When Ohio volunteers skirmished with seven
hundred secessionists at West Liberty, Kentucky, on October 23, 1861, a
triumphant account published in Cincinnati reported that twenty-one enemies
were killed and victors returned with an entourage.
Captured, according to the news account, were 34
prisoners, 52 horses, 10 or 12 mules, 2 jacks and one large bear. Like the cub
kept as a mascot by another outfit, this animal was probably half tame, but was
estimated to weight about three hundred pounds.
Diaries and letters reveal that men in blue as
well as men in gray spent time with pets to break the monotony of camp life.
Many mongrel dogs were fed scraps, and several units adopted squirrels. One of
them, owned by a drummer, is said to have learned to dance to the beat of its
master’s instrument. Officers of a Minnesota outfit bragged to comrades that
their mascot was a bear cub that “smelt powder in a dozen engagements before
being sent home in good condition.”
In January 1864, Lt. A. L. Cady of the
Twenty-fourth New York Battery was praised in newspaper throughout the north.
In the Tyrrel Country, North Carolina, he led a raid that resulted in the
capture of five guerrillas and two Confederate officers. More important, in the
opinion of the newspaper editors, “he returned to camp with one thousand sheep.
Sue Chancellor, for whose family a plantation
home and a major battle were named, was a girl of fourteen at the time of what
some term “Lee’s greatest triumph.” Before she became accustomed to seeing
Confederate pickets near her home, Sue later said, a large drove of sheep came
running down the road one day without a shepherd.
As she recalled the incident, that to her always
remained vivid, a soldier asked her if she’d like to have a pet. When she
nodded, Tomas Lamar Stark of Columbia, South Carolina, picked out for her “a
beautiful white lamb.” Named Lamar in honor of its donor, the lamb remained
with its new mistress until the Chancellor mansion was burned.
Before donning a gray uniform, Robert E. Lee once
described himself as being “very solitary.” His only companions, he said in a
letter to his wife, were “my dog and cats.” According to the lonely cavalry
officer, his dog went with him to his office every morning and lay down “from
eight to four without moving.”
During his U.S. Army days, Lieutenant Colonel Lee
once crossed the “Narrows” between Fort Hamilton and Staten Island, New York.
Halfway over the body of water, he spied a female dog with its head barely
above the waves. He rescued the animal, named her Dart, and took her home with
him.
One of her pups, Spec, was an alert and
especially affectionate black and tan terrier who once jumped out of a high
window to join the family at church. Lee was so impressed by the valor of the
animal that he permitted Spec to “go into the church afterwards, whenever he
wished.”
Lt. A. O. Abbott of the First New York Dragoons
was among numerous Union prisoners held at Columbia, South Carolina, during the
fall of 1864. Abbott whiled away part of the time be keeping a detailed diary.
According to it, an October sunrise revealed “two strangers going through the
camp.”
The prisoners decided that they must be killed at
once, so they found an axe “and the deed was done.” The bodies of the victims
were shoved into an abandoned well just before guards began searching. As
Abbott described the eventful morning, Confederates eventually brought to light
the missing dogs, dead bloodhounds that were two of a pack around camp every
morning to discover if any “Yankees had made fresh tracks for liberty during
the night”.
