Month: February 2026

Hoosier Col. Benjamin Harrison

A fervent prewar Republican, Benjamin Harrison was first elected in 1860 as reporter for the Indiana Supreme Court. In 1862, he gained appointed as an officer and served under Sherman in the Atlanta campaign.

In the early postwar, Harrison warned Indiana audiences that “the Southern foe remained just as wily, mean and impudent as ever, and politics would be the new battleground against ex-rebels.” Though he didn’t advocate immediate enfranchisement for former slaves,” he insisted that “should white Southerners remained recalcitrant, the adoption of black suffrage offered the only way to produce truly loyal governments in the South.” The key to a successful peace was to keep the rebels and “their northern allies out of power. If you don’t,” Harrison warned, “they will steal away, in the halls of Congress, the fruits won from them at the glistening point of the bayonet.”

As the Republican national standard bearer in 1888 against Grover Cleveland, Harrison lost the popular vote but lavish Republican campaign spending in crucial swing States bought him victory in the Electoral College. A lasting blot on his presidency was the American-led coup of Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani in 1893.

Hoosier Col. Benjamin Harrison

“Atlanta fell to Sherman in early September 1864 and ten days later Harrison headed home under orders to report to Governor Morton for “special duty.” That duty included recruitment of news soldiers and more important, campaigning for the Republican ticket in the fall election.

After Harrison entered the army in 1862, Hoosier Democrats had secured a court order declaring the supreme court reporter office vacant, and in a special election, Democrat Michael Kerr had defeated an ineffectual Republican candidate. In 1864 the Republicans nominated Harrison again for the position. He stumped the State vigorously, adjuring voters to stand by the Republicans and the war effort, while accusing Democrats of halfhearted resistance to, if not outright sympathy for, the rebellion.” Further, he condemned the Democrats’ notion of State sovereignty as a “deadly poison to national life.”

Moreover, defying the widespread Negrophobia within Indiana, Harrison fervently defended the Emancipation Proclamation and extolled the courageous service of blacks in the effort to suppress the rebellion. Harrison and the entire State ticket triumphed, and Lincoln carried Indiana.

Immediately after the election, Harrison headed for Georgia to rejoin his men [but] received orders to take command of a brigade forming in Tennessee to block a Confederate counteroffensive. He found the brigade a mongrel outfit with many men “quite unfit for duty in the field” – some hardly recovered from wounds, others just back from sick leave, and a large number of raw recruits, including many European immigrants unable to speak English.”

(Benjamin Harrison. Charles W. Calhoun. Henry Holt and Company. 2005, pp. 24-25)

Harper’s Ferry Arsenal Burned

Soon after Virginia’s convention ratified its ordinance of withdrawal from the United States Constitution on April 18, 1861, the military commander at the Harper’s Ferry, apparently under orders to do so, set fire to the armory. Contrary to Northern reports that the American South had been for years preparing for war, in reality the federal government had kept the construction and manufacture of war materials in the North.

Harper’s Ferry Arsenal Burned

“The avowed purpose of the Federal Government was to occupy and possess the property belonging to the United States, yet one of the first acts was to set fire to the armory at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, the only establishment of the kind in the Southern States, and the only Southern depository of the rifles which the General Government had then on hand.

What conclusion is to be drawn from such action?

To avoid attributing a breach of solemn pledges, it must be supposed that Virginia was considered as out of the Union, and a public enemy, in whose borders it was proper to destroy whatever might be useful to her of the common property of the States lately united.

As soon as the United States troops had evacuated the place, the citizens and armorers went to work to save the armory as far as possible from destruction, and to secure valuable material stored within. The master armorer, Armistead Ball, so bravely and skillfully directed these efforts, that a large part of the machinery and materials was saved from the flames.”

(Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Jefferson Davis, Volume I, D. Appleton and Co., 1881, pp. 318-319)

 

To Sustain the Right of Self-Government

In his “Rise and Fall,” President Jefferson Davis described the object of the American South’s struggle “was to sustain a principle – the broad principle of constitutional liberty, the right of self-government.”

To Sustain the Right of Self-Government

“The notice received, that an armed expedition had sailed for operations against the State of South Carolina in the harbor of Charleston, induced the Confederate States Government to meet, as best it might, this assault, in the discharge of its obligation to defend each State of the Confederacy. To this end the bombardment of the formidable work, Fort Sumter, was commenced, in anticipation of the [Northern] reinforcement which was then moving to unite with its garrison for hostilities against South Carolina.

The bloodless bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter occurred on April 13, 1861. The garrison was generously permitted to retire with the honors of war. The evacuation of the fort, commanding the entrance to the harbor of Charleston, which, if in hostile hands, was destructive of its commerce, had been claimed as the right of South Carolina. The voluntary withdrawal of garrison by the United States government had been considered, and those best qualified to judge believed it had been promised.

Yet, instead of the fulfillment of just expectations, instead of the withdrawal of its garrison, a hostile expedition was organized and sent forward, the urgency of the case required its reduction before it should be reinforced. Had there been delay, the more serious conflict between larger forces, land and naval, would scarcely have been bloodless, as the bombardment fortunately was.

The event, however, was seized upon to inflame the mind of the Northern people, and the disguise which had been worn in the communications with the Confederate States Commissioners was now thrown off, and it was cunningly attempted to show that the South, which had been pleading for peace and still stood on the defensive, had by this bombardment inaugurated a war against the United States.

But it should be stated that the threats implied in the declarations that the Union could not exist part slave and part free, and that the Union should be preserved, and the denial of the right of a State peaceably to withdraw, were virtually a declaration of war, and the sending of an army and navy to attack was the result to have been anticipated as the consequence of such declaration of war.”

(Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Jefferson Davis, Volume I, D. Appleton and Co., 1881, pp. 296-297)

Peaceful Separation No Longer Possible

In his December 3, 1860, State of the Union address, President James Buchanan stated that all that the South desired was to be let alone to manage its domestic institutions. Regarding the personal liberty laws of the Northern States, he declared they were in direct violation of the United States Constitution.

Buchanan further noted that waging war against a State desiring withdrawal was not a valid Federal power in the Constitution, but if the power existed, exercising it would produce a fraternal conflict in which “a vast amount of blood and treasure would be expended, rendering future conciliation . . . impossible.”

Peaceful Separation No Longer Possible

“Mr. Buchanan was an able man, but a very timid one. If he had the nerve to deal with the situation [of December 20, 1860] as its gravity demanded, I doubt exceedingly whether any other State [at the] South would have followed South Carolina into secession.

Had he withdrawn the troops from Sumter, it would have been such a conspicuous act of conciliation that the other States would not, I believe, have called conventions to consider the question of secession, or if they had the ordinances [they] would not have been passed. I was not one of those who believed there could ever be a peaceful separation of the States but could not convince our people of it.

I had years before become convinced by my association with Mr. Webster, that the North would never consent to it. I knew that secession meant war, and, therefore, did my utmost to prevent it. When the war came, however, it had to be met with spirit.

The chance for peaceful separation of the States was lost years before the war. It could have succeeded when the North wanted to go [the Hartford Convention], and again when Texas was annexed [when New England voiced secession], but not after.”

(The Life and Death of Jefferson Davis. A.C. Bancroft, editor. J. S. Ogilvie Publisher, 1889, pp. 145-146)

The Union’s “Veteran’s Corps”

In some northern States the amount of total bounty money for one man had risen to $1500 – a very large sum in 1863. If one consults Robert L. Dabney’s “Discussions, Volume IV (1897), he states: “the Secretary of War wrote that “after May 1, 1863, there were 1,634,000 enlistments. And if the cost of each enlistment was $300, which is far below the average bounty, somebody had to pay them a total of $490,000,000. It is then likely the “bounty jumpers” as it is well-known, perpetrated immense frauds with the number of bounties paid being far larger than that of the enlistments.”

The Union’s “Veterans Corps”

“In early November 1863 the veteran northern troops occupying Plymouth, North Carolina first read of financial incentives to reenlist, made necessary due to high bounties paid for new enlistees. To avoid mass desertions of veterans the US War Department needed incentives for existing troops. The following month a New York soldier recorded in his diary that “those regiments whose time expires next fall are asked to reenlist for three years or the war’s duration.” He wrote that the men “were lured by money in sums not imagined earlier: payment of an unpaid original bounty of $100, a new bounty of $400 plus a $2 recruiting premium paid in $50 installments every six months.

This was at a time when the annual family income in New York may have been $350. In addition to the $402 financial incentive was a month-long furlough home to see loved ones while wearing the blue uniform adorned with a gold sleeve chevron of the new “Veterans Corps.” Once at home, the soldier would also receive a $50 bounty from the State of New York and whatever bounty was offered by the soldier’s county and town. The total sum of $750 or more was sufficient to “build a house on his little farm on the road up home.”

As a town or county did not require residency to receive the bounty-paid credit, the soldier home on reenlistment furlough could shop area communities and counties for the highest amount and credit his reenlistment to them. Civilians unwilling to enlist and employers wanting to retain trained workers both contributed to each town’s bounty account to attract substitutes.

Some blowbacks did occur as some “Veteran Volunteers” visiting home would credit themselves to another community so as to not shelter those they considered “shirkers” in their hometowns who avoided the draft.”

(Plymouth’s Civil War: The Destruction of a North Carolina Town. John Bernhard Thuersam. Scuppernong Press, 2024, pp. 160-161)

Letter From Enemy-Occupied Plymouth

The writer below laments the low number of troops left to defend occupied-Plymouth, North Carolina, as the men of the 101st Pennsylvania Regiment were enjoying a 30-day furlough home. This and $402 was a bonus for “veteranizing,” a device for the retention of northern soldiers coming to the end of their original 3-year term. In addition to the $402 bonus, at home the reenlisting soldier collected generous State, county and town bounties offered as well, often totaling over $1000. Few voluntary enlistments came after the carnage of Fredericksburg; draft riots and poor-quality substitutes forced Lincoln to turn to American and foreign mercenaries. The North Carolina “troops” mentioned below were likely deserters whose families and farms were caught behind enemy lines.

Letter from Enemy-Occupied Plymouth

“There are not over eight hundred troops here now, & a considerable part of them are North Carolinians, & how much they can be depended [on] we do not yet know. A [rebel] deserter came in yesterday.  Says he came from Goldsborough & that there are but two rebel troops in this State. Don’t believe him as all the news we have had for the past month shows that the rebels have been concentrating a force in this state. Probably he was sent in to deceive us in hopes we would relax our vigilance & become easy prey the rebels.

Our river gunboat USS Bombshell had a narrow escape last week . . . she went up the Chowan River and was engaged by a rebel battery . . . though not damaged. Harry Brinkerhoff, her commander is considered a brave man. He is a German & is most terribly wicked.

We have two companies of the 2nd Regiment, Massachusetts Heavy Artillery here now. They are a hard set. Nearly all foreigners. Came out for the large bounties. It is amusing to hear some who are Irishmen talk about their enlistment: They will say: “only six weeks in this country and I enlisted in the Massachusetts “waty” [brogue for weighty or heavy] artillery.”

(Civil War Letters of E.N. Boots from New Bern and Plymouth. Wilfred W. Black, editor. North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. XXVI, No. 2, April 1959, pp. 220-221)