It Happened Here --War Stories

Fortunately, for the people of New York State the American Civil War was fought miles away from New York's borders.  Blood soaked fields and bullet riddled woods and shattered cities were not a part of New York's direct experience. But as the most populous state in the Union,  New York supplied the most soldiers, suffered the most casualties, was home to some of the biggest war industries, and was site of one of the largest prisoner-of-war camps in the North.  New York was profoundly effected by the war. Within a few years monuments to the War's survivors and memorials to its dead would spring up in nearly every city and small town with a park or village green across the State, as they did in Virginia or the Carolinas. And from its onset, the war generated war stories.

The war stories told at the beginning of a conflict, and while it is going on, tend to be different from the war stories told by veterans after the war is over. (And quite different, too, from the author-less rumors that are current throughout a war.) The stories told in the early stages of war tend to laud the patriotism, selflessness, and bravery of our own soldiers while vilifying and emphasizing the cruelty of our enemies. In the Texas Revolt of 1836 such stories gave rise to the cry "Remember the Alamo," and similarly, (with more than a little help from America's jingoistic press) gave resolve to the troopers in 1898 storming San Jan Hill, shouting, "Remember the Maine".

On the other hand, war stories told by veterans are often somewhat different, and told for different reasons, focusing more on the capriciousness of war and the ironies of survival. The horrors of war are shared with other veterans for the cathartic effect sharing them seems to have. Personal recollections of people and events are shared to help old soldiers make sense of them and put them in some kind of historical perspective.

One of the first war stories to come out of the Civil War was the story of Col. Elmer Ellsworth, the first union officer killed in the Civil War.  Elmer Elsworth was born in Malta, New York in Saratoga County in 1837, the same year his father lost his tailor business in the Panic that year and was forced to try to make ends meet by doing odd jobs and peddling pickled oysters, door to door. At age 11 his family moved to Mechanicville. The younger Ellsworth was small in stature and was teased with the nickname "oyster keg" but from an early age he dreamed of military glory and became a student of military tactics and drill.

 At an early age he left home and headed west.  A few years before the beginning of the Civil War, Ellsworth found job as a clerk in a patent lawyers' office, near Chicago. Though he was barely eking out an existence as a clerk, he found time to join a local militia unit, the Cadets of the National Guard.  Local militias, decades removed from the last domestic war (in 1812) had become mainly social organizations like weekend softball leagues or sportsman's clubs. Their training was minimal and arms and equipment mismatched and antiquated..

Around this time Ellsworth met Charles DeVillers, a fencing instructor in a local gym. DeVillers was a veteran of the French Zouaves, a group of exotic colonial regiments based in Algiers known for their dashing appearance and daring precision bayonet tactics. Ellsworth became his eager student and in a few months had transformed himself into an expert fencer, an acrobat and a drill instructor/choreographer. Ellsworth's apparent knowledge and enthusiasm led him to be elected as the unit's major, and Ellsworth set out to transform this doughty, lackadaisical militia into a precision drill team, inspired by the Zouaves. After a few local exhibitions the U.S. Zouave Cadets, as they now styled themselves, became a sensation and were booked on a national tour that  took them to two dozen cities in the north and northeast.  On their next-to-last stop in Springfield, Illinois  Ellsworth met with Abraham Lincoln and secured a job with him as one of his law clerks.* 

County Rte 108, east of the roundabouts, Malta

 Through the summer of 1860 he worked with Lincoln in his office and on his campaign, while
Lincoln kept a low profile. When his employer went to Washington,  Ellsworth went with him; then as the country mobilized for war, he offered an idea. The showman major would raise a regiment of real soldiers by recruiting among New York's firemen, who had shown tremendous enthusiasm for the Zouave Cadets. Lincoln approved and in a short time Ellsworth was Colonel to the 11th Volunteer Regiment, the "Fire Zouaves."

When Virginia seceded from the Union in May 1861, Colonel Ellsworth used his influence with the President to get his unit assigned on the first raid into Alexandria, Virginia, across the Potomac. Entering the city, he learned another body of attacking troops had secured an agreement with the Rebel forces.  The Union forces would be allowed to occupy the city if the Rebels troops could withdraw peacefully.  Disappointed, Ellsworth reconciled himself to the notion there would be no opportunity for glory that day! Ellsworth had sent his men ahead to occupy the telegraph office when he remembered a large Confederate flag he had passed, flying from a flagpole atop the Marshall House Inn.  Ellsworth had observed it through a telescope from the White House with Lincoln's family and it had become something of a symbol for the President's critics of the President's reluctance to take decisive action. Turning abruptly,  Ellsworth took four soldiers with him and entered the hotel. There he encountered a disheveled James W. Jackson, the proprietor who pretended to be a border who said he knew nothing about the flag.  In fact, Jackson was an ardent secessionist and slaveholder with a penchant for violence.  Ellsworth and his men rushed passed Jackson up the stairs to the roof.  On the way back down Ellsworth, encumbered with the massive flag, ran into Jackson on the second floor landing. Jackson was now armed with a double barrel shotgun and he fired both barrels at the Colonel at extremely close range. Ellsworth died instantly. A second later Corporal Francis E. Brownell shot Jackson in the face and bayoneted him repeatedly.
 

A photograph of a display of Ellsworth relics exhibited at a U. S. Sanitary Commission benefit (predecessor of the Red Cross) in 1863. Throughout the war Ellsworth memorabilia were used for this purpose and for recruiting, and often featured the bloodstained coat and shirt Ellsworth wore when he was shot.
After the War, the Democratic Party complained Republicans used the Democrats mixed support of the War to link them with the Rebels, and condemn them as "the Party of Secession" a tactic they called "waving the Bloody Shirt" (picture on display at the NYS Military Museum, Saratoga)

 Coat of Col. Ellsworth--Cleaned of Blood when it was conserved, it still shows the fatal damage from Jackson's shotgun blast. Not until 1862, after several friendly fire incidents were all Union troops required to wear blue. (on display at NYS Military Museum, Saratoga)



Within hours, news of the incident was telegraphed to every state in the North. Ellsworth's body was taken to lay in state at the White House. Lincoln was devastated. "My boy! My boy! Was it necessary this sacrifice should be made?"he was heard to murmur.  The funeral was delayed by the thousands that trooped past the body as it lay in state in the East Room. A large military parade accompanied the hearse which brought the body to a special funeral train that would take the Colonel's remains to New York City where tens of thousands more would view the coffin, on its way to Mechanicville. A focal point of that parade to the train station in Washington would be Corporal Brownell who marched with the captured Confederate flag impaled on his bayonet**. The story of Ellsworth's death created a new national martyr. Only a 24 hour Zouave guard prevented the Confederate flag from being cut up into thousands of relics for private veneration. A floodgate holding back the rising antipathy toward the South seemed to have burst. In May Lincoln asked for 42,000 more volunteers. Within a few weeks, fueled by news of the attack on Fort Sumter and the story of Ellsworth's death, five times that number had enlisted.

NYS Rte 32, Mechanicville

                                                                  
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Corporal James Tanner's military career came to an end on August 30,  1862.  He had enlisted when he was 17 in the New York 87th Volunteer Infantry and fought through the long arduous Peninsular
Campaign in the battles of Fair Oaks, Williamsburg, Siege of Yorktown, Seven Days' Battles before Richmond, and Malvern Hill. When his unit came under fire at the Second Battle of Bull Run, he and his fellow infantrymen had been ordered to lie down, to avoid enemy cannon fire.  Then an exploding shell ripped off one of his lower legs and destroyed the foot on his other leg.  Carried unconscious to a farmhouse field hospital he was left by his retreating comrades to the care of the Confederates and was exchanged a few days later.

NYS Rte 7, west of Richmondville

 Somehow Tanner survived his grievous wounds and was fitted with wooden prostheses after a few months. Returning to New York, Tanner became active in Republican politics and secured for himself a position as a doorkeeper for the New York Assembly.  Tanner studied stenography and in 1864 landed a job in Washington as a clerk in the War Department.  In April 1865 he received an urgent call from Secretary Stanton who summoned him to the Petersen Hotel, across from Ford's theater where, as President Lincoln lay dying, he recorded all the incoming information about the assassination.

A year later he returned to New York State to earn his law degree and begin his climb in Republican politics and increasingly important public offices. From its formative days,  Tanner was a most active member of the Grand Army of the Republic, the great Union veterans organization, that developed out of the war. The garrulous Tanner enjoyed the company of other veterans, never missing an annual encampment in 48 years, becoming its President in 1876. Tanner would go on to organize a fund raising campaign to build a 600 bed Soldier's Home for New York's disabled veterans in Bath, New York, then pressure the State government to support its upkeep.  Later in Virginia, he would inspire and instruct Confederate veterans on a similar campaign that resulted in the Confederate Home in Richmond, Virginia.
 

*Ellsworth had met Lincoln a year before and had made a favorable impression on him. Since then he had become engaged to Carrie Spafford. Her father, an Illinois businessman encouraged him to seek out Lincoln to pursue a more lucrative career path, and may have facilitated the meeting.

**Brownell was eventually awarded the Medal of Honor for killing Jackson!

Marker of the Week -- Who knew?!   I had always assumed the Town in Saratoga County named Malta was named for the rather large island in the Mediterranean Sea, once a British Protectorate, home to Crusaders and scene of a spirited defense by British forces during WWII, etc.

There are certainly many towns in New York named for countries.  New York has a China, a Sweden, a Mexico, a Peru, a Greece and a Russia, and there are probably others. It would be interesting to investigate the who, why and when of the name change--perhaps if "NYSHMS: It Happened Here" looks at the Temperance Movement, in some future post.