Taking the Oath

[Pvt.Shattuck]

March 7-12 – A number of prisoners, mainly from the privates' pen, have signified a willingness to take the hated oath of allegiance, and are now kept in separate barracks, clothed in blue suits and given better rations. They are called "Galvanized" men, and sometimes "Company Q."
These weak and cowardly men are willing to betray their own country and people, and swear to support a government which they can but detest. Such men could not have been of any real value to the South, but rather skulking nuisances, and they are to be pitied as well as despised. Diary of Captain Robert Parker, Point Lookout Prison, 1865

 

[TerryB]

The watercolor sketches of Point Lookout show any number of POWs clad in blue, mixed right in with the rest. I thought that might mean they had been issued clothing when their own uniforms wore out.

 

[AndyHall]

At Rock Island these men were put off in a separate part of the pen, adjacent to the hospital, where they were housed until assignment to a unit out west. The accommodations were the same as before, but they were issued new clothing and (most important) had full rations restored -- Confederate prisoners at Rock island had had their rations cut in retaliation for abuses of Union prisoners in the Confederacy.

It does seem to me these men were in a bad spot regardless -- disdained by their former comrades and their new ones, both.

 

[ole]

Just noticed another outré hat in your avatar.

 

[Billy Yank]

My compliments, Sgt. Shattuck. Fascinating picture and accompanying description from Cpt. Parker. I'd be interested in seeing contrasting accounts given by these men of "Company Q."

 

[Pvt.Shattuck]

My compliments, Sgt. Shattuck. Fascinating picture and accompanying description from Cpt. Parker. I'd be interested in seeing contrasting accounts given by these men of "Company Q."

Thanks. The diary is dated March of 1865 but the image has no month recorded. Perhaps it was taken after the surrender. Maybe these fellows weren't traitors to the Confederacy after all. Maybe they were just soldiers, having done their duty as they understood it with their honor intact, doing their duty again, no matter how hard, by accepting bitter defeat and swearing loyalty to the country they believed had wronged them.

 

[ole]

"Taking the oath" could mean many things. Sometimes it meant getting out of the Yankee prison and getting paid for rough duty out west. Sometimes it meant just going home and getting on with what life you had before you surrendered.

Couldn't have been pleasant for the die-hard secesh, but it was a way to get on with it.

Consider the options. Consider what you (in a general sense) might have to consider what it might mean. No! Never! Was an option, as well as was, "I'm whipped and just want to go home."

 

[Craig L Barry]

"Taking the oath" could mean many things. Sometimes it meant getting out of the Yankee prison and getting paid for rough duty out west. Sometimes it meant just going home and getting on with what life you had before you surrendered.

Couldn't have been pleasant for the die-hard secesh, but it was a way to get on with it.

Consider the options. Consider what you (in a general sense) might have to consider what it might mean. No! Never! Was an option, as well as was, "I'm whipped and just want to go home."

Funny. It has an alternate meaning all right... "Taking the Oath" was mid-19th century slang for liquoring up. Not only soldiers, civilians drank a great deal more alcohol per capita than we do today. It was about 7 gal per year for each person of drinking age (15 yrs) in the 19th century. It is around 2 gal per year for each person of drinking age now (21 yrs). It is actually slightly worse than it looks because of the drinking patterns. That 7 gal per person was virtually all whiskey, and the two gal per person today now includes wine.

We wonder why there was a temperance movement and ultimately prohibition...alcohol was a huge societal problem.

 

[TerryB]

The publication date is given as June 30, 1865. Most would be gone by then, so I'm assuming this is May 1865 and these are CS soldiers who understand the war is over.

 

[ole]

Funny. It has an alternate meaning all right... "Taking the Oath" was mid-19th century slang for liquoring up. Not only soldiers, civilians drank a great deal more alcohol per capita than we do today. It was about 7 gal per year for each person of drinking age (15 yrs) in the 19th century. It is around 2 gal per year for each person of drinking age now (21 yrs). It is actually slightly worse than it looks because of the drinking patterns. That 7 gal per person was virtually all whiskey, and the two gal per person today now includes wine.

We wonder why there was a temperance movement and ultimately prohibition...alcohol was a huge societal problem.

It was, and still is in some respects, but it did firmly imprint the idea that if one may not have it, it will give rise to a criminal element that will provide it. What fools these mortals be.

 

[James B White]

Funny. It has an alternate meaning all right... "Taking the Oath" was mid-19th century slang for liquoring up. Not only soldiers, civilians drank a great deal more alcohol per capita than we do today. It was about 7 gal per year for each person of drinking age (15 yrs) in the 19th century. It is around 2 gal per year for each person of drinking age now (21 yrs). It is actually slightly worse than it looks because of the drinking patterns. That 7 gal per person was virtually all whiskey, and the two gal per person today now includes wine.

We wonder why there was a temperance movement and ultimately prohibition...alcohol was a huge societal problem.

Could you provide a source for your statistics? On the charts I've seen, absolute consumption of alcohol remains fairly steady when comparing the 1860s to today, with the shift that you noted from proportionately more liquor in the 1860s to more beer today, but not much change in the actual quantity of alcohol itself being consumed.

For example: http://dryspace.org/data/table1_2009.htm
No great variation from a little over 2 gallons of absolute alcohol total per capita, though a significant shift from the proportion consumed in liquor vs beer and wine.

http://books.google.com/books?id=2AUH0vchHRIC&pg=PA232
Different figures, but the same trend: a little over 1 gallon of absolute alcohol total per capita in the 1860s increasing to 2 gallons per capita where the chart ends in 1975, but the other chart shows a decrease since then. This chart goes back further, into the late 18th century, where it shows absolute consumption triple what it was in the 1860s, reflecting the significant drop in consumption due to the temperance reform movement of the 1840s and 1850s.

I wonder if that's what you were thinking of? For some reason, people tend to associate the temperance movement with only the late 19th century, but there was a big push in the antebellum period too: the Washingtonians, Maine Laws, Sons of Temperance, etc.

 

[Craig L Barry]

"Use of spirits rose to an all time high of 3.25 gallons per person (men, women & children) in 1860."
Here is alcohol consumption per person (every man, woman and child) in the US:

CONSUMPTION OF ALCOHOL PER PERSON/UNITED STATES (includes wine, beer, distilled spirits)

1851-1860......................................5.1 gallons
1861-1870......................................6.6 gallons
Source: W J Rorabaugh The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (Oxford Press, New York) 1979.

 

[AndyHall]

The publication date is given as June 30, 1865. Most would be gone by then, so I'm assuming this is May 1865 and these are CS soldiers who understand the war is over.

Prisoners were still being released at Rock Island in the latter half of June 1865. If the date of the photo is June 30, I doubt the men in the photo are "galvanizing" in that case.

 

[ole]

That sort of thing is the curse of our race. You ought not do that! There oughta be a law!

So we let them slide into their own personal hell and then we worry about their kids. Is there no surcease? (This ought to be in the "Do you remember these? thread.)

News. There is no law to prevent people from really messing themselves up. (You may not be a butthead! Riiiiight.)

I think it was my parents who forbade me from being a butthead. I don't recollect any other forbidding except for Rudy, Hans, Leo and Aust.

Now, before any accuse me of actually being a butthead, I will remind you that jgoodguy is watching.

Somewhere in there is a balance in what is allowed at the time and place in which it occurs. Prohibition was necessary when it was enacted. What the advocates didn't figure in was the unintended consequences. A good idea went wrong.

Now I'm trying to think of a time when a good idea went right.

Good ideas have a way of getting afoul of human nature. Guess what comes out on top.

 

[James B White]

"Use of spirits rose to an all time high of 3.25 gallons per person (men, women & children) in 1860."
Here is alcohol consumption per person (every man, woman and child) in the US:

CONSUMPTION OF ALCOHOL PER PERSON/UNITED STATES (includes wine, beer, distilled spirits)

1851-1860......................................5.1 gallons
1861-1870......................................6.6 gallons
Source: W J Rorabaugh The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (Oxford Press, New York) 1979.

That's the same book as my second link above, though the table I linked to goes by specific years rather than ranges.

I'm guessing those ranges are from the chart on page 238-239 which gives the following for the 1851-1860 range:

Distilled spirits, per capita total population: 2.2 gallons
Wine .2 gallons
Beer 2.7 gallons

The total isn't given, but it would add up to 5.1 gallons, same as you quoted. The 1861-1870 total also adds up to 6.6 gallons. Rather than rising, the per capita consumption of distilled spirits is shown as falling from a peak of 4.7 gallons in 1820-1836, down to 2.2 and 2.1 in the 1850s and 1860s.

The latest the chart goes to is 1970-74 and for that range the numbers are:
Distilled spirits 1.8
Wine 1.3
Beer 18.4
Total: 21.5 gallons, but of course that's predominantly beer, which would make the absolute alcohol consumption proportionately lower.

The following table on p. 239, which lists the absolute alcohol consumption, doesn't have 1851-1860, but does have 1861-1870, as 1.3 gallons, compared to 1.8 gallons in 1970-1974.

In other words, consumption of alcohol beverages was much lower in the 1860s than the 1970s, and absolute alcohol consumption was slightly lower in the 1860s compared to the 1970s, according to your own source.

 

[TerryB]

I have some ancestors who were late taking the oath, so May-June seems about right for the picture. Capt Jesse Wynne took it at Marshall, Texas, in July 1865. Marcellus Pointer was at home in Holly Springs recovering from wounds, and his records say he surrendered April 23, was paroled in June. Family legend says he never took the oath. But he applied for a passport in Dallas in 1888 and subscribed to the oath on that document. Ed Buford fell off a moving train in NC after being exchanged in March 1865. No official record of his parole, but his bio says he was paroled in May at Salisbury, NC. However, his injuries delayed his return to Nashville until July 7. Lt. Thomas Pointer was released on June 17, 1865, from Fort Delaware, after taking the oath on the same day. As I understand it, men who were deemed to be more hard core Confederates were the last to be paroled.

 

[Albert Sailhorst]

In our reenacting unit, the person my son portrays is James E. Toland, Pvt., Scott's Battery. He was captured at Missionary Ridge and sent to Rock Island Prison (which is about 20 miles from where we now live). We have Toland's war record....He "Galvanized", but the war ended before they could send him anywhere, so he was released from prison.....The poor fellow could not write, so he "made his mark" on his papers (we have copies)....

 

[Craig L Barry]

That sort of thing is the curse of our race. You ought not do that! There oughta be a law!

So we let them slide into their own personal hell and then we worry about their kids. Is there no surcease? (This ought to be in the "Do you remember these? thread.)

News. There is no law to prevent people from really messing themselves up. (You may not be a butthead! Riiiiight.)

I think it was my parents who forbade me from being a butthead. I don't recollect any other forbidding except for Rudy, Hans, Leo and Aust.

Now, before any accuse me of actually being a butthead, I will remind you that jgoodguy is watching.

Somewhere in there is a balance in what is allowed at the time and place in which it occurs. Prohibition was necessary when it was enacted. What the advocates didn't figure in was the unintended consequences. A good idea went wrong.

Now I'm trying to think of a time when a good idea went right.

Good ideas have a way of getting afoul of human nature. Guess what comes out on top.

1. ole:
What are you talking about here?

2. James B White:
Appears you are right on with the source material, we still "take the oath" quite vigorously today!


All:
Sorry, did not mean to hijack the thread into alternate meanings of the phrase "taking the oath" but it appears I did...