Originally aired on August 14, 1998 - In part 207 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson tells us that the 37th Iowa Infantry was like any other regiment save for one difference: the men were all past the maximum age limit for conscription.
#207 – The Graybeards
In January, 1863, a new regiment left the state of Iowa for duty in St. Louis. It was a most unusual unit. Although every member in it was exempt from military service nine hundred and fourteen men had enlisted freely and taken an oath to fight for the Union. The regiment was officially the 37th Iowa Infantry.
In organization it was a unit like all others save for one difference – every man from colonel to drummer boy was past the maximum military age limit of forty-five. Many of the recruits were over sixty. Some were in their seventies. The senior soldier was Curtis King, who at eighty became the oldest soldier in the Civil War. In contrast one of the younger members of the regiment was the Chaplain James H. White. He was only forty-eight.
This was Iowa’s famous “Graybeard” regiment recruited by special arrangement with the War Department as a means of showing that there was still plenty of able bodied citizens not subject to conscription, but perfectly willing to go to war. The tacit understanding from the beginning was that the 37th Iowa was to perform guard and garrison duty only. The “Graybeards” were never intended to be a combat regiment.
They enlisted for a full three year tour of duty. They were excellent guards, but being older men they were easily annoyed by discipline and adapted ever so slowly to army routine. For several months the regiment guarded prisoners of war and railroad lines in the St. Louis area. When they received no pay after four months in service an Iowa editor pled, “the old heroes do not grumble yet many of them have large families dependent upon them and the failure to receive any pay must necessarily cause considerable suffering.” By then the 37th had lost its eldest member. The demands of war had proved too much for eighty year old Curtis King. The transplanted Virginian was discharged after four months of duty for physical disabilities.
Guarding captured soldiers at Alton and Rock Island, Illinois occupied the “Graybeards” for over a year. The only action for the regiment came when guerillas ambushed a train in which they were riding in Memphis, Tennessee. In the last year of the Civil War, the Iowans were on guard duty in Indianapolis and Cincinnati.
Even though the 37th Iowa was in no major battle it had more than its share of misfortunes. The adjutant general of Iowa stated of the regiment, “during the period of their service the officers and men suffered greatly from sickness both on account of the change of climate and the exposure to frequent rainstorms to which they were subjected. Ignoring the advanced ages of the men,” the Iowa official added; “they were not provided with adequate camp equipage and the exposure and hardships which they encountered resulted in many deaths and rendered many more unfit for the further performance of military duty.”
Battle casualties for the “Graybeards” were only seven men. On the other hand, one hundred and forty-five soldiers died of disease. Another three hundred and sixty-four were discharged as too ill to serve any longer. When the regiment was officially mustered from the army in May, 1865, a startling statistic emerged. More than one thousand three hundred sons and grandsons of members of the 37th Iowa had also been in Union service during the war. Another fact may be even more unbelievable, so old were those Iowans and so young was the state of Iowa that not a man in the regiment could claim the “Hawkeye” State as his birthplace. There had been no Iowa when these men were born.