Gettysburg's next superintendent specializes in museums and artifacts

The next superintendent at Gettysburg National Military Park and two affiliated sites has been with the National Park Service for 37 years and has experience in museum collections.

The agency on Thursday announced Stephanie Stephens will take over the park, Eisenhower National Historic Site and Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument in the fall. All three sites are in south-central Pennsylvania.

Stephens currently serves as the acting regional director for the Midwest region of the NPS. She will replace Kris Heister, who retired a few months ago.

 “Stephanie’s extensive experience in cultural resource stewardship, museum and curatorial leadership, collaborative planning and community engagement is perfectly suited for this position,” said acting Northeast Region Deputy Regional Director Brandon Bies. “Her curatorial knowledge is especially relevant at Gettysburg, home to the National Park Service's largest Civil War museum collection, where the preservation, care, and interpretation of these meaningful artifacts is a central mission.”

Stephens grew up in Twentynine Palms, California, where a military installation and a national park were central to her community.

Stephens has been with the National Park Service for 37 years, in a variety of leadership positions focused on the preservation and stewardship of National Park Service museum collections and cultural resources. In 2016, she was selected as the National Park Service chief curator.

The Picket asked the NPS to comment on whether Stephens has any near-term objectives but has not yet received a response.

Gen. Jacob Cox slept here: Citizen-soldier's division camped on land that became Emory University. His competence and memoirs are lauded, his racial views are not

Jacob Cox (Library of Congress), marker on Clifton Road and walkway nearby on Emory University (Picket photos)

In 1944, Wilbur G. Kurtz – restorer of the Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama, rescuer of the locomotive Texas and technical adviser to the film “Gone With the Wind” – wrote a letter to the father of an Atlanta teenager whose hobby was relic collecting.

Kurtz provided some suggestions on places to dig, but ended the correspondence with books the boy should read to really understand what happened in the city in summer 1864.

At the top of the list, in the letter kept by the Atlanta History Center, was “Atlanta,” one of several notable Civil War books authored by Maj. Gen Jacob D. Cox.

The man who went on to become Ohio governor, U.S. interior secretary, congressman and president of the University of Cincinnati was among the most successful citizen-soldiers of the conflict. He served in both theaters of the Civil War, including the Atlanta Campaign.

“I think Cox did fine during the Atlanta Campaign, and his advance southward on 27 June (Battle of Kennesaw Mountain) provided ‘the only advantage of the day,' according to Sherman,” says Charlie Crawford, president emeritus of the Georgia Battlefields Association.

Crawford said he believes Cox’s 1882 account (Ebay photo) of the Atlanta Campaign is largely accurate and “provides some insights that other memoirs lack, whereas his account of the Second Manassas Campaign is tainted by his animus toward Fitz John Porter.”

Civil War historian Robert D. Jenkins, executive director of the Blue and Gray Education Society, said Cox’s book about Atlanta “is fair and good, and for a long, long time was really one of the only reliable histories of the Atlanta Campaign until the middle and end of the 20th century."

I reached out to Crawford and Jenkins on Saturday after stopping to photograph a sign on the Emory University campus near Decatur. Cox’s Third Division of Schofield’s XXXIII Corps camped there on the evening of July 19, 1864, a few days before the Battle of Atlanta and fighting in Decatur.

While I had heard of Cox, particularly his strong performance as a brigadier general at Utoy Creek in August 1864, I didn’t know much about his career.

Cox was a trial lawyer before the Civil War and had to scramble to learn military skills West Pointers already possessed. He fought at Antietam and South Mountain and later moved to the Western Theater.

“In early 1864, Cox marched with Sherman to Atlanta as second in command of the Army of the Ohio. He performed yeoman service during this period. In July, he led a flank attack which caused the Confederate Army of Tennessee to retreat from its strong position on Kennesaw Mountain,” according to an article by Gene Schmiel in “On Point,” a publication of the Army Historical Foundation.

“Cox’s forces were the first to cross the Chattahoochee River, forcing the Confederates into the defenses of Atlanta. Later that month, Cox’s division cut the final supply line into Atlanta, forcing General Hood to abandon Atlanta and opening the way for Union control.”

Cox later played a crucial role in crushing Hood’s Confederate forces at Franklin, Tenn. Crawford points out some critics claim the general took too much credit for some victories.

Nothing in his background indicated Cox (left, after the war) would be a successful military man.

“I have become used to being surprised as to my own fate, and take it rather quietly, feeling a kind of third person’s curiosity at looking on to see what is to become of me,” Cox wrote in 1866.

One aspect of Cox’s service to the country has not aged well.

While his family had abolitionist ties and he was anti-slavery, Cox opposed moves toward racial equality after the war.

“Some of his post-war comments about what to do with 3.5 million former slaves put him on the wrong side of current thinking,” says Crawford. The politician had advocated for a separate colony or territory for blacks.

Cox died in 1900 at age 71.

As for that historical marker, I asked Crawford what happened in the area during fighting for Atlanta. (Emory University as we know it did not exist in 1864; its forerunner, Emory College, was established in Oxford, Ga.)

On July 21, 1864, Cox's division transited west from north of Decatur along what is now N. Decatur Road (known as Paces Ferry Road at the time) to a position north of the Augustus Hurt house. (Above, Crawford map of Cox division leaving the Emory area)

Stanley's division was almost simultaneously marching southward along what is now Briarcliff Road and passing just west of what is now the campus (right, Picket photo).

During the July 22 fighting in Decatur, a 17th Corps wagon train escorted by 43rd Ohio Infantry and part of the 9th Illinois Mounted Infantry was heading south toward Decatur along what is now Clairmont Road, says Crawford.

“Hearing the sound of the fighting and also being warned by couriers and 15th Corps wagon drivers who (Brig. Gen. John) Sprague had instructed to flee northward, the lead 17th Corps wagons turned west on North Decatur Road and passed along the south edge of the campus,” says Crawford.

“Wagons that were farther behind (17th Corps train being about four miles long) turned west on other roads.” 

As I prepared this blog post, I reviewed my 2011 article on the little-known Aug. 5-7, 1864, engagement at Utoy Creek. (Below, Picket photo of Federal trenches)

Coincidentally, I had mentioned both Kurtz and Cox in that post.

In 1932, Kurtz wrote about an Atlanta family that hid in a bombproof, or "dugout," during the fighting there. Up to 26 people huddled inside at the height of the fighting in western Atlanta.

Gen. Cox on Aug. 11, 1864, wrote this compelling passage.

“In this bomb-proof four families are now living, and I never felt more pity than when, day before yesterday, I looked down into the pit, and saw there, in the gloom made visible by a candle burning while it was broad day above, women sitting on the floor of loose boards, resting against each other, haggard and wan, trying to sleep away the days of terror, while innocent-looking children, four or five years old, clustered around the air-hole, looking up with pale faces and great staring eyes as they heard the singing of the bullets that were flying thick above their sheltering place.”

A flier checked a bag carrying five pieces of Civil War artillery ammo. She didn't know they had been stolen by a grandchild from Fort Morgan on Mobile Bay, officials say

The artillery rounds were wrapped in paper towels (TSA-Gulf Shores photos)

Alabama’s Fort Morgan State Historic Site will not press charges after a juvenile took artillery ammunition from the coastal Civil War fort and the artifacts were detected by the Transportation Security Administration in the checked bag of the child's unwitting grandmother.

The TSA recently posted an article about the July 18 incident at Gulf Shores International Airport. It said screener Justin Dupree spotted the five iron balls, at first thinking they appeared to be a medicine ball wrapped in paper towels. 

The article called the items cannonballs, though observers said most are likely canister or grapeshot  The largest was described as being about the size of a grapefruit.

“I had never seen anything quite this unique,” said Dupree, a TSA officer for four years. “I’ve seen inert grenades and training munitions but never an Indiana Jones-esque stolen artifact-type situation.” He was concerned they might have been live.

The TSA contacted local authorities, who determined the prohibited rounds were inert and did not contain explosive components.

TSA officer Justin Dupree in the checked baggage area of the airport (TSA)

Capt. Nathan Lusk of the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office told the Picket in an email that the items were taken by the juvenile from a storage area at the fort.

“Fort Morgan personnel were able to confirm the items as their property due to paint markings they apply to artifacts. The grandmother stated that she did not know they were stolen. Fort Morgan’s director chose to not press charges, so there was no further action from us.”

The pieces were returned to the state park. Heather Tassin, the site manager, said, “Due to this being an active investigation we are unable to provide any comments.”

The airport is about 20 miles east of Fort Morgan, which sits at the mouth of Mobile Bay.

Fort Morgan is nestled in a popular vacation area (Picket photo)

The historic site played a prominent part in the 1864 Battle of Mobile Bay.

Mobile was one of the last major Confederate ports still open at the time. Fort Morgan, with a garrison of about 600, and other fortifications meant to keep Union Adm. David Farragut out. The bay was heavily mined with what were then called torpedoes.

On Aug. 5, 1864, the monitor USS Tecumseh struck a mine within a few hundred yards of the fort. More than 90 hands died when the monitor rolled over and sank. The other 17 Union vessels began to move back, but Farragut, on board the USS Hartford, demanded the fleet move through, uttering “Damn the Torpedoes!”

Farragut triumphed over the opposition of heavy batteries in Fort Morgan and Fort Gaines. His fleet secured the surrender of the ironclad CSS Tennessee and defeated the squadron of Confederate Adm. Franklin Buchanan.

The USS Tecumseh buoy off Fort Morgan; Dauphin Island is in background (Picket photo)

Farragut’s brazen assault was one half of a Union operation. Troops landed on Dauphin Island and laid siege to Fort Gaines, which had few ships to help in its defense. Confederate Col. Charles D. Anderson had half his infantry foe’s number and surrendered

After the fall of Fort Gaines on Aug. 8, Yankee troops moved on Fort Morgan across the bay, forcing its surrender on Aug. 23.

Mobile itself was heavily fortified and the Union command moved on after securing the bay. The city surrendered in April 1865, three days after Appomattox.

Battle of the Crater: Park historian Emmanuel Dabney thinks you should know about these 5 men, three of whom fought with the USCT and two who wore gray

John Elder's painting of the Crater emphasizes the Confederate perspective 

The Battle of the Crater, which occurred 162 years ago today, wasn’t just a significant defeat for Union forces trying to break Confederate siege lines at Petersburg, Va. The debacle is remembered as much for the massacre of scores of U.S. Colored Troops who were surrendering.

Federal soldiers set off a mine on July 30, 1864, under a position held by South Carolinians. Troops rushed into the giant breach but became targets when they massed in an area with little room to maneuver. 

Among them were USCT units who had been encouraged by their white officers to use "Fort Pillow! No Quarter!" as their battle cry. Instead, they received “no quarter” from Rebels.

Petersburg National Battlefield this summer offers daily ranger programming that includes an 11 a.m. tour of the Crater.

I asked Emmanuel Dabney (right), chief of resource management at the park, to name a few soldiers whose actions or memories stand out from fighting at the Crater. He mentioned these five men:

Pvt. Peter Churchwell, 23^rd USCT

Churchwell had the unfortunate distinction of being returned to slavery after his capture at the Crater. He had escaped from Orange County, Va., in 1862. He worked in Washington, D.C., before he enlisted in the 23rd US Colored Troops.

After his capture at the Crater, Churchwell was put to work for several days burying the dead before he was sent to Danville, Va., according to the National Park Service. (At left, USCT soldier in action, Library of Congress)

Churchwell testified later in his life, “I was kept there until Major Reuben Gordon, my old Master, heard I was in prison, and he came there and claimed me as his slave [and] sold me to a Mr. Shedrick Lee, a slave dealer at Richmond, Va., and he sold me to Luke Powell a slave dealer who took me to Wilmington N.C. [and] I was there 8 days working in a shoe shop of Geo. French’s store, [and] then sold to Patrick Murphy who took me on his farm near Raleigh N.C., and worked at making boot [and] shoes for him, [and] he sold them.”

Churchwell escaped in early 1865 and fled to Wilmington, N.C., which had fallen to the Union troops. He lived in Washington, D.C., in his later years, according to the park.

Capt. Robert K. Beecham, 23^rd USCT

Like many other officers, Beecham served in white units early in the Civil War before they were assigned to lead USCT regiments.

Dabney describes the officer’s 1902 memoirs, “As If It Were Glory: Robert Beecham's Civil War from the Iron Brigade to the Black Regiments,” as “amazing.” (Photo, courtesy Wisconsin Historical Society, Unique ID W0139K4) 

Beecham was captured at Gettysburg and then exchanged before joining the 23^rd USCT. He was wounded and captured at the Crater and served eight months in captivity before he escaped and found his way to freedom just before war’s end.

The soldier wrote in this recollections: “The Afro-American came forward cheerfully and volunteered his strength, his brawn, his heart’s blood to save the honor of the flag that to him and his race had been the symbol of every dishonor.”

Pvt. Abraham Tuckson, 23^rd USCT

Abraham Tuckson, who escaped from slavery in Virginia in 1862, was killed at the Crater. His remains were never identified, said Dabney. Hester Tuckson, his widow and mother of their children, was left to remember her departed husband.

In 2011, Eric Mink with the NPS wrote about the couple, who were enslaved in Spotsylvania County.

Abraham, after he fled from enslaver Dr. John R. Taylor, returned to the plantation to retrieve what he felt was rightfully his, including clothing.

“Abraham’s confrontation with Dr. Taylor is an example of a former slave embracing his freedom and sense of independence,” Mink wrote. ”We also learn about a woman whose husband left to fight to maintain his freedom and secure hers, but she remained on the plantation and managed to keep the rest of her family together.”

 

Col. John Cheves Haskell, Confederate artillery battalion

Dabney said the officer commanded an artillery battalion and has a vivid account of stopping at least some of the massacre of surrendered USCTs at the Crater. (Photo: Library of Congress)

Haskell and several other Confederate officers tried to stem the slaughter, but they had little success.

“Our men, who were always made wild by having negroes sent against them … were utterly frenzied with rage. Nothing in the war could have exceeded the horrors that followed. No quarter was given, and for what seemed a long time, fearful butchery was carried on,” Haskell wrote years later in his memoirs.

William A. Day, 49^th North Carolina Infantry

Like Col. Haskell, Day recalled the fury Confederate defenders heaped on the USCT troops, Dabney says. The Black soldiers brought their own anger into the battle, seeking retribution for the massacre at Fort Pillow of African-American troops.

“(Confederates) dashed up to the brink of the ditch, halted a moment as if mapping out their work, fired a rolling volley into the ditch filled with Yankees, the most of them being negroes, at this feet; then turning the butts of their guns, they sprang into the ditch among them,” Day wrote in “Confederate Veteran” magazine.

“The slaughter was terrible. The soldiers were excited, they were reckless; they burst the negroes’ skulls with the butts of their guns like eggshells. The officers tried to prevent it, but they were powerless. It was ‘No quarter for the Rebels’ that morning, and it is no quarter for them now. The fight was soon ended.”

Yankee cavalry torched Sope Creek paper mill above Atlanta. Now a nonprofit aims to preserve the stone wall of ruins in federal park along the Chattahoochee River

Ruins: Chattahoochee National Park Conservancy, map from NPS, marker by David Seibert, HMdb.org

In the days before Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s army made a pivotal crossing of the Chattahoochee River -- inching ever closer to Atlanta – mounted soldiers fanned out, intent on destroying anything of value to the Confederate cause.

Of particular interest were water-powered mills that mostly produced textiles. But one mill east of Marietta, Ga., along Sope (sometimes spelled Soap) Creek, was a bit unusual. It made newsprint for newspapers, writing sheets and cartridge paper used for Rebel weapons, among other goods. It apparently was known as a “rag mill," due to the paper being made from linen rags and old cotton. 

On July 5, 1864, elements of the famous Wilder’s (Lightning Brigade) put the torch to the Marietta Paper Mill, which got its start in the late 1850s. While the mill was rebuilt after the Civil War, it became defunct in 1902. (Photo below: Nearby pulp mill in 1907)

In recent years, the paper mill site has been a favorite trail stop for millions who flock to the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area.

Time and nature, of course, have taken a toll on the ruins. Unchecked and invasive vegetation have spread throughout the stones, placing pressure on its delicate walls. That’s about to change, according to an announcement this week. The nonprofit Chattahoochee National Park Conservancy and the National Park Service are partnering on an ambitious restoration project.

“For more than 170 years, these iconic stone ruins have stood as a reminder of Georgia's industrial past and the pivotal role the Chattahoochee River played in shaping our region,” the conservancy said. “After decades of exposure to the elements and encroaching invasive vegetation, the site is ready for critical preservation work.”

The first phase will remove invasive species, improve access for preservation specialists and document existing conditions.

In 2027, phase two will bring in experienced historic preservation specialists to stabilize and restore the remaining stone masonry. “Rather than reconstructing the ruins, the work will focus on protecting and preserving the existing structure while maintaining its historic integrity,” the conservancy said.

Did Phillips Legion founder tweak his nose at Yankees?

Col. John T. Wilder’s brigade gained fame in 1863 for its performance at Chickamauga, protecting the army’s flank and then launching a counterattack. For the Atlanta Campaign, regiments were transferred to the cavalry corps.

On July 5, 1864, the 17^th Indiana Mounted Infantry and 72^nd Indiana Mounted Infantry heading for the mills in Roswell found the Sope Creek paper mill, which was partially owned by William R. Phillips (left).

David Evans, in his book “Sherman’s Horsemen,” wrote about the raid, and quoted from an earlier book on Georgia places and personalities.

“An ardent secessionist, at the outbreak of the war Phillips had raised a regiment of infantry, cavalry and artillery known as Phillips’ Legion,” Evans wrote. “The loss of an eye had forced him to retired from active duty in 1862 but had done nothing to lessen his hatred of Yankees. Watching from the south side of the Chattahoochee when Maj. (Jacob) Vail and his men arrived on July 5, he sent them a message which declared, ‘The mill belonged to a man who had fought them from the beginning of the war, and who could continue to fight them to the bitter end; that he had been taught to hate them as enemies to him and his, and that he would die hating them; that he did not ask any favor from them; and they might burn to their heart’s content.’”

“It is uncertain whether Vail received the message, but his Hoosiers put the paper mill and neighboring flour mills and machine shops to the torch,” Evans added.

Wartime and postwar images of 17th Indiana drummer boy Johnny Butler ("Souvenir," a regimental history)

The National Park Service said at the time the site was rumored to have been printing Confederate currency and bonds, but the claim has never been substantiated.

Charlie Crawford, president emeritus of the Georgia Battlefields Association, cautions the Phillips quotation may be apocryphal.

Crawford in a “Georgia Outdoors” segment produced several years ago for Georgia Public Broadcasting, talked about Sherman’s strategy.

“One of his objectives was to destroy any industry that might be of use to the Confederate government. Now in many cases, he would leave a flour mill, because he was uncertain how long his own troops would be here, and if they were here for a prolonged period of time, they might need flour,” Crawford said on the episode about mills. “And so he didn’t destroy every flour mill. But a paper mill or anything that was essentially superfluous to his efforts, but yet might aid the Confederacy, was fair game.”

Howls of protest: Women mill workers were taken north

The destruction of property, whether business or personal, was burned into the memories of Georgians. Of particular outrage was the fate of hundreds who worked at mills around Atlanta.

After a large Douglas County mill was torched by Union cavalry in July 1864, nearly 100 residents, mostly female workers and their children, were sent north by train -- under protest -- to spend the rest of the war. Many took an oath of allegiance to the United States. 

Don Scarbrough at New Manchester mill site in 2017 (Picket photo)

They shared the same fate as a much larger group of 500 people connected to destroyed mills in Roswell, just north of Atlanta.

From the Northern perspective, the workers were American citizens in open rebellion – a policy that outraged Southerners.

Crawford said the Sope Creek paper mill suspended operations before the cavalry arrived, so no workers were present to be taken into custody.

Researcher and historian Brad Quinlin said he recalled a 2014 event to commemorate the 600 mill workers being marched in Marietta before they were put on trains.

“We had a gentleman join us and said his gr-grandmother was one of those mill workers from Sope Creek Mill. It was fun to have him with us for the day and march with us to the square. He did not have much information on his gr-grandmother and her journey after she was shipped out of Marietta,” Quinlin wrote in an email.

Very few of those shipped north ever made it back to Georgia.