1 The Controversies Over America’s Last Civil War Veterans BY Garry Victor Hill 2014 2 3 Contents Dedication page 4 Author’s Note page 5 Acknowledgements page 5 Copyright page 6 Introduction page 7 Part One page 11 Part Two page 48 Afterword page 181 About the Author page 182 4 Dedication Jay S. Hoar (1933- ) Dedicated to Professor Jay Sherman Hoar without whose help this book was unfortunately written. This mistake was corrected in America’s Last Civil War Participants: An Investigation (2015) Professor Jay S. Hoar is the pioneer in the study of America’s Civil War Veterans. His three volume elegy will remain the definitive collection. 5 Author’s Note: This is Version One of a work in progress. Much more research is needed on several individuals: unfortunately this looks like months of work, not only to find and collate primary source material, but to assess its veracity, and worth. Secondary sources are also needed, they clarify much. Another more detailed version America’s Last Civil War Participants: An Investigation has been published in 2015. Even so the verdict on the last surviving veterans is not set in stone, I’m looking forward to evidence that will verify them. While realising that continual hedging with “probably” “possibly” “uncertain” “likely” “seems” and “dubious” are wearying and create a longing for definite conclusions, a major point is that too many people writing on this issue have been definite on issues – and have been wrong. When evidence is ultimately inconclusive I still go with the evidence. With sources I have not usually credited muster rolls and censuses in source notes because they and the individual or organization referred to are mentioned in the text. There is no list of works cited: this ensures that plagiarists do some work. The on screen option Navigation: Search Documents makes an index obsolescent. Permission to quote is okay with acknowledgements Garry Victor Hill Website “Controversies Over America’s Last Civil War Veterans.” 2014. Acknowledgements: I would like to acknowledge the help given by: Cherri Butler of Fitzgerald Georgia for her work on William J. Bush, Richard Menard for the use of his copyrighted photograph of William J. Bush. Wade H. Dorsey, a South Carolina History archivist for work on Arnold Murray. C. Michael Anderson of Prospect, Connecticut for good advice on texts and information about Sarah Rockwell and advising me to contact Professor Hoar. To Harold Ott for his help with the Loudermilks. To John McClure of the Virginia Historical Society for his vital help on Thomas Evans Riddle. Thanks to the workers in the archives of the Virginia Library and the Arkansas State Archives. 6 A special thankyou to those writers, researchers, archivists, genealogists, bloggers and contributors who refuse to be commercialised,giving free access to their sites. Copyright: Garry Victor Hill asserts the moral right to copyright of the written text of this work. Short quotations for critical or academic purposes are allowed. Sales or reproduction by any means or storage in any electronic system without the expressed permission of the author is a copyright violation. ©ᶜ The maps and most illustrations are from free access internet sites. Most of these illustrations are from Google options, these are compiled by generic topics. They begin ‘Images of…’ They request feedback, which becomes a specific request for usage and if granted, they are copied. Others have been used following requested copyright steps for inclusion. Either way, they should not be copied from this work. The author does not hold the copyright to any illustration. If any illustration has been put on free access websites without their owner’s permission, and then copied here, this is done unknowingly. Contact the author and that illustration will be removed or given full acknowledgement. Other illustrations are used with permission. Two of Jay S. Hoar and some 1860s picture frames have been cropped. Not one illustration has been coloured, but some are enlarged or diminished. Permission to quote from the text and captions is with acknowledgement: Garry Victor Hill Website The Controversies of America’s Last Civil War Veterans. 2014. Or [email protected] Copies of this book are stored in the archives of the UNE Library, Armidale, The Virginia Historical Society and the South Carolina Department of Archives and History. Copies have been sent to Professor Jay S. Hoar, Andrew MacKenzie, the Australian National Library, and the Library of Congress and to the Mitchell Library Sydney. No suggestion of fraud, racism or deceit is made against any individual. Where claims have not been fully verified this is due to a lack of conclusive evidence or conflicting evidence. Written Without Predjudice A Note on language Although many of the quotations are in American English, the computer is based in English English. This leads to inconsistencies in spelling and the use of some terms. I have not corrected grammar, spelling or syntax in quotations. 7 Introduction As comments on the previous page imply, this is a preliminary work. A later, larger and more in depth version is America’s Last Civil War Participants: An Investigation is also available free on my website. Use Google and go to the white type in bar at the top left hand corner, type http://garryvictorhill.com.au/ (without underlining) This later work goes over 82,000 words. This version is over 46,000 words and has far fewer illustrations, perhaps not even half. This work deals with twenty one claimants to Civil war service while America’s Last Civil War Participants: An Investigation examines twenty-eight claimants and goes into much more detail with almost all of them. That version also looks at their post-war lives in more detail. There is also a shift from seeing them as veterans, a word which conjures up an image of a tough, seasoned fighter. Few of the people examined in this version were like that image: many were non-combatants, most were very young and did 8 some small service to their side. Even so, they were participants in the war effort – or claimed to be. As the title of the two different works suggests, the first focuses more on the controversies concerning the issue and the second puts the controversies into the background, focusing more on the investigating process. America’s Last Civil War Participants: An Investigation is definitely the longer, more informative, more detailed read, but for those who dislike minute examinations of documents, who want quicker answers, and a briefer read, this is the book. In comparison to America’s Last Civil War Participants: An Investigation this work does serve other purposes. One is to disprove the fallacy that everything that can be said about the war has been said. While writing this book, in less than a year, the following primary source material relating just to the last veteran’s question became computerised public knowledge and was incorporated into the new work: The Civil War era photo of William J. Bush (included here) The 1913 reconstruction group photo which had Arnold Murray and perhaps Thomas Evans Riddle. An 1863 soldier’s diary in which Riddle is mentioned. Arnold Murray’s 1910 census. Simultaneous mention of both men named William A. Kinney in the 1860 census. The long accepted argument was that there was only one man with this name in Kentucky and that he was born in 1861 so Kiney could not have been a Civil War soldier. Kiney’s 1863 enlistment document in the 10TH Kentucky Cavalry. An 1863 Alabama enlistment for A. Witkowski. Felix Witkoski, frequently described as a fraud claiming to be a veteran, said this was where was in 1863. A 1949 newspaper interview with W.W. Alexander, who briefly described his Civil War service. A war record of Thomas Edwin Ross Ross’s affirmation of Civil War service in the 1910 census 9 Murray’s and Loudermilk’s affirmations of Civil War service in the 1930 census Red Cloud’s brief description of his time in the Civil War, given in a 1950s interview. Obituary articles for James E. Ewin and W.W. Alexander and the latter’s brief account of his war service. Only some of this evidence is in this work, but all are in America’s Last Civil War Participants: An Investigation. Yet another reason for examining this work is that most of it was written without the help of Professor Jay S. Hoar, the world’s leading expert on the topic of Civil War veterans and that war’s child soldiers. Most of this work was even written without any knowledge of his writings. This is not boasting, for this work, when compared with America’s Last Civil War Participants: An Investigation shows how vital his work is for any student, writer or reader interested in this topic. Rather than mislead I have included two sections from his work, those on Ross and Kiney. Each of these have a section written using other sources, but without using Professor Hoar’s work. Compare my effort and his and see how easy it is to go astray. Richard A. Serrano writing about the last two Civil War veterans in 2013, rightly suggested that Professor Hoar’s work was the place to start.1 This is because Professor Jay S. Hoar wrote much of the pioneering work on this topic in his epic three volume study Sunset and Dusk of the Blue and the Gray. This trilogy starts with The North’s Last Boys in Blue Volume I. This investigates those Union veterans still alive between 1940 and 1946 while Volume II continues on with those living between 1946 and 1971.