New Jersey Butterfly Boys in the Civil War: The Hussars of the Union Army

By Peter T. Lubrecht

The New Jersey Butterflies, officially the Third New Jersey Cavalry, was formed for the last year of the Civil War. They were also known as the First American Hussars; their creation by an alcoholic ex-officer of the Union Army was supposed to entice men to join a galloping, dashing, romantic cavalry unit. Clothed in orange gilt trimmed hats and capes, they were supposed to charge armed only with a saber, in most traditional European Cavalry fashion, into battle and subdue an enemy armed with rifles. This book is not about battlefield configurations, but rather about the men themselves. Individual stories from original accounts will examine how this glorious, historically victorious, difficult and often tragic year affected their return to the daily world of doctors, teachers, lawyers, clerks and workmen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Mar 18, 2011
• ISBN: 9781614232322

Peter T. Lubrecht

Peter Lubrecht is the program chairman and a trustee for the Sussex County Historical Society and Museum and for the Colonel Henry Ryerson Civil War Round Table. He is an adjunct professor at Warren County Community College and a member of the Germania Park Gesang and Schul Verein, as well as the Henry Muhlenberg Chapter of the Steuben Society of America.

Book preview

The Hussars of the Union Army

PETER T. LUBRECHT

Published by The History Press

Charleston, SC 29403

www.historypress.net

Copyright © 2011 by Peter T. Lubrecht

All rights reserved

First published 2011

e-book edition 2011

ISBN 978.1.61423.232.2

Lubrecht, Peter T.

New Jersey butterfly boys in the Civil War : the Hussars of the Union Army / Peter T. Lubrecht.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

print edition ISBN 978-1-60949-132-1

1. United States. Army. New Jersey Cavalry Regiment, 3rd (1864-1865) 2. United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Regimental histories. 3. United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Participation, German. 4. New Jersey--History--Civil War, 1861-1865. I. Title.

E521.63rd .L83 2011

973.7’449--dc22

2011003220

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

To Pop

Contents

Preface

Introduction

1. The Cavalier Colonel

2. The Birth of the Butterflies or, Mister, Where’s Your Mule?

3. Marching from Trenton

4. A Long Sloppy Journey

5. Into Battle

6. Into the Major Battles: First Winchester

7. Cedar Creek

8. Skulking Deserters

9. Chasing General Lee

10. Appomattox and Beyond

11. Mustering Out and Picking Up the Pieces

Appendix:

The Men Who Enlisted in the First American Hussars: The Third New Jersey Cavalry

Notes

Bibliography

About the Author

Preface

My late friend and colleague, film editor Ralph Pioreck, always said to let the story tell itself. This book is a tale of New Jersey men who left their homes, went to war in designer uniforms and then returned to the state after the war. Their odyssey has been an interest of mine since I discovered my cousin Christian Lubrecht was a Third New Jersey Butterfly (First American Hussar). He had come from Hannover, Germany, to America, in 1852, where he joined his brother in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, only to travel to Texas to join the U.S. Second Dragoons and then the Third New Jersey Cavalry. Our family had been in the Prussian cavalry since the early eighteenth century and the Napoleonic Wars. When I found a few firsthand accounts of this unit, I became intrigued and started to retrieve material. I found a base on Karen Denmark’s excellent website and proceeded from there. It has been quite a journey to historical societies, museums and archives.

I found some materials that had been in storage since the Civil War, and I have met descendants of some of the soldiers. I have tried to tell their story from the soldier’s eye view. There are volumes and maps on troop movements and strategies, and in most cases, I left that for the hard core battlefield students. These soldiers were from every corner of New Jersey, and they lie beneath the soil from Wantage to Cape May and from Phillipsburg to Millville. I tried to tell about their journey. I think that, with the approaching anniversary of the war of the rebellion, there is a need to revisit these stories. The Civil War almost destroyed a nation, and it leaves a lesson behind. We must never go there again and let hatred, greed and want go unbridled.

I need to thank the people who helped on my trail of the First American Hussars: the members of the Colonel Henry Ryerson Civil War Round Table, who started me on this path; transcriber and German traslator, Ilse Baker; Joe Bilby at the New Jersey Militia Museum; the helpers at the United States Government Archives; Ray Castellani for telling me never to quit; Paula McNally for moral support; Dean Bob Smith of Northampton Community College, in Bethlehem Pennsylvania, for help with the weaponry; Karen Denmark for the website and help; Tom Landers of Freeland, Pennsylvania, for local history; and also Steve Cunningham of the Morrison Family. Special thanks go to my two sons, Peter and Christopher, for listening to Civil War Stuff and especially to my grandson, Michael Lubrecht, who has questioned me daily from his car seat on his way to first grade. Mostly thanks goes to my wife of many years, Thea, who never intended to become a historical research partner, to tramp battlefields or to get lost on them. Without her, there would be no book.

Recruitment advertisement: the First American Hussars in the New Jersey Herald Democrat. Courtesy of the Sussex County Library, Newton, New Jersey.

Introduction

The Third Regiment of New Jersey Cavalry, the Thirty-sixth Volunteers, glittered as they rode in formation during the last part of the American Civil War. Proudly resplendent in heavy, gold-braided uniforms, with orange-lined capes, topped off with gold-braided brimless hats and holding their sabers aloft, they proudly called themselves the First American Hussars. They had passed the governor of New Jersey and the president of the United States in review, 1,400 mounted cavalry recruited for the last year of the conflict. Foot soldiers passing by called out get a mule; onlookers, however, had to be impressed with the sight of the clanking troops marching to bugle calls and carrying the red, white and blue banner of the Union. The bright orange lining of their capes, folded back against the royal blue talma for the parade, gave them their nickname, the Butterflies. No matter how hard the unit tried to keep the romance of the Hussar ideal and impress others with the title, the name remained attached to them.

This unit was recruited during the latter part of 1863, from summer into the winter of the next year. Most observers viewed them as a flashy parade ground cavalry; however, during the course of their travels, they became a formidable fighting force and helped to end the war. Their story is filled with ironic twists and turns. These soldiers left their homes in the hills, farms and small towns of New Jersey and parts of Pennsylvania to join the Union cause. Some had reenlisted after three years of fighting at Gettysburg, Antietam and Fredericksburg; some were very young boys and men looking for adventure and sustenance during the course of the war effort. They journeyed from small towns to a world arena, and then they returned to daily life. Books about romantic settings in faraway places helped this generation escape from the hard work of the daily routine. During the early part of the century, reading and writing were popular pastimes, particularly in the romantic genre. Boys dreamed of knights in King Arthur’s court after reading Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe and Quentin Durward. Charles Lever’s cavalry adventure books were very popular; Jack Hinton Guardsman and Tom Burke were at the top of the list. However, the most famous was Charles O’Malley: Irish Dragoon, who said, ever till now did I know had for higher the excitement readies when man to man sabre to sabre, arm to arm, we ride forward to the battlefield.

Sergeant Sheppard Stuart, Third New Jersey Cavalry. Courtesy of the United States Military Library, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Young George Armstrong Custer found the Lever books his inspiration and motivation for a career in the romantic and chivalrous ride to glory. Boyhood dreams remained with the man for a long time, and when his glory approached, it was seen as identical to those in the pages of the books. Romantic adventures were distant from the harsh reality of life in the northeastern part of the Union during the summer and fall of 1862–1863.¹ Difficult living conditions, coupled with inflation and stagnated war efforts, resulted in higher prices and general discontent. Coal strikes increased food prices. Wage earners who made between $600 and $10,000 were paying 3 percent of their gross income to the support the war effort with the new income tax. As the war dragged on, soldiers who made, at most, $15 to $20 a week could send little money home for the family. Many of them deserted to gain a living wage. Women doing the marketing found inflation and cost of living rising, so between 1860 and 1864, feeding and supporting the family became difficult, if not nearly impossible.

During the summer of 1862, a need for men became crucial, and the ensuing draft call resulted in riots and unrest. Violent demonstrators in New Jersey and Pennsylvania protested higher prices and the draft. The call for 300,000 men needed for the Union army came on August 4, 1862; 1,400 or 1,500 men were drafted from Luzerne County Pennsylvania alone. Public outcry echoed by the press was the precursor to the riots and general unrest.

The Luzerne Union reported:

Archibald (Pa) Sept 28, 1862: Woman without her man is but a savage. On the 28th of August, Augustus Brown and Charles Johnson went up the hill to enroll the names. They found so much opposition from the women that they returned—They then went across the White Oak Run, joined by Mr Spangenburgh. Near the railroad depot a large force of women, armed heavily with stone, attacked them. They retreated to the telegraph office and locked themselves.²

President Lincoln was blamed by the newspapers for the spreading unrest and the slow progress of the war. The Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania paper, on June 29, 1864, in advance of Lincoln’s campaign for reelection, wrote:

What they have to notice are the three terrible years that the country has already gone through under the Presidency of Mr. Lincoln—three years of war, in which the country has endured every misery, the President’s incapacity, in a military and financial point of view, could plunge it into [sic]. This is what the people have to consider; and what they have to decide is simply whether or not they wish to repeat these years.

Mr. Lincoln is responsible for every blunder committed in every department of the government since the commencement of the war. He assumed the absolute control of our armies, with a flourish of defiance to the enemy and a Chinese announcement that our armies should move on a certain day. Under his direct guidance, we experienced a series of reverses without parallel. Our grandly organized Peninsular campaign was made to end disastrously by his interference, and Stonewall Jackson’s triumphs were due, not to Jackson’s genius, but to Lincoln’s intellectual opacity.

Despite draft riots in Bergen and Essex County, New Jersey faced squarely this need for support and the call to arms. A year into the war, the New Jersey legislature, on May 11, 1861, authorized a payment to the state’s military of $2.00 per month for single men and $6.00 a month for married men who were volunteers in the service. County and township officials distributed this pay to wives or widowed mothers of enlisted men (including drafted men and substitutes) in New Jersey volunteer units. This pay was from the day they started until discharge, death or desertion and as long as all parties lived in the state. As the war progressed, additional pay for service in other branches of the service was added. Counties and townships supplied bounties for enlistment. By the end of the war, New Jersey coffers had supplied $2,317,374.58, and the bounties totaled $23,000,000.00. The August 4, 1863 draft law required the state to supply 10,478 men for nine-months’ service in the military. On September 3, the adjutant general proudly declared that eleven new New Jersey regiments would be formed that would actually, if filled, exceed the draft quota by 236 men. Recruits were needed again during the fall of 1863, and posters and newspaper ads appeared throughout the Northeast.

Civil War enlistment center. Courtesy of the Author.

The Newark Advertiser ran this ad in 1864:

39th New Jersey Regiment: Only one year! Recruits Wanted! For the regiment Lately authorized to be raised, to whom the highest Bounties will be paid. Look at the following figures: Bounty and pay $864. Cash paid on muster, $533.33. Captain George W. Harrison late of the 26th Regiment having received authorization to recruit a company for the 39th Regiment, has established his headquarters in Main Street near Centre, Orange, where recruits will be received.

Married men were paid forty cents more than the $15.60 for single men.

New Jersey had one of the more successful recruiting programs, but the one assembling the Third New Jersey Cavalry was unique. Colonel Andrew Jackson Morrison, a former Union officer, approached the adjutant general of New Jersey with the idea that the formation of a European Hussar unit would attract men to the war in droves. He insisted that the uniform be of special design, even though it would cost about three dollars per man more than the standard jacket of the Union. Each regiment and volunteer organization was competing for qualified men to fill the ranks. The Third New Jersey Cavalry offered a chance for glory, glamour and victory in battle. Pictures of Hussars were distributed throughout the state, in the hope that the dash and bravado of a reputed foreign-style unit would attract men in droves. The advertisement did just that. However, much of the credit had to be given to the dashing colonel who was advertised as the one officer who would lead them to victory.

Chapter 1

The Cavalier Colonel

Some historians see Andrew Jackson Morrison, who created, formed and ultimately led the First American Hussars, as a colorful figure, whose military career was tainted with alcoholism, which led to ending his life in an asylum. However, scrutiny of family and original regimental records reveal a character of fictional proportions whose quick verbal trigger often got him into trouble. Historical research does not reveal the political entanglements of the upper echelons of the military command