East meets West
A Study in
Soldierly Contrasts, Autumn 1863
Following the Union defeat at
Chickamauga in September 1863, The Army of the Potomac's 11th and 12th corps were sent
west by rail from Virginia to reinforce the Army of the Cumberland in Tennessee. When the
smartly attired Eastern soldiers, especially those wearing the 12th Corps' star badge,
first encountered their Western comrades, a heated rivalry sprouted immediately. One
Buckeye officer thought the new arrivals looked like "walking museums of buttons and
brass plates and ornaments" - a sharp contrast to "the scantier outfit of the
western troops." The outward differences were even more pronounced in November after
additional Federal reinforcements under Gen. William T. Sherman marched over 300 miles to
Chattanooga's relief from Memphis. Sherman's hardened veterans were dumbfounded upon
seeing Gen. Joseph Hooker's natty Potomac men Jibed an Illinoisan: "'What elegant
corpses they'll make in those good clothes!' we said to each other, with simulated
admiration." Another Westerner, Private William Bakhaus of Company G, 47th Ohio,
remembered the meeting this way:
Having been continually on the road
for 55 days we naturally did not present a very creditable appearance, and we were a very
motley looking set of men. Many were hatless and shoeless, clothing tattered and torn. My
shoes, or what was left of them, had no soles. In striking contrast to our appearance were
Hooker's men, all dressed up as if for parade, in short neat looking jackets and paper
collars. They had stars on their caps, on their coats, on their tents, on their flags
[and] on their wagons. Everything they had seemed to be a brigadier general. We, at that
time, did not know that the star was their corps badge, having never heard of such a thing
before.
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