The Poison Spring Massacre (April 18, 1864) part 1

 

On April 18, 1864, the 1^st Kansas Colored Regiment faced its worst day. A foraging expedition turned into a desperate battle, and the battle concluded with their heaviest losses. While many of the former slaves and their white officers fell in combat, the worst came after the battle had been lost. The wounded were targeted for a racial and revenge-motivated killing spree at the hands of the victors. The Battle of Poison Spring was not the largest battle of General Frederick Steele’s Camden Expedition in Arkansas, but it gained an infamous place in Civil War history. Arkansas citizens in the area did not call it a battle, but the Poison Spring Massacre. It helped usher in 1864 as perhaps the cruelest year of the Civil War.

The Northern Hook

The Camden Expedition was in fact part of the Red River Campaign. Major-General Henry W. Halleck, Chief-of-Staff of the Army, was determined to see the conquest of Texas and its cotton bundles. General Ulysses Grant, recently promoted to Lieutenant-General over all Federal forces, had wanted Major-General Nathaniel Banks (one of several notoriously incompetent political generals), to descend upon Mobile, Alabama, one of the last functioning major ports in the South. Halleck, however, won his case for Banks to advance on Texas instead. There were legitimate military objectives. Texas, largely untouched beyond its Gulf coastline, contained vast amounts of cattle and other supplies that it could still slip east past the Union-occupied Mississippi River. Also, the Lincoln Administration still feared that the French, waging their war in Mexico just to the south, might still potentially form an alliance with the Confederacy. A large Federal presence in Texas could dissuade this. More controversially there were political and economic motives as well. Lincoln hoped to install a pro-Union government in conquered Texan territory that would of course in turn hold pro-Lincoln voters. Above all the Federals coveted Texas’ vast amounts of cotton. Since Texas had a land border with Mexico, it could bypass the Union naval blockade and send cotton directly to French and Mexican middlemen.

History Rhymes: The Emerging Anti-Russian Hysteria

You might recall one of these phrases on the repetition of history. There is Abraham Lincoln's "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Mark Twain once opined "History does not repeat, but it rhymes." Then there is the Biblical "There is nothing new under the sun." We are certainly seeing this trend today in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This post does not deal directly with the war itself, but the reaction to it in parts of the West. I am referring to the attempts to apply cancel culture as an international weapon. Food has been renamed, Russia-originated works removed, and Russian-born immigrants fired. This brings to mind the anti-German hysteria during America's entry into the First World War, over 100 years ago.

After German submarines sank several American ships (most famously the passenger liner Lusitania), the United States reached enough war fervor to join the Great War under the direction of President Woodrow Wilson and a collection of war hawks. There was also lingering anti-immigrant feeling (Germans made a large portion of late 19th Century and early 20th Century immigrants) mixed with oft-vicious British propaganda. Once America was earnestly in the war, native-born Americans went on an anti-German crusade.

 

Hippensteel, Scott. Myths of the Civil War: The Fact, Fiction, and Science behind the Civil War’s Most-Told Stories. Lanham: Stackpole Books, 2021.

Scott Hippensteel is an associate professor of earth sciences at the University of North Carolina. If one wonders why a scientist wrote a book on the Civil War, it should be noted that his specialties include geoarchaeology and micropaleontology. Hippensteel himself is a Civil War buff and has sought to apply his specific field to this historical era. Myths of the Civil War does not deal with social issues like slavery’s importance or strategic ones like who was really responsible for the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg, but primarily with how historians and others who present the Civil War have uncritically accepted soldiers’ metaphors as literal fact or the objectivity of early photojournalism. Injecting his short book with bits of humor, Hippensteel is able to scientifically challenge claims about the Civil War in an engaging and entertaining fashion.

The first myth he challenges is that of the Civil War sniper, that thanks to advances in weapon technology, crack shots were able to hit generals like Sedgwick at Spotsylvania and Reynolds at Gettysburg with pinpoint accuracy. Studying physics and the capabilities of firearms at the time, Hippensteel convincingly argues that Civil War sharpshooters were not the equivalent of snipers and would either target clusters of men or work in teams to fill a general area with bullets.

8 Inaccuracies in the Movie Gettysburg (1993)

 Ted Turner’s Gettysburg is the 1993 film (with a successful mini-series performance on TNT) that got me interested in the Civil War. It’s my favorite Civil War movie period, even if technically there are better entries on the subject. While it will always hold a special place in my heart, I have noticed, through the observations of others and my own expanding knowledge of history that there are a few inaccuracies. Some are carried over from Michael Shaara’s Killer Angels, the historical novel on which the movie is based on. Others were mistakes or intentional cinematic choices on the part of the filmmakers. This is not a heavy criticism, as the inaccuracies are for the most part harmless and in a couple cases help make a better viewing experience. I will not list the soldiers’ well-fed and often older appearance, as the movie’s budget required the voluntary efforts of reenactors rather than meticulously selected extras or hired soldiers to fill out the battle scenes. Let’s start with a couple light ones.

#1. The 14th Brooklyn is at the Wrong Place

When General John Reynolds falls to a sharpshooter’s bullet, a regiment wearing red kepi hats and trousers stops to gather around him. Several units in the Army of the Potomac had colorful uniforms, but none were present for the first day’s battle around McPherson’s Ridge. The 14th Brooklyn, actually part of the 84th New York, was part of Reynold’s Corps, but fought at the Railroad Cut to the north. They were popularly known as the “red-legged devils” and were known to be Abolitionist in their politics. They were originally supposed to be off in the distance to show some scale to the battle scenes. Director Ron Maxwell, however, tired of shooting a sea of blue uniforms, decided to have them front and center for a big scene.