Vache Grass, Arkansas through Votes

VACHE GRASS, ARKANSAS, September 26, 1864. 14th Kansas Cavalry. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 886.


VAIL, Stephen, manufacturer, born near Morristown, N. J., 28 June, 1780; died there. 12 June, 1814. He received ordinary educational advantages, and in 1804 became the owner of the Speedwell ironworks, near Morristown, New Jersey. At these works the engine of the " Savannah," the first steamship to cross the Atlantic (1819), was built. Later he contributed money to aid in the construction of the electric telegraph, and at his place the first practical exhibition of the new invention was made. He was one of the lay officers that are required on the local bench, and so acquired the title of judge.— His son, Alfred, inventor, born in Morristown, New Jersey, 25 September, 1807; died there, 18 January, 1859, was educated at Morris Academy, and as a youth showed a fondness for study and investigation in natural science. In accordance with the wishes of his father, he entered the Speedwell iron-works, but on attaining his majority he determined to prepare for the Presbyterian ministry, and in consequence was graduated at the University of the city of New York in 1886. While in college he became interested in the experiments that Professor Samuel F. B. Morse was then conducting for the purpose of perfecting a system of telegraphy. Vail became convinced of the possibility of the scheme of electric communication, and his mechanical knowledge led to various suggestions on his part to Professor Morse. This acquaintance developed into an offer of partnership, and he obtained permission to invite Professor Morse to Speedwell, where he persuaded his father to contribute $2,000 toward the completion of the apparatus. In 1837 an agreement was signed by Mr. Vail, in which it was stipulated that he should construct at his own expense, and exhibit before a committee of Congress, one of the telegraphs " of the plan and invention of Morse," and that he should give his time and personal services to the work and assume the expense of exhibiting the apparatus and of procuring patents in the United States. In consideration, Vail was to receive one fourth of all rights in the invention in this country. Thereafter, until Congress appropriated money for the building of the initial line between Baltimore and Washington, Vail was active in developing the practical parts of the telegraph. His mechanical knowledge applied to the experimental apparatus resulted in the first available Morse machine. He invented the first combination of the horizontal lever motion to actuate a pen, pencil, or style, and then devised a telegraphic alphabet of dots, spaces, and dashes which it necessitated. The dot-and-dash system had already been invented by Morse for use in a code, but Mr. Vail claimed that he was the first to apply it alphabetically. He then devised in 1844 the lever and grooved roller, which embossed on paper the alphabetical characters that he originated. In March, 1841. he was appointed assistant superintendent of the telegraph that was to be constructed between Washington and Baltimore under the government appropriation. On the completion of the line he was stationed at Baltimore, and there invented the finger-key and received at the Mount Claire depot the first message from Washington that was sent over the wires, on 24 May, 1844, at the formal opening of the line. (See Morse, S. P. B.) The practical improvements in the original instrument that are of value in telegraphy were invented by Vail. Prior to 1837 the apparatus embodied the work of Morse and Joseph Henry alone. Prom 1837 to 1844 it was a combination of the inventions of Morse. Henry, and Vail, but gradually the parts that Morse contributed have been eliminated, so that the essential features of the telegraph of to-day consist solely of the work of Joseph Henry and Alfred Vail. The business relations that existed between Morse and Vail made it impossible for the latter to claim what might have been used against the validity of Morse's patents. In the years that followed, when Professor Morse was universally hailed as the inventor of the telegraph, the reputation of his modest partner was allowed to suffer. Amos Kendall, the associate and friend of both, said, at the meeting of the directors of the Magnetic telegraph Company that was held to take action on the death of Vail: "If justice be done, the name of Alfred Vail will forever stand associated with that of Samuel P. B. Morse in the history and introduction into public use of the electro-magnetic telegraph." Mr. Vail was the author of " The American Electro-Magnetic Telegraph" (Philadelphia, 1845).—His brother, George, congressman, born in Morristown, New Jersey, 21 July, 1809; died there, 23 May, 1875, received an academic education, and was associated with his father in the Speedwell iron-works. He also aided his brother. Alfred, with funds when the latter was engaged in perfecting the electric telegraph. In 1851 he was appointed by the governor of New Jersey to represent that state at the World's fair in London. Subsequently he was chosen to Congress as a Democrat, and with re-election served from 5 December, 1853, till 3 March, 1857. In 1858 he was appointed U. S. consul at Glasgow, Scotland, but he returned to this country in 1861, settled in Morristown, New Jersey, and was for many years a member of the court of pardons. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 220.


VAIL, Stephen Montford, clergyman, born in Union Dale, Westchester County, New York, 10 January, 1818; died in Jersey City, New Jersey, 26 November, 1880. He was graduated at Bowdoin in 1838, and at Union theological seminary in 1842, having in the meantime been licensed to preach in the Methodist Episcopal church, and founded the first church of that denomination in Brunswick, Maine. He became professor of languages in Amenia seminary in 1843, was subsequently pastor in Fishkill, New York, Sharon, Connecticut, and Pine Plains, New York, and in 1847-'9 was president of the New Jersey conference seminary at Pennington. While occupying that post he induced the trustees of the institution to admit women as pupils, and he was tried before the ecclesiastical court of his church for advocating in his writings the cause of an educated ministry. He became professor of Oriental languages in the General biblical institute of the M. E. church at Concord, New Hampshire, in 1849, and held that chair until failing health required his resignation. In 1869 he became U. S. consul for Khenish Bavaria, travelled extensively in the East and Egypt, and on his return settled in Southfield, Staten Island, X. Y. fie wrote for the Methodist press, and was professor of Hebrew in the Chautauqua school of languages. Genesee College, Lima, New York, gave him the degree of D. D. in 1856. Dr. Vail was an active member of the Republican party, and an early Abolitionist. Previous to the Civil War he sustained a long and able controversy with Bishop John H. Hopkins on the subject of human slavery, the bishop being an earnest advocate of that institution. Dr. Vail published essays on slavery and church polity, "Outlines of Hebrew Grammar," and other educational hand-books, and "Memoir and Remains of Reverend Zenas Caldwell" (Boston, 1824): " Education in the Methodist Episcopal Church" (1853); and "The Bible against Slavery" (Concord, New Hampshire, 1864). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 220-221.


VALENTINE, Edward Virginius, sculptor, born in Richmond, Virginia, 12 November, 1838. He was educated in Richmond, and when a mere boy studied anatomy at the Medical college of that city. His first desire for art arose from a visit to the New York exhibition in 1851. After receiving such instruction in drawing and modelling as could be obtained in Richmond, he went to Europe in 1859 to study. Upon his return he opened a studio in Richmond, and exhibited a statuette of Robert E. Lee. He made several ideal heads, among them "The Samaritan Woman" and "Penitent Thief," which were admired for their facial expression, and several portrait busts of southern leaders, including General Pierre G. T. Beauregard, General James E. B. Stuart, "Stonewall" Jackson, Commodore Matthew P. Maury, and General Albert Sidney Johnston, a colossal head of Humboldt, a head of Beethoven, a portrait bust of Edwin Booth, and "Grief," a marble female figure. He was finally given the commission to execute the marble figure of General Robert E. Lee (see illustration), in the mausoleum attached to the chapel of Washington and Lee University at Lexington, Virginia This is among the finest pieces of sculpture of the kind in the United States. Another of his works is a group representing Andromache and Astyanax. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 225-226.


VALLANDIGHAM., Clement Laird (val-lan de-gam), politician, born in New Lisbon, Columbiana County, Ohio, 29 July. 1820; died in Lebanon, Warren County, Ohio, 17 June, 1871. He received an academical education, and from 1838 till 1840 taught at Snow Hill, Maryland. In 1840 he returned to Ohio, and in 1842 was admitted to the bar. In 1845-'6 he was a member of the Ohio legislature, and from 1847 till 1849 edited the Dayton "Empire." He belonged to the extreme state-rights wing of the Democratic party. He was a member of the National Democratic Convention in 1856. In 1857 he was a candidate for Congress against Lewis D. Campbell, and, though declared defeated, contested the seat and won it, serving from 25 May, 1858, till 3 March, 1863. During the 37th Congress he became conspicuous for his bold utterances against the acts of the administration in the conduct of the war, and on 5 December, 1862, offered a series of resolutions in which he declared "that, as the war was originally waged for the purpose of defending and maintaining the supremacy of the constitution and the preservation of the Union, . . . whosoever should attempt to pervert the same to a war of subjugation, and for overthrowing or interfering with the rights of the states, and to abolish slavery, would be guilty of a crime against the constitution and the Union." These resolutions were laid on the table by a vote of 79 to 50. On 14 January following, Mr. Vallandigham spoke to the resolutions of Mr. Wright, of Pennsylvania, defined his position on the war question, and said: "A war for Union I Was the Union thus made? Was it ever thus preserved? History will record that after nearly six thousand years of folly and wickedness in every form and administration of government, theocratic, democratic, monarchic, oligarchic, despotic, and mixed, it was reserved to American statesmanship in the 19th century of the Christian era to try the grand experiment, on a scale the most costly and gigantic in its proportions, of creating love by force, and developing fraternal affection by war; and history will record, too, on the same page, the utter, disastrous, and most bloody failure of the experiment." After his term in Congress expired, Mr. Vallandigham returned to Ohio and made numerous speeches, in which he attacked the administration with great violence and bitterness. General Ambrose E. Burnside, then commander of the Department of the Ohio, regarded these demonstrations of Mr. Vallandigham and his friends as intended to afford aid and comfort to the enemy; and, as the city of Cincinnati, as well as southern Ohio and the adjacent states, was in some peril from the raids of the Confederates, he deemed it his duty to suppress these demonstrations, and accordingly issued an order declaring that persons within the lines that were found committing certain specified acts for the benefit of the enemy should be tried as spies and traitors, and also said that the habit of expressing sympathy for the enemy would no longer be tolerated in the department. Mr. Vallandigham replied to this order on 1 May in a defiant speech, and General Burnside ordered his arrest. He was taken to Cincinnati, and, though he issued an appeal to his adherents, was tried by court-martial, convicted, and sentenced to close confinement during the war. President Lincoln changed the sentence to a banishment across the lines. This affair occasioned much discussion both in public assemblies and in the press. Without exception, the Democratic journals denounced the whole transaction. The organs of the administration took different views, some maintaining that the necessities of the case justified the measure, while others deprecated the action of General Burnside and the military commission. Not liking his reception by the leaders of the Confederacy—to whom he had given the assurance that they would succeed if their armies could only hold out till another election, when the Democrats would sweep the Republican administration out of power, and make peace—Mr. Vallandigham made his way to Bermuda, and thence to Canada, where he remained for some time. While thus in exile, he was nominated for governor by the Democratic party in Ohio, but was defeated, his rival, John Brough, having a majority of more than 100,000. The government made no objection to Mr. Vallandigham's return to Ohio, and he was a member of the Democratic national convention at Chicago in 1864, and brought about the nomination of George B. McClellan and George H. Pendleton. He was also a delegate to the National Democratic Convention in 1868. His death was caused by the accidental discharge of a pistol in his own hand, in the court-room, with which he was illustrating his theory of the manner in which a homicide had taken place. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 227-228.


VALLEY ROAD, TENNESSEE, October 2, 1863. Detachment of 4th Indiana Cavalry. During Wheeler and Roddey's raid, a Federal wagon train under escort of a portion of the 4th Ind., cavalry was attacked, captured and destroyed by the Confederates on the Valley road. No casualties were reported. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6.


VALLEY STATION, COLORADO TERRITORY, October 10, 1864. 3d Colorado Cavalry. Colonel John M. Chivington, commanding the district of Colorado, reported to Major-General S. R. Curtis on October 10: "Captain Nichols, 3d Colonel volunteer cavalry, surprised and killed 10 Indians, Cheyennes; captured n ponies and 1 mule this morning near Valley Station." The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 886.


VALLEY STATION, COLORADO TERRITORY, January 7, 1865. U. S. Troops of District of Colorado. A large force of Indians, variously estimated at from 500 to 1,500 attacked two stages on the Platte route, one at Valley Station and the other at Julesburg. The first fight resulted in the killing of some 12 of the' escort and the burning of the stage. At Julesburg the Indians were driven off, each side losing 2 killed. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 886.


VALLEY STATION, COLORADO TERRITORY, January 15-29, 1865. 1st Colorado Cavalry. The rear-guard of the 1st Colonel was attacked as it was going into camp about a mile from Valley Station by a band of Indians. About the same time an attack was made on the American (or Morrison's) and the Wisconsin ranches. All the inmates of the American ranch, 8 in number, were killed. Troops from Valley Station rescued the inmates of the Wisconsin ranch. On the 28th the Indians burned 100 tons of hay and ran off 650 head of government cattle near Valley Station. The 20 men sent out to disperse the marauders were surrounded and compelled to cut their way out, killing 10 Indians in doing so. Next morning the red men were surprised in their camp and 400 of the stolen cattle were recovered. In the last engagement 20 Indians were killed. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 886.


VALUE. (& WEIGHTS.) (Scott, Military Dictionary, Van Nostrand, 1862, p. 639).


VALVERDE, NEW MEXICO, February 21, 1862. Troops commanded by Colonel E. R. S. Canby. On the morning of February 21 the Confederate advance under General H. H. Sibley, numbering 3,000 men, moved up a ravine in the valley of Rio Grande some 4 or 5 miles above Fort Craig. There were two fords in the immediate vicinity, and it was apparently the enemy's intention to cross at the upper ford and descend upon the fort, where the Union garrison consisted of detachments of the 1st, 2nd, 3d, 4th, and 5th New Mexico infantry, detachments of the 1st, 2nd and 3d U. S. cavalry, detachments of the 5th, 7th and 10th U. S. Infantry, Graydon's New Mexico company and Dodd's Colonel company, all under command of Colonel Canby. About 8 a. m. Colonel B. S. Roberts, with all the available cavalry, was sent to hold the upper ford. His support was McRae's battery (provisional), made up of two companies from the regular cavalry. After a 2 hours' fight the Confederates were driven from the ford. The Union cavalry and artillery immediately crossed the river and took up a new position on the enemy's front. A direct attack on the Confederate line being out of the question, Canby attempted to turn their left. With this object in view an assault was made upon that flank which succeeded in driving the enemy from his position behind the first range of sandhills. But at the same moment a cavalry charge was made from the right of the Confederate .line upon the Union left, consisting of a section of McRae's battery and the N. Mexico infantry. The latter became panic stricken and fled in confusion, and the artillerymen, after a severe fight in which half their number were killed or wounded, abandoned their guns and withdrew. Confederate reinforcements came up just at this time and Canby withdrew in an orderly retreat to Fort Craig. The Union losses were 68 killed, 160 wounded and 35 missing. Over 100 men of the New Mexico regiments deserted on the field. The Confederate casualties were heavier. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, pp. 886-887.


VAN BRUNT, Gershom Jaques, naval officer, born in Monmouth County, New Jersey, 28 August, 1798; died in Dedham, Massachusetts, 17 December, 1863. He entered the service as a midshipman on 1 January, 1818, served in Commodore David Porter s Mosquito fleet against pirates in the West Indies, was made a lieutenant on 3 March, 1827, and rose to be a commander on 29 May, 1846, and commanded the brig "Etna" in the Gulf during the Mexican War, during which he participated in the expedition against Tuspan and the second expedition against Tobasco. He served as a commissioner to survey the boundary-line of California in 1848-'50, and was promoted a captain on 14 September, 1855. He commanded the "Minnesota," and took an active part in the reduction of the forts at Cape Hatteras and in operations in the North Carolina sounds and the blockade of Hampton Roads, where he saved his ship from the Confederate ram " Merrimac." He was commissioned as commodore on 16 July, 1862, and was retired because of his age on 28 April, 1863. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 229.


VAN BUREN, James Lyman, soldier, born in Dunkirk, New York, 21 June, 1837; died in New York City, 13 April, 1866. He was graduated at the New York Free Academy in 1850, studied law, and travelled in Europe, returning shortly before the beginning of the Civil War. He entered the National Army as a lieutenant of New York volunteers, was detailed to learn the signal code, and acted as signal officer on General John G. Foster's staff at Roanoke Island and at New Berne. After the taking of New Berne he served as judge-advocate of the department on the staff of General Ambrose E. Burnside, and subsequently as military secretary to Governor Edward Stanly. He rejoined General Burnside after the battle of Antietam, and was with him while he commanded the Army of the Potomac, and afterward in the East Tennessee Campaign. In 1864 he served with credit in General Grants Campaign against Richmond, receiving the brevet of lieutenant-colonel for his bravery, and subsequently that of colonel for his services in the Knoxville Campaign. In the assault on the works at Petersburg he gained the brevet rank of brigadier-general. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 229.


VAN BUREN, John Dash, merchant, born in New York City, 18 March, 1811: died in Newburg, New York, 1 December, 1885. He was graduated at Columbia in 1829, studied and practised law, afterward engaged in mercantile pursuits, and became the head of the importing-house of Benjamin Aymar and Company, New York City, retiring about 1850. He aided Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase in drafting tax and other financial bills, was a member of the legislature in 1863, and acted as Governor John T. Hoffman's private secretary in 1868-'72. Mr. Van Buren was a frequent writer for the press on questions of financial legislation, and a strong advocate of a metallic currency.—His son, John Dash, civil engineer, born, in New York City, 8 August, 1838, studied at the Lawrence scientific school of Harvard, and in Rensselaer polytechnic institute, where he was graduated in 1860. After serving for a Year as assistant engineer of the Croton aqueduct in New York City, he entered the engineer corps of the U. S. Navy, took part in the operations on James River, and was for four years assistant professor of natural philosophy and of engineering in the U. S. Naval Academy, being promoted first assistant engineer on 1 January, 1865. He resigned his commission on 22 September, 1868, was admitted to the bar in 1869, and practised law for a short time in New York City, then returned to the profession of engineering, was in charge for construction in the department of docks in New York City, was appointed on a commission to investigate canals in 1875, and in 1876-'7 was state engineer and surveyor. Besides papers in the "Journal of the Franklin Institute' and the "Transactions" of the American society of civil engineers, he has published "Investigation of Formulas for Iron Parts of Steam Machinery" (New York, 1869).  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 229.


VAN BUREN, Martin, eighth president of the United States, born in Kinderhook, Columbia County, New York, 5 December, 1782: died there, 24 July, 1862. He was the eldest son of Abraham Van Buren, a small farmer, and of Mary Hoes (originally spelled Goes), whose first husband was named Van Alen. Martin studied the rudiments of English and Latin in the schools of his native village, and read law in the office of Francis Sylvester at the age of fourteen years. Rising as a student by slow gradations from office-boy to lawyer's clerk, copyist of pleas, and finally to the rank of special pleader in the constables' courts, he patiently pursued his legal novitiate through the term of seven years and familiarized himself with the technique bf the bar and with the elements of common law. Combining with these professional studies a fondness for extemporaneous debate, he was early noted for his intelligent observation of public events and for his interest in politics. He was chosen to participate in a nominating convention when he was only eighteen years old. In 1802 he went to New York City and there studied law with William P. Van Ness, a friend of Aaron Burr. He was admitted to the bar in 1803, returned to Kinderhook, and associated himself in practice with his half-brother, James I. Van Alen. Van Buren was a zealous adherent of Jefferson, and supported Morgan Lewis for governor of New York in 1803 against Aaron Burr. In February, 1807, he married Hannah Hoes, a distant kinswoman, and in the winter of 1806-'7 he moved to Hudson, the county-seat of Columbia County, and in the same year was admitted to practice in the Supreme Court. In the state election of 1807 he supported Daniel D. Tompkins for governor against Morgan Lewis, the latter, in the factional changes of New York politics, having come to be considered less true than the former to the measures of Jefferson. In 1808 Van Buren became surrogate of Columbia County, displacing his half-brother and partner, who belonged to the defeated faction. He held this office till 1813, when, on a change of party predominance at Albany, his half-brother was restored. Attentively watching the drift of political events, he figured in the councils of his party at a convention held in Albany early in 1811, when the proposed re-charter of the United States bank was the leading question of Federal politics. Though Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, had recommended a re-charter, the predominant sentiment of the Republican party was adverse to the measure. Van Buren shared in this hostility and publicly lauded the "Spartan firmness " of George Clinton when as vice-president he gave his casting-vote in the U. S. Senate against the bank bill, 20 February, 1811. In 1812 Van Buren was elected to the Senate of New York from the middle district as a Clinton Republican, defeating Edward P. Livingston, the candidate of the "Quids," by a majority of 200. He took his seat: in November of that year and became thereby a member of the court of errors, then composed of senators in connection with the chancellor and the Supreme Court. As senator he strenuously opposed the charter of " the Bank of America," which, with a large capital and with the promise of liberal subsidies to the stole treasury, was then seeking to establish itself in New York and to take the place of the United States bank. He upheld Governor Tompkins when, exercising his extreme prerogative, he prorogued the legislature on 27 March, 1812, to prevent the passage of the bill. Though counted among the adherents of the administration of Madison, and though committed to the policy of declaring war against Great Britain, he sided with the Republican members of the New York legislature when in 1812 they determined to break from "the Virginia dynasty" and to support De Witt Clinton for the presidency. In the following year, however, he dissolved his political relations with Clinton and resumed the entente cordiale with Madison's administration. In 1814 he carried through the legislature an effective war-measure known as " the classification bill," providing for the levy of 1,.000 men, to be placed at the disposal of the government for two years. He drew up the resolution of thanks voted by the legislature to General Jackson for the victory of New Orleans. In 1815, while still a member of the state senate, he was appointed attorney-general of the state, superseding the venerable Abraham Van Vechten. In this same year De Witt Clinton, falling a prey to factional rivalries in his own party, was removed by the Albany council from the mayoralty of New York City, an act of petty proscription in which Van Buren sympathized, according to the " spoils system " then in vogue. In 1816 he was re-elected to the state senate for a further term of four years, and, removing to Albany, formed a partnership with his life-long friend, Benjamin F. Butler. In the same year he was appointed a regent of the University of New York. In the legislative discussions of 1816 he advocated the surveys preliminary to Clinton's scheme for uniting the waters of the great lakes with the Hudson. The election of Governor Tompkins as vice-president of the United States had left the "Bucktails" of the Republican Party without their natural leader. The people, moreover, in just resentment at the indignity done to Clinton by his removal from the New York mayoralty, were now spontaneously minded to make him governor that he might preside over the execution of the Erie canal which he had projected. Van Buren acquiesced in a drift of opinion that he was powerless to check, and. on the election of Clinton, supported the canal policy; but he soon came to an open rupture with the governor on questions of public patronage, and, arraying himself in active opposition to Clinton's reelection, he was in turn subjected to the proscription of the Albany council acting in Clinton's interest. He was removed from the office of attorney-general in 1819. He opposed the re-election of Clinton in 1820. Clinton was re-elected by a small majority, but both houses of the legislature and the council of appointment fell into the hands of the anti-Clinton Republicans. The office of attorney-general was now tendered anew to Van Buren, but he declined it. The politics of New York, a mesh of factions from the beginning of the century, were in a constant state of swirl and eddy from 1819 till 1821. The old party-formations were dissolved in the " era of good feeling." What with "Simon-pure" Republicans, Clintonian Republicans. Clintonian Federalists, " high-minded" Federalists cleaving to Monroe, and Federalists pure and simple, the points of crystallization were too many to admit of forming a strong or compact body around any centre. No party could combine votes enough in the legislature of 1818—'19 to elect its candidate for U. S. Senator. Yet out of this medley of factions and muddle of opinions Van Buren, by his moderation and his genius for political organization, evolved order and harmony at the election for senator in the following year. Under his lead all parties united on Rufus King, a Federalist of the old school, who had patriotically supported the war against Great Britain after it was declared, and who by his candor had won the confidence of President Monroe; and Rufus King was re-elected with practical unanimity at a time when he was fresh from the hot debate in the U. S. Senate against the admission of Missouri without a restriction on slavery. His anti-slavery views on that question were held by Van Buren to "conceal no plot" against the Republicans, who, he engaged, would give "a true direction" to that momentous issue. What the "true direction" was to be he did not say, except as it might be inferred from his concurrence in a resolution of the legislature of New York instructing the senators of that state "to oppose the admission, as a state in the Union, of any territory not comprised within the original boundaries of the United States without making the prohibition of slavery therein an indispensable condition of admission." In that Republican resolution of 1820 " the Wilmot Proviso” of 1847 an the Missouri appeared above our political horizon, but soon vanished from sight on the passage of compromise in 1821. On 6 February, 1821. Van Buren was elected U. S. Senator, receiving in both houses of the legislature a majority of twenty-five over Nathan Sanford, the Clintonian candidate, for whom the Federalists also voted. In the same year he was chosen from Otsego County as a member of the convention to revise the constitution of the state. In that convention he met in debate Chancellor Kent, Chief Justice Ambrose Spencer, and others. Against innovations his attitude was here conservative. He advocated the executive veto. He opposed manhood suffrage, seeking to limit the elective franchise to householders, that this "invaluable right" might not be "cheapened" and that the rural districts might not be overborne by the cities. He favored Negro suffrage if Negroes were taxed. With offence to party friends, he vehemently resisted the eviction oy constitutional change of the existing supreme court, though its members were his bitter political enemies. He opposed an elective judiciary and the choice of minor offices by the people, as swamping the right it pretended to exalt. He took his seat in the U. S. Senate, 3 December, 1821, and was at once made a member of its committees on the judiciary and finance. For many years he was chairman of the former. In March, 1822, he voted, on the bill to provide a territorial government for Florida, that no slave should be directly or indirectly imported into that territory "except by a citizen removing into it for actual settlement and being at the time a bona-fide owner of such slave." Van Buren voted with the northern senators for the retention of this clause; but its exclusion by the vote of the southern senators did not import any countenance to the introduction of slaves into Florida from abroad, as such introduction was already prohibited by a Federal statute which in another part of the bill was extended to Florida. Always averse to imprisonment for debt as the result of misfortune. Van Buren took an early opportunity to advocate its abolition as a feature of Federal jurisprudence. He opposed in 1824 the ratification of the convention with England for the suppression of the slave-trade Perhaps because a qualified right of search was annexed to it, though the convention was urgently pressed on the Senate by President Monroe. He supported William H. Crawford for the presidency in 1824, both in the congressional caucus and before the people. He voted for the protective tariff of 1824 and for that of 1828, though he took no part in the discussion of the economic principles underlying either. He voted for the latter under instructions, maintaining a politic silence as to his personal opinions,
which seem to have favored a revenue tariff with incidental protection. He vainly advocated an amendment of the constitution for the election of president by the intervention of an electoral college to be specially chosen from as many separate districts as would comprise the whole country while representing the electoral power of all the states. The measure was designed to appease the jealousy of the small states by practically wiping out state lines in presidential elections and at the same time proposed to guard against elections by the house of representatives, as case of no choice at a first scrutiny the electoral colleges were to be reconvened. After voting for a few " internal improvements," he opposed them as unconstitutional in the shape then given to them, and proposed in 1824 and again in 1825 to bring them within the power of Congress by a constitutional amendment that should protect the "sovereignty of the states" while equally distributing these benefits of the government. In a debate on the Federal judiciary in 1826 he took high ground in favor of "state rights" as against the umpirage of the supreme court on political questions, and deplored the power of that court to arraign sovereign states at its bar for the passage of laws alleged to impair "the obligation of contracts." He confessed admiration for the Republicans of 1802 who had repealed "the midnight judiciary act." He opposed the Panama mission, and reduced the " Monroe Doctrine" to its true historical proportions as a caveat and not a "pledge." On all questions he was strenuous for a "strict construction of the constitution." He favored in 1820 the passage of a general bankrupt law, but, in opposing the pending measure, sharply accentuated the technical distinction of English law between "bankrupt" and "insolvent" acts—a distinction which, in the complexity of modern business transactions, Chief-Justice Marshall had pronounced to be more metaphysical than real, but which to Van Buren was vital because the constitution says nothing about "insolvent laws." He was re-elected to the Senate in 1827, but soon resigned his seat to accept the office of governor of New York, to which he was elected in 1828. As governor he opposed free banking and advocated the " safety-fund system," making all the banks of the state mutual insurers of each other's soundness. He vainly recommended the policy of separating state from Federal elections. After entering on the office of governor he never resumed the practice of law. Van Buren was a zealous supporter of Andrew Jackson in the presidential election of 1828, and was called in 1829 to be the premier of the new administration. As Secretary of State he brought to a favorable close the long-standing feud between the United States and England with regard to the West India trade. Having an eye to the presidential succession after Jackson's second term, and not wishing meanwhile to compromise the administration or himself, he resigned his secretary-ship in June, 1831, and was sent as minister to England. The Senate refused in 1832 to confirm his nomination, by the easting-vote of John C. Calhoun, the vice-president. Conscientious Whigs, like Theodore Frelinghuysen, confessed in after days the reluctance with which they consented to this doubtful act. A clause in one of Van Buren's despatches while secretary, containing an invidious reference to the preceding administration, was alleged as the ground of his rejection. The offence was venial, compared with the license taken by Robert R. Livingston when, in negotiating the Louisiana Purchase, he cited the spectre of a Federalist administration playing into the hands of " the British faction." Moreover, the pretext was an afterthought, as the clause had excited no remark when first published, and, when the outcry was raised, Jackson " took the responsibility" for it. The tactical blunder of the Whigs soon avenged itself by bringing increased popularity to Van Buren. He became, with Jackson, the symbol of his party, and, elected vice-president in 1832, he came in 1833 to preside over the body which a year before had rejected him as foreign minister. He presided with unvarying suavity and fairness. Taking no public part in the envenomed discussions of the time, he was known to sympathize with Jackson in his warfare on the United States bank, and soon came to be generally regarded by his party as the lineal successor of that popular leader. He was formally nominated for the presidency on 20 May, 1835, and was elected in 1835 over his three competitors, William H. Harrison, Hugh L. White, and Daniel Webster, by a majority of 57 in the electoral college, but of only 25,000 in the popular vote. The tide of Jacksonism was beginning to ebb. South Carolina, choosing her electors by state legislature and transferring to Van Buren her hatred of Jackson, voted for Willie P. Mangum. During the canvass Van Buren had been opposed at the north and championed at the south as "a northern man with southern principles." As vice-president, he had in 1835 given a casting-vote for the bill to prohibit the circulation of " incendiary documents " through the mails, and as a candidate for the presidency he had pledged himself to resist the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia without the consent of the slave-states and to oppose the " slightest interference " with slavery in the states, he had also pledged himself against the distribution of surplus revenues among the states, against internal improvements at Federal expense, and against a national bank. Compelled by the fiscal embarrassments of the government, in the financial crash of 1837, to summon Congress to meet in special session, 4 September, 1837, he struck in his first message the key-note of his whole administration. After a detailed analysis of the financial situation, and of the causes in trade and speculation that had led to it, he proceeded to develop his favorite idea of an independent treasury for the safe-keeping and disbursement of the public moneys. This idea was not new. It was as old as the constitution. The practice of the government had departed from it only by insensible degrees, until at length, in spite of the protests of Jefferson, it had been consolidated into a formal order of Congress that the revenues of the government should be deposited in the United States Bank. On the removal of the deposits by Jackson in 1833, they had been placed in the custody of "the pet banks," and had here been used to stimulate private trade and speculation, until the crisis in 1837 necessitated a change of fiscal policy. By every consideration of public duty and safety, conspiring with what he believed to be economic advantage to the people. Van Buren enforced the policy of an independent treasury on a reluctant Congress. There was here no bating of breath or mincing of words: but it was not until near the close of his administration that he succeeded in procuring the assent of Congress to the radical measure that divorced the treasury from State banking and trade. The measure was formally repealed by the Whig Congress of 1842, after which the public moneys were again deposited in selected banks until 1840, when the independent treasury was reinstalled and has ever since held its place under all changes of administration. He signed the independent treasury bill on 4 July, 1840, as being a sort of "second Declaration of Independence," in his own idea and in that of his party. Von Hoist, Ae sternest of Van Buren's critics, awards to him on "this one question" the credit of "courage, firmness, and statesman-like insight." It was the chef d'oeuvre of his public career, ne also deserves credit for the fidelity with which, at the evident sacrifice of popularity with a certain class of voters, he adhered to neutral obligations on the outbreak of the Canada rebellion late in 1837. The administration of Van Buren, beginning and ending with financial panic, went down under the cloud resting on the country in 1840. The enemies and the friends of the United States bank had equally sown the wind during Jackson's administration. Van Buren was left to reap the whirlwind, which in the "political hurricane " of 1840 lifted General Harrison into the presidential chair. The Democratic defeat was overwhelming. Harrison received 234 electoral votes, and Van Buren only 60. The majority for Harrison in the popular vote was nearly 140,000. Retiring after this overthrow to the shades of Lindenwald, a beautiful country-seat which he had purchased in his native county, Van Buren gave no vent to repinings. In 1842 he made a tour through the southern states, visiting Henry Clay at Ashland. In 1843 he came to the front with clear-cut views in favor of a tariff for revenue only. But on the newly emergent question of Texas annexation he took a decided stand in the negative, and on this rock of offence to the southern wing of his party his candidature was wrecked in the Democratic national convention of 1844, which met at Baltimore on 27 May. He refused to falter with this issue, on the ground of our neutral obligations to Mexico, and when the nomination went to James K. Polk, of Tennessee, he gave no sign of resentment. His friends brought to Polk a loyal support, and secured his election by carrying for him the decisive vote of New York. Van Buren continued to take an interest in public affairs, and when in 1847 the acquisition of new territory from Mexico raised anew the vexed question of slavery in the territories, he gave in his adhesion to the " Wilmot Proviso." In the new elective affinities produced by this "burning question" a redistribution of political elements took place in the chaos of New York politics. The "Barnburner" and the "Hunker" factions came to a sharp cleavage on this line of division. The former declared their "uncompromising hostility to the extension of slavery." In the Herkimer Democratic convention of 26 October. 1847, the Free-Soil banner was openly displayed, and delegates were sent to the Democratic national convention. From this convention, assembled at Baltimore in May, 1848, the Herkimer delegates seceded before any presidential nomination was made. In June, 1848, a Barnburner convention met at Utica to organize resistance to the nomination of General Lewis Cass. who. in his "Nicholson letter," had disavowed the "Wilmot proviso." To this convention Van Buren addressed a letter, declining in advance a nomination for the presidency, but pledging opposition to the new party shibboleth. In spite of his refusal, he was nominated, and this nomination was reaffirmed by the Free-Soil national convention of Buffalo, 9 August, 1848, when Charles Francis Adams was associated with him as candidate for the vice-presidency. In the ensuing presidential election this ticket received only 291,263 votes, but, as the result of the triangular duel. General Cass was defeated and General Zachary Taylor, the Whig candidate, was elected. The precipitate annexation of Texas and its natural sequel, the war with Mexico, had brought their Nemesis in the utter confusion of national politics. Van Buren received no electoral votes, but his popular Democratic vote in Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York exceeded that of Cass. Henceforth he was simply a spectator in the political arena. On all public questions save that of slavery he remained an unfaltering Democrat, and when it was fondly supposed that "the slavery issue" had been forever exorcised by the compromise measures of 1850, he returned in full faith and communion to his old party allegiance. In 1852 he began to write his "Inquiry into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States" (New York, 1867), but it was never finished and was published as a fragment. He supported Franklin Pierce for the presidency in 1852, and, after spending two years in Europe, returned in time to vote for James Buchanan in 1856. In 1860 he voted for the combined electoral ticket against Lincoln, but when the Civil War began he gave to the administration his zealous support. Van Buren was the target of political accusation during his whole public career, but kept his private character free from reproach. In his domestic life he was as happy as he was exemplary. Always prudent in his habits and economical in his tastes, he none the less maintained in his style of living the easy state of a gentleman, whether in public station at Albany and Washington, or at Lindenwald in his retirement. As a man of the world he was singularly affable and courteous, blending formal deference with natural dignity and genuine cordiality. Intensely partisan in his opinions and easily startled by the red rag of "Hamiltonian Federalism," he never carried the contentions of the political arena into the social sphere. The asperities of personal rivalry estranged him for a time from Calhoun, after the latter denounced him in the Senate in 1837 as "a practical politician," with whom " justice, right, patriotism, etc., were mere vague phrases," but with his great Whig rival. Henry Clay, he maintained unbroken relations of friendship through all vicissitudes of political fortune. Asa lawyer his rank was eminent. Though never rising in speech to the heights of oratory, he was equally fluent and facile before bench or jury, and equally felicitous whether expounding the intricacies of fact or of law in a case. His manner was mild and insinuating, never declamatory. Without carrying his juridical studies into the realm of jurisprudence, he yet had a knowledge of law that fitted him to cope with the greatest advocates of the New York bar. The evidences of his legal learning and acute dialectics are still preserved in the New York reports of Johnson. Cowen, and Wendell. As a debater in the Senate, he always went to the pith of questions, disdaining the arts of rhetoric. As a writer of political letters or of state papers, he carried diffusiveness to a fault, which sometimes hinted at a weakness in positions requiring so much defence. As a politician he was masterful in leadership—so much so that, alike by friends and foes, he was credited with reducing its practices to a fine art. He was a member of the famous Albany regency which for so many years controlled the politics of New York, and was long popularly known as its " director." Fertile in the contrivance of means for the attainment of the public ends which he deemed desirable, he was called "the little magician," from the deftness of his touch in politics. But combining the statesman's foresight with the politician's tact, he showed his sagacity rather by seeking a majority for his views than by following the views of a majority. Accused of "non-committalism." and with some show of reason in the early stages of his career, it was only as to men and minor measures of policy that he practised a prudent reticence. On questions of deeper principle — an elective judiciary, Negro suffrage, universal suffrage, etc.—he boldly took the unpopular side. In a day of unexampled political giddiness he stood firmly for his sub treasury system against the doubts of friends, the assaults of enemies, and the combined pressure of wealth and culture in the country. Dispensing patronage according to the received custom of his times, he vet maintained a high standard of appointment. That he could rise above selfish considerations was shown when he promoted the elevation of Rufus King in 1820, or when he strove in 1838 to bring Washington Irving into his cabinet with small promise of gain to his doubtful political fortunes by such an "unpractical" appointment. As a statesman he had his compact fagot of opinions, to which he adhered in evil or good report. It might seem that the logic of his principles in 1848, combined with the subsequent drift of events, should have landed him in the Free-Soil party that Abraham Lincoln led to victory in 1860: but it. is to be remembered that, while Van Buren's political opinions were in a fluid state, they had been cast in the doctrinal molds of Jefferson, and had there taken rigid form and pressure. In the natural history of American party-formations he supposed that an enduring antithesis had always been discernible between the "money power" and the "farming interest " of the land. In his annual message of December, 1838, holding language very modern in its emphasis, he counted "the anti-republican tendencies of associated wealth " as among the strains that had been put upon our government. This is indeed the mam thesis of his " Inquiry," a book which is more an apologia than a history. In that chronicle of his life-long antipathy to a splendid consolidated government, with its imperial judiciary, funding systems, high tariffs, and internal improvements— the whole surmounted by a powerful national bank as the "regulator" of finance and politics—he has left an outlined sketch of the only dramatic unity that can be found for his eventful career. Confessing in 1848 that he had gone further in concession to slavery than many of his friends at the north had approved, he satisfied himself with a formal protest against the repeal of the Missouri compromise, carried through Congress while he was travelling in Europe, and against the policy of making the Dred Scott decision a rule of Democratic politics, though he thought the decision sound in point of technical law. With these reservations, avowedly made in the interest of " strict construction" and of "old-time Republicanism" rather than of Free-Soil or National reformation, he maintained his allegiance to the party with which his fame was identified, and which he was perhaps the more unwilling to leave because of the many sacrifices he had made in its service. The biography of Van Buren has been written by William H. Holland (Hartford, 1835); Francis J. Grand (in German, 1835); William Emmons (Washington, 1835): David Crockett (Philadelphia, 1836): William L. Mackenzie (Boston, 1846); William Allen Butler (New York, 1862); and Edward M. Shepard (Boston, 1888). Mackenzie's book is compiled in part from surreptitious letters, shedding a lurid light on the "practical politics" of the times. Butler's sketch was published immediately after the ex-president's death. Shepard's biography is written with adequate learning and in a philosophical spirit.—His wife, Hannah, born in Kinderhook. New York, in 1782; died in Albany, New York, 5 February, 1819, was of Dutch descent, and her maiden name was Hoes. She was educated in the schools of her native village, and was the classmate of Mr. Van Buren, whom she married in 1807. She was devoted to her domestic cares and duties, and took little interest in social affairs, but was greatly beloved by the poor. When she learned that she could live but a few days, she expressed a desire that her funeral be conducted with the utmost simplicity, and the money that would otherwise have been devoted to mourning emblems be given to the needy.—His brother, Lawrence, soldier, born in Kinderhook, New York, in 1783; died there. 1 July, 1868, served in the war of 1813—'15, in which he attained the rank of major. He was a presidential elector on the Democratic ticket in 1852.—Martin's son, Abraham, soldier, born in Kinderhook, New York, 27 November, 1807; died in New York City, 15 March, 1873, was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1827, and attached to the 2d U.S. Infantry as 2d lieutenant. He served for two years on the western frontier, and for the next seven years as aide-de-camp to the general-in-chief, Alexander Macomb, except during several months in 1836, when he accompanied General Winfield Scott as a volunteer aide in the expedition against the Seminole Indians. He was commissioned as a captain in the 1st U.S. Dragoons on 4 July, 1836, resigning on 3 March, 1837, to become his father's private secretary. He brought daily reports of the proceedings of Congress to President Van Buren, who was often influenced by his suggestions. At the beginning of the war with Mexico he re-entered the army as major and paymaster, his commission dating from 26 June, 1846. He served on the staff of General Zachary Taylor at Monterey, and subsequently joined the staff of General Scott as a volunteer, and participated in every engagement from Vera Cruz to the capture of the city of Mexico, being brevetted lieutenant-colonel for bravery at Contreras and Churubusco on 20 August, 1847. He served in the paymaster's department after the war till 1 June, 1854, when he again resigned, after which he resided for a part of the time in Columbia, South Carolina (where his wife inherited a plantation), till 1859, and afterward in New York City except during three years' absence in Europe.—Another son. John, lawyer, born in Hudson, New York, 18 February, 1810; died at sea, 13 October, 1866, was graduated at Yale in 1828, studied law with Benjamin F. Butler, and was admitted to the bar at Albany in 1830. In the following year he accompanied his father to London as an attaché of the legation. In February, 1845, he was elected attorney-general of the state of New York, serving till 31 December, 1846. He took an active part in the political canvass of 1848 as an advocate of the exclusion of slavery from the territories, but did not remain with the Free-Soil party in its later developments. He held high rank as a lawyer, appearing in the Edwin Forrest and many other important eases, was an eloquent pleader, and an effective political speaker. He died on the voyage from Liverpool to New York. He was popularly known as " Prince John," was tall and handsome, and of elegant manners and appearance.—Abraham's wife, Angelica, born in Sumter district, South Carolina, about 1820; died in New York City, 29 December, 1878, was a daughter of Richard Singleton, a planter, and a cousin of William C. Preston and of Mrs. James Madison, who, while her kinswoman was completing her education in Philadelphia, presented her to President Van Buren. A year later she married Maj. Van Buren, in November, 1838, and on the following New-Year's day she made her first appearance as mistress of the White House. With her husband she visited England (where her uncle, Andrew Stevenson, was U. S. minister) and other countries of Europe, in the spring of 1839, returning in the autumn to resume her place as hostess of the presidential mansion. The accompanying vignette is from a portrait painted by Henry Inman. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 230-234.


VAN BUREN, William Holme, surgeon, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 5 April, 1819; died in New York City, 25 March, 1883. His grandfather, Beekman, and his great-grandfather, Abraham, who came from Holland in 1700, after studying under Boerhaave at Leyden, were physicians to the New York City almshouse. He was a student at Yale of the class of 1838 for two years, and was subsequently granted his degree. On leaving college, he studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and in the Paris hospitals. He received his diploma from the University of Pennsylvania in 1840, presenting an essay on "Immovable Apparatus," which was published by the faculty, and on 15 June of that year was appointed an assistant surgeon in the U. S. Army. Resigning on 31 December, 1845. he went to New York City to assist his father-in-law, Valentine Mott, in his surgical clinic in the medical department of the University of the city of New York. He soon took high rank both as an operative surgeon and family practitioner, also as a teacher and demonstrator of anatomy and surgery. When Bellevue hospital was organized in 1847 he was appointed one of the surgeons. In 1849 he became surgeon to St. Vincent hospital, and in 1852 he was elected to the chair of anatomy in New York University Medical College. He was visiting surgeon to New York hospital from 1852 till 1868, and from the latter date consulting surgeon. He was consulting surgeon also to Bellevue and Charity hospitals. He was one of the founders of the U. S. sanitary commission in 1861, and served as the medical member of its executive committee throughout the Civil War, declining the appointment of surgeon-general of the U.S. Army. He resigned his professorship in the University Medical College in 1866, on being elected professor of surgery for the newly established department of diseases of the genito-urinary system in Bellevue hospital Medical College. […].  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 235-236.


VAN BUREN, ARKANSAS, December 28, 1862. Army of the Frontier. Brigadier-General James G. Blunt with 8,000 men and 30 pieces of artillery started from camp at Prairie Grove on the morning of the 27th and at 10 a. m. of the 28th two regiments of Confederate cavalry were encountered at Dripping Springs. Blunt's cavalry charged and in a running fight drove the Confederates into and through Van Buren, resulting in the capture of all their transportation, some 40 wagons, camp and garrison equipage, ammunition, etc., and 100 prisoners. Four steamers attempting to get away down the river were also captured. Later in the day the Confederates opened with artillery from the opposite bank of the river, but they were driven away by the Federal guns. Blunt's loss was 6 wounded, and although the Confederate casualties were not reported they were undoubtedly heavier. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 887.


VAN BUREN, ARKANSAS, February 10, 1863. Detachment of 10th Illinois Cavalry. During a scout from Fayetteville to the Arkansas river the detachment under Lieutenant-Colonel James Stuart, was attacked by about 100 Confederate cavalry at a point 8 miles from Van Buren, but a charge of 50 men quickly dispersed the enemy. No casualties were reported. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 887.

VAN BUREN, ARKANSAS, August 12, 1864. 2nd and 6th Kansas Cavalry. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 887.


VAN BUREN, ARKANSAS, April 2, 1865. Detachment of 1st Arkansas Cavalry. A band of 20 Confederates came within 2 miles of Van Buren and robbed a number of citizens. Eight mounted men were immediately started in pursuit and came upon the marauders a few miles from town. In the skirmish which ensued 2 Confederates were killed. No loss on the Federal side. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 887.


VAN BUREN, MISSOURI, August 12, 1862. 24th Missouri Infantry. Colonel Sempronius H. Boyd, with his regiment, surprised 6 Confederates at Van Buren, killed 2 and captured 3. The other 1 escaped. Boyd's command suffered no loss. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 887.


VAN BUREN, MISSOURI, October 22, 1862. Missouri State Militia Cavalry. A Federal detachment under Colonel B. F. Lazear attacked 450 mounted Confederates near Van Buren, drove them from their camp and through the town. The Confederate loss was not reported, but Lazear had 1 man killed. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 887.


VANCE, Zebulon Baird, senator, born in Buncombe County, North Carolina, 13 May, 1830. He was educated at Washington College, Tennessee, and at the University of North Carolina, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1852, established himself at Asheville, North Carolina, was chosen county solicitor, and in 1854 was elected to the legislature. When Thomas L. Clingman entered the Senate, Vance was elected to succeed him in the House of Representatives, taking his seat on 7 December, 1858. He opposed the secession of North Carolina, yet after that step was taken he raised a company and was chosen captain, and soon afterward was appointed colonel of the 26th North Carolina Regiment, which became one of the most famous of the organizations of southern soldiers. In 1862 he was elected governor, while serving in the field. He soon saw the impossibility of obtaining sufficient supplies for the troops of his state without recourse to foreign aid, and therefore sent agents abroad, and purchased a fine steamship in the 'Clyde, which successfully ran the blockade, not only supplying the state troops with clothing and arms, but furnishing also large stores for the use of the Confederate government and for the hospitals, and general supplies for the people of his state. As early as December, 1863, perceiving the desperate nature of the undertaking in which the south was engaged, he urged President Davis to neglect no opportunity of negotiation with the U. S. government, but at the same time he was so earnest and efficient in contributing men and material for the support of the cause that he was called the war governor of the south. He was also conspicuous in his efforts to ameliorate the condition of Federal prisoners in his state. He was overwhelmingly re-elected for the next two years in 1864. When the National troops occupied North Carolina, Governor Vance was arrested and taken to Washington, D. C., where he was confined in prison for several weeks. In November, 1870, he was elected U. S. Senator by the legislature, but he was not allowed to take his seat, and resigned it in January, 1872. In the same year he was again a candidate for a senatorship, but was defeated by Augustus S. Merrimon, to whom the Republicans gave their votes. He received a pardon from President Johnson in 1867, and his political disabilities were removed by Congress in 1872. Soon after he had been refused a seat in the U. S. Senate by reason of those disabilities. He continued to practice law in Charlotte, taking no part in politics, except his conspicuous efforts as a private citizen to overthrow the reconstruction government in North Carolina. In 1876, after an animated canvass, he was elected governor by a large majority. He resigned on being again elected U. S. Senator, took his seat on 4 March, 1879, and by his wit and eloquence soon acquired a high rank among the Democratic orators of the Senate. In 1884 he was re-elected for the term ending on 4 March, 1891.  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 235.


VANCEBURG, KENTUCKY, October 29, 1864. Kentucky Home Guards. On the morning of the 20th some 40 Confederates under Captain John P. Williams attacked Vanceburg. The citizens were organized by Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis M. Clark and after a sharp fight the enemy was completely routed and driven for a distance of 20 miles. No casualties were reported. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 887-888.


VAN CLEVE, Horatio Phillips, soldier, born in Princeton, New Jersey, 23 November, 1809. He studied for two years at Princeton, then entered the U. S. Military Academy, was graduated in 1831, served at frontier posts in Michigan Territory, was commissioned as 2d lieutenant of infantry on 31 December, 1831, and on 11 September, 1836, resigned and settled in Michigan. He taught in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1840-'l, then engaged in farming near Ann Arbor. Michigan, was an engineer in the service of the state of Michigan in 1855, then United States surveyor of public lands in Minnesota, and in 1856 engaged in stock-raising. On 22 July. 1861, he was commissioned as colonel of the 2d Minnesota Infantry. He served under General George H. Thomas at Mill Springs, for his part in which action he was promoted brigadier-general of volunteers on 21 March, 1862. He was disabled by a wound at Stone River, but resumed command of the division on his recovery, was engaged at Chickamauga, and was in command of the post and forces at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, from December, 1863, till 24 August, I865, when he was mustered out, having been brevetted major-general on 13 March, 1865. He was adjutant-general of Minnesota in 1866-'70, and in 1876-'82.  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 235-236.


VANDERBILT, Cornelius, financier, born near Stapleton, Staten Island, New York, 27 May, 1794; died in New York City, 4 January, 1877. He was descended from Jan Aertsen Van der Bilt, a Dutch farmer, who settled near Brooklyn, New York, about 1650. Cornelius's great-grand-father, a son of the emigrant ancestor, moved about 1715 to New Dorp, Staten Island, where the family was converted to Moravian doctrines by religious exiles from Bohemia. His father was a farmer in moderate circumstances, who conveyed his produce to market in a sailboat, which the son (7)  early learned to manage. The boy. who was hardy and resolute, early became schooled in practical affairs and the direction of men, but neglected every opportunity for education. When sixteen years of age he purchased a boat, in which he ferried passengers and goods between New York City and Staten Island, and at the age of eighteen he was the owner of two boats and captain of a third. A year later he married a cousin, Sophia Johnson, and moved to New York City. He extended hi3 interests in boats, sloops, and schooners, engaged in traffic as well as transportation along the shores of New York bay and Hudson River, and built new craft on the latest and most approved models. In 1817 he engaged as captain of a steamboat that made trips between New York City and New Brunswick, New Jersey, and for twelve years worked for a salary. In 1827 he leased the ferry between New York City and Elizabeth, and, by putting on new boats, made it very profitable. Returning to New York City in 1829, he began to build steamboats of improved construction and fittings, and to compete in prices and service with the wealthy capitalists who owned the existing lines on Hudson River and Long Island sound, his success as a steamboat builder and manager caused the title of "Commodore" to be popularly attached to his name. Before he was forty years old his wealth was estimated at $500,000. He withdrew his steamboats from the Hudson River by arrangement with Robert L. Stevens, but maintained lines connecting New York City with Bridgeport, Norwalk, Derby, New Haven, Hartford, and New London, Connecticut Providence and Newport, Rhode Island, and Boston, Massachusetts When the emigration of gold-seekers to California began, he established a passenger line, by way of Lake Nicaragua, gaining large profits. Selling this in 1853. he visited Europe in the "North Star," which was constructed after his own designs, and surpassed all steam yachts that had before been built. The company to which he had transferred the Nicaragua short line evaded payment, and on his return Vanderbilt again engaged in the California traffic, threatening to force his dishonest competitors into bankruptcy. This he accomplished, and in the course of eleven years he accumulated $10,000,000 in this business. He engaged in ocean transportation while British ships were withdrawn during the Crimean war, building three of the finest and fastest steamers, and establishing a line between New York and Havre. His offer to carry the mails for nothing impelled the government to withhold the subsidy that it had paid to the Collins line and caused the cessation of its operations. A few years later Vanderbilt, who had begun to invest largely in the stock of the New York and New Haven Railroad as early as 1844, retired from the transatlantic trade on account of the sharp competition of Europeans, and gradually transferred his capital from shipping to railroad enterprises. When the "Merrimac" attacked the National vessels in Hampton Roads, he had his finest steamship, the "Vanderbilt," fitted up for naval purposes and sent to James River, intending to run down the Confederate ram. He gave the vessel to the government, and, at the conclusion of the war, Congress voted him a gold medal in recognition of his gift. His first important railroad venture was in 1863, when he purchased a large part of the stock of the New York and Harlem Railroad, and obtained a charter for a connecting street railroad through New York City, causing the stock to rise from ten dollars a share to par. Daniel Drew and other heavy speculators, with foreknowledge of the intention of the city council to cancel the franchise for a horse-car line through Broadway, sold stock for future delivery, causing it to decline heavily. Vanderbilt bought what was offered, till it was all in his hands, and the sellers could only make their deliveries by paying him double the prices that he had contracted to pay them. He began in the same year to purchase the shares of the Hudson River Railroad, a competing line, and, when he had obtained the control, procured the introduction of a bill for the consolidation of this and the Harlem road. Members of the legislature entered into a combination with stock-jobbers to defeat the measure, after promising their support, and in this way to cause Harlem stock, which had risen from $75 to $150 a share in anticipation of the consolidation, to fall below the former price, enabling them to make profits by selling while it declined. With the aid of financial allies, Vanderbilt was able to take all bids of stock, effecting a "corner" of much greater dimensions than the former one. The speculators for a fall had agreed to deliver 27,000 more shares than the entire stock of the road, and, when the time for settlement came, the Vanderbilt "pool" could make the price what they chose, but did not venture to raise it above $285 for fear of precipitating a general panic. After this stroke, by which he gained many millions, he purchased large amounts of New York Central Railroad stock. Fearing that the road would pass into his hands, the managers in 1864 made secret arrangements to have freight and passengers forwarded to New York City by river steamers, instead of by the Hudson River Railroad. In retaliation, in the second winter after the discriminations began, Vanderbilt changed the terminus of the Hudson River Railroad at Albany to the eastern side of the river, and ordered the employes to receive no freight from the Central Railroad. The stock of the New York Central Railroad fell in the market, and Vanderbilt and his associates gradually increased their holdings. In 1867 Vanderbilt was elected president of the company. The Harlem and Hudson River Railroads had improved greatly in efficiency and economy under Vanderbilt's administration. He now applied the same methods of reform to the New York Central road, increasing the rollingstock, improving the tracks, systematizing the service, and increasing the connections. In order to put an end to unprofitable competition in rates, he next sought to obtain control of the New York, Lake Erie, and Western Railroad (then called the Erie), and bought freely, while Daniel Drew, Jay Gould, and James Fisk sold "short" for a fall, winning the contest by flooding the market with new shares, illegally issued. They obtained from Vanderbilt about $7,000,000, but, after a legal controversy over the fraudulent issue, were willing to repay nearly $5,000,000. In 1869 he procured an act for the consolidation of the New York Central and Hudson River companies, and in the same year divided new shares among the stock-holders, adding 107 per cent, to the nominal capital of the New York Central and 80 per cent, to that of the 16 Hudson River Road. Notwithstanding the doubling of the stock, the market value of the shares, which in 1867 had ranged from $75 to $120, reached $200 in 1869. By purchasing a controlling interest in the Lake Shore, the Canada Southern, and the Michigan Central Railroads, he extended his system to Chicago, making it a trunk-line for western traffic. He erected the Grand Central Station in New York City, with viaducts and tunneled approaches, for building which the city paid half of the cost. Four tracks were laid on the New York Central line. Of the capital stock of the railroads that composed the trunk-line, amounting to $150,000,000, Vanderbilt owned one half. Although he had never contributed to benevolent enterprises, toward the close of his life he gave $50,000 to Reverend Charles F. Deems to purchase the Church of the Strangers, and $1,000,000 to found Vanderbilt University at Nashville, Tennessee. He had a fortune generally estimated at $100,000,000, all of which he left to his eldest son, William Henry, except $11,000,000 bequeathed to the latter's four sons, and $4,000,000 to his own daughters, his voyage to England and along the coasts of Europe from Russia to Turkey was recounted by Reverend Dr. John O. Choules in "The Cruise of the Steam Yacht “North Star” (Boston, 1854). Mr. Vanderbilt was an extremely handsome man, with a beautiful complexion. He was tall and graceful, and to the last retained an erect figure and an elastic step.—His son, William Henry, financier, born in New Brunswick. N.J., 8 May, 1821;  died in New York City, 8 December, 1885, was educated at Columbia grammar-school. Leaving school at the age of seventeen, ne engaged in business as a ship-chandler, and a year later became a clerk in the banking house of which the senior partner. He married in his twentieth year, and, his health failing, settled in 1842 on a small farm in New Dorp, Staten Island, that his father gave him. This he cultivated profitably, enlarging and improving it with but slight aid from his father, who at that time had a poor opinion of his financial ability. This estimate was altered when The son managed with great success the Staten Island Railroad, of which he was made receiver. When "Commodore " Vanderbilt engaged in railroad financiering at the age of seventy, he intrusted the business management of the railroads that came into his control to William H., who was chosen vice-president of the Harlem and Hudson River corporations in 1864, and afterward of the New York Central. To these great establishments he applied the same watchful attention and frugal economies which had restored to prosperity the bankrupt Staten Island road, and with the same success. While participating no more in the speculative plans of his father than he formerly had in his steamship enterprises, he aided materially toward their success by his efficient management. When he succeeded to the control of the railroad property he averted the consequences of a protracted war of rates and of a threatened strike of laborers by conciliation and compromise. With equal prudence he avoided a contest over his father s will with his brother, Cornelius Jeremiah, and two of his sisters, by agreeing to pay the brother the income from $1,000,000, which was five times as much as the will awarded him, and increasing by $500,000 the legacy of each of his sisters. Under his administration was completed the acquisition of the Canada Southern Railroad, which was effected by a guarantee of its bonds, and that of the Michigan Central by purchases in the open market. Between 1877 and 1880 he gained control of the Chicago and Northwestern line, comprising with its tributaries 4,000 miles of road. He obtained connection with St. Louis by means of the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis Railroad. In November, 1879, in order to obviate financial rivalries by interesting other capitalists in the New York Central road and to put his own property into a more manageable shape, he sold 250,000 shares of the stock to an English and American syndicate, investing the $30,000,000 that he obtained in U. S. government bonds, of which a year later he held $53,000,000. In 1880 he sold his Interests in the Western Union Telegraph Company. In 1881 he lowered rates in competition with the New York, Western, Lake Erie, and other trunk lines, primarily in order to discourage the construction of the "Nickel Plate" Railroad. On 4 May, 1883, he formally resigned the office of president of the New York Central and Hudson River, Lake Shore and Michigan Southern, and Michigan Central Companies, and sidled for Europe. At the same time the companies were reorganized by the election of his son Cornelius as chairman of the board of directors of the New York Central, and Michigan Central Companies, and of his son William Kissam as chairman of the Lake Shore Road. The Nickel Plate Road, when completed, was acquired and added to the New York Central system, while the West Shore Road was forced into bankruptcy by a reduction of rates. Mr. Vanderbilt built a fine mansion, which, with two other family residences, is shown in the illustration, in New York City, which he filled with modern paintings, chiefly of the French school, and with other works of art. Five houses were built for his sons and daughters in Fifth avenue near his own. He was fond of driving, as his father had been, and purchased Maud S. and other famous trotting-horses. He added $200,000 to the endowment of Vanderbilt University, and gave $100,000 for a theological school and $10,000 for a library in connection with the university. In 1884 he gave $500,000 for new buildings to the College of physicians and surgeons, and a year afterward his daughter, Emily, wife of William D. Sloane, built and endowed in connection with it a maternity hospital at a cost of $250,000, and his four sons have erected and equipped a building for clinical instruction in connection with the college as a memorial of their father. He distributed $100,000 among the train-men and laborers of the New York Central Railroad when they refrained from striking in 1877, gave $50,000 to the Church of St. Bartholomew, and paid $103,000 for the removal of the obelisk that the Khedive Ismail gave to the United States and for its erection in Central park, New York City. General Ulysses S. Grant, two days before the failure of Grant and Ward, borrowed from Mr. Vanderbilt, on an exchange check, $150,000, which went to protest. The general then sent to Mr. Vanderbilt, as security for this loan, deeds to certain real estate, and his swords, medals, works of art, and the gifts made him by foreign governments. Mr. Vanderbilt proposed to return all this property to General Grant, but found that impossible, as it was liable to be seized by creditors of the firm of Grant and Ward. He then offered to give them to Mrs. Grant; but she declined to receive them. He then proposed to transfer all the property to the Union Trust Company, in trust for Mrs. Grant and her heirs. Mrs. Grant and the general refused this, on the ground that the original debt was a debt of honor. Mr. Vanderbilt then proposed that the presents should be transferred to Mrs. Grant during her life, and at her death be placed in the archives of the National government at Washington. This proposition was accepted, and Mrs. Grant immediately transferred the articles to the government. By his will he left $10,000,000 to each of his eight children, one half of each bequest to be held in trust; to his eldest son $2,000,000 more; $1,000,000 to the eldest son of the latter: and the residuary estate in equal parts to his two eldest sons, subject to the payment of an annuity of $200,000 to the widow, to whom he left his house and the artistic objects that it contained. He bequeathed $1,000,000 for benevolent purposes, including gifts to Vanderbilt University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Young Men's Christian Association, the missions of the Protestant Episcopal church, and St. Luke's Hospital. He also provided for building and maintaining a Moravian church and a family mausoleum at New Dorp, Staten Island. The bulk of the family fortune, including the railroad securities, has, by agreement among the heirs, been left to the management of the two principal heirs, Cornelius and William Kissam.—The eldest son of William H., Cornelius, financier, born on Staten Island, New York. 27 November, 1843. was educated at private schools and trained to business. He was treasurer of the New York and Harlem Railroad from 1867 till 1877, then vice-president till 1886, and since that date has been its president. In addition to his connection with the roads previously mentioned, in 1883 he became president of the Canada Southern Company. He is a director in thirty-four different railroad companies, and is a trustee of many of the charitable, religious, and educational institutions of New York City. Among Mr. Vanderbilt's benefactions are the gift of a building in New York City for the use of railroad employes, a contribution of $100,000 for the Protestant Episcopal cathedral, and a collection of drawings by the old masters and the painting of the " Horse Fair,"' by Rosa Bonheur, to the Metropolitan museum of art. —The third son, Frederick William, is secretary and treasurer of the New York, Chicago, and St. Louis Railway Company, and is a director in most of the roads comprising the Vanderbilt system.— The youngest son, George Washington, has established a free circulating library in New York City, which was opened in July, 1888, and has maintained a manual training-school. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 240-242.


VANDERBURGH'S HOUSE, VIRGINIA, August 31, 1861. (See Munson's Hill.)


VANDERPOEL, Ann Priscilla, philanthropist, born in London, England, 25 June, 1815; died in New York City, 4 May, 1870. Her father, Robert O. Barnes, came to this country with his family in 1833. She married Dr. Edward Vanderpoel in 1837, and for many years was identified with philanthropic work in New York City. She founded the Ladies' Home U. S. Hospital in 1861, and gave her gratuitous services, for four years and a half, as a nurse to the Union soldiers, her labors being recognized by the government, especially by President Lincoln, who sent her an engraved certificate as a memorial of her work. In July, 1863, during the draft riots in New York City, she saved Mayor George Opdyke's house from fire and pillage by driving in an open carriage from Fourth street to Mulberry street, where the police office was situated, and sending a company of soldiers to his aid. To reach the office she exposed her life by breaking through a dense mob. She has been called the Florence Nightingale of New York. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 243-244.


VAN DER VEER, Albert, surgeon, born in Root, New York, 10 July, 1841. He studied at Albany Medical College, was graduated in 1862 at the National Medical College, Washington, D. C, and served through the Civil War as a surgeon. He then settled in Albany, where in 1869 he became professor of the principles and practice of surgery in the Medical College. In 1882 he was given the chair of surgery and clinical surgery. During this time he was also connected with Albany and St. Peter's Hospitals. Dr. Van der Veer has achieved success in abdominal surgery. He has been president of the New York State Medical Society, and is a member of various other medical societies at home and abroad. Albany Medical College gave him the degree of M. D. in 1869, Williams that of A. M. in 1882, and Union and Hamilton that of Ph. D. in 1883. He has contributed to " Wood's Reference Handbook of Medicine and Surgery," and to several medical journals. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 244.


VAN DERVEER, Ferdinand, soldier, born in Butler County, Ohio, 27 February, 1823. He was educated at Farmer's College, Ohio, enlisted as a private in an Ohio Regiment during the Mexican War, rose to the rank of captain, and headed one of the assaulting columns at the capture of Monterey. He subsequently practised law, and became sheriff of Butler County, Ohio. At the beginning of the Civil War he became colonel of the 35th Ohio Volunteers, succeeded to the command of General Robert L. McCook's brigade, and led it, till the autumn of 1864, when he was made brigadier-general of volunteers, and assigned to the 4th Corps. General Van Derveer saw much active service, and, among many other engagements, participated in the battles of Mill Springs, Chickamauga, and Mission Ridge. Since 1870 he has been judge of the court of common pleas of Butler County, Ohio. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 244.


VAN DORN, Earl, soldier, born near Port Gibson, Mississippi, 17 September, 1820: died in Spring Hill, Tennessee, 8 May, 1863. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1842, assigned to the 7th U.S. Infantry, and served in garrisons. After his promotion to 2d lieutenant, 30 November, 1844, he took part in the military occupation of Texas in 1845-'6, was made 1st lieutenant, 3 March, 1847, and brevetted captain on 18 April for "gallant and meritorious conduct in the battle of Cerro Gordo." He was at Contreras and Churubusco, and was brevetted major, 20 August. 1847, for gallantry in those actions. He also took part in the assault and capture of the city of Mexico, and was wounded at Belen Gate. He was aide-de-camp to General Persifer P. Smith, from April, 1847, till May, 1848, at Baton Rouge, Louisiana Lieutenant Van Dorn engaged in the Seminole War in 1849-'50, was made captain in the 2d U.S. Cavalry, 3 March, 1855, took part in the battle with the Comanches, 1 July, 1856, and commanded the expedition against those Indians near Washita Village, Indian territory, 1 October, 1858, where he was four times wounded, twice dangerously by arrows. He was again engaged with the Comanches in the valley of Nessentunga, 13 May, 1859. He became major of the 2d U.S. Cavalry, 28 June, 1860, but resigned on 31 January, 1861, and was appointed by the legislature of Mississippi brigadier-general of the state forces, afterward succeeding Jefferson Davis as major-general. He was appointed colonel of cavalry in the regular Confederate Army, 16 March, 1861, took command of a body of Texan volunteers, and on 20 April captured the steamer "Star of the West" at Indianola. On 24 April, at the head of 800 men, at Salaria, he received the surrender of Major Caleb C. Sibley and seven companies of U. S. infantry, and on 9 May he received that of Colonel Isaac V. D. Keeve with six companies of the 8th Infantry. He became brigadier-general on 5 June, and major-general on 19 September, 1861, and on 29 January, 1862, took command of the Trans-Mississippi department. He was defeated at Pea Ridge on 6-8 March (see Curtis, Samuel R.), and, being superseded by General Theophilus H. Holmes, joined the Army of Mississippi. At Corinth, 3-4 October, where he was in command with General Sterling Price, he was again defeated, and he was superseded by General John C. Pemberton. On 20 Dee. he made an attack on Holly Springs, Mississippi, which was occupied by Colonel Murphy with a body of U. S. troops, and captured a large amount of valuable stores. On 10 April, 1863, he made an unsuccessful attack on General Gordon Granger at Franklin. Tennessee. In the following month General Van Dorn was shot by a physician named Peters, on account of a private grievance. General Van Dorn provoked many strictures at one time by an order restricting the comments of the press on the movements of the army, though the step was taken in obedience to the commands of General Braxton Bragg. He possessed a cultivated taste, and was a fine draughtsman. When stationed at Newport, Kentucky, barracks, opposite Cincinnati, he devised and successfully tried in that city an elevated electric railway. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 245-246.


VANDERBURGH'S HOUSE, VIRGINIA, August 31, 1861. (See Munson's Hill.)


VAN DUSEN'S CREEK, CALIFORNIA, April 14-15, 1861. Detachment of 6th U. S. Infantry. Lieutenant J. B. Collins of the 4th U. S. infantry, in command of a detachment of the 6th U. S. infantry, attacked a band of Indians on Van Dusen's creek near Mad river on the afternoon of the 14th and killed 15 or 20 of them. Next morning he again attacked, killing 6 and wounding 3. One soldier was wounded. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 888.


VAN DUSEN'S CREEK, CALIFORNIA, July 2, 1862. (See Cutterback's House.)


VAN DYKE, Henry Herbert, financier, born in Kinderhook, New York, in 1809; died in New York City, 22 January, 1888, was apprenticed to a printer early in life, and at twenty-one years of age became editor of the Goshen "Independent Republican." He was subsequently connected with the Albany "Argus," and was active in state politics as a Free-Soil Democrat, following the lead of Martin Van Buren in the revolt against the "Hunker" Democrats that resulted in the election of Zachary Taylor to the presidency as a Whig. He subsequently joined the Republican Party, and was a presidential elector on the Fremont ticket in 1856. He became superintendent of public instruction for the state of New York in 1857, and in 1861 superintendent of the state banking department, holding office till 1865, when he was chosen by President Johnson assistant U. S. treasurer. The failure of his health compelled his resignation of that post in 1869. He was president of the American Safe Deposit Company in 1883-'8, and, among other business offices, held the presidency of the Erie Transportation Company. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 245.


VAN DYKE, John, jurist, born in Lamington, New Jersey, 3 April. 1807; died in Wabasha, Minnesota, 24 December, 1878. He was admitted to the New Jersey bar in 1830, and immediately rose to prominence in the Suydam-Robinson murder trial. He held many offices of trust and was the first president of the Bank of New Jersey at New Brunswick. He was elected to Congress in 1847 and served two terms, during which his course was marked by bitter opposition to slavery. In politics he was a Whig, and afterward one of the founders of the Republican Party in New Jersey. In 1859 he became one of the state supreme court judges, which post he held until 1866. Two years later he went to Minnesota, and was there, by special appointment, judge of the 3d judicial district. He published some anti-slavery pamphlets and contributed to magazines. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 246.


VANGUARD. Advanced guard. (Scott, Military Dictionary, Van Nostrand, 1862, p.639 ).


VAN NOSTRAND, David, publisher, born in New York City, 5 December, 1811: died there, 14 June, 1886. He was educated at Union Hall, Jamaica, New York, and in 1830 entered the publishing-house of John P. Haven, who gave him an interest in the firm when he became of age. In 1834 he formed a partnership with William Dwight, but the financial crisis of 1837 led to its dissolution. Mr. Van Nostrand then accepted the appointment of clerk of accounts and disbursements under Captain John G. Barnard, at that time in charge of the defensive works of Louisiana and Texas, with headquarters at New Orleans. While so engaged he devoted attention to the study of scientific and military affairs, and on his return to New York City began the importation of military books for officers of the U. S. Army, afterward receiving orders from private individuals and from academic institutions for foreign books of science. His place of business was at first at the corner of John Street and Broadway, and as his trade increased he began the publication of standard works by American authors on military and scientific subjects. This extension, with the growing demands for books on scientific subjects, led to his removal to 23 Murray street, where he continued until his death. In 1869 he began the publication of " Van Nostrand's Engineering Magazine," a monthly journal, which was devoted to selections from foreign sources, but also contained original papers on mathematics. Mr. Van Nostrand was one of the founders of the St. Nicholas and Holland societies, and was an early member of the Century and Union league clubs of New York City. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 249-250.


VAN RENSSLAER, Henry, soldier, born in Albany, New York, in 1810; died in Cincinnati, Ohio, 23 March, 1864, was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1831, but resigned from the army the next year and engaged in farming near Ogdensburg, New York. He was a member of Congress in 1841-'3, having been chosen as a Whig, and in 1855-'60 was president of mining companies. At the beginning of the Civil War he was appointed chief-of-staff to General Winfield Scott, with the rank of brigadier-general, and he became inspector-general with the rank of colonel on the retirement of General Scott, served in the Department of the Rappahannock in April and August, 1862. subsequently in the 3d Army Corps, and in the Department of the Ohio from 17 September until his death. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 252.


VAN RENSSELAER, Thomas, 1800-1850, New York City, NY, African American abolitionist, editor.  Executive Committee, American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1840-1842.  Co-founded newspaper, The Ram’s Horn.  Van Rensselaer was formerly enslaved in the Mohawk Valley in New York.  He escaped from slavery in 1819.  He worked in the New York Vigilance Committee, which aided and defended fugitive slaves.  While in New York, he was an advocate for African American rights.  In 1849, he relocated to Philadelphia, where he continued his anti-slavery work. (Mabee, 1970, pp. 130, 270, 391n27; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 11, p. 317)


VAN SANTVOORD, Staats, clergyman, born in Schenectady, New York, 15 March, 1790; died in New Baltimore, New York, 29 May, 1882, was graduated at Union in 1811 and at New Brunswick Theological Seminary in 1814, ordained to the ministry of the Dutch Reformed church, and was pastor of the church of Belleville, New Jersey, in 1814-'28, of the church in Schodack, New York, in 1829-'34, and then he moved to New Baltimore, where he resided until his death. He retired after completing his fiftieth year in the active ministry of the Reformed Dutch church. In 1864 he was in the service of the Christian Commission at Nashville, Tennessee. His last public appearance was in his ninety-first year, when he attended the 200th anniversary of the Dutch Reformed church at Schenectady, of which his ancestor was pastor, delivering the benediction in Dutch. Union gave him the degree of D. D. in 1876. He published several sermons, and "A Spiritual Gift," a series of fifteen discourses (New York, 1851). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 254.


VAN SANTVOORD, Cornelius, clergyman, born in Belleville, New Jersey, 8 April, 1816, was graduated at Union in 1835, and studied at New Brunswick and Princeton Theological Seminaries. He became pastor of the Dutch Reformed church in Canastota, New York, in 1838, subsequently filled charges in New York state, was chaplain in the U. S. Army in 1861-'5, associate editor of the "Interior," Chicago, Illinois, in 1869-'71, and commissioner of schools in Ulster County, New York, in 1871-6. Rutgers gave him the degree of D. D. in 1855. He was a special correspondent of the “New York Times " during the Civil War, has published numerous magazine and newspaper articles, "Discourses and Miscellanies" (New York, 1856), and "Memoirs of Eliphalet Nott," with contributions by Professor Taylor Lewis (1876). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 254.


VAN VALKENBURGH, Robert Bruce, 1821-1888, lawyer, Union Colonel.  Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York.  Member of Congress 1861-1865.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 256; Congressional Globe)

VAN VALKENBURG, Robert Bruce, congressman, born in Steuben County, New York, 4 September, 1821; died at Suwanee Springs, Florida, 2 August, 1888. He received an academic education, adopted the profession of law, and served three terms in the New York assembly. When the Civil War opened he was placed in command of the state recruiting depot at Elmira, New York, and organized seventeen regiments for the field. He served in Congress in 1861-'5, having been chosen as a Republican, and took the field in 1862 as colonel of the 107th Regiment of New York Volunteers, which he commanded at Antietam. In the 38th Congress he was chairman of the committees on the militia, and expenditures in the state department. He was appointed by President Johnson in 1865 acting commissioner of Indian Affairs, during the absence of the commissioner, and in 1866-'9 was U. S. minister to Japan. He became a resident of Florida when he returned from that mission, and was chosen associate justice of the state supreme court, which place he held at his death. Judge Van Valkenburg was an able politician and jurist. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 256. 


VAN VLIET, Peter, Iowa Territory, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1839-1840.


VAN VLIET, Stewart, soldier, born in Ferrisburg, Vermont, 21 July, 1815. He was educated at the U. S. Military Academy, being graduated ninth in a class of forty-two in 1840, when he was promoted 2d lieutenant in the 3d U. S. Artillery. He served against the Seminole Indians and in garrison at several military posts in Louisiana, Georgia, and South Carolina, until 1846, when, having become 1st lieutenant and captain and assistant quartermaster. He was present at the battle of Monterey and siege of Vera Cruz, Mexico, in command of his company. Captain Van Vliet was in charge of the construction of Fort Laramie, Fort Kearny, and other frontier posts in 1847-'51, was actively employed in fitting out the Utah Expedition under Albert Sidney Johnston, and with General William S. Harney at the battle of Blue Water, 3 September, 1855, against the Sioux. He was chief quartermaster of the Army of the Potomac with rank of brigadier-general from August, 1861, till July, 1862, and rendered important service in fitting out troops for the field, and accompanied General George B. McClellan, serving under him in all the battles from Gaines's Mills to Malvern Hill. He was promoted major, 3 August, 1861, and lieutenant-colonel and deputy quartermaster-general, 29 July, 1866. He was on duty at New York City in 1862-'7, furnishing transportation and supplies, at Schuylkill Arsenal, Pennsylvania, in 1869, and was chief quartermaster of the Division of the Atlantic in 1872 and the Department of the Missouri in 1872-'5. He was brevetted major-general. U. S. Army, 13 March, 1865, for ''faithful and distinguished services during the war," and promoted to the full rank of colonel and assistant quartermaster-general, 6 June, 1872. On 22 January, 1881, General Van Vliet was retired from active service. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 257.


Van Wert, Georgia, October 9-10, 1864. Cavalry Corps of the Department of the Cumberland. During the northern movement of Hood from the vicinity of Atlanta into Alabama and Tennessee, the 3d cavalry division under Brigadier-General Judson Kilpatrick was attacked by the Confederate cavalry under Ferguson and after a severe fight succeeded in repulsing the enemy. Next morning Kilpatrick again met Ferguson, reinforced by Ross, on the mountains a mile and a half from town. The 3d Kentucky charged the pickets and drove them through the town, but was finally obliged to fall back on the main body of the division, which had just reached the top of the mountain. At 2:30 p. m. the Confederates attacked Kilpatrick, but were repulsed and a countercharge of the 3d brigade drove them in confusion. The casualties were not reported. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 888.


VAN WINKLE, Peter Godwin, 1808-1872.  U.S. Senator from newly-formed State of West Virginia.  Served as senator 1863-1869.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. (Appletons’, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 257; Congressional Globe; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 10, Pt. 1, p. 219)

VAN WINKLE, Peter G., senator, born in New York City, 7 September, 1808; died in Parkersburg, W. Virginia, 15 April, 1872. He moved to Parkersburg, Virginia, in 1835, and practised the profession of law there till 1852, when he became treasurer and subsequently president of a railroad company. He was a member of the Virginia constitutional convention in 1850, and of the Wheeling reorganizing convention in 1861, was in the West Virginia legislature from the formation of the new state till 1863, and in that year became U. S. Senator, having been chosen as a Unionist for the term that ended in 1869. He was chairman of the committee on pensions in that body, was a member of those on finance, pensions, post-offices, and post-roads, and in the impeachment of President Johnson was one of the members that voted for acquittal. In 1866 he was a delegate to the Philadelphia loyalists' convention. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 257.


VAN WYCK, Charles Henry, senator, born in Poughkeepsie. New York, 10 May, 1824. He was graduated at Rutgers in 1843, adopted the profession of law, and in 1850-'6 was district attorney of Sullivan County, New York. He served in Congress in 1859-'63. having been chosen as a Republican, and while holding his seat in that body became colonel of the 10th Legion, or 56th Regiment, of New York Volunteers. He served with General George B. McClellan in the Peninsula Campaign, and in 1865 was made brevet brigadier-general of volunteers. He was again in Congress in 1867-'71, and was chairman of the committee on retrenchments. He moved to Nebraska in 1874, engaged in farming, was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1876, state senator in 1876-'80, and in 1881 became U. S. Senator. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 257.


VAN ZANDT, John, died 1847, abolitionist.  Member and participant in the Underground Railroad in Ohio.  Van Zant was a former slaveholder from Kentucky.  He was sued in court by the owner of slaves he harbored in his home in Ohio.  His case was heard before the U.S. Supreme Court in Jones vs. Van Zandt in 1847.  The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Jones, upholding the principle that slavery was constitutionally protected.  Van Zandt was financially ruined by the courtand legal fees.  He died that same year.


VARNELL'S STATION, GEORGIA, February 22, 1864. (See Dalton, Palmer's Demonstration on.)


VARNELL'S STATION, GEORGIA, May 7, 1864. Cavalry, Army of the Cumberland and Army of the Ohio. Early on the morning of this date, while General Sherman's forces were concentrating for the advance on Atlanta, General Stoneman relieved McCook's pickets and soon afterward the enemy drove in the Union outposts on the Cleveland and Dalton pike. Stoneman established a line extending from Varnell's station along the ridge to the west of the railroad, and this position was held until 2:30 p. m., when a large body of infantry gained the Ringgold road, forcing back Stoneman's left. Colonel La Grange, commanding the 2nd brigade of McCook's division, came up with a detachment of the 2nd Ind. cavalry, drove the enemy some distance beyond the town and encamped there for the night. The only casualties reported were in the 2nd Ind. viz.: One captain, 1 lieutenant and 46 men captured, and 2 men wounded and taken prisoners. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 888.

VARNELL'S STATION, GEORGIA, May 9, 1864. 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, Army of the Cumberland. The brigade, commanded by Colonel O. H. La Grange, was ordered to move forward on the Cleveland and Dalton road to develop the position and strength of the enemy. About 2 miles from Varnell's station the Confederate pickets were driven in for about a mile, when their reserve, consisting of three brigades of cavalry and a division of infantry, was found drawn up in line of battle. Part of the 4th Ind. had been dismounted as skirmishers and these were being pressed back, when a battalion of the 2nd Ind. came up on the left of the dismounted men and checked the enemy's advance. Seeing the enemy were massing their superior numbers against him La Grange ordered the recall sounded, when the Confederates made a rush, capturing a large part of the command and driving the remainder in some confusion to the woods in the rear. La Grange was captured after having two horses shot from under him. Lieutenant-Colonel Stewart assumed command and retired with the brigade to Varnell's station. Casualties reported: 5 killed, 42 wounded and 93 missing. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 888.


VARNELL'S STATION, GEORGIA, May 12, 1864. Confederate Generals Johnston and Wheeler give an account in their reports of the defeat of a body of Federal cavalry and the destruction of a large number of wagons near Varnell’s station on this date, but no mention of the affair is made in the Union reports. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, pp. 888-889.


VASHON, George Boyer, 1824-1876, African American, writer, lawyer, anti-slavery activist. (Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 11, p. 327)


VASHON, John B., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, abolitionist.  Manager, 1833-1837, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. (Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833)


VASHON, Susan Paul Smith, 1838-1912, African American, educator, writer.  Wrote articles for abolitionist papers. (Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 11, p. 329)


VASSAR, John Ellison, lay preacher, born near Poughkeepsie, New York, 18 January, 1813; died in Poughkeepsie, 6 December, 1878, was the son of Thomas Vassar. In early life he was employed in the brewery of Matthew Vassar, but, having become a religious man of very earnest convictions, he left the service of his cousin and devoted his entire life to self-sacrificing labors for the good of others. He was employed in 1850 by the American Tract Society as a colporteur, his first missionary work being in Illinois and other western states. Subsequently New York and New England were his field of service. During the Civil War he was at the front, engaged in religious labors of all kinds among the soldiers. Just before the battle of Gettysburg he was captured by General James E. B. Stuart's cavalry, who were glad to let him go to escape his importunate exhortations and prayers. At the conclusion of the war he visited, in the service of the Tract Society, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida. Few men of his day travelled more extensively or were more widely known than " Uncle John Vassar," as he was everywhere called. […]. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 264.


VASSAR, Thomas Edwin, clergyman, born in Poughkeepsie, New York, 3 December, 1834, is son of William Vassar. His plans for entering college were frustrated by family misfortunes, and he was ordained to the Baptist ministry in 1857, without the advantages of a formal education. He has been successively settled as pastor at Amenia, New York, Lynn, Massachusetts, Flemington, New Jersey, and Newark, New Jersey, and is now in Kansas City, Missouri. He was for one year chaplain of the 150th New York Regiment, and was at several battles, including Gettysburg. He is the author of a memoir of his cousin, John Ellison Vassar, entitled "Uncle John Vassar " (New York. 1879), of which about 20,000 copies have been sold in America and England. He has received the degree of D. D. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 264.


VAUGHAN ROAD, VIRGINIA, September 29—October 1, 1864. (See Poplar Springs Church.)


VAUGHAN ROAD, VIRGINIA, October 27, 1864. (See Hatcher's Run, same date.)

VAUGHAN ROAD, VIRGINIA, February 5-7, 1865. (See Hatcher's Run.)


VAUGHAN ROAD, VIRGINIA, March 29, 1865. (See Five Forks.)


VAUGHN, MISSISSIPPI, May 12, 1864. 1th, 72nd, and 76th Illinois Infantry; expedition to Yazoo City. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 889.


VAUGHT'S HILL, TENNESSEE, March 20, 1863. 2nd Brigade, 5th Division, 14th Army Corps. Colonel Albert S. Hall, while operating with his brigade in the vicinity of Murfreesboro, learned that a large Confederate force under Morgan was also in the neighborhood and would in all probability attack him on the morning of the 20th and accordingly he took position on Vaught's hill 3 miles from Milton. Twenty minutes afterward the enemy's advance was seen coming along the pike and was quickly scattered by a shell. The contour of the ground was such that the Confederates were enabled to again approach and it became necessary for Hall to draw his whole command back, converging his flank regiments to a line with his center along the top of the hillock. The enemy's cavalry was meantime moving around on both sides and it was not long before Hall was completely surrounded. One of the 2 pieces of artillery was posted on the crest of the hill and swinging as on a pivot was successful in pouring a fire on every part of the Confederate line; the other gun was placed on the turnpike and also did effective service. Several times the enemy assaulted, but each time he was repulsed. From 11:30 a. m. until 2:15 p. m. the unequal contest was continued, when, finding the efforts to break the circle were futile, the Confederate cavalry was withdrawn, leaving only enough on the flanks to support the artillery. About 4:30 the whole force retired and a little later Hall was reinforced. The Union loss was 6 killed, 42 wounded and 8 captured or missing. The Confederate casualties were not definitely given, but were estimated by a Confederate captain at 125 killed and wounded. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 889.


VAUX, Calvert (vawks), landscape architect, born in London, England, 20 December, 1824. He was educated at the Merchant tailors' school, and was a pupil to Lewis N. Cottingham, architect in London. In 1848 he came to this country at the suggestion of Andrew J. Downing, whose architectural partner he became, and with whom he was associated in laying out the grounds that surround the capitol and Smithsonian institution, Washington, D. C, and other work of landscape gardening. On his suggestion, public competition was invited for the plans of Central park, and, in connection with Frederick L. Olmsted, he presented a design which was accepted, and possessed among its original features that of transverse traffic roads. During the completion of the work Mr. Vaux held the office of consulting architect to the department of parks. In 1860 he presented a design for Prospect Park, Brooklyn, which was accepted. Subsequently he was associated with Mr. Olmsted in designing the parks in Chicago and Buffalo, and the state reservation at Niagara Falls. They also designed the plans for Riverside and Morningside parks in New York City, and Mr. Vaux is now landscape architect of the department of public parks, with charge of the improvements of city parks. Meanwhile he has been exceedingly fertile as an architect, designing country residences in Newport and elsewhere, also dwellings and public buildings in New York City. The Belvedere in Central park, which is shown in the accompanying illustration, was designed by him. He has published "Villas and Cottages (New York, 1860). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 269-270.


VEATCH, James Clifford (veech), soldier, born near Elizabethtown, Harrison County, Indiana, 19 December, 1819. He was educated in common schools and under private tutors, was admitted to the bar, practised for many years, and was auditor of Spencer County, Indiana, from 1841 till 1855. He was in the legislature in 1861-'2, became colonel of the 25th Regiment of Indiana Volunteers, 9 August, 1861, brigadier-general of volunteers, 28 April, 1862, and brevet major-general in August, 1865, at which time he retired from the army. He was engaged at Fort Donelson, Shiloh, the sieges of Corinth and Vicksburg, the Atlanta Campaign, the siege and capture of Mobile, and many other actions during the Civil War. He became adjutant-general of Indiana in 1869, and was collector of internal revenue from April, 1870, till August. 1883. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 271.


VEDETTES OR VIDETTES. Sentries upon outposts, so placed that they can best observe the movements of an enemy, and communicate by signal to their respective posts and with each other. (Scott, Military Dictionary, Van Nostrand, 1862, p. 639).


VELASCO, TEXAS, August 11, 1862. A report from Colonel Bates of the 13th Texas infantry (Confederate), commanding the post of Velasco, states that a steam vessel of 800 tons burden entered the harbor and opened fire on the battery, which promptly responded. After a short time the vessel withdrew out of range. Union reports make no mention of the affair. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 889.


VELASCO, TEXAS, March 21, 1864. Captain W. S. Herndon (Confederate), commanding the post of Velasco, in a report to Colonel Joseph Bates stated that on the afternoon of the 21st the Federal blockading vessel off Velasco came close in and commenced firing at the batteries. The latter immediately replied and the duel was kept up for several hours. No casualties were reported. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 889.


VELOCITIES. (See INITIAL.) Measurement of distances, by sound. The velocity of sound, in one second of time at 32 Fahrenheit in dry air, is about 1,090 English feet. For any higher temperature, add 1 foot for every degree of the thermometer above 32. The measurement of distances by sound should always be made, if possible, in calm, dry weather. In cases of wind, the velocity per second must be corrected by the quantity, f cos. d; f being the force of the wind in feet per second, and d the angle which its direction makes with that of the sound. Or, in general, in dry air, v = 1,090 feet -f (t 32) cos. d

VELOCITY AND FORCE OF WINDS.


Velocity in miles per 'hour. A wind, when it does not exceed the velocity opposite to it, may be denominated Velocity per second. Force on a square foot. 6.8 13.6 19.5 34.1 47.7 54.5 68.2 81.8 102.3 a gentle pleasant wind feet. 10 20 30 5K '70 80 100 120 150 lbs. 0.129 0.915 2.059 5.718 11.207 14.638 22.872 32.926 51.426 a very brisk gale & high wind a very high wind a storm or tempest a hurricane a violent hurricane, that tears up trees, etc. (Scott, Military Dictionary, Van Nostrand, 1862, p. 639).


VENABLE, Abraham Woodson, congressman, born in Prince Edward County, Virginia, 17 October, 1799; died in Oxford, North Carolina, 24 February, 1876, was graduated at Hampden Sidney in 1816, and at Princeton in 1819, in the mean time studying medicine. He was admitted to the bar in 1821, moved to North Carolina in 1828, and established a large practice. He was a presidential elector on the Jackson ticket in 1832, and on the Van Buren-Johnson ticket in 1836, was chosen to Congress in 1846, and served by re-election till 1853, but was defeated in the next canvass. During his service in that body he gained reputation as an able debater and an opponent of the Free-Soil or anti-slavery policy and that of nullification. He was a presidential elector on the Breckinridge and Lane ticket in 1860, and in 1861-'4 a member of the Confederate Congress. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 275.


VENABLE, Charles Scott, educator, born in Prince Edward County. Virginia, 19 April, 1827, was graduated at Hampden Sidney in 1842 and at the University of Virginia in 1848, and studied at Berlin in 1852 and at Bonn in 1854. He was professor of mathematics at Hampden Sidney in 1848-'56, of physics and chemistry in the University of Georgia in 1856, and of mathematics and astronomy in the University of South Carolina in 1858-'61. He became captain of engineers in the Confederate Army in the last-named year, and in 1862-'5 was lieutenant-colonel and aide-de-camp to General Robert E. Lee, participating in all the important battles in which the Army of Northern Virginia took part. He became professor of mathematics in the University of Virginia in 1865, and still holds that chair. In 1870-'3 he was chairman of the faculty, and in 1887 was again chosen to that office. In 1866, he was one of the five commissioners appointed to visit Labrador to observe the solar eclipse. The University of Virginia gave him the degree of LL. D. in 1868. He has published a series of mathematical text-books (New York, 1869-'75). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 275,


VENARD, Stephan, 1823-1891, Lebanon, Ohio, abolitionist.  Active in the Underground Railroad in Indiana.


VENT. The opening or passage in fire-arms, by means of which the charge is ignited. The diameter of the vent is two-tenths of an inch in ordnance, except the eprouvette, which is one-tenth. The vents of brass guns are bored in vent pieces of wrought copper, which are screwed into the gun. (Scott, Military Dictionary, Van Nostrand, 1862, p. 640).


VENUS POINT, GEORGIA, February 15, 1862. Detachment of 3d Rhode Island Artillery. Four Confederate gunboats attempted to pass the Federal battery at Venus Point near Savannah, but after an engagement of half an hour they were driven back, one of the vessels being disabled. The Union battery was manned by the 3d Rhode Island artillery. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 889.

VERA CRUZ, MISSOURI, November 3, 1864. One company of the 46th Missouri Infantry. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 889.


VERDICT. (See FINDING.)


VERDON, VIRGINIA, July 22, 1862. A Confederate report contains mention of an attack by Federal cavalry on a cavalry camp near Verdon. The Union men drove the enemy out, destroyed everything of value, and then retired. No casualties were reported.


VERMILLION BAYOU, LOUISIANA, November 11, 1863. (See Carrion Crow Bayou, same date) The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 889.


VERMILLIONVILLE, LOUISIANA, October 10, 1863. Detachments of 13th and 19th Army Corps. During operations in the Teche country of Louisiana the Federal cavalry and a section of Nims' battery crossed Vermillion bayou. Two shells scattered the Confederates drawn up near Vermillionville and the cavalry pursued a mile and a half beyond the town. The casualties were not reported. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 890.


VERMILLIONVILLE, LOUISIANA, October 16, 1863. Detachment of 19th Army Corps. Major-General W. B. Franklin reported from Vermillionville at 3:40 p. m. on the 16th: "The enemy made an attack on our pickets about 10 o'clock, but without any result. My casualties: None killed, 6 wounded." The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 890.


Vernon, Indiana, July 12, 1863. Indiana Minute Men; Morgan's raid. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 890.


VERNON RIVER, GEORGIA, December 14-21, 1864. (See Fort Beaulieu.)


VERONA, MISSISSIPPI, December 25, 1864. Cavalry Division, Department of the Mississippi. In the course of an expedition from Memphis to destroy the Mobile & Ohio railroad Brigadier-General Benjamin H. Grierson surprised Forrest's dismounted camp at Verona. Twenty-six men were captured, the remainder dispersed, and 2 trains of 16 cars each loaded with supplies, 300 wagons, 4,000 stands of arms, and a large amount of ordnance stores, etc., were destroyed. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 890.


VERSAILLES, MISSOURI, July 13, 1864. Citizen Guards. Brigadier-General Egbert B. Brown reported that "on Wednesday night, 13th instant, Gregg's band of 30 men attempted to rob Versailles, Morgan county. Were attacked and driven off by the citizen guards of that place." Via's House, Virginia, June 3, 1864. (See Haw's Shop.) The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 890.


VESEY, Denmark, c. 1767-1822, African American abolitionist. (Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 11, p. 339; Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 603; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 10, Pt. 1, p. 258; Hinks, Peter P., & John R. McKivigan, Eds., Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition.  Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood, 2007, Vol. 2, pp. 721-723)

VESEY, Denmark, conspirator, born about 1767; died in Charleston, South Carolina, 2 July, 1822. He was an African of great physical strength and energy, who had been purchased in St. Thomas, when fourteen years old, by a sea-captain of Charleston, South Carolina, whom he accompanied in his voyages for twenty years, learning various languages. He purchased his freedom in 1800, and from that time worked as a carpenter in Charleston, exercising a strong influence over the Negroes. For four years he taught the slaves that it would be right to strike a blow for their liberty, comparing their situation to that of the Israelites in bondage, and repeating the arguments against slavery that were made in Congress by speakers on the Missouri Compromise Bill. In conjunction with a Negro named Peter Poyas, he organized a plot for a general insurrection of slaves in and about Charleston, which was disclosed by a Negro whom one of the conspirators approached on 25 May, 1822. Several thousand slaves from neighboring islands, organized in military formations and provided with pikes and daggers, were to arrive in canoes, as many were accustomed to do on Sunday, and with one stroke take possession of the city, the forts, and the shipping in the harbor. Nearly all the slaves of Charleston and its vicinity, many from remoter plantations, and a large number of whites, were in the plot. The leaders that were first arrested maintained such secrecy and composure that they were discharged from custody, and proceeded to develop their plans. An attempt was made to carry them out on 16 June, but the insurrection was promptly suppressed. At length, on the evidence of informers, the chief conspirators were arrested and arraigned for trial on 19 June. The two courts were organized under a colonial law, and consisted each of two lawyers and five freeholders, among whom were William Drayton, Robert Y. Hayne, Joel R. Poinsett, and Nathaniel Hayward. Denmark Vesey showed much dialectic skill in cross-examining witnesses by counsel and in his final plea. He and five of the ringleaders were hanged first, and twenty-nine others on later dates, all save one keeping up to the end their calm demeanor and absolute reticence, even under torture. On the day of Vesey's execution a second effort was made to rouse the blades, but two brigades of troops, on guard day and night, were sufficient to deter them from action. The slaves were ready, however, to embrace the first opportunity, and re-enforcements of United States troops were sent in August to guard against a renewal of the insurrection. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 603


VEST, George Graham, senator, born in Frankfort, Kentucky, 6 December, 1830. He was graduated at Centre College in 1848, and in the law department of Transylvania University in March, 1853. Beginning practice in central Missouri, he was chosen a presidential elector on the Democratic ticket in 1860, and in the same year was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives. In the legislative debates of the session of 1861 he was an ardent supporter of southern views. He relinquished his seat in order to take his place in 1863 as a representative from Missouri in the Confederate Senate, of which he was a member for two years. After the downfall of the Confederacy he resumed the practice of law in Sedalia, Missouri, whence he moved in 1877 to Kansas City, Missouri. He was elected to the U. S. Senate, taking his seat on 18 March, 1879, became prominent by his powers as a debater and orator, and was re-elected for the term ending 3 March, 1891. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 284.


VETERAN. An old soldier. Twenty years' service in the army entitles an enlisted soldier to the privileges of the army asylum. (See ASYLUM.) (Scott, Military Dictionary, Van Nostrand, 1862, p. 640)


VETERINARY. Veterinary surgeons are alone competent to treat grave cases of wounds and diseases in horses. Officers, however, may prevent accidents by watchfulness, recognize the existence of ailments, and by prompt care frequently relieve the horse entirely.

Limping. The particular lameness is distinguished at a walk by observing that if a fore foot is lame, the horse raises the corresponding fore quarter before putting his foot to the ground. If a hind foot, he raises the hind quarter. At a trot, the contrary takes place. The horse should be watched in passing over ground of different degrees of hardness. For all lameness not connected with the shoe, prescribe rest, cold bathing, poultices. When there is pain in the joints, with swelling of the tissues, rub with spirits. Lameness from shoeing may proceed: 1st, from pricking. If the nail be at once withdrawn, and the pricking is not deep, the lameness is not immediate. It is necessary, however, to enlarge the opening, introduce the essence of turpentine and dress with pledget, or lint coated with the same substance; act in the same way if the wound is old, after having taken out the nail, and cleared away to the bottom of the opening.

2. Bleyme, or inflammation in the foot of the horse between the sole and the bone. It is recognized by a red spot. Clear away the evil to the bottom, and dress as above. To prevent a return of the disease, it is perhaps necessary to clear away to the bottom of the offensive part for several successive shoeings.

3. Solbature is caused by the iron resting on the solo, or by a hard body introduced between the iron and the sole: clear the wounded part, apply a pledget coated with turpentine and retained in its place by a splint. Readjust the shoe.

4. Burnt sole is caused by an iron being applied when too hot and held too long. Act as in case of solbature.

These accidents from shoeing are all shown by limping. The precise seat of the accident is ascertained by pinching with the farrier's pincers. If the horse is to march, attach the shoe with but few nails, simply to hold it in its place.

Founder. There is great heat in the foot without apparent cause. The horse walks with difficulty, resting on the heel; he shows discomfort, want of appetite, fever. It is necessary to unshoe him; cut the horn of the hoof to 1 the quick towards the toe; even make it bleed; bathe with cold salt water; envelop the whole foot with linen soaked in vinegar to the crown; later, rub hard from the ham to the knees with essence of turpentine and camphorated spirits: diet, bran with water. The horse must not march.

Chaps, serosity of limbs. These exact cleanliness, washing with warm water and a little spirit of wine, and towards the termination of the ailment, with sub-acetate of lead.

Injuries. At the least appearance of tumor stop the development of inflammation by washing with fresh water, vinegared or salted. Strengthen the tissues by friction with brandy, united with soap or camphor. Take off the load. Put on the saddle in such a way as to leave a space between it and the tumor. If the ailment increases, notwithstanding those precautions, it is necessary to relieve the horse from all weight, continuing the washings and rubbings. If the tumor still increases, open it. When opened wash the wound once a day only; do not remove the pus entirely; prevent its contact with the air by means of oakum or lint. When the wound begins to heal, its cicatrization may be hastened by washing with sub-acetate of lead. When from their appearance tumors of the withers and loins seem to be soft and inclose red water, cut the hair smooth and apply a blister ointment, which it is rarely necessary to renew. When a horse is wounded under the tail, clean the wound and put in it the unguentum populi. For slight contusions from kicking, use twice a day the unguentum populi, and then rub the upper part with camphorated spirits. If the pain is severe, bleed and foment with warm mallows water.

Internal affections. The ordinary symptoms are: dry and frequent cough, uneasiness and sadness, disgust of food, falling off; alteration of flank; hair not smooth; fever. Separate the horse from others; put him to diet on bran, attending to the prescriptions of the veterinary surgeon. Examine the eyes, gently reversing the eyelids, pass the hand into the mouth of the horse; if the eye is red and the mouth very hot, bleed the horse, drawing from him 8 lbs. of blood; leave him two hours without eating; rub him down well, cover him and give him some injections; replace his allowance of oats with warm barbotage of barley-flour as much as possible. For want of appetite it is sufficient sometimes to sprinkle the forage with salt water. If the horse, in rising or lying down, looks at his flanks with an unquiet air he kas colic. In this case it is often sufficient in order to cure him to rub hard with rumpled linen upon the belly, and apply injections of decoctions of mallows or lettuce. If an hour or two after the first trouble the colic is not over, call a veterinary surgeon; death may take place in a short time. If a horse tries often to urinate, and shows pain, it is retention of urine. Recourse must be had to emollient injections, and to nitrated drinks. In certain diseases of the breast prompt succor is necessary. In grave cases, in the absence of the veterinary, put blisters or setons upon the breast, and bleed. The necessary tools, &c., are: syringes, bistouries, tape and needles to setons, dry oakum, camphorated spirits, soap, nitre, essence of turpentine, liquid, sub-acetate of lead, foot ointment, and unguentum populi. (See GLANDERS; HORSE. Consult Memorial des Officiers D’Infanterie et de Cavalerie; SKINNER'S Youatt.) (Scott, Military Dictionary, Van Nostrand, 1862, pp. 640-642).


VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. Using contemptuous or disrespectful words against, punishable by cashiering or otherwise at the discretion of a court-martial; (ART. 5.) (Scott, Military Dictionary, Van Nostrand, 1862, p. 642).


VICKERS, George, senator, born in Chestertown, Kent County, Maryland, 19 November, 1801: died there, 8 October, 1879. He acquired a classical education, was employed in the county clerk's office for several years, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1832, and practised in Chestertown. He was a delegate to the Whig National Convention of 1852. When the Civil War began he was appointed major-general of the state militia. He was a presidential elector on the McClellan ticket in 1864, and one of the vice-presidents of the Union Convention of 1866. In 1866-'7 he was a member of the state senate. In 1868 he was elected U. S. Senator for the term that ended on 3 March, 1873, in the place of Philip F. Thomas, who had been denied the seat. He took a conspicuous part in the debate on the 15th Amendment to the Federal Constitution. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 287.


VICKSBURG, MISSISSIPPI, June 26-29, 1862. U. S. Fleet, commanded by Commodore David G. Farragut.


VICKSBURG, MISSISSIPPI, SIEGE OF. May 18 to July 4, 1863. Army of the Tennessee and the Mississippi Flotilla. By the reduction of New Madrid, the surrender of Island No. 10, the evacuation of Forts Pillow and Randolph, and the destruction of the Confederate fleet in front of Memphis the Mississippi river was opened to Vicksburg, which place presented a more formidable opposition than any of the points that had been overcome. The first campaign against Vicksburg was planned in the fall of 1862. Sherman was to move down the Mississippi from Memphis with the right wing of the Army of the Tennessee, while Grant, with the left wing, was to attack from the east. Grant established a depot of supplies at Holly Springs, but his stores there were surrendered to the enemy by Colonel Murphy on December 20, and about the same time Forrest made a raid through northern Mississippi, cutting Grant's communications with the north. These unfortunate events prevented Grant from carrying out his part of the programme, as he was compelled to fall back and open up communication with Memphis. Sherman, unadvised of what had happened to the left wing, went ahead and fought the battle of Chickasaw bluffs, which ended disastrously for the Federal arms. Thus the combined attack, partly by water and party by land, against the Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi, ended in a complete failure. Vicksburg is situated on the east bank of the Mississippi, upon a range of bluffs about 200 feet high. On the western side of the river is a low bottom and directly opposite is a long, narrow peninsula, formed by an abrupt bend of the river a short distance above the city. On this, peninsula, at the time of the operations against Vicksburg, stood the little town of De Soto, the terminus of the Shreveport & Vicksburg railroad. At the bend referred to the bluffs trend away from the river into a range called Walnut hills, leaving a lowland through which flow the Yazoo river and numerous bayous. Near Warrenton, some 7 or 8 miles below Vicksburg, the bluffs again recede from the river, making the natural location one well suited for defense. Protected on three sides by the river and its low bottoms, it required only a line of intrenchments from the Warrenton ridge on the south to the Walnut hills on the north, to guard against an attack from the eastward, to render the position almost impregnable to assault. Added to these advantages was the fact that the plateau formed by the bluffs was full of deep ravines, which made it impossible to maneuver troops there with any degree of success. After the failure of the first campaign Grant moved his army to Memphis, and thence down the river to Young's point, 9 miles above Vicksburg on the Louisiana side of the river, where he arrived and assumed command on February 2, 1863. The army in the Vicksburg campaign consisted of the 9th, 13th, 15th, 16th and 17th army corps, respectively commanded by Major-Generals John G. Parke, John A McClernand, William T. Sherman, Cadwallader C. Washburn and James B. McPherson, and two brigades from the District of Northeast Louisiana under the command of Brigadier-General Elias S. Dennis. During the operations General McClernand was superseded in the command of the 13th corps by Major-General E. O. C. Ord. The 9th corps was composed of the 1st and 2nd divisions, commanded by Brigadier-Generals Thomas Welsh and Robert B. Potter. In the 13th corps the 9th division was commanded by Brigadier-General Peter J. Osterhaus, the 10th by Brigadier-General Andrew J. Smith, the 12th by Brigadier-General Alvin P. Hovey, and the 14th by Brigadier-General Eugene A. Carr. The 15th corps was composed of the 1st, 2nd and 3d divisions, commanded by Brigadier Generals Frederick Steele, Frank P. Blair and James M. Tuttle. The 16th corps included the 1st, 4th and provisional divisions, commanded by Brigadier-Generals William Sooy Smith, Jacob Lauman and Nathan Kimball. From May 13 to 20 Lauman's division was temporarily attached to the 15th corps. The 17th corps contained four divisions, the 3d, 6th and 7th, and one commanded by Brigadier-General Francis J. Herron. The 3d division was commanded by Brigadier-General John A. Logan, the 6th by Brigadier-General John McArthur, and the 7th by Brigadier-Generals Isaac F. Quinby, Marcellus M. Crocker and John E. Smith, successively. At the beginning of the campaign the Union army numbered about 43,000 men, but it was increased by reinforcements until at the close of operations Grant had 75,000 men about the city and its environs. A valuable adjunct to the army in the reduction of Vicksburg was the Mississippi Flotilla, under the command of Rear-Adm. David D. Porter. It was composed of the flag-ship Benton; the gunboat Essex; the ironclads DeKalb (former the St. Louis), Cairo, Carondelet, Cincinnati, Louisville, Mound City, Pittsburg, Choctaw, Lafayette, Chillicothe, Indianola and Tuscumbia; the Rodgers gunboats Conestoga, Lexington and Tyler; the Ellet rams Fulton, Horner, Lancaster, Lioness, Mingo, Monarch, Queen of the West, Sampson and Switzerland; the tinclads Brilliant, Cricket, Forest Rose, Glide, Juliet, Linden, Marmora, Petrel, Rattler, Romeo and Signal; the mortar boats Abraham, Clara Dolsen, General Lyon, Grampus, Great Western, Judge Torrence, New National and Red Rover, and the despatch boat William H. Brown. On March 14-15 the following vessels, belonging to the West Gulf Squadron and commanded by Rear-Adm. David G. Farragut, passed the batteries at Port Hudson and assisted in the siege of Vicksburg: Hartford (flagship), Mississippi, Monongahela, Richmond, Genesee, Kineo, Albatross, Estrella and Arizona. In addition to these vessels various gunboats participated in some of the operations, viz.: Alexandria, Argosy, Black Hawk, Champion, Covington, Curlew, Hastings, Exchange, Key West, Kenwood, Moose, New Era, Naumkeag, Pawpaw, Peosta, Prairie Bird, Queen City, Reindeer, St. Clair, Silver Cloud, Silver Lake, Springfield, Tawah and Victory. Opposed to this force was the Confederate army under the command of Lieutenant-General John C. Pemberton, consisting of the divisions of Major-Generals W. W. Loring, Carter L. Stevenson, John H. Forney, Martin L. Smith and John S. Bowen, the river batteries, commanded by Col . Edward Higgins, and some unattached troops. The strength of the Confederate forces at Vicksburg has been variously estimated at from 40,000 to 60,000 men, the latter figure being Grant's estimate. Pemberton, in his report, says that when he moved within the defenses of Vicksburg his available force aggregated about 28,000 men, but as over 31,000 were surrendered as prisoners of war after a siege of nearly two months, it is evident that his statement of his force is too low. The battle of Chickasaw bluffs had demonstrated the strength of the Confederate works on the north side of the city, and Grant decided to gain a foothold below and attack from the south. To do this it was necessary to transport the army and its supplies to some point down the river. The Queen of the West ran past the batteries in front of Vicksburg on the night of February 2, and the Indianola on the night of the 13th. Although these single vessels had passed safely, it was regarded as too hazardous an undertaking to attempt the passage with a large number of transports loaded with men and supplies, and a channel for the boats was sought elsewhere. Three routes presented themselves for consideration. One was the canal that had been excavated by General Williams across the southern part of the peninsula opposite the city, in June, 1862; the second was to connect Lake Providence near the Arkansas line, with the Mississippi by a canal about a mile long and send the fleet through Louisiana via the Tensas, Black and Red rivers to a point on the Mississippi below Natchez; the third was the Yazoo pass route on the eastern side of the river. Work was commenced on the Williams canal early in February, its course being changed to insure a better current, and its construction was pushed vigorously. Rainy weather set in and continued until March 7, just as the canal was about completed, when the levee gave way, inundating the canal and the camps west of it, and forcing the abandonment of the enterprise. Attention was then turned to the Lake Providence route, which had been examined by engineers and pronounced practicable, and by March 16 a canal was completed connecting the lake with the river, but before it was turned to any account Grant determined to try the route via the Yazoo pass, the Coldwater and Tallahatchie rivers, in the hope of gaining the high ground on the Yazoo above Haynes' bluff. Yazoo pass was a bayou, connecting the Mississippi, through Moon lake, with the Coldwater river, nearly opposite Helena, Arkansas. In early times it had been used for the passage of boats from Memphis to Yazoo City, but some years before the beginning of the war it had been closed by a strong levee to reclaim a large tract of land subject to overflow. This route had been under consideration from the first. On February 3 the levee was blown up by a mine and four days later a gunboat entered the pass. The Confederate spies and pickets had kept Pemberton well informed regarding every movement Grant made, and when it was learned that the Federals were preparing to advance by the Yazoo, steps were taken to offset the movement. Yazoo pass, as well as the Coldwater river, ran through a forest. The Confederates felled a large number of trees into the water, thus impeding the progress of the vessel and causing a tedious delay in removing the obstructions, the Coldwater not being reached until the 21st, when the 13th division of McClernand's corps, Brigadier General Leonard F. Ross commanding, was ordered to pass through to test the availability of the route for a larger body of troops. Ross was delayed in procuring boats and did not reach the Coldwater until March 2. On the 5th Grant ordered McPherson to move his whole corps, about 30,000 men, down to Yazoo City and there effect a lodgment, while two divisions of cavalry were to move to the eastward and cut the enemy's communications. Pemberton in the meantime had sent Loring, with about 2,000 men and 8 heavy guns to the mouth of the Yallabusha to dispute the passage of the Yazoo. About 5 miles below the mouth of the Yallabusha, where the waters of the Yazoo and Tallahatchie are brought within a short distance of each other by a sharp bend, Loring constructed a line of works, to which he gave the name of Fort Pemberton. The delay encountered by the Federals in clearing the streams above gave Loring plenty of time to get the fort in a good state of defense, and when the gunboats and transports with Ross' division arrived before the fort on March 11, they found the Confederates prepared to give battle. As the ground in front of the fort was under water a charge on the works was out of the question, and the only thing that could be done was for the gunboats to try to silence the enemy's guns. On the 12th a land battery was established about 800 yards from the fort and the next day the bombardment was continued, but without any perceptible injury to the fort. Ross moved back up the Tallahatchie until he met Quinby's division. Quinby, being the senior officer, assumed command and ordered the whole expedition back to Fort Pemberton, where, after a short bombardment on the 23d, he determined to send to Helena for a pontoon bridge, by means of which he could cross the Yallabusha, gain the rear of the fort, and by cutting off communications compel its surrender, but before the movement could be executed a despatch was received from Grant, ordering the entire force to return to the Mississippi. While Ross was working his way down the Tallahatchie Grant was informed that Loring was being reinforced from Vicksburg and, fearing that Ross might be surrounded and captured, planned an expedition to relieve him and at the same time reach the Yazoo above Haynes' bluff. The route selected was up the Yazoo to Steele's bayou; thence up that bayou for about 40 miles to Black bayou; through that to Deer creek; up Deer creek for about 30 miles; then through a cross stream known as Rolling Fork to the Sunflower river, and down that stream to the Yazoo. Porter, with the Pittsburg, Louisville, Mound City, Cincinnati and Carondelet, four mortar boats and two tugs, accompanied by Sherman, with one division of his corps, started up the Yazoo on March 16, preceded by the 8th Missouri to remove trees, etc., from the streams. On the evening of the 18th Porter was within a few miles of Rolling Fork, and it began to look as if this expedition was to be successful. But the enemy had learned of the movement and sent a brigade of infantry, with several pieces of artillery, up the Sunflower to head it off. A battery was planted at the mouth of the Rolling Fork and an attempt made to get in the rear of Porter, with a view to cutting off his retreat and capturing his gunboats. Porter sent word to Sherman, who hurried forward his troops and on the 21st he had a sharp skirmish with the Confederates, driving them back and extricating Porter from his predicament . The expedition now turned back and on the 27th reached the Mississippi, adding another failure to the efforts to gain a position on Pemberton's flank. Two months had now been spent in futile efforts to find a way by which the army could be transferred to a point below or in the rear of Vicksburg. Although somewhat disappointed, Grant was not altogether discouraged. The situation was carefully canvassed and but three plans presented themselves as being at all feasible: 1st, a direct assault on the enemy's works; 2nd, to return to Memphis and reopen a campaign in the rear of Vicksburg; or 3d, to find a way through the bayous and swamps on the western side of the Mississippi, cross that river and move against the city from the south in accordance with the original scheme. The idea of a direct assault was rejected as too hazardous, defeat being almost certain. Sherman urged the adoption of the second method as the one most practicable, but the press and the public at the north were clamoring for aggressive action, Grant was being daily characterized as a failure, and many were urging the president to relieve him of the command of the army. To return to Memphis would look like a retreat. Probably for this reason, more than any other, Grant resolved to try the third plan. It was full of risk; failure meant the destruction of his army, but if it succeeded at all the success would be overwhelming. A route was reconnoitered from Milliken's bend and Young's point via Richmond, Louisiana, to New Carthage, about 30 miles below Vicksburg. It was found that, by excavating a canal about 2 miles long a short distance below Duckport, the Mississippi could be connected with Walnut bayou; thence by the sinuous course of that stream and Roundaway bayou a passage could be opened for light draft boats, by means of which the troops and supplies could be conveyed to New Carthage, but the gunboats and heavy transports would have to run the gauntlet of the Vicksburg batteries. The canal was opened and one steamboat and several barges passed through the channel, when the river began to fall rapidly, rendering the route useless. It was no longer needed, however, for with the receding of the waters it became possible to march an army across the country. Even while the canal was under construction Osterhaus' division moved over the route, occupying Richmond on March 31, after a short skirmish, and arriving at New Carthage on April 6. On the night of April 16 the fleet ran past the batteries at Vicksburg. Porter, with the flag-ship Benton, was in the lead. Then followed, in the order named, the Lafayette, Louisville, Mound City, Pittsburg and Carondelet. Next came three transports, the Forest Queen, Silver Wave and Henry Clay, barricaded with cotton bales, while the gunboat Tuscumbia brought up the rear. Leaving the mouth of the Yazoo at 10 o'clock, the vessels dropped slowly down the river and about an hour later came within range of the Confederate guns, which immediately opened a vigorous fire. As the gunboats went by each one delivered a broadside on the town. The aim of the Confederate gunners was fairly accurate as every vessel was struck a number of times, but the only one seriously damaged was the Henry Clay, on which the cotton was fired by a bursting shell, and the crew becoming panic-stricken escaped to the other vessels or the shore, allowing her to burn to the water's edge. The batteries at Warrenton were passed without difficulty and at 2 a. m. on the 17th the fleet landed at New Carthage. On that day Grant started Grierson on a cavalry raid from La Grange, Tennessee, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as a diversion, and to prevent reinforcements from being sent to Pemberton. (See Grierson's raid). On the night of the 22nd the transports Tigress, Anglo-Saxon, Cheeseman, Empire City, Horizon and Moderator, loaded with army supplies, ran the batteries. Five of them were more or less damaged. The Tigress received a shot in her hull below the water line, but she was run to the Louisiana shore, where she sank soon after passing beyond the range of the guns. Grant's objective point was Grand Gulf, a small village on the east side of the river on the first bluff south of Vicksburg, and about 50 miles from that city. The enemy had fortified the bluff by a strong line of earthworks, in two sets of batteries, one above and another below the landing, the two being connected by a covered trench. On April 24 Grant and Porter made a reconnaissance of the batteries and decided them too strong to attack from the position then occupied some 20 miles up the river. Accordingly the line was extended to Hard Times landing, about 3 miles above Grand Gulf, and on the 29th everything was in readiness for the assault. At 7 a. m. Porter left Hard Times with his fleet, and proceeded down the river followed by three divisions of McClernand's corps in transports, with instructions to land and carry the works by assault as soon as the enemy's guns were silenced. The bombardment began at 8 a. m. and continued without cessation until 1 p. m., when the Confederates ceased firing. In the action Porter' lost 19 killed and 56 wounded. Every one of his vessels had suffered to some extent, the Tuscumbia having been struck 81 times, a number of the shells penetrating her armor and bursting on the inside, damaging her so much that for some time she was unfit for service. The enemy lost 3 killed and 15 wounded. Although the batteries were silenced Grant regarded it as a feint and refused to land his infantry. McClernand moved his men back to Hard Times, where they were disembarked and marched across the bend to a point about 3 miles below Grand Gulf, but on the opposite side of the river. That night Porter renewed the attack on the batteries and while it was in progress the transports managed to get by without being seriously injured. At daylight the next morning McClernand commenced ferrying his troops across the Mississippi, and by noon his entire corps, numbering 18,000 men, was on Mississippi soil at Bruinsburg, about 8 miles below Grand Gulf. McPherson's corps soon followed, three days' rations were issued to the men, and at 4 o'clock that afternoon the advance was begun on Port Gibson, where the enemy was met and overcome the next day. Grierson's raid had kept Pemberton from sending reinforcements to Grand Gulf, and on the night of May 2 the garrison evacuated that place, retiring toward Vicksburg. Porter took possession on the morning of the 3d and later in the day Grant rode over from Bruinsburg to make preparations for the establishment of his base. At the beginning of the campaign the purpose was to have Major-General N. P. Banks, commanding the Department of the Gulf, cooperate with Grant in the capture of Port Hudson, after which their combined forces would move against Vicksburg. While Grant was at Grand Gulf on the 3d he received word from Banks, who was then on the Red river, announcing that he would be unable to reach Port Hudson until about the middle of May, and then with a much smaller force than originally intended. This news changed the whole current of Grant's plans. He was in the heart of the enemy's country, and to wait for Banks would only give Pemberton an opportunity to strengthen his position at Vicksburg, making the problem all the harder to solve. It was known that reinforcements were moving to Pemberton's support, and Grant determined by prompt and energetic action to strike the Confederate forces in detail before they could be concentrated at Vicksburg. While the main body of the army was moving toward Grand Gulf, Sherman had been left to make a demonstration against Haynes' bluff. On May 1 he received orders to cease his operations there and push his whole corps toward Hard Times. When Grant received the communication from Banks he immediately sent orders to Sherman to organize a train of 120 wagons and bring them to Grand Gulf, where they were to be loaded with rations from the transports. This supply, with the rations already issued to McClernand's and McPherson's men, gave enough to last the whole army for five days, and was the last received from the government stores until a base was established at Chickasaw Bluffs nearly a month later. During that time the troops subsisted off of the country. Sherman, with his train, arrived at Grand Gulf on the 7th and the advance was resumed, the line of march being along the Big Black river toward the Vicksburg & Jackson railroad, the object being to cut off the forces which Grant had reason to believe were assembling there to move to Pemberton's assistance. On the 12th McPherson's corps fought the battle of Raymond. Two days later the Confederates under Johnston were driven from Jackson and Grant's entire army turned westward toward Vicksburg. Pemberton had moved out to meet the Federals, but was defeated in the engagements at Champion's Hill on the 16th, Big Black river bridge and Bridgeport on the 17th, and forced to retire within his works. Sherman crossed the Big Black at Bridgeport on the morning of the 18th and moved on the Bridgeport road against the enemy's position on Walnut hills. McPherson crossed the river above the Jackson road and came up in the rear of Sherman on the same road. McClernand, after crossing the river followed the Jackson road to Mount Albans, where he turned to the left to reach the road leading to Baldwin's ferry. By the morning of the 19th the investment of Vicksburg was as complete as could be made with the forces at Grant's command. During the forenoon of the 19th, while the Union troops were getting into better position, there was constant skirmishing along the lines. Knowing that the enemy had been demoralized by his recent defeats, Grant was of the opinion that the Confederates would make but a feeble effort in defense of Vicksburg, and at 2 p. m. ordered an assault . But the enemy put up a more stubborn resistance than was anticipated, and the only advantage gained was to secure more advanced positions, where the men were covered from the fire of the Confederate batteries. The next two days were spent in strengthening these positions and in opening roads to the Yazoo river, where Grant had established a depot of supplies. On the evening of the 21st regular rations were distributed among the men, many of whom had been without bread and coffee for two weeks or more. The Fort Hill road left Vicksburg on the north side, ran for some distance parallel with the river, then turned east along the crest of the ridge overlooking the Mint Spring bayou. Farther east a road ran out past a cemetery and united with the Fort Hill road about a mile and a half from the city. This was known as the Graveyard road. Near the northeast corner of Vicksburg a ridge ran eastward and along the summit of this ridge was the Jackson road, one of the principal thoroughfares entering the town. South of the Jackson road was the road leading to Baldwin's ferry. Running southeastwardly was the Hall's Ferry road, while the road to Warrenton followed the edge of the bluff down the river. A line of earthworks extended from the Fort Hill road on the north to the Warrenton road on the south, and was manned as follows: Martin L. Smith's division was along the Fort Hill road, with Vaughn's brigade on the extreme left; between the Graveyard and Baldwin's Ferry roads lay Forney's division; south of the Baldwin's Ferry road was Stevenson's division, Barton's brigade forming the extreme right. This line was defended by 128 pieces of artillery, 36 of which were siege guns of heavy caliber, while along the river front were a number of batteries in charge of Colonel Higgins. Sherman's corps occupied the Union right and extended from the river to the Graveyard road. Next came McPherson, his left resting near the Baldwin's Ferry road. South of McPherson was McClernand, with a gap of over 3 miles between his left and the river. This was subsequently filled by Lauman's and Herron's divisions. Notwithstanding the failure of the 19th, opinion was prevalent among the rank and file of the army that the works could be carried by assault. Orders were accordingly issued on the evening of the 21st for a general attack along the whole line at 10 o'clock on the following morning. So complete were the arrangements for this movement that the corps commanders all set their watches by Grant's so that all should begin at exactly the same moment. Precisely at the time designated the three corps advanced to the attack. Sherman had planted four batteries so as to concentrate their fire on the bastion of the fort in his front, and formed a storming party of 150 to carry materials for throwing a rough bridge across the ditch. At the given signal the storming party rushed forward, closely followed by Ewing's brigade. As the line advanced Hebert's brigade arose inside the parapet and opened a terrific fire on their assailants. But the storming party made a rush, crossed the ditch and planted their flag on the parapet, where it was maintained until nightfall in spite of several attempts of the enemy to capture it. The majority of the storming party were killed, and the supporting troops forced to seek the shelter of a friendly ravine about 70 yards from the fort. From this position they kept up the fight until dark. The right of McPherson's line was in a position where any attempt to advance would have been met by a cross-fire, and all that could be done by Quinby's and Logan's divisions was to make a strong demonstration to keep Forney from sending reinforcements to other parts of the line. On the left J. E. Smith's and Stevenson's brigades made a gallant charge up the slope against the fort north of the Baldwin's Ferry road. Smith was checked by a galling fire, but Stevenson pressed on to the foot of the works, where the 7th Missouri planted their colors, but after losing six standard bearers in quick succession fell back about 200 yards to a more sheltered position. In McClernand's corps Carr's division occupied the right, with Benton's brigade on the Baldwin's Ferry road and Lawless just south of the Jackson railroad, with A. J. Smith's division in support. Osterhaus came next and one brigade of Hovey's division was on the extreme left, the other having been left at Big Black river bridge. As the line advanced Osterhaus and Hovey were checked by a murderous cross-fire from a square fort on their left, and though they held their position were unable to approach any nearer the enemy's works. Benton and Lawler advanced, the latter's attack being directed against a fort on a hill near the railroad. Two regiments, the 21st and 22nd la., charged up the hill and gained the ditch in front of the fort. Sergt. Joseph Griffith, with a small party, entered the work and engaged in a hand-to-hand fight, in which nearly all of Griffith's men were killed. The fort was abandoned by the Confederates, but it was commanded by a stronger work a short distance in the rear the Iowa troops were unable to hold it, though the flag of the 22nd waved over the parapet for the rest of the day. Benton's brigade also reached the ditch in their front and planted their colors on the parapet, while Landram's brigade, of A. J. Smith's division, joined Lawler, the colors of the 77th Illinois being planted by the side of those of the 22nd la. In repulsing the attacks of Benton and Lawler the Confederates used hand grenades with terrible effect. At 10:30 a. m. several Union flags were floating over the outer line of works, but further progress seemed to be impossible. Toward noon McClernand sent a message to Grant, stating that he had part possession of two of the enemy's forts, and asking that McPherson strike a vigorous blow to cause a diversion in his favor. This despatch was shown to Sherman, who sent Tuttle forward to the assistance of Blair, and ordered Giles Smith to join his brigade with that of Ransom, of McPherson's command, in an attack on the works near Graveyard road. Logan's division again advanced, but was forced back with heavy loss. Regarding this part of the action, and the despatches sent by McClernand, Grant says in his report: "The position occupied by me during most of the time of the assault gave me a better opportunity of seeing what was going on in front of the Thirteenth Army Corps than I believe it possible for the commander of it to have. I could not see his possession of forts nor necessity for reinforcements, as represented in his despatches, up to the time I left it, which was between 12 m. and 1 p. m., and I expressed doubts of their correctness, which doubts the facts subsequently, but too late, confirmed. At the time I could not disregard his reiterated statements, for they might possibly be true; and that no possible opportunity of carrying the enemy's stronghold should be allowed to escape through fault of mine, I ordered Quinby's division, which was all of McPherson's corps then present but four brigades, to report to McClernand, and notified him of the order. I showed his despatches to McPherson, as I had to Sherman, to satisfy him of the necessity of an active diversion on their part to hold as much force in their fronts as possible. The diversion was promptly and vigorously made, and resulted in the increase of our mortality list fully 50 per cent., without advancing our position or giving us other advantages." McClernand had probably gained an erroneous idea of what had been accomplished in his front from the slight success achieved by Griffith and his little body of Iowans, but as late as 3:50 p. m. he sent a despatch to Grant, expressing his faith in his ability to force his way through as soon as McArthur and Quinby arrived to aid him. The conduct of McClernand on this occasion led to his being superseded by Major-General Ord in command of the 13th corps soon afterward. The assault failed and that night the Union troops fell back to their original position for the siege. To conduct the siege successfully and the same time guard against an attack in the rear by the forces under Johnston, Grant called for reinforcements. These were promptly sent to him and at the close of the siege he had about 75,000 men about Vicksburg, the 9th and 16th corps and Herron's division having been added to his army. Johnston did begin the work of organizing an army at Canton for the relief of Vicksburg, but he spent so much time in correspondence with the Confederate authorities at Richmond, and was otherwise so slow in his movements, that he was not ready to begin his advance until July 1, and before be reached Vicksburg Pemberton had surrendered. On May 13 the Union army began the work of intrenching itself. During the siege nearly 12 miles of trenches and 89 batteries were constructed. These batteries mounted 248 guns, mostly field pieces. In the absence of mortars wooden coehorns were made from tough logs, banded with iron, and were used for throwing 6 and 12 pound shells into the Confederate trenches. A few heavy siege-guns were brought up from the gunboats and worked by naval crews. The character of the ground between the lines made it easy to run covered ways up to and even under the enemy's works. Materials for gabions and sap-rollers were found in abundance in the cane and undergrowth of the ravines. Saps were run from three points on the Jackson road to the fort just north of it, and on June 25 the mine was ready. It was charged with a ton of powder, two regiments were stationed under cover to charge through the breach, and at 3 p. m. the fuse was lighted. The explosion was a success, the two regiments rushed into the crater, which they held for 24 hours, when they were driven out with hand grenades from a second line of works which the Confederates had in the meantime thrown up in the rear of the parapet destroyed. A second mine was exploded on July 1, but no attempt was made to charge the works. About this time a despatch from Johnston to Pemberton was intercepted. From it Grant learned that it was Johnston's intention to create a diversion on July 7, in order to give the forces at Vicksburg a chance to cut their way out. Grant, therefore ordered another assault for the 6th. By this time the covered galleries had been run close up to the enemy's works in a number of places. They were now widened to permit the troops to pass through four abreast, and materials were collected for crossing the ditches. All this time a bombardment had been kept up on the city by the gunboats. Some days before Johnston's despatch was intercepted a report reached Grant to the effect that Pemberton was preparing to escape under cover of darkness to the western side of the Mississippi. Porter was directed to keep a close watch upon the river, batteries were planted on the Louisiana shore, and brushwood was arranged for firing, to light up the river in case the attempt was made. When the Union troops entered Vicksburg they found a large number of rudely constructed boats, showing that there was no doubt some truth in the report. A number of houses had been pulled down to furnish the materials for the construction of these boats. A communication under the caption "Appeal for Help," and signed "Many Soldiers," was sent to Pemberton from the trenches. It was dated June 28, and the following extract shows the feeling that existed at that time in the Confederate ranks. "If you can't feed us, you had better surrender us, horrible as the idea is, than suffer this noble army to disgrace themselves by desertion. I tell you plainly men are not going to lie here and perish; if they do love their country, self preservation is the first law of nature, and hunger will compel a man to do almost anything. You had better heed a warning voice, though it is the voice of a private soldier. This army is now ripe for mutiny unless it can be fed." On July 1 Pemberton called on his division commanders for information "as to the condition of your troops, and their ability to make the marches and undergo the fatigues necessary to accomplish a successful evacuation." Two of the generals were outspoken in favor of surrender, and the other two expressed the opinion that any attempt to evacuate would prove a failure. About 10 o'clock on the morning of the 3d white flags were displayed on the enemy's works and hostilities along that portion of the line ceased. A little later General Bowen and Colonel Montgomery were seen coming under another white flag toward the Union lines. Montgomery bore a letter from Pemberton to Grant, proposing an armistice and the appointment of three commissioners from each army to arrange terms for the capitulation of Vicksburg, and stating that he made the proposition to save the further effusion of blood. To this letter Grant replied as follows: " * * * The useless effusion of blood you propose stopping by this course can be ended at any time you may choose, by the unconditional surrender of the city and garrison. Men who have shown so much endurance and courage as those now in Vicksburg will always challenge the respect of an adversary, and I can assure you will be treated with all the respect due to prisoners of war. I do not favor the proposition of appointing commissioners to arrange terms of capitulation, because I have no terms other than those indicated above." With this letter Grant sent a verbal message, asking Pemberton to meet him at a given point between the lines at 3 o'clock that afternoon. At that meeting it was agreed that hostilities should cease until the correspondence was ended, and Grant promised to give Pemberton his final propositions by 10 o'clock that night. After the conference Grant called together his corps commanders, and after consultation with them sent the following letter to Pemberton: "In conformity with agreement of this afternoon I will submit the following proposition for the surrender of the city of Vicksburg, public stores, etc. On your accepting the terms proposed I will march in one division as a guard, and take possession at 8 a. m. tomorrow. As soon as rolls can be made out and paroles signed by officers and men, you will be allowed to march out of our lines, the officers taking with them their side arms and clothing; and the field, staff, and cavalry officers one horse each. The rank and file will be allowed all their clothing, but no other property. If these conditions are accepted, any amount of rations you may deem necessary can be takes from the stores you now have, and also the necessary cooking utensils for preparing them. Thirty wagons also, counting two-horse or mule teams as one, will be allowed to transport such articles as cannot be carried along. The same conditions will be allowed to all sick and wounded officers and soldiers as fast as they become able to travel. The paroles for these latter must be signed, however, whilst officers present are authorized to sign the roll of prisoners." These terms were subsequently modified to permit each brigade of the Confederate army to march to the front of the position occupied (by it and stack arms, after which the men were to return to the inside of the works, where they were to remain until all were paroled. Accordingly at 10 a. m. on the 4th the various commands moved outside and stacked their arms. Logan's division was the first to enter the city, and before noon the national colors floated over the court-house. The work of paroling the prisoners was hurried forward as rapidly as possible, the number of prisoners surrendered being 31,600, together with 172 pieces of artillery, 60,000 muskets and a large quantity of ammunition. The losses of the Union army during the siege, including the assaults on May 19 and 22, were 763 killed, 3,746 wounded, and 162 missing. The Confederate reports of casualties are imperfect. Incomplete returns show the losses from May 1 to July 3 to have been 1,260 killed, 3,572 wounded and 4,227 captured, though the whole number was probably not far from 12,000. The fall of Vicksburg opened the Mississippi to the Federal armies and coming just at the same time as Lee's defeat at Gettysburg the two victories marked the turning point in the fortunes of the Confederacy. (For the campaign in the rear of Vicksburg see Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, Champion's Hill and Big Black River Bridge.) The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, pp. 890-900.


VICKSBURG, MISSISSIPPI, August 27, 1863. 5th U. S. Colored Heavy Artillery. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 900.


VICTOR, Orville James, author, born in Sandusky, Ohio, 23 October, 1827. He was graduated at the seminary and theological institute in Norwalk, Ohio, in 1847. After contributing to "Graham's Magazine" and other publications for several years, he adopted journalism as a profession in 1851, becoming associate editor of the Sandusky "Daily Register," which he left in 1856 to edit the "Cosmopolitan Art Journal." Moving to New York in 1858, he assumed charge also of the "United States Journal," conducting both periodicals till 1860. He next edited the "Dime Biographical Library," to which he contributed lives of John Paul Jones, Anthony Wayne, Ethan Allen, Israel Putnam, Winfield Scott, Abraham Lincoln, and Giuseppe Garibaldi, and wrote for newspapers and periodicals in New York City. In 1863-'4 he visited England, and there published a pamphlet entitled "The American Rebellion; its Causes and Objects: Facts for the English People." He edited in 1866-'7 "Beadle's Magazine of To-Day," in 1870-'l the weekly "Western World," and in 1872-80 the "New York Saturday Journal." He published during the Civil War, in annual volumes, a "History of the Southern Rebellion " (4 vols., New York, 1862-'5), which for several years he has been engaged in revising for republication in two volumes. His other works are "Incidents and Anecdotes of the War" (1863), and a " History of American Conspiracies" (1864). —His wife, Metta Victoria, author, born near Erie, Pennsylvania, 2 March, 1831; died in Hohokus, New Jersey, 26 June, 1886, was educated in the female seminary at Wooster, Ohio. When thirteen years old she published a story called "The Silver Lute," and from that time till her eighteenth year was a contributor to the "Home Journal" under the penname of " Singing Sibyl" or in connection with her elder sister, Frances A. Fuller, the two being known as "The Sisters of the West." In 1856 she married Mr. Victor, and in 1859-'61 she edited the "Home Monthly Magazine." A volume of poetry by the two sisters was published under the title of "Poems of Sentiment and Imagination, with Dramatic and Descriptive Pieces" (New York, 1851). She published individually "Fresh Leaves from Western Woods" (Buffalo, 1853); "The Senator's Son: a Pica for the Maine Law" (Cleveland, 1853), which had a large circulation in England as well as in the United States; and "Two Mormon Wives: a Life-Story" (New York, 1856 ; London, 1858). She was the author of " The Gold-Hunters." "Maum Guinea," and others of Beadle and Company's "Dime Novels." Among her numerous contributions to the periodical press were series of humorous sketches under the signature of ' Mrs. Mark Peabody," entitled," Miss Slimmens' Window" and "Miss Slimmens' Boarding House," which were issued in book-form (New York, 1859). The story of "Too True" was reprinted from "Putnam's Magazine"(1868). Her novels " Dead-Letter" and "Figure Eight " were issued under the pen-name of "Seeley Register" (1868). Her last novel was " Passing the Portal" (1877). She subsequently wrote humorous books entitled "The Bad Boy's Diary " (1880), " The Rasher Family " (1884)," The Naughty Girl's Diary " (1884), and "'Blunders of a Bashful Man" (1885), which were issued anonymously. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 287


VICTUALS. Whosoever shall relieve the enemy with money, victuals, or ammunition, or shall knowingly harbor or protect an enemy shall suffer death, or such other punishment as shall be ordered by the sentence of a court-martial; (ART. 56.) (Scott, Military Dictionary, Van Nostrand, 1862, p. 642).


VIDALIA, LOUISIANA, September 14, 1863. Detachments of 30th and 35th Missouri Infantry and 2nd Mississippi Heavy Artillery (Colored). On the morning of the 14th a party of 150 or 200 Confederates cut its way through the negro pickets of the Federal camp at Vidalia and commenced firing into the men and loosing the mules. The firing aroused the men of the 30th Missouri, 40 in number, who advanced and attacked the enemy, driving him from the camp and compelling him to abandon the mules he had captured. A detachment sent over the river from Natchez followed, skirmishing for a distance of 16 miles, and then came upon the enemy's main body 800 strong. Three Federals were killed, 2 wounded and 9 captured or missing. The Confederate casualties were not ascertained, but were undoubtedly heavier. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 900.

VIDALIA, LOUISIANA, February 7, 1864. 2nd Mississippi Heavy Artillery, African descent. Lieutenant-Colonel Hubert A. McCaleb with a detachment of 432 men was sent to reinforce Colonel Farrar who was being hard pressed by the enemy at Vidalia. Upon his arrival there McCaleb deployed his men and had no sooner taken position that the Confederates advanced. The Federals waited until the enemy was within 200 yards and then poured in a volley which checked his advance. Another volley sent the Confederates flying in confusion, with a loss of 1 man killed and 5 wounded. Not a man of the Federal command sustained any injury. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 900.


VIDALIA, LOUISIANA, July 22, 1864. 6th U. S. Colored Heavy Artillery. Vienna, Alabama, July 8, 1864. Detachment of 12th Indiana Cavalry. Company B of this regiment, while scouting in the vicinity of Vienna, when about 3 miles from that place, was fired upon and dispersed. The guide was killed and 8 men were wounded. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 901.


VIELE, Egbert Ludovickus, engineer, born in Waterford, New York, 17 June, 1825, was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1847, assigned to the 2d U.S. Infantry, and, joining his regiment in Mexico, served under General Winfield Scott. He was then given duty on lower Rio Grande River, and was stationed at Ringgold Barracks and afterward at Fort Mcintosh. In 1853 he resigned, after attaining the rank of 1st lieutenant on 26 October, 1850. He then settled in New York City, where he entered on the practice of civil engineering, and in 1854'-6 was state engineer of New Jersey. In 1856 he was appointed chief engineer of Central Park, New York, and prepared the original plan that was adopted, tour years later he became chief engineer of Prospect Park, Brooklyn, for which he prepared the original plan, but resigned at the beginning of the Civil War. He responded to the first call for volunteers, and conducted an expedition  from New York to Washington, forcing a passage up Potomac River. After serving in the defences of Washington as captain of engineers in the 7th New York Regiment, he was commissioned brigadier-general of volunteers on 17 August, 1861, and directed to form a camp of instruction in Scarsdale, New York. In April, 1862, he joined the South Atlantic Expedition and had charge of the forces in Savannah River. General Viele commanded the movement that resulted in the capture of Fort Pulaski, and also took Norfolk and its navy-yard, becoming military governor of that city from its capture in May, 1862, until October, 1863. After superintending the draft in northern Ohio, he resigned on 20 October, 1863, and resumed his engineering practice. In 1883 he was appointed commissioner of parks for New York City, and in 1884 he was president of the department. He was elected as a Democrat to Congress in 1884, but he was defeated in his canvass for re-election in 1886. General Viele is president of the Equitable Home Building Association, for building houses in the vicinity of Prospect Park, Brooklyn, to be sold to tenants who agree to use them as homes only. Besides papers on engineering, sanitation, and physical geography, he has published a " Hand-Book for Active Service" (New York, 1861), and a "Topographical Atlas of the City of New York" (1865). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 291.


VIENNA, VIRGINIA , June 17, 1861. 1st Ohio Volunteers. Brigadier-General Robert C. Schenck with some 270 men left the Federal camp and took passage on a train for the purpose of guarding the railroad bridge at Vienna. As the train was rounding a curve just before entering Vienna it was fired upon by a masked battery of 3 guns and before it could be stopped several men were killed or wounded. Upon disembarking, the troops retired to the right and left of the train through the woods, but finding the battery supported by a regiment of cavalry and another of infantry, Schenck withdrew along the railroad to a point 5 miles distant . The Union loss in this affair was 8 killed and 4 wounded; the Confederates sustained no casualties. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 901.


Vienna, Virginia, November 26, 1861. Detachment of 3d Pennsylvania Cavalry. Captain Charles A. Bell with about 100 men was sent on a reconnaissance from Camp Marcy through Vienna toward Hunter's mill. Just after passing Vienna the rear-guard was attacked and became panic stricken. The confusion spread to the remainder of the detachment and a precipitate retreat was made. Bell did not report his losses, but a Confederate report puts them at 1 killed, 6 wounded and 26 taken prisoners. The enemy suffered no loss. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 901.


VIENNA, VIRGINIA, February 22, 1862. Reconnaissance by the 1st Minnesota Infantry.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 901.


VIGNAUD, Jean Henry (veen-yo), author, born in New Orleans, Louisiana, 27 November, 1830. He is descended from an ancient Creole family, received his education in his native city, and was a teacher in the public schools of New Orleans in 1852-'6, being at the same time connected with " Le Courrier," of New Orleans, and other publications. In 1857 he established in the town of Thibodeaux, Louisiana, a daily entitled " L'Union de Lafourchu." which he edited till 1860, when he aided in founding in New Orleans a weekly review, " La renaissance Louisianaise," which did much to encourage the study of French literature in the state. In 1861 he published "L'Anthropologie," a work partly scientific but mainly philosophical. He became a captain in the 6th Louisiana Regiment, Confederate Army, in June, 1861, and was captured in New Orleans in April, 1862. In March, 1863, he was appointed assistant secretary of the Confederate diplomatic commission in Paris. At the same time he was a contributor to the " Memorial diplomatique," and in charge of the theatrical criticisms in several dailies. In 1869 he became secretary of the Roumanian legation in Paris, and in 1872 he was officially connected with the Alabama commission in Geneva, for which he translated nearly all the papers presented to that tribunal in behalf of the United States. In 1873 he was U. S. delegate at the International diplomatic metric conference, received the appointment, 14 December, 1875, of second secretary of the U. S. legation in Paris, in 1882 was U. S. delegate at the International conference for the protection of sub-marine cables, and on 11 April, 1882, was promoted first secretary of legation at Paris. Mr. Vignaud has contributed memoirs to the Institute of France and other learned societies, and since 1869 has been secretary of the Soeifite savante, of Paris. He has in preparation a " History of the Formation of the American Union " and a " History of the Discovery and Occupation of the Territory of the United States." Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 292.


VILAS, William Freeman (vy'-Ias), postmaster-general, born in Chelsea, Vermont, 9 July, 1840. He went to Wisconsin, when eleven years old, with his parents, who settled in Madison. He was graduated at the State university in 1858, and at the Albany law-school in 1860. He practised in Madison till the Civil War began, when he entered the army as a captain in the 23d Wisconsin Volunteers. He rapidly rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and commanded his regiment during the siege of Vicksburg and for two months afterward. Resigning his commission in August, 1863, he returned to the practice of his profession. He became a lecturer in the law department of the University of Wisconsin, and a regent of the institution. He was appointed by the Supreme Court in 1875 one of the board that for three years was engaged in revising the state constitution. He declined to be a candidate for governor in 1879. In 1884 he was elected to the legislature. The same year he attended the Democratic national convention as a delegate, and was chosen permanent chairman. On 5 March, 1885, President Cleveland made him Postmaster-General, and in December, 1887, he was transferred to the portfolio of the interior to succeed Lucius Q. C. Lamar, who had been appointed to the bench of the United States Supreme Court. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 293.


VILLAGE CREEK, ARKANSAS, June 12, 1862. (See Waddell's Farm, same date.)


VILLAGES. Cavalry, the better to preserve their horses, should occupy villages whenever the distance of the enemy, and the time necessary to repair to its post in battle, will permit. Their quarters should be preferably farmhouses or taverns having large stables. Posts are established by the colonel or commanding officer, and the squadrons conducted to their quarters by their respective captains. Where in an exceptional case regular distributions are not made, the resources which the household assigned as quarters presents are equally divided. About two hours after their arrival the squadrons in succession water their horses and then give forage. Cavalry and infantry also should, when thus cantoned near an enemy, occupy, wherever it can be done, houses which will hold an entire company or some constituent fraction of a company, and at break of day stand to their arms. When in the same cantonment, cavalry should watch over the safety of the cantonment by day and the infantry by night; and in the presence of an enemy they should be protected by an advance guard and natural or artificial obstacles. (Scott, Military Dictionary, Van Nostrand, 1862, p. 642).


VILLARD, Henry, financier, born in Spire, Bavaria, 11 April, 1835. His name was originally Gustavus Hilgard. He was educated at the universities of Munich and Wurzburg, and came to the United States in 1853. He studied law for a time in Belleville and Peoria, Illinois, then moved to Chicago, and wrote for papers. In 1859 he visited the newly discovered gold region of Colorado as correspondent of the Cincinnati "Commercial," and on his return published a volume entitled "The Pike's Peak Gold Regions " (I860). He also sent statistics to the New York "Herald" that were intended to influence the location of a Pacific railroad route. He then settled in Washington as political correspondent for eastern and western newspapers, and during the war was an army correspondent. He married Fanny, a daughter of William Lloyd Garrison, at Washington on 3 January, 1866, went to Europe as correspondent of the New York "Tribune," returned to the United States in June, 1868, and shortly afterward was elected secretary of the American Social Science Association, to which he devoted his labors till 1870, when he went to Germany for his health. While living at Wiesbaden he engaged in the negotiation of American railroad securities; and, when many companies defaulted in the payment of interest, after the crash of 1873, he joined several committees of German bond-holders, doing the major part of their work, and in April, 1874, returned to the United States to represent his constituents, and especially to execute an arrangement with the Oregon and California Railroad Company. On visiting Oregon, he was impressed with the natural wealth of the region, and conceived the plan of gaining control of its few transportation routes. His clients, who were large creditors also of the Oregon Steamship Company, approved his scheme, and in 1875 Mr. Villard became president of both corporations. He was appointed in 1876 a receiver of the Kansas Pacific Railroad as the representative of European creditors, and was removed in 1878, but continued the contest he had begun with Jay Gould and finally obtained better terms for the bond-holders than they had agreed to accept. The European investors in the Oregon and San Francisco Steamship line, after building new vessels, became discouraged, and in 1879 Villard formed an American syndicate and purchased the property. He also acquired that of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, which operated fleets of steamers and portage railroads on the Columbia River. The three companies that he controlled were amalgamated, under the name of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company. He began the construction of a railroad up Columbia River, and failing in his effort to obtain a permanent engagement from the Northern Pacific Company, which had begun its extension into Washington Territory, to use the Columbia River line as its outlet to the Pacific Ocean, he succeeded, with the aid of a syndicate which was called a " blind pool," in acquiring control of the Northern Pacific property, and organized a new corporation that was named the Oregon and Transcontinental Company. After some contention with the old managers of the Northern Pacific road, Villard was elected president of a reorganized board of directors on 15 September, 1881. The main line to the Pacific Ocean was completed, with the aid of the Oregon and Transcontinental Company; but at the time when it was opened to traffic with festivities, in September, 1883, the "bears" of the stock market arranged an attack on the securities of the allied companies, and Villard, in the vain endeavor to support the properties, sacrificed his large fortune, and on 4 January, 1884, resigned the presidency of the Northern Pacific Railroad. After spending the intervening time in Europe, he returned to New York City in 1886, and has since purchased for German capitalists, large amounts of the securities of the transportation system that he was instrumental in creating, becoming again director of the Northern Pacific Company, and on 21 June, 1888, again president of the Oregon and Transcontinental Company. He has given a large fund for the State University of Oregon, liberally aided the University of Washington territory, founded a hospital and school for nurses in his native town, and devoted large sums to the Industrial art school of Rhenish Bavaria, and to the foundation of fifteen scholarships for the youth of that province. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 294.


VILLEPIGUE, John Bordenave, soldier, born in Camden, S. C., 2 July, 1830; died in Port Hudson, Louisiana, 9 November, 1862. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1854, and served on the western border as a lieutenant of  U.S. Dragoons until the secession of South Carolina. Joining the Confederate Army, he was made a captain of artillery, and soon afterward promoted colonel and placed in command of Fort McRae, Pensacola, Florida. At the bombardment of this post he was severely wounded. He was transferred to Mobile, and a few weeks later to Fort Pillow, which he strengthened for the ensuing bombardment of fifty-two days, which was sustained until he was ordered to evacuate. His brigade opened the attack and covered the retreat of the army at Corinth. He was ordered to Port Hudson soon afterward with a major-general's command and the assurance of promotion to that rank, but reached his post only to die of fever. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 296.


VINCENT, Strong, soldier, born in Waterford, Erie County, Pennsylvania, 17 June. 1837; died near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 7 July, 1863, after passing through Erie Academy and working for two years in his father's iron-foundry, entered the scientific school at Hartford, Connecticut, next became a student of Trinity College, and, leaving that, was graduated at Harvard in 1859. He then studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1860, and began practice in Erie. When the Civil War began he enlisted as a private for three months in the volunteer army, was chosen 2d lieutenant, and soon afterward was appointed adjutant. He re-enlisted for three years, was made major, and promoted lieutenant-colonel of the 83d Pennsylvania Infantry in September, 1861. He was engaged in the construction of siege-works at Yorktown, and soon after the battle of Hanover Court-House was prostrated with swamp fever. He returned to his regiment in October, 1862. as its colonel, and at Fredericksburg temporarily commanded a brigade in a difficult retreat. He declined the appointment of judge-advocate of the Army of the Potomac, in April, 1863, took command of his brigade as ranking colonel, and effectively supported General Alfred Pleasanton’s cavalry at Aldie. At Gettysburg, orders having come from the front from General George Sykes, at the suggestion of General Gouverneur K. Warren, for a brigade to occupy Little Round Top, Vincent, in the absence of the division commander, assumed the responsibility of taking up his own brigade. On reaching the hill, he quickly selected a position, posting his men on the left-hand crest of Little Round Top, and in the hollow between it and Round Top, where the Confederates made their first attempt to ascend the ravine and turn the left flank of the National Army, in withstanding which his force was supported by the command of General Stephen H. Weed and the battery of Captain Charles E. Hazlett on the middle crest of Little Round Top, and by the regiment of Colonel Patrick H. O'Rorke, which was sent up by General Warren just in time to frustrate the flank movement of the enemy. Vincent was shot while cheering on this regiment as it faltered before the fire of the Confederate infantry. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 299.


VINCENT, Thomas McCurdy, soldier, born near Cadiz, Harrison County, Ohio, 15 November, 1832. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1853, and on 8 October, 1853, became 2d lieutenant in the 2d U.S. Artillery. During the three years that followed he served with his company in Florida during active operations in the field against hostile Indians, and from severe exposure in the line of duty became dangerously ill in May, 1855. During his convalescence Lieutenant Vincent compiled a "Sketch of South Florida," which was used by troops in the filial operations pending the removal of the Indians, and for which he received the thanks of the general-in-chief. During the years 1855-'6 he performed the duties of assistant adjutant-general and quartermaster and commissary of subsistence. He served with his company at Fort Hamilton and Plattsburg, New York, until August, 1859, when he was detailed as principal assistant professor of chemistry at the military academy. Declining the appointment of captain in the 18th Infantry, he was appointed assistant adjutant-general in July, 1861, and assigned to the Army of Northwestern Virginia, being engaged in the battle of Bull Run. In August, 1861, he became captain, and in July, 1862, major of staff. From 1861 till 1865 he was constantly on duty in the adjutant-general's office at Washington, particularly in charge of the "organization and miscellaneous business of the volunteer armies of the United States," persistent applications for service in the field being disapproved by Secretary of War Stanton for the reason that "the public interests demanded his presence in the war department." Not only did the responsibility for framing all the rolls and instructions issued for the government of the volunteer forces in service during the war, and the charge connected with a personnel of more than 90,000 commissioned officers, devolve upon General Vincent, but the preparation of the plan (of which he was also the sole author), and the immediate general direction of the work under it, for the muster-out and disbandment of the volunteer armies, numbering 1,034,064 officers and men, distributed to 1,274 regiments, 316 independent companies, and 192 batteries. This plan was prepared in advance of any notification from the Secretary of War, and was put into execution immediately upon submission to that officer and General Grant. Since the war General Vincent has been identified with all important changes in the methods of transacting the business of the War Department, the revision of army regulations, and he has served as adjutant-general of various departments, and in September, 1888, was ordered to Washington on duty. He became lieutenant-colonel and assistant adjutant-general in July, 1881, and was brevetted to the grade of brigadier-general. U. S. Army, "for faithful and meritorious services during the rebellion." General Vincent has made several reports to Congress on "army organization," and is the author of "The Military Power of the United States during the War of the Rebellion" (New York, 1881).  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 300.


VINCENT, Albert Oliver, soldier, born in Cadiz, Ohio, 7 February, 1842; died in St. Louis, Missouri., 9 December, 1882, was educated at common schools, and at the age of nineteen was about to establish himself as a printer, when, at the opening of the Civil War, he was tendered by Secretary Cameron a commission as 2d lieutenant in the 2d U.S. Artillery. From 1861 till 1866 he served with his battery, part of the time commanding it during all the operations of the Army of the Potomac, principally with horse artillery in conjunction with the cavalry, comprising thirty-five battles and minor affairs, besides continuous and rapid marches. He was commissary of musters and superintendent of volunteer recruiting service in 1865, and served with his regiment in California and Washington Territory in 1865-'7. He was brevetted captain for Antietam, major for Gettysburg, and lieutenant-colonel for faithful and meritorious services, 13 November, 1865, and declined the appointment of captain, 38th U.S. Infantry, in July, 1866. He served as major of the 4th Arkansas Cavalry in 1864-'5, and was retired from active service in 1869. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 300.


VINCENT'S CREEK, SOUTH CAROLINA, August 4, 1863. Detachment of 100th New York Infantry. A Confederate command composed of men from the navy and the 25th South Carolina infantry attacked and broke up the Federal picket stationed at an unfinished battery at the mouth of Vincent's creek, capturing 10 men, 4 of whom were wounded. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 901.


VINCENT'S CROSS-ROADS, MISSISSIPPI, October 26, 1863. 1st Alabama Cavalry. A Confederate detachment under Brigadier-General S. W. Ferguson came upon about 500 men of the 1st Alabama cavalry drawn up in line of battle at Vincent's cross-roads near Bay Springs. After a fight of some hours the Confederates were victorious, suffering a loss of 2 killed and 11 wounded. Union reports make no mention of casualties, but Ferguson says 20 were killed, 9 wounded and 29 captured. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 901.


VINE PRAIRIE, ARKANSAS, February 2, 1863. Detachment of 1st Arkansas Cavalry. This affair was a sharp skirmish between 82 Federals and a Confederate force said to number 180. The enemy was first encountered by the advance, which fell back to the main column, when the Confederate charged, but were checked, and after 30 minutes of fighting were driven from the field with a loss of 8 killed and 15 or 20 wounded,  according to the Federal report. The Union casualties amounted to 1 man wounded. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 901.


VINEGAR. On board ship vinegar is essential to the comfort of horses, and should be freely used by sponging their mouths and noses repeatedly, and also their mangers. A small portion of vinegar drank with water supplies the waste of perspiration of men in the field. It is better than rum or whiskey; it allays thirst, and men who use it avoid the danger of drinking cold water when heated, and are not fevered as they are too apt to be by the use of spirituous liquors; (Dr. RUSH.) (Scott, Military Dictionary, Van Nostrand, 1862, p. 643).


VINING STATION, GEORGIA, July 5, 1864. 3d Division, 4th Army Corps. After the Confederates evacuated their works at Smyrna camp ground on the night of the 4th the pursuit was taken up by the 4th corps on the 5th, with slight skirmishing along the route. At Vining Station Wood's skirmishers encountered a brigade of cavalry dismounted, behind a rail barricade at right angles to the road leading to Pace's ferry on the Chattahoochee river. Wood pushed forward the whole division and drove the enemy from his position, but the cavalry mounted and retreated by a river road not known to the Union troops and thus escaped captures. Wood then occupied the high banks overlooking Pace's ferry. No casualties reported. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 901.


VINING STATION, GEORGIA, July 9, 1864. 21st Ohio Infantry. The Ohio regiment, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Arnold McMahan, made an attack on a line of rifle-pits occupied by the 4th Mississippi and 54th Louisiana infantry, drove them out of their trenches and back to the main line of works with a loss of several in killed and wounded and 17 prisoners. McMahan held the rifle-pits, from which he annoyed the enemy behind the main breastworks. That night the Confederates withdrew across the Chattahoochee river, leaving the Federals in possession of the station. The Union loss in this affair was 15 killed, 39 wounded and 1 missing. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, pp. 901-902.


VINTON, David Hammond, soldier, born in Providence, Rhode Island, 4 May, 1803; died in Stamford, Connecticut, 21 February, 1873, was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1822, was commissioned to the 4th U.S. Artillery, and in 1823 transferred to the infantry. After a term of garrison and special duty, he was sent to Florida in 1836, where he was employed on quartermaster duty, and in 1837 was made quartermaster-general of Florida. He continued in this service until 1846, in which year he was made chief quartermaster on the staff of General John E. Wool, with the rank of major, and served in Mexico. He was chief quartermaster of the Department of the West in 1852-'6, of the Department of Texas in 1857-'61, and was taken prisoner upon the surrender of General Twiggs to the Confederates in February, 1861. Being exchanged after a few months, in August, 1861, he was made deputy quartermaster-general and chief quartermaster at New York, where until 1866 he rendered valuable services. In 1864 he was brevetted, for faithful and meritorious services, colonel and brigadier-general. In 1866 he became assistant quartermaster-general, and in the same year was placed upon the retired list. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 301.


VINTON, Francis Laurens, engineer, born in Fort Preble, Maine, 1 June, 1835; died in Leadville, Colorado, 6 October, 1879, was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy in 1856, and assigned to the 1st U.S. Cavalry, but did not join his regiment, and on the expiration of his graduating leave of absence resigned on 30 September, and entered the Ecole des Mines at Paris, where he received the degree of engineer of mines in 1860. He was then an instructor in Cooper union, New York City, and afterward in charge of explorations in Honduras till 5 August, 1861, when he was commissioned captain in the 16th Infantry. On 31 October he became colonel of the 43d New York Regiment, with which he served in the Peninsular Campaign, and after a month's leave of absence he took command of a brigade on 25 September, 1862, having been commissioned brigadier-general of volunteers on the 19th, and led it in the Maryland and Rappahannock Campaigns till the battle of Fredericksburg, 13 December, 1862, where, his men being reluctant to advance, he himself headed the charge, and received a disabling wound that forced him to resign from the army on 5 May, 1863. His appointment as brigadier-general had expired on 3 March, 1863, but had been renewed ten days later. On 14 September, 1864, on the organization of Columbia school of mines, General Vinton became professor of mining engineering there, and in 1870 the duties of his chair were extended so as to include civil engineering; but he was retired on 15 August, 1877, and from that time till his death acted as a consulting mining engineer at Denver, Colorado. He was not only an accomplished mathematician, but a good draughtsman and musician. Many of his contributions to mining journals, notably those to the "Engineering and Mining Journal," of which he was staff correspondent after he went to the west, and his professional reports, were illustrated by his own hand. He was the author of "The Guardian." a poem (New York, 1869); also "Lectures on Machines," lithographed from notes (1869); and “Theory of the Strength of Materials" (1874). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 302.


VINTON, Samuel Finley, 1792-1862, South Hadley, Massachusetts, Whig U.S. Congressman, attorney.  Aided President Lincoln in the process of emancipating slaves in the District of Columbia by Congress.  (Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 303; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 10, Pt. 1, p. 284)

VINTON, Samuel Finley, congressman, born in South Hadley, Massachusetts, 25 September, 1792; died in Washington, D. C., 11 May, 1862. He was graduated at Williams in 1814, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1816, and began to practise in Gallipolis, Ohio. He was chosen to Congress as a Whig, serving from 1 December, 1823, till 3 March, 1837, was a presidential elector on the Harrison ticket, and served again in Congress in 1843-'51. His last public service was in 1862, when he was appointed by President Lincoln to appraise the slaves that had been emancipated in the District of Columbia by act of Congress. He published numerous congressional and other speeches, including “Argument for Defendants in the Case of Virginia vs. Garner and Others for an Alleged Abduction of Slaves” (1865). His daughter, Madeleine, married Admiral John A. Dahlgren.  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 303.


VIOLENCE. Any officer or soldier who shall offer any violence against his superior officer, being in the execution of his office, on any pretence whatsoever, punished by death or otherwise, according to the nature of his offence; (ART. 9.) Violence to any person who brings provisions to the camp, garrisons, or quarters to the forces of the United States employed in any part out of the said States, punishable in like manner; (ART. 51.) (Scott, Military Dictionary, Van Nostrand, 1862, p. 643).


VOGDES, Israel, soldier, born in Willistown, Chester County, Pennsylvania, 4 August, 1816. He was graduated at the U. S. Military Academy, and promoted 2d lieutenant, 1st U.S. Artillery, 1 July, 1837. For the next twelve years he was assistant professor and principal assistant professor of mathematics in the academy, being promoted 1st lieutenant in 1838, and captain in 1847. He was stationed in Florida from 1849 till 1856, and took part there in the hostilities against the Seminole Indians. After being in command at Fort Moultrie, South Carolina, and connected with the artillery-school for practice at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, in 1858-'61, he was ordered to re-enforce Fort Pickens, Florida, but he was virtually interdicted from carrying out his orders by instructions received from Washington subsequent to his arrival, and it was not until after the inauguration of President Lincoln that he was finally allowed to proceed with the work. He was promoted major, 14 May, 1861. On 9 October he was engaged in repelling the Confederate attack on Santa Rosa Island, Florida, during which he was captured. After his release in August, 1862, he served on the staff of General John F. Reynolds in the Maryland Campaign of that year. He was commissioned brigadier-general of volunteers in the following November, and was in command of Folly Island, South Carolina, from April till July, 1863, when he took part in the construction of the batteries on Lighthouse inlet for the proposed attack on Morris Island. He took part in that engagement, and also in the one on Folly Island. From August, 1863, till July, 1864, he was occupied in the operations against Fort Sumter and the city of Charleston. On 1 June, 1864, he was made lieutenant-colonel, and on 1 August he became colonel. After seeing further service in Florida, he had charge of the defences of Norfolk and Portsmouth, Virginia, from May, 1864, till April, 1865, in which month he was brevetted brigadier-general in the regular army for gallant and meritorious services in the field during the Civil War. On 15 January, 1866, he was mustered out of the volunteer service, and from that date until 2 January, 1881, when he was retired at his own request, after forty-three years of active service, he was in command of the 1st Regiment of U.S. Artillery. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 304-305.


VOLK, Leonard Wells, sculptor, born in Wellstown (now Wells), Hamilton County, New York, 7 November, 1828. At the age of sixteen he began the trade of marble-cutting in his father's shop at Pittsfield, Massachusetts In 1848 he went to St. Louis, Missouri., and in the following year he undertook modelling in clay and drawing without instructors. He was subsequently engaged in business. In 1855 Stephen A. Douglas, who was his wife's cousin, aided him to go to Italy for study. Volk remained there until 1857, when he settled in Chicago. His first sitter for a portrait-bust—the first that was ever modelled in that city—was his patron, and he subsequently, in 1858, made a life-size statue of Mr. Douglas in marble. In 1860 he executed a portrait-bust of Abraham Lincoln, the original marble of which was burnt in the Historical society building during the great fire of 1871. He revisited Italy for study in 1868-"9 and 1871-2. He was elected an academician of the Chicago Academy in 1867, and was for eight years its president. His principal works are the Douglas monument in Chicago, several soldiers' monuments, the statuary for the Henry Keep mausoleum at Watertown, New York, life size statues of Lincoln and Douglas in the statehouse, Springfield, Illinois (1876), and portrait-busts of Henry Clay, Zachariah Chandler, Dr. Daniel Brainard, Bishop Charles H. Fowler. David Davis, Thomas B. Bryan, Leonard Swett, Elihu B. Washburne, and many others. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 305-306.


VOLNEY, KENTUCKY, October 22, 1863. Detachments of 26th Kentucky and 6th New Hampshire Mounted Infantry and 3d Kentucky Cavalry. This force under Colonel Cicero Maxwell overtook a band of guerrillas at Volney and fired at them. The outlaws fled without returning the lire and were pursued for a distance of 30 miles. Several were captured, together with their horses and booty. One Federal soldier was wounded. Waddell's Farm, Ark, June 12, 1862. 9th Illinois Cavalry. A train of 36 wagons was sent out by Colonel Albert G. Brackett , under an escort of four companies of the 9th Illinois, for the purpose of obtaining supplies. Later in the day Major Humphrey, commanding the escort, reported that he had been attacked by a superior force and needed help. Brackett took the remainder of the regiment and went to his aid. He found Humphrey holding his position at Waddell's farm near Village creek. Brackett brought 2 howitzers to bear and then charged, scattering the enemy in every direction with a loss (according to the Federal report) of 28 in killed, wounded and prisoners. One man captured and 12 wounded was the loss sustained by the 9th Illinois. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 6, p. 902.


VOLUNTEERS. Whereas sundry corps of artillery, cavalry, and infantry now exist in several of the States, which by the laws, customs, or usages thereof, have not been incorporated with, or subject to, the general regulations of the militia; such corps shall retain their accustomed privileges, subject, nevertheless, to all other duties required by this act in like manner with the other militia; (Act May 8, 1792.) (See CALLING FORTH MILITIA; and MILITIA.)


This class of uniformed militia exists in every State of the Union. It is a regular, unpaid force, composed generally of men engaged in such private business operations, as must always prevent their being employed except in their immediate vicinage. But in cases of riot, or the defence of their own firesides, town or city, experience has shown it to be a most reliable organization. There is, however, another class of troops, also called volunteers, which have from time to time been raised by Congress for temporary purposes. Such troops are properly United States and not State troops. The manner in which their officers are to be appointed is therefore always designated by Congress. The act of May 28, 1798, authorized the President to appoint the company officers of such volunteers; the act of June 22, 1798, directed that the field-officers of such volunteers should be appointed by the President and Senate; the act of May 23, 1836, directed that the officers of volunteers then raised, should be appointed in the manner prescribed by law in the several States and Territories to which such companies, battalions, squadrons, regiments, brigades, or divisions shall respectively belong; the act of March 3, 1839, applies the same provision to the volunteers then authorized; the act of May 13, 1846, contains the same provision as to appointment of officers; and the act of June 26, 1846, authorizes the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint such number of major-generals and brigadier-generals as the organization of such volunteer forces (raised by the act of May 13, 1846) into brigades and divisions, may render necessary and in case the brigades or divisions of volunteers at any time in the service shall be reduced in number, the brigadier-generals and major-generals herein provided for shall be discharged in proportion to the reduction in the number of brigades and divisions.

There should, then, be no question that these volunteers are United States troops raised by Congress under its constitutional authority to raise and support armies; but, strangely enough, the officers have been usually commissioned by their respective States. It becomes, therefore, an important question to ascertain, if possible, by experience, whether the advantages which attend raising armies in this particular way are not greatly counterbalanced by its disadvantages; whether the efficiency of such an irregular force is in any degree commensurate with its cost; and whether deaths, diseases, discharges, and other casualties do not in such a force accumulate in such numbers as to deprive the Government of the moral right thus uselessly to sacrifice the citizens of the country.

The statistics of the Mexican war, published by Congress, (Doc. 24, House of Representatives, 31st. Congress, 1st Session,) furnish the following startling facts:

REGULAR ARMY. AGGREGATE FORCE. LENGTH OF SERVICE. Old establishment, 15,736 26 months. Additional force, 11,186

The old establishment of the regular army, with an aggregate of 15,736 men during 26 months' service, lost by discharges for disability 1,782 men; by ordinary deaths, 2,623 men; and by deaths from wounds in battle, 792 men.

The additional regular force, with an aggregate of 11,186 men during 15 months' service, lost by discharges for disability 767 men; by ordinary deaths, 2,091 men; and by deaths from wounds in battle, 143 men.

The volunteer force, with an aggregate of 73,532 men during an average of 10 months' service, lost by discharges for disability 7,200 men; by ordinary deaths, 6,256 men; and by deaths from wounds in battle, 613 men. T

the number of wounded in battle were: In the old establishment, 1,803 men; in the additional regular force, 272 men; and in the volunteers, 1,318 men. The number of deserters were, in the whole regular force, 2,849 men; and in the volunteer force, 3,876 men.

These statistics require no commentary to show the waste of life and money in employing volunteers. But without explanation they do not show the numbers of each description offeree engaged in the different battles of Mexico, or how, with such a large aggregate of forces employed in Mexico, Taylor's battles were fought with never more than 6,000 men, and Scott had at his disposition only about 1 1,000 men for the inarch from Puebla and the capture of the city of Mexico. An analysis of the aggregates offerees engaged in those battles is therefore necessary, to ascertain by whom they were won, and this will lead to a subsequent inquiry, which will show why such ostentatious aggregates furnished so small a body of men for the great operations of the war.

Regular Army. Ex-Doc. 24, House of Representatives, 31st Congress, 1st Session, shows that the old regular force on the frontier of Texas, May, 1846, at the commencement of the war was 3,554 men present and absent. This force alone under Taylor fought the battles on the Rio Grande, with an aggregate loss of killed in battle and died of wounds, of 72 men. There were wounded in the same affairs 147 men.

May 24, volunteers began to arrive on the Rio Grande. August 1, General Taylor reports that the volunteer forces ordered to report to him are much greater than he can employ, and regrets that one division of volunteers should not have been encamped at Pass Christian, where it could have been instructed; (Doc. 119, House of Representatives, 29th Congress, 2d Session.)

For the march from Camargo upon Monterey, General Taylor organized a force of volunteers of about 3,000 men, and about the same number of regulars. The volunteers lost 74 men killed and died of wounds in the battle of Monterey, Sept. 21, 22, and 23, 1846, and had 218 men wounded. The regulars lost in the same battle 68 men, and had 150 men wounded.

At the battle of Buena Vista, Feb. 22 and 23, there were engaged 517 regulars and about 4,400 volunteers. The loss of the regulars 8 killed and died of wounds, and 36 wounded; the loss of the volunteers 269 killed and died of wounds, and 372 wounded.

At the siege of Vera Cruz, March, 1847, there were 6,808 regulars and 6,662 volunteers. The loss of the regulars 10 killed and died of wounds, and 26 wounded; the volunteers lost 2 killed and 25 wounded.

At Cerro Gordo, April, 1847, there were 6,000 regulars and 2,500 volunteers. The loss of the regulars was 61 killed and died of wounds, and 201 wounded; the loss of the volunteers 38 killed and died of wounds, and 152 wounded.

At Contreras, Churubusco, San Antonio, and San Augustine, August 19 and 20, 1847, there was an aggregate of 9,681 of old and new regulars and marines, and 1,526 volunteers. The regulars lost in killed and died of wounds 137 men, and 653 wounded; the volunteers lost 52 men killed and died of wounds, and 212 wounded.

 At Molino del Rey, September 8, 1847, there were 3.251 regulars engaged. Lost 195 men killed and died of wounds; 582 wounded.

At Chapultepec, and the capture of the city of Mexico, September 12, 13, and 14, 1847, the whole army for duty was 8,304 men. Regulars 7,035 men; volunteers 1,290 men. The regulars lost 144 killed and died of wounds, and 434 wounded; the volunteers 44 killed and died of wounds, and 239 wounded.

In all other incidental affairs and skirmishes, mostly with guerilla parties of the enemy during the whole war, the aggregate losses of the regulars were 65 killed and died of wounds, and 163 wounded; the loss of volunteers 62 killed and died of wounds, and 130 wounded.

Having thus analyzed the losses in battle of the regulars and volunteers, and given the numbers of each engaged in the important battles of the war, the inquiry recurs: why, with an aggregate of 73,000 volunteers and 26,922 regulars reported as being employed during the war, so small a body should have been at the disposition of commanders for marching against the enemy.

The first reason was undoubtedly the defective plan of campaign upon which the war was begun. Immediately after the victories of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, the public mind was inflamed. The volunteer system caused great numbers to flock to the standard of the country. The pressure upon the Administration was great for their reception. General Taylor was flooded with volunteers for whom he could find no employment. A plan of campaign was therefore devised in Washington, for inarching on New Mexico, marching on Chihuahua, marching on Monterey, and marching on California, with different detachments, thus hastily collected together without taking the necessary measures to organize and instruct the troops, and without first providing the materiel indispensable for such long marches. The plan was therefore defective in all those respects, but still more defective in its predominant idea of striking at remote frontiers of the enemy instead of marching on his capital. It was like pricking the fingers of man instead of pointing a dagger at some vital part.

The second and paramount reason why with such large aggregates offerees mustered into service so few were employed in battles, is the failure of the law to provide for a well-digested system of national defence prepared in peace, which would enable Congress and the Executive to meet any crisis in foreign affairs. This want caused the reception into service of 12,601 volunteers for 3 months at the beginning of the war with Mexico. These lost 16 men killed in battle and died of wounds; 129 by ordinary deaths, 922 by discharge, and 546 by desertion. Those killed in battle belonged to the Texas horse and foot, and they alone were engaged with an enemy.

Upon the declaration that war existed by the act of Mexico, Congress, however, authorized the President to accept volunteers for twelve months or for the war. He accordingly received 27,063 v men of this class for twelve months. They lost during their service, killed in action or died of wounds, 439 men; by ordinary deaths 1,859 men; by discharges 4, 36 men; and by desertion 600 men. Some of this class of volunteers rendered most effective service at Monterey, Buena Vista, Vera Cruz, and Cerro Gordo. The great mistake committed in regard to them was in receiving them for the short period of twelve months. Generally mustered into service in June, 1846, they were entitled to discharge in June, 1847, at a moment when their services were much needed, in order to strike a decisive blow at the capital of Mexico. Every effort was made to re-engage them, but without success; and General Scott, who had been employed to conduct military operations on the line from Vera Cruz to the capital, reluctantly put over 3,000 of these men in march from Jalapa to the United States in May, 1847, when he had ascertained that his column was not likely soon to be reinforced by more than 960 army recruits, and the services of those volunteers for the short remainder of their time could therefore no longer be usefully employed. Meanwhile the Administration, having late in 1846 awakened from its dream of conquering a peace, by directing blows against remote extremities of Mexico, had at last adopted the plan of striking at the vitals of their enemy. General Scott was put in command. Some volunteers were at once mustered into service for the war, but in insufficient numbers. Out of the whole force raised for the war, General Scott only received in time for his operations a regiment from New York, two from Pennsylvania, and one from South Carolina, and one company under Captain Wheat, who alone re-engaged themselves from the whole number of twelve-months volunteers; and these were the only regiments of volunteers, which took part in the battles in the valley of Mexico, and the capture of the city, September 14, 1847, which secured the conquest of peace. The whole volunteer force raised for service during the war with Mexico, (but with the exceptions stated, too late for important military operations,) were 33,596 men. They lost 152 men killed and died of wounds; ordinary deaths 4,420; discharges 3,890 men; and desertions 2,730 men. Of the 152 who were killed in battle or died of wounds, 134 belonged to the regiments mentioned as being with General Scott. It was not until December 1847, months after the occupation of the capital, that other volunteers for the war reached Gen. Scott's head-quarters in the city of Mexico.

The same want of administrative ability was shown by the War Department in despatching regulars to the scat of war. Doc. 24, H. of R., 31st Congress, 1st Session, exhibits an aggregate of 15,736 men of the old regular regiments, and 11,186 men of the new regular regiments in all 26,922 regulars employed during the war, and yet the largest regular force employed at any one time against the enemy was less than 10,000 men. Let us endeavor to ascertain how this happened.

It has been seen that the whole regular force on the frontiers of Texas at the beginning of the war was 3,554 men, and that this force fought the battles of Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma and Fort Brown in May, 1846. In September, this force had not been largely increased; for, at the battle of Monterey, Taylor had only about 3,000 regulars.

In February and March, 1847, the regular force employed both at Buena Vista and at Vera Cruz had been increased to 7,425 men. And in April, 1847, at Cerro Gordo, and on the line to Vera Cruz and at Tampico, the whole regular force did not exceed 8,000 men. These all belonged to the old regular regiments. ^ Meantime, February 11, 1847, Congress passed an act for raising one regiment of dragoons* and nine regiments of infantry. But none of these troops reached Gen. Scott's head-quarters at Puebla, until July and August, 1847. The last detachment came up August 6, and Gen. Scott marched on the city of Mexico, August 7, 1847, with only 2,564 new regulars. The forces which took part in the battles in the valley of Mexico were then:

 Old regular regiments . . .  6,446 men. New regular regiments .... 2,365 " Marines 271 " Volunteers 1,569  Total 10,651 men.


The greater part of the additional force of regulars raised for the war, as well as the very large numbers of volunteers raised for the same purpose, were not, it thus appears, put at the disposition of military commanders, until final success in battles had already been accomplished. The following tables, giving losses by regiments, &c., are from the report of the adjutant-general of Dec. 3, 1849:

Total killed and died of wounds.

RECAPITULATION OF LOSS IN BATTLE OF THE REGULAR ARMY, BY REGIMENTS AND CORPS, IN THE CAMPAIGN OF 1846. BEGIMENTS AND COEPS. KILLED IN BATTLE. WOUNDED […]

RECAPITULATION OF LOSS IN BATTLE OF THE VOLUNTEER FORCES IN THE CAMPAIGN OF 1847, AND AGGREGATE OF THEIR LOSSES IN 1846. REGIMENTS AND CORPS. KILLED IN BATTLE. WOUNDED.  V DIED OP WOUNDS. […]

 (Scott, Military Dictionary, Van Nostrand, 1862, p. 643-651).


VON SCHRADER, Alexander, soldier, born in Germany about 1821; died in New Orleans, Louisiana, 6 August, 1867. He was graduated at the military academy in Berlin, and became 2d lieutenant, in the army of the duke of Brunswick, in which his father was a lieutenant-general. After twenty years service in Europe he came to this country at the opening of the Civil War, and was made lieutenant-colonel of the 74th Ohio Regiment. He was soon afterward made assistant inspector-general on the staff of General George H. Thomas, and served with credit at Chickamauga, Stone River, Chattanooga, the Atlanta Campaign, and Nashville. On 13 March, 1865, he was brevetted brigadier-general of volunteers. In 1867 he was commissioned major of the 23d regular Infantry and assigned to duty as acting assistant inspector-general of the District of Louisiana. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 306-307.


VOORHEES, Daniel Wolsey, senator, born in Butler County, Ohio, 26 September, 1827. He was taken to Indiana in infancy by his parents, was graduated at Indiana Asbury (now De Pauw) University in 1849, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1851, and began to practice in Covington, Indiana, in the same year. He was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Congress in 1856, and m 1858 was appointed U. S. district attorney for Indiana, which office he held until 1861. In 1859 he went to Virginia, at the request of Governor Ashbel P. Willard, of Indiana, to defend John E. Cook, the governor's brother-in-law, who had been put on trial for participation in John Brown's raid. He was then chosen to Congress and served from 1861 till 23 February, 1866, when his seat was contested successfully by Henry D. Washburn, but he sat in that body again in 1869-'73. During his service in the house he was a member of the committees on elections, appropriations, the judiciary, the revision of laws, and the Pacific Railroad. On the death of Oliver P. Morton, Mr. Voorhees was appointed to fill his seat in the U. S. Senate, serving from 12 November, 1877, and he was elected for a full term in 1879, and re-elected in 1885. In early life Mr. Voorhees obtained the name of "The Tall Sycamore of the Wabash," by which he is still frequently called. He has made a reputation as an orator. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 307.


VOSE, Richard H., Augusta, Maine, abolitionist.  Manager, 1833-1837, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. (Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833)


VROOM, Peter Dumont, soldier, born in Trenton, New Jersey, 18 April, 1842, was graduated at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, in 1862. He served in the Civil War, being wounded at South Mountain, was promoted major of the 2d New Jersey Cavalry in 1863, and brevetted lieutenant-colonel and colonel of volunteers for meritorious services during the war. He became 1st lieutenant in the 3d U. S. Cavalry in July, 1866. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 306


VOTES. (See FINDING.)