Civil War Oddities #115

Sue Chancellor, for whose family a plantation home and a major battle were named, was a girl of fourteen at the time of what some term “Lee’s greatest triumph.” Before she became accustomed to seeing Confederate pickets near her home, Sue later said, a large drove of sheep came running down the road one day without a shepherd.

As she recalled the incident, that to her always remained vivid, a soldier asked her if she’d like to have a pet. When she nodded, Tomas Lamar Stark of Columbia, South Carolina, picked out for her “a beautiful white lamb.” Named Lamar in honor of its donor, the lamb remained with its new mistress until the Chancellor mansion was burned.

Civil War Oddities #114

Before donning a gray uniform, Robert E. Lee once described himself as being “very solitary.” His only companions, he said in a letter to his wife, were “my dog and cats.” According to the lonely cavalry officer, his dog went with him to his office every morning and lay down “from eight to four without moving.”

During his U.S. Army days, Lieutenant Colonel Lee once crossed the “Narrows” between Fort Hamilton and Staten Island, New York. Halfway over the body of water, he spied a female dog with its head barely above the waves. He rescued the animal, named her Dart, and took her home with him.

One of her pups, Spec, was an alert and especially affectionate black and tan terrier who once jumped out of a high window to join the family at church. Lee was so impressed by the valor of the animal that he permitted Spec to “go into the church afterwards, whenever he wished.”

Civil War Oddities #113

Lt. A. O. Abbott of the First New York Dragoons was among numerous Union prisoners held at Columbia, South Carolina, during the fall of 1864. Abbott whiled away part of the time be keeping a detailed diary. According to it, an October sunrise revealed “two strangers going through the camp.”

The prisoners decided that they must be killed at once, so they found an axe “and the deed was done.” The bodies of the victims were shoved into an abandoned well just before guards began searching. As Abbott described the eventful morning, Confederates eventually brought to light the missing dogs, dead bloodhounds that were two of a pack around camp every morning to discover if any “Yankees had made fresh tracks for liberty during the night”.

Civil War Oddities #112

In November 1863 men of the First South Carolina Colored Troops were forced to retreat from a site near Pocotaligo, South Carolina. Bloodhounds were brought to track them down, but the soldiers whom they chased were ready and waiting when the dogs drew near.

According to the Rebellion Record, the contest between men and animals was brief and bloody: Dogs dashed into the party in advance of their comrades, the rebels. One hound was shot, and left with broken legs upon the field. Five others were impaled upon their bayonets of the Union troops, and brought as trophies into their camp.

Civil War Oddities #111

Colonel Arthur Rankin, a Canadian abolitionist eager to fight for the Union, secured permission to raise a large regiment. From the beginning, Rankin made it clear that he expected his men to fight with lances.

Newspaper editors in Toronto soon accused him of deliberately setting out to violate the Neutrality Act. Authorities refused his request for a leave of absence as commander of the Ninth Military District, Canada West. Because of these rebuffs, the sixteen hundred Canadian lancers expected by Washington to help put a quick end to the fray never entered it.

Civil War Oddities #110

Late in the war, Egyptian dignitaries decided to send a blooded stallion to Jefferson David as a gift. Shipped across the Atlantic on the Banshee, a British owned blockade-runner, all went well until the vessel tried to slip into Wilmington, North Carolina, under cover of darkness. When the neighing of the white Arabian horse was heard aboard a Federal blockading vessel, its crewmembers moved into action.

Chased into shoal water twenty miles southwest of Beaufort by the USS Grand Gulf, the captain of the Banshee chose to surrender to men aboard the transport steamer Fulton rather than to the captain of the pursuing warship. As senior military officer on the vessel, Major James E. Bailey of the Third Rhode Island Artillery formally accepted the surrender.

Bailey’s December 24, 1863, report stressed that the Banshee and her cargo were prizes of war belonging to the men who were on the Fulton at the time of her capture. However, his account of the capture failed to mention the blooded Egyptian horse bound for Richmond. As a result, official records do not indicate what became of the animal that crossed the Atlantic safely, but never bore on its back the president of the Confederacy.