Civil War Oddities #49

Thomas A. Scott, superintendent of the Pittsburgh division of the Pennsylvania railroad, took an aide with him when he went to Washington to become an assistant secretary of war. Speaking with a soft Scottish burr, his twenty-six year old companion quickly showed himself to be an expert in telegraphy. Soon Andrew Carnegie was put to work coordination rail and telegraph lines of the Union.

Serving as a civilian executive in the military transportation section of the War Department, Carnegie was never forced to dodge Confederate bullets. He considered establishment of the telegraph office frequented by Lincoln to be one of his greatest contributions to the war effort.

Entering the iron and steel business in 1865, within one-quarter of a century he had gained controlling interest in the U.S. Steel Corporation. Then the former worked for the War Department sold out and devoted the rest of his life to distributing his fortune among countless public libraries and other charitable enterprises.

Armed Forces Insignia from WW1 and WW2

Here is the first look of my Armed Forces Insignia project. This was originally published in the Philadelphia Inquirer on August 1, 1954. The new image is 12.5 by 16.5, 110# gloss cover, printed on both sides.

Shoulder insignia, the brightly colored designs worn on the left sleeve below the shoulder to denote divisions, corps, armies, or organizations within the U. S. Armed Forces, express warmth and a fraternity which men of all services know from experience.

Originated by the 81st Division in 1918, the cloth patches were soon officially recognized for their value in building morale. 

Civil War Oddities #48

By 1861, the name of one-time ferryboat captain Cornelius Vanderbilt was becoming familiar in the U.S. shipping circles. Men who knew the business predicted that he would find a way to double the money he had made when he sold his California-to-Nicaragua shipping line.

One month after Fort Sumter, he surprised Federal authorities. In a letter to W. O. Bartlett, who was about to go to Washington, Vanderbilt authorized him to say that the steamer Vanderbilt would be turned over to the government on its own terms. As president of the Atlantic and Pacific Steamship Company, he offered the U.S. Navy four additional vessels. With the price of these ships to be determined by a “board of commodores,” he offered the Ocean Queen, Ariel, Champion, and Daniel Webster.

Just one year later, Vanderbilt bought a controlling interest in the New York and Harlem Railroad. From that point he had clear sailing in his quest to become one of the nation’s wealthiest men.

Civil War Oddities #47

Bavarian emigrant Thomas Nast was just twenty-one years old at the outbreak of hostilities, but he had sketched some of Giuseppi Garibaldi’s battles for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. Switching to the staff of Harper’s Weekly, the artist was on numerous battlefields and in many camps. Within a decade after the end of hostilities, he gained national fame from his attacks on the Tweed Ring in New York City. Today he is chiefly remembered for having created both the Democratic donkey and the Republican elephant.

Civil War Oddities #46

According to the New York Evening Post of September 4, 1862, the Seventeenth Connecticut Regiment “left New York for a seat of war” on the previous evening. Having been organized on August 28, the unit was assigned to garrison duty until it participated in the famous “Mud March” of January 1863. A mid-winter storm left Virginia roads of “shocking” condition.

Among the privates who made up the regiment was inventor Elias Howe. At that time, the sewing machine he perfected was widely pirated in England and Europe, but Howe was not generally known. When his improved sewing machine won a gold medal at the Paris Exposition in 1867, the ground was laid for his later induction into the American Hall of Fame.

Civil War Oddities #45

New York native Matthew B. Brady’s portrait studio saw a few table sits for the camera during the 1850’s. He was all but unknown, however, outside a small circle of persons who had learned the photographic process perfected by Louis J. J. Daguerre of France.

Aware that his eye had been damaged, perhaps by chemicals, and that he was fast losing his vision, Brady hired a group of enthusiastic younger men and sent them to war.

They made thousands of photographs for which their employer took full credit. Today much material in the Brady Collection is identified by the name of the photographer who produced it.

Still, no other man who envisioned capturing the war on wet plates is more closely identified with 1961-1865 action than the man who personally saw very little of it.

Civil War Oddities #44

At the outbreak of the war, ex-captain U.S. Grant was a military has been who was reduced to working as a clerk in a family owned leather goods store. Nevertheless, perennial failure Grant” became the first person since George Washington to become a lieutenant general in the U. S. Army, then spent two terms as president of the United States.