The 79th New York Highlanders in the Civil War

A slightly edited version of an article titled “Blue Bonnets Over the Border”, authored by Joseph G. Bilby. The article appeared in the magazine Military Images, Volume VI, Number 1, July – August 1984.

For three years, the war-jaded citizens of Manhattan watched men march naively off to war and straggle back broken and battered. The first year they came singly, some limping, others furtive, eyes casting about for the provost guards who scooped up deserters. Later they came as whole regiments; their term of service expired, treading the cobblestones with the loose but steady mile-eating gait of veteran infantry.

It was on one of those days in that terrible spring of 1864 that the survivors of the 79th New York came home. They tramped off the Cortland Street ferry, quickly formed up in ranks, and then marched up Broadway, escorted by the Scots of the Caledonian Society, donors of the “glengarry” each man now wore in place of his regulation forage cap. It was a final Celtic touch for a regiment known as the “Cameron Highlanders,” which took both its name and number from a Scottish regiment of the British line.

The 79th, founded as a militia unit in 1859, was originally composed largely, albeit not entirely, of Scotsman. In keeping with its ethnic identification, the regiment wore kilts on parade and a fatigue dress of “caps, blue jackets and Cameron Tartan trousers (trews).”

The attack on Fort Sumter in 1861 created a wave of war enthusiasm which caught up the organized militia of the country, including the 79th. Not all of the Highlanders were so eager, however, and a number, including Colonel Roderick Cameron, pled poor health, advanced age, or alien citizenship rather than follow the zealots of the regiment into United States Service. Even had every man turned out, the 79th still would have been under strength for federal acceptance. To remedy this deficiency, the Highlanders recruited actively, “without regard to nationality.” Or geography either, as recruits came in from as far away as Englishtown, New Jersey. On 13 May 1861, with 795 men in the ranks, the 79th was mustered in for three years. The Highlanders were far from combat ready, however, and spent the next three weeks receiving equipment and learning the rudiments of drill. Like the Irish 69th, the original 79th militia regiment had a leavening of old soldiers with prior British Army service, and these men, with a Mexican War veteran as drill master, began to shape up the recruits.

On 2 June the 79th formed up for its first formal inspection and dress parade as a volunteer infantry regiment. Officers and men from the old militia unit wore their kilts, while the recruits were decked out in uniforms supplied by the Union Relief Committee of New York: state coats trimmed in red, Cameron tartan trousers and regular issue forage caps. Immediately afterward, the Highlanders, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Elliott, left for the capital. The regiment rolled south across New Jersey on the rickety Camden and Amboy railroad, stopping briefly in friendly Philadelphia and then in hostile Baltimore. Finally arriving in Washington, the 79th marched out of Georgetown and took quarters in the college, replacing the 69th New York State Militia, who had crossed the Potomac to build Fort Corcoran, first of a ring of defenses which would surround Washington. During their Georgetown tenure the Highlanders received a new colonel, another Cameron, this one named James, brother of Simon Cameron, the prominent Pennsylvania politico who was Lincoln’s Secretary of War.

The new commander’s first official act was to march his men down to the Washington Arsenal to exchange their state weapons for federal issue firearms. Expecting rifled muskets, the Highlanders were chagrined to receive Model 1816 smoothbores converted from flintlock to percussion, the same type of obsolescent weapons they were turning in. Their displeasure almost occasioned rebellion in the ranks, but it was quickly quelled by the colonel’s promise to soon secure a shipment of Springfield rifle muskets – a promise he never kept.

On 7 July, old smoothbores shouldered, the 79th crossed into Virginia, the regimental band blaring “All the Blue Bonnets Are Over the Border.” As they swung past the camp of the 69th they serenaded the Irishmen with “The Campbells Are Coming.”

Brigaded with the 69th, the 13th New York and the 2nd Wisconsin under newly commissioned Colonel William T. Sherman, the 79th marched out toward Manassas on 6 July 1861. They marched in fatigue uniform, with trews, kilts and red trimmed jackets left behind. One captain did wear a kilt on the first day out, but packed it away after becoming an object of ridicule while chasing a pig down the brigade lines.

In the 21 July assault on Henry Hill, the Highlanders, along with the 69th, suffered grievously. Colonel Cameron would never be called upon to deliver the rifled muskets, for he was left dead on the field, along with 39 other Highlanders. James Smith, a Jerseyman from Englishtown, recovered the regiment’s lost colors, and was last to leave the field.

The survivors who straggled back over the rain soaked landscape of northern Virginia found their camp a disaster scene almost as complete as that of the battle. The 79th‘s camp guards, receiving news of the rout at Bull Run, had looted their erstwhile companions’ belongings and deserted to Washington. After surveying the dismal scene, several bedraggled Highlanders found temporary shelter in a barn. They were summarily ejected by their brigade commander, who suggested that they move into a nearby wood lot and build brush huts. War was indeed hell.

With the sunrise, Lieutenant Colonel Elliott began to reorganize the regiment, but discovered that more than a few of his officers suddenly had “pressing business” at home which could not await the end of a three year enlistment. A number of enlisted men, lacking the officer’s privilege of resignation, began to visit sympathetic medical officers, who discovered that initial physical examinations had overlooked such disabling illnesses as rheumatism, chronic diarrhea, piles, ulcerous veins, and near-sightedness, all of which were grounds for disability discharges.

The 79th was not alone. Thousands of soldiers, their war enthusiasm dimmed at Bull Run, were, legally or illegally, parting company with the army. This exodus came to a halt, however, when General George Brinton McClellen, fresh from his victories in western Virginia, assumed command on 27 July. The ascendancy of “Little Mac,” while it brought the beginnings of order to the federal army, did not bring glad tidings to the 79th. The regiment shortly came to McClellan’s attention as an example of the sort of behavior he intended to suppress.

In an ill conceived attempt to keep some control over their men, the officers of the 79th had intimated that the regiment would soon be returning to New York for garrison duty and recruiting. When it became apparent that this would not occur, the troops grew surly and rebellious. It reached a head with the arrival of the 79th’s new commander, Colonel Isaac Ingalls Stevens. First in his class at West Point in 1839, Stevens not a man to brook insubordination from disenchanted volunteers.

On 14 August, Stevens ordered the Highlanders to pack up and move to a new campsite. Eight companies refused to strike their tents. The colonel went to each man and formally ordered him to obey. Each declined. As Stevens completed his rounds, Colonel Dan Sickles rode up to offer his assistance. The New York politician, familiar to the men of the 79th, was greeted from the ranks with “jeers and hisses” and numerous references to his family life. The man clever enough to be a murder charge for shooting his wife’s lover with the first plea of temporary insanity was also astute enough to perceive that the revolt of the Highlanders was reaching a danger point, and wheeled his horse away.

Stevens requested assistance from higher echelons, then ordered Lieutenant Colonel Elliott to suppress the rebellion or resign his commission. The Scottish born oculist, still troubled by injuries sustained when his horse fell on him at Bull Run, gladly took the easy way out.

As Elliott packed his traps, word of the mutiny reached McClellan, who moved fast and ordered General Fitz John Porter to the scene with Regular troops to back up Stevens. As this infantry crested the horizon, the Highlanders lost heart in their enterprise and a large number of convivial kibitzers from other regiments quickly quit the scene. The 79th was disarmed and marched to the Provost Marshal’s office, where they surrendered their colors and were officially admonished. Thirty five men designated as ringleaders were arrested. Of these, twenty one eventually were sentenced to terms breaking rocks in the Dry Tortugas.

Much subdued, the Highlanders determined to prove themselves to Stevens. Over the following months they drilled assiduously and participated in combat and reconnaisance patrols in the Virginia countryside. The Colonel, in his turn, impressed the 79th with both his military knowledge and fairness. When Stevens was promoted to Brigadier General and assigned to an amphibious task force bound for Charleston in October, he requested that the Highlanders be added to his division. On 19 October, beginning an odyssey that would eventually make them the most traveled New York troops in the war, the 79th left the sleety cold of northern Virginia for the balmy coastal South.

Brigaded with the 8th Michigan and the 50th and 100th Pennsylvania, the Highlanders shared a ship with the northwesterners, who they regaled with “war stories” of Bull Run. On the long trip south, the boys of the 79th amused themselves by spearing greasy salt pork on ramrods and waving it in front of Michiganders hanging seasick over the rail. The Wolverines got revenge when some of them snacked on a northwestern tidbit of salt pork dipped in molasses, which sent more than one Highlander running for the side.

After landing at Hilton Head the regiment moved on to Beaufort, where they resumed the routines of camplife and occasionally patrolled into the hinterlands. With the new year, the 79th, without field officers since Stevens’ promotion, was assigned Colonel Addison Farnsworth and Major Francis Hagadorn. The latter left almost immediately for a slot as a general in the Venezuelan army.

Life was good in South Carolina, and the local black population who, freed by default when their masters skedaddled, pampered Yankee palates with oysters and fresh berries. Bored by the minimal duties of garrison life, the boys domesticated baby alligators and dogs, including a 3 legged mongrel dubbed “Tip,” who would serve through to the regiment’s discharge.

As the weather grew warm the Highlanders outfitted themselves in captured Confederate cotton uniforms, more comfortable than the itchy Union wool. Well fed and clothed, the 79th increased in manpower as well, as prisoners captured at Bull Run rejoined the ranks. On 1 June 1862, the 79th mustered 26 officers and 688 enlisted men present for duty, fully 10% of whom were detailed away from the regiment to various military support functions.

The June muster was the last the Highlanders held in their playground by the sea. On that day the regiment, minus the ailing Colonel Farnsworth, left for the James Island campaign against Charleston. There, at Successionville on 16 June, the 79th attacked the “Tower Battery,” a virtually impregnable earthwork fort protected on both flanks by water. The Highlanders followed the skirmishers of the 8th Michigan in the assault. Both regiments were badly battered by musketry and by artillery firing old chains, broken glass and scrap iron. Even though some of the federals reached the battery’s parapet, the attack was doomed from the start. With Lt. Col. Morrison wounded and all their supports shot away, the Highlanders retreated. As they withdrew, a rebel jumped out of the fort and seized Private VanHorsen of Company E, attempting to drag him back a prisoner. The Yank proved stronger, however, and the chagrined southerner was himself escorted back to the Union lines, where the 79th waited for orders to renew the assault.

Fortunately for them, the orders would not come. The 79th suffered 110 casualties, including 36 killed and mortally wounded, out of the 474 men who participated in the attack. In a queer twist of the fortunes of war, the wounded Highlanders left on the bloody slopes of the Tower Battery were well treated by their captors, the “Charleston Highlanders,” whose commander was the brother of the 79th’s color sergeant.

The abysmal tactical failure for which these men needlessly shed their blood became a matter of disagreement and recrimination among the Federal commanders involved. Major General David Hunter, overall commander of the expedition, who was absent and had not authorized the attack, relieved General Benham, the field commander, put him under arrest, and shipped him north. Benham in turn blamed the fiasco on Stevens, whose division was actually engaged. Interestingly enough, both junior officers, who must share the blame for Successionville, went on to distinguish themselves, Benham as Hooker’s engineer officer at Chancellorsville and Stevens for his rearguard action at Chantilly. Hunter, who alone may be absolved, subsequently disgraced himself on a number of occasions.

Within a few weeks the ill-starred campaign was abandoned. On 4 July the Highlanders marched down to the steamer Delaware and sailed away gratefully from Charleston. Almost immediately after their return to Beaufort, however, the Highlanders were ordered to Virginia. At 10 a.m. on the morning of 16 July they debarked at Newport News, where they were consolidated with other troops from the Carolina coastal campaigns to form the IX Army Corps.

As the battle hardened Highlanders watched the rest of their new corps come ashore, the were particularly struck by the youthful appearance and adolescent behavior of the 9th New York, “Hawkens’ Zouaves,” many of whom, though they too were combat veterans, were obviously below the legal minimum age for soldiering. General Stevens, never noted for his diplomacy, exclaimed, “Great God, what Primary School’s broke loose now?”

The 79th’s Colonel Farnsworth thoroughly loathed the Zouaves. The Colonel had no great regard for his own men either, for several of them had stoned him one dark night at Beaufort. The guilty parties were still at large in the ranks, and Farnsworth may have had revenge in mind when he posted an order prohibiting fraternization with other units. When Farnsworth saw a number of “Zoo-Zoos” wandering around the 79th’s camp in violation of his edict, he unceremoniously booted them out and had the camp guard strung up by their thumbs.

There was little time for internecine squabbling between regiments of the new corps, however, and the IX Corps, although still a skeleton organization was assigned to support General John Pope’s northern Virginia campaign, and shipped out on 3 August. The 79th dallied for a few days in Fredricksburg and marched out in a happy mood – some Highlander sharpies had crudely counterfeited Confederate money and passed it on a loyal but ignorant southerner in exchange for corn whisky.

The IX Corps consisted of two under strength divisions under the command of Major General Jesse Reno. The 79th, along with the 28th Massachusetts, comprised the 3rd brigade of Stevens’s 1st division. The brigade was commanded by Colonel Farnsworth, with Lieutenant Colonel David Morrison leading the 79th. On 16 August the Highlanders camped on the site of the recent conflict at Cedar Mountain, where Nathaniel Banks had come up against Stonewall Jackson. They had been led to believe it was a Union victory, but the canny Scots soon deduced that “…somebody did gain a victory here but it was not General Banks.”

Beyond Cedar Mountain the armies of Pope and Lee, enshrouded in the fog of war, maneuvered for position. Lee’s plan to strike the federal flank was thwarted when Pope acquired a copy of rebel troop dispositions after Jeb Stuart’s Adjutant General was captured by Union cavalry. The sometimes brilliant but often careless Confederate cavalry commander was almost captured himself on 18 August.

Fitzhugh Lee, a far more consistent commander of horse, redeemed the reputation of the rebel mounted arm four days later when he bagged Pope’s headquarters shop, and with it the information that the federal general would be strongly reinforced by troops withdrawn from McClellan’s army on the peninsula. Upon receipt of this information, Lee decided on a dramatic turning movement against an enemy army already outnumbering him by 75,000 to 55,000. To initiate the plan, he sent Jackson’s corps and Stuart’s cavalry off on a massive raid on the federal lines of communication on the morning of 25 August.

The 79th arrived at the Union supply depot at Manassas Station shortly after Jackson’s juggernaut departed. Intending to refill their haversacks there, they found that the graybacks had emptied the larder. General Pope was also dismayed, and moved in pursuit of the elusive Jackson, who expecting attack, assumed a solid defensive position and waited.

On the morning of 25 August the tired and hungry Highlanders halted on the road running from Blackburn’s Ford to Centerville. They stood silently in the settling dust, listening to the mutter of artillery to the front, as Pope launched a series of piecemeal attacks on the entrenched Jackson. When the tempo of the firing increased, the 79th was ordered forward. The regiment crossed open fields to the Warrenton Turnpike – a road they had streamed down in retreat the year before. Farnsworth’s brigade was detached from its division and fed into the line of battle of Schurz’s division of the I (later XI) Corps. They remained there, subjected to occasional harassing fire, until nightfall, finally withdrawing to eat supper.

As the footsore soldiers of the 79th tore into tough army beef and hardtack and wondered about their fate on the morrow, John Pope ebulliently stalked about his headquarters. By his perceptions, he had Stonewall Jackson cornered. Pope was unaware that Jackson had been heavily reinforced by Longstreet during the day’s fighting and that the latter was in position to enfilade any force attacking Jackson. Longstreet was apprehensive, however, about being enfiladed himself by the Union V Corps of Fitz John Porter, coming up on Longstreet’s right. Pope resolved this problem for the Confederate corps commander by ordering Porter into position to renew the frontal assault on Jackson.

The Highlanders were reunited with the rest of their division on the morning of 30 August and, after a brief probe toward the enemy line to their front, were deployed as artillery support. All hell broke loose to their left as Pope renewed his attack on Jackson. The 79th suffered some casualties from artillery counterbattery fire but was not involved in the unsuccessful attacks against Stonewall.

At a propitious moment late in the day, Longstreet, whose presence still had not been comprehended by Pope, delivered a smashing artillery barrage into the Union left flank and followed it up with an inexorable wave of infantry. The 5th New York Zouaves took the initial brunt of the rebel attack, temporarily sacrificing its existence as a regiment and perhaps, in the process saving the rest of the Yankee army.

As the Federals retreated, Jackson’s men joined in the pursuit and the whole of Pope’s army fell back toward Bull Run. The 79th began to take casualties as they backpedaled, and the drum corps carried off as many of the wounded as they could, including Colonel Farnsworth. The two musicians detailed to carry the irascible brigade commander, annoyed by his constant carping, dropped him on the field and left. Fortunately for Farnsworth, he was picked up by men from another unit, who no doubt were unfamiliar with his personality traits.

The retreat continued until both pursued and pursuers became disoriented in the dark. While on reconnaissance that night, Lt. Heffron of the 79th took a wrong turn and became a prisoner of the 5th Alabama. In all, the Highlanders lost 9 men killed and 74 wounded, while another 16 shared Hefferon’s fate. Later all prisoners were paroled on the battlefield by their captors.

On 1 September General Stevens surveyed his division by counting the stacked muskets in front of his weary regiments. He found to his dismay that half of his force had evaporated; killed, wounded, captured or simply straggled away. As his diminished division of just over 2,000 marched to the left of the main federal force that morning, Stevens spotted enemy infantrymen moving to intercept the Union retreat. Reacting quickly, he deployed part of the 79th and attacked the rebel skirmishers, pushing them back. The general’s son, a Captain, took a minie ball through his hat from a retreating rebel, who managed to evade the return fire of twenty Yankee muskets. The famished Highlanders drove the graybacks through an apple orchard and stopped to pick fruit between shots while their division commander considered his next move. Stevens decided to reinforce success and dispatched staff officers back to the road for more men. As the division came into line, the general resumed the advance toward a woodline in his front.

Stevens’ son attached himself to Captain Lusk’s company of the 79th as they went in. Lusk, unimpressed by the enemy resistance, pointed to the woods and said to young Stevens, “There is no enemy there. We shall find nothing there.” His last words were drowned out by a volley that wounded Stevens in the hip and arm. The 79th blazed away in return and the division soon found itself in a fierce fight with Jackson’s Corps.

The regiment had lost five color bearers when General Stevens himself raised their banner high and led forward the 79th and the 28th Massachusetts. The battle line followed, then halted when Stevens was struck in the head by a minie ball. Lightning flashed through the dark late afternoon sky, and rain pelted down on the desperate combatants and the dead general, now enshrouded in the blood spattered regimental color.

But help was on the way in the person of the inimitable Phil Kearney, whose division splashed at the double quick through muddy fields to the sound of the guns. Far in advance of his men, the profane and fearless Kearney rode right through the Union front line, ignoring warning of the enemy’s proximity, to personally scout their position. It was his last ride. Called upon to surrender by Confederate infantry, the one armed Jerseyman turned his horse to bolt and was blasted dead out of the saddle by a ragged volley.

As Kearney died the battle was sputtering out all along the line with the coming of darkness. Both sides withdrew from the battlefield. They would call it Chantilly, and, in the nature of Civil War battles it was a small thing, although it cost the Union two promising commanders and the Highlanders 10 killed.

Leaving bonfires burning to cover their withdrawal, the 79th resumed the retreat that night, slogging on toward Washington. They reached Alexandria the following morning. Eight Officer and 200 men were present for roll call. But there was little time to rest. Pope’s debacle had resulted in the recall of McClellan, and that self-designated savior of his country was soon off in pursuit of Robert Lee, whose victorious army had crossed the Potomac.

The IX Corps would fight this campaign with three divisions of its own and the Kanawha Division attached. The first division had been reshuffled and was now under the command of Orlando Willcox. The 79th was in the division’s first brigade with the 28th Massachusetts and the 50th Pennsylvania. The Highlanders received a much needed infusion of strength when 70 recruits reported to regimental headquarters on the march.

The new men got their first taste of battle at South Mountain, where the 79th lost eight men wounded in a badly planned reconnaissance mission. By 17 September they found themselves at Antietam, where the IX Corps was deployed on the Union left, again under the command of Ambrose Burnside after Jesse Reno’s death at South Mountain.

“Old Burn” was faced with the problem of getting his men across Antietam Creek. Although the stream was fordable in a number of places, Burnside, displaying the tactical ineptitude which would make his name a synonym for bungling, insisted in assaulting across a narrow bridge swept by enemy fire. When he finally succeeded it was too late to affect the course of the battle.

The 79th remained in reserve as other regiments battered at the bridge, but was committed to combat after the crossing. Driving scattered rebel resistance before it, Burnside’s corps advanced on the town of Sharpsburg with the Highlanders moving on the right flank through the fire of a rebel batter. The youthful Hawkins' Zouaves died bravely in great numbers to silence it, but the effort was misspent. Burnside’s dilatoriness had enabled Confederate General A. P. Hill’s division to arrive from Harper’s Ferry, smashing into the left flank of the IX Corps and halting it cold. As the Yankee assault crumbled, the Highlanders fell back to the bridgehead with casualties of 8 killed and 30 wounded. The following day the Army of the Potomac lay dormant while Lee escaped back to Virginia.

After Antietam McClellan leisurely reorganized his army, failing to pursue Lee despite prodding from Washington. On 13 October he finally bean to move, but his efforts were too little too late for Lincoln, who removed him from command for the second and final time. Now under the command of Burnside, the army began a rapid and arduous march to Fredricksburg.

Although the 79th remained in the 1st division’s 1st brigade, it was otherwise a completely different outfit. The 50th Pennsylvania and 28th Massachusetts were gone, the latter to the II Corps’ Irish Brigade. The Highlanders were now the only eastern regiment in the outfit, brigaded with the 2nd, 8th, 18th, and 20th Michigan. It turned out to be a lucky brigade, remaining in reserve during the slaughter at Fredericksburg on 13 December.

New Years Day 1863 found the Army of the Potomac licking its wounds at Falmouth. Considering the circumstances, the officers of the 79th celebrated the holiday lavishly. Two tables set up in the shelter of a hospital tent groaned with delicacies imported from Washington for the occasion. The centerpiece of the festivities was a steaming whisky punch. Although liquor was officially banned in the Army of the Potomac, the decree did not prevent a host of hard drinking senior officers from visiting the 79th. The enlisted men tapped their own sources of food and spirits, and Highlander and outlander alike tipped a glass to cut the “Rappahannock fog.”

Rappahannock mud more than fog would trouble the army in the days ahead. Attempting to maneuver once more against Lee, Burnside began an elaborate flanking movement on 20 January. It began to rain and the flank march soon became the “mud march” remembered as the nadir of the eastern army. The 79th never left camp as the disintegration of the plan became evident.

The failure of the “mud march” was evident to greater powers than Burnside, and brought about his overdue removal from command and subsequent transfer to the Department of the Ohio.

His favorite corps left the army as well, departing on 12 February for Suffolk, Virginia, a federal enclave believed threatened by Longstreet’s corps, which had been detached from Lee’s army to gather supplies. In late March, when it was recognized that Longstreet’s threat was more apparent than real, the IX Corps, minus Getty’s 3rd division, was on the move again, up the coast by ship then overland by rail to Kentucky. The arrival of the 79th in Louisville unfortunately coincided with the receipt of four months back pay. The conduct of the long deprived and newly affluent Highlanders in Louisville was later described as “deplorable in the extreme.” Deleting graphic details, regimental historian William Todd admitted that, with abundant “scarlet women and liquor,” the 79th went berserk, with some men disappearing from the ranks and never returning. The regimental orgy continued for several days until the money ran out, the survivors were rounded up and shipped to outpost duty in Lebanon, Kentucky. Forty AWOLs were forwarded to the Highlander camp the following week.

Still a bit shaky from their spree, the 79th was initiated into the mundane, tiresome and largely fruitless task of pursuing Confederate guerillas through the spring rain and mud. On 1 June the were ordered back to Louisville for “detached service.” which they took to mean garrison duty. They only stopped in the Midwestern Babylon to change trains, however, and were soon headed further west. The IX Corps, “Burnside’s Peripatetic Geography Class,” traveled to Illinois, where at Cairo, they transferred to steamboats for a cruise down the Mississippi to the siege of Vicksburg, a city likened by the more literate to Troy.

There was no Helen here though, just a land aswarm with lizards that ran down backs and into boots. More fortunate than the besieged, the Highlanders were not reduced to eating the scaly creatures. Although the quality of issue rations was low, wild plums and berries were abundant and, together with an occasional foraged chicken, added variety and antiscorbutics to the diet.

The IX Corps, assigned to Sherman’s command, took no part in Grant’s daring river crossing which isolated Vicksburg and hastened its capitulation. With the city safe in Union hands, Sherman moved on to Jackson Mississippi to confront the rebel General Joe Johnston’s belated relief force. The march was long and dry, broken by a providential rainstorm, which enabled the troops to catch water in their ponchos and funnel it into empty canteens.

The 79th arrived at the Mississippi capital on 10 July and, minus Company C, which served as corps headquarters guard, immediately went into action. The regiment’s skirmish line moved through the grounds of the Mississippi Lunatic Asylum, with an audience of inmates laughing and screaming curses as the Highlanders traded bullets with the rebels. After several days of inconclusive fighting, Johnston withdrew, taking with him Adjutant James Gilmour of the 79th, who had made a wrong turn in the dark.

Their mission at Vicksburg completed, the IX Corps was returned to Burnside, who requested the assistance of his favorite unit in his invasion of East Tennessee. The 79th reached Nicholasville, Kentucky on 17 August 1863, suffering so severely from diseases contracted in the Mississippi swamps that less than 200 men answered roll call.

The Nicholasville camp was a quiet one. Not only was the 79th laid low by disease, but the brigade Provost Marshal, Captain Belcher of the 8th Michigan, took it upon himself to enforce strict discipline. A little too strict for the Highlanders, who took it upon themselves to chasten the captain. Entering a cave to observe unusual rock formations, Belcher found the mouth walled up when he tried to exit. Eventually released, he, like Addison Farnsworth, was never able to discover the perpetrators.

After a short period of recuperation, the IX Corps moved into Tennessee, trudging through clouds of dust and shouldering broken wagons off narrow tortuous mountain roads. On the march they passed Fraser’s Confederate brigade, captured in its entirety at Cumberland Gap. The Yankees shared hardtack and conversation with their erstwhile enemies, discovering that, although “many of them were as staunch rebels as ever.” a number had had enough of the war and were ready to take the oath of allegiance.

For once in his life, Ambrose Burnside was on a roll. Occupying Knoxville on 2 September, “Burn” advanced toward Virginia while Rosecrans and Bragg maneuvered to the west. The IX Corps’ physical suffering for want of adequate supply was counterbalanced somewhat by the friendly civilian population of East Tennessee.

Short of the army staple, hardtack, the Highlanders bartered biscuits from the local mountaineers. The biscuits were considered a rare delicacy until one soldier observed a local lass wipe tobacco juice from her mouth and return her stained hand to the bowl of dough. Tobacco seemed more important than food in East Tennessee, where “snuff dipping” was a social ritual enjoyed by men, women and children. Tobacco implements were highly prized, and a woman offered a Highlander the astronomical sum of fifty cents for his briar pipe.

The comfortable relationship between Federal soldiers and Union sympathizers was disrupted by the defeat of Rosecrans at Chicamauga and the move of a rebel force from Virginia into East Tennessee. The Virginians were brushed aside by the IX Corps at Blue Springs, where the 79th lost two men killed. A more serious threat soon posed itself in the person of General James Longstreet and his corps, as they were detached from Bragg’s army and marched on Knoxville.

Assisted by Joe Wheeler’s cavalry division, Longstreet’s campaign did not begin auspiciously. Wheeler’s attempt to gobble up Knoxville behind Burnside’s back was thwarted by General William Sanders’ Union horse, while Longstreet came out a poor second to Burnside in an infantry race to the city’s defenses, losing 400 men to Burnside’s rearguard at the Campbell’s Station crossroads.

Safely in Knoxville, the Union infantry worked feverishly to improve the city’s fortifications while Sanders held Longstreet at bay, though it cost Sanders his life.

The 79th wielded shovels along with the rest, with most of the regiment’s effective force, 120 men, manning the ramparts of Fort Sanders, named for the deceased cavalry leader.

Fort Sanders’ commander, artillery Lieutenant Samuel Benjamin, worked the 440 man garrison hard erecting abatis and chevaux de frise and crowning the parapets with leather-wrapped cotton bales. In addition, Benjamin had his men string telegraph wire around the numerous stumps surrounding his position to provide another obstacle to potential attackers.

Laboring in the rain with short rations, the physical condition of the Highlanders deteriorated. As the siege went on, its tedium was punctuated by sharpshooters’ bullets zipping into the fort. One round hit an off duty Highlander in the mouth as he was sitting in his tent. The man spat out a tooth and a minie ball, was hospitalized and eventually discharged for disability. Lieutenant Watson, also shot in his tent, was heard to exclaim after a bullet tore into his leg, “Oh Hell, it’s spoiled my boots.”

Although the siege was beginning to wear on the defenders, their ordeal would soon be over. Longstreet decided to attempt to carry the city by storm, and selected Fort Sanders as the key to the defenses. In the dark before dawn on Sunday, 29 November 1863, the 79th pickets in front of the fort were treated to a fireworks display as Longstreet’s field artillery blasted away at the earthworks. At dawn the Yankee skirmishers saw long lines of rebel infantry emerge from the haze 150 yards to their front.

The pickets beat a hasty retreat without firing, one calling another who raised a musket a “damned fool.” The Highlanders scurried over the telegraph wire, tripping, falling and cursing, to escape to the relative safety of the fort.

The rebels were right behind them. When they were a scant fifty yards away, Lieutenant Benjamin’s heavy Parrotts tore into them with double shotted cannister and the infantry blazed away with musketry, toppling hundreds of the attackers in the wire. Grabbing extra loaded muskets and dipping into the cartridges laid out all along the line, the defenders kept a steady stream of fire pouring into Longstreet’s men.

The rebels who survived the sheet of flame poured into the ditch surrounding the fort and found to their dismay that they could not climb out. They had not brought scaling ladders, and the glacis, slick with ice, gave no grip to hand or foot. Although safe from the artillery which could not be depressed enough to hit them, the rebels were treated to another of Lieutenant Benjamin’s surprises – artillery rounds with the fuses cut short were being thrown into their midst. These giant grenades blasted and dismembered the already battered attackers.

The Highlanders took revenge for Successionville here, and for Manassas and Antietam as well, for they were cutting up the pride of the Army of Northern Virginia. But because they were the Army of Northern Virginia, they kept right on coming. Some clawed their way up the slope to engage in hopeless hand to hand combat; another reached a gun embrasure and yelled “Surrender, you damned Yanks!” before a lanyard pull blew him away.

Finally the Confederates retreated, leaving 200 unwounded men in the ditch along with the bits and pieces of casualties. Knowing escape was impossible, they surrendered. As the prisoners were escorted into Fort Sanders, one of them quipped, “General Longstreet said we would be in Knoxville for breakfast this morning, and so some of us are.”

Many of them were somewhere else. Rebel losses, out of perhaps 3,000 engaged, were 129 killed, 458 wounded, and 226 captured. The Confederates also lost three battle flags, one of which was taken by Sergeant Judge of the 79th, and 600 muskets. The defenders of Fort Sanders lost 8 killed and 5 wounded, all of the wounded and all of the dead being in the 79th. Overall Union casualties for the day were 20 killed and 80 wounded.

After the battle a truce was called, and the Union and Confederate troops fraternized while the graybacks buried their dead. A half dozen rebels, who claimed to be New Yorkers resident in the South and drafted into the Confederate army, used the occasion to slip into the Union lines, abetted by overcoats borrowed from the Highlanders.

The failure of Longstreet’s attack, coupled with Bragg’s disastrous defeat at Chattanooga, effectively ended Confederate hopes of regaining Knoxville, and Longstreet began pulling out for Virginia. Burnside, reverting to his usual torpor, allowed the rebs to withdraw without undue harassment.

In December, given the chance to reenlist and return home to New York on furlough, the Highlanders declined, and, together with the men from other regiments who had not reenlisted, spent a dreary ration-short winter manning block houses against rebel raiders in the vicinity of Knoxville.

In March of 1864 the IX Corps was ordered to pack its bags once more. The 79th would be leaving a number of men behind, dead of disease or bullets and interred in the soldiers’ cemetery at Knoxville. On other occasions they had left their dead all to hastily, and, perhaps as a consequence, decided it would be different here. Colonel Morrison ordered Corporal Young of Company F to assemble a detail of former stonecutters and to erect a marble tablet over each man’s grave, inscribed with his name, company and cause of death.

At the end of March the corps began its trek out of Tennessee, the long column picking up regiments and detachments from far flung posts along the route. The reached Covington Kentucky on 1 April, and an expedition of Highlanders was immediately mounted to explore the fleshpots of neighboring Cincinnati. To the Highlander’s chagrin, the 79th did not remain long, boarding eastbound trains and arriving at Annapolis on 7 April.

At the Maryland staging area the IX Corps, once more under the direct command of Ambrose Burnside, was totally reorganized and heavily reinforced. The IX Corps became a 24,000 man army, with more artillery than any other army corps and large integral cavalry formations. It was also a bi-racial organization, as its 4th division was composed of black troops.

The Highlanders, who had shuffled through the whole IX Corps in their career, were now in the 2nd brigade of the 3rd division. In the parlance of a later conflict, the Highlanders were “short timers,” and, as the army moved south in late April, hoped that that fact would keep them out of the serious fighting ahead. So it seemed at first, as they were left behind on guard duty when their corps crossed the Rapidan. They were just warm bodies to the high command, however, and were soon ordered forward to join their division, which had become involved in the fighting in the Wilderness.

The Wilderness bloodbath flowed on to Spotsylvania and it was there, on 9 May 1864, that the 79th New York Infantry engaged in its last combat of the Civil War. When a rebel attack drove back a regiment engaged to their front, the Highlanders were ordered forward to plug the gap, which they did, losing 3 men killed and 11 wounded, including Colonel Morrison, hit in the hand.

Just after daylight on 12 May, when the Spotsylvania fighting was reaching its apex at the Bloody Angle, the 79th received orders to report to division headquarters, where they were assigned to guard the huge bag of rebel prisoners captured in the morning’s assault. The following day they left the army, herding their charges back to the prison pen at Belle Plaine. After delivering the luckless rebs, the Highlanders kept on going, all the way to New York and home.

The recruits who had joined the 79th at various times during its three years of service were lucky, for they traveled with the rest of the regiment to New York. Later in the war, such soldiers would have been transferred to another unit from the same state, remaining in the field until discharged or dead.

The Highlanders reached Jersey City by train on 18 May, and there the Caledonians met them with their glengarries. After their march up Broadway they politely listened to the political blather at city hall and marched together one more time to Mercer House, headquarters of the prewar 79th militia. They turned in their weapons there and the men of ’61, and Tip the dog, walked out as civilians.

The “recruits” with time to serve were furloughed for the rest of the month and then reported to Hart’s Island, the New York City draft rendezvous. While awaiting further orders there, 17 men finished their terms of service and were discharged. The remainder, numbering 100, were organized into a two-company battalion and sent back to Virginia as guards for recruits, draftees and substitutes destined for the Army of the James. Upon arrival, the battalion was assigned duty as the XVIII Corps provost guard. They served in that capacity until 10 September, when they assumed the same role in their old outfit, the IX Corps.

Recruits reinforced this abbreviated version of the 79th over the winter of 1864-65 until March, when they were able to muster six companies. Thus constituted, the battalion took part in the final operations against Petersburg, which they occupied after Lee’s retreat. With the end of the war they returned to Washington for the Grand Review and were discharged on 14 July at Alexandria, VA.

In its Civil War incarnation the 79th New York was a hard drinking, hard marching, hard fighting infantry regiment. Although the Highlanders could and would not make any claims to the performance of great deeds, they had done their job and had done it well, and, in retrospect, that was the greatest deed of all.