'The Orange Blossoms'

Military Images, Mar/Apr 2004 by McAfee, Michael J

Although not dressed exactly in an exotic uniform, the 124th New York Infantry, best known as "The Orange Blossoms," still adapted a unique badge.

Most of the articles in this series have featured regiments with distinctive uniforms. To some degree this is unfortunate, for the majority of all Federal soldiers, regulars and volunteers alike, were attired in government-issue blue, making their histories inappropriate to this column.

This means that many outstanding regiments are ignored here - regiments with extremely fine records that are just as deserving of note, if not more so, than many of the distinctly clad uniforms investigated here. One such regiment that wore the standard uniforms but that found its own small token of distinction is the subject of this discourse - the 124th New York Volunteer Infantry.

The 124th has a special interest to this author as it is one of the local regiments of where I live. It was recruited for the most part from the citizens of Orange County, New York, in the summer of 1862 and was organized at Goshen, New York, where it was mustered into service on September 5, 1862. The regiment's colonel, Augustus Van Home Ellis, happened to have been something of a martinet with a colorful personal history.

A graduate of Columbia University and a practicing lawyer, he succumbed to the call of adventure and spent time in California and the Hawaiian Islands before marrying the in the small Orange County town of New Windsor. At the outbreak of the war Ellis served as a captain in the 71st New York State Militia at First Bull Run, commanding a section of Dahlgren howitzers within the militia regiment. Afterwards he was offered the lieutenant colonelcy in Orange County's other regiment, the 56th, but declined to accept the lead of the 124th.

Ellis almost literally whipped the 124th into shape from the beginning. He was described as "cold, harsh and ambitious ... but every inch the soldier." He called his regiment "The American Guard," after the old 71st Militia, but at their first battle he unintentionally gave his men a new name.

At Chancellorsville, Virginia, in May 1863, the 124th was bloodied for the first time. The regiment engaged in a bitter face-to-face firefight as the III Corps of the Army of the Potomac attempted to halt the advancing Confederates. There, in urging his men forward, Ellis shouted, "Hie!! Hie! My Orange Blossoms!," and thereafter the men became the "Orange Blossoms."

At some point the officers and men of the regiment began wearing strips of orange ribbons in their buttonholes to mark themselves, a practice they seem to have followed throughout the war. Together with their III Corps badges, retained after the corps was disbanded and they were transferred to the II Corps, the orange ribbon was a part of their regimental "uniform."

The actual uniforms of the 124th were standard issue. The State of New York provided 993 infantry frock coats, 21 infantry musicians' coats, and one Ordnance coat (for the regimental hospital steward) along with 1,015 blouses and 1,215 forage caps. It went of to war looking like any other infantry regiment except for the initial issuance of "Vincennes Rifles" with sword bayonets. These imported weapons were soon replaced with Enfield and later Springfield rifle muskets. New York State jackets were also drawn by some soldiers after the initial issue uniforms, but for the most part the regiment fought to the end of the war wearing standard Federal uniforms. Only the small orange ribbons denoted the 124th as a regiment of distinction, but that mark was well-known in the Army of the Potomac.

The regiment lost its fierce colonel at an equally fierce fight at Devil's Den on july 2, 1863. At Gettysburg the 124th suffered 32 men killed and mortally wounded, including Ellis and the regiment's major. It fought on through all the battles of the Army of the Potomac before finally returning home to Orange County via the steamship Mary Powell in june 1865. It had not worn any uniform as grand as those of zouaves and chasseurs, but the regiment's little strips of orange ribbon were as mighty as symbol of their courage as they needed.

The Orange Blossoms at Chancellorsville

The men of the 124th New York believed for years after the war that they were responsible for an act that helped turn the tide of war - and at their very first battle, Chancellorsville.

Held in reserve at Fredericksburg, the 124th had been rearmed after that battle with Enfields and ended up, as Captain Charles Weygant, later regimental commander and historian wrote, "...on a road which ran at right angles with their line, into the woods in front of them. This road was the Fredericksburg Turnpike, or the Orange Plank Road, for at that point the two are merged. The clearing behind us was the Van Wert farm. We were facing west, and somewhere in the woods lay the enemy."

The regiment was alerted that the Confederates were preparing for a rare night attack, and began to come under fire. Weygant recalled that just then he noticed a horseman riding up and demanding the regiment cease firing into "your own men." Ellis replied that they'd fire into any enemy forces, at which point the horseman, followed by a larger group of horsemen dashed into the woods on the northern side of the road, "followed," Weygant wrote, "by a ball from Colonel Ellis' revolver and a volley from Company A."