“Traitors Have No Favors to Expect of Him”

Carte de visite by Christopher Smith German of Springfield, Ill. In northeastern Missouri in September 1861, a strong presence of federal troops enforced martial law in the town of Palmyra. Burnings of bridges and businesses, and other depredations against property and people—the work of pro-Confederate forces—interrupted everyday life.

Union troops stationed in Palmyra are charged with maintaining law and order and preventing further violence. They included four companies of the 26th Illinois Infantry, commanded by the officer pictured here: Lieutenant Colonel Charles Johnston Tinkham. His presence in Palmyra during these tense times instilled confidence in soldiers and loyal citizens. One writer shared this observation of Tinkham: Energetic and loyal, he is “one of the best officers in the service. Traitors have no favors to expect of him.” Another writer called out the conduct of Tinkham’s command: “The discipline of this regiment certainly exceeds that of any other which has been stationed here, and, at night, our city is emphatically placed under martial law, for the streets are then guarded and no one is allowed to pass.”

Tinkham’s reputation traced back to his birth in Kentucky about 1825. At some point during his youth, his family moved to Indiana, from where Tinkham received an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy. He attended from 1846 to 1848, in the same class with future Civil War generals Gouverneur K. Warren and Junius Daniel. Tinkham hovered toward the bottom of his class during his tenure, racking top demerits for conduct and proving a poor student in all his subjects with the exception of drawing. His skills as an artist were not enough to save him, and so he never graduated. Still, he left West Point understanding the basic arts of war.

Tinkham returned to the midwest, and by 1850 had settled in the hamlet of Homer in Champaign County, Illinois, where he found work as a teacher and surveyor. A decade later, in May 1860, as the country geared up for a presidential election that elected a citizen from nearby Springfield to the White House, Tinkham, now 29 years old, married Caroline Coffeen, a music teacher ten years his junior. The first of their five children, a son, was born a day before South Carolina forces bombarded Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, sparking all out war between the states.

In early August 1861, Tinkham joined the Union army as captain of Company F of the 26th. Before the end of the month, he advanced to lieutenant colonel and second in command of the regiment. His first assignment in his new role was to protect Quincy, Ill., a town on the Missouri border. Tinkham’s men, untrained and yet to receive weapons, arrived with hickory clubs to keep the peace. There is no record they had to use them.

Meanwhile, in neighboring Missouri, secessionist tensions rippled across the border state. Though Missouri adhered to the Union following a series of political and military actions, including the quelling of a deadly riot in St. Louis in May, the secessionists remained determined to pull the state into the Confederacy. In June, the secessionist governor, Claiborne F. Jackson, and the commander of the state militia, Gen. Sterling Price, withdrew from the capital and formed a Confederate government and military force. By August, Missouri had two governments. On August 10 at Wilson’s Creek, opposing forces fought a major battle that ended in Confederate victory and the death of the Union commander, Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Lyon, who had done much militarily to keep Missouri in the Union. Though the Confederates had won the battle, momentum in Missouri tilted in favor of the United States.

This is the situation Tinkham and his men wandered into when they arrived in Palmyra for guard duty here and around area railroads and bridges that had been under attack by marauding bands of pro-Southern elements. By this time, the hickory clubs carried by Tinkham’s men had been replaced by modern muskets imported from Britain.

It can be fairly stated that Tinkham and the 26th did their part to maintain law and order and bring a measure of order out of the chaos that had swept across Missouri in 1861.

Thus began the history of the 26th, which gained a reputation as one of the hardest-fighting regiments in the Union army. It may also be fairly stated that Tinkham’s leadership played an important part in the regiment’s success.

Tinkham, however, would not be with the 26th at the war’s end. In May 1862, in Mississippi during the Siege of Corinth, the 26th and other Union regiments commanded by Maj. Gen. John Pope were struck by Confederates led by Gen. Earl Van Dorn at a place called Farmington. The exposed federals were hit hard. Tinkham and the 26th received orders to fall back behind the protection of woods and a morass. The Confederates kept on coming. One of Tinkham’s captains, Ira Jackson Bloomfield of Company K, described the engagement in a letter:

“Lieut. Col. Tinkham halted and formed us four times, and each time held his position till ordered back—all this in the face of a deadly fire. While crossing the morass, tangled in the brush and mired in its mud, the storm of shot and shell upon us was terrible, as ours was the last regiment to leave the field. Here Lieut. Col. Tinkham was struck by a shell, which burst upon us, killed one man, broke another’s leg, and wounded him. I was near him and helped him on till he recovered from the shock so as to be able to walk, when I went to the rear of my regiment to assist the wounded till after we passed the morass, when I went to the front, caused a halt, and formed my company, and ours was the only company that came back in order.”

The Union went to down as the loser at Farmington, but it did not stop them from taking Corinth.

Losses in the 26th included a dozen killed and 68 wounded and missing. Tinkham returned to command, but turned in his resignation a few months later. Captain Bloomfield eventually became lieutenant colonel, filling Tinkham’s position.

The 26th continued on, fighting in total 57 engagements in the Trans-Mississippi and Western Theaters, including the Atlanta Campaign, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea, and the Carolinas Campaign. At the war’s end, the regiment’s national colors were inscribed with key battles in which it participated: New Madrid, Island No. 10, Siege of Corinth, Iuka, Corinth, 3d and 4th October 1862, Holly Springs, Vicksburg, Jackson, Miss, Missionary Ridge, Resaca, Kennesaw, Ezra Church, Atlanta, Jonesboro, Griswoldville, McAllister, Savannah, Columbia, Bentonville—and Farmington.

Tinkham returned to Homer and his family, went into the hardware business, and became was of the town’s most respected citizens. He died at age 68 in 1891 after losing a battle against pneumonia.

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Taken on: December 24, 2024

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carte de visite

civil war

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Christopher

Smith

German

Springfield

Illinois

infantry

Farmington

Missouri

Mississippi

1862

Charles

Johnston

Tinkham

champaign county

1861

Nathaniel Lyon

Sterling Price

Claiborne Fox Jackson

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Sets appears in: • Identified soldiers

Groups appears in: • Cabinet Portraits, CDV, photos on cardboard • Veterans of the American Civil War more » • Civil War Era Portraits • Early Photography in the U.S.A. • The 1860s « less

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