Compromise!

Bit of finals week fun from the University of Kentucky that shows some ideological continuity between 1861 and 2009 in the Commonwealth. My intro to U.S. students had a short essay question as follows:

Who’s to blame for the Civil War, and how did we get there, between 1840 and 1861?

Now, this should prompt the students to air the grievances of both North and South, taking into account the litany of events that drove us toward conflict for twenty years. Historiographically speaking, I'm looking for a "blundering generation" sort of answer, which is perhaps debatable, but seems to cover the material well enough for non-majors. However, I was pleased to see this from a student still, it would seem, steeped in the anger and frustration that proslavery Unionists in Kentucky felt during the secession crisis.

The Confederates are to blame for starting the Civil War. Just because you’re not getting what [you] want doesn’t mean you need to succeed [sic] from the Union and start a war with them. They should’ve just kept calling congress into session until they reached compromise and if they didn’t get their states rights, then they could have succeeded [sic] from the Union.

Legacy of H. Clay much?

Happy New Year: From the New South

A bit of a New Years celebration here at AoT. This is a poem I came across during my thesis research that I've always loved. It's from the Lexington Observer & Reporter, owned and edited by W.C.P. Breckinridge, Colonel of the 9th Ky. Cav (CS), and lately (by the time of this poem) passed off to Confederate sympathizer George S. Ranck. The paper was a leading spokesman for the Kentucky Democracy, a New South booster, eventually a New Departure paper following Henry Watterson's lead, and one of the best sources I have for news and (favorable) opinion about anti-black militia and Kuklux activity.

Notice the "cut down in the prime of life" and "whipped but defiant" South imagery. And, of course, the section towards the end about guarding the "annals and altars of state" from the "wolf" is, going into 1869, a commentary on Kentucky's position on the upcoming 15th Amendment debate.

ADDRESS OF THE CARRIERS OF THE
Lexington Observer & Reporter,
TO THEIR PATRONS,
The 1st of January, 1869.

PROLOGUE
Looking backward for the glory,
Of a gilded summer dawn,
Down a weary waste of whiteness,
Down a dreary winter lawn.

Looking backward, down the shadow
Of an iron beaten way,
Whence the armoured TIME came silent,
On the animate to-day.

Oh, it startles human reason;
Oh, it withers human pride,
Looking backward, ever backward,
On the living things that died.
...
ADDRESS
Tread lightly – tread softly – oh, merciful Time,
O’er the land of the sun, and the lemon and lime,

For leaves of the flowers so faded and strewn,
Were fair in the morning and fallen at noon.

Go back to the plane of your ice-hidden lakes –
Go back with your breath of the frost and the flakes,

Go northward, oh, season of winter and gloom,
From the emerald South and its odorous bloom.
...
Oh, better to die and be hidden away,
Than to live in the circle and sight of decay.

Our metals of life in their crucibles run,
When the pulses are red in the glow of the sun.

But come to the South with the ice of your heel,
And the channels are still and the currents congeal.

Go backward, oh, winter, go back to the lakes,
With your withering frost and your wandering flakes.
...
The bush is borne down, and the blossom is shed
And we gather to-day at the grave of the dead.

The course that is stark, and the body that’s cold,
Is a lick of the past to be lost in the mold;

And armies may go the sepulcher plain,
To laurel the bier of the body that’s slain,

But never again at the death of the years,
Will the heart of the Southron be lavish of tears,

Go seek in the far-reaching fields of his land,
For the shade of his column and capital grand;

Go look for the mosque of his worship and pride;
Go look for his brother go look for his bride;

Go look for all things he has cherished and loved,
The garden be haunted – the valley be roved,

And the desolate track, and the ravens that fly.
Will tell that the fount of the Southron is dry.

Time was, when a sentinel stood at the gate,
And guarded the annals and altars of state;

When the gleam of his eye and the glare of his blade
Kept the wolf in the covet afar and afraid;

When the good and the pure, and the noble and true,
Were all in the land that the sentinel knew –

Time was when the tyrant would blanch in the sight,
Of the column and arch of our temple of right,

When the marbles of state in their purity stood –
That our fathers had builded and hallowed in blood;

But time is long gone with the sands of the glass,
When honor was watchword, and virtue the pass.

Go banish the dust from your lexicons old
Ye people that glitter and seek to be gold;

Go back to the schools of your earlier days,
For their lessons of truth, and their patriot lays;

Go study the greatness, that tried in the fires,
Shone bright in the glory that covered your sires;

Go feel in the spell that encircles their graves
That tyrants and cowards are meaner than slaves.

Oh, men of the nation – oh, rulers and kings,
Do ye know that your riches and powers have wings?

Do ye know that the ashes ye scatter and spurn,
Must quicken in time, and arise from the urn?

Do you know that the gates where ye gather your tolls,
Are peopled with things that have pulses and souls?

Do ye dare from your source in the dust and the clods
To covet the robe and the thrones of the Gods?

Ye may look at the waves that go out on the sea,
And learn from the past, what your future will be;
...
But evening must come from the shadow at last
With a garment of gloom and a gathering blast.

Happy New Year from a still-defiant South!

Old Hickory's Ties to Chickamauga

I take pen in hand (well, keyboard) in order to peer into the lives of “Old Hickory’s” adopted family and trace their loyalties to the Union. General Andrew Jackson was an ardent Unionist but had several relations give their lives for the “Southern Cause.” It was Jackson who, during Thomas Jefferson’s birthday celebration on April 20, 1830, starred John C. Calhoun squarely in the eyes, and gave the resounding toast, “OUR UNION: IT MUST BE PRESERVED!” Although born in South Carolina, and a Tennessee emigrant, Jackson was willing to lay down his life and the lives of United States soldiers in order to keep the Union together. His adopted grandson (grandnephew in reality) and grandnephew gave their lives for the South at the Battle of Chickamauga.

Jackson and Rachel had no children of their own, but one cannot say they were childless. Children seemed to be scrambling all about the Hermitage and the White House during his presidential years. The couple adopted two children during their lives and acted as guardians for eight others. One of the adopted children was the son of Rachel’s brother, Severn Donelson, renamed Andrew Jackson, Jr, to honor his adopted father. The other adopted son was an orphaned Creek Indian named Lyncoya. Jackson adopted him during the Creek Indian war of 1813-14 and sent him to the Hermitage to be reared, but unfortunately, Lyncoya died in 1828, at the age of eighteen, as a result of tuberculosis. Andrew Jackson, Jr. married Sarah Yorke of Philadelphia in 1831, and they had a son, Samuel Jackson, in 1837.

The Jackson’s also added three nephews to their family in 1804. After another brother of Rachel’s died, John Samuel Donelson (1798-1817), Daniel Smith Donelson (1802-1863), and Andrew Jackson Donelson (1799-1871) came to call Andrew guardian. The best known of the three nephews was Andrew Jackson Donelson, who married Emily Tennessee Donelson and was his Uncle Andrew’s private secretary during his two terms as president. Emily Donelson acted as White House hostess for most of Jackson’s presidency, but she died of tuberculosis in 1836. One of the Children produced from this marriage was John S. Donelson.

John S. Donelson was born in the White House on May 18, 1832, and was standing at the bedside of his granduncle when the ex-president died in 1845. According to John's stepmother, Elizabeth, the dying Jackson called John to his side, "kissed him and gave him his blessing and parting admonitions [.] He told him not to weep for him[,] that he hoped to meet him in Heaven & that he must be a good boy, obey his parents, keep the Sabath[sic] holy, and not neglect his salvation." John cast his lot with the Confederacy on May 14, 1861, when he was mustered into Company E of the 154th (Senior)Tennessee Regiment as a 2nd lieutenant. His promotion to 1st lieutenant came in August 1861, and his appointment to captain occurred on June 27, 1862. Captain Donelson received a severe wound during the Battle of Stones River (Murfreesboro) on December 31, 1862, and was subsequently killed on September 19, 1863, at the Battle of Chickamauga while serving on Brigadier Preston Smith’s staff as Acting Assistant Adjutant-General (A.A.A.G.). His effects were placed in his brother’s care but no record of his burial was documented. According to the Compiled Service Records (CSRs), Donelson’s captaincy had not been filled by December 1863, due to “the captain-elected” having “failed to pass ex board and appointment not made.”

General Jackson’s “grandson,” Samuel, was born at the Hermitage on June 9, 1837, to Andrew Jackson, Jr. and Sarah Yorke. He enlisted and was elected as the 1st lieutenant of Company G, 44th Tennessee Infantry on December 30, 1861, and received an appointment as captain on April 24, 1862. He too was wounded at the Battle of Stones River (Murfreesboro). Unlike his cousin, John Donelson, Jackson’s wound was recorded. He took a shot in the hand and was sent to Marietta, Georgia, to recover. His company’s muster roll recorded him as being “present” in May and June 1863. Like his cousin, Samuel Jackson took part in his final battle on September 19, 1863, at Chickamauga. Brigadier General Bushrod Johnson described the scene in his official report on October 24, by saying, “ The Forty-fourth Tennessee Regiment had Lieut. Col. John L. McEwen, jr., commanding, a gallant and able officer, who has rendered faithful and efficient service in our army, and 5 company officers wounded, 1 (Capt. Samuel Jackson) mortally.” Johnson goes on to say that “Captain Jackson, of the Forty-fourth Tennessee Regiment, has since died of his wounds. Known to me long and familiarly in youth and manhood as Capt. Samuel Jackson has been, I feel unable to do justice to his many virtues, his pure and admirable character, or his merits as an officer and a soldier.” Jackson’s CSR records he died on October 2, 1863, from wounds received at Chickamauga, but his gravestone at the Hermitage records his death as September 29. Samuel Jackson’s name was placed on the Confederate Roll of Honor on August 10, 1864, posthumously.

Bingham's Citizens: Antebellum Elections

Artist George Caleb Bingham gave us some of our best images of antebellum America. Perhaps one of his most famous is his painting of election day, part of a series including images of a stump speaking and the announcement of results. I particularly love this one, as it represents something that the overwhelming majority of the soldiers we study, Union and Confederate, would have been familiar with. Here we see a community of citizens on display. From the gentleman/candidate in the blue coat on the steps, doffing his tall beaver to a farmer for his vote, to the party men so plied with whiskey that they can no longer stand (but maybe can pull themselves together enough to pronounce for the Party's candidate), and the ever watchful party organizer sitting on the steps counting the votes and marking off his list of constituents as they come forward. All ranks of the citizen are here.

Who isn't here? Women, for one, are not. In Bingham's mind, this is a gathering of citizens, a gathering where women have no place. While women were important to shaping politics, they influenced decisions within the domestic sphere. African Americans are not present either, save for the one man dispensing drinks at the behest of his owner/employer (depending on which side of the Mason-Dixon you presume this to represent). In reality, women, children, and African Americans were present at elections, politics was entertainment and elections, speeches, and political parades were times for socializing. The entire community would have turned out for the election. Bingham, though, shows citizens: white, male, citizens. He wants to depict American democracy as it was, and by excluding noncitizens he did precisely that.

The fact remains, though, that even with citizenship restricted as it was, antebellum elections saw voter turnouts of 70-90% regularly. I know that at 5:50 (in the a.m.) when I went to the polls this morning there was already a 30 minute wait. I couldn't have been more proud of my fellow citizens there, in line before the sun came up. Let's hope that this election -- whoever you vote for -- can reinvigorate American democracy.

Most of us can't understand or experience much of what Civil War soldiers went through during the war. I will never feel the rush of adrenaline in combat, the pains of homesickness, the suffering and terror of an army hospital. But I can -- you can -- participate in this public ritual that both sides went to war claiming to defend.

More 1870s Election Commentary: Voter Misinformation

From this article: "Some local Democrats spoke out Tuesday after a fake flier was circulated this week that looked like a notice from the state Board of Elections telling people 'emergency regulations' require Republicans to vote on Tuesday and Democrats to vote Wednesday."

From another one: "It's too hard to vote in Kentucky." "Kentuckians must vow today that before the presidential election in 2012, we'll make it easier to vote. With polls open in Kentucky only 12 hours on Election Day — 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. — too many voters get shut out.
For some historical perspective...

TO THE COLORED VOTERS

On Monday next, for the fourth time, you will have an opportunity to exercise a right under the highest privilege which a citizen has. Your right to vote as a man and citizen is guaranteed to you by the supreme law of the land. Your right to vote is protected by this law, and all who attempt to prevent, delay, or hinder you in the exercise of your right, can be punished UNDER THIS LAW, with very severe penalties. ... Your right to vote is as good as any one's. Your duty to vote is as imperative as any one's. Therefore, you should go to the polls and vote, letting no threats of any kind keep you from exercising your right. ... Go to the polls one and all of you, and STAY UNTIL YOU HAVE VOTED, then leave the polls that others may get to them. When you are at the polls no one has a right to drive or push you from them until you have voted. When you have voted it is your duty to give way that others may vote.
Follow our advice, and should any difficulty disturb the peace, no one, even your most bitter opponent, could not attach the least blame to you. We repeat: it is your duty to vote. ... It is your duty to do nothing that will interfere with the rights of others, nor to allow others to do anything that will in any compromise your rights. As good citizens you should do every thing in the interest of quiet and good order.

Lexington Kentucky Statesman, August 4, 1871.

Effigy 1870 & 2008

Yesterday morning an effigy of Barack Obama was found hanging by a noose from a tree on the University of Kentucky campus -- the campus where I study the history of racial violence and racism in Kentucky, the campus where I teach that same history to students. (link here) I presume that if/when the perpetrators of this are caught, they'll cry crocodile tears about being ignorant of the implications of their action, being ignorant of the history of racial inequality, violence, and lynching that has plagued this state since before emancipation. And I will be the first person to stand up and call "bullshit." Even for 18 year old freshmen, the weight that these images carry in American -- particularly Southern -- society is too great not to be noticed. Sure, there was the effigy of Sarah Palin hung recently, and we should too decry that as inappropriate. But the two acts ARE NOT equal. There is too much cultural baggage attached to the hanging of black men to not consider this an act of racial intimidation.

Strangely, though, I am not outraged; I am not livid. Perhaps I should be. Instead, I am disappointed; I am saddened. I am, frankly, embarassed. On Saturday I am going to Austin Peay University in Clarksville, Tenn. to deliver a paper on the state-sanctioned racial violence of the Kentucky National Legion during Reconstruction. I am honestly nervous about having to hold my head up in front of my audience and deliver this paper. Does this undermine my credibility as a historian representing the University of Kentucky? How does the horiffic act of a member (presumably) of my institution cast me? Was it one of my students? One of my classmates? My paper's title is drawn from a Republican newspaper editor's sighing acceptance of his inability to stem the tide of the state's campaign of violence and lynching, every bit the equal of states in the former Confederacy. "So Goes Democratic Law in a Democratic State." I can begin to understand that Republican editor, a voice crying out in the wilderness, pointing to the racism in American society, despite our best attempts to hide it, to call it something else, to justify it in some way.

I think I will give a short preface to my paper, acknowledging the effigy and asking the audience to think about what Kentucky's history of racial inequality and violence -- or of inequality and violence toward any group -- may have to bear on this incident, on this election. I claim that insecurity brought on by the social chaos of slavery's end motivated this response. That economically unstable, socially precarious, and politically threatened young white Kentuckians lashed out against African Americans attempting to claim political equality. They claimed that a "Black Peril" was upon them, threatening to overtake everything they held dear. I claim -- and they claimed at the time -- that a political contest was about more than the office at stake. It was a contest for the soul of the state. Hopefully, then, the audience at this panel might start a conversation through the lens of history that bears meaning for today. This is what history does. This is why historians matter. They clarify the murky memories of the past, and provide examples of when society achieved great things and when it didn't.

I'll close with a quote from an item in Frederick Douglass's New Era from Aug. 18, 1870 commenting on the first election in Kentucky when blacks could vote. In the face of racism, the Democratic Party machine, and the bayonets of the militia, Douglass remains hopeful for a brighter, more equal, future. Hopefully Kentckians, Americans, can do the same today.

[White Kentucky] built their shanty on the sand bank of slavery, but the rising tide of freedom and equality has flooded back into the wretched hovel, and the whole organization has set to work with a "White Man's Party" mop, to sweep back the wave of human progress. They are doing their best. There is a splash and a spattering, but the tide ever rolls inward, and the great ocean of liberty outside shows the utter feebleness and futility of the effort. While they are vigorously mopping, the sand bank is melting away, and the whole structure will speedily cave in, or be carried out to sea, and engulphed beyond the hope of recovery. That tide is resistless.

Toombs and the Resurrected Confederacy

Just how defeated and cowed was the Confederacy after the war? Did all Confederates go peacefully to their homes and begin to rebuild, or was there still animosity and a desire for independence in their hearts? We certainly know that the rash of racially motivated riots in cities throughout the South, the December 1865 insurrection scare, and the rise of groups like the Ku Klux Klan caused many loyal citizens (black and white, North and South) to be wary of former Confederates’ claims that they had accepted the results of the war and moved on. The South was still a tumultuous, dangerous, and violent place.

Some digging in the 1870 and ’71 issues of Fredrick Douglass’ Washington D.C. New Era (and later the New National Era) may have some evidence of some lingering plans for the South to rise again. The first comes in a July 28, 1870 article, “Rebels Ready for Another Struggle,” and quoted the editor of the Griffin (Georgia) Star:

Then, again, there is another and a much greater hope looming up in the distance, and that is Southern Independence! ...we can not, unaided, achieve our own independence. Should Europe, however, engage in universal war, European possessions in America must become involved and through these complications the United States must inevitably be drawn into the contest. Then it will be seen and known that the South will join fortunes with any European power that will guarantee us freedom from the thralldom of the North.

That threat to rise with European help, of course, was made all the more real to Douglass' readership by the news of the Franco-Prussian War that flooded the columns that summer. The same unreconstructed thinking was present the next year as well. On July 20, 1871, the New National Era printed an interview with former Confederate politico Bob Toombs originally from the New York Herald.

“You have given up, however, all hope of making armed resistance to the United States Government?”

“Not at all. I don’t know but that it is about time for us to fight again. Our only hope is in ourselves; every party in the North abandons us. I never expected much from Northern Democrats since they deserted us at the beginning of the war, so I am not greatly disappointed. I know the men who are their leaders and they are just as unscrupulous as the Radicals [Republicans]....

“But you surely do not seriously mean that the war ought to begin again?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And you remember the bloodshed and misery which that must involve?”

“Yes; but what of it? I am not a peace man. There are many worse occupations for a gentleman than fighting. Besides, everything nearly in the way of political freedom has been won in battle....”

“When are you going to raise the standard of revolt?”

“Whenever a favorable opportunity occurs. We will wait until your people at the North are divided among themselves or are at war with some foreign power. The time will come, sooner or later. And these men” (here Mr. Toombs pointed to some farmers standing near by) “would fight again, to-day, if need be. You cannot conquer us except by killing us all off, and that would be an impossibility.”

The question that remains, in my mind is not whether the thing would have worked or not, Toombs himself admitted that it “would be a desperate undertaking, of course.” But I want to know, would “the farmers,” as Toombs designated the yeomen standing nearby, have fought? The “farmers” abandoned the Cause the first time around when crop production fell, promised salt failed to materialize, and families began to starve. Their need to provide for the folks at home and willingness to desert to do so drained the Confederacy just as the heat was really being applied by Union armies in late 1863 and 1864. But in the wake of the first five years of Reconstruction, would the nonslaveowning farmer have fought? Now that he could see African Americans socially and politically equal to and competing economically with himself, would he have been willing to fight again, and this time to see success? Many have argued the South was more united after Reconstruction than it was in 1861 or 1865; would that have told out in some hypothetical “Civil War, pt. II?” Would Missouri, Kentucky, or Maryland, with many slaveowners stinging from the Emancipation Proclamation and XIII, XIV, and XV Amendments have joined in on the fun, as well? Would the perceived indignity of racial equality have brought “the farmers” back into the fight?

General Thomas C. Hindman and Rep. Henry S. Foote

In July 1863, Major General Thomas Carmichael Hindman made his way across the Mississippi in order to take command of a Confederate division in Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee. Hindman had some serious allegations aimed at him prior to taking on his newly assigned duties as a division commander in Tennessee. One of his more famous critics was a member of the Confederate House of Representatives.

Hon. Henry S. Foote (MS) had a fairly interesting career in the United States Senate before entering the Confederate House in 1861. For example, he had once pulled a pistol on Senator Thomas Hart Benton during an altercation on the Senate floor over the compromise resolutions in 1850. Foote adamantly spoke out against President Jefferson Davis, General Braxton Bragg, and Confederate Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin. In 1865, Foote noticing the end of the Confederacy was eminent, crossed into Union lines, made it to Canada, and sailed to London. After the Confederacy's collapse, Foote sailed back to the United States and moved to Washington, D.C., where he practiced law. President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed him as Superintendent of the New Orleans Mint in 1878. Foote died in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1880.

Thomas C. Hindman survived the war, only to be killed by an assassin's bullet on September 28, 1868. The motivation of the assassination was never determined, and he was buried in Helena, Arkansas.

Here is what the Hon. Henry S. Foote had to say about General Hindman in his book, Casket of Reminiscences (1874):

Perhaps the most cruel and atrocious conduct perpetrated by any of President Davis’ military servitors during the war was that practice by his especial favorite, General Hindman, in the State of Arkansas. I have formerly asserted, and my assertion has never yet been denied, nor can it be, that this person as his own formal report to the War Department evidenced, finding, as he said, that the very comprehensive provision of the conscription law were not quite comprehensive enough to suit his purposes, deliberately amplified them by proclamation; declared martial law throughout Arkansas and the northern portion of Texas, and demanded the services of all whom he had thus lawlessly embraced in his wide-sweeping conscription list. All who refused to obey his mandate, as he in terms confesses, were apprehended, subjected to trial by military court, appointed by Hindman himself; and when convicted, as a good many of them were, of an offense which he himself unblushingly acknowledges in this same official report was wholly unknown to the law of the land, he had them all executed; and going even beyond the example of the infernal Jeffreys himself in barbarity, he (as he also most ostentatiously declares, in the same report) took care to be personally present, that he might witness the dying agonies of his unfortunate victims. This man seized upon all the cotton and other property for which he had use, (as he boldly avows,) burned some, retained some, and appropriated a third portion to such purposes as he pleased. His cruelties were so enormous in Arkansas that it became unsafe that he should remain there longer, when he was brought across the Mississippi river under order of the Confederate War Department, made president of a court of inquiry for the trial of General Lovell, and, after having made such a report as was deemed to be necessary to the shielding of certain officials in Richmond from blame in connection with the capture of New Orleans, was immediately thereafter put in command of one of the largest divisions in the army of Tennessee, where he remained snug and comfortable until, running into collision with a more potential presidential favorite, the well-beloved Bragg, he was quietly relieved from command. I exposed all the enormity of this fiend in human form in open session of the Confederate Congress on more than one occasion, and took pains to have my exposition put in print, and yet I could not persuade Mr. Davis or Mr. Seddon to make the slightest notice of these outrageous enormities (395-396).

John C. Breckinridge's cane

Isaac Bassett, a Senate employee for over 64 years during the 19th Century, left a rich collection of written reminiscences upon his death in 1895. It was his hope that these notes would be used to publish a memoir of his life as a Senate employee (from http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/art/special/Bassett/default.cfm)

I contacted the NARA in January 2008, and one of the archivists burned a copy of Bassett's written notes and collected papers to a DVD and sent it to me free of charge. Since this blog deals with the Army of Tennessee, I thought it might be of interest to delve into General Breckinridge's senatorial past. I have included an excerpt concerning a cane left behind by Breckinridge after his departure from Washington City.

"I have in my posetion [sic] a cain [sic] that that he left at the Capitol when he left during the rebelling it is made of a peese [sic] of the Charter Oak. I consider it quite a relic and would like to keep it but if any of the children comes for it they shall have it on the head of the cain [sic] is the words
The Equality of the States
Connecticut, Kentucky
Presented to Hon. J.C. Breckridge[sic]
By his friends-Hartford Conn’t
Since riting[sic] the above I have delivered the cain[sic] to his son Clifton Breckridge[sic] he was veary[sic] thankful in receiving it" (Bassett, Box 14A, page 13)

More to follow...