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Edward Baker's California Regiment
(71st Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry)
Tattered State Colors of the California
Regiment which were returned to the State of Pennsylvania
during the ceremony illustrated at the bottom of the page
(courtesy of the Capital Preservation Committee)
In the middle of May 1861, twenty-two-year-old
George Washington Beidelman, a native of
Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, now living in Philadelphia, was "in a fighting mood"
to risk it all for "the best Constitution and government the world has ever
produced." Within a few days, George, like many other young men in these heady
days of the first spring of civil war, had enlisted in Mr. Lincoln’s burgeoning
army. He and well over one thousand other fellows, most hailing from
Philadelphia and New York City, but also from Washington, D.C., New England and
the West, as well as a goodly number from Ireland, Scotland, England and even
Jamaica, found themselves training along the crowded streets of New York City.
These boys were members of the California Regiment, a unit with no more than a
tenuous link to the state for which it was named, that had been organized in the
first weeks following the surrender of Fort Sumter by
Senator Edward Dickinson Baker of Oregon, close friend and
strong political ally of Abraham Lincoln. Baker’s men, among the troubled
nation’s first three-year’s troops, were in all respects average soldiers. They
had quit their jobs as iron workers, butchers, railroad men, common laborers,
sailors, policemen and teamsters to do their part in putting down the rebellion
that threatened the cherished legacy of their forebears. Initially, the regiment
was recognized by neither New York or Pennsylvania, but rather the Federal
government. Indeed, its rolls were to be applied to the number of men to be
called from the State of California. But in November 1861, after part of the
regiment had been badly handled in the debacle at Ball’s Bluff and Edward Baker had been killed,
the Keystone State adopted the California Regiment which was redesignated the
71st Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. Still, most of the men
continued to refer to the regiment by its original name rather than its
numerical appellation.
The Californians went on from Ball’s Bluff to see heavy duty on
the Virginia peninsula, and at
Antietam, the regiment would suffer its greatest
loss of the war in the West Woods. The men marched from Sharpsburg to
Fredericksburg where, on December 13, elements of the regiment participated in a
senseless attack of Rebel infantry deployed at the base of Marye’s Heights. Then
two days later, the entire regiment was engaged in a little described fierce
action at a brick tannery on the Orange Plank Road. After Chancellorsville, the
Californians tramped north to their home state where, on the afternoon of
July 3rd, they found themselves at the vortex
Robert Lee’s attempt to storm the Federal line on Cemetery Ridge. The
Californians saw action in all of the campaigns of the Army of the Potomac until
they mustered out in July 1864.
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Beginning in early 1862, the California
Regiment served in the Second Brigade ("Philadelphia Brigade"), Second
Division, Second Corps of the Army of the
Potomac. |
The full story of the California Regiment had remained hidden by
more than 130 years of history. Indeed, since its organization, numerous
misunderstandings have swirled about the regiment. For example, in July and
August 1861, rumor had it that the poorly trained unit was about to be
disbanded. Understandably, some of the Californians were sensitive to what was
said of them back home and reacted with measured anger to the slanderous
scuttlebutt. More recently, though, George Stewart, in his superb Pickett’s
Charge, A Microhistory of the Final Attack at Gettysburg, July 3, 1863,
described what he believed to be the state of the California Regiment early on
the third day of July: "about them, on this morning, one senses some faint
suggestion as of inward rotteness." Although Stewart went on to add that "there
was no where any official indication" that the regiment was "not of first
quality," one cannot help but wonder what impelled Stewart to hold such
reservations about the California Regiment.
What was it about the Californians that compelled
historian Stewart to describe the essence of the regiment in such negative
terms? As it turns out, there is little to support such a view. Indeed, the tale
of the California Regiment is that of an average fighting unit in the Army of
the Potomac. It comprised brave and not so brave men; men who worried about how
they would react when the fighting started; men who believed that they were
playing an important role in liberating an oppressed group of people while
others of their numbers who railed at the Lincoln administration over the
Emancipation Proclamation; at times, some of the Californians doubted that the
war could ever be won. The marches and bivouacs of these troops are chronicled
here in their own words to the extent that it is possible. The long, tedious
periods of camp life as well as the short bursts of searing excitement of battle
come across in the diaries, letters and reminiscences of the Californians.
Truly, these were average men but after all was said and done, the war was won
by millions of common soldiers like the Californians. This history, then, is a
tribute to men such as Albert Schurtz, William Burns, Frank Donaldson, Alban
Paist, Alfred Hills, Robert Lesher, George Kenney, Isaac Wistar, John Markoe,
George Beidelman, Joseph Elliot, Benjamin Franklin Hibbs, Richard Penn Smith and
their comrades in the Edward Baker’s California Regiment.
Materials here provided courtesy of Gary Lash
Comments and discussion are welcome:
Lash@fredonia.edu
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