Civil War Research



                                                   -by-



                                          David T. Hardy



	Anyone seeking records of a civil war participant will be startled by the

amount of data recorded at National Archives in Washington, D.C. The personnel

file (and, when applicable, the pension file) of virtually every Union soldier, and a

majority of Confederate ones, are readily available for examination. The main

impediment to finding a specific soldier is not the lack of data, but the sheer

volume of it--records on several million persons are not easily searched.



	First, perhaps, a note on civil war organization:

	"Regiment": the primary organizational unit: a man enlisted in a

regiment, was kept on its muster rolls, and could be involuntarily transferred out

of it only on rare occasions. Civil war infantry strongly identified with their

regiments. A regiment was commanded by a colonel and lieutenant colonel.

There were two types of regiments:

	Regular ("U.S" regiments--"1st U.S.") regiments had the more complex

organization. Regular regiments were subdivided into two battalions, each

commanded by a major, with eight companies in each.

	Volunteer (designated by state name--"1st Michigan") regiments had a

simplified substructure of ten companies. The single major was merely another

regimental officer. Strength on paper was just over a thousand men, but disease,

casualties, and detachments meant practical strength was about 500. A volunteer

regiment had no formal "battalions," but the term was still used to designate any

ad hoc group of companies smaller than the entire regiment. Regiments were

numbered by their date of formation. Illinois had fielded six regiments in the

Mexican War, and chose to begin numbering its Civil War contingent with the 7th

Illinois Infantry. In 1864, when enlistments began running out, regiments which

re-enlisted enough men to survive were allowed to change their names from

"volunteer" to "veteran" regiments. Thus "2d Michigan" "2d Michigan

Volunteers" and "2d Michigan Veterans" may all describe the same unit.

	Companies (100 men on paper) were commanded by a captain plus a first

and second lieutenant Companies were designated by letter (In Volunteers, A-I

and K;  "J" being omitted as too easily confused with "I").

	Civil war infantry had no smaller units than a company. Informal

detachments were used for tasks requiring a smaller group.



	"Brigade": a battle formation (i.e., regiments could be shifted into and out of

them whenever desired) of roughly 4-6 regiments, or around 2,000 men in

practice. Commanded by a brigadier general, or often by a colonel awaiting

promotion. Some brigades achieved an identity (the Stonewall Brigade; the Iron

Brigade) but most remained ad hoc groupings. Identified by number or, more

usually, the commander's name--"Hartranft's Brigade."



	"Division": a battle formation of several (usually 3) brigades, commanded by

a Major General. Identified by number or commander. Like the brigade, an ad

hoc formation with which troops rarely identified.



	Corps: A group of several divisions with supporting elements, identified by

commander's name or roman numeral, and led by a Major General. A corps

functioned as a miniature army, with its own detachments of artillery, engineers,

and often cavalry. The flexibility of the corps (which could be detached from the

main army to seize a position or make a long flanking march, or separated to

move down parallel roads) was a striking feature of Napoleonic and post-1862

Civil War armies. Although corps were sometimes broken up or restructured,

(esp. in the winter of 1863-64) troops did tend to identify with them.



	Army: the largest of battlefield formations, comprised of 3-8 corps, and

identified by the locale it was meant to protect. Union armies were named for

rivers, Confederate for states or portions of states. Union armies were

commanded by Major Generals.  (That the same rank commanded divisions,

corps and armies led sometimes to difficulties, when a junior Major General

might be superior to a senior one).



	For research purposes, your focus will be primarily on the regiment. If you

don't know the regiment, but do know the State, it's often possible to proceed

quickly. The fastest way to find the regiment is to turn to the books most states

compiled over the years 1866-1903, listing all civil war veterans. These are

available in National Archives, and also in state libraries. Unfortunately, the

quality varied radically from State to State. Michigan, for example, did an

excellent job: a separate book for each regiment, each with an alphabetical list

giving name, place of enlistment, and date of death or discharge, together with a

single volume listing all persons alphabetically and linking to the regimental

records. Other states listed regimental rosters, but had no alphabetical list of

persons from the entire state.

	If that fails, National Archives does maintain an alphabetized microfilm of

all union and confederate soldiers. In the 1880's, the US sought to organize its

civil war personnel records, and did so by preparing cardboard tabs, rather like

bookmarks, which could then be filed. Archives has microfilmed these, in

alphabetical order (with some mistakes). Needless to say, it's not easy to find the

right person this way, when you're separating out dozens of people with the same

name and often from the same State.

	Whichever method you use, be alert to the possibility of name errors. If the

person wasn't literate, it was spelled however the recruiting officer thought it

should be spelled; your family today may spell it differently. "Fogel" and Vogel"

may be the same person, as may "Collins" "Cullen" and "Cullum." A good

number of troopers also enlisted under an alias in those days before Social

Security numbers.



	Once you have the name and regiment, you can access the records. If you

can get to National Archives in Washington, it's pretty simple. (Note: you want to

go to the downtown building, not the one in Maryland. Parking is all but

impossible to find: take the Metro. At night--and it's open until 9:30--parking is

easier, but the area is a bit rough. Note also that while you can read files, and

request files, in the evening, they stop actually pulling them around 4 PM--so

don't expect same-day turnaround past that time. Normally, they advertise 45

minutes turnaround, but 90 minutes is a safer bet. One more point: you need an

ID card to enter the building. Those are free, and quickly obtained, but only issued

during the day.).



	In National Archives, take the north entrance, head up to the 4th floor. To

request the military records, just fill out the right form with name and regiment.

The military records will usually include enlistment papers, bookmark-type cards

reflected each regimental muster at which he was present (musters took place

every 2 months), and sometimes discharge papers, death certificates, or

correspondence.



	The pension files are larger and usually more interesting. These reflect

filings in later years by the soldier himself (since medical causation was poorly

understood, many filed with the argument that diseases suffered much later in

life were caused by those contracted during service) or his dependents--parents,

wife, children. The documentation can be stunning--medical reports over

decades, lists of dependents, marriage licenses, letters from the family. To access

these, you need to go to the alphabetical indeces, the microfilms of bookmark-like

cards (see above). Find the right one, and fill in the file numbers on the form to

request pension records. Get all the file numbers, and double check them: the

folks who pull records can be picky.



	After you've turned in the requests, get a bite to eat or wander around; it'll

take at least an hour. Then wander down to the reading room on the second floor.

Make sure you have a quarter for the locker (in which you'll place all books and

papers--there's tight security here, to make sure no documents wander off) and

money for photocopy. There are photocopiers inside, and specially-punched paper

and cards on which you can make notes. (If it seems unusual, remember that

you'll be looking at *originals*, not microfilms or copies. Without some special

paper, who is to say whether that's your handwriting, or the original from the

file?). Then get the file from the desk, and go at it. Bring plenty of dollar or five

dollar bills for the photocopiers (you buy a card, rather than drop in coins).



	Locating killed in actions is a bit complicated. The Military History branch

of Archives has a roster of headstones issued to civil war soldiers, which can be of

aid. Sometimes the personnel file will mention where the person was buried.

There was also a postwar study--the "Roll of Honor" which recorded all known

Union burials. Often, tho, you'll find the persons rests as an "unknown."



	Civil War "unknowns" are frequent (I've heard figures of 40-60% of the

dead are recorded this way) due to the conditions of burial. If a soldier was buried

by men other than his immediate comrades (the unit retreated, or was shifted

about), he almost always was unknown from the start. Thus when the Union

pulled back after Chancellorsville, or the Confederacy after Gettysburg, almost all

their dead became unknown from the moment of burial. Even where the dead

were buried by their comrades, many became "unknown." The dead were mostly

buried where they died (on the battlefield, or just outside a field hospital), with the

result that Virginia was essentially a giant graveyard in 1865. The graves were

marked, at best, with a penciled scrawl on a wooden slat from packing crates.

After the war, an audit of graves was undertaken; the results were published in a

multivolume set entitled "The Roll of Honor." (It makes interesting reading:

many entries are essentially: 'Smith's apple orcharge. Three graves at

crossroads, all unknown. One behind barn: name illegible except for "Jo__

Smi___."  Shallow grave in woods, 100 yds NW of corner. No name; N.Y. buttons

on uniform"). After the audit, the Union dead were disinterred by private

contractors and relocated to National Cemeteries, which were then newly created.

(A handful of such had existed in the D.C. area during the war, including the

famous Arlington, but also one in Alexandria and one at "Soldier's Home" in

northern D.C.--some others, such as Kalorama, existed but were later closed and

the dead moved. All these, however, received only the dead from the general

hospital system during the war). Many of the slats had fallen or rotted during the

war, hence the large number of unknowns. At Arlington, the reinterred dead for

the most part received individual graves. At other cemeteries (i.e.,

Fredricksburg), they were buried 4-10 to a single grave. ("10" in this case means

10 skulls and hopefully somewhere around 20 arms and 20 legs. The unknowns

were, however, shipped en masse: contractors were paid by the skull, to prevent

fraudulent reassembly of 4 skeletons into, say, 5.). At Arlington, most of the

contemporeaneous burials (as opposed to relocation in 1866-68) are to be found in

plot 27, at the extreme NE end of the cemetery. Major national cemetaries in the

East are Arlington (receiving hospital dead from April, 1864 onward), Soldier's

Home (hospital dead until April 1864), Alexandria (hospital dead, prior to April

1864), Fredericksburg (dead from that battle, Chancellorsville, Wilderness, and

Spottsylvania CH), Richmond and Petersburg (dead from the 1864-65 campaign,

and on the penninsula east of Richmond (mostly from the Seven Days).