ECW welcomes back guest author Devan Sommerville.
President Abraham Lincoln visited the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac in October 1862. During this time, he was captured by photographer Alexander Gardner in a series of photographs.
In one famous image, Lincoln towers over two men flanking him. One, civilian detective Allan Pinkerton, was George McClellan’s intelligence chief and Lincoln’s escort during his inauguration journey.
The other figure, Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand, had recently arrived from the West. A long-time acquaintance of Lincoln, the president invited him to accompany the trip up the Potomac. It was an irresistible opportunity. McClernand had an exciting proposal: with the president’s blessing, he would raise an army and capture the Confederacy’s crown jewel—Vicksburg.
Although a defining event of the American Civil War, the Vicksburg Campaign emerged unconventionally. Control of the Mississippi River was crucial in Union strategy from the war’s outset. Lincoln perceived Vicksburg as the key to Confederate control of the river; a Union victory would be elusive “until that key is in our pocket.”[1] As long as Vicksburg remained in Confederate control, cotton and supplies from as far as Texas could travel down the unimpeded Red River to Vicksburg, from where they would be transported across the South. Yet amid abortive attempts and setbacks, meaningful efforts to capture the city had yet to begin.
For McClernand, a Vicksburg expedition was a political and personal opportunity. Elevated as an influential pro-war Democrat from Southern Illinois, McClernand’s reputation was at a high ebb, shaped by personal bravery and credible performances at Belmont and Shiloh – ably publicized through the Northern press. He also resented the West Point officer corps and chafed under its authority.[2]
His plan reflected his preferred approach: direct offensive action rather than strategy and maneuvers.[3] The proposed Vicksburg expedition drew on a populist military tradition: filibustering. Derived from the Spanish for “lawless plunderer,” it described extralegal, private military ventures launched by Americans in Latin America. Filibustering peaked in the 1850s as a Southern effort to expand plantation slavery.[4]
The free-enterprising military culture of the antebellum frontier was familiar to a Jacksonian Democrat like McClernand. But he turned filibustering’s character on its head: instead of expanding slavery, he aimed to strike a decisive blow to the rebellion.
Like his Southern predecessors, McClernand’s filibuster was regionally motivated. Western farmers faced hardship from the Mississippi’s closure, undermining support for the war. Indiana Governor Oliver Morton described the issue of free navigation on the Mississippi as having “the most potent appeal” for Northwestern voters, “requiring only to be stated to be at once understood and accepted.”[5]
McClernand echoed that sentiment. Re-opening the Mississippi River to northwestern commerce “would be hailed by a suffering people with the loudest exclamations of gratitude.”[6] But the window for action was closing. He warned Secretary of War Edwin Stanton that without action to “reopen that great highway,” Northwesterners would be drawn to those that “favor the recognition of the independence of the so-called Confederate States, with the view to eventual arrangements, either by treaty or union.”[7]
McClernand reinforced this through political connections. He spurred a petition to Lincoln from Northern governors praising his military accomplishments and urging “his assignment to an independent command…in the Mississippi Valley.”[8] His strongest leverage was his personal relationship with Lincoln. Though partisan adversaries, they shared cordial ties since their time in the Illinois state legislature. Lincoln recognized McClernand’s value in maintaining popular support for the war among Western Democrats.[9] Lincoln also described him as “brave and capable, but too desirous of being independent of everybody else.”[10]
This entrepreneurial spirit was soon apparent. On October 21, 1862, he received orders to organize regiments in Illinois, Indiana and Iowa for “an expedition under General McClernand’s command against Vicksburg and to clear the Mississippi River.”[11] Based in Illinois, McClernand acted quickly, securing support from the respective governors.[12] He was assisted by a note from Lincoln appended to his orders, expressing the President’s “deep interest in the success of the expedition, and desire it be pushed forward with all possible despatch.”[13]
McClernand described the expedition in filibustering language. In correspondence with Stanton, he called it an “enterprise” and said he was “to do all in my power to promote it.”[14] He treated the mobilization personally, telling one counterpart that he was ordered to “enlist an army at Springfield, Illinois, and command it at the siege of Vicksburg,” and understood from Stanton that his “personal influence” was to be relied on.[15] He also attended to details more characteristic of a private military venture than the operational responsibilities of a senior commander. His personal correspondence with the secretary of war specified the size of tents, distribution of small arms at the company level, and artillery calibers.[16]
He also sought personal and political loyalty. To stiffen the expeditionary force, McClernand requested thirteen veteran regiments, mostly from his division in the Army of the Tennessee. He also requested preferred officers to serve as brigade and division commanders, rising stars without formal military education and committed War Democrats like himself.[17]
McClernand reached across partisan lines to other soldiers that shared his entrepreneurial approach. He successfully encouraged Frank P. Blair, the Missouri Republican congressman and general who was instrumental in securing that state for the Union, to petition Lincoln to include Blair and his newly raised brigade in McClernand’s expedition.[18]
A seasoned politician, he used the press to shape public perception and promote his venture. Almost immediately upon his arrival in Springfield, word spread that he was leading an expedition against Vicksburg.[19] McClernand cultivated fawning coverage. “Gen. McClernand is an energetic man. He personally supervises everything himself. He is indefatigable, watchful, and brave,” recounted the Chicago Daily Tribune; “there are no ‘ifs,’ or ‘ands,’ or ‘buts,’ with him in the prosecution of this war.”[20]
The Illinois State Journal informed its readers that “McClernand is one of the fighting Generals, and just the man for driving the rebels from their strongholds at Vicksburg.”[21] A lithograph of the general was also available, the paper re-assuring readers they would be “gratified to know that such a likeness is in existence.”[22]
Ultimately, McClernand claimed that through his efforts, 49 infantry regiments and two batteries of artillery – 40,000 men – were forwarded for “the Mississippi expedition.”[23] Although these regiments were overwhelmingly recruited prior to McClernand’s arrival, he and his staff exercised considerable energy to ready the new levies in less than two months.[24] The men organized by McClernand were imbued with his filibustering spirit. William T. Sherman observed that “the new troops come full of the idea of a more vigorous prosecution of the war, meaning destruction and plunder.”[25]
McClernand the filibusterer had raised his expeditionary force. Unbeknownst to him, others were moving to assert control over both the manpower and the mission. Henry W. Halleck, general-in-chief of the Federal Army, maintained no confidence in McClernand’s capability for independent command. Finding sufficient flexibility in the War Department’s orders, he worked to harness McClernand’s organizational energy while delaying his presence at the front to lead the campaign. Through Halleck’s initiative, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant found himself tasked to lead the campaign that would enshrine his legendary reputation and position him as the pre-eminent General of the Union Army.
Devan Sommerville is a consultant lobbyist based in his native Canada, living in Toronto, Ontario with his wife and young son. A lifelong student of the American Civil War and American Antebellum History, he holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts in History and a Master’s in Public Policy from the University of Toronto.
Endnotes:
[1] Abraham Lincoln in David Dixon Porter. Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (New York: D. Appleton, 1885), 96.
[2] Richard L. Kiper. Major General John Alexander McClernand: Politician in Uniform (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1999), 135.
[3] Kiper, 135.
[4] For an examination of filibustering and its link to pro-slavery expansionism, see Walter Johnson. River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2013).
[5] Oliver Morton to Abraham Lincoln. ALP, October 27, 1862.
[6] John McClernand to Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln Papers: Series 1. General Correspondence. 1833-1916 – September 28, 1862.
[7] The War of the Rebellion: The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series 1, Vol. 17, Part 2, 334.
[8] Richard Yates to Abraham Lincoln. ALP, September 26, 1862.
[9] Josiah Grinnell. Men and events of forty years: autobiographical reminiscences of an active career from 1850 to 1890. (Boston: D. Lothrop Company, 1891), 174.
[10] Salmon P. Chase. Salmon P. Chase Papers: Diaries, -1870; 1862, July 21-Oct. 12. – October 12, 1862, 1862. September 27, 1862.
[11] OR, Series 1, Vol. 17, Part 2, 282.
[12] OR, Series 1, Vol. 17, Part 2, 332.
[13] Roy Basler, ed. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press), 5:469.
[14] OR, Series 1, Vol. 17, Part 2, 333.
[15] Porter, 123; OR, Series 1, Vol. 17, Part 2, 308.
[16] John McClernand to Edwin Stanton. Edwin McMasters Stanton Papers: Correspondence, -1870; 1862, Aug. 29-Dec. 19. – October 10, 1862.
[17] John McClernand to Edwin Stanton. EMSP, October 10, 1862.
[18] OR, Series 1, Vol. 17, Part 2, 351; Francis Preston Blair to Abraham Lincoln. ALP, November 1862.
[19] Chicago Daily Tribune. October 28, 1862, 1.
[20] Ibid. December 27, 1862, 1.
[21] Illinois State Journal. October 27, 1862, 3.
[22] Ibid. November 25, 1862, 3.
[23] OR, Series 1, Vol. 17, Part 2, 401.
[24] Kiper, 153.
[25] OR, Series 1, Vol. 17, Part 2, 351.
ECW welcomes back guest author Collin Hayward.
Raphael Semmes was born in Maryland in 1809 and entered the United States Navy in 1826 as a midshipman. He served much of his early career in the Caribbean conducting counter-piracy operations with the Navy’s West Indies Squadron.[1] Upon the outbreak of the war with Mexico, Lieutenant Semmes commanded the 10-gun brig USS Somers, which took an active role in the blockade of the Mexican port of Vera Cruz. Semmes quickly proved himself an aggressive young commander, but his early war record was plagued by misfortune. He captured and burned the Mexican blockade runner Criolla in a daring cutting out expedition, only to learn later that Criolla was a spy ship operating under the authority of the American Commodore David Connor. While pursuing another blockade runner, Somers capsized and sank in a sudden squall, resulting in the deaths or capture of more than quarter of the ship’s company.[2]
Despite this ignominious beginning to his war, Semmes was rescued and reassigned to USS Raritan as first lieutenant. Initially assigned to accompany landing forces into Vera Cruz, Semmes would accompany General Scott’s staff throughout the campaign. Semmes distinguished himself during the fighting around the San Cosme Gate during the battle of Chapultepec, where he emulated Lt. Ulysses Grant in directing the placing of artillery in elevated positions to support the storming of the gate by General Worth’s division.[3]
Semmes returned from Mexico as a military hero but remained ashore practicing law and supervising lighthouses until his resignation from the Navy in 1861 following Alabama’s secession and his acceptance of a Confederate naval commission.[4]
From the very outset, the Confederacy found itself at a significant disadvantage at sea. Starting in April 1861, a Union naval blockade began to constrict Southern ports. Lacking a navy of their own, the Confederacy sought an asymmetric approach to counter Northern naval supremacy. The Confederacy initially offered letters of marque to recruit privateers, but the ports of many foreign powers refused to receive them since the banning of privateering by the 1856 Treaty of Paris. The Union even went so far as to try the captured privateers of Savannah and the Jefferson Davis as pirates, before eventually agreeing to treat them as prisoners of war, thus granting the Confederate privateers the legal status as belligerents.[5]
The Confederacy eventually abandoned privateering but saw more success from blockade running and commerce raiding. Commerce raiding has a long history in warfare (where it was used extensively in the American Revolution, War of 1812, and the Napoleonic Wars) but remains contentious as it inherently pits state military force against civilian commerce. As such, while it meets the legal threshold to qualify as a traditional military activity, it inherently constitutes an example of asymmetric warfare.
Semmes was an early advocate for commerce raiding and demonstrated its effectiveness by using a small packet steamer converted into the raider CSS Sumter to capture 17 prizes in six months.[6] With Sumter out of fuel, in need of repairs, and under the watch of Union warships at Gibraltar, Semmes paid off his crew escaped with some of his officers.
Acting with support from Confederate agents in England, Semmes helped man and provision CSS Alabama as a commerce raider to harass Union shipping across the world’s oceans.[7] Over the course of two years, Alabama haunted the high seas and sank, burned, or captured 64 American merchant ships in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans.[8]
Semmes needed to rest and refit Alabama after many months of wartime patrolling and set into the harbor at Cherbourg, France.[9] USS Kearsarge, a Union warship, found and trapped her there in June 1864.[10] Despite being outgunned by the Union warship, Semmes chose to venture out and engage in a duel with Kearsarge. Alabama fought well and damaged Kearsarge, but eventually the latter’s advantages in armor and weight of shot won out and Semmes was forced to strike Alabama’s colors. With the ship actively sinking under them, the crew abandoned ship and Semmes and his officers were rescued by the British steam yacht Deerhound, which observed the action.[11] After this escape, and despite the fact that he had ostensibly surrendered with his ship, Semmes returned to the Confederacy, where he commanded a flotilla of gunboats outside of Richmond. After scuttling them during the fall of that city, he commanded a brigade of naval infantry, which he surrendered to Gen. William T. Sherman’s army in 1865.[12]
Analysis:
Semmes recognized that American trade networks were too vast to be effectively secured and that, with the Union fleet engaged in a blockade of the Southern coasts, his single ship could have an outsized impact on the war. This ability to recognize opportunities to leverage a small tactical force to achieve strategic outcomes is among the most valuable skills an irregular warfare practitioner can have. However, when Semmes was trapped at Cherbourg by Kearsarge, he viewed the situation as a matter of honor. Unlike at Gibraltar when his ship was unable to sail, he viewed any course of action other than sailing out to offer battle as cowardly.[13] Semmes was indoctrinated in both a Southern culture and a naval culture that taught him to hold honor as sacred, so he failed to account for other options that he did not view as honorable. This honor fixation meant that Semmes failed to successfully adapt. He viewed the arrival of a Union warship with superior armor and firepower as a purely military problem and tried to engage in a “fair fight” that he was doomed to lose.[14]
Despite the American press occasionally referring to Semmes as a “pirate”, the Union authorities eventually allowed that Semmes’s conduct throughout the war was legal.[15] Though he was arrested in December 1865 and initially charged with piracy, the Union authorities quickly recognized that such a charge could not be applied to Semmes’s actions. They then attempted to prosecute him for failing to adhere to the laws of war by escaping aboard Deerhound after surrendering his ship, but even this charge was eventually withdrawn when prosecutors assessed that they would be unlikely to successfully achieve a conviction.[16] Semmes was allowed to retire and become a local fixture of Mobile society, in which he maintained a well-earned reputation as a naval hero (and may have inspired Jules Verne’s famous Captain Nemo).[17]
However, Semmes’ post-war plight illustrated the legal and moral hazards of irregular warfare. His command was destroyed because he prioritized the conventions of naval honor over practicality, but he was imprisoned and had his post-war livelihood degraded because he had waged an irregular warfare campaign in the first place. Practitioners of conventional warfare often stigmatize irregular warfare as illegal, immoral, or unethical. Practitioners of irregular warfare must attempt to walk a fine tightrope. A disregard for law, ethics, and morality risks an irregular command becoming discredited as little more than a criminal gang, while zealously observing the rules imposed on irregular combatants by their conventional counterparts risks honorable defeat.[18]
Collin Hayward is an Army Officer and qualified Army Historian specializing in the study of irregular warfare. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Virginia Tech and Masters degrees from American University and the Army Command and Staff College, where he was an Art of War Scholar. He has previously published an analysis of historical case studies in the InterAgency Journal titled “How to Win Without Fighting: Cold War Lessons on the Risks and Rewards of Political Warfare in Strategic Competition”.
Endnotes:
[1] Russell Blount, “Raphael Semmes: Patriot or Pirate?,” Mobile Bay Magazine, October 25, 2024.
[2] “U.S. Navy Brig Somers,” Naval History and Heritage Command, July 9, 2025, https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/ships/ships-of-sail/us-navy-brig-somers.html.
[3] Lawrence A Frost, “Dispatches from Grant,” Ulysses S Grant Presidential Library, January 1967.
[4] Blount.
[5] Spencer C Tucker, “CSS Alabama and Confederate Commerce Raiders in the American Civil War,” essay, in Commerce Raiding Historical Case Studies 1755-2009 (Newport , RI: Naval War College Press, 2013), 73–89.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Raphael Semmes, The Confederate Raider Alabama (New York, NY: Fawcett Publications, 1962), 44.
[8] James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 547.
[9] Semmes, 362.
[10] McPherson, 547.
[11] Semmes, 382.
[12] Semmes, 436.
[13] Semmes, 368.
[14] Semmes, 369.
[15]MacPherson, 316..
[16] John A. Bolles, “Why Semmes of the Alabama Was Not Tried (Part I),” The Atlantic, July 1872.
[17] Jules Verne and William Butcher, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas (Oxford: New York?: Oxford University Press, 1998), 442.
[18] Collin Hayward, “Foul, Brutal, Savage, and Damnable: Quantrill’s Raid on Lawrence and the Pitfalls of Reciprocal Violence,” Emerging Civil War, July 8, 2025.
We have asked this before back in 2017, but it felt like a good time to ask again. Who is YOUR favorite historical person from the Civil War Era?
Imagine my delight as I pop out of the woodline on the southern edge of Spotsylvania’s Spindle Field and I see row upon row of corn. It’s exactly what I should see at this time of year, but such has not been the case for most of the summer. The uncultivated part of this field, closest to the woodline, has been in dire need of a haircut.
That’s been the case all across the Spotsylvania Courthouse Battlefield. The open fields—unburned in the spring and mowed all summer—have become many deciduous jungles of fast-growing oaks and scraggly pines. Occasional tulip poplars, tall and stringy, have stretched their way in, and in some places, sumac has grown so thick, they look like short stands of palm trees thick enough to require a machete. Bristly thistles have started to show their purple globe blossoms.
But these were farm fields once here around Sarah Spindle’s farm. Elsewhere, the Landrums, the McCools, the Harrisons had farms of their own. Sarah Spindle’s farm field is mostly in cultivation these days, but the others are left as natural places.
The challenge, of course, is that topography is such a vital part of the story of Spotsylvania Courthouse. The same can certainly be said on nearly any battlefield, but at a battlefield like Spotsylvania, where minimal interpretation and signage marks the field, being able to see the ground becomes especially important for understanding the story. When the foliage has taken over, land features get obscured and earthworks vanish.
In front of the Mule Shoe, the swale the did so much to direct troop movements into the maw of the Bloody Angle seems far less prominent, despite its sweep and size. The dueling earthworks along the Mule Shoe’s east face, where Federals and Confederates sniped at each other for twenty hours, dissolve into the terrain, obscuring the angry proximity of the lines. They have no power to illustrate, losing their most important value to us.
But the Park Service has been suffering budget cuts and staffing shortages. Mowing has tumbled down the priority list. And Spotsylvania, the least-visited of the park’s four battlefields, has always received less attention than the others because of its relative isolation.
But today I can see those rows of corn in the cultivated part of the field, no longer obscured by the wilder part of the field along the woodline.
What strikes me immediately is how they resemble rows of infantry. Imagine federal soldiers in Dennison’s Maryland Brigade lined up shoulder to shoulder in their advance at about 8:00 a.m. on May 8, 1864. I can’t see their point of departure on the far side of the field. A ridge cuts perpendicular across the field, obscuring its far side. When Federals reached the ridge, only then could they see another quarter of the field beyond and the confederate line at the far side along the woodline where I now stand.
That is something else the corn shows me today. Imagine those same Federal soldiers lined up in a long row, shoulder to shoulder, on the crest of that ridge line, silhouetted as easy targets for the waiting Confederates, who had only just rushed onto the field and perhaps hadn’t even had much time to get their bearings. Silhouettes on the ridge became easily recognizable targets for tired, disoriented veterans.
If I follow the walking trail down toward the corn, it intersects the ridge right next to Brock Road. Here, a bend in the road turns east toward the village, running along the upper lip of a large fishbowl in the landscape. Confederates used a rail fence along the road to help form a barricade against the first brigade-sized attack that crossed Spindle Field, six Federal regiments under the command of Peter Lyle.
For most of the summer, the fishbowl lay beneath a sea of foliage that seemed to fill the bowl. Now moved, the dramatic nature of the concavity shows. Lyle’s men got down into the fishbowl, many of his men in underneath the fire of the Confederates who could not depress their rifles far enough to hit them once the Federals got close enough. Lyle’s men ended up pinned against the lip of the fishbowl until finally flushed out by a flanking attack from Benjamin Humphrey’s Mississippians, who found it like shooting fish in a fishbowl.
Lyle’s men had no idea what they were marching into. From the perspective of their approach, a knoll hid the fishbowl in the same way that the ridge on the opposite side of the road hid the far woodline. The topography played tricks on everyone—tricks that have remained hidden this summer, buried beneath aggressive green.
Those of us in the preservation community talk about the value of “walking the ground” to better understand what happened there. But as this summer has illustrated, you have to be able to see the ground as you walk it.
I’m glad the Park Service has been able, finally, to mow. I’m sure for some folks, it seems like just another tedious chore that someone needs to do. But for those of us who know the ground and the stories it holds, a clear landscape makes a world of difference.
Gettysburg History has announced three new initiatives for the coming months: a Black history project at the Hopkins house; details about its annual film festival; and a new Gettysburg History Council that includes ECW’s Kris White and Chris Mackowski. The Council consists of “a network of distinguished scholars, authors, filmmakers, and interpreters who have shaped public understanding of this remarkable place [Gettysburg].”
Andrew Dalton, executive director of Gettysburg History, shares the details.
For more on Gettysburg History, visit the Adams County Historical Society.
You can also visit the Gettysburg History Council online.
On August 15, Prince William County announced that they acquired 22 additional acres of core battlefield, which will be added to the Bristoe Station Battlefield Heritage Park.
Originally purchased by the American Battlefield Trust in 2021, the land, which saw fighting as part of both the battle of Kettle Run on August 27, 1862, and the battle of Bristoe Station on August 14, 1863, borders Bristow Road and the Norfolk Southern rail line. (see maps, below)
“The Trust is grateful to have a strong ally and steward in Bristoe Station Battlefield Heritage Park,” said David N. Duncan, president of the American Battlefield Trust. “The inclusion and interpretation of this further acreage into its existing holdings will enhance learning opportunities for visitors and ensure a comprehensive strategy for care of the site.”
The 22-acres now being added increases the size of the Bristoe Station Battlefield Heritage Park, opened in 2006, to 160 acres. The park features three miles of interpretive walking trails, covering both battles, and the military encampments located in the area.
“This is an exciting day for Prince William County. The preservation of the Rollins Farm and its historical significance extends the Bristoe Station Battlefield Heritage Park across Norfolk Southern’s tracks to the east, offering more opportunities for exploration, learning and recreation” said Brentsville District Supervisor Tom Gordy.
Prince William County plans to restore the newly acquired land to its 1863 appearance.
ECW’s Chris Mackowski spoke with historian Kevin Pawlak, site manager of the Bristoe Station Battlefield Heritage Park, about the impact of the new acquisition.
For more information on Bristoe Station Battlefield Heritage Park, visit www.pwcva.gov/bristoe.
Northern Virginia was torn apart during the Civil War, both physically and ideologically. An agricultural landscape that witnessed enormous battles, mass army movements, and the construction of dozens of forts, many families were displaced or shattered by the conflict. Some residents in this part of the state embraced the Southern cause, even if their families did not benefit from the horrid institution of slavery. The following is an account of Confederate Pvt. James E. Ankers, a Loudon County man whose confinement in four prisons across the Union culminated in personal defeat and familial upheaval.
James Edwin Ankers was born in November 1837 at Guilford Station, now the modern town of Sterling. This region remained primarily farmland until the mid-20th century, during suburban Washington’s mass development. The fifth child and third son of John Ankers and Harriet Hess, he and his nine siblings worked on the family farm and received a basic education – although James opted to omit his signature within his Confederate service record.
John Ankers, a War of 1812 veteran who enlisted in the summer of 1814[1], was a second-generation Northern Virginian (his own father moved the family from Maryland). The Ankers’ farm relied on enslaved labor. According to the 1830 Slave Schedule, John held four people in bondage: one man, one woman, and their two inferred children.[2] While the Ankers were not as wealthy as the nearby Fairfax and Lee families, this ownership – along with supporting nine children to adulthood – showed they maintained some wealth either through revenue or generational inheritance. However, their status in Loudon County diminished greatly when the war concluded in 1865.
The Ankers were prominent and numerous in this part of Loudon County. James’s parents remained at Guilford Station as the war raged on. Relatives owned a blacksmith shop in the vicinity, which became entangled in one of Mosby’s raids, later known as the “Ambush at Ankers’s Shop.”[3] While we may never know the true motivations behind the Ankers’s support of the Confederacy, it is clear that their historic use of enslaved labor and self-identification as Virginians led them to favor secession. Unlike other secessionists in the region, they did not abandon their property to flee further into “Dixie.”
On October 1, 1862, James enlisted in Company K of the 6th Virginia Cavalry (the Loudon or Leesburg Cavalry) in the nearby town of Snickersville (now Bluemont). He followed in the footsteps of his older brother Samuel, who joined the 38th Battalion in June 1861, one week after Virginia seceded from the Union. After suffering slight wounding at Upperville and witnessing Gettysburg, James Ankers blasted through the beginning of the Overland Campaign, surviving Wilderness and Spotsylvania Courthouse.[4]
n January 1864, older brother Samuel was removed from the front lines and reassigned to “detail” at General Hospital No.9 in Richmond. Also called “Seabrook’s Hospital” or “Receiving and Wayside,” it held over 1,500 patients when Samuel arrived on January 12, even though the capacity was capped at 900.[5]
Of the four Anker sons eligible to enlist in the Civil War, only two did. Eldest brother and third child John (b.1834) and sixth child Arthur (b.1840) have no record of enlistment or service for either the Union or Confederacy. Samuel thus had a heightened awareness of James’s fate and likely kept closer tabs on him from the Richmond hospital. Did Samuel await his younger brother’s admission for illness or injury? How many 27-year-old Virginian soldiers were brought in on stretchers or in literal pieces that reminded Samuel of James?
As luck would have it, James’s initial wave of success and survival came to a crashing halt when he was captured at Cold Harbor on May 31, 1864. By June 5, he was confined to Point Lookout in Maryland, where he remained until January 8, 1865. For reasons unknown, Ankers was removed from this bay-side prison during that harsh winter month and transferred to the Union-occupied town of Alexandria. It is likely that he was in the running for prisoner-exchange, and Alexandria was often utilized to keep P.O.Ws close to the border – but that system had come to a sudden interruption. James’s chances of exchange were slim. After one month of confinement in the Franklin and Armfield slave auction house, confiscated as the damp and dark “Slave Pen Jail,” he contracted pneumonia. Union officials kept rebel soldiers and civilian secessionists in the same cells that once detained enslaved persons before sale, holding a symbolic meaning against the Confederate cause.
Ankers was admitted to Grosvenor Branch Hospital on February 9, which still stands as the Lee-Fendall House Museum. For three weeks, he received treatment and care from Head Surgeon Maj. Edwin Bentley and the assistant surgeons until his return to prison on March 2. This hospital held a capacity of 150 beds, but often more patients than that. The first floor, where Ankers was possibly chained to his cot or kept under watch, was mandated for private rank, while the second floor was reserved for officers’ quarters and the third for staff housing. He was among a large wave of prisoners, both Union and Confederate, that were treated at Grosvenor Branch due to the horrid conditions in Alexandria’s five military prisons. Ankers was one of three rebel prisoners-of-war assigned to this hospital for medical care.
Upon returning to the Slave Pen, he remained incarcerated for a few more days until his removal to the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C., currently the site of the Supreme Court building. Ankers spent twenty days in the District’s largest correctional facility before one last transfer to his final imprisonment: Elmira. He endured two days of travel to New York by rail lines and bumpy wagon rides. Insight into Ankers’s time at the Elmira prison camp lie in the military records at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., however, much can be assumed about his four months in the “Andersonville of the North.” Ankers was not released until General Orders 109, which authorized the discharge of rebel prisoners upon taking the oath of allegiance.
Over a month after President Andrew Johnson issued the order, Ankers pledged his loyalty once again to the United States, thus certifying his release from Elmira and his ability to go home to Loudon County and see father John before the patriarch’s death in 1867. In the 1870 census, James is living at home with his mother Harriet (now 65) and four siblings. Samuel, John, Jr., and little sister Catherine, each married and moved away.
Arthur retuned to the household in 1880, listed as its head, right before their mother passed away. The Ankers’ farm was valued at $300 at the time of the 1870 census, and two sons experienced unemployment in the aftermath of the war. The region itself was shattered by fraternal loss and scorched earth, scattering starving families out of the county. James labored at the nearby Colvin Run mill to support his extended family. Did he speak of his imprisonment in four Union cells? Did the pneumonia still haunt him as he toiled at the mill?
In 1895, at the age of 58, James married Sarah Lloyd. This was his first and only marriage. The couple did not have any children. Their marriage was short-lived, as James died in 1909 and Sarah in 1915. Both of their tombstones at the Old Sterling Cemetery are simple and do not note James’s Confederate service.
Despite their financial hardships and parental deaths, none of the Ankers children moved out of Loudon County. Their struggles on the farm led a descendant, somewhere on the family tree, to relinquish the property. Guilford Station is no longer. Now the name of a shopping mall on the site of the Ankers’ post office, it sits just six miles from Dulles International Airport. All evidence of the Ankers’ once prosperous farm – and their Confederate cause – lie under the busy Route 28 in Sterling, Virginia.
Endnotes
[1] Ancestry.com, U.S., War of 1812 Pension Application Files Index, 1812-1815 from National Archives, Index to War of 1812 Pension Application Files, 1960 – 1960, Records of the Department of Veteran Affairs, https://catalog.archives.gov/id/563315.
[2] Ancestry.com, 1830 U.S. Federal Census from National Archives, Fifth Census of the United States, 1830, Records of the Bureau of the Census, https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/8058/records/860950?tid=105742216&pid=160047333568&ssrc=pt
[3] Craig Swain, “Ambush at Ankers’s Shop,” Historical Marker Database (2022), https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=42329
[4] Fold3, “Ankers, James E.,” US, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Virginia, 1861-1865, https://www.fold3.com/file/7948016.
[5] Civil War Richmond, “Statistics of General Hospital #9,” https://www.civilwarrichmond.com/images/pdf/stats_gen9.pdf.
Biography
Madeline Feierstein is an Alexandria, VA historian specializing in psychiatric institutions, hospitals, and prisons. A native of Washington, D.C., her work has been showcased across the Capital Region. As Lead Historian for the Lee-Fendall House Museum & Garden, Madeline leads efforts to document the sick, injured, and imprisoned soldiers that passed through Civil War Alexandria. Additionally, she interprets the burials in Alexandria’s historically rich cemeteries with Gravestone Stories. Madeline holds a Bachelor of Science in Criminology from George Mason University and a Master’s in American History from Southern New Hampshire University. Explore her research at www.madelinefeierstein.com.
ECW welcomes back guest author Riley Sullivan.
When one thinks of the American Civil War, they might be drawn to places like Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Bull Run, Fort Sumter, or Shiloh. These battles, and others, have been etched into the American psyche due to the tremendous consequences they wrought. Fewer individuals might consider that any significant action took place in Galveston, Texas during the Civil War. However, in the early morning hours of January 1, 1863 “the heavens were in a blaze” in Galveston.[1] On this battlefield, one of the most remarkable occurrences of the entire Civil War occurred.
Around 4 a.m. – hours before President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation – Confederate forces under the command of Maj. Gen. John Bankhead Magruder launched a joint sea-land attack against Union soldiers and vessels stationed in Galveston Bay. The fighting lasted throughout most of the early morning before Union troops of the 42nd Massachusetts surrendered while the Federal fleet sailed out of the bay. With the recapture of Galveston, the Confederates also boasted the destruction of USS Westfield and the capture of USS Harriet Lane. It was aboard Lane that a father and son, fighting on opposing sides, came to confront each other on the battlefield.
Harriet Lane’s executive officer was Lieutenant Commander Edward Lea, born to Albert Miller Lea and Ellen Shoemaker in Baltimore, Maryland in 1837. He grew up in what Adm. David Dixon Porter later described as “the very heart of Secessia.”[2] His father was a graduate of West Point (class of 1831) and served as an engineer on the frontier.[3]
Undoubtedly, his father’s military background influenced Edward’s own desire for a military career as he enrolled in the U.S. Naval Academy in 1851. After graduating in 1855, Lea served as a midshipman and later a lieutenant aboard USS Hartford in the East India Squadron.
While Lea served in the navy, his father moved to Texas and, with the outbreak of the Civil War, the Lea family endured a schism. For the elder Lea, there was no question as to which side to support. Being a Southerner, he, as well as most of the Lea family, opted to support the newly formed Confederacy.
Meanwhile Edward, despite being a “Southern man,” opted to remain loyal to the Union. Similar to the likes of Southerners like George Thomas, Edward later stated to then Cmdr. David Porter that because of his decision, “my family [has] disowned me.” In this same conversation, Edward also provided insight into how his father–who served as a Confederate artillery officer–stated that “if he should ever meet me in battle he would shoot me like a dog.”[4]
With this matter weighing heavily on Edward’s heart, he returned to Philadelphia in late 1861 to receive a new assignment.[5] On December 26, 1861, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles reassigned Lea to USS Harriet Lane; he reported by the end of the year. For the next year, Lea served as Harriet Lane’s executive officer, under Lt. Cmdr. Johnathan Wainwright.
After serving a brief stint in Virginia, Lea and Harriet Lane were attached to the West Gulf Blockading Squadron under then-Captain David G. Farragut. During 1862, Lea saw action throughout the Gulf, where he participated in the capture of New Orleans, Pensacola, and an attempt at Vicksburg’s guns. During this period, Harriet Lane served as the flagship of David Porter’s Mortar Flotilla. By late 1862, Harriet Lane reached its final assignment as a Union vessel, blockade duty off Galveston, Texas.
As Union forces occupied the city following its abandonment by Confederates in October 1862, Harriet Lane was largely confined to Galveston Bay, monitoring any suspicious activity by potential blockade runners. While Federal forces began their occupation of the city, Confederate leadership in the region also witnessed a change. Taking command of the District of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona was Maj. Gen. John Bankhead Magruder. Almost immediately following his arrival in Houston, Magruder began to formulate plans for a joint sea-land operation to retake Galveston. That plan came into fruition in the early morning hours of January 1, 1863.
To conduct the assault on Galveston, Magruder had under his command troops who had served in Gen. Henry Sibley’s failed New Mexico expedition. Additionally, a small hastily constructed flotilla of cottonclads, under the command of Leon Smith of the Texas Maritime Department, was used in the assault to support the ground troops. When Confederate artillery fired in the vicinity of Kuhn’s Wharf–where several companies of the 42nd Massachusetts Infantry were stationed–the cottonclad flotilla did not immediately appear.
During this portion of the battle, Harriet Lane and several other vessels provided crucial naval firepower for the Federal infantry. Magruder’s forces desperately needed support, and for a moment it appeared that his plan would fail. However, after initial confusion, Leon Smith and his flotilla headed straight towards the Federal ships. Harriet Lane easily outgunned the two cottonclads that approached her, Bayou City and Neptune, however, due to small arms fire coming from both cottonclads, the gun crews aboard Lane were forced to go below deck to seek cover. Eventually, Lane was rammed and boarded by Confederate forces.
As Leon Smith and his troops under his command—which according to participate Robert Franklin consisted of a combination of artillerymen, infantry, and cavalry instead of Confederate sailors—began to pour onto the deck of Harriet Lane, they found that their small arms fire had killed its captain, Lt. Cmdr. Wainwright, and mortally wounded his second in command, Edward Lea.[6] According to Robert Franklin, who was a part of Bayou City’s boarding party, Lea had been “wounded in the abdomen and sides [with] 5 wounds in all.”[7]
Remarkably, shortly after the Confederates had captured Lane, Edward’s father Albert also rushed aboard. During the days preceding the battle, Albert Lea–a major in the Confederate artillery–had paid a visit to Magruder–his old West Point classmate–and served as an aide during the engagement.
Prior to the battle, the elder Lea heard a rumor that his son was serving aboard Lane. Once the fighting began to die down, Lea quickly boarded Lane and found his son dying. While he had been harsh in his rhetoric towards his son when he found out that he would not join the Confederate cause, the elder Lea quickly embraced his son. According to one account Lea “reached the scene in time to clasp his son in his arms.”[8] Lea recounted years later that he sought permission for an ambulance from Magruder, who promptly allowed him. However, by the time he returned to his son, the naval officer had already passed. As Albert Lea remembered, the surgeon who was with his son at the end remarked that his dying words were “my father is here.”[9]
The following day, Albert Lea laid to rest his son and his captain, Jonathan Wainwright. At the request of the Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph, Lea wrote his recollections of the funeral just a few weeks after the battle. In this recollection, he spoke little of his son’s final moments, but rather of the magnitude of the occasion.
Having been granted permission, several officers from Harriet Lane served as pallbearers for the funeral. With this unique show of mourning, Lea wrote that “the national hate, engendered by the war, and especially excited by the recent contest, had shown itself partially in personal aversion to the unfortunate prisoners” as men both North and South mourned the loss of Lt. Cmdr. Edward Lea.[10]
Edward Lea was laid to rest in the Trinity Episcopal Church Cemetery in Galveston. While his commander’s body was later exhumed and relocated to Annapolis, Edward’s father refused to have his son exhumed as he believed he would have wanted to remain on the field where he had died. For the elderly Lea, this grave was a fitting place for his son as it was “in sight of the sea, in sound of the surf, where such devoted sailors would love to lie.”[11]
Long beyond his death, the story of the Leas continues to capture the interests of the Civil War community. For historians like Edward Cotham, this was one of the most “heart-stirring stor[ies] in the whole Civil War.”[12] Stories such as this demonstrate to us that the Civil War was a conflict that impacted individuals on a personal level. While the battle of Galveston is often forgotten in the grand scheme of the conflict, families like the Leas would not forget that terrible day when a father saw his son die opposing him in a civil war.
Riley Sullivan earned his MA in History at Sam Houston State University and is a Professor of History at San Jacinto College in Pasadena, TX. He has published works on Civil War Memory that have appeared in the Tennessee Historical Quarterly. He is also a doctoral student in the Department of History at the University of Houston.
Endnotes:
[1] Dorman H. Winfrey, “Two Battle of Galveston Letters,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 65, no. 2, (Oct. 1961); 252.
[2] Porter wrote this in his memoirs as he recalled his relationship with Edward Lea (referring him to Lieutenant Lee). However, this is an interesting statement as Maryland was a Southern state that remained loyal to the Union. David Dixon Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War, (D. Appleton and Company, 1885), 110.
[3] While Albert M. Lea was not a well-known frontiersman, Albert Lea, Minnesota is named in his honor.
[4] Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes, 111.
[5] Edward Lea to Gideon Welles, 28 December 1861, Navy Officer’s Letters 1802-1884, The National Archives, Washington D.C., Fold3, https://www.fold3.com/image/638402628/lea-edward-page-1-us-navy-officers-letters-1802-1884?terms=lea,war,us,edward,civil,union,united,america,states,lea,%20edward (accessed July 30, 2025).
[6] Franklin, Robert M. Battle of Galveston, January 1st. (Galveston, Tex., The Galveston News, 1911) Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/39020660/. 2.
[7] Ibid, 11.
[8] Edward B. Williams, “A ‘Spirited Account’ of the Battle of Galveston, January 1, 1863,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 99, no. 2, (Oct. 1995); 213.
[9] Freeborn County Standard (Albert Lea, Minnesota), May 15th, 1890.
[10] Tri-Weekly Telegram, (Houston, TX), February 27th, 1863.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Edward J. Cotham, Battle on the Bay: The Civil War Struggle for Galveston, (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1998): 136.
As part of their preparation to co-author their book Unconditional Surrender: Ulysses S. Grant in the Civil War, Chris Mackowski and Curt Fields (as U.S. Grant) sat down to talk about the war from Grant’s perspective. The result was a nine-part series that served as the outline for Unconditional Surrender, published by Savas Beatie as part of the Emerging Civil War Series.
In this episode, Grant recounts his experience at the battle of Belmont (November 7, 1861), where his troops were first bloodied. He also recounts his success at Forts Henry (February 6, 1862) and Donelson (February 11–16, 1862), which resulted in his first major victory and gave him his iconic nickname.
For more on Unconditional Surrender, or to order a copy, visit www.savasbeatie.com/unconditional-surrender-ulysses-s-grant-in-the-civil-war/.
If you’d like to see more of Curt Fields as Ulysses S. Grant, check out “Fridays with Grant,” presented by our partners at the Civil War Roundtable Congress.