by Mark Meyer
On a cold
day in late spring I found myself in the lobby of the History Center inquiring
about volunteer opportunities. A chance encounter with Nancy McCammon-Hansen (History Center Marketing Coordinator), who had
also found herself in the aforementioned lobby, led to an offer to contribute entries to the
History Center blog. But, more importantly, the meeting also resulted in a
referral to the Allen County Public Library. It is there where I had the good
fortune to stumble into an opportunity at the ACPL Lincoln Financial Foundation
Collection where, thanks to my favorite Lincoln librarians, I had the further
good fortune to meet Mr Isaac Bevier and Mr John E. Wilkins.
Technically,
I have not really met Bevier and Wilkins. Both men, long since dead, were
veterans of The War of the Rebellion, now known as the Civil War. They never
met. They grew up in separate states and served in regiments that never crossed
paths. But they had one thing in common: a written record. For Bevier it was a
series of letters home to his parents; for Wilkins, a collection of documents
including a diary and several notebooks. For the past few months I’ve had the
good fortune to transform the longhand script to the digitally accessible print
of a Word document. At the same time, the words of Bevier and Wilkins have
transformed me. Their entries have led to a voracious need to learn more of
their world, their battlefield experiences, and the greatness of others whose
paths they crossed.
It began
with Isaac Bevier’s letters home to his parents in the Hudson Valley of New
York. In August of 1861 Bevier mustered
into the service as a member of the 44th New York Volunteer Infantry
Regiment, also known as Ellsworth’s Avengers, named in honor of the first
officer killed in the Civil War. His letters home provided a glimpse of the
slow deliberate move of the early Union forces when incessant drilling and
training was the rule of the day. His original letters, some on stationery
imprinted with his new home, Camp Butterfield, talked of living conditions,
daily routines, the excitement for future battle, and always, the weather.
Often the letters contained requests for supplies of clothing and foodstuffs as
well as a plea for correspondence. Bevier introduced me to the “sutlers”, the
opportunistic vendors who followed the encampments offering goods that were
often in short supply. Their offerings of basic foodstuffs, paper, and stamps
came at a highly inflated price. Bevier recalled a near riot when a greedy
sutler sold a penny stamp for 15 cents!
From late
summer of 1861 into the spring of ’62 Isaac’s letters take on the sameness of
the daily routines of camp life and the repeated requests for items from home. But
on one occasion he noted assisting Thaddeus Lowe in the launch of “The
Intrepid”, a helium balloon that could be regarded the first U.S. airship. The
letters often contained reference to the Rebels nearby and impending battles
that failed to materialize. The reference to battles always contained excited
anticipation of the real opportunity for personal glory and the chance to do
one’s state proud. When Bevier finally found himself in action in the Peninsula
Campaign, it was brief. He described the capture of a Rebel fortification that
had used logs rubbed in tar to create the illusion of heavy cannon, thereby
stalling the Union advance. But, his next letter was from a hospital. He had
been wounded in the Battle of Hanover Court House, taking a ball in his right
ankle. A long convalescence followed in a series of hospitals in Washington
D.C. Bevier wrote of the city, often of visits with acquaintances, relatives,
and other injured friends from the 44th. As he recovered, his
regiment was active in The Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and
Chancellorsville. In a letter dated July 2, 1863 he wrote home of the boredom
of hospital guard duty, unaware that members of his regiment were fighting for
their lives on the crest of Little Round Top in the Battle of Gettysburg.
Shortly thereafter he wrote of a detail to the battlefield of Bull Run where he
found himself taking lunch in a landscape of countless graves so shallow bones
and skulls protruded from the ground.
As I
transcribed I read books in hopes of better understanding references Bevier
made in his letters. I read of the Civil War campaigns on the Peninsula in
1862, the state of Washington, DC in wartime, the seeds of the Emancipation
Proclamation, Antietam, and the history of the 44th New York. In May
I found myself on Little Round Top tracing the name of Isaac Bevier on the
brass plaque in the 44th Infantry’s castle-like memorial on the
Gettysburg battlefield. I was hooked, but little did I know I was about to meet
someone far more fascinating…
John E.
Wilkins was a Hoosier, born in 1836 in Vigo County. Wilkins was a bit older and
more experienced than Isaac Bevier. Unlike the eastern bred Bevier, he grew up
in a time and space not far removed from the days of the pioneers. He was an
outdoorsman who hunted the still-plentiful game of the area and was a keen
observer of his community. His father was a county official, John his
assistant. Wilkins also spent time with the local volunteer fire company
manning the engine Terre Haute had purchased from a Philadelphia company. When war broke out, Wilkins was one of the
first to respond to Major Lew Wallace’s initial call for volunteers to fill the
request made of the state by President Lincoln. At the time, officials
over-optimistically saw a short duration for the war and requested 3-month
enlistments. Wilkins found himself in the Indiana 11th Volunteer Infantry on
its way to the eastern theater, and fortunately, he committed to record his
exploits in a near-daily diary. In its short three month existence, the Eleventh
Indiana Volunteers saw action at the Battle of Romney, an initial Union
success, and a deployment in Maryland near Fredericksburg. Wilkins’ detachment
did not see action but that all would change quickly. The 3-month enlistment time
period ended and the 11th was sent home to Indiana where it quickly
re-formed with a 3-year enlistment span.
The 11th became a part of a
Division led by Lew Wallace who had since been promoted to the rank of Major
General. In a short time Wilkins found himself a Lieutenant in the Army of the
West where he experienced the victories of Fort Henry and Fort Donnelson, narrowly
missed the slaughter of Shiloh, walked the streets of Vicksburg the day of its
surrender, transitioned to Mounted Infantry in the Red River campaign and finished his days in the occupation of New
Orleans. Throughout, Wilkins maintained his diary. Sometimes no more than a
weather reference was entered but even those entries give insight to the
conditions that led Wilkins to so often write, "…the boys suffered greatly”. His
entries on the battles of Fort Donnelson on the banks of the Cumberland River,
the battles leading to the siege and victory at Vicksburg, and the many
skirmishes during his final campaign in the bayou country of Louisiana are
particularly moving. The content of his entries was aided by the fact he acted
as his regiment’s Adjunct from the end of the Vicksburg campaign until he
mustered out in 1865. As Adjunct, he filed the daily and monthly reports
required by the Department of War. This role would provide him unique access to
the accurate facts pertaining to his regiment.
The
transcription to a Word document was aided by Wilkins’ own efforts to
accurately chronicle the war as he lived it. The original field diaries he
maintained, excepting one, are not to be found. At one point he referenced
destroying them, perhaps to protect the reputation of others whom he
criticized. In any event, as he neared the end of his life in 1911 he
transcribed the diaries to a series of paper notebooks, titled “Recollections”
and numbered 1 through 4. Notebooks 1 and 4 contain recalled stories and diary
entries while 2 and 3 are exclusively diary entries. These diary entries were
then duplicated in a beautifully bound and labeled hardback ledger with
slipcover. The Word document transcriptions of the diary and notebooks 2-4 are
complete and are planned to be a part of the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection’s
online archive (Notebook number 1 is not a part of the collection but was surprisingly
located online. I’m currently transcribing to a Word document).
As with the
Bevier letters, the writings of Wilkins led to a flurry of reading. His entries
on the Western campaign opened the doors to much I did not know. Soon I found
myself reading about the Navy’s role on inland rivers, the Red River Campaign
of Louisiana and Arkansas, the assassination of Lincoln and subsequent search
for JW Booth, the trial and conviction of conspirators, and most recently, the
incredible, magical life of General Lew Wallace.
But, of most
interest to me in my association with Mr. Bevier and Mr. Wilkins, is my
opportunity to help Mr. Wilkins share his story. To date no record of how or
when the Wilkins documents came to the Lincoln Financial Collection have been
determined. Nor is there any record of the material being accessed. It is
likely that Wilkins' painstaking effort to preserve his diaries will be rewarded
for the first time when the document scans and transcriptions are posted online.
Hopefully his observations will shed new light on one of the most dramatic
times in our history’s past and he’ll be remembered warmly for his efforts to
record history. In the meantime I’ll be happy to be remembered as that one
lucky volunteer.
