College Looted!

War swept through the Arkansas plateau known as Cane Hill on November 28, 1862, during the Prairie Grove campaign. Among the communities in the area was Boonsboro (now known as Canehill), the home of Cane Hill College. This institution, established in 1834, evolved into a four year college in 1852. Following the fighting in the area, Union soldiers settled in for several days. Among them was an Ohio artilleryman named Robert T. McMahan who chronicled some “jayhawking” in his diary. In McMahan’s words:

“November 28, 1862….We camped in the boro and buried one or two of the rebel dead. Bookstore plundered. Cane Hill College suffered to the extent of the loss of her libraries (in part) and her chemical apparatus in toto. There was several shells fired by our men into the meetinghouse by the college as the rebels had posted themselves near and around it….

November 30, 1862: On guard last night and today. Search made this morning for Jayhawked property. Four books found in the battery. I had more than that rolled up in my blankets which they however did not see fit to examine?? My first hawking too. Young man in the 3^rd Wis. [cavalry] tied up to a tree for three hours because he had the telescope from the Cane Hill College… (3 feet long).”

And what did McMahan jawhawk? Apparently the following items…

“December 1, 1862: Am now flush with Geological works. Have Hitchcock’s Geology, Hugh Miller’s food and fruits and Humbolt’s Cosmos Volumes 1 and 2” (p. 83-84).

Robert T. McMahan’s diary is part of the excellent Unwritten Chapters of the Civil War West of the River series edited by Michael E. Banasik and published by the Camp Pope Bookshop of Iowa City, Iowa.

Union Soldiers and the Christmas Season

Have you ever wondered what the Christmas season was like for Civil War soldiers? I perused my bookshelves and located some quotes about the day from the perspective of Union soldiers posted in various parts of the trans-Mississippi.

August Scherneckau, near Van Buren, Missouri:
“Wednesday, December 24 [1862]—….Christmas Eve, surrounded by the loveliest evergreen trees, provided many opportunities to obtain a Christmas tree, but for whom? And with whom? I felt lonesome in the middle of thousands of comrades, almost had some sort of homesickness. It was, of course, the first Christmas Eve I had to spend without having some friends or relatives around who like myself—and we North Germans in general—were accustomed to observing this evening. The pine branches that we brought into camp tonight reminded me very vividly of our homeland….

Thursday, December 25—Christmas Day. The most miserable I have ever spent….We had to clean the whole camp, each company its tent alley and also around the tents of its officers. All bushes had to be cut down, the leaves swept away and burned. The rocks, with which the ground is covered, had to be thrown onto piles, etc. I was busy with this work when I was ordered to report to the quartermaster. There I received the assignment, with about twenty more men, to chop wood for burning charcoal….This pleasant work kept us going until evening….”

From James E. Potter and Edith Robbins, eds., Marching With The First Nebraska: A Civil War Diary (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007), 50-51.

Robert T. McMahan, Rhea’s Mills, Arkansas:
“December 25 1862:
Nothing unusual in camp today save the extra chicken fixens etc. for Christmas. Heard that our Reg. camped in Leavenworth the evening of the 6^th on their way to Ohio. Arrived in Leavenworth from Ft. Scott in mule wagons and on foot. Horses played out and turned over at Ft. Scott.”

From Michael E. Banasik, ed., Reluctant Cannoneer: The Diary of Robert T. McMahan of the Twenty-fifth Independent Ohio Light Artillery (Iowa City: Camp Pope Bookshop, 2000), 94.

Henry O. Gusley, Galveston, Texas:
“December 26, 1862
Christmas is over—gone—past; nor was it in any respect dissimilar to other days. Even the quiet of Sunday was not ours; and the same ration which a common day would have brought, we thankfully received. Well, its novelty may after all be of some benefit; and at some future Christmas, if we are spared to spend another in civil life, the remembrance of this and the last one may add a greater zest to the roast fowl, pies, puddings and bonbons in which we may then be indulging. We hope so….”

From Edward T. Cotham, Jr., ed., The Southern Journey of a Civil War Marine: The Illustrated Note-Book of Henry O. Gusley (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), 126.

Sergeant George Hand, Fort McRae, New Mexico:
“Dec. 25. [1863] Christmas passed off very dull, but towards night whiskey was found where soldiers always find it, and Co. ‘G’ was nearly all drunk and noisy until morning, when a cold snowstorm dr0ve them all to bed.”

From Neil B. Carmony, ed., The Civil War in Apacheland: Sergeant George Hand’s Diary: California, Arizona, West Texas, New Mexico, 1861-1864 (Silver City, NM: High-Lonesome Books, 1996), 151.