HARPERS FERRY
CIVIL WAR ROUND TABLE
Vol. 34 March 2015 No. 07
DATE:
Wednesday, March 11th, 2015
TIME:
Dinner 7:00 PM; Program 8:00
PLACE:
Camp Hill Methodist Church, Harpers Ferry, WV
SPEAKER:
Gail Stephens
SUBJECT:
The Career of Major General Lew Wallace
The Speaker:
Author of Shadow of Shiloh: Major General Lew Wallace in the Civil War, Gail
Stephens has a Bachelor’s Degree in International Politics from George Washington
University in Washington D.C., and has done graduate work at Johns Hopkins and
Harvard Universities. She worked for the Department of Defense for 26 years, retiring in
1994 as a member of the Department’s Senior Executive Service. Upon retirement, she
began to study the American Civil War. She volunteers at Monocacy National Battlefield
near Frederick, Maryland, lectures on the Civil War, and gives battlefield tours. In 2002,
she won the National Park Service’s E.W. Peterkin award for her contributions to public
understanding of Civil War history. She is on the board of the General Lew Wallace
Study Museum and chairs the board of the Western Maryland Interpretive Association,
which is responsible for the bookstores at Antietam and Monocacy National Battlefields.
Stephens has written articles on Lew Wallace and Jubal Early’s 1864 invasion of the
North for various Civil War publications. Shadow of Shiloh, published by the Indiana
Historical Society Press in October 2010, won the Civil War Forum of New York City’s
William Henry Seward Award for best Civil War biography of 2011.
The Subject
In the aftermath of the bloodbath of the Battle of Shiloh, Union commander Ulysses
Grant attributed General Lew Wallace’s late arrival on the battlefield to a failure to obey
orders, badly tarnishing his honor. Shiloh still defines Wallace’s military reputation,
overshadowing the rest of his stellar military career and making it easy to forget that in
April 1862 he was a rising military star, the youngest major general in the Union army.
Wallace was devoted to the Union, but he was also pursuing glory, fame, and honor when
he volunteered to serve in April 1861. Gail Stephens will specifically address Wallace’s
military career and its place in the larger context of Civil War military history, including
the tension between citizen-soldiers and West Pointers that occurred in the officer ranks.
The general assumption in current Civil War histories is that the West Pointers were more
competent at war than the citizen-soldiers. That was not true in Wallace’s case. He had a
talent for battle, which he demonstrated at Fort Donelson, Monocacy, and even Shiloh.
But Wallace’s disdain for military rules and protocol and his arrogance, fueled by early
promotion, alienated his West Point superiors such as Grant and, especially, Henry
Halleck. At Shiloh, Wallace was merely one amateur in an army of amateurs. Grant and
his staff made errors and Wallace’s late arrival was only one mistake of many, but Grant
focused on it to shift the blame for the enormous casualties at Shiloh from himself. After
Shiloh, Wallace left Grant’s army and returned to Indiana, giving Halleck an opportunity
to keep Wallace out of the field for almost two years. In 1864 President Abraham Lincoln
gave Wallace a second chance, and he validated Lincoln’s trust at the Battle of
Monocacy. Wallace was an extraordinary man, lawyer, politician, general, author,
inventor, and adventurer. Gail Stephens sheds light on the long-standing issues
surrounding Wallace’s Civil War career and puts his great service to the nation in
perspective.
The Meal
A family-style meal will be served at 7:00 PM prior to the program. The cost of the
meal is $15.00 per person. Reservations for the meal must be made no later than
Sunday, March 7th, with Kyle Wichtendahl at [email protected] or 301-6398855. The meal will consist of Corned Beef and Cabbage, Carrots, Potatoes, Irish Soda
Bread, Rye Bread, Butter, Iced Tea, Coffee, & Dessert.
Memorial honors only Marine killed in John Brown's raid
May 25, 2011|By RICHARD F. BELISLE | [email protected]
HARPERS FERRY, W.Va. — A 3,500-pound granite monument honoring the only
Marine killed during John Brown's raid in 1859 finally came to rest Tuesday in Harpers
Ferry.
Pvt. Luke Quinn, an Irish immigrant who joined the Marines in 1855, was killed when
he was sent to Harpers Ferry in Oct. 18, 1859 in a unit commanded by Lt. Col. Robert E.
Lee to stop Brown and his raiders from taking over the U.S. arsenal there. Quinn was
mortally wounded when the unit stormed the barricaded engine house.
A crew from Hammaker Memorials in Martinsburg, WV, spent more than two hours
Tuesday morning installing the monument on a spit of donated land abutting the sidewalk
on Potomac Street across from the train station.
The idea to immortalize Quinn in granite has been kicked around for more than 20
years by J. Dixie Wiltshire, 81, a Harpers Ferry native, ex-Marine and Korean War
veteran. "Pvt. Quinn has a marker over his grave on the hill in St. Peter's Catholic
Cemetery, but there's never been a monument for him," Wiltshire said. He, fellow
veterans Harry Biller, Paul Ranalli and other members of Harpers Ferry/Bolivar District
Veterans raised more than $2,800 to have the monument made. Hammaker donated the
granite for it, Wiltshire said.
The monument was completed last year, but the veterans had to find a place to set it
down. "I went to the Park Service (Harpers Ferry National Historical Park) first, and then
I went to the Town Council, but I was turned down both places," Wiltshire said.
Park Superintendent Rebecca Harriett said this week that Wiltshire met with her several
times asking permission to place Quinn's monument on park grounds. "Placing a
monument on federal park property is a very involved process," she said. “It would also
need the permission of the director of the National Park Service,” she said. Harpers Ferry
Mayor Jim Addy said Tuesday that he had suggested that it be placed on the hill where
the engine house stood during the raid, but that didn't work out, either. Harriett said the
monument's design would not fit in with the planned transformation of the site where
Brown's fort stood and its proposed cultural landscape. A local resident solved the
veterans' dilemma by donating the land on Potomac Street. Pvt. Quinn's monument sits
less than a quarter-mile from where he fell on the hill while assaulting Brown's position.
Wording on Quinn's monument, authored by Wiltshire, and the epitaph on his
gravestone in the cemetery brought up another problem. The gravestone said Quinn was
born in Ireland in 1835, came to America when he was 9 and enlisted in the Marines in
1855. Hammaker's workers, dutifully following Wiltshire's writing, sandblasted into the
granite that Quinn came to America in 1835. "The only way to fix it is to make a new
one," said Steve Ashton, Hammaker manager. "I guess I messed it up," Wiltshire said,
dismissing his error. The only way an observer would notice his mistake is by seeing the
gravestone and the monument, which are nearly a mile apart.
The monument, which was built in three sections, stands nearly 7-feet high. It was
designed by Hank Happy of Charles Town, WV, a Civil War re-enactor who dresses in
the uniform of a U.S. Marine at the time of the John Brown raid, Wiltshire said.
The monument shows the sandblasted outline of a Marine dressed in the uniform of the
day, standing at attention in the 5-foot high main section. The front of the middle section
carries the inscription written by Wiltshire: "IN MEMORY OF PVT LUKE QUINN only
Marine killed in John Brown's raid October 18, 1859. Pvt. Luke Quinn came from Ireland
in 1835 and enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1855 in Brooklyn, NY. He was sent to sea
duty then transferred to Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C. He came to Harpers Ferry
with Lieut. Col. Robert E. Lee. Then was killed in the storming of the engine house. His
funeral was in St. Peter's Catholic Church (in Harpers Ferry) by Father Michael Costello
and he was buried in St. Peter's Catholic Cemetery." [sic]
Angie Hough who owns the Pvt. Quinn Pub remarked, “That’s great. Customers are
always asking who Pvt. Quinn was.” (Excerpted and edited from the Herald-mail.com)