“arrested development”

Posted on November 4, 2016 by SUMPTER
The tailor of the Potomac, or, Andy Johnson, on his way to Chigago [!] (LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/amss.as113320/)

“weary of the tailor from the State of Tennessee!”

150 years ago a Boston journal reacted to Andrew Johnson’s Swing Around the Circle with a 6,000 word attack on the president and his policies. Here are the first three paragraphs from The Atlantic Monthly, VOL. XVIII.—NOVEMBER, 1866.—NO. CIX:

THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ACCOMPLICES.

Andrew Johnson has dealt the most cruel of all blows to the respectability of the faction which rejoices in his name. Hardly had the political Pecksniffs and Turveydrops contrived so to manage the Johnson Convention at Philadelphia that it violated few of the proprieties of intrigue and none of the decencies of dishonesty, than the commander-in-chief of the combination took the field in person, with the intention of carrying the country by assault. His objective point was the grave of Douglas, which became by the time he arrived the grave also of his own reputation and the hopes of his partisans. His speeches on the route were a volcanic outbreak of vulgarity, conceit, bombast, scurrility, ignorance, insolence, brutality, and balderdash. Screams of laughter, cries of disgust, flushings of shame, were the various responses of the nation he disgraced to the harangues of this leader of American “conservatism.” Never before did the first office in the gift of the people appear so poor an object of human ambition, as when Andrew Johnson made it an eminence on which to exhibit inability to behave and incapacity to reason. His low cunning conspired with his devouring egotism to make him throw off all the restraints of official decorum, in the expectation that he would find duplicates of himself in the crowds he addressed, and that mob diffused would heartily sympathize with Mob impersonated. Never was blustering demagogue led by a distempered sense of self-importance into a more fatal error. Not only was the great body of the people mortified or indignant, but even his “satraps and dependents,” even the shrewd politicians—accidents of an Accident and shadows of a shade—who had labored so hard at Philadelphia to weave a cloak of plausibilities to cover his usurpations, shivered with apprehension or tingled with shame as they read the reports of their master’s impolitic and ignominious abandonment of dignity and decency in his addresses to the people he attempted alternately to bully and cajole. That a man thus self-exposed as unworthy of high trust should have had the face to expect that intelligent constituencies would send to Congress men pledged to support his policy and his measures, appeared for the time to be as pitiable a spectacle of human delusion as it was an exasperating example of human impudence.

Andy's trip "Who has suffered more for you and for this Union than Andrew Johnson?" / / Th. Nast. ( Illus. in: Harper's weekly, v. X, no. 513 (1866 October 27), pp. 680-681; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2016651601/)

“His low cunning conspired with his devouring egotism to make him throw off all the restraints of official decorum”

Not the least extraordinary peculiarity of these addresses from the stump was the immense protuberance they exhibited of the personal pronoun. In Mr. Johnson’s speech, his “I” resembles the geometer’s description of infinity, having “its centre everywhere and its circumference nowhere.” Among the many kinds of egotism in which his eloquence is prolific, it may be difficult to fasten on the particular one which is most detestable or most laughable; but it seems to us that when his arrogance apes humility it is deserving perhaps of an intenser degree of scorn or derision than when it riots in bravado. The most offensive part which he plays in public is that of “the humble individual,” bragging of the lowliness of his origin, hinting of the great merits which could alone have lifted him to his present exalted station, and representing himself as so satiated with the sweets of unsought power as to be indifferent to its honors. Ambition is not for him, for ambition aspires; and what object has he to aspire to? From his contented mediocrity as alderman of a village, the people have insisted on elevating him from one pinnacle of greatness to another, until they have at last made him President of the United States. He might have been Dictator had he pleased; but what, to a man wearied with authority and dignity, would dictatorship be worth? If he is proud of anything, it is of the tailor’s bench from which he started. He would have everybody to understand that he is humble,—thoroughly humble. Is this caricature? No. It is impossible to caricature Andrew Johnson when he mounts his high horse of humility and becomes a sort of cross between Uriah Heep and Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. Indeed, it is only by quoting Dickens’s description of the latter personage that we have anything which fairly matches the traits suggested by some statements in the President’s speeches. “A big, loud man,” says the humorist, “with a stare and a metallic laugh. A man made out of coarse material, which seemed to have been stretched to make so much of him. A man with a great puffed head and forehead, swelled veins in his temples, and such a strained skin to his face, that it seemed to hold his eyes open and lift his eyebrows up. A man with a pervading appearance on him of being inflated like a balloon, and ready to start. A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man. A man who was continually proclaiming, through that brassy speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, his old ignorance and his old poverty. A man who was the Bully of humility.”

cleveland (https://www.loc.gov/item/2016651601/)

the Cleveland stop on the Swing

If we turn from the moral and personal to the menial characteristics of Mr. Johnson’s speeches, we find that his brain is to be classed with notable cases of arrested development. He has strong forces in his nature, but in their outlet through his mind they are dissipated into a confusing clutter of unrelated thoughts and inapplicable phrases. He seems to possess neither the power nor the perception of coherent thinking and logical arrangement. He does not appear to be aware that prepossessions are not proofs, that assertions are not arguments, that the proper method to answer an objection is not to repeat the proposition against which the objection was directed, that the proper method of unfolding a subject is not to make the successive statements a series of contradictions. Indeed, he seems to have a thoroughly animalized intellect, destitute of the notion of relations, with ideas which are but the form of determinations, and which derive their force, not from reason, but from will. With an individuality thus strong even to fierceness, but which has not been developed in the mental region, and which the least gust of passion intellectually upsets, he is incapable of looking at anything out of relations to himself,—of regarding it from that neutral ground which is the condition of intelligent discussion between opposing minds. In truth, he makes a virtue of being insensible to the evidence of facts and the deductions of reason, proclaiming to all the world that he has taken his position, that he will never swerve from it, and that all statements and arguments intended to shake his resolves are impertinences, indicating that their authors are radicals and enemies of the country. He is never weary of vaunting his firmness, and firmness he doubtless has, the firmness of at least a score of mules; but events have shown that it is a different kind of firmness from that which keeps a statesman firm to his principles, a political leader to his pledges, a gentleman to his word. Amid all changes of opinion, he has been conscious of unchanged will, and the intellectual element forms so small a portion of his being, that, when he challenged “the man, woman, or child to come forward” and convict him of inconstancy to his professions, he knew that, however it might be with the rest of mankind, he would himself be unconvinced by any evidence which the said man, woman, or child might adduce. Again, when he was asked by one of his audiences why he did not hang Jeff Davis, he retorted by exclaiming, “Why don’t you ask me why I have not hanged Thad Stevens and Wendell Phillips? They are as much traitors as Davis.” And we are almost charitable enough to suppose that he saw no difference between the moral or legal treason of the man who for four years had waged open war against the government of the United States, and the men who for one year had sharply criticised the acts and utterances of Andrew Johnson. It is not to be expected that nice distinctions will be made by a magistrate who is in the habit of denying indisputable facts with the fury of a pugilist who has received a personal affront, and of announcing demonstrated fallacies with the imperturbable serenity of a philosopher proclaiming the fundamental laws of human belief. His brain is entirely ridden by his will, and of all the public men in the country its official head is the one whose opinion carries with it the least intellectual weight. It is to the credit of our institutions and our statesmen that the man least qualified by largeness of mind and moderation of temper to exercise uncontrolled power should be the man who aspired to usurp it. The constitutional instinct in the blood, and the constitutional principle in the brain, of our real statesmen, preserve them from the folly and guilt of setting themselves up as imitative Caesars and Napoleons, the moment they are trusted with a little delegated power. …

fighting-traitors (LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2016651601/)

fighting traitors

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People (Congress) #1

Posted on November 3, 2016 by SUMPTER
Extract const. amend (Illus. in: Harper's weekly, v. 10, no. 513 (1866 Oct. 27), p. 688.; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2001695546/)

from Harper’s Weekly October 27, 1866

From The New-York Times November 3, 1866:

The President and the People.

That the dominant sentiment of the country differs at this time more widely than ever from the position of the President, is proven beyond dispute by the result of the late elections. The President, by his messages to Congress, and by his speeches upon his late tour, has given the people every opportunity to comprehend fully his policy. He has not only stated it repeatedly in definite terms, but he has enforced it by all the arguments which he could command from the Constitution, from the principles of reason, and from the grounds of statesmanship and the public welfare. He has been thoroughly in earnest in the matter, and has himself unquestionably been governed by the reasons which he has brought to bear upon others, and through which he has attempted to convince his opponents. But neither Congress, which was demonstrated by the votes, nor the people, as has been shown by the elections, appear to have been affected by the President’s arguments, or, at least they have not been affected in such a way as to bring them to the conclusions at which he is firmly anchored. On the contrary, the divergence between them has been steadily growing greater, until to-day the policy of the Administration seems hopeless of popular triumph in any State of the Union, if we except the State of Kentucky.

The editorial goes on to argue that the Legislative branch of the federal government is more powerful than the Executive as shown by Congress overriding the president’s vetoes. There was even talk of impeaching the president. The Times called on Mr. Johnson to act as a statesman and accept the people’s vote and work with Congress by trying to conform his policy to the legislature’s.

… On a hundred occasions he has said, “The people are always right.” It can, therefore, be no violence to his principles or his character, to listen to their voice and obey it. He held out against Congress last session, because he believed the people were with him. He held on his course through the Summer, because he saw no sufficient reason to change it. He held on after the earlier elections in the Fall, because he believed the later and more important ones would result in his favor. But after he has heard from the Eastern, Western and Central States – after he hears from New-York and New-Jersey and Illinois and the other States that vote this month, he can have no shadow of a doubt as to the popular will; and he will only justify his record in voluntarily recognizing that it is not the Executive but the people who’s right it is to rule.

You can check out the Harper’s Weekly cartoon at the Library of Congress. The cartoon suggests the importance of the Fourteenth Amendment in the 1866 elections.
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no more rebels to fight

Posted on November 2, 2016 by SUMPTER

So far I haven’t noticed a letter from General William T. Sherman endorsing President Andrew Johnson’s reconstruction policy being published just before the 1866 elections in New York for its bombshell affect, but according to reports the general openly supported the president while he was in Washington, D.C. in October. From a Seneca County, New York newspaper in November 1866:

LIUTENANT [sic] GENERAL SHERMAN while in Washington made no secret of his support of the President’s policy. On one occasion he said, “Soldiers have something else to do now besides fighting. We fought the rebels as long as there were any rebels to fight. What we have now to do is to secure the object for which we fought. We fought to restore the Union; let us now restore it.” He frequently expressed his surprise and indignation that the Southern states were deprived of the right of representation so long after the termination of the war. – N.Y. Commercial Advertiser.

According to his 1889 memoirs, General Sherman had been in Washington at the request of Andrew Johnson. From The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Second Edition, Volume II, in Chapter 26:

General Sherman's portrait in 1889 book

General Sherman’s portrait in 1889 book

While these great changes were being wrought at the West, in the East politics had resumed full sway, and all the methods of anti-war times had been renewed. President Johnson had differed with his party as to the best method of reconstructing the State governments of the South, which had been destroyed and impoverished by the war, and the press began to agitate the question of the next President. Of course, all Union men naturally turned to General Grant, and the result was jealousy of him by the personal friends of President Johnson and some of his cabinet. Mr. Johnson always seemed very patriotic and friendly, and I believed him honest and sincere in his declared purpose to follow strictly the Constitution of the United States in restoring the Southern States to their normal place in the Union; but the same cordial friendship subsisted between General Grant and myself, which was the outgrowth of personal relations dating back to 1839. So I resolved to keep out of this conflict. In September, 1866, I was in the mountains of New Mexico, when a message reached me that I was wanted at Washington. I had with me a couple of officers and half a dozen soldiers as escort, and traveled down the Arkansas, through the Kiowas, Comanches, Cheyennes, and Arapahoes, all more or less disaffected, but reached St. Louis in safety, and proceeded to Washington, where I reported to General Grant.

He explained to me that President Johnson wanted to see me. He did not know the why or wherefore, but supposed it had some connection with an order he (General Grant) had received to escort the newly appointed Minister, Hon. Lew Campbell, of Ohio, to the court of Juarez, the President-elect of Mexico, which country was still in possession of the Emperor Maximilian, supported by a corps of French troops commanded by General Bazaine. General Grant denied the right of the President to order him on a diplomatic mission unattended by troops; said that he had thought the matter over, world disobey the order, and stand the consequences. He manifested much feeling; and said it was a plot to get rid of him. I then went to President Johnson, who treated me with great cordiality, and said that he was very glad I had come; that General Grant was about to go to Mexico on business of importance, and he wanted me at Washington to command the army in General Grant’s absence. I then informed him that General Grant would not go, and he seemed amazed; said that it was generally understood that General Grant construed the occupation of the territories of our neighbor, Mexico, by French troops, and the establishment of an empire therein, with an Austrian prince at its head, as hostile to republican America, and that the Administration had arranged with the French Government for the withdrawal of Bazaine’s troops, which would leave the country free for the President-elect Juarez to reoccupy the city of Mexico, etc., etc.; that Mr. Campbell had been accredited to Juarez, and the fact that he was accompanied by so distinguished a soldier as General Grant would emphasize the act of the United States. I simply reiterated that General Grant would not go, and that he, Mr. Johnson, could not afford to quarrel with him at that time. I further argued that General Grant was at the moment engaged on the most delicate and difficult task of reorganizing the army under the act of July 28, 1866; that if the real object was to put Mr. Campbell in official communication with President Juarez, supposed to be at El Paso or Monterey, either General Hancock, whose command embraced New Mexico, or General Sheridan, whose command included Texas, could fulfill the object perfectly; or, in the event of neither of these alternates proving satisfactory to the Secretary of State, that I could be easier spared than General Grant. “Certainly,” answered the President, “if you will go, that will answer perfectly.”

General Sherman and party left for Mexico on November 10th.

According to Garry Boulard [1]General Grant declined the Mexico assignment in an October 21st note to the president:

“I have most respectfully to beg to be excused from the duty proposed. It is a diplomatic service for which I am not fitted either by education or taste.”

No longer, just because the president asked, would Grant respond. Johnson was astonished. A wide and unbridgeable chasm between the General-in-Chief and President had finally become a reality.

  1. [1]Boulard, Garry The Swing Around the Circle: Andrew Johnson and the Train Ride that Destroyed a Presidency. Bloomington, Indiana: iUniverse, 2008. Print. page 158.↩
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October surprise?

Posted on October 29, 2016 by SUMPTER
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44686/44686-h/44686-h.htm#if_image488

General Sherman back in the news

From a Seneca County, New York newspaper in October 1866:

Gen. Sherman Endorses the President.

The Washington correspondent of the New York Tribune, speaks of this distinguished General:

“I am informed that General Sherman has made a second surrender to the Rebels, more disastrous to his fame than his celebrated surrender to Joe Johnston. We all know that the General is conservative, but despite Grant’s orders not to interfere with politics, he makes his conservatism political. He has written a letter to the President, indorsing the policy unequivocally, sustaining the President’s course since Lee’s surrender, and making no allusion to the amendment. This letter is held in reserve, and will be printed just before the New York election, in hope of carrying over some half-and-half Republicans.”

And this it is which makes a surrender to the Rebels!

We have but very little doubt of all this. The best men, and the best minds in the army are with the Restoration Policy of the President. What they fought for was 36 United States, not 26, and hence such letters from Gen. Sherman.

General Wm. T. Sherman U.S.A. (between 1860 and 1875; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/brh2003001160/PP/)

supports President Johnson

William Tecumseh Sherman was criticized for the lenient terms he originally agreed to for the surrender of Joseph Johnston’s army in April 1865.

150 years ago today another New York newspaper used the rumors of Sherman’s support for President Johnson to launch an attack on Wendell Phillips

From The New-York Times October 29, 1866:

EVEN-HANDED JUSTICE. – Since the announcement by telegraph a few days since that Gen. SHERMAN approves of what is popularly known as the President’s policy of reconstruction, we have received at least a hundred papers in which he is stigmatized as a “Copperhead,” and a great variety of charges not less terrible than this are brought against him. What will be said when the letter he has written expressing his views. [sic] gets into print, no man can tell: but if he be not denounced as a traitor and a coward, and if WENDELL PHILLIPS does not propose to have him gibbeted on short notice, it will be very curious. Those who remember the exploits performed by WENDELL PHILLIPS on the field of battle and elsewhere in saving the country during its days of peril, will certainly justify him in treating SHERMAN as a traitor, and also in dealing with GRANT in the style he has done, as at least belonging to the suspects. The armies of LEE and JO. JOHNSTON, it will be remembered, surrendered to PHILLIPS last year, and when he also compelled GRANT and SHERMAN to surrender, he can then turn them all over to the hangman.

Wendell Phillips (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23761/23761-h/23761-h.htm#WENDELL_PHILLIPS)

General Phillips

The Times was almost certainly referring to a speech Wendell Phillips presented at the Cooper Institute on October 25, 1866 (reported here). Mr. Phillips called for Andrew Johnson’s prompt removal from office because of the president’s “treachery, his collusion with traitors, his resistance to the laws of Congress, the blood of New-Orleans upon his hands, his crusade [I think] against the whole essence and spirit of the hour.” He went on to say that General Grant was also responsible for the New Orleans riot. As General-in-Chief it was his job to keep the streets safe in the “conquered Republic”. Benjamin Butler would have kept New Orleans safe. “The war is not yet ended. The fight recommences in a new shape. If Gen. GRANT has surrendered to JOHNSON as SHERMAN did to JOHNSTON, why let us know it. This people are bound to and certain to save the nation.”

Garry Boulard writes that Andrew Johnson’s Swing Around the Circle caused The New-York Times to become much less supportive of the president.[1] But it seems like the paper was going to oppose anyone bashing General Grant.

RINOs today; half-and-half Republicans 150 years ago. Both more moderate than the labelers, although the labelers are coming from opposite sides of the left-right political spectrum. From Project Gutenberg: generals, Wendell Phillips. From the Library of Congress: General Sherman
  1. [1]Boulard, Garry The Swing Around the Circle: Andrew Johnson and the Train Ride that Destroyed a Presidency. Bloomington, Indiana: iUniverse, 2008. Print. page 156.↩
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not a lost cause

Posted on October 25, 2016 by SUMPTER

Apparently 150 years ago a former Virginia governor and Confederate general was not buying into the Lost Cause theory.

NY Times October 26, 1866

NY Times October 26, 1866

From The New-York Times on October 26, 1866:

The celebration at Winchester to-day was an entire success, if a large crowd and lengthy oration are elements. The number in attendance were fully 5,000, and Ex-Gov. WISE was the orator. Stonewall cemetery already contains the remains of 2,000 rebel dead gathered from around Winchester.

The ceremonies to-day were intended as dedicatory. The funeral and burial of the brothers ASHBY was the main feature of the morning, the procession through the streets being large and imposing, and the burial being accompanied with Masonic honors. Ex-Gov. WISE spoke for two hours. After his oration a poem was read, and the ceremonies concluded late in the day. The number of drunken men in and about Winchester was very large, and, for an occasion of this kind, disgraceful.

ADDRESS BY GOV. WISE

Henry A. Wise (between 1860 and 1870; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/cwp2003003421/PP/)

calling on the Stonewall example

FELLOW-CITIZENS: A mourning people meet in the midst of graves, the dust of which is more sacred than that of kindred, to do homage to the virtuous, and to commemorate the deeds of their heroes. I came to condole with and comfort the living, to search among the ashes of the dead for examples how to survive their death, how to live after them, how to nourish the seeds of indestructible truth. … The buried are now immortal, while we survive to suffer. … [The South needed “more than a Moses now to bear us up in dungeons of defeat …” I invoke then the mighty Confederate dead…] … a grave in Lexington, trembling, quickly gives up a life-breathing spirit in a great example – the sanctified Stonewall JACKSON – a very Michael of deliverance; his example speaks to us. The intrinsic sterling stamina of his moral greatness, his Christian heroism, the eternal adamant of his character and nature, his supreme faith in God – faith in immutable morals and principles, and in their might to prevail in the end against all opposing powers – these made him “Stonewall.” From this example rising up before us with this immortal fact, I reverently commence, and question it here amid these Confederate braves. … The Stonewall example is not admonishing, but it is cheering and full of hope. It puts to shame the deceased Machaevelian dogma that a faith or the truth that moral principles can ever or could ever be submitted to the arbitrament of arms and be conquered by the mere force of numbers. But it scouts that worse than immorality, that diabolical despair which maligns a cause worth Stonewall JACKSON’s fighting for, and worth his dying for, by calling it a lost cause, as if crucifixion could lose a cause. The Captain of our Salvation was conquered; He died that the cause might live; and from that day to this the blood of the martyr has been the seed of the church. So with the seeds of truth on earth. If our cause was lost, it was false; if true, its [sic] not lost. First victories cannot be termed final results. There were many errors in our ways of going out to war. Those errors fell. The truths for which we fought yet live. [The Stonewall example speaks to all those who despair]. There is a kind of pride, a decent dignity due to ourselves, which, spite of our misfortunes, may be maintained and cherished to the last.

The grave of Stonewall Jackson: Lexington Virginia (New York : Published by Currier & Ives, c1870.; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2001702138/)

at Stonewall’s grave in Lexington

… [Mr. Wise encouraged young men to stay in Virginia and quietly labor] He asked them where they would go if they should leave Virginia? Would they leave the United States? If they supposed the United States not free, where else on earth did they expect to find a people as free?

[Mr. Wise explained Virginia’s slow progress compared to other states:] Slavery created a landed aristocracy which was antagonistic to progress, and repellant to immigration. ….

Stonewall Jackson is buried in Lexington. The Stonewall Confederate Cemetery is currently part of Mount Hebron Cemetery in Winchester, where you can still see the graves of Turner Ashby and his brother Richard. You can read more about The Lost Cause at Encyclopedia Virginia: “In 1866 [Edward A.] Pollard published The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates, a justification of the Confederate war effort, prompting the popular use of the term.” According to the Wikipedia link up top, Henry A. Wise joined the Republican Party at some point after the war – just like Confederate General James Longstreet.

ashby_brothers_grave_-_mount_hebron_cemetery_winchester_virginia_-_stierch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ashby_Brothers_Grave_-_Mount_Hebron_Cemetery,_Winchester,_Virginia_-_Stierch.jpg)

the Ashby brothers’ grave in Winchester

513px-jacksonmemorial (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:JacksonMemorial.jpg)

at Stonewall Jackson’s grave in Lexington

Sarah Stierch (CC BY 4.0 ) provides the photo of the Ashby grave, which is licensed by Creative Commons. Jan Kronsell photo of the Stonewall staue is also licensed by Creative Commons. From the Library of Congress: a probably pre-war Wise, a Currier and Ives rendition of Stonewall’s grave, with General Lee
Miscellaneous. Lee, Gen. R.E. [at the grave of Stonewall Jackson] (between 1873 and ca. 1916; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2016713006/)

a couple Lost Cause icons

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winter wheat

Posted on October 15, 2016 by SUMPTER
Portrait of Abigail Adams by Benjamin Blyth (Portrait of Abigail Adams by Benjamin Blyth; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/hec2009000215/)

remember us

I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors … If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.

ABIGAIL ADAMS: Letter to John Adams, 1774.[1]*

______________________________________________
______________________________________________

From a Seneca County, New York newspaper in 1866:

A WOMAN FOR CONGRESS. – Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton announces herself as a candidate for Congress in the Eighth District. She publishes her card in the Anti-Slavery Standard of this week, declaring herself to be in favor of free speech, free press, free trade and free men. She desires a seat in the Fortieth Congress in order that she may have a “voice for universal suffrage.”

The Capitol of the United States of America: taken from Adams & Co's Office (c1865.; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/97517392/)

Mrs. Stanton going to Washington?

The editors might have copied the story from the October 11, 1866 issue of The New-York Times. The articles are basically the same except that The Times wonders why Mrs. Stanton only mentioned free men and ends with “We believe she has not yet received a nomination from any of the regular Conventions.”

Here’s more detail from History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II, edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage (1881; pages 180-181):

At the November election of this year, Mrs. Stanton offered herself as a candidate for Congress; in order to test the constitutional right of a woman to run for office. This aroused some discussion on this phase of the question, and many were surprised to learn that while women could not vote, they could hold any office in which their constituents might see fit to place them. Theodore Tilton gives the following graphic description of this event in “The Eminent Women”:

In a cabinet of curiosities I have laid away as an interesting relic, a little white ballot, two inches square, and inscribed:

ecs

Mrs. Stanton is the only woman in the United States who, as yet, has been a candidate for Congress. In conformity with a practice prevalent in some parts of this country, and very prevalent in England, she nominated herself. The public letter in which she proclaimed herself a candidate was as follows:

To the Electors of the Eighth Congressional District:

elizabeth_cady_stanton (http://www.wpclipart.com/American_History/Womans_Rights/womens_rights_2/Elizabeth_Cady_Stanton.jpg)

the four freedoms

Although, by the Constitution of the State of New York woman is denied the elective franchise, yet she is eligible to office; therefore, I present myself to you as a candidate for Representative to Congress. Belonging to a disfranchised class, I have no political antecedents to recommend me to your support,—but my creed is free speech, free press, free men, and free trade,—the cardinal points of democracy. Viewing all questions from the stand-point of principle rather than expediency, there is a fixed uniform law, as yet unrecognized by either of the leading parties, governing alike the social and political life of men and nations. The Republican party has occasionally a clear vision of personal rights, though in its protective policy it seems wholly blind to the rights of property and interests of commerce; while it recognizes the duty of benevolence between man and man, it teaches the narrowest selfishness in trade between nations. The Democrats, on the contrary, while holding sound and liberal principles on trade and commerce, have ever in their political affiliations maintained the idea of class and caste among men—an idea wholly at variance with the genius of our free institutions and fatal to high civilization. One party fails at one point and one at another.

In asking your suffrages—believing alike in free men and free trade—I could not represent either party as now constituted. Nevertheless, as an Independent Candidate, I desire an election at this time, as a rebuke to the dominant party for its retrogressive legislation in so amending the National Constitution as to make invidious distinctions on the ground of sex. That instrument recognizes as persons all citizens who obey the laws and support the State, and if the Constitutions of the several States were brought into harmony with the broad principles of the Federal Constitution, the women of the Nation would no longer be taxed without representation, or governed without their consent. Not one word should be added to that great charter of rights to the insult or injury of the humblest of our citizens. I would gladly have a voice and vote in the Fortieth Congress to demand universal suffrage, that thus a republican form of government might be secured to every State in the Union.

Representative women / L. Schamer del. (Boston : L. Prang & Co., c1870.; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/98508687/)

a “representative” woman

If the party now in the ascendency makes its demand for “Negro Suffrage” in good faith, on the ground of natural right, and because the highest good of the State demands that the republican idea be vindicated, on no principle of justice or safety can the women of the nation be ignored. In view of the fact that the Freedmen of the South and the millions of foreigners now crowding our shores, most of whom represent neither property, education, nor civilization, are all in the progress of events to be enfranchised, the best interests of the nation demand that we outweigh this incoming pauperism, ignorance, and degradation, with the wealth, education, and refinement of the women of the republic. On the high ground of safety to the Nation, and justice to citizens, I ask your support in the coming election.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

New York, Oct. 10, 1866.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was in the news earlier that year. From a Seneca County, New York newspaper on April 14, 1866:

ECS quote at SF park

seed sown

THE GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY. – Our whilom townswoman, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as President of the National Woman’s Rights Committee, insists that at this hour the nation needs the highest thought and inspiration of a true womanhood infused into every vein and artery of its life; and woman needs a broader, deeper education, such as a pure religion and lofty patriotism alone can give. From the baptism of this second revolution should not woman come forth with new strength and dignity, clothed in all those “rights, privileges, and immunities” that shall best enable her to fulfill her highest duties to humanity, her country, her family and herself? Of course she should! By all means let the dear creatures come! Who’s afraid?

Apparently the editors based the above on the announcement of an “Eleventh National Woman’s Rights Convention” to be held in New York City on May 10, 1866. The call appeared in the April 2, 1866 issue of The New-York Times. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony said that nobody could call the republican ideal a failure until it had been genuinely tried by ensuring equal rights for all. They disagreed with federal legislation that would promote voting rights for black men but ignore all women:

“… while our representatives at Washington are discussing the right of suffrage for the black man, as the only protection to life, liberty and happiness, they deny that “necessity of citizenship” to woman, by proposing to introduce the word “male” into the Federal Constitution. In securing suffrage but to another shade of manhood, while we disfranchise fifteen million tax-payers, we come not one line nearer the republican idea. Can a ballot in the hand of a woman, and dignity on her brow, more unsex her than do a sceptre and a crown?” [Britain’s Queen Victoria] …

___________________________________________________
___________________________________________________

Whilom indeed. In her 1898 autobiography Elizabeth Cady Stanton described the shock of moving from Boston to Seneca Falls in 1847 (pages 143-148):

ecs-autobiography145 (https://archive.org/details/cu31924032654315)

On page 145

Nevertheless, Mrs. Stanton certainly made good use of her desert experience. She began to appreciate the difficult life of women who didn’t have good servants and could appreciare Ralph Waldo Emerson’s statement that “A healthy discontent is the first step to progress.” There were many reformers in central New York State. She played a major role in the Seneca Falls “Woman’s Rights Convention” on July 19 and 20, 1848. AS a matter of fact, she was the chief author of “A Declaration of Sentiments” that she read at the convention. The document, which proclaimed that “all men and women are created equal”, was modeled closely on that 1776 declaration of “independency.” In 1862 Mrs. Stanton moved to New York City, where she ran for Congress 150 years ago.

1010160809-00 (ECS Park in SF NY)

Elizabeth Cady Stanton Park in Seneca Falls, New York

You can read and see more about Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s life at the National Park Service, including a photo from about 1865. The winter wheat plaque is on the left side mini-column at the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Park. The park is just across the street from the reconstructed Wesleyan Chapel, where the 1848 convention met. Across the canal from the park is the old Seneca Knitting Mills, which employed women during the Civil War. I believe the mills is going to become the new home of the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
*According to the Library of Congress, Abigail Adams’ letter to John was written in 1776.
The portrait of Elizabeth Cady Stanton comes from wpclipart. From the Library of Congress: Abigail Adams, capitol, seven women, sculpture (I believe the live woman to the far right is sculptor Adelaide Johnston).
Sculpture: Portrait Monument to Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, in crate, U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C. ([between 1921 and 1923; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/hec2013001261/)

Stanton, Anthony, and Mott

  1. [1]Seldes, George, compiler. The Great Quotations. 1960. New York: Pocket Books, 1967. Print. pages 557-558.↩
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straw gazing

Posted on October 8, 2016 by SUMPTER

Back in 1866 Henry J. Raymond was a U.S. Congressman from New York and publisher of The New-York Times. Mr. Raymond was a moderate Republican, who generally favored President Andrew Johnson’s reconstruction policy of readmitting Southern states to the Union and Congress with as few federal prerequisites as possible. The 1866 midterm elections could be seen as a referendum on President Johnson and his policies vis-à-vis the more radical Republican Congress. 150 years ago today Mr. Raymond’s paper predicted state elections in Pennsylvania and Indiana the next day were not going to be favorable to the president. One of the main problems was that to support the president meant a vote for Democrats.

Our national chart, a supplement to the "Cincinnati Weekly Times" for 1866 (Cincinnati : C.W. Starbuck & Co., 1866; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2005694439/)

his policy on trial

From The New-York Times October 8, 1866:

The State Elections To-morrow – Probable Results and their Causes.

The elections in Pennsylvania and Indiana take place to-morrow. A Governor and other State officers are to be chosen in the former, and members of the Fortieth Congress in both. The canvas has been active and vigorous – marked by much more of feeling and bitterness than usual; and the result is of a good deal of importance. It is scarcely accurate to say that the issue, as between the President’s plan of reconstruction and that of Congress, has been clearly made and distinctly tried, – because many side issues, quite foreign to this, such as the New-Orleans riot, the President’s Western tour, the nomination and appointment of Copperheads to office, &c., have been brought into the canvas, and have had a controlling influence upon public sentiment. Nevertheless, in a general way, the President’s policy is upon trial, and will be indorsed or condemned by the people at the polls.

We have no doubt that the verdict will be adverse. We look for the defeat of CLYMER in Pennsylvania by at least 20,000 majority, and a similar, though perhaps less decisive, result in Indiana. In both States, more probably in the latter alone, the Republicans may lose two or three members of Congress, but the substantial victory will remain in their hands.

The House of Representatives, U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C. / lith. by E. Sachse & Co. (Washington, D.C. : Published by Casimir Bohn, 1866.; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/98507527/)

U.S. House meets c1866 – empty Southern seats?

This is not the time for a detailed inquiry into the causes of such a result – though that time will come. We do not believe it due to any inherent injustice or unsoundness in the main feature of the President’s policy – the early restoration of the Union by the admission into Congress of loyal members from loyal States. But in our judgment, it will be due, in a very large degree, to the fact that this policy has been identified, in the public mind, with the Democratic Party and the secession sentiment in the South – and that it’s success at the polls involves the return of the Democratic Party, as organized and directed during the war, to place and power. In Pennsylvania the only way in which that policy can be sustained at the polls, is by electing CLYMER as the Democratic candidate over GEARY to be Governor; and in Indiana, as well as in Pennsylvania, Democratic nominees for Congress must be elected over Union candidates and Republicans. The issue is between these two parties. There is no National Union organization in the field … The Philadelphia Convention has disappeared from the contest. …

Nothing could be more unwise or preposterous than to ask Union men of any sort to support such a candidate as CLYMER in opposition to such a man as GEARY. The one fought for the Union, with ability and distinction, through the whole war; the other opposed the Government, denounced its action and aided the Democratic Party in its efforts to embarrass and defeat its measures. CLYMER was identified, thoroughly and wholly, with the Democratic Party, … To present him and that party as the special representatives and sole champions of the President’s policy, was to saddle it with a burden which no policy, however wise and just, could be reasonably expected to bear. …

Gen'l. John W. Geary and staff - taken at Harper's Ferry (between 1860 and 1870; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/98506791/)

“Gen’l. John W. Geary and staff – taken at Harper’s Ferry” (Library of Congress)

Matters have been so mismanaged, not only in Pennsylvania, but throughout the North, that support of the President’s policy of Restoration involves a return of the Democratic Party to power; and that price the people will not pay. They have no faith in that party … They do not believe … that it cares for the liberties or rights of the enfranchised slaves, or sympathizes with efforts to elevate the character and improve the condition of the great mass of the people. They regard it as utterly selfish … [The electorate would rather risk the continued exclusion of the South from Congress than a return of power to Democrats. Radicals will win tomorrow and in other states later on]

I was surprised that the Times could put a number on Mr. Geary’s margin of victory. According to Wikipedia: “The first known example of an opinion poll was a local straw poll conducted by The Aru Pennsylvanian in 1824, showing Andrew Jackson leading John Quincy Adams by 335 votes to 169 in the contest for the United States Presidency. Since Jackson won the popular vote in that state and the whole country, such straw votes gradually became more popular, but they remained local, usually city-wide phenomena.” Wikipedia then jumps to the first national survey in 1916. One of the internet sources that says that the term “straw vote” has been used in print since 1866 is barrypopik.com, which mentions a report with a small sample size: “1866 Cleveland (Ohio) Leader 6 Oct. 4/2 A straw vote taken on a Toledo train yesterday resulted as follows; A. Johnson 12; Congress, 47.”

I don’t know how the Times came up with its numbers, but it’s prediction was quite accurate, as can be seen in the October 10, 1866 issue of The New-York Times, which gave Geary a nearly 20,000 majority. Today Wikipedia says 17,000.

One Pennsylvania citizen proclaimed that he somewhat grudgingly voted Republican:

Take notice! To all whom this may concern. Darby, Delaware County, Pa. Tuesday, October, 9th, 1866. The undersigned votes the (so called) Republican ticket ... John Sidney Jones. Darby, Pa. 1866. (1866; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/rbpe.1590130b/)

cause he couldn’t tweet?

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at Independence Hall

Posted on October 5, 2016 by SUMPTER

In late August 1866 President Andrew Johnson and entourage embarked on a two and a half week “Swing Around the Circle” tour to try to influence the 1866 midterm elections in favor of more conservative, Democrat candidates opposed to Radical Republicans. The president didn’t swing into New England, but it probably wouldn’t have helped his cause at all. On September 10th Maine voted overwhelmingly Republican. The Republicans kept all five U.S. House seats, and former General Joshua Chamberlain was elected as governor with 62% of the vote.

Clymer Hon. Hiester of PA. Rep. (between 1865 and 1880; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/brh2003001969/PP/)

Hiester Clymer

The Pennsylvania elections were scheduled for October 10th. According to the October 6, 1866 issue of The New-York Times 150 years ago this evening Democratic gubernatorial candidate Hiester Clymer held a rally at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. His opponent was former Union General John W. Geary. Mr. Clymer began his speech by explaining that he had traveled throughout the state during his campaign, including “on the African coast that Bradford and Susquehanna Counties. [Laughter and Applause.] … and the stomping ground of THADDEUS STEVENS – the County of LANCASTER. [Applause and Laughter.]”

After the Keystone Club arrived Mr. Clymer continued his address:

The constitutional amendment! (1866; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2008661697/)

Don’t vote for Geary!

… My fellow-citizens, the clouds of darkness are disappearing. Upon every hill-top and in every valley the watchfires of Conservatism are burning brightly; and by the 9th of October I predict the glorious sun of victory will arise to shine upon the peace and happiness of our distracted country. … Now, my fellow-citizens let me advert to the gigantic conflict which is presented in the present issues. Why was that war waged? Was not its vital object [the] preservation of the Union, to uphold the Constitution and enforce the laws? [“Yes, yes.”] Suppose that under the shadow of this sacred temple of liberty, the memories of which inspire the heart of every American – suppose that at the inception of the rebellion you had been told it was intended to free the negro, to confer social and political privileges upon him, and to perpetuate the existence of a particular party, would you have voted a dollar or a man to any such purpose as that? [Cheers.] But there is a party in this country that openly proclaims this was the great and essential end of the war. …

The two platforms (1866; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2008661700/)

no gray area

A procession approached that included “an omnibus containing wounded and maimed soldiers and sailors” … “A banner was borne containing the inscription – ‘No serpent can live in the Cradle of Liberty.'”

Mr Clymer continued:

Fellow-citizens, you now behold men who in their devotion to the Union have risked life, strength and comfort. [Cheers for ANDREW JOHNSON.] I stand before the people of this State the representative of the Union, of the Constitution, of the enforcement of the laws, and of the white race in this land. [Cheers.] It matters not whether the destruction of this Union be effected by war or legislation; whether it be the open act of the rebels or the insidious and unconstitutional abuse of power by the Radicals. The Democratic party stands ready to thwart and prevent them. [Applause.] …

The candidate again noticed the maimed soldiers and maintained his opposition to negro suffrage, unlike his opponent John Geary – “I am gratified in maintaining that I am the representative of the white race as a distinction. [Cheers.]” There was more to Mr. Clymer’s speech. The Times also reported a brief disturbance at the rally in which some police officers and citizens were severely injured. The Union Republican clubs of Philadelphia conducted a “grand torchlit procession” on the same night.

The Freedman's Bureau! An agency to keep the Negro in idleness at the expense of the white man. Twice vetoed by the President, and made a lawy by Congress. Support Congress & you support the Negro Sustain the President & you protect the white man (1866; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2008661698/)

Clymer supports President Johnson’s two vetoes of Freedman’s Bureau act

Independence Hall. Philadelphia 1876 / Theodore Poleni. (LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2009633673/)

“sacred temple of liberty”

Posted in 150 Years Ago This Week, Aftermath, Postbellum Politics, Postbellum Society, Reconstruction | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

2,111 unknown

Posted on September 30, 2016 by SUMPTER
Civil War Unknowns monument, designed by Montgomery Meigs and dedicated in 1866, at Arlington Cemetery (1866?; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2015650835/)

as it originally appeared in 1866

150 years ago this month the Civil War Unknowns Monument was sealed at Arlington National Cemetery. Although Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs intended the monument to honor Union soldiers, Confederate soldiers were probably also included because all the skeletons were unidentifiable. Wikipedia also says that one of the reasons Arlington was chosen for the national cemetery was to make it impossible for Robert E. Lee to ever move back into his old house. Today Arlington House is The Robert E. Lee Memorial.

According to the October 3, 1866 issue of The New-York Times the remaining household effects from the Lee mansion were delivered to General Lee’s representative by order of President Johnson on October 1, 1866:

… It appears that nearly everything of any value had been stolen. Many valuable heirlooms, including some of the family portraits had been purloined. The portraits were taken from the frames, packed in boxes, and stored in the upper loft of the mansion for safety in 1861. These boxes had been broken open, and everything of real value taken away, and the letters and private papers of Gen. LEE scattered over the loft

View of the city of Washington, the metropolis of the United States of America, taken from Arlington House, the residence of George Washington P. Custis Esq. / P. Anderson del. ; on stone by F.H. Lane. (Boston : T. Moore's Lithography, c1838.; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2003670215/)

D.C. from Arlington House c1838

[Arlington, Va. Brig. Gen. Gustavus A. DeRussey (third from left) and staff on portico of Arlington House] (1864 May.; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/cwp2003000933/PP/#)

“Brig. Gen. Gustavus A. DeRussey (third from left) and staff on portico of Arlington House” (c1864, Library of Congress)

800px-washington_dc_from_arlington (Washington DC from Arlington House, atop Arlington National Cemetery.(November 2005; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Washington_DC_from_Arlington.JPG)

DC from Arlington House November 2005

Sean McCue’s November 2005 photo is licensed by Creative Commons
Posted in 150 Years Ago This Month, Aftermath, Postbellum Society, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

crater surprise

Posted on September 29, 2016 by SUMPTER
The Battle of the Petersburg Crater: The Crater, as seen from the Union side. From a sketch made at the time (ca. 1887; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2003669688/)

after the explosion

The Battle of the Petersburg Crater: The Confederate line as reconstructed at the crater. From a drawing made by Lieutenant Henderson after the battle (ca. 1887; LOC: https://www.loc.gov/item/2003669689/)

after “reconstruction”

__________________________________

From a Seneca County, New York newspaper in September 1866:

BODY OF A WHITE FEMALE SOLDIER FOUND IN THE CRATER AT PETERSBURG. – The Petersburg Index says that the grave diggers at the crater have unearthed, a short distance in front of that famous place, the body of a white woman dressed in a Federal uniform. The body when found was in an excellent state of preservation. The features, pallid with the hue of death, revealed the delicate caste of her woman’s face, and her hair, though cut short, possessed a glow and softness which alone might have excited a suspicion of her sex. She had been shot through the head. She was carefully placed in one of the new coffins provided for her sterner comrades and taken [?] with them to be buried among them.

You can read more about Women Civil War Soldiers here.

For sale! That very valuable tract of land known as Crater Farm near Petersburg, Virginia ... For terms, address Mrs. Susie R. Griffith, Crater Farm, Petersburg, Virginia Kirkham & Co. printers [n. d.]. (https://www.loc.gov/item/rbpe.18802200/)

tourist trap?

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