Hi Patti:

Stuart wrote that Michael McGrath's service records show that after his capture at Missionary Ridge, he was transferred to Rock Island Barracks, Illinois on December 9, 1863 as a Confederate prisoner of war, where he took the Oath and "En. in U. S. Navy. Transfd. to Naval Rendezvous, Camp Douglas, Ill." No date is provided for the oath taking and transfer to the Navy, but there are also no POW camp records dated after December 1863 in his file, so you have to presume that this transfer to the Naval Rendezvous point at Camp Douglas took place at the end of 1863 or in early 1864.

The information Stuart gave you can be found in Booth's "Records" which are a secondary source extracted from what we now call the Compiled Military Service Records. The CMSR can sometimes contain more scraps of information that would help with research questions such as yours, and if you have not acquired a copy of Michael McGrath's CMSR, I would urge you to do so. But I also presume that Stuart is working from a copy of the Compiled Military Service Records for the 13th Louisiana. In any event, whatever appears in the CMSR trumps Booth's "Records". I will leave it to Stuart to help you sort out which Louisiana companies he served in. Sounds very complex!!

The term "galvanized Yankees" is generally taken to mean ex-Confederates who took the Oath of Allegiance to the United States, joined the Union army and went out west to fight the Indians. However, not all of the "galvanized Yankees" served on the western frontier. Some joined the U. S. Navy, some served as prison guards, and many actively served in other Union army units directly engaged with the Confederates east of the Mississippi River.

An excellent book on "galvanized Yankees" is Dee Brown's "The Galvanized Yankees" (University of Nebraska Press, 1963). On page 65, Brown wrote an interesting passage about the enrollment of Confederate "oath takers" in the U. S. Navy in late 1863. Brown wrote: "There was no great rush of prisoners desiring Navy service. Not many of them had any sea experience, and in at least one camp, Rock Island, loyal Confederates organized themselves to block the efforts of the camp commandant to so enlist them. The leaders of this movement secretly enlisted 1,300 fellow prisoners into a paper cavalry regiment of 10 companies, which held steadfast until the autumn of 1864, when a few were beguiled into the Galvanized Yankees with the offer of freedom for going West to fight the Indians. The majority of this group remained loyal to the Confederacy until freed by exchange, or by the end of the war." Brown's source for all of this appears to be the Official Records, Series II and III, but he did not clearly footnote this particular passage.

There were six regiments of these "U. S. Volunteers" on the frontier. Dee makes you work for it, but he does eventually tell where they were collected from:
1st Regiment - Point Lookout, Maryland (February - August 1864)
2nd & 3rd Regiments - Rock Island, Illinois (February & March 1865)
4th Regiment - Point Lookout (six companies, October 1864)
5th & 6th Regiments - Alton Military Prison, Camp Douglas, Camp Chase (May and June 1865)

I appreciate your frustration trying to validate a family oral history through the surviving military records. But the solution is not to declare the surviving historical records to be wrong, or mean something other than what they say. It is more likely that the family oral history is wrong, or contains certain errors in fact, or in this case, missed an interesting point altogether.

Michael McGrath was a POW at Rock Island Barracks who took the Oath and was enrolled (enlisted) for service in the U. S. Navy and transferred (that means to me that he was physically sent) to the Naval Rendezvous Point at Camp Douglas, Illinois. Given there are no POW records in Michael's file after December 1863, one must assume that this undated transfer to the Naval Rendezvous at Camp Douglas took place in late 1863 or early 1864. And further, that he was not involved in the "paper cavalry regiment” organized by the Confederate POWs themselves at Rock Island.

Let the record speak for itself. The War Department archivists who created the CMSR back at the turn of the last century did not find anything in the records to suggest that this transfer to naval service didn't happen. They also would not have gone looking for his subsequent Federal service records. These would have been compiled separately.

In order for your extensive family oral tradition to be validated (and it may be true, in whole or in part), once in U. S. Navy service, Michael would have then transferred to one of the U. S. Volunteer regiments when they were formed some 15 months later. It would seem logical that he would have wanted to serve with his friends and acquaintances in either the 2nd & 3rd U. S. Volunteer regiments which were recruited at Rock Island in February and March 1865, and requested a transfer after 12 months of “naval service”. It is also possible, that after a year of "naval service" he was allowed, or encouraged, to transfer from the Navy to the Army and go west with one of the groups that formed the 5th or 6th U. S. Volunteers. And it is also possible that he finished the war in U. S. Navy service and the family oral tradition got “what happened” confused with “what might have happened”.

Your next research move should be to examine the rosters of the 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 6th U. S. Volunteers for his name. The National Park Service's website contains an Index to the CMSR and (I believe) rosters of the U. S. Volunteers. The website is down at the moment, or I would have looked for him myself. See http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/ If you find his name listed among the U. S. Volunteers, you will also want to order a copy of his Union army Compiled Military Service Records which will be separate from and in addition to his Confederate CMSR with the 13th Louisiana Infantry.

He should also have a Naval service record. I have never examined Navy records and can only assume that there exists a set of "Compiled Naval Service Records" similar to the CMSR for the Confederate and Union armies.

Keep us posted on what you learn!

Hugh Simmons
Fort Delaware Society
http://www.del.net/org/fort