American Civil War, Part 5: From "Our Country, Then and Now"

"Ancestors in the War," "William Forster," "Joe Smethurst"

Serialization of selections from my book Our Country, Then and Now continues with the cooperation of my publisher, Clarity Press.

This is the 5th and final section from the chapter on the American Civil War from Our Country, Then and Now. I hope this material has proved interesting and enlightening to you, the reader. It certainly was a fascinating study for me. I had already been acquainted with Civil War history through spending much of my life in the Washington, D.C.—Virginia—Maryland area, including the years after retiring from the federal government when I served as an interpreter for the Maryland Park Service in Boonsboro, near the Antietam Battlefield. But the period of the Civil War took on new meaning and dimensions through the writing of the book.

Clearly, the Civil War was an existential crisis for the United States of America. It was actually the second such crisis, with the first obviously being the Revolutionary War, when the US gained independence from Great Britain.

But one of the things I learned was that the second crisis—the Civil War—could also be seen as an attempt to break free from the British Empire, whose globalist bankers had every intention of contributing to the break-up of the federal union and thwarting the attempt made by the Lincoln administration to gain financial freedom through the issuance of Greenbacks. And it was the British, acting from their intelligence center in Montreal, who financed the plot by which Lincoln was assassinated.

I would also contend that the US today faces a third existential crisis against the same adversary—the globalist financial elite, whose headquarters is still London. This is a theme that will recur as the serialization of my book continues.

In this final section of this chapter, I tell the story of two family ancestors who fought in the Civil War on the side of the Union.

William Forster was an immigrant from Ireland who arrived at the time of the Potato Famine and became a gunnery sergeant in the New York Heavy Artillery. His story sheds light on the tragedy that befell Ireland through the Famine due to British neglect. Again the Rothschilds enter the story as they had in the lead-up to the war described in previous sections.

Joe Smethurst was a descendant of Puritan immigrants originally from Massachusetts. He served as a private in the 25th Regiment of Wisconsin Volunteers who fought in the southern theater and took part in the attack on Atlanta.

But there were others. One was my great-great grandfather George Edward Hubbard who served for the Union as a Second Lieutenant but became such an imposing figure after the war that he was called “Colonel” Hubbard, owned the only hotel in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, and was elected mayor of that town by acclamation. He was married to Caroline (Carrie) Mariah Lasher Davis, whose father was a veteran of the War of 1812.

So please welcome to the stage these actors in one of the great dramas of American history.

Our Country, Then and Now may be ordered directly from the publisher here.

Ancestors in the War

Several of my ancestors, or those of our family archivist, my cousin Johnny Lathrop, as well as others in the extended family, fought in the Civil War.

William Forster

My great-great-grandfather on my mother’s side was William Forster, who arrived in the US in 1849, having embarked from Cobh, County Cork, Ireland, during the Irish Potato Famine. Records are scant, but we do know that William Forster, who had settled in Brooklyn, New York, became a gunnery sergeant with the New York Heavy Artillery. Initially, that unit was assigned to the defenses of Washington, D.C., but later was part of Grant’s army when Lee surrendered at Appomattox. William Forster drew his veteran’s pension until his passing in 1893.

Speaking of the Famine, in his book Empire, the foremost modern British establishment historian Niall Ferguson is able to admit:

“Direct rule from Westminster [in London] had without question exacerbated the disastrous famine of the mid-1840s, in which more than a million people had died of dearth and disease.”[i]

Ferguson does not mention that up to two million more Irish embarked for North America. Thousands died during the trip, including many newborns. Ferguson adds that, “It was the dogmatic laissez-faire policies of Ireland’s British rulers that turned harvest failure into outright famine.”

Ferguson’s account does not mention that huge amounts of produce continued to flow to England and the Continent from farms that had been seized from the Irish during various episodes of British conquest, where the starving Irish population now worked for British landlords as tenant farmers. When the potato harvest failed, large numbers of tenants were evicted for failure to pay rent. I could see when visiting Ireland in 2013 that such traumas are hard to forget.

But some at least saw a positive benefit from the Famine. Ferguson writes in volume two of The House of Rothschild that by the late 1840s, the Rothschilds were:

“…receiving estate agents’ reports from Ireland, advising…of the favorable opportunities there. ‘Potatoes failing all directions and free trade ruining everybody,’ ran one such tip; ‘Ireland completely ruined, now is the time or at least it is fast approaching for buying estates on the sly. When the Parliamentary Title be obtained, acknowledge the purchase and resell at a very advanced premium.’”[ii]

Ferguson notes that the Rothschilds declined the opportunity, preferring at the time to invest in wine-growing estates in France, where the market for “good-quality clarets” was splendid. So it was left to competing investors to snap up the now-vacant Irish land at dirt-cheap prices.

Joe Smethurst

Joe Smethurst was born in Morgan County, Ohio, in 1842, and moved with his family to Seneca, Wisconsin, prior to September 1857. This is one of at least eighteen towns or cities in the US named after tribes of this Iroquois Indian nation. Joe was an ancestor of my cousin Johnny Lathrop on his father’s side.

Joe Smethurst worked as a printer before the war on The Courier newspaper in Prairie du Chien, about twenty miles away. Prarie du Chien was an early site of French-Indian fur trading and was where Black Hawk surrendered to Colonel Zachary Taylor in 1832, ending the four-month Black Hawk War. Wisconsin became a state in 1848 and furnished over 91,000 soldiers to the Civil War.

Joe joined the 25^th Regiment of Wisconsin Volunteers on August 9, 1862, with a three-year enlistment. He was discharged on June 2, 1865. He joined just before Lee and McClellan faced off at Antietam and served until after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Joe’s service started in the western theater of the war.

Joe’s wartime diaries commence on February 26, 1863. Having completed his initial training, he moved south by rail, arriving with his unit in Columbus, Kentucky on March 5, 1863. From his diary, Joe spends his days drilling with his unit and performing guard duty. One day he “rolled ten pins.” On another, his brother John, in the same unit, had a fight with Dick Bull, who “got his eyes blacked.” One day Joe cleans his gun; on another the unit “all went down to the river and took a wash”; on another a soldier dies from unspecified causes, but it was raining so hard “we could not bury him.”

By late March Joe is becoming ill. On March 23, he “had the sick headache all day.” He was in a hospital on March 31. He “had a shake” on April 1. The next day he “got some medicine that made me very sick,” though he felt better in the afternoon. On April 4, “I was sick with the dioreahrea [sic] all night.” He was feeling better by the 7^th and got more medicine on the 8^th. On April 9, “One of the Regulars shot two other soldiers—one fatally.” Joe reports more diarrhea on April 13.

On May 4, Joe and three other soldiers start a 30-day furlough. Stopping in Cairo, Illinois, “the bed bugs were so thick I could not sleep.” Joe then makes his way home to Prairie du Chien and Seneca. There he “saw all the girls” and “all my old chums.”

By mid-June 1863, Joe is back in Kentucky with his unit, drilling and serving guard duty. One night he gets a bad cold from sleeping on the ground. On July 6, the soldiers learn of Meade’s victory over Lee at Gettysburg and the next day of the fall of Vicksburg to Grant. They were told “that there should be a general rejoicing and an illumination [fireworks] in the evening.” The soldiers “all had a good old time.” The next day Joe was back on picket duty. The monotony was broken by letters from home and picking blueberries.

Joe’s unit was part of a federal army that would eventually cross southern Tennessee and defeat the Confederates at Chattanooga in November 1863. Under General William Tecumseh Sherman, the federals would then enter Georgia, burn Atlanta, and conduct Sherman’s “March to the Sea.” They would then turn north into the Carolinas until the war ended.

Throughout July, Joe would continue to drill and stand guard, with some time left to pick apples and help maintain the breastworks. His brother John got “the fever” and “swetz bad.” At one point “there was a big scare” that rebel forces might be attacking, but Joe still has yet to see combat. On July 26, some rebel prisoners were brought in, and Joe was detailed to help escort them to imprisonment in Memphis. His brother John was now feeling better. On July 30, Joe “saw a deserter drummed out of camp.”

After seven months of inactivity, Joe’s unit finally moved out, traveling by train from Columbus, Kentucky, to Chattanooga, arriving after the big battle there was done, with fighting around Chattanooga having stopped in November 1863. For the next few months, Union General Sherman and Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston would try to outmaneuver each other until a clash at Kennesaw Mountain near Mariettta, Georgia, on June 27, 1864.

Joe’s unit then carried out a flanking march south to the Chattahoochee River. Joe writes: “There was a hard battle fought here yesterday, and the rebels charged our brigade and killed about thirty. The rebels left about 300 killed on the field…one wounded soldier girl.”

On July 22, 1864, Joe is under artillery fire for the first time, a year and five months after he enlisted. He writes: “When we were taking our place in the line, the rebel battery commenced to shell our regiment. As it was the first time we had been under fire, I felt scared. So did all the rest. Laid down on the ground for about a half hour and then went to throwing up.” Joe records a couple instances of fellow soldiers being shot through the head. On July 23, Joe writes, “One of our batteries is throwing shells into Atlanta and set some part of the town on fire.”

Joe continues to be involved in the fighting. On July 29, “I fired about 20 rounds.” “Milo S. was struck with a spent ball in the leg. Company A took 17 prisoners.” But the fight for Atlanta would soon be over. Joe writes, “I think the Johnnies are going to leave our front soon.”

A few days later, he writes: “If I have a chance to re-enlist for three years I would never take it.” On August 6: “I felt bad this morning.” On September 18, he is back in Chattanooga, this time in an army hospital. He is then sent to a hospital in Nashville, where the doctor won’t give him a furlough. He writes: “The doctor in charge of this ward is an old fool entirely. I could bust his head.”

Joe does get his furlough and travels home to Wisconsin. But by January 28, 1865, he is in Savannah, Georgia, having traveled by train via New Jersey. Sherman’s “March to the Sea” has ended, and the army is preparing to move north toward Richmond. Joe reaches Fayetteville, North Carolina, but there are still Confederates in the vicinity. In a clash on March 19, 1865, Joe is wounded in the leg and taken prisoner.

After two years and one month on duty, Joe is a wounded captive. But the next day, the federals counter-attack and Joe is freed. The last entry in his diary is dated March 31, 1865: “In 1^st Division hospital at Goldsboro, N.C. I am almost as good as new. I am going to get a furlough if I can.”

Joe Smethurst returned to Wisconsin and married Rose Abigail Mills on August 6, 1866. They had five children and both lived to a ripe old age.

Looking at such accounts, you realize again that the overwhelming motivation for Civil War soldiers—at least on the Union side—was to preserve the Union. The enemy were called “Rebels” or “Secesh”—sometimes “Johnnies.” There were also negative sentiments about the Northern Democrats, whose failure to support Lincoln, some felt, actually brought on the war. A faction of Democrats was regarded with such loathing as to be called “Copperheads.”

Joe’s accounts also reinforce the fact that during the Civil War, disease was responsible for more deaths than battle wounds, the biggest killer being dysentery. Some doctors also said that some of the young men passed away from “homesickness.”

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[i] Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, Penguin Group (2004), p.253.

[ii] Ferguson, House of Rothschild, P.46.