Barbecued Ribs and the Pipe of Peace: The 1889 Blue-Gray Reunion at Chickamauga

Concurrent with the annual meeting of the Society of the Army of the Cumberland, a Blue-Gray Veterans’ Reunion and Barbecue was held at Crawfish Springs, Georgia on September 20, 1889. It was reported that over 12,000 attended the barbecue, thousands of them veterans who enjoyed not only a hearty meal but a chance to tour the battlefield and meet face to face with their enemies from years before.

          Uriah Cahill, a veteran of the 31st Ohio, wrote that “on Friday morning the 20th, we boarded an early train for Crawfish Springs where the blue and gray were to have a grand barbecue,” he wrote. “Our party got off at Mission Ridge station and a walk of a mile and half brought us to Snodgrass Hill where the 31st Ohio fought on that Sunday afternoon 26 years ago. We had no trouble locating the spot where we took part in one of the hardest contested battles of the war. There may be seen evidence of the desperate struggle.”

Invitation to the 1889 Blue-Gray Barbecue
(Image courtesy of Dr. Anthony Hodges)

          An Indiana veteran described the grounds upon which the barbecue was held. “The greatest event was the reunion of the Blue and Gray at Crawfish Spring on the 26th anniversary of the great battle,” he wrote. “This spring is the largest we have ever seen. The water bursts from under a giant rock and flows away in a stream larger than Sugar Creek. Nearby in the beautiful ground that was once a Rebel camp a stand was erected from which Generals Rosecrans and Gordon addressed the assembled veterans of both armies. It was a grand sight to see these heroes of the war greet each other and such a contrast to when they met upon this field 26 years ago.”

          Cahill and his comrades explored the field, walking into Crawfish Springs too late to hear the speeches made by the welcoming committee. General John B. Gordon, a decorated veteran of the Army of Northern Virginia then serving as Governor of Georgia, gave the welcoming address. “On this anniversary morning, the South salutes you with uncovered heads, open arms, earnest, honest hearts. She cannot receive you with costly and imposing ceremonies, but with the simplicity of speech and patriotic purposes,” he said.  Turning to General William Rosecrans and his comrades of the Army of the Cumberland, Gordon said, “I come with a soldier’s greeting on my lips and a soldier’s sympathy in my hearts. Speaking for those whom I am called to represent, I pledge their earnest cooperation in the sacred mission which convenes you and in all things which pertain to the peace, welfare, and unity of the American people. We are here to unite with you in the final and eternal sepulcher of sectional hostility.”  

          General Rosecrans, visibly moved, rose to respond to Gordon’s welcome and commented “most feelingly on the grand sight and scene presented, old Confederate and Federal soldiers sitting side by side and engaging in pleasant friendly conversation, and he prayed to God that the day would soon come when the last vestige of feeling over the war would be eradicated.” Rosecrans concluded by saying “I am sorry I am not able to fittingly express the feeling I have on this occasion, nor to give speech to kind thoughts that come to my mind as I stand here. I am sure I have not words, neither have I voice to appropriately do so, but I hope and pray that the future may see the eminent success of our fraternal undertaking.” This concept of reconciliation became one of the guiding lights of Rosecrans’ remaining years; when he was buried in Los Angeles in 1898, he was borne to the grave by eight men: four Union veterans, and four Confederate veterans.

          The barbecue itself was a grand feast. “There were set up 30 tables 250 feet long,” Cahill continued. “On these tables were 12,000 loaves of bread, and there was said to be cooked 104 hogs, 185 sheep, 122 goats, and 7 beeves. Taking the reunion altogether it was a very enjoyable gathering. The feeling between the boys in blue and gray seemed friendly.” Our Indiana veteran recalled that the provisions for the meal also included 65 pounds of pepper, 1,200 pounds of salt, 300 pounds of butter, and a barrel of vinegar.

One of the few surviving Chickamauga peace pipes made from wood cut on the Chickamauga battlefield and distributed at the 1889 Blue-Gray reunion. The paper labels attached to the bowl grew fragile with time and its possible that there are many survivors missing the label.
(Image courtesy of Dr. Anthony Hodges and Tennessee Virtual Archive)


          On top of the mounds of tasty victuals, the veterans were delighted to find that the committee had procured 75 pounds of tobacco along with a small gift placed beside each plate: a pipe, symbolizing the pipe of peace. “The pipe is nicely finished and inscribed as follows: ‘Chattanooga’s Pipe of Peace: Veterans’ Day of the Blue and Gray. Barbecue, Crawfish Springs, Walker County, Georgia. September 20, 1889. Made from wood grown on the battlefield of Chickamauga,” remembered one of the attendees, Colonel Jonathan R. Miles of the 27th Illinois. The number of these pipes has been variously reported as anywhere from 1,400 in one account to 14,000 number but one thing is clear, surviving Chickamauga pipes today are rare as a hen’s tooth.

          One of the primary goals of the event was to form a joint Chickamauga Memorial Association whose mission was to develop a package to present to Congress requesting an appropriation to purchase the Chickamauga battlefield and form a national military park based on the model of Gettysburg. “The bill passed both house of Congress with little opposition and on August 19, 1890, President Benjamin Harrison signed into law” the bill the led to the creation of the Chickamauga National Military park.

          In the years after the battle, veterans treasured relics that reminded them of this costliest battle in the western theater. General John Corson Smith, who had fought at Chickamauga as a member of the 96th Illinois General James B. Steedman’s division of the Reserve Corps, had a cut-glass decanter he had retrieved from General Longstreet’s former headquarters on Lookout Mountain in the fall of 1863. “This was empty when I found it on Lookout Mountain, but in all other respects is exactly the same,” he said. “The decanter has an old-fashioned silver stopper with an intelligent self-acting valve that knows exactly when to shut its mouth. Even the thin cylinder of cork surrounding the stopper is the same through which the Confederate general poured consolation and courage into a tin cup both before and after defeat or victory.”

General Walter Whitaker

          Hanging in a corner of his study was the headquarters flag that once belonged to General Walter Whitaker, commanding the Second Brigade of the First Division of the 14th Army Corps in the days after Chickamauga. “Whitaker was feared by many, loved by some, and despised by none,” General Smith recalled. “A cyclone in battle, he was a tempest in a teapot in camp. Genial and jolly at times, he was jealous of any seeming affront to his rank and dignity even to the point of ridiculousness, hurling causeless curses promiscuously upon the imaginary offender.” Smith recalled Whitaker’s nickname being “General Walter Thee Whitaker, by God sah!”

          Another of General Smith’s prized relics was a Chickamauga log embedded with a shell, a gift from Colonel Seth B. Moe who served on General Steedman’s staff during Chickamauga. The section of white oak was 31 inches high and 19 inches in diameter with a Confederate shell “three inches in diameter and nine inches longs which pierced the young tree to the depth of four inches but did not explode. Twenty-six years of growth have swollen the sapling so that its bark is now flush with the butt of the imprisoned shell.” General Smith averred that in the event of a house fire, the first thing he would save would be the log for fear that the shell would explode in the heat “littering the park with a mixture of houses and human beings.”


A "Chickamauga log" held in a collection in Connecticut.

          One wonders whether General Smith’s log was genuine as local entrepreneurs had made a cottage industry of crafting “Chickamauga logs.”  One reporter noted that “suspicion exists that the manufacture of relics is a profitable industry followed by some residents of the vicinity. It is said that with assorted fragments of iron, a collection of musket balls, some scarred logs, and a sledgehammer, the most interesting relics can be turned out in a few hours. During the recent Confederate reunion, a man drove into Chattanooga with a wagon full of logs, one of which had 13 pieces of shell sticking in it and partially visible.”

          No doubt the attendees of the Blue-Gray barbecue likewise had a chance to pick up souvenirs, one of the more popular of which proved to be these logs. “People who live on the battlefield proper say that those who are not so fortunate as to have free access to the forest in which the fighting was done manufacture their relics right along,” the article continued. “They argue that a piece of tree, with a bullet only half hidden by the bark, is to be viewed with natural suspicion because it is only reasonable to suppose that in 27 years the wood of any live tree would have grown over the imbedded missile. Then they take you out into the forest and show you that while every tree shows marks of being struck, there are no bullets protruding. To make the object lesson complete, the honest native takes an axe, chops into the tree at one of the scars, and shows the genuine relic- a bullet buried two or three inches into the bark. The moral is- beware of Chickamauga relics which show too much.”


Special thanks to Dr. Anthony Hodges for his assistance with this article. Also check out his article "Smoking the Pipe of Peace: Blue-Gray BBQ of 1889." 

         

Sources:

“If They Could Speak: War Relics Collected by a Chicago Soldier Might Tell a Very Interesting Story,” Freeport Daily Journal (Illinois), June 20, 1889, pg. 4

“Chickamauga Relics,” Western Veteran (Kansas), December 24, 1890, pg. 4

“Mementoes of Dixie,” Alton Telegraph (Illinois), October 3, 1889, pg. 6

“Glorious Reunion: Army of the Cumberland-Warm Words of Fraternity,” Miami Helmet (Ohio), September 26, 1889, pg. 8

“Army of the Cumberland,” Uriah Cahill, Co. F, 31st Ohio, Richwood Gazette (Ohio), October 3, 1889, pg. 2

“Chattanooga Letter,” J.F.K., Hancock Democrat (Indiana), October 3, 1889, pg. 4


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