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


Comments

Post a Comment

Most Popular Posts

Arming the Buckeyes: Longarms of the Ohio Infantry Regiments

Image
     A common question that comes up in conversation about Civil War Buckeye regiments is "What were they armed with?" We are fortunate in that the state of Ohio kept good records of how the regiments were armed when they went into service, this being especially true for those regiments which went into service in 1861 and 1862. The state adjutant general's reports for 1861 and 1862 have been heavily drawn upon to construct this article, as well as consultation with Phil Spaugy who has done extensive research on how Ohio's troops were armed during the war.      Buckeyes carried a fairly wide variety of weapons into the field, and the below article breaks this down into weapons of both domestic manufacture and imported arms. The early days of the war found the state of Ohio practically bereft of longarms; as an example, when the 1st and 2nd Ohio Volunteer Militia left the state in late April 1861, they left unarmed, being armed at Lancaster, Pennsylvania on their way to
Read more

Bullets for the Union: Manufacturing Small Arms Ammunition During the Civil War

Image
       Civil War bullets are perhaps the most common item collected from the era; the two armies expended bullets by the millions during the four years’ conflict and spent or deformed bullets of all shapes and sizes have made fascinating and affordable collectibles since the guns went silent in 1865.       I recently acquired a display piece featuring 35 different types of small arms ammunition used during the Civil War, including everything from a small .28 caliber ball up to a .69 caliber three-ring Minie and it triggered some questions: how did the Federal army obtain its small arms ammunition during the war? Where did the lead come from to make the bullets, and where and how was the ammunition manufactured? This post seeks to answer those questions. A typical .58 caliber 3-ring Minie bullet   “Whenever the blasts of war blow in the ears of men who trade in the implements of destruction, they are apt to experience more joy than the true warrior, for then comes the harvest of gain.
Read more

Dressing the Rebels: How to Dye Butternut Jeans Cloth

Image
     In the early days of the Civil War,  the Southern states found themselves with an abundance of cotton but a shortage of cloth with which to make army uniforms. The trade in cloth prior to the war had largely been to send raw cotton or wool north to New England (or Great Britain) where it was converted into usable cloth; but now that trade was broken and the Southern states were thrown upon their own resources in their efforts to properly clothe the Confederate army.  This collection of Confederate enlisted men's frock coats and shell jackets gives some indication of the variety of shades of butternut worn during the war. All of them are shades of yellow brown, some heavier on the yellow and some heavier on the brown. The blue used around the collar or as rank insignia indicates that the soldier was in the infantry. Surviving Confederate uniforms are considered rather rare and command quite a healthy price in the collecting market. For an in-depth study of how Confederate jacke
Read more

The Wizard of Oz and the Civil War

Image
T he 1939 film The Wizard of Oz has delighted viewers for 85 years and ranks as a personal favorite, especially during the Halloween season. While watching it with the family the other night, I wondered if there were any connections between the film and the Civil War. Not surprisingly, the answer is yes and those connections touch both the blue and the gray.           Interestingly both “witches” in the film not only had Civil War ancestors but had connections with Civil War soldiers from Ohio. Margaret Hamilton, the “Wicked Witch of the West,” was born in Cleveland, Ohio on December 9, 1902, to attorney Walter Jones Hamilton and his wife Mary Jane Adams; Margaret’s grandfather was Judge Edwin Timothy Hamilton. Judge Hamilton had served as a private in Co. D of the 84 th Ohio Infantry during the summer of 1862. The 84 th Ohio, a three months’ regiment, served nearly the whole of its service attached to the Railroad District in western Maryland, performing provost duty at Cumberlan
Read more

The Vaunted Enfield Rifle Musket

Image
     The English-made Model 1853 .577 caliber Enfield Rifle Musket was widely regarded as the best infantry arm in the world at the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861. Favorable international press describing its efficiency in the Crimean War and in suppressing the Indian rebellion led to the widespread desire of American infantrymen (both Federal and Confederate) to be armed with these accurate and well-made arms. The lock plate of this well-worn P1853 Enfield rifle musket produced in 1862 shows the typical markings of a British-made weapon that made it through the Federal blockade.  ( Army of Tennessee Relics ) Enfield-pattern weapons were imported into the states by the tens and hundreds of thousands during the war years; one estimate stated that the Federal government purchased 500,000 while the Confederates purchased another 400,000. The Confederate government dispatched Captain Caleb Huse to Europe in April 1861 to purchase weapons and Huse focused on securing all the Enfi
Read more

In front of Atlanta with the 68th Ohio

Image
  The arrow corps badge of the 17th Army Corps was worn by many members of the 68th Ohio in the latter days of the war.       Private Edward A. Bigelow of Co. F of the 68th Ohio Volunteer Infantry wrote this brief account of the Battle of Atlanta just two days afterwards to his father back home in Henry County, Ohio. The regiment formed a part of Colonel Robert K. Scott's three regiment all-Ohio brigade consisting of the 20th, 68th, and 78th regiments, being designated the Second Brigade of the Third Division of Frank Blair's 17th Army Corps. Bigelow's letter originally appeared in the Napoleon Press newspaper and was copied in the Toledo Daily Commercial which was providential as no known copies exist today of the wartime Napoleon Press.  
Read more

Charging Battery Robinett: An Alabama Soldier Recalls the Vicious Fighting at Corinth

Image
W riting 30 years after the Battle of Corinth, James A. McKinstry of the 42 nd Alabama recalled his experiences storming Battery Robinett with Colonel William P. Rogers of the 2 nd Texas and expressed guilt that it was perhaps his action that brought about the colonel’s demise. “On seeing a line of Federals approaching, and before giving the situation a thought, I immediately raised my gun and fired full into the breast of a Federal sergeant, who was in front of the column, and only a short distance from us.  'Twas then that Captain George Foster shouted, "Cease firing, men! cease firing!" and waved his handkerchief, then I realized the true situation. 'Twas too late! That fatal volley had been turned on our little band from the muzzles of 1,500 muskets. I was still standing just as I was when I fired my last shot, and within a few feet of Colonel Rogers, when a Minie ball went crashing through my left hip and turned me half round; another went tearing through my
Read more

Federal Arms in the Stones River Campaign

Image
  T he following list, constructed after many years of research, lists unit by unit which type of weapons were carried by the Army of the Cumberland during the Stones River campaign. A number of sources were consulted including state ordnance reports, Federal quarterly ordnance reports (thank you Research Arsenal ), Ken Baumann’s Arming the Suckers, regimental histories and memoirs, captured ordnance reports, and consultation with knowledgeable experts in the field of firearms. Some of this information has been shared on the blog before in “ Rosy’s Heavy Metal: Artillery of the Army of the Cumberland ” or “ Shoulder Arms: How Sheridan’s and Davis’s Divisions Were Armed at Stones River ” but this is the first time the army as a whole has been presented. The overall conclusion I drew from looking at this data is that the Army of the Cumberland in December 1862 was an organization in the midst of transformation as far as arms. Many of the regiments still retained their original issue
Read more

Cook & Brother of New Orleans

Image
    The lockplate of a New Orleans-made Cook & Brother Enfield rifle produced in 1862 shows the fine craftsmanship that became the hallmark of the maker throughout the Civil War. Note the stars and bars flag at left, an emblem used on C&B's production throughout the war and the Cook & Brother, N.O. 1862 markings. Earlier production weapons at New Orleans had the flag located just above the maker's name while later weapons produced in Athens, Georgia would have a modified flag and Athens on the plate followed by the serial number.        In the spring of 1861, two English-born businessmen, Ferdinand and Francis Cook of New Orleans, perceived the need for the South to have its own domestic production of firearms and  set out to prove "that rifles could made here as well as in Yankee land or in Europe." The brothers  elected to produce copies of the British Model 1853 .577 caliber Enfield rifle as this was considered the benchmark longarm at the outset of the
Read more

Revisiting Snodgrass Hill: Memories of a 21st Ohio Officer

Image
Captain Isaac Cusac, Co. G, 21st Ohio Volunteer Infantry proudly displaying his rank as captain in an image likely dating from early 1863. One of his shoulder straps was shot off in the final stages of the 21st Ohio's fight atop Snodgrass Hill on September 20, 1863. Cusac brought it back to Chickamauga 50 years later.  I n September 1913, 83-year-old Isaac Cusac, a retired Presbyterian minister from the little town of McComb, Ohio, returned to Chattanooga to attend the national G.A.R. encampment. The former captain of the 21 st Ohio returned to Snodgrass Hill on the old Chickamauga battlefield on the 50 th anniversary of the battle carrying with him a precious relic of his wartime experiences. “He carried with him there an epaulet that was shot from his shoulder at the battle,” it was reported. “The bullet clipped off the epaulet and then struck him on the left hand, injuring two fingers.”           The flood of memories as he walked the grounds must have been overwhelming. The f
Read more