"Doctor Livingstone, I Presume."

History
#1

“Doctor Livingstone, I presume.”

Those famous words were spoken by Henry Morton Stanley, a reporter who was sent to Africa to find missionary doctor David Livingstone, who hadn’t been heard from in quite a while. Henry Morton Stanley bears a unique historical distinction. He is the only man known to have served in the Confederate Army, the Union Army, and the Union Navy.

As an Englishman, he had no strong allegiance to either side. He was living in the South when the war started, so he joined the Confederate Army. He was soon captured and taken prisoner. The Union Army had a program whereby captured Confederate soldiers could avoid prison by joining the Union Army and going out west to fight Indians with the Cavalry. They would get out of prison and they wouldn’t have to fight against their former countrymen. Such soldiers were known as Galvanized Yankees. Stanley took them up on the offer.

Shortly before his unit was to ship out, he was struck by a serious illness and wasn’t able to go. He somehow slipped through the cracks and went AWOL. He was an experienced sailor, so later, using an assumed name for fear of being detected, he joined the Union Navy.

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#2

I wasn’t aware of this! Wonderful tales.

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#3

Wow, that’s interesting! I had never heard that about him, or “Galvanized Yankees”! Amazing.

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#4

I heard the term “Galvanized Yankees” years ago but I didn’t know what it meant. I saw a movie that starred Dan Haggerty as a US Marshall escorting 3 women prisoners across the desert. Along the way they encountered a troop of Cavalry. In one scene, a couple of the soldiers were eyeing one of the women. A Cavalry officer said to her, “Galvanized Yankees, ma’am. Not to be trusted.”

Dee Brown wrote a book called The Galvanized Yankees, which I found very informative and very enjoyable.

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#5

Wow, fascinating. I’m inspired to go back an re-learn so much I’ve either forgotten or never knew!
One of my great grandfathers fought in the Civil War, on the Confederate side. He probably would have known the term!

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