Adam C. Reinoehl's Civil War

I happily take a break today from the Lancaster County Regiment to republish the letters of Adam C. Reinoehl to the Lancaster Daily Evening Express during his service with the 76th Pennsylvania.  Welcome to any readers visiting this blog through Prof. Louise Stevenson's Civil War class at Franklin and Marshall College, the institution from which Reinoehl graduated as the valedictorian of the Class of 1861.

Wartime photograph almost certainly
of Adam C. Reinoehl
See Note [1] below.

As not only one of the most prolific of Lancaster's many Civil War soldier-correspondents, Adam C. Reinoehl also had some of the more unique experiences in his service with the 76th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry (the "Keystone Zouaves") between 1861 and 1865.  The regiment spent most of the war around Hilton Head, South Carolina, where Union forces encountered issues of slavery, emancipation, and African-American soldiers in very raw form.  The 76th Pennsylvania was even brigaded with the 54th Massachusetts in the famous July 1863 attacks on Fort Wagner, in which Reinoehl was wounded for the first time and which are chronicled in the movie Glory.

After the war, Reinoehl carried on Thaddeus Stevens-style Radical Republicanism as a member of the Pennsylvania Legislature for three-terms.  He also remained one of Lancaster's most active Civil War veterans, helping to lead efforts to erect the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, working on soldiers' orphans issues, and organizing Grand Army of the Republic posts in Lancaster County.   

By my count [2], Reinoehl penned twenty-nine letters to the Daily Evening Express, usually spaced in one-month intervals.  He wrote under a pen name, which I'm guessing was more to provide a literary flair than preserve anonymity, as the letters' author's identity would have been pretty obvious in Lancaster (although perhaps it provided a buffer against a negative reaction by someone in the War Department).  Reinoehl curiously signed his letters, "Demas," presumably alluding to the Apostle Paul's companion in mission who later deserted Paul "because he loved this world" (2 Timothy 4:10) and is held up for as an example not to emulate for Christians.  I wonder if Reinoehl chose the name as a playful way of recognizing how he--the valedictorian of Franklin and Marshall College's Class of 1861--got caught up in the spirit of the times and enlist in the army to abandon the higher calling of academic life.

Uniform of soldier in Keystone Zouaves (76th Pennsylvania) sold by Heritage Auctions

For a fuller biography of Reinoehl, I defer to Officers of the Volunteer Army and Navy who served in the Civil War (L.R. Hamersly & Co., 1893):

Brevet Major Adam Cyrus Reinoehl was born in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, November 15, 1840. In 1856 his parents settled in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Entering Franklin and Marshall College at Lancaster, he graduated in 1861, receiving the valedictory oration,the highest honor of the class. On commencement day, on taking formal leave of the Board of Trustees, he commented on the action of that body at their meeting held on the previous night, when they dismissed from the faculty Professor Koeppen, a learned, faithful, but somewhat eccentric gentleman, greatly beloved by the students. The president of the college arose and ordered him to stop, but, disregarding the interruption, the valedictorian continued. The president called on the band to play, but the orator proceeded until his voice was lost in the music. The exercises were abruptly ended. The public insisted that the valedictory should be delivered, and the owners of the hall refusing to hire it, in the evening Charles Eden tendered the balcony of his ice-cream saloon, adjoining Fulton Hall, from which the oration was delivered in the presence of several thousand ladies and gentlemen, who crowded the streets in the vicinity.

After teaching school for two months and twenty-three days in Ephrata Township, he enlisted in the Seventy-sixth Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers, Keystone Zouaves. Entering the service as a private in Company D, he took part in all the campaigns and battles of the regiment. The Seventy-sixth was ordered to Port Royal, South Carolina, in the fall of 1861, and was actively engaged in the sieges and engagements in the Department of the South. In April, 1862, the regiment was ordered to Tybee Island, and was present at the siege and capture of Fort Pulaski. Reinoehl served as private of Company D in the campaign against Charleston on James Island, June, 1862, and in the battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina, October 22, 1862. On the 10th of December, 1862, he was promoted to regimental quartermaster-sergeant, and January 24, 1863, he was promoted to sergeant-major. The Seventy-sixth was in Strong's brigade, which charged and captured the rebel batteries on Morris Island, South Carolina, July 10.

On the morning of July 11, 1863, the Seventy-sixth Pennsylvania, with four companies of the Seventh Connecticut and Ninth Maine, charged Fort Wagner, and were repulsed. The Seventy-sixth lost one hundred and eighty-seven killed, wounded, and missing. Sergeant-Major Reinoehl was shot through the left arm with a Minnie-ball, and was permanently disabled.

Returning to his regiment after a furlough, he remained in the service, and re-enlisted April, 1864, for three years, and while on veteran furlough, having been recommended for promotion by Colonel Strawbridge, received from the hands of Governor A. G. Curtin, at Harrisburg, a commission as first lieutenant of Company B, April 27, 1864. He commanded the company during the campaign of the Tenth Corps, in the Army of the James and Army of the Potomac, at Cold Harbor, at the explosion of the mine, and in the siege of Petersburg. On the 4th of August, 1864, he was promoted to adjutant. On the 27th of October, in a charge on the rebel works at Darbytown Road, Va., the outer defenses of Richmond, he was severely wounded in the left thigh by a ball from a shrapnel shell, and was removed to his home at Lancaster. Disabled for months, he resigned, and was honorably discharged Feb. 6, 1865. March 13, 1865, he was brevetted captain " for gallant and meritorious service in the assault on Fort Wagner, S. C.," and was brevetted major "for gallant and meritorious service in the attack on the enemy's works on Darbytown Road, Va., Oct. 27, 1864."

In 1866 he was admitted to the bar of Lancaster County. In 1868 he was elected to the Pennsylvania Legislature, and subsequently re-elected in 1870 and 1871, serving three terms. In 1872 he was appointed Deputy Secretary of the Commonwealth by Gov. John W. Geary, and was continued by Gov. John F. Hartranft, until he resigned, in 1873, to resume the practice of his profession. On retiring he was tendered letters highly complimentary of his services by Gov. Hartranft and Hon. M. S. Quay, Secretary of the Commonwealth. In 1889 he was appointed a member of the Soldiers' Orphans' Commission of the State of Pennsylvania by the department commander of the Grand Army of the Republic. In 1889 Major Reinoehl was elected district attorney of the county of Lancaster, his term expiring Jan. 1, 1893. He married Miss Lucy Davis, Nov. 24, 1870. They have four children,-Walter Allan, Mary Acheson, Gertrude Laughlin, and Albert Riegel. He is an active member of the Grand Army of the Republic, and of the Pennsylvania Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion.

Reinoehl died on December 14, 1900, in an incident described as suicide in a New York Times account.  Another biography is available here.

Adam C. Reinoehl Tombstone at Lancaster Cemetery (vws)

I have compiled Reinoehl's letters (except the May-October 1862 letters [2]) as a pdf available to view and download at this link <https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5luPkqpDDWkZTViNWQzNTctZjY4NC00Zjg3LTk0ZTktN2RmYjBjZDFhZTBl>.

Or, you can view them here:



Further Reading and Research:

• Search "Reinoehl" in the digitized Lancaster Intelligencer, a staunch conservative Democratic newspaper which had many colorful things to say about the Republican Reinoehl.  
• Find the letters from "Demas" written to the New Era in the 1880s(?) as part of the Tucquan Club, a fraternal organization for prominent Lancaster men that went camping along the Susquehanna River. 
• Find Reinoehl's account of the Battle of Fort Wagner appearing in the March 31, 1886, Philadelphia Weekly Press.  This also appeared in the April 10, 1886, New Era (I have a paper copy, but not an electronic copy). 
• Regimental history and roster of the 76th Pennsylvania.
• Illustration of 76th Pennsylvania zouave uniform in Don Troiani's Civil War. 
• Learn about Lieut. W. Wilberforce Nevin, valedictorian of F&M's Class of 1853 and son of future F&M president.  

Notes:

1. I recently stumbled upon this image sold by Heritage Auctions a couple years ago.  It is a mid-war image of a sergeant major of the Keystone Zouaves taken in Lancaster by Jamison and Benson photographic gallery in Lancaster.  Given that there's only one sergeant major in the 76th Pennsylvania (which was Reinoehl after he was wounded at Fort Wagner and subsequently returned home) and that none of the 76th PA companies were recruited in Lancaster, this image almost certainly has to be Reinoehl.  
2. Thanks to Richard Sauers' index in the PA Save the Flags Collection at USAMHI for expediting the process by which I found these letters.  The May-October 1862 editions of the Daily Evening Express are not microfilmed but available as part of newspaper bound volumes at the Lancaster County Historical Society.  I do have pictures of those letters, but they need some processing (maybe transcription) before I can post them.

'Turn our footsteps towards the Sunny South': Another Camp Nevin Letter

Artilleryman in Independent Battery B, 1st Pennsylvania Light Artillery (Library of Congress)
The battery was attached to Negley's Brigade at Camp Nevin.

Today's letter again comes from Camp Nevin, but show some signs of itching to move on to the target of Bowling Green, Kentucky, and Confederate forces under Gen. Simon B. Buckner.  Although the letter is missing a signature, its tone and content convince me it's from the pen of the Daily Evening Express's normal correspondent, Corp. Elias H. Witmer.

Regarding a few of the topics mentioned in the letter:

• On November 9, 1861, Gen. Don Carlos Buell took over command of the Army of the Ohio from William T. Sherman.  The brigade of Pennsylvanians that included the 77th, 78th, and 79th Pennsylvania under Gen. James Negley was assigned to the division of Gen. Alexander McCook.  Attached to Negley's Brigade was Independent Battery B, Pennsylvania Light Artillery (aka Muehler's Battery, 26th Pennsylvania Artillery), in which Thaddeus Stevens' nephew and ward Alanson J. Stevens was an officer.  It was recruited in Franklin and Erie Counties, and I don't know if I can verify Witmer's assertion that it was "manned entirely by Germans."
• Witmer's description of praise for Col. Hambright's regiment is among the first of a long parade of compliments the regiment would receive for its appearance and proficiency.
• The lightning strike of a tent in the 77th Pennsylvania's camp was described in a letter from last week.
• The fatal accident in the 78th Pennsylvania, commanded by Col. Sirwell, is described in more detail in the regiment's history. (p. 29)
• The company under Capt. Pyfer was the extra company intended for Col. Hambright's regiment but that later became Co. K, 77th Pennsylvania.  (see this post for the first letter from the company)
• Witmer offers pretty strong support for Gen. John C. Fremont and his preliminary emancipation proclamation in Missouri, which drew the ire of Washington.  In the complex and evolving opinions soldiers in the 79th Pennsylvania felt about race, slavery, black soldiers, etc., Witmer's comments are an important data point. 

From the November 21, 1861, Express: (alternate link)

Lieut. William McCaskey's Two Black Confederate Regiments

If you've spent a few minutes browsing Civil War websites and blogs in recent weeks, you'll inevitably (and lamentably) hit a somewhat bizarre and controversial topic known as "Black Confederates"--the proposition that African Americans fought in significant numbers as soldiers with Southern armies.  It's promoted by a fringe element of self-styled defenders of the Confederacy's heritage, but basically all historians dispute the interpretation of the evidence (if not the evidence itself) behind their claims and view it them as the disturbing descendant of the early-20th century "faithful slave" narrative.

The issue has even gained national attention with the Virginia textbook mini-scandal of last year and a recent episode of the "History Detectives."  I'll refer you to primers on the subject that can be found on two blogs: Dead Confederates and Civil War Memory.  The whole issue is sad as it diverts talented and/or passionate historians and readers from connecting new resources with new questions in novel ways--an activity that I hope ends up defining the Civil War Sesquicentennial.

William S. McCaskey, Co. B, 79th PA
Richard Abel Collection, USAMHI

With the attention of this past week to Black Confederates, I thought I'd throw out a reference I coincidentally discovered while re-checking a note about Corp. Elias H. Witmer, a 79th Pennsylvania soldier-correspondent who penned his first letter to the Lancaster Daily Evening Express 150 years ago last week.  The source is a private letter from Lieut. William S. McCaskey, Co. B, 79th Pennsylvania, to his brother John Piersol McCaskey (a locally famous educator and the namesake of Lancaster's McCaskey High School), written in Murfreesboro, TN, on March 20, 1863--a very interesting time when the Union army was dealing with the Emancipation Proclamation and going through its own internal "Republicanization."  Here's the excerpt, as transcribed in The Letters of William S. McCaskey:

A negro brigade or two would come might handy, to throw into the thickest of the fight, for by this, you scary many a white man, and at no cost to the government.  I sounded most all our boys, and most of them did not like the idea of having them as comrades, but when the matter was fully explained and when they heard that Van Dor of the rebel army had two regiments in the fight at Franklin some few weeks ago, to which Regiments (Negro), many of the men had to surrender, they kind of changed their foolish ideas and now the cry is, "let them come, let them come," with regard to those remarks of mine, and your request to show them to [Corp. Elias H.] Witmer, I would say, that your request has been complied with and he will give them a little thunder.  with regard to my being acquainted with him, I would say that he is a member of Co. E., and I had command of him some two months and further that he is a very particular friend of mine.  (March 20, 1863, Murfreesboro, Tennessee)

Although it's hard to prove a negative, it appears to us as obviously a false rumor that Confederate Gen. Earl Van Dorn fought with two regiments of black soldiers.  Note the fairly apparent motivation of the myth here: McCaskey was trying to justify the use of African-American soldiers in the Union Army to the men of his company (and maybe even to himself).  This thought process calls to mind Frederick Douglass' 1861 comments about Black Confederates. 

J. P. McCaskey
Richard Abel Collection, USAMHI

Even more interesting to me is the coordination dynamics between the home front and battlefield.  We have Republican agitator J. P. McCaskey, who we know (from other letters) occasionally put anonymous articles in the Express attacking Democrats, appealing for an audience through his brother to soldier-correspondent Elias H. Witmer.  J. P. McCaskey's concern was presumably a Lancaster citizens' public claim of receiving a letter from another 79th PA soldier stating that "contraband negroes are fed better than soldiers," as Witmer's next letter, published in the Express on April 6, 1863, contained a lengthy build-up to a strong denial:

I have been led to this train of thought by a letter handed me written by a prominent citizen of Lancaster, saying that at a meeting held in that city, one of the speakers remarked that he saw a letter from the 79th P.V., stating that contraband negroes are fed better than the soldiers.  I do not wish to have any controversy of a public character with any person, but justice to the army, and to the government demands a denial of so fabulous a charge.  If the letter was written from this regiment it is a misrepresentation of facts; if it was an imaginary fabrication, manufactured for the occasion, it was done to drop a narcotic into the public heart and breath a upas breath into the public mind.  If the letter was written in this regiment it promulgates a falsehood; if not written here, the publication of such a statement was the damning work of partisanship bordering on disloyalty, and should receive the condemnation of every loyal citizen in the country...I forewarn all men against writing to men in this regiment telling them to lay down their arms, as this is a war for the nigger.  I shall expose every man that resorts to this "snake in the grass" manner of sending discord in our ranks.  (April 6, 1863, Daily Evening Express)

Those are pretty harsh words for simply suggesting that African Americans could achieve equality in terms of caloric intake, but I think it testifies to the sensitivity and volatility of the issue of race at that time in the North.  If you want the Democratic counterpoint to Witmer's letter, see this poem reprinted from the Philadelphia Sunday Mercury in the February 17, 1863, edition of the Lancaster Intelligencer.

The Union army's winter camps of 1863 seemed to provide a crucible for matters of race, so it will be interesting to catalog the diverse perspectives within the 79th Pennsylvania (recall Lancaster was home to both Thaddeus Stevens and James Buchanan) and their evolution during the war and after.  Based on other research, I'm fairly confident that Witmer, McCaskey, and the Daily Evening Express approximately represent the median Republican opinion, so it's important to note the reluctance in early 1863 to advocate on African Americans' behalf as a benchmark for future reference. 

Letter by Elias H. Witmer, Co. E, 79th Pennsylvania, appearing in the April 6, 1863, Lancaster Daily Evening Express: (alternate link)

A Sunday Drive to Southern Lancaster County

The Brown family at Devil's Den, Gettysburg, c. 1930.
My grandmother, Ethel (Brown) Bielmyer, stands second from the left.

On Sunday, I had the fortunate occasion to take a drive with my ninety-one year-old grandmother to southern Lancaster County and visit some of the sites I wrote about few weeks back.  Our mini-tour included William T. Clark's farm, the Chestnut Level Presbyterian Church where he was buried, the Drumore Friends Meeting with its cemetery in Liberty Square (where most of the people in the Shoemaker album are buried), and the Octoraro Creek in Little Britain Township where the fictional events of Ellwood Griest's John and Mary were set.

In exchange, my grandmother recounted stories of her grandparents (Browns from Little Britain Township and Oxford, Chester County) and visiting family there in the 1920s.  Here are a few pictures of what we saw:

A Glimpse of the Nearly Invisible

1) Emma Smith 2) Maggie J. Wiley 3) Mary Johnson
CDV by B. Frank Saylor, late 1860s
Ebay item #200656604669 ($137.50)

Of the thousands of photographs taken by Lancaster photographers before 1870 that I have viewed prior to this week, I can only recall one that had an African American as its subject.  In terms of primary sources, especially photography, Lancaster's African-American community is largely invisible. 

John and Mary: A tale of south-eastern Pennsylvania

It is fairly well known that Lancaster County was a hot spot for underground railroad activity due to

1. its proximity to Philadelphia and Baltimore,
2. a large free black community in places like the Susquehanna River town of Columbia, and
3. farms of sympathetic Quakers in the southern part of the county, from the Susquehanna River near the Maryland Line that also extended into Chester County. 

In spite of some semi-primary sources like R. C. Smedley's 1883 History of the Underground Railroad in Chester and the Neighboring Counties of Pennsylvania and research efforts like Charles Spotts' 1966 pamphlet The Pilgrim's Pathway: The Underground Railroad in Lancaster County, which named seventeen "stations" in Lancaster County, our knowledge of the fugitive slave activity in Lancaster is fairly limited. 

What might actually be our best glimpse into what was going on in the minds of fugitive slaves and the people who harbored them is an 1873 novel by Ellwood Griest entitled John and Mary: or, The fugitive slaves. A tale of south-eastern Pennsylvania (click on link to view the book).

Maj. Ellwood Griest (1824-1900) was born to a Quaker family just across the Octoraro Creek from Lancaster County in West Nottingham, Chester County.  He learned blacksmithing, moved to Christiana, and became very active in Republican politics and abolitionism.  The Lancaster Intelligencer even accused him during the 1860 election campaign of "figuring somewhat prominently" in the Christiana Riot, although I haven't seen evidence.  Griest also served with the Union army as a Sixth Corps commissary officer (a Quaker compromise?), and stayed in the army until 1866 witnessing early Reconstruction in Florida.  After the war, he ran a newspaper in Lancaster and stayed active in politics.  Lancaster's 1920s skyscraper, the Griest Building, is named after Ellwood Griest's son, Congressman William Walton Griest. 

This remarkable novel is actually a rather interesting read, and combines fiction and fact (some autobiographical) to tell two stories.

Detail of Little Britain Township from 1864 Bridgens' Atlas (source)
The story was set very specifically along the Octoraro Creek in this area.

The first is set in 1830 along the banks of the Octoraro Creek in Little Britain Township, Lancaster County, near the Maryland line.  A Quaker family, the Browns, get involved for the first time in hosting fugitive slaves--John and Mary and their infant, Charley--but the plan for their northward journey is thwarted, resulting in a semi-dramatic nighttime confrontation with the slaveowner's posse.

The Octoraro Creek, a couple miles downstream from the story's events. (source)

The second story is set in late 1865 or 1866, and takes place during early Reconstruction at an army camp near Gainesville, Florida, where one of the Brown children who witnessed the events of 1830 is now a captain.  An act of racial violence linked to the Ku Klux Klan meant to intimidate the black soldiers stationed there leaves a soldier of the 33rd Regiment, United States Colored Troops, dangerously wounded.  Capt. Brown meets the ultimately fatally wounded soldier and the soldier's mother, recognizing them as the fugitives he met as a six year-old boy.

Eastland Friends Meeting, Little Britain Township  (Source + info)
Many characters of the story are connected to and presumably buried here.

1st South Carolina Volunteers, later the 33rd Regiment, United States Colored Troops (USAMHI, Source)
Griest mentioned many free black men from Lancaster and Chester County joined the 33rd USCT.

In spite of attention given to heroism displayed in 1830, the story imparts a rather pessimistic message about Reconstruction.  The fugitive slave baby, whose life was so treasured and precious that so many people in 1830 risked so much to save the baby from slavery, grew to a man whose life was ended rather meaninglessly by random racial violence in the post-war South.  Griest's assessment seems to be that this sort of violence was undermining Southern society.  He might have also been responding to similar sentiments (although not as violent?) in the North--even Lancaster--as the Democratic Party of the late 1860's made a pretty nasty brand of racism into a policy pillar.  Here's an interesting poem from the September 24, 1870, Columbia Spy in which an anonymous (presumably) African-American author expresses deep exhaustion with the grip racism has on society.

If you encounter any interesting passages in John and Mary, or something in the books strikes you, feel free to share in the comments.

See also:

• "Banking on the Octoraro," Lancaster Online October 3, 2008.  Efforts of the Lancaster County Conservancy to preserve land referred to in the story above.
• Other literary and historical scholarship mentioning John and Mary
• Sitting in darkness: New South fiction, education, and the rise of Jim Crow ... By Peter Schmidt
• Abolitionists remember: antislavery autobiographies & the unfinished work of ... By Julie Roy Jeffrey
• Watching slavery: witness texts and travel reports By Joe Lockard