1863 April 29: “Gen. Dow is in command of this post and a bigger fool never wore shoulder straps”

Jerry Flint, with Company G of the 4th Wisconsin Infantry in Louisiana, writes to his brother Phineas (Phin) in River Falls.  Jerry’s handwriting is frequently challenging to read, hence the occasional guesses in square brackets followed by a question mark [?].  The original letter is in the Jerry E. Flint Papers (River Falls Mss BN) at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, University Archives and Area Research Center.

Detachment 4^th Wis Volunteers
Camp Parapet La   Apr 29^th /863

Dear Brother

                        I shall have to beg your pardon for not answering your letter sooner.  It has been nearly three weeks since I’ve received it and it had been on the way over a month.  I suppose by this time you were at River Falls so I shall direct to that place.  The miniatures you sent came through all right.  It did my soul good to get them.  I cannot see that Mother has grown old at all and you are about the same except that you are a little [fair?].  I have now a very good collection of pictures to keep off the blues.  Lu and Carrie sent me theirs and who could look at them without laughing.  I have also Elimira’s which makes me think of the good old days gone by.  Besides I have one or two that I picked up in my travels that are not bad to rest the eyes on.  They are from the famous old city of Baltimore.  I tell you Phin I enjoyed life in that city.  New Orleans is like the black hole of the infernal regions in comparisons.  [paragraph break added]

Yesterday I had a call from Monroe Brown.¹  He is in the 15th N. H. Reg.  You will recollect that he went to school at the Falls [River Falls] the winter Clapp [Edward A. Clapp] helpt² there.  I was shaking with the Ague [fever] when he came in laughing and held out his hand [and] asked me if I knew him.  I had to look a spell before I could make out where I had seen him although he looked very familiar.  He came here when Gen. Banks’ [Nathaniel P. Banks] troops and has camped within 50 rods of us for four months.  Yesterday he got to talking with one of our boys and found out where the company was from.  I have also heard that Ha[yward?] is at Bonnet Carre [Carré] twenty five miles above here.  He was also encamped at one time close to our battery but I didn’t know it.  [paragraph break added]

Gen. Banks is doing good work in western Louisiana.  We hear every day of the immense amount of supplies he has taken from the rebels.  By papers found on one of the captured rebel gunboats we learn that they had a nice plan laid for attacking New Orleans.  But Banks’ movements frustrated them.  Their army is driven out of the country, their navy blowed to the devil and their naval commander whom they call the Paul Jones of the South³ is a prisoner in New Orleans.  His flag ship was the old “Queen of the West.”  As our fleet advanced in Grand Lake the Calhoun sent a fire ball crashing through her which set her on fire and and blew her up.⁴  [paragraph break added]

The weather is extremely hot so that we do not drill much only from half past seven to half past eight in the morning, and about half an hour in past sundown.  The rest of the time we lay in the shade as much as possible.

To morrow is a general muster of all the troops in the department and I have been at work nearly all day, cleaning musket and equipments and putting my things in order generally.  We are expecting pay in a few days.  We shall have four months pay here day after to morrow.

Gen. Dow⁵ is in command of this post and a bigger fool never wore shoulder straps.  He has forbidden the sale of Whiskey in camp although it was recommended by the  surgeon.  Beer and cider have fared the same and also ice which is the worst of all where there is nothing to drink but the warm river water.  The boys are all well.

Hoping this will find you in health.  I remain

Your Brother, Jerry

1.  Monroe Brown was a corporal in Company G of the 15th New Hampshire Infantry.
2.  “Helpt” looks and sounds odd to most of us, but it is in fact the simple past tense and past participle of help.
3.  E. W. Fuller was a veteran gunboat commander and was the captain of the CSS Queen of the West. He was called the “John Paul Jones of the South.”
4.  It is interesting to note that the USS Calhoun, which was a captured Confederate ship, destroyed the CSS Queen of the West, a captured Union ship. A shell from the Calhoun set fire to Queen of the West’s cotton, and her burning wreck drifted down the river for several hours before she grounded and exploded.

Neal S. Dow, cropped (see footnote 5)

5.  Neal S. Dow (1804-1897), the son of Quaker parents, had the nickname the “Napoleon of Temperance” and the “Father of Prohibition.” He was also an ardent abolitionist and his home was a stop on the Underground Railroad. When the Civil War began, Dow volunteered for service even though he was 57. He was appointed colonel of the 13th Maine Infantry and his regiment participated in the capture of New Orleans (along with Jerry Flint’s regiment). He was promoted to brigadier general in April 1862, and was assigned to command Forts Jackson and Saint Philip, the two Confederate forts captured at the same time as New Orleans. Dow is best remembered for his role in the Siege of Port Hudson, which is coming up May 21–July 9, 1863.
This photograph of Dow in his Civil War uniform is from the Neal Dow entry in “Maine: An Encyclopedia.”  The original photograph is in the collections of the Maine State Archives.

Jerry Flint letter of April 29, 1863, from the Jerry E. Flint Paper (River Falls Mss BN) at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls University Archives & Area Research Center

1863 January 18: “I say curse such men”

Jerry Flint, with the 4th Wisconsin Infantry in Louisiana, has a lot to say in this letter about past experiences, what’s happening currently around him, and what he expects in the near future.  The original letter is in the Jerry E. Flint Papers (River Falls Mss BN) at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, University Archives and Area Research Center.

Camp Parapet La
Jan. 18^th 1863

My Dear Brother,

                                         I was much gratified at the reception of a letter from you yesterday, and was also very much surprised to learn that you were at Madison.  I am glad to know that you have your discharge for I was well satisfied that you could not get well enough this winter to stand a soldier’s duty.  From the way you write I should think that some of the men thought they were having hard times.  I hope our boys will not get such an idea into their heads, for if they ever leave the State and go into the field they will think they have been living on the top shelf.

When we went into camp in the State many of the boys thought they had dreadful living but our rations then were like thanksgiving supper compared with what we get now.  Let them march through the swamps a few days, laying down at night in the rain without shelter and nothing to eat but a chunk of salt beef and hard bread, and ill lest they will think of the old Barracks at Camp Randall with a grunt of satisfaction.  [paragraph break added]

Our regiment is pretty much done growling.  It was all grumble from the time we left the state through all our travels until we started for Ship Island.  Every place we went things kept growing worse.  But the voyage from Fortress Monroe to Ship Island capped everything before it so the boys came to the conclusion that they might just as well keep cool and take things as they come.

There has been many times this summer when I would have been glad to have got out of the service, but I could have done so honorably, but I never wish to leave while matters stand as they are now.  I can never again feel proud of being called an American citizen if the accursed “Stars and Bars” emblem of treason and rebellion are allowed to float independently over the ruins of our once great Republic.

Things in the department are very quiet although our Generals are not idle since the arrival of Gen. Banks forces [Nathaniel P. Banks], troops are constantly moving about and getting ready to do something.  Baton Rouge was occupied as soon as his forces arrived and there is now at that place an army of 30,000 men.  They are mostly new troops and to use their own words don’t mean to fight much.  They are enlisted for nine months and got a huge bounty.

I say curse such men.

Quite a number of the old regim[ents] are with them at Baton Rouge and I am afraid that when the battle comes they will have to stand the brunt.  Our regiment is up there in a brigade commanded by Col. Paine [Halbert E. Paine].  Their position is in the advance.  It was said when the regiment left that we should follow them in a week or so as soon as another company could be drilled on the heavy guns.  But we are here yet and no more signs of going  that first.  We shall however probably join them before the column is ready to move.

It is expected that we shall have a severe fight at Port Hudson.  The rebels have fortified until it is nearly as strong as Vicksburg.  When we came by there the last time in July there was not a gun there.  Now thousands of lives must be lost taking it.  Why they were allowed to fortify right under the nose of our gunboats is more than I can tell.  I think it could have been stopped any way.

Gen. Weitzel¹ has been fighting in the vicinity of Berwick Bay and has scooped the rebels every time.  The rebel iron clad gunboat on Bayou Teche was blown up.  Lieut. Com. Buchanan² of the gunboat “Calhoun” was killed by sharp shooters on the bank of the Bayou.  His funeral was attended in New Orleans.  Admiral Farragut [David G. Farragut] and Gen. Banks marched on foot in rear of the procession.

The rebels again have possession of Galveston but it will not long as an expedition is fitting out for that place.  I do not know whether you have heard of the capture of the Harriet Lane and the destruction of the Westfield in Galveston Bay or not.  They were both aground when New Years eve four light draught boats of the rebels came out and attacked them.  The Harriet Lane sunk one of them but being aground she could not maneuver so that the rebels boarded her and after a severe fight captured her.  They then made for the Westfield but Com. Renshaw [William B. Renshaw] seeing he could not help himself told his crew that the rebels could never have her and that all who wished could take to the boats for he was going to blaze her up.  Part of the crew swore they would never leave their commander and so staid and were all blown up together.  The Westfield was a light open boat but carried some good guns.  She was up the river with us last summer.  When the rebel ram Arkansas run the upper fleet and landed under the guns of Vicksburg this boat run right up under the guns, fired a shot into the ram as a challenge to come out and fight her alone but they dare not do it.  This shows what kind of man Renshaw was, and I believe it shows what our whole navy is.³

Gen. Banks visited the camp the other day.  We fired the salute from our battery.  We used 10½ lb. cartridges.  You had better believe they talked some.

Remember me to all the folks in Chicago, our folks of course.  Tell Mother I shall write to her next.

I received letters by yesterdays mail from Sarah Hunt, Sophia, Eunice, Rossie and yourself.

Write Soon, Jerry

1.  Godfrey, or Gottfried, Weitzel (1835-1884) was born in Bavaria (Germany) and immigrated to Cincinnati, Ohio, with his parents. He graduated from West Point and was a career military officer working primarily as an engineer. In 1861 his company served as the bodyguard during the inauguration of President Abraham Lincoln. Early in the Civil War he constructed defenses in Cincinnati, Washington, D.C., and for the Army of the Potomac. He then became the chief engineer on General Benjamin F. Butler’s staff. At this time he was commanding the advance in General Nathaniel P. Banks’ operations in western Louisiana and he will command a division under Banks at the siege of Port Hudson.
2.  “On January 14, 1863, a combined expedition of Union gunboats, infantry, and artillery attacked the [CSS] Cotton near Pattersonville [Louisiana]. Her crew burned her and sank her across Bayou Teche as an obstruction. … Lieutenant Commander Thomas M. Buchanan had command of the Federal vessels. He was shot in the head by one of the Confederate riflemen.”  For more details, see page 105 of The Civil War Reminiscences of Major Silas T. Grisamore, C.S.A., edited and with an introduction by Arthur W. Bergeron, Jr. (Louisiana State University Press, 1993), available on Google Books.
Thomas M. Buchanan.
3.  See our post of January 14, 1863, Battle of Galveston, for more details on Commander William B. Renshaw, the USS Westfield, and the USS Harriet Lane.

Jerry Flint letter of January 18, 1863, from the Jerry E. Flint Paper (River Falls Mss BN) at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls University Archives & Area Research Center