More Books With Staying Power

As mentioned in an earlier posting, historians often cite Annie Heloise Abel’s trilogy about the slaveholding Indians in the Indian Territory. Four books by Union veteran Wiley Britton also regularly crop up in book citations. Born near Neosho, Missouri, in 1841, Britton enlisted in March 1862 in Company K of the 6^th Kansas Cavalry, a regiment that saw much service in the border area. Based on a diary, his Memoirs of the Rebellion on the Border: 1863 is a good chronicle of campaigning and contains excellent descriptions of the people and geography of Arkansas, the Indian Territory, and Missouri. Pioneer Life in Southwest Missouri relates facts of Britton’s early life and the Civil War years in southwest Missouri. Britton used his diary, official records, and papers loaned to him by participants in writing The Civil War On The Border in two volumes. This work was the first to focus exclusively on the entire war along the border, and it ranks as Britton’s most cited work along with his Memoirs. An inferior work, and one less cited, is The Union Indian Brigade In The Civil War that provides too little specific information about the brigade to even be considered as a unit history. Like Abel, Wiley Britton was also a pioneering historian of the trans-Mississippi. He died in 1930 at the Old Soldiers Home in Leavenworth, Kansas.

Bibliographic citations for his books:

Britton, Wiley. The Civil War On The Border. 2 vols. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1899-1904; reprint ed., Ottawa, KS: Kansas Heritage Press, 1994.

Britton, Wiley. Memoirs of the Rebellion on the Border: 1863. Chicago: Cushing, Thomas, and Co., 1882; reprint ed., Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993.

Britton, Wiley. Pioneer Life in Southwest Missouri. Columbia: State Historical Society of Missouri, 1923.

Britton, Wiley. The Union Indian Brigade In The Civil War. Kansas City, MO: Franklin Hudson Publishing Co., 1922; reprint ed., Ottawa, KS: Kansas Heritage Press, n.d.

The Battle of Prairie Grove: The Human Toll

One hundred and fifty years ago today, the battle of Prairie Grove was fought near Fayetteville, Arkansas. The Confederate army altogether suffered casualties of 1,483 men (204 killed, 872 wounded, and 407 missing); the Union army suffered losses of 1,233 men (175 killed, 808 wounded, and 250 missing). The human toll of the battle is seen more clearly in the casualty lists that give personal names and a description of the wounds. Here are two Confederate casualty lists from the battle of Prairie Grove:

Captain Henry West’s Arkansas Battery:  Situated on top of a ridge, the Borden House was the epicenter of the battle. West’s Battery was positioned near the base of this ridge when “The fire of several Federal batteries was soon concentrated on him, and his loss in men and animals was quite heavy.” This action resulted in the following casualties:

“Killed: First Sergeant John B. Whitsitt, Corporal H. T. Boatright, Private Peter Gallagher. Wounded: Privates Thomas J. Lane, left arm off; R. J. Irvin, slightly in face; Charles Clifton, slightly in leg and head. Missing: Private Albert Brooks.”

Captain William D. Blocher’s Missouri Battery: Blocher’s Battery was positioned near the Borden House and was the target of several Union assaults. The Battery’s casualties were: “Killed: Privates Joseph Leech and John Conn. Wounded: Corporal A. Choate, arm off; Privates H. J. Cox, right arm off; M. D. Dunnaway. left hip; Louis Hillborn, left foot; James Keel, in the chest; -----Tyree, left hand off; Musician Sol Catharina, supposed fatally. Missing: Martin, wounded by fall of horse; Alex McComas, left arm off; S. B. Clary, left arm; Hardy Tucker, in breast. Missing: Ogden Bryant, Patrick Cain, David Cheatham, Peter Fitzpatrick, James Gibbons, Larry Gallagher, Patrick Grady, ----- Hogan, E. W. Johnston, ----- Sanders, Daniel Wilson”

For those of you who enjoy battlefield tramping, the Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park is well worth a visit.

Source of quotes: W. E. Woodruff, With The Light Guns In ’61-’65: Reminiscences Of Eleven Arkansas, Missouri and Texas Light Batteries, In The Civil War (Little Rock: Central Printing Co., 1903; reprint ed., Little Rock: Eagle Press, n.d.), p. 87, 89.

The 20th Iowa Marches to Prairie Grove

So, what was it like to participate in the greatest march of the war? And, how many men actually made it all the way to the battlefield? Colonel Joseph Bloomfield Leake’s report contains some interesting observations about the 20^th Iowa Infantry’s role in the epic march from near Springfield, Missouri, to the Prairie Grove battlefield. Leake noted that “On the morning of December 4, the condition of the regiment was as follows: Present, 30 commissioned officers, 3 of whom were sick; 637 enlisted men, of whom 22 were sick.” After describing the march into Arkansas, Leake continued by writing “We then marched on rapidly until we arrived at the battlefield between 11 and 12 o’clock on the morning of December 7, a distance of nine miles. The regiment thus marched the distance of 100 miles in eighty consecutive hours, the last fifty-three and one-half of which we accomplished in thirty-one hours. Very much of the command marched with shoes so much worn that their feet were upon the ground, and were badly bruised and cut up by the stony road. Many of the boots furnished at Camp Lyon fitted the feet of the men so illy that they became inflamed and blistered by the continuous marching, and a few carried their boots in their hands, and marched to the field in their bare feet, whilst many fell out by the way, unable to march further. Under these circumstances, we went into the engagement with only 270 men enlisted men, and twenty-three commissioned officers.” This means that the regiment suffered a loss of 42.4% of their enlisted men on the march and 7.7% of their commissioned officers [I included the sick in the totals].

Source of quotes: Janet B. Hewett, Noah Andre Trudeau, and Bryce A. Suderow, eds., Supplement To The Official Records Of The Union and Confederate Armies (Wilmington, NC: Broadfoot Publishing Co., 1995), Vol. 4: pp. 43-44.

The Greatest March of the War?

One hundred and fifty years ago today, Union troops were on the march on unimproved roadways from near Springfield, Missouri, to what became the Prairie Grove battlefield near Fayetteville, Arkansas. Although the mileages differed from regiment to regiment, the 2^nd Division of the Army of the Frontier logged about 105 miles in three and a half days; the 3^rd Division marched about 120 miles in a similar time frame. An incredible feature to this is that at the end of the march, the men went almost directly into heavy combat at Prairie Grove. Another amazing aspect of the march is the weather: on the mornings of December 4^th and 5th, the temperature was about 20 degrees. And, if you’re in need of one more detail, the roads traversed terrain that was fairly rugged in places. Bill Shea, the author of the best book on the campaign, labels this march “an epic of human endurance,” and I agree with his assessment.

Source of quote: William L. Shea, Fields of Blood: The Prairie Grove Campaign (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), p. 128.

Books With Staying Power

When I get a new Civil War book, I first look at the endnotes/footnotes so I can see the kinds of sources that the author used. Perhaps this makes me a geek, but I like to see how an author constructed the book. Over the years, I’ve read a fair number of books relating to the trans-Mississippi, and there are certain sources that I see referenced over and over. One of these is the trilogy written by Anne Heloise Abel, a pioneering historian. Published between 1915 and 1925, Abel studied the fate of the slaveholding Indians (the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles) in the Indian Territory from 1830-1866. Most modern historians focus on relatively small slices of history so I am impressed at Abel’s audacity in tackling a large and complex topic.

According to the introduction in the modern reprint of her trilogy, Abel was born in England, but her family emigrated to Kansas when she was a still a youngster. She earned her first degrees at the University of Kansas and then earned a Ph.D. at Yale University. How and why she became interested in the topic of slaveholding Indians during the war is a mystery to me; perhaps it related to her time at the University of Kansas. Several years after earning her Ph.D., she taught at a college in Baltimore and traveled regularly to Washington, D. C. to examine Bureau of Indian Affairs records. Abel was the first historian to study many of these documents.

Admittedly, it took me several years to work up the courage to begin reading her books as I assumed that they were densely written. Much to my surprise they proved to be well organized and quite readable. However, she was fond, quite fond, of footnotes and some pages consist primarily of notes. She had a tendency to include transcriptions of excerpts and even entire documents in her notes. Although this is viewed as quite old-fashioned today, I have actually found her notes to be quite valuable in my latest research project. Another refreshing feature of her books is the almost total absence of typographical errors. One of my pet peeves in recent years has been the great increase in typographical errors in history books. Not too long ago, I had to set aside a book for a few days because I became so irritated at the many typos. But, I digress… A major negative feature of Abel’s trilogy is her outmoded, ethnocentric references to Indians; her wording can be quite jarring. Also, she failed to make use of Indian sources in her study. In spite of these criticisms, though, Abel’s work has stood the test of time. It has been almost 100 years since her trilogy was published and essentially every journal article or book dealing with the Indian Territory references her work. Now, that is staying power!

Bibliographic citations for her books:

Abel, Annie Heloise. The American Indian as Slaveholder and Secessionist. Cleveland: Arthur H. Clarke, 1915; reprint ed., Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992.

Abel, Annie Heloise. The American Indian in the Civil War, 1862-1865. Cleveland: Arthur H. Clarke, 1919; reprint ed., Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992.

Abel, Annie Heloise. The American Indian and the End of the Confederacy, 1863-1866. Cleveland: Arthur H. Clarke, 1925; reprint ed., Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993.