Pvt. John Fischer, Co. F 146th NYSV and the First Memorial Day

By Michael D. Fischer, Chittenango

(2013) As we celebrate the Memorial Day Holiday and the 150^th anniversary of the US Civil War, let’s revisit the first Memorial Day observance, which has its roots in the War Between the States.

Before this time there were no national celebrations to honor those who fell on the battlefield, but with more than half a million deaths during the war, every community across the country must have felt the loss of their sons, brothers and fathers. From this loss arose a collective desire to do something to acknowledge the sacrifice of our fallen soldiers. For Central New Yorkers, there is a local connection that may add greater meaning to honoring the military men and women who sacrificed their lives for our freedom.

First, let’s clean up a bit of history. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a Presidential Proclamation in May of 1966, recognizing Waterloo NY as the Birthplace of Memorial Day.  The first parade held in Waterloo to honor the Civil War dead took place on May 5, 1866, and was repeated the following year. Thus, at least in the north, began one Memorial Day tradition.

It was in the south, however, that the first community-wide celebration in honor of fallen soldiers occurred. The date was May 1, 1865, and the location was the Washington Race Course Prison in Charleston, SC. That event, which led to the celebration of “Decoration Day” is linked to one of Utica’s sons, German immigrant Johann Fischer (1840-1864).

Johann Fischer (John Fischer)

Peter and Veronica Ginster Fischer arrived in Utica in August of 1842 after a voyage lasting several weeks aboard the packet ship Silvie de Grasse, from Le Havre to New York City. The family included five children ranging from Michael, the eldest at 13, to Johann, age 2 ½; two more children would be born in Utica.

Many families from the Rheinland-Pfalz region of Germany looked to America for refuge and a beginning of a prosperous new age after decades if not centuries of political conflict, war and famine. Utica was a fresh start for the Fischers; the family joined other German immigrants and settled on Schuyler Street in West Utica.

Peter was a nail-maker, providing hardware for the growing construction market. The Fischers began their assimilation into life in America by helping to nurture the parish family of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church on Lafayette Street. We know from letters and various accounts of the time that Johann was active in his faith; he attended the parish school and in 1858 was a charter member of the St. Aloysius Young Men’s Benevolent Society along with his brother Theodor.

By the time of the 1860 US Census, the family names were anglicized; John and Theodore were residing with their now-widowed mother at 46 Canal Street, and worked as carpenters in the employ of their brother Michael, a successful builder in West Utica.

John enjoyed frequenting the taverns in the Varick Street neighborhood, savoring a glass of beer and burning a cigar, and reveling in the fellowship of the growing population in his generation. John took pleasure in playing base-ball and cards with his “old sports” and had an eye for the girls in West Utica. In short, he was an average young man, enjoying life, working hard, and doing his best to get by. He cared about his faith, his family, and his friends.

The 146^th NYSV Infantry Regiment

When a new Regiment was to be formed in the summer of 1862, John answered the call and enlisted. On Oct. 10, 1862, he mustered in as a Private in Company F of the 146^th New York State Volunteers. The 146^th NY was a renowned part of the Grand Army of the Republic. The unit, formed in Oneida County, went by several nicknames- including Garrard’s Tigers, Halleck’s Infantry, and the Fifth Oneida. John joined with dozens of his friends from Utica who embarked on this adventure armed with the general belief that the squashing of the rebel uprising would be a simple matter.  Within two months, the 146^th was engaged in its first action at the Battle of Fredericksburg. For the boys from Utica, the war had begun.

Thanks to letters sent by John Fischer during his service to his friend Willie Diefenbach and other family members back in Utica, and saved as part of the family legacy, we have a bittersweet taste of life in the Union Army, and the tremendous hardships endured during the war. Reading John’s account of death under fire and in camp from sickness and wounds, the confusion in the greenhorn ranks of the regiment at the Battle of Fredericksburg when shells were dropping all around, scattering the men, and his description of “shell-shock,” we can sense the terror that was part of life during battle. John remarked in a letter to Willie, sent soon after Fredericksburg, that “some was so afraid they did not know themselves.”

We also are able to see a lighter side of life in the 146^th, and can imagine John’s homesickness as he asks Willie to send him a newspaper to read, to “have a beer” for him, and to say hello to the “Utica girls.” John’s letters include mention of band music in camps, and singing songs to pass the Christmas Holiday. When describing the tremendously large lice, called “graybacks,” that infested the camps John joked that he would have sent one back for Willie to see except he “did not have enough postage stamps to fetch him to Utica.”

Life as a private in the 146^th was a mixture of gallantry and terror on the battlefield, feast and famine in camp, excitement and boredom, and constant sickness from the extremely unsanitary conditions faced each and every day. John seemed almost numbed by war when he described the suicide of a soldier who shot himself in the head by “blowing his brains out” in the street, and in the same paragraph asked Willie to tell some of the girls back home not to get married too fast, because “we soldiers want a sight for some when we get home.”

During 1863 the 146^th distinguished itself at battles in Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, and other skirmishes in Maryland and Virginia. It was at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863, where the 146^th contributed mightily to the cause of the Union by helping defend Little Round Top and halt the northern advance of the Confederate Army. Through 1863 casualties in the 146^th were less than 100 men, but that would soon change in a single battle.

The appointment of Ulysses S. Grant as Lieutenant-General of all the Federal troops in March of 1864 led to the reorganization of the Union Army. The various army corps were consolidated, and so the 146^th, part of the Fifth Corps, was honorably assigned to the 1^st Brigade of the 1^st Division. General Grant’s first engagement with General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia would be the Battle of the Wilderness.

John Fischer, who spent much of the winter of 1864 at Stanton Army Hospital in Washington DC, returned to the 146^th in March, just in time for the conflict that would come to epitomize the sacrifice made by the 146^th.

The Battle of the Wilderness began on May 5, 1864, and was fought primarily in a densely overgrown thicket described as a “maze of trees, underbrush, and ragged foliage in a jungle of switch ten or twenty feet high.” As the armies clashed, the advantage shifted to Lee’s forces; they were arranged in such a way as to separate and surround many of the advancing Union companies. The battle was fought at close quarters; bayonets and bullet alike were employed as well as hand-to-hand combat where enemies beat one another with the butts of their guns. This terrific engagement between the forces resulted in the single-greatest loss of men in the history of the 146^th. By the time the battle ended, more than 300 members of the 146^th were lost, killed, wounded or missing. Many were captured by the Rebels; John Fischer was among those unfortunates who ended up in the hands of the Confederate war machine.

Andersonville Prison

After the battle John Fischer and his captured comrades were transported away from the front, first to Lynchburg, and soon after to the prison camp at Andersonville, Ga. Already weakened from bouts of dysentery and diarrhea, John did not fare well as a prisoner of the Confederacy. Andersonville was a notoriously overcrowded hell-hole of a prison.

By the summer of 1864 there were close to 30,000 prisoners confined inside a fenced area intended for 10,000, with no shelter, fresh water, or sanitary facilities. Conditions of filth, sickness, starvation, exposure, and brutal treatment by their captors resulted in the deaths of some 13,000 Union soldiers. John Fischer, who had suffered from illness throughout much of his service, must certainly have felt miserable.

Thanks in part to a breakdown in the prisoner exchange system between the Union and Confederate armies, and the lack of any available resources to provide proper food, clean water, and shelter for the prisoners, a sentence in Andersonville was a sentence to a race against time. It seemed the only way out would be to outlast the war.

The Race Course Prison, Charleston, South Carolina

After the fall of Atlanta in September of 1864 to Union forces under General William T. Sherman, Andersonville prison was evacuated to keep the prisoners out of the reach of Sherman’s Army, and possible freedom. Many of the surviving Union prisoners, including John Fischer, were marched to Charleston, SC where they were held captive in the infield of the Washington Race Course. Conditions in Charleston were not noticeably better than Andersonville, but given the advanced state of disease and starvation suffered by many of the prisoners, and their already weakened condition, the effect of captivity must have been worse. John’s condition gradually but inexorably worsened during his months at the Race Course. It was there that he came under the care of Mrs. Eliza McGuffin Potter, who came to be known as the “Soldier’s Nurse.”

John Fischer suffered from dysentery that caused chronic diarrhea, dehydration, and other debilitating side effects. He died in the Washington Race Course prison camp on December 5, 1864, seven months to the day after his capture at the Wilderness. He was buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand. Sadly, a truce between the Union Soldiers at Battery Gregg and the Confederates at Fort Sumter had been called for the same day in order to exchange prisoners. Had John been able to muster the strength to last just a few more days, he might have survived.

Mrs. Eliza McGuffin Potter

Born in Scotland, raised in Ireland, and immigrated to America, Eliza McGuffin married Lorenzo T. Potter, a businessman from Rhode Island. In the 1850s, the Potters relocated to Charleston so that Mr. Potter could attend to his business interests in the South. Before the war, they enjoyed success as business prospered, but after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, the family became all but outcast due to their expressed Unionist sympathies. Once the need for assistance at the Union prison camp and makeshift hospitals in Charleston became apparent, Eliza Potter stepped up to assist, providing clothing, food, and nursing care for the prisoners.

With the well-known family position as union supporters who were living in the heart of the Confederate States of America, the assistance to Union soldiers by Eliza Potter became too much for the Charleston citizens to without retaliation. Her once-friendly neighbors and acquaintances now treated the Potter family with disdain at best and contempt at worst. The antagonism spread to affect even her young son, for among the many punishments the Potters endured for their sacrifice was the savage beating of their eldest son Frederick by schoolmates, which ultimately led to his death in April of 1863, at the age of 17, as he contracted Typhoid fever while bedridden from the effects of the beating. The tragic loss of their son in such a manner was compounded by the prior death of their oldest daughter, Julia, who passed away in 1861 from illness.

Despite the odds against her, Eliza Potter worked tirelessly and at great personal expense to continue to provide care to the Union prisoners in Charleston. As she watched scores of those in her care suffer and die, she made a promise to each of them that their service and sacrifice would not be forgotten, and that she would ensure that a fitting monument would be erected in their honor.

The First “Decoration Day”

Charleston lay in ruins as the war came to a close. Years of shelling had destroyed many buildings, and the once proud city was beyond recognition. After the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, thousands of former slaves returned to Charleston and looked to begin their lives free from bondage.

One group of newly freed slaves from local churches in Charleston, calling themselves “Friends of the Martyrs” decided to establish a new cemetery and rebury the soldiers at the Race Course Prison in individual graves, marked by wooden head-boards, to ensure the fallen soldiers would rest in a manner befitting of their status as heroes of the war. They constructed a fence to surround this new cemetery and built an arched entry over which a sign was placed bearing the words “The Martyrs of the Race Course.” A committee of freed slaves called the “Patriotic Association of Colored Men” formed to plan an event to honor these Union martyrs. As work on the cemetery neared completion, the committee set the date of May 1, 1865, for their observance.

When May 1 arrived more than 10,000 people, the vast majority being former slaves, arrived at the new Race Course Cemetery in Charleston for a day-long observance. The celebration included a parade of marchers, a choir of several thousand children singing patriotic songs, and speeches by local religious leaders and other dignitaries. Those present were privileged to witness a military review by the 54^th Massachusetts, the first Union regiment to include black soldiers. The parade marchers carried bouquets of flowers to decorate the new graves; by the end of the day it was noted that the graves appeared as one large mass of roses. The event lasted all day and was truly the first organized community event of its kind anywhere in the United States; the first “Decoration Day..

There can be no question that the celebration in Charleston happened at the right time and under the right circumstances. The first Decoration Day was a true celebration of thanks offered by those who had been liberated from slavery by the honored soldiers. Who better then, to honor their sacrifice?

Beaufort National Cemetery and Eliza Potter’s Promise

In May of 1868, just three years after that first Memorial Day, the soldiers buried at the Race Course were moved to the Beaufort National Cemetery a short distance south of Charleston, to provide a more lasting and fitting resting place for the “Martyrs of the Race Course.” The Washington Race Course was private property, and the cemetery was suffering from neglect. According to an article and illustration in Harpers Weekly in 1867, “a mass of tangled grass and herbage nearly hides from sight the little head boards which mark the graves.”

True to her word, Eliza Potter and her husband funded the installation of the Union Soldiers Monument, and a marble and brick box tomb; both structures were completed in 1870. The marble top of the tomb contains names of many of the soldiers who died in Charleston and who had been cared for by Eliza Potter. Included in the names from New York State inscribed on the top of the tomb is that of J. Fisher. There is a stone memorial in Saint Joseph’s Cemetery in Utica that bears the inscription “John Fischer, Company F, 146^th NYV.,” but there is no grave in Utica; Johann Fischer rests in Beaufort, SC, in the National Cemetery.

A Lasting Legacy

There is a lot more to tell of the tapestry of these people and their times, and of that first Decoration Day celebration in Charleston. John Fischer’s letters and family correspondence include many other stories about life in Utica and in the 146^th during the Civil War and beyond.

Willie Diefenbach married John’s niece, Philomena Servatius, the daughter of Simon and Margarethe Fischer Servatius. Willie’s older brother John Diefenbach married Maria Catharina Fischer, another of John’s sisters. Willie and his brother John formed a partnership and opened a barbershop with Bartholomew Fischer, the youngest of John’s brothers. This was a close-knit community of families, friends and neighbors.

The story of Eliza Potter and her efforts to ease the suffering of those she considered to be heroes of the Union has been documented, yet somehow she has escaped the collective popular consciousness.

The bravery and sacrifice of the 54^th Massachusetts, the first black union regiment to see battle, was captured in the movie “Glory.” The members of the 54^th who died the unit’s attack on Battery Wagner were buried by the Rebels in a mass grave, but are now interred at Beaufort National Cemetery in unmarked graves.

The site of the Race Course Prison is now Hampton Park. In 2010 the City of Charleston installed a memorial plaque in commemoration of the first Memorial Day.

When we think about honoring our war dead this Memorial Day, and in the years to come, we might reflect on the simple beginnings that began with the first “Decoration Day.” A group of newly freed people sought to honor the sacrifice made by their liberators with the profoundly simple act of remembering. We can remember that John Fischer was one of us and was honored on that May Day in Charleston. We can remember how Memorial Day began when those soldiers who died in captivity were honored by others recently freed from their own captivity. There are other “first” Memorial Days, but none could have been more fitting than that which honored the Martyrs of the Race Course.

Michael Fischer is a family historian and is the great-grand nephew of John Fischer.

Sketch, “Martyrs of the Race Course”, Union Soldiers Cemetery at Charleston, SC

Drawing by Alfred R. Waud. J.P. Morgan Collection, Library of Congress

Memorial for John Fischer, St. Joseph’s Cemetery, Utica, NY

Photograph by Michael Fischer

Black Carpenters Reburying Union Soldiers at Washington Race Course, Charleston, SC

Photograph from Library of Congress

Eliza McGuffin Potter, Portrait