For lack of any other orders, the post commander at Kearney instructed Lieutenant Hoyt to distribute his company along the line of unguarded stations east of the fort as far as Little Blue. No sooner had Hoyt accomplished this and established headquarters at Spring Station, than orders from his regiment finally reached him. H Company was to report for duty at Camp Wardwell, Colorado.8
When the company was reassembled and started on the 250-mile march to Wardwell, Sergeant McDade reported 17 men missing. No one seemed to know where or when they had gone; they could have been lost or misplaced at any of a dozen stations. Lieutenant Hoyt never made any great effort to find them, and the missing soldiers doubtless made even a lesser effort to find their company. They were listed on the rolls as deserters.
In mid-December, the wanderers managed to settle down in winter tents at Camp Wardwell, but after New Year’s Day various detachments were on the road again, performing messenger and escort duties to Denver and Julesburg. The last week of January in bitter cold weather, Lieutenant Hoyt and a platoon had to take a group of prisoners to Denver for courts-martial.9
H Company spent three months at Camp Wardwell, and the men evidently liked the place; only one desertion occurred. But springtime brought the inevitable marching orders. With I and K Companies, which were also stationed on the Julesburg-Denver trail, H Company was ordered to Fort Lyon “to form a permanent garrison.”
From what they had seen of Fort Lyon back in the summer of 1865, Lieutenant Hoyt and his men had no desire to return there, but on April 1 they started south along the valley of Bijou Creek, struck the Denver-Santa Fe road, and marched into Fort Lyon three weeks later.
Even in springtime the flat-roofed, stone-walled buildings of Fort Lyon had a bleak look about them. The post had been built on the flats of the Arkansas River, and the only vegetation was a fringe of slender willows along the banks. At Fort Lyon there was no place to go and nothing to see. The enlisted men’s quarters had no flooring, and every time rain fell, water would flow inside and remain for days on the hard-packed earth.
The post was under command of an aging lieutenant-colonel of the 2nd Cavalry, Enoch Steen, who believed in rigid discipline and harsh punishments for infractions of the rules. After a few weeks at Fort Lyon, the men of Company H would have welcomed a transfer to anywhere. But no orders came.
On June 9, Lieutenant-Colonel Steen gave them an unexpected holiday to honor the recent death of General Winfield Scott, and on the Fourth of July, after a dress parade, they enjoyed another half-day of rest. But on all other days their waking hours were spent drilling, policing, guarding, and standing inspections.
Lieutenant Hoyt, who was as much a civilian at heart as were his men, endured the monotonous existence until July 19, and then submitted his resignation “for private reasons.”10 By this time his company had dwindled to less than 40 men, and he must have realized that the captaincy which his command originally warranted would never be forthcoming.
After Hoyt departed in mid-August, H Company became largely the responsibility of Sergeant-Major McDade, who reported to Lieutenant A. O. Ingalls of K Company. Six weeks later when General Sherman arrived at Fort Lyon on his inspection tour of Western posts, he was so appalled by what he saw that he recommended the post be abandoned. The quarters, he said, were not fit for human habitation. “Anybody looking through them can see full reason for the desertions that have prevailed so much of late years.”11 Sherman ordered the 2nd Cavalry transferred to Fort Laramie, the three companies of Galvanized Yankees to be mustered out.*
H Company still had one more long stretch of Western country to cross—500 miles to Fort Leavenworth. On October 15, with I and K Companies, the Alabama-Georgia boys started east along the Santa Fe Trail, every step marched a step nearer home—for those who were going home.
Their delayed mustering out enabled them to benefit from a recent War Department ruling. They could keep their knapsacks, haversacks, and canteens—all for free. If they wanted to retain their well-used Springfield muskets they had to put $6.00 on the line. Revolvers were $8.00, swords $3.00. Those who elected to stay in the West probably chose revolvers.
At Fort Leavenworth on November 13, 1866, they became civilians again. These were the last of the Galvanized Yankees.
*In June 1867, Fort Lyon was relocated on a sandstone bluff 20 miles up the Arkansas from its old site.
XII
A Note on the Galvanized Confederates
EARLY IN THE CIVIL War the Confederate States of America had a far Western frontier, but its importance rapidly diminished, and as the Confederacy was never engaged in war with Indian tribes, its government could not offer prisoners of war their freedom in exchange for frontier service.
The Confederate Army did recruit, however, several hundred Galvanized Confederates (sometimes confusingly called Galvanized Yankees) from prison camps. As early as March 1863, General John Pemberton queried the Confederate Secretary of War, James A. Seddon, as to possibilities of enlisting Union soldiers held as prisoners of war in Mississippi. Seddon’s reply left the responsibility largely to Pemberton: “Use your discretion with regard to men taken as prisoners of war. Enlist if any are willing. Let any willing take the oath of allegiance. Put any willing to work. Parole and dismiss toward their own country such as you may deem safe.”1
Pemberton apparently never enlisted any of his prisoners. He probably never found time to do so, because during the next few weeks he was too much occupied with defending Vicksburg from the vigorous assaults of General Grant, and surrendering to him on July 4.
Not until late in 1864 did the Confederate War Department make any serious effort toward recruiting soldiers from prison camps. On September 13, General Samuel Jones reported to General Braxton Bragg from Charleston, South Carolina: “Many Yankee prisoners now here profess to be highly indignant with their Government for not exchanging them … and they express an earnest desire to take the oath of allegiance, and many of them to join our army if we will permit them. Can anything be done in that way?”
Bragg forwarded the inquiry to Secretary Seddon, who replied: “A battalion or two might be formed of the foreigners—the Yankees are not to be trusted so far, or at all.”2
Two weeks later from Macon, Georgia, General M. J. Wright notified Secretary Seddon that there were “a thousand or more” Irish and other foreign-born Union prisoners under his jurisdiction who desired to enlist in the Confederate service. “Shall it be done?” Wright asked.
“The enlistment of Irish and other foreign prisoners, as proposed, is sanctioned,” Seddon ruled on September 30, and Wright immediately ordered that all foreigners willing to take the oath be placed in a separate camp to await specific instructions for enlistment.3
The first camp selected for concentration of recruits was at Florence, South Carolina. On October 12, Lieutenant-Colonel W. D. Pickett made an inspection of the camp, reporting his findings to General W. J. Hardee at Charleston:
They are mostly foreigners, and are generally good-looking men, and I doubt not will make good soldiers. They are woefully destitute in clothing and blankets, and their wants should be at once supplied. I recommend that they at once be placed in the field, either as an organization or scattered in old commands. I understand several hundred more foreigners can be enlisted, and if you will take Western men, 1,500 to 2,000 more can be enlisted. About 50 of them already enlisted are old gunners and seamen, and are anxious to go in the Navy. I recommend that they be allowed to do so.
When Hardee forwarded this report to Seddon, the Secretary of War evidently had some misgivings about immediate enlistment Of these former enemies. For the time being, he directed, the recruits should be “detailed for work at their respective trades.”4
Meanwhile other hard-pressed Confederate commanders, eager to fill up their rosters, began beseeching Richmond for permission to recruit from prison camps. The competition became keen, one general complaining that 1,100 of the prisoners enlisted at Florence “have been
carried away to some place unknown to me by one of General Hardee’s inspectors.”5
Early in November, Seddon granted permission for “enlistment of a battalion of infantry from prisoners of war at Millen, Andersonville, and other points in Georgia,” and soon afterward extended this to any military prisons in the Eastern theater of war. That the recruiting efforts were productive is indicated by a November report of the commandant at Camp Lawton, Georgia, who noted 349 prisoners enlisted in Confederate service.6
All this activity behind the Confederate lines soon came to the notice of the Union Army. On November 11 and 12, special reports were sent to the chief of staff, H. W. Halleck, from Union Army Headquarters, Department of the South, Hilton Head, South Carolina. The commanding general of the department, J. G. Foster, had taken testimony from several Galvanized Confederates who had escaped at the first opportunity and made their way back to the Union lines.
One of these men was Sergeant James D. Salsbury, Company K, 3rd New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, who had been captured near Petersburg, Virginia, May 24, 1864. In his statement, Salsbury said “that to save his life and health he enlisted in the 47th Georgia Volunteers, knowing it was stationed at James Island, so that he could desert and come to our lines.” Salsbury also told General Foster there were 150 former U.S. soldiers who had taken the oath of allegiance to the Confederate States of America and enlisted in that same regiment.
After questioning other men who had escaped, Foster estimated that there were “between 1,300 and 2,000 U.S. soldiers who have taken the oath of allegiance to the Southern Confederacy; 400 of them have arms and are on James Island; the others are in camp at Summerville. They are clothed in the C. S. Army uniform.”
General Halleck immediately forwarded this information to General Grant with the notation: “Advices from other sources indicate that many of our foreign troops and substitutes, prisoners of war, are joining the rebel cause.”7
About the same time that Grant was thus apprised of the situation, his opponent across the lines at Petersburg, General Robert E. Lee, also became interested. On November 14, Lee wrote Seddon that General J. G. Martin had informed him that 2,000 or 3,000 foreigners held as prisoners of war at Salisbury, North Carolina, could be enlisted in the Confederate Army.
He [Martin] also states that authority for this purpose has been given to several persons by the War Department and that the company officers are to be elected by the members of the company. If they are taken from among themselves I fear they may be neither effective nor reliable. How would it answer to organize these men into the Regular Army, with officers appointed by the President, and the whole under one good officer? The men would then be placed in camp, instructed, and disciplined. By the spring they would make a valuable addition to the Army. General Martin thinks that by proper management this force could be increased to 7,000 or 8,000.
In a lengthy reply, Seddon outlined his attitude toward prison recruitment, the steps he had already taken, and those he proposed to take. “I have given to officers supposed to be competent … permits to raise battalions, directing them to prefer Irish and French, and to enlist no citizens of the U.S. The latter, especially native born, I hold in great distrust.” Seddon explained that he preferred to form battalions instead of regiments because he “doubted the expediency of having so many of this material together as a regiment required.” The Secretary agreed with General Lee that the practice of permitting enlisted prisoners to elect their officers from among themselves was dangerous, and promised that it would no longer be permitted.8
The high hopes of General Lee for a “valuable addition” to his army from prisoners of war must have been considerably dampened on Christmas Eve, 1864, by a message from General Hardee at Charleston:
Colonel Brooks’ battalion composed of Federal prisoners of war enlisted from prisons into the Confederate service, was found at Savannah to be utterly untrustworthy. The men deserted in large numbers and finally mutinied, and were narrowly prevented from going over in a body to the enemy. The ringleaders were shot and the remainder sent back to prison. These men were selected with great care, and were principally foreigners, and this is, therefore, a fair test of such troops. I recommend that all authority to organize similar commands be revoked.9
Three days later at Egypt Station, Mississippi, General Benjamin Grierson’s Union Cavalry Division was facing a defensive position held by the 10th Tennessee Infantry and other Confederate regiments. After nightfall several soldiers dressed in Confederate uniforms made their way into the Union lines at a point held by the 3rd Iowa Cavalry and surrendered. They reported that they were former Union soldiers who had been prisoners of war at Andersonville. They told Colonel John Noble of the 3rd Iowa that they had enlisted in the Confederate Army to save themselves from death by starvation and disease, and that they had taken an oath they no longer remembered, with the design and determination to join the Union Army at the first opportunity. They also informed Noble that about 300 more Galvanized Confederates were with the 10th Tennessee, and that “many of these men would not resist in battle.”10
Next morning when Grierson ordered an attack, the 3rd Iowa and 2nd New Jersey cavalry regiments bore the brunt of the fight with the 10th Tennessee. When the battle was over, the Union forces were victorious; they had also taken 500 prisoners, 254 of them former Union soldiers. According to Colonel Noble, the assurance that me Galvanized Confederates would not resist “proved true in many instances, although the fight was a severe one.” The commander of the New Jersey regiment, however, reported that when his men came within range of the 10th Tennessee skirmish line, “they opened a heavy fire, killing three officers and 20 men and wounding 74 others, that he then made a charge, when they threw down their arms and surrendered.”11
General Grierson ordered all the former Union soldiers shipped north to Alton, Illinois, for internment in a special prison designed for spies, political subversives, and deserters. In his report of their capture, Grierson explained that he believed they were induced to join the Confederate Army “from a desire to escape a loath-some confinement. I commend them to the leniency of the Government.”12
For a few weeks the fate of these captives was in doubt, the judge advocate general being inclined to bring them individually to trial as deserters. But by this time the war was nearing its end, and in St. Louis, across the river from Alton, General Grenville Dodge was energetically seeking recruits for his 5th and 6th U.S. Volunteer Infantry regiments.
It was largely through Dodge’s efforts that these special prisoners once again became Union soldiers. These were the Galvanized Confederates who became Galvanized Yankees in Companies C and D of the 5th U.S. Volunteers, and marched under Captain George Williford with the Sawyers Expedition to Powder River. (The end of their story is told in Chapter VI.)
In the meantime the Confederate Army had not entirely abandoned plans to recruit more prisoners of war into its ranks. About the same time that General Hardee completely rejected any further use of such recruits, General D. H. Maury, commanding in the lower Mississippi Valley, requested permission to give the experiment a trial in his department.
Secretary Seddon was extremely cautious in his reply, advising Maury not to place such recruits in new organizations, but to scatter them among veteran regiments. “In one case in which a new battalion was formed from such material,” Seddon warned, “a conspiracy was discovered; and although it was promptly crushed, yet it was found expedient to disband the battalion.” Seddon repeated the instructions he had given other commanders: “Recruit chiefly among the Irish. Men born in the U.S. should not be received unless known to have sincere and positive predilections for the South. Natives of the Southern States may be received more freely.”13
As the war rushed to its end, harassed Confederate commanders in the East became involved in petty quarrels over available prisoner recruits. On January 17, 1865, General Zebulon York complained to General Lee that Lieutenant-Colonel John G. Tucker, commanding
the First Foreign Battalion, had recruited prisoners promised to him in North Carolina. York’s message was passed around through higher headquarters, accumulating indorsements while Grant was delivering his final hammer blows at the army of the Confederacy. The Confederate War Department at last decided that Lieutenant-Colonel Tucker’s First Foreign Battalion had priority over York’s brigade.14
Meanwhile General Sherman’s victorious Union army had been rolling north from Savannah, freeing thousands of prisoners. By the time York received his reply from Lee, Sherman was threatening North Carolina, and nothing seemed of less importance than the Galvanized Confederates.
Notes
I. Introduction
1. Ware, p. 401.
2. Root, p. 505.
3. Waters, p. 62.
4. Union Vedette, April 12, 1865.
5. Rocky Mountain Herald, July 2, 1927.
6. Mackey, p. 649.
7. OR, Ser. I, vol. 48, pt. 2, p. 1228; Dodge, p. 63.
8. Ibid., pp. 751-52, 1239.
9. Frontier Scout, Aug. 17, 1865.
10. Union Vedette, Oct. 10 and 12, 1865.
11. Frontier Scout, June 15 and Oct. 12, 1865.
12. Ware, p. 401.
13. Sturgis, pp. 268-69, and from information supplied by Roy Brandon, Halls, Tennessee.
14. Goss, p. 225; Grigsby, p. 182.
15. OR, Ser. II, vol. 8, p. 358.
16. Butler, vol. 3, p. 557.
17. Bowles, p. 11.
II. “Bloody Year on the Plains”
1. OR, Ser. III, vol. 4, p. 680.
2. Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 7, p. 531.
3. OR, Ser. III, vol. 4, p. 740.
4. Ibid., p. 744.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., 756.
7. Minnich, p. 30.
8. Ibid.
9. OR, Ser. III, vol. 4, p. 940.
10. OR, Ser. I, vol. 48, pt. 1, p. 761.