Home on Furlough 1864

Harper's Weekly
February, 1864

        After a hard campaign around Charleston, SC that resulted in the capture of Morris Island (but not the fall of Fort Sumter and Charleston) the 85th Pennsylvania spent the first few months of 1864 in relaxed duty on Hilton Head Island.
        While stationed there, the Union hierarchy made a concerted effort to have as many regiments as possible reenlist beyond their original 3-year commitments. If a certain percentage of men in a regiment re-enlisted, they earned the designation of being called "veteran volunteers."
      The other three regiments in the brigade of the 85th Pennsylvania all earned this distinction. They were the 62nd Ohio, 67th Ohio and 39th Illinois. Although a number of 85th Pennsylvanians re-enlisted, not enough extended their service to earn the distinction of being called a veteran volunteer regiment.

Waynesburg (PA) Messenger     3-16-1864,    p.3

       In my book, Such Hard and Severe Service: The 85th Pennsylvania in the Civil War, I detail the efforts of their officers to encourage their men to re-enlist and explore the reason more men did not sign on for extended service.
       Those that did re-enlist earned an immediate 30-day furlough to go back home to visit family and friends; also some states used the furloughed men to recruit new men from their home areas. Another inducement may have been cash payments in the hundreds of dollars from their local and/or county government. This helped fill a quota of men the locality was expected to furnish towards the war effort.
       Only about a hundred or so men re-enlisted from the 85th Pennsylvania. The article at the right is from a Greene County newspaper of the time, the Waynesburg Messenger. It lists a number of Greene Countians, mostly from Companies F and G, who returned home on leave in early 1864 under the command of Lieutenant Levi Rogers.
       Unfortunately, when they returned to army duty, less than half of the men in this group made it unscathed through the rest of the war. The article mentions 23 men from the 85th Pennsylvania who visited Waynesburg. When their month was over and they returned to the war, three were killed, seven were wounded, two died from disease and one was captured. The rest returned to the war and survived without dying or being wounded.
    It should also be noted that none of the men who were killed or hurt died as a result of extending their service. All fell during the period of their original enlistment, which ended in November of 1864.

           Below is the list of the men in the same order they are named in the news article, as well as what happened to them during and after the war.

Soldiers Home on Furlough
Harper's Weekly
January 23, 1864

Lieutenant Levi Muncy Rogers was severely wounded in the hip at the Battle of Second Deep Bottom outside of Richmond in August of 1864. He died three weeks later at a hospital at Fort Monroe, VA. He is buried in the Hampton (VA) National Cemetery.
Sergeant Elmore A. Russell was wounded four times during the war. His most severe wound was suffered at Second Deep Bottom where he was shot in the arm. Russell survived the war and settled in Texas for the last four decades of his life. His occupations included teacher, farmer, fruit-grower, postmaster and city councilman. He died in 1912 at Lamar, TX at the age of 70.
Sergeant Alonzo Lightner was killed at the Second Battle of Deep Bottom. He was about 24 years of age.
Corporal Thomas J. White survived the war and settled in Nebraska where he worked as a printer. He was one of eight members of the regiment who earned a "Gillmore" Medal for meritorious service during operations on Morris Island, SC in 1863. White died in 1896 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. 

Corporal John N. Durbin was wounded in the leg at Darbytown Road near Richmond on October 13, 1864. He died in 1897 and is buried in Greene County.

Corporal Thomas M. Sellers was wounded at the Battle of Second Deep Bottom but survived. He became a farmer in Kansas and a horticulturalist in Texas after the war. He died at the age of 86 in 1932 and is buried in Houston.

Civil War Song Sheet  LOC

Corporal John D. Haveley was wounded at Second Deep Bottom but stayed in the army until the end of 1865. He died around 1880.
Private William E. Leonard was awarded a Medal of Honor for the capture of an enemy flag at Second Deep Bottom, where he also suffered a head wound.
Private Lisbon Scott was captured in May of 1864 during the Bermuda Hundred Campaign. After nearly a year, he was released from Andersonville Prison in Georgia. He went home to Greene County and served as a county commissioner. Scott died in 1917.
Private John Rizor was born in Marshall County, VA (later West Virginia) and served until 1865. He died in 1919 and is buried in Belmont County, Ohio.
Private Isaac Gray was wounded twice prior to his furlough. He served until 1865 and then returned to his life as a farmer in Greene County. He died in 1906.

Private George Pettit suffered a facial wound at Second Deep Bottom. He returned home and worked as a farmer in West Virginia. He patented a self-closing farm gate in 1897. Pettit died in 1917.

Private Jackson Kimble had his right arm amputated after being wounded at Second Deep Bottom. He died in 1913 and is buried in Greene County.

Private James Huffman returned to Greene County and his life as a farmer after the war. He died in 1911.

Private Jacob Huffman was wounded at Darbytown Road in October of 1864. He died in 1927 at the age of 86 and is buried in Illinois.

Private David Fry served in the regiment for four years and three months. Returning after the war to Greene County, he had a wife, Mary, and four children. He died in 1907.

Private Henry Fry was shot and killed while on picket duty at Ware Bottom Church on June 17, 1864. He was survived by his wife and three children.

Private Andrew J. Morris returned from his furlough and soon died from smallpox in April of 1864. He is buried in the Beaufort National Cemetery in South Carolina.

Private Alfred McDonald returned from his furlough and contracted jaundice. He died in October of 1864 at the age of 44. He is buried in the Hampton (VA) National Cemetery. McDonald was survived by his wife, Christina, and four children.

LOC

Private John Rush was one of three men named John Rush in the regiment, all from Greene County. This is probably John J. Rush, who returned to Greene County after the war. He died in 1914.
Private William Seabold survived the war and moved to Ohio. He died in 1918 and is buried in West Jefferson, Ohio.
Private Thomas Rinehart returned home to Greene County after four years of service. He died in 1922 at the age of 86.
Private Andrew Frakes lived in Ohio and West Virginia after the war before returning to Greene County. He died in 1922 at the age of 76.

Civil War "Doughboys"

Library of Congress

       Most people associate the term "doughboys" is with American soldiers in the First World War. However, there are indications that the term was used in America as a reference to soldiers at least as far back as the Mexican War (1846-48).

     This link provides excellent information for the term as well as various references to "doughboys" in the 19th century.

      In late 1918, in the final month of World War I, James E. Sayers of Waynesburg, a veteran of the 85th Pennsylvania regiment,  wrote the following letter to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Sayers was 73 years old at the time and was a prominent attorney in Greene County, PA. 

      Sayers had enlisted into the 85th Pennsylvania as an 18-year old and was with the regiment through the end of the war at Appomattox Court House. [The author used Sayers' diary as a source in his book about the regiment called, "Such Hard and Severe Service: The 85th Pennsylvania in the Civil War," published by Monongahela Books] 

       In his letter, Sayers notes that the term "doughboys" was used during the Civil War and explains the origin of the term.

Pittsburgh Post Gazette
October 23, 1918

                       Sayers' reference to the soil "kneaded into mud ('dough') by the infantry" undoubtedly was a reference to the "Mud March" in late January of 1863. This followed Burnside's disastrous loss at Fredericksburg, Virginia the previous month, [NOTE: The 85th Pennsylvania did not take part in the Battle of Fredericksburg. They were in North Carolina on the Goldsboro Expedition trying to created a diversion for the attack on Fredericksburg.] Burnside planned a winter offensive towards Richmond. But a heavy rainstorm quickly turned Burnside's planned river crossing of men and wagons into a muddy quagmire. The offensive was abandoned. 

Harper's Weekly
December 13, 1864

James E. Sayers
Greene Connections

    The following article from 1865, which appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper near the close of the war, confirms Sayers' version of "doughboys."

Philadelphia Inquirer
April 3, 1865

.     The article below from 1863 during the Civil War uses the term in the same way it was used in World War I as a reference to all infantrymen.

Buffalo Courier
May 23, 1863

 
           In any event, Sayers' premise is confirmed by the Civil War era newspapers that the term '"doughboys," although not used as extensively as it was later used in the First World War, was used to refer to soldiers during the Civil War more than 50 years earlier.

SW Pennsylvania Invasion Threats Part 6 John Hunt Morgan

           

John Hunt Morgan
LOC

                  Once the Confederate invasion threat from Confederate General William "Grumble" Jones subsided in May of 1863, the attention of Greene County and Washington County soon turned from the south to the west and to another prominent Confederate raider, John Hunt Morgan. Reports were that Morgan and his band of 2,500 rebels intended to attack Pittsburgh by marauding their way from Kentucky through Indiana, Ohio and West Virginia. From there, they had only to travel through the Pennsylvania counties of Greene and/or Washington in order to threaten Pittsburgh.

Joseph Markle
History of the County of
Westmoreland, PA  p.653

FOOTNOTE: The town of West Newton in nearby Westmoreland County, east of Pittsburgh, responded to the Morgan’s threat by forming a company led by Joseph Markle. The 86-year old Markle was born during the Revolutionary War, had served in the War of 1812 and was a former general of the Pennsylvania militia. When Markle was 17 years old in 1794, Major General Daniel Morgan used the Markle family farm as a stopover as he led his wing on the Federal army against the Whiskey Rebellion. [Robert Van Atta, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, April 9, 2000] 






               Morgan’s raid began in June of 1863 in Tennessee and moved in a northern direction. From southern Indiana, Morgan’s Raiders headed due east until they reached Buffington Island, West Virginia. From here, Morgan took a northerly path once more and passed through Steubenville, Ohio. He was captured in late July near West Point in Columbiana County, Ohio, not far from Beaver County, Pennsylvania and just 60 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. 
       

Route of Morgan's Raid
Scott Mingus for Wikipedia

           Morgan began his raid upon the orders of General Braxton Bragg in Kentucky to create a diversion for Robert E. Lee's Army of the Potomac as Lee was marching towards central Pennsylvania and the epic confrontation at Gettysburg. Morgan was under orders from Bragg not to cross the Ohio River into northern territory, an order that Morgan ultimately ignored.
           On his 1000-mile trek, Morgan captured and paroled 6000 Union soldiers, destroyed 34 bridges, disrupted railroad traffic and generally put fear into the populace of several states, including Pennsylvania. Although Morgan never entered Pennsylvania, it was thought that the foundries, factories and federal arsenal in Pittsburgh might be a target.
         

Frank Leslie's Illustrated, 8-8-1863
Looting in Indiana by Morgan's Raiders

              In June, prior to Morgan’s capture, a small meeting of civic leaders was held at the Washington, Pennsylvania courthouse to prepare a defense of the city. Included in the four-man committee were two former officers of the 85th PA, Lieutenant Colonel Norton McGiffin and Harvey Vankirk. Like Vankirk, McGiffin had been medically discharged from the 85th PA in 1862. [Earle R. Forest, History of Washington County, Forest, 1926, p.1029] 
           A warning came from political leader James S. Jennings on June 17 for Greene and Fayette Counties to assemble local militias to meet this potential threat. “An invasion of this State by a large rebel force would be a great public calamity. It would be especially unfortunate for the farmers, who would be robbed of their stocks and produce, or paid in worthless Confederate shin-plaster [paper money]. I incline to the opinion that the Rebels will strike at Pittsburgh. The Cannon Foundries here, the Arsenal, and other establishments render this an important point just now, and it should be held at any expense or sacrifice.” [Waynesburg Messenger, June 17, 1863, p.3] 
             

John Hunt Morgan raid on Washington, Ohio
Harper's Weekly, August 15, 1863

             Local patrols began riding through both Greene and Washington counties. On one evening, some mounted men from Washington County rode into in Greene County. Fearful that they had spotted a Confederate raiding party, they burst through Waynesburg in the style of Paul Revere warning the townspeople that Morgan was on his way. The Confederate raiding party turned out to be simply a Greene County scouting party headed home from their mission to Waynesburg. [Forest, History of Washington County, 1026]

Pittsburgh Daily Post
7-28-1863

      



Coupled with the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg, PA in early July, the capture of Morgan's men and his imprisonment in Pittsburgh led one newspaper in that city to boast in the article at left:

SW Pennsylvania Invasion Threats Part 4 Greene County

Greene County PA with the city of Waynesburg
Mongolia County, WV with city of Morgantown
LOC

During the Jones-Imboden Raid by Confederates into western Virginia in the spring of 1863, southwestern Pennsylvania began preparing for the possibility of invasion. Greene County residents were extremely concerned that their horses and cattle would  be confiscated by the raiders, and that the Confederates might move on to Waynesburg to steal bank funds. The Waynesburg

Waitman T. Willey
Photo by Matthew Brady   LOC

Messenger reported that a courier sent from Morgantown by Waitman T. Willey, newly elected senator-elect from West Virginia, warned Greene Countians of events in Morgantown. Willey, the newspaper said, had escaped capture by fleeing to the Greene County community of Carmichaels. A Committee of Safety of seven prominent Waynesburg citizens was quickly organized with the goal of raising a local militia. After Confederate General Jones occupied Morgantown, the Waynesburg Messenger reported, “In view of this raid and of the fact that we are exposed here on the border to similar rebel incursions, we suggest that measures be immediately set on foot to organize the militia in the several townships.” [Waynesburg Messenger, April 29, 1863, p.3]

Among the community leaders of Waynesburg who were selected to form the Committee of Safety  was James B. Lindsay. Lindsay had been the sergeant major of the 85^th Pennsylvania before returning home in early 1862 on permanent medical leave.

Lindsay in fact went on a scouting mission to Morgantown while that community was being occupied. With him was Rufus K. Campbell and Samuel A. Porter, both Union veterans.  Upon returning to Waynesburg, Lindsay reported that his small party had been chased home by Confederate raiders. Lindsay also reported that the Confederates numbers around 1,500 and were presently camped two miles from Morgantown.

Pittsburgh Gazette    April 29, 1863

         It will remembered that after confronting and defeating Jones’ force at Rowlesburg, (West) Virginia, Union Colonel John Showalter decided to withdraw his force to Uniontown and then to Wheeling. Both Waynesburg and Washington (PA) had organized local militias to support Showalter but called off the march to Morgantown when word was received that Showalter had left.

Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin notified Washington, DC in late April of the potential

PA Governor Andrew Gregg Curtin

for raids progressing into Pennsylvania. However, President Lincoln astutely surmised that southwestern Pennsylvania was in no real danger. Lincoln wrote, “I do not think the people of Pennsylvania should be uneasy about an invasion. Doubtless a small force of the enemy is flourishing about in the northern part of Virginia on the ‘screwhorn principle’ on purpose to divert us in another quarter. I believe it is nothing more.” [Baylor, 142]

Word had reached the men in the regiment that some farmers back home tried to use the hilly topography to their advantage by hiding their livestock in deep ravines, while some businessmen hid their merchandise in barns and coal mines. [Robert Van Atta, Pittsburgh Tribune Review, April 9, 2000]

This part of the panic was mocked by some in the regiment, which was stationed on Folly Island near Charleston (SC) Harbor. One soldier who did not take the threat very seriously was Company G’s Mark Gordon of Greene County. In his letters

Marquis Lafayette Gordon
Experiences in the Civil War

home, Gordon had sometimes complained that his and other Union regiments were doing the dirty work for the government while many able-bodied men back home chose to sit out the war for as long as possible, if not permanently. In Gordon’s view, it was fitting that citizens back home were getting a taste of the war that he and his regiment had been attending to for the last 17 months. Gordon wrote, “Our boys had a great time after the arrival of the last mail, laughing over the scare of the people in Greene Co. had at the time of the threatened invasion by the Rebels…Some men…should have shown more pluck than to run off with their horses and cattle and leave their wives and children in the hands of a merciless vagabond band of guerillas.” [M.L. Gordon’s Experiences in the Civil War, p. 34]

Gordon was referring to the panicky atmosphere in Morgantown, just 26 miles from his hometown of Waynesburg. In a letter written by Anne Mathiot Dorsey from her farm a few miles south of Morgantown to her brother several days after the occupation, she wrote that while the raiders helped themselves to all the horses they could find in the town, most of the men had fled, leaving their wives and children to fend for themselves. [Source: Anne Mathiot Dorsey, letter to Jacob D. Mathiot, May 8, 1863, Myron B. Sharp, ed.  “The Confederate Raid at Morgantown,” Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania]

       A correspondent for a Philadelphia newspaper in Uniontown wrote, "Another person came in [from Morgantown] named FIELD and told a thrilling story, but on cross questioning, it appears he had deserted his wife and children to save one horse." (Philadelphia Inquirer, May 1, 1863)

Confederates with Confiscated Livestock

       In any event, by May 6, the Waynesburg Messenger reported that, “all imminent danger of a Rebel incursion having passed away, the Washington [PA] lads returned to their homes and our own people resumed their usual business occupations. At present, all is quiet, and all alarm allayed.”

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