Chapter 1
One Man Moore
The same wave of excitement that pulsed throughout the North after the firing on Fort Sumter also coursed through Monmouth, a town of just 2,500 people in west central Illinois about 25 miles from the Mississippi River. Eighty men of the town had already answered Lincoln’s call. During the meeting, 19 more agreed to serve, leaving the new organization just one enlistee shy of the full company complement of 100. The secretary of the committee appointed to raise the company and oversee the welfare of the families who would leave behind called out that he needed “just one man more.” One of the Monmouth students, Josiah Moore, slowly lifted his six-foot, four-inch frame from his seat, stood for a moment, and then strode confidently to the front. “I am that man Moore,” he proclaimed.2
According to local legend, Moore staged the dramatic moment by telling others in the room to wait until 99 men had enlisted so he could make his grand statement. Whether Moore possessed great timing or a tremendous sense of theatrics, his dramatic announcement had a significant impact on the other recruits. They elected Moore as captain of the company.3
Given the patriotic fervor of the times, it was difficult for the able-bodied young men of the North to resist the urge to participate in what many believed would be a short adventure against an out-manned enemy. The almost festive atmosphere of the opening days of the war was, in the words of one historian “something grotesque, almost poignant” when viewed against the slaughter of the next four years. “Very well, let’s go it while we’re young,” wrote one journalist. “We never had a civil war before, you know … and now we’ve got one we’re going to show the world that we can beat it at that as well as every thing else.”
In those early days of the conflict, both sides tossed out boastful and bellicose statements. The New York Times promised that Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his cohorts “will be hung before the 4th of July,” while Confederate Secretary of War Leroy Walker predicted the Rebel flag would “fly atop the Capitol in Washington before the first of May.” The prevailing opinion on both sides was that the war would end quickly.4
The Civil War would be fought overwhelmingly with volunteers like those from Monmouth. Since Colonial days, Americans had distrusted the idea of a large standing army, viewing large military forces as more appropriate for monarchs. Horace Greeley, the influential editor of the New York Tribune, wrote that “we have no more need of a Standing Army than of an order of nobility.” At the outbreak of the Civil War, the U.S. Regular Army comprised just over 16,000 men, including fewer than 1,100 officers. Previous military conflicts had relied on volunteers, sometimes drawn from state militias and often bodies of citizens with no military experience of any kind. Greeley and many others in the North firmly believed that these state militias would do just fine in the current war.5
What made these men from Monmouth, as well as others in the North, join the fight? Some enlisted for the promise of adventure. Some believed fervently that the war was necessary to end the evil of slavery (although other soldiers were both anti-abolitionist and strongly prejudiced against blacks). Most, though, joined because they believed “the Union” meant democracy, liberty, and free labor. It was, as one modern historian argued, “a bulwark against the forces of oligarchy personified in the American context by proud aristocrats from the slaveholding states.” The commitment to the Union, he wrote, “functioned as a bonding agent among Americans who believed, as a citizenry and a nation under the Constitution, they were destined for greatness on the world stage.” For those in the antebellum North, this view of American nationalism and Union “was bound up with the ideals of human betterment.” By rebelling, the Southern states threatened this great and shining ideal. According to this view, the people in the South did not value free labor (even though many of the Union soldiers did not view blacks as citizens), and exploited poor whites.
Frank Peats, a 27-year-old from Rockford, Illinois, who would rise to the rank of major in the 17th Illinois Infantry and become one of Josiah Moore’s friends and colleagues, explained his main reason for going to war when he wrote to a female acquaintance, Betsey (Bessie) Tew, in April 1861. His choice was a difficult one “between his love of kindred and duty to our country. You must not forget Bessie I claim the high prerogative, the title of an American citizen. Shall I not by remaining inactive render myself unworthy of so high a position?” In a valuable recollection written after the war, Peats asserted that nearly everyone in the North, “Republican and Democrat, Protestant and Catholic, worshiped at the one common altar of country.” For men like Peats, preserving the Union meant preserving the concepts for which their forefathers had died during the American Revolution. “We fight because we love our government,” explained one Yankee soldier, “and they [the South] fight because they hate it.”6
To be sure, there were men who fought from a desire to destroy the institution of slavery and free those in bondage, although they were in a distinct minority, especially during the war’s early years. This relatively small group shared a moral opposition to the forced servitude of human beings. Others opposed slavery from self-interest, believing the expansion of slavery into new territories limited their ability to acquire their share of those lands. Although there is widespread evidence that many Union soldiers realized the war was about slavery—that is, they believed the South was willing to destroy the Union to protect that institution—most were not enlisting to fight to end slavery, free the slave, or even improve the lot of blacks.
At the time, only 7,600 blacks lived in Illinois out of a population of 1.7 million, with the largest concentration residing in Chicago. As a result, many men of the 17th Illinois had little, if any, exposure to them. Prejudice against blacks, a feeling that they were second-class citizens at best, was a common sentiment in Northern armies. Even those opposed to the institution of slavery blamed both slaves and abolitionists for bringing on the war. According to one historian, “[T]he hostility of the average Union volunteer towards anti-slavery sentiment should not be exaggerated. If he had no love for trouble-making abolitionists and much antipathy towards blacks, he also had no fondness for slavery.” Oliver O. Howard, who would become a senior commander in the Union armies (and the head of the Freedmen’s Bureau after the war), proclaimed that hostility to abolition was “bitter and unmeasured.”7
Among Yankee troops, even those born in other lands felt the desire to fight for “Union.” “[T]his is my country as much as the man that was born on the soil,” announced one Irish-born recruit, “and so it is with every man who comes to this country and becomes a citizen.” To this immigrant, a Union loss meant “the hopes of millions fall and … the old cry will be sent from the aristocrats of Europe that such is the common end of all republics.” During the four years of the war, 500,000 immigrants put on a blue uniform; 150,000 were Irish. For many of them, the Union “was synonymous with the republic—America’s unique experiment in self-rule ‘by the people’” that carried with it “a transcendent, mystical quality as the object of their patriotic devotion and civil religion.” Failure of America’s “Grand Experiment” meant, for men like the Irish recruit, a potential return to the tyranny and despotism from which they had fled Europe and other lands.8
The concerns of the young Irishman about the failure of the American experiment were more than just speculation. Henry John Temple, the prime minister of Britain and an aristocrat known as Lord Palmerston, believed the American struggle demonstrated the problems inherent in a democracy. “Power in the Hands of the Masses throws the Scum of the Community to the Surface and that Truth and Justice are Soon banished from the Land,” he wrote. “[I]t seems your Republic is going to pieces,” crowed a French official to a visitor from the United States, and predicted “a reign of terror, and then two or three monarchies” for the American republic. Another French official rejoiced at the news of war and hoped that both North and South would be “irretrievably ruined.” The war, declared members of Germany’s elite, was a “natural consequence of unlimited freedom.”9
Many in Europe viewed the American nation as the height of hypocrisy. Early in the nineteenth century, Englishman Sydney Smith sneered at the idea of the United States calling itself a democracy. “Under which of the old tyrannical governments of Europe is every sixth man a slave, whom his fellow-creatures may buy and sell and torture?” he asked.10
Southerners had their own view of the causes of the war. They believed that God ordained slavery, and therefore any attack upon it had to be opposed. Many whites in the South spoke of the North’s “tyranny” and claimed their Northern brethren were motivated by greed and desire. Like those in the North, Southerners claimed the mantles of both patriotism and religion. They believed they were the ones really fighting for liberty and independence, and compared themselves to the people of Israel who sought to leave Egypt. Both sides felt justified in claiming the moral high ground.11
Unfortunately, nothing in any of Josiah’s writings explicitly states why he enlisted. Interestingly, while attending preparatory school at Westminster (now Westminster College) in 1859 in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, Josiah wrote a poem entitled “The Murder of John Brown.” It was published in the December 1859 student newspaper. Brown was a strident abolitionist who led a bloody raid on the Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) in October 1859 with the aim of sparking a slave insurrection. A contingent of U. S. Marines under the command of Robert E. Lee retook the facility and captured Brown, who was hanged in December of that year. Josiah’s poem was a scathing indictment of those involved with Brown’s imprisonment and hanging. In his ode to Brown—a man detested throughout the South but hailed as a martyr by the anti-slavery movement—Josiah called him a “hero” whose life was taken by “cowards.” In the same edition of the paper, the editors, while acknowledging “the sin of slavery” and advocating “all right means for the removal of this incubus,” excoriated many in the abolitionist movement as people looking to simply “make political capital” while demonstrating “no real desire or intention of benefitting the slave.” The editors labeled these people “insane enthusiasts.” Despite his ode to Brown, Josiah displayed no significant level of abolitionist sentiment as the war progressed. Perhaps his ardor for the movement had cooled by 1861.12
The slavery question that had split the country also created schisms in other institutions, including organized religion. Despite a reluctance on the part of many Presbyterian clergy to enter a debate on an issue they believed could harm their overall evangelization mission, a segment of the church that came to be known as “New School Presbyterians” began to talk more openly about abolition by the 1850s. Many in the New School remained hesitant to agitate too much, for they recognized the issue’s real threat to the Union. Things came to a head in May 1861 when the Presbyterian General Assembly met in Philadelphia shortly after war began. New School adherents attempted to press the issue against slavery. Southern church members, anticipating the conflict, largely avoided the meeting. The Old School members admitted the war was over slavery, but cited biblical passages to mean God supported the practice, and so insisted the North had no right to interfere. Being a Presbyterian institution, Monmouth College was roiled by the conflicts within the church.13
The Student’s Journal, December 1859 (Westminster College, New Wilmington, PA.) Josiah’s poem about the death of John Brown is visible in the left column. Author
The morning after the rally in the courthouse, the new recruits filed into Claycomb Hall, a large, imposing brick structure that still stands on the Monmouth square, to hear patriotic speeches. One of the speakers was David Wallace, the president of Monmouth College. He was anti-slavery but not outspokenly so, perhaps to avoid controversy at the school given the great divide in the Presbyterian Church at the time. Wallace took the opportunity to address his former students who had joined the Union Army, and “invoked the God of battles to be with them, to protect and assist them” in their upcoming campaigns.14
Of the 100 men who had volunteered for the company from Monmouth, 20 were students at the college. In 1861 the school had only 220 students, of whom 137 were male. By the end of the war, 232 Monmouth students had joined Union armies, including 81 of the 137 male students attending in 1861. Included in that number were 41 commissioned officers and one brigadier general. By 1863, not a single male of military age remained on campus. One out of eight of those who served died either in battle or from disease, a much more common killer of the Civil War soldier.15
The company’s original muster sheet lists 105 men who volunteered for service. Many were later rejected for medical and other reasons. Because of the government ban on blacks serving in the military, all of the enlistees were white. The youngest was 18, and the oldest 45. Eight of the men were 30 or older. Nineteen of the original enlistees were six feet or taller. The shortest was 5 foot, 3 inches and the tallest, Josiah, stood 6 foot, 4 inches. Eight were married and just 15 listed their birthplace as Illinois. One of those was Josiah, who perhaps avoided noting his Irish birth due to the era’s nativist tendencies. The recruits listed numerous occupations, with farmer being the most common (in fact, about half of all Union enlistees everywhere were farmers). There were accountants, laborers, teachers, blacksmiths, and one pugilist—Murry Claycomb, the nephew of the man responsible for Claycomb Hall. Only 14 men noted they were students, although some who were enrolled at Monmouth listed different occupations. One of them was future sergeant Robert Duncan, who stated he was a farmer. The enlistees also included one of the town physicians, John B. Stephenson, who joined as second sergeant at the age of 29.
Another young man who joined was 19-year-old James Earp, who described himself as “five feet, eight inches tall with fair complexion and blue eyes” and his occupation as “coach driver.” Earp was born in Kentucky and lived for a time in Monmouth before leaving for Iowa with his family. His father, Nicholas, had served with a Monmouth volunteer unit during the Mexican War, and James returned to Monmouth to enlist in the Civil War. His brother Virgil served with the 83rd Illinois, and a half-brother, Newton, joined the 4th Iowa Cavalry. Two other brothers, Wyatt and Morgan, were too young for service in 1861. Both brothers would see their share of gunplay years later.16
Moore, the anointed captain of this new military organization, was a 27-year-old college junior who had enrolled at Monmouth in September 1860. The company’s muster sheet describes him as having light hair, blue eyes, and a fair complexion. It’s likely that few of the men in his company knew him. Until enrolling at the college, he had been a resident of Hanover, Illinois, a town to the northwest. He was born to Charles and Hannah Moore in 1833 in Ballybay, Ireland, in the county of Monaghan in the north-central part of the country. Ballybay, a Gaelic name that translates to “At the Mouth of the Ford of the Birches,” was the center of a thriving linen industry that had fallen on hard times by the time of Josiah’s birth. The Moore family left Ireland in 1834, fully a decade before the potato blight caused the death of a million Irish through disease and starvation and the emigration of a similar number. The Moores sailed from Ireland to Liverpool, and from there took the Edwin to Baltimore, where they arrived on August 20 that same year. From Baltimore, the family journeyed by wagon on the National Road to Washington County in western Pennsylvania. They lived there with friends until 1836, when they moved by water to Illinois to join Charles, who had left the previous fall to prepare land he had purchased. A log cabin 12 miles outside Galena, Illinois, was the Moore family’s new home. At the time, Illinois sat on the western frontier of the young nation. American Indians were frequent visitors to the Moore home and farm.
Tintype of Hannah Moore, mother of Josiah. Author
After settling in Illinois, Josiah’s parents had five more children. Two children, Margaret and William, had been born before Josiah in Ireland, but both had died before their first birthdays. Charles became a founder of an active Presbyterian community in nearby Hanover. Josiah went to western Pennsylvania to attend preparatory school at Westminster, taught briefly in Illinois, and then enrolled at Monmouth. His younger brother William was enrolled in Monmouth’s preparatory section at the outbreak of war, but it does not appear that he joined the military.17
Josiah Moore’s Hanover home, believed to have been built in the 1840s. Josiah’s father is on the front porch. His mother Hannah is barely visible on the porch to the right. Author
The new enlistees named their company the Monmouth Union Guards and made the transition from civilian life to the military. Students traded their books on classics and theology for books on drill, and waited for the call to battle. Robert Duncan, another Monmouth student who served as a sergeant and company clerk, wrote that the men “are commencing to keep step and face right and left—they think there is considerable romance to a Soldiers life.”18
During the Civil War, it was typical for the bulk of a company of 100 men to come from the same town or general area. This meant that brother served with brother, father with son, co-worker with co-worker, and, in the case of the Monmouth Union Guards, student with fellow student. Serving for and with his community provided a tremendous motivating force for a soldier. Men from close-knit communities such as Monmouth knew they would be a focus of attention. People back home received reports of their conduct and actions, so the men in the ranks had a tremendous incentive to maintain a good name and record. In addition, officers knew that if they survived the war they would have to go home and live among the men they commanded, which tended to work against unfair or tyrannical behavior. On the other hand, it did not always lead to the highest ideals of military discipline.19
The men who enlisted in 1861 were strong believers in democratic ideals, and that extended to life in the military. Since neither the typical officers or enlisted men in these new units had much if any training, the men in the ranks tended to view themselves as equal to their officers. “Many of the men seem to think they should never be spoken to unless the remarks are prefaced by some words of deferential politeness,” complained one Michigan officer. Southern soldiers shared this philosophy. A Confederate veteran remarked that each individual reserved the right to “decide some questions for himself [and] to the last he maintained the right of private judgment, and especially on the field of battle.” The fact that Josiah was older than most men in the company—and towered over them—probably helped him maintain discipline.20
Selecting officers by election was another common practice. Sometimes a local merchant who financed the company or regiment was elected captain or colonel. Sometimes, as in the case of Josiah, a stirring action or speech gained support for a captaincy. As the war progressed, governors appointed the colonels of state volunteer regiments. In many cases, these were political appointees, and many rose to lofty heights without any formal military training. Daniel Sickles, for example, a former Democratic member of Congress from New York with no military experience, received an appointment as colonel and rose to command a corps in the Army of the Potomac. Within a year, Josiah and his men found themselves under the command of a general with a similar background. Trained military men showed little respect for these citizen soldiers and “political generals.” In turn, politicians and civilians often distrusted the military class and felt formal military training was unnecessary for the task at hand.21
A painting by John Thomson of the square in Monmouth, Illinois, in the 1860s. The building on the left is the original courthouse built in 1839 and the location of the recruiting rally in April 1861. It was replaced by a new courthouse in 1890. The building on the right is Claycomb Hall, where the new enlistees met the evening after volunteering for service. Claycomb Hall still stands. Jeff Rankin, Monmouth College
On Monday, April 29, the Monmouth Union Guards were called to assemble in Peoria, Illinois, about 50 miles away. There, they joined recruits swarming to the city from points throughout Illinois. They were the first troops from Monmouth to leave for the front, and “the entire city turned out to see their departure.” Before the troops boarded the train to Peoria, Miss Kate Beach (Monmouth Class of 1861) addressed them with a poem that concluded:
And now, with aching hearts, and dark forebodings,
And many a smothered sigh
We bid you go! Oh, cherished friends and brothers,
God bless you all, good bye!
Send-offs like this took place in communities throughout the North and South and reinforced the belief of these new soldiers that they were not only fighting for a higher cause, but for the people back home. The feelings of “dark forebodings” Miss Beach noted would prove sadly prescient.22
1 Daniel Mayer and Jeffrey D. Rankin, A Thousand Hearts Devotion: A History of Monmouth College (Monmouth, IL, 2002), 18; Circular and Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Monmouth College (Monmouth, IL, 1861), 27.
2 Monmouth College, Oracle, Volume XV Number 34 (Monmouth, IL, May 30, 1911), 11.
3 Dr. William Urban, Paper on William P. Rupp, Department of History, Monmouth College, Monmouth, Illinois, 1-2.
4 Mark Wahlgren Summers, “The North and the Coming of the Civil War,” in Gabor Boritt, ed., Why the Civil War Came (New York, NY, 1996), 180; Vincent Fraley, “Uniting for the Union,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 17, 2014, Section C1.
5 Allan C. Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (New York, NY, 2013), 10; Wagner, Gallagher, Finkelman, The Library of Congress Civil War Desk Reference, 367-369; Mark Boatner, III, The Civil War Dictionary (New York, NY, 1959) 495; Adam Goodheart, 1861: The Civil War Awakening (New York, NY, 2011), 194.
6 Gary W. Gallagher, The Union War (Cambridge, MA, 2011), 42-48; Letter from Frank Peats to Bessie Tews, April 18, 1861; Frank Peats, Recollections of Forts Henry and Donelson, 2, Frank Peats Collection, Lake County Discovery Museum, Wauconda, IL; Steven Woodworth, While God is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers (Lawrence, KS, 2001), 260.
7 Chandra Manning, What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (New York, NY, 2008), 3, 4, 12, 13; Reid Mitchell, Civil War Soldiers (New York, NY, 1988), 13, 15; Gallagher, The Union War, 43; Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, 125.
8 Gallagher, The Union War, 5; Adams, Living Hell, 16; Manning, What This Cruel War Was Over, 6.
9 Don H. Doyle, The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War (New York, NY, 2015), 1, 41, 98, 99.
10 Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, xviii.
11 Manning, What This Cruel War Was Over, 138-139; George C. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War (Chapel Hill, NC, 2010), 274-276, 70.
12 Boatner, The Civil War Dictionary, 91; Westminster College, Students Journal, Volume 2, Number 12 (December 1859), Author’s Collection.
13 Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples, 15-16, 26, 35-37, 45, 57-59, 84.
14 Mayer and Rankin, A Thousand Hearts Devotion, 12; Dr. William Urban, “Monmouth College in the Civil War,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (February, 1978), 14; Monmouth College, Oracle, 11.
15 Monmouth College, Oracle, 5; Meyer and Rankin, Thousand Hearts Devotion, 18. The general was Abner Harding, a member of the board of trustees. He enlisted as a private in the 83rd Illinois and was later promoted to colonel and then brigadier general in March 1863, but had to resign a short time later because of deteriorating eyesight.
16 James B. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades:Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York, Oxford, 1997), 182; Original muster sheet of Company F, Author’s Collection; Jeff Guinn, The Last Gunfight (New York, NY, 2011) 24-25. Wyatt Earp, of course, was the famous gambler, gunslinger, and sheriff engaged in the famous shootout at the O.K. Corral on October 26, 1881.
17 James H. Murnane and Peadar Murnane, At the Ford of the Birches (Monaghan, Ireland, 1999), Foreword; David J. Hogan, et. al., Irish American Chronicle (New York, 2009), 88-90; S. J. Connolly, ed., The Oxford Companion to Irish History (Oxford, 1998), 228. Clarke, History of McDonough County, Illinois (Springfield, IL, 1885), 453-454; Judge David Matchett, address delivered at the United Presbyterian Church, Hanover, August 3, 1935, Author’s Collection.
18 Duncan, Robert L, Sergeant, Company F clerk, Log book of Company F, 17th Illinois Infantry, Warren County, Illinois Historical Society (transcribed by Tom Best).
19 Frances M. Clarke, War Stories: Suffering and Sacrifice in the Civil War North (Chicago, IL, 2011), 37.
20 Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, 11; Reid Mitchell, The Vacant Chair: The Northern Soldier Leaves Home (New York, NY, 1993), 21-25, 42-51.
21 McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 318; Boatner, The Civil War Dictionary, 760.
22 Monmouth College, Oracle 11-12; Urban, Monmouth College in the Civil War, 15; Mitchell, Vacant Chair, 21-25.