Collis' Zouaves; The 114th Pennsylvania Volunteers in the Civil War

Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1997. First edition. First printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. xvii, [1], 357, [1] p. Abbreviations used in Notes. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index. Inscribed to Brigadier General Richard McGill by the author. Brig. Gen. Richard M. McGill was mobilization assistant to the Commander, Air Force Office of Special Investigations. He managed and directed the investigative activities of more than 425 Reserve individual mobilization augmentee special agents. The general entered the Air Force in 1967 as a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colo. He served four years active duty with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, and then separated from active duty in August 1971, joining the Air Force Office of Special Investigations Reserve individual mobilization augmentee program. He retired in 2001. From a university on-line posting: "Professor Edward J. Hagerty holds the Ph.D. from Temple University, where he worked with the eminent military historian Russell F. Weigley. Dr. Hagerty's primary interest in the field of military history is the American Civil War. His first book was Collis' Zouaves, The 114th Pennsylvania Volunteers. Dr. Hagerty retired from the Air Force Reserve as a colonel and special agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI). His second book, The Air Force Office of Special Investigations, 1948-2000, was published in 2008." n Collis' Zouaves: The 114th Pennsylvania Volunteers in the Civil War, military historian Edward J. Hagerty tells the story of an elite regiment that saw service with the Union Army of the Potomac in major battles of the Civil War, including Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Petersburg. What made the 114th Pennsylvania unique, Hagerty explains, was its composition (it was made up largely of skilled workers and native-born Americans), its flamboyant uniforms (based on contemporary costumes worn by French North African units), and its commander, Colonel Charles Henry Tucker Collis. Collis was a Philadelphia lawyer, an abolitionist who had emigrated from Ireland in 1853 and had established a successful, politically connected practice by the time he was twenty-five. In 1863, however, Collis was charged with failing to obey orders and was court-martialed. "The controversy surrounding his battlefield conduct," stated Edward C. Snowden in his Pennsylvania History review of the book, "would continue to plague him even after his military service ended." After the war, Collis remained active in politics, often espousing causes that benefited fellow soldiers. "His bonds to his men did not end with the war," Snowden concluded. "Through his activities in the Grand Army of the Republic he championed the rights of veterans. He 'devoted much of the remainder of his life to the development of a National Park at Gettysburg.'" Hagerty also devotes much of his study to the type of men who chose to follow Colonel Collis. Many of them, stated Kevin S. Gould in H-Review, "were neither farmers nor foreigners." Instead, like their colonel, they were members of skilled trades who came into the army, not because of financial incentives, but because they believed in the cause for which they fought. Hagerty, Gould said, "shows through the Zouaves' letters that they joined either for such idealistic reasons as preserving the Union, ensuring liberty and democracy, and maintaining the American example, or out of family and professional loyalty." The author, Gould concluded, "has produced a model in military and social history." The 114th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was an infantry regiment that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. They were notable for their colorful Americanized version of the Zouave uniform worn in emulation of certain French light-infantry units that became world-famous during France's colonization of North Africa, the Crimean War, and the Second War of Italian Independence fought in the years prior to the American Civil War. The 114th Pennsylvania was the brain-child of Charles H. T. Collis, an Irish immigrant who settled in Philadelphia becoming a prominent young lawyer. Collis initially raised only a small company of men calling them the "Zouaves d'Afrique" which served while attached to other regiments. They saw action in the 1862 Shenandoah Valley Campaign, the Battle of Cedar Mountain, and the Battle of Antietam. The "Zouaves d'Afrique" were much admired for their military bearing and prowess in battle to the point that it was decided to raise a full-sized regiment which was given the numeric designation of 114th Volunteer Infantry. Like other Zouave regiments raised in the larger cities of America, the 114th attracted some immigrants to its ranks who were veterans of European wars, but the rank and file consisted mostly of American-born citizens from Philadelphia and its surrounding counties. In the winter of 1862 the regiment participated in the Battle of Fredericksburg. There they took part in a counterattack by Robinson's brigade of the III Corps to relieve General George G. Meade's brigade from potential disaster. When the Zouaves began to falter in their charge against the Confederate line, Colonel Collis seized the regiment's national colors and urged the men on. Their counterattack stalled, then pushed back, the Confederate advance thereby saving a Federal artillery battery from capture. For his actions in this battle Colonel Collis would belatedly receive the Medal of Honor in 1893. The regiment would also take a prominent roll in the Battle of Chancellorsville the following spring where they would endure their greatest number of casualties during any battle of the war. During the fighting, Colonel Collis, suffering from the effects of malaria, was observed being removed from the field on a stretcher by some officers who were personal enemies. After the battle they falsely accused Collis of cowardice in the face of the enemy although he had managed to command the regiment through most of the battle even while gravely ill. He was later brought to Court-martial to face these accusations but he successfully defended himself, introducing witnesses who could attest that he had served faithfully under fire during most of the battle until he collapsed from exhaustion due to his reoccurring problems with malaria. Collis was fully exonerated and allowed to return to duty, however his lingering illness would prevent him from participating with his regiment at the Battle of Gettysburg. There the 114th would again suffer a large number of casualties while defending the Peach Orchard salient. At the conclusion of hostilities in the Eastern Theater the 114th Pennsylvania was transferred into the famed Zouave Brigade of the Army of the Potomac's V Corps. They would lead the brightly clad brigade which consisted of several Zouave regiments, each wearing a different style and color of Zouave uniform, in the Grand Review of the Armies on May 23, 1865, held in Washington, D.C. They were then sent home to Philadelphia and mustered out of service. Ultimately, the 114th Pennsylvania Infantry would leave their mark on the landscape of America itself, its veterans erecting three monuments in memory of comrades lost in battle. A regimental monument was erected in 1886 under the auspices of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania at Gettysburg. Another smaller marker was placed by the veterans at Gettysburg in 1886 to mark the place on Cemetery Ridge that the regiment occupied on the final day of the battle. A final monument was placed on the Chancellorsville battlefield by the 114th veterans in 1898 to mark one of several locations the unit fought during that engagement.