Jollification

[Subdeacon Joe]

Fort Vancouver National Historic Site
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We hope your Thanksgiving feast was as good as the one enjoyed by soldiers at Vancouver Barracks in 1918! On November 30, 1918, the soldiers' newspaper "The Straight Grain" printed this report on their holiday celebrations.

[Cyrus Cassidy #45437]

Hey Joe, is that your cannon in your signature line?

[Subdeacon Joe]

 

Hey Joe, is that your cannon in your signature line?

 

I wish.  That is Christian, a steel reproduction of the M-1857 12-Pounder Light Field Gun, usually called a Napoleon, by Steen Cannon Works.  Owned by a gentleman in Shaver Lake, CA.  The image is the first firing of it.  Two pounds of Goex Cannon Grade powder.  Did one more two pound charge.  After that, due to cost, scaled back to one pound charges. Place was Gibson Ranch in Elverta, CA.  
Here is that second shot:


If you look towards the back you can see the air still shimmering from the vent plume.


I took care of a Steen-built M-1861 3 Inch Ordnance Rifle.   The guy who owned this gun named her Flo, after his mom.  In the Civil War it was rare for a gun to have a feminine name, but there were some.  

[Utah Bob #35998]

A fine gun, the Ordnance Rifle. Deadly accurate.

[Subdeacon Joe]

 

A fine gun, the Ordnance Rifle. Deadly accurate.

 

That it was.  General Leonidas Polk was killed by one.

 

Also very strong.  Only two were know to have had a catastrophic failure during the War of 1861.  Both were forward of the trunnions.  I read an account of one of the failures and given the tactical situation I suspect that a "Zero second" fuzed shell detonated before it cleared the bore. Evening battle, enemy charging and very close.  I don't recall the circumstance of the other one, but I think it was also a failure forward of the trunnions.

[Subdeacon Joe]

One account of the death of Gen. Polk:


 

General Leonidas Polk
Born on April_10, 1806 in Raleigh, North Carolina, Leonidas Polk graduated from West Point in 1827, along with the future President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis and fellow officer Albert Sidney Johnston. Called to pursue a religious career, he resigned his commission in the army. Over the next thirty years that career would include missionary work and his appointment to the prestigious post of Bishop.

Secession brought the Bishop into the fold of the Confederate Army. He seized the city of Columbus, Kentucky, on September_3, 1861. On November_7, 1861, Polk chased off a then unknown Ulysses S. Grant at Belmont, Missouri. He saw action at Pittsburgh Landing (Shiloh), Perryville, Stone's River, and his troops bore the brunt of the first day's fighting at Chickamauga. He was transferred to Alabama after questioning Braxton Bragg about a decision.


Polk fought with the Army of Tennessee during the Atlanta Campaign. Called to the line by Lieutenant General William J. Hardee, the swarthy Cajun, Johnston, Polk, and others journeyed to Pine Mountain to see if the position could be maintained. William Tecumseh Sherman surrounded the Confederates on three sides and William Hardee was fearful of being enveloped by Uncle Billy. As they studied the position Rebel infantry repeatedly warned the officers that Union artillery had the range of their position, but for some reason these men chose to ignore the warning and continued in full sight of the Federal batteries. Although mini-balls had come nearby, the big guns were under orders to conserve ammunition and did not fire until Sherman rode up and ordered them to keep the observers under cover. The first shot scattered most of the generals, but Polk, for some reason known but to him, took his time.


A second round struck nearby and the third round entered Polk through an arm, passing through his chest and exiting through the other arm. He was dead. Johnston stood over the man who had baptized him earlier in the campaign and cried. One of the few men who had little use for Rebels, and even less for the clergy was Gen. Sherman, who in a tersely worded statement sent to Gen. Halleck, "We killed Bishop Polk yesterday and have made good progress today..."

An interesting note: Polk donated the land for Maury County's Saint John's Church. It was so beautiful that General Patrick Cleburne remarked, "It is almost worth dying for to be buried in such a beautiful place." After Cleburne's death a few days later at the Battle of Franklin he was buried there until later disinterred.

The Polk Monument (pictured at right) is a tall shaft erected on the spot where Leonidas Polk fell that fateful day. Beginning in the 1890's many of the important events of The Civil War were being commemorated. A Marietta, Georgia soldier and his wife had the monument built to honor the general, fearing others would forget him. The monument is on private property but still accessible.

From a reader:
It was said at Sewanee, The University of the South that the Illinois soldier who fired the cannon that killed Leonidas Polk was so distraught that he had killed such a fine man that he committed suicide.

 

 Yonder is the mountain he was killed on, picture taken in 1864