OHIO STATEWIDE FILES OH-FOOTSTEPS Mailing List *********************************************************************** USGENWEB NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. *********************************************************************** OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest Volume 99 : Issue 768 Today's Topics: #1 Fw: Bio History --Know your Ohio - ["Maggie Stewart" To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <043601bf280f$986c0620$0300a8c0@local.net> Subject: Fw: Bio History --Know your Ohio -- Ohio in the Civil War -- pt 7 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ----- Original Message ----- From: kathi kelley To: Sent: Saturday, October 30, 1999 1:24 PM Subject: Bio History --Know your Ohio -- Ohio in the Civil War -- pt 7 *********************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio From the Diaries of S.L. Kelley Know Your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley *********************************************** Ohio in the Civil War -- Pt 7 Balloons and Telegraph -- continuation. The Confederates too, fielded a few balloons but gave up after their best remembered " gas bag " the " Silk Dress Balloon," so named because it was made from strips of dresses donated by patriotic Southern women-- was captured in 1862. Gen James Longstreet, in a rare moment of romanticism, bemoaned its loss as " the meanest trick of the war." Where there were balloons, there were bound to be antiballoon measures. Chief among these were camouflage and antiballoon artilley fire. The Confederates used camouflage to deceive Union aerial observers, who from their airborne stations could count tents and guns and arrive at accurate estimates of their enemy's strength. Beauregard suggested camouflaged sheds and " Quaker guns" of blackened wood to represent entrenched cannon. More often, draw near and then let loose a salvo of shellfire--the world's first antiaircraft fire. Tom Rosser's battery of the Washington Artillery of New Orleans is said to have shot down one of McClelan's observation balloons in this manner, but " shot down " may have meant " forced down," since there is no record of a Union balloon being so destroyed, nor of a Union aeronaut being lost to Rebel gunfire. The telegraph, invented by Samuel F. B. Morse in 1844, had similarly profound effect on the conduct of the war. For the first time in history, military policymakers. generals in the field, and numerous lesser lights were able to communicate spontaneously and almost instantaneously. By 1864 General Grant , from his post in the field with the Army of the Potomac, could control the activities of a multitude of units operating on widely separated fronts as if he were present with each. The telegraph did not immediately displace more antiquated modes of communication such as the dispach rider, but by the end of the war nearly all strategic and a large proportion of tactical communications ( especially the Union armies ) were being handled by the telegraph. Both Governments adopted the exsisting civilian telegraph network for military use, but the North did so more efficiently, and for two reasons: first, the Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, was loath to interfere with private companies, preferring loose supervision to government control; second, Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's powerful Secretary of War and himself a former executive of the Atlantic and Ohio Telegraph Company, secured the active cooperation of Northern firms and created the Federal Military Telegraph System, which operated under his direct supervision. This organization at first worked in tandem with the U.S. Signal Corps ( established since June 1860 ), then in late 1863 all telegraphic communications, both strategic and tactical, became the responsibility of the civilian operators of Stanton's Military Telegraph System. The Signal Corps continued to operate, but was limited to visual signaling in tactical situations. ********************************************** Civil War in Ohio to be con't in part 8. ______________________________ ------------------------------ X-Message: #2 Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 23:35:56 -0500 From: "Maggie Stewart" To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <043c01bf2810$6ac44a60$0300a8c0@local.net> Subject: Fw: Bio History -- Know Your Ohio-- Ohio in the Civil War -- Part 8 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ----- Original Message ----- From: kathi kelley To: Sent: Sunday, October 31, 1999 12:46 PM Subject: Bio History -- Know Your Ohio-- Ohio in the Civil War -- Part 8 *********************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio From the Diaries of S.L. Kelley Know Your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley *********************************************** Ohio in the Civil War-- Part 8 In his diary of the Civil War, Mr. Kelley writes-- The Civil War has always fasinated me-- the stories handed down to me by friends and relatives, who not only lived them and wrote about them, but brought them to life, to be recorded, so that we will always remember the brave and loved ones who each day faced the unknown---- Stress -- Jitters -- Women-- Of the Civil War Suppose you have just left camp in a hurry with your regiment. Marching down a dusty road with your fellow soldiers, you know where you are going-- the telltale thud of artillery and the crackling of musketry sound nearer and nearer. Your colonel orders quick time, and your heart, already pounding out an alarm, shifts into an even wilder rhythm. Your column leaves the road and heads toward a clearing. The gunfire is loud, sulfurous smoke drifts by, and bloodied men limp past, heading for the rear. Shouting above the clatter, the officers order you and your comrades to shift positions and form a line of battle. Here and there, men take care of urgent, last minute business. Some whisper prayers. Some nerviously discard tools of sin: playing cards and risque pictures. One fellow with a foreboding of doom writes his name in pencil on a scrap of paper and pins it to his blouse. Some men can't stop talking; others are silent as tombstones. And then it's over. The enemy has retreated before you could join the fight. You march back to camp -- elated to be alive, but exhausted from the agony of preparing to die. This scene barely hints at the stress Civil War soldiers faced before every engagement. Most men experienced the instinctive response to perceived danger known at the " fight or flight reaction." This reaction made jobs like this so stressful. First your heart starts pounding, your blood pressure rockets, you breathe heavily. and you get a rush of adrenaline to make you hyper-alert. The whole incident ends peacefully, and you are still shaking from the stress. Perhaps you will soon go through the same drama again. After a while, your nerves begin to get frazzled, unless you find a wholesome way to relieve the stress. Of course, stressful conditions do not always end well, especially on battlefields. Civil War soldiers were wounded or killed in huge numbers, and it was this plain fact that brought on pre-battle jitters. Meanwhile, far from the shooting, soldier's wives had their own jitters and stress. A wife knew her husband ran a high risk of dying or being permanently disabled or disfigured. She knew he could be changed by the war. She knew that if he died in the war, she would be left without enough income to support herself and the children. She knew that unless her husband returned soon, she might not be able to keep the farm or business running. Granted, the stress women experienced on the homefront was not the same as what soldiers felt, but if the soldiers had the choice, would they have traded places with their wives? Would they have elected to sit and wait, knowing full well that the women they loved, or at least depended upon, might be erased from the face of the earth, and their was nothing they could do about it? I do not think so---. This was the stress felt by the wives and love ones at home. Many a wife or mother must of wished she could take the place of her soldier husband or son, prefering to risk her own life than to endure the torture of waiting and worrying while a loved one faced death. But she couldn't. So she took steps to busy herself --to lessen the pain for both of them. Women were more involved in the Civil War than any other war, since they were able to see the war first hand. There were more written about Southern women as they had more journels published and written, as they were expected to learn to read and write at an early age. Northern women were permitted to be active in other ways. The U.S. Sanitary Commission was created by women who helped stop diseases that were killing thousands of men before the they went into battle. They created battlefield hospitals and ambulance corps, They fed the troops, both North and South. They held fairs to raise money for the war effort, which resulted into millions of dollars. They formed Ladies aid societies who sewed , quilted, rolled bandages, packed suppies, perserved food, collected medicines, raised crops of food and animals,and etc. All for the cause of their loved ones. Women were permited as civilians to volunteer as nurses in some field hospitals, under the superision of the Sanitary Commission. For this they had special training, usually under supervision of Military doctors. There were reports of some women disquising themselves as men, and enlisting themselves to fight along side of the men. Many were later found out and let go, however, some wives under hardship, were able to follow their husbands and work as washer women. For this work they were paid. Other reports show women used as spies for the cause, and entertainers. Charitable Balls were planned to cheer many of the soldiers when they returned home for furlough. These things were done with love and understanding of the hardships of the soldiers efforts. Not forgeting, that life went on, and the homefront and farms, and businesses must continuely be maintained. Children had to be cared for and educated. They had to be both, mother and father. Fields had to be maintained, to pay the bills. Food had to be grown to fill the hungry. The Civil War changed the outlook of women. Finally they were being recognized and realization began, that the war could not have been won, without the help of the woman. ********************************************** Continued in part 9. ______________________________ ------------------------------ X-Message: #3 Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 23:37:39 -0500 From: "Maggie Stewart" To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <044301bf2810$a8508420$0300a8c0@local.net> Subject: Fw: Bio History -- Know Your Ohio -- Ohio in the Civil War -- pt 9-A Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ----- Original Message ----- From: kathi kelley To: Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 1999 4:38 PM Subject: Bio History -- Know Your Ohio -- Ohio in the Civil War -- pt 9-A *********************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio From the diaries of S. L. Kelley Know your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley *********************************************** Ohio in the Civil War -- part 9 --A. The following advertisement appeared in the Newspapers of New York City on April 29th, 1861. The presses of the Nation picked it up and reprinted it in newspapers of Ohio and in all the Union Newspapers. It planted the seed and the formation of the United States Sanitary Commission. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ TO THE WOMEN OF NEW YORK AND THE NATION, and especially to those already engaged in preparing against the time of wounds and sickness in the Army. The importance of systematizing and concentrating the spontanious and earnest efforts now making by the women of New York and the rest of the Nation, for the supply of extra medical aid to our Army through its present campaign, must be obvious to all reflecting persons. Numerous societies, working without concert, organization, or head, without any direct understanding with the official authorities, without any positive instructions as to the immediate or future wants of the Army, are liable to waste their enthusiasm in disproportionate efforts, to overlook some claims and overdo others, while they give unnecessary trouble in official quarters, by the variety and irregularity of their proffers for help or their inquiries for guidance. As no existing organization has a right to claim precedence over any other, or could properly assume to lead in this noble cause, where all the desire to be first, it is proposed by the undersignd, members of various circles now actively engaged in this work, that the women of New York, should meet in the Cooper Institute, on Monday next, at eleven o'clock, A.M., to confer together, and to appoint a General Committee, with power to Organize the benevolent purposes of all into a common movement. To make the meeting practical and effective, it seems proper here to set forth briefly the objects that should be kept in view. The form which women's bevevolence has already taken, is likely to take, in the present crisis, is, first, the contrbution of labor, skill, and money in the preparation of lint bandages and other stores, in aid of the wants of the Medical Staff; second, the offer of personal services as nurses. In regard to the first, it is important to obtain and disseminate exact official information as o the nature and variety of the wants of the army; to give proper direction and proportion to te labor extended, so as to avoid superfluity in some things and deficiency in others; and to this end, to come to a careful and thorough understanding with the official head of the Medical Staff, through a committee having this department in hand. To this committee should be assigned the duty of conferring with other associations in other parts of the country, and especially through the press, to keep the women of the loyal States everywhere imformed how their efforts may be wisely and econimically employed, and their contributions of all kinds most directly concentrated at New York, and put at the service of the Medical Staff. A central depot would, of course, be the first thing to be desired. In the second form of benevolence-- the offer of personal services as nurses-- it is felt that the public mind needs much enlightenment, and the overflowing zeal and sympathy of the women of the nation, a careful channel,not only to prevent waste of time and effort, but to save embarrassment to the official staff, and to secure real efficiency in the srvice. Should our unhappy war be continued, the Army is certain to want the services of extra nurses, not merely on account of the casualties on the field, but of camp diseases originating in the exposure of the soldiery to a strange climate and to unaccustomed hardships. The result of all the experience of other war has been to prove the total uselessness of any but picked and skilled women in this department of duty. The ardor and zeal of all other women should therefore be concentrated upon finding, preparing, and sending bands of women, of suitable age, constitution, training, and temperment, to the Army at such points and at such time as they asked for by Medical Staff. A central organization is wanted, therefore, to which all those desiring to go as nurses may be referred, where a committee of examiners, partly medical and partly otherwise, may at once decide upon the fittness of the canidate. Those accepted should then at once be put under competent instruction and discipline--( for which is understood, a thorough school will be opened at once by the Medical Faculty of the city.), and as occasion offers, the best prepared, in sucessive order, be sent, under proper escort, to the scene of the war, as they are wanted. It is felt that all who want to go, and are fitted to go, should have the chance to do so, and are not unlikely to be wanted sooner or later. Of these, may be rich and many poor. Some may wish to go at their own charges, and others may require to be aided as to their expenses, and still others, for the loss of their time. But the best nurses should be sent, irrespective of these distinctions-- as only the best are economical on any terms. It will appear that without a central organization, with proper authority, there can be no efficiency, system, or discipline in this important matter of nurses--and there can be no organization. to which a cheerful submission will be paid, except to originate in the common will, and be genuine representative of all the women of New York, and of all exsisting associations having this kind of aid in view. It is obvious that such an organization will require generous contributions, and that all women of New York and of the country, not otherwise lending aid, will have a direct opportunity of giving support to the object so near their hearts, through the treasury of this common organization. To consider this matter deliberately, and to take such common action as may then appear wise, we earnestly invite the women of New York, and the pastors of the churches, with such medical advisors as may be specially invited, to assemble for council and action, at Cooper Institute, on Monday Morning next, at eleven o'clock. Mrs. Gen. Dix. -- Mrs. Hamilton Fish -- Mrs. Lewis C. Jones -- Mrs. E. Robinson -- Mrs. William Kirkland -- Mrs. Wm H. Aspinwall -- Mrs. R.B. Minturn -- Mrs. Jas. B. Johnson -- Mrs. Judge Roosevelt -- Mrs. A. M. Bininger -- Mrs. W.C. Bryant -- Mrs. R.L. Stuart -- Mrs. D.D. Field -- Mrs. W.B. Astor, Jr. -- Mrs. M. Grinnell -- Mrs. G.L. Schuyler -- Mrs. H.K. Bogart -- Mrs. Charles Bultler -- Mrs. E.C. Lane -- Mrs M.D. Swett -- Mrs R. M. Blatchford -- Mrs. S.F. Birdham -- Mrs. A.W. Bradford -- Mrs.W. H. Lee -- Mrs. Parke Goodwin -- Mrs. H.J. Raymond -- Mrs. S.L.M. Barlow -- Mrs. J. Auchincloss -- Mrs. Walker -- Mrs. Elisha Fish -- Mrs. C.A. Seward -- Mrs. S. Osgood -- Mrs. Peter Cooper -- Mrs. Thomas Tileston -- Mrs. F.S. Wiley -- Mrs. R. Gracie -- Mrs. M. Catlin -- Mrs. Chandler -- Mrs. R.B. Winthrop -- Mrs. G. Stuyvesant -- Mrs George Curtis -- Mrs. A.R. Eno -- Mrs. W.F. Carey-- Mrs. A.S. Hewitt -- Mrs. Dr. Peaslee -- Mrs. H. B. Smith-- Mrs R. Hitchcock -- Mrs F.F. Marbury -- Mrs. F.F. B. Morse -- Mrs. Judge Daly -- Mrs. Charles R. Swords -- Mrs. Marquand -- Mrs. G. Holbrooke -- Mrs. D. Adams-- Mrs. H. Webster -- Mrs. Moffat -- Mrs. H.W. Bellows --Mrs. Stuart Brown -- Mrs. Ellis -- Mrs. J. D. Wolfe -- Mrs. Alonzo Potter -- Mrs. R. Campbell --Mrs. Griffin -- Mrs. L.M. Rutherford -- Mrs. S.J. Baker -- Mrs. H. Baylis -- Mrs. John Sherwood -- Mrs. S,H, Tying -- Mrs Capt. Shumway -- Mrs. Edward Bayard -- Mrs. James I. Jones -- Mrs Judge Betts -- Mrs. William G. Ward -- Mrs. H.E. Eaton -- Mrs. W.C. Evarts -- Mrs. Judge Bonney -- Mrs. Minturn -- Mrs. M. Trimble -- Mrs. S.B. Collins -- Mrs. R.H. Browne -- Mrs B.R. Mclivaine -- Mrs. John Reid -- Mrs. N. Lawrence -- Mrs C. Newbold -- Mrs-- J.B. Collins -- Mrs. J.C. Smith -- Mrs. Paul Spotford -- Mrs. C.W. Field -- Mrs. P. Townsend -- Mrs L. Baker -- Mrs. Charles King. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ To be continued in part 9 B. -------------------------------- End of OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest V99 Issue #768 *******************************************