I have been impressed with a number of articles, blogs, and video lectures that have been making their way onto the internet as of late, and the New York Times' Disunion blog is one of them, the following link will take you to a recent posting about Army of Tennessee brigade commander Randall Gibson, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/14/black-or-white/?emc=eta1 . I have seen references to Gibson's heritage before but found this very enlightening and also alerted me to the posting's author's recent book that uses the Gibsons as one of three families he studies, so Im going to have a look. One thing that has definately piqued my interest in this beyond the obvious was the noted feud between Gibson and Bragg, and I wonder if hushed rumors about this might have been involved there. Anyway dear readers, enjoy.
Looking over the first page of the Introduction to The Killer Angels, I am -- no surprise here -- displeased with Shaara's characterization of the two armies.
Of the Army of Northern Virginia, Shaara writes:
They are rebels and volunteers. They are mostly unpaid and usually self-equipped. ... It is Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. Though there are many men who cannot read or write, they all speak English. They share common customs and a common faith...
Of the Army of the Potomac:
It is a strange new kind of army, a polyglot mass of vastly dissimilar men, fighting for union. There are strange accents and strange religions and many who do not speak English at all. Nothing like this army has been seen upon the planet. ... They are volunteers: last of the great volunteer armies, for the draft is beginning that summer in the North.
Aside from beating these two descriptions up with big sticks of scholarship that, admittedly, have come largely since Shaara wrote, I have another important question. Would the modern neo-Confederate movement agree with this characterization of the Confederate Army anymore?
I pose this stemming from Jonathan Sarris' lovely characterization of the neo-Confederate movement's recent obsession with finding -- creating -- "Black Confederates" as an effort to find a "multicultural" Condfederacy and thereby counteract their well-deserved stigma of racism. Has the Anglo-Saxon Protestant A.N.V. been replaced by the equally mythological enlightened paradise of a rainbow coalition army fighting for libertarian values?
In preparing a talk on the 44th United States Colored Troops, a unit raised in Chattanooga in the spring of 1864, I came across three very interesting comments related to USCTs in general in the area, and one specific to the 44th. The first is from a former slave; "The N_______ was mighty glad to have the Yankees take them...they wanted to get out from under that rough treatment. Georgia was about the meanest place in the world. They would knock you and kick you around just like you was a dog."
Now the next comes from a Confederate officer, Spencer Talley, who was present when most of the 44th was captured at Dalton, GA on October 13th, 1864; "They immediately surrendered and my company was sent in to have them stack their arms and march them out. We took the white men as prisoners but the negroes were taken as livestock or other property. The separation of these white officers from their Negro commands was as interesting as well as a sickening scene to our Southern boys. The white officers in bidding farewell with their colored men showed in no uncertain way their love and devotion to the colored race. Their hearty handshakes and expressions of sorrow over their separation will never be forgotten."
The final account also concerns the 44th's capture at Dalton and published in the Macon Daily Telegraph; "The negroes were stripped of their overcoats and hats, and, under guard and lash, put to work tearing up the railroad. They will not be treated as prisoners of war, but if any of them should live long enough they will be reduced to their normal condition."
Some of them did make it home, like Hubbary Pryor, pictured above, but many did not, indeed it seemed as that those that were not sent back into bondage seemed to disappear as the army made its way across North Georgia and into North Alabama, there fait still remains unknown. The remainent of the 44th that escaped capture was joined by some men who were able to make their escape and fought in the Battle of Nashville. After Nashville they would spend their time in garrison duty in Tennessee until April of 1866 when they were mustererd out of service.
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.
In honor of finishing up my essay, "'All Men of Decency Ought to Quit the Army': Benjamin F. Buckner, Manhood, and Pro-Slavery Unionism in Kentucky," for The Register last night, I decided to post Ben's letter to Helen, his fiancee, from which I took my title. It also happens to be one of his most concise (but certainly not only) articulations of his opinions about the propriety of African Americans as soldiers and the actions of the Lincoln administration.
Bowling Green, Ky. Feby. 1, 1863
My Dear Helen,
I received a very long and interesting letter from you yesterday evening, and as the mails have at last commenced coming with some regularity, I shall doubtless have the pleasure of hearing frequently and of writing to you as often. I cant tell you when I am coming home as that depends on Col Hansons stay. When he comes I am going home on leave for a while, and just as soon as we are paid off I am going to try General Wright with a resignation. The papers come quite regularly and we are very much edified by reading the proceedings of the Congress upon the Negro Soldier bill. All men of decency ought to quit the army if that bill becomes a law. What is to become of Kentucky it is impossible to tell. All is dark in her future. I am sick at heart with the prospect before us. We who are in the army feel that we have been grossly deceived by the President and the party in power and what to do is the question that disturbs us all. We are all opposed to secession, and believe that it is no remedy for any of the evils that beset us. At the same time, we are uncompromising in our opposition to the infamous and disgraceful measures originated by the President & his party. The fact [is] that the Army and the Country are brought into disrepute both at home and abroad by the adoption of measures totally unfit for the accomplishment of any useful purpose. ... Col Hanson’s time is up in the 5 or 6 of this month. You must be sure and keep me posted up as to your whereabouts for I dont want to have to go all over the Country hunting you up like I did before. I am going to send this letter by Capt Williams of Mt. Sterling[.] He is on duty in the Provost Marshall’s office, and is going home to see his wife. I hope to get my resignation through Genl Wrights head quarters. We are in disputed jurisdiction Rosecrans and Wright both claim us and having tried Genl Rosecrans I intend to try the other. I hope soon to see you at any rate and we can then arrange for the future. Goodbye the train is whistling & I have no time to write further [at] this time.
Ever yours BFB
Though he had first stated his intention to resign back in June of '62 because of preliminary anti-slavery measures, the threat of social contamination-by-association with blacks in the military was too much for him to bear. Standing in integrated ranks was no way to preserve the "decency," honor, community esteem, or whatever else you might call it that a young lawyer needed to successfully build a practice and win a sweetheart. Of course, even had he stayed in the army he would have likely never seen, associated with, or formed alongside African American soldiers. But the pollution to the institution of the army and the country were too great to risk personal miasma.
Interestingly, just like Gorgas in the (apparently firebrand of a) post from the other day, he seems to suggest that despite the radical step taken by the Republicans, the USCTs would still be "unfit for the accomplishment of any useful purpose" as soldiers. But numbers might disagree with Ben. 23,000 black Kentuckians did things like relieve white troops from garrison duty, allowing the Ben Buckner-less 20th KY to return to active service the field in the Summer of '63 and again in '64.
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.
Today marks the 144th Anniversary of the first major contact between the soldiers of the Army of Tennessee and USCT troops. After the fall of Atlanta, Hood began a northward movement in an attempt to force Sherman to abandon Atlanta. Hood struck at Sherman's supply line, the Western and Atlantic Railroad, and there were a number of small battles fought with Union garrisons along the way, the most notable being the Battle of Allatoona Pass on October 5th. Hood arrived in front of Dalton on October 13th, which was then garrisoned by a large detachment of the 44th USCT and a few companies of white troops totaling about 750 men, all under the command of the 44th's colonel, Lewis Johnson. The town was surrounded by Hood and artillery placed on a ridge that overlooked the town and its garrison. Hood sent in a demand for unconditional surrender or risk the whole garrison be put to the sword, as his infantry prepared to attack, Pvt. William Bevins of the 1st Arkansas remembered, "While the artillery made ready the Texans passed the word down the line as though it came from General Cheatham, 'Kill every damn one of them,' which would have been carrying out their own threat of 'no quarter.'" Given the odds Johnson surrendered. The USCTs were seperated from their officers and soon forced to work tearing up the railroad, several incidents occured where at least six USCTs were shot down for refusing. With the railroad broken again, Hood moved westward to the community of Villanow, along the way, Bevins recalled, "That evening the Texas command moved over to us. We heard them yelling and singing but did not know what had happened. They were guarding the negro prisoners, and were calling to us, 'Here are your "no quarter" negroes, come and kill them!" The poor negroes, with eyes popped out nearly two inches, begged, prayed, and made all sorts of promises for the future. They soon moved on out of sight....". At Villanow a pen was errected to house the 44th, and a call was sent out to locals to claim any of them who might have been runaways and the USCT officers were paroled and sent to Chattanooga. The stay at Villanow was short though and Hood continued moving westward. Over the next couple of weeks Hood would continue westward with the USCTs in tow. What remains a mystery is what happened to the majority of them, 350 would make it to the end of Hood's march to Florence, Ala, where they were sent work rebuilding railroads in Mississippi, Rev. Charles Quintard would recall seeing them, "I saw a number of Negroes captured at Dalton-some in the most distressing condition-evidently dying." A few made their escapes and made it back to what remained of the 44th at Chattanooga. Still others would have been claimed by their former owners, or those who said they were their owners. Still others died along the route, the exact numbers are lost to history. One of the most haunting images of the Civil War comes from one member that would survive the whole ordeal, Hubbard Pryor. Pryor was a runaway from North Georgia who had joined the 44th in March of 1864, at which time two photographs were made of him, one in uniform and the other displaying the condition he arrived in.
Another letter from the collection I am working with currently. Major Benjamin F. Buckner of the 20th KY Inf. (US) writes to his fiancee Helen from Mississippi in the midst of the campaign in 1862. In this letter, he describes his appearance in the field -- no doubt greatly changed from the last time she had seen him off to war. Given Lee's posts this summer about Generals' appearance in the field, I figured this compliments (despite Buckner wearing Blue).
Camp Near Corinth Miss
May 24 1862
My Dear Helen,
Your idea of my personal appearance under the ___ circumstances is far from correct. I wear a black wool hat, and my face is nearly of the same color, my hair short, my mustache trimmed close, my whiskers cut off – beard of about a weeks growth, (I have no time to shave oftener than once a week as you may imagine, when I tell you that we have been in such a state of watchfulness that I have not pulled off my sword for nearly two weeks)[.] My uniform consists of a stiff pair of soldiers’ shoes minus the strings, a pair of coarse army pants and a blouse without shoulder straps. Actual service in the field dispels all the romance of soldiering. It is a laborious drudging life for anyone of lower rank than Colonel, and I would rather be a negro under Harrison Thompson (for the same length of time) than a private soldier.
I think the last paragraph is fantastic. Because while Buckner serves in the Union army, he was still from a slaveowning family in Central Kentucky. So his comparisons, his worldview, his understanding of the essential meaning of drudgery is all drawn from that experience of growing up in a slave society. Harrison Thompson, as you may have guessed, was a large planter in Clark Co. Ky., Buckner's home county. These compairsons, this shared worldview, raise the question: how different are some of these Border State Unionists from their Confederate counterparts? The a later section of the same letter may shed some light on ideological differences. Buckner writes regarding a comment Helen's friend (and big-time Secessionist) Sally Moore had made. The comment was not recorded in Buckner's letter, but I gather it was something about hoping all the US troops would catch yellow fever from the Mississippi swamps.
I did not attribute it to any thing except that mania Secession which despite her good sense, has taken possession of her mental faculties, perverting them from the nobler purposes for which they were intended and which they [are] wont to fulfill. I therefore dont hold her responsible for it, but hope on her account that she may be speedily convinced of the error of her ways. … Dont tell Sally any thing except that her remark was not offensives, as I really did not care a straw fact and like her too much to get angry with her about it.
Though Buckner believes secession is equivalent to madness, in the end he never questions Sally's (or any other secesh's) motives. Preserving slavery is, as his other letters reveal, his goal as well. He just understands the Constitution and the Union as the more secure, more conservative means of its preservation. And as wild and inappropriate a step as he believes secession to be, because he personally knows many of its proponents (including Helen and her family) and because, fundamentally, they fight for the same thing he can never bring himself to be angered at them. Love the sinner, hate the sin.
As Lee's last post noted, the 145th Anniversary of the battle of Chickamauga was celebrated this weekend. And it was celebrated in two distinct ways, on and off the Military Park. At the NPS site, all of your intrepid bloggers were employed in presenting a bang-up weekend of interpretive programming that our increased visitor traffic enjoyed. Down the road, however, the "big show" reenactment took a nosedive for the worse when nationally known neo-Confederate and advocate of the myth of Black Confederate soldiers, H.K. Edgerton took top billing in the "education" portion of the event. It was beyond a sham. Out of curiosity, I stopped in on one of H.K's sermons (for really I don't want to call them lectures or talks... scholars give those), and was unsurprisingly disgusted before a full five minutes were up. The contrast between the scholarly and professional character of the NPS events and the circus-like atmosphere of the reenactment was even apparent to many park visitors who we found were leaving to come be educated with the NPS. It truly was a fantastic weekend.
For my part, as Lee has also said, I put together a little living history event. I've still got many lessons to unpack from this one: which I think means it was a success. But here is a brief AAR. We started out intending to go far beyond the boundaries of living history at a Park that has had one of the strongest traditions within the NPS Civil War community. We sought to recreate the famous Co. Aytch in age, physical condition, "look," and attitude. And, though our numbers may have been small, we succeeded in all of these these regards. The small numbers, though, were an extreme benefit for us, as we were able to bring our audience up close to see exactly what a platoon of that famous company looked like. What it looked like in its entirety:
Essentially, we argued that if we are to tell the full story of Company H, 1st Tennessee Vol. Infantry then we must look beyond Sam Watkins' famous book. Though it is a fine starting point, it is and must be understood as a product of a particular race, class, and worldview unique to the 1880s. Drawing from other scattered writings by and about the 1st, we claimed that discussing the soldiers who volunteered and about whom Sam wrote was only telling a fraction of the story. Underlying every story about every character in Co. Aytch are the stories that Sam consciously excluded, hoping they would become lost. What about the men who didn't volunteer? We know that of the more than 1,000 men in the 1st Tenn. there were at least 50 slaves who accompanied them into the field. Of the 50, we know the names of just 3, one of whom, Sanker, belonged to Sam himself. Where did their narrative go? Why are they not in Co. Aytch? We made the contested claim that Sanker's, Wash Webster's, and Uncle Ike's stories deserve equal footing with those of Tennessee Thompson, Billy Webster, and Alf Horsley.
I can truthfully say that the most stunning part of the event -- for me at least -- was Emmanuel Dabney's presence in the role of my body servant. It was a presence that has not been seen on that field since 1863. That simple presence in the -- or more properly outside of the -- ranks of Co. Aytch was the first step to re-finding these individuals who were fully participant in the events that made up Watkins' narrative but that would be lost to time if we rely on Watkins' postwar memory. Reflecting on the programs we did this weekend with some other long-time Chick-Chatt'ers we agreed that this was the first time that an African American voice had been heard on that battlefield, certainly all the more important that it was one from the Confederate side, too. With the "big show" down the road playing host to H.K. Edgerton's sketchy (at best) claims, it was a high note for scholarship in the parks. The contrast couldn't have been greater, and that is exactly what we need our National Parks to provide.
Aside from the many lessons, fine programs, and hilarious times we had this weekend, there will be two related moments which will stick with me forever. Both involved reinforcing -- to me and hopefully to the audience to whom we were speaking at the time -- the basic inhumanity of slavery. One, as I was delivering a tactical talk and it came time to drop knapsacks I unslung mine and let it fall to the ground. Before I could finish my sentence and place it in the stack with the platoon's, Emmanuel had walked up -- eyes down and hands folded -- and moved it before I could say a word. I instantly knew that I had an opportunity to demonstrate the institution's cruelty here, and so I did not acknowledge his act, did not thank him for it, did not make eye contact, did not stop my talk. My own cruelty -- even to make a teaching point to the audience -- made me shudder inside. In another talk, as I paced up and down in front of the audience I took off my kid gloves and held them behind me for Emmanuel to take. Again without looking back, without saying a word, without acknowledging him in the least, I demanded his service and his loyalty. I denied him the choice of taking my gloves or not; I required that he did. And as I felt those gloves leave my hand, and as I continued my talk without missing a beat, I was sickened.
The point is not that Emmanuel was more than willing to do these things during our programs; the point is not that we dispensed with our master-slave roles once the crowds left. The point is that we got to the essence of living history this weekend. We demonstrated for the public the horrifying nature of that master-slave relationship that the battlefield had not seen since 1863. But this time we were not fighting to maintain it. We were fighting to educate a public that often does not -- can not -- grasp the basic dehumanization that that relationship forced. This time we were fighting to give these invisible characters their shot at making history at Chickamauga.
The question now is, how do we make this an every day experience for visitors at our National Park Service sites? How can we make these lessons not for special events, but for each and every visitor who walks through our doors?
Thought I'd put out a link to the memoir of Levi Branham. An interesting view of Northwest Georgia life from the African American perspective. His story of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Caps provides a foil to my earlier post regarding racial violence in Northwest Georiga and Southeast Tennessee. http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/branham/branham.html
I thought I'd share with you all some excerpts from a typescript from the collection of the Chattanooga History Center. Written by E. G. Carroll, a Rossville, Georgia attorney between 1920 and 1930, this record of extra-legal violence provides a fascinating insight into the postwar environment of Northwest Georgia and Southeast Tennessee and the ongoing act of memory making that made Klansmen and White Caps into heroes who upheld morality, racial order, and law.
Today's excerpts:
"This is a true story of the activites of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Caps in North Georgia, and teh incident that led to the destruction of the White Caps. I have gotten my information in regard to the Ku Klux Klan from men who belonged to the organization and women who lived through those terrible Carpetbag days. Most of the information that I have gathered in regard to the White Caps was given to me by the late Steve Shackleford of Gordon County Georgia, who lived in a community where most of the men belonged to the organization.
I find that most people think that the Ku Klux Klan and the White Caps were the same organization but they were not. The Ku Klux Klan was a secret organization that operated in the South during the Carpetbag days immediately after the Civil War. The White Caps were the outgrowth from the original Ku Klux Klan and operated in North Georgia until sometime in the nineties. They wore the same disguise and probably started out under the same laws and regulations as the Ku Klux Klan, but they were not the same organization."
..... "Of course we have no written records of what happened in those days, this is the Klan kept no records of what they did. I have gathered what little information I have of Klansmen and conditions in those days, from talking with men and women who were there. Those old Klansmn were very stingy with their information. My father T. B. Carroll of Marion County, Tennessee, was a Confederate soldier and a Klansman, but he would tell me very little about the organization. He did tell me about some of the things Uncle Bill Smith did over in Marion County. I don't suppose there is anyon in Marion County Tennessee, who remembers one arm Bill Smith. Uncle Bill and his company used to come over and do the hanging for the Chattanooga Boys. They hung some carpetbaggers down on the river one night to the beams of an old building. There was no chance to charge that hanging to the Chattanooga Boys, for they made it convenient to be seen on the streets at the time of the hanging. It seem[ed] to be a rule of the Klan to never make a raid in their own community."
April 1865, the end of the Civil War, must have been an unfathomable blow for many Confederates. I think we may underestimate the psychological impact of defeat on the Confederate soldier (particularly Jason Phillips' young "diehards"). Not only had they lost the war that they had been fighting and dying in for four years, but their society was in ruins. Sure, there was physical destruction, but their social worlds were turned upside down as well. Slavery, which had brought with it both economic success and social stability, was torn out from under the white South. White Southern soldiers had been whipped on the battlefield, their efforts to protect home and fireside had come to naught, and they had failed to defend their way of life. Bertram Wyatt-Brown notes the shame and dishonor that this failure brought down on the heads of Confederates. What's more, slavery's end meant that citizenship, and the manhood that came with it in the 19th c., was open to African Americans. As Confederate soldiers returned home, found themselves no longer in control of their local political (and racial) structures, unable to make a decent living for their families, and insulted by their former slaves' assertions of citizenship and the rights of men, 1865 was a psychological crisis for Southern males.
All of this came flooding back when I was in Nashville on a research trip earlier this week. In the War Memorial Plaza near the capital sits a 1926 monument to the women of the Confederacy. The monument depicts "Fame supporting the wounded and exhausted Confederate soldier with her left arm while with her right hand she is placing a wreath upon the head of the Southern Woman, whose every nerve is vibrating with love and sympathy for the soldier and his cause, as expressed by the palm she is trying to place upon his breast, thoroughly unconscious that as her reward a crown is being placed upon her own head."(1) Alright, but aside from the fama gloriaque patriae, I was most struck by the unusual tip of the flag being drug down by the defeated soldier. Good God, it's limp!
Indeed, cutting through all the neo-classicism here, there is indeed a powerful statement on how the white South saw the end of the war. As Anne Sarah Rubin points out, the white South was a poltically, economically, and socially shattered nation The Confederacy's fall was an irrecoverable blow to the honor, pride, and manhood of some who slid into alcoholism, fled to Brazil or Egypt, or sank into deep depressions for the rest of their lives. The language of Reconstruction and Redemption is couched in terms of manhood lost, manhood asserted, and manhood reclaimed. Former Confederates lost that claim to masculinity when they were shut out of the political process, blacks claimed a share of that manhood themselves when they first began serving in the Union Army during the war and began to vote after it. Whites lashed out against this assertion of masculinity, too. Kuklux night riders at times castrated lynching victims, and often used accusations of rape (a decidedly masculine crime) as pretext for racial violence. In my own work on post-Fifteenth Amendment racial violence in Kentucky, we see organized anti-black militia activity in the state began as blacks began to vote, amid exaggerated rumors of a "Negro Kuklux" that was to fight back against the white Klan's own excesses, essentially challenging white men's role of "defenders" of the community. In reasserting control of their own communities during the era of Redemption, southern white males successfully reclaimed their shattered -- even limp -- manhood as well.
The UCV, who approved the design, apparently remembered that stinging shame of emasculation well, even in the 20th century. Yet again, beneath the veneer of Lost Cause glorification lurks some nuggets of the raw reality of the war years.
This summer, the staff of your favorite Western Theater blog (this one...right?) have been taking a series of research trips on our days off. There are some quality posts that are due to be written stemming from these, but I thought I'd share one of the lighter ones. Last week while headed to Montgomery to the Alabama Dept. of Archives and History, we stopped in Jacksonville, AL, the hometown of our own Chris Young. Now, Jacksonville at the time of the War was a regular metropolis, the transportation hub of the northeast (in the pre-Birmingham days), and the county seat of Calhoun.
Now it is none of those things. It is home to a fine regional university, though, and more important to our readership is the resting place of The Gallant Pelham. I know, I try to keep our posts centered on the war in the West, but I figure that since he is buried in an area that Eastern Theater partisans rarely travel to (i.e. outside the I-95 corridor) it deserves some illumination (I kid, I kid). The Gallant Pelham's memory still hangs heavy on the good people of Jacksonville, the main drag through town, the one that used to lead right to the courthouse has been renamed for him. The cemetary, too, cannot seem to move beyond his dashing Confederate legacy. The pedestaled statue of the Major dominates the cemetery, and is placed, curiously, on the edge of the cemetery, looking over the town. It struck me as the Feudal lord, surveying his lands and serfs; Pelham, Earl of Jacksonville, Defender of the Cause. And the local SCV (Pelham Camp, go figure!) has contributed in its own way to further the cult of the glorious Cause. Their marker for some CS unknowns who died in the hospitals in the town sums up so much about the romanticization and glorification of the Confederate soldier that has taken place over the intervening years. "Carved out of the endurance of granite God created his masterpiece -- The Confederate Soldier."
Even the grave of a local reenactor (and yes, it did mention that fact quite prominently) abandons traditional imagery of death, mourning, and grief to have laser-carved Lost Cause images from Mort Kunstler's playbook. What does it mean to define your own life, and your lasting footprint on this physical world, not for any feats that you yourself have attained, but instead to define yourself in relation to an historical event? Honestly, this is not even defining yourself in relation to a historical event, but instead to the constructed memory of that event, the Beau Ideal of the Lost Cause that the sacrifice of the young, dashing, Gallant Pelham over across the way did so much to establish in both life and death. Do the people of Jacksonville still live to serve the Cause? Can't we say something else about Mr. Carter other than "He was true to the 'ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods'?"
All this stands in marked contrast to one small section of the cemetary, not far, incidentally, from the Pelham monument. The graves of the servants of the Hoke, Forney, and Abernathy families (some of the best names in the antebellum town, I'm told). "In memory of their faithful servants: Ellen, Sallie, Nancy, Jemima, Mary, Judy, Harriet, Alfred, Johnny, and others." And others? There were better than 35 "others" in that plot. The families don't know enough to name more than the handful, don't care how many there are, don't mark them with more than a rock. Those "faithful servants," apparently, should just be happy they got to be buried with their whitefolks, and in such close proximity to that dashing young artillerist who died to perpetuate their inferiority. Of course, in contrast to those CS unknowns, there isn't a Sons of Former Slaves group to come back and place nice stones on the graves of these people. They receive no eulogy, no one to tell how their own endurance must have been carved out of granite. Instead, they remain nameless, faceless, nearly forgotten. Even when remembered, these people are seen not as icons of the past whose lives we should emulate but as faithful witnesses to the Old South, as those good ol' darkies whom the paternalistic Confederacy was fighting to "care for." I don't mean to downplay the physical sacrifice of the Confederacy or of its fighting men here, but what are we to think of these slaves, of American citizens of all colors today, if the CS soldier was indeed "God's Masterpiece?"
The Vidette was a camp newspaper for John Hunt Morgan's brigade. In one of their November of 1862 issues, the following appeared;
"It is a hard matter to get a Union man to acknowledge that this is an abolition war. He will say to you; 'If I thought this was a war for the abolition of slavery, I would not only lay down my arms which I have taken up for the defense of the Union, but I would go into the Southern army...many in the western states speak the same way. Now, any man who pretends to believe that this is not a war for the emancipation of the blacks, and that the whole course of the Yankee government has not only been directed to the abolition of slavery, but even to a stirring up of servile insurrections, is either a fool or a liar. "
The cause for fighting is pretty clear here for the men of Morgan's Cavalry.
A bit ago I started musing on why Confederate veterans in their postwar memoirs always seemed to go seeking adventures in '61, as John Jackman of the 9th KY put it, like so many Romantic Don Quixotes. Part One explored some of the instances when the "fun and adventure" motivation could have motivated soldiers, but here I want to show why I think this is a postwar creation as part of the glossing over of the war's causes.
What’s the point of understanding who the postwar memoirist was in 1861?It is to say that the postwar memoirist came from the set of men who had the most on the line in 1861.He was the one who was completing his studies, apprenticeship, or clerkship and was looking to start a business for himself soon.He was the one looking to get married in the next few years and start a family.He was the one who wanted to take advantage of the cheap land and need for professional men in the western territories.He was the one who wanted slavery extended into those territories so that he could make a profitable living there.He was the one whom Lincoln’s election (with its promise to corral slavery in the states where it already existed) most threatened.The memoirist was from a set of men that were fire-eating secessionists, who held secession rallies in towns and on college campuses, who joined militia units in the wake of John Brown’s raid, and who enlisted to fight for the Confederacy in the hopes that they might be able to extend their property rights into the Southwestern territories.The memoirist and his comrades fought for slavery, no two ways around it.Slavery’s prosperous expansion was both an Enlistment Motivation for the memoirist as well as a Sustaining one.If the Confederacy failed, his world would be turned upside down.His father’s economic security would crumble, their own plans to expand West, be fruitful, and plantation-ize the territories would go up in smoke.The memoirist can write about the entire war from wire to wire because he fought the entire war, wire to wire.The memoirist was a diehard because his old life was over if the war was lost.Memoirists like Marcus Toney didn’t give up the fight in 1865 either...he became a Kukluxer.
So, in the late 19th century, the memoirist found that having fought for slavery (and implicitly personal economic and social stability in their future lives) was politically inexpedient.It did not harmonize with the tone of sectional reconciliation that was currently being pushed by the UCV, the Southern Historical Society, et al.Hence, one of his underlying Enlistment motivations and one of his Sustaining Motivations, the expansion and preservation of slavery, was swept under the rug.The substance of the war, the pretext for the adventure, and the motivation that sustained them long after their thirst for martial glory was slaked, was quenched.
What has this done to our understanding of the Confederate soldier?Just like the rest of the Lost Cause interpretation that has whitewashed the war’s causes in favor of highlighting the military events.We understand the young Confederate enlistee not as a forward-thinking, big man on the make but as youthful innocents, too besotted with starry-eyed dreams of heroism to know what they were getting into.We forget the two years of military training that many of them had had in the wake of the Brown raid, we forget the filibustering experience of their older brothers and their officers, we forget the decade of growing conflict brewing as these men came of age.They become hollow allegories, representing lost youth.It’s a tearjerker and a tragedy, we are to feel sympathy for the South’s “Lost Generation” who willingly sacrificed themselves.An understanding like this flattens the Confederate soldier.He is no longer a complex human being with plans for the future, fighting to make a place for himself in a competitive world, but instead a fatalistically Romantic child-hero, free from sin and reproach.
Did the memoirists need to remember their fallen comrades as such?It likely helped ease the burden of their own survivors’ guilt.But in a larger sense, removing the political and racial issues of 1861 from the table promoted national (white) reconciliation, goodwill and amiable respect between North and South.It was this respect and removal of Republican oversight that allowed those same memoirists and their comrades free reign to rewrite state constitutions and pass legislation in the state houses and deny justice in the courts.The memoirist and his youthful, adventurous literary character helped usher in the era of Jim Crow.It took the country another half-century to reverse the legal segregationist course that the aging Civil War generation set us on in the 1890s as these memoirs were at the height of their popularity.
Unfortunately, it has taken historiography even longer.In recent years, historians have begun to cut through the mythology and see the carefully constructed memoir’s hero for what he was: a postwar creation of Jubal Early, Marcus Toney, and Sam Watkins that served the contemporary political and social ends of the white South.Today, those who continue to promote the “fun and adventure” thesis live in a past as false as Gone With the Wind.In one respect, by consuming, digesting, and promoting that image of the antebellum South, they participate vicariously in and implicitly support the post-Reconstruction campaign to reestablish the antebellum Southern power structure and disenfranchise blacks.Can we look past the “fun and adventure” now?
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?
With regards to the feeling of Confederate soldiers on certain issues, the following is from the Personal Recollections of Sherman's Campaigns by Captain George Pepper, 80th Ohio Infantry;
"...a corporal of Company I, 60th Illinois, broke from the line, and under cover of projecting ledges, got up within twenty feet of a squad of rebels on the summit. Taking shelter from the sharpshooters, he called out: 'I say, rebs, don't you want to hear Old Abe's Amnesty Proclamation read!' 'Yes! yes!' was the unanimous cry, 'give us the ape's proclamation.' 'Attention!' commanded the corporal; and in a clear and resonant voice he read the Amnesty Proclamation to the rebels whose hands were raised to destroy the fabric of a Government established by our fathers. When he arrived at those passages of the Proclamation where the negro was referred to, he was interrupted by cries of 'none of your damned Abolitionism! Look out for rocks!' and down over his hiding-place decended a shower of stones and rocks. Having finished ther reading, the corporal asked: 'Well, rebs, how do you like the terms? Will you hear it again!' 'Not to-day, you bloody Yankee. Now crawl down in a hurry, and we won't fire,' was the response, and the daring corporal descended and rejoined his command..."
One of my last official acts before leaving Kentucky for the summer was to take a stroll through the Lexington Cemetery, a mecca for those interested in the Commonwealth's Confederate contingent. The Hunt and Morgan family plot is, unsurprisingly, noteworthy for its high concentration of names familiar to students of the Western theater. The graves are arranged in semi-circles, all surrounding big daddy and golden-age Lexington millionaire John Wesley Hunt.
Among these resting places of one of Kentucky's first families, I noticed one marker standing out of place, in the middle of two rows (arcs?) of graves. You can see hers in the bottom right corner of the picture, behind the first arc of Hunt and Morgan graves. The small stone was marked "Bouviette James (Col.) Ever Faithful." Intrigued by this odd placement of a loyal family servant in the family plot, and hoping to find some evidence of postwar paternalistic benevolence, I did some digging. Aunt Betty, as the Morgans called her, was the mammy of the house, caring for the children including young John Hunt Morgan. During the war, it is said that she was so loyal to the children that she became an ardent supporter of the Confederate cause, and likely mourned the family's losses along with the household's whites. When she died in 1870, the family buried her in their own plot with some of the surviving Morgans and Basil Duke as her pallbearers. So devoted to the family, was Ms. James, that her ghost is still said to haunt the house in Lexington, and was often seen with children when the residence was still occupied. Neat story, and one not unlike many of the "loyal slave" stories throughout the wartime and postwar South. It may even be seen as rather touching that the family would consider a former slave such an integral part of their household.
Undoubtedly, the relationship between family servant and white folks was close, even affectionate at times, but the relationship was always understood to be unequal. Black was always and unquestionably subservient to white, and the knowledge of this distinction was present in every daily interaction. In the case of Bouviette, her status within the household carried over into death as well. The Hunts and Morgans could not even write her name on her tombstone without reference to her skin color lest some future visitor mistake this (colored) woman for one of the "real" family. Further separating her is her placement within the plot. While Aunt Betty was buried with the family, hers was the only grave not arranged in one of the semi-circles around John Wesley Hunt. She was inside the household, to speak, but was never nor never would be part of the (quite literal) family circle. Her marker, smaller than the rest of the family, also highlights her inequality. Though she was of advanced age when she died in 1870, James received the same sized headstone as the Morgan children who died in infancy or pre-adulthood. Implicitly, then, Aunt Betty was in life and was to be in death a perpetual child, a racial other, and an inside-outsider in the Morgan family.
I find it most amazing that the Morgans perpetuated this master-servant domestic relationship beyond the grave. The permanence of Bouviette's outsider, unequal, childlike status is reinforced even though the post-Emancipation world had destroyed the legal framework of that relationship. Bouviette's unequal situation is particularly interesting in light of the political situation in 1870, the year she died. The passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1869 meant that blacks in Kentucky would vote for the first time in that year. When black men were beginning challenging Kentucky's antebellum political and social racial caste system through political participation, when black and white seemed closer to equality than they had ever been, when the slaveowning Hunts and Morgans feared their world was turning upside down, they buried their loyal old Mammy inside but ever outside the family circle. They showed their credentials as caring, paternalistic masters while at the same time demonstrated their idea of the proper station of African Americans in the Commonwealth.
A few feet from Bouviette, in one of the Morgan semi-circles, lies Francis K. Morgan, little brother of John H. Frank enlisted and served as a Private in Co. I of Morgan's and later Duke's 2nd KY Cav. during the war, and in 1870 joined the Citizens' Guards, a Lexington militia company raised amid white claims that the advent of black suffrage would lead blacks to claim full social equality with whites. Old antebellum fears of insurrection, race war, and miscegenation were trotted out to scare Kentucky whites into action against the state's newly-energized Republican party. Instead of "defending" the "threatened" white citizenry, though, the militiamen of the Guards and four other companies led by former Union and Confederate officers in the city would beat, shoot, intimidate, and harass blacks trying to vote or hold political rallies during elections from 1870-1873 (those companies and their violent reassertion of white supremacy, incidentally, were the subject of my recently completed MA thesis).
In the context of Frank Morgan's and other white Lexingtonians' struggle against black political and social equality in the early 1870s, Bouviette's "Ever Faithful" epitaph is a lesson for Bluegrass African Americans in their "proper" status: loyal, submissive, and unequal. Far from doing her honor by burying her "with" the family, Bouviette's peculiar interment in the Lexington Cemetery is a head on a pike, a hanged pirate in the harbor, a lesson, warning, and threat to African Americans no longer bound by slavery but still bound by the Commonwealth's antebellum racism and violence.
