subject index to the Eugene B. Payne Papers
Alphabetic index to the Schoff Civil War Collections
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The University of Michigan Schoff Civil War Collection Soldiers' Letters 65 Diaries & Journals (oversized) |
Lincoln, Benjamin C., 1840-1865 Rank: Captain, Colonel Regiment: 37th Illinois Infantry Regiment (1861-1866) Service: 1861 September 18-1864 September
In the late summer, 1861, after serving for three months as a private in the Chicago Zouaves, Eugene B. Payne raised a company of infantry in Waukegan, Ill., for three years' service in the Union army. He was elected Captain of Co. C when it was mustered into the U.S. service with the 37th Illinois Infantry on September 18, 1861, but thereafter his promotions came regularly: to major on November 20th, 1862, Lt. Colonel on October 19th, 1863, and finally to Colonel and Brevet Brigadier General on March 13th, 1865.
The 37th Regiment began their long and very active field service when they were sent to Missouri in late September, 1861. They took part in the occupation of Springfield early in 1862, and then joined in the pursuit of the elusive Sterling Price. Their first major battle was at Pea Ridge, in March, 1862, which, as Payne noted, was "a day that will be remembered by every member of the 37th Ills. to his dying day. It was our first battle. It was the first time we had seen our comrades fall mangled and torn by our side" (p. 9). Outnumbered three to one, according to Payne, the regiment lost 142 men and a large number wounded, but the men reveled in the rout of Confederate forces and the sense that the battle was as pivotal and decisive for the western theatre as any battle had been for the eastern.
After Pea Ridge, Payne's regiment continued the chase, pursuing John Marmaduke through southwestern Missouri and northern Arkansas, eventually capturing Fayetteville and forcing the Battle of Prairie Grove on December 7th, 1862. Payne considered Prairie Grove to be as great an accomplishment as Pea Ridge, despite the surreptitious escape of the enemy -- the cover of darkness and a truce arranged by Marmaduke, ostensibly to bury the dead, allowed Confederate forces to muffle the wheels of their artillery pieces and slip unnoticed from the field without further loss. The 37th Illinois remained encamped on the battlefield for two weeks and then pressed on to Van Buren, Ark., before returning to Huntsville, near Fayetteville. There Payne witnessed the summary execution of several suspected guerrillas, adding that "thus had crime met its reward in the summary justice dealt out to these infernal villains" (p. 31). After only a brief period of rest, the 37th Illinois resumed its rapid marching ways, traipsing over familiar grounds in Missouri and Arkansas, chasing Confederates, but never succeeding in bringing them into pitched battle. By this time the regiment had gained a reputation as being one of the most mobile and effective regiments in the Army of the Frontier and were proud of the hardships they could endure.
In mid-June, Payne's regiment were transferred to Vicksburg and assumed positions so near the rebel lines that the soldiers could trade jokes with each other. Typically, though, they did not remain long. After the fall of Vicksburg and the almost uncontested capture of Yazoo City, they were sent to positions near Port Hudson and finally, in September, to New Orleans. Lt. Col. Frisbie and several officers and enlisted men left the regiment at New Orleans to accept commissions in the "Colored" Regiments being recruited there. The 37th Illinois was highly praised by their Divisional commander, Napoleon J.T. Dana, for the rapidity with which they assembled and came to the rescue of several regiments captured at Bayou Atchafalaya in September, 1863. Dana's command also took part in Banks' Texas Coast operations in October, 1863, and the 37th Illinois were assigned for several months to post duty at Brownsville, Tex., beginning in November. In December, however, Payne was sent to Illinois on recruiting detail. During his absence, the regiment were persuaded to reenlist, despite their disdain for their officers, by a promise from General Banks that they would be returned to New Orleans and granted furloughs to visit home. Thus, in February the new recruits in regiment returned to New Orleans, while the reenlisting veterans returned home to Chicago in March for a thirty day furlough.
Upon returning to the field in April, 1864, the 37th Regiment were assigned to a familiar role, chasing after Confederate cavalry under Nathan Bedford Forrest in west Tennessee. As in Missouri and Arkansas, and despite heroic efforts, they never succeeded in engaging the enemy. In May, they were assigned to support Banks' Red River Campaign, which Payne found badly planned and poorly executed. He considered Banks to be a "good man perhaps to manage a cotton mill in Mass., [but who] had not the brains to manage an army" (p. 62). They saw engagements along the Atchafalaya and at Morganza during Banks' ignominious retreat. During the following September, Payne received an honorable discharge for malaria, which he had contracted at Vicksburg, and returned home. He was immediately placed in nomination as Republican candidate for the Illinois House and was elected in a landslide. Payne later settled in Cleveland, where he was employed as Special Examiner and Clerk for the Bureau of Pensions.
The Eugene B. Payne Papers consists of a journal, 14 letters to his wife, and assorted documents pertaining to Payne's service in the 37th Illinois Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. The main item is the journal, or "Scrap Book" as Payne calls it, which is an account of the battles and activities of the 37th Illinois from its mustering in September, 1861 until Payne left the service in 1864, and is occasionally augmented by newspaper clippings. The scrap book and assorted notes may have been made while preparing a regimental history. It and some of the loose-leaf manuscripts appear to have been written, at least in part, during sporadic breaks in his service, rather than to as running accounts.
Along the way, Payne describes life in camp, the conditions under which the regiment lived, and the numerous marches in pursuit of fleet-footed Confederate forces. Payne provides some description of the areas through which the regiment passed, and the conditions of the people living there. He was not inclined to look upon the pro-Confederate women in Missouri or the Mexicans living in Texas approvingly, and he registered approval after discovering several Confederates that had been summarily executed by other Union forces. Payne also notes command changes and promotions, including his own rise from captain to lieutenant colonel. He explains with some editorial comment disputes between officers in the regiment over battle performance; he even takes half a page at one point to disparage Nathaniel Banks. Payne had a good sense of operational-level activities and his accounts of Pea Ridge and Prairie Grove are excellent for the detail they provide.
There are three loose-leaf manuscripts included with the journal which may be edited versions of the journal. The first is written on legal-sized paper, consists of very brief, almost telegraphic entries for the period from October, 1861 through June 8, 1865. The second, entitled "The 37th Ills. Vols. Infty.", covers the regiment's service through the Battle of Pea Ridge and includes some additional information not found in the journal, particularly for the earliest days of their service near Boonville and Otterville, Mo. The last manuscript, headed September 18, 1863, is a running account, some written in the present tense, of the regiment's activities from their engagement on the Atchafalaya through the reenlistment of the regiment at Brownsville, Tex., in February, 1864. The remaining items in the collection include a copy of Payne's service record prepared in 1888; two letters (one concerning the use of the journal as a source for someone else's book, and another concerning a piece of legislation in the Illinois legislature), charges against two privates for going AWOL at Brownsville, and a decorative menu from a reunion of the regiment at the Palmer House, Chicago, in 1885.
Payne's letters to his wife provide remarkable insight into the man, his motivations, and his close and affectionate relationship with his wife. Payne became embittered with aspects of his experience in the army, and was particularly resentful of what he claimed to be profiteering by Nathaniel P. Banks and other officers. Payne had heard -- and believed -- that Banks had entered into a collusive agreement with Confederate officers, including Kirby Smith, to market cotton from Texas for personal gain. In Payne's mind, the conspiracy would have worked to Banks' advantage had David D. Porter, unaware of the deal, but greedy himself for cotton, had not intervened and precipitated the disastrous Red River Campaign.
His sense of embitterment is most pronounced when discussing abolition and African-American troops. Upon hearing that one of the officers in his regiment had accepted a commission in a "colored" regiment, Payne gasped "God save the polluted wretch now, low mean degraded reptile; could not wallow in his own filthy slime without dragging down the name of the heretofore untarnished 37th Ills. by going into a negro regt" (1863 September 2). More pronounced was his response to his wife's apparently mild-mannered abolitionism and her more strident friends' calls for racial equality: "Is not such a belief -- such a theory as revolting to sober minds as free loveism -- or ... spiritualism or any other ism which is in confliction with truth with nations and with the whole world? Now I claim to stand on this question where at least five eights of all Americans stand, where the whole of Europe stands, where in fact the whole civilized world stands. What is it. : The the negro is a man, having a human soul, but that his is race inferior to the white race... I grant that the negro is entitled to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness... but he can have & enjoy these rights and still not have all the rights of the white race... I do deny that the phrase 'free and equal' can be applied to the negro in comparison with the white race -- I even deny that the term can be applied to all the white race and I am not alone in this latter belief..." (1864 July 30).
The Payne Journal is available on microfilm and is extremely fragile. It should be handled only with the greatest care.
Eugene B. Payne. Prairie Grove (1904; Dornbusch I:180)
Eugene B. Payne. The 37th Illinois veteran volunteer infantry and the battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas (1903; Dornbusch I:181)
Michael A. Mullins. The Fremont Rifles (Wilmington, N.C., 1990)
subject index to the Eugene B. Payne Papers
Alphabetic index to the Schoff Civil War Collections
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