Civil War Times 2015-06

Appomattox Image Explained Stanton’s War on Sherman Union Daredevil

John Wilkes

Booth

➧ New insights into

the assassin’s mind ➧ The house that Booth built ➧ The assassination’s accidental hero

COURTHOUSE TOWN

Appomattox’s Elusive Truth COLLATERAL DAMAGE

The Sacrifice of War Horses TRIBUTE

Gettysburg’s Great Scholar June 2015

TO

ON YOUR iPAD

®

AND GET:

• INTERACTIVE FEATURES • BONUS CONTENT • MUCH MORE!

Add an iPad® edition to your current print subscription for

ONLY $3.00* *Call US: 800.435.0715; CAN: 386.246.0165 or email customer service at: [email protected]

START YOUR SUBSCRIPTION TODAY! Go to: www.civilwartimes.com/subscribe (WWSLHUK[OL(WWSLSVNVHYL[YHKLTHYRZVM(WWSL0UJ YLNPZ[LYLKPU[OL<:HUKV[OLYJV\U[YPLZ (WW:[VYLPZHZLY]PJLTHYRVM(WWSL0UJ

Contents

34

The House That Booth Built BY Kim A. O’Connell

A visit to Tudor Hall, home to John Wilkes Booth

38

The Complex Legacy of Appomattox BY Hugh Howard

How much of what we know about Lee’s surrender is fact, and how much is fiction?

46

Edwin Stanton’s Whipping Boy BY William Marvel

The Union secretary of war tried to further his own career—at William T. Sherman’s expense

54

A Dead Horse at Antietam BY James I. Robertson Jr.

A deceptively peaceful photograph epitomizes the war’s equine casualties

60

Lincoln’s Last Witness BY Kim A. O’Connell

Amputee James Tanner played a critical role in investigating Lincoln’s murder

64

Brash, Dashing…and Effective BY Jamie Malanowski

Union Navy Lieutenant William Cushing launched a series of raids on the Cape Fear River

9 10 16 18 22 24 31 70 81 82

Editorial

A timeless battle study

Letters

The truth about Hood and drugs

HistoryNet Reader

More great reads

News

150th of the war’s end

Details

The 188th Pennsylvania at Appomattox

Insight

Gettysburg scholar Harry Pfanz

Interview

Booth biographer Terry Alford

Reviews

Robert E. Lee vs. George Washington

Etc.

A special spot at Arlington

Sold!

CDV album

[JUNE A photographer captured this memorable view of President Lincoln’s nine-car funeral train after it arrived in Columbus, Ohio, on April 28, 1865. The mourning train left Washington on April 21 and passed through 100 cities, making seven stops before it arrived in Springfield, Ill., where Lincoln was buried on May 4 (related story, P. 60).

2 0 15

]

Lincoln and Freedom by Lewis E. Lehrman President Abraham Lincoln’s hand was shaking. New Year’s Day festivities on January 1, 1863 began at 11 A.M. The hundreds of hands Lincoln shook at the White House Reading the Emancipation Proclamation

left the nation’s chief executive with a tremor he could not afford. About noon, President Lincoln took time out from shaking hands to sign the corrected Emancipation Proclamation. Frederick Seward, assistant secretary of state, remembered coming from the nearby State Department to the White House: “We, threading our way through the throng in the vicinity of the White House, went upstairs to the President's room, where Mr. Lincoln speedily joined us. The broad sheet was spread open before him on the Cabinet table. Mr. Lincoln dipped his pen in the ink, and then...

EDITOR IN CHIEF

Michael A. Reinstein Dionisio Lucchesi William Koneval

Roger L. Vance CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER PRESIDENT ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

Vol. 54, No.3

JUNE 2015

Dana B. Shoaf

EDITOR

ART DIRECTOR Jennifer M. Vann

Nan Siegel

Managing Editor

Chris K. Howland

Senior Editor

Sarah Richardson

Senior Editor

Sarah J. Mock

Photo Editor/ Social Media Coordinator

ADVISORY BOARD

TO READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE, VISIT:

www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org/Freedom

LincolnResource.org

Edwin C. Bearss, Gabor Boritt, Catherine Clinton, William C. Davis, Gary W. Gallagher, Lesley Gordon, D. Scott Hartwig, John Hennessy, Harold Holzer, Robert K. Krick, Michael McAfee, James M. McPherson, Mark E. Neely Jr., Megan Kate Nelson, Ethan S. Rafuse, Susannah Ural

DIGITAL

CORPORATE

A Free Resource For All Lincoln Enthusiasts

Find a network of informative websites dedicated to the preservation of Abraham Lincoln’s story and his influence over this great nation.

Brian King Gerald Swick Barbara Justice

Director

Paul Zimny Greg Ferris David Steinhafel Karen Johnson Rob Wilkins

EVP Digital

George Clark

Single Copy Sales Director

Editor Senior Graphic Designer

EVP Strategy Operations & Finance Business Director Military Ambassador & Partnership Marketing Director

ADVERTISING Karen M. Bailey Production Manager/Advertising Services

[email protected]

Richard E. Vincent National Sales Manager [email protected]

Kim Goddard National Sales Manager [email protected]

Rick Gower Georgia [email protected]

Terry Jenkins Tenn., Ky., Miss., Ala., Fla., Mass. [email protected]

Kurt Gardner Creative Services Director

Also find these great titles & more from TLI Books.

DIRECT RESPONSE ADVERTISING Russell Johns Associates 800-649-9800 • [email protected]

©2015 World History Group, LLC Subscription Information 800-435-0715 Yearly subscriptions in U.S.: $39.95

LINCOLN “by littles”

The American Founders

View from your mobile device. A Project of The Lehrman Institute

Visit 6

www.LincolnResource.org Today!

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

Back Issues: 800-358-6327 List Rental Inquiries: Belkys Reyes, Lake Group Media, Inc. 914-925-2406; [email protected] Civil War Times (ISSN 1546-9980) is published bimonthly by World History Group, LLC 19300 Promenade Drive Leesburg, VA 20176-6500 703-771-9400. Periodical postage paid at Leesburg, VA and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER, send address changes to Civil War Times P.O. Box 422224 Palm Coast, FL 32142-2224 Canada Publications Mail Agreement No. 41342519 Canadian GST No. 821371408RT0001 The contents of this magazine may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the written consent of World History Group, LLC.

PROUDLY MADE IN THE USA

All through the state, Mississippi’s Civil War heritage is a key component of America’s story. See collections of two presidents— Confederate President Jefferson Davis at Beauvoir and President Ulysses S. Grant at Mississippi State University. Journey through two of the most studied military EDWWOHÀHOGV³9LFNVEXUJDQG%ULFH·V Crossroads. Watch the story of this WUDJLFFRQÁLFWFRPHDOLYHDW&RULQWK·V Civil War Interpretive Center and the Contraband Camp. Browse VisitMississippi.org to start writing your own chapter.

ADVERTISEMENT

The City that Has It All. Columbus, Missippi, is home to three National Register Historic Districts that boast an impressive 676 properties. While other cities were ravaged during the Civil War, Columbus was a “hospital town,” leaving the antebellum and Victorian homes — along with their contents — spared. Tours of these architectural gems abound. Whether taking a guided walking tour or winding through the scenic area by car, visitors to “The Friendly City” are able to experience 19th century OLYLQJÀUVWKDQG Attractions include Waverley Plantation Mansion, a National Historic Landmark and one of the most photographed homes of the South; Friendship Cemetery, the VLWH RI WKH ÀUVW 0HPRULDO 'D\ FHOHEUDWLRQ LQ  DQG the Mississippi University for Women, the oldest public college for women in the United States and home to 23 National Register properties.  )RXQGHG LQ  RQ WKH EDQNV RI WKH 7RPELJEHH 5LYHU the town thrives on its rich heritage and Southern Charm. &ROXPEXV RHUV DQ H[WUDRUGLQDU\ PL[ RI KLVWRU\ QDWXUDO beauty and culture. Situated on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway (nickQDPHG WKH 7HQQ7RP  &ROXPEXV RHUV QXPHURXV RSSRUWXQLWLHVIRURXWGRRUUHFUHDWLRQ2QHRIWKHWRSVSRUWVÀVKLQJ spots in the nation, the Tenn-Tom is a 234-mile stretch that connects middle-America with the Gulf Coast. It is ideal for

scenic boat tours, water skiing or leisurely strolls down the newly-opened River Walk.

“Since being named one of the ‘Dozen Distinctive Destinations,’ we have seen our visitation increase tremendously,” said Nancy Carpenter, CEO and Executive Director of the Columbus-Lowndes Convention and Visitors Bureau. “We hope to welcome thousands more to experience our authentic charm and Southern hospitality. Columbus really is the city that has it all!”

Festivals and fun. Grand historic homes. Birthplace of America’s greatest playwright, Tennessee Williams. Run or bike along the scenic Riverwalk, winding around and over the Tombigbee River. Shop, dine, and savor in the ultimate Southern destination. Columbus, Mississippi.

The city that has it all...

Go to www.visitcolumbusms.org for complete listing of events and attractions. 7HQQHVVHH:LOOLDPV+RPH :HOFRPH&HQWHU800-920-3533

Editorial

Devil’s Den in winter. Pfanz described it as a “wild sort of place… an assortment of huge boulders, slabs and chunks…all jumbled together….”

I

I never met Harry Pfanz (see “Insight,” P. 24), but his magnificent book Gettysburg: The Second Day helped me enjoy one of the best weekends I have ever spent on a battlefield. In January 1992, or maybe 1993, when I was a graduate student on mid-winter break, I trudged the cold, empty battlefield with Pfanz’s book in hand, following the pitch and sway of fighting in the Wheatfield, Devil’s Den and Little Round Top with his text as my guide. I scribbled self-important notes in the margins, mused over command decisions and marveled at the engagement’s glory and horrors. I frequently think back on that trip. For me, The Second Day was more than a great book; it became a touchstone for my passion for the Civil War era. Thank you, Harry Pfanz, for your inspiration and for leaving behind a body of work that will continue to inspire readers from new generations. Like me, they won’t get to meet you in the flesh and blood, but they’ll feel your presence nonetheless.

➧

Thanks

The editor’s well-loved copy of Harry Pfanz’s first major Gettysburg book.

— Dana B. Shoaf

JUNE 2015 | CIVIL WAR TIMES

9

Letters

Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood steadies himself with crutches in a photo taken after he was fitted with a prosthetic right leg in Richmond, while recovering after the Battle of Chickamauga.

John Bell Hood

John Bell Hood

Pain&

Stephen M. Hood’s article on General John B. Hood in the April 2015 issue hits the mark perfectly. Some of us have known for a long time that the legend of Hood’s laudanum use is a bunch of malarkey, but having Civil War Times announce the myth as “busted” on your front cover is sure to catch attention. Thanks a lot!

Prescriptions Recently discovered doctor’s reports prove the general did not use opiates. Time to rewrite some Civil War history BY STEPHEN M. HOOD

N

o Civil War commander wounded in the line of duty has been the subject of as much unsubstantiated speculation as Confederate Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood. The intensity of his pain, his reliance on opiates and their effects on his mood, demeanor, mental capacity and judgment have been written about extensively— all without any primary evidence. The recent publication of two documents detailing his medical history provides a long-overdue opportunity to separate fact from fiction.

Hood was first injured in combat with Comanche and Lipan Apache warriors near Devil’s River, Texas, on July 20, 1857, when an arrow pierced his left hand and pinned it to his saddle. Six years later, on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, shell fragments severely damaged the general’s left arm, wounds that resulted in partial incapacitation of that limb for the rest of his life. His third and most grievous injury came on September 20, 1863, at Chickamauga, and necessitated the amputation of his right leg 4 inches below the hip. Hood’s descendants recently made public a previously unknown cache of the general’s papers that included

Stephen Davis Atlanta, Ga.

reports written by his physician, Dr. John Thompson Darby, of his treatment at Gettysburg and Chickamauga. Those documents reveal much that was previously not known about Hood’s injuries, his treatment and use of pain medication. The detailed Chickamauga report is approximately 3,500 words long, with daily entries from September 20 through November 24, 1863, and is the focus of this article. Darby, who had arrived on the scene to take charge of Hood’s recovery and rehabilitation on September 24, was an experienced surgeon. Born in 1836 in St. Matthews Parish, S.C., Darby studied at the College of Charleston

30 CIVIL WAR TIMES | APRIL 2015

Stephen M. Hood’s article “John Bell Hood: Pain & Prescriptions,” in the April issue (based on the recently published book The Lost Papers of Confederate General John Bell Hood), has disproved the speculation about the general’s drug use perpetrated by various historians, including Wiley Sword, Thomas Connelly, James McDonough and others. The article shows that the general was not addicted to opiates, that the doctor administered them very sparingly when given, and that by the time Hood returned to the army, he made no mention of any pain or discomfort in his leg or arm. Even in the general’s letters to his wife, Anna, he makes no mention of pain. The “historians” who came to the conclusion that the general was addicted based their statements on hearsay, innuendo and the false statements of previous authors. None of the general’s contemporaries, including thenConfederate President Jefferson Davis, noted any addiction, unusual behavior, or unsteady gait due to drugs or alcohol. It was left to the modern historians to conjure up these tall tales to sell their books. Does Stephen Hood have a stake in disproving the stories about General Hood’s addiction? Certainly. He is a descendant, but more important, he is a historical detective who set out to find the truth, and he proved it. Peter J. D’Onofrio President, Society of Civil War Surgeons, Inc.

Correction from author Sam Hood: A well-intentioned editor took a reference I had made to Lieutenant General “A.P. Stewart,” and changed it to “Alfred P. Stewart,” when his name, of course, was “Alexander.” As Winston Groom told me, however, when all is said and done, editors will make me look foolish exponentially less often than they will save me from making a fool of myself!

On General William T. Sherman’s 195th birthday, February 8, 2015, readers came close to starting a Facebook Civil War. ➧ “Winner of the Atlanta Downtown urban renewal program for 1864” Dave Scarce

➧ “Arsonist and pillager of the highest order” John Witt

10

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

➧ “People in Atlanta still talk about him...” Hal McNeal

➧ “Another crazy redhead who loved his country” Mark Doyle

➧ “To all those in the South. Sherman warned you what would happen and he followed through. No apologies necessary.” Michael Garvey

➧ “Rest in peace, war hero” Bill Parks

tly tric st s ju ! tion Edi ted to dwide i l lim wor 0

0

5,0

A hand-cast tribute to one of the greatest Confederate leaders Stonewall Jackson’s strong faith, brilliant military maneuvers and unflinching courage in battle made him General Robert E. Lee’s right hand man. Now, in honor of this renowned Civil War leader we present the Stonewall Jackson Cold-cast Bronze Tribute, available exclusively from The Bradford Exchange. Lending the look of far costlier solid bronze at a fraction of the price, each cold-cast bronze sculpture is individually hand-cast of fine artist’s resin and finished in genuine bronze. Enjoy historically accurate details, emblems honoring the Confederacy and a brief biography of Jackson. Completing this tribute, the general stands tall on a mahogany-toned base adorned with a metal “Stonewall” Jackson title plaque. Superb value; satisfaction guaranteed The Stonewall Jackson Cold-cast Bronze Tribute comes with a 365-day money-back guarantee and is issued in a limited edition of only 5,000. Act now to obtain it in four interest-free installments of $24.98, for a total of $99.95*. Send no money now. Just return the Reservation Application today! Enjoy dozens of researched details from Jackson’s Model 1850 U.S. Staff and Field Officer’s Sword to his binocular case

Shown much smaller than actual height of 12½ inches

Includes a Certificate of Authenticity attesting to its status as a true limited edition  Authentically-rendered statue portrays the general in his Civil War uniform with superb realism  Sculpted base recreates the look of a Confederate-style eagle emblem ©2014 BGE 01-14703-001-BIS RESERVATION APPLICATION

www.bradfordexchange.com/stonewall

SEND NO MONEY NOW Mrs. Mr. Ms. Name (Please Print Clearly)

Address

9345 Milwaukee Avenue · Niles, IL 60714-1393

YES.

Please reserve the Stonewall Jackson Cold-cast Bronze Tribute for me as described in this announcement. Limit: one per order. Please Respond Promptly

City State

Zip

Email (optional)

01-14703-001-E39093

*Plus $14.99 shipping and service. Limited-edition presentation restricted to 5,000. Please allow 4-8 weeks after initial payment for shipment. Sales subject to product availability and order acceptance.

Letters Flaggers, Pro and Con I have been a reader of the magazine longer than some of your readers have been alive. I never felt the need to write in before, but the column in the April 2015 issue “ ‘ Flaggers’ on the Fringe,” upset me. Never have I seen Civil War Times do a political attack against any group or free speech, or right to protest before. I don’t want to see Southern heritage disappear. I don’t see anything in the group’s web page or Facebook that would lead an educated person to feel that they are a racist group or a wing of the KKK or Nazi Party. I don’t know why Gary Gallagher felt the need to bring up the name “Nazis” at all.

I do not understand why you continue to have columns by Gary Gallagher published in your fine Civil War Times Magazine. He has continued to throw Southerners under the bus, and this latest “Flaggers” article takes the cake. As usual, Gallagher loves to throw fuel on the fire of Southern destruction. That is why I do not attend any of his seminars or have any of his books.

After reading Gary W. Gallagher’s column “ ‘ Flaggers’ on the Fringe,” I was very disappointed by the author’s assertion that historians should basically give up and let the “flaggers” who have distorted the historical record have their way. While I agree with Dr. Gallagher that certain groups will never be swayed from their biased viewpoints no matter how many sources a historian wields to show the fallacy of their claims, giving up and letting them have their way is not an option. It is our job as historians to present the facts and preserve them for future generations—no matter how stark and unpleasant the facts may be.

Darwin Roseman Cary, N.C.

Steve Reilly Fort Salonga, N.Y.

Michelle L. Hamilton Ruther Glen, Va.

In Fayetteville, the 1st military site you should visit is the Airborne & Special Operations museum. As for the other 40, keep reading.

One of the many things you’ll see on our military trails.

NC Veterans Park is popular with area tourists.

The Airborne & Special Operations Museum is one of the most highly-regarded museums this side of the Smithsonian. But why stop there? Fort Bragg and the Communities of Cumberland County are home to dozens of historical military sites that people fly from all over the world to see. There’s NC Veterans Park, the JFK Special Warfare Museum, the Averasboro Battlefield and Museum, as well as a number of military-themed trails. It’s all part of a big historic military adventure that you won’t forget anytime soon. for more info Vi s i tFay e t t e v i l l e N C .c om

12

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

Letters Lee and Arlington I found Julia McParland’s letter in the April issue regarding Lee’s ownership and abandonment of Arlington amusing. Unlike her, I lately was coming to the opinion you seemed to be going out of your way to deify Southern generals, especially Lee. I have always believed the Confederacy is romanticized, and subsequently all Northern generals get shortchanged. I believe a more balanced view would show Grant to be, if not a beloved general, the superior commander. Ralph Mansell via email

Civil War Trail in Greene County, TN

Coal Oil In the April issue’s “Image & Insight,” you have a picture of New Hampshire officers sitting around a tent, and you point out a lantern that might have burned “coal oil,” as it was called in that period. I was born and raised in rural Illinois, and we still call it coal oil. Jim Graff Middletown, Ill.

T

rails that define and tell the Civil War story - preserved in Greeneville and Greene County Tennessee’s scenic and historical landscape. Greene County is home to six Civil War Trails sites as well as a 14-mile bike/driving tour.

Experience History!

We love to hear from our readers, so drop us a line:

GREENE

COUNTY

TOURISM

Civil War Times 19300 Promenade Dr. Leesburg, VA 20176

cwtletters@ historynet.com

Civil War Times Magazine

@civilwartimes

JUNE 2015 | CIVIL WAR TIMES

Greeneville/Greene County Tourism 115 Academy Street Greeneville, TN 37743 (423)638-4111 www.VisitGreenevilleTN.com

13

NORTH & SOUTH INVITED Blue & Gray United K

noxville and East Tennessee stood at the epicenter of political influence and confrontation for the nation and the state at the end of the Civil War. Vice President Andrew Johnson, a former slaveholder, became President at the close of a war that ended slavery. Knoxvillian Parson William Brownlow, a fiery and 1st U.S.C.H.A. Soldier unforgiving Unionist, was Edward Kline and wife Nannie. Image courtesy of Gerald Augustus elected governor in a state that had joined the Confederacy. These two East Tennesseans would wrestle with the job of reuniting a country when there appeared to be no sense of compromise on either side. Naturally, 150 years later Tennessee has chosen Knoxville to be site for the state to close its 5-year long commemoration of the Civil War. Because of the pivotal role East Tennessee played for the nation at the end of the Civil War, Knoxville

and the state of Tennessee will offer four days of programming where visitors can explore the themes of reconstruction, remembrance, and reconciliation. Knoxville hosted a Blue and Gray Reunion in 1890 and again in1895, where veterans of the 1863 Battle of Fort Sanders returned to shake hands with comrades and former foes. Today the city is working to recreate the feeling of that historic occasion that will dovetail with the State of Tennessee’s activities. In those postwar reunions held both north and south, African Americans were largely uninvited. This time around The Blue & Gray Reunion and Freedom Jubilee will recognize the veterans and descendants of the 1st U.S. (Colored) Heavy Artillery regiment in Knoxville. We hope you will join us from April 30 – May 3 for this once in a lifetime Col. Henry Ashby, 2nd Tennessee Cavalry Regiment opportunity. Image courtesy of Anthony Hodges

HistoryNet Reader A sampling of remarkable adventures, decisive moments and great ideas from our sister publications, selected by the editors of Civil War Times

AMERICA’S CIVIL WAR

WILD WEST

AMERICAN HISTORY

War’s Bitter End

Arikaras at Little Bighorn

Southern Showdown

From the May 2015 issue

From the June 2015 issue

From the June 2015 issue

After the fall of Richmond, it was only a matter of time before the Confederacy crumbled.

Officially soldiers, not scouts, 22 Arikara Indians followed Major Marcus Reno across the Little Bighorn River to attack a Sioux village on June 25, 1876.

In 1778 it was clear to the British that three years of fighting in New England and the Mid-Atlantic had settled nothing.

At the war’s end, the South was totally prostrated; its infrastructure of bridges, railroads and communications wrecked, much of its commercial and private property destroyed, its fields fallow, its livestock decimated. The Southern political system was likewise in tatters. With the disenfranchisement of former Confederate soldiers and officials, a leadership vacuum was created into which stepped a large number of incompetents and malfeasants under the harsh terms of Reconstruction. Though their armies had been defeated, their economy lay in ruins and their land was occupied by their enemy, the Southerners remained defiant. An undercurrent of feeling ran through the populace that the North did not “fight fair” by coming at them with such overwhelming numbers of soldiers. In a “fair fight,” the Southerners reasoned, “we could have whupped them.”

Loyalist uprisings expected in The Arikaras rode around a burial tepee, slapping it with their whips: A coup even on a dead Lakota was worth something. Lt. Col. George Custer told them, with help from interpreter Frederic Gerard: “You were supposed to go right on into the Sioux village. I told you to stop for nothing. Move to one side and let the soldiers pass you. If any of you is not brave, I will take away his weapons and make a woman of him.” One Arikara shouted back, “Tell him if he does the same to all his white soldiers who are not so brave as we are, it will take him a very long time indeed.” About half the Arikaras stuck with Reno and three companies of white soldiers who were advancing on the village when the Sioux made a flanking movement around the army’s left, defending their village in unexpected strength.

places like New York and Pennsylvania had not materialized. As the British probed for weaknesses elsewhere, they thought they discovered the soft underbelly in the South, where loyalist sentiments were strong and patriot military forces were weak and scattered. In December a British expedition captured Savannah, Ga., touching off America’s first civil war, as patriot and loyalist militias squared off against each other. Many militiamen fought because they disagreed over whether to form a new nation. But some fought because they had personal, social or economic grievances or because they had scores to settle. Whatever the motivation, the results were tragic. British redcoats weren’t the worst perpetrators of violence in the Southern war. Most atrocities there were committed by Americans against Americans.

To order these or any other HistoryNet magazines, visit www.HistoryNet.com or call 1 (800) 435-0715 or go to HistoryNet.com

16

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

Pride of the South

Civil War Commemorative Watch Etched on the back with Pride of the South and historic Civil War symbols

P

roud emblems... vivid colors... the stars and the bars. Together, they evoke a powerful passion for the Confederacy and those who served that still lives on. Now, celebrate the history and the heroism with the “Pride of the South” Civil War Commemorative Watch.

Dramatic Black Watch Dial Showcases Striking Heraldry This exclusive timepiece features an ebony watch dial which provides a striking contrast to the brilliant red and blue Confederate emblems, the words “Pride of the South” and the years of the Confederacy. Similar heraldry is also etched on the back. Handsomely styled with a bold bracelet, the watch has an adjustable “C-clasp” closing.

Superb craftsmanship ... An Exceptional Value Meticulously designed and finely hand-crafted of stainless steel, the “Pride of the South” Civil War Commemorative Watch boasts a precision quartz movement, and silver-colored hour markers and hands. Available at just $119* and payable in 3 easy installments of $39.67, your watch comes in a custom case with Certificate of Authenticity and is backed by our unconditional 120-day guarantee and a full-year limited warranty. To reserve yours, send no money now; just fill out and mail the Reservation Application today!




©2015 BGE 01-04023-002-BIR

Comes in an attractive jewelry case with a Certificate of Authenticity




Expertly crafted in stainless steel with a precision quartz movement




Emblazoned on the front with colorful Confederate emblems Reserve Today! www.bradfordexchange.com/cww

LIMITED-TIME OFFER Reservations will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. Respond as soon as possible to reserve your watch.

RESERVATION APPLICATION

SEND NO MONEY NOW

9345 Milwaukee Avenue · Niles, IL 60714-1393

YES. Please reserve the “Pride of the South” Civil War Commemorative Watch for me as described in this announcement. Signature Mrs. Mr. Ms. Name (Please Print Clearly)

Address Shown actual size *Plus $9.98 shipping and service. Please allow 4-6 weeks after initial payment for shipment of your watch. Sales subject to product availability and order acceptance.

City

State

Zip

Email (optional)

01-04023-002-E39001

News

Thomas Nast’s tableau of the surrender ceremony at Appomattox Court House was commissioned by newspaper publisher Herman Kohlsaat.

Galena Marks the War’s End

T

he East Coast doesn’t have a monopoly on commemorating the Civil War’s conclusion. You’ll find special exhibits and presentations throughout the nation, including the Midwest. For example, The Galena-Jo Daviess County Historical Society in Galena, Ill., is hosting a bevy of Sesquicentennial exhibits and performances this April as part of “Galena Remembers.” Galena—named one of the nation’s most beautiful towns in 2014—can boast being home to not just Union General and President Ulysses S. Grant but also to eight other generals: Brev. Maj. Gen. Augustus L. Chetlain, Brev. Brig. Gen. John O. Duerr, Brig. Gen. Jasper A. Maltby, Brev. Brig. Gen. Ely S. Parker, Maj. Gen. John A. Rawlins, Brev. Brig. Gen. William R. Rowley, Brev. Brig. Gen. John C. Smith and Maj. Gen. John E. Smith. Thomas Nast’s oil painting Peace in Union, which depicts Grant shaking hands with Robert E. Lee, was presented to Galena’s citizens in 1895 and serves as the centerpiece of this year’s celebratory events. On offer will be a play, Peace in Union, art exhibits and a Civil War band performance. See GalenaHistoryMuseum.org for details.

18

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

NAST’S CLEVER CARICATURES Thomas Nast is best remembered for his political cartoons, but he also left a fascinating record of his perspective on common soldiers, including battle scenes, troop movements North and South and camp life. Many of his witty sketches were published in Harper’s Weekly. Check out “The Civil War Through the Eyes of Thomas Nast,” currently on display at the Macculloch Hall Historical Museum in Morristown, N.J. Also coming on June 25 will be a new exhibit, “Thomas Nast: Unknown Works and American Icons.” See maccullochhall.org for more information.

Sesquicentennial Events ➧ Ford’s Theatre Observations of the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination at Ford’s Theatre, which kicked off in January, will continue until late May. Ford’s will host an around-the clock event, “The Lincoln Tribute,” on April 14-15, which will include a candlelight vigil outside the theater on 10th Street in Washington, D.C. James Swanson, author of Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase to Catch Lincoln’s Killer, leads a midnight tour of Ford’s on April 14, and guided tours of the theater are offered on May 3 and May 17. A special exhibition, “Silent Witnesses: Artifacts of the Lincoln Assassination,” will also be on display at the nearby Center for Education and Leadership (514 10th Street, N.W.) until May 25. Among featured artifacts are Lincoln’s top hat, cuff buttons and Brooks Brothers Great Coat and the contents of his pockets. Ford’s will also present a one-act play about the assassination titled One Destiny until May 16. For more information, go to fords.org.

➧ Booth Symposium The 150th of Lincoln’s assassination is the inspiration for a symposium “Tudor Hall, the Booths of Maryland and the Civil War 2015,” to take place May 9 at the Bel Air Armory. Tours of Tudor Hall (see P. 34) will be on offer to attendees. Participating will be authors Terry Alford (Fortune’s Fool, see P. 31), Daniel Watermeier (American Tragedian: The Life of Edwin Booth), Jim Garrett (The Lincoln Assassination: Where Are They Now?), Thomas A. Bogar (Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination) and David C. Keehn (Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War). Check out harfordhistory.net/events.php for more details.

➧ Appomattox This April’s commemoration of Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, scheduled for April 8-12, promises to be the best-ever-attended Sesquicentennial event, with organizers estimating as many as 100,000 visitors. Festivities will include tours, music, photography and artillery demonstrations, a ball and much more. For more details, check out appomattoxcountyva.gov, moc.org and nps.gov/apco.

➧ Virginia Concert Celebrate the 150th anniversary of the war’s end in grand style on May 25 at the Virginia State Capitol. An outdoor concert by the Roanoke Symphony, with narration by Bud Robertson, will bring together images and music of the period. Attendance is free, but please preregister at virginiacivilwar.org/finale.php.

➧ Potomac Pageantry Two scenic stretches of the Potomac River will be the site of Sesquicentennial events June 13-14. “Blue and Gray Days: The Final POW Release From Point Lookout” takes place that weekend in Maryland’s St. Mary’s County. A resort community before the war, Point Lookout became home to the Union’s 40-acre stockade Camp Hoffman after Gettysburg. The two-day event in June will mark the 150th anniversary of the final release of the camp’s prisoners. For more info, see visitstmarysmd/events. Farther up the river on June 13, the first Potomac River Blockade Boat Tour will depart from Leesylvania State Park in Woodbridge, Va., for an up-close look at sites involved in the Confederacy’s troublesome blockade of Washington, D.C., between September 1861 and March 1862 (including the well-preserved batteries at Freestone Park and Possum Nose). The cruise costs $45 per person and includes lunch (call 703-792-4754 for reservations). For more on the blockade and related sites, see “Battlefields&Beyond” in the December 2014 Civil War Times.

JUNE 2015 | CIVIL WAR TIMES

19

News

[

]

THE CIVIL WAR ON THE INTERNET

Chronicling America chroniclingamerica.loc.gov

D

o you remember when microfilm readers were an essential but frustrating part of researching historical newspapers? Remember how your eyes ached after hours of scrolling through page after page? Yes, major papers like The New York Times were digitized years ago, and presses from cities that played a significant role in a conflict, like the Richmond Daily Dispatch and Charleston Mercury, have been digitized or at least largely transcribed for some time. But historians interested in what Americans were reading and debating in print across the country had to rely on good old-fashioned microfilm. And then came the magical world of mass digitization. Something truly

“

revolutionary happened when the Library of Congress teamed up with the National Endowment for the Humanities to create the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). Through the NDNP they launched “a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages.” The result is known today as Chronicling America, a searchable database of America’s newspapers from 1836 to 1922, with further information on newspapers published in the U.S. as early as 1690. Chronicling America allows readers to search digital scans of historic newspapers. We’re no longer cringing a bit as we do our research, hoping

You return to your homes with the admiration of our people, won by the courage and noble devotion you have displayed in this long war…

”

— Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston’s farewell to troops, May 2, 1865

20

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

that the transcriber copied the articles word-for-word, and wishing they had also copied the ads that capture the socio-economic pulse of communities. Consider, too, the geographic coverage on tap. The NEH has been awarding digitization grants to state-run repositories to add to the NDNP. In Jackson, for example, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History is nearing completion of a two-year project that digitized key pages from over 150 newspapers between the 1830s and the 1920s. As of December 2014, it had placed more than 25,000 pages online. Right now, Chronicling America houses more than 1,600 newspapers collected from nearly every state, all available for download as image files, PDFs or formatted for printing. I encourage you to visit Chronicling America and use the advanced search options to narrow your exploration to 1865. Then type in a keyword or phrases like “Appomattox,” “occupation,” “freedmen,” “Andrew Johnson,” “Ironclad Oath” or “veterans” to explore how Americans, North and South, debated their tumultuous transition from war to peace. —Susannah J. Ural

[QUIZ] Name this important late-war location and send your answer via email to thequiz@ historynet. com or via regular mail (19300 Promenade Drive., Leesburg, VA 20176) marked “Late War.” The first correct answer will win a book. Congratulations to last issue’s winner, Mike Golden of Waterford, Mich. (e-mail), and Barbara Lawrence, Buffalo, N.Y. (mail), who correctly identified Franklin, Tenn.

Fleming File Rare images from the collection of Matthew Fleming This beautiful ambrotype shows Jeremiah C. Allen of Company A, 10th New Hampshire Infantry, dressed in a state-issue frock coat. Allen would fall victim to disease on July 27, 1863, in Hampton, Va. New Hampshire state frock coats were piped in light blue, the color that signified the infantry branch of service. Allen’s sergeant stripes, however, are tinted red, a color usually associated with artillerymen.

Preservation New Marker for Ball’s Bluff First the bad news: One of the earliest Civil War markers in Virginia—the Ball’s Bluff signage installed near Leesburg in 1928—was stolen last winter. Now the good news: Thanks to fundraising efforts by the Friends of Ball’s Bluff, the money was quickly found for a replacement, which will include more details of the October 21, 1861, fight. Jim Morgan, Friends of Ball’s Bluff ’s chairman, anticipates a dedication ceremony in June. To learn more, check out Friends of Ball’s Bluff Facebook page. Jeb Needs Help! The Stuart–Mosby Historical Society recently announced it is mounting a campaign to repair the statue of Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart on Richmond’s Monument Avenue, which is suffering from extensive corrosion, necessitating repairs amounting to roughly $35,000. To find out how you can help, visit stuart-mosby.com.

The North–South Skirmish Association’s Spring Nationals take place May 13-17 at Fort Shenandoah in Winchester, Va. The event, which pits member units from 13 regions across the country, features live-fire competitions using original or authentic reproduction Civil War–period muskets, carbines, breech-loading rifles, revolvers, mortars and cannons. For more information, go to n-ssa.org.

JUNE 2015 | CIVIL WAR TIMES

21

Details

Not Your Typical County Seat BY PATRICK A. SCHROEDER

This image by Timothy O’Sullivan of Appomattox Court House has sometimes been ascribed to April 1865, when General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army. It is in fact one of three photographs O’Sullivan took of the courthouse later that summer. Neither Lee nor Grant entered the building on the day of the surrender, Palm Sunday, when the courthouse was closed. The image shows Company D of the 188th Pennsylvania Infantry, stationed in the village as the provost guard from midJuly until November 1865. Federal troops served throughout Virginia as provost guards after the war ended, maintaining law and order until the reestablishment of government. The original courthouse building, constructed in 1846-47, served as the county seat of Appomattox County until 1892, when it burned down. During 1963 and 1964, the courthouse was reconstructed for use as the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park’s visitor center. Patrick A. Schroeder is the historian at Appomattox Court House National Historical Park.

22

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

1

1

Forty Federal troops appear in this image, including Company D Captain James Geiser. He later became the Appomattox County sheriff and married a local woman.

2

The company’s sparkling-clean Model 1861 riflemuskets are neatly stacked, their service in Civil War combat at an end.

3

Both the soldiers labeled with the numeral “3” are holding dogs. Because these mascots moved during the lengthy exposure, their images are blurry.

5

3

3

7 4

6 2

4

County Clerk George Peers is one of five civilians shown. Standing with him are two children, most likely his own, and another well-dressed community member.

5

Lieutenant Henry Cogan poses with his jacket open. Cogan, who became the town postmaster, is buried behind the Clover Hill Tavern in Appomattox Court House.

6

A former Confederate soldier stands in front of the stairs, still dressed in his Southern uniform.

7

The 188th Pennsylvania was part of the XXIV Corps. This soldier wears the corps’ heart-shaped badge on his hat. See P. 81 for an example.

JUNE 2015 | CIVIL WAR TIMES

23

Insight by Gary W. Gallagher

Gettysburg’s Great Historian

n the fall of 1985, when I learned that Harry had a big manuscript devoted to part of the Battle of Gettysburg, I discussed soliciting it with Matthew Hodgson, who served as director of the press and had spoken with me about publishing studies of Civil War military campaigns. Impressed that Harry, then chief historian of the National Park Service, had spent many years at Gettysburg National Military Park early in his career, Matt asked him for a sample chapter. Harry sent him one. “I have read your chapter with considerable interest,” Matt wrote Harry in December 1985, “and would very much like to read your manuscript in its entirety.” Harry soon delivered a narrative of more than 1,000 manuscript pages that examined fighting on the southern end of the battlefield on July 2. I told Matt it was a model of the genre and predicted that it “should take its place among the classic Civil War tactical studies”— a prediction I later made to Harry. He responded with his usual quiet

I

24

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

➧

The sad news of my friend Harry Pfanz’s death, on January 27, brought back memories of working with him years ago to develop a list of Civil War titles at the University of North Carolina Press. modesty, expressing the hope that his manuscript would please Matt and UNC Press. “It covers wellknown ground that has been scratched but not plowed,” he observed, adding with typical understatement: “The subject ought to have considerable appeal.” Gettysburg: The Second Day was published in December 1987 and became an instant success. It met a standard for tactical studies that few other books, before or after, have equaled. The History Book Club made it a selection in March 1988, and reviewers praised the quality of Harry’s research, the clarity of his prose and the soundness of his judgment. “Pfanz was relentless in tracking down every conceivable… document,” wrote one reviewer, and another described the book as “a dynamic yet beautifully disciplined piece of work.” Gettysburg: The Second Day—which Harry called “the orange covered book” in reference to its original dust jacket—quickly went through five printings, a remarkable achievement for a 600-page study

Harry Pfanz explains Gettysburg’s “High Water Mark” monument to visitors. He worked at Gettysburg from 1956 to 1966, and eventually became chief historian of the National Park Service.

that assesses the performances of scores of officers and tracks the movements of a huge number of regiments, batteries and larger units. I still have a note Harry sent me in early 1987, which I laid in my copy of the book’s first edition. “I’ve been thinking of the help that you gave me in making contact with the University of North Carolina Press,” he wrote graciously, “and continue to be grateful for it.” UNC Press was equally grateful to Harry, as was I, for sending his impressive work to Chapel Hill. That gratitude grew over the next several years, when Harry delivered two more splendid manuscripts. Gettysburg—Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Hill and Gettysburg—The First Day appeared in January 1994 and July 2001, respectively. The three titles total 1,642 pages and remain foundational for anyone interested in the

ADVERTISEMENT

The American Revolution Taught by Professor Allen C. Guelzo GETTYSBURG COLLEGE

IT

1.

R FE

70% off

O

RD

E R BY MA

16

LIM

LECTURE TITLES

TIME O ED F

Y

The Imperial Crisis, 1763–1773

2.

The Ancient Constitution

3.

“A Soldier What’s Fit for a Soldier”

4.

“How the British Regulars Fired and Fled”

5.

Standoff in Boston, 1775

6.

Bunker Hill

7.

The King, the Conqueror, and the Coward

8.

Conquering Canada, Reconquering Boston

9.

Common Sense

10. An Army Falls in Brooklyn 11. “A Glorious Issue” 12. Joy in Princeton 13. “Congress Are Not a Fit Body” 14. “America Is Not Subdued” 15. “A Day Famous in the Annals of America” 16. “Not Yet the Air of Soldiers” 17. With Washington at Valley Forge 18. The Widening War 19. The French Menace 20. Vain Hopes in the Carolinas 21. “The Americans Fought Like Demons” 22. The Reward of Loyalty 23. A Sword for General Washington 24. “It Is All Over”

How 13 Colonies Defeated an Empire The story of the American Revolution is the story of how our country was forged—through decisive strategies, intense combat, and the efforts of ordinary and extraordinary individuals. In The American Revolution, follow the course of the war’s events and get a richly detailed picture of this landmark conflict between a group of colonists and the 18th century’s most powerful empire. Award-winning Professor Allen C. Guelzo, a prolific author and member of the National Council on the Humanities, guides you through an indepth look at the military mechanics of the American Revolution. In 24 lectures, you gain insights into everything from the components of the British and colonial forces to the war’s impact around the globe. By the conclusion, you’ll have a stronger appreciation of the intense struggle that created the United States.

Offer expires 05/16/15

THEGREATCOURSES.COM/5 CWT 1-800-832-2412

The American Revolution Course no. 8514 | 24 lectures (30 minutes/lecture)

SAVE UP TO $185 NOW $69.95 NOW $49.95

+$10 Shipping, Processing, and Lifetime Satisfaction Guarantee

Priority Code: 110526 For 25 years, The Great Courses has brought the world’s foremost educators to millions who want to go deeper into the subjects that matter most. No exams. No homework. Just a world of knowledge available anytime, anywhere. Download or stream to your laptop or PC, or use our free mobile apps for iPad, iPhone, or Android. Over 500 courses available at www.TheGreatCourses.com.

Mystery Romance & Murder

A GLIMPSE OF LIFE AND ITS HARDSHIPS DURING THE CIVIL WAR THROUGH THE LIVES OF NANCY AND DAVID PARKER

Amazon.com [email protected] For more information, see our Facebook page: A life for Nancy–Daughter of Frankie Silver 26

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

Insight war’s most famous battle. No one else approaches Harry in terms of contributions to our understanding of the tactical story of Gettysburg. As one prominent historian put it, Harry’s volumes on Gettysburg “comprise a great classic, and the best Gettysburg material ever published.” On a personal note, I grew to treasure my friendship with Harry and learned an immense amount from him. In our extensive walks around the Gettysburg battlefield in the 1980s and early 1990s, he helped me understand many complicated episodes of the fighting. His amazing command of the battle’s ebb and flow allowed me, for example, to grasp the incredibly complex action in the Wheatfield, the often-slighted struggles along the slopes of Culp’s Hill, Jubal Early’s two-brigade assault against East Cemetery Hill and Cemetery Hill on the evening of July 2, and James Longstreet’s convoluted flank march on July 2. Those walks and my other time with Harry convinced me that, without question, Ed Bearss had it right in his blurb for Gettysburg—The First Day: “No one knows and understands the battle of Gettysburg better than Harry W. Pfanz.” One golden afternoon when Harry and I had the Wheatfield all to ourselves stands out especially vividly. As we traversed every part of what had been brutally contested ground on July 2, he explained successive phases of the fighting that brought units from the Union III, V and II corps into action against Confederates from John Bell Hood’s and Lafayette McLaws’ divisions. We finished our walk by following the advance of Union Col. John R. Brooke’s brigade through the field and up to the ridge opposite the Rose Farm, stopping for a few minutes just south of the knoll where Captain George B. Winslow

‘No one knows and understands the battle of Gettysburg better than Harry W. Pfanz’ deployed his Battery D of the 1st New York Light Artillery. Harry urged me to take in the array of Union regimental monuments visible from that spot, and how the sculptors incorporated into their designs the different Union corps badges—the diamond of the Third, the Maltese Cross of the Fifth and the trefoil of the Second. Contemplating how all those units went into action within 200–300 yards of our position underscored just how effectively the Federals had exploited their advantage of interior lines. Ever since my walk with Harry that day, I have used the monuments, with their corps symbols, to make that point about interior lines with groups I take to the Wheatfield. I always was struck by how lightly Harry carried his knowledge, how his service as a combat soldier in World War II informed his analysis of the Civil War, and how he almost never claimed to have definitive answers to historical questions. I consider myself very lucky, as an editor and a historian, to have worked with Harry. More than that, I am fortunate to have known such a fine and generous man. ■

Civil War Tours 2015 April -9 (7XHV±Thurs) Sunset of the Confederacy: 7KH)DOORI3HWHUVEXUJDQG/HH¶V5HWUHDWWR$SSRPDWWR[ 6SHFLDO6HVTXLFHQWHQQLDO7RXU )ROORZOHJHQGDU\EDWWOH¿HOGWRXUJXLGHEdwin C. Bearss as he takes you through the

closing battles of the Petersburg Campaign of 1864. Then we’ll follow the retreat of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and conclude the tour with a visit to Appomattox Court $325 House. Evening lectures by 5REHUW..ULFN 5(/.ULFN

May -3 )UL±6XQ &KDQFHOORUVYLOOH/HH¶V*UHDWHVW9LFWRU\ Join historians5REHUW..ULFN 'U*DU\*DOODJKHUas we cover the historic events associated with Robert E Lee’s dramatic victory at Chancellorsville. We’ll VWDUWDW(O\¶V)RUGIROORZ6WRQHZDOO-DFNVRQ¶VÀDQNPDUFKVWDQGRQWKHVSRWZKHUH-DFNson was mortally wounded and follow the ambulance route to Guinea Station. In addition we will tour the sites of the Second Battle of Fredericksburg and Salem Church. Evening $325 lectures presented by 5REHUW..ULFN 'U*DU\*DOODJKHU

June 1-20 (6Xn-Sat) %OXH *UD\7RXU Follow our historian guides as they lead you on this exciting comprehensive tour of the Civil War’s most dramatic battles. 5REHUW..ULFN will lead the group over WKH&KDQFHOORUVYLOOH%DWWOH¿HOGIROORZHGE\DGD\ORQJWRXURI*HWW\VEXUJ1DWLRQDO Military Park led by historian Jeffry Wert
Sept 1-20 ()UL±Sun) $QWLHWDP0F&OHOODQ¶V0LOLWDU\0DVWHUSLHFH

Spend 2 days with historian Ed Bearss as we cover in detail the dramatic events of America’s bloodiest day. We’ll tour the famous sites of Antietam National Military Park including the North Woods, West Woods, Bloody Lane, and Burnside’s Bridge. $325 Evening lectures by 'HQQLV)U\H 7HG$OH[DQGHU.

Oct 2-25 ()UL±Sun) *HWW\VEXUJ7KH6HFRQG'D\ Follow historian Ed Bearss as we cover the extraordinary events of the pivotal day of the famous Battle of Gettysburg. We’ll visit Culp’s Hill, Little Round Top, Devil’s 'HQWKH:KHDW¿HOGDQGWKH6KHUI\3HDFK2UFKDUG $325 Evening lectures by -HII:HUW 'U5LFKDUG6RPPHUV

Nov 1-15 7KXUV±6XQ 9LFNVEXUJ*UDQW¶V0LOLWDU\0DVWHUSLHFH

Travel back in time with historians Ed Bearss and Terry Winschel as we devote 3 days to the famous Vicksburg Campaign. We’ll follow the action of the dramatic events associated with the Battles of Raymond, Jackson, Champion Hill and the Big Black River Bridge. In addition, we’ll cover the siege operation at Vicksburg and visit the gunboat $550 U.S.S. Cairo. Evening lectures by Terry Winschel. 2XUWRXUVLQFOXGHHYHQLQJOHFWXUHVOXQFKHDFKGD\PXOWLFRORUWDFWLFDOPDSV WKH¿QHVWEDWWOH¿HOGJXLGHV

Call (301) 676-4642 today for our 2015 brochure! Visit us on the web at: www.civilwartours.org

Civil War Tours - P.O. Box 416, Keedysville, MD 21756 Email: [email protected]

— History Lives Here. — As the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War continues, discover Maryland’s authentic stories through one of our Civil War Trails driving and walking tours.

800-289-3168

These carefully mapped driving tours link together a collection of both well-known and less-known sites from Baltimore City throughout the Chesapeake Region, in Southern Maryland, the Capital Region and into Western Maryland. This 90-mile historic and scenic driving tour follows the route taken during Robert E. Lee’s advance through Maryland in September 1862 that ended at Antietam National Battlefield—site of the deadliest one-day battle in American history.

Explore the Civil War story in Baltimore and the surrounding Chesapeake Bay region. Baltimore witnessed the first bloodshed of the Civil War—the Pratt Street Riot—now told in a 1.5-mile walking tour along the Inner Harbor.

Follow the routes taken by Union and Confederate armies during the June–July 1863 Gettysburg Campaign. Four scenic driving tours trace the paths of the soldiers who marched toward the Civil War’s most epic battle and the civilians whose lives were impacted.

Follow the escape route that John Wilkes Booth took after assassinating President Lincoln at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. On this 90-mile route there are dozens of other Civil War sites located in the Southern region of the Chesapeake Bay.

Follow the troop movements of Confederate General Jubal A. Early in his attempts to invade Washington D.C. in July 1864. Union forces clashed with Early’s troops in Maryland during the Battle of Monocacy, as the Confederates advanced toward Washington. This last raid at Monocacy has become known as “the battle that saved Washington.” Larry Hogan, Governor

These commemorations and events open a window on the waning days of the Civil War, reflect on the life, death, and legacy of The Great Emancipator, President Abraham Lincoln, and relive the pursuit of his assassin – the treasonous John Wilkes Booth.

APRIL 11, 18, 25 - MAY 2, 2015 John Wilkes Booth Escape Route Tour Surratt House Museum Clinton APRIL 11 - MAY 4, 2015 Lincoln’s Final Journey Home Monocacy National Battlefield Frederick APRIL 12 AND SEPTEMBER 13, 2015 Edwin and John Wilkes Booth: A House Divided Tudor Hall Bel Air APRIL 17, 2015 An Evening of Civil War Music and Words College of Southern Maryland La Plata APRIL 17-18, 2015 A Global View of The Escape: What did the heavens look like on that fateful evening? James E. Richmond Science Center Waldorf APRIL 17-19, 2015 Lincoln Commemoration Weekend: On the Trail of the Assassin Various Sites Charles County APRIL 18-19, 2015 Villains, Rebels & Rouges: Archeology and Preservation along the Booth Escape Trail Rich Hill Farmhouse Bel Alton

Plan the perfect getaway. For information on the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War and to order your Civil War Trails Guides, call 800-289-3168 or go to VisitMaryland.org.

APRIL 18-19 (OPENING WEEKEND) EXHIBIT RUNS THROUGH MAY 30, 2015 The War Came By Train - The Year of 1865 & Lincoln’s Funeral Train B&O Railroad Museum Baltimore APRIL 26, JUNE 14 AND JULY 12, 2015 John Wilkes Booth and Tudor Hall Tudor Hall Belair MAY 23, 2015 Coming Home: Civil War 1865 Riley’s Lock on the C&O Canal Darnestown JUNE 13-14, 2015 Blue and Gray Days: The Final Prisoners of War Release Point Lookout State Park Scotland THROUGH JULY 31, 2015 Lincoln: The Child, The Man, The Legacy The Children’s Museum at Rose Hill Manor Park Frederick THROUGH DECEMBER 13, 2015 The Full Story: Maryland, The Surratts, And The Crime Of The Century: An Exhibition Surratt House Museum Clinton THROUGH DECEMBER 31, 2015 Lincoln: The Martyred President National Museum of Civil War Medicine Frederick

Download our free Civil War Trails mobile app.

ADVERTISEMENT

Visit Historic Queen Anne’s County American history lives in beautiful Queen Anne’s County, Maryland. Here you can visit such memorable sites as:

Christ Episcopal Church Originally home to the oldest continuous Christian congregation in Maryland, this Queen Anne-style 1880 church is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Sudlersville Train Station Museum This circa 1885 train station has been preserved as a museum devoted to the history of railroad, Sudlersville and Baseball Hall of Famer Jimmie Foxx. It is the only station in the county still in its original location.

Queen Anne’s County Courthouse Completed in 1792, the Queen Anne’s County Courthouse boasts a long heritage as the oldest Maryland courthouse in continuous use. The courthouse green is the town’s centerpiece and the green itself is graced with a sculpture of the county’s namesake — Good Queen Anne.

Kent Manor Inn Built in 1820, this beautiful inn situated on 220 acres of woods and farmland serves as an enchanting locale for weddings, retreats and corporate events today. )LUQ[[QWVQ[NZMM\WUIVaPQ[\WZQK[Q\M[WV\PMÅZ[\ Saturday of every month through October.

Come play in QA for a weekend or a day! ill Wye Grist M

Experience the Pride of the Eastern Shore! Christ Chu

rch

Historic sites throughout the county throw their doors open the 1st Saturday of every month through October! FREE ADMISSION!

www.visitqueenannes.com (410) 604-2100

Interview

Fortune’s Fool, Terry Alford’s new biography of John Wilkes Booth, is the first full-length examination of Abraham Lincoln’s assassin in nearly a century. A professor at Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, Va., Alford depicts a youthful, mercurial Booth—somehow both a high-spirited, handsome animal lover and yet also a cat-killer—and his gradual transformation into a murderer, determined to revenge the defeat of the South. Was Booth a Southerner? His family was a mix of rural and urban Maryland, and it was not a classic slave-owning family; in fact it was an immigrant family, so in some ways you would think they wouldn’t have any connection to Southern institutions like slavery or states’ rights. But early on Booth identified with the South, particularly when he was well received as a young actor while living in Richmond in the years just before the war began. Why did Booth attend John Brown’s execution? He was in Richmond when the John Brown Raid took place in 1859. He was not a member of a city militia company, but he socialized with them, so he volunteered to go along with them [to the execution]. I was surprised to find that he was not just a hanger-on—he actually had a military rank. He was a corporal in the commissary department, wore a

uniform and got paid by the Commonwealth of Virginia. James O. Hall and I discovered his pay document in the state archive, where it had lain for 125 years. What did he think of Brown? While he despised Brown’s abolitionist philosophy, he admired anyone as courageous and as indomitable as Brown. A personality who made things spin around on his axis, and focus the country’s attention on his issue. Booth loved heroes in the heroic mold, like the ones he played on stage and occasionally like Brown. They are bookends in a way. They are similar in that Booth was having trouble at the end with his investments, and his voice was giving him problems. The war was going badly for the South, and he had spent thousands of dollars on the abduction plot. A lot of things were going against him, and he was bending under a lot of that. A bold act

➧

John Wilkes Booth: Celebrity Assassin

The handsome Booth was dressed to the height of fashion for this circa 1862 portrait.

would vindicate his life, his beliefs, and establish him in the future as somebody Americans would be proud of, like a Brutus or Cassius. Why didn’t Booth join the Confederacy? He got almost ill when he saw blood. But his family never mentioned that as a cause for not enlisting. They always came back to the cause as his mother. She was a widow, and they were extremely close. She had always had a feeling he would die prematurely. She prayed, she begged him not to enlist, and she won. Was Booth out of his mind when he shot Lincoln? Yes and no. He was sitting on the sidelines during the war, and when the war began going bad for the South, that’s when he became dangerous. At the end, work-

JUNE 2015 | CIVIL WAR TIMES

31

Interview

‘He was a very, very serious actor and was making just about as much money as any dramatic actor at that time. Top tier.’

ing himself up to this frenzy, he lost the ability to realize how other people would see this and take this, why the thousands of people who really hated Lincoln never attacked him. They knew there was a line there that you don’t cross. Thousands of people could have shot Lincoln throughout the whole war. One of the things that most impressed me about the book is that I’m amazed Lincoln lived as long as he did. But Booth didn’t start out planning to kill Lincoln. He pulled together a team of former schoolmates, Confederate operatives and Southern sympathizers from Baltimore and Washington, and they plotted to abduct Lincoln. Twice they got close to him, and our whole understanding of Booth would be different if they had been able to abduct Lincoln. But Lincoln was not as accessible as they imagined. When the war ended, there was no place to take Lincoln—there was no Richmond to take him to. The Confederate government was on the run. Booth decided at that point that something more dramatic would have to happen. There is an irrational element: When he cried “Revenge!” on the stage of Ford’s Theatre. Everyone has heard that he shouted “Sic semper tyrannis”; not too many people pay attention to his “Revenge” shout. Revenge is when you inflict pain on somebody for the pain you think they gave you. It is not a very noble motive, but it is a very human one. He is feeling a lot of pain at the end of the war, and he is determined to shoot. Did Booth always hunger for fame? He wanted to be distinguished from other people even as a kid, and especially from his father [the English actor Junius Brutus Booth Sr.]. You can see this in his early teenage habit of putting his initials on things—on

32

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

himself—a tattoo, JWB on trees, on the school he went to, on the rock in front of the school. Is there someone today who is like Booth? I would like readers to realize this guy was a very, very serious actor, and he was making just about as much money as any dramatic actor was making at that time. Top tier. Some said he was the best or had it in his grasp to be the best. He would be like your most familiar and popular male movie star. We know how volatile some of those people can be, idiosyncratic, with strong political opinions. Your narration of the assassination and escape is remarkably detailed. I found a few new facts, like the words that Booth said to Major Rathbone as he was struggling to get out of Lincoln’s box in the theater. When Rathbone tries to stop him, Booth says, “Let go of me or I will kill you.” Nobody has used that or found it before. It’s also pretty interesting that Booth was able to stay on the run as long as he did, particularly with a broken leg, and I think his disability was a little more serious than some earlier writers did. He was fortunate to fall into a network of Southern sympathizers who passed him from one person to another. Terry Alford A number of them were willing to help him escape, but they would never have helped him kill Lincoln. He was either a hero or a hot potato. When he got trapped in the barn at Richard Garrett’s Farm, even the soldiers who surrounded the barn—Lincoln’s avengers, who had come to run him to ground—were pretty impressed with him. Staring

death in the face, he stared back. Tell us about Boston Corbett, the sergeant who shot Booth. Corbett had shaken Lincoln’s hand early in the war when Lincoln had thanked him for coming to Washington with the New York militia and saving the city. Corbett wanted that same hand to be the one that avenged Lincoln. Some may not like that interpretation, but the facts bear it out. He kept saying, “Let me go in there alone and deal with him.” What happened to Booth’s body? Booth was brought back to Washington and identified by the government, and they did a proper, creditable job. Then they made a big mistake: They buried him secretly. A lot of people thought: “What’s the rush? Why didn’t you show his body?” Stories began to swirl that it wasn’t Booth and that he had escaped. But it really was Booth, and in 1869 his body was turned over to his family and buried in Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, where his parents are buried. There’s no individual headstone; he is buried on the side of the family monument. They were a little afraid that the grave might be disturbed by people who hated him or even memorialized by people who honored him. In 1995 there was a court case in Baltimore; an effort was made to exhume the grave and make sure he was in there. But that case was defeated. Booth today rests exactly where his mother put him in 1869, Green Mount Cemetery. Do you have a passage or part of the book that you like the most? One of the things I really enjoyed was rediscovering Booth’s childhood. Booth’s home is owned by Harford County in Maryland. It’s a historic house. Ella Mahoney, who owned the house for many decades, became

kind of a hostess, and she would take people around and tell them about the house. She wrote, with a friend, a manuscript called “The House That Booth Built.” The manuscript had disappeared, but in my research I discovered it. It was a wonderful thing that she and a friend wrote about in 1940-41, and it contained many stories—many factual, some legendary, some tall tales, some local lore. Her parents were contemporaries of JWB, and she wrote it down in this book. It’s critical to understanding the young adult that he became. What surprised you most in your research? One of the intriguing things I discovered, which will be the subject of my next book, is that John Wilkes Booth was into spiritualism. Charles J. Colchester was a spiritualist or medium who visited Abraham and Mary Lincoln. The Lincolns had lost a child [Willie] in 1862, and she was very susceptible when they received visits from these spiritual ministers at the White House. Interestingly, this Colchester, an English medium, was not just a friend of Booth but an associate of his who spent time in the National Hotel, which is where the Newseum is today. He and Booth would hang out together and drink. It seems coincidental-to-bizarre that Booth and Lincoln shared knowledge of this person, who was kind of a con artist and had a bad drinking problem and cheated people, though he didn’t have a felonious heart. At one point he warned Lincoln: He said, “I think you need to take care of yourself and make sure that you’re safe.” We don’t know if he got that warning from Booth, but here is one spiritualist who knew what he was talking about. If he was close to Booth, he could have learned that Lincoln was in danger. ■ Interview conducted by Senior Editor Sarah Richardson.

JUNE 2015 | CIVIL WAR TIMES

33

34

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

The House that

Booth Built Maryland’s Tudor Hall, home of the theatrical Booth family, helped to shape a future assassin BY KIM A. O’CONNELL

After the tragic events of April 1865, the New York Tribune printed a rumor that the local residents around Bel Air, Md., could easily believe: Abraham Lincoln was probably not the first man John Wilkes Booth ever killed.

D

uring the war, a small band of Unionists had camped not far from the Booth family home in Bel Air—a small town in Harford County, east of Baltimore—which the family had named Tudor Hall. As a border state, Maryland was torn between Union and Confederate partisans, often within a single family, and the Booths were no exception. This was a family of renowned actors, a household where giving free vent to the emotions was encouraged. On at least two occasions, the Tribune reported, the impetuous John, a longtime Southern sympathizer, had rushed into Tudor Hall, grabbed his rifle, and run off to join the local Confederates skirmishing against the bluecoats in the nearby woods. Whether or not John actually killed anyone there is an open question. But history has recorded that, after Lincoln was assassinated, the neighbors had nothing good to say about him. “[N]one of the neighbors ever liked the family, who were the devil’s own play-acting people, and would do anything bad,” the Tribune quoted one man saying. Rumor had it that the young Booth of Bel Air liked to get his kicks by shooting local dogs or farm animals. Once a killer, always a killer, according to the locals. And yet the story of Tudor Hall paints a more complicated picture of John Wilkes Booth and his tempestuous family. It was, in some ways, a happy home, given to flights of fancy, grand gestures and elaborate “play-acting.” It was a place where John pretended to be Romeo (or perhaps Juliet) from the balcony off his bedroom, where he is assumed to have carved the initials J.W.B. found on a nearby beech tree, and where he “was known to be loved,” according to subsequent owner Ella Mahoney, who wrote memoirs of Tudor Hall and the Booth family. But Tudor Hall was also a house of dark corners, where the mercurial John had deliberately chosen an eastern-facing bedroom because he didn’t like to watch the sun set. There, the family mourned the loss

John Wilkes Booth spent many of his formative years at this charming Gothic Revival cottage, set in the tranquil Maryland countryside: an improbable home for a killer.

JUNE 2015 | CIVIL WAR TIMES

35

This is the oldest known image of Tudor Hall, supposedly taken in the spring of 1865, shortly after President Lincoln’s murder.

of its gifted patriarch, Junius B. Booth Sr., who had chosen the house’s design and overseen its construction but died before he could live there.

A

s a master tragedian, the elder Booth knew something about messy affairs of the heart. In his professional life, Junius had played such tortured leading men as Hamlet, Caesar and Richard III, but his personal life was nearly as dramatic. In 1821 the Londonborn Booth had abandoned his wife Adelaide and young son in England (a daughter had died in infancy) to accompany his lover, Mary Anne Holmes, to America, where they set up housekeeping in downtown Baltimore. The couple would eventually have eight children together, four of whom would die in childhood. Their life was comfortable, supported by Booth’s soaring acting career, which sent him to the tread the boards in Boston, New York and other major cities. He soon longed for a bit of privacy and fresh air, and purchased a log cabin in Bel Air in 1823 to serve as a summer retreat for the family. It was there, on May 10, 1838, that John Wilkes Booth was born. By all accounts, Junius threw himself into farming, planting a vineyard and orchard, harvesting crops and corralling horses and cows. He sent away for farming journals

36

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

and studied them closely. Despite his fervor, Junius took a humane approach to his animals. He insisted that no livestock be slaughtered on his property, purchasing meat at neighboring farms. Several of his children, including John, were raised as vegetarians. Junius, who was accustomed to velvet and brocade in his costumes, farmed his land barefoot and was known to neighbors simply as Farmer Booth. In the mid-1840s, when Junius sought to upgrade their homestead, he turned to an architectural pattern book published by William H. Ranlett in 1847. Ranlett was a wellknown architect whose most famous work is the Hermitage, now a national historic landmark in New Jersey. Booth chose Ranlett’s design for a 1½-story Gothic Revival cottage with a front-facing gable and Palladian symmetry. The brick house was painted green to reflect its bucolic surroundings, and the interior living rooms and parlors were cozy, with a fireplace in the middle of the main room. A free-standing kitchen was only feet away. For the construction, Booth chose James J. Gifford, a respected carpenter in the region. (Ironically, Gifford would later be employed by John T. Ford to build his theater in Washington, D.C.) It is perhaps not surprising that a renowned actor could pull off leading a double life. For years, Junius sent money home to support his family in England, and it is thought that Adelaide was none the wiser about his home life in America (though one never knows). But by the late 1840s, the truth was out. Adelaide and Junius were divorced in 1851. That

‘‘

Young John sometimes fell into melancholy, reminding friends that a fortune-teller had predicted he would meet a bad end

’’

same year, some 30 years after their affair began, Junius and Mary Ann were married. Their official union, like those in the Shakespearian tragedies he knew so well, was short-lived. The following year, Junius contracted consumption of the bowels after a six-night stand in New Orleans and expired on a riverboat en route to Ohio. His last words, according to his daughter Asia, were “pray, pray, pray.” After his passing, one admirer wrote a tribute to Junius in a literary journal, saying, “There are no more actors.” For the grieving actor sons, including John and older brother Edwin, also a leading light of the American stage, the death of their father was no doubt the hardest act to follow.

N

John’s father Junius Booth, the leading actor of his age, died on the Mississippi River before he saw his home at Tudor Hall completed.

ow without its head, the family moved into their new home, Tudor Hall. Edwin stayed only briefly, but John resided there with his mother, sisters Asia and Rosalie, and younger brother Joseph. According to Asia, there was little for the young Booths to do, perhaps a blessing and curse for youngsters with active imaginations. Occasionally Asia and John attended a church event or dance, but mostly they read aloud to each other or recited lines from plays or whiled away the hours climbing the great cherry tree near the house. Once, when some of Asia’s friends visited, John whipped up a simple supper of pancakes. He sometimes fell into melancholy, reminding family and friends that a fortune-teller had predicted he would meet a bad end and die young. As the nation moved toward war, his support of the South became more trenchant, leading to arguments with his Unionist brother Edwin. (Years later, when Edwin received a trunk of John’s, filled with costumes and love letters, he burned them.) By the outbreak of the Civil War, the Booths had rented Tudor Hall to the King family from Washington, D.C. Although they kept some belongings at Tudor Hall, they rarely returned, except for John, who had “a strong affection for his boyhood home and friends,” according to Ella Mahoney. He mostly toured the country as an actor whose reputation was growing (his early outings, when he was still a teenager, earned scathing reviews, but he had grown

accomplished in his craft). He was well-known to Ford’s Theatre audiences, and once pointed directly to President Lincoln in his box during a scene. In his last appearance there in March 1865, he played Duke Pescara in The Apostate—the lead role, and a villain. A month later, John turned his villain act into reality. By April 15, 1865, Lincoln was dead, John Wilkes Booth was on the run in southern Maryland, and soldiers surrounded Tudor Hall. Mrs. King stepped out onto the balcony—perhaps the same one young John had once play-acted on— where the troops called up to her, demanding to be let in. For 10 days they came and went, searching the house and grounds in vain. They didn’t know that the assassin was never to return to his beloved home. The last act of the most dramatic role of his career was playing out, ensuring that his fame would forever eclipse that of his older brother or father. On April 26, 1865, after he was shot at the Garrett Farm in Virginia, John Wilkes Booth died near dawn, the time of day he had loved best. ■ Kim O’Connell, based in Arlington, Va., has a master’s degree in historic preservation. She wishes to thank Tom Fink, president of the Junius B. Booth Society, for his research and assistance with this story.

JUNE 2015 | CIVIL WAR TIMES

37

The surrender at Appomattox Court House has been remembered—and misremembered—from the day the Army of Northern Virginia laid down its arms BY HUGH HOWARD

Douglas Southall Freeman stands next to a 61st Virginia Infantry flag as he addresses the crowd gathered for the April 1950 dedication of the Wilmer McLean House in Appomattox, Va.

On April 16, 1950, historian Douglas Southall Freeman addressed 20,000 spectators in Appomattox, Va. His audience crowded the little village where, fourscore and five years earlier, two generals had met to end the war. As a warm breeze fluttered the flags near the speaker’s podium—including many “Stars and Bars” battle flags—Freeman recounted the Army of Northern Virginia’s final days. The nine-month siege of Petersburg had ended in early April 1865. During General Robert E. Lee’s last week in uniform, Freeman pointed out, the Virginian had pursued a strategy “to form a junction with the army of General Joseph E. Johnston in North Carolina.” Wherever Lee turned, however, his scouts brought him word: “there’s a blue line ahead of us.” The author of a Pulitzer Prize–winning two-volume biography of the South’s greatest commander, Freeman was regarded as the preeminent authority on Lee in 1950. His account of the Confederacy’s last days was also buttressed by the passion of a partisan: His father, Walker Burford Freeman, had stood with Lee at Appomattox at age 22, and his memoirs included his own account of the waning hours of Lee’s army. Walker recalled that on April 8—hungry, exhausted and without a tent to shelter in—he had climbed a hill close to Appomattox Court House. The sight of countless Federal campfires, seen from atop that hill, made him realize “maybe even General Lee couldn’t get out of that trap.” Douglas Freeman delivered his speech near the Wilmer McLean House, where Lee had surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant. The centerpiece of the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park, the McLean House looked new in 1950—and indeed the paint was barely dry on a meticulous reconstruction engineered by the National Park Service. Congress had appropriated the funds for the site to commemorate the reuniting of the country, and Freeman duly addressed the gathering as a “reunion of brothers.”

40

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

The event marked the official opening of the McLean House to the public. In the audience that day were two individuals with a special interest in Freeman’s remarks: retired Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant III, a veteran of both world wars; and 25-year-old Robert E. Lee IV, who would wield the scissors in the ceremony’s closing moments, cutting a red-whiteand-blue ribbon. The National Park Service continued its work in Appomattox after 1950, restoring many other buildings to their wartime appearance. Still, the surrounding landscape looked much different than it had in the 1860s. Instead of cultivated fields, much of the area was now forested, for example, making it hard for visitors to imagine exactly where the soldiers had been positioned during the war’s final hours. Recent scholarship on Appomattox—the place as well as the events that unfolded there—suggests just how problematic memory can be. For example, the significance of Appomattox, as seen in Douglas Southall Freeman’s eyes, was colored by emotional “truths,” and also by regional subjectivity and selectivity. Looking back today at the facts and the ways in which events would be interpreted long after the war ended makes it clear that the past is hardly a fixed destination.

A “sick headache” kept Grant awake the night of April 7–8. The pain hung over him like a miasma despite all the remedies he tried, including applying mustard plas-

Above left: This print shows Lee surrendering to Grant under an apple tree, one of many inaccurate depictions of the surrender. Above right: World War veteran Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant III, at left, holds the ceremonial ribbon at the 1950 Appomattox Court House gathering while Robert E. Lee IV wields the scissors in the ceremony’s closing moments, marking the official opening of the newly rebuilt McLean House.

ters to his neck and immersing his feet in hot water. It didn’t help Grant’s migraine any knowing that Robert E. Lee had so far refused to accept the inevitable. The Union commander had dispatched a short note to Lee late in the afternoon of the 7th: “The results of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance. I…regard as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood by asking of you the surrender of…the army of Northern Virginia.” While Lee rejected Grant’s assessment that the Confederate army’s situation was hopeless, he didn’t rule out negotiation. The Southern commander wrote back, “I reciprocate your desire to avoid the useless effusion of blood, & therefore before considering your proposition, ask the terms you will offer on condition of its surrender.” On Saturday morning Grant wrote again, stating his sole condition: “The men and officers [of the Army of Northern Virginia] surrendered shall be disqualified from taking up arms again against the Government of the United States.” Lee’s soldiers would not be imprisoned; once paroled, they could go home to restart their lives. Lee responded with another deflection. Though he affirmed his willingness to continue the conversation about “the restoration of peace,” he refused to give up, writing, “I do not think the emergency has arisen to call for the

surrender of this Army.” Lt. Col. Horace Porter, Grant’s aide-de-camp, recorded his commander’s reaction to that message: “The general shook his head, expressive of his disappointment, and remarked, ‘It looks as if Lee still means to fight; I will reply in the morning.’ ” Still suffering from his migraine, the exhausted Grant—in full uniform save for his jacket and boots—lay down on a sofa in the farmhouse where he was headquartered. But he could not sleep.

For Lee, these were the worst days of his military career. After his retreat from Petersburg and Richmond’s fall, he heard that a worshipful mob of freedmen had greeted President Abraham Lincoln as he toured the former Southern capital. Then on April 6, Lee lost 8,000 men at Sailor’s Creek, most of them taken prisoner. Among them was his eldest son, Maj. Gen. George Washington Custis Lee. As he watched the throng of Confederates retreating at sunset that evening, their commander was overheard wondering aloud, “My God, has the army dissolved?” His force now consisted of just two corps, and as it marched southward the once proud Army of Northern Virginia grew ever smaller. At every country crossing demoralized soldiers turned toward home.

JUNE 2015 | CIVIL WAR TIMES

41

The next morning, after a long night in the saddle, Lee was resting in the shade of a pine tree when Brig. Gen. William Pendleton rode up. Pendleton told Lee that he and several other officers had reached the hard conclusion that “in their opinion, the struggle had reached a point where further resistance was hopeless.” Lee still resisted the notion even with members of his inner circle. When he had read Grant’s first note recommending surrender, he passed it wordlessly to the man he called his “Old War Horse,” Lt. Gen. James Longstreet. Handing it back, Longstreet spoke for both of them: “Not yet.” They both still cherished a flickering hope that they could consolidate with the Army of Tennessee and other forces under General Johnston. Capitulation was alien to Lee’s character. The Confederate army lurching toward Appomattox numbered perhaps 30,000 effectives, little different from the number he had led after the Battle of Antietam three years earlier. The general clung to the belief that what remained of his army might somehow break through the Union armies closing in on him.

Lee’s message of April 9 banished Grant’s headache. As he remembered years later, “The instant I saw the contents of the note I was cured.” Through Saturday night into Sunday morning the Federal infantry had outmarched Lee’s weary soldiers, and Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan’s forces captured Confederate

42

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

supply trains at nearby Appomattox Station. Fighting early on the morning of the 9th went badly for the Southerners. At that point Lee, like Walker Freeman, came to the realization that no good escape route remained. He initiated an exchange of messages, carried by couriers under flags of truce. Lee’s words were: “I now request an interview in accordance with the offer contained in your letter of yesterday.” Once a cease-fire was agreed to, both commanders rode toward the tiny village of Appomattox Court House. Lee arrived first, riding his prized horse Traveller and accompanied by Colonel Charles Marshall and an orderly. Marshall inquired of resident Wilmer McLean—who in one of history’s oddest coincidences had also inhabited a plantation on Virginia’s Bull Run battlefield, site of the war’s first major clash in July 1861—whether he knew of a suitable meeting place. McLean told him his own parlor might make a good venue. General Lee walked into McLean’s parlor and sat down, placing his hat and gauntlets on a marble-topped table in front of him. Then he waited. After 39 years—at West Point, in the U.S. Army and, for the last four, in service to the CSA—his military career was approaching its end. Half an hour later, the man who was responsible walked through the door and shook hands with him. Both Grant and Lee wore full beards, but there the resemblance ended. Lee, known for his courtly demeanor, had donned a fresh dress uniform with a gold silk sash and ceremonial sword. Grant was dressed for the field, wearing

a mud-splattered soldier’s blouse of blue flannel. His trouser legs were stuffed into ordinary boots, and he wore neither spurs nor sword. “I met you once before, General Lee,” Grant began, “while we were serving in Mexico.” Lee—who admitted meeting Grant but apparently hadn’t recognized him—was 16 years older than his opposite number. During the Mexican War, Grant had been an infantry lieutenant, while Captain Lee was a fast-rising aide on General Winfield Scott’s staff. They spoke briefly of other matters before Lee asked that Grant commit to paper the proposed surrender terms. In fewer than 200 words, the Union general elaborated only slightly on his previous proposal. The Southern soldiers would stack their rifles and artillery, then sign parole agreements promising not to take up arms against the U.S. government. Officers would be allowed to keep their private horses, side arms and baggage. Lee then asked whether the troops might also be permitted to retain their horses. Recognizing this would be essential during the spring plowing, Grant agreed to that condition as well. “This will have the best possible effect upon the men,” Lee said, adding, “It will be very gratifying and will do much toward conciliating our people.” In an hour and a half, they had reached an understanding. Grant reportedly treated his opponent with dignity throughout the proceedings. His terms served to advance the cause of reconciliation, displaying generosity in victory, as Lincoln had instructed him to do at a recent conference at

City Point, Va. The terms also honored the president’s own words, spoken during his Second Inaugural Address barely a month before: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive…to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” Though some Confederates were still fighting—Joe Johnston in North Carolina, Richard Taylor in Alabama and Edmund Kirby Smith in Texas—the remainder of the Southerners would soon follow Lee’s lead. For practical purposes, the war ended that day at Appomattox. Simultaneously, however, the remembering—and the misremembering—commenced.

By the time newspaper reporters got to Appomattox, within days of the surrender, they found the “surrender room” empty of not just people but furnishings. John Dennett, a reporter for The Nation, noted of his

own visit to the McLean House that “tables, chairs, vases, fans, pens, books, everything small and great that could be removed from the room [had been] eagerly bought, or appropriated without purchase, by enthusiastic visitors.” General Sheridan had paid $20 in gold for the table where Grant wrote the terms of surrender. Sheridan then gave it to Brev. Maj. Gen. George Armstrong Custer as a compliment to Mrs. Custer, and bystanders recalled seeing the yellow-haired officer riding out of town with it slung over his shoulder. Maj. Gen. Edward O.C. Ord is said to have paid $40 for the parlor table at which Lee sat. Grant’s and Lee’s chairs went to different buyers, as did a stoneware inkstand and a pair of candlesticks. No one photographed the famous surrender parlor at the time, but numerous artist’s impressions of the surrender meeting soon rolled off the presses—including one illustration that was promoted by Wilmer McLean. Speculations in sugar had kept McLean prosperous during the conflict, but he found himself facing hard times after the war. Hoping that selling a surrender picture could mend his fortunes, he wrote to Lee asking “…If you will grant me, two, or three sittings, for one of the first Artists of N.Y. to get a life like likeness of yourself.” Even after Lee declined, McLean persisted Wilmer McLean commissioned the print at left, hoping to capitalize on the famous in his plan, borrowing money to commission meeting that took place in his home. The tableau was inaccurate, depicting George and print an illustration. As it turned out, Meade, George Custer and other commanders who hadn’t been present. Lee’s chair, not only did “Room in the McLean House at the surrender desk and Grant’s chair (above) are preserved at the Smithsonian.

JUNE 2015 | CIVIL WAR TIMES

43

Appomattox C.H.” fail to provide the bonanza that McLean had envisioned, but he failed to recoup his investment. McLean’s print—reproduced by engravers Major & Knapp of New York—more closely resembled the event than most others. While he managed to get the architectural particulars of his own house correct, McLean confused the cast of characters. Lee and Grant are pictured with Lee’s aides and Union Generals Sheridan, Ord, Meade and Custer—though Meade and Custer were some distance away at the time. And the wrong clerk is shown writing out the terms of surrender. A few illustrators were truer to the facts. Alfred Waud, whose wartime illustrations appeared regularly in Harper’s

Alfred Waud’s eyewitness sketch recorded the dignified bearing of General Lee as he rode away from the McLean House with his aide.

Weekly, had been standing outside the McLean House on that Palm Sunday, and watched Lee emerge and gesture to his orderly to bridle his horse. Waud sketched the scene as Lee left, trailed by Colonel Marshall and watched by a crowd of faceless Union soldiers. A polished version of Waud’s drawing would be widely reproduced. Another vignette comes down to us through first-person accounts. Some observers claimed that as Lee was leaving, Grant—standing on the porch—lifted his hat in a salute. And that Lee did the same before riding away. Did that actually happen? It’s hard to say. The anecdote was often repeated, and over time came to symbolize a reconciliation between North and South in a larger sense. But some writers altered the story, claiming that Lee had surrendered to Grant under an apple tree or that during

44

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

their meeting he had tendered his sword to Grant, who then refused it. Neither of those tales is true. The view of Appomattox as showcasing Yankee magnanimity and Confederate honor no doubt served the “Lost Cause” reading of the conflict. The myth of the Lost Cause began taking shape soon after the war ended, via the book The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates, by Edward Pollard, editor of the Richmond Examiner. Pollard rushed his book to press in 1865 and 1866. Essential throughout his narrative was Pollard’s view of Grant as a man of “course [sic], heavy obstinacy…[with] no spark of military genius.” He saw Lee as a “genius,” describing his battlefield strategies as “masterly.” In subsequent generations, Lost Cause historians continued to shape their version of the war, explaining Lee’s defeat as a consequence of the North’s vastly superior resources of men and materiel. In one memoir published in 1878, Lee’s adjutant Colonel Walter Taylor asserted that the Southern commander was outnumbered 6-to-1. Yet a close examination of manpower during the Appomattox Campaign points to the fact that, although Lee was as usual outnumbered, the disparity wasn’t as significant as some early writers had claimed. Recent calculations by historian Chris Calkins suggest that when the Appomattox Campaign began in late March Confederate strength amounted to some 58,000 men, while the Union count was roughly 76,000. The Lost Cause view also held that Lee was nearly infallible, and his troops were unfailingly devoted. By 1865, however, Lee had doubts of both his own leadership and his men’s selflessness. On April 20, 1865, he reported to Jefferson Davis that in the preceding months “the troops were…not marked by the boldness and decision which formerly characterized them. Except in particular instances, they were feeble; and want of confidence seemed to possess officers and men.” That Lee’s men fought less boldly than they once had, he allowed, was only part of the problem. His army, he told Davis, had “begun to disintegrate, and straggling in the ranks increased up to the surrender.” Whatever the shifting palette of interpretation and recollection over time, the meeting of Grant and Lee at Appomattox clearly established a common expectation, hope for the future and—above all—for reunification. Lee, who could have opted to continue the conflict as a guerrilla war, as one of his officers had suggested, rejected that idea, saying that his men “would become mere bands of marauders” and the result would be “a state of affairs it would take the country years to recover from.” Grant put it more simply on the evening of April 9, telling his men, “The war is over; the rebels are our countrymen again.” In recent years, a reexamination of documents and data pertaining to the war’s end has discredited some aspects of the Lost Cause view that Douglas Southall Freeman accepted. But if he were alive today, Freeman might well

The Death and Rebirth of Mr. McLean’s House The village of Appomattox Court House consists of a handful of houses, dependencies, two law offices, a store, the Clover Hill Tavern, a jail and a courthouse. Once home to fewer than 150 residents, it now offers thousands of visitors a chance to learn about how the McLean House earned a place on history’s map. But the story of the building itself also can be seen as a metaphor for how historic memory can be deceptive. Constructed as a tavern in 1848, the original structure lasted less than 50 years. The building was dismantled in 1893 in a planned move to Washington, D.C., where it was to be rebuilt as a Civil War museum. But that plan fell through, and the components never left Virginia. Soon overgrown with a thicket of honeysuckle and locust, the wooden elements decayed, while relic hunters carried off countless bricks. By 1903, according to one Civil War veteran, the house was “a dismal heap of ruin.” A half-century would pass before the National Park Service re-created the McLean House, guided by drawings made during its dismantling and also archaeological studies. The furnishings chosen for the newly built version had never belonged to Wilmer McLean, though the NPS did manage to procure period furniture resembling the originals. Today the beautiful landscape surrounding the place where the war ended—with its rolling fields, rail fences, tall trees and peaceful agrarian air—can lull visitors into forgetting that a violent battle raged around Appomattox Court House in the hours before the generals met to end the conflict. So, too, have romanticized after-thefact recollections tended to exaggerate the sense of shared nationalism that arose after Lee and Grant parted company.—HH

have approved of the more complex reading of the Confederacy’s end that the current generation of historians puts forward. Though he was a Virginian just like his father, he was also a journalist, trained to report on facts. In fact, he edited the Richmond Times-Dispatch for 34 years. We can only wonder what he would say about documents exhumed by the likes of Virginia-born historian Charles Dew, a descendant of Confederate soldiers and the proud recipient, on his 14th birthday, of Freeman’s Lee and His Lieutenants. To his surprise, Dew unearthed secession documents giving the lie to Lost Cause arguments that “paint the Civil War as a mighty struggle over differing concepts of constitutional liberty.” Dew closed his 2002 book Apostles of Disunion with the assertion that a close reading of these documents “[lays] to rest, once and for all, any notion that

slavery had nothing to do with the coming of the Civil War. To put it quite simply, slavery and race were absolutely critical elements in the coming of the war.” In 1950 Freeman told his audience that the Civil War was a “brother’s war”—which amounted to an implicit denial of slavery as its principal cause. In light of what we now know, his viewpoint seems less than complete. But we live in times far removed from Reconstruction and Freeman’s era of a segregated South. In the wake of the Civil War, notions of a virtuous cause and a perfectible hero were perhaps reassuring. Today we are learning to embrace complexities more willingly. ■ Hugh Howard is the author of Houses of Civil War America. He writes from a quiet hamlet in upstate New York.

JUNE 2015 | CIVIL WAR TIMES

45

[EXCERPT]

Edwin Stanton’s

Whipping Boy At war’s end, the Secretary of War deliberately misrepresented William T. Sherman’s actions, in an attempt to further his own political interests BY WILLIAM MARVEL ajor General William T. Sherman entered the reviewing stand to watch his troops march down Pennsylvania Avenue during Washington’s historic Grand Review of the Armies, held in May 1865 to celebrate the end of the war. Politicians and generals congratulated him as he made his way to his seat, but when Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton offered his hand, Sherman refused to take it. Their palpable enmity was largely the result of Stanton’s misguided political scheming. During his three years as Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of war, Stanton trod two contradictory paths, and by early 1865 those paths were beginning to diverge too far to straddle any longer. Stanton had come into Lincoln’s Cabinet with a reputation as a conservative Democrat, known for his service as James Buchanan’s attorney general, for his support of John Breckenridge in the presidential election of 1860 and for his disgust with Republicans. Compared to the Radical wing of their Republican Party, however, Lincoln and most of his Cabinet remained conservative enough that Stanton seemed politically palatable to them, though the Radicals had to be won over to assure Stanton’s confirmation in the Senate. Fortunately for him, he had secretly courted that faction during most of his time in the Buchanan administration, and thanks to the endorsement of key Radicals he won Senate approval with relative ease. From the day Stanton entered the War Department in January 1862, he forged an alliance with the most powerful Radicals on Capitol Hill, cultivating their allegiance and surreptitiously sympathizing with their

M

46

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

A formal portrait of William T. Sherman taken after his promotion to commander in chief of the U.S. Army in 1869. At the end of the Civil War, Edwin Stanton accused Sherman of endangering contrabands and overstepping his authority in negotiations with surrendering Confederates.

agenda even as they fell into conflict with the president. So well did Stanton disguise his duplicity that Lincoln never wavered as his political patron, but the approaching end of the war threatened to bring an open breach between Lincoln and the Radicals over Reconstruction. As Stanton certainly understood, he could not continue much longer to be all things to all men. In January 1865, a couple of weeks after Sherman marched his troops into Savannah, Ga., Stanton sailed down from Washington for a visit. Like much of what Stanton did, the trip involved a nominal objective and one or more ulterior purposes. Officially, Stanton came to collect 25,000 bales of cotton that Sherman had captured with the city, but that might have been accomplished by the Treasury Department official who accompanied him. Acting Adjutant General Edward D.

that incident into a vast slaughter, and a letter on the subject had appeared in the New York press, arousing Radical anger. Sherman harbored the contemporary conservative view of the race issue, and he responded to the accusation with his customary candor, thereby fanning the flames. In his first dispatch from Savannah, Sherman had insensitively mentioned the need to “clear the army of surplus negroes, mules and horses,” which had provoked a rebuke from Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase. Chief of Staff Henry W. Halleck warned Sherman that his critics had gained the ear of the president, alluding probably to Stanton, among others. Stanton showed annoyance at Sherman’s policy before he left Washington, directing him to gather in contrabands as they approached his lines— and, by way of contrast, to expel the

Lincoln’s death deprived Stanton of his most powerful protector, leaving the Radicals as his most reliable allies Townsend, part of Stanton’s entourage in Savannah, admitted that collecting the cotton was only an excuse; he claimed the sea voyage was meant to relieve Stanton’s asthma, which worsened during the heating season. There was another unstated reason for so long a journey. Stanton sailed for Savannah at least partly—and perhaps mainly—in response to the indignation of Radicals over Sherman’s increasingly obvious disdain for “contrabands” and black soldiers. On the March to the Sea, Sherman’s army had attracted thousands of fugitive slaves, and one of his corps commanders had left hundreds of them to the mercy of pursuing Rebel cavalry on the bank of Ebenezer Creek, pulling up his pontoon bridge before those slaves could cross. Rumors had inflated

48

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

families of Confederate officers from their homes. When he reached Savannah, Stanton revealed that he indeed believed that Rebel cavalry had butchered the fugitives trapped at Ebenezer Creek, which Sherman dismissed as a combination of misapprehension, exaggeration and assumption. Sherman said he had less trouble protecting the freedmen from their former masters than from greedy Northern recruiters, who had come down to snap them up as substitutes for drafted white men. Just before Stanton left Savannah, he and Sherman met with a gathering of the city’s black religious leaders, some of whom were freeborn, some long free and some free only since the arrival of the Union armies. Their chosen spokesman answered specific questions, beginning with the

capacity of his people for self-support, and he said they most needed land on which they could support themselves. Assuming that prejudice would persist for years, he preferred colonization to integration, and all but one of those with him agreed. In accordance with the majority wish of the ministers, Sherman arranged for at least the temporary settlement of Savannah’s freedmen on separate parcels of confiscated land. Northern Radicals regarded Sherman’s order only as further evidence of his prejudice, apparently looking on those settlements as internment camps. Embarrassed by indirect association with that program, Stanton sent the minutes of his interview to William Lloyd Garrison, the Boston abolitionist, gratuitously intimating that he, at least, did not consider Southern blacks “an inferior race.” The better to quell any Radical doubts about his reliability on that subject, he also forwarded a copy of the minutes to Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, the first Radical he had secretly befriended back in 1861. He told Sumner that he hoped Congress might adopt some measure to discharge the government’s duty toward “the colored people of the South,” as though to imply now that Congress, rather than President Lincoln, would have to do justice to the former slave. Then, three months later, came the assassination of the president. Lincoln’s death deprived Stanton of his most powerful political protector, leaving the Radicals as his most reliable allies. When Andrew Johnson first assumed the presidency, he evinced a sharply Radical attitude himself, at least in his vindictive suggestions for the handling of former Confederates, all of which greatly encouraged Senate zealots like Benjamin Wade of Ohio and Zachariah Chandler of Michigan. Stanton, who habitually sought the support of incompatible factions by playing double roles, evidently believed for a short while that

he could ingratiate himself to both the new president and the dominant congressional coalition while wearing the same face. By the time of Lincoln’s death, Sherman had run Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of Tennessee to ground in North Carolina, and the two generals put their armies into camp while they composed an intricate surrender convention for the approval of their respective governments. Sherman, who had waged war as viciously as any of the Radical generals he scorned, always maintained that his hostility would vanish the moment the Rebels laid down their arms, and his agreement with Johnston confirmed as much. Word of the assassination had not reached them when they first met, and Sherman seemed deeply imbued with the spirit of magnanimity that Lincoln had expressed during a late-March interview with him and Grant. With his Confederate counterpart, Sherman outlined a complete blueprint for Reconstruction, including a general amnesty, the restoration of citizens’ political rights and the preservation of state governments. The proposed convention would have subverted the Radical plan for Reconstruction, which included disenfranchising former Rebels, granting political rights to the freed slaves and perhaps awarding them homesteads on confiscated property. Sherman and Johnston continued their cease-fire while the paperwork traveled north. Grant recognized immediately that Sherman had exceeded his authority, asking Stanton to call a special Cabinet meeting. Stanton gathered the president and Cabinet members that night, and they unanimously rejected the agreement as intruding on the prerogatives of the chief executive—and on those of Congress, as any Radical would have argued. There the matter might have ended, since the document had merely been sent for approval or disapproval, but Stanton waxed especially vitriolic on Sherman. Later that night he

Stanton entered Lincoln’s Cabinet as a conservative Democrat, but simultaneously courted the Radical Republicans—who were inclined to distrust and vilify General Sherman.

composed an order for Grant to proceed to Sherman’s headquarters and “direct operations against the enemy,” intimating that Sherman would be removed from command at the moment of victory. To this Stanton added an unfairly accusative and unnecessarily public rebuke. Since the assassination he had been sending what were essentially press releases to Maj. Gen. John Dix, in New York, for publication in the newspapers there, and he wired Dix a diatribe against Sherman. In it he cited a March 3 order to Grant prohibiting any political negotiations between Union and Confederate generals, clearly hoping to leave the impression that Sherman was aware of it. In fact, Sherman was just leading his armies out of South Carolina when that order went out, and he never saw it, as Stanton probably knew. Sher-

with General Sherman,” so they could flee the country with their treasure. He concluded with an announcement that Grant had gone to North Carolina to take over the fight against Johnston, broadcasting his hint that Sherman would be relieved of command. By the ferocity of his initial attack on Sherman in the Cabinet meeting, Stanton plainly hoped to convince the others that the generous surrender terms amounted to insubordination, or even treason. It worked, especially with Stanton’s new protégé in the Cabinet, Attorney General James Speed. Paranoia, fueled by guilt over his injustice to Sherman, apparently drove Stanton frantic, and within a few days he worried that the general would lead his armies against the government rather than submit. His raving seemed to infect Speed, who wondered whether Sherman might arrest

Stanton suggested, inaccurately, that the armistice had allowed Jefferson Davis to escape with a fortune in Confederate gold man’s negotiations reflected the kindly spirit Lincoln had conveyed at their March meeting—as well as Stanton’s own advice, at Savannah, that policy restraints might have to be relaxed for the more important goal of prompt capitulation. Stanton’s screed was clearly crafted to gratify Radicals, and he devoted most of it to demonizing Sherman. Stanton suggested, inaccurately, that the armistice had allowed President Jefferson Davis to escape with a fortune in Confederate gold. Davis and his Cabinet had slipped away behind Johnston’s army before the negotiations began—but Stanton insinuated Sherman might have made an illicit bargain with the Rebel leaders, quoting a rumor that Davis and his fugitive government hoped to “make terms

50

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

his best friend, Grant, when he arrived at Sherman’s headquarters. Looking back on Stanton’s disproportionate fury, Navy Secretary Gideon Welles thought Stanton regarded peaceful reunion with trepidation because, as a turncoat from the ranks of states’ rights conservatives, he feared a rapid restoration of the old Union. Reconstruction as Sherman’s convention conceived it would likely restore the Democratic Party to power. For antislavery politicians like Wade, Sumner and Rep. Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, that would have spelled disaster by assuring the defeat of their social-justice agenda and squandering what they viewed as the chief fruits of victory. For men like Stanton, who had learned to depend on government connections for their

livelihood, restoration of the old political order would have exacted a more personal toll. He might also have faced potential prosecution for the excesses of his military tribunals, and had he been subjected to the same version of justice he inflicted on others he would have had good cause for worry. Grant left Washington before the accusative telegram went out, joining Sherman and instructing him to offer Johnston the same terms as Lee had accepted at Appomattox on April 9: The Rebels were to turn in their arms and go home on parole, and were not to be disturbed as long as they maintained good behavior. Johnston accepted without hesitation, and Grant did not inflict the intended humiliation of watching over Sherman, instead coming directly back to Washington. Stanton had nevertheless aroused enormous animosity toward Sherman over the faux pas. Even the general’s brother, Senator John Sherman of Ohio, expressed his distress at the terms, although he pointed out that his brother was merely extending the same generosity as Grant and Lincoln. He added that the incident was all the more painful in the wake of the assassination, and the vindictive atmosphere prevailing so soon after Lincoln’s funeral may have explained the exaggerated public outrage, which Stanton had manifestly intended to incite. Henry Halleck, by then assigned to duty in Richmond, had joined in the clamor against Sherman, directing Sherman’s subordinates to disregard their commander’s orders, and Stanton had that edict published too. Convinced that Stanton had acted maliciously—and it is all but impossible to believe otherwise—Sherman quietly nursed his grudge. On his way through Richmond, Sherman sent Halleck an icy note refusing to march his troops in review before him and essentially warning him to keep out of their way—and his. The trial of those accused in the Lincoln assassination plot had hardly

begun when prominent Washington Radicals heard that Stanton might soon resign. That story surfaced just as newspapers began reporting that General Sherman’s army was nearing the capital on its march from Richmond, and the official snub Sherman had given Halleck on his way through that city suggested that he was coming with blood in his eye, intent on taking revenge against the author of his humiliation. Stanton’s apprehension on that point may have prompted remarks that initiated the resignation rumor. When the soldiers who had marched through the Carolinas did arrive, they and their general went quietly into camp below the Potomac River. No mutinous mob assailed the War Department, but a few days later even the trial of the conspirators had to pause as the returning soldiers took over the city. Washington brimmed with visitors who had come to see the last grand review of the nation’s two principal armies. Before dawn on May 23, tens of thousands of cavalry, infantry and artillery filed into the streets leading toward the Capitol as crowds of civilians, convalescent soldiers and Confederate deserters jostled each other for vantage points on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue. A canopied reviewing stand had been erected where the avenue bent behind the White House, and there sat President Andrew Johnson, with Stanton on his right and Grant on his left, along with a few other Cabinet members, military officers and women. At 9 a.m. the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac began moving along the avenue between cheering crowds, followed by the infantry with its bands blaring. Artillery brigades squeezed in between the infantry divisions, and it was well into the afternoon before the last caisson had rumbled past. Sherman’s armies of the West took center stage the next day, marching in the loose-jointed fashion that had carried them across four states, bow-

Stanton’s First Scapegoat Stanton’s attacks on Sherman were not the first time he had sacrificed a general to win favor among Radical Republicans. On January 28, 1862, only two weeks after his appointment as Secretary of War, Stanton ordered the arrest of Brig. Gen. Charles P. Stone, whom he imprisoned at Fort Lafayette. That was done nominally on suspicion of treachery for Stone’s role at the Union Army’s debacle at the October 1861 Battle of Ball’s Bluff. But Stone’s real crime consisted of holding conservative political views. An act of Congress eventually forced Stone’s release, but Stanton ensured that the general never held another significant command, and finally hounded him out of the Army altogether in September 1864.—WM

ing and turning to wave their acknowledgment of the onlookers’ cheers. Some of them led mules burdened with pilfered cookware, atop which sat the occasional half-tamed critter collected along some Southern byway. A battalion of bummers—the undisciplined stragglers who had foraged so avariciously throughout the Carolinas— rode their commandeered horses and mules. Sherman led the procession, saluting the president and Grant as he passed the reviewing stand. Once past, he consigned his horse to an orderly and climbed up to sit with the dignitaries. Johnson, Grant and the others all stood to greet him, shaking his hand, but this was the first time he and the secretary of war had met since Stanton’s tantrum over the surrender convention. A Massachusetts congressman had seen Sherman two days before, finding him still extremely bitter over Stanton’s rebuke, and when

a hopeful Stanton extended his hand, Sherman let him grasp the air with it, clapping his own hand to his side and merely nodding, or bowing slightly. Across the avenue sat others who had been waiting for this very moment, many with binoculars or opera glasses trained on the tall, florid general and the squat, gray bureaucrat. Stanton swallowed the insult. He may have begun doubting his own popularity after an avalanche of criticism over trying the assassination suspects by military commission: Even some Radicals had expressed great dissatisfaction with the tribunal. With so many angry soldiers in the city, he could not afford to provoke another controversy. After the review, Sherman’s troops began showing overt public contempt for the secretary of war, and Stanton dared not arrest them for fear of inciting violence—perhaps against himself. On May 26, a drove of Sherman’s offi-

JUNE 2015 | CIVIL WAR TIMES

51

A close-up of the reviewing stand at the May 1865 Grand Review in Washington reveals a number of dignitaries: Brev. Brig. Gen. Ely S. Parker (A), who served as an aide to Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant (B). President Andrew Johnson (C), Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles (D), Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman (E) and Quartmaster General Montgomery Meigs (F). Stanton does not seem to be present, or is out of view.

A

B

C

D

E

F

cers poured into Willard’s Hotel and began to damn Stanton high and low; some of them would periodically jump up on the bar, call for “three groans” for the secretary, and then jump back down for another drink and another similar toast. Solicitous of her husband’s career prospects, Ellen Ewing Sherman tried to heal the breach by making a social call on the Stantons herself—and Stanton eagerly welcomed the attempt, entertaining Mrs. Sherman for “a very pleasant half hour.” The general remained obdurate nevertheless, insisting that Stanton owed him an apology, and the tense situation among Sherman’s soldiers may have accelerated the process of mustering out the armies. On May 29, Stanton ordered all troops sent home whose terms of service would expire before October; that included the greater part of Sherman’s four corps and the vast majority of his most loyal officers and men. Some have supposed that Sherman never forgave Stanton for his politically motivated affront, and that resentment flavored his portrait of the secretary when he came to write his memoirs. Certainly Sherman never regained whatever personal respect he might have once held for Stanton, but neither did any of the other individuals Stanton betrayed or sacrificed during his lifetime. The general did seem to forgive him, though, and after the ailing Stanton left office Sherman offered to provide him with an army escort to bring him out to a post in the Rockies, where he might find relief from the asthma that would soon kill him. With that invitation Sherman merely showed the more gracious side he had revealed in his negotiations with a vanquished foe. ■ Adapted from Lincoln’s Autocrat: The Life of Edwin Stanton, by William Marvel, ©2015 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher: www.uncpress.unc.edu

JUNE 2015 | CIVIL WAR TIMES

53

A Dead Horse at Antietam BY JAMES I. ROBERTSON JR.

Early in my career as a historian, I spent hours looking through picture files at the National Archives, Library of Congress, Virginia Historical Society and Museum of the Confederacy. One day I came across a photograph of a dead horse, alone on a battlefield. Visual images sometimes pack more punch than the printed word—and this one hit me hard. I freely confess I’ve had a lifelong love affair with four-legged animals, and the piteous spectacle of that

Adapted from Lens of War: Exploring Iconic Photographs of the Civil War, University of Georgia Press, 2015

horse provoked a number of disturbing thoughts: of innocent creatures caught in the crossfire of human destruction, how death in battle can be slow and cruel, whether the dying horse had been looking for aid that never came, if anyone had paused to mourn its passing, and what kind of burial—if any—it came in the morning fight. However, a member of the 13th Massachusetts Infanwith me. Whenever Civil War history comes to mind, my first try boasted to his father, “I fired between forty and fifty rounds and had a good mental image is of that horse seemingly staring at me. mark to aim at every time. I did not waste my ammunition, I can assure you.” Henry Strong was killed in one of the first exchanges of he basic facts behind the photograph are well gunfire. Mortally wounded by the same blast, his creamdocumented. The horse’s owner was Henry B. colored mount sank to the ground on all fours and turned Strong. Born in Scotland around 1821, Strong his head as it fell, as if falling asleep. The Confederates immigrated to America and was working as a were forced back. A Louisiana comrade who sought to clerk in New Orleans when the Civil War began. On June recover valuables from Strong’s body was hit four times 5, 1861, he entered Confederate service as a captain in by bullets. Federals stripped the dying animal of its the 6th Louisiana Infantry. By the summer of 1862, he saddle and tack. The horse was ignored as battle raged was the colonel of the regiment. Though not known as the until sundown brought an end to the slaughter. most inspiring of officers, Strong was easily recognizable For at least two days Strong’s horse lay where it had by his cream-colored stallion. fallen, in a lifelike pose that attracted attention. Union Wednesday, September 17, 1862, was the bloodiest Brig. Gen. Alpheus S. Williams wrote his daughters: day in American history. Two powerful armies fought “One beautiful milk-white animal had died in so graceful viciously along the banks of Antietam Creek in western a position that I wished for its photograph. His legs were Maryland. When the 13 hours of carnage began, the 6th doubled under and its arched neck gracefully turned to Louisiana and sister units of Brig. Gen. Harry T. Hays’ one side, as if looking back to the ball-hole in its side.” brigade were posted behind the main line to the east of Among others reportedly struck by the horse’s death the Hagerstown Pike. Heavy waves of Federals soon pose was Lieutenant Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., a future fought their way through a cornfield on the ConfederSupreme Court jurist. ate left flank. Maj. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson On September 19, Alexander Gardner, then serving as ordered his second line forward to meet the threat. an assistant to pioneering photographer Mathew Brady, When the Louisiana Brigade charged across David reached Antietam. The energetic Gardner would take R. Miller’s farm and collided with Brig. Gen. George L. some 70 pictures at Antietam, most of them near Dunker Hartsuff ’s mostly Massachusetts brigade, Hartsuff fell Church—including the image long seared into my own seriously wounded. Most of his 600 casualties that day

received. A half-century later, that disturbing image remains

T

56

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

memory. Gardner likely made his photograph because of the white stallion’s unusual pose. But Strong’s mount was just one of thousands to be seen on battlefields.

W

ithout horses, no major Civil War battle could have occurred. Horses and mules provided the bulk of transportation in the 19th century. In fact, the first casualty of the war was a horse killed during the bombardment of Fort Sumter. Four-legged beasts provided the power to transport armies that otherwise would have been stationary. The cavalry would by definition have been nonexistent without mounts. Each rider needed three remounts yearly during the war, so demand for new horses was constant. A single six-gun artillery battery required 72 horses for full efficiency. Even the infantry, the main component of an army, was inoperable without wagon trains. The Napoleonic standard at the time called for 12 wagons per 1,000 men. Four horses lugged a wagon containing about 2,800 pounds of supplies. (A six-mule team could haul 4,000 pounds on good roads—but roads were seldom good.) At the time of Gettysburg, the Army of the Potomac was utilizing 4,000 wagons and 1,100 ambulances. Rufus Ingalls, the army’s chief quartermaster, had the daunting responsibility of obtaining and maintaining more than 20,000 draft animals for that most famous campaign of the war. How far an army traveled, as well as what it accomplished on a march or in a battle, was contingent upon the number and quality of its horses. Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman emphasized consideration for the Army’s livestock, saying: “Every opportunity at a halt during a march should be taken advantage of to cut grass, wheat, or oats and extraordinary care be taken of the horses upon which everything depends.” Tragically, however, most participants in the Civil War assumed that horses would be readily available wherever they fought. It certainly seemed that way at the outset of hostilities. In 1861 the North had 3.4 million horses, while the Confederate states had 1.7 million steeds—an inventory deemed sufficient for the short contest that everyone initially expected. Yet what followed were four years of marches, battles, deaths, suffering, trials and tribulations never envisioned. The most unimaginable hardships fell upon army horses and mules. Most soldiers knew little about caring for mounts and draft animals, using and abusing them with pitiless disregard. They treated the animals as if they were at least indefatigable and at most indestructible. Long-distance movements in all kinds of weather wore down thousands of animals. In the Western Theater, horses traveled across nine states. One of Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan’s

cavalry raids involved horses pushed to cover 1,100 miles in less than a month. While cavalrymen managed to sleep in the saddle, their mounts were in continual motion. Sheer exhaustion overcame horses on prolonged movements. Brig. Gen. James H. Wilson recalled of the Union pursuit of John Bell Hood’s Confederate army in December 1864: “It was cold and freezing during the nights, and followed by days of rain, snow, and thaw. The country…had been absolutely stripped of forage and provisions by the march of contending armies….The poor cavalry horses fared still worse than their riders. Scarcely a withered corn blade could be found for them, and thousands, exhausted by overwork, famished with hunger, or crippled so that death was a mercy, with hoofs dropping off from frost and mud, fell by the roadside never to rise again.” An estimated 2.3 million horseshoes were annual necessities for every 60,000 animals. Yet neither shoes nor farriers were always where they were needed. Lameness was epidemic. Worn-down animals in some cases were shot rather than allowed to recover and fall into enemy hands. Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan admitted after one retreat that he had slaughtered 500 of his mounts. The commander of the Confederate pursuit put the number at 2,000 animals. The most constant problems were a lack of water and food. Dehydration, malnutrition and starvation were the most prevalent killers. Army regulations stipulated that each horse was to receive three pounds of oats and 14 pounds of hay daily, though those standards were seldom met. One brigadier general no doubt provoked laughter when he routinely asked for 800,000 pounds of grain and hay per day for the horses in his command. “Short rations” were worse for the animals than for the soldiers. Indeed, in the war’s later stages, hungry soldiers consumed the corn allotted for their starving horses. Finding sufficient forage was an almost hour-by-hour problem. The search for food for man and beast was certainly a factor in Lee’s 1863 decision to invade the North. It was a crippled army that stopped the Confederate advance at Gettysburg. Federal horses had been without forage for three days, and several thousand collapsed and died in the Gettysburg–Frederick, Md., segment of Meade’s post-battle movements. Ironically, the forage those animals so badly needed comprised a large percentage of the 57 wagonloads of supplies that Lee took back to Virginia. Insufficient attention was also paid to the content and quality of rations for the animals. When hay wasn’t available, horses would be fed only grain. Because horses are grazing animals, however, they require a considerable amount of roughage in their diet. Lack of hay could lead

JUNE 2015 | CIVIL WAR TIMES

57

— BRIG. GEN. RUFUS INGALLS, CHIEF QUARTERMASTER, ARMY OF THE POTOMAC

to either of two deadly diseases: colic, a gastrointestinal infection that was usually fatal, and laminitis, an inflammatory foot condition that can be permanently crippling. Pasturage was a poor substitute for army rations, since it has only a third of the nutritional value of oats and hay. Photographs of long wagon trains belie their contents. Many vehicles were carrying bales of hay and sacks of grain. As official campaign dispatches repeatedly made clear, there was never enough feed for dwindling numbers of animals still struggling to keep pace. On July 2, 1863, at the climactic moments of battles at both Vicksburg and Gettysburg, the Confederate Quartermaster Department announced that the sources for acquiring horses and mules were “well-nigh exhausted.” The question then arose of “how the animals necessary for the future equipment of our armies in the field are to be obtained.” Within a year, Lee was eliminating artillery batteries because horses could not be found to pull the cannons and caissons. The retreat to Appomattox turned into a death march. One Richmond artillerist observed, “The poor horses were giving out, and by the time Amelia Court House was reached, the teams were so broken down by hard marching and want of rest…that the caissons were abandoned and destroyed.” Lee was thus deprived of artillery for the last five days of his army’s existence. The number of horses killed in combat will never be known. Commanding officers, even cavalry leaders, rarely mentioned equine casualties in their communiqués. Some statistics did emerge in official reports of the Battle of Gettysburg. Losses in Colonel Henry Cabell’s

58

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

artillery battalion were 26 men, plus 67 horses killed and 13 disabled. At least 881 artillery horses in the Army of the Potomac were slain in the three days of fighting. The day after Gettysburg concluded, Rufus Ingalls wrote Maj. Gen. George Meade: “The loss of horses in these several battles has been great in killed, wounded and worn down by excessive march….I think I shall require 2,000 cavalry and 1,500 artillery horses as soon as possible to recruit the army.” Ingalls revised his figures the next day to 5,000 horses. A major factor in Meade’s slow pursuit of General Robert E. Lee after Gettysburg was the poor condition of his cavalry and draft animals. Too few were on hand at the time, and they were asked to do too much. As a result, the Union army’s pursuit stalled.

I

ndian leader Mahatma Ghandi once declared: “You can judge a people by the way they treat their animals.” In reading thousands of soldiers’ letters, diaries and reminiscences throughout my career, I’ve always been on the alert for their comments about army horses and mules. Horses were on hand wherever any component of an army was present, and every soldier saw them. Yet they received little attention from most Johnny Rebs and Billy Yanks. Soldiers who did mention the animals generally were expressing revulsion or pity at what they had witnessed. In mid-April 1862, a Maine adjutant stationed at Harpers Ferry classified teamsters “as a class the most depraved of any in the Army. They have no mercy for their beasts, are the very personification of selfishness

and malevolence, stupidity physical and moral….They know less than the beasts they drive. Today I heard an unusual hub-bub and looking out saw a wretched abortion of humanity, pounding the noses of two mules and trying to make them back up against the railroad tracks.” Looking at the Fredericksburg battlefield two days after the fighting ended there, George Hitchcock of the 21st Massachusetts Infantry reported that the saddest sight “was that of a wounded horse fastened to an artillery wagon, which had been shot somewhere in the hindquarters. From time to time it would raise itself up on its forward feet, look toward us in a most imploring way, appealing for help with a groan like a human being—most heart-rending; then falling back in exhaustion, slowly dying by pain, starvation and thirst.” Sprinkled throughout Civil War accounts are reports of the bravery and endurance of individual mounts. At Gettysburg, Captain Chester Parsons of the 1st Vermont Cavalry was riding “a gentle sorrel, scarred and stiff with long service.” Yet in an open-field attack on Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart’s Confederate cavalry, Parsons’ horse reportedly “sprang into the charge!” bounding over fences and broken country. After a bullet struck Parsons, who slumped in the saddle, “How gently he carried me from the field, although blood spurted from his side at every step….And when I was lifted down into unconsciousness, my

last recollection was of his great eyes turned upon me as in sympathy and reproof.”

A

handful of mounts that belonged to generals are famous: Lee’s Traveller, Ulysses S. Grant’s Cincinnati, Jackson’s Little Sorrel and Sheridan’s Rienzi. Those horses were in a far better class than the millions of their four-legged comrades. Many commanders’ horses live on, in equestrian statues sprinkled throughout battlefields, as well as in city parks. Whenever I visit Richmond’s North Boulevard, I habitually look at the front lawn of the Virginia Historical Society, where there stands a bronze sculpture created by Tessa Pullen and dedicated by Paul Mellon in 1997. The bronze figure depicts a broken-down, skeletal horse, head bent low, as if in the final seconds of its life. It is clearly not meant to be part of a proud army passing in review or a dramatic participant in a battle scene. Instead, it’s the silent embodiment of the phrase “faithful unto death.” That statue, as well as Gardner’s photograph at Antietam, are inadequate tributes to all the animals that died during the war. More than 1.5 million horses and mules did not live to enjoy the pasturage that came in 1865, with the advent of peace. Not one received a decent burial. Another million horses hobbled home permanently impaired. History remembers them all only as necessary costs in a great nationmolding conflict. They deserve a better title: “The Unsung Heroes of the Civil War.” ■

Tessa Pullan’s powerful sculpture of a war-weary horse is based on a painting she saw of a horse in a snowstorm. Her original sculpture stands in the horse-country town of Middleburg, Va., with a plaque inscribed “In memory of the one and one half million horses and mules of the Confederate and Union armies that were killed, were wounded or died from disease in the Civil War. Many perished within 20 miles of Middleburg in the Battles of Aldie, Middleburg and Upperville in June of 1863.” In addition to the copy of that sculpture located at the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, a third copy is on display at the U.S. Cavalry Museum in Fort Riley, Kan.

JUNE 2015 | CIVIL WAR TIMES

59

Lincoln’s

Last Witness

Corporal James Tanner, who had already given much to the Union, played a key but little-known role in the aftermath of Lincoln’s assassination BY KIM A. O’CONNELL

By the time Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, James R. Tanner had seen enough of bloodshed. Just 17 years old at the outbreak of the Civil War, he had enlisted in Company C of the 87th New York Infantry, with which he participated in some of the heaviest fighting in Virginia in 1862—notably the Peninsula Campaign and the Seven Days’ Battles. The 87th had been decimated by combat, disease and desertions that summer, and by the Second Battle of Bull Run in August what remained of the unit was temporarily attached to the 105th Pennsylvania. On the afternoon of August 30, the second day of the battle, the 105th came under intense Confederate artillery fire. Tanner and his comrades were lying in wait on their stomachs when a shell fragment struck Tanner, all but severing his left foot and pulverizing his right leg. As Tanner later put it, “my feet were hanging by shreds of flesh.” A surgeon at a nearby field hospital amputated each of his legs 4 inches below the knees. Tanner moved back to his home state of New York, where he learned to walk with prosthetic limbs. Recognizing that he was still young and needed a useful profession, he studied stenography at Ames’ Business College in Syracuse. During the Civil War, the prevailing method of taking notes via shorthand was the Pitman method, a phonetic or soundbased system wherein the symbols represent sounds rather than letters. As a result, stenography was then often known as “phonography.” By 1864, prepared for a new career, Tanner returned to Washington, D.C., and began work as a clerk for the Ordnance Bureau of the War Department. He rented an upstairs apartment on 10th Street, directly across from the theater that John T. Ford had opened just a couple of years earlier in an old church meeting house. Tanner had no idea that the last act of the Civil War would land on his doorstep. n Good Friday, April 14, 1865, the mood in Washington was jubilant. The war was effectively over, and residents were filling theaters, bars and restaurants to celebrate. Like so many others that night, Tanner and

O 60

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

a friend had opted to see a show. Rather than attend the performance of Our American Cousin playing across the street at Ford’s Theatre, they chose instead to see Aladdin, Or the Wonderful Lamp at Grover’s New National Theater, located three blocks away. Aladdin was a light fantasy, perfect for sweeping away war’s pall. In fact, according to historian James Marten, author of America’s Corporal: James Tanner in War and Peace, Grover’s had gone all out that night: hanging a very large painting of Charleston Harbor and Fort Sumter, and commissioning a special performance of a song titled “When Sherman Marched Down to the Sea.” The owner had invited the Lincolns to watch Aladdin from a private box, but they instead opted to see the show at Ford’s. Almost as a consolation prize, they had sent their son Tad over to the show at Grover’s. At just after 10 p.m., according to a letter Tanner wrote to a friend three days later, the doors to Grover’s theater burst open and a man yelled that Lincoln had been shot. The crowd gasped and stood up, preparing to leave the theater—but most audience members were quickly convinced that it was merely a trick pulled by pranksters or pickpockets. People sat back down and the show briefly continued, before another man burst in and confirmed the shocking report. The crowd immediately dispersed. Tanner and his friend first went to Willard’s Hotel, where they learned nothing new. They then decided to head back to Tanner’s flat. When they approached 10th Street, Tanner recalled, “There was an immense throng there, very quiet yet very much excited; the street was crowded and I only

Hermann Faber, an artist on the surgeon general’s staff who was at Lincoln’s deathbed, drew this sketch of the mournful scene. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton sits at far right.

and he was a little over middling height.” Then the shot rang out and the assassin jumped to the stage, which is when Crawford noted that “he very strongly resembled the Booths.” In his transcription, Tanner would later underline “Booths” three times. The third witness was actor Harry Hawk, who had been standing on the stage when the assassin jumped. Hawk’s recollection was unambiguous: “I believe to the best of my knowledge that it was John Wilkes Booth….He made some expression when he came on the stage but I did not understand what.” That expression, of course, was “Sic semper tyrannis”—thus always to tyrants—the Virginia state motto. Tanner went on to record accounts by James C. Ferguson, a neighboring saloonkeeper who knew Booth, and Henry B. Phillips, an actor from Philadelphia who recalled a conversation with Booth a few days earlier in which he had lamented the Union victory and said it had given him “the blues.” Very brief remarks from Colonel George V. Rutherford of the Quartermaster Corps rounded out the testimony. (Some accounts say that Laura Keene, the star of Our American Cousin, also gave testimony. Keene is known to have knelt at Lincoln’s bedside and gotten his blood on her dress, but her observations were not recorded by Tanner or anyone else.) “In fifteen minutes,” Tanner later wrote, “I had testimony enough down to hang Wilkes Booth, the assassin, higher than ever Haman hung,” a reference to the villain in the Book of Esther in the Hebrew Bible. Tanner immediately began transcribing his notes, finishing by 6:45 a.m. By then it was clear that Lincoln’s last breath was imminent. The president’s minister, the Rev. Phineas D. Gurley, said a final prayer that Tanner attempted to record, but he found that his pencil point had broken in his pocket. The clerk’s later recollection of the scene, however, calls into question one of the most vivid and oft-quoted parts of the Lincoln deathbed story: “As ‘Thy will be done, Amen’ in subdued and tremulous tones floated through the little

got across on account of my boarding there.” The president had already been carried across the street to William Petersen’s house, adjacent to Tanner’s building. Tanner climbed to his second-floor balcony, where he witnessed the comings and goings of such luminaries as Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and Generals Henry Halleck and Montgomery Meigs, the latter of whom placed himself in the doorway of the house and acted as a gatekeeper. When it was evident no more could be done for the president other than keep him comfortable, Stanton asked for someone fluent in phonography to take down eyewitness testimony. A clerk on the scene called Tanner over. The atmosphere in the house was oppressively solemn, Tanner recalled, with Mrs. Lincoln weeping in the front parlor as the dying president gasped and groaned in the back room, where he had been laid across the bed. In the midst of the unfolding drama, Tanner was nervous and his first attempts at shorthand were shaky. “I was so excited when I commenced that I am afraid that it did not much resemble Standard Phonography or any other kind,” he wrote later. “But I could read it readily afterward, so what was the difference?” It was after midnight when he began with the first witness, Alfred Cloughly, a clerk in the Auditor’s Office who had witnessed the escape of the would-be assassin of Secretary of State William Seward a few blocks away (later determined to be conspirator Lewis Powell, then known as Lewis Payne). In a series of squiggles, slashes and x marks that comprised Pitman’s shorthand, Tanner took down Cloughly’s astonishing recollections: “I was walking with a lady in Lafayette Square. I heard someone cry out that the gates should be shut & immediately after the cry of murder and stop thief.” The second witness was Lieutenant A.M.S. Crawford of the Volunteer Reserve Corps, who had been sitting close to the president’s box at Ford’s when the assassin appeared. “He attracted my attention,” Crawford recalled. “I thought first that he was intoxicated. There was a glare in his eye Panic swept through Washington as word spread of Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865. John Wilkes Booth managed to escape the city despite the alarm, and remained on the run until he was mortally wounded on April 26.

Surratt Boarding House

Seward House Willard Hotel President’s House

Grover’s National Theatre

y t

Petersen House

i

c

Ford’s Theatre

n o t g n i h s

a

w washington monument

62

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

the capitol

The first transcription James Tanner, seen at right in the 1890s, made of the murder witness accounts was sloppy, so he made a second, neater copy for Edwin Stanton, and kept the original for himself. Tanner donated his copy, above, to the Union League in Philadelphia, where it remains.

chamber,” Tanner later wrote, “Mr. Stanton raised his head, the tears streaming down his face. A more agonized expression I never saw on a human countenance as he sobbed out the words: ‘He belongs to the angels now.’ ” Of course, the statement far more commonly attributed to Stanton in that moment is “Now, he belongs to the ages.” Ages, not angels. In Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin acknowledges that witnesses recalled slightly different comments that morning, though all the ones she quotes end in “ages.” But other historians, most notably Jay Winik, author of April 1865: The Month That Saved America, and James L. Swanson, author of Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, settled on “angels.” As Swanson writes, “the most persuasive interpretation supports ‘angels’ and is also more consistent with Stanton’s character and faith.” anner quickly faded into obscurity—though he wouldn’t stay there for long. In September 1865, he returned to New York, where he obtained various clerkships and studied law. In 1866 he married Mero White, with whom he would have four children—two girls and two boys—before her tragic death in 1906 during a vacation in Montana. Tanner soon began to gain prominence through a variety of platforms. He became a vocal advocate for veterans, eventually serving as commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic. He enjoyed touring the lecture circuit and became a regular spokesperson for the Republican Party. He served for five months as the Commissioner of Pensions, during which time his desire to “treat the boys liberally” and make it easier for veterans to qualify for pensions rubbed some people the wrong way, leading to his dis-

T

missal. And in the early 1900s, he was named the Register of Wills for the District of Columbia, as well as a leader in the reorganization of the Red Cross. As the Civil War generation began to pass into memory, the early 20th century found renewed interest in sharing stories about the war. During this time Tanner gave several public accounts of his role that night at the Petersen House. His son had also mounted his father’s original notes—both the shorthand and the transcriptions—on linen, and the newly bound manuscript became an object of fascination. Tanner died on October 2, 1927, in Washington, D.C., with three of his four children at his bedside. Along with Mero, he is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, which recently bestowed upon him a new honor (see “Etc.,” P. 81). “I tell you,” Tanner wrote to a friend back in 1865, “I would not regret the time and money I have spent on Phonography if it never brought me more than it did that night, for that brought me the privilege of standing by the deathbed of the most remarkable man of modern times and one who will live in the annals of his country as long as she continues to have a history.” A century and a half later, Tanner’s assessment of Lincoln still holds true. Yet the corporal himself played an important role in the annals of his country, although he remains lesser known. Perhaps the most salient point is that he did what all good people should do when faced with a challenging situation. As he had done before, and as he would do again, James R. Tanner rose to the occasion. ■ Kim O’Connell has seen productions at both Ford’s Theatre and Grover’s New National Theater (now known as the National Theatre) many times.

JUNE 2015 | CIVIL WAR TIMES

63

Brash, Dashing...and

Effective Youthful William Cushing bedeviled Rebels with daring raids on North Carolina’s hazardous Cape Fear River BY JAMIE MALANOWSKI

L

Lieutenant William Barker Cushing

the river, and tighten their pass through the other. But Cushing’s superior, Captain Benof the U.S. Navy pulled off one of the most implausible feats jamin Sands, considered the plan risky and denied him permission with a curt, “Can’t of the Civil War on October 28, 1864, when he sank the nototake the responsibility.” As Cushing wrote rious Confederate ironclad ram Albemarle with a torpedo later, “This, I confess, provoked me, and I launched from a small open boat. But the Albemarle triumph told the Senior Officer that I could not only do that, but if he wanted the Confederate genwas presaged by a number of other successes for the audaeral off to breakfast, I would bring him.” He cious and quick-thinking Cushing. Two of those escapades then began laying plans to do exactly what he had proposed. occurred within four months of each other early in 1864. Shortly after sundown on February 29, Cushing took 20 men in two small boats and rowed several In February 1864, Cushing—then 21, and the youngest miles up the Cape Fear, past the guns of Fort Caswell and lieutenant in the history of the Navy—was assigned to the Fort Johnston, past the town of Smithville, where Brig. Gen. North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, based at the mouth of Louis Hébert, the Confederate commander of the area, the Cape Fear River, and given command of USS Monticello. made his headquarters. By that point North Carolina, with its many twisty rivers and Having sneaked past Smithville, Cushing’s raiders turned hidden inlets, was one of the few places where Rebel blockand approached the town from the opposite direction, so ade runners still enjoyed success. Their preferred port was anyone who might be watching would think they were comWilmington, 28 miles inland from the mouth of the Cape ing downriver—and must therefore be friendly. After beachFear, a river well-protected not only by forts and batteries, ing the boats, Cushing took half his men into the one-street but also by shifting currents, changing depths, unmarked town. Even at night, its layout wasn’t difficult to discern: shoals and marshes and other navigation hazards that could the general store, the stable, the larger building that was a ensnare even experienced pilots familiar with the area. hotel. At the end of the street, the building with narrow winSoon after his arrival on February 17, Cushing, true to his reputation for independence and aggressiveness, brought dows would be the fort. Hébert would be staying somewhere his superiors a proposal to take 200 men and seize Smith’s comfortable, in a house. But which one? Island, at the mouth of the river. Doing so would close one Ahead of him Cushing could see a dark building where of the two entrances that blockade runners used to enter a large fire was burning—a salt works. Two black men, no

64

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

William B. Cushing after his promotion to lieutenant commander in October 1864. Cushing was clearly a handful even during his Naval Academy days: The superintendent wrote him a letter admonishing him for being “entirely regardless of the regulations.”

The U.S. Army built Fort Caswell and Fort Johnston, and Confederates appropriated them when the war began. Construction on Johnston began in the 1790s, and Caswell was built in 1838, in part to discourage pirates from holing up in the Cape Fear region. The Confederates renamed Johnston Fort Branch and then Fort Pender after generals killed in action. The Union retained the bastion’s prewar nomenclature, though it is misspelled “Johnson” on this map. Confederate forces constructed Fort Fisher and Fort Anderson.

Fort Fisher was the main bastion guarding Wilmington, but its supporting forts also posed a threat to Cushing’s daring escapades.

66

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

doubt slaves, were sitting by the fire. “Where’s the general?” Cushing asked. One of the men led him and two of his officers, Ensign J.E. Jones and Master’s Mate W.L. Howorth, to a house with a large veranda. Cushing crept onto the porch and quietly opened the door. Easing his way along as his eyes adjusted to the dark, he determined that he was standing in a dining room, and then a hallway. He had begun climbing the stairs when he heard a crash from below, with Howorth calling for him. Cushing hurried back to the dining room, where a large man in a nightcap confronted him, a chair raised above his head. The lieutenant punched the man in the face, later recalling, “I had him on his back in an instant with the muzzle of a revolver at his temple and my hand on his throat.” But after lighting a match, Cushing learned that the man on the floor wasn’t Hébert but Captain Patrick Kelly. The general had left for Wilmington hours before, and the noise Cushing had heard was the sound of Adj. Gen. W.D. Hardman clumsily escaping through a window. Confederate soldiers would soon be on the way. Cushing tossed Kelly his pants and waved him to the door. Then the three Yankee officers, the Rebel captain and the two slaves who were a boat ride away from freedom headed quickly for the river. Behind him, Cushing could hear shouts of alarm as Rebels filled the street, “but like the old gent with the spectacles on his forehead, [they were] looking everywhere but in the right place.” Back in their boats, Cushing’s party was halfway home before Confederates at Smithville ignited signal fires to alert other bases on the river that Yankees were in the area. “At one [a.m.],” Cushing wrote, “I was in my cabin, had given my rebel dry socks and a glass of sherry, laughed at him, and put him to bed.” Kelly didn’t get to sleep long; Cushing roused him for breakfast on the commanding officer’s ship. That afternoon the lieutenant sent Ensign Jones to Smithville under a flag of truce, in search of clothes and money to make Kelly’s stay in a Northern prison more comfortable. Ensign Jones was taken to the commander of the fort, a colonel also named Jones. After an understandably awkward beginning, the Confederate Colonel Jones showed his sporting side. “That was a damned splendid affair, sir!” he commented. The two went on to have an amiable chat, at the end of which Ensign Jones produced a letter from Cushing to General Hébert:

British schooner full of rotting coconuts and bananas. Then on the night of May 6, CSS Raleigh, an ironclad that had been built in Wilmington, emerged from the river and attacked the Union fleet. The sudden assault was launched after Confederate inspectors discovered that another ironclad based on the river, North Carolina, was riddled with shipworms, and declared it unsound. Raleigh’s commander launched his ship into battle because he didn’t want to risk suffering the same verdict, even though his vessel had never been designed to engage an enemy in open waters. Raleigh couldn’t manage to close in on the Federal ships, and steamed haphazardly around the blockading squadron, firing occasionally without ever finding a target. During the confusion a blockade runner steamed through the Federal lines, but otherwise no damage was done. At dawn Raleigh returned to New Inlet, then disappeared over the bar back onto the river.

C

My Dear General: I deeply regret that you were not at home when I called. Very respectfully, W.B. Cushing. After that adventure, Admiral Samuel Lee, head of the squadron, gave Cushing an independent command to hunt blockade runners. What should have been an ideal assignment, however, turned out to be a waste of time. In five weeks Cushing captured nothing more than an abandoned

Cushing now envisioned a new mission: capturing Raleigh. “I feel very badly over the affair, sir,” he wrote to Admiral Lee in a melodramatic letter on May 9, “and would have given my life freely to have had the power of showing my high regard for you and the honor of the service by engaging the enemy’s vessels. If they are there when I arrive, I shall use the Monticello as a ram, and will go over her or to the bottom.’’ Lee soon endorsed the idea. Cushing’s first step was to scout his adversary. On the evening of June 23, Cushing, Jones and Howorth as well as 15 volunteers armed with small arms and cutlasses took off in a cutter to find Raleigh. Entering the river with muffled oars, they passed Fort Caswell and the other outer batteries without catching a glimpse of the ironclad. Although Cushing had hoped the ship would be waiting, he determined it didn’t really matter. He was prepared to row to Wilmington if he had to. The Federals traveled the first 12 miles—close to the half of the 30 that spread between the port city and their point of embarkation—half hidden by shadows. When they passed Fort Anderson, however, they found themselves in full moonlight, in view of sentries who immediately lit signal fires and took potshots at them. At first Cushing turned the boat around and rowed obliquely, feigning retreat, but as soon as a cloud slipped in front of the moon the lieutenant resumed his northward passage. Behind them the hubbub continued, as the Confederates searched for something that was no longer there. By dawn the Union men were seven miles south of Wilmington when they pulled ashore and hid amid thick marsh grass and cattails. They spent the day resting and observing; Cushing counted nine steamers cruising past, three of them blockade runners. Later they saw Yadkin, the flagship of Flag Officer William Lynch, commander of all Confederate naval vessels in the Wilmington area.

JUNE 2015 | CIVIL WAR TIMES

67

Cushing figured that once night fell he would take the men up to Wilmington and explore its defenses. Just as they were about to embark, however, two small boats came into view hugging the shore. It turned out to be merely a fishing party—but one with some important news: Raleigh had sunk the day after its wild ride, running aground at high water. As the tide fell, its bottom split open. Now it was a toothless wreck. Cushing displayed no disappointment, deciding that the opportunity to make mischief in the enemy’s backyard was the next best thing. With the fishermen as their guides, the Yankees headed farther north, toward Wilmington. Cushing managed to catalog the city’s defenses—earthworks, guns, iron-tipped spikes, three rings of obstructions in total, backed by a battery of 10 naval guns. At Cypress Swamp they located Mott’s Creek, and poled up the shallow stream to a point where it was crossed by a log road. They followed this rough path for about two miles until it intersected a turnpike, which one of the fishermen identified as the main connection between Fort Fisher and Wilmington. Lying in some tall grass there, they waited. The lieutenant figured that something of interest would eventually appear. When a hunter passed by shortly before midday, the sailors jumped him. They quickly learned that he was in fact the owner of a general store about a mile away. Before they could question him further, however, a horseman clopped into view—a soldier toting a mailbag. In the face of eight or

nine muskets and pistols, the man dismounted and surrendered his mailbag, which turned out to hold hundreds of letters full of information about the size of the garrison at Fort Fisher, the state of supplies and the deployment of its guns. Soon the discussion turned to food, and Howorth suggested a daring plan. He would take the courier’s coat, hat and horse and go to the hunter’s general store, not far away. Flush with Confederate money taken from the mailbag, he would stock up for the group. While Howorth went shopping—he eventually returned with chicken, milk and blueberries, the makings of a tasty picnic that, according to Cushing, “could not be improved in Seceshia”—Cushing and his men continued to detain passers-by, and eventually they were holding 26 people. Cushing figured that they would continue to sit there until the afternoon mail carrier bound for Fort Fisher came by, since he would likely be carrying the latest newspapers, always a good source of intelligence. But the courier apparently saw Cushing’s men first, because he abruptly wheeled his horse around and began galloping back toward Wilmington. Cushing pursued him for two miles but never caught up. Once the mailman reached Wilmington, Cushing realized that Confederate authorities would learn of his foray. Rebels up and down the river would be on high alert. Cushing ordered the telegraph wire cut and then led the group out of the swamp. At the river, he loaded his captives into canoes that were then tied to the back of his cutter.

Stuart and Mosby vs. Cushing In Civil War lore, two events consistently stand out for dash and panache.

➧

➧ On June 12, 1862, Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart set out with 1,200 troopers to scout the right flank of the Union army south of Richmond, and turned it into a three-day jaunt around Maj. Gen. George McClellan’s entire force. He gathered intelligence, captured 165 Yankee soldiers along with animals and supplies, and essentially made the Federals look foolish. That brazen foray, during which only a single Confederate trooper lost his life, established the Stuart legend.

Nine months later Lieutenant John Singleton Mosby, the famous “Gray Ghost,” sneaked behind Union lines on March 9, 1863, and captured Union Brig. Gen. Edwin Stoughton, who was staying in a private home in Fairfax Court House, Va. “On the bed we saw the general sleeping,” Mosby wrote in his memoir. “There was no time for ceremony, so I drew up the bedclothes, pulled up the general’s shirt, and gave him a spank on his bare back. “General, did you ever hear of Mosby?” the Rebel guerrilla recalled asking him. “Yes,” Stoughton replied, “have you caught him?” “I am Mosby,” came the reply. “Stuart’s cavalry has possession of the courthouse; be quick and dress.”

Does Cushing’s ride around the Cape Fear River rank with Stuart’s ride around McClellan’s Federals? Probably not, at least not in terms of scale or spectacle; after all, 1,200 cavaliers galloping on horseback must have been quite a sight. But Cushing has it on Mosby. While the Gray Ghost’s prey yielded to a slap on the butt, Cushing had to overcome a quarry wielding some heavy furniture in his own defense. –JM

68

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

Around 7 p.m. Cushing’s little fleet headed to a lighthouse-occupied island in the river, where the Union lieutenant planned to leave William was one of a remarkable set of brothers who served the Union. the prisoners, confident they would soon be rescued. But as they reached the island, a Alonzo Youngest brother steamer appeared on the horizon, seemingly Hersford Howard Bass Cushing headed toward them. Cushing and his men hid Cushing survived the Civil behind the boats; they were not detected, but of the 4th War, but died fighting he quickly changed his mind about what to do U.S. Artillery Apaches in 1871. with his prisoners, cutting them loose in the continued blasting canoes without sails or paddles. By the time canister into they were rescued, he figured, any news they Milton Cushing, the the teeth of Pickett’s Charge could pass on about Yankee raiders would no eldest son of Milton at Gettysburg, despite severe longer be a factor. and Mary Cushing, wounds, until Rebel musketry As the Union cutter headed for the mouth also served in the U.S. shot him down. In November Navy during the Civil of the river in the predawn hours, it overtook 2014, Alonzo received a War. He died in 1887. a small boat, with four sailors and two women posthumous Medal of Honor for his bravery. on board. Cushing’s boat was already overloaded, but he felt compelled to take the six captive. The prisoners were quick to taunt reported, “...by my trick of steering the cutter so as to avoid Cushing, however, telling him: “There are guard boats lookreflecting the moon’s rays, caused the main line of enemy ing for you. You’ll never get past Federal Point. There’s 75 boats to lose sight of her in the swell.” soldiers in a boat waiting for you.” The Confederates were now chasing something they could The moon had risen at that point, clearly no longer see. Cushing kept looking to exploit an opening, and as he felt the pull of the tide and current beneath him, illuminating the little boat in the wide, empty river, but Cushhe realized something important: He was at the point in the ing was confident the tide was still in his favor. “I concluded channel where the tide split. One channel led back to Fort to pull boldly for the bar,” he later reported, “run foul of Caswell, close to where his trip had begun, and one channel the guard-boat, use cutlasses and revolvers and drift by the led past Fort Fisher to the Atlantic. Cushing called for one batteries in that way since they would not fire on their own more quick turn, and the cutter caught the channel to Fort men.” But just five minutes after starting for the channel, his Fisher; his men then rowed like they were possessed. plan failed; a large boat, certainly large enough to hold 75 solLeaving the Confederate boats struggling to turn around, diers, loomed ahead of them. Surrender was out of the questhe Union vessel shot ahead. Borne by the current, it began tion. “We determined to outwit the enemy, or fight it out.” opening up distance from the Rebel flotilla—30 yards, 50 Fight it out seemed the most likely option. Cushing had yards, 100—all but vanishing against the horizon. There closed to within 20 yards of the ship, intent on ramming it, was a final plunge into the breakers off Caroline Shoals to when he saw three additional boats pull out from the bar on thwart the gunners at Fort Fisher, and the expedition was the left, and then five more from the right. Too many, Cushover. Cushing hailed the steamer Cherokee, which towed the ing realized, to overpower. small boat back to Monticello. By midafternoon the Yankee He quickly steered the boat to the right, toward the westraiders were again in their bunks, including Cushing, who ern bar. His men pulled hard and in perfect sync, opening had gone 68 hours without sleep. precious space between themselves and their pursuers. The Cushing’s raid on Smithville was certainly audacious. surprised Rebels fumbled with their oars and lost time turnHe brought back valuable intelligence that would influence ing. Had they thought for a moment, they might have realUnion operations in North Carolina for the rest of the war. ized what Cushing had already figured out: There would be Even more important, his account of his adventures helped no escaping that morning through the western bar. There convince his superiors that young Lieutenant Cushing was a was a strong southwest wind that would fill the passage with very special talent—special enough to take on the ironclad breakers too strong to surmount. He would be left there, Albemarle, the Confederates’ Roanoke River bully. ■ his men straining at the oars and his overloaded little boat a perfect bobbing target for the guns of Fort Caswell. But the Rebel pursuers chased the Yankee boat—and Jamie Malanowski is the author of Commander Will became all the more confused when it vanished. “Dashing Cushing: Daredevil Hero of the Civil War. He writes from off with the tide in the direction of Smithville,” Cushing Briarcliff Manor, N.Y.

The Brothers Cushing

T

JUNE 2015 | CIVIL WAR TIMES

69

Reviews

Why did Lee leave the Union? Is there anything new to say about Robert E. Lee? Jonathan Horn thinks so.

reviewed by GORDON BERG n The Man Who Would Not Be Washington, Jonathan Horn tries to answer an often-asked question: What prompted the preeminent soldier of mid-19th-century America to reject his country and his sworn duty to defend it, following instead the state of his birth into secession and rebellion? Why did Lee, linked by history and blood to George Washington, offer his military skills to tear apart the creation of his grandfather-in-law’s generation, a democratic, if imperfect, union of states bound together by the consent of a majority of its citizens? Horn does a masterful job of showing the many historical, geographic and genealogical strands that linked the Washington and Lee families together from Colonial times. He carefully explicates the complicated relationship with the first president’s legacy that enveloped Lee from the

I

70

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

time he married Mary, the daughter of Washington’s adopted son, George Washington Parke Custis, in 1831. But dissecting Lee’s decision-making process and the reasons behind it falls short of proving it to be a choice “that changed American history.” Horn’s nimble writing and tentative forays into psycho-history never quite arrive at an answer beyond the old shibboleth that Lee could not renounce the pro-slavery choice of his native state to save his native country. On duty in Texas when his fatherin-law died in 1857, Lee resigned his commission and returned to Virginia to settle family debts and put unprofitable properties, including Arlington, back on firm financial footing. Robert was unwilling to repeat the sins of his father—and George Washington’s comrade—“Light Horse” Harry Lee. Horn maintains that for Lee, the “responsibility for closing an estate as large and messy as Custis’ would be all consuming.” In choosing

between the Army and Arlington, Horn concludes Lee set aside his own desires and opted for answering the needs of family. He cites character traits long linked to Lee: abhorring secession and believing that slavery was a political and moral millstone, sinking the nation’s economic and social progress. Still, maintaining slavery on his plantations was crucial to the immediate financial well-being of his family. Lee was back with his regiment in Texas when an urgent message from General in Chief Winfield Scott called him to Washington in February 1861. He arrived at Arlington in time to greet a new grandson and a new president, as well as witness a nation on the brink of dissolution. Lauded as the living repository of Washington’s legacy by Northerners and Southerners alike, Lee agonized over the decision of whether to accept command of all the nation’s armies. The framers of the Constitution,

The Man Who Would Not Be Washington: Robert E. Lee’s Civil War Jonathan Horn Scribner, $28

Lee wrote in a letter to his son, Rooney, “intended for perpetual union, so expressed in the preamble….In 1808, secession was termed treason by Virginia statesmen. What can it be now.” But while Washington, in his Farewell Address, admonished his countrymen never to raise their swords except in defense of their country, Lee concluded his letter differently. “If the union is dissolved and the government disrupted,” he wrote, “I shall return to my native state and share the miseries of my people and save in her defense will draw my sword no more.” When Virginia voted to secede, Horn concludes, “Saving the Union might require conquering Virginia. That he [Lee] could not do.” After Lee informed Scott of his decision, the old general told him, “You have made the greatest mistake of your life….” Lee struggled throughout his life to reconcile his thoughts and actions with those of his famous relative by marriage. Horn tries to decode Lee’s often contradictory views, but in the end we are left with Lee as a tragic, often conflicted figure—much like the state and country he tried, but ultimately failed, to serve with equal commitment.

We’re not just any small town. We’re Bardstown, KY—the Bourbon Capital of the World® and the most beautiful small town in America, according to Rand McNally and USA Today. Great for history, bourbon, shopping, sightseeing and relaxing— whatever you enjoy, you’re sure to find it in beautiful Bardstown.

www.visitbardstown.com 800.638.4877

Panzers, Landsers and Politics Short Stories and Epic Novels Versailles to the Eastern Front Jagdpa

nzer Ve rlag

Visit our website

www.panzerschlacht.us JUNE 2015 | CIVIL WAR TIMES

71

Reviews reviewed by ETHAN S. RAFUSE he past few decades have been good for students of the great campaign that Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans’ Army of the Cumberland and General Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee waged in August and September 1863, which culminated in two brutal days of combat at Chickamauga, Ga. William Glenn Robertson, Peter Cozzens and Steven E. Woodworth have generated an impressive body of scholarship distinguished by thorough research, fine attention to detail and compelling analyses of men and events that have significantly enhanced our understanding of the complex maneuvers and tactical actions shaping the campaign’s course and outcome. In A Mad Irregular Battle, David Powell, author of the superb The Maps of Chickamauga and an award-winning study of Confederate cavalry operations during the campaign, offers the first in a planned three-volume study that

T The Chickamauga Campaign: A Mad Irregular Battle— From the Crossing of the Tennessee River Through the Second Day, August 22– September 19, 1863 David A. Powell Savis Beatie, $37.50

promises to provide the most thorough examination yet of the troop movements and fighting at Chickamauga. Powell skillfully chronicles the process by which the two armies maneuvered, resulting in a stalemate by nightfall on September 19, 1863. As with all works of this type, however, this book’s value will depend on the reader’s specific interest in Chickamauga. Powell does an exceptional job of sorting through the sources to provide a satisfying account of a complicated series of tactical actions, but there’s probably too much in this doorstop of a book for novice students to digest easily— or really anyone who doesn’t already have a fairly good background on the battle. Those folks will be better served by turning to Powell’s Maps book or Woodworth’s various works before taking this on. Anyone looking for more detail will find much to enjoy in this volume, and will finish it eagerly looking forward to Powell’s upcoming treatment of the battle’s September 20 fighting and its aftermath.

Don’t Miss the April 2015 Civil War Living History Program!

Confederate Memorial Park is the site of Alabama’s only Old Soldiers Home for Confederate Veterans. In operation from 1902 to 1939, the home cared for elderly veterans, and wives and widows of veterans.

COME FOR A VISIT! For more information, call 205-755-1990 or go online www.preserveala.org/confederatepark.aspx 72

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

ADVERTISEMENT

Alabama’s Historic Gulf Coast Standing atop the fort with a view of the once embattled Mobile Bay, you can almost hear the command of Admiral David Farragut as he led his troops into battle, “Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead!” Voyage through time and revisit an era of adventure and bravery aboard the USS Alabama, or walk in a soldier’s footsteps and experience day-to-day life at Fort Morgan and Fort Gaines. Further exploration awaits at the area’s many museums that recall the Native American history, medical history and railroads that feature prominently in the Gulf Coast’s historical landscape. Learn more at www.GulfShores.com.

Suddenly, you’re in a whole different state of

remembrance.

History comes alive when you step foot onto the hallowed ground at one of the country’s few remaining Civil War forts. Come experience the story of the Battle of Mobile Bay and learn how Fort Morgan played a pivotal role at one of our nation’s most crucial moments.

888-666-9252

A group of radicals wanted to take over the federal government. With Lincoln dead, the opportunity was theirs.

NEW IN PAPERBACK

A well-written account of the events, motives and consequences of radical politics during the pre- and postCivil War Era. Comprehensive index and bibliography. 600 pages Paperback price $25.99

Order Online www.curtandersbooks.com

Civil War Museum of the Western Theatre In Historic Bardstown, Kentucky

The finest collection of Western Theatre Civil War artifacts in the United States! Plus! s Women’s Civil War Museum s War Museum of Mid America s Historic Pioneer Village

310 E. Broadway Bardstown, KY

(502) 349-0291 www.civil-war-museum.org Email: [email protected]

76

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

Reviews reviewed by GORDON BERG nly the dead know Shiloh better than Tim Smith, who has spent much of his professional life studying the battle that, according to Ulysses Grant, “has been perhaps less understood or, to state the case more accurately, more misunderstood than any other engagement.” Though Shiloh is better understood now than it was in Grant’s day, Smith assures readers “there is plenty new to say.” For instance, his in-depth analysis of April 7, the second day of the battle, shows it “was much more important to the central contest than is often thought.” Smith, who knows the region’s landscape, waterways and road system, points out, “Any understanding of the Battle of Shiloh has to start with an understanding of the terrain on which it was fought.” Maps enable readers to follow troop movements and grasp the topography. Unlike other authors, Smith contends the Union army’s camping ground was well chosen and defensible, favoring the Federals. Lack of Union entrenchments has long been understood as a factor leading to the Confederates’ initial successes on April 6. But Smith argues, “despite everything, the idea that the Federals were totally negligent of security is a myth.” Sickness was rampant in the Army of the Tennessee, and a reorganization of the artillery and cavalry on April 4 and 5 had officers taking new commands and units moving campsites. Smith also makes it clear that Grant and Brig. Gen. William Sherman’s contention they hadn’t been surprised must be understood in a strategic Shiloh: rather than a tactical sense. Both Union comConquer or Perish manders knew the enemy was in the area, but no Timothy B. Smith one in blue had any idea 40,000 Rebels were University of Kansas Press poised to strike less than a mile from Union lines. $34.95 First contact at Shiloh involved a small Union patrol attacking the 3rd Mississippi Infantry, which was advancing in Fraley Field. Another myth Smith puts to rest is that the initial Confederate attack swept all before it. “Once it started,” Smith insists, “the attack was anything but quick and overwhelming.” In fact, many Union regiments in Sherman’s division executed effective fighting retreats, and mid-rank officers like Colonel Everett Peabody bought time so other units could organize themselves. But the untested regiments of Brig. Gen. Benjamin Prentiss’ small division fared poorly. In the mass confusion, some did rally with Prentiss in an area that became known as the “Hornets’ Nest,” fighting until forced to surrender. Smith concludes that “The Army of the Tennessee was in shambles” on the night of April 6, but the decision to trade space for time and “lower level grit put Grant in a position to come out on top.” Rather than holding his position, hoping for a tactical draw, Grant attacked the next morning. Two factors made this a winning decision. First, Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell’s reinforcements, 17,000 strong, gave Grant fresh troops. A second component was “the remarkable lack of preparation in the Confederate army during the night, especially compared to what was occurring behind the Union lines.” All night long, boats ferried in reinforcements, while ammunition wagons rolled among the regiments. Victory at Fort Donelson in February 1862 may have given Grant a memorable moniker, but Shiloh gave him a prescription for victory.

O

Reviews reviewed by ALLEN BARRA veryone has heard of the Underground Railroad, but Eric Foner’s Gateway to Freedom shows us how little we really know about it. Foner makes it clear that a comprehensive look at the Underground Railroad is impossible, despite a lifetime of study. Even in New York, which had a huge black population, the story of the Railroad “is like a jigsaw puzzle, many of whose pieces have been irretrievably lost, or a gripping detective story where the evidence is murky and incomplete.” If not for the editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, abolitionist and UGRR operative Sydney Howard Gay, we might not even know about Harriet Tubman. Both Northern and Southern journalists credited the UGRR with more organization and resources than it had; as Foner writes, “both abolitionists and slave owners had a vested interest in exaggerating the numbers—the former to emphasize

E

the black desire for freedom…the latter as evidence of a northern conspiracy to undermine the peculiar institution.” The number of slaves who escaped will never be known, but one estimate is as many as 5,000 per year between 1830 and 1860. One reason facts about the UGRR are so imprecise was that it was, simply put, illegal. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 had established that even if a state abolished slavery, it must respect the laws of other states. The Act remained the only federal law on the subject of slavery until it was reinforced by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. The new law essentially commanded citizens to arrest escaped slaves. Any who aided escapees faced stiff punishment from their own government. Foner’s history stands as the definitive work to date on the Railroad, and pays fitting tribute to activists like Louis Napoleon, a free black who may have rescued as many as 3,000 slaves—and whose occupation was listed on his death certificate as “Underground RR Agent.”

Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad Eric Foner W.W. Norton, $26.95

JUNE 2015 | CIVIL WAR TIMES

77

With Pride We Honor The Brave Men Of the Union Who Fought The Civil War. With Patience We Preserve Their Memory, Their Monuments, and Their Legacy. With Persistence We Educate The Children of
BACK ISSUES DON’T MISS A SINGLE COPY ORDER TODAY!

CW506A

HistoryNetShop.com • 1-800-358-6327

BUYING! CONFEDERATE & SOUTHERN OBSOLETE CURRENCY P.O. Box 9 • Franklin, TN 37065 (901) 487-5944 email: [email protected]

www.GregTonCurrency.com

Shenandoah Civil War Associates presents: “The War Came by Train: the B&O Railroad during the Civil War.”

Q BOOKS/PUBLICATIONS FOR SALE: 43 issues CWT Illustrated, Dec ’63 - Aug ’68. Excellent condition, $135, free US shipping. Respond to: [email protected]. Q FOR SALE MILLER’S 10 VOLUME Photographic History of the Civil War. 113 years old. Like new condition. $700.00 OBO plus shipping. John Pierce. Home: 248-855-0038, Cell: 248-736-1563.

Tour dates: June 19-21, 2015 Join us with Civil War historian Daniel Toomey, author of “The War Came by Train: The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad During the Civil War” and curator of the Civil War-themed exhibit at Baltimore’s B&O Railroad Museum.

Q MUSIC GHOSTWRITER FOR HIRE. Write your book today! Also: book proposals, editing, manuscript review. I don’t promise the moon, just a well-written book. Call Jonathan The Ghost Writer at: 800-642-9278, www. jwghostwriter.com.

• Ellicott City Station- the oldest surviving railroad station in America • The B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore-The largest collection of Civil War railroad equipment in the world • Camden Station and President Street Station • Relay House, Md, where the majority of troops passed on the way to the battlefields

Q

TRAVEL/TOURS/ VACATIONS

• Culminating with a two hour excursion from New Freedom, Pa. to Hanover Jct., Pa. and back on The William H. Simpson #17, a faithful replica of the 1860 Civil War steam locomotive that carried Abraham Lincoln to deliver his now famous Gettysburg Address. These same tracks carried Lincoln’s funeral train two years later. Live period entertainment included as well as a historical perspective of the railroad by historian and author Scott Mingus.

www.CivilWarTraveler.com SPECIAL EVENTS: Little Big Horn Associates. 2015 Annual Conference in Lynchburg, VA. June 10-13, 2015. Join us in the commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of the Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. To Register go to: http:// thelbha.org/pdfs/conferenceRegistra tion.pdf (membership is required). To join the LBHA go to: http://thelbha.org/join.shtml.

For program information email [email protected] To register contact: Conferences at James Madison University, (540) 568-8043

HISTORY FILLED WEEKEND commemorating the 150th anniversary of the sinking of the Sultana, the largest maritime disaster in U.S. history, April 24-25, 2015. www. sultana150.org.

A special issue to commemorate the

150th Anniversary of the

BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG! Available in

DIGITAL FORMAT

Item: CWGB13 Print: $11.99 Digital: $9.99 To order, call: 1-800-358-6327 Or go online: HistoryNetShop.com

too!

PO Box 8005, Dept. CW506B, Aston, PA 19014

ADVERTISEMENT

TECHNOLOGY SIMPLIFIED – BIGGER AND BETTER

Wow! A Simple to Use Computer Designed Especially for Seniors! Easy to read. Easy to see. Easy to use. Just plug it in!

NEW Now comes with... Larger 22-inch hi-resolution screen – easier to see 16% more viewing area Simple navigation – so you never get lost Intel® processor – lightning fast Computer is in the monitor – No bulky tower Advanced audio, Better speaker configuration – easier to hear Text to Speech translation – it can even read your emails to you! U.S. Based Customer Service

FREE

Automatic Software Updates

Have you ever said to yourself “I’d love to get a computer, if only I could figure out how to use it.” Well, you’re not alone. Computers were supposed to make our lives simpler, but they’ve gotten so complicated that they are not worth the trouble. With all of the “pointing and clicking” and “dragging and dropping” you’re lucky if you can figure out where you are. Plus, you are constantly worrying about viruses and freeze-ups. If this sounds familiar, we have great news for you. There is finally a computer that’s designed for simplicity and ease of use. It’s the WOW Computer, and it was designed with you in mind. This computer is easy-to-use, worry-free and literally puts the world at your

fingertips. From the moment you open the box, you’ll realize how different the WOW Computer is. The components are all connected; all you do is plug it into an outlet and your high-speed Internet connection. Then you’ll see the screen – it’s now 22 inches. This is a completely new touch screen system, without the cluttered look of the normal computer screen. The “buttons” on the screen are easy to see and easy to understand. All you do is touch one of them, from the Web, Email, Calendar to Games– you name it… and a new screen opens up. It’s so easy to use you won’t have to ask your children or grandchildren for help. Until now, the very people who could benefit most from E-mail and the Internet are the ones that have had the hardest time accessing it. Now, thanks to the WOW Computer, countless older Americans are discovering the wonderful world of the Internet every day. Isn’t it time

you took part? Call now, and a patient, knowledgeable product expert will tell you how you can try it in your home for 30 days. If you are not totally satisfied, simply return it within 30 days for a refund of the product purchase price. Call today. s Send & Receive Emails s Have video chats with family and friends s Surf the Internet: Get current weather and news s Play games Online: Hundreds to choose from!

Call now toll free and find out how you can get the new WOW! Computer. Mention promotional code 49109 for special introductory pricing.

1-877-740-1964 © 2015 firstSTREET for Boomers and Beyond, Inc.

80992

“I love this computer! It is easy to read and to use! I get photo updates from my children and grandchildren all the time.” – Janet F.

Etc. XXIV Corps Badge Soldiers of the X and XVIII Corps were consolidated to form the XXIV Corps (see P. 22) on December 3, 1864, and the heart was designated as the corps’ distinctive badge. An unknown soldier paid a pretty penny for this engraved silver “private purchase” badge. When the XXIV Corps was reactivated for both WWII and the Vietnam War, the heart insignia remained a fixture on the corps shoulder patch.

James Tanner’s Arlington Tribute

F WOOF!

A pooch catches a ride on a 9th New York Heavy Artillery limber.

rom its Civil War inception, Arlington Cemetery became a magnet for Americans who wished to honor the nation’s veterans. This led to the creation of Decoration Day (later known as Memorial Day) observances at the cemetery. As crowds for those observances grew, General Montgomery Meigs, a gifted engineer and architect, designed a neoclassical amphitheater for such gatherings in the form of a pergola with supporting columns. The unnamed amphitheater was first used on May 30, 1873, with dignitaries such as President Ulysses Grant and Frederick Douglass in attendance. By 1900, however, it was clear to cemetery officials that an even larger amphitheater would be required to accommodate the growing crowds.

Although planning and funding were slowed by World War I and other events, the cemetery’s new Memorial Amphitheater opened in 1920, leaving the “Old Amphitheater” to be referred to in exactly that way for decades, with no official name. That changed in May 2014, when Arlington Cemetery renamed the Old Amphitheater for James Tanner (see P. 60), who is buried a few yards away in section 2, grave 877, marking the occasion with a dignified celebration. “This dedication not only symbolizes the connection to our rich heritage to generations yet to come,” said Patrick Hallinan, executive director of the Army National Military Cemeteries, “but also embraces the selfless sacrifice of our military members, past, present and future.” —Kim A. O’Connell

CREDITS Cover: National Archives/Colorization by Slingshot Studio, North Hampton, NH; P. 4-5: From the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection/Courtesy of the Indiana State Museum and Allen County Public Library; P. 9: Top: lcm1863/Lisa DeCusati; Bottom: Courtesy of Dana Shoaf; P. 10: Bottom: Library of Congress; P. 13: Top: Reading Times, January 8, 1863; Bottom: Pittston Gazette, November 20, 1862; P. 18: Left: Courtesy of the Galena & U.S. Grant Museum; Right: Harper’s Weekly, January 5, 1907; P. 19: Left: National Museum of American History/Smithsonian Institution; Top Right: Ian Dagnall/Alamy; Top Bottom: Jennifer Vann; P. 20: Top: Library of Congress; Bottom: William A Turner Collection; P. 21: Left: Matthew Fleming; Top Right: Google Earth; Bottom Right: Sarah J. Mock; P. 22-23: Library of Congress; P. 24: Courtesy of the Gettysburg National Military Park; P. 26: Gettysburg: The Second Day; P. 31: George Eastman House/Getty Images; P. 32: Historical Society of Harford County, Inc.; P. 33: Courtesy of Terry Alford; P. 34: Jennifer Vann; P. 36: James T. Wollon Collection/Historical Society of Harford County, Inc.; P. 37: Library of Congress; P. 38-39: Appomattox Court House National Historical Park; P. 41: Left: Library of Congress; Right: Appomattox Court House National Historical Park; P. 42: Library of Congress; P. 43: National Museum of American History/Smithsonian Institution/Bridgeman Images; P. 44: Library of Congress; P. 45: Shenandoah Sanchez; P. 47: Library of Congress/ Colorization by Slingshot Studio, North Hampton, NH; P. 49: Library of Congress; P. 51: National Archives; P. 52: Library of Congress; P. 54-55: Library of Congress; P. 59: Photo by Jennifer Rohrbaugh Nesossis/Virginia Historical Society; P. 61: Library of Congress/Colorization by Slingshot Studio, North Hampton, NH; P. 62: Joan Pennington; P. 63: From Left: Union League of Philadelphia (2); Genealogy of the White Family (1895); P. 65: National Archives; P. 66: The Official Military Atlas of the Civil War; P. 68: Library of Congress (2); P. 69: Left: Special Collections and Archives Division, USMA Library; Top Right: Wisconsin Historical Society, WHS-113547; Bottom Right: Wisconsin Historical Society, WHS-NF Cushing, Milton; P. 70: Chuck Myers/MCT/Landov; P. 81: Clockwise from Top Right: Wally Gobetz; Library of Congress; Courtesy of Skinner, Inc. www.skinnerinc.com; P. 82: Courtesy of Skinner, Inc. www.skinnerinc.com.

JUNE 2015 | CIVIL WAR TIMES

81

Sold!

Friends and the Famous

$ 4,613

The Original Dropbox Soldiers by the score paid to have inexpensive cartes de visite made during the war. Many images were later placed in keepsake albums, along with CDV copies of photographs of famous commanders. These recently auctioned albums feature images of Rhode Island soldiers, as well as prewar images of Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson.

82

CIVIL WAR TIMES | JUNE 2015

THE REBEL YELL…

THE REBEL YELL… was one of the most effective psychological tools used by the Confederate army during the American Civil War. It was first heard during the First Battle of Manassas when Stonewall Jackson’s troops were ordered to “yell like furies,” during a bayonet charge assaulting Henry House Hill. It was heard again and again at every battle during the bloody fighting that raged for four years. The shrill ringing scream is said to have had ancient Celtic origins,

7R\6ROGLHU6KRSSH Tel: 414-302-1850 Fax: 414-302-1851 www.toysoldiershoppe.net 3775 S. 108th St. *UHHQ¿HOG:LVFRQVLQ 7KH7R\6ROGLHU&RPSDQ\ Tel: (Toll Free)1-888-825-8697 www.toysoldierco.com

WBA0315

©2015 FIRST GEAR, INC.

as decades before the war, almost three quarters of the population from Virginia to Texas was probably of Scotch-Irish decent. Anecdotes from former Union Soldiers commented that, “if you claim you heard it and weren’t scared that means you never heard it.” You can almost hear the Rebel yells when you look at our newest additions to our ever growing collection of American Civil War figures. For a closer look please visit one of our authorized dealers.

7KH+LVWRU\6WRUH Tel: 740-775-7400 www.thehistorystore.net [email protected] 101 North Paint St. Chillicothe, Ohio 45601

6LHUUD7R\6ROGLHU Tel: 408-395-3000 Fax: 408-358-3966 www.sierratoysoldier.com 29 N. Santa Cruz Ave. Los Gatos, California 95030

*UHHQ·V&ROOHFWDEOHV Tel: 973-627-4961 www.greenscollectables.com 46 Warren Trail Denville, New Jersey 07834

Tedtoy Miniatures Tel: 270-929-2876 www.tedtoy.com 1301 Walnut Street Owensboro, Kentucky 42301

Treefrog Treasures Tel: 866-394-2418 Outside U.S.: 1-507-545-2500 www.treefrogtreasures.com 248 Sandstone Drive NW Eyota, Minnesota 55934

Hobby Bunker Tel: 781-321-8855 Fax: 781-321-8866 www.hobbybunker.com 33 Exchange Street Malden, Massachusetts 02148

FIRST GEAR®,

design, W. Britain®, and

 registered trademarks of First Gear, Inc., Peosta, IA are

Beautiful new editions FROM THE FOLIO SOCIETY A NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM: SELECTED WRITINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN A collection of Lincoln’s finest writing that sheds new light on one of America’s literary as well as political giants. 150 years after Lincoln’s death, rediscover the full oratory of the ‘poet of politics’ and the nations greatest president. This edition is selected and introduced by distinguished biographer, Professor Fred Kaplan and weaves together the best of Lincoln’s speeches, letters and articles into a compelling and moving narrative.

NEW TITLE EXCLUSIVE TO THE FOLIO SOCIETY

“With malice towards none, with charity for all” To see the full range of distinctive history titles visit www.foliosociety.com or call 1-866-255-8280 (toll-free)