The Americanologist Book Review: Unexpected Finds and Murphy's Law
Normally in this space, I choose a book that is generally available and accessible, either in current print or with a strong used cohort. For this edition, a rare book is under consideration. As The Americanologist, one of my great joys in life is to find something “old” from American life that is “new” to me, and few objects hold my interest as strongly as a hardcover book from the distant past. I have collected a working library of books on history, culture, politics, nature, fiction, biography, and science, primarily but not limited to the American experience. I find them in some of the most interesting places, scavenging across the country on my travels, tucked away in flea markets, thrift and antique stores, as well as the occasional independent used bookstores specializing in dusty old books. Combined with the fact that I tend to seek out the American battlefield landscape, the souls of the men lost often drift through the mist and settle on the pages of the treasures I find. In my own trips, from Gettysburg and the Shenandoah in the east to Chattanooga and Atlanta in the west, small corners of Americana yield great treasures of pages printed generations before my birth. Coming across a first edition of a classic is one of those moments when I feel the joy I first felt when my parents presented me with a full pictorial youth encyclopedia set on American history when I was about 10 years old. Sometimes my find is an early reprint of a book that sold well in its first contemporary offerings, when the people whose lives were changed by the U.S. Civil War were interpreting and collecting their own history. To know something of the battle, of the people and places where a loved one fell was a human need, and these works provided a way to reach out and touch their fathers, sons, husbands, and brothers lost, often never recovered home.
As rewarding as my find is when I gain a copy near a battlefield, this was truly a war that touched every life in the nation, and those stories echoed beyond the grim space of the campaigns, assaults, and defensive positions. There are classic first editions and reprints scattered across the nation, and I have found them in some of the most unlikely places. One of my prized finds came from a barn on the Old Mission peninsula in the Traverse City area of Michigan, where we came across an antique shop whose owner had passed away and the estate was now in the process of liquidation. A very clean first edition Volume II of The Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, printed in 1885, was tucked into the corner of a shed. In discussion with the deceased owner’s daughter, who served as the estate executrix, a fair price was paid on a book that had not been marked for sale by her father. When she offered to sell the book for $20, not sure of its value in the mountain of items her father had acquired, I had to decline the price, offering instead $50 to her as a more equitable deal. My wife patiently waited while we scoured the area for the first volume of the set, which, if it was in the same shape as the second, would have fairly priced the set at over $200. (Sotheby’s has a set of the originals rebound listed for $4,500 currently, a bit out of my price range!). Unfortunately, there was no match to be made. The book rests now on my fireplace mantle, mixed in with several other unique finds, including a first edition of T.E. Lawrence’s Revolt in the Desert, from which David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia cinematic masterpiece was born. There is a first edition of Father Duffy’s Story, the priest’s view of New York’s Fighting 69th, the national guard regiment activated into the Rainbow Division in World War I. This Irish regiment earned its own Civil War glory, which included its mass absolution by Father Jerome Corby before it marched out into the Wheatfield as part of the Union’s “Irish Brigade” at Gettysburg on July 2nd to meet the enemy. The key to being a good hoarder of a particular item is to never quit looking.
Recently, on an impromptu date night with my wife, we drove up to Dundee, Michigan to get a bite to eat at one of our favorite comfort food restaurants, River’s Edge. While we put our names in for a table, we went next door to CK Antiques and Restorations, looking for a particular piece of antique furniture which had eluded us for some time. We were in luck, they had a table which met our extended search. With our decision made, we had some time to browse. The first section I always head for when we are not engaged on a specific hunt is the one with books- and in just a few minutes, I spied two volumes of a set, in a special display, wrapped in plastic, unlike the majority of the holdings. Finding a book given special treatment by a shop is always an intriguing prospect, and reading the spine of the first, I could not believe my eyes. I was holding a first edition of The Official Roster of the Soldiers of the State of Ohio in the War of the Rebellion, 1861-1866, Volume VI, printed in 1888. This volume covered the early officially reported histories of Ohio volunteer infantry regiments numbered 70 through 86. These units were organized in the call from President Lincoln in the summer and fall of 1861 for the states to form men into regiments committed to 3 years of warfare after the realization that an army of volunteers committed for 90 days would have no impact on the secession of the south and the restoration of the nation. This also meant that the Radical Republican goals of the immediate and full abolition of slavery in North America would remain a seemingly impossible outcome.
Here, north of Ohio, nowhere near a Civil War battlefield, was the book which held the official roster report that includes great-great grandfather Lamont’s regiment, the 82nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. It had a torn lower spine cover but was it not missing any printed area, and from the outside the pages looked worn but intact, but wrapped as it was, I needed to inspect the inside. My wife knew by the sound of my voice and the look on my face that I had truly found something wonderful, and the fact I was babbling excitedly and bounding toward her removed any doubt. Priced at $60, there was no way I was not taking this home with me. The store’s owner, Cassie, offered to unwrap the book so I could inspect it fully before purchase, and she also patiently endured the sudden appearance of a 10-year-old history nerd in front of her, recounting the importance of the find.
One of the unique human traits we share is the need to assign meaning to our lives. Among the many ways this occurs are the attachments we place on not only relationships with people, but to ideas, places, experiences, and objects that can transport us across time. As a public historian, I consider the preservation of archival material and artifacts a crucial duty in not only preserving the memory and history of the nation, but also a sacred bridge that helps us to make and interpret meanings by connecting us to deep reservoirs of knowledge and community. For me, the physical book in my hand, which contains information which is easily accessible on the internet now, brought me one step closer to uncovering my family’s story in the lives of Lamont, his brother William, and cousin, Solomon. To add this to my small stack of curated books was a grand moment!
As a trio, Lamont, William, and Solomon statistically represent a fair approximation of the mortal experience of the northern volunteer infantryman in the war. William died in May of 1863 of typhus in Virginia and is buried in the Fredericksburg National Cemetery. He was a second-year man who never saw a major battle, joining his younger brother, Lamont, one of the original 1861 men, in the fall of 1862 after the unit fought at Second Manassas. William had come to the unit after the two brother’s cousin, Solomon, went home disabled in October of 1862 out of the Shenandoah Valley, after the unit’s first battle at McDowell. Virginia. These facts are recorded in this volume, but additional research yielded Solomon’s fate, death at home in the last week of June of 1863, the result of his disability. Only Lamont survived the 3-year commitment to the cause, serving in a regiment that experienced a unique combination of defeats and victories across its 3 and a half years of battle.
The statistics of the 82nd OVI officially recorded in the book now held in my hand are not a new revelation, the contents of the records are preserved digitally and accessible to all with internet access at the Official Roster of the Soldiers of State of Ohio in the War of the Rebellion, 1861 - 1866 through The Hathi Trust, a blessing of modern technology for the ghosts of the Union. Modern military veterans provide proof of their eligibility for benefits with their DD-214, the U.S. Department of Defense’s abbreviated testimony to an individual’s service which includes periods of federal service during wartime or campaigns. In the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War, there was no standardized means for an individual to prove his service, and this impacted the veterans themselves, their widows and orphans, and the communities which had committed their men to the war. A mix of state and federal benefit programs had been created, but they were incomplete in their impact and access to eligible citizens. It was not until the advocacy of the Union veterans through the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) from the end of the war and into the 1880s that a true federal pension system was established. These documents from the state of Ohio, ultimately consisting of twelve volumes, were essentially the state’s required testimonials to a soldier’s honorable performance of their commitment (volunteer or otherwise) in the great war that shaped the modern nation. But the book has another strange link to my grandfather.
On the inside cover of the book, there are three names listed as the signatories for the official records authorized by the Ohio General Assembly, to preserve and testify to the histories of the men and their units in the great war of rebellion. On this volume, the first is the governor of the state in 1888, Joseph B. Foraker, a veteran of the 89th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, whose unit fought as part of Palmer’s XIV Corps, also part of George Henry Thomas’ Army of The Cumberland. Foraker was also at Resaca, the Dallas battle line (Dallas, New Hope Church, Pickett’s Mill), Kennesaw, and Peachtree Creek, a shared experience with grandfather Lamont.
A second name on the title page is H.A. Axline, the Adjutant General of the State of Ohio in 1888. Henry Augustus Axline is considered the “Father of the Ohio National Guard.” Axline also served in the Civil War, enlisting at the age of 15 in the 159th Ohio Volunteers, a 100-day unit formed in 1864, but outside of the 1864 battle at Monocacy Junction, gained limited battle experience during his short enlistment.
Finally, the book is signed by James S. Robinson, Ohio’s Secretary of State in 1888. General Robinson was Lamont’s regimental commander in the 82nd Ohio at Gettysburg, leading the regiment out into the field north of the town, advancing forward of its hasty picket fence defensive position on July 1st in a doomed attempt to protect the exposed right flank of the Union’s I Corps. Targeted from its left by artillery above it on Oak Hill and pressed from the front by the confederate forces of Ewell’s 2nd Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia, the 82nd moved forward 150 yards beyond its support on the left and right, drawing fire and shifting the attack away from the right flank of I Corps temporarily. The maneuver proved costly to the regiment, with 18 of its 20 officers wounded or killed on the first day, including Colonel Robinson, wounded as he led the troops forward on his horse.
James Robinson recovered and returned to serve with the 82nd Ohio, promoted to Brigadier General and brigade commander in the western theater in Alpheus Williams’ division of Hooker’s XX Corps. Robinson had enlisted in 1861 as a captain originally with the 4th Ohio, Company G, and was transferred to the 82nd OVI as a Major in early 1862. Now as brigade commander, he led the 82nd OVI as part of his brigade throughout the Atlanta Campaign, Sherman’s March to the Sea, and then finally in its march through the Carolinas to destroy Joe Johnston’s army as Sherman moved toward Richmond to join Ulysses Grant in finishing off Lee and ending the war. Robinson had risen politically after the war as a U.S. House representative from Ohio and was elected as Secretary of State.
As I opened the book it was apparent that it was well-used, and the spine cracked and loosened, which required holding the front cover firmly, to avoid further damage. Flipping through the pages to find the 82nd OVI’s sections, which begins on page 507 and ends on page 567, I was disheartened to find that the exact pages (521 through 532) that held both Company C and D’s roster had been removed from the book, sliced out carefully. “Murphy’s Law,” a shorthand explanation for the often-frustrating nature of the universe, had snatched the most important pages from my grasp.
There is no way to know why these specific pages were removed, but a likely answer comes from the economic realities facing Civil War veterans, and the fact that reproductive technology was not available to them as they struggled to prove their service. These pages served as the soldier’s DD-214, and without them, the process of applying and receiving benefits was more than difficult. Of the 6,000 original copies of this printing, many were collected by local community groups, the GAR itself, and held by state and federal repositories to use as reference for the claims made by veterans and survivors. The issue of back-payment and ongoing remission of pensions to the soldiers and their dependents with proof of marriage for death and disability payments required affidavits, appearances before local judges, the collection of marriage records, birth and death certificates. In the case of disability pensions (under federal invalid programs specifically for veterans) a regular medical examination by a local board-certified physician was required on a regular basis, to testify that a particular veteran was physically unable to work.
For grandfather Lamont, a resident of Defiance, Ohio at the time of his death in 1929, his last invalid pension examination copy, available from the National Archives and Records Administration which still holds these records, occurred in February of 1929, at his recorded age of 90. The sworn affidavit signed by D.J. Slosser, MD, of the Defiance County Medical Society, on June 5, 1929, notes that, along with a list of maladies and a recent stroke, “if the intent of the law is ‘complete Disability’ and applies to any man, it surely applies to Mr. Cupp.” Even though Lamont had been on the Civil War Invalid Pension roll since the late 1890’s based upon medical conditions that had begun during the Atlanta campaign and required his hospitalization in Atlanta, after the 82nd Ohio was one of the first union regiments to enter the city, his continued payments required recertification. In this case, it involved the efforts of his local congressman, C.J. Thompson. Representative Thompson had intervened after the claim had been received first by the federal government in September of 1927 and languished in the bowels of the bureaucracy, an experience not unlike veterans that would follow him throughout the rest of the 20th century and now into the 21st.
I did collect this treasure, and Cassie made a fair adjustment to the price based upon the missing pages, a kindness I appreciate. The book now sits on the mantle, next to U.S. Grant’s memoir volume II, awaiting its companion should I ever be fortunate enough to find a matching first piece, when once again the 9-year old who felt as if struck by lightning in the field north of Gettysburg in 1972 can reappear in a slightly grayer and older version in some dusty bookstore, flea market, or antique store.
