" Burny In Mud ", Lt. Hulse, 50th NY Vol., Writes Home To Penn Yan, NY, 1863

JPK Huson 1863

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Joined
Feb 14, 2012
Location
Central Pennsylvania
mud march harpers2.JPG

Harper's artist, of course, captured some, slight idea of an army sucking itself along through gelatinous earth. Whose? Sign said " Burny" Confederates gleefully snarked via signs along the way, " Burny In Mud ", " This Way To Richmond ", " Burnside's Army Stuck In Mud ". Well, how could they resist?

Story of all our lives, here at CWT? " While looking for something else, tripped over this... " Wearing size 20, history-geek boots does that to us. Spend a fair amount of time in old Penn Yan papers; JPK would have returned there, had he not encountered a sniper's bullet fired from the Bliss Barn, a few months after this article ran in his local paper.

Lt. Dan Hulse, from Penn Yan, New York, checking in with his hometown paper from Co. A, 50th New York Volunteers sounds grubby, tired and a little cranky in spots- but a trooper. ( cavalry notwithstanding )

mud march 1.JPG


Wonderful description of what it took to get horse batteries under way- and Hulse sounds as if this may be a touchy point.

mud march 2.JPG


Teamsters driving- pontoon trains, artillery, infantry- nightmarish logistics on getting an army from A to h*ll, through 18" mud. Hulse's train alone was a mile long.

mud march forbes.JPG

Edwin Forbes making misery look a little noble.

mud march 3a.jpg

Every wagon had settled from 18" to 2 ' in mud! In a train that long! How did everyone not just unhitch the horses and desert?

mud march 3b.jpg

" Burny Stuck In The Mud " ........ it was a humorous kind of army.
horse artllery 1861.JPG

In cleaner days, although not the 50th NY, near Arlington, in 1861.

Read this next bit carefully, on Hooker and his supposed mastery over the weather, where Burnside failed. The, we imagine, Hulse got himself to bed- and hopefully eventually back to Pen Yann, Yates County, New York.
mud march 4.JPG


Love letters on-the-spot, inside Time, from iconic moments with which we're so familiar it's far too easy, forgetting those moving around inside. Cool letter, before The Mud March was The Mud March- it was just a miserable, spectacularly awful few days.
 
How miserable that must have been! What terrible conditions, surely enough to make a man want to flee duty.


As if daily life in camp wasn't enough, right? No expert, but at war's inception Union camps ( can make no observations on Confederate camps because I've never run into anything- may be a good reason for that! ) could be almost literally cesspools. Was it Hooker, who insisted they cleaned up? Wish I could remember where, or which relief worker described conditions. Lice were the least of their afflictions. The Mud March must have seemed like a disinfecting bath.
 
View attachment 178381
Harper's artist, of course, captured some, slight idea of an army sucking itself along through gelatinous earth. Whose? Sign said " Burny" Confederates gleefully snarked via signs along the way, " Burny In Mud ", " This Way To Richmond ", " Burnside's Army Stuck In Mud ". Well, how could they resist?

Story of all our lives, here at CWT? " While looking for something else, tripped over this... " Wearing size 20, history-geek boots does that to us. Spend a fair amount of time in old Penn Yan papers; JPK would have returned there, had he not encountered a sniper's bullet fired from the Bliss Barn, a few months after this article ran in his local paper.

Lt. Dan Hulse, from Penn Yan, New York, checking in with his hometown paper from Co. A, 50th New York Volunteers sounds grubby, tired and a little cranky in spots- but a trooper. ( cavalry notwithstanding )

View attachment 178375

Wonderful description of what it took to get horse batteries under way- and Hulse sounds as if this may be a touchy point.

View attachment 178376

Teamsters driving- pontoon trains, artillery, infantry- nightmarish logistics on getting an army from A to h*ll, through 18" mud. Hulse's train alone was a mile long.

View attachment 178380
Edwin Forbes making misery look a little noble.

View attachment 178377
Every wagon had settled from 18" to 2 ' in mud! In a train that long! How did everyone not just unhitch the horses and desert?

View attachment 178378
" Burny Stuck In The Mud " ........ it was a humorous kind of army.
View attachment 178384
In cleaner days, although not the 50th NY, near Arlington, in 1861.

Read this next bit carefully, on Hooker and his supposed mastery over the weather, where Burnside failed. The, we imagine, Hulse got himself to bed- and hopefully eventually back to Pen Yann, Yates County, New York.
View attachment 178379

Love letters on-the-spot, inside Time, from iconic moments with which we're so familiar it's far too easy, forgetting those moving around inside. Cool letter, before The Mud March was The Mud March- it was just a miserable, spectacularly awful few days.
I have always wondered how long did it take to do the illustration The work to place in in a magazine or paper must have required time and effort.Then considering the caution which was required for these pictures was much more than for photographers.
 
Those are great pictures and the article is fantastic :smile: where did you get them from?


Library of Congress, their ' pictures and photographs ' section, for some? If you have trouble navigating it, looking for something specific, PM me? Happy to help- it can sometimes be a pain. OH, and NYPL digital had the Forbes, I think, although you can find his in National Archives, too- and a few other places.

Tougher but worth it, is finding the right date, in a Harper's Weekly or Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper ( Internet Archives and Hathitrust ). If you know something occurred, like the Mud March, paging through the next issue, you can get lucky and find that magazine covered it. We're really, really lucky- it's public access so we're allowed to bring these images here.
 
Those are great pictures and the article is fantastic :smile: where did you get them from?


Oops- forgot, sorry! Fulton Postcards, hysterically named, is a private website someone runs as this massive, public service to all of us! It's ridiculous! Wish someone would award this nice person the Nobel Prize for Public Service in History. SO many newspapers, scanned. Mostly New York but he's put a ton of other states in, too, now. He has a few search options- one is an alphabetical listing of all his papers. Also a little hard to navigate- but could just be me! You look to be a student, so have a feeling you'll have no problem whatsoever! Again, feel free to PM me, if you have questions, or ask in a post. Happy to help!
 
Oops- forgot, sorry! Fulton Postcards, hysterically named, is a private website someone runs as this massive, public service to all of us! It's ridiculous! Wish someone would award this nice person the Nobel Prize for Public Service in History. SO many newspapers, scanned. Mostly New York but he's put a ton of other states in, too, now. He has a few search options- one is an alphabetical listing of all his papers. Also a little hard to navigate- but could just be me! You look to be a student, so have a feeling you'll have no problem whatsoever! Again, feel free to PM me, if you have questions, or ask in a post. Happy to help!
Thanks! I hadn't heard of Fulton Postcards yet, so that should be a wonderful resource. Do you have the links to those articles, or to fulton postcard? (I googled it but couldn't find it.) Also, I've pored all over the LOC database also, and never saw that particular picture, there's so much there, it's aways great when someone finds something new. Do you have a link to the picture?
 
Found the LOC picture! Also, here's another of the mud march that looks oddly bizarre - is that wagon on it's side do you think?
SmZnQBslvcju5jepGUOosDcREdblgdE1xRQB_SkXVNn3sizOM3HtFqUudN7zcu3wg3Rl8_Ayt-5HdUoB5LLqC1XNC3tRGG4X.png
 
Thanks for posting! Fantastic article and pictures. I cannot even fathom what that must’ve been like to get through that mud. Ugh...
 
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