Special Issue: The War Is Over LINCOLN ASSASSINATED H THE NATION REACTS H HOW—AND WHY—DID IT HAPPEN?
VOL. 5, NO. 1
{ 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 }
The End. Plus:
CHAMBERLAIN’S SURRENDER STORIES
Abraham Lincoln’s top hat, which he wore to Ford’s Theatre on the night of his assassination
SPRING 2015
H
$5.99
What Really Happened at Appomattox?
WAR CORRESPONDENCE
Intercepted Confederate Letters CIVILWARMONITOR.COM
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Contents DEPARTMENTS
VOLUME 5, NUMBER 1 / SPRING 2015
FEATURES
Salvo CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT: TYLER DARDEN; FORD’S THEATRE NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL LITERARY SOCIETY COLLECTION, THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM, RICHMOND, VA;
{Facts, Figures & Items of Interest}
SPECIAL: LINCOLN
A S SA S S I N AT I O N 1 8 65- 2 0 1 5
TRAVELS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
“Sic Semper Tyrannis! ” 28
VOICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865. But who—or what—else shared the blame for the president’s death?
LIVING HISTORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
BY MARTHA HODES
PRESERVATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
PORTRAIT OF AN ASSASSINATION 38
A Visit to Petersburg Surrender
Historian Chris Calkins
A Breakthrough at Petersburg
An illustrated look at the killing of Abraham Lincoln and its aftermath.
DISUNION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 When Freedom Came to Charleston
IN FOCUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Reviewing the Troops
Columns CASUALTIES OF WAR . . . . . . . . 24
War Correspondence
50
The letters of hundreds of Confederate soldiers and civilians—confiscated by Union forces before they could be delivered—provide a rare window into the southern state of mind at the end of the Civil War.
SURRENDER STORIES 58
BY JOSHUA SHAFFER AND JOHN M. COSKI
Going Home
BATTLEFIELD ECHOES . . . . . . 26 Subdued Victory at Appomattox
Books & Authors CLOSING THE BOOK ON THE CIVIL WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 WITH A. WILSON GREENE, JOAN WAUGH, ELIZABETH R. VARON, AND BRIAN MATTHEW JORDAN
In Every Issue EDITORIAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 War’s End
PARTING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Tools of War Transformed
The origins and evolution of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain’s account of his famous salute to Confederate troops at Appomattox. BY STEPHEN CUSHMAN
ON THE COVER: Abraham Lincoln’s
top hat. Image courtesy the National Museum of American History.
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EDITORIAL VOLUME 5, NUMBER 1 / SPRING 2015
Terry A. Johnston Jr. EDITOR-IN-CHIEF TERRY@CIVILWARMONITOR.COM
Laura June Davis David Thomson Robert Poister CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
War’s End “SUCH A SCENE FOLLOWED as I can never see again,” wrote Union officer Theodore Lyman to his wife on April 9, 1865. “The soldiers rushed, perfectly crazy, to the roadside, and there crowding in dense masses, shouted, screamed, yelled, threw up their hats and hopped madly up and down!” Lyman, an officer on the staff of General George Gordon Meade, was in Appomattox, where General Robert E. Lee had surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant earlier that day. The war, Lyman and others well knew, had in effect ended. “My little share of this work is done,” Lyman noted with satisfaction. “God willing, before many weeks, or even days, I shall be at home, to campaign no more!” Jubilation was only one of the myriad emotions felt by Americans as the Civil War, which had witnessed the deaths of more than 600,000, came to a close. Also prominent were exhaustion, anger, and deep uncertainty—not only for those whose paths forward seemed unclear (“Oh, God, what will be our fate now?” wrote a resident of Columbia, South Carolina, in mid-April), but also for those traumatized by the death of President Abraham Lincoln, who had overseen the war’s successful end only to be cut down by an assassin’s bullet days later. To mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War’s end, we’ve devoted this issue entirely to covering the conflict’s final chapter, with an emphasis on how the country’s residents, North and South, experienced it. And while we can’t claim to have described every aspect of the war’s final months, we hope that the following pages will provide readers with a firmer understanding of this significant yet often overlooked period in our nation’s history. SPEAKING OF ENDINGS, this issue includes the final installments of “Battlefield Echoes” and “Casualties of War,” the columns overseen by historians Clay Mountcastle and Stephen Berry, respectively. Both have been part of (and epitomized the best of) the Monitor since day one. “Echoes” has been a probing yet accessible exploration of military themes from the Civil War that resonate still today, and “Casualties” a thoughtful and often poignant look at the conflict’s impact on the lives of a diverse lot of soldiers and civilians (and in one instance—perhaps my favorite installment— circus animals). We’ll miss them both, but never fear. New columns will debut soon, and we plan to hear from Clay and Steve again in future issues.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: LETTERS@civilwarmonitor.com
Stephen Berry Patrick Brennan John Coski Judith Giesberg Allen C. Guelzo Amy Murrell Taylor EDITORIAL ADVISORS
Jennifer Sturak COPY EDITOR
Matthew C. Hulbert SPECIAL PROJECTS MANAGER MATT@CIVILWARMONITOR.COM
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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, PO Box 567, Selmer, TN 38375-0567. 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.
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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SPRING 2015
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“ASTOUNDING….
The most deeply researched and analytically rich study of Union veterans ever written.” —DAVID W. BLIGHT, Yale University, author of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory
MARCHINEG
HOM
erans t e V n o i Un and ending Their Un
R A W L I CIV rdan
“Literate, beautifully crafted…. Racked by painful
recollections of the battlefield, unprepared for the ways of civilian life, and greeted with suspicion wherever they went, the shell-shocked veterans lived out their lives unable to let go of the memories of a war that their neighbors seemed determined to forget.” —JAMES OAKES, author of Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865
o tthew J
Ma Brian
For further reading
“[An] absorbing revisionist history of what could be called the second American Revolution.” —Newsweek LIVERIGHT PUBLISHING W. W. Norton • Independent publishers since 1923 • www.wwnorton.com
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“Of the 5,000-plus cases in which attorney Abraham Lincoln participated, none had more national significance than the one that Brian McGinty so ably describes and analyzes in this highly readable volume.” —MICHAEL BURLINGAME, author of Abraham Lincoln: A Life
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S A LV O
D I S PAT C H E S
Bluff in October and so at the time of his death he was officially ranked a colonel. Indeed, he remains the only sitting U.S. senator to be killed in action.
Living History
The winter 2014 issue is superb. I particularly enjoyed the story about Mark Dunkelman [“Living History,” Vol. 4, No. 4]. He spoke to the Joshua Chamberlain Civil War Round Table here in Maine a while ago and I had the honor of having dinner with him prior to the meeting. Fascinating work he is doing. Bravo to you all for profiling him.
Stuart McClung HAGERSTOWN, MARYLAND ED. We appreciate the explana-
tion, Stuart. Note that the wording of that caption was ours, not Mr. Bordewich’s, and therefore so is the responsibility for the lack of clarity.
Mike Bell VIA EMAIL
* * * There is an error on page 51 in Fergus Bordewich’s article “The Radicals’ War.” The author mentions Union general Benjamin Butler’s “fumbled attempt to capture Fort Fisher, Georgia, in December 1864.” There was no Fort Fisher in Georgia; the fort in question was located outside of Wilmington, North Carolina. I have enjoyed reading your fine magazine.
The Radicals’ War
Richard P. Cox SUN CITY, ARIZONA ED. Thanks for your note, Rich-
ard. For the record, Mr. Bordewich does mention Representative Daniel Gooch (whose photo is on page 52) by name in the article when he discusses the joint trip that Gooch and committee chair
Ben Wade made to Tennessee to investigate allegations of atrocities at Fort Pillow in 1864. * * * In the winter issue’s article on the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, the caption on page 45 states that Edward D. Baker was a “senator turned general.” Although he was evidently nominated by Abraham Lincoln as a major general, Baker felt he should reject such a commission as he might be in violation of the Emoluments Clause (Article 1, Section 6, Clause 2) of the Constitution and required, as a result, to resign his seat in the Senate. There is no indication that the nomination was confirmed by the Battle of Ball’s
Frank Roberts Letters to the editor: email us at letters@ civilwarmonitor. com or write to The Civil War Monitor, P.O. Box 428, Longport, NJ 08403.
STOCKBRIDGE, GEORGIA
PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE
Fergus M. Bordewich’s otherwise excellent article on the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War [“The Radicals’ War,” Vol. 4, No. 4] is somewhat marred by his failure to emphasize that this was a joint congressional committee, meaning the committee included members of the House of Representatives as well as senators. House members should have been mentioned, even though aside from congressman Daniel Gooch, most of the committee’s initiatives seemed to have come from the Radical Republican senatorial members.
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“A famous ghost emerges from this realistic dramatization of Jefferson Davis…an account of the early years of an educated man…illuminating Davis’s formative years, romances, marriages…allows a candid glimpse…as he struggles through setbacks, and tragedies….” FOREWARD REVIEWS
Keep Up the Good Work
I am happy to extend my subscription to your intelligent and quality magazine on the Civil War. Your in-depth articles are particularly appreciated, along with numerous book reviews, so valuable to the Civil War history buff. My only disappointment is that relying on academia for your authors produces the inevitable pro-Union bias, noticeable to those who give full weight to the Confederate viewpoint. Maintaining a balance between the two sides is hard in these PC times, and my appreciation for your efforts in this is therefore the more appreciated.
“The author’s story of the least understood figure of the Civil War era is both well-written and riveting. It manages to replace the cardboard cutout of the leader of the Confederacy with a flesh-and blood human.” THE US REVIEW OF BOOKS
AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE AT AMAZON.COM or AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE
ALSO AVAILABLE FOR AMAZON KINDLE
CONTACT THE AUTHOR AT DMARING.COM
David Maring, a retired circuit judge, provides an intimate look at Jefferson Davis before he rose to lead the Confederacy.
Johan Temmerman VIA EMAIL
The Monitor Abroad ED. We were more than a bit surprised to
receive the picture below from Monitor reader Erik Svane, who attached the following note: “You will never guess where I found the latest issue of The Civil War Monitor. Give up? Okay. In the airport of ... Phnom Penh, Cambodia! I did do a double take!” So did we, Erik. Thanks much for sharing.
PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE
The Monitor in the stacks of an airport newsstand in Phnom Penh, Cambodia
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AGENDA
The Wall of Honor at the Brazos Valley Veterans Memorial in College Station, Texas
Your Guide to Civil War Events
SPRING 2015
D E D I C AT I O N
Brazos Valley Veterans Memorial THURSDAY, APRIL 9, 11:30 A.M.
Veterans Park and Athletic Complex COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS
A ceremony to mark the installation of two bronze statues—one Union and one Confederate soldier—includes a musical tribute, a rifle salute, a reading of soldiers’ letters, and a keynote address, “The Citizen Soldiers of the American Civil War,” delivered by historian T. Michael Parrish. FREE; FOR MORE INFORMATION: BVVM.ORG/EVENTS/ CIVIL-WAR-MEMORIAL-DEDICATION. C O M M E M O R AT I O N
150th Anniversary of the Surrender at Appomattox WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8 – SUNDAY, APRIL 12
Museum of the ConfederacyAppomattox
Confederate reenactors at Bennett Place State Historic Site in Durham, North Carolina
MARCH 2015
APRIL 2015
C O M M E M O R AT I O N
GRAND REOPENING
Five Forks Living History Program
Bennett Place Museum and Visitor Center
SATURDAY, MARCH 28
Five Forks Visitor Center DINWIDDIE, VIRGINIA
The Five Forks Unit of Petersburg National Battlefield marks the 150th anniversary of the decisive battle that preceded the Union breakthrough at Petersburg, Virginia, in April 1865. Living history demonstrations, including cannon firings, are scheduled from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Ranger-guided night tours of the field occur between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. Flashlights are recommended. FREE; FOR MORE INFORMATION: NPS.GOV/PETE or 804-732-3531, EXT. 202 OR 203.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1
Bennett Place State Historic Site DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA
The newly renovated museum and visitor center reopens with new exhibits and an upgraded theater. Bennett Place is where General Joseph E. Johnston capitulated to General William T. Sherman on April 26, 1865, representing the largest surrender of Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. FREE; FOR MORE INFORMATION: BENNETTPLACEHISTORICSITE.COM or 919-383-4345.
Over five days, the Museum of the Confederacy-Appomattox marks the sesquicentennial of Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox with a variety of programs, including living history demonstrations, reenactments, and lectures by leading Civil War historians. (Be sure to visit The Civil War Monitor at our table.) MOST EVENTS FREE WITH MUSEUM ADMISSION; FOR MORE INFORMATION: ACWM.ORG or 434-352-5791. PERFORMANCE
1st Brigade Band Historical Concert SATURDAY, APRIL 18, 2 P.M.
Turner Hall GALENA, ILLINOIS
As part of the city’s multi-day commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the end of the war, the Galena Festival of the Arts hosts a concert by the 1st Brigade Band,
THE DURHAM CONVENTION & VISITORS BUREAU; BRAZOS VALLEY VETERANS MEMORIAL
APPOMATTOX, VIRGINIA
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MAY 2015 PERFORMANCE
Music and Literature of the Civil War Era SATURDAY, MAY 16, 11 A.M.
Somerset Place State Historic Site CRESWELL, NORTH CAROLINA
which performs Civil War-era brass band music on antique instruments.
Costumed historic interpreters use original letters of the era during a guided walking tour to help paint a picture of life on Somerset Plantation during the Civil War. In addition, music historian Simon Spaulding will perform a variety of contemporary music and soldiers’ songs.
FREE; FOR MORE INFORMATION: GALENAHISTORYMUSEUM.ORG or 815-777-9129.
$6 FOR ADULTS; $3 FOR CHILDREN OVER 4; FOR MORE INFORMATION: NCHISTORICSITES.ORG/SOMERSET or 252-797-4560.
C O M M E M O R AT I O N
REENACTMENT
The Lincoln Tribute TUE., APRIL 14 – WED., APRIL 15
Ford’s Theatre WASHINGTON, D.C.
Beginning at 9 a.m. on April 14, Ford’s Theatre marks the 150th anniversary of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln with an around-the-clock event that includes ranger talks, living history demonstrations, panel discussions about Lincoln’s death and legacy, and performances of the play One Destiny. FREE; FOR MORE INFORMATION: FORDS. ORG/EVENT/LINCOLN-TRIBUTE or 202347-4833.
150th Anniversary of the Battle of Palmito Ranch SATURDAY, MAY 16, 9 A.M.
Mexico Boulevard BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS
Mark the sesquicentennial of the Civil War’s final engagement with military and civilian living history demonstrations and a battle reenactment. FREE; FOR MORE INFORMATION: PH150. US or 956-244-3770. C O M M E M O R AT I O N
The Grand Review Parade SUNDAY, MAY 17, NOON
A Di!erent, Broader A"roach to Regimental History
“... highly recommended for all Civil War students and historians.” - Earl J. Hess, author of Into the Crater: The Mine Attack at Petersburg and In the Trenches at Petersburg: Field Fortifications & Confederate Defeat
“A unique regimental history.”
- Mark H. Dunkelman, author of Brothers One and All: Esprit de Corps in a Civil War Regiment Explore the battles - including the Crater, Poplar Spring Church, and April 2, 1865 AND MUCH MORE • medical care • prisoners of war • desertion
• 1864 election • citizen soldiers • recruitment
• religion • and much more
“If I have got t, to go and figh” g. in I am wi$ Forged A Union Regiment paign in the Petersburg Cam
PERFORMANCE
Our American Cousin
Pennsylvania Avenue
TUE., APRIL 14 – SUN., APRIL 19
Join an estimated 6,000 – 10,000 marchers and spectators in marking the 150th anniversary of the Grand Review of the Armies, during which some 150,000 Union soldiers paraded triumphantly down Pennsylvania Avenue in May 1865.
Carlow University Theatre PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
Carlow University Theatre presents a performance of Our American Cousin, the play Abraham Lincoln was attending at Ford’s Theatre when he was shot by John Wilkes Booth. $20 – $40; FOR MORE INFO: CARLOW. EDU/11865.ASPX or 412-578-2095.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
$25 TO MARCH IN PARADE (FOR EARLY BIRDS), AFTERWARD $35; FREE TO ATTEND; FOR MORE INFORMATION: GRANDREVIEWPARADE.ORG or 202667-2667.
Share Your Event Have an upcoming event you’d like featured in this space? Let us know: events@civilwarmonitor.com
“My brave boys will you follow me?”
Gregg - Colonel William
The 179th r Infantry New York Voluntee 1864-1865
edwin p. rutan,
#
e-book $14.95! Download today and let the journey begin with 30 enlargeable maps and over 180 images.
Available online at
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S A LV O S A LV O
{
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
}
A U.S. Army wagon train loaded with provisions rolls into Petersburg, Virginia, on April 3, 1865, shortly after Confederate forces, their defensive line broken the previous day by assaulting Union troops, evacuated the city. FOR MORE ON PETERSBURG, TURN THE PAGE.
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IN THIS SECTION Travels
A VISIT TO PETERSBURG . . . . 10 Voices
SURRENDER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Living History
HISTORIAN CHRIS CALKINS . . . 16 Preservation
A BREAKTHROUGH AT PETERSBURG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Disunion
WHEN FREEDOM CAME TO CHARLESTON. . . . . . . . . . . 20 In Focus
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
REVIEWING THE TROOPS . . . . 22
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S A LV O
T R AV E L S
PETERSBURG VIRGINIA 1
DON’T MISS
Most visitors to Petersburg National Battlefield (5001 Siege Rd.; 804-732-3531) visit the eastern front area, but the park contains 10 additional parcels, most of them in the western front. My favorite is Fort Gregg, a lonely earthwork bastion that on April 2, 1865, witnessed one of the war’s most tragic battles. Nearby is the little monument marking the spot where Confederate general A.P. Hill was killed earlier that day. –AWG The cabin used by General Ulysses S. Grant as his headquarters at City Point (1001 Pecan Avenue, Hopewell; 804-458-9504) is well worth a visit. President Abraham Lincoln traveled there by boat three times to meet with his general-inchief and plan the end of the war. –MB
Site of the Crater at Petersburg National Battlefield
Appomattox Manor at City Point
PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE
UPON ASSUMING the position of general-in-chief of the Union army in March 1864, Ulysses S. Grant determined to maneuver Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia into the open for a decisive battle. After pushing the Confederates southward toward Richmond during the early summer’s bloody but inconclusive Overland Campaign, in mid-June Grant changed tack and moved Union forces south of the James River to threaten the city of Petersburg. Both Lee and Grant realized that the fall of Petersburg, the main supply center for the region, would render nearby Richmond indefensible and established long and elaborate earthworks around the vital city—for Lee, to defend it; for Grant, to strangle it into submission. For nine months, the armies traded blows in combat that foreshadowed the trench warfare of the early 20th century. In the end, the pressure proved too much for Lee’s outnumbered and under-supplied army, which evacuated under Union attack on April 2, 1865. A week later, Lee would surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House. Interested in visiting Petersburg? To help make the most of your trip, we’ve enlisted two experts on the area—A. Wilson Greene and Martha Burton—to offer suggestions for what to see and do in and around the historic city. 10 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SPRING 2015
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Campbell’s Bridge
4
Best Civil War Spot Old Blandford Church (319 South Crater Rd.; 804-733-2396) should not be missed. The Ladies Memorial Association of Petersburg created a Confederate cemetery there in the years immediately after the war, as women did in so many communities throughout the South. But the Petersburg women took their effort to memorialize fallen Confederate soldiers one step further. Around the turn of the century they engaged Louis Comfort Tiffany to create stained glass windows dedicated to the Confederate states. Go late in the afternoon, when the sun hits the window above the entrance perfectly. This place is magic. –AWG The historic Dinwiddie County Courthouse (14101 Boydton Plank Rd.; 804-469-5346) served as Union general Philip Sheridan’s headquarters during the Battle of Dinwiddie Courthouse and the Battle of Five Forks. It’s also a special place for me—my father was the county sheriff and had his office there. The courthouse was built in 1851 and raised to accommodate two stories in 1858; the magnificent Doric portico was added later. The building is now home to the Dinwiddie County Historical Society. –MB
2
Best Kept Secret
On nice days a walk along the Appomattox River & Heritage Trail (folar-va.org) is a restful way to spend an afternoon. A relatively new trail runs from Campbell’s Bridge in Petersburg to the Appomattox River Park in Dinwiddie County. Along the way the story of the river and adjacent canal mixes with pristine views of the roiling Appomattox and its plant and wildlife. This is a green oasis in the city and suburbs. –AWG The region is blessed to have both the Appomattox and James rivers and Lake Chesdin, so the opportunities for water activities are endless. Kayak trips with Eco Trek Adventures (ecotrekadv.com) are very special. Plan to go on a “Gourmet Paddle”—you paddle away with your guide, and lunch from an Old Towne Petersburg restaurant is served on an island in the river. What could be more peaceful? –MB
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BEST FAMILY ACTIVITY
The cemetery at Old Blandford Church
At the risk of betraying bias, I must say that Pamplin Historical Park (6125 Boydton Plank Rd.; 804-861-2408) was designed with children and adults in mind. There are activities for kids throughout our museums and on the battlefield, and our visitors tell us that it is a perfect historic venue for families. –AWG Pamplin Historical Park is not just a museum; there is plenty of acreage where children can run and play. At the military encampment, the Discovery Hut invites kids to try on Civil War uniforms and period clothing in just their size. In the Battlefield Center, there are interactive computer kiosks. Another kid-friendly spot is the Keystone Truck and Tractor Museum (880 W. Roslyn Rd., Colonial Heights; 804-524-0020), located just across the Appomattox River from Petersburg in Colonial Heights. It’s home to 170 restored antique tractors, along with one of the largest model-truck collections in the world. –MB
PHOTOGRAPHS BY TYLER DARDEN
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TKTKTKTKTKTK
BY TKTKTKTKTKTK
Title Title Demolition Coffee The fare at The Bistro at Market and Grove
The counter at Dixie Restaurant The High Street Inn
The Brickhouse Run
5 BEST EATS The dining scene in Petersburg has really improved in recent years. For breakfast with the locals, try Dixie Restaurant (250 N. Sycamore St.; 804732-7425), an homage to small-town 1950s eateries. My favorite lunch spot is Longstreet’s (302 N. Sycamore St.; 804-722-4372), also downtown at Sycamore and Bank streets. It has an upscale deli vibe with cold beverages that require an ID. Two restaurants in Old Towne stand out: Croaker’s Spot (39 River St.; 804-957-5635) for old-fashioned southern comfort food, and The Bistro at Market and Grove (422 N. Market St.; 804-732-4480) for funky decor and a wonderful menu. For low-cost dining, you can’t beat the Italian fare at Giuseppe’s (7022 Boydton Plank Rd.; 804-733-1300), especially if you are touring the battlefields in Dinwiddie County. –AWG Dixie Restaurant is a wonderful, homey place to jump-start your day. The omelets, potatoes, apples, eggs, and pancakes are all very good, but if you want to go all the way southern, try the “grits and greens” and the fried scrapple. Demolition Coffee (215 E. Bank St.; 804-732-2991) is the place for caffeine: They have espresso, lattes, cappuccinos, mochas, café au lait, or just a cuppa joe—and you can have it hot, iced, or frozen. Demolition also has an endless list of sandwiches, great homemade soups, salads, and a display case of desserts—try the chocolate-covered bacon. Sit on the beautiful patio, one of my favorite spots. My favorite lunch in Old Towne is a pita-pizza with fresh tomatoes, mushrooms, and extra cheese at Alexander’s (101 W. Bank St.; 804-733-7134). It is the perfect size for one person, and it’s delicious. The Brickhouse Run (407-409 Cockade Alley; 804-8621815)—an English-style pub with a fun, boisterous bar—is a great choice for dinner. While the fish ’n’ chips is great (the fish is so large the plate will not hold it all), the menu offers more than British pub food, including fried green tomatoes with pimento cheese. On Tuesdays they have a $10 special, and Wednesdays are burger nights. –MB
The High Street Inn
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Best Sleep
Of the half-dozen bed-and-breakfast inns in Petersburg, my recommendation is The Destiny Inn (517 High St.; 877-834-8422). The late 19th-century home is well located for walking into the Old Towne area of the city and carefully managed by customer-oriented hosts. If hotels are your preference, the Hampton Inn Petersburg-Fort Lee at Exit 45 off I-95 (11909 South Crater Rd.; 804-732-1400) is one of the best entries in this reliable mid-priced hotel chain. –AWG Along High Street is a beautiful Queen Anne mansion built in 1891, The High Street Inn (405 High St.; 804-240-8906). The inn is very large and has both rooms and suites decorated with beautiful antiques. A delicious breakfast is served in a grand dining room, or guests can enjoy coffee in the ladies’ or gentlemen’s parlors. –MB
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PHOTOGRAPHS BY TYLER DARDEN
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Old Towne Petersburg
7
BEST TIME TO BE HERE
October is the single best time to visit Southside Virginia. All of our historic sites are open but not overrun, the fall colors are glorious (especially during the second half of the month), and the weather typically features warm days and cool evenings. If local sports are your thing, catch a Friday night football game featuring the state champion Dinwiddie County High School Generals. –AWG Fall is a wonderful time to visit. Each September the Chamber of Commerce hosts the Festival of Grapes & Hops (festivalofgrapesandhops.com)—which features music and craft beer and wines—around the historic farmers market in Old Towne Petersburg. In mid-October, the Prince George County Regional Heritage Center hosts the Czech and Slovak Folklife Festival (princegeorgevahistoricalsociety.org), which celebrates the traditions of the many Czech and Slovak families who came to Virginia, and particularly Prince George and Dinwiddie counties, in the late 19th century. Activities include cooking demonstrations, polka music, dancing, traditional food, and farm life exhibits. Around Halloween visitors are invited to a “ghost walk” through Blandford Cemetery (319 South Crater Rd.; 804-733-2397) on Wells Hill to hear stories about Petersburg citizens and Civil War soldiers who were laid to rest there. –MB
The Civil War’s Quaker Scout
Jonathan Roberts of Fairfax, Virginia, reconciled his religion with his sense of duty to preserve the Union and abolish slavery.
“HHHHH” Foreword Clarion Reviews
AVA I L A B L E F O R P U RC H A S E AT
For more info: CivilWarQuakerScout.com
8 Best Book The best book on the Petersburg Campaign is Earl Hess’ In the Trenches at Petersburg: Field Fortifications & Confederate Defeat (2009). Although Hess focuses on the impact of field fortifications on the conduct of the campaign, the context that he provides serves as an articulate and well-researched overview of the complicated story at Petersburg. –AWG The “must read” for a trip to Petersburg is A. Wilson Greene’s Civil War Petersburg: Confederate City in the Crucible of War (2007). At the time of the conflict, Petersburg was a large and prosperous industrial city. It was also home to a sizable community of free blacks. Greene not only conveys the very significant military history of the struggle for Petersburg, but he also tells the stories of citizens who endured the siege and how the city was impacted economically, socially, and emotionally. –MB
ABOUT OUR EXPERTS
A. Wilson Greene is the executive director at Pamplin Historical Park and the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier. He first moved to the Petersburg area in 1973 and lives near the battlefields in Dinwiddie County.
Martha Burton, a native of Dinwiddie County, is tourism director at Petersburg Area Regional Tourism.
The Long Overdue Story DVD
is an authentic, unique and inexpensive resource for educators teaching the history of the Civil War. Dianne Cross started with only her great-great grandfather’s name, portrait and oral family history. Her extensive research over several years has enabled her to weave together Isaac Hall’s life from slave to soldier to freeman to his final resting place.
PURCHASE THE DVD AND DIGITAL DOWNLOAD AT
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S A LV O
VOICES
/ SURRENDER
“After to-night you will be my whole command—staff, field officers, men—all.”
“i never saw such performances in my life. every man has a bell or a horn, and every girl a flag and a little bell, and every one is tied with red, white and blue ribbons. i am going down town again now, with my flag in one hand and bell in the other and make all the noise i can.” CAROLINE COWLES RICHARDS (ABOVE), IN HER DIARY, APRIL 10, 1865, ON THE REACTION TO NEWS OF ROBERT E. LEE’S SURRENDER IN CANANDAIGUA, NEW YORK
“This is an army of skeptics, they won’t believe in Lee’s surrender. I do, and I tell you it makes this one of my brightest days. His surrender makes sure beyond any chance that what we have been fighting for for four years is sure.” ILLINOIS OFFICER CHARLES WRIGHT WILLS, IN HIS DIARY, APRIL 12, 1865
“News has come that Lee’s army has surrendered! We are struck dumb with astonishment! Why then all these four years of suffering—of separations— of horror—of blood—of havoc—of awful bereavement! Why these ruined homes—these broken family circles—these scenes of terror that must scathe the brain of those who witnessed them till their dying day! Why is our dear Willy in his uncoffined grave? Why poor Frank to go through life with one arm? Is it wholly and forever in vain? God only knows!” VIRGINIA RESIDENT MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON, 45, IN HER DIARY, APRIL 1865. FRANK AND WILLY, HER STEPSONS, BOTH SERVED IN THE CONFEDERATE ARMY; FRANK WAS WOUNDED AT NEW MARKET IN MAY 1864, WHILE WILLY WAS KILLED AT SECOND BULL RUN IN AUGUST 1862.
“Dear Wife, this is not the fate to which I invited you when the future was rose colored to us both; but I know you will bear it even better than myself, and that, of us two, I alone, will ever look back reproachfully on my past career.” CONFEDERATE PRESIDENT JEFFERSON DAVIS, IN A LETTER TO HIS WIFE, VARINA BANKS HOWELL DAVIS (ABOVE), APRIL 23, 1865
“We … kept on through the sad remnants of an army that has its place in history. It would have looked a mighty host, if the ghosts of all its soldiers that now sleep between Gettysburg and Lynchburg could have stood there in the lines, beside the living.” UNION STAFF OFFICER THEODORE LYMAN (RIGHT), DESCRIBING HIS RIDE THROUGH THE CAMP OF THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA AT APPOMATTOX, IN A LETTER TO HIS WIFE, APRIL 23, 1865
SOURCES: THE HEART OF A SOLDIER: AS REVEALED IN THE INTIMATE LETTERS OF GENERAL GEORGE PICKETT (1913); MEADE’S HEADQUARTERS, 18631865 (1922); ARMY LIFE OF AN ILLINOIS SOLDIER (1906); VILLAGE LIFE IN AMERICA, 1852-1872 (1913); THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON (1903); JEFFERSON DAVIS: PRIVATE LETTERS, 1823-1889 (1966).
RICHARDS: VILLAGE LIFE IN AMERICA, 1852–1872 (1913); DAVIS: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; LYMAN: MEADE’S HEADQUARTERS, 1863–1865 (1922).
CONFEDERATE GENERAL GEORGE E. PICKETT, IN A LETTER TO HIS WIFE WRITTEN FROM APPOMATTOX, NOT LONG BEFORE THE SURRENDER OF THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA ON APRIL 9, 1865
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Explore the African American & Civil War history of Spotsylvania Courthouse with our mobile app
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S A LV O
LIVING HISTORY
BY JENNY JOHNSTON
Following Lee’s Footsteps H I STO R I A N C H R I S CA L K I N S’ D ECA D E S - LO N G D E VOT I O N TO T E L L I N G T H E STO RY O F T H E C I V I L WA R ’S F I N A L DAYS I N V I R G I N I A
1865. They were taking photographs of one another in the antebellum village when a park ranger started hassling them about their muskets. Then a second ranger approached, dismissed the first, and said words that would change Calkins’ life. “He said, ‘I saw you guys come into the village. You look great,’” Calkins recalls. “‘Would you be interested in coming back to work here for a summer?’” For two years, Calkins could think of little else. He’d taken a job at the National Bank of Detroit, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was in the wrong place. Maybe even the wrong time. “I told my boss, ‘I’d give anything to go back to Virginia,’” he says. So in 1971, Calkins showed up in Appomattox for that summer job, with his musket and his uniform. When a seasonal park ranger job came available there a few months later, he packed everything he owned into his Volkswagen Beetle and headed south. “I still drive a Beetle, to remind me of how I moved down here,” he says. Nearly 44 years later, that
fateful move has altered more than just Calkins’ life. It has utterly changed what is known about the final days of the Civil War in Virginia. Indeed, Calkins’ entire career has
Chris Calkins on the grounds of Sailor’s Creek Battlefield Historical State Park, which he has managed since its founding.
been dedicated to illuminating the fast-moving chain of events that began with General Robert E. Lee’s retreat from Petersburg on the night of April 2, 1865, and ended with his surrender in Appomattox just seven days later. Insiders would tell you that Calkins’ life’s work and Lee’s retreat are so intertwined that today it is hard to talk about, or even imagine, one without the other. Calkins didn’t set out to spend four decades researching a single week of history. But
PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE
THE FIRST TIME Chris Calkins set foot in Appomattox, Virginia, he was wearing a Confederate uniform and carrying a musket. It was the summer of 1969, and he was 18 years old. Calkins and two buddies were on a Civil War road trip, having just graduated from high school back in their native Detroit. They had spent a lot of weekends in those uniforms, bringing the 19th century to life for tourists at a museum in nearby Dearborn. Now, at Gettysburg, Antietam, Harpers Ferry, and elsewhere, they were seeing that century come to life all around them. ¶ Appomattox was one of their last stops. Calkins remembers getting out of the car and marveling at how everything within sight, except their car, placed them in
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PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN DOE
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PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE
when he started at Appomattox, there was just one book covering the war’s final days: Burke Davis’ To Appomattox, written in 1959. “It had a lot of problems, I’ll just say that,” says Calkins. “I would go out and try to visit the sites that he was writing about, but I just ended up with a lot of unanswered questions.” Calkins’ first book, 36 Hours Before Appomattox, was published in 1980 (an updated edition will be released this year). Eleven more publications followed. So did “Lee’s Retreat,” the 26-stop driving tour from Petersburg to Appomattox that he designed and wrote—the first heritage tourism trail in the country. Calkins has also done more than arguably anyone else to bring that crucial week in American history alive for hundreds of thousands of visitors who have streamed through the Virginia Piedmont, chasing answers to their own questions about the war and its ending. His unique ability to see—and to help others see—the 19th century poking through the modern landscape, and to pull it into the foreground, made him an exceptional ranger. During his 34-year Park Service career, he interpreted the blur of events that led to Lee’s surrender, first at Appomattox Court House National Historical Park and eventually at Petersburg National Battlefield, where he served for more than two
decades as historian and then as chief of interpretation. But Calkins’ greatest legacy might be the work he is doing right now to preserve and reanimate Sailor’s Creek Battlefield—the site of Lee’s final “For years it just lay dormant. At Appomattox and at Petersburg, visitors would ask, ‘What’s there to see at Sailor’s Creek?’ And basically the answer was, ‘There’s nothing.’”
fight on April 6. The loss would cost Lee almost a quarter of his army, sealing his fate. In the 1930s, the state of Virginia acquired land at Sailor’s Creek with the intention of creating a historical state park. But then World War II broke out, and the impetus was lost. “For years it just lay dormant,” says Calkins. “At Appomattox and at Petersburg, visitors would ask, ‘What’s there to see at Sailor’s Creek?’ And basically the answer was, ‘There’s nothing.’” The plan finally came to fruition in 2008—but the newly established Sailor’s Creek Battlefield Historical State Park needed a manager. More than that, it needed someone to bring its history back and make it visible. Calkins was the natural choice. Calkins threw everything he had—almost literally—into reviving Sailor’s Creek. The Hillsman House—a 1780s building that served as a field hospital during the battle and that was restored on Calkins’ watch—is furnished with
antiques from his own collection. (He and his wife, Sara, have restored three Civil Warera structures, including the 6,000-square-foot Georgian mansion in Petersburg where they now live. “My wife and I have never been to a modern furniture store in all our years,” says Calkins. “When I go home, the interior of my house looks like the 1860s.”) In 2012 came the visitors center, to which he donated his personal 2,500volume Civil War library. A museum followed, along with continued efforts by Calkins and his small staff to return the park to its original landscape. In 2014, Sailor’s Creek saw 44,000 visitors, its highest annual total yet. “So word is getting out,” Calkins says. He expects visitation to get a further boost after this year’s sesquicentennial events, which he has been planning for six years. He’ll spend the first weeks of April moving from one site and one event to another, just steps ahead of Lee’s own footsteps 150 years earlier. “I mean, I love it out here,” Calkins says of his job, his park, and the 110-mile stretch from Petersburg to Appomattox that he probably knows better than anyone else. It is hard to imagine a morning when Calkins won’t be spotted driving along that stretch, heading to work in his Volkswagen Beetle. But Calkins, now 64, senses that retirement isn’t too far into his future. Several } CONT. ON P. 72
17 PHOTOGRAPH BY TODD WRIGHT
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S A LV O
BY O . JAMES LIGHTHIZER PRESIDENT , CIVIL WAR TRUST
P R E S E R VAT I O N
A Breakthrough at Petersburg
strategic goal of the campaign was control of the three vital rail lines between Petersburg and the Confederate capital at Richmond. When the final rail link fell into Union hands on April 1, 1865, the loss and evacuation of Richmond and Petersburg became inevitable. The Trust has now preserved more than 500 acres related to this critical juncture of history. Preservation efforts began with a 68.5-acre easement on a property along Church Road, north of Fort Fisher, in 2001, and accelerated over the next decade. In 2004 and 2005, the Trust added nearly 400 acres to the total saved land at the Breakthrough. In the fall of 2011, the Trust, Pamplin Historical Park, and the National Park Service kicked efforts into even higher gear to engage visitors through historic restoration and the installation of an interpretive walking trail connecting nearby Pamplin Park’s trail network to the Civil War Trust’s Breakthrough property. In March 2012, the NPS opened the Jones Farm Loop Trail to give the public access
to Trust property where fortifications from the March 1865 Battle of Jones Farm are located. That October, the Trust began the process of remediating the property, steadily rolling away the past 150 years to reveal how the landscape looked in April 1865. This process included clearing timber from 152 acres and demolishing a non-historic
These earthworks, which formed part of the Union’s Fort Welch, are part of the Trust’s preserved battlefield land at the Petersburg Breakthrough.
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
house, two barns, four grain silos, one machine shop, and a seven-acre concrete hog lot. In the fall of 2014, a public parking area was cleared, along with a trail that leads visitors to the NPS-owned Fort Welch. The breathtaking new landscape at the Breakthrough is an incredible testament to the power of restoring Civil War property to its 19th-century appearance. This April, in time for the 150th anniversary of the Breakthrough, the Trust will unveil a new walking trail with eight interpretive signs connecting the existing trails between Pamplin Park and Fort Welch. Authentic split-rail fencing will also be installed near the new } CONT. ON P. 72
PHOTO BY ROB SHENK, COURTESY OF THE CIVIL WAR TRUST
LAST FALL, THE Civil War Trust announced that we had forever saved more than 40,000 acres of America’s most hallowed ground. One of the acquisitions—a small but important 2.5-acre tract where the Petersburg Breakthrough occurred— capped off a decade-long effort from Petersburg-area preservation partners to preserve and restore the site of the Petersburg siege’s decisive finale. ¶ The site of the siege and breakthrough at Petersburg represents a critical network of battlefield land. During the 10-month siege operation, opposing armies under the command of generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee clashed in major combat 16 times—often over the same fields—resulting in more than 80,000 casualties. A key
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S A LV O
BY BLAIN ROBERTS AND ETHAN J . KYTLE
DISUNION
NEARLY TWO DOZEN FIRES burned out of control across Charleston, South Carolina, on February 18, 1865, as the Union army moved into the city where the Civil War had begun four years earlier. A brutal 545-day siege, the longest in American history, had reduced much of the city to rubble and driven away most wealthy residents, while General William T. Sherman’s march through the heart of South Carolina—which threatened to cut off Charleston’s supply line—had prompted Confederate forces in the city to set fire to cotton supplies and munitions and then evacuate. ¶ But the Union soldiers who advanced into Charleston were welcomed with open arms—and not just because they helped put out the flames. Thousands of former slaves thrilled at the sight of their liberators, most of whom were members of the 21st United States Colored Troops. “The negroes cheer us, bless us, dance for joy when they see our glorious flag—pray for us, fight for us, ‘can’t love us enough,’ as they beautifully express it,” wrote James Redpath, a correspondent for The New-York Tribune. Over the next few months, as the Civil War ground to a halt, Charleston was transformed from the birthplace of secession into the graveyard of slavery. In parades, commemorations, and demonstrations, local freedmen and women joined with the occupying force to mark Union victory and the end of the peculiar institution. Although the city had been practically burned to the ground, revelry reigned. Each week brought yet another “festival of freedom,” as the black abolitionist William C. Nell had once dubbed such pageants. Before the war, Charleston had been the capital of American slavery. Nearly half the slaves transported to what would become the United States first stepped foot on
American soil on nearby Sullivan’s Island, the Ellis Island of black America. After the international slave trade was closed in 1808, Charleston continued to be a vibrant market for slaves traded locally, as well as for those sold to the burgeoning cotton plantations of Mississippi and Louisiana. And it wasn’t just the buying and selling of human beings that made slavery so central to the city. For much of its early history, Charleston had a black and enslaved majority, and in the decades leading up to the Civil War, most white households owned at least one slave. Little wonder that Charleston played host not only to the 1860 South Carolina Secession Convention, which broke up the Union in the defense of slavery, but also to the opening salvo of the war with the 1861 firing on Fort Sumter. This history was no doubt on the minds of black Charlestonians as they observed the liberation of the city four years later. Just hours after Charleston fell, hundreds of newly emancipated men, women, and children rejoiced when a com-
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.
pany from the 54th Massachusetts Infantry marched across the Citadel Green, a park at the center of Charleston. “Shawls, aprons, hats, everything was waved,” wrote C.H. Corey, a northern minister accompanying the troops. “Old men wept. The young women danced and jumped, and cried, and laughed” in an outpouring of emotion that brought even the soldiers to tears. Three days later, the allblack 55th Massachusetts Infantry arrived, singing “John Brown’s Body” to the AfricanAmerican crowds who cheered them on. “Imagine, if you can, this stirring song chanted with the most rapturous, most exultant emphasis, by a regiment of negro troops, who have been lying in sight of Charleston for nearly two years—as they trod with tumultuous delight along the streets of this pro-Slavery city,” Redpath wrote. Some of the men in the 55th “had walked those streets before as slaves,” noted Charles C. Coffin, a Boston Daily Journal correspondent. But now they were free, “soldiers of the Union, defenders of its flag.” Freedpeople assembled again on February 27 to receive the rest of the 54th Massachusetts. “On the day we entered that rebellious city, the streets were thronged with women and children of all sizes, colors and grades—the young, the old, the halt, the maimed, and the blind,” observed John H.W.N.
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
When Freedom Came to Charleston
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Collins, a black sergeant. “I saw an old colored woman with a crutch—for she could not walk without one, having served all her life in bondage—who, on seeing us, got so happy, that she threw down her crutch, and shouted that the year of Jubilee had come.” One week later, 5,000 African Americans filed through the city in a show of affection for President Abraham Lincoln after his second inauguration. Perhaps the largest festival of freedom was held on Tuesday, March 21, when a crowd of 10,000 gathered at Citadel Green. For decades the park had served as a parade ground for the adjacent South Carolina Military Academy, also known as the Citadel. But now the grounds where white cadets, charged with protecting the city against a slave insurrection, had regularly conducted public exercises became the gathering point for a parade of black Union soldiers and
This Harper’s Weekly sketch shows soldiers of the 55th Massachusetts Infantry singing “John Brown’s Body” as they march through the streets of Charleston, South Carolina, in February 1865, with the city’s AfricanAmerican residents cheering them on.
countless African Americans. According to Redpath, the assembled viewed the procession as “a celebration of their deliverance from bondage and ostracism; a jubilee of freedom, a hosannah to their deliverers.” The parade started at about 1 p.m., under rain-filled skies, and took several hours to wind its way down King Street to the Battery, and then back to Citadel Green. Led by various dignitaries on horseback, a marching band, and the 21st United States Colored Troops, the procession also included local tradesmen, fire companies, and nearly 2,000 newly enrolled schoolchildren singing songs like “John Brown’s Body.” Most striking was a large mule-drawn cart bearing a sign that read, “A number of negroes for sale” and carrying a faux auctioneer’s block and four African Americans—one man, two women, and a child— all of whom had been sold at some point in their lives. The
man playing the role of auctioneer cried out to the crowd along the parade route, “How much am I offered for this good cook?” “She can make four kinds of mock-turtle soup— from beef, fish or fowls.” “Who bids?” Behind the auction cart trailed a simulated slave coffle comprising some 60 men, “tied to a rope—in imitation of the gangs who used often to be led through these streets on their way from Virginia to the sugarfields of Louisiana.” The participants in this carnivalesque display intended to ridicule the system under which so many in Charleston—and the rest of the South— had suffered for so long, and the show did in fact, as one observer noted, produce “much merriment.” Yet it touched a little too close to home for some. “Old women burst into tears as they saw this tableau,” Redpath reported, “and forgetting that it was a mimic scene, shouted wildly, } CONT. ON P. 72
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S A LV O
IN FOCUS
Reviewing the Troops
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
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PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN DOE
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PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE
BY BOB ZELLER PRESIDENT , CENTER FOR CIVIL WAR PHOTOGRAPHY
PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE
ON MAY 23 and 24, 1865, three Union armies—the Army of the Potomac, the Army of the Tennessee, and the Army of Georgia—marched in Washington, D.C., in a martial spectacle known as the Grand Review of the Armies. The victorious soldiers, an estimated 150,000 in all, paraded triumphantly through the capital’s streets to great cheers from the throngs of civilians, politicians, and dignitaries who lined the route. The festive mood was a welcome change in a city still reeling from the previous month’s assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Photographers took dozens of images during the two-day event, mostly of the procession itself, showing long, straight columns of officers on horseback and troops marching down Pennsylvania Avenue, with the newly finished Capitol dome rising in the background. One of the most striking images taken during the festivities, though, is not of the parading soldiers, but of a group of spectators. In this photograph, part of the Alexander Gardner negative collection at the Library of Congress, we see a small part of the crowd seated in a temporary viewing stand, their attention drawn for a moment from the procession to the camera.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE
PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE
23 PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN DOE
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C A S U A LT I E S O F WA R
THOSE WHO RETURNED TO THEIR FAMILIES FACED THE CHALLENGE OF ADJUSTING TO LIFE AFTER WAR. BY STEPHEN BERRY
tanding in ranks at Appomattox Station on the morning of April 9, 1865, Luman Harris Tenney and the rest of the 2nd Ohio Cavalry braced for battle. Ordered into the wooded hills south of the Court House, they were readying themselves for the inevitable charge when Confederate artillery fell silent and a white flag appeared in the distance. The feeling that surged through the ranks was electric. “Lee has surrendered!” Tenney wrote in his diary that night. “Oh the wild and mad huzzas which followed! Pen cannot picture the scene. The four years of suffering, death and horrid war were over. ‘Thank God!’ ‘Thank God!!’ was upon every tongue. Peace, home and friends were ours. Yes, thank God! What wonder that we were crazy with joy?”1 In the spring of 1865, more than 2 million American men laid their heads on their pillows and bedrolls and dared to think, “I made it. I’m going home.” “We could not sleep for joy,” remembered Charles Lynch of the 18th Connecticut. “We were all so happy over the prospect of going home.” Antebellum America is often remembered as a nation of restless individualists, men on the make and on the move as capitalism and revolutions in transportation sent many packing for the West. But it was a society marked, too, by profound attachment to place. Before the Civil War, many soldiers had never been out of their own home counties. Homesickness was seen as a genuine disease, and a diagnosis of “nostalgia” meant that a patient might actually die if he or she did not get home. Given such understandings, it is perhaps not surprising that Union army doctors diagnosed 5,000 cases of nostalgia during the war, 74 of them proving fatal. For most Civil War soldiers, heaven was not a glorious realm of pearly gates, fluffy clouds, and sitting at the right hand of Jesus. It was simply “the land where we part no more,” a family reunion that would last forever.2 For three or four years, then, most Civil War
“I TELL YOU, PA,” WROTE A GEORGIA SOLDIER, “I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT A MOTHER AND FATHER WAS UNTIL I LEFT HOME.”
To view this article’s reference notes, turn to our Notes section on page 78.
soldiers had been achingly homesick. “Home,” William Nugent wrote his wife, “how sweet that dear old word sounds.” “I tell you, Pa,” wrote a Georgia soldier, “I didn’t know what a mother and father was until I left home.” Writing his family in Massachusetts, Charles Brewster scolded them for failing to provide enough detail about home doings. “You all seem to think that because you have no great events to write about, or stirring incidents that you have nothing,” he hectored. But “it is the little common place incidents of everyday life at home which we like to read. It is nothing to the inhabitants of Northampton that the beans are up in the old garden at home, or that Mary has moved her Verbena bed ... but to me, way off here in the swamps, and woods, frying in the sun, or soaking in the rain, it is a very important thing indeed. You do not realize how everything that savors of home, relishes with us.” In turning mentally toward home, then, soldiers were returning not merely to their old lives but to all the little things they had learned to love anew—the verbena beds and the beans in the old garden.3 Beneath such simple sentiments, however, ran more complicated emotions. For many men, thankfulness was laced
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with disbelief. They had fought for so long and seen so many men die that they had almost gotten used to the idea of dying themselves. “Sometimes I try never to let my hopes fix upon anything beyond the war, such is the uncertainty of surviving it,” wrote Elisha Paxton of the Stonewall Brigade in April 1863. Paxton was killed three weeks later at the Battle of Chancellorsville. By 1865 most soldiers had experienced such foreboding; most had survived. But in screwing themselves up to die as their buddies did, they now found themselves in the midst of a great emotional unwinding. They would not come home in a box to disappointed loved ones. They would not die, either as cowards or heroes. They would not die at all—or, at least, not yet. Even William Tecumseh Sherman seemed a little dumbstruck by the war’s end. “I can hardly realize it,” he told his
Union soldiers on leave are greeted by loved ones in Winslow Homer’s 1863 sketch “Home from the War.” While the men who returned for good at conflict’s end would encounter similar scenes, many also found it bittersweet to leave army life.
wife, “but I can see no slip.”4 Lying on their bedrolls, soldiers had other realizations to face as well. Some few had found in the immorality and violence of war something they rather liked. For most, however, the war had been a chastening experience; it had sobered them up, and they were determined to become better men, gentler and more appreciative. “I shall not give you any cause again to set up for me nights like you used to,” John Pardington of the Iron Brigade promised his wife. “Sarah if I could recall those nights I would sacrifice my right hand. [When] I get back to you I will live a different life.” Edwin Fay of the Minden Rangers made a similar recommitment. “I have learned something that will be of advantage to me,” he told his wife. “I think we shall be much happier than we have ever been. I think our capacities for enjoyment will
be enlarged by the suffering we have undergone, [and] I know I shall appreciate you far more highly than I have ever done before.”5 There has been much attention paid to the difficulty some Civil War veterans faced in adjusting to life after the war. This is most obvious in the cases of soldiers left legless, armless, or witless, suffering from uncommon traumas to the body and brain. But in truth the end of the war was bittersweet for many, maybe most, soldiers. Yes, they would live; yes, they would go home. But they would also have to take leave of friends, take stock of all that had been lost, and give up on a life that had become, however horribly, familiar. “I feel rather bad to leave [the soldiers’ life] for all its hardships and horrors & dangers,” noted Charles Brewster of the 10th Massachusetts, “[because] it is a fascinating } CONT. ON P. 73
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B AT T L E F I E L D ECHOES
GRANT, LEE, AND THE AMERICAN TRADITION OF ENDING WARS WITH MORE PARDON THAN PUNISHMENT. BY CLAY MOUNTCASTLE
ICHMOND WAS IN ASHES. The Army of Northern Virginia was tired, starving, and rapidly losing the ability to put up a fight. By most indications, the Civil War was over and General Robert E. Lee knew it. It was the first week of April 1865, and the Army of the Potomac was in dogged pursuit of Lee’s battered force, closing in for the longawaited decisive blow. Then, on April 6, the Federals overwhelmed and captured nearly a quarter of Lee’s remaining force at the Battle of Sailor’s Creek. The end of the Army of Northern Virginia was now at hand. As devastating as the thought of surrender must have been to Lee, the options before him were limited, and none of them was promising. A number of his lieutenants, most notably General E. Porter Alexander, suggested that the Confederacy take up guerrilla warfare against the Union, but Lee wanted nothing of it. Such a campaign would mean more destruction and bloodshed for the South, a dismal proposition. A complete and final surrender seemed to Lee to be the only reasonable course of action for his army, for which he felt an immense affection and responsibility. “We have now simply to look the fact in the face that the Confederacy has failed,” he told Alexander.1 The only remaining question was the nature of the terms that would be offered by General Ulysses S. Grant, known for his famous demand of unconditional surrender at Fort Donelson in 1862. Many Confederate leaders feared that Grant would insist on the same harsh terms, or perhaps worse, for Lee. Given the bitter and ruthless nature of the four-year struggle between the two armies, it was a likely prospect. And yet, when the two adversaries began a dialogue on a potential Confederate surrender, Grant did not seize upon the opportunity to be heavy-handed. He could easily have imposed punitive penalties on the Army of Northern Virginia, including the imprisonment of Confederate soldiers or the confiscation of the army’s ani-
“I FELT LIKE ANYTHING RATHER THAN REJOICING AT THE DOWNFALL OF A FOE WHO HAD FOUGHT SO LONG AND VALIANTLY.” GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT ON THE CONFEDERATE SURRENDER AT APPOMATTOX
To view this article’s reference notes, turn to our Notes section on page 78.
mals. And while it is uncertain if President Abraham Lincoln would have supported such terms, it is fair to assume that he would have permitted Grant a great deal of leeway to deal with the defeated southern army as he saw fit. But, like Lincoln, Grant strongly believed in the importance of reconciliation. The emancipation of the slaves had altered the character of the war, but the singular purpose of the contest for the Union—reunification—never changed. Both Grant and Lincoln understood that in order to bring the country back together, the South must be welcomed, not conquered. As historian Jay Winik aptly put it, “The North may defeat the Confederate armies … but, if Grant was going to have anything to do with it, it would not also destroy their dignity.”2 Lee and Grant agreed to discuss the terms of surrender at the small farmhouse of Wilmer McLean near Appomattox Court House on April 9. The meeting between the two opponents was marked by cordiality and mutual respect. Grant wrote out his surrender terms on the spot and presented them to Lee for his approval, which was quickly given. The terms required the Confederates only to stack their arms and to go home. Lee’s soldiers were per-
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mitted to keep their baggage and horses, and his officers could retain their sidearms. By any definition, the terms were generous. As historian Joseph Glatthaar stated, “There would be no persecution, no imprisonment for the men in Lee’s army.”3 It is no wonder that Lee accepted them graciously, although certainly saddened by what they meant. Grant, too, was melancholy. As he described later, “My own feelings … were sad and depressed. I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had
Above: A dramatization of the meeting between Robert E. Lee (seated, left), Ulysses S. Grant (seated, center), and their staffs in the McLean House in Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, 1865. Below: Union soldiers and local citizens stand outside the courthouse in the days following the surrender.
fought so long and valiantly.” Even the spontaneous celebratory firing of Union artillery at the word of Lee’s surrender was immediately silenced by Grant. “We did not want to exult over their downfall,” he explained.4 The rejoicing, parades, and celebrations would come later, but the surrender at Appomattox was much more solemn than most would expect of such a pivotal moment in American history. And such moments have been the norm at times of American victory. Despite the fashionable claims of imperialism and the depictions of the U.S. military as a tool of conquest throughout our country’s history, American triumphs in war have often demonstrated more restraint than conquest, more pardon than punishment. The surrenders of the British at Yorktown, the Mexicans at Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Empire of Japan aboard USS Missouri—all could have seen much
more severe terms levied. The 19th and 20th centuries are replete with examples of other nations that practiced far less military or political restraint when they emerged on the winning side of a fight. Echoes of Appomattox were particularly seen in a hot, dusty tent at Safwan Air Base in Iraq in March 1991. It was the end of the Persian Gulf War. Having liberated Kuwait, U.N. coalition forces, led by U.S. Army General Norman Schwarzkopf, presented cease-fire terms to officials from the defeated Iraqi army. Instead of continuing its offensive into Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein from power (actions that would come more than 10 years later), the U.S.-led coalition, with the full support of President George H.W. Bush, chose to halt the war and allow the Iraqi government and army to remain intact, provided that it remain within its borders and respect an } CONT. ON P. 74
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L I N C O L N A S S A S S I N AT I O N 1 8 6 5 - 2 0 1 5
JOHN WILKES BOOTH shot Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865. But who— or what—else shared the blame for the president’s death?
Tyrannis!” 28 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SPRING 2015
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In this 1865 lithograph by John L. Magee, Satan goads John Wilkes Booth to kill President Abraham Lincoln, who is seen in a theater box in the background.
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The scene in Ford’s Theatre had changed instantaneously from blithe comedy to complete pandemonium. A gunshot rang out, the actors froze, and Mary Lincoln screamed. The assassin leapt from the presidential box, slipped from backstage to back alley, and disappeared into the dark. in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, authorities would charge seven men and one woman as Booth’s accomplices in conspiring to commit the country’s first presidential assassination. But the bereaved spread the blame far beyond the gunman and his collaborators, encompassing the Confederate leadership, the wider southern elite, Rebel soldiers, and even the institution of slavery.1 As Union authorities searched for the fugitive assassin, white southerners exalted in a momentary reprieve from the horror of defeat. Less than a week earlier, Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox
Court House, Virginia. With their downfall interrupted by news of Lincoln’s demise, many Confederates expressed outright glee, at least in the privacy of diaries and letters. A Florida Rebel called Booth a “great public benefactor,” while a Louisiana woman thought him a “brave destroyer.” One Confederate soldier praised Booth for the “best act of his life” and thought his cry of “Sic semper tyrannis!” (“Thus always to tyrants!”) as he jumped to the stage should be translated as “Bully for Booth.” As another Confederate soldier wrote in his diary, “Pity it hadn’t been done years ago.”2 Up north, the rabidly anti-Lincoln faction known as the Copperheads LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)
Audience members recognized the vaulting criminal as John Wilkes Booth, a well-known Shakespearean actor, and his name spread rapidly from the crowds rushing outside the theater to the telegraph office and into the newspapers. The biggest question on the night of April 14, 1865, was whether the president would live. But by the time Abraham Lincoln expired the next morning, another question loomed in the minds of mourners: Booth had pulled the trigger, but who—or what—was to blame? The War Department’s “wanted” posters offered $100,000 for the capture of the killer and his accomplices, and after arresting hundreds
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“Here is to Old Abe Lincoln. May his soul go to Hell, and the assassin who murdered him sit at the right hand of God.” UNION CAPTAIN DAVID PARSONS, PROFESSING A SENTIMENT SHARED BY MANY IN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY’S COPPERHEAD FACTION
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agreed, and many did not hesitate to express themselves in front of mourners. A black customer in Dolan’s clothing store on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington heard a white man thanking God for Booth. In a Baltimore saloon, patrons got into a fight with a fellow who announced that Booth had “done right.” At supper in their upstate New York barracks, the loyal Union men of the Veteran Reserve Corps were reviling General George B. McClellan when a comrade startled them. “Here is to Old Abe Lincoln,” Captain David Parsons proclaimed, lifting his glass. “May his soul go to Hell, and the assassin who murdered him sit at the right hand of God.”3 For all their elation, Confeder-
ates and Copperheads alike were careful to note that they considered Booth and his conspirators to be the only perpetrators. Gratifying as the murder was, Confederates did not want the assassination to stain the nobility of their cause, and Copperheads knew they needed to deflect any blame from themselves (as one loyal Yankee soldier wrote to his wife, as long as “those Copperhead reptiles are allowd to crall around and Croak, such crimes will be commited”).4 The easiest way to prove that Booth had no wider connections was to cast him as mentally unstable. How unfair it would be, a New Orleans planter wrote, “for the whole southern people to be blamed for the act of a crazy play Actor”
ABOVE: Abraham Lincoln is memorialized in this northern broadside. OPPOSITE PAGE: An 1865 depiction of the assassination shows John Wilkes
Booth leaping to the stage after shooting the president.
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whose exploit was “not at all political.” A Georgia woman likewise asserted that the Yankees had “no right to lay upon innocent people the crazy deed of a madman.” As much as a hero, Booth was also, Confederates assured themselves and their conquerors, a lunatic, a desperado, a man “imbued with tyrannicidal monomania.” Copperheads agreed that Booth’s actions were purely his own—nothing more, one proclaimed to New York mourners on the day Lincoln died, than the result of a “drunken after dinner boast.”5 Many of Lincoln’s mourners did indeed make Booth the primary object of their ire. To those lamenting Lincoln’s death, Booth was a scoundrel and a fiend, a demon who should be caught alive and made to suffer. A mere hanging would be too mild, young Clara Allen wrote to her brother in the Union navy, for Booth “ought to be tortured in some way.” Men were more likely to spell out the particulars. In camp, the soldiers of the 17th Maine Infantry traded suggestions. “Billy Patterson desires to ‘fry his liver before his very eyes,’” one man recorded in his diary, while another wanted to “hang him till most dead, then resuscitate him and repeat the procedure for several days.” If it had been up to a white private in the 157th New York Infantry, he would have arranged for four black men to brand a chained Booth with hot irons “till he died dead.” A grieving banker on the home front offered yet greater detail. “I would tear him slowly in pieces,” John Worthington wrote to his sister, “kill him by inches, pull out his toe-nails & pick out his rascally eyes with a fork. Cut out his tongue, break his arms & leg’s & at last hang him on a nail by one eyelid.” Everybody, Washington telegrapher David Homer Bates wrote in his diary, was
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“I hope they will get Jeff Davis and hang him just where they hung John Brown.” A VERMONT ABOLITIONIST, IN A LETTER TO HER SON IN THE UNION ARMY
Lincoln’s mourners occupied themselves by devising a fresh round of reprisals. Edgar Dinsmore, a soldier in the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, wanted Davis hanged or, as he put it in a letter to his sweetheart, “fitted with a hempen cravat cut in the latest fashion.” William Gould, a runaway slave in the Union navy, picked up on a verse from “John Brown’s Body,” hoping “the sour Apple Tree” would be “all ready.” Fourteenyear-old Sarah Putnam confided
to her diary that she would like the Confederate president “roasted, starved, burnt, and skinned.” With less jocularity, a Unitarian minister wondered of Davis, “Shall not his life atone (however poorly) for Abraham Lincoln’s?”8 For their part, Confederates were appalled that their leader was assumed to be involved. “The hardest to bear of all the humiliations yet put upon us,” Eliza Andrews of Georgia wrote in her diary, were Presi-
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“wild with grief and rage.”6 Yet for all the imagined torments, the assassin was far from the sole target of that rage. First and foremost, Lincoln’s mourners blamed the Confederate leadership. As President Lincoln lay dying in the back room of a boardinghouse across the street from Ford’s Theatre, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton began to gather eyewitness accounts, presuming that Booth had acted on orders from Confederate authorities, with President Jefferson Davis atop the list. Although Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt was ultimately unable to prove that any Confederate leaders were complicit, the connection felt eminently reasonable to Lincoln’s mourners in the immediate aftermath of the assassination. New England lawyer George White recorded in his diary a long list of potentially responsible Confederates, including Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Secretary of State Judah Benjamin, Secretary of War John Breckinridge, and generals P.G.T. Beauregard, Richard Ewell, A.P. Hill, and Joseph E. Johnston. When a lieutenant in the 2nd New York Cavalry conveyed the news of Lincoln’s death to his men, the soldiers murmured “curses on the assassin and the Jeff Davis crew.” A letter writer to a black newspaper believed that the “leaders of the rebellion,” with their “diabolical intentions,” had always aimed to kill Lincoln, and a Vermont abolitionist wrote to her son in the Union army, “I hope they will get Jeff Davis and hang him just where they hung John Brown.”7 When Booth shot Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre, Jefferson Davis had already been on the run for a week and half, having fled the executive mansion when Richmond fell to the Yankees on April 3. When the Union army caught up with Davis in Irwinsville, Georgia, on May 10,
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dent Andrew Johnson’s rewards for the arrest of Davis and his colleagues, “under pretense that they were implicated in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.” For Andrews, the ubiquitous handbills amounted to no less than “a flaming insult.” Had Union authorities “posted one of their lying accusations on our street gate, I would tear it down with
my own hands,” she promised herself, for it was simply “the most villainous slander ever perpetrated.”9 Even as the bereaved pointed to the Confederacy’s “hot-headed leaders,” they broadened the blame to encompass the entire southern elite. The indignation of mourners, an angry Massachusetts man wrote to his brother, “is extended
OPPOSITE PAGE: Confederate president Jefferson Davis, one of many southern leaders held responsible by the northern public for Lincoln’s death. ABOVE: Minister Henry Ward Beecher, one of the northerners who
drew a line between the culpability of southern elites and poor southern whites.
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toward the whole south or I might more properly say the upper classes of the South.” But if they agreed that Confederate leaders and elites were responsible for Lincoln’s assassination, black and white mourners diverged over the guilt of poorer white southerners. White northerners felt sure that the powerful slaveholders had coerced their nonslaveholding neighbors into the war, “against interests as dear to them as their own lives,” in the words of the minister Henry Ward Beecher, or, as Massachusetts abolitionist Sarah Browne understood it, “against the dictates of their hearts and Consciences.” These innocents were the “misguided millions,” in the phrase of a Union army chaplain. Accordingly, the Rev. Matthew Simpson, in his funeral oration delivered at Lincoln’s burial in Springfield, Illinois, on May 4, condemned the Rebel leaders but exempted “the deluded masses.”10 Black mourners saw things differently, pointing out that resentment of wealthy planters did not preclude allegiance to white supremacy. The “poor and ignorant” white people in the slave states, noted the New York Anglo-African, should be emancipated from the “tyranny of the rich” but doubted that they could ever be “emancipated from negro-hate.” The Christian Recorder similarly assumed that even the South’s “ignorant white loyalists” believed that African Americans were “made to be slaves.” In extemporaneous remarks delivered at a memorial service in Rochester’s City Hall on the day Lincoln died, Frederick Douglass had pointedly divided the enemy population not into rich and poor, but rather into “Southern foes” and “Southern friends.” In the wake of Lincoln’s death, Douglass believed, the only true friends to be found down south were African Americans.11 Yet even as many white mourners absolved white southerners outside the planter classes, grieving Union soldiers and officers—the men who had overwhelmingly voted President Lincoln back into office just a few months earlier—did not bother
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“That means nigger citizenship. Now, by God, I’ll put him through.” JOHN WILKES BOOTH AFTER HEARING LINCOLN RAISE THE ISSUE OF LIMITED BLACK SUFFRAGE
to differentiate, craving one final military engagement. In North Carolina, Union troops greeted with consternation the news of Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston’s lateApril surrender to General William T. Sherman. “We wish that the fight were not over yet!” they exclaimed. For even more than mustering out and going home, they wanted to be “let loose” on the enemy to “revenge the President’s murder.” A white lieutenant with the black 5th Massachusetts Cavalry found himself positively “blood-thirsty” at news of the assassination, hoping for an order to “burn, kill, & distroy.” So highly did his men esteem the president that the officer felt sure they would raise “a monument of dead rebells” on the battlefield. Newton Perkins of the 13th Connecticut Infantry wanted to etch Lincoln’s name on a banner, then call out to his comrades, “Boys ‘Slay and spare not! give no quarter; take none.’” Civilians dreamed of similar reprisals, Yankee women
included. When grieving Union supporter Mary Butler cried “death to all traitors,” she did not exempt her beau, fighting in the Confederate army. “I hope he will meet the fate he deserves,” she wrote to her mother, repeating exactly what she meant: “death to the traitors.”12 Despite their exemption of poor white southerners, northern whites joined black mourners in blaming not just the Confederate leadership, but also the Confederacy as a whole. Whether or not John Wilkes Booth had taken direct orders from Rebel authorities, he had acted, mourners believed, in the spirit of the rebellion. As the black Civil War correspondent Thomas Morris Chester saw it, Lincoln’s murder “logically followed the efforts of treason to dismember the Union.” Fourteen-year-old Sarah Putnam of Boston likewise implicated the seceding southern states when she wrote in her diary that “the rebels only hurt their own cause when they assassinated dear old
OPPOSITE PAGE: Ardent secessionist Edmund Ruffin, who was among those southerners appalled at the northern attempt to tie Booth to the Confederacy as a whole. ABOVE: A broadside
from Philadelphia expresses the city’s grief at the assassination.
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Lincoln.” Again, Confederates were appalled at the expanding circle of blame. Edmund Ruffin, the ardent secessionist known for firing a shot in Charleston Harbor in April 1861, expressed fury at a sermon he read in the northern papers that equated Booth with the “spirit which fired on Fort Sumter.” When the ministry dared to “charge the southern people with the assassination of Lincoln,” Ruffin wrote in his journal, they needlessly encouraged “increased hatred & vengeance.”13 EVEN AS THEY BLAMED BOOTH, Confederate leaders and their nation, and the southern elite, Lincoln’s mourners also pointed to something larger, what they called the southern “system.” The assassination, Lincoln’s legal adviser Francis Lieber wrote to General Henry Halleck, was a result of a “devilish system and doctrine.” Lincoln’s murder, an Illinois mourner told her son in the Union army, “exactly comports with their whole system.” To a professor at the University of Maryland, Lincoln had “fallen a victim to a thug system.” At the foundation and heart of that system lay the institution of slavery.14 On Tuesday evening, April 11, three days before he shot the president, John Wilkes Booth had stood in the crowd listening to Lincoln deliver a post-victory speech from the White House balcony. Cautiously, the president spoke of voting rights for black men—“I would myself prefer,” he told his audience, that suffrage be “conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.” According to a companion, that pronouncement enraged Booth. “That means nigger citizenship,” he protested. “Now, by God, I’ll put him through.”
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“Slavery has done its worst. Its hatred of all that is just and pure ... [is] embodied in that miserable assassin.” PART OF A SET OF SPECIAL RESOLUTIONS PASSED BY THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB OF PHILADELPHIA AFTER THE ASSASSINATION
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Whether or not Booth uttered those of slavery.” The murder, wrote an exact words, the would-be assaseditor of the Black Republican of New sin had already written down, in an Orleans, was “the natural outcrop 1864 letter to his sister’s husband, of that vast stratum of cruelty and his conviction that “this country was of crime which slavery has been so formed for the white not for the black long depositing below the surface of man.”15 society.” The assassination, Lieber Right from the start, many of himself believed, was a result of Lincoln’s mourners “pro-slavery barbarism,” named slavery in the and whether Booth shot same breath in which Lincoln on orders from they excoriated Booth, Confederate leaders or Confederate authorities not, he had “emphatically and elites, and the failed done it as a servant of the nation itself. “How many shameless set of barbarmore martyrs to slavery!” ians and in their spirit.” cried an eyewitness at On the day Lincoln died, Ford’s Theatre. “It was the Union League Club slavery that killed our of Philadelphia drew up President,” pronounced a set of special resoluJoseph Prime, a black tions. “Slavery has done Charles Francis Adams minister in upstate New its worst,” the men wrote. York. Mourners did not “Its hatred of all that is have to be abolitionists to make the just and pure, its malevolence, its connection. Rather, many of the brutality, its violence, its heartlessbereaved understood that even if ness, its treachery, its defiance of most northerners supported a war every law, human and Divine, are all primarily to restore the Union, the embodied in that miserable assascause of disunion had been the ques- sin.” In fact, the “the lash of the tion of slavery in the nation’s future. slave-driver” was just as abhorrent “It is Slavery, Slavery!” cried Francis as Booth’s own “pistol and dagger.”17 Lieber (once a slaveholder himself). More concretely, mourners knew “Slavery, Rebellion and Assassinathat it was President Lincoln’s oppotion form but one word,” wrote a sition to slavery that had precipiman who worked for the American tated the crime. An official bulletin Colonization Society, the organifrom Union authorities, appealzation that encouraged free Afriing to African Americans to assist can Americans to leave the United with the capture of the assassin, States. Charles Francis Adams, a announced that Lincoln had been moderate Republican and the minkilled “because he was your friend.” ister of the U.S. legation in London, Signed by General Winfield Scott named the assassination as “the Hancock, the broadside announced, fruit of the seed that was sown in the “Had he been unfaithful to you and slavery of the African race.”16 to the great cause of human freedom Some mourners went further, he might have lived.” Like the Union expounding upon the institution’s League resolutions, the announceinherent wickedness, like the black ment connected Booth’s weapon to citizens of Sacramento who called the cause of the war and to human Lincoln’s assassination “the natural bondage: “The pistol from which he fruit” of “that barbarous institution met his death, though held by Booth,
OPPOSITE PAGE: The list of resolutions adopted by the Fire Department of
Philadelphia on April 20, 1865—an expression “of Regret of the Death of our Late President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln.”
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was fired by the hands of treason and slavery.” In just that spirit, one former slave confronted her former mistress with the words, “You are the slayer of my deliverer!”18 WITH THEIR BELOVED CHIEF SLAIN, mourners could not help but wonder how the nation would fare without Lincoln. To allay that vexing question, they turned to God, hoping to find a divine message in the inscrutable sequence of victory and assassination. Searching for a providential message went hand in hand with justice, and thus did mourners envision the “new birth of freedom” that the president had invoked at Gettysburg. Lincoln, one man wrote in his journal, needed to be “stricken down by the slaveholder’s bullet” in order “to rouse the people to vigilance.” For Frederick Douglass, making his impromptu remarks in Rochester on April 15, the president’s violent death was God’s warning not to reconcile with the “spirit which gave birth to Booth.” For Lincoln’s bereft mourners, the nation’s regeneration could emerge only from justice for the slain victims of slavery, secession, and war—and, finally, assassination.19 On April 26, the Union army tracked down John Wilkes Booth and shot him before he could be brought to trial. In early July, all eight of Booth’s conspirators were found guilty by a military tribunal. Four were sentenced to death and hanged, including Mary Surratt, the first woman to be executed by the federal government. Three others were sentenced to life in prison, while the most minor character (he had held onto Booth’s horse outside Ford’s Theatre) received a six-year sentence. In the meantime, President Andrew Johnson had } CONT. ON P. 74
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L I N C O L N A S S A S S I N AT I O N 1 8 6 5 - 2 0 1 5
Portrait
OF AN
Assassination
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An illustrated look at the killing of ABRAHAM LINCOLN and its aftermath
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The Derringer pistol John Wilkes Booth (opposite page) used to shoot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865
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I. ASSASSINATION “THAT IS THE LAST SPEECH he will ever make.” So remarked John Wilkes Booth on April 11, 1865, after listening to President Abraham Lincoln deliver remarks outside the White House. Speaking to a crowd of thousands only two days after Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House, Lincoln had mentioned his support of limited black suffrage, a position that enraged the well-known Maryland-born actor and Confederate sympathizer. Three days later, Booth arrived at Ford’s Theatre, where the Lincolns and their guests, Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée, Clara Harris, were attending a performance of the play Our American Cousin. At around 10:15 p.m., Booth snuck into the presidential box, pointed a pistol to the back of Lincoln’s head, and pulled the trigger. He then drew a knife and slashed Rathbone, who tried to detain him, then jumped from the box to the stage floor, fracturing his left leg in the fall. Before making his escape on a horse waiting outside, Booth turned to the confused audience, raised his bloody knife over his head, and reportedly proclaimed, “Sic semper tyrannis!” (“Thus always to tyrants!” in Latin). Lincoln, unconscious, was transported across the street to a bed in the first-floor room of a boardinghouse owned by William Petersen. He succumbed to his wound the following morning at 7:22 a.m., making him the first American president to die by an assassin’s hand. Abraham Lincoln as he appeared in February 1865, two months before his death. RIGHT: The playbill for Friday, April 14, 1865, the night Lincoln attended Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre.
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Major Henry Rathbone, his fiancée, Clara Harris, and Mary Todd Lincoln look on as John Wilkes Booth shoots Abraham Lincoln in the presidential box. BELOW: A ticket to Ford’s Theatre.
“Now he belongs to the ages.” SECRETARY OF WAR EDWIN STANTON AFTER ABRAHAM LINCOLN SUCCUMBED TO HIS WOUND ON APRIL 15, 1865
The horn-handled dagger used by Booth to stab Major Rathbone after shooting President41 Lincoln. It is engraved with the words “Liberty” and “America.” THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SPRING 2015
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Confederate army veteran Lewis Powell, 20, tried but failed to kill Secretary of State William Seward on the same night that Booth assassinated Lincoln.
“I’m mad! I’m mad!”
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LEWIS POWELL AS HE STABBED SECRETARY OF STATE WILLIAM SEWARD IN HIS BED
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II. CONSPIRACY
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George Atzerodt, the man charged by Booth to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson. BELOW RIGHT: David Herold, who was to assist Lewis Powell in assassinating Secretary of State William Seward.
BOOTH DID NOT ACT ALONE, nor was the assassination of Lincoln the plot’s only goal. He and his co-conspirators had hoped to disrupt the leadership of the U.S. government by also killing Secretary of State William Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson. As Booth undertook his mission at Ford’s Theatre, Lewis Powell, a former Confederate soldier who was wounded at Gettysburg, and David Herold, a 22-year-old Maryland native, arrived at Seward’s residence, where the secretary was recovering in bed from a carriage accident. Powell gained access to Seward’s room and stabbed him repeatedly in the face and neck before running away. (A splint covering the convalescing secretary of state’s neck likely saved him from a fatal wound to a jugular vein.) Meanwhile, German immigrant George Atzerodt arrived at Washington’s Kirkwood Hotel, where the vice president was staying. But Atzerodt lost his nerve, got drunk in the hotel’s saloon, and was wandering the city’s streets instead of confronting Johnson in his room with pistol and knife at the appointed time. Later that night, under the direction of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, a massive manhunt for the conspirators began.
ABOVE: A depiction of the attempted
assassination of William Seward by Lewis Powell. LEFT: A wanted poster naming Booth, Atzerodt, and Herold.
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III. RETRIBUTION
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A boot worn by Booth on the night of the assassination. It was cut and removed by Dr. Samuel A. Mudd the next day when he treated the assassin’s injured leg.
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“P
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Sergeant Boston Corbett shoots John Wilkes Booth in the burning Garrett barn as co-conspirator David Herold is apprehended in this dramatic but historically inaccurate depiction of the events of April 26, 1865.
“Providence directed me.”
UNION CAVALRYMAN BOSTON CORBETT ON WHY HE FATALLY SHOT JOHN WILKES BOOTH, VIOLATING ORDERS TO TAKE THE ASSASSIN ALIVE
Boston Corbett
WITHIN A HALF HOUR of shooting Lincoln, Booth crossed the Navy Yard Bridge into Maryland, where he rendezvoused with David Herold, who had crossed the bridge shortly after him. After spending April 15 at the home of physician Samuel A. Mudd, who set Booth’s broken leg and equipped him with crutches, the pair spent the next several days hiding out in a pine thicket two miles east of the Potomac River in southern Maryland. On April 24, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd Booth and Herold, aided by three Confederate soldiers, crossed into Virginia and made their way to a tobacco farm in Port Royal owned by Richard Garrett. On April 26, men from the 16th New York Cavalry surrounded the Garrett barn, where Booth and Herold were holed up. Herold promptly surrendered, but Booth, armed with a rifle and pistol, refused, shouting, “I will not be taken alive!” Under orders to capture and not kill Booth, the troopers began by setting fire to the barn in hopes of forcing him out, but a sergeant named Boston Corbett soon took aim through a large crack in the barn wall and shot Lincoln’s assassin in the back of the head, severing his spinal cord. Booth died two hours later, two weeks shy of his 27th birthday.
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Accused Lincoln conspirators, shackled and hooded, are transferred to Washington’s Old Arsenal Penitentiary for trial in May 1865.
IV. JUSTICE “
ON MAY 12 IN A ROOM in Washington’s Old Arsenal Penitentiary, a nine-member military commission began hearing evidence to decide the fate of Herold, Powell (arrested April 17), Atzerodt (arrested April 20), and five other suspects, including Mary Surratt, whose High Street boardinghouse was frequented by Booth and various Confederate agents (and was the location of Powell’s capture). After seven weeks and more than 300 witnesses’ testimony, the tribunal found seven of the prisoners guilty of conspiracy and issued its sentences: Herold, Powell, Atzerodt, and Surratt were sentenced to death by hanging; Dr. Samuel Mudd, who treated Booth’s injured leg, escaped a death sentence by one vote and received a life term in prison; Samuel Arnold and Michael O’Laughlen, two men who had been part of Booth’s previous plot to kidnap Lincoln, were also sentenced to life in prison; and Edmund Spangler, a Ford’s Theatre stagehand, was found guilty of aiding Booth’s escape and sentenced to six years in prison. (Mudd, Arnold, and Spangler would be pardoned in February 1869 by President Johnson, while O’Laughlen would die in captivity of yellow fever in 1867.) Shortly after sentencing her to hang, five members of the tribunal sent a letter to the president recommending clemency for Surratt—life in prison instead of death—due to “her sex and age,” but Johnson refused to halt the execution (and later denied having seen the request).
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Samuel Arnold
Mary Surratt
Michael O’Laughlen
Edmund Spangler
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The nine military commission members and three judge advocates who tried and convicted the Lincoln conspirators
“I intend to show that this man is a constitutional coward; that if he had been assigned the duty of assassinating the Vice President, he could never have done it....” CAPTAIN WILLIAM E. DOSTER, ARGUING IN DEFENSE OF GEORGE ATZERODT AT HIS TRIAL
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A scene from the trial of the conspirators, as captured by a sketch artist for Harper’s Weekly. OPPOSITE PAGE, CENTER: A northern broadside printed shortly after Lincoln’s death.
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V. THE END
Abraham Lincoln’s funeral procession makes its way through the streets of New York City on April 26, 1865. BELOW: Lincoln’s coffin on view at the State House in Springfield, Illinois, on May 3.
IMMEDIATELY AFTER PRESIDENT Johnson approved the sentences on July 5, construction of the gallows commenced in the arsenal’s courtyard. Two days later, after a last-minute effort by Surratt’s lawyers to spare her failed, the executions proceeded. At 1 p.m., as a crowd of roughly 1,000 (mostly military men) looked on in the sweltering heat, the four condemned, their ankles and hands bound, were led through the courtyard and up the steps to the gallows, where they were seated in chairs. Each had their arms, thighs, and ankles bound with white cloth and was attended to by a member of the clergy. Surratt, dressed in all black, was seen to hold a crucifix to her lips; Powell proclaimed, “Mrs. Surratt is innocent. She doesn’t deserve to die with the rest of us.” Less than 20 minutes after they entered the courtyard, the prisoners were ready for execution. They were ordered to stand, their chairs were removed, and each had a white bag and a noose placed over the head. After a few seconds, an army officer clapped his hands, signaling the trap doors beneath the condemned be sprung. The bodies hanged for 30 minutes before being cut down, placed in pine coffins, and buried in shallow graves near the arsenal wall.
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Rope that was used to hang one of the Lincoln conspirators
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“Please don’t let me fall.”
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MARY SURRATT'S LAST WORDS BEFORE HER HANGING ON JULY 7, 1865
CREDITS: Page 38: Library of Congress (hereafter LOC).
39: Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site (hereafter FTNHS). 40: LOC (both; Lincoln colorized by Mads Madsen of Colorized History). 41: LOC (top); FTNHS (2). 42–43: LOC (all). 44: FTNHS. 45: LOC (3). 46: Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (top); LOC (5). 47: LOC (top); Harper’s Weekly. 48: LOC (top 2); FTNHS. 49: LOC.
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The hooded bodies of Lincoln conspirators (left to right) 49 Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR Atzerodt on July SPRING 7, 1865 2015
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A letter from J.F. Hei of Columbia, South Carolina, dated March 17, 1865, to his sons in the Confederate army
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CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL LITERARY SOCIETY COLLECTION, THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM, RICHMOND, VA.
The letters of hundreds of Confederate civilians and soldiers— confiscated by Union forces before they could be delivered—provide a rare window into the southern state of mind at the end of the Civil War.
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On April 16, 1865, a young southern woman wrote an encouraging letter to her “very Dear Brother Robert” in the Confederate army. She apparently was unaware of the momentous events at Appomattox and Ford’s Theatre the preceding week. I have determined this Monday morning to commence the duties of the present week by writing to a loved brother…. Although our lines of communication are so cut off and such a state of confusion that I have very little hope that my letter will reach you yet it may accidentally or providentially…. We are informed that the 12th Reg (with others) have been sent to Gen. Johnson have not much confidence in the report should think that Gen Lee had no men to spare from Richmond if he expects to hold the place in your last letters you appear very desponding as to the success of our Cause! The scenes through which you have recently passed with a general knowledge of Our National Extremities. Federal Triumphs!... I have an inexpressible sympathy for you my dear Brother; whose heart has previously been buoyant and hopes bright which is so necessary to prepare One like yourself … patiently to endure camp life & valiantly contend upon the battlefield I hope you are on better spirits Do not think as did Napoleon Bonapart that “victory always crowns a strong & well trained army” We have a better guide which tells us that “The race is not always to the Swift; nor the battle to the Strong.” “If God is for us; who can be against us”? Cheer up dear brother! Trust in God and whatever you conceive to be your duty to your Country & to Him who guides the destinies of nations Do “with all your might” and “all will be well[”] We have endured much national suffering and at present Dark luminous “clouds” threaten us! but God’s hand is in this Great Matter and if We are right He will bring us safely through. But we (as a nation) must be humbled When will this be? Oh! I fear too late for the good of very many careless souls Oh that we as Individuals and as a People would Repent of our sins and look to Him whose ear is never deaf to the cries of those who bring an acceptable sacrifice It does appear as if Our past suffering ought to be sufficient to humble us But if there is any sign of humility diverging from our National Calamities The Signs are certainly invisible in this vicinity I must write something else…. I never was more anxious to see my dear brother “Rob” It is my daily prayer that God will protect & spare your life that you may return to the embrace of loved & loving Ones at home … very affectionate good & smart as ever your devoted sister Helen1
As she feared, “Dear brother Robert” never received her letter. Rather, it became another entry in the sadly common tale of undelivered Civil War correspondence. It was among thousands of letters that Federal forces intercepted in the last months of the war and diverted to a Washington, D.C., post office. This particular epistle was one of 315 that a curious Michigan congressman culled from mailbags there and saved for posterity. In the 1890s, they ended up in the collection of The Museum of the Confederacy.2 The letters offer a rare, perhaps unique, kaleidoscope of southern reaction to the end of the conflict. Unlike those in most manuscript collections, they were written not by a few members of a single elite family, but by more than 300 ordinary white southerners. (Because the envelopes were not saved, most of the writers’ identities and locations are unknown.) Many are semi-literate, with phonetic spelling and virtually no punctuation. They came from all corners of the Confederacy, but a disproportionate number from the so-called Confederate heartland of
Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and upcountry South Carolina—an area often cut off from communication, where rumors were rampant and reliable news hard to come by.3 Like Helen, most of the writers sensed that the end of the war was near and that the future was uncertain. Some hoped for peace and others vowed to fight on regardless of the price. Many grieved for lost loved ones or prayed for the safety of others, recalling fond memories of hearth and home. Presented here are highlights of letters written between March and May 1865. To help preserve the authors’ voices, the original spelling, sentence structure, and (lack of) punctuation were retained except where punctuation [added in brackets] was necessary for clarity.
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“I wish to know all about you and yours”
Most of the words in the 315 letters have absolutely nothing to do with the Civil War or its impending close. Typical of Civil War letters, they are filled with discussions of the weather and farming (the unusually cool and wet spring had delayed planting). Most of all, writers inquired about or reported on the welfare of family and friends and the affairs of hearth and home. “As I wish to know all
Union soldiers share rations with recently surrendered Rebel troops in this sketch made by Alfred R. Waud on April 9, 1865. Many southerners were unaware of the demise of Robert E. Lee’s army for several weeks and continued writing encouraging letters to their Confederate soldier relatives.
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (OPPOSITE PAGE); CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL LITERARY SOCIETY COLLECTION, THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM, RICHMOND, VA.
about you and yours,” wrote John P. Darden from Fayette, Mississippi, to his long-lost cousin in Georgia on April 14, “How is my Dear Cousin Jane, whom I will never forget? Old Aunt Polly? Mary Jane, and Sammy? Where are they all &C &c. I suppose Sammy is in the army _ Mary Jane probably married – She was beautiful and intelligent, and most interesting when I was there – If Old Aunt is still alive, remember me to her in the greatest kindness and respect – Aunt Patsy was alive when I last heard from her _ Tell me about Cousin Tom Heard and family also Cousin John, Cousin Henrietta &c. Dont fail to write me the particulars about your own family affairs in which i feel a deep interest….” The news was as mundane as it was touching, of little interest to anyone but the writers and the intended recipients. Love received its share of ink and pencil lead as well. “Do not I pray you think that I have gone entirely crazy I have at least sense enough left to love, but I believe that is about all,” confessed a C. Crozier, in a revealing April 1 letter to her “Cousin Sue.” “It seems as though the hard times do not keep people from marrying,” wrote soldier R.C. Jones on March 20 from camp in Louisiana to his cousin, Louisa. “[S]ome marry on passes others marry on furloughs, every one to his or her notion, for my part it seems as though I am doomed to live in Celibacy, our Christian association continues to flourish members are added to it monthly.” Several of the writers were not reporting on others’ love lives, but advancing their own. “I have never tried to deceive you Mollie,” a man in DeSoto, Mississippi, wrote to Mollie Weathersbee on April 7. “I loved you wildly passionately: loved you with all my heart, I confessed, ya I demonstrated the fact to you; therein I fear that I committed an error: for that was the wind & fueld which fed & faned the flaim in your own heart; causing you to bestow your hearts best love upon a stranger, a soldier and who cannot call his life much less his time his own To me our future has always been wraped in mysterious forbordings; dark & angry clouds of
John P. Darden’s April 14, 1865, letter to his cousin in Georgia was one of many captured missives that focused on mundane matters such as the well-being of family and friends.
uncertainty have ever lingered there.” On April 5, S.W. Anderson of Nelson County, Virginia, wrote to Mrs. Richards with a proposal to marry Mrs. Richards’ daughter, Virginia. If she consented, Anderson assured her, “it will then become my chief delight, – humanly speaking to do all in my power to promote her welfare and happiness[.]” His letter, of course, never reached Mrs. Richards.
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“destruction and horror was hovering ever where”
“How has the war used you?” John P. Darden asked his cousin Samuel after his torrent of queries about the welfare of Samuel’s family. “I hope the Sherman raid was too far from
you to injure you, and that you will escape the ravages we have long felt in Mississippi…. The yankees visited me more than a year ago, taking horses, mules &c. and doing other damage while between 40 and 50 of my negroes, most of whom were efficient hands left me at various times, carrying off nearly every thing like a horse on the place[.]” The specter of Union forces “visiting” southern neighborhoods cast a long shadow over many of the letters. In the spring of 1865, Union forces were penetrating into parts of the South that had largely been spared the hard hand of war for four years. Not only was Major General William T. Sherman’s army continuing its march from Savannah, Georgia, through the Carolinas, but
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“We have rumors here every day & hour keeping us in a continued state of excitement”
Collectively, the letters present a cacophony of news and rumors. One unnamed woman confessed in her April 7 letter that “we hear so much that is not so I dont believe anything that I do hear….” A young woman in Jackson, Mississippi, wrote her mother on April 23 that Federal troops were now occupying the region between them and that “We
The burning of Columbia, South Carolina (depicted below), in February 1865 dealt a heavy blow to southern morale. “Our once bountiful City is now in ashes,” a Columbia resident wrote to his sons in the Confederate army in March. “[T]he horror & fright cannot be described on paper.”
have rumors here every day & hour keeping us in a continued state of excitement.” On April 2, Miss C. Crozier informed her “darling brother” that “we have just heard that Petersburg was evacuated & preparations were being made for the evacuation of Richmond, hope the report is false, but believed here.” H.H. Harris wrote female friends from Meridian, Mississippi, on April 29 that General John Bell Hood (with whom he was traveling) “believes that R. E. Lee and command has surrendered it is also believed by every body here Oh subjugation what a thought how can I bear it but we must put our trust in the Supreme Architect of the Universe[.]” A woman in Mississippi heard the same news, but wrote to a friend on April 23 that “In regard to the surrender of Lee I believe as much of that as I choose, which is little enough.” If the news from Virginia was distressing and raised the threat of “subjugation,” the rumors out of North Carolina fostered hope. “We have just heard that Sherman has been whipped with a loss of 5000 prisoners and twenty-three pieces of Artillery, by Gen’s Johnston and Beauregard,” R.E. Giffen wrote on March 27. Writing from Yazoo, Mississippi, to family in Richmond on April 2, A.L. Trevilian echoed this news with an almost giddy delight: “I believe it is generally believed here,” he began, “that Gen. Sherman has been handsomely whiped The Papers Acknowledge a defeat and the loss of 6000 men which if 30 will add new courage to our desponding troops.” A soldier named Perkins in the 6th Texas Cavalry stationed near Canton, Mississippi, passed along to Sallie on April 22 some “offeshel news” including the report that “Joson has whiped Sherman[.]” General Joseph E. Johnston’s successful attack on Sherman’s army at Bentonville, North Carolina, on March 19 accounted for this raft of hopeful rumors. The three-day battle ultimately went against Johnston, and by the time Perkins communicated his “offeshel news,” Johnston was negotiating for the surrender of his Army of Tennessee.
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FRANK LESLIE’S ILLUSTRATED NEWSPAPER (TOP); NATIONAL ARCHIVES
most destructive act of Sherman’s March to the Sea and dramatized the South’s helplessness. “On our part,” wrote Columbia resident J.F. Hei to his sons in the Confederate army on March 17, “we cannot but be grateful to our heavenly Father for his mercies during the recent catastrophy for whist destruction and horror was hovering ever where, we were spared and passed through the pillage and conflagration safe and unharmed. Our once bountiful City is now in ashes, only a few scattering residences on the extreme Ends of the streets remain, and before the Yankee Demons burnt the town they pillaged & robbed almost every house. You have no doubt read the particulars in the papers, but the horror & fright cannot be described on paper.”
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Major General George Stoneman and Brigadier General James H. Wilson launched large-scale cavalry raids into western North Carolina and central Alabama, respectively. Major General E.R.S. Canby’s forces captured Spanish Fort and Fort Blakeley, Alabama, compelling the Confederate army and navy to abandon Mobile and retreat northward to Demopolis. From the Confederate steamer Black Diamond at Demopolis, J.A. Cordray (possibly Condray) wrote to his wife on April 16 what he heard about the destruction of Selma and alleged atrocities committed there: “the Yanks burnt all the Shops of evry kind in the place not less than 15 or 20 beside Several privit houses & robed all the rest of the valuables they could find you have but little but if they ever pay you a visit (but I pray God they never will)…. I must relate one rumer that is said to be reliable in regard to the torture of the infurnal theaves have resorted to, to obtain hidden treasure. Thay taken three Ladies & held there naked feet to the fire until one died another had to have one of her feet amputated the other was burnt shockingly.” In contrast to the “rumer” of torture, the burning of Columbia, South Carolina, in February 1865 was beyond doubt. It was the single
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FRANK LESLIE’S ILLUSTRATED NEWSPAPER (TOP); NATIONAL ARCHIVES
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
“I suppose you hav heard of Abe Lincol Death”
Soldier Perkins passed along another piece of news to Sallie with an almost calculated nonchalance: “Miss Sallie I have no news of importance to wrigh[t] to you a bout the war more than old lincon and Seward is ded lincon ws kill at a theater….” Writing on the same day (April 22) from Edward’s Depot, Mississippi, to his brother in Columbus, Georgia, J.D. Thomas was more expansive. As he traveled closer to enemy lines, “we are able to obtain all information and intelligence in reference to war matters. The latest to day is Pres Lincoln is dead also Sect Seward. Bro Nephew, and his two attendants.” As promised he related “the particulars” in some detail and with hints of sympathy for President Abraham Lincoln and
Many southern civilians’ hopes were renewed after early reports of Rebel victory at the Battle of Bentonville (depicted above) in March, where Confederate soldiers commanded by Joseph E. Johnston (below) had initially routed part of William T. Sherman’s advancing Union force.
Secretary of State William Seward (whom many southerners mistakenly believed had been killed). In stark contrast, the young woman in Jackson, Mississippi, who had refused to believe the news about Lee’s surrender celebrated Lincoln’s death. “While we do not believe in assassinations yet we can not but feel rejoiced to have gotten rid of so dastardly a foe, & with one accord we lift our voices in the cry ‘Sic semper tyrannis’ – Ofehelia no doubt is folding her hands and with on loud lamentations feeling – the truth of the latin words ‘Sic transit gloria mundi’ tell her I think so too – He has wielded – his scepter of despotism long enough & there are none of us but will feel glad at knowing “that the dream of his glory is over[.]”
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“The south is bound to give up now”
Southerners living through the spring of 1865 certainly sensed that the end was near, but they rarely understood the full significance of the events as they witnessed or learned of them. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the captured letters is how ordinary white southerners tried to make sense of the news they were hearing. In Union-occupied Memphis, a woman named Georgie believed (mistakenly, as it turned out) that she would finally be able to get a letter through the lines to her husband in the Confederate army. “Ma told me to say to you to come home immediately,” she wrote on April 12. “The south is bound to give up now, as Lee and Johnson has surrendered, so there is no use to hold back, do my darling come right home[.]” Outside Federal lines, few writ-
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As evidenced by this March 3 letter to friends, Texas cavalryman W.A. Rumple was among those Confederates eager to see the war end soon, regardless of outcome.
and mysterious – But all this is bosh to you – will be old before it reaches you.” The letter never did reach his friends, but peace came all the same. “I am all the time looking forward and enjoying in anticipation the happiness in store for us when this war is ended and we are snug and comfortable in our own little home,” wrote one “devoted wife” to her “darling husband” from Alabama on April 7. She went on, though, to declare that “even if the Yankees strip us of our property, if we gain our independence, and I am confident we will, we will be happier than we have been during the war. I would willingly give up all and everything if by so doing peace and independence could be established.”
Certainly, though, this feeling was not uniform, as evidenced in a confession between siblings. “All patriotism dear brother in me has expired in the ardent wish of seeing you again,” wrote a young woman to her brother Ernest in an Alabama military unit. “I care nothing about the war how it ends or who gains so you and Josh come home safe – my prayers are for Peace and you return – every one is disheartened and tired of war – it is time that men used the reason that God endowed them with – and not be cut each other down as if they had no souls to save.” From Mill Hill, Georgia, on April 14, D.H. House wrote to his father in a defiantly hopeful tone. Although the Federals had already “visited” his
CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL LITERARY SOCIETY COLLECTION, THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM, RICHMOND, VA.
ers were as certain about the outcome. On March 26, A.M.F. Robertson wrote from Mississippi that “it seems of prospect of Peace has died away so we can only fight it out if every man would return to their Commands we could soon whip them out but there is so many shirking from duty it looks disheartning the news is that Johnson & Bragg has whipped Sherman if that is so it will enable Lee to whip Grant I do pray it is so, and we may be able to whip the thieving wretches out of countenance.” Olivia in Virginia struck a more realistic tone. “What do you think our prospects are for peace or do you think we have eny,” she wrote on April 1 to her friend Lelia. “Some [persons?] think we will have peace this year & on our own terms but I don’t know what they build these hopes up I think the Yankee army has been very successful of late.” Casting his gaze abroad, the aforementioned A.L. Trevilian wrote that “the prospect of Peace is quite gloomy at this time not withstanding some of the European Powers are considerably dissatisfied and is is [sic] hoped that an intervention will soon take place and bring this unnatural Civil War to a close and let us once more be at peace with ourselves, and all mankind.” After this hopeful interjection, Trevilian went on to express hope for the war’s swift conclusion. “Oh I wish this war would End and let long absent Mothers and Sons Husbands and wives meet to part nomore forever on such Occasions may the God who directs the destiny of men and nations preserve his people from desolation and ruin is the honest Prayer of your Humble svt.” From far out in Anderson County, Texas, W.A. Rumple of Company C, 5th Texas Cavalry, wrote to friends on March 3 that “Peace! Peace!! Peace!!! jingles harmoniously in the ears of every person nearly on this side of the River – but from whence? Things seem to indicate a negotiation in existence an armistice or Some deep scheming in progress. It is the general opinion of soldiers and citizens that we wil have no more fighting to do, but the ‘whys and wherefore’s’ cant be given – affairs are gloomy dark
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“[T]here is aplenty of deserters about here I think that there is more men in the woods now than ever has bin before.” T.B. YEARING OF FORSYTH COUNTY
our cause. For every 100 we would put in the field, we would arm, equip, [and] drill 99 soldiers for the enemy....” John A. Speer, a soldier in a Georgia unit, wrote from Natchitoches, Louisiana, to his mother on April 2 that he had “no faith” in the proposal. “It is too late to make negroes available as Soldiers – they are too much demoralized also the whites eve[n] to discipline them, no resources left to back us in the experiment.” White southerners considered the controversial proposal in light of the slavery system’s collapse. While a few letters insist on the faithfulness of enslaved African Americans, others are filled with references to slaves “going off” or being too “demoralized” to work. “I am afraid that the institution of slavery is about gone up,” B.W. Bush from Sweet Water (probably Mississippi) told his brother bluntly on March 23. The behavior of the remaining slaves in the neighborhood of Grenada, Mississippi, prompted G.W. Adair to pen a backhanded endorsement of black enlistment. “If you could witness the
A Confederate deserter runs into Union lines in 1861. Four years later, as the war came to a close, a perceived epidemic of desertion among Rebel troops worried many southerners.
THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS
CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL LITERARY SOCIETY COLLECTION, THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM, RICHMOND, VA.
father’s place, there was “peace and plenty here yet” and he expected the trains from Augusta to Atlanta would be running again soon. “Times are dark ahead,” he concluded, “but all that I can see that we can do is to put our trust in God and keep our powder dry – I look upon Subjugation as degradation of the deepest dye and to it I prefer utter extermination, consequently I am in favour of fighting to the bitter end, and if it is gods will we Shall be exterminated all I have to say, is So mote it be.” Many letter writers shared House’s dread of “subjugation”—a ubiquitous word that became both shorthand for the destruction and violations of person and property that “Yankee” occupation would bring as well as a rallying call for continued resistance at all costs. Early in 1865 southerners debated whether their determination to avoid subjugation was strong enough to enlist and arm black Confederate soldiers. In March, a bill to do just that was passed by the Confederate Congress, approved by President Jefferson Davis, and enacted by the army. “Is it possible that our Govt will be mad enough to arm the slaves?” asked an unknown correspondent from Keachi, Louisiana, on February 4, 1865. “It would be the death blow to
indolence lazy independent bearing of the few negroes left in this Section you would say ‘Let them rally Boys rally’ – & take their chances in Battle. I never want to see the negroes among us in any other way than as slaves – the position their phisical mental & morral endowments, (& peculiar ordor) intends them to fill.” Letter writers at home and in the ranks fretted over what they perceived as an epidemic of desertion. “[T]here is aplenty of deserters about here I think that there is more men in the woods now than ever has bin before,” noted T.B. Yearing of Forsyth County (either North Carolina or Georgia) to her brother on February 12, 1865. “Even now the Country is full of deserters & as fast as they catch them they desert again & the military authorities appear afraid to punish them,” complained a man named Rhodes to his brother Moses from Rutersville, Texas, on February 1. Private Jesse C. Miller of the 6th South Carolina Infantry wrote his brother from the Richmond defenses on March 13 that there was “a great deal [of] dissatisfaction in the army and a great deal of desertion we have lossed over one hundred men in our Brigade in the last 3 weaks though thay are generaly very low down charecters….” A woman named Mart in Enon, Mississippi, reported matter of factly to her brother on April 11 that “I think the deserters are almost all at home now as the county is destitute of cavalry,” while others registered their disapproval of desertion. “I think the ladies of the south ought to use all their influence to urge back those who through thought-lessness or despondency have deserted their posts,” wrote Josie Henselt of Somerville, Tennessee, on April 7. “[S]hould their persuasions fail they ought to denounce them as cowards and skulkers[.]” A father in Douglassville (probably Arkansas) wrote his “Dear Boy” on March 28 that “As anxious as I am to see you I } CONT. ON P. 75
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SURRENDER
THE ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION OF JOSHUA LAWRENCE CHAMBERLAIN’S ACCOUNT OF HIS FAM
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ER STORIES HIS FAMOUS SALUTE TO CONFEDERATE TROOPS AT APPOMATTOX. BY STEPHEN CUSHMAN
Regarding his April 12, 1865, sketch “Surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia to the Army of the Potomac,” artist John R. Chapin noted that the scene he depicted was “described to me by Genl. Chamberlain, who recd the surrende[r].”
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WITH THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE APPOMATTOX SURRENDER AT HAND, this order constituted a salute to the surrendering Confederates. But even this simple claim has stirred controversy and disagreement, some of which Chamberlain biographer John J. Pullen has summarized helpfully: “There is some question as to whether or not this was really a salute. In ‘shouldered arms’ as described in Casey’s Infantry Tactics the musket was held vertically in the right hand and resting in the hollow of the right shoulder. A salute would have required that the piece be held by both hands at ‘present arms’ vertically opposite the center of the body.” In other words, Chamberlain’s famous “salute” to Gordon’s troops may have consisted of nothing more than Chamberlain calling his own soldiers to attention to ensure that there would be no exulting or taunting of the kind that Grant himself expressly wanted to avoid.3
T
HE KING OF Chamberlain skeptics is William Marvel, who has chided the man from Maine in not one but two books, A Place Called Appomattox (2000) and Lee’s Last Retreat: The Flight to Appomattox (2002). In the first, Marvel describes Chamberlain this way: “General Chamberlain proved as magnificent a soldier as he was a literary stylist, but while he was courageous and coolheaded he also tended to wrap life’s little dramas in ribbons of romantic imagery in which he, himself, was somehow entwined.” In the second book, Marvel has this to say: “A college professor from Maine just three years before this day, he saw the world as one grand romantic cavalcade in which he participated prominently, and if he did anything common, he seemed unable to remember it that way.” Not everyone will find these patronizing dismissals of Chamberlain necessary or justifiable, but
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PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE
To view this article’s reference notes, turn to our Notes section on page 78.
comes from Chamberlain himself, which puts many healthy skeptics on their guard. But even the most skeptical would be unlikely to quibble with some basics: At 5 a.m., almost four years to the minute after the first signal shot was fired at Fort Sumter, the officer from Maine began assembling the Third Brigade of Joseph J. Bartlett’s division of Charles Griffin’s V Corps along the southern side of the Lynchburg stage road, the main street of Appomattox Court House. This location put his left somewhere just east of the courthouse, with Chamberlain himself positioned at the other end of the line, about 300 yards away toward the river, on the extreme right of the V Corps, the only unit of the Army of the Potomac at Appomattox, the II and VI Corps having been sent toward Burkeville. His position put Chamberlain closest to the surrendering southerners, led by the Army of Northern Virginia’s Second Corps under General John B. Gordon, who would soon be marching into the village from the north and east (Chamberlain’s right).2 The next day, April 13, Chamberlain wrote a letter to his sister Sarah describing the disposition of the troops under his command, who, he claimed, numbered about 6,000, a figure more appropriate for the entire First Division than for the Third Brigade alone. But as for subsequent events, when Gordon’s Confederate Second Corps, marching in from Chamberlain’s right, finally came abreast of these Federal soldiers, the simple truth is we do not know exactly what happened. What we can be reasonably sure of is that some command was given (by or to whom is uncertain), the Federal soldiers made some change in how they were standing, and that in turn altered the tone of the surrender ceremony in some way. As Chamberlain came to represent the moment, he ordered his soldiers to “shoulder arms,” and
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (RIGHT AND PREVIOUS SPREAD)
visitors to Appomattox Court House National Historical Park will probably hear a park ranger tell some version of a story about Brigadier General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain’s role in the surrender ceremony, as I first did many years ago. On its website, the National Park Service summarizes Chamberlain’s role this way: “During the war’s closing chapter at Appomattox, Chamberlain was selected to receive the Confederate surrender of arms, during which he ordered his men to attention as the Confederates passed, as a sign of respect for their defeated foe.” Yet the events of Wednesday, April 12, 1865, may not have such a clear and simple interpretation. In the Appomattox chapter of his Personal Memoirs, published 20 years after the surrender, Ulysses S. Grant commented wryly on the nature of such stories: “Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true.” Grant mentioned Chamberlain once in his memoirs but not in connection with the surrender ceremony, which Grant himself missed, having designated others to parole Robert E. Lee’s troops and then left for Washington to see President Abraham Lincoln. In omitting Chamberlain’s name in this context, Grant was not alone, but his formulation about how stories of fiction are “told until they are believed to be true” provides us with a useful place to start thinking about Chamberlain’s role at Appomattox, his subsequent stories about that role, and the willingness, even eagerness, of many people to believe his stories today.1 What was Chamberlain’s role in the surrender ceremony on that damp, chilly April Wednesday at Appomattox? Most of what we know
PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (RIGHT AND PREVIOUS SPREAD)
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain as he appeared sometime after his promotion to brevet major general of volunteers on May 29, 1865, a little over a month after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox.
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NATIONAL ARCHIVES
PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE
General John B. Gordon, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia’s Second Corps, whose men were the recipients of Chamberlain’s famous “salute” on April 12, 1865, at Appomattox.
“WE RECEIVED THEM WITH THE HONORS DUE TO TROOPS—AT A SHOULDER—IN SILENCE. THEY CAME TO A SHOULDER ON PASSING MY FLAG + PRESERVED PERFECT ORDER.... POOR FELLOWS. I PITIED THEM FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART.”
NATIONAL ARCHIVES
PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE
JOSHUA LAWRENCE CHAMBERLAIN ON THE CONFEDERATE SURRENDER AT APPOMATTOX IN A LETTER TO HIS SISTER, APRIL 13, 1865
the more important point is that for Marvel, the fact that Chamberlain revised his subsequent narratives of the salute is the end of the story.4 In fairness to Marvel, criticisms and counterclaims have dogged Chamberlain’s accounts all along, both during his lifetime and since his death. Another Chamberlain biographer, Edward G. Longacre, summarized some of them: Chamberlain made it appear that his command alone took part in the ceremony, ignoring other elements of the V Corps; he implied that his command received Confederate arms and flags all morning and afternoon, instead of during only a portion of the day; he maintained that he was designated by either Grant or Griffin (depending on the account) to receive the Confederate surrender, when, in fact, his division commander and superior officer, Bartlett, was really in charge but was summoned elsewhere; and, most important for this discussion, he insisted that he and Gordon exchanged salutes of some kind, although they may not actually have done so at all. Having summarized these inconsistencies, however, Longacre then draws an admirably judicious and levelheaded conclusion: “These criticisms notwithstanding, it seems clear that some gesture on Chamberlain’s part that day made the surrender ceremony something other than the degrading, humiliating experience Lee’s army might otherwise have found it.”5 We cannot determine the exact nature of Chamberlain’s gesture, but we can focus on how his narratives of it evolved over 50 years and on how students of history have interpreted it. Six documents authored by Chamberlain map this evolution: (1) Chamberlain’s letter to his sister, written the day after the surrender ceremony; (2) “The Surrender of Gen. Lee,” an article published almost three years
later, in January 1868; (3) “The Third Brigade at Appomattox,” a speech published in 1894; (4) “The Last Salute of the Army of Northern Virginia,” an article published in 1901; (5) “Appomattox,” an address published in 1903; and, finally, (6) Chamberlain’s book The Passing of the Armies, published in 1915, the year after Chamberlain died at the age of 85.6 In the first version, dated April 13, 1865, Chamberlain gives his sister only this bare report: “We received them with the honors due to troops— at a shoulder—in silence. They came to a shoulder on passing my flag + preserved perfect order.” He makes no mention of deciding to offer the salute or issuing orders for it. His only depiction of his own thoughts takes this shape: “Poor fellows. I pitied them from the bottom of my heart.” In version two, almost three years later, new details emerge: Soon the rebels were seen slowly forming for the last time: on they they [sic] came with careless step, their ranks thick with banners. The bugle sounds. Our line shoulders arms—not present, as some of the histories have it; that would have been too much honor. On our side there is not a sound; the silence is as if the dead passed; it is a funeral salute we pay them. They move along our front, face inward towards our line, dress lines, fix bayonets, stack arms, take off their cartridge boxes and place them on the pile, and then reluctantly, painfully, furl their flags, and lay them down, some kneeling and kissing them with tears in their eyes.
Here Chamberlain shows the surrendering Confederates behaving in ways that could arouse the pity to which he confessed in his earlier letter, and here he adds the epic image of saluting a procession of the dead, employing one of his favorite rhetorical techniques, the shift into the present tense. But even with these flourishes, he still does not
take credit for issuing an order for the salute, and he already shows an awareness of potential confusion about the historical record of this moment, as we see in the careful distinction he draws between “shoulder arms” and “present arms,” which would have been “too much honor.” This last qualification suggests that Chamberlain knew very well what he was about; it implies a shrewd, canny recognition of limits not at all characteristic of some misty-eyed romantic sentimentally sloshing his way into unqualified reconciliation with a defeated enemy. With version three, delivered in 1893 and published in 1894, things become more complicated: We could not content ourselves with simply standing in line and witnessing this crowning scene. So instructions were sent to the several commanders that at the given signal, as the head of each division of the surrendering column approached their right, they should in succession bring their men to “attention” and arms to the “carry,” then resuming the “ordered arms” and the “parade rest.” … As they came opposite our right our bugle sounds the signal and repeated along our line. Each organization comes to “attention,” and thereupon takes up successively the “carry.”
Chamberlain now includes the thought process behind the order to salute, and a first-person pronoun emerges to authorize that process. But the pronoun is a plural one, so it remains unclear who really was thinking this way: Chamberlain only? Or Chamberlain and his fellow officers, including those in the First and Second Brigades, which Chamberlain mentions in this version and places across the Richmond-Lynchburg Stage Road from the Third Brigade? Or did Bartlett, the division commander, say something to Chamberlain? Chamberlain’s use of the passive voice (“So instructions were
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“THE MOMENTOUS MEANING OF THIS OCCASION IMPRESSED ME DEEPLY. I RESOLVED TO MARK IT BY SOME TOKEN OF RECOGNITION, WHICH COULD BE NO OTHER THAN A SALUTE OF ARMS.” JOSHUA LAWRENCE CHAMBERLAIN IN HIS MEMOIR, THE PASSING OF THE ARMIES (1915)
ing of the Armies.7 In version five, published in 1903, Chamberlain consolidates his role as originator of the salute, although he retains the passive voice when it comes to his order’s transmission: This was the last scene of such momentous history that I was impelled to render some token of recognition; some honor also to manhood so high. Instructions had been given; and when the head of each division column comes opposite our group, our bugle sounds the signal and instantly our whole line from right to left, regiment by regiment in succession, gives the soldier’s salutation—from “order arms” to the old “carry”—the marching salute.
This version adds nothing new to the representation of the salute itself, but it does show Chamberlain straining toward greater eloquence, with phrases such as “last scene of such momentous history” and “impelled to render some token of recognition” now strutting where the perfectly serviceable prose of version four formerly did its work. Finally, with version six, published posthumously in 1915 in The Passing of the Armies, we get not only a new inconsistency—as Chamberlain now places the First Brigade behind the Third on the south side of the Richmond-Lynchburg Stage Road, facing only the Second Brigade on the north side—but we also see Chamberlain’s thoughts on General Bartlett’s possible resentment that Chamberlain had charge of the First Division for the parade, resentment that Chamberlain soothes with the statement “but he was a manly and soldierly man and made no comment.” More important, though, is another new wrinkle: “The momentous meaning of this occasion
Artist Ken Riley’s 1965 painting reflects the modern-day understanding of the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia on April 12, 1865: Union soldiers standing at attention as a sign of respect as Rebel soldiers surrender their arms.
impressed me deeply. I resolved to mark it by some token of recognition, which could be no other than a salute of arms. Well aware of the responsibility assumed, and of the criticisms that would follow, as the sequel proved, nothing of that kind could move me in the least.” Here Chamberlain scales back some of the straining eloquence of version five, but adds a feisty self-righteousness absent from the other versions. Coming at the end of his life, this defiant declaration sounds like the proud hindsight of an old warrior who has tenaciously survived his share of wounds from both bullets and words. But this bit of valedictory bravado seems to be little more than shadow-boxing, since there is no contemporary evidence that anyone criticized Chamberlain’s salute at the
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WEST POINT MUSEUM, UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY
sent”) further obscures the top link in the chain of command. Finally, a new detail emerges from the manual of arms. Instead of coming to shoulder arms and standing in that position silently throughout the surrender, Chamberlain’s soldiers cycled through the sequence from “order arms,” with musket butts resting on the ground (as they do in “parade rest”), to “carry” (which results in the same position as “shoulder arms”) and back, repeating the sequence as each Confederate division passes. With version four, first published in The Boston Journal in April 1901 and subsequently circulated throughout the South by Southern Historical Society Papers (1904), Chamberlain clearly positions himself as the originator of the salute to Gordon’s troops: “At such a time and under such conditions I thought it eminently fitting to show some token of our feeling, and I therefore instructed my subordinate officers to come to the position of ‘salute’ in the manual of arms as each body of the Confederates passed before us.” Here the first-person singular “I” relieves the earlier “we,” and the active voice displaces the passive. Meanwhile, the ambiguous term “salute” blurs the earlier specificity of “shoulder arms,” “carry arms,” and “order arms.” Most important about this fourth version is the role it played in southern imaginations of the surrender, first in Gordon’s Reminiscences of the Civil War (1903) and subsequently in Douglas Southall Freeman’s Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command (1944), which splices this fourth version with the sixth and final one in Chamberlain’s The Passing of the Armies, noting, without censure, that the account in Southern Historical Society Papers gives “some details” not in The Pass-
WEST POINT MUSEUM, UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY
time, although Marvel has led subsequent attacks on Chamberlain’s narratives of it. Some people have questioned his facts, but no accounts that I can find condemn whatever gesture he made. In fact, many do not even mention it. Among the principals who published memoirs, Grant said nothing, James Longstreet said nothing, and Edward Porter Alexander said nothing. Likewise, The New York Times and Chicago Tribune said nothing, nor did any of the major papers that began publishing in the North or the West during the later decades of the 19th century, as Chamberlain released his various versions: not The Washington Post, not The Wall Street Journal, not the Los Angeles Times. In other words, Chamberlain’s narrative of the salute shows him, just before his death, spoiling for a
fight he never would get. Although it is pure conjecture to say so, his readiness to take on anybody who condemned the salute may have been a strategy to distract potential critics from some of the inconsistencies among his many narratives. If so, the tactic did not work on Marvel, who near the end of A Place Called Appomattox explains the changes by making the northern general out to be some kind of historiographic ambulance-chaser, promoting himself in the narrative as each of his superior or peer officers died. But Marvel’s evidence is questionable here, since in fact Alfred Pearson, who had command of the Third Brigade until Chamberlain’s transfer and command of the First Brigade as a consequence of that transfer, was still alive in 1901 when the fourth ver-
sion first appeared and represented Chamberlain as the originator of the salute. (Pearson died in 1903.) Whatever one’s skepticism about Chamberlain’s veracity, the most famous and frequently quoted phrase to come out of his Appomattox stories is “honor answering honor,” which describes Gordon’s response to Chamberlain’s salute, not that salute itself. At this point we can return profitably to Grant’s statement about wars, stories, and belief, and then consider three recent references to Chamberlain’s salute. The first appears in a 1996 book by Gordon R. Sullivan and Michael R. Harper, Hope Is Not a Method: What Business Leaders Can Learn from America’s Army. Here is the moral Sullivan and Harper draw from Chamberlain’s story: } CONT. ON P. 76
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Compelling first-hand accounts of the war, lavishly illustrated with rare period photographs
THE EARLY MORNING OF WAR
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Connecticut Civil War Soldiers Tell Their Stories Dione Longley and Buck Zaidel “Heroes for All Time weaves compelling personal accounts and evocative original images with crisp narrative to create a riveting, unforgettable account of Nutmeggers’ Civil War experience from battlefield to home front.” —Diana Ross McCain 340 pages, 342 color illus., 9 x 10” $55.00 cloth / ebook available
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Robert D. Jenkins, Sr.
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To the Gates of Atlanta covers the period from the Confederate victory at Kennesaw Mountain, 27 June 1864, leading up to the Battle of Peach Tree Creek, 20 July 1864, and the first of four major battles for Atlanta that culminated in the Battle of Jonesboro, 31 August and 1 September 1864. This is the greatly researched prequel to The Battle of Peach Tree Creek: Hood’s First Sortie, 20 July 1864.
IN THE LAND OF THE LIVING
WARTIME LETTERS BY CONFEDERATES FROM THE CHATTAHOOCHEE VALLEY OF ALABAMA AND GEORGIA Ray Mathis†, editor with Douglas Clare Purcell
9780881465242 hardback
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Published jointly with the Historic Chattahoochee Commission, this unique book—originally published in a limited edition in 1982 and out of print for many years—is the most comprehensive collection of Civil War letters written by residents of Southeastern Alabama and Southwestern Georgia to be published. The letters contained here provide us with a unique opportunity to understand the effects of the Civil War from an intensely personal perspective and in a disarmingly honest manner.
The Life of Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas, 1834–1907 Carolyn Newton Curry An intimate story of privilege, devastating loss, and ultimate personal triumph. A Southern woman’s life before, during, and after the Civil War.
THE WORLD’S LARGEST PRISON The Story of Camp Lawton John K. Derden
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The first full-length history of the infamous Confederate stockade located near Millen, Georgia. Only operational for six weeks, it was evacuated in the face of Federal troops under Gen. Sherman.
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BOOKS & AUTHORS
ing . A ng,
the ted nal ace
Closing the Book on the Civil War THE BEST READS ON THE CONFLICT’S LAST CHAPTER IN KEEPING WITH this issue’s theme, we asked four historians—each of them experts on an aspect of the conflict’s final phase—to recommend books for readers interested in learning more about this critical, and often overlooked, period of the Civil War. 67 THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SPRING 2015
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B&A The Petersburg Campaign BY A. WILSON GREENE
The Petersburg Campaign, once considered almost bereft of good military studies, has experienced a renaissance during the last 10 or 15 years. A number of outstanding monographs have recently become available, but the following are, in my view, the best of a good and growing lot.
In The Trenches at Petersburg: Field Fortifications and Confederate Defeat BY EARL J. HESS UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS, 2009
The only unfortunate aspect of this book—the best overall look at the entire Petersburg Campaign—is its title. Hess’ study is much more than an analysis of earthworks and the role they played at Petersburg. If you wish to roll up your sleeves and learn about Petersburg, this is the place to start.
Richmond Redeemed: The Siege at Petersburg BY RICHARD J. SOMMERS DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, 1981; REVISED EDITION, SAVAS BEATIE, 2014
Dick Sommers’ classic tome is one of the finest campaign studies written on any aspect of the Civil War. Unparalleled research and penetrating analysis make this the definitive study of Ulysses S. Grant’s Fifth Offensive in September and October 1864. Readers daunted by the length of this work will be surprised to know that it is the much-abridged version of Dr. Sommers’ dissertation at Rice University,
the text of which is available online.
Richmond Must Fall: The Richmond-Petersburg Campaign, October 1864 BY HAMPTON NEWSOME KENT STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2013
Newsome does for Grant’s Sixth Offensive in October what Sommers did for the preceding campaign. Deep research in primary sources and clear, lucid writing make reading this book a pleasure. Before Newsome tackled his subject, readers knew precious little about this aspect of the Petersburg saga.
The Confederate Alamo: Bloodbath at Petersburg’s Fort Gregg on April 2, 1865 BY JOHN J. FOX III ANGLE VALLEY PRESS, 2010
With a more narrow scope than Sommers or Newsome, Fox takes a balanced look at one of the most tragic engagements of the entire war. A handful of Confederates defended two small forts—Gregg and Whitworth—on the afternoon of the campaign’s final day. Their heroics bought sufficient time for Robert E. Lee to shuffle reinforcements into Petersburg’s last line of defense and preserve his opportunity to evacuate the city that night. Fox makes his story live and breathe.
tion), but it is the most persuasively provocative Petersburg monograph in recent memory. Levin explains the unprecedented mayhem that characterized the combat on July 30, 1864, as akin to a slave rebellion in the minds of the Confederate defenders. It is also one of the best “memory studies” in that now large and often redundant field. A. WILSON GREENE IS THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AT PAMPLIN HISTORICAL PARK AND THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE CIVIL WAR SOLDIER IN PETERSBURG, VIRGINIA.
Appomattox BY JOAN WAUGH
Appomattox is best known as the place where history ended, and where it began anew. The terrible Civil War was over, but the surrender’s magnanimous promise of easy reunion was aborted in the ensuing bloody and bitter struggle over Reconstruction. Appomattox has reigned in American historical memory as a powerful symbol of the broken country’s path to renewal as one peaceful nation. In different ways, the five books I have selected shed light on the complicated history—before and after the surrender—behind the myth.
Appomattox: Victory, Defeat, and Freedom at the End of the Civil War
Remembering the Battle of the Crater: War as Murder
BY ELIZABETH R. VARON
BY KEVIN M. LEVIN
This finely grained depiction of the Appomattox surrender offers a riveting narrative of the sharp divergences among three major groups over the meaning of United States victory.
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY, 2012
This is not the best study of the Battle of the Crater (Earl Hess’ Into the Crater: The Mine Attack at Petersburg holds that distinc-
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2014
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“April 1865 pushes the reader to adopt the longer view in judging Appomattox’s success or failure, inviting an appreciation for the strong and powerful country that managed to emerge from the ashes of Civil War.” JOAN WAUGH ON JAY WINIK’S APRIL 1865: THE MONTH THAT SAVED AMERICA
Varon follows up the surrender by patiently unraveling the evolving positions of unionists, ex-Confederates, and African Americans most affected by the war’s vexing and unfulfilled second act, Reconstruction. Appomattox is an indispensable resource for those who seek to go beyond the stereotype of one of the most iconic moments in American history.
Lee’s Last Retreat: The Flight to Appomattox BY WILLIAM MARVEL UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS, 2002
Marvel has published two worthy titles on Appomattox, but this is my favorite. Marvel delights in puncturing Civil War myths and upending settled assumptions, and both traits are deployed vigorously in the meticulously researched Lee’s Last Retreat. The campaign that preceded the surrender highlighted the flawed leadership of Robert E. Lee, whose exhausted, dispirited, and dwindling army fell to Union forces. Marvel’s unsentimental depiction of the bitterly expressed sentiments on both sides throws some cold water on the mythic reconciliation scenes so lavishly described in numerous subsequent memoirs, including those published by former generals Joshua Chamberlain and John Gordon.
April 1865: The Month That Saved America BY JAY WINIK
protagonists as well as many of the lesser known but still fascinating characters. Ulysses S. Grant’s generous surrender terms at Appomattox are placed within the context of Richmond’s fall, Lee’s ignominious retreat, President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, and, closing out the tumultuous month, the signing of William T. Sherman’s peace terms with Joseph E. Johnston on April 26. Did April’s events predict disaster or eventual triumph for the chances of reunion? Winik’s optimistic answer seems to slight the fate of African Americans in the South. Nevertheless, April 1865 pushes the reader to adopt the longer view in judging Appomattox’s success or failure, inviting an appreciation for the strong and powerful country that managed to emerge from the ashes of the Civil War.
HARPERCOLLINS, 2001
A Stillness at Appomattox
A book bearing such an audacious title begs to be read, and Winik’s lively description is studded with profiles of major
BY BRUCE CATTON DOUBLEDAY AND CO., 1953
Winner of both the National Book Award and the Pulit-
zer Prize, this third volume of Catton’s classic study of the Army of the Potomac holds up beautifully after 62 years. Catton’s prose flows effortlessly as the tale of the final dramatic campaign of the war unfolds in gripping detail. From a story of raw power, superhuman stamina, heartbreaking miscues, and downright venality emerges a profound understanding of the stakes and the sacrifice both sides made for their “cause.” The final chapter, “Endless Road Ahead,” predicts the sunny jubilation of impending victory interwoven with a gloomy foreboding of impending defeat and concludes with Grant walking up the steps of Appomattox Court House for his fateful meeting with Lee.
Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation BY CAROLINE E. JANNEY UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS, 2014
Where Catton ends, Janney begins. A captivating depiction of the surrender ceremony at Appomattox and its immediate aftermath sets up a thoughtful exploration of Civil War memory. In Janney’s view, the Appomattox spirit of reconciliation was never very powerful or influential until well into the 20th century. Beneath the outwardly friendly Blue-Gray reunions lay a deep animus between those who fought for the “Union Cause” and those who served the “Lost Cause.” And far from being forgotten, Janney notes, the uniting of Union and emancipation, or black freedom, was celebrated at numerous northern com-
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B&A
“This meticulously researched book thoroughly discredits the myth of ‘black Confederates.’” ELIZABETH R. VARON ON BRUCE LEVINE’S CONFEDERATE EMANCIPATION: SOUTHERN PLANS TO FREE AND ARM SLAVES DURING THE CIVIL WAR
memorations. This is the perfect read for pondering the legacy of Appomattox at the end of the Civil War sesquicentennial. JOAN WAUGH TEACHES THE CIVIL WAR AT UCLA AND IS THE AUTHOR OF U.S. GRANT: AMERICAN HERO, AMERICAN MYTH (UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS, 2009). HER CURRENT WRITING PROJECT IS ON SURRENDER DURING THE CIVIL WAR.
The Demise of Slavery BY ELIZABETH R. VARON
The success of emancipation hinged on Union victory and Confederate defeat. And so here are some noteworthy books—a few in a burgeoning field—that illuminate the transition from slavery to freedom during the war’s last phase.
Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household BY THAVOLIA GLYMPH CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2008
This is a vivid account of how the end of the war transformed plantation households. Challenging scholars who see the Civil War as a time when slaveholding women assumed new authority, Glymph shows that plantation mistresses had wielded power, often violently, all along—and she reveals the depth of white women’s bitterness at Confederate defeat and the loss of slavery. While most scholarship on Civil War slave resistance has focused on the exodus of fugitive slaves from plantations to Union lines, Glymph brings to light the day-to-day resistance of slaves who stayed behind on plantations, refusing to submit to their mistresses’ demands. She
describes how black women saw white women as the face of slaveholder authority and, when the war ended, resisted white women’s efforts to salvage the prewar order and turn them into all-purpose servants. Instead, freedwomen organized to establish independent households, free of white surveillance and demands.
Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment BY MICHAEL VORENBERG CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2001
This is the definitive study of the events dramatized in Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film Lincoln. Vorenberg demonstrates that the Thirteenth Amendment—passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, to close the loopholes in President Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation—not only sealed the demise of slavery but also signaled a new willingness on the part of Americans to use constitutional amendments to effect social change. Vorenberg expertly traces the origins of the amendment and the political jockeying that led to its passage, as Lincoln and congressional Republicans maneuvered to bring key Democrats into their column. And he notes that the passage of the amendment did not resolve heated debates about whether emancipation should herald black citizenship and racial equality.
Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves During the Civil War BY BRUCE LEVINE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2006
This meticulously researched
book thoroughly discredits the myth of “black Confederates.” Levine provides a close analysis of the 11th-hour Confederate debate over freeing and arming slaves. He reveals that proponents of the black-troops policy saw it as a way to stave off military defeat and thus salvage what was left of slavery; they argued that after the war, blacks who had borne arms for the Confederacy could be consigned to a perpetual serfdom. Levine’s book sheds light on the war’s origins, as opponents of the black-troops policy countered that the purpose of secession was to defend the sanctity of their property rights. The policy that this debate finally yielded up in March 1865—a meek appeal from the Confederate government inviting masters to volunteer their slaves, and slaves to volunteer themselves—yielded results that were statistically negligible, as masters refused to hand their slaves over and slaves refused to volunteer.
Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and its Legacy BY ERIC FONER LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1982
This classic from the early 1980s anticipated the recent wave of scholarship that puts the demise of slavery into an international framework. Reminding us that emancipation was a prolonged global process, not a singular moment, Foner shows how antislavery struggles in Haiti and the British Caribbean influenced American emancipation, and how events here shaped the course of slavery’s demise, after the American
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Abraham Civil War, in Cuba and Brazil. In so doing, Foner broadens the case for the significance of the critical year of 1865.
Marten’s book skillfully captures the pension battles and the sobering, day-to-day realities of living with a Civil War injury.
ELIZABETH R. VARON IS LANGBOURNE M. WILLIAMS PROFESSOR OF AMERICAN HISTORY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA. HER MOST RECENT BOOK, APPOMATTOX: VICTORY, DEFEAT, AND FREEDOM AT THE END OF THE CIVIL WAR, WON THE 2014 LIBRARY OF VIRGINIA LITERARY AWARD FOR NONFICTION AND THE 2014 LANEY PRIZE OF THE AUSTIN CIVIL WAR ROUND TABLE.
Across The Bloody Chasm: The Culture of Commemoration Among Civil War Veterans
Civil War Veterans BY BRIAN MATTHEW JORDAN
For decades, historians presumed that the men who endured the war settled easily into the peace. Billy Yank and Johnny Reb allegedly put aside the issues that had divided them, refusing to imperil sectional reconciliation. Time mended their horrific wounds and erased bitter memories. This is no longer the scholarly orthodoxy. Civil War veterans have instead become the focus of a rich new vein of scholarship. Collectively, these books demonstrate how the war continued to exact physical, psychological, and political costs decades after 1865.
Featuring a Fine Selection of
s Artifacts
LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2014
For generations, historians assumed that Civil War veterans “hibernated” in the decades after Appomattox— and then embraced their former enemies in the twilight of their lives. Harris makes the compelling argument that while many Civil War veterans promoted “reconciliation,” they nonetheless “preserved the memories of their sectional ideals, their trials, and their respective causes” at the same time. Through analysis of their regimental histories, reunion speeches, and war sketches, Harris renders a truly nuanced portrait of veterans who continued to articulate competing visions of the war—the “Won Cause” and the “Lost Cause”—throughout the late 19th century.
s Autographs s Books s Letters s Campaign Memorabilia s Ephemera s Paintings s Photographs s Prints s Sculpture
Glorious Contentment: The Grand Army of the Republic, 1865-1900 BY STUART McCONNELL
BY JAMES MARTEN
This deeply researched social and cultural history is the finest modern study of the largest northern veterans’ organization. McConnell’s rigorous analysis of initiation rituals, post rooms, campfire meetings, and war memories challenges the orthodox view of the Grand Army of the Republic as a shill for the Republican Party. He argues that the organization instead functioned much like other Gilded Age fraternal orders, providing both solace and sanctuary for veterans beguiled by the freewheeling bounty of the late 19th century. } CONT. ON P. 72
This exceptional piece of historical detective work is the first booklength biography of Corporal James Tanner, who lost both legs in the ranks of the 87th New York Infantry at Second Manassas. Despite his own disability, “Legless Jim” became a fixture on the “old soldiers’ circuit” and an outspoken advocate for veterans’ rights. Tanner’s munificence as commissioner of the Pension Bureau during President Benjamin Harrison’s administration earned him the ire of the nation.
Specialists in Historical Americana since 1938
BY M. KEITH HARRIS
America’s Corporal: James Tanner in War and Peace UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA PRESS, 2014
Lincoln Book Shop, Inc.
Relating to Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War and U.S. Presidents
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS, 1993
Abraham Lincoln Book Shop, Inc. 357 W. Chicago Ave. Chicago, IL 60654 (312) 944-3085 ALincolnBookShop.com
If it’s on our Shelves…
It’s History!
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BRIAN MATTHEW JORDAN IS THE AUTHOR MOST RECENTLY OF MARCHING HOME: UNION VETERANS AND THEIR UNENDING CIVIL WAR (LIVERIGHT, 2015).
After the Glory: The Struggles of Black Civil War Veterans BY DONALD R. SHAFFER UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KANSAS, 2004
The Won Cause: Black and White Comradeship in the Grand Army of the Republic BY BARBARA A. GANNON UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS, 2011
These painstakingly researched histories document the postwar lives of the black men who fought in blue. Making expert use of long-neglected pension files, Shaffer argues that the men who stormed Battery Wagner and fought at places including Olustee and New Market Heights were able to achieve a partial victory in the peace. A sense of manhood earned on the battlefield—together with their entitlement to federal pension benefits—left black veterans better equipped than civilian counterparts to navigate the netherworld of Jim Crow. Gannon’s prize-winning study reminds us that black men became important voices in the Grand Army of the Republic—upending the venerable notion that Billy Yank deserted his black comrades and their cause after the war.
Last of the Blue and Gray: Old Men, Stolen Glory, and the Mystery that Outlived the Civil War BY RICHARD A. SERRANO SMITHSONIAN BOOKS, 2013
In life, Civil War veterans tended to be magnets for controversy. They made demands on state and federal budgets and confounded civilians who wanted to “let bygones be bygones.” And, as Serrano explains, they were even controversial in death. Serrano’s book relates the tale of those wrinkled centenarians who claimed—and only sometimes truthfully—to be among the war’s last survivors in the 1950s. This fast-paced narrative, peppered with colorful characters including Walter Williams and Albert Woolson, documents both the twilight of veteranhood and the place of the Civil
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years ago he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and he knows there will come a day, hopefully not soon, when that drive will become too much. On a recent morning, Calkins was on his commute when The Doors’ song “Riders on the Storm” came on, triggering a favorite memory from his early days at Appomattox. “I was sitting in the village one night,” he recalls. “The park was pretty much closed, and a tremendous thunderstorm was coming my way. I had a radio on, a little plug-in radio with no antenna, and every time there was lightning in the distance, the radio would crackle along with the song. And I knew at that time, I said, ‘This is the place I need to be.’” JENNY JOHNSTON IS A FREELANCE WRITER AND EDITOR BASED IN SAN FRANCISCO.
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parking area. The protection of the Breakthrough landscape will be a lasting legacy of the sesquicentennial commemoration, and a fitting tribute to all American soldiers who continue to serve and protect our country. For more information on the Trust and our efforts, visit civilwar.org. Learn more about the Battle of Petersburg at civilwar.org/petersburg.
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‘Give me back my children! Give me back my children!’” Following the auction cart and
slave coffle came an unambiguously comic feature of the tableau: a hearse carrying a coffin labeled “Slavery,” which elicited laughter among the audience. A decade earlier, Boston abolitionists protesting the rendition of runaway slave Anthony Burns had suspended a large black coffin, with the word “Liberty” painted in white, along the route by which Burns was marched back into bondage under armed guard. Now, the tables were turned, and the funeral procession was for slavery, not liberty. Scrawled in chalk on the hearse were the inscriptions “Slavery Is Dead,” “Who Owns Him,” “No One,” and “Sumter Dug His Grave on the 13th of April, 1861.” A long train of female mourners dressed in black followed behind the coffin, their smiling faces the only tell of their true sentiments. “Charleston never before witnessed such a spectacle,” concluded the New York Times correspondent of the day’s events. The festivities fueled the frantic chatter of upcountry slaveholders. Charleston expats traded stories— some true, others false or exaggerated—of interracial balls, plots of black insurrection, and the theft and wanton destruction of private property. In Columbia, Emma LeConte seethed in her diary that Charleston recently “had a most absurd procession described in glowing colors and celebrating the Death of Slavery.” It was a world turned upside down. “Abolitionists delivered addresses on the superiority of the black race over white—Adam and Eve were black, so were Cain and Abel, but when the former slew his brother, his great fright turned him white!” Despite their anger and unease, most whites back in Charleston scrambled to demonstrate their allegiance to the United States by taking the loyalty oath. Surrounded by black soldiers and their former slaves, the few Confederate sympathizers who remained were too chastened to protest any of the celebrations that spring. The New York Times reported that the “slavery is dead” parade “was by no means pleasant to the old residents, but they had sense enough to keep their thoughts to themselves.”
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PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT HERE
War in American memory on the eve of the centennial.
Northerners marveled at the new climate in Charleston. “I have given utterance to my most radical sentiments to try their temper, and have not even succeeded in making any one threaten me by word, look or gesture,” insisted Charles C. Coffin in late February. “William Lloyd Garrison or Wendell Phillips or Henry Ward Beecher can speak their minds in the open air … without fear of molestation.” A couple of months later, Garrison and Beecher would do just that. On April 14, 1865, exactly four years after Major Robert Anderson had surrendered Fort Sumter to Confederate general P.G.T. Beauregard, the two northern abolitionists joined thousands of former slaves and Union soldiers, including Anderson himself, at a ceremony to commemorate the return of the American flag to the small island fort. “No more war! No more accursed secession! No more slavery, that spawned them both!” Beecher intoned to an uproar of applause. These festivals continued throughout the year. Black Charlestonians inaugurated Decoration Day (May 1), observed the Fourth of July, and celebrated the anniversaries of West
Indian emancipation (August 1) and Lincoln’s final Emancipation Proclamation (January 1). It was all a fitting reminder of how much had changed since 1861: The capital of slavery had become the citadel of freedom. As one abolitionist newspaper, The National Anti-Slavery Standard, had observed in March, “Historical justice and poetical justice sometimes coincide in the annals of mankind, but rarely so exactly as in the example of the city of Charleston.” BLAIN ROBERTS, THE AUTHOR OF THE BOOK PAGEANTS, PARLORS, AND PRETTY WOMEN: RACE AND BEAUTY IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY SOUTH, AND ETHAN J. KYTLE, THE AUTHOR OF THE BOOK ROMANTIC REFORMERS AND THE ANTISLAVERY STRUGGLE IN THE CIVIL WAR ERA, ARE ASSOCIATE PROFESSORS OF HISTORY AT CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, FRESNO. THEY ARE CURRENTLY COAUTHORING A BOOK ABOUT THE MEMORY OF SLAVERY IN CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA.
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kind of life ... much freer [than] civil life which I almost dread to come back to.” Most men would not have gone quite that far. Most knew they
did not want to be soldiers anymore, but they were not quite sure how to be anything else. “I [can] not tell how it would feel to undress [to] go to Bed,” one soldier wrote home. “I suppose I shall have to sleep outside on the ground for the first two or three nights.” It is surprising how many of them felt the same way. “I think I shall bivouac for the future in your flower yard,” Confederate Edwin Fay wrote his wife. Joshua Callaway of the 28th Alabama told his wife that after the war he would just lie down on a “pallet in the parlor ... and have the children play around and on me.” Even Robert E. Lee spent his first night back in Richmond with his entourage in a tent, despite the availability of a bed indoors. They were all of them “outdoor men” now, institutionalized by the army for the army’s uses, and they hardly knew what it would be like to live a life indoors, let alone to return to their prewar professions and responsibilities.6 “My head is fuddled yet from all I seen and felt,” confessed Corporal Patrick Sloan of the 90th Illinois. “I don’t believe I am the same being,” wrote Confederate Walter } CONT. ON P. 74
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Includes bus and walking tour of South Mountain, Antietam, and Gettysburg along with sessions by Lance Herdegen and others. Based in Chambersburg, PA.
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Lee to his mother, “at least I don’t think as I used to and things don’t seem as they did.” Upon returning home from the war, Dugat Williams of the 5th Texas found himself “broke in every sense of the word, broke pecuniarily, flat broke, and if I was not broke physically and mentally, I was wonderfully bent.”7 Bent too were the homes and families they returned to. Having lost one of her brothers, Mississippian Kate Foster had also lost her ability to feel. “My heart became flint,” she said simply. “I am almost afraid to love.” Georgian Abbie Brooks confessed similarly that the war’s disasters had “petrified” her. “I care very little for anybody or anything,” she noted, and “am neither sorry or glad, but passive.” It did not help such women that the soldiers were returning. It only drew attention to those who were not. “How I have dreaded their first days at home!” Sarah Morgan said of the soldiers’ return. “Since the boys died, I have constantly thought of what pain it would bring to see their comrades return without them—to see families reunited, and know that ours never could be again, save in heaven.”8 Even where families were intact, hometowns themselves had changed. Returning to Columbia, South Carolina, after the war, Malvina Waring and her comrades walked slowly down Main Street marveling at the “desolation and ruin on all sides.” Turning onto a oncefamiliar side street, they lost their bearings altogether in the piles of brick and ash. “We said little to each other,” Waring recalled. “We only drew long, deep, sighing breaths of pain.” “Changed are we,” she concluded, “and changed our home.”9 But for a lucky few, homecoming seemed like something out of a picture book. On June 3, 1865, David Lane and a few friends from the 17th Michigan set out on a train from Washington, D.C., to Detroit, where they had
mustered in three years before. At the Detroit station, they exchanged photographs of each other and Lane jumped aboard the midnight train to Jackson. “We are no longer an organized body,” he said of himself and his chums. “Each individual is at liberty to consult his own interests or inclinations.” The next morning, Lane leaped from the train while it was still moving and landed on roads as fond as they were familiar: I lost no time in friendly greetings by the way, but leaped from the cars before they fairly stopped; passed swiftly up the track to the first street crossing; up “Moody Hill” and along the “Gravel;” turned to the left; on down the “Marvin Hill” to the old “Clinton House;” again to the left, past “Markham’s” and “Shipman’s,” to the little school house on the corner. I am now one mile from home. What a beautiful world it is, this bright June morning; and how familiar the sights and sounds that greet my senses.... I see the cottage now, set in a grove I planted many years ago, when first my mate and I did build our humble nest. I wrote them yesterday I would break my fast with them this morning. I wonder, did they get it? Yes, they are on the lookout. In the east door, that commands this angle of the road, stands my darling, waving her handkerchief, her dear face transfigured with joy and happiness. In the south door is my eldest daughter, clapping her hands in unaffected delight. Another daughter and my son have climbed the road fence, and are giving vent to their joy in childish boisterousness, while “pet,” the little lass, is running down the street, fast as her little feet can carry her, to leap into her father’s arms and bid him Welcome Home.10 STEPHEN BERRY IS AMANDA AND GREG GREGORY PROFESSOR OF THE CIVIL WAR ERA AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA. HE IS THE AUTHOR OR EDITOR OF FOUR BOOKS ON AMERICA IN THE CIVIL WAR ERA, INCLUDING HOUSE OF ABRAHAM: LINCOLN AND THE TODDS, A FAMILY DIVIDED BY WAR (HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT, 2007). AUTHOR’S NOTE: I’D LIKE TO THANK MY READERS’ AND EDITOR’S KIND INDULGENCE AT THIS, THE FINAL INSTALLMENT OF “CASUALTIES OF WAR.” IT HAS BEEN AN ATTEMPT TO CONSTELLATE THE MANY FACES OF DEATH DURING THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, AND TO BUILD AN ACCUMULATING SENSE THAT WAR IS ALWAYS ABOUT THE KIND OF DAMAGE THAT PILES UP, RIPPLES OUT, AND CLAIMS EVEN THOSE WHO ARE DISTANT FROM IT IN SPACE AND TIME. I WISH TO EXTEND PARTICULAR THANKS NOT ONLY TO MASTER EDITOR TERRY JOHNSTON AND COPY EDITOR JENNIFER STURAK, BUT ALSO TO AMY MURRELL TAYLOR, JUDITH GIESBERG, AND MATTHEW HULBERT, WHO MORE ABLY THAN MYSELF FILLED THIS COLUMN WHEN MY MUSE HAD FLED.
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spelled out lenient policies for all Confederates, leadership and elite included. Indeed, white northerners and southerners would ultimately reconcile by trying to erase black freedom from the history of the Civil War. The Confederacy had died, but the “spirit which gave birth to Booth” would remain alive and well far beyond Reconstruction. MARTHA HODES IS PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AT NEW YORK UNIVERSITY. SHE IS THE AUTHOR OF MOURNING LINCOLN (YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2015), THE SEA CAPTAIN’S WIFE: A TRUE STORY OF LOVE, RACE, AND WAR IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (W.W. NORTON, 2006), AND WHITE WOMEN, BLACK MEN: ILLICIT SEX IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY SOUTH (YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1997).
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established no-fly zone. This was perhaps much better than Saddam Hussein and his government deserved, but it was in keeping with the American tradition of benevolence in victory. Those with a darker view will point to the use of the atomic bomb in World War II or the treatment of Native American tribes during the Indian Wars as examples of American conquest. Some might argue that the means contradict the ends. To a degree, such points are valid, but the moments of victory in these wars (although there was no single moment for the Indian Wars) saw more charity displayed than ruthlessness. There is little doubt that Grant’s choice at Appomattox—to heal rather than to hurt—defined the way that America had ended, and would continue to end, its wars when given the opportunity. As such, our nation’s most destructive war concluded with perhaps one of its finest moments. CLAY MOUNTCASTLE, A LIEUTENANT COLONEL IN THE U.S. ARMY, CURRENTLY SERVES AS THE PROFESSOR OF MILITARY SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON IN SEATTLE. HE HOLDS A PH.D. IN HISTORY FROM DUKE UNIVERSITY AND IS THE
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AUTHOR OF PUNITIVE WAR: CONFEDERATE GUERRILLAS AND UNION REPRISALS (UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KANSAS, 2009). AUTHOR’S NOTE: IT HAS BEEN MY DISTINCT PLEASURE TO PROVIDE THE BATTLEFIELD ECHOES COLUMN FOR THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR SINCE ITS FIRST EDITION. YOU WILL NOT FIND A FINER MAGAZINE, EDITORIAL STAFF, OR READERS ANYWHERE.
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do not desire to see you, on the terms that many return home on, a large portion of the Texans from Hoods Command are deserting or leaving without furlough, bringing ruin on themselves and family for generations unborn.” “O! This cruel war!!!”
Poetry and song have made references to “this cruel war” seem like a cliché, but to southerners in the spring of 1865, the phrase was serious, even profound. “O! This cruel war!!! Privation and suffering has become the common lot of the great mass of the families through this whole, once happy land particularly among poorer classes,” wrote Alabama refugee George J. McCleskey to his sister on February 1. A mother wrote to her “precious Son” in the army on April 2: “Oh! that your life and your limbs may be sacred in His sight who ruleth & ordereth all things. How glad I would have been if you could have come to me before entering. I could at least have given you a Mother’s blessing. It is very hard for us to be without a home. Shall we never, never have one again? Will this cruel war never be over? Sometimes when thinking of it my heart sinks within me May God have mercy
upon us.” Mattie J. in Botetourt Springs, Virginia, confessed to her “Absent Friend” on April 1 that her letter “leaves me well in body but not in mind I am in so much trouble about you poor soldiers and Brother has to leave Monday morning for the army again oh the trouble that I see about my Brouther no tongue can tell oh that this cruel war was over what would I give[.]” “It is now more than a year since I saw you and a great many changes have taken place since that time,” J.M. Shumate’s correspondent in Lauderdale Springs, Mississippi, wrote him on April 29. “So many of our friends are killed and wounded, I am beginning to think this cruel war will never end.” A man who signed his name “Wis” wrote to his niece acknowledging her letter of March 9 and waxed poetic on the mood of the country. “God grant we may once more see the bright & smiling face of peace sweet peace. Some thinks there is more actual pleasure in the pursuit of an object than the posesion of it. But this [one?] instance in my oppinion kills it all. Were we all in pursuit of an honorable peace swimming in a flood of blood grabbing with the horrors & distruction of a devastating & cruel war. Surrounded by thousands of mourning widdows, & crippled brethren, all telling the horrible ordeal through which we & our country have for the last four years passed, Besides prayer after prayer, & Suplication after Supplication, have been Sent to the throne of our God, to be delivered from this pursuit, Do you think when that peace is once established } CONT. ON P. 76
Stories of
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of these letters looked forward to an existence without war. WAR CORRESPONDENCE CONTINUED FROM P. 75
Journey Into Darkness, a story in four parts
“I enjoyed the excitement and suspense and couldn’t put it down.” Isaac Sassa,14 “It’s a moving, large scale, and splendid story.” Lloyd Alexander, author Blake’s Story – “This was a horrific war ... but to see it through a child's eyes was a very different experience and a very impressive one.” Iris A. Coffin, reviewer
SURRENDER STORIES CONTINUED FROM P. 65
“Chamberlain and Gordon, two of America’s citizen soldiers, understood the most basic truth: leadership always comes back to people.”8 The second mention appears in To Forgive Is Human: How to Put Your Past in the Past (1997) by Michael E. McCullough, Steven J. Sandage, and Everett L. Worthington Jr. After summarizing Chamberlain’s versions of the surrender, the authors conclude this way: “War seeks justice, but Chamberlain understood that his enemies were human and deserved more than justice. They deserved respect. In offering a salute to the humiliated Confederates, Chamberlain commu-
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The regiments and their histories in these stories are real, the events did happen. www.upfromcorinth.com /book.html
in our land, there will be so much trouble & misery? no! sweet will be our repose, & calm our thoughts, a smile will be wreathed upon our lips, for every one & joy inexpressible will dwell eternal in our bosoms.” Jesse Miller of the 6th South Carolina Infantry, stationed in the Richmond defenses, meditated on his own future in a March 13 letter to his brother. “I am in hopes that this cruel war may soon come to a close and that we may have piece to reign over our land once more i pray that my life may be spared to survive this war and return home and be of some service to Mother and the family i think that i will change my way of living and live a more secluded life than i have done heare to fore.” For four years, the “cruel war” had taken life, interrupted life, and, for many, become life. Even if they dreaded the prospect of Confederate defeat, virtually all of the writers
JOSHUA SHAFFER IS AN INTERPRETER/GUIDE AT THE WHITE HOUSE OF THE CONFEDERACY AND IS ALSO COMPLETING HIS MASTER’S DEGREE AT VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY. JOHN M. COSKI IS HISTORIAN AT THE MUSEUM OF THE CONFEDERACY (NOW PART OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM) IN RICHMOND.
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Historically Researched Civil War Fiction for Young Readers
tend that skeptics about the details of Chamberlain’s salute will be persuaded, or should be persuaded, to accept everything he has written as credulously as the non-specialist writers who have made use of his story. But it is to say that the gesture he made toward Gordon and the Confederate Second Corps on the raw morning of April 12, 1865, whatever it may have been, amounts to only one aspect of his achievement and legacy. That legacy continues today in widely diverging contexts of American economic, social, and
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS & ARCHIVES, BOWDOIN COLLEGE LIBRARY
A postwar image of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
nicated that although justice would be served mercy would also be extended. That is forgiveness.”9 In the third and final example, Robert J. Wicks conjures up Chamberlain in the second volume of his Handbook of Spirituality for Ministers, published in 2000. After summarizing Chamberlain’s salute and quoting “honor answering honor,” Wicks poses large questions: “Is God in all this? Can God be apart from it all? Our theology today tells us that the world and God are inseparable. God is the depth level of all human experience.”10 These books—on topics as broad as industrial management, strategic planning, forgiveness, interpersonal relations, clergy, religious life, and pastoral theology—cover the spectrum from the commercial and pragmatic, through the social and emotional, and on to the spiritual and religious. Chamberlain’s relevance to any point on that spectrum—or more precisely, the widespread belief in his relevance—testifies persuasively to the power of the story he developed over 50 years. What is particularly remarkable about these varied uses of Chamberlain is that they appear in the writing and work of people who are not Civil War specialists but who still recognize a paradigm or a parable for complicated and difficult moments in contemporary civilian life. To make this claim is not to pre-
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spiritual life, each with its own set of attitudes and concerns, which show little or no need to resolve, or even awareness of, the uncertainties of that raw April morning. STEPHEN CUSHMAN IS ROBERT C. TAYLOR PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA. THIS ARTICLE IS ADAPTED FROM HIS MOST RECENT BOOK, BELLIGERENT MUSE: FIVE NORTHERN WRITERS AND HOW THEY SHAPED OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE CIVIL WAR (UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS, 2014), WITH PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER. MR. CUSHMAN’S OTHER BOOKS INCLUDE THE RED LIST: A POEM (LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2014) AND BLOODY PROMENADE: REFLECTIONS ON A CIVIL WAR BATTLE (UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA PRESS, 1999).
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10 David Lane, A Soldier’s Diary: The Story of a Volunteer, 1862-1865 (1905), 269-270.
Marino, CA (hereafter HL). 5
John Peter Nelson to George W. Colles, April 20, 1865, Colles Family Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library (hereafter NYPL); Eliza F. Andrews, May 5, 1865, entry, The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 1864–1865 (New York, 1908), 216; Lucy Muse (Walton) Fletcher diary, April 19, 1865, Fletcher Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University, Durham, NC (hereafter Duke); François Joinville to Gustavus V. Fox, April 28, 1865, Gustavus-Fox Papers, Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, NewYork Historical Society (hereafter NYHS); Francis R. Rives to unknown, April 15, 1865, William Cabell Rives Papers, LC; unknown writer, April 15, 1865, #193, Thomas B. Harned Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, LC.
6
David F. Cushman to Caroline D. Cushman, April 15, 1865, #250, octavo vol. 1, Civil War Collection, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA; Helen Lansing Grinnell diary, April 15, 1865, NYPL; R.B. Milliken to “Friend Byron,” April 16, 1865, Lincoln Room Miscellaneous Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (hereafter HLH); Edgar B. Jones to Theresa H. Perkins, April 22, 1865, Montgomery Family Papers, LC; Clara Allen to Walter Allen, April 16, 1865, WestonAllen Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA; John W. Haley, The Rebel Yell and the Yankee Hurrah: The Civil War Journal of a Maine Volunteer, ed. Ruth L. Silliker (Camden, ME, 1985), 268; Charles J. Harris to parents, [late April] 1865, Harris Letters, Duke; John Worthington to Mary Worthington, April 15, 1865, Autograph File, HLH; David Homer Bates diary, April 16, 1865, Bates Papers, LC.
7
George White diary, April 17, 18, 1865, Historical and Special Collections, Harvard Law School Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Elbert Johnson diary (labeled “E.M. Johnson’s Reminiscences of the War”), April 15, 1865, Johnson Papers, Manuscripts and Special Collections, New York State Library, Albany; W.H.C., “Our California Letter,” April 21, 1865, Christian Recorder, published May 20, 1865; Mary Mellish to George H. Mellish, April 19, 1865, Mellish Papers, HL.
8
Edgar Dinsmore to Carrie Drayton, May 29, 1865, Dinsmore Papers, Duke; William Benjamin Gould diary, June 16, 1865, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston (hereafter MHS); Sarah G. Putnam diary, April 27, 1865, MHS; Samuel May almanac, April 12, 1865, May Papers, MHS.
9
Eliza F. Andrews, The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 1864–1865 (New York, 1908), 238 (May 10, 1865, entry).
BATTLEFIELD ECHOES (Pages 26–27, 74)
SOURCES & CITATIONS FROM THIS ISSUE’S ARTICLES
CASUALTIES OF WAR (Pages 24–25, 73–74) 1
Frances Andrews Tenney, ed., War Diary, 18611865 (Cleveland, OH, 1914), 195.
2
Charles Lynch, The Civil War Diary, 1862-1865, of Charles H. Lynch, 18th Conn. Vol’s (Hartford, CT, 1915), 163; Susan J. Matt, Homesickness: An American History (New York, 2011), 5, 75-101.
3
My Dear Nellie: The Civil Letters of William L. Nugent to Eleanor Smith Nugent (Jackson, 1977), 100; David Blight, ed., When This Cruel War is Over: The Civil War Letters of Charles Harvey Brewster (Amherst, 2009), 148.
4
John Gallatin Paxton, ed., Memoirs and Memorials: Elisha Franklin Paxton, BrigadierGeneral, C.S.A. (New York, 1905), 98; M.A. DeWolfe Howe, ed., Home Letters of General Sherman (New York, 1909), 344.
5
Coralou Peel Lassen, ed., Dear Sarah: Letters Home from a Soldier of the Iron Brigade (Bloomington, 1999), 11; Bell Irvin Wiley, ed., This Infernal War: The Confederate Letters of Sgt. Edwin H. Fay (Austin, 1958), 156-157.
6
Blight, ed., When This Cruel War is Over, 317; Lassen, ed., Dear Sarah, 35; Wiley, ed., This Infernal War, 51; Judith Lee Hallock, ed., The Civil War Letters of Joshua K. Callaway (Athens, 1997), 75.
7
Brian Matthew Jordan, Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War (New York, 2014), 17; Laura Elizabeth Battle, ed., Forget-Me-Nots of the Civil War: A Romance, Reminiscences, and Original Letters of Two Confederate Soldiers (St. Louis, 1909), 67; William Dugat Williams Letters, Co. F., 5th Texas, History Research Center, Hill College, Hillsboro, Texas. (I am indebted to Susannah Ural for the quotation.)
8
Both Abbie Brooks and Kate Stone are quoted in Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering (New York, 2008), 145; Sarah Fowler Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl’s Diary: Sarah Morgan Dawson (Boston, 1913), 439.
9
Malvina S. Waring, “A Confederate Girl’s Diary,” in A.T. Smythe, et al. South Carolina Women in the Confederacy (1903), 287.
1
Edward Porter Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander, ed. by Gary W. Gallagher (Chapel Hill, 1989), 532.
2
Jay Winik, April 1865: The Month that Saved America (New York, 2001), 182.
3
Joseph T. Glatthaar, “The Civil War: A New Definition of Victory,” in Between War and Peace: How American Ends its Wars, ed. Matthew Moten (New York, 2011), 116.
4
Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs (New York, 1982), 556-556, 559.
“SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS” (Pages 28–37, 74)
1
2
3
4
“$100,000 reward! The murderer of our late beloved President, Abraham Lincoln, is still at large,” 1865, Rare Book and Special Collections, Library of Congress (hereafter LC). Anonymous diary [Rodney Dorman], April 23, 1865, “Memoranda of Events that transpired at Jacksonville, Florida, & in its vicinity; with some remarks & comments thereon,” Orloff M. Dorman Papers, Manuscript Division, LC; John Q. Anderson, ed., Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone, 1861–1868 (1955; reprint, Baton Rouge, 1995), 333, 341; E.R. Harmanson to “Prince,” April 23, 1865, Albert A. Batchelor Papers, ser. B, part 5, reel 1, Louisiana State University Libraries, Records of Southern Plantations from Emancipation to the Great Migration, University Publications of America; William Calder diary, April 24, 1865, Calder Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Testimony of Charlotte Johnson via Nancy Diges, in case of Maria Edwards, Robert Harden, and Fanny Cook, #15674, April 22, 1865, Union Provost Marshals’ File of Papers Relating to Two or More Civilians, M416, roll 56, Record Group 109, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. (hereafter NARA); John Largest, file MM2047, David J. Parsons, file OO940, both in Court-Martial Case Files, entry 15, Records of the Office of the Judge Advocate General (Army), Record Group 153, NARA. John B. Burrud to Ocena Burrud, April 19, 1865, Burrud Papers, Huntington Library, San
10 Hatsell P. Lyons to “Mary,” May 15, 1865, Lyons Papers, G.W. Blunt White Library, Mystic Seaport, Mystic, CT; Francis Cabot Lowell to brother, April 17, 1865, Francis Cabot Lowell Papers, MHS; Henry Ward Beecher, Oration at the Raising of “The Old Flag” at Sumter; and Sermon on the Death of Abraham Lincoln (Manchester, 1865), 24; Sarah Browne to Albert Browne, April 20, 1865, Browne Family Papers, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Hallock Armstrong to
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Mary Armstrong, April 8, 1865, in Letters from a Pennsylvania Chaplain at the Siege of Petersburg: 1865 (n.p., 1961), 25, 22; “Funeral Oration by Bishop Simpson,” in B.F. Morris, Memorial Record of the Nation’s Tribute to Abraham Lincoln (Washington, D.C, 1865), 236. 11
“Emancipation of the White Man,” New York Anglo-African, July 23, 1865; “The Blacks and the Ballot,” Christian Recorder, May 27, 1865; Frederick Douglass, “Our Martyred President: An Address Delivered in Rochester, New York, on 15 April 1865,” in The Frederick Douglass Papers, ed. John W. Blassingame and John R. McKivigan (New Haven, 1979–92), ser. 1, 4:78–79.
12 Carl Schurz to wife, April 18, 1865, in Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz 6 vols., ed. Frederic Bancroft (New York, 1913), 1: 253; Edward J. Bartlett to Martha Bartlett, April 16, 1865, Bartlett Letters, MHS; Newton Perkins to mother, April 16, 1865, Montgomery Family Papers, LC; Mary Butler Reeves to Caroline Butler Laing, April 16, 1865, Butler-Laing Family Papers, NYHS. 13 Chester dispatch, April 17, 1865, in Thomas Morris Chester: Black Civil War Correspondent—His Dispatches from the Virginia Front, ed. R. J. M. Blackett (Baton Rouge, 1989), 311; Sarah G. Putnam diary, April 27, 1865, MHS; William Kauffman Scarborough, ed., The Diary of Edmund Ruffin: A Dream Shattered, June, 1863–June, 1865 (Baton Rouge, 1989), 859 (April 21, 1865, entry).
Henry W. Halleck, April 15, 1865, box 28, Lieber Papers, HL; Proceedings of the Union League of Philadelphia Regarding the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (Philadelphia, 1865), 11, 12. 18 “General Hancock’s Appeal to the Colored People,” April 24, 1865, in Morris, Memorial Record, 117; John Glenn diary, April 29, 1865, Glenn Papers, H. Furlong Baldwin Library, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore. 19 Odell Shepard, ed., The Journals of Bronson Alcott (Boston, 1938), 372 (April 19, 1865, entry); Frederick Douglass, “Our Martyred President,” 78.
WAR CORRESPONDENCE (Pages 50–57, 75–76)
1
Helen to Dear Brother, April 15, 1865, “Soldier Letters” [sic] Collection, Eleanor S. Brockenbrough Library, Confederate Memorial Literary Society. All of the letters quoted and cited in this article come from this collection. Subsequent citations and quotations will include all pertinent information in the text and, therefore, will not be endnoted.
2
The background of this collection has been a mystery for decades. The provenance given here owes to a piece of paper found in a file related to the massive collection that the Southern Historical Society (founded in 1869) deposited with the Museum of the Confederacy in the 1890s and donated formally in 1912: “Mr. John F. Driggs, M.C. from Michigan 1862-8, collected these letters from bags of mail from the South delivered in Washington, D.C. The mail was ransacked, afterwards destroyed. These letters were preserved because of personal interest in them.” Although there is no “smoking gun” linking this document to the collection of letters, the circumstantial evidence is very strong.
3
All but 15 of the 315 letters were dated between November 1864 and May 1865. Two-thirds of them were written by women. A disproportionate number (at least 55) were written from somewhere in Mississippi; 46 came from Virginia, 27 from Georgia, 21 each from Louisiana and South Carolina, 17 from Alabama, and 10 from Texas; only a few were written from North Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee, or Florida. The collection includes two letters each from only a half-dozen correspondents.
14 Francis Lieber to Henry W. Halleck, April 16, 1865, box 28, Lieber Papers, HL; J. and J.H. St. John to Bela T. St. John, April 24, 1865, St. John Papers, LC; Ellis Hughes diary, April 25, 1865, Hughes-Gray Family Papers, Duke. 15 Abraham Lincoln, “Last Public Address,” April 11, 1865, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, ed., 8 vols. (New Brunswick, NJ, 1953–55), 8:399–405; William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life (New York, 1900), 2:289 (“Frederick Stone, counsel for Harold [sic] after Booth’s death, is authority for the statement”); John Wilkes Booth, “To Whom It May Concern,” November 1864, in “Right or Wrong, God Judge Me”: The Writings of John Wilkes Booth, ed. John Rhodehamel and Louise Taper (Urbana, 1997), 125. 16 Frederick A. Sawyer, “Account of what I saw of the Death of Mr. Lincoln written April 15, 1865,” in “An Eyewitness Account of Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination,” ed. Ronald D. Rietveld, Civil War History 22 (1976): 67; Joseph A. Prime, “Sermon Preached in the Liberty Street Presbyterian Church (Colored),” in A Tribute of Respect by the Citizens of Troy to the Memory of Abraham Lincoln (Troy, NY, 1865), 155; Francis Lieber to Henry W. Halleck, April 15, 1865, box 28, Lieber Papers, HL; Edward Morris to “My Dear Friend,” April 20, 1865, Incoming Correspondence, box I: A179, reel 97, American Colonization Society Papers, LC; Charles Francis Adams diary, April 26, 1865, Adams Family Papers, MHS. 17 Geo. Booth and Chas. Cuthbert, “Proceedings of the Colored Citizens of Sacramento,” San Francisco Elevator, April 28, 1865; “Assassination of President Lincoln,” New Orleans Black Republican, April 22, 1865; Francis Lieber to
SURRENDER STORIES (Pages 58–65, 76–77) 1
http://www.nps.gov/resources/person.
htm?id=62; Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant (New York, 1999; originally published 1885 and 1886 in two volumes), 601. 2
Alice Rains Trulock, In the Hands of Providence: Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the American Civil War (Chapel Hill, 1992), 502 n.18; William Marvel, A Place Called Appomattox (Chapel Hill, 2000), 258.
3
John J. Pullen, Joshua Chamberlain: A Hero’s Life and Legacy (Mechanicsburg, PA, 1999), 7.
4
Marvel, A Place Called Appomattox, 260; William Marvel, Lee’s Last Retreat: The Flight to Appomattox (Chapel Hill, 2002), 193.
5
Edward G. Longacre, Joshua Chamberlain: The Soldier and Man (Conshohocken, PA, 1999), 246-247.
6
Joshua L. Chamberlain to “My dear Sae” [Sarah (Chamberlain) Farrington], Appomattox Court House, April 13, 1865, George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections and Archives, Bowdoin College, Joshua L. Chamberlain Collection, M27; “The Surrender of Gen. Lee,” Kennebec Journal (Augusta, Maine), January 3, 1868; “The Third Brigade at Appomattox,” Proceedings of the Third Brigade Association, First Division, Fifth Army Corps, Army of the Potomac held at the time of the National Encampment, Grand Army of the Republic, Indianapolis, Indiana, 6 September 1893 (New York, 1894), 134-142; “The Last Salute of the Army of Northern Virginia,” Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. 32 (1904): 355-363; “Appomattox: Paper Read before the New York Commandery, Loyal Legion of the United States, October Seventh, 1903” (S.l.: s.n., 1-21), a pamphlet in the George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections and Archives, Bowdoin College; The Passing of the Armies: An Account of the Final Campaign of the Army of the Potomac, Based Upon Personal Reminiscences of the Fifth Army Corps (New York, 1915; reprint edition, New York, 1993).
7
Douglass Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command (New York, 1944), 745 n. 77.
8
Gordon R. Sullivan and Michael V. Harper, Hope Is Not a Method: What Business Leaders Can Learn from America’s Army (New York, 1996), 240-241.
9
Michael E. McCullough, Steven J. Sandage, and Everett L. Worthington Jr., To Forgive Is Human: How to Put Your Past in the Past (Downers Grove, IL, 1997), 36-37.
10 Robert J. Wicks, Handbook of Spirituality for Ministers, vol 2 (New York, 2000), 172-173.
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Tools of War Transformed “[ A ] ND THEY SHALL beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall
not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” This familiar biblical reference from the Book of Isaiah, invoked at the end of armed conflicts throughout history, seemed most apt at the close of the American Civil War, when so many of the country’s civilians and ex-soldiers yearned to put the four years of bloody struggle behind them and forge a lasting peace. Symbolic of this important sentiment were the efforts of an unknown craftsman who made the set of chessmen pictured here from bullets picked up on the fields at Appomattox, Virginia. In so doing, he transformed the conflict’s most deadly projectile into implements for an intellectual, not martial, pursuit.
THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM, RICHMOND, VA, MUSEUM OF THE CONFEDERACY COLLECTION
PA R T I N G SHOT
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THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MUSEUM, RICHMOND, VA, MUSEUM OF THE CONFEDERACY COLLECTION
ACWM.ORG
WHITE HOUSE OF THE CONFEDERACY 1201 E. Clay Street, Richmond VA
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MUSEUM OF THE CONFEDERACY- APPOMATTOX Rte. 24 at Rte. 460, Appomattox VA
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