Eric J Wittenberg - At Custers Side: Civil War Writing on James Harvey Kidd

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AT CUSTERS SIDE

Cdr. James Harvey Kidd. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

AT CUSTERS SIDE

The Civil War Writings of
James Harvey Kidd

EDITED BY

Eric J. Wittenberg

THE KENT STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Kent, Ohio, and London

2001 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242

All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 00-062019

ISBN 0-87338-687-6

Manufactured in the United States of America.

06 05 04 03 02 01 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kidd, James Harvey, 18401913.

At Custers side: the Civil War writings of James Harvey Kidd / edited by Eric J. Wittenberg.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

ISBN 0-87338-687-6 (alk. paper)

1. Kidd, James Harvey, 18401913. 2. United States. Army. Michigan Cavalry Regiment, 6th (18621865) 3. United StatesHistoryCivil War, 18611865Personal narratives. 4. MichiganHistoryCivil War, 18611865Personal narratives. 5. United StatesHistoryCivil War, 18611865Regimental histories. 6. Michigan HistoryCivil War, 18611865Regimental histories. 7. United StatesHistoryCivil War, 18611865Cavalry operations. 8. SoldiersMichiganBiography. 9. Custer, George Armstrong, 18391876. I. Wittenberg, Eric J., 1961- II.Title.

E514.6 6th .K4 2000 973.7'474dc21

00062019

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication data are available.

THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED to the memories of James Harvey Kidd, George Armstrong Custer, and the men who followed the guidon of the Michigan Cavalry Brigade.

Contents

Fiddlers Green

Halfway down the trail to Hell,

In a shady meadow green

Are the Souls of all dead troopers camped,

Near a good old-time canteen.

And this eternal resting place

Is known as Fiddlers Green.

Marching past, straight through to Hell

The Infantry are seen.

Accompanied by the Engineers,

Artillery and Marines,

For none but the shades of Cavalrymen

Dismount at Fiddlers Green.

Though some go curving down the trail

To seek a warmer scene.

No trooper ever gets to Hell

Ere hes emptied his canteen

And so rides back to drink again

With friends at Fiddlers Green.

And so when man and horse go down

Beneath a saber keen,

Or in a roaring charge of fierce melee

You stop a bullet clean.

And the hostiles come to get your scalp,

Just empty your canteen,

And put your pistol to your head

And go to Fiddlers Green.

Author unknown. Believed to have been written in the 1870s, Fiddlers Green was a song sung by the troopers of the 6th and 7th Cavalry Regiments.

When, in his famous 1884 Memorial Day Address, the future Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes proclaimed, In our youth our hearts were touched with fire, he spoke for a generation of young men who had passed through the pain and glory of the American Civil War. Some, like Holmes, were largely content to internalize the personal legacy of the conflict as they moved on to less sanguine fields of achievement. Others bore the scars and suffering of their ordeal for a lifetime or, encumbered with memories, found the later decades of their lives inevitably diminished by comparison with the recollected glories of their youth.

But there were many veterans of the Civil War who even while embracing the challenges and opportunities of civilian lifeestablishing profitable careers and immersing themselves in civic and familial responsibilitiessought to preserve the heritage of their wartime service through the power of the spoken and written word. James Harvey Kidd was one of those. His postwar occupations of manufacturer and journalist coexisted with a desire to record the exploits of the 6th Michigan Volunteer Cavalry of Custers Brigade, in whose ranks Kidd had served with credit and honor, at age twenty-five winning promotion to the rank of brevet brigadier general.

Best known for his 1908 memoir Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman in Custers Michigan Cavalry Brigade, General Kidd rarely passed up an opportunity to speak to veterans organizations on his favorite subject and was called upon to deliver dedicatory addresses at monuments commemorating Custer and the hard-charging Wolverines. He saw it as a just and sacred duty, worthy of whatever time and effort that entailed, to ensure the Michiganders a permanent and honorable place in history. In this second volume devoted to the writings of James Kidda companion to the previously published wartime correspondencehistorian Eric Wittenberg presents a number of Kidds stirring tributes to his wartime comrades and the charismatic swashbuckler who led them, Gen. George Armstrong Custer.

For James Kidd, service with the Michigan Brigade was truly an exalted remembrance. It was like a spectacle, he wrote of the great cavalry clash east of Gettysburg, where the knights, advancing from their respective sides, charge full tilt upon each other in the middle of the field. Although clearly out of sync with our modern-day view of combat, indelibly shaped as it is by the chemical and technological horrors of two world wars, in Kidds era this chivalric notion of battle was readily accepted by a public who expected military carnage to embody a full measure of pride, pomp and circumstance. And certainly the jangling spurs and flashing sabers of the horse soldiers seemed the very epitome of military panache.

Kidds narratives resound with vibrant descriptions of hard-riding, rough campaigning, the beauties of nature, the stern service, and above all the dash and glory of combat of heroic proportions. The student-turned-soldier had a way with words, florid at times, but very much in earnest. And the flamboyant personality of George Custer is omnipresenta bedizened thread woven through Kidds martial tapestry.

To say that James Kidd admired General Custer would be an understatement. When he described the golden-haired sabreur as the idol, as well as the ideal of his men, Kidd clearly reflected his own idealism and idolatry. Custer was plainly Kidds hero. But while glorifying Custers achievements, Kidd stressed that the Generals military prowess incorporated much more than flamboyance and personal bravery. To be sure Custer had bulldog courage, and seemed everywhere present amidst the swirling chaos of battle; but Kidd did not view him as reckless. Custer was eminently skilled in tactical deployments, his prescience and intuition enabling him to size up the situation at a glance, then acting with rapid and decisive initiative. When Kidd noted that General Custer as a cavalry officer was in a class by himself, he meant it in the most positive and adulatory sense. Kidd regarded him as nothing less than the foremost cavalry officer of his time.

Given Kidds penchant for hero-worship when it came to Custer, it is interesting to see what he has to say about other mounted commanders with whom he served. Kidd describes David McMurtrie Gregg as a great and modest soldier, perhaps implying a bit of a contrast with that far-from-modest cavalry leader Judson Kilpatrick. Wesley Merritt, while irking Kidd with his off-the-cuff rejection of the latters postwar narrative of Cedar Creek, was nonetheless gallant on the battlefield, and Kidd praises his coolness and intrepidity of action. On the negative side of the coin, Kidd dismisses Alfred T. A. Torbert as a pompous infantry officer but recently assigned to a cavalry command, while division commander James Harrison Wilson had Kilpatricks fatuity for getting into scrapes, but lacked his skill in getting out.

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