No Distinction Whatsoever
Studio portrait, unidentified African American Union Soldier, 22nd Colored Infantry Regiment
Nothing is ever simple. Complex issues are too often boiled down and reduced to a single factoid or a talking point. The real story can only be pieced together by plowing through mounds of seemingly tedious routine paperwork. In fact, historians are often the only people to appreciate the beauty of bureaucracy.
The correspondence of the War Department, a lot of which was conducted by telegraph and is now contained in the USMT ledgers, is a prime example of the extraordinary value of seemingly mundane and boring government paperwork.
A case in point: on April 17, 1864, Ulysses S. Grant, who had assumed the command of the Union armed forces a month before, suspended prisoner of war exchanges. It is very tempting to take any pronouncement by a general of Grant’s caliber for a straightforward order.
Yet April 17, 1864 was just an installment in a long and convoluted story of the prisoner exchange. Both sides of the Civil War divide believed that they were fighting a just war and professed their commitment to the norms of civilized warfare. Equitable exchange of prisoners, accomplished by a cartel or agreement between the belligerents, was one of these norms.
The cartel, codified on July 22, 1862, called for equal exchange, man for man, as matched in the rank, branch of service, and the state of health. The exchanged soldiers and officers would return to the ranks. Those men for whom no exact match could be found, were paroled; the parolees were barred from taking up arms until the formal exchange could be arranged.
The cartel ambled along, punctuated by claims of breaches of trust, retaliations and counter-retaliations, until the Union army started recruiting African American soldiers. The Confederates refused to apply the “man-for-man” exchange to black soldiers. The act of the Confederate Congress of May 1, 1863 mandated that black Union troops were to be “delivered” to the authorities of the state where they had been captured “to be dealt with according to the present or future law” of the state, which meant either death or slavery.
In response, Stanton’s War Department halted all exchanges. In early July, Grant and Nathaniel P. Banks ignored this directive to parole the entire garrisons of Vicksburg and Port Hudson. The War Department had to remind the generals that all exchanges were suspended until “the rebel authorities” demonstrated a “better understanding in relation to the cartel.”
The negotiations were resumed in December 1863, after Ethan Allen Hitchcock, the Commissioner for the Exchange of Prisoners, appointed Benjamin F. Butler as a special agent. Butler’s instructions directed him to ensure “the protection of the Government” for “colored soldiers of the United States and the officers commanding them.”
On April 9, 1864, Butler submitted a lengthy memorandum to Stanton. He acknowledged that there were many issues with the process but insisted that the United States must honor the cartel, for the sake of “the good sense of the country, the justice of the Government, or humanity toward our suffering brother soldiers in the Confederate prisons.”
Yet there was a red line. The United States could not permit to have “those black men whom we have made free, uniformed and armed, and put in our service, when captured, being treated as slaves.” If the Confederate authorities refused to exchange black soldiers “man-for-man,” the entire cartel would have to be set aside. Butler then proposed to negotiate away all outstanding problems, so that this one crucial issue “may be left standing sharply alone.”
Somewhat taken aback, Stanton referred Butler’s memorandum to Grant. Grant responded on April 17, in a letter to Butler which is often miscast as an order.
Grant agreed with Butler: “no distinction whatsoever shall be made between white and colored prisoners; the only question being where they, at the time of the capture, in the military service of the United States.”
On August 10, 1864, the Confederate commissioner agreed to a “man-to-man” exchange. When Butler inquired whether the exchange would cover black troops, there was no reply.
Bickering Generals
By Olga Tsapina, Norris Foundation Curator of American Historical Manuscripts at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens
The telegraph offered a revolutionary breakthrough in communications, however, no technology could ease personal tensions or alleviate turf wars. Two telegrams spotted by hungmung, one of our valiant volunteers, offer an intriguing insight into one of such conflict.
Both telegrams were received in Washington on February 7, 1862. Both involved Henry W. Halleck (Alden), then the commander of the Department of the Missouri; George B. McClellan (Andes), the general-in-chief of Union armies; and Don Carlos Buell (Alvord), the head of the Department of the Ohio. The telegrams were part of a complicated but little known conflict over the course of action in the West.
Lincoln urged speedy occupation of the heavily Unionist Tennessee, but McClellan and his old friend Buell wanted instead to target Nashville. The heads of two Western departments, Halleck and Buell, could not get along. When Buell came up with a plan to launch a dual advance on the Tennessee and the Cumberland rivers, Halleck dismissed the plan as “madness” on the grounds that the Union troops in the West were too scattered to provide for any sort of sustained campaign.
Things got even more complicated in late January 1862. McClellan, perhaps hoping to score some political points, proposed to shift the fighting to Kentucky and then move on to East Tennessee. Upon his request, the Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton sent his Assistant Secretary Thomas A. Scott to explore the logistics of transferring some 60,000 troops from McClellan’s command to Buell’s headquarters in Louisville.
On January 29, McClellan fired off a telegram to Halleck warning him of the impending Confederate expedition into Kentucky. The next day, Halleck ordered Ulysses S. Grant to start immediately for Fort Henry.
At the same time Buell decided to go to East Tennessee after all. When Halleck, who was getting cold feet about the operation, asked Buell either to transfer some of his troops or to stage a diversion, Buell was less than enthusiastic, even after McClellan urged his friend to help Halleck by switching the line of attack from East Tennessee to Bowling Green, Ky.
In the second telegram, Buell telegraphed McClellan complaining about Halleck’s move which, although “right in its strategic bearing” had been commenced without “appreciation, preparation, or concert.” Now that it had “become of vast magnitude,” Buell noted that he was indeed contemplating “a change of the line to support” but warned that this sudden change of direction was “hazardous.”
The telegram appears in on pp. 587-588 of vol. 7 of the 1st Series of the Official Records. It is clear that the publication differs from the ledger record. For example, the phrase “without appreciation, preparation, or concert,” was edited to read “without appreciation – preparative or concert.”
Moreover, the publication does not include the telegram that, as the ledger shows, immediately preceded it. The telegram at the top of the page was published some sixteen years later; it appears on p. 206 of vol. 52 (part I). It was also printed with errors: it seems to indicate that the telegram was sent from Washington, D.C. and addressed to an “L. Thomas.” As seen in the ledger, the telegram was in fact addressed to General George Thomas and sent from Buell’s headquarters in Louisville. Because the telegrams were printed out of sequence and with serious errors, the connection between them has long been overlooked.
As the ledger shows, Buell was indeed contemplating the transfer of some Ohio and Indiana regiments. Also, the published version of the telegram from Buell to McClellan features a time-stamp that seems to show it took almost 12 hours to transmit it: the message sent at midnight of February 6 was received at 11:30 a.m. of February 7. The ledger, however, shows no time stamp on this or the preceding telegram. In fact, there were only two more telegrams that similarly lacked the time stamp. All four were received on February 7 and all followed a confidential report from Thomas A. Scott, the Assistant Secretary of War to his boss Edwin M. Stanton.
That report, which also does not appear in OR, describes Scott’s effort to facilitate the confusing and bitter communications between Halleck’s and Buell’s departments. It appears that our telegrams were attached to the report. The ledger shows that the telegrams were received along with the report by a USMT operator in Washington at 1:30 a.m. rather than 11:30 a.m. of February 7.
Generals bickering on the battlefield is nothing new. What is interesting is to see how that bickering has been captured and then reinterpreted over time. These messages offer a confirmation of the primary importance of our job here at Decoding the Civil War.
Ledger 7, Received
The cover of the above ledger is not all that exciting to look at. But within that cover is the first of the hard earned rewards from the Ledger Challenge. This is the cover of Ledger 7, the first ledger we received with consensus data from the 20 finished during those exciting two weeks. The consensus text has been reviewed and published in the Huntington Digital Library. Coming in at 400 pages, with some 460 telegrams, it took us a while to go through it. The contents of the ledger are varied, covering the period from late May to early July 1863, and include various (sometimes conflicting) reports from Vicksburg, potential traitors in Indiana, and the start of Gettysburg.
Our volunteers worked hard on all 20 ledgers. We want to say, again, thank you for that effort. Ledger 7 shows that the effort is bearing fruit. We are already hard at work on the next ledger, and the others are going through the consensus processing now.
As we publish these ledgers, we will link to them on the Results page of the Decoding the Civil War site.
Wooooo Hoooooo!
As a follow-up to Mario’s post on Monday, I just wanted to share that we have officially passed 100,000 classifications for the project! Well done transcribers! The end (of phase 1) may not quite be nigh, but it is in sight.
Challenge Demolished
Decoding the Civil War has just finished its two-week transcription challenge. Our original goal was simple: complete 10 ledgers. Well, we reached that goal in the first six days. Deciding to ask our volunteers for a little more, we added 10 more ledgers. The challenge became 20 ledgers in two weeks. We can happily say that we have met that goal as well.
That is correct—all of our wonderful volunteers have completed an incredible 20 ledgers! The ledgers are:
mssEC_01; mssEC_02; mssEC_04; mssEC_05; mssEC_06; mssEC_07; mssEC_08; mssEC_09; mssEC_10; mssEC_11; mssEC_12; mssEC_15; mssEC_17; mssEC_20; mssEC_21; mssEC_22; mssEC_25; mssEC_33; mssEC_34; mssEC_35.
That is a total of 9,998 classifications, an average of 714 transcriptions a day, far exceeding our goal of 425 classifications per day! We also added 727 volunteers. Welcome to all of you! You and our veteran volunteers have helped make this a very successful challenge.
The researchers now have their hands full reviewing the consensus data and getting it transferred into the Huntington Digital Library. Keep checking our Results page to see new ledgers added.
So it is time to strike up the band, and order extra rations to all our volunteers! We have 30962 classifications left. That is still quite a bit, but remember that we have completed almost 10,000 in the last two weeks, and 87,150 classifications since the project started last June.
We ask you to keep your enthusiasm up and those fingers flying. Let’s try to finish them by June 30th!
Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!
With a Brave Army and a Just Cause
By Olga Tsapina, Norris Foundation Curator of American Historical Manuscripts at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens
Executive Mansion
Washington, April 30, 1864
Lieutenant General Grant.
Not expecting to see you again
before the Spring Campaign opens, I wish to express,
in this way, my entire satisfaction with what you have
done up to this time, so far as I understand it. The
particulars of your plans I neither know, or seek to
know. You are vigilant and self-reliant; and, pleas=
ed with this, I wish not to obtrude any constraints
or restraints upon you. While I am very anxious that
any great disaster, or the capture of our men in great
numbers, shall be avoided, I know these points
are less likely to escape your attention than they would
be mine. If there is anything wanting which is with=
in my power to give, do not fail to let me know it.
And now with a brave Army, and a just cause, may
God sustain you.
Yours very truly
A. Lincoln
The Civil War, born of a grave constitutional crisis over slavery, tested many provisions of the Constitution that hitherto had remained mere abstractions. One of these was Article II Section 2 which proclaimed the President “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.”
The extent of these powers was unclear and was subject of fierce debates, most famously those over the constitutionality of suspension of the writ of habeas corpus or emancipate the enemy slaves by means of a presidential proclamation. It was also unclear to what extent commander-in-chief should be involved in the actual business of commanding the army and navy.
On April 30, 1864, as Ulysses S. Grant was preparing to embark on what would become the bloodiest campaign of the war, the President wrote the above letter to the newly appointed Lieutenant General–a title that only George Washington had borne before.
Lincoln, acutely aware of his lack of military experience, generally refrained from giving orders. He left the planning, and the follow through, of the campaign in Grant’s hands, much as he had done with other generals. And many times had Lincoln been disappointed and frustrated by their performance. This time, however, he had found the correct general. Grant devised a campaign in the Spring of 1864 that would lead to the final collapse of the Confederacy a year later.
The Enemy Fled
By Olga Tsapina, Norris Foundation Curator of American Historical Manuscripts at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens
On April 29, 1862, Thomas A. Scott, the Assistant Secretary of War telegraphed to his boss from camp near Pittsburg, Tenn.: “Genl. Pope sent force to Monterey this morning the enemy fled our forces took fifteen prisoners some baggage and supplies We destroyed encampment and returned to camp in good order.” This was the beginning of the advance on Corinth, a massive operation by the combined forces of the Armies of the Tennessee and Ohio, commanded by Henry W. Halleck, with John Pope commanding the left wing of Halleck’s army.
Scott also noted that “our army greatly rejoiced to hear the capture of New Orleans.” Indeed it was on the very same day when Farragut’s sailors from the USS Hartford removed the Louisiana state flag from the City Hall.
The coincidence seemed like a good omen. On May 3, the very same day when Stanton declared the Crescent City “recovered” for the Union, Pope would capture Farmington, just six miles away from Corinth. Corinth, “the vertebrae of the Confederacy,” would surrender on May 29, 1862, just a month after this telegram.
Hunting for Mosby
Hd Qrs M M Divn
RR McCaine Winchester Apl 28th 1865
Plug Richard Harriet David for Consent Regent Parsons
can trifle of course now that Booth pimple
caught dog The Panther wishes you to try
and hunt up Elder If more money is
needed it canby had upward C H Morgan
Decoded, using cipher 4
Hd Qrs M M Divn
RR McCaine Winchester Apl 28th 1865
Head Quarters Middle Military Division 11 AM 28th for A.T.A. Torbert Major Governor
can return of course now that Booth has been
caught ; The general wishes you to try
and hunt up Mosby If more money is
needed it can be had signature C H Morgan
Whoever was encoding the messages for General Morgan appears to have gotten a little carried away. I can understand obscuring “Mosby”, but did “has been” really need to be replaced by its arbitrary, “pimple”? And the operator made an error by using the arbitrary for Governor, Parson, instead of the second arbitrary for General, Paradise, which is the line above in the cipher. Perhaps it was like a child who has received a new toy, and wants to use it at any opportunity?
Whatever the case may be, with John Wilkes Booth dead and most of his associates in custody, the Union army continued the business of wrapping up the war. Here we have General Morgan, who was Chief of Staff to General Hancock at this point, altering the short term goal of General Torbert’s command from capturing Booth to capturing Confederate Colonel John Mosby. It is perhaps unsurprising that Mosby, the “Gray Ghost”, evaded his pursuers for another month and a half before turning himself in.
Happy Birthday General Grant!
On this day in 1822 Hiram Ulysses Grant was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio. Although he was generally known as Ulysses S. Grant, during the Civil War he was referred to by a number of code names. In honor of his birthday, here is a review of his arbitraries from the United States Military Telegraph’s ciphers, roughly in chronological order:
Cipher 12: Abel & Austria
Cipher 12A: Abner & Alpha
Cipher 9: Bangor & Bengal
Cipher 1: Judah, John, Juno, Jupiter, Japan & Jersey
Cipher 2: Bellows & Belly
Cipher 4: Amateur, Advertise, Amber, Affect, America, Afflict
Cipher 5: Artist, Assist, Ashland, & Assume
Many thanks to the kind folks at The George C. Marshall Foundation for sharing their copies of 12,12A and 4 from the William F. Friedman Papers with us!
Surrender of Johnston
910 am 28th Raleigh Apl 26th 1865
Raleigh 730 pm 26th Maj Eckert Sherman & Johnston
had another interview today and Johnston has
surrendered on same terms Lee accepted .
I think the great bulk of the army will
start for Washn over-land in few days
I will be guided by circumstances in the
absence of any instruction from you . I
think we will hold on here some time
R. O’Brien Chf Opr
After the original terms that Sherman offered to Johnston were rejected, the two opposing generals met again, and on this day in 1865 Johnston surrendered all of the Confederate troops in North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. This time the terms were approved (Sherman stuck exclusively to military matters).
Following the surrender, Sherman prepared to return to Washington with his troops. They would participate, with other Union Troops, in a Grand Review, which was held on the 23rd and 24th of May. Sherman and Johnston were friends following the war, and both served as pallbearers in U.S. Grant’s funeral in 1885. In fact, Johnston died of pneumonia in 1891, caught while serving as a pallbearer at Sherman’s funeral.
Seven mile funeral cortege of Genl. Grant in New York Aug. 8, 1885, U.S. Instantaneous Photographic Co., 1886, p. 45. (Huntington Digital Library, UDID 397202)
Decoding the Civil War 