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Another in a series.

Francis Effingham Pinto was in the grain storage and transport business in Brooklyn before and after the Civil War. He had been successful as a merchant since about 1850, when he decided to sell supplies to ’49ers in California rather than mining gold himself.

He was appointed Lieutenant Colonel of the 32nd New York Infantry in May 1861 and on 13 September 1862 was temporarily assigned to command their sister regiment, the 31st New York Infantry as they approached South Mountain in Maryland – the 31st having no field officers (Colonel, Lt. Colonel, Major) of their own present.

He was in command of the 31st at Crampton’s Gap on the 14th and at Antietam on 17 September, but did he also lead the 32nd New York Infantry at Antietam?

The New York State monument (1919) on the battlefield lists Colonel Roderick N Matheson and Major George F Lemon (both also longtime Californians) in command of the 32nd at Antietam. They certainly led the regiment in action at Crampton’s Gap on 14 September, but both were mortally wounded there and obviously not at Antietam 3 days later.

Lieutenant Colonel Pinto’s cemetery biography suggests he took charge of both units at Antietam. The definitive answer is probably in Pinto’s own History of the 32nd Regiment, New York Volunteers, in the Civil War, 1861-1863, and personal recollection during that period, which he published in 1895, but I’ve not found a copy yet.

Returning to Pinto’s civilian life after the war, here’s a lovely illustration of a floating grain elevator and F.E. Pinto’s grain storage buildings in Atlantic Basin, Brooklyn, NY in 1871.

Colonel Pinto’s photograph is from the MOLLUS Massachusetts album, online from the US Army Heritage and Education Center, Carlisle Barracks.

The picture of Pinto’s stores in Brooklyn is from Harper’s Weekly of 20 May 1871 and was shared online by Maggie Land Blanck.

One of the saddest stories of Antietam is that of the vain heroism of the men of the 7th Maine Infantry on the Piper Farm at about 5 pm on 17 September 1862. Their ill-considered charge there destroyed the regiment as a fighting force and obtained little result.

[Battle Map #15 on AotW]

Their commander, Major Thomas Worcester Hyde of Bath, Maine, described it in his after-action report 2 days after the battle and refined his narrative in his later memoir Following the Greek Cross, or, Memories of the Sixth Army Corps (1894), which I’m excerpting here to accompany a new battle map on AotW.

Colonel Irvin [William H Irwin] of the 49th Pennsylvania commanded our brigade at Antietam. He was a soldier of the Mexican War, and had been wounded at Resaca de la Palma. He was a gallant man, but drank too much, of which I was then unaware.

read the rest of this entry »

As I’ve done on my last several trips to the battlefield, I stopped to visit a few stones in Antietam National Cemetery this past week. Starting at the “back” – the south wall of the cemetery – I noticed particularly the rows of markers for the many unknown soldier buried there …

As you probably know, nearly all 1890 United States Census records were destroyed in a fire in 1921 leaving a permanent information gap familiar to historians and genealogists. Not so familiar, I expect, are a set of special veteran’s schedules the Bureau collected during the 1890 Census, most of which survived.

This Special Schedule was particularly valuable to me in learning about a mystery soldier of the 16th Connecticut Infantry.

He enlisted as Lewis Bulgick, a Private in Company H in August 1862, was wounded at Antietam on 17 September, and was discharged from the service for disability in February 1863.

I spent quite a bit of time trying to learn more about Private Bulgick, with little luck. Other regimental researchers before me have had this same problem – all the way back to his fellow veterans in the 1890s. I found a little for him in Massachusetts records of the 1860s and 70s, but nothing about his ancestry, birth, or death.

Then I stumbled upon a page of the 1890 Special Schedule for Southbridge, MA. Here it is (click to enlarge):

There on row 35 is the key: he also used the alias Louis Bolduc, his birth name, it turns out. With that I was easily able to find his Québécois parents and 17 (!) siblings, birth and death information, the works. Very satisfying.

I do not know why he used the Bulgick name instead of the one he was born with – but I believe he consciously chose it, it’s not just a phonetic mis-transcription: in addition to enlisting as Bulgick, he also gave that name to the 1860 and 1870 census enumerators and the Massachusetts towns where some of his 8 or more babies were born. Some of his children seem to have later used Bulgick (or variations) and some Bolduc.

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For much more detail about the history of the 1890 Special Schedule, see First in the Path of the Firemen by Kelee Blake in the National Archives’ journal Prologue for Spring 1996.

I got my copy of this particular page from Ancestry.com.

Sergeant Patrick Breen fought with Company C of the 2nd United States Infantry above the Middle Bridge at Antietam on the afternoon of 17 September 1862, and two days later at Boteler’s Ford near Shepherdstown.

Many years later, in 1895, he wrote a piece for the National Tribune – a Washington, DC newspaper which catered to Civil War veterans – suggesting how differently the battle at Antietam would have ended, if only …

Following is a transcription with the accompanying illustrations:

I’m exploring another Irish unit today – Company K of the First South Carolina Infantry (McCreary’s). Formed in June 1861 as the Irish Volunteers for the War, they came largely from a pre-war militia company organized in Charleston in about 1853: the Meagher Guards.

When the Guards’ idol and namesake Thomas F. Meagher began recruiting Irishmen for the Union in New York in 1861

the Charleston company condemned Meagher for “taking arms against us in this most unholy war in support of usurpation and oppression,” struck his name off their roll of honorary members, and on 9 May changed the unit’s name to Emerald Light Infantry.

Two former officers the Meagher Guard who formed the Irish Volunteers for the War – Company K – were wounded at Sharpsburg in September 1862:

Dublin-born Captain Michael P. Parker was a carpenter who “had acquired an education beyond his circumstances. He was an able mathematician, and an excellent writer.” Formerly First Lieutenant of the Meagher Guards, he was made Captain of Company K in January 1862. He was “dreadfully” wounded at Sharpsburg, and never really recovered, dying young at about age 35 in 1868.

First Lieutenant James Armstrong, Jr. was only slightly hurt at Sharpsburg and was eventually promoted to Captain of the Company after Parker. He was born in Philadelphia of immigrant parents but was raised in Charleston and lived for some time in Ireland in the 1850s.

At least 9 more men of Company K were casualties on the Maryland Campaign and many had probably been members of the Meagher Guard; with Irish surnames like Burns, Dillon, Feeney, Holloran, Kennedy, and Sullivan.

The announcement for the Guards, above, is from the Charleston Daily Courier of 16 September 1853. I found it and the quotes above in the excellent Meagher Guard, Charleston’s Fighting Irish by Bill Bynum, published in Company Front (Issue 1, 2011) [pdf], the journal of The Society for the Preservation of the 26th Regiment North Carolina Troops.

This is the outside of a 30 October 1863 application submitted by Lieutenant George H Kearse, then commanding Company G of the 17th South Carolina Infantry, concerning Private Jones Frank Jones of his Company. Jones had been wounded by a buckshot through his left hand at Turner’s Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862, 14 months before.

It was the second or third such application for discharge made on his behalf.

Regimental commander Colonel Fitz William McMaster passed it along with the following illuminating note:

Hd Qr 17th Reg S.C.
Nov 2nd 1863

Approved and respectfully forwarded –

I made two applications for the discharge of Private Jones last Spring but failed to procure it.

His hand was badly mutilated at Boonsboro Sep 14th 1862 and he has since been an inconvenience to the Regiment. I know him to be a good & faithful soldier anxious to serve his country and hope he will not be compelled to ___ [?] out a miserable existence in camp unable even to attend to his own personal comforts, much less to benefit the service.

F.W. McMaster
Col 17th Reg S.C.

Private Jones was discharged 3 days later.

The inside of the application is shown below. It’s from Jones’ Compiled Service Record at the National Archives.

These are the national colors of the 30th New York Infantry regiment, probably carried at Antietam, from the New York State Military Museum.

Appropriately, the flag has the 34 stars in the blue canton, following the Act of April 4, 1818 signed by President Monroe, which provided that the American flag should have 13 stripes, and one star for each state; new stars to be added to the flag on the 4th of July following the admission of each new state.

A 33-star flag was in use from 1858 to 1861 and the 34-star flag became official on 4 July 1861, a star added for the admission of Kansas (29 January 1861). It was in use for 2 years until 4 July 1863, when a 35th star was added for West Virginia (admitted 20 June 1863).

While probably most common, the rectangular 34-star arrangement above – similar to our modern 50-star pattern, but in rows of 6-5-6-6-5-6 – was not the only one used, as the Act specified only the number of stars. Also frequently seen are flags with rows of 7-7-6-7-7 stars and similar.

Here’s a display flag with quite another design. This particular one was made to be hung on a wall and is only finished on one side (as seen on PBSs Antiques Roadshow in 2016).

Here’s a variation of that circular arrangement, sometimes called the Great Medallion pattern, on a flag sold by Heritage Auctions in February 2007.

Flags were also made with the stars formed in the shape of a large star or flower, such as this one, sold by Heritage Auctions in May 2010.

Let me know of other historical 34-star flags you’ve seen, won’t you?

Captain George F. Norton had been in Confederate service since April 1861 and led the First Virginia Infantry on the Maryland Campaign, seeing combat on South Mountain and at Sharpsburg. He was in command again at Gettysburg, where he was wounded, and afterward was promoted to Major. He was with the regiment to the end of the War – which for him occurred when he was captured at Sailor’s Creek, VA on 6 April 1865.

He jumps headlong out of the distant past, though, in this brief letter he wrote to President Jefferson Davis on 28 February 1865:

Sir,

I respectfully ask to be appointed Colonel of a Negro Regiment –

I am a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and accompany this application with recommendations from my Brigade and Division Commanders.

I am – Sir – very respectfully,

George F Norton
Major 1st Va. Infantry

I’ve never seen anything like this before.

In February 1865 there were no “Negro Regiments” in Confederate service, nor were any expected. So this seems like an off-the-wall request.

The idea of arming slaves had been argued before, and roundly rejected. In December 1863 General Patrick Cleburne formally floated the idea in a proposal he shared among his officers. Word got around the army, and the reaction was universally and understandably negative. Cleburne either misunderstood or underestimated the power that slavery held in and over the Confederate States.

Most of the leadership probably agreed with Howell Cobb, Georgia politician and Confederate founding-father, who later famously wrote:

I think that the proposition to make soldiers of our slaves is the most pernicious idea that has been suggested since the war began … If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong, but they won’t make soldiers.

When he received the proposal in January 1864, President Davis firmly rejected it and demanded the document and all copies be destroyed.

However, a year later the situation was desperate, and on 10 February 1865, and with the support of General R.E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, Congressman Ethelbert Barksdale of Mississippi introduced a bill (HR-367) authorizing arming slaves in the defense of the Confederacy. It passed the House on 20 February, and slightly amended, by one vote, the Senate on 8 March. President Davis signed it into law on the 13th.

So it may not be such a mystery that Norton wrote that letter. From a prominent Richmond family, with friends in the city, it is likely that he knew of the legislative activity. Perhaps he saw an opportunity for advancement and wanted his name in the running.

I have not found a reply from the President to Major Norton in the record.

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The CS War Department issued General Orders No. 14 to implement the new law on 23 March. Notably they included these among the provisions:

No slave will be accepted as a recruit unless with his own consent and with the approbation of his master by a written instrument conferring as far as he may, the rights of a freedman …

It is not the intention of the President to grant any authority for raising regiments or brigades. The only organizations to be perfected at the depots or camps of instruction are those of companies and (in exceptional cases where the slaves are of one estate) of battalions consisting of four companies …

The war was effectively over less than a month later, and by that time only two such “companies” had actually been formed.

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Notes

The image above, of Major Norton’s letter (along with the accompanying recommendations from Generals Corse, Terry, and Pickett, and Thomas Haymond’s forwarding letter) is in the US National Archives in his Compiled Service Record; I found it online from fold3 (subscription required).

The Howell Cobb quote is from a letter he wrote to then-Secretary of War James Seddon on 8 January 1865, which is online from the Encyclopedia Virginia.

The text of the approved Act of the Confederate Congress and of War Department General Orders No. 14 authorizing enlistment of black soldiers is online thanks to the Freedmen and Southern Society Project at the University of Maryland.

George F Norton’s bio page is on Antietam on the Web.

For a deeper look at the issue of enlisting slaves for Confederate service, from an early 20th century perspective, you might consult N. W. Stephenson’s The Question of Arming the Slaves (American Historical Review, January 1913), and Thomas Robson Hay’s The South and the Arming of the Slaves (American Historical Review, June 1919), both online from JSTOR.

[Nathaniel Wright Stephenson (1867-1935), a prolific writer of history and biography was appointed professor at the College of Charleston (SC) in 1902 and at the new Scripps College (CA) in 1927.  T.R. Hay (1888-1974) was a Penn State-trained electrical engineer who became a noted historian and editor.]

Lieutenant Richard C. Shannon of the 5th Maine Infantry was assigned as aide-de-camp to Major General Henry W. Slocum, commander of the First Division, 6th Army Corps, in March 1862. Although a well-educated young man, he was still learning his profession as a staff officer in August and September 1862.

Shannon left behind some wartime diaries which, although not especially dramatic as narrative, offer insight into his day-to-day experience in the field.

Of particular interest to me is this field notebook/diary he had with him on the Maryland Campaign.

It is a flip-page style that he probably carried in his pocket, and he used it both as a traditional diary – writing a brief summary of each day’s activity – and as a working notebook to keep orders, names, maps, and other things he needed to remember.

I’ll pull out some pages to give you a flavor, here. Click on any of them to expand for easier reading.