Emmitsburg Area In the Civil War
Wayde
Chrismer Part
2 of 4
Mount St. Mary’s
College During the Civil War
With students, teachers
and administrative personnel from both North and South,
political feelings at the Mount were strongly divided.
Prior to the war, it had suffered severely from
political Know-Nothings (a subject treated lengthily
elsewhere. ) When war itself broke out, its personnel,
as individuals, had little choice but to take sides
though there was no open hostility between themselves.
The school suffered both spiritually and financially.
‘‘There were 173 students in 1859-60, not including
seminarians, ‘ But ‘‘the number of pupils in
1861-62 was the lowest in half a century 67, with 28
seminarians.’’ In mid-wartime ‘‘the catalogue of
June 24, 186.3, showed 94 boys and 27 seminarians.
Scores of its students
followed geographical leanings to go with one army or
the other. No restraint was put upon their going other
than what the Federal Government could apply. Its
administrators had a different problem. Graduates of its
seminary were occupying high religious offices in North
and South. Bishop Quinlan "from the extreme
South" wrote President McCaffrey in February 1861
before the war commenced: "Tho’ wishing from my
heart to see a long and prosperous Union . . . I am
afraid that it is now vain, to hope for its
reconstruction and preservation Bishop Elder at Natchez
in July ‘61 wrote: "We are continuing our prayers
for peace but a fair and honorable peace." Among
those who "gave the Confederacy the ‘aid and
comfort’ of sympathy if not overt action The Mountain
cites the Rev. Thomas R. Butler, Vicar General of the
Covington, Ky. diocese. Of him it says: "In the
interest of some Southern prisoners, he visited Pres.
Lincoln. They’ were kind red spirits in their hearts,
tender charity and love of justice and right as each saw
it." Though thus suggesting that Fr. Butler was a
Southerner, it adds that "he never after allowed in
his presence a sneer at Abraham Lincoln either by word
or look.’’ These were men formerly associated with
The Mount. It was a different thing for Dr. McCaffrey
school president and responsible for all its official
actions. How he managed to get away with what he did
without being arrested is difficult to imagine. A priest
of later days who had been "a prefect in the days
of the Civil War" wrote in 1906: "In and
around the College [there was] a very bitter feeling
towards the North. Dr. McCaffrey in his remarks was
exceedingly bitter.
The same authors state:
"The long years of uninterrupted authority had
rendered Rev. John McCaffrey more than autocratic ‘‘
saying his motto might well have been I am the
College." They add: "Had he accepted the mitre
of Charleston’ he would during the Civil War, have
been among the most ultra of those with whom his deepest
sympathies were: he was a Southerner of the most
uncompromising type. There can be no doubt that his
actions at The Mount during the war supported it."
Though he claimed that it was in the interests of
neutrality, Father McCaffrey refused to let the American
flag be displayed on the campus. When Lincoln was shot,
Federal orders were issued ‘‘for every house to
display some sign of mourning. An officer visited the
college, but there was no sign visible," until Dr.
McCaffrey produced "a small piece of crape" on
a door which had been opened back so that it would not
be visible until disclosed.
The Mountain quotes an
1863 graduate writing after the war: "Whilst there
were strong partisans, both among the faculty and
students, for both sides, the general aspect of the
college was neutral ground. Still the prevailing
sentiment of the college was in favor of the South ...
The adherents of the South among the faculty were: The
President, Dr. McCaffrey: Henry McMurdie, Professor of
Logic and Director of the Seminary; George H. Miles,
Professor of English Literature; Col. Daniel Beltzhoover,
a graduate of West Point and a classmate of General
Grant, professor of Mathematics and Commandant of the
Mountain Cadets; and James Hickey, Professor of Writing
and Drawing. The Union men were: Rev. John McCloskey,
Vice-President and Treasurer; Rev. Leonard Obermeyer and
Rev. John B. Byrne. Henry Dielman, Professor of Music,
and Jean Maurice, Professor of French, were neutrals. In
the Seminary, John D. Crimmens was the most pronounced
Republican or Abolitionist."
There are two
discrepancies here of the sort that make Civil War
historians desperate if they truly seek the truth.
McCloskey is called a Union man, vet the same work
associates him intimately with the Rebel Gen. Stuart.
That Beltzhoover was a "classmate of Gen.
Grant" is definitely untrue. The historical
Register of the U.S. Regular Army shows that Beltzhoover
entered West Point on the very same day that Grant
graduated.
The mountain continues:
"Though the professors and students took sides and
were firm in their opinions there was never any
ill-feeling entertained nor violence indulged in."
No sooner had the war broken out than Southern-born
students made haste to leave for Dixie. Some thirty left
with Beltzhoover, who later commanded a Louisiana
battery. Among others was Louis Victor Baughman, son of
the editor of The Frederick Citizen, later suppressed by
the Yankees. During the Antietam campaign, at least six
left to join Lee’s troops in Frederick. In 1864, when
Gen. Early made the final Confederate raid on Maryland,
a Mississippi parent was persuaded by two student sons
for permission to join him. One son was killed during a
raid in the neighborhood of Hagerstown" but the
other escaped. Not all Southern-born students left,
however, and The Mount wrote off their expenses because
funds for their maintenance could not be sent to the
school. The college also contributed money towards the
maintenance of Southern students at the American College
in Rome for the same reason.
In addition to
financial losses incurred by a drop in enrollment, the
subsidization of Southern students and natural economic
problems, the school is supposed to have expended huge
sums on the purchase of quickly depreciating and
ultimately worthless Confederate bonds. We can find no
substantiation for this in The Story of the Mountain. It
was a standing joke when this writer attended The Mount
(and never contested by the authorities to my knowledge)
that Msgr. B. J. Bradley, its president, could have
papered the largest room there using nothing but the
valueless Rebel bonds with which the schools’ archives
were said to be filled. In any case, Mount Saint Mary’s
came out of the war with nearly all her temporal
possessions lost, but with her glorious records of the
past untarnished and her spirit unbroken.’
Probably like most of
her lay neighbors in Emmitsburg, the college, by and
large, looked upon the conflict as a biographer cited in
The Mountain wrote of Archbishop John Hughes of New
York, the school’s most famous graduate during the
Civil War: "When the rebellion first broke out in
1861, he hoped and prayed for peace until all room for
hope was gone. He was not carried away by the war-like
enthusiasm which broke out all through the North after
the capture of Fort Sumter; though he was by no means a
believer either in the doctrine of State sovereignty or
the right of secession. [He had written:] ‘I am an
advocate for the sovereignty of every State in the Union
within the limits recognized and approved by its own
representative authority when the Constitution was
agreed upon . . . I hold that South Carolina has no
State right to interfere with the internal affairs of
Massachusetts . . . But the Constitution, having been
formed by the common consent of all parties engaged in
the framework and approval thereof, I maintain that no
State has the right to secede, except in the manner
provided for in the document itself .
Let’s end this
account of The Mount with an anecdote probably unknown
to all its readers. John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s
assassin, was taught "at a school kept . . . in a
little one-story brick building . . . in Baltimore a
graduate of Mt. St. Mary’s College, Martin J. Kerney."
So writes James J. Williamson, one of Mosby’s Rangers,
who says he was a classmate there with Booth, along with
the latter’s brother Edwin and John Sleeper Clarke,
yet another actor, who later married the Booth brothers
sister, Asia.
The Story of St. Joseph’s
in the War
Unlike its masculine
counterpart across "The Valley", St. Joseph’s
was non-military and became involved in politics only
briefly, again at the hands of the Know-Nothings as will
be noted later. The Mother House of The Daughters of
Charity of St. Vincent de Paul of St. Joseph’s in the
\alley of Emmitsburg, Maryland" by which ponderous
title its best-read historians define it, was almost
solely known for the many works of charity and mercy to
which its founder, St. Elizabeth Bayley Seton, had
dedicated it.
There was scarcely a
community of any consequence in North or South here the
sisters from Emmitsburg did not perform their acts of
charity of mercy. They served in hospitals in Richmond,
Winchester, White House, Gordonsville and Lynchburg
(Virginia); in New Orleans, Natchez andl central
Georgia; in Washington, New York and Philadelphia; in
Frederick, at Point Lookout, and, Baltimore; and also
actively on the actual battlefields of Harper’s Ferry,
Second Bull Run, Antietam, Shiloh and Gettysburg to name
but some.
In June 1861, the
Confederate doctor in charge of military hospitals in
Richmond "called upon Sisters of Charity of
Emmitsburg to come to the relief of the sick and wounded
soldiers in that neighborhood." Archbishop Hughes
of New York, learning of the request, wrote Archbishop
Kenrick in Baltimore that, though he understood the
Sisters "would be willing to volunteer a force of
from fifty to one hundred nurses’’ he had ‘‘very
strong objections." He reasoned that "Maryland
is a divided community at this moment and feared
political misinterpretations if they were sent to nurse
Confederate wounded when they were needed in the North
to which Maryland, officially, still belonged. They did
go there later however. Also, most high Catholic
officials feared that the sisters might, inadvertently,
be used for improper military purposes. They were quite
right. No sooner had ‘a group of brave sisters left
Emmitsburg on June 9(1861) for Frederick" through
which they would pass on their way to the Harper’s
Ferry Battlefield, than a local man tried to give a
sister a letter that "a gentleman in Emmitsburg
desires you to put in a Southern post office after you
have crossed the [Yankee] lines." The author says
"The sisters remained quiet and made the best of
the incident’ an ambiguous statement taken to mean
that the sisters declined.
Hundreds of post-war
memoirs and letters by both Yanks and Rebs that this
writer has perused attest to the complete charitable
impartiality of the sisters, stating that "their
tender care was given to all." Men in blue and
gray, lying side by side in the same battlefield
hospitals, vied for the honor of being cared for by the
‘‘ladies in the big white hats.’’ Barton says
sisters serving in Richmond hospitals at the time of the
Seven Days Battles in 1862 were told 1w Yankee soldiers,
doubtless jokingly, "that they had received orders
from their general ‘to capture Sisters of Charity if
they could as the hospitals were in great need of them.’’
Barton says of
Emmitsburg: "That section of country in which the
Mother House was located was in possession of the Union
army most of the time. The house was looked upon as
sacred property by the generals of both armies and never
molested by the soldiers." Following the battle of
Antietam, General McClellan personally thanked the
Sisters, saying "I am proud and happy to see the
Sisters of Charity with these poor men.’’ In New
Orleans, Yankee General Butler (in command there then)
"personally thanked Sister Maria Clara, Sister
Superior in charge of the Emmitsburg nuns, writing that
‘no one can appreciate more fully than myself the
holy, self-sacrificing labors of the Sisters of Charity.
Sisters to all mankind, they know no nation, no
kindred, neither war nor peace’."
One post-war woman
author who served as a nurse during the war and. judging
from other remarks, had little regard for Catholics,
wrote of the Sisters of Charity with whom she served at
Point Lookout, the huge Union hospital for Confederate
prisoners of war at the tip of Southern Maryland:
"Twenty-five Sisters of Charity with the priest and
Sister Superior had supervision over the patients in a
part of the cottages . . , and we sometimes caught a
glimpse of a sweet placid face under the long white
bonnets which they’ wore. They’ were ceaseless in
the work of mercy amongst those poor suffering soldiers
. . . One of them died at the hospital and was buried in
the wave-washed cemetery, surrounded by the graves of
the soldiers.’
After the battle at
nearby Antietam, "The Superior of the Sisters of
Charity, with the people of Emmitsburg, collected a
quantity of clothing. provisions, remedies, delicacies
and money. The overseer of the Community drove in a
carriage to the place, with Father Smith, C. M., and two
of the Sisters some thirty miles" to care for the
wounded of both sides. who were being housed in every
kind of shelter barns, sheds, pens and even under fodder
shocks.
"On July 4. 1863,
the day after Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg] Rev.
James Francis Burlando, with twelve Sisters left
Emmitsburg for the battlefield, taking refreshments,
bandages, sponges and clothing. On reaching Gettysburg,
the Sisters did all they could to relieve and console
the wounded soldiers. Their assistance was divided
without partiality to both Yankees and Rebs alike,
whether in an improvised hospital or on the bare fields
of the carnage-strewn area."
Altogether, at least
232 Sisters from Emmitsburg are positively identified as
having served during the Civil War in one way or
another. Of these, Dr. Jolly breaks down their places of
birth, showing that 41 came from the Northern free
states, 52 from slave states (including Maryland
and the District of
Columbia) and 139 from foreign countries mostly of
Ireland and Germany. She identified only two as being
Emmitsburg natives Sister Mary Catherine Chrismer, who
served at Gettysburg, and m Sister Mary Rosina Quinn
who, she says, "formed a part of the Ambulance In
corps, and served on land and on water in the South and
in the North."
Lay students of St.
Joseph’s Academy, like their Mountain counterparts,
also came from all over the nation. Certainly some of
them who were able to get back to their Southern homes
did not return to the school. Others were forced by
circumstances to stay there for the duration, and at
least one little Southern girl died and was buried at
the school. They were probably in the group which
welcomed a Pennsylvania Regiment of Yanks shortly before
the battle of Gettysburg. Barton writes that as the
regiment was approaching St. Joseph’s Academy near
Emmitsburg, a long line of young girls led by several
Sisters of Charity took their position along the side of
the road and at a word from the Sister in charge all
fell upon their knees and with upturned faces earnestly
prayed for the spiritual and physical safety of the men
who were about to go into deadly battle.
Emmitsburgians Who
Fought In The War
The historian will go
crazy who tries to determine with certainty how many
Marylanders actually fought in the two armies. A faster
way to an asylum is to try to learn where they came
from. No two historians can agree upon the numbers
involved. The History and Roster claims 62,959; the OR’s
credit the state with 46,638. This writer’s
name-by-name check, eliminating all duplications, finds
a figure of about 40,000 to be more likely correct.
With no agreement as to
numbers, even from Maryland as a whole, we can only
speculate on who came from Emmitsburg. According to The
History and Roster of Maryland Volunteers, War of 1861-5
(a two-volume work on Union soldiers compiled for the
General Assembly in 1898 and hereafter called "The
History and Roster",) there were enlisted in
Frederick County six companies, or parts thereof, for
the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th Maryland Infantry Regiments,
and probably some for the 1st. The county also raised
four companies for the 1st Potomac Home Brigade Infantry
and two for the Third. Numerous veterans from those
latter two who "re-upped" when their
enlistments expired and joined the 13th Regt. were
probably also from Frederick County, as were a part of
one company in the 3rd Maryland Cavalry.
It is entirely possible
that there were Emmitsburg men in each of the companies
enlisted in Frederick. Three uncles of my mother named
Humerick, though spelled variously in the History did
so, and it is not likely that they went there
unaccompanied by local friends. Of one thing only is
this writer certain. That is, that many of the men in
Company C of Cole’s Cavalry, as it came to be known
but officially the 1st. Regt. Potomac Home Brigade
Cavalry, came from Emmitsburg. Not only was the company
originally known as John Horner’s Cavalry Company and
organized by that Emmitsburgian, but many of the men in
it bear surnames with a distinctive Emmitsburg flavor
some known personally to this writer in his childhood in
the town. The regiment ultimately grew to 12 companies,
but Companies A, C and D, from Frederick County, and
Company B from Cumberland, were organized into a single
battalion under Col. Henry A. Cole.
Horner and most of his
Emmitsburg companions were mustered into Federal service
on Aug. 27, 1861, but John Horner resigned and left the
company June 10, 1862. It was
Oliver A.
Homer, also of
Emmitsburg and originally a private in the company, who
rose to be a Major on the regimental staff, who achieved
greatest individual fame with it and came to be known as
the outfit’s leader. It was Captains Albert M. Hunter
and Henry Buckingham who officially succeeded the
organizer, however. Listed as officers in the company
are these others bearing local names: 1st Lt. John M.
Annan (killed accidentally Nov. 13, 1861); 1st Lt. W. A.
Horner; 2nd Lt. Hiram S. McNair.34
Listed among the
company’s non-commissioned officers and privates are
these other familiar Emmitsburg names: Sergt. Andrew A.
Annan; George Cease (more likely Seiss but misspelled,
who was killed in action Sept. 2, 1862 probably at
Leesburg, Va.); George T. Eyester (or Eyster), Theodore
Fites (or Fitez), who was taken prisoner Jan. 1, 1864,
almost certainly by Moshy’s guerrillas whom the
battalion was fighting near Upperville, Va. at the time
and who died in prison Dec. 10, 1864; there were also
Thomas F. Fraley, Win. A. Fraley, Sergt. John F. Gilson,
John H.Gelwicks, George L. Gillelan, Corp. Charles A.
Gilson, Joseph T.Gelwicks, Corp. George T. Gelwicks,
Richard N. Gilson (who died Aug. 3,1864, of wounds
received in action in the post-Monocacy fighting that
chased Gen. Early back across the Potomac); Silas
McAllen Horner, Jacob Hartzell, Michael Hoke, John F.
Knott, Noah Koontz, Samuel J. Maxell (who later became a
Lieutenant on Cole’s staff and was captured Sept. 2,
1862, also probably at Leesburg during the fiasco that
followed Second Bull Run; he was exchanged and fought
with the regiment until its final muster-out June 28,
1865); Samuel N. McNair, wounded in action Sept. 2, July
1862 and discharged for disability though The Roster
mistakenly carries is him on the rolls until Jan. 7,
1865; also Thadeus A. Maxell, killed in action June 8,
1864 during fighting in the Shenandoah while repelling
Early’s entry in to Maryland; John H. Mentzer, John
Munshower, John M.
Morritz (also carried
as "Moritz" who died Nov. 15, 1863); John
Reifsnider; Sgt. George W. Shriver, captured Jan. 1,
1864 and who died Aug. 27, 1864 in Andersonville Prison;
John Slagle, Edward Wenchoff, taken prisoner Jan. 1,
1864 but obviously exchanged for he is carried on the
rolls until June 6, 1865; John F. Wetzel and William J.
Weddle. That there were probably other Emmitsburg area
men in this company, the writer willingly acknowledges,
and suggests that the reader search the roster for
others whom he can identify.
Emmitsburg can be proud
of two things in connection with Company e C: though 16
of the 180 men listed in the company at one time or
another, deserted it, not one of those who sounds like
an Emmitsburgian was among them, Also, almost all of
these "Emmitsburgians" not only served out the
original terms of their enlistment (except the founder)
but reenlisted and were still in service when the
regiment was mustered out in June of 1865.
The exploits of Cole’s
Battalion were among the most heroic and spectacular of
any organization in the Eastern theater of war. See an
article by this writer in The Emmitsburg Chronicle on
Oct. 20, 1967 for fuller details of their activities.
The men themselves stuck together as a fraternity long
after the war. As late as 1892 they were holding
reunions at the local Grand Army of the Republic
headquarters, banqueting at the old Western Maryland
Hotel, and holding "campfires" where they
relived their old days in the field and camp. Most other
information about Emmitsburgians who fought in the War
is negative. Emmitsburg organized a body of "Union
Zouaves composed of the flower of the young men of
Emmitsburg in mid-May of 1861" but no such group
appears anywhere in any records of the State or Federal
government or in those works that treat of such
independently organized groups. These Zouaves must have
stemmed from Governor Hicks’s early 1861 orders from
Washington for Maryland to provide four regiments for
the protection of that city’. Maryland was still
hassling with Union authorities as to how and where such
men should he used. Hicks demanded that they not be sent
out of the State or, at the farthest, not beyond D. C.
Also, many Northern officers distrusted the loyalties of
all Maryland men. The Zouaves were reportedly officered
by Capt. Isaac S. Annan., 1st. Lt. William Wardsworth,
2nd Lt. Samuel Maxwell, Orderly Sgt. Samuel Eyster,
Corp. David Gillan [more probably Gillelan] and Ensign
James McCullough, Some of which names we’ve seen
earlier in Company C of Cole’s Cavalry.
Records of the Union
draft as it affected Frederick County might have given
helpful information but they are not available.
"David Agnew was the local draft officer for
Emmitsburg under the President’s call for troops in
1862" and probably had records of Emmitsburg men in
service. However, William Mahoney, Commissioner of
Enrollment and Draft for this county, was arrested by
the Confederates [during the Antietam campaign in Sept.
18621 and the enrollment books destroyed." Under
that 1862 call the county was asked for 259 more men to
add to the total of 1019 it had already provided.
Presumably, therefore, the records of at least 1,278
(and possibly their places of residence) became
Confederate possessions and were later lost if not
immediately destroyed. This was not actually a draft but
a call for more volunteers. The first actual mandatory
draft was riot instituted until July of 1863.
A writer in The Story
of the Mountain says "The people around Emmitsburg
and in the town were very evenly divided at the outbreak
of the War of 61. A company of volunteers marched off
openly one day to strike for the Union cause; whilst
others discovered that they had important business
demanding immediate attention down in the direction of
Dixie’s land. The latter went off without the aid of
brass bands; and if any tears were shed at parting they
rolled in secret. Too much guesswork is involved in any
Confederate accounts for this writer to speculate about
who, from Emmitsburg, might have fought for that army.
Readers who may want to know if their ancestors fought
with the Confederacy are referred to two sources where
there are listed some names which sound as though they
could be Emmitsburg related. They are "The Index to
the Maryland Line, etc." published in Annapolis in
1944; and A Guide to Virginia Military Organizations,
1861, Richmond, 1964.
The History of
Emmitsburg also lists a few Emmitsburgians who are
buried in local cemeteries, but states nothing else. It
identifies these: Major 0. A. Horner, IA. John M. Annan,
Enos McDannels, Presbyterian; Isaac Heagy, Noah Koontz,
Thadeus Maxell, Benjamin Cehrhart, Joseph Wills, John
Shields, James Peoples, James Mcllhenny, Jeremiah
Stranesbaugh, Lutheran; C. W. McPherson, Jacob
Settlemyer, James Arnold, Peter Cook, Augustus Little,
John Murphy, Theodore Cook, Jacob I. Topper, Nicholas
Seltzer, Catholic; John Constant, Nathaniel Millsbury,
John Rosensteel, Joseph Shorb, Henry Taylor, George
Seiss, College; Jacob Reeves, John Spence, Philip Long,
Mountain View; John Kipe, George Kipe, Sabillasville;
Frederick Nindle, Fairfield; John Hunter, Gettysburg;
Joseph Davidson, Rocky Ridge; Peter Glasser, Mt. Joy;
Joseph Zech, Henry Gelwicks, Joseph Coombs,
Andersonville; Emory Gilson, died in prison; Newton
Gilson, killed in battle.’ To this list, the writer
can add one more name. It is that of James J. Hospelhorn,
the town’s last surviving Civil War soldier, whose
obituary the author wrote for The Emmitsburg Chronicle
as a youngster. He was buried in the Lutheran Cemetery
as a squad of riflemen from the Francis N. Elder Post of
the Emmitsburg American Legion fired a final salute over
his grave.
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