11,670 Miles
11,670 miles—that’s how far my three times great-grandfather Christopher Erisman is said to have traveled with his regiment—by rail, by river, on horseback, and on foot—over the course of the Civil War (Vance 1886). That’s a long way. Google tells me I could go to Paris and back and still be a few hundred miles short. And that would be by airplane. From Illinois to Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, Washington, DC, and eventually Kansas. Christopher and his fellow soldiers saw a lot of the southern United States over the course of their four years and four months of military service.
Christopher was born Dec 13, 1828, in Adams County, Pennsylvania, and when he was about 10 years old, moved with his family to Montgomery County, Ohio, a journey of more than 400 miles. Perhaps that gave him a taste for travel because he moved again, as a young adult, another 300 plus miles to Menard County, Illinois, where he married Irene Elmore in 1853. Over the next eight years, Christopher and Irene had five children, and he worked as a mule-spinner (spinning machine operator) in a textile factory, a skilled and relatively well-paid position for that time period (Freifeld 1986).
This life changed dramatically on May 11, 1861, when Christopher enlisted, along with many others from Menard County, as a private in Company E of the 14th Illinois Infantry. This regiment was one of 10 regiments of infantry—one from each of Illinois’s congressional districts—that the state government authorized to be organized and trained for up to 30 days in the expectation that the federal government would ask the states to provide troops for the war against the Confederacy, which had been declared on April 12. The state government was correct in their assessment of the situation, and the 14th Illinois was mustered into federal service on May 25. After electing their officers and spending a few months in training, the regiment was sent to Missouri.[1]
I’m interested in why Christopher chose to enlist in the army in 1861. He was 32 years old with a wife and five young children, not an obvious candidate for military service. His motives are unlikely to have been economic, since he had a good job and the cash bounties offered to enlistees didn’t begin until later that year. I have no letters or diaries of his so can’t know his feelings about slavery or the war, but it seems possible that his motives had something to do with his life in Illinois. After all, although not a native of Illinois, he resided in Menard County, where Abraham Lincoln lived during the 1830s, and a cousin of his wife’s had served under Lincoln during the Black Hawk War in 1832 (Martin 1915). So perhaps Christopher felt a sense of “home town pride” that encouraged him to enlist.[2]
The 14th Illinois’s time in Missouri doesn’t seem to have been very exciting, although their regimental history says that they “did good service in keeping down the spirit of rebellion” (Vance 1886). All that changed in early 1862, though, when the regiment was sent to Tennessee. From then on, the list of the regiment’s actions has many names that would be recognized by Civil War buffs. The bloody Battle of Shiloh on April 6-7, at which the 14th Illinois saw their first sustained action of the war, was the most notable in 1862.
14th Illinois Infantry Memorial, Vicksburg, Mississipp. Photo by author.
After wintering in Tennessee, the 14th Illinois were ordered in May 1863 to join General Ulysses S. Grant’s forces at the Siege of Vicksburg. Following the Confederate surrender on July 4, 1863, the 14th Illinois remained in Mississippi for nearly a year, guarding Vicksburg and participating in the siege of Jackson and campaigns against Natchez and Meridien.
In May 1864, the three-year commitment made by the original members of the 14th Illinois expired, but many re-enlisted.[3] The regiment had been reduced in size by death, disability, and desertion and so was combined into a veterans’ battalion with the 15th Illinois, with whom, the regimental history says, they had been “ever together since the fall of 1862, sharers of each others’ sorrows and joys, weary marches and honorably earned laurels” (Vance 1886).
Following their veterans’ furlough at home in Illinois, the new battalion was sent to Ackworth, Georgia, to guard the railroad supplying General William T. Sherman’s army. A Confederate attack in October 1864 left many in the battalion dead and many others prisoners of war. Christopher Erisman and his remaining comrades were then, according to the regimental history, “mounted, and, on the Grand March to the Sea, acted as scouts, and were continually in the advance, being the first to drive the rebel pickets into Savannah, Georgia.” (Vance 1886). From there, the battalion fought its way up the Atlantic coast through the Carolinas, participating in the Battle of Bentonville and witnessing the surrender of Confederate General Joseph Johnston in April 1865, following news of the Confederate defeat at Appomattox.
The Grand Review of the Army passing on Pennsylvania Avenue near the Treasury, May 1865. Washington, DC: Library of Congress.
After a 21-day march to Washington, DC, the 14th Illinois, newly re-formed with an influx of recruits, participated in the Grand Review of the Armies, held on May 22-23, 1865. During this celebration, two massive parades of some 150,000 Union troops marched up Pennsylvania Avenue from the U.S. Capitol past the White House where various political and military notables were seated. Unfortunately, Christopher, who had made it through four years of war without injury, fell off his horse while in Richmond, Virginia, on the way to Washington, DC, and badly hurt his ankle, an injury which would plague him for the rest of his life.
Although the Civil War was largely over at this point, the 14th Illinois was sent west for duty on the plains before finally being mustered out at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, on September 18, 1865. Christopher returned home and moved his family to Greene County, Illinois, where he was able to purchase some property and find work in a woolen mill (Clapp 1879). He lived to a ripe old age, dying at age 85 on January 12, 1914, after seeing his family expand with the births of many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Christopher didn’t leave the war completely unscathed, though. In his veteran’s pension application from 1891, his doctor reports that, in addition to the problems with his ankle, he had suffered from chronic diarrhea since his time at Vicksburg and from rheumatism contracted while marching through Georgia. It’s hard for me to imagine what life in the army must have been like for Christopher—or how his wife and children fared during the years he was away from home—but that 11,670 miles is going to stick in my mind for a long time along with a much better understanding of some Civil War battles that were previously only names to me.
Medical report from Christopher Erisman’s pension application, 1891
[1] I was surprised to learn that electing officers was a common practice in the volunteer regiments organized by states as part of the effort to quickly build up the Union Army (Romanus 2005).
[2] I’ll also note that Christopher, in 1855, named his son Richard Yates Erisman, after Richard Yates, who was at that time the U.S. Representative for the district that included Menard County. Yates, an ally of Abraham Lincoln, had become governor of Illinois by the time Christopher enlisted and was heavily engaged in supporting the Union war effort (Hicken 1991).
[3] A substantial percentage of the surviving 1861 Union volunteers re-enlisted in 1864. Historians are divided about the reasons these soldiers had for re-enlisting, arguing variously that patriotism, group bonding and peer pressure, or financial concerns drove the decision to re-enlist (Hicken 1991). Most likely a combination of all of these factors motivated the soldiers to different extents, and a $400 cash bounty and 30 days leave at home must also have offered some incentive.
Works Cited
Clapp, Clement L. 1879. History of Greene County, Illinois: Its Past and Present. Chicago, IL: Donnelley, Gassette, and Loyd, Publishers.
Colling, Benjamin F. 2005. “The Civil War, 1863.” American Military History, Volume 1: The United States Army and the Forging of a Nation, 1775-1917. Richard W. Smith, Ed. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army.
Freifeld, Mary. 1986. “Technological Change and the 'Self-Acting' Mule: A Study of Skill and the Sexual Division of Labour.” Social History 11(3): 319-343.
Hicken, Victor. 1991. Illinois in the Civil War. 2nd Ed. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Martin, Charles. “History of Cass County.” Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois. Vol 2. Newton Bateman and Paul Selby, Eds. Chicago, IL: Munsell Publishing Company.
Romanus, Charles F. 2005. “The Civil War, 1861.” American Military History, Volume 1: The United States Army and the Forging of a Nation, 1775-1917. Richard W. Smith, Ed. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army.
Vance, Brigadier General Joseph W. 1886. “History of the 14th Infantry.” Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Illinois, 1861-1866. Springfield, IL: H.W. Rokker State Printer and Binder.