Dancing Priest

Author and Novelist Glynn Young

Civil War

“Mosby’s Rangers” by James Joseph Williamson

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In my novel Brookhaven, I have the 13-year-old Sam McClure sent to the Confederate army in the East. His father had fought with Robert E. Lee in the Mexican American War, and Lee hoped that the young Sam had learned some of his father’s espionage and survival skills. The young man is assigned to a unit called Colby’s Rangers, and after a few weeks of basic training is sent with others to prepare for Lee’s invasion of the North, which culminated in the Battle of Gettysburg. 

The model for Colby’s Rangers in the novel is an actual unit called Mosby’s Rangers. It was less involved in espionage and more involved in disruptions of federal lines, camps, and supply lines. When General Jeb Stuart “rode around” the Union army of George McClellan in 1862, it was Mosby’s Rangers leading the cavalry.

Beginning in April 1863, James Joseph Williamson was a private who gained what many Confederate soldiers and cavalrymen desired – a spot in Mosby’ Rangers. Some 44 years later in 1909, he published a memoir of his time with the unit, which stretched to the end of the war in 1865. Mosby’s Rangers: A Record of the Operations of the Fourth-Third Battalion Virginia Cavalry, From Its Organization to the Surrender is the title. and it was republished as an e-book in 2018. (It’s also available as an audio book.)

Memoirs of the Civil War by soldiers were common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Civil War generation was dying out, and much of the story had not been told. Generals had been their memoirs published; Ulysess S. Grant’s memoirs were a bestseller.  But now it seemed it was the soldiers and lower officers who were publishing accounts “from the ground level.”

Williamson published two editions in his lifetime; the second corrected errors and added information. He had kept a diary during the war years, and the diary became the basis for the memoir. 

It’s a highly readable, interesting, and often thrilling account. John S. Mosby was a Virginian attorney when he joined the Confederate Army. He caught the eye of Jeb Stuart, and he soon became known as one of Stuart’s key men. Mosby’s Rangers operated primarily in the Shenandoah Valley and northern Viriginia, he it’s fair to say they ran circles (literally and figuratively) around Union armies. 

Col. John Mosby

He was nicknamed the “Gray Ghost;” his cavalrymen could slip through enemy lines almost like phantoms. One of the most famous of the Rangers’ exploits was in March 1863. In the early morning hours, a group of 30 Rangers led by Mosby discovered a break in Union lines. They traveled several miles to Fairfax County Courthouse and captured Union Brigadier General Edwin Stoughton, two captains, 30 soldiers, and nearly 60 horses without a shot being fired to a man lost. And then they made their way back to Confederate lines. The story electrified the South and outraged the North; it also earned Mosby a promotion. After Stuart’s death, Mosby reported directly to Lee.

Williamson was one of the 29 men who accomplished “the impossible raid,” and his account is riveting.

Mosby survived the war, despite a bounty placed on his head by Grant. Impressed by what Mosby had accomplished, Grant would pardon him when he became President. They became friends, and Mosby – to the dismay of his Southern fans – became a Republican and worked to unify the country. His popularity diminished rapidly.

Mosby’s Rangers is a great story, told first-hand by a man who was there and saw it happen.

Top photograph: A group of Mosby’s Rangers, with Mosby in the center.

Finding an Army Medal in a Small-Town Antique Store

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I’m always suspicious of Facebook messages coming from people I don’t know. If it seems that a message might possibly be legitimate, I’ll check the person’s profile page. More often than not, it’s people from Hong Kong or the Philippines or Africa, or people who names and profile photos clearly don’t match. Click delete.

A few weeks ago, one arrived that raised my suspicions, but the sender seemed legitimate. And he was. He asked me if I was the author of this article at Emerging Civil War: “Research for a Novel Upended a Family Legend.” Yep, that was me.

He said he had an interesting story to tell me, and we eventually connected by phone. 

Cross of Military Service

Some weeks before, he’d been in an antique store in Paris, Texas, north of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He collects Civil War memorabilia, and he’d found a medal with a serial number on the back.

The medal was a Cross of Military Service. It had been awarded by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDAC) to veterans whose ancestors fought in the Civil War and who themselves were veterans of World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, and/or the Global War on Terror. He said finding a medal like this was highly unusual, because families tended to hold on to them, even after the awardee’s death. 

He contacted the UDAC and learned that this one was even more unusual – it had been awarded to a woman for her service in both World War II and Korea. Her name was U.S. Army Major Ruby Edwina McCain. She was born in 1913 and died in 1991. The UDAC was able to tell him that her Civil War ancestor was Jarvis Seale, born in 1824 in Amite County, Mississippi, and died in 1862 at the Battle of Shiloh. Ruby was his great-granddaughter.

The man who found the medal went looking for Jarvis Seale, and what did he find but my article at Emerging Civil War.

Ruby Edwina McCain

For a long time, Jarvis Seale was the mystery man in the Young family Bible records. No one knew why he was there. Family Search eventually revealed the reason – he had married a Martha Young, the oldest sister of my great-grandfather Samuel, who originally bought the Bible and entered all of the family records. Samuel would have known his brother-in-law and remembered him in the Bible. Samuel also lost his two older brothers in the war.

What puzzled my new friend was what had puzzled several people – why was Jarvis listed in Find-a-Grave and Family Search as buried in a cemetery in Clarksville, Texas? The fact is, he wasn’t. He was buried in one of several mass graves for Confederate dead at Shiloh. At some point years later, one of his daughters moved with her husband to Clarksville, and she had placed a memorial stone there in the family plot. That was two mysteries solved – the Bible’s mystery name and the Texas gravestone.

Ruby McCain was from Clarksville. Her grandmother had been the one to arrange for the memorial stone. Clarksville is about 20 miles south of the Oklahoma border, and 30 miles east of Paris, Texas, where Ruby’s medal ended up. Our best guess is that a relative (Ruby had no children) had included the medal in an estate sale or given it away, and it ended up in the antique store.

Jarvis and Martha furnished their names for characters in my novel Brookhaven. A medal, a memorial stone, and a book brought them back from the past, facilitated by Facebook messenger and a phone call.

“Glorious Courage: John Pelham in the Civil War” by Sarah Kay Bierle

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In my research for my novel Brookhaven, it was difficult not to run across references to one particular officer.

John Pelham was an Alabama boy, the third of three sons and born in 1838 in a small wooden house in rural Benton County. His father was a doctor and farmer, enjoying both community respect and economic success. The family’s reputation was such that John’s father was able to get an appointment for his son to the U.S. Military Academy. The young man arrived at West Point in 1856, enrolling in a five-year degree program.

As the rhetoric of the years leading up to the Civil War became increasingly heated, West Point must have become a strange place – outwardly uniform but inwardly affected by the same passions rearing the country apart. John left the academy in 1861, one month shy of graduation. Like other Southerners at West Point, he was being closely watched as secession tore the country apart. He made his way to New York City and then to border-state Kentucky, finally reaching home. Just as he’d been watched by his commanding officers at West Point, he’d also been observed by their Southern counterparts, who were keen to make use of his military training.

For the rest of his short life – he would be mortally wounded aged 24 at the Battle of Kelly’s Ford in 1863 – John Pelham became the stuff of legend. Historian Sarah Kay Bierle has spent years studying in his life, separating fact from myth. The facts of his military prowess didn’t need myth and legend to enhance his reputation. Despite almost all of his letters having disappeared, she’s been able to reconstruct his life and accomplishments from the letters and reports of others as well as official records and reports.

Bierle has succinctly and compellingly summarized it all in Glorious Courage: John Pelham in the Civil War.

And what an enthralling story it is.

Pelham proved the utility of the horse artillery. Have horses pull artillery pieces meant they could be moved frequently and strategically during battle. Pelham demonstrated the value – and his own – during the battles of the Peninsular Campaign, First and Second Manassas (Bull Run), Antietam, and Fredericksburg, among several others. He caught the eye of Confederate generals like Stonewall Jackson, Jeb Stuart, and Robert E. Lee. He was promoted to major and then recommended for a promotion to lieutenant colonel, which was pending at the time of his death. 

He became known as the “Gallant John Pelham;” it was Lee who described his “glorious courage” (and inspired the title of Bierle’s book). In the years after the war, the legends cropped up around him; it seems every young Southern woman had had a romance with him. (And while it was in a different context, it was Pelham who inspired one aspect of the main character in my novel – how legends get born that often have no basis in fact.)

Sarah Kay Bierle

Bierle is what’s called a public historian, working in the field of Civil War education and battlefield preservation. She’s written articles and essays for numerous publications, including Emerging Civil War, and is a frequent speaker on Civil War topics. Her previous publications include Decisions at Chancellorsville, War in the Western Theater, and Call Out the Cadets: The Battle of New Market, May 15, 1864. 

Glorious Courage is a fascinating read. It does what good history should do – separate fact from fable and present a person or event as it should be. In the case of John Pelham, he didn’t need legends to enhance his reputation, and Bierle serves her subject very well indeed.

Related:

Martha Pelham’s Letter: Finding Colorful Details for John Pelham’s 1858 Summer – Sarah Kay Bierle at Emerging Civil War.

Artillery: John Pelham –  Artilleryman, Gallant Fool, Splendid Boy – Sarah Kay Bierle at Emerging Civil War.

Podcast: Historian Sarah Kay Bierle on ‘Gallant’ John Pelham – John Banks’ Civil War Blog.

Top photograph: One of there three known photo of John Pelham.

What Happened to the Fireside Poets?

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When I first envisioned my novel Brookhaven, I focused on a family story passed down through generations, which turned out to be a legend, as in, almost entirely untrue. But two things shifted my focus. 

First, in 2022, I had the old family Bible conserved. It had seen better days; my father gave it to me wrapped in grocery store bag paper and tied with strong. My contribution had been to remove the paper and string, wrap it in acid-free paper, and store in an acid-free box. It sat on a closet shelf for years, until I brought it to a book conservator in St. Louis. He discovered something tucked in the Book of Isaiah that both my father and I had missed – a yellowed envelope containing a lock of auburn hair.

For various reasons, I believe the hair belonged to my great-grandmother Octavia. She died in 1888 at age 44. Unusual for the time, my great-grandfather Samuel never remarried. He died in 1920. And I thought to myself, “There’s a love story here.”

Second, also in 2022, we saw a movie entitled “I Heard the Bells.” It’s a snapshot of the life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) during the Civil War, including both the tragic death of his beloved wife and the near death from a war wound of his oldest son Charles. Both events contributed to Longfellow’s writing the poem that became a Christmas hymn, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” 

To continue reading, please see me post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Illustration: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

The Book on My Father’s Bookshelf

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The book sat on a bookshelf in my parent’s bedroom for as long as I can remember. The shelf itself was a former window, occupied by an air conditioner when they became available in late 1950s New Orleans. When central air became possible, the window was reconfigured as a bookshelf.

The title of the book was The Battle of Liberty Place: the Overthrow of Carpetbag Rule in New Orleans, written by Stuart Omer Landry. It was printed by a local New Orleans publisher, Pelican Publishing, in 1955. This volume was apparently part of a numbered edition, except the number is left blank. If I remember correctly, a friend of my father’s at the publisher gave him a copy as a gift.

The book tells the story of a pitched battle that occurred in 1874, when New Orleans was still occupied by federal troops. On Sept. 14, 1874, some 5,000 armed citizens under the leadership of the Crescent City White League fought with the Metropolitan Police and state militia. The insurgents won the battle and held downtown New Orleans, including the statehouse and the armory, for three days. Federal troops arrived and restored the elected government. 

The insurgent army drove the federal forces to take refuge in the Customs House on Canal Street (still in existence today), Eventually, after President Grant sent troops and gunboats, a truce was worked out. The siege ended and the insurgents dispersed with no one arrested. 

I had always thought that the battle centered on Canal Street. It did, but it had also spilled over into the business district, including a part of Tchoupitoulas Street a scant half-block from where for some 20 years my father had operated his printing and mailing business on Gravier Street. 

This “Battle of Canal Street,” as it has often been called, was the culmination of anger and violence that had started in different parts of the state with the disputed 1872 governor’s election. Both sides had claimed victory; the Democratic candidate likely won but the Republican candidate had the backing of federal troops. Both sides in the election had engaged in fraud and violence; a state panel appointed by the then-governor had declared the Democrat to be the winner.

Carpetbag rule in Louisiana and other places in the former Confederacy ended with the Compromise of 1877, in which Rutherford Hayes (the Republican) became president after the contested election with Samuel Tilden was resolved. In return for the House Democrats to vote for Republican Hayes, all federal troops were withdrawn from the South. And that was the end of Reconstruction, for good and for ill. 

The monument stood on Canal Street until 2017.

Some years later, a monument to the Battle of Liberty Place was erected on Canal Street near the Customs House; I remember walking by it numerous times. The monument was removed in 2017 in the wave of removal of Confederate monuments all over the southern states.

The account in the book is a rather frank celebration of the actions of the White League. The army, comprised primarily of Confederate veterans of the Civil War, is seen as patriots and defenders of liberty. The federal forces and the local police are treated far less favorably. 

The book was a product of its time. The author, Stuart Omer Landry (1884-1966), was also the owner of Pelican Publishing. He had acquired the business in 1927, when it was part of the Pelican Bookstore on Royal Street in the French Quarter and included such patrons as William Faulkner and Sherwood Andrson. Landy also authored several other books, including The Caddo Indians: Their History and Culture, History of the Boston Club, and Dueling in Old New Orleans. Pelican was known for publishing books that advocated white supremacy and segregation, but it also published the first Louisiana Almanac in 1949 as well as other books of local history and culture. 

The paperback edition

After Landry died in 1966, Pelican was acquired by Hodding Carter, the Pulitzer- Prize-winning journalist. He owned it for three years, when it sold it to two brothers who returned it to its Landry-type orientation. In 2019, it was bought by Arcadia Publishing, eventually combined with River Road Press, and remained focused on more general historical and cultural subjects. (One of its titles in a family favorite: The Cajun Night Before Christmas, now more than 50 years old and sold in just about every souvenir shop in New Orleans.)

The Battle of Liberty Place is an artifact of its time. It’s profusely illustrated and isn’t strictly an anti-Union occupation screed. It includes considerable historical information. The first edition is listed for about $145; a paperback edition is also available for about $30.

I can’t recall my father ever talking about it, except to say the book was a gift. He may have done some general printing work for Mr. Landry, but, if so, that’s lost in time as well. When my mother was moving to an assisted living home in 2013, she told me to take whatever books I might be interested in. I took that on, as well as a few books he purchased about World War II and a biography of P.G.T. Beauregard, by historian T. Harry Williams and published by LSU Press, I had given him as a Christmas gift in 1970.

Top photograph: A drawing of the battle near the Customs House on Canal Street.

“Fred Grant at Vicksburg” by Albert Nofi

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When I wrote my historical novel Brookhaven, I was aware of this story, but I didn’t know it in terms of the color and details. Now I do.

In the spring of 1863, Frederick Dent Grant was 12 going on 13. He’d been born in St. Louis. His mother was Julia Dent Grant, daughter of a slaveowner in St. Louis County. His father was Ulysses S. Grant, general in the Union Army, who was now encamped down the Mississippi River, charged with taking Vicksburg, the last Confederate fortification not in Union hands along the Mississippi. Memphis, New Orleans, and Baton Rouge were all in Union hands; Vicksburg was the last impediment to Union control of the river.

The teenaged Fred Grant

And then Grant did something that would seem almost inexplicable to parents today. In early March of 1863, he sent for his oldest son Fred to join him for the Vicksburg campaign. Fred’s mother also did something inexplicable – she let him go, although she did keep nine-year-old Ulysses Jr. with her and the family.

Fred Grant was one thrilled boy. He would talk about it, and give speeches on it, for the rest of his life.

Far from being watched, monitored, or babysat by an orderly, Fred had almost free roam the camps and even many of the battles. His father would occasionally try to keep him in a safe place, but Fred usually found a way to experience the excitement. His was with the army for numerous battles around Vicksburg, traveled with the army for the Battle of Jackson, and was there when Vicksburg surrendered. He also came down with a common soldier’s ailment – dysentery – and was eventually sent home to St. Louis to recuperate.

Many of Fred’s speeches still exist, and he wrote down his account of the experience in memoir form. Historian Albert Nofi had assembled many of these sources and edited Fred Grant at Vicksburg: A Boy’s Memoir at His Father’s Side During the American Civil War. Fred’s account in not a series of diary entries but rather the adult son of the Union general looking back on one of the most important engagements of the Civil War. While the Battle of Gettysburg usually gets more attention, the fall of Vicksburg established full Union control of the Mississippi River and split the Confederacy in two. 

Fred Grant about 1900

Fred Grant is more than an edited and annotated memoir, however. Nofi provides a succinct and informative introduction and includes several helpful appendices. These are a summary of the Grant and Dent families’ history, short biographies of people and explanations of places mentioned in the text, the order of battle, military terminology, and several other helpful sections that help provide context. The book is also profusely illustrated with photographs, including one of the young Fred Grant at about the time of Vicksburg.

Nofi received his Ph.D. in military history from the City University of New York. He’s written more than 40 books on military history and is a founding member and director of the New York Military Affairs Symposium. He lives in New York City. 

Fred Grant is a memoir, yes, but it also provides a window of a boy’s perspective of war, his father who happened to be one of the most important figures of the Civil War, and how we remember the formative events of our lives. I’s a thoroughly enjoyable book.