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CIVIL WAR ARCHIVE OF PERRY POWELL, 1ST ILLINOIS LIGHT ARTILLERY,
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CIVIL WAR ARCHIVE OF PERRY POWELL, 1ST ILLINOIS LIGHT ARTILLERY,
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includes 2 photographs, 4 diaries with transcripts, 2 books & GAR cards, ambrotype and photograph. A native of the Chicago area, Perry Powell enlisted in the Co. A, 1st Illinois Artillery (Smith’s Chicago Light Artillery), an active company that served with distinction from Shiloh and Corinth through Vicksburg, Chattanooga, and Atlanta. During a tour of duty frequently interrupted by illness, Powell carried a pocket diary, keeping a brief, but informative daily record of his experiences. The first of his four volumes of diary begins in December 1862, just after the battery had followed Grant’s forces from Mississippi into Louisiana for the preliminaries of the Vicksburg Campaign. Serving with Co. A, Powell had already experienced battle at Shiloh and Corinth, and he was correspondingly cool at Chickasaw Bayou and Chickasaw Bluff. The heavy fighting seems not to have perturbed him. On December 28, he wrote coolly There was firing at daylight with some musquetry. We got in position about half past eleven and opened fire on a hill the battery shelled them. They did not make much answer. The firing was kept up until dark. There was not many killed. Not any of our company hurt… The next day, still in unemotional mood, he wrote: Skirmishing commenced this morning at seven and kept on so until about twelve. When the Eighth Missouri and the Sixth and the Thirteenth Regulars went down to try to cross the bayou there was pretty sharp firing until dark. The rebels has got breastworks across the bayou. The Sixth got across but lost a good many men. We had two horses wounded but none of the men hurt… Moving into Arkansas in pursuit of Confederate forces, the regiment took part in the capture of Fort Hindman in January 1863, which Powell described in typically laconic style: At noon the gunboats opened and then our batteries on land opened a little while after the musquetry opened on our right and was kept up for a good while and then it almost stopped and then it opened on our left heavy for a while and then it opened in the center where our battery was. Such firing or artillery and musquetry, I never before heard. It kept up until sun down when they surrendered. Our guns in action all the while… The next day, he and his comrades went into the fort, took souvenirs, and surveyed the artillery’s impact. There was a good many dead rebels, he wrote. The most of them was all mangled up with cannon balls. Some of our boys got shot guns (I got one gun) and some revolvers… Powell’s battery next took up quarters in Youngs Point, La., and dealt with the standard problems facing troops during the Union forces in Mississippi: illness, heat, hard work, and exposure, to name a few. Powell himself suffered periodically from fever, but records incidents in his diary describing the Union ram fleet, Confederate fire boats, and the litany of excursions and constant shelling. When he learned that Negro Regiments were being organized in the area, he noted that several men in his company were interested in becoming officers, but he felt too ill to do so himself. He remained behind convalescing when the rest of his company took part in the demonstration on Haines Bluff and took part in Grant’s masterful move, shifting a large force to the east of Vicksburg to seal the city’s fate. Even in sick camp, however, Powell was not safe, and less than a month before Vicksburg fell, he was called into action: The rebels drove in our pickets out back by the railroad. They advanced out in the open field. All the convalescents that had guns fell in line behind the levee. I did not have any gun. There was a little skirmish and two convalescents was wounded. The rebels fell back. There was about fifteen hundred of them out in sight… Over the weeks leading up to the fall of Vicksburg, Powell was relatively regularly engaged in shelling Confederate positions, well but very week, as he put it, and even getting wounded by a spent ball on the nose. It only knocked the skin off a little, he wrote, adding I got the ball. On July 4, he was ill, but reported the surrender of the city and capture of thousands of prisoners. Powell moved into Vicksburg on July 8 and for several days after, he tried to work his way onto a hospital boat. While he didn’t succeed, due to his continuing illness, he earned a discharge by mid-August and returned to his home near Chicago. With some exceptions, Powell continued his diary at home, marking the slow course of his recuperation from his old complaint. He returned to making pumps and accoutrements (piping, buckets) by January and apparently to drilling either with a home guard or other militia unit, and when spring began to arrive, setting out an orchard. By May, Powell was well enough to enlist in the 134th Illinois Infantry, a regiment that served the entirety of its 100 days of service in garrison at Columbus, Ky. Although he complained occasionally of continuing ill health, his experience was somewhat less testing than it had been in the Chicago Light Artillery. Other than rumors, occasional work on picket lines, and the occasional shot at a pig by Confederate foragers, the scene in Columbus was fairly quiet. Powell provides some fine examples of life in camp during this stage of the war in Kentucky. On July 4, 1864, for example, he went into town for a couple of hours. The niggers is having a gay old time over in the forte. Most all of our officers was half tight before night. I never see officers come out in daylight and carry on as they did. They acted a great deal worse than the privates. We was agoing to have a gay time this evening but our nigger cooks gave us the slip. They took their banjo and fiddle along with them so it left us in the dark. Powell makes some mentions of other work while in the 134th, including an account of a scouting expedition to a plantation where they discovered a small force of guerrillas, capturing a man attempting to infiltrate their lines, and a notice of a nearby engagement between the 34th New Jersey and guerrillas. More typically, he describes taking hogs and other goods from `secesh` farms and picking berries or apples, though he does relay an interesting incident of military discipline: There was a prisoner shot this morning at nine o’clock for being a guerrilla. Our regiment was ordered out. We formed a three square, the prisoner was brought out, his eyes was blindfolded. Ten of Gregory’s state militia was ordered out to shoot him. The prisoner fell pierced by nine balls, he was then buried. The citizens that were at work on the entrenchments were marched out to see him shot… Perhaps the most interesting part of Powell’s 100 days experience came as his time was running out and he and his fellow soldiers were given a pitch to re-enlist. Only two did. Powell reported that The boys don’t car much what they do since our time has expired, and word of the ill discipline, however well founded, reached high in the command. Gen. Solomon Meredith ordered all the troops out, the 134th placed between the 34th New Jersey and the Negro Regiments. He said that we had disgraced our flag and wasn’t men that we ought to be. He said that he wanted us to stay a while longer probably a week or two. He said that he wanted to make soldiers of us before we go home. He discharged the sick sympathizers that was at work on the fortifications. He called them gentlemen and told them to go home and take care of their crops…. There is almost a mutiny raising amongst all the troops at the post. The officers say that they won’t serve under such a general. The union citizens call him a old traitor. The 134th didn’t give an inch however, and although they were repeatedly delayed in their mustering out – and once again protested being kept in the service by refusing duty – they were eventually released in October. Powell’s final diary, covering the year 1865, includes a number of references to news of his old artillery comrades, the war, and other current events such as the sinking of the Sultana, and he continued to drill with the militia. After Lincoln was assassinated, he notes that some people had been killed for rejoicing, and in the days following, he kept close tabs on the developing crisis. The militia was called out for the funeral procession: Battery went down to the foot of Main Street near Fort Pickering, was then formed into procession. All the cavalry and artillery was out. Did not parade the streets long. Artillery was formed in battery, fired a gun every half hour until sun down. Fired a salute of 32 guns after sunset. The collection also includes an ambrotype of Powell in half case, ca.1858; a photograph of Powell, ca.1895; three of his calling cards (two from the GAR), and a book, Long Island Genealogies (Albany: Munsell, 1895) on the Powell family. The book binding is in rough condition, the cover bowed, stained, and worn, with newspaper adhered to the front, but internally presentable, with only minor tide lines on a few pages and soiling. Complete transcripts of Powell’s diaries have been provided. A nice set of diaries with an unusually interesting record of a 100-days regiment and a good account of a seasoned Western artillery regiment, leavened with an interesting little glimpse into the life of a maltreated, but still stiff-necked, 100-days regiment.
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