Galveston Research Summary #8 - Yellow Jack

"In the spring and summer of 1839, Galveston presented a scene of active progression. Houses were being erected as if by magic. But this busy scene of progressive life and animation was suddenly paralyzed and the energies of the people were instantly numbed by a dreadful fear, and friend looked into the face of friend, neighbor into the face of neighbor, with the fearful inquiry of 'Who next?' An epidemic had fallen upon them, and was decimating their ranks with a fatality more dreadful and irresistible than war." - Galveston: History of the Island and the City (1879)

Previous "Galveston Research Summaries" can be found below:

#1 - Dissent, Sedition, and Confederate Secret Police (here)
#2 - Ursuline Sisters (here)
#3 - The Pearce Civil War Museum and Collection (here)
#4 - New Orleans Archdiocese Records a the Archives of the University of Notre Dame (here)
#5 - Digital Resources at Rice University (here)
#6 - Texas General Land Office (here)
#7 - Dolph Briscoe Center for American History (here)

Summary of my Galveston/Civil War Research and Writing Project (here)

And now, for the latest in Galveston Research Summaries:

I continue my research and writing for my present book project, with the working title Galveston and the Civil War: Voices of the Island City, to be published by The History Press in mid- to late-2012.

I am dedicating an entire chapter in the book to the scourge of yellow fever on Galveston, from the first epidemic in 1839 to the severe wartime outbreak in 1864 to the devastating post-war epidemic in 1867 that claimed more than a thousand lives including a substantial number of U.S. soldiers who were garrisoned in the city.

I'm doing this for (at least) four reasons:

1) It appeals to my primary hsitorical interest of 19th-century medicine
2) As one historian declared, "No disease brought more fear and more deaths to Galveston than yellow fever"...in other words, it is an important part of the story of Galveston in the 19th-century
3) The 1864 and 1867 epidemics, especially, have received only cursory attention in other published books on Galveston and the Civil War, including Edward Cotham's excellent Battle on the Bay
4) It has introduced me - and hopefully readers of the book - to a variety of personalities on resources important to the story of yellow fever, Galveston, and the Civil War.

Here are just a few:

I've written before on the importance of yellow fever and the Civil War - including its effect on the Gulf Coast, Texas, and Galveston (specifically) - in my interview with Andrew M. Bell, Ph.D., author of Mosquito Soldiers: Malaria, Yellow Fever, and the Course of the American Civil War (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2010). You can read that interview here.

[Bell's book takes its title from the fact that yellow fever is transmitted via the bite of an infected mosquito, especially the Aedes aegypti, pictured above, courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]

One of the most interesting personalities is Ashbel Smith (1805-1886), in no small part because his association with yellow fever and Galveston extends from the first deadly epidemics in the 1830s to the Civil War and after. In the aftermath of the 1839 yellow fever epidemic in Galveston, Smith wrote an influential medical treatise - Yellow Fever in Galveston, Republic of Texas, 1839 (reprinted in 1951). During the Civil War, Smith was an officer in the Second Texas Infantry, and was commanding the regiment in Galveston in 1864, when another epidemic took the lives of civilians and soldiers.

Gail Borden was featured in an entire chapter my first book, Lincoln's Labels: America's Best Known Brands and the Civil War (Edinborough Press, 2008). I have written about him before on this blog (here). Although not a native Texan, Borden was still one of Galveston's "favorite sons." He lost his wife and at least one of his children to yellow fever epidemics in Galveston in the 1850s. Always thinking, Borden came up with a novel plan to eradicate yellow fever on the island via refrigeration.

The wartime epidemic of 1864 - the main topic of the chapter - is recorded in period newspapers, the Official Records, soldier correspondence, documents in the National Archives, and other sources that I have consulted and will incorporate into the book.

As mentioned above, the Galveston yellow fever epidemic of 1867 took the lives of U.S. soldiers in the city during Reconstruction and administration of the Freedman's Bureau. The commander of the city, Col. Charles Griffin, died in the epidemic. One of the outstanding documents on describing this epidemic is Report on Epidemic Cholera and Yellow Fever in the Army of the United States (1868), which provides a detailed report of cases among the civilian and soldier populations, numbers of deaths, and some reports of heroism every bit as inspiring as feats of arms on the battlefield:

"Before proceeding to the summary of the prevalence of the fever, I should speak of the hospital service, during nearlv the entire epidemic season, of Hospital Steward Ernest Cauzler, U. S. A., who, unacclimated, had been placed on duty at the military hospital for the epidemic, having arrived at the station on the 22d of July. On the 5th of September he was prostrated, but early resumed his duty. For a time, when all the medical officers of the army were ill, he was the only one of the department on duty."

and

"I should do injustice to pass over the name of Charles H. Weeks, Sergeant, Company " I'," 17th U. S. Infantry, who, unacclimatcd, voluntarily assumed, at an early period, the immediate duty of an acting hospital steward in the convalescent ward of the hospital and barracks in the city, only ending his faithful service with his life, dying of yellow fever at nearly the close of the epidemic."

"with a fatality more dreadful and irresistible than war," indeed.

Review/Interview: Antique American Medicine Guide (aka "Matt's CD")

"When I first started collecting medicines I looked for price guides but could only find books [which were] very generic and not very reliable or books [that] mostly covered high end bottles I never found at flea markets and couldn't afford. I just wanted a way to know what price I should expect to buy or sell medicines for." - Matthew Knapp, Creator, "American Antique Medicines - Bottle Guide"

I've learned that collecting medical bottles can be a "game of thousands":

Between the mid-1800s and early 1900s, there were thousands of different manufacturers of patent medicines, some of them offering more than one product, and the single product might have been offered in bottles of different shapes, sizes, and colors, generating many more thousands of possibilities. Now some of those bottles are very common, going for a few dollars at an antique store, online, or at a bottle show...others are very rare and are worth thousands of dollars.

How to make sense of it all in valuing your own collection and making sure your buying and selling prices are fair? Especially for a relatively new collector like me?!

A good collecting guide is a great way to start...and as the quote that begins this post demonstrates, a good guide can sometimes be hard to find. Matthew Knapp of Frederick, Maryland, was in that situation so a few years ago he decided to create his own guide. Now that guide has been through several versions and is relied upon by many people in the bottle collecting community, so much so that on many forums you will see it referred to as "Matt's CD"!

In this post I provide a review of Matt's "Antique American Medicines - 2010 Bottle Price Guide and Trade Cards" CD-ROM and an interview with Matt!

The Guide consists of two principal parts:

1) A 1000-page plus (!) bottle guide with almost 7,000 listings, as a PDF file.
2) A guide to more than 700 patent medicine trade cards from more than 200 companies, as an HTML file that can be opened in any web browser.

Matt also maintains an excellent website at antiquemedicines.com (here), which - as you will see below - makes an excellent companion to the CD-ROM.

Given this amount of information, the Guide is a BARGAIN at only $20 (see ordering details at the end of this post).

As you will see in our interview below, there is always friendly debate over whether a printed guide or electronic guide is more user-friendly...I haven't purcahsed an e-reader yet (Nook, Kindle, iPad, etc.), but I believe most of them do accept PDF files (and also, perhaps, local HTML files) so it may be that the CD-ROM is even more versatile than it already is!

The Trade Card HTML file opens up easily in your default browser, with a front page that looks like this:

I noticed that at least one of the companies had an additional hyperlink to a Wikipedia entry, which is a useful feature...it's possible that most do not have that feature because it is hard to find information on all but the most well-known manufacturers.

Clicking on any of the more than two hundred companies represented gives examples of the front and reverse of some trade cards...some of the companies have only one and others have as many as a half dozen or more:

Generally, clicking on the images gives an enlarged view of the front or reverse. There were a just a few cases where clicking on the front of the card actually produced a duplicate image of the reverse, but this happened in only a handful of the more than 700 cards that Matt has provided on the CD ROM.

As you will see in the interview below, these trade cards are more than just great art and entertainment: they sometimes contain valuable information (cities, addresses, years, etc.) that can aid you in dating your bottles or learning more about the company!

The PDF of the actual Bottle Price Guide also opens easily on the computer. Matt also provides a helpful link to the Adobe website if you do not have Adobe Acrobat Reader already installed on your computer.

The first pages of the Guide includes an Introduction to bottle types, molds, lips, and colors, in...well...color! This is very helpful for a new collector like myself who is just learning some of the terms:


The next almost 1000 pages (!) is the meat of the Guide: a listing of almost 7,000 (!) different bottles...some firms have a single one listed...others have multiple bottles of a single medicine listed...others still have multiple bottles of multiple medicines listed.

As I stated earlier, Matt also maintains a terrific website at antiquemedicines.com (here)...one of the BEST features of that website is his "Medicine Bottle Nexus" (here) which has images of thousands of bottles:


I found that it was very useful to have both the PDF and Matt's website open at the same time...since "a picture is worth a thousand words" it really helps in bringing the bottle descriptions in the Guide to life.

The most important part, of course, is the Price Guide...to "test" this I looked at some of the bottles on online auctions and from trusted bottle collector websites (by the way, Matt also has dozens of bottles for sale here). There were very few bottles that were not listed in Matt's Guide from the limited search that I did. The Guide was most useful in cases where several sizes, shapes, or colors of bottles are available, and even more useful when there are significant price differences among those bottles.

The "beauty" of the PDF and CD-ROM, of course, is that keywords (company names, cure names, etc) are easily searchable and the search engine works really well and fast (the first search takes some time, but this perfectly natural for a 1,000-plus page document).

I can already see that this Guide is going to be a wonderful resource for me. Matt readily admits in the Introduction that not all bottles or firms are listed but as you will see in the interview below, he encourages collectors to send him information so that he can make the next version of the Guide even better.

I want to congratulate Matt on the accomplishment of this compilation and thank him for the contribution he has made to the hobby.

Now...on to our interview!

Matt was kind enough to answer some questions about his collecting interests and the Guide:

Jim (J): So tell us a little about yourself – where are you from, what do you do for a living, when did you started collecting bottles, etc.

Matt (M): I was born in Johnstown PA, grew up in northern VA. I am an electrical engineer, I design embedded microprocessor systems. I collected everything as a kid: rocks, fossils, bottles, arrowheads, etc. I grew up living next to a Confederate winter camp so I got into Civil War relics in the 1970s. I had a pretty good collection until a few years ago when I sold most of it. The Civil War market was being eroded by a multitude of fakes from places like India, Pakistan,and the USA. I decided to get back into bottles about 12 years ago.

J: Everyone has their own reason for collecting bottles – some people appreciate them as pieces of art (which they are) and craftsmanship, others for their connections to local history…others – like me – appreciate them for the company histories and for what was in the bottle…why do you to collect bottles?

M: I like the look and artistry of glass in general. I gravitated to patent medicines because I am a skeptic by nature and find it amazing how many people were (and still are) duped by quack medicines. Unlike bitters and flasks, it's cheap and easy to put together a decent collection of patent medicines. I like visiting fleamarkets and antique shops, you see more medicines than probably any other bottles (except for sodas). I also like the fact that mold blown medicines are difficult to fake. There are only a handful of fakes or reproduction medicines known. This is a benefit to the hobby as many other collectible categories are overrun with fakes. About half my collection is local bottles from Frederick and Hagerstown. I hope to make a small book at some point documenting these local bottles.

J: You live near Frederick, MD, which will be very familiar to my Civil War readers, as it was a significant hospital site following the battle of Antietam and is home to the Nat’l Museum of Civil War Medicine. Are you a Civil War enthusiast, and – if so – why and what’s it like to live in a historic area and so close to Gettysburg and Sharpsburg?

M: I have studied the Civil War a good bit. Gettysburg is neat but a bit of a tourist trap. Sharpsburg? Never heard of it :) we do have a neat battlefield to the south called Antietam. The Monocacy battlefield is a few miles from my house and was a pretty significant turning point in the war. The battle of South Mountain was also of some significance. As for relic hunting I find this area more difficult to hunt in than Northern VA. Its harder to get access to sites.

J: The “Antique Medicine Guide” is a tremendous resource and obviously required a lot of time to compile. Why did you embark on the project and when did the first edition come out.

M: When I first started collecting medicines I looked for price guides but could only find books like Kovels which was very generic and not very reliable or books like O'Dell's which was great but mostly covered high end bottles I never found at flea markets and couldn't afford. I just wanted a way to know what price I should expect to buy or sell medicines for. I started keeping my own database of bottles I saw sell around 1999. I think the first version was around 2004 but not positive. I did CDROM versions because they were obviously cheaper to make and distribute. In 2006 I printed a paper book version of the guide. A limited run of 100 with the profits going to Habitat for Humanity.

J: I looked at the 2010 CD version…you have mentioned that you are working on a 2012 printed edition. Personally, I like the CD but I imagine the printed edition might be more portable for folks visiting flea markets, antique stores, bottle shows, or digging…what do you think are the pros and cons of both.

M: A lot of people have told me they want a paper book version. I have always been a fan of the RED BOOK of Fruit Jars. My goal would be to make something equivalent to that for medicine bottles. The CDROM has one HUGE benefit over a paper version. The PDF format allows it to be searched easy.

J: You readily admit in the Intro to your Guide that there are other guides for more specific needs or collections (bitters, Warner’s, etc.)…what are some of your favorite medicine bottle collecting resources?

M: O'Dell's books are great , both his pontil medicine encyclopedia and his medicine guide. I have an old copy of PATENT and PROPRIETARY MEDICINE BOTTLES by Baldwin, its an amazing reference. There are some other excellent CDROM resources, Jim Holst's Pontil Medicine guide and his newer guide for Liniment bottles which I was fortunate to be able to contribute to. Another must have is the Greer auction catalog documenting probably the best pontil medicine collection ever sold.

J: I don’t want to make you give away any secrets, but how did you go about compiling information for the first version and how do you compile data for the updates?

M: I use a Microsoft Access database that I setup for bottle data. You just have to decide what info you want to save. The hard part is deciding what data you MIGHT need in the future since it hard to go back and fill in holes if you dont save it from the start.

J: One of the best parts of the CD is the images of hundreds of trade cards...some of my favorites are the puzzle cards from folks like Seth Arnold's Balsam or the cheeky and fairly risqué (for the time, anyway) ones from folks like Pond’s Bitters…besides the entertainment value though, there is a lot of important company information on those cards – changes in address, company names, etc. What is your favorite part about trade cards?

M: I currently have about 700 medicine trade cards in my collection. Trade cards were basically premiums that were given away by stores. People put them in albums (mostly kids) and looked at them for entertainment before the days of radio and TV. Cheap chromolithography was fairly new in the late 1870s and the artwork is amazing. The trade cards use peaked in the 1880s-1890s. That form of advertising dropped off as radio became popular and printed half tone photography became cheaper. As you say , I like trade cards for the extra information they provide about the medicine products.

J: I have seen your guide referred to as “Matt’s CD” many times on various forums, etc…it must be very gratifying to be so familiar and trusted in the bottle community… can you comment? I’m just a beginner but I have already found other collectors to be very generous with advice, etc… why are all these factors – trust, generosity, etc. - so important for collectors of bottles (or any kind of collection, really)?

M: Its well known on the major bottle forum www.antique-bottles.net since I post on there a lot. Not sure how well its known across the bottle collecting community in general. I don't really promote it much. People mostly seem to find it when researching stuff on my website. I have always received good feedback from the people who have bought it. I mostly did it to help enhance the hobby so I'm glad when people use it.

J: Do you have any advice for someone thinking about starting a collection?

M: Always buy quality over quantity. A collection of 50 nice bottles will be better in the long run than a collection of 500 mediocre bottles. Dont buy damaged bottles unless they are very rare. Specialize: its easier to gather reference materials, you will learn about the bottles faster, and you will end up with a more impressive collection. Dig your own bottles if you can: ones you dig yourself always have an extra value.

J: Is there anything other collectors can do to help you make the next guide even better than the already-terrific guide that it is?

M: People can always help by sending me any info for bottles that are not listed on the CDROM or the online Medicine Nexus.

12) What’s the best way to get a copy of the Guide?

M: Just go to the CDROM area of my website (here)

Thanks, Matt, for answering my questions and for your contributions to the hobby!

We're Going to Need a Bigger Cake ! (301 Posts!)

Well, yesterday's entry marked 300 posts for the "Civil War Medicine (and Writing)" blog! Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah! That's a tricentennial, or in the spirit of the day: a bi-sesquicentennial!



Thanks to everyone for the support and comments! That's the fun part!



So, if you aren't a regular reader, what have you been missing?! Well, acording to Blogger Stats, here are the Top 10 posts (with pageviews) in the past 12 months:








Medical Department #38 - Civil War Anesthesia (Mar 1, 2011) (1,254 Pageviews)
Medical Department #18 - Lee's Health at Gettysburg (Jun 25, 2008) (1,052)
Medical Department #30 - Civil War Surgical Photography (Oct 13, 2009) (1,002)
Medical Department #7 - Quinine Substitutes in the Confederacy (Sep 4, 2007) (589)
Medical Department #4 - Pharmacy in the Civil War (Jun 7, 2007) (444)
Medical Department #26 - Jefferson Davis' Eye Disease (Jul 10, 2009) (344)
Medical Department #22 - Civil War "Snake Oil" - Part II of IV (Feb 5, 2009) (198)
Medical Department #23 - Urological Wounds in the Civil War (Feb 25, 2009) (193)
Games for Civil War Soldiers at Christmas! (Dec 1, 2010) (169)
Medical Department #3 - Army Medical Museum (May 24, 2007) (163)


And don't forget to visit my other blog: "Notre Dame in the Civil War" !

Here's to another 100 posts!

Medical Department #41 - Soldier Suicides During the Civil War

The following tragic headline was carried in many of the nation's newspapers in the past couple of weeks:

ARMY SUICIDES HIT RECORD IN JULY

This extract from an article in the Washington Post (full article here) explains the epidemic:

"The U.S. Army suffered a record 32 suicides in July, the most since it began releasing monthly figures in 2009. The high number of deaths represents a setback for the Army, which has put a heavy focus on reducing suicides in recent years. The number includes 22 active duty soldiers and 10 reservists. The previous record was 31, from June 2010. Army officials cautioned that investigations are still underway in most of the deaths to confirm the exact cause...In recent years, the Army’s suicide rate has surpassed the rate for the overall population. Comparing suicide rates among soldiers is difficult because the latest national suicide statistics, which are compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are about three years old."

It's an unfortunate - but all-the-more timely - coincidence that my most recent "Medical Department" column for The Civil War News deals with soldier suicide in the Civil War. (I had already submitted the article to editor at CWN before these recent headlines).

I usually introduce a column by stating "Enjoy!"...that's not appropriate in this case...see the end of the column for a more appropriate sentiment: a call to action.

THE WORLD GETS TOO MUCH

By James M. Schmidt
Civil War News

“Medical Department” – September 2011

At the end of the third part of Robert Penn Warren’s poem, “The Day Dr. Knox Did It,” a Confederate veteran tries his best to answer his grandson’s question why a neighbor had killed himself:

“But what made him do it?” I said, again.

Then wished I hadn’t, for he stared at me.
He stared at me as though I weren’t there,
Or as though I were dead, or had never been born

Darker than shade, his mouth opened then.
Spit was pink on his lips,
I saw the tongue move beyond the old teeth,
in the dark of his head.

It moved in that dark.
Then, “Son -” the tongue said
“for some folks the world gets too much,” it said.

The grandfather came as close as anyone can to explaining the tragedy of suicide. Indeed, a report from the Department of Defense recently (2010) concluded “After decades of research, there is still much that is not understood about the causes of suicide and effective approaches to prevent it.”

That the DOD would have to contemplate the issue at all is the more recent tragedy: In the five years from 2005 to 2009, over 1,100 service members have committed suicide; a rate of a suicide every 36 hours. The past year alone has seen the publication of dozens of papers in the medical literature commenting on the crisis and methods to identify the risk of suicide among active-duty personnel and in the ranks of veterans.

Not surprisingly, the phenomenon was also a social concern in the mid-19th century, and is the subject of Col. R. Gregory Lande’s recent and interesting article, “Felo De Se: Soldier Suicides in America’s Civil War” (Military Medicine, Vol. 176, May 2011, pp. 531-36.). (Full abstract here).

Dr. Lande (MC, USA, Ret.) was mostly recently attached to Psychiatry Continuity Service at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He is the author of more than thirty papers on military psychiatry in the professional medical literature and several books, including Madness, Malingering & Malfeasance: The Transformation of Psychiatry and the Law in the Civil War Era (Potomac Books, 2003).

In the article, Dr. Lande examines several aspects of suicide in the 1860s and 1870s, including record-keeping by states and municipalities; competing views of suicide among the public, the legal system, and the medical profession; factors that were thought to contribute to suicide; statistics on suicide among soldiers during the Civil War by year, by season, and troop strength; a discussion of conclusions drawn from those statistics; and the recognition that the “stressors of war” are timeless.

The term “felo de se” is a term meaning “a felon on himself.” Although it seems counter-intuitive, in fact suicide was considered a crime – legal and moral - deserving of punishment in the 1800s. Unfortunately, it was the families of the victim who actually suffered as Dr. Lande notes that the consequences could involve forfeiture of the victim’s property to the state or Crown. In the United States, life insurance policies were generally written to deny benefits to the families when deaths occurred due to suicide.

Official medical records kept during the Civil War indicate that there were no les than 268 suicides in the 51 months between June 1861 and August 1865, or 5.25 suicides per month. Dr. Lande found that the second year of the war produced the most suicides. He also examined the number of suicides by season and found that they reliably peaked every spring, but did not make a guess as to why that would be so.

The article also included reports – drawn from period newspapers – of specific suicides. Using leads from Dr. Lande’s paper – as well as my own research – below are some examples. Though one always has to be careful with simple anecdotal evidence, in fact each of the cases illustrates one or more of the social and personal factors that Dr. Lande identified as reasons for suicide, including “financial reversals, troubled relationships, the pernicious impact of certain literature, aggravating influence of education…poor health, insanity, and temperament.”

While Dr. Lande necessarily confined himself to reports of soldier suicides during the war for the purposes of the article, I’ve also included some reports of suicide of a war widow and veterans of two wars:

“Alonzo Coy…shot himself through the brain at these headquarters…A few days since his business led him to Washington, where he lost or had stolen from his pocket promissory notes to the amount of nearly $1,000 since which time he had appeared unusually depressed. Yesterday he was quite ill, and his illness, together with his loss, doubtless overruled his customary firmness, and to some degree unsettled his mind…About noon, Major Tripp…passed the door of his tent and entered a house standing near, the deceased saluting and speaking in a cheerful tone as he passed...immediately afterward heard the report of a pistol...The Major…rushed into the tent and found his friend lying…with the blood flowing from both temples. The pistol, a heavy revolver, lay upon the floor, having fallen from his grasp... his death has east a gloom upon the spirits of all who knew him.” – New York Times, September 26, 1862.

“W. B. Carter, a returned soldier, committed suicide on Wednesday, by taking strychnine…he left a note, saying he was tired of life, and stating where his pension certificate could be found, desiring it to be returned to his wife.” - Daily Evening Bulletin (Philadelphia), June 4, 1869.

“A homeless and hopeless soldier committed suicide in the streets of New York last week.” – The Press (Philadelphia), May 19, 1865.

“A soldier’s widow in Muncy became so depressed in consequence of the returning home of soldiers, that she committed suicide by drowning herself in a well.” – The Mariettian (PA), June 24, 1865.

“An Old Veteran Commits Suicide Rather Than Go to the Poor House – An old man named Andrew Klotz…committed suicide one day last week by hanging himself. He was an old soldier of the war of 1812 and had become quite poor. He was to have been removed to the Poor House the day after the commission of the deed.” – Lancaster Intelligencer (PA), September 18, 1867.

Dr. Lande concluded his article with a well-worded call to action:

“The shock of suicide often leads to a correspondingly intense inquiry. After a time, interest seems to dwindle until the next ‘unexpected’ suicide. The goal for policy makers and clinicians is to remain vigilant, ever on guard for the possibility of suicide. Even with the best practices, suicide prevention is hampered by the mysteries surrounding the motives. After all, the real answer is lost forever when the person dies. Nonetheless, prudent risk management strategies enforce alertness, ensure the appropriate interventions are quickly accessible, and demonstrate the military’s resolve to combat the dark emotional forces that lead to suicide.”

Let us never forget that casualties of the Civil War extended beyond the battlefield and – heeding Dr. Lande’s call – let us also remain vigilant and alert and do our part in supporting the needs of our men and women in uniform and returning veterans so that, for them, the world does not get “too much.”

C. H. Mason's Vegetable Cancer Cure - 1908 Letter

Here's another piece of "quack medicine" history from my collection...you can see my other posts here.

As an added bonus, this post is really brought to life by some photos of a rare bottle and medicine package generously shared by Dan Cowman, MD, one of the premier antique medicine and ephemera collectors in the country.

This letter was written by Mrs. Elnora Allen, Birchardville, PA , to Dr. C. H. Mason, Chatham, NY. Mason wrote a note in return on the back of a supper menu from his "New Windsor Hotel."

Mason and his brother, Abbott M. Mason, M.D., were known for their "Vegetable Cancer Cure" (later, "Vegetable Cancer Compound," both "VCC") which they sold by mail or - preferably - administered in their "Windsor Sanitarium."

Mrs. Allen was apparently a user of the VCC (which she refers to as the "Brand") for a lump in her breast, which is now gone. She indicated she had other problems as well: poor appetite and bowels and a lump behind her ear, all presumably "cured" by the VCC, which she stated she has stopped taking (while on her fifth bottle). At $10 a pop, that was no small sum in the early part of the century.

Now she is "nervous" but doesn't think she needs medicine for that.

Dr. Mason replies that she can stop taking the "Bran" [sic?] but is sending her some "red pills" for her nervousness and recommends that she continue to bathe her breast in alcohol.

Mrs. Allen may have been inspired to try the "Vegetable Cancer Cure" after seeing a typical Mason ad, such as this one, promising that cancer is cured with "No Pain" and "No Knife" with a testimonial of a woman claiming her breast cancer was cured:

The building in the advertisement is the Windsor Sanitorium/hotel, first built in the late 1880s, it succumbed to fire at least twice in the 1890s, and was rebuilt as the "New Windsor." The recent book, Around the Village of Chatham, by Gail Blass Wolczanski (Arcadia Publishing, 2009) has some GREAT period photographs and illustartions of the Windsor in its various forms.

Not surprisingly, the VCC was entirely worthless as a cancer "cure"; billed as "a purely vegetable compound of roots, herbs, and barks, containing no minerals or poisons" may have been true but whatever ingredients it did contain were not effective. Once source indicated that the VCC contained "water, about 75 per cent; alcohol, 12.56 per cent; and vegetable ingredients, 12.34 per cent; composed of drugs without definite chemical principles, but similar to rhubarb, sarsaparilla, etc." (The Pure Food and Drugs Act: Hearings before the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 1912).

Extant bottles of the VCC ("Cure" or "Compound") are very rare. I want to thank Dan Cowman, MD, for generously providing photographs of this marvelous bottle and package in his collection (below).

Readers of this blog will remember I met Dr. Cowman at the Houston Bottle Show in mid-July (you can read about it here). As mentioned at the beginning of this post, Dan is one of the premiere antique medicine collectors in the country and also collects medical ephemera. He is an expert who has always graciously answered my questions about collecting.

Unfortunately, the VCC was only one of many quack cancer cures marketed in the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries. Even more unfortunate is that quackery lives to this day and one can still find "unconventional" therapies that prey on the fear and mystery that is attached to cancer.

Hopefully I'll be able to feature more questionable cancer cures on this blog in the future, as my collection grows!

Meet John W. Morris, Esq.! (Civil War Pension Ephemera #9)

You can see my "Civil War Pension and Disability Ephemera" posts #1 through #8 here!

And now for today's post...

I have written generally about Civil War pension attorneys before (here), but here's your chance to see a typical pension attorney pitch! The items below - from attorney John W. Morris - are from my collection of Civil War pension ephemera

If your ancestor was a Civil War veteran, especially a Union veteran, he (and in a few cases, she!) was probably hounded by pension attorneys like John W. Morris seeking them as a client. Indeed, there's a good chance that your ancestor actually used John W. Morris, as he had one of the more successful pension attorney firms.

Enjoy!

Galveston Research Summary #7 - Dolph Briscoe Center for American History

Previous "Galveston Research Summaries" can be found below:

#1 - Dissent, Sedition, and Confederate Secret Police (here)
#2 - Ursuline Sisters (here)
#3 - The Pearce Civil War Museum and Collection (here)
#4 - New Orleans Archdiocese Records a the Archives of the University of Notre Dame (here)
#5 - Digital Resources at Rice University (here)
#6 - Texas General Land Office (here)

Summary of Galveston/Civil War Research Project (here)

And now, for the latest in Galveston Research Summaries (!):

I had the great pleasure this past weekend of visiting the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History (CAH, website here) on the campus of the University of Texas (Austin, TX) to do some research for my Galveston/Civil War writing project.

The mission of the CAH is:

Through stewardship, scholarship, and outreach, the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History increases knowledge and fosters exploration of our nation's past.

As a leading history research center, we collect, preserve, and make available documentary and material culture evidence encompassing key themes in Texas and U.S. history. Researchers, students, and the public mine our collections for a wide range of academic, professional, and personal uses. Our collections also inspire our own projects, including books, exhibits, programs, films, and educational materials. The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History is an organized research unit and public service component of The University of Texas at Austin.

My good friend, Guy R. Hasegawa, Pharm. D., co-editor (and contributor) of our book, Years of Change and Suffering: Modern Perspectives on Civil War Medicine (Edinborough Press, 2009), has been the subject of several of my "Medical Department" columns for The Civil War News. In one of those columns (here) he gave advice on efficient use of the National Archives, but that advice is pertinent to visiting any archives, and I took it to heart:

“First, do your homework, and be as specific as possible in stating your research interest,” he told me...His second suggestion is to allow plenty of time: “It takes time to locate microfilm or have paper records retrieved,” he said. He also noted that Civil War documents are generally handwritten and are difficult to read quickly. In short, he concludes: “Don’t fool yourself into thinking that any sizable project can be done in one day.”

So, first I did my homework!

The CAH has some excellent online finding aids (here) and I also took advantage of the terrific Texas Archival Resources Online (TARO, here), which helped with some specific keyword searching. In fact, TARO, is so helpful, I'm sure I'll make it the subject of another of these research summaries!

Second, I limited the amount of material I would ask for, especially since the Saturday hours at the CAH were limited. I identified two collections I was interested in - one the wartime diary of a leading GAlveston citizen and the other a handwritten account of the Battle of Galveston - and had the "box number" reference numbers ready as soon as I arrived an checked in. Even then, I still used the time allotted and didn't finish all of my research.

Although Guy didn't mention it, I'm sure he would agree that it's also important to know the policies and procedures of an archive before you visit as to regulations for what paper, writing utensils, computers, photography, etc. are or are not allowed. The CAH policies are here.

The staff at the CAH was VERY helpful and courteous...I look forward to visiting again!

1868. The First Class At MIT. The Only Chance To Save Boston (Forthcoming from Matthew Pearl!)

Got some great news via e-mail from one of one of my favorite authors today!

Matthew Pearl, author of The Dante Club, The Poe Shadow, and The Last Dickens, announced the February 2012 release of his fourth novel, The Technologists!

Here's my take on his debut novel, The Dante Club:

First, as an avid Civil War enthusiast, it was great fun to take a break from my usual diet of non-fiction to read a really good story with characters and events from the Civil War era. A few people have complained in other reviews about mistakes in fact, as far as the War goes - I did find a few as well, but i don't think they detract from the story and certainly wouldn't be caught by the general public. Most important, I really appreciated the importance Pearl seemed to place on male friendship - especially among the members of "The Club" - it really seems to be lacking in today's society and in today's writing. Whether the emphasis was purposeful or not, it was a nice departure from the post-modern sensibility of individualism that seems to crowd most of today's works.

...and of The Poe Shadow:

I will readily admit that it is not as good as The Dante Club but it's still a very enjoyable read. The characters are wonderful and his "experiment" in using a fictional character to describe a historical mystery (rather than in The Dante Club where real-life characters solved a fictional mystery) was a great premise. Personally, I think the plot of overseas politics was silly and he'd been much better to use the device of the local slave traders even more. In the paperback version with the author interview, they consider whether there is any of Matthew Pearl in the main character...perhaps so...I also think there is some Edgar Poe in Matthew Pearl: he has kindly and enthusiastically answered personal correpsondence (read the book and you'll understand!)

I haven't yet read The Last Dickens, but I will!

And now, in the author's words, a preview of The Technologists (!):

1868. The First Class At MIT. The Only Chance To Save Boston.

THE TECHNOLOGISTS is an explosive thriller set in tumultuous nineteenth century Boston. In the spring of 1868, the first students of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) prepare to graduate at a time when the word “technology” represents a bold and frightening new concept. Just two months before the historic graduation, a series of technological attacks in Boston spread a wave of terror through the population. Harvard, already alarmed by the “radical” education introduced by its new competitor across the Charles River, mobilizes its influence to direct the hysteria and fear against MIT. With the future of their school and careers at stake and innocent lives endangered, the first MIT students must employ their particular skills to stop the attacks and uncover the mastermind. The city's fate will come down to Marcus Mansfield, a Civil War veteran determined to repay MIT's founder for taking a chance on enrolling a working class machinist, as well as fellow “Tech” students, brash Bob Richards, meticulous Edwin Hoyt and the eccentric and brilliant Ellen Swallow, the first female secretly studying at MIT.

Sounds Terrific! February 2012 can't get here too soon!

Dr. Thacher's Liver and Blood Syrup - Part II (Package Inserts)

See here for Part I (photos of bottle, biographical, etc.).

Below are the package inserts...for fun, compare them to the inserts for today's medicines!

Dr. Thacher's Liver and Blood Syrup - Part I

Thought it was a good time to feature another item from my modest (but growing!) patent/quack/proprietary medicine collection. This post features:

Dr. Thacher's Liver & Blood Syrup
Thacher Medicine Co,
Chattanooga, TN

I'm not sure of the exact age of the bottle (with syrup (!), box, and insert), but it is certainly post-1916 but pre-acquisition by "Allied Products"...probably c. 1925-30.

In Part I below, I feature photos of the bottle, biographical information on Thacher, and some additional information from the classic Nostrums and Quackery. In Part II, I will feature scans of the product insert.

Here is some biographical information on founder Henry Savage Thacher from The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, Volume 47 (1916):

Henry Savage Thacher [was] born December 11th, 1826, at Biddeford, Me.; he resided successively at East Concord, N. H., and at Nashville and Chattanooga, Tenn. He was a chemist and apothecary and was the founder of Dr. Thacher's Medicine Company of Chattanooga, Tenn., and the inventor and proprietor of the medicines there manufactured; he died at Chattanooga, November 16th, 1898, and was there buried in the Catholic Cemetery. He married at East Concord, N. H., September 30th, 1852, to Sarah Drown Eastman, born East Concord, N. H., June 5th, 1828; died at Chattanooga, July 21st, 1899, and was there buried. She was a daughter of Ebenezer and Mary Drown (Underwood) Eastman, of East Concord, N. H. Children (5; 4 sons, 1 daughter, all born at East Concord, N.H.).

It would be interesting to know what brought this New Englander down to Chattanooga!

The advertisement below from 1905 is typical in touting its many "cures: all liver disorders, all kidney diseases, biliousness, constipation, skin diseases, dyspepsia, rheumatism, and headaches (at least!).

Although this post features his "Liver and Blood Syrup," the company produced several different medicines,including a worm syrup (for children), a "cholera mixture, Stella Vitae (for female complaints), and others.

What's in That Stuff Anyway?

In an article in a 1903 issue of the American Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record, the Thacher Medicine Co. insisted that their Liver and Blood Syrup was not a "patent" medicine or nostrum (that is, with secret ingredients) but rather a proprietary medicine (carrying the Thacher name), that always listed the ingredients:

Thacher's Liver and Blood Syrup, as well as all other preparations made by the Thacher Medicine Company, of Chattanooga, Tenn., is not a " patent" but a proprietary medicine, the formula for which includes the following: Buchu, hydrangea, mandrake, yellow dock, dandelion, sarsaparilla, gentian, senna and potassium iodide. Their laboratory affords every facility for compounding these ingredients in a superior, scientific manner. Only the best and purest drugs are used : these are bought direct from the importers in large quantities, every one of which is tested and guaranteed absolutely pure.

Evidently, the American Medical Association and the "feds" saw it differently; in the classic Nostrums and Quackery is the following description of false claims:

Thacher's Liver and Blood Syrup.—This preparation, which admittedly contained 12% per cent, alcohol, was sold by the Thacher Medicine Company, Chattanooga, Tenn. The claims made by the company that the stuff contained no aloes but contained potassium iodid and sarsaparilla combined with May apple, gentian, juniper berries, buchu leaves, dandelion root and yellow dock root were declared by the government to be false and misleading. It was further claimed by the company that Thacher's Liver and Blood Syrup would "cure All Liver Complaints, Biliousness, Costiveness, Drowsiness, Yellow Jaundice, and All Liver Complaints, Impure or Bad Blood including Scrofula, Salt Rheum, Erysipelas, Pimples, and All Diseases of a Syphilitic Character, Also Loss of Appetite, Dyspepsia, Sour Stomach, Sleeplessness, Pains in Back and Sides, Sick Headache . . ." Naturally, the government declared these claims misleading, false and fraudulent. As no claimant appeared for the property, the court ordered that it should be destroyed by the United States marshal.

I was not able to find any fatalities attributed to Thacher's Liver and Blood Syrup, but there was a 1911 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association describing a tragic poisoning of two young children by Thacher's "worm syrup."

In Part II, I'll post scans of the package insert.

"An Army of Scarecrows" - Uniforms at Wilson's Creek

Next week marks the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Wilson's Creek, fought August 10, 1861, on the outskirts of Springfield, MO.

The battle is one of my favorites to study and I have (happily!) visited the battlefield 2 or 3 times.

I have posted previously on the battle as noted below:

Book review of Wilson’s Creek, Pea Ridge, & Prairie Grove: A Battlefield Guide with a Section on Wire Road (here)

The Springfield (MO) National Cemetery (here)

"The Sinkhole" - a temporary burial pit - on the battlefield (here)

Like many of the early battles of the Civil War, the Battle of Wilson's Creek witnessed a great variety of uniforms as well as mistaken identity of enemy and friend.

The excerpt below from my first book, Lincoln's Labels: America's Best Known Brands and the Civil War (Edinborough Press, 2008) gives a sense of this variety and confusion.

Enjoy!

"An Army of Scarecrows"

We know, Mr. Weller — we, who are men of the world — that a good uniform must work its way with the women, sooner or later. In fact, that’s the only thing, between you and me, that makes the service worth entering into. — The Pickwick Papers

More than fifty years after the fact, Eugene Ware still remembered how the militia companies in Burlington, Iowa — one composed mainly of Germans and the other of Irish — had attracted his attention. “They were both fiercely pugnacious,” Ware wrote, “the Germans having a little more fight than the other . . . when there were festive occasions and these two military companies paraded, they paraded separately, and when the thing was over and military discipline at an end, there was liable to be a fight, and generally a fight that was stubborn.” (1)

In the late 1850s, Ware got his chance to join. He bought his own uniform and, after some drilling, became quite proficient and proudly marched in the company’s exhibitions in the city. As the unit matured, it grew more expert still, especially under the helm of an old, kind-hearted Swede who had fought in Europe and had been through the Mexican War. “Our Swedish captain wanted us to become Zouaves [a colorfully-adorned soldier popularized by the French wars in Africa],” Ware remembered, “so we all bought Zouave uniforms — leather leggings, red flannel baggy trousers, a light-blue woolen shirt, and a bob-tailed, dark-blue cloth jacket . . . with rows of round brass buttons. A little gold braid was put on and a jaunty cap with a gold band.” Ware concluded that “a handsomer body of young men could not have been found.” (2)

Ware’s Zouaves constituted the larger part of another local military company: the “Wide Awakes,” a pro-Union paramilitary organization that had chapters across the nation. The town’s Democrats formed their own company, adopted a Scotch plaid uniform, and called themselves the “Douglas Clan” or the “Little Giants.” With partisan tensions stirred, either the Wide Awakes or the Little Giants were promenading on the streets all the time, and — like the German and Irish companies he watched as a youngster — Ware was now party to fisticuffs of his own. “It was hard to have a political parade without a fight,” he remembered. (3)

With the passing of Lincoln’s election, it became apparent that war was likely. Even more men wanted to join Burlington’s Zouaves, and Ware became a drillmaster of new recruits. By spring, the company had grown to 200 men. When news of the firing on Fort Sumter reached town, the unit immediately offered its services to Iowa’s governor; but, with so many men prepared to go, Ware was not assured a spot.

“I went home that night with a very heavy heart,” he remembered, “feeling that I was not going to get into the company and I was not going to get to see any of the trouble.” A few nights later, at a local tavern, Ware encountered a Rebel sympathizer waxing poetic about how “one Southern man could beat five [Yankees] any time or any where.” A fight ensued in which Ware came out on top; the victory won him accolades and — more important — a spot in the company. (4)

Only half the company had the Zouave uniforms, however, and local veterans of the Mexican War criticized the attire as unfit for the rigors of camp and battle. The state had no uniforms to give, so the girls in town organized themselves and made an outfit “the way they wanted it,” Ware recalled, “with some art and some style put into it so that we would be adorned as well as uniformed.” With bemusement, Ware described the homespun uniform in detail:

The coat, as made, was a hunting-frock of the pioneer Daniel Boone type, fitting closely at the neck, cuff, and belt, but full of surplusage everywhere else. It was made of a fluffy, fuzzy, open-woven, azure-gray cloth, the like of which I had never seen before and have never seen since. The cuff, collar, and a band up and down the breast were flannel of a beautiful Venetian red, insuring a good target. Trowsers of a heavy buckskin type and color. Black felt hunting-hat, with a brilliant red-ribbon cockade. (5)

Now uniformed, Ware and his company joined hundreds of fellow statesmen in Keokuk, where they were mustered into the First Iowa Infantry in mid-May 1861 for three months’ service. Few thought the war would last that long. The First left Iowa for Missouri in mid-June, marching from Macon City to Renick and then to Booneville in a week’s time, as part of Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon’s “Army of the West.”

“We now began looking for the foe,” Ware remembered, “the ‘foe’ is what we were after.” In Lyon’s eye, the “foe” was the Missouri State Guard under Major General Sterling Price. Lyon had chased him from St. Louis to Booneville to Jefferson City and was now advancing toward Springfield. (6)

Ware had enlisted in April. It was now mid-July, and Lyon’s campaign was wearing the men down. “Regarding the First Iowa, I may here say that they had begun to look tough,” Ware wrote. “In the first place, no two companies were uniformed alike. Each company had a different shape of clothes and in different colors. . . . In addition to this, many uniforms had been completely worn out and the boys had bought what they could get, or had got new things from home already partially worn. It was a motley crew.” Ware was right about the eclectic uniforms of his comrades. “[They] were a mixture of every shade and shape,” one historian declared. “The jackets varied from dark blue to light bluish-gray, while two companies wore black and white tweed frock coats. The pants ranged from black with red stripes to pink satinet with light green stripes.” (7)

It was all too much for Franc Wilkie, a reporter with the Dubuque Herald who was traveling with Ware’s regiment. When he compared the condition of his fellow Iowans with a regiment of Missourians in “their clean, handsome blue uniforms and glittering rifles and sword bayonets with the dirty, travel-soiled appearance of our men, with their old-fashioned black muskets, I was ashamed of Iowa,” he reported. He continued:

A State pretending to loyalty, sends a thousand men into service, looking like an army of scarecrows, while a secession state [Missouri] furnishes twice as many regiments, and gets them ready for service in a style unsurpassed by that of the best soldiers in the world. It was enough to make one curse in utter vexation to see our men as they trampled wearily through the sand — their rags fluttering like streamers — their whole appearance more like that of a crowd of vagabonds chased from civilization. If the children of Israel looked half as ragged and dirty and woe-begone, after their forty years tramp in the wilderness, as our men yesterday, they were a meaner looking set of men than one can well imagine. (8)

Wilkie needn’t have been so critical of Iowa: the regiment that caught his attention was the exception to the rule in Lyon’s army. Also, other Missourians were less well off; a soldier in the Third Missouri wrote that his regiment “resembled a rabble more than soldiers. Each one wore whatever clothes he chose to wear. They had become torn on the march. Some had no trousers anymore. In place of trousers they had slipped on sacks for head coverings.” An officer in the First Kansas infantry had “tinfoil shoulder straps sewed with black thread,” and other Kansans had government-issued blouses and socks (if they were not barefooted) and headgear that ranged from “Jackson’s white plug at Talladega to Scott’s monstrosity at Cherubusco.” (9)

Lyon and his “army of scarecrows” — about 6,000 strong — were camped at Springfield, Missouri. Confederate troops under the command of Brigadier General Benjamin McCulloch had joined Price’s Missourians, making them about 12,000 strong. On August 9, both sides — each unbeknownst to the other — formulated plans to attack. At about five o’clock the following morning, Lyon, in two columns, attacked the Confederates on Wilson’s Creek, about twelve miles southwest of Springfield.

The first major battle of the war west of the Mississippi was fierce; it was also confusing. The panoply of uniforms on both sides — Price and McCulloch’s men wore a mix of blue, gray, and butternut themselves — led to several incidents of mistaken identity. At a critical point in the battle, Colonel Franz Sigel, commanding one of Lyon’s two columns, saw a regiment in gray emerge from the smoke. The optimistic Sigel — who had pressed for the two-column approach — expected to link up with Lyon’s forces at some time in the battle and, thinking that the approaching force was Ware’s own gray-clad First Iowa, ordered his men to hold their fire.

In fact, the troops emerging from the haze were soldiers of the opposing Third Louisiana, and when they began firing it was a great surprise to Sigel and his men. Sigel, horrified at what he thought was tragic friendly fire, screamed in his native German, “Sie haben gegen uns geschossen! Sie irrten sich!” (“They [are] firing against us! They make a mistake!”). Some of the Union soldiers returned fire, but the Third Louisiana was largely unopposed and quickly routed Sigel’s force from the field. (10)

The battle was going no better across the creek. Lyon had been killed leading the First Iowa in a charge; his column had faced three charges by Confederates up “Bloody Hill” and, low on ammunition, could scarcely face another. The Union force, now under Major Samuel Sturgis, retreated to Springfield.

As for Ware himself, he was justly proud of how his company and regiment fought in the battle and incredulous that they had left the field to the Confederates. Still, Ware drew two important lessons from his first of many actions in the war: “One thing which the battle . . . forever settled was that a ‘mudsill’ would fight,” Ware decided. “And another thing was forever settled, that one Southern man could not whip five Northern men.” (11)

Eugene Ware’s experience with uniforms in the early part of the Civil War was not a singular one. In the hectic days following Fort Sumter, the federal government was hard pressed to supply uniforms for tens of thousands of volunteers, let alone impose standards for color, pattern, and quality. The states took responsibility — as best they could — for outfitting their regiments; a few governors were able to supply their men with durable uniforms that matched, but most relied on militia units — like Ware’s Zouaves — to go to war in sometimes gaudy and often impractical attire until they could be properly outfitted.

In the early days of the Civil War, blue and gray had not yet taken on any partisan significance. On each side, soldiers wore both colors, even in the same regiments. This confusion due to the variety of uniforms made a great difference in the war’s early days. The First Battle of Bull Run ( a month before Ware’s trial at Wilson’s Creek ) and the Battle of Cheat Mountain ( a month after) witnessed “friendly fire” incidents caused by uncertainty about the uniforms of approaching parties.

***

After the battle at Wilson’s Creek, the First Iowa left Springfield and marched to Rolla, where they were put on flatcars and boxcars and delivered to the arsenal at St. Louis in late August “in the presence of a vast crowd that yelled and cheered as if they could not make noise enough,” Ware recalled. The men got up at 4 a.m. the following day. (“We had got into the habit of getting up early,” Ware wrote, “and could not sleep in the morning.”) Roll was called, breakfast was had, and mail was delivered. “Then we all went down into the Mississippi River,” Ware remembered, “and had fun in the water.” (12)

On return to the arsenal from their day at the beach, the men had a great surprise waiting for them: boxes of uniforms sent by the state. “These State uniforms were very neat,” Ware wrote. They included a black hat, light-blue trousers, and a dress coat buttoning up the chin made of fine cadet gray cloth with a light-blue collar and cuff trimmings. “I got a uniform that fitted me as if a tailor had made it,” Ware remembered with satisfaction (and humor: “I looked like a Confederate officer,” he added). The men struck out for baths and barbers and threw away everything they had worn till then. Shaved and bathed, the Iowans made a good impression at the evening’s dress parade: “Nobody would have known the regiment,” Ware concluded. (13)

The reception given by the city heartened Ware and his comrades considerably. Museums, theaters, restaurants, and other establishments were open to them gratis. “I never put my head out of [my] hotel but that — having on my First Iowa uniform,” Ware recalled, “the first German who saw me took me by the arm to the nearest beer saloon, and after introducing me to everyone he knew in the room, said ‘You fights mit Sigel — you drinks mit me.’” (14)

When it returned home to Iowa, the First was greeted with equal aplomb. The regiment — then finished with its three-months’ service (and more) — disbanded, but Ware reenlisted in the cavalry. And why not? Like Dickens’ “gentleman in blue” who addressed Mr. Weller in the Pickwick Papers, Ware’s uniform did “work its way with the women.” “The girls had been praising us so that we felt it incumbent on us to prove we could do it over again if we wanted — and we did,” Ware wrote. “Without the inspiration of women there could be no armies, no great battles, and but little of what we call ‘history,’” he concluded. (15)

Notes:

(1) Ware, E. F. The Lyon Campaign in Missouri. Topeka, KS: Crane & Co., 1907, p. 5.
(2) Ibid, p.64.
(3) Ibid, p.66.
(4) Ibid, pp. 70-71.
(5) Ibid, p.79.
(6) Ibid, p. 80.
(7) “Regarding the First Iowa . . . ” in Ware, p. 155-56; “[They] were a mixture . . . ” in Lindberg, K. “Uniform and Equipment Descriptions of Units at Wilson’s Creek.” Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield, n.d., p. 12.
(8) Dubuque Herald, June 26, 1861, p. 2.
(9) “resembled a rabble more than . . . ” in Lindberg, p. 17; “tinfoil shoulder straps . . . .” and “Jackson’s white plug at . . . ” in Lindberg, p. 15.
(10) Piston, W. G. and R. W. Hatcher, III. Wilson’s Creek: The Second Battle of the Civil War and the Men Who Fought It Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000, p. 255.
11. Ware, p. 340.
12. Ware, p. 345.
13. Ibid, p. 346.
14. Ibid, p. 347.
15. Ibid, p. 353.

Read more excerpts from Lincoln's Labels here:

E. R. Squibb and Anesthesia (here)
Gail Borden and Condensed Milk (here)
Express Companies (here)
du Pont Gunpowder (here)
Introduction (here)
Essay on Sources (here)

and more on this blog!