Chapter 4: Fog of War
Supplement to Endnotes
Endnote 1) see more on the chaos and controversy concerning the first battle at Blackburn Ford, in 4.1, here.
Endnote 3) On wanting out of his first regiment: Cole appealed to the Chief of Cavalry to be transferred with some of his men to the Third New York Cavalry. “[We] volunteered our services in May 1861,” he reasoned, but because New York state was not accepting cavalry units, Cole and his company had “since acted as infantry, under the assurance from the State military authorities that we should be mounted & used in our proper place….” But because New York state was not accepting cavalry units, his company had acted as infantry “under the assurance” by New York military authorities that it would be “mounted & used in our proper place….” Letter to Brig Gen. Stoneman, Chief of Cavalry, Aug 26, 1861 in Cole’s Compiled Service Record (CSR), Twelfth New York Volunteers, NARA.
Endnote 5) George W. Lewis was listed as captain in September of 1861, in the muster book. See: New York State Archives, Cultural Education Center, Albany, New York; New York Civil War Muster Roll Abstracts, 1861-1900; Archive Collection #:13775-83; Box #: 62; Roll #:903-904, p. 1039.
Endnote 6) On the perceptions of cavalry: The cavalry’s aristocratic connotations increasingly came under attack within Yankeedom. For the first half of the war, at least, the Union cavalry brought disappointment to the North; it was outgeneraled by southern men who felt more comfortable in the saddle than did shopkeepers from Boston and Philadelphia. The Southerners knew the lay of their own land, and had better horses, too. See: Stephen Starr, The Union Cavalry in the Civil War: The War in the West, 1861–1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007), p. xii; Edward Longacre, Mounted Raids of the Civil War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), pp. 11-18.
Endnote 7) I am deeply indebted to David L. Burrows, an expert in war medals, for helping me solve a mystery that I was unable to figure out for over a decade. I only know about this disc because of a letter from a man named F.B. Alderdice who wrote the Civil War Veteran Bureau in 1935, seeking information about a “round medal of copper” that he found in Parker County, Texas. Strangely, Alderdice refers to Washington as “some man, surrounded by stars and the work[sic] ‘Union’ at the bottom.” Alderdice gives a clear description of the I.D information on the reverse side. He asked for information about how to reach Cole’s descendants, perhaps believing that he could sell the medal to them. Mary had long been dead in 1935 and there is no indication that Alderdice returned the family treasure. In response to the letter, the Widows and Dependents Claim Service wrongly informed Alderdice that it was likely a medal issued by Congress -- when it was truly an identification tag; Thus began over a decade-long fool's errand of trying to find information on this mysterious medal from Congress. Only when fortune led me to David Burrows did I connect the dots.
About the disc: Cole had “Captain” punched before his name, so he purchased it between his transfer to the cavalry in September 1861, and his promotion to major in December 1862. Because it didn’t take him long to begin dreaming of promotions and becoming an officer over black troops, he might have hesitated in adding his rank of captain after his first days in his new regiment. There are 34 stars on the disc, representing the 34 United States before West Virginia became the 35th in June 1863.
Also, I believe he wore the disc as a necklace and not suspended from a breastpin like a medal. Soldiers sometimes posed with their breastpin discs proudly displayed on their uniform, something Cole did not do in his surviving war poses. There are 49 known designs of identification discs that Union soldiers purchased. The particular George Washington disc does not seem to correlate with the discs that others in his cavalry regiment wore. See: Larry B. Maier and Joseph W. Stahl, Identification Discs of Union Soldiers in the Civil War: A Complete Classification Guide and Illustrated History (Jefferson: McFarland & Company), pp. 5-23, and links between discs and regiments on pp. 55-56, 172; Also see: Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), esp. chapters, “Naming” and “Accounting.”
Now for a strange, inexplicable thing that happened while researching all of this. From early on in my research, I knew that so much of Cole’s story was tied -- at least in a literary way -- to George Washington and the long shadow of the bold American experiment. I had come to see that George Cole and his twin brother (who died soon after birth) had been born in a time when the fading heroes of revolution were on the minds of his parents. Never did I suspect that the supposed “medal” lost by Cole, had actually been an identification disc with George Washington on it. It was David Burrows who directed me to the truth about Cole’s “medal of copper” through an email. One day, I was searching for his email to thank him. When I found our initial email exchange I noticed that he had written the email to me on February 22 (2021), the day of George Washington’s Birthday! Months later, I was re-reading the original letter from 1935, where the man from Texas described this supposed medal. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Mr. Alderdice wrote that original letter to Washington DC on February 22!
Endnote 12) About his injury. The “picked up for dead” is one of the rare descriptions that came directly from George Cole, after the murder, as he argued to the magistrate why he needed a better cell.
Endnote 13) About the affidavits and Cole’s pension record: See the General Affidavit by Edwin R. Fox, June, 1882; deposition of Mary B. Cole, March 12, 1884; more evidence of Fox found in Syracuse Journal, April 25, 1868; for Cole grabbing catheter away from hospital steward in Syracuse Journal, April 28, 1868. See letter of Martha Cole to Cornelius, December 9, 1862, UCLA Box 15; Syracuse Journal, July 30, 1862 (loose clipping found in Cole-Hiscock folder at Onondaga Historical Association).
For story about Cole wishing he had been shot a little higher, so that he would be buried in a grave in Virginia, see testimony of Frank E. Garret in Syracuse Journal, April 25, 1868, and Remarkable Trials, pp. 243-44. It seems clear that the shot that Cole received around the time he fell with his horse happened in North Carolina, not Virginia -- though there is some suggestion that he was shot earlier in the war too. Frank Garrett probably misremembered; it seems he got the right body part but the wrong state. Cole’s use of a cane can be found in cross-examination of Garret by Sedgwick. There is also a record of George Cole getting a medical leave of absence from Jul 23 to about Aug 9, 1862 from the Assistant Adjutant General’s Office—Department of North Carolina. See pension, for record of another leave on April 16, 1863, for 20 days.
Endnote 14) About the expeditions that Cole missed while laid up. His cavalry regiment also engaged in a November expedition to capture rebel iron-clads under construction. This expedition, derisively called the “Tarboro Mud March,” was foiled when a warning, written with milk on paper by a woman in New Bern, was smuggled through Union lines into guerrilla hands. See: Schoharie Patriot, February 5, 1863; David A. Norris, Potter’s Raid: The Union Cavalry’s Boldest Expedition in Eastern North Carolina (Wilmington, NC: Dream Tree Books, 2007), pp. 16-18. Also see chapter 7 in Christopher Jones’s manuscript (on the Tarboro Raid and Foster’s Raid). Chapters by Jones shared with author in private correspondence. On this raid to destroy ships, the alerted Rebels dissolved into the backcountry. The frustrated pursuers eventually discovered that no such ironclads existed in the river town of Hamilton. They then turned toward the town of Tarboro, a Confederate stronghold but were fooled and stopped short of taking the town. A party of Rebel soldiers, with the help of a single train running back and forth in front of the Tarboro station, along with synchronized yelling from townspeople, simulated the sounds of reinforcement troops arriving to protect the town. Unaware of the ruse, the Union commanding officer turned his soldiers toward their own mud tracks to slink their way back to New Bern.
Endnote 15) His “bully boys” set fires and looted, but -- in their minds -- it was justice for the cowardly deeds of the enemy who escaped defeat one time by waving a flag of truce, with the false pretext of removing women and children from a town under assault.
About the violence of the Third New York, see: Letter from Charles Mosher to Father, March 7, 1863; For the legend of the charge, see the correspondent for the Democrat and American, February 24, 1864, in newspaper clippings for the Third Cavalry New York at the New York State Military Museum (website): http://dmna.ny.gov/historic/reghist/civil/cavalry/3rdCav/3rdCavCWN.htm (accessed on June 3, 2015).
I want to give thanks to Christopher Jones, who freely shared his meticulous, unpublished work with me. It was essential to understanding the raw violence committed by the cavalry in North Carolina. (Essays in my possession.)
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