The battle of Anderson, revisited

This is the 163-year-old flag that the Arsenal cadets rallied around in the "Battle of Anderson." It is displayed at The Citadel Museum in Charleston, S.C. (Photo courtesy The Citadel Archives and Museum)

PIEDMONT, S.C.

 Where was the last battle of the Civil War? Depending on how you define a battle, it might have been in Anderson County. 

 There were three brief skirmishes in the county on May 1, 1865, as thousands of mounted Yankees converged on Anderson to pursue fugitive Confederate President Jefferson Davis. One was near Craytonville, where locals fired on the 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry. Another was near what is now La France Mill, where Col. W.R. Jones' Pendleton Mounted Infantry challenged Yankees from Michigan, Kentucky, or Tennessee. 
 The third incident happened at Thomas Moore's farm halfway between Anderson and Greenville. Historical markers describe this as "one of the last engagements of the war" and "the last unit action of the War between the States east of the Mississippi," the units being a squad from the 10th Michigan Cavalry and the Arsenal Cadets, also known as Company B of the State Battalion. Mercifully, none of those skirmishes resulted in a loss of life.

Memorial in Waynesville, N.C.

 However, the gunshots in the Anderson countryside were not the last hostilities of the war. One of the Arsenal cadets who fought at Moore's Farm, McKenzie Parker, was killed by Stoneman's raiders May 3 in downtown Anderson, as was Texas Ranger A.C. Wall in a midnight skirmish May 9 in Madison, Ga. About May 23 in Greenville, one of Stoneman's Tennessee regiments came under fire from a loosely organized Home Guard. 
 Waynesville, N.C., also makes a claim to the last shot of the war on May 6, 1865, when Thomas' Legion (composed largely Cherokee Indians loyal to the Confederacy) killed James Arwood of the Union's 2nd N.C. Infantry. 
 There were even two Yankees killed by friendly fire May 10 in Irwinville, Ga., during the capture of Jefferson Davis, when two Union lines mistook each other for Confederate bodyguards.

The marker on the left is in downtown Williamston and implies that "one of the last engagements of the war" took place in nearby Mineral Spring Park. Actually, the skirmish happened 10 miles away at Thomas Moore's farm.

 Some of the details of the so-called battle of Anderson weren't easy to nail down when I wrote about it during the 150th anniversary of Stoneman's Raid in 2015. Since then, I've come across some old newspaper accounts and eyewitness reports from the Confederates.
 The Arsenal Academy was a school in Columbia that was essentially a prep school for The Citadel in Charleston. In 1865, when Charleston anticipated an attack from Gen. William T.  Sherman, The Citadel sent its flag to Columbia for safekeeping. Then Sherman decided to attack Columbia instead of Charleston, and the Arsenal cadets took the flag and began marching through the countryside to elude the Yankees.
 They eventually wound up in Greenville, where they helped guard a gun factory until they heard of the approach of Stoneman's cavalry. Knowing that Robert E. Lee had already surrendered, they weren't looking for a fight, so they began retreating toward Newberry. They stopped to rest at Thomas Moore's farm in northern Anderson County, near what is now the town of Piedmont. The farm was in the Williamston Township, even though it was 10 miles from the town of Williamston. Piedmont and Pelzer did not exist at the time, though one of the cadets, Ellison Adger Smyth, would put Pelzer on the map by building a cotton mill there.
 The 10th Michigan Cavalry was riding from Spartanburg toward Anderson, where they were to rendezvous with other regiments from Stoneman's Raid and pursue Davis "to the end of the earth." Their route brought them through the Golden Grove community south of Greenville.
 On their way to Anderson, the Michigan cavalry divided into squads to try to pick up the trail of Jefferson Davis—who was actually taking a more southerly path via Greenwood and Abbeville. Guided down a country lane by a freed slave, the Union cavalry stumbled upon the cadets at Moore's Farm.

Route of the 10th Michigan Cavalry. They were in Lincolnton April 12, Newton April 17, Asheville April 26, Spartanburg April 30, Anderson May 1-2, and Athens May 5.

Gen. Stoneman had left the raid two weeks earlier, and military discipline had broken down under Gen. Simeon Brown. Many of the Union soldiers saw no purpose in pursuing Davis, now that most Confederates had surrendered. By the end of the war, the Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee regiments in Stoneman's raid had a terrible reputation, which was borne out by the way the Yankees pillaged and terrorized Asheville April 26 and Anderson May 1-2, 1865

 Two renegades from Michigan lost their lives through their mischief in Anderson County. The dates they died indicate that they had abandoned the pursuit of Davis. By May 3, their regiments had left South Carolina and were in Georgia. 

• Alanson Wesley Chapman of Hillsdale, Michigan, accidentally shot himself May 5 near Pendleton while looting the Boscobel plantation of Rev. John Bailey Adger. The preacher's memoirs include vivid details. "Chapman had stolen a fine young mare, and in mounting her, his short carbine swung around. The hammer hit the pommel of his saddle as the muzzle jabbed him under the chin, and he fell dead in the yard." His fellow Yankees began going through the pockets of their dead comrades to take his loot." When Adger saw watches Chapman had stolen from his home, he declared, "The hand of God is on you men." They returned the watches to him, and Rev. Adger gave the soldier a proper burial. "I could do no less for any man who died at my door," the preacher said.
• David "Harry" Morrison was killed May 9 between Greenville and Easley in retaliation for the May 1 murder of civilian Matthew Ellison. Morrison, 18, was buried on Turner Hill near what is now the intersection of U.S. 23 and S.C. 153. Family members later reclaimed the bodies of Morrison and Chapman. 

 It's no wonder that the 10th Michigan Cavalry missed their opportunity for fame in the pursuit of Jefferson Davis. In fact, the 10th Michigan Cavalry was still over 100 miles behind Davis when he was captured by the 4th Michigan Cavalry, who had come through Alabama.

Capt. John Peyre Thomas

 On the day of the "battle of Anderson," the Michigan outfit may have been looking for places to plunder, and Moore's stately two-story home would have been a likely target. In that case, it might have been every man for himself, which would explain why the squad abandoned their wounded comrade, James Callahan, on the field of battle, rather than fighting to rescue one of their own.
 The superintendent of the Arsenal, Capt. John Peyre Thomas, wrote a history of South Carolina Military Academy in 1893, where he described the events that led to the Anderson skirmish. After the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee April 9 in Virginia and Gen. Joseph Johnstone April 26 in North Carolina, he said his cadets were "the only organized body in arms in the state, and perhaps in the South, this side of the Mississippi River."
 Capt. Thomas doesn't mention it, but historian Thomas Bland Keys wrote in his paper "The Federal Pillage of Anderson: Brown's Raid," that a local militia led by Lt. W.P. Price fought alongside the cadets. 
 With so many armed men roaming the countryside, and with Southern blood boiling in defeat, it didn't take much to spark a shootout. From Thomas' book: 

 

 In another passage, Capt. Thomas described the flag as "blue Lyons silk" decorated on one side with the coat of arms of the state of South Carolina and on the reverse with the names of S.C. Revolutionary War battles—Fort Moultrie, Cowpens, King's Mountain, Eutaw Springs. The banner was a gift from the Washington Light Infantry (named for a cousin of George Washington), an organization that is still active in Charleston.
 When I first heard about the cadets rallying around the flag, I thought it might be "Big Red," the famous 5x7-foot banner that was captured by a Union soldier after the war and kept in an Iowa museum for many decades. Since 2018, "Big Red" has been displayed at the Holliday Alumni Center at The Citadel, and the state governors have been negotiating a permanent loan that would keep the flag in Charleston.
 At Moore's Farm, the Yankees realized they were outnumbered. They soon retreated and took another route to Anderson. According to Louise Ayer Vandiver's history of Anderson County, the cadets' stand prevented the Yankees from burning the nearby trestle on the Greenville & Columbia Railroad. 
 The wounded Yankee later returned to marry Thomas Moore's daughter. 

Cavalry vs. Calvary: Not a hill to die on

Etched in stone: Note the spelling correction on the seventh line of this marker

 Forty years ago, a British country singer named Paul Kennerly wrote a concept album dealing with the Civil War from a Southern perspective. "White Mansions" is far from politically correct, but it has become a cult classic. The characters were portrayed by  Waylon Jennings, his wife Jessi Colter, and John Dillon and Steve Cash from the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.
 One of my favorite songs on the album was about two warhorses, "The Union Mare and the Confederate Grey" (click to listen). Kennerly betrays his roots by using "grey" instead of "gray," which is how we usually spell it down South.
 But the greater faux pas in the song is in the way Waylon Jennings sang it. In an otherwise outstanding performance, he pronounced cavalry as calvary:

Two horses were trotting. They pranced and they ran.
Each one was commanded by a calvary man.
Two horses stood grazing where their dead riders lay.
A Union mare and a Confederate grey.

They nuzzled each other, as they teased and had fun.
They bathed in the warm rays of the old Southern sun.
No more senseless orders for them to obey.
So they acted like lovers, this mare and this grey.

Now these are such sad times that we're all living in.
For killing your brother is the mightiest sin.
How happy we'd be if we acted the way
of the Union mare and the Confederate grey.

Two horses were trotting. They pranced and they ran.
Each one was commanded by a calvary man.
Two horses stood grazing where their dead riders lay.
A Union mare and a Confederate grey.

 At least when Joan Baez recorded "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," she got "cavalry" correct when she changed "till Stoneman's cavalry came" into "till so much cavalry came."
 It's a common mistake. The Civil War memorial in Tampa, Fla., used Calvary instead of Cavalry, and it cost the veterans' committee $1,635 to fix the cast metal plaque.
 Cavalry was originally misspelled on the stone that marks the site of the May 1, 1865, skirmish in northern Anderson County, S.C. Jimmy Orr, who worked with the Sons of Confederate Veterans to install the monument in 1998, says he is unsure if the error was his or the engravers. "We Baptists are obsessed with Calvary, for obvious reasons," he said.
 Toward the end of Stoneman's Raid, during the pursuit of Jefferson Davis, it is said that some of Stoneman's cavalry camped at Calvary Episcopal Church in Fletcher, N.C. This account of Gen. Stoneman sparing the church is a myth, as the general was no longer with the raid by the time they passed through Henderson County. We don't know much about the general's faith, but we do know he had a unique perspective on the desecration of Southern churches.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

Yankees published this 4-column extra May 6, 1865, while they occupied Athens.

 
 If you are reading The Stoneman Gazette on your phone or tablet (like many in our audience), we invite you to try us the way newspapers were meant to be read—with more than one column.
 Open our page on an old-fashioned computer screen (or switch your iPhone to "View web version") and you'll discover a right-side column that features a search engine, a timeline that guides you day-by-day and town-by town along the path of the raid, and birthdays and biographical links for hundreds of folks who have graced our pages. This is also where we give proper credit to all the fine historians whose work we've plundered.
 Our broadsheet edition also features section tabs where you can explore topics we've covered, such as Faith, Music, Sports, Tech, and Travel. Looking for a table of contents? Start here.
 In other words ... there's more to The Stoneman Gazette than meets the iPhone.  

 

(If you're not pun-shy, you're also invited to visit my other blog. —Tom Layton)

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THREEDOM OF THE PRESS: The Athens newspaper (above) was one of three issues published by Union troops during Stoneman's Raid. Others were in Salisbury, N.C., and Spartanburg, S.C.