September surprise?

Posted on October 31, 2018 by SUMPTER
NY Times September 23, 1868

NY Times September 23, 1868

Democratic politician John Dix was a Union general during the Civil War and in 1868 was serving as American Minister to France. In early September he sent a letter to friend in New York City. Mr. Dix wanted to deny a report in an American newspaper that he supported Democrat presidential nominee Horatio Seymour. In its September 23, 1868 issue The New-York Times published the letter with an introduction explaining that “It was not written for publication, but the gentleman to whom it was addressed has consented to give it to the public.” John Dix said Mr. Seymour was a nice guy, “But you know as well I that he has not a single qualification for the successful execution of the high official trust to which he been nominated, and he is especially deficient in that firmness of purpose which in critical emergencies is the only safeguard against public disorder and calamity.” On the other hand, the election of Ulysses S. Grant would ensure the country’s safety in dangerous times. “On his decision of character, good sense, moderation and disinterested patriotism, I believe the South will have a far better hope of regaining the position in the Union to which it is entitled” than under a Seymour administration.

A couple weeks later a pro-republican newspaper responded to Democrat charges that the letter was just sour grapes – that John Dix was miffed that he was not nominated by the Democrats.

Gen. John A. Dix (Hartford, Conn. : Taylor & Huntington, No. 2 State St., [between 1861 and 1865]; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2011661066/)

letter from Paris

From Harper’s Weekly October 10, 1868:

GENERAL DIX FOR GENERAL GRANT.

The letter of General DIX strongly advocating the election of General GRANT, and stating his reasons for opposing Mr. SEYMOUR, is not only very good in itself, but it is very significant. The SEYMOUR papers sneer at it as the snarl of a disappointed man. But that does not touch the point. Granting it to be so, for the argument, what then? Why is he disappointed? Certainly General DIX’s career as a Democrat is much more conspicuous and brilliant than Mr. SEYMOUR’s. He has been Senator in Congress, secretary of the Treasury, and Minister to France. He is a gentleman of capacity, of scholarly accomplishment, of very great experience in public affairs, of unspotted reputation, and of national distinction. It is said that he disappointed because he was not nominated by the Democrats for the Presidency. Very well, being a much more eminent and able man than Mr. Seymour, and universally known to his party, why was he not nominated?

Leaders of the Democratic Party (1868; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2008661705/)

Dix is out of place

For precisely the same reason that he was not confirmed as Minister to France twenty years ago, when his party controlled the Senate and the policy of the Government. Because he was not a tool of the aristocratic slave power; because he had been opposed to the annexation of Texas for the benefit of that power; and because he had said that slavery should be confined to its domain by a cordon of free States, and forced, like the scorpion girt with fire, to sting itself to death. General Dix, although a Democrat, had shown some emotion of humanity, some sense of justice, some regard for national honor. But from the moment that this appeared his ” Democracy” was not sound. “Sound Democracy” was unswerving subservience to the slave-holding aristocracy. FRANKLIN PIERCE’S was the true article; so was HORATIO SEYMOUR’S. They sneezed when Senator BUTLER of South Carolina took snuff.

Seymour at home (1868; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2005686646/)

tergiversation at Convention

When the slaveholders rose in rebellion against the Government, “sound Democracy” was shown in the letter of PIERCE to JEFFERSON DAVIS and the speeches of SEYMOUR, denouncing the war and discrediting the Government. But General DIX surrendered all hope preferment by the Democratic party when he wrote, “If any man haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot!” What was WADE HAMPTON doing but that very thing? What was HORATIO SEYMOUR doing but encouraging him? And when both were baffled, and WADE HAMPTON returned to the command of the Democratic party, of course he rewards SEYMOUR, and General DIX has as much chance of the nomination as CHARLES SUMNER.

If, then, General DIX be a disappointed man, it is because he has not understood his party. What right had he to suppose, from any thing the Democratic party has ever said or done, that hostility to slavery and distinguished service for the Government against the rebellion were claims upon its favor? Who were the managers of that party during the war? Who was the President of its National Convention in 1864,and what did that Convention declare ? Who controlled its late Convention? VALLANDIGHAM directed its financial policy, and WADE HAMPTON its policy of reconstruction. It nominated HORATIO SEYMOUR, who declared that the success of the Government would be as revolutionary as that of the rebellion, and FRANK BLAIR, who called aloud for the President to overthrow by force the governments of the Southern States. “Sound Democracy” served slavery alive, and it serves it dead. It passes black codes, organizes the Ku-Klux Klan, and threatens laborers with starvation who do not support it. It is the enemy of equal rights, of free government, and of progress. Its chosen representatives are SEYMOUR, VALLANDIGHAM, HAMPTON, and HOWELL COBB. Is General DIX disappointed that these persons did not nominate him, or that his party insists upon being chained to a corpse?

[Major General George B. McClellan in uniform] / Cartes de visite by Silsbee, Case & Co., photographic artists ; Case & Getchell from Dec. 3, 1862. (LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2016649613/)

“tragi-comical”

The next week Harper’s editorialized about another Democrat ex-Union general, who had recently returned from Europe. George B. McClellan’s take on the presidential election was basically “no comment.” Mr. McClellan might have been mostly disappointing as a general, but that wasn’t really his fault. His big mistake was accepting the Democratic nomination for president in 1864:

GENERAL M’CLELLAN has returned from Europe, and there has been a torch-light procession in his honor, which was probably not all that its projectors had anticipated. The General did not declare himself. He did not even name SEYMOUR nor hurrah for Blair. He merely said “Thank you, gentlemen,” bowed, and retired. As usual, he was in a false position. There is something touching [?] in the continued determination of some interested persons to make the General a great or representative man. There was, indeed, a time when the need of a great military leader was felt to be so urgent that, will he nill he, the country insisted the General was he. He was the little NAPOLEON. General SCOTT had expressed complimentary opinions, and the fight in West Virginia showed that the great man was coming. The General went to Philadelphia and received a sword, and said, modestly, that the war was to be short, sharp, and decisive. And all the while those wretched Quaker guns were making mouths at him from Manassas. It was no fault of the General’s that the country was deceived. But it is sad to think of the Chickahominy swamps, and it is even ludicrous, now that the facts are becoming known, to recur to that history. If, after tha[t] terrible seven days, and the unopposed withdrawal of Lee from Antietam, General M’CLELLAN had quietly disappeared from public view, there would have been an irresistibly tragi-comical, but not a very hostile feeling in regard to him, and the final verdict would have been that we were ourselves most to blame in insisting that any man was great merely because we wanted a great man.

littlemachw10-24-1868 https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn")

cock fightless (Harper’s Weekly October 24, 1868

The serious error of General M’CLELLAN was accepting the candidacy of the party that demanded the triumph of this rebellion. He then deliberately became the representative of the Copperhead spirit of the country. It was the result of conviction or of sheer weakness. …

NY Times October 31, 1868

NY Times October 31, 1868

Other Union generals did favor the Democratic ticket. According to a report in the October 31, 1868 issue of The New-York Times the night before a rally of “Blue Democrats” was held at Tammany Hall. The report said the meeting of “true War Democrats, “those who believed the war a failure until the final triumph came,” was fairly well attended, but some of the generals “advertised” to be there, including W.S. Hancock and W.S. Smith didn’t show up. Someone read a letter from George McClellan explaining he couldn’t return to New York but was thankful for the invitation and wished the meeting and the Democratic cause all the best. It appears that the main speaker was General Frank P. Blair, Jr. – the Democrat candidate for Vice-President.

Our generals in the field / Crow, Thomas & Eno, Lith. 37 Park Row. Enlarge (Lithographs--1860-1870. )

Dix and McClellan side by side … way back then

Gen. John A. Dix (Hartford, Conn. : Taylor & Huntington, No. 2 State St., [between 1861 and 1865] ; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2011661066/)

back of Dix stereograph (above)

[Gen. U.S. Grant campaign button for 1868 presidential election] (1868; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2011661490/)

Dix’s preference

Harper’s had a lot of nice things to say about John A. Dix in its editorial. I would just like to add that he apparently had one heck of a vocabulary, too. In his letter from Paris he was especially irritated about the Democratic candidate’s stance on how the federal government should repay its war debt. According to Mr. Dix, before the Democratic convention Horatio Seymour publicly supported payment in specie. But in his speech accepting the nomination Mr. Seymour changed his tune and said the government should use paper currency. Dix wrote, “I know nothing so humiliating in the history of American politics as this tergiversation
witcheshw10-31-1868p704 ("https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn"

brewmasters (Harper’s Weekly October 31, 1868)

Posted in 150 Years Ago, 150 Years Ago This Month, Aftermath, Reconstruction, The election of 1868 | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

rigging vigorously

Posted on October 25, 2018 by SUMPTER
rigging10-10-1868p649 (https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn)

Harper’s Weekly October 10, 1868

150 years ago this month three New York City newspapers published reports of alleged voter fraud. It seems that the October 10, 1868 issue of Harper’s Weekly is saying that the legal process of naturalization was being corrupted by men already citizens who applied for naturalization by providing false addresses.

The October 25, 1868 issue of The New-York Times reported on the first day of proceedings in a United States Circuit Court in the matter of Benjamin B. Rosenberg, who was charged with fraudulently supplying naturalization certificates for a fee. Apparently federal Marshal Murray conducted a sting operation. Witnesses testified that the defendant charged two dollars per certificate; Mr. Rosenberg told a witness he didn’t make any profit on the transactions because he had to divide the $2 “equally between the sham principal and his bogus witness;” testimony indicated that Mr. Rosenberg offered volume discounts – only $1.50 per certificate for orders greater than one hundred; witnesses suggested the the defendant would only supply the papers to Democrat operatives.

Our boss (Tobacco label showing Boss Tweed(?) seated, three-quarter length portrait, facing left;November 27, 1869; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/96515961/)

never “a fair or honest election in the City of New York” on his watch

In an article about stealing elections City Journal said that an 1868 issue of The Nation “reported that Tammany Hall had set up a “naturalization mill,” instantly certifying folks right off the boat as citizens—and Tammany voters.” Tammany Hall was the Democratic political machine in New York City. The City Journal article goes on to say that
in 1877 testimony Tammany’s Boss Tweed was asked if the 1868 election was fair. He said that he couldn’t remember the particulars but that “I don’t think there was ever a fair or honest election in the City of New York.”

HathiTrust provides the 1868 issues of The Nation. When I searched for “naturalization mill” I didn’t see anything (so far) about Democrats actually waiting right on the docks to provide an expressway to citizenship for new immigrants, but many didn’t have to wait five years to be naturalized. From page 341 in the October 29, 1868 issue:

The naturalization mill has finished its work for this election, having ground out 35,000 voters in this city alone. Of these, 10,000 are perhaps rightly admitted, 10,000 have passed through the machine without having been here five years, and the other 15,000 have never, at any rate, been near the court-room; indeed, from 5,000 to 7,000 of these latter are non-existent.

From page 361 in the November 5, 1868 issue (right after the November 3rd election):

Boss_Tweed,_Nast (Harper's Weekly October 7, 1871; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boss_Tweed,_Nast.jpg)

a leading manufacturer

No election in the country was ever attended by so much fraud as the one we have just gone through. In this State, of course, the natural home of chicane and boundless rascality, the fattening-place of the corruptest of all American politicians, every variety of cheating has been practised. The naturalization mill we spoke of last week is probably the most effective of all the means of defrauding honest citizens of the control of their political affairs. Men in thousands were made citizens who have no more right to a certificate and a vote than if they were still on their native side of the Atlantic. False names in thousands were put on the registration lists, and on the strength of them repeaters went from precinct to precinct voting early and often. In Brooklyn, in open defiance of law, the officials whose duty it was to count the vote deliberately announced their intention of performing their functions in secret with closed doors. This in order to make the majority as large as might be needed. Such a proceeding, of course, makes the perpetrators of it liable to punishment on conviction, but unfortunately it does not vitiate the poll— and conviction these gentry do not greatly fear. In order that it might be learned just how large a majority it was that would probably be needed, the notorious Supervisor Tweed and his associates sent out a day or two before the election to every county in the State a circular to this effect: The recipient was to make arrangements with a shrewd and reliable Democrat in each city and in most of the towns, whose business it should be to transmit in the early part of the evening an approximate estimate of the relative vote of the two parties. “There was, of course an important object to be gained.” The object was, of course, that the Hoffman ring might in turn tell their henchmen in this county and Kings how many ballots to add to the number really cast, fraudulently or honestly. …

According to the Wikipedia article about New York City Mayor John T. Hoffman, “Connections to the Tweed Ring ruined his political career, in spite of the absence of evidence to show personal involvement in corrupt activities.”
The Harper’s Weekly exposé and cartoon from 1868 can be found at the Internet Archive. I got the Boss Tweed tobacco label from 1868 at the Library of Congress. You can see the Thomas Nast cartoon about Boss Tweed from the October 7, 1871 issue of Harper’s Weekly at Wikipedia.
naturalizedvoterhw10-10-1868 p647 (https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn)

early and often

Posted in 150 Years Ago This Month, Aftermath, Postbellum Politics, Postbellum Society, Reconstruction, The election of 1868 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sedgwick statue dedicated

Posted on October 21, 2018 by SUMPTER

According to Harper’s Weekly, 150 years ago today a statue of Union General John Sedgwick was dedicated at West Point. At least as of 2008 the monument was still standing.

Sedgwick Statue a hw10-24-1868

Harper’s Weekly October 24, 1868

Sedgwick Statue b hw10-24-1868

Harper’s Weekly October 24, 1868

2008 Sedgwick_Statue West Point (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sedgwick_Statue.JPG)

aging greenfully

Gen._John_Sedgwick_(cropped)-_NARA_-_528582 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sedgwick#/media/File:Gen._John_Sedgwick_(cropped)-_NARA_-_528582.jpg)

“Uncle John”

________________________

John Sedgwick was killed at Spotsylvania on May 9, 1864. As the general was trying to encourage his men who were under fire from Confederate sharpshooters, his next to last words were: “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.” He got shot under his eye moments later and died.

Related to the “you never know” theme is the experience of the New York 33rd Infantry, a two year regiment which served in the Sixth Corps from May 1862 and was scheduled to muster out around the end of May 1863. The regiment took relatively few casualties until early May 1863 with less than a month left for the two year soldiers. During the Chancellorsville Campaign the 33rd suffered heavy losses during the battles of Second of Fredericksburg and Salem Church. John Sedwick had become the Sixth Corps’ commander by then.

In the aftermath of the American Civil War Harper’s Weekly has also been showing pictures of monuments dedicated to all the soldiers of particular localities.
The paper’s October 24, 1868 issue published the information about the Sedgwick monument. Read all about at the Internet Archive. I got the portrait and Ahodges7’s December 2008 photo of the statue at West Point from Wikipedia. The 33rd’s table of casualties can be found at the New York State Military Museum.
33rd casualties (http://dmna.ny.gov/historic/reghist/civil/infantry/33rdInf/33rdInfTable.htm)

New York 33rd Infantry casualties

October 22, 2018: I just found out that Harper’s also covered the actual unveiling on October 21, 1868:

Sedgwick statue hw11-7-1868p717

Harper’s Weekly November 7, 1868 page 717

Posted in 150 Years Ago This Week, Aftermath, Monuments and Statues, Postbellum Society | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

tsunami?

Posted on October 17, 2018 by SUMPTER

On October 13, 1868 voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana elected Republicans in state races by substantial margins. The Democrats were reportedly in such deep distress that they considered replacing Horatio Seymour as their nominee for the U.S. Presidency, possibly with Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase. In its October 14, 1868 issue The New-York Times didn’t try to hide its preferences as it declared “Victory!” Even 150 years ago Pennsylvania was considered a swing state: “The great battle has been fought and the victory won. Pennsylvania, the State to which both Republicans and Democrats have been anxiously looking, and for which both have vigorously contended, has gone Republican by a decisive majority.”

New York Times October 14, 1868

New York Times
October 14, 1868

New York Times October 15, 1868

New York Times
October 15, 1868

New York Times October 15, 1868

New York Times
October 15, 1868

Harper's Weekly October 17, 1868 p672

Horatio hopeless?

The cartoon was published in the October 17, 1868 issue of Harper’s Weekly on page 672 at the Internet Archive.
Posted in 150 Years Ago This Week, Aftermath, Postbellum Politics, Reconstruction, The election of 1868 | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

circular logic

Posted on October 12, 2018 by SUMPTER
EARLY ITALIAN ENGRAVING OF A SAILING SHIP ((In the British Museum) (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35461/35461-h/35461-h.htm#chapXLIX page 300)

EARLY ITALIAN ENGRAVING OF A SAILING SHIP
(In the British Museum)

Apparently in 1492 most educated Europeans knew that the earth was spherical. The Atlantic Ocean was beginning to be explored; the technology of the mariner’s compass made it easier to figure out which way you were going, and “a certain Genoese mariner” was inspired by a book to sail west.

From A Short History of the World by H.G. Wells

The publication of Marco Polo’s travels produced a profound effect upon the European imagination. The European literature, and especially the European romance of the fifteenth century, echoes with the names in Marco Polo’s story, with Cathay (North China) and Cambulac (Pekin) and the like.

Two centuries later, among the readers of the Travels of Marco Polo was a certain Genoese mariner, Christopher Columbus, who conceived the brilliant idea of sailing westward round the world to China. In Seville there is a copy of the Travels with marginal notes by Columbus. There were many reasons why the thought of a Genoese should be turned in this direction. Until its capture by the Turks in 1453 Constantinople had been an impartial trading mart between the Western world and the East, and the Genoese had traded there freely. But the “Latin” Venetians, the bitter rivals of the Genoese, had been the allies and helpers of the Turks against the Greeks, and with the coming of the Turks Constantinople turned an unfriendly face upon Genoese trade. The long forgotten discovery that the world was round had gradually resumed its sway over men’s minds. The idea of going westward to China was therefore a fairly obvious one. It was encouraged by two things. The mariner’s compass had now been invented and men were no longer left to the mercy of a fine night and the stars to determine the direction in which they were sailing, and the Normans, Catalonians and Genoese and Portuguese had already pushed out into the Atlantic as far as the Canary Isles, Madeira and the Azores.

Atlantic_Ocean,_Toscanelli,_1474 (By Bartholomew, J. G. - A literary and historical atlas of America, by Bartholomew, J. G. [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8304706; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus#/media/File:Atlantic_Ocean,_Toscanelli,_1474.jpg)

“Toscanelli’s notions of the geography of the Atlantic Ocean (shown superimposed on a modern map), which directly influenced Columbus’s plans.”

Yet Columbus found many difficulties before he could get ships to put his idea to the test. He went from one European Court to another. Finally at Granada, just won from the Moors, he secured the patronage of Ferdinand and Isabella, and was able to set out across the unknown ocean in three small ships. After a voyage of two months and nine days he came to a land which he believed to be India, but which was really a new continent, whose distinct existence the old world had never hitherto suspected. He returned to Spain with gold, cotton, strange beasts and birds, and two wild- eyed painted Indians to be baptized. They were called Indians because, to the end of his days, he believed that this land he had found was India. Only in the course of several years did men begin to realize that the whole new continent of America was added to the world’s resources.

Christopher Columbus (1595; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2003680403/)

put more globe in globalization

The success of Columbus stimulated overseas enterprise enormously. In 1497 the Portuguese sailed round Africa to India, and in 1515 there were Portuguese ships in Java. In 1519 Magellan, a Portuguese sailor in Spanish employment, sailed out of Seville westward with five ships, of which one, the Vittoria, came back up the river to Seville in 1522, the first ship that had ever circumnavigated the world. Thirty-one men were aboard her, survivors of two-hundred-and- eighty who had started. Magellan himself had been killed in the Philippine Isles.

Printed paper books, a new realization of the round world as a thing altogether attainable, a new vision of strange lands, strange animals and plants, strange manners and customs, discoveries overseas and in the skies and in the ways and materials of life burst upon the European mind. The Greek classics, buried and forgotten for so long, were speedily being printed and studied, and were colouring men’s thoughts with the dreams of Plato and the traditions of an age of republican freedom and dignity. The Roman dominion had first brought law and order to Western Europe, and the Latin Church had restored it; but under both Pagan and Catholic Rome curiosity and innovation were subordinate to and restrained by organization. The reign of the Latin mind was now drawing to an end. Between the thirteenth and the sixteenth century the European Aryans, thanks to the stimulating influence of Semite and Mongol and the rediscovery of the Greek classics, broke away from the Latin tradition and rose again to the intellectual and material leadership of mankind.

A bit from 150 years ago. According to Wikipedia’s article about Columbus Day, “San Francisco claims the nation’s [USA] oldest continuously existing celebration with the Italian-American community’s annual Columbus Day Parade, which was established by Nicola Larco in 1868”.
You can read H.G Wells’ book and see the ship at Project Gutenberg. The Columbus excerpt is in the section on “The Intellectual Revival of the Europeans” and is on pages 300-304. The image of Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli’s map laying over a modern map is from Wikipedia. The Library of Congress provides the Columbus image, although the Wikipedia link says that “no authentic contemporary portrait has been found.” The four voyages map is from Filson Young’s Christopher Columbus, Complete at Project Gutenberg
four voyages (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4116/4116-h/4116-h.htm#fourvoyages)

a pond is born

Posted in American History, Technology, World History | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

not in their backyard

Posted on October 11, 2018 by SUMPTER

In its September 22, 1868 issue the The New-York Times published a report of political violence in southeastern Georgia that occurred on September 19th. A couple of Republican politicians traveled to Camilla for a rally. As they neared the town an armed “rebel” warned them to stay away. They didn’t turn back, even after the Sheriff later told them “the people would not allow a Radical to speak in Camilla. They persisted, however, and on reaching the Courthouse, they and their friends were assaulted by a mob.” The two politicians were wounded, and many more Republicans, most of whom were black, were killed or wounded. Most of the blacks were unarmed and “were of course beaten and shot down by the Seymour Democracy, almost without any resistance.”

Harper'sWeekly9-5-1868p568 (https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn)

part of a pattern?

As more information made its way north, the October 10, 1868 issue of Harper’s Weekly didn’t claim to know all the facts but said that the “fair presumption” was against the former rebels:

THE CAMILLA RIOT.

It is not easy to ascertain accurately the facts in any case of violence in the late rebel States. Usually, however, when it is a conflict between rebels and the Union men of any color, the fair presumption is against the former. The Union men, knowing that the feeling of the old master-class is against them, are not likely to provoke disturbance, while the history of their conduct before and during and since the war relieves them, generally, of the suspicion of instigating trouble. Again, there is not a reflecting man in the country who is familiar with the facts, who supposes that if the colored population in the Southern States were treated with fairness it would be troublesome or vindictive. While there is certainly not a man of common manhood who supposes that any class of men will allow itself to be thrust back into a cruel bondage, from which it has just been delivered, without a struggle. If, therefore, we hear of riots and bloodshed arising from the condition of society in the Southern States, we may be very sure that the final cause is the unjust attempt of one part of the population politically and socially to subjugate the other.

A fortnight ago Colonel PIERCE, Republican candidate for Congress in the second district of Georgia, and Captain MURPHY, one of the Republican candidates for Elector, went with a party of political friends to hold a meeting at Camilla. They were met at some distance from the town by the Sheriff and some of the citizens, who requested them to retire, as the people of Camilla wished to hear no Radical speaking. The party declined, and moving on, entered the town, where they were presently attacked. Both PIERCE and MURPHY were wounded, and many of their friends were killed. The Sheriff says that he asked them only to lay aside their weapons. But it does not appear that they were unusually armed, while the attack shows the townspeople to have been fully armed. This request, therefore, was, that a party of unarmed Republicans, many of whom were colored, would take the risk of holding a meeting in a rebel town and among armed rebels. Now it may be the fate of Union men to be summarily shot in Georgia for the crime of holding political meetings. But it is really extravagant to mask them to submit to slaughter without even a form of remonstrance.

Hon. Rufus B. Bullock (between 1860 and 1875; LOC: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017893596/)

Rufus Bullock

The question upon reading this statement is, whether it was probable that the intention of the party was, as the Associated Press dispatch avers, “to overawe” the citizens of Camilla? Had not Colonel PIERCE and Captain MURPHY a right to hold a political meeting any where in their district? If some of their friends were armed, has there ever been a political meeting in exciting times in that part of the country where a large part of those present were not armed? Has the conduct of their opponents been such as to show the Republicans that it is not necessary to defend themselves? Have not WADE HAMPTON and his associates every where invited the Democrats to organize against colored Union men and starve them if they will not support Seymour? Has not the Georgia Legislature expelled the colored members? Are not colored men thrust from the jury box? Are not the black codes the living witnesses of the feeling of their political opponents?

Governor BULLOCK has done what he can to protect loyal men in Georgia, but the Democratic majority left in the Legislature by the expulsion of Union men has thwarted his efforts. These are the fruits of the green tres [sic]. If SEYMOUR and BLAIR should be elected, what a fearful tragedy must not every where follow in the Southern States! If while SEYMOUR is a candidate merely there is such confusion, must not his election produce chaos in that distempored [sic] region? General SCHOFIELD has ordered General MEADE to return and to keep the peace in Georgia. He will investigate the facts of the Camilla riot. But we imagine they are already substantially known and understood. Once more, we say, let all sensible men decide whether the election of SEYMOUR and BLAIR is the road to peace.

The white man's banner . . . Seymour and Blair's campaign song (New Orleans : Published by A.E. Blackmar, 1868.; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2008661704/)

the white man’s friends?

Let us have pease, ha, ha (1868; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2008661707/)

that’s a good one

________________________

According to Today in Georgia History, Philip Joiner, one of the black state legislators expelled from the state assembly earlier in the month, “led several hundred freedmen on a March from Albany to Camilla for a Republican rally.” The events in Camilla kept many black voters home on the 1868 presidential election day and prompted the federal government to resume military rule in Georgia.

HWp6249-26-1868 (at the <a title="Internet Archive" href="https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn">Internet Archive</a>)

countermarch

The New Georgia Encyclopedia provides more details about the event: “As marchers entered the courthouse square in Camilla, whites stationed in various storefronts opened fire, killing about a dozen and wounding possibly thirty others. As marchers returned to Albany, hostile whites assaulted them for several miles.” This article also mentions that the violence suppressed the freedmen’s vote for the 1868 election.

Both Georgia sites mention that after the initial reporting and return to federal military rule, the massacre was somehow covered up or not publicly acknowledged until 1998.

hw10-3-1868p632 (at the <a title="Internet Archive" href="https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn">Internet Archive</a>)

haircut for the freedmen

Both Edward C. Woolley’s 1901 The Reconstruction of Georgia and Paul Laurence Sanford’s 1947 thesis discuss the Georgia legislature’s expulsion of the black representatives in early September but don’t seem to mention the Camilla violence.
In his 1868 report General George Meade does mention Camilla. In August 1868 his Third Military District (Georgia, Alabama, and Florida) was combined with Second (the Carolinas) to create the Department of the South, which General Meade was assigned to command. On pages 11-12 he mentions that after Georgia (among other states) was re-admitted to representation in Congress the military was ordered to cease intervening in civil affairs and only act as a peace-keeping force. “Soon after announcing the [less interventionist] position of the military, the outrage at Camilla, in Georgia, was committed, where as I have stated in a special report, the evidence would seem to show, that the authors of the outrage were civil officers; who, under the guise of enforcing the law and suppressing disorder, had permitted a wanton sacrifice of life and blood. At the same time the report stated that the opposite parties, – for the affair was a political one – had, by their want of judgment, and their insistence on abstract rights in the face of the remonstrances of the law officers, giving these officers the opportunity of acting as they did. …” You can read General Meade’s full account of the Camilla investigation on pages 79-84.
According to the New Georgia Encyclopedia Rufus Bullock was born and educated in the North. In 1860 he moved to Augusta Georgia to manage the Southern Express Company. He opposed secession but “accepted the rank of lieutenant colonel and continued operating the telegraph, railroad, and freight interests for his company and for the Confederate quartermaster’s office.” He participated the the state constitutional convention and defeated ex-Confederate General John B. Gordon for governor in April 1868. As governor he supported greater rights for blacks and opposed white supremacy. When the Democrats took control of the state legislature in the 1870 elections he apparently had a “fair presumption” that he was going to be in trouble and secretly fled to New York. He returned to Georgia in 1876 and lived there until 1903.
The Harper’s Weekly editorial can be found on page 642 at the Internet Archive. You can find all the political cartoons at the same place. From the Library of Congress: Rufus Bullock; Democrat-flavored sheet music – white, pease (“Let us have peace” was part of Grant’s acceptance of the Republican presidential nomination for 1868)

 

hw10-10-1868p648 (at the <a title="Internet Archive" href="https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn">Internet Archive</a>)

another monument controversy

Posted in 150 Years Ago, Aftermath, Postbellum Politics, Postbellum Society, Reconstruction, The election of 1868 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

late summer of ’68

Posted on September 29, 2018 by SUMPTER
HW9-19-1868 p605 (https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn)

Kegler-in-Chief

Some headlines from early September 1868. Statewide elections in Vermont resulted in large Republican majorities. The Georgia legislature expelled twenty-five black representatives (New York Times September 4, 1868). After a conference at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, Union General William Rosecrans conducted a public correspondence with Confederate General Robert E. Lee about “what the South wants.” The general’s letter was controversial. A northern periodical contrasted General Lee’s words of conciliation with the expulsion of the black legislators in Georgia and other southern white actions against the freed slaves. The editorial tied the letter to the 1868 campaign.

NY Times 9-2-1868 Vermont

The New-York Times September 2, 1868

NY Times September 4, 1868

The New-York Times September 4, 1868

NY Times 9-5-1868

The New-York Times September 5, 1868

______________________

From Harper’s Weekly September 19, 1868 (page 595):

GENERAL ROSECRANS AND GENERAL LEE.

Statues and sculpture. Robert E. Lee in Statuary Hall (Horydczak, Theodor; ca. 1920-ca. 1950; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/thc1995010474/PP/)

controversial

One of the lighter comedies of the canvass is the exchange of letters between General ROSECRANS and the ex-rebel Generals LEE, BEAUREGARD, and others. General LEE, whose whole career shows him to be one of the weakest of men, and whose treachery to the Government was not less contemptible than odious, is saluted by General ROSECRANS in these words: “I know you are a representative man in reverence and regard for the Union, the Constitution, and the welfare of the country.” The General then asks the representative man to tell him the public opinion of the South.” Conferring with other representative men, like BEAUREGARD, of “booty and beauty” renown, General LEE replies in a series of statements which shows that he is not familiar with the recent history of the Southern States. Indeed, a grosser misrepresentation of familiar public facts has not been made.

But one assertion is peculiarly amusing in view of the expulsion of the Georgia colored members, of the Ku-Klux Klan, of the address of the South Carolina Committee, and of WADE HAMPTON’S scheme of Democratic voting or starvation. It is the remark of General LEE that “the idea that the Southern people are hostile to the negroes or would oppress them if it were in their power to do so is entirely unfounded. They have grown up in our midst, and we have been accustomed from childhood to look upon them with kindness.” The paddle, the auction-block, and the blood-hound were the emblems of this kindness before the war; the Black Codes and the massacres, since.

The letter of General LEE is put forward as a Democratic campaign document, and it is one of the feeblest conceivable.

The complete letter from Lee and twenty-six other southern men (Beauregard, Stephens, Letcher) to Rosecrans was published in the September 8, 1868 issue of the Staunton Spectator. You can read it at The Lee Family Digital Archive.

According to the Library of Congress, long-time social reformer Gerrit Smith wrote Robert E. Lee a letter on September 25, 1868 severely criticizing the general’s letter as promoting a “re-instatement of slavery.” “But to argue to you that slavery, virtual, if not literal, must ever attend the disfranchisement of a race, and especially when it is the only disfranchised race, would be a superfluity insulting to your excellent understanding.” Mr. Smith’s letter also referenced the upcoming election:

Harper'sWeekly9-5-1868p568 (https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn)

won’t sell up north

… How sad that the white men of the South should look upon the Republican Party as the enemy of the South! In the success of this Party—in the election of those just and wise men, Grant and Colfax—is the salvation of the South. Peace—a righteous and enduring Peace—would come of it. The white men of the South have but two enemies. The Republican Party is neither of them. Their own wicked hearts—wicked, because still refusing to repent of slavery—is one of them; and the other, and far wickeder one, is the Democratic Party, whose only hope of re-ascendency being in the resurrection of slavery, is ever at work to inflame those wicked hearts, and to counsel and contrive that resurrection.

You white men of the South have made your choice. This choice is to go for the Democratic Party. You will, probably, be disappointed in the Election. For the North, though extensively corrupted by the arts of the leaders of the Democratic Party, can hardly be brought to give a majority of her votes to a Party, which goes openly for cheating the Nation’s creditors, and for taking up arms to bring back under the yoke of slavery a race to whose magnanimous forgetfulness of their immeasurable wrongs and to whose brave hearts and stalwart arms the salvation of our country is so largely due. …

In his P.S. Gerrit Smith referred to the Democrats as the “Murder-Party” because in the three years since the war ended they had killed over a thousand southerners for their political opinions.

In his 1901 The Reconstruction of Georgia (beginning on page 56 at Project Gutenberg) Edwin C. Woolley wrote about the expulsion of the black legislators, which happened “the very moment after the federal government withdrew its hand”:
THE EXPULSION OF THE NEGROES FROM THE LEGISLATURE
AND THE USES TO WHICH THIS EVENT WAS APPLIED
When the Georgia Republicans, or Radicals, as they were locally called, found that instead of a sweeping victory they had won only a governorship hemmed in by a hostile legislature, an effort was made, as we have said, to improve their position through the interference of Meade. Meade refused to aid them. When, a short time afterwards, federal power, on which they had hitherto relied, was completely withdrawn, they seemed left to make the best of an uncomfortable position without any assistance. At this point a god appeared from the machine.
In the state senate there were three negroes, in the lower house twenty-five. Their presence was an offense. It was an offense not merely to the Conservative members. Some of the Republicans entertained Conservative sentiments and principles, but supported reconstruction simply in order to hasten the liberation of the state from Congressional interference. To them as well as to the Conservatives “negro rule” was obnoxious. Negro rule, so far as it consisted in negro suffrage, was established by the constitution. But negro office-holding was not so established expressly. As early as July 25, 1868, the question, whether negroes were eligible to the legislature, was raised in the state senate.
Legally considered, the question had two sides, each supported by eminent lawyers. For the negroes it was argued that Irwin’s Code, which was made part of the law of the state by the constitution, enumerated among the rights of citizens the right to hold office. Negroes were made citizens of equal rights with all other citizens by the new constitution. Therefore they had the right to hold office. It was true that the constitution did not grant the right to hold office to the negroes expressly, as it granted the right to vote; but in view of the fact that the convention which made the constitution was elected by 25,000 white and 85,000 colored men, and that that constitution was adopted by 35,000 white and 70,000 colored men, it would be absurd to suppose that the intent of that instrument was to withhold office from the negroes. On the other side, it was argued that the right to hold office did not belong to every citizen, but only to such citizens as the law specially designated, or to such as possessed it by common law or custom. Irwin’s Code could not be cited to prove that negroes had the right, because that law had been enacted before the negroes had been made citizens, and the word citizens in it referred to those who were citizens at that time. As the negro had no right to hold office because he was a citizen, and as he could not claim the right from common law or custom, he could obtain it only by specific grant of law. There was no such grant. The argument for the negro was made by the Supreme Court of the state in 1869, the opposing argument by one of the justices of that court in a dissenting opinion.
Such were the legal aspects of the question, which were of course less important than the political and the emotional aspects. The legislature passed upon the issue in the early part of September, 1868, by declaring all the colored members ineligible, and admitting to the vacated seats the candidates who had received respectively the next highest number of votes. If there was some legal ground for unseating the negroes, there was none for seating the minority candidates. It was done on the authority of the clause in Irwin’s Code which said:
If at any popular election to fill any office the person elected is ineligible, … the person having the next highest number of votes, who is eligible, whenever a plurality elects, shall be declared elected.
But this clause is found under the title “Of the Executive Department,” and under the sub-head “Regulations as to All Executive Offices and Officers.” Under the next title “Of the Legislative Department,” there is no such provision.
For a legislature to unseat some of the elected members because on not untenable legal grounds it finds them ineligible, is not unusual. But the act of the Georgia legislature could not, under the circumstances, be regarded in the ordinary way. It showed strong racial prejudice. It was a startling breach of the system which reconstruction had been designed to institute, committed the very moment after the federal government withdrew its hand. It fixed on Georgia at once the earnest and unfavorable attention of northern public opinion. This fact enabled the Georgia Republicans to bring the federal government again to their assistance.
On the pages right after it used the expulsion of the black legislators as an example of how Robert E. Lee was out of touch with Southern reality, Harper’s Weekly reported on three Georgia cities that were looking pretty good after a little Republican reconstruction:
georgiacitieshw9-19-1868p596 (https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn)

Harper’s September 19, 1868

3georgiacitieshw9-19-1868p597 (https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn)

Harper’s September 19, 1868

hw9-26-1868 p616 (https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn)

Harper’s September 26, 1868

2018 sure has been impinging on my enjoyment of 1868; I’m glad I could put this up by early fall. All the Harper’s Weekly clippings were published in issues throughout September 1868 and can be found at the Internet Archives. Theodor Horydczak’s photo of the Lee statue in Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol is from the Library of Congress. The Capitol’s first cornerstone was laid 225 years ago on Wednesday, September 18, 1793.
hw 9-19-1868page600 (https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn)

the devil wants DC

October 1, 2018: According the the October 20, 1918 issue of The New York Times (image 14 at the Library of Congress 100 years ago General and Mrs. Robert E. Lee’s last surviving child was knitting for American soldiers in World War I. According to Find A Grave the 83 year old Mary Custis Lee died on November 22, 1918. An blog at WETA explains that in 1902 Miss Lee was arrested in Alexandria, Virginia for breaking the city’s new segregation law by riding in the black section of a streetcar. Her refusal to give up her seat in the back of the car might have had to do more with personal convenience than as a stand for racial integration. Miss Lee apparently was quite a traveler. In his Freedom by the Sword blog Jimmy Price wrote that General Lee’s daughter was in Europe when World War I broke out. In London on her way back to the States she gave an interview to a The New York Times reporter on October 21, 1914: “I am a soldier’s daughter,” she said, “and descended from a long line of soldiers, but what I have seen of this war, and what I can foresee of the misery which must follow, have made me very nearly a peace-at-any-price woman.”

MaryCustisLee (https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn78004456/1918-10-20/ed-1/?sp=14)

Posted in 150 Years Ago This Month, Aftermath, Postbellum Politics, Postbellum Society, Reconstruction, Southern Society, The election of 1868 | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

dragon visit

Posted on August 31, 2018 by SUMPTER

Da qing guo shi ba sheng [quan tu]. (1900; Administrative map of Qing Dynasty.LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2002626767/)

breaking out of its shell?

In 1861 President Abraham Lincoln appointed Anson Burlingame as minister to the Qing Dynasty, which ruled China from 1644 to 1912. “Burlingame worked for a cooperative policy rather than the imperialistic policies of force which had been used during the First and Second Opium Wars and developed relations with the reform elements of the court.” Mr. Burlingame encouraged the European powers to respect China’s territory and not interfere in its internal affairs. He stressed that the West should treat China in a fair and Christian manner.

aburlingame hw 5-30-1868 p348 (https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn)

Ambassadors Burlingame

China appreciated the Burlingame treatment. In the fall of 1867 the ambassador notified U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward that he wanted to return to America and resume his political career. The Chinese had different ideas. In November Chinese officials asked Mr. Burlingame if he would act as the Qing Empire’s envoy to the Western powers.

As a very interesting article at Foreign Affairs points out, the ambassador accepted. He notified Secretary Seward with a telegram in November, “And with that, Burlingame went from being the representative of the United States in China to being the representative of China to the world.” Burlingame and two native Chinese ministers began their round-the-world mission in December 1867. They arrived in San Francisco Bay on March 31, 1868. “Burlingame’s arrival in San Francisco was highly anticipated, and people gathered at the wharf to get their first glimpse of Chinese nobility—and of the imperial yellow dragon flag, which appeared in many contemporary press reports. ”

Flag_of_the_Qing_Dynasty_(1862-1889).svg (

Qing flag 1862-1889

Since the transcontinental railroad wasn’t completed yet, the mission next traveled to the East Coast by steamship via Panama. In early June the group met President Andrew Johnson at the White House. While in Washington Ambassador Burlingame and Secretary Seward negotiated the Burlingame Treaty, which modified and mollified one of the “unequal treaties.”

In early August 1868 the Chinese Embassy stopped in Secretary of State Seward’s hometown of Auburn, New York on its way to Niagara Falls. Walter Stahr writes that Mr. Seward, who had regaled the Chinese mission in Washington with trips to Mount Vernon and the Capitol and with a reception in his DC residence, held a reception for the travelers at the Seward mansion (I believe). “His guest list included not only various local leaders but also such national leaders of the women’s movement as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Margaret Coffin Wright. When one of the senior Chinese praised the intelligence of the American women, Seward’s sister-in-law Lazette Worden responded that ‘Chinese women would be intelligent also, if they were allowed to come into the parlor, instead of being kept in the back part of the house.’ Stanton recalled that the only answer of the Chinese delegates to the women’s questions about Chinese society was ‘immoderate laughter.’ The interpreters explained that the Chinese had never before heard ‘women in all earnestness ask such profound questions.'”[1]

NY Times August 5, 2018

NY Times August 5, 2018

NY Times August 6, 1868

NY Times August 6, 1868

NY Times August 9, 1868

NY Times August 9, 1868

According to reports in The New-York Times, the Chinese also visited Auburn’s prison, where they were favorably impressed by “the American mode of punishing criminals.” The group also intended to visit a nearby farm to see a mower and reaper exhibition. They got rained out on their first try. On August 7th Secretary Seward hosted a second reception for the Embassy before its departure for Niagara on the next day [I don’t know which reception the famous women attended]. Anson Burlingame offered a toast: “The Great Secretary CANNING said that he had called a new world into existence to redress the balance of the old. Mr. SEWARD has called an old world into the existence of the new.”

hw7-18-1868p460 (https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn)

May-December relationship?

At Niagara Falls the Chinese hosted a party for the citizens of Buffalo on August 11. Later in August the Embassy was in Boston. On August 21st the City Council put on a banquet for the visitors. You can read about it the Internet Archives. Ralph Waldo Emerson remarked that the Chinese Embassy was a visit “from the oldest Empire in the world to the youngest Republic.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.also used that theme in a poem he recited for the occasion. His vision was of a more united world.

Boston reception p41OWH1(https://archive.org/details/receptionenterta01bost)

“We, the new creation’s birth,
Greet the lords of ancient earth”

Boston reception p42OWH2 (https://archive.org/details/receptionenterta01bost)

“Knowledge dwells with length of days;
Wisdom walks in ancient ways;”

Boston reception p42OWH3(https://archive.org/details/receptionenterta01bost)

“Open wide, ye gates of gold,
To the Dragon’s banner-fold!”

hw6-13-1868p376 (https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn)

belt and
road trip

niagarafallsny1882 (c188; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/73694500/)

Erie Outlet

owh project gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28747/28747-h/28747-h.htm)

the Missouri and the Hoang-Ho – one river vision

As the Foreign Affairs article explains, the Embassy continued to Britain and Europe and ended up in Russia. Mr. Burlingame was probably hoping to draft a treaty that would end the China-Russia border dispute, “But he fell ill in the cold Russian winter, took to bed, and died a few days later, on February 23, 1870. The cause of death was pneumonia. He was 49 years old.”
The same article mentions that the American Civil War was not nearly as destructive as what was going on China at the same time: “When Burlingame arrived in China in October 1861, the ruling Qing Dynasty was fighting the Taiping rebellion in a protracted civil war that lasted from 1851 until 1864. Historians widely consider the Taiping rebellion the bloodiest civil war in history, with an estimated death toll of at least 20 million. Burlingame put the U.S. government firmly on the side of the Qing government.”
Other blue-gray touches. From the Harper’s Weekly biographical sketch (page 346): “At the request of Mr. BURLINGAME Confederate pirates were excluded from Chinese waters.” The Boston banquet was attended by people we’ve had on before: Charles Sumner, who was the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time; Congressman George Boutwell; General Irvin McDowell, who successfully got the Union army headed south after the rebels in July 1861 but unsuccessfully attacked them at First Bull Run; political General Nathaniel P. Banks, who had returned to politics in 1865 and was representing the Massachusetts 6th District in Congress.
I haven’t done a scientific study, but it’s pretty certain that Harper’s Weekly was not a fan of President Andrew Johnson. However, in its June 20, 1868 issue the newspaper seemed to have approved of at least one of Mr. Johnson’s utterances: “In receiving the Chinese Embassy the president made a discursive oration in which he naturally spoke of the means of communication between China and the United States, and remarked that more important than all of them was ‘the great work of connecting the two oceans by a ship-canal to be constructed across the Isthmus of Darien.'” (page 387) I don’t think I ever heard anyone refer to Andrew Johnson as a visionary, so I was very impressed that he thought of a canal across the isthmus about 36 years before the United States began building one. It was just more history I didn’t know. According to Wikipedia Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was dreaming of a canal way back in 1534.
In its May 30th issue Harper’s Weekly recognized that the possibility of increased trade with China would make the Pacific Ocean, the Isthmus of Panama, and the completion of the transcontinental railroad in the United States more important than ever.
HW 5-30-1868 p344(https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn)

New York City’s place …

HW 5-30-1868 p345 (https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn)

… in the universe?

You can read Stanton Jue’s article about Anson Burlingame and his missions at American Diplomacy. The article includes an image of President Johnson receiving the Chinese mission.
Sodacan’s image of the Qing flag (1862-1889) is licensed by Creative Commons. The portrait of Oliver Wendell Holmes is from a book of his works at Project Gutenberg. All the images and references from Harper’s Weekly of 1868 can be found at the Internet Archives May 30th, June 13th, and July 18th. From the Library of Congress: Administrative map of Qing Dynasty about 1900, Niagara-Falls, N.Y. 1882, Chinese Embassy
Chinese Embassy / photographed by J. Gurney & Son. (1868; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2008680540/)

world travelers 1868

September 2, 2018 – This just in:

Fifty years after the Chinese Embassy led by Anson Burlingame a large number of Chinese were also headed to Europe. From The New-York Times September 22, 1918:

NY Times September 22 1918 no1 (https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn78004456/1918-09-22/ed-1/?st=gallery)

coolies headed over there

NY Times September 22 1918 No2 (https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn78004456/1918-09-22/ed-1/?st=gallery)

welcome to the world
war

The Qing dynasty ended in 1912. Japan occupied the city of Tsing-tao (Qingdao) from 1914-1922.
  1. [1]Stahr, Walter Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man. 2012. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2013. Print. pages 520-521.↩
Posted in 150 Years Ago, 150 Years Ago This Month, Foreign Relations, Postbellum Society | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

R.I.I.P.

Posted on August 17, 2018 by SUMPTER
Remains_of_Thadeus_Steven_lying_in_state_-_NARA_-_530043.tif (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Remains_of_Thadeus_Steven_lying_in_state_-_NARA_-_530043.tif)

Black Zouaves guard the remains Of Thaddeus Stevens

I wished that I were the owner of every southern slave, that I might cast off the shackles from their limbs, and witness the rapture which would excite them in the first dance of their freedom.

– Thaddeus Stevens, 1837 [1]

Thaddeus Stevens portrait (HW 8-29-1868 p548 (https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn)

freedom for everyone

On August 11, 1868 Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, Radical Republican from Pennsylvania, died after at least several months of deteriorating health. As Chairman of the House Reconstruction Committee his last major effort was to help persuade the full House to impeach President Andrew Johnson. Mr. Stevens was one of the seven managers of the House prosecution before the U.S. Senate, but he was too sick to take much of a role in that impeachment trial.

The August 29, 1868 issue of Harper’s Weekly (Harper’s pages 546, 548-549 at at the Internet Archives) provided a good deal of coverage of Mr. Stevens’ death and life. The journal began its editorial-like obituary by saying that even Democratic newspapers recognized his sincerity and independence; Republicans “praised his love of liberty,” but realized he lacked the qualities of “a true statesman and leader of men.” On his deathbed he ordered that two “colored” clergymen be admitted to pray with him. On August 13th five colored and three white pall-bearers carried his casket to the Rotunda of the Capitol near a life-sized statue of Abraham Lincoln. “The guard of honor were the officers of the Butler Zouaves, a colored military organization of Washington. The body thus lying in state was viewed by five or six thousand persons – white and black.”

ts deathbed (HW 8-29-1868 p548 https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn)

on deathbed

tstevenscapital hw 8-29-1868 p545 (https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn)

under dome

An editorial in The New-York Times on August 13, 1868 saw the Republican Party as practical vehicle for Thadddeus Stevens to promote his strong anti-slavery beliefs; he was effective during the war but less so during Reconstruction :

Thaddeus Stevens.

The death of Mr. THADDEUS STEVENS deprives the Radical section of the Republican Party of it recognized leader, and the House of Representatives of its most conspicuous, and, in some respects, most influential member.

Hon. Thaddeus Stevens, Pa (https://catalog.archives.gov/id/525663)

dictatorial, unchristian, extreme, Evil Genius?

From the first an ardent politician, Mr. STEVENS was not always an extreme one. His earliest experiences in Congress were as an associate of representative Whigs, and the foundations of his after influence were laid deep in earnest, persistent work. It was a diligent committeeman, zealous, untiring and faithful in the performance of the duties intrusted to him – not as a glib and frequent speaker, or the devotee of hobbies – that Mr. STEVENS worked his way to prominent usefulness. He was, however, from conviction, an opponent of the slave system, and when the formation of the Republican Party furnished the means of organized and effective, because practical, resistance to the encroachments of the Southern oligarchy, he threw himself into the movement with the energy that characterized him in everything. The difficulties of the contest did not dishearten him. He saw in the Republican Party a pledge of emancipation from the evils which enthralled and degraded the Republic, and he contributed greatly to its success.

The rebellion developed exigencies and created opportunities which made the reputation of Mr. STEVENS national. … With the progress of the conflict came freer scope for his peculiar characteristics. He comprehended the magnitude of the crisis, while the majority about him saw but dimly its proportions, and realized the necessity of bold, strong measures, while others clung to hopes of pacification and compromise. He was one of the few who are not afraid to grasp first principles and lay hold of great truths, or to push them to their remotest logical result. Thus he differed with the Administration and the party as to the relation of the rebel States to the Union, and the course that should be pursued in regard to them. He discerned the expediency of emancipation, and urged it long before Mr. LINCOLN issued his proclamation.

Mr. STEVENS was not at that period the legislative dictator he afterward aspired to be. He never concealed his opinions and purposes, and never hesitated to do all that could be done to promote them. But though ahead of the Republican Party, he was a steady co-worker with it through all the stages of the war, sustaining its every measure, and rendering valuable assistance to the Government in the execution of its plans.

The requirements which grew out of the restoration of peace, found Mr. Stevens less qualified for efficient service. For the needs of bitter strife, none could be more fitted by habits of thought or readiness for rough and ready action. Means were less thought of than the results. And Mr. STEVENS, with his contempt for nice distinctions, constitutional or ethical, was just the man for the occasion. It was a season of perilous excitement, and the qualities of revolutionary leaders reappeared in him. He failed, as men cast in his mould usually do fail, when the time came for reconstructing the shattered institutions of the South, and restoring friendly relations between the sections. The partisan leader occupied the place of the statesman. He was for consummating a conquest – not for hastening reconciliation. He would have supplemented the horrors of war with banishment and confiscation. He demanded measures that would have rendered the union of North and South, except in the relation of conqueror and conquered. The remorseless logic which sustained war measures, insisted on postponing the return of peace. He had so fostered hatred of the nation’s enemies, that he refused, even in their helplessness, to extend the fraternal hand. In the abstract, perhaps, and in the light of his convictions, he was in this consistent. Certainly he was outspoken, fearless, and, in a certain sense, formidable. But his spirit was unchristian, and his measures were unjust and impolitic.

It can not be truthfully said that Mr. STEVENS exercised a happy influence over the Republican policy in the matter of Reconstruction. His most extreme views were not accepted by the party. He never obtained a hearing for his confiscation scheme, and the territorial doctrine on which he predicated his plans was denied recognition. The Constitutional Amendment, which was originally offered as a basis of restoration, was so regarded in spite of him. And the conditions of Reconstruction, stern and sweeping as they are, would have been still more severe had his plans prevailed. He desired, in truth, to delay rather than to hasten the return of the excluded States, and he would have kept them out till doomsday rather than tolerate conditions lacking what he deemed essential.

On the subject of Reconstruction, then, Mr. STEVENS must be considered the Evil Genius of the Republican Party. … [As Chairman of the House Reconstruction Committee he had an “intolerant spirit” and was “defiant, despotic, and in all things irritation.” …]

House impeachment managers

His leadership entailed disaster in other directions. The impeachment was, perhaps, the most notable of his mistakes. Of that he was the promoter and guiding spirit. To him it owed its origin, and to his management the prosecution was indebted for whatever strength it possessed. Latterly his control of the House was evidently impaired. His feeble health gradually unfitted him for stormy contests, and the Republican Party seemed to feel the necessity of a cooler judgment and a more generous spirit in the conduct of its counsels. The Chicago Convention marked the triumph of other purposes than those which he had made his own, and foreshadowed a more generous and more judicious policy than that which he had favored.

According to the August 18, 1868 issue of The New-York Times many people visited the bodily remains of Thaddeus Stevens at his home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on August 15th and 16th. On the morning of the 17th the casket was opened one last time for the crowd: “The coffin was decorated with wreaths, and a cross of evergreen and white lillies. The face was becoming somewhat discolored, but the expression was the same, and all who had known him agreed that the appearance was more natural than they bad expected.” Later that day about 15,000 people attended his burial ceremonies.

As Eric Foner has written, “For one last time, Stevens challenged his countrymen to rise above their prejudices, for he was buried in an integrated Pennsylvania cemetery, in order, according to the epitaph he had composed, ‘to illustrate in my death the principles which I advocated through a long life, Equality of Man before his Creator.'”[2]

You can still find the grave in Lancaster. The complete inscription on his tombstone:

I repose in this quiet and secluded spot,
Not from any natural preference for solitude
But, finding other Cemeteries limited as to Race
by Charter Rules,
I have chosen this that I might illustrate in my death
The Principles which I advocated through a long life:
EQUALITY OF MAN BEFORE HIS CREATOR.

Tomb of Thaddeus Stevens. Lancaster, Pa. ( LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2003690918/)

rest in integrated peace

According to William S. McFeeley, on one occasion Thaddeus Stevens tempered his belief in the equality of man for what he thought was political expediency. In 1866 Radicals held a convention in Philadelphia to counter a conservative National Union convention. Mr. Stevens urged radicals in Rochester, New York not to send Frederick Douglass as a delegate to the convention because radical Congressmen attending the convention were afraid that their white constituents would vote against them in the fall elections if they even appeared to support full political and social equality for black men. Frederick Douglass as delegate might get voters thinking that way. Rochester sent Douglass anyway. Despite pleas from Stevens and others Mr. Douglass attended the convention anyway, walking to Independence Hall arm-in-arm with a white man. Theodore Tilton. “Stevens regarded the gesture as ‘foolish bravado.'” The only famous attendee who warmly greeted the pair was “bluff, irrepressible (and totally unembarrassable) Benjamin Butler.”[3]
Civil War Talk discusses the photo of the Butler Zouaves guarding the remains of Thaddeus Stevens at the Capitol Rotunda
The image that accompanies a biography at the National Endowment for the Humanities shows Thaddeus Stevens in boxing gloves.
The photo of Mr. Stevens’ casket at the Capitol Rotunda comes from Wikipedia. The three brown-backed drawings were published in the August 29, 1868 issue of Harper’s Weekly at the Internet Archives. From the National Archives: times four, managers. From the Library of Congress: tomb, cartoon
The Radical Party on a heavy grade / J.M. Ives, del. ; on stone by Cameron ([New York : Currier & Ives], c1868. ; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2003674599/)

off the wagon

  1. [1]Statement at the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention (July 1837), quoted in Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South (1959) by Fawn M. Brodie, p. 63 at Wikiquote↩
  2. [2]Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. New York: HarperPerennial, 2014. Updated Edition. Print. page 344.↩
  3. [3]McFeely, William S. Frederick Douglass. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991. Print. page 250-251.↩
Posted in 150 Years Ago This Week, Aftermath, Impeachment, Postbellum Politics, Postbellum Society, Reconstruction | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Boston at New York

Posted on August 7, 2018 by SUMPTER

From my growing up I had heard about Zouave units associated with the American Civil War but didn’t know much more about it. According to Wikipedia it wasn’t until 1859 that Zouaves were brought to the American public attention when Elmer Ellsworth toured nationally with a Zouave drill company. Apparently it caught on. One of the first things I noticed after the Civil War Sesquicentennial began was a large number of clippings from Seneca County, New York newspapers about a Zouave unit organized by James E. Ashcroft, a resident of Seneca Falls, that gave public demonstrations of its skill in light infantry tactics. Mr. Ashcroft organized a non-Zouave company for the 19th New York Infantry after the shooting started at Fort Sumter. Both the Union and Confederacy fielded Zouave units during the Civil War.

According to that Wikipedia link Zouaves “gradually vanished from the U.S. military in the 1870s and 1880s, as the militia system slowly transformed into the National Guard.” Nevertheless, according to the August 15, 1868 issue of Harper’s Weekly, 150 years ago this summer a company of Zouaves from Boston traveled to Manhattan for a drill competition against a New York City unit.

hw8-15-1868p525(https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn p526)

friendly military competition

Zouaves hw8-15-1868p526-1 (https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn)

thousands in attendance at Tompkins Square

Zouaveshw8-15-1868p526-2 (https://archive.org/details/harpersweeklyv12bonn)

New York eked out a technical victory

It’s probably not too surprising that Boston and New York competed well before Babe Ruth changed from red stockings to pinstripes. Apparently it’s not just military and sports competition.
An article at The Bowery Boys sees the inter-city rivalry going back all the way back to the 17th century when “Many so-called heretics fled the Puritans [in New England] and were granted haven by the Dutch [in New Amsterdam].”
Boston was the hotbed of the American Revolution; New York pretty much stayed in British hands throughout the war but then served (briefly) as the first federal capital under the new Constitution.
Winslow_Homer_-_The_Brierwood_Pipe (1864; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Winslow_Homer_-_The_Brierwood_Pipe.jpg)

1864 painting

Burnside zouaves march (1868; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200000386/)

1868 sheet music

Babe Ruth, full-length portrait, standing, facing slightly left, in baseball uniform, holding baseball bat ( c1920.; LOC: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/92507380/)

built house in the Bronx

There’s more information out there: Burnside Zouaves; Zouave Database; Montgomery Guards;
I don’t want to do anything to spread the misinformation, disinformation out there. I have no idea where Babe Ruth lived. The original Yankee Stadium was referred to as “The House That Ruth Built”
You can see the Harper’s Weekly image and article at the Internet Archives, pages 526 and 527; From the Library of Congress: Burnside’s; Babe; envelope. I got Winslow Homer’s 1864 painting at Wikipedia.
[Civil War envelope showing Patriot labeled "Secured" holding the Constitution and Zouave soldier labeled "Defended," with message "The Union forever"] (Cin[cinnati] : Jas. Gates Pub., [1861] ; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2013648212/)

a northern take

Posted in 150 Years Ago, 150 Years Ago This Week, Aftermath, American Society | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment