During the final eighteen months of the war, the diet kitchens often under enemy fire,
issued more than two million sick rations monthly. As the hospitals gradually emptied
when peace was declared, the courageous women who manned them returned with the
other veterans to their families. As a result of her tremendous achievement, Mrs.
Wittenmeyer became a close friend of General Grant and of President Lincoln, both of
whom frequently consulted with her as to the needs of the sick and wounded men. Of her
General Grant said: "No soldier on the firing line gave more heroic service than she
rendered." Annie Wittenmeyer and the unsung women who worked beside her to
alleviate the horrible conditions in army hospitals introduced a completely new era into
the care of the war sick and wounded, not only in the United States but in other countries
as well. They put into action the dream of Clara Barton.
Inevitably the story of Annie Wittenmeyer's bravery filtered through to the farm
homes in the vicinity of Keokuk. Soldiers were coming and going on leave bearing word
of the new women nurses and hospital attendants. Visitors to camps and hospitals learned
of Annie's work, and told anxious mothers of her care of the wounded and ill. John
returned from one of his many trips to Keokuk with food and supplies for the front and
44
reported to Mary and Araminta of Mrs. Wittenmeyer and her daring to oppose public
opinion by going into the hospitals with her new diet kitchens.
"She's a close friend of Abe's and of Grant's, too," John chuckled. "With that pair
behind her there is nothing can stop her!"
Mary thought of the courage of this woman who defied the military surgeons and
officers to care for the suffering men. "It is difficult to imagine," she said seriously, "a
woman going into a camp to work with only men in charge. But," she hesitated, "she is a
widow and she isn't young . . ."
Araminta giggled happily: "What harm could a bunch of sick soldiers, many of them
without arms and legs do, Ma?" she asked.
Mary frowned: "Don't be flippant, daughter," she said sternly. "It's a new world, and
you will probably be freer than I ever was, but women are still women and must
remember to be ladies!"
"Ladies," sniffed the girl. "I'm so busy being a lady, I haven't time to be a woman!"
"Araminta!" gasped Mary.
"Don't be impudent, young lady!" said John firmly. Araminta said no more but she
was sure she noted a quick twinkle in her father's eye.
"I'm plumb sick of being a lady," she told herself. "If I believed in the migration of
souls, I'd ask that when I came back, even if only a worm, that I might be a male worm!"
Throughout that day and those which followed, Araminta brooded over her father's
story of Annie Wittenmeyer and her diet kitchens. She thought of her brothers, one of
whom perhaps at this very moment was lying in an army tent, homesick, uncared for,
hungry, so slow were communications between the front and the families behind the
lines.
She woke, crying, from frantic dreams that Jim Andrews, whose ring hung on a fine
gold chain around her neck, was dying, neglected, in an army hospital. The ring was a
thin band of gold set with a fine red garnet. The night before Jim left with a company of
volunteers marching to Keokuk, he appeared at the kitchen door, asking her to step
outside for a moment.
She took a quick look around. No one was in sight. Still .... a lady didn't walk in the
dark with a man friend. Quickly she decided. Taking another quick look to make sure no
one was watching, she took down her mother's gray shawl from the hook by the door and
slipped outside.
Jim took her shoulders between his hands: "Araminta," he said, his voice shaking,
"I'm leaving in the morning. It may be I'll not see you for a long time." He drew a painful
breath, "perhaps, never. Before I go I'd like to give you a ring. It was my mother's and her
mother's before her. It means a lot to me. When Ma was sick she slipped it off her finger
and gave it to me to give to the girl I would some day meet and want to wear her ring!"
For a long moment the two stood silent. Jim was thinking of the long hard road with
its unknown perils which stretched before him Araminta was realizing that the days
without Jim, her long time playmate, not knowing where he was or if he was safe, would
be bitter ones.
"Araminta," he said, "I'm asking you to wait for me?"
The girl caught her breath: "I'll wait," she said. "I'll wait, and I'll pray for you every
day. I'll write, and you write to me."
She slipped the little ring on the fine gold chain which was her one ornament. Her
family were fond of Jim, but for now she wished her pact with the boy to be a secret
between them. Often as she went about her daily chores, she touched the ring hidden
45
beneath her dress. It was for her a bond between them. When she visioned her brothers in
a hospital, she visioned Jim there, too. She thought of the other boys in the neighborhood,
the boys with whom she had gone to school and to church. Youngsters with whose
families her family had picnicked and frolicked at house raisings and husking bees and
play parties. Now all of them were far away, marching endless ugly miles through mud
and dust and heat and cold. Hungry, tired, lonely, wounded .... her mind was made up.
She would go with Annie Wittenmeyer. Perhaps she could not care for her own, but she
could care for other women's men.
She found her father in the barn welcoming a newborn calf. "A fine little animal,
Ary," he said. "He'll make good beef for the army!"
"Pa!" she burst out. "I'm going to be an army nurse! Take me to Keokuk so I can see
Mrs. Wittenmeyer and ask her to help me!"
John stared at the excited girl as though she had suddenly gone mad. The thought did
cross his mind. But a closer look disclosed the girl was in deadly earnest.
"The boys have gone," she said. "You said yourself it was time men of your age
joined up. I'm well and strong, I can cook and sew, and clean. I can make beds and help
care for the men. If you, the father of a family, can think of going, it's time I went!"
To himself John thought "She is right!" He was surprised that Ary had penetrated his
secret worry, his growing belief that he as an able-bodied man should be in uniform.
He shook his head tiredly. "Yes, girl, I suppose you are right. It's a great work Mrs.
Wittenmeyer is doing, and her care, and the care of her helpers might mean the life of one
of your brothers."
The two left for Keokuk the next day. In bewildered acceptance Mary watched them
drive down the lane. It was all very confusing.. War was men's business, yet her
daughter, her little girl, was leaving her home and its protection, the protection which was
the right of every woman, to venture into who knew what strange adventures. "It must be
all right," she thought unhappily, "yet I can't imagine a woman, a girl, going out among
men, alone, to care for strangers! Whatever," she smiled wryly, "is this world coming to!"
Mary turned away from the window to her kitchen table. Without Araminta to work
beside her, she would face double duty. Araminta was fast and capable, she took the extra
steps to save her mother. Now the younger children must do more. Quickly she organized
in her mind the additional tasks which must be assigned to each child, and rearranged her
own day so she could assume more of the work which Araminta had laid down. That she
could lessen her undertakings never occurred to her. Each task was essential to the whole,
to the maintaining of their home and land, to the furtherance of the army's needs. The loss
of each pair of hands meant the duties of those hands must be carried on by other busy
hands.
When John and Araminta reached Keokuk they found Mrs. Wittenmeyer in town.
When the Meigs told her of Araminta's wish, Annie looked at the girl, at her radiant
vitality, her dimpled smile, her shining eyes.
"No," she said shaking her white head firmly. "You are much too young, and" she
smiled wryly, "much too pretty! We only take the older women, women who are married
or established in life. Soldiers are only human, and" she looked to John for agreement
"you wouldn't be safe!"
Surprisingly John didn't agree. He smiled crookedly at Araminta.
"She's a steady girl, Mrs. Wittenmeyer. Besides she's spoken for by a neighbor boy so
she isn't interested in anyone else." Araminta caught her breath, how did her father know?
John smiled again: "Her mother and I, he told Annie, "talked this over last night. We
46
have decided we want Ary to go. America is her land as much as it is her brothers and she
has a duty to defend it in her way!"
Mrs. Wittenmeyer laughed gaily. "So you are a woman's righter, Mr. Meigs she said.
"No," said John, "never thought of myself as such. Perhaps I am, perhaps I am not.
But I believe that standing up for one's country is an obligation, for women as well as for
men!" Still laughing, Annie shook her head. "I can't stand up to both of you," she said.
"We need help too desperately. Get your things, girl, we'll go south on tonight's packet."
Silently John handed Araminta the shabby carpet bag in which she and her mother
had packed a few necessities. The girl clutched the bag firmly and gritted her teeth as a
wave of fear shook her. South . . . her first time away from home. South . . . down where
the fighting was, where men were killing one another!
"To late," she advised herself "to change my mind now!"
She kissed her father lightly, public demonstrations of affection were not in good
taste in the 1860's. "Give mother my love," she said steadily "and kiss the children for
me."
Then, turning to Mrs. Wittenmeyer, "Where do I begin?"
46 Grant
In the west, the Mississippi was the great highway to tomorrow. In the nation which
when the Civil War began, stretched from ocean to ocean, the River divided its heartland.
By 1860 the railroads were nibbling its traffic loads, but the river still was a symbol—a
symbol for which men would fight and die.
To Grant whose home was on the river and who knew its place in the American
background, to be placed in command of that river, was the greatest distinction he could
achieve. He was an inarticulate man, but he knew as did Sherman, that whichever side
conquered the Mississippi would win the war. As Virginia was symbolic to the
Confederacy, to Robert E. Lee and the Confederate leaders, so was the great Mississippi
Valley symbolic of the Union to the men of the west. For once Grant, the unlucky, found
himself where he could stand on his convictions: he believed in what he was asked to do.
For once good fortune was on his side.
Grant staunchly believed that the Federal government was the friend, not the foe of
the everyday man whom he knew so well. He was enraged and depressed by the
secession of the southern states, knowing that most southerners lived in poverty and
should have the western viewpoint. Unfortunately few southerners saw it so, and aligned
themselves with the great planters who owned the slaves and fixed the pattern for a way
of life which we think of today as typical of the era A point of view which was to Grant
incomprehensible.
In Missouri, Grant and his men campaigned in the northeastern part of the state,
marching to and fro, enduring privation and discomfort, suffering from disease, but
laying the foundation for later campaigns as the movement south began. Here he learned
one invaluable lesson. The enemy was as scared as he, himself, was. Despite this
common fear, Confederates and Unionists fought doggedly. The pioneer did not easily
yield to circumstances. The fighting so far as it could be in war, was straightforward.
Foraging and pillaging was not permitted. Grant insisted upon the observance of his rules
against these and in paying for everything he took, but found, strangely, that by so doing
he made no friends. "Troops of the opposite side," he said "march through and take
everything they want leaving no pay, but strip the countryside, and the inhabitants
become desperate secession partisans because they have nothing more to lose." It was a
philosophy which the direct thinking Grant found disconcerting.
During this time, Grant was made a brigadier-general, partly because of his
congressman's assistance, and partly because of Washington's haphazard way of
distributing commissions. Lincoln created three dozen brigadiers, and to his practical
mind, the organization of an army was akin to a political machine. He asked congressmen
for recommendations. Congressman Washburne sent in Grant's name and he became
"General" Grant.
Colorful General John C. Fremont, who lacked military capacity, but did recognize
the importance of winning the Mississippi Valley, took one step in the right direction. He
named Ulysses S. Grant to command at Cairo, Illinois, with control over southern Illinois
and southeastern Missouri. Iowa troops were moving by the thousands down the river,
and this meant many of them were placed in the ranks of Grant's brigade.
Like Missouri, Kentucky was trying desperately to remain neutral in a contest in
which there was no neutrality. Cairo was in the tip of Illinois at the junction of the Ohio
and the Mississippi, and just across the Ohio was Kentucky. The Confederates watching
the increasing movements of troops and supplies believed the Unionists soon would
move, and marched into Kentucky. The war for the great valley of the Mississippi was
on. Until then, Missouri had been the focal point of the War in the West. Now began the
fighting for control of the mighty river, fighting in which Iowa would play so prominent a
part.
Lincoln and Grant, frontiersmen, with middlewestern pioneering backgrounds,
lacking the spit and polish of regular army men and eastern politicians, commanding an
army of men like themselves, were on their way to everlasting fame in the War in the
West and the decisive part it played in the far-flung Civil War. Lincoln, the shrewd judge
of men. recognized in Grant, the dull plodder, the stolid qualities needed for success, and
soon made him a major general.
When street corner warriors labeled Grant a drunkard, an incompetent, a man who
could win only when the odds were in his favor, Joseph recalled the boy and man he had
known, and stoutly defended him, as an organizer and administrator, a determined man, a
hard, straight thinker. This war, Grant's supporters pointed out, was different from those
in which the regular army creed had been formulated. This was total war. Civilians in and
out of uniform were doing the fighting, and leading it. Women and children and old men
in the southern states were caught up in the ruthless destruction and confiscation of
property behind the lines. Lives were spared, but the army grimly confiscated and
destroyed these people's means of livelihood and supplies which might aid the
Confederate army. The untrained civilian soldiers who at Shiloh and along the entire
western front underwent a pounding that few professional soldiers could or would have
endured, were matched by the civilians on the contested lands, who by every means at
their command sought to protect their crops and possessions.
Food as always in war, in the end would be the deciding factor and Grant knew it.
Long since he had given up sternly ordering his men not to trespass on civilian property
or to confiscate civilian goods.
With the difficulties of transportation. the army must live on the country through
which it marched. As it struck into the heart of the South, hams, sweet potatoes, other
eatables were gathered from plantation smokehouses and storerooms, and piled on army
wagons. Fresh baked bread, pies and cakes, jellies and jams, gathered in plantation
kitchens lent zest to the Federal's barren diet. Against this raiding, women, old men,
48
children, and slaves fought back by secreting the hoarded food which the Confederate
armies so desperately needed, and which must keep starvation from their own doors.
When Hiram and other boys from his company were detailed on forage duty, they
looked with appreciative eyes on the rich farm lands of the Delta country. Going into
homes so similar to their own, raiding pantries and kitchens, was difficult. In the
evenings around the campfire, the men talked it over.
"We're not so hungry," said one strapping lad from Burlington "that we must take
food from women and children!"
The men were quiet remembering their avoiding the big-eyed stare of a row of
children watching their cookies and food going into Union knapsacks. Unable to endure it
longer, the men shamefacedly put back their spoils. "Good-bye, Rebs," called James, and
the Yankees shouldered their guns and marched on, waving and grinning at the staring
children who timidly waved back.
Around the campfire remembering their own homes and families, they tried to find a
reason for the misery and loneliness and heartbreaking suffering, but there seemed no
reason. "Surely we could save the Union without stealing cookies from children," one
man grumbled.
In the morning, they shouldered their guns and slogged on through the mud. These
young simple lads could find no reason for it all, but it was their job, and they did it.
When Grant told them to march, they marched. They trusted his judgment even though it
was against their own instincts.
Later these same men marching with Sherman on their way to the sea, learned to fire
houses and barns, even the lush standing crops. James could never reconcile his thinking
to this terrible path of destruction, necessary as he knew it to be in the final winning of
the war. To him the land and its produce was a vital living thing, its production to be
nurtured, not violently destroyed. Long after the war was over, he remembered with
horror those harsh days of vicious destruction.
"No one," he told himself, in the long nights when he lay sleepless living again that
terrible march "could comprehend the bitter terror and ugly anguish of those invaded
lands." In later years he told his grandson "A soldier destroys knowing he must. We did
what we had to do. What our officers ordered that we do. We did it sadly and in sorrow."
These flaming buildings were homes like the men's Iowa homes. Homes built with
the tedious labor of their owners. Homes furnished with prized belongings brought by
their forefathers to this land, as James' family had brought their cherished possessions to
the new world. Difficult as it was to fight the men in gray so similar to themselves, to
their brothers and friends, it was even more difficult to ravage their land and dispossess
their families. In part the stamina in battle and on the march of both the blue and the gray
was founded on courage reared on a hard determination to overcome this aversion to
fighting in their own land, against their own people. For the great majority of both North
and South it was no easy accomplishment. Their home-loving, land-loving instincts must
be fought down, and in their place implanted the hard convictions of right and wrong
lovingly taught in home and school. So effectively was this realized that it is not
surprising that today, more than one hundred years after the war's close, these
deep-rooted convictions exist in the minds and hearts of their descendants. In North and
South so deeply implanted were these beliefs and the hatreds which they brought about,
they still flourish in our thinking. The stain of slavery which was smeared across our
young nation is not easily wiped away. The ugly differences which thrived on the blood
of war, still raise their heads from time to time. Lincoln and Grant and the men who led
49
the nation in the war years knew this. The men who led the Confederate armies knew
this. Knew this vicious aftermath was inevitable. Troubled men knew the proud march of
the victorious Union troops down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington's Grand Review,
did not erase the ugly disfiguration Appomatox marked only the end of the shooting war.
To succeeding generations was left the burden of blotting out the stain. Hate generated to
fire an army on its way whether it be against a foreign foe or one at home, is not easily
obliterated when the fighting ends. It must be patiently uprooted by men and women of
good will, who understand the tragic elements stirred into that caldron of hate, with the
tolerance to overcome the evil done. That the South which bore the burden of the actual
fighting over its lands and homes should find this particularly difficult is to be expected.
Between the fighting men, a certain camaraderie developed. Northern and Southern
boys from time to time declared an unofficial truce meeting between the lines to talk
things over. During the prolonged siege of Vicksburg, James and his friends often slipped
into the darkness between the lines to meet Confederates stationed opposite to them on
one occasion, Jeb Greene, a lanky Alabaman confided that food was powerful scarce in
the besieged city.
"I ain't takin' to eatin' rats yit," he confided dismally "like some folk, has, but rations
git much shorter, I may come to it!"
Eating his corn pone and side meat the next day, which he had found so distasteful
before, remembering Jeb's plight, he decided it wasn't so bad after all. Hungry as he was
after a day digging trenches, he would have gladly given his heaping plate to the southern
boy. "Don't seem right," he told himself "that Jeb and I should be fighting one another!
We haven't got a grudge!" Next time there is a meeting he promised himself, I'll go with
full pockets. Tasteless as corn pone and salt pork swimming in fat was to him, it was
better than fried rat!
Word tackled along the lines that Grant said Vicksburg must be taken, and the Iowa
boys accepted his judgment. James and his pals had one more meeting with their rebel
friends. They passed on the word that the fighting was going to stiffen.
"We're going to take Vicksburg," they told Jeb and his friends, "rats and all!"
"Probably," said Jeb. "You've got the men, and you've got the gun but don't forget,
Yank, we'll put up a powerful fight! You won't find it any Sunday walk!"
The little group stood up. "Thanks, Yanks, for the food. Mighty good corn pone and
pork. At least we'll fight tomorrow on a full stomach!" They shook hands embarrassed.
"Good luck!" said James. "Same to you!" responded the Alabaman.
"See you in Vicksburg!" James called as he turned away.
"Maybe!" said Jeb.
The men slipped into the darkness, each back to his own lines.
The capture of Vicksburg would be a mortal blow to the Confederacy, more costly
even than a Confederate victory at Gettysburg would be to the Union. The surging, tawny
river would be open, a symbol of the nation's unity.
From Cairo to Vicksburg, Iowa troops marched with Grant and commended their
courage and skill in out-finessing a wily enemy.
47 Deep South
No other of our nation's wars has asked and received such service from its people,
who demanded so little in return. The principal of helping one another, and of fighting to
protect one's rights was so universal, that the demands made on time and money and life,
did not seem unreasonable. Self help was the way of life in early Iowa, not only in
helping one's family and neighbors, but in serving the community and the state.
As the months and years of the war dragged on, community and army service became
organized and efficiently directed. Only a high sense of responsibility could produce the
quality and quantity of volunteers which Iowa sent into the army, and originate the
generous support given to these volunteers by those behind the lines.
As was inevitable, the high pitched enthusiasm which existed in the early months of
the war, slackened. War inevitably brings its own disillusionment as the glory fades and
reality strengthens, but more practically in this war, the enlistments lessened because the
cream was quickly skimmed from the supply available. Able-bodied young men grew
scarce. A growing awareness of the state's responsibility to its fighting men aroused timid
talk of pensions, at least for the wounded and the families who had lost their men. To
secure enlistments, bonuses were offered to volunteers. Men called under the draft were
permitted to buy a replacement. Three hundred dollars was the customary price. In a day
when this was a sizable sum, well-to-do fathers resorted to this practice to keep a
pampered son safe at home, or a prosperous draftee who put moneymaking before
patriotism, bought a substitute. Often the substitute, the money bulging in his pocket,
counted himself the winner in the exchange. The political practice of rewarding returned
soldiers with appointive civil offices, resulted in some men enlisting for a brief service,
hoping to make themselves eligible for these plums before the great mass of the army
could be discharged.
Hiram passed his eighteenth birthday. Either as a volunteer or draftee the army would
soon call him. Strong and energetic he was from morning until night busy in the fields
and barns. Without his help it would be difficult for his father and mother to keep the
land's production as high as they had been able to do during the past years. Neither of his
parents mentioned army service to him, nor did they to one another. When word came
that a neighbor lad had enlisted, or a boy had been sent home crippled, Joseph and Mary
avoided looking at each other. Hiram knew that telling them he must go would be
difficult, but in his heart he knew the time had come.
"Pa would hate for the draft to take me," he told himself. The thought of buying his
way out of the army was repugnant to the upstanding lad. Neither his father nor his
mother would stand in the way of his going, but he knew how bitter it would be for them
to tell him he could go.
When young Bill Carroll came by the Meig's home place seeking a bed and food
before walking on to Iowa City where his older brother was already a member of the
twenty-Second Iowa Volunteer Infantry, Hiram quietly rolled his blanket, surreptitiously
packed a knapsack of food, bade farewell to his dog and horse, and leaving a
tear-splattered note telling his family where he was going, in the quiet of the early dawn
joined Bill on his way.
When the two boys reached Camp Pope close by the Rock Island Railroad in Iowa
City, they found a scene of swirling excitement. Newly enlisted men, uncomfortable in
new uniforms, lounged before the tents. Officers in worn uniforms stepped briskly about,
busy, or attempting to appear busy and important, while gruff, loud voiced non-coms
ordered the new recruits about, including Hiram and Bill, wide eyed at this activity.
When at last Bill located his brisk young lieutenant brother, and confided to him their
intent to volunteer, the company's officers hurried the boys into town, where Squire
Murray would swear them into service. Bystanders directed them to the squire's office up
51
flight of rickety stairs, above a hardware store. When Hiram and Bill clattered up the
steps demanding to be sworn in, the Squire ordered them back downstairs:
"I don't swear nobody in," he told them, "you two or anybody else up here in this
office." The old man followed the two back down the stairway, where he mounted an old
table that stood on the sidewalk. Picking up a flag that lay on the table, he swore the two
in, waving the flag furiously above their heads. The brief ceremony over, he shouted to
the bystanders to join him in three cheers for the Union. People passing along the streets
or in the offices or stores nearby, attracted by what was happening, watched the simple
ceremony and joined in lusty cheers for the boys, the flag, and the Union. A hundred men
were sworn in that day, each receiving cheers from the bystanders and a hearty "God
bless you!" from the Squire.
"Excitement is high," Hiram wrote home. "It is the Fourth of July and Christmas all
mixed together. "
Each new recruit hurried to the camp to be outfitted in a uniform and given his
equipment. That the uniforms were ill-fitting, the shoes often shoddy, the guns not the
latest models, passed unnoticed. Adventure loomed ahead. The cruel knowledge of dirt,
disease, suffering, bloodshed, hunger, was yet to come. Today was the eager lads' big
day, and caught up in the wild enthusiasm which surged about him, each enlistee longed
to be on his way.
The hard bitten army sergeant, Indian fighter and veteran of the Mexican War,
invalided home from the fighting, who outfitted the new men shouted gruffly to them, to
move along, step lively, who do you think you are?, but behind his raucous commands
lurked a deep sympathy for these green boys so soon to be thrown into the fighting lines.
"They've got a hell of a lot to learn, these lads," he commented aside to his corporal.
"That they have," the corporal agreed. "But they'll learn fast, or they face rebel guns."
"I hope so," the sergeant acquiesced. His own son had failed to learn in time and gone
down in a wild futile charge at Shiloh.
"Too many good men are lost in the learning," the sergeant tossed a uniform to Hiram
harshly ordering him to move along. "Too bad" he went on "there isn't more time."
"Yep," said the corporal "but time is one thing we don't have in war!" He shoved a
half dozen hesitating youngsters through the door into the bare room where they would
don their uniforms and wrap their clothes to be returned home.
"Get rid of everything," the corporal ordered. "You'll have neither room nor energy to
carry a lot of trash! Pack what you'll need to keep alive, the rest send home."
Hiram sorted through his belongings. He kept his mother's picture and the little Bible
his grandfather once gave him. The rest of his cherished possessions he wrapped in his
good suit to be sent home. He called that Jeremiah wrote home describing the route of
march being littered with possessions discarded by the tired men.
"You carry only necessities, when you are going into battle." Hiram wrote in a letter
home: "I've left my clothes and belongings in the camp," he told them. "Perhaps someone
from over our way can take them to you. I kept Ma's picture and Grandpa's Bible.
Everything else I am sending home. Guess it's the first step in becoming a soldier to get
rid of everything I own. From now on I'll live and breathe as a fighting man with nothing
to hold me back!"
He addressed the letter and took it to headquarters to be picked up should mail be
going towards Keokuk. "Tisn't easy," he confided to Bill Carroll. "I think of the folks,
and my dog, and my room with my books and things. A soldier can't do that. It is just too
plumb upsetting! From here on, boy, you and I are going to think war!"
52
Uncertainly Bill agreed.
The parade and drill ground extended along both sides of the railroad tracks up to the
front of Governor Kirkwood's home. The new recruits marched to and fro, slept, ate,
joshed one another, and were homesick. In their own eyes at least, they were heroes.
Carrying wooden bayonets, issued in lieu of the real article, they acknowledged the salute
of the officer of the day. He, too, wore a wooden sword. Sternly the nervous guards
halted sisters and sweethearts bringing food to the men, and the candy boy sneaking
through the lines with a basket of homemade goodies to sell.
The camp vibrated with military commands and calls, with stern reminders to the
distant outpost that pausing in his vigil to chat with his best girl was not done in war.
Carrying a grimy tin cup, tin plate, tin spoon, iron knife and fork Hiram went three
times a day to the soup house for his rations. His stomach turned queasily on observing
the cooks, greasy, dirty, slovenly. He looked at the big iron kettle in which the thick
colorless soup bubbled and burped. Recalling his mother's kitchen, clean, bright, filled
with the delicious smells of simmering food, he wondered, briefly, what this soup was
made. For an instant he considered throwing down his plate and eating nothing. Then
hunger prevailed. Standing outside with the other men, he hastily gulped down the
unappetizing mess. At least, he thought, this is over until the next meal. He remembered
the tasty food that Iowa City women had brought in their heaping baskets the night
before. The crisp apple pie .... crusty brown fried chicken.... spicy potato salad .... huge
loaves of homemade bread .... jars of baked beans .... his mouth watered .. perhaps when
he got to Keokuk or to Burlington to board the southbound boat, Mother and the girls
would meet him with like baskets. For a moment homesickness rocked him, and he was
but a lonely boy, in an ugly world. Then he shook his head, and reminded himself, that he
was a man, and this was a man's world.
Month later as he tramped with other tired, dirty, hungry men, along a dusty road,
past farms and plantations stripped bare of everything and anything edible, he
remembered with longing the questionable soup. "At least," he reminded himself
ruefully, "it was food, poorly cooked, improperly seasoned, but the meat and vegetables
were real. Anything but corn pone," he told himself, "or the raw corn we took from the
mules and chewed down in Missouri, would be better!"
In Iowa City the day came at last when real guns and equipment were issued. With
new pride, heads high, most of the men in step, the regiment moved out. Eyes sternly
ahead, each company swung past the handkerchief waving girls and crying women, who
lined the parade ground.
"Women" Hiram thought disgustedly "always cry. At weddings, a birthing, or a
parade!" He forgot, or perhaps never knew, that these women lining the road had lost
husbands, brothers, sons, and their tears were not only for these men marching so
pridefully, but for other boys and men who had marched with equal pride and now lay
dead on southern battlefields.
"No," said Hi to himself "we're soldiers. No more playacting with wooden bayonets
and swords." He slid his eyes quickly to right and left. "We're ready," he told himself.
And ready they were. As ready as thousands before and after them were and would
be.
In early September the regiment was mustered into the United States Army, and a day
or so later, in boxcars, cattle cars, and open coal cars, with a huffing puffing little engine
up ahead, the regiment moved down to Keokuk to go on board a boat and move down the
River. When they reached Keokuk, they unloaded in a downpour, and ran for shelter
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wherever it could be found. There was no time for letting families know, nor time for
families to make the trip to Keokuk. Only a few men and women stood on the dock, as
the big paddle wheel started to turn, and with great puffs of black smoke pouring from
the tall smoke stack, the boat swung slowly into the current of the great river.
As the boat moved south, stops were made along the way and the Negro roustabouts
ran down the plank and drove protesting pigs and carried squawking chickens onto the
boat. Later a frenzied squealing or frantic squawking proclaimed the preparation of the
evening meal. Refrigeration was unknown. The food came on the boat alive. The animals
were slaughtered and the waste thrown into the river to the edification of the great
channel cat who swam lazily behind the slowly turning paddle in the hope of a feast.
The nights were hot and humid. Blankets were seldom used. The men, feet to the rail,
lay along the deck in search of what coolness might rise from the water or could be found
in the miasmic breeze which blew across the swamp lands along the banks. Homesick
boys cried under their breath through the night, but in the daytime adventure beckoned.
Many had never been more than a few miles from home; the sights and sounds of the
great river and its endless traffic was thrilling to them.
The boat made good progress on its way south. When it reached St. Louis, the troops
marched down the plank and took the road to Fort Benton. The sun burned hot, hot even
to these boys who had known summer heat in the fields of Iowa. About them swirled the
heavy river humidity, heavier and damper than Iowa's sultry corn weather. Hi
remembered what returned veterans had told of the endless marching, marching, tramp,
tramp, tramp, in snow and rain and heat and dust. Moving his heavy feet steadily ahead in
time to the moving feet of the men about him, he thought unhappily, if this is a sample of
what is to come, I'll never be able to do it."
Two weeks later when the Benton Barracks were becoming unendurable to the
restless boys, the regiment was ordered to Rolla, Missouri. Here like the regiments which
preceded them, they guarded trains carrying troops and supplies and equipment to the
Union posts. Waynesville, a distance of thirty miles from Rolla, they did in two days
going and two days coming. Hi learned to fall into line and to make his mind a blank,
looking neither to right or left, but with eyes fixed on the booted feet of the man before
him, concentrate his every effort on simply moving his feet—right, left, right, left—the
steady cadence became mechanical. For hours on end he moved without thought,
expending only the effort needed to keep in motion. His regiment as well as the other
Iowa regiments throughout their terms marched thousands and thousands of miles. One
Iowa regiment traversed eight thousand miles during its years of service.
Life in winter quarters was dull. The camp ground was either boot deep in mud, or
frozen into ruts which made walking difficult. Whatever the weather—rain, snow, mud,
ice—day after day, hour after hour, the drilling went on. Slowly the men were learning
discipline, learning to salute smartly and respond "Yes sir", when spoken to, learning to
accept without question, unpleasant duties. Learning to become one of a group which
functioned automatically when ordered to do so. Gradually the understanding came to
them that this discipline so resented by boys accustomed to freedom of movement, was
for their own protection at the front. They learned from men who had been in action, that
fewer casualties resulted in companies headed by relentless disciplinarians. New recruits
who complained of the hard routine, received short shift from the older men.
"You're lucky to have old Blood and Guts", a veteran told Hiram, referring to an
officer noted for his tireless training. "Your hide is safe under rebel fire!" The boys soon
54
learned that leaders of this type all had harsh nicknames, names bestowed out of the
men's admiration rather than their dislike.
Colonel Stone who headed the Twenty-Second and had been captured at Shiloh and
released, knew the men's problems from personal experience. Realizing the bottled up
energy of the companies, he organized a mock snowball battle for the regimental banner,
which resulted, Hiram wrote his family, in more damage to the banner than to the men.
On another night, Stone, having discovered an eclipse of the moon was due, surprised the
men by sounding the roll at a late hour. Anticipating a Confederate attack, the boys
scrambled hurriedly out of their blankets and lined up, only to discover the man in the
moon was disappearing behind the earth's shadow!
As rations grew more scarce, Major Atherton ordered a wagon train of corn brought
down from Iowa, hauled to the gristmill some sixteen miles away. The oxen slowly
dragged the wagon over the rocky trails, up and down the mountains, to the little mill
beside a roistering mountain stream, where the corn would be ground. The owner, a lanky
red headed Missourian dressed in butternut homespun, sucking a corn cob pipe, moved
slowly about his business. Even the great stones turned slowly. The water diverted into
the sluice on its way to the mill shared apparently, in the general inertia. The Missourian
visited amiably with the men. To all appearances he was friendly, but the Yankees were
fearful he was deliberately delaying their return, and watched nervously for the
Confederates whom they were convinced would appear at any moment. When the last
kernel was ground, the meal sacked and loaded into the wagons, it was the oxen whom
the men believed were conniving with the rebels, so slowly did they move.
"The whole Confederate army could be hidden behind these rocks and trees!" the men
grumbled, shifting their guns for greater convenience should the expected attack
materialize.
As always it rained. The wagons slipped and slid in the mud, threatening to overturn
at any moment. The wheels struck an embedded stone which the men must dig out before
the party could move on. The oxen's feet mired deep in the slush and slime, and the great
beast rolled their eyes unhappily as they laboriously extricated each hoof, a time killing
procedure. Occasionally a gaunt mountaineer was glimpsed slipping through the trees and
rocks away from the trail. No women or children appeared, and no homes glimmered
with light or the cheerful smoke of a wood fire. The rain and fog dripped endlessly about
them. For food they baked corn pone in the skillets carried slung about their necks, or if
they had time on small stones heated in a little fire.
When at last the regiment reached West Plains near the Arkansas line, it was swung
east toward the Mississippi. Rumor swirled that the men were marching to join Grant at
Vicksburg.
Hiram thrilled to the thought of serving under Grant. He remembered his father's
stories of Grant as a boy, and of his meeting Grant in Burlington and learning that his old
friend was now in the Union army. "He's slow to move, Grant is" John told his family
"but when he moves he knows where he is going!" A sense of security swept over the
boy. "It's good we're marching with Grant" he told himself.
Now even the unwelcomed corn pone was becoming scarce. In Thomasville a
gristmill was discovered, and again the men watched while the precious corn was ground.
Rations, the men were told, were waiting for them across the Ozark mountains, and the
thought of a change from three meals a day of corn pone lightened their steps. The glad
word as Thomasville was left behind "A mile and a quarter to hard tack!" sped them
along, but the supply wagon was not reached until miles later that night.
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Crossing a river, Hiram had his first experience with a wagon pontoon. The wagons
were driven into the river, placed end to end, and tied together. While the teams stood on
the banks, the soldiers climbed from wagon bed to wagon bed and so crossed the stream.
After the men were all on the opposite bank, the horses belabored and encouraged by
their drivers, dragged the wagons over with the waiting men shouting advice.
At Iron Mountain a rest stop was ordered and a detail picked to again haul corn to a
distant grist mill. Then the men moved on to St. Genevieve, oldest city on the river and
once the center of river traffic. Now it was the center of the established farming country
roundabout. Food was more plentiful here, and the boys rambled about the countryside
enjoying the rich farming lands, glad to have left behind the mountains with their rugged
rocks and straggling timber. At last the SS Black Hawk docked before St. Genevieve and
the men tramped aboard. On March 27, the troops reached Milliken's Bend, having made
a brief stop on their way at Helena, Arkansas, the swampy malarious hole where
hundreds of Union soldiers had already died of disease.
Small pox, a deadly enemy, added to the general discomfort and suffering in the
camps, complicated by measles which tormented the troops. Illness killed more men than
did gunfire. Fortunately the Twenty-Second did not linger too long in Helena which no
doubt spared many of its men.
At the Bend, the men unloaded wagons and provisions from the transports. When at
last the regiment moved ahead it was accompanied by a sizable wagon train. Progress
south was at a snail's pace. The river was in flood and the back country was covered with
water. When the wagons mired down beyond the strength of the oxen or horses aided by
the men, to drag them through, flat boats built from timber cut along the shore were
brought up, the wagons loaded on them, and let down into the Mississippi River by
"snubbing up". With long ropes the heavily loaded flatboat was tied to trees, stumps of
roots, or rocks along the stream or in overflowed land, and let down the current by
loosening the rope while another rope was caught to a tree further down. The upper rope
was then released and the process repeated as the load crept slowly on its way. When at
last the bayou mouth was reached, and the boat floated out into the Mississippi's current
it was on its way, usually towed by a transport which took the men aboard.
At the last landing, the men made preparations to cross the river and enter actively
into the siege of Vicksburg.
In their camp that night, the men could see the lights in the beleaguered city and
could hear the dull roll of the guns. Major Atherto, sitting in front of his tent wrote to his
wife:
"It seems impossible that I am here within the sound of the guns a Vicksburg.
Tomorrow we will cross the River and join the fighting. The men are in good condition.
The months spent in camp, in marching, in training, have disciplined them. They are
ready. I have come to know them well as a whole and individually. The difficult thing
tonight is facing the bitter truth that many of these fine boys must die."
And so they did.
Later the Twenty-Second was at Port Gibson with Major Atherton in command, as
Colonel Stone was now heading a brigade. It was at Champion Hills and Black River
Bridge, where its capture of artillery, small arms and a horde of prisoners marked its
success.
On May 22nd when the assault was made on Vicksburg's impregnable works, fifteen
or twenty men of the Twenty-Second led by Sergeant Joseph B. Griffith, were the only
Union soldiers to force their way inside. At dawn after a night spent in infiltrating enemy
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defenses, with the cry Remember Kinsman, Colonel Stone led the charge. By raising one
another above the walls, Griffith and his men gained entrance and captured a number of
prisoners. Lack of hoped for reinforcements drove them back. Only Griffith and one
other man survived the daring exploit. The Twenty-Second, together with the
Twenty-Third and a Wisconsin regiment, stayed on the field until their ammunition was
gone and they had to withdraw. Without ammunition, with twenty-seven men killed, one
hundred eighteen wounded, and nineteen captured, they could only retreat. Major
Atherton's fears became reality.
Until Vicksburg's surrender, the Twenty-Second remained in the trenches.
48 War's End
The years 1835-1865 began and ended Iowa's pioneer period. This period witnessed
not only the transformation of its prairies from a vast sea of waist high grass spreading
from river to river into a panorama of productive fields and growing towns, but a bitter
internecine conflict whose principal benefit to its participants was that it enlarged and
revolutionized the economic scope of those years. On the debit side it left in its wake, a
tremendous liability which must be paid either as an honest debt or by a devastating
inflation. The post Civil War years brought to the state the same tragic difficulties which
every great war leaves in its path.
The impetus of the war's demands tremendously increased the industrialization of
manufacture, which the following hundred years saw come to fruition. Transportation to
accommodate the increasing flow of population and materials was a compelling demand.
Immigration problems were insistent. The original settlers bitterly resented the rising
flood of foreign immigrants, forgetting that the Indian met their invasion with like
resentment. Protection became a political catchword designed to bring the farmers' vote
into the now dominant Republican party. Industrial enterprise and the economic
mechanics for bringing a richer, more financially independent life to the state's citizens
were in the air. Throughout the world, change was on every hand, which in turn was
reflected in new thought and action in Iowa. The intrusion of masses of foreign people
brought new attitudes to bear on the state's way of life. The Suez canal and improved
transportation were reducing distances, bringing not only our own national boundaries
but those of the world, closer. In Iowa a new and compelling national awareness was
becoming apparent. An awareness which would play a leading role in the hundred years
following the war's end.
On the economic front, a people accustomed to hard labor and sun to sun drudgery
were discovering themselves living in a comfort beyond that of which they had dreamed.
Security was won. Not the gadget filled life of today, but a life which encompassed food,
clothes, shelter, the necessities, even a degree of luxury as measured in the 1800's. Now
the ambitious and successful pioneer could escape from his cramped log or sod cabin into
an ornate frame house bedecked with porches and a bay window. He could buy books,
art, music, and pianos hauled overland from railhead or steamer dock. Even the recently
invented sewing machine and manufactured farm equipment were purchased. For the
wealthy adventure-minded there was travel to Europe or the Orient.
The self discipline so firmly imposed in the conquering of a new land held the
emerging pioneer back from a foolish extravagance of materials or wasteful attitudes. He
still demanded his money's worth and lived thriftily with a vegetable garden, a cow and
chickens, even a pig to eat the table scraps, in his back yard. His wife preserved, cooked,
57
mended and sewed, demanded the merchant sell her well woven yard goods and stoutly
made furniture. No longer did she weave and spin, or expect her husband and sons to
carve her chairs and sofas, but in this transition stage to the machine age, she sought a
like quality in these products.
No state church or school, or predestined way of life hampered the thinking or
freedom of choice of the evolving citizen. The pioneer and the soldier made it possible
for the prairie farms and urban centers created by the destruction of the wilderness, to
become centers of independent thinking.
An amazing accomplishment of the post-Civil War era was the return of millions of
soldiers, young men of peaceable intent, who had been violently uprooted from civilian
life and thrust into a bloody prolonged war, to their prewar lives. A transition which was
made with comparatively little disruption so far as the soldier himself was concerned. A
fact which testifies to the soundness of the pioneer background. North and South, the
weary soldier asked only that he be granted the privilege of return to his home and his
work, an attitude which emphasizes the high ideals, the leadership, and the unity of origin
of these men. Especially in the later years of the war, increasingly men left their everyday
pursuits in response to a call to duty. They were men of substance to whom the war was a
moral obligation.
The fighting over, the returned soldiers met on different terms than are those
ordinarily established in a bitter civil war. Had the soldiers of both sides been allowed to
fix the terms of victor and vanquished, the post- Civil War history could have been vastly
different. The South, hard pressed to survive, left alone could have patched up its
wounds. The northern soldier would have helped it to do so. Unhappily the goodwill
which existed at the war's end among the fighting men, was swallowed up in a second
war of aggression and greed fomented not by the men who had suffered in the lines, but
by greedy men who sought plunder and revenge.
The Civil War years saw greater change than did any other comparable period in our
state and national history. Industry, politics, education, thinking, attitudes, were
revolutionized. Until the Civil War, Americans had believed themselves immune from
the perils which confronted their European neighbors, and others more distant. The
American believed it possible to live wholly unto himself. The war disturbed this state of
mind and brought the first glimmerings that Americans, too, were subject to the universal
heritage of man. Because of the state's distance from the political and industrial centers of
the nation, Iowa's isolationist beliefs died more slowly than did those in the eastern
section of our country. Even today although we think in international terms, in Iowa we
live in a greater independence of thought than do those in more congested areas of our
country.
As in every war, young men matured rapidly and were forced into posts of leadership
at an earlier age than in peaceful times. The result was a quickened turning to education.
The decade following the Civil War, as in more recent wars, found the colleges and
universities crowded with returned veterans. In spite of their five year war service
handicap, many of these students pushed to the front in business, politics, and similar
fields of endeavor. Nor was progress confined to the male sex. Their sisters hurried off to
school, a new adventure for women. Facilities for education and the available training
programs increased tremendously. One clear benefit of the Civil War was the greatly
augmented interest in education, a benefit which was not immediately apparent, but
which in later years proved of inestimable value.
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Another group made up of the young men who had been pushed into high army rank
without relationship to education or community standing, and came home wearing a
major's, a colonel's or even a general's insignia, finding it difficult to drop back into the
less significant trade or job they had abandoned, or to join their less distinguished
companions on the school benches, threw themselves into the political arena with the
result that for years after the war even minor political posts were filled with high as well
as lesser military officers. Some who held distinguished army rank found defeat in
civilian life, as bitter as that faced by Lee's army at Appomatox.
One gain to Iowa's culture not always noted was in music. The Civil War was a
singing war. The men learned their tunes well, and many of these lilting airs had elements
of real music. New instruments were introduced. The love of music inherent in us all, was
brought to life. While great music was familiar to the European and in the eastern areas
of our country, for many pioneers it was a new experience. The old time singing school
was led by a master with a tuning fork who knew little, if anything, of harmony. In the
general clamor which resulted, the boy or girl with a fine voice passed unnoticed. To the
hard working pioneer the idea of music as a career was abhorrent. Suddenly this was
changed The lilting fife and drum rhythm became a living part of the community. Its foot
tapping beat led the march of the young people. The flute, because of its likeness to the
fife, commanded attention. In more prosperous homes, the square piano lent dignity to
the parlor. The "fiddle" whined out gay tunes for lively dances. Local orchestras played
for the graceful quadrilles and thrilling polkas. Bandstands were built in the town squares
where military bands were heard in every community. The organ once denounced as
sinful, appeared in homes and in churches Soon young and old were reveling in the bright
tunes to which the soldiers once marched to battle, and sang with the veterans their
gallant campfire songs.
Literature, too, had a new birth. Longfellow, Holmes, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whittier,
Bryant and Lowell, almost unknown in 1860, by 1870 were popular favorites. Historians
like Bancroft, controversial writers like Darwin, dime novels as well as illustrious
writers, Poe, Irving, Melville, and Cooper, came into vogue. Foreign writers shared in
this enthusiasm; Thackeray, Dickens, Eliot, Hugo, Tennyson, Prescott, Macaulay,
together with poets, Burns, Byron, Scott, Wordsworth, Keats and Shelley, with
Shakespeare, Milton, and other long quiet classics, were prominently displayed on Iowa
bookshelves. The Civil War emancipated the slaves; it brought as well a moral and
intellectual emancipation to the people of America.
In school and at home, thinking people sought a new appreciation of our life, and of
the life in distant countries. Seldom has a nation so vigorously recuperated from a long,
bitterly contested war with incredible loss of life and property, as did the United States in
the years immediately following the Civil War. This, in part, was occasioned by the
youthful citizenry, particularly in the pioneer areas of our country.
The Civil War was fought by Americans, Americans primarily of English
background. Since the war had to come, it is well that it was fought by men who were
descendants of those who founded the country, as their sons must carry on the burdens
laid down by the war's contestants. Appreciation of the nation was deeply rooted in their
background. North and South alike had a similarity of background which made possible a
common understanding.
One far-reaching effect of the war, was its revelation to the American people of
themselves and their place in the world. Until the war, they had vainly imagined their
experiment in free government was the first known to mankind, that it would be the last,
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and would be the pattern for all free governments to come. They envisioned themselves
proof against the ills of suffering humanity around the world. They truly believed they
could live in isolation, carrying on their great experiment in society. Europe, Asia, Africa,
had slight interest for them, as did the ancient cultures of the Indians in North and South
America.
The War brought the first intimation to our leaders that this theory was not entirely
workable. Another definite result was the evolution of a new national patriotism, a
national character, and a progressive political sense. New conceptions of currency,
banking, coinage, industrial problems, arose. New social concepts struggled for life. New
evils crept in. In the limited confines of early America, corruption in its major forms
found little room for expansion. With new concepts of public responsibility and
expanding wealth reflected in taxes and public funds, new temptations, and possibilities
for their fulfillment came into existence.
The Middlewest nourished on Jeffersonian theories, which its people fondly believed
would serve it permanently, in its ballooning expansion, discovered these theories were
not the final answer. Its citizens learned that force as well as goodwill existed. That no
longer were communities units unto themselves to develop along a local pattern—the
thinking of distant communities whose members were unknown to one another must be
reckoned with.
Changing responsibilities were thrust upon youth. Boys and girls left the farms and
villages in earlier years. After the excitements of war the youthful veteran found his
earlier hard working dawn-to-dusk days too dull as did his younger brothers who had
eagerly followed his adventures. The war not only opened the doors of opportunity, it
awakened new aspirations. The long trek West had nearly reached its close. Until the turn
of the century and beyond, the covered wagon would move westward, but the initial
exploration was reaching its end. America had been crossed and re-crossed. Its rivers had
been explored, its mountains had been climbed. The movement now was one of
settlement of the already discovered lands.
With the close of the Civil War came new independence and attitudes to these mobile
seeking people. The war brought new intellectual outlook to the pioneers who by
unremitting discipline had achieved material plenty, but who until now had lacked the
light to point out the path ahead. The new transportation, the railroad, enabled Iowa
young people to escape the small community for Des Moines and other rapidly growing
Iowa towns. It enabled them to discover Chicago and Denver and beyond. The movement
west took on added acceleration. Returned soldiers flocked to unsettled lands, built
communities to their own desires, while immigrants from the old countries crowded into
the places left vacant to settle close on the wheel tracks of the American pioneer moving
on into the west.
The history of Iowa and of the United States from 1865 on was written by the
pioneer's sons and grandsons, and by the thousands of sons and daughters of the
immigrants who left the old countries across the seas for the farms and factories of
America, to answer the challenge of the mountains and deserts and valleys of the West
and the rolling waves of the Pacific.
After 1865, Iowa was no longer a pioneer land. The state now had reached a
youthful maturity, vigorous, heady, with a leadership imbued with new, and to the elders
of the community, often dangerous theories. Determined to achieve for itself a place in
the nation, Iowa moved into a place of leadership in the lusty new Union, writing "finis"
to the story of the pioneer, and beginning the first chapter of the Iowa of today.

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