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Some Surprises Are Just Bigger Than Others
The Fifteenth Iowa’s Baptism by Fire
The Eleventh article in serial form from Honor the Colors, the Iowa Battle Flag Project
By
David M. Lamb
Volunteer Conservator
Last Tuesday (April 19th, 2011) we pulled the remnants of a Regimental flag from the Fifteenth Iowa Volunteer Infantry Regiment from light-tight flat storage in order to begin the conservation/preservation assessment process of dozens of photographs, measurements and minute observation in order to allow us to ultimately arrive at a conservation plan for this flag. As you can see from some of the initial photos that accompany this flag, there has been considerable denigration of the flag already and there is a considerable portion missing right out of the center section that appears to be the result of heavy “souveniring” at some point in the past. Much of the center eagle device is gone as is any Regimental identifier that might has once graces her folds.
In the extreme lower corner near the “fly end” there was a supportive second layer of conservation cloth approximately 18 inches square that had been added to the original layer that would have been sewn on in 1894 before the flags went into their cases in the Capitol building. The fringe on the top, bottom, and fly edges is mostly intact and has been “loop-stitched” into a gathering of individual fringe threads about every 15 to 18 threads. The blue, silk field is dirty, and we are already seeing what we believe are probably bullet holes beneath the dingy brown conservation cloth that will be our next step to remove. Given the history of this regiment, that would hardly be surprising.
On February 13th, 1862, the various companies of volunteers that would comprise the new Fifteenth Iowa were mustered into Federal service at Keokuk, Iowa, where they would begin the process of learning the endless drill and classes on Army regulations and military tactics. One of these companies (“B”) had come to Keokuk under the command of their newly elected Captain, Wilson T. Smith from Des Moines.
No muskets were yet available to the men before they departed for Benton Barracks, near St. Louis, MO., aboard the river steamer “Jennie Deans” on March 19th. They stayed in Benton Barracks until April 1st, 1862 where they continued to study military regulations, deportment, and drill and where they were finally issued arms, but no ammunition was available to them, so they never actually got to fire their new rifled muskets. As incredible as this seems to us today, it was not highly unusual (in either Army) as it was generally believed that powder and ball was far too expensive to allow recruits to pound away at targets that didn’t shoot back. Consequently, the first time that many Civil War infantrymen ever loaded their weapons was when some other group of men were advancing upon them intent upon killing them. Such was to be the experience of the Fifteenth Iowa…and, in spades.
On April 1st, 1862, the regiment was marched back to the riverbank at the edge of St. Louis where they were herded aboard the steamer “Minnehaha” that was bound for Tennessee. Five days would be spent aboard the steamer as it moved down the Mississippi, the Ohio and then up the Tennessee to a small settlement known as “Pittsburgh Landing”, arriving there early on the morning of April 6th, 1862, where they were hurried ashore and drew their very first issue of ammunition where they were the order to “load” flew quickly up and down the line of the new arrivals before they were hurried off toward a small country church called “Shiloh” by their Colonel (Hugh T. Reid) where it looked like a large Confederate for force was moving toward the right flank of General McClernands’1st Division. The Iowa boys would come under practically immediate and concentrated artillery and musket fire as they approached the nearby woods where they were to hold the line for the next two hours under a murderous fire before being reinforced and then relieved. Of the 760 men the off-loaded from the Minnehaha that morning, the Fifteenth’s baptism by fire would be both the first and last for two officers and nineteen enlisted men. Another seven officers and one-hundred-and-forty-nine would be wounded; and two officers and six men would be “lost” or captured within their first two hours of fighting. Practically one in three would be bloodied in this largest battle of the Civil War up until that time.
The Battle of Shiloh lasted but two days; Sunday, April 6th, and Monday, April 7th, 1862. By the time that the two exhausted armies would disengage from one another, some 23,000 men had been either killed, wounded, or captured. A particularly amazing statistic when one considers that some historians estimate that perhaps as many as 80% of the 77,000 men who engaged each other on the fields and forests around Shiloh church had never heard a shot fired in anger before those two days, and many on both sides shared the same experience (or lack thereof) with their rifles as the men of the Fifteenth Iowa.
And this flag was there. Amazing!
Photos by David M. Lamb
Posted by Cpl Stahr on Tuesday 26 April 2011 - 07:57:56 | LAN_THEME_20
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