Every Memorial Day, I resolve to put together all my scraps of research and tally up some statistics on fallen farriers--the ones who were killed in action in US wars. I guess we all have to start somewhere, so today's fragmented salute may be the start of something much more worthwhile, one of these years.
In the meantime, this is a personal salute to some fascinating farriers who suffered tragic deaths. I met them in the small print of dusty old books and quirky Internet databases. Their names should be known and their stories should be told. Let's get started, and add to it. This article is by no means complete. Do you have more information? A snapshot of a gravestone? Please send any additional information you may have about farriers who died in wars, whether from disease or in action or as collateral damage.
Heels up or heels down in Aleppo, Syria tonight? These might have been the oldest and most historic horseshoes on earth. All but one of these horseshoes is a message of defiance to any who would attempt to conquer the city. But one--and only one--horseshoe is an ancient coded message to invaders should they get past these massive gates. It's a message that is 800 years old, will it be heard again tonight?
Just when you think it can't get any worse, it looks like time may have run out for the ancient Syrian city of Aleppo. There is no cavalry coming to the rescue. There are no white knights on the horizon. For most, there is no more hoping-against-hope that the world will hear their pleas.
It's time for one last footnote from history, one last snapshot from the past. And, one last chance for a horseshoe legend to save its city, as it was designed to do 800 years ago.
I just stared at in disbelief. It was beautiful. It looked accurate. And it depicted something that, to the best of my knowledge, had never been painted before. And if it has been painted before, it was never painted so carefully and so artistically. Even the details of the forge wagon look correct.
A brief excerpt from a PBS documentary on the sculptor Saint-Gaudens, who created the Shaw Memorial on Boston Common. We take it for granted 364 days a year but Memorial Day seemed like a good time to stop and take a closer look. What memorials are in your town?
I don't know how many times I have walked by this statue--hundreds?--and never stopped to think much about it. It's part of the fabric of the city. We learned all about it in school. I saw the movie "Glory", which was Hollywood's version of who these people were. You probably saw it too.
I was intrigued by the horse's legs and hooves. Remember that this is a relief sculpture. It's not exactly 3-D. It's more like 2.5-D. And hard to do. This is the best my iPhone could record in the dark.
But the other night I stopped there at the top of Boston's Beacon Hill because I was taken with the horse and I wanted to see it close up.
It struck me that the foot soldiers are all leaning forward. But the rider and horse are not. In fact, they seem a bit hesitant. The horse's ears are back.
That's when I decided to start doing some more reading. And start forgetting Hollywood.
As soon as the Civil War began, African-American men in the North tried to enlist in the Union Army. They were turned away.
Colonel Shaw ended up in
an unmarked grave with his
fallen black soldiers.
Then it happened: it was two years into the bloody war, in 1863. Massachusetts, the hot bed home of the abolitionists, received permission from Washington to form a Black regiment.
They knew was they were up against. Confederacy policy was to enslave any captured Black soliders.
The governor of Massachusetts assured them that African American soldiers would be treated equally; they would receive the same pay and the same benefits as white recruits.
Only white men, however, could serve as officers. Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the only son of one of Boston's leading abolitionist families, would lead the regiment. He was only 25 years old.
Hollywood made Americans much more aware of the 54th.
On May 28th, the regiment was ready to fight; they marched through the streets of Boston, to the cheers of thousands of well-wishers the same way we lined the streets when the Red Sox won the World Series. This is the moment memorialized in the sculpture. They marched right to the docks and boarded ships headed south.
One of their first engagements was on July 18th at Fort Wagner, in Charleston Harbor in South Carolina. Colonel Shaw led 600 men up the embankment. Almost half his men were killed, wounded, or captured.
Colonel Shaw was shot through the heart; the Confederates buried him in a common (unmarked) grave alongside 74 of his men.
Who were the black men who
modeled for the sculptor?
His parents said he would have wanted it that way.
The War Department, meanwhile, did not deliver on the governor's promise to the soldiers. The men of the 54th were paid only $10 per month--$3 less than the white soldiers.
So, they decided if they could not receive equal pay, they would accept no pay.
For 18 months, soldiers could send no money home. In turn, they received heartbreaking letters from their impoverished families back in Massachusetts.
Finally, in July 1864, Congress acted to give African-American soldiers the equal pay they had been promised, retroactive to the date of their enlistments.
In winter, the three-dimensional relief sculpture comes to life. They march on.
Memorial Day was declared a holiday in 1868, so that Americans would stop what they were doing and place flowers on the graves of fallen soldiers--a custom that began in Mississippi. It was called Decoration Day.
On May 31, 1897, 60 veterans of the 54th Regiment were among hundreds of people who gathered on the Common for the unveiling of the memorial. This bronze relief statue, which took the leading sculptor in the United States 14 years to create, is considered one of the greatest works of public art in the United States and was the first to portray black men in uniform.
Sculptor Saint-Gaudens' original plan was to craft a magnificent equestrian statue of Shaw--alone on his horse, on a pedestal. But Shaw's family wouldn't hear of it. Saint-Gaudens bought into their line of thinking and designed the first public sculpture to show an officer and enlisted soldiers together.
And, probably, blacks and whites together.
It was commissioned by the black citizens of Massachusetts, who raised funds to pay Saint-Gaudens. I'm just not sure why it is called the Robert Gould Shaw memorial. I hope someday I'll hear that its name will be changed to honor the whole regiment.
When it was unveiled back in 1897, people could read the names of the five white officers killed in battle; they were inscribed on the back of the monument.
It wouldn't be until 1981 that the names of the fallen black soldiers would be carved into that stone.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any direct compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned, other than Hoofcare Publishing. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
Today is the 150th anniversary of the beginning of one of the darkest and most painful chapters in United States history: the Civil War. Where I live, every little village has a monument to its men who died in places like Gettysburg and Antietam. The names go on and on. It makes you wonder if anyone came back at all.
I can imagine that in the southern states, the lists could be longer and it would be possible that no one returned.
As much as I read and study about the Civil War, I keep learning new things. For me, the horses are the thing of interest, and the farriers who serviced them, and the foot problems that challenged both horses and farriers.
Farriers for the Union horses were often foreign immigrants. This group looks like new arrivals: their aprons are clean and their hammers shiny.
If you have read this blog for any length of time you know that the Burden Horseshoe played a big role in turning the tide of the War in favor of the Union. Trainloads of horseshoes could leave the factory in Troy, New York and be bound for the huge remount stations or go directly to the front. Not just the cavalry but the entire artillery and the massive kitchens and quartermaster depots moved camp only the horses were shod. And those first machine-made shoes from Troy kept them all moving.
The Confederacy wasn't so lucky. They had a limited supply of iron, and it was needed for munitions as much as for horseshoes. There were no horseshoe factories in the South and orders were given for any raids on Union supply trains to go for two things: cash and horseshoes.
Until recently, I never thought much about who the farriers of the Confederacy were. I knew the Union recruiters met ships in New York and convinced farriers and blacksmiths from all nations to either enlist or to go to work as civilian government horseshoers in the remount stations.
But what about the Confederacy?
This is the enlistment paper for Ellick, an African-American who was brought into military service to work as a farrier for the Confederate States of America, even though it was not approved for white men to conscript blacks into service. This document is preserved in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
This week I learned that the laws of the Confederacy prohibited the conscription of slaves into military service. But African-Americans were there anyway, in fighting and non-fighting roles, and if authors Kevin M. Weeks and Ann DeWitt are correct, the care of the horses may have been one area where they could have been found. Just take Ellick's case.
Ellick was a farrier for the Confederacy, though he had no rank and drew no pay. It's impossible to know if he went willingly. It's quite likely that the Confederate army was desperate for farriers and experienced horsemen. Ellick may have played an important role.
Not only did the Union have new recruits with shiny hammers and unmarked aprons. They had mobile forges built on double wheel axles. In front of the forge you see here was a big bellows. The US Army designed and built these to get the farriers and the shoes to the front, where they were needed. (Library of Congress photo)
How amazing is it that the National Archives in Washington would have preserved the enlistment paper of a farrier after that war was over? This is just one example of the millions of bits of fascinating information that lies buried in those vaults of papers.
Who found Ellick? Kevin Weeks and Ann DeWitt are the authors of the new book, Entangled in Freedom: A Civil War Story. Last week their book graced the cover of Publishers Weekly's Special Independent Publishers Spring Announcement Issue. Entangled in Freedom is a young adult novel written as a first-person account of a young African-American serving with his slaveholder in the Confederate Army. The book has already won the Bonnie Blue Society Award. Ann DeWitt runs the web site www.blackconfederatesoldiers.com.
I'd like to thank them for bringing Ellick to my attention, for pulling him out of the piles of papers in the Archives, and for making him come to life. Maybe we'll never know much about Ellick but for today, he's the star farrier on the Hoof Blog and the Civil War is interesting all over again.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any direct compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned, other than Hoofcare Publishing. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, World War I ended. It was November 11, 1918.
Here we are almost 100 years later, and the original "Armistice Day" has become "Veterans Day". A lot of people will hardly blink.
Looking back to World War I, I found this very interesting poster that I thought I'd share with you. Someone designed a horse-drawn horse ambulance that made a lot of sense. The ambulance was rear-entry and front-exit, so that an injured horse never had to back up. I think that is brilliant. When the ambulance arrived at the stable or hospital, the pulling horse was unhitched and the injured horse led forward through the traces.
