Governor Sam Versus Uncle Sam
Governor Samuel Kirkwood used his oratorical skills to rally recruits for Lincoln’s armies— on his terms.
In 1855, a combination of political and personal circumstances put Samuel Jordan Kirkwood on a path to become Iowa’s wartime governor. That year Kirkwood, a lawyer active in Ohio state politics, left the Democratic party, closed his law practice in Mansfield, and moved to Iowa.
The first of these changes resulted from Kirkwood’s dissatisfaction with the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The controversial legislation effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which had prevented the spread of slavery into western territories north of Missouri’s southern border. The other two changes occurred because of Mrs. Kirkwood’s desire to live near relatives in Iowa.
In the spring of 1855 Kirkwood went into business with his wife’s brother, Ezekiel Clark. Together they owned land, stores, and a grist mill at Coralville, a few miles northwest of Iowa City. Kirkwood was an active partner, exchanging his suits for overalls and assuming the duties of farmer and miller.
While grinding grain on February 22, 1856, Kirkwood was interrupted by Clark, who had spent the morning in Iowa City at the organizational convention of the Republican party in Iowa. With some reluctance, Kirkwood acceded to Clark’s plea that he attend the convention’s afternoon session. Clad in flour-speckled rustic dress and speaking extemporaneously before the organizers, Kirkwood found himself once again a political leader, this time as a member of the fledgling Republican party. Election to the Iowa State Senate came within a few months, followed by two terms as governor, from January 1860 to January of 1864.
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Iowa’s constitution designated the governor as commander of the state’s army, navy, and militia but contained no provisions for the development or maintenance of such forces. Between 1846, when Iowa became a state, and 1860, none of Iowa’s governors had seen a need to establish a military force. Therefore, when Lincoln called for 75,000 three-month volunteers in April 1861, Kirkwood was unsure that he would be able to meet Iowa’s one-regiment quota. He need not have feared.
Kirkwood immediately issued a proclamation calling for the various counties to raise volunteer companies consisting of a minimum of 78 men each; the companies would comprise a state militia which would ultimately be mustered into the United States army. In addition, the governor used his oratorical skills to explain his — and Lincoln’s— belief that the Union should remain inviolate. The result was that twice as many Iowans volunteered as could be accepted.
The real problem Kirkwood faced was not recruiting troops but equipping, feeding, and paying them until they became Union soldiers. To this end, he took some extraordinary steps, pledging to raise $10,000 dollars, even if it meant using his own property as collateral. With the State Treasury having no monies designated for military purposes, Kirkwood used money from the governor’s contingency fund and borrowed from two state-chartered banks on the basis of notes he took out as the Governor of Iowa. In effect, these notes made him personally liable for their repayment. With patriotism running high in Iowa, other bankers also offered substantial funds to the governor, and railroads provided free transportation to the troops.
Although a legislative session in May authorized a bond issue to establish a War and Defense Fund to pay soldiers for their time in the Iowa militia, Kirkwood strove throughout his terms as governor to provide for Iowans serving in the war. He wrote letters to officials and traveled to Washington pleading for supplies and weapons, rarely receiving any. He accompanied a commission sent to care for wounded Iowans following the fighting at Fort Donaldson. Kirkwood’s reason, according to biographer Harry Warren Lathrop, was that “he could not rest till all had been done for the boys that could be done, for he felt for them all the anxiety of a father.”
Governor Samuel Kirkwood
Kirkwood’s paternal instinct surfaced in another manner in 1862 when the Federal government issued a call for 600,000 additional soldiers. Of these, half were to be enlisted for three years, the remaining 300,000 for nine months. For each group, Iowa’s quota was approximately 10,500 men. The three-year regiments were raised easily, but Kirkwood refused to send soldiers for nine-month terms. His military secretary, N. H. Brainerd, explains:
He said it took nine months for raw recruits to become of value as soldiers, to become inured to camp and march, to change of food and habits, and the exposure incident to army life, and efficient in drill and the use of arms. By the time they had got thus far and were beginning to be soldiers indeed their term of enlistment would expire and they be lost to service.
As a result, Iowa met the second half of her 1862 quota with men enlisted for three years rather than nine months.
Unfortunately, the war dragged on. As Brainerd writes, ” with all its casualties and the expiration of the enlistments of the nine months’ men [from other states], more recruits were wanted, and as they could not be enlisted fast enough a draft was ordered in 1863, and Iowa was called upon to furnish troops under it.”
While justifiably proud of the number of Iowan volunteers and the quality of their service, Kirkwood had no desire to needlessly expose more men to the war. When Brainerd reasoned that if Iowa were given credit for the time of the three-year enlistements used to fulfill the second half of its 1862 quota, its 1863 obligation for troops would also be met, Kirkwood concurred. They calculated that 10,500 men serving for three years equated to 42,000 soldiers serving for nine months.
The Governor asked Secretary Brainerd to correspond with the War Department in Washington to present the claim. Brainerd received “a prompt reply that the claim was just, but that the department was overwhelmed with work and had no time then to adjust the matter.” The bureaucrats promised to give credit to Iowa sometime in the future.
Regrettably, that sometime did not come until January 1865, a year after Kirkwood’s tenure as governor ended. Had the War Department been able to make the appropriate adjustments when Kirkwood had Brainerd present the issue in 1863, thousands of Iowans who volunteered or were drafted to meet Iowa’s quotas in 1864 could have stayed home.
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Iowa Civil War Trivia
Iowa fielded approximately 76,000 soldiers during the Civil War, furnishing 48 infantry regiments (including one black regiment), 9 cavalry regiments, 4 artillery batteries, and 1,000 replacement troops. Of those, 13,000 men died, more from diseases than battle wounds. Twenty-seven Iowans received Congressional Medals of Honor. According to David L. Snook at www.iowanationalguard.com, “By the end of the war, Iowa had the highest percentage of volunteer enlistments of any state, North or South.”