Blue Gray Review | American Civil War more or less

a death on campus

Posted on October 12, 2020 by SUMPTER

in 1845

It was a damp, chilly afternoon in Lexington, Virginia. A heavy rain set in that eventually resulted in some severe flooding. September 28, 1870 was a long day for Robert E. Lee, the president of Washington College. According to Colonel William Preston Johnston, Mr. Lee ended his work day with a three hour church meeting:

the last picture shown

“Wednesday, September 28, 1870, found General lee at the post of duty. In the morning he was fully occupied with the correspondence and other tasks incident to his office of president of Washington College, and he declined offers of assistance from members of the faculty, of whose services he sometimes availed himself. After dinner, at four o’clock, he attended a vestry-meeting of Grace (Episcopal) church. The afternoon was chilly and wet, and a steady rain had set in, which did not cease until it resulted in a great flood, the most memorable and destructive in this region for a hundred years. The church was rather cold and damp, and General Lee, during the meeting, sat in a pew with his military cape cast loosely about him. In a conversation that occupied the brief space preceding the call to order, he took part, and told with marked cheerfulness of manner and kindliness of tone some pleasant anecdotes of Bishop Meade and Chief-Justice Marshall. The meeting was protracted until after seven o’clock by a discussion touching the rebuilding of the church edifice and the increase of the rector’s salary. General Lee acted as chairman, and, after hearing all that was said, gave his own opinion, as was his wont, briefly and without argument. He closed the meeting with a characteristic act. The amount required for the minister’s salary still lacked a sum much greater than General Lee’s proportion of the subscription, in view of his frequent and generous contributions to the church and other charities, but just before the adjournment, when the treasurer announced the amount of the deficit still remaining, General Lee said in a low tone, ‘I will give that sum.’ He seemed tired toward the close of the meeting, and, as was afterward remarked, showed an unusual flush, but at the time no apprehensions were felt. …

After the church meeting Mr. Lee went home. As his wife Anna Custis Lee wrote, the general was literally speechless:

tea delayed

“…My husband came in. We had been waiting tea for him, and I remarked: ‘You have kept us waiting a long time. Where have you been?’ He did not reply, but stood up as if to say grace. Yet no word proceeded from his lips, and he sat down in his chair perfectly upright and with a sublime air of resignation on his countenance, and did not attempt to a reply to our inquiries. That look was never forgotten, and I have no doubt he felt that his hour had come; for though he submitted to the doctors, who were immediately summoned, and who had not even reached their homes from the same vestry-meeting, yet his whole demeanour during his illness showed one who had taken leave of earth. He never smiled, and rarely attempted to speak, except in dreams, and then he wandered to those dreadful battle-fields. Once, when Agnes urged him to take some medicine, which he always did with reluctance, he looked at her and said, ‘It is no use.’ But afterward he took it. When he became so much better the doctor said, ‘You must soon get out and ride your favorite gray!’ He shook his head most emphatically and looked upward. He slept a great deal, but knew us all, greeted us with a kindly pressure of the hand, and loved to have us around him. For the last forty-eight hours he seemed quite insensible of our presence. He breathed more heavily, and at last sank to rest with one deep-drawn sigh. And oh, what a glorious rest was in store for him!”

“what a glorious rest was in store for him!”

General Lee breathed his last on October 12th. Thanks to the telegraph, the news spread quickly. From the Richmond Daily Dispatch October 13, 1870:

The News Of The Death Of General Lee

home and office

The tidings of the death of Gen. Robert E. Lee reached Richmond by telegraph at nightfall yesterday. The brief telegram containing the sad intelligence brought sorrow to the heart of every man, woman, and child, in the city, and ere an hour passed, the whole community was shrouded in gloom. All seemed to have a sense of personal bereavement, and everywhere was manifested a desire to pay a fitting tribute of respect and affection to the memory of the departed patriot.The Chamber of Commerce had just assembled in annual meeting when the news was announced. No business was done except the adoption of the following resolution:”That this Chamber of Commerce recommend to its members and the citizens generally to close their places of business and place crape upon their doors during the day tomorrow (13th instant), in token of the general grief and as a tribute to the memory of the good and great man who has fallen in the midst of his usefulness and his honors.”The Chamber then adjourned to meet on Wednesday, the 19th instant.The action of this representative body of our mercantile community was spontaneous, and just what might have been expected of an assemblage of Virginia gentlemen stricken by the saddest of news; and the sentiment which prompted it will find an echo in every breast. No words of ours are necessary to secure the strict observance of the recommendation.The Governor will to-day communicate officially to the General Assembly the news of General Lee’s death, and in all probability that body will set apart a day to be observed as one of mourning throughout the Commonwealth. Virginia’s voice will doubtless find expression in the request that the remains of her noblest and most honored son shall he brought to the capital and interred where lie so many of her heroic dead – at Hollywood.The bells on all the public buildings in the city will be tolled from sunrise to sunset to-day as a tribute of respect, and the City Council will hold a meeting at 5 o’clock P. M. to take action in reference to the public loss.

Columbia’s mourning paper

The Daily Phoenix page 2

‘a tale of sorrow for the South’

________________________

Horace Greeley really annoyed the Richmond Dispatch when he apparently opined that flags should not be flown half-mast in General Lee’s honor. In its October 24th issue the Daily Dispatch said that future historians would look kindly on General Lee – just like a contemporary editorial from London:

almost venerated

Greeley excuses himself for justifying Mr. Boutwell and his Savannah understrapper in refusing to allow the United States flag to fly at half-mast upon the occasion of the death of General Lee by pleading that that flag represents “the whole country” that General Lee won his fame in attempting to humble it; and that he (Greeley) cannot “consent that a false estimate” of General Lee’s errors “shall pass into history.” Thus spoke and wrote the great Dr. Samuel Johnson, of Washington, and the other “rebels” who fought the war of American independence. Thus spoke and wrote the British loyalists of the seventeenth century concerning John Hampden, Algernon Sidney, and Oliver Cromwell. But history to-day speaks the praises of all these men. A Carlyle champions Cromwell, a Macaulay extols Hampden and Sidney, and every historian, British and American, lauds the “Cincinatus of the West.” So shall it be, oh, mole-eyed Greeley, with the fame of Robert E. Lee. It will grow brighter and brighter as the coming centuries fall into line with the years “beyond the flood.” The voice of contemporaneous historians residing in England is some indication of what the verdict of those separated from us by time instead of distance will be. Even as we write we come across the following discriminating article, copied from the London Standard. Read it, all ye puny tricksters who set up your little parasols between the sun and the earth, and understand how much light you will be able to shut out from the future historian – how easy you will find the task of preventing the truth from “passing into history”: “The announcement that General R. E. Lee has been struck down by paralysis, and not expected to recover, will be received, even at this crisis, with universal interest, and will everywhere excite a sympathy and regret which testify to the deep impression made on the world at large by his character and achievements. Few are the generals who have earned, since history began, a greater military reputation; still fewer are the men of similar eminence, civil or military, whose personal qualities would bear comparison with his. The bitterest enemies of his country hardly dared to whisper a word against the character of her most distinguished general; while neutrals regarded him with ah admiration for his deeds and a respect for his lofty and unselfish nature which almost grew into veneration, and his own countrymen learned to look up to him with as much confidence and esteem as they ever felt for Washington, and with an affection which the cold demeanor and austere temper of Washington could never inspire. The death of such a man, even at a moment so exciting as the present, when all thoughts are absorbed by a nearer and present conflict, would be felt as a misfortune by all who still retain any recollection of the interest with which they followed the Virginian campaigns, and by thousands who save almost forgotten the names of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the Wilderness and Spotsylvania. Truer greatness, a loftier nature, a spirit more unselfish, a character purer, more chivalrous, the world has rarely if ever, known. Of stainless life and deep religious feeling; yet free from all taint of cant and fanaticism and as dear and congenial to the Cavalier Stuart as the Puritan Stonewall Jackson; unambitious, but ready sacrifice all at the call of duty; devoted to his cause, yet never moved by his feelings beyond the line prescribed by his judgment; never provoked by just resentment punish wanton cruelty by reprisals which would have given a character of needles savagery to the war – North and South owe a deep debt of gratitude to him, and the time will come when both will be equally proud of him. And well they may, for his character and his life afford a complete answer to the reproaches commonly cast on money-grubbing, mechanical America. A country which which has given birth to like him him, and those who follow him, may look the chivalry of Europe in the face without shame; for the fatherlands of Sidney and Bayard never produced a better solider, gentlemen, and Christian than General Robert E. Lee.”

An editorial from New York City wasn’t as complimentary. From the October 29, 1870 issue of Harper’s Weekly:

amiable soldier

ROBERT E. LEE

ROBERT E.LEE was undoubtedly an amiable man and a good soldier. But his career, in that part of it which concerns the whole country, was an illustration of an apparently fatal weakness of character. He was bred to the army, and served as an engineer in Mexico with great distinction, and subsequently in a cavalry command. Upon the fall of Sumter, the first time that the flag of his country had been fired upon with doubtful result, he resigned his commission, on the 20th of April, 1861, saying that except in defense of his native State he hoped never again to draw his sword. Despite this hope, however, he went immediately to Richmond, where, two days afterward, he was appointed General of the Virginia troops, and on the 10th of May Major-General of the rebel army. From that time he was the most popular man in the Confederacy. He was passionately extolled by his Southern associates, and the Copperhead and the Copperhead papers in the North were never weary of applauding the “great captain” and “the Christian gentleman.”

Harper’s Weekly February 5, 1870

His military skill was conceded by his ablest opponents. But he kept himself carefully aloof from politics, confining himself closely to his military duties. It will not, however, be forgotten that the suffering of the Union prisoners at Belle Isle was almost visible from his headquarters in Richmond, and that the tortures of Andersonville were not stopped by him, nor, so far as we are aware, condemned by him. Personally courteous, and in the field honorably considerate of friend and foe, his indifference to the fate of the Union prisoners may have been due to incredulity, or to a feeling that he was not responsible. Indeed, notwithstanding that he passed immediately from the national army to that of the rebels, his interest in the rebellion seems to have been reluctant and ex officio. Trained in the sophistry of State sovereignty he thought it his duty to “to go with his State,” but saw no reason that his State should go. His services being required by the authority to which he thought them due, he performed the tasks allotted him as well as he could. “I recognize no necessity for this state of things,” and with a fatal inability to perceive, what he yet seems always to have vaguely felt, the consequent immorality of his position, he continued to conduct the operations of a war which seemed to him needless.

pity the self-sophisticated

If that war had been in defense of his country, if it had been a rising against intolerable oppression, if its object had been to assert and maintain threatened freedom, his obedience to such an authority would have been commendable. But it was a war to destroy a nation, and instead of a rising against oppression, it was an effort to overthrow a great government, solely because it seemed to favor lawful liberty. To such a cause he gave his sword, because he thought that Virginia had a right to command it! Was his moral judgment, was his manhood, subject to his State? A man may be amiable, courteous, and refined, a brave and skillful soldier, unselfish, and modest, but if in the crucial moment of his life he consents to fight in a war of which he sees no necessity, and the malign purpose of which is but too plain, he consents to cloud his name forever as that of an amiable man whose weakness is virtual crime. It is in vain that we say General LEE thought that he ought to go with his State, for no man whom history can respect thinks that he ought to go with his State or with his country for an ignoble purpose. If he did not see that purpose as ignoble, his confusion is even the more evident; for he was then ignorant of what was known to every man, and of what had been loudly and widely declared by the second officer of the Government which he obeyed.

From the day that he surrendered and his cause was lost General LEE lived quietly withdrawn from the public eye. Apparently regarding events as a soldier and not as a politician, he did not think it honorable to try to thwart the results of a victory which he had vainly sought to prevent. His personal generosity and kindliness, and the modesty of his retirement, had greatly softened public feeling, and he has been regarded with the pity that always attends sincere self-sophistication. But in the warmest eulogies that have been made of him, however, there is a tone of conscious apology. He was in no sense a great man, but he may be called truly unfortunate. His name will be remembered as that of a chief leader of one of the worst causes in history, yet a weak man, called to deal with events which he could neither clearly comprehend nor control.

thanks for the memories

Lee Chapel on campus

with the missus at one of the “dreadful battle-fields”

great race on the big river

Colonel Johnston’s book said that one of Robert E. Lee’s last earthly acts was to contribute some money to his church, but of course that was 150 years ago. According to the Episcopal Church website, the church in Lexington changed its name from R.E. Memorial Church to Grace Episcopal Church three years ago. Scroll to bottom of the web page if you’d like to “♥ Give to The Episcopal Church”

I enjoyed learning more about Robert E. Lee’s last years at a lecture reproduced on Youtube. Gettysburg National Military Park Ranger Matt Atkinson is a big fan of the general.

Last evening I read Allen C. Guelzo’s “The Mystery of Robert E. Lee” in the October 5, 2020 issue of National Review (pages 33-36). Robert’s father, “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, behaved recklessly and abandoned of his family when Robert E. was six-years old. The trauma created three great drives in Robert’s psyche – desires for perfection, independence, and security. Those forces “governed the extraordinary skill with which he managed Confederate military affairs.” His preeminence in the CSA did not make him happy; that only came when he used the three forces at as president of Washington College, “where he would find independence to run matters as he saw fit, find security for himself and his family, and find perfection in what he could demand of his students.” I got a little nervous when I read that Mr. Lee abolished the college rule book, the only rule was to behave as a gentleman, which made President Lee the only lawgiver and judge. I’m kind of used to believing in the U.S. we live under a written constitution.

I’m guessing the “nearer and present conflict” mentioned in the London editorial is the Franco-Prussian war, which has even been dominating the pages of America’s Harper’s Weekly.

Trib take October 13, 1870

on Traveller

Traveller, Lincoln, and the UDC

________________________________

chapel exterior/interior

Lee burying-place

Valentine sculpted the recumbent statue

Lee monument in Richmond, early 20th century

Robert E. Lee Jr. included the information from Colonel William Preston Johnston and his mother in Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee (at Project Gutenberg, Chapter XXIV). I guess it’s not just The Dukes of Hazard, people have apparently been naming moving vehicles after Mr. Lee for a long time (included a Confederate blockade runner. The information about the steam race and all the Harper’s Weekly information from 1870 can be found at the Internet Archive; the paper was a little harder on Mr. Lee in February 1870. The photo of wet fallen leaves comes from Free-Images, just like the image of sculptor Valentine’s studio and Traveller’s tombstone

All the images with the brownish background come from General Robert E. Lee after Appomattox, edited by Franklin L. Riley; you can get a copy at HathiTrust. The last section of the book is a letter that Mr. Lee wrote to the famous Lord Acton on December 15, 1866 from Lexington. He believed in states’ rights, including over suffrage laws, and saw those rights as a way to prevent a dangerous consolidation of national power.

From the Library of Congress: death bed by Currier & Ives: “His deeds belong to history, while his life of devoted, unostentatious piety and firm and living trust in Jesus as his personal Redeemer, gives assurance that he has received the Christian crown of glory, and entered into that ‘rest that remaineth for the people of God.'”; the front page of and editorial in Columbia South Carolina’s Daily Phoenix – the telegrams announcing General Lee’s death appear on page 3; the front page of The Charleston Daily News for October 13, 1870; In Memoriam from 1870; Lee Chapel, according to the Library – Significance: The Lee Chapel was declared a Registered National Historic Landmark in 1961 by the U.S. Department of the Interior which stated that “This site possesses exceptional value in commemorating and illustrating the history of the United States.” A monument to the life of Robert E. Lee, it commemorates especially the final achievement of the Confederate General, his leadership in education as a way of rebuilding the South and of restoring the unity of the nation. This small brick chapel was built in 1867 under the supervision of Lee when he was president of Washington College. The burial place of Lee, it is visited by about 35,000 persons annually; Carol M. Highsmith’s July 2019 photo of Earl Weaver and Holly Roberts Morgan portraying the Lees at Gettysburg re-enactment; the editorial in the New-York Tribune on October 13, 1870 – it seems pretty balanced, no mention of flags at half-staff in that piece; the Lee monument in Richmond; the general and horse

[October 15, 2020] After poring incessantly over the fascinating stacks at the Library of Congress, yesterday I finally re-found the bottom painting of General Lee. It is here and said to be c1886 Aug. 27.

I got the image of Washington College in 1845 at Wikimedia

Mary Custis Lee picture: from Personal reminiscences, anecdotes, and letters of Gen. Robert E.
Lee. By Rev. J. William Jones. [Published by authority of the Lee
family, and of the faculty of Washington and Lee university] (1874) at Hathi Trust

[October 13, 2020]Mr. Guelzo’ article contrasted Robert E. Lee’s gentlemanly, dignified composure with the bad temper he could have at times. The most striking example of this occurred in 1859. Lee’s father-in-law put him in a bind by naming him executor of his estate with provisions in the will to divide the real estate between the Lees’ three sons and pay each of the Lees’ four daughters with $10,000. How to sell raise the $40,000 without selling the property? Robert E. Lee strove to make the plantations more efficient and productive than they had been. Three runaway slaves threatened his plans. After the slaves were captured and returned, Mr. Lee had them whipped; some said he even did the whipping. On the other hand,General Lee voluntarily emancipated the slave family he inherited from his mother in 1862.

October 14, 2020I forgot to mention an important part of the Custis will – Robert E. was expected to emancipate all his father-in-law’s slaves within five years. That probably increased the stress on him to make the plantations productive.

[October 13, 2020]From General Lee’s letter to Lord Acton: “… while I have considered the preservation of the constitutional power of the General Government to be the foundation of our peace and safety at home and abroad, I yet believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people, not only essential to the adjustment and balance of the general system, but the safeguard to the continuance of a free government. I consider it as the chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it. …”

patriot

Posted in 150 Years Ago, 150 Years Ago This Week, Aftermath, Confederate States of America, Southern Society, Veterans | Tagged 1st Baron Acton, Edward Virginius Valentine, Horace Greeley, John Dalberg-Acton, Mary Anna Custis Lee, Robert E. Lee, Robert E. Lee Jr., Washington College (Lexington VA) | Leave a comment

‘demi-deity’ in bronze

Posted on September 27, 2020 by SUMPTER

already there in the Square c1870

Apparently some people politicized public monuments 150 years ago. From the October 8, 1870 issue of Punchinello (at Project Gutenberg):

“SOLEMN SILENCE.”

Perhaps very few persons—and especially very few members of the Republican party—are aware that a monument to ABRAHAM LINCOLN has at last been completed, and that it has been placed on the site allotted for it in Union Square. It is very creditable to the Republican Party that they exercised such control over their feelings when the day for unveiling the LINCOLN Monument arrived. Some parties might have made a demonstration on the occasion of post-mortuary honors being accorded to a leader whom they professed to worship while he lived, and whom they demi-deified after his death. No such extravagant folly can be laid at the door of the Republican Party. “Let bygones be bygones” is their motto. They allowed their “sham ABRAHAM,” in heroic bronze, to be hoisted on to his pedestal in Union Square in solitude and silence. That was commendable. A live ass is better than a dead lion; and so the Republican Party, who consider themselves very much alive, went to look after their daily thistles and left their dead lion in charge of a policeman.

It’s true I didn’t see anything in Harper’s Weekly about the unveiling, but about seven months earlier the publication did mention that the statue was going to be erected and provided an illustration.

Prospect Park in Brooklyn

solitary silence

improvement shown?

_________________________

From the February 26, 1870 issue of Harper’s Weekly:

STATUE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

We give above [in the center] a picture of the bronze statue of ABRAHAM LINCOLN by the distinguished artist, Mr. H.K. BROWN, which is to be placed opposite the equestrian statue of Washington, by the same artist, at the lower end of Union Square, in this city. In some respects this statue is an improvement upon the one executed by the same artist for Prospect Park, Brooklyn, of which we gave an engraving in the Weekly for November 13, 1869. The attitude and expression are full of dignity and repose, and the work reflects great credit on the artist.

The statue was cast at the foundry of Messrs. ROBERT WOOD & Co., of Philadelphia, to which the public is indebted for many works of great artistic excellence, one of the principal of which is the cast of the statue of a “Citizen Soldier,” by Mr. QUINCY WARD, of this city, for the New York Central Park.

I think in 1870 The New-York Times was Republican-leaning. On the front page of its September 11, 1870 edition it explained that workmen were preparing the monument and gave details about its appearance and the materials used. For example there were 36 stars representing the number of United States during Mr. Lincoln’s presidency (after Nevada joined up in 1864). The article also mentioned that the monument was ordered by the Union League Club^[1].

According to the New York City Parks website the Lincoln statue in Union Square was dedicated on September 16, 1870. You can read much more about Henry Kirke Brown and John Quincy Adams Ward at The Met. Karen Chernick’s post at Hidden City Philadelphia tells the story of the Robert Wood foundry.

Harper’s mentioned John Quincy Adams Ward’s “Citizen Soldier” in Central Park. It must be the memorial to the Seventh Regiment, although that wasn’t dedicated until 1874.

The Departure of the 7th Regiment
To the War, April 19, 1861

presented to 7th in May 1863 at Washington DC

remember the common soldier

A citizen-soldier type monument in Louisiana has had a tumultuous time recently. According to The South’s Defender on August 13th this year the Calcasieu Parish Police Jury voted to keep The South’s Defenders Memorial Monument standing in place outside the parish courthouse, despite calls for its removal. But CBS News reported that the statue was knocked off its pedestal on August 27th, apparently by Hurricane Laura. You can read a history of the monument at The South’s Defenders Memorial Monument. The most recent time the statue was toppled was during a windstorm back in 1995. You can read a case for removing the monument at change.org

Philadelphia Foundry

finished product

South’s Defender standing at the Courthouse, 1923

I got the photograph of Washington Monument in Union Square (c1870) at Wikimedia; The photograph of Henry Kirke Brown is also from Wikimedia and also c1870. Maybe three times really is a charm, at least Wikimedia is also the place I found Jim.henderson’s photo of the 7th regiment statue, which is the 7th Regiment National Guard – you can read much more about the regiment and the statue at Daytonian in Manhattan; the 7th was designated the 107th for World War I. Thomas Nast’s The Departure of the 7th Regiment
To the War, April 19, 1861 (1869) and the 7th’s National Color come from the NY State Military Museum

From the Library of Congress: Lincoln’s statue in Prospect Park; Robert Wood’s advertisement; Lincoln in the square; South’s Defender at the Courthouse in 1923; the monumental centerfold from the August 19, 1885 issue of Puck – it looks like the Washington and Lincoln Union Square statues made the pic;

monuments a plenty

[September 28, 2020]: I added the single quotes in the title. That’s Punchinello’s concept as the publication was apparently having some fun with local Republicans. Also, last night I read a current article that gave Union Square a relative thumbs up. In “The Death of Public Beauty” Michael J. Lewis bemoaned modern public spaces that are “fragmented and disjointed.” “Perhaps the worst offender in this regard is Chicago’s Millennium Park. whose different features were funded independently by individual donors, making it less a unified design like New York’s Union Square than a series of discrete naming opportunities.” That is on page 29 of the September 21, 2020 issue of National Review.

^[1]The New York Times The Complete Front Pages 1851-2008. New York: Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers Inc., 2008. DVD.↩

Posted in 150 Years Ago This Month, Aftermath, Monuments and Statues | Tagged 7th Regiment New York State Militia, Abraham Lincoln, Henry Kirke Brown, John Quincy Adams Ward, Lake Charles Louisiana, monuments and statues, The South's Defenders Memorial Monument, Union League Club, Union Square (New York City) | Leave a comment

define citizen

Posted on September 4, 2020 by SUMPTER

on the road again

The magic number was .75, or at least that was the magic constant and had been since the U.S. federal constitution was promulgated in 1788. According to Article 5 of the Constitution, a proposed amendment that has been approved by two-thirds in the U.S. Senate and in the House will become law after three-fourths of the state legislatures approve it. The proposed Nineteenth Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote in the United States passed Congress in June 1919. Over the next year 35 states approved the amendment, but the magic number was 36 out of the 48 ststes. On August 18, 1920 Tennessee ratified the amendment; on August 26th the U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the results – the 19th amendment was law.

enfranchised en masse

The front page of The New York Times on August 19, 1920 stated that both major political parties began targeting the new women voters immediately after the Tennessee vote and both major party presidential candidates said they were happy with the result. The paper got a couple sound bites. Democrat James M. Cox, the governor of Ohio, equated the passage of the amendment with the end of war: “The civilization of the world is saved. The mothers of America will stay the hand of war and repudiate those who traffic with a great principle. …” The presidential race was an all-Buckeye contest. U.S. Senator Warren G. Harding: “All along I have wished for the completion of ratification, and have said so, and I am glad to have all the citizenship of the United States take part in the Presidential elections. …”

Candidate Cox meets suffragists

war is now a goner

now all citizens can vote

_______________________________

Women had the right to vote in some states prior to the Nineteenth Amendment. The territory of Wyoming even passed woman’s suffrage way back in 1869; later Wyoming refused to accept statehood unless women could retain the right to vote; the U.S. Congress grudgingly agreed, so in 1890 Wyoming became the first state to allow women the vote. Between then and 1920 fourteen other states granted women full suffrage.

Wyoming: a revolutionary territory

early (woman) voter

the states of suffrage

_______________________

New York State granted women the right to vote in 1917, but some New York women didn’t wait that long. On November 5, 1872 Susan B. Anthony and fourteen other women voted in Rochester, New York. These women and the three election officials who allowed them to vote were eventually arrested. According to the November 30, 1872 issue of The New-York Times, a federal official in Rochester examined the women on the 29th. The women admitted that they voted but claimed they were entitled to do so by the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. …

Susan B. Anthony was tried and convicted for illegal voting during June 1873 in federal court in Canandaigua New York. After she was convicted the three election inspectors who voted 2-1 to allow her to vote were also tried and convicted. You can read an account of the proceedings at Project Gutenberg. Here are a few parts of the presentation and argument by Henry R. Selden, Ms. Anthony’s attorney:

… Before the registration, and before this election, Miss Anthony called upon me for advice upon the question whether, under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, she had a right to vote. I had not examined the question. I told her I would examine it and give her my opinion upon the question of her legal right. She went away and came again after I had made the examination. I advised her that she was as lawful a voter as I am, or as any other man is, and advised her to go and offer her vote. I may have been mistaken in that, and if I was mistaken, I believe she acted in good faith. I believe she acted according to her right as the law and Constitution gave it to her. But whether she did or not, she acted in the most perfect good faith, and if she made a mistake, or if I made one, that is not a reason for committing her to a felon’s cell. …

Women have the same interest that men have in the establishment and maintenance of good government; they are to the same extent as men bound to obey the laws; they suffer to the same extent by bad laws, and profit to the same extent by good laws; and upon principles of equal justice, as it would seem, should be allowed equally with men, to express their preference in the choice of law-makers and rulers. But however that may be, no greater absurdity, to use no harsher term, could be presented, than that of rewarding men and punishing women, for the same act, without giving to women any voice in the question which should be rewarded, and which punished. …

Selden for the defense

Miss Anthony, and those united with her in demanding the right of suffrage, claim, and with a strong appearance of justice, that upon the principles upon which our government is founded, and which lie at the basis of all just government, every citizen has a right to take part, upon equal terms with every other citizen, in the formation and administration of government. This claim on the part of the female sex presents a question the magnitude of which is not well appreciated by the writers and speakers who treat it with ridicule. Those engaged in the movement are able, sincere and earnest women, and they will not be silenced by such ridicule, nor even by the villainous caricatures of Nast. On the contrary, they justly place all those things to the account of the wrongs which they think their sex has suffered. They believe, with an intensity of feeling which men who have not associated with them have not yet learned, that their sex has not had, and has not now, its just and true position in the organization of government and society. They may be wrong in their position, but they will not be content until their arguments are fairly, truthfully and candidly answered.

In the most celebrated document which has been put forth on this side of the Atlantic, our ancestors declared that “governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” …

By reference to the provisions of the original Constitution, here recited, it appears that prior to the thirteenth, if not until the fourteenth, amendment, the whole power over the elective franchise, even in the choice of Federal officers, rested with the States. The Constitution contains no definition of the term “citizen,” either of the United States, or of the several States, but contents itself with the provision that “the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States.” The States were thus left free to place such restrictions and limitations upon the “privileges and immunities” of citizens as they saw fit, so far as is consistent with a republican form of government, subject only to the condition that no State could place restrictions upon the “privileges or immunities” of the citizens of any other State, which would not be applicable to its own citizens under like circumstances.

It will be seen, therefore, that the whole subject, as to what should constitute the “privileges and immunities” of the citizen being left to the States, no question, such as we now present, could have arisen under the original constitution of the United States.

But now, by the fourteenth amendment, the United States have not only declared what constitutes citizenship, both in the United States and in the several States, securing the rights of citizens to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States;” but have absolutely prohibited the States from making or enforcing “any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.“

By virtue of this provision, I insist that the act of Miss Anthony in voting was lawful.

It has never, since the adoption of the fourteenth amendment, been questioned, and cannot be questioned, that women as well as men are included in the terms of its first section, nor that the same “privileges and immunities of citizens” are equally secured to both. …

If we go to the lexicographers and to the writers upon law, to learn what are the privileges and immunities of the “citizen” in a republican government, we shall find that the leading feature of citizenship is the enjoyment of the right of suffrage.

The definition of the term “citizen” by Bouvier is: “One who under the constitution and laws of the United States, has a right to vote for Representatives in Congress, and other public officers, and who is qualified to fill offices in the gift of the people.”

definitions galore, including “citizen”

By Worcester—”An inhabitant of a republic who enjoys the rights of a freeman, and has a right to vote for public officers.”

By Webster—”In the United States, a person, native or naturalized, who has the privilege of exercising the elective franchise, or the qualifications which enable him to vote for rulers, and to purchase and hold real estate.”

The meaning of the word “citizen” is directly and plainly recognized by the latest amendment of the constitution (the fifteenth.)

“The right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” This clause assumes that the right of citizens, as such, to vote, is an existing right.

Mr. Richard Grant White, in his late work on Words and their Uses, says of the word citizen: “A citizen is a person who has certain political rights, and the word is properly used only to imply or suggest the possession of these rights.”

Mr. Justice Washington, in the case of Corfield vs. Coryell (4 Wash, C.C. Rep. 380), speaking of the “privileges and immunities” of the citizen, as mentioned in Sec. 2, Art. 4, of the constitution, after enumerating the personal rights mentioned above, and some others, as embraced by those terms, says, “to which may be added the elective franchise, as regulated and established by the laws or constitution of the State in which it is to be exercised.” At that time the States had entire control of the subject, and could abridge this privilege of the citizen at its pleasure; but the judge recognizes the “elective franchise” as among the “privileges and immunities” secured, to a qualified extent, to the citizens of every State by the provisions of the constitution last referred to. When, therefore, the States were, by the fourteenth amendment, absolutely prohibited from abridging the privileges of the citizen, either by enforcing existing laws, or by the making of new laws, the right of every “citizen” to the full exercise of this privilege, as against State action, was absolutely secured.

Chancellor Kent and Judge Story both refer to the opinion of Mr. Justice Washington, above quoted, with approbation.

The Supreme Court of Kentucky, in the case of Amy, a woman of color, vs. Smith (1 Littell’s Rep. 326), discussed with great ability the questions as to what constituted citizenship, and what were the “privileges and immunities of citizens” which were secured by Sec. 2, Art. 4, of the constitution, and they showed, by an unanswerable argument, that the term “citizens,” as there used, was confined to those who were entitled to the enjoyment of the elective franchise, and that that was among the highest of the “privileges and immunities” secured to the citizen by that section. The court say that, “to be a citizen it is necessary that he should be entitled to the enjoyment of these privileges and immunities, upon the same terms upon which they are conferred upon other citizens; and unless he is so entitled, he cannot, in the proper sense of the term, be a citizen.”

In the case of Scott vs. Sanford (19 How. 404), Chief Justice Taney says: “The words ‘people of the United States,’ and ‘citizens,’ are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing; they describe the political body, who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty and hold the power, and conduct the government through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the sovereign people, and every citizen is one of this people, and a constituent member of this sovereignty.”

Judge Ward Hunt

As the judge was about to pronounce Ms. Anthony’s sentence the following exchange reportedly took place:

Judge Hunt—(Ordering the defendant to stand up), “Has the prisoner anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?”

Miss Anthony—Yes, your honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually, but all of my sex, are, by your honor’s verdict, doomed to political subjection under this, so-called, form of government.

Judge Hunt—The Court cannot listen to a rehearsal of arguments the prisoner’s counsel has already consumed three hours in presenting.

HOPE unmasked

Miss Anthony—May it please your honor, I am not arguing the question, but simply stating the reasons why sentence cannot, in justice, be pronounced against me. Your denial of my citizen’s right to vote, is the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as one of the taxed, the denial of my right to a trial by a jury of my peers, as an offender against law, therefore, the denial of my sacred rights to life, liberty, property and—

Judge Hunt—The Court cannot allow the prisoner to go on.

Miss Anthony—But your honor will not deny me this one and only poor privilege of protest against this high-handed outrage upon my citizen’s rights. May it please the Court to remember that since the day of my arrest last November, this is the first time that either myself or any person of my disfranchised class has been allowed a word of defense before judge or jury—

Judge Hunt—The prisoner must sit down—the Court cannot allow it.

Miss Anthony—All of my prosecutors, from the 8th ward corner grocery politician, who entered the complaint, to the United States Marshal, Commissioner, District Attorney, District Judge, your honor on the bench, not one is my peer, but each and all are my political sovereigns; and had your honor submitted my case to the jury, as was clearly your duty, even then I should have had just cause of protest, for not one of those men was my peer; but, native or foreign born, white or black, rich or poor, educated or ignorant, awake or asleep, sober or drunk, each and every man of them was my political superior; hence, in no sense, my peer. Even, under such circumstances, a commoner of England, tried before a jury of Lords, would have far less cause to complain than should I, a woman, tried before a jury of men. Even my counsel, the Hon. Henry R. Selden, who has argued my cause so ably, so earnestly, so unanswerably before your honor, is my political sovereign. Precisely as no disfranchised person is entitled to sit upon a jury, and no woman is entitled to the franchise, so, none but a regularly admitted lawyer is allowed to practice in the courts, and no woman can gain admission to the bar—hence, jury, judge, counsel, must all be of the superior class.

Judge Hunt—The Court must insist—the prisoner has been tried according to the established forms of law.

taking her right to vote

Miss Anthony—Yes, your honor, but by forms of law all made by men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men, and against women; and hence, your honor’s ordered verdict of guilty, against a United States citizen for the exercise of “that citizen’s right to vote,” simply because that citizen was a woman and not a man. But, yesterday, the same man made forms of law, declared it a crime punishable with $1,000 fine and six months’ imprisonment, for you, or me, or any of us, to give a cup of cold water, a crust of bread, or a night’s shelter to a panting fugitive as he was tracking his way to Canada. And every man or woman in whose veins coursed a drop of human sympathy violated that wicked law, reckless of consequences, and was justified in so doing. As then, the slaves who got their freedom must take it over, or under, or through the unjust forms of law, precisely so, now, must women, to get their right to a voice in this government, take it; and I have taken mine, and mean to take it at every possible opportunity.

Judge Hunt—The Court orders the prisoner to sit down. It will not allow another word.

Miss Anthony—When I was brought before your honor for trial, I hoped for a broad and liberal interpretation of the Constitution and its recent amendments, that should declare all United States citizens under its protecting ægis—that should declare equality of rights the national guarantee to all persons born or naturalized in the United States. But failing to get this justice—failing, even, to get a trial by a jury not of my peers—I ask not leniency at your hands—but rather the full rigors of the law.

Judge Hunt—The Court must insist—

(Here the prisoner sat down.)

summarizing the judgment

Judge Hunt—The prisoner will stand up.

(Here Miss Anthony arose again.)

The sentence of the Court is that you pay a fine of one hundred dollars and the costs of the prosecution.

Miss Anthony—May it please your honor, I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a $10,000 debt, incurred by publishing my paper—The Revolution—four years ago, the sole object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I have done, rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of law, that tax, fine, imprison and hang women, while they deny them the right of representation in the government; and I shall work on with might and main to pay every dollar of that honest debt, but not a penny shall go to this unjust claim. And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim, that “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”

Judge Hunt—Madam, the Court will not order you committed until the fine is paid.

Apparently Post Offices were widely used 150 years ago. The same book at Project Gutenberg includes Susan B. Anthony’s address “Delivered in twenty-nine of the Post Office Districts of Monroe, and twenty-one of Ontario, in her canvass of those Counties, prior to her trial in June, 1873.” It’s a long speech and includes references to two Union generals from the Civil War:

… President Grant, in his message to Congress March 30th, 1870, on the adoption of the fifteenth amendment, said:

“A measure which makes at once four millions of people voters, is indeed a measure of greater importance than any act of the kind from the foundation of the Government to the present time.”

How could four millions negroes be made voters if two millions were not included? …

Benjamin F. Butler, in a recent letter to me, said:

“I do not believe anybody in Congress doubts that the Constitution authorizes the right of women to vote, precisely as it authorizes trial by jury and many other like rights guaranteed to citizens.”

And again, General Butler said:

“It is not laws we want; there are plenty of laws—good enough, too. Administrative ability to enforce law is the great want of the age, in this country especially. Everybody talks of law, law. If everybody would insist on the enforcement of law, the government would stand on a firmer basis, and questions would settle themselves.”

And it is upon this just interpretation of the United States Constitution that our National Woman Suffrage Association which celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the woman’s rights movement in New York on the 6th of May next, has based all its arguments and action the past five years. …

math problem

just enforce the law

remembrance/anticipation

According to Alma Lutz’s 1959 Susan B. Anthony: Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian (pages 198-200 at Project Gutenberg):

Susan preached militancy to women throughout the presidential campaign of 1872, urging them to claim their rights under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments by registering and voting in every state in the Union. …

With the spotlight turned on the Fourteenth Amendment by these women, lawyers here and there throughout the country were discussing the legal points involved, many admitting that women had a good case. Even the press was friendly.

Susan had looked forward to claiming her rights under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and was ready to act. She had spent the thirty days required of voters in Rochester with her family and as she glanced through the morning paper of November 1, 1872, she read these challenging words, “Now Register!… If you were not permitted to vote you would fight for the right, undergo all privations for it, face death for it….”

This was all the reminder she needed. She would fight for this right. She put on her bonnet and coat, telling her three sisters what she intended to do, asked them to join her, and with them walked briskly to the barber shop where the voters of her ward were registering. Boldly entering this stronghold of men, she asked to be registered. The inspector in charge, Beverly W. Jones, tried to convince her that this was impossible under the laws of New York. She told him she claimed her right to vote not under the New York constitution but under the Fourteenth Amendment, and she read him its pertinent lines. Other election inspectors now joined in the argument, but she persisted until two of them, Beverly W. Jones and Edwin F. Marsh, both Republicans, finally consented to register the four women.

This mission accomplished, Susan rounded up twelve more women willing to register. The evening papers spread the sensational news, and by the end of the registration period, fifty Rochester women had joined the ranks of the militants. …

Election day did not bring the general uprising of women for which Susan had hoped. In Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Connecticut, as in Rochester, a few women tried to vote. In New York City, Lillie Devereux Blake and in Fayetteville, New York, Matilda Joslyn Gage had courageously gone to the polls only to be turned away. Elizabeth Stanton did not vote on November 5, 1872, and her lack of enthusiasm about a test case in the courts was very disappointing to Susan.

However, the fact that Susan B. Anthony had voted won immediate response from the press in all parts of the country. Newspapers in general were friendly, the New York Times boldly declaring, “The act of Susan B. Anthony should have a place in history,” and the Chicago Tribune venturing to suggest that she ought to hold public office. The cartoonists, however, reveling in a new and tempting subject, caricatured her unmercifully, the New York Graphic setting the tone. Some Democratic papers condemned her, following the line of the Rochester Union and Advertiser which flaunted the headline, “Female Lawlessness,” and declared that Miss Anthony’s lawlessness had proved women unfit for the ballot.

As of this morning Google defined citizen as: a legally recognized subject or national of a state or commonwealth, either native or naturalized.
“a Polish citizen”

or an inhabitant of a particular town or city.
“the citizens of Los Angeles”

It was still a numbers game for Alice Paul but she was one of the suffragists in the 1910s who wanted to change course – instead of getting all the states to change their state laws, get 36 states to ratify a constitutional amendment that would impose federal law on all 48 plus.

Abigail Adams: women will “foment a rebellion”

sewing star by star

what will they think of next?

The 1918 photo of Louisa A. Swain, one of the first female voters in Wyoming Territory is from Wikimedia Commons. Lokal_Profil’s suffrage map is licensed under Creative Commons. Wikimedia Commons also provides the image of B.F. Butler

The clipping describing the trial was published in the July 5, 1873 issue of Harper’s Weekly at Hathi Trust.

One of the themes of political cartoons from 150 or so years ago seems to have been an apprehension of changing gender roles. The example here of a woman getting her two bits worth at the barbershop is from the September 10, 1870 issue of Punchinello at Project Gutenberg

From the Library of Congress: parade vehicle; headline from the August 26, 1920 issue of the Washington Evening Star; the photo of a meeting said to have taken place on Jul16, 1920 – “Alice Paul and a delegation consulting with Governor Cox on the suffrage situation in Tennessee.”; candidate James M. Cox candidate Warren G. Harding; portrait of Henry Rogers Selden – you can read more about him at Western New York Suffragists: Winning the Vote; Alice Paul sewing in the December 21, 1919 issue of the New York Tribune; Susan B. Anthony’s papers with the image of Abigail Adams and 1902 words from Ms. Anthony that she’s pro-divorce when women are mistreated by their husbands; Noah Webster; Judge Ward Hunt; Suffrage kewpies in Puck February 20, 1915; the cover of the June 5, 1873 issue of The Daily Graphic; U.S.Grant ca. 1868; with the Susan B. Anthony quote on a banner at the National Woman’s Party; Alice Paul with 36 star banner; don’t forget Susan B.

June 2, 1920

36 starts at last

Posted in 100 Years Ago, American History, The election of 1920 | Tagged Alice Paul, Bainbridge Colby, female suffrage, Fourteenth Amendment U.S. Constitution, Henry Rogers Selden, James Middleton Cox, Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Noah Webster, Susan B. Anthony, The election of 1920, Ward Hunt, Warren Gamaliel Harding | Leave a comment

peanut prophecy

Posted on August 8, 2020 by SUMPTER

From the July 16, 1870 issue of Harper’s Weekly:

PEA-NUTS.

OUR illustration on this page represents a scene which is perfectly familiar to those who have visited our Southern cities; and we dare say some of our readers who have sauntered along the Savannah docks may recognize the features of the good-natured and almost superannuated aunty whose bent figure, sheltered by the tattered umbrella, and surrounded by heaping baskets of roasted pea-nuts, forms the principle object in our picture. It was drawn from life, greatly to the delight of the old woman, who had never before been honored by the attentions of an artist.

Come get your goobers

The pea-nut, though almost universally liked, is considered very “ungenteel.” Its cheapness, and the ease with which the soft shell is broken, make it a favorite with boys; and it is rare indeed to empty a little fellow’s pocket and not find among its wonderfully miscellaneous contents two or three pea-nuts or the debris of their crumbling shells. Outside of boydom the popularity of the pea-nut is chiefly confined to people who frequent such places of amusement as the Bowery Theatre, the atmosphere of which is always redolent of the pea-nut stand and the beer gardens. Such people, indeed, munch them every where – as they walk the street, on the cars, in the stages, and aboard the ferry boats, scattering the shells abroad with the utmost indifference, and littering the dress of every person in their neighborhood. Pea-nuts impart a pungent odor to the breath, which makes the eater almost as great a nuisance in a crowd as one who indulges in the luxury of Limburger cheese.

pungent peanut place

In this city there are hundreds of stands where pea-nuts are sold, and the trade in them must be very large, if not particularly remunerative. There must be several hundred old men and old women in New York alone who make their living at these stands – their entire sales consisting, on any day, of a few shillings worth of pea-nuts, with perhaps a dozen or two apples, whose surface shines with a polish too suggestive of the process by which it is obtained for delicate stomachs. Occasionally you may see a gentleman purchasing at these stands; but generally it is done with a furtive glance to see that nobody is near whose observation might be unpleasant. If one like pea-nuts, and is thus sensitive, it is convenient to have the protection of a little son or nephew, who may not, however, in all cases reap the benefit of the purchase.

The pea-nut is not recognized in polite society. It is not found at dessert. Yet a few years ago an American in Munich placed on the dinner-table of the Hôtel de Bavière a dish of these with other nuts peculiar to this continent, for the benefit of his German friends, and the unanimous verdict of the foreign members of the party was, that the pea-nut was most excellent eating. Thus pea-nuts, like prophets, are not without honor save in their own country; and it is not likely they will ever rise above their present position here.

When I read this piece I thought of a book I read years ago (I don’t have the reference). The author referred to hamburger (and maybe potatoes) as an inferior food or inferior good. That kind of surprised me – what about McDonald’s?

I’m not sure about peanuts. I don’t think adults try to hide their use of them. You might never be able to order peanuts as a main course in hotels in Bavaria or any other place, but 150 years later peanuts do seem to be a highly valued food. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches might not have the same cachet as other entrees, but they have a good deal of nutritional value. As scientists have analyzed food in greater and greater detail, we now know that peanut butter is kind of high in fat, but it has 0 cholesterol and 0 trans fat. And that’s a good thing, at least for now. [September 8, 2020: For example, the September 5th 2020 issue of The Economist (page 8) mentions that up to 240 million people around the world have food allergies and peanut allergy is the most common, although thanks to science, there is now an approved remedy.]

Tuskegee teacher

peanut power

Peanuts were one of the crops that George Washington Carver, an earlier scientist, urged farmers to grow to offset the ravages of King Cotton:

good steward of the soil

“While a professor at Tuskegee Institute, Carver developed techniques to improve soils depleted by repeated plantings of cotton. He wanted poor farmers to grow other crops, such as peanuts and sweet potatoes, as a source of their own food and to improve their quality of life. The most popular of his 44 practical bulletins for farmers contained 105 food recipes using peanuts. Although he spent years developing and promoting numerous products made from peanuts, none became commercially successful.” Rotating cotton with crops that returned nitrogen to the soil, for example sweet potatoes and legumes such as peanuts, would improve the soil.

In his 1917 How to grow the peanut : and 105 ways of preparing it for human consumption George Washington Carver saw a bright future for peanuts:

“By reason of its superior food value the peanut has become almost
a universal diet for man, and when we learn its real value, I think
I am perfectly safe in the assertion that it will not only become a
prime essential in every well-balanced dietary, but a real necessity.
Indeed, I do not know of any one vegetable that has such a wide range
of food possibilities.”

Gotham goobers

wash it down with a Billy Beer … or two

peanuts worth?

_________________________________

Life isn’t always as peaceful as that snapshot of the peanut vendor at the Savannah docks. On December 22, 1869 General Alfred Howe Terry began serving as “the last military governor of the Third Military District, based in Atlanta.” According to the January 1, 1870 issue of Harper’s Weekly even before that he had reported that the Klu Klux Klan was still active in the state. The newspaper editorialized:

MURDER AND SENTIMENTALITY.

A FEW weeks ago, while the Boston Cadets were feasting General MAGRUDER, the rebel commander at Great Bethel, Union men in Georgia, according to General TERRY, were murdered at the pleasure of the Ku Klux hands. There is, he says, no security for life or property, and magistrates neither will nor can do justice. Do the worthy members of the Company of Cadets see no relation between the two facts? Their invitation to General MAGRUDER does not, indeed, directly occasion the slaughter of Union men; but it does indirectly. The lesson which the disaffected element in the Southern States is so painfully slow to learn is that we understand our own victory, not as one of vengeance, but of principle. And how can we ever expect them to learn it if we do not show it in every intelligible way? General MAGRUDER threw up the commission of his country to fight against his flag, at the command of a State, for the purpose of perpetuating human slavery. Is this an act which the Boston Cadets think worthy of especial honor? Or is it to show that they have no ill feeling? But nobody charged it upon them. Or is done because they think that General MAGRUDER was as honest as they were?

… we would not certainly honor conspicuous rebels while the rebel spirit slaughtered our brethren …

… There is this advantage in the councils of extreme men, as they are called – that they understand each other. Set a thief, if you choose, to stop a thief. Fight fire with fire. These are exhortations that grow out of the depths of experience. It may not be an agreeable truth, but it is a truth, that such a man as THADDEUS STEVENS understood better how to deal with rebels than any more moderate man; and for the reason that he was of a like resolution and temper with them, but patriotically and nobly directed. The policy of reconstruction which has been adopted was the result of a situation which Mr. STEVENS, and men like him instinctively divined. When he spoke of confiscation and military rule and territorial condition, there was a general shuddering even among his own party friends. He was vigorously denounced as blood-thirsty and vindictive by the opposition. But he always quietly answered in substance, why is the blood of enemies more precious than that of friends?

He did not indeed advise bloodshed. But he was of the opinion that the blood of rebels should be spilled rather that of Union men of any color. He knew, also, that it was necessary, by a thorough and radical reorganization of society in the rebel States, to show the rebel spirit that the country fully comprehended its own victory, and would certainly secure it. He knew that the contempt of “the North” was ingrained and traditional in the South,” and that the shortest and surest way of peace was to show a perfect readiness upon the part of “the North” to use its superior strength to establish its policy.

feted in Boston

fire fighter

Georgia on his mind

His view of the situation was correct. It implied nothing vindictive, nothing unjust. Gradually events showed its wisdom. … [events including massacres, Black Codes, and the Ku Klux Klan] …

That condition virtually remains. Nobody, of course, expects that any system will instantly pacify a State so long demoralized by the barbarism of slavery, and then so riven with Civil War as Georgia. But because every thing may not be done at once, it would be extremely foolish to endeavor to do nothing. The removal of the colored members of the Legislature was a deliberate defiance of the authority of the United States. Had it been instantly accepted as such by Congress, and the territorial condition been restored, there would be at this moment much more security for life and property in that State than General TERRY reports. So, likewise, when it was proposed that the Cadets in Boston should honor General MAGRUDER, magistrates and juries in Georgia would have been stronger had the Cadets decisively declined.

The remedy is, first of all, moral, then physical. Let the South perceive that we regard the war as a very sober matter – as an enormous crime, the memories and lessons of which are not to be drowned in a slop of sentimentality. Then the leaders will act accordingly; and if not now, then in the next generation. It is a very great mistake that we can not wait. Experience proves that we can. Then the immediate remedy is physical. It is a disgrace to the country that it suffers such a condition of things any where in its domain as that reported by General TERRY. If it is proved that Georgia does not protect lives and property, let the United States protect them by any necessary number of soldiers, and for any length of time whatever.

According to the New Georgia Encyclopedia General Terry took some action soon after he took over:

“In June 1869 in White v. Clements, the Supreme Court of Georgia ruled two-to-one that blacks did indeed have a constitutional right to hold office in Georgia. Ironically, one of the two deciding justices was Chief Justice Joseph E. Brown, appointed by Bullock in July 1868. In January 1870, Alfred H. Terry, the third and final commanding general of the District of Georgia, conducted “Terry’s Purge.” He removed the General Assembly’s ex-Confederates, replaced them with the Republican runners-up, and then reinstated the expelled black legislators, thus creating a heavy Republican majority in the legislature. In February 1870 the newly constituted legislature ratified the Fifteenth Amendment and chose new senators to send to Washington. The following July, Georgia was again readmitted to the Union.”

“Shelling peanuts, Wolf Creek, Georgia” 1935

I think I remember years ago reading a quote from George Washington Carver about peanuts. I’m not sure if this is it or not:

When I was young, I said to God, ‘God, tell me the mystery of the universe.’ But God answered, ‘That knowledge is for me alone.’ So I said, ‘God, tell me the mystery of the peanut.’ Then God said, ‘Well George, that’s more nearly your size.’ And he told me.

You can read that and many more interesting quotes from Mr. Carver at AZ Quotes

The picture isn’t big enough to show, but the Library of Congress has a cartoon by Denys Wortman from 1945 in which the value of peanut butter was debated: “Mopey Dick and the Duke. ‘I can’t decide whether to give up peanut butter on account of its calories, or to eat it on account of its vitamines’ [sic]”

Plains, Georgia

Dothan, Alabama

Savannah, Georgia

From the Internet Archive: Harper’s Weekly for 1870 and George Washington Carver’s 1917 book.

The World War II era poster is from the National Archives via Wikimedia Commons. It is dated 1943; Mr. Carver died on January 5, 1943. Also from Wikimedia Commons – the Bowery Theatre in July 1867.

From the Library of Congress: Chemistry laboratory at Tuskegee Institute about 1902 – Mr. Carver is second from right; Carol M. Highsmith’s photograph of the statue of Mr. Carver “outside the George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center, in the 1926-43 segregated Phoenix Union Colored High School in Phoenix, Arizona;” Peanut stand on West 42nd Street, NY City; the huge peanut float in Washington, D.C. on January 20, 1977 for the inauguration of Jimmy Carter as U.S. president – Mr. Carter was a peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia – his brother Billy promoted the beer named after himself; Carter peanut novelties; the portrait of John Bankhead Magruder – apparently Prince John could be kind of fluid, after the Civil War he fled to Mexico, where he worked for the Mexican government for awhile, he left Mexico in November 1866, you can read a short bio at Duke University; the image of Thaddeus Stevens; General Alfred H. Terry; three more from Carol M. Highsmith – Plains, a mural in Dothan Alabama (a Mural City which is also named the “Peanut Capital of the World), “Felix de Weldon’s Waving Girl statue on Savannah, Georgia’s, waterfront” (“it depicts Florence Martus, who took it upon herself to be the unofficial greeter of all ships that entered and left the Port of Savannah between 1887 and 1931. According to legend, not a ship was missed in her forty-four years on watch.”); peanut shelling in Georgia; Polly in the patch, said to be between 1900 and 1905.

“Polly in the peanut patch”

Posted in 150 Years Ago This Month, Aftermath, Postbellum Society, Reconstruction, Southern Society | Tagged Alfred Howe Terry, Bowery Theatre, food bias, George Washington Carver, Georgia, Hôtel de Bavière, John Bankhead Magruder, Ku Klux Klan, peanuts, Savannah Georgia, Thaddeus Stevens | Leave a comment

reading the reasons

Posted on July 9, 2020 by SUMPTER

On July 2, 1776 the Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia voted for independence from Great Britain. On July 4th the Congress agreed to the words in the written Declaration. July 8th was a “great day of celebration” in Philadelphia as the Declaration was read aloud to crowd in the State House Yard; bells rang, bonfires burned, candles illuminated windows and the King’s Arms was removed from a room at the State House and thrown on a huge fire. ^[1]. 244 years ago today the Declaration of Independence was read to the American army in New York City. From the July 9, 1870 issue of Harper’s Weekly:

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

THE illustration underneath commemorates one of the most interesting events in the history of New York – the first reading of the Declaration of Independence to the American army, by order of General WASHINGTON – of which we find the following account in LOSSING’S “Field-Book of the Revolution:” “WASHINGTON received the Declaration on the 9th of July, 1776, with instructions to have it read to the army. He immediately issued an order for the several brigades, then in and near the city, to be drawn up at six o’clock that evening, to hear it read by their several commanders or their aids. The brigades were formed in hollow squares on their respective parades. The venerable ZACHARIAH GREENE (commonly known as ‘Parson Greene,’ the father-in-law of Mr. THOMPSON, historian of Long Island, yet (1855) living at Hempstead, at the age of ninety-six years, informed me that he belonged to the brigade then encamped on the ‘Common,’ where the City Hall now stands. The hollow square was formed at about the spot where the Park fountain now is. He says WASHINGTON was within the square, on horseback, and that the Declaration was read in a clear voice by one of his aids. When it was concluded three hearty cheers were given. HOLT’S Journal for July 11, 1776, says: ‘In pursuance of the Declaration of Independence, a general jail delivery took place with respect to debtors.’ Ten days afterward, the people assembled at the City Hall, at the head of Broad Street, to hear the Declaration read. They then took the British arms from over the seat of justice in the court-room, also the arms wrought in stone in front of the building, and the picture of the king in the council chamber, and destroyed them, by fire, in the street. They also ordered the British arms in all the churches in the city to be destroyed. This order seems not to have been obeyed. Those in Trinity Church were taken down and carried to New Brunswick by the Rev. CHARLES INGLIS, at the close of the war, and now hang upon the walls of a Protestant Episcopal church in St. John.”

what we’re fighting for

According to Scientific American, during the evening of July 9, 1776 a crowd pulled down a statue of King George III in Bowling Green on Manhattan. The article agrees with Harper’s that patriots also practiced “defacing and destroying examples of the royal arms where they were found.”

but slaves also built up the pyramids [***probably wrong see below]

something like that

the royal nemesis

On July 3, 1776 John Adams wrote two letters to his wife Abigail. He thought the day before, when the Continental Congress voted for independence from Great Britain, would be the big day Americans celebrated in the future, fireworks on the Second. From Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife
Abigail Adams During the Revolution:

114. John Adams.

3 July, 1776.

… Yesterday, the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America, and a greater, perhaps, never was nor will be decided among men. A Resolution was passed without one dissenting Colony “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, and as such they have, and of right ought to have, full power to make war, conclude peace, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which other States may rightfully do.” You will see, in a few days, a Declaration setting forth the causes which have impelled us to this mighty revolution, and the reasons which will justify it in the sight of God and man. A plan of confederation will be taken up in a few days.

When I look back to the year 1761, and recollect the argument concerning writs of assistance in the superior court, which I have hitherto considered as the commencement of this controversy between Great Britain and America, and run through the whole period from that time to this, and recollect the series of political events, the chain of causes and effects, I am surprised at the suddenness as well as greatness of this revolution. Britain has been filled with folly, and America with wisdom; at least, this is my judgment. Time must determine. It is the will of Heaven that the two countries should be sundered forever. It may be the will of Heaven that America shall suffer calamities still more wasting, and distresses yet more dreadful. If this is to be the case, it will have this good effect at least. It will inspire us with many virtues which we have not, and correct many errors, follies, and vices which threaten to disturb, dishonor, and destroy us. The furnace of affliction produces refinement in states as well as individuals. And the new Governments we are assuming in every part will require a purification from our vices, and an augmentation of our virtues, or they will be no[192] blessings. The people will have unbounded power, and the people are extremely addicted to corruption and venality, as well as the great. But I must submit all my hopes and fears to an overruling Providence, in which, unfashionable as the faith may be, I firmly believe.

115. John Adams.

Philadelphia, 3 July, 1776.

Had a Declaration of Independency been made seven months ago, it would have been attended with many great and glorious effects. We might, before this hour, have formed alliances with foreign states. We should have mastered Quebec, and been in possession of Canada. You will perhaps wonder how such a declaration would have influenced our affairs in Canada, but if I could write with freedom, I could easily convince you that it would, and explain to you the manner how. Many gentlemen in high stations, and of great influence, have been duped by the ministerial bubble of Commissioners to treat. And in real, sincere expectation of this event, which they so fondly wished, they have been slow and languid in promoting measures for the reduction of that province. Others there are in the Colonies who really wished that our enterprise in Canada would be defeated, that the Colonies might be brought into danger and distress between two fires, and be thus induced to submit. Others really wished to defeat the expedition to Canada, lest the conquest of it should elevate the minds of the people too much to hearken to those terms of reconciliation which, they believed, would be offered us. These jarring views, wishes, and designs occasioned an opposition to many salutary measures which were proposed for the support of that expedition, and caused obstructions, embarrassments, and studied delays, which have finally lost us the province.

All these causes, however, in conjunction would not have disappointed us, if it had not been for a misfortune which could not be foreseen, and perhaps could not have been prevented; I mean the prevalence of the small-pox among our troops. This fatal pestilence completed our destruction. It is a frown of Providence upon us, which we ought to lay to heart.

But, on the other hand, the delay of this Declaration to this time has many great advantages attending it. The hopes of reconciliation which were fondly entertained by multitudes of honest and well-meaning, though weak and mistaken people, have been gradually, and at last totally extinguished. Time has been given for the whole people maturely to consider the great question of independence, and to ripen their judgment, dissipate their fears, and allure their hopes, by discussing it in newspapers and pamphlets, by debating it in assemblies, conventions, committees of safety and inspection, in town and county meetings, as well as in private conversations, so that the whole people, in every colony of the thirteen, have now adopted it as their own act. This will cement the union, and avoid those heats, and perhaps convulsions, which might have been occasioned by such a Declaration six months ago.

But the day is past. The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.

You will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am not. I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration and support and defend these States. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is more than worth all the means. And that posterity will triumph in that day’s transaction, even although we should rue it, which I trust in God we shall not.

The book of letters was edited by John and Abigail’s grandson, Charles Francis Adams, who, in a footnote, said he checked the facts and corrected a previous “slight alteration” by relative.

FOOTNOTES:

[146] The practice has been to celebrate the 4th of July, the day upon which the form of the Declaration of Independence was agreed to, rather than the 2d, the day upon which the resolution making that declaration was determined upon by the Congress. A friend of Mr. Adams, who had during his lifetime an opportunity to read the two letters dated on the 3d, was so much struck with them, that he procured the liberty to publish them. But thinking, probably, that a slight alteration would better fit them for the taste of the day, and gain for them a higher character for prophecy, than if printed as they were, he obtained leave to put together only the most remarkable paragraphs, and make one letter out of the two. He then changed the date from the 3d to the 5th, and the word second to fourth, and published it, the public being made aware of these alterations. In this form, and as connected with the anniversary of our National Independence, these letters have ever since enjoyed great popularity. The editor at first entertained some doubt of the expediency of making a variation by printing them in their original shape. But upon considering the matter maturely, his determination to adhere, in all cases, to the text prevailed. If any injury to the reputation of Mr. Adams for prophecy should ensue, it will be more in form than in substance, and will not be, perhaps, without compensation in the restoration of the unpublished portion. This friend was a nephew, William S. Shaw. But the letters had been correctly and fully printed before. See Niles’s Principles and Acts of the Revolution, p. 330.

According to Wikipedia:

“Following the British occupation of New York in 1777, [Charles] Inglis was promoted from curate to rector of Trinity Church. As a Loyalist, it is recorded that Inglis prayed aloud for King George III while George Washington was in the congregation. The church was quickly surrounded by militia. Inglis’ home was plundered. In November 1783, upon the evacuation of Loyalists from New York, Inglis returned to England. However, his whole congregation of Trinity Church went to Nova Scotia.” [George Washington might have been in the congregation in 1776]

According to Find a Grave, Reverend Zachariah Greene “Served three years in the Revolutionary War (from Jan 1776 to Jan 1779); during which time he was engaged in three severe battles: Throgg’s Point, White Plains, and White Marsh (northwest of Philadelphia). He was wounded at the Battle of White Marsh on Dec 7, 1777, a musket ball entering his left shoulder fracturing the scapula and clavicle.” He later became a preacher and served as pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Brookhaven (Setauket) on Long Island from 1797 until his death in 1858.

Harper’s Weekly for 1870 is at the Internet Archive

You can find the Adams book of correspondence at Project Gutenberg. The two letters here are on pages 190-194.

From the Library of Congress: the print said to be from 1851; statue pulled down by slaves (there might have been slaves in the crowd, but they wouldn’t have done all the tearing down; apparently King George was dressed as an ancient Roman, Marcus Aurelius); Johannes A. Oertel’s romanticized picture; His most gracious majesty King George the Third

[July 10, 2020]I added the fake history tag. *** A little embarrassing, maybe I’ve been watching too many movies; there’s evidence that no slaves, Hebrew or otherwise, helped build the pyramids. I apologize.

^[1]McCullough, David. John Adams. New York: Simon & Schuster paperbacks, 2004. Print. pages 136-137.↩

Posted in 150 Years Ago, American History | Tagged American revolution, Charles Inglis (bishop), Declaration of Independence, fake history, George Washington, Independence Day, John Adams, Zachariah Greene | Leave a comment

“Eighty-odd years since …”

Posted on July 4, 2020 by SUMPTER

The Fourth of July 1863 was a glad day for the Union during the American Civil War. Rebels surrendered Vicksburg, Mississippi to Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant, and that evening the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia began to head back South after three bloody days at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. A few days later President Abraham Lincoln focused on Independence Day in some off the cuff remarks to a group of serenaders. From The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Volume Six at Project Gutenberg:

“All Men Are Created Equal” and “Stand by the Declaration.”

RESPONSE TO A SERENADE,
JULY 7, 1863.

FELLOW-CITIZENS:—I am very glad indeed to see you to-night, and yet I will not say I thank you for this call; but I do most sincerely thank Almighty God for the occasion on which you have called. How long ago is it Eighty-odd years since, on the Fourth of July, for the first time in the history of the world, a nation, by its representatives, assembled and declared as a self-evident truth “that all men are created equal.” That was the birthday of the United States of America. Since then the Fourth of July has had several very peculiar recognitions. The two men most distinguished in the framing and support of the Declaration were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the one having penned it, and the other sustained it the most forcibly in debate—the only two of the fifty-five who signed it and were elected Presidents of the United States. Precisely fifty years after they put their hands to the paper, it pleased Almighty God to take both from this stage of action. This was indeed an extraordinary and remarkable event in our history. Another President, five years after, was called from this stage of existence on the same day and month of the year; and now on this last Fourth of July just passed, when we have a gigantic rebellion, at the bottom of which is an effort to overthrow the principle that all men were created equal, we have the surrender of a most powerful position and army on that very day. And not only so, but in the succession of battles in Pennsylvania, near to us, through three days, so rapidly fought that they might be called one great battle, on the first, second, and third of the month of July; and on the fourth the cohorts of those who opposed the Declaration that all men are created equal, “turned tail” and run.

President Lincoln November 8, 1863

Gentlemen, this is a glorious theme, and the occasion for a speech, but I am not prepared to make one worthy of the occasion. I would like to speak in terms of praise due to the many brave officers and soldiers who have fought in the cause of the Union and liberties of their country from the beginning of the war. These are trying occasions, not only in success, but for the want of success. I dislike to mention the name of one single officer, lest I might do wrong to those I might forget. Recent events bring up glorious names, and particularly prominent ones; but these I will not mention. Having said this much, I will now take the music.

The president did prepare a speech with a couple of these ideas for his visit to Gettysburg about four months later. Many people think his words there for the dedication of the soldiers’ national cemetery were “worthy of the occasion.”

Based on correspondence all around July 7th, it seems that President Lincoln wanted a little more success from General Meade and his Army of the Potomac as the rebels retreated from Gettysburg:

“turned tail” and run?

ANNOUNCEMENT OF NEWS FROM GETTYSBURG.
WASHINGTON,

July 4, 10.30 A.M.

The President announces to the country that news from the Army of the Potomac, up to 10 P.M. of the 3d, is such as to cover that army with the highest honor, to promise a great success to the cause of the Union, and to claim the condolence of all for the many gallant fallen; and that for this he especially desires that on this day He whose will, not ours, should ever be done be everywhere remembered and reverenced with profoundest gratitude.

A. LINCOLN.

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL FRENCH. [Cipher] WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C.,

July 5, 1863.
MAJOR-GENERAL FRENCH, Fredericktown, Md.:

I see your despatch about destruction of pontoons. Cannot the enemy ford the river?

A. LINCOLN.

CONTINUED FAILURE TO PURSUE ENEMY
TELEGRAM TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

SOLDIERS’ HOME, WASHINGTON, JULY 6 1863.7 P.M., MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK:

I left the telegraph office a good deal dissatisfied. You know I did not like the phrase—in Orders, No. 68, I believe—”Drive the invaders from our soil.” Since that, I see a despatch from General French, saying the enemy is crossing his wounded over the river in flats, without saying why he does not stop it, or even intimating a thought that it ought to be stopped. Still later, another despatch from General Pleasonton, by direction of General Meade, to General French, stating that the main army is halted because it is believed the rebels are concentrating “on the road towards Hagerstown, beyond Fairfield,” and is not to move until it is ascertained that the rebels intend to evacuate Cumberland Valley.

These things appear to me to be connected with a purpose to cover Baltimore and Washington and to get the enemy across the river again without a further collision, and they do not appear connected with a purpose to prevent his crossing and to destroy him. I do fear the former purpose is acted upon and the latter rejected.

If you are satisfied the latter purpose is entertained, and is judiciously pursued, I am content. If you are not so satisfied, please look to it.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.

…

SURRENDER OF VICKSBURG TO GENERAL GRANT
TELEGRAM FROM GENERAL HALLECK TO GENERAL G. C. MEADE.

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 7, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Army of the Potomac:

I have received from the President the following note, which I respectfully communicate:

“We have certain information that Vicksburg surrendered to General Grant on the Fourth of July. Now if General Meade can complete his work, so gloriously prosecuted this far, by the literal or substantial destruction of Lee’s army, the rebellion will be over.

“Yours truly,

“A. LINCOLN.”

H. W. HALLECK. General-in-Chief.

TELEGRAM FROM GENERAL HALLECK TO GENERAL G. C. MEADE.
WASHINGTON, D. C., July 8, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Frederick, Md.:

There is reliable information that the enemy is crossing at Williamsport. The opportunity to attack his divided forces should not be lost. The President is urgent and anxious that your army should move against him by forced marches.

H. W. HALLECK, General-in-Chief

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL THOMAS.
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, July 8, 1863.12.30 P.M.

GENERAL LORENZO THOMAS, Harrisburg, Pa.:

Your despatch of this morning to the Secretary of War is before me. The forces you speak of will be of no imaginable service if they cannot go forward with a little more expedition. Lee is now passing the Potomac faster than the forces you mention are passing Carlisle. Forces now beyond Carlisle to be joined by regiments still at Harrisburg, and the united force again to join Pierce somewhere, and the whole to move down the Cumberland Valley, will in my unprofessional opinion be quite as likely to capture the “man in the moon” as any part of Lee’s army.

A. LINCOLN.

the getaway

The third U.S. president alluded to by Mr. Lincoln was James Monroe, who died on July 4, 1831.

[07/04/2020 PM] Of course, It would take many years for “all men” to include all women.

Hal Jespersen’s map of the retreat from Gettysburg (Map by Hal Jespersen, www.posix.com/CW) is licensed under Creative Commons

From the Library of Congress: the illustrated Declaration circa 1861, when emancipation was still in the future; Alexander Gardner’s portrait; Edwin Forbes’ Escape over the Potomac near Williamsport;

Posted in Gettysburg Campaign, Vicksburg Campaign | Tagged Abraham Lincoln, Battle of Gettysburg, Declaration of Independence, Gettysburg, Gettysburg Address, Independence Day, James Monroe, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Vicksburg | Leave a comment

virtual vacation

Posted on June 29, 2020 by SUMPTER

Apparently some people weren’t venturing too far from home 150 years ago.

vacationing in place

What they might have been missing:

from the Canadian side

I’m so old I sort of remember when they turned off the American Falls when I was going to school. As it turns out that happened the same year a couple men walked on the moon and a whole bunch of people rocked Woodstock. The CBC explains scientists studied the erosion that “threatened to ‘flatten out the American Falls and make them disappear altogether'”.

flattening the fall (1931)

holiday in the head

I’ve never been to Newport but no problem, thanks to Youtube. According to its documentation this performance took place exactly a month before 9/11.

tripsavvy suggests twelve other virtual vacations.

real solitude?

According to Project Gutenberg the cartoons were published in Punchinello – Niagara on July 23, 1870 and Newport on July 30, 1870. The Canadian view before rock falls in 1931 and 1954 shortened the American drop (CBC) comes from The Falls of Niagara and Other Famous Cataracts, by George W. Holley also at Project Gutenberg. I found the photo of the Maid of the Mist (1859) at Wikimedia. The bird’s eye view from 1931 is from the National Archives and also at Wikimedia. Four from the Library of Congress said to be published by George Stacy between 1860 and ca. 1865: group portrait; on the edge; sitting solo lower and higher

virtual vicarious vacation

Posted in 150 Years Ago, American Culture, American Society, Postbellum Society | Tagged Newport Rhode Island, Niagara Falls, tourism | Leave a comment

lapping it up

Posted on June 15, 2020 by SUMPTER

Here’s a man that might have fit right in with Stonewall Jackson’s foot cavalry – except that he hailed from north of Mason-Dixon.

still life (temporary)

From Harper’s Weekly June 11, 1870:

WESTON, THE PEDESTRIAN.

WE give on this page a portrait of Mr. EDWARD PAYSON WESTON, the well-known pedestrian, who has just accomplished the feat of walking one hundred miles in twenty-one hours and forty minutes – twenty minutes less than the time required by his wager. The performance took place at the Empire Rink, in Third Avenue. He made about nine stoppages for rest during his walk, none of which was longer than ten minutes. His chief nourishment was beef-tea, together with crackers, raw eggs, and lemonade. He accomplished the one hundred miles without giving evidences of any great strain on his mental or physical system, being nearly as fresh at the finish as he was at the opening. The first fifty miles were made in ten hours and thirty-five minutes. His quickest mile was done in about eleven minutes, and his best single circuit of the rink in one minute and twenty seconds. The close of his performance was witnessed by an audience of at least 5000 people, who greeted his triumph with enthusiastic applause.

5000 people crowded into a building for a sporting event? What were they thinking?

You can learn more about the Empire City Skating Rink (and see a picture) at Daytonian in Manhattan. Mr. Weston isn’t mentioned, but: “The building continued to be home not only of the annual fairs, but of athletic events and other spectacles. In the spring of 1877 a five-mile walking race took place here.”

Edward Payson Weston was a life-long long distance walker. An article at the Running Past website begins with his famous 1861 walk from Boston to Washington, D.C. to honor a wager: If Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election, he would walk the 478 miles in ten days to attend the inauguration. But that was just the beginning of some amazing feats, only ending when Mr. Weston was a septuagenarian: After a couple coast-to-coast walks at 70 and 71-72, “His last big hike was in 1913 at age 74, from New York to Minneapolis.”

“American apostle of the gospel of walking”

Matthew Algeo, author of Pedestrianism – When Watching People Walk Was America’s Favorite Spectator Sport, in an interview at NPR, said that mass urbanization after the Civil War created huge numbers of people with a good deal of time in their hands, “so pedestrianism — competitive walking matches — filled a void for people. It became quite popular quite quickly.” Mr. Algeo mentioned Edward Payson Weston and one of his great rivals Dan O’Leary and compared them to Muhammad Ali/Joe Frazier. O’Leary was like Smokin’ Joe – quiet, serious, and focused on the competition. On the other hand, “Weston was a flashy guy. He wore ruffled shirts and sashes and capes and carried a cane … he really understood that it was about entertainment as much as it was an athletic event.” The NPR article shows a drawing of Weston walking in 1874 in a ruffled shirt and high boots.

O’Leary vs. Weston, London 1877

___________________________

Self-promotion might have added to the entertainment value. E. P. Weston wrote several books/pamphlets about his exploits, beginning with his 1861 walk to Washington for the Lincoln inauguration. The Pedestrian; being a correct journal of “incidents” on a walk from the state house, Boston, Mass., to the U.S. capitol at Washington, D. C. … between February 22d and March 4th, 1861 is available at HathiTrust. The book also includes his time-table for a planned May 1862 eight day walk from Washington to Boston and an account of a journey that began in late April 1861. Dressed in a disguise furnished by Brooks Brothers, Mr. Weston delivered mail from New York City and Boston to soldiers and officials in the Annapolis and Washington D.C. area. The missives were also disguised: “These letter’s being confined in an enameled cloth bag, furnished by the Rubber Clothing Co., which was sewed into my clothes.” Unsurprisingly, much of the trip was by foot from Philadelphia. He didn’t have any real trouble in a riled up Baltimore: “Passing through the city at that late hour, I observed a motley crowd on almost every corner, and did not feel inclined to make any longer stay in Baltimore at that time, although but a few weeks previous [before Fort Sumter and the Baltimore riot of April 19th] I had been kindly entertained by a number of the citizens on my way east, after having walked to Washington [for the Inauguration].” As Mr. Weston approached Annapolis he was detained for over a day and half by the 69th New York Militia. For part of that time he was held in the “guard-house, a nasty, filthy place, about ten feet square, wherein were confined three or four of their own men. I thought it was an elegant place to invite a man into who had walked seventy miles in less than twenty-four hours, and who needed at least a decent place to sit down in. But I had to ‘go in and bear it.'” Finally the 69th’s Colonel Michael Corcoran and it’s chaplain Father Mooney interrogated the pedestrian, examined the letters he was carrying, and telegraphed the Howard Hotel in NYC for a reference. The 69th released Weston after receiving a good word from the hotel. He successfully completed his mission and met General B.F. Butler in Annapolis.

walking in a war zone

questioned the pedestrian

churchman militant

According to King of the Peds “Pedestrianism hit its zenith in 1879.” The documentation at the Library of Congress says the three card-type images below and the big group picture at the bottom were all published in 1879. Weston, O’Leary, and Rowell are all candidates for the title of champion at the King of the Peds.

going coastal in … 76 days

You can read all of Harper’s Weekly for 1870 at the Internet Archive. I got the image of the 1877 London duel from Wikimedia.

From the Library of Congress: walking groupies; 1861 Seat of War; General Michael Corcoran; Father Thomas Mooney – according to Irish in the American Civil War “Father Mooney would get into hot-water during the militia’s time at Fort Corcoran for blessing an artillery piece, an action that led to his recall.”; generic pedestrian; John Ennis Charles Rowell.

The age 70 portrait of the Pedestrian and the page about his upcoming nationwide stroll is from: Weston and his walks; souvenir programme of the great transcontinental … Weston and his walks; souvenir programme of the great transcontinental …

pedestrianism emulated

Posted in 150 Years Ago, Aftermath, American Culture, Postbellum Society | Tagged 69th New York, Daniel O'Leary, Edward Payson Weston, Empire City Skating Rink, Father Thomas Mooney, Michael Corcoran, pedestrianism, spectator sports | Leave a comment

floral tributes

Posted on May 30, 2020 by SUMPTER

From the May 31, 1870 issue of The New-York Times.
Except the day on which is celebrated the independence of these United States, there is no day that calls out the patriotic feelings of our people more than “Memorial Day.” The 30th of May has come to be a National holiday — not by any enactment of Congress, not by any enactment of Legislature, but by the general consent of the people. On this day, when the earth is robed in its most beautiful verdure — when everything bids the soul lift itself up to things superterrestrial — it has been well chosen that the nation should pay homage and reverence to the manes [names?] of those who bared their breasts to the battle’s front when treason sought to overthrow our national institutions, and discord sought to make of an hitherto united people a dissevered and divided nation. All over the Union yesterday was celebrated as a fit and appropriate occasion on which to testify the honor in which is held the memory of the heroic dead who,

“Fighting in freedom’s cause, bravely fell.”

The tradition of services at Arlington National Cemetery continued, including a song performed by the Marine band and a chorus of 500 at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers:

remembering and decorating

Luther’s “A Strong Castle is Our Lord”

Comrade John A. Logan was main orator

big demand day

Services were also held at Antietam National Cemetery. In his long main oration Colonel Ephraim F. Anderson began by focusing on the common soldier as he commemorated the Union cause:

Ladies and Gentlemen :

We have come here to-day with evergreens and flowers to decorate the graves of our fallen heroes. The 30th of May, which has been designated as our “Memorial Day,” is indeed becoming a national anniversary — the saddest yet the sweetest of all the days we celebrate. These tender observances help to humanize our feelings and purify our patriotism. — Our annual pilgrimages to these sacred little mounds make our hearts better and inspire us with a purer love of country. While people everywhere, both civilized and barbarous, have fondly cherished the memory of their brave ones slain in battle, yet their tributes of sorrow and gratitude have been commemorative rather of their great national triumphs, or lavished upon their victorious chieftains alone. Monuments have been reared to the very heavens to point where battles were fought and won, or to mark where famous leaders fell, and pyramids have been erected for the sepulture of kings ; but the rank and file of armies have passed unnoticed as individuals, and have been allowed to commingle their dust in shallow, evenly covered ditches, in forgotten or unfrequented places.

We are not here to-day to gaze up toward the apex of some proud pillar, as it pierces the sky; nor are we come where our sentiment for the dead will be lost in admiration of the splendid mausoleum or costly cenotaph. Within these cemetery walls five thousand of our brave defenders lie slumbering, and we are come to this bivouac of our gallant dead, bringing with us the bloom and fragrance of early spring-time — beautiful flowers, delicate and tender as the emotions which they symbolize — beautiful flowers with which God’s love has made our earth smile — beautiful flowers to be arranged by fair hands over each humble yet honored grave. I know not whether the departed turn back to view the honors bestowed upon their remains, but if such be their wont, I imagine the spirits of those whose bones repose here are hovering about these memorial services; and these lovely flowers are only less grateful to them than the nation’s starry flag which they hallowed by their blood.

While this occasion is mainly in honor of the cause for which our soldiers gave up their lives, it at the same time engages the tenderest affections of our hearts, for we are sensible that those who sleep here are our sons and our brothers, and we perform, though imperfectly, the sweet offices which their dearer kindred would esteem their sacred privilege. In all times, it has been a fond desire of the human race to be buried, after death, among their kindred in the family graveyard, where surviving friends might often stray and bestow their tributes of affection. …

Our offerings to-day are for the Union Soldier, who sleeps among strangers far away from the family vault. But it is pleasing to know that, though the mother and sisters may never come to plant the white rose and train the myrtle, yet the Soldier boy’s grave is not neglected — with his life’s blood he purchased a fond mother and gentle sisters in every home defended by his valor, and they will come, by-times, to deck his modest tomb with choice flowers and moisten its verdure with grateful tears. …

You can read all of Colonel Anderson’s address at HathiTrust

Posted in 150 Years Ago, 150 Years Ago This Week, Aftermath, American Society, Veterans | Tagged Antietam National Cemetery, Arlington National Cemetery, Ephraim F. Anderson, John Alexander Logan, Memorial (Decoration) Day, Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers | Leave a comment

spring chicken

Posted on May 14, 2020 by SUMPTER

____________________

Come to find out, Meherrin Station Virginia is the site of a historical marker which commemorates two Civil War-related events. Federal cavalry units were in the area during the Wilson–Kautz Raid in late June 1864. The raid’s mission was to destroy Confederate railroad track and bridges as the Richmond–Petersburg campaign began. As The Siege of Petersburg explains the raid had only limited success from a Union point of view. The Federal cavalry suffered substantial casualties given that it failed to accomplish one of its main objectives – destroying the Staunton River Bridge on the Richmond & Dansville Railroad. Quite a bit of track was torn up and Confederate supplies ran low for awhile, but in about nine weeks the tracks were repaired. That would explain the second event mentioned on the historical marker – as Richmond was burning and the Confederate government was fleeing, Jefferson Davis and associates passed through Meherrin Station on the Richmond & Dansville as they made their way all the way to Dansville, where they temporarily set up the government.

wrecking rebel railroads

rough raid route

You can read all of Harper’s Weekly at the Internet Archive, including pages 288, 320, and 336. Hal Jespersen’s map of the Wilson-Kautz raid is licensed under Creative Commons, Map by Hal Jespersen, www.posix.com/CW. From the Library of Congress: rail disruption; vacated Davis house; burnt districts map; the Danville Address.

the house that Jeff left

what got burnt

Montgomery, Richmond, … Danville

Posted in 150 Years Ago, Aftermath, Postbellum Society, Reconstruction, Southern Society, War Consequences | Tagged agriculture, davis, education, Emancipation, Jefferson Davis, Meherrin Station Virginia, Reconstruction, Virginia, Wilson–Kautz Raid | Leave a comment

I enjoyed learning more about Robert E. Lee’s last years at a lecture reproduced on Youtube. Gettysburg National Military Park Ranger Matt Atkinson is a big fan of the general.

I’m guessing the “nearer and present conflict” mentioned in the London editorial is the Franco-Prussian war, which has even been dominating the pages of America’s Harper’s Weekly.

[October 15, 2020] After poring incessantly over the fascinating stacks at the Library of Congress, yesterday I finally re-found the bottom painting of General Lee. It is here and said to be c1886 Aug. 27.

I got the image of Washington College in 1845 at Wikimedia

Mary Custis Lee picture: from Personal reminiscences, anecdotes, and letters of Gen. Robert E. Lee. By Rev. J. William Jones. [Published by authority of the Lee family, and of the faculty of Washington and Lee university] (1874) at Hathi Trust

October 14, 2020I forgot to mention an important part of the Custis will – Robert E. was expected to emancipate all his father-in-law’s slaves within five years. That probably increased the stress on him to make the plantations productive.

According to the New York City Parks website the Lincoln statue in Union Square was dedicated on September 16, 1870. You can read much more about Henry Kirke Brown and John Quincy Adams Ward at The Met. Karen Chernick’s post at Hidden City Philadelphia tells the story of the Robert Wood foundry.

Harper’s mentioned John Quincy Adams Ward’s “Citizen Soldier” in Central Park. It must be the memorial to the Seventh Regiment, although that wasn’t dedicated until 1874.

… President Grant, in his message to Congress March 30th, 1870, on the adoption of the fifteenth amendment, said:

“A measure which makes at once four millions of people voters, is indeed a measure of greater importance than any act of the kind from the foundation of the Government to the present time.”

How could four millions negroes be made voters if two millions were not included? …

Benjamin F. Butler, in a recent letter to me, said:

“I do not believe anybody in Congress doubts that the Constitution authorizes the right of women to vote, precisely as it authorizes trial by jury and many other like rights guaranteed to citizens.”

And again, General Butler said:

And it is upon this just interpretation of the United States Constitution that our National Woman Suffrage Association which celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the woman’s rights movement in New York on the 6th of May next, has based all its arguments and action the past five years. …

According to Alma Lutz’s 1959 Susan B. Anthony: Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian (pages 198-200 at Project Gutenberg):

Susan preached militancy to women throughout the presidential campaign of 1872, urging them to claim their rights under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments by registering and voting in every state in the Union. …

With the spotlight turned on the Fourteenth Amendment by these women, lawyers here and there throughout the country were discussing the legal points involved, many admitting that women had a good case. Even the press was friendly.

This mission accomplished, Susan rounded up twelve more women willing to register. The evening papers spread the sensational news, and by the end of the registration period, fifty Rochester women had joined the ranks of the militants. …

As of this morning Google defined citizen as: a legally recognized subject or national of a state or commonwealth, either native or naturalized. “a Polish citizen”

or an inhabitant of a particular town or city. “the citizens of Los Angeles”

It was still a numbers game for Alice Paul but she was one of the suffragists in the 1910s who wanted to change course – instead of getting all the states to change their state laws, get 36 states to ratify a constitutional amendment that would impose federal law on all 48 plus.

The 1918 photo of Louisa A. Swain, one of the first female voters in Wyoming Territory is from Wikimedia Commons. Lokal_Profil’s suffrage map is licensed under Creative Commons. Wikimedia Commons also provides the image of B.F. Butler

The clipping describing the trial was published in the July 5, 1873 issue of Harper’s Weekly at Hathi Trust.

One of the themes of political cartoons from 150 or so years ago seems to have been an apprehension of changing gender roles. The example here of a woman getting her two bits worth at the barbershop is from the September 10, 1870 issue of Punchinello at Project Gutenberg

MURDER AND SENTIMENTALITY.

… we would not certainly honor conspicuous rebels while the rebel spirit slaughtered our brethren …

His view of the situation was correct. It implied nothing vindictive, nothing unjust. Gradually events showed its wisdom. … [events including massacres, Black Codes, and the Ku Klux Klan] …

From the Internet Archive: Harper’s Weekly for 1870 and George Washington Carver’s 1917 book.

The World War II era poster is from the National Archives via Wikimedia Commons. It is dated 1943; Mr. Carver died on January 5, 1943. Also from Wikimedia Commons – the Bowery Theatre in July 1867.

114. John Adams.

3 July, 1776.

115. John Adams.

Philadelphia, 3 July, 1776.

The book of letters was edited by John and Abigail’s grandson, Charles Francis Adams, who, in a footnote, said he checked the facts and corrected a previous “slight alteration” by relative.

FOOTNOTES:

According to Wikipedia:

Harper’s Weekly for 1870 is at the Internet Archive

You can find the Adams book of correspondence at Project Gutenberg. The two letters here are on pages 190-194.

Based on correspondence all around July 7th, it seems that President Lincoln wanted a little more success from General Meade and his Army of the Potomac as the rebels retreated from Gettysburg:

ANNOUNCEMENT OF NEWS FROM GETTYSBURG. WASHINGTON,

July 4, 10.30 A.M.

A. LINCOLN.

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL FRENCH. [Cipher] WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C.,

July 5, 1863. MAJOR-GENERAL FRENCH, Fredericktown, Md.:

I see your despatch about destruction of pontoons. Cannot the enemy ford the river?

A. LINCOLN.

CONTINUED FAILURE TO PURSUE ENEMY TELEGRAM TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

SOLDIERS’ HOME, WASHINGTON, JULY 6 1863.7 P.M., MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK:

If you are satisfied the latter purpose is entertained, and is judiciously pursued, I am content. If you are not so satisfied, please look to it.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.

…

SURRENDER OF VICKSBURG TO GENERAL GRANT TELEGRAM FROM GENERAL HALLECK TO GENERAL G. C. MEADE.

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 7, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Army of the Potomac:

I have received from the President the following note, which I respectfully communicate:

“We have certain information that Vicksburg surrendered to General Grant on the Fourth of July. Now if General Meade can complete his work, so gloriously prosecuted this far, by the literal or substantial destruction of Lee’s army, the rebellion will be over.

“Yours truly,

“A. LINCOLN.”

H. W. HALLECK. General-in-Chief.

TELEGRAM FROM GENERAL HALLECK TO GENERAL G. C. MEADE. WASHINGTON, D. C., July 8, 1863.

MAJOR-GENERAL MEADE, Frederick, Md.:

There is reliable information that the enemy is crossing at Williamsport. The opportunity to attack his divided forces should not be lost. The President is urgent and anxious that your army should move against him by forced marches.

H. W. HALLECK, General-in-Chief

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL THOMAS. WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, July 8, 1863.12.30 P.M.

GENERAL LORENZO THOMAS, Harrisburg, Pa.:

A. LINCOLN.

The third U.S. president alluded to by Mr. Lincoln was James Monroe, who died on July 4, 1831.

[07/04/2020 PM] Of course, It would take many years for “all men” to include all women.

Hal Jespersen’s map of the retreat from Gettysburg (Map by Hal Jespersen, www.posix.com/CW) is licensed under Creative Commons

From the Library of Congress: the illustrated Declaration circa 1861, when emancipation was still in the future; Alexander Gardner’s portrait; Edwin Forbes’ Escape over the Potomac near Williamsport;

I’ve never been to Newport but no problem, thanks to Youtube. According to its documentation this performance took place exactly a month before 9/11.

tripsavvy suggests twelve other virtual vacations.

The age 70 portrait of the Pedestrian and the page about his upcoming nationwide stroll is from: Weston and his walks; souvenir programme of the great transcontinental … Weston and his walks; souvenir programme of the great transcontinental …

You can read all of Colonel Anderson’s address at HathiTrust

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General Civil War Sites

Mary Custis Lee picture: from Personal reminiscences, anecdotes, and letters of Gen. Robert E.
Lee. By Rev. J. William Jones. [Published by authority of the Lee
family, and of the faculty of Washington and Lee university] (1874) at Hathi Trust

As of this morning Google defined citizen as: a legally recognized subject or national of a state or commonwealth, either native or naturalized.
“a Polish citizen”

or an inhabitant of a particular town or city.
“the citizens of Los Angeles”

ANNOUNCEMENT OF NEWS FROM GETTYSBURG.
WASHINGTON,

July 5, 1863.
MAJOR-GENERAL FRENCH, Fredericktown, Md.:

CONTINUED FAILURE TO PURSUE ENEMY
TELEGRAM TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK.

SURRENDER OF VICKSBURG TO GENERAL GRANT
TELEGRAM FROM GENERAL HALLECK TO GENERAL G. C. MEADE.

TELEGRAM FROM GENERAL HALLECK TO GENERAL G. C. MEADE.
WASHINGTON, D. C., July 8, 1863.

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL THOMAS.
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, July 8, 1863.12.30 P.M.