Letters from the battlefield
Public Museum exhibit explores Oshkosh’s role in the Civil War

BY ALDRICH M. TAN • of The Northwestern • July 6, 2008

All Photos Courtesy of the Oshkosh Public Museum Group portrait of 1st Lieutenant Joseph Arnold (Oshkosh), Company E, 26th Wisconsin Infantry and 31 members of Company H taken in a gallery, probably at the end of war in Milwaukee. Company H was recruited from the Sheboygan area. Arnold is wearing a fatigue blouse with 1st Lieutenant’s bars on the shoulders. The men are seated and standing in four rows, 24 are wearing uniform coats while the rest wear fatigue blouses. All are wearing or holding black felt hats, three of which are M1858 uniform hats while the rest wear civilian style hats, four wear sergeant’s chevrons and musician Carl Rosselor sits in the front on his drum. To the right of Arnold is 1st Sergeant William Ehrmann; to the left of Arnold sit sergeants Otto Krebs; Friederich Engelking; and Henry Reineck. There were 30 enlisted men present at the muster out of the company in June 1865.Lt. John Hancock, of Oshkosh, left the battlefield with barely anything.

A bullet had cut the left shoulder of his coat open. Hancock had also lost his store clothes, trunks and baggage. The only things he had left were two shirts and a gray suit.

The date was July 29, 1861. Several days before, the Union had lost the Battle of Bull Run in Virginia, one of the pivotal early battles in the Civil War, a war that divided the nation.

“Such is war,” Hancock wrote to his wife. “That defeat is a terrible disaster to us and God only knows now where and when this thing will end."

Hancock was one of hundreds from Wisconsin fighting for the Union. Many more men from all over Winnebago County served in the war, said Scott Cross, archivist for the Oshkosh Public Museum. The Oshkosh Public Library has two volumes of books with listings of all the Civil War Veterans of Winnebago County.

Wisconsin alone had 53 infantry regiments in the Union army, Cross said. There are 10 companies in a regiment, and Oshkosh had 12 companies. Like every community in the North, Oshkosh was very patriotic, Cross said.

“They saw this war as something destructive to the United States,” Cross said. “It crossed political barriers.”

The first Civil War militia raised in Oshkosh, in 1861, was known as Company E, 2nd Wisconsin Infantry, Cross said. Its members included Hancock and Capt. Gabriel Bouck who were both lawyers and Democrats. The third officer was Lt. Herman B. Jackson.

While the museum has a trove of artifacts from Hancock as a result of the recent discovery of Hancock’s letters, it has few artifacts from his counterparts. The museum has Jackson’s officer’s belt, insignia, and a whisky flask. They also have a photograph of Bouck.

Hancock’s collection of 140 letters, now at the Oshkosh Public Museum, provide insight into the lives of a soldier off to war, Cross said.

Cross said the letters have helped him understand the depths of suffering that the soldiers had gone through. Hancock talked about conditions in Camp Randall in Madison about how the barrack roof leaked onto the beds, causing soldiers to become ill as a result.

Hancock also wrote about such fears of getting ready for battle in Virginia.
“If we come out alive, we shall do well,” Hancock said. “If we do not, we shall do well.”

Cross said the letters reveal how homesick the Oshkosh soldiers were. Almost every letter that Hancock wrote refers to his wife, Jennie Reardon. They were married when Hancock came home serving between the two different regiments. There are times he felt quite “desponding” not hearing from his wife.

Throughout the war, companies of men left Oshkosh on a regular basis. According to the diary of Nancy Derby, a young woman who moved to Oshkosh in 1854, ladies made flags of silk on their sewing machines in red, white and blue.

Derby recalled the departure of a company of 100 men leaving for war on May 4. Her husband George, who operated the Derby & Corran Shingle Mill, told her that the railroad depot had the largest gathering of people that he had ever seen in Oshkosh.

“The company departed amidst weeping and heartrending farewells,” Derby wrote. “There is no Telegraph dispatch this evening and news of the day is unimportant.”

Women also served during the Civil War. Susannah Van Valkenberg, who moved to Oshkosh in 1871 following the war, was a nurse in Washington, D.C. tending to the wounded and sick.

Oshkosh soldiers started coming home in 1864, before the war ended, Cross said. Many of the soldiers were under a three-year contract.

Meanwhile, the Oshkosh community watched as the war came to its end with the siege of Richmond, Va., the capital of the Confederacy, in 1865.

One of the first few Union regiments to invade the Richmond was the 19th Wisconsin Infantry and several of the members were from Winnebago County, including Pvt. Michael Butler of Nekimi. It also marked the liberation of several Oshkosh soldiers who were in a Confederate prison camp.

Victory at Richmond was especially sweet for Oshkosh, Derby recalled. The drums beat. The bells rang. Flags streamed and fluttered in the breeze. People were “going mad” down the streets.

Through Derby’s reaction to the Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln, it was clear that Oshkosh knew what it was fighting for.

“We are now the champions of freedom,” Derby said.

Aldrich M. Tan: (920) 426-6663 or atan@thenorthwestern.com.