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powellproject · 8 years ago

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Discharged and Carpetbagging

A screenshot from the diary of Robert H. Milroy mentioning W. Angelo Powell. The diary is in the General Robert H. Milroy Collection of the Jasper County Public Library, Rensselaer, Indiana.

Discharged

On January 3, 1865, Captain W. Angelo Powell was honorably discharged from the service. Papers in hand, the veteran returned to Hagerstown, Maryland.

For three and a half years, Powell served in a region that witnessed some of the fiercest fighting of the war. With the exception of suffering from “acute rheumatism” (arthritis) and an injury to his left leg, Powell escaped the greatest conflict in American history virtually unscathed. Physical health and mental stability were assets few veterans possessed.

Powell had seen his family sporadically over the past three years. His weight had dwindled and the cavalryman arrived in Hagerstown displaying a hungry gauntness. Cecelia embraced her husband, but daughters Nannie (age four) and Flora (age five) barely recognized their father.

Never a man of wealth, Powell emerged from the shadow of the war virtually penniless. With little money in hand and five mouths to feed, he began searching for steady work that paid. On February 13, the former captain composed a letter to Major General Winfield Scott Hancock. Hancock, a thirty-nine-year-old Pennsylvania native, had been assigned to lead the ceremonial First Veterans Corps.

Martinsburg W. Va

February 13th 1865

Maj Gen Handcock [sic]

Vet Corps.

Sir

I respectfully request to know if it is possible for me to obtain the position with your Veteran Corps as Engineer__ On the 3rd of January 1865 I was discharged from the U. S. Service by means of Paragraph 5. Circular No 75. C. S. A. G. O 1964.

I entered the Service as Engineer & [illegible] with Genl W. S. Rosecrans in 1861 and served under him during he campaign of 1861 in Western Va. Afterwards with Genl Fremont, Genl Sigel, fortified at Winchester under Genl Piatt, Genl Julius White in 1862. At Harpers Ferry in 1862 and again at Winchester Va in 1863 with Genl Milroy, and during 1864 under Genl Averell On the Raids into S. W. Va.

I possess all the necessary Engineer instruments for the field and respectfully request that my application may be duly Considered. and respectfully refer to Genl Schenck — Members of Congress and to E. D. Townsend A. G. War Dept.

I have the Honor to be

Sir with the Respect your Obd

W Angelo Powell

(Late Capt Co A 1st W Va Cav)

The Veteran Corps was conceived as a means to reenlist discharged veterans with disabilities. Originally called the “Invalid Corps,” it was divided into two battalions. The First Battalion was comprised of those whose disabilities were comparatively slight—men who were still able to handle a weapon, march, and perform guard or provost duty. The Second Battalion was made up of men whose disabilities were more serious—those who had lost limbs or suffered other grave injuries. These men were commonly employed as cooks, orderlies, nurses, or guards in public buildings.

Major General Hancock was a well-respected soldier who was severely wounded in the leg at the Battle of Gettysburg. After recuperating, he performed recruiting services for the army. Hancock never regained full mobility but returned to field in 1864. During Lieutenant General Hiram Ulysses Grant’s Overland Campaign, Hancock commanded the II Corps. Although he performed well at the Battle of the Wilderness and other engagements, Hancock surrendered his field command in November 1864.

Unfortunately Powell was unable to secure an engineer’s commission with the Veteran Corps. Turning to the private sector, he composed a letter to General Robert Huston Milroy, one of his former commanders.

Tennessee

In December 1864, General Milroy was transferred to the Western Theater. Having avoided a court-marital for the embarrassment of Second Winchester, the forty-eight-year-old major general was stationed in Tennessee. Old Gray Eagle was ordered to organize the local militia forces and oversee the defenses of the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad.

Milroy’s task was not an easy one. The region under his command was extremely dangerous. Tennessee was the most sectionally divided state of the Confederacy and difficult to control. Only the state of Virginia saw more fighting during the Civil War and his long supply lines were thinly stretched over a vast expanse of territory.

Due to necessity, the Union “occupied and fortified only select towns and railroad crossings, scattering their strength…to prevent mounted raids.” According to James Alex Baggett, author of Homegrown Yankees: Tennessee’s Union Cavalry in the Civil War:

More than anywhere else…the Cumberlands possessed the conditions to foster guerrilla warfare. The section’s isolated territory, much of it “rough and inaccessible,” made it suitable terrain for irregular warfare. Moreover its population clung to those traditions that encouraged the growth of guerilla bands: retribution in kind, family feuds, class conflicts, vigilantism, and backwoods wars against authority.

Milroy’s headquarters were located in Tullahoma, approximately 70 miles southeast of Nashville. Founded as a work camp in 1852, the small town of Tullahoma prospered due to its vital railroad link. Before Milroy’s arrival, the region was a special place—one controlled by neither side and one without a strong base of operations. It consisted of:

…forested hills and mountains, swiftly moving streams, and fertile valleys yielding plentiful crops. Rebels used the area…for sanctuary and for obtaining foodstuffs and horses. It soon became, as preacher J. H. Grimes of Putnam County described it, a place of “rendezvous for bushwhackers and guerillas on both sites.” As he recalled, “stealing, robbery, and murder was the order of the day.”

The white-haired Milroy called himself the “bossguard” of the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad and “dispatched mounted detachments to scout and forage in a difficult to defend “no-man’s land” of quasi-Union authority.” One of the senior officers under Milroy’s command was a local Union sympathizer named Shelah Waters. A native of DeKalb County, Tennessee, Major Waters served in 5th Cavalry (First Middle Regiment Union Tennessee Cavalry).

The 5th Tennessee guarded many small-town posts along the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad and scouted the surrounding area. Their area of operations was a large:

…lying east of the Caney Ford river, and west of the Cumberland mountains; and south of the Cumberland river, and north of a line on which [lay] the towns of McMinnville & Sparta.”

The 5th, along with the 10th and 12th Tennessee, were adept at capturing, trying, and executing bushwhackers and guerrillas.

In August 1864, Milroy ordered Major Waters to McMinnville. Located 35 miles northeast of Tullahoma, McMinnville was (and remains) the seat of Warren County. Before the outbreak of the war it was described as a “bustling metropolis” nestled in a predominately agricultural community. The town possessed “a great variety of first-class stores and shops” and drew “high quality lawyers, doctors, and ministers from across the country.”

As the quartermaster stores were being withdrawn from McMinnville, Waters had orders to post pickets around the town. If threatened, his troops were to skirmish with the enemy and gauge their strength. If necessary, Waters was to hold his lines and then “send off his equipment with loyal citizens by rail toward Tullahoma before covering his garrison’s withdrawal on horseback.”

On August 29, approximately 300 Confederates attacked McMinnville. Waters ignored Milroy’s instructions and engaged the enemy surrounding the town for more than three hours.

The 5th Tennessee lost 10 troopers and several wagons. Waters and his remaining men barely escaped with their lives. The major’s decision to circumvent Milroy’s orders was dangerous, but it earned his superior’s respect. The two officers became fast friends. They also began discussing plans for life after the war.

Milroy, Waters & Company

Shelah Waters resigned from the 5th Tennessee on January 24, 1865. He kept in close contact with Milroy and the two formed a business. “Milroy, Waters & Company” was conceived to deal “in oil and mineral lands, stocks & c.”

On Monday, April 3, Milroy attended a “meeting of the Tenn Legislature with Gov. [William Gannaway “Parson”] Brownlow” in Nashville. The general discussed several potential business ventures with the governor and the negoitians went smoothly. Later that day Milroy wired Angelo Powell “$75.00 to pay expenses out to Tullahoma to act as engineer for our Co.”

On the afternoon of April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee, the general-in-chief of Confederate forces, and Hiram Ulysses Grant, the commanding general of the United States Army, met in the parlor of Wilmer and Virginia McLean’s house in the village of Appomattox Court House, Virginia. It was Palm Sunday. After four years of fighting and more than 630,000 casualties, General Lee surrendered—signaling the end of the Southern States attempt to create a separate nation.

Powell arrived in Tennessee just days before Lee surrendered. On April 14, his first week in residence, President Lincoln was assassinated.

Lincoln’s killing was a shocking counterpoint to Grant’s triumph. Powell, along with the rest of the nation, closely followed the pursuit of John Wilkes Booth in the newspapers. Twelve days after the actor’s narrow escape, the assassin was shot and killed in a barn near Bowling Green, Virginia.

Milroy resigned his commission from the army on July 26 and established business operations for Milroy, Waters & Co. in Nashville. Powell worked primarily around McMinnville and Tullahoma.

On September 19, Powell sent his new employer a telegram “asking for funds to enable him to” travel to the state capitol. Milroy wired him $10.00 and, later that afternoon, composed a letter to his wife:

…I have more faith in our oil than in our mineral prospects of wealth. Our oil well at McMinnville is getting along splendidly. Capt. Powell is superintending it & everything goes on like clock work. He is down 75 ft. & has already got oil in considerable quantities & feels certain that he will get a flowing well there by the time he gets down a 100 ft. further.

Powell faced innumerable challenges in his new role as the company’s civil engineer. Prospecting was dangerous work, and the veteran was often confronted by hostile locals. Many viewed him as a carpetbagger and Milroy’s letter to his wife went on to state:

Capt. Powell wants his gun badly; that I forgot to bring with me. I wish you would get Conwell to make a nice box for it & send it to me at this place by Express. I have promised Powell to have it here soon.

Powell’s engineering background helped the veteran secure employment. The gun allowed him to keep it. On January 20, 1866, the 34th Tennessee State Legislature voted to allow:

“Milroy, Waters & Company,”…to purchase, lease, hold, operate, manufacture, transport, refine, erect and dispose of such real estate, leaseholds or parts thereof, mines, oils, minerals, buildings, machinery, tools, and other property…as may be necessary for the legitimate and successful transaction of their business.

The business was granted license to engage in boring and mining for “petroleum, salt-water, iron marble, coal, slate, and other valuable minerals and volatile substances….”

Hagerstown

The day-to-day operations of Milroy, Waters & Co. did not run smoothly. Shortly after the legislature’s vote, the company folded.

Robert Milroy returned to Indiana to practice law. Shelah Waters, after serving as a clerk in the Office of the Second Auditor of the Treasury, became the Assessor of Internal Revenue in the Tennessee’s Third Collection District. W. Angelo Powell:

…accepted engineering work in Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama, running preliminary lines for different railroad companies, who began to project plans for opening up the rich resources of the South. His duties included the making of reports on mineralogy along the routes and affording details of all kinds to his employers.

Powell also speculated, but was met “with disastrous results financially.”

In the spring of 1866, Powell returned to Cincinnati. By the time he arrived, the Roebling-designed Cincinnati-Convington Bridge suspension bridge was nearing completion. The engineering marvel spanned more than 1,000 feet and the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle called it “the stateliest and most splendid evidence of genius, enterprise and skill it has ever been my lot to see.”

Powell spent several weeks in the Queen City, but found it “full of architects.” The thirty-eight-year-old veteran’s attempts to revive his former practice bore no fruit. He again returned to Hagerstown.

#W. Angelo Powell #Architecture #Robert H. Milroy #Milroy Waters & Co.

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