Whiskey Men Who Fought for the North ll

Foreword:  This, the second post about soldiers who fought for the Union in the American Civil War,  recounts three quite different stories.  The “whiskey men” involved had quite diverse experiences that ultimately took those soldiers into postwar careers of prosperity and recognition in three disparate parts of the country.

Within a week of President Lincoln’s call for 75,000 men to serve for three months at the outset of the conflict, John Low, 25 years old, joined a Carlisle, Pennsylvania, troop called the Sumner Rifles and was given the rank of corporal.  His unit performed garrison duties in Delaware and West Virginia.  When its term of service ended the company returned to Harrisburg to be mustered out.  Low enrolled again at Carlisle and became a 2nd lieutenant.  Within a month he was engaged in hot combat at Antietam, West Virginia, one of the costliest battles of the Civil War.  After that he was engaged at the fierce battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville in Virginia.

A captain by war’s end, Lowe returned to Carlisle to an uncertain future.  Married with two children and others on the way, none of Low’s Civil War heroics seemed to translate into prosperity.  He tried and failed as a produce dealer and later as a mechanic.  In the 1880 census Low’s occupation was listed as “huckster,” someone selling items from a push cart or stall. 

Low’s fortunes were about to change.  His reputation and income rose significantly sometime in the 1880s when he established a liquor wholesale house and bottling facility.  He featured a proprietary brand that he marketed as:  “A Whiskey Without a Headache.”  It was “Elk’s Pride.” Low also became the local distributor for several important breweries, including Pabst beer from Milwaukee and Bartholomay beer from Rochester, New York, two very popular brands of the times. He also was bottling soft drinks sold under his name. His building in downtown Carlisle is shown below.

When he died at the relatively young age of 55, Low was mourned as one of the leading businessmen of Carlisle and given a well-attended church funeral, with full military honors.  

Almost a quarter of the troops fighting for the Union in the Civil War were foreign born, among them some 216,000 from Germany.  Less well known were the thousands of immigrants who stayed in the military, moved West and fought in the Indian Wars.  Among them was Fritz Jessen who eventually found a permanent home in Prescott, Arizona, running a popular saloon and earning praise as “a good citizen in every sense of the word.”

Coming to America from Germany in 1850, Jessen was 19 when the Civil War broke out, joining the 29th Regiment Massachusetts Voluntary Infantry in December 1861, the only non-Celtic regiment in the famed Irish Brigade.  Over the next four years  Jessen’s regiment took part in 29 battles and four sieges, including Vicksburg.  Just before the South surrendered, during the siege of Petersburg, his unit suffered its worst casualties during the March 1865 Battle of Fort Stedman, shown above.  Jessen appears to have escaped serious injury throughout the conflict.

Unlike other Union soldiers, who went back to civilian pursuits at war’s end, Jessen stayed on as his battalion was reorganized ordered to the Presidio of San Francisco to counter resistance from Indian tribes. In June 1870 the federal census found him there, unmarried and 28, assigned to the Signal Corps.  Stationed with him were a number of other German-born soldiers.  It is likely that Jessen took part in the war against the Modoc tribe in California during 1872-1873.

Perhaps as early as 1882, Jessen left the Army to buy an existing drinking establishment in Prescott. Arizona,  and changed its name to the Headquarters Saloon.  Located on busy Gurly Street, it is shown on the postcard view below, the two story frame building second from right.  Jessen advertised frequently in the local newspapers, emphasizing sales of both draft and bottled beer. He also claimed to have “The best Wines, Liquors and Cigars in the market always on hand.”  Over the next few years, Jessen thrived in his adopted city.  The Headquarters Saloon proved to be one the most popular in Prescott, known throughout the West for its teeming “Whiskey Row” of drinking establishments.

When he died in 1903 at the age of 69, Jessen was hailed in the local press as a Civil War veteran and valued Prescott resident.  Said the Weekly Arizona Journal Miner:  “The deceased from his long residence in Prescott had made a great many friends, who will be pained to hear of his death. He was a good citizen in every sense of the word, and during his business career, was always progressive and enterprising, taking a natural pride in the progress of the town.”

Born in Ireland, Lawrence J. Logan immigrated to the United States, joining the Union Army in 1865 as the conflict was coming to a close.  Upon return he assisted his brother with his saloon and liquor business.   According to a biographer, Logan developed “a love for military life.” Serving in a reserve capacity he was promoted through the ranks until 1879 when he was made a lieutenant colonel. Logan’s rise in Boston’s business circles also had been rapid.   Within seven years of joining his brother in the whiskey trade, Logan took over the business completely. Eventually the scope of Logan’s sales would cause social historian Dennis Ryan to declare him the “baron of Boston’s liquor business.”

With the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898, Logan, now 57 years old, was determined to participate and was mustered into regular service, arriving in Cuba on July 1, 1898.  Almost immediately his commanding officer became violently ill and had to be returned to the U.S.  Lt. Col. Logan took command.  Soon he found himself leading the main body of the regiment to the fighting front.  It required an all-night march through forested and swampy ground that one writer termed “tedious and memorable.”  

After a brief halt in the morning, the advance continued and by noon of the same day the regiment arrived at field headquarters. With Logan leading, the Massachusetts volunteers were assigned key positions in trenches on the extreme left of the siege of Santiago, shown here.  There the regiment experienced fierce combat and significant casualties from hostile fire and disease, recording 129 fatalities, including four commission officers.

The colonel’s business and military prowess carried him into South Boston political prominence.  For many years he was a member of the Democratic City Committee and for four years served as treasurer.  In 1886 and 1887 he was elected to the Massachusetts Governor’s Council, a governmental body that provided legislative and advisory assistance to the governor in matters such as judicial nominations, pardons and commutations. 

Before he died at age 80 in 1920 at the advent of National Prohibition, according to one account:  “Lawrence Logan was raking it in as head of the company.  There were at least eighteen large breweries operating in and around Boston, but the Galway-man’s outfit dominated the “Irish market,” the pubs in the Irish wards…”   Lawrence also lived to see his son Edward become a much-decorated WWI general and the man after whom Boston’s Logan airport is named.

Note:  More complete vignettes of each of these whiskey men may be found elsewhere on this website:  John Low, April 27, 2018, Fritz Jessen, September 19, 2019. and Lawrence Logan, August 2, 2019.  An earlier post on whiskey men as Union soldiers ran April 15, 2018.