Afternoon to introduce to you trevor plant. Trevor is the director of the Textual Records Division at the National Archives building in washington, dc. Ill translate that for you all. Trevor has a very important job in the field of history. Trevor is the friend of every historian. Trevor is a really likable guy. But if you didnt like him and youre a historian, hes still going to be really nice to him because archivist have all the power. Now i got a double whammy there. My wife is an archivist, so i got archivist at home that i have to mind as well as the field as well. The archivist are again are indispensable to what we do in the field of civil war history, in particular. Youd be hard pressed to find a book that doesnt have the imprint of trevor. He knows the collections exceeding only well, and thats whats so crucial. When you work with an archivist, you want someone who can do more than just pull the records off the dusty shelves. Youve got to have somebody who really understands that and knows something about what youre working on. Theyve got to know the field. And trevor does just that. So he has a very again, valuable, Important Role in the field of civil war history. Hes probably some if you want to see some of his work, you should go to prolog. Prolog is the national archive. Its the blog so you can see some of the stuff that hes done there. I remember years ago that trevor did a piece on civil war desertion. That was fantastic. Trevor also is i dont want to call him a tvs star, but he has been on a number of programs, including the very popular who do you think you are . Hes also been on the gettysburg excuse me, the Discovery Channel show called gettysburg. So today, trevor is going to share with us treasures from the National Archives. Welcome, trevor plant. Thank you. Thank you, pete. Im going to bring him to my bosss office when i ask for a raise. It is my pleasure to be here with you this afternoon. This is my first time presenting at cwi, so id like to thank dr. Carmichael for inviting me to speak today. Id like to thank ashley lusk for all the support leading up to this moment. So. The one disclaimer im going make before i jump into this is these are. So pete asked me to talk about treasurys with the National Archives, and thats all he asked me for. So there were no parameters involved. So this is documents. The National Archives in washington, dc, we have many other facilities with the National Archives. We have field locations across the country. We have a much larger building in college park, maryland, that also holds civil war era records, as well as the map collection and the photographs that both covered civil war. So i just wanted to give you that caveat. You know, kind of what what i worked with when i when i put this together for you all so, i wanted to start with. So were going to have the first three are non civil war most of the records of the National Archives start during the american revolution. So a great example of that, our oath of allegiance. So the Continental Congress passed an act they want to Army Officers to sign a oath of allegiance. So this is the written version of the verbal. So we still have oath today in this country. If you work for the federal government, like i do, if youre in the military, if youre a politician on the hill in dc, first day you sign a lot of paperwork, you get fingerprinted, raise your hand, and you do an oath to uphold the constitution. This is a much different oath than the one i took and that we take today. This predates the constitution constitution. The other thing that ill point out so let me let me jump into this and then ill ill explain a little bit about it. So. The timing of this couldnt be better. So this is preprinted forms that they sent to washington. And he wanted him they wanted him to have the officers sign these be witnessed by another officer, return the paperwork to army headquarters. So the timing of this is this is Washingtons Army coming out of the famous horrible winter at valley forge, where the army could barely afford to feed them, housed them, clothed them, provide them with arms and ammunition, but heres the paperwork. Please return the paperwork when youre done. So the bureaucracy has always been with us. So with that, ill jump into this. So the army numbered these. George washington is number one as George Washington commander, chief of the army, the United States of america do acknowledge the United States of america to be a free, independent, sovereign states, declare the people thereof. No, oh, no. Allegiance or obedience to george, the third king of great britain. So right off the bat, much different than our our oath today. Obviously. So youll notice theres a space in the middle where they were the word swear there was a few religious groups at the time there was a passage in matthew. They take very literally that says you cant swear under god. So thats where they could swear or affirm. Washington swore thatll do the utmost in his power to support maintain defend the United States against the said king george the third his heirs and successor in his or their betters. So the whole royal family is covered signed by washington and then it has in the lower left hand corner on the bottom sworn before me camp at valley forge, may 12, 1778, and the Major General stirling is the officer who witnessed washingtons oath. So whenever i talk about oath of allegiance during the revolutionary war, the one officer, at least till a couple of years ago that everyone asked about was benedict arnold. So we do have Benedict Arnolds oath of allegiance at the National Archives. Benedict arnold was overtaken by a more popular officer. So we do have Alexander Hamilton and he signed alex hamilton. We dont often think of him as alex, but thats him signing. And all three of those, like i said, were at valley forge in may. Of 1778. So one of the start out groups with talking about personnel related records before we jump into to some other specific documents, because those in itself are treasures. So these are some of our most popular civil war records used by historians, used by genealogist. And so i just give kind of a breakdown of Civil War Service. We have compiled Service Records, pension files, card of medical records for confederates, compiled Service Records, and then p. O. W. Records. So the thing thats interesting is when we think of military and personnel, the first thing that pops up is kind of a personnel file. And then in modern terms, a discharge paper, which is a d to 14 today, there was no consolidated personnel file during the civil war for union or confederate. It didnt exist. That concept didnt exist. The u. S. Army had been so small that they never a consolidated file on an individual soldier officer or enlisted. As you know, the army exploded in size during civil war. It became a huge problem after the war where individual veterans were putting in a pension request to the Pension Office. The Pension Office would get the request, send it over to the War Department to verify the Persons Service and to verify they didnt desert. If was a disability related pension, they had to prove in the paperwork the disability. Again, they were trying to do this without a consolidated file. It got to the point where there were about a year, a half or two years behind answering the question that was coming in to the Pension Office, the grand army of the republic got involved. It was a very powerful union. Veterans group after the civil war put a lot of pressure on congress. Congress, then put a lot of pressure on the War Department. And then in the 1880s, they created the system that im about to walk through with you all. So these were called compiled Service Records. What youre looking at are three envelope for three soldiers in, the second georgia calvary. So these are the envelopes that contain cards. And ill show you the examples of the cards on the next slide, the red numbers are numbers on the back of the cards that are within the envelope. Sometimes people see the envelope and they think that these relate to a totally different file. Thats not what this is. This tells you the number of of cards that should be within that within that file itself. So these are cards in the service record. Basically, any time a soldiers name showed up on a muster enroll, they must write roll a must roll busters were taken every two months and you either present or absent. So its kind of like when we were in elementary school, your present or absent if you were absent and they knew why, then there may be remarks and then they would show up on here as well. So these information that was consolidated based on other records, but it always tells what that original record was that the information is taken from so in this case, company must roll. Prisoner of prisoner of war, role, etc. And then same thing role of p. O. W. And then various information on the first two and then this soldier did an oath of allegiance. So thats what the third card is, is an oath allegiance. And then this is what that oath looked like. So going back that card on the right sites, this basically is how that is how that system worked. So then it then made it where the War Department just based on a name and a unit could go in and then everything was consolidated. It was in an envelope. And so they were creating personnel files after the fact. Well, after the fact, they started with medical records in the early 1880s. Then they did union. So going into late 1880s, 1890s, they focused on union. They then were working on confederates and so late 18, 18, 19, 1898 into the early 1900s, they were still compiling information on on confederates. So this is a Union Service record. Its the same exact, you know, system. It looks exactly the same. Its just this one relates to a member in a u. S. Colored heavy artillery unit. And then same thing it shows you where the information was taken from with various company muster enrollees or muzzle rolls. Then same thing where it has the two month. You can see the system follows through. Whereas like, you know, every two months theyre doing the the most roles. And then muster out. So this is when the soldiers was mustered out of federal service. So this is unusual. So id mentioned adt to 14 so any veterans who are you know 20th century or more recent they know what a d d d, d 214 is. Thats literally just the form for a discharge paper. So in world war two, when they discharged a lot of soldiers from world war two, they gave them copies of a discharge paper with my grandfather. He had like almost like a microfiche little version could then be read and expanded. The War Department kept actually dodd kept a copy of it. They gave several copies to to the soldiers. That was not the case in the civil war. The civil war, there was one discharge paper and they literally handed it to the soldier when they were discharged from the army. The reason this is at the National Archives is because either veteran or a next of kin submitted this later as part of a pension claim. So again, there will be one discharge paper from the war, but itll be for each unit. So if you have someone who served multiple units or in the civil war, theoretically they would have received a discharge paper from each one of those from those units when they were discharged. Then mentioned medical records. So this is the system that they started in the early 1880s. We call them, and medical records. So its the same thing where itll show you where the records were taken from as far as the union. So for itll be in the in the compiled records which are digitized and available on full three, youre not going to get as much information with confederates as you do for union. The confederates burned a lot of their paperwork. So when grants army was coming in to richmond a week before appomattox, the clerks were literally throwing reams of paper into fireplaces. They burned a lot of records in richmond, went on a train burn, more in danville, virginia, and then even more in the carolinas. They made their way into the carolinas. So a lot of the confederate records were destroyed. So a lot of what the National Archives has is either what captured. So the captured confederate records or what some cases copied from what the former confederates had. So thats what like i said, what the cadre medical looks like and it will always tell you the volume it was taken from. So if its a field, if its a general hospital, in many cases itll have a volume number and page number. So reason again, they came up with this system was before if a claim in and well you sandy willis was one of the soldier examples that had to in sandy willis was injured Saint Petersburg thats all that he submitted to the Pension Office so thats the only information that the War Department had to go on. So clerks had to go through all of the various hospitals that he could have theoretically in and then go through lists of names that are non alphabetical to try to find this one persons name. So thats why it was taking so long for them to respond to the Pension Office. It was a very labor intensive process. So the cardio medical. Definitely helped. So thats. So i failed to mention this is Joshua Chamberlain, so hopefully you picked up on that at the top. So this is Joshua Chamberlain soon after. So this is see, this is july into november where hes getting leave based on gettysburg and then later, 1864, based on his wounds that petersburg. So each one of these again is referencing something something different. And in this case related to Joshua Chamberlain chamberlain. So we have mentioned Court Martial records. So martial records are a great source. Theyre literally the transcript of the trial. So its charges, specifications, questions asked and answered and then the outcome of the case, this ones a little hard to believe. Someone got drunk in key west, florida. This is lieutenant john sheppard, who was drunk on duty. So this one this one is a little unusual. So the officers these are officers in his unit who sat on the on the Court Martial trial. They found him guilty. And he was to be cashiered from the army. So that was the outcome. The colonel then approves the outcome of that case. All of the officers that were involved in that case wrote a cover letter recommending that the ruling that they just did be looked at and remitted. And then they gave several reasons why he had, you know, good service. This was his first offense. He was a good guy. He was a good officer. And so their recommendation, even though they just said he should be cashiered there, really he is his sentence should remitted so that went up to the general. The general agreed with the recommendation. It then went to army jag and then in the upper right hand corner, president lincoln wrote sentence remitted abe lincoln and then the date. So thats in Abraham Lincolns hand. So it did go to the president , but again, it filtered the judge advocate general for the army before it before it it went there. This is another case. So this is the background of this is this is a soldier who was in a colorado unit. So this is private Michael Delaney was a company k first colorado cavalry. He deserted in the spring. They found him several months later, went to trial. The outcome of the case was he was to be shot to death. So same thing the officers sat on that trial, made recommendation that he not be shot to death because they found serving in another colorado unit. So he left for a couple of months, came back, didnt return to his previous unit. He joined another colorado unit, which happened during the civil war. Most, most often they went back to their theyre their unit. There were several soldiers who because they were volunteers felt that they volunteer to go to the army and they felt that they volunteer to go home when their wife, you know, needed help on the farm and then volunteered to go back, which, as you can imagine didnt go over well with Army Officers. So again, they made the recommendation that that that not actually happen. So what ive circled here this also went to president lincoln and he wrote let him fight of being shot a lincoln july 18th, 1863. So in this one, i mean the president s personality comes out because, you know, i work for the government, all they needed the president to do. Right. Approved or disapproved. Thats all they needed from lincoln. So you definitely get a little bit of his of his personality comes under we dont know what so what we know about him is we know that he survived the civil war based on his service record, not lot was happening in colorado during the civil war. He drops off after that he didnt put in for a pension and he doesnt show up on the census records. But we do know that he he survived his his Civil War Service. The next one. So this is an individual actually document that was found within a service record. This private William Christman, who was from the 67th pennsylvania volunteer infantry, he enlisted on march 25th, 1864. He was then sent to a camp in philadel