Carl Schurz

While in Oshkosh we also passed the Carl Schurz monument. We didn't stop for pictures as I knew I had some already to share. Clearly these pictures were taken during a summer visit. The monument has seen some wear so the inscription might not be too easy to read in these pictures but it does say "Our Greatest German American"

Schurz was part of the failed 1848 revolution in Germany and this is why he came to the United States. He settled in Wisconsin in 1855 and soon after entered politics as a Republican. He campaigned for Lincoln in the 1858 Senate race against Douglas. He made most of his speeches in German which raised Lincoln's popularity among Germans. At the Republican presidential convention in 1860 he led the Wisconsin delegation which voted for Seward but eventually did shift his support to Lincoln and was among the men who told Lincoln he had been nominated.

When the war began Lincoln made him ambassador to Spain and he convinced them not to support the South (although one wonders how much convincing they really needed). He returned to the states and was appointed a brigadier general in April 1862, he quickly after moved up to division command (in a corps led by Sigel) and was later promoted to major general. He fought at Second Bull Run, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg before being transferred west for the Chattanooga campaign. He served in the army through the end of the war, he was Slocum's chief of staff for the Army of Georgia when Johnston surrendered in North Carolina.

After the war he continued in politics and also worked in newspapers. He was editor of the Detroit Post and later was editor, and proprietor of the Western Post in St Louis. Interesting side note, at the Western Post he gave Joseph Pulitzer his first job as a reporter. Schurz was elected Senator from Missouri, the first German so elected. He also was the Secretary of the Interior under Hayes. His performance there was a bit of good and bad.

Camp Bragg

My grandmother lives in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Over the years I have stopped at the three Civil War monuments many times. But this time I wanted to stop at one to see how my son would react. This wasn't the same as wandering Shiloh for a whole day but if cannons in a park wouldn't interest him then I'd know nothing would. But as you can see he did like the cannons. He especially liked to hear that this was part of the Lincoln and John Brown thing we talk about all the time. He could finally touch something connected to the stories.

Camp Bragg was where the 21st and 32nd Wisconsin infantries got their first taste of military life. The 32nd had the good luck to miss most combat, serving some garrison duty then finishing up the war with Sherman in the Carolinas. The 21st got into quite a bit of combat, first at Perryville, through Chickamauga, Chattanooga and then with Sherman to the end. The 21st Wisconsin lost 112 men through battle and 183 by disease, while the 32nd Wisconsin lost 27 in battle and 254 by disease. By those numbers alone you can get a sense of the different type of service each saw.

Camp Bragg was behind this monument, this monument marks the northeast corner of the camp. It was named for Edward Bragg who was the lieutenant colonel of the 6th Wisconsin in the fall of 1862. He would become a brigadier general in June 1864.

The guns on the right used to be a matched pair. One was inscribed Stones River and the other was inscribed Chickamauga. The Stones River gun was sent to the battlefield and traded for another gun. The Chickamauga gun is still there, it is the one on the far right. In an odd twist of chance I am friends with the man whose great grandfather (Confederate General Alfred Vaughn) led the brigade that captured the Stones River gun. I've seen that gun at the battlefield but was too late to see it in Oshkosh.

All of the guns (except the one received in the Stones River trade) are marked "M. Greenwood Cincinati O[hio] 1862"