fulcrum point?

Posted on November 16, 2013 by SUMPTER
chattanooga-tennessee (Harper's Weekly, September 12, 1863)

“central point of the Confederacy” (VIEW OF THE CITY OF CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE, FROM THE NORTH SIDE OF THE TENNESSEE RIVER.)

Ever more Yankees, including General Grant, were concentrating at Chattanooga. This Richmond editorial knew the North was going to attack and hoped that if the South won it would break “the backbone of the war.” Otherwise, “the South will be overrun.”

From the Richmond Daily Dispatch November 16, 1863:

Chattanooga.

All eyes are now turned upon this central point of the Confederacy and of the war. It is useless to deny that the enemy are about to make their supreme effort on that field. –They are consolidating there their greatest strength. The flower of their armies is collected there, with the best of their Generals at its head. In numbers, in equipments, in munitions of war, all their preparations are of the most colossal kind. The stake at issue warrants the magnitude of their efforts, for if they are defeated there the backbone of the war is broken, and all hope of the subjugation of the South banished forever even from their own mad counsels. If they are successful, the South will be overrun, and it may be many years before we can recover from the consequences.

The aspirations of every patriot and Christian must rise most earnestly to Heaven for success in the approaching battle. We believe that the Southern army near Chattanooga, though inferior in numbers, is fully equal to the emergency, and, if properly handled, with the blessing of Heaven, will again victoriously rout the Northern hordes. No better and braver soldiers walk the earth than those collected under the banner of Gen. Bragg. They have just broken the spell of Northwestern invincibility, and they must be inspired to visit upon the foe another and a severer lesson.–Let them remember how much depends upon this battle; that the eyes of their country and of the world are fixed upon them; that their peaceful homes are looking to them for salvation, and the freedom and independence of the South for deliverance.–Let them know no enemies but the enemies of their country; let them banish all feuds and dissensions, till the great, controlling feud between them and the invaders is decided. It is an hour of fearful moment.–The destinies of this generation and of generations yet to come may be involved in this battle. How can any one think at such a time as this of anything but his country?–All personal considerations ought to be as dust in the balance compared with that.–The enemy, great as his numbers are, has no power to defeat us if we are true to our selves and our cause. Rosecrans, their military idol, has been dashed to pieces, and Grant will encounter his fate, if the Army of the West, sustained by the majesty of their cause, and the benediction of Providence, puts forth one mighty and consolidated effort for the deliverance of the land.

The view of Chattanooga was published in the September 12, 1863 issue of Harper’s Weekly (at Son of the South)

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swarming with yankees

Posted on November 15, 2013 by SUMPTER
Richmond 1863 (by Robert Knox Sneden (LOC: gvhs01 vhs00051 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.ndlpcoop/gvhs01.vhs00051 )

prison city

Richmond was just about overflowing with Yankee prisoners. Some were being disposed to Danville and Lynchburg.

From the Richmond Daily Dispatch November 14, 1863:

The prisoners of War in Richmond.

The morning report of the Libby prison yesterday shows the following number of Yankee prisoners now in the prisons in and around Richmond: Prisoners of war, 12, 747; citizen prisoners, 3; Yankee deserters, 3; negroes, 22; total, 12,775. Among these are 953 commissioned officers of different grades, from Brigadier-General down to Third Lieutenant. There are also 84 surgeons in the lot. Seven hundred of these prisoners were yesterday sent to Danville, and 700 will be sent daily to that point until 4,000 are thus disposed of. It is understood that several thousand will also be sent to Lynchburg.

The day before the Dispatch editorialized on the difficulties of having to take care of thousands of Yankee prisoners, especially given the worsening economic condition in Richmond. From the Richmond Daily Dispatch November 13, 1863:

The Yankee prisoners.

The persistent lies of the Yankee journals about the starvation and cruel treatment of their prisoners in Richmond are only intended to blow up the declining war spirit in the North, and to justify themselves upon the pretext of an abominable falsehood, in inflicting new cruelties upon our unhappy captives in their hands. We have made inquiries upon the subject which satisfy us that all is done for the support and comfort of the Yankee multitude which the Confederate Government is capable of doing. A fact came to our notice yesterday morning which will be a striking illustration of the true state of things to all fair minds. Several persons of respectable standing in this community were endeavoring to obtain a small quantity of some portions of the beef which have been permitted to be sold at the commissary shops to the general public, but were informed by the man in charge that they could not have it, as it was now required by the Yankee prisoners. Here are our people dented provisions for themselves and their children to feed these Yankees, who have come to destroy us! We do not mention this in the way of complaint; on the contrary we give the Government credit for its merciful disposition, but this single fact sufficiently disproves the base and malignant falsehood that we are seeking to starve the Yankees, when, in reality, it is our own people that are in danger of starving in order that these prisoners may be fed.

Libby interior (Harper's Weekly 10-17-1863)

INTERIOR VIEW OF LIBEY PRISON, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, SHOWING THE QUARTERS OF THE UNION OFFICERS CONFINED THERE.—SKETCHED BY CAPTAIN HARRY E. WRIGLEY, TOPOGRAPHICAL ENGINEERS.

To any one willing to listen to reason and truth, it must be apparent that thirteen thousand Yankee prisoners thrust upon a community already overcrowded, and having great difficulty to provide the plainest articles of food for its own tables, cannot expect, with the best dispositions on our part’ to fare sumptuously every day. We know people, once in affluence, who would be glad to be assured of as liberal a daily provision as these Yankee prisoners. It may be that their food is plain, and not abundant, but it is as good and as plentiful as, with our straightened means, we can supply. Liars ought to have good memories, and to keep up a show at least of consistency, and therefore we would suggest to the mendacious Yankee scribes who accuse us of deliberately starving our prisoners, whether, if it be true, as they daily assert, that the people of Richmond are threatened with the horrors of famine, it may not be that the alleged famine among their prisoners is involuntary? If we are starving ourselves, how can we keep them from starving? But the truth is, that, though straightened in our own means of life, we are doing as well for our prisoners as for ourselves. Seventy bullocks a day are sacrificed for their commissariat, and bread in proportion to their numbers. Our own people, as we know of our own personal knowledge, are in some cases denied meat for their own families, because it is necessary for the Yankees. Thus much we say, not because we consider any explanation due to our enemies, or likely to be satisfactory, but because the facts ought to be known, in vindication of our own character, and in justice to our own prisoners whom they wish to harass and torture upon a false and malignant pretext.

The Union prison camp at "Belle Isle," Richmond, Va. (between 1861 and 1865; LOC: LC-DIG-stereo-1s02817)

old factories full – send them to Belle Isle

In regard to accommodation it is undoubtedly true that we are deficient in the means of comfortably accommodating the multitude on our hands. We had no room in Richmond before the war for a large surplus population. Since the war our population has been doubled; people who once lived in large mansions are glad to get two rooms, the Confederate Government has been compelled to occupy for the uses of State many of our principal public edifices. Artisans and builders having been drawn upon largely for the army, very little building has been going on since the war commenced. The consequence is, that after packing all our spare factories with Yankee prisoners, we have been compelled to encamp the others on Belle Isle, which is the most agreeable of places in summer, but not better in winter than the usual winter quarters of soldiers.–What can we do? Arrangements have been made to send them away as fast as we can find places for them in the interior of the country, and in the meantime they must submit to a disagreeable position with the best philosophy they can, knowing that it is the result of necessity and not of wanton cruelty on our part.

We have abstained from referring to the unspeakable horrors which our prisoners have suffered in Fort Delaware and other Yankee prisons, because two wrongs do not make a right. But we may at least say to the Yankee prisoners that if they suffer here it is not our fault, who cannot help it; but the fault of their own Government, who will not exchange prisoners — who will only send us back our sick and wounded men, and when we return others in the same condition, basely and of wanton malice pretend that their sufferings are the result of starvation in Southern prisons.

The Dix–Hill Cartel that regulated prisoner parole and exchange started breaking down toward the end of 1862. By June 1863 exchanges had almost ceased. Two big issues were the Confederates government’s refusal to parole captured black Union soldiers and the return to service of some paroled but non-exchanged Confederates soldiers.[1]

The interior view of Libby was published in the October 17, 1863 issue of Harper’s Weekly (at Son of the South

The following image of Union prisoners on Belle Isle was published in the December 5, 1863 issue of Harper’s Weekly (at Son of the South). A report from the Union perspective (Confederates suffered in Union prisons, too.) accompanies the drawing.

belle-isle (Harper's Weekly 12-5-1863)

THE PRISONS AT RICHMOND—UNION TROOPS PRISONERS AT BELLE ISLE.

  1. [1]McPherson, James M. The Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Ballantine Books, 1989. Print. pages 792-793.↩
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brief

Posted on November 14, 2013 by SUMPTER
Joseph Eggleston Johnston, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing left (by frederickDielman, c.1896; LOC: LC-USZ62-91813)

laconic “no General” ?

150 years ago this month Joseph E. Johnston was in charge of the Confederate Departments of Alabama and Mississippi. Apparently he had enough time on his hands to make (tiny) speeches.

From the Richmond Daily Dispatch November 14, 1863:

Gen. Johnston’s Speeches.

–Whether Gen. Joe Johnston is “no General” or not, it cannot be denied that he is a great speaker. When he makes a speech, he speaks directly to the point, and quits as soon as he gets through — a secret of his which many long-winded Congressmen would do well to catch. Recently the General made a telling speech at Enterprise. “Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for this expression of your kindness.” (What could be more appropos than that?) “Soldiers, I hope soon to see you with arms in your hands in front of the enemy!” There! the whole ground was covered. Everything necessary to be said was said; and although the eloquent orator may have been thoroughly overcome and exhausted by the effort, yet it is said that he did not weary his audience in the slightest degree–Mississippian, Extra.

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ladies’ night

Posted on November 13, 2013 by SUMPTER
Congo Square in New Orleans c.2006

Congo Square in New Orleans (c.2006)

I’m pretty sure the Dispatch editors found the following document historical for the racial component. My added take: it’d be a lot better party by making sure the women got there; therefore, the 50% price reduction?

From the Richmond Daily Dispatch November 13, 1863:


An Historical Document.

–The following is a copy of a ticket to a Yankee 4th of July fete in New Orleans:

Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!

Saturday, July4th, 1863.

Grand Union Pastoral Festival,
On Congo Square, Second District.

No Distinction of Race! No Distinction of Color!

Admittance. Ladies, 25 cents.

Admittance. Gentlemen, 50 cents.

Admit one gentleman.

During the 18th century slaves, who were given Saturdays off by their Spanish and French masters, began using Congo Square as a market and music and dance place. “As harsher United States practices of slavery replaced the more lenient French colonial style, the slave gatherings declined. Although no recorded date of the last slave dances in the square exists, the practice seems to have stopped more than a decade before the end of slavery with the American Civil War.”

Today Congo Square is part of Louis Armstrong Park.

Performing Arts mural by Randy Spicer featuring jazz immortal Louis Armstrong, Eureka, California (photo bt carolM. Highsmith, mural by Randy Spicer (2012; LOC: LC-DIG-highsm-21781)

playing in Eureka, California

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in pain

Posted on November 12, 2013 by SUMPTER

To paraphrase Shelby Foote: Before the Civil War many Americans said “The United States are …”; after the war they said “The United States is. It’s been well-documented how when the war started many Southerners had to choose between their state or the United States. It’s been almost three years since Winfield Scott chose his nation, but given the ever greater sufferings of Southerners, it probably seemed judicious for a Richmond newspaper to lambaste the old Virginian 150 years ago this week. The sense of betrayal to the state comes through as the newspaper fires up its readership.

From the Richmond Daily Dispatch November 10, 1863:

Gen. Scott.

A “personal admirer” of Gen. Scott, connected with the New York Times gives the following in an account of a visit to that distinguished personage:

“On the subject of the war the General is reticent. It gives him pain. To a question in regard to it he shook his head, replying, ‘That is a matter I do not talk upon; it is a subject for others to discuss, and not for me to dwell upon in my old age. It is in other hands, and must now engage the attention of other heads.'”

(from General Scott, by General Marcus J. Wright at Project Gutenberg

“sold himself to the enemies of his State and people”


We can easily conceive that the subject “gives him pain.” We are willing to suppose that this pain arises in some degree from other feelings besides personal disappointment. Gen. Scott must still have about him some of the ordinary feelings of human nature, and, if he has, we can easily understand why he broods in sombre silence over the great national iniquity in which, reluctantly, we hope, he has played so conspicuous a part. This man is a Virginian, and, if he can look upon the land in which he first drew breath, and which once so delighted to honor him, subjected to such woes and sufferings as she has borne for nearly three years, he must be not a man, but a monster. He has passed a great part of his life in the North, and he cannot but know the difference between the two people. Whatever the ribald hirelings of the Northern press may say of Virginia, General Scott knows, of his own personal observation, the pure and generous character of the Virginia people; the simple virtues of their agricultural firesides; the high tone of morality and personal honor, and of humble and unaffected Christianity which distinguish the great mass of her community. He knows, too, just as well the selfish, corrupt, licentious, godless traits of the Northern populace, and when he sees this herd of brutish beasts let loose to ravage and destroy the once powerful and happy plains and hillsides where he roved in childhood, the war may well give him pain. He cannot but love Virginia, not only for her people, but her past history. As a Virginian, he must be proud of the land which produced a Washington, and Marshall and Madison, and a host of other illustrious names which he was taught from his childhood to love and revere. Well may it give him pain to think of such soil desecrated by the vandal feet of mercenaries from every clime; its modest churches defaced with licentious and sacrilegious inscriptions; its hospitable dwellings burned to the ground, and the families which once delighted to entertain the stranger and give refuge to the distressed driven from their own homesteads and made wanderers on the face of the earth; its best blood flowing like water on a hundred battle-fields, and its very graves polluted by the infernal orgies of the fiends who have been let loose to work their will of demoniac hatred upon the living and the dead. If he can look upon such a scene without pain, he does not deserve the name of man.

Other considerations of a more selfish nature add, no doubt, to the “pain” which the war gives General Scott. When the war commenced he was the military idol of the whole American people. No soldier of the old United States Army occupied as proud a position. The laurels of the war of 1812, and of the war with Mexico, rested gracefully upon his massive brow. Other figures of those wars, perhaps not less deserving than himself, had faded away, but he towered upwards, a grand, living monument of the nation’s military glory. Virginia, his mother, had delighted to cover him with marks of her honor and love. Such he was then. But now! Called up to choose between honor and interest, between gratitude and selfishness, between duty and p[s]elf, he sold himself to the enemies of his State and people, and has lost all — lost his own good name, and lost the base price for which he sold it. To become Commander-in-Chief of the grand Yankee army, he sacrificed love and loyalty and every generous feeling of his nature, and in three months after he had done it he was thrown aside by the Yankees themselves, laid away upon the shelf as an antediluvian curiosity, consigned to a mausoleum of dead celebrities, where he is little regarded by the pressing crowd as the crumbling monument of the unfortunate Lawrence in Trinity churchyard. Instead of going down to his grave admired and honored all over the continent, he is execrated by the South as a traitor, and treated by the North as a dotard. Well may the war give him “pain.”

There is another reason besides for his sufferings. As a military man, he doubtless perceives the utter impracticability of accomplishing the objects for which the Federal Union has expended so much blood and treasure. He is himself on record as expressing the opinion that the South cannot be readily subjugated. Three years have set the seal of experience to the correctness of that opinion. Army after army has vanished away in the attempts. General after General has shared his own ignoble fate. McDowell, McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker, Rosecrans, Buell, and others, have followed him to a living grave. And still the military power of the South is not only unsubdued, but stronger and more defiant than ever.–Well may Gen. Scott be sorrowful and silent. Unhappy old man! He has outlived himself and his country, and is tottering onwards to a yawning tomb, where the most merciful epitaph that he can expect is–“Forgotten.”

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that European diet

Posted on November 11, 2013 by SUMPTER
[Gettysburg, Pa. Confederate dead gathered for burial at the edge of the Rose woods, July 5, 1863] (by Alexander gardner, 1863 July [5]; LOC: LC-DIG-cwpb-00882)

“till this horrid war is over” (slain Confederates at Gettysburg, 7-5-1863; Library of Congress)

From the Richmond Daily Dispatch November 10, 1863:

Eat Press [Less] meat.

–The great scarcity of meats of all kinds in this Confederacy renders it absolutely necessary that all classes should be exceedingly economical in its use, in order to furnish the Southern armies with proper rations. In the old countries, where the people possess iron constitutions and enjoy fine health, comparatively little meat is used. We must follow their example during this war. Every housekeeper should raise as many hogs and beeves as possible, and every farmer ought to devote a fair proportion of his best lands to the cultivation of the Chinese sugar cane, from which to make abundant supplies of molasses. By doing this, and by cultivating and drying fruits of all sorts, we shall have an abundance of good, nourishing food for private families and exempts and a fair promotion of meats for, the army. The South has its all in this war. It must conquer an honorable peace, or lose all that is worth living for. If it desires freedom its people must be willing to bear sacrifices, privations, and want. Without these we cannot succeed, and the sooner every man and woman in the land makes up their mind to bear all and suffer all, rather than become Northern slaves, the sooner we will attain to the great end for which we are aiming. Meat is scarce, very scarce, and we are compelled to do with very little of it, even now. The stock on hand can last but a short time, and our readers should make up their minds to do without it altogether till this horrid war is over.

A market report earlier in the week included a paragraph on meat prices, domesticated and wild. From the Richmond Daily Dispatch November 6, 1863:

… In the City Markets there has been a slight advance in nearly all the articles offered for sale. Fresh Meats are worth from $1.25 to $1.50 for beef and mutton, and $2 for pork; Chickens $6 to $8 per pair; Turkeys $12 to $15 a piece; Ducks $7 to $8 per pair; Raccoon $10 apiece; Opossum from $2.50 to $5, according to size; Rabbits $1.50 to $2; Squirrels $1; Fish — small Alewives $2 per bunch of four; Catfish $1.50 to $2 per bunch of four; Butter $5 per pound; Sweet Potatoes $2.50 per half peck; Irish Potatoes, $2 per half peck; Turnips $2 per peck; Cabbage 75 cents to $1.25 per head. …

From the Richmond Daily Dispatch November 11, 1863:

hog_butcher_diagram (http://www.wpclipart.com/food/meat/hog_butcher_diagram.png.html)

beware fake impressment officers

Local Matters. …

One thousand dollars reward

is offered by the Mayor, under an order of the City Council, for the arrest and conviction of the person or persons engaged in seizing hogs and other articles from citizens, under the pretext of being Confederate impressing officers. A similar reward would be very appropriate for the man that induced persons to sell their hogs to him, by representing that the Government intended to seize them. This species of swindle was practiced on white and black, and the author is liable to a term in the penitentiary, if convicted. …

Flour

continues scarce, and commands enormous prices. We have heard of some few lots selling as high as $110. A mercantile firm on 12th street received a lot on Monday last, and was offered $100 per barrel for it by a baker, but refused to sell to him at any price, preferring to sell it to families at $80 per barrel, which they did in a very short time. If farmers could be induced to thresh out their grain the supply would soon equal the demand, but they will not do so.

Salt Meats.

–The City Council have passed a resolution allowing the renters of stalls in the meat markets to sell bacon and lard. An effort was made to add butter to the list, but the Council refused to do so, one or more members alleging [ that that ] would open the door for huckstering, and that neither grocers nor families would ever be able to get a supply save from the swarm of cormorants who bought up all that came to the city and retailed it out at their own prices. …

Increase of salaries.

–The City Council have amended an ordinance increasing the salaries of the police twenty five per cent.–This increase will help the officers to buy bread, but is not enough to enable them to educate their children.

And it sure would be a good idea to keep the police force happy. From the same article:

Popular move.

–The amended ordinance reported to the Council by Mr. Hill, at its last meeting, by which negroes are prevented from riding in hacks about the streets, will be the most popular law that the Council have enacted for many years. Negroes should be treated humanely, but should be kept in their places. For months past they have monopolized the public hacks, by day and night, and many slaves have no doubt been enabled to escape from their masters by the use of such vehicles.

It seems that wages for Richmond police officers were similar to other wages in the South: “Wage increases lagged far behind price increases. In 1862 wages for skilled and unskilled workers increased about 55 percent while prices rose 300 percent.”[1]

___________________________________________
___________________________________________

U.S. Marines in France Digging in. Training for modern warfare consists mostly in digging one trench after another, and our boys, realizing the importance of this training, go at it with a will. (between 1917 and 1919; LOC: LC-DIG-ds-04289)

doughboys digging in, in France (LOC)

[German military personnal in a trench] (between 1914 and 1918; LOC: LC-USZ62-136101)

Germans in a trench (LOC)

A French departure trench just before zero hour (photographed between 1914 and 1918; LOC: LC-USZ62-93510)

“A French departure trench just before zero hour” (LOC)


__________________________________________________

The image of hog butcher diagram is from wpclipart

  1. [1]McPherson, James M. The Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Ballantine Books, 1989. Print. page 440.↩
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Monday theater

Posted on November 9, 2013 by SUMPTER
John Wilkes Booth (1925; LOC: LC-F81- 36169)

John Wilkes Booth (Library of Congress)

150 years ago today “President Abraham Lincoln attends the theater in Washington, D.C., ironically observing actor John Wilkes Booth perform in The Marble Heart.” [1] According to The Lincoln Log (you can search by the date or the name of the play) the play was staged at Ford’s Theatre .

Back on February 18, 1861 John Wilkes Booth and President-elect Lincoln both lodged in Albany, New York. Mr. Booth was performing in a play; Mr. Lincoln was on his train journey to Washington for his inauguration.

In March 1863 Mr. Booth played in The Marble Heart in Philadelphia.

______________________________

Fords Theather [i.e., Theater], [Washington, D.C.] (between 1918 and 1920; LOC: LC-DIG-npcc-00144)

Ford’s (Around 1920; Library of Congress)

  1. [1]Fredriksen, John C. Civil War Almanac. New York: Checkmark Books, 2008. Print. page 370.↩
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and yet so far

Posted on November 8, 2013 by SUMPTER
[Charleston, S.C. St. Michael's Church] (by George N. Barnard, April 1865; LOC: LC-DIG-cwpb-03029)

St. Michael’s steeple an accustomed sight (April 1865 photo; Library of Congress)

Going on three years now Charleston and especially Fort Sumter have been hugely symbolic (New York City Republicans fired a “miniature Fort Sumter” at a Washington’s birthday celebration back in 1861). The Union has been banging away all year, but Charleston and Sumter are still in rebel hands. A correspondent for a Baltimore newspaper sees eventual Northern success as inevitable.

From the Richmond Daily Dispatch November 7, 1863:

Charleston through a glass.

–A correspondent of the Baltimore American, writing from the fleet off Charleston, says:

Lying well up, nearly opposite Fort Wagner, we have, across the narrow part of Morris Island, so full a view of Charleston that I have studied the aspect of the city until it has grown familiar to me. We can see the shipping, what there is of it, at the wharves; the plying of one or two small steamers to and fro; trace the streets up from the battery, and almost fancy we see the people moving in them. The tall steeples of Grace, St. Michael’s and Christ’s churches have grown accustomed sights, and those in the fleet who have been familiar with Charleston in other days point out prominent buildings, and speculate as to the fate of old friends whom the war has swept into the vortex of treason and disloyalty. But, though Charleston is thus near to us, the same glass that seems almost to place it within our grasp shows to us Sumter, ruined yet defiant; the threatening embrasures of Fort Johnston, and the long line of batteries which fringe the shore of Sullivan’s Island, from Moultrie upwards, until these sandy outlines are lost in the woods about Mount Pleasant. These are the sentinels that guard the road to the city. They will be overcome, humbled, and captured — not a doubt of that — but whilst they remain, though near, Charleston is not ou[r]s.

[Fort Sumter] (by Hass & Peale, 23 August 1863; LOC: LC-DIG-cwpb-04742)

“ruined yet defiant” (August 1863 photograph; Library of Congress)

And St. Michael’s still stands.

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gamblers unanonymous

Posted on November 7, 2013 by SUMPTER

150 years before New Yorkers voted for a constitutional amendment that allows as many as seven non-Indian casinos in the state, the Provost Marshal of the Army of the Potomac was actually trying to discourage gambling among his men (the 93rd NY might have been part of his provost brigade). Here’s a bit of sketchjournalism from Alfred R. Waud.

From the November 7, 1863 issue of Harper’s Weekly (at Son of the South):

gambling (by Alfred R. Waud, Harper's Weekly, November 7, 1863)

THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC—GAMBLERS AT THE PROVOST MARSHAL’S HEAD-QUARTERS.—[SKETCHED BY A. R. WAUD.]

GAMBLERS IN THE ARMY.

How General Patrick deals with gambling we discover from the picture above.

Mr. Waud writes: “Some inveterate players, belonging to the Ninety-third New York, were provided with a table, dice, and a tin cup for a dice-box, and, under charge of a guard, were kept at their favorite amusement all day, playing for beans, with boards slung on their shoulders with the word GAMBLER written on them. They did not seem to enjoy it, an attempt to make the most of their time and play for greenbacks being nipped in the bud. Dinner was also denied them, on the plea that gamblers have no time for meals. Much harm, no doubt, results from gambling; but it is useless to punish the men while it is so prevalent a vice with the officers.”

Gambling has always been more or less prevalent in armies.

You can read an interesting overview of gambling during the Civil War at Michelle Ule’s blog. She mentions that the Army of the James (formed in April 1864) was referred to as the Army of the Games. According to the Library of Congress the following photograph shows the quarters of Dr. David McKay of the Army of the James:

[Quarters of Dr. David McKay (Army of the James), interior view withi men playing cards] (between 1861 and 1865; LOC: LC-DIG-cwpb-03634)

nice hand (Library of Congress)

Culpeper, Virginia. General Marsena R. Patrick (Provost General, Army of the Potomac) and staff (by Timothy H. O'Sullivan, 1863 Nov; LOC: LC-DIG-cwpb-00091)

impossible dream? Provost General Marsena Patrick and staff, November 1863 (Library of Congress)

________________________________________

[Drummer boys off duty, playing cards in camp, winter of 1862] (1862, printed later]; LOC: LC-DIG-ppmsc-02787)

Drummer boys get in on the action? (winter of 1862; Library of Congress)

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sidewalks are for white folks

Posted on November 6, 2013 by SUMPTER

And blacks can’t congregate about their churches, even on Sundays

This piece made me think of the white settlers in Humboldt County, California back in April 1861. U.S. troops were fighting and killing the troublesome Indians. An editorial said the native Americans were an “intolerable nuisance” and should stick to their reservations.

From the Richmond Daily Dispatch November 6, 1863:

Occupying the sidewalks.

–Yesterday morning the Mayor called the attention of his police to the ordinance concerning negroes in the streets, and directed the chief to enforce it rigidly from this time if he had to call to his aid all the force of the night and day departments. By this ordinance negroes are commanded to give the sidewalks and crossings to white persons — they are to walk on the outside of the footway, and, if necessary to make room for white persons, they are to go into the carriageway. [If this section is enforced, ladies will not be rudely run against by mulatto wenches, who have become exceedingly insolent.] It prohibits the assembling in the streets of more than five negroes, and makes it a punishable offence for them to congregate and loiter about their churches on Sundays or other times. Any violation of this ordinance is punishable by the lash at the whipping post; and for the sake of decency and good order it is to be hoped that the police will obey their instructions, and teach negroes their proper places. Let them have all proper privileges and enjoyments, but for the future let them know that the city laws are to be obeyed, and that all violations of them are to be punished in the severest manner. Will the police obey the orders given them? We shall see.

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