Civil War Oddities #107

During the Wilderness campaign, reporter Henry E. Wing of the New York Tribune was the only man from Union forces to reach a telegraph line with vital reports. He got there on foot, having been forced to abandon his horse when observed by Confederates. When he demanded the right to send lengthy dispatches to New York, U.S. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton ordered his arrest.

Abraham Lincoln countermanded Stanton’s order and sent a train to bring Wing to Washington. After a dramatic 2:00 a.m. session in the White House, the president detailed for the reporter an escort of cavalry and artillery with which to return to the scene of his adventures. Wing triumphantly led them to the spot where he had hidden his horse in a thicket after Confederate Major John Mosby’s men spotted him.

Having recovered the animal, Wing resumed the task of trying to please his publisher, Horace Greely, and Tribune readers throughout the North.

Civil War Oddities #106

At the outbreak of armed conflict, the field commander of the U.S. Army was physically unable to mount a horse.

Subordinate only to the president, who was also commander in chief, at age 75. Lt. General Winfield Scott had directed the U.S. Army since 1841. Behind his back, subordinates called him “old Fuss and Feathers.” Members of the tiny professional army knew that their leader was afflicted with gout and was too heavy to sit in a saddle.

Because no general directed his fighting men on foot, it was obvious that Scott couldn’t go into combat. As much as any other factor, Scott’s inability to ride contributed to George B. McClellan’s October 1861 success in his campaign to supplant “Old Fuss and Feathers” as the Union’s top brass.

Civil War Oddities #105

Veteran U.S. Cavalrymen learned how to supplement information received from their scouts. “By the nervous twitching of our horses’ ears,” recalled a member of the expedition led into Alabama by Brigadier General James H. Wilson, “we learn that they enemy is near us and soon we find him.”

Civil War Oddities #104

A standard U.S. Army wagon was 120 inches long (inside measurement), 43 inches wide, and 22 inches high. Such a vehicle was rated as capable of transporting a cargo of about 2,600 pounds, equivalent to 1,500 individual rations of bread, coffee, sugar, and salt.

Fully loaded, such a vehicle required a team of four horses or six mules for travel on good roads. Other loads and circumstances required more animals.

When Stonewall Jackson captured a bevy of locomotives near Harpers Ferry, he discovered that they’d have to be pulled overland to reach a Confederate railroad line. As a result, he hitched a team of forty horses to each captive locomotive for the trek to the Manassas Gap Railroad.