Iowa History

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History of Iowa

Volume I

Chapter XXXI

 Picture included in this chapter Mrs. Ann E. Harlan, Annie Wittenmyer

    Our State furnished four batteries of light artillery for service during the Civil War.

   The First Battery was organized early in the first year of the war and was mustered into the service at Burlington about the middle of August, 1861, having enrolled one hundred and sixteen officers and men. They were enlisted from the State at large. The first captain was Charles H. Fletcher of Burlington, who served until January 8, 1862. He was succeeded by Lieutenant J. A. Jones who was wounded at the Battle of Pea Ridge and resigned on the 24^th of March, 1862. Harry H. Griffith, who was a captain of Company E, Fourth Iowa Infantry, was his successor. This battery did excellent service in many important battles and received honorable mention in reports of commanding officers. During its term of service the First Battery lost ten men killed in battle, fifty died of disease, twenty-seven wounded in action and twenty-six discharged fro disability. It was mustered out at Davenport, July 5, 1865.

   The Second Battery was raised in the counties of Polk, Dallas, Harrison, Fremont and Pottawattamie and went into camp at Council Bluffs in August, 1861. It consisted of one hundred and twenty-three men and was organized with Nelson T. Spoor as captain. Upon the expiration of his term of service on the 30^th of August, 1864, Lieutenant Joseph R. Reed was commissioned captain. Upon the expiration of his term of service, June 19, 1865, he was mustered out and succeeded by Lieutenant John W. Coons. This battery did excellent service during the war and was among the most famous for its brilliant action at the battles of Vicksburg, the Atlanta campaigns and at Nashville. Its losses were two killed, twenty-nine deaths from disease, fourteen wounded in action and sixteen discharge for disability. It was mustered out at Davenport on the 5^th of July, 1965.

    The Third Battery was raised in the Third Congressional District, and numbered one hundred and forty men. It went into camp at Dubuque in August, 1861, where it was mustered into the service. Captain M. M. Hayden was its first commander and served until October 3, 1864, when he was mustered out, being succeeded by Lieutenant Melville C. Wright who served until January 5, 1865, when he in turn was succeeded by Lieutenant O. H. Lyon. This battery took an active part in the battles of Pea Ridge and Helena as well as several engagements in other parts of Arkansas. Its losses during the war were four killed, thirteen wounded, thirty-three deaths from disease and twenty discharged for disability. This battery was mustered out of the service on the 3d of October, 1865 at Davenport.

    The Fourth Battery was enlisted largely in the counties of Mahaska, Mills, Fremont and Henry, went into quarters at Davenport and was mustered into the service on the 23d of November, 1863. It numbered one hundred and fifty-two men, including officers, and was organized by the appointment of Philip H. Goode, captain. Many of the officers and men were soldiers who had seen service in other organizations in the early years of the war. It was stationed in Louisiana and was not called upon to participate in any important engagements with the enemy during the term of service. Its only losses were from disease and accident and it was mustered out at Davenport on the 14^th of July, 1865.

 A Fort Dodge Cavalry Company

    In the spring of 1861 after Fort Sumter had been fired upon, a number of young men living in Fort Dodge and vicinity determined to make preparation for the war that was then seen to be inevitable. They assembled weekly for the purpose of receiving military instruction. After the Battle of Bull Run they decide to organize a military company and enter the service. Dr. L. L. Pease who was in Washington about time, learned from Senator Harlan that Colonel Josiah Harvey, a relative of the Senator, was raising a regiment of cavalry in Philadelphia and would be pleased to have a company from Iowa for his regiment. Upon his return to Fort Dodge the doctor conferred with the members of his home company. Desirous of meeting the enemy as soon as possible, the members of the Fort Dodge Company decided to join Colonel Harvey’s regiment of Pennsylvanians which became the Eleventh Pennsylvania Cavalry. The following officers were chosen mission from Governor Kirkwood of Iowa: Captain Frank A. Stratton; First Lieutenant George S. Ringland; Second Lieutenant George W. Bassett. This company reached Washington on the 6^th of October, 1861, and was given the place of honor as “Company A. Eleventh Pennsylvania Cavalry.” It was the only organization of Iowa soldiers that served during its whole term of enlistment in the eastern armies. The regiment to which this Iowa company was attached was employed in Virginia during the greater part of the war. Captain Stratton became a major and Lieutenant Ringland was promoted to captain of the company. Upon the expiration of its term of service the company. Upon the expiration of its term of service the company was given a cordial reception by the citizens of Fort Dodge.

 Andersonville and Other Confederate Prisons

    During the war of the American Revolution the government of Great Britain won a record of infamy that had not been equaled by that of any civilized nation of modern times, in its treatment of American prisoners. Crowded in the holds of prison ships reeking with foul air and filth, suffering horrors indescribable, they perished by hundreds. The cruelties practiced by the prison keepers upon their helpless victims were perpetrated for the avowed purpose of punishing rebels and terrifying the patriots who were joining the armies of the Revolution.

   The Confederate government in the treatment of prisoners captured from the Union armies surpassed the British in barbarity, in many of the prison pens. The horrors endured by inmates of Libby, Salisbury, Florence, Macon, Belle Isle, Tyler and Columbia have been told by survivors in every Northern State and the record of thousands who perished from inhuman treatment, disease and starvation and were buried in the prison cemeteries, bear witness to an infamous system of cruelty that must ever shock humanity.

   Iowa soldiers endured the horrors of these prisons and hundreds sleep in nameless graves, who were slowly murdered within the stockades.

   A brief description of the Andersonville stockade, where more Iowa soldiers perished than in any other prison, will give the people of present and future generations a truthful picture of the horrors of all of them.

   Early in 1864 the site was selected in southern Georgia remote from any large city or town, in the heart of a swampy, desolate region covered with pine forests. A railroad station and seven small buildings made the town of Andersonville. Half a mile east, twenty-seven acres of the forest were cleared and enclosed with palisades firmly planted in the ground to a depth of five feet. This made a solid wooden wall twelve feet in height. Inside of this wall at a distance of seventy feet was another wall of palisades and, at a distance of one hundred feet inside of this, was a third wall eighteen feet high. Within this wall, at a distance of seventeen feet, was the “Dead Line,” made by driving into the ground posts which projected five feet above the surface upon which were spiked two by four scantlings. On the inside of the palisades were erected sentry boxes thirty yards apart in which were stationed the armed guards, with instructions to shoot any prisoner who should reach or step inside of this “dead line.” A swampy creek ran through the enclosure from west to east, so that there was left inside of the “dead line” not more than thirteen acres of dry ground upon which men could live. Into this pen were crowded in June, 1864, 22, 291 prisoners. Dr. Joseph Jones, a distinguished Confederate physician and surgeon of Augusta, Georgia, made a visit to the stockade in August and gave a report of its condition from which the following extract is made: 

    “In July there were twenty-nine thousand and thirty, and in August thirty-two thousand eight hundred and ninety-nine prisoners confined in the stockade. No shade trees were left in the entire inclosure. But many of the Federal prisoners had ingeniously constructed huts and caves to shelter themselves from the rain, sun and night damps. The stench arising from this dense population crowded together here, performing all the duties of life, was horrible in the extreme. The accommodations for the sick were so defective and the condition of the others so pitiable that from February 24^th to September 21^st nine thousand four hundred and seventy-nine died, or nearly one-third of the entire number in the stockade. There were nearly five thousand prisoners seriously ill, and the deaths exceeded one hundred a day. Large numbers were walking about who were not reported sick, who were suffering from diarrhea and scurvy. I visited two thousand sick lying under some long sheds; only one medical officer was in attendance, whereas at least twenty should have been employed. From the crowded condition, bad diet, unbearable filth, dejected appearances of the prisoners, their systems had become so disordered that from the slightest abrasion of the skin, form the heat of the sun or even a mosquito bite, they took on rapid and frightful ulceration and gangrene. The continuous use of salt meat imperfectly cured and their total deprivation of vegetables and fruit caused the scurvy. The sick were lying upon the bare floors of open sheds without even straw to rest upon. The haggard, dejected, living skeletons, crying for medical aid and food, and the ghastly corpses with glazed eyeballs staring up into vacant space, with flies swarming down their open mouths, and over their rags infested with swarms of lice and maggots, as they lay among the sick and dying, formed a picture of helpless, hopeless misery, impossible for words to portray. Millions of flies swarmed over everything and covered the faces of the sick patients and crowded their open mouths, depositing their maggots in the gangrenous wounds of the living, and in the mouths of the dead.

    “These abuses were due to the total absence of any system or any sanitary regulations. When a patient died he was laid in front of his tent, if he had one, and often remained there for hours.”

    This was the language of a distinguished surgeon of the Confederacy who recites what he actually witnesses. His soul revolted at the cruelties that he saw on every side and the indifference of the officials who were directly responsible for the awful, needless sufferings that he so graphically describes. The condition of the perishing victims of this horrible prison was repeatedly reported by the Confederate surgeons in attendance upon the prisoners and to the Confederate Government at Richmond but not a word of rebuke came to check the horrid work of Winder and Wirz. Winder, the superintendent of prisoners, appointed by Jefferson Davis, openly boasted that “in 1864 he had destroyed more Yankee soldiers at Andersonville than had General Lee with twenty of his best regiments in the field.” Thus perished 12, 853 Union soldiers in less than a year. They were buried in a cemetery near the scene of their awful sufferings and lingering deaths. These heroic men were repeatedly offered release from the horrors of the prison, if they would enlist in the Confederate army but to their enduring honor let it be here recorded that they spurned the offers with a patriotism unsurpassed in the annals of history and remained to suffer the martyr’s death. The following is the roll of honor of the Iowa victims of Andersonville, the number being that inscribed on the marble slab that marks the soldier’s grave:

 Women’s Work in the War

    Volumes have been written on the noble services of the Union soldiers, in the somber years of the great Civil War. During the whole of that fearful drama the newspapers and periodicals told in glowing words of countless deeds of heroism of American soldiers in the bloody conflicts on a hundred battle-fields. The names of gallant officers are inscribed on imperishable records in every State of the Union. Their brilliant deeds will be an inspiration to patriotism in all the coming years of the Republic. But no history of the war however minute can record the silent sufferings on the countless marches, the heroic deeds in deadly conflict, the horrors of the prison pens, of the common soldiers. Their unmarked graves are scattered among the forests, swamps, highways and farms of more than twenty States. They marched away from northern homes in the years of early manhood when hopes were high and life was dear to them and to all the family circle from which they parted. If there is a more trying degree of patriotism than that which sent the young men of the family out into unknown dangers for love of country, it is the suppressed grief, too deep for utterance, the long, lingering ever present anxiety of the wives, mothers, sisters and dear ones who remained at home. No language can utter, no pen describe the silent, oppressive fear that never ceased to brood over the minds of the sufferers at home. How bravely they endured the fearful suspense of years had never been and can never be told. Many were left with heavy burdens to bear in providing for the family and with too much pride to accept assistance, struggled on with uncomplaining endurance. The women on farms took the places in the field of the volunteers who had gone to war, while others added to the long hours of labor by working late into the night to provide for the family support. These humble heroisms in every day life of the patient women all over the land, were inspired by as fervent patriotism as eve impelled the men of the family to face their country’s foes on the field of battle. Like the deeds and sufferings of the private soldiers they must ever remain unrecorded but like the nameless graves that the red demon of war left scattered all over the South, in which serenely slept the unknown dead, the memory of what they did in the great struggle “will never perish from the earth.”

   During the war the women of Iowa were untiring in their work to alleviate the suffering and to add to the comfort of the soldiers in the field and hospital. Almost every town and neighborhood in had its society to collect or make such articles as were needed by the sick and wounded. Hundreds of women offered their services as nurses in the hospitals but for a time were rejected by Regular Army officials. But, as the need of their services became great, and higher and more humane officials were appealed to, the obstructions were removed and their valuable services were gladly accepted.

    Mrs. J. T. Fales was the first Iowa woman was the first Iowa woman to visit army hospitals and minister to the sick. Mrs. I. K. Fuller, wife of the chaplain of the First Iowa Infantry, went with her husband to the field, was the first army nurse appointed from the State and rendered most valuable service. Mrs. Ann E. Harlan, wife of our distinguished United States Senator was the first to visit the battle-field of Shiloh.

   When the news of that great battle reached Washington Mrs. Harlan procured from Secretary Stanton a pass to take herself and a lady companion through the lines of our army. At St. Louis she procured a steamboat, a large supply of sanitary goods and field equipments and hastened to the battle-field to minister to the wounded, while hundreds of the relatives of the dead and dying soldiers who had come on the same humane mission, were heartlessly turned back by his order. It was only the written order of Secretary Stanton that secured to Mrs. Harlan admission into the camps and hospitals. After affording all possible relief to the wounded on the field, Mrs. Harlan obtained permission of the authorities to remove a steamer load of the wounded Keokuk, where a special hospital was prepared for them. During the remainder of the war Mrs. Harlan was untiring in her work in behalf of our soldiers. She was one of the principal movers in a State Sanitary Convention which was held at Des Moines in November, 1863, at which a State organization was effected which worked through the local Aid Societies in providing sanitary supplies for the soldiers.

    Another of the women who was unceasing in the good work of ministering to the wants of the sick and wounded soldiers was “Aunt Becky Young.” She went from New York, but since the war has made Iowa her home. She was one of the most faithful, helpful, and sympathetic of the army nurses who, during the war gave her services in behalf of the suffering.

    In August, Governor Kirkwood appointed Mrs. Annie Wittenmyer of Keokuk, State Sanitary Agent. She entered at once upon the work and proved to be a most efficient and energetic leader in the cause to which she devoted her entire time and best energies from the day of her appointment to the close of the war. She made frequent visits to the armies, camps and hospitals wherever Iowa soldiers were to be found, looking carefully into their condition and was untiring in her labors to alleviate their suffering sand supply their wants.

    In almost every town and county throughout the State the women of Iowa earnestly cooperated in this humane work. Sanitary fairs were held at Dubuque, Burlington, Muscatine and Marshalltown at which large amounts of money were raised through cordial work and generous contributions from the county organizations. The aid thus given to the soldiers in the field was estimated to amount to more than half a million dollars.

    At a convention of one hundred twenty-eight women held at Muscatine in October, 1863, Annie Wittenmyer proposed that steps be taken to organize an association for the care and education of the orphans of Iowa soldiers. The proposition met with general favor and representative men and women throughout the State associated themselves into a body corporate and determined to raise a fund sufficient to establish the Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home. Judge Chester C. Cole was chosen president, B. F. Allen, treasurer, Miss Mary Kibben, secretary and Rev. P. P. Ingalls, general agent. Mr. Ingalls gave his entire time to the work of raising funds, traveling through all parts of the State presenting to the people the plans of the Association, everywhere meeting with cordial reception. Ingersoll says “There has never been any one work in the State that has convened so many people in large and enthusiastic assemblies, filled so many churches and halls, thrilled so many hearts, awakened so much emotion, suffused with tears so many eyes, commanded such great liberality, or enlisted so many great minds as the Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home. The soldiers in the field made most liberal contributions to the fund, amounting to more than $45,000. One of the Homes was located at Davenport where Government buildings were appropriated to its use and remodeled for that purpose. Three hundred orphans were there gathered and provided for within a year from the time the Home was opened.

    Another Home was established at Cedar Falls where the soldiers’ orphans in the northern part of the State were cared for to the he number of more than one hundred the first year.

    So generous had been the contributions of the people of Iowa that, after the buildings had been remodeled and furnished, the Association had remaining in the treasury more than $75,000. All of the money used in this humane enterprise had come from the voluntary contributions of the people in addition to the heavy burdens cheerfully carried through the war. This generation cannot realize the continued sacrifices borne by the men and women during the war period. No pen can describe them in all of the varied forms in which they came upon the people from year to year as the conflict increased in magnitude. Every new emergency was met with a lofty and unselfish patriotism that has never been surpassed in any age or by any race