THE MAGAZINE OF THE CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM
Winter 2015 VOLUME XL, NUMBER 1
4 26 40 3 66
Contents The Art and Politics of Chicago’s Sanitary Fairs Evie Terrono
Quelling the Camp Douglas Conspiracies Stephen E. Towne
Remembering the Grand Army of the Republic Robert I. Girardi
Departments From the Editor Rosemary K. Adams
Making History Timothy J. Gilfoyle
C H I C AG O H I S T O RY Editor-in-Chief Rosemary K. Adams Senior Editor Emily H. Nordstrom Assistant Editor Esther D. Wang Designer Bill Van Nimwegen Cover: Confederate prisoners at Camp Douglas, Chicago, c. 1863. ICHi-01800
Copyright 2015 by the Chicago Historical Society Clark Street at North Avenue Chicago, IL 60614-6038 312.642.4600 chicagohistory.org ISSN 0272-8540 Articles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life.
Photography Joseph Aaron Campbell Stephen Jensen
C H I C AG O H I S T O R I C A L S O C I E T Y OFFICERS
James L. Alexander Chair T. Bondurant French Chairman Emeritus David D. Hiller First Vice Chair Walter C. Carlson Second Vice Chair Tobin E. Hopkins Treasurer Daniel S. Jaffee Secretary Gary T. Johnson President Russell L. Lewis Executive Vice President and Chief Historian HONORARY T R U S T E E
The Honorable Rahm Emanuel Mayor, City of Chicago
TRUSTEES
James L. Alexander Gregory J. Besio Matthew J. Blakely Denise R. Cade Walter C. Carlson Warren K. Chapman Keith L. Crandell Patrick F. Daly Patrick W. Dolan James P. Duff Paul H. Dykstra T. Bondurant French Gregory L. Goldner Timothy J. Gilfoyle Mary Lou Gorno David D. Hiller Dennis H. Holtschneider, CM Tobin E. Hopkins Cheryl L. Hyman Daniel S. Jaffee Gary T. Johnson Falona Joy Randye A. Kogan Judith H. Konen Michael J. Kupetis Robert C. Lee Douglas Levy Russell L. Lewis Ralph G. Moore Michael A. Nemeroff Kelly Noll
M. Bridget Reidy Larry Selander Joseph Seliga Jeff Semenchuk Kristin Noelle Smith Sarah D. Sprowl Samuel J. Tinaglia, Sr. Ali Velshi Gail D. Ward Jeffrey W. Yingling HONORARY LIFE TRUSTEE
The Honorable Richard M. Daley LIFE TRUSTEES
Lerone Bennett, Jr. Philip D. Block III David P. Bolger Laurence O. Booth Stanley J. Calderon John W. Croghan Alison Campbell de Frise Michael H. Ebner Sallie L. Gaines Sharon Gist Gilliam Barbara A. Hamel M. Hill Hammock Susan S. Higinbotham Henry W. Howell, Jr. Philip W. Hummer Richard M. Jaffee
Edgar D. Jannotta, Sr. Barbara Levy Kipper W. Paul Krauss Fred A. Krehbiel Joseph H. Levy, Jr. Josephine Louis R. Eden Martin Robert Meers Josephine Baskin Minow Timothy P. Moen Robert J. Moore Potter Palmer John W. Rowe Jesse H. Ruiz Gordon I. Segal Paul L. Snyder TRUSTEES EMERITUS
Bradford L. Ballast Paul J. Carbone, Jr. Jonathan Fanton Thomas M. Goldstein Cynthia Greenleaf David A. Gupta Jean Haider Nena Ivon Erica C. Meyer Eboo Patel Nancy K. Robinson April T. Schink Margaret Snorf Noren Ungaretti Joan Werhane
The Chicago History Museum gratefully acknowledges the support of the Chicago Park District on behalf of the people of Chicago.
FROM THE EDITORI
I
n 1861, after Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, most Americans—Northern and Southern—assumed the conflict would end quickly and decisively. Instead the nation endured four years of brutal war that impacted not only the soldiers on the battlefields but also civilians on the home front. By 1865, having experienced what was the greatest challenge of the young nation’s democratic principles, Americans were ready to move on, yet they could not ignore how the war had changed the nation. In this issue of Chicago History, published during the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, we look at the experience of both soldiers and civilians. At the crossroads of the nation’s railway system, Chicago bustled with activity during the war. The city hosted two Sanitary Fairs. Although intended primarily to raise funds for medical supplies and other needs of Union soldiers and encourage civilian participation in the war effort, the fairs’ art displays provided a memorable cultural experience for Chicagoans. As Evie Terrono explores in “The Art and Politics of Chicago’s Sanitary Fairs,” these exhibitions functioned as a respite from war news but also encouraged patriotism. On the Near South Side, Camp Douglas served first as a training post for Union forces and then as a prisoner-of-war camp for captured Confederates. Author Stephen Towne reveals the conspiracies developed to free prisoners, so they could wreak havoc in the North and replenish the South’s dwindling military forces. Once the war ended, returning soldiers sought support as they tried to adjust to peacetime. Among the most prominent of the veteran organizations established for this purpose was the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), founded in Decatur, Illinois, in 1866. Robert Girardi’s “Remembering the Grand Army of the Republic” discusses how the GAR provided fraternity for its members and also helped keep their sacrifices—and those of their deceased comrades—in the consciousness of Chicagoans. Regular contributor Timothy J. Gilfoyle offers a Making History article based on interviews with Richard M. Jaffee and John W. Rowe, two Chicagoans who have made a lasting impact as business leaders and philanthropists. Mr. Jaffee and Mr. Rowe join a distinguished group of past awardees that includes Studs Terkel, Mary Dempsey, Jesse White, Sara Paretsky, and Roger Ebert, among others. Finally, we offer a new feature in this edition of Chicago History—endnotes! Each article now includes the authors’ citations as well as additional commentary. We’re pleased to provide readers with a fuller understanding of each author’s research. I hope you enjoy this special issue of Chicago History. Please look for the next in the spring of 2016 where, among other topics, we’ll take a look at one of the most intriguing and provocative subjects in the city’s history—its criminal past.
Rosemary K. Adams Editor-in-Chief
The Art and Politics of Chicago’s Sanitary Fairs The impressive exhibitions of 1863 and 1865 popularized the righteousness of the Union cause and spurred the development of the arts in the postbellum era. EVIE TERRONO
U
pon reviewing the art gallery of the Ladies’ North-Western Soldier’s Fair in Chicago in the fall of 1863, one critic proclaimed it a “small Paradise,” which provided audiences with “the privilege of . . . tasting the fruits upon which . . . older and richer cities feed continuously.” He considered it evidence of “the growth in culture and the refinements of civilized life that [had] taken place” in the city in recent years in spite of the Civil War.1 A year and a half later, the art gallery of the Great North-Western Fair, held in the
spring of 1865, was deemed to be “the feature of the Fair, not alone in the extent of the collection but in its choiceness. . . . a superb representation of American Art.”2 These comments demonstrated the unalloyed pride evident in the wealth and breadth of local art collections and also the organizational acumen of the city’s art community in successfully engaging artists and collectors in support of the Sanitary Fairs, the most complex and ideologically significant cultural experiences in the young city’s history.
The Chicago branch of the United States Sanitary Commission, later known as the Northwestern branch, was established in October 1861 to provide logistical support and medical care for those serving in the Union army. In this illustration, Heroes and Heroines of the War, Thomas Nast depicts their efforts. 4 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
Sanitary Fairs, popular charity bazaars held in many Northern cities, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Union war effort between 1863 and 1865. These lithographs depict the main building of Chicago’s 1865 fair (above) and visitors inside its Union Hall (left).
Held from 1863 to 1865 throughout the cities of the Union, big and small, under the auspices of the United States Sanitary Commission (USSC), these fund-raising fairs, which provided for the needs of Union soldiers, were successful in garnering public sentiment in support of the war effort and promoting and sustaining the Union rhetoric at times of declining personal spirits and divisive political realities. The fairs and their art galleries, in particular, were propagandistic exercises that commemorated the nation’s historical achievements; they affirmed ideas about geographic expansion, which were inextricably connected to the national self-consciousness, and invited the viewers to contemplate the nation’s future prospects.
A reporter for the Daily Missouri Democrat clearly expressed the fairs’ paramount ideological significance as “revivals of patriotism,” elaborating, “Their mission is to awaken patriotism . . . and to bring home to every man the question: Am I doing my whole duty [italics in text] to my country in this time of her agony?”3 Most of the cities in which fairs were held were politically divided with broad segments of their populations demonstrating strong pro-Southern and antiwar sentiments. This was true for New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Baltimore, Cincinnati, and Chicago alike. Extolling the ideological value of the Ladies’ NorthWestern Soldier’s Fair, which opened on October 27, 1863, in Chicago, Mary Livermore (1820–1905), one of its organizers, remarked that “its electric generosity, its moral earnestness, and its contagious patriotism glorified the occasion . . . [and] were of more worth to the country than the money which was raised.”4 Newspaper reviews applauded the remarkable enterprise as a “sublime protest on behalf of the people against the poltroons and traitors who were enemies to the Government, and opposed to the war.”5 The fair was lauded for its potential to unite opposing factions in “an atmosphere which was literally Chicago’s Sanitary Fairs | 5
Similar to charity bazaars, the Sanitary Fairs featured women’s handiwork, including this potholder, which was sold at the 1865 fair.
filled with generous emotions and where every other element was absorbed or neutralized.”6 Moral uplift and political suasion were central to the success of the fairs and depended on the carefully modulated rhetoric integrated in their exhibits.7 The precedence for the arrangements and contents of the Sanitary Fairs was found mostly in state fairs, charity bazaars, antislavery fairs, and museums of curiosities. Similar to their predecessors, the fairs often included women’s handiwork and distinctive natural specimens, but also displays of Native American life, curiosities from around the world, meaningful objects of American history, relics of military conflicts, and magnificent art displays. Women were at the forefront of energizing contributions to these enterprises in time, effort, and in kind.8 At a time when artists, art critics, and clergymen alike expounded on the benefits of art as an ethical modifier, the fairs’ art exhibitions were often praised for their benevolent impact upon the psyche of visitors. As Neil Harris observed, the “great Civil War itself seemed only to intensify the need for the spiritual balm of art.”9 Fair organizers believed that exposure to artistic masterpieces enhanced moral sentiment and elevated the mind above the malignant influences of the war. A reporter for the Cincinnati Daily Commercial, while reviewing the local Hall of Curiosities and War Relics, observed that the visitor entering the art gallery was “made buoyant by the . . . living embodiment of the noblest conceptions of the 6 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
genius” while “scattering at once the jaundice from his disordered vision . . . and dispelling from his thoughts all bilious and melancholic ruminations.”10 The newly sanctified purpose of the art exhibits—to popularize the righteousness of the Unionist cause—elevated their influence to a position “so high and sacred” as they now offered “succor and solace, to those who are struggling and dying for Freedom and the Union.”11 With declining prospects for patronage, the art galleries of the Sanitary Fairs provided exposure for artists both of local and national reputation. Living in Chicago, George Peter Alexander Healy (1813–94) later recorded the hardship that he experienced because of lack of commissions: “This war-time was hard upon me; for when bare necessities of life are obtained with difficulty, such luxuries as portraits are not to be thought of. This was especially true during the first part of this terrible war.”12 A comparison of the content of the art exhibits in 1863 and 1865, respectively, alerts us to their rising importance for the viability of the American artistic community during the conflict and in its near aftermath. The inclusion of both American and European paintings in 1863 testified to the cosmopolitan tastes of Americans and revealed a strong preference for European works in many antebellum local and Midwest collections. By the 1865 fair, however, the art gallery comprised mostly works by American artists, primarily from New York and Boston. Rather than being on loan from local collectors, many of the works were offered for sale by artists or art dealers, a clear indication of the shift in American collecting patterns.13 By the 1860s, Chicago, with its established group of art patrons with collections of national renown, competed with St. Louis and Cincinnati for artistic leadership of the Midwest. Both Ezra Butler McCagg (1825–1908), president of the Chicago branch of the United States Sanitary Commission, and William Butler Ogden (1805–77), who had served as the first mayor of Chicago in 1837 and 1838, graced their homes with significant collections of American and European art, only to be surpassed by the nationally renowned collection of Alexander White (1814–72). Local patrons supported artists Healy, Charles Highwood (1824–93), John Antrobus (1837–1907), and Susan Hely St. John (1833–1913), all of whom painted portraits and scenes of everyday life; although Antrobus also practiced landscape painting. It is rather peculiar then that in March 1864, a reviewer for the Round Table asserted that “Chicago is no paradise of artists,” an opinion he attributed to the notion that art activities in the city were “yet unorganized.”14 This seems a rather harsh estimation, considering that in 1859, sculptor Leonard Volk (1828–95) amassed 289 artworks from local collections for the First Chicago
George Peter Alexander Healy, pictured here in 1868, participated in the 1863 fair with thirty-six paintings, more than any other artist, and served as chairman of the art committee of the 1865 fair. Photograph by John Carbutt Chicago’s Sanitary Fairs | 7
In 1860, sculptor Leonard Wells Volk (above) took plaster molds of Abraham Lincoln’s face and hands. This bronze copy of Lincoln’s left hand (left) was made from the original impression.
8 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
Exhibition of the Fine Arts, held at Burch’s Building, which attracted considerable audience and critical attention.15 Furthermore, the Chicago Art Union, established in 1860, was devoted to the encouragement of art and the “promotion of a true and discriminate taste in Painting and Sculpture.”16 The concerted efforts of Livermore and Volk yielded an impressive collection for the 1863 fair, as “homes beautified with works of art, paintings, or statuary, were temporarily plundered of them for the ‘Art Gallery’.”17 Volk’s central role in 1863 and, along with Healy, in 1865 reflected both his experience and prominence in the city.18 The “warmest praise” was reserved for him in 1863, when in two days’ time he was able to arrange more than three hundred paintings and sculptures “by a sort of artist’s instinct . . . in so admirable a manner that the crabbiest author or owner of a picture would find it a hard matter to find fault.”19 Visitors were encouraged to experience the “literally marvelous and enchanting” effect of the art gallery at its best “by gas light.”20 The exhibition included many portraits of local luminaries and everyday themes, but the majority of the works on view were landscapes, including a broad array of northeastern and South American subjects.21 Although availability determined the contents of the exhibit, the arrangement of the works elicited purposeful ideological associations that depended on a common understanding of their cultural and political significance to enhance their didactic potential.22 Contrasting interpretations between North and South American landscapes were by no means novel and carried explicit messages for contemporary audiences. Scholars have elaborated on the fact that in the nineteenth century Americans understood and engaged with views of American nature, not merely in terms of their picturesque or sublime characteristics, but rather as manifestations of divine favor inextricably connected with American nationhood and identity. Reviews of the artworks reiterated metaphorical meanings, often attached to the national landscape that had not only ideological potency and political validity, but helped remove graphic references to the internecine conflict. Many artists projected national anxieties about the Civil War onto nature, or chose to minimize the war’s impact by emphasizing humorous or pathetic subject matter, or even clothed contentious contemporary political meaning in allegorical themes.23 As would become customary in the Sanitary Fairs that followed, scenes of familiar locales in New England and along the Hudson predominated in the 1863 show, such as Jasper Francis Cropsey’s (1823–1900) Catskill Mountain House (no. 239, Minneapolis Institute of Arts) and Greenwood Lake (no. 241), one of his many interpretation of panoramic vistas around the lake near West
Mary A. Livermore (above) assumed a leadership role in the Chicago branch of the USSC in the spring of 1862 and proved to be a capable administrator and fundraiser. The branch’s office was located on the first floor of McVicker’s Theater (below, c. 1863).
Chicago’s Sanitary Fairs | 9
Above: Jasper Francis Cropsey, American, 1823–1900, Catskill Mountain House, 1855, Oil on canvas, 29 x 44 inches, Bequest of Mrs. Lillian Lawhead Rinderer in memory of her brother, William A. Lawhead, and the William Hood Dunwoody Fund, 31.47, Minneapolis Institute of Art. The 1863 art gallery, the “best arranged and best lighted hall in the city,” was located on the second floor of McVicker’s Theater. The catalogue (left) identified the price of admission as twenty-five cents or one dollar for a season pass.
Milford, New Jersey.24 The former depicted a popular resort hotel situated in a picturesque landscape that had enticed visitors since the early 1820s. Although by the time of Cropsey’s work, the area was modified, he chose to disregard modern developments and emphasized instead an Arcadian view of nature with the house nestled warmly in its embrace, providing a comforting scene for the war-torn visitors to the fair.25 Similarly, the writer for the Chicago Tribune focused his attention on Asher B. Durand’s (1796–86) Stratton Gap, Manchester Vermont (no. 95) noting the “tremendous force of the convulsion which long ago rent the solid mountain, and opened the wide cleft in its side.”26 10 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
He furthermore applauded that “every shade and tint of the color from which the range of hills is named, blended in that soft harmony and repose which are the peculiar characteristics of the region.”27 At once, the reviewer spoke of the antiquity of the site and emphasized its peacefulness, entirely unmarred by the devastation that was overwhelming the nation’s Southern landscapes. Moreover, he singled out the landscape because it “reproduced the scene with a fidelity and truth . . . that almost carries us back to the Green Mountains,” a locale identified with early Revolutionary history as the home of Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys and recorded in John Greenleaf Whittier’s “Song of the Vermonters” of 1779; in this respect, the region recalled the nation’s beginnings and carried the promise of freedom and independence. On the other hand, Church’s View of Cotopaxi of 1857 (The Art Institute of Chicago), listed in the catalogue as South America (no. 200), encouraged audiences to consider the political and economic utility of territorial expansion, deeply ingrained into the rhetoric of American nationhood.28 Depicting a panoramic view of the luminous landscape with a dramatic waterfall in the middle ground and a fuming volcano in the background,
it communicated an awe-inspiring sublimity. The young woman in the lower right and the figure in the boat in the placid water are mediating factors, reassuring viewers of hospitable ground in this remote landscape.29 As Angela Miller has proposed, South American works by Church and vistas of western territories by Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902) provided appealing alternatives to Northeastern American scenery.30 Whereas western expansion was fraught with problems because of the debate over the spread of slavery, the exploration of South America, investigated at the time by Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806–73), a geographer in the service of the government, could provide, as Maury suggested, a useful “safety valve” that would release economic pressures that had risen from population shifts in the United States and even a “remedy for preserving the Union.”31 Furthermore, contemplating such landscapes brought forth in the minds of visitors the providential promise of Manifest Destiny and helped to temper their apprehensions about the future of the nation. Even allegorical works reiterated reassurances as to the potential for national political well-being, as evidenced by the critical attention given to Thomas Prichard Rossiter’s (1818–71) America (no. 28) and Italy
Frederic Edwin Church, American, 1826–1900, View of Cotopaxi, 1857, Oil on canvas, 24½ x 36½ inches, Gift of Jennette Hamlin in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Louis Dana Webster, 1919.753, The Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago’s Sanitary Fairs | 11
(no. 29, both currently unlocated). The paintings, which faced each other in the gallery, were described at length in the history of the fair: Two female figures symbolize the two countries: “America,” with bright face, blue eyes, and waving hair, on which a star-besprinkled crown is resting, stands in the flooding lights of the newly risen day, looking young, strong, brave and hopeful. “Italy,” with dark hair, sad, down-cast eyes, and worn features, droops in a despairing and abandoned attitude, while the red twilight falls around her.32 The works were exhibited in an alcove along with a copy of Thomas Couture’s (1815–79) Romans of the Decadence (original 1847, Musée d’Orsay), cited as Decline of the Roman Empire (no. 23), which depicted the fatal debauchery and excess of the Roman Empire.33 Together, these pieces foregrounded the deterioration and demise of the once-powerful Roman civilization, whereas brighter prospects were situated in the New World, as illustrated by America and Church’s South American landscapes, also included in the same location. The dearth of art related overtly to the war at hand underscored the optimistic outlook of the fair. American artists of the time largely failed to respond to the critical call for nationally significant art that addressed the reasons behind the conflict or recorded the valor and sacrifice of the fallen. Reflecting on such concerns, in 1864, the reviewer of The Round Table recognized the reportorial work of artists such as Winslow Homer (1836–1910) and others, who illustrated popular journals with incidents of the war, but reproached American artists for their disregard and neglect of the dramatic pictorial potential offered by the war, observing: One of the most remarkable circumstances connected with the existing war is the very remote and trifling influence which it seems to have exerted upon American art. . . . The few who have illustrated episodes of the war have selected those of a grotesque or humorous character, or occasionally those appealing to the sentimental or pathetic strings of heart.34 Recent scholarship has attributed the paucity of Civil War paintings to the “nature of the war, its course and ultimate objectives,” which made it a problematic war for American artists to interpret.35 The internecine conflict precluded the use of the aesthetic principles and visual devices often applied to grand manner historical paintings dealing with warfare between nations. Furthermore, scholars have proposed that the ascendancy of photography, with its powerful and graphic immediacy, provided alternative means of recording and interpreting the Civil War, although it arguably did not pro12 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
vide an equivalent, substitutive experience for history painting.36 Political ambiguities, the divided loyalties of patrons, the search for surrogate themes to express the devastation of war, and the need for evaluative distance compromised and delayed monumental depictions of the conflict. Financial deprivations also laid heavily in artists’ minds who would not have undertaken costly historical works in the absence of public patronage. Occasionally, scenes of daily experience offered subtle political commentary as with the work of John H. Drury (1816–1914), who had relocated to Chicago from Washington, DC. Drury’s Maryland Farm Scene (no. 170) and Nine Miles from Washington [Kentucky] (no. 171, both currently unlocated) were regarded “with peculiar pride as the production of a native Chicago artist” and thought worthy of “a very high place in the temple of modern art.” A reviewer described the latter as “a scene in Kentucky, where a negro [sic] who has driven three horses, a-team, a-field, is resting on his plow-handle, talking with a negro [sic] girl with a bundle on her head,” but even such benign racial references were rare in the art galleries.37 The content and arrangement of the art gallery in 1863 served as a model for the 1865 installation, only by then many of the works on view were of a truly national reputation and momentous ideological relevance. New York artists and collectors contributed in large numbers to the gallery, appraised to be “the most extensive and magnificent exhibition of art ever witnessed in this country.”38 Credit for the successful distribution of the works was given to Healy, who, along with Volk, “arranged the pictures with ultimate fairness, endeavoring always, and generally succeeding in placing the distinctive features of the style of each artist in the most favorable light.”39 Inaugurated on May 30, 1865, the fair marked the end of the war and lamented the tragic loss of Abraham Lincoln. Landscapes, which dominated the art exhibit, were often thought to reflect the mood of the nation. Particular attention was devoted to Jervis McEntee’s (1828–91) In the Catskills (no. 51), one of the many paintings on view depicting the storied New England landscape. In a lengthy critique, the reviewer praised the artist for finding “inspiration in the melancholy days” and the “sober and pensive . . . [and] bleak and dreary atmosphere of the dying year,” which reiterated for audiences the mournful state of the nation.40 On the contrary, he bestowed harsh criticism upon Sanford Robinson Gifford’s (1823–80) Twilight in the Catskills of 1861 (Yale University Art Gallery), listed in the catalogue as Kauterksill, Cove Catskill Mountain (no. 150), for its stylistic exaggerations, noting that “this was a landscape looking sickly and forlorn, with a sky . . . struggling in a fierce turmoil of whirling clouds” that left him bewildered at its “eccentric” and “grotesque” artificiality.
The ascendancy of photography provided an alternative means of recording and interpreting the Civil War. Above: Drum corps of Momence, Illinois, 1864. Photograph by J. B. Hamilton. Below: Burial place, Fredericksburg, Virginia, c. 1863.
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The catalogue for the 1865 exhibition listed the fine arts committee, which included Healy, Volk, Livermore, and among others Ezra McCagg; Uriah H. Crosby; artist John H. Drury; journalist and critic George P. Upton; and Edwin Burnham, the father of architect Daniel Burnham. Below: The front page of the Voice of the Fair, published under the auspices of the North-Western Sanitary Fair.
Sanford Robinson Gifford, American, 1823–1880, Twilight in the Catskills, 1861, Oil on canvas, 27 x 54 inches, Gift of Joanne and John Payson in memory of Joan Whitney and Charles Shipman Payson, Class of 1921, and in honor of Joan Whitney Payson, B.A. 2009, 2007.178.1, Yale University Art Gallery.
It could be, however, that it was not the formal elements that the reviewer found disturbing but rather the graphic illustrations of death in nature, as reflected in the decimated landscape in the foreground.41 The rocky, barren scene is foreboding and inhospitable. A black bear is its sole occupant, and the viewer is precariously suspended in midair in the immediate foreground, looking at the precipice beyond. The work imparts a sense of destabilizing disquietude, and audiences at the time recognized all too well its disruptive political implications that maintained their currency at the war’s end.42 The palliative warmth of James McDougal Hart’s (1828–1901) A Harvest Field in New England (no. 97) counteracted the pessimism of Gifford’s work. It garnered critical praise because of its peaceful reaffirmation of the benign coexistence of man in a nurturing landscape: “there is no panic in the sky, nor convulsion in the hills; the trees are not attitudinizing, nor the rocks putting theatrical airs; it is only a quiet, simple New England Harvest field.” The author ruminated that it was all too evocative of the “sentiment of a cherished home in that happy land.”43 Another reviewer deemed the painting the “second best picture in the collection . . . It is [an] every day brook, tree, cow and harvest field, but . . . magically elaborated into a thing of beauty.”44 Hart’s view was situated across from the largest, and possibly the most acclaimed, work in the gallery: Albert Bierstadt’s monumental The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak of 1863 (no. 1, Metropolitan Museum of Art). Placed
in its own alcove and measuring six by ten feet, Rocky Mountains dominated the show and many of the reviews. Singled out for critical attention, the reviewer of the Evening Journal noted that visitors would proceed through the view toward “the mountains heaped glory upon glory . . . brightening towards heaven, banishing all wonder that God the father gave the law from Sinai.” He further remarked that contemplating the landscape called forth the familiar verses of the hymn “The Strength of the Hills”: For the strength of the hills we bless thee, Our God, our fathers’ God; Thou hast made thy children mighty By the touch of the mountain sod.45 The remainder of the hymn references long suffering in the hands of “foul oppressors” and “ruthless foes” and concludes with an acknowledgment of God’s grace and protection, “Thou hast led us here in safety,” messages which would not have gone unnoticed to readers of the review. When the work was exhibited in New York in the spring of 1864, shortly before the opening of the Metropolitan Fair, it was recognized as “a truly . . . historic landscape . . . [that] inspires the temperate cheerfulness and promise of the region it depicts, and the imagination contemplates it as the possible seat of supreme civilization.”46 George Bancroft (1800–91), a historian, diplomat, and benefactor of Bierstadt, commented on the Rocky Mountains in the fair’s newspaper: Chicago’s Sanitary Fairs | 15
Albert Bierstadt, American, 1830–1902, The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak, 1863, Oil on canvas, 73 ½ x 120 ¾ inches, Rogers Fund, 1907, 07.123, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 16 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
Chicago’s Sanitary Fairs | 17
Albert Bierstadt, German landscape painter. Photograph by Sarony
We hold that the scene would have been comparatively voiceless, meaningless, and dead but for the addition of the wild men of the mountains in their own life and manners. The one is the fulfilment [sic] of the other . . . bright, cheerful, sunny nature in its savage mountains; bright, cheerful, sunny nature in its savage children, and the two combining to form one harmonious whole.47 At the close of the war, it served as a hopeful reminder of national destiny and the providential charge toward territorial advancement. It was an Edenic landscape, full of unexplored potential, immersing viewers in its dazzling pictorial effects and promoting its political narrative: these lands, populated only by savage Indians, now lay ripe for exploration. Besides extolling the distinctive qualities of the western landscape, the painting’s title had particular temporal meaning. Bierstadt had traveled to Saint Joseph, Missouri, and in 1859 joined Frederick W. Lander’s survey party into the Rocky Mountains, all the while keeping Eastern audiences abreast of his activities by publishing a series of letters to the Crayon, thus familiarizing them with the physical setting of his works. Lander had died in service to the Union in March 1862 and his New York Times obituary recognized him “as the very best ideal of an American soldier,” thus commemorating in his death, the sacrifice of the nation’s victims that marked forever the American landscape.48 At a time of national mourning for the recently 18 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
slain President Lincoln, but also of celebration of the war’s end, Bierstadt’s work gave audiences the chance to affirm their faith in divine benevolence and the restorative potential of the American land, which sustained them and brought them through the national crisis, scathed perhaps, but confident in their belief of national ascendancy and progress. Two other paintings in the vicinity of Bierstadt’s work proposed a meaningful dialogue between past and present. Peter F. Rothermel’s (1817–95) Patrick Henry Delivering His Address Before the House of Burgesses of Virginia in 1765 of 1851 (no. 3, Patrick Henry National Memorial, Brookneal, Virginia) and Louis Lang’s (1814–93) telling The Soldier’s Widow or the Spirit of 1864 (no. 6, currently unlocated) allowed visitors to contemplate the country’s revolutionary past and the Civil War’s tremendous toll on innumerable families. Rothermel’s work spoke of disunity and strife, but also of the ultimate hope of resolution and reconciliation. It depicts Patrick Henry in May 1765, delivering his famous speech against the Stamp Act, which incited an intense reaction among the burgesses and brought the house into great disarray. The scene of the “speech [was] familiar to every school-boy’s mouth . . . recalling the denunciation of attempted wrong, the statement of grievances burdening the people.”49
Peter F. Rothermel, painter. Photograph by J. E. McLees
Peter F. Rothermel, American, 1812–95, Patrick Henry Delivering His Address Before the House of Burgesses of Virginia in 1765, 1851, Oil on canvas, 79 x 61 inches, Red Hill—The Patrick Henry National Memorial. Chicago’s Sanitary Fairs | 19
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Henry was seen as the determining agent in a divine plan that proscribed American independence from monarchical rule and an onward march toward a shared governance based on republican ideals. Richard Henry Lee, seated tensely at the lower left, who was remembered in the 1860s as one of the most vociferous opponents to slavery on religious grounds, advanced this vision. In a significant speech to his peers at the Virginia House of Burgesses in November of 1759, Lee proposed that slaves were “entitled to liberty and freedom by the great law of nature.” In an 1852 review of the work for Graham’s Magazine, the writer recognized, “Lee sees by a sort of prophetic intuition the full import of this inspired oratory. His very face . . . is a long perspective of war, desolation, heroic deeds, and the thick-coming glories of ultimate civic and religious liberty.”50 The painting emphasized the popular idea that the Civil War was yet another step along the path that ultimately would lead to the satisfaction of a larger divine plan for national selfdetermination and political stability. Whereas Rothermel’s work reiterated national aspirations, Lang’s The Soldier’s Widow depicted a young boy in his crib playing with the rings from the scabbard of his deceased father. According to the reviewer, the painting would “stay many a passing step, and make many eyes grow dim,” as it focused on “the deep seated grief of the mother and exuberant delight of the child, unconscious [of] what orphanage means.”51 Equally solicitous of the audience’s sympathy was Lang’s The Departure for the War (no. 148, currently unlocated), a picture for which “half a million homes might have furnished the original.”52 The work depicted a family bidding farewell to their son with the “mother . . . giving her last adieu and blessing with worthy firmness, while the sister waves with enthusiasm her hand-kerchief at the troops filing by the window.” Although derided for its “artistic merit of low grade,” the work was also praised for its “truth of representation and power of expression.”53 But, as in all previous Sanitary Fair exhibitions, works capturing the actualities of the conflict were very few, a fact noted by the writer of the Voice of the Fair: As yet there seems to be no grand historical pictures on a subject suggested by the war; perhaps it is necessary that time should elapse and the memory of many incidents to die out, for their redundance [sic] is apt to confuse history; then when the great mass of the common people have selected some particular occurrence, as of importance to them and their interests, the dear chosen collection will be seized Opposite: John Quincy Adams Ward, American, 1830–1910, The Freedman, 1862–63, Bronze, 19 5⁄8 x 15 ¾ x 9 3⁄8 inches, Roger McCormick Endowment, 1998.1, The Art Institute of Chicago.
John Quincy Adams Ward in his studio, c. 1887. Pach Brothers, photographer. Miscellaneous photographs collection. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
by some artist and married to immortal canvas, and perpetuate the heroism, self-denial and patriotism of these noble men, who at the crying of the loud voice which seemed like the giving up of the country’s life offered their own bodies to her successful defiance.54 The only evidently political work in the exhibition was John Quincy Adams Ward’s (1830–1910) The Freedman of 1863 (no. 320, The Art Institute of Chicago), which curiously enough, considering its singular importance, was not reported in the press. Perhaps the exclusion indicated the uncertainty or discomfort that this ideal representation of the black man presented for contemporary audiences.55 The sculpture presents a partially clothed young African American, broken manacles still attached to his wrist, resting cautiously on a tree stump and looking away from the viewer. The critical reaction to the work at the time highlighted the difficulties of its interpretation and reception. Although the sculptor himself intended to “express not one set free by any proclamation so much as his own love of freedom,” contemporary critics, while recognizing the work’s “soul lifting” eloquence, identified the subject as “one of the ‘redeemed’” and advocated that the figure “should become the companion of the Washington in our Chicago’s Sanitary Fairs | 21
As a railroad and manufacturing hub for the North and a primary supplier for the Union army, Chicago fared well during the war. Newly built structures graced the city, such as the Tremont House hotel (above) at the southeast corner of Lake and Dearborn Streets.
nation’s Capitol, to commemorate the crowning virtue of democratic institutions in the final liberty of the slave.”56 Kirk Savage has proposed that the figure, in his reluctant attitude, represents his “liminal position, neither completely beyond the realm of slavery nor entirely within the world of freedom,” and one may surmise that this political and social ambiguity, applicable to many newly emancipated slaves, would have been all too relevant to the fair’s visitors.57 The moralizing and didactic impact of the art galleries was recognized repeatedly. Reviewers noted that they provided “food for thought, a new and more intimate acquaintance with the beauty of nature and life.” They called for the establishment of a permanent art gallery in Chicago “as a proof of the local refinement and cultivation” and demonstration that a “profound respect for art is taking root among us,” asserting that “every good picture that is exhibited, whether for love or money, is a public benefaction, which no man can measure by weights and yardsticks.”58 Whereas the art gallery of 22 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
1863 expressed the hopeful aspirations of its organizers to bestow an air of aesthetic refinement upon their patriotic enterprise, that of 1865 confirmed that the “Sanitary Fair collections had created a taste for pictures and awakened a desire upon our wealthy citizens to purchase,” thus providing the impetus for the development of the arts in the postbellum era.59 For most interpreters of American art, the Civil War is considered a disruptive interlude between the intensely nationalistic spirit of the prewar years and the expansionist, cosmopolitan aesthetic trends that followed the conflict. Most historians have largely considered the war years as devoid of significant cultural and artistic activity, but this view ignores the moral, ideological, and didactic outlook of the art galleries of the Sanitary Fairs and their impressive public appeal and financial achievement. The galleries deflected, if only briefly, the dislocating realities of the conflict, neutralized social and political animosities, and coalesced the community around a therapeutic narrative of the nation’s yet-to-be-realized future.
The establishment of Uriah H. Crosby’s Opera House in 1865 was an immediate response to the influence of the Chicago fairs. It was home to several businesses, a 3,000-seat theater (above), an art gallery, and artists’ studios. The structure stood on Washington Street between State and Dearborn until 1871. Evie Terrono is professor of art history at Randolph-Macon College. This article, based on her current book project, derives from her dissertation, “For the ‘Boys in Blue’: The Art Galleries of the Sanitary Fairs” (Graduate School and University Center, City University of New York, 2002). I L L U S T R AT I O N S | Illustrations are from the Chicago History Museum, unless otherwise noted. 4, ICHi-22101, 5, top: ICHi-63123, center: ICHi-15124; 6, ICHi-68078; 7, ICHi68128; 8, ICHi-31318, inset: ICHi-52647; 9, top: ICHi-51132, bottom: ICHi-75169; 10, top: courtesy of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, bottom: ICHi-76889; 11, reproduced with the permission of The Art Institute of Chicago; 13, top: ICHi07461, bottom: detail of ICHi-68277; 14, top: ICHi-76886, ICHi-76888, bottom: detail of ICHi-76890; 15, reproduced from the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery; 16–17, reproduced from the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, www.metmuseum.org; 18, top: ICHi-76884, bottom: ICHi76885; 19, reproduced with the permission of Red Hill—The Patrick Henry National Memorial, www.redhill.org; 20, reproduced with the permission of The Art Institute of Chicago; 21,
reproduced with the permission of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; 22, ICHi-00766; 23, ICHi-18413. F O R F U RT H E R R E A D I N G | For the significance of the Sanitary Fairs in enhancing support for the war effort, see Daniel Greene, “Nothing Daunts Chicago: Wartime Relief on the Home Front,” in Home Front: Daily Life in the Civil War North (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013), 71–97. For the political implications of American landscape painting, see among many others Angela Miller, The Empire of the Eye: Landscape Representation and American Cultural Politics, 1825–1875 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993). Specifically on the ideological function of landscape paintings in the Civil War, see Eleanor Jones Harvey, “Landscapes and the Metaphorical War,” in The Civil War and American Art (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 17–73. For the challenges of interpreting the Civil War in historical paintings at the time, see Steven Conn, “Narrative Trauma and Civil War History Painting, or Why Are These Pictures so Terrible?” History and Theory 41, no. 4 (December 2002): 17–42. Chicago’s Sanitary Fairs | 23
ENDNOTES
1 “Art in Chicago,” The Round Table 1, no. 1 (December 19, 1863): 12. 2 “The Great Fair: Art Hall,” Chicago Tribune, May 29, 1865, 4, 1. 3 “The Popular Feature in Our Fair,” Daily Missouri Democrat (St. Louis, MO), April 17, 1864, 4, 3. 4 Mary Livermore, My Story of the War (Hartford, CT: A. D. Worthington & Company, 1890), 563. 5 “The Great Northwestern Sanitary Fair,” Chicago Tribune, October 29, 1863, 4, 1. 6 “The Great Northwestern Sanitary Fair,” The Sanitary Commission Bulletin 1, no. 3 (December 1, 1863): 65. 7 For the significance of the Sanitary Fairs in promoting patriotic allegiance, see Melinda Lawson, “A Union Love Feast: The Sanitary Fairs, Civil War Patriotism and National Identity,” in Patriot Fires: Forging a New American Nationalism in the Civil War North (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2002), 14–39. 8 For the fundraising efforts of women in general and in the Sanitary Fairs specifically, see Beverly Gordon, Bazaars and Fair Ladies: The History of the American Fundraising Fair (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1998). 9 Neil Harris, The Artist in American Society: The Formative Years 1790–1860 (New York: George Braziller, 1966), 300. 10 “The Art Gallery of the Great Western Sanitary Fair,” Cincinnati Daily Commercial, December 25, 1864, 1, 7–8. 11 “The Art Exhibition,” Chicago Tribune, October 27, 1863, 4, 2. 12 George P. A. Healy, Reminiscences of a Portrait Painter (New York: Kennedy Graphics, Inc., 1970), 68–69. 13 For the content of the art galleries, see Catalogue of Paintings, Statuary, etc. Exhibited for the Benefit of Ladies’ NorthWestern Fair in Aid of the Chicago Branch of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, for the Relief of Soldiers, 27 October 1863 and Catalogue of Paintings, Statuary Etc., in the Art Department of the Great NorthWestern Fair (Chicago: n. p., 1865).
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Out of the 207 works listed in the 1865 art catalogue, less than thirty were by European artists. The numbers for the artworks in the art galleries included in this text refer to their citations in these catalogues. 14 “Chicago Art Notes,” The Round Table, 1, no. 15 (March 26, 1864): 234. 15 For the 1859 exhibition, see “Chicago’s First Fine Arts Exhibition,” Chicago History 2, no. 11 (Spring 1951): 324–25 and Joel S. Dryer, “The First Art Exhibition in Chicago,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 99, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 28–45. In addition to the 289 paintings, the exhibition comprised eighteen statues and sixty-seven engravings. It attracted more than twelve thousand people in its more than monthlong run, netting $800 from entry receipts and catalogue sales. For its content, see Chicago Exhibition of the Fine Arts. Catalogue of the First Exhibition of Statuary, Paintings, & c. (Chicago: Press & Tribune Print, 1859). 16 George P. Upton, “Art in Chicago,” The Western Monthly 4 (December 1870): 404. 17 Livermore, My Story of the War, 441. Livermore appealed to her acquaintances in the East hoping for “an introduction to some of the N.Y. artists, who might be willing to donate some specimens of their handiwork for the benefit of our Southwestern heroes, anguishing in hospitals.” See Mary Livermore, letter to Louisa Lee Schuyler, September 24, 1863. Louisa Lee Schuyler Papers, New York Historical Society. 18 There is at least one indication that Healy was initially considered as the manager of the art gallery for the 1863 fair, see “Fine Art Gallery, The Northwestern Sanitary Fair,” Evening Journal (Chicago), October 14, 1863, 4, 4. 19 “The Great Northwestern Fair,” Chicago Tribune, October 29, 1863, 4, 2. This was primarily an exhibition, as very few works were for sale. Only eighteen out of 323 works were marked for sale and included copies after old masters but also works by local artists.
20 “The Great Northwestern Sanitary Fair. The Art Gallery,” Chicago Tribune, October 30, 1863, 4, 2. In 1863, 25,000 visitors attended the art gallery in a twelve-day period and seven thousand catalogues were sold in the first five days. In a single day, 1850 tickets and 800 catalogues were sold, and the gallery netted $3,726.75 in its threeweek run. For statistics, see History of the Northwestern Soldier’s Fair (Chicago: Dunlop, Sewell & Spalding, 1864), 35. 21 The diversity of the experience was recorded in verse by “Paulina,” a visitor to the art gallery; see “Visit to the Art Gallery of the North-Western Sanitary Fair,” Evening Journal (Chicago), November 10, 1863, 4, 1. 22 The physical arrangement of the art gallery is described in detail in “The Art Exposition of the Sanitary Fair,” Evening Journal (Chicago), October 29, 1863, 4, 4. 23 Eleanor Jones Harvey, “Landscapes and the Metaphorical War,” in The Civil War and American Art (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 19. 24 Cropsey had a significant presence in the art gallery with six art works on display, many of them views of familiar locales in New Hampshire. He was wellknown for his strong religious beliefs as well as his pro-Union views, see Anthony Speiser, “Jasper Cropsey: Painter of Faith,” in Jasper Francis Cropsey: Catalogue Raisonne, ed. Anthony Speiser, vol. 1, 1842–1863 (Hastings-on-Hudson, NY: NewingtonCropsey Foundation, 2013), xv–xxxiv, and Gail E. Husch, “1851: Jasper F. Cropsey and the Spirit of the Peace,” in Something Coming: Apocalyptic Expectation and Mid-Nineteenth Century American Painting (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2000), 152–79. 25 For a discussion of this work, see John Howat, American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987), 203–5. 26 The work is cited in David B. Lawall, Asher B. Durand: A Documentary Catalogue of the Narrative and Landscape Paintings (New York: Garland Publisher, 1978), no. 193.
27 “The Art Exhibition,” Chicago Tribune, October 27, 1863, 4, 2. 28 Franklin Kelly, Frederic Edwin Church (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1990), 164–5. The work had also been exhibited at the 1859 exhibition. 29 History of the North-Western Soldier’s Fair, held in Chicago the last week of October and the first week of November, 1863 (Chicago: Dunlop, Sewell & Spalding, 1864), 33. 30 Angela Miller, The Empire of the Eye: Landscape Representation and American Cultural Politics, 1825–1875 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 200–241. 31 Katherine E. Manthorne, Tropical Renaissance: North American Artists Exploring Latin America, 1839–1879 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 1989), 52–53. 32 “The Art Gallery,” History of the NorthWestern Soldier’s Fair, 33. The information about their location in gallery is found in “The Great Northwestern Sanitary Fair. The Art Gallery,” Chicago Tribune, October 30, 1863, 4, 2. 33 The original by Couture dated 1855 is in the collection of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. For the arrangement of the third alcove, see “The Art Exposition of the Sanitary Fair,” Evening Journal (Chicago), October 29, 1863, 4, 4. 34 “Art, Painting and the War,” The Round Table 2, no. 32 (July 23, 1864): 90. 35 For discussions as to the paucity of Civil War artworks, see Lucretia Hoover Giese, “‘Harvesting’ the Civil War: Art in Wartime New York,” in Redefining American History Painting, ed. Patricia M. Burnham and Lucretia Hoover Giese (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 64–81. Steven Conn also considers the subject in Steven Conn and Andrew Walker, “The History in the Art: Painting the Civil War,” in Terrain of Freedom: American Art and the Civil War, The Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 27, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 65–67. 36 Alan Trachtenberg, Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Matthew Brady to Walker Evans (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989), 71–118.
37 “The Great Northwestern Sanitary Fair. The Art Gallery,” Chicago Tribune, October 31, 1863, 4, 2. 38 “Magnificent Art Gallery of the Coming Fair,” The Voice of the Fair 1, no. 4 (May 18, 1865): 2. There were at least two editions of the art catalogue, see Catalogue of Paintings, Statuary, Etc. in the Art Department of the Great NorthWestern Fair, 2nd ed. (Chicago, 1865). Meaningful paintings that had been exhibited in the meantime at the larger fairs, such as the Metropolitan Fair in New York and the Great Central Fair in Philadelphia, were reassembled once again in Chicago and their critical reception clearly pointed to their national significance. 39 “Art Sketches, no. 2,” The Voice of the Fair 1, no. 12 (June 7, 1865): 2. 40 “The Art Gallery,” Chicago Tribune, June 7, 1865, 2, 3. 41 In his study of the work, Adam Greenhalgh suggests that the work was listed in the artist’s 1874 list of “Chief Pictures” as Kauterskill Clove, see “‘Darkness Visible’: A Twilight in the Catskills by Sanford Robinson Gifford,” American Art Journal 32, no. 1/2 (2001): 51. Images of twilight in American art of the late 1850s and particularly the 1860s were often understood in political terms, including Frederick Church’s well-known Twilight in the Wilderness, 1860 (Cleveland Museum of Art). 42 Ibid., 63–64. 43 “The Art Gallery,” Chicago Tribune, June 7, 1865, 2, 3. 44 “Art Hall,” Chicago Tribune, May 29, 1865, 4, 1. 45 “Glimpse of the Fair: The Art Gallery,” Evening Journal (Chicago), May 27, 1865, 4, 2. 46 “The New Pictures,” Harper’s Weekly, March 26, 1864, 195. 47 George Bancroft, “Nature and Life,” The Spirit of the Fair 1, no. 16 (April 22, 1864): 186. 48 New York Times, March 3, 1862, cited in Nancy K. Anderson and Linda S. Ferber, Albert Bierstadt: Art and Enterprise
(New York: The Brooklyn Museum of Art, 1991), 77. 49 “Art Sketches, no. 3,” The Voice of the Fair 1, no. 15 (June 10, 1865): 2. 50 “The Philadelphia Art Union,” Graham’s Magazine 40 (March 1852): 326, quoted in Husch, Something Coming, 151. 51 “Glimpse of the Fair: The Art Gallery,” Evening Journal (Chicago), May 27, 1865, 4, 2, and “Art Sketches, no. 1,” The Voice of the Fair 1, no. 9 (June 3, 1865): 3. 52 “Glimpse of the Fair: The Art Gallery,” Evening Journal (Chicago), May 27, 1865, 4, 2. 53 “The Art Gallery,” Chicago Tribune, June 11, 1865, 2, 2. 54 “Art Sketches, no. 3,” The Voice of the Fair 1, no. 15 (June 10, 1865): 2. 55 The Freedman was the first sculpture in bronze to depict an African American and the first that was widely exhibited and attracted considerable critical attention. Ward had already exhibited the plaster cast of this work at the National Academy of Design in 1863, and its fame quickly spread across the nation and persisted even after the war. The artist himself offered this for sale at the 1865 fair. Besides The Freedman, the small collection of statuary included Leonard Volk’s original portrait of Lincoln, for which he had sat in 1860, and Harriett Hosmer’s (1830–1908) monumental Zenobia of 1859, in which the Queen of Palmyra is seen as a Roman captive in chains. 56 Kevin Sharp, ed., Bold Cautious True: Walt Whitman and American Art of the Civil War Era (Memphis, TN: Dixon Gallery, 2009), 113. 57 Kirk Savage, “Molding Emancipation: John Quincy Adams Ward’s The Freedman and the Meaning of the Civil War,” Terrain of Freedom, The Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 27, no. 1 (2001): 32–33. 58 January Snarle, “Art in Chicago,” Evening Journal (Chicago), June 10, 1865, 4, 3. 59 George P. Upton, “Art in Chicago,” The Western Monthly 4 (December 1870): 403.
Chicago’s Sanitary Fairs | 25
Quelling the Camp Douglas Conspiracies In addition to fighting on the front lines, the Union army functioned as a domestic security agency to monitor and suppress Confederate sympathizers in the North. STEPHEN E. TOWNE
T
he plots to attack Chicago’s Camp Douglas prison camp during the Civil War are well known to historians. Scholars understand that Confederate authorities were eager to free thousands of their imprisoned soldiers held in Union prisoner-of-war (POW) camps located in the North. As well as replenishing their depleted ranks, Southern leaders aimed to release rebel soldiers on the Northern landscape to cause upheaval and panic. In their plan, armed Confederate sympathizers—Northerners who opposed President Abraham Lincoln’s administration of the war and his policies—would rise up, join with the freed rebel soldiers, and run riot in the North, especially in the Midwest. Together, rebel soldiers and insurrectionists would halt the Union war effort, divert federal troops to the North, and destroy Lincoln’s prospects for reelection. Of the several attempts made, the plots targeting Camp Douglas were the most daring. Confederate troops operating out of Canada under Captain Thomas Henry Hines slipped secretly into Chicago in August and November of 1864 to meet with local conspirators to plan attacks on the camp, located on the city’s South Side. However, both plots failed.1 Historians have generally concluded that the plots collapsed due to the incompetence of Southern sympathizers who got cold feet at the last minute or inadvertently divulged their plans to government detectives. Moreover, historians argue that the plots involving Camp Douglas and other Midwestern camps posed little threat to the stability of the North and never had a chance of success. The plotters’ incompetence, their presumed small numbers, and the assumption that overwhelming Union military power would crush any uprising all figure in historians’ estimations. In hindsight, scholars have judged that the plots existed more in fear-mongering politicians’ imaginations than in reality,2 but records housed in the National Archives and other repositories that have long been overlooked or ignored by historians point to different conclusions.
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Founded in the fall of 1861 as a training camp and staging center for Union forces, Camp Douglas was named for Stephen A. Douglas, who donated the property just south of the city. By the middle of the war, it was converted to a POW camp. Pictured here are Confederate prisoners, c. 1863. Camp Douglas Conspiracies | 27
Confederate-sympathizing groups often communicated in code to preserve secrecy. This message sent between Order of the Sons of Liberty members is from the official court record of their trial in Indianapolis in 1865.
Contrary to historians’ assumptions, these records show that military officers and civilian authorities genuinely feared the prospect of large-scale revolutionary uprisings, so they closely investigated threats of insurrection in the Midwest. Officials received and credited numerous reports that secret organizations located in Midwestern states and boasting large memberships were in communication in Confederate agents to foment unrest in the North. Accordingly, officials worked diligently to uncover the plots and neutralize their threat. During the course of the Civil War, US Army commanders in Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, Indianapolis, Louisville, St. Louis, and elsewhere cooperated to investigate antigovernment conspiracies and break up plots. The Camp Douglas plots of August and November of 1864 were quashed because army officers shared information among themselves about the movements of rebel agents and their Northern collaborators. Their information came from turncoat rebel informers, spies hired to infiltrate secret groups or tail suspicious persons, and intercepted correspondence. Military intelligence efforts in the Midwest arose haphazardly during the war, with no direction from officials in Washington, DC. Intelligence operations were mobilized in response to growing local threats to the federal government’s ability to prosecute the war. In 1861 and 1862, civilian and military officials saw the rise of secret organized groups in the North that vowed opposition to the war owing to their fear of Lincoln’s administration and hatred of its Republican agenda to abolish slavery and to centralize power in the federal government. Civil law enforcement efforts discovered the existence of these groups, which were tied to the Democratic Party and called by various names but were generally known as the Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC). Civil authorities, however, lacked the investigatory tools to prosecute them successfully in court. In 1863, responding to threats to the Union army’s ability to recruit and retain troops in the face of widespread disenchantment with the war effort (especially Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation), mili28 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
tary commanders hired civilian detectives to investigate armed organizations that encouraged, harbored, and protected deserters. They also had soldiers pose as deserters to infiltrate the armed groups. Also in that year, Congress passed the Enrollment Act that created a nationwide detective apparatus under the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau in the War Department. Its duty was to find and arrest deserters and draft dodgers. In this way, the Union army became a domestic security agency as its detectives roamed throughout the Midwest to investigate armed and organized resistance to the government. Army agents watched people and opened and read their private mail.3 Late in 1863, army intelligence efforts scored their first major victories when they infiltrated secret groups and learned that the KGC had morphed into the Order
Charles Walsh was an Irish immigrant who became a successful businessman in Chicago. He served as the brigadier general of the local Sons of Liberty chapter.
of American Knights (OAK). This new secret organization, which was growing throughout the North with many thousands of members, planned attacks on prisoners-of-war camps in Ohio and Indiana. Union commanders shared this information among themselves and with Midwestern Republican governors. Acting on information from soldier spies who infiltrated the organization, officers arrested plotters in Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio, and in Covington, Kentucky, and secured indictments for conspiracy and treason in federal court. As the war continued into 1864, Democratic opposition to Lincoln increased in strength and the secret organizations grew in numbers. Military authorities maintained their vigil and continued to investigate conspiracies throughout the Midwest.4 The conspirators’ and Confederates’ focus on releasing prisoners of war pointed attention to Camp Douglas, the sprawling former rendezvous and training camp for Union volunteers located in Chicago that had been converted to a prison camp to hold captured rebel enlisted men. The largest such camp in the Midwest, the prisoner population swelled to more than eight thousand, guarded by about eight hundred soldiers, by summer of 1864. Despite garrison commanders’ vigilant watch, rebel prisoners managed to escape the stockade individually or in small groups, so to prevent further escapes, guards received help from other commands. In May 1864, Union authorities in Kentucky successfully recaptured an escaped Camp Douglas prisoner. During interrogation, the prisoner divulged that he had been aided by the “copperheads of
Benjamin Sweet was wounded at the Battle of Perryville in 1862 and, upon joining the Veteran Reserve Corps in 1863, was assigned to oversee Camp Douglas.
Richard Yates devoted his life to serving the people of Illinois. Prior to being governor, he held seats in both the Illinois and US House of Representatives and afterward, the US Senate.
northern Ill[inois]” who gave horses and money to the escapees. The “principal instrument” of the escape effort was a Chicago man named Charles Walsh, who employed his daughter to play near the stockade walls and “slip in to the prisoners letters containing money & other articles.” Kentucky officers shared this information with Colonel Benjamin J. Sweet, commandant of Camp Douglas,5 but there is no evidence that he acted on the tip. By the summer of 1864, army commanders and the governors of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were in agreement that they faced a looming danger. Their spies reliably reported that the armed organizations (most of which now called themselves the Sons of Liberty) had grown stronger and bolder and planned coordinated uprisings in August. Most of the commanders and governors, however, feared that any move to arrest leading conspirators would prompt outbreaks of overwhelming violence that the army, with few troops available in the North, could not quell. Richard Yates, governor of Illinois, adamantly opposed any plan to arrest the known leading conspirators in the state without significant military reinforcements. Lincoln and the War Department initially ignored pleas for troops; the president was loath to weaken armies that were already bogged down in heavy fighting in the South. He finally relented, however, and sent some raw recruits to the Midwestern prisonerof-war camps, including Camp Douglas. The reinforcements had an immediate effect. The arrival of troops in Indianapolis on the eve of a planned uprising to release Camp Morton prisoners on August 16 intimidated local plotters, who called off their attempt. Camp Douglas Conspiracies | 29
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The east side and main entrance of Camp Douglas faced Cottage Grove Avenue. It was bounded to the north and south by Thirty-First and Thirty-Third Streets, respectively, and to the west by present-day Giles Avenue.
Camp Douglas Conspiracies | 31
While reinforcements temporarily foiled Indiana conspirators, Union spies and detectives reported that Confederate authorities and leaders of the secret organizations remained determined to attack elsewhere. Important information came from Lieutenant Colonel Bennett H. Hill, the Union commander at Detroit, whose spies kept close watch on Confederate agents, escaped POWs, deserters, and draft dodgers who congregated across the border in Canada. In early August he reported to Major General Samuel P. Heintzelman, the commander of the multistate Northern Department headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, that a disgruntled Confederate officer, Major George W. Young, had divulged plans to foment an uprising in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention at the end of the month. Captain Thomas Henry Hines, a daring cavalry officer then in charge of Confederate secret operations in the North, was to command it. Hines and Confederate troops planned to slip into the United States from Canada in small groups and make their way to Chicago. There they would attack Camp Douglas with the help of local conspirators, who comprised five thousand armed men. The release of the prisoners “would be a signal for an outbreak in the states of Indiana and Illinois,” Young told Hill.6 Acting promptly, Heintzelman ordered Hill to share the information with Union Colonel Sweet, who immediately hired detectives to investigate the matter. The sleuths, however, failed to find the Confederates in the city. The colonel appears not to have acted on the information supplied him about Walsh and now, presented with Hill’s information, he dismissed an imminent threat. While a secret organization existed in the city, he noted, “I do not believe it to be armed” and its leaders did not plot “open armed hostility.”7 If they intended “mischief,” he wrote, “I have not yet been able to detect it.”8 While Sweet initially found little evidence of the plot, commanders at other posts provided information on the threat of violence in Chicago. The rebel turncoat Young provided additional details on Hines’s movements to Hill, who passed them on to Sweet. Their plot, planned for months, would be aided by “large accessions” of armed men from the city and region. The combined force of released captives and armed insurgents would fight their way to Kentucky and hold it for the Confederacy.9 Tidbits shared by officers in St. Louis, Indianapolis, and Lexington, Kentucky, also pointed to rebel action in Chicago during the Democratic convention.10 Moreover, the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau officer in Chicago, Captain William James, reported that local sources told of a plot to release prisoners and torch the city.11 The Union army commander in Springfield ordered Sweet to avoid provocation during the convention, but should an uprising occur, he was to punish the 32 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
Samuel P. Heintzelman, depicted here c. 1882, was a seasoned army officer who graduated from West Point and served in the Second Seminole War and the Mexican-American War prior to the Civil War.
malefactors in “exemplary” fashion.12 Heintzelman’s headquarters ordered Sweet to watch the railroad stations for the arrival of Hines and his men; Hill forwarded Hines’s physical description.13 While troops were in short supply throughout the department, headquarters shifted an artillery battery from Columbus, Ohio, to reinforce Camp Douglas. In sum, military leaders took the threat seriously and shared information among themselves to defend against an uprising. As Chicago began to overflow with thousands of Democratic delegates and visitors attending the convention, General Heintzelman received orders from the War Department to oversee Camp Douglas’s defense in person. He arrived by train late on August 29, the first day of the convention. The general did not attend the gathering, held in a purpose-built amphitheater on the lakefront, but inspected the camp and conferred with Sweet who now, in a pinch, could turn out about two thousand soldiers to repel attack. Heintzelman met with prominent Democratic leaders at his hotel, the Sherman House, and elsewhere. In conversation he learned, as he recorded in his private journal, “there’s a rumor that we have 5,000 troops. We may as well let them believe so.”14 The Democratic National Convention adjourned on September 2, delegates having chosen former Major General George B. McClellan to challenge President Lincoln. While they made many apoplectic speeches
condemning the Lincoln administration, no uprising occurred in the city during the event. Shortly afterward, the news of the capture of Atlanta, a major triumph for Union forces, reached the North. Back at headquarters in Columbus, Heintzelman mused in his journal: “What a pity [the news] did not occur while the democratic convention was in session. It would have been a bombshell in their camp. What a commentary such a remark is on their loyalty.”15 What happened to the plot to release the rebel prisoners of war during the Democratic National Convention? All evidence indicates that the plotters were present and ready to attack. Hines and his Confederates had eluded detectives amid the masses of visitors in the city and had holed up in hotels. The prisoners, aware of the plan, were poised to attack the garrison. Leaders of the Sons of Liberty from neighboring states attending the convention also conferred in the city. But the local armed group led by Charles Walsh, who again used his daughter to smuggle communications to camp prisoners, begged off at the last minute. Hines met with Walsh twice during the convention and learned that the Chicagoans’ revolutionary zeal had waned. The cause: newspapers circulated rumors that Heintzelman had orders to monitor the convention and had brought reinforcements to that end. Press stories of troop trains passing through the city rippled through rebel-sympathizing
ranks. Years later, one of the Confederate soldiers present in Chicago recalled: “It was soon rumored about that the Camp Douglas Garrison had been reinforced by 5,000 men.”16 Another remembered that the rumor “had its effect upon the leaders of the Sons of Liberty.”17 Hines’s second-in-command derisively termed the local revolutionaries timid “theorists.”18 Lacking local firepower, Hines postponed the attack. He sent most of his troops back to Canada, while he and twenty-five Confederates boarded trains for downstate Illinois, scattered into several towns, and quietly organized local groups to plan another attempt.19 The collapse of the plot to attack Camp Douglas during the convention was due to a combination of factors. First and foremost, the rumor of heavy reinforcements at the camp quite reasonably gave local revolutionaries pause. While armed, numerous, and led by bold Confederate officers, they felt themselves no match against what they believed was a powerful garrison. Second, the Union army’s intelligence efforts—especially Young’s disclosures to Colonel Hill—afforded commanders time to prepare, strengthen their dispositions, and present a bold front that fooled local observers. For historians to echo disgusted Confederate soldiers and judge the conspirators as feckless “theorists” is perhaps unjust when Union commanders made every effort, with their prior knowledge, to deter or defeat an assault.
Situated on Michigan Avenue near Twelfth Street (now Roosevelt Road), the convention amphitheater was two hundred feet in diameter and could accommodate sixteen thousand people. Lithograph by Charles Shober, c. 1864 Camp Douglas Conspiracies | 33
After the plot to attack Camp Douglas during the convention collapsed, the once-complacent Colonel Sweet became more vigilant about the threat coming from armed pro-Confederate groups in Chicago. In the following weeks, he used detectives, informers, and spies more extensively and effectively to monitor both the prisoners within the camp and local opponents of the war. His extra efforts paid dividends. Sweet reported to his superiors that he possessed names and information on “the Sons of Liberty in this city and state” and had discovered their “channels” of communication with the prisoners.20 He also revealed that his spies inside Camp Douglas had foiled a plan by prisoners to overpower the guard on September 19, timed to coincide with the SS Philo Parsons plot by Confederate agents to attack the USS Michigan, the sole naval warship on the Great Lakes, and free rebel officers on Johnson’s Island, the POW camp on Lake Erie near Sandusky, Ohio.21 Having been caught unprepared before the Democratic convention in August, Sweet was not to be outdone again. As autumn approached and Union forces continued their advances into rebel-held regions of the South, Confederate agents continued to target Camp Douglas and other prisoner-of-war camps to free rebel troops and open a new front in the war. Union intelligence got wind of these efforts and pursued their leads. In early November, Colonel Sweet obtained reports from several sources of continued attempts on Camp Douglas. Detectives reported that large numbers of southern Illinois men (recruited by Hines and his Confederates) were arriving on trains, and that Confederate officers had been identified in Chicago hotels. Agents working for other Union commands also tracked rebel officers to Chicago and shared information with Sweet.22 Obtaining permission from the War Department to employ prisoners as spies, on November 3 camp officers asked prisoner John T. Shanks, a Texan captured during Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan’s raid in Ohio, to gather information about the Confederate officers in the city. Posing as an escaped prisoner, Shanks inquired at the house of prominent city judge Buckner S. Morris and his wife, Mary, both of whom were known to the Union army for having aided prisoners. The judge told him that an uprising would soon occur in the city. Shanks reported this to camp commanders and on November 6 went to the Richmond House hotel, where he met Confederate officers he had served with in Morgan’s command. Some of the officers revealed information In June and July of 1863, John Hunt Morgan led about two thousand Confederate soldiers through Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio to wreak havoc. This group of captured Morgan’s Raiders, pictured here at Camp Douglas in 1864, was infamous for their repeated escape attempts. 34 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
Camp Douglas Conspiracies | 35
Like many active Copperheads in Chicago, Judge Buckner Morris was a southern migrant. Morris served as mayor of Chicago from 1838 to 1839.
Richmond House stood at the northwest corner of Michigan Avenue and South Water Street. It was conveniently located across from the Great Central Station, the entry point for many Southern sympathizers.
about an imminent attempt on Camp Douglas on election day, November 8, when Hines would lead local armed conspirators in an attack. The freed prisoners, equipped with guns by the local secret organization, would then rampage through the city and state.23 Armed with information of an impending attack, on the evening of November 6 Colonel Sweet dispatched a messenger by rail to Springfield to alert his superior, Brigadier General John Cook, deeming a telegraph mes36 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
sage insecure. He warned that the city was full of “suspicious characters,” including Captain Hines and other Confederates who had been in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention. The situation was too dangerous to await orders, he reported; he intended “to arrest these officers, if possible, before morning. The head gone we can manage the body.” He also planned to arrest several “prominent citizens” involved in the plot, “of which the proof is ample.”24 Sweet lost no time. In the early morning hours of Monday, November 7, troops under his orders from the camp garrison marched into the city and arrested Confederate officers in the Richmond House and several civilians in their houses, among them Judge Morris and Charles Walsh. Sweet identified Walsh as the local “Brigadier General” of the Sons of Liberty; Morris was its treasurer.25 At 3:00 A.M. troops surrounded and raided the house where Hines was known to be, but he eluded capture by hiding in the bed of his hosts. During the search, the lady of the house “complained of being quite sick and kept her bed all day,” thus shielding him in the bed covers. Hines slipped away and out of the city only when the troops guarding the house were relieved the following evening.26 His other collars made, Sweet felt secure enough to telegraph Cook to report the arrest of “noted conspirators.” Cook feared that Camp Douglas was still threatened with attack on election night and requested reinforcements from other Midwestern commands.27 Among other help, four companies of troops arrived by train from Indianapolis. In the meantime, as the city awoke on November 7 to learn the astonishing news, Sweet’s troops fanned out across the city and seized large quantities of firearms and ammunition at the house and livery stables of Charles Walsh: hundreds of loaded revolvers and shotguns that were to arm the freed prisoners. Using the seized guns, military commanders equipped an ad hoc militia cavalry to patrol the city in the following days. Troops seized more records of the Sons of Liberty, “some of them valuable,” wrote Sweet, and showing “the intents and purposes of the organization.”28 During the next several days, Captain William James of the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau and his agents arrested and interrogated ninety-six men, confirming that the plot aimed to liberate the Confederate prisoners.29 Downstate, provost marshal deputies also captured men who had eluded city dragnets, eliciting confessions of involvement in the Camp Douglas plot.30 Military and federal authorities put the Chicago conspirators on trial by military commission, which took place at department headquarters in Cincinnati in early 1865. The trial served as a sequel to the military commission trials held in Indianapolis from September 1864 to January 1865. There, the Union army tried Indiana
This sketch captures the Indianapolis Treason Trials of 1864–65. The twelve-man military commission faces the seven leaders of the Indiana chapter of the Sons of Liberty, who are flanked by standing guards.
leaders of the Sons of Liberty for conspiracy to release prisoners of war at Camp Morton and raise revolt. Occurring during the fall election season, Republican leaders in Washington, DC, clearly intended the Indianapolis trials (involving Indiana Democratic leaders) to influence voters’ attitudes and equate Democrats with traitors. Republicans undoubtedly succeeded, winning many states handily. Taking place long after the fall elections, the Cincinnati trial of the Chicago conspirators—including Buckner Morris, Charles Walsh, and several Confederate officers—did not have immediate electoral propaganda value. But the widely reported trial, based on the evidence of Union spies and informers, helped cripple Democrats for years by portraying them as the party of pro-Confederate conspirators.31 The careful investigations arising from genuine concern about large-scale insurrection and violence allowed Union commanders to successfully break up the November 1864 attempt to attack Camp Douglas. Intelligence sharing among different military commanders in the region again proved decisive in affording the Union army time to move scarce troops and prepare defenses. Moreover, quick action based on reliable information allowed Colonel Sweet to arrest rebel officers poised to lead local armed revolutionaries. Additionally, in September Sweet’s new vigilance in detecting covert activities in Chicago and Camp Douglas headed off another attempt to break out of the prison in conjunction with the SS Philo Parsons plot. In all three instances, intelligence efforts prevented violent upheaval in Chicago, averted additional bloodshed in the North, and stopped the creation of a new Northern front. Newly uncovered archival evidence shows that during the war the US Army engaged in extensive domestic espionage
to counteract the existence of powerful and widespread underground organizations in the North.32 The plots in Chicago were part of a larger effort throughout the Midwest to subvert the Union war effort and help the Confederacy win, but the army’s concerted intelligence efforts defeated the conspirators’ movements and helped preserve the Union. Stephen E. Towne is associate university archivist at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis and is author of books and articles on the American Civil War. His most recent book is Surveillance and Spies in the Civil War: Exposing Confederate Conspiracies in America’s Heartland (Ohio University Press, 2015). I L L U S T R AT I O N S | Illustrations are from the Chicago History Museum, unless otherwise noted. 27, ICHi-01800; 28 top left: ICHi-76904, top right: ICHi-76903, bottom: ICHi51129; 29, top: Library of Congress, Brady-Handy Photograph Collection, LC-BH83-1765 <P&P> [P&P], bottom: ICHi51131; 30–31, ICHi-62614; 32, ICHi-69905; 33, ICHi-01981; 35, ICHi-01805; 36, top: ICHi-69904, bottom: ICHi-74478; 37, ICHi-51128. F O R F U RT H E R R E A D I N G | For an edited version of the Indianapolis trials records, see Benn Pitman, ed., The Trials for Treason at Indianapolis, Disclosing the Plans for Establishing a North-Western Confederacy: Being the Official Record of the Trials Before the Military Commission (Cincinnati, OH: Moore, Wilstach & Baldwin, 1865). For more on how politicians, soldiers, and civilians dealt with disloyalty during the Civil War, see William A. Blair, With Malice toward Some: Treason and Loyalty in the Civil War Era (University of North Carolina Press, 2014). Camp Douglas Conspiracies | 37
ENDNOTES 1 Several Confederate soldiers who participated in secret operations in the North wrote memoirs. See Thomas Henry Hines, “The Northwestern Conspiracy,” Southern Bivouac 2 (1886–87): 437–45, 500–510, 567–74, 699–704; John Breckinridge Castleman, Active Service (Louisville, KY: Courier-Journal, 1917); John W. Headley, Confederate Operations in Canada and New York (New York: Neale, 1906); Emile Longuemare, “New Light on Wartime Plot,” New York Sun, September 16, 1906: 5; see also Longuemare’s letter in the Sun of September 13, 1906, 6; Adam R. Johnson, The Partisan Rangers of the Confederate States Army. Edited by William J. Davis. (Louisville, KY: George G. Fetter, 1904). Also included in Johnson’s volume is a short account by Terah Major Freeman, “The Sons of Liberty,” 428–37. See also H. G. Damon, “Perils of Escape from Prison,” Confederate Veteran 15 (May, 1907): 223–26; Stephen E. Towne and Jay G. Heiser, eds., “‘Everything is fair in war:’ The Civil War Memoir of George A. ‘Lightning’ Ellsworth, Telegraph Operator for John Hunt Morgan,” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 108, no. 1 and 2 (Winter/Spring, 2010): 3–110. 2 Older scholarship that credited the existence of collaborations between Confederate secret agents and Democratic conspirators in the North to release Camp Douglas prisoners includes Mayo Fesler, “Secret Political Societies in the North During the Civil War,” Indiana Magazine of History 14, no. 3 (September 1918): 183–286; George Fort Milton, Abraham Lincoln and the Fifth Column (New York: Colliers, 1942), and Wood Gray, The Hidden Civil War: The Story of the Copperheads (New York: Viking, 1942). Amid post-World War Two antiCommunist “witch hunts” of the 1940s through the 1960s, a revisionist view arose challenging the older view and arguing that wartime evidence and accusations of conspiracy and treason were fabrications concocted by Republicans and ambitious army officers to smear their Democratic rivals. The leading voice in this revisionist argument was historian Frank L. Klement, whose works focused on rehabilitating the antiwar
38 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
“Copperhead” Democrats from what he considered were Republican slanders. See Klement, The Copperheads in the Middle West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), and Klement, Dark Lanterns: Secret Political Societies, Conspiracies, and Treason Trials in the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984). Klement’s view is widely accepted today. In his excellent study of Chicago in the Civil War-era, Theodore J. Karamanski takes a middle ground in the dispute, but leans toward the revisionist view in arguing that Chicago conspirators were “inept” and delusional when they believed that they could succeed. Also, he downplays the revolutionary aims of the conspirators. See Karamanski, Rally ‘Round the Flag: Chicago and the Civil War (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1993; reprinted, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 185–223. 3 See Stephen E. Towne, Surveillance and Spies in the Civil War: Exposing Confederate Conspiracies in America’s Heartland (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2015). 4 Towne, Surveillance and Spies in the Civil War, 116–73. 5 Captain Stephen E. Jones to commanding officer, Camp Douglas, 6 May 1864, RG 393, Part I, District of Kentucky Records, E 2239, Press Copies of Letters Sent by Capt. Stephen E. Jones, vol. 2, 403, National Archives and Records Administration (hereafter NARA). “Copperheads” was an epithet given to northern Democrats who opposed the Lincoln administration war policies; some of them supported the southern rebellion. For a study of their significant power during the war, see Jennifer L. Weber, Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 6 Lieutenant Colonel Bennett H. Hill to Captain Carroll H. Potter, 8 August 1864, RG 393, Part III, District of Michigan Records, E 327, Press Copies of Letters Sent, 111–13, NARA. 7 Colonel B. J. Sweet to Potter, 12 August 1864, RG 393, Part III, District of Illinois Records, E 196, Letters Received, box 1, NARA. 8 Sweet to Brigadier General Halbert E.
Paine, 23 August 1864, RG 393, Part III, E 196, box 1, NARA. 9 Hill to Sweet, 16 August 1864, RG 393, Part III, E 196, box 1, NARA. 10 Brevet Major General Stephen G. Burbridge to Major General Samuel P. Heintzelman, 12 August 1864, RG 393, Part I, District of Kentucky Records, E 2164, Letters Sent, vol. 119, 163, NARA. 11 Captain William James to Lieutenant Colonel James Oakes, 19 August 1864, RG 110, Provost Marshal General’s Bureau Records, E 5382, Letters Received from District Provost Marshals, box 3, National Archives and Records Administration, Great Lakes Region, Chicago, Illinois (hereafter NARA-GLR). 12 District of Illinois Special Orders 8, August 27, 1864, RG 393, Part I, Northern Department Records, E 3349, Letters Received, box 2, NARA. 13 Hill to Sweet, 31 August 1864, RG 110, E 5897, Letters Sent by the Acting Assistant Provost Marshal General, Michigan, vol. 5, 73–74, NARA-GLR. 14 Journal entry of August 29, 1864, Samuel P. Heintzelman Papers, Library of Congress [hereafter LC]. 15 Journal entry of September 3, 1864, Heintzelman Papers, LC. 16 Towne and Heiser, eds., “’Everything is fair in war,’” 95. 17 Freeman, “The Sons of Liberty,” 428–37. 18 Castleman, Active Service, 146. 19 Towne and Heiser, eds., “‘Everything is fair in war,’” 96. 20 Sweet to Paine, 20 September 1864, RG 393, Part III, E 196, box 1; Sweet to Colonel William Hoffman, 11 October 1864, RG 393, Part IV, Post of Chicago, Illinois Records, E 415, Letters Sent, vol. 2, 454–55, both NARA.
21 Sweet to Hoffman, 22 September and 1 October 1864, RG 393, Part IV, E 415, vol. 2, 426–27, 438–42; Sweet to Captain G. W. Carter, 22 September 1864, RG 393, Part III, E 196, box 1, all NARA. For information on the rebel capture of the SS Philo Parsons and the plot to seize the Michigan and attack Johnson’s Island, see Frederick J. Shepard, “The Johnson’s Island Plot: A Historical Narrative of the Conspiracy of the Confederates, in 1864, to Capture the U.S. Steamship Michigan on Lake Erie, and Release the Prisoners of War in Sandusky Bay,” Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society 9 (1906): 1–51, David W. Francis, “The United States Navy and the Johnson’s Island Conspiracy: The Case of John C. Carter,” Northwest Ohio Quarterly 52, no. 3 (June 1980): 229–43, and Bradley A. Rodgers, “The Northern Theater in the Civil War: The U.S.S. Michigan and Confederate Intrigue on the Great Lakes,” American Neptune 48, no. 2 (March 1988): 96–105. 22 Thomas H. Keefe, “How the Northwest Was Saved: A Chapter from the Secret Service Records of the Civil War,” Everybody’s Magazine 2 (January, 1900): 89. Keefe was a minor government functionary whom Sweet hired to perform detective work in the fall of 1864. His account is self-aggrandizing. See also Keefe, The Great Chicago Conspiracy of 1864 (Chicago: Desplaines Press, 1898). See also Edmunde Kirke, “The Chicago Conspiracy,” Atlantic Monthly 16, no. 93 (July 1865), 113. Kirke was the nom de plume of writer J. R. Gilmore, who clearly had access to government records and officials in writing his account. Another Chicago man, a homeopathic physician, served authorities as an informer. His postwar accounts of his exploits are unreliable. See I. Winslow Ayer, The Great Northwestern Conspiracy in All Its Startling Details (Chicago: Rounds and James, 1865) and The Great Treason Plot in the North during the War (Chicago: U.S. Publishing, 1895). 23 George A. “Lightning” Ellsworth detailed in his 1882 memoir that once freed and armed, the Camp Douglas prisoners were to destroy all railroad lines leading in and out of Chicago except the tracks leading to Rock Island, Illinois, where federal troop held thousands more Confederate
prisoners. “A detail of 2500 men were to start for [Rock Island] as soon as the camp Douglas prisoners were released. The Rock Island prisoners were to have been brought to Chicago to form a junction with the Douglas prisoners at that point.” Mounted, the rebels then would have marched south. See Towne and Heiser, eds., “‘Everything is fair in war,’” 102. 24 Sweet to Brigadier General John Cook, November 6, 1864, printed in The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies [hereafter OR] (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office), series 1, vol. 45, part 1, 1081.
Pitman, ed., The Trials for Treason at Indianapolis, Disclosing the Plans for Establishing a North-Western Confederacy (Cincinnati, OH: Moore, Wilstach, and Baldwin, 1865). 32 Historian Joan M. Jensen posits that during the American Civil War the Army was largely uninvolved in internal security efforts. See Jensen, Army Surveillance in America, 1775–1980 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991). Her research, however, did not delve deeply into archival records of the Army’s intelligence efforts in the North during the rebellion.
25 Sweet to Cook, 7 November 1864, ibid., 1082. 26 Towne and Heiser, eds., “‘Everything is fair in war,’” 102–3. 27 Cook to Potter, 7 November 1864, RG 393, Part I, Northern Department Records, E 3350, Telegrams Received, NARA. 28 Sweet to Captain B. F. Smith, 23 November 1864, RG 393, Part IV, E 415, vol. 3, 17–29, NARA, published in OR, series 1, vol. 45, part 1, 1077–83. 29 Captain William James to Colonel James Oakes, 11 November 1864, RG 110, Provost Marshal General’s Bureau Records, E 5551, Letters and Endorsements Sent First District, vol. 4, NARA-GLR. See also Chicago Daily Journal, November 8 and 11, 1864, and Chicago Daily Tribune, November 9 and 10, 1864. 30 James to Sweet, 15 November 1864, RG 110, E 5551, vol. 4, 552, NARA-GLR; Hirschbeck to Sweet, 15 November 1864, Letterbook “G,” 812, box 14, folder 2, Wabash Yates Papers, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, Illinois. 31 Congress published the complete verbatim transcript of the Cincinnati trial. See Executive Documents Printed by Order of the House of Representatives during the Second Session of the Thirty-ninth Congress, 1866–1867 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1867). An edited version of the Indianapolis trial transcript appeared in 1865. See Benn
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40 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
Remembering the Grand Army of the Republic Founded as a support network for Civil War veterans, the GAR established a legacy that remains visible today. R O B E RT I . G I R A R D I
O
n the morning of August 28, 1900, tens of thousands of spectators lined the streets of downtown Chicago to witness an extraordinary pageant. The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), whose members were Union veterans of the Civil War, was celebrating its thirty-fourth national encampment. Veterans from forty-five departments were represented in the gala affair. Marching from the site of the elaborate Grand Army Memorial Hall at the corner of Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue, an estimated fifty thousand veterans participated in or witnessed the spectacular parade. For six hours, a continuous line of old soldiers marched to the strains of military bands. The event was just one of the many highlights of the magnificent celebration of the Union victory. These annual gatherings were immensely popular and brought significant revenue to the host cities. Though membership in the GAR was beginning to decline as the veterans aged, this event was considered to be the organization’s grandest ever. The Grand Army of the Republic was founded as a fraternal organization in Decatur, Illinois, on April 6, 1866, and survived well into the twentieth century. In its heyday, it was both a premier social club for former soldiers as well as a political powerhouse that addressed veterans’ issues. The GAR grew to a peak membership of 409,000 veterans in 1890. With the founding of the first post, the GAR became part of Chicago, and it shaped the way that the Civil War would be remembered in the city. But time is a cruel master. Today, though there are many visible reminders of the grandeur and the achievements of the Civil War generation, it is easy for most people to pass by without giving it as much as a fleeting thought. How did the Grand Army of the Republic degenerate from being a part of everyday life to a historical afterthought? The GAR was the largest and most influential of the many veterans societies established after the Civil War. Many persons wanted to provide some support for vet-
Opposite and above: The Grand Army of the Republic was among the most influential veterans’ groups of the post–Civil War era. Membership peaked at 400,000 in 1890; its most celebrated event took place in 1900.
erans as they tried to reacclimate into mainstream society. There was an understanding that these men had shared sacrifices alien to outsiders. Because of this, they wanted to help each other as they had done so often during the war. The Civil War was, for many of the men who experienced it, the most profound event of their lives. Grand Army of the Republic | 41
The founding principles of the organization were to maintain fellowship with veterans, to provide care for those injured or disabled during the war, and to support widows and orphans; its motto was “Fraternity, Charity, Loyalty.” As veterans’ issues came to the forefront in the decades following the war, the GAR soon became a powerful and vocal political lobby group. The organization also played a critical role in the years of reconciliation, hosting annual reunions on both local and national levels, as well as working with Confederate veteran societies to hold joint commemorative events. A second camp was founded in Springfield later in 1866. Former General John M. Palmer was elected commander of the Department of Illinois. Soon afterward, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, and Missouri formed their own statewide organizations, and the Grand Army of the Republic was born.1 When John A. Logan was named commander of the GAR in 1868, he made some significant contributions. Most notable was General Order No. 11, establishing Decoration Day, now known as Memorial Day. It was meant to be an annual day of remembrance to honor those who had fallen during the Civil War. The date, May 30, was chosen because it did not coincide with any major battle or event of the war. Chicago’s first GAR post was established in 1868 and named in honor of the “Rock of Chickamauga,” George H. Thomas, the Virginia-born general who remained loyal to the Union and ultimately commanded the Army of the Cumberland. Thomas earned lasting fame for the heroic stand he made in September 1863 on Snodgrass Hill at the Battle of Chickamauga in northeastern
General John A. Logan served in the Civil War and had a political career before and after the war. He was influential in establishing Decoration Day, now known as Memorial Day.
Georgia. The Chicago post was soon disbanded due to lack of growth, but also as a result of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Not until 1873 did a second George H. Thomas Post reorganize. For years this post would be the largest and most influential of the many in Illinois, and perhaps the largest one in the country.2 The GAR grew slowly. In its early incarnation, the group was too closely tied to partisan politics to thrive despite charters that discouraged this tendency. In 1871, Chicago’s Thomas E. G. Ransom Post ran an appeal to all veterans to form a post or to join an existing one:
John M. Palmer, commander of the Department of Illinois 42 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
On the basis of loyalty and patriotism . . . every honorably discharged soldier and seaman of the Union army and navy . . . is summoned by the Grand Army of the Republic to tally once again at this time, for peaceful communion and pleasant intercourse. Every such comrade is exhorted to assist in the formation of posts, by whose combined action arrangements may be devised and perfected for such charitable relief to the disabled veterans, their widows and orphans.3
Chicagoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first GAR post was named in honor of Civil War hero George H. Thomas, known as the Rock of Chickamauga for his service in the Georgia battle. Grand Army of the Republic | 43
44 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
Mayor William Hale â&#x20AC;&#x153;Big Billâ&#x20AC;? Thompson greets two members of the GAR in 1916.
The Abraham Lincoln Post of the Grand Army of the Republic during a Memorial Day parade, May 30, 1912. The day was originally founded to honor soldiers who had died during the Civil War.
Chicago soon became a favorite destination for large GAR gatherings. The seventh annual reunion of the Department of Illinois was held in Chicago in 1873. At the time, membership in the Illinois department numbered a scant 238, scattered among four posts. Two years later, the city hosted the ninth National Encampment of the GAR, on May 12 and 13. During that interval, Illinois membership had grown to 1,200 members in thirteen posts, and membership peaked in 1891 with almost 33,000 members in 800 local chapters. The GAR in Chicago dominated the Department of Illinois; Chicago provided more than a fair share of the department commanders. By 1890, there were thirteen posts in Chicago. As late as 1914, even as national overall membership declined, the city still boasted twenty-three active posts with a combined membership of more than two thousand veterans. Several of these were for black soldiers, but all of the posts were open to veterans of all races.4 The large number of veterans rising to prominent positions in business and politics helped to fuel and maintain the power of the GAR. Some, such as John C. Black, were Medal of Honor winners. Black earned his medal leading the Thirty-Seventh Illinois Infantry at the Battle of Prairie Grove, Arkansas, on December 7, 1862. After the war, he moved to Chicago and began practicing law. He was named US district attorney by President Grover Cleveland in 1884; the next year, he was appointed commissioner of pensions. Later, from 1893 to 1895, he served in Congress. Black was always involved in veterans groups. He was raised to commander in chief of the GAR in 1903. Many other prominent Chicagoans were members of the Thomas Post, including former General John Corson Smith. Grand Army of the Republic | 45
In addition to its fraternal and ceremonial activities, the GAR was a powerful lobbying group for the veterans’ pensions and benefits legislation after the war. The group also played a leading role in providing burial plots for its members. The GAR’s bronze star emblem became the official grave marker for veterans belonging to the Thomas post, “so that the grave of a member of this Post can always be found when flowers are strewn on Memorial Day.” The post dedicated its own plot in Rosehill Cemetery with a twelve-foot, seventeen-ton granite block, engraved “The Rock of Chickamauga,” in honor of its namesake.5 Rosehill Cemetery, Oak Woods, Bohemian National, Union Ridge, Graceland, and Elmwood are among the sixty-five Chicago-area cemeteries that have burial plots for Civil War veterans. The respect for Civil War veterans and the wave of interest that spurred hundreds of volumes of regimental histories and memoirs also attracted commercial ventures to the city. Such businesses thrived in no small part because of the active participation and patronage of the many veterans and GAR posts; Charles F. Gunther’s Libby Prison War Museum, for example, actively recruited GAR members to work as docents. These ventures, the wildly popular cycloramas, and other large-scale traveling exhibitions made fortunes for their owners.6 46 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
The Prisoner’s Reception Room in the Libby Prison War Museum, c. 1900. After the war, commercial enterprises took advantage of the interest in the war and its veterans. Organizations such as the Libby Museum recruited veterans to work as docents and share their war experiences with visitors.
Targeting the local population of former Confederates and visitors to the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, Gunther even advertised his museum in Confederate Veteran magazine: “There is no feature outside of the great Exposition in which they will take so much interest as in Libby Prison and its wonderful collection.” The museum advertisement promised that no sectional animosity was intended, “no North, no South, but a fair representation of the great Civil War, from both Northern and Southern standpoints. Every Southern man should not fail to see it.” 7 Each passing year added to the spirit of camaraderie and nostalgia for the veter-
ans, who gradually spent less time politicking in favor of reminiscing about their wartime deeds. Museums such as Gunther’s provided forums for these activities. GAR reunions and encampments provided comradeship. Souvenirs and mementos were tangible reminders of days gone by.8 In addition to the local chapters of the GAR, the Grand Army of the Republic Memorial Association of Cook County, Illinois, was chartered on June 15, 1887. The primary goals of the association were to hold an annual memorial service for Abraham Lincoln on February 12 and to arrange for the proper observance of Memorial Day. In addition to the parade, this meant providing speakers for the schools of Cook County and decorating all veterans’ graves in the county’s cemeteries. Membership was open to all veteran organizations and their auxiliaries in Cook County.9 Also in 1887, Chicago posts of the GAR invited a number of Confederate veterans to march in the Memorial Day parade for the first time. This was done in conjunction with ceremonies held at Oak Woods Cemetery, the final resting place of more than six thousand
Confederates soldiers who had died Chicago’s prisonerof-war facility, Camp Douglas.10 Continuing in the spirit of reconciliation, some of Chicago’s GAR posts were among the first to suggest honoring Confederate soldiers with a monument. Though by no means unanimous in their feelings, Chicago’s GAR posts worked in conjunction with the United Confederate Veterans, raising funds to erect a monument over the mass graves in Oak Woods. Despite some ill feeling by the Department of Illinois, the Confederate monument was dedicated on May 30, 1895. President Grover Cleveland and a number of prominent Confederate generals, including James Longstreet, came to Chicago for the ceremony.11 The most significant and enduring accomplishment of the Grand Army of the Republic in Chicago was the establishment of Memorial Hall, the purpose of which was to “commemorate and forever bear witness to the patriotism and sacrifices of the Soldiers and Sailors from Illinois who took part in the great contest.” Although Illinois had erected monuments to Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and John A. Logan, the state had done nothing to recognize the service of the more than
The GAR’s most tangible legacy remains the Memorial Hall (above, c. 1903) which was located in the Chicago Public Library (now the Cultural Center). The building opened on October 11, 1897, and served as a meeting space as well as repository for memorabilia such as flags and books, as well as objects including Ulysses S. Grant’s saddle. Grand Army of the Republic | 47
250,000 volunteers who fought for the Union cause. Memorial Hall would be a meeting space as well as a museum, serving as a safe repository for the many flags, relics, and other mementos in the possession of the many GAR posts throughout the state.12 The site chosen for the hall was at the corner of Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue. This property belonged to the GAR and was the location of the Chicago Soldiers’ Home, a halfway house for veterans that had been in existence since the war. Attempts to secure this property for other purposes began as early as 1883.13 On June 4, 1889, the State of Illinois passed an act that empowered the GAR to build Memorial Hall on the northwest quadrant of this block. Complications ensued, however, because the state also authorized the Chicago Public Library to take possession of the whole block for the purpose of building a library. On May 19, 1890, after much deliberation and negotiation, the state finally passed an ordinance, allowing the library to take full possession of Dearborn Park and to construct a new building.14 As part of plan, the library must: make provision for a memorial Hall, for the use of such organizations of Union soldiers and sailors of the late Civil War as have their headquarters in Cook County, to be used by them for the purposes of their organization, and for the preservation of relics and mementos of the late Civil War, at a nominal rent, merely for the purpose of attornment, for the period of fifty years, and no longer.15 The Soldiers’ Home had thus transferred and conveyed to the library “all right, title and interest which it had in the north quarter of Dearborn Park.” This provision would prove fateful. The GAR had given up its title to Dearborn Park in exchange for a hall in the library for a limited period of time, after which the library would take full possession of the space. At the time, the measure seemed wise, as the GAR was not a regenerative organization. The Civil War had ended almost thirty years earlier, and fifty years was deemed long enough to outlive most of the veterans. The building opened on October 11, 1897. The fourstory structure, designed by the Boston architectural firm of Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge, was constructed of Bedford blue limestone on a granite base in the neoclassical style with elements of the Italian Renaissance. Two stained-glass domes, one over each of the two wings, highlighted the edifice. The cornerstone of the building, at Michigan and Randolph, was dedicated to the Grand Army of the Republic.16 The interior of Memorial Hall contained spectacular mahogany doorways and green marble walls on which appeared the names of Civil War battles in gilt lettering. 48 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
Grand Army of the Republic | 49
GAR stained-glass rotunda photo to come
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The magnificent Grand Army of the Republic Memorial Hall was located at the north end of the building. The meeting hall featured spectacular mahogany doorways and elegant Vermont green marble walls and archways above which, in large gilt lettering, appeared the names of many of the most important battles of the Civil War. A forty-foot-diameter stained-glass dome crowned the rotunda outside of the hall. Beautifully carved oak furniture added to the decor. The holdings were a treasure trove of books, documents, photographs, artifacts, and memorabilia, including Ulysses S. Grant’s saddle, William T. Sherman’s army uniform, John C. Black’s Medal of Honor, and George A. Custer’s flamboyant hat. Additionally a number of impressive oil paintings of prominent generals by leading artists were added to the collections. The veterans were pleased with the establishment and the appearance of Memorial Hall. They took formal possession at the dedication ceremonies on December 29, 1898: Every Comrade is welcome beneath its roof. It belongs to us while we live and will stand as a testimonial to us when we are gone. Its walls are alight with the names of our battles. The faces of our heroes appear in its niches. Our flags illuminate its recesses, and while one stone stands piled upon another its massive and majestic structure will be the home and resting place of the thoughtful and worthy soldier of the Great War, and every one of you may abide and have there a place for patriotic revery and for proud memories and sacred musings.17 For years, the veterans gathered in the hall for meetings and special ceremonies and jealously guarded their collections and their memories. The space remains the most enduring accomplishment of the organization in Chicago. If Memorial Hall stands as the most visible reminder of the GAR, then the organization’s Thirty-Fourth National Encampment, held August 26–30, 1900, remains its most celebrated occasion. An estimated thirty-five thousand veterans registered to attend the grand event, which virtually took over the city. Railroads offered special rates to veterans of one cent per mile, while the streetcar companies worked extra hours to accommodate them. Courtrooms were made available for reunion purposes, and buildings across the city were decorated with patriotic emblems. The Chicago Park District allowed veterans to pitch tents and camp in the parks. In addition, sixtyfive schools, three National Guard armories, and ten public halls were opened to provide free housing. The GAR supplied twenty thousand new canvas cots, and the Chicago Police Department provided security for all of the buildings used as sleeping quarters. The area railroads reported that three hundred thousand passengers came to Chicago for the festivities.18
In August 1900, the GAR held its most spectacular event: the Thirty-Fourth National Encampment. Above: A map of the parade route. Below: An invitation to the event. Opposite: The cover of the official souvenir program.
Elaborate ceremonial victory arches honoring the army and the navy were constructed on Michigan Avenue between Van Buren and Twelfth Streets (now Roosevelt Road). Fifty feet high, fifty feet across, and twenty feet thick, the arches were adorned with statues exemplifying military glories and topped with figures personifying Grand Army of the Republic | 51
The George H. Thomas Post color guard at the Memorial Day parade on May 30, 1911. Marking the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the war, the 1911 parade sparked controversy when the Horse Show Parade Association wanted include the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work horses as part of the event. The veterans successfully countered that the day should remain devoted to the war dead.
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A GAR commemorative arch on Michigan Avenue, erected as part of the 1900 encampment. One of two elaborate victory arches honoring the army and navy, the arch was fifty feet high, fifty feet wide, and twenty feet thick.
Victory and Honor. A colonnade of 132 twenty-five-foot high Corinthian columns connected the arches, lining both sides of the street to form an “Avenue of Fame.” On the evening of August 25, the arches were illuminated immediately prior to a reenactment of the Battle of Santiago on the lakefront. The Chicago Tribune noted: The two arches . . . when illuminated, are as striking in effect as anything that has been produced in street decorations in Chicago. Viewed at an angle from 500 feet out in the Lake Front Park they are seen to best advantage. The solidity and massiveness of the structures is more apparent, and the beauty of curve blends with the strength of the angles. The letters ‘G.A.R.’ stand out boldly. The columns were lit up as well with yellowish light by incandescent lamps in the shape of the letter Y symbolizing the branches of the Chicago River. The lamps were mounted upon shields resting on a cross of flags. The reviewing stand was 250 feet long, with twenty rows of 54 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
seats and a capacity of 3,500. The president’s box was in the front center.19 The naval veterans of the Civil War held their parade on August 27, which was designated Naval Day. In addition to the parade, dozens of decorated steamers, yachts, and tugboats passed in review along the lakefront. The guest of honor was Spanish-American War hero Admiral George Dewey. A reception in his honor was held that evening in Memorial Hall.20 The main event was the Grand Army parade, held on Tuesday, August 28. Mayor Carter Harrison Jr. declared a city holiday. Most businesses closed, and crowds thronged the route to watch the six-hour-long parade of veterans. The parade began promptly at 10:00 A.M. at Memorial Hall, and proceeded along Randolph, State, Adams, Franklin, Monroe, and Market Streets, and thence to Michigan Avenue and Jackson Boulevard to the reviewing stand near the Logan Monument in Grant Park. President William McKinley was invited to attend the event, but canceled at the last minute. Instead, he
was represented by Lieutenant General Nelson A. Miles, the commanding general of the United States Army. The event committee estimated that 35,000 veterans marched. Of the GAR Departments that participated, Illinois contributed the largest contingent, just under seven thousand. For two veterans, it was their last hurrah—one died during the encampment and another while carrying the flag.21 Five thousand people gathered in the Chicago Coliseum on August 28 to attend the twenty-eighth annual reunion of former prisoners of war. Other highlights of the encampment included concerts, museum exhibitions, and a fireworks display. A reenacted battle was fought in Washington Park on Thursday, August 30. An estimated one hundred thousand spectators witnessed the event. All told, the Thirty-Fourth National Encampment was a spectacular success and an unparalleled spectacle.22 One harbinger of things to come occurred a few weeks later on September 21. Colonel Joseph H. Wood, who had acted as grand marshal of the parade, died of a heart attack. Wood was a member of the George H. Thomas Post, a veteran of the Sixth US Cavalry, a railroad magnate, and a nephew of Major General Joseph Hooker. Wood was not the only veteran to march for the last time. The year 1900 would see more GAR deaths than any other.23 The fading away of the old soldiers was noticeable as early as Memorial Day 1894. The Chicago Tribune reported that the aged veterans rapidly won the hearts of the spectators, but also noted, “The physical infirmities of some of the men was an affecting reminder that they were passing away.”24 The museums and cycloramas had lost their popular appeal and were either sold, closed, or destroyed. The Libby Prison War Museum closed its doors in 1899, and its collections were ultimately absorbed into the Chicago Historical Society. The year 1909 marked the centennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. It also marked the passage of the Civil War generation and its veterans into the twilight.25 Another sign of the GAR’s declining influence occurred in 1911. The aging veterans became increasingly possessive of their legacy to the point of shrillness, perhaps. When they learned that the annual Memorial Day parade would also include Chicago’s work horses, they rebelled. Memorial Day was dear to the veterans, and the year was the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of their war. Chicago’s Memorial Day parade was a gala affair from the earliest days, when thousands of veterans marched, carrying their old and tattered battle flags. Now, the handful of surviving veterans did not want to share this momentous day “set aside for a specific purpose.” By a unanimous vote, the GAR Memorial Association elected not to march in the parade. The
Grand Army of the Republic drum corps members gather on a train platform, 1906. While many veterans remained active in GAR events, the turn of the twentieth century marked the passage of the Civil War generation and its veterans into the fading twilight.
Chicago Tribune explained: Stirred by the thought that the heroism of the men who gave their lives to save the union had been so far forgotten by a new and ungrateful generation that it is willing to turn over to the sacrilege of baseball games, horse parades and kindred amusements the one day out of the year’s 365 that has been dedicated to those heroes memory, 101 of Chicago’s gray and battered survivors of the great civil struggle decided to abandon completely their plans for a public memorial.26 Arthur Meeker, chairman of the Horse Show Parade Association, vowed to go forward with the parade. John W. Lattimer, commander of the Washington Post of the GAR, regarded this as a personal insult and a desecration of the event, stating, “In a few years there will be no more old soldiers and then the citizens will not be bothered with these disputes about the observance of our day.”27 Ultimately, the veterans held their own parade, perhaps their last victory. The Horse Show Parade Association backed out of the Memorial Day observance and held a separate parade on June 3. In June 1911, more than two hundred members of the George H. Thomas Post marched in a parade in Joliet, Illinois. As the aged veterans walked the route, some were forced to fall out of the ranks because of fatigue, at least one of them in tears. As the Chicago contingent made its way to the bridge over the drainage canal, they began to falter. The group was marching ahead of a band and behind a fife and drum corps, and the musicians instinctively began to play martial airs. With renewed vigor, the veterans marched and sang “Marching through Georgia.”28 Later that year, Confederate veterans from Grand Army of the Republic | 55
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Above: The William McKinley Post of the GAR during the Memorial Day parade, May 30, 1911. Photograph by Charles R. Clark
Chicago Camp No. 8 held a joint meeting with Columbia Post No. 706 of the GAR in Chicago. The former Confederates returned the flag of the Thirtieth Illinois Infantry to their one-time foes; the tattered flag had been captured at Atlanta on July 22, 1864. Captain E. B. David was the last surviving member of the Thirtieth and was too overcome with emotion to make a speech when he received the beloved banner.29 The veterans continued to cling to their dignity and in 1917 objected to use of the Memorial Hall by a women’s group wishing to host a canteen for veterans of other wars. The Chicago Tribune quoted the GAR: “Why, those women want to take a jazz band upstairs and turn the rooms into a cabaret. It’s just a political scheme by the library to try to get the rooms away from us.”30 As the GAR began to wane, its Chicago members continued to be its foremost advocates and leaders. On May 15, 1925, Chicagoan Orrin R. McKenney of the George H. Thomas Post was named commander of the Illinois Department. Another Chicagoan, Thomas Ambrose, was appointed in 1935.31 In 1931, however, the GAR canceled the Memorial Day parade due to heavy rains. Other ceremonies, including speeches and grave-decorating ceremonies continued as planned, but the event revealed the waning strength of the veterans. Only forty were present to march in the parade in 1937. Membership and attendance at the annual ceremonies and parades steadily dwindled. The George H. Thomas Post, always the largest in Chicago, now had but fourteen active members and was the only post that still held regular meetings. Many of Civil War veterans march in the 1912 GAR Memorial Day parade. Grand Army of the Republic | 57
Members of the Abraham Lincoln Post at the 1911 Memorial Day parade. Twenty years later, the GAR cancelled Chicago’s parade due to heavy rains; the aging veterans had difficulty participating in more strenuous activities.
the veterans were simply too weak to leave their homes. The last member of the Grand Army of the Republic died in 1955, and the organization disbanded in 1956.32 Even before the death of the last soldier, the GAR had sought to create a permanent legacy by ensuring that Memorial Hall continued in service of Civil War veterans and their descendants. When the fifty-year charter on Memorial Hall expired in 1947, the library took over the entire building as well as the GAR’s collection of photographs and artifacts, but not without a struggle. Ambrose, then president of the GAR Memorial Association, petitioned the library for an extension of the lease to allow veterans groups and their auxiliaries to continue using the premises, emphasizing that the group’s original purpose was to erect “a monumental structure, which shall stand as a living record of the heroism of all the soldiers of the State of Illinois.” One of the founding members asked the key question in 1889: “What is going to become of this hall when the Grand Army of the Republic is done with it? Let the law governing it be so constructed as that it will fall into the hands of the Sons of Veterans, our successors.”33 The original charter was amended in 1891 to allow other veterans’ groups to use the hall. But the intent of the GAR differed from the charter, and their pleas fell on unsympathetic ears. The library reported that it doubted it had 58 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
“the authority or power to execute a new lease or extend the existing lease” and maintained that it had acted in “good faith with all of the original conditions.”34 According to library officials, any change to the original charter, including the 1891 amendment, was a violation of the original contract.35 The GAR Memorial Association used its clout, however, and tried to have the state legislature pass a bill to extend their lease for an additional one hundred years.36 Despite these attempts, library was steadfast in its interpretation of the charter: “The GAR had a legal claim fifty years ago, and was entitled to the consideration which it received,” reported Joseph B. Fleming, library board president. “No successor organization has any such claim.”37 Ultimately, the lease was not extended and the library took full possession of the building and the holdings of the GAR in 1948. Still, the fight continued. In fact, it reignited when the library announced the decision to move the GAR collection out of Memorial Hall to restore the artifacts and then place them in storage. The library was envisioning a renovation of the whole building and even considered razing it. An article in the January 1969 issue of Inland Architect opined that the Grand Army of the Republic Memorial Hall occupied 17,858 feet of space for its hall, meeting room, and auditorium: “A grander waste of space prob-
ably cannot be found anywhere in Chicago.” In addition, Ralph G. Newman, president of the Chicago Public Library, was a vocal critic of the space taken up by the Memorial Hall and suggested that other organizations could take some of the GAR collection: “This city does not need two Civil War museums less than two miles apart. And the Chicago Historical Society’s collection is outstanding. It would be possible to work out some sort of compromise or consolidation.”38 Although the library decided to restore the building instead of destroy it, it did make critical decisions regarding the GAR collections. Library staff were tasked with the cleaning, restoring, and rehabilitating the thousands of items in the vast collection. Some of the books and papers were indeed transferred to the Chicago Historical Society (now the Chicago History Museum). The GAR’s collection of artifacts, however, presented a complex
problem. For many years, selected items were displayed in sixteen exhibition cases in Memorial Hall.39 The library maintained that these pieces were neglected and badly in need of restoration and estimated that it would cost $100,000 to do the necessary work to repair what eighty years of neglect had wrought on the uniforms, guns, saddles, flags, and other items. Most of the pieces were placed in storage, never again to be displayed in their entirety. Members of the GAR Memorial Association complained that they were not allowed to see specific items.40 Library officials complained that they were not qualified to appraise the value of the GAR collection. The library recommended that a committee be appointed, “composed of persons who know the historical resources of Chicago and who can judge the value of the Grand Army holdings,” for the purpose of determining the fate of the collection.41
In 1926, veterans decorated the graves of deceased comrades in Graceland Cemetery. Although some veterans could no longer march in parades, maintaining gravesites continued to be an important duty. Grand Army of the Republic | 59
In the late 1960s, Ralph G. Newman, founder of the Civil Round Table and president of the Chicago Public Library, was critical of the presence of Memorial Hall in the library.
Newman, who had founded the Civil War Round Table in 1940, was a leading advocate of the move. He explained in a letter to Richard W. Crain of the GAR Memorial Association that the although the library was obligated to preserve the Memorial Hall and its contents in perpetuity, once the GAR lease expired, the library gained full control over the collection.42 Newman also contended that the library had the right to remove items from the hall as long as they were kept in perpetuity. When the lease expired, he insisted, “the preservation or removal of the items in the GAR Room were subject to the approval of the Chicago Public Library.” He further believed that the GAR room and Memorial Hall were not being used to their full advantage, attributing this to the extinction of the GAR and the lack of resources available despite the efforts of descendants and auxiliary groups such as the Woman’s Relief Corps. To better preserve the collection, Newman suggested that the Civil War Round Table and the library collaborate to establish the Civil War Research Center and Library, adjacent to Memorial Hall. He wrote: “Here we would provide a place for a 60 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
great Civil War reference library as well as a research material in the broader field of American history.” The book collection would be noncirculating and thus remain intact. Newman also suggested that the GAR artifacts be stored at the Chicago Historical Society. In the end, Newman’s plan was not fully enacted. Afterward, the GAR space continued as part of the library, serving as the Special Collections Division, but except for occasional exhibitions, most of the collections were stored away. 43 Still, the refurbished library opened as the Chicago Cultural Center in October 1977 with an exhibition of GAR memorabilia. The pamphlet accompanying the dedication proclaimed, “Books, pamphlets, broadsides, sheet music from the Grand Army Hall and Memorial Association (GAR) Collection . . . became the property of the CPL in 1948,” and would henceforth be preserved in the Special Collections Division.44 In addition to the argument over the fate of the artifacts, use of the hall itself continued to be the subject of debate. For its part, the library increasingly infringed upon the activities of the GAR Memorial Association and the Sons of Union Veterans (SUV) who continued to use the hall for their meetings. Although the library gave the GAR Memorial Association an air-conditioned office, it continued to edge them out of Memorial Hall. It changed the hours of when the association and the SUV could hold their meetings. From 1898 until 1976, the meetings were held on Saturday evenings, beginning at 6:30 P.M. and with no end time designated, but usually ending by 10:00 P.M. In 1976, the library told the association it could no longer meet on Saturdays and would have to end their meetings by 8:00 P.M. (later changed to 7:00 P.M.). The meeting day was changed to Thursday, and the association was also informed that it could no longer meet in Memorial Hall, but instead in a smaller area. Furthermore, the association was told that the library had no room to hold the 1977 celebration of Lincoln’s birthday. In fact the library began using the hall for “Library purposes,” including hosting events as it saw fit.45 Evelyn Gill, quartermaster of the GAR Memorial Association, in a letter to the membership wrote that the library was changing the purpose and even the name of the hall: “They are trying to call it the ‘exhibition hall,’ she lamented. Many people visit Memorial Hall expecting to see Civil War artifacts. Even our plaques have been turned around toward the wall so the back can be used for information regarding the exhibit at the time. Visitors to the Hall find everything but what they want to find.”46 The GAR Association fought a tenacious and heated battle. At one point, it accused the library of violating the original agreement of 1891 and demanded an investigation. An inventory of the GAR collection revealed that at least one hundred items were missing, including “a full sized field cannon, plus two small cannon, a porthole
assembly from the raised U.S.S. Maine, a tripod of rifles welded together, an original 1776 chair from Independence Hall, etc.” Moreover, office furniture and cases of GAR badges, photographs, and regimental battle flags, including the colors of the GAR post itself, had disappeared without explanation. Additionally, a replica of the Augustus Saint-Gaudens sculpture Abraham Lincoln: The Man in Lincoln Park “has had its base, pedestal, and chair smashed to bits in order to put the remains in a store-room.” Some of these items were found to be lost or misplaced due to negligence and the inability of the membership to properly maintain them, which reinforced the library’s stance on the issue. A police report was filed regarding the missing cannons. No explanation was given on how items disappeared from a secure building.47 Today, the GAR artifacts are maintained by the library in its Special Collections Division, which was established in 1975. At the time, the division occupied the space adjacent to the Grand Army of the Republic Memorial Hall. Ironically, and to the dismay of some in the GAR, the library named the collection the Ralph G. Newman Civil War Collection as part of the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the Chicago Civil War Round Table in 1991. Those collections are now on the ninth floor of the Harold Washington Library Center. Patrons can occasionally see these items on exhibition or make appointments to view specific holdings of the collections. While this is neither what the GAR wanted nor what Ralph Newman envisioned, it is better than nothing.48 With the library’s move in 1991, Memorial Hall became available to be used for other purposes. It was the temporary home of the Museum of Broadcast Communications and is currently used as rental space for weddings and other social events. Today, while visitors can admire the beautiful architecture and design, only a few appreciate the original purpose and meaning of the magnificent room. Traces of the GAR, however, remain. On the first floor of the Harold Washington Library Center, visitors can see magnificent oil paintings of Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and George H. Thomas. The intricately carved oaken initiation altar of the GAR occupies a corner of the lobby as does a long, ornate conference table. But unless one is aware of their existence, these pieces are easy to miss. It is a sad legacy for brave men in a society with a short memory span. The splendor of the GAR in Chicago is a thing of the past. As a group formed solely for Civil War veterans, it fell from a position of reverence to one of irrelevance. Small but dedicated groups continue to perform some of the ceremonial duties of the GAR, but they are not welcome in the Memorial Hall built by their forebears. SUV chapters maintain burial plots in local cemeteries and administer the placement of new or replacement gravestones. They are a visible reminder of the past and can
The veterans’ medal was featured on a 1914 pamphlet published by the GAR Memorial Association of Cook County.
be seen at ceremonial events on Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and at the placement of historic markers. John A. Logan declared in 1868, “One country, one Flag. Eternal vigilance the price of liberty. These are the great commandments of the Grand Army of the Republic.” But the GAR had also written its own epitaph: “If other eyes grow dull and other hands slack, and other hearts cold in the solemn trust, ours shall keep it well as long as the light and warmth of life remain to us.”49 Grand Army of the Republic | 61
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1n 1898 at the dedication of the Grand Army of the Republic Memorial Hall, Colonel James A. Sexton, the commander-in-chief of the GAR avowed, “Comrades, these are our rooms. This is our Memorial Hall, and if the contract is carried out, our great grandchildren can assemble here . . . and here we can assemble and will assemble to tell the old, old story of the war, its thrilling incidents, and its dreadful emotions.”50 Robert I. Girardi earned his master’s degree in public history from Loyola University of Chicago. He is past president of the Chicago Civil War Round Table and sits on the board of directors of the Illinois State Historical Society and the Camp Douglas Restoration Foundation. I L L U S T R AT I O N S | Illustrations are from the Chicago History Museum, unless otherwise noted. 40, ICHi-76899; 41, ICHi-76898; 42, top: ICHi-76892, bottom: Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-22324; 43, Library of Congress, Brady-Handy Photograph Collection, LC-DIG-cwpbh-01069; 44, ICHi-70694; 45, Library of Congress, George Grantham Bain Collection, LC-DIG-ggbain-21872; 46 main: ICHi-30990, inset: ICHi-30975; 47, DN-0000327; 48–49, Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey, HABS ILL,16-CHIG,14—5; 50, ICHi-76897; 51, top: ICHi-76896, bottom: ICHi-76901; 52–53, ICHi-70659; 54, ICHi-30994; 55, DN-0003818; 56, DN-0058756; 57, ICHi70665; 58, ICHi-70666; 59, DN-0081106; 60, ICHi-76893; 61, ICHi-76895; 62, DN-0081040. F O R F U RT H E R R E A D I N G | For more on the history of the GAR in Chicago, see Chicago Public Library, Civil War Collection: A Guide to the G.A.R. Memorial Hall (Chicago Public Library, c. 1958) and Thomas A. Orlando, Treasures of the Chicago Public Library: An Exhibition of Notable Acquisitions, 1872–1977, assembled for the dedication of the Chicago Public Library Cultural Center, Grand Army of the Republic Memorial Hall, October 1977 (Chicago Public Library, 1977). For a chronicle of black and white veterans’ efforts to create and sustain the GAR, see Barbara A. Gannon, The Won Cause: Black and White Comradeship in the Grand Army of the Republic (University of North Carolina Press, 2011). To view the Chicago Public Library’s Wayne Whalen Digital Archive of the Grand Army of the Republic and Civil War Collections, visit http:// cdm16818.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/wha.
Veterans, each wearing a GAR medal, pose together at Graceland Cemetery in 1926. Through the GAR, these men and their comrades were able to “tell the old, old story of the war, its thrilling incidents, and its dreadful emotions.” Grand Army of the Republic | 63
ENDNOTES 1 Grand Army of the Republic Committee on Revision, The Grand Army Blue Book, Containing the Rules and Regulations of the Grand Army of the Republic and Decisions and Opinions Thereon as Reported to and Approved by the National Encampment to August 21, 1903 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1904), 7. 2 Henry C. Cooke, The History of George H. Thomas Post No. 5, Department of Illinois, Grand Army of the Republic, for twenty-five years, an address delivered before the post, August 12, 1898, by Post Commander Henry C. Cooke, celebrating the twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Posts of organization (Chicago: Fred Kressman & Bro., 1898). Jennifer R. Bridge, “Tourist Attractions, Souvenirs, and Civil War Memory in Chicago, 1861–1915” (PhD diss., Loyola University of Chicago, 2009), 100. 3 Committee of Ransom Post GAR, Chicago Tribune, September 3, 1871. 4 In 1890, there were 7,184 posts, with total membership of 286,453. “History of the Grand Army of the Republic,” Chicago Tribune, August 25, 1900. 5 Cooke, The History of George H. Thomas Post No. 5. . ., 26–27. 6 Charles Gunther, a Civil War veteran, was a successful candy manufacturer in Chicago. He purchased Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia, and moved it to Chicago to serve as a Civil War museum. Bridge, “Tourist Attractions.” 7 Confederate Veteran 1, no. 7, July 1893, 213 and Confederate Veteran 1, no. 10, October 1893, 320. 8 Bridge, “Tourist Attractions,” 169. 9 Constitution and Bylaws of the Grand Army of the Republic Memorial Association of Cook County, Illinois. Earl F. Bartholomew GAR Papers, private collection of Marilu Meyer. 10 Theodore J. Karamanski and Eileen M. McMahon, eds., Civil War Chicago: Eyewitness to History (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2014), 264. 11 “Longstreet is Here,” Chicago Tribune, May 29, 1895. 12 Ibid., 12.
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13 Kirk Hawes, A Condensed History of Dearborn Park and the Efforts that Have Been made During the Past Eight Years to Secure the Right to Erect a Public Library Building, and a Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Hall on the Same (Chicago: Chicago Public Library and Grand Army Hall and Memorial Association of Illinois, 1891), 4. 14 Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Chicago Public Library, Chicago, April 27, 1942, 77. 15 Ibid., 6–8. 16 The cornerstone at the northeast corner of the Chicago Cultural Center at 78 East Washington Street reads “1893 Grand Army of the Republic.” 17 Grand Army of the Republic, Department of Illinois Proceedings of the Thirty-third Annual Encampment (Chicago: Grand Army of the Republic, Chicago, 1899), 114–15. 18 Report of the Officers and Chairmen of Committees of the Thirty-Fourth National Encampment G.A.R., Chicago, Illinois, August 26–30, 1900 (Chicago: Dean Bros. Blank Book and Printing Co., 1901), 27–28, 36. 19 “Adorning City for Grand Army,” Chicago Tribune, August 12, 1900 and September 26, 1900. 20 “Admiral Dewey’s Visit,” Chicago Tribune, January 14, 1900. 21 Report of the Officers and Chairmen of Committees of the Thirty-Fourth National Encampment, 43. 22 Ibid., 7, 51. 23 “Col. JH Wood Dies Suddenly,” Chicago Tribune, September 22, 1900. 24 “Make it a Holiday,” Chicago Tribune, May 31, 1894. 25 Bridge, “Tourist Attractions,” 209. 26 “G.A.R. Gives Over May 30 to Horses,” Chicago Tribune, May 21, 1911. 27 “G.A.R. Will Strike if Horses March,” Chicago Tribune, May 4, 1911. 28 “Veterans Weep as They Quit Line,” Chicago Tribune, June 15, 1911. 29 “The Battle Flag of the Thirtieth Illinois Infantry, after Half a Century, Tattered
and Torn, Comes to Memorial Hall, Springfield,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 4, no. 4 (January 1912): 493–96. 30 “G.A.R. Refuses Hall to Women for a Canteen,” Chicago Tribune, December 16, 1917. 31 “Illinoisan is Elected Commander in Chief of G.A.R. Veterans,” Chicago Tribune, September 4, 1935. 32 “Only 40 G.A.R. Vets to be Out On Memorial Day,” Chicago Tribune, May 26, 1937, and “Time Leaves Only 40 Names on Dwindling Roll of Cook County’s Civil War Veterans,” Chicago Tribune, May 30, 1937. 33 Proceedings of the Twenty-third Annual Encampment G.A.R. of Illinois, 147. 34 Chicago Public Library Committee on Buildings and Grounds, Report to the Library Board, November 10, 1947. Earl F. Bartholomew GAR Papers, courtesy of Marilu Meyer. 35 “Library Chief Defies State in G.A.R. Dispute,” Chicago Tribune, June 7, 1947. 36 “The G.A.R. Hall,” Chicago Tribune, May 16, 1945. 37 Board of Directors of the Chicago Public Library, Regular Meeting, Chicago, April 27, 1942, Official Record, 77. 38 Norman Mark, “Raze Chicago’s Central Library? It Could Happen . . . Sooner or Later,” Inland Architect, January 1969, 16–21. The Chicago Historical Society was located at Clark Street and North Avenue, just three miles north of the library. 39 Chicago Public Library, A Guide to the Civil War Collection, G.A.R. Memorial Hall (n.p., n.d.). 40 William Currie, “Library in a Civil War Skirmish,” Chicago Tribune, August 17, 1978. 41 Lowell Arthur Martin, Terence Crowley, Thomas W. Shaughnessy, Library Response to Urban Change: A Summary Prepared for the Citizens’ Committee on the Survey of the Chicago Public
Library (Chicago: American Library Association, 1969), 49–50. 42 Ralph G. Newman to Richard W. Crain, 20 November 1974. Earl F. Bartholomew GAR Papers, courtesy of Marilu Meyer. 43 Alex Ladenson, chief librarian of the CPL, to Earl Bartholomew, 16 August 1974. Earl F. Bartholomew GAR Papers, courtesy of Marilu Meyer. 44 Thomas A. Orlando, Treasures of the Chicago Public Library: An Exhibition of Notable Acquisitions, 1872–1977, assembled for the dedication of the Chicago Public Library Cultural Center, Grand Army of the Republic Memorial Hall, October 1977 (Chicago: Chicago Public Library, 1977), 5. 45 Hand-written memorandum indicting the Library’s changing policies with regard to the GAR Memorial Association, n.d. Earl F. Bartholomew GAR Papers, courtesy of Marilu Meyer. 46 Evelyn L. Gill to the Grand Army of the Republic Memorial Association of Cook County, February 1979. Earl F. Bartholomew GAR Papers, courtesy of Marilu Meyer. 47 Earl F. Bartholomew GAR papers, courtesy of Marilu Meyer. 48 The Special Collections Division consists of books, pamphlets, maps, broadsides, sheet music, theater programs, and other printed ephemera, literary and historical manuscripts, legal documents, photographs, prints, paintings, and artifacts. Among their collections are the books and artifacts of the GAR. 49 John A. Logan, General Order No. 11, May 5, 1868. The Grand Army of the Republic: America’s Legion of Honor (Grand Army of the Republic, n.d.), 11. Earl F. Bartholomew GAR papers, courtesy of Marilu Meyer. 50 “Dedicate G.A.R. Hall,” Chicago Tribune, December 30, 1898.
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M A K I N G H I S T O RY I
Wisconsin Roots: Making History Interviews with Richard M. Jaffee and John W. Rowe T I M O T H Y J . G I L F OY L E
R
ichard M. Jaffee and John W. Rowe may have started from humble beginnings, but each became a leading corporate citizen of Chicago. The persuasive and affable Rowe was arguably the nation’s leading utility executive at the turn of the twenty-first century. As the CEO of Commonwealth Edison and Exelon from 1998 to 2011, he managed the largest fleet of nuclear power plants in the United States and more than nineteen thousand employees,1 co-chaired the National Commission on Energy Policy, and served on the US Secretary of Energy’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future.2 In 2008 and 2009, Institutional Investor named Rowe the best electric utilities chief executive in America.3 Jaffee began working for the Oil-Dri Corporation of America in 1958, quickly moved into leadership positions, and served as president or chief executive officer from 1960 to 1997.4 Founded by his father in 1941, Oil-Dri was originally a distributor of clay floor absorbents for automobile repair shops. Jaffee, however, deftly and creatively reinvented the firm during his three decades at the helm. From 1971 to 1991 alone, Oil-Dri’s sales increased by more than a factor of one hundred, doubling in size every five years. When Jaffee retired in 1997, Oil-Dri was one of the nation’s leading manufacturers of absorbent products for individual, industrial, agricultural, and environmental consumers.5 Rowe and Jaffee share more than their long tenures as chief executives. Both have roots in southwestern Wisconsin. Rowe was born in 19456 to William and Lola Rowe,7 and grew up on a farm near the town of Richard M. Jaffee (left) received the Marshall Field Making History Award for Distinction in Corporate Leadership in 2014. John W. Rowe (right) was honored with his wife, Jeanne Dodgeville. “My parents were farmM. Rowe, with the Bertha Honoré Palmer Making History Award for Distinction in Civic ers out of several generations of Leadership in 2013. working farmers,” explains Rowe. 66 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
“They were Depression-generation farmers, so hard work and saving every dollar you could was simply in their bones.” Rowe attended the one-room Holyhead School from first through eighth grades. In most years, the total enrollment numbered less than twenty. Rowe remembers that one year the number jumped to twenty-two: “It was a good year because we had enough so we could have a better baseball game,” he remarks. “It’s hard when you have only seventeen or eighteen kids in eight grades to get a good ball game going.”8 Jaffee was born in 19369 to Nick and Lucille (Bloom) Jaffee.10 His father grew up in Platteville, Wisconsin, but after World War I, the collapse of commodity and agricultural prices generated a “farmer’s depression.” “That wiped out a lot of people, my grandfather included,” says Jaffee. The family packed up and came to Chicago. His mother grew up in the city’s Back of the Yards neighborhood, frequenting the settlement house run by Mary McDowell.11 Jaffee lived in several residences in the ethnically diverse South Shore neighborhood. He has fond memories of growing up on both Merrill and Jeffrey Avenues where he attended the nearby Horace Mann School: “I loved being in South Shore,” he states. “I lived at the lake and went to the beach almost every day of my life during summers. And we rode our bicycles all over the place. To me, it was a great place to grow up.”12 The University of Wisconsin was instrumental for both Jaffee and Rowe, in part because it nurtured their passion for history. After graduating from Dodgeville High School, Rowe moved to Madison, where he excelled as an undergraduate, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and named the Outstanding Graduating Senior.13 He stayed on to complete his law degree, graduated in 1970, and was elected to the Order of the Coif.14 Rowe laughs about the rewards of his unique upbringing: “Growing up on a farm and knowing what it takes to get hay to cows on a winter morning, and what it takes to castrate pigs on a summer afternoon, and then going to the University of Wisconsin, you can’t ask for two better starts than that.”15 Rowe intended to major in political science as an undergraduate. But then he took a course with the famed German historian George Mosse. “Mosse had this ability to make history come alive in ways that we all try to do when we teach,” reminisces Rowe. “He had the gift.” Rowe quickly changed his major to history and enrolled in other Mosse classes. He acknowledges that Mosse had many virtues as a teacher, “but the thing I would give him most credit for,” Rowe insists, “is teaching me about evil.”16 Jaffee also knew George Mosse, even though he never took a course with him. Mosse “was somewhat like an unofficial advisor to my fraternity,” he explains. “He would come over and sit around, and smoke cigarettes and drop ashes all over the place, and talk in his German accent. He was quite a special person.” Although Jaffee majored in accounting, he readily concedes,
Rowe (left) and Gary T. Johnson, president of the Chicago History Museum, stand before the desk of John Nicolay, secretary to Abraham Lincoln. On June 11, 2015, Rowe signed the Lincoln Honor Roll, becoming an early member of the Museum’s planned giving society. Photograph by Stephen Jensen
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“My real love was history.” More specifically, “I loved Wisconsin, and I loved the history part of it.” He confesses that he used to tell his future wife, Shirley, whom he met at Wisconsin, “I’m going to work for twenty-five years, make some money, and then I’m going to be a history teacher.”17 Rowe moved to Chicago upon graduating from Wisconsin. From 1970 to 1980, 18 he worked at the law firm of Isham, Lincoln & Beale and eventually became a partner.19 He was interested in regulated industries and initially assigned to matters related to Commonwealth Edison, the company he would eventually lead a quarter-century later. Then an unexpected opportunity arose within the firm: “I worked full-time on the Milwaukee Railroad bankruptcy for three years,” Rowe recalls. “That is the work that, more than any one thing, made my career.”20 He began collaborating with Richard Ogilvie and Stanley Hillman, both of whom were appointed trustees to the bankrupt corporation and became instrumental mentors. The up-close experience proved invaluable. During a three-year period, Rowe argued a Fifth Amendment case and was directly involved in splitting the railroad in half “because there was no way to save any of it at the pace the Interstate Commerce Commission was willing to go,” he remembers. “My work there got me from being a law firm junior partner into being a senior officer at a corporation at a very young age.” Rowe also realized something about his legal skills: “I kept noticing that the real accolades went to people who fit a box better than I did. I realized that my career was leaning toward management.”21 In 1980, at age thirty-five, Rowe gave up his partnership and accepted the position of senior vice president and general counsel of Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail).22 Jaffee followed a different route back to Chicago. After passing the Illinois CPA exam, he briefly worked at the accounting firm of Touche Niven before joining his father’s company.23 Nick Jaffee had started a business selling car parts to garages during the Depression.24 He noticed that the garages relied upon sawdust to absorb the considerable amount of oil on their floors. The elder Jaffee theorized that fuller’s earth, a clay-like absorbent mineral substance used for thousands of years, could be a safer, less flammable absorbent.25 He initially called his new product and company Floor-Dri, and since fuller’s earth was not rationed during World War II, the company quickly expanded. In 1945, the firm moved to new offices at 520 North Michigan Avenue, where Oil-Dri remained into the 1990s. In 1958, Richard joined the firm; two years later, he became Oil-Dri’s second president.26 68 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
Jaffee attributes his corporate and philanthropic successes to the values he learned from his parents and his wife. Above: Jaffee (right) with his father, Nick, and brother, Bob, in 1944. Left: Richard and Shirley Jaffee in Chicago on their wedding day, January 30, 1956.
The younger Jaffee’s fortunes took an unanticipated turn in 1962, when his father died suddenly at age fifty-six. Compelled to guide Oil-Dri without the experience and advice of his father, Jaffee began moving the company in new directions: “We diversified, but all within—because going back to discussions I had with my dad, I said we should buy these mines and then come up with other uses for the clay.” So between 1960 and 1979, Oil-Dri acquired competitors and clay mining operations in Georgia, Mississippi, and Oregon, effectively converting the firm from a wholesale distributor with almost all liquid assets to a capital-intensive, vertically integrated business. Jaffee adds, “I invested in research and development, and ultimately, we had a research center in Vernon Hills, Illinois, with about twenty-five or thirty scientists who studied clay mineralogy and application.”27 A new product, which Jaffee introduced in 1960, proved to be a major source of public attention—kitty litter.28 As cats began overtaking dogs as the number one pet in America, Jaffee recognized a new market for absorbent products. By 1988, the nation’s cats outnumbered dogs 58 million to 49 million, and Oil-Dri was one of the top two producers of kitty litter. Jaffee, however, remains circumspect about the attention given to the product: “Cat litter is our biggest volume, but it’s so competitive that it’s not our best source of income. The other applications—chemical specialties—are really more profitable, but cat litter is the one that gets all the press.”29 Indeed, one OilDri official proclaimed in 1988, “Cat litter has done for the cat what air conditioning did for Houston.”30 Kitty litter may have attracted the most attention, but Jaffee transformed Oil-Dri into much more. In 1962, the company developed a soil conditioner for maintaining lawns, golf greens, and playing fields. Three years later, the firm introduced a new fuller’s earth–based product for delivering various pesticides and other crop chemicals. During the 1980s, Oil-Dri launched Flo-Fre Flowability Aid to prevent soybean meal and other animal feeds from caking. Another product—PelUnite— enabled manufacturers to make stronger food pellets and reduce wear on their machinery. By the 1990s, Oil-Dri was developing new products related to environmental protection, including polypropylene absorbents such as Oil-Dri rugs, rolls, pads, sweeps, and brooms that could be incinerated and in some cases recycled.31 These new products transformed Oil-Dri. With revenues of $141 million in 1995, Oil-Dri enjoyed a compound annual sales growth rate of 14 percent from 1965 to 1995.32 By then Jaffee had turned Oil-Dri into a global corporation, building or purchasing plants in Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom, while expanding its sales and marketing operations into Malaysia, Japan, and Australia.33 Rowe’s rise up the corporate ladder was equally rapid. After only three years at Conrail, he was named the chief executive of Central Maine Power Company in 1984.34 Rowe had been to Maine only once in his life. “They just realized that the company had troubles that went beyond politics,” he explains. “They had to rethink what they were doing, and all of a sudden my Conrail and railroad bankruptcy experience seemed very relevant.”35 At age thirty-eight, Rowe became one of the youngest CEOs in the United States.
Oil-Dri Corporation of America is a family-run enterprise. Above: Jaffee (right), chairman, with his son Daniel S. Jaffee, chief executive officer, in 2013. Below: An advertisement for Floor-Dri, the company’s original product.
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Rowe’s tenure at Central Maine Power proved to be an instrumental learning experience. “A utility is inherently a community and political business, and if you forget it, you die,” Rowe insists. “The public service things you do as a utility CEO are as much a part of your business as running power plants or restoring service after a hurricane.” In the rapidly changing, high-tech economy of the twentieth century, the business models and corporate structures of contemporary utility firms were analogous to dinosaurs. “It is not an entrepreneurial business,” emphasizes Rowe, “hasn’t been since 1930.”36 Nevertheless, Rowe adapted and discovered his niche: five years later he was recruited to be the CEO of New England Electric System in 1989.37 Less than a decade hence, he accepted the same position at Commonwealth Edison (ComEd). Rowe was returning to Chicago.38 The most severe problem Rowe confronted upon arrival was ComEd’s transmission and delivery service (called T&D within the industry). Less than a year after taking the helm, more than one hundred thousand Chicago households lost electricity during a power outage in July 1999.39 “I had no idea that we had let the T&D service get so bad,” Rowe recognizes retrospectively. “So we put billions into improving the Commonwealth Edison T&D.” With the help of the company’s chief nuclear officer Oliver Kingsley, Rowe increased the utility’s operating capacity from 49 percent to more than 90 percent. “Over fifteen years, we made a good nuclear culture in Commonwealth Edison, we made good nuclear plants, and we made significant cultural and hardware improvements in transmission and distribution.”40 Rowe transformed ComEd into Exelon by merging with PECO Energy in 2000. “Putting those two companies together made a much better utility,” Rowe believes. “It put the new Exelon in a place on the map that Commonwealth Edison wasn’t ever able to get to by itself.”41 But Rowe was not finished. At the end of his tenure at Exelon, he oversaw the eight-billiondollar merger with Baltimore-based Constellation Energy Group in 2011.42 By then, Exelon was the nation’s leading utility. Exelon’s position as a large American corporation stands in sharp contrast to the family-run enterprise of Oil-Dri. In 1995, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance honored the company as the Family Business of the Year in the category of firms with at least 250 employees.43 At the time, the Jaffee family main70 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
Rowe acknowledges the rewards of growing up on a working farm and attending the University of Wisconsin, saying, “You can’t ask for two better starts than that.” Above: John as a toddler. Left: John and Jeanne Rowe on their wedding day.
John and Jeanne Rowe, along with Frank and Vera Clark, are the namesakes of the Rowe-Clark Math & Science Academy. In 2011â&#x20AC;&#x201C;12, the academy celebrated the opening of its Exelon Gymnasium. The Rowes attended the groundbreaking (above) and mingled with student athletes in the finished space (below).
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As chairman of its transformative capital campaign, Jaffee was instrumental in helping Rush University Medical Center rebuild for the twenty-first century. He is pictured at the groundbreaking (top, center) and 2010 beam-raising ceremony (below) of the patient-centered, state-of-the-art hospital building, known as the Tower (left), which opened in January 2012.
tained control over Oil-Dri by owning 30 percent of its publicly traded stock and all of its voting stock.44 That year, Daniel Jaffee, Richard’s son who had worked for the firm since 1987, became Oil-Dri’s president and chief operating officer, while Richard remained chairman and chief executive until retiring two years later. Dan, like Jaffee’s three other children and two of his sons-in-law, worked for Oil-Dri,45 but only after first working at other companies.46 Jaffee believes that encouraging family members to work for Oil-Dri has proven beneficial: “I’ve always been able to say to my children, and now to the grandchildren—and we’ll see which ones, if any, come into the business—you can be paid for what you do, you cannot be paid for who you are. In a lot of other family businesses which are private, everybody wants to be on the payroll.”47 Jaffee attributes Oil-Dri’s success as a family-run operation to the values he learned from his parents: “If an employee had a good work ethic and values, chances were high his brother or uncle or kids did, too.” The family atmosphere extends beyond the Jaffees; in 1995, at least sixty different families had multiple members working for Oil-Dri.48 “We have modern business methods, but a folksy atmosphere,” insists Jaffee.49 72 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
Rowe was never adverse to defending controversial positions in which he believed. Early in his tenure at Exelon, for instance, he became a vocal supporter of the cap-and-trade mechanism for carbon emission control, a divisive issue within the industry.50 He made international news in 2009 when he pulled Exelon out of membership in the US Chamber of Commerce over the chamber’s opposition to cap-and-trade.51 In 2013, Rowe also joined forty-nine other business leaders in sending a letter to Illinois state lawmakers calling for their support of the marriage equality bill.52 Public controversies, however, never diminished Rowe’s well-known sense of humor. In defending the importance of a chief executive taking action, for example, he once said, “It is better to be a moving turkey than a sitting duck. If you’re just standing still, whatever you’re doing is going to get shot apart.”53 When queried why Exelon was not aggressively investing in new-energy technologies, such as windmills or solar cells, Rowe replied, “A dinosaur cannot save itself from extinction by mating with a rodent.”54 After analyzing individual state cap-and-trade requirements, he concluded, “California always goes further. Its renewable requirements are higher. If you tell California that scotch is good, they drink it by the gallon.”55 Or when discussing his national influence, Rowe quipped, “My impact on energy policy wouldn’t fill one corncob pipe.”56
Rowe is committed to a wide variety of civic and charitable activities, including serving as chair of the executive committee of the Field Museum Board of Trustees. Here, he stands in the iconic Stanley Field Hall with Richard Lariviere (left), the museum’s president and chief executive officer.
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Rowe and Jaffee have been equally active in local philanthropic efforts. Since returning in 1998, Rowe has committed himself to a wide variety of civic and charitable activities focusing on education, science, history, and diversity. He has held the position of board chairman, president, or chairman of the Illinois Institute of Technology, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, Commercial Club of Chicago, and the Chicago History Museum. He has served on the oversight boards of the Field Museum,57 Illinois Holocaust Museum, Northwestern University Settlement House, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, OneChicagoFund, and the Morgridge Institute for Research in Madison, Wisconsin.58 Rowe is widely regarded as one of Chicago’s leading corporate philanthropists, mentioned in the same breath as Standard Oil’s John Swearingen, Sara Lee’s John Bryan, and his predecessor at ComEd, James O’Connor.59 Education and research have been Rowe’s greatest passions. Along with his wife, Jeanne, and son, William, Rowe founded the Rowe Family Charitable Trust. The trust was instrumental in establishing numerous research positions, including the Rowe Professorship of Architecture and the Rowe Family Endowed Chair in Sustainable Energy at the Illinois Institute of Technology;
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In 2006, the Chicago Historical Society celebrated its sesquicentennial with a new name, extensive renovation, and grand reopening. Below: As chair of the board of trustees, Rowe (left) guided and served as a spokesperson for the effort. Above: At the dedication ceremony, Rowe officially opened the new Chicago History Museum with the help of (from left) Gary T. Johnson, Mayor Richard M. Daley, and Potter Palmer.
John and Jeanne Rowe are active supporters of Chicago schools. Above left: A visit to the Rowe-Clark Math & Science Academy in Humboldt Park. Above right: Jeanne (left) and Ana Martinez, the founding principal of Rowe Elementary School in Wicker Park. Below: The Rowes with students at Pope John Paul II Catholic School in Brighton Park.
the Rowe Professorship of Byzantine History and the Rowe Family Professorship in Greek History at the University of Wisconsin; the Rowe Professorship in Virology at the Morgridge Institute; and the Curator of Evolutionary Biology at the Field Museum. In 1987, after raising their family in the suburbs, Richard and Shirley Jaffee moved back to Chicago. He immediately became an active trustee at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Rush University Medical Center, the Museum of Science and Industry, and the Chicago History Museum. Jaffee allows that he “had a natural inclination” toward service and philanthropy. “I saw my dad do some of this,” he remembers. “I saw my mother do some of it.” But it was Shirley who truly inspired him. “She really was the one who got me thinking in that direction, because from her earliest days, she was always helping other people,” he explains. “I saw her take our daughter Karen to Lutheran General Hospital weekly or a couple times a week and work with sick kids in the hospital. She tutored kids who had disability issues. She formed a Girl Scout troop for mentally disabled girls.” With much admiration, Jaffee is quick to point out, “I learned a lot about this from my wife.”60 Jaffee has displayed a special talent for fund raising. He co-chaired the Illinois Institute of Technology Challenge Campaign, which reached its goal of $250 million in 2001, a year early, and ultimately raised $270 million in just four years.61 Jaffee’s success, modesty, and magnetic personality caught the attention of Sears chief executive and Rush University Medical Center board chairman Ed Brennan, who recruited Jaffee to lead the planning phase for a $300 million capital campaign at Rush, which was publicly launched in 2006. The campaign led to a massive building project. “I think my contribution at that time was my natural tendency toward being cautious,” Jaffee admits. He convinced his fellow planners to Making History | 75
break the project into phases. “We ended up with four phases, and the new hospital building was phase three,” Jaffee remembers: “In the first, we had to get the power plant and the parking straightened out and some of the infrastructure. The second was to get the orthopedics building built. The third was the new hospital.”62 Jaffee ultimately served as campaign chairman. He directed a team of trustees and friends of the medical center that raised $389 million to support facilities, clinical and community programs, research projects, and student aid. Most ominously, the campaign took place at the height of the Great Recession from 2008 to 2011. “It was a very scary time,” Jaffee confesses. “But in spite of all that, we were able, by that time, to finance and sell bonds.”63 The campaign was completed in 2012, the largest and most successful in Rush’s history.64 Jaffee considers the Rush campaign “one of the best things that ever happened to me. I loved it.” He acknowledges that the successful campaign gave him a great deal of satisfaction: “I never did anything that I had such a complete sense of fulfillment,” he said retrospectively. “I got so much more out of that experience than anything I ever contributed that there’s no way I could pay it back.”65 While Jaffee was helping Rush rebuild for the twenty-first century, John and Jeanne Rowe were actively supporting Chicago schools. They are cofounders of the Rowe-Clark Math & Science Academy in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, patrons of Pope John Paul II Catholic School in Brighton Park on the Southwest Side, and the benefactors of Wicker Park’s Rowe Elementary School. John is also chairman of the Renaissance Schools Fund, a nonprofit organization formed to fund charter schools in the city.66 “We said if we’re going to put money in, we’re going to spend time in the school,” he declares. “We wouldn’t have put more than half as much money in if we didn’t know the kids.” The couple not only provides scholarships, but physically participates in school activities. Jeanne tutors weekly at both John Paul II and Rowe Elementary.67 76 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
Left: Jaffee delivered the commencement address and received the Trustee Medal during Rush University’s ceremony, held in the UIC Pavilion, for the class of 2013. Above: Richard and Shirley Jaffee on their fifty-fifth wedding anniversary, 2011.
Both Rowe and Jaffee see their roles as corporate and philanthropic leaders as an intersecting form of stewardship. Corporate leadership, in particular, entails a responsibility beyond profits and dividends. “I would say if I have any historical contribution, it’s an effort to find honor in Mammon’s work,” believes Rowe. “There is a big difference between seeing yourself as a steward and seeing yourself as just somebody who has all these neat toys that you can play with. And I saw my companies as stewardship.”68
Left: On June 5, 2013, Craig J. Duchossois (left) presented John W. and Jeanne M. Rowe with their Making History Award. Above: Richard M. Jaffee (right) received his Making History Award from presenter Dr. Larry Goodman on June 4, 2014. Photographs by Dan Rest
Timothy J. Gilfoyle teaches history at Loyola University Chicago and is the author or editor of five books, including Millennium Park: Creating a Chicago Landmark (2006). He is the president of the Urban History Association. I L LU S T R AT I O N S | 66, courtesy of the awardees; 67, Chicago History Museum; 68, courtesy of Richard M. Jaffee; 69, courtesy of Oil-Dri Corporation of America; 70–71, courtesy of John and Jeanne Rowe; 72, courtesy of Richard M. Jaffee; 73, Chicago History Museum; 74–75, courtesy of John and Jeanne Rowe; 76, courtesy of Richard M. Jaffee; 77, Chicago History Museum. F O R F U RT H E R R E A D I N G | Profiles on John W. Rowe include David Greising, “A Corporate Executive with Roots,” New York Times, February 3, 2012. See also his interview with Adam Bryant, “A Sitting Duck Can’t Catch a Moving Turkey,” New York Times, June 25, 2011. For Richard M. Jaffee, see Mark Fischetti, “How Excellent Companies Do It,” Family Business, Spring 1995, 12–14 and “Oil-Dri Corporation of America: Interview of Richard M. Jaffee,” Wall Street Corporate Reporter, January 13–19, 1997. A good overview of Oil-Dri appears in the International Directory of Corporate Histories (Farmington Hills, MI: St. James Press, 1998), vol. 20, and Funding Universe, “Oil-Dri Corporation of America History,” available at http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/oil-dri-corporation-of-america-history/.
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ENDNOTES 1 Julie Wernau, “Cast in a Softer Light: Exelon Corp. CEO Says Keeping the Power on has Given his Career a Purpose,” Chicago Tribune, November 14, 2011.
20 Rowe, interview.
50 “John Rowe (Exelon),” Wikipedia.
21 Ibid.
51 “Exelon’s John Rowe to be Honored by ILGOP,” Illinois Review, February 5, 2013, accessed August 29, 2015, http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2013/02/exelons-john-rowe-tobe-honored-by-ilgop.html.
22 “John W. Rowe,” Bloomberg Business online. 23 Jaffee, interview; “Oil-Dri History,” Funding Universe website.
2 “John W. Rowe,” Bipartisan Policy Center, accessed September 9, 2015, http://bipartisanpolicy.org/person/johnw-rowe/.
24 Mark Fischetti, “How Excellent Companies Do It,” Family Business, Spring 1995, 12–14; “Oil-Dri History,” Funding Universe website.
3 “John Rowe (Exelon),” Wikipedia, last modified August 30, 2015, accessed September 9, 2015, https://en.wikipedia. org/ wiki/John_Rowe_(Exelon).
25 Fischetti, “Excellent Companies”; “OilDri History,” Funding Universe website.
4 Oil-Dri Corporation of America LinkedIn page, accessed August 29, 2015, http://www.linkedin.com/company/oildri-corporation-of-america.
54 David Greising, “A Corporate Executive with Roots,” New York Times, February 3, 2012.
27 Jaffee, interview.
55 Rowe, interview.
28 “Oil-Dri History,” Funding Universe website.
56 Wernau, “Cast in a Softer Light.”
29 Jaffee, interview.
6 “John W. Rowe,” NNDB intelligence aggregator, accessed July 2013, http://www.nndb.com/people/097/000123725/.
32 Fischetti, “Excellent Companies.”
7 John W. Rowe, oral history interview by Timothy J. Gilfoyle, September 10, 2013, deposited in the collection of the Chicago History Museum.
34 “John W. Rowe,” Bloomberg Business online.
9 Richard Jaffee, oral history interview by Timothy J. Gilfoyle, June 16, 2014, deposited in the collection of the Chicago History Museum.
30 “Oil-Dri History,” Funding Universe website. 31 Ibid.
33 “Oil-Dri History,” Funding Universe website.
35 Rowe, interview. 36 Ibid. 37 “John W. Rowe,” Bloomberg Business online. 38 Ibid.
10 “Oil-Dri History,” Funding Universe website.
39 Peter Kendall and Margaret O’Brien, “Relenting, ComEd to Pay Up for Spoilage,” Chicago Tribune, August 3, 1999.
11 Jaffee, interview.
40 Rowe, interview.
12 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
13 Rowe, interview.
42 Wernau, “Cast in a Softer Light”; Rowe, interview.
14 “John Rowe (Exelon),” Wikipedia. 15 Rowe, interview.
43 Fischetti, “Excellent Companies”; “OilDri History,” Funding Universe website.
16 Ibid.
44 Fischetti, “Excellent Companies.”
17 Jaffee, interview.
45 Jaffee, interview; “Oil-Dri History,” Funding Universe website.
18 Daniel F. Cuff, “Business People,” New York Times, April 10, 1989. 19 “Executive Profile: John W. Rowe,” Bloomberg Business, accessed July 2013, http://investing.businessweek.com/resea rch/stocks/people/person.asp?personId= 173435&ticker=EXC.
78 | Chicago History | Winter 2015
53 Adam Bryant, “A Sitting Duck Can’t Catch a Moving Turkey,” New York Times, June 25, 2011.
26 “Oil-Dri History,” Funding Universe website.
5 “Oil-Dri Corporation of America History,” Funding Universe, accessed August 29, 2015, http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/oil-dricorporation-of-america-history/.
8 Ibid.
52 Ibid.
46 Fischetti, “Excellent Companies.” 47 Jaffee, interview. 48 Fischetti, “Excellent Companies.” 49 Fischetti, “Excellent Companies”; “OilDri History,” Funding Universe website.
57 “John Rowe (Exelon),” Wikipedia. 58 “John W. Rowe,” Bipartisan Policy Center. 59 Greising, “A Corporate Executive with Roots.” 60 Jaffee, interview. 61 Bahman Atefi, “The Sale of IIT Research Institute Assets to Alion,” IIT Magazine, Special Edition: The Collens Years, 1990–2007, 42, accessed August 29, 2015, available at http://magazine.iit.edu/ sites/magazine/files/field_uploads/issue/ pdfs/summer-2007.pdf; Jaffee, interview. 62 Jaffee, interview. 63 Ibid. 64 “Rush University’s 2013 Commencement Speaker and Trustee Medal Recipient is Richard M. Jaffee,” Rush University, accessed August 29, 2015, www.rushu.rush.edu/servlet/ Satellite?MetaAttrName=meta_services&ParentId=1320160724616&Pare ntType=RushUnivLevel2Page&c=content_block&cid=1320160724606&level 1-p=2&level1-pp=1320160723970 &level1-ppp= 1320160723970&pagename=Rush%2Fcontent_block%2F ContentBlockDetail 65 Jaffee, interview. 66 “John W. Rowe,” Bipartisan Policy Center; “John Rowe (Exelon),” Wikipedia. 67 Rowe, interview. 68 Ibid.