Blue Gray Review | American Civil War more or less

Old Pap gone

Posted on April 30, 2020 by SUMPTER

dark days

I first knew of him as “The Rock of Chickamauga.” In September 1863 Union General George H. Thomas and his men held off the Confederate Army of Tennessee while about a third of the Union Army of the Cumberland was fleeing back to Chattanooga from the fight in northern Georgia. Thanks to their determined defense the Union army was able to regroup enough to fight another day, with reinforcements. Of course, there was much more to George Thomas’s life and career than the Battle of Chickamauga. His career was all army from his West Point graduation in 1840 through the Civil War and beyond. His last post was as commander of the Military Division of the Pacific, where he died in San Francisco on March 28, 1870. In response to news of his death, a New York City newspaper published a brief bio of the native Virginian. The next week it described the funeral and burial services. At least three of Thomas’s fellow generals from the Chattanooga campaign of October and November 1863 attended – the U.S. president, the army’s general-in-chief, and Joe Hooker.

From the April 16, 1870 edition of Harper’s Weekly:

GEN. GEORGE H. THOMAS.

On the 29th of March the sorrowful intelligence was communicated to us of the death of Major-General GEORGE H. THOMAS. He died at eight o’clock on the 28th from a stroke of apoploxy, at San Francisco, his post of duty. General THOMAS was born on July 31, 1816, in the county of Southampton, Virginia. In his early boyhood he accepted a subordinate position under his uncle, the clerk of the county, and at the same commenced the study of law. It is worthy of notice that he was a native of Virginia, belonging, as did General ROBERT E. LEE, to wealthy and respectable family of that State. Like General LEE, also, he was sent from Virginia to West Point, where he graduated June 30, 1840, ranking twelfth in a class of forty-two.

His military career previous to our Civil War is soon told. Immediately after his graduation at West Point he took part in the Indian campaign in Florida, serving as Lieutenant. He took a prominent part in the Mexican War, and for gallant conduct in the several conflicts at Monterey, on the 21st, 22d, and 23d of September 1846, was brevetted Captain. February 23, 1847 he was brevetted Major “for gallant and meritorious conduct in the Battle of Buena Vista.”

November, 1860, found THOMAS in Texas. General TWIGGS had surrendered, and Major THOMAS at Carlisle Barracks took command of the Sixth Cavalry, and entered into the great conflict for the preservation of the Union. We do not purpose in this brief sketch to follow his military career during the Civil War in all its details. Unlike General LEE, he did not consider it his duty to sacrifice his allegiance to the nation to that which he owed to Virginia. On May 3, 1861, we find him Colonel of the Fifth Cavalry (the old Second), in the place of General LEE, who had resigned. He commanded the first brigade of General PATTERSON’s army of Northern Virginia until August 26, 1861, when he was made Brigadier-General of Volunteers, and ordered to Kentucky. Thenceforth his career was eminently successful, and in many respects more remarkable than that of any other Federal general during the war.

General THOMAS was never defeated. After his victory over General ZOLLICOFFER at Mill Spring, in January, 1862, he moved forward and, after the fall of Fort Donelson, occupied Nashville. On the second day of the battle of Pittsburgh Landing he commanded the reserve of the Union army. He was made a Major-General April 25, 1862, and at the close of the year we find him in command of a corps under ROSECRANS’s command. In the official report of the battle of Stone River General ROSECRANS alluded to General THOMAS as “true and prudent, distinguished in counsel and on many battle-fields for his courage.”

In the summer and autumn of 1863 General THOMAS especially distinguished himself in the Chattanooga campaign. But for his wise precautions ROSECRANS could never have concentrated his army at Chickamauga, and must have been overcome in detail by BRAGG. ROSECRANS would have it that BRAGG was retreating in confusion into Georgia. But THOMAS knew better. When the army was finally concentrated at Chickamauga General THOMAS commanded the left wing, which he held in position on the 19th of September, retrieving the battle which ROSECRANS had already given up as lost. In October THOMAS was assigned to the command of the Army of the Cumberland, succeeding ROSECRANS.

In the Atlanta campaign, early in 1864, THOMAS took a prominent part. After its successful completion General SHERMAN, setting out for his March to the Sea, sent THOMAS back to Nashville to attend to HOOD, who had succeeded General BRAGG. HOOD’S design was to compel SHERMAN’S retreat by a bold march northward, looking to the occupation of Nashville.

The result of the battle of Nashville, near the close of 1864, gave General THOMAS his most characteristic distinction. He will ever be known as “the hero of Nashville.” His patience before the battle, when the wiseacres at Washington were clamoring for an immediate advance on his part, was not less remarkable than his tactics on the battle-field after that [sic] he had mustered all his forces and entered upon the conflict. His victory over HOOD was the most complete victory of the war. HOOD’S forces were utterly demoralized, and the rebel power in the Southwest never recovered from the blow. For this THOMAS was made a Major-General in the regular army.

Since the close of the war General THOMAS has been assigned to department duty in Tennessee and Kentucky, and latterly California. During the few weeks preceding his death he enjoyed remarkably good health; but on the 28th, at half past five o’clock, P.M., he was seized with a fit of apoplexy while attending to business in his office. In less than three hours after the attack he died. His death is truly a national calamity. As a man and as a soldier his character is unreproached and irreproachable.

From the April 23, 1870 issue of Harper’s Weekly:

THE FUNERAL OF GEN. THOMAS.

On the 8th inst. the remains of Major-General GEORGE H. THOMAS, the Hero of Mill Spring and Nashville, were buried with appropriate civil and military honors in Oakwood Cemetery, at Troy. The occasion drew together a vast concourse of people desirous of paying the last tribute of respect to one whose services to the Union will ever cause his memory to be held in the highest veneration by his countrymen. The funeral services were held in St. Paul’s Church, which was appropriately draped for the occasion. The remains of the lamented soldier, in a metallic burial casket, were deposited on a dais in front of the chancel. A ribbon of immortelles and wreaths of ivory were twined around the edge of the casket in California, and were deposited with it in the grave. As it lay in the chancel an elegant crown of evergreens and roses, surmounted by a cross of immortelles, was placed at the head, and a wreath of japonicas [my best guess] and lilies at the foot of the casket. A plain silver plate bore the simple inscription: “Gen. GEORGE HENRY THOMAS, U.S. Army. Born July 31, 1816. Died March 28, 1870.” President GRANT, General SHERMAN, and General HOOKER, and many other distinguished men were present to do honor to his memory.

The sketch underneath represents the scene in the cemetery at the moment of depositing the remains in the vault belonging to the family of the deceased soldier’s wife. The burial service was read by Bishop DOANE, after which the customary burial salute was fired by the United States Infantry, and the procession left the cemetery, each portion of it wheeling out of line on the return, as it reached its appropriate place. In the evening a funeral oration was delivered, in Dr. BALDWIN’S church, by General STEWART L. WOODFORD, on the life, character, and services of the late General, there having been, at the special request of Mrs. THOMAS, no panegyric or eulogy pronounced over the remains. After a rapid sketch of his military career the orator gave some interesting personal reminiscences of the General, which served to illustrate his character and show the estimate in which he was held by his soldiers. Silent, sedate, never familiar, though always kind, he had none of the petty arts and practiced none of the stage devices that sometimes attract a short-lived popularity. His men had always known him to be thoughtful of their wants and considerate of their comforts. He had never exacted from them useless work. He had never tolerated the slightest evasion of duty, from his brigadiers down to his orderlies. Always, when possible opportunity was afforded, he had visited the regimental hospitals and looked himself after the condition of the sick. Many a hospital steward and company cook in the old Cumberland Army remember the unexpected and personal inspection which the sick-quarters and the company kitchen received from the Major-General himself. And not soon will they forget how once his face hardened into a white heat of passion when he found that a drunken commissary had neglected to provide sufficient food, and how, taking out his penknife, he ripped off the fellow’s shoulder-straps, and simply said, “Go home, Sir, by the next train. You may do to feed cattle; you shall not feed my soldiers.” His soldiers called him “Old Pap THOMAS.” The name was not over-respectful, perhaps; but it fitly expressed the love and fealty of the brave men who followed him from victory to victory. Our hardy volunteers, while as obedient to discipline as they were steady in fight, when off duty and around the camp-fires, retained their democratic habits and their sturdy personal independence of thought and language. They picked off the shoulder-straps and dissected the uniforms, and looked down below the commission and into the man, and measured his real worth and work with unerring instinct. The judgments they formed of their leaders, expressed in quaint and familiar epithets, have undoubtedly anticipated the graver verdict of the historian.

circa 1866

the general’s last post

funeral orator

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A good quick biography of General Thomas from the National Park Service mentions that during the Mexican-American War Thomas became good friends with his superior Braxton Bragg, the future commander of the Confederate forces during the battles of Chickamauga and Chattanooga. In antebellum days Bragg would recommend Thomas for a teaching position at West Point (where he met his wife, Frances Lucretia Kellogg) and as a “major in the newly created 2nd United States Cavalry” out in California. Robert E. Lee was West Point superintendent while Thomas taught there and became Lieutenant Colonel of the Second Cavalry. The Park Service piece also mentions the agonizing decision Thomas had to make as the Civil War broke out – whether to stay loyal to the Union or go with his home state. Whereas Robert E. Lee went with Virginia, George Thomas was disowned by his family because he stayed true to the Union.

And it wasn’t just his family that knew about his decision. George H. Thomas was Number 8 on a list of Virginians considered traitors to their State. From the Richmond Daily Dispatch September 11. 1861:

Notes of the war.

The Enquirer publishes the following 11st [list?] of Virginia Officer[s] in Lincoln’s Army:

blue blood?

1. Brevet Lieutenant General Winfield Scott.
2. Colonel P. St. George Cooke, Second Cavalry.
3. Lieutenant-Colonel Washington Sea well, Eighth Infantry.
4. Lieutenant-Colonel Edward J. Steptor, Ninth Infantry.
5. Lieutenant-Colonel James D. Graham, Engineers.
6. Major Campbell Graham, Engineers.
7. Major Lawrence P. Graham, Second Dragoons.
8. Major George H. Thomas, Second Cavalry.
9. Major N. C. MeRae, Third Infantry.
10. Major T. L. Alexander, Eighth Infantry.
11. Major Albert J. Smith, Paymaster.
12. Major Benj. W. Bryce, Paymaster.
13. Major G. D. Ramsey, Ordnance.
14. Major T. S. S. Laidly, Ordnance.
15. Major F. N. Page, Assistant Adjutant General:
16. Major John F. Lee, Judge Advocate General.
17. Major William Hayes, Second Artillery.
18. Major William H. Gordon, Third Infantry.
19. Major George C. Waggaman, Assistant Quartermaster General.
20. Captain John Newton, Engineers.
21. Capt. J. W. Davidson, First Dragoons.
22. Capt. W. J. Newton, Second Dragoons.
23. Capt. T. G. Williams, First Infantry.
24. Capt. T. A. Washington, First Infantry.
25. Capt. G. Chapin, Seventh Infantry.
26. Capt. L. H. Marshall, Tenth Infantry.
27. Capt. Jesse L. Reno, Ordnance.
28. Capt. E, W. B. Newby, First Cavalry.

Several in the above list have been rewarded by Lincoln with promotion. Two of them, Majors George H. Thomas and Lawrence P. Graham, have been made Brigadier-Generals. Col. Cooke, who has been for some time in Utah, it was supposed, would retire from the Yankee service, and link his destiny with his native land for weal or woe. Possibly he may yet do so. The friends of Col. Steptoe have asserted with confidence that he, too, would be true to his State and to his name, and we are still unwilling to place his name on the list of Scott traitors. Before the commencement of our present troubles, in consequence of ill health, he obtained a furlough with a view to a somewhat protracted absence from the country. He returned from Europe, however, some weeks since, and was in Montreal the last we heard of him.

A couple months later (November 13) the Richmond Daily Dispatch reported the Virginia and/or Confederacy was taking action against the traitors. I don’t understand how it worked out but the government was trying to take property of alien enemies or those associated with the enemies:

Sequestration proceedings.

–Since our last report, proceedings have been instituted in the Confederate States District Court against the following persons, to sequester property of alien enemies:

… Camilla Loyal — David G. Farragut, alien enemy. … Thos. W. Thomas — George H. Thomas, alien enemy Bolling W. Haxall–Mrs. Maria Scott, (wife of Gen. Winfield Scott,) alien enemy. …

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In its October 10, 1863 issue (at Son of the South) Harper’s Weekly covered the Battle of Chickamauga and included some reporting by the Herald’s Mr. W. F. G. Shank, who described General Thomas’s grim composure while his men were holding off the rebel onslaught at the close the second day:

stalwart defense

Just behind Harker’s brigade, posted in the key of the position, there was a slight hollow in a large open field, in which were still standing about a dozen dead trees. In this deflection of the field, at the time the last fight of Sunday began, there were gathered together Generals Thomas, Gordon Granger, Garfield, Wood, Brannan, Steadman, Whittaker, and Colonel Harker. As the fight opened, Harker and Wood ran up the hill to their brigade and division, both being the one and the same. Steadman, Brannan, and Whittaker, rode off to join their commands. Garfield continued to indite his dispatch. Granger and Thomas remained, the latter on his horse, his arms folded, listening to the awful fire that soon raged along the line with the coolness of assured victory or the calmness of despair. His lips were compressed. His eyes glanced from right to left as the shell and canister exploded about the field, and once I saw him, just as the fight opened, most furiously glance up at a large, beautiful white pigeon or dove which alighted upon a dead tree above him and watched the battle from her dangerous nest. The representative man of that line, in unfaltering courage (Thomas), may be also said to have represented by his thoughts at that moment the thoughts of all. Watching him, we could see his anxiety at the reflection that if that line did not stand all would be lost; and each and every man there knew that the safety of themselves, but more the safety of the whole army, depended upon them. To be defeated there was to be cut to pieces or captured. To be routed was to fall back upon Chattanooga in disgrace, to be ignominiously taken in flight. There was no help to be expected save in the darkness of the slowly approaching night.

Happily Thomas’s men did hold out till night, and the army was saved.

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About 15 months after Chickamauga the Union army under General Thomas thoroughly destroyed the Army of the Tennessee commanded by John Bell Hood at the Battle of Nashville. Before the battle General Thomas’s superiors were worried that Hood would give him the slip and have clear marching all the way to the Ohio River. Generals Halleck and Grant ordered Thomas to attack immediately. General Thomas explained that he wanted to refit his cavalry first and then he had to wait for a sheet of ice to melt before he could successfully attack. Here’s a description from Was General Thomas Slow at Nashville? at Project Gutenberg (pages 30-35):

pressure from Washington

THE PANIC AT WASHINGTON.

In spite of the plainest statements of the situation, of the great disparity of forces, of the dictates of prudence to remain on the defensive until he could strike an effective blow, which he expected to deliver in a few days, Thomas was prodded and nagged from City Point and Washington as no officer in command of an army had been before, and treated day by day as if he needed tutelage. In the last dispatch of the series of clear explanations,—which under other circumstances than the seething of that inside panic which a full appreciation of the complications that Sherman’s march to the sea had caused would doubtless have been accepted,—General Thomas was peremptorily ordered to “attack Hood at once without waiting for a remount of your cavalry. There is great danger in delay resulting in a campaign back to the Ohio.” This was sent in reply to a telegram of Thomas showing that there was the greatest activity in getting the cavalry ready, and he hoped to have it remounted “in three days from this time.” To this Thomas replied that he would make all dispositions and attack according to orders, adding, “though I believe it will be hazardous with the small force of cavalry now at my service.” Orders to prepare for attack were immediately sent out, and dispositions for the attack began. Meantime a sleet storm came on which covered the country with a glaze of ice over which neither horses, men, nor artillery could move even on level ground, to say nothing of assaulting an enemy intrenched on the hills. The same day Halleck telegraphed: “If you wait till General Wilson mounts all his cavalry you will wait till doomsday, for the waste equals the supply.” And General Grant telegraphed orders relieving Thomas. The latter telegraphed Halleck that he was conscious of having done everything possible to prepare the troops to attack, and if he was removed he would submit without a murmur.

and from City Point

The order of relief was suspended. The sleet storm continued. All of General Thomas’s officers agreed that it was impracticable to attack. Some of them even found it impossible to ride to headquarters because of the ice, and in the midst of it came an order from Grant: “I am in hopes of receiving a dispatch from you to-day announcing you have moved. Delay no longer for weather or reinforcements.”

Thomas replied:

“I will obey the order as promptly as possible, however much I regret it, as the attack will have to be made under every disadvantage. The whole country is covered with a perfect sheet of ice and sleet, and it is with difficulty the troops are able to move about on level ground.”

To Halleck, Thomas replied:

“Sledge of Nashville”

“I have the troops ready to make the attack on the enemy as soon as the sleet which now covers the ground has melted sufficiently to enable the men to march, as the whole country is now covered with a sheet of ice so hard and slippery that it is utterly impossible for troops to ascend the slopes, or even move upon level ground in anything like order. Under these circumstances I believe an attack at this time would only result in a useless sacrifice of life.”

The reply to this, unquestionably born of the panic to which allusion has been made, was an order sending General Logan to relieve Thomas. Grant himself then started from City Point for Nashville to assume general command. But the ice having melted, he was met at Washington by the news of Thomas’s victory.

The delay that Thomas had insisted upon, in the face of orders twice given for his relief, gave him the cavalry force he required for the decisive blow he intended to strike.

While the official inside at City Point and Washington bordered on panic, everything at Nashville was being pressed forward with activity and vigilance, and at the same time with deliberation, prudence, and the utmost imperturbability. At length, and at the first moment possible consistent with a reasonable expectation of success, the attack began. …

big role for Wilson’s cavalry

ice-free Federal outer line at Nashville, December 16, 1864

Nashville 1864

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Henry V. Boynton is credited with being the author of Was General Thomas Slow at Nashville?, but in his Preface he points out that much of the material was first published as an article in the New York Sun of August 9, 1896. At any rate, the Union cavalry was very important (pages 36-39):

“The developments of the battle, the energy and success of the pursuit, and the marvelous results of the whole, namely, the virtual destruction of a veteran army, reveal at every step what General Thomas had in mind when he insisted upon waiting till he could remount his cavalry.

“In no other battle of the war did cavalry play such a prominent part as in that of Nashville. In no other pursuit did it so distinguish itself. …

“Many officers have organized and built up an effective cavalry force in times of rest and peace, but no one except General Wilson ever did it in the heat and hurry of a desperate midwinter campaign. And he could not have succeeded, nor could any man have accomplished it, in the face of the interferences which were attempted, but for the protection and support of the peerless and imperturbable Thomas.”

As it turned out Philip St. George Cooke did stay true to the Union, unlike a couple family members: “The issue of secession deeply divided Cooke’s family. Cooke himself remained loyal to the Union, but his son, John Rogers Cooke, became an infantry brigade commander in the Army of Northern Virginia. J.E.B. Stuart, the famous Confederate cavalry commander, was Cooke’s son-in-law. Cooke and Stuart never spoke again, Stuart saying, ‘He will regret it only once, and that will be continually.'”

a rock in a hard place

The Herald’s reporter William Franklin Gore Shanks wrote 1866’s Personal Recollections of Distinguished Generals. He remembered General Thomas and included this snippet from Chickamauga (see Project Gutenberg pages 63-65):

This methodical and systematic feature of his character found an admirable illustration in an incident to which I was a witness during the battle of Chickamauga. After the rout of the principal part of the corps of McCook and Crittenden, Thomas was left to fight the entire rebel army with a single corps of less than twenty thousand men. The enemy, desirous of capturing this force, moved in heavy columns on both its flanks. His artillery opened upon Thomas’s troops from front and both flanks; but still they held their ground until Steedman, of Granger’s corps, reached them with re-enforcements. I was sitting on my horse near General Thomas when General Steedman came up and saluted him.

“I am very glad to see you, general,” said Thomas in welcoming him. General Steedman made some inquiries as to how the battle was going, when General Thomas, in a vexed manner, replied,

“The damned scoundrels are fighting without any system.”

Steedman thereupon suggested that he should pay the enemy back in his own coin. Thomas followed his suggestion. As soon as Granger came up with the rest of his corps, he assumed the offensive; and while Bragg continued to move on his flanks, he pushed forward against the rebel centre, so scattering it by a vigorous blow that, fearful of having his army severed in two, the rebel abandoned his flank movement in order to restore his centre. This delayed the resumption of the battle until nearly sunset, and Thomas was enabled to hold his position until nightfall covered the retirement to Rossville Gap.

Thomas is not easily ruffled. It is difficult alike to provoke his anger or enlist his enthusiasm. He is by no means blind to the gallantry of his men, and never fails to notice and appreciate their deeds, but they never win from him any other than the coldest words in the coldest, but, at the same time, kindest of commendatory tones. He grows really enthusiastic over nothing, though occasionally his anger may be aroused. When it is, his rage is terrible. …

Thomas war flag

Chickamauga survivor

Georgia monument at Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park

You can read all of Harper’s Weekly for 1870, including pages 253 and 257, at the Internet Archive.

I found “Thomas’s Bivouac at Chickamauga” at Wikimedia. AgnosticPreachersKid’s 2009 photo of the west side of the Thomas equestrian statue in Washington D.C. is licensed under Creative Commons. Hal Jespersen’s map of the last part of Chickamauga is also licensed under Creative Commons. You can find the map of Battle of Nashville at Wikimedia The non-stereo image of the general in profile was published in Was General Thomas Slow at Nashville? now at Project Gutenberg.

From the Library of Congress: Alfred R. Waud’s drawing of Confederate troops advancing at Chickamauga; from Russain Hill; the Presidio circa 1856; the portrait of Stewart Lyndon Woodford circa 1870; Thomas portrait in stereo; Halleck; “Grant and staff at City Point , summer 1864″;Federal outer line; Nashville depot; Thomas war flag; survivor – “C.S.A. Veterans, Sgt. J.J. Dackett, Co. I. 3rd S.C.V., wearing hat with bullet holes received in the Battle of Chickamauga Sept. 20, 1863”; Carol M. Highsmith’s 2017 photograph of the Georgia Monument at Chickamauga military park; San Francisco paying its respects

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west coast mourners

More April Funerals

When I was looking for pictures of San Francisco I found the stereograph above. Five years before General Thomas’s death the people of San Francisco paid their respects for the slain Abraham Lincoln, even though his actual funeral took place in Washington, D.C. According to the April 19, 2019 issue of The Post-Standard (Syracuse, NY, page A2), that was a pretty common occurrence across the country. The article begins with a comparison – Even given today’s uncertainties over the corona virus pandemic, it’s hard to imagine the manic week Americans endured beginning April 9, 1865, from Lee’s surrender on Sunday to the assassination of President Lincoln on Friday night and his death on Saturday morning. “Here in Syracuse, like many other cities around the country, the profound national grief took the cathartic form of a mock funeral for the martyred President, a sad tribute indeed.” The mayor shut down schools, churches, and businesses on April 19th for a citywide procession; cannon fired, church bells rang. The eulogist praised Lincoln and the end of slavery. “He is gone, but he has left us the rich inheritance of a redeemed and regenerate and free country.”

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gone but not forgotten

Posted in 150 Years Ago, 150 Years Ago This Month, Aftermath, Veterans | Tagged Battle of Chickamauga, Battle of Nashville, David E. Twiggs, Felix Zollicoffer, George Henry Thomas, James Harrison Wilson, John Bell Hood, Philip St. George Cooke, Stewart Lyndon Woodford, William Croswell Doane, William Rosecrans | Leave a comment

down with dramshops

Posted on April 8, 2020 by SUMPTER

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been aware of the saying, “If March comes in like a lion, it goes out like a lamb” (and I thought vice versa, but that seems to return a lot fewer search results). According to documentation at the Library of Congress, a 19th century American social reformer had a different take on the changeable month. Gerrit Smith wanted March to come in dry, stay dry, and go out dry, not just in March but in every month and in every year. Alcohol was freely and legally available for sale in much of the United States 150 years ago, so Mr. Smith took a couple steps to change that in March 1870.

Gerrit Smith: focus on panel 2

On March 2nd he reported the relative success of the New York State Anti-Dramshop Party in a local election in the town of Smithfield (itself dry since 1842). I don’t think it won any particular race, but it did better than the Democrats. Gerrit Smith referred to both the Democrats and Republicans as dramshop parties because neither was confronting the evil of dramselling, even though both parties had non-drinking members. The name of his party also indicated its narrow focus. “The great principle on which our party is founded and the happily-chosen name of our party afforded us a great advantage in arguing for our ticket. This principle—viz. the duty of Government to protect person and property — none could gainsay. Nor could any deny that it grossly violates this duty, when it establishes or permits the dramshop.” The party didn’t want to criminalize drinking at home, or even the manufacture and importation of alcohol because a ban on selling alcoholic drinks would dampen the demand so much that making and/or importing wouldn’t be profitable.

Mr. Smith saw a potential rift in the temperance movement between his party’s purpose and those who wanted to make any use of alcohol illegal:

Just here, is one of the very greatest perils of our cause. Just here, is where the friends of temperance are divided—perhaps, fatally divided. Whilst many of them would wage political war upon dramselling only, many of them would wage it against alcohol, every where. Such universal war would, probably, result in nothing but a reaction against the cause of temperance. On the other hand, if the war is against dramselling only, it will be espoused by tens of thousands, who, though they may continue to drink liquor at their homes, are, nevertheless, too much the friends of peace and order and too studious of the safety of person and property, to be patient with the dramshop. Moreover, such of them, as have young sons or young grandsons, take no pleasure in the thought of their growing up under the influence of the dramshop.

Mr. Smith writes to Washington

In a letter to Henry Wilson dated March 29, 1870, Gerrit Smith picked a bone with his fellow abolitionist and temperance supporter. He criticized a paper by the U.S. Senator from Massachusetts for not getting down to the nitty-gritty of politicizing the temperance movement by abolishing the dramshop. It wasn’t enough for the church to be in favor of temperance – it had to focus on voting the dramshop out of existence. Any movement that combined temperance with protestantism would be ineffective for eliminating the use of alcohol because the temperance movement needed support from people of all religions:

What in your paper before me most surprises and pains me is its perfect silence in respect to voting. For years, you were earnestly engaged in the work of voting slavery to death. Hence you connected yourself with an independent anti-slavery political party, and eloquently summoned your fellow citizens to do likewise. Why is it that you are not now at work to get the dramshop voted out of existence? I notice that you speak of the labor we have had with slavery and with its consequences as a “political” labor, and of that we have with temperance as a “moral” one. I beg you to inform the public of your grounds for this distinction. Is not the dramshop as much as slavery the creature of law? — and is not political action to shut it up as necessarily and as loudly called for, as it was to terminate slavery?

relying too much on THE CHURCH?

Your reliance for carrying forward the cause of temperance is on the reviving of an interest in it in the church. “The church must take up the matter,” say you in capitals. Now, if you had said: “the church must take up the matter of voting for temperance or, in other words, of voting against the dramshop,” my whole heart would have fallen in with your injunction. I like sermons and prayers, when their avowed end is to promote the doing of the work, that is to be done: — but I loathe them when they are made a substitute for doing it. A church, that expressly preaches and prays for men to vote the shutting up of the dramshop, is a church that I like. But such a church is not common. Nay, uncommon is the church, whose votes do not go to keep open this overflowing fountain of the heaviest curses. You refer to the guilty conduct of the church in our old struggle with slavery. Guilty wherein? She failed not to preach and pray against oppression. Her guilt was in clinging to pro-slavery parties and refusing to testify against slavery at the polls. Similar to this is her guilt in the matter of the dramshop and drunkenness; —and you must pardon me for adding that you, instead of entirely ignoring the wickedness of her dramshop voting, are, from your influential position in the church, under special obligation to bring home to her and press upon her this great wickedness. Would that, instead of writing this paper which I am criticising, you had called on the church to persuade all her voters to join the national political party organized last September for the suppression of dramselling. Some of these voters are joining it. Some of them are still foolish enough to believe that their dramshop parties will yet abolish the dramshop, just as there were persons who were foolish enough to believe that the old Whig and Democratic parties would abolish slavery. To hang upon these parties which, as a general remark, have not the least idea of ever making war upon the dramshop, is, surely, a very poor way to help temperance. Some of these voters would quit their dramshop parties to join a party (if there were such a one) which goes against the dramshop and also against certain things that they greatly dislike. But the party, which fights the dramshop, will have its hands full, though it shall fight nothing else. It will need, too, all the help it can get — Catholic as well as Protestant voters; men of whatever views of the Common School; Jews, Seventh day Baptists and No-Sabbath men as well as Sunday men. It is true that a party for temperance and protestantism might, as it is claimed it would, “sweep the State.” Such a party would, however, sweep it not with temperance — but with a protestant frenzy. It would bring no help, but, on the contrary, immense harm to temperance. No good whatever would come of such a party; whilst the sectarian animosity it would engender is an evil beyond computation. I have now referred to some of the different courses of different church members. I close under this head with saying that a large share of the church members manifest no interest whatever in the cause of temperance.

“criminality of dramselling.”

“This is a world of shams”

next up – freedom from alcohol?

_____________

not even wine on her wedding

It seems that both Gerrit Smith and Henry Wilson prioritized progressive causes. Since slavery had been abolished and reconstruction was “substantially complete,” temperance should take center stage (Mr. Smith also mentioned repudiation). Women’s rights was another movement intertwined with abolition and temperance, as Seneca County Historian Walt Gable pointed out in an excellent article about Amelia Bloomer (Finger Lakes Times, March 29, 2020, page 4B). She got married to a local newspaper publisher and moved to Seneca Falls, New York in 1840. At the wedding reception she “sweetly refused to drink wine.” Seneca Falls would have made Gerrit Smith very happy in 1842 when it passed a law forbidding the sale of liquor. She became a member of the Ladies Total Abstinence Society of Seneca Falls that formed in 1848. That Society began publishing The Lily in 1849; from 1850 Amelia Bloomer was editor and publisher until she sold the paper in 1854. The Lily publicized the newfangled pants with knee-length dress, which became known as “bloomers,” even though Amelia didn’t invent them. On May 12, 1851 Bloomer introduced Susan B. Anthony to Elizabeth Cady Stanton after a public program during which William Lloyd Garrison and a British abolitionist spoke. Sometime after their first meeting Anthony was invited to spend several days at the Stanton home. “Thus began the great working collaboration between Anthony and Stanton in both the temperance and women’s rights causes.” In 1853 the Bloomers began moving west and ended up in Iowa: “During the Civil War, she [Amelia] started the Soldier’s Aid Society of Council Bluffs to help Union soldiers.”

dry prose?

Gerrit Smith eventually got his wish. The 18th or “Prohibition” amendment went into effect in January 2020. It banned not only the sale, but also the manufacture, transportation, and importation of alcohol. Although there is evidence that the amendment did lead to some healthy results, apparently it didn’t dampen demand enough because the 21st amendment repealed prohibition in 1933 and with it the demand for speakeasies, alcohol smuggling, and bathtub gin.

I read a couple articles recently that provide a little local, upstate New York color for the prohibition era. The January 23, 2020 issue of The Post-Standard (Syracuse, New York pages A10-A11) flashbacked 100 years. The evening before the 18th amendment kicked in was a relatively sober affair in Syracuse, possibly because it was cold with three inches of snow falling and people were frugal – if they had any alcohol left, they wouldn’t down it all at once but would nurse it for as long as possibly during the coming months. Also, the city’s Internal Revenue collector warned that the new amendment would be strictly enforced. There were two pharmacies in Syracuse that were allowed to sell alcohol – but only with a doctor’s prescription. The travel business picked up – there was increased interest in taking a trip to “Cuba, Bermuda and the Bahamas.” “Maybe it was to get from Syracuse’s cold weather, or, maybe, it was because these were the nearest “wet” foreign countries.”

The February 2020 issue of the New York Farm Bureau’s Grassroots (page 19) tells that Utica, New York’s West End Brewing Company (now F.X. Matt) was the first brewery in the nation to legally sell (full strength) beer after prohibition was repealed. F.X. Matt I kept his company going and his workers employed during prohibition by producing soft drinks and Utica Club, a malt tonic. The tonic’s label included a disclaimer: “Caution: Do not ferment, do not add yeast, or you will create beer.” But the Matt company fervently lobbied the federal government for repeal of prohibition; the company got the first license to sell beer post-prohibition because Frank Matt was in Washington lobbying at the time. F.X. Matt I wrote his distributors that they could have all the beer they wanted at 12:05 AM on December 6, 1833 – the first wet day. Right after I wrote this summary I found out you can see it all, the original article, at the New York State Brewers Association, which even shows pictures of Mr. Matt’s notes to distributors.

I think the national political party that Gerrit Smith referenced in his letter to Henry Wilson would be the Prohibition Party:

“On September 1, 1869, almost five hundred delegates from twenty states and Washington, D.C. met in Farwell Hall, Chicago and John Russell was selected to serve as the temporary chairman and James Black serving as president of the convention. The party was the first to accept women as members and gave those who attended full delegate rights. Former anti-slavery activist Gerrit Smith, who had served in the House of Representatives from 1853 to 1854 and ran for president in 1848, 1856, 1860 with the Liberty Party nomination, served as a delegate from New York and gave a speech at the convention. The organization was referred to as either the National Prohibition Party or the Prohibition Reform Party.”

The party is still in existence. Phil Andrew Collins is its 2020 presidential nominee; the nominating convention was held by conference call last August.

Sunday morning respite

D.A.’s door

Prohibition Party symbol

The Prohibition Party symbol comes from Wikipedia. I also got The Lily masthead from Wikipedia, which got it from a blog post about Elizabeth Cady Stanton – a good example of the close relationship between temperance and women’s rights is a newspaper notice for the first annual meeting of The Woman’s N.Y. State Temperance Society, with Cady Santton as President and Bloomer as Cor. Sec.: “Although best known for their joint work on behalf of women’s suffrage, Stanton and Anthony first joined the temperance movement. Together, they were instrumental in founding the short-lived Women’s New York State Temperance Society (1852–1853). During her presidency of the organization, Stanton scandalized many supporters by suggesting that drunkenness be made sufficient cause for divorce.” The image of Amelia Bloomer was published in History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I and can be found at Project Gutenberg.

From the Library of Congress: Drunkard’s Progress from about 1826; Gerrit Smith; Senator Henry Wilson; Carol M. Highsmith’s photograph of Ted Aub’s statue “When Anthony [l] Met Stanton [r]”, Amelia Bloomer (m) introduced them – I was happy to find out Ms. Highsmith was here in 2018, 170 years after the first women’s right convention … and the founding of the Ladies Total Abstinence Society of Seneca Falls; Pioneers of freedom from about 1866 – Gerrit Smith, Henry Wilson, and William Lloyd Garrison all appear.

The photos of D.A.’s on Bridge Street, Seneca Falls, New York were taken on March 29, 2020 during the corona virus pandemic. New York State deems liquor stores essential businesses, but the owners want patrons to keep their distance inside.

A,B,CS: a spark for temperance and women’s rights, but social distancing concern

Posted in 150 Years Ago, Aftermath, Postbellum Society | Tagged Amelia Bloomer, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Gerrit Smith, Henry Wilson, New York State Anti-Dramshop Party, progressivism, Prohibition Party, temperance, temperance movement, The Lily (newspaper) | Leave a comment

long career, short retirement

Posted on March 22, 2020 by SUMPTER

Mediterranean calm before the American storm

When the recently-launched (January) USS Richmond departed for the Mediterranean on October 13, 1860, its namesake was the capital of one of the United States, albeit one of the original thirteen – Virginia, the Old Dominion. When the ship returned to New York on July 3, 1861, Richmond was still Virginia’s state capital, but it had taken on another role – the national capital of the breakaway Confederate States of America. According to the September 7, 1919 issue of the New York Tribune, the Richmond spent the American Civil War helping force the rebels back into the Union.

sixty years service

I haven’t seen any evidence that the Richmond ever served as David Farragut’s flagship, but it was actively engaged throughout the Civil War. According to the U.S. Navy this second iteration of the USS Richmond began its war career in late July 1861 by sailing for Jamaica, looking for “the elusive Confederate raider Sumter commanded by Raphael Semmes”. The Richmond couldn’t find the Sumter either, so then joined the Gulf Blockading Squadron and patrolled the mouth of the Mississippi. During the Battle of the Head of Passes on October 12, 1861 the Confederate ram Manassas rammed but did not disable the Richmond. Later in 1861 the ship’s crew suffered some casualties and the ship was furthered damaged from rebel fire during the bombardment of Pensacola Navy Yard.

rammed at the Southwest Pass

Port Hudson battle, March 1863

the current issue

__________________

After repairs in New York the Richmond joined the West Gulf Blockading Squadron under Flag Officer David Farragut and was actively involved in the Union operations that captured New Orleans. Farragut’s fleet continued to focus on the Mississippi River until the Union capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson in July 1863. During that period one of the war’s “fiercest engagements” occurred when the fleet, heading upriver, attempted to pass rebel fortifications at Port Hudson in March 1863. “Richmond, lashed alongside Genesee, found she could make no headway against the strong current as she came under fire from the shore batteries. Her executive officer, Comdr. Andrew B. Cummings, was mortally wounded. Richmond was struck soon afterward by a 42-pounder shell which ruptured her steam lines, filling the engine room and berth deck with live steam. As Genessee [sic; Genesee] was unable to tow Richmond against the current, the two ships reversed course, passing again through heavy shore fire.”

The Richmond was again repaired in New York and then rejoined the blockading squadron by November 1863. It participated in Admiral Farragut’s assault on Mobile Bay on August 5, 1864. This time the Richmond was lashed to the Port Royal as it proceeded across the bar with the rest of the Union fleet and ran the gauntlet between two Confederate forts and through a channel planted with torpedoes (mines). After the monitor Tecumseh struck a torpedo and quickly sunk, the other Union ships hesitated. At this point, Admiral Farragut, lashed to the mast of his flagship Hartford, ordered the Union ships to sail full-speed through the minefield. Once in the bay, the Union ships defeated the Confederate fleet that same morning. “Richmond suffered no casualties in the action and only slight damage.”

battle at the bay

fort fight

Farragut’s diagram

________________

After the war Richmond got a new set of engines, was recommissioned in 1869, and returned to the Mediterranean. 150 years ago this year the ship “was stationed at Villefranche and Marseille [sic; Marseilles] to protect U.S. citizens potentially endangered by the Franco-Prussian War”. Later on Richmond did serve as a flagship: first with the South Pacific Station (1874-1877); then with the Asiatic Fleet (1879-83) – “For 4 years Richmond cruised among the principal ports of China, Japan, and the Philippines;” from 1889 to 1890 Richmond was the flagship of the South Atlantic Station. For the rest of its career it was used as a training ship, receiving ship, and finally at Norfolk as an “auxiliary to the receiving ship Franklin until after the end of World War I”.

Richmond as auxiliary receiving ship to the bigger Richmond (Norfolk Navy Yard early 1900s)

“Richmond was struck from the Navy list on 31 June 1919 and sold to Joseph Hyman & Sons, Philadelphia, Pa., on 23 July. She was delivered to that firm on 6 August for breaking up.”

According to other documentation at the U.S. Navy website, the Richmond was burned for scrap in Eastport Maine. Even though the ship had apparently been sold to a private company, Assistant Secretary of the Navy F.D. Roosevelt “witnessed this event”:

“Captain Turner is on the stern hauling down his flag”

burning for scrap

Oh, to be an auxiliary to a receiving ship … A couple months ago I read a seemingly pertinent essay. ^[1] Arthur Brooks contrasted the careers of two famous geniuses. Both Charles Darwin and Johann Sebastian Bach achieved enormous success and notoriety when they were young, and both were unable to emulate their achievements later on in life; but Mr. Darwin had more trouble adapting to changed circumstances. His research abilities plateaued during his 50s, and he became depressed. Mr. Bach was a gifted baroque composer and musician, but then classical music replaced baroque in popularity. Unlike Darwin, J.S. Bach didn’t become embittered; instead he redesigned his life and spent his last years writing a baroque instruction manual. Mr. Brooks advises those over 50 to avoid the despondency and inactivity of Charles Darwin and be like Bach, the beloved, fulfilled, respected Bach.

embittered in old age?

happier?

last act: writer

Or Ulysses S. Grant? I recently noticed Grant’s famous visage in an article about retiring early. ^[2] Back when MONEY published a paper magazine, it asked experts for books that they’d suggest for those seeking “financial independence and early retirement.” Ron Chernow’s Grant surprisingly made the list even though it isn’t “about retiring early, per se.” John Challenger, a CEO of an outplacement firm, sees Grant’s life as an example of “how people were able to pivot and adapt to their situations to make significant advances in their careers.” The general and president repeatedly reinvented himself. He was famously working hard at the very end of his life, this time as a memoirist, and not because he had the financial independence to do a little writing in a larger amount of spare time – he was trying to put his family finances back in shape after a ponzi scheme left his family destitute. And toward the end he was trying to finish the second volume of his memoirs before his imminent death.

It might be a stretch to say that the Richmond reinvented itself, but the ship did seem to take on several different roles throughout its career, and, perhaps a bit like Bach, it was able to stay useful as society’s/technology’s cutting edge left it behind. I’ve never been a genius or a flagship sailing the Seven Seas; it seems most of my career has been trying to work out a career, but my body and my brain are definitely slowing down and I’m more and more out of step with societal changes. If I make it to retirement, I’m hoping for something of the usefulness of an auxiliary receiving ship, probably with time for a few more naps. [March 23, 2020 – that might be what they call semi-retirement, although there are many ways to be useful without paid work].

“Stripped for action, at Pensacola, Florida, on 3 August 1864, just prior to the Battle of Mobile Bay ( Richmond on the left with the Lackawanna)

“In the harbor of Ville Franche, France, in 1872. USS FRANKLIN is on the left.”

a flagship’s crew

According to the Encyclopedia Virginia, “In the midst of evacuating Richmond to Union forces on April 3, 1865, Confederate soldiers set fire to tobacco warehouses and the conflagration spread throughout the commercial heart of the city, leaving nine-tenths of the business district in ruins.” The site provides a slideshow of some of the destruction.

You can read a bio of F.D. Roosevelt as Assistant Secretary of the Navy during the Wilson Administration at the National Park Service.

More information about the Richmond is available at NavSource Naval History, which verifies that the ship was burned in Eastport in 1920.

Lieutenant Commander Andrew Boyd Cummings mortally wounded at Port Hudson

Admiral Farragut at Mobile Bay on the Hartford

watched Richmond burn

From the Library of Congress: Southwest Pass from the December 7, 1861 issue of Harper’s Weekly, is it old age? I don’t seem to be able to make out the Manassas; Mobile Bay chart; fighting past Fort Morgan; Lieutenant Commander Andrew Boyd Cummings; Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt; Charles Darwin about 1870; J.S. Bach; at Baton Rouge

From the U.S. Navy: in the Mediterranean in 1861 – KN-715; preparing for Mobile Bay – NH 51184; back to the Mediterranean in 1872 – NH 61880; at quarters – NH 119215; housed over in Norfolk – NH 75371; at Eastport – NH 44800 (flag removal) and NH 44801.

According to the Navy Site, the USS Franklin was in service from 1867-1915, so I’m not sure the Richmond was an auxiliary to the Franklin until the end of the First World War.

The Port Hudson attack map is said to be from the Official Records – you can find at Wikipedia; the image of the Battle of Port Hudson is from the April 18, 1863 issue of Harper’s Weekly at the Son of the South; Farragut’s diagram is from J.C. Watson’s 1916 paper “Farragut and Mobile Bay – Personal Reminiscences” at Project Hathi. The image of David Farragut in the Hartford’s rigging was published in the April 11, 1868 issue of Harper’s Weekly (page 228) at the Internet Archive – the engraving was based on William Page’s painting, said to very accurately represent the looks of the admiral and his flagship (page 227). You can find Grant’s Memoirs, including the cover at Project Gutenberg – From the inroduction: “The first volume, as well as a portion of the second, was written before I had reason to suppose I was in a critical condition of health. Later I was reduced almost to the point of death, and it became impossible for me to attend to anything for weeks. I have, however, somewhat regained my strength, and am able, often, to devote as many hours a day as a person should devote to such work. I would have more hope of satisfying the expectation of the public if I could have allowed myself more time. I have used my best efforts, with the aid of my eldest son, F. D. Grant, assisted by his brothers, to verify from the records every statement of fact given. The comments are my own, and show how I saw the matters treated of whether others saw them in the same light or not.” This was dated July 1, 1885; Mr. Grant died on July 23, 1885.

at Baton Rouge 1863

^[1]“Learning to accept your decline,” by Arthur Brooks, The Week January 17, 2020, pages 32-33. The Week edited the essay originally published in The Atlantic↩
^[2]“5 Books to Help You Retire Early,” by Martha C. White, Money December 2018, pages 34-35. ↩

Posted in 100 Years Ago, 150 Years Ago, Naval Matters | Tagged Battle of Mobile Bay, Battle of the Head of Passes, Capture of New Orleans, David G. Farragut, Mobile Alabama, Ulysses S. Grant, Union Navy, USS Richmond | Leave a comment

ebony and ivory

Posted on February 25, 2020 by SUMPTER

According to Wikipedia, Mississippi “was readmitted to the Union on January 11, 1870, and its representatives and senators were seated in Congress on February 23, 1870.”[*the dates are questionable] Although both new senators were Republicans and non-native Mississipians, one was black and one was white.

From the February 19, 1870 issue of Harper’s Weekly:

GENERAL AMES.

General ADELBERT AMES, who has just been elected to the United States Senate from the State of Mississippi, and whose portrait is given on this page, is a native of Maine, and entered West Point as a cadet from that State. He graduated with honors in 1856, received a lieutenant’s commission, and has since remained in the army. No officer has a more honorable war-record than General AMES. He served with distinction in the Army of the Potomac, and participated in nearly every battle in which that gallant host was engaged, and was promoted for gallant and meritorious services through the various grades, from lieutenant to the rank of major-general, which he now holds.

General AMES is about thirty-five years of age, a man of pleasant bearing, of frank and yet firm disposition. His administration as Military Governor of Mississippi has been eminently wise and successful. He was chosen Senator by the nearly unanimous vote of the Legislature of that State. Should the question of his eligibility be decided against him, his rejection by the Senate would cause general regret throughout the State, where his impartial conduct has won the respect of all parties.

two new Senators from Mississippi

HON. H.R. REVELS.

On this page will be found the portrait of Hon. H.R. REVELS, Senator elect from Mississippi. Mr. REVELS was born in North Carolina, in 1822, of free colored parents. He was educated at a Quaker Seminary in Indiana, and became a Methodist Minister. At the breaking out of the war he was settled in Baltimore, and from that time took an active part in the management of freedmen’s affairs. In 1864 he went To Vicksburg, in pursuance of this mission, and assisted in the organization of schools and churches among the liberated slaves. He passed the next two years in Kansas and Missouri, preaching and lecturing on moral and religious subjects; returned to Mississippi the following year, and has since resided in Natchez. He is presiding elder of his Church for the southern portion of the State. Since July last he has been a member of the City Council, and has served in that capacity with credit. A short time since he was elected to the State Senate by a handsome majority, and has now been selected by the Legislature as a proper man to represent the State in the Senate of the United States.

Mr. REVELS is a tall, portly man, of light complexion; has benevolent features, a pleasant voice, and cultivated manners. He is thoroughly respected by his own people and by the whites.

dignity in the Senate

The New-York Times February 26, 1870

According to the February 26, 1870 The New-York Times, Mr. Revels was actually sworn in as Senator 150 years ago today. The galleries were packed with intensely interested spectators. The Senate debated whether Mr. Revels should be seated. Senator Vickers from Maryland argued that Mr. Revels wasn’t eligible because he hadn’t been a U.S. citizen for nine years as required by the U.S. Constitution, and Senator Casserly from California “arraigned the entire reconstruction policy, charging that all the Southern Senators were put in their seats by the force of the bayonets of the regular army”. Charles Sumner’s closing speech for the Republican party “was brief, pithy and eloquent.” The majority-Republican Senate voted to admit Mr. Revels along strict party lines. When Vice-President Colfax told the Senator-elect to come forward and take the oath, “a pin might have been heard drop.” “Mr. REVELS showed no embarrassment whatever, and his demeanor was as dignified as could be expected under the circumstances. The abuse which had been poured upon him and on his race during the last two days might well have shaken the nerves of any one. The vast throng in the galleries showed no sign of feeling one way or the other, and left very quietly.”

One of the spectators in the visitors’ gallery was Charles Douglass. As he wrote to his father Frederick, Charles was happy that the Democrat effort to block the seating of Revels failed, but wished the first black Senator could have been his father: “The new senator was ‘dignified, … but I fear … weak. … If it could only have been Fred. Douglass … the door is open and I expect yet to see you passing, not through as a tool as I think this man is, to fill an unexpired term … but from your native State [Maryland].'” ^[1]

Hon. Fred. never made U.S. Sen.

In his 1913 The Facts of Reconstruction John R. Lynch, who in 1873 became the first African-American to be elected speaker of a state (Mississippi)legislature, wrote that Rev. Dr. Revels opening prayer when the Mississippi state senate convened in January 1870 was so effective that it “made him” a U.S. Senator, albeit for the shortest of the three terms the Mississippi state senate had to fill. From Project Gutenberg:

… When the Legislature convened at Jackson the first Monday in January, 1870, it was suggested to Lieutenant-Governor Powers, presiding officer of the Senate, that he invite the Rev. Dr. Revels to open the Senate with prayer. The suggestion was favorably acted upon. That prayer,—one of the most impressive and eloquent prayers that had ever been delivered in the Senate Chamber,—made Revels a United States Senator. He made a profound impression upon all who heard him. It impressed those who heard it that Revels was not only a man of great natural ability but that he was also a man of superior attainments.

The duty devolved upon that Legislature to fill three vacancies in the United States Senate: one, a fractional term of about one year,—the remainder of the six year term to which Jefferson Davis had been elected before the breaking out of the Rebellion,—another fractional term of about five years, and the third, the full term of six years, beginning with the expiration of the fractional term of one year. The colored members of the Legislature constituted a very small minority not only of the total membership of that body but also of the Republican members. Of the thirty-three members of which the Senate was composed four of them were colored men: H.R. Revels, of Adams; Charles Caldwell, of Hinds; Robert Gleed, of Lowndes, and T.W. Stringer, of Warren. Of the one hundred and seven members of which the House was composed about thirty of them were colored men. It will thus be seen that out of the one hundred forty members of which the two Houses were composed only about thirty-four of them were colored men. But the colored members insisted that one of the three United States Senators to be elected should be a colored man. The white Republicans were willing that the colored men be given the fractional term of one year, since it was understood that Governor Alcorn was to be elected to the full term of six years and that Governor Ames was to be elected to the fractional term of five years.

In this connection it may not be out of place to say that, ever since the organization of the Republican party in Mississippi, the white Republicans of that State, unlike some in a few of the other Southern States, have never attempted to draw the color line against their colored allies. In this they have proved themselves to be genuine and not sham Republicans,—that is to say, Republicans from principle and conviction and not for plunder and spoils. They have never failed to recognize the fact that the fundamental principle of the Republican party,—the one that gave the party its strongest claim upon the confidence and support of the public,—is its advocacy of equal civil and political rights. If that party should ever come to the conclusion that this principle should be abandoned, that moment it will merit, and I am sure it will receive, the condemnation and repudiation of the public.

It was not, therefore, a surprise to any one when the white Republican members of the Mississippi Legislature gave expression to their entire willingness to vote for a suitable colored man to represent the state of Mississippi in the highest and most dignified legislative tribunal in the world. The next step was to find the man. The name of the Rev. James Lynch was first suggested. That he was a suitable and fit man for the position could not be denied. But he had just been elected Secretary of State for a term of four years, and his election to the Senate would have created a vacancy in the former office which would have necessitated the holding of another State election and another election was what all wanted to avoid. For that reason his name was not seriously considered for the Senatorship.

The next name suggested was that of the Rev. H.R. Revels and those who had been so fortunate as to hear the impressive prayer that he had delivered on the opening of the Senate were outspoken in their advocacy of his selection. The white Republicans assured the colored members that if they would unite upon Revels, they were satisfied he would receive the vote of every white Republican member of the Legislature. Governor Alcorn also gave the movement his cordial and active support, thus insuring for Revels the support of the State administration. The colored members then held an informal conference, at which it was unanimously decided to present the name of Rev. H.R. Revels to the Republican Legislative Caucus as a candidate for United States Senator to fill the fractional term of one year. The choice was ratified by the caucus without serious opposition. In the joint Legislative session, every Republican member, white and colored, voted for the three Republican caucus nominees for United States Senators,—Alcorn, Ames and Revels,—with one exception, Senator William M. Hancock, of Lauderdale, who stated in explanation of his vote against Revels that as a lawyer he did not believe that a colored man was eligible to a seat in the United States Senate. But Judge Hancock seems to have been the only lawyer in the Legislature,—or outside of it, as far as could be learned,—who entertained that opinion.

Mr. Lynch’s point that Hiram Revels finished out the U.S. Senate term of Jefferson Davis seems to be debatable. A.J.Langguth wrote that it was the non-Davis seat, but still “the symbolism reverberated throughout the nation.” Thomas Nast expressed the irony in his Shakespearean cartoon. ^[2]

short term, big step

Jeff’s stomach ache

from his 1913 book

___________________________

Also from February 1870 – enough states had ratified the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution for it to become law. All American citizens had the right to vote no matter what: “The right of 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.”

In its March 12, 1870 issue Harper’s Weekly assumed that the formal proclamation of the adoption of the amendment was imminent. It noted that the states that voted against the amendment were all run by Democrats and that New York State tried to rescind it previous ratification after Democrats took control of state government after the 1869 elections. The amendment completed the work of “political purification begun by the war.”

The paper concluded: “Every citizen of the United States who has contributed to this truly American and humane triumph has reason to be proud. His further duty is to help break down the prejudice that must long survive the removal of the ban [I think] under which the colored race has lain in this country. No law, indeed can remove feeling, but manly good sense can.”

bothersome Democrats

* There seems to be a question of when Mississippi was officially brought back into the nation. Heather Thomas explains in an article at the Library of Congress that Mississippi was formally readmitted to the Union on February 23, 1870. Her post also shows an image from Frank Leslie’s of Mr. Revel being sworn in on February 25th.

February 26,2020: I am adding some references and the Harper’s Weekly spread that included the Mississippi Senators’ bios. Edward Jenner’s 1796 smallpox vaccine eventually led to the disease’s eradication.

All the 1870 Harper’s Weekly material can be found at the Internet Archive. From the Library of Congress: heroes – Blanche Kelso Bruce served as U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1875-1881; Hiram Revels portrait. The thumbnais of Revels and Lynch are from John R. Lynch’s book

__________________________

^[1]McFeely, William S. Frederick Douglass. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991. Print. page 264.↩
^[2]Langguth, A.J. After Lincoln: How the North Won the Civil War and Lost the Peace. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014. Print. pages 305.↩

Posted in 150 Years Ago, 150 Years Ago This Month, 150 Years Ago This Week, Postbellum Politics, Postbellum Society, Reconstruction, Southern Society | Tagged Adelbert Ames, Charles Sumner, Eugene Casserly, Fifteenth Amendment to the U S Constitution, George Vickers (U.S. Senator from Maryland), Hiram Rhodes Revels, John Roy Lynch, Mississippi, Natchez Mississippi | Leave a comment

dignity, repose, and mercy

Posted on February 12, 2020 by SUMPTER

If he had lived, Abraham Lincoln would be 211 years old today. In its February 26, 1870 issue Harper’s Weekly pictured a new statue of Abraham for Union Square in New York City and recounted the story of President Lincoln pardon of the “sleeping sentinel,” William Scott.

Saved the Union

Harper’s Weekly February 26, 1870

asleep at the Chain Bridge

reprieve

According to Wikipedia, Carl Sandburg debunked part of the William Scott story: no dramatic last words, no dramatic presidential ride to the execution site. But more modern research indicates that Mr. Lincoln was aware of the case and did intervene (as General McClellan’s order implied).

pre-Hollywood treatment

Posted in 150 Years Ago This Month, Monuments and Statues | Tagged Abraham Lincoln, Union Square (New York City), William Scott (The Sleeping Sentinel) | Leave a comment

live from dry square

Posted on January 24, 2020 by SUMPTER

Not exactly lively, not exactly dry

better hurry

The 18th amendment to the United States Constitution, prohibiting the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all the territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes,” went into effect nationwide on January 17, 1920. That might have been bad enough, but Prohibition reportedly even affected the prior New Year’s Eve in New York City. The big night had been a subdued affair according to the January 1, 1920 issue of the The New-York Times, which headlined a New Year’s Eve “Gay in Hotels, Quiet on Streets,” “Abundance of Liquor in Dining Rooms, Brought in Packages by the Guests,” … “Revenue Agents Vigilant,” “Mingled in Restaurant Crowds in Evening Dress, Some Accompanied by Their Wives”:

A sober city gave tacit notice to the world that prohibition and the attendant fear of beverages tainted with wood alcohol had caused it to abandon forever its time-honored custom of greeting the New Year by turning its Broadway and Times Square into a Mardi Gras, where good-natured throngs took part in revels and bantering until the cold morning mists drove them home.

New Year’s Eve as an institution and as a great expression of a community psychology, a psychology that caused thousands in other years to gather into a great Broadway maelstrom, has passed into the city’s history. Hard hit by the war and overshadowed by the great Armistice Night celebration, the riotous New Year’s Eve of a year ago failed to return to its haunts last night under the most favorable weather conditions. Cause: Prohibition!

Little Gayety in Streets.

could you please direct me to the Mardi Gras?

Only in the hotels and the restaurants along Broadway was there any hint last night of the old prewar New Year’s Eve, with its ear-rending, noise-making machines, its feather ticklers, its confetti, its trumpets, its immovable crowds, and its good cheer. There the last precious drops of good old bonded stuff were used up by diners who sought to bring back the oldtime New Year’s Eve and to make themselves believe that they at least for this one year could outwit prohibition.

Although an insidious rumor had bed spread far and wide that some of the hotels would open their hearts and their wine cellars at the stroke of midnight and carry forth casks of the good cheer which they were forbidden by law to sell, no such theatrical munificence was carried out, save, to a limited extent, in the hotels of the du Pont-Boomer group. Hoping against hope, hundreds of patrons placed themselves in receptive positions in all hotels, but at midnight the managers came around and shook hands. Nothing else! …

The same front page described a raid on a shop in Brooklyn that manufactured poison wood alcohol that “caused many deaths in Hartford, Chicopee, and other places in New England …”

on the wagon,
Uncle Sam’s wagon

bathtub gin?

dry cabaret
August 1919???

__________________________________

The Volstead Act, passed in October 1919, specified how the eighteenth amendment was to be carried out, but I still didn’t understand how enforcement of prohibition seemed to begin before January 17, 1920 until I found a picture at the Library of Congress and then found information about the Wartime Prohibition Act at chronozoom: the act “banned the sale of alcoholic beverages having an alcohol content of greater than 2.75 percent. (This act, which was intended to save grain for the war effort, was passed after the armistice ending World War I was signed on November 11, 1918.) The Wartime Prohibition Act took effect June 30, 1919, with July 1, 1919, becoming known as the “Thirsty-First”.”

last call for (full-strength) alcohol

An American history textbook viewed Prohibition as a victory for rural America against the cities. The temperance movement had been a strong force since Andrew Jackson’s administration and during the Progressive Era many reformers wanted to ban alcohol entirely. “(P)rohibition was a typical progressive reform, moralistic, backed by the middle class, aimed at frustration ‘the interests’ – in this case, the distillers.” World War I was a boon to the movement – the Food and Fuel Control Act also controlled alcohol because it “banned the production of “distilled spirits” from any produce that was used for food.” Apparently it reduced the permissible alcohol content in legal beer. Prohibition had good and bad results. The amendment did reduce average alcohol consumption and resulted in fewer alcohol-related deaths. Since beer and wine were also banned, many citizens opted to break the law. Smuggling increased and saloons were replaced by speakeasies. The legal production of wine for religious services increased “800,000 gallons during the first two years of prohibition.” Pharmacists could legally prescribe alcohol for medicinal purposes. Overall prohibition led to a lot of societal hypocrisy.^[1]

British author G.K Chesterton had quite a bit to say about Prohibition in his 1922 What I Saw in America (at Project Gutenberg). Here are a few excerpts:

I went to America with some notion of not discussing Prohibition. But I soon found that well-to-do Americans were only too delighted to discuss it over the nuts and wine. They were even willing, if necessary, to dispense with the nuts. I am far from sneering at this; having a general philosophy which need not here be expounded, but which may be symbolised by saying that monkeys can enjoy nuts but only men can enjoy wine. But if I am to deal with Prohibition, there is no doubt of the first thing to be said about it. The first thing to be said about it is that it does not exist. It is to some extent enforced among the poor; at any rate it was intended to be enforced among the poor; though even among them I fancy it is much evaded. It is certainly not enforced among the rich; and I doubt whether it was intended to be. I suspect that this has always happened whenever this negative notion has taken hold of some particular province or tribe. Prohibition never prohibits. It never has in history; not even in Moslem history; and it never will. Mahomet at least had the argument of a climate and not the interest of a class. But if a test is needed, consider what part of Moslem culture has passed permanently into our own modern culture. You will find the one Moslem poem that has really pierced is a Moslem poem in praise of wine. The crown of all the victories of the Crescent is that nobody reads the Koran and everybody reads the Rubaiyat.

Most of us remember with satisfaction an old picture in Punch, representing a festive old gentleman in a state of collapse on the pavement, and a philanthropic old lady anxiously calling the attention of a cabman to the calamity. The old lady says, ‘I’m sure this poor gentleman is ill,’ and the cabman replies with fervour, ‘Ill! I wish I ‘ad ‘alf ‘is complaint.’ …

Now Prohibition, whether as a proposal in England or a pretence in America, simply means that the man who has drunk less shall have no drink, and the man who has drunk more shall have all the drink. It means that the old gentleman shall be carried home in the cab drunker than ever; but that, in order to make it quite safe for him to drink to excess, the man who drives him shall be forbidden to drink even in moderation. That is what it means; that is all it means; that is all it ever will mean. It tends to that in Moslem countries; where the luxurious and advanced drink champagne, while the poor and fanatical drink water. It means that in modern America; where the wealthy are all at this moment sipping their cocktails, and discussing how much harder labourers can be made to work if only they can be kept from festivity. This is what it means and all it means; and men are divided about it according to whether they believe in a certain transcendental concept called ‘justice,’ expressed in a more mystical paradox as the equality of men. So long as you do not believe in justice, and so long as you are rich and really confident of remaining so, you can have Prohibition and be as drunk as you choose. …

sine qua non

class consciousness

verboten

Now my primary objection to Prohibition is not based on any arguments against it, but on the one argument for it. I need nothing more for its condemnation than the only thing that is said in its defence. It is said by capitalists all over America; and it is very clearly and correctly reported by Mr. Campbell himself. The argument is that employees work harder, and therefore employers get richer. That this idea should be taken calmly, by itself, as the test of a problem of liberty, is in itself a final testimony to the presence of slavery. It shows that people have completely forgotten that there is any other test except the servile test. Employers are willing that workmen should have exercise, as it may help them to do more work. They are even willing that workmen should have leisure; for the more intelligent capitalists can see that this also really means that they can do more work. But they are not in any way willing that workmen should have fun; for fun only increases the happiness and not the utility of the worker. Fun is freedom; and in that sense is an end in itself. It concerns the man not as a worker but as a citizen, or even as a soul; and the soul in that sense is an end in itself. That a man shall have a reasonable amount of comedy and poetry and even fantasy in his life is part of his spiritual health, which is for the service of God; and not merely for his mechanical health, which is now bound to the service of man. The very test adopted has all the servile implication; the test of what we can get out of him, instead of the test of what he can get out of life. …

Nobody in his five wits will deny that Jeffersonian democracy wished to give the law a general control in more public things, but the citizens a more general liberty in private things. Wherever we draw the line, liberty can only be personal liberty; and the most personal liberties must at least be the last liberties we lose. But to-day they are the first liberties we lose. It is not a question of drawing the line in the right place, but of beginning at the wrong end. What are the rights of man, if they do not include the normal right to regulate his own health, in relation to the normal risks of diet and daily life? Nobody can pretend that beer is a poison as prussic acid is a poison; that all the millions of civilised men who drank it all fell down dead when they had touched it. Its use and abuse is obviously a matter of judgment; and there can be no personal liberty, if it is not a matter ofprivate judgment. It is not in the least a question of drawing the line between liberty and licence. If this is licence, there is no such thing as liberty. It is plainly impossible to find any right more individual or intimate. To say that a man has a right to a vote, but not a right to a voice about the choice of his dinner, is like saying that he has a right to his hat but not a right to his head.

Prohibition, therefore, plainly violates the rights of man, if there are any rights of man. What its supporters really mean is that there are none.

social compact?

Sometimes I get so blue because of all the gray areas in life. Alcohol is a good example. One of my memories of Gettysburg when I was a little kid ^[2] was visiting the Cyclorama – I heard an agonizing scream as the spotlight highlighted a near-battlefield amputation; I hope that soldier, regardless of uniform, could have had some whiskey to ease the pain a little bit. On the other hand, I’m quite certain that drinking can lead to something approaching the exact opposite of personal liberty, with an increasing likelihood of collateral damage

Apparently doctors even in the early twentieth century relied on alcohol as a medicine. The front page of The New-York Times on January 22, 1919 headlined an increase in city influenza cases of 462 in one day and a concern that because of prohibition it would be difficult to obtain enough whiskey to treat the flu and pneumonia. (the other concern was a shortage of nurses, especially for home care). The Health Commissioner planned on asking the federal government to set up liquor stations where medical professional could obtain the stuff to treat patients. Druggists were worried that they could get in trouble if they filled too many prescriptions for medicinal alcohol now that the liquid was banned nationwide.

I was surprised to read that G.K. Chesterton didn’t think Muslims read the Koran, although that was about one hundred years ago.

Kenesaw Mountain Landis served as a judge on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois from 1905-1922 and as Baseball Commissioner from 1920 until his death in 1944.

You can read a blog about Prohibition at the Library of Congress.

Also from the Library of Congress: the photo of the returning 11th Engineers from the May 4, 1919 issue of the New York Tribune – a couple months before the Wartime Prohibition Act took effect; also from the Trib in 1919 – August 3rd, October 19th, November 9th, December 7th, December 28th; a quiet Times Square between 1900 and 1915; “Interior of a crowded bar moments before midnight, June 30, 1919, when wartime prohibition went into effect New York City;” “No Beer-No Work sheet music from 1919; Personal Liberty sheet music also from 1919; Bottles and barrel of confiscated whiskey/a>

cellar dwellers?

down with drink

killjoys

^[1]Garraty, John A., and Robert A. McCaughey. The American Nation: A History of the United States, Seventh Edition. New York: HarpersCollins Publishers, 1991. Print. page 721-722.↩
^[2]many decades ago, my memory certainly could be faulty↩

Posted in 100 Years Ago, World War I | Tagged Eighteenth Amendment to U.S. Constitution, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, New Year's, Prohibiton, temperance, temperance movement, Volstead Act | Leave a comment

the golden character

Posted on January 10, 2020 by SUMPTER

According to documentation at Project Gutenberg, President Ulysses S. Grant sent his first annual message to Congress when it reconvened early in December 1869. It was a long report; overall things seemed pretty peaceable. Reconstruction in the Southern states was progressing. The president seemed to encourage a gradual return to the gold standard. The federal government ran a surplus for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1869. Congress should make sure that the office of Commissioner of Internal Revenue received the pay and prestige it deserved. The United States shouldn’t enforce its “views upon unwilling nations.” President Grant wanted to stop citizens of foreign nations becoming naturalized U.S. citizens only as a kind of backstop – these people would continue to live and work in their home country for years until “civil discord” or being drafted into military service made them escape to the United States. It seems that the president saw trade as a way to promote the nation’s self-interest. President Grant was using Quakers to run a few Indian reservations and military officers as agents to the natives not on reservations. He thought that the best policy was to eventually get all the aborigines living on reservations. The document contained over 7600 words; here are some excerpts:

FIRST ANNUAL MESSAGE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, Washington, D.C., December 6, 1869.

To the Senate and House of Representatives:

the general in his new clothes

In coming before you for the first time as Chief Magistrate of this great nation, it is with gratitude to the Giver of All Good for the many benefits we enjoy. We are blessed with peace at home, and are without entangling alliances abroad to forebode trouble; with a territory unsurpassed in fertility, of an area equal to the abundant support of 500,000,000 people, and abounding in every variety of useful mineral in quantity sufficient to supply the world for generations; with exuberant crops; with a variety of climate adapted to the production of every species of earth’s riches and suited to the habits, tastes, and requirements of every living thing; with a population of 40,000,000 free people, all speaking one language; with facilities for every mortal to acquire an education; with institutions closing to none the avenues to fame or any blessing of fortune that may be coveted; with freedom of the pulpit, the press, and the school; with a revenue flowing into the National Treasury beyond the requirements of the Government. Happily, harmony is being rapidly restored within our own borders. Manufactures hitherto unknown in our country are springing up in all sections, producing a degree of national independence unequaled by that of any other power.

These blessings and countless others are intrusted to your care and mine for safe-keeping for the brief period of our tenure of office. In a short time we must, each of us, return to the ranks of the people, who have conferred upon us our honors, and account to them for our stewardship. I earnestly desire that neither you nor I may be condemned by a free and enlightened constituency nor by our own consciences.

Emerging from a rebellion of gigantic magnitude, aided, as it was, by the sympathies and assistance of nations with which we were at peace, eleven States of the Union were, four years ago, left without legal State governments. A national debt had been contracted; American commerce was almost driven from the seas; the industry of one-half of the country had been taken from the control of the capitalist and placed where all labor rightfully belongs—in the keeping of the laborer. The work of restoring State governments loyal to the Union, of protecting and fostering free labor, and providing means for paying the interest on the public debt has received ample attention from Congress. Although your efforts have not met with the success in all particulars that might have been desired, yet on the whole they have been more successful than could have been reasonably anticipated.

In Richmond (Harper’s Weekly November 20, 1869)

Seven States which passed ordinances of secession have been fully restored to their places in the Union. The eighth (Georgia) held an election at which she ratified her constitution, republican in form, elected a governor, Members of Congress, a State legislature, and all other officers required. The governor was duly installed, and the legislature met and performed all the acts then required of them by the reconstruction acts of Congress. Subsequently, however, in violation of the constitution which they had just ratified (as since decided by the supreme court of the State), they unseated the colored members of the legislature and admitted to seats some members who are disqualified by the third clause of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution—an article which they themselves had contributed to ratify. Under these circumstances I would submit to you whether it would not be wise, without delay, to enact a law authorizing the governor of Georgia to convene the members originally elected to the legislature, requiring each member to take the oath prescribed by the reconstruction acts, and none to be admitted who are ineligible under the third clause of the fourteenth amendment.

The freedmen, under the protection which they have received, are making rapid progress in learning, and no complaints are heard of lack of industry on their part where they receive fair remuneration for their labor. The means provided for paying the interest on the public debt, with all other expenses of Government, are more than ample. The loss of our commerce is the only result of the late rebellion which has not received sufficient attention from you. To this subject I call your earnest attention. I will not now suggest plans by which this object may be effected, but will, if necessary, make it the subject of a special message during the session of Congress.

boys will be boys

At the March term Congress by joint resolution authorized the Executive to order elections in the States of Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas, to submit to them the constitutions which each had previously, in convention, framed, and submit the constitutions, either entire or in separate parts, to be voted upon, at the discretion of the Executive. Under this authority elections were called. In Virginia the election took place on the 6th of July, 1869. The governor and lieutenant-governor elected have been installed. The legislature met and did all required by this resolution and by all the reconstruction acts of Congress, and abstained from all doubtful authority. I recommend that her Senators and Representatives be promptly admitted to their seats, and that the State be fully restored to its place in the family of States. Elections were called in Mississippi and Texas, to commence on the 30th of November, 1869, and to last two days in Mississippi and four days in Texas. The elections have taken place, but the result is not known. It is to be hoped that the acts of the legislatures of these States, when they meet, will be such as to receive your approval, and thus close the work of reconstruction.

Among the evils growing out of the rebellion, and not yet referred to, is that of an irredeemable currency. It is an evil which I hope will receive your most earnest attention. It is a duty, and one of the highest duties, of Government to secure to the citizen a medium of exchange of fixed, unvarying value. This implies a return to a specie basis, and no substitute for it can be devised. It should be commenced now and reached at the earliest practicable moment consistent with a fair regard to the interests of the debtor class. Immediate resumption, if practicable, would not be desirable. It would compel the debtor class to pay, beyond their contracts, the premium on gold at the date of their purchase, and would bring bankruptcy and ruin to thousands. Fluctuation, however, in the paper value of the measure of all values (gold) is detrimental to the interests of trade. It makes the man of business an involuntary gambler, for in all sales where future payment is to be made both parties speculate as to what will be the value of the currency to be paid and received. I earnestly recommend to you, then, such legislation as will insure a gradual return to specie payments and put an immediate stop to fluctuations in the value of currency.

The methods to secure the former of these results are as numerous as are the speculators on political economy. To secure the latter I see but one way, and that is to authorize the Treasury to redeem its own paper, at a fixed price, whenever presented, and to withhold from circulation all currency so redeemed until sold again for gold.

The vast resources of the nation, both developed and undeveloped, ought to make our credit the best on earth. With a less burden of taxation than the citizen has endured for six years past, the entire public debt could be paid in ten years. But it is not desirable that the people should be taxed to pay it in that time. Year by year the ability to pay increases in a rapid ratio. But the burden of interest ought to be reduced as rapidly as can be done without the violation of contract. The public debt is represented in great part by bonds having from five to twenty and from ten to forty years to run, bearing interest at the rate of 6 per cent and 5 per cent, respectively. It is optional with the Government to pay these bonds at any period after the expiration of the least time mentioned upon their face. The time has already expired when a great part of them may be taken up, and is rapidly approaching when all may be. It is believed that all which are now due may be replaced by bonds bearing a rate of interest not exceeding 4-1/2 per cent, and as rapidly as the remainder become due that they may be replaced in the same way. To accomplish this it may be necessary to authorize the interest to be paid at either of three or four of the money centers of Europe, or by any assistant treasurer of the United States, at the option of the holder of the bond. I suggest this subject for the consideration of Congress, and also, simultaneously with this, the propriety of redeeming our currency, as before suggested, at its market value at the time the law goes into effect, increasing the rate at which currency shall be bought and sold from day to day or week to week, at the same rate of interest as Government pays upon its bonds.

The subjects of tariff and internal taxation will necessarily receive your attention. The revenues of the country are greater than the requirements, and may with safety be reduced. But as the funding of the debt in a 4 or a 4-1/2 per cent loan would reduce annual current expenses largely, thus, after funding, justifying a greater reduction of taxation than would be now expedient, I suggest postponement of this question until the next meeting of Congress.

It may be advisable to modify taxation and tariff in instances where unjust or burdensome discriminations are made by the present laws, but a general revision of the laws regulating this subject I recommend the postponement of for the present. I also suggest the renewal of the tax on incomes, but at a reduced rate, say of 3 per cent, and this tax to expire in three years.

With the funding of the national debt, as here suggested, I feel safe in saying that taxes and the revenue from imports may be reduced safely from sixty to eighty millions per annum at once, and may be still further reduced from year to year, as the resources of the country are developed.

The report of the Secretary of the Treasury shows the receipts of the Government for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1869, to be $370,943,747, and the expenditures, including interest, bounties, etc., to be $321,490,597. The estimates for the ensuing year are more favorable to the Government, and will no doubt show a much larger decrease of the public debt.

The receipts in the Treasury beyond expenditures have exceeded the amount necessary to place to the credit of the sinking fund, as provided by law. To lock up the surplus in the Treasury and withhold it from circulation would lead to such a contraction of the currency as to cripple trade and seriously affect the prosperity of the country. Under these circumstances the Secretary of the Treasury and myself heartily concurred in the propriety of using all the surplus currency in the Treasury in the purchase of Government bonds, thus reducing the interest-bearing indebtedness of the country, and of submitting to Congress the question of the disposition to be made of the bonds so purchased. The bonds now held by the Treasury amount to about seventy-five millions, including those belonging to the sinking fund. I recommend that the whole be placed to the credit of the sinking fund.

Your attention is respectfully invited to the recommendations of the Secretary of the Treasury for the creation of the office of commissioner of customs revenue; for the increase of salaries to certain classes of officials; the substitution of increased national-bank circulation to replace the outstanding 3 per cent certificates; and most especially to his recommendation for the repeal of laws allowing shares of fines, penalties, forfeitures, etc., to officers of the Government or to informers.

The office of Commissioner of Internal Revenue is one of the most arduous and responsible under the Government. It falls but little, if any, short of a Cabinet position in its importance and responsibilities. I would ask for it, therefore, such legislation as in your judgment will place the office upon a footing of dignity commensurate with its importance and with the character and qualifications of the class of men required to fill it properly.

Cuban insurrection

As the United States is the freest of all nations, so, too, its people sympathize with all people struggling for liberty and self-government; but while so sympathizing it is due to our honor that we should abstain from enforcing our views upon unwilling nations and from taking an interested part, without invitation, in the quarrels between different nations or between governments and their subjects. Our course should always be in conformity with strict justice and law, international and local. Such has been the policy of the Administration in dealing with these questions. For more than a year a valuable province of Spain, and a near neighbor of ours, in whom all our people can not but feel a deep interest, has been struggling for independence and freedom. The people and Government of the United States entertain the same warm feelings and sympathies for the people of Cuba in their pending struggle that they manifested throughout the previous struggles between Spain and her former colonies in behalf of the latter. But the contest has at no time assumed the conditions which amount to a war in the sense of international law, or which would show the existence of a de facto political organization of the insurgents sufficient to justify a recognition of belligerency. …

[In addition to the rebellion in Cuba, President Grant reviewed the foreign relations of the United States, including the Spanish seizure of a couple U.S. ships, “the subject of an interoceanic canal to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Isthmus of Darien,” the settlement of all claims between Great Britain and the United States (probably including the CSS Alabama), and more.

… The unsettled political condition of other countries, less fortunate than our own, sometimes induces their citizens to come to the United States for the sole purpose of becoming naturalized. Having secured this, they return to their native country and reside there, without disclosing their change of allegiance. They accept official positions of trust or honor, which can only be held by citizens of their native land; they journey under passports describing them as such citizens; and it is only when civil discord, after perhaps years of quiet, threatens their persons or their property, or when their native state drafts them into its military service, that the fact of their change of allegiance is made known. They reside permanently away from the United States, they contribute nothing to its revenues, they avoid the duties of its citizenship, and they only make themselves known by a claim of protection. I have directed the diplomatic and consular officers of the United States to scrutinize carefully all such claims for protection. The citizen of the United States, whether native or adopted, who discharges his duty to his country, is entitled to its complete protection. While I have a voice in the direction of affairs I shall not consent to imperil this sacred right by conferring it upon fictitious or fraudulent claimants. …

Our manufactures are increasing with wonderful rapidity under the encouragement which they now receive. With the improvements in machinery already effected, and still increasing, causing machinery to take the place of skilled labor to a large extent, our imports of many articles must fall off largely within a very few years. Fortunately, too, manufactures are not confined to a few localities, as formerly, and it is to be hoped will become more and more diffused, making the interest in them equal in all sections. They give employment and support to hundreds of thousands of people at home, and retain with us the means which otherwise would be shipped abroad. The extension of railroads in Europe and the East is bringing into competition with our agricultural products like products of other countries. Self-interest, if not self-preservation, therefore dictates caution against disturbing any industrial interest of the country. It teaches us also the necessity of looking to other markets for the sale of our surplus. Our neighbors south of us, and China and Japan, should receive our special attention. It will be the endeavor of the Administration to cultivate such relations with all these nations as to entitle us to their confidence and make it their interest, as well as ours, to establish better commercial relations. …

On my assuming the responsible duties of Chief Magistrate of the United States it was with the conviction that three things were essential to its peace, prosperity, and fullest development. First among these is strict integrity in fulfilling all our obligations; second, to secure protection to the person and property of the citizen of the United States in each and every portion of our common country, wherever he may choose to move, without reference to original nationality, religion, color, or politics, demanding of him only obedience to the laws and proper respect for the rights of others; third, union of all the States, with equal rights, indestructible by any constitutional means.

To secure the first of these, Congress has taken two essential steps: First, in declaring by joint resolution that the public debt shall be paid, principal and interest, in coin; and, second, by providing the means for paying. Providing the means, however, could not secure the object desired without a proper administration of the laws for the collection of the revenues and an economical disbursement of them. To this subject the Administration has most earnestly addressed itself, with results, I hope, satisfactory to the country. There has been no hesitation in changing officials in order to secure an efficient execution of the laws, sometimes, too, when, in a mere party view, undesirable political results were likely to follow; nor any hesitation in sustaining efficient officials against remonstrances wholly political.

It may be well to mention here the embarrassment possible to arise from leaving on the statute books the so-called “tenure-of-office acts,” and to earnestly recommend their total repeal. It could not have been the intention of the framers of the Constitution, when providing that appointments made by the President should receive the consent of the Senate, that the latter should have the power to retain in office persons placed there by Federal appointment against the will of the President. The law is inconsistent with a faithful and efficient administration of the Government. What faith can an Executive put in officials forced upon him, and those, too, whom he has suspended for reason? How will such officials be likely to serve an Administration which they know does not trust them?

For the second requisite to our growth and prosperity time and a firm but humane administration of existing laws (amended from time to time as they may prove ineffective or prove harsh and unnecessary) are probably all that are required.

The third can not be attained by special legislation, but must be regarded as fixed by the Constitution itself and gradually acquiesced in by force of public opinion.

From the foundation of the Government to the present the management of the original inhabitants of this continent—the Indians—has been a subject of embarrassment and expense, and has been attended with continuous robberies, murders, and wars. From my own experience upon the frontiers and in Indian countries, I do not hold either legislation or the conduct of the whites who come most in contact with the Indian blameless for these hostilities. The past, however, can not be undone, and the question must be met as we now find it. I have attempted a new policy toward these wards of the nation (they can not be regarded in any other light than as wards), with fair results so far as tried, and which I hope will be attended ultimately with great success. The Society of Friends is well known as having succeeded in living in peace with the Indians in the early settlement of Pennsylvania, while their white neighbors of other sects in other sections were constantly embroiled. They are also known for their opposition to all strife, violence, and war, and are generally noted for their strict integrity and fair dealings. These considerations induced me to give the management of a few reservations of Indians to them and to throw the burden of the selection of agents upon the society itself. The result has proven most satisfactory. It will De [be] found more fully set forth in the report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. For superintendents and Indian agents not on the reservations, officers of the Army were selected. The reasons for this are numerous. Where Indian agents are sent, there, or near there, troops must be sent also. The agent and the commander of troops are independent of each other, and are subject to orders from different Departments of the Government. The army officer holds a position for life; the agent, one at the will of the President. The former is personally interested in living in harmony with the Indian and in establishing a permanent peace, to the end that some portion of his life may be spent within the limits of civilized society; the latter has no such personal interest. Another reason is an economic one; and still another, the hold which the Government has upon a life officer to secure a faithful discharge of duties in carrying out a given policy.

you, too, can become a ward of the nation

The building of railroads, and the access thereby given to all the agricultural and mineral regions of the country, is rapidly bringing civilized settlements into contact with all the tribes of Indians. No matter what ought to be the relations between such settlements and the aborigines, the fact is they do not harmonize well, and one or the other has to give way in the end. A system which looks to the extinction of a race is too horrible for a nation to adopt without entailing upon itself the wrath of all Christendom and engendering in the citizen a disregard for human life and the rights of others, dangerous to society. I see no substitute for such a system, except in placing all the Indians on large reservations, as rapidly as it can be done, and giving them absolute protection there. As soon as they are fitted for it they should be induced to take their lands in severalty and to set up Territorial governments for their own protection. For full details on this subject I call your special attention to the reports of the Secretary of the Interior and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. …

[Next is a summary of Cabinet Department reports]

… There are many subjects not alluded to in this message which might with propriety be introduced, but I abstain, believing that your patriotism and statesmanship will suggest the topics and the legislation most conducive to the interests of the whole people. On my part I promise a rigid adherence to the laws and their strict enforcement.

U.S. GRANT.

chalk talks

I don’t know much about the Grant Administration except that it was supposed to scandal-plagued. According to Wikipedia the first Grant Administration scandal was the Black Friday Gold Panic 1869. Jay Gould and James Fisk led a plan to manipulate the price of gold by ensuring that the federal government stopped using federally-owned gold to buy back bonds and reduce the government debt. At first, President Grant naively went along. When he realized what was going on, he and Secretary of the Treasury George Boutwell agreed to begin buying bonds again with government-owned gold. On September 24, 1869 Secretary Boutwell used $4,000,000 worth of gold to buy bonds. The artificially high price of gold collapsed and many investors were ruined:

“The gold panic devastated the United States economy for months. Stock prices plunged and the price of food crops such as wheat and corn dropped severely, devastating farmers who did not recover for years afterward. Gould had earlier claimed to Grant that raising the price of gold would actually help farmers. Also Fisk refused to pay off many of his investors who had bought gold on paper. The volume of stocks being sold on Wall Street decreased by 20%. Fisk and Gould, who could afford to hire the best lawyers, were never held accountable for their profiteering, as favorable judges declined to prosecute.”

price controls

devilish design?

occupied Wall Street

______________________________________

Harper’s Weekly began 1869 with sky-high expectations for the new year in general and the incipient Grant Administration in particular. The newspaper seemed quite a bit more muted as 1870 rolled around, but it still had a great deal of faith President Grant’s character. From the January 8, 1870 issue of Harper’s Weekly:

New York not having any

THE NEW YEAR.

The new year opens with the world outwardly at peace, except in Cuba and Paraguay. At home, the administration of General GRANT, which began with such high hopes, is stronger in public confidence than ever. The eager expectations of “a splendid administration” may have been chastened; for to compose the country after a civil tempest, to encourage the return of industry to its proper channels, and to pay the debt, are not precisely a “splendid,” although the most necessary policy. Those who anticipated splendor meant probably annexation. It was their hope that Canada and the West Indies would fall under our control. That is, perhaps, still their hope. It would not be surprising if President GRANT himself should expect or wish to signalize his administration by an extension of the national domain. Perhaps it has occurred to him that in some honorable way Canada might fall to us out of the Alabama complication. Perhaps he has supposed that Spain, no longer suspicious after the release of the gun-boats, might not be unwilling to think of selling Cuba.

gold scandal: “The President’s character was his armor”

But whatever the President’s hopes or wishes may be, his character and his conduct equally show that the country has nothing to expect but what is most fair, most reasonable, and most patriotic. After ten months’ strictest observation of General GRANT in his great office, for which it was alleged that, however good a soldier he might be, he was certainly not fitted, his sturdy honesty, his natural rectitude of feeling, his remarkable sagacity and alert apprehension, have impressed the country with a profound conviction that the public welfare is peculiarly safe in his hands, and he is trusted as President LINCOLN was trusted, and as few other Presidents have been. His Cabinet, although not composed of party leaders, is evidently a body of wise counselors; and General GRANT would not be where he is if he were not capable of selecting sound advisors and following good counsels. Undoubtedly the general feeling is that the Administration has no other purpose than the public good, and that the character of its members is an [?] earnest of its devotion to that object.

During General GRANT’S Presidency the Union will be wholly restored, equal rights secured, the debt generally reduced, taxation diminished, and the foreign questions satisfactorily adjusted. These results are foreshadowed by the experience of this year, and without territorial extension these certainly supply real “splendor” enough to any Administration. Yet to increase the national territory is always a popular policy. Unquestionably Mr. SEWARD believes that he will be as gratefully remembered for acquiring Alaska as for defending freedom in California and Kansas. But, however inevitable the extension of our limits may be, the addition of a population foreign in race, language, and traditions of every kind is not an unmixed blessing. The consciousness of this fact evidently subdues the popular impulse that demands annexation. Formerly the impulse seemed more positive, for annexation was the political policy of a faction to strengthen slavery. Now, fortunately, it has only its normal play. And, we repeat, if increase of territory is to be added to the trophies of the GRANT Administration, it will be in the most honorable and satisfactory manner.

Abroad, there is not only peace between the great states, but there is an especial friendliness towards us. If it is to be explained by the proved power of this country and certain accusing reminiscences elsewhere, let us now at least remember that as a slaveholding republic we did not conciliate other nations, and that we have as carefully avoided sentimentality in international relations as any foreign government. The Christmas sun shines upon the English war steamer bringing respectfully to America the body of a noted American who had made both countries his home; while the best known and most beloved of all our English friends during our struggle is a conspicuous member of the British government, which modifies at our wish its old doctrine of allegiance. In France LOUIS NAPOLEON speaks us fair. Spain sees that we are friendly. Germany also allows expatriation at our request. Austria gives her hand to us in freeing her schools from ecclesiastical control. Russia is our ally, and little Denmark, unwilling to be deceived, waits to see that our plighted faith be fulfilled.

“an honest chance”

So friendly and full of promise opens the new year. But for us its chief glory is that it dawns not only on the Union fully restored, but consecrated to equal liberty and pledged to its defense. If any where in the land – in Texas, in Georgia, in Mississippi – the old tyranny asserts itself to abuse a single friendless citizen, the power of the whole is bound for his protection. Let us make that the American practice as well as the American principle. Let the cabin of the most unfortunate and forlorn of our brethren feel our protecting hand – feel that they are to have an honest chance to rise as men out of the brutishness into which we suffered them to be trampled, and they will indeed feel that the light of a new year shines upon their long night, and that they hear, as the Syrian shepherds heard, the divine gospel: “Peace on Earth: Good-will to men.”

In the same issue Harper’s Weekly pictorially reviewed the decade that had just ended:

from election to emancipation

economy and education

“resist the further encroachments of slavery”

In the 1869 New York State election Democrats swept all the statewide offices and won control the state assembly and senate. Two blue-gray people were losing Republicans – Franz Sigel (Secretary of State) and Horace Greeley (Comptroller).

All the Harper’s Weekly material can be found at the Internet Archive – 1869 and 1870

From the Library of Congress: presidential portrait; Charles M. Russell’s c.1899 drawing of “The Indian of the plains as he was”; New York Gold Room bulletin board – “Photograph of the black board in the New York Gold Room, September 24, 1869, showing the collapse of the price of gold. Handwritten caption by James A. Garfield indicates it was used as evidence before the Committee of Banking & Currency during hearings in 1870.” (the handwritten caption got the year wrong); Two African American boys, photo said to be between 1867 and 1870 by “J. D. Heywood’s Photographic Art Rooms, New Berne, N.C.” I’m quite sure there were impoverished white children, too. I guess equal opportunity is the thing.

Posted in 150 Years Ago, Aftermath, Reconstruction, The Grant Administration | Tagged Black Friday Gold Panic 1869, Cuba, Franz Sigel, George Peabody, Grant Administration, Grant Administration scandals, Horace Greeley, James Garfield, Tenure of Office Act (1867), Ulysses S. Grant | Leave a comment

“earnest and fearless”

Posted on December 27, 2019 by SUMPTER

Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War during most of the Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson administrations, died on December 24, 1869. Funeral services were held 150 years ago today in Washington, D.C. Harper’s Weekly eulogized him in its January 8, 1870 issue:

gave every thing for the Union

EDWIN M. STANTON

Since he left the War Department the health of Mr. STANTON has been so uncertain that nobody could have been very much surprised by the news of his death. But there was no patriotic household in the land whose Christmas was not saddened by it, and which did not feel the singular felicity of the President’s words in announcing the event – words that should be carved upon Mr. STANTON’S tomb. “He was unceasing in his labors; earnest and fearless in the assumption of responsibilities necessary to his country’s success; respected by all good men, and feared by wrong-doers.” A nobler epitaph for a public man could not be written, nor truer words spoken of Mr. STANTON. So true are they that there was not an honorable American who did not feel that the highest praise of the dead Secretary was the vulgar and futile abuse of the New York World, poured out unconsciously on his corpse. Had Mr. STANTON devoted his great powers and tireless energy to perpetuating slavery and destroying the government, the World would have saluted him as a constitutional hero and a Christian gentleman.

Mr. STANTON’S services to the country during the war, like Mr. LINCOLN’S, like Governor ANDREW’S, like those of all the chief men of that time, are incalculable. It can never be known, indeed, that there were not others who would have been as indomitable and efficient in the most trying and laborious of positions; but it will always be historical that his administration of his office was an inspiration to the whole country, and that every heart was stronger and every hand surer for the consciousness of the unquenchable energy at the centre [sic]. The worth of one such intelligent will at such a time is immeasurable. Happily among the most faithful and eminent of the soldiers and civilians of that tremendous hour the country cannot divide its gratitude. Its love and respect unite them. What Mr. LINCOLN thought of Mr. STANTON is well known. How General GRANT trusted and honored him the country has seen. They were worthy of each other, and the latest generation of faithful Americans will associate them in hallowed remembrance.

To the salvation of the Government Mr. STANTON gave every thing: talent, time, health, fortune, and at last life itself. He spared neither himself or others. Controlling millions of men and enormous sums of money, not a thought nor an act, however peremptory, was sullied with a suspicion of selfishness. In so vast and incessant an activity injustice was inevitable, but it was not culpable. Such men in such times are tested by purity of motive and by beneficence of results. Nor will it ever be forgotten that the man who, in a post like that of Mr. STANTON, is “earnest and fearless in the assumption of responsibilities necessary for his country’s success,” inevitably outruns a limited sympathy, and appeals to the general reason. He is in too close contact with prejudices and passions of every kind to be invested with the least personal glamour. His immediate career has, therefore, a certain undue austerity of aspect which time will touch tenderly and soften into truth.

unglamorous

Mr. STANTON was greatest upon great occasions. With personal urbanity and magnetism he would have been a great leader of men. In the crucial hour of our history, when the President was assassinated by the spirit that sought to turn this country into a slave-pen, the spirit that jeered at LINCOLN as a gorilla, and at GRANT as a butcher, and that now spits at STANTON as a bloated blackguard, the Secretary steadied the heart of the people, and showed us all that our Government, when intrusted [sic] to such men – and only then – is superior to every adverse shock. Besides the soldiers who died upon the field, the three most illustrious victims of the war are LINCOLN, ANDREW, and STANTON. They will all rank among the most famous and honored Americans. ANDREW, STANTON, LINCOLN – the conviction, the will, the benignity of the better America. In their characters we read the prophecy of our career. By their deaths let us be bound even more solemnly to fulfill it.

President Grant nominated Edwin McMasters Stanton for Supreme Court Justice on December 19, 1869. The Senate quickly confirmed the appointment.

Posted in 150 Years Ago This Week, Aftermath, Postbellum Society | Tagged Abraham Lincoln, Edwin M. Stanton, John Albion Andrew, Ulysses S. Grant | Leave a comment

Christmas Wonder

Posted on December 25, 2019 by SUMPTER

a scholar and a poet

Way back in its August 14, 1869 issue, Harper’s Weekly profiled a famous American man of letters:

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

Now that LONGFELLOW — the most popular of American poets — is in England, the question is naturally asked, What do Englishmen
think of him? In reply it may he said that Longfellow is, in England, more popular than TENNYSON. It is also true that Tennyson is more popular in this country than Longfellow. This seems strange at the first glance; but the reason is obvious. Longfellow’s poems are cheaper in England than here; and Tennyson’s may be bought here at a nominal price as compared with their cost to an English reader. Is there not here a strong argument against an international copyright, which would exclude both TENNYSON and” LONGFELLOW from the poorest classes?

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW was born at Portland, Maine, February 27, 1807. He is now, therefore, nearly sixty-three years old. His father, the Hon. STEPHEN LONGFELLOW, was an eminent lawyer. He entered Bowdoin College at the early age of fourteen, and during his course he gave evidence of those abilities which have given him such high distinction both as a scholar and a poet. Among his productions at this period may be mentioned his “Hymn of the Moravian Nuns,” “The Spirit of Poetry,” “The Woods in Winter,” and “Sunrise on the Hills.” After his graduation he seems to have some vague idea of adopting the legal profession. But a more congenial occupation offered. He was appointed Professor of Modern Languages and Literature at Bowdoin College, with the privilege of residing some years abroad. In 1826 he sailed for Europe, and during that and the two following years he made a tour of France, Spain, Italy, and Germany. He returned home in 1830, and entered upon the duties of his professorship, which he held for five years, when he accepted a similar position in Harvard College, succeeding Mr. GEORGE TICKNOR. He, in 1835 and 1836, made another European tour through Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Germany, and Switzerland. In 1854 he resigned his position, and has since resided at Cambridge. …

The article went on to analyze several of Mr. Longfellow’s works and concluded that “His countrymen may well be proud of him.” I don’t specifically remember reading any of the works mentioned but have certainly heard of many of them, for example, “The Courtship of Miles Standish.” I might have read that) But my question is, “What about the big one?” – What about “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”? Just as I enjoy reading and rereading about the Civil War, I enjoy hearing the same old Christmas carols every year – like “I Heard the Bells,” which was influenced by the American Civil War. The Harper’s Weekly piece didn’t really go into Mr. Longfellow’s personal life, but, according to Wikipedia, his life experiences were crucial to the poem:

within bell range?

In 1861, two years before writing this poem, Longfellow’s personal peace was shaken when his second wife of 18 years, to whom he was very devoted, was fatally burned in an accidental fire. Then in 1863, during the American Civil War, Longfellow’s oldest son, Charles Appleton Longfellow, joined the Union Army without his father’s blessing. Longfellow was informed by a letter dated March 14, 1863, after Charles had left. “I have tried hard to resist the temptation of going without your leave but I cannot any longer”, he wrote. “I feel it to be my first duty to do what I can for my country and I would willingly lay down my life for it if it would be of any good.” Charles was soon appointed as a lieutenant but, in November, he was severely wounded in the Battle of New Hope Church, Virginia, during the Mine Run Campaign. Charles eventually recovered, but his time as a soldier was finished.

Longfellow wrote the poem on Christmas Day in 1863. “Christmas Bells” was first published in February 1865, in Our Young Folks, a juvenile magazine published by Ticknor and Fields.”

“Christmas Bells” From The Complete Poetical Works of Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow at Project Gutenberg

war song

Charles wounded on November 27th

drowning out the carols

lots to ponder

____________________________

I think about Mr. Longfellow’s poem just about every Christmas. This year I also thought about the ending of Amanda Foreman’s book about British-American relations during the Civil War ((just ahead of the Epilogue). British-born Doctor Elizabeth Blackwell trained Union nurses throughout the American Civil War. She wrote to a friend about the suffering the war caused and how President Lincoln empathized with all the pain:

You cannot hardly understand and I cannot explain how our private lives have all become interwoven with the life of the nation’s. No one who has not lived through it can understand the bond between those who have. … Neither is it possible without this intense and prolonged experience to estimate the keen personal suffering that has entered into every household and saddened every life. … The great secret of our dead leader’s popularity was the wonderful instinct with which he felt and acted … he did not lead, he expressed the American heartbreak … it has been to me a revelation to feel such influence and to see such leadership. I never was thoroughly republican before … but I am so, thoroughly, now.^[1]

“Christmas Bells” asks a couple questions that humans have been asking for millennia: Does God exist? If God exists, then why does x [something horrible] occur? Recently I’ve read a couple items that seem to have different takes those issues. From the April 1906 issue of Mother Earth:

Christmas isn’t for children

About 74 years ago Daniel Russell quoted Charles A. Beard:

I am convinced that life is not a mere bog in which men and women tangle themselves in the mire and die. Something magnificent is taking place here … and the supreme challenge … is that of making the noblest and best in our curious heritage prevail.^[2]

_____________________________________________

The December 28, 1919 issue of the New York Tribune pictured an institution founded in 1869 that was still going strong fifty years later:

feeding and forming foundlings

Here’s how Harper’s Weekly pictured Christmas in 1869:

no place like it

flag-festooned

wonder and awe

from real life

Those old Harper’s Weeklies are available at the Internet Archive – 1869 and 1870. According to page 7 in 1870, placing gifts around the Christmas tree was becoming more prevalent as fireplaces were being replaced with more modern heating mechanisms – Santa Clause wasn’t finding stockings hung at the fireplace as much. The street scene was based on real homeless and hungry people gathered at a London police station in search for food and shelter. Harper’s said there was now thousands in the same dire situation in America and urged some Christian charity to alleviate the suffering and to acknowledge “the Divine Master’s saying: ‘The poor ye have always with you.'”

American Battlefield Trust provides more details about the background of “Christmas Bells” and shows a photograph of the wounded Charles. You can read much more about Charles Appleton Longfellow at the National Park Service. Henry helped nurse his son back to health in the summer of 1863 after Charley was stricken with “Camp Fever”.

You can read the entire April 1906 issue of Mother Earth at Project Gutenberg. The same issue includes an article by anarchist and publisher Emma Goldman and “M.B.” about their travels in the northeast. What they have to say about Syracuse, New York sounds so modern, especially the dislike of coal:

The city where the trains run through the streets. With Tolstoy, one feels that civilization is a crime and a mistake, when one sees nerve-wrecking machines running through the streets, poisoning the atmosphere with soft coal smoke.

What! Anarchists within the walls of Syracuse? O horror! The newspapers reported of special session at City Hall, how to meet the terrible calamity.

Well, Syracuse still stands on its old site. The second meeting, attended largely by “genuine” Americans, brought by curiosity perhaps, was very successful. We were assured that the lecture made a splendid impression, which led us to think that we probably were guilty of some foolishness, as the Greek philosopher, when his lectures were applauded, would turn to his hearers and ask, “Gentlemen, have I committed some folly?”

The image of the Foundling Hospital was published in the December 28, 1919 issue of the New York Tribune, available at the Library of Congress. According to The New York Foundling three Sisters of Charity did indeed open the doors in 1869. Over the years some of the services have changed, but the organization continues “to share our founders’ belief that no one should ever be abandoned, and that all children deserve the right to grow up in loving and stable environments.” One of the three founders was Sister Mary Irene FitzGibbon. The photograph of Sister Irene and her charges is at the Wikipedia link and is part of a group at the Library of Congress by Jacob A. Riis called Poverty and tenement life in New York City, ca. 1890

“Sister Irene and her flock”

Elizabeth Blackwell

O Pioneer!

The December 28, 1919 Trib also reported the deportation of Emma Goldman and 248 other alien anarchists on the “Soviet Ark,” the U.S. transport Buford. The December 22, 1919 issue of The New York Times reported that the ship was bound for Kronstadt and headlined that “Emma Goldman Shows Bravado—Glad to Go, She Says, Predicting Triumphant Return.” Like Mahatma Gandhi, Ms. Goldman was born 150 years ago in 1869.

The quote attributed to Charles A. Beard didn’t specifically mention a personal, Christian God. Mr. Beard was an early 20th century historian who interpreted history through an economic lens. Writing with his wife Mary Ritter Beard, he saw the Civil War primarily as the result of class conflict: “The Beards downplayed slavery, abolitionism, and issues of morality. They ignored constitutional issues of states rights and even ignored American nationalism as the force that finally led to victory in the war. Indeed, the ferocious combat itself was passed over as merely an ephemeral event. … The Beards announced that the Civil War was really a “social cataclysm in which the capitalists, laborers, and farmers of the North and West drove from power in the national government the planting aristocracy of the South”. In their History of the United States (at Project Gutenberg) the Beards staed that bells and cannon worked together when South Carolina seceded: “As arranged, the convention of South Carolina assembled in December and without a dissenting voice passed the ordinance of secession withdrawing from the union. Bells were rung exultantly, the roar of cannon carried the news to outlying counties, fireworks lighted up the heavens, and champagne flowed. The crisis so long expected had come at last; even the conservatives who had prayed that they might escape the dreadful crash greeted it with a sigh of relief.”

Russian-born anarchist and feminist

it’s the economic conflict

Mary Ritter Beard

More from the Library of Congress: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s home in Cambridge, Mass; the poet sitting on a bench; portrait of Elizabeth Blackwell; the Confederate envelope; more portraits – Emma Goldman on a street car, Charles A. Beard, and his wife, Mary Ritter Beard, who was also a “a member of the Executive Committee of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage.”

Hal Jespersen’s map of the Mine Run campaign is licensed by Creative Commons – Hal Jespersen, www.CWmaps.com/. Amanda Foreman’s reference for the letter she quoted: “Columbia University, Blackwell MSS, Elizabeth Blackwell to Barbara Bodichon, May 25, 1865.” As of December 19, 2019 the New York State historical marker honoring Elizabeth Blackwell stood on South Main Street in Geneva, New York.

Daniel Russell quoted Charles A. Beard in a meditation about “Veiled Meanings,” in which he begins by considering the boy who chased arrows for Jonathan and David in 1 Samuel 20 and then goes on to say: “We all live in two worlds. One is the world of daily tasks where day by day we chase our arrows. But folded around that world is the world of the divine purpose.”

Merry Christmas (New York : Published by Currier & Ives, 125 Nassau St., [1876])

Hope it’s merry, “wild and sweet”

^[1]Foreman, Amanda A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War. New York: Random House, 2010. Print. pages 783.↩
^[2]Russell, Daniel Meditations for Men Brief Studies of Religion and Life. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1945. Print. page 383.↩

Posted in 150 Years Ago, Aftermath, American Culture | Tagged "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day", Charles A. Beard, Charles Appleton Longfellow, Christmas, Elizabeth Blackwell, Emma Goldman, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mary Hansen, Mary Ritter Beard, Mine Run Campaign, New York Foundling Hospital, Sister Mary Irene FitzGibbon | Leave a comment

another flag controversy

Posted on December 16, 2019 by SUMPTER

From the December 28, 1919 issue of the New York Tribune:

capital riled

tricolors mixed

You can get a full-color view of the flag at WorthPoint. The three allies certainly didn’t make up all the world’s population, but they were fighting for all of humanity, à la Woodrow Wilson’s reason for entering World War I – to make the whole world safe for democracy. The controversy in Washington, D.C. occurred while the U.S. Senate was working out whether there was any possible way the Senate could ratify the peace treaty that created the League of Nations. The United States never joined the League; the League never had an official flag.

Nowadays Oskar Pernefeldt has proposed an International Flag of Planet Earth to represent Earth in outer space and to remind us that we all share the planet regardless of what nation we live on.

the big three +

You can see the League sheet music at the Library of Congress

Posted in 100 Years Ago, World War I | Tagged Humanity Flag, League of Nations | Leave a comment

The Herald’s reporter William Franklin Gore Shanks wrote 1866’s Personal Recollections of Distinguished Generals. He remembered General Thomas and included this snippet from Chickamauga (see Project Gutenberg pages 63-65):

“I am very glad to see you, general,” said Thomas in welcoming him. General Steedman made some inquiries as to how the battle was going, when General Thomas, in a vexed manner, replied,

“The damned scoundrels are fighting without any system.”

You can read all of Harper’s Weekly for 1870, including pages 253 and 257, at the Internet Archive.

I think the national political party that Gerrit Smith referenced in his letter to Henry Wilson would be the Prohibition Party:

The party is still in existence. Phil Andrew Collins is its 2020 presidential nominee; the nominating convention was held by conference call last August.

The photos of D.A.’s on Bridge Street, Seneca Falls, New York were taken on March 29, 2020 during the corona virus pandemic. New York State deems liquor stores essential businesses, but the owners want patrons to keep their distance inside.

You can read a bio of F.D. Roosevelt as Assistant Secretary of the Navy during the Wilson Administration at the National Park Service.

More information about the Richmond is available at NavSource Naval History, which verifies that the ship was burned in Eastport in 1920.

From the U.S. Navy: in the Mediterranean in 1861 – KN-715; preparing for Mobile Bay – NH 51184; back to the Mediterranean in 1872 – NH 61880; at quarters – NH 119215; housed over in Norfolk – NH 75371; at Eastport – NH 44800 (flag removal) and NH 44801.

According to the Navy Site, the USS Franklin was in service from 1867-1915, so I’m not sure the Richmond was an auxiliary to the Franklin until the end of the First World War.

February 26,2020: I am adding some references and the Harper’s Weekly spread that included the Mississippi Senators’ bios. Edward Jenner’s 1796 smallpox vaccine eventually led to the disease’s eradication.

All the 1870 Harper’s Weekly material can be found at the Internet Archive. From the Library of Congress: heroes – Blanche Kelso Bruce served as U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1875-1881; Hiram Revels portrait. The thumbnais of Revels and Lynch are from John R. Lynch’s book

British author G.K Chesterton had quite a bit to say about Prohibition in his 1922 What I Saw in America (at Project Gutenberg). Here are a few excerpts:

Prohibition, therefore, plainly violates the rights of man, if there are any rights of man. What its supporters really mean is that there are none.

I was surprised to read that G.K. Chesterton didn’t think Muslims read the Koran, although that was about one hundred years ago.

Kenesaw Mountain Landis served as a judge on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois from 1905-1922 and as Baseball Commissioner from 1920 until his death in 1944.

You can read a blog about Prohibition at the Library of Congress.

In the 1869 New York State election Democrats swept all the statewide offices and won control the state assembly and senate. Two blue-gray people were losing Republicans – Franz Sigel (Secretary of State) and Horace Greeley (Comptroller).

All the Harper’s Weekly material can be found at the Internet Archive – 1869 and 1870

I am convinced that life is not a mere bog in which men and women tangle themselves in the mire and die. Something magnificent is taking place here … and the supreme challenge … is that of making the noblest and best in our curious heritage prevail.[2]

The city where the trains run through the streets. With Tolstoy, one feels that civilization is a crime and a mistake, when one sees nerve-wrecking machines running through the streets, poisoning the atmosphere with soft coal smoke.

What! Anarchists within the walls of Syracuse? O horror! The newspapers reported of special session at City Hall, how to meet the terrible calamity.

You can see the League sheet music at the Library of Congress

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I am convinced that life is not a mere bog in which men and women tangle themselves in the mire and die. Something magnificent is taking place here … and the supreme challenge … is that of making the noblest and best in our curious heritage prevail.^[2]