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Washington Evening Journal
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Library hosts Civil War soldier
Historian gives first-person account of the war between the states
MARENGO — A roomful of history buffs and home-schooled children heard the story of the United States Civil War last month from an Iowa soldier who fought for Generals Grant and Sherman from Missouri through South Carolina.
Historian O.J. Fargo, dressed in an authentic Union Army uniform, presented a first-person account of the war in a program offered through Humanities Iowa. Friends of the Marengo Public Library brought Fargo to Marengo.
Fargo’s presentation is based on his book “Just Before the Battle Mother.” Fargo details experiences of Iowa soldiers in the national conflict fought mostly outside the state.
Fargo, a former social studies teacher and adjunct professor at Green Valley Area Education Agency, has researched Iowans in the Civil War and created a database of 72,000 Iowans who served in the war. Iowa residents can access it during his performances throughout the state.
Fargo began reenacting Civil War battle in 1993 as a member of Army of the Southwest, an Iowa Civil War re-enactment organization.
“I’m returning from four years for the most part,” said Fargo of the character he portrayed for more than an hour in Marengo last month. It’s 1865, and Fargo is 35 years old. He got off a boat in Davenport. Rail service ended in Iowa City, so Fargo’s waiting for a stagecoach in Marengo to take him home to Afton, about 10 miles east of what is now Creston, though there was no Creston in 1865.
“You have to put yourself in their place,” Fargo told his audience. People in 1865 didn’t see things the way we do, he said.
The Civil War soldier Fargo became was born and raised in Rock Island. He was a stevedore, loading and unloading cargo ships. He was married and had two children.
Newspaper editor Horace Greeley told people to go west and make their fortunes, Fargo said. But there was no fortune for Fargo. He landed in Afton in 1856. It was Indian territory. He wasn’t going any farther west than that.
The beginning
The North and South had been arguing like children for 50 years, Fargo said. Then Fort Sumpter happened.
Following the election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States in 1860, South Carolina seceded from the Union. By Feb. 2, 1861, six more states had seceded. They established the Confederate States of America.
On April 12, 1861, the South Carolina militia attacked Fort Sumpter, and the war began.
Most people thought the war would last only three months, and they were excited to be part of it, Fargo said. U.S. citizens wanted to go South and show those rebels that they couldn’t leave the Union.
Some men may have joined the fight because of slavery, said Fargo, but they were in the minority. Most northerners didn’t see slavery in person and had a live-and-let-live attitude.
Lincoln needed 100,000 men for three months, and Iowa Gov. Samuel J. Kirkwood was ready to supply the 1,000 Lincoln requested from Iowa. Iowans were ready to serve; 15,000 men volunteered.
Each state was supposed to have a militia, said Fargo, but those groups weren’t trained. Most were ceremonial; the men were more prepared to wear fancy uniforms in parades than to fight in a war.
But emotions were high. “Everybody has been primed for this for years,” said Fargo.
The Iowa soldiers ended up in Missouri. “Nobody knows anything,” said Fargo. Their three months were up, and their uniforms were worn out. They used feed sacks to cover the holes in the seat of their trousers.
But they stayed to fight. “They knew a battle was coming,” Fargo said, and they wanted to be part of it.
At Wilson’s Creek, Iowa men were outnumbered 3-to-1. Though the Iowa regiment lost that battle, they were treated as heroes.
More men
As the war continued, Lincoln asked for 300,000 more men and, later, for another 300,000.
By that time, the Union was willing to take older men, like Fargo. “So I sign up.”
The new soldiers were taught to march, to react to bugle calls and drum tattoos. “We think this is all kind of a waste of time,” said Fargo. The men just want to go south and “smack someone in the mouth.”
Local women brought them fried chicken every night.
“We ended up in Kanesville (now Council Bluffs),” said Fargo. Iowa’s Grenville Dodge took charge of the Iowa regiments and marched them to St. Louis where they fought Confederate guerrillas.
“We thought they were a bunch of godless heathens and all we had to do is show some muscle and they were just going to go home,” said Fargo. “We saw them as a bunch of whiny kids.
“They … saw us as a big nasty people who wanted to oppress them all the time,” Fargo said. “Both sides were convinced they were right.”
The Iowa men continued across Missouri. “And we run into … pockets of guerrillas,” Fargo said. “But they don’t give us a whole lot of trouble.”
They ended up in northern Arkansas where they fought the Battle of Pea Ridge in March 1862.
“We run across an army of about 20,000 of Confederates down there,” said Fargo. “And there are about an equal number of us.
“They whoop us pretty good the first day,” Fargo said. “The second day, we come back and whoop them.”
Fargo said his mother read about battles in the newspaper and assumed her son was in each battle. She was wrong.
“Nobody fought all the time,” said Fargo. “They rotate you in and out.”
In Mississippi
The Iowa soldiers marched into Mississippi. “Now we’re under General Grant,” said Fargo.
The battle for Helena wasn’t terrible, said Fargo. But Chickasaw Bluffs was another story.
“Grant wanted that hill taken, and it was almost impossible,” said Fargo. Some men — not those from Iowa — said the task was too hard and refused to go up the hill, so the Union didn’t take it, he said.
Instead, the Union came in from the backside, Fargo said. “We put [Vicksburg] under siege for about six or seven weeks.” More than 25,000 Confederate soldiers surrendered.
They moved on to Chattanooga, Tennessee to aid Union soldiers who were trapped by Confederate troops. “We relieved that siege,” Fargo said.
Lincoln promoted Grant and sent him east, and Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman took over the army that included the Iowa troops. The men called him Uncle Billy, but not to his face, Fargo said.
Fargo didn’t think Chattanooga was a bad place to finish out the war, but Sherman decided to take Atlanta, Georgia. And then Savannah.
“It wasn’t bad because there’s nobody here,” said Fargo. The Confederate troops were in Virginia, so only local militia defended Savannah. All the “dyed-in-the-wool” Confederates had left, said Fargo, and only people who weren’t able to leave remained.
With the ingenuity of Union engineers, 30,000 troops made their way through George swampland and marched on Charleston, South Carolina. “Charleston got it good,” said Fargo, because South Carolina had started it all.
Surrender
The surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee at Appomattox, Virginia April 9, 1865 didn’t end the war, said Fargo. Lee’s was the largest Confederate army, but there were four others, he said.
When the second-largest army surrendered. The war fizzled out.
“I’m no big proponent of Lee,” said Fargo, but when Lee surrendered, the Confederacy wanted soldiers to start a guerrilla war. Lee rejected the idea, and Fargo was glad to hear it. Guerrilla war is not pretty, Fargo said. “You don’t know who your friends are.”
Fargo was among the 80,000 men who marched in a parade in Washington, D.C. to celebrate the end of the war. “Newspapers said we looked like … an army of lean wolves.”
Fargo explained his uniform, hardtack and weapons to his audience and demonstrated how to load a 58-calibur Italian-made rifle using a replica.
“They would never have seen one of these before the Civil War,” said Fargo. Prior to that time, soldiers used flintlocks which discharge about 80% of the time.
The 58-calibur used a packet with powder and a bullet that was tamped into the barrel of the gun. It fired 98% of the time, Fargo said.
