Prognostications for the New Year–January 1862

Prognostications for the New Year, Money Finds Its Way Back Home, and the Panorama of War Comes to Danville

By Gary Far­row, mem­ber of the Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

The troops set­tled in for the first full month of win­ter. Restrict­ed move­ment meant that major bat­tles in many parts of the coun­try would have to wait for spring, so the news turned to the more mun­dane aspects of the war. And, as tech­no­log­i­cal changes (such as the tele­graph) sped news to Danville, the town would see and expe­ri­ence a new, rich­er and more vivid medi­um that told the sto­ry of their age.

Grandiose prog­nos­ti­ca­tions short­change peo­ple and their sto­ries. This was nev­er truer than in the bor­der states of Mis­souri and West Vir­ginia, which were, in their own unique way, micro­cosms of the larg­er conflict.

North Star Jan­u­ary 11, 1862

The edi­tor of the Port­land Adver­tis­er who under­stands in the case by his late res­i­dence at the West thinks that — “While the South presents a bold front on the Potomac, …in West­ern Vir­ginia and Mis­souri… behind this front is noth­ing but weak­ness… Noth­ing is left in reserves behind this out­ward appear­ance. A sin­gle deci­sive bat­tle against the South, like Man­as­sas against the North, would decide this ques­tion and blot out for­ev­er the rebel­lion, which has noth­ing to fall back upon. Not so with the North. A dozen defeats like Man­as­sas only pro­long the con­test. It does not and can­not decide it.”

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The editor’s san­guine vision was mis­tak­en; the Civ­il War would go on for four bloody years, and the peo­ple in Mis­souri and West Vir­ginia would write their own unique stories.

When the Civ­il War erupt­ed, Mis­souri had been a state for forty years. A prod­uct of the Mis­souri Com­pro­mise of 1820, it came into the Union as a slave state.

In his Jan­u­ary 5, 1861, inau­gur­al, Mis­souri pro-slave Demo­c­ra­t­ic Gov­er­nor, Clai­borne Fox Jack­son, bel­lowed that “[Mis­souri should make] a time­ly dec­la­ra­tion of her deter­mi­na­tion to stand by her sis­ter slave-hold­ing states.” How­ev­er, the state con­ven­tion, which was held to con­sid­er seces­sion, opt­ed to stick with the Union.

Mis­souri would soon be plagued by law­less­ness and guer­ril­la war­fare. Gov­er­nor Jack­son attempt­ed to cap­i­tal­ize on the seces­sion­ist fever, fol­low­ing the fall of Fort Sumter, by tak­ing con­trol of the St Louis police and the state mili­tia, which had seized a small US arse­nal out­side of Kansas City. He also request­ed artillery from Con­fed­er­ate Pres­i­dent Jef­fer­son Davis, who oblig­ed with four can­non. The can­non mys­te­ri­ous­ly appeared in a grove on the out­skirts of St Louis where the south­ern mili­tia was drilling. This place came to be called “Camp Jackson.”

In the mean­time, Union Cap­tain Nathaniel Lyon, com­man­der of the forces guard­ing the 60,000 piece U.S. gun arse­nal in St Louis, mus­tered sev­er­al Ger­man-Amer­i­can reg­i­ments into Fed­er­al ser­vice and planned to sneak 21,000 of the arsenal’s guns across the riv­er to Illi­nois. How­ev­er, the plan leaked out and a pro-con­fed­er­ate crowd col­lect­ed at the docks to pre­vent the ship­ment of guns.

Lyon sent a box of old flint­lock mus­kets to be loaded onto the Illi­nois bound steam­boat. The crowd inter­cept­ed the box, opened it and tri­umphant­ly parad­ed the mus­kets through the streets. The Cap­tain then sent the 21,000 mod­ern mus­kets to anoth­er boat where they were suc­cess­ful­ly trans­port­ed out of state.

Not rest­ing on his lau­rels, Lyon took his new­ly mint­ed Ger­man-Amer­i­can reg­i­ments and some of his reg­u­lars over to Camp Jack­son. The south­ern mili­tia sur­ren­dered with­out a shot and the four can­non were seized. But as Lyon was tak­ing the pris­on­ers back through the city, a riot ensued, leav­ing 28 civil­ians and two sol­diers dead.

The tragedy in St Louis con­vert­ed many con­di­tion­al union­ists into seces­sion­ists and sig­nif­i­cant­ly influ­enced the pol­i­tics in Jef­fer­son City, the state cap­i­tal. The leg­is­la­ture suc­cess­ful­ly passed Gov­er­nor Jackson’s bills that put Mis­souri on a war foot­ing, how­ev­er it was Cap­tain Lyon who actu­al­ly seized the cap­i­tal and the state mili­tia fled to the South­west cor­ner of the state. Large parts of the state saw guer­ril­la war­fare between Union­ist and Con­fed­er­ate sympathizers.

Gov­er­nor Jack­son called a pro-south leg­is­la­ture into ses­sion, which enact­ed an “ordi­nance of seces­sion.” The state of Mis­souri was accept­ed into the Con­fed­er­a­cy and rep­re­sent­ed by one of the stars on the Con­fed­er­ate flag. How­ev­er, the Con­fed­er­ate state gov­ern­ment was dri­ven out of the state and spent the war years in exile.

None of this resis­tance and fight­ing unseat­ed the Union­ists from polit­i­cal con­trol of the state. For the next four years, Mis­souri was gov­erned by a state con­ven­tion until a new gov­ern­ment was final­ly elect­ed under a new Free State constitution.

North Star Jan­u­ary 11, 1862

Rebel Defeat in Western Virginia

Cincin­nati, Jan 6 ‑A spe­cial despatch to the Gazette from Hut­tonsville, VA, says that the expe­di­tion con­sist­ing of 400 of the 5th Ohio, 300 of the 2nd Vir­ginia, and 40 of Bracker’s cav­al­ry sent out by Gen­er­al Mill­roy to attack Huntersville was a com­plete suc­cess.… After skir­mish­ing an hour, the rebels retired with a loss of eight killed and wound­ed, $80,000 worth of army stores were cap­tured and destroyed …Huntersville was a depot for rebel sup­plies in West­ern Virginia.

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The state of West Vir­ginia itself was cre­at­ed in the cru­cible that was the Civ­il War. Long sim­mer­ing issues came to a head in 1861 with geog­ra­phy pro­vid­ing the back story.

The land west of the Shenan­doah Val­ley and north of the Kanawha Riv­er was dif­fer­ent from the rest of the Vir­ginia. Nar­row val­leys and steep moun­tain­sides stood in sharp con­trast to the low­lands which dom­i­nat­ed the rest of the state. Both slaves and slave own­ers were rare among these hard-work­ing moun­tain peo­ple who often felt slight­ed by the state leg­is­la­ture that was dom­i­nat­ed by “tide­wa­ter aristocrats.”

The pol­i­tics of the state were skewed heav­i­ly towards the Vir­gini­ans in the east. Slaves were taxed at one-third of their mar­ket val­ue while all oth­er prop­er­ty was taxed at full mar­ket rates. Most inter­nal improve­ments were fund­ed in the east­ern por­tion of the state while north­west Vir­ginia was in dire need of high­ways and rail­roads. The main city west of the Val­ley, Wheel­ing, felt more akin social­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly to Pitts­burgh (60 miles away) than it did to Rich­mond, which was on the oth­er side of the moun­tains and more than 330 miles down the road.

When Vir­ginia vot­ed to secede that April, only five of 31 del­e­gates from north­west Vir­ginia vot­ed for the seces­sion; a pop­u­lar vote on the ques­tion of leav­ing the Union was reject­ed by a three to one mar­gin. In June, the vast num­ber of Union­ists in the north­west cor­ner of the state con­vened the Wheel­ing con­ven­tion, which formed its own “restored gov­ern­ment” of Vir­ginia. All state offices were declared vacant and new offi­cials were appoint­ed, includ­ing Gov­er­nor Fran­cis Pier­point. Try­ing to knit the Union togeth­er as best he could, Lin­coln rec­og­nized the Pier­point admin­is­tra­tion as the legit­i­mate gov­ern­ment of Virginia.

The Wheel­ing con­ven­tion met again on Octo­ber 24; 186 del­e­gates vot­ed an “ordi­nance of dis­mem­ber­ment” sub­ject to rat­i­fi­ca­tion by ref­er­en­dum. In turn, vot­ers elect­ed del­e­gates to a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion for the new state of “Kanawha.”

While these events were unfold­ing, the Union army invad­ed west­ern Vir­ginia and defeat­ed a small rebel force. The for­ma­tion of West Vir­ginia would not have been suc­cess­ful had not Fed­er­al troops defeat­ed the Con­fed­er­ates and occu­pied the region.

In June of 1863, the adop­tion of West Vir­ginia into the Union was made con­di­tion­al by Con­gress upon the eman­ci­pa­tion of the slaves with­in its bor­ders. Con­se­quent­ly the state declared slaves born after July 4 free and all oth­ers free upon their twen­ty-fifth birthday.

Mean­while the Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and the states had to cre­ate many of the day-to-day machi­na­tions of the war effort on the fly.

North Star Jan­u­ary 25, 1862

The Allotment System

The last Brat­tle­boro Phoenix says — It will be remem­bered by our read­ers that in Octo­ber last Gov. Fair­banks appoint­ed Hon. Joseph Poland of Mont­pe­lier a Finan­cial Agent to vis­it the camps of Ver­mont troops in the ser­vice, and to receive and trans­mit such por­tions of their earn­ings to their fam­i­lies and friends at home as the sol­diers should see fit… At the same time there was a law for allot­ment of sol­diers’ pay passed at the Extra ses­sion of Con­gress last sum­mer but no details had been decid­ed upon for putting it into operation.

Imme­di­ate­ly upon the adjourn­ment of the leg­is­la­ture of this State, Gov. Hol­brook request­ed the Hon. John Page, Trea­sur­er of the State and John Howe Jr of Bran­don, the agent for pro­vid­ing for the fam­i­lies of vol­un­teers, to per­fect a sys­tem and pre­pare forms, where­by the allot­ment act of Con­gress could be made avail­able to Ver­mont sol­diers… At his request, they pro­ceed­ed to Wash­ing­ton on their way to the encamp­ment of our vol­un­teers to explain…the sys­tem to the men and car­ry the plan to active operation.

Upon their arrival, they found that Con­gress by act for that pur­pose empow­ered the Pres­i­dent to appoint three Com­mis­sion­ers for each state. [Page and Howe’s] plan was sub­mit­ted to the Trea­sury, and was found to be bet­ter than any oth­er that had been sug­gest­ed. Under these cir­cum­stances, and with­out con­sult­ing the Exec­u­tive of the State, the Pres­i­dent very prop­er­ly appoint­ed these gen­tle­men Com­mis­sion­ers… and as Mr Poland was then in Wash­ing­ton, he joined them in this Commission.

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In a depar­ture for its usu­al fare, the paper also had this enter­tain­ing, if not believ­able, sto­ry. Some­times it’s best not to let facts get in the way of a good tale.

North Star Jan­u­ary 25, 1861

A Reprieved Soldier

Some time ago, a pri­vate in the nine­teenth Indi­ana reg­i­ment was tried by court mar­tial for desert­ing his post and found guilty the pun­ish­ment for which is death.…

The pris­on­er was led for­ward blind fold­ed and the usu­al words of prepa­ra­tion and com­mand were giv­en in a low mea­sured tone by the offi­cer in com­mand. Dur­ing the inter­val between com­mands “Take Aim” and “Fire” and before the last was giv­en, a horse­man rode rapid­ly up the road, wav­ing a paper in the air which was under­stood to be a reprieve.…

… The shout “reprieve” fell upon the poor soldier’s ear, which was already strained to the utmost in antic­i­pa­tion of hear­ing the last and final word that was to ush­er his soul into the pres­ence of his Creator.

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Back home in Danville, the rev­o­lu­tion­ary sci­ence of pho­tog­ra­phy offered news and enter­tain­ment for just a few pennies.

North Star Jan­u­ary 25, 1861

Panorama of War

Clarke, Clement & Co’s Pho­to­graph­ic Mir­ror of the great Rebel­lion will be exhib­it­ed at the Court Room in Danville next Wednes­day evening Jan­u­ary 29 — It will con­tain por­traits of Gen. McClel­lan, Gen. Scott, Major Ander­son, Pres­i­dent Lin­coln, and oth­er impor­tant and inter­est­ing scenes among which are: The Bom­bard­ment of Fort Sumter, The Bat­tle of Great Bethel, The Bat­tle of Bull Run, Tak­ing of Forts Hat­teras and Clark… Admis­sion 15 cts. Chil­dren 10 cts. Doors open at 7, com­mence at 7 ½ o’clock.

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