Civil War Photo Friday: Private Simeon J. Crews, 7th Texas Cavalry

This fearsome fellow is Private Simeon J. Crews of Co. F, 7th Texas Cavalry Regiment. He's carrying a revolver and a cavalry saber that he's cut down for some reason, making it more of a stabbing than slashing weapon.

The 7th Cavalry saw plenty of action, going with General Sibley on his ill-fated expedition into New Mexico and later fighting in Texas and Louisiana.

I can't get over this guy's weapon! It reminds me of another Confederate Texan I've featured here and some of the medieval weapons used in the Civil War. I would definitely try to shoot this guy before he got in close.


Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Civil War Photo Friday: John Wilson Vermillion, CSA

This is John Wilson Vermillion of Virginia, long thought to be Texas Jack Vermillion, a supporter of Wyatt Earp during the Tombstone fights. Actually that was a different man, as is thoroughly proven in an excellent new book I reviewed here.

While John Wilson Vermillion wasn't the famous Western gunslinger, he still had an interesting life. Here he is posing for a photo during his time serving in the Confederate army. He enlisted on August 12, 1861 in the 5th Battalion of Tennessee cavalry. He spent the war mostly in Tennessee and Kentucky and saw a great deal of combat. His service records are incomplete, but we know he was sent home at least once after being wounded.

Here he is with a cavalry saber and a rather unimpressive little pistol. This photo was probably taken when he enlisted. Men would often have their photos taken to mark that important event, and often posed with weapons supplied by the studio. So while he certainly carried a saber during the war, that little popgun may have been a studo prop!

On the other hand, many soldiers brought weapons and other equipment from home. Vermillion's war records show he was paid extra because he brought his own horse, so maybe he carried that pistol as a backup weapon to the saber, pistol, and possibly carbine that the army issued him.

Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Civil War Photo Friday: A Duel Between Confederate Generals

"You're a coward!"

Remember Confederate General John Sappington Marmaduke? He was best known for raiding Missouri, although he had some fatal flaws as a cavalry commander.

This didn't stop him from being judgmental about his fellow officers. After the Battle of Helena, Marmaduke felt General Marsh Walker had let the side down. He accused him of "avoiding danger", basically saying he was a coward. The fact that Walker was later given some of Marmaduke's troops didn't help matters.

That was in July of 1863, but in September, 150 years ago this month, Marmaduke began to be vocal about Walker's supposed cowardice. Walker heard of this and, being a Southern gentleman, demanded satisfaction.

Both were in command of troops defending Little Rock, Arkansas, from an advancing and considerably larger Union army, but they didn't let little things like a military crisis from standing in the way of their egos.

"Wanna fight?"

At dawn on September 6, the two met at a plantation seven miles north of the city. With a crowd of officers looking on, the two men stood back to back with drawn pistols. They then marched fifteen paces, spun, and fired. Both missed. Marmaduke was the first to get another shot off, putting a bullet into Walker's side. The general staggered back, firing off a shot that went wild as he fell to the ground.

Walker lingered for a whole day, during which time he wrote a statement to his friends and family that they should forgive Marmaduke and not do him any harm. Soon after, Walker died, a gentleman to the last.

Marmaduke's commander General Sterling Price could have had him court marshaled and shot, but with the enemy at the gates he kept him in command. The Union army pushed the rebels out of Little Rock on September 10 and as the Confederate army retreated everyone seemed to forget about Marmaduke's deed. He continued to command troops until he was captured in the autumn of 1864.

When you take away a cavalryman's horse, he ain't happy

In a previous post I talked about the 30th Arkansas Infantry, a Confederate unit. That name is a bit misleading because the regiment actually began life as cavalry.

There were chronic supply problems in the Trans-Mississippi Theater, however, and in June of 1863, Major General Hindman realized he didn't have enough fodder for all the horses under his command. In a letter dated June 19, 1863, he wrote, "The scarcity of supplies now caused great distress. Nearly two months must yet elapse before the new crop would ripen. To lessen the consumption of corn, I found it necessary to dismount four regiments of Texans and three of Arkansians. This produced much dissatisfaction, and there were many desertions in consequence."

One of those units was the 30th Arkansas, and the records show a spike of desertions at this time. Cavalry considered themselves superior to infantry, they fancied themselves knights riding into battle rather than commoners slogging through the mud. To lose one's horse was insulting, and many simply went home rather than be turned into infantry.

The Fatal Flaw of many Confederate Cavalry Raiders

On this date 150 years ago, Confederate Colonel Joseph Porter was dying. He had been fatally wounded at the Battle of Hartville, Missouri, a few days before while supporting General Marmaduke's cavalry raid.

Marmaduke was now retreating back to Arkansas, having caused a fair amount of trouble for the Union forces in Missouri. His raid could not be called a success, however. Marmaduke blundered badly at the Second Battle of Springfield when he attacked an entrenched position with little artillery and no numerical superiority. The rule of thumb is that you need at least 3-1 superiority in numbers to take an entrenched position.

The Battle of Hartville was another stand-up battle. While the rebels won this time, they lost many men and all they really achieved was an escape route out of Missouri.

Cavalry raids were most effective when they moved quickly and hit the enemy's weak spots. In between these two battles, Marmaduke's men burnt bridges, cut telegraph wires, and snapped up small Union outposts. They should have stuck with that. Getting into set-piece battles is not what a cavalry raid is for.

Porter should have learned that lesson before he ever joined Marmaduke in 1863. The year before, he'd been given the duty of raising troops and causing trouble in northeastern Missouri. His ranks swelled to some 2,000 men. While about half had no weapons, Porter fought a series of skirmishes and battles with Union forces that whittled away his numbers and led to a mass desertion of some 500 men in a single day. His ranks much reduced, he fled south and ended up under Marmaduke's command.

My books American Civil War Guerrilla Tactics and Ride Around Missouri: Shelby's Great Raid 1863 delve more deeply into this subject. I'm hoping to do another book on guerrillas in the Civil War this year. We shall see!

Since no photos of Porter are known to exist, here's a Wikipedia image of the flag he flew under, the state battle flag of Confederate Missouri.

Book Review: With Porter in North Missouri

With Porter In North Missouri: A Chapter In The History Of The War Between The States by Joseph A. Mudd
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This memoir by a Confederate veteran is a flawed yet still valuable look at an interesting part of the Civil War in Missouri.

The author rode with Colonel Porter in 1862 as they fought their way across Union-held northeast Missouri, gathering recruits, drawing bluecoats away from more important theaters, and generally causing havoc. There are few published memoirs from either side for this region so Mudd's book is intrinsically valuable.

Where it falls down, however, is its starry-eyed view of Porter. In Mudd's eyes the man could do no wrong. In fact, Porter made several basic tactical blunders, such as getting into a series of set-piece battles with larger and better-armed Union forces. It seems Porter thought of himself more as a general leading an army rather than a cavalry raider doing hit-and-run strikes. This led to his downfall and eventual death.

Further undermining the credibility of this volume are the lengthy quotes attributed to Porter, some running more than a page. Since this book was published in 1909, it's obvious that these conversations are made up. The content, however, generally corresponds with what we know of Porter's personality and tactics, thus only a few grains of salt are needed to get through these passages.

For serious students of the Civil War, this book is a worthwhile historic curio. Those with only a passing interest in the Civil War in Missouri or Confederate cavalry raiders would do best to look elsewhere.


View all my reviews

Marmaduke's First Missouri Raid and the Second Battle of Springfield

The year 1863 started with a bang in Missouri. On December 31, 1862, Confederate Brigadier General John Sappington Marmaduke rode out of Arkansas at the head of 3,000 cavalry to hit Union supply lines.

For the first few days, they rode in three separate columns through the sparsely populated Ozarks without the Union command being any the wiser. That changed on January 7 when the rebels fell upon Union outposts at Ozark and Fort Lawrence. Most of the garrison managed to flee. Some of the supplies were taken away or burned, and some fell into Marmaduke's hands.

That same evening Brig.-Gen. Egbert Brown, pictured here, was alerted. He was based in Springfield, the Union's base of operations for southwestern Missouri. He heard Marmaduke was coming straight for him with 6,000 men. For some reason Union reports consistently overestimated rebel numbers and this led to much unnecessary panic and retreating.

Not so with Gen. Brown. He decided to stick, even though he only had 2,100 men, many of them untested militia and a "Quinine Brigade" of convalescents from the military hospital; and five cannon, three of them on slapped-together mountings of old wagon wheels. The town was surrounded by four forts. Even though none were completed they were better than nothing.

Marmaduke desperately wanted the supplies stored in Springfield. All three of his columns were supposed to attack the town on this date, but only two showed. Col. Porter, with 800 men, didn't make it on time, thus Marmaduke was attacking an entrenched position without numerical superiority.

Civil War Photo Friday: William T. Biedler, 16 years old

This young rebel is William T. Biedler, who had his picture taken at just sixteen years of age. He was in Company C of Mosby's Virginia Cavalry Regiment.

I suspect this was taken at the beginning of the war because he's armed with an antiquated flintlock musket. Both sides, especially the rebels, had chronic supply problems and some men had to go to battle with inferior weapons or no weapons at all. They picked up better weapons from the dead or captured as soon as possible and it's doubtful that Biedler would have carried his flintlock beyond the first year of the war.

Compare this with the photo of Jesse James as a Confederate bushwhacker at the same age. There's quite a difference!


Photo courtesy Library of Congress.