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Civil War Resources in the Indiana State Archives

[Delivered by Robert Horton, Indiana State Archives, the Indiana
Historical Society Fall Meeting, 1994. The accompanying slides
are not represented here.]

     When writing her book Indiana in the Civil War Era, Emma Lou
Thornbrough had occasion to become closely familiar with the
resources available on the topic. She came to this conclusion
about what's at the Indiana State Archives:

          Materials preserved in the Archives ...
          constitute a rich but largely neglected
          source for historical research. Lack of
          detailed inventories and catalogues for all
          but a few of the collections has no doubt
          been a deterrent to their use ...

      That was written in 1965 and, since then, I am glad to
report, we have made some progress. Especially in the last few
years, the staff at the Archives has made a special effort to
identify collections that were not receiving the attention they
deserved and both to prepare them for use and to publicize their
existence. One such project I spoke about at the Spring meeting
of the Historical Society in 1993 - the federal land office
records for the northern half of the state which we have entered
on computer databases.
     Today I want to speak about another set of records which
eminently qualify for the description of "a rich but largely
neglected source:" the Civil War resources in the Archives. To
describe these records, I want to begin by discussing first the
circumstances under which they were created - that is, the
demands of the war and the administrative framework the state
created in response. Then I want to talk about what the records
have to offer researchers. Finally, I want to tell you about the
several projects the Archives has begun in order to make these
materials more accessible and "user friendly."
     First, the war and the state's administrative response ...
Those of you familiar with American history and politics and with
Indiana history and politics in particular, are well aware that
our governmental structures reflect the people's deep and
persistent fear of government itself. This has a paradoxical edge
- in September and October of this year, the Indianapolis Star
published the results of polls that showed the overwhelming
majority of respondents felt that government should solve certain
social problems, which afflict education, health care and the
like, while they simultaneously held to the opinion that
government should not be involved in those very same aspects of
their lives. This contradiction isn't, thank goodness, a problem
which we have to resolve today; I mention it, though, so you
might understand the effects of such an attitude on the creation
of records. Simply put, government bureaucracies create and
preserve government records, so, unless some state agency has an
administrative concern with a particular activity, then that
activity will not be routinely documented. No bureaucrats, no
records - it's a very simple equation.
     Accordingly, if we think back to the first half of the 19th
century, when the distrust of government was much stronger and
when the structure and responsibilities of government were much,
much smaller, then we can appreciate why there are relatively few
records from that period available to researchers today.
     Pre-Civil War militia records provide a good illustration of
how this worked. In theory, there should be good records for the
state militia: the state constitution mandated the participation
of all able bodied white males from the ages of 18 to 45; state
law, as codified in 1852, established elaborate regulations for
the structure of units, with provisions for officers, reports,
annual musters and training, all the necessary elements of a
coherent organization. However, the militia was organized as a
voluntary, unpaid, ad hoc operation, with no bureaucracy to
oversee and operate the system. The numbers tell the story: in
the fiscal year 1860, just before the Civil War, the state spent
a grand total of $180.25 on the militia, which was about $120
less than its contribution to the Indiana Historical Society that
same year.
     As you can imagine, $180 did not purchase much of an
organization. So there really are no records. Nobody kept them.
Nobody had to. All we have are officers' commissions, because
these were highly prized by local dignitaries and politicians who
craved the prestige of a military title - we might call it the
Kentucky Colonel syndrome.
     That sort of situation existed throughout state government,
with the result that only certain aspects of early Indiana life
and society are reflected in the records we now have. Land
records, because everyone had an interest in acquiring and
maintaining clear titles to property. Judicial records, because
when those property titles weren't clear, people went to court -
as they did for all manners of other disputes and problems.
Institutional records, because prisons and asylums necessarily
kept track of their residents. What family historians encounter
very often, then, is that government records only say much about
their ancestors when they bought land, committed crimes or went
mad. Other events or transactions in people's lives occurred, of
course, but they were not routinely or permanently recorded.
     This situation changed with the Civil War; for the first
time in the state's history, the government became involved in a
massive effort, demanding a sacrifice from all its citizens, with
corresponding effects on all levels of society and in all parts
of the state. To supervise that effort, the state had to develop
a complex record producing and record keeping structure, with the
result that a tremendous number of documents were created,
covering a larger section of the population and many more aspects
of their lives.
     To give you an impression of the quality of this change, let
me quote these figures. In 1860, as I mentioned, the state spent
$180 on the militia and, allowed, in the budget for 1861, for an
increase to $300. Then came the war. In 1862, the Paymaster of
the militia reported that he alone had disbursed almost $95,000
the year before. That sum, a quantum increase over the
expenditure for 1862, still covers only a portion of the money
spent on the war, less, as you can see, than 1/4 of the whole.
Consider that nearly 200,000 Hoosiers served in the War. Consider
the expenditures on supplies and equipment; provisions for camps,
hospitals and training grounds; salaries for the personnel
necessary to oversee and operate this vast effort; then you can
appreciate the huge growth in the responsibilities of the
government.
     At first, though, the state was pretty much completely
unprepared to shoulder the burden. There wasn't any institutional
or ideological base for operating the state government on such a
scale, so the initial efforts were experimental and tentative.
The State Arsenal, for example, started operations in April 1861
using only some volunteers from the 11th Indiana. A year later,
with some 500 employees at work, it was one of the biggest
industrial operations in the state, but the state legislature had
made no appropriation to fund the project, so the Arsenal's head
was reduced to borrowing money from friends to meet the payroll -
"once a month," as he wrote, until the federal government started
to subsidize the operation in 1862.
     Similar ad hoc arrangements initially characterized the
state's purchases of supplies, the provision of medical care and
equipment to the troops and efforts to support the families of
men at the front. The state government did not easily make the
transition to war footing; as it did, though, it professionalized
its operations, moving from a reliance on individuals and
personal networks to building institutionalized, record producing
bureaucracies.
     There are numerous examples of this. To cite only one, Gov.
Morton, from an early point in the war, recognized that a
soldier's pay was completely inadequate to support the family he
left behind, so he called on county authorities and private
citizens, particularly clergymen, to raise the money necessary to
keep body and soul together. "No nobler work than this can engage
you," he concluded. Later, he was forced to conclude that such
charitable and philanthropic efforts had not worked. In his 1865
address to the General Assembly, he said, "I have not been able
to employ the force necessary to meet the demands of a business
so large and important, and I recommend that such legislation be
had as will establish agencies on a permanent basis, with a force
sufficient to transact the business." In this, as in so many
other aspects of the war, the demands of organizing the efforts
of thousands of people and spending hundreds of thousands of
dollars led to the creation of accountable organizations -
bureaucracies that produced records. War, from that point on, was
paperwork.
     All that paperwork represents a bonanza to historians and
especially to family historians; because of the vast number of
people enlisted in the war effort, whether as soldiers, as
widows, as orphans, as victims, or as bureaucrats, records
describing a significant section of the population were created.
More important, because those involved in the War were convinced
of its historical significance, great efforts were made to
preserve these records. Gov. Morton explained the significance of
WHH Terrell's Report of the Adjutant General in 1867:

     It is intended to give the name and military history of
     every officer and soldier who went into the army from
     this state, and thus furnish a public record of the
     service, and honorable discharge of every good soldier,
     and fix the status of every man who deserted and of
     every man who was dismissed or punished for cowardice
     or crime ... The value of [this] record will increase
     with years, and will be held sacred by coming
     generations.

While these intentions were not completely fulfilled, as witness
the sadly aborted attempt to collect a photograph of every
officer from Indiana, or the continuing problems with the battle
flags in the state's care, it is nonetheless true that Indiana's
government made an uncharacteristically concerted effort to
preserve the records of the Civil War.
     What sort of records, then, are at the State Archives? First
and foremost in volume, we have the service records of individual
soldiers. No doubt you are all familiar with this basic form: the
muster card. This records information taken from the muster rolls
compiled when a unit was mustered into service. One copy of the
muster roll was sent to the State Adjutant General's Office and
this was used as a sort of master list - information was jotted
down in it regarding wounds, deaths, promotions, etc., during the
war. The muster cards were copied much later and, as you can see,
they are abbreviated versions of the muster roll. In particular,
two categories were routinely omitted: residence at the time of
enlistment and marital status.
     For some units, unfortunately, the muster rolls were never
completely filled out. In perhaps a third of the cases, only a
bare minimum of detail was recorded: name, place and date of
enlistment and muster, and place and date of discharge. The
personal description was not taken down. For the most part, this
occurred with short term units - of the almost 200 regiments and
batteries formed in Indiana during the War, a certain number were
raised for short periods, some for as little as six days. These
units did not receive much bureaucratic attention and so their
records are minimal. We can determine who served and when - very
little else.
     The same applies to the militia, or Indiana Legion, as it
was called after 1861. Very little information is available about
the individual members - what there is, though, has just been
thoroughly cataloged and sorted by Gene McCormick, a volunteer at
the Archives, working with our Civil War expert, Steve Towne. The
Legion collection consists primarily of muster rolls compiled
locally, in a somewhat idiosyncratic fashion. Gene McCormick has
organized the Legion muster rolls by county and by unit, with the
result that it is now relatively simple to gain access to the
information they contain.
     After checking the muster rolls, the best course to obtain
more information on the average soldier is to contact the
National Archives for the military and pension files compiled for
each veteran. I understand this is not a perfectly
straightforward business, as the price for a mail order has
increased and that the National Archives copies only selected
portions of the file - and that after a rather long wait. But
this still remains a sure source of further information on an
individual; as the federal government assumed the responsibility
for paying troops during the war, it necessarily kept records of
those payments, which detail who was in the service and when.
Later on, as pensions were granted, the same principle applied.
In all, hundreds of thousands of files were created and preserved
with information that is unavailable at the state level.
     The Archives' records, of course, focus on the
responsibilities that the state assumed. Beyond the muster rolls
and muster cards, there are two basic sources of information for
individual soldiers: clothing books and hospital registers.
Clothing books, as the name implies, record the equipment issued
to individuals. While we have a fairly complete run of these,
covering almost all Indiana units for at least some period of the
war, they do vary in quality. Some units, such as this one,
copiously recorded items, so you can get a clear picture of the
accoutrements worn by their soldiers. The books of other units
are somewhat more vague, noting when items were distributed,
rather than what the items were. One point I should make is that
soldiers signed for their equipment, so these books do have
samples of the handwriting of the men - at least for those who
could write.
     This summer, the Archives' staff completed a new inventory
of the clothing books, so identifying and retrieving what is
available for any unit is now quite simple. You should know,
however, that because of the size and condition of these books,
we cannot photocopy them; the only reproduction one can order,
then, is a photograph.
     Hospital registers, on the other hand, we have just had
microfilmed, so copies are a simple and an inexpensive business.
They do not, though, record much information. These are arranged
by unit and then by date, with soldiers documented at the time of
their appearance at the hospital. Beyond the name, little else is
noted; usually, there is only a brief reference to the illness
or, less often, the wound involved.
     Those of you interested in learning more about the
conditions in the hospitals can turn to the various letters and
reports sent to the governor by the state agents and members of
the Sanitary Commission. Formed in March 1862 on the order of
Gov. Morton, the Sanitary Commission was a semi-official body
concerned with monitoring and improving the lot of Indiana's
troops. Given the incredibly unhealthy consequences of camp life
and diet, there was a great deal for it to do. Again, statistics
are telling: Indiana units suffered 7,283 battle deaths during
the war, while 17,785 men died from disease. Accordingly, the
commission sponsored various schemes, including the Indiana
Sanitary Fair in 1864, to raise money and supplies for the
troops. It also sent a stream of agents to the units in the field
to determine what could be done to help.
     What the visitors learned and recommended is recorded in
correspondence, both to Gov. Morton and to the Adjutant General's
office. These are extremely interesting and informative letters,
but ones which primarily discuss conditions in general terms.
That is, they will tell the researcher a great deal about units,
but only intermittently will they mention individuals. What they
record, though, is fascinating; the letters add flesh to the bare
skeleton of the muster rolls and give a much more lively picture
of army life.
     Take, for example, this letter to Morton from an agent
visiting the 3rd Indiana Cavalry, serving with the Army of the
Potomac in late 1861: "It may not be out of place to say here
that I believe the officers and privates are less addicted to the
use of alcoholic stimulants than is usually found among a similar
number of men under the same circumstances." I find this
particular report a model of discretion, an extremely circumspect
form of telling flattery: the men are drinking, yes, but much
less than the circumstances warrant - all in all, a tribute to
Hoosier probity.
     Most of the records of the Sanitary Commission are indexed
in the Archives' Morton Correspondence and Civil War Miscellany.
Researchers can locate them by date, by name of the agent or
correspondent, by unit and/or by subject. It is very simple,
then, to identify what might be of value and, from there, just a
matter of time to read what is available.
     Two other resources will provide similar information. The
first is the regimental correspondence. All through the war, the
Adjutant General's office remained in constant contact with
Indiana units and their officers. The principle topic of concern
was officers' commissions. I confess when I first looked at these
files I was somewhat taken aback at the interminable jockeying
for advancement that characterizes these letters. From the very
beginning to the very end of the war, officers and would be
officers wrote endlessly to savage their colleagues and to
promote themselves. Partly this reflects this human nature,
partly the pre-civil service system of appointments that
characterized American government at the time.
     At first, officers' commissions were routinely determined by
the appointment of the governor at the higher ranks and by
election at the lower. Reverses in the field led to severe
criticism of so called "political officers," some of it fair,
some of it not; you might consider, in this context, the still
unresolved debate over the military reputation of Lew Wallace. In
any case, to correct perceived abuses, the army instituted a
review board to vet the various appointments, while the electoral
process fell by the wayside. These reforms, however, still left a
great deal of latitude to state officials and, for the rest of
the war, recommendations, critiques and barefaced pleas poured
into the Adjutant General's office.
     These can make for very interesting reading. Many are quite
simple petitions, in a "we-the-undersigned-respectfully-submit"
with the name of the officer and then the signatures of the
petitioners appended. The petitions came from all over - fellow
officers, men in the units, people back home - so quite a few
names show up. Quite a few opinions as well, as many letters go
into some detail, describing personalities, specific incidents
and the vices and virtues of all concerned.
     Beyond these, the regimental correspondence covers a variety
of other topics: conditions in the field, recommendations for
bravery and heroism, reports on morale and the electoral
prospects of the Republican party. For family historians, these
records can, as I mentioned above, flesh out the story of a unit;
if your ancestor was an officer, they very often will provide
significant details on his service.
     As will regimental and company order books. These simply
record the special and general orders that shaped military life.
Unfortunately, we do not have a very large collection of these at
the Archives, for most units, in fact, none at all. Those we do
have are fascinating. I have here a recipe for "fresh beef soup,"
which starts with 7 pounds of beef and 2.5 ounces of salt, and
moves rapidly to an indigestible guarantee of hypertension. After
reading this, you will understand thoroughly the prevalence of
gastric complaints on the hospital registers. Even more
interesting is the qualification that this is the "most excellent
soup," which leads me to believe that there are other recipes out
there, starting "First, find a dead mule."
     I have another order, this from the 50th Regiment of Indiana
Volunteers, which establishes the "Awkward Squad," for all those
privates whose appearance and demeanor did not seem sufficiently
military. Orders such as this one are of interest because they
very often give details of disciplinary measures and court
martials, which are only noted summarily on the muster rolls.
     Order books, if any are available, are precious just because
of the details on everyday life they offer. It is very unusual to
be able to move beyond the dates and places of "born here, lived
there," and to learn something about how our ancestors actually
lived - what they ate, what they endured, even how often they had
to wash their feet (every Sunday and Thursday in the 50th Indiana
Volunteers). The army, as those of you who were in the service
can testify far more persuasively than I, was prepared to
regulate every aspect of a soldier's existence, from head to toe
and from dawn to dusk. That sort of information about a man's
life isn't available from other sources, even in the richest and
most copious diaries. Did Calvin Fletcher describe how often he
bathed? I don't think so. But we know how often the 50th Indiana
did.
     These are some of the main resources we have at the Archives
describing who was in the Union army; now I want to discuss some
of those that will describe who was not. As I noted earlier,
because of the pervasive effort of the state to win the war, all
the people of the state were affected in one way or another.
Accordingly, there are significant records of those who didn't
fight as well as those who did.
     Foremost here are the records generated by the draft. While
Indiana contributed an enormous number of volunteers to the war,
the demand for manpower was so great, that the federal government
eventually had to initiate a draft. In order to meet its quota,
Indiana had to have some idea of which men were available and
eligible. The enrollment of 1862 was the result. While this is
not necessarily an exact and complete census, it was intended to
register all the "able bodied white male citizens ... between the
ages of 18 to 45" resident in Indiana. The enrollment is arranged
by county and then by township. The categories of information
recorded are : name, age, occupation, "not able bodied and why,"
"exempt and why" and, last, remarks. Two of those categories
specifically cover men who would not enter the army and so the
enrollment may well answer questions family historians may have
on that score.
     As this page from Brown Township, Hendricks County,
indicates, the information available has some real potential.
James Barnett (#16), a saw miller, was marked off the list, for
having lost a foot, a probably not unusual condition for someone
in his profession. Then we have the usual litany of woes from the
period - scrofula, phthisis, consumption - and this rather
intriguing remark for one William Brown - "California Bill." It
stands out amongst all these disabilities. Did Bill go there? Did
he talk about it? Is this one of the earliest manifestations of
Hoosier disdain for the California lifestyle? Tracking down the
origins of that nickname would be an interesting problem.
     We are now preparing this rather large set of volumes for
microfilming, in the hope of making it more accessible to
patrons. Right now, it is somewhat under utilized, a situation
which we hope to change.
     There are other means of identifying the men who did not
serve. One quite simple and easy method is to go through our list
of men who hired substitutes. As you well know, the draft laws of
the period had escape clauses for the well to do and it was both
possible and common for men to hire others to serve in their
places. We have an alphabetized listing of those who did.
     There are other reasons why men did not serve, as we
discovered this summer on taking possession of records from the
Central State Hospital. As the oldest of the state's mental
hospitals, its records include commitments from the War period.
One of our researchers pointed out to us this commitment paper
for a Jeremiah Hayworth, of Vigo County. Forty years old,
married, a farmer and sent to Central State because of an
insanity "induced by fear of the draft for military duty."
     Records in the Archives also allow one to trace down
ancestors who may not have served in the armed forces, but
nonetheless helped in the war effort by volunteering as doctors,
chaplains and nurses. Tracking these people down is somewhat
demanding, but by no means impossible. A vast number of doctors
were interested in becoming regimental surgeons and specific
files exist at the Archives containing their correspondence
regarding appointments. These letters are particularly
interesting as they discuss qualifications and education -
overall, they outline the condition of the medical practitioners
in Indiana in the mid 19th century. As the government did not
then, as it does today, effectively license doctors, these are a
unique census of the profession.
     Chaplains similarly desired regimental posts and wrote for
appointments. Their letters are usually filed in the
correspondence of the specific regiment, so they are rather more
difficult to locate. In fact, it would be almost impossible to go
through the entire collection systematically in the hope of
finding one specific applicant.
     Nurses present a similar problem. Certain letters in the
Morton Correspondence identify women who volunteered for service
in hospitals; these are conveniently indexed by name and subject,
so they can be quickly identified and studied. Many women worked
in conjuntion with the Sanitary Commission, so references are in
that collection as well. I suspect, though, that more women
actually served than are mentioned in letters to the Governor.
Various financial ledgers and claims at the Archives may be
helpful here. This claim for the State Treasurer's files notes
the service as matron of Almidia or Almeda Greenwood in the
hospital at Camp Morton in the first year of the War.
     Financial records note the services of Hoosiers in all sorts
of roles - as everything from nurse to stevedore. As the
documents were compiled for economic reasons, they are arranged
for the convenience of the accountants - by year, office, sum,
etc. - and so for the most part resist easy use by genealogists.
     Some are a little easier to use because they were compiled
in a specific context. The records of bread distributions to
soldiers' families, for example. We have a rather limited set of
these for Marion County, dating from 1864, when the state bakery
started distributing the surplus from goods prepared for the
camps and hospitals around Indianapolis. These are very
interesting as they note the names of the husbands, wives/widows
and underage children. Another of our volunteers, Anne Rodick, is
now working on an index to these records.
     Another example of a usable financial record are the claims
made by those who suffered during the Morgan Raid. This is a
collection you can research if you had an ancestor living along
the path of the rebels- although you might want to take their
claims with a grain of salt. Gov. Morton noted in this context,
"As there is a natural tendency to exaggerate damages when they
are paid for by the public, such safeguards should be adopted ...
as will prevent imposition upon the state." And, reading the
claims submitted, one can see how Morton reached this conclusion
- it seems a disproportionate number of southern Indiana farmers
routinely hitched thoroughbred race horses to their plows. No
other explanation will account for the great value of the
livestock lost to Morgan's men and the Indiana Legion during the
raid.
     After the war ended, the state did not stop generating
records. While to a significant extent, the government dismantled
the structures it had developed for the war effort, it assumed
certain habits and responsibilities which led to a larger
establishment than existed before 1861. The post-war militia, as
this indicates, did not revert to the same state of neglect and
disorganization.
     More importantly, the government's role in the continuing
care of war veterans and their interests meant the creation of a
very large number of records. In mid 1865, Gov. Morton took the
lead here, convoking a number of interested parties, to address
the situation "of a vast number of disabled soldiers in a
destitute condition ... who seemed to have neither homes nor
friends to provide for their wants." The Home for Disabled
Soldiers was thus established in Knightstown; when the
responsibility for its operations were assumed by the state in
1867, the doors were opened as well to the orphans of veterans.
This institution then evolved into the Soldiers and Sailors
Orphans Home, which still exists today. Its records, while
neither voluminous nor complete, are quite informative about the
children entrusted to its care; the individual files are
organized alphabetically, so they are quite easy to check for
particular names.
     The Home for Disabled Soldiers became exclusively an
orphanage in 1871, when the quarters for the veterans burned
down. At that point, the older residents were transferred to a
National Home in Dayton Ohio, operated by the federal government.
This, and another national home, opened later in Marion Indiana,
were the only public institutions available to Indiana veterans
until 1896, when the state opened its Soldiers Home in Lafayette.
Veterans, their wives and widows could enter the Home upon
verification of their eligibility. As this depended on producing
a satisfactory quantity of records, the Soldiers Home files are
often an extremely revealing set of documents, including
everything from discharges to pension certificates to letters
from disgruntled residents complaining about each other. At a
minimum, the files will include an application noting, among
other things,  details of service, next of kin to be notified and
their addresses. These can be a great help to genealogists then.
We have two finding aids at the Archives, listing alphabetically
the names of the male and female residents of the Home, so
identifying a particular individual is a very simple business.
     Not all veterans, of course, can be discovered at the
Soldiers Home. Some, though, can be located through their
membership in the precursor to the American Legion, the Grand
Army of the Republic. While this was a private organization, its
extreme political power as lobbyist and voting bloc ensured close
relations to the government; ties to the state adjutant general's
office led to the gradual transfer of GAR records there and
thence to the Archives as time wore on.
     What survives, admittedly is a mixed bag. The collection is
organized primarily by post and the various posts were more or
less diligent in their record keeping responsibilities. What we
can always produce is at least one roster of members; these
rosters, though, are not comprehensive and usually cover only the
members at a specific point in time. For a significant portion of
the posts, however, there are more detailed records, including
membership books which are much more informative.
     There is no overall name index to GAR membership, but we do
have lists of posts by county and location, which means that we
can usually narrow down the posts which any one researcher needs
to investigate. I have to add, though, that many people find this
a rather disappointing process because the odds of verifying GAR
membership are uneven.
     A much higher rate of success is possible with the 1886,
1890, 1894 enrollments of veterans, their widows and orphans.
These were a sort of census sponsored by the state to facilitate
claims for pensions. The information was not, however, compiled
by impartial census takers, so the results have to be judged with
a certain skepticism. As of 1886, one had to prove some injury or
ill health as a result of military service in order to qualify
for a pension.  But the veterans or their survivors filled out
the forms without any supervision; they were available at
township assessors' office and sent to the state without further
verification. So, naturally, those who went to the trouble to
fill out the form wanted to establish the record of a condition
warranting a pension. So I would suggest comparing the
information on an enrollment to an actual pension application, as
that would include further documentation, including a report from
a doctor investigating the claim. Again, this file is available
only from the National Archives.
     Still, the enrollments contain quite valuable information.
The basic categories cover the veteran's service, present
address, financial condition, number of children and go on to
discuss specific aspects of his health and physical condition.
This page from the 1886 enrollment for Vanderburgh County, for
example, notes "gun shot wound in left leg," "arm broken in
Bolivia TN" and "has fits and brain affected." Here you can learn
quite a bit about the post war lives of your ancestors.
     The collection itself is very accessible. Records from all
the counties, if not from all three years, exist and the
Genealogy Division of the State Library has a name index that
greatly facilitates research. The record themselves are on
microfilm at the Archives, so using and copying them is quite
simple.
     That covers the major resources for the Civil War; although
there are others still, I want to move on and to finish by
discussing some of the projects regarding Civil War records in
which the Archives is involved. Within the Archives, Steve Towne,
our expert on the War, along with two of our most dedicated
volunteers, Milt Lundgren and Gene McCormick, have worked
diligently to catalog and index certain collections. One I
mentioned earlier: the Indiana Legion materials arranged by Gene
McCormick. Milt Lundgren has been working with Steve on an
equally impressive project: compiling a computerized database to
Gov. Morton's telegraph books. These books record telegrams sent
and received by the Governor's office and constitute an extremely
rich source of information.
     Heretofore, they have been somewhat difficult to use for two
reasons: 1) they were recorded on a flimsy paper that has not
aged very well; and 2) there was no index to them, which left
researchers the unenviable task of winnowing the wheat from the
chaff - reading all the records to find just one.
     The first step Steve Towne took was to have the books
microfilmed, transferring the material to a stable medium. The
second was to read all the records and identify certain
characteristics of each for entry onto a database. This printout
demonstrates the result. There are now over 8000 records on the
database, each broken down into 9 fields. To produce this
printout, I entered the search term "Owen," to see what I could
find for Robert Dale Owen, the state's primary purchasing agent
at the beginning of the war. Here are the results.
     This database offers some obvious advantages to the
researcher. Names can be quickly checked, with a minimal
investment. For example, the staff on the Society's Lew Wallace
Papers project has already taken advantage of this to locate
records of interest to them. Others could use this to follow
events from day to day - Morgan's Raid comes first to mind, as
the authorities in southern Indiana kept up a steady stream of
information flowing to Morton in Indianapolis regarding the
rebels' progress. As that was an emergency, much of that detail
did not wait for the leisurely process of correspondence; the
telegram records are the immediate and only impressions of the
raid.
     The Archives' staff is also playing a role in two outside
projects which you may have heard or read about: the Indiana
Battle Flags Commission and the Civil War Museum for the Soldiers
and Sailors Monument.
     Both projects represent relatively large financial
investments, which means progress in today's political climate
is, how shall we say, deliberate. Nonetheless, progress is being
made and I want to close today with brief reports on what we are
doing.
     First, the flags. As early as 1862, discussion of the future
of Indiana's battle flags revolved around their historical and
emotional value. In the fall of that year, Col. John Osborne,
commanding the 31st Indiana, wrote Morton, "I have taken the
liberty of sending to you the fragments of the flags of this
veteran regiment with the request that you deposit it in the
State Library or any other place you may select that it may be
preserved as a memento of the gallant manner in which these
heroic sons of Indiana conducted themselves before the enemies of
this glorious Union."  The idea of saving flags for display
evidently percolated through the minds of the authorities,
leading to a formal presentation of the flags to Gov. Morton by
General Lew Wallace the 4th of July 1866. Morton accepted the
gift, saying "In behalf of the State of Indiana, I accept these
flags. They will be deposited and preserved among her archives as
her most precious treasures." The flags were thereupon placed
in the State House and more or less left to moulder for the next
50 years.
     In 1908, their condition was such that the first Battle
Flags Commission was formed to oversee their restoration. Capt.
David McCormick, a veteran of the Spanish-American War and the
pacification campaigns in the Phillippines, became the guiding
light, serving as superintendant of the project for the next 25
years.
     He had relatively little support, receiving only about
$32,000 from the General Assembly over the course of nearly three
decades. This money went to the construction of steel and glass
cases for the some 50% of the flags - the cases, incidentally,
were designed by McCormick, after he decided that the bids he had
received, including one from Tiffany's, were too high.
     Mrs. McCormick and a core of badly paid seamstresses did a
certain amount of conservation work, but, for the most part, the
flags were simply protected from adverse elements and left to
obscurity, first in the State House, then the Soldiers and
Sailors Monument and, finally, in the War Memorial.
     Within the past two years, outcry over the state of the
flags led to the creation of a new Battle Flags Commission, which
has worked in cooperation with a task force independently formed
by the War Memorial to work on a restoration project. The
Archives' staff works with both groups.
     At present, some $50,000 has been spent on building a
controlled environment and storage space for the flags; another
$50,000 is committed to complete the job. Beyond that, plans for
a computerized inventory, public programs and a conservation
policy have been developed.
     Fund raising is the key, though, as the restoration of an
individual flag will cost anywhere from $2-5,000. I recently
spoke with a friend at the Alabama Dept. of Archives and History
who is involved in a similar project; he told me that an
aggressive fund raising campaign allows them to restore about two
flags per year. Indiana has about 300 flags in its collection.
     Money, again, is a major stumbling block in the creation of
the proposed Col. Eli Lilly Museum in the ground floor of the
Soldiers and Sailors Monument. The problem here is the patent
unsuitability of that space for a museum - the barrel vaulted
ceiling, the cramped aisles and constant water seepage from the
fountains overhead make the prospects for a successful renovation
quite daunting. The impossibility of securing an adequate
environmental control, in fact, forbids putting original
artifacts in the space; they simply would not be safe from
deterioration. Consequently, reproductions are the only sensible,
feasible choice.
     In that context, the Archives suggested installing a
computer kiosk with connections to various electronic records. We
could relatively easily scan works like McCormick's Indiana
Battle Flags, or the Centennial Commission's Guide to Indiana
Civil War Mss. and so make basic texts available for easy
reference at the Museum. Later, other texts and records, as well
as graphics and photographs could be added as they became
available. At the moment, the idea for a kiosk is on hold, but we
are going ahead with discussions on scanning the texts and making
them accessible over the Internet. Whatever the fate of the
Museum, then, I think the conversion of these records to an
electronic format will occur in the relatively near future.
     As to the Museum, a number of organizations are involved in
its planning; the State Archives, as always ecumenical in its
policies, supplies historical services to all. As the largest and
the most important source of records of Indiana's role in the
Civil War, we feel we will play a significant role in this
project. We feel, as well, that we can play an important role in
your own projects and hope that we will see you soon in the
Archives Reading Room.

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