Cover: Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter's assembled flotilla at the mouth of the Red River as visualized in a sketch ap- pearing in the March 1864 issue of Harper's Weekly. (USN Photo NH 59082) CIVIL WAR MARINE A Diary of The Red River Expedition, 1864 Edited and Annotated by James P. Jones and Edward F. Keuchel HISTORY AND MUSEUMS DIVISION HEADQUARTERS, U. S. MARINE CORPS WASHINGTON, D. C. 1975 PCN 19000317000 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402 Price $1.65 Stock Number 008—055—00080—0 • DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS wAsHINGToN,::. 20380 A short time ago, Dr. Edward F. Keuchel, a member of the Department of History, Florida State University, ac— guired the journal of a Civil War Marine officer, Frank ]. Church. A career officer, Church maintained a personal journal through most of the Red River Expedition of 1864. The Red River was a major trouble spot for the Federal river forces in the west, and during the expedition of 1864, Church commanded the Marine guard on the U. S. Steamer Black Hawk, Admiral David Dixon Porter's flagship of the Mississippi Squadron, and the Cricket, a tinclad, which served as f lag- ship for the expedition. Together with Dr. James P. Jones, a colleague in the history department at Florida State and a Civil War expert, Dr. Keuchel has edited and annotated the Church journal and has provided an interesting vignette of Federal Marine Corps service in the Civil War and especially in one of the cam- paigns in which Marines served. Dr. Jones in a graduate of the University of Florida, receiving his Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from that institution. His specialty area is the U. S. Civil War and he has written extensively on that period. Among his publications is "Black Jack": John A. Logan and Southern Illinois in the Civil War Era (Tallahasse, 17). A gráduate of Rockist cd11ege,Th. Keuchel received his MA from the University of Kansas and his PhD from Cornell University; both advanced degrees were taken in the field of American history. His specialty area is American economic history, and he is currently Director of the Florida State University Program in Oral History. In the interest of accuracy and objectivity, the His- tory and Museums Division welcomes comments on this pamph- let from interested individuals. E. H. SIMMONS Brigadier General., U. S. Marine Corps (Ret.) Director of Marine Corps History and Museums Reviewed and Approved: 19 February 1975 iii PREFACE The Southern states responded to the election of Abra— ham Lincoln in 1860 and to the President's call for troops on April 15, 1861, by calling state conventions to vote on secession. With a war between the states imminent, many officers from all branches of Federal service tendered their resignations and offered their services to the Southern states. The t1arine Corps, which consisted of 63 officers and 1,712 enlisted men on 31 October 1860, lost 20 officers to the Southern Confederacy. Six resigned and 14 were dismissed when their resignations were rejected. Twelve were citizens of southern states, five were from border states, while three were citizens of northern states, Of the 20, 19 were company—grade officers. To compensate for its losses and to increase the size of the Corps, the Marine Corps commissioned 38 new officers in early 1861 and a number of others in subsequent years. The peak strength during the war was reached on 28 February 1865 when 90 officers (including five retired but recalled for active duty) and 3,791 enlisted men were carried on the rolls for a total of 3,881. Frank L. Church was commissioned in July 1862. The Marines of the Corps with whom he was to serve saw combat primarily as members of ships' detachments, landing to fight ashore only on a few occasions. Those Marines who served ashore, did so either as part of a ships' landing force or while directly assigned to units of the Union Army. In either case, the numbers were not overwhelming. The events described in the Church journal represent only one very small incident in a much larger, wider ranging war. But this chronicle of his Civil War experiences is of interest, nonetheless, for the light it sheds on one small facet of that war. The final editing of this manuscript was done by Mr. Ralph W. Donnelly, Assistant Head, Reference Section, who also selected some of the photographs appearing in this booklet, and Mr. Benis N. Frank, Head, Oral History Unit, History and Museums Division, who prepared the manuscript package for publication. The final draft was typed by Lance Corporal Carl W. Rice, USMC, Histories Branch, History and Museums Division, and the Word Processing Center, Headquar- ters, U.S. Marine Corps. 1' /tJ p. () Edward F. Keuchel v TABLE OF CONTENTS • iii. Foreward • • • • Preface. iv Introduction . . 1 . Frank L. Church, Civil War Marine. . . 3 . The Journal of Frank L. Church . . . . . . 29 Epilogue . . 60 Bibliography . . . . . . . 80 Illustration Credits 83 Index • • • • • • . 84 Map: Valley of the Red River, La., from Mississippi River to Shreveport 1865 (reprint from Atlas to accompany The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 1861-1865, Seri I, Vol. Insert XXXIV, Part I). . Vii INTRODUCTION Reminiscences or personal papers of Marines of tl'ie Civil War period are quite scarce, and the publication of any can be considered a "find" for the historian of the Marines in the Civil War. Historian of the Corps Major Richard S. Collum was one of those who served, during the war who also wrote about it. Collum published in 1886 a short article, "Services of the Marines During the Civil War," but this article was sketchy and essentially an outline for his treatment of the war his History 'of the United in States Marine Corps (Phila- delphia, 1886) .The personal flavor is missing from these publications. Another wartime officer, First Lieutenant Frederick Tomlinson Peet (USMC, 1862—1869), published a small volume entitled Personal Experiences in the Civil War (New York, 1905) in which he devoted one 1TaEr, "witFEhe Marine Corps at Charleston Harbor; and on the Steamship 'Niagara'," to his Marine Corps experiences. This particular version contains some details, but the type of detailed information usually found in letters or diaries is almost absent. Lieutenant Peet's Civil War material was utilized in 1917 in the publication of the Civil War Letters and ments of Frederick Tomlinson Peet, buEthis vo1umWas not circulated widely. A copy is reported to be at Columbia University, but it is not in the holdings of the Library of Congress. Unfortunately, a known set of annual diaries by Marine officer Henry Clay Cochrane was destroyed by fire when the USS Black Hawk burned on 23 April 1865, shortly after Coch- rane had relieved Lieutenant Frank L. Church. Cochrane's unpublished papers, containing some Civil War references, are preserved today in the Marine Corps Museum Collection Unit. Another promising source of manuscript material was expected to be the McLane Tilton papers, also held by the Marine Corps Museum, but inspection revealed that the collec- tion consists primarily of letters from Tilton's two cruises as a fleet Marine officer. Only one Civil War letter, dated 28 October 1861 describing, in part, an abortive "cutting out expedition" off Fort Pickens, Fla., survives. First—hand accounts by enlisted men are even more scarce. Between 1915 and 1918, four brief articles appeared in The Recruiters' Bulletin dealing with life on a block— adethe Trent affair, flogging and grogging, and the uni- form used during the Civil War. The author as John P. 1