the Men of the 12th Indiana, part 1

By Patrick Lewis

This short post is designed to be an introduction to the 12^th Indiana. It will not, however, focus on what the 12^th Indiana did on any particular battlefield or in any particular campaign. It will focus on the raw material of the 12^th, its soldiers. It and following posts will try to put the men of the 12^th into the context of the mid-19^th century. Primarily, we are concerned with three questions: Who were they? What did they think? And how did their thought translate into action (which we can represent at Bummers)?

The 12^th was a combination of men who had enlisted in May of 1861 in what we will call the Old 12^th, which served its one year term uneventfully in Western Virginia and returned to Indiana. Some men from that organization reenlisted and formed the veteran (relatively speaking) nucleus around which the 12^th we will portray was recruited in the summer of 1862. Though more in-depth work in the 1860 Census and Compiled Service Records is required, it seems that the majority of the men lived in Allen and Kosciusko Counties in the northern part of the state. Fort Wayne and Warsaw being the respective county seats.

Politically, the regiment seems to have been staunch Republicans. The regimental history, From Vicksburg to Raleigh, published –astonishingly – in August 1865, consistently decried both “the blind devotees of the Baal of African slavery (xii).” The South, they believed, had been fooled by political leaders into destroying the sacred – in a literal sense, fully ordained by God as the greatest government on earth – union of states. “The mischievous doctrine of State Rights, inculcated by Calhoun and a large class of extremists who succeeded him,” the history’s author and regimental Chaplain M.D. Gage wrote, “like a delusive phantom, lured those States from their allegiance to the Constitution and laws of the Union, to engage in the Utopian scheme of founding a Southern Confederacy, based upon the declared right of capital to own the labor of the subject African race (15).” Make no mistake, slavery was undoubtedly seen as the cause of the war by the rank and file of the 12^th. Its separation from the doctrine of State Rights has been an ahistorical, postwar development.

Having said that, it must be noted that for many Midwestern Republicans – Lincoln included – opposition to slavery did not necessarily coincide with a desire for racial equality or even the belief that blacks were or ever could be equal to whites. Slavery was – and this is a point to be expanded on greatly in future posts – considered to be a threat to white liberty and a stain on the national soul. Therefore, when the southern states severed the cherished union to defend their right to and interests in slave property, they were understood to sacrifice a sacred, free institution (Constitution and union) to an immoral, unholy, and tyrannical institution (slavery).

Perhaps more despised than southern Confederates, it must be noted, were Democrats at home who argued for an end to the war. These “Copperheads” were particularly strong in Indiana. The men of the 12^th – and many soldiers in the army, 80% of which voted for Lincoln in the 1864 election – held these “disloyal” citizens in the highest contempt. Speaking of that election, Gage would write that “The army penetrated the designs of these base deceivers, and aided the people, in the use of the elective franchise, to cast down the idolaters’ Dagon before the ark of the covenant, in which were deposited the sacred rights of man. The slimy folds of the serpent were unmasked, and the hateful ‘Copperhead’ was revealed to the public eye in all his loathsome repulsiveness (xi).”

Which brings us to the third of the questions: How did this conviction that southerners had started the war for the protection of their slave property manifest itself in behavior on the March to the Sea? For the 12^th and the majority of the U.S. soldiers in the West, the March had one primary goal, destroy the material support of the Confederate field armies and end the war rapidly. That is, deprive Confederate soldiers of food, clothing, and war material so that it would wither on the vine. This primary goal generated two important secondary objectives: 1) destroy the slave economy of the South which produced much of that material and 2) double the damage done to Confederate armies by feeding off of their stock. “If they were defenders of the nation’s life, they claimed the privilege of striking at the stomach of the rebellion, when they could no longer reach its heart. In cutting the communication between the producer and the armed traitor they were rendering a no less efficient service than when striking at the life of their foes. For this object they fought in the presence of the enemy, and foraged and destroyed his property when they could no longer reach him (95).”

There also seemed to develop – at all levels of Sherman’s army – a (not wholly unjustified) desire to punish the Confederacy for dragging the nation into conflict and forcing the men to have suffered the privations, dangers, and traumas of war. Some historians have likened this mindset to that of a parent spanking disobedient children. Upon being released to forage “they summarily entered upon the work of penal infliction, and punished rebellion in the mot effectual manner, by consuming the supplies which gave strength to an armed foe (94-5).”

Each of these sections is admittedly brief, but sketches what seem to be the most important points that we should consider when beginning to research the unit. Complex issues of politics, society, race, and identity are not easily contained, so expect each paragraph to receive significant expansion in posts to follow. Remember, this is the stuff that defines an impression and separates a well-rounded living historian from a simplistic – if accurate-looking – reenactor.