Jacob Ham: Three Years with the "Old Steady" 128th New York Infantry

Like thousands of Civil War soldiers, Jacob Ham fought for three years — and sometimes cooked — then went home and took up the rural life he had left. He lived into his mid-80s and was buried in the cemetery at St. Paul's Church.

Monument to the 128th New York Volunteer Infantry in Poughkeepsie, New York. National Park Service.

Enlisting

Ham served as a private in the 128th New York Volunteer Infantry, raised in the Hudson Valley counties of Dutchess and Columbia. Nicknamed "old steady," the regiment fought in more kinds of places than most New York units — Louisiana, Virginia, Georgia and the Carolinas — and lost more than half its original strength on the way to Union victory.

President Lincoln's call in the summer of 1862 for "300,000 more" volunteers stirred young men upstate. With friends and neighbours from the rural town of Ancram, Columbia County, on the east bank of the Hudson, the 22-year-old Ham joined Company G of the new regiment on August 13, 1862, for three years. He left the farm where he lived with his parents and three younger sisters — and his new wife, Melinda, 17, who was pregnant. Their first child, John, was born in early 1863 while Ham was at the front.

The send-off was like thousands across the North. At camp in the city of Hudson the ladies of the town served afternoon tea; a captain trained at West Point drilled the recruits; women of both counties presented flags; and a local woman wrote a fight song calling for "Death to traitors who would sever What the Lord has joined together." At Camp Kelly the lean, 5-foot-9 farmer, black-haired and grey-eyed, was fitted with a blue wool uniform and a slanted kepi. The regiment marched out on September 5 with new haversacks still smelling of varnish, packed with bread, pork and "a big onion," went by steamer down the Hudson — "the jewel of American scenery," in the regimental history's words — and on through New York City to Baltimore, where the men were issued Enfield rifled muskets.

Louisiana

In December 1862 the regiment sailed for the Gulf of Mexico to help retake control of the Mississippi River. That was unusual for a New York regiment. Eastern units generally stayed in Virginia and resisted Gulf postings for fear of malaria, typhoid and other diseases, and for supply reasons those armies were mostly filled from the Northwest. More troops were certainly needed in the lower South, but the 128th's posting may also reflect a lack of political connections to avoid it.

The regiment spent a year and a half in Louisiana, sometimes fighting in swamps and riverbeds, with spells of garrison duty in Baton Rouge in between. Under General Nathaniel Banks's Department of the Gulf, it:

• assaulted Port Hudson, the Confederate river stronghold, in the spring and summer of 1863, losing heavily — its colonel, David S. Cowles, among the casualties — and saw the garrison surrender on July 9, completing Union control of the Mississippi;
• joined the spring 1864 Red River expedition, one of the Union's clearer failures, meant to extend control over Louisiana and carry the flag into Texas. After a major Confederate victory the 128th helped guard the line of retreat and built a dam to help save Union ships, with considerable losses.

Ham's own part is hard to trace — he was one man in a regiment of 1,000 — but he was present at both Port Hudson and the Red River, and came through unwounded and uncaptured. His service record also lists him as cook for Company G: his captain probably discovered his skills and set him to feeding nearly 100 men. He still fought, but stirring stews in big metal pots probably spared him guard duty and other chores.

Virginia to the Carolinas

In July 1864 the regiment went north to Virginia to join General Phil Sheridan's campaign to break Confederate resistance in the Shenandoah Valley and end its use as a supply base. At Cedar Creek on the morning of October 19 the New Yorkers were among the regiments caught in the Confederate surprise attack, and many were captured, though an afternoon counterattack won a major Union victory.

In January the 128th was sent to Savannah, Georgia, and in March to North Carolina, where Ham took part in General William Sherman's Carolinas campaign until General Joseph Johnston surrendered on April 26. The regiment mustered out at Augusta, Georgia, on July 12, 1865 — a few weeks after most units.

Home

Had the war changed him? Outwardly he went back to Melinda and the life he would probably have led anyway, and lived another 60 years, which suggests no serious wounds. There is little sign of emotional trouble. There must have been great pride in surviving, stories for his children and neighbours, and — for all the hardship — a sense of adventure for a man who, apart from 1862–65, may never have left the Hudson Valley.

• 1870: still a farmer in the same Columbia County town, with Melinda and five children, four born after the war.
• Ten years later: nine children; Jacob working as a blacksmith; two teenage sons in a cotton mill — the industrial revolution reaching the countryside of his boyhood.
• 1910: Melinda had died; he had remarried a younger woman and had two more daughters, still in Columbia County.
• Around 1920: after his second wife's death he moved to Mount Vernon to live with his granddaughter Alta and her husband, Harold Treuer, an engraver, on Union Lane near St. Paul's — a common arrangement before assisted living and nursing homes.

He died after a long illness on November 7, 1925, aged 85, survived by seven of his 11 children. A few days later he was buried in the part of St. Paul's cemetery that Mount Vernon used as a municipal burial ground, under a plain soldier's stone.

Sources

• National Park Service, Saint Paul's Church National Historic Site, Civil War Soldier interred at St. Paul's served three years with "Old Steady" 128th New York Infantry.