Disunion! Civil War is Proclaimed! (2 Viewers)

[jazzeum]

Grant Goes to War

A profile of General Ulysses from his birth in the region in Southern Ilinois known as Egypt (a reference to the supposed similarity between the Nile Delta and the fertile soil found at the confluence of the Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee Rivers) until he occupied parts of Kentucky in September 1861.


General Grant, 1861

Kentucky, at the outset of the Civil War, declared itself independent of both sides and would align with the side that was not the first to invade. However, Grant wanted to force the issue. In the end Grant took some daring moves that made the Confederates take the first step which led to the solidly Unionist legislature to overrule the Governor. The Governor complied, ending neutrality and declaring that Kentucky would side with the United States.

The full article can be accessed here.

 

[jazzeum]

The Iron Horse

The Civil War marked the first significant use of the railroad as a military tool.

At the beginning of the War, a heavy majority of the rails were in the North and the Northern lines were better developed than the Southern lines with more advanced equipment (locomotives, rolling stock and track); the North was quick to realize the importance of controlling the railroads which in 1861 were in private hands.

However, the South scored several victories through the rails and the Battle of Bull Run, won in part because of the rails, made the North pay attention and led to the appointment of Herman Haupt, a well known rail engineer as deputy military director and superintendent of the railways. Haupt became known as the war's "Wizard of Railroading" for his skills in buiding and destroying railways with great speed. He rebuilt a 400 foot bridge over the Potomac in just nine days.


Herman Haupt


Potomac Creek Bridge

The author of the piece, Christian Wolmar, author of "Engines of War: How Wars Were Won and Lost on the Railways" concludes that number of battles and the breadth of the War were the result of the iron horse's ability to move food and materiel in an unprecented way.

The full article can be accessed here.

 

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Jessie Fremont Confronts the President

September 10, 1861 - Jessie Benton Fremont, the daughter of famed Senator Thomas Hart Benton and wife of the "Pathfinder", General John Fremont, arrives in Washington to see the President to deliver a letter from her husband defending his August 30 proclamation freeing slaves in Missouri.


Jessie Benton Fremont


President Lincoln

As soon as she arrived in Washington, Lincoln sent her the following message: she was to come "Now, at once."

The meeting didn't go well, with, according to Mrs. Fremont, Lincoln telling her she was "quite a female politician" and Lincoln recalling that it was all he could do to avoid arguing with her.

In the end, the trip was for nought as Lincoln rescinded the proclamation to avoid losing the border states. Emancipation was not yet to be at hand.

She returned to Missouri where Fremont was relieved of his command in November.

The full article can be accessed here.

 

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Julia Marcum's Civil War

An account of one family living on a farm near Scott County, Tennessee, which is northwest of Knoxville. This area was a strongly pro Unionist section of Tennessee and early in the War Hiram Marcum, the father of the protagonist of this article, Julia Marcum, made his farm available as a way station for the thousands of Southern men traveling north to join the Union Army.

Due to the political uncertainty of this area, Confederate units had moved into the area and this article depicts those experiences, in September 1861. These experiences which left Julia Marcum blinded in one eye and missing a finger eventuallly led to her filing for a pension after the War in 1884 and receving it in 1885, one of a few women to receive one.

The article can be accessed here.

 

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Exploding Kansas

As the war dawned, guerrilla warfare was a constant presence between the border of Kansas (a free state) and Missouri (a slave state but a border state in the Civil War), especially around Kansas City and the Missouri River. This area was no stranger to violence as dozens of pro and anti slavery settlers had been killed since the Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854, which had a lot to do with hastening civil war between the North and South.

In early September a force organized by Kansas Senator James Lane crossed the Missouri border and attacked several towns, plundering the farms of suspected rebels along the way and burning one town where 10 Confederate soldiers were captured and five executed.


Senator James Lane

The climax of the Jayhawkers' raid (as the Kansans were known) came on September 22 when they sacked the town of Osceola, routed a small rebel force, killed a dozen Confederates and plundered anything they could.

This conflict turned into vicious guerrilla war and also marked an important step in the Union Army's war on slavery.

The full article can be accessed here.

 

[jazzeum]

Having been away for a few days and then playing catchup, I've been behind on several of the articles so here are some small summaries:

The Terrifying Tigers - Lively article on the Wheat Batalion (which, following Bull Run, became known as the Tiger Battalion) and their terrible reputation for misconduct. In 1861, the Tigers were just a small part of the 12,000 soldiers in Virginia, who all became known as the Louisiana Tigers. The Tigers would prove to be among the best fighters of the Army of Northern Virginia and fought in every major battle in Virginia. By 1865, only 373 were left. The LSU Tigers are named after them. The full article can be accessed here.

Rumors of Revolt - In mid September 1861, rumors of a slave insurrection had been growing along the plantations in the lower Mississippi River Valley. These continued to increase and on Sept. 16 a group of planters in southwest Mississippi began to arrest slaves for plotting a revolt. A “vigilance committee” was formed in the city of Natchez, which would eventually preside over one of the largest insurrectionary scares in the history of American slavery. It would last nearly two years, result in the execution of over 200 slaves and mark a bitter conclusion to the decades of black bondage along the Mississippi River. Far from the early fighting, the Natchez insurrectionary scare demonstrates how the Civil War unsettled the daily lives of slaves and slaveholders.


Print depicting the stages in the life of a slave who rises up against his master, escapes to the Union Army and
dies in battle

In the end the slaves did revolt: six months after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves by the thousands ran away enlisted in the Union Army and helped bring about the end of the Confederacy.

The article can be accessed here.

Great-Aunt Hattie's 'Little Book' - Recollections by the great-great-great niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin. When Lincoln met Stowe, he was reported to have said "So you're the little lady who started this war." Amazingly, the author of the piece avoided reading the book until recently she was encouraged to do by two writer friends of hers and found it a work "of great moral courage." The full article can be accessed here.

 

[jazzeum]

Recounting the Dead

Over the years, the accepted number of Civil War deaths has been put at 618,222 on both sides. However, that is probably too low. New estimates, based on census data, indicates it was approximately 750,000 and may have been high as 850,000.

By the late 19th century, even though the 1870 census was discredited (for undercounting, particularly in the South), the estimate of Union dead of 360,322 was the agreed upon number. However, the number of Confederate dead was subject to debate. Comparing sex differences in mortality during the 1860s with sex differences in mortality in the 1850s and 1870s, the results indicate that the war was responsible for the death of 750,000 men, although using less conseravative assumptions, the total may have been high as 850,000.

This means that almost 10 percent of white males of military age in 1860 died from war related causes. A higher death toll implies that more women were widowed and more children orphaned than had been previously thought.

The full article can be accessed here.

 

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Freedom Through Bondage

In 1861, free African Americans in St. Louis registered for free negro bonds by the dozens. These bonds gave African Americans the right to reside in Missouri during "good behavior." If the African American ran into trouble, the person co-signing the bond would have to pay a monetary amount.

In view of the Dred Scott decision, there was some question as to the legality of the bonds but their use continued until the Emancipation Proclamation became effective, even though it did not apply to Missouri and other border states.

The full article can be accessed here.

 

[jazzeum]

Lieutenant Ingraham's Short Commish

The story of Aaron Ingraham, the son of a farmer from Connecticut, who enrolled in the summer of 1861 as a corporal in the New York 48th Infantry, mostly due to the financial straits his family constantly faced. These financial pressures led him to dream of getting a "commish," a lieutenant's commission.


Aaron Hunt Ingraham pictured early in the war; Carte de visite by an unidentified photographer, circa 1861

He eventually advance to quartermaster sergeant but more than ever desired to become an officer. In late 1862 he applied for his commission and recieved it in 1863 and as luck would have it his unit, which was now in South Carolina, went into action in the assault on Fort Wagner (made famous to audiences in the movie Glory) and when the first lieutenant in Company C was killed, Ingraham was promoted to take his place.

Unfortunately, his superiors had not released from his former duties. The 48th moved to Virginia and joined the Army of the James to participate in operations against Petersburg and Richmond. Finally, on June 1, 1864, he got his chance to lead his company into battle for the first time, at Cold Harbor.

Alas, it was to be a very short command as Ingraham was struck down. His career as a combat officer had lasted only a few minutes.

The tragic story of Lieutenant Ingraham can be accessed here.

 

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Down Home in Indiana

When the Union was routed at Bull Run, not everyone in the State of Indiana was unhappy with the results, particularly in the southern part of the state.

The reason for this was that the southern part of the state, as in Illinois and Ohio, had been settled by Southeners who were still loyal to the South. In these semi-border states, southern allegiances competed with northern allegiances. For example, Lincoln had been born in Kentucky, moved to Indiana when he was very young, married into a slaveholding family (the Todds) and rose to political power in Illinois. His best friend in his late 20s/early 30s was a member of a slaveholding family.

In addition, these states had important trading links with the South and while they were free states they maintained, as did many states, "black laws" that restricted participation by African Americans from participating in political life, and laws that prevented African Americans from moving into them.

Despite all this, the pro-southern candidates in the 1860 election fared poorly in these states. However, this may have been partially due to the fear that, if elected, these candidates would have permitted the importation of slaves into their states.

This very interesting article can be accessed here.

Note: the author of the piece, Nicole Etcheson, a Professor of History at Ball State University has a book coming out that looks at the Civil War in a county in Indiana from 1850 to the end of reconstruction that looks to be very interesting. It is called "A Generation of War: The Civil War Era in a Northern Community" and it is schedule to be published in mid October.

 

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A Command for Garibaldi?

In September 1861, Henry Shelton Sanford, U.S. Minister to Belgium, traveled to Sardinia, at the request of Secretary of State Seward to offer a military command to Giuseppe Garibaldi, the "Hero of Two Worlds."


Henry Shelton Sanford


Giuseppe Garibaldi

Garibaldi was interested in a command if it involved a war against slavery. In In Garibaldi’s mind, victory over the Southern slaveholders would come swiftly; “the enemy is weakened by his vices and disarmed by his conscience,” he told his comrades. From there they would go on to vanquish the slaveholders of the Caribbean and Brazil, where millions of “miserable slaves will lift their heads and be free citizens.”

One of the reasons for having Garibaldi fight for the Union was to ward off the possibility of England and France declaring support for the Confederacy.

Sanford and Garibaldi discussed the terms of the offer, with the latter expecting that he would be named supreme commander of the Union Army. Sanford had to explain that he would be at the head of a large army, which did little to assuage Garibaldi. He also had to explain that Lincoln was limited in making this a war against slavery. They continued to speak but Sanford received no satisfactory answer and departed.

As the author notes on Garibaldi's fundamental question on the purpose of the war, "Garibaldi’s question anticipated a fundamental problem the Union confronted in trying to explain its cause to a puzzled world. Was this only a civil war, a purely domestic conflict in a quarrelsome democracy? Was the Union’s goal nothing more than to put down rebellion and protect its sovereignty? Or was there something of real consequence to the world at large? The Union would have to find answers before other powers of the world decided to include the South among the family of nations."

The full article can be accessed here.

 

[Louis Badolato]

Garibaldi founded my club, Tiro A Segno, which is where we have the opening dinner of the Symposium every year.

 

[jazzeum]

Garibaldi founded my club, Tiro A Segno, which is where we have the opening dinner of the Symposium every year.

I had no idea Louis. Thanks for the information.

 

[jazzeum]

Mapping the Cotton Kingdom

In 1852 Frederick Law Olmstead, better known as the architect of New York’s Central Park, was sent down South by the New York Times to report on the conditions there. His reports, which were published in three volumes, called “The Cotton Kingdom,” wrote of disorder, poverty, inefficiency, backwardness and chaos. These accounts presented a different picture of the South.

On the eve of succession, Olmstead decided to issue his reports in a single volume and recruited a North Carolinian abolitionist to help with the task. They identified slave labor as the single most damaging influence on the southern economy: it was inefficient, absorbed capital away from reinvestment, and required substantial overhead.

As they hurried to finish their project, England declared neutrality in May 1861, which, according to the author of this article, may have prompted Olmstead and his collaborator to map the productivity of cotton.

The map used census data to illuminate Southern strengths and resources. They “identified two variables on the map: the relationship of the free and slave population and the production of cotton. They separated areas where slaves outnumbered freemen, and the reverse. Then they classed regions according to high, medium and low output, shrewdly leaving readers to conclude just how inefficient slave labor really was. In most cases, the areas of high production had relatively low slave populations. Those areas shaded as highly productive but without corresponding slave populations were, in their view, direct evidence against slavery.”

Olmstead and his collaborator weren’t the first to say slavery was a doomed system but one of the first to use cartography to do so.

The full article can be accessed here.

 

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William Henry Hurlbert and the “Diary of a Public Man’

The adventures of William Henry Hurlbert, the lead editorial for the New York Times in 1861, who, sensing the country was headed for catastrophe in 1861, headed South to see what he could do to stop the war. Meeting failure in Richmond, he planned to visit his sister in South Carolina.


William Henry Hurlbert

However, he was thought to be a spy and was arrested and placed in a Richmond jail. Through friends in high places was finally able to make his way back north in August 1862.

Hurlbert’s fame today rests on “The Diary of a Public Man,” which was published anonymously in the 1870s. It purported to show behind the scenes discussions between some of the leading figures during the great secession winter of 1860 and 1861. However, it wasn’t a diary (because Hurlbert wasn’t there) but a fictional construct that was, nonetheless, rooted in reality as Hurlbert knew a great deal about what had happened during the secession winter.

Historians found it valuable (it was quoted in David Potter’s Lincoln and His Party in the Succession Crisis) and it, in fact, became the subject of a book by the author of this piece, Daniel Crofts of the College of New Jersey.

The article can be accessed here.

 

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Ahead on Emancipation

In 1861 Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was determined to ensure that the Civil War resulted in emancipation. He interpreted every event through the lens of freedom. He had always hated slavery and had been a Conscience Whig, a Free Soiler and a leader of the Republican Party. In fact, it had nearly cost him his life: in 1856, he was beaten in the well of the Senate by Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina over insults hurled at his cousin. Sumner did not return to the Senate for three years after that.


Senator Sumner, 1859

In October 1861, Sumner, in a speech, said that Lincoln had the right to emancipate the slaves under the war powers clause of the Constitution. Sumner said the war power war power, he believed, is “positively recognized by the Constitution … [and] this law might be employed against Slavery, without impediment from States Rights.”

He called for a decree of emancipation and said that “two objects are before us, Union and Peace, each for the sake of the other, and both for the sake of the country; but without Emancipation how can we expect either?”

His stance did not receive support but he believed Lincoln was leaning in that direction and tried to keep the pressure on the President. On July 4, 1862, he went to the White House twice to push for emancipation but Lincoln wouldn’t budge fearing the reaction of the officers in the Union Army.

Finally, on July 22, Lincoln told his Cabinet of his intention to issue an emancipation proclamation but didn’t announce it publicly on Secretary of State Steward’s advise that that the announcement should be deferred until the Union had secured a victory, which it did at Antietam.

Sumner did not stop and pushed Lincoln to authorize the enlistment of black soldiers. The final Emancipation Proclamation did indeed provide for the enlistment of black soldiers, and those soldiers played an important role in the outcome of the war. Sumner had one final request: if no one had spoken for it, could he have the pen used to sign the decree.

The article can be accessed here.

 

[jazzeum]

Why Bismarck Loved Lincoln

This article is a fascinating look at the Civil War as not just a uniquely American event but one of several wars for national unification (Germany and Italy) on both siders of the Atlantic during the 19th Century.

Countries like the USA and Germany were focused inward, developing the centralizing powers that have defined the archtype of the modern state. Younger states should opt for political and geographic consolidation and centralization. This was understood by Garibaldi in Italy as well as nationalists in Canada and South America.

As the author of the piece writes, "Perhaps no one was more in tune with Lincoln than Otto von Bismarck, the minister-president of Prussia. Beginning in 1862, Bismarck unified Germany, but he explicitly rejected the idea of a “Großdeutschland,” or “Greater Germany,” incorporating Austria, in favor of a “kleindeutsche Lösung,” or “Little German Solution,” that preferred centralization over maximum territorial expansion."


Otto Fürst von Bismarck

The author concludes "In other words, the Civil War is even more important when viewed through a comparative, transatlantic lens. It would, along with Bismarck’s Germany, be a new kind of state: centralized, rationalized and mobilized to dominate the coming century."

The full article can be accessed here.

 

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The Boys of War

Many an underage boy, who dreampt of adventure and glory, joined the ranks of the armies. Although there were age restrictions, those wanted to be part of the action didn't let that get in their way. Some enlisted without their parents’ permission and lied about their ages or bargained with recruiters for a trial period, while others joined along with their older brothers and fathers whose partisan passions overwhelmed their parental senses. Most of the youngest boys became drummers, messengers and orderlies, but thousands of others fought alongside the men.

The article contains stories of some of these boys. Apparently one was rather famous, John Joseph Klem (who later changed his name to John Lincoln Clem) of the 22nd Michigan who shot a Confederate officer at the Battle of Chickamagua. Klem was 11 at the time. Ultimately, he was given a medal by Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase. He was eventually discharged in 1864 and finished high school in 1870 and was nominated to West Point by President Grant and was appointed a Second Lieutenant. He served 43 years in the Army and retired with the rank of Major General, the last Civil War veteran to actively serve in the Army.


Johnny Clem

As the author of the piece notes, "These and the other boys who served, whether as drummers, orderlies or soldiers, risked their lives alongside men twice their age and, sometimes, size. Some became prisoners of war, while others were killed in the thick of battle or died from diseases that ravaged even the strongest men. Those who were lucky enough to survive were often left with a lifetime of haunted memories."

The article can be accessed here.

This article has an accompany slide show of boys who served. Please click here.

 

[jazzeum]

The Southern 'Iron Man'

A biographical sketch of Thomas Webber of Mississippi, who saw his brother Watkins killed on October 8, 1861 in an attempt to take Fort Pickens in Florida, the last Union fort in the South at the time of the outbreak of the Civil War.

Webber then become part of the Jeff Davis Rifles that became part of the Ninth Missippi Infantry. He eventually became became captain of a company of horse soldiers, boasting that his Mississippi boys were “of the finest material of the country.” The company joined the Second Kentucky Cavalry, under the command of Gen. John Hunt Morgan. Thomas Webber eventually became Major of th Regiment and participated in the July 1863 raid -- Morgan's Raid -- into Indiana and Ohio, although they were eventually decisively defeated. Basil Duke, an officer and Morgan's brother-in-law said that "He was one of the very best officers in the Confederate cavalry,” and noted, “of his conduct after the Buffington disaster, General Morgan, and his comrades spoke in enthusiastic praise — one officer in describing his unflinching steadiness called him the ‘Iron man.’”


Maj. Thomas Binford Webber of the Second Kentucky Cavalry sat for this portrait while a prisoner of war; Carte de visite by John Lawrence Gihon of Philadelphia, Pa., circa 1864

Webber was ultimately captured after the raid but then exchanged in 1864.


“Morgan’s Raid — Entry of Morgan’s freebooters into Washington, Ohio,” is the caption of this illustration in the Aug. 15, 1863, issue of Harper’s Weekly.

He kept fighting all the way to the end; in April 1865, he struck out with the remnants of his command for Texas to join the last standing Confederate Army. The troopers rode as far as Columbia, Miss., when they learned that those forces, E. Kirby Smith’s Trans-Mississippi Department, had surrendered. He disbanded his command and returned home.

The article can be accessed here.

 

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The Party Spirit on Trial

This article concentrates on the party system in that existed as of 1854 (Democrats and Whigs), to be followed by Democrats and Republicans (Northern Whigs, Free Soilers, and some members of the Know-Nothing Party).

The article concentrates on the changing and shifting alliances during the Civil War from War Democrats, who temporarily united with the Republicans to those who ultimately didn't, the Peace Democrats (or Copperheads) to the Union Democracy (old Whigs and Democrats temporarily puting their differences aside) to the States Rights Party (which formed the basis of the Southern Democrats after 1865.


An 1863 cartoon from Harper’s Weekly, showing “copperheads” menacing the Union.

Once the War was over, the old party politics would re-assert itself and "A new political geography was set for a century: residents of the eastern mountains, African-Americans and some of the German immigrant communities in Louisville and northern Kentucky would side with the Republicans, while the large majority in the rest of the state would stick with the Democratic Party. The spirit of Henry Clay and the nationalist Whigs died, and Democratic Kentucky, despite occasional internal differences over matters of railroad development and mining, became a reliable part of the Solid South.

The party spirit would re-emerge across the nation as well. Republicans would largely abandon African Americans in the late 1870s, replacing their votes with the growing states of the mountain West. Democrats would forge an unwieldy coalition among the white South; urban, Northern immigrants; and small farmers and laborers across the country. New rituals and slogans would replace old ones, and only the occasional fusionist entity – like the Democratic-Populist alliance of the 1890s – would briefly upend the new party spirit."

The full article can be accessed here.