Circa1865

Grant took command of Lincoln’s Army of the Potomac on March 17, 1864, now massed on Virginia’s Rapidan River and numbering 141,160 men. To oppose this invasion of Virginia, General Robert E. Lee’s strength was 50,403 muskets. His cavalry, artillery and supplies were all depleted, and his numerical strength in all arms did not exceed 64,000 as Grant began his march southward on May 4, 1864.

Grant’s Theory of Attrition

“General Grant’s theory of war was, “to hammer continuously against the armed force of his enemy, until, by mere attrition, there should be nothing left.”

Military genius, the arts of war, the skillful handling of troops, superior strategy, the devotion of an army of men, the noble self-denial of commanders, all must give way before the natural forces of “continuous hammering” by an army with unlimited reinforcements, an inexhaustible treasury, a well-filled commissariat, and all directed by a unanimous people.

The work of Lincoln’s war department was based upon the need for an army of a million men. Vast stores were accumulated. The US Congress, with reckless prodigality, continued to pass the most extravagant appropriations for organizing armies, and for maintaining the countless forces which constituted an invasion so vast, that it was hoped it would be invincible.

At the Wilderness, Grant’s onslaught overpowered two divisions and drove them back until Lee himself rode among his troops to rally them and reestablish his lines. In early June, Grant ordered an assault at Cold Harbor which was repelled with extraordinary slaughter, though he ordered a second attack in the afternoon which his men sullenly refused to obey.

Grant then pivoted toward the James River below Richmond to surprise and capture Petersburg, but was thwarted by Generals Beauregard and Wise, who had been reinforced with local militia and home guards. At this point Lee’s aggregate strength had increased to 78,400 men with which to oppose Grant, who had been reinforced and was now up to 192,160 troops.

Mr. Swinton, in his ‘History of the Army of the Potomac,’ estimates Grant’s losses at the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, North Anna and Cold Harbor battles at “above 60,000 men’ which included 3,000 officers, ‘while the loss of Lee did not exceed 18,000 men, of whom few were officers). This result would seem an unfavorable comment upon the choice of route by Grant, as McClellan two years prior attained the same point with trifling losses.

Grant had achieved no signal victory nor important success to offset his losses and had not defeated Lee on any of the campaign’s battlefields. The Army of Northern Virginia, not reinforced until it had reached Hanover Junction, and then only by 9,000 men, had repulsed every assault, and in the final trial of strength with a force vastly superior, had inflicted upon the enemy, in about an hour, a loss of 13,000 men.”

(Jefferson Davis: A Memoir by His Wife, Volume II. Varina Davis. Nautical and Aviation Publishing Company of America. 1990 (original published 1890), pp. 487-493)

The author below writes that “Most Puritans sought a homogenous society that made any kind of stranger generally unwelcome,” and “their efforts to expunge untrustworthy members with white skin were legendary.” Those with white complexions from different cultures posed a “complicated dilemma” for Puritans, but the vast gulf between their own and Indian and African cultures made the latter unwelcome except as slaves.

Puritan Slaveholders

“Slavery began in New England during the first years of settlement in Massachusetts, and thus, the Puritans learned how to be slaveowners immediately on arrival. As white New Englanders established their new settlements, they enslaved Indian populations both to control them and draw upon them for labor. Although John Winthrop did not immediately see Indians as slaves, it dawned upon him that they could be used as such.

Winthrop recorded requests for Indian slaves both locally and in Bermuda. Wars with the Narragansett and Pequot tribes garnered large numbers of slaves, and the trading of Indian slaves abroad brought African slaves to Massachusetts shores. In 1645, Emmanuel Downing, Winthrop’s brother-in-law and a barrister, welcomed a trade of Pequot slaves for African slaves.

However, the enslavement of Indians had a different tenor than the enslavement of Africans. The indigenous slaves represented an enemy, a conquered people, and a great threat to Puritan society. African slaves represented a trade transaction, laborers without strings attached. Moreover, Indians slaves were part of peace negotiations and control of the region. They served as collateral with which to negotiate with local Indian leaders. Further, Puritan colonists could expel troublesome Indians out of the colony or simply control them as slave property.”

(Tyrannicide. Forging an American Law of Slavery in Revolutionary Massachusetts and South Carolina. Emily Blanck. UGA Press, 2014. p. 12-13)

The bloody carnage of 1862, capped by the north’s bloody Fredericksburg defeat in late December of that year, brought voluntary enlistments to an end. But rather than ending the war between Americans, Lincoln’s Republican party resorted to a conscription law in March of 1863 to fill their depleted ranks This was in practice a “whip” to gain those attracted by the generous bounty monies from federal, State, county and towns to satisfy Lincoln’s quotas. Recent immigrants, especially unskilled laborers, were a prime target of bounty monies or substitution.

Bounty Money in Buffalo

“I was born on the 16^th day of November 1843 in the province of Brandenburg, district of Potsdam, Kreis (county) Prenzlau in the Uckermark. I emigrated with my parents (Phillip and Auguste Albertine Schultze Milleville) to this country in the year 1847, landing in Buffalo on the 4^th of July 1847. My parents settled in the town of Wheatfield, Niagara County, in a German community called Neu Bergholz.

I lived at home until the age of 16, and then apprenticed to tailor Friedrich Parchart for three years for room and board. All the cash money I had during the three years was 75 cents which I received from a political candidate for delivering a letter.

In April 1862 I went to the city of Buffalo and got a job with tailor Adam Sipple on Main Street. I worked for $6 a month and board; after 6 months I asked for more pay, he let me go. Then I got work at nearby Fort Erie, Canada, at $8 a month with board for about 4 or 5 months. Then I got a job again in Buffalo, but my boss was a drunkard. He would work all day Sunday, and Sunday night he would go to a saloon and often not come home until Tuesday morning while his family suffered. Then I got a job at 32 Main Street with tailor Jacob Metzger.

There I stayed until the 20^th day of January 1864 when I enlisted in Company I, 2^nd New York Mounted Rifles. For enlisting I got $300 government bounty, $75 State bounty, and $110 County Bounty. Of the government bounty we got $50 every six months – the State and County money we received immediately.

As recruits we were taken to Fort Porter on the banks of the Niagara River. After a few days a fellow enlistee asked to borrow my overcoat to go into town for tobacco but forgot to come back. I guess he was a Bounty jumper. We then needed a pass to go into the city, but the boys would arrange with the guards to walk in opposite directions in order to slip through.

In early June 1864 we had our first battle at Petersburg, Virginia. The Rebels were following us and attacked in the rear. They then went around our left flank. We lost 13 men out of our company; some of the boys threw away everything and ran. The next day the Rebs had us bottled up and we barely slipped out.”

(Excerpt, Civil War Diary of Herman Henry Milleville: Historical Society of North German Settlements in WNY, Winter 2025 Issue. Eugene W. Camann Collection)

Despite their formerly-invincible political influence waning in the early 1890s, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) took aim at school textbook authors who suggested that the American South may have fought for the same independence and liberty their forefathers had in 1776 – branding it “disloyal history.”

School book authors mentioned below are John Fiske (1842 – 1901), born in Hartford, Connecticut; and Daniel H. Montgomery (1837-1928), a graduate of Brown University in Rhode Island. Both States dominated the colonial transatlantic slave trade.

GAR War Upon “Disloyal History”

“Another phase of their patriotic campaign was the Grand Army’s intensified textbook warfare, in which the Confederate Veteran’s finally took up cudgels for the authors and point of view of their own section. Union veterans, feeling the general public reaction against liberality to old soldiers after the pension gift of 1890, sought some explanation for their declining prestige.

The GAR veterans concluded that it lay in the growing tendency of literature and textbooks to minimize the American South’s “crime.” The Boston Grand Army Record asserted:

“It is often spoken of in [Grand Army] Post meetings and at Camp Fires and on other public occasions that the general public opinion is not so favorable to the surviving Union soldiers as it formerly was . . . voters who have studied School Histories since 1865 have no idea what the Union Army contended for, what sacrifices they endured . . . [and] the present emasculated public opinion regarding the Right and Wrong of the Rebellion is the natural fruit of these emasculated School Histories. The indifference regarding the duties of the present generation to the surviving Union soldiers is the legitimate product of False School histories written by Professor Fiske and Reverend Montogomery imported from England. Englishmen helped the Rebels when the United States was in what seemed its death throes. We do not now need the services of Englishmen to write up the Rebellion in our School History.”

While national and State GAR headquarters showered educational institutions with angry complaints, local GAR committees paid grim calls upon school superintendents. These committees made scathing reports on textbooks by Southern writers and wrote even more bitter reviews of those produced in the north for national sale.

A typical expression was that of the Massachusetts GAR that many histories were “open to the suspicion that that they had “soothed the wounded spirit of secession for the sake of Southern trade.”  They give over-prominence and over-praise to the  leaders and movements of the secession forces, and so treat the events of the war period as to leave the impression upon the youthful mind that the war was merely a quarrel between two factions, in which both were equally to blame.”

(Veterans in Politics: The Story of the GAR. Mary R. Dearing. LSU Press, 1952. p. 480-481)

The author below was born in Ireland in 1822 and 9 years later came with his family to Philadelphia. He later studied law and theology before moving to Iowa in 1843 and was admitted to the bar in 1847. Politically active, Mahony was elected to the Iowa House of Representatives twice; co-founded the Dubuque Herald in 1852 and elected twice as Dubuque County sheriff.

He was arrested in mid-1862 for criticism of Lincoln’s government, held in Old Capitol Prison, and released in November after signing a document stating that he would “form an allegiance to the United States and not bring charges against those who had arrested and confined him.”

It was Lincoln’s predecessor, James Buchanan, and his Attorney General Black, who both determined that to wage war against a State and adhere to its enemies was the Constitution’s very definition of treason.

Lincoln’s War Proclamation

“One of the most flagrant acts of Executive violation of the United States Constitution was the proclamation of the third of May 1861, providing for the increase in number of the regular army and navy, and prescribing that volunteers called into the service of the United States under that proclamation should serve for a period of three years if the war might continue during that period. As part of the history of the subversion of the government, this proclamation is referred to as evidence of fact.

The United States Constitution, in the most positive, express and unequivocal terms, delegates to Congress the sole authority both to raise armies and to make rules for their government, as well as those of the naval force. This Constitutional provision was disregarded by the President in his proclamation of the third of May. He assumed the power in that proclamation which the Constitution had vested in Congress alone, and which no one ever supposed that a President had a right to exercise.

Thus, by almost the first official act of Lincoln did he violate the Constitution, which, little more than a month previous he had taken an oath to “preserve, protect and defend.” This oath, it seems, he has since construed so that it does not require him to obey the Constitution, as if he could both preserve, protect and defend it by the same act which disobeys it.

It was in vain that the Constitution vested in Congress only the power to raise and support armies, to provide and maintain a navy, and to make rules for the governing of the land and naval forces. Lincoln by his proclamation assumed the right and power to do all this – a right which scarcely any monarch, if a single one, would dare to assume, and a power which no one but a usurper would attempt to exercise.”

(Prisoner of State. Dennis A. Mahoney. Addressed to Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton and entered by Act of Congress in the year 1863. Published by Crown Rights Book Company, 2001, pp. 29-31)

In 1887, President Grover Cleveland vetoed the “Dependent Pension Bill” which sought to reward a favored Republican constituency, the North’s veterans of the Civil War. Since 1865, the Republican party had created and expanded a virtual national welfare program to attract their votes. Viewing this bill as simply a “raid on the US Treasury” benefitting the Republican party, Cleveland incurred the wrath of Northern veterans as he believed it was charity, and his veto the honorable path to take.

The Daily Advertiser of Boston in early September 1865 contained the letter of an astute resident who advised the public to give veterans work and a full share of public offices. Otherwise, he feared, “we shall guarantee a faction, a political power, to be known as the soldier vote . . . I wonder if our State politicians remember that 17,000 men can give the election to either party.”

America’s First Welfare Program

Lincoln’s government initiated a military pension system in mid-July 1862 and included a $5 fee for Claim Agents who assisted veterans; attorneys could charge $1.50 if additional testimony and affidavit were required. The House of Representatives set this latter amount given the temptation for unscrupulous attorneys to take undue advantage of the pensioners. With this Act passed, practically every member of Congress became anxious to provide for soldiers, sailors and their dependents – more than a few began to take advantage of the political power that lay in the hands of the “soldier vote.” A Mr. Holman, representing Indiana in Congress, praised the 5,000 Indiana men “who gave up the charmed circle of their homes to maintain the old flag of the Union.”

As the war continued into 1864 and the spirit of revenge in the North increased, it was officially proposed to create a large pension fund for Northern soldiers by confiscating Southern property.  In September 1865, Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, a former slave-State, “proposed a plan whereby he hoped the government would realize over three and a half billions of dollars by confiscating Southern property. Although no such a measure ever became law, it reveals the attitude which several members of the House had toward the question of pensions.”

The abuse of the pension system by 1875 caused the commissioner, Henry Atkinson, to state that “the development of frauds of every character in pension claims has assumed such magnitude as to require the serious attention of Congress . . .”

(History of the Civil War Military Pensions, 1861-1865. John William Oliver. Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, No. 844, Vol. 4, No. 1. pp. 11-12; 14; 20; 41)

The men of the 51^st Pennsylvania Regiment, mostly of Harrisburg, mustered in late 1861 to help “save the Union.” Their early service was at North Carolina’s Outer Banks through the capture of New Bern in March of 1862, where blue-coated soldiers ransacked homes and businesses. Afterward, empty troopships returning northward were said to be loaded with stolen furniture, paintings, libraries, jewelry and antiques. It is recalled that Willam Penn and his Quakers were slaveholders, and in the early 1700s were kidnapping Tuscarora children in North Carolina for slavery in Pennsylvania.

In mid-July 1863, the 51st Regiment was attached to Gen. W.T. Sherman’s army. Ordered to destroy anything considered “military or commercially related” at Jackson, the regiment first helped themselves to the possessions of the citizenry.

The Sacking of Another American City

“After the 51^st Pennsylvania Regiment under Col. John Hartranft planted its colors in the front of Mississippi’s State Capitol at Jackson, it stacked arms in the street. A detail was made to guard the stacks and another to guard prisoners who had been paroled at Vicksburg.

The remainder of the regiment not on special duty then broke ranks and ransacked the town for tobacco, whiskey and such valuables as had been left behind by the fleeing citizens on the retreat of Gen. Joe Johnston. Tobacco warehouses had been broken open, and the invaders freely supplied themselves with the weed of the very best brands; none other suited them now. Whiskey was the next thing to be sought out, and a copious supply was found and used. After supplying themselves to repletion with the above, then private property had to suffer.

Grocery, dry goods, hat, millinery and drug stores were broken open and “cleaned out” of every vestige of their contents; private dwellings entered and plundered of money, jewelry and all else of any value was carried off; crockery, chinaware, pianos, furniture, etc., were smashed to atoms; hogsheads of sugar rolled into the street and the heads knocked in and contents spilled.

About noon the Pennsylvania regiment was ordered to occupy a large fort near the city. As the regiment was marching out it made quite a ludicrous appearance, for the men were dressed in the most laughable and grotesque habiliments that could be found. Some clad in all female attire, some with hats having crowns a foot high, shawls, sunbonnets, frock skirts, with crinoline over all instead of underneath; in fact, everything was put on that a head, hand, arm, body, a foot or feet could get into, and . . . carrying bonnets and bandboxes in their hands.

They were followed by the colored females, yelling and screaming with delight, and begging the “Yankees” to “gib us dat bonnit” and “Massa, do please gib me dat frock.” By the time the regiment arrived at the fort the colored ladies were in possession of nearly every particle of female wear which the men had.”

(History of the Fifty-first Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers. Thomas H. Parker, King & Baird Printers, 1869. Pp. 363-365)

A bronze equestrian monument of Maj. Gen. John F. Hartranft stands majestically outside the capitol building at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This memorial still stands today despite Hartranft waging war against Americans in the South who fought for political independence as did their ancestors in 1776. Under the Constitution Hartranft swore fealty to, Article III, Section 3 is clear regarding treason as waging war against a State.

After the death of Lincoln, Hartranft served as a special provost marshal during the show trial and predictable convictions, including that of Mary Surratt. He afterward personally led these Americans to the gallows in early July 1865.  In 1872 he became governor of Pennsylvania governor and won a second term in 1876 despite being accused of bribing leaders of the Molly Maguires to induce members to vote for him.

Monument to a War Hero Politician

Just prior to the battle of First Manassas in July 1861, the enlistment period of then-Col. Hartranft’s Pennsylvania regiment had expired, and they returned home. Assigned as an aide to another command during the battle, he was unsuccessful in his attempt to stem the wholesale retreat of Northern soldiers. For this latter action Hartranft was to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1886.

In April 1862, Hartranft was colonel of the 51^st PA regiment during Gen. Burnside’s invasion of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The resulting occupation of the islands and afterward New Bern was marked by the wholesale looting and pillaging of businesses and civilians.

In May 1863, Hartranft’s 51^st Pennsylvania Regiment was near Jackson, Mississippi as Grant approached Vicksburg. At that time, the Lieber Code which would govern the conduct of northern armies in the field was being promulgated – it forbade the waging of war against innocent civilians.

At Jackson, one of Hartranft’s officers later wrote in 1866 of the 51^st Pennsylvania troops who “broke ranks and ransacked the town of Jackson for tobacco, whiskey and valuables . . . Grocery, dry goods, hat, shoe, millinery and drug stores were broken open and “cleaned out” of every vestige of their contents: private dwellings entered and plundered of money, jewelry and all else of any value were carried off; crockery, chinaware, pianos, furniture, etc., were smashed to atoms; hogsheads of sugar rolled into the street and heads knocked in and contents spilled . . . and soon some very splendid buildings were reduced to ashes.”

The writer continues: “As the 51^st Pennsylvania Regiment was marching out [of town] it made quite a ludicrous appearance, for the men were clad in female attire, some with hats having crowns a foot high, some with masks on, shawls, frock skirts, with crinoline all over instead of underneath . . . marching with bonnet and bandboxes in their hands.

They were followed by the colored females, screaming with delight and begging the “Yankees” to “gib us dat bonnit,” and “Massa, do please gib me dat frock.” By the time they reached their destination the colored ladies were in possession of nearly every particle of female wear which the men had stolen.”

(History of the Fifty-first Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers. Thomas H. Parker, King & Baird, Printers, 1869, pp. 85; 363-365).

The author below records that when Gen. Hooker took command of the Army of the Potomac in late-Jan. 1863, desertions were occurring at a rate of several hundred a day – with about 25 per cent of his assumed strength missing. Senator Henry Wilson stated on the Senate floor in March 1864 that some 40,000 soldiers had already deserted despite executions occurring almost daily in that army.

Northern Desertions, 1863

“Perhaps Lee and the commanders in the South saw with the eyes of the Union scout who wrote from Virginia on November 20, 1862, that desertions form Union lines were so frequent as to be disgusting to Southerners as well.

It is about this time that Lincoln recognized and presented the situation in realistic terms. He pointed out to a group of women calling upon him that while Gen. McClellan was constantly calling for more and more troops, that deserters and furloughed men outnumbered the new recruits; and that while that general had 180,000 men on the rolls for the Antietam battle, he had had only some 90,000 with which to enter the fight, as 20,000 men were in hospitals and the rest “absent,” and that within two hours after the battle, some 30,000 had straggled and deserted.

Northern General Pope in September of that year had reported the straggling as so bad that unless something were done to restore tone to the army, it would “melt away before you know it.”

No less a figure than Gen. Halleck charged that not a few Northern soldiers voluntarily surrendered to the enemy in order to be paroled as prisoners of war. Even the vigilance of escorts and guards was materially affected by the alluring thought that captivity meant liberty and relaxation. Many Northern soldiers, according to Generals Meade and McClellan, dispersed and left during the Antietam battle.

Every Northern defeat was marked by a long line of stragglers and deserters, who, if the outcome had been different, would probably have remained to press on the advantage. And the number absent without leave in late December 1862, after Gen. Burnside’s disaster at Fredericksburg, worsened the losses and the demoralization of Lincoln’s army was complete.”

(Desertions During the Civil War. Ella Lonn. University of Nebraska Press, 1998, pg. 144-145. (original American Historical Association, 1928)

Yankee Deserters

“The rigor of treating Yankee deserters as prisoners of war appears to have relaxed during the winter of 1862-1863 when so large a number of them had accumulated in the military prisons that the Secretary of War gave instructions to allow such of them as were willing to take the oath of allegiance to the Confederate States of America, and then to permit them to seek work where it could be found.

Accordingly, a number were employed by a director of the Tredegar Works at Richmond, who forwarded them to labor in Rockbridge County, Virginia, where their presence duly alarmed the Confederate House of Representatives.

Somewhat more than a year later, in June 1864, an enrolling officer attempted to conscript some Yankee deserters, who, under an oath of neutrality, preferable to an oath of allegiance as it could not be broken by conscription, had secured work near Salisbury, North Carolina, where their conduct had been unexceptional, against the protest of the captain commanding the post.

The War Department, as consistency demanded, discharged the men as protected by their oath of neutrality. But at the same time there were deserters from the northern army who preferred to be treated as prisoners of war.

Beginning with the middle of 1862 a distinct effort was made by Confederate State authorities to encourage desertion from the north’s armies. It was at first directed to the inhabitants of Tennessee in the hope of detaching the State from northern strength to at least neutrality.

General Lee was not mistaken in believing that the Confederacy’s offer of stimulating deserters with release to the north – many printed in German – so that they may spread the story of kind treatment from Southerners.

Grant admitted in a statement that bounty and substitute men had been deserting immediately upon their arrival at the front to take advantage of the Confederacy’s offer to send them through the lines. The Richmond papers on September 4, 1864, announced that several hundred Federal deserters had already availed themselves of the offer and were waiting to be sent north. It may possibly have affected several thousand soldiers all told.

(Desertion During the Civil War, Ella Lonn. Bison Books, 1998 (original 1928). pp. 184-185; 190-191)