Fulfilling a Dream: Francis Harris's Civil War Story, Part 2

Greetings, readers! I am back again with the next installment of the Civil War story of Private Francis Harris of the 12th New Jersey, ancestor of my former student Jessica Harris. When I left off with that story last time, Harris had, with about 900 others from his rural area of southern New Jersey, been sworn into 3 years’ volunteer service in Woodbury, New Jersey, in early Sept. 1862. In this installment, I will be covering the 12th as it moved to a training camp in Maryland, and then marched south to join the massive Army of the Potomac at Falmouth in central Virginia (September to December 1862) after the Union disaster at the Battle of Fredericksburg. Francis (we're on a first name basis by now!) and his unit will not go into combat until May 1863 (to be covered in a later installment).

Some context first: at the time that Harris leaves New Jersey, the Union Army in the East was in a state of emergency, as the Confederates, under famous Gen. Robert E. Lee, were in the process of invading the North, crossing the wide Potomac River into Maryland. Lee and his men were full of confidence, having driven the much larger Union Army of the Potomac away from Richmond in the spring, and having inflicted a major defeat on it just south of Washington in the Second Battle of Bull Run at the end of August. Besides, Maryland was a slave state, and Lee hoped to gain recruits there, as well as to supply his perennially underfed men. His most important goal was to win a victory, on Northern territory, of a size that would convince the European powers, most importantly Britain (the world superpower at the time), to recognize the Confederacy and break the Union Navy’s strangling blockade of the South. Standing in his way, again, was the Army of the Potomac, over 87,000 strong, under its newly restored commander, Gen. George McClellan.

Pres. Lincoln, meanwhile, had already decided on the emancipation of the slaves (about 3 million!) in Confederate territory, but had been convinced by his Cabinet to hold back the Proclamation until there was a Union victory. The North was also facing another crisis further west, with a second Confederate invasion imminent, aimed for Kentucky (also a slave state loyal to the Union).

For this story, I am relying primarily on Harris’s diary (relatively brief entries, but kept regularly), and especially on his long and observant letters to his wife and children (which he stated he would write every week, but in fact wrote almost daily, and sometimes twice in a day!). Thanks so much again to Jessica and her father Tom, who painstakingly transcribed (!) both the diary and letters, which run for hundreds of pages and have never been published! For comparison, I’m also using letters by another private in a different company of the 12th (Charles Gamble), and some diary entries by an officer in yet another company (Charles Stratton, as published in a massive postwar history of Company F of the 12th).

The 12th, organized in typical Civil War regiment fashion as ten companies of about 90-100 each (Harris being in Co. A), left their first (very brief!) training for a short train ride to Camden, NJ, on Sept. 7, 1862. Harris was 31, and was leaving behind his farm, his beloved wife Maggie, and four small children in the small town of Woodbury. His (apparently younger) brother Robert was in the same unit (but as a member of the band, not in Co. A). These young men were full of confidence, having been sent off by their civilian friends with a banquet and a formal presentation of the regimental flag, and with crowds cheering them as they left the state. From Camden they boarded a ferry across the broad Delaware River to Philadelphia, where they enjoyed a sumptuous meal served by patriotic women at the Cooper Shop, organized by Anna Maria Ross (the same women had just fed another regiment full of friends of the 12th, the 24th New Jersey). The 12th was, very fortunately, not yet headed into combat. Instead it was included in a broad assignment of units to protect the Baltimore & Ohio (B&O) Railroad, an essential east-west communications and supply link running from Baltimore west through Frederick and Harpers Ferry, and on through the Appalachians to the Union states of the upper Midwest. The Union command knew that a long-standing Confederate objective was to break this link, by destroying not just track but its bridges and tunnels. It was also still unclear to the Union top command whether Lee’s army would be turning east to strike either Washington, D.C. or Baltimore. Specifically, the 12th was headed to the town of Ellicott’s Mills (now called Ellicott City) west of Baltimore (another fresh unit, the 14th New Jersey, was sent further west on the B&O to guard a crucial bridge over the Monocacy River).

After their Philadelphia lunch, the soldiers had a short but sweaty march to a railroad station, where in the afternoon they boarded 22 cars of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad, bound for Baltimore. The slow train took 8 hours; during the trip they were given cartridges for their obsolete Austrian rifles, and again they were cheered at each stop. They were supposed to get a B&O train for their destination when they got to Baltimore, but apparently the order wasn’t given because their overall commander, Gen. Wool (78!) was asleep! As a result, most of them (at least the enlisted men) spent the night sleeping on the street. This was somewhat nerve-wracking, as the city was known to be very pro-Southern (in fact a Baltimore mob had attacked the first Union soldiers bound for Washington at the start of the war in Apr. 1861!). But the night was uneventful (if not restful), and the next day, Sept. 9th, now having been given their dress uniforms, they had their last train ride (though it was in smelly cattle cars!) to Ellicott’s Mills. Once there, they marched up a steep hill above the town of about 13,000, to the grounds of a girls’ school (the Patapsco Female Institute, closed in advance by the slave-owning parents!).

Patapsco Female Institute in Ellicott City, MD- now a city park (from visitoldellicottcity.com)

Here they laid out their training camp, to be named “Camp Johnson” after their commander, Col. Robert Johnson. Their large tents (holding 13 each) having arrived, they were set up in rows, providing quite comfortable quarters. Harris and the others were especially pleased by the quality of the water supply (a nearby spring). Essentially the 12th had two important duties, as well as constant drilling: picketing (regular patrols sent out in various directions to look for any Confederates), and “provost” guard duty (guarding the rail station, the tracks and switches, their storehouse, and any prisoners and deserters). Harris summarized this routine, which would turn out to last much longer than the men had expected (to December):

"Our duty consists of guard duty, picketing, occasional drill, cleaning campground, carrying water and rations for the cook, lounging, writing letters, and debating freely on every subject and point, expressing our own opinions, while a stranger would think we quarreled continually but it is interesting, gratifying, edifying and enjoying. We all have to keep our guns bright, and in order, also the brasses on our cartridges boxes, belts etc. shoes blacked, clothes brushed. All of which keeps us as busy as ever we lived." (Letter 9/21/62)

The drill involved constant practice in how to march and change direction as entire companies (so that they could quickly respond to voice commands in combat, as well as improving their physical fitness). Of course they also practiced their marksmanship (Harris, not known for boasting in his diary and letters, frequently mentions that he was one of the best shots in his unit!). The men seem to have been blissfully unaware of their poor weapons (since they didn’t have the deadly new rifle-muskets, with their much greater range and accuracy, that helped to cause the Civil War’s unprecedented carnage). There was the occasional excitement of catching deserters, or of finding arms stored and smuggled (even inside the Female Institute!) by pro-Southern civilians. There was the spectacle, to be witnessed by the whole unit in formation, of comrades being punished for petty crimes:

"Three boys for not obeying the orders of their officers had to go to the guardhouse I think 4 days and and at the end of that, to each carry a heavy fence on their shoulders 6 hours and then rest 1 hour, then at it again for 3 hours more before they could be discharged. Another big fellow of Co. E. threatened to shoot his comrade for cursing him, yes he loaded his gun for the purpose. He was sentenced in the guard house one month and hard labor every day at digging and shoveling (Sundays and all) and besides his legs is cuffed at the ankles with a foot and a half chain, and two three pound balls to another chain 3 feet long attached to the centre of the first chain… " (Letter 9/14/62)

Harris and the minority of devout soldiers did their own evening prayer meetings (as well as going to Sunday services). And one day Harris and his company got a (very rare and much appreciated!) bath- by standing under the nearby Patapsco Falls!

These months (September-December 1862), passed without any bloodshed (other than a few firearms accidents), as also in the much longer winter camp in Virginia to come, would prove invaluable for the 12th in that the men certainly became much more bonded with each other and with their officers, and much more used to the discipline and mundane realities of military life (while, as soldiers always have done, Harris and the others filled much of their time and letters with comments about the food and their homesickness). The food, basically hard crackers, coffee, and salted meat (“boiled beef and those sea biscuits,” in Gamble’s words), was abundant (especially compared to the Confederates!), but very unexciting (as well as being nutritionally horrendous!). All alcohol was banned. There were two options for expanding their diet: on their free time, going into the nearby town to shop, and going to the sutler. Sutlers were independent contractors who set up a tent near an army camp and sold a wide range of items, not just foods. In both cases prices were high (there was high inflation everywhere in the North after more than a year of war, though again not nearly as bad as in the South; sutlers were routinely seen as overcharging).

Not far away from Camp Johnson, momentous events were unfolding. Lee’s invasion had been going very well at first, since Gen. McClellan was moving so slowly to respond; indeed on the same day that Camp Johnson was created, Lee felt confident enough to divide his much smaller army (both to reduce the mouths to feed for each part, and to send his top lieutenant, “Stonewall” Jackson, to capture the large and vulnerable Union garrison at Harpers Ferry. Then, on Sept. 13, an extraordinary event changed the course of the war. Two Union soldiers found an envelope in an abandoned enemy campsite; inside were the so-called “Lost Orders,” Lee’s instructions about dividing his army in three parts!! McClellan had one of the greatest opportunities in all of military history for destroying the enemy army, though he still moved quite slowly toward those divided forces. But he, with 88,000, did confront Lee, who at that point only had 18,000, with his back to the unbridged Potomac River, at Antietam Creek in western Maryland on Sept. 15. Another large Confederate force was able to reunite with Lee before McClellan attacked on the 17th.

Also on the 15th, the commander of the Harpers Ferry garrison, Gen. Miles, panicked, surrendering to Jackson when the siege had barely begun. It was the largest Union surrender of the entire war: over 12,000 men and a mountain of supplies. For the 12th New Jersey and Harris, all of these events had two immediate consequences: first, a wave of Confederate prisoners (even more after the Battle of Antietam) heading to Ellicott’s Mill, followed by the angry paroled Union soldiers from Harpers.

As the 12th was rounding up and passing along both groups, Lee’s army fought for its survival at Antietam on Sept. 17: the so-called “bloodiest day” of U.S. history. The Confederates survived the massive, though disjointed, attacks, but at the cost of a third of their number; Lee retreated to Virginia and the invasion was over. Harris wrote in his diary on that day:

"Cloudy. Warm No wind. On guard. Our whole company on guard. Better news from Fredricks. The rebels are badly whipped. Four of our companies C. H. I. & H. conducted 14 hundred rebel prisoners from Fredrick to Fort Delaware but returned when got to Baltimore when relieved by guards of another regiment there." (9/17/62)

Gamble had a stronger reaction to the captured enemy:

"There has been several thousand Rebel prisoners pass through in the cars but none of them stopped here. They were guarded by our Company here; we all marched out in the road and seen them pass. They were the dirtiest looking men that I ever saw in my life. They had no uniform whatsoever. When the cars stopped some of our boys hurrahed for Johnson [their colonel] and they hurrahed for Jackson. I tell you I felt like ramming bayonets through them. Their officers looked as bad as the soldiers did." (Gamble Letter 9/25/62)

And Capt. Stratton wrote on the 20th: “still on guard with the [paroled] prisoners, over 10,000 of them; weary, foot-sore, sick, disheartened, they say they were surrendered whilst holding a strong position, almost without firing a shot. They feel the disgrace keenly.”

The costly Union victory also gave Lincoln the opportunity to issue the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on Sept. 22. All slaves in enemy territory were to be freed on Jan. 1 unless the South made peace; more immediately, black troops were to be enlisted for the first time (though none of the sources I’ve found for the 12th New Jersey mentions either event). Instead, those soldiers who were recording focused on a common and tragic aspect of the war: the steady trickle of deaths of soldiers from disease, most commonly typhoid and dysentery (with Harris carefully tabulating each), that would make up the majority of the Civil War’s death toll. This early in the war, there was still time made for individual funerals, as the bodies were put on trains for home.

By November, two months into the time in Maryland, a number of events interrupted the routines of the regiment, and those of Francis’s military life. The first was the national midterm elections (though New Jersey at this point banned voting by the soldiers). Back home the Democrats, lukewarm at best about the war, took control of the legislature, and Joel Parker was elected governor. The election coincided with an upsurge in illegal drinking by some of the 12th, much to Harris’s disgust (the unit’s provost marshal shut down a tavern in town, dumping the whiskey into the street). Second, there was a change of high command; Lincoln, exasperated with McClellan (also a Democrat), the Army of the Potomac’s commander, for not pursuing Lee further into Virginia after Antietam in September, replaced him with his subordinate Ambrose Burnside on Nov. 7 (a general best remembered today for his own take on facial hair, “sideburns”!). The next change was in the weather: it got increasingly stormy, interrupting the drills, and started snowing by early in November, making life in the tents unsustainable and the picketing miserable. At one point it looked as if the men would be able to move into an unused cotton factory down in the town, but that never happened. Instead the soldiers, including Harris, responded in the way typical in the Civil War for beginning winter quarters: by “stockading.” That meant that the soldiers themselves dug out a rectangular “basement” (which had the benefit of providing some insulation), and then constructed a hut (the soldiers were given planks), with the tent used to make the roof. The soldiers also had to pay for their own stoves. Harris’s group of 8 had their hut done by Dec. 3. Lastly, the unit universally rejoiced on the 4th, when the men finally got their first pay since enlistment three months earlier. Harris, who was down to 29 cents (!), recorded in his diary about the next day: “Battalion drill this forenoon but badly performed in consequence of drunkenness of officers and men. Oh that spirituous liquors were abolished. The pay will soon be spent by many of the soldiers.”

Francis Harris, as his time away from home lengthened, also faced tensions in his family life. As he missed his first harvest, he barraged his wife with questions about the crops and the annual slaughter of livestock. He noted the first furloughs (leaves to go home to families), and the visits to camp by the wives of his comrades, but was thoroughly muddled about his own wife making the trip. Here are his complicated feelings in his letter:

"Joe [Morgan- his tent mate and good friend] is like a flitter (if I must say so) about his wife’s coming for next Saturday Company A. has to go on picket and he don’t know how to manage it because he wants to be at the depot when she comes. If she comes to see him and stay two or three days and return it will be well enough but to come and stay anytime as I think she may, is a disgrace to a woman character. If she comes she will want to be in camp most the time with him as she did at Camp Stockton. I have learned by this time that military camp is not the place for woman except on short visits. For a woman to remain in camp and hear the talk of the vicious, is a disgrace at least it is disgusting to me. I don’t think it well for a man’s wife to come and board in the town as it is the case of some of the officers. Our captain has his wife boarding in the town, and I don’t think it sounds well. And so much of his time is taken with her that I don’t think he cares as much for the welfare of his worthy men. Yes, the 2nd Lieutenant of the company C.- Theodore F. Harris married a girl a few days ago of a family not out of stone throw of the camp." [a Union soldier marrying a local] (Letter 10/21/62)

As it turned out, his wife Maggie (and the kids) never did visit him, throughout all of his military service. While we don’t have her letters to provide an explanation, she was apparently running the farm by herself (later she did get help from Francis’s brother Charles), as well as raising the four young children, all with long stretches between payments sent home by her husband; no question that, logistically alone, a long trip would have been a challenge for her. At one point, in an early letter, Francis tells her that she shouldn’t be outside “digging potatoes,” that that should be done by the kids! She did, as most families did for their soldiers, send him boxes of food, clothing, and other supplies, as well as letters (less frequent than his). Her absence meant that her letters took on extra importance for her soldier husband:

"I will imbrace another opportunity to have a little interview with you by letter as it is the only way for us, nowadays, to have a chat. I am thankful that we can have such an intercourse, for dreary must be our hopes, if we had no means of hearing from each other. Though we have an uninterrupted and undisturbed exchange of thoughts and hopes, I need not be placed many miles further to be beyond the boundaries of such communication and providence only knows how soon I may be removed beyond those lines, or taken prisoner by the enemy, and thereby deny the privilledege of writing. But while we have this blessing let us be grateful and enjoy it."

(Letter 10/30/62)

What was especially stressful for Francis was a serious and prolonged ideological conflict between Francis and his father John about the war, which Francis first refers to in November:

"Maggie it troubles me a great deal to think that father don’t write. I am affraid he can’t get over my leaving home for the honor of my country and his, and you and our children’s good; for how could I stay when my country is in peril and your welfare is in danger? Oh that the rebellion was crushed that I might return. But while it is not I feel it is my duty as I always have to do my duty to my country. And not that I rejoice to disobey him or leave him and my little ones. Far from it. I wish you would talk to him, you know my mind as well as I do. And won’t you tell mother to tell him to write…" (Letter 11/7/62)

Francis would return to this conflict periodically throughout his letters, with increasing passion and frustration; apparently his father saw no overall justification for a war against the South, and on a personal level was fiercely opposed to his son leaving his family for many months to participate in that war. While there’s no information about the general health of his parents, they also never visited Francis. His only in-person family support while he was in the Army came from his brother Robert (a frequent visitor), and from his brother-in-law Charley Trapper (who was in a nearby unit, the 24th New Jersey).

The actual station in Ellicott City, where the 12th arrived & departed, is still there! It's the oldest surviving passenger station in the U.S. (1830), and one of the oldest in the world! From Wikipedia- photo taken by William E. Barrett (1970).

In December, the long period in Maryland came to an abrupt end. The 12th was now needed to bolster the Army of the Potomac as a whole, as its Gen. Burnside was preparing for an all-out attack on Lee’s Confederates at Fredericksburg, about halfway between the two capitals (Washington and Richmond). On Dec. 10, right after payday, the unit left Ellicott’s Mills by train (being replaced by the 138th New York). While there was a general eagerness to move closer to the war, the men were very pleased to see the way that the townspeople, who on the whole had become much friendlier over time, turned out to bid them a warm farewell. The unit arrived in crowded wartime Washington by afternoon (“a nice place if it wasn’t so muddy,” as Gamble put it!), and marched to a barracks (unfortunately cold and bare), known as “Soldiers’ Rest,” not far from the Capitol. The officers headed off to hotels for greater comfort. Harris was thrilled to be able to visit the Capitol the next day, with its huge new unfinished dome (completed by war’s end); it was likely the grandest building he’d ever seen:

"…it is splendid. It shows the work of art in a remarkable degree, and manifests the power and genius of man in its stately size, pillars, dome, apartments and shades, with all its costly furnitures [in the] Senate’ and House of Representative’s chambers. Its marble and metallic platings, and its paintings, makes it pay well for the Loyal to visit and view it."

(Diary 12/11/62)

US Capitol in 1861- from PBS Newshour, "Capitol Dome Restored to Former Glory," 11/15/2016

Their stay in the capital was brief; their baggage was stripped down, and their weapons were replaced at the Arsenal, with their Austrian rifles exchanged for the “buck and ball” Harper’s Ferry muskets that they would carry for the rest of the war (still inferior to standard period weapons, but deadly at close range).

On Dec. 13, as their comrades were making disastrous charges far to the south at Fredericksburg, the 12th New Jersey Regiment started its march to reach them: the first prolonged foot march in its short existence. The route took them first through swampy southern Maryland, to Liverpool Point at the mouth of the Potomac. Being winter, everyone found the experience to be generally very unpleasant: cold, and with a “cutting wind” and deep mud adding to the physical exertion. Many, including Francis, paid the drivers of the supply wagons to allow their knapsacks to ride in there. Stratton recorded that many men found their blankets frozen on the morning of the 18th. From the Point, they boarded two steamboats to cross, in a “severe snow squall,” to the Aquia Creek supply base in Virginia (it turned out the boats were familiar ones, as peacetime ferries between Red Bank, NJ, and Philadelphia). For Francis Harris, the crossing was of particular meaning, as it marked leaving behind his familiar geographic world (so far as we know, restricted to Maryland, eastern Pennsylvania, and southern Jersey), and entering enemy territory.

From there, the 12th on its final march was clearly entering the war zone. It passed fellow New Jersey units which were guarding the rail line from Aquia to the front at Falmouth; wounded from Fredericksburg being evacuated to Baltimore; and followed a route strewn with dead horses (a “desolate vail,” to quote Harris). After 21 miles, they arrived on Dec.19, 1862 at the enormous camp of the Army of the Potomac (about 110,000 men, a veritable city of tents), and at their own campsite on the Fitzhugh farm outside Falmouth, near the Rappahannock River. They were happy to find many New Jersey friends, including the 24th, already camped nearby. And they could see the enemy for the first time- on the distant south bank.

Print of Falmouth camp of 84th PA Infantry & others, by L.N. Rosenthal (1861), comparable to the camp of the 12th New Jersey in 1862; Library Company of Philadelphia

That’s the end of this installment! As always, I hope that you’ve enjoyed the read. I have decided to change my usual pattern for posts, and will delay my concluding post about Chinese wildlife until after my next installment about Harris. That one will cover his story and the 12th as they experience a long anxious wait in winter quarters, ending in their first major combat, at the Battle of Chancellorsville, one of the most important battles of the Civil War. Much drama ahead!