VOL. 5, NO. 3
{ a n e w l o o k a t a m e r i c a’s g r e a t e s t c o n f l i c t }
Embattled Banner
H
Minister of Deceit
THE SLY WORKINGS OF SECRETARY OF WAR EDWIN M. STANTON P. 42
FALL 2015
PLUS:
$5.99
CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC AUTHOR TONY HORWITZ ON THE RECENT BATTLE FLAG BACKLASH
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JAMIE BETTS (TOP LEFT); ISTOCKPHOTO (TOP RIGHT); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)
ACWM.ORG
WHITE HOUSE OF THE CONFEDERACY 1201 E. Clay Street, Richmond VA
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HISTORIC TREDEGAR 500 Tredegar Street, Richmond VA
MUSEUM OF THE CONFEDERACY- APPOMATTOX Rte. 24 at Rte. 460, Appomattox VA
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Contents DEPARTMENTS
Salvo
{Facts, Figures & Items of Interest}
VOLUME 5, NUMBER 3 / FALL 2015
FEATURES
EMBATTLED BANNER 32
TRAVELS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Our exclusive conversation with Pulitzer-Prize winning author Tony Horwitz on the recent backlash against the Confederate battle flag
A Visit to Williamsburg
VOICES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Thanksgiving
FACES OF WAR. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 An Unlikely Friendship
PRESERVATION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Victory for Campaign 150
FIGURES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Philadelphia’s Great Central Sanitary Fair
DISUNION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Confederates in the Jungle
COST OF WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
A Sergeant’s Lucky Coat
IN FOCUS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Return of the 69th
Columns AMERICAN ILIAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 JAMIE BETTS (TOP LEFT); ISTOCKPHOTO (TOP RIGHT); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)
The Sword of General Lee
LIVING HISTORY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Rebel Restorer
Books & Authors VOICES FROM THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC, PART 6. . . . . . 65
MINISTER OF DECEIT 42
BY GARY W. GALLAGHER
THE BOOKS THAT BUILT ME . . 69 BY LESLEY J. GORDON
In Every Issue EDITORIAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Heat of Battle 54
PARTING SHOT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Climate, weather, and the First Battle of Manassas
The sly betrayals and treacherous workings of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton
by kenneth w. noe
by william marvel
Embattled Banner
Lee Photo Rediscovered
ON THE COVER: The battered battle flag carried during the war by an 1 unidentified Mississippi infantry regiment. Image courtesy of The American Civil War Museum, THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR Richmond, Virginia (acwm.org). FALL 2015
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editorial VOLUME 5, NUMBER 3 / FALL 2015
Terry A. Johnston Jr. EDITOR-IN-CHIEF TERRY@CIVILWARMONITOR.COM
Laura June Davis David Thomson Robert Poister Katie Brackett Fialka
Embattled Banner at first, the June 17, 2015, killing of nine African Americans in the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, seemed destined to be remembered primarily as another heartbreaking incident of gun violence in the United States. But days later, photos of the young white suspect with the Confederate battle flag—a symbol with a long and complicated association with racial oppression, especially in the American South—spurred impassioned calls for the banner to be removed from the grounds of the South Carolina statehouse in Columbia. On July 10, the flag came down. “[N]o one should drive by the statehouse and feel pain,” said Governor Nikki Haley of her support for the banner’s removal. “No one should drive by the statehouse and feel like they don’t belong.” This isn’t the first time in modern memory that heated controversy has arisen around the flag. In 1998, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tony Horwitz tackled the issue head-on in his book Confederates in the Attic, in which he explored the enduring impact of Confederate symbols throughout the South. To help make sense of the current debate about the banner—from its place in public and private life to how far this demand for the removal of Confederate symbols will go—we turned to him. You can read his thoughts beginning on page 32.
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Stephen Berry Patrick Brennan John Coski Judith Giesberg Allen C. Guelzo Amy Murrell Taylor Matthew C. Hulbert EDITORIAL ADVISORS
Jennifer Sturak COPY EDITOR
Brian Matthew Jordan BOOK REVIEW EDITOR BRIAN@CIVILWARMONITOR.COM
Katharine Dahlstrand SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR
Patrick Mitchell CREATIVE DIRECTOR MODUS OPERANDI DESIGN (WWW.MODUSOP.NET)
Zethyn McKinley ADVERTISING & MARKETING DIRECTOR ADVERTISING@CIVILWARMONITOR.COM (559) 492 9236
Margaret Collins ADVERTISING ASSOCIATE MARGARET@CIVILWARMONITOR.COM
Howard White CIRCULATION MANAGER HWHITEASSOC@COMCAST.NET website
this issue also marks the launch of two new columns. One, “Living History”—Jenny Johnston’s profiles of individuals whose lives are in some way tied up with the history, preservation, or memory of the Civil War—will be familiar to many readers, its early installments having appeared in the “Salvo” section of previous issues. The second, “American Iliad” by historian Mark Grimsley, explores the origins and lasting power of the conflict’s mythical stories. How did they come to exist, and why, like the ancient Greek epic poem, do they continue to exert such a strong grip on our imagination? We hope you enjoy them both.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: letters@civilwarmonitor.com
www.CivilWarMonitor.com
M. Keith Harris Kevin M. Levin Robert H. Moore II Harry Smeltzer DIGITAL HISTORY ADVISORS SUBSCRIPTIONS & CUSTOMER SERVICE
Civil War Monitor / Circulation Dept. P.O. Box 292336, Kettering, OH 45429 phone: 877-344-7409 EMAIL: CUSTOMERSERVICE@CIVILWARMONITOR.COM
The Civil War Monitor (issn 2163-0682/print, issn 21630690/online) is published quarterly by Bayshore History, llc, 8008 Bayshore Drive, Margate, NJ 08402. Periodicals postage paid at Atlantic City, NJ, and additional mailing offices. postmaster: Send address changes to The Civil War Monitor, P.O. Box 292336, Kettering, OH 45429. Subscriptions: $21.95 for one year (4 issues) in the U.S., $31.95 per year in Canada, and $41.95 per year for overseas subscriptions (all U.S. funds). Views expressed by individual authors, unless expressly stated, do not necessarily represent those of The Civil War Monitor or Bayshore History, LLC. Letters to the editor become the property of The Civil War Monitor, and may be edited. The Civil War Monitor cannot assume responsibility for unsolicited materials. The contents of the magazine may not be reproduced in whole or part without the written consent of the publisher.
Copyright ©2015 by Bayshore History, llc
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Angels Of War
I always look forward to receiving the latest copy of The Civil War Monitor. In your summer issue I especially enjoyed reading the articles about Civil War nurses and the prisoner-of-war camp on Belle Isle [“Angels of War” and “Death & Life on Belle Isle,” Vol. 5, No. 2]. One of the women highlighted in the former, Maria M.C. Hall, worked in the Naval Academy Hospital (which was located in Annapolis—not, as the article says, Washington, D.C.) toward war’s end at the request of Dr. Bernard Vanderkieft, the surgeon in charge. Vanderkieft was familiar with Hall from their time at Smoketown Hospital, where they had ministered to men wounded at the Battle of Antietam. Given his wish for her to join him at Annapolis, he was clearly impressed with her work. William van de Giesen VELP, GELDERLAND, THE NETHERLANDS ED. Thanks, William, for the cor-
rection and the further details. We appreciate both very much. * * *
Thank you for the fascinating profiles of Civil War nurses, “Angels of War.” Missing from your gallery of brave and dedicated women is the formidable Mary Ann “Mother” Bickerdyke. Glenda M. Patton ROCK SPRINGS, GEORGIA
ED. Thanks for your note, Glenda.
We decided not to feature the war’s most prominent nurses, including Bickerdyke and others such as Clara Barton and Dorothea Dix—not, of course, because they weren’t worthy of inclusion, but rather to highlight women whose names and stories were much less likely to be widely known by our readers.
Lee Reconsidered
Thanks for the piece on Robert E. Lee in the summer issue [“Dossier: Robert E. Lee,” Vol. 5, No. 2]. Using the questions posed to your panelists, I’d like to submit my own assessment of Lee’s record as a Confederate leader.
Letters to the editor: email us at letters@civilwarmonitor.com or write to The Civil War Monitor, P.O. Box 428, Longport, NJ 08403.
Lee’s most admirable characteristic as a commander was his awareness of the importance of gaining information about the strength, leadership, disposition, and intentions of the enemy forces he was confronting. His greatest flaw was his single-minded insistence on keeping his personal staff to a minimum, which led to an inability to provide an alternate means of gathering information and producing intelligence when his cavalry was unable to do so. My favorite book about Lee, strangely enough, is the Official Records, because these volumes include Lee’s messages, reports, circulars, and general orders, which collectively help define his skill and character as a military commander. My favorite quote attributed to Lee was his response to an inquiry about Gettysburg in which he replied that the battle had been “commenced in the absence of intelligence.” Finally, Lee’s best performance in a campaign was at Chancellorsville, where he took advantage of the intelligence that his scouts provided about the vulnerable position of the enemy. His worst was at Gettysburg, for his inexplicable refusal to utilize all his available information-gathering resources and for not acknowledging or understanding that the Army of the Potomac was conducting effective intelligence operations during key periods in the campaign that foiled Lee’s plans and objectives. Tom Ryan VIA EMAIL
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Kudos
I recently came across a copy of your magazine, opened it up, and started to read one of the most interesting Civil War publications that I have ever read. Because of this I intend to subscribe soon. Keep up the great work! Norman J. Cody ANSON, MAINE
Surrender Stories
In response to Stephen Cushman’s thoughtful article on Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain’s “salute” at Appomattox [“Surrender Stories,” Vol. 5, No. 1], William Marvel writes [“Dispatches,” Vol. 5, No. 2] that Cushman “provided no evidence beyond Chamberlain’s ever-changing story” that he ever initiated some “flattering gesture to the surrendering Confederates.” In fact, Cushman did. He cited Alfred Pearson, a brigade commander in the Army of the Potomac’s 1st Division, V Corps, as confirming in 1901 that Chamberlain was the originator of the “salute.” Marvel’s failure to reference Pearson is all the more puzzling because Cushman inserted the reference in response to Marvel’s oft-made claim in his own writings on Appomattox that there are no other witnesses to support the “salute story” but Chamberlain himself. I went back and checked my journal for September 2005, when I was on a tour of Appomattox with Ed Bearss. I asked Ed about Marvel’s assertion that no salute ever took place at Appomattox. Bearss’ response to me was, “Some people don’t like it when romance and reality are one but here it happened.” Jim Heenehan ARDMORE, PENNSYLVANIA
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agenda
A guide dressed as a Union soldier leads a walking tour through the streets of Smithfield, Virginia. A November 7 tour focuses on the little-known battle there.
Your Guide to Civil War Events
FALL 2015
The Museum of the Confederacy-Appomattox APPOMATTOX, VIRGINIA
OCTOBER
P R E S E N TAT I O N
REENACTMENT
War Words Wisdom
Civil War Battle at Shoal Creek
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2–4:30 P.M.
SATURDAY, OCT. 10 – SUNDAY, OCT. 11
Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site and Interpretive Center
Shoal Creek Living History Museum
HUNTINGTON STATION, NEW YORK
Join historians Karen Karbiener and Brian Matthew Jordan, plus artist Mort Künstler, for a series of presentations on the Civil War—Karbiener on the tragic history of a Union soldier whose life lay in Walt Whitman’s hands during the famed poet’s days as a volunteer nurse; Jordan on his recent book, Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War; and Künstler on his historic interpretive art, including his work “Angel of the Battlefield: Clara Barton with Walt Whitman at Chatham, December 15, 1862.” Refreshments and tours of Whitman’s birthplace will also be offered. FREE; FOR MORE INFORMATION: WALTWHITMAN. ORG or 631-427-5240 X112.
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI
Three battle reenactments—two on Saturday, one on Sunday—soldier camps, a Sunday morning church service, food and craft vendors, various demonstrations, and a mercantile shop offer attendees a chance to step back in time and experience the Civil War era. $10 PER CAR; FOR MORE INFORMATION: SHOALCREEKLIVINGHISTORYMUSEUM.COM or 816-792-2655. LIVING HISTORY
19th-Century Log Cabin Grand Opening SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 10 A.M.
FREE; FOR MORE INFORMATION: ACWM.ORG or 434-352-5791 X203. LIVING HISTORY
Coweta Mission Civil War Weekend FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23 – SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25
Arthur Street’s Farm COWETA, OKLAHOMA
Battle reenactments, a Civil War dance, and period church service, as well as an encampment consisting of an artillery battery, medical hospital, signal corps, and trading post, are among the many features at the eighth annual Coweta Mission Civil War Weekend. $5 ADULTS; $2 CHILDREN UNDER 12; $1 CHILDREN UNDER 6; WEEKEND PASS: $5 ADULT, $3 CHILDREN; FOR MORE INFORMATION: COWETAMISSION.COM or 918-625-4900.
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COURTESY OF BRETT ENGLAND
SEP TEMBER
THE MUSEUM OF THE CONFEDERACY-APPOMATTOX
The 19th-century log cabin at the Museum of the Confederacy-Appomattox is scheduled to open on October 17.
Join The Museum of the ConfederacyAppomattox for a day of celebration as its 19th-century log cabin opens to the public. Artisans will be located throughout the museum’s grounds demonstrating such 19th-century skills as spinning, cooking, gardening, blacksmithing, soap making, shoemaking, woodworking, and cider making. Miniature pumpkins will be available for the youngest visitors to paint, and visitors of all ages can help the Appomattox Volunteer Fire Department raise funds by indulging in their delicious barbecue plates and Brunswick stew.
NOVEMBER TOUR
Battle of Smithfield Guided Walking Tour SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2 P.M.
Isle of Wight County Museum SMITHFIELD, VIRGINIA
A lecture and walk down Church Street in Smithfield, Virginia, focuses on the littleknown engagement between Union and Confederate forces that occurred in town from January 31 to February 1, 1864. The tour runs approximately 75 minutes.
Explore the African American & Civil War history of Spotsylvania Courthouse with our mobile app
$2; FOR MORE INFORMATION: HISTORICISLEOFWIGHT.COM or 757-357-0115. P R E S E N TAT I O N
Civil War Photographs from the George Eastman House Collection SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2 P.M. TOUR
Guided Civil War Walking Tour SATURDAY, OCT. 24, 10:30 A.M.
Newtown History Center’s “Newtown Tavern”
STEPHENS CITY, VIRGINIA
Join members of the Newtown History Center’s staff on an hour-long tour along Main Street in Stephens City, Virginia, with stops along the way to note significant events that occurred in the town, located in the northern Shenandoah Valley, during the Civil War. Pre-registration is highly encouraged.
(540) 507-7090
www.visitspotsy.com
FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA
Dr. William Stapp, former curator at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, will speak on the images, and the photographers who took them, featured in the traveling exhibit “Between the States: Photographs of the American Civil War,” on display at the Civil War Interpretive Center at Historic Blenheim. FREE; FOR MORE INFORMATION: FAIRFAXVA.GOV/VISITORS or 703-591-0560. LIVING HISTORY
Thanksgiving Dinner with Abraham Lincoln SATURDAY, NOV. 21, 3:30–6 P.M.
Hale Farm & Village BATH, OHIO
COURTESY OF BRETT ENGLAND
THE MUSEUM OF THE CONFEDERACY-APPOMATTOX
$5 AGES 6 AND UP; CHILDREN UNDER 5 ARE FREE; FOR MORE INFORMATION: NEWTOWNHISTORYCENTER.ORG or 540-869-1700.
The Civil War Interpretive Center at Historic Blenheim
Share Your Event Have an upcoming event you’d like featured in this space? Let us know: events@
civilwarmonitor. com
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Enjoy a classic Thanksgiving feast with family and friends as you dine with President Abraham Lincoln and Hale Farm & Village costumed interpreters, who will share stories and music of the season with guests. Reservations are required. $40 ADULT; $30 MEMBER; $15 CHILDREN 12 AND UNDER; FOR MORE INFORMATION: HALEFARM.ORG or 330-6663711 X1720.
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FA C T S , F I G U R E S & I T E M S O F I N T E R E S T
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In this watercolor by artist William McIlvaine—who served during the war in the 5th New York Infantry—a Union wagon train moves along Duke of Gloucester Street in Williamsburg, Virginia, shortly after the battle fought there in May 1862. FOR MORE ON WILLIAMSBURG, TURN THE PAGE. ☛
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IN THIS SECTION Travels
A VISIT TO WILLIAMSBURG . . . 10 Voices
THANKSGIVING . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Faces of War
AN UNLIKELY FRIENDSHIP . . . 16 Preservation
VICTORY FOR CAMPAIGN 150 . . 18 Figures
PHILADELPHIA’S GREAT CENTRAL SANITARY FAIR . . . 20 Disunion
CONFEDERATES IN THE JUNGLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Cost of War
A SERGEANT’S LUCKY COAT . . 24 In Focus
MARIAN S. CARSON COLLECTION, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
RETURN OF THE 69TH . . . . . . . 26
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WILLIAMSBURG VIRGINIA in early 1862, General George B. McClellan hatched an ambitious plan: He would transport his massive Army of the Potomac by ship from its position outside Washington, D.C., to Fort Monroe, Virginia, and advance it up the Virginia Peninsula toward Richmond. Opposing McClellan’s over 100,000 men after they landed in March were approximately 11,000 Confederates commanded by Brigadier General John B. Magruder, who constructed a series of defenses on the peninsula to slow the enemy advance as reinforcements could be brought forward. On May 5, after being delayed for a month at Yorktown, Union troops reached Williamsburg, where they clashed with the rearguard of the Confederate army, which was withdrawing toward Richmond. A number of attacks and counterattacks produced nearly 4,000 total casualties but no significant breakthroughs. And while McClellan would declare the engagement a “brilliant victory,” the Confederates were able to resume their march toward their capital, where they would ultimately turn back the Union advance during a series of bloody battles in June. Interested in visiting Williamsburg? To help make the most of your trip, we’ve enlisted two experts on the area—Glenn David Brasher and Drew Gruber—to offer suggestions for what to see and do in and around the historic city.
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DON’T MISS
Virginia’s Route 5 connects Williamsburg to Richmond, leisurely winding through countryside filled with both antebellum and colonial plantation homes on the James River. Of particular note is Berkeley Plantation (12602 Harrison Landing Rd., Charles City; 804-829-6018), located 45 minutes west of Williamsburg, where the Army of the Potomac encamped after the Peninsula Campaign in 1862 and where Abraham Lincoln came to visit the soldiers. On his trip the president contemplated (and maybe even drafted) the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in response to the campaign’s failure. GDB I’d recommend heading to the USS Monitor Center at The Mariners’ Museum (100 Museum Dr., Newport News; 757-596-2222), 20 miles southeast of Williamsburg. The center houses the famed ironclad Monitor’s turret as well as a worldclass exhibit about the vessel that includes reproductions of Monitor and its opponent at the Battle of Hampton Roads, CSS Virginia. In Williamsburg, I’d suggest a visit to the Wren Building (111 Jamestown Rd.; 855-756-9516) at the College of William & Mary. Built between 1695 and 1700, the structure has witnessed its share of historical events and distress, including when Union soldiers quartered there in 1862 set fire to it. Although its classrooms are still in use, visitors can explore the building’s exhibit hall and chapel. DG
Wren Building
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BEST KEPT SECRET
Do not make the mistake of visiting Colonial Williamsburg (101 Visitor Center Dr.; 888-965-7254) without partaking in its colonial-inspired nightlife. Evening programs feature 18th-century comedic plays, tours involving the city’s myths and legends, and even a highly entertaining re-creation of an actual witch trial that took place there. Afterward, you will find that strolling the moonlit streets, people watching from a bench, and doing a little playful ghost hunting all make for a wonderful night. GDB
Colonial Parkway
Colonial Williamsburg Regional Visitor Center
Colonial Parkway, the 23-mile scenic roadway that connects Yorktown, Jamestown, and Williamsburg, makes for one of the most beautiful and exhilarating drives in Virginia. The road is lined with a variety of historical markers, beaches, picnic opportunities, pull-offs, and interesting places to check out. My favorite spots include the Fusiliers Redoubt in Yorktown, the site of a British earthwork built during the American Revolution with an amazing view of the York River, and the Jamestown Island Bridge, which offers a fantastic panorama of the James River. Roll the windows down and enjoy a truly exceptional drive. DG
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Jamestown Settlement
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BEST FAMILY ACTIVITY
Williamsburg features two major amusement parks: Busch Gardens (1 Busch Gardens Blvd.; 800-3437946) and Water Country USA (176 Water Country Pkwy; 757-229-9300). Further, Colonial Williamsburg keeps children engaged with fun programs and activities designed for both amusement and history education. It is common to see kids walking around in rented 18th-century-style hats and dresses, or happily playing colonial-era outdoor games. GDB Jamestown Settlement (2110 Jamestown Rd.; 757253-4838) and the Yorktown Victory Center (200 Water St., Route 1020, Yorktown; 888- 593-4682) offer history programming for families as well as a camp, fort, and reconstructed ships. Colonial Williamsburg is another good option for family-friendly activities, including the popular RevQuest history-mystery game and ghost tours. DG Lee Hall Mansion
Yorktown Battlefield
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BEST CIVIL WAR SPOT
Just east of town is the 22-acre Redoubt Park (510 Quarterpath Rd.; 757-259-3760), a site containing two excellently preserved and interpreted redoubts that were part of the Confederate defenses during the Peninsula Campaign. Further, while the fortifications at nearby Yorktown Battlefield (1000 Colonial Pkwy, Yorktown; 757-898-2410) are interpreted in their Revolutionary War context, most of the earthworks are actually Confederate constructions. The battlefield’s visitors center offers a brochure with more of a Civil War focus, but you may have to ask for it. You will also want to visit Lee Hall Mansion (163 Yorktown Rd., Newport News; 757-8883371), an antebellum plantation home east of town that became a Confederate headquarters during the Peninsula Campaign. GDB Though only the scene of minor skirmishing during the Battle of Williamsburg, Redoubt Park, with its informative Civil War Trails markers and well-maintained paths, provides a good perspective of the terrain of the battlefield. A portion of Fort Magruder (1035 Penniman Rd.), the earthwork central to the Confederate defensive line at Williamsburg, still stands, although it is now surrounded by a chain-link fence. DG
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Yorktown Pub
One of Williamsburg’s Colonial Houses
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BEST EATS
Finding a decent breakfast spot is not a problem. For quick and very friendly service, good ol’ eggs and hash browns right off the grill, and a non-chain environment, try Shorty’s Diner (627 Merrimac Trail; 757-603-6674). For lunch, try The Cheese Shop in Merchants Square (410 W. Duke of Gloucester St.; 757-220-0298). It’s a locally owned legend, and you will find a crowd of tourists, locals of all ages, and students from the College of William & Mary lining up to place an order. Another good option is the Yorktown Pub (540 Water St., Yorktown; 757886-9964). It is right on the York River beach and features fresh oysters out of local waters (Union soldiers frequently commented in their diaries and letters about the wonderful oysters they enjoyed while in the area) and a superb hamburger. You would be remiss if you came to the area without having dinner at one of Colonial Williamsburg’s taverns. The best late night ambience is at Chowning’s Tavern (109 E. Duke of Gloucester St.; 757-229-2141), where you will find colonial musicians, songs, and games. Get a mint julep or historic brew of ale, order the Welsh rarebit, and stomp and sing along. GDB Shorty’s Diner and Honey Butters Kitchen (4680 Monticello Ave.; 757-221-8038) do very tasty breakfasts with a southern flair. Nawab (204 Monticello Ave.; 757-565-3200), an Indian restaurant near downtown, offers an extremely tasty lunch buffet that won’t break the bank. For a casual dinner, locals frequent College Delly (336 Richmond Rd.; 757-229-3915) or Paul’s Deli (761 Scotland St.; 757-229-8976). The subs and the stromboli are good, and the prices affordable. For upscale dining try Waypoint Grill (1480 Quarterpath Rd.; 757-220-2228) or the Fat Canary (410 W. Duke of Gloucester St.; 757-229-3333). DG Shorty’s Diner
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BEST SLEEP
The most fun place to stay is at one of Williamsburg’s Colonial Houses (136 East Francis St.; 888-965-7254). They are scattered throughout the historic area and blend beautifully into the colonial environment, yet contain all the modern amenities. If you are on a tighter budget, try the Rodeway Inn Historic (US-60, Page St.; 757229-1855). It is an older hotel that most people drive right past, but it is clean and comfortable. GDB The historic Colonial Houses that can be rented through the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation provide a literal window into the restored colonial town, a walkable neighborhood for dining, and quick access to Jamestown and Yorktown. While they’re not the most costly option in the Williamsburg region, they are more expensive than most. DG
BEST BOOK
There are two works that are excellent travel companions: Carson O. Hudson Jr.’s Civil War Williamsburg (1997), a nicely illustrated guide by someone who knows the area better than most, and Brian K. Burton’s The Peninsula & Seven Days: A Battlefield Guide (2007), which is invaluable for finding some of the obscure sites that connect Williamsburg to one of the conflict’s most important campaigns. GDB The Cheese Shop
Civil War Williamsburg provides a great overview of the battle and is a must-have for anyone interested in experiencing Williamsburg’s Civil War history. For additional reading check out Carol Kettenburg Dubbs’ Defend This Old Town: Williamsburg During the Civil War (2004). DG
ABOUT OUR EXPERTS
Glenn David Brasher is an instructor at the University of Alabama who considers Williamsburg a second home. He is the author of The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation (2014).
Drew Gruber, a Williamsburg resident and acting president of the Williamsburg Battlefield Association, was recently appointed to the Commonwealth’s Board of Historic Resources.
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/ THANKSGIVING
“ Well, our Thanksgiving dinner was a success. Nearly three hundred turkeys and chickens suffered death for the good of their country.” NURSE ELVIRA J. POWERS, JEFFERSON GENERAL HOSPITAL, INDIANA, IN HER DIARY, NOVEMBER 25, 1864
“ I FEEL THANKFUL TO ALMIGHTY GOD THAT MY LIFE HAS BEEN SPARED SO LONG, AND THAT MY CONDITION IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN THAT OF THOUSANDS AROUND ME, AND PRAY … THAT I MAY BE SPARED TO SEE MY FRIENDS AT HOME ONCE MORE.”
UNION SURGEON JOHN GARDNER PERRY (ABOVE), IN A LETTER WRITTEN DECEMBER 3, 1863 SOURCES: PASSAGES FROM THE LIFE OF HENRY WARREN HOWE (1899); DIARY OF A SOLDIER (1865); LETTERS FROM A SURGEON OF THE CIVIL WAR (1906); THE STORY OF THE GREAT MARCH (1865); HOSPITAL PENCILLINGS (1866); EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS TO A.B.T. FROM EDWARD P. WILLIAMS … (1903)
EDWARD P. WILLIAMS, 100TH INDIANA INFANTRY, IN A LETTER WRITTEN FROM CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE, NOVEMBER 12, 1863
“ Thanksgiving-day was very generally observed in the army, the troops scorning chickens in the plenitude of turkeys with which they had supplied themselves. Vegetables of all kinds, and in unlimited quantities, were at hand, and the soldiers gave thanks as soldiers may, and were merry as only soldiers can be.” UNION OFFICER GEORGE WARD NICHOLS, DURING SHERMAN’S MARCH TO THE SEA, IN HIS DIARY, NOVEMBER 1864
“ I should like a turkey for Thanksgiving, but shall be obliged to be contented with army rations.” HENRY WARREN HOWE, 30TH MASSACHUSETTS INFANTRY, IN A LETTER TO HIS PARENTS, NOVEMBER 18, 1864
LETTERS FROM A SURGEON OF THE CIVIL WAR (LEFT); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (3)
“ [W]e were wishing ourselves home for Thanksgiving, but as that was impossible, we resolved to do the best we could here, and so determined to have a plum pudding, at least. Two days were spent building an oven in which to bake it, and ... everything was ready the night before the important day.... Alas! That same night at twelve o’clock we were ordered to march at daylight, and on the very morning of Thanksgiving Day flour and raisins were thrown away, and we went trudging on with thousands of other poor devils….”
UNION SOLDIER EUGENE FORBES, IN HIS DIARY WHILE HELD AT ANDERSONVILLE PRISON, ON THANKSGIVING DAY 1864. FORBES WOULD DIE IN CAPTIVITY IN FLORENCE, SOUTH CAROLINA, THE FOLLOWING FEBRUARY.
“ I am sorry that I cannot accept your invitation to Thanksgiving dinner. Uncle Sam has a prior claim upon my time and will insist on my remaining here and dining with his happy family.”
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362 Yorktown Road Newport News, VA
(757) 887-1862 www.endview.org
Relive the 1862 Peninsula Campaign through yearround tours, re-enactments, children’s camps, exhibits and special programs
163 Yorktown Road Newport News, VA (757) 888-3371 www.leehall.org
LETTERS FROM A SURGEON OF THE CIVIL WAR (LEFT); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (3)
Completed in 1859, Lee Hall was home to planter Richard Decatur Lee. One of the last remaining antebellum homes on the Virginia Peninsula, Lee Hall offers visitors a step back to the midVictorian era.
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fa c e s o f wa r
by ronald s . coddington publisher, military images
AN UNLIKELY FRIENDSHIP shortly after the battle of Bentonville in late March 1865, where the left wing of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s advancing Union force beat back General Joseph E. Johnston’s Confederates after several days of fighting, Sherman paused his army at Goldsboro, where he intended to regroup before resuming his pursuit of Johnston. The appearance of Sherman’s blue-clad columns was a welcome sight to the town’s black population, many of whom, like countless thousands of former slaves before them, flocked to the Union army for aid and protection. n A teenager named John Taylor was among those in Goldsboro who sought freedom behind Union lines. Born into bondage on a cotton plantation in Bear Creek, North Carolina,
about 1849, Taylor was taken in by the men of the 5th Connecticut Infantry. While not all of the Union men were welcoming, Taylor found a friend in a corporal in the 5th named Charles Hallock. When Hallock decided to have his photograph taken, he asked Taylor if he’d join him. The resulting image is shown here. n After the war, Taylor accompanied Hallock to his home in Norwalk, Connecticut. Over the years, Taylor would work in a variety of jobs, marry three times, and help found the town’s first AfricanAmerican church. When he died in 1930, the Norwalk newspaper ran Taylor’s obituary and image on the front page, a sign of his importance to the community. He had outlived Hallock, a locksmith and father of two, by 13 years.
IMAGE COURTESY OF THE BUCK ZAIDEL COLLECTION; SOURCES: DIONE LONGLEY AND BUCK ZAIDEL, HEROES OF ALL TIME: CONNECTICUT CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS TELL THEIR STORIES (2015); “MEN OF CONNECTICUT! TO ARMS!!!” MILITARY IMAGES VOL. 33, NO. 2 (SPRING 2015)
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COURTESY OF MILITARY IMAGES, A MAGAZINE DEDICATED TO SHOWCASING, INTERPRETING, AND PRESERVING PHOTOS OF CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS AND SAIILORS. TO LEARN MORE, VISIT MILITARYIMAGESMAGAZINE.COM. THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR FALL 2015
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You are invited to a Spectacular Civil War Event! You are invited to a Spectacular Civil War Event!
A Christmas Past
COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG,VA
From Civil War battlefields to the American West, Gardner produced unforgettable images of the era.
1850s & 60s Civilianevents or Military Attire Required special include:
September 18 through March 13, 2016
DECEMBER 11-13, 2015 2015 December 11–13, Colonial Williamsburg, VA 1850s & 60s Civilian or Military Attire Required
Grand Ball ˜ Yuletide ˜ Special Events Include: The Groaning Board Spectacular ˜ Witch ~ Yuletide Ball ~ ˜ Trial Christmas High Tea ˜Private ˜ atGrand ˜ Meals Historic Taverns ~The Groaning Board Spectacular~ ˜ Meeting ˜ with a Founding Father ˜ Trial ˜ ~Witch ~ Corps Christmas Drum & Fife March &High EscortTea~ ˜ Illuminations of Capital Building ˜ ~Private at Historic Taverns~ ˜ Gun Meals ˜ Salutes Caroling & Bonfire
˜ ˜ ~Meeting with˜a Founding Father~ ~Drum & Fife Corps March & Escort~ www.GrandCivilianEvents.com ~Illumination of Capital Building~ 636-775-3330 ~Gun Salutes ~ Caroling & Bonfire~ IMAGE COURTESY OF THE BUCK ZAIDEL COLLECTION; SOURCES: DIONE LONGLEY AND BUCK ZAIDEL, HEROES OF ALL TIME: CONNECTICUT CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS TELL THEIR STORIES (2015); “MEN OF CONNECTICUT! TO ARMS!!!” MILITARY IMAGES VOL. 33, NO. 2 (SPRING 2015)
Dark Fields of the Republic: Alexander Gardner Photographs, 1859–1872
#DarkFields
Abraham Lincoln by Alexander Gardner, 1865, Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery
8th and F St. NW • Washington, DC 20001 • Free entry
www.GrandCivilianEvents.com 636-775-3330
Ships,
History Great
Historic Homes & Earthworks
AND
THE
Outdoors
USS Monitor Center at The Mariners’ Museum
Battle of the Ironclads
888.493.7386 newport-news.org
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Minutes from Williamsburg, A short drive from Virginia Beach.
8/20/15 12:09 AM
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by o . james lighthizer president, civil war trust
p r e s e r vat i o n
E
Victory for Campaign 150
The Trust was able to make preservation and 21st-century interpretation part of the media coverage of nearly every major battle anniversary, giving present-day implications to what might otherwise have amounted to simple “this day in history” recitations. Under the Campaign 150 banner, major acquisition efforts coincided with battle anniversaries, and critical lands were transferred to the National Park Service during relevant sesquicentennial commemorations. We emphasized the “completion” of battlefields by obtaining large tracts that dramatically enhanced current holdings, and by securing inholdings within existing parks. “By every measure imaginable, Campaign 150 proved to be a profound success, and all of that success is a testament to the dedication of many people and a great cause,” said campaign chairman Jeff Rodek. “The Civil War Trust wishes to thank each of the campaign’s tens of thousands of supporters for their role in this remarkable American success story.” The tally of Campaign 150
victories reads like a summary of the war’s greatest struggles: Manassas, Virginia (49 acres); Wilson’s Creek, Missouri (60 acres); Antietam, Maryland (44 acres); Chancellorsville, Virginia (133 acres); Brandy Station, Virginia (56 acres); Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (135 acres); the Wilderness, Virginia (50 acres); Resaca, Georgia (473 acres); and Appomattox, Virginia (52 acres). Moreover, the Trust made signifi-
LOOK FOR REGULAR PRESERVATION NEWS AND UPDATES FROM THE CIVIL WAR TRUST IN FUTURE ISSUES. TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION AND HOW YOU CAN HELP, VISIT CIVILWAR.ORG
cant progress in educating the public by providing free print and online educational tools, and completed a host of major land stewardship initiatives that restored landscapes and opened new interpretive trails in time for anniversary events. Campaign 150 was the successful realization of a focused, realistic roadmap for Civil War battlefield preservation in the 21st century. For all this success, however, much work remains. As long as there are historically significant pieces of land that are on the brink of destruction or salvageable through landscape reclamation efforts, the Civil War Trust will step forward to protect America’s hallowed ground. Learn more about how you can help at civilwar.org.
A view of part of the battlefield at Cedar Creek, Virginia, where Union and Confederate forces clashed on October 19, 1864. To date, the Trust has saved over 600 acres at Cedar Creek, 89 of them during Campaign 150.
CIVIL WAR TRUST (CIVILWAR.ORG)
with the sesquicentennial commemoration of the Civil War now concluded, the Civil War Trust has declared victory in Campaign 150: Our Time, Our Legacy, which raised more than $52.5 million to protect more than 10,000 acres of hallowed ground at 64 individual battlefields in 16 states—the largest sum ever privately raised for heritage land preservation. ¶ Trust leadership saw that the sesquicentennial would provide a natural resurgence of public interest in the Civil War, especially near growing urban areas. Thus, Campaign 150 was designed to help the general public look forward, and not just back, over the course of the anniversary, and shape the conversation of what the sesquicentennial would mean in the context of historical study.
B
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©
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Excerpt from Book III
Path of Pickett’s Charge
hard-pressed bellies flat to earth s’ empty, aint a chore designed… fit to test the ult’mate depervation comes of war no breeze so much ‘s stir the oppressive, fumin cannonade these drawn to challenge fate! I wait… m’ hand… the Black Trump Spade Gen’ral more ‘an ready lucky for the chance! names of o’er ten thousand men invitin Death to dance Sun! hazy, orange eclipse above the thumpin cannonade Card drawn for ever’ man! m’ hand… the Black Trump Spade Call the stretcherbearers! Here! where braver voices fail! Guide the leagues of wounded! Back! the reddened rearward trail! Sons of Jackson! Noble ‘nitiates… March! Beyond the cannonade O’er the hill… Confed’rate Freedom! yet, m’ hand… the Black Trump Spade Noon hour Silent Sunday Sabbath! couriers tiptoe whisp’rin commands Lee follows… with binoculars! Destinies left to God’s hands Ridges come alive! Volcanoes spewin… unrelentin molten cannonade Enfilade! Entire regiments… left! m’ hand… the Black Trump Spade
CIVIL WAR TRUST (CIVILWAR.ORG)
July Blazin! all convergin… disconcertin gallin groan! Echoes! each man ‘s converted… One appalin moan So Grand! Splendid affect! of such effective cannonade Strong Grasp! Our Prayer! Outlast! Spare! m’ hand… the Black Trump Spade Remainin… Hope! Remember! still… a hundred years! Time! and Time Again! Recordin what has happened here! That this not reoccur! Recall… the cursed cannonade! Let this Dirge be Unknown! Unplayed!... m’ hand… the Black Trump Spade ©2004 Postlethwaite Publishing. RHawk61@gmail.com
Illustration and design by DM Designs, LLC.
Books & Illustration Note Cards at Turn The Page Bookstore Boonsboro, Md. www.RHJournal.com and www.TTPbooks.com CWM17-FOB-Preservation.indd 19
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216 feet
figures
Height of Union Avenue building’s flagstaff, a gift from local ship carpenters valued at $1,800
Philadelphia’s Great Central Sanitary Fair ❚ HALL OF ARMS & TROPHIES
❚ HORTICULTURAL HALL
$300
Sale price of a model frigate made from a piece of the main topmast of USS Cumberland, which was destroyed by the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia
190 feet
Diameter of the hall
300 feet
Circumference of the lake that occupied the center of the hall
15 lbs.
Weight of a 20-inch Bowie knife on display, reportedly taken from one of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Confederate cavalrymen
❚ ART GALLERY
1,500
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Approximate number of works displayed
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❚ RESTAURANT DEPARTMENT
102 Number of items on the menu ❚ BREWERS AND MALTSTERS
150
Barrels of ale produced and consumed
133
Barrels of lager produced and consumed
$0.60 Price of the most expensive dish (Porter House Steak)
9,000 People “entertained daily” by 160 waiters at 180 tables. They consumed: 22,000 LBS. OF BEEF 11,250 LBS. OF CHICKEN 1,805 LBS. OF MUTTON 7,949 LBS. OF LOBSTER 469,000 OYSTERS 7,110 LBS. OF HAM 8,000 QUARTS OF MILK 1,127 QUARTS OF CREAM 8,928 QUARTS OF STRAWBERRIES 25,500 QUARTS OF ICE CREAM 21,341 LOAVES OF BREAD 12,126 LBS. OF SUGAR 3,475 LBS. OF BUTTER
❚ KITCHEN
30
Number of cooks “constantly at work”
from june 7 to june 28, 1864, Logan Square in Philadelphia played host to a massive fundraiser called the Great Central Fair. The event’s aim was to raise money for the United States Sanitary Commission, a private relief agency devoted since the war’s first summer to promoting “the health, comfort, and efficiency” of soldiers in the Union army. Months in the making and inspired by similar events recently held in other major northern cities, Philadelphia’s Sanitary Fair relied on the efforts of thousands of volunteers, who constructed and manned a series of elaborate buildings that hosted a variety of displays, exhibits, and shops. The three-week event was a resounding success, both financially and in the minds of its many visitors. In the words of one attendee, the Philadelphia Sanitary Fair was a “miracle of American spirit, energy, & beauty.” Another thought it “the most wonderful display of everything under the sun.”
❚ CONSTRUCTION
40
Number of days to construct the exhibit buildings
1.5 million
Square footage of lumber used to construct the exhibit buildings ❚ ATTENDANCE
253,924 Number of tickets sold
$1,010,976.68 Fair’s net proceeds
❚ UNION AVENUE BUILDING
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
540 feet long / 64 feet wide / 51 feet tall
SOURCES: CHARLES J. STILLE, MEMORIAL OF THE GREAT CENTRAL FAIR FOR THE U.S. SANITARY COMMISSION, HELD AT PHILADELPHIA, JUNE 1864 (1864); ANTHONY WASKIE, PHILADELPHIA AND THE CIVIL WAR: ARSENAL OF THE UNION (2011); J. MATTHEW GALLMAN, MASTERING WARTIME: A SOCIAL HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA (1990).
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disunion
by ron soodalter
the fourth of july celebration has all the hallmarks of a scene from Gone with the Wind, or a county fair in the most unreconstructed corners of Mississippi or Alabama. The men, dressed in Confederate gray shell jackets, yellow-trimmed frock coats, kepis, and plumed black slouch hats, cross the dance floor to select their partners, elegant young women in colorful hoop-skirted ball gowns. Arm in arm, they step to the rhythms of ancient dances, as the fiddle and banjo strike up the oldtime strains of “Dixie’s Land,” “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” “The Virginia Reel,” and “Cumberland Gap.” ¶ Meanwhile, families gather around banquet tables loaded down with dishes that are the products of centuries-old southern family recipes. Along the sidelines, vendors hawk Rebel battle flags, Confederate campaign caps, and T-shirts, mugs, and bumper stickers emblazoned with slogans like “Hell no, we won’t forget!” Nearby stands a small stucco-walled chapel. An old cemetery, shaded by Alabama pines and bougainvillea, contains over 500 graves with stones bearing such venerable southern names as MacKnight, Miller, and Baird; Steagall, Oliver, and Norris; Owens, Carlton, and Cobb. The setting is, in fact, in the South—very far south, in Brazil. The Festa Confederada is held as often as four times a year in Campo, an area carved out of the sugar cane fields outside Americana, a modern city of some 200,000 residents in the state of São Paulo. All the participants are “Confederados”—descendants of southerners who immigrated here in the days following the Civil War. The entire scene—the dress, the music, the food, even the conversation—is a carefully rendered homage to those
disaffected Rebels who elected to leave their conquered nation and make a new home in a foreign land. By 1866, the future for countless southerners appeared bleak. Not only had their bid for nationhood been destroyed; in many instances, so had their homes, their communities, and their livelihood. The prospect of living under the harsh fist of the conquering North was more than many were willing to bear. As one Confederado descendant wrote, “Helpless under military occupation and burdened by the psychology of defeat, a sense of guilt, and the economic devastation wrought by the war, many felt they had no choice but to leave.” There were other reasons. For some, the prospect of laboring alongside former slaves was unacceptable. And then there were those adventurers who hoped to find gold or silver in what was being widely touted as a tropical paradise. Whatever their impetus, for tens of thousands of southerners, the promise of a new beginning in a new land was
THIS ARTICLE IS EXCERPTED FROM DISUNION, A NEW YORK TIMES ONLINE SERIES FOLLOWING THE COURSE OF THE CIVIL WAR AS IT UNFOLDED. READ MORE AT WWW.NYTIMES.COM/ DISUNION.
irresistible, and Latin America beckoned. The southerners’ knowledge of agriculture made them an attractive asset, and a number of countries, including Mexico, Honduras, and Venezuela, competed to colonize the disaffected Americans. The most favorable offer, however, came from Brazil’s Emperor Dom Pedro II. Desperate to expand the cultivation of cotton in his country, he put together a proposal offering an impressive list of amenities, including the building of a new road and rail infrastructure for conveying crops to market. Brazil had been a strong ally to the Confederacy throughout the war, harboring and supplying Rebel ships. And although Brazil had closed its ports to the African slave trade in 1850, it would not abolish slavery for another 38 years. Of all the Latin American nations, Brazil was the one with which the southerners felt the strongest bond. In contrast to the often tired crops of the American South, Brazilian cotton was of a high quality, and could be harvested twice a year. Sugar cane, corn, rice, tobacco, bananas, and manioc flourished as well, and southern farmers, as well as doctors, teachers, dentists, merchants, artisans, and machinists, envisioned a glowing future. Brazil would become the New South! The all-too-real obstacles—a foreign culture with a difficult lan-
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COURTESY OF THE WEST POINT MUSEUM COLLECTION, UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY
Confederates in the Jungle
COURTESY OF THE WEST POINT MUSEUM COLLECTION, UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY
guage, strong native competition, an often hostile environment, a racially mixed society, a restrictive national religion, homesickness, and the loneliness of distance and isolation— factored little in their plans. There are no accurate records documenting the exact number of émigrés; some historians have placed the figure at around 40,000, from across the former Confederacy, and even loyal border states. For most, the first destination was Brazil’s capital, Rio de Janeiro. The vessels in which they sailed ranged from small packets to large ships, and while some completed the 5,600-mile voyage in an uneventful month, for others the trip was arduous, and sometimes fatal. When the southerners disembarked, they were greeted by brass bands, parades, and flowery speeches. One former
Downhearted Rebel troops pack away their colors during the surrender ceremony at Appomattox Court House in April 1865 in Richard Norris Brooke’s 1872 painting “Furling the Flag.” Unwilling to live in the reunified United States, some 40,000 Confederate veterans and civilians headed south to begin new lives in countries including Mexico, Honduras, Venezuela, and—most successfully—Brazil.
Confederate general recalled, “Balls and parties and serenades were our nightly accompaniment and whether in town or in the country it was one grand unvarying scene of life, love and seductive friendship.” The emperor greeted many of the new arrivals personally, as the bands played “Dixie.” Conditions would never be this elegant again. Dom Pedro’s grand promises of governmental support for the farmers went generally unfulfilled, through no fault of his own. Coincidentally, the year the Civil War ended brought the outbreak of the War of the Triple Alliance, in which Brazil played a major part. The booming economy of the previous decades collapsed, plunging the country into an economic depression. By the time the first southerners arrived, the emperor was confronting
enormous internal issues, and struggling with poor health. The colonists were left to make their own way. While most members of the southern professional class settled in the larger cities, such as Rio and São Paulo, the rest chose to literally plant their roots farther down the coast or in the vast, dense interior. Their scattered colonies dotted a 250-square-mile stretch along the country’s east coast, and great distances often separated them. Many of the chosen locations were inhospitable and illsuited for growing crops. Without the promised road and rail system, crops that did thrive often grew too far from the market. Farms failed, community leaders died, and colonies fell apart under power struggles and losing battles with illness and the elements. Some disil- ☛ } CONT. ON P. 72
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c o s t o f wa r
$40,250 A SERGEANT’S LUCKY COAT BRINGS A WINDFALL THE ARTIFACT
The regulation shell jacket worn by Sergeant Henry H. Stone, Company I, 11th Massachusetts Infantry
CONDITION
The coat shows wartime repairs. Its lining has some tears and one missing piece, which appears to have been removed during the conflict. No buttons survive. DETAILS
In June 1861, Stone, a 20-year-old fireman from Charlestown, Massachusetts, enlisted in the 11th Massachusetts, also known as the Boston Volunteers. The regiment originally wore state-issued gray uniforms, but soon after going into battle at First
Bull Run it switched to the standard Union blue clothing. Stone would wear his new coat during some of the Army of the Potomac’s greatest battles, including Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg, where he was grazed in the arm by a bullet during the fighting for the Peach Orchard on July 2, 1863. He would wear the jacket—which he came to call his “lucky coat”—into battle several more times in early 1864, each time emerging unscathed, before sending it to Massachusetts in April at the request of his mother, who, he notes in an accompanying letter, “wish[ed] for me to send home any of my clothes that I may have worn in the Battle of Gettysburg.” The following month, Stone was taken prisoner during the fighting at Spotsylvania Court House and sent to Andersonville,
where he remained until exchanged in December. He mustered out of the service in February 1865 and returned to Charlestown. According to his great-granddaughter, who passed the coat on to a Civil War collector in 1970, Stone donned the jacket every Memorial Day until his death in 1892. EXTRAS
In addition to his jacket, the collection also included a photograph of Stone, two letters he sent to his mother while away at war, copies of his military and pension records from the National Archives, a complete transcript of a diary he kept while a prisoner at Andersonville, and an old newspaper interview in which he recounted his “Andersonville Memories.” QUOTABLE
Of his capture and imprisonment, Stone
would later note: “I became a captive with others in what was General Hancock’s charge … the extreme right of the line. We were ordered on to the works, and some of us found ourselves in a trap with nothing to do but surrender or be shot down…. We surrendered and six terrible months began for me right off. It was pretty hard on a man who saw home so near, but such is the luck of war.” VALUE
$40,250 (price realized at Cowan’s Auctions Inc. in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 2009). “Genuine examples of Civil War enlisted infantry uniforms are extraordinarily rare,” noted Wes Cowan, founder and owner of Cowan’s Auctions, at the time of the sale, “and this truly historic coat with impeccable provenance is quite frankly unprecedented.”
COWAN’S AUCTIONS INC. (COWANSAUCTIONS.COM)
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CLoSE oUT SALE Limited edition CoLLeCtors PLates Commemorating The Sesquicentennial of the Civil War, 1861–1865
I
COWAN’S AUCTIONS INC. (COWANSAUCTIONS.COM)
ndividually hand-wrought, forged aluminum, these Civil War Commemorative Plates feature a detailed recreation of the Siege of Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861, and Secretary of the Treasury John A. Dix’s handwritten order to Union treasury agents. Each 6" diameter plate arrives in a custom presentation box, perfect for safekeeping, making this a unique and historic gift.
Handmade in the USA $25.00 for both (plus $6.00 S&H)
Don’t delay! Limited Quanitities. For additional information, email cheller1@kent.edu, ksupress@kent.edu, or call 330-672-7913.
The Kent State University Press
1118 University Library • Kent, Ohio 44242-0001 www.kentstateuniversitypress.com
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in focus
Return of the 69th
by bob zeller president , center for civil war photography
THE CENTER FOR CIVIL WAR PHOTOGRAPHY IS A NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION DEVOTED TO COLLECTING, PRESERVING, AND DIGITIZING CIVIL WAR IMAGES FOR THE PUBLIC BENEFIT. TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE CCWP AND ITS MISSION, VISIT CIVILWARPHOTOGRAPHY. ORG
BOB ZELLER COLLECTION
“i have just been up to the corner to see a sorry sight, the return of the 69th Regiment,” wrote Abby Howland Woolsey to her sister, Eliza, shortly after 10 a.m. on the morning of July 27, 1861. “[O]h, so shabby, so worn and weary—all sorts of hats and shirts and some with hardly any clothes at all, staggering along under their knapsacks which they should never have been allowed to carry....” Woolsey was describing the men of the 69th New York State Militia as they marched through the streets of Manhattan upon their return from the seat of war. Six days earlier, the regiment, composed largely of men of Irish birth and descent, had participated in the Union defeat at Bull Run, where it had performed admirably but suffered significant losses—nearly 200 casualties, including its commander, Colonel Michael Corcoran, who was taken prisoner. This “instantaneous” (stop-action) image, originally published as a stereo view by E. & H.T. Anthony & Co. in 1861, shows the battle-weary soldiers as they march up a flag-festooned Broadway, squeezed by throngs of well-wishers, some of whom hold umbrellas to ward off the summer sun’s hot rays. It was an impressive scene, as Woolsey noted in her letter to her sister. “The surging mass of men and women locking arms and walking with the[m] … was wonderful. It was a wild, tumultuous, promiscuous rush— not a march.”
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BOB ZELLER COLLECTION
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american iliad
The Sword of General Lee oined by the popular historian Otto Eisenschmil in 1947, the term “American Iliad” brilliantly captures the essence of so many Americans’ passion for the Civil War.1 A man once told me, in complete seriousness, that the story of the war was his religion. And while a conflict that killed over 2 percent of our country’s population may not be the best thing to construct an entire worldview around, it is probably not the worst thing, either. Abraham Lincoln’s magnanimity, Ulysses S. Grant’s perseverance in the face of all obstacles, and Robert E. Lee’s grace in defeat all provide strong life lessons. Although it is plainly exceptional to regard the Civil War as a religion, it is obvious that the Civil War routinely functions as a national myth, a way to understand ourselves as Americans. And like the classic mythologies of old, it contains timeless wisdom of what it means to be a human being. Homer’s Iliad tells us much about war, but it also tells us much about life. The American Iliad does the same thing. Foundational to the American Iliad is the conviction that the conflict was not a struggle between darkness and light, freedom and tyranny, but rather between two sides, equally gallant, committed to different but morally equivalent visions of the American republic, and therefore caught up in a tragedy larger than themselves, “a war of brothers.” In his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Killer Angels, arguably one of the influential modern tellings of this Iliad, Michael Shaara has Confederate general James Longstreet muse, “The war had come as a nightmare in which you chose your nightmare side.”2 Robert E. Lee provides the most prominent example of a soldier forced to make this choice. With the exception of Lincoln, Lee is perhaps the foremost protagonist in the American Iliad’s pantheon. In mythic terms he is the ideal man, the perfect warrior, the flawless gentleman—“the Christlike Lee,” as histo-
To view this article’s reference notes, turn to our Notes section on page 78.
rian Kenneth Stampp once put it.3 On the eve of the war he is a full colonel, so obviously gifted that Lincoln offers him command of the armies that must extinguish the rebellion should war break out. Lee declines. Despite a lifetime’s service to the United States—and despite telling his siblings that “I recognize no necessity for this [rebellion]”—he feels honor-bound to resign from the U.S. Army when Virginia, his homeland, secedes. “Save in defense of my native State,” he says, “I have no desire ever again to draw my sword.”4 But of course he must defend his native state. Thus it is the protection of hearth and home, not the abstract principle of states’ rights and certainly not the preservation of slavery, which governs his decision. “I did only what my duty demanded,” he would write in 1868. “I could have taken no other course without dishonor. And if it all were to be done over again, I should act in precisely the same manner.”5 Historian Alan Nolan once questioned whether Lee’s fateful choice to draw his sword against the United States was as ethical as the great captain maintained.6 But the American Iliad is emphatic that it was indeed Lee’s only path. Lee’s decision provides the opening of the American Iliad, for, like Homer’s Iliad, this Iliad
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ANNE S.K. BROWN MILITARY COLLECTION
MYTHOLOGIZING THE FAMED CONFEDERATE LEADER’S DECISION TO GO TO WAR BY MARK GRIMSLEY
ANNE S.K. BROWN MILITARY COLLECTION
In many popular retellings of the Civil War, Robert E. Lee (depicted here) is viewed as an ideal man, a perfect warrior and flawless gentleman who had no choice but to choose the path he did in 1861.
begins with the war underway. It is the first iconic episode, by which I mean the sort of episode that Civil War buffs know by heart. A typical buff can take you step by step through the three days of Gettysburg but generally knows far less detail about the origins of the conflict. Instead they often have rather vague ideas that the South left the Union in defense of states’ rights against a government that embodied centralized political power, or that the war pitted the agrarian South against the industrial North, or even that it was a cultural clash between a supposedly Celtic South against a supposedly Anglo North. These views are nearly always asserted, not argued. These explanations function simply to push the sordid political details (particularly the defense of slavery) out of the picture and just get on with the almost purely military story, for the American Iliad is all about generals, soldiers, and battles. The war, in mythic terms, is not “a continuation of politics,” to use the famous definition of war espoused by the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz. It’s not a continuation of anything. It’s just there. And thus Lee is helplessly in the grip of something that resembles a natural disaster more than a ☛ } CONT. ON P. 72
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living history
A FRENCHMAN’S UNLIKELY CAREER AS THE LEADING CONSERVATOR OF CONFEDERATE MARITIME ARTIFACTS BY JENNY JOHNSTON
aul mardikian never intended to become an authority on the American Civil War. Growing up in Paris, France, he was far more interested in the Atlantic Ocean itself than anything that had ever happened on its other side. It was the 1970s, an era when the French undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau was reaching peak popularity. The more TV broadcasts Mardikian watched of Cousteau floating past shipwrecks in his mini submarine, Calypso, the more he felt drawn to the sea and its undiscovered historical treasures. Something about those moments—the thrill of finding objects lost, relics no living person had seen before—settled deep into his bones. In college, Mardikian experimented with underwater archaeology but then quickly found his calling: the conservation of cultural artifacts that had spent years or even centuries on the ocean floor. Removing the near-petrified mass of sand and sea life that encased most longsubmerged artifacts, and that was often harder than the artifacts themselves, could be difficult and destructive. But Mardikian soon displayed a knack for taking “giants lumps of something that looks like nothing” and figuring out how best to both reveal and preserve the cultural heritage inside them. When RMS Titanic was found in 1985—the most famous shipwreck in history—Mardikian was invited to join the conservation team. He was just 22 years old. Slowly and meticulously, he rescued dozens of Titanic artifacts from the sediment blocks in which they’d been entombed, 12,500 feet underwater for 73 years. He conserved several of the ship’s compasses, as well as the legendary bell from the ship’s crow’s nest— the one that was rung to announce that an iceberg was in sight. But it was another ship discovered the same year as Titanic that turned the Frenchman’s career toward the American Civil War. CSS Alabama was a Confederate commerce raider, noto-
“ T HERE IS THE LIFE OF THE OBJECT WHEN IT WAS MADE, WHEN IT WAS USED, AND ITS LIFE AS A LOST OBJECT.” Paul Mardikian (above)
rious for its skill at capturing and burning Union merchant ships, that sank in French waters in June 1864 during a battle with USS Kearsarge. Three years after the discovery, the U.S. Navy hired Mardikian to help conserve many of the recovered objects. “I started my career working on Civil War artifacts in 1988, and I never stopped,” said Mardikian. Indeed, between Alabama and what was to follow, he has spent more time in and around Confederate war ships than any Confederate ever did. Among the Alabama artifacts that Mardikian conserved were the ship’s long-range rifled Blakely cannon; its steering wheel (which was etched, in French, with the words “God helps those who help themselves”); and its surprisingly extravagant toilets. To mislead spies, Alabama had been built to look like an expensive yacht, all the way down to the toilets, which were constructed from lead, brass, wood, cast iron, and china. “Those toilets were unbelievable,” recalled Mardikian. “They were the most spectacular toilets that one could conserve.” One of the toilets showed signs of having been repaired back when CSS Alabama was still out raiding Union ships. Mardikian was careful to pre-
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FRIENDS OF THE HUNLEY (2)
P
Rebel Restorer
FRIENDS OF THE HUNLEY (2)
serve those traces. “There is the life of the object when it was made, when it was used, and its life as a lost object,” explained Mardikian. “You look at all those layers of history and you need to preserve them.” Returning an object to its original state, he said, would be like removing the scars from your body, along with all of their stories. “They are all part of your history, all part of your layers.” In 1995, while Mardikian was living in the south of France and still working on Alabama, news spread of an even bigger Civil War-era maritime find. It was CSS Hunley, the first submarine ever to sink an enemy vessel. After using a torpedo to destroy USS Housatonic, a blockade ship stationed in Charleston Harbor, in February 1864, Hunley and its eightman crew had disappeared. Mardikian had never heard of Hunley, but a submarine? His mind must have flashed back
Early in his career as a marine conservation specialist, Paul Mardikian displayed a knack for revealing and preserving long-submerged artifacts. Above: Mardikian and a colleague work to restore the exterior of the Confederate submarine CSS Hunley, which was raised in 2000 after sitting for 136 years at the bottom of Charleston Harbor.
to memories of Jacques Cousteau’s Calypso. His interest was immediately piqued. The U.S. Navy called again, this time offering him the chance to serve as Hunley’s senior conservator. It would be another long-term Civil War project, even longer than the last one. He would have to leave France and move to South Carolina. And everything about the vessel’s conservation plan would need to be created from scratch. “It’s a small sub, but it’s a giant artifact,” said Mardikian. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He took the job. That was 16 years ago, and through careful conservation Hunley has revealed answers to questions that historians had been debating for decades: the crew were still at their posts; the sub likely went down close to the time that Housatonic sank, based on when the captain’s ornate gold pocket watch
(which Mardikian conserved) stopped; Hunley was very close to Housatonic when the explosion occurred. Most recently, the letters “CN” were revealed under the hard layers of sediment coating the sub’s hull. “If you’re very careful in the way you clean the surface, you can see a scratch that was left 150 years ago,” said Mardikian. The restoration of the exterior is nearly finished, except for the forward conning tower, which has damages that could be linked to the attack. A complete conservation of Hunley’s interior will follow. Whether another Civil Warera ship turns up soon needing Mardikian’s attention is anyone’s guess. In the meantime, his work recently turned in a surprising direction. In 2013, he was hired to conserve 12,000 pounds of the Apolloera engines used to propel the Saturn V rockets to the moon. The ☛ } CONT. ON P. 72
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THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA (LEFT); ISTOCK
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EMBATTLED BANNER THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA (LEFT); ISTOCK
three days after the fatal shooting of the pastor and eight African-American parishioners at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17, 2015, photos surfaced showing the young white man charged with the murders posing with a Confederate battle flag. The images inflamed the decades-long debate over the contentious banner, in particular its presence on the grounds of the statehouse in Columbia. Calls to remove the flag—which had flown above the capitol dome from 1962 to 2000, when it was moved to a 30-foot flagpole nearby—quickly gained momentum. On July 6, after five hours of debate, the South Carolina Senate voted to remove the banner; the South Carolina House followed suit three days later. The next day, a Highway Patrol honor guard lowered the Confederate flag and turned it over to the curator of the city’s Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum. ¶ To help make sense of these remarkable developments and their larger impact, we sat down for a conversation with tony horwitz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Confederates in the Attic. His insightful 1998 book details his yearlong travels through the American South in search of the reasons behind the region’s continued preoccupation with the Civil War, the durability of the Lost Cause interpretation of the conflict, and the passionate debate surrounding Confederate symbols—including the divisive battle flag. Left: The battle flag carried by the 15th South Carolina Infantry. Above: The Confederate battle flag flies on the grounds of the South Carolina statehouse in Columbia before its July 2015 removal.
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Is this a watershed moment in the history of Confederate memory? Or in American culture more generally? Members of the South Carolina Highway Patrol remove the Confederate battle flag from the capitol grounds in Columbia on July 10, 2015.
“ I AM 44 YEARS OLD. I NEVER THOUGHT I’D SEE THIS MOMENT. I STAND WITH PEOPLE WHO NEVER THOUGHT THEY WOULD SEE THIS AS WELL…. IT’S EMOTIONAL FOR US NOT JUST BECAUSE IT CAME DOWN, BUT WHY IT CAME DOWN.” Todd Rutherford, South Carolina House minority leader and member of the South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus, July 9, 2015
We’re clearly witnessing a watershed moment in the memory of the Confederacy and of our history generally. What started as a movement to furl a piece of cloth has exploded into a national debate over remembrance and memorialization of the Civil War. Until recently, I suspect, most Americans didn’t give much thought to driving down Jeff Davis Highway, serving at military bases named for generals who fought against the U.S., or passing statues to ardent advocates of slavery and secession. This was all just part of our landscape, like McDonald’s Golden Arches. Now, many Americans are at least pausing to reflect on these names and symbols and whether they’re appropriate. More broadly, there’s been recognition that no symbol is static; the time, context, and audience all matter. The Rebel flag may have been seen as a battle standard to a soldier charging behind it at Gettysburg in 1863. The same flag signaled something very different a century later, when Governor George Wallace hoisted it above the Alabama State House. One person’s heritage is another person’s hate. The brouhaha over symbols has also brought renewed attention to the true history of the Confederate cause. Let’s be honest. Most students of the Civil War, North and South, have long preferred to dwell on the great leaders and battles and heroism of soldiers and civilians, rather than focus on the knottier and more divisive issues underlying the conflict. We don’t ignore these issues, but most of us were drawn to the war in the first place by its drama and, yes, its romance. We want to share our knowledge and passion peaceably (and for some us, profitably) with as wide an audience as possible. Shining a laser light on slavery and the racism of white Americans in 1861 raises uncomfortable questions and risks spoiling the reverence many of us feel for that era. Meanwhile, Americans who don’t share our keen interest in the Civil War and history generally have continued to absorb a vague and sanitized understanding of the conflict. In polls, more Americans cite
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PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE
tony horwitz: There’s been low-grade warfare over the Confederate flag for decades, so I wasn’t surprised to see this battle flare anew. What did surprise me was that the fight over South Carolina’s flag leapt like wildfire to other states and other symbols. Almost overnight, it seemed, every emblem, name, and monument related to the Confederacy was suddenly up for grabs. There are many reasons for this turnaround, including the South’s fast-changing demographics, Republican politics, the “Black Lives Matter” movement, and the power of the Internet to spread information and mobilize far-flung Americans. The swiftness and range of the campaign also says to me that this reckoning was long overdue. It’s not news that the battle flag is deeply offensive to a large portion of the South’s population. But the cur-
rent debate reveals a broader, pent-up desire to liberate the South from a mythic and burdensome narrative that misrepresents the region as a whole. The Lost Cause, and almost all the monuments to it, arose in the late 19th and early 20th century, when Jim Crow was at its height and the South was still predominantly agrarian, impoverished, and isolated. That stopped being true a long time ago, and increasingly so in the last few decades, as the South has become an economically vibrant and globalized region of roughly 100 million people. I suspect future historians of this moment won’t simply study why the tide turned against Confederate symbols so dramatically in June 2015. They’ll question why in the world battle flags and other emblems were still being so prominently displayed a century and half after Appomattox.
RANDI BAIRD (UPPER LEFT); ASSOCIATED PRESS (LEFT); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Were you at all surprised by the recent efforts to take down the Confederate flag?
PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE
RANDI BAIRD (UPPER LEFT); ASSOCIATED PRESS (LEFT); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
An elderly man sits before the Confederate flag in a 1913 photograph captioned “The Conquered Banner.”
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“ ARE [CONFEDERATE FLAGS ON] … LICENSE PLATES NEXT? YES, AND A HUNDRED OTH AND BOULEVARDS, NAMES OF LIBRARIES. THESE ATTACKS ARE THE EQUIVALENT OF C IT’S A WAR GOING ON HERE. IT’S A WAR AGAINST CONFEDERATE HERITAGE.” Ben Jones, chief of heritage operations for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, June 2015
PHOTOGRAPH LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CREDIT HERE
Union and Confederate veterans wave their respective flags at a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1913.
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RED OTHER THINGS. STATUES LENT OF CULTURAL CLEANSING.…
“states rights” than slavery as the primary cause of the conflict. Millions of visitors flock to former slave plantations, attracted, for the most part, by the lingering Gone With the Wind romance surrounding the Old South’s “way of life.” Many Americans believe that thousands of slaves and free blacks fought willingly for the Confederacy in defense of their “homeland.” Scholars, of course, have been shredding such fictions for decades, and presenting the clear and overwhelming evidence that slavery was the “cornerstone” of the southern cause, as the Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens famously stated. Thanks to the current debate, and the Internet, which makes the primary documents so easy to disseminate and access, I like to think many Americans are receiving a bracing tutorial on slavery and its role in the Civil War.
What, if anything, do you think advocates on both sides of the current debate are missing?
PHOTOGRAPH LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CREDIT HERE
I’m not sure anything is being missed, but there’s one issue that certainly deserves more emphasis. Slavery wasn’t just the cornerstone of the Confederacy. It was the bedrock underlying a great deal of America before the war. Slave-grown cotton powered northern mills, provided almost three quarters of the nation’s exports, and enriched shippers and banks and universities and countless other institutions. Most of our prewar presidents were slaveholders, and the quest for plantation land drove many of our nation’s policies, including Indian removal and the Mexican War. Northern states gradually ended slavery, but they enacted harsh anti-black laws and most northern whites accepted slavery’s existence so long as it didn’t expand outside the South. Abolitionists were a tiny and widely despised minority. Again, none of this is news. Scholarly works on slavery’s national (and international) reach abound. But I don’t think much of this history has penetrated popular con-
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The banner often described today as “the” Confederate flag was but one of many standards flown by southerners during the Civil War. Here is a sampling of the more prominent of these emblems.
1
3
FIRST NATIONAL FLAG
Adopted in March 1861, the Confederacy’s first official national flag— known as the Stars and Bars—mimicked the U.S. flag with white and red horizontal stripes and a blue canton with white stars to represent the new nation’s states. (The flag went through four versions as states joined the Confederacy.) Its similarity to the Stars and Stripes—it was repeatedly confused with the U.S. flag at First Bull Run in July 1861—made the banner impractical and unpopular among many southerners. (The editor of the Charleston Mercury noted how it “resemble[d] too closely the dishonored ‘Flag of Yankee Doodle.’”) Shown here is the First National Flag carried by the 10th Georgia Infantry.
The flag confusion at Bull Run spurred Confederate officials to create a more distinctive battle banner. In the fall of 1861, the Army of Northern Virginia adopted a square red flag with a star-laden blue saltire—the so-called “Southern Cross” that remains the symbol most associated with the Confederacy. The Army of Northern Virginia would carry the banner until war’s end, its regiments (like the 28th North Carolina Infantry, whose flag is pictured above) often adorning their versions with the names of the battles in which they fought. ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA (ACWM.ORG)
1
BATTLE FLAG OF THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA
SECOND NATIONAL FLAG
On May 1, 1863, the Confederate Congress approved a new national flag to replace the Stars and Bars. Dubbed the Stainless Banner for its pure white field, the flag utilized the iconic Southern Cross in its canton. While the new banner initially drew good reviews, it was eventually criticized for, among other things, being too easily soiled and too closely resembling a flag of truce. Still, some southerners maintained an affinity for the banner. The editor of the Morning News in Savannah, Georgia, for one, thought the white field was an appropriate symbol. “As a people, we are fighting to maintain the heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored races,” he noted. “A White Flag would be thus emblematical of our cause.” Pictured at right is the Second National Flag flown at the headquarters of Confederate general Simon Bolivar Buckner.
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ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA (ACWM.ORG)
1
THIRD NATIONAL FLAG
The Confederacy adopted its third, and final, national standard on March 4, 1865. The flag had only a slight variation from the Second National Flag—the addition of a red bar to help distinguish it from a flag of truce when hanging limp. In the end, few flags of this design were manufactured; little more than a month after its authorization, Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House. The Third National Flag shown here was captured in Richmond at war’s end.
1
5
SECOND CONFEDERATE NAVY JACK
One of several banners officially flown by vessels of the Confederate navy, the Second Confederate Navy Jack—a rectangular version of the Army of Northern Virginia’s battle flag—was in use between 1863 and 1865. It is this flag—also used during the war by the Army of Tennessee when commanded by General Joseph E. Johnston—that is today considered by many to be “the” Confederate flag and a symbol of the American South.
BONNIE BLUE FLAG
The Bonnie Blue Flag—consisting of a single five-pointed star on a blue field— served as the unofficial banner of the Confederacy during the conflict’s early months. Its raising above the state capitol in Jackson, Mississippi, in January 1861 inspired the popular song “The Bonnie Blue Flag,” which helped cement the banner’s status as a symbol of secession. A number of Confederate military units— among them the Catawba Light Infantry, a company in the 5th South Carolina (whose banner is shown here)— incorporated the symbol in their regimental flags.
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sciousness. Many Americans regard slavery and Confederate symbols as having nothing to do with them— it’s all “a Southern thing.” It’s not. Whether your roots are northern or southern, or even if your forebears came to this country long after Appomattox, you have a stake in this debate. All of us as residents of the U.S. have inherited a world that was shaped by slavery and the Civil War.
Is there a “right way”—for Americans in general and southerners in particular—to remember the Confederacy? The Confederacy stood on the wrong side of history and in violent opposition to our nation’s most cherished principles of liberty and equality. Secession and slavery aren’t causes that our nation should celebrate or revere.
The Confederate flag has often appeared at racially charged demonstrations, including this protest over the admission of nine AfricanAmerican students to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957.
“ THE CONFEDERATE BATTLE FLAG WAS A SIGN OF DEFIANCE, A SIGN OF PRIDE, A DECLARATION OF A GEOGRAPHICAL AREA THAT YOU WERE PROUD TO BE FROM. THAT’S ALL IT IS TO ME AND ALL IT EVER HAS EVER BEEN TO ME.” Country musician Charlie Daniels, June 26, 2015
This campaign has a long way to go, in part because there are so many names and statues and mascots out there. Also, this issue has migrated from the state to the federal level, and downward to cities, towns, counties, school districts, and other jurisdictions that must debate the fate of hundreds, if not thousands, of names, monuments, and other emblems of the Confederacy—not to mention all the merchandise. In some cases, changes will likely occur without much of a stir. It’s relatively easy to furl a flag in a government building, move a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest from the Tennessee State Capitol to a nearby museum, or change the name of a state highway that few care about much in the first place. But what about the towering statues on Monument Avenue in Richmond, or the much smaller ones on courthouse
SOURCES: “S.C. House Approves Bill To Remove Confederate Flag From Statehouse,” AP, July 9, 2015; “Flags,” June 26, 2015, charliedaniels.com; “Nikki Haley: Confederate Flag ‘Should Have Never Been There,’” cnn.com/2015/07/10/ politics/nikki-haley-confederate-flag-removal/index.html; “Remarks by the President in Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney,” whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/06/26/remarks-president-eulogy-honorablereverend-clementa-pinckney; “Confederate License Tags in Cross Hairs, but Not in South Carolina,” politico.com/ story/2015/06/confederate-license-plates-in-crosshairs-but-not-in-south-carolina-119335.html. THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR
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JASON GRINDLE/ISTOCK
President Barack Obama (above), in his eulogy for the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, one of nine people killed at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, June 26, 2015
How deep do you think this surge against Confederate symbols will go? Should we be debating high school sports teams’ names and Confederate flag merchandise, or can the
quest to purge our public spaces from Confederate symbols be taken too far?
WHITEHOUSE.GOV; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
“ REMOVING THE FLAG FROM THIS STATE’S CAPITOL WOULD NOT BE AN ACT OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS; IT WOULD NOT BE AN INSULT TO THE VALOR OF CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS. IT WOULD SIMPLY BE AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT THAT THE CAUSE FOR WHICH THEY FOUGHT—THE CAUSE OF SLAVERY—WAS WRONG— THE IMPOSITION OF JIM CROW AFTER THE CIVIL WAR, THE RESISTANCE TO CIVIL RIGHTS FOR ALL PEOPLE WAS WRONG.”
But our history is filled with events and figures we find troubling or worthy of condemnation today. Very few Americans (I hope) believe it was right to dispossess, break treaties with, and massacre Indian tribes. My own view is that we should remember the Confederacy by being as honest and accurate about it as we can: in our textbooks, at our national parks, on markers by the monuments (assuming they remain standing). Let’s try to take the myth and contemporary politics out of our approach to that era, educate the public, and frankly discuss the roots and legacy of the Confederacy. I know, easier said than done.
squares across the South, or others that are owned not by the public but by organizations like the United Daughters of the Confederacy? There’s another complication: Not all Confederates and monuments are alike. Should we treat a political leader like Jefferson Davis the same as a military general? Should Robert E. Lee be swept into the dustbin of history with the notorious Forrest? What about Confederate soldiers, most of whom weren’t slaveholders and many of whom were draftees rather than volunteers? We don’t regard the Vietnam War memorial as an endorsement of U.S. policy in Indochina. Should we revile hundreds of thousands of southerners, and take down monuments erected to them, because they fought and died for a cause that most Americans now regard as unjust?
In debating these questions, I hope Americans don’t succumb to reflexive overreach and scrub history as we’re trying to correct its wrongs. For instance, I’m already hearing instances of educational games and DVDs being pulled from shelves and websites because they in some way incorporate the Rebel battle flag. And Confederate reenactors, most of whom regard themselves as educators or “living historians,” wonder if they will be able to appear in public without being shouted at or spit on. I also hope most of the monuments will remain standing, because they’re vivid historical documents in their own right. For me, studying a stone Rebel and reading the florid inscriptions give tremendous insight into the psychology of the Lost Cause and those who saw fit to put up these monuments. Rather than
JASON GRINDLE/ISTOCK
WHITEHOUSE.GOV; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
A man holds a sign protesting the Confederate flag’s presence at the South Carolina State House on June 28, 2015.
“ THE BIGGEST REASON I ASKED FOR THAT FLAG TO COME DOWN WAS I COULDN’T LOOK MY CHILDREN IN THE FACE AND JUSTIFY IT STAYING THERE.” South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, on why she supported removing the Confederate flag from statehouse grounds, July 10, 2015
tear these monuments down, let’s add interpretive plaques that teach the public about the long, dark era of white supremacy and racial subjugation that gave birth to them.
Have recent events forced you to reconsider anything you wrote back in 1998’s Confederates in the Attic? My book was in part a snapshot of Civil War memory in the South in the mid to late 1990s, and I believe it’s an accurate and balanced portrayal of what I saw. But in seeking out the most active nodes of Confederate remembrance, I naturally gravitated toward Civil War sites, heritage groups, reenactments, and locales where memory of the conflict was strongest. As a result, I spent most of my time in smaller cities, towns, and rural areas, rather than in large metropolitan areas. In retrospect, I could have made it clearer that the world I described was only a part of the South and not representative of its fast-changing urban and suburban society. When I travel in the South now (as I’m doing for a new book), I’m struck by the pace and breadth of the region’s transformation. The people and attitudes I described in Confederates still exist, but they’re an aging and diminishing voice in a cacophony of Millennials, recent immigrants, newcomers from across the U.S., and others who simply don’t care about the Confederacy, are hostile to it, or want to embrace a truer and more welcoming image of what the South is today. I saw signs of that “New South” emerging in the 1990s and wrote about it in Confederates. But if I could beam myself back 20 years, I’d pay more attention to the demographic and other changes that underlie the current movement among so many southerners to finally secede from the old Confederacy. TONY HORWITZ IS A JOURNALIST AND WRITER WHOSE BOOKS INCLUDE TWO ABOUT THE CIVIL WAR ERA, CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC: DISPATCHES FROM THE UNFINISHED CIVIL WAR (1998) AND MIDNIGHT RISING: JOHN BROWN AND THE RAID THAT SPARKED THE CIVIL WAR (2011). HE’S CURRENTLY AT WORK ON A THIRD, ABOUT THE ANTEBELLUM SOUTH.
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MINISTER OF
DEC
President Abraham Lincoln (third from left) reads a draft of his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet in this 1864 painting by Francis B. Carpenter. Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s second secretary of war, sits at far left.
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ECEIT
THE SLY BETRAYALS AND TREACHEROUS WORKINGS OF SECRETARY OF WAR
EDWIN M. STANTON BY WILLIAM MARVEL
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He had hardly taken the oath of office as James Buchanan’s attorney general when he started carrying exaggerated versions of confidential cabinet discussions to the opposition party, and his infidelity to Andrew Johnson during Reconstruction is legendary. Less well known are his disloyal intrigues while serving as secretary of war to Abraham Lincoln, whose opponents he courted when the wind seemed to be blowing their way. Even as a fledgling lawyer, Edwin M. Stanton molded his political persona to suit those who could best serve his interests. He studied law in his native town of Steubenville, Ohio, and began practicing as soon as he reached his majority, at the end of 1835. He gained notoriety in that town as the junior partner of Judge Benjamin Tappan, who served in the U.S. Senate as an anti-bank, antimonopoly Locofoco Democrat, and Stanton showed unmistakable deference to the judge’s political opinions. Tappan sympathized with the abolition politics of his better-known brothers, Lewis and Arthur; Stanton allowed the Tappans and influential antislavery politicians like Senator Salmon P. Chase to believe that he shared those sentiments, but he dodged or ignored all Chase’s efforts to enlist him in that crusade.1 After Senator Tappan retired, Stanton made surreptitious efforts to ingratiate himself to other Ohioans in Congress with cautiously ambiguous flattery of their conflicting positions. First he offered antislavery Representative Jacob Brinkerhoff gratuitous congratulations for speaking against slave-state ambitions for expansion into Texas, but their correspondence was cut short when Brinkerhoff was denied nomi-
nation to another term. Stanton then turned to pro-slavery Senator William Allen, whose belligerent nationalist demands he complimented with equal zeal.2 During the war with Mexico, Stanton entered a new partnership in Pittsburgh, where he avoided active participation in politics and concentrated on the law. Over several years he achieved regional renown by winning an injunction against a bridge spanning the Ohio River at Wheeling, Virginia, arguing that it impeded the interstate traffic of steamboats, the larger of which could not pass beneath the bridge. In 1855 he further enhanced his reputation as part of the legal team of John Manny, whom Cyrus McCormick was suing for infringement of his reaper patents. The trial was held in Cincinnati in September of that year; it was on the steps of their hotel there that Stanton allegedly snubbed fellow defense attorney Abraham Lincoln, but that infamous incident probably originated in the imagination of yet another of Manny’s lawyers.3
Stanton had been a widower for a dozen years when, in 1856, he married Ellen Hutchison, the daughter of a wealthy Pittsburgh businessman. After the election of James Buchanan they moved to Washington, D.C., where Stanton immediately began lobbying the new administration for legal work. His acquaintance with Buchanan’s attorney general, Jeremiah Black, bore great fruit, and Black soon hired him to resolve disputes over real and fraudulent Mexican-era land grants in northern California. After a year in San Francisco that brought him the then-phenomenal fee of $25,000, Stanton returned to Washington early in 1859, just in time to help defend congressman Daniel Sickles in his trial for the murder of his wife’s paramour. Stanton is often remembered as the sole or principal defense counsel in that case, and as the author of the successful insanity defense, but neither characterization is accurate. Another of the eight attorneys for Sickles forwarded the insanity plea, while Stanton’s primary role was to win sympathy for Sickles as a wronged husband. Until the end of 1860 he continued to act as a special counsel for the federal government—and sometimes as a private attorney for its opponents—in litigation over the disputed California grants. Such lucrative special-counsel cases depended on the continued patronage of President Buchanan and Attorney
PREVIOUS SPREAD: U.S. SENATE COLLECTION; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)
edwin stanton served in the cabinets of three successive american presidents, and at one time or another he betrayed each of them.
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PREVIOUS SPREAD: U.S. SENATE COLLECTION; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)
Edwin M. Stanton (with his son, Edwin Lamson Stanton), as he appeared in the decade before the Civil War—a time when the ambitious Ohio-born lawyer remarried, moved to Washington, D.C., and served as a member of the defense team during the murder trial of congressman Daniel Sickles (depicted opposite page).
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General Black. After it was clear to Buchanan that he would not be nominated for reelection, he and Black both gave their support to slavepower candidate John Breckinridge, and Stanton did the same—despite the antislavery leanings he privately professed to leading abolitionists, then and later. The secession crisis following the election of Abraham Lincoln led to a cabinet shuffle that put Black in the State Department, and he recommended Stanton as his successor because of his familiarity with the California cases. Barely two months remained in the Buchanan administration when Stanton assumed his duties as attorney general, after which the political machine on which he had relied would cease to exist. Stanton, ever vigilant for the main chance, almost immediately opened clandestine communications with the incoming administration. Lincoln’s future secretary of state, William H. Seward, still held office as New York’s senior senator, and through a common acquaintance Stanton began sending him alarming tales of weakness and indecision in the Buchanan circle. In those jaundiced reports Stanton always played the part of the nationalist hero, stiffening the spine of a quavering president and facing down the conservative southerners in his cabinet. At one point, with no adequate cause, he secretly reported Navy Secretary Isaac Toucey, of Connecticut, as a traitor in need of surveillance. In one melodramatic late-night interview, Stanton informed Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts that the Buchanan administration was rife with treason. This partisan espionage continued until Buchanan’s term ended in March. All the while Stanton remained perfectly cordial and obsequiously flattering to the president, notwithstanding his self-serving tales of dressing down Buchanan and his wavering ministers. For months after Lincoln’s inauguration Stanton corresponded with Buchanan in conspiratorial tones, sneering in general at “Blacks” (i.e., antislavery “Black Republicans”) and at
former colleagues who supported Lincoln’s war, whom he accused of unseemly office-seeking. When Joseph Holt, Buchanan’s former postmaster general and secretary of war, was mentioned for a judicial appointment, Stanton sneered that Holt “appears now to be the chief favorite of the Republicans.” His exchanges with Buchanan dropped off only after Stanton’s stealthy services to the new administration yielded him some employment of his own under the Lincoln government.4 He began as a special counsel for the War Department in the summer of 1861, and in that capacity he befriended George McClellan, the new commander of the Army of the Potomac. By late October McClellan was maneuvering for overall command of the U.S. Army. He made
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PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE
After serving as attorney general during the final two months of the administration of President James Buchanan (left), Edwin Stanton maneuvered for a position in Abraham Lincoln’s administration. By the beginning of 1862, he had found one, replacing Simon Cameron (below right) as secretary of war. Right: Stanton (third from left) greets Union army generals at a reception shortly after his confirmation as secretary of war.
that bid with the encouragement and probably the advice of Stanton, who offered his own house and pen to help McClellan compose a brief on that subject for Secretary of War Simon Cameron. On reading that document the president promptly retired General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, naming McClellan in his place. Cameron’s inattention to his department had begun to cause widespread concern, and in his annual report for 1861 he embarrassed the president with a premature and unauthorized recommendation for arming freed slaves. By the second week of January the president had decided to replace him. With that, Stanton’s intrigues of the previous winter began to pay bigger dividends, and Seward privately suggested him to Lincoln as Cameron’s successor. Seward also proposed that Stanton’s old friend, Treasury Secretary Chase, act as intermediary between Stanton and Cameron, who was to be appeased with an appointment as ambassador to Russia. Chase also arranged an interview between Stanton and William Pitt Fessenden, a senator from Maine who was then leaning toward the Radical Republicans, and Stanton convinced him that he was sound on the policies that mattered to the Radical wing. While Fessenden reported favorably to his colleagues, Stanton’s Democratic credentials
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Whereas he had once treated George B. McClellan (pictured here) as a friend and ally, Stanton began to view the young generalin-chief as a rival soon after his appointment as secretary of war.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)
convinced senators of that party that he would exert a conservative influence to offset the abolition ambitions of those very Radicals. Stanton personally secured McClellan’s endorsement; he visited the still-grateful general as he was recovering from a severe bout of typhoid, bringing along a New York Herald reporter through whom he offered further reassurance to his old Democratic constituency.5 By presenting such different faces to different factions, Stanton achieved near-unanimous confirmation. McClellan was still looking pale and weak when he called a couple of hundred senior army officers into the War Department to receive the new secretary, but those visitors had no sooner dispersed than Stanton began conspiring against the general, whose support he no longer needed. McClellan had effectively enjoyed free rein with the army under the inattentive Cameron, but Stanton had no intention of tolerating so much independence from the general, whom he regarded as a rival for control of the department. He also saw McClellan as a handy sacrifice to win the trust and favor of Washington’s increasingly powerful Radicals, who resented the general’s resistance to their pressure for emancipation and even impugned his loyalty. Those Radicals had established the Joint Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War as a tool for purging the army of such resistance. On his very first evening in the War Department Stanton invited the committee into his office for a confidential interview, and he appears to have forged an immediate alliance with the Radicals who chaired and dominated it. They stayed late into the night. No record of their conversation was kept, but the next day Senator Ben Wade, the chairman of the committee, revealed the substance of their discussion with two questions he sent to Stanton. First he asked if statutory authority existed for McClellan’s position as overall army commander, and then he wondered if it were
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possible to create a rank higher than major general, as though thinking of elevating someone over McClellan’s head. Major General John C. Frémont, a favorite of Wade’s, had issued an order freeing the slaves of Rebels in Missouri, and he had remained unemployed since the president repudiated that order and removed him from command.6 Stanton’s perfidy soon became obvious to McClellan. The new secretary called him into a meeting with Wade in which the senator grew acerbically critical of the army’s activity, and Stanton agreed with Wade at every turn. Wade, whose committee had recently fixed the blame for a serious military disaster at Ball’s Bluff on inadequate transportation across the Potomac River, chastised McClellan for taking the time to build a bridge for his next foray over the river; McClellan reminded him of what might happen in case of a retreat, and Wade hypocritically suggested that McClellan’s soldiers could come back “in their coffins.” Stanton neither objected to Wade’s crudeness nor noted his inconsistency.7 If McClellan needed any further evidence that Stanton had taken the side of his political enemies, it came with the arrest of Brigadier General Charles P. Stone. Stone, who had commanded Union forces in the defeat at Ball’s Bluff, had earned the enmity of Radicals for the same reason they hated McClellan. He was a Democrat in politics, but worse yet, he obeyed the federal laws regarding runaway slaves and returned them to their owners, at least in the loyal state of Maryland. The pompous Senator Sumner ridiculed him for that on the floor of the Senate, belittling his military competence while complimenting his efficiency as a slave catcher. Stone replied with a private note calling Sumner “a well-known coward,” over the beating he had taken from Preston Brooks in the Senate in 1856 without defending himself or avenging the attack. That sealed Stone’s fate with Sumner’s secret confidant, Stanton. When disgruntled subordinates whom Stone had disciplined
Stanton’s order to have Brigadier General Charles P. Stone (pictured here) arrested on dubious evidence that he had communicated with the enemy was a clear sign that Stanton had sided with McClellan’s political enemies.
accused him of holding communication with the enemy—as his duties often required—Stanton ordered McClellan to arrest him. McClellan hesitated, realizing the worthlessness of the evidence against Stone, but a prisoner had offered convenient answers to leading questions about the Rebel generals’ respect for Stone, whereupon Stanton made the order peremptory. Stone entered the dungeon for suspected traitors at Fort Lafayette, where he spent the next six months. An act of Congress ultimately forced his release, but Stanton refused to give him another
command, and when General-inChief Ulysses S. Grant tried to do so, two years later, Stanton summarily stripped Stone of his general’s commission.8 For all the tension that supposedly existed from the start between McClellan and President Lincoln, much of which seems exaggerated by dubious recollections, they had enjoyed a fairly congenial relationship before Stanton’s ascension. Lincoln’s native humility and good nature counterbalanced McClellan’s brash conceit, and the lanky president often exercised a fatherly
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lmost as soon as he entered the War Department, Stanton began consolidating as much of the executive power as he could under his own authority. Seward had been overseeing the administration’s “extraordinary” arrests—meaning those made without regard to due process—and he had been roundly criticized for the metaphorical “little bell” that he could ostensibly ring to imprison virtually anyone. Stanton persuaded the president to convey those responsibilities to him, and along with the job he acquired Seward’s shady chief detective, Lafayette Baker. Initially Stanton established a commission to examine the cases of Seward’s prisoners, and he released a host of them, but before the end of 1862 he was arresting nearly as many citizens every month as Seward had during most of a year as Lincoln’s jailor.12 Early in his tenure Stanton also issued an order taking “military possession” of the nation’s telegraph lines, establishing a military telegraph service with a chief who doubled as his censor. That allowed him to exert considerable control over the news, because in addition to withholding the official communications on which newspapers throve he could deny newspaper correspondents wire communications with their editors. In addition to that, he advised the principal newspaper editors not to report on the movements or composition of the army, and then he began treating that suggestion as an order.13 To establish his authority to impose such restrictions without danger of a legal challenge, Stanton may have deliberately orchestrated an incident with the Washington Sunday Chronicle, published by fawning administration supporter John Forney. In March 1862, while McClellan was preparing to
move his army to Fort Monroe, the Chronicle published a story about an earlier expedition to Manassas that seemed to fit the proscribed content; it revealed intelligence no more sensitive than many papers had been publishing for months, but Stanton ordered the editorial staff arrested and the newspaper closed. According to a cautionary story printed in the Philadelphia Press—also owned by Forney—the editor explained to the arresting officers that the piece had been published inadvertently, promising it would never happen again. With that the journalists were released and their weekly resumed publication without interruption, but the precedent had been set.14 Forney may well have played along with the scheme, which made Stanton appear perfectly nonpartisan in his enforcement of the edict. His motive, however, lay more in propaganda than in security, and the newspapers that gave the administration hearty support suffered no consequences despite frequent violations. Robert E. Lee claimed that he based his movements during the Gettysburg Campaign on intelligence gathered from the Philadelphia Inquirer, the door of which never saw the shadow of a provost marshal. Ulysses Grant objected when a New York Times article revealed William T. Sherman’s plans for his March to the Sea just as he left Atlanta, but the editor of that paper had chaired Lincoln’s reelection committee; Stanton brushed off Grant’s complaint as though he had no power whatever over the press, blaming the leak on Sherman. “If he cannot keep from telling his plans to paymasters,” Stanton contended, “and his staff are permitted to send them broadcast over the land, the Department cannot prevent their publication.”15 Journalists also found that Stanton would issue passes with a partisan bias. Reporters who wanted ready access to the armies learned that they were better off to avoid To view this article’s reference notes, turn to our Notes section on page 78.
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for disobedience of orders, just as he later saw to the court-martial of McClellan’s friend Fitz John Porter.11
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attitude that had at least momentarily positive effects on his young general. Stanton quickly moved to block their communications. When an unforeseen impediment delayed McClellan’s first offensive toward Harpers Ferry and Martinsburg, Stanton strove to anger the president over it, and succeeded; when McClellan came back to Washington he sought to explain the problem to the president and put it in perspective, but Stanton disingenuously told him that Lincoln had already been satisfied on that point, and dissuaded him from going to the White House. A few weeks later, as McClellan was preparing to take the field for the summer, Stanton removed all the telegraphic equipment from army headquarters in Washington and installed it in the room next to his office in the War Department. That prevented McClellan from communicating with anyone in the government without going through Stanton, and it may have been Stanton’s particular intent to separate the general from the president.9 Military historians recognize that McClellan had his own shortcomings as a general, and the worst of them was a debilitating tendency to hesitate at the very moment when it was most opportune to strike a blow. He had shown a hint of that flaw during his 1861 campaign in western Virginia, but in 1862 it became habitual, and Stanton’s manifest antipathy may have aggravated it. McClellan was warned repeatedly of Stanton’s backbiting, and he read the results of it; even as Stanton assured McClellan that “no man had ever a truer friend than I have been to you and shall continue to be,” he was sending secret, damaging letters about McClellan to newspapermen and go-betweens, to promote editorial criticism.10 The general could well have turned more cautious than usual under the justifiable apprehension that his immediate superior might exploit any costly mistakes as an excuse to remove or even court-martial him. By late summer Stanton actually did make ominous preliminary inquiries that suggested a hope of bringing McClellan to trial
PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
While head of the War Department, Stanton (shown here in a wartime photo) took a number of measures—from overseeing the administration’s “extraordinary” arrests to taking “military possession” of the nation’s telegraph lines—in an effort to consolidate as much of the executive power as he could under his own authority.
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series of minor and moderate Union victories had leant momentary credence to that impression, but it was dispelled three days after Stanton’s order went out by the vigorous if unsuccessful Confederate attack at Shiloh. The Richmond government imposed conscription on its population about the same time, so the spring campaigns began with the Rebel forces growing and the national armies shrinking. That helped reduce the Union advantage of overwhelming numbers, which might have crushed the rebellion more quickly, and by the height of summer Union armies had gone on the defensive in both major theaters.17 Stonewall Jackson’s lightning
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trated Russell to give up reporting on the war and go back to England.16 As McClellan undertook his Peninsula Campaign and began pleading for reinforcements, Stanton made the apparently unilateral decision to cease all army recruiting, ordering recruiting officers to close their stations, sell any furnishings, and return to their regiments. Later he tried to pass the decision off as an effort to determine how many men had been enlisted in the nation’s service, but initial reports (including a news article written by one of the president’s personal secretaries) characterized it as an acknowledgement that the Confederacy had effectively been vanquished. A
ANNE S.K. BROWN MILITARY COLLECTION
topics that reflected badly on the administration, and particularly those that embarrassed Mr. Stanton and his War Department. William Russell, a renowned correspondent for The Times of London who had written critically about the Union debacle at Bull Run in 1861, may have been the first to suffer Stanton’s ire through that avenue of control. Russell obtained the approval of General McClellan to join him at the outset of the Peninsula Campaign, but Stanton refused to let him go—either because Russell had embarrassed the Union cause before or, just as likely, because he found Russell too complimentary of McClellan. That arbitrary refusal persuaded the frus-
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
ANNE S.K. BROWN MILITARY COLLECTION
In mid-1862, a series of Union battlefield setbacks—including in the Shenandoah Valley at the hands of General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson (right) and outside of Richmond during McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign (depicted here)—prompted an anxious Stanton to quickly counter his previous, and apparently unilateral, decision to cease all army recruiting.
campaign in the Shenandoah Valley toward the end of May threw such a scare into Stanton that he quietly but anxiously asked the state governors if they could provide him with a few more regiments. With the exception of some short-term militia that Stanton frantically authorized contrary to federal law, those regiments proved difficult to raise. At the end of June, when McClellan’s army started reeling under daily attacks by Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, it became clear that large numbers of new troops would be needed promptly. Striving to save face for the administration, Lincoln and Secretary Seward disguised the urgency Stanton’s blunder had
caused by staging an elaborate charade in which the state governors pretended to spontaneously offer troops to the government without a presidential demand.18 Even as the White House orchestrated that pantomime, a bill authorizing indirect federal conscription was making its way through Congress under the eye of Senator Henry Wilson, the chairman of the Military Affairs Committee. Nominally it merely extended executive authority to call out the militia, but for the first time in American history it afforded the president a vehicle for forcing compliance if the states demurred from his request. The language of the bill, its precau-
tionary details, and Stanton’s close collaboration with Wilson on later military legislation all put Stanton’s fingerprints on the composition of that legislation. Lincoln signed it on July 17.19 Three weeks later Stanton used that law as his authority to call for a levy of 300,000 militia—in addition to 300,000 volunteers the governors had purportedly “offered.” Then, in conjunction with that draft, he issued another order on his own initiative to “arrest and imprison any person or persons who may be engaged, by act, speech, or writing, in discouraging volunteer enlistments, or in any way giving aid and comfort to the enemy, or in any ☛ } CONT. ON P. 73
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Climate, Weather, and the First Battle of Manassas BY KENNETH W. NOE
A wartime view of Bull Run Creek near Manassas, Virginia. Union forces crossed the stream on the morning of July 21, 1861, to attack Confederate positions. The resulting battle—known as First Manassas or First Bull Run—ended in a decisive Union defeat, an outcome impacted in large part by the weather. 54 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR FALL 2015
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of Battle
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The Civil War was, among other things, an environmental event.
Among their areas of study are the role of environmentally borne diseases and the relationship between the war and the destruction of the South’s physical geography. What we still largely lack, however, are environmentally sensitive considerations of the war’s most elemental event: battle.1 To be sure, any good historian talks broadly about the weather, and no battle narrative is complete without explaining the weather that affected particular fights, such as the massive drought that preceded and shaped the Battle of Perryville in October 1862. What is missing are analytical studies and broader, linked considerations of Civil War weather that provide context while drawing on other fields. Few historians realize, for example, that meteorologists refer to a “Civil War drought,”
after the fall of Fort Sumter in April 1861, soldiers and citizens across the Union were arguing about their next steps. In Washington, General-in-Chief Winfield Scott wanted to inflict the least amount of possible damage to the Confederacy, in hopes of rapidly facilitating reunion once the shooting stopped. He was also concerned about troop preparedness, his unfortunate experiences in the Mexican-American War having been a dear lesson on the limits of poorly disciplined volunteer troops. Scott’s ideas thus focused on creating an effective naval blockade of the southern coast while primarily using regular troops to secure control of the Mississippi River Valley through joint army-navy operations. Surrounded and cut in two, he predicted, the Confederacy would implode with relatively little bloodshed or bitterness. The impatient northern public, however, wanted nothing to do with
Scott or his conservative “Anaconda Plan,” and time was of the essence to decide on a strategy, as the volunteers whom President Abraham Lincoln had called out after Sumter fell would see their 90-day enlistments run out in July. The Confederate government then offered a seemingly golden opportunity when it moved its capital from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond after Virginia’s secession. “Forward to Richmond!” the influential Republican New York Tribune responded on June 26. “The Rebel Congress Must Not be Allowed to Meet There on the 20th of July. BY THAT DATE THE PLACE MUST BE HELD BY THE NATIONAL ARMY.” Many northerners agreed, as did their president. Even if he hadn’t, Lincoln was too savvy a politician to ignore the political pressure. And so it was “on to Richmond.”3 Major General Irvin McDowell, the former staff officer commanding the Union army gathering in and around Washington, objected, saying that he needed more time to train his men. Lincoln dismissed his concerns. “You are green, it is true,” Lincoln famously told McDowell, “but they are green, also; you are all green alike.” The plan that followed had much to recommend it. McDowell would march his 35,000 men from the city and attack the Confederate force of 20,000 soldiers under P.G.T. Beauregard, the hero of Sumter, at Manassas Junction. From To view this article’s reference notes, turn to our Notes section on page 78.
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an event most likely shaped by the natural phenomenon known as La Niña. Food shortages and divisions in the Confederacy grew out of it. One can hardly imagine a worse decade to launch an agricultural republic, and yet the drought remains almost unknown beyond a handful of historical studies. Those conditions also affected the battlefield, with perhaps more than half of the war’s battles and campaigns significantly shaped by weather conditions. The first major battle of the war, Bull Run, was one of them.2
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (LEFT); NATIONAL ARCHIVES
This “ecological disaster” spread disease and death, wrecked farm and forests, and left in its wake an impoverished southern landscape. Yet until recently, the field of environmental history has rarely dealt with the war. Most early environmental historians were westerners who looked toward home when researching, while the great majority of Civil War historians kept gazing east. In recent years, though, several scholars have taken up environmental aspects of the war, perhaps inspired by the great environmental historian Jack Temple Kirby, who called for a crossroads between the two parallel fields.
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (LEFT); NATIONAL ARCHIVES
Pressured by both public opinion and President Abraham Lincoln, Major General Irvin McDowell (opposite page) led his 35,000 Union soldiers in early July 1861 to engage a force of some 20,000 Confederates, commanded by General P.G.T. Beauregard (pictured here), positioned at Manassas, Virginia.
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there, the road to Richmond would be open. The one caveat was General Joseph E. Johnston’s 11,000 Confederates in the northern Shenandoah Valley. Were Johnston somehow to get his men to Manassas first, McDowell’s favorable odds would disappear. To avoid that possibility, General Robert Patterson had to move his Union force at Harpers Ferry south to occupy Johnston.4 Compelled to go on the offensive, McDowell at least wanted to do it quickly, before the Confederates could respond. His first target date was July 8, but organizational delays, especially in securing transportation, cost him a week. While he waited for wagons and both sides girded for battle, an apparent omen
appeared: A previously unknown comet unexpectedly rose in the northern sky. Having first appeared in the Southern Hemisphere late in May, the Great Comet of 1861 blazed forth in splendor above North America in the early days of July. Its massive head was nearly the size of the moon while its tail forked upward, looking for all the world like an Old World grenadier’s exploding-grenade insignia. Observing it, people reflected upon everything from the Book of Revelation to the end of superstition in a modern age. South-
ern editors delighted in how it covered up the North Star. Diarist Mary Boykin Chestnut later remembered how young men in Richmond cleverly used it to entice young women outside for “philandering.” According to one later observer, even Abraham Lincoln was transfixed, brooding about a Washington slave’s obscure prophecy that seemingly heralded the death of Lincoln’s sons. Most Americans, however, saw the phenomenon as a sign of war; the New York Herald even named it the “War Comet of 1861.” Adding to the heav-
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (TOP); BATTLES AND LEADERS OF THE CIVIL WAR
The Union and Confederate armies that clashed at Manassas were full of raw recruits who were unprepared for the often harsh conditions of campaigning. above: A group of 90-day volunteers from the 1st New Hampshire Infantry relaxing in their Washington, D.C., camp in the weeks before the battle at Bull Run. below: A concerned mother gives her newly enlisted soldier-son an umbrella, a touching yet impractical parting gift.
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enly wonders, a meteor streaked across the sky directly from north to south on July 4, of all nights, leading soldiers to wonder what it all meant.5 But it was northern Virginia’s climate and weather, not heavenly bodies, that most troubled McDowell. Here, two definitions are in order. Casual conversations aside, weather and climate are not the same thing. Mark Twain perhaps said it best when he wrote that “climate lasts all the time, and weather only a few days.”6 Weather, that is to say, refers to atmospheric conditions at an exact moment in time. Climate, in contrast, is the average, long-term pattern created by all of those separate events.7 Modern climatologists divide the United States into discrete climate zones, each with distinctive characteristics. The U.S. Department of Energy recognizes eight. Most of Virginia lies in the “Mixed-
Humid” zone, which stretches south, more or less from the Mason-Dixon line and the southern counties of Indiana and Ohio, into the northern halves of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi. The Mixed-Humid zone, home to McDowell’s theater of war in 1861 but unfamiliar to most Union soldiers from the “Cold” and “Very Cold” zones, receives as much rain and humidity as the “Hot-Humid” zone to its south, but is colder in winter.8 Intense heat and frequent, violent thunderstorms characterize July in this zone, with the hottest week of the year usually recorded around the summer equinox. Moreover, the area from Washington west to Manassas lies in the same hotter subzone along the Chesapeake Bay that contains the Lower Peninsula. Summer temperatures are especially high there, averaging 88 degrees in July. July 1861 was no exception. While a brief cool spell with rain and wind at the end of June and beginning of July coincided with the comet’s appearance, the overall trend in northern Virginia weather that summer was heat.9 By July 7 the dog days had arrived at last. The mercury rose to 90 degrees in Washington that day—brutal for men in wool uniforms—and returned there every day through July 10 before another brief cooling trend.10 The heat also brought afternoon and evening rain and thunderstorms to northern Virginia, the lower (northern) Shenandoah Valley, and Washington every night (except July 12) between July 6 and July 13. The storms of July 9 and July 10 particularly disrupted McDowell’s preparations. On July 10, Lieutenant Colonel Robert McAllister of the 1st New Jersey Infantry encountered “a tremendous storm of wind, driving the dust in the streets so that I could not see one foot before me.”11 It rained again the next night; Newton Martin Curtis of the 16th New York Infantry described the “heavy rainstorm” blowing up late in the afternoon as his regiment traveled by boat from Washington to Alexandria.12 From her home in Fauquier County, west of Manassas, Amanda Virginia Edmonds compared the weather to the Confederacy’s political situation.
“Our country is so enveloped in the darkest clouds,” she wrote.13 Conditions across the Blue Ridge Mountains in the Shenandoah Valley, the North’s other potential highway into Virginia, were almost as warm and just as rainy. It poured on July 6 before turning hot again. For new soldiers like John Apperson of the 4th Virginia Infantry, still unused to long marches, soldiering in such heat was tough. “Our march to-day was a truly hot one,” he wrote the next day on the road to Winchester, “many of our men became too sick to walk and we had no way of transporting them except the ammunition wagon.” Then rain, probably part of the same system that drenched the contending armies at Rich Mountain, Virginia, settled in on July 10. “I slept on the wet ground and I fear it will give me a severe cold,” he complained. That evening “a tollerably hard rain fell ... and the soldiers have to take it without shelter. I pity them. It is injust too that they should have to suffer. There are tents enough lying around to furnish the whole Regiment with shelter.” When another “very hard rain fell” again on the night of July 12, Apperson sought shelter in a wagon with a leaky cover. “I covered up my head and let it rain,” he wrote.14 Back in Washington, it was July 16 before McDowell and his army could finally move toward the Confederates at Manassas, with Fairfax Court House his first objective. They did so incredibly slowly, requiring three days to move to the outskirts of Manassas, the equivalent of a good day’s march a scant year later. Several familiar factors slowed their pace. Training and discipline were painfully lacking; the soldiers were truly still “green.” Felled trees in the road—the work of Confederates—repeatedly stopped columns, as did breathless rumors of Confederate ambushes. Heavily laden with gear both useful and necessary, the men gobbled down their rations so quickly that McDowell had to stop his advance on July 19 and send for more food, leading to great confusion and recrimination behind the lines.15 But the Virginia climate took a major toll on the Union’s rookie sol-
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Jackson, began arriving in Manassas late in the afternoon. All day on July 20, Johnston’s men continued to arrive, followed by their commander early that afternoon. Together, Beauregard and Johnston finalized their own plan. They would stack troops on their right flank and attack the enemy’s left at dawn. A few miles away, their fellow West Pointer McDowell finished up a mirror image of their plan and began positioning his men in the moonlight.20 “The moon was just sinking in the west,” Augustus Woodbury remembered as he and his comrades in the 1st Rhode Island Infantry began to move, “a cool wind which had spring up in the night made the morning chilly.”21 As historian E.B. Long later wrote, the two sides’ similar battle plans “could have resulted in both armies going in a circle.”22 But McDowell, mindful of the weather, moved first. “The divisions were ordered to march at 2.30 o’clock A. M.,” he later explained, “so as to arrive on the ground early in the day, and thus avoid the heat which is to be expected at this season.”23 He opened the attack a little after 5 a.m. The sun was already up; it was “a beautiful
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road side with scarcely breath enough to keep them alive, but only one man died, he from the effects of sun stroke.” Even southern birth could not protect unseasoned men from heat on the march.19 In the Shenandoah Valley, a hesitant and confused Robert Patterson—charged with keeping Joseph Johnston’s forces from reaching Manassas—did little to accomplish his end of the mission. On July 18, Johnston started pushing his Confederates from Winchester to the Virginia Central Railroad depot at Piedmont, where he would use railcars to shuttle his men to Manassas. One of Johnston’s men remembered “the beautiful sunset” at Winchester on that blistering 18th, “with some purple clouds floating in the soft sky.” The next day’s march was less pleasant, with heat and dust clouds. Around sunset it began to rain “and whenever we rested for a few minutes we had to lie down, wet on the wet ground, our first experience in that way.” After reaching Piedmont the men again “were permitted to lie down on the wet ground and sleep for three or four hours.” The first elements of Johnston’s army, under Thomas J.
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diers as well. Along with the hottest week of the year, July also brings the most thunderstorms. For days, the blistering heat and rain pummeled the new recruits, most of whom were also without tents per McDowell’s marching orders. On July 16, the first day out of Washington, the skies were clear and dry but temperatures rose into the 80s. The thirsty men and horses moved slowly and stopped frequently. The next day was hotter still, 86 degrees back in Washington, and clouds of choking dust rose all along the column, stifling breathing while adding to the swelter. It grew hotter still the third day, July 18, the temperature reaching 90 that afternoon as the two armies made first contact at Blackburn’s Ford on Bull Run. It was so hot by then that even the cattle driven with the army to provide fresh meat to the ranks faltered.16 “The day was hot,” William B. Westervelt of the 27th New York Infantry wrote, “and the men but little used to marching, so it came very hard to us.” After five miles, his regiment halted for the day at Centreville, three miles from the enemy lines, and, lacking tents or other shelter, they cut down vegetation and “built bough houses to protect us from the dew and sun.”17 While the next day was somewhat cooler, with a high of only 82 degrees, a torrential overnight storm soaked the army as it lay at Centreville while McDowell finalized his plans. On July 20, the mercury was back at 90, and Union soldiers were crafting shade shelters out of pine and cedar boughs.18 Confederates were on the move as well on those hot July days. Beauregard’s advance elements at Fairfax Court House initially fell back in the wake of McDowell’s approach. South Carolinian Dick Simpson, marching with that column, remembered July 17 as particularly brutal. “The day was excessively hot and the road hilly and rocky,” he wrote his father. Worse, they were “double-quicked for two hours ... having all their baggage to carry.” As a result, some men, including Simpson’s cousin, “fainted in their tracks, while others fell from their horses. Some dropped on the
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BATTLES AND LEADERS OF THE CIVIL WAR (TOP); NATIONAL ARCHIVES
A hesitant and confused Union general Robert Patterson, charged with keeping the Confederate force commanded by Joseph E. Johnston pinned down in the northern Shenandoah Valley, permitted Johnston to move his men via railroad to reinforce P.G.T. Beauregard at Manassas, where they arrived just in time to participate in the battle. opposite page: Confederates board trains for Manassas as civilians cheer them on (above); Joseph E. Johnston (below). above: A group of children looks on as seven Union cavalrymen prepare to cross Bull Run Creek at Sudley Springs Ford. On the day of the battle, many parched Union soldiers paused en route to the fight to drink at this spot.
morning,” according to Henry Kyd Douglas of the 2nd Virginia Infantry.24 Taking advantage of both the element of surprise and superior numbers, the Federal attack hit the weakened Confederate left and began driving it back across the eastwest Warrenton Pike onto the somewhat higher ground beyond. By mid-morning Confederate units began to break near the home of bedridden widow Judith Henry, situated on a slight eminence tucked into the southwestern angle formed by the turnpike and the ManassasSudley Road. But there, the Federal advance bogged down. Several factors account for the loss of momentum. The men were exhausted from lack of sleep and fighting. Inadequate training led to a loss of unit
cohesion. In the gunpowder smoke of battle, the Stars and Stripes too closely resembled the Stars and Bars. Some Confederates wore blue, some Federals were clad in gray, and uniforms utilizing the rest of the palette defied easy recognition. Historians especially stress the determination of Thomas J. Jackson as he brought his unbloodied Virginia brigade up Henry House Hill to stop the threatened collapse. But Virginia’s climate and the weather that day played a crucial role as well. Simply stated, it was already beastly hot by mid-morning at Bull Run, to the degree that excited men in woolen uniforms quickly became exhausted and faltered. July 21 was the second-hottest day of the year so far, with the mercury reaching
94 degrees in Washington at 2 p.m. Rookie soldiers already worn out from the march from Washington grew thirsty quickly; McDowell and others cited men slowing down and even halting for water in their afteraction reports, particularly at the ford at Sudley’s Mill, while Woodbury pointed out how the officers and men of his already parched regiment slowed down to drink and water horses at Sudley Springs as they crossed Bull Run, even before they went into action.25 Elnathan B. Tyler of the 3rd Connecticut Infantry described rushing to the battlefield only to emerge from the woods covered in dust and “the perspiration streaming down our faces”26 The Federal attack, in short, had already started to slow down before Jack-
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ed—contended for the now bloodsoaked hill. Heat exhaustion and its more dangerous corollary, heatstroke, appeared, the latter bringing with it confusion and life-threatening stress to the heart and brain. Wounded men suffered tremendously from “heat and thirst.”30 Horses suffered, too. Confederate cavalryman Colonel John Lay reported that “two died from heat and exhaustion; others are permanently injured, I fear.”31 Unit cohesion disappeared as individual officers erratically ordered their units forward or backward. By mid-afternoon, Federal soldiers had started breaking off contact on their own, falling back to the rear. In contrast, the Confederates continued to feed Johnston’s fresh, still-arriving regiments into the fight. At 4 p.m., Beauregard launched a massive counterattack, his men hitting the worn-out Union line and driving it back toward Bull Run. Retreating in order at first, the retrograde soon metamorphosed into a collapse as men ran for the fords and bridges. Jefferson Davis,
who had just arrived from Richmond, desperately called for a vigorous pursuit, but Beauregard and Johnston demurred, citing their own disorder and exhaustion. McDowell’s defeated army and a second army of frightened civilian sightseers streamed back toward Washington, all unit cohesion lost and making better time than they had in the advance.32 “The larger part of the men are a confused mob,” their commander reported, “entirely demoralized.”33 Those who retreated that night would never forget it; the Virginia weather was not done with them. It started to rain on the road back to Washington, through Centreville and Fairfax Court House, the 10th time in 22 days. It was a hard rain, too, leaving almost an inch and a half of precipitation before it ended on July 23.34 As Walt Whitman later memorialized it, “The Saturday and Sunday of the battle … had been parch’d and hot to an extreme, the dust, the grime and smoke, in layers, sweated ☛ } CONT. ON P. 76
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son’s “stonewall” came up, largely because of Union soldiers’ previous exertions in the rising heat. To be sure, Confederates were hardly immune to the conditions. McHenry Howard’s 1st Maryland Infantry was among the last of Johnston’s units to arrive on July 21, and rushed from the depot to the field and into action. During a halt, Howard noted that “some of the men eagerly lapped the muddy water which stood in the fresh deep prints of horses’ feet in the road.”27 On Henry House Hill, according to John Newton Lyle of Jackson’s 4th Virginia Infantry, “the blistering rays of a July sun came down from a cloudless sky. The water in our canteens was hot and nauseous.”28 Suffocating dust was a related factor at First Manassas, rising to such remarkable heights that soldiers and their commanders used it to keep track of troop movements.29 Well into the afternoon, the two armies—dust-covered, overheated, parched, and increasingly exhaust-
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above: Confederate troops—freshly reinforced by the men of Johnston’s arriving army—rally during the Battle of Manassas. By late afternoon, a successful Rebel counterattack drove McDowell’s overheated and exhausted Union soldiers back in what devolved into a panicked retreat. opposite page: Union soldiers stand near the stone church in Centreville, Virginia, in March 1862, seven months after McDowell’s men would have passed by during their retreat toward Washington, D.C, in a pounding rain.
BATTLES AND LEADERS OF THE CIVIL WAR
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Mourning Lincoln
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Martha Hodes
Competing Visions of Empire
The Writings of Abraham Lincoln
Abigail L. Swingen
Edited and with an Introduction by Steven B. Smith Paper
The Iron Way
Railroads, the Civil War, and the Making of Modern America William G. Thomas Paper
A Changing Wind Commerce and Conflict in Civil War Atlanta
Labor, Slavery, and the Origins of the British Atlantic Empire
The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815–1860 Calvin Schermerhorn
My Bondage and My Freedom
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Amistad’s Orphans An Atlantic Story of Children, Slavery, and Smuggling
Benjamin N. Lawrance
Photography and the American Civil War Jeff L. Rosenheim
Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press
The Civil War and American Art Eleanor Jones Harvey
Published in association with the Smithsonian American Art Museum
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David Eltis and David Richardson Foreword by David Brion Davis Afterword by David W. Blight
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Yale university press CWM17-BOB-Books.indd 64
Tell It With Pride
JACKSON MITCHELL
An epic story of a nation—and a family— divided by fate, love, loyalty, and war.
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BOOKS & AUTHORS
Voices from the Army of the Potomac, Part 6
JACKSON MITCHELL
BY GARY W. GALLAGHER the sixth installment in this series assesses testimony from three important figures whose names and contributions may be less well known than those of famous fighting generals. Marsena Rudolph Patrick, the army’s provost marshal general from October 1862 through the end of the war, was intimately involved with military justice and interactions between Union soldiers and Confederate civilians. Jonathan Letterman served as medical director of the army from mid-1862 through early 1864, while Herman Haupt over-
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saw the construction, repair, and coordination of railroads. Inside Lincoln’s Army: The Diary of General Marsena Rudolph Patrick, Provost Marshal General, Army of the Potomac (1964), edited by David S. Sparks, contains a wealth of evidence regarding the internal workings of the Army of the Potomac as well as unvarnished, and often grumpy, opinions about various officers and a political environment dominated by the Republican Party. A native of New York and 1835 graduate of West Point, Patrick led a brigade before George B. McClellan appointed him provost marshal general. In his new position, Patrick constantly worried about the state of discipline among the army’s citizen-soldiers. In June 1862, for example, he described the men as “indifferent & feel that they are acting without an object, or a purpose; consequently they behave badly, strolling over the country, stealing, destroying fruit trees loaded with partially ripened fruit etc. etc.” The fate of Fredericksburg on December 12, 1862, especially infuriated Patrick. He noted damage to the town from Union artillery on December 11 and continued, “But this was not the worst— The Soldiery were sacking the town! Every house and Store was being gutted!” The next morning he described “a most deplorable state of things— Libraries, pictures, furniture every thing destroyed & the brutal Soldiery still carrying on their work.” In the aftermath of Gettysburg, Patrick criticized many of the town’s citizens. Charged by
General George G. Meade with overseeing the burial of Union dead, he became “thoroughly disgusted with the whole Copperhead fraternity of Gettysburg & the country about, as they came in Swarms to Sweep & plunder the battle grounds.” As for morale after Gettysburg, Patrick wrote on July 21, “Our Army is in no condition to fight another battle—The discipline is horrible. There is no responsibility any where, & Commanders of every rank cover up
Marsena Rudolph Patrick, pictured right and above (third from left) with his staff in September 1863, served as the Army of the Potomac’s provost marshal general from October 1862 through war’s end. His diary contains a wealth of information on the inner workings of the Union’s largest fighting force in the war’s eastern theater.
the rascality of their Troops….” He did defend Meade against criticisms from the Lincoln administration and General-inChief Henry W. Halleck. The latter, thought Patrick, “ought to be removed from the position he disgraces.” During the presidential election of 1864, Patrick deplored interference in voting among the soldiers. “I vote for McClellan,” he confessed, “because I cannot vote for Lincoln—and because I believe it will most
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“ Our Army is in no condition to fight another battle—The discipline is horrible. There is no responsibility any where, & Commanders of every rank cover up the rascality of their Troops....” PROVOST MARSHAL GENERAL MARSENA RUDOLPH PATRICK, COMMENTING ON THE STATE OF THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG
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surely, bring us to peace.” He accused the Lincoln administration and Republicans of suppressing Democratic voting and claimed, on November 7, that “All possible obstacles were thrown in the way of a fair Soldier’s vote….” At the end of the war, as provost of the Department of Virginia with headquarters in Richmond, Patrick found himself at odds with policymakers in Washington. “Halleck has been sent for to have a report made,” he noted on June 7, 1865, adding, “I am disgusted and propose to resign very soon.” Six days earlier, Ulysses S. Grant had asked Halleck, “Do you not think it advisable to relieve General Patrick? ... [H]is kindness of heart may interfere with the proper government of the city.” By June 15, Patrick had returned to New York and could record in his diary that “we came home most agreeably.” Jonathan Letterman’s Medical Recollections of the Army of the Potomac (1866) offers valuable information on medical practices in the army. A Pennsylvanian, Letterman assumed the position of medical director under McClellan in the final phase of the Peninsula Campaign. He found a chaotic situation, with personnel overwhelmed by the number of casualties during the Seven Days Battles. Over the next several months, Letterman oversaw a sea change in the army’s medical care. He improved triage and operating procedures, organized field hospitals and an effective ambulance corps, and otherwise brought reforms that
yielded benefits at Antietam, Fredericksburg, and in later campaigns. Letterman’s text only occasionally departs from a tone of earnest description, though a few passages stand out. Soldiers harbored no love of hardtack, as Letterman explained while discussing operations against Richmond in 1862: “The fresh bread was eagerly sought for by the men, who loathed the hard bread which they had used for so many weeks. This loathing was no affectation, for this bread is difficult to masticate—is dry and insipid—absorbs all the secretions poured into the mouth and stomach, and leaves none for the digestion of other portions of food.” Giving a glimpse into conditions following the Battle of Fredericksburg, he wrote on the night of December 13, 1862, that officers and men of the medical corps “could not use their lanterns, as the glimmer of a candle invariably called forth a shot from a sharpshooting picket. They were obliged to grope their way, and search for their wounded comrades, who lay on the field, covered by the fire of the enemy’s musketry, which made it hazardous for the wounded, or those seeking them, to move over that sanguinary ground, even when protected by darkness.” At Chancellorsville on May 3, 1863, Letterman was at Joseph Hooker’s headquarters when a Confederate artillery round stunned the general. “Being within a few feet of him at the time of the accident,” wrote the surgeon, “I saw him fall, and was instantly
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The wartime writings of Jonathan Letterman (above, seated left) and Herman Haupt (left) shed light on medical practices and the movement of men and materiel, respectively, in the Army of the Potomac.
assisted the movement of men and materiel for a succession of commanders in the Army of the Potomac. Reminiscences of General Herman Haupt (1901) traces Haupt’s activities in detail, reprints numerous official documents (many of which were not included in the Official Records), and reveals the author’s opinions of famous officers. Haupt presented a scathing example of George B. McClellan’s caution at the time of Second Bull Run. Seeking help from McClellan for Major General John Pope’s units engaged near Manassas Junction, Haupt “explained my plans for giving them relief, but a strong force was necessary
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JAMES WADE WILCOX
with him, and had him taken to his room; he was very much stunned by the blow, although no bones were broken.... The effect of this blow and fall, lasted for some hours.” Herman Haupt brought a West Point education and considerable civilian experience as a surveying engineer to his work with the Union army. The native Pennsylvanian entered military service in late April 1862 at the request of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, who asked that he “proceed directly to the Headquarters of Major-General McDowell on the Rappahannock.” Thus began a career that earned Haupt a reputation as a superb engineer whose labors greatly
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B&A
“ The General would not … assume any responsibility, and would give no orders, instructions, or suggestions of any kind!!” HERMAN HAUPT, ON HIS FRUSTRATION WITH GENERAL GEORGE MCCLELLAN’S LEADERSHIP DURING THE SECOND BATTLE OF BULL RUN
JAMES WADE WILCOX
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to protect the trains.” McClellan responded “that he could not approve the plan; that it ‘would be attended with risk.’ I reminded the General that military operations were usually attended with risk, but that I did not consider the risk in this case excessive.” Haupt’s exasperation came through: “The General would not give his consent, or assume any responsibility, and would give no orders, instructions, or suggestions of any kind!!” Haupt also recalled a tense meeting two days after the Battle of Gettysburg. “I asked Meade in reference to his future movements,” stated Haupt, “so that I could arrange for his supplies, and observed that I supposed he would march at once to the Potomac and cut off Lee’s retreat.” Meade replied that his men required rest. Haupt pointed out that Lee’s men surely needed rest even more and should be pressed. “As a class-mate of General Meade at West Point,” continued Haupt, “I did not hesitate to express my opinions freely without fear of offense. I could not, however, remove the idea from General Meade that a period of rest was necessary.” These three titles help flesh out a full understanding of the Army of the Potomac. They are not among the first books someone new to the subject should consult, but veteran readers will find them well worth the investment of time. GARY W. GALLAGHER IS THE JOHN L. NAU III PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA. HIS MOST RECENT BOOKS ARE BECOMING CONFEDERATES: PATHS TO A NEW NATIONAL LOYALTY (2013) AND THE AMERICAN WAR: A HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR ERA (2015; WITH JOAN WAUGH).
The Books That Built Me BY LESLEY J. GORDON it was the summer of 1981, and I was reading everything I could find about the American Civil War. I had been inspired by my 10th-grade U.S. history teacher to learn more outside the classroom, so I began to scour libraries in and around my hometown of East Granby, Connecticut. I read widely, keeping a handwritten list that grew through the summer into the fall. I would read and sketch while waiting at the bus stop, during breaks at school, and late into the evening hours. I hoped to become an historical artist, much in the vein of Don Troiani. I was also fascinated by Civil War photography.
Lesley J. Gordon
Another favorite teacher gave me William Frassanito’s Antietam: The Photographic Legacy of America’s Bloodiest Day (1978) that summer. She had inscribed: “Enjoy this book while you pursue your interest in the Civil War. It presents a different perspective.” And indeed it did. While I also read traditional histories of the war by Bruce Catton, Shelby Foote, and Allan Nevins, Frassanito’s study left a lasting impact. “War is a dangerously easy thing to glorify,” he wrote in his opening pages; this statement resonated with me greatly, and has ever since. I was drawn to the common soldiers pictured in these battlefield photos: dead and bloated bodies, seemingly anonymous in these images, yet still individuals with personal stories and histories of their own. As Frassanito recounts, photographer Alexander Gardner, employed by Mathew Brady, set out on the battlefield soon after the fighting ended to bring the war home. Though he frequently staged scenes for the camera lens, the realism in these photographs is undeniable. As The New York Times famously observed when Brady displayed the “Dead at Antietam” photographs in his New York City studio: “Mr. BRADY has done something to bring
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B&A Three soldiers from the 22nd New York State Militia share a meal in front of their tent in this early war photograph. Below, a drawing of the scene by historian Lesley Gordon, one of many that she painstakingly sketched in pencil while a high school student.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (TOP); LESLEY J. GORDON
home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our dooryards and along the streets, he has done something very like it.” Bell Irvin Wiley’s books further piqued my curiosity about the men in Gardner’s haunting photographs. Wiley’s The Life of Johnny Reb and The Life of Billy Yank still stand as treasure troves of information for today’s scholars. But I remember one Wiley book most vividly: They Who Fought Here (1959), which combined Wiley’s text with illustrations selected by Hirst D. Milhollen. As I absorbed Wiley’s thorough descriptions of camp life, uniforms, and weaponry, my eyes narrowed onto the soldiers’ faces. One of the images that I sketched painstakingly with colored pencils was that of the 22nd New York State Militia. During high school, I also read a good deal of historical fiction, including Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, The Killer Angels (1974). Shaara explains in an introductory note that he wrote his book because, as Stephen Crane first put it, “he wanted to know what it was like to be there....” Shaara’s descriptions of seemingly great men and noble deeds captured my imagination. At the time, I willingly glossed over his refusal to deal squarely with the ugliness of slavery as a cause of the war (a shortcoming common to most historians I was reading at the time). I was content to view brave leaders and courageous soldiers as somehow removed from the complex societies
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Abraham from which they came. However, Confederate general George Pickett intrigued me: He did not quite fit the mold of the others about whom I was reading. Shaara depicts him as a hopeless romantic, yet he appears largely a caricature: “Gaudy and lovable, long-haired, perfumed.” When I learned of Pickett’s bitterness and anger at Robert E. Lee for ordering Pickett’s Charge and “destroying” his division at Gettysburg, I wondered if there was more to this man than The Killer Angels (or any other published source) was telling me. I later discovered that Shaara’s Pickett was largely mythologized, and based mostly on a romantic vision created by Pickett’s formidable third wife, LaSalle Pickett. Another foundational book—also fiction—was by MacKinlay Kantor. While I read every Kantor novel I could find, including his award-winning Andersonville (1955), I was captivated by his 1934 book Long Remember, which tells the story of Daniel Bale, a young pacifist whose hometown, Gettysburg, is overtaken by the war in the summer of 1863. The novel recounts the famed battle from the perspective of civilians, noncombatants, and women, but also reflects on conceptions of military heroism and cowardice. Kantor’s novel, hailed as one of the first works of realistic wartime fiction, seemed to me to accomplish what Shaara had sought but fell short of: to show readers “what it was like to be there.” These four books helped shaped me during a formative time in my life. I was reading as much as I could about the Civil War, imagining what it may have been like, but I had yet to really understand the principles or theories of historical writing or critical ways to consider the past. I then set out from my small New England hometown southward to study at the College of William &
Mary, and then at the University of Georgia, with accomplished historians who wrote important books of their own, including Alan Taylor, Ludwell Johnson, Robert Engs, Emory Thomas, William McFeely, Jean Friedman, Eugene Genovese, John Inscoe, and Thomas Dyer, among others. Each of them guided me to hone my skills as a researcher, writer, and historian. I learned about critical theory, including how cultural constructs, such as gender and race, shape our understanding of the conflict’s issues, which deeply changed how I thought and wrote about all of American history. One book was particularly significant in linking my early interest in everyday people’s war experiences with my maturing attention to the war’s violence and trauma. Early in my graduate study, I read Michael Fellman’s Inside War: The Guerilla Conflict in Missouri During the American Civil War (1990), one of the first comprehensive works about the “irregular” struggle waged far from the conventional battlefield. “My subjects,” Fellman explained, “were neither heroic nor contemptible but ordinary people trying to sort out personal and cultural experience and meaning in an overwhelmingly stressful situation.” These words rang as true to me when I first read them nearly 25 years ago as they do today. From my own biography of George Pickett to my recent study of a Connecticut regiment’s struggles in war and prison, I have continued to contemplate the tension between reality and myth, and how constructed narratives can both commemorate and repress the collective traumas of the past.
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lusioned colonists returned home; others migrated to the most successful settlement—the Norris Colony, established in 1865 by Colonel William Norris. The former Alabama senator had chosen the site carefully, and it soon became the most populous and productive American colony in Brazil, eventually containing some 100 families. And when the railroad finally did come through, the settlers built the beginnings of the nearby market town that survives today as Americana. Even here, though, life could be brutal. Former Rebel colonel Anthony T. Oliver had immigrated among the first settlers, along with his wife, Beatrice, and two teenage daughters. Within the first year, Beatrice died of tuberculosis, followed shortly by both daughters. When locals denied his wife burial in the Catholic graveyard, Oliver donated a section of his land—dubbed “Campo”—for a Protestant cemetery exclusively for the Confederados. Soon, the colonists built a small chapel nearby, which became the center of worship and connection for the transplanted Americans. Hard though the life could be, many who chose their locations well and put in the work succeeded. Through the use of what the native Brazilians perceived as advanced cultivation methods and tools, the colonists’ crops flourished. In addition to raising native produce, they introduced such homegrown crops as watermelon and pecans. So popular was the “Georgia Rattlesnake” watermelon that by the late 19th century, Confederados were shipping 100 carloads daily from Americana to various parts of Brazil. Within a short time, the displaced Rebels established a reputation as hard workers and as diligent and independent citizens. They did, however, go to great lengths to maintain their own identity. Although subsequent genera-
tions intermarried with the Brazilians, they never lost sight of their history and traditions. This was not always viewed in a positive light. Wrote one former Georgia planter in 1867, “The Anglo-Saxons are completely ignorant of amalgamation of thoughts and religion. Naturally egotistical, they do not admit superiors, nor do they accept customs which are in disagreement with their preformed ideas. They think it is their right to be boss. In my opinion … the Anglo-Saxon and his descendants are birds of prey, and woe to those who get in their way.” One clear indicator of the fierceness with which the Rebel settlers maintained their identity is in their speech. Despite five generations of assimilation, the English language has survived, perfect and intact, among a number of the bilingual Confederados. Amazingly, although most have not visited the United States, their speech clearly reflects that of the American South. When Jimmy Carter, then the governor of Georgia, visited Campo in 1972, he was stunned: “The most remarkable thing was, when they spoke they sounded just like people in South Georgia.” The Confederados represent a human treasure trove for modernday linguists. Throughout the past century and a half, scholars have puzzled over what the southerners of the Civil War era actually sounded like. The Brazilian descendants’ English, in the words of one latter-day Rebel, has been “preserved in aspic”; in its purist form, it stands virtually frozen in time, reflecting the pronunciations and speech patterns of their forebears, dating from the third quarter of the 19th century. Similar settlements in Mexico and other Latin American countries faltered; Brazil was the only place where the Confederate émigrés managed to carve a life and an extended community from the jungle, and to found a thriving dynasty. Today, the living descendants of Brazil’s original Rebels are scattered throughout the country, and they enjoy the richness of a dual culture. They see themselves as Brazilians, but also as
distinctly American—the last Rebels of the Civil War. Says one historian, “They are proud to have Brazil as their mother country, and the United States as their grandmother country.” As one descendant, who learned English before he learned Portuguese, put it, “Actually, we’re the most Southern and the only truly unreconstructed Confederates that there are on Earth. We left right after the war, and we never pledged allegiance to the damn Yankee flag.” RON SOODALTER IS THE AUTHOR OF HANGING CAPTAIN GORDON: THE LIFE AND TRIAL OF AN AMERICAN SLAVE TRADER AND A CO-AUTHOR OF THE SLAVE NEXT DOOR: HUMAN TRAFFICKING AND SLAVERY IN AMERICA TODAY.
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human-created event. The war forces upon him a choice that is no choice at all, for his honor and integrity require that he serve the Confederacy. And in mythic imagination, Lee’s decision symbolizes the honor and integrity of every one of the 800,000 southern men who take up arms not from any political ideology, but rather because they must protect their families, their neighbors, their homeland. MARK GRIMSLEY, A HISTORY PROFESSOR AT THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, IS THE AUTHOR OF SEVERAL BOOKS, INCLUDING AND KEEP MOVING ON: THE VIRGINIA CAMPAIGN, MAY-JUNE 1864 (2002) AND THE HARD HAND OF WAR: UNION MILITARY POLICY TOWARD SOUTHERN CIVILIANS, 1861-1865 (1995). HE HAS ALSO WRITTEN OVER 50 ARTICLES AND ESSAYS.
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engine parts were recovered off the coast of Florida after more than 40 years in the Atlantic, thanks to an expedition funded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. “They are the most powerful disposable artifacts ever made,” said Mardikian. Conserving objects that are both “modern technical marvels and marine archaeological artifacts” has been a challenge, but Mardikian suc-
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ceeded. He even managed to preserve soot resulting from the combustion of liquid oxygen and kerosene in some of the engine parts. “This is not something you want to clean,” he said. Mardikian said that there are no artifacts that he wouldn’t enjoy conserving—ancient or modern— except those that have been ripped away from their story. “An artifact has no interest without it,” he said. “If you just excavate an object and remove it from its context, it may be an amazing object, but you’re leaving behind all of its history.” It is Mardikian’s job to revive that history, to restore its dimensions—and Civil War scholarship has greatly benefited from his talent to do so. “It’s a page of the history book that you’re turning,” he said, “that may never have been turned again otherwise.” JENNY JOHNSTON IS A FREELANCE WRITER AND EDITOR BASED IN SAN FRANCISCO.
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other disloyal practice against the United States.” So broad and vague an order implied an extension of the constitutional definition of treason to include the expression of opinions in opposition to executive policy, and Stanton subsequently demonstrated that this was his intent. For the first time since the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts of 1800, federal officers began actively imprisoning people under his edict for exercising their basic First Amendment right to disagree with the government. Probably
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at Stanton’s suggestion, the president reissued the same order a few weeks later under his presumed war powers, making it stand for the duration of the war— suspending habeas corpus and subjecting legions of prisoners to the convictionprone justice of martial law.20 The nature of those proclamations in the late summer of 1862 inevitably led to partisan implementation. The decrees immediately preceded most states’ biennial elections, in which the Republican Party was expected to fare very badly, and did, but those intimidating orders may have prevented even worse results by curbing opposition rhetoric in many quarters. Journalists, candidates for state and national office, and dissident citizens by the hundreds were rounded up and detained indefinitely for what had always been regarded as legitimate campaign criticism. That dialectical handicap continued throughout the war, fluctuating in intensity as critical impending elections inspired periodic crackdowns, and it exerted a chilling effect on the Democratic press. In order to avoid being arrested or having their newspapers seized for direct criticism of the administration, many editors began publishing analogies of similar repression from the French Revolution; such comparisons might have seemed obviously relevant to those educated in the history of that era, but more plebian readers would often have missed the point. Scholars who have assessed the Lincoln administration’s infringements ☛ } CONT. ON P. 74
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on the opposition press have not given much thought to the political impact of such self-censorship. In addition to trying to muzzle or muffle Democratic newspapers as important elections approached, Stanton staged occasional propaganda dramas for dissemination by a willing Republican press. During the 1864 presidential campaign he ordered Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt, his colleague from the Buchanan cabinet, to launch an “investigation” into treasonable conspiracies. Officers who had made a specialty of propagating such myths provided Holt with an assortment of undocumented and largely improbable claims that smeared Democratic candidates and celebrities as traitors. Rather than arresting and charging the alleged villains, Stanton instructed Holt to release that miscellany as an official report, and it appeared exactly one month before the election. The War Department published thousands of copies of it in pamphlet form, for immediate public consumption.21 Through Holt’s bureau, Stanton also initiated a series of show trials to coincide with the president’s reelection campaign. Focusing primarily on a military tribunal in Indianapolis, long daily newspaper accounts covered the prosecution’s case against defendants who were, for the most part, members of militant Democratic fraternal societies no more dangerous than the Republicans’ Union League clubs. Protracted presentations by army prosecutors delayed all defense rebuttals until after the election, in what seemed a deliberate effort to deprive Democratic papers of their own partisan pre-election fodder.22 Stanton’s strenuous efforts toward the president’s reelection reflected no particular faithfulness to Lincoln, whose political opponents the war secretary had often cultivated as potential allies of his own. Ear-
ly in 1864 Secretary Chase dropped hints among prominent Radicals that he would allow himself to be considered as a candidate for the 1864 nomination in place of Lincoln, and once again Stanton let Chase believe that he was sympathetic. He awarded so much War Department advertising to Chase’s newspaper backers that conservative observers commented on it. During that same interlude Stanton also invited Radical congressman Henry Winter Davis to his home for a private chat, beyond the sight and hearing of the White House coterie. Davis, who had attended Kenyon College with Stanton, would soon join Ben Wade in challenging Lincoln over his Reconstruction policy, and the Wade-Davis Manifesto seriously threatened his
reelection prospects.23 Once that Radical schism had faded away, Lincoln’s reelection offered Stanton’s only avenue to continuation in office, and he reverted to ardent support of the president in private as well as in public. Few had noticed his equivocal efforts on behalf of Chase’s nomination, and apparently no one knew of his meeting with Davis, so Stanton was later able to bury such speculative infidelity. After the assassination led to Lincoln’s political apotheosis, Stanton became the principal architect of his own image as the most beloved and loyal member of the lamented president’s cabinet. One suspiciously maudlin, self-serving tale of Lincoln refusing Stanton’s request to resign sprang to life when Stanton himself
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When Andrew Johnson (pictured here) assumed the presidency, Stanton tried to dominate him. When that failed, he joined the Radical Republicans’ unsuccessful efforts to push Johnson out of office.
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introduced it in a conspiratorial letter to James Ashley, a Radical Ohio congressman, just as Stanton’s place in Andrew Johnson’s cabinet became insecure. “Putting his hands on my shoulders,” Stanton wrote, “tears filling his eyes, he said: ‘Stanton, you cannot go. Reconstruction is more difficult and dangerous than construction or destruction. You have been our main reliance; you must help us through the final act. The bag is filled. It must be tied, and tied securely. Some knots slip; yours do not. You understand the situation better than anyone else, and it is my wish and the country’s that you remain.’” In that same letter Stanton ominously noted how effectively Congress could “tie the hands of Johnson and Seward,” and it was undoubtedly to plan such a strategy that he beseeched Ashley to come see him in Washington immediately.24 Stanton surely had no part in the assassination of Lincoln, who was then his primary and most powerful political champion, but Stanton’s widely recognized duplicity made it seem credible to some that he actually did have a hand in the murder. As a member of Buchanan’s cabinet he ingratiated himself to the incoming Lincoln administration at Buchanan’s political and historical expense. No sooner had he entered Lincoln’s official family than he secretly allied himself with Lincoln’s critics among the Radicals, who seemed to be the rising power in Washington, and then there was his equivocal association with the Radicals who sought to deprive Lincoln of a second term. When Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency Stanton first tried to dominate him; when that failed, he served as the Radicals’ spy and co-conspirator in the effort to hamstring Johnson and hound him out of office. The contest with Johnson proved his undoing. Johnson’s attempt to fire him led to impeachment proceedings against the president for violating the Tenure of Office Act— which Stanton himself had almost certainly proposed that the Radicals
pass for his own protection. When the Senate narrowly voted to acquit Johnson, Stanton finally resigned, six years and three months after taking office. Although he pretended otherwise, Stanton obviously hoped to serve next in Ulysses Grant’s cabinet, but in that he was bitterly disappointed—and most likely because Grant was already too familiar with him. More than a year of disappointing attempts to revive his legal practice illustrated how dependent Stanton had become on political patronage even for that sort of work, but two successive openings on the Supreme Court gave him hope for permanent public office. He strove mightily for an appointment to each vacancy, to the extent of making himself look ridiculous in his eagerness. Through one intermediary he essentially begged the president for a place on the court, to the extent of hinting that he would provide opinions that were politically helpful to the administration.25 Grant still evidently preferred not to nominate him. Not until the second vacancy did he relent, and then only under intense pressure from Stanton’s mainly Radical friends in the Senate and House of Representatives, who petitioned the president directly for the appointment. Faced with such strong support from a crucial faction, the president acceded as though he was happy to do so, but his willingness may have been enhanced by the accurate impression that Stanton lay at death’s door. He died in the wee hours of December 24, 1869, only five days after Grant signed his appointment. In an extraordinarily irregular gesture the Senate had already confirmed his nomination, weeks before the justice he was to have replaced actually retired. Some of Stanton’s earliest correspondence documents his habit of plying conflicting factions with insincere compliments as a means of winning favor with men of influence. His reputation for stern candor has nevertheless been sustained by a series of biographers who were quick to accept Stanton’s own word
without digging too deeply or interpreting too harshly. He has become a fixture in the myth of a serendipitous political combination in the Lincoln White House, when instead he seems to bear primary responsibility for some of the more troubling actions of Lincoln’s presidency. Even his involvement on the Radical side of Reconstruction, which today seems more creditable than it did a century ago, appears to have been guided by more cynical motives of personal preservation. Except for his own family members and the Radicals who formed his last political cohort, Stanton’s contemporaries depicted him as sly, treacherous, and deceitful. On such talents did he survive in public life— perennially maintaining a position of privilege and authority for himself by advocating policies molded to the preferences of the most powerful faction, with little regard for the ultimate public good. WILLIAM MARVEL IS AN INDEPENDENT SCHOLAR FROM NEW HAMPSHIRE. HE HAS WRITTEN 17 BOOKS ON THE CIVIL WAR, THE LATEST OF WHICH IS LINCOLN’S AUTOCRAT: THE LIFE OF EDWIN STANTON.
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in, follow’d by other layers again sweated in, absorb’d by those excited souls—their clothes all saturated with the clay-powder filling the air —stirr’d up everywhere on the dry roads and trodden fields by the regiments, swarming wagons, artillery, &c.—all the men with this coating of murk and sweat and rain, now recoiling back, pouring over the Long Bridge—a horrible march of twenty miles, returning to Washington baffled, humiliated, panic-struck.”35 “It was a weary, painful night,” Augustus Woodbury wrote less poetically, “the road seemed to stretch on and on.... Still we pressed on, and soon after the dawn, which broke cloudy, rainy, and uncomfortable, the waters of the Potomac and the city of Washington appeared.”36 For others, the retreat was almost too much to bear. “Many times I sat down in the mud determined to go no further,” Elisha Hunt Rhodes of the 2nd Rhode Island Infantry admitted, “and willing to die to end my misery.”37 Businessman Charles Lewis Francis watched the broken army enter the city, afraid “that the existence of the nation was in its greatest peril. To render it worse,” he added, “that direful day was dark and gloomy, and it rained in torrents.”38 Back at Manassas, the same “hard rain” awakened jubilant but bonetired Confederates as well as hundreds of Union prisoners. With creek beds flooded and roads impassable with mud, Beauregard maintained that any Confederate pursuit—then and now the subject of heated discussion—was rendered all but impossible “by the unusually heavy and unintermitting fall of rain [that] intervened to obstruct our advance with reasonable prospect of fruitful results.”39 In the face of a “slow but steady drizzle” that lasted well into the next night, as well as temperatures declining steadily through the day, many soldiers simply sought shelter instead. The men of the 1st
“ It was a weary, painful night, the road seemed to stretch on and on.... Still we pressed on, and soon after the dawn, which broke cloudy, rainy, and uncomfortable, the ... city of Washington appeared.” UNION SOLDIER AUGUSTUS WOODBURY
cheeks, swelling the tide of raindrops that beat in our faces.”41 The rain finally cleared off on July 23, two days after the battle at Manassas, but it left deep mud everywhere. The Confederates cautiously pushed forward through the mud to Centreville and beyond, close enough to Washington in some cases to see the city from their picket posts. Northern Virginia remained hot and humid for the next several weeks, with highs in the 80s and occasionally the low 90s. Heavy rain set in again on July 28. August proved cloudier and wetter—it rained 17 out of 31 days—but cooler as well, with the last 90-degree high on August 10 and the rest of the cloudy month reaching into the 80s on only eight out of 20 days.42 Conditions initially were no less debilitating for the defeated Federals stationed inside their works or elsewhere around Washington. From Georgetown Heights on August 5, for example, Luther Furst claimed that two entire companies of the 39th Pennsylvania Infantry were stricken with sunstroke.43
Noting that “it is raining now every day,” Lieutenant Colonel McAllister of the 1st New Jersey wrote his wife on August 19 that “we have two hundred men sick from chills and fever.” Three days later he greeted the sun with joy, but added that the bad weather and accompanying illness had “nearly ruined our Regiment.”44 But a change was already in the offing. On July 26, a bright, sunny day with a high of 86 degrees, George B. McClellan arrived in Washington, summoned from his recent triumphs in western Virginia to command the new Military Division of the Potomac.45 His ascent soon brought practical results. McClellan moved decisively to reshape and rebuild the force (which he renamed the Army of the Potomac) with a skillful combination of ability, firmness, discipline, and military paternalism. But he also began to deal with managing the weather, providing uniforms and tents to soldiers who had done without. In more ways than one, a new season had arrived.46 In retrospect, even a battle as familiar as First Bull Run can illustrate the way that weather and climate shaped Civil War campaigns. Delays in preparation led McDowell to launch his army during the hottest weeks of the summer. Heat, dust, and rain slowed his march even more, exhausting soldiers who were new to the field and unaccustomed to southern heat. McDowell launched his attack at Bull Run in hopes of escaping the worst heat of the day, but Confederate resistance in the hot sun pushed his worn out and increasingly dehydrated men to their breaking points. Stormy weather further pummeled McDowell’s army during its retreat and eroded morale, but it also helped forestall a Confederate pursuit and protect Washington. Weather and climate might not have won the Battle of Manassas for the Confederacy, but it played an important role in its outcome. KENNETH W. NOE IS THE DRAUGHON PROFESSOR OF SOUTHERN HISTORY AT AUBURN UNIVERSITY. MOST RECENTLY HE WAS THE EDITOR OF THE YELLOWHAMMER WAR: THE CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION IN ALABAMA (UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS, 2013). HIS CURRENT RESEARCH INVOLVES A BROADER STUDY OF CIVIL WAR WEATHER.
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Virginia Infantry made makeshift tents from their blankets. McHenry Howard described taking refuge “under some flat bush shelters” made of tree branches that others had erected the previous day for shade. “Dripping with rain” they soon proved “worse than no shelter at all.”40 Others turned to a most unpleasant duty. “It didn’t just rain it poured all day long the 22nd,” Lieutenant John Newton Lyle of the 4th Virginia Infantry explained. “Captain White and I went with a detail and buried the killed of the College Company.... They were laid side by side in a trench and, as Captain White prayed, the tears streamed down his and our
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6 Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, 3 vols. (Washington, 1863), Vol. 1, 75-76. 7 Ibid., Vol. 1, 84-85, Vol. 2, 426. 8 The shameful persecution of General Stone is best summarized in Stephen W. Sears, Controversies and Commanders: Dispatches from the Army of the Potomac (Boston, 1999), 29-50.
SOURCES & CITATIONS FROM THIS ISSUE’S ARTICLES
AMERICAN ILIAD (Pages 28–29, 72) 1
Otto Eisenschiml with Ralph Newman, The American Iliad: The Epic Story of the Civil War as Narrated by Eyewitnesses and Contemporaries (Indianapolis, 1947). Despite the title, the book does not elaborate on the mythic reference but rather is a compendium of firstperson accounts. Charles P. Roland employs the same phrase in an introductory survey of the conflict: An American Iliad: The Story of the Civil War (Lexington, KY, 1991).
2 Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels (New York, 1975), 65. 3 Kenneth M. Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction (New York, 1965), 3. 4 Lee to Sydney Smith Lee, April 20, 1861, in Clifford Dowdey and Louis H. Manarin (eds.), The Wartime Papers of R.E. Lee (New York, 1961), 10. 5 J. William Jones, Personal Reminiscences of General Robert E. Lee (Richmond, 1989), 142. 6 Alan T. Nolan, Lee Considered: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History (Chapel Hill, 1991), 30-58.
MINISTER OF DECEIT (Pages 42–53, 73–75) 1
Five months after Stanton’s death, Chase declined to provide Senator Henry Wilson with testimony to Stanton’s antislavery zeal, noting that in all the decades they were acquainted Stanton never confirmed his professed abolition sympathy by any action. Chase to Wilson, May 25, 1870, Chase Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter LC).
2 Stanton to Brinkerhoff, January 19, 1845, Stanton Papers, LC; Stanton to Allen, February 20, 1846, Allen Papers, LC. 3 Whether this episode happened at all (and it very likely did not) is the subject of an entire appendix in Lincoln’s Autocrat. 4 Stanton to Buchanan, March 10, 1861, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Stanton’s letters to Buchanan in the spring and early summer of 1861 are in the Buchanan Papers of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and in volume 11 of John Barrett Moore, The Works of James Buchanan (Philadelphia, 1911). 5 Malcolm Ives to James Gordon Bennett, January 15, 1862, Bennett Papers, LC.
9 For Stanton’s successful effort to infuriate a grieving President Lincoln over a technical impediment to McClellan’s campaign up the Potomac, see John G. Nicolay’s eyewitness account of their interview in Michael Burlingame, With Lincoln in the White House: Letters, Memoranda, and Other Writings of John G. Nicolay, 1860-65 (Carbondale, IL, 2000), 72-73. 10 Stanton to McClellan, July 5, 1862, McClellan Papers, LC; Stanton to Heman Dyer, May 18, 1862, and Horatio Woodman to Stanton, June 22, 1862, Stanton Papers, LC. 11 War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 128 vols. (Washington, 1880-1901), Series I, Vol. 12, part 3, 706, 739-741 (hereafter cited as OR). 12 Ibid., Series 2, Vol. 2, 221-223, 225-238, 249, 250-252, 261-268; Mark E. Neely Jr., The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil War Liberties (New York, 1991), 62. 13 OR, Series 3, Vol. 1, 899. This “order” was not issued officially, going instead as a telegram to the editors and publishers of selected newspapers, advising “that the public safety requires all newspapers to abstain for the present from publishing intelligence in respect to military operations by the U.S. forces.” It specified no time period. 14 In Lincoln and the Power of the Press (New York, 2014) Harold Holzer gave Stanton’s actions in this incident a much more flattering interpretation, mistaking the Washington Sunday Chronicle for a daily newspaper and asserting that Stanton’s order cost it a day’s publication. The Chronicle did not become a daily until November 1862, and the theatrical shutdown caused it no inconvenience. Holzer also misapprehended that Stanton was enforcing an earlier order issued by Secretary of State William Seward, rather than his own vague and seemingly advisory “order” of two weeks before. 15 OR, Series 1, Vol. 39, part 3, 740. 16 Russell to Stanton, April 2, 1862, Stanton Papers, LC; William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South (London, 1863), 338-340. 17 OR, Series 3, Vol. 2, 2-3, 26, 29. 18 Ibid., Series 3, Vol. 2, 179-188, 199-200; Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols. (New Brunswick, NJ, 1953), Vol. 5, 298, 301, 304. 19 OR, Series 3, Vol. 2, 198, 280-282. 20 Ibid., 321. 21 Stanton to Holt, August 31, 1864, Stanton Papers, LC; Report of the Judge Advocate General on the “Order of American Knights” or
“Sons of Liberty,” a Western Conspiracy in Aid of the Southern Rebellion (Washington, 1864). 22 Benn Pittman, ed., The Trials for Treason at Indianapolis, Disclosing the Plans for Establishing a North-Western Confederacy (New York, 1865). 23 The Independent, October 15 and November 5, 1863; Stanton to Davis, January 26, 1864, Stanton Papers, LC. 24 Stanton to Ashley, September 14, 1866, published in Frank Abial Flower, Edwin McMasters Stanton: The Autocrat of Rebellion, Emancipation, and Reconstruction (Akron, OH, 1905), 310-312. 25 Stanton to Bishop Matthew Simpson, October 26, 1869, Cabinet Member Letters, Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, IN.
HEAT OF BATTLE (Pages 54–63, 76) 1
Jack Temple Kirby, “The American Civil War: An Environmental View,” National Humanities Center (2001), nationalhumanitiescenter.org/ tserve/nattrans/ntuseland/essays/amcwar. htm, accessed July 8, 2015. A good introduction to the Civil War environmental history and its practitioners is Brian Allen Drake, ed., The Blue, the Gray, and the Green: Toward an Environmental History of the Civil War (Athens, GA, 2015).
2 Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union (Indianapolis, 1952; reprint edition, Baton Rouge, 1978), 55-58, 76-77, 127; Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy (Indianapolis, 1943; reprint edition, Baton Rouge, 1978), 59-67, 74-75, 79, 244-245; Kenneth W. Noe, Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle (Lexington, 2001); Kenneth W. Noe, “Fateful Lightning: The Significance of Weather and Climate in Civil war History,” in Drake, ed., The Blue, the Gray, and the Green, 16-33; Celine Herweijer, Richard Seager, and Edward R. Cook, “North American Droughts of the Mid- to Late-nineteenth Century: A History Simulation and Implication for Mediaeval Drought,” The Holocene 16 (February 2006): 159-171. 3 Allen C. Guelzo, Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War & Reconstruction (New York, 2012), 154; McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York, 1988), 333-337 (quotation, 334). 4 McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 335-336, 339-340. 5 Adam Goodheart, 1861: The Civil War Awakening (New York, 2011), 350-351, 366-370; Mary Chestnut, A Diary from Dixie, ed. by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary (New York, 1905), 79; J.B. Jones, A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital, ed. by Howard Swiggett (New York, 1935), v. 1, 56; John Herbert Roper, ed., Repairing the “March of Mars”: The Civil War Diaries of John Samuel Apperson, Hospital Steward in the Stonewall Brigade, 1861-1865, transcribed by Jason Clayman, Peter Gretz, and John Herbert Roper
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(Macon, GA, 2001), 103. 6 Mark Twain, English as She is Taught, biographical sketch by Matthew Irving Lans (Boston, 1900), 16. 7 “Weather and Atmosphere,” NOAA Education Resources, education.noaa.gov/Weather_ and_Atmosphere/, accessed June 1, 2015; “Climate,” NOAA Education Resources, education. noaa.gov/Climate/, accessed June 1, 2015. 8 This discussion is based on Michael C. Baechler, et al, “Guide to Determining Climate Regions by County, Vol. 7.1, High-Performance Home Technologies,” Building America Best Practices Series (Washington, August 2010): 2-4. See also David M. Ludlum, The American Weather Book (Boston, 1982), 70. 9 Curtis W. Crockett, “The Climate of Virginia,” in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, Climates of the States, Volume I-Eastern States plus Puerto Rico and the U. S. Virginia Islands (Port Washington, NY, 1974) 418; George H.T. Kimble, Our American Weather (New York, 1955), 147. 10 Kimble, Our American Weather, 146-148, 150171; Georgetown, District of Columbia, July 1861, Reel 81, RG 27.5.7, NARA-CP, and New York, New York City, July 1861, Reel 360, RG 27.5.7, RG 27.5.7, Records of the Division of Station Facilities and Meteorological Observations and its Predecessors, Microfilm T907, National Archives and Records Administration II, College Park, MD [cited hereafter as RG 27.5.7, NARA-CP]; Robert K. Krick, Civil War Weather in Virginia (Tuscaloosa, 2007), 30; McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 339. 11 James I. Robertson, ed., The Civil War Letters of General Robert McAllister (New Brunswick, NJ, 1965), 39. 12 Newton Martin Curtis, First Bull Run to Chancellorsville: The Story of the Sixteenth New York Infantry, Together with Personal Reminiscences (New York, 1906), 33. 13 Nancy Chappelear Baird, ed., Journals of Amanda Virginia Edmonds: Lass of the Mosby Confederacy, 1857-1867 (Stephens City, VA, 1984), 52. 14 Roper, ed., Reparing the “March of Mars,” 103108 (quotations, 106, 107, 108). 15 United States War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records 129 vols. (Washington, 1880-1901), Series I, Vol. 2, 303-305, 308, 318-319, 338-40 (hereafter cited as OR); McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 340. 16 OR, Series I, Vol. 2, 305, 339, 452; Kimble, Our American Weather, 146-147, 150-171; Georgetown, District of Columbia, July 1861, Reel 81, RG 27.5.7, NARA-CP; Augustus Woodbury, A Narrative of the Campaign of the First Rhode Island Regiment in the Spring and Summer of 1861 (Providence, 1862) 76-83; William C. Davis, Battle at Bull Run: A History of the First Major Campaign of the Civil War (Garden City, NY, 1977), 93, 97, 108, 152; Robert Hunt Rhodes, ed., All for the Union: A History of the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteer Infantry in the War of the Great Rebellion (Lincoln, RI, 1985), 24; Mike Woshner,
India-Rubber and Gutta-Percha in the Civil War Era: an Illustrated History of Rubber & Pre-Plastic Antiques and Militaria (Alexandria, VA, 1999), 101, 121-122. 17 William B. Westervelt, “Lights and Shadows of Army Life, As Seen by a Private Soldier,” typescript, William B. Westervelt Manuscript, Box 121, Civil War Miscellaneous Collection, U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, PA (hereafter cited as USAMHI), 2. This is an incomplete typescript of Westervelt’s 1886 book. 18 Georgetown, District of Columbia, July 1861, Reel 81, RG 27.5.7, NARA-CP; Davis, Bull Run, 152, 154; Rhodes, All for the Union, 26. 19 Guy R. Everson and Edward H. Simpson Jr., eds., “Far, Far from Home”: The Wartime Letters of Dick and Tally Simpson, Third South Carolina Volunteers (New York, 1994), 29, 31. 20 McHenry Howard, Recollections of a Maryland Confederate Soldier and Staff Officer under Johnston, Jackson and Lee, Introduction, Corrections, and Notes by James I. Robertson Jr. (Dayton, OH, 1975), 30, 33. See also Napier Bartlett, Military Record of Louisiana, Including Biographical and Historical Papers Relating to the Military Organizations of the State (New Orleans, 1875; reprint edition, Baton Rouge, 1964), 38; W.W. Blackford, War Years with Jeb Stuart (New York, 1945), 23; John O. Casler, Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade, 4th ed. (Dayton, OH, 1971), 16; Charles W. Turner, ed., A Reminiscence of Lieutenant John Newton Lyle of the Liberty Hall Volunteers (Roanoke, VA, 1987), 79. 21 Augustus Woodbury, A Narrative of the Campaign of the First Rhode Island Regiment in the Spring and Summer of 1861 (Providence, 1862), 87. 22 E.B. Long with Barbara Long, The Civil War Day by Day: An Almanac, 1861-1865 (Garden City, NY, 1971), 97. 23 OR, Series I, Vol. 2, 318. 24 Henry Kyd Douglas, I Rode With Stonewall (Chapel Hill, 1940), 9; Casler, Four Years, 25. 25 OR, Series I, Vol. 2, 319, 333, 413; Georgetown, District of Columbia, July 1861, Reel 81, RG 27.5.7, NARA-CP; Wooodbury, Narrative, 92. For wearing woolen uniforms that summer, see the memoir of a soldier whose regiment admittedly missed the battle, William Augustus McClendon, Recollections of War Times, by an Old Veteran While Under Stonewall Jackson and Lieutenant General James Longstreet ... (Montgomery, AL, 1909; reprint edition, San Bernadino, CA, 1973), 28. 26 Frinkle Fry [Elnathan B. Tyler], “Wooden Nutmegs” at Bull Run, A Humorous Account of Some of the Exploits and Experiences of the Three Months Connecticut Brigade, and the Part They Bore in the National Stampede (Hartford, 1872), 66. 27 Howard, Recollections, 35. See also Susan Leigh Blackford, Charles Minor Blackford, and Charles Minor Blackford III, eds., Letters from Lee’s Army, or, Memoirs of Life In and Out of the Army in Virginia During the War Between the States (New York, 1947), 30; Blackford, War Years, 33; Jubal Anderson Early, War Memoirs:
Autobiographical Sketch and Narrative of the War Between the States, ed. with an introduction by Frank E. Vandiver (Bloomington, 1960), 20; R.H. Peck, Reminiscences of a Confederate Soldier of Co. C, 2nd Va. Cavalry (n.p., n.d.), 5. 28 Turner, ed., Reminiscence, 84. 29 Joseph E. Johnston, Narrative of Military Operations, Directed, During the Late War Between the States (New York, 1874), 42. 30 OR, Series I, Vol. 2, 344. 31 Ibid., 573. 32 Ibid., 334; McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 340-347. 33 OR, Series I, Vol. 2, 316. 34 Ibid., 352, 356; Georgetown, District of Columbia, July 1861, Reel 81, RG 27.5.7, NARA-CP. 35 Walt Whitman, Specimen Days & Collect (Philadelphia, 1882-1883), 23. 36 Woodbury, Narrative, 109-100. 37 Rhodes, All for the Union, 30. 38 Charles Lewis Francis, Narrative of a Private Soldier in the Volunteer Army of the United States, During a Portion of the Period Covered by the Great War of the Rebellion of 1861 (Brooklyn, 1879), 12. 39 OR, Series I, Vol. 2, 504, 519, 529 (quotation 504). See also Davis, Bull Run, 244; Peck, Reminiscences, 6; and Blackford, et al, eds., Letters, 34, 36. Blackford’s wife noted torrential rain as far west as Lynchburg. 40 Howard, Recollections, 43. See also Casler, Four Years, 32; Roper, ed., Repairing the March of Mars, 117. 41 Turner, ed., Reminiscence, 92. 42 Austin C. Dobbins, ed., Grandfather’s Journal: Company B, Sixteenth Mississippi Infantry Volunteers, Harris’s Brigade, Mahone’s Division, Hill’s Corps, A. N. V., May 27, 1861 - July 15, 1865 (Dayton, OH,, 1988), 33; Everson and Simpson, “Far, Far from Home,” 37; Napier Bartlett, Military Record of Louisiana, Including Biographical and Historical Papers Relating to the Military Organizations of the State (New Orleans, 1875; reprint edition, Baton Rouge, 1964), 54; Kimble, Our American Weather, 172. 43 David W. Blight, ed., When This Cruel War is Over: The Civil War Letters of Charles Henry Brewster (Amherst, MA, 1992), 27, 30; Benjamin F. Cook, History of the Twelfth Massachusetts Volunteers (Webster Regiment) (Boston, 1882), 25-28; Luther C. Furst Diary, 11-12, Harrisburg Civil War Round Table Collection, USAMHI; Rhodes, All for the Union, 41; “The Diary of Horatio Nelson Taft, 1861-1865. Volume 1, January 1, 1861 – April 11, 1862,” transcribed by the Library of Congress. Washington, D.C., lcweb2.loc.gov/mss/mtaft/mtaft1/mtaft1.xml. 44 Robertson, ed., Civil War Letters of General Robert McAllister, 67, 69. 45 Georgetown, District of Columbia, July 1861, Reel 81, RG 27.5.7, NARA-CP. 46 Robertson, ed., Civil War Letters of General Robert McAllister, 71.
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pa r t i n g shot
Lee Photo Rediscovered IN MID-FEBRUARY 1866, 10 months after his surrender at Appomattox Court House, Robert E. Lee traveled from his
DONALD A. HOPKINS
home in Lexington, Virginia, to Washington, D.C. The erstwhile Confederate leader, now president of Lexington’s Washington College, had been subpoenaed to appear before Congress’ Joint Committee on Reconstruction, which was debating whether the former Confederate states were “entitled to be represented in either house of Congress.” ¶ After testifying, Lee visited the Washington studio of photographer Alexander Gardner, who took four images of the former general. Three of these photos—showing the venerable Virginian in a dark suit and narrow bow tie—have long been among the best-known postwar depictions of Lee. The fourth, however, remained hidden to history. That changed recently, when collector Don Hopkins of Gulfport, Mississippi, came across a copy at an auction of Civil War artifacts. (The photo he purchased is shown here and was brought to our attention by our friends at the Center for Civil War Photography.) An expert on Lee images and author of Robert E. Lee in War and Peace, a Photographic History of a Confederate and American Icon (2013), Hopkins had only heard of a photo with this pose once before, reportedly seen in a private collection. To the best of his knowledge, it has never before been published.
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