Original History of the 85th PA (1915)

Burying the dead at Seven Pines with the Twin Houses in the background

The official history of the 85th PA regiment was published in 1915 and was written by Luther Samuel Dickey. It can be found online here.

Dickey (1846-1926) had served in the Union army, enlisting at age 16 into Company C of the 103rd PA regiment from the Pittsburgh area. He later wrote the official history of his own 103rd PA and also co-wrote the history of the 101st PA with veteran John Reed.

All three of these regiments were brigaded together in 1862 during the Peninsula Campaign and the Goldsboro Expedition. Not surprisingly, all three of Dickey's histories include a substantial section that defends their actions at the Battle of Seven Pines (VA) on May 31, 1862 when these regiments served in Henry Wessells' Brigade in Silas Casey's Division of the Union Fourth Corps.

The effort to write a history of the regiment came about at a veterans’ reunion in 1912 at Smithfield, Fayette County, PA. One member of the 85th PA, wealthy industrialist Norman Bruce Ream, hired Dickey and financed the work. When the history was published in 1915, it was dedicated to Ream, who had died earlier that year.

A 1914 news story from a Washington County (PA) newspaper noted that, "a committee of the survivors of that command is engaged in collecting data for a history which will be published soon....The members of this committee are now being entertained by First Lieutenant N.B. Ream at his residence near Thompson, Conn...During its stay in Connecticut the members of the committee are being royally entertained by Mr. Ream. He has a fine residence on a 400-acre farm, kept as a park." [Daily Notes, Canonsburg, PA, July 22, 1914, p.1]

The best quality of Dickey's effort is its thoroughness. He used the Official Records of the war extensively, along with letters and diaries to record the activities of the men. Dickey used wartime diaries of men like John B. Bell, William Chick and James A. Swearer to include almost a day-by-day description of the regiment's activities. He also included newspaper records, including letters written home to publications in western Pennsylvania. Rosters are included at the end of the book as well

On the negative side, Dickey's effort bogs down in his numerous, almost mind-numbing citations from the Official Records. Although the battle reports provide extensive primary source material, it can be irritating to read ten different accounts of the same battle by ten different officers.

Dickey circa 1910

Dickey also goes into too much detail in his defense of Casey's Division at Seven Pines. There is no doubt that his own regiment, as well as the 85th PA and others, fought well that day and was unfairly disparaged in the national press by General George B. McClellan as cowards and shirkers. Dickey's attitude in 1915 appears to be that a great wrong must be corrected after 50 years.

But counter-arguments and corrective revisions of McClellan's initial, erroneous assessment began to appear in the press within a week of the battle. Casey was personally scapegoated for the near Union disaster on the first day of the battle, and suffered public humiliation. But most of the regiments that he commanded went on to achieve noble fighting records, including the 85th PA. By 1915, the dubiousness of McClellan's report that Casey's Division had given way "unaccountably and discreditably" had been fairly well debunked. Dickey goes overboard in devoting a quarter of his book to the one day's event at Seven Pines.

Dickey's narrative, for the most part, stops in late 1864 when the original members of the regiment who had not enlisted went home. However, the 125 or so "veteran volunteers" who had re-enlisted, or those who joined the regiment in 1862 or later, went on to participate in two enormously significant fights at Fort Gregg and Appomattox. Dickey ignored these events almost completely.

In summary, Dickey's History of the 85th PA is a great reference book. It is still a go-to source for individual names and dates. But if you are going to read the work from cover to cover, be prepared for sleep-inducing repetitive accounts of almost every engagement in which the regiment participated.