A Collection of California/Civil War Links

Here are a few interesting sites that feature information on California's role in the Civil War.

California in the American Civil War from Wikipedia

Californians in the Civil War from the California Department of Parks and Recreation

The Civil War in California State Parks from the California Department of Parks and Recreation

The Golden State and the Civil War from LearnCalifornia.org

Civil War History in California from the San Francisco Chronicle

California in the Civil War from Drum Barracks

Californians Serving in the Civil War from the California State Military Museum

Lincoln and Thanksgiving

In 1863, President Lincoln issued the following declaration, establishing Thanksgiving as a national holiday:

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

Click here to learn more about Lincoln's ongoing interest in California. 

The Grand Army of the Republic

The Grand Army of the Republic, or GAR, was founded on April 6, 1866, in Decatur, Illinois. This veterans' organization was open to honorably discharged veterans of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Revenue Cutter Service who served during the war.

The GAR began as a fraternal organization, but soon developed into a force for veteran's affairs, including working to ensure soldiers' pensions and constructing soldiers' home. The GAR final meeting took place in 1949 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Its last member, Albert Woolson, died in 1956 at  age 109.

During the GAR National Encampment held in San Francisco in 1886, the Department of New York presented a banner to the Department of California. Here's the banner in the encampment's grand procession. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA)

The GAR's Department of California and Nevada was organized on February 21, 1868. Eventually, the department was home to nearly 200 individual posts, all of which were named for deceased veterans. No two posts in the same department were supposed to be named for the same deceased veteran. While the last National Encampment was held in 1949, the Department of California and Nevada continued to hold their annual Department Encampments into the 1950s.



The last member of the Department, William Allen Magee of Company M, 12th Ohio Cavalry, died in Long Beach, California, on January 23, 1953 at age 106.

Here's a close-up of the banner the Department of California received at the 1886 GAR National Encampment (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA).

The group continues today as the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War. It is open to descendants of honorably discharged Union veterans. The National Archives also has Civil War veterans' information available in its military holdings.

The Battle of Ball's Bluff, October 21, 1861

On October 21, 1861, Col. Edward Dickinson Baker (right) became the only sitting U.S. senator to die in battle, leading his troops at the Battle of Ball's Bluff in Virginia. Six months earlier, the Secretary of War authorized him to organize an infantry regiment to be taken as part of the quota from California. Baker organized the California Brigade (mostly from the Philadelphia area) and served as its colonel. Shortly afterward, he received command of a brigade in General Charles Pomeroy Stone's division, guarding Potomac River fords north of Washington. Baker's death was dramatized in "Death of Col. Baker," a steel engraving (left) by H. Wright Smith after drawing by F.O.C. Darley, copyrighted by Hurlbut Williams & Co. (Photos from Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

Col. Baker is buried in San Francisco National Cemetery in California, where I took this photo of his tombstone. The back of the tombstone describes him as "eminent San Francisco lawyer" and "United States senator from Oregon." Baker and Abraham Lincoln became friends when both lived in Illinois, and Lincoln thought so much of the friendship and the man that he named his second son Edward Baker Lincoln.  Col. Baker and his family lived in San Francisco from 1851 to 1860, when they moved to Oregon so he could become a Republican senator from the state. His son and namesake, who escorted his father's body to Washington, DC, after Ball's Bluff, died while in serving in the Army in Vancouver, Washington.

Saluting America's First Aeronaut

The Civil War marked the beginning of modern warfare, at least in terms of communications and reconnaissance. We've already looked at the 150th anniversary of the telegraph, and this year marks the 150th anniversary of the use of aerial observers in American warfare. Professor Thaddeus Sobieski Coulincourt Lowe was an inventor who proposed using balloons to observe Confederate positions and troop movements to President Lincoln on June 11, 1861. Lincoln approved the plan, and Lowe first flew his balloon, the Intrepid, over the First Battle of Bull Run. After his success, Lincoln ordered the formation of the Union Army Balloon Corps and named Lowe chief aeronaut.

The first photo shows his balloon camp at Gaines Mills, Virginia, in 1862. He is in the balloon basket as it's about to lift off. The second photo shows Lowe in camp in 1861. After the war, he and his family moved to Pasadena, California, where he opened several ice plants, founded the Citizen's Bank of Los Angeles and became involved in the Mount Lowe Railway, a line designed to transport people to the crest of the San Gabriel Mountains. (Photos from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

The Sesquicentennial of the Telegraph

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the invention of the telegraph. On Oct. 24, 1861, California chief justice Stephen J. Field sent a congratulatory wire from San Francisco to Abraham Lincoln in Washington, DC, on the successful completion of the cross-country project, which spelled the end of the Pony Express and could be considered the start of the wiring of America.

Building the project presented its own set of challenges for Western Union, including a shortage of wood through what is now Nevada, and the unintentional destruction of some poles across what is now Wyoming by itchy buffalo, which scratched themselves on the poles and knocked some of them down.

The telegraph revolutionized communications from the east to the west, and it even created its own  shorthand, which was used primarily by wire service reporters who were filing their stories with eastern news bureaus. Reporters used the numbers "73" for goodbye, and "30" to indicate the end of a story. (Hey, now I know where the ##30## comes from from j-school. Life is a an ongoing learning experience!) They used these and other abbreviations to keep the wires as free of clutter as possible.

The Union Army strung 15,000 miles of telegraph wire solely for military use during the Civil War. Keeping it repaired was likely a full-time job. (Photo from Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

During the Civil War, the telegraph made it easier for the military and the media to communicate with the capitals and newspaper offices. The Union army strung about 15,000 miles of wire solely for military telegraphic use, and telegraphers brought their battery wagons close to the front lines to power their machines. Generals could send battle reports to Washington and Richmond, and reporters could file stories with their editors faster than ever before.

By 2006, Western Union had stopped sending telegrams altogether, relying instead on customers wiring money to one another as the bulk of its business.

A Piece of Postal History

Collecting California Civil War memorabilia is not the easiest hobby to pursue, but anyone who knows me will tell you "easy" is not always the way I choose. This is a patriotic envelope that has a particularly nice rendition of the state seal and an appropriate-to-the-times message.