their families and friends, and to the Cincinnati German community, it was known only as ''Die Neuner." The Adjutant and Drillmaster of the regiment was August von Willich.11 A drill area was at once established on the "Orphanage Grounds" at Fourteenth and Elm, where the Music Hall now stands, and there the regiment marched and countermarched, learning the Prussian system of drill, the only system von Willich knew. For the convenience of everyone concerned — with the possible exception of Colonel McCook — German was used as the language of command. Within three days of its formation "Die Neuner" had its first parade, led by the Turner Band, and on April 24 the regiment marched to Camp Harrison, located on the Trotting Park between Spring Grove and Carthage, on the outskirts of Cumminsville. There the men constructed frame shacks to serve as living quarters until tents could be procured, and divided their time and energy between drill and vigorous criticism of the many shortages that beset them, shortages of blankets, cooking utensils, shoes, and even of straw to sleep on. The food was naturally at the head of the long list of complaints and probably with just cause, for the

10Johnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders, I, 97. Robert McCook was a member of the family that became known as the "Fighting McCooks." Major Daniel McCook and his eight sons (of whom Robert was the fourth) and the five sons of Major Daniel's brother, all served in the war. Robert McCook and three of his brothers became brigadier-generals; one brother became a major-general, another a colonel, and two brothers became majors. The Ninth was distinctive in another respect. Contrary to the usual practice of giving enlistees a very cursory physical examination or none at all, every member of the Ninth was examined thoroughly before the muster-in. About 300 men were rejected, but their places were promptly taken by new recruits. nElla Lonn, Foreigners in the Union Army and Navy (Baton Rouge, La., 1951), 189-191; for the formation and early history of the regiment see "Die Neuner" — Eine Schilderung der Kriegsjahre^ des 9ten Regiments Ohio Vol. Infanterie (Cincinnati, 1897). August von Willich was one of the most admirable officers in the Union Army. He left "Die Neuner" in the summer of 1861 to become colonel of an Indiana regiment, and subsequently rose to the rank of major-general. His greatest admirers were the American-born officers who served under him. The son of an East Prussian noble family, von Willich became an officer in the Prussian army, but resigned in 1846 because he could no longer reconcile army service with his liberal convictions. He then earned his living as a carpenter, but had to flee Germany after taking part in the unsuccessful revolu- tion in Baden in 1848. For a time after coming to the United States, he worked as a carpenter in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and later moved to Cincinnati. In 1861, he was living in Evansville, Ind., and editing Der Deutscher Republikaner. Camp Dennison, 1861-1865 173 food was supplied to the men by an enterprising firm of builders who contracted to feed the entire camp for what was thought to be the unconscionable price of sixty cents per day per man. Not- withstanding the high price charged to the State, the men received food that they considered insufficient in quantity and inferior in quality. Nevertheless, with plenty of goodwill and good humor, the regiment made a start in learning the trade of soldiering, a process that was facilitated by the presence in the regiment of a leavening of men who had acquired military experience in the Fatherland.12 The Ninth was not the only Cincinnati regiment to be formed at this time. As might be expected with a war in prospect, the large Irish colony of Cincinnati bestirred itself, and in two days' time an Irish regiment came into being. Commanded by Colonel William H. Lytle, it was known to the War Department as the 10th Ohio Volunteer Infantry — and to its members as "The Bloody Tinth."13 This regiment joined the Ninth and the other units already at Camp Harrison. Of course, all the towns and counties around Cincinnati were also recruiting companies and regiments, and it was the same story throughout the State. Only sixteen days after the President's proclamation, Adjutant-General Carrington of the Ohio Militia proudly announced that the troops already raised or in the process of organization in the Buckeye State were sufficient in number to fill the quota of 75,000 assigned to the entire country.14 The newly-raised troops were scattered over the length and breadth of the state. Every town of any size, and many a hamlet, had its primitive, improvised "camp" housing one or two regi- ments, or part of a regiment, or no more than a single company in 12Carl Wittke, "The Ninth Ohio Volunteers," Ohio Arckeological and Histori- cal Society Publications (Columbus, O., 1927), XXXV, 408-413. A letter to the editor of the Cincinnati Daily Gazette protested with considerable heat against the payment of sixty cents per man per day for food. That price was claimed to be "higher than first class hotel boarding." Twelve cents per man per day was the price paid by the State to feed the volunteers at Camp Jackson in Columbus. 13It is a great pity that the history of this very interesting regiment was never written. The Tenth is always referred to as an "Irish Regiment," but the fact must be noted that there was a very considerable sprinkling of Korfs, Reidlingers, Muellers and Wedemeyers among the many Coyles, O'Briens, Currans and Donohoes in the regiment. At the same time that the Tenth was being organ- ized, the Italian and French residents of Cincinnati were forming an Italian and a French company, respectively. 14Reid, Ohio in the War, I, 42. Before the end of the war, Ohio had furnished 313,180 men to the Union Armies. Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, 2 vols. (Washington, 1903), II, 285. 174 The Bulletin process of formation. Life in these camps had its pleasant aspects. For example, Camp Harvey in the little town of Lynchburg, in Highland County, housed part of a company just being formed. To raise additional members, this group made regular recruiting trips to the neighboring towns and villages, "where rousing war meetings were held, and sumptuous meals spread before the young soldiers, which generally resulted in getting new recruits."15 Even in 1861, something more than this was needed to form an army; it was obviously of the first importance to bring together all the widely-scattered, small bodies of troops into a few camps for proper organization and training. The word "training" should not be misunderstood. At no time during the war did the Army prescribe any definite pattern or duration of training, and what instruction any given organization received depended almost wholly on the whim and keenness of the commanding officer and the needs of the moment for additional troops.16 Particularly at the beginning of the war, the training of infantry recruits did not usually progress beyond the manual of arms, the loading of rifles "by the numbers," a few elementary evolutions and guard-mount. Even if there had been the time or the desire to train the volunteer regiments to Regular Army standards, the lack of trained drillmasters would have made such a goal impos- sible of attainment. The great majority of volunteer officers made the change from civilian life to uniform at the same time as their men and knew no more of tactics than they did; the officers themselves had to learn at the same time that they endeavored to teach their men. Nevertheless, a modicum of organization and drill was essential, and, from the standpoint of administration also, a few large camps were greatly preferable to the many small ones then in existence. The problem of establishing suitable camps engaged McClellan's attention immediately upon his appointment, pri- marily because conditions in Columbus were becoming intolerable. Companies and regiments were pouring into that small city of 19,000 at the rate of nearly 2,000 men daily. As early as April 23, 15John A. Bering, History of the Forty-Eighth Ohio Vet. Vol. Inf. (Hillsboro, O., 1880), 3. 16Fred A. Shannon, The Organization and Administration of the Union Army, 1861-1865, 2 vols. (Cleveland, 1928), I, 152. There were many regiments which received no training whatever; at several critical periods in the course of the war, newly-raised regiments were rushed into active service as fast as they could be armed and equipped; they "learned by doing." Camp Dennison, 1861 -1865 175 Camp Jackson was so badly overcrowded that hundreds of soldiers had to be lodged at the Lunatic Asylum and in the State House; the contractors who had undertaken to feed the men could not expand their operations fast enough to keep pace with the growth of their clientele, and hundreds of men had to take their meals at the local hotels. The rest complained bitterly about the poor quality and the irregularity of their rations. These conditions had to be remedied promptly. McClellan met the situation admirably. He decided to establish a large "transient camp of instruction" in a suitable location on the outskirts of Cincinnati. There he could bring together troops from the many small camps in the central and and southern parts of the state and provide for the overflow from Camp Jackson. At the same time, he would concentrate a relatively large force at a point near enough to Cincinnati to afford protection to the metropolis in the not improbable event that Kentucky joined the Confederacy. On April 24 or 25, Captain (later Major-General) William S. Rosecrans chose a site for the camp on the large, level tract of ground between the Little Miami River and the line of hills to the west immediately below Miami- ville.17 The tract chosen had many advantages. It was large enough to house 12,000 - 15,000 men, with space in addition for drill and parade grounds of ample size, and all of it was level. The Little Miami Railroad ran through the area, providing good com- munications with Cincinnati as well as Columbus. The river fur- nished an ample supply of water, and Cincinnati was near enough for all essential purposes, including a quick march into Kentucky, should that ever become necessary, yet not so near as to create un- due disciplinary problems with the men. On April 26, Manager Clement of the Little Miami Railroad visited the area and asked the landowners to meet with him the next day to set rental prices on their holdings. On the 27th, A. E. Ferguson of the Cincinnati Bar and Colonel Geo. W. Holmes leased the necessary land on be- half of the State of Ohio for ten months at from $12 to $20 per acre.18 There was little, if any, effort made to obtain the land at

17For most of its course along Camp Dennison, the Little Miami River flows from north to south. 18Mary R. Sloan, History of Camp Dennison, 1796-1956 (Cincinnati, 1956), 29-30. During the first few months of its existence, Camp Dennison was under the jurisdiction of the State of Ohio. It was later taken over by the United States Government. 176 The Bulletin minimum rentals, and in a few months there was to be much ad- verse comment about the high prices paid. However disadvanta- geous the bargain may have been, the land was acquired and McClellan promptly named the new camp "Camp Dennison" in a well-deserved tribute to the Governor. On April 29, Brigadier-General Jacob Cox was ordered to leave Camp Jackson the next day to "activate" the new camp. April 30 was a fair spring day. At noon, the train from Columbus stopped in the midst of spacious fields planted with wheat and corn, and deposited the 1,500 men General Cox brought with him. They were met by Captain Rosecrans, who had arrived on the site with a trainload of lumber from Cincinnati. Aided by a small detail of soldiers, Rosecrans proceeded to lay out the lines of the encamp- ment with his compass and chain. The barracks were to be placed along the southern edge of the camp area, the parade and drill grounds being located along the railroad. While Rosecrans ran his lines, Cox's men unloaded the lumber and carried the rough pine boards to the barracks area. After an afternoon of vigorous but none too skilful work with saw and hammer, there was shelter of sorts by nightfall for 1,500 men. The "bar- racks" were unfloored frame shanties, about 12 feet by 18 feet, large enough to house a dozen men. Each company had its own street, 25 feet wide, running east and west, with three or four shanties on each side; each street was open to the parade and drill ground, and on the end toward the hills to the west, it was closed off by a hut for the company officers and usually a cook- shack behind that. This pattern was adhered to as additional troops came to the camp. It was well that General Cox's command had its huts built by nightfall, for in the evening the sky clouded over, the temperature dropped, and a chill rain began to fall. By the following morning, the plowed fields had turned into a veritable swamp and the mud was knee-deep. The Eleventh Infantry, the next regiment to be transferred from Camp Jackson, had the misfortune to reach camp at nightfall on May 1; the rain was coming down in torrents, deep mud was everywhere, and there was no shelter available. There were pine boards in plenty along the railroad track. The men carried them through the mud to the area assigned to the regiment, and did what they could in the rain and darkness to build their shanties. Years later, the historian of this regiment Camp Dennison, 1861-1865 177 wrote that the "first night spent in Camp Dennison will never be forgotten by any who had the misfortune to be there.... Huddled together under their partially completed quarters, the rain coming down in torrents, with a steady drip, drip, drip through the many crevices in the boards, mud beneath and all around them, but few closed their eyes that night. . . ."19 The men of the Eighth Infantry had much the same experience when they arrived from Cleveland late on the 3rd of May without tents or camp equipment of any kind, and in the midst of a cold, dreary rain. One wonders if during the first two weeks of May 1861 the rain ever stopped falling, for it is on record that the Fourth Infantry under Colonel Lorin Andrews, who had just exchanged the presidency of Kenyon College for his shoulderstraps, also arrived just as a rainstorm was starting, and spent a miserable first night in camp under lean-tos made by leaning the top edges of boards against rail fences. General Cox, who saw these men crawl out from under their shelters the following morning, had ample reason to call them a "queer-looking lot."20 The Seventh Infantry, another Cleveland regiment, acted with foresight. They chose ten men from each of the ten companies and sent them on ahead to construct shanties for the entire regiment. The arrival of the advance detachment was greeted by "rain . . . falling as in the days of Noah," but the seventy-odd shelters required were built, and when the rest of the regiment arrived on May 6—• naturally "in the midst of heavy rain and a sea of mud, making the entry into this new camp singularly dreary and forbidding" — their barracks were waiting for them.21 In time, however, the rain stopped, the warm sun came out and the soggy fields began to dry. Other units arrived one by one until there were eleven infantry regiments in camp, among them our German and Irish friends of the 9th and 10th Regiments. The elements no longer presented a major problem, but almost everything else did. All of the elementary, day-to-day housekeep- ing of the new camp had to be organized. Above all, 11,000 ruggedly individualistic citizens of the Republic had to be turned into soldiers and equipped for the field. This process might have

19Joshua H. Horton, A History of the Eleventh Regiment (Ohio Volunteer In- fantry) (Dayton, O., 1866), 21. 20Johnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders, I, 95. 21Lawrence Wilson, Itinerary of the Seventh Ohio Volunteer Infantry (New York, 1907), 33-35. 178 The Bulletin

From P. F. Mottelay, ed., Soldier in Our Civil War, I, 244 WORK DAY AT CAMP DENNISON gone faster and more smoothly if McClellan had carried out his intention of personally taking command of the camp, but he thought it best to establish his headquarters in Cincinnati and spent very little time in Camp Dennison. The first and most obvious task was to take care of the physical needs of the men. The crude shanties described earlier provided passable shelter. When the weather became warmer, the men spent much leisure time in embellishing and improving their huts in ways neither provided for nor encouraged by the regula- tions. Many shanties were transformed into country cottages by means of lattice-work porches, elaborate scroll-work cornices and climbing vines; some even had pigeon-lofts added to them. Names were invented, suitably inscribed on boards and affixed to huts which thereby became the Astor House, Burnett House, Eagle's Nest, Charter Oak and the like. For bedding, there were ample supplies of straw, and not only did most men now have blankets, but a great many had quilts from home, and even down puffs were not unknown. Uniforms were not available for the men until the end of May, and for some regiments not until June. Meanwhile, everyone made do with what he had, usually the civilian clothes he wore when he Camp Dennison, 1861-1865 179 enlisted. The rough life in camp was hard on clothing and some regiments were literally in rags; one regiment refused to turn out for drill because the men were ashamed to appear in public. A few companies wore their militia uniforms. Since the costumes of the pre-war militia were limited as to pattern and colors only by the exuberant imaginations of the members of each company, the owners of these uniforms must have seemed like veritable birds of paradise amid the general drabness. However, it is safe to assume that these fancy uniforms, more suitable for parades than camps, lost their pristine freshness in short order. The Italian patriot Garibaldi was a popular hero of the time, and pending the arrival of army uniforms a number of companies clothed themselves in the very practical "Garibaldi dress" of black trou- sers and red flannel shirts. Feeding the men was a problem from the start and so it remain- ed, not because there was a shortage of food, but because the arrangements for preparing it never advanced beyond the primi- tive. The men had to learn to cook the provisions provided for them — mostly rice, potatoes, bacon and coffee — eat them raw or go without.22 Each company had to find by a process of trial and error the member or members with some aptitude for cooking, and during this process many an unpalatable meal had to be eaten. Some companies solved this problem by hiring negro cooks. At first, even the mechanics of requisitioning rations in accordance with the regulations had to be painfully learned. Lieutenant James Sterling, Co. B, 7th Ohio Volunteer Infantry was ordered one morning to draw rations for the company. Locating the commis- sary, which was established in a barn, he demanded food for a hundred men. "Where is your requisition?" asked the commis- sary. "What's that? I never heard of it. I want rations for a company of hungry men." "Well, you can't have them until you furnish a proper requisition." "And how am I to get one?" "Out of the book." "I know several. Never saw a requisition in any of them." "The Blue Book; didn't you ever hear of that?" The Lieutenant found a Blue Book, borrowed a sheet of paper and laboriously copied out a requisition which he presented to the commissary, thinking that he had thus complied with the

22After being rebuffed in his efforts to obtain a post on General McClellan's staff in Cincinnati, U. S. Grant considered "trying to get a contract to supply bread for the Ohio volunteers who were assembling at Camp Dennison . . . ." Lloyd Lewis, Captain Sam Grant (Boston, 1950), 426. 180 The Bulletin formalities. But no. Said the commissary: "It must be approved. The commandant of the camp must approve all requisitions." The commandant's quarters were a mile away; the Lieutenant waded there through the mud and had his requisition approved. Having made the return journey, he handed the approved requi- sition to the commissary with a proud flourish. Thirty years later, Sterling still remembered the look the commissary gave him — as well as his own feelings — as the latter said: "I can't give you anything on that. You have made a requisition for com- missary supplies on a quartermaster's blank."23 However, not- withstanding all difficulties, some comic and some serious, all the men in camp were fed somehow. In 1861, it was a major undertaking to provide an adequate supply of water for a community as large as Camp Dennison, which in a matter of two weeks became the sixth largest "city" in Ohio. The need was met by negotiating a contract with an eccentric, elderly West Point graduate, Thomas Worthington, to haul water in barrels from the river to the barracks area.24 Worth- ington promptly got into trouble with the soldiers because his employees filled their water-barrels at a point just opposite the camp, only a short distance downstream from a slaughterhouse which dumped its effluvia into the river. The soldiers naturally objected, but Worthington insisted that the distance between the slaughterhouse and the camp was sufficient for the water to purify itself. The soldiers were not convinced and settled the controversy to their own satisfaction by overturning Worthington's water- carts and emptying his barrels. They persisted in this practice until the unhappy contractor was forced to give in, whereupon he constructed a large, brick-lined reservoir on top of the steep hill across the road from the Waldsmith house. A steam pump forced water from the river below the camp into the reservoir, whence wooden pipes carried it by gravity to the cantonments. Whether this water was any more pure than the water the men had object-

23J. T. Sterling, "Personal Experiences of the Early Days of 1861" War Paper No. 18, Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, Michigan Com- mandery (Detroit, 1892), 4-5. 24Worthington graduated from West Point in 1827. After his Camp Dennison tribulations, he became an active officer in the Union army, notwithstanding his advanced age, and reached the rank of colonel. His father, Thomas Worthington, Sr., had served two terms as governor of Ohio, from 1814 to 1818. Camp Dennison, 1861-1865 181 ed to, the records do not disclose; the complaints, however, ceased.25 For every man in the Union Army who was killed in battle or died of wounds during the Civil War, there were two who died of disease.26 The incidence of disease and the mortality rate were never worse than during the first few months of the war, and Camp Dennison was no exception in these respects. Within a short time after the arrival of troops at the camp, overcrowding, exposure and the coarse diet began to take their toll. Every regiment had its regimental surgeon, but infirmaries and hospitals were not estab- lished until the number of men reporting sick reached alarming proportions. Except for an outbreak of measles — the most com- mon camp disease at the beginning of the war — the illnesses were seldom serious, or would not have been had there been proper hospital care available. But the hospitals, when they were set up, were either in the same kind of shacks in which the men lived or in some convenient barn. The principal remedies were calomel, quinine and whiskey, and there was neither a proper diet nor any nursing care for the sick. Word of these conditions soon reached the city, and the women of Cincinnati promptly responded. Numbers of them went to the camp daily to nurse the sick, taking with them delicacies which were a more appropriate diet for sick men than the customary hospital fare of sidemeat and hardtack. In the forefront of this work were the Sisters of Charity, led by Sister Anthony 0' Connell. She and six other nuns, one of them a German interpreter, tended the sick and cooked for them. The nuns visited each of the regimental hospitals daily, a walk of two or three miles "in mud and water over their shoetops." To avoid the expense and loss of time of a daily journey to the camp, they moved to Camp Dennison and took up their abode in a small wooden church. Dorothea Dix, Superintendent of United States Nurses, had a strong prejudice against the nursing orders, and tried to replace the Sisters of Charity with volunteer nurses. However, the men as well as the surgeons preferred the relatively well-trained nuns,

25Jacob D. Cox, Military Reminiscences of the Civil War, 2 vols. (New York, 1900), I, 26. Worthington was nearly ruined by the cost of his elaborate water works. The government refused to pay, on the ground that the project had not been authorized. Eventually, Worthington was paid about half the cost of the installation. 26Heitman, Historical Register, II, 286; 110,070 men were killed or died of wounds; 224,586 died as a result of illness. 182 The Bulletin a preference that can also be explained by the fact that to meet Miss Dix's specifications for volunteer nurses, a woman had to be over thirty, plain, and dressed in brown or black, with no bows, curls, jewelry or hoopskirts; at any rate, the Sisters stayed on. The Cincinnati Branch of the United States Sanitary Commission also played a part in ameliorating the situation, and by mid-sum- mer great improvements were effected. By the end of November suitable hospitals had been built and equipped. From that time on, the facilities for taking care of the sick at Camp Dennison were the equal of any in the United States.27

DIVINE SERVICE AT CAMP DENNISON, OHIO—S

There is little to be said about provisions for the spiritual welfare of the men, for relatively little was done in that respect. Most regiments had a chaplain, but with honorable exceptions chaplains, as a group, were poorly equipped for their tasks and 27For the medical history of Camp Dennison in 1861, see Joshua H. Bates, "Ohio's Preparations for the War," Papers Read Before the Ohio^ Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States (Cincinnati, 1881), I, 134; Johnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders, I, 96; Bering, History of the Forty-Eighth, 9; Mary McCann, The History of Mother Seton's Daughters — The Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati, 2 vols. (New York, 1917), II, 215-217; Helen E. Marshall, Dorothea Dix (Chapel Hill, N. C, 1937), 203-219; Franklin Sawyer, A Military History of the Eighth Regiment of Ohio Vol. Inf'y. (Cleveland, 1881), 13. Camp Dennison, 1861-1865 183 their efforts were correspondingly slight and ineffectual. Their shortcomings were made good to some extent by members of the ministerial body in Cincinnati who held services at the camp on Sundays. Near the end of May, the ministers of nearby villages asked McClellan's permission to erect a church in the camp for the use of the soldiers. They offered to supply the labor and the lumber if the Army would supply the nails. Thereupon McClellan sent a dispatch to the Secretary of War himself, asking for authority to furnish nails for this purpose. Secretary Cameron, greatly amused by the spectacle of the Major-General commanding the Department of the Ohio making such a request, sent the classic reply: "God's will be done" — and then saw to it that the exchange of telegrams was widely circulated.28 As soon as a regiment was settled in camp, it began to drill. Drill meant mainly the practice of evolutions of the squad, com- pany, battalion and regiment. These rigidly formalized evolu- tions were called "Tactics." The great majority of the commis- sioned and noncommissioned officers were just as ignorant of tactics as the men they had to teach, so that the first order of business was to establish schools in every regiment for the field, staff and company officers. What the officers learned in the eve- ning, they could teach their men the next day. The first two or three regiments bought up the small available supply of the au- thorized textbook, Hardee's Tactics,11 and the later arrivals would have been in a sorry state had not the enterprising Thomas Wor- thington, whom we have already met in his capacity of water- contractor, been equal to the emergency. Within a very few days, he prepared an abridgement of Hardee, had it printed, and was offering it for sale. The other important training activity was guard mount. The group of barracks occupied by each regiment was treated as a separate camp, and the men were taught the duties of a sentry, while the officers were schooled in the duties of officer of the day and officer of the guard. At sunset each day, the entire garrison, organized into three brigades, turned out for the traditional and impressive rite of the evening parade. When the weather was fair, the ceremony was performed under the admiring eyes of hundreds 28Myers, McClellan, 38. 29The infantry drill-book most widely used in the Union army had been written by William J. Hardee, who became a lieutenant-general in the Con- federate army. 184 The Bulletin of civilian visitors, among whom members of what was then called the fair sex were exceedingly well represented. The dress parades became wonderful spectacles indeed after uniforms had been issued to all the men and the officers especially were a brave sight, bedecked with scarlet sash and sword and wearing "wonderful Kossuth hats, made by 'Dodd the Hatter' with the ostrich plumes floating proudly on top."30 On Sunday mornings, each company was inspected by its Captain, after which the First Sergeant read the Articles of War and chilled the blood of his very imperfectly militarized audience with the phrase, reiterated at the end of almost every section of the Articles, that "Any violator of said section shall suffer death, or such other punishment as by a court martial shall be inflicted." The men were then marched to the Colonel's quarters to hear a sermon by the regimental chaplain or a visiting minister. The rest of the Sabbath was given over to reunions with visiting families and relatives, who came to the camp in droves and invariably with well-filled hampers, to the writing of letters and diaries, or to less edifying pursuits away from camp until the evening dress parade closed the day's activities. A welcome break in the camp routine, and a great event in the history of every regiment, was the day set apart for the presenta- tion of the regimental flag. Usually, the flag was the handiwork of the women of the city whence the regiment came. It could be of any color and pattern, and could carry any device the ladies might consider suitable. For example, the flag presented to "Die Neuner" was of beautiful blue silk, with the name of the regiment and thirteen gold stars embroidered upon it. Fastened to the staff were two streamers, one carrying the legend, "Dem ersten deutsches Regiment Cincinnatis," and the other, "Kampfet brav fur Freiheit und Recht." On the day of the presentation, the regiment and its band of twenty-four musicians were drawn up in a hollow square, officers to the front. The flag was brought for- ward by a large deputation of ladies and presented to the regi- ment on their behalf in a ringing patriotic spech. After a speech of acceptance from Colonel McCook, a handsome sword of honor was presented to Major von Willich, who in two short months had become the "beloved father" of the regiment. The playing of

30William E. Smith and Ophia D. Smith (Eds.), Colonel A. W. Gilbert (Cin- cinnati, 1934), 51. Camp Dennison, 1861-1865 185 "Hail Columbia," the "Marseillaise" and the "Star Spangled Banner" followed, after which there was a parade of the regiment. Then every man was given a pass for the remainder of the day and the "sublime festivity" came to a fitting close in Wagner's Felsenkeller in Milford, where the men "enjoyed themselves in real German style with music, song, speeches and barley- juice."31 By about the middle of May, in the amazingly short time of two or three weeks, the birth pangs of the new camp were reced- ing into the past. There were still many rough edges and much ground for justified complaint, but considerable progress had been made. The "awkward salute, and the equally awkward response, the complaints of the soldiers, the criticism of the officers, the odd mistakes, the blundering commands" were being replaced by a growing competence.32 Everyone was learning his job, and was even becoming bored with the artificial routine of camp. There were occasional fiareups of serious trouble. Cne of the regiments, which had been promised modern guns, was given instead old smooth-bore muskets "modernized" at the Miles Greenwood Foundry on Vine Street.33 The men flatly refused to accept these guns, and it required all the considerable oratorical skill of Major Edward F. Noyes to bring them to a more reasonable state of mind.34 Other incidents had an amusing side, as did the ill- feeling which almost erupted into a Civil War in miniature between the "Bloody Tinth" and "Die Neuner," the former claiming that the sentries belonging to the latter took a more than professional delight in filling the guardhouse with members of the Tenth who returned to camp of an evening in a somewhat unsteady condition. Much more troublesome problems arose from the peculiarity in the Army Regulations, subsequently modified, which forbade the mustering-in of any part of a regiment until the entire regiment n"Die Neuner, 31-32; Lonn, Foreigners in the Union Army, 357; Wittke, "The Ninth Ohio Volunteers," 414. 32Sawyer, A Military History of the Eighth Regiment, 12. 33During the first few months of the war, Greenwood rifled more than 25,000 smooth-bore muskets for the State at a price of $1.25 per gun; the "Greenwood rifle" eventually became quite popular with the men, who thought it equal to the Enfield in accuracy and range; Reid, Ohio in the War, I, 60. 34Smith and Smith, Colonel A. W. Gilbert, 51. Noyes was one of the leaders of the Cincinnati Bar. Later in the war he became colonel of the 39_th 0. V. I., and while serving as commandant of Camp Dennison, was elected city solicitor of Cincinnati. After the war, he became successively governor of Ohio, U. S. senator from Ohio, and minister to France. 186 The Bulletin was ready for muster. If it required several weeks to fill the ranks of a regiment, as was usually the case after the first wave of enlist- ments, the first few companies to reach camp had to remain there without pay, uniforms or equipment, and with no one exercising any authority over them until all the rest of the regiment arrived and was mustered in. During this period of waiting, the national government did not even furnish subsistence to the men, and disciplinary problems, always present in a volunteer army, were at their worst. The most serious troubles arose in mid-May, as a result of President Lincoln's call for 42,000 volunteers to serve for three years. The War Department decided to secure the greater part of this number by persuading three-month volunteers already in service to re-enlist for three years; the eminently sensible motive behind this decision was to preserve for the army the benefit of the training and organization these men already had. At Camp Dennison, this policy was put into effect by General McClellan's Special Order No. 246, which contained the provision that "A company, when full, will nominate its officers by ballot for the approval of the (Governor)."*5 This was a clear invasion of the immemorial and inalienable right of volunteers to elect their own officers. At once, the camp was thrown into turmoil, and what discipline thirty days' service had brought into being promptly disappeared. Not all of the 11,000 men then in camp were pre- pared to enlist for three years, especially not under officers who might not be men of their own choosing. Night after night, meetings were held by companies and by regiments to debate the question of re-enlistment. Acrimony and oratory flourished, and the confusion was compounded by the persuasive arts of officers who wanted to retain their rank and of others who hoped to become officers in the forthcoming elections. Nor did the electioneering for shoulder-straps stop at mere oratory. Future President James Garfield was beaten for election as Colonel of the Seventh Infantry "by bargains and brandy." Most regiments were exposed to the arts of a political campaign and not a little chicanery.36 In the meantime, the men who had decided not to enlist for three years, but still had nearly two months of their original term ^.Bates, "Ohio's Preparations for the War," 136-137 (Italics ours). 36Theodore C. Smith, The Life and Letters of James Abram Garfield, 2 vols. (New Haven, 1925), Vol. I, 162-165. Camp Dennison, 1861-1865 187 of enlistment left to serve, remained in camp, although hundreds of new three-year men were being brought in by the recruiting parties that had been sent out by every regiment and by most companies to find replacements for the men who would drop out. The result was overcrowding and nearly total chaos. The situation threatened to get completely out of hand until Generals Bates and Cox thought of the expedient of sending home on what would now be called terminal leave all the three-month men who had chosen not to enlist for three years. With these men out of the way, the process of reorganization made rapid headway, and one by one the eleven regiments reported themselves ready for muster-in for three years. Once again "Die Neuner" led the way, re-enlisting almost to a man. Great was the pride of the regiment when it was announced that, by being the first Ohio regiment to enlist for three years, the Ninth had won an oversize bass drum, the gift of a patriotic lady of Columbus. By the beginning of June, the excitement caused by the three-year problem had largely subsided, and once again the camp settled into its normal routine. The men were even becoming restless, many fearing that the Rebellion would be put down before they had had a chance to see action; but McClellan's campaign in western Virginia was about to begin, and one by one the regi- ments which had helped to create Camp Dennison took their departure for the field. Their places were taken by more recently raised regiments which passed through the camp in a steady stream so long as the war lasted, staying for shorter or longer periods of training on their way to war. The 15th Infantry Regi- ment came, and the 17th, the 38th, 39th, 48th, 50th, 83rd, 113th, and many others; in due course, each of them left Camp Dennison with full ranks and with shiny new equipment and uniforms. In November 1861, arrangements were at last made to provide decent housing. All the men then in camp were moved into tents; a host of carpenters tore down the shanties constructed with so much labor in April and May, and replaced them with large and commodious barracks 100 feet long by 22 feet wide, with 3 tiers of bunks running the full length of the building on each side. Each building provided accommodations for a full company, and each company had its own spacious kitchen and a separate building for the commissioned officers. A touch of what the members of the 7th, 9th or 10th Regiments would have undoubted- 188 The Bulletin

ly regarded as Sybaritic luxury was added by the installation of two large stoves in every barracks building. In November also, the first of the several cavalry regiments to train at Camp Dennison arrived. This was the Fifth Ohio Cavalry, followed shortly by the Fourth Ohio Cavalry under Colonel John Kennett, a regiment recruited almost entirely in Cincinnati and Hamilton County. The Twelfth Cavalry also came, with its fine regimental band mounted on snow-white horses. Now the many civilian visitors to the camp had the novel oppor- tunity of observing cavalry in training. Batteries of artillery came also, the 5th, 8th, 10th and 14th Independent Batteries of Ohio Light Artillery, and many others. They practiced their evolutions on fields packed hard by the tramp of infantrymen and, as local tradition has it, fired their guns at the steep hill on which Camp Friedlander is now located. Camp commandants came and went, eighteen of them in the period from November 1861 to September 1865, holding the post for periods varying from one day to six months. Except for frequent changes of commanding officers, the placid and orderly routine of the camp was disturbed only twice. The first occasion came after the Battle of Shiloh, fought on April 6 and 7, 1862. In this battle, one of the bloodiest of the entire war, more than 13,000 Northern soldiers became casualties, 8,403 being wounded.37 On the afternoon of April 9, news of the battle reached Cincinnati, the casualties being reported as from eighteen to twenty thousand. At once the Sanitary Commission, the City of Cincinnati and the State of Ohio chartered boats, loaded them with hospital supplies and stores, staffed them with physicians and nurses, and dis- patched them to Shiloh to succor the wounded.38 When the boats arrived at Pittsburg Landing, the Ohio wounded were collected from the field hospitals, placed on board ship, and brought back to Cincinnati to be cared for in the hospitals in the city and at Camp Dennison. Thereafter, to the end of the war, Camp Dennison functioned as a base hospital without ceasing to be a training camp, and during the next three years, thousands of Union wounded and sick passed through the camp hospitals.

"Johnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders, I, 538. 38The boat chartered by the city carried not only physicians and nurses, but also fifty members of the Police Department, headed by the Chief of Police, Colonel Dudley. Camp Dennison 1861-1865 189 The second incident was one in which the camp played a not very glorious part. It occurred on July 14,1863. The celebrations of the twin victories of Gettysburg and Vicksburg were hardly over when Rebel General John Morgan came riding toward Cincinnati on a raid which, however harebrained it may have been from a military point of view, was full of menace for the anxious citizens of Ohio and Indiana during those dry summer days of 1863. Morgan learned from his spies on the afternoon of July 13 that Cincinnati was strongly held by Union troops. He therefore decided to make a wide circuit around the city by marching northward from Harrison and then east through Glendale. On the afternoon of July 14, after a march of more than ninety miles in 35 hours, during which he lost 500 men through sheer ex- haustion, he was at last forced to halt for food and a brief rest, and did so just above and within sight of Camp Dennison.39 After a short, undisturbed halt, Morgan and his 2,000 troopers departed eastward with nothing but a light picket skirmish to delay them. It is reported that near Miamiville, the raiders stopped and burned a train made up of a locomotive and three coaches, carrying a military band from Columbus to Camp Dennison. The musicians were allowed to depart unharmed, but their instruments were burned. Whether this act of destruction represented a serious loss to the Northern war effort, our records do not tell us. It is, however, a fact that Morgan's march through the area was in no way impeded by the garrison of Camp Dennison. There is little left to tell of the history of the camp during the next two years. Its activities were now a smoothly-running system. New regiments, individual recruits and draftees, and the wounded and sick came and went as before. Then, in May 1864, there came a change. The flow of troops was reversed, as the three-year terms of enlistment of the earliest regiments began to expire, and those of the men who chose not to re-enlist as Veteran Volunteers came back to Camp Dennison to be mustered out. Later still, after the war ended in the spring of 1865, many more regiments came home from the South, the Southwest and the East, their ranks sadly thinned by the absence of the hundreds in each regiment who were gone: the dead, the missing, the pris- oners, the men discharged earlier because of wounds or illness.

39Basil W. Duke, History of Morgan's Cavalry (Cincinnati, 1867), 440-445; Cecil F. Holland, Morgan and His Raiders (New York, 1942), 241-244. 190 The Bulletin But the men who were left came back to make up the final regi- mental muster roll, turn in their equipment, receive their dis- charges and last pay, and to form ranks for the last time before departing for their homes. At last, even this stream ceased to flow. In September 1865, the camp was deactivated. The barracks were dismantled, the long-fallow fields were turned back to the owners and again put under the plow. In a very few years, there was nothing left to mark the site of Camp Dennison except the memories of the thousands who had passed through it.