Save Our Flag! 17th N.Y. Veterans
[Photo - The Officers of the 17th New York Veteran Volunteer Infantry Regiment, ca. May to July of 1865, at Alexandria, Virginia.]
RALLY TO THE COLORS! HELP SAVE THE NATIONAL FLAG OF THE 17TH N.Y.V.V.!!
The members of the “Palmetto Riflemen & New York Zouaves” are asking for help in our efforts to raise the necessary funds to conserve and restore the National Flag of the 17th New York Veteran Volunteer Infantry Regiment! This Flag was carried through the campaigns in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina during the American Civil War!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“The Devil Take the Last One”
The 17th New York Veteran Infantry at Jonesboro
September 1, 1864, an army gathered outside a small railroad town known as Jonesboro, Georgia. The sweltering sun forced the Union troops to the shade of the trees as the artillery of both sides fired on each other. The bluecoats waited in line for the order to go forward across fields, swamps and woods up the ridge where those Confederate guns were stationed. It seemed a daunting task. Although the Confederates were smaller in numbers they were all veterans and entrenched on the ridgeline. The Union veterans looked at the newest regiment, the 17th New York Infantry. Would the rookie Easterners stand in their first serious western battle?
The 17th New York Infantry was unlike any regiment in the Western Army. The New Yorkers were one of the few eastern regiments in their army and one of three in their own Fourteenth Corps. This was their first large battle in the West. They were, however, a veteran regiment composed of some of the best Eastern army units in the first part of the war. The regiment was composed of the 9th, 11th, 17th and 38th New York Volunteer regiments, two-year regiments who had completed their terms of service and had wanted to rejoin the fight. The units could not complete reorganization and were instead consolidated. In deference to two of the units the new regiment adopted a unique uniform, that of the 9th New York, “Hawkins Zouaves”.
The regiment sported the red fez with blue tassel, a short red trimmed jacket, vest with a narrow red stripe down the center, red wool sash, dark blue trousers with red trimmings and white gaiters. The regiment made a colorful scene and the westerners harassed the New Yorkers unmercifully about their foreign appearance.[iii] They were called “paper-collars”, a reference to the Eastern army and regularly, “… blackguarded by the Western Regt. most shamefully. They used to say to us we fight down here and hello Army of the Potomac. We will show you fellows how to fight,” remembered company commander Captain William Fisher. This battle would allow the easterners to show their bravery.
The 17th’s soul was embodied in Colorbearer Sergeant John S. Harvey. John S. Harvey was old for a Civil War solider at 42, of average height standing 5’ 9” tall, and recruited, like the rest of the unit, from New York City. Harvey was born in County Monaghan in Ireland, emigrating to the U.S. with the waves of Irish suffering from the potato blights of the 1840.[v] Married in 1847 his wife died from a brain hemorrhage and fall in Newark, New Jersey in 1856, but not before bearing the couples’ only child, a daughter named Emma. Leaving his daughter with friends Harvey joined the 17th New York in October 1863. The powerful Irishman was an obvious choice to guard the U.S. colors- the pride of a regiment. John Harvey would be tested this day.
At 4 p.m. just as the heat wore off the Union troops were ordered forward. Harvey gripped his flagstaff and advanced with the colorguard in front of the 17th New York, sweat pouring down his face. After crossing a field the brigade entered a belt of woods. The Zouaves struck a muddy ravine covered with a thick growth of briars. The regiment was forced to bull its way through with briars tearing at their uniforms. Delayed for several minutes the 17th cleared the ravine to find them alone in a smoky forest with no direction. Colonel William T. Grower, the 17th’s commander, on horseback could not see any nearby troops and could only turn his regiment towards the zipping bullets, which he assumed came from the entrenched Confederates.
Suddenly a messenger arrived on a frothing horse. A brigade of U.S. Regulars had been pinned down by ferocious Confederate fire and they were in desperate need. Without concern for his own formation, Grower ordered the regiment to move northwards, towards the distressed regulars. Arriving on the edge of a cotton field the Zouaves found the Regulars lying down to hold their ground. Earlier in the battle the Regulars had charged up the ridge only to be thrown back by the concentrated fire. Now trying to rally themselves the Regulars cheered the new arrivals.
The Zouaves dressed their ranks and passed over the Regulars pushing across the cotton field. Passing the Regulars some of the Zouaves called out, “Get back old boy, we’ll give them hell.” Hell was not too far off for the Zouaves.
Marching across the field the Zouaves followed the still mounted Colonel Grower. At the southern edge of the field the terrain sloped up to the Confederate defenses, but a small drainage trench ran at is base. Here the Zouaves crossed as best as they could and it was here that Colonel Grower, still suffering from a painful wound at Second Manassas, dismounted and proceeded on foot with the use of a cane. As the regiment dressed its ranks in the woods, Grower, in front of the regiment’s left flank, stared up at the ridgeline to ponder his next move, when a Confederate volley tore into the New Yorkers. Men went down in droves as musket balls thudded into the compact ranks. Nearby Grower hit twice was propped against a large tree between him and the Confederates. The wound was mortal and incapacitating. A cry rose out for Major Joel O. Martin to take over. Martin shook with a combination of fear and excitement, ran to Grower’s side. As the Grower was being moved he told Martin that the regiment would need to retreat if it wasn’t supported by other Union units.
Martin looked about him and could see that the regiment was alone. The Regulars were still back on the north side of the cotton field and there was no one else to be seen. Martin, worried the regiment would be flanked and cut down by the Confederate defenders above him, yelled out, “Fall back, 17th.” The Zouaves, as Captain Pearce of Company F wrote, “…stayed not on the order of our getting, but got at once.” Zouaves turned and fled down the hill with rifle bullets singing behind them. Soon they came to the edge of the cotton field and the mob that was the 17th New York was accosted by a passing staff officer. The Zouaves turned and looked back at the ridge with trepidation.
The next few minutes would change the 17th New York. The Zouave, waiting for leadership, grouped together. Major Martin, wondering what to do, was immobilized with fear. It was now that something miraculous occurred. From the middle of the mob, Sergeant John Harvey and his colors pushed back towards the ridgeline. He took six large strides from the Zouave cluster and planted his U.S. colors into the ground. Immediately the rest of the colorguard joined Harvey in his stand. “Forward on the colors,” yelled the major and in quick time the regiment was back in order. Bayonets were fixed. This time there would be no stopping to fire. Then without orders and with a wild cheer the Zouaves started back up the hill.
In the lead of this new charge were John Harvey and the colorguard. The men clawed their way up the ridge under an increasing amount of Confederate fire. Zouaves were falling along the charge’s route, but the rest continued shouting “… a Zouave yell.” “We were by this time just getting fighting mad, and went for them so sharp…”, wrote Sergeant William Westervelt. The Zouaves’ blood was up and Captain Fisher of Company D followed behind Harvey and another officer as the regiment neared the Confederate trenches. Order was gone as every man rushed as if “the devil take the last one.” The Confederates braced themselves for the Zouaves’ impact with bayoneted rifles.
The first one in the Confederate works was John Harvey. Sergeant Major John Green of the 9th Kentucky saw Harvey and his guards cross the works: “Just to our left, in front of Govan’s brigade, I saw their color bearers…(theirs was from New York)… rush right up to Govan’s rifle pits & take their flag staffs & beat our boys in those trenches over the head with the butt of the flag staffs.”
The fighting was brutal hand-to-hand. Men were stabbed by bayonet and sword or had their heads crushed by swinging muskets. The Confederates had no ammunition, but desperation steeled their resolve, the Zouaves, with revenge and respect on their minds, refused to be denied. Harvey and the colorguard were slashing and whacking Confederates with their staffs and muskets, but the pressure was too much. John Green saw Harvey’s last courageous moments: “While I rejoiced to see them both fall the next instant (each with a bayonet run through him), I could not help feeling those brave men deserved a tear.”
While the colorbearers were killed, the rest of the regiment surged over the works taking many of the defenders captive. Cheers rent the air as the colors were reclaimed and the regiment feeling justly proud, paused to catch their breath.
Later that night more Confederate captives came into the Zouaves’ lines. The numbers became uncountable and many of the prisoners were sent down the ridge to the waiting arms of the reserve regiments. But the price was severe. Besides Harvey and Colonel Grower, who died a day later, the regiment had lost 31 killed, and 70 wounded or nearly 1/3 of the regiment’s strength.
The next day as the tally was collected the Western regiments saw the devastation on the 17th’s front. Captain Fisher’s company D went into the fight with 17 men and at the end only 6 were left unhurt. A new found respect for the 17th began that day. The nickname, “Red-Headed Woodpeckers” overnight changed from derisive to a compliment.
“And now our Regt is spoken of all over Sherman’s Army and when one of our boys go any place the other soldiers stop and look at them and say to one another there goes one of those Zouaves that fought like H--- at Jonesboro. I tell you we have got a big name down here and they don’t hollow at us anymore either,” wrote Captain Fisher a week later. It was a respect that would last for the rest of their lives. In the pages of the National Tribune, a veteran newspaper, from the 1880s to 1900s there are articles about the Battle of Jonesboro, written from across the nation by veterans who were in the regiments who were there. None of them spoke a negative word about the “Red-Headed Woodpeckers.” Respect earned that day was remembered by both friend and foe and John Harvey and his flag was where it all began.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Following the regiment being mustered out of service in July of 1865 the two flags were deposited with the New York State Adjutant Generals Office and placed in the State Capital in Albany, New York, where they have remained, in many cases, untouched since 1865. In 1960 the National Flag received a netting treatment, which was mean to stabilize the flag, typically this old netting treatment is not removed from the flag during conservation. The current condition of the Flag is best described in the NY State Military Museums website as follows:
“What Do We Know About The Condition Of New York’s Battle Flags?
+ Most of the Civil War flags are in fair-to-poor condition
+ All of New York’s battle flags are being damaged by the current method of display in the cases on the first floor of the Capitol
+ The flags are crowded into cases in an uncontrolled environment
+ Gravity is causing stresses on the rolled, vertical flags
+ The flags became soiled from a century of exposure to dirt in the Capitol and the surrounding urban environment
+ The flags, now wrapped in acid-free tissue for protection, were exposed to excessive amounts of light for over 100 years, which caused degradation of the fibers."
As such we will be raising the $5,000 that is required to conserve and preserve the National Flag of the 17th New York Veteran Volunteers. What does this conservation entail?
+ 1) Documenting the history and current condition of the flag
+ 2) Removing the flag from its staffs, cleaning it, and realigning them
+ 3) Creating a support made of archival-quality materials for the flag
+ 4) Establishing a secure space with a stable, clean environment as interim storage for the flag after treatment.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
COST - The total cost to sponsor/conserve the National Flag is $5000, however to ensure that the Conservation is completely covered we will be raising an additional $500 to cover any additional costs to ensure that the flag is preserved.
Once the funds are completely raised they will be sent to the New York State Military Museum, the flag will then be transferred to the conservation lab and the treatment will begin. All those who donated will be kept abreast of the flag's status, etc.., during the treatment process. Upon completion of the conservation we have been invited up to view the flag at the conservation lab!
ADDITIONAL FUNDS - Any additional funds raised over the required amount will be sent in to the N.Y. State Military Museum to be used towards the preservation of other flags of the New York Volunteers!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
For more information on the conservation work for the National Flag of the 17th N.Y.V.V. and other New York flags visit the New York State Military Museum's Website at https://dmna.ny.gov/historic/btlflags/.
For more information on the Palmetto Riflemen & New York Zouaves, visit our website at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~scprnyz/MainPage.html .